How many flags there were The Soviet command attached exceptional importance to the battles to capture Berlin, and therefore the Military Council of the 3rd Shock Army, even before the start of the offensive, established the Red Banners of the Military Council, which were distributed to all rifle divisions

Appendix How many were there? Although concentration camps in the USSR numbered in the thousands, and the people who passed through them in the millions, for decades the exact number of victims was known only to a handful of officials. Therefore, during the years of Soviet power, trying to estimate the number

The scale of Stalin's repressions - exact numbers

In a contest of liars

In a accusatory rage, the writers of anti-Stalinist horror stories seem to be competing to see who will lie more strongly, vying with each other naming the astronomical numbers of those who died at the hands of the “bloody tyrant”. Against their background, a dissident Roy Medvedev, limited to a “modest” figure of 40 million, looks like some kind of white crow, a model of moderation and conscientiousness:

“Thus, the total number of victims of Stalinism reaches, according to my calculations, figures of about 40 million people».

And in fact, it's inappropriate. Another dissident, son of a repressed revolutionary Trotskyist A. V. Antonov-Ovseenko, without a shadow of embarrassment, calls twice the figure:

“These calculations are very, very approximate, but I am sure of one thing: the Stalinist regime bled the people, destroying more 80 million his best sons."

Professional "rehabilitators" led by a former member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU A. N. Yakovlev are already talking about 100 million:

“According to the most conservative estimates of the specialists of the rehabilitation commission, our country lost about 100 million Human. This number includes not only the repressed themselves, but also members of their families doomed to death, and even children who could have been born, but never were born.

However, according to the version Yakovlev the notorious 100 million includes not only direct "victims of the regime", but also unborn children. But the writer Igor Bunich, without hesitation, claims that all these "100 million people were ruthlessly exterminated."

However, this is not the limit. The absolute record was set by Boris Nemtsov, who announced November 7, 2003 in the Freedom of Speech program on NTV pro 150 million people allegedly lost by the Russian state after 1917.

Who are these fantastically absurd figures, willingly replicated by Russian and foreign mass media, intended for? For those who have forgotten how to think for themselves, who are accustomed to uncritically take on faith any nonsense rushing from the TV screens.

It is easy to see the absurdity of the multimillion-dollar figures of "victims of repression". It is enough to open any demographic directory and, picking up a calculator, make simple calculations. For those who are too lazy to do this, I will give a small illustrative example.

According to the population census conducted in January 1959, the population of the USSR amounted to 208,827 thousand people. By the end of 1913, 159,153 thousand people lived within the same borders. It is easy to calculate that the average annual population growth of our country in the period from 1914 to 1959 was 0.60%.

Now let's see how the population of England, France and Germany, countries that also took an active part in both world wars, grew in those same years.

So, the population growth rate in the Stalinist USSR turned out to be almost one and a half times higher than in the Western "democracies", although for these states we excluded the extremely unfavorable demographic years of World War I. Could this have happened if the “bloody Stalinist regime” had destroyed 150 million or at least 40 million inhabitants of our country? Of course no!

archival documents say

To find out the true number of those executed at Stalin, it is absolutely not necessary to engage in fortune-telling on coffee grounds. It is enough to familiarize yourself with the declassified documents. The most famous of them is a memorandum addressed to N. S. Khrushcheva dated February 1, 1954:

Comrade Khrushchev N. S.

In connection with the signals received by the Central Committee of the CPSU from a number of persons about illegal convictions for counter-revolutionary crimes in previous years by the Collegium of the OGPU, troikas of the NKVD, and the Special Meeting. By the Military Collegium, courts and military tribunals, and in accordance with your instructions on the need to reconsider the cases of persons convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes and now held in camps and prisons, we report:

According to the data available in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, for the period from 1921 to the present, the Collegium of the OGPU, troikas of the NKVD, the Special Meeting, the Military Collegium, courts and military tribunals have been convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes 3 777 380 person, including:

to VMN - 642 980 Human,

Of the total number of those arrested, tentatively convicted: 2 900 000 people - the Collegium of the OGPU, the troikas of the NKVD and the Special Conference and 877 000 people - courts, military tribunals, the Special Collegium and the Military Collegium.

Prosecutor General R. Rudenko

Minister of Internal Affairs S. Kruglov

Minister of Justice K. Gorshenin

As is clear from the document, in total from 1921 to the beginning of 1954, on political charges, he was sentenced to death 642 980 person to imprisonment 2 369 220 , to the link - 765 180 .

However, there are more detailed data on the number of those sentenced to capital punishment for counter-revolutionary and other especially dangerous state crimes.

Thus, for the years 1921-1953 were sentenced to death 815 639 Human. In total, in 1918-1953, in the cases of state security agencies, they were prosecuted 4 308 487 the person of whom 835 194 condemned to the highest degree.

So, the “repressed” turned out to be somewhat more than indicated in the report dated February 1, 1954. However, the difference is not too great - the numbers are of the same order.

In addition, it is quite possible that a fair number of criminals were among those who received sentences under political articles. On one of the references stored in the archive, on the basis of which the above table was compiled, there is a pencil mark:

“Total convicts for 1921-1938. - 2 944 879 people, of which 30 % (1062 thousand) - criminals»

In this case, the total number of "victims of repression" does not exceed three million. However, in order to finally clarify this issue, additional work with sources is needed.

It should also be borne in mind that not all sentences were carried out. For example, out of 76 death sentences pronounced by the Tyumen District Court in the first half of 1929, by January 1930, 46 were changed or canceled by higher authorities, and only nine of the remaining ones were carried out.

From July 15, 1939 to April 20, 1940, 201 prisoners were sentenced to capital punishment for the disorganization of camp life and production. However, then some of them the death penalty was replaced by imprisonment for terms of 10 to 15 years.

In 1934, 3849 prisoners were kept in the NKVD camps, sentenced to the highest measure with the replacement of imprisonment. In 1935 there were 5671 such prisoners, in 1936 - 7303, in 1937 - 6239, in 1938 - 5926, in 1939 - 3425, in 1940 - 4037 people.

Number of prisoners

Initially, the number of prisoners in forced labor camps (ITL) was relatively small. So, on January 1, 1930, it amounted to 179,000 people, on January 1, 1931 - 212,000, on January 1, 1932 - 268,700, on January 1, 1933 - 334,300, on January 1, 1934 - 510 307 people.

In addition to the ITL, there were corrective labor colonies (NTCs), where convicts were sent for short periods. Until the autumn of 1938, the penitentiaries, together with the prisons, were subordinate to the Department of Places of Confinement (OMZ) of the NKVD of the USSR. Therefore, for the years 1935-1938, so far only joint statistics have been found. Since 1939, the penitentiaries were under the jurisdiction of the Gulag, and the prisons were under the jurisdiction of the Main Prison Directorate (GTU) of the NKVD of the USSR.

How reliable are these numbers? All of them are taken from the internal reports of the NKVD - secret documents not intended for publication. In addition, these summary figures are quite consistent with the initial reports, they can be expanded monthly, as well as by individual camps:

Let us now calculate the number of prisoners per capita. On January 1, 1941, as can be seen from the table above, the total number of prisoners in the USSR amounted to 2 400 422 person. The exact population of the USSR at this point is unknown, but is usually estimated at between 190-195 million.

Thus, we get from 1230 to 1260 prisoners for every 100 thousand of the population. On January 1, 1950, the number of prisoners in the USSR was 2 760 095 people - the maximum figure for the entire period of Stalin's rule. The population of the USSR at that moment totaled 178 million 547 thousand. We get 1546 prisoners per 100 thousand of the population, 1.54%. This is the highest figure ever.

Let's calculate a similar indicator for the modern USA. Currently, there are two types of places of deprivation of liberty: jail - an approximate analogue of our temporary detention facilities, jail contains persons under investigation, as well as those sentenced to short terms, and prison - the prison itself. At the end of 1999, there were 1,366,721 people in prisons and 687,973 in jails (see the website of the Bureau of Legal Statistics of the US Department of Justice), which gives a total of 2,054,694. The population of the United States at the end of 1999 is approximately 275 million , therefore, we get 747 prisoners per 100,000 population.

Yes, half as much as Stalin, but not ten times. It is somehow undignified for a power that has taken upon itself the protection of "human rights" on a global scale.

Moreover, this is a comparison of the peak number of prisoners in the Stalinist USSR, which is also due first to the civil and then the Great Patriotic War. And among the so-called "victims of political repression" there will be a fair share of supporters of the white movement, collaborators, Hitler's accomplices, members of the ROA, policemen, not to mention ordinary criminals.

There are calculations that compare the average number of prisoners over a period of several years.

The data on the number of prisoners in the Stalinist USSR exactly match those given above. In accordance with these data, it turns out that on average for the period from 1930 to 1940, there were 583 prisoners per 100,000 people, or 0.58%. Which is much less than the same indicator in Russia and the USA in the 90s.

What is the total number of people who were in places of detention under Stalin? Of course, if you take a table with the annual number of prisoners and add up the lines, as many anti-Soviet people do, the result will turn out to be incorrect, since most of them were sentenced to more than a year. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate this by the amount of not sitting, but by the amount of convicts, which was given above.

How many of the prisoners were "political"?

As we can see, until 1942, the “repressed” made up no more than a third of the prisoners held in the Gulag camps. And only then did their share increase, having received a worthy "replenishment" in the person of Vlasov, policemen, elders and other "fighters against communist tyranny." Even smaller was the percentage of "political" in corrective labor colonies.

Mortality of prisoners

The available archival documents make it possible to shed light on this issue as well. In 1931, 7283 people died in the ITL (3.03% of the average annual number), in 1932 - 13,197 (4.38%), in 1933 - 67,297 (15.94%), in 1934 - 26,295 prisoners (4.26%).

Data for 1953 are given for the first three months.

As we can see, the death rate in places of detention (especially in prisons) did not at all reach those fantastic values ​​that accusers like to talk about. But still, its level is quite high. It increases especially strongly in the first years of the war. As stated in the certificate of mortality according to the OITK of the NKVD for 1941, compiled by acting. Head of the Sanitary Department of the GULAG NKVD I. K. Zitserman:

Basically, mortality began to increase sharply from September 1941, mainly due to the transfer of conscripts from units located in the front-line areas: from the LBC and Vytegorlag to the OITK of the Vologda and Omsk regions, from the OITK of the Moldavian SSR, Ukrainian SSR and Leningrad region. in OITK Kirov, Molotov and Sverdlovsk regions. As a rule, the stages of a significant part of the journey, several hundred kilometers before loading into the wagons, were on foot. On the way, they were not provided with the minimum necessary food at all (they did not receive bread and even water completely), as a result of such transportation, s / c gave a sharp exhaustion, a very large%% of beriberi, in particular pellagra, which gave significant mortality along the way and along the way. arriving at the respective OITKs that were not prepared to receive a significant number of replenishments. At the same time, the introduction of reduced food allowances by 25–30% (orders No. 648 and 0437) with an increased working day up to 12 hours, often the absence of basic food products, even at reduced rates, could not but affect the increase in morbidity and mortality

However, since 1944, mortality has been significantly reduced. By the early 1950s, in the camps and colonies, it fell below 1%, and in prisons - below 0.5% per year.

Special Camps

Let's say a few words about the notorious Special Camps (special charges) created in accordance with the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 416-159ss of February 21, 1948. These camps (as well as the Special Prisons that already existed by that time) were supposed to concentrate all those sentenced to imprisonment for espionage, sabotage, terror, as well as Trotskyists, rightists, Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries, anarchists, nationalists, white émigrés, members of anti-Soviet organizations and groups and "individuals who pose a danger through their anti-Soviet connections." Prisoners of special services should be used for hard physical work.

As we can see, the death rate of prisoners in special camps was only slightly higher than the death rate in ordinary labor camps. Contrary to popular belief, special services were not "death camps" in which the color of dissident intelligentsia was allegedly destroyed, moreover, the most numerous contingent of their inhabitants were "nationalists" - forest brothers and their accomplices.

1937 "Stalinist repressions. Great lie of the XX century.

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Ours with D.R. Khapaeva's article, devoted to the collective ideas of post-Soviet people about Soviet history, caused a series of letters to the editor demanding that the following phrase contained in it be refuted:

“73% of respondents are in a hurry to take their place in the military-patriotic epic, indicating that there were those who died during the war years in their families. And although twice as many people suffered from Soviet terror than died during the war , 67% deny the presence of victims of repression in their families.”

Some readers a) found it incorrect to compare the number affected from repression with the number dead during the war, b) found the very concept of victims of repression blurred, and c) were indignant at the extremely overestimated, in their opinion, estimate of the number of repressed. If we assume that 27 million people died during the war, then the number of victims of repression, if it were twice as large, would have to be 54 million, which contradicts the data given in the well-known article by V.N. Zemskov "GULAG (historical and sociological aspect)", published in the journal "Sociological Research" (No. 6 and 7, 1991), which says:

“... In fact, the number of those convicted for political reasons (for "counter-revolutionary crimes") in the USSR for the period from 1921 to 1953, i.e. for 33 years, amounted to about 3.8 million people ... Statement ... of the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR V.A. Kryuchkov that in 1937-1938. no more than a million people were arrested, which is in full agreement with the current Gulag statistics that we studied in the second half of the 1930s.

In February 1954, in the name of N.S. Khrushchev, a certificate was prepared, signed by the Prosecutor General of the USSR R. Rudenko, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR S. Kruglov and the Minister of Justice of the USSR K. Gorshenin, which indicated the number of those convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes for the period from 1921 to February 1, 1954. this period was condemned by the Collegium of the OGPU, the "troikas" of the NKVD, the Special Meeting, the Military Collegium, courts and military tribunals of 3,777,380 people, including capital punishment - 642,980, to detention in camps and prisons for a term of 25 years and below - 2,369,220, in exile and exile - 765,180 people.

In the article by V.N. Zemskov also cites other data based on archival documents (first of all, on the number and composition of the Gulag prisoners), which in no way confirm the estimates of the victims of terror by R. Conquest and A. Solzhenitsyn (about 60 million). So how many victims were there? This is worth understanding, and by no means only for the sake of evaluating our article. Let's start in order.

1. Is the quantity matching correct? affected from repression with the number dead during the war?

It is clear that the injured and the dead are different things, but whether they can be compared depends on the context. We were interested not in what cost the Soviet people more - repressions or war - but in how much today the memory of the war is more intense than the memory of repressions. Let's put aside a possible objection in advance - the intensity of memory is determined by the strength of the shock, and the shock from mass death is stronger than from mass arrests. Firstly, it is difficult to measure the intensity of the shock, and it is not entirely known what the relatives of the victims suffered more from - from the "shameful" - and posing a very real threat to them - the fact of the arrest of a loved one or from his glorious death. Secondly, the memory of the past is a complex phenomenon, and it depends only in part on the past itself. No less does it depend on the conditions of its own functioning in the present. I believe that the question in our questionnaire was formulated quite correctly.

The concept of “victims of repression” is indeed vague. It can sometimes be used without comment, and sometimes not. We could not specify it for the same reason that we could compare the killed with the injured - we were interested in whether compatriots remember the victims of terror in their families, and by no means what percentage of them had injured relatives. But when it comes to how many “actually” there were victims, who should be considered victims, it is necessary to stipulate.

Hardly anyone will argue that those who were shot and imprisoned in prisons and camps were victims. But what about those who were arrested, subjected to "interrogations with prejudice", but by a happy coincidence were released? Contrary to popular belief, there were many. They were not always re-arrested and convicted (in this case, they fall into the statistics of convicts), but they, as well as their families, certainly retained the impressions of the arrest for a long time. Of course, one can see the triumph of justice in the fact of the release of some of the arrested, but perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that they were only hurt, but not crushed by the machine of terror.

It is also appropriate to ask the question whether it is necessary to include in the statistics of repressions those convicted under criminal articles. One of the readers said that he was not ready to consider criminals victims of the regime. But not all who were convicted by ordinary courts under criminal articles were criminals. In the Soviet kingdom of distorting mirrors, almost all criteria were shifted. Looking ahead, we say that the cited V.N. Zemskov in the passage quoted above, the data relate only to those convicted under political articles and therefore are deliberately underestimated (the quantitative aspect will be discussed below). In the course of rehabilitation, especially during the perestroika period, some convicted under criminal articles were rehabilitated as actually victims of political repression. Of course, in many cases it is possible to understand here only individually, however, as you know, the numerous "carriers" who picked up spikelets on the collective farm field or took a pack of nails home from the factory also went into the category of criminals. During campaigns to protect socialist property at the end of collectivization (the famous Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of August 7, 1932) and in the post-war period (Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of June 4, 1947), as well as in the course of the struggle to improve labor discipline in the pre-war and war years (the so-called wartime decrees), millions were convicted under criminal articles. True, the majority of those convicted under the Decree of June 26, 1940, which introduced serfdom in enterprises and forbade unauthorized leaving from work, received insignificant terms of corrective labor labor (CTR) or were sentenced conditionally, but a rather significant minority (22.9% or 4,113 thousand people for 1940-1956, judging by the statistical report of the Supreme Court of the USSR in 1958) were sentenced to imprisonment. With these latter, everything is clear, but what about the former? It seems to some of the readers that they were just treated a little cool, and not repressed. But repression - this is going beyond the limits of generally accepted severity, and such an excess was the terms of the engineer for absenteeism, of course. Finally, in some cases, the number of which is impossible to estimate, those sentenced to the ITR due to a misunderstanding or due to the overzealousness of the guardians of the law still ended up in the camps.

A special issue concerns war crimes, including desertion. It is known that the Red Army largely held on to methods of intimidation, and the concept of desertion was interpreted extremely broadly, so that some, but it is not known which part of those convicted under the relevant articles is quite appropriate to consider victims of the repressive regime. The same victims, of course, can be considered soldiers who fought their way out of the encirclement, escaped or released from captivity, who usually immediately, due to the prevailing spy mania and for "educational purposes" - so that others would be discouraged from surrendering - fell into the filtration camps of the NKVD, and often even further to the Gulag.

Further. Victims of deportations, of course, can also be classified as repressed, as well as administratively deported. But what about those who, without waiting for dispossession or deportation, hurriedly packed up during the night what they could carry, and ran until dawn, and then wandered, sometimes was caught and convicted, and sometimes started a new life? Again, everything is clear with those who were caught and convicted, but with those who were not? In the broadest sense, they also suffered, but here, again, one must look individually. If, for example, a doctor from Omsk, warned of his arrest by his former patient, an NKVD officer, took refuge in Moscow, where it was quite possible to get lost if the authorities announced only a regional wanted list (this happened to the author’s grandfather), then perhaps it would be more correct to say about him that he miraculously escaped reprisals. There were, apparently, many such miracles, but it is impossible to say exactly how many. But if - and this is just a well-known figure - two or three million peasants flee to the cities, fleeing dispossession, then this is more like repression. After all, they were not only deprived of their property, which they sold in a hurry at best, for as much as they could, but they were forcibly torn out of their habitual habitat (it is known what it means for a peasant) and often actually declassed.

A special question is about "members of the families of traitors to the motherland." Some of them were "definitely repressed", others - a lot of children - were exiled to colonies or imprisoned in orphanages. Where are these children to be found? Where are the people, most often the wives and mothers of convicts, who not only lost loved ones, but also evicted from apartments, deprived of work and registration, who were under surveillance and awaiting arrest? Shall we say that terror - that is, the policy of intimidation - has not touched them? On the other hand, it is difficult to include them in the statistics - their number is simply not taken into account.

It is fundamentally important that different forms of repression were elements of a single system, and this is how they were perceived (or, more precisely, experienced) by contemporaries. For example, local punitive bodies often received orders to toughen the fight against the enemies of the people from among those exiled to their districts, condemning such and such a number of them “in the first category” (that is, to be shot) and such and such in the second category (to imprisonment). ). No one knew on which rung of the ladder leading from "working out" at a meeting of the labor collective to the Lubyanka basement, he was destined to linger - and for how long. Propaganda introduced into the mass consciousness the idea of ​​the inevitability of the beginning of the fall, since the bitterness of the defeated enemy is inevitable. Only by virtue of this law could the class struggle intensify as socialism was built. Colleagues, friends, and sometimes relatives recoiled from those who stepped on the first step of the stairs leading down. Being fired from a job, or even simply “working through” under conditions of terror, had a completely different, much more formidable meaning than they can have in ordinary life.

3. How can you assess the scale of repression?

3.1. What do we know and how?

To begin with, about the state of the sources. Many documents of the punitive departments were lost or purposefully destroyed, but many secrets are still kept in the archives. Of course, after the fall of communism, many archives were declassified and many facts made public. Many - but not all. Moreover, in recent years there has been a reverse process - the re-secretization of archives. With the noble goal of protecting the sensitivity of the descendants of the executioners from exposing the glorious deeds of their fathers and mothers (and now more likely grandfathers and grandmothers), the declassification dates for many archives have been pushed back into the future. It is amazing that a country with a history similar to ours carefully guards the secrets of its past. Probably because it is the same country.

In particular, the result of this situation is the dependence of historians on statistics collected by the "relevant authorities", which can be verified on the basis of primary documents in the rarest cases (though, when it is possible, the verification often gives a rather positive result). These statistics were presented in different years by different departments, and it is not easy to bring them together. In addition, it concerns only the “officially” repressed and is therefore fundamentally incomplete. For example, the number of those repressed under criminal articles, but for actual political reasons, in principle, could not be indicated in it, since it proceeded from the categories of understanding of reality by the above bodies. Finally, there are inexplicable discrepancies between different "references". Estimates of the scale of repression based on available sources can be very approximate and cautious.

Now about the historiographical context of V.N. Zemskov. The cited article, as well as the even more famous joint article written on its basis by the same author with the American historian A. Getty and the French historian G. Rittersporn, are characteristic of the 1980s. the so-called "revisionist" direction in the study of Soviet history. Young (then) Western historians of leftist views tried not so much to whitewash the Soviet regime as to show that the “right-wing” “anti-Soviet” historians of the older generation (such as R. Conquest and R. Pipes) wrote unscientific history, since they were not allowed into the Soviet archives. Therefore, if the “rights” exaggerated the scale of repressions, then the “lefts”, partly from dubious youth, having found much more modest figures in the archives, were in a hurry to make them public and did not always ask themselves the question whether everything was reflected - and could be reflected - in the archives. Such "archival fetishism" is generally characteristic of the "tribe of historians", including the most qualified ones. It is not surprising that the data of V.N. Zemskov, who reproduced the figures cited in the documents he found, in the light of a more careful analysis, turn out to be underestimated indicators of the scale of repression.

To date, new publications of documents and studies have appeared, which, of course, give a far from complete, but still more detailed idea of ​​the scale of repression. These are, first of all, books by O.V. Khlevnyuk (as far as I know, it exists only in English), E. Applebaum, E. Bacon and J. Paul, as well as the multi-volume " History of Stalin's Gulag" and a number of other publications. Let's try to comprehend the data given in them.

3.2. Sentence statistics

Statistics were kept by different departments, and today it is not easy to make ends meet. Thus, the Certificate of the Special Department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs on the number of those arrested and convicted by the bodies of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD-MGB of the USSR, compiled by Colonel Pavlov on December 11, 1953 (hereinafter - Pavlov's certificate), gives the following figures: for the period 1937-1938. 1,575,000 people were arrested by these bodies, of which 1,372,000 were for counter-revolutionary crimes, and 1,345,000 were convicted, including 682,000 sentenced to capital punishment. Similar figures for 1930-1936. amounted to 2,256 thousand, 1,379 thousand, 1,391 thousand and 40 thousand people. In total, for the period from 1921 to 1938. 4,836,000 people were arrested, 3,342,000 of them for counter-revolutionary crimes, and 2,945,000 were convicted, including 745,000 sentenced to death. From 1939 to mid-1953, 1,115,000 people were convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes, of which 54,000 were sentenced to death. In total, in 1921-1953. 4,060,000 were convicted under political articles, including 799,000 sentenced to death.

However, these data relate only to those convicted by the system of "extraordinary" bodies, and not to the entire repressive apparatus as a whole. So, this does not include those convicted by ordinary courts and military tribunals of various kinds (not only the army, navy and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but also railway and water transport, as well as camp courts). For example, a very large discrepancy between the number of arrests and the number of those convicted is due not only to the fact that some of the arrested were released, but also to the fact that some of them died under torture, while others were transferred to ordinary courts. As far as I know, there are no data to judge the relationship between these categories. The statistics of arrests of the NKVD were better than the statistics of sentences.

Let us also pay attention to the fact that in the “Rudenko reference”, quoted by V.N. Zemskov, the data on the number of those convicted and executed by the verdicts of all types of courts turn out to be lower than the data of Pavlov’s certificate only on “emergency” justice, although Pavlov’s certificate was presumably only one of the documents used in Rudenko’s certificate. The reasons for such discrepancies are unknown. However, on the original of Pavlov's certificate, stored in the State Archives of the Russian Federation (GARF), to the figure 2,945 thousand (the number of convicts for 1921-1938), a note was made by an unknown hand in pencil: “30% angle. = 1062". "Injection." They are, of course, criminals. Why 30% of 2,945 thousand amounted to 1,062 thousand, one can only guess. Probably, the postscript reflected some stage of "data processing", and in the direction of underestimation. It is obvious that the figure of 30% was not derived empirically on the basis of a generalization of the initial data, but represents either an “expert assessment” given by a high rank, or an estimated “by eye” equivalent of the figure (1,062 thousand), by which the specified rank considered it necessary to reduce reference data. Where such an expert assessment could come from is unknown. Perhaps it reflected the ideologeme widespread among high officials, according to which criminals were actually condemned “for politics” in our country.

With regard to the reliability of statistical materials, the number of those convicted by "extraordinary" bodies in 1937-1938. is generally confirmed by the research conducted by Memorial. However, there are cases when the regional departments of the NKVD exceeded the "limits" allocated to them by Moscow for convictions and executions, sometimes having time to get a sanction, and sometimes not having time. In the latter case, they risked getting into trouble and therefore might not show the results of excessive diligence in their reports. According to a rough estimate, such “unrevealed” cases could be 10-12% of the total number of convicts. However, it should be noted that the statistics do not reflect repeated convictions, so these factors could well be approximately balanced.

The number of those repressed in addition to the bodies of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD-MGB can be judged by the statistics collected by the Department for the preparation of petitions for pardon under the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR for 1940 - the first half of 1955. ("Babukhin's reference"). According to this document, 35,830 thousand people were convicted by ordinary courts, as well as military tribunals, transport and camp courts during the specified period, including 256 thousand people sentenced to death, 15,109 thousand to imprisonment and 20,465 thousand to imprisonment. person to corrective labor and other types of punishment. Here, of course, we are talking about all types of crimes. 1,074 thousand people (3.1%) were sentenced for counter-revolutionary crimes - slightly less than for hooliganism (3.5%), and twice as many as for serious criminal offenses (banditry, murder, robbery, robbery, rape together give 1.5%). Those convicted for military crimes amounted to almost the same number as those convicted under political articles (1,074 thousand or 3%), and some of them can probably be considered politically repressed. Robbers of socialist and personal property - including here an unknown number of "non-bearers" - accounted for 16.9% of those convicted, or 6,028 thousand. 28.1% accounted for "other crimes." Punishments for some of them could well have been in the nature of repression - for unauthorized seizure of collective farm lands (from 18 to 48 thousand cases a year between 1945 and 1955), resistance to the authorities (several thousand cases a year), violation of the feudal passport regime (from 9 to 50 thousand cases per year), failure to meet the minimum workdays (from 50 to 200 thousand per year), etc. The largest group was made up of punishments for unauthorized leaving work - 15,746 thousand or 43.9%. At the same time, the statistical collection of the Supreme Court of 1958 speaks of 17,961 thousand sentenced under wartime decrees, of which 22.9% or 4,113 thousand were sentenced to imprisonment, and the rest to fines or labor labor. However, not all those sentenced to short terms actually reached the camps.

So, 1,074,000 convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes by military tribunals and ordinary courts. True, if we add up the figures of the Department of Judicial Statistics of the Supreme Court of the USSR (“Khlebnikov’s certificate”) and the Office of Military Tribunals (“Maximov’s certificate”) for the same period, we get 1,104 thousand (952 thousand convicted by military tribunals and 152 thousand - ordinary courts), but this, of course, is not a very significant discrepancy. In addition, Khlebnikov's certificate contains an indication of another 23,000 convicts in 1937-1939. Taking this into account, the total sum of Khlebnikov's and Maksimov's certificates gives 1,127,000. True, the materials of the statistical collection of the Supreme Court of the USSR allow us to speak (if we summarize different tables) either about 199,000, or about 211,000 convicted by ordinary courts for counter-revolutionary crimes for 1940–1955 and, respectively, about 325 or 337 thousand for 1937-1955, but even this does not change the order of the numbers.

The available data do not allow us to determine exactly how many of them were sentenced to death. Ordinary courts in all categories of cases handed down death sentences relatively rarely (as a rule, several hundred cases a year, only for 1941 and 1942 we are talking about several thousand). Even long terms of imprisonment in large numbers (on average 40-50 thousand per year) appear only after 1947, when the death penalty was briefly abolished and penalties for theft of socialist property were toughened. There is no record of military tribunals, but presumably in political cases they were more likely to resort to harsh punishments.

These data show that to 4,060 thousand convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes by the organs of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD-MGB for 1921-1953. one should add either 1,074 thousand convicted by ordinary courts and military tribunals for 1940-1955. according to Babukhin’s certificate, or 1,127 thousand convicted by military tribunals and ordinary courts (the aggregate result of Khlebnikov’s and Maksimov’s certificates), or 952 thousand convicted for these crimes by military tribunals for 1940-1956. plus 325 (or 337) thousand convicted by ordinary courts for 1937-1956. (according to the statistical collection of the Supreme Court). This gives respectively 5,134 thousand, 5,187 thousand, 5,277 thousand or 5,290 thousand.

However, ordinary courts and military tribunals did not sit idly by until 1937 and 1940, respectively. So, there were mass arrests, for example, during the period of collectivization. Given in " Stories of Stalin's Gulag"(Vol. 1, p. 608-645) and in" Stories of the Gulag» O.V. Khlevniuk (pp. 288-291 and 307-319) statistical data collected in the mid-50s. do not concern (with the exception of data on those repressed by the organs of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD-MGB) this period. Meanwhile, O.V. Khlevnyuk refers to a document stored in the GARF, which indicates (with a reservation about incomplete data) the number of those convicted by ordinary courts of the RSFSR in 1930-1932. - 3,400 thousand people. For the USSR as a whole, according to Khlevniuk (p. 303), the corresponding figure could be at least 5 million. This gives approximately 1.7 million per year, which is in no way inferior to the average annual result of the courts of general jurisdiction of the 40s and early 50s gg. (2 million per year - but population growth should be taken into account).

Probably, the number of those convicted for counter-revolutionary crimes for the entire period from 1921 to 1956 was hardly much less than 6 million, of which hardly many less than 1 million (but rather more) were sentenced to death.

But along with 6 million "repressed in the narrow sense of the word" there were a considerable number of "repressed in the broad sense of the word" - primarily those convicted under non-political articles. It is impossible to say how many of the 6 million "nesuns" were convicted under the decrees of 1932 and 1947, and how many of the approximately 2-3 million deserters, "invaders" of collective farm lands, who did not fulfill the norm of workdays, etc. should be considered victims of repression, i.e. punished unfairly or disproportionately to the gravity of the crime due to the terrorist nature of the regime. But 18 million convicted under serf decrees in 1940-1942. all were repressed, even if "only" 4.1 million of them were sentenced to imprisonment and ended up, if not in a colony or camp, then in prison.

3.2. Gulag population

The assessment of the number of repressed people can be approached in another way - through the analysis of the "population" of the Gulag. It is generally accepted that in the 1920s prisoners for political reasons numbered rather in the thousands or a few tens of thousands. There were about the same number of exiles. The year of the creation of the "real" Gulag was 1929. After that, the number of prisoners quickly exceeded one hundred thousand and by 1937 had grown to about a million. Published data show that from 1938 to 1947. it was, with some fluctuations, about 1.5 million, and then exceeded 2 million and in the early 1950s. amounted to about 2.5 million (including colonies). However, the turnover of the camp population (due to many reasons, including high mortality) was very high. Based on the analysis of data on the entry and exit of prisoners, E. Bacon suggested that between 1929 and 1953. about 18 million prisoners passed through the Gulag (including the colonies). To this we must add those held in prisons, of whom at any given moment there were about 200-300-400 thousand (minimum 155 thousand in January 1944, maximum 488 thousand in January 1941). A significant part of them probably ended up in the Gulag, but not all. Some were released, others could receive minor sentences (for example, most of the 4.1 million people sentenced to imprisonment under wartime decrees), so it did not make sense to send them to camps and perhaps even to colonies. Therefore, probably, the figure of 18 million should be slightly increased (but hardly more than 1-2 million).

How reliable are the Gulag statistics? Most likely, it is quite reliable, although it was carried out carelessly. Factors that could have led to gross distortions, both exaggerated and understated, roughly balanced each other, not to mention that, with the partial exception of the Great Terror period, Moscow took seriously the economic role of the forced labor system, monitored statistics and demanded a reduction in the very high death rate among prisoners. Camp commanders had to be prepared for accountability checks. Their interest, on the one hand, was to underestimate the mortality and escape rates, and on the other hand, not to overestimate the total contingent so as not to get unrealistic production plans.

What percentage of prisoners can be considered "political", both de jure and de facto? E. Applebaum writes about this: “Although indeed millions of people were convicted under criminal articles, I do not believe that any significant part of the total number were criminals in any normal sense of the word” (p. 539). Therefore, she considers it possible to speak of all 18 million as victims of repression. But the picture was probably more complex.

Table of data on the number of Gulag prisoners, cited by V.N. Zemskov, gives a wide variety of percentage of "political" of the total number of prisoners in the camps. The minimum figures (12.6 and 12.8%) are in 1936 and 1937, when the wave of victims of the Great Terror simply did not have time to reach the camps. By 1939, this figure increased to 34.5%, then decreased slightly, and from 1943 it began to grow again to reach its apogee in 1946 (59.2%) and again decrease to 26.9% in 1953 The percentage of political prisoners in the colonies also fluctuated quite significantly. Attention is drawn to the fact that the highest rates of the percentage of "political" fall on the war and especially the first post-war years, when the Gulag was somewhat depopulated due to the especially high death rate of prisoners, their sending to the front, and some temporary "liberalization" of the regime. In the "full-blooded" Gulag of the early 50s. the proportion of "political" was from a quarter to a third.

If we turn to absolute figures, then usually there were about 400-450 thousand political prisoners in the camps, plus several tens of thousands in the colonies. This was the case in the late 30's and early 40's. and again in the late 40s. In the early 1950s, the number of political figures was rather 450-500 thousand in the camps, plus 50-100 thousand in the colonies. In the mid 30s. in the Gulag, which had not yet gained strength, there were about 100 thousand political prisoners a year, in the mid-40s. - about 300 thousand. According to V.N. Zemskov, as of January 1, 1951, there were 2,528,000 prisoners in the Gulag (including 1,524,000 in camps and 994,000 in colonies). Of these, 580 thousand were “political” and 1,948 thousand “criminal”. If we extrapolate this proportion, then out of the 18 million prisoners of the Gulag, hardly more than 5 million were political.

But even this conclusion would be a simplification: after all, some of the criminal cases were still de facto political. Thus, among 1,948 thousand prisoners convicted under criminal articles, 778 thousand were convicted of embezzlement of socialist property (in the vast majority - 637 thousand - by Decree of June 4, 1947, plus 72 thousand - by Decree of June 7, 1947). August 1932), as well as for violations of the passport regime (41 thousand), desertion (39 thousand), illegal border crossing (2 thousand) and unauthorized leaving the place of work (26.5 thousand). In addition to this, in the late 30s - early 40s. there were usually about one percent of “family members of traitors to the motherland” (by the 1950s there were only a few hundred people left in the Gulag) and from 8% (in 1934) to 21.7% (in 1939) “socially harmful and socially dangerous elements” (they almost disappeared by the 1950s). All of them were not officially included in the number of those repressed under political articles. One and a half to two percent of the prisoners were serving a camp term for violating the passport regime. Convicted for theft of socialist property, whose share in the population of the Gulag was 18.3% in 1934 and 14.2% in 1936, decreased to 2-3% by the end of the 30s, which is appropriate to associate with a special role persecution of "nesuns" in the mid-30s. If we assume that the absolute number of thefts over the 30s. has not changed dramatically, and given that the total number of prisoners by the end of the 30s. increased approximately three times compared with 1934 and one and a half times compared with 1936, then, perhaps, there is reason to assume that the victims of repression among the plunderers of socialist property were at least two-thirds.

If we sum up the number of de jure political prisoners, their family members, socially harmful and socially dangerous elements, violators of the passport regime and two-thirds of the embezzlers of socialist property, it turns out that at least a third, and sometimes more than half of the population of the Gulag were actually political prisoners. E. Applebaum is right that there were not so many “real criminals”, namely those convicted of serious criminal offenses such as robbery and murder (2-3% in different years), but still, in general, hardly less than half of the prisoners cannot be considered political.

So, the rough proportion of political and non-political prisoners in the Gulag is about fifty to fifty, and of the political ones, about half or a little more (that is, about a quarter or a little more of the total number of prisoners) were political de jure, and half or a little less - political de facto.

3.3. How do the statistics of sentences and the statistics of the population of the Gulag agree?

A rough calculation gives approximately the same result. Of the approximately 18 million prisoners, about half (about 9 million) were de jure and de facto political, and about a quarter or slightly more were de jure political. It would seem that this coincides quite accurately with the data on the number of those sentenced to imprisonment under political articles (about 5 million). However, the situation is more complicated.

Despite the fact that the average number of de facto political in the camps at a certain moment was approximately equal to the number of de jure political ones, in general, over the entire period of repression, de facto political repressions should have been significantly more than de jure political ones, because usually the terms for criminal cases were significantly shorter. Thus, about a quarter of those convicted under political articles were sentenced to terms of imprisonment of 10 years or more, and another half - from 5 to 10 years, while in criminal cases most of the terms were less than 5 years. It is clear that various forms of prisoner turnover (first of all, mortality, including executions) could somewhat smooth out this difference. Nevertheless, de facto political ones should have been more than 5 million.

How does this compare with a rough estimate of the number of those sentenced to imprisonment under criminal articles for actually political reasons? The 4.1 million wartime convicts probably did not make it to the camps for the most part, but some of them could well have made it to the colonies. On the other hand, out of 8-9 million convicted of military and economic crimes, as well as for various forms of disobedience to the authorities, the majority made it to the Gulag (mortality during transit was, presumably, quite high, but there is no exact estimate of it). If it is true that about two-thirds of these 8-9 million were in fact political prisoners, then together with those convicted under wartime decrees who reached the Gulag, this probably gives at least 6-8 million.

If this figure was closer to 8 million, which is in better agreement with our understanding of the relative length of prison terms under political and criminal articles, then it should be assumed that either the estimate of the total population of the Gulag during the period of repression at 18 million is somewhat underestimated, or the estimate the total number of de jure political prisoners of 5 million is somewhat overestimated (perhaps both of these assumptions are correct to some extent). However, the figure of 5 million political prisoners, it would seem, exactly matches the result of our calculations of the total number of those sentenced to imprisonment under political articles. If, in fact, there were less than 5 million de jure political prisoners, then this most likely means that many more death sentences were handed down for war crimes than we assumed, and also that death in transit was a particularly frequent fate. namely de jure political prisoners.

Probably, such doubts can be resolved only on the basis of further archival research and at least a selective study of “primary” documents, and not just statistical sources. Be that as it may, the order of magnitude is obvious - we are talking about 10-12 million convicted under political articles and under criminal articles, but for political reasons. To this must be added about a million (and possibly more) executed. This gives 11-13 million victims of repression.

3.4. In total, the repressed were ...

To 11-13 million shot and imprisoned in prisons and camps should be added:

About 6-7 million special settlers, including more than 2 million “kulaks”, as well as “suspicious” ethnic groups and entire peoples (Germans, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, etc.), as well as hundreds of thousands of “socially alien "expelled from those captured in 1939-1940. territories, etc. ;

About 6-7 million peasants who died as a result of an artificially organized famine in the early 1930s;

About 2-3 million peasants who left their villages in anticipation of dispossession, often declassed or, at best, actively involved in the "building of communism"; the number of dead among them is unknown (O.V. Khlevniuk. p.304);

The 14 million who received sentences to labor and fines under wartime decrees, as well as most of the 4 million who received short sentences under these decrees, allegedly served them in prisons and therefore were not taken into account in the statistics of the population of the Gulag; in general, this category probably adds at least 17 million victims of repression;

Several hundred thousand arrested on political charges, but for various reasons acquitted and not arrested subsequently;

Up to half a million servicemen who were captured and, after being released, passed through the NKVD filtration camps (but not convicted);

Several hundred thousand administrative exiles, some of whom were subsequently arrested, but by no means all (O.V. Khlevniuk, p.306).

If the last three categories taken together are estimated at approximately 1 million people, then the total number of victims of terror, at least approximately taken into account, will be for the period 1921-1955. 43-48 million people. However, this is not all.

The Red Terror did not begin in 1921, and it did not end in 1955. True, after 1955 it was relatively sluggish (by Soviet standards), but still the number of victims of political repression (suppression of riots, the fight against dissidents and etc.) after the 20th Congress is calculated as a five-digit figure. The most significant wave of post-Stalinist repression took place in 1956-69. The period of revolution and civil war was less "vegetarian". There are no exact figures here, but it is assumed that we can hardly talk about less than one million victims - counting the dead and repressed during the suppression of numerous popular uprisings against the Soviet regime, but not counting, of course, forced emigrants. Forced emigration, however, took place after the Second World War, and in each case it was calculated in the seven-figure figure.

But that's not all. The number of people who lost their jobs and became outcasts, but happily escaped a worse fate, as well as people whose world collapsed on the day (or more often on the night) of the arrest of a loved one, does not lend itself to any accurate calculation. But "not countable" does not mean that there were none. In addition, some considerations can be made about the last category. If the number of those repressed under political articles is estimated at 6 million people and if we consider that only in a minority of families more than one person was shot or imprisoned (for example, the proportion of “members of the family of traitors to the motherland” in the population of the Gulag, as we have already noted, did not exceed 1%, while we estimated the proportion of the “traitors” themselves at approximately 25%), then we should be talking about several million more victims.

In connection with the assessment of the number of victims of repressions, one should dwell on the question of those who died during the Second World War. The fact is that these categories partly intersect: we are talking primarily about people who died in the course of hostilities as a result of the terrorist policy of the Soviet government. Those who were convicted by the military justice authorities are already included in our statistics, but there were also those whom commanders of all ranks ordered to be shot without trial or even personally shot, based on their understanding of military discipline. Examples are probably known to everyone, and there are no quantitative estimates here. Here we do not touch upon the problem of the justification of purely military losses - the senseless frontal attacks, which many famous commanders of the Stalinist era were eager for, were also, of course, a manifestation of the state’s complete disregard for the lives of citizens, but their consequences, of course, have to be taken into account in the category of military losses.

The total number of victims of terror during the years of Soviet power can thus be approximately estimated at 50-55 million people. The vast majority of them, of course, account for the period up to 1953. Therefore, if the former chairman of the KGB of the USSR V.A. Kryuchkov, with whom V.N. Zemskov, not too much (only 30%, towards underestimation, of course) distorted the data on the number of those arrested during the Great Terror, then in the general assessment of the scale of repressions A.I. Solzhenitsyn was, alas, closer to the truth.

By the way, I wonder why V.A. Kryuchkov was talking about a million, and not about a million and a half repressed in 1937-1938? Maybe he did not so much fight for the improvement of the indicators of terror in the light of perestroika, but simply shared the above-mentioned "expert assessment" of the anonymous reader of Pavlov's reference, who was convinced that 30% of the "political" ones were actually criminals?

We said above that the number of those executed was hardly less than a million people. However, if we talk about those who died as a result of terror, then we get a different figure: death in the camps (at least half a million in the 1930s alone - see O.V. Khlevniuk, p. 327) and in transit (which is incalculable), death under torture, suicides of those awaiting arrest, death of special settlers from starvation and disease both in places of settlements (where about 600 thousand kulaks died in the 1930s - see O.V. Khlevniuk. С.327), and on the way to them, executions "alarmists" and "deserters" without trial or investigation, and finally, the death of millions of peasants as a result of a provoked famine - all this gives a figure hardly less than 10 million people. "Formal" repressions were only the surface part of the iceberg of the terrorist policy of the Soviet government.

Some readers - and, of course, historians - are wondering what percentage of the population were victims of repression. O.V. Khlevnyuk in the above book (p. 304) in relation to the 30s. says that among the adult population of the country, one in six suffered. However, he proceeds from an estimate of the total population according to the 1937 census, not taking into account the fact that the total number of people living in the country for ten years (and even more so during the entire almost thirty-five years of mass repression from 1917 to 1953 .) was greater than the number of people living in it at any given moment.

How can you estimate the total population of the country in 1917-1953? It is well known that Stalin's population censuses are not entirely reliable. Nevertheless, for our purpose - a rough estimate of the scale of repression - they serve as a sufficient guideline. The 1937 census gives a figure of 160 million. Probably, this figure can be taken as the "average" population of the country in 1917-1953. 20s - first half of the 30s. characterized by "natural" demographic growth, significantly exceeding the losses as a result of wars, famines and repressions. After 1937, growth also took place, including due to the accession in 1939-1940. territories with a population of 23 million people, but repression, mass emigration and military losses to a greater extent balanced it.

In order to move from the “average” number of people living in the country at a time to the total number of people living in it for a certain period, it is necessary to add to the first number the average annual birth rate multiplied by the number of years that make up this period. The birth rate, which is understandable, varied quite significantly. Under the conditions of the traditional demographic regime (characterized by the predominance of large families), it usually amounts to 4% per year of the total population. The majority of the population of the USSR (Central Asia, the Caucasus, and indeed the Russian village itself) still lived to a large extent under such a regime. However, in some periods (the years of wars, collectivization, famine), even for these regions, the birth rate should have been somewhat lower. During the war years, it was about 2% of the national average. If we estimate it at 3-3.5% on average over the period and multiply it by the number of years (35), it turns out that the average "one-time" indicator (160 million) should be increased by a little more than two times. This gives about 350 million. In other words, during the period of mass repressions from 1917 to 1953. every seventh inhabitant of the country, including minors (50 out of 350 million), suffered from terror. If adults accounted for less than two-thirds of the total population (100 out of 160 million, according to the 1937 census), and among the 50 million victims of repression we counted there were “only” a few million, then it turns out that at least one in five the adult was a victim of a terrorist regime.

4. What does it all mean today?

It cannot be said that fellow citizens are poorly informed about the mass repressions in the USSR. The answers to the question of our questionnaire about how it is possible to estimate the number of repressed were distributed as follows:

• less than 1 million people - 5.9%
• from 1 to 10 million people - 21.5%
• from 10 to 30 million people - 29.4%
• from 30 to 50 million people - 12.4%
• over 50 million people - 5.9%
• find it difficult to answer - 24.8%

As you can see, the majority of respondents have no doubt that the repressions were large-scale. True, every fourth respondent is inclined to look for objective reasons for repression. This, of course, does not mean that such respondents are ready to remove any responsibility from the executioners. But they are hardly ready to unequivocally condemn these latter.

In modern Russian historical consciousness, the desire for an “objective” approach to the past is very noticeable. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but the word "objective" is not accidentally put in quotation marks. The point is not that complete objectivity is hardly achievable in principle, but that the call for it can mean very different things - from the honest desire of a conscientious researcher - and any interested person - to understand that complex and contradictory process that we call history, to the irritated reaction of the layman planted on the oil needle to any attempts to embarrass his peace of mind and make him think that he inherited not only valuable minerals that ensure his - alas, fragile - well-being, but also unresolved political, cultural and psychological problems , generated by seventy years of experience of "endless terror", his own soul, which he fears to look into - perhaps not without reason. And, finally, the call for objectivity may hide the sober calculation of the ruling elites, who are aware of their genetic connection with the Soviet elites and are not at all inclined to "let the lower classes in a row engage in criticism."

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the phrase from our article, which aroused the indignation of readers, concerns not just an assessment of repressions, but an assessment of repressions in comparison with the war. The myth of the "Great Patriotic War" in recent years, as once in the era of Brezhnev, has again become the main unifying myth of the nation. However, in its genesis and functions, this myth is largely a "protective myth", trying to replace the tragic memory of repressions with an equally tragic, but still partly heroic memory of the "nationwide feat". We will not go into a discussion of the memory of the war here. Let us only emphasize that the war was not least a link in the chain of crimes committed by the Soviet government against its own people, which aspect of the problem is almost completely obscured today by the "unifying" role of the myth of the war.

Many historians believe that our society needs “cliotherapy”, which will save it from an inferiority complex and convince it that “Russia is a normal country”. This experience of "normalizing history" is by no means a unique Russian attempt to create a "positive self-image" for the heirs of the terrorist regime. Thus, in Germany, attempts were made to prove that fascism must be considered "in its era" and in comparison with other totalitarian regimes in order to show the relativity of the "national guilt" of the Germans - as if the fact that there was more than one killer justified them. In Germany, however, this position is held by a significant minority of public opinion, while in Russia it has become predominant in recent years. Only a few will decide to name Hitler among the sympathetic figures of the past in Germany, while in Russia, according to our survey, every tenth respondent names Stalin among his sympathetic historical characters, and 34.7% believe that he played a positive or rather positive role in the history of the country (and another 23.7% find that "today it is difficult to give an unambiguous assessment"). Other recent polls speak of close - and even more positive - assessments by compatriots of the role of Stalin.

Russian historical memory today is turning its back on repressions, but this, alas, does not mean at all that "the past has passed." The structures of Russian everyday life to a large extent reproduce the forms of social relations, behavior and consciousness that came from the imperial and Soviet past. This, it seems, is not to the liking of the majority of respondents: more and more imbued with pride in their past, they perceive the present quite critically. So, to the question of our questionnaire whether modern Russia is inferior to the West in terms of culture or surpasses it, the second answer option was chosen by only 9.4%, while the same indicator for all previous historical eras (including Muscovite Russia, the Soviet period) ranges from 20 to 40 %. Fellow citizens probably do not bother to think that the "golden age of Stalinism", as well as the subsequent, albeit somewhat more faded period of Soviet history, may have something to do with what does not suit them in our society today. To turn to the Soviet past in order to overcome it is possible only on the condition that we are ready to see the traces of this past in ourselves and recognize ourselves as the heirs not only of glorious deeds, but also of the crimes of our ancestors.

Stalinist repressions:
What was it?

To the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repressions

In this material, we have collected the memories of eyewitnesses, fragments from official documents, figures and facts provided by researchers in order to provide answers to questions that excite our society again and again. The Russian state has not been able to give clear answers to these questions, so until now, everyone is forced to look for answers on their own.

Who was affected by the repression

Representatives of various groups of the population fell under the flywheel of Stalinist repressions. The most famous are the names of artists, Soviet leaders and military leaders. About peasants and workers often only the names from the execution lists and camp archives are known. They did not write memoirs, tried unnecessarily not to recall the camp past, their relatives often refused them. The presence of a convicted relative often meant an end to a career, study, because the children of arrested workers, dispossessed peasants might not know the truth about what happened to their parents.

When we heard about another arrest, we never asked, “Why was he taken?”, but there were few like us. Crazed with fear, people asked each other this question for pure self-consolation: they take people for something, which means they won’t take me, because there’s nothing for it! They refined themselves, coming up with reasons and justifications for each arrest, - “She really is a smuggler”, “He allowed himself such a thing”, “I myself heard him say ...” And one more thing: “You should have expected this - he has such terrible character”, “It always seemed to me that something was wrong with him”, “This is a complete stranger”. That is why the question: “Why did they take him?” has become taboo for us. It's time to understand that people are taken for nothing.

- Nadezhda Mandelstam , writer and wife of Osip Mandelstam

From the very beginning of terror to this day, attempts have not stopped to present it as a fight against "sabotage", enemies of the fatherland, limiting the composition of the victims to certain classes hostile to the state - kulaks, bourgeois, priests. The victims of terror were depersonalized and turned into "contingents" (Poles, spies, wreckers, counter-revolutionary elements). However, the political terror was total in nature, and representatives of all groups of the population of the USSR became its victims: “the cause of engineers”, “the cause of doctors”, persecution of scientists and entire areas in science, personnel purges in the army before and after the war, deportation of entire peoples.

Poet Osip Mandelstam

He died in transit, the place of death is not known for certain.

Directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold

Marshals of the Soviet Union

Tukhachevsky (executed), Voroshilov, Egorov (executed), Budeny, Blucher (died in Lefortovo prison).

How many people were hurt

According to the estimates of the Memorial Society, there were 4.5-4.8 million people convicted for political reasons, 1.1 million people were shot.

Estimates of the number of victims of repression vary and depend on the method of counting. If we take into account only those convicted under political articles, then according to the analysis of the statistics of the regional departments of the KGB of the USSR, carried out in 1988, the bodies of the Cheka-GPU-OGPU-NKVD-NKGB-MGB arrested 4,308,487 people, of which 835,194 were shot. According to the same data, about 1.76 million people died in the camps. According to the calculations of the Memorial Society, there were more people convicted for political reasons - 4.5-4.8 million people, of which 1.1 million people were shot.

The victims of Stalinist repressions were representatives of some peoples who were subjected to forcible deportation (Germans, Poles, Finns, Karachays, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars and others). This is about 6 million people. One in five did not live to see the end of the journey - about 1.2 million people died during the difficult conditions of the deportations. During dispossession, about 4 million peasants suffered, of which at least 600 thousand died in exile.

In general, about 39 million people suffered as a result of Stalin's policies. The victims of repression include those who died in the camps from disease and harsh working conditions, the dispossessed, the victims of hunger, the victims of the unjustifiably cruel decrees "on absenteeism" and "on three spikelets" and other groups of the population who received excessively severe punishment for minor offenses due to repressive the nature of the legislation and the consequences of that time.

Why was it necessary?

The worst thing is not that you are suddenly suddenly taken away from a warm, well-established life, not Kolyma and Magadan, and hard labor. At first, a person desperately hopes for a misunderstanding, for a mistake by the investigators, then painfully waits for them to call, apologize, and let them go home, to their children and husband. And then the victim no longer hopes, does not painfully search for an answer to the question of who needs all this, then there is a primitive struggle for life. The worst thing is the meaninglessness of what is happening ... Does anyone know what it was for?

Evgenia Ginzburg,

writer and journalist

In July 1928, speaking at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Joseph Stalin described the need to fight "foreign elements" as follows: "As we move forward, the resistance of the capitalist elements will increase, the class struggle will intensify, and Soviet power, forces which will grow more and more, will pursue a policy of isolating these elements, a policy of disintegrating the enemies of the working class, and finally, a policy of suppressing the resistance of the exploiters, creating a basis for the further advance of the working class and the bulk of the peasantry.

In 1937, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR N. Yezhov published order No. 00447, in accordance with which a large-scale campaign to destroy "anti-Soviet elements" began. They were recognized as the culprits of all the failures of the Soviet leadership: “Anti-Soviet elements are the main instigators of all kinds of anti-Soviet and sabotage crimes, both on collective farms and state farms, and in transport, and in some areas of industry. The state security organs are faced with the task of crushing this entire gang of anti-Soviet elements in the most merciless way, protecting the working Soviet people from their counter-revolutionary intrigues, and finally, once and for all, putting an end to their vile subversive work against the foundations of the Soviet state. In accordance with this, I order - from August 5, 1937, in all republics, territories and regions, to begin an operation to repress former kulaks, active anti-Soviet elements and criminals. This document marks the beginning of an era of large-scale political repression, which later became known as the Great Terror.

Stalin and other members of the Politburo (V. Molotov, L. Kaganovich, K. Voroshilov) personally compiled and signed execution lists - pre-trial circulars listing the number or names of victims to be convicted by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court with a predetermined punishment. According to researchers, under the death sentences of at least 44.5 thousand people are Stalin's personal signatures and resolutions.

The myth of the effective manager Stalin

Until now, in the media and even in textbooks, one can find the justification of political terror in the USSR by the need for industrialization in a short time. Since the release of the decree obliging convicts to serve their sentences in forced labor camps for more than 3 years, prisoners have been actively involved in the construction of various infrastructure facilities. In 1930, the Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps of the OGPU (GULAG) was created and huge flows of prisoners were sent to key construction sites. During the existence of this system, from 15 to 18 million people have passed through it.

During the 1930-1950s, the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, the Moscow Canal, was carried out by the forces of the Gulag prisoners. The prisoners built Uglich, Rybinsk, Kuibyshev and other hydroelectric power stations, erected metallurgical plants, facilities of the Soviet nuclear program, the longest railways and highways. Gulag prisoners built dozens of Soviet cities (Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Dudinka, Norilsk, Vorkuta, Novokuibyshevsk and many others).

Beria himself characterized the labor efficiency of the prisoners as low: “The existing ration of 2,000 calories in the Gulag is designed for a person who is in prison and not working. In practice, this underestimated norm is also released by supplying organizations only by 65-70%. Therefore, a significant percentage of the camp labor force falls into the category of weak and useless people in production. In general, the labor force is used no more than 60-65 percent.”

To the question "Is Stalin needed?" we can only give one answer - a firm "no". Even without taking into account the tragic consequences of famine, repression and terror, even considering only the economic costs and benefits - and even making every possible assumption in favor of Stalin - we get results that clearly show that Stalin's economic policy did not lead to positive results. Forced redistribution significantly worsened productivity and social welfare.

- Sergei Guriev , economist

The economic efficiency of Stalinist industrialization by the hands of prisoners is extremely lowly assessed by modern economists. Sergei Guriev cites the following figures: by the end of the 1930s, productivity in agriculture had only reached the pre-revolutionary level, while in industry it was one and a half times lower than in 1928. Industrialization led to huge losses in welfare (minus 24%).

Brave new world

Stalinism is not only a system of repression, it is also the moral degradation of society. The Stalinist system made tens of millions of slaves - morally broke people. One of the most terrible texts I have read in my life is the tortured "confessions" of the great biologist Academician Nikolai Vavilov. Only a few can endure torture. But many - tens of millions! – were broken and became moral freaks out of fear of being personally repressed.

- Alexey Yablokov , corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Philosopher and historian of totalitarianism Hannah Arendt explains that in order to turn Lenin's revolutionary dictatorship into a fully totalitarian government, Stalin had to artificially create an atomized society. For this, an atmosphere of fear was created in the USSR, and whistleblowing was encouraged. Totalitarianism did not destroy real "enemies", but imaginary ones, and this is its terrible difference from ordinary dictatorship. None of the destroyed sections of society were hostile to the regime and probably would not become hostile in the foreseeable future.

In order to destroy all social and family ties, the repressions were carried out in such a way as to threaten the same fate of the accused and everyone in the most ordinary relations with him, from casual acquaintances to closest friends and relatives. This policy penetrated deeply into Soviet society, where people, out of selfish interests or fearing for their lives, betrayed neighbors, friends, even members of their own families. In their desire for self-preservation, the masses of people abandoned their own interests, and became, on the one hand, a victim of power, and on the other, its collective embodiment.

The corollary of the simple and ingenious device of "guilt for association with the enemy" is such that, as soon as a person is accused, his former friends immediately turn into his worst enemies: in order to save their own skin, they hasten to jump out with unsolicited information and denunciations, supplying non-existent data against accused. Ultimately, it was by developing this device to its latest and most fantastic extremes that the Bolshevik rulers succeeded in creating an atomized and fragmented society, the like of which we have never seen before, and whose events and catastrophes in such a pure form would hardly have happened without it.

- Hannah Arendt, philosopher

The deep disunity of Soviet society, the lack of civil institutions were inherited by the new Russia, and became one of the fundamental problems hindering the creation of democracy and civil peace in our country.

How the state and society fought the legacy of Stalinism

To date, Russia has experienced "two and a half attempts at de-Stalinization." The first and largest was deployed by N. Khrushchev. It began with a report at the 20th Congress of the CPSU:

“They arrested without the sanction of the prosecutor… What else could be a sanction when everything was allowed by Stalin. He was the chief prosecutor in these matters. Stalin gave not only permission, but also instructions on arrests on his own initiative. Stalin was a very suspicious person, with morbid suspicion, as we were convinced while working with him. He could look at a person and say: “something your eyes are running around today,” or: “why do you often turn away today, don’t look directly into your eyes.” Painful suspicion led him to sweeping distrust. Everywhere and everywhere he saw "enemies", "double-dealers", "spies". Having unlimited power, he allowed cruel arbitrariness, suppressed a person morally and physically. When Stalin said that such and such should be arrested, one should have taken it on faith that he was an "enemy of the people." And the gang of Beria, who was in charge of the state security organs, climbed out of their skin to prove the guilt of the arrested persons, the correctness of the materials they fabricated. And what evidence was put into play? Confessions of the arrested. And the investigators got these "confessions".

As a result of the fight against the cult of personality, sentences were revised, more than 88 thousand prisoners were rehabilitated. Nevertheless, the era of the “thaw” that came after these events turned out to be very short-lived. Soon, many dissidents who disagree with the policy of the Soviet leadership will become victims of political persecution.

The second wave of de-Stalinization occurred in the late 80s - early 90s. Only then did the public become aware of at least approximate figures characterizing the scale of the Stalinist terror. At this time, sentences passed in the 30s and 40s were also reviewed. In most cases, the convicted were rehabilitated. Half a century later, posthumously dispossessed peasants were rehabilitated.

A timid attempt at a new de-Stalinization was made during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev. However, it did not bring significant results. Rosarkhiv, at the direction of the president, posted on its website documents about 20,000 Poles shot by the NKVD near Katyn.

Programs to preserve the memory of the victims are being phased out due to lack of funding.