MASS REPRESSIONS OF THE 1920s EARLY 1950s in the USSR - coercive measures against large groups of the population, used by the Soviet government and the Communist Party in solving economic and political problems, to suppress dissent and speeches against the authorities, non-economic coercion to work.

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Estimates of the number of victims of Stalin's repressions differ dramatically. Some call numbers in the tens of millions of people, others are limited to hundreds of thousands. Which of them is closer to the truth?

Who is guilty?

Today our society is almost equally divided into Stalinists and anti-Stalinists. The former draw attention to the positive transformations that took place in the country during the Stalin era, the latter urge not to forget about the huge numbers of victims of the repressions of the Stalinist regime.
However, almost all Stalinists recognize the fact of repressions, however, they note their limited nature and even justify them with political necessity. Moreover, they often do not associate repressions with the name of Stalin.
Historian Nikolay Kopesov writes that in the majority of investigative cases on those repressed in 1937-1938 there were no resolutions of Stalin - everywhere there were sentences of Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria. According to the Stalinists, this is evidence that the heads of the punitive organs were engaged in arbitrariness and, in confirmation, they quote Yezhov: “Who we want, we execute, whom we want, we have mercy.”
For that part of the Russian public that sees Stalin as the ideologist of repression, these are just particulars that confirm the rule. Yagoda, Yezhov and many other arbiters of human destinies themselves became victims of terror. Who but Stalin was behind all this? they ask rhetorically.
Doctor of Historical Sciences, chief specialist of the State Archives of the Russian Federation Oleg Khlevnyuk notes that despite the fact that Stalin's signature was not on many hit lists, it was he who sanctioned almost all mass political repressions.

Who got hurt?

Even more significant in the controversy surrounding the Stalinist repressions was the question of the victims. Who and in what capacity suffered during the period of Stalinism? Many researchers note that the very concept of “victims of repression” is rather vague. Historiography has not worked out clear definitions on this matter.
Undoubtedly, convicts, imprisoned in prisons and camps, shot, deported, deprived of property should be counted among the victims of the actions of the authorities. But what about, for example, those who were subjected to "hard interrogations" and then released? Should there be a separation between criminal and political prisoners? In what category should we classify the “nonsense” caught in petty single thefts and equated with state criminals?
The deportees deserve special attention. To what category do they belong - repressed or administratively deported? It is even more difficult to decide on those who fled without waiting for dispossession or deportation. They were sometimes caught, but someone was lucky enough to start a new life.

Such different numbers

Uncertainty in the question of who is responsible for the repressions, in identifying the categories of victims and the period for which the victims of repressions should be counted lead to completely different figures. The most impressive figures came from the economist Ivan Kurganov (referenced by Solzhenitsyn in his novel The Gulag Archipelago), who calculated that between 1917 and 1959, 110 million people became victims of the internal war of the Soviet regime against its own people.
This number Kurganov includes the victims of famine, collectivization, peasant exile, camps, executions, civil war, as well as "the neglectful and slovenly conduct of the Second World War."
Even if such calculations are correct, can these figures be considered a reflection of Stalin's repressions? The economist, in fact, answers this question himself, using the expression "victims of the internal war of the Soviet regime." It is worth noting that Kurganov counted only the dead. It is difficult to imagine what figure could have appeared if the economist had taken into account all the victims of the Soviet regime in the specified period.
The figures cited by the head of the human rights society "Memorial" Arseniy Roginsky are more realistic. He writes: “On the scale of the entire Soviet Union, 12.5 million people are considered victims of political repression,” but he adds that up to 30 million people can be considered repressed in a broad sense.
The leaders of the Yabloko movement, Elena Kriven and Oleg Naumov, counted all categories of victims of the Stalinist regime, including those who died in the camps from diseases and harsh working conditions, the dispossessed, the victims of hunger, those who suffered from unjustifiably cruel decrees and received excessively severe punishment for minor offenses in the force of the repressive nature of the legislation. The final figure is 39 million.
Researcher Ivan Gladilin notes on this occasion that if the number of victims of repression has been counted since 1921, this means that it is not Stalin who is responsible for a significant part of the crimes, but the “Lenin Guard”, which immediately after the October Revolution unleashed terror against the White Guards , clergy and kulaks.

How to count?

Estimates of the number of victims of repression vary greatly depending on the method of counting. If we take into account those convicted only under political articles, then according to the data of the regional departments of the KGB of the USSR, given in 1988, the Soviet authorities (VChK, GPU, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, MGB) arrested 4,308,487 people, of which 835,194 were shot.
Employees of the "Memorial" society, when counting the victims of political trials, are close to these figures, although their figures are still noticeably higher - 4.5-4.8 million were convicted, of which 1.1 million were shot. If we consider everyone who went through the Gulag system as victims of the Stalinist regime, then this figure, according to various estimates, will range from 15 to 18 million people.
Very often, Stalinist repressions are associated exclusively with the concept of the "Great Terror", which peaked in 1937-1938. According to the commission headed by academician Pyotr Pospelov to establish the causes of mass repressions, the following figures were announced: 1,548,366 people were arrested on charges of anti-Soviet activities, of which 681,692 thousand were sentenced to capital punishment.
One of the most authoritative experts on the demographic aspects of political repression in the USSR, historian Viktor Zemskov, names a smaller number of those convicted during the years of the Great Terror - 1,344,923 people, although his data coincides with the number of those who were shot.
If the dispossessed kulaks are included in the number of those subjected to repressions in Stalin's time, then the figure will grow by at least 4 million people. Such a number of dispossessed is given by the same Zemskov. The Yabloko party agrees with this, noting that about 600,000 of them died in exile.
The victims of Stalinist repressions were also representatives of some peoples who were subjected to forcible deportation - Germans, Poles, Finns, Karachays, Kalmyks, Armenians, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars. Many historians agree that the total number of deportees is about 6 million people, while about 1.2 million people did not live to see the end of the journey.

Trust or not?

The above figures are mostly based on the reports of the OGPU, NKVD, MGB. However, not all documents of the punitive departments have been preserved, many of them were purposefully destroyed, many are still in the public domain.
It should be recognized that historians are very dependent on statistics collected by various special agencies. But the difficulty is that even the available information reflects only the officially repressed, and therefore, by definition, cannot be complete. Moreover, it is possible to verify it from primary sources only in the rarest cases.
The acute shortage of reliable and complete information often provoked both the Stalinists and their opponents to name radically different figures in favor of their position. “If the “rights” exaggerated the scale of the repressions, then the “lefts”, partly from dubious youth, having found much more modest figures in the archives, were in a hurry to make them public and did not always ask themselves whether everything was reflected - and could be reflected - in the archives ", - notes the historian Nikolai Koposov.
It can be stated that estimates of the scale of Stalinist repressions based on the sources available to us can be very approximate. Documents stored in the federal archives would be a good help for modern researchers, but many of them have been re-classified. A country with such a history will jealously guard the secrets of its past.

The history of Russia, as well as other former post-Soviet republics in the period from 1928 to 1953, is called the “Stalin era”. He is positioned as a wise ruler, a brilliant statesman, acting on the basis of "expediency." In fact, they were driven by completely different motives.

Talking about the beginning of the political career of the leader who became a tyrant, such authors shyly hush up one indisputable fact: Stalin was a recidivist convict with seven “walkers”. Robbery and violence were the main form of his social activity in his youth. Repression became an integral part of the state course pursued by him.

Lenin received in him a worthy successor. “Creatively developing his teachings,” Iosif Vissarionovich came to the conclusion that he should rule the country by methods of terror, constantly instilling fear in his fellow citizens.

The generation of people whose mouths can speak the truth about Stalin's repressions is leaving... Are the newfangled articles that whitewash the dictator a spit on their suffering, on their broken life...

Leader who sanctioned torture

As you know, Iosif Vissarionovich personally signed the death lists for 400,000 people. In addition, Stalin toughened repression as much as possible, authorizing the use of torture during interrogations. It was they who were given the green light to complete lawlessness in the dungeons. It was directly related to the notorious telegram of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated January 10, 1939, which literally unleashed the hands of the punitive authorities.

Creativity in introducing torture

Let us recall excerpts from the letter of commander Lisovsky, who is being abused by the satraps of the leader ...

"... A ten-day conveyor interrogation with a cruel, vicious beating and no way to sleep. Then - a twenty-day punishment cell. Then - forcing to sit with arms raised up, and also to stand bent over, with his head hidden under the table, for 7-8 hours ..."

The desire of the detainees to prove their innocence and their failure to sign fabricated charges caused an increase in torture and beatings. The social status of the detainees did not play a role. Recall that Robert Eikhe, a candidate member of the Central Committee, had his spine broken during interrogation, and Marshal Blucher died from beatings during interrogations in Lefortovo prison.

Leader's motivation

The number of victims of Stalin's repressions was not tens, not hundreds of thousands, but seven million starved to death and four million arrested (general statistics will be presented below). Only the number of those shot was about 800 thousand people ...

How did Stalin motivate his actions, boundlessly striving for the Olympus of power?

What does Anatoly Rybakov write about this in Children of the Arbat? Analyzing the personality of Stalin, he shares with us his judgments. “A ruler who is loved by the people is weak because his power is based on the emotions of other people. Another thing is when people are afraid of him! Then the power of the ruler depends on him. This is a strong ruler!” Hence the leader's credo - to inspire love through fear!

Steps adequate to this idea were taken by Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. Repression became his main competitive tool in his political career.

Beginning of revolutionary activity

Iosif Vissarionovich became interested in revolutionary ideas at the age of 26 after meeting V. I. Lenin. He was engaged in robbery of funds for the party treasury. Fate took him 7 links to Siberia. Stalin was distinguished by pragmatism, prudence, promiscuity in means, rigidity towards people, egocentrism from a young age. Repressions against financial institutions - robberies and violence - were his. Then the future leader of the party participated in the Civil War.

Stalin in the Central Committee

In 1922, Joseph Vissarionovich received a long-awaited career opportunity. Sick and weakening, Vladimir Ilyich introduces him, along with Kamenev and Zinoviev, to the Central Committee of the party. Thus, Lenin creates a political counterbalance to Leon Trotsky, who really claims to be the leader.

Stalin simultaneously heads two party structures: the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee and the Secretariat. In this post, he brilliantly studied the art of party undercover intrigues, which was useful to him later in the fight against competitors.

Stalin's position in the system of red terror

The red terror machine was launched even before Stalin came to the Central Committee.

09/05/1918 The Council of People's Commissars issues a Decree "On the Red Terror". The body for its implementation, called the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VChK), operated under the Council of People's Commissars from December 7, 1917.

The reason for such a radicalization of domestic politics was the assassination of M. Uritsky, chairman of the St. Petersburg Cheka, and the attempt on the life of V. Lenin, Fanny Kaplan, acting from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Both events took place on August 30, 1918. Already this year, the Cheka unleashed a wave of repression.

According to statistics, 21,988 people were arrested and imprisoned; 3061 hostages taken; 5544 shot, imprisoned in concentration camps 1791.

By the time Stalin came to the Central Committee, gendarmes, policemen, tsarist officials, entrepreneurs, and landlords had already been repressed. First of all, a blow was dealt to the classes that are the backbone of the monarchical structure of society. However, "creatively developing the teachings of Lenin", Iosif Vissarionovich outlined new main directions of terror. In particular, a course was taken to destroy the social base of the village - agricultural entrepreneurs.

Stalin since 1928 - the ideologist of violence

It was Stalin who turned repression into the main instrument of domestic policy, which he substantiated theoretically.

His concept of the intensification of the class struggle formally becomes the theoretical basis for the constant escalation of violence by state authorities. The country shuddered when it was first voiced by Iosif Vissarionovich at the July Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1928. Since that time, he actually becomes the leader of the Party, the inspirer and ideologist of violence. The tyrant declared war on his own people.

Hidden by slogans, the real meaning of Stalinism is manifested in the unrestrained pursuit of power. Its essence is shown by the classic - George Orwell. The Englishman showed very clearly that power for this ruler was not a means, but an end. Dictatorship was no longer perceived by him as a defense of the revolution. The revolution became a means to establish a personal unlimited dictatorship.

Iosif Vissarionovich in 1928-1930 began by initiating the fabrication by the OGPU of a number of public trials that plunged the country into an atmosphere of shock and fear. Thus, Stalin's cult of personality began to form with trials and instilling horror in the whole society ... Mass repressions were accompanied by public recognition of those who committed non-existent crimes as "enemies of the people." People were brutally tortured into signing accusations fabricated by the investigation. The cruel dictatorship imitated the class struggle, cynically violating the Constitution and all norms of universal morality...

Three global lawsuits were rigged: the “Union Bureau Affair” (putting managers at risk); "The Case of the Industrial Party" (the sabotage of the Western powers against the economy of the USSR was imitated); "The Case of the Labor Peasant Party" (obvious falsification of damage to the seed fund and delays with mechanization). Moreover, they all united in a single cause in order to create the appearance of a single conspiracy against the Soviet government and provide scope for further falsifications of the OGPU - NKVD.

As a result, the entire economic management of the national economy was replaced from the old "specialists" to "new cadres" ready to work on the instructions of the "leader".

Through the mouths of Stalin, who provided the state apparatus loyal to repressions with the courts, the adamant determination of the Party was further expressed: to oust and ruin thousands of entrepreneurs - industrialists, merchants, small and medium; destroy the basis of agricultural production - the prosperous peasantry (indiscriminately calling it "kulaks"). At the same time, the new voluntarist party position was masked by "the will of the poorest strata of workers and peasants."

Behind the scenes, in parallel with this "general line", the "father of the peoples" consistently, with the help of provocations and false evidence, began to implement the line of liquidating their party competitors for the highest state power (Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev).

Forced collectivization

The truth about Stalin's repressions of the period 1928-1932. testifies that the main social base of the village - an efficient agricultural producer - became the main object of repression. The goal is clear: the entire peasant country (which in fact at that time were Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic and Transcaucasian republics) was to turn under the pressure of repression from a self-sufficient economic complex into an obedient donor for the implementation of Stalin's industrialization plans and the maintenance of hypertrophied power structures.

In order to clearly indicate the object of his repressions, Stalin went on an obvious ideological forgery. Economically and socially unjustified, he managed to ensure that party ideologists obedient to him singled out a normal self-supporting (profitable) producer into a separate "class of kulaks" - the target of a new blow. Under the ideological leadership of Joseph Vissarionovich, a plan was developed for the destruction of the social foundations of the village that had developed over the centuries, the destruction of the rural community - the Decree "On the liquidation of ... kulak farms" of 01/30/1930

The Red Terror came to the village. Peasants who fundamentally disagreed with collectivization were subjected to Stalinist trials - "troikas", in most cases ending in executions. Less active “kulaks”, as well as “kulak families” (any persons subjectively defined as “rural activists” could fall into the category) were subjected to forcible confiscation of property and eviction. A body of permanent operational management of the eviction was created - a secret operational management under the leadership of Efim Evdokimov.

Settlers in the extreme regions of the North, victims of Stalin's repressions, were previously identified on a list basis in the Volga region, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Siberia, and the Urals.

In 1930-1931. 1.8 million were evicted, and in 1932-1940. - 0.49 million people.

Organization of hunger

However, executions, ruin and eviction in the 30s of the last century are not all Stalin's repressions. Their brief enumeration should be supplemented by the organization of famine. The real reason for it was the inadequate approach of Joseph Vissarionovich personally to insufficient grain procurements in 1932. Why was the plan fulfilled by only 15-20%? The main reason was crop failure.

His subjective plan for industrialization was under threat. It would be wise to reduce the plans by 30%, postpone them, and first stimulate the agricultural producer and wait for the harvest year ... Stalin did not want to wait, he demanded the immediate provision of food for the swollen power structures and new gigantic construction projects - Donbass, Kuzbass. The leader made a decision - to withdraw from the peasants the grain intended for sowing and for consumption.

On October 22, 1932, two emergency commissions led by the odious personalities Lazar Kaganovich and Vyacheslav Molotov launched a misanthropic campaign of "fighting the kulaks" to seize bread, which was accompanied by violence, quick to punish by troika courts and the deportation of wealthy agricultural producers to the regions of the Far North. It was genocide...

It is noteworthy that the cruelty of the satraps was actually initiated and not stopped by Joseph Vissarionovich himself.

Known fact: correspondence between Sholokhov and Stalin

Mass repressions of Stalin in 1932-1933. are documented. M. A. Sholokhov, the author of The Quiet Flows the Don, addressed the leader, defending his countrymen, with letters, exposing lawlessness during the confiscation of grain. In detail, with an indication of the villages, the names of the victims and their tormentors, the famous resident of the village of Veshenskaya stated the facts. Bullying and violence against the peasants are horrifying: brutal beatings, breaking out of joints, partial strangulation, staging execution, eviction from houses ... In a response letter, Joseph Vissarionovich only partially agreed with Sholokhov. The real position of the leader can be seen in the lines where he calls the peasants saboteurs, "quietly" trying to disrupt the provision of food...

Such a voluntaristic approach caused famine in the Volga region, Ukraine, the North Caucasus, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Siberia, and the Urals. A special Statement of the State Duma of Russia, published in April 2008, disclosed to the public previously classified statistics (previously, propaganda concealed these repressions of Stalin in every possible way.)

How many people died of starvation in the above regions? The figure set by the State Duma commission is appalling: more than 7 million.

Other areas of pre-war Stalinist terror

We will also consider three more directions of Stalinist terror, and in the following table we will present each of them in more detail.

With the sanctions of Joseph Vissarionovich, a policy was also pursued to oppress freedom of conscience. A citizen of the Land of Soviets had to read the Pravda newspaper, and not go to church ...

Hundreds of thousands of families of formerly productive peasants, fearful of dispossession and exile to the North, became an army supporting the country's gigantic construction projects. In order to limit their rights, to make them manipulated, it was at that time that passportization of the population in cities was carried out. Only 27 million people received passports. Peasants (still the majority of the population) remained without passports, did not enjoy the full range of civil rights (freedom to choose their place of residence, freedom to choose work) and were “tied” to the collective farm at their place of residence with the obligatory condition that they fulfill workday norms.

Antisocial policy was accompanied by the destruction of families, an increase in the number of homeless children. This phenomenon has acquired such a scale that the state was forced to respond to it. With the sanction of Stalin, the Politburo of the Land of Soviets issued one of the most inhuman decrees - punitive in relation to children.

The anti-religious offensive as of 04/01/1936 led to a reduction in Orthodox churches to 28%, mosques - to 32% of their pre-revolutionary number. The number of clergy decreased from 112.6 thousand to 17.8 thousand.

Passportization of the urban population was carried out for repressive purposes. More than 385 thousand people did not receive passports and were forced to leave the cities. 22.7 thousand people were arrested.

One of the most cynical crimes of Stalin is his sanctioning of the secret resolution of the Politburo of 04/07/1935, which allows teenagers from 12 years old to be brought to trial and determines their punishment up to the death penalty. In 1936 alone, 125,000 children were placed in NKVD colonies. As of April 1, 1939, 10,000 children were exiled to the Gulag system.

Great terror

The state flywheel of terror was gaining momentum ... The power of Joseph Vissarionovich, starting in 1937, as a result of repressions over the whole society, became comprehensive. However, their biggest leap was just ahead. In addition to the final and already physical reprisal against former party colleagues - Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev - mass "purges of the state apparatus" were carried out.

Terror has gained unprecedented proportions. The OGPU (since 1938 - the NKVD) responded to all complaints and anonymous letters. A person's life was broken for one carelessly dropped word ... Even the Stalinist elite was repressed - statesmen: Kosior, Eikhe, Postyshev, Goloshchekin, Vareikis; military leaders Blucher, Tukhachevsky; Chekists Yagoda, Yezhov.

On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, leading military personnel were shot on fabricated cases “under an anti-Soviet conspiracy”: 19 qualified commanders at the corps level - divisions with combat experience. The cadres who replaced them did not possess the proper operational and tactical art.

Stalin's cult of personality was characterized not only by the showcase facades of Soviet cities. The repressions of the “leader of the peoples” gave rise to a monstrous system of Gulag camps, providing the Land of Soviets with free labor, a mercilessly exploited labor resource for extracting wealth from the underdeveloped regions of the Far North and Central Asia.

The dynamics of the increase in those held in camps and labor colonies is impressive: in 1932 it was about 140 thousand prisoners, and in 1941 - about 1.9 million.

In particular, ironically, the convicts of Kolyma mined 35% of the allied gold, being in terrible conditions of detention. We list the main camps that are part of the GULAG system: Solovetsky (45 thousand prisoners), logging camps - Svirlag and Temnikovo (respectively 43 and 35 thousand); oil and coal production - Ukhtapechlag (51 thousand); chemical industry - Bereznyakov and Solikamsk (63 thousand); development of the steppes - Karaganda camp (30 thousand); construction of the Volga-Moscow canal (196 thousand); construction of BAM (260 thousand); gold mining in Kolyma (138 thousand); Nickel mining in Norilsk (70 thousand).

For the most part, people stayed in the Gulag system in a typical way: after a night of arrest and an ill-judged prejudiced trial. And although this system was created under Lenin, it was under Stalin that political prisoners began to enter it en masse after mass trials: “enemies of the people” - kulaks (in fact, an effective agricultural producer), or even entire deported nationalities. Most served a sentence of 10 to 25 years under Article 58. The process of investigation on it involved torture and a break in the will of the convict.

In the case of the resettlement of kulaks and small peoples, the train with prisoners stopped right in the taiga or in the steppe, and the convicts themselves built a camp and a special purpose prison (TON). From the 1930s, the labor of prisoners was mercilessly exploited to fulfill five-year plans - 12-14 hours a day. Tens of thousands of people died from overwork, poor nutrition, poor medical care.

Instead of a conclusion

The years of Stalin's repressions - from 1928 to 1953. - changed the atmosphere in a society that has ceased to believe in justice, which is under the pressure of constant fear. Since 1918, people were accused and shot by the revolutionary military tribunals. An inhuman system developed... The Tribunal became the Cheka, then the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, then the OGPU, then the NKVD. The executions as part of the 58th article were valid until 1947, and then Stalin replaced them with 25 years of serving in camps.

In total, about 800 thousand people were shot.

Moral and physical torture of the entire population of the country, in fact, lawlessness and arbitrariness, was carried out on behalf of the workers' and peasants' power, the revolution.

The disenfranchised people were terrorized by the Stalinist system constantly and methodically. The beginning of the process of restoring justice was laid by the 20th Congress of the CPSU.

The Sakharov Center hosted a discussion "Stalin's terror: mechanisms and legal assessment", organized jointly with the Free Historical Society. Leading researcher at the HSE International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences Oleg Khlevnyuk and Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Memorial Center Nikita Petrov took part in the discussion. Lenta.ru recorded the main theses of their speeches.

Oleg Khlevnyuk:

Historians have long been deciding whether the Stalinist repressions were necessary from the point of view of elementary expediency. Most experts are inclined to believe that such methods are not needed for the progressive development of the country.

There is a point of view according to which terror has become a kind of response to the crisis in the country (in particular, the economic one). I believe that Stalin decided on repression on such a scale precisely because in the USSR by that time everything was relatively good. After the completely disastrous first five-year plan, the policy of the second five-year plan was more balanced and successful. As a result, the country entered the so-called three good years (1934-1936), which were marked by successful rates of industrial growth, the abolition of the rationing system, the emergence of new incentives for work, and relative stabilization in the countryside.

It was terror that plunged the country's economy and the social well-being of society into a new crisis. If there had been no Stalin, then there would have been not only mass repressions (at least in 1937-1938), but also collectivization in the form in which we know it.

Terror or fight against the enemies of the people?

From the very beginning, the Soviet authorities did not try to hide the terror. The government of the USSR tried to make the trials as public as possible not only within the country, but also in the international arena: transcripts of court sessions were published in the main European languages.

The attitude towards terror was not unambiguous from the very beginning. For example, the American ambassador to the USSR, Joseph Davis, believed that enemies of the people really got into the dock. At the same time, the Left defended the innocence of their fellow Old Bolsheviks.

Later, experts began to pay attention to the fact that terror was a broader process, embracing not only the top of the Bolsheviks - after all, people of intellectual labor also fell into its millstones. But at that time, due to the lack of sources of information, there were no clear ideas about how all this was happening, who was being arrested and why.

Some Western historians continued to defend the theory of the significance of terror, while revisionist historians said that terror is a spontaneous, rather random phenomenon, to which Stalin himself had nothing to do. Some wrote that the number of those arrested was low and numbered in the thousands.

When the archives were opened, more accurate figures became known, departmental statistics from the NKVD and the MGB appeared, in which arrests and convictions were recorded. The statistics of the Gulag contained figures on the number of prisoners in the camps, mortality, and even the ethnic composition of the prisoners.

It turned out that this Stalinist system was extremely centralized. We saw how, in full accordance with the planned nature of the state, mass repressions were planned. At the same time, it was not routine political arrests that determined the true scope of the Stalinist terror. It was expressed in large waves - two of them are associated with collectivization and the Great Terror.

In 1930, it was decided to launch an operation against the peasant kulaks. The relevant lists were prepared on the ground, the NKVD issued orders on the course of the operation, the Politburo approved them. They were performed with certain excesses, but everything happened within the framework of this centralized model. Until 1937, the mechanics of repression was worked out, and in 1937-1938 it was applied in the most complete and detailed form.

Prerequisites and basis of repression

Nikita Petrov:

All the necessary laws on the judiciary were adopted in the country in the 1920s. The most important can be considered the law of December 1, 1934, which deprived the accused of the right to defense and cassation appeal against the verdict. It provided for the consideration of cases in the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court in a simplified manner: behind closed doors, in the absence of a prosecutor and defense lawyers, with the execution of a death sentence within 24 hours after its pronouncement.

According to this law, all cases received by the Military Collegium in 1937-1938 were considered. Then about 37 thousand people were convicted, of which 25 thousand were sentenced to death.

Khlevniuk:

The Stalinist system was designed to suppress and instill fear. The Soviet society of that time needed forced labor. Various campaigns, such as elections, also played their part. However, there was a certain unified impulse that gave a special acceleration to all these factors precisely in 1937-38: the threat of war was already quite obvious at that time.

Stalin considered it very important not only to build up military power, but also to ensure the unity of the rear, which involved the destruction of the internal enemy. Therefore, the idea arose of getting rid of all those who could stab in the back. The documents leading to this conclusion are the numerous statements of Stalin himself, as well as the orders on the basis of which the terror was carried out.

Enemies of the regime fought out of court

Petrov:

The decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of July 2, 1937, signed by Stalin, marked the beginning of the “kulak operation”. In the preamble to the document, the regions were asked to set quotas for future extrajudicial sentences for execution by firing squad and imprisonment of those arrested in camps, as well as to propose compositions of "troikas" for sentencing.

Khlevniuk:

The mechanics of operations in 1937-1938 were similar to those applied in 1930, but it is important to note here that by 1937 there were already records of the NKVD on various enemies of the people and suspicious elements. The center decided to liquidate or isolate these accounting contingents from society.

The limits on arrests set in the plans were in fact not limits at all, but minimum requirements, so the NKVD officials set a course to exceed these plans. This was even necessary for them, since internal instructions focused them on identifying not single individuals, but unreliable groups. The authorities believed that a lone enemy is not an enemy.

This led to the constant exceeding of the original limits. Requests for the need for additional arrests were sent to Moscow, which regularly satisfied them. A significant part of the norms was approved personally by Stalin, the other - personally by Yezhov. Some were changed by decision of the Politburo.

Petrov:

It was decided once and for all to put an end to any hostile activity. It is this phrase that was inserted into the preamble of the order of the NKVD No. 00447 dated July 30, 1937 on the “kulak operation”: he ordered it to begin in most of the regions of the country from August 5, and on August 10 and 15 - in Central Asia and the Far East.

There were meetings in the center, the heads of the NKVD came to Yezhov. He told them that if an extra thousand people were injured during this operation, then there would be no big trouble in this. Most likely, Yezhov did not say this himself - we recognize here signs of Stalin's great style. The leader regularly had new ideas. There is his letter to Yezhov, in which he writes about the need to extend the operation and gives instructions (in particular, regarding the Socialist-Revolutionaries).

The attention of the system then turned to the so-called counter-revolutionary national elements. About 15 operations were carried out against counter-revolutionaries - Poles, Germans, Balts, Bulgarians, Iranians, Afghans, former workers of the CER - all these people were suspected of espionage in favor of those states to which they were ethnically close.

Each operation is characterized by a special mechanism of action. The repression of the kulaks did not become the invention of the bicycle: "troikas" as an instrument of extrajudicial reprisals were tested back in the days of the Civil War. According to the correspondence of the top leadership of the OGPU, it is clear that in 1924, when the unrest of the Moscow students took place, the mechanics of terror had already been perfected. “We need to assemble the “troika”, as it was always in troubled times,” one functionary writes to another. "Troika" is an ideology and partly a symbol of the Soviet repressive organs.

The mechanism of national operations was different - they used the so-called deuce. No limits were set for them.

Similar things happened when the Stalinist execution lists were approved: their fate was decided by a narrow group of people - Stalin and his inner circle. In these lists there are personal notes of the leader. For example, opposite the name of Mikhail Baranov, head of the Sanitary Directorate of the Red Army, he writes "beat-beat." In another case, Molotov wrote “VMN” (capital punishment) opposite one of the female surnames.

There are documents according to which Mikoyan, who left for Armenia as an emissary of terror, asked to shoot an additional 700 people, and Yezhov believed that this figure should be increased to 1500. Stalin agreed with the latter on this issue, because Yezhov knows better. When Stalin was asked to give an additional limit on the execution of 300 people, he easily wrote "500".

There is a debatable question about why limits were set for the "kulak operation", but not for, for example, national ones. I think that if the “kulak operation” had no boundaries, then terror could become absolute, because too many people fit the category of “anti-Soviet element”. In national operations, clearer criteria were established: people with connections in other countries who arrived from abroad were repressed. Stalin believed that here the circle of people was more or less understandable and delineated.

Mass operations were centralized

A corresponding propaganda campaign was carried out. The enemies of the people, who had made their way into the NKVD, and slanderers were accused of unleashing terror. Interestingly, the idea of ​​denunciations as a reason for repression is not documented. The NKVD in the course of mass operations functioned according to completely different algorithms, and if they reacted to denunciations there, it was quite selective and random. Basically, they worked according to pre-prepared lists.

After the end of the Great Patriotic War, Joseph Stalin was not just the leader of the country, but the real savior of the fatherland. They practically did not call him otherwise than the leader, and the cult of personality in the post-war period reached its climax. It seemed that it was impossible to shake the authority of such a scale, but Stalin himself had a hand in this.

A series of inconsistent reforms and repressions gave rise to the term post-war Stalinism, which is also actively used by modern historians.

Brief analysis of Stalin's reforms

Repressions of the post-war period and the tightening of the cult of Stalin

It has already been mentioned above that Stalinism in the post-war years only grew stronger, and among the people the General Secretary was considered the main hero of the Fatherland. The planting of such an image of Stalin was facilitated both by excellent ideological support and cultural innovations. All films being made and books being published glorified the current regime and praised Stalin. Gradually, the number of repressions and the volume of censorship increased, but no one seemed to notice this.

Stalinist repressions became a real problem for the country in the mid-30s, and after the end of the Great Patriotic War, they gained new strength. So, in 1948, the famous "Leningrad case" received publicity, during which many politicians holding key positions in the party were arrested and shot. So, for example, the chairman of the State Planning Commission Voznesensky was shot, as well as the secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Kuznetsov. Stalin was losing confidence in his own close associates, and therefore those who yesterday were still considered the main friend and associate of the General Secretary were under attack.

Stalinism in the post-war years increasingly took the form of a dictatorship. Despite the fact that the people literally idolized Stalin, the monetary reform and the re-emergence of repression made people doubt the authority of the general secretary. The first to oppose the existing regime were representatives of the intelligentsia, and therefore, led by Zhdanov, purges among writers, artists and journalists began in 1946.

Stalin himself brought to the fore the development of the country's military power. The development of the plan for the first atomic bomb allowed the USSR to consolidate its status as a superpower. All over the world, the USSR was feared, believing that Stalin was capable of starting the Third World War. The Iron Curtain covered the Soviet Union more and more, and the people resignedly waited for changes.

Changes, albeit not the best, came suddenly when the leader and hero of the whole country died in 1953. Stalin's death marked the beginning of a completely new stage for the Soviet Union.