HOT HEART, COLD HEAD AND "CLEAN" HANDS
Mikhail Sokolov: We continue our series of programs dedicated to the 75th anniversary Great terror in USSR. Today in our Moscow studio our guest from Novosibirsk Aleksey Teplyakov, candidate historical sciences, author of the monograph "Terror Machine: OGPU-NKVD of Siberia in 1929-1941" ...
Alexey Georgievich, I would like to say that formally your story begins in 1929, the year of the great turning point, but, nevertheless, of course, you are well aware of the previous period.
Is it possible to say that over the previous decade Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, Stalin, and the Bolshevik Party in general created an ideal mechanism for the physical destruction of the opponents of the Bolshevik dictatorship?
Alexei Teplyakov: In an absolutely amazing way, it took the Bolsheviks months rather than years to form this merciless and very effective punitive apparatus for the Bolsheviks. They, having no previous experience, nevertheless, created a very effective Okhrana, which only developed further.
Mikhail Sokolov: And what helped them, in fact, where did the personnel, professionals come from? Or did Lenin's theory turn out to be very good in practice?
Alexei Teplyakov: Lenin's theory superimposed remarkably on those features that were in Russia. A very archaic population, disturbed by the war, betrayed great amount people, unbelievable just ready to kill. They knew great secret, incomprehensible normal person: which is easy to kill.
And if the leadership consisted mainly of professional revolutionaries, in the Cheka in the center and in the localities, then the rest of the apparatus was filled from pine forest. And it was, of course, the main problem find people who would be ready for anything, at the same time would be at least slightly literate and at least somehow disciplined.
And just with discipline they were big problems, and from the very beginning, the organs of the Cheka were colossally criminalized. All the punishments that were not able to cleanse the organs, and from the very beginning they were formed on the principle of mutual responsibility, which was based on a sense of impunity. They punished those who did not hide their crimes well, those who were found guilty of political sins. In general, the Chekist system was paramilitary, and the authorities appointed the guilty there.
Mikhail Sokolov: And where did the Bolsheviks find executioners for the OGPU Cheka?...
Alexey Teplyakov: ..After the First World War, the revolution, during the Civil War, a huge cadre of people was formed who went through the war. It was among them that ordinary employees were recruited, who, if they showed promise, were promoted. From the very beginning, the tradition of baptism in blood was formed in the Cheka. A novice, not always, but, as a rule, had to participate in executions.
...
Mikhail Sokolov: Was it a career moment in general? In your book, I see that not only full-time security officers, but drivers, employees of the federal service took part in the executions.
Was it a chance for them to advance, to make a career already in the GPU?
Aleksey Teplyakov: The fact is that the specialization of commandants in executions existed from the very beginning, but it was not designed for constant outbreaks of terror. And as soon as it was necessary to shoot too much, it was necessary to connect the entire operational staff, and when he was also in literally choking in blood, they connected both couriers and even drivers, in a word, everyone who served, who turned up.
The Chekists themselves admitted that only barmaids did not participate in our torture investigation, the cleaning lady could interrogate.
...
Mikhail Sokolov: So it's like a "fight against the kulaks" so-called?
Alexey Teplyakov: Yes, but it was much wider, all the so-called "former" were rowed there. For example, in Siberia there was one of the first cases of percentage destruction, when authorized representative OGPU Zakovsky gave direct indication shoot 10% of all priests. There were two thousand of them to Siberia. And so the task was completed.
...
Mikhail Sokolov: There is such a standard idea that torture was massively used by the Chekists only in 1937-38. As I understand it, do you have enough evidence that this torture system worked from 1917 until the end of the Stalin era?
Alexey Teplyakov: Of course, there are a lot of factors about the torture investigation since 1918. And of course, Dzerzhinsky knew about it. But as Felix Edmundovich himself said at the beginning of 1918 in front of his first collaborators, that everything is allowed for them to defend the revolution, and our principle is that the end justifies the means. And torture was extremely widespread, but the Chekists, somehow until 1937, of course, were not very effective, but they hid this widespread use.
As one of the prominent activists of the Chekist system explained: torture was applied especially to those who, by all indications, were already suicide bombers. And so they did not go to the surface, because a person was shot, and he usually did not have time to complain to anyone. And just in 1938, this Chekist was imprisoned for protesting against such a widespread use of torture, because “this will expose our methods. And only those who will be shot should be tortured.”
Mikhail Sokolov: There is some strange duality here. On the one hand, they used racks, night interrogations, cold cells, some kind of glaciers, God knows what, on the other hand, from time to time some Chekists were punished for the same.
Alexei Teplyakov: Yes, you see, in this system there was a constant rejection of those who could not be an effective investigator. If a person was good at giving high-profile cases, he could commit some outrageous acts on a fairly large scale with impunity and be constantly covered. And accordingly, an inefficient worker, including under the pretext that he beat someone, there were traces or there was a complaint to the very top, and it reached, he could be punished.
In general, the leaders demanded that there should be confessions, that all should be signed, and that there should be no open torture. And the Chekist authorities reported that "we are, of course, clearing our ranks, we are monitoring and generally working efficiently and correctly."
...
Mikhail Sokolov: Still, the question of "kulaks and pests", why was this part of the population the target? What was Stalin afraid of?
Alexei Teplyakov: You know, the Bolsheviks considered terror as a universal master key to all problems. It was from the very beginning, even Lenin told one of the American communists that the fierce class struggle and the corresponding terror against the overthrown classes is 50-70 years. That is, it, in fact, covered the entire Soviet period without knowing it.
And accordingly, in the 30s, this devastation associated with collectivization, super-industrialization, gave rise to a huge number of people who were thrown to the sidelines of life, replenished the criminal environment, and rampant crime was fantastic. It got to the point that workers in the suburbs took cattle home for the night, because otherwise they would steal it, and workers in night shift did not dare to return home and spent the night in the workshops. Killed, robbed terrible force. It is simply difficult for us to imagine rampant crime, it was quite comparable to the level of the Civil War.
One of the goals is the destruction of all the so-called socially harmful and thus the mitigation of the criminal situation. In those so-called kulaks who dared to escape from exile, they fled in hundreds of thousands, scattered throughout the country, the leadership saw cadres of future rebel organizations. Finally, it was necessary to calculate the so-called representatives of "harmful" nationalities, and Stalin directly told the secretary of the Krasnoyarsk regional committee of the CPSU (b) that "all these Germans, Poles, Latvians are treacherous nations to be destroyed, we must put them on their knees and shoot like mad dogs"...
And thus, entire sections of the population were annihilated, starting with the so-called "former", who 20 years after the revolution numbered in the millions, and the remnants of all these defeated classes, coupled with representatives of those nationalities of the state who were hostile to the USSR. And finally, the nomenklatura, which, from the point of view of Stalin, has worked its way out and should be replaced ...
But when terror began to unwind, having its inevitable logic to expand and expand, it was precisely at the expense of the criminal contingent that the Chekists saved money, and as a result, out of 720,000 executed in 1937-38, the criminal element was hardly more than 10%. Moreover, among the executed there was a lower percentage, because it was much more important to shoot the so-called kulaks.
...
Mikhail Sokolov: How did the Chekists themselves feel in 1937-38? Did their leaders understand that they had no chance of escaping, since repressions were removing layers upon layers of leadership?
Alexei Teplyakov: In 1937, there was a certain euphoria associated with the fact that a number of major Chekists, relatively speaking, "Yagoda's people" were repressed, which created a huge number of vacancies for active careerists. And they, receiving the highest orders and membership in the Supreme Council, felt, of course, comfortable for some time. But already in 1938 they began to actively plant them.
In the second half of 1938, of course, the sensations there were terrible, and these people active work and alcohol tried to save their nervous system, but many committed suicide, and there were even two cases of escapes, when the head of the Far Eastern Department of the NKVD, Lishkov, was able to escape through Manchuria to Japan, and the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Uspensky, was hiding all over the country for almost half a year. A whole brigade was looking for him and finally caught him in the Urals.
...
Mikhail Sokolov: You published another work on the mechanism for the execution of sentences by Chekists, simply about executions, of course, all this was a secret.
Can it be considered proven that the Chekists did not just kill people, but massively used torture before execution, raped women, looted, used strangulation, killed with crowbars, and even were the first to invent gas chambers, like the Nazis, using exhaust gases to kill?
Alexei Teplyakov: That's exactly what it was. The Bolsheviks turned the matter death penalty into a very brutal and carefully orchestrated murder mystery. The number of sadistic methods of deprivation of life, especially during the period of aggravation of terror, is simply awesome.
By different regions examples of one another are scarier when, say, in Vologda region it is not clear why the Chekists hack those sentenced to death with axes, then they drink, and the head of the NKVD district department says: “What good fellows we are, having not previously had such experience, hacked human body like a turnip."
AT Novosibirsk region in one of the prisons more than 600 people were strangled and about 1,500 people were shot. Why were they choking? At the trial, they vaguely said that there was such an order from above. One of the most disgusting Chekist rituals was the almost always obligatory beating of prisoners before execution.
Mikhail Sokolov: And the concept of "criminal order" did not exist in the system?
Alexey Teplyakov: Absolutely...
Mikhail Sokolov: In the Khrushchev era, the topic of denunciations was still circulating, they say, because of initiative slanderers, there was such a scale of terror. Do you see it? I thought it was greatly exaggerated.
Alexey Teplyakov: Denunciation played very great importance, it’s just hard to see him in the investigative file, he usually remained in the volume of operational materials that they don’t show to anyone ...
As a result of the fact that we do nothing strictly within the framework of the instructions, very often in investigative cases you can see the reasons why it arose, including denunciations. When there were outbreaks of terror, of course, the Chekists worked, first of all, according to their so-called "accounts".
Mikhail Sokolov: And what is it?
These are lists of those people who are politically suspicious, disloyal, behind whom something has been noticed either in terms of statements, or at least in terms of origin, their connections with some exposed enemies of the people. People who have already been convicted for political reasons, people who have connections with foreigners. There were 18 registration categories in which those who passed were in to some extent are doomed.
Mikhail Sokolov: As I understand it, the people who worked in the Chinese Eastern railway(CER), and then returned to Soviet Union, the men were almost all destroyed.
Alexei Teplyakov: Yes, it was one of the most brutal massacres, about 30,000 people were shot, and these were mostly specialists. From the point of view of the Chekists, on the one hand, they were mostly “former”, and on the other hand, they were ready-made Japanese spies.
...
Mikhail Sokolov: On the number of victims of terror. I saw that the Stalinists use certain figures from the report of the prosecutor Rudenko, that since the 1920s, 1,200,000 were allegedly repressed, 600,000 were shot.
There are other estimates, commissions of the Central Committee of the CPSU under the leadership of Shatunovskaya: almost 12 million were repressed and one and a half million were shot.
How do you assess what was done by the Bolsheviks, Stalin and so on with the population of the country?
Aleksey Teplyakov: You see, one thing shot only for political reasons is about a million people over the years Soviet power, to this we must add more than 150 thousand shot in the war - this is only in court, and 50 thousand, at least, on the battlefield.
But it must be borne in mind that during the Civil War and after civil war in the first years of Soviet power there was a colossal number of extrajudicial reprisals, which were carried out not only and not even so much by the Chekists, but by the army, food detachments, armed detachments of communists.
These are the victims of the suppression of "rebellions", when only one West Siberian uprising led to the death of about 40 thousand peasants. And so, of course, millions are added.
And the highest death rate in Soviet time- these are, of course, the victims of hunger strikes - these are approximately 15 million people who from 1918 to the end of 1940 died a terrible death from starvation. This cannot be dropped from the scales of history.
Mikhail Sokolov: Perhaps the last one. In my opinion, the elements of Chekism are paranoia, spy mania, secrecy, and so on, they have been preserved in the system of modern state security. What is your opinion?
Alexey Teplyakov: Unfortunately, they survived. And we see that modern system state security and police - these are the same closed from public opinion structures in which the principle of protecting one's own is in the first place, mutual responsibility and, as far as one can judge, very high level intradepartmental crime, which is carefully hidden.
Mikhail Sokolov.
On August 30, 1877, 137 years ago, the "iron soldier of the revolution" Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky was born. Today his name is diligently "forgotten" by the authorities, as an example of an honest, principled and absolutely disinterested politician(which cannot be said about any of the current "leaders"), an excellent business executive and a skilled leader.
Dzerzhinsky was born in a small estate noble family. There were nine children in the family, when in 1882 his father died of tuberculosis, Felix was five years old, the eldest of the Aldone sisters was 12, and the youngest was a little over a year old. In 1895, while studying at the gymnasium, at the age of 17, Dzerzhinsky joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic organization in Vilna, joining its left wing. In 1896 he left the gymnasium and became a professional revolutionary.
Conducted propaganda in circles of craft and factory apprentices. In 1897 he was arrested on a denunciation and imprisoned in Kovno prison, where he stayed for almost a year. In 1898 he was exiled for 3 years under police supervision in Vyatka province(city of Nolinsk). Here he entered as a printer at a shag factory and began to conduct propaganda among the workers. For this, he was exiled 500 miles north of Nolinsk to the village of Kai, from where he escaped by boat in August 1899 and made his way to Vilna.
A Pole by nationality, one of the members of the leadership of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL), he was always in solidarity with Lenin's policy and believed that only together with the RSDLP was it possible to defeat tsarism and national liberation peoples of the Russian Empire.
In February 1900, Dzerzhinsky was again arrested and imprisoned in Warsaw citadel, later in Sedlec prison. In January 1902 he was exiled for 5 years to Vilyuisk, for some time he was in the transit prison. Alexander Central. On the way to the place of settlement, he again fled by boat from Verkholensk and emigrated.
During Russo-Japanese War 1904 - 1905, organized worker riots and sabotage in Poland, during revolutionary events 1905 led a May Day demonstration, acted in a military revolutionary organization. In July 1905 he was arrested in Warsaw, in October he was released under an amnesty.
At the 5th Congress of the RSDLP (1907) he was elected in absentia a member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. In April 1908 he was again arrested in Warsaw. In 1909 he was sentenced to the deprivation of all rights of state and a lifelong settlement in Siberia (the village of Belskoye, then Sukhovo and Taseevo, Yenisei province), from where he fled in November 1909 to Capri to M. Gorky. In 1910 he returned and continued his activities in Poland.
After illegally returning to Warsaw in January 1912, he was arrested again in September and in April 1914 was sentenced to 3 years of hard labor; served them in Oryol Central. Additionally sentenced in 1916 to another 6 years of hard labor, he served it in Butyrskaya prison in Moscow, from where he was released on March 1, 1917 after February Revolution.
led active training October revolution, organized Red Guard detachments in Moscow. During the October 25 revolution, he captured the Main Post Office and the Telegraph. He was People's Commissar of Defense from June 17 to August 31.
After the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the party sent Dzerzhinsky to the most important areas of work. 6(19) December 1917, the Council of People's Commissars instructed Dzerzhinsky "to form a special commission to find out the possibilities of combating sabotage through the most energetic revolutionary measures," and the very next day at a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars, he made a report "On the organization and composition of the commission to combat sabotage" - with the approval of the Council of People's Commissars, the All-Russian Emergency Commission for the fight against with counter-revolution and sabotage. Dzerzhinsky was appointed its chairman and remained so until its transformation into the GPU in February 1922.
After the end of the Civil War, Dzerzhinsky - chairman of the commission to develop measures to strengthen the protection of state borders. In 1922 - 1923 - Chairman of the GPU (OGPU).
The economy destroyed by the Civil War had to be restored as soon as possible and Dzerzhinsky, by decision of the party, transferred to command positions in industry (People's Commissar of Communications, from April 14, 1921), at the same time - People's Commissar of Internal Affairs in 1919 - 1923, from February 1922 of the year - Chairman of the Main Political Directorate (GPU) under the NKVD of the RSFSR, from September 1923 chairman of the OGPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.
“On our roads, in the area of theft and mismanagement, there is one continuous horror ... Theft from cars, theft at the box office, theft in warehouses, theft during contracts, theft during procurement. You need to have strong nerves and will to overcome this sea of revelry…”.
Heading the communist economy, Dzerzhinsky was also the chairman of the commission "to improve the lives of children" (that is, to combat child homelessness). As chairman of the commission, Dzerzhinsky organized a system of children's institutions - reception centers (temporary stay), orphanages, "communes" and children's "towns". In these institutions, thousands of disadvantaged children received: medical care, education, food and, most importantly, the opportunity for further self-realization. On the basis of one of the communes, a whole enterprise was created where teenagers worked, creating one of the most modern cameras for those years called “FED”, that is, the first letters of his name, patronymic and surname. Eight former homeless children later became academicians of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and among them the world-famous geneticist Nikolai Petrovich Dubinin. It should be noted that at that time, according to official figures, about 5,000,000 children were homeless.
Dzerzhinsky understood how important a good physical shape is for employees of the internal affairs bodies. On his initiative, DSO "Dynamo" was created.
Since 1924 Dzerzhinsky is a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the party. From February 1924 chairman Supreme Economic Council of the USSR. He considered the main factor in the development of industry to be “orientation to a broad peasant market” and emphasized that “it is impossible to industrialize if we talk with fear about the well-being of the countryside”, advocated the development of small-scale private trade, to put the private merchant “in healthy conditions”, defending it from local administrators. He strove to reduce the cost of production and prices for industrial products by outpacing the growth of labor productivity in relation to wages. Supported experts of the Supreme Economic Council - former Mensheviks as "great workers".He considered it necessary to radically change the system of government in order to overcome the bureaucratic "paralysis of life", believing that otherwise the country would "find its dictator, the funeral of the revolution, no matter what red feathers were on his suit." And in this Dzerzhinsky's opinion coincided with Stalin's.
On July 20, 1926, at a plenum of the Central Committee dedicated to the state of the economy of the USSR, Dzerzhinsky delivered a two-hour report, during which he looked sick. In it, he sharply criticized G.L. Pyatakov, whom he called "the biggest disruptor of industry", and Lev Kamenev, whom he accused of not working, but engaging in politicking - " ... if you look at our entire apparatus, if you look at our entire system of government, if you look at our unheard-of bureaucracy, our unheard-of fuss with all sorts of approvals, then I am horrified by all this. More than once I came to the Chairman of the STO and the Council of People's Commissars and said: give me a resignation ... you can’t work like that!
Due to a nervous breakdown, he became ill. On the same day he died of a heart attack. .
Of course, during the Civil War there were self-seekers, abuses were committed. But the current myth-makers are not embarrassed that Pasternak did not consider it possible to paint a portrait of a revolutionary with the help of such colors. The writer remembered what was typical for the time of the Civil War, and what was perceived as an exception even by the townsfolk. The luxurious revolutionary is an exception. Starving - typically.
That Soviet bureaucratic privileges arose under Stalin is an old Soviet myth. It all started under Lenin. In supplying the leading workers, the Communists, albeit slightly so far, deviated from the principles of social equality. The usual laws of social hierarchy won out, giving rise to privileges in any centralized society. What was the pinnacle of "nomenklatura privileges" during "war communism"? For lunch in the dining room of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in 1920, you could get a choice: 100 grams of meat, or game, or fish, or one hundred and fifty grams of herring. It was possible to give up this luxury, and then eat about 75 grams of porridge, or pasta, or rice. And you could refuse the above and boo - eat as many as two hundred grams of potatoes. You could also add about 30 grams of garnish and 8 grams of butter. By giving up oil, one could claim salt. Bread was supposed to be one hundred grams. In the "super-elite" canteen of the Council of People's Commissars, these norms were 2-3 times higher. Also not a lot - the standard of living of an ordinary Soviet person in the 70s.
So the plots of television and film crafts like Doctor Zhivago are no more truthful than the agitation of Stalin's time. And when, on the basis of, in general, modest Soviet privileges, they try to justify the current social stratification (they say, look what happened under the communists), it is appropriate to talk not about a myth, but about brainwashing with hydrochloric acid. The Soviet state sought to provide the nomenklatura workers with the standard of living of the Western middle class, even during national disasters. This is reprehensible, it violates the norms of social justice officially proclaimed by the communists, but this is incomparable with the revelry of the current owners of life in the resorts of Courchevel and on estates near Moscow.
"Clean hands, warm heart, cold head"
This formula, uttered by the founder of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky, determined what a real Chekist should be like. In Soviet times, the official myth claimed that such Chekists were almost without exception. Accordingly, the Red Terror was portrayed as the forced destruction of the implacable enemies of the Soviet regime, revealed through a scrupulous collection of evidence. The picture, to put it mildly, did not correspond to reality. And if so, get new myth: the communists both came to power and began to methodically destroy the "gene pool of the nation."
The Red Terror has become the most grim phenomenon initial stage Soviet history and one of the indelible stains on the reputation of the communists. It turns out that the whole history of the communist regime is continuous terror, first Leninist, then Stalinist. In reality, outbursts of terror alternated with lulls, when the authorities managed to get by with the repressions that are characteristic of an ordinary authoritarian society.
The October Revolution took place under the slogan of the abolition of the death penalty. The resolution of the Second Congress of Soviets read: "The death penalty restored by Kerensky at the front is abolished." The death penalty in the rest of Russia was abolished by the Provisional Government. scary word The “revolutionary tribunal” was initially covered up by a rather mild attitude towards “enemies of the people”. Kadetka S.V. Panina, who hid the funds of the Ministry of Education from the Bolsheviks, on December 10, 1917, the Revolutionary Tribunal issued a public censure.
Bolshevism entered the taste of repressive politics gradually. Despite the formal absence of the death penalty, the killings of prisoners were sometimes carried out by the Cheka during the "cleansing" of cities from criminals.
More wide application executions, and even more so, carrying them out on political matters, was impossible both because of the prevailing democratic sentiments, and because of the presence of the Left Social Revolutionaries in the government - principled opponents of the death penalty. The People's Commissar of Justice from the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party, I. Sternberg, prevented not only executions, but even arrests for political reasons. Since the Left SRs were actively working in the Cheka, it was difficult to deploy government terror at that time. However, work in the punitive bodies influenced the psychology of the Socialist-Revolutionary Chekists, who became more and more tolerant of repression.
The situation began to change after the Left SRs left the government, and especially after the start of the large-scale Civil War in May-June 1918. Lenin explained to his comrades that in the conditions of the Civil War, the absence of the death penalty was unthinkable. After all, supporters opposing sides they are not afraid of imprisonment for any term, as they are confident in the victory of their movement and their release from prisons.
The first public victim of political execution was A.M. Happy. He commanded the Baltic Fleet at the beginning of 1918 and, in difficult ice conditions, led the fleet from Helsingfors to Kronstadt. Thus, he saved the fleet from being captured by the Germans. Shchastny's popularity grew, the Bolshevik leadership suspected him of nationalist, anti-Soviet and Bonapartist sentiments. People's Commissariat of War Trotsky feared that the commander of the fleet might oppose the Soviet regime, although there was some evidence of preparation coup d'état did not have. Shchastny was arrested and, after a trial at the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal, he was shot on June 21, 1918. Shchastny's death gave rise to a legend that the Bolsheviks were fulfilling the order of Germany, which took revenge on Shchastny, who took away Baltic Fleet under the noses of the Germans. But then the communists would not have had to kill Shchastny, but simply hand over the ships to the Germans - which, of course, Lenin did not do. It's just that the Bolsheviks sought to eliminate the candidates for Napoleon before they prepared the 18th Brumaire. Evidence of guilt was the last thing they were interested in.
The transition of the communists to mass terror is associated with the attempt on Lenin. This is inaccurate. With the outbreak of the Civil War, terror began to be used in the frontline zone with the active support of Lenin. “In Nizhny, a White Guard uprising is clearly being prepared. It is necessary to exert all efforts, to form a trio of dictators, to induce mass terror at once, to shoot and take out hundreds of prostitutes who are drinking soldiers, former officers etc." , - Lenin telegraphed on August 9. On the same day, he sent a telegram to Penza: “To carry out a merciless mass terror against the kulaks, priests and White Guards; doubtful lock in concentration camp outside the city" . On August 22, the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars orders "to shoot conspirators and vacillators, without asking anyone and without allowing idiotic red tape."
In the aggravated situation in June-August 1918, the opponents of the Bolsheviks also resorted to terrorist methods of struggle. On June 20, the People's Commissar for Propaganda V. Volodarsky was killed by an unknown person. The killer could not be found. Even then, Lenin advocated unleashing mass terror: “Comrade. Zinoviev! Only today we learned in the Central Committee that the workers in St. Petersburg want to respond to the murder of Volodarsky with mass terror, and that you restrained them. I strongly protest!.. We must encourage the energy and mass character of terror. On August 30, a young supporter of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, L. Kannegiser, killed the head of the Petrograd Cheka, M. Uritsky. On the same day, Lenin was wounded at a rally. A supporter of the Socialist-Revolutionaries F. Kaplan was declared guilty of the attempt. However, the specific culprits at that moment were not so important - whole classes had to answer for the three Bolsheviks.
In response to these assassination attempts, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets adopted a resolution stating: “The All-Russian Central Executive Committee issues a solemn warning to all serfs of the Russian and allied bourgeoisie, warning them that for every attempt on the leaders of the Soviet government and bearers of ideas socialist revolution all counter-revolutionaries will answer... white terror The workers and peasants will respond to the enemies of the worker-peasant power with massive red terror against the bourgeoisie and its agents. This meant the introduction of hostage, when completely different people should be held accountable for the actions of some people. On September 5, the decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on the Red Terror was adopted.
This formula, uttered by the founder of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky, determined what a real Chekist should be like. In Soviet times, the official myth claimed that such Chekists were almost without exception. Accordingly, the Red Terror was portrayed as a forced destruction of the implacable enemies of the Soviet regime, revealed through a scrupulous collection of evidence. The picture, to put it mildly, did not correspond to reality. And if so, you will get a new myth: the communists, as soon as they came to power, began to methodically destroy the “gene pool of the nation”.
The Red Terror became the most ominous phenomenon of the initial stage of Soviet history and one of the indelible stains on the reputation of the Communists. It turns out that the whole history of the communist regime is a continuous terror, first Leninist, then Stalinist. In reality, outbursts of terror alternated with lulls, when the authorities managed to get by with the repressions that are characteristic of an ordinary authoritarian society.
The October Revolution took place under the slogan of the abolition of the death penalty. The resolution of the Second Congress of Soviets read: "The death penalty restored by Kerensky at the front is abolished." The death penalty in the rest of Russia was abolished by the Provisional Government. The terrible word "Revolutionary Tribunal" at first covered up a rather mild attitude towards "enemies of the people." Kadetka S.V. Panina, who hid the funds of the Ministry of Education from the Bolsheviks, on December 10, 1917, the Revolutionary Tribunal issued a public censure.
Bolshevism entered the taste of repressive politics gradually. Despite the formal absence of the death penalty, the killings of prisoners were sometimes carried out by the Cheka during the “cleansing” of cities from criminals.
The wider use of executions, and even more so their conduct on political matters, was impossible both because of the prevailing democratic sentiments and because of the presence in the government of the Left SRs - principled opponents of the death penalty. The People's Commissar of Justice from the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party, I. Sternberg, prevented not only executions, but even arrests for political reasons. Since the Left SRs were actively working in the Cheka, it was difficult to deploy government terror at that time. However, work in the punitive bodies influenced the psychology of the Socialist-Revolutionary Chekists, who became more and more tolerant of repression.
The situation began to change after the Left SRs left the government, and especially after the outbreak of a large-scale civil war in May-June 1918. Lenin explained to his comrades that in a civil war, the absence of the death penalty was unthinkable. After all, supporters of the warring parties are not afraid of imprisonment for any term, as they are confident in the victory of their movement and the release of their prisons.
The first public victim of political execution was A.M. Happy. He commanded the Baltic Fleet at the beginning of 1918 and, in difficult ice conditions, led the fleet from Helsingfors to Kronstadt. Thus, he saved the fleet from being captured by the Germans. Shchastny's popularity grew, the Bolshevik leadership suspected him of nationalist, anti-Soviet and Bonapartist sentiments. People's Commissar Trotsky feared that the commander of the fleet might oppose the Soviet regime, although there was no definite evidence of the preparation of a coup d'état. Shchastny was arrested and, after a trial at the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal, he was shot on June 21, 1918. Shchastny's death gave rise to a legend that the Bolsheviks were fulfilling the order of Germany, which was taking revenge on Shchastny, who took the Baltic Fleet out from under the noses of the Germans. But then the communists would not have had to kill Shchastny, but simply give the ships to the Germans - which, of course, Lenin did not do. It’s just that the Bolsheviks sought to eliminate the candidates for Napoleon before they prepared the 18th Brumaire. Evidence of guilt was the last thing they were interested in.
