Wrote a comment June 25, 2015, 01:24 "Everyone knows and everyone understands only fools and charlatans" (A.P. Chekhov). Stalin, judging by this article, did not know everything, unlike the author. What he knew for sure was that war between Nazi Germany and the USSR was inevitable. It is quite possible that he was going to fight on foreign territory and was preparing an attack himself. Even Halder wrote that "if we abandon the hackneyed assertion that the Russians want peace and will not attack themselves, then it should be recognized that their grouping quite allows a quick transition to the offensive, which would be extremely unpleasant for us." On May 5, 1941, Stalin himself declared: "an offensive is the best defense." In the event of an offensive by a huge army of the USSR, concentrated on its western borders, the result of the first days of the war would have been directly opposite, but the Germans were ahead and everything happened as it happened. An attack on a concentration of troops prepared for an offensive but not yet ready for it, as a rule, ends in a retreat or complete defeat. A huge army colossus, preparing to attack, cannot be instantly prepared for defense. No matter what the scouts reported, June 22 was determined by Hitler only in June.

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Nikita matvienko replied to Kot Korabelny June 25, 2015, 09:45 Stalin knew that the war with Nazi Germany was inevitable, and made a brilliant move, confirming that he was "the luminary of all sciences." He began to strengthen the military potential of Germany and help her conquer Europe. A vivid symbol of the Soviet-German "military cooperation" in 1939 became
"joint parades" of units of the German armed forces and the Red Army. Ours deny the fact of these parades, but the German military chronicle has preserved direct and convincing evidence of the "brotherhood in arms" of the USSR and Nazi Germany, in particular photographs taken in Brest on September 22, 1939, which depict brigade commander Krivoshey, General Guderian and a group of officers, past which military equipment moves. By the way, this parade is mentioned by Guderian in his memoirs, published in Russian in 1998: “Our stay in Brest ended with a farewell parade and a ceremony with the exchange of flags in the presence of brigade commander Krivoshein.” Similar joint parades were held in Bialystok, Grodno, Lvov and other cities of the "annexed territories".

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nikita matvienko replied to Kot Korabelny June 25, 2015, 09:46 AM Concluding a pact with Hitler, Stalin contributed to the rapid defeat of Poland and the mafia division of its territory between the "allies". The war unleashed by Hitler in Europe was already in full swing, it was clear to everyone that sooner or later we would have to fight Germany. And it was at this time that echelon after echelon went from Russia to Germany, more and more strengthening the power of a potential enemy. These trains carried strategic cargoes to Germany. and this happened already during the Nazi blitzkrieg against Norway, Holland, Belgium and France. Only at the end of 1940, that is, 6 months before the start of the war, Germany and the USSR agreed to increase Russia's strategic supplies by 10%.

According to the German-Soviet trade agreement, signed on August 19, 1939 as a result of negotiations between Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, the USSR began regular supplies of raw materials and materials necessary for the functioning of German military production. These shipments included, among others: phosphates, platinum, rare earth metals, petroleum products, cotton, feed grains, including:

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nikita matvienko replied to Kot Korabelny June 25, 2015, 09:47 1,000,000 tons of feed grains and legumes, worth 120 million Reichsmarks;
900,000 tons of oil, worth about 115 million Reichsmarks;
100,000 tons of cotton, worth about 90 million Reichsmarks;
500,000 tons of phosphates;
100,000 tons of chromite ores;
500,000 tons of iron ore;
300,000 tons of iron scrap and pig iron;
2400 kg of platinum.

The Soviet Union also pledged to be an intermediary in securing the purchase of military materials needed by Germany that were not produced directly in the USSR. In accordance with the economic agreement of February 11, 1940, Germany was also granted the right to transit through Soviet territory for trade with Iran, Afghanistan and the countries of the Far East. The transit of goods from eastern markets through the territory of the USSR radically leveled the consequences of the British naval blockade of Germany, which was established after the Wehrmacht's invasion of Poland, while simultaneously contributing to the growth of the economic and military power of the Germans.

Subsequently, additional economic agreements of February 11, 1940 and January 10, 1941 were concluded between the USSR and Germany, as well as a number of agreements that significantly expanded the volume of

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nikita matvienko replied to Kot Korabelny June 25, 2015, 09:49 AM strategic supplies.

Ours are trying to disavow military supplies to the USSR by mutually beneficial trade agreements, and they have agreed to the "German fathers" of the Soviet "Defence". And what was the reality?

A number of historians evaluate these military supplies as a "crime", "conscious support for the Nazi regime" and even as "Stalin's tribute to Hitler." The fact is that after Hitler came to power, Soviet-German trade was significantly reduced, but it expanded to its full extent just before Hitler's attack on the USSR ...

Here is an extract from the Second Memorandum on Real German-Soviet Economic Relations (Berlin, May 15, 1941):
3. The situation with the supply of Soviet raw materials still presents a satisfactory picture. In April, deliveries of the following most important types of raw materials were made:
Grain 208.000 tons;
Oil 90.000 tons; Cotton 8.300 tons;
Non-ferrous metals 6.340 tons (copper, tin and nickel). As for manganese ore and phosphates, their supplies suffered due to lack of tonnage and transport difficulties in the southeastern zone.

The decision of I.V. Stalin in 1941 foreshadowed 1945 and the greatest rise of the USSR in the 50-80s - otherwise, it postponed our death as a great power, at most until the autumn of 1942, with a very likely prospect of complete destruction ...

World history does not know the decision so difficult and so significant, which was adopted and carried out in the summer of 1941 by Joseph Stalin, the decision that nominated him as the Greatest Supreme Commander-in-Chief, who realized the war not as a game of armies and fronts with chips, but as a great mediation of Economics, Politics, Ideology , Space, Time, Will, Spirit, Armed Forces.

Lev Isakov

Modern Russian historian and publicist

About the great super-task of 1941

Two wars in Russian history, 1812-1813 and 1941-1945, received the great honor of being proclaimed Patriotic. They are brought together both by the significance in the national destiny of the Eurasian peoples, and by many external details and circumstances, and by some coinciding internal meaning of the events.

They are international phenomena, especially the second, and deeply national, intimately secret, swept in thunder - and silence, in manifestation - and darkness.

It can be said that we still don’t know, even drawing on the artistic and psychological genius of Leo Tolstoy and the amazing military talent of Karl Clausewitz, the greatest thinkers of the mystery of the spirit and Moloch of War, who wrote about 1812, what M.I. Kutuzov thought and felt on the Borodino field with what he went to the army a couple of weeks before and with what measure he assessed the events when he persecuted and spared, exterminated and helped Napoleon on the terrible Smolensk road, destroyed divisions and corps, destroyed darkness and thousands and released the last ten, hundred, convoy .

We have not even solved the obvious, waking and visibly posed riddles of 1812:

Reasons for the promotion of the Shevardinsky redoubt on the Borodino field;

The obvious inexpediency of the distribution of forces between Barclay and Bagration;

And finally, in connection with this, how was M.I. Kutuzov going to carry out "his" battle without the intervention of Napoleon's foresight and how much the French military genius violated these plans, and whether he violated them at all, if it took place and had a discouraging result.

The great military thinker, the wonderful clever Hegelian type Karl Clausewitz, summing up the study of the war in his work "1812" and with scientific conscientiousness establishing and proving that the actions of the Russian commander in chief were often wrong, mostly shallow and often textbook erroneous, concludes it with a stern phrase , showing his superiority as a researcher and honest observer over pedantic critics blinded by their own constructions: "... But if, as a result of these erroneous actions, Napoleon lost 450 thousand troops, all cavalry and artillery and returned to Europe with barely 10-12 thousand combat-ready mass , then Kutuzov did the right thing, even contrary to the strategy.

We realized very little M.I. Kutuzov in the unity of the heterogeneous wealth of all his activities; where and when he acted not as a European-educated general, but as a wise old man-leader who knew his restless tribe (which Clausewitz very perceptively writes "from the point of view of Borodino's strategy was a defeat - Kutuzov announced victory, and given the impact of his manifesto on society , admittedly, he knew his people better"); we only grope and mumble that in the actions of the great old man there was not only a military, but also a political meaning, without opening and evaluating which the whole picture of the war is not completely clear to us; we do not know how the Pavlovian doctrine of the Russian-French alliance of the early 1800s affected them, one of the few devoted supporters of the emperor - the creator of which was M.I. Kutuzov - we do not know much!

But the main content of the military drama of the summer of 1812 is established and obvious - using the territorial factor, provided by the deep shelter of vital national centers within the state and the insensitivity of the feudal-estate population to bourgeois-liberal propaganda, roll the French army across the great East European plain among the hostile spirit (remember Stendhal's story "Storm of the Redoubt", which quartermaster Henri Bayle went through the campaign of 1812), faith, language; customs, temperament of the population, luring deep into the country and there to bring down on it, weakened by an unbearable communication line, a decisive blow. Alexander I spoke about this in 1811 to Caulaincourt, this was known and shown in his actions by the reasonable and firm M.B. Barclay de Tolly, this was all the more close to M.I. a campaign that discovered a special talent for the use of time and space - this is in cramped Europe! Now he had the entire Eurasian continent at his disposal... And only one splinter dug into the tail of his coat and into his heart - Moscow! And he pulled it out - only when? After the loss of Smolensk? Or only after Borodin? Was it a ritual hecatomb or something greater, a statement in the national self-consciousness of the tradition "The enemy always pays for Moscow!"; or purely military considerations prevailed, drawing Napoleon's attention with the prospect of a general battle, drawing him to one point, hiding other goals and opportunities, tearing him away from dangerous, according to the initial superiority of the conqueror, actions on the periphery - after all, according to the results of the 600,000-strong army in August, they actively acted somewhere between 160-180 thousand, and then less than 100 thousand ... The wings froze and fell off, which completely freed Wittgenstein and Chichagov to reach the communications of Napoleon's main Moscow group ... Or maybe all together - but the general meaning of events was obvious!

Grandiose drama 1941-1945. was infinitely higher, majestic, hysterically-ultimate - we can say that all the events of the First Patriotic War, from the Neman crossing on the morning of June 12 (24) to the Maloyaroslavsky field, were postponed in its first year - and there were four more ahead ...

But how little, vaguely, disproportionately, we know about the meaning of this first year in relation to that monstrous mountain of facts about almost every minute of these days of the summer-autumn of 1941. , that single penetrating note that concerns the content of all events and, subtly ingenious, changes their meaning in relation to external givenness and leads to a result even more discouraging than Borodino. We were undoubtedly and certainly amazed in the summer of 1941, our peacetime personnel army, in large part with two or three years of training, numerous, solid, richly supplied with technical means, was defeated, and the ratio of losses in killed and prisoners (800 thousand - 3300 thousand) - a classic, textbook worn out indicator of a breakdown in military spirit - directly testified to far-reaching defeatism (compare Borodino in 1812 - 43,500 killed and 1,000 (!) Captured). Then there were already destruction battalions, the militia ... and suddenly a miracle on December 4-6, when the troops that were defeated with a one and a half to two times superiority smash an enemy of equal and even greater numbers, when the will came out in chaos, and a crazy storm fell, opening the final unexpected result

What was the factor around which and for the possession of which the main hidden struggle took place, that invisible collision of events that led to the moment; when the weapon hanging on the stage in the 1st act fired in the 4th?

It can be said that everything written about 1941 is just a "meaningless" registration of events that was there and there at such and such a time, and powerless theorizing is rather annoying with its toothlessness, a simple statement of facts is better like "that it rains in summer and snows in winter", it at least shows the gaping emptiness of generalizations, prompting deeper reflections than those that are available, those that, without clarifying the meaning of the event, drown it in the depths empty sea.

Yes, the Great Patriotic War was not lucky - Leo Tolstoy did not paint it, Clausewitz did not understand its intricacies, it was rather taken by the quantity, not the quality of the authors; domestic historiography was at the mercy of a host of politicians who usurped its theme, pulling the blanket of events on themselves, one near Kyiv, the other to Malaya Zemlya; Western historiography diligently and biasedly hushed up, being afraid to reveal its significance on a global scale more than the natural aberrations and nonsense of the concept of the world-historical process being worked out in the 1940s-50s, which arose as a result of not taking into account its factor (the name of the American series about the Great Patriotic War in 1980 is typical years "This unknown war in the East").

But that wild nonsense in which domestic politics and history found themselves at the end of the 20th century, that Bedlam picture of all institutions and ideogems that has been revealed to us, is urgently demanded from a historiosophical, and not historical, point of view, that is, from the point of view of what was true, in contrast to what what once seemed true for the participants in the events, to comprehend the background of the drama of the summer of 1941, when the entire great plate of the Eurasian statehood and civilization tilted, in gaining the lessons and guidelines we so needed in the conditions of its new collapse.

Who was at the center of the events of 1941? Who was Alexander I and Kutuzov, Political leader and National Commander-in-Chief all rolled into one? Who was the conscious conductor or the unconscious cacophonist of the melody that played over the great East European plain? - Joseph Stalin!

It is from him, as from the center, that one must proceed in an attempt to capture the meaning of events, here, around him, they condensed, pulled together, bulged in a caricatured generalization, from here they left, weakening and individualizing.

What was the main task for himself and, as the outcome of the war shows, did I.V. Stalin solve in the desperate days of the summer of 1941? What was the lever for him, seizing on which he believed to change the course of events - about which he never spoke, did not name, and only occasionally interrupted too importunate commentators on his actions after the war, and especially those of them who carried out the identity of his strategy of 1941 year of the Kutuzov line of 1812 - this fable, which was so suitable for the asserted stereotype of "the greatest commander of all times and peoples", seems to have especially irritated him, his statement is known, which crosses it out in meaning: "our retreat was not the result of free choice, but a difficult necessity."

In order to draw any conclusion, or at least to discard some of the accumulated historical husks, especially of recent years, one should consider at least the main circumstances that preceded 1941; objectively or subjectively influenced the decisions made then and the actions being carried out - some of them will themselves discard part of the heap of near-scientific conjectures.

Let's ask and answer a few questions.

Was World War II unexpected for Stalin in general terms?

Let me remind you in the age of amateurs with a camp-mathematical, tank-ideological and organ-philosophical education, currently presented to society as "historians", at worst as "thinkers" a number of capital facts for a qualified professional teacher of a course of civil history of the facts of the genesis of World War II war.

1915 - in a secret memorandum to members of the Cabinet, the British Foreign Secretary, Lord E. Gray, informs his colleagues that the goal of England for the post-war period is the unconditional exclusion of Russia from the Black Sea straits, which she had just been promised. This made a military clash between the two powers in the foreseeable future inevitable. Even the weak, cowardly Italian bourgeoisie, "not admitted" to the Balkans and Africa after the war, responded to Benito Mussolini's England and France with a war - all the more so the immeasurably more powerful Russian bourgeoisie. A new division of the world was announced.

1917 - The German General Staff (the famous Great Staff of Moltke and Schlieffen) comes to the conclusion that the changed goals of Germany - the scrapping of national sovereignties in Europe and the establishment of unconditional German predominance - cannot be achieved in the ongoing world war and another world battle is needed. It is impossible not to admire the uncompromising consistency of these guys - one war is not over yet, the thousand-headed artillery of the battle of Nivelle thunders - and they are planning a new one! Yes, what are they planning - they are starting to cook! After the war, the victors were very puzzled when they discovered huge carved adits in the rocky ridges of Lorraine and an incomprehensible canal begun by construction in Belgium. Only in 1945, when all the documents of the Great Staff became available for review, it was discovered that the Lorraine undergrounds were intended for strategic storage depots of World War II ammunition, and super-heavy artillery on barges was to be brought along the Belgian canal to organize coastal defense and the bombing of England.

1921 - V.I. Lenin, assessing on the eve of the Genoa Conference the threat of a joint action of the capitalist powers against Soviet Russia in the event of rejection of the ultimatum on debts, establishes its groundlessness, because. there is a profound split in the Western countries, and relations between Japan and the United States in the Pacific have reached such a degree of antagonism that they can only be resolved by war.

1924 - The young captain of the American army D. Eisenhower, who had just married a charming girl and was burdened by a poor officer salary and service in the malarial swamps of Panama, asked his boss, the famous General Scott, whether army service had any prospects. All night long, by the light of a kerosene lamp, walking around the tent in front of a young officer, the venerable military leader makes aloud an assessment of the situation in the world and comes to the conclusion that no later than 12 years from now, World War II is inevitable. Army experience in these conditions becomes an invaluable capital. As you know, in 1939, D. Eisenhower was the only colonel in the American army who had experience in managing armored units, which in 4 years raised him from an ordinary senior officer to a four-star general and commander-in-chief of the armed forces of 12 states in Europe!

1930 - The British Imperial General Staff does not extend its next moratorium "10 years without war", recognizing its real possibility.

1934 - Reich Chancellor A. Hitler issues a directive to the military-industrial authorities of Germany to begin direct systematic preparation for war, designed for 5 years with a period of unconditional readiness at the end of 1939, to which all resources, organization, and propaganda should be subordinated. This decision is irrevocable - if the war does not start within the specified period. Germany is waiting for a financial collapse in the same 1939.

The very diversity of testimonies, from different camps, from different persons, at different levels - from political to everyday life, - rejects the assumption that the war was unexpected for I. Stalin in strategic terms.

Another feature in these testimonies is that the war was recognized as a reality; both Lenin and Scott foresaw it not on the basis of an analysis of the intersystem "communism - capitalism", but by evaluating the intrasystemic contradictions of the capitalist world, i.e. it could not be stopped by the sole will of the USSR and was not genetically controlled by it. Could Stalin not know this? Of course not, his whole foreign policy of the 30s was the restoration of a concert with the "well-fed peace lovers" of the old Entente. In this and only in this, in the creation of a system of collective security, he saw a guarantee of the prevention of war. I. Stalin and his creature M. Litvinov, of course, distinguished between "skirmishers" and "back benchers" of the military sliding of the 30s, "democrats" and "fascists". It was not only the "Litvinov line", their proximity was more generally recognized, since the 1900s, when M. Litvinov carried out technical training in the combat organization of the RSDLP (b), and I. Stalin organizational training for the transfer of weapons and expropriations for the purposes of the revolution , and later rallied against L. Trotsky, who cursed Litvinov and Krasin in his memoirs. In essence, this was already a direct comparison of oneself with one of the camps of the emerging military split in the world.

A characteristic episode of 1936. On July 18, 1936, a fascist rebellion began against the government of the bourgeois-democratic Popular Front in Spain. Within a few days it became clear that Germany and Italy were behind the rebels. Most likely, Stalin knew this from the very beginning - in the mid-30s, there were no secrets for us in Berlin and Rome. At the beginning of August 1936, an extremely narrow meeting was held in the Kremlin under the chairmanship of V. Molotov with the participation of I. Stalin, which decided the question of the advisability of interfering in Spanish events and possible forms of assistance. The general political assessment was the same - the Iberian Peninsula was becoming a testing ground for fascism, the springboard from which it would begin its leap to undermine the existing balance in international relations - and defeating it here, at the very beginning of an aggressive breakthrough, would have the most beneficial consequences, including for the USSR The participants of the meeting were mainly inclined to think that Republican Spain itself, whose military organization was extremely weakened by the split of society since the beginning of the civil war, and the technical equipment froze at the level of 1900-1914, while combat experience and traditions are based almost in the Spanish-American campaign of 1898-1900, will not be able to resist the concerted invasion of two first-class military powers - Germany and Italy. Of the two possible options for assistance:

Limit itself to military supplies and the sending of volunteer instructors;

Directly engage in events by sending an expeditionary corps and taking over the military-technical support of the military operations of the Republicans;

the majority voted for the latter. Along the way, the political and technical possibility of sending and supporting the supply of expeditionary forces in 5-7 divisions, sufficient to ensure the military predominance of the Republicans and stabilize the international situation around Spain, was revealed.

Under these conditions, the speech of Marshal Tukhachevsky, who was responsible for the combat readiness of the Red Army as the head of armaments and chairman of the commission on military reform and regulations, sounded sharply dissonant, saying that regular full-blooded formations should not be sent to Spain, since they "will show there not only strong, but also weaknesses of the Red Army", which sounded like a statement about the unpreparedness of the armed forces in a combat sense, which was completely untrue.

Until the autumn of 1938, the Red Army had an equivalent materiel with the German Air Force, with superiority over the Italian ones. In air battles, the main Soviet I-16 fighter, having equal speed with the best German Me-109V fighter, surpassed it in armament and maneuverability, the situation began to change only with the appearance of the Me-109E cannon in Spain at the end of the war. On the ground, the Soviet cannon tanks BT-5 and T-26 directly suppressed the German and Italian machine-gun T1, T2, "Ansaldo" with their superiority. The organization of the German armed forces in 1933-36. was "childish", almost "nursery", which was discovered by terrible embarrassment during the entry into the Saarland and Austria, after which the divisions, which had disintegrated due to lack of experience in driving troops by commanders, had to be searched for and collected along the roads for several days with the help of the police . The Italian army - according to the old General Staff joke - at all times existed in order to have someone to defeat the Austrians.

Tukhachevsky's speech had a serious effect, after which the meeting "faded", no decisions were made, which meant the actual adoption of the first version of the "dropper for the dying." Let us pay tribute to our hero, in August 1936, Mikhail Tukhachevsky averted from Adolf Hitler the most dangerous threat in his ascent - to be defeated, when for the German elites he was still a dark horse, almost an upstart, and had not yet become the idol of the German layman. But it was from this meeting that the countdown of the last days of Tukhachevsky began - Stalin raised and kept him in such a post not in order to find out about the unpreparedness of the army at an extremely acute political moment.

Was Stalin aware of the approach of war as a kind of reality among others, or as an inevitable terrible inevitability? What was in his mind: "If it will be ... If it will be" or - "It will be! It will be! It will be!" Were measures taken in connection with this “in general”, “according to ability”, or was absolutely everything possible done?

The best evidence of this is the material of the structural socio-economic breakthrough of the USSR in the 20s-40s. Excluding, perhaps, 1926-28, when the purely military side of economic development could be reduced to the natural modernization of the armed forces, the entire interwar development of society and the economy took place with the brightest illumination of a purely defensive task determined by the upcoming battle.

All of our pre-war five-year plans had a special military orientation. So:

The task of the 1st five-year plan (1928-1932) was to create armed forces that would ensure superiority over the largest military power in the capitalist world (at that time France);

The task of the 2nd Five-Year Plan (1933-1937) included the creation of a military potential that would provide superiority over the coalition of 2-3 militarily largest capitalist states, provided that the clash was limited to one military theater, European or Asian;

The task of the 3rd Five-Year Plan (1938-1942) was to create a military potential that would ensure superiority over any possible combination of the militarily largest states of the capitalist world in any possible scenario of struggle in all theaters of military operations.

Real fight 1941-45 occurred - given the unification of almost the entire military potential of Europe in the hands of Germany and the constant, although not materialized threat from Japan - according to an intermediate "two-half" option; and the results of the war show that the planners of the 1920s and 1940s included real figures in their calculations.

Moreover, all other construction was subordinated to the defense task. All our new enterprises were laid down as dual-purpose production - civilian and military. So:

Agricultural engineering plants were designed according to the aviation profile;

Plants of medium machine building on the profile of artillery and mortar;

Automobile plants for the production of armored vehicles and light tanks;

Tractor for the profile of medium and heavy tanks;

Grain elevators as gunpowder production;

Pasta factories as factories for the production of ultra-slow-burning gunpowder for long-range artillery;

Watch factories as the production of fuses.

At these plants, technological flows were organized in advance, equipment and tooling were completed, auxiliary production facilities were created, engineering and technical services were staffed, consumable and long-term stocks were concentrated, taking into account both of their purposes.

American engineers made fun of the customer, who demanded that 50-ton loads be taken into account in the spans of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant instead of the usual 5-7 tons, which made construction extremely expensive and made production unprofitable. They did not realize that these spans were not supposed to bear the weight of tractors, but the weight of heavy tanks.

All 10.000 enterprises, built in two and a half pre-war five-year plans, were aimed at defense production, and while not always cost-effective as automobile, combine, tractor, they were effective as artillery, aviation, tank.

World economic history does not know such a systematic, comprehensive militarization of industry and agriculture - after all, the same MTS is the complete pre-mobilization readiness of the entire auto-tractor fleet of the country, and Germany's super-efforts of 1935-39 look modest against its background.

As a result of this work, the Soviet economy acquired fantastic controllability and maneuverability, the ability to almost instantly expand military production. If the mobilization of the industry of Great Britain required 22 months, of which 9 months without the direct influence of the enemy, if the US economy, not affected by the war, was mobilized in 36 months, then the economy of the USSR; under the direct impact of the war, it was mobilized in 3-4 months for the main industries and in 7 completely. No amount of super-enthusiasm, storming, impulse could provide such a result without this gigantic systematic work of the pre-war years. And only with full awareness of the inevitability of war could it be accepted, launched and carried out.

And if it had not been produced in the Soviet Union, who would have produced it in the world? And without it - what would have stopped A. Hitler and the armored besties of the most militant nation of the 20th century, burning with enthusiasm for world domination? In this work, the only possible then only in the USSR, the salvation of the world was laid - and only One Sixth could carry it out according to the state, traditions, aspirations of society and, let us add, the providence of its leader.

The largest strategic decision of I. Stalin at that time was a sharp increase in the pace of industrialization from the beginning of the world economic crisis of 1929-32. The world economic catastrophe sharply complicated the situation for the USSR. On the one hand, the instability of the entire international situation has become extremely intensified, the world's "crowding" of capital awakened the search for "free zones" and "spaces", brought to the surface extreme chauvinistic currents that received a mass social base in the face of an unsettled, embittered against the State, God and Neighbor, mass.

On the other hand, the crisis for the first and last time opened before us the world markets of advanced equipment and technologies, not lying around, overripe - brand new, smelling of laboratory paint and sparkling with designer whiteness. The impotence of the crazed bourgeois states, the spasm of a zoological paroxysm of fear that permeates capital, opened the doors of workshops, design bureaus, plazas for us, removed the curtains over the drawing boards, opened laboratory journals.

F. Krupp and Demag, Mannesmann and Pratt & Whitney, Renault-Kodron and Fokker were in line for Soviet orders, Messerschmitt, Douglas, Heinkel, Christie offered their latest products for sale, Royce is the world's tech elite. There was an opportunity to pump out the entire backlog from the portfolios and brains of Europe and America, but no further than 2-3 years, set by the crisis.

And Stalin did this, throwing everything, down to the last gram of gold reserves, an export kilogram of grain, a piece of an exported egg, to acquire invaluable experience and equipment that temporarily turned out to be ownerless. In 1932, as the elements of the crisis began to subside, signaling the end of the accessibility regime, he, in a last effort to wrest from the West everything that was needed and could be taken, sharply increased food exports. In the writhing and horror of children dying of starvation, the cannibalism of insane savagery of adults, there was a stream of technical imports of this year. The very cruelty of this event directly stated - Stalin realized the war as a given, inevitable and irremovable, only in unconditional confidence could he carry out this action - the first battle of a not yet imminent military drama, more difficult than the upcoming battles, which he had to win from his own people, taking for the poor, it is necessary for the sake of what was not yet realized.

But the flow of equipment, patents, technologies that flooded into the country required infrastructure, buildings, personnel - to wait for the construction of new sites, communications, the formation of qualified personnel in awakened bearish corners means to deaden the acquired capital for 3-4 years, while freezing the existing potential withdrawal of huge funds for import purchases, i.e. get a result opposite to that which was sought. That is, it had to be installed, deployed, launched not in new centers in the East, the results of which should have been expected in 5-7 years (i.e. not earlier than 1938-39), but in old ones in the West, at existing sites, in zones of concentration of manpower, intellect, skills, not reducing, but increasing the vulnerability of the territorial distribution of the military industry, to the western centers of which not only pre-revolutionary military production gravitated, but also new ones, being deployed for the first time, for example, the aluminum plants of Volkhov and Dnepropetrovsk, aircraft engine, tank and aircraft production in Kharkov, military chemistry, special metallurgy, heavy engineering in Zaporozhye, Mariupol, Taganrog, precision mechanics in Leningrad, limiting their placement to the east by the Volga line. It was not a matter of free choice - it was dictated by the whole complex of super-industrialization in an extremely short (9-10 years) period of necessity and inevitability.

We entered the war, having the 1st aviation and tank fleet in the world (16600 and 17300 units) and the 2nd artillery (63100 units - the consequences of the struggle of M.N. -35 years of all development work and the closure of the artillery design bureau). How many tanks and aircraft would the Red Army have on June 22, 1941, if their production instead of 1933-1934. would have been deployed in 1938-39, because from 1934 to 1939 we annually produced only 3-3.5 thousand tanks? And what quality would our designers and their developments be, even if, even with a well-established production, it took 5-6 years before they became trendsetters in the world tank and aviation fashion (T-34, KV and Il-2 appeared in the summer and autumn of 1939) ?

Did this avalanche of armaments give hope for security associated with a purely quantitative factor "yes, they ... - yes, we ...". Yes! But did not the cautious and vigilant mind retain a sense of some kind of precariousness, instability, insecurity of such a situation, when the military industry is drawn to the most dangerous western border, the silent presence of that instinctive question "What if ...", which arises outside of any - either connection with the situation, not so much in the mind as in the feeling, like that; which begins to swarm when looking into the abyss, even because of a reliable parapet: "What if it can't stand it?".

Was Stalin able to assess the purely military side of the events, to see in them a different meaning than that suggested by military advisers; was he independent in his conclusions and on what level of insight, knowledge and professionalism were they based?

The formation of a professional revolutionary I.V. Stalin took place in a special, not debatable, but active-practical environment of the Combat Organization of the RSDLP (b) (a conditional name - those structures that technically served the 1st Russian revolution), where the strong-willed and power principle was the leading , and the main occupation was a specific form of war.

He spent the civil war as a "field member" of the RVS of several fronts, including the 2 main ones, the Southern during the offensive of A. Denikin and the South-Western during the Soviet-Polish war. He became known as the leading organizer of the successful defense of Tsaritsyn in 1918 and one of the leaders of the defense of Petrograd in difficult conditions in 1919. He was one of the initiators of the creation, in spite of the opposition of the Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic L.D. Trotsky, a large, maneuverable association - the First Cavalry Army - whose tactics were closest to the "deep operations" of the motorized troops of the future, the formation of which in the 30s in almost all armies of the world took place precisely on the basis of cavalry formations.

But he himself most of all valued and, it seems, considered "his" operation to storm the Baltic forts "Krasnaya Gorka" and "Grey Horse" considered impregnable in the summer of 1919, a rare for the Civil War, where infantry and cavalry dominated, an example of a combined operation of heterogeneous forces with a significant composition of the technical element: land, fleet, aviation, armored parts, sea, ground, air and artillery attacks.

Basically, throughout the war, he acted as an organizer with specialist commanders, in relation to whom he showed great psychological observation. His conflict with Svechin in the summer of 1918, in the light of the latter's recently published diaries, seems quite natural. About the wild, almost cavernous anti-democratism and xenophobia of the tsarist general, the testimonies of students of military academies of the 30s, who often drove him from the pulpit, have been preserved. I have to remind you of this, because. this person was presented by A. Solzhenitsyn as "Russia's last hope" in 1917, and his arrest by Stalin in 1918 was declared the envy of "tyrant parvenu".

Nevertheless, Stalin definitely preferred economic and managerial work, enthusiastically undertook it in a peaceful respite in 1920, having received an appointment as commander of the Ural Labor Army and extremely reluctantly returned "with a promotion" to the Revolutionary Military Council of the South-Western Front.

Stalin did not play "Napoleon", did not find himself in a purely military area, and as a result, both on the Southern and on the South-Western Front, he did not replace the commander A.I. to Warsaw (Tukhachevsky) fronts, which led to the failure of the Polish campaign in the military unit, was not a conflict between Stalin - Tukhachevsky, but Tukhachevsky - Yegorov. The role of Stalin in it is different, his usual strong-willed support of his commander gave incredible strength to Yegorov's position, made his mistake especially fatal. For Stalin himself, it should have been a lesson of a different kind - never condition your decision only on trust in anyone; and the outcome of any event, no matter how brilliantly it began, is determined only after its completion.

Is there any evidence of such a conclusion in his subsequent actions? And the incredible career of M. Tukhachevsky in the 30s, with the undoubted support of Stalin, who became the first person in the military hierarchy, excluding K. Voroshilov, who had a different role - political commissar over the army. Stalin definitely took into account the lesson of the Polish campaign and, without noise, appointments and promotions, asserted the “alien” Tukhachevsky over “his” Yegorov.

Many observers noted that in 1942-45, Stalin became picky, strict, highlighting the mistakes and omissions at the moment of success of one or another military leader, "putting him down" from a state of euphoria, and vice versa, became condescending, friendly to them if they fell into difficult situation, suffered failures not caused by their efforts, lifted the spirit and mood, showing confidence so important at the moment of despondency. Are these the lessons of 1941? In terms of the transience of events, there were almost no such distinguishable examples - in its full visibility, this was in 1920!

In the interwar years, his connection with the army developed and takes on a slightly different character - it is not so much participation in the daily life of the troops as general issues of military development, personnel policy, the level of strategy and doctrine. He led the sovereign ship - the military leaders were in charge of his guns. For him, military issues began in the invisible depths of the coal pits and the bilge, for them from the conning towers, cellars, shells, mechanisms, barrels that appeared from nowhere. Before the Spanish events, the purely military sphere had a certain autonomy within the framework of his interests, was present in them indirectly, through other persons - K. Voroshilov, M. Tukhachevsky, Ya. Gamarnik. It can be argued that he gradually descended from the political quantitative level of assessments in purely military issues to an awareness of the qualitative certainty of this area, and if in the 30s he still did not take part in the Kiev maneuvers, which advanced the theoretical thought of the military community so much, then in 1939 year asks G.K. Zhukov for the combat charter of the ground forces, the surviving copy of which retains many traces of his pencil, and in 1940 he is present at the military game of the General Staff, where K.A. Meretskov and G.K. Zhukov showed their skills.

Of the entire circle of people who influenced the formation of his military ideas, B.M. Shaposhnikov and M.N. Tukhachevsky stood out, although in different plans. The influence of B.M. Shaposhnikov, whom the German sources of the 30-40s call the "grand marshal", "great strategist", which Germany had not had an equal since the death of Schlieffen, was constant and indisputable throughout the life of Boris Mikhailovich, the only one in the environment Stalin, to whom he addressed by name and patronymic instead of the usual "comrade - name". Theoretical works and many years of activity of B. Shaposhnikov formed the basis for the development of the brain of the army - the General Staff, he brought up the famous "Shaposhnikov school" of strategists, to which A.M. Vasilevsky, I.A. Antonov, M.V. Zakharov, V. D.Sokolovsky. Culture, noble restraint, tactful adherence to principles of the military leader had a great influence on Stalin on a personal level, moderating the cruel impulses of his will. In communication with Shaposhnikov, he developed those forms of relations with the highest institutions of the armed forces that determined the methods of making decisions in the war; according to it, he also measured the subsequent leaders of the General Staff.

The attitude towards M.N. Tukhachevsky (whom, by the way, B.M. Shaposhnikov did not like, as the serious "working in war" general staff officer of the "playing" cavalry guard dislikes) was different - between them lay a wide band of personal incompatibility. Stalin could not stand narcissism, playing with abilities, external artistry with a touch of lordly snobbery, but at the same time he paid tribute to the gift of penetration of the youngest marshal, the atmosphere of creative elation that he knew how to create around himself.

Until 1936, he steadily supported all of Tukhachevsky's innovations in the army, extinguished outbreaks of acute hostility between him and Voroshilov, and did not give way to the accumulating "compromising evidence" - direct memos on M.N. by 1937, up to a dozen and a half had accumulated in his case - he assessed the obvious failures of the latter, for example, the fight against artillery and the "bombing disease" of the mid-30s as delusions of a schematic mind. His own ideas about the war were developed, as it were, in a critical reworking of Tukhachevsky's concept, and already in the 1930s acquired features of originality. The future war was drawn to him as a war of motors - "motors on the ground, motors on the water, motors in the air" - but for all its intricacies, its central element - the battle was understood by him not as an episode in the operation when breaking through the front line and then as a flight of scattered across the map arrows - but as her constant occupation, from the first to the last day.

From the point of view of the "combat" assessment, his idea of ​​the technical composition of the armed forces and the struggle for it took shape, often taking on the character of a collision with the military department, carried away by other ideas. It should be remembered:

The battle for attack aircraft (from 1936 to 1939), rejected by 3 successively repressed commanders of the Air Force;

The battle for front-line bombers (who did not understand their meaning, the designers who were in love with heavy vehicles "realized their mistakes" only in conclusion);

The steadfast preservation of artillery as a branch of service, providing fire superiority on the battlefield from the attacks of M. Tukhachevsky, about which V.G. Grabin writes so much in his memoirs;

The introduction of thick-armored universal tanks into the armed forces; Let us recall that the T-34 was developed almost in secret from the Armored Directorate of the Red Army, which rejected it, and was carried away by the ideas of "car trips" on the YuBT to the deep rear of the enemy.

Even then, he understood more deeply in some military-strategic problems than military commanders. Admiral I.S. Isakov cites an extremely interesting testimony about the leader’s rare trip to the North - on a white night, while on the bridge of the destroyer, Stalin, in the presence of an officer, thoughtfully, said aloud: “And what do they say - Baltic, Baltic ... Here, on North, we need to build a fleet." This is evidence of a new understanding of the importance of the oceans for a great power. I. Isakov did not meet such understanding among the naval command of that time.

Was Stalin's thinking dogmatic, inactive, established in certain schemes and not subject to other influences? Was his will a kind of manic obsession, like, say, A. Hitler, a self-affirmation disease that has developed, which replaces the natural appearance of events with an imaginary picture?

Stalin was a reddish brown-haired man, 175 cm tall, with a strong build, with a regular, strict, handsome face, marked on the bottom of his cheeks with traces of smallpox. He was very photogenic - those who are accustomed to the stamp of the "Kremlin highlander" I recommend putting photos of Stalin, Trotsky, Bukharin of those years in a row and comparing them without bias. The testimonies of film and photographic materials are also confirmed by the recollections of eyewitnesses of the 30-40s. - I will name only foreigners A. Eden, G. Hopkins, C. de Gaulle, W. Churchill, D. Eisenhower - who unanimously noted his expressive, memorable appearance.

He had a physical defect - one arm is shorter than the other, the consequences of an injury in adulthood while swimming. He did not experience any physical inferiority, a mental complex from this, and, being an avid lover of the bath, quite calmly showed his body to strangers, never trying to retire. Of the surrounding persons, only his tailor, who sewed one sleeve of his service jackets and uniforms shorter than the other, attached some importance to this defect - most did not even notice this. Police maps of the external examination of the arrested person and persons close to him are completely silent about his "everyone's known six-fingeredness."

Observers noted his exceptional hearing and ability to feel the subtlest mood of the interlocutor, the ability to "talk" those around him to complete emancipation; he liked large, many-voiced meetings, he watched them with noticeable pleasure, his personal participation in them was tangible, and his phrases, marked by a special accuracy of meaning, were remembered.

He had a good basic education, was 4th in the graduation of the Tiflis Theological Seminary, which gave a gymnasium course in subjects of general education. During his studies, he did not show any exhibitionistic inclinations attributed to him later, as evidenced by the two-fold intercession of church authorities during the first arrests. In general, he never showed "domestic iconoclasm" and in the 30s he reprimanded A.M. Vasilevsky for breaking with his father-priest; to restore relations with the Orthodox Church in 1941 went easily and quickly.

According to his spiritual inclinations, he was inclined towards humanitarian subjects, history, and literature; in his youth he wrote poetry; talented enough. In the seminary he studied Hebrew, Hellenic, Latin. The degree of ownership of the former is unclear, Latin authors, especially Tacitus, knew well, as evidenced by Academician E.V. Tarle, who communicated with him in the 40s. Some special interest in antiquity, and specifically in Roman antiquity, prompted him to closely follow the works of R. Wipper. This growing special humanitarian interest, shortly before his death, broke through in his personal intervention in the discussion on questions of linguistics, where he sharply and justifiably fell upon the vulgar sociological schemes of the cultural and historical process of Pokrovsky-Marr, - outside of these internal predilections, his interference is inexplicable, to look for in them other, political underlying reason is unfruitful.

Favorite literary authors were Maxim Gorky, whose "Life of Klim Samgin" he re-read in the midst of the Moscow battle; Mikhail Bulgakov, in whose prose he especially appreciated "The Heart of a Dog" and kept 3 copies in his library (1 handwritten), and from the dramaturgy "Days of the Turbins", which he watched 15 times in productions of various Moscow theaters in defiance of the stupefying criticism of Lunacharsky and Svidersky, " rulers of thoughts" 20-30 years. At the same time, he put The Master and Margarita very low, considering this work an imitation of Gogol's mystical tradition, a set of talented episodes that did not fit into a single whole due to the weakness of the connecting philosophical canvas (and she, she, right!). He was interested in the work of Nikolai Erdman, in private conversations he repeatedly mentioned the play "Suicide" as excellent.

Of the poets, he immediately and exceptionally highly appreciated V. Mayakovsky, whom V.I. Lenin, for example, hardly tolerated; singled out B. Pasternak - and not for panegyrics in his honor; but especially Arseny Tarkovsky, who after the war was sharply reprimanded for trying to translate the poems of the "mediocre Georgian author Iosif Dzhugashvili" into Russian as a waste of valuable time.

After his death, another of his hobbies was discovered - he collected caricatures of himself and especially appreciated, he kept at hand in the drawer of his desk a sheet of "Punch", on which he is depicted in a women's headscarf and a skirt over riding breeches dancing a polonaise with A. Hitler.

Were these various external manifestations an expression of an irrelevant intellect, or did they hide the prevailing ideological depth - after all, for example, his great antagonist W. Churchill was a rare combination of talents and abilities, alas, on an extremely thin philosophical and pragmatic basis? One private remark by I. Stalin slightly opens the veil - somehow, speaking about Academician M.B. Mitin, he dropped a phrase; that that "helpful but average" philosopher, those. expressed in an evaluative-special sense, from the height of the idea that it carries in itself.

As an original independent complex, this idea arose outside the academic school, but developed on some initial philosophical premises, growing in the process of practical understanding of the world, and it is extremely interesting to look at the starting points of this ascent, the full result of which we will never know.

In the "Short Course on the History of the CPSU(b)", which he edited, the ecstasy of Hegelian dialectics is striking. Materialism as a system-wide representation is declared there, but the richness and passion of examples are brought down precisely on dialectics. She and especially the first two laws are the object of his sensual worship.

Revealing the situation as a kaleidoscopic combination of heterogeneous processes, contradictory aspects, ascending and descending short-term and long-term intermediate forms, she developed in him the habit of looking for the main, determining, i.e. shaped his thinking as analytical and logical rather than intuitive, it can be said that he was better protected from the most sophisticated malicious design than from ordinary stupidity.

At the same time, perceiving people and events as the manifest result of contradictions, he saw them in his view wider and deeper than the generally accepted one, feeling the presence of hidden edges of being, and in this sense he could understand A. Hitler deeper and more figuratively than Roosevelt and Churchill, the views which lay within the framework of quantitative continuity.

And, finally, it should be said about the inflexible violent inner strength that fills Stalin, galvanizing those around him with burns of voltaic discharges. F. Chaliapin for the rest of his life remembered the feeling of a crouching tiger when Stalin in soft boots walked through the living room at a meeting with M. Gorky. W. Churchill wrote in his memoirs that even he, brought up in the unflattering traditions of English parliamentarianism, felt an instinctive desire to jump up and freeze with his arms outstretched at his sides when the Soviet leader entered the hall of the next conference. However, this did not prevent the two inveterate "owls" from communicating with each other with interest until 2-3 o'clock in the morning, but it hardly lulled the alertness of the Soviet leader.

I. Stalin met the eve of World War II in the prime of experience, foresight and will, as an established military-political figure, in full possession of all the skills of state, political and ideological management, in the keen attention of a sharp-sighted, alert intellect, in the ability to perceive any cruel truth of reality and to answer it with an extremely merciless, unrestricted solution.

How was the threat of war assessed in 1939, and how realistic was it to be drawn into World War II from the very beginning?

From the middle of 1938, the war was no longer dreaming in the Pyrenean distance, but was blazing on the territory of the USSR:

In July 1938, battles took place near Lake Khasan in the Far East, which began with failures: the first attacks near Khasan led to the death of a mass of light armored tanks on the Japanese anti-tank line;

Republican Spain fell in February 1939; the end of the struggle brings extremely disturbing news - Soviet aviation is losing tactical and technical equality with the air force of a potential enemy, in recent battles, new German Messerschmidt-109E cannon fighters at a speed of 570 km / h beat Soviet I-16s at a speed of 460 km / h;

In May 1939, large-scale hostilities begin at Khalkhin Gol in Mongolia, and again failures; the first air battles end with the defeat of Soviet aviation, armed with I-15 and I-16 aircraft of the first series;

In the West, the Polish buffer is about to collapse under the blows of the Wehrmacht, and then the most dangerous threat of war in both theaters, European and Asian, becomes a topical reality!

In July 1939, I. Stalin makes his last desperate effort to create a system of mutual security in Europe at the Anglo-French-Soviet negotiations in Moscow, but when it turned out that in response to the 136 divisions proposed by K. Voroshilov, England (Drax) and France (Dumenk) ready to fork out for 10-16, everything became clear.

Was the threat of war with Germany in the summer of 1939 real, and did the actual situation in the USSR at that time require a postponement of military events? Was it worth it to give A. Hitler a free hand in Europe?

If not for the Soviet-German non-aggression pact, Hitler, in the conditions of Japanese support in the east, would undoubtedly have rushed at us - in the summer of 1939 he would have rushed at anyone, even at the Lord God in defense of the trampled Aryan rights of Satan.

By the summer of 1939, the implementation of the military program of 1934 brought Germany, which, unlike the USSR, did not have economic autarchy, to the brink of an economic disaster - all resources and sources of foreign exchange were used up, clearing trade came to a standstill, credit markets were exhausted. In May, Finance Minister Schacht reported to the Reich Chancellor that from June-July he would be forced to begin suspending payments for loans and short-term obligations. This meant the inevitable collapse first of the economy, then of the regime:

German industry could not function without Swedish iron ore, etc.;

German transport could not exist without Romanian, Soviet and other oil;

The German population could not do without Russian bread, and agriculture without cake.

Only one card was in hand - the Wehrmacht, not quite ready for a full-fledged war, but already possessing a powerful invasion apparatus.

Only one prospect remained with the Nazi elite - to recklessly rush into a war that would remove all debts and destroy all creditors!

Under the terms of July 1939, there was a "poor" choice - either the Pact or a war on 2 fronts in conditions where Germany and Japan would not be isolated from the world community and its resources, and the USSR would find itself in a political vacuum. And this is in situations where the Spanish and Far Eastern events showed the urgent need for urgent technical modernization, and the fighting in the Far East also showed the failure of a part of the top command staff (V. Blucher at Khasan, Feklenko at Khalkhin Gol). We have to remind the supporters of the "democratic", "anti-fascist" war in 1939 that for the first time we saw the flight of our divisions from the battlefield before 1941, at Khalkhin Gol (84th Perm Rifle), and this spectacle, which revealed the low combat readiness of spare parts, was so Marshal G. Kulik, who was present in the conflict area, was struck by the fact that he fell into defeatism and began to demand the surrender of Khalkhin Gol, only the firm position of the new commander G.K. Zhukov restored the situation. Under these conditions, Stalin showed an outstanding sense of reality, turning at once towards the situation that was determined in the summer of 1939, pushing aside all doubts, stepping over the instantly fallen "adoration" of the "world", "democratic" and other publics, and wresting in conditions of an extreme shortage of political levers maximum from the Pact:

Relocation of the western border, i.e. the coming line of invasion 400-700 kilometers further, casually solving the historical task unattainable for Russian tsarism - the reunification of the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples;

And he violated, as it seemed in the summer of 1939, but in reality split the German-Japanese military cooperation, strengthening the "sea" anti-American "party" as opposed to the "land" anti-Soviet in the ruling circles of Japan.

Did the conclusion of the Pact weaken Stalin's sense of war anxiety? Did he begin to rely on a 10-year (until 1949 - according to the letter of the agreement) peace period?

The facts show otherwise:

In September 1939, the personnel system for serving in the army was approved, universal military duty was fully restored, which doubled the size of the army, and the cost of maintaining it 3.5 times;

At the same time, a special regime of work was introduced in industry: an increasing transfer of production to the production of military products began;

The construction of backup plants in the East is rapidly accelerating.

Where, tell me, did those 1523 evacuated enterprises of the summer-autumn of 1941 fit - in cowsheds? cinemas? restaurants? - yes, and there too, but in the icy deserts of Siberia it is easier to find a yaranga than a cinema. ... Basically, in unfinished, but with industrial communications, boxes laid down in 1938-40! Otherwise, with all the super-success of the evacuation, the launch of production in 3-5 weeks at new sites in Siberia and the Urals was impossible!

Stalin's anxiety grows with indescribable force as the Wehrmacht advances in the West. Two of his events, which were of great importance for the imminent military period, speak directly about this:

In the summer of 1940, contrary to the opinion of the entire military-industrial leadership of the country, he introduced a ban on the production of old models of weapons from existing spare parts and components and on the transition to the production of only the latest, even not completely finished equipment, throwing his well-known words "on old aircraft it is easy fly, but they are also easy to shoot down," which meant the deadening of huge resources, the shortage of thousands of tanks and aircraft. As future events showed, this decision turned out to be correct - and the point is not only that by June 22 the Red Army received 2650 new aircraft and 1840 modern tanks, but especially that the transition to the production of the latest weapons was completed before the war, by the spring of 1941 year, and the industry no longer needed a strategic restructuring of production until 1945 according to the modernization stock adopted in 1939-1940. the main types of weapons against the German, forced to start this painful process in 1942, due to the exhaustion of the modernization stock adopted in 1935-1936. main types of weapons; or the English, the first year and a half of the war, which heavily outlived the existing production of old weapons along with new ones;

In the face of the impossibility of overcoming in a short time Germany's superiority in aluminum smelting (1st place in the world), which ensured its superiority in the production of all-metal combat vehicles, decided not to "long option" to overcome the backlog in the construction of new aluminum plants, relying on the Pact, and launched a "fire solution" to switch in the production of aircraft to wooden structures according to the type of Fokker's developments, which made it possible, by connecting the transferred 20 assembly and 20 engine plants to the existing 6 aircraft and 6 aircraft engine plants, to obtain one and a half superiority in the capacities of the aviation industry over Germany by March 1941 of the year.

In the negative part, this decision meant a 2-3 short reduction in the service life of aircraft and was justified only by the consideration that in war "the age of fighters is short", provided that it is nearby, otherwise wooden machines may simply rot prematurely!

Did Stalin admit the possibility of war in 1941?

A.M.Vasilevsky testifies that in 1940-41, Stalin repeatedly told him about the prospect of war "we will not stand aside beyond 1942," implying its outwardly coercive nature in Soviet policy. The huge military program of the 3rd Five-Year Plan was also focused on 1942. But war is a two-sided action, and what if Germany attacks in 1941?

A number of facts show that already from the middle of 1940, Stalin began to assess the situation as intolerably dangerous:

The construction of the Strategic Large Fleet is being stopped and all forces and means are being rushed to short-term military programs;

An unheard-of program for the formation of 15 tank corps is being adopted, and not in the old model of M. Tukhachevsky, thousands of herds of "light-armored horses" without any accompaniment of other branches of the armed forces, but as an association of heterogeneous "fire-armor-motorized infantry" forces interacting on the battlefield with a deadline staffing by the summer of 1941;

The formation of strategic and mobilization reserves is sharply accelerating.

But it should be recognized right away - the gigantic explosive strengthening of Germany as a result of the Western campaign of 1940, when the Anglo-French allies, instead of the year expected by military observers, were crushed in 40 days, as a result of which the military potential of the Wehrmacht more than doubled (stocks of strategic raw materials, modern weapons of 160 divisions, military industry of the entire continent) - could not be overcome by the summer of 1941. Only in April did the massive supply of new equipment to the troops begin, and any tangible result of saturating the army with these means and an average tolerable level of possession of them was to be expected by October, after the summer training campaign by tank and air formations. Moreover, the initial period of retraining is accompanied by a drop in the combat effectiveness of troops who have not yet mastered the new weapons, which should have been taken into account. The most dangerous period of a temporary drop in combat effectiveness falls on the first 2/3 of the summer military campaign, which, in the conditions of the European part of the USSR, lasts from May 10 to September 20, i.e. 142 days. Next, the famous Russian off-road, which German experts assessed worse than African in terms of temperature differences and the impact on equipment; and from November 10 winter campaign.

It was known:

The German army does not have winter support (uniforms, fuel and lubricants, means of overcoming off-road), due to the "spurt" of 1935-1939;

Moreover, it is equipped only taking into account the conditions of the war in Western Europe (the width of the tracks of armored vehicles, the transport units of the guns, the composition and number of vehicles, the availability of field airfield-based equipment).

Those. the winter campaign is completely unacceptable for it, and it can and must achieve its goals only in the summer campaign.

Given the pace of the strategic offensive in the West (approximately 10 km per day with a 400-kilometer advance) along an incomparably better road network, the Wehrmacht needed at least 140-150 days to defeat the most important centers in the European part of the USSR, i.e. German planners were only just fitting into the time frame allotted by nature.

Thus, if the decision to attack the USSR was made, it should have been carried out no later than the 2nd decade of May - after the war it turned out that the first approved version of the Barbarossa plan determined the time for the attack on May 12-15, 1941! A number of Stalin's measures indicate that he understood the gravity of this threat:

The February 1941 plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks directly orients the party, the state and society towards the military danger;

In March-April 1941, Operation Fog was carried out - the mass deportation of anti-Soviet and pro-fascist elements from the western border regions deep into the USSR, a preemptive strike was delivered on identified German intelligence centers; such "purges" are usually timed to coincide with the eve of the war, so that at the most critical moment it begins to deprive the enemy of channels of information (remember the mass executions of declassed elements in the Paris forts in August 1914 or the preventive imprisonment of the German diaspora in England in 1914 and 1940 years.);

In April, the advance of 4 armies from the internal districts to the border zone begins;

In February-May, 800 thousand servicemen of the reserve of the 1st stage are called up for military service again!

But these were passive response measures to the growing threat; which by themselves could not stop the running military skating rink - the Germans had to disrupt all the preparations for the start of the summer campaign with some kind of extraordinary blow to the German military-political machine itself. And then there is an extremely interesting Yugoslav episode!

On March 27, a group of patriotic officers led by Dušan Simović overthrows the pro-fascist government of Cvetković-Maček. With unprecedented speed, on April 5, 1941, the Soviet Union signs a treaty of friendship, non-aggression and friendly cooperation in the event of an attack by third countries with Yugoslavia. Either the appearance or the reality of a two-front, Soviet-Balkan coalition arises, in which, in addition to Yugoslavia, one can see Greece, which is already waging war against Italy; Turkey, wary of the Germans and Italians; royal circles of Romania, offended by the results of the Vienna Arbitration; English Expeditionary Force; Bulgarian-Russian sympathies...

Hitler, who has been haunted by the nightmare of the 2nd Front since World War I, reacts extremely sharply and hysterically - on April 6, the Wehrmacht's Balkan campaign begins with the invasion of Yugoslavia, which ended on June 2 with the assault on Crete. Thus, Hitler exchanged the best time to strike at the main strategic enemy for a brilliant private success, secondary in strategic terms. But was the Yugoslav option the only one? What did Stalin think if Hitler neglected the Balkans as a secondary goal and fell upon the Union? .. Only in the 20th of May did the transfer of German tank and motorized formations to Poland begin, and only in early June, after the difficult Crete campaign, did the movement of aviation units begin, which meant reaching the full readiness of the Wehrmacht in the third decade of June and, thus, the loss of 40-50 days of the summer campaign by Germany (which German officers would so regret in October-November near Moscow), and the attack itself was made strategically reckless.

Stalin could not imagine that his opponent, having discarded all "unnecessary" arguments of reason, would plan to complete the campaign, which required 140 days, not in 80 days, as nature gave, but in 40 days! True, suspecting something adventurous-like behind A. Hitler, in May, speaking to graduates of military academies, he explained in detail to the German Fuhrer the difference between the military organization of the Balkan countries, which had a total of 80 divisions without modern heavy weapons, or Western allies with their 140 modern divisions - and the USSR, which has 266 divisions with 7-8 thousand tanks and aircraft of the first line, as well as the difference between four hundred and one thousand two hundred kilometers separating, for example, Paris and Moscow from the state border, the difference between dirt roads and highways ...

Alas, the subsequent actions of the Soviet leadership were more in line with the logic of nature than with the mysticism of Berlin - the increased combat readiness was removed, the troops were bred for training camps at shooting ranges and training grounds. Should it have been done?

By June 20, pilot flying time on the new aircraft had risen to an average of 10-15 hours from April's zero; without which they would not have taken off on June 22;

The infantry went through the initial course of shelling with artillery and running in tanks (at Khalkhin Gol 84, the Perm Rifle Division ran not as a result of Japanese attacks, but simply for the first time coming under shelling);

Tank and mechanized formations were being knocked together, they are beginning to acquire a formidable reality.

What is better untrained, but concentrated connections or semi-trained, but scattered? It is extremely difficult to judge, but this situation was aggravated by two more circumstances:

The German blow hit the troops at the time of the transition to new equipment; when modern weapons had not yet been mastered, and the old ones were already being neglected, especially with regard to repairs, which had a sharp effect on the combat effectiveness of their use;

A. Hitler turned out to be a wonderful meteorologist, in response to the cautious remarks of his generals about the late start of the campaign and the possibility of bad weather in early September, stating that the weather in September would be excellent and how he looked into the water - the weather in 1941 was unusually good until early October !

They put forward other alternatives for the actions of May-June 1941:

The concentration of the main mass of troops along the line of the old border and its system of fortified regions ("Stalin's line");

Preservation of the mobilized part of the army that participated in the Soviet-Finnish war;

Refusal of summer studies in 1941 while maintaining the high readiness of concentrated troops.

Recently they even began to say:

Preemptive strike while the German army is stuck in the Balkans, i.e. fend off the adventurer with adventurism.

But was it possible to carry out the campaign in the summer of 1941 with less qualitative losses, i.e. Was the subjective factor predominant in the prevailing situation in June-August 1941?

G.K. Zhukov's assessment is significant: "Even the mobilized army of 1942 could not hold back the concentrated attack of the German troops in the South and rolled 700-1299 kilometers", especially the army of 1941. That is, the loss of territory from Brest to the Moscow region was objectively inevitable, and the situation in the summer of 1941 was generally determined not by a chain of mistakes and miscalculations, but by the current quality of the armed forces, the general state of the country's military potential at that time.

Was Stalin prepared for the military failure of the initial period of the war? How unexpected was she?

The fighting in the Khasan area in 1938, the final battles of 1938-1939. in the Pyrenees, the conflict at Khalkhin Gol in the summer of 1939 and, finally, the "winter war" of 1939-1940. provided food for thought. The results achieved were less than they could have been according to simple arithmetic of the balance of forces, namely, in comparison with the result of the number of bayonets, barrels, tanks and aircraft, which testified to the shortcomings of the military organization. Already in 1938-1940, Stalin had to repeatedly change the military leadership in the area of ​​one or another event:

In 1938, V. Blucher had to be replaced by G. Stern on Khasan;

In 1939, the insolvent command of the Soviet Group of Forces in Mongolia was replaced by the team of G.K. Zhukov;

In 1940, the entire leadership of the People's Commissariat of Defense, along with K. Voroshilov, was removed:

The results of the Soviet-Finnish war looked especially alarming, which gave rise in the West to the legend of the "USSR - Colossus with feet of clay." The war ended successfully, but not so much due to the quality of the military apparatus, but thanks to the will of Stalin and the material resources that fell on the Finns (60 divisions against 20 with a five-sevenfold superiority of technical means). The war itself was substantiated, which was recognized even by the "sworn friend" L.D. Trotsky, as the only way to "turn off" the military threat in the North-West from the White Finns, who dreamed of a "Great Finland" from the Gulf of Bothnia to the Neva and the White Sea. But the semi-victory did not allow Finland to be withdrawn from the number of opponents and 40% of the front line and up to 40 Soviet divisions in 1941-44. pulled over the Finnish section, 1 million dead Leningraders should be included in its price ...

And this is against the background of the phenomenal victories of Germany, which played with the muscles of its troops in Europe:

Jump to Scandinavia;

Ardennes;

Dunkirk;

Fantastic successes of the German airborne troops, seizing one impregnable position after another.

How feverishly Stalin in the Red Army is looking for equal talents to Kleist. Rommel, Guderian, Reichenau; how swiftly he puts forward the young military leaders discovered by him, who have passed the fire of Spain, China, Mongolia.

But the turning point is slower than the growing threat. In the summer of 1940, a German plane landed on Red Square in Moscow; in a fit of terrible rage, Stalin ordered the entire air defense leadership to be shot, but the new one, headed by G. Stern, turned out to be inconsistent, which became obvious in the spring of 1941.

Air Force Commander-in-Chief A. Loktionov was repressed for opposing the introduction of Il-2 attack aircraft and the failure to organize the retraining of flight personnel for new equipment ...

At the command-staff game of 1940 in the People's Commissariat of Defense, the inconsistency of K. Meretskov, who had just been appointed chief of the general staff, was revealed, he had to be replaced by G. Zhukov - and also not the best appointment, the outstanding commander was a mediocre staff officer ...

Could Stalin, under these conditions, expect a particularly favorable start to the war?

Moreover, in 1940-1941, we rather even overestimated the quality of the German armed forces. So:

The tank department proceeded from the presence in the German army of thick-armored tanks with 80-100 mm armor and a 75-100 mm gun, which appeared only in 1943;

Aviation proceeded from the assumption that by the summer of 1941 the Luftwaffe would be equipped with aircraft at a speed of 650-700 km per hour instead of the serial 570 km per hour; on this occasion, there was a conflict between the head of the Soviet aviation delegation in Berlin, General Gusev, and the inspector general of the Luftwaffe, Udet, when Gusev accused the latter of hiding new cars from him by showing the Me-109E at a speed of 570 km. The German general who broke out declared that he, as an officer, was responsible for his words and that he had no other cars - and he told the truth!

Artillerymen, based on the forecasts of colleagues, demanded 57 and 100 mm anti-tank guns, which were not needed until 1943-1944, and learned to hit targets moving at a speed of 70-80 km per hour, while throughout the war German armored vehicles puffed on 40-50 km;

Combined-arms commanders expected a high culture of fire interaction of German troops on the battlefield, based on the traditions of World War I, the precepts of I. Bruchmuller and the theoretical works of General Bernhard. And how amazed V.I. Chuikov was when, approaching the front line for the first time, he saw how the German artillery sluggishly scattered shells in a narrow strip, which meant an "artillery offensive" for her.

Could the merciless realist and pragmatist have overlooked the totality of all this evidence? Shouldn't he have looked for a fallback to the major refrain: "If tomorrow there is war, if tomorrow we go on a campaign, if a black cloud comes ..."?

Stalin's rejection of the start of the war on June 22 was incomprehensible to contemporaries, because the directive on the 21st had already been sent to the troops! But it was not evidence of hesitation, but of his rejection of the worst-case scenario. It was an uprising of the will against the cheerless statements of the mind. It couldn't last!

What value orientation ultimately determined the outcome of the struggle in the summer of 1941?

Any war, in that part of it that concerns only the means of violence to achieve a general political goal, solves three tasks separately or simultaneously:

Destruction (defeat) of the armed forces of the enemy;

The seizure of its territory as the exclusion of its resources from the struggle;

Destruction (undermining) of the military-economic potential.

Starting a war; The main goal of their actions, the Wehrmacht set the destruction of the armed forces of the USSR, i.e. regular army and navy, the achievement of the other two was supposed to be a consequence of the first, while the third task was practically not considered, it was understood that the capture of the territory meant the mastery of its military and economic potential; this was fully justified in the West, moreover, special air strikes on the economic centers of a defeated enemy were perceived as harmful to themselves - after all, it will go to the winner anyway; measures to destroy the enemy's military and economic potential were theoretically recognized only to the extent that the prospect of a long war arose, which was previously declared excluded as long as the struggle was continental and did not concern the United States.

Therefore, in the first hours of the war, the German command was in extreme anxiety - whether the Russians would begin a quick withdrawal of troops from the border, removing the Wehrmacht from under attack. And with what relief, even jubilation, it perceived the massive counterattacks of the Soviet troops in the afternoon of June 22 and the whole week until June 28. Everything went even better than planned! Thrown into battle by someone's petrified will, the Russians did not leave - they attacked near Siauliai, Bialystok, Brest, Kalvariya, Rivne, Lutsk, Kovel, Vladimir-Volynsky, Przemysl, in a furious impulse wedged into the location of the German troops, more and more covered by iron pincers of tank wedges. It was an exciting war - dangerous and at the same time victoriously intoxicating!

The enemy was strong, struck with an abundance of equipment - but everything happened in accordance with the canons of classical military science Clausewitz-Schlieffen! Already at the end of the second week of the war, the chief of staff of the ground forces, General G. Halder, wrote in his official diary the phrase that France was defeated in 40 days, the collapse of Russia should be expected in an even shorter time!

What was behind the desperate counterattacks of the doomed formations and corps of Khatskelevich, Mikushev, Puganov, Petrovsky, Karpezo, with what was the total death of cavalry divisions that rushed into saber attacks on tanks near Bialystok compared?

The assumption of futile attempts to prevent a deep invasion, to preserve the territory, immediately disappears. If the combat operations of the first 2-3 days were determined by the "offensive" content of the emergency packages of the pre-war General Staff, opened on alarm, then on June 25 the announced directive on the creation of a state defense zone along the line of the Western Dvina - Dnieper - Sinyukha cancels them, recognizing the entire territory to the west of its potential lost!

Along with this, the circumstances already mentioned reject the assumption of special concern for the preservation of a peacetime cadre army. The directive of June 25 meant the recognition of the defeat of the army in the border battle, and if the purely military side of the events was recognized as the main one (and what else could be in the war?), It would be necessary to simultaneously issue a directive to the troops on a quick exit from the blow by retreat in an easterly direction, doubling the the pace of retreat and proceeding to damage roads, bridges, crossings. Full motorization "in the European version" tied the German army to the roads and made it especially sensitive to such actions, which do not require much effort and time.

There is a completely opposite picture: the army can quickly retreat - it is forced to counterattack, holding on to certain areas, it can escape - it is killed! Indicative in this regard is the tragic fate of the commander of the 4th Army of the Western Front, General Klimovskikh, who militarily accomplished a feat of valor - for 4 weeks being at the forefront of the attack of the southern wing of the Army Group Center, again and again collecting and closing the units cut by the tank wedges of the Wehrmacht army, he opposed Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group and Kluge's 4th Army, never allowed encirclement and did not release Guderian into operational space in an easterly direction, which was an outstanding achievement, an instructive example of active defense with a sacrifice of territory - but shot because that he was retreating, while his comrades Boldin, Golubev, Kurochkin, Kurasov attacked boldly, but from a military point of view, were unproductive, were surrounded, quickly lost troops, but served indefinitely!

What was it in a country at war that Stalin for some time placed above the fate of the Army in the Field?

On June 25, the troops did not receive a directive to get out of the strike - a day earlier, on June 24, a discreet Evacuation Council was created without much fuss (Chairman Shvernik, Deputy Kosygin).

Some strange aberrations begin, one has only to approach this Council:

- "eyewitnesses claim" that Stalin in the first days of the war expressed unjustified optimism about the imminent turning point in the course of hostilities - but this Council was "announced" on the 24th, i.e. "decided" on the 23rd, i.e. no later than the first 48 hours (!) of the war;

- "eyewitnesses claim" that Stalin was suppressed in the first days of the war, did little business - and downright gigantic instant deployment of the activities of this Komi ... sorry! Council, which at once raised the industry of 7 republics, 60 regions, and without a hitch, without a hitch - and without a single question!

Omnipotent Bodies, Gosplan, Gossnab, VoSo, a dozen people's commissariats of the first rank in unconditional subordination and before whom? - "advice", and even some not "important". Who is Shvernik? Do you know Shvernik? Trade Unionist, Secretary of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions! And Kosygin? Who is Kosygin? People's Commissar of the textile industry! Even the people's commissariat of water transport is better known as a "execution place" according to the custom to send top officials thrown to it! And suddenly Voznesensky, Beria, Kaganovich, Zhdanov, Khrushchev bowed before them?!

"Come on, wake up! I recognize a lion by its claws!" Leibniz would have exclaimed. Who, except for I. Stalin, embodied in the all-powerful VKP (b), the most effective structure of management and rule known to history, could carry out this work; an unheard-of difficulty and grandiose consequences of which are already obvious to us? Whose police captain's cap could unleash any obstacle, unleash any ambition, harness a swan, cancer and pike into one cart? - even if A.N. Kosygin brings them ...

And who, besides this professional revolutionary conspirator, could obscure it so much that neither the allies, nor the enemies, nor we, living 6 decades later, and knowing its weight, can in no way determine its rank among the other tasks he solved in 1941 - so, important among the important.

The very sequence of decision-making - on the 24th on evacuation and on the 25th on strategic defense - indicates that Stalin considered it most important in the conditions of an extremely unfavorable start to the war to preserve the military-economic potential, under the conditions of the 30s, 80% deployed to the west Volga, preliminary work on the movement of which had already begun in 1939 under the conveniently incomprehensible sign "construction of backup plants." The creation of the Evacuation Council meant that no later than the morning of the 23rd, and most likely in the second half of the 22nd, I. Stalin came to the conclusion that the army was defeated in the border battle - perhaps he considered the initial failure in 1941 inevitable, although it was extremely difficult to put up with her, and delayed the adoption of the final decision ...

Somewhere in the twilight hours from the evening of the 22nd to the morning of the 24th, Kutuzov's dilemma in a new form arose in all its cruelty - what is more important for the fate of the country, the preservation of a peacetime cadre army, which fell under an irresistible blow, or the salvation of the military industry, for the most part caught in the invasion zone?

The results of the war, the fate of the USSR, the fate of each country in it, the fate of the world ultimately depended on the correctness of his choice:

Abandon industry and quickly withdraw deep into the country to save the 4.7 million peacetime army as the basis for the deployment of mass armed forces ... that's just what they will go into battle with in 5-6 months, when mobilization reserves begin to run low;

Or, sacrificing a cadre army, evacuate industry, relying on the country's 20-25 million draft contingent, recreate it anew ... but won't the death of cadre units become a fall of a dam, after which the roaring elements will swallow everything up? How to prevent this threat?

On June 24, the visible part of the decision was cast into a directive on the creation of an Evacuation Council - Stalin solved the dilemma in favor of industry! The cadre army had to sacrifice itself... but not to the last soldier!

In that huge maneuver of the military potential through space and time, typologically partly coinciding with the maneuver of the territory in 1812, the cadre army played not the main and exceptional, but a melody united in a common symphony:

She did not allow the enemy to quickly move inland to the military-industrial centers;

It attracted air strikes, including long-range bombers, removing them from highways, industrial sites, loading racks;

Bleeding, it retained a last-term reserve, which by December had been reduced to 40 Far Eastern divisions; - served as a bait, amused the general-Prussian arrogance with the number of prisoners, the numbers of the destroyed corps and divisions, the shower of the Iron Crosses, the fanfares of the Berlin radio, behind the silver spills of which the growing rumble of hundreds of factories rising from their places was not heard!

It was the army that paid with its blood for the transfer of 1,523 factories and 10 million personnel through space - but this price turned out to be terrible: 4,200,000 fighters and commanders!

Was it possible to avoid such victims? A simple calculation shows that in order to withdraw the troops of the Western and South-Western directions from the attack of the Wehrmacht, it was necessary to carry out a strategic retreat at an average speed of 25-30 km per day instead of 12-15 km real, i.e. the entry of German troops into the industrial centers of the South would begin 25-30 days earlier. What does this mean, says the example of Krivoy Rog, the entry of the enemy into which began in mid-August. Even with extreme exertion of forces, only the equipment of the aircraft engine plants and the Dnieper aluminum plant could be taken out by this time, while the last echelons left when the German tanks entered the industrial zones. The shortage of time was so severe that the equipment of artillery factories had to be abandoned, without which, in extreme cases, one could do without. They didn’t even have time to destroy the technical documentation, according to which the Germans in 1942 launched the production of the 120-mm Shevyrin mortar, which they highly valued. What would we have taken out if the Germans had entered a month earlier?

The picture of the development of events with "army priority" is shown by the following fact: the "released" Soviet troops left the city of Izyum so quickly that the Germans did not occupy it for 2 days; during this time, the party and Soviet apparatus of the Council for the Evacuation managed to take out the only production of optical glass in the USSR ... Among other things, this example once again shows that technically the army in 1941 could escape from the blow - and even in 1942 in the strategic retreat, with the same degree of motorization, she never allowed herself to be surrounded; the pace of the German offensive in 1942 from Kharkov to the Caucasus was approximately equal to the summer of 1941.

Finally, it remains to be said when I. Stalin changed this distribution of the ranks of his tasks as the Supreme Commander - in October 1941, by calling G.K. it was in the case of Mogilev, Smolensk, Bryansk, Kyiv, Kharkov, Tikhvin, Rostov-on-Don, i.e. putting military priority in a place independent of other circumstances, freeing it from the conditionality of saving the military-industrial potential, which had already moved beyond the Volga - The first great task of the war had been solved, the Army was now becoming the Main, but not the Only.

The decision of I.V. Stalin in 1941 foreshadowed 1945 and the greatest rise of the USSR in the 50-80s - otherwise, it postponed our death as a great power, at most until the autumn of 1942, with a very likely prospect of complete destruction ...

World history does not know the decision so difficult and so significant, which was adopted and carried out in the summer of 1941 by Joseph Stalin, the decision that nominated him as the Greatest Supreme Commander-in-Chief, who realized the war not as a game of armies and fronts with chips, but as a great mediation of Economics, Politics, Ideology , Space, Time, Will, Spirit, Armed Forces.

From now on, he stood on an immeasurable height above any domestic military leader. Sometimes they try to cover it up with G.K. Zhukov - an unsuccessful attempt. Georgy Konstantinovich was only a strategist, a leader of troops, a great commander who did not at all feel, for example, the political side of the war, but in a purely military field he was limited by his land outlook and lack of understanding of the role of the fleet in the global military picture, which did not have the best effect on his activities as Minister of Defense of the USSR in the 50s.

Appointment to the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces in 1945 was a natural ceiling for the "First Marshal" of the Stalinist cohort, those whose hands and minds the Great Commander-in-Chief made war - Rokossovsky, Vasilevsky, Shaposhnikov, Meretskov, Govorov, Tolbukhin, Konev, Timoshenko, Sokolovsky, Malinovsky !

Do we have great generals now?

Do we have a Great Commander-in-Chief?

There is a great arrogance of peoples and societies that once received a miracle and believe that it will be repeated. By the great efforts of the nation, many generations of those who lived before, a great leader, a great leader, is born! 4-5 generations of Russian revolutionaries created the alloy from which Joseph Stalin was cast!

Do not console yourself with hope - the Great Commander-in-Chief will not come!

You didn't create it!

One day, a bell rang in the editorial office of a scientific television program that went out after midnight. A male voice told the host: I like your program, I watch it with pleasure. And I really like your guests - scientists, and what they talk about. That is why, said the voice, I decided to allocate the prize to the most interesting interlocutor. And he called the amount - a million euros! More than a Nobel Prize!

Could these words be taken seriously? Moreover, the stranger refused to give his last name, profession, occupation, which clearly looked like a prank.

But, it turned out, no one played anyone. And when the winner of an unusual competition was determined, the stranger kept his word. He transferred the money - exactly one million euros - to the name of the theoretical physicist Dmitry Sergeevich Chernavsky. It was his work that was recognized as the most relevant and promising.

There will be problems with surrender, - Dmitry Sergeevich did not fail to joke.

Well, but seriously?

I just couldn't do otherwise, he said. – Today it is not easy for our science and us scientists. Therefore, it is simply immoral to appropriate the big money that has fallen on your head.

Who is he, this modern Don Quixote? And why is his work so interesting?

Dmitry Sergeevich Chernavsky is a well-known scientist in the country and abroad, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. For many years his life has been inextricably linked with the famous FIAN, the Physical Institute of the Lebedev Academy of Sciences. Having made considerable contributions to theoretical nuclear physics, in the 1960s he turned sharply towards the then new biophysics and achieved considerable success. Later he became interested in a new scientific direction - synergetics. In Greek, “syn” means joint, and “ergos” means action.

It was she, synergetics, who helped to unite the efforts of representatives of the exact, natural and human sciences in order to understand and even model the world around. The nuclear physicist Chernavsky was one of the first to take important steps in this direction. The most effect of his mathematical model is "theoretical history". "What would happen if..."

But when modeling historical processes, one must first unravel the historical “mysteries”. One of these mysteries for the scientist was the figure of Stalin.

- So much has been written about Stalin, what new have you found out?

Yes, a lot has been written about him. And the attitude towards him at different times was different. Once there was a "Song about Stalin." It was performed until the 53rd year and sounded almost like an anthem. It sang about a wise, dear and great leader. And in all the pictures he appeared as a great leader, a great politician.

But what kind of person was he? What were his desires, dreams? Many consider it to be a hidden desire for power. Only? I can't believe it... He must have had deeper, more intimate human desires. Which? Did they come true? Or have they remained dreams? All this interested me. I tried to imagine what has driven them all their lives? He tried to unravel the riddle not only of Stalin the politician, but, above all, of a man. After all, he had a difficult fate. Can he be understood or forgiven?

- And what is possible?

It's hard to forgive, but understandable. Which is what I tried to do. Although in Russian the words "understand" and "forgive" are almost synonymous. In Russia, to understand means to forgive.

- What did you understand, Dmitry Sergeevich?

Imagine, he came to power, perhaps even unexpectedly for himself, the circumstances so developed. He came to her through difficult trials, humiliation, contempt.

You are performing some new song about Stalin! After all, even his friends noted that from childhood he was cruel, cunning, vindictive, ambitious and power-hungry.

As a child, he was beaten very much - by his father, and mother, and peers. And why? It seems to me that I found the answer to this question, and the overall picture gradually formed itself. It all started from early childhood.

Joseph was born into a poor family, in the courtyard of the Prince of Gori. Important: in the yard, not at the court. Little is known about his father, Vissarion Dzhugashvili: he was a shoemaker and drank accordingly.

More is known about the mother. She served as a maid to the prince and fulfilled all his desires, as well as his guests. Keto did not honor ordinary people with attention.

Almost from the day Joseph was born, persistent rumors circulated that the real father of Soso - that was his name in childhood, was not Vissarion, but someone else. Maybe the prince himself. Or one of his "noble" guests.

The father, of course, did not like such conversations, but he most likely believed in them and, having drunk, in despair beat the unfaithful wife and another's son.

Subsequently, he left home and wandered. The exact date of his death is unknown. According to rumors, he was stabbed to death in a drunken brawl when Soso was 11 years old.

Sorry, I'll interrupt, but judging by the old photographs of Vissarion and Joseph, these two people are very similar to each other!

But, judging by the portraits of Stalin at a later time, his resemblance to Przhevalsky, a Russian nobleman, a traveler who was visiting Prince Goriy, is striking. However, this is not the point. It's not about who actually was Soso's biological father, but how he himself treated these conversations. He was smart, but weak, withdrawn and timid. Of course, all the rumors about his "father" were reported to Joseph by the yard boys, and this was the main reason for them to tease and beat Soso. And his natural timidity turned into cowardice. And how not to become a coward when everyone beats you, but you can’t answer.

- They say that everyone who was beaten badly in childhood remains a coward for life.

And very careful. Stalin learned to disguise himself. If his soul went cold with fear, no one saw it. In any case, he was never accused of cowardice. But he was not endowed with courage either, he did not climb on the rampage, he did not commit heroic deeds.

- But what about his heroic epic with Tsaritsyn?

Yes, he was sent as a commissar to Tsaritsyn when the troops of General Krasnov tried to take the city. This episode of Stalin's life was later greatly exaggerated, but the main events are correct.

He arrived, and ... chickened out. The situation was critical. The Whites were preparing for the assault, there were almost no means for protection. We made a decision: to concentrate all the artillery in only one place - the alleged direction of the attack of the Whites. Most likely, some military specialist suggested this, but Stalin agreed with him. It is believed that this decision is an example of Stalin's courage. But later he ordered all military experts - and the very one who advised him - to be drowned in the Volga, so that military secrets would not be revealed. Rather, his shameful cowardice. Which is what was done.

- The natural cruelty of Stalin.

Perhaps not so much cruelty as indifference to human life. Expediency with Stalin prevailed over cruelty, except when it came to personal enemies or offenders.

- His offenders, they say, he dreamed of punishing since childhood. Was this the purpose of his life?

Imagine, as a child, Soso had another dream that he carried through his whole life. But forever I had to hide it and dress up in other clothes. He was not ashamed, but secretly proud of his origin.

Yes, he is an illegitimate son, but a noble man. By origin, he is above all this "legitimate" yard punks. The fact that its origin is not recognized is an injustice. This is a test sent to him by God. Sooner or later, thanks to efforts, patience and intelligence, he, Joseph, will take a place worthy of his origin, and justice will prevail.

And then he will be accepted in the circle of noble, intelligent and respected people, as an equal among equals. He will share a feast with them, he will have a leisurely conversation about the eternal and beautiful, about history and art, and about the meaning of life. What did the guests of the prince usually talk about. He will be accepted among the Russian aristocracy in St. Petersburg as the son of a prince or a Russian nobleman. And his current offenders will remain servants or peasants. He will not even punish them, but at the meeting he will treat them with disdain, with contempt. Soso then very much believed that God would help him.

- And so he chose his future path - serving God and entered the seminary?

I chose the seminary because it was believed that money and connections are not needed for a spiritual career. After all, everyone is equal before God. Only patience, diligence, diligence and, of course, ability are important. You can become an abbot or even a bishop. And then... In short, Soso's dream will come true.

He studied with zeal, and the abilities really were: a phenomenal memory, observation, common sense. Studied theology, history, especially ancient and oriental despotisms. I understood how Tamerlane, Shah Abbas and others achieved power. Much has come in handy since then. I did not study Western languages ​​- there were no such subjects in the seminary.

Soon, however, Soso realized that in the spiritual field without communication and money, one would not advance far. I realized that equality before God is nothing more than words. The disappointment was painful.

- And he went to the revolutionaries ...

In those years, the activity of the Georgian Social Democrats revived, they went "to the people." Soso was also drawn into the movement.

At first, Soso listened to the speeches of the Social Democrats with rapture. Young intellectuals promised: the world will be ruled by working people, aristocrats and capitalists will lose power and influence. The smart, capable and industrious will rise - "who was nothing, he will become everything." And all this, they say, is a historical inevitability.

The dream dawned again - to make a career and "become everything." Soso joined the social democracy, drew attention to himself, even became an agitator. However...

Once, at one of the gatherings, Soso really wanted to continue the conversation, but the speaker was in a hurry: that evening, the Georgian intelligentsia gathered in one house for a musical evening dedicated to Chopin. Soso was not invited there. After all, he is a person of a completely different circle, he does not know Chopin.

And Soso so wanted to go there! He would have listened like everyone else was invited. Then I would have learned to talk about Chopin. The main thing is that he would be among those people with whom he dreamed of being on an equal footing. But they didn't let him in.

Again disappointment. In 1937 this disappointment cost the Georgian intelligentsia dearly. Nevertheless, Soso remained in the party of Russian Social Democrats: there was nowhere to go.

He soon fell into the hands of the Okhrana. There he was not beaten, not tortured, they simply offered to "report". Soso agreed without much hesitation. Got scared again? Or he did so because it did not contradict his goals, and he knew the price of talkers. And betrayal... The whole history of great leaders is a chain of betrayals.

- Did he already imagine himself a leader then?

The role of the individual in periods of sustainable development, generally speaking, is small. And any person here does what needs to be done. But in special, crisis, so-called bifurcation moments, I use the terms of the science of synergetics, in moments of instability, the role of the individual greatly increases.

And here, of course, not every person becomes a leader. This requires certain qualities that not everyone possesses: caution, courage, and ... sometimes timidity. Well, and most importantly, you need confidence that it is YOU, exactly THIS person. Confidence and ability to take on the burden of deciding the life and death of people.

- When did Stalin believe that HE was this person?

Not soon. At first, he sought to fulfill only his childhood dream. He walked towards her slowly and very carefully.

But a split occurred in the Social Democracy. A new leader appeared who said that enough chatting and having fun, we need to get down to business. That the party needs people capable of concrete deeds. Belonging to the intelligentsia is not at all obligatory and, moreover, even hinders the cause. The idle chatter that some Social Democrats (Mensheviks) are engaged in is lies and hypocrisy.

Joseph fell in love with this man. After all, he openly said what Joseph himself had long understood, but because of his caution he did not dare to say. There was hope: it is with such a person that one can enter the elite of the future society.

Following his idol, Joseph himself wrote an article stating that "the party should be like a rock." They paid attention to him, and soon he entered the circle of close associates and took a worthy place in the Bolshevik faction - as an equal among equals.

Has your childhood dream come true?

Exactly almost. Not in the form we wanted: there is no palace, no servants, and the society of equals (members of the Central Committee) is not the same. But nevertheless, these are smart, energetic people and, most importantly, they respect him, Joseph. The party also includes noblemen (Skryabin-Molotov) and even princes (Chicherin). They can talk about Chopin and Mozart, but in the party hierarchy they are no higher than him. And many are even lower.

The Mensheviks (offenders, different Tseretelis there) also occupy a prominent place in the RSDLP party, but they are forced to reckon with him, Joseph, on an equal footing. And now he, Joseph, decides whether to invite them or not to invite them to the next meeting of the Bolshevik faction.

The party, of course, is not large and not very influential, but it is united, and if things are done smartly, then it can take its rightful place in the Russian Empire.

- And he - in it, right? In any case, Stalin wrote to Lenin that he agreed to any responsible work.

Moreover, he wrote in those years when the influence of Bolshevism was clearly declining. This made a great impression on Lenin and aroused a very positive attitude towards him from Vladimir Ilyich.

- Vladimir Ilyich even once called Stalin a "wonderful Georgian."

Yes, when he wrote a work on his instructions: "Marxism and the national question", where he expressed Bolshevik views on the solution of this issue. Lenin appreciated Stalin's abilities, although he noted "Great Russian chauvinism" in him. But then the despotic manner and rudeness of the “wonderful Georgian” began to irritate him. And at the end of his life he realized that he was mistaken in him, and in his “Letter to the Congress” he wrote that Stalin should be removed from the post of general secretary.

Because, as Pushkin said in the tragedy “Mozart and Salieri”, “Genius and villainy are two things that are incompatible” ... Did Lenin think so?

But that will be much later. In the meantime, Joseph was slowly advancing in the Bolshevik Party. Received party nicknames - it was supposed to. The first of them - Koba - reflected the Georgian origin and corresponded to the middle link of the party hierarchy. The nickname Stalin meant that he had been assigned the highest rank, that he was already the leader of the proletariat. May not be the most important.

Each society and even party has its own rules of conduct, its own hierarchy, its own symbols and heraldry. Party nicknames were not just assigned, but also approved. Nicknames: Stalin, Sverdlov, Molotov - the highest party heraldry, something like a count's coat of arms with a lion, an eagle or a bear. They are inherited - children also become Stalins, Sverdlovs, Molotovs.

Before the revolution, the position taken in the society of Joseph Stalin almost suited him, and he did not strive higher.

Current life - bank robbery, prison, exile, in short, ordinary party work did not cause any special emotions. Personal life - women, family, children - were not the main things in Stalin's life. In the circle of close people, he often dissolved. In an official setting, he was restrained, laconic and almost always quite correct.

- All his life he was a two-faced Janus!

Lenin since 1900 actually lived in exile. Party affairs in Russia until 1917 were decided independently, and Stalin played a significant role in this. Prior to Lenin's arrival, he directed the activities of the Central Committee and the St. Petersburg Committee of the Bolshevik Party, and was a member of the editorial board of the Pravda newspaper.

In February 1917, the Russian Bolsheviks did not take an active part. They were waiting for what it would lead to, and were preparing, if necessary, to take some place in the future government. Not the most important thing, but still ... Stalin was fine with that.

Still would! To be in the government, to finally discuss issues on an equal footing with ministers, princes and counts! ..

But in April 1917, Lenin returned to Russia with his emigrants, and immediately everything turned upside down. The emigrants pushed aside the Russian Bolsheviks and took leading positions in the leadership of the party.

Stalin was again called Koba. Again injustice, again he is a man not of their circle, not the same origin, not the same upbringing. However, he remained in the Central Committee.

And even became one of the leaders of the October armed uprising. At least that's how it's always been thought.

Although he was against the coup. Causes? If the coup is successful, then for the new leaders it is still "not their own." It’s not that they don’t like them, they destroy them - he knew this from the history of the East. If the coup fails, then the entire party will be destroyed, and then he is nobody again.

Lenin insisted on a coup, and it happened surprisingly easily. Difficulties began later.

- Stalin was mistaken in his forecasts: the party remained, and he was in it, he did not even fly out of the Central Committee!

But it still turned out to be “not mine”. And in those years, Stalin behaved quietly, tried not to irritate the new leaders - Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, who fought for key positions in the Central Committee and government. Even as a member of the Central Committee, he did not try to enter their circle - it was impossible. These leaders did not see any special merit in Stalin. And Trotsky generally considered him mediocrity. And in the Central Committee, not publicly, but among themselves, as soon as they didn’t call them!

Stalin carried out individual orders of the party, but basically, as they say, "lay low" and endured ridicule. Because he understood that he was nobody without a party. Not only an equal among equals - no one! Therefore, he was silent. Waited and waited. But he did not forgive the humiliation, that's for sure!

- Yes, anyone would not forgive in his place! However, not everyone would be able to endure so long.

And very subtly, gradually, in an oriental cunning way to make a career. He turned out to be a good strategist.

A place was prepared in the party - not the first, even, most likely, the last - "secretary". Stalin occupied it, but literally asked Zinoviev and Kamenev to add the word "general" to the title. They agreed, they say, what's the difference! “Whatever the child is not amused!” If only to stay away...

They did not know that in the East a name, sometimes the most insignificant, acquires greatness and power.

Tamerlane was called not a shah, not a khan - an emir. This is something like "ruler", "official". And what power did this "official" have? Stalin knew well and hoped that the time would come when the words "general secretary" would mean no less than "emir."

- And our quiet man began to slowly turn into a cruel tyrant ...

At first, he did not take an active part in senseless cruelties: he did not shoot priests, nobles and merchants. Moreover, he even condemned these cruelties, but, of course, not openly.

And what about the drowned military experts in Tsaritsyn? Yes, and other activities. Probably, it was not for nothing that he received the Order of the Red Banner on the Petrograd Front .... Even Trotsky wrote about him: "This cook can only cook spicy dishes."

Well, if we compare, then it was Trotsky, and not Stalin, who was famous for his cruelty. He was obsessed with the idea of ​​a world revolution, and for this, according to his calculations, it was necessary to destroy the peasant kulaks, to rob them. Also: it was necessary to destroy the Cossacks, as opponents of the internationalists. All this was calculated and stated with cold cynicism. Even the figure of those killed was called - 10 million people. Of course, this shocked society, and Trotsky was first sent into exile, and then ended up abroad. Of course, Stalin contributed to this fall.

- But after all, these 10 million were eventually destroyed by Stalin during the period of collectivization?

He chose the path of collectivization - in essence, it was the same plan of Trotsky, almost without changes. But instead of Trotsky's cold cynicism, this plan was covered up with hypocritical, deceitful words about collectivization, industrialization, and so on.

Well, why false? After all, all plans were fulfilled and the country was really turned into a great power. True, at a very high price.

And here, apparently, it was also not cruelty that prevailed, but indifference to people's lives. The main thing is to make a decision. The time was like this. Terrible time.

And it has gone on too long...

It began, by the way, with the decrees of grandfather Lenin.

- Also a genius and a villain at the same time ...

I will answer you with the words of one of the heroes of the actor Bronevoy: mind you, I didn’t say that!

But he was cruel to the enemies of the revolution, and Stalin was cruel to his associates. He destroyed the old Bolsheviks with the same indifference.

These heroes of the Civil War only knew how to fight. Yes, they helped carry out collectivization with an iron fist, identify its enemies and deal with them.

But they couldn't lead the country, they couldn't stay in the country at all. Such people have always been destroyed. There are many examples of this in history, and there are practically no exceptions. This is the law of history, and Stalin understood this well. The old Bolsheviks were doomed.

In 1937, when Lenin's relatives came to Stalin to ask for the old Bolsheviks, he replied:

Who are you asking for? These are the killers!

And it was true. It was also true, however, that Stalin himself was a murderer.

- And the 37th year is the peak of the cruelty of the leader!

Now they talk a lot about this year, although its choice is very conditional: both the 35th and 36th are no better. The thirty-seventh was an inevitable consequence of collectivization.

Although the number of victims of the 37th is an order of magnitude smaller than during collectivization. Historians call the figure: about one and a half million. They were just those who did collectivization, participated in it directly or indirectly.

However, now about ten million peasants, kulaks and Cossacks are almost forgotten. But they remember about a million old Bolsheviks.

Probably because they were not "enemies of the people", but his former comrades-in-arms. After all, Stalin removed them as witnesses to his former humiliations?

- "And now, not a bribe, but a punishment, the year 37 came to them" - this is a line of the poet Mandel-Korzhavin. Then almost everyone who condemned Stalin at the XIII Bolshevik Congress of the RSDLP was destroyed. All Bolshevik emigrants were destroyed. It was those who called him not Stalin, but Koba. They did not even suspect how much this seemingly friendly nickname offends and humiliates him.

And why actually humiliated? I once happened to visit the village of Kazbegi, where this Georgian poet was born, and there I found out: Stalin chose the pseudonym Koba for himself by the name of the hero of one of Kazbegi's novels - a noble robber who was the idol of young Soso.

Do you know what this novel was called? "Parricide". Does the title mean anything? Remember the assumption that Vissarion Dzhugashvili died in a drunken brawl when Joseph was 11 years old? And once, in his memoirs, the leader admitted how, as a child, defending himself, he threw a knife at his father and almost killed him.

Maybe he killed?

Who knows. Although Stalin himself in 1909 claimed that his father was still alive. But back to thirty-seven. Then Stalin destroyed everyone who treated him at one time with disdain. The nickname Koba reminded me of that time. But in general, he had not so many such personal enemies.

Why were tens of thousands destroyed?

The losses of the 37th are mainly the result of historical events: almost world isolation, constant expectation of intervention, or war with neighbors, or an internal coup. The consequence, I repeat, is inevitable.

And Stalin's cruelty, his evil will? Well, of course, there was cruelty and ill will. And the confidence that only in this way, with a firm hand, can one govern a great country.

Interestingly, many famous people admired Stalin and glorified him. For example, Boris Pasternak, according to Chukovsky, simply raved about Stalin and dedicated poems to him. And even some foreign politicians - De Gaulle, Churchill - spoke of him with respect and reverence. And Joseph Davis, the US ambassador to the USSR, for many years was of the opinion that Stalin did everything right, and that repressions were inevitable. And we still have a lot of people just longing for a firm hand! ..

Those who have not been touched in the past by this same hand. Many then lived in fear. Yes, and Stalin himself was afraid that this cup would not pass him!

At the beginning of the war, he was seriously scared - this is a historical fact. For three days he was at a loss and was afraid that those whom he led to the war would come and punish him. They came. But the humble ones, with a request: “own us!” And he took control again.

Much has been written about the war. Some wrote that Stalin, as a commander, was more of a hindrance than a help. Others, that he listened carefully to the opinion of military experts and made decisions that were considered and often suggested by others.

Probably both are correct. Of course, he made mistakes, like any great leader. But he made fewer mistakes than Hitler, who also interfered in the affairs of the military. One way or another, the winners are not judged.

Stalin believed that they were being judged. And as before, he planted and planted ... Did everyone continue to be afraid? After all, all around him only praises were sung. I have achieved everything, and I can even say that I have exceeded my dream. What else was needed?

After the Great Victory, it seemed that the time had come when it was possible to relax, think about what he had achieved and what he had not achieved, and his age corresponded to that - he was under 70 then.

- He even tried to resign... But he was not released.

This was later, in 1952. And immediately after the war, his struggle with the "enemies of the people" continued. Massive campaigns began: against the departure from the "party principle", against the "abstract academic spirit", "objectivism", "anti-patriotism", "rootless cosmopolitanism" and so on ... And the famine of 1946-47 claimed the lives of about a million Human. In total, the loss of the population during the period of his reign amounted, according to various estimates, to over 20 million people.

- As one of his former friends said: "It was a triumph for him to achieve victory and inspire fear."

But did his dream come true? Here is the question. Yes, he has attained supreme power. Now he can invite scientists, composers, singers, writers, poets. He can decide with whom to talk and on what topics. But... not with anyone.

There are no those princes, counts and nobles with whom he dreamed of being on an equal footing ...

There are no equals either, lackeys are all around - they cater, servility. And even the remnants of the tribal aristocracy behave in such a way that it is shameful and disgusting to look at!

The real count and talented writer Alexei Tolstoy went to Germany and began to carry junk there, like the last thief in the market. I had to pull:

Tell our Soviet count so that honor knows!

Who to talk to? The childhood dream blurred, disappeared - he alone, the ruler, and there are no equals.

There are talented, independent, proud, but they themselves do not want to communicate with him, they do not like him. Bulgakov, Prokofiev, Shostakovich - you can invite them. But they will sit tense, and there will not be that heart-to-heart conversation that they dreamed about in childhood.

- Dmitry Sergeevich, you sympathize with him!

No. I'm just trying to get into his skin. What was he thinking, losing all his friends?

- Probably about the world revolution?

The world revolution never fascinated him. Like world domination. Health was deteriorating, and most importantly, there was loneliness, complete loneliness. Even the closest, beloved people - Vasily and Svetlana - were far away.

He felt that he would not live so long, and the doctors said the same. He was tormented by the question: who should leave the country?

It would be better if he, caring, repented of his unthinkable sins before death! And he returned the innocent people from the camps, asking for forgiveness from them on his knees.

Did he think about declaring himself emperor? There is a short talented story by Viktor Nekrasov on this topic. Apparently, fantasy, but - you read and involuntarily believe.

Stalin allegedly invited him, Nekrasov, and asked:

What if I proclaim myself emperor?

Nekrasov did not answer yes or no.

- And the people would support! I would try otherwise!

At the very least, he remained silent. He, the people, does not care what the king, what the secretary general. The main thing is to have a head in the country.

The Communists would have supported in the majority. Especially if the leader announced that he was the most communist monarch. It sounds absurd at first glance. But after all, it was like this: the most Christian monarch, although theologians at first perceived this as absurd, and then they got used to it.

And why didn't Stalin become emperor? Did not have time? But why would he? After all, he had more power than the emperor. And the Soviet Union was tacitly called an empire.

Yes, the country is great, but how is it governed? General Secretary and Politburo. It turns out not a power, but some kind of order, like the Templars, where the master and the council. And formally, the Politburo can meet at any moment and depose him.

And after all more than once it was so in religious orders. To depose then meant: to take the sacred dagger and thereby solve the problem.

Of course, the Politburo is not capable of this - they are afraid of it. Fear now, what about later?

You might think that they did not deal with emperors, kings! The same Boris Godunov - he ruled firmly, smartly, and when he weakened, it was known what became.

Stalin hoped that then he would be able to raise worthy people to the ranks and princes. The emperor has such a right. And the power to inherit.

- Children?

No, he did not take his children into account. And he could not choose who to rely on. For the army? Zhukov? It is quite possible for him to welcome the title - Count Orel-Kursky, after the place of the legendary battle. There was Suvorov - Count Rymniksky.

Zhukov, perhaps, will support him. But what if he then declares himself ruler? After all, Tamerlane did just that. He was a military leader, and then he stabbed his master. No need for Zhukov. Who else to choose? Iosif Vissarionovich decided to wait. And while not changing the management structure. And just in case, Zhukov was exiled away, to the Far East.

Always cautious, towards the end of his life, Stalin became a pathological coward. I spent the night in one place, then in another. Yes, and at the dacha it was arranged in such a way that ten rooms were identical, very modest, ascetic, and in which one he would spend the night, even he decided at the last moment - he was afraid of a palace coup!

How about atone for your sins?

By the end of life, every person who has received a religious upbringing turns to God. Stalin, according to eyewitnesses, prayed before. He smashed churches, killed and exiled priests. And he prayed.

Many people, many souls he ruined - for what? For the sake of your dream or for the sake of the Great Empire? Did he have the right? What will he say to God, standing before him?

Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great were also ruined, and also for the sake of the Great Country, but they were anointed to the kingdom, they had the right to control destinies, from birth they were granted the right to execute and pardon.

And he? He was not anointed. He himself, by cunning, perseverance, and intelligence, received this right from people. And he knew the value of people.

He invited the patriarch and dreamed: a majestic one would come, in all magnificent attire. I would fall on my knees before him, kiss his hand, say: “Father, forgive your sins! Have mercy and bless!"

But ... an old man came in civilian clothes, where is there on his knees!

And with bitterness and resentment, the words were heard: “You are afraid of me, you are not afraid of HIM!”

On that fateful night, he spent the night in Kuntsevo, at the dacha. Felt bad. Nobody came to his aid. And I could not pray - there was no icon in this cell.

No one forgave his sins that night. Big sins. He died alone, never waiting, never seeing the golden dream of his childhood come true.

But Stalin became the only Soviet leader for whom a memorial service was performed by the Russian Orthodox Church. Pray for the bloodsucker. But what did the holy fool say to Boris Godunov? “The Mother of God does not order to pray for the king-herod” ...

Nevertheless, he was buried. And many have forgiven. Recently, attitudes towards him have been divided. For some, Stalin is still a cruel villain, bloody and ruthless, who killed millions and millions of people. For others, he is a major, even a great statesman, a genius who managed to revive the Russian empire in the form of the Soviet Union, the inspirer of many victories, including over fascism. As the recent television project “Name of Russia” showed, there were many admirers of Stalin in our country.

- Well, God bless him, if only this would never happen again!

Unfortunately, it can happen again. Human losses over the past decades are estimated at approximately the same figures as during collectivization. And history is inexorable, history does not forgive such losses. So the 37th year is by no means excluded. Only it may not be for the sake of the triumph of communist ideas, but, perhaps, for the sake of democracy. At first glance, democratic dictatorship seems absurd, but in fact it is quite probable and no less bloody.

It turns out that the spirit of Stalin hovers over us for a reason? Who is he after all: a heroic criminal, or a criminal hero? Villain or genius?

It is a symbol of the historical era.

- I wonder what symbol our era will have. Wait and see?

Do you know what this Roman proverb actually sounds like? "We'll see if we live." And this is something else...

Years go by, but history is in no hurry to put everything in its place. The name of Joseph Stalin still causes heated debate. There are more and more books and studies dedicated to this man, but neither chroniclers nor journalists have come to a consensus - who really was the man who led the country for 30 years in the most difficult period of its history. Without claiming to be the ultimate truth, and understanding the magnitude of the issue, let's try to analyze at least some of the arguments that opponents cite, characterizing Stalin as a cruel tyrant, or as a talented leader.

The arguments of those who consider Joseph Stalin a bloody tyrant

1. During the reign of Stalin, more than 100 million people were repressed.3

2. From May 1937 to September 1939, the entire command staff of the Red Army in the amount of 40 thousand people was destroyed.

3. Before the Great Patriotic War itself, the most talented military leaders of the Red Army were destroyed.

4. Stalin deliberately artificially arranged the famine of 1932-33, systematically withdrawing all the food from the peasant farms.

5. The victory in the Great Patriotic War was won by the Soviet people, not Stalin.

Arguments of those who consider Joseph Stalin a great leader

1. When assessing the number of those repressed during the Stalinist regime, figures from 10 to 100 million sound. However, during the years of Stalin's rule, the annual population growth averaged 3 million people.

Many studies of human rights activists mention 40 thousand repressed commanders, who make up almost the entire leadership of the Red Army. There is no reason for this amount.

2. The commanders repressed in 37-39 were elevated to the rank of "geniuses of strategy and tactics." In fact, the victories of the Red Army in the 1920s were ensured by the military specialists of the former Tsarist Army. The laurels of victories were reaped by the red commanders.

3. The myth that Stalin purposefully staged a famine in the country in 1932-33 remains one of the most popular on the territory of modern Ukraine.

Here I got acquainted with the transcript of the meeting of the Military Council under the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR on June 4, 1937, dedicated to the Tukhachevsky conspiracy http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/2696813.html Well, what can I say - Zhvanetsky is resting Please note that these are not open Stalinist courts, but this they decide between themselves! Pay attention to the level of Stalin's leaders Pay attention to how the system works It's just ridiculous, someone else wants to convince me of the genius of Stalin? Who else will prove to me that Stalin won the war? PS There, even corruption was revealed! Someone stole 100 bucks of representative Belov. For example, I am shy. How many times have I had to perform, and every time I perform, I feel like I'm performing for the first time. When I catch the eye of Comrade Stalin or Voroshilov, I am always embarrassed, I sweat, and, to be honest, I must have looked like a fool before Comrade Stalin. Will ask me...

Here I got acquainted with the transcript of the meeting of the Military Council under the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR on June 4, 1937, dedicated to the Tukhachevsky conspiracy http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/2696813.html

Well, what can I say - Zhvanetsky is resting
Please note that these are not open Stalinist courts, but they resolve issues among themselves!
Pay attention to the level of Stalin's leaders
Pay attention to how the system works

It's just ridiculous, someone else wants to convince me of the genius of Stalin? Who else will prove to me that Stalin won the war?

PS There, even corruption was revealed! Someone stole 100 executive bucks

Belov. For example, I am shy. How many times have I had to perform, and every time I perform, I feel like I'm performing for the first time. When I catch the eye of Comrade Stalin or Voroshilov, I am always embarrassed, I sweat, and, to be honest, I must have looked like a fool before Comrade Stalin. They will ask me - I need five minutes to swing; and Comrade Stalin did not listen for more than five minutes. And it turned out that all these Tukhachevskys, yakirs and oboreviches, all this bastard, she was not shy about anything and felt better than us.

Stalin. Waste-ta, rata-ta-ta!

Belov. Yes Yes. Therefore, they represented the army, and commanders, and political workers in any form.

Stalin. They still studied military affairs.

Belov. So I consider it necessary to report to you that they studied military affairs in a fraudulent manner.

Stalin. For themselves, they still knew military affairs.

Belov. I'll tell you now. I began to study in 1919. They began to study from childhood. The difference, of course, is huge, and, undoubtedly, that until 24-1925. they were taller than us. But from the moment they felt like nobles - and this was obvious to everyone - they stopped studying, and we - myself and a number of other comrades: Fedko, Uritsky, Dybenko - we literally suffered over our studies. After all, how did that son of a bitch Uborevich work? At 2-3 o'clock in the morning he calls his subordinates, and these subordinates are idiots, then they complain that he did not sleep at night, he works around the clock. I haven't slept many nights in my life...

Stalin. But no one was called?

Belov. No. And to be honest, I must say that sometimes you work at night and you want it to go unnoticed, because they say unpleasantly: you don’t have time to work during the day, which means some kind of imperfection in the structure. I don’t know who I can compete with in terms of the fact that I didn’t get enough sleep. I did not compete with anyone, but I never called a single subordinate later than 12 at night.

Voroshilov. Also called, people complained!

Belov. Well, there are subordinates who complain if you call them at 10 o'clock. And subordinates are idiots, not all are good. (General laughter.) So these people very skillfully rubbed the glasses of both subordinates and leaders. After all, their overall development was great.

Stalin. Not good.

Belov. Gloss was.

Stalin. If they had a military development, then the general development of Tukhachevsky, Uborevich, and Yakir was small.

Belov. It seemed to me that they had a gloss.

Stalin. The gloss is a different matter.

Belov. They were able and able to talk. For example, I can't smile when I don't want to. (General laughter.) People's Commissar often scolded me: why are you like a biryuk. And I can't do otherwise. I can not. And they, for example, hated me. Hated for what?

Stalin. They thought you were retarded.

Belov. Yes, they thought that I was backward, they thought that I was a lackey.

Voroshilov. Kholuy?

Belov. Yes, Voroshilov lackey.

Belov. They, Comrade Stalin, praised me from time to time - rightly so; but how they used my crazy wife to make me...

Stalin. They were careful about their faces, they did not say a single word to me. They were careful in front of me.

Belov. They acted through their wives. How Uborevich used his madam. I had a crazy wife, but that, comrades, was a misfortune.

Voroshilov. They say it's bad luck.

Belov. Not a single doctor, not a single idiot could confirm this. She was also crazy.

Voroshilov. Some of your friends said that she should be put in a lunatic asylum.

Belov. And then they would say: "Belov put his wife in a madhouse." In a word, this bastard used everything. And by the way, I have to report what the system was like. They beat me in Turkestan, they beat me with mortal combat, they beat me crazy, they beat me in Moscow, they beat me in Berlin, and they beat me with the same weapon. And here's what I'm leading to: I was the same idiot, what a politically underdeveloped person I was - I was embarrassed to report to Comrade Voroshilov about the bullying in Berlin. Now, of course, all this is simple, but even then it was simple and clear, but I did not make a detailed report to Comrade Voroshilov.
I came to Berlin. Suppose I am an undeveloped person according to a number of people. I came to Berlin to study, and I needed more than anyone to help. Tov. Voroshilov said that everything would be done, and Berzin wrote to his military attache and said that everything would be provided. I'm coming to Berlin. Above me from beginning to end, Putna begins to mock me. Representative. You all know that representative offices in a bourgeois state are of great importance. Uborevich and Yakir were given $150 a month for entertainment expenses, but I was immediately put on $50.

Stalin. Who arranged it?

Belov. Putna.

Stalin. And did you endure it?

Belov. I didn’t even write to Comrade Voroshilov, I endured it.

Stalin. So you need it! (Laugh.)