What was really behind the fight against the enemies of the people in 1937?

These days marks the 80th anniversary of the events, disputes about which have not been subsided to this day. We are talking about 1937, when mass political repressions began in the country.

In May of that fateful year, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and a number of other high-ranking military men were arrested, accused of a "military fascist conspiracy." And already in June they were all sentenced to death ...

Questions, questions...

Since the time of perestroika, these events have been presented to us mainly as supposedly “unfounded political persecutions” caused solely by Stalin's personality cult. Allegedly, Stalin, who wanted to finally turn into the Lord God on Soviet soil, decided to crack down on everyone who had the slightest doubt about his genius.

And above all, with those who, together with Lenin, created the October Revolution. Like, that's why almost the entire “Leninist Guard” innocently went under the ax, and at the same time the top of the Red Army, who were accused of a conspiracy against Stalin that never existed ...

However, a closer study of these events raises many questions that cast doubt on the official version.

In principle, thinking historians have had these doubts for a long time. And doubts were sown not by some Stalinist historians, but by those eyewitnesses who themselves did not like the "father of all Soviet peoples."

For example, the memoirs of the former Soviet intelligence officer Alexander Orlov, who fled our country in the late 1930s, were once published in the West. Orlov, who knew well the "inner kitchen" of his native NKVD, wrote directly that a coup d'état was being prepared in the Soviet Union. Among the conspirators, according to him, were both representatives of the leadership of the NKVD and the Red Army in the person of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and the commander of the Kyiv military district, Iona Yakir. The conspiracy became known to Stalin, who took very tough retaliatory actions ...

And in the 80s, the archives of Joseph Vissarionovich's main opponent, Lev Trotsky, were declassified in the United States.

From these documents it became clear that Trotsky had an extensive underground network in the Soviet Union. Living abroad, Lev Davidovich demanded from his people decisive action to destabilize the situation in the Soviet Union, up to the organization of mass terrorist actions.

And in the 90s, our archives have already opened access to the protocols of interrogations of the repressed leaders of the anti-Stalinist opposition. By the nature of these materials, by the abundance of facts and evidence presented in them, today's independent experts have drawn two important conclusions.

First, the overall picture of a broad conspiracy against Stalin looks very, very convincing. Such testimonies could not be orchestrated or faked to please the “father of nations”. Especially in the part where it was about the military plans of the conspirators. Here is what the well-known historian and publicist Sergei Kremlev said about this:

“Take and read the testimony of Tukhachevsky given to him after his arrest. The very confessions of a conspiracy are accompanied by a deep analysis of the military-political situation in the USSR in the mid-30s, with detailed calculations of the general situation in the country, with our mobilization, economic and other capabilities. the case of the marshal and who allegedly set out to falsify the testimony of Tukhachevsky ?! No, these testimonies, and voluntarily, could only be given by a knowledgeable person no less than the level of the deputy people's commissar of defense, which was Tukhachevsky.
Secondly, the very very of the conspirators' handwritten confessions, their handwriting spoke of what their people wrote themselves, in fact voluntarily, without physical influence from the investigators' manners. This destroyed the myth that the testimony was rudely knocked out by the force of "Stalin's executioners" ...

So what really happened in those distant 30s?

Threats on both the right and the left

In general, it all began long before 1937, or to be more precise, in the early 1920s, when a discussion arose in the leadership of the Bolshevik Party about the fate of building socialism. I will quote the words of a well-known Russian scientist, a great specialist in the Stalin era, Doctor of Historical Sciences Yuri Nikolayevich Zhukov (interview with Literaturnaya Gazeta, article “Unknown 37th year”):

“Even after the victory of the October Revolution, Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and many others did not seriously think that socialism would triumph in backward Russia. They looked hopefully at the industrialized United States, Germany, Great Britain, France. After all, tsarist Russia was after tiny Belgium in terms of industrial development. They forget about it. Like, ah-ah, what was Russia! But in the First World War, we bought weapons from the British, French, Japanese, Americans.

The Bolshevik leadership hoped (as Zinoviev wrote especially vividly in Pravda) only for a revolution in Germany. Like, when Russia units with it, then it will be able to build socialism.

Meanwhile, back in the summer of 1923, Stalin wrote to Zinoviev: even if the Communist Party of Germany were to fall from the sky, it would not hold it. Stalin was the only person in the leadership who did not believe in world revolution. I thought: our main concern is Soviet Russia.

What's next? The revolution did not take place in Germany. We accept the NEP. A few months later, the country howled. Businesses are closing, millions are unemployed, and those workers who have kept their jobs are getting 10 to 20 percent of what they were getting before the revolution. The peasants were replaced with a food tax, but it was such that the peasants could not pay it. Banditry is on the rise: political, criminal. There is an unprecedented - economic: the poor, in order to pay taxes and feed their families, attack trains. Gangs arise even among students: in order to study and not starve to death, you need money. They are mined by robbing NEPmen. This is what the NEP resulted in.He corrupted the party, Soviet cadres. Bribery is everywhere. For any service, the chairman of the village council, the policeman take a bribe. Directors of factories repair their own apartments at the expense of enterprises, buy luxury. And so from 1921 to 1928.

Trotsky and his right hand in the field of economics, Preobrazhensky, decided to transfer the flame of revolution to Asia, and to train cadres in our eastern republics, urgently building factories there to “breed” the local proletariat.

Stalin proposed another option: the construction of socialism in one single country.

However, he never said when socialism would be built. He said - construction, and a few years later he clarified: it is necessary to create an industry in 10 years. heavy industry. Otherwise we will be destroyed. This was uttered in February 1931. Stalin was wrong. After 10 years and 4 months, Germany attacked the USSR.

The differences between Stalin's group and the hard-core Bolsheviks were fundamental. It doesn't matter if they are leftists, like Trotsky and Zinoviev, rightists, like Rykov and Bukharin. Everyone relied on the revolution in Europe ... So the point is not retribution, but a sharp struggle to determine the course of the country's development.

The NEP was curtailed, continuous collectivization and forced industrialization began. This gave rise to new difficulties and difficulties. Massive peasant riots swept across the country, in some cities workers went on strike, dissatisfied with the meager rationing system for distributing products. In a word, the internal socio-political situation sharply worsened. And as a result, according to the apt remark of the historian Igor Pykhalov: “party oppositionists of all stripes and colors, lovers of“ fishing in troubled waters ”, yesterday's leaders and bosses, who longed for revenge in the struggle for power, immediately became more active.”

First of all, the Trotskyist underground, which had vast experience in underground subversive activities since the Civil War, became more active.

In the late 1920s, the Trotskyists teamed up with the old associates of the deceased Lenin - Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, dissatisfied with the fact that Stalin removed them from the levers of power because of their managerial mediocrity.

There was also the so-called "right opposition", which was supervised by such prominent Bolsheviks as Nikolai Bukharin, Avel Enukidze, Alexei Rykov. These sharply criticized the Stalinist leadership for "incorrectly organized collectivization of the countryside." There were also smaller opposition groups. All of them were united by one thing - hatred for Stalin, with whom they were ready to fight by any methods familiar to them from the revolutionary underground times of the tsarist era and the era of the brutal Civil War.

In 1932, almost all oppositionists united in a single, as it would later be called, Right-Trotsky bloc.

Immediately on the agenda was the question of the overthrow of Stalin. Two options were considered. In the event of a war expected with the West, it was supposed to contribute in every possible way to the defeat of the Red Army, in order to seize power later on the wave of chaos that had arisen. If the war does not happen, then the option of a palace coup was considered.

Here is the opinion of Yuri Zhukov:

“Directly at the head of the conspiracy were Abel Yenukidze and Rudolf Peterson - a participant in the Civil War, took part in punitive operations against the rebellious peasants in the Tambov province, commanded by Trotsky's armored train, since 1920 - the commandant of the Moscow Kremlin . They wanted to arrest the entire "Stalinist" five at once - Stalin himself, as well as Molotov, Kaganovich, Ordzhonikidze, Voroshilov.
Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Deputy People's Commissar for Defense, was attracted to the conspiracy, offended by Stalin for allegedly not being able to appreciate the "great abilities" of the marshal.People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Genrikh Yagoda also joined the conspiracy - he was an ordinary unprincipled careerist, who at some point thought that the chair under Stalin seriously swayed, and therefore he hurried to get closer to the opposition.

In any case, Yagoda conscientiously fulfilled his obligations to the opposition, hindering any information about the conspirators that periodically came to the NKVD. And such signals, as it turned out later, regularly fell on the table of the country's chief security officer, but he carefully hid them "under the cloth" ...

Most likely, the conspiracy failed because of the impatient Trotskyists. Fulfilling the order of their leader on terror, they contributed to the murder of one of Stalin's comrades-in-arms, the first secretary of the Leningrad regional party committee, Sergei Kirov, who was shot dead in the Smolny building on December 1, 1934 .

Stalin, who had already heard alarming information about the conspiracy more than once, immediately took advantage of this assassination and took drastic retaliatory measures. The first blow fell on the Trotskyists. Mass arrests of those who at least once came into contact with Trotsky and his associates took place in the country. The success of the operation was largely facilitated by the fact that the Central Committee of the party took strict control over the activities of the NKVD. In 1936, the entire top of the Trotskyist-Zinoviev underground was condemned and destroyed. And at the end of the same year, Yagoda was removed from the post of People's Commissar of the NKVD and shot in 1937 ...

Next came the turn of Tukhachevsky.

As the German historian Paul Carell writes, referring to sources in German intelligence, the marshal planned his coup on May 1, 1937, when a lot of military equipment and troops were drawn to Moscow for the May Day parade. Under the cover of the parade, military units loyal to Tukhachevsky could also be brought to the capital ...

However, Stalin already knew about these plans. Tukhachevsky was isolated, and at the end of May he was arrested. Together with him, a whole cohort of high-ranking military leaders went on trial. Thus, the Right-Trotskyist conspiracy was liquidated by the middle of 1937 ...

Failed Stalinist democratization

According to some reports, Stalin was going to stop the repressions on this. However, in the summer of the same 1937, he faced another hostile force - "regional barons" from among the first secretaries of the regional party committees. These figures were greatly alarmed by Stalin's plans to democratize the political life of the country - because the free elections planned by Stalin threatened many of them with an inevitable loss of power.

Yes, yes, free elections! And it's not a joke. First, in 1936, at the initiative of Stalin, a new Constitution was adopted, according to which all citizens of the Soviet Union, without exception, received equal civil rights, including the so-called “former”, previously deprived of voting rights. And then, as an expert on this issue, Yuri Zhukov, writes:

“It was assumed that simultaneously with the Constitution, a new electoral law would be adopted, which spelled out the procedure for electing from several alternative candidates at once, and the nomination of candidates to the Supreme Council would immediately begin, elections for which were scheduled to be held in the same year. Samples of ballot papers have already been approved, money has been allocated for campaigning and elections.”

Zhukov believes that through these elections, Stalin not only wanted to carry out political democratization, but also to remove the party nomenklatura from real power, which, in his opinion, was too snickering and cut off from the life of the people. Stalin generally wanted to leave only ideological work to the party, and transfer all real executive functions to the Soviets of various levels (elected on an alternative basis) and the government of the Soviet Union - so, back in 1935, the leader expressed an important ideas:

"We must free the party from economic activity."

However, Zhukov says, Stalin revealed his plans too early. And at the June 1937 Plenum of the Central Committee, the nomenklatura, mainly from among the first secretaries, actually delivered an ultimatum to Stalin - either he would leave everything as before, or he himself would be removed. At the same time, the nomenklatura referred to the recently uncovered conspiracies of the Trotskyists and the military. They demanded not only to curtail any plans for democratization, but also to strengthen emergency measures, and even introduce special quotas for mass repressions by region, supposedly in order to finish off those Trotskyists who escaped punishment. Yuri Zhukov:

“The secretaries of the regional committees, regional committees, the Central Committee of the National Communist Parties requested the so-called limits. The number of those whom they can arrest and shoot or send to places not so remote. Most zealous was such a future "victim of the Stalinist regime" as Eikhe, in those days - the first secretary of the West Siberian Regional Party Committee. He asked for the right to execute 10,800 people. In second place is Khrushchev , who headed the Moscow Regional Committee: "only" 8,500 people. In third place is the first secretary of the Azov-Chernomorsky Regional Committee (today it is the Don and the North Caucasus) Evdokimov: 6644 - to be shot and almost 7 thousand - to be sent to camps.Sent bloodthirsty applications and other secretaries. But with smaller numbers. One and a half, two thousand...

Six months later, when Khrushchev became the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, one of his first dispatches to Moscow asked him to allow him to shoot 20,000 people. But they already walked there for the first time ... ".

Stalin, according to Zhukov, had no choice but to accept the rules of this terrible game - because the party at that time was too big a force that he could not challenge directly. And the Great Terror went through the country, when both the real participants in the failed conspiracy and just suspicious people were destroyed. It is clear that many of those who had nothing to do with conspiracies fell under this “cleansing”.

However, here we will not go too far, as our liberals are doing today, pointing to "tens of millions of innocent victims." According to Yuri Zhukov:

“At our institute (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences – IN) Viktor Nikolaevich Zemskov, Doctor of Historical Sciences, works. As part of a small group, for several years he checked and rechecked in the archives what the real numbers of repressions were. In particular, on the 58th article. came to concrete results. In the West, they immediately screamed. They were told: please, here are the archives for you! We arrived, checked, were forced to agree. Here's what.

1935 - in total, 267 thousand were arrested and convicted under Article 58, of which 1229 people were sentenced to capital punishment, in the 36th, respectively, 274 thousand and 1118 people. And then a splash. In 1937, more than 790,000 were arrested and convicted under Article 58, over 353,000 were shot, in 1938, more than 554,000, and more than 328,000 were shot. Then a decline. In 1939, about 64,000 were convicted and 2,552 people were sentenced to death, in 1940, about 72,000 and 1,649 people were sentenced to capital punishment.

In total, for the period from 1921 to 1953, 4,060,306 people were convicted, of which 2,634,397 people ended up in camps and prisons.

Of course, and these are terrible numbers (because any violent death is also a great tragedy). But still, you see, we are not talking about many millions at all ...

But let's go back to the 1930s. In the course of this bloody campaign, Stalin finally succeeded in directing terror against its initiators, the first regional secretaries, who were eliminated one by one. Only by 1939 was he able to take the party under his full control, and mass terror immediately subsided. The social situation in the country has also dramatically improved - people really began to live much more satisfying and prosperous than before ...

... Stalin was able to return to his plans to remove the party from power only after the Great Patriotic War, at the very end of the 40s. However, by that time a new generation of the same party nomenklatura had already grown up, standing on the previous positions of its absolute power. It was its representatives who organized a new anti-Stalinist conspiracy, which was crowned with success in 1953, when the leader died under circumstances that have not yet been clarified.

It is curious, but some of Stalin's comrades-in-arms nevertheless tried to realize his plans after the death of the leader.

Yuri Zhukov:

“After Stalin's death, the head of the government of the USSR Malenkov, one of his closest associates, canceled all benefits for the party nomenklatura. For example, the monthly issuance of money ("envelopes"), the amount of which was two or three, or even five times higher than the salary and was not taken into account even when paying party dues, Lechsanupr, sanatoriums, personal cars, turntables. And he raised the salaries of government employees by 2-3 times. Party workers on the generally accepted scale of values ​​(and in their own eyes) have become much lower than state workers. The attack on the rights of the party nomenklatura, hidden from prying eyes, lasted only three months.Party cadres united, began to complain about the infringement of "rights" to the Secretary of the Central Committee Khrushchev.

Further is known. Khrushchev "hung" on Stalin all the blame for the repressions of 1937. And the party bosses were not only given back all the privileges, but in general they were actually removed from the scope of the Criminal Code, which in itself began to rapidly decompose the party. It was the completely decomposed party elite that  eventually ruined the Soviet Union .

However, that's a completely different story...

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