How to find out what is useful for Russia

On May 19, 2009, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, by his decree, established a Commission to counter attempts to falsify history to the detriment of Russia's interests. The commission was headed by the head of the administration of the head of state, Sergei Naryshkin. Naryshkin is also the chairman of the commission for the protection of state secrets, whose function is to declassify archival documents. So far, his activity has been noticed not so much by the opening of new archives, but by the closing of previously opened ones. In his first specialty he is a mechanical engineer, in his second he is an economist. He doesn't have historical education, it is replaced by a good political scent. This is news to history.

Ivan Demidov, a former TV presenter and now head of one of the departments of the Russian President's Domestic Policy Department, became the commission's executive secretary. Also new to history. The commission included 28 people, including deputies of the Duma, the Federation Council, the Foreign Ministry, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the FSB and the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, as well as journalist Nikolai Svanidze. This is the third novelty. But there are also familiar, traditional approaches - a couple of people from the Ministry of Education and the institutes of Russian and general history of the Russian Academy of Sciences were introduced to the commission. It is not new for former Soviet, now Russian academicians to rewrite history, so they are in their element.

It is clear that it is impossible to falsify "against" the interests of Russia, but is it possible to falsify for the interests? This has always been done in the past. Interests are not at all a scientific and historical category, but a sociopolitical one. What about the Baltic states that believe they were occupied by the Red Army in 1940? According to the interests of the USSR, they were not occupied, but freed from bourgeois oppression. What about the war with Finland? Then it was useful to consider that the White Finns started the war. And the "Red Finns" lived in the then established Karelian-Finnish SSR and were very happy. There is a conclusion hostile to Russia's interests that Stalin contributed to Hitler's rise to power, because he forbade the Communist Party of Germany to cooperate with the Social Democrats, and in August 1939 he completely allowed Hitler to attack Poland, and then partitioned it with "friendly" Germany.

The problem is complex. So much so that soon the decree was removed from the President's website.

However, let's leave these questions and touch on one juicy detail: what Hitler and Stalin said about each other after the signing of the Non-Aggression Treaty of August 23, 1939 and the Treaty of Friendship of September 17 of the same year.

At first glance, it seems that Stalin is Hitler's worst enemy,

and he must speak of it in the most rude and sarcastic tones. But nothing like that. Here about Churchill or Roosevelt, Hitler always speaks with malice and mockery. Churchill is a stupid drunkard, Roosevelt is a half-mad syphilitic, moreover, a half-breed. Chamberlain and Daladier, who agree with Hitler, are generally "worms". But Stalin is always mentioned by Hitler with the epithets "smart", "sharp", "brilliant". At a meeting with the high military command on January 9, 1941, Hitler said: "Stalin, the master of Russia, is a smart guy. He will not openly oppose Germany." Smart Stalin was, according to Hitler, before the start of the war. And after the beginning, he became a genius in his eyes. Yes, for example, with what words Hitler ends the conversation at his dinner on August 21, 1942, "The brilliant Stalin was fully aware that in the implementation of his plans for a world revolution," and further, how bad it would be for the whole world from Russian-style communism 2. Goebbels reported in his diaries about a kind of love at first sight: "The Fuhrer saw Stalin in a film, and he immediately seemed likeable to him. This, in fact, began the German-Russian coalition" 3 . Yes, more than once in his table conversations he modestly called him a genius and openly admired him! But Hitler’s more detailed judgment about Stalin: “A community can be created and maintained only by force ... And if Stalin in the past years used the same methods in relation to the Russian people that Charlemagne used in his time in relation to the German people, then taking into account the cultural level of the Russians at that time, you should not curse him for it.Stalin also concluded for himself that the Russians need strict discipline and a strong state to unite them if you want to provide a solid political foundation in the struggle for survival, which is waged by all the peoples united in the USSR, and help the individual achieve what he cannot achieve on your own, for example, get medical care" 4 .

Hitler very much approved of Stalin for his massive shooting of the Soviet command and officers. Not only because of the purely pragmatic goals of a sharp weakening of the Red Army (he himself contributed to this by ordering Soviet intelligence to plant compromising evidence about Tukhachevsky's cooperation with the German services), but precisely because of ideological ones. Hitler sincerely believed that any disloyalty among the military should be suppressed in the most radical way. What is a "radical solution"? This is the physical liquidation of the disloyal. It was Hitler who showed an example of eliminating problems in such a simple way, when in the summer of 1934 he eliminated the entire leadership of the SA (assault detachments), led by his former boss Rem, with one blow (about 200 people were shot in one night). Stalin was delighted. According to Mikoyan and Stalin's interpreter Berezhkov, Stalin, having learned about the liquidation of his associates by Hitler, exclaimed at a meeting of the Politburo: "Well done, this Hitler! He showed how to deal with political opponents!" 5 And adopted. But, being, according to Bukharin's definition, a "brilliant dispenser", he did not rush. He very thoroughly prepared the assassination of Kirov (December 1 of the same year) and only from 1935 began the gradual liquidation of political and other "disloyal".

Let me explain what the term "disloyalty" means in relation to the understanding of Stalin. This is not at all rebellion, insubordination, or some kind of creation of their own factions. By the mid-30s, such things had long since become obsolete. And all that remained was quiet conversations in the kitchen, saying that, they say, Stalin didn’t ... no matter how he led the country into a swamp. They even told a joke: "Why did Lenin wear shoes and Stalin wear boots?" “Because Stalin turned the country into a swamp.” Or, even more quietly, they recalled that, after all, Lenin, in his will, demanded that Stalin be removed from the post of general secretary. Silently remembered. Only the microphones were already quite sensitive. And even then it was not clear which of the whisperers would run first. Therefore, each tried to get ahead of the other. And getting ahead and catching his breath, he informed "who should" about kitchen conspiracies. That's all sedition. And, you see, by 1939 there was already no one to whisper. After the assassination attempt by Colonel Staufenberg on Hitler on July 20, 1944 (Operation Valkyrie), Hitler again remembered his friend and once again expressed his admiration to him that, they say, he completely exterminated the old officer corps, and he, Hitler, although he filed Stalin is an example, but not completely. And here is the result.

Therefore, Stalin's toast after the signing of the non-aggression pact and secret protocols to it, raised by him on August 23, 1939, does not look like such a forced political move: "To the health of the great leader of the German people and best friend of the USSR, Adolf Hitler!" Stalin simply could not fail to pay tribute to his capable student, who in some ways surpassed the teacher. Stalin proclaimed the second toast for Hitler's faithful ally, Reichsführer SS Himmler, as "a reliable guarantor of order in Germany." It is a pity that no one recorded Stalin's table conversations with his henchmen. Given that Stalin, unlike Hitler, was not a vegetarian and a teetotaler, we would have learned a lot of interesting things after drinking at the "near dacha" about the arbiter of the fate of hundreds of millions. And so one has to be content with the information of then friends, and soon - enemies.

Here is what Ribbentrop said upon his arrival from Moscow to the main ideologue of Nazism Rosenberg (he kept a diary published in Germany after the war): "The Russians were very nice, he (Ribbentrop) felt among them as among the old National Socialists." From the same sources we know that Stalin twice assured Hitler (through the same Ribbentrop and Hitler's personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann) of his approval of Hitler's measures towards the Jews, and that the hour would come when he would do the same with them. The British Foreign Minister of that time, Anthony Eden, said that in December 1941 (that is, when Hitler was standing near Moscow!) In Stalin’s conversation with him, Stalin noticed that Hitler proved to be an exceptional genius, because he managed to turn a disunited and ruined the German people into a great power. Here, only, Stalin added, "Hitler showed that he has a fatal flaw. He does not know when to stop." 6 And then more than once he lamented that he had lost such a friend. “Oh, with the Germans we would be invincible,” he used to say after the war. 7

But the then friends were connected not only by common ideas about the need for cruelty towards peoples. True, here, too, Stalin turned out to be more ingenious and more original than Hitler: he practiced the extermination of other nations, and Stalin practiced his own.

Hitler adopted experience even in terms of individual details of managing the party and the population. For example, Hitler introduced a management system in his concentration camps with the help of kapos recruited from criminals, which he completely borrowed from Stalin's camps, which by that time were no longer called this German word "concentration camp", as under Lenin, but corrective labor. And in the party, Hitler organized the so-called Commission of Inquiry and Settlement (GONE) as exact copy TsKK (Central Control Commission, later Party Control Commission - CPC). Finally, the Gestapo men were trained by the NKVD bone-breakers, who by that time had much more experience in fighting the enemies of the state than the young Nazis. The only thing that Hitler did not have time to organize was the Stakhanov movement. But how flattering he was! On June 22, 1942, just on the anniversary of the attack on the USSR, Hitler once again expressed respect to his friend at a dinner: "Stalin, of course, must also be treated with due respect." - And he continued: "In his own way, he is simply a brilliant type ... his plans for the development of the economy are so ambitious that only our four-year plans can surpass them ... And it would be stupid to ridicule the Stakhanov movement. The armament of the Red Army is the best proof that With the help of the movement, unusually great successes were achieved in the education of Russian workers with their special turn of mind and soul.

But, as I have already said, Hitler did not develop the Stakhanovist movement in Germany. And why, if even here he tried to surpass his brilliant teacher and created a grandiose system of using slave labor, mainly from Ostarbeiters?

I will dwell on one not very well-known episode from the field of borrowing experience. Hitler really liked the radio broadcasting system introduced in the USSR by Stalin. He devoted an entire table-talk on July 16, 1942, to this accomplishment. Here is what extracts from it look like: “If products in Ukraine are amazingly cheap, then any technical device is damn expensive. It is striking, however, that despite this, in almost all houses you can find a radio point. appreciated the importance of broadcasting, but also realized what danger it is fraught with. From the point of view of the state authorities, it seems simply ideal that this (wire radio network - V.L.) gives the competent authorities the opportunity to control the content of radio broadcasts. Radio listeners would not be able to listen to foreign radio stations For example, in the Soviet Union, local commissars personally set up radio stations whose programs were intended for the inhabitants of a particular locality, thus from the very beginning any propaganda influence from abroad was excluded. conveys the words of Hitler in the third person - V.L.) also instructed our propaganda ministry organize a wired radio network in Germany. He deeply regrets that these measures could not be implemented before the start of the war. This is one of the greatest blunders of the Ministry of Propaganda. But in the future, a wired radio network will be organized throughout Germany, this is quite obvious. For no reasonable government will allow its people to be poisoned."

To these "state" arguments about the benefits for the unintelligent people, a small comment is needed. The concept of wired radio communications as a powerful ideological tool for influencing mass consciousness was put forward by Stalin in the early 30s, and by the end the whole country was already covered with it. If it did not reach every house, then it did get to every village: there, near the administration or the village council, large quadrangular loudspeaker sockets hung in the street, so well remembered by the older generation. And from them, from early morning until late evening, victories and successes were announced in a special cheerful and cheerful announcer's voice. Or in a gloomy and solemn voice - about enemies. And again cheerful - about their merciless extermination. Mixed with intoxicating marches and perky songs, such as "Morning paints with a gentle light." Ordinary receivers were also, but not enough. And their very presence could already be evidence with a landing under Article 58, paragraph ASA (Anti-Soviet agitation). Solzhenitsyn in "The Gulag Archipelago" tells a "funny" episode, how one engineer was accused under this article, because he recounted foreign programs. During the investigation, it turned out that he did not retell (the scammer could not say what exactly). But he could, because he had a receiver. He managed to prove that there was no receiver either (he was not listed in the search protocol). There was no receiver, but it could have been, because a radio tube was found at the engineer's house during a search. So, there was an intent to make a radio receiver. And for what? We know why: to listen to foreign programs and retell them. Nothing could be done about this iron logic, and the engineer went to places where there were not even radio stations.

After the war, and especially after the death of Stalin, ordinary (short wave) radios also appeared on the market. There is still progress on the street, you need to somehow keep up with it. But - until 1957, radios were necessarily registered like cars. And they charge a fee for their use. And only then they went along the original path: the registration was canceled, but they continued to build special jamming radio stations in each city and in the intervals between them. This is a special song. Soviet civilization has given rise to something extremely original: a huge network of jamming stations, consuming monstrous electricity, employing tens of thousands of people and worth billions of rubles! And only so that the owners of authorized radios could not use them at their own discretion.

And from the era of radio stations and loudspeakers - buckets on poles - the term "forced broadcasting" remained. It has survived in Russia to this day: it can be heard on trains (with the limitation that there is at least a way to turn it off in a compartment) and, especially, on beaches and ships. "Music is playing on the ship, and I am standing on the shore." The music is still playing and someone is still standing.

And if there is no Hitler's grave, as well as no monuments to him, then there is Stalin's grave with a monument in the very center of Moscow on Red Square. Stalin is still with us.

It is difficult to say how one should evaluate Stalin's activity in eliminating all the faithful Leninists, and to them the officers, engineers, peasants and other enemies of the people - as a matter aimed at the good of Russia or against its interests. We need to wait for the decision of the new commission.

1 Cited. by Alan Bullock. Hitler and Stalin. Smolensk, 1994, v.2, p.343.

2 G. Picker. Table talk, p.447

3 Elena Rzhevskaya. Goebbels. Portrait against the backdrop of a diary. M. 1994, p.221.

4 Conversation of April 11, 1942.

5 Rzhevskaya, p.183.

6 Cit. according to M. Geller, A. Nekrich. Utopia in power. London, 1986, p.328.

7 Quot. according to S. Alliluev. Only one year. New York, 1970, p.339.

8 Table talk. p.451.

Until 1941, the USSR and Germany tried to maintain friendly relations, which even at a certain moment could well develop into allied ones. What would be the geopolitical picture of the world in this case?

Failed allies

Everyone knows the Non-Aggression Pact between the USSR and Germany, signed by Molotov and Ribbentrop on August 23, 1939. However, few people know that a year later, the two countries could become full-fledged allies if their leaders managed to agree. In November 1940, Vyacheslav Molotov, during his three-day visit to Berlin, made, as it turned out, the last attempt to resolve the contradictions that had accumulated between the partners in the pact.

Hitler was ready not only to normalize relations, but also to bring them to a new level. Together with Joachim von Ribbentrop, he invited the head of the Soviet foreign ministry to join the "Triple Alliance" between Germany, Italy and Japan, according to which the countries pledged to respect each other's "natural spheres of influence." A project was attached to the announced contract secret protocol, where it was said about the zone of interests of the Soviet Union, indicated by the direction "to the Indian Ocean".

There can hardly be any doubt that behind the "respect for natural spheres of influence", in fact, Hitler's intention was to redraw the map of the world according to the needs of the signatory countries. Such an agreement did not impose obligations on the USSR to support the Allies in their military campaigns. Hitler, in a conversation with Molotov, made it clear that he "does not ask for any kind of military assistance - Germany does not need it."

Nevertheless, under the terms of the treaty, the USSR would have to stand in opposition to the UK-US bloc. And here there were two options for the development of events: either the USSR was watching the clash between “democrats” and “nationalists”, or it was participating in the redistribution of spheres of influence, turning its eyes towards Iran and India.

On November 25, Molotov handed over to the German ambassador Werner von der Schulenburg in Moscow his own draft agreement, taking into account the interests of the USSR. According to the document, German troops had to leave Finland, which was becoming a zone of Soviet occupation; in the Dardanelles appeared Soviet naval base, and Bulgaria moved into the geopolitical orbit of the USSR. In addition, Moscow intended to expand the scope of its interests "south of Batum and Baku to general direction to the Persian Gulf," including Turkey and Iran.

General Heinz Guderian in his memoirs described the reaction of the head of the Reich to the Soviet proposal: “Hitler was very angry with the demands of the Russians and clearly expressed his displeasure during conversations in Berlin, simply ignoring the subsequent Russian note. From Molotov's visit and the course of negotiations, Hitler concluded that war with the Soviet Union was inevitable sooner or later.

Conflict be

And yet, how could history develop if Stalin and Hitler compromised? Boris Sokolov, a member of the Russian PEN Center and the Free Historical Society, is convinced that a hypothetical alliance between Hitler and Stalin would only delay the German invasion of the Soviet Union. To begin with, the Wehrmacht would shift the center of gravity of military operations to the Mediterranean and the Balkans, leaving an impressive contingent of troops on the eastern borders for fear of a Soviet attack.

Sokolov believes that Stalin would not have given up his intention to strike first, but would still prefer to get concessions from his ally on Finland, Bulgaria and Turkey. But could Hitler make such sacrifices? Hardly.

The Soviet occupation of Finland created a potential threat to Sweden, where the industry of the Reich scooped iron ore. Soviet control over Bulgaria threatened Romania, where German divisions were stationed. Having acquired Turkey, Moscow would have enormous influence throughout the Mediterranean, including interfering with the plans of Germany and Italy in the region.

Virtually no one doubts that the union of Germany and the USSR would be temporary. The friendship threatened to end at the moment when the interests of the two superpowers were affected. Both Stalin and Hitler looked at each other as an obstacle to the implementation of their own geopolitical scenarios.

It is interesting to note that Hitler called the non-aggression pact "a pact with Satan to exorcise the devil." The clash between the two socio-political systems was a matter of time. In May 1940, Stalin bluntly declared: “We will fight against Germany! England and America will be our allies!”

From India to Britain

Publicist Alexander Skobov does not rule out that the USSR, in the event of an alliance treaty with the Reich, could well have joined the German war against Britain. However, he does not believe in the success of this enterprise. To master the British Isles, powerful aircraft and navies were needed, and the USSR, until 1945, did not have the resources to implement such a military project, Skobov notes.

The conclusion of the expert is as follows: Germany, even with the support of the Soviet Union, would not have been able to defeat Britain, since the United States, whose scientists were close to completing the development of a nuclear program, would certainly have come out on the side of the latter. Skobov believes that the use of the atomic bomb by the Americans against Germany would have predetermined the outcome of the conflict.

The writer Vladimir Yurovitsky has a different attitude. He believes that Stalin had no reason to threaten Hitler: “For what? On the contrary, he should have come out on the side of Germany. Especially next to the USSR on the territory of India, Afghanistan and Iran lay practically "no man's land" with a vacuum of power. According to Yurovitsky, a joint Soviet-German attack on the Middle East would seriously shake the power of the British Empire.

And further prospects, according to Yurovitsky's forecasts, are as follows: the USSR is expanding due to the "voluntary" entry into its composition of India, Afghanistan and Iran; Germany cracks down on Britain. With the combined efforts of the USSR, Germany and Japan, they break the last "stronghold of democracy" - the United States. And the question of the forthcoming redistribution of the world is closed.

Interesting historical research on Hitler and Stalin. There are many parallels. For example,

Hitler ruled in the name of the working class, Hitler's party was called the workers' party.
Stalin also ruled on behalf of the working class, his system of power was officially called the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Hitler has a red flag.
And Stalin has a red flag.

Hitler hated democracy and fought against it.
Stalin hated democracy and fought against it.

Hitler built socialism.
And Stalin built socialism.

Hitler considered his path to socialism to be the only true one, and all other paths to be a perversion.
And Stalin considered his path to socialism the only true one, and all other paths were deviations from the general line.

Party comrades who deviated from the right path, such as Rem and his entourage, Hitler mercilessly destroyed.
Stalin also mercilessly destroyed all those who deviated from the right path.

Hitler has a four year plan.
Stalin has five years.

Hitler has one party in power, the rest are in prison.
And Stalin has one party in power, the rest are in prison.

With Hitler, the party stood above the state, the country was ruled by party leaders.
And with Stalin, the party stood above the state, the country was ruled by party leaders.

With Hitler, party congresses were turned into grandiose performances.
And Stalin did too.

The main holidays in Stalin's empire are May 1, November 7-8.
In Hitler's empire - May 1, November 8-9.

Hitler has the Hitler Youth, the young Nazis.
Stalin's Komsomol - young Stalinists.

Stalin was officially called the leader and Hitler - the Fuhrer
In translation, it's the same.

Hitler loved grandiose buildings.

He founded in Berlin the largest building in the world - the Assembly House. The dome of the building is 250 meters in diameter. The main hall was supposed to accommodate 150-180 thousand people.

And Stalin loved grandiose buildings.

He founded in Moscow the largest building in the world - the Palace of Soviets. Stalin's main hall was smaller, but the whole structure was much higher. The 400-meter-high building was like a pedestal, above which a hundred-meter statue of Lenin towered. The total height of the structure is 500 meters.

Work on the projects of the Assembly House in Berlin and the Palace of Soviets in Moscow was carried out simultaneously.

Hitler planned to demolish Berlin and build a new city of cyclopean buildings in its place.
Stalin planned to demolish Moscow and build a new city in its place from cyclopean structures.

For Germany, Hitler was an outsider
He was born in Austria and almost until the moment he came to power did not have German citizenship.

Stalin for Russia was a man from the outside.
He was neither Russian nor even Slavic.

Sometimes, very rarely, Stalin invited foreign guests to his Kremlin apartment, and they were shocked by the modesty of the situation: a simple table, a wardrobe, an iron bed, a soldier's blanket.
Hitler ordered that a photograph of his dwelling be placed in the press. The world was shocked by the modesty of the situation: a simple table, a wardrobe, an iron bed, a soldier's blanket.

Only Stalin has black stripes on a gray blanket, and Hitler has white ones.

Meanwhile, in secluded places amid the fabulous nature, Stalin erected very cozy and well-protected residences-fortresses, which in no way resembled a hermit's cell.

And Hitler, in secluded places among the fabulous nature, erected impregnable residences-fortresses, did not spare them either granite or marble. These residences did not in any way resemble a hermit's cell.

Hitler's beloved woman, Geli Raubal, was 19 years younger than him.
Stalin's beloved woman, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, was 22 years younger than him.

Geli Raubal committed suicide.
Nadezhda Alliluyeva - too.

Geli Raubal shot herself with a Hitler pistol.
Nadezhda Alliluyeva - from Stalin's.

The circumstances of Geli Raubal's death are mysterious. There is a version that Hitler killed her.
The circumstances of the death of Nadezhda Alliluyeva are mysterious. There is a version that Stalin killed her.

Hitler said one thing and did another.
Like Stalin.

Hitler began his reign under the slogan "Germany wants peace". Then he took over half of Europe.
Stalin fought for "collective security" in Europe, sparing neither strength nor resources for this. After that, he captured half of Europe.

Hitler has the Gestapo.
Stalin's NKVD.

Hitler has Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau.
Stalin's Gulag.

Hitler at Babi Yar.
Stalin has Katyn.

Hitler exterminated people by the millions.
And Stalin by the millions.

Hitler did not hang himself with orders
and Stalin did not hang.

Hitler walked around in a paramilitary uniform without insignia.
And Stalin - in a paramilitary uniform without insignia.

It will be objected that later Stalin was drawn to military ranks, to marshal's stripes and golden epaulettes. This is true. But Stalin appropriated himself the rank of marshal in 1943 after the victory at Stalingrad, when it became finally clear that Hitler had lost the war. At the time of conferring the rank of Marshal, Stalin was 63 years old. He wore a marshal's uniform for the first time during the Tehran Conference, when he met with Roosevelt and Churchill.

We cannot compare Hitler and Stalin in this matter simply because Hitler did not live to such an age, nor to such meetings, nor to such victories.

Everything else matches

Stalin without a beard, but with a famous mustache.
Hitler without a beard, but with the famous mustache.

What is the difference?

Mustache difference.

And the difference is that the world considered Hitler's actions the greatest atrocities.
And Stalin's actions, the world considered the struggle for peace and progress.

The world hated Hitler and sympathized with Stalin.

Hitler took over half of Europe and the rest of the world declared war on him
Stalin captured half of Europe, and the whole world sent him greetings.

In order to prevent Hitler from holding the countries captured in Europe, the West sank German ships, bombed German cities, and then landed on European continent overpowered army.

And in order for Stalin to be able to capture and hold the other half of Europe, the West gave Stalin hundreds of warships, thousands of combat aircraft and tanks, hundreds of thousands of the best military vehicles in the world, millions of tons of first-class fuel, ammunition, food, etc.

Poet versus Artist

... During the century of bloodshed, Hitler and Stalin acted in similar terrifying roles, like two beacons of evil. They devoted themselves to mutual destruction, however, it seemed that they still needed each other. They studied careers, respected and even admired their cruelty, and used each other to further their ambitions.

Adhering to their ideologies, their goal was the collapse of Europe, the death of millions of people and the redistribution of the political system of the whole world.

Both Hitler and Stalin were outsiders, coming from far poorer places than the empires they later created, so they were sometimes called provincials, vulgar upstarts, and both had a distinctive regional accent throughout their lives.

"The rose bud has opened,

I clung to the blue violet,

And awakened by a light wind,

Lily of the valley bent over the grass

These poems belong to a young Georgian poet, who at an early age abandoned the poetic field for the sake of a great idea...

Joseph Stalin was born in 1878 in Georgia, where he is still considered a hero, despite the fact that he turned his back on his country. Iosif Dzhugashvili (his real name) took the revolutionary surname Stalin in 1912.

Stalin was the son of a simple shoemaker who terrorized the family. As a child, he contracted smallpox, which left scars on his face for life. His left arm was paralyzed in an accident, he was only 1.52 tall and occasionally walked on a hidden platform.

Adolf Schicklgruber, better known as Hitler, was 10 years younger than Stalin. He also could not boast of a happy childhood. Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in the suburbs of the Austrian town of Branau. He was a smart but lazy boy and liked to dream of adventure. From early childhood, he adored books about war and military service. His father was a customs officer. He wanted Adolf to continue his path and go to public service. The boy was shocked, he said that he wanted to become an artist.

"Artist? Only over my dead body!"- answered his father.

Like Stalin, Hitler grew up in a very cruel atmosphere. Hitler's father was a very cruel man and often beat Adolf and his brother. That Hitler despised his father was obvious. But he simply adored his mother Clara, he carried her photograph with him until his death. She spoiled him very much, which spoiled the boy. Upon coming to power, Hitler proclaimed the day of his mother's death as Germany's Mother's Day.

Stalin's mother, Ekaterina, was not so obsessed with her son, but she also took care of him, sending her son a basket of Georgian delicacies until his death. When Stalin somehow reproached her for treating him like a child, she replied that that was why he had grown up to be such a good person. She wanted him to become a priest and sent him to an Orthodox Russian theological academy. This was a turning point in the life of a Georgian boy.

... The poet Dzhugashvili ended when Stalin clashed with the Marxists, when the cause of universal justice captured him entirely. Although, according to some reports, Stalin did not stop writing poetry until his death ...

"But instead of the greatness of glory

People of his land

Poison to the outcast

They presented it in a bowl.

They told him: "Damn,

Drink, dry to the bottom ...

And your song is alien to us,

And your truth is not needed!"

In the repressive atmosphere of the seminary in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, Stalin was politically savvy. Instead of the bible, he read copies of Marxist theory, and instead of Christianity, he believed in the new communist idea. His daughter, Svetlana, believes that it was at this stage that he realized that people are rude and intolerant, and that they lie and weave intrigues. At the age of 20, he left the seminary and devoted his life to the revolution.

Stalin had all the qualities of a terrorist, he robbed banks, provoked violent demonstrations and beat his opponents. Seven times he was arrested and exiled to Siberia. A little later he wrote about those times:

"I communicated for the most part with criminals. I remember how we stopped in the salons of the city and drank all our pennies. The criminals were quite cunning and there were many political rats among them."

In Siberia, Joseph Stalin developed the trait that later helped him rise to power - absolute self-confidence and independence. He could not rely on anyone but himself, never shared his experiences. He later said:

Hitler was a little different. In 1908, he left the small town of Austria and came to Vienna, where he wanted to try his luck and make a career as an artist. It is known that even at school, Hitler had an "excellent" grade only in gymnastics and drawing. He painted everything he saw, painted a lot and painted until his death.

"I was sure that they would welcome me there with open arms, they would be happy to see me, because my work is impeccable," Hitler wrote in his work "My Struggle" before arriving in Vienna. But, as it turned out, his talent was not enough. He twice tried to enter the Academy of Arts, but twice he was refused:

"It was very hard. When I found out the news, I was just dumbfounded" - he said. The failed artist quickly sank, and he had to look for housing among the vagrants. It was very humiliating. Confused and lonely, he sat all day long in the same corner, painting. Hitler tried to cash in by selling his landscapes of Vienna as illustrated postcards.

World War I in 1914 was a turning point in the life of Adolf Hitler. He became a regimental courier, relaying messages from trench to trench, often under relentless fire. He was wounded twice, once gassed, then was awarded the Order of the Iron Cross. The war changed him forever. He created a mental stupefaction for himself, perhaps due to the fact that he constantly saw his friends kill people, and this prompted in him the desire to place himself in an atmosphere of death and destruction. This influenced his further desire to use violence in politics.

"I realized that life is very cruel, and there is no other goal than the preservation of the species" - wrote Hitler. For him there was no such thing as morality. He recognized only the survival of the strongest representative of the highest German nation.

Joseph Stalin, unlike Adolf Hitler, did not participate in the First World War due to a hand injury and political unrest. Freed from service, he devoted himself entirely to politics. He perfectly understood his role in history, working with such personalities as Trotsky and Lenin. Stalin, it seemed, had already understood his destiny, but Hitler after the First World War was in complete chaos.

The defeat of Germany in 1918 was a severe blow to him. He learned the news while in the hospital after being gassed. The defeat betrayed to Hitler the strongest traits that were also inherent in Stalin - an unsurpassed sense of political mission. He later wrote:

"Hatred grew in me, hatred for those who are not responsible for these actions. My fate became clear to me."

He felt that he needed to connect his life with German history and with the future of Germany.

In 1919 he joined the right-wing workers' party in Munich. From the very beginning, he delivered a speech despite his Austrian accent. The power of oratory gave him control over the newly formed party and its thousands of new members. In less than a year, Hitler made her his. It was an amazing change for a man who went from a beggar to a leader in just 10 years.

Stalin had already risen to power at this time and was trying to cling to it more firmly, but in a world where Lenin was a star, Stalin had to reduce his ambitions, unlike Hitler, who craved power. Lenin appreciated Stalin's ruthlessness and cunning:

"This cocoon will cook us nothing but a peppery dish" - he said.

Stalin's behavior towards the party and his skills led him in 1922 to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party, which gave him a good basis for the future, especially when Lenin's health deteriorated.

Stalin knew how to quietly select people in his office in the Central Committee of the party, put them in the places he needed, and these people subsequently remained indebted to him for high positions.

Lenin's death gave Stalin the opportunity he had long awaited. He acted as the new preacher of the cult of personality of Lenin, at the same time he figured out his rivals. The mastery of Stalin's power was built on his remarkable ability to destroy others with the hands of some.

After eliminating Trotsky as the main rival, Stalin will begin a policy against those who helped him eliminate Trotsky. And he will eliminate them too.

Secretly and ruthlessly, the General Secretary of the Communist Party built a complete and despotic power that was unparalleled. Only one person could compete with him - Adolf Hitler.

In January 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. But this was not what he wanted - a perfect winner, but only the head of the coalition government. What he had to go through later was very different from the path of Stalin.

Stalin remade the party and organization, and Hitler had to create his party from nothing. But, like Stalin in Russia, in Germany many underestimated the Fuhrer, although he used the same methods of cunning and manipulation. The German conservatives believed that once Hitler came to power, they could control him. They were wrong as well as those close to Stalin.

Hitler's strength was his ability to speak. His speeches touched people and brought him closer to him. The following was written about him:

"Hitler echoed the vibrations of human hearts with the accuracy of a seismologist or a radio receiver, thereby allowing him to act as the voice of the entire nation."

Before starting a speech, Hitler always felt the mood of the audience. The speaker, as he said, receives constant guidance from the people to whom he speaks. It was a combination of style and emotion, as well as Hitler's acting ability.

All contemporaries of the Fuhrer noted his special gestures during speeches. It was a spell, hypnosis, his characteristic gestures - folded hands on his chest, a sharp thrust of one hand forward - contained a mysterious esoteric meaning. This was an external copying of the signs of ancient Germanic runes. Hitler designed his speeches like an artist, all speeches were thoroughly thought out.

Stalin's power could not be compared with his public speeches. Stalin had many talents, but oratory was not on this list. Until the end of his days, he spoke with a strong Georgian accent, he lacked fluency, but he had a rather pleasant manner of communication at party conferences. Stalin, unlike Hitler, never aspired to the external ostentatious side of his speeches. Stalin's calm speech, subject to internal logic, was devoid of any emotionality. Every word was measured and weighed, the logic of his speeches was impeccable. Stalin devoted a lot of time to his self-education, and he himself said that he read up to 500 pages daily. But it was hard to imagine that he could show up at a Nazi rally and, like Hitler, make people stand up...

Stalin became one of the main figures in Russia. Like Hitler, he had enormous dictatorial power, and like Hitler, he used it to carry out his personal plans. For Stalin, this was modernization, and nothing and no one could prevent him from achieving his goal. Stalin always believed that the fastest way to a political solution to the problem is physical violence:

"If any social group people interfere with your policy, then eliminate them physically "- he said.

Ideologies need enemies. The enemies of the Nazis were outsiders, Jews, Marxists, gypsies and homosexuals. Stalin's enemies were his own people against whom he started a war in the name of the state ..

Hitler, unlike Stalin, was a vegetarian and also never smoked. He hated the routine of management. Unlike Stalin, Hitler refused to read long papers, got up late and often did nothing all day.

Joseph Stalin was always on duty. Working alone day and night at his dacha, he received the nickname "friend of the filing cabinet." He was very diligent, unlike Hitler. This was his very valuable trait in regard to power. Over time, his paranoia intensified, he stopped trusting everything around him, even close colleagues and friends. He got rid of them. He became a permanent figure in the endless chain of funerals.

"There is a person - there is a problem. No person - there is no problem" - Stalin said.

In 1938, Hitler and Stalin became the absolute heads of each in their own country. And to balance power in Europe, they began to follow each other.

"I read a book about Stalin," Hitler said, "he is an amazing person who placed this entire gigantic country in his iron embrace."

Both Hitler and Stalin silently admired each other and respected the fact that they both hailed from the lower strata, but they went their way to great power.

In 1939, Hitler set a new target - Poland. With the help of logic, but also with the supreme cynicism characteristic of both dictators, the two camps of opponents fell into the arms of death. In the summer of 1939, Hitler sent his minister Ribbentrop to Moscow to sign a "non-aggression pact" with Stalin. This was beneficial to both sides: Hitler could calmly attack Poland, Stalin, weakened after military operations, could calmly gather defenses. After signing the pact, Stalin said:

"I know what Hitler has in mind. He thinks he outwitted me, but in fact it was me who outwitted him."

Events have shown him wrong...

The pact caused war in the world and decided the fate of Poland. A secret agreement between the dictators divided the territory of Poland between them. In the summer of 1940, Hitler visited Paris as a conqueror. In less than 6 weeks, France was in the hands of Hitler. His military success greatly strengthened Hitler's ego as a political genius, he equated himself with Napoleon.

Intoxicated with success, he turned his attention back to the East. He ordered his generals to prepare a lightning attack on the Soviet Union by early summer.

... The idea of ​​"Blitzkrieg" was the product of an expressionist artist, and indeed, as in a picture, conquered countries fell at Hitler's feet: France lasted a month, Denmark fell in one day, Holland lasted less than a week. He planned the same thing in the USSR, but here Hitler's expression ran into a man for whom the word was the main thing. The Stalinist word "brothers and sisters!" and "the enemy will be slain - victory will be ours!" penetrated into the consciousness of every soldier, and everyone could draw a picture of a future victory.

That is, an artist who tried with quick strokes in the spirit of impressionism to paint a picture of a thousand-year-old Reich, with quick strokes to paint a picture of the capture of the largest country in the world, and a poet who at first did not realize what was happening, then thought for a long time, and then completed the job like this as he needed...

At the same time, Stalin was absolutely sure that Hitler would not attack him, despite the information received from informers. He didn't trust anyone but Hitler.

When Stalin first heard that the Germans were bombing Russia, his response was:

"Hitler knows nothing about this. We need to contact Berlin urgently!"

But he soon learned the cruel truth. Hitler's betrayal made him furious. After that, he left for his dacha and did nothing while the Germans approached. Even after the war, he shook his head and said:

"Together with the Germans, we would be invincible."

Stalin needed time to recover. On June 30, 1941, he returned to the Kremlin and regained control again, addressing the Russians:

"Well, if the Germans want a war of extermination, they will get it!"

Now that the two dictators were at odds with each other, their ruthlessness and cruelty took a new turn. It was a battle of the titans, a life-and-death battle between two tyrants of world history.

Hitler was absolutely sure of victory. But the strategy was misunderstood and faith in one's own power.

The German troops were not ready for the Russian winter. They are too stretched across the boundless expanses of Soviet territories.

When the colors thickened, Hitler realized that Stalin's strength was that he was always ready to take into account what others did not even notice. Stalin is half monster, half giant - he is completely indifferent to the social side of life. People had to die for what he wanted.

After the defeat at Stalingrad, Hitler went into the shadows, and his relations with the Germans weakened. This mistake reduced the size of his figure.

When Russian troops approached Berlin, Hitler forbade negotiations with them:

“If we agree, tomorrow I will do the same. And there is nothing I can do about it…” he said.

In March 1945, the Fuhrer appeared in public for the last time. The war greatly aged him, he looked much older than his 56 years. On April 30, 1945, Hitler committed suicide.

When Stalin learned that Hitler had committed suicide, he exclaimed:

"He did it, you scoundrel! Too bad we couldn't take him alive." stalin hitler war

After Hitler's death and the end of the war, Stalin became even more powerful. But the older he got, the more aloof and isolated he became, constantly afraid of death.

Stalin, despite his tyranny, occupies an important place in history. He was a great leader who brought order and industry to the country.

Both Hitler and Stalin have cast a shadow over modern world history. During their reign, millions of people died. For many, Hitler will remain the brightest reflection of evil. Stalin is not condemned so severely, because his crimes became known only after his death. But it is possible that what is important in the conclusion is not which of them was more cruel, but what their roots were. Both dictators washed their hands of compassion fairly early on.

"One death is a tragedy," said Stalin. "The death of millions is a statistic."

"Conscience," said Hitler, "is an invention of the Jews"...

... If we take these metaphors that Hitler is an artist, and Stalin is a poet, then Hitler rather made an external impression, a visual effect, and Stalin "burned people's hearts with a verb", and the effect turned out to be more structural, large-scale precisely with Stalin.

Stalin retreated from the direct expansion that was in Hitler's speech, and seemed to look unsightly, without special gestures and mystical messages embedded in this gesture, but at the same time, the ideology encoded in the behavior itself and in the signs had a more fundamental and serious influence that people, each in their own way, deciphered within themselves.

Hitler's picture of the thousand-year-old Reich, painted in broad strokes, did not stand the test of time, it crumbled along with the artist. The Stalinist image of victory turned out to be stronger and more durable.

Both of them were measured out talents by a generous hand. One could become a very good landscape painter, architect; another could become a very good poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But both gave up their talents for the good of the country, for the sake of what they considered justice ...

“When I die, a lot of rubbish will be put on my grave, but the wind of time will ruthlessly sweep it away…” Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

Stalin and Hitler: on the way to power

In order to free people from centuries of oppression, deliver them from incredible suffering, calm their souls, seized with anxiety and confusion, who grew up without knowing security - one day fate will send a person born in the name of these goals, and he eventually achieves what people have longed for so long.

Adolf Hitler "Mein Kampf", 1926 1

Spring 1924. The plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) met on May 18, a few days before the 13th Party Congress. On the same day, Lenin's widow handed over to the Committee a sealed letter, dictated with pain by her seriously ill husband in 1922. Five copies of this letter were made, each sealed with a wax seal. Lenin asked his wife to convey this letter to the next party congress, as he could not address the delegates himself due to illness. But she delayed the letter until he died a year later on January 21, 1924. The letter contained Lenin's political testament. It was opened, read and discussed by the Central Committee. The testament is remembered primarily for the fact that it mentioned Stalin: "Comrade Stalin, having become General Secretary [in April 1922], has concentrated unlimited power in his hands, and I am not convinced that he will be able to use it properly" 2 . Stalin knew the contents of this letter before it was opened; one of Lenin's secretaries, worried about the possible consequences of this will, showed it to Stalin immediately after Lenin finished dictating it. After reading this letter by a handful of party leaders, Stalin issued a stern order to Lenin's assistant to burn it, not knowing that the other four copies of the letter were already in the safe 3 . What Stalin did not know was that, a few days later, Lenin dictated an appendix to the letter that could have ruined his political career. Enraged by Stalin's rudeness and arrogance, he advised the party to "find ways to transfer him" and replace him with someone "more tolerant" and "less capricious".

Lenin's proposal, announced so soon after his death, and which might have great value for loyal members of the party, was not put on the agenda of the congress. It was discussed at a closed session of the Central Committee. One of the participants in this meeting later recalled Stalin, who was sitting on the steps of the podium when the will was read out, and how he looked "small and miserable"; although at the same time his facial expression was outwardly calm, “it was clearly visible from his face that his fate was being decided” 5 . Grigory Zinoviev, who was supported by the chairman of the committee, Lev Kamenev, who was sitting at the table in Lenin's place, suggested that the letter should not be considered on the grounds that Lenin was not fully aware of himself when he wrote it. Stalin allegedly offered his resignation from his post, but this offer was not accepted by his associates in the party leadership. A reservation was made at the congress to encourage Stalin to take Lenin's remark seriously and change his behavior in the direction of being more in line with his position. Stalin was saved not only by his ostentatious modesty, but also by the vicissitudes of the struggle that began after the death of Lenin in the leadership of the party. Among the obvious heirs of the leader, the remnants of the former reverence have completely disappeared. Zinoviev and Kamenev did not want the fiery and gifted commissar of defense Leon Trotsky to inherit the Leninist mantle. By supporting Stalin, they hoped to get themselves an ally in the fight against a rival. Whether the hostile reaction on the part of the Central Committee and the Congress after reading Lenin's letter could have removed Stalin's post remains open, but there is no doubt that the decision to ignore Lenin's last request gave Stalin a happy political reprieve, which he took full advantage of. Twelve years later, Zinoviev and Kamenev were executed by firing squad in the first big Stalinist show trial.

That same spring of 1924, in Germany, at a court hearing held in a nondescript red-brick infantry school classroom on the outskirts of Munich, Adolf Hitler awaited his fate after the previous November's failed mutiny against the Bavarian government. The putsch on November 9 was to be the prelude to the grandiose "march on Berlin" with the aim of overthrowing the republic and seizing state power. The coup attempt was crushed by a hail of police bullets. The next day, hiding in a house, Hitler threatened to shoot himself, but was disarmed by the mistress of the house, who had recently learned the techniques of jiu-jitsu 7 . He was captured on the same day and a few weeks later, along with other leaders of his small National Socialist Party, among whom was Erich Ludendorff, an army veteran who relentlessly marched with Hitler towards the police cordon and the ranks of soldiers that stood in their way, even after they opened fire, and his comrades fled from the battlefield, they were charged with treason. High treason was considered a serious crime, which included the possibility of receiving twenty years of hard labor. Threatening to start a hunger strike, Hitler decided to use this process to promote his idea of ​​revolutionary nationalism. He was lucky to be tried at the Munich People's Court, which, along with other emergency courts set up immediately after the war, was due to close at the end of March 1924. One and a half months were allotted for what later became known as "Hitler's trial" and was to take place in Bavaria and not in Berlin. The trial lasted twenty-five days, from 25 February until the final verdict on 1 April. The temporary courtroom was surrounded by guards, consisting of armed troops stationed behind barricades of barbed wire. Most of the courtroom had three blocks of seats set aside for the press, who came to cover the unusual political spectacle that was unfolding in Room 9.

Hitler was allowed to speak in his defense indefinitely. He presented himself and his accomplices as honest German patriots, eager to save Germany from the "parliamentary slavery" to which she was treacherously sentenced at the end of the war in 1918 by those who accepted the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Presiding judge Georg Neidhardt, openly sympathetic to the right-wing nationalists in Bavaria, did not limit the manifestations of Hitler's oratorical talent, rushing to the surface. On the last morning of the hearing, Hitler felt like a real hero in court. The meeting opened only after 9 o'clock and closed at 11.17. And although five more clients were to speak, Hitler's closing speech took up almost two-thirds of the entire morning session. He concluded it with a rhetorical and florid statement of historical redemption: “Even if you say ‘guilty’ a thousand times, the eternal goddess [history] of eternal judgment will tear apart the Attorney General’s petition with laughter, and so will the decision of the court, because the goddess declares : we are free!" 10 Hitler's speech convinced even the accuser that before him was a man whose calling was "to become the savior of Germany." Neidhardt sentenced him to five years in prison (three years less than the prosecutor demanded) and a fine of 200 gold marks. He would also have to demand the deportation of Hitler, since he was still an Austrian citizen, not a German one. Even a five-year sentence Hitler received could have ended his political career, but given the favorable review of his exemplary behavior in the Landsberg prison (where he was simply inundated with food, drink and flowers by his well-wishers, he refused to participate in sporting events - "The leader does not can afford to be beaten in games,” and dictated “Mein Kampf”). December 20, 1924 11 he was released. Subsequently, Neidhardt was rewarded more generously than Zinoviev and Kamenev: after the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, he received the presidency of the Bavarian high court, and at the celebration on the occasion of his retirement in 1937, a letter from Hitler was read, glorifying the unwavering patriotism of the judge , which he demonstrated throughout his career 12 .

* * *

There is no doubt that the personalities of Stalin and Hitler were very different. Between them, however, there is also a superficial similarity, so the conclusions made on the basis of random coincidences of individual facts of their biographies require a very cautious approach. Both were thought to have experienced ruthless abuse from their despotic fathers, Stalin the negligent, often drunk shoemaker, Hitler the petty-bourgeois martinet. Both were strongly attached to their mothers. Both opposed early religious education; both were social and ethnic outsiders, being in a Russian and German environment, since Stalin was a Georgian and Hitler was an Austrian. Both retained a very strong accent, immediately distinguishing them from the bulk. Both began careers in the political underground as terrorists, Stalin in the Russian Social Democratic Party before 1914, and Hitler in the dubious radical nationalist milieu in Germany after 1918. Each went through jail time for their political beliefs. But none of these comparisons is anything out of the ordinary, much less unique. Hundreds of Europeans at the turn of the century were imprisoned for their beliefs; many of them were outsiders, whether on the right or left of the main stream. Most Europeans had some sort of religious education; few boys in Europe at the end of the 19th century had the good fortune to avoid being beaten, but the regular and brutal abuse experienced by future despots, Stalin and Hitler, was not so widespread. For most other personality traits, daily habits and other routines, both characters were very different.

Stalin's biographers have to overcome two obstacles: on the one hand, there is a great discrepancy between the real history of Stalin's revolutionary activities and the false history of his life, constructed during the period of unbridled glorification of the 1930s; on the other hand, the surviving information about Stalin’s personality fluctuates greatly between the image of a ruthless and cruel despot, devoid of everything human, and the idea of ​​​​a quiet, unpretentious, kind person, similar to the one on whose knees, as the American envoy Joseph Davis noted, “I would like to sit a child " fourteen . Stalin had many faces, and these faces changed over time. To catch the "true" Stalin means to understand that the marked features in his image in reality were formed under the influence of time and circumstances that had developed by the time these features were noticed. The quiet, stubborn, wary Stalin, as many contemporaries of his political youth characterize him, evolved into the patronizing, secretive, and capricious statesman of the 1940s. The details of his early life are well known. Born on December 21, 1879 in the small Georgian town of Gori, a remote outskirts of the Russian Empire, in the family of a shoemaker and a laundress, that is, the origin of Stalin was surprisingly unimpressive for a man who, fifty years later, climbed to the pinnacle of power. He began life as a lumpen proletarian, flawed, truly a social outcast. Starting to attend a local school, he struck his teachers with a remarkable memory so that they decided that this was quite enough to send him to a seminary school in the Georgian capital Tiflis. Here, a narrow-faced young man with strongly visible traces of smallpox on his face, which disfigured him in early childhood, slightly bow-legged, with his left arm four centimeters shorter than his right, thin due to a stomach ulcer that was draining him, first encountered the Russian Social Democratic movement 15.

At the age of eighteen, he joined the revolutionary movement, after which he was expelled from the seminary. The young Stalin was captivated by the uncompromising revolutionary outlook of Russian Marxism and the simple lessons of class struggle. After entering the underground life, he had to live the next seventeen years in dimly lit and dangerous dungeons. Here he learned to survive by leveling his own personality; the name Iosif Dzhugashvili, which he was given at birth, turned first into "Koba", then at times into "David", "Nizhevadze", "Chizhikov", "Ivanovich", until, finally, according to some sources, shortly before the start of the war in 1914 , he took the Russian word "steel" and became "Stalin". He was engrossed in wrestling, read a lot, wrote more than his later detractors could read, and took part in bank robberies to finance his business. By at least four times he was arrested, until finally he was sent to Siberia. He fled, which in the case of royal exile meant little more than getting on a train bound for the west. He was delegated several times to party conferences abroad, but decisive for his further upward movement was his decision to side with the Bolshevik faction, or "majority", when the Social Democratic Party split over revolutionary tactics in 1904. Stalin sided with a party group led by a young lawyer, Vladimir Ulyanov, whose revolutionary pseudonym was Lenin. In 1912, while imprisoned, Stalin was elected a member of the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks, the leading body of the party, and remained in it, apart from a brief break during the World War, for the next forty years. In 1913, his four-year exile began in Turukhansk, where he was given a state salary of 15 rubles a month; Here he spent much of his time hunting and fishing. His colleague in exile recalled in 1916 a thirty-six-year-old but already experienced veteran of the youth revolutionary struggle: “Growing fat, of medium height, drooping mustache, thick hair, narrow forehead, rather short legs ... his speech was boring and dry ... a limited, fanatical person.” Stalin was arrogant and taciturn, his attitude towards others was "rude, provocative and cynical" 16 . The then personal qualities of Stalin are well recognizable in the future dictator.

The revolution of 1917 created Stalin. He returned from Siberia to Petrograd and entered a cohort of seasoned activists who hoped to use the fall of the Russian monarchy as a stepping stone to a socialist revolution. The heroic version of Stalin's contribution to the cause of the revolution, written in the 1930s, puts Stalin's name everywhere, always in the midst of a crisis. He became Lenin's closest associate and worked tirelessly to prepare for the seizure of power in October 1917 17 . However, the real circumstances were somewhat different, although Stalin was not so modest in the year of the revolution, as later revisionists of the role of Stalin tried to present. He supported Lenin's strategic line, announced by him in April 1917, to prevent compromise with the Provisional Government. His articles and speeches testify to a tireless, uncompromising revolutionary who exposes the threat of counter-revolution from less committed or opportunistic socialists and calls on the party and the entire population to seize power and transfer it to the Russian working people. The narrowness of his views on the unity of the party ranks and a single party line, characteristic of the 1930s, was fully outlined during the period of ideological and organizational confusion between the two revolutions. In May, in the newspaper Soldatskaya Pravda, he called for "unity of views", "one common goal", "one common path" eighteen . It was Stalin who drew up the report of the Central Committee in July 1917, which called for a break with other socialist parties, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries who supported the "bourgeois" government. His speeches of that time testify to a clear understanding of the political situation and a firm revolutionary course. At the moment of the last crisis of the Provisional Government in October 1917, Stalin, like most of the other members of the committee, voted for the coup. His speeches, recorded in brief protocols, ended with the following statements: "We must firmly and resolutely set the course for an armed uprising" 19 .

There is a possibility that a certain amount of this revolutionary enthusiasm was introduced later, when selected works of Stalin were published in 1934; the uprising, when it began, did not need Stalin at all in order to succeed, but there is no doubt that Stalin, being at the very center of big politics, felt like a fish in water. No one has ever questioned the fact that he was a devoted revolutionary who, throughout 1917, saw the revolution as nothing more than the transfer of power to the common people and the complete destruction of the society of the privileged who exploited them. It was his job, the meaning of his life. When the first Bolshevik government was formed on October 26, 1917, Stalin was offered the Commissariat for Nationalities. In the context of the disintegration tendencies that emerged in the multinational state, this was an important post, and Stalin used it to prevent the attempts of the non-Russian outskirts former empire, including his native Georgia, to secede from the new revolutionary community. In 1921, his policy led to a serious conflict with Lenin, which contributed to the unflattering review of Stalin in Lenin's "testament". Stalin became one of about a dozen associates who formed the Bolshevik leadership. In October 1917, he was elected one of the seven members of the Politburo of the Central Committee, the forerunner of the formal Politburo established in 1919, of which Stalin would also become a member. In November, he is named one of the four leaders of the party, along with Lenin, Trotsky and Yakov Sverdlov, who had the authority to decide urgent issues without asking for majority support. Stalin's office was next to Lenin's office. Stalin became the head of the political administration of the Bolshevik leadership at the very critical period the beginning of the Bolshevik regime, which found itself in the face of civil war and the collapse of the economy. In 1919, he was appointed to the additional post of commissar for "workers and peasants" (Rabkrin), who was supposed to ensure the efficient functioning of the apparatus and quickly respond to complaints. ordinary people. It is not surprising that he, who performed these numerous duties, was chosen when, in April 1922, it was decided to strengthen the apparatus serving the Central Committee, and the post of General Secretary was established. There are many conflicting opinions about the early period of Stalin's political career, but most of them agree that he was a nonentity or an insignificant person. The emergence of this murderous judgment is due to the memoirs of the socialist Nikolai Sukhanov, published in 1922. As is well known, he characterized Stalin as "dullness", which was later finally enshrined in Trotsky's caustic definition of Stalin as the "outstanding mediocrity" of the party 21 . The opinion that Stalin was a colorless and clearly unremarkable person with limited mental abilities was widely held. In exile in Siberia, where they were together during the war, Kamenev dismissed what Stalin said with "short, almost contemptuous remarks" 22 . There is an opinion that Lenin approved the appointment of Stalin as a member of the government in October 1917, because this post "did not require special intelligence"; Stalin's name was last on Lenin's list of twelve recommended people's commissars. The image of a boring bureaucrat who sat out time was reflected in one of Stalin's first nicknames: "comrade filling the office", "comrade Kartotekov" 24 . Stalin's personal behavior and the nature of his personality strengthened this image. He was outwardly modest and unassuming, lacking the passion and intellectual purpose of many of his colleagues. His voice, according to the recollections of many of his associates, was colorless, inexpressive; he did not differ in oratory skills, spoke indistinctly, usually read the printed text slowly, pausing and stammering from time to time, and, following stereotypes, brightened up his speech only with a strong intonation to emphasize right places in the text. His critics later discovered that he spoke in a manner similar to yesterday's editorial in Pravda, which he probably read 25 . At meetings, he was often seen sitting on one side of the hall, he spoke little or was silent, smoked cigarettes or a pipe stuffed with strong-smelling tobacco, while he was all attention and always on his guard.

Now it is easy to understand why many of his associates underestimated him, hiding under the mask of a clumsy, modest official and an intellectual dwarf. Stalin was a great master of simulation. Where some saw a lack of intelligence, there was a sharp, well-informed, cautious and brilliantly organized intellect. Stalin was not stupid. He read voraciously and critically, putting question marks in the books, making notes, underlining the right places. In the 1930s, his library numbered 40,000 books 26 . In addition, he wrote extensively and intensively, both before 1917 and in the 1920s, and his works and speeches, when published, amounted to a total of thirteen volumes. His vision of Marxism was well thought out and supported by an apparently clear, logically consistent, balanced argument. His prose, later elevated to the rank of a model of socialist directness and clarity, was boring and did not strike the imagination, although in places it was flavored with eye-catching metaphor for spice, especially since the background surrounding it was pompous passages. He favored what in 1917 was defined as "creative Marxism," and his own complex of political convictions testifies to his desire to adapt Marx to the existing reality in the same way that Lenin did 27 . At the same time, he did not depart for a second from the idea of ​​building a communist society. His view of communism was "unidirectional" rather than "limited". Early in his political career, he treated communism as a historical necessity, even when real life contradicted the ideas of the Bolsheviks in the 1920s, making the idea of ​​communism a complete utopia.

If Stalin was not stupid, then he was not an intellectual either, "smartness", in his opinion, was tantamount to almost a crime. The nature of his personality in the 1920s seemed, especially against the background of Lenin and Trotsky, clearly plebeian. He was rough; often used foul language, even to Lenin's wife, which gave rise to an appendix to the latter's "testament". The habit of swearing isolated the lower classes of the communist movement from the educated and noble Bolshevik intelligentsia, which became rare among the new ruling elite that Stalin surrounded himself with in the 1930s. Unable to maintain a good tone, devoid of social gloss (at a dinner in honor of the Allies in 1943, he was forced to ask embarrassedly how to use the numerous devices that surrounded his plate), possessing a small body size, Stalin stepped aside instead of responding with rudeness, albeit in an autocratic manner 28 . Unassuming to those he wished to mislead, he allowed himself to be short-tempered, vulgar, aloof, or overbearing towards his subordinates and ruthlessly cruel to those whom he regarded as his personal enemies. Obviously, due to his nature, Stalin was vindictive and felt insecure; and the culture of vendetta may have been borrowed by him from his native Georgia; Stalin, according to Kamenev's memoirs, read and reread Machiavelli during his Siberian exile; however, practically nothing is known for certain about Stalin's views on political relations. Meanwhile, as a politician, he brought the art of manipulating people and using them for his own purposes to perfection.

There is a running anecdote, perhaps embellished because it was written by Trotsky, that one afternoon in 1924, Stalin, Kamenev, and Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of the security service, argued with each other about what each of them liked best. Stalin chose the following: "The greatest pleasure in life is to mark the victim, carefully prepare the attack, deliver a powerful blow, and then go to bed and sleep peacefully" 30 . Like it or not, this story reveals a central element of Stalin's political complex. His views on other people were characterized by absolute cynicism and opportunism: he pandered to people who were useful to him in every possible way, because he needed them, and only if they did not stand in his way or if he had opportunities to outwit them. His methods of spying on people resembled the habits of a predator who knows his prey well. Secretive and intolerant, Stalin, however, knew how to gain confidence even in those whom he tried to topple. “Watch Stalin carefully,” they say, repeated Lenin. “He is always ready to betray you.”31 Stalin had few close friends, although he could, when he wanted to, be sociable, cheerful and friendly. Throughout his career, he was heavily burdened with a distrust of other people that later bordered on pathology. And as a consequence, his instincts were capricious and vindictive, even if his public image, promoted by posters and portraits of the 1930s, was, in the words of one of the many foreign visitors fascinated by Stalin, "the image of a pleasant, respected aging man" 32 .

Undoubtedly, Stalin was the product of twenty years of underground political life, in which there was no place for trust, where police spies and provocateurs were hiding everywhere. Secrecy and the need to rely only on oneself have become second nature, and the danger of betrayal - harsh truth life. He absorbed the ethics of the underground world and, having polished it in the crucible of the civil war, transferred it to the practice of high politics. In the 1930s and 1940s, as the dictator of the entire Soviet Union, he behaved as if infiltration, disguise, betrayal, and harsh, party-dividing arguments on ideological and tactical issues, which are the realities of underground life, were still alive. and operate in a mature one-party state. And yet, Stalin of the later period was a more effective and balanced personality compared to the embittered youth hiding in the underground. He took full advantage of the shortcomings of his personality. His sullenness turned into equanimity, his clumsy timidity became unfeigned modesty, his stilted high-flown manner of speech transformed into a slow, well-thought-out, mocking performance that could last for three or four hours. From the expression on his face, it was impossible to understand his true thoughts hidden in his head. And only yellowish-brown eyes, habitually darting from side to side, as if in search of vulnerabilities in his interlocutor, betrayed to the guest the anxiety hiding behind his outward calmness 33 .

Along with the evolution of his personality, the manner of working also changed. He was never the soft-hearted employee that arose from the myths spread about him, a kind of bureaucrat turned dictator. Nikolai Bukharin, the editor of Pravda in the 1920s and the main victim of Stalin's subsequent repressions, noted "laziness" as Stalin's main feature, which does not fit in with the image of a tireless employee who freed his rivals from the hardships of administrative work 34 . Stalin was indeed indefatigable, but his job was politics. He neglected the duties of people's commissar to such an extent that Lenin was forced to publicly reprimand him for his failure to turn the Workers' and Peasants' Committee into an effective institution. Stalin did not like bureaucratic work, and in 1924 he left both commissariats. The routine work of the secretariat was entrusted to a huge team of employees and assistants recruited by Stalin after 1922. Stalin was an activist and a revolutionary and remained so for as long as possible. His personal routine in the 1930s often contrasted with that of Hitler, but there were similarities. He got up late and went to bed late; meetings were scheduled almost every day, and work with correspondence took place daily, but he could also be absent, having gone to the country, and in the 1930s he began to take long vacations. In the evenings, he was sometimes busy with dinner, which could be followed by a film in the Kremlin cinema, after which discussions sometimes began, which sometimes dragged on until late. He drank little, usually light Georgian wine, but liked to watch his guests get drunk. He loved the company of women with whom he could be charming to the point of gallantry. However, as a rule, Stalin dined modestly in a simply furnished three-room apartment specially equipped for him in the Kremlin. He married twice, but after the suicide of his second wife in 1931, which affected him strong impact, Stalin remained lonely throughout the entire period of his dictatorship, although not celibate 35 . He never flaunted his power and disliked and ridiculed when others did. His hatred of privilege did not go away, but as a top government official and world-class politician in the post-1945 period, he dressed more formally and displayed much more respectability than he had as a party politician in the 1930s.

Any mention of Stalin's life inevitably raises the question of what motives moved him forward. According to his first Russian biographer of the glasnost period, Dmitry Volkogonov, and which is quite consistent with common sense, this was power: “The more power he concentrated in his hands, the more power he craved” 36 . As Robert Tucker noted in his classic biography of the dictator, Stalin craved not only power, but also glory: "Glory ... remained his goal" 37 . According to Bukharin and Trotsky, Stalin was driven by deep-seated vices of his personality: envy, jealousy, petty ambitions. Meanwhile, there are almost no notes that could shed light on the motives that moved Stalin. Once, during the civil war, when the city of Tsaritsyn, located on the Volga, was being successfully defended, Stalin remarked that he would willingly sacrifice forty-nine percent of the people if it "save the remaining fifty-one percent, because it would mean saving the revolution." It is possible that envy of the more successful and ambitious people around him pushed him to eliminate them, but it is also possible that he was simply flattered by the applause of the masses (many, however, testified that he objected to the most extravagant forms of praise of his person) , but the only thread that connected all his actions and deeds was the idea of ​​​​saving the revolution and protecting the first socialist state. Power for Stalin, apparently, was not an end in itself, rather, he needed this power to preserve and develop the revolution and the state, which he personified. The goal of preserving the revolution became a personal matter for Stalin, because at some point in the 1920s, perhaps after the death of Lenin, he began to see himself as the leader of the Bolsheviks, who alone was able to pave the way for the revolution with sufficient rigidity and determination. His instinct for self-preservation, the complete insensitivity with which he destroyed his party comrades, the Makevialist policy - all this evidence is not that Stalin was a completely self-absorbed personality, perverted by sadistic inclinations, but rather that this man made full use of the means available to him to achieve main goal, whose devotion he maintained throughout his life, starting from adolescence. For Soviet society, such a purposefulness cost huge losses and had far-reaching consequences, but to Stalin such a position, obviously, seemed justified by the highest goal of building communism.

Hitler's biography has been studied much better. All the details of his personal and public life are better illuminated, and Hitler's views, according to the most various issues reflected in his writings and outlined conversations. The legend about Hitler, which was formed in the 1930s, is much closer to the truth compared to official version past Stalin. And yet, the thoughts hidden in the deepest corners of consciousness, which could come out in diaries and regular personal correspondence, remain with seven seals, both Hitler and Stalin. Understanding Hitler's personality is an extremely difficult task. The gulf that lies between the clumsy, unremarkable, reticent individual and the public politician Hitler, demagogue and prophet, seems completely insurmountable, and, on the contrary, Stalin's personal traits were fully manifested in his public career. This contrast in Hitler's character seemed so striking that many suspected him of possessing some rare, incomprehensible physical and psychological gift that helped him to enchant and hypnotize both those who were in his immediate vicinity and the distant crowd that he became proselytizing since the early 1920s. But they saw the reason not only in the supernatural. So, one day in Berlin in 1934, sitting in the stadium literally a foot from Hitler behind his back, two British guests of the Hitler congress watched how he captivated the audience with his already familiar growing passion and harsh voice. “Then something incredible happened,” they noted. “[We] both saw a flash of blue lightning emanating from Hitler’s back… One could only be surprised that none of us who stood very close to him were killed to death.” These people subsequently tried to understand whether Hitler was at some point in the power of the devil, and the answer was: "Yes, we came to the conclusion that this was the case" 40 .

Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in the small Austrian town of Braunau an der Inn as his father's fourth child from his third marriage, although his three older siblings died in infancy. His father was a customs officer, and the family was quite petty-bourgeois. Hitler's father died in 1900, and his mother Clara died in 1907. He attended a local school, where he showed some ability, however, when he moved to a secondary school in Linz, the young Hitler lost interest in his studies. Like Stalin, Hitler had an exceptionally good memory. When he was sixteen he left Linz and moved to Vienna, where he hoped to train as a painter or architect. He then lived, contrary to his later statements, not in poverty, but on a fairly large inheritance, as well as on funds received from the sale of his paintings - mainly urban landscapes, which were shown in local galleries. In 1907 he was refused admission to the Vienna Academy of Arts. He spent his days in the company of young loitering people with little to do, and in the evenings he attended theaters and concerts, where he was attracted by the music of his favorite composer Gustav Mahler. Five youthful years spent in Vienna provide few clues pointing to the future of a politician; he was interested in current events, was fond of pan-German nationalism, but there is no clear evidence that during these years his nationalism was clearly anti-Semitic in nature. And yet, in the shy, polite, socially passive youth, who at times could be openly self-confident, wandering, self-centered and indifferent to his friends, one could recognize the split personality of the 1930s.

In May 1913, Hitler fled from Vienna to Munich to avoid military service in the Austrian army. the Austrian authorities contacted him, but he managed to avoid deportation for almost a year, until in February 1914 the twenty-four-year-old artist was returned to Salzburg, where a medical board declared him "unfit for military or auxiliary service" 42 . In August of the same year, standing on the Odeonplatz in Munich, he heard about the outbreak of the First World War. Two days later he went to fight as a volunteer in the German army, which found him quite fit for military service. After a brief two-month training, Hitler was sent to the front in Belgium and France. Like thousands of other young Europeans who rushed to the front, Hitler admitted that he was "extremely excited" 43 . The war created Hitler, just as the revolution created Stalin. A month later, Hitler was promoted to corporal and awarded the Iron Cross Second Class (“Happiest day of my life,” Hitler wrote to his landlord in Munich). He finally received the Iron Cross First Class in August 1918. In the extreme conditions of the war, requiring every soldier to exert all his strength, he showed personal courage and was always cheerful: “risk his life every day, look death in the eye” 44 . The fact that after all four years of the war he remained alive, while thousands of his comrades remained lying on the battlefield, was a mere accident. The war had a much stronger effect on him than the years of life in Vienna. In his book "Mein Kampf", recalling this time, he writes that it was "the most unforgettable time of my entire earthly life" 45 . He was psychologically completely immersed in the struggle; Hitler accustomed himself, by his own admission, to a paralyzing fear of death. There is no doubt that for a young soldier who experienced all the horrors of war, being in the harsh, anomalous conditions of the front, it was unbearable to admit defeat. Hitler may have embellished his account by recalling the night of the Armistice, when an all-consuming hatred for those who led Germany to defeat before the Allies arose in him, but throughout his subsequent career, the nature of his policy indicated that he was simply unable to separate his own psychological state from the historical reality he was trying to confront. He took the defeat of his country as his own humiliation. Since then, Hitler carried within himself an unbridled thirst for revenge, at times bordering on sheer insanity.

Hitler began his post-war life as an army agitator who was supposed to inform demobilized soldiers about the dangers posed by Marxism and the Jews. In September 1919, he joined a small political party in Munich formed by watchmaker Anton Drexler, a member of the Fatherland Party, founded in 1917 at a joint meeting of radical nationalists and pan-German politicians united in support of the war. He became the 55th member of the German Workers' Party; in November 1919 he was appointed leader of the propagandists. In February 1920, the party changed its name to the National Socialist Workers' Party, at the same time its program was published. The following year, Hitler was elected chairman of the party, and in this capacity he organized the putsch that later became famous, but as a result of the failure of this putsch, in 1924 he was imprisoned in the Landsberg Fortress, after which he suddenly became a political figure on a national scale. The outlook of the young politician at this time fluctuates widely. Those who heard him or who were involved in his inner circle, when characterizing Hitler, turned to terms that were more applicable to a preacher with the gift of revelation. Yet much of this evidence suggests that Hitler was still perceived as a failure; his appearance and behavior, when he was not in public, were unremarkable and of little interest, and his attempts to make himself a tribune and defender of a people who had been betrayed were simply ridiculous. A textbook slovenly cloak, a narrow dark mustache, bangs hanging from his forehead, a pale, slightly puffy face, and even bluish-gray eyes and at times absent, insensible gaze, made Hitler easily recognizable, but no less impartial for this. In his revealing recollection of meeting Hitler in 1920 at his Munich villa, the composer Clemens von Frankenstein emphasized a distinct mixture of social insecurity and pompous demagogy. Hitler arrived accompanied by other guests, consisting of theatrical figures and artists. He wore gaiters and a soft hat, and in his hand he held a riding-whip, although he did not know how to ride a horse and used it to periodically whip his boots with it. He had his dog with him. He looked like a "stereotypical goof"; sat down with an awkward reservation in the presence of his aristocratic guests. At the end, seizing on some cue, he began his political monologue in the style that he maintained throughout his political life. “He addressed us like an army chaplain,” recalls another guest. “I got the impression that he was just dumb” 47 . He was not interrupted, and he, leaving the tone of the preacher, switched to shouting. The servants rushed to defend their master. When Hitler left the meeting, the guests sat, as the memoir says, as if they were passengers in a railway compartment who suddenly realized that they were "in the company of a psychopath" 48 . The feeling of extreme embarrassment or embarrassment that Hitler could cause in everyone, not noted in this performance, made it difficult to try to calm him down if he had already begun to orate. He learned to use this circumstance as a way to avoid conflicts and objections, seeking the submission of his interlocutor. Hermann Rauschning, head of the party branch in Danzig, later in 1933 noted that Hitler's tirades were a kind of "competition in suppression", which explained "how important shouting and feverish pace were to his eloquence" 49 .

Hitler somehow succeeded in the 1920s in turning unattractive personal rhetoric into triumphant oratory to the masses, which became the most striking feature of his personality as a party leader, and later as a dictator. He was aware of the impression he made on people, but he had too little sense of humor to endure criticism, inattention or laughter. In the words of Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler's photographer, who was never allowed to photograph him in glasses or a bathing suit, "Hitler had a fear of being ridiculous." All his speeches were carefully choreographed and rehearsed. At first he wrote everything himself, and then, like Stalin, he began to dictate. He usually delivered his speech the way he wanted the public to hear it and waited for his secretaries to reproduce it as he delivered it, without notes. Hitler's speech, dedicated to the tenth anniversary of his power, was written in this way. His secretary tensed from the moment he began dictating slowly and quietly, pacing back and forth across the room. By the end of his speech, he was already shouting at the wall, his back turned to the room, but in such a way that he could be heard quite distinctly. He went over his speech many times until he was sure of the impression it made. From the very beginning of his career, he realized the power of his thick, raspy voice with a strong Austrian accent, now measured and even slow, the next moment sharp, noisy, indignant, and sometimes, but for a very brief moment, hysterical. He believed that in politics, the spoken word always outperforms the written text: “From time immemorial, the spoken word has been the force that unleashed the greatest religious and political avalanches in history,” he wrote in Mein Kampf. Only "a fiery word thrown at the masses" 52 is capable of kindling the flame of political passions.

Among the many historical excursions into Hitler's history, it is widely believed that the content of speeches mattered less to him than how they were delivered. His ideas and views are reputedly secondary and ill-conceived, a consequence of his laziness and amateurish tastes. His "Mein Kampf" is seen by most scholars as a combination of a self-serving and false biography with pompous ideas and views, rather than his own, but heavily borrowed from various sources. As the former Minister of Economics wrote in 1945: “Hitler was the type of semi-literate person. He read a huge number of books, but interpreted everything he read in the light of his own ideas ... without expanding his knowledge. But this is only half the truth. He read to find support for his own ideas; his surviving library shows that he read extensively in the fields of modern popular philosophy, political science, and economics, took notes in the margins, and carefully underlined passages he liked or disliked. Among the books he read are books by Lenin; he read Paul de Lagarde, 19th century educator, author of The Leadership Principle, a book by Houston Stewart Chamberlain, perhaps the most widely known of the generation of racial theorists of the late 19th century. However, it is also true that, on the basis of all these numerous sources, he developed his own worldview and his own views on real politics and behavior. Taken together, all this became his fixed idea and determined his further political career, just as creative Marxism influenced Stalin. The fact that Hitler was narrow-minded and selective, deaf to rational and objective criticism, intellectually naive or banal, does not diminish the value of his ideas as historical sources that provide insight into how he rose first to power and then to the top of dictatorship. "Mein Kampf" remains an invaluable source for anyone who wants to understand through the prism of what ideas Hitler viewed the world.

Views of the world were drawn very soon. Their contours were fixed for life, although the details were constantly changing. Hitler believed that he was witnessing one of the periods of the rise of world history caused by the French Revolution and the era of unfettered individualism and economic selfishness that followed. The division of society into classes serves the interests of the bourgeoisie, breeds class envy and worship of money, cuts off the working classes from the nation, and encourages the emergence of revolutionary internationalism that threatens to undermine European civilization. The key to survival lies in recognizing that historical progress lies not through class struggle but through racial struggle, and that a true understanding of the importance of race (or nation) is the key to moving from an era of classes to ushering in a national revolution. First of all, the racial and cultural-social institutions born of racial communities must be preserved. This, according to Hitler, is the central task of politics. His radical nationalism went far beyond the mere assertion of national interests common to nationalists of all kinds. Hitler wanted the nation to represent a special type of community, not with classes, but with "fellow races", an economy run for the sake of the people, a community of blood as the basis for expressing allegiance; a kind of conglomerate covered by the term National Socialism, owing its birth as much to Hitler's Austrian origins as to the atmosphere of radical nationalism in Germany. The enemies opposed to these aspirations were mainly Jews. At some point towards the end of the war, Hitler seized on the popular anti-Semitic thesis that the Jews were responsible for the defeat of Germany: either as Marxists preaching the ideology of social disintegration, or as capitalists in whose hands all threads of the world market are concentrated, or as a biological challenge, threatening the purity of the blood. Jews and Jewry became a historical metaphor for Hitler to explain the crisis in Germany 57 .

His views on political life were cynic and manipulative. The crowd, driven by his rhetoric, mattered to him only to the extent that it could give a revolutionary impetus to a political movement. Hermann Rauschning recalled a conversation with Hitler about the secret of his success with the crowd: “The masses are like animals that obey instincts. They are incapable of drawing conclusions through logical reasoning... At a mass rally, thinking is turned off” 58 . Hitler viewed human relationships as a struggle between individuals: "Domination always means the transfer of a stronger will to a weaker one", which, he believed, lies "somewhere in the nature of physical or biological processes» 59 . His racist views were exclusively narrow-minded, rejecting any human material, not qualified. "Everyone in the world who does not belong to a good race," he wrote in Mein Kampf, "is a scum." Contempt for most of humanity was mixed in him with a deep hatred for all whom he considered enemies. Hitler's lexicon has always been spiced with expressions that reflect the absolute quality of this obsessive malice: "extirpate", "destroy", "destroy". Anyone who crossed his path became an outcast; like Stalin, he had a long vindictive memory. In politics, as Hitler believed, other people must either be corrupted and subjugated, or exiled and destroyed.

This was the ideological baggage of Hitler during the period when he was being transformed from a radical nationalist agitator to the head of state, and then a dictator. As a mature politician, he showed more decorum and awareness of his authority, but the outbursts of rage did not stop. He began to use them as a political tool, deliberately turning them on and off and knowing what effect they had during negotiations, although Hitler still retained the ability to completely let go of control over himself, and he managed to do this in a completely natural way. At times he displayed the greatest tension of his entire nervous system, which was reflected in numerous medical conditions, both real and ostentatious. Despite the fact that he himself considered decisiveness the great virtue of a politician, he was often observed in a state of indecision and obvious self-doubt. He was equally capable of suddenly gaining confidence and "iron determination", descending on him suddenly after a series of days of being in a state of hesitation or caused by a pulse of energy, but in both cases becoming clearly visible in manifestation. The ability to create the impression that he has an extraordinary ability for intuitive judgment, Hitler used as one of the methods to strengthen his image of the German messiah in the eyes of the people. In his daily conversation, Hitler played on the contrast between his outward mediocrity and his claims to the exceptional nature of the individual. By dressing modestly but elegantly, Hitler could disarm his guests and visitors with obvious and serene mediocrity. A smiley greeting and then a handshake - "arm extended straight and slightly down" - was followed by a silence that was as unexpected as it was disconcerting. At this moment, Hitler fixed his gaze on the counterpart, not taking his eyes off him, as if trying to penetrate into the depths of his thoughts. His gaze could have a hypnotic effect, as in the case of a rabbit caught in the grip of a snake. As one of his interpreters observed, Hitler stubbornly “keeps his eyes on his victim, and those who pass the test are accepted, and those who lose their presence of mind or remain indifferent are rejected 62 .

The gap between the messianic pretensions of the dictator and the banal nature of his persona grew wider over time. The Hitler who proved capable of breaking the Treaty of Versailles, resurrecting Germany's military might, declaring war on half of humanity, and wiping out millions of people, was incomprehensibly different from that dim-witted moralizer and petty-bourgeois Hitler whose favorite meal was daily afternoon tea. The typical Hitler was a fussy and fastidious bourgeois with limited and insecure artistic tastes, who maintained a measured and ascetic regime. And this character deepened even more during the war. After 1933, Hitler led a life of banal routine. He went into even greater isolation, and his lifestyle became familiar and carefully, and sometimes obsessively, controlled. After the suicide in 1931 of his niece Geli Raubal, for whom he felt strong affection He began to avoid women. The difference from the more earthly, rough and sociable Stalin is simply amazing. Hitler was not prone to smoking, Stalin smoked all his life. In both residences of Hitler, the office in Berlin and the Alpine villa in the Bavarian town of Berchtesgaden, two separate rooms were allocated - for smokers and non-smokers, intended for afternoon relaxation. No one dared to smoke freely in his presence. He was almost a teetotaler (he allowed himself to drink a little brandy with milk to sleep, and was seen with a glass of champagne on the morning when Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor); while eating he preferred mineral water, the rest of the time he liked to drink an infusion of chamomile or an infusion of lime flowers 63 . Hitler was a vegetarian who hated hunting animals; Stalin ate huge amounts of meat, drank wine and vodka, and was said to be in the most peaceful state of mind when he held a hunting rifle or fishing rod in his hand. Hitler could be polite to the point of servility, a gentleman in front of the opposite sex, and swore so rarely that his secretary, which he sent to the Italians for capitulating to the Allies in September 1943, continued to be remembered even in post-war memoirs 65 . Despite the fact that Hitler saw himself as an artist turned political overnight, his tastes were by no means bohemian. His favorite opera, besides Wagner, was Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow; he enjoyed reading stories about the Wild West by the German author Karl May; among Hitler's art supplies hidden in a salt mine in 1945 was the song "I'm a Captain Sailing in My Bath" 66 .

To understand the huge gulf that separated an ordinary person with petty-bourgeois tastes, which Hitler was alone with himself, and requiring the exertion of all forces public life in the very thick of world history, consciously chosen by him, it is necessary to understand the motives that prompted him to struggle for power. For Hitler, as for Stalin, power was not an end in itself. The outward trappings of power seemed to mean little to him; his fragile nature apparently found some psychological support in power after years of hurtful defeats, but it was power for an exclusive purpose. Hitler considered the power entrusted to him as a gift of Providence to the people of Germany to save her from a state of impotence and disgrace. “It is a true miracle of our time,” he said at the party congress in November 1937, “that you found me, found me among millions of other people. And I came to you. This is a great success for Germany. Hitler saw himself as the savior of Germany; his personal power was that given to him by world history, his humble origins and modest life are only a reminder that Hitler "was chosen by Providence to carry out his mission" from a great mass of other people. Shortly after the crisis that culminated in the Storm Trooper Putsch led by Ernst Röhm in June 1934, he made the following pretentious statement to the Reichstag: "At this hour I take responsibility for the fate of the German nation..." 68 . Hitler was obsessed with the idea of ​​saving the German nation, just as Stalin was fixated on the idea of ​​saving the revolution. He came to the conclusion that he was the chosen one of history, sent down to fulfill his mission, just as Stalin was convinced of his indispensability in the cause of building communism. This deep conviction in the predestination of one's fate is consistent with all political career Hitler since the earliest years post-war period, when his speeches and articles were aimed at deceiving the simple-hearted but extraordinary followers, contrary to the lessons of world history, until his dying testament, dictated in 1945, in which he marks his place in history: “I have sown good seeds. I have helped the German people to realize the significance of the struggle they are waging for their very survival...” 69 .

Neither Hitler nor Stalin can be attributed to the category of the norm. As far as the data on them allow us to judge this, it can be argued that they were mentally inadequate, in the broadest clinical sense of the word, individuals. However great the temptation to assume that monstrous deeds go hand in hand with madness, they were people endowed with exceptional personal qualities and the greatest political energy. They were driven by unshakable devotion to one idea, and they, each in their own way and for different reasons, saw themselves as an instrument of history chosen to achieve this goal. Awareness of their fate led to the fact that each of them developed excessive vulnerability, a painful complex formed. Stalin was tormented by the fear of death, and as he grew older, his concern grew that his death would mean the end of the cause of the revolution, which he had defended all his life.

Hitler, too, was consumed by the fear of imminent death. “Depressed by the thought of the transience of time,” as Albert Krebs, the leader of the party in Hamburg, noted, “he wanted to compress the events of a whole century into two decades” 70 . Each of them was ruthless, opportunistic, prone to change tactics. The political life of both was uncompromisingly focused on their own survival. Both were underestimated by their colleagues and opponents, who failed to recognize in the unremarkable modest personalities future despots with far-reaching plans, politically merciless, freed themselves from all moral restrictions and, when it came to politics, full of disregard for other people. Both were absorbed in the daily struggle with the difficulties of political life; both only through their own efforts paved their way to dictatorial power, overcoming obstacles and resistance. unity of purpose and iron will demonstrated by each of them in the 1920s did not immediately lead them to the unlimited power they enjoyed in the 1930s. None of them envisaged the establishment of a dictatorship. It remains unclear when Stalin came up with the idea that his autocracy could be a surer way to defend the revolution than collective leadership. Hitler's attempt, at first hesitant, to identify himself as a figure sent down by Providence to save Germany, was first made by him during his brief stay in prison in 1924. However, the evolution of this image took time, moreover, it was necessary to convince wide circles of this both within the party and among the population. The first task for both Stalin and Hitler was to become the head of the leadership of their parties before declaring their broader ambitions.

* * *

“We are against the decision of one person to decide the leadership of the party,” Nikolai Bukharin wrote in 1929. “We are opposed to the collective leadership of the Party being replaced by the leadership of one person…” 71 . In the 1920s, after the death of Lenin, the Bolshevik Party was to become a party led by its Central Committee. For the first time after 1924, none of the leaders of the party dared to lay claim to leadership. In the meantime, the Stalinist secretariat, for two years after its formation in 1922, was an organization with greater authority and more procedural power than was originally supposed when this small service department was created in 1919. Decisions on political issues were made after their discussion at the Central Committee of the Party. Stalin's voice was one of many others. The core leadership of the party consisted of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Trotsky, and Aleksey Rykov, appointed to lead the Council of People's Commissars and inherit this post previously held by Lenin. But, in spite of everything, by 1930 they were all removed from their highest posts, and Stalin began to be considered by the majority of its members as the "master", the only and most significant figure in the leadership of the party. “When he enters,” as noted in one of his early biographies, published in 1931, “everyone instantly straightens their backs, everyone turns into attention itself – the audience sees a great leader ...” 72 .

The five-year period between 1924 and 1929 was decisive for Stalin's career. During this time, he succeeded, using his powers as General Secretary, to remove or alienate his colleagues in the leadership of the party. First of all, he needed to take possession of the legacy of the deceased Lenin. In October 1923, Stalin suggested that other party leaders embalm the body of the leader after his death, but was ridiculed by Trotsky, and Bukharin, rejecting this idea, reprimanded him, noting that "this would be an insult to his memory" 73 . By the time of Lenin's death, Stalin had secured a majority of the Politburo's support for his idea, which in the spring of 1924 was the responsibility of Stalin's supporter Felix Dzerzhinsky. Stalin was one of the two main people who were supposed to carry Lenin's coffin at his funeral. Three months later, at a party at the Communist University. Sverdlov, he read a series of lectures on Lenin's contribution to the theory of Marxism. Published under the title The Foundations of Leninism, this series of lectures gave a definite direction to Lenin's thoughts and portrayed Stalin as one of the leaders of the party who studied them most deeply and correctly. The book was addressed to the new generation of young communists who joined the party after the victorious revolution, for whom a single clear guide to the fundamentals of Lenin's theory of the revolutionary state was extremely important. Stalin was celebrating his victory by achieving the identification of his personality in the people's minds as the only and true fighter for the realization of the revolutionary theory 74 .

Stalin needed the name of Lenin in order to emphasize the special importance of party unity and party leadership. To this end, he began to attack factionalists and splitters, thus solving his key task of ensuring his leadership in the party leadership. In his speech at the Congress of Soviets, held just two days after Lenin's death, Stalin gave priority to maintaining a spirit of uncompromising solidarity: "After leaving us, Comrade Lenin bequeathed us to cherish the unity of the Party as the apple of our eye." In his Fundamentals of Leninism, Stalin invariably referred to Lenin's resolution adopted at the 10th Party Congress in 1921, "On the Unity of the Party", while at the same time his own writings during the period of the revolution were full of calls for a single party line. The party needs "unity of will" and "absolute unity of action"; this, as Stalin wrote, "will prevent any factional struggle and division of power in the party" 76 . Stalin, which can be said with almost complete certainty, himself believed that this was the cornerstone of political strategy, but there is no doubt that such an approach was fully in line with his own political interests, his desire to position himself as the guarantor of this unity. All leaders whose authority and power in the party had been undermined by Stalin in the 1920s were accused of factional struggle. This accusation, deliberately included by Stalin in all his speeches and articles, was used by him in order to isolate his rivals and destroy the basis of their resistance.

Stalin primarily sought to associate himself with the broader interests of the rank and file of the party. Stalin had the advantage of his true plebeian origin. He always called the party an organization of workers and poor peasants, despite the fact that a significant part of his leadership consisted of representatives of the educated intelligentsia. His speech at Lenin's funeral began with the statement: "We are communists - people of a special temper", but at the same time he continued to characterize the ideal members of the party as "sons of the working class, sons of the needy and struggling, sons of those who have experienced incredible need ... "77. In his lectures dedicated to the memory of Sverdlov, he put forward the thesis that intellectuals and other petty-bourgeois elements who have infiltrated the party as opportunists prone to ideological decay should be expelled from the party by true proletarians with the help of a "merciless struggle", that is, that strategy which he followed and ruthlessly implemented all subsequent years, destroying the intellectual elite of the party 78 . Stalin was able to carry out the "proletarianization" of the party, partly as a result of his increased control over personal appointments in the party apparatus. Stalin's supporters were given key positions in the Central Committee and the Secretariat, responsible for appointing and selecting candidates for top positions. Stalin did not miss a single detail, maintaining the balance of power in committees or meetings, at the same time, the degree of his control over the party machine was greatly exaggerated, since many officials in the apparatus were, although formally, appointed not by Stalin, but by the Central Committee. The key to his success among recruits in the party ranks was the ability to appear as the only leader who always put the interests of the party above personal ambitions. Working on committees, he developed an effective tactic for himself, which allowed him to have the last word in all cases, while giving the impression that he was just the mouthpiece of the party line. “While attending meetings, Stalin never took part in the discussion until it was over,” reported Boris Bazhanov, who worked with Stalin in the Kremlin. “Then, when everyone had already spoken, he got up from his seat and summarized in a few words what was the opinion of the majority” 79 . At the larger congresses he presented himself as the voice of party common sense, and with undisguised pleasure parodied, ridiculed and attacked any hint of deviation from the party line, which in fact, at the right moment, could be useful to him. Stalin ensured that in the minds of the majority of party members he established himself as the most devoted spokesman for the party line and the most reliable bulwark of the unity of the party ranks.

Nevertheless, there were still issues of revolutionary strategy on which the opinion of the party leadership was divided. Long before Lenin's death, Trotsky commanded the troops of the Soviets in the civil war, being the people's commissar for military affairs. He became associated with a political position that placed him aloof from the Leninist general line. He stood adamantly for the ideas of party democracy and considered it necessary to hold open debates on questions of party strategy; Trotsky opposed the New Economic Policy, adopted in 1921 as a way to restore a market economy in agriculture and small retail trade, considered it necessary to strengthen socialization in the food production system, advocated accelerating the country's large-scale industrialization; and finally, Trotsky believed in the international mission of the revolutionary movement ("to give impetus to the world revolution") and considered it an important factor building socialism in the Soviet Union, which would otherwise become a "temporary" phenomenon 80 .

Trotsky, being in the highest degree ambitious adherent of the party, since 1924 he began to distance himself from Leninism, trying to belittle the role of Lenin in the events of 1917, and this happened at the very time when Stalin was strengthening his image of an unshakable Leninist with all his might. Zinoviev and Kamenev, who had backed Stalin in the announcement of Lenin's will, began to shift towards opposition to the man they realized could undermine their own claim to leadership. By the end of 1924, Stalin felt that his position was strong enough to launch an open and merciless attack. In his lecture on "Trotskyism or Leninism?" he accused Trotsky of rallying "non-proletarian elements" around him, aiming at the destruction of the proletarian revolution. A month later, Stalin published in the newspaper Pravda a letter written by Trotsky in 1913, found in old police archives. In a letter addressed to a Georgian Menshevik, Trotsky spoke contemptuously of Lenin: "The whole system of views of Leninism today is built on lies and falsification..." 82 . The letter dealt a heavy blow to Trotsky's moral authority in the party, and in January he was ordered to resign as People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs.

In the next two years, Stalin continued his brutal persecution of both Trotsky and his former allies, Zinoviev and Kamenev, whom Stalin and his supporters in the party dubbed the United Opposition, seeking to split the party ranks by excessively accelerating the pace of economic transformation and denying the possibility of building socialism in one country. Stalin's tactical skill lay in close attention to detail and persistent, calculated inflating their significance in order to discredit his victims. In 1924, for example, he organized a campaign to stop naming towns, villages or factories after Trotsky. He issued an order to remove Trotsky's name from instructions, pamphlets and textbooks on political education in the army, in which he was characterized as an outstanding commander of the Red Army 83 . Anonymous rumors and slanderous fabrications circulated among the population, playing on the fact that Trotsky had been a Menshevik for most of his political career and had only joined the party in 1917. Stalin used the same tactics against Zinoviev and Kamenev - the fact that they did not support the party's call for an uprising in 1917 was presented by Stalin as an example of sabotaging the revolution. By the time the Fourteenth Party Congress opened in December 1925, Stalin's rivals were already forced to defend themselves by going into opposition, significantly weakened by the fact that the retaliatory attacks on Stalin by each of the three were purely personal, while Stalin always attacked them. by manipulating abstract notions of their threat to the cause of the revolution. When Kamenev began his speech condemning Stalin as the leader of the party, the congress delegates drowned out his speech with shouts and exclamations, chanting: “Stalin! Stalin! 84 In a speech delivered a year later, Stalin noted with a disarming note that he would "avoid personal elements in the polemic" as best he could, and immediately launched a ruthless attack on his opponents using those very personal elements. Stalin used a very simple but effective rhetorical arsenal so that his demagogy did not seem like an ordinary squabble between quarreling pretenders to the throne of Lenin. He often spoke of himself in the third person to further smooth out this very "personal element".

Later, the opposition made another desperate attempt to remove Stalin, although this was hardly the "watershed in history" as Trotsky later wrote in his autobiography. In October 1927, the Central Committee, meeting at its plenum, expelled from its ranks Trotsky and Zinoviev, already expelled from the Politburo and deprived of all government posts. Trotsky took the opportunity to circulate a long letter on the history of the party, in which he highlighted those parts of Lenin's testament that condemned Stalin and called for his removal. Copies of the letter were copied and distributed secretly. October 23, 1927 was the last act of a dramatic confrontation that took place within the framework of the plenum of the Central Committee. Trotsky stood up and spoke, with all his vehemence, denouncing Stalin as real threat party, an autocratic bureaucratic tyrant, from whom the revolutionary movement must get rid, as Lenin demanded. Some began to interrupt him with incessant cries of “Slander!”, “Schismatic!”, Others listened without special attention. Stalin, enraged and forced to defend himself, and knowing that uncomfortable questions were already being raised as to why Lenin's will was not communicated to all party members, responded by demonstrating, contrary to Trotsky's accusations, that he was simply unable to express his thoughts or articulate arguments, extraordinary oratorical skills and well-controlled indignation, brilliantly reflecting Trotsky's latest attack. He agreed with the arguments against him, remarking, addressing the delegates: “I think it would be strange and insulting if the opposition, which is striving to destroy the party, would begin to praise Stalin, who defends the fundamental principles of the Leninist party” 87 . He unreservedly agreed with Lenin's accusation that he was "too rude", but, turning everything on its head, declared: "Yes, comrades, I am rude, but only with those who treacherously destroy the unity of the party." Stalin persuaded the plenum to pass a resolution approving "rudeness" as an essential attribute of the party members, and not their fault. He called for the expulsion of all those who condemned him, and then turned to the plenum with a request to reprimand him for not being rude enough with them. Under enthusiastic cries: “That's right, we are reprimanding you!” and thunderous applause Stalin triumphed, having won a complete victory. The opposition was expelled from the Central Committee, and in the following months from the party. In January 1928, Trotsky was exiled to Central Asia, and a year later to Turkey.

Throughout much of the struggle against the so-called "Left Opposition," Stalin enjoyed the support of the Politburo and Central Committee from a cohort of leaders who had coalesced around Nikolai Bukharin, a party economist and Pravda editor. This was a very popular figure in the party, completely different from Stalin. Calm, sociable, wide-eyed, polite, with red hair, a neat mustache and a goatee that distinguish him, he was distinguished by an extraordinary mind and encyclopedic knowledge. As the son of a teacher, he studied economics at Moscow University, joined the party in 1906, fled abroad in 1910, and returned to Russia after the revolution. Taking radical positions in 1917 and during the Civil War, and being a supporter of the spread of revolutionary struggle and communism in Europe, as well as a supporter of violent economic mobilization, he went over to the side of the more moderate part of the party in 1922-1923, began to advocate the New Economic Policy and more moderate rates of industrial development, which made it possible to develop small-scale trade and agriculture, providing the necessary balance when "the city did not plunder the countryside" 89 . Bukharin was an ill-suited figure for political activity and was distinguished by unusual simplicity, but in the 1920s he was recognized by many as the most prominent thinker in the new, Soviet system and was considered as the likely heir to Lenin. He was on friendly terms with Stalin, but at the same time he was Trotsky's close intellectual partner. The circle of people close to him included the head of the Moscow City Party Committee, Nikolai Uglanov, the leader of the Soviet trade unions, Mikhail Tomsky, and the chairman of the government, Alexei Rykov. It was not a clearly organized faction or platform, but only a group of people who shared common position who advocated a more balanced course economic development and the idea of ​​a more stable post-revolutionary society that would present the world with a more acceptable image of Russian communism and a more preferable alternative to Stalinist despotism 90 .

It is quite possible that Stalin always sought to overthrow Bukharin, seeing in him a threat to his own position and wary of him as a guardian of the Leninist mantle and a popular, endearing potential head of state, but the problem that separated them was not only questions of doctrine, but also personal relationships.

Stalin never liked the implicit change in the direction of economic development that followed from the program adopted in 1921. In a long conversation with Bukharin in 1925 about the prospects for the Russian economy, Stalin stressed that the New Economic Policy would "crush the socialist elements and restore capitalism" 91 . Stalin stood for accelerated industrialization in order to build a truly proletarian state, but in a dispute with the ideas of Trotsky, who advocated "super-industrialization", he took an intermediate position. In the winter of 1927/28, when the United Opposition had already been crushed, Stalin was given the opportunity to move towards the idea of ​​accelerated industrialization, which he had always secretly cherished. And this inevitably meant taking away a huge share of the surplus production from the peasants; In the spring of 1928, Stalin finally launched the emergency measures to confiscate grain, which became the first stage of the revolution in the countryside, with which the name of Stalin is inevitably associated. This action was an irresistible bone of contention in his dispute with Bukharin, so in the end the latter was destroyed, and with him the remnants of the national leaders who had previously grouped around him were crushed.

As a rule, having outlined a victim, Stalin began to play political chess with her. He began by regularly including hints in his speeches indicating that a new faction of oppositionists who did not accept the economic revolution was being formed. Lacking broad support and the ability to appeal to the more proletarian elements in the movement, Bukharin and his supporters found themselves isolated. In Moscow, where Bukharin had support, Stalin, through manipulation in the elections to the city council, achieved a majority, and the head of the city, Uglanov, had already been overthrown in November of that year. In January 1929, Stalin finally openly called Bukharin the representative of a platform that stood in "opposition to the policy of the party" 92 . It was in this month that Bukharin made the grave mistake of once again reminding Stalin of Lenin's assessment of him. In an article in Pravda entitled "Lenin's Political Testament", Bukharin explained what he saw as genuine Leninism and accused Stalin of undermining the Leninist principle of party democracy. In his letter, published on January 30, Bukharin openly, without fear, declared that "the Stalinist regime is no longer tolerated in our party." Stalin succeeded in winning the support of the majority in the Central Committee, after which he crushed the last remnants of resistance. At the plenum of the Central Committee in April, Bukharin's supporters attacked Stalin, condemning his unscrupulous career in the party. To each personal accusation, Stalin threw: “this is trivial,” but, having waited for the end, he went on the attack, quoting the passage in Lenin’s will where he accused Bukharin of having a scholastic and not quite Marxist Marxism. The committee voted to remove representatives of the "right opposition" from their posts. In November 1929, Bukharin was expelled from the Politburo and lost his post as editor of the Pravda newspaper. Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky were forced to write a letter of repentance, where they confessed their mistakes. In December 1930, Tomsky lost his post as head of the trade unions, and Stalin appointed his close ally, Vyacheslav Molotov, in his place. In fact, the "right opposition", united by a single platform, was largely a fiction. At the same time, differences in political strategy were real. Stalin did not believe that Bukharin really understood what the driving forces and fundamental ideas of Leninism were. In the heat of an argument on the eve of Bukharin's expulsion, when they exchanged angry accusations, Stalin growled at him: “You are all not Marxists, you are sorcerers. None of you understand Lenin!” 94 In December 1929, the whole country celebrated Stalin's fiftieth birthday; the list of Politburo members, always in alphabetical order and indicative of the collective nature of party leadership, was changed to emphasize that Stalin was "Lenin's first disciple and leader of the party." This was the first and most important step towards the establishment of autocracy in the 1930s 95 .

Hitler's rise to the top of the party took place in a completely different context. The question of whether he is ready to tolerate "collective leadership" in any sense of the word has never been raised. When he was released from Landsberg prison in December 1924, his first task was to restore himself to the role of the undisputed leader of the party, which he had lost during his time in prison. Unlike Stalin, Hitler had to lead a rather noisy party with no prospects of being in power, while Stalin was one of the top leaders of the ruling party. Being in prison put Hitler in a very difficult position. His party was banned in all German regions, with the exception of Thuringia 96 . In July 1924 he completely left political activity until his release. Outside the small groups, the National Socialists broke into different factions, some of them united under the roof of the Radical Nationalists in Northern Germany, others entered into association with small pan-German alliances in Bavaria. In the absence of Hitler to replace him, the first of these groups, the National Socialist Freedom Party, placed the aged General Ludendorff in charge, but the Bavarian wing of the party did not accept the appointment. The movement that welcomed Hitler's return to politics in 1925 was very small and fragmented; the party publishing house in Munich, Echer-Verlag, had only three staff members. Hitler reorganized the party mainly on the principle of loyalty to his person. His first public performance on February 27, 1925, took place in the same beer cellar in Munich where the putsch he led began. On that day, thousands of his supporters filled the hall, most of them had to listen standing up, as there were not enough places to sit. Hitler called for allegiance to him as the sole leader of the party. The local nationalist leaders, grouped around Hitler, "achieved reconciliation" at the end of his speech, completely surrendering themselves to his "indisputable" authority, 98 as one witness wrote.

The next two years were a turning point in Hitler's career. His new ascent began from the most unpromising foot to the pinnacle of power in the party. The radical nationalist wing of German politics was insignificant and fragmented. Hitler could count on support only from a heterogeneous handful of several thousand Bavarian nationalists; the organization in northern Germany was in the hands of revolutionary nationalists, who were much less enthusiastic about Hitler's authoritarian rule; Ludendorff was still a significant figure on the fringes of the movement; on the horizon, too, was the vague outline of the young, ambitious pharmacist Gregor Strasser, who, in Hitler's absence, began to act as a "confidant" of the imprisoned Fuhrer. Strasser was to Hitler what Bukharin was to Stalin. Despite the fact that Strasser is often called the representative of the "northern" wing of the party, in reality he was a Bavarian, born in 1892 in the family of a devout Catholic. His father was a small civil servant. Like Hitler, Strasser went through the entire war, was also awarded the Iron Cross first and second class; like Hitler, he considered the war the most important test of his life. Strasser's personality was in many ways the antithesis of Hitler. He was naturally sociable, cheerful, open, with a great sense of humor; his large figure and strong voice, smile and charm of easy authority naturally made him a leader and a popular figure both inside and outside the party. His political views were formed in the trenches: a powerful revolutionary nationalism that completely rejected the old imperial order in favor of a natural community based not on class and privilege, but on the common desire of all to work in the name of the nation. "We became nationalists in the trenches," he told an assembly in 1924, "so we could not help but become socialists." The Hitlerite movement became a natural refuge for Strasser. He joined the party in 1922, and in March 1923 became the head of a Bavarian regiment in the party's paramilitary organization, the Assault Troops (SA). During Hitler's time in prison, Strasser became one of the leading members of the bloc of radical nationalists fighting for victory in the elections, in the absence of the banned National Socialist Party, and in December 1924 he was elected to the Reichstag. Unlike some prominent right-wing radicals, in February 1925 Strasser decided to join Hitler, not as a "follower", but as an equal "colleague" 100 .

Hitler accepted Strasser's offer to cooperate in the revival of the dying party, but he remained adamant about leading it, believing that he alone was capable of leading it to future victories. This conviction deepened in Hitler's months in prison, and it was also fueled by the obsequious attention given to him by his secretary and his other self, Rudolf Hess, who was in prison with his leader, whom he called "tribune." After the meeting, which began the revival of the party, Hess noted the "unshakable faith" of his ruler "in his fate" 101 . Hitler's views on the organization of the party ruled out any kind of party democracy that some party leaders wanted to introduce; his conception of the movement was entirely based on the fact that he was the potential savior of Germany and his ideas and political moves could not be influenced by the ideas and advice of others. On February 14, 1926, Hitler called the entire senior leadership of the party to a conference in the city of Bamberg in northern Bavaria. Among the leaders were also party radicals who preferred the revolutionary path to power. They were a loosely organized working group founded last July by Strasser to coordinate party strategy outside of Bavaria; he also drew up a modified version of the party program adopted in 1920, which he hoped would be approved. Hitler talked tirelessly for five hours. He argued that the party's program was unshakable ("the basis of our religion, our ideology"); he swept aside the revolutionary path of struggle in favor of moving to power through victory in parliamentary elections; but first of all he clearly expressed the idea that he himself was indispensable and that only he could lead the party to victory. Five months later, at the first party congress after the revival, convened on July 4 in Weimar, Hitler's personal leadership in the party was recognized by a majority, and his position in the party as Führer (a title officially approved in Weimar) was from that moment unshakable.

There is no doubt that Hitler used his appeal and personal charisma to ruthlessly kill those who stood in his way, as well as to simplify the process of developing the strategy of the party. And yet there were real differences in basic questions of doctrine and tactics. Thus, Strasser represented those circles in the party leadership who advocated emphatically "Germanic" socialism. "We socialists are enemies, mortal enemies of the existing capitalist economic system," he wrote in 1926 in a pamphlet containing a list of the tasks of the movement in the future. Other party leaders were more hostile to the fact that the party should concentrate all its efforts to become a nationalist representative of the urban working class. These differences reflected existing disagreements on issues of tactics: the "socialist" wing proposed a more uncompromising and hostile stance towards parliament, the moderates advocated legal forms of struggle for power. Here it is tempting to compare Hitler's approach to arguments with Stalin's tactics in the debate on the industrialization of the country. Both rejected radical ways of resolving issues, as they were associated with party circles that posed a threat to their personal political positions. Hitler largely shared and continued to promote in the 1930s the views of Strasser, who argued that the old economic order was bankrupt and unjust, and therefore should be replaced by an economic system based on "achievements" for the nation 104 . But Hitler was aware that uncompromising revolutionism would alienate the voters and, in the end, could also sweep him away.

The strength of the opposition, as well as its cohesion that Hitler faced, may have been greatly exaggerated. There was no real "united opposition" because the party leaders concluded that without Hitler the party would be indistinguishable from other small radical nationalist factions competing with each other for survival. The variety of political perspectives and ideologies was a consequence of the heterogeneity of many nationalist groups and associations that united into a single party. Only unconditional loyalty to Hitler could overcome a possible split and unite them, just like no less dispersion political views and ideas in the CPSU (b) in the 1920s was overcome, in the end, only as a result of uniting around the Stalinist party line. Both parties were not monolithic organizations and consisted of a variety of ideological, political and social associations.

Much of his political energy in the period up to 1933 Hitler devoted to leading the party, ironing out differences, ridding the party of dissidents, uniting local party leaders through regular conciliatory visits, face-to-face meetings and pep talks. But the opposition to the constructed myth of a German messiah on whom the Party must rely was still alive. Arthur Dinter, a consistent opponent of the idea of ​​unifying the movement around Hitler and the leader of the party in Thuringia, at the conference of the majority of the party on organizational reform in August 1928, introduced a resolution suggesting the limitation of Hitler's power by appointing a party senate. In the subsequent vote, Dinter was the only one who supported her. In October, he was expelled from the party, and Hitler sent letters to all party leaders so that they, by signing them, confirmed their rejection of the idea of ​​\u200b\u200blimiting his powers. All letters were returned signed 105 .

Another serious danger came from the revolutionary wing of the movement, which grew stronger after the 1928 elections to the Reichstag showed how little success the legitimate path to power promises. The National Socialists won only twelve seats in the Reichstag, and they were supported by fewer voters than those who voted for the Nationalist bloc in 1924. Party politics shifted from fighting for the votes of non-Marxist workers to seeking support among the small landowners and the small town petty bourgeoisie. The urban strategy was not abandoned, but socialism became less accentuated. However, other problems arose in connection with the paramilitary wing of the movement, since the CA included mainly urban elements, and there were also a significant number of manual laborers in their ranks. This wing was re-established after the party's revival in late 1926 under the leadership of former Freikorps Franz von Pfeiffer, who became head of the SA, an organization independent of the party's central apparatus that shared the concern of many SA leaders at the excessive personal power imposed by Hitler on their movement. In 1930, the cup of patience overflowed and discontent resulted in an open gap. In July 1930, Gregor Strasser's brother Otto, with a small group of uncompromising, anti-capitalist revolutionaries, broke away from the party, declaring openly that "the socialists are leaving the NSDAP" 107 . In August, von Pfeiffer resigned in protest at the party's unwillingness to support the SA's aspirations to become a proto-army force alternative to regular troops. Hitler overcame the ensuing crisis by declaring that he himself would lead the SA and offered a number of minor concessions. But the following spring, a full-scale revolt broke out among the East German members of the SA, led by Walter Stennes, who on April 1, with a swift blow, overthrew the leadership in Berlin and announced that the SA was taken under his control, but was overthrown after Hitler's impassioned appeal for the absolute need to remain loyal to him. . The purge that followed led to the suspension of those members of the SA who were to be politically tested. Hitler took control of all appointments at SA headquarters and required all SA leaders to swear allegiance to him personally. Eventually the SA was led by another former Freikorps leader, Ernst Röhm, who had been a senior officer in 1919 and had been tried with Hitler in 1924 108 .

Before he was offered the post of chancellor in January 1933, Hitler faced another difficulty. Although Gregor Strasser never denied his personal loyalty to Hitler, he remained his comrade rather than assistant. In 1928 he was appointed organizational leader of the party. While in this post, he had to deal with organizational issues arising from the sharp increase in the number of new party members after the crisis of 1929. Strasser was a popular and widely respected politician and the most effective and prominent parliamentary figure in the party. Starting in 1930, he began to shift in his views from socialist positions towards the realization of the need for real political power. In his activities, he used connections with other political parties and their representatives, unlike Hitler, who did not recognize any compromises with others. political forces, which did not deprive him of the opportunity to get the post of chancellor. Strasser feared that Hitler's stubbornness would deprive the party of any possibility of attaining power, whether by one party or in coalition with other political forces. In the summer of 1932, defeat seemed as likely as success, and Strasser grew impatient. In October, he advocated a bloc with trade unions and other nationalist parties: "All who are with us along the way, join" 109 . He negotiated with the Catholic Center Party; negotiated with army commanders and eventually became an ally of Kurt von Schleicher, the Minister of Defense, who advocated the idea of ​​a broad National Socialist alliance, in which other political leaders besides Strasser would be involved. After the complete failure of the elections in November 1932, Strasser went on an open break with Hitler in the hope that he himself could bring important elements to the party or be able to convince Hitler to accept the idea of ​​​​building coalitions and collective leadership. On December 3, Schleicher offered Strasser the post of Vice-Chancellor in the coalition government; for the latter, after ten years in opposition, such an offer was very tempting. Hitler, who was in a personal violent confrontation with Strasser, while in the Kaiserhof Hotel in Berlin, ordered him to stop further negotiations, and instead of separating from the party and joining the government, Strasser unexpectedly resigned on December 8 and left almost all political posts in last moment showing an inability to deny the importance of Hitler in the national revolution for which he so aspired 110 .

As a result, Strasser, like Bukharin, began to be seen as a genuine historical alternative to the dictators who managed to push them to the sidelines. Had Strasser succeeded in reducing Hitler's powers or taking his place in the national coalition in early 1933, Hitler's personal dictatorship might have become impossible; if Bukharin had been able to take advantage of his position as "the favorite of the party", as Lenin said in his "testament", by succeeding in promoting his version of the revolution, perhaps Stalin would have been removed or forced to accept the conditions of collective leadership. There can be no doubt that the histories of both states, Germany and the Soviet Union, would have taken a completely different path if the two had gained the confidence of the parties. However, it is important to note here that the alternatives suggested above cannot be seen as the more acceptable face of communism or National Socialism, a faint shadow of fanatical reality. Strasser was an ardent anti-Semite, an adamant opponent of Marxism, a revisionist in matters of international politics and an opponent of parliamentarism. Bukharin began his career in the Soviet system as an ultra-revolutionary, and his commitment to moderate economic policies did not make him a great democrat; as a member of the Politburo, he supported all authoritarian decisions made in the 1920s. In this respect, both of them went not far from Hitler and Stalin.

In the end, neither Bukharin nor Strasser proved to be strong enough personalities to overcome the immeasurable weakness of the entire opposition opposing the future dictators. Both were straightforward and uncomplicated personalities, whose straightforwardness was a serious drawback in the secret and sophisticated political game that Stalin and Hitler played with them, who enjoyed the art of politics and were completely ruthless and unscrupulous personalities. Neither Bukharin nor Strasser had the ambition, nor the determination or will power to take over the leadership of the party, as was made abundantly clear by their clumsy response to confrontation in the late 1920s. Their doctrinal differences from their main rivals have been greatly exaggerated by historians seeking to highlight other options for emerging from the crises of the 1920s 112 . Among other things, not one of them was able to convince either the party masses or the wider population, since he could not successfully convey his promises to their consciousness. Both Hitler and Stalin appealed over the heads of other party leaders to the rank and file, who eventually began to see them as indispensable figures for the future of the party. Yet both Strasser and Bukharin received a terrible sentence for being in true opposition to the style of leadership that had been established in both parties by Hitler and Stalin. Strasser was arrested at his house on June 30, 1934 under the pretext that he was preparing a coup d'état, and a few hours later he was shot by an SS captain in the basement of the headquarters of the secret police. Bukharin continued to cling to a limited role in the party, enduring humiliation at the hands of Stalin for eight years, until in March 1938 he was charged with counter-revolutionary activities and terrorism. Sentenced to death, on the night of the execution on March 15, 1938, he wrote a short letter to Stalin in which he asked: “Koba, why do you need my death?” 113

The desire to take over the party does not provide an exhaustive explanation of why the dictatorship was imminent, although this was an important prerequisite. The best explanation for the impending dictatorships was two major socio-political crises, one in Germany, the other in the Soviet Union. Both had a historically clearly expressed revolutionary character. In the period since 1928, the population of the Soviet Union has experienced tremendous social upheaval: the beginning of collectivization, the launch of the five-year plans, and the incessant attacks on culture, ideas and attitudes considered "bourgeois", which initially in the 1920s seemed to the regime tolerant and usable. The so-called “second revolution” returned to a radical trajectory and revived the social conflicts that were characteristic of the first post-revolutionary years of the civil war, the goal of the transformation was to accelerate the construction of socialism. In Germany, the socio-political crisis, which reached exceptional severity, was provoked by a recession in the economy in 1929. It spawned a nationalist revolution that completely rejected the political system, culture and social values ​​of the republic and set as its goal the choice of a "truly German" model of national unification. The revolution swept aside all "bourgeois" values ​​that were seen as Western, cosmopolitan and sowing discord. The revival of the nation was interpreted as a return to the trajectory of self-affirmation interrupted by the war and subsequent defeat.

Hitler and Stalin arose in the crucible of the internal party struggle of the 1920s as the most prominent representatives of the two revolutions and those sections of the population of both countries that supported and participated in them. Neither of these upheavals was caused by a wave of the hand of either Stalin or Hitler, although both played an important role in aggravating the situation and took full advantage of the political opportunities that presented themselves. Both revolutions were the product of certain social forces and circumstances, difficult to predict and not always manageable, and were accompanied by widespread violence and political conflicts. In the conditions of instability of both communities, agonized at the epicenter of the deepest crisis, there was a desire to find a charismatic political figure capable of overcoming chaos, while maintaining the achievements of the revolution. On their way to absolute power, both Stalin and Hitler relied on the support of the broad masses, they were supported by the widespread opinion even among those who were not eager to convert to another faith that it was the leader who could become the guarantor of political stability and revolutionary order. None of them had the opportunity to usurp power through a direct coup or other non-parliamentary means. The establishment of both dictatorships was the result of a historical confluence of circumstances, when the ambitions of the two leaders merged into a single stream with the aspirations of those they wanted to represent.

The "second revolution" in the Soviet Union was the result of an apparent paradox at the heart of the revolutionary transformation in 1921, after Lenin laid the foundation for the New Economic Policy. The decision to allow private property in agriculture and commerce caused an immediate response in a society where four-fifths most of"workers" was represented by artisans and small traders. The decision taken that same year to end the factional struggle and liquidate all alternative political currents led to the fact that a predominantly urban revolutionary party remained in the political arena, formally setting the goal of building a modern workers' state and creating a powerful industry, a party that was to lead a community that was difficult to succumb to implementation of modernized socialism. This contradiction came to the surface immediately after the majority of the party was faced with the indisputable fact that revolutions were not planned anywhere else in Europe in the 1920s. The conclusions that flowed from the realization of this reality became an irresistible bone of contention between Trotsky and Stalin. Trotsky represented the narrow circle party members who were of the opinion that the revolution would finally perish if it was not spread. Stalin, on the other hand, spoke on behalf of the rest of the party members, who believed that the building of socialism in only one country - the Soviet Union - could become an inspiring prelude to the revolutions that would break out around the world. The victory over Trotsky forced the party to face the logic of its own position. If the Soviet Union was to go through this path alone and show the rest of the world an exemplary model of a socialist society, it was necessary to make rapid and radical socio-economic changes. In his speech to the leaders of industry in February 1931, echoing his own explanations set out in the Central Committee in November 1929, Stalin called economic transformation fundamental factor in the survival of the revolution: “We are fifty or a hundred years behind the developed countries. We need to overcome this gap in ten years. We'll do it or we'll just go under." 114 . Stalin once again reminded the audience that the transformation of the Soviet Union would become a model for the proletariat of the whole world, who, looking at the achievements of a modernized country, would exclaim: “There is our vanguard, shock brigade, the power of the state of the working class, my fatherland!” 115

But in reality, the construction of an exemplary socialist state was accompanied brutal violence, was rather destructive in nature, and often managed chaotically, which led to negative social consequences. The critical moment came in 1927 and 1928. During the winter of 1927, the supply of grain to the cities dropped sharply. In November and December they dropped to half the level of 1926 116 . The grain crisis was partly caused by the inability of industry to produce enough commodities; peasants held grain to raise their stakes when bargaining with the state. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the state economic authorities at the same time adopted what became the first five-year plan, according to which the general level of industrial production was to rise sharply, primarily in heavy industry. The grain crisis that broke out led to the compromise of the industrialization plan; the government found that market forces, in the midst of the New Economic Policy, began to shift the balance of Soviet society towards a huge segment of the population employed in small-scale trade and private production. By the spring of 1928, a wave of protests against speculators and kulaks arose in the party in favor of accelerating the growth of industrial production. In January 1928, emergency measures were taken - article 107 of the Criminal Code was introduced, directed against speculators and setting the task of seizing more grain from the peasants and punishing those who held it. In 1928, the Five Year Plan was launched and the focus was on heavy industry, thousands of party agents dispersed to the villages in order to reduce the threat of hiding grain by peasants who resented the lack of necessary commodities. “We cannot allow,” Stalin declared at the beginning of 1928, “that industry should depend on the caprice of the kulak.”117

These measures marked the end of cooperation between the two social strata and finally buried the concept of the moderate economy of the 1920s. AT rural areas party activists, outraged that the peasants could demand a ransom from the revolution, imposed a real class war on those they branded as capitalists, often on very shaky grounds. All the poorest peasantry and rural workers were mobilized to carry out the social revolution in the countryside. The traditional meetings of the village population, the gatherings, were used as a tool to isolate the "wealthy" peasants and those who resisted state policy and refused to increase the quota of grain given to the state to a level that deprived them of their competitiveness. As a result, the traditional methods and rituals of humiliation of the kulaks began to be encouraged, consisting in the fact that they were led through the village streets with collars smeared with tar around their necks or subjected to public beatings 118 . The strategy was to use the peasants themselves to practical implementation what the party wanted, namely, the implementation of the "Ural-Siberian method", so named by Stalin himself after the name of the region where this method was first applied, led to the emergence of a truly revolutionary situation, which turned into an open class war in 1929 , and by the end of that year became the starting point of the official policy of "dispossession". In just one year, the party made the transition to a policy of collectivization of agriculture, the creation of large state agricultural associations that replaced small private farms, and the complete destruction of the independent market for agricultural products. Mass collectivization began in October, but a month later, Stalin solemnly announced what he called the "great turn" 119 . To top it all off, on December 27, 1929, Stalin issued an uncompromising demand to "destroy the kulaks as a class." The spirit of merciless class struggle, which permeated Stalin's entire policy towards the peasantry, spread through all the villages and villages of the vast country.

The revolutionary class struggle, inspired by those party leaders who, like Stalin, feared that the New Economic Policy era would lead to the gradual restoration of capitalism, resumed with renewed vigor on other fronts. In March 1929, the Supreme Soviet adopted the most ambitious plan for the development of industry, marking the beginning of a program that physically changed the face of the Soviet Union and led to a mass exodus of people from rural areas and their movement to new industrial centers. The party took advantage of the social shift that had taken place to launch an aggressive policy of the proletarianization of Soviet society. A campaign was launched in all factories and factories to attract hundreds of thousands of new members to the party, and this mass of recruits completely eroded the old guard of pre-revolutionary Bolsheviks. The culture was under tight control, so that the possibility of the emergence of new, experimental forms creative expression was simply excluded, and everything new was characterized as formalist and bourgeois, while everything truly proletarian was encouraged and supported in every possible way. The Cultural Revolution was only for the most part the ongoing war against the remnants of the bourgeois class and bourgeois values, which was marked in March 1928 by a show trial of coal mine engineers in the city of Shakhty in southern Russia. Fifty-three engineers were accused of carefully planned sabotage and destructive counter-revolutionary activities. Most were found guilty, and five were executed. The process marked the end of the period when the so-called bourgeois specialists were invited to cooperate. In April 1928, Stalin declared that this process helped to reveal a new form of counter-revolutionary struggle of the bourgeoisie "against the dictatorship of the proletariat." The fear of renewed "attacks on Soviet power" by hidden capitalist elements caused massive violations of human rights, arrests, imprisonment and executions of thousands of representatives of the old intelligentsia who worked in industry, government, including a number of the most prominent economists and workers in the statistical department, who made possible adoption of an industrial development plan at the end of the 1920s 120 .

In the short term, the results of the resumption of the revolutionary class struggle turned out to be the most deplorable. The old specialists were everywhere replaced by hastily trained proletarian workers. The industry expanded, but this happened in an atmosphere of constant incompleteness of projects, non-fulfillment of quotas and low quality of products, which in turn provoked endless persecutions and trials for sabotage and violations of the laws. The most devastating consequences of this policy were in the countryside, where millions of peasants continued to resist the sudden violent change in their world order, so that part of the rural population of the Soviet Union found itself in a state of undeclared civil war with the state. Peasants broke working equipment, destroyed and burned houses and outbuildings. They were more ready to destroy their livestock than to give it into the hands of the state: between 1928 and 1933, the number of cattle in the countryside decreased by 44 percent, the number of sheep by 65 percent, the number of horses vital for agriculture in century, when tractors were not yet common, by more than half. Grain production dropped sharply, while the centralized purchase of grain increased, thus leaving a huge part of the rural population without an adequate supply of food 121 . The resistance of the peasantry provoked a new spiral of violence, when members of the Communist Party, managers and policemen, leaving the cities, dispersed throughout the country to stop acts of sabotage by the peasants. The number of violent clashes and terrorist attacks rose from just over 1,000 in 1928 to 13,794 by 1930. That year, there were 1,198 murders and 5,720 attempted murders and serious offenses, most of which were directed against party activists and peasants who voluntarily joined the collective farms. The number of riots and demonstrations also increased, reaching over 13,000 in 1930, and they included, according to official statistics, a total of more than 2.4 million peasants. In this situation, the authorities were powerless, and in March 1930, Stalin announced a temporary respite, accusing the communist activists of "dizzy with success." And, as a consequence of this respite, by October of that year the number of collective farms in Russia had dropped from 59% to 22% 123 . Then the regime changed its policy tactics, and the collectivization of the following year was carried out with the use of force: more than 2,000,000 peasants were deported to labor camps in the north of the country, and 2,000,000 were displaced within their regions 124 .

Eventually, as a result of the crisis, a mass famine began in 1932. It has been established that during the winter of 1932/33, in a vast expanse of territory from Kazakhstan, through the North Caucasus to Ukraine, as a result of excessive seizures of grain, loss of labor and horses, demoralization of peasants and their resistance, 4,000 people died from malnutrition and diseases caused by hunger. 000 people. In that year, the crisis that arose as a result of the “second revolution” reached its maximum. Industrial production declined, inflation rose. In April, a strike broke out among industrial workers in Moscow in response to food cuts. In the Ukraine, where the Party insisted on a maximum quota of expropriations as a punishment for the resistance of the peasants, the situation was so desperate that Stalin was forced to remark in his urgent letter written in August 1932: "We may lose the Ukraine", although this, as it has become common, could mean an instruction to intensify repressive measures against saboteurs and criminals 125 . In March 1932, a group of communists united around Martemyan Ryutin, a candidate for the Central Committee of the party, circulated a 200-page document entitled "Stalin and the Crisis of the Proletarian Dictatorship", which gave a detailed analysis of the failure of the "second revolution". In September, the so-called Ryutin platform circulated among the members of the Central Committee the “Letter of Eighteen”, which called on all members of the party to lead the country out of the crisis and impasse by “eliminating the dictatorship of Stalin and his clique” 126 . As a result, they were all expelled from the party, however, when Stalin demanded that Ryutin be shot, the Politburo did not support him. Stalin was forced to back down and agreed with Ryutin's imprisonment.

The regime was able to maintain control over the “second revolution” throughout the crisis period partly due to the fact that it enjoyed the support of the broad masses of the population, who perceived everything that was happening as a real attempt to finally return the revolution to its true socialist ideals. Therefore, mass resistance to the authorities in rural areas was side by side with the great enthusiasm of the poorest and landless part of the rural workers, who readily cooperated with the authorities, helping them to overthrow those who were branded with fists. The basis of the revolutionary “shock labor” brigades in factories and detachments that traveled around the countryside with the good revolutionary news was new party cadres of more proletarian origin, who were eager to realize the benefits promised to the working class, and did not receive special benefits from the introduction of the New Economic Policy. Molotov, who became Prime Minister in 1930, hailed the "liberation of the revolutionary forces of the working class and the middle peasantry" 127 . But the main beneficiary of this movement was, after all, Stalin himself, who prudently staked on a new wave of class struggle. He succeeded in the fact that in the decisive period of the revolutionary reorganization of society, he began to be perceived as an indispensable figure in the party and the state. “It so happened,” Bukharin complained in 1936, “that he became a kind of symbol of the party and its grassroots members, the workers, people believe in him…” 128 . Even those who did not like what was behind Stalin at all were inspired by the revolutionary spirit emanating from him and gave him every support. “I can’t stand idleness,” wrote Ivan Smirnov, a former supporter of Trotsky, “I must build!” 129 . Stalin achieved tremendous success in consolidating his position at the pinnacle of power, becoming a symbol of permanence in an ever-changing world. Even in 1932, at the height of the crisis, this sense of his indispensability proved stronger than Ryutin's assertions that this was not the case at all. “Loyalty to Stalin,” Alexander Barmin wrote that year, “was based mainly on the conviction that there was no one who could take his place ... to stop now or retreat would mean losing everything” 130 . The first revolution was associated with Lenin; the second, which represented a broad movement forward to complete the process begun by the first revolution, became eventually identified as the Stalinist revolution, whose claim to supreme power increased as the crisis deepened.

Since in Germany everything eventually ended with the dictatorship of Hitler, the "national revolution" became associated by everyone with Hitler and National Socialism. For this reason, attempts to identify all the factors of the party's success in the elections and to determine the social affiliation of those to whom he appealed are seen as the key to understanding how he rose to power. In fact, Hitler was the representative of a much broader nationalist movement that had emerged long before the National Socialist Party had gained sufficient weight to participate and claim victory in elections, and continued to cooperate with National Socialism when this party became mass. A significant number of Germans, who were not committed members of the party and did not vote for it, welcomed the end Weimar Republic; the early phase of Hitler's reign was a period of nationalist coalition. Hitler came to power only because a group of conservative nationalists, united around the aging president, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, who was chosen as the symbol of the nation in 1925, considered, albeit reluctantly, Hitler a figure powerful enough to lead a broad national revolution to its successful conclusion. . The crisis years that followed 1929 were used by the National Socialists much more effectively than any other nationalist movement, but this success was based mainly on the ability of the party to speak the language of social revival and national self-affirmation, which caused a wide resonance among the masses. Ultimately, Hitler's political career depended entirely on how broadly his appeals received.

The course of the crisis can only be approximated by the broken curve of the graph, with its sharp ups and downs. During a four-year period of crisis, the world's second-largest industrial power experienced a halving in trade, two-fifths of the working population fell into unemployment, the rest had only short-term jobs or experienced a reduction wages, shopkeepers and small traders became impoverished, and the state itself was on the verge of bankruptcy 131 . Most Germans experienced economic and income growth for only two or three years, during which their incomes reached pre-war levels, but a sudden economic collapse interrupted development, causing a deep social upheaval, then a political crisis. The coalition in the Reichstag, consisting of liberals and social democrats, fell apart in 1930 due to disagreements on the issue of social payments, and from that time until 1933 the government governed the country on the basis of emergency presidential decrees and administrative decrees of the chancellor. The elections to the Reichstag in 1930 and the summer of 1932 were marked by a serious outflow of voters from moderate parties and an increase in the popularity of parties committed, on the one hand, to an anti-parliamentary and, on the other hand, to an excessively parliamentary form of government: the total share of votes cast by the National Socialist and The German Communist Party for the period between the two elections to the Reichstag, rose from 31 to 52%. The resurgence of communism reminded the population of the post-war revolution in Germany; The economic crisis has given rise to widespread fears about the prospect that the end of capitalism could mean social disintegration and civil war. “It was painfully familiar,” wrote one of the witnesses of that time, “we smelled the smell of 1919 or 1920” 132 . Politics was seen by all as a fundamental problem for the future of Germany, and the political violence that became the sign of the times after 1929 was a symptom of a deep national crisis. In 1932 alone, 155 people were killed in political clashes, including 55 National Socialists and 54 Communists. Thousands of others were injured or threatened with violence. Gregor Strasser was suspended from parliament for insulting a fellow MP. The police fought violators in every possible way, trying to contain the violence. Weapons were constantly used to resolve disputes. At times, Hitler himself carried a loaded pistol. Political sentiment degenerated into a feeling of deep resentment and unbridled hatred.

The nationalist forces in Germany increasingly spoke of the need for a revolution. Hitler himself often referred to this word when he spoke about the destruction of the existing order of things and about the party's plans for the construction new Germany 134 . Nationalist politicians were divided as early as the 1920s, not only by personalities, but also by differences in understanding of the nation. Up until 1929, the National Socialists were a small party of the nationalist political establishment, not trusted by other nationalists. “Most people looked at us as immature daredevils, wasting time and money for the sake of an impossible dream,” recalled one of the members of the SA in his essay, written in 1934 for the researcher Theodor Abel 135 . Hitler, as another eyewitness recalled, "was still perceived by many as a kind of figure with oddities and a sinister past" 136 . The nationalist electorate included the German Nationalist People's Party, led by Alfred Hugenberg, the German People's Party, and a number of other, smaller fringe parties that shared many of the views of the German nationalists. There were also paramilitary groups and veterans' organizations with millions of citizens in their ranks, the oldest of which was the Stahlhelm or Steel Helmet organization, led by Franz Seldte. There were also professional associations and unions, such as big union trade workers who held broadly nationalist views. There was also an influential radical nationalist intelligentsia whose leaders cherished hopes for national revival and social reform. One of the few among them were the National Socialists. These numerous groups were united by hostility towards republican politicians, authoritarian views, militaristic thinking, a desire to revise the terms of the Versailles peace treaty, and, in some cases, although by no means in all, a desire to establish a new social order. It was a mixture of diverse nationalist forces seeking a post-1930 political solution that could rid the country of the prospect of a return to parliamentary government, protect the nation from communism, revive the German economy and restore its military strength. During 1930 and 1931, the National Socialists were busy looking for ways to unite all these disparate forces and the many smaller movements that merged with them. In addition, they were busy calling on their members to vote for National Socialist candidates. By 1932, effective and well-organized propaganda work yielded results and National Socialism became the most numerous detachment of the nationalist movement. The central slogan of the party was based on the presentation of Hitler as a person needed by Germany. In November 1932, their election posters contained the call: "Hitler is our last hope." The fall in the number of votes cast for the National Socialists in these elections was not necessarily due to a decrease in enthusiasm for the idea of ​​​​national revival, but was due only to Hitler's inability to convey this idea to the masses. He was saved by a growing fear of street violence among conservative nationalists and by the movement's populist slogans that the unresolved problems of the political crisis of 1932 could open the way for communism and civil war. On January 30, 1933, Hitler was asked to form a "cabinet of national unity", in which the National Socialists were to receive only three seats. His appointment did not yet open the way to dictatorship, but it was already a signal that the national revolutionary movement was becoming a real force. For the next year and a half, the so-called "coordination" process took place throughout Germany; thousands of people were removed from their posts because they did not participate in the national revolutionary struggle, thousands more ended up in prisons and camps, victims of unrestricted cruelty and intimidation. In keeping with the spirit of the civil war, the dividing line was drawn not between the National Socialists and other political forces, but between the Nationalists and others, and the frightening violence characteristic of the first months of the regime was directed primarily against the supposed enemies of the nation, mainly the Socialists, the Jews. and Christians who actively opposed the National Socialist movement. The driving force of the national revolution was a coalition of nationalist forces, which, however, in the summer of 1933 began to crystallize into a clearly national socialist version of the revolution, eliminating all other political parties. Even in 1934, the coalition with the conservative nationalists still continued to exist. The banker Hjalmar Schacht of the Nationalist Party remained in the very important post of Minister of Economics, Seldte became Minister of Labor, and the post of Minister of Finance continued to be held by a career bureaucrat. None of them was a member of the National Socialist Party.

Hitler was the clear beneficiary of the nationalist revolution. The development of a mass movement that supported the party essentially legitimized its claim to personify the revolution. The support of one-third of the popular vote in the 1932 elections gave Hitler a stronger claim to political leadership than other leaders of the movement. Strasser's lack of firmness when he challenged Hitler in 1932 was the result of his personal prejudice that a possible split in the party might threaten the future of Germany. Like Stalin, Hitler played on fears of class struggle seeking to expand their claims. The more Hitler ranted about the threat of communism, following the tactics he brought to a climax in the spring of 1933, when he got his hands on legal opportunities to suppress the communist movement, the more he appeared in the eyes of the people as the savior of Germany. The crisis did him a great service in this. In 1929, Strasser was fully aware of the prevailing reality when he said: "We want a catastrophe ... because only a catastrophe ... can clear the way for us to solve the problems that we, the National Socialists, set" 137 . Even figures who did not trust Hitler, such as Franz von Papen, who served as an intermediary and persuaded the president to appoint Hitler as Chancellor, believed that Hitler held the keys to rallying disparate nationalist groups in 1933. In the elections in March 1933, the nationalists received more than the required majority - 52% of the vote. Many nationalists remained distrustful of the social radicalism and racial hatred of Hitler's followers, but few of them wanted Germany to return to the economic chaos and political civil war that it experienced in the early 1930s. In this sense, the ever-increasing role of Hitler in political life, just as it happened with Stalin, was based on an assessment of the situation, which had both positive and negative sides. Among those who approved the dictatorship, there were those who went for it with enthusiasm, others - reluctantly, but with deliberate calculation, out of fear that an alternative choice could throw back the system and all the gains of the “second revolution”, and with them hopes. for the salvation of the nation will be lost. The crisis that lasted for a long time was inseparable from this process; in both cases, the ambition or sense of destiny that drove Hitler and Stalin allowed them, at a critical moment, to present themselves as the representative of all those who yearn for change, provided that stability is maintained. Without these crises, it is unlikely that both politicians would have been able to transform into larger political figures of dictators.

At what point did they feel like dictators? History does not yet provide a clear answer to this question. It is generally accepted that Stalin's dictatorship begins from that moment in December 1929, when his birthday was pompously celebrated on the pages of Pravda. This event definitely indicated that from that moment on he became the full owner of the party machine. In the eyes of the public, Stalin was still one of the party figures, perhaps the first among equals, but by no means the absolute tyrant of the late 1930s. When in 1929 one of the watchmen in the building of Moscow University was asked who he had in mind when he spoke of the "new tsar", he named the aged Soviet president Mikhail Kalinin 139 . The idea of ​​Stalin as a figure aimed at building a new socialist society began to take shape during the "second revolution", but no one, except for his detractors, ever called him a "dictator". Hitler's dictatorship, by contrast, had a more solid foundation. His appointment as Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, is often taken as the starting point of Hitler's dictatorship, although he was still only chancellor in a cabinet composed mostly of Nationalists, not of National Socialists, headed by a president who retained extraordinary the power to cancel his appointment to the post of chancellor or to dissolve parliament for serious reasons. Under the March Act of 1933, the Hitler government was granted emergency powers to legislate, but it was not entirely clear whether Hitler could legislate alone or only with the consent of the government as a collective body 140 . Hitler's unrestricted personal power, which he had long exercised within his own party, also arose and was strengthened during the national revolution. When deciding on the starting point of both dictatorships, the dispute of historians revolves around different dates, but in the cases of both dictators, the choice is based on the assumption that there was some starting point for the establishment of autocracy.

There are many reasons to believe that 1934 was the turning point. Ten years after the crisis, during which they political careers could break off, Stalin and Hitler already dominated the congresses of their parties. Everyone took advantage of the respective congress as an opportunity to take stock of the recent revolutionary past. At the 17th Party Congress, the “Congress of the Victors,” which met in January 1934 in Moscow, Stalin announced that anti-Leninism had been defeated: “There is nothing left that requires proof, and, apparently, there is no one left to fight. Everyone can see that the party line has triumphed. Continuing to play his sinister game, Stalin allowed his former enemies, including Zinoviev and Bukharin, to deliver speeches filled with obsequious praise (“our leader and commander,” Kamenev claimed) 142 . In September 1934, the National Socialists held a "unification congress, a congress of power." Hitler's triumphant speech to an excited crowd gathered on the Zeppelin field in Nuremberg was read by the party boss from Bavaria, Adolf Wagner. “The German way of life,” Wagner said, “should triumph over the next thousand years. For us, the turbulent 19th century has finally come to an end.

Meanwhile, it was not these two congresses in 1934 that signaled the advent of personal dictatorships, but two murders committed during this period. The first was the assassination of Ernst Röhm, head of the SA, who was shot on Hitler's orders in the basement of the Stadelheim prison in Munich on the afternoon of July 1, 1934. The second was the assassination of the popular secretary of the Leningrad organization of the Communist Party, Sergei Kirov, on December 1, 1934, when he was on his way to his office in Smolny. In both cases, both Stalin and Hitler used these assassinations to demonstrate that they were now above the law; this expression of unlimited personal power was the most important element in characterizing these two characters as dictators. The appointment of Röhm as head of the SA in 1930 was due to Hitler's desire to reward the old party fighter and put an end to the rebellious elements in the ranks of the SA. The result was just the opposite. Röhm formed a much larger and better armed organization and saw himself, like Strasser, not as an ordinary lieutenant, but rather as a colleague of Hitler. In 1933, the SA became involved in a series of violent clashes, official and unofficial, with opponents of their movement. The members of the SA hoped that the national revolution would reward them with an office or a job, but in reality many of them remained unemployed; there was talk that the SA intended to take over the functions of the police, and perhaps even the role of the German army, which, numbering only 100,000 people - the number allowed under the Treaty of Versailles, was only one-twentieth of the entire party militia. Hitler hesitated as to whether he should remove his conservative allies in the national coalition and in the summer of 1933 laid siege to their aspirations. But the next year, Remus' ambitions and his desire to expand the national revolution intensified. He openly cherished the idea of ​​creating an SA army and an SA air force to take over the defense of the Reich; members of the SA began to praise the cult of their own leader more often than the cult of Hitler. At the beginning of the summer of 1934, the mood of most of the members of the SA was characterized by indignant radicalism.

Hitler stood up difficult choice, as the SA grew in numbers along with the movement, which became a symbol of its long and bloody struggle for power. Threats from army commanders in June 1934 to take action if Hitler did nothing forced him, albeit reluctantly, to accept that Röhm should be eliminated. The secret police had a large dossier on the fiery homosexual leader of the SA and numerous data on Rem's connections with von Schleicher, a conspirator who tried to lure Strasser into the government in December 1932. Supported by other party leaders, Hitler planned a coup for the end of June 1934 under the pretext that Röhm intended to overthrow the government and hand over Germany to foreign powers (an accusation worthy of the Stalinist trials during the purge years). On June 30, against the backdrop of extremely dramatic events in Berlin, Munich and other German cities, the massacre of the leaders of the SA began: they were dragged into prisons and shot there by people from the security detachments (SS) - Hitler's guards dressed in black. On the same day, Schleicher, Strasser, and a handful of other prominent critics and opponents of Hitler were shot on charges of being part of the conspiracy. A total of eighty-five murders were recorded, but the figure was almost certainly higher, as the party leaders settled all the old scores 145 .

Kirov's assassination may have been ordered by Stalin, but the evidence to date suggests that he was the victim of a lone assassin. The significance of Kirov's death, like the death of Rem, is that he represented the last possible barrier on the way to Stalin's unlimited autocracy. The son of a minor official, Sergei Kostrikov, who chose the surname Kirov as his Bolshevik pseudonym, was not much younger than Stalin and had a long and reverent revolutionary biography that led him in February 1926 to the post of head of the Leningrad Party Committee as a Stalinist emissary, designed to eradicate the left opposition. He was an inspired leader who lived a very busy life (he suffered from alcoholism), energetic, with a pleasant appearance, a broad, youthful face, and an outstanding orator who, according to those who happened to hear him in the first days of his work in Leningrad, was , "passionate, compelling and inspiring" 150 . In the 1930s, he was considered a loyal supporter of Stalin and, like Röhm, at times extravagantly demonstrated this loyalty in public. His personal views were far more critical. It is said that on the eve of the "congress of the victors" a group of old Bolsheviks tried to persuade him to make an attempt to take Stalin's place, but he turned down the offer. At the congress itself, however, he did not take a seat on the stage, which allowed his position in the party, but sat next to the Leningrad delegation. The speech he delivered at the congress, diluted with traditional hyperbole against Stalin, was calm, unemotional and impersonal, where Stalin was firm and impassive. Kirov's speech was greeted standing, rewarding her with a storm of applause. When the elections to the Central Committee were held, Stalin received 1056 of the votes counted, and Kirov 1055. But later evidence suggests that, apparently, as many as 289 ballots, on which Stalin's name was crossed out, were simply destroyed. If not for this circumstance, Kirov would have become a clear winner, and Stalin's power was greatly shaken, although he would hardly have been removed.

Stalin never nominated himself in the election of the General Secretary, and since that time, not a single party or government document there is no reference or mention of this position of his 151 .

Throughout 1934, Stalin became increasingly suspicious of Kirov. The applause with which he was greeted at the congress was normally due only to Stalin himself. A few weeks later, Stalin invited Kirov to Moscow to work in the Secretariat of the Central Committee, which allowed him to be more closely supervised. Kirov, having shown courage, refused, and in this he was supported by other members of the Politburo. Apparently, Kirov did not have much fear of Stalin. In 1932, he came to Ryutin's defense when Stalin demanded his execution. At times he expressed disagreement with the decisions of the Politburo. It also happened that Kirov made incautious remarks about Stalin. Throughout the year, Kirov was overloaded with tasks from Moscow. Stalin insisted on regular meetings with him, and in August, contrary to his intentions, Kirov was forced to accompany Stalin on his long vacation, which he spent at his dacha in Sochi. Kirov's health was deteriorating. When he returned from a trip to Kazakhstan, where he checked the progress of the harvest in October 1934, he discovered that his office, which had previously been on the third floor of the Smolny Institute, was urgently moved without his consent from the main corridor around the corner, to the end of a long passage, next to a small side staircase 153 . It was here that on December 1, at 4:30 p.m., Kirov was shot in the neck at close range by Leonid Nikolaev, an unemployed party member with an unfavorable background, whose family suffered from hunger and who unsuccessfully tried to convince Kirov to take him back to work. He was a pitiful murderer in a desperate situation, whose diary entries showed that he constantly toyed with the idea of ​​attempted murder in the spirit of Dostoevsky. We may never know the truth, but the fact remains that there is still no evidence of a direct link between Stalin and Kirov's assassination. Stalin took the train to Leningrad that same evening and the next day took the unusual step of interrogating Nikolayev personally under the pretext of wanting to force him to name his accomplices. Three weeks later Nikolaev was shot 154 .

Stalin took advantage of Kirov's assassination to issue a remarkable decree. On the same day, without the usual discussion in the Politburo and without the signature of President Kalinin, as required by the constitution, Stalin prepared and signed a law allowing the secret police to arrest suspected terrorists, secretly torture them and conduct investigations in absentia, without the participation of the defense and without the right to appeal and carry out sentences without delay 155 . The so-called "Kirov Law", like the law adopted under pressure from Hitler two days after the assassination of Röhm, was used by Stalin to securely consolidate his position as a man above the law, and also as a tool for the destruction of thousands of party members branded "enemies of the people", which took place over the next three years. More than 1,100 delegates who applauded Kirov with such imprudent enthusiasm at the "congress of victors" were shot or imprisoned four years later. Already languishing in prison by that time, Ryutin was shot in 1938. One of Stalin's close associates subsequently recalled his reaction at a meeting of the Politburo to the news that reached Moscow about the purge of Rem: “Hitler, what a fine fellow! This is how one should act against one's political opponents.

The path to dictatorship traversed by both characters was unpredictable and not predetermined. Both were driven by a special desire to take what they considered their place in history, but this ruthless will was intertwined with an obsession with the tactical details of political struggle, inhuman cruelty to anyone who compromised or stood in the way of their political ambitions, and an unprincipled desire for public recognition. It was truly a monstrous conglomeration of base motives. It is easy to complain about the weakness of the oppositions that opposed them, but it is impossible not to recognize the whole difficulty and impossibility of the task of finding in that situation a way to block their way up, to outmaneuver the people who were moving forward with the feeling that they were carrying themselves on their shoulders. human history, go, sweeping away everything in their path, without hesitation, destroying people and changing circumstances.

And yet, despite the coincidence of circumstances and frank gifts of fate that played an important role in their personal destinies, Stalin and Hitler were not accidental dictators.