The results of Stalin's rule speak for themselves. In order to devalue them, to form a negative assessment of the Stalin era in the public consciousness, fighters against totalitarianism, willy-nilly, have to escalate the horrors, attributing monstrous atrocities to Stalin.

At the liar's competition

In an accusatory rage, the writers of anti-Stalin horror stories seem to be competing to see who can tell the biggest lies, vying with each other to name the astronomical numbers of those killed at the hands of the “bloody tyrant.” Against their background, dissident Roy Medvedev, who limited himself to a “modest” figure of 40 million, looks like some kind of black sheep, a model of moderation and conscientiousness:

“Thus, the total number of victims of Stalinism reaches, according to my calculations, approximately 40 million people.”

And in fact, it is undignified. Another dissident, the son of the repressed Trotskyist revolutionary A.V. Antonov-Ovseenko, without a shadow of embarrassment, names twice the figure:

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

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

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

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

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

Who are these fantastically ridiculous figures, eagerly replicated by the Russian and foreign media, intended for? For those who have forgotten how to think for themselves, who are accustomed to uncritically accepting on faith any nonsense coming from television screens.

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

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

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

So, the rate of population growth in the Stalinist USSR turned out to be almost one and a half times higher than in Western “democracies,” although for these states we excluded the extremely unfavorable demographic years of the 1st World War. Could this have happened if the “bloody Stalinist regime” had destroyed 150 million or at least 40 million inhabitants of our country? Of course no!
Archival documents say

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

"To the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee

Comrade Khrushchev N.S.

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

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

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

…
Prosecutor General R. Rudenko
Minister of Internal Affairs S. Kruglov
Minister of Justice K. Gorshenin"

As is clear from the document, in total, from 1921 to the beginning of 1954, on political charges, 642,980 people were sentenced to death, 2,369,220 to imprisonment, and 765,180 to exile. However, there are more detailed data on the number of those convicted

Thus, between 1921 and 1953, 815,639 people were sentenced to death. In total, in 1918–1953, 4,308,487 people were brought to criminal liability in cases of state security agencies, of which 835,194 were sentenced to capital punishment.

So, there were slightly more “repressed” than indicated in the report dated February 1, 1954. However, the difference is not too great - the numbers are of the same order.

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

“Total convicts for 1921–1938. - 2,944,879 people, of which 30% (1,062 thousand) are criminals"

In this case, the total number of “victims of repression” does not exceed three million. However, to finally clarify this issue, additional work with sources is necessary.

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

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

In 1934, there were 3,849 prisoners in NKVD camps who were sentenced to death and commuted to imprisonment. In 1935 there were 5671 such prisoners, in 1936 - 7303, in 1937 - 6239, in 1938 - 5926, in 1939 - 3425, in 1940 - 4037 people.
Number of prisoners

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

In addition to the ITL, there were correctional labor colonies (CLCs), where those sentenced to short terms were sent. Until the fall of 1938, the penitentiary complexes, together with the prisons, were subordinate to the Department of Places of Detention (OMP) of the NKVD of the USSR. Therefore, for the years 1935–1938, only joint statistics have been found so far. Since 1939, penal colonies were under the jurisdiction of the Gulag, and prisons were under the jurisdiction of the Main Prison Directorate (GTU) of the NKVD of the USSR.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is the total number of people who were imprisoned under Stalin? Of course, if you take a table with the annual number of prisoners and sum up the rows, as many anti-Sovietists do, the result will be incorrect, since most of them were sentenced to more than a year. Therefore, it should be assessed not by the amount of those imprisoned, but by the amount of those convicted, which was given above.
How many of the prisoners were “political”?

As we see, until 1942, the “repressed” made up no more than a third of the prisoners held in the Gulag camps. And only then their share increased, receiving a worthy “replenishment” in the person of Vlasovites, policemen, elders and other “fighters against communist tyranny.” The percentage of “political” in correctional labor colonies was even smaller.
Prisoner mortality

Available archival documents make it possible to illuminate this issue.

In 1931, 7,283 people died in the ITL (3.03% of the average annual number), in 1932 - 13,197 (4.38%), in 1933 - 67,297 (15.94%), in 1934 - 26,295 prisoners (4.26%).

For 1953, data is provided for the first three months.

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

Basically, mortality began to increase sharply from September 1941, mainly due to the transfer of convicts from units located in the front-line areas: from the BBK and Vytegorlag to the OITK of the Vologda and Omsk regions, from the OITK of the Moldavian SSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Leningrad region. in OITK Kirov, Molotov and Sverdlovsk regions. As a rule, a significant part of the journey of several hundred kilometers before loading into wagons was carried out on foot. Along the way, they were not at all provided with the minimum necessary food products (they did not receive enough bread and even water); as a result of this confinement, the prisoners suffered severe exhaustion, a very large % of vitamin deficiency diseases, in particular pellagra, which caused significant mortality along the route and along arrival at the respective OITKs, which were not prepared to receive a significant number of replenishments. At the same time, the introduction of reduced food standards by 25–30% (order No. 648 and 0437) with an extended working day to 12 hours, and often the absence of basic food products, even at reduced standards, could not but affect the increase in morbidity and mortality

However, since 1944, mortality has decreased significantly. By the beginning of the 1950s, in camps and colonies it fell below 1%, and in prisons - below 0.5% per year.
Special camps

Let's say a few words about the notorious Special Camps (special camps), created in accordance with Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 416-159ss of February 21, 1948. These camps (as well as the Special Prisons that already existed by that time) were supposed to concentrate all those sentenced to imprisonment for espionage, sabotage, terrorism, as well as Trotskyists, right-wingers, Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, anarchists, nationalists, white emigrants, members of anti-Soviet organizations and groups and “individuals who pose a danger due to their anti-Soviet connections.” Prisoners of special prisons were to be used for hard physical work.

As we see, the mortality rate of prisoners in special detention centers was only slightly higher than the mortality rate in ordinary correctional labor camps. Contrary to popular belief, the special camps were not “death camps” in which the elite of the dissident intelligentsia were supposedly exterminated; moreover, the largest contingent of their inhabitants were “nationalists” - the forest brothers and their accomplices.
Notes:

1. Medvedev R. A. Tragic statistics // Arguments and facts. 1989, February 4–10. No. 5(434). P. 6. The well-known researcher of repression statistics V.N. Zemskov claims that Roy Medvedev immediately renounced his article: “Roy Medvedev himself even before the publication of my articles (meaning Zemskov’s articles in “Arguments and Facts” starting with no. 38 for 1989. - I.P.) placed in one of the issues of “Arguments and Facts” for 1989 an explanation that his article in No. 5 for the same year is invalid. Mr. Maksudov is probably not entirely aware of this story, otherwise he would hardly have undertaken to defend calculations that are far from the truth, which their author himself, having realized his mistake, publicly renounced” (Zemskov V.N. On the issue of the scale of repression in USSR // Sociological Research. 1995. No. 9. P. 121). However, in reality, Roy Medvedev did not even think of disavowing his publication. In No. 11 (440) for March 18–24, 1989, his answers to questions from a correspondent of “Arguments and Facts” were published, in which, confirming the “facts” stated in the previous article, Medvedev simply clarified that responsibility for the repressions was not the entire Communist Party as a whole, but only its leadership.

2. Antonov-Ovseenko A.V. Stalin without a mask. M., 1990. P. 506.

3. Mikhailova N. Underpants of counter-revolution // Premier. Vologda, 2002, July 24–30. No. 28(254). P. 10.

4. Bunich I. Sword of the President. M., 2004. P. 235.

5. Population of the countries of the world / Ed. B. Ts. Urlanis. M., 1974. P. 23.

6. Ibid. P. 26.

7. GARF. F.R-9401. Op.2. D.450. L.30–65. Quote by: Dugin A.N. Stalinism: legends and facts // Word. 1990. No. 7. P. 26.

8. Mozokhin O. B. Cheka-OGPU Punishing sword of the dictatorship of the proletariat. M., 2004. P. 167.

9. Ibid. P. 169

10. GARF. F.R-9401. Op.1. D.4157. L.202. Quote by: Popov V.P. State terror in Soviet Russia. 1923–1953: sources and their interpretation // Domestic archives. 1992. No. 2. P. 29.

11. About the work of the Tyumen District Court. Resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR of January 18, 1930 // Judicial practice of the RSFSR. 1930, February 28. No. 3. P. 4.

12. Zemskov V. N. GULAG (historical and sociological aspect) // Sociological studies. 1991. No. 6. P. 15.

13. GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D. 1155. L.7.

14. GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D. 1155. L.1.

15. Number of prisoners in the correctional labor camp: 1935–1948 - GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.1155. L.2; 1949 - Ibid. D.1319. L.2; 1950 - Ibid. L.5; 1951 - Ibid. L.8; 1952 - Ibid. L.11; 1953 - Ibid. L. 17.

In penal colonies and prisons (average for the month of January):. 1935 - GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.2740. L. 17; 1936 - Ibid. L. ZO; 1937 - Ibid. L.41; 1938 -Ibid. L.47.

In the ITK: 1939 - GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.1145. L.2ob; 1940 - Ibid. D.1155. L.30; 1941 - Ibid. L.34; 1942 - Ibid. L.38; 1943 - Ibid. L.42; 1944 - Ibid. L.76; 1945 - Ibid. L.77; 1946 - Ibid. L.78; 1947 - Ibid. L.79; 1948 - Ibid. L.80; 1949 - Ibid. D.1319. L.Z; 1950 - Ibid. L.6; 1951 - Ibid. L.9; 1952 - Ibid. L. 14; 1953 - Ibid. L. 19.

In prisons: 1939 - GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.1145. L.1ob; 1940 - GARF. F.R-9413. Op.1. D.6. L.67; 1941 - Ibid. L. 126; 1942 - Ibid. L.197; 1943 - Ibid. D.48. L.1; 1944 - Ibid. L.133; 1945 - Ibid. D.62. L.1; 1946 - Ibid. L. 107; 1947 - Ibid. L.216; 1948 - Ibid. D.91. L.1; 1949 - Ibid. L.64; 1950 - Ibid. L.123; 1951 - Ibid. L. 175; 1952 - Ibid. L.224; 1953 - Ibid. D.162.L.2ob.

16. GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.1155. L.20–22.

17. Population of the countries of the world / Ed. B. Ts. Urlaisa. M., 1974. P. 23.

18. http://lenin-kerrigan.livejournal.com/518795.html | https://de.wikinews.org/wiki/Die_meisten_Gefangenen_weltweit_leben_in_US-Gef%C3%A4ngnissen

19. GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D. 1155. L.3.

20. GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.1155. L.26–27.

21. Dugin A. Stalinism: legends and facts // Slovo. 1990. No. 7. P. 5.

22. Zemskov V. N. GULAG (historical and sociological aspect) // Sociological studies. 1991. No. 7. pp. 10–11.

23. GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.2740. L.1.

24. Ibid. L.53.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid. D. 1155. L.2.

27. Mortality in ITL: 1935–1947 - GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.1155. L.2; 1948 - Ibid. D. 1190. L.36, 36v.; 1949 - Ibid. D. 1319. L.2, 2v.; 1950 - Ibid. L.5, 5v.; 1951 - Ibid. L.8, 8v.; 1952 - Ibid. L.11, 11v.; 1953 - Ibid. L. 17.

Penal colonies and prisons: 1935–1036 - GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.2740. L.52; 1937 - Ibid. L.44; 1938 - Ibid. L.50.

ITK: 1939 - GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1. D.2740. L.60; 1940 - Ibid. L.70; 1941 - Ibid. D.2784. L.4ob, 6; 1942 - Ibid. L.21; 1943 - Ibid. D.2796. L.99; 1944 - Ibid. D.1155. L.76, 76ob.; 1945 - Ibid. L.77, 77ob.; 1946 - Ibid. L.78, 78ob.; 1947 - Ibid. L.79, 79ob.; 1948 - Ibid. L.80: 80rpm; 1949 - Ibid. D.1319. L.3, 3v.; 1950 - Ibid. L.6, 6v.; 1951 - Ibid. L.9, 9v.; 1952 - Ibid. L.14, 14v.; 1953 - Ibid. L.19, 19v.

Prisons: 1939 - GARF. F.R-9413. Op.1. D.11. L.1ob.; 1940 - Ibid. L.2ob.; 1941 - Ibid. L. Goiter; 1942 - Ibid. L.4ob.; 1943 -Ibid., L.5ob.; 1944 - Ibid. L.6ob.; 1945 - Ibid. D.10. L.118, 120, 122, 124, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133; 1946 - Ibid. D.11. L.8ob.; 1947 - Ibid. L.9ob.; 1948 - Ibid. L.10ob.; 1949 - Ibid. L.11ob.; 1950 - Ibid. L.12ob.; 1951 - Ibid. L.1 3v.; 1952 - Ibid. D.118. L.238, 248, 258, 268, 278, 288, 298, 308, 318, 326ob., 328ob.; D.162. L.2ob.; 1953 - Ibid. D.162. L.4v., 6v., 8v.

28. GARF. F.R-9414. Op.1.D.1181.L.1.

29. System of forced labor camps in the USSR, 1923–1960: Directory. M., 1998. P. 52.

30. Dugin A. N. Unknown GULAG: Documents and facts. M.: Nauka, 1999. P. 47.

31. 1952 - GARF.F.R-9414. Op.1.D.1319. L.11, 11 vol. 13, 13v.; 1953 - Ibid. L. 18.

On the scale of political repression in the USSR under Stalin: 1921-1953

There are no exact statistics on victims of the communist regime in the USSR. Firstly, there is a lack of reliable documentary materials. Secondly, it is difficult to define even this very concept - “victim of the regime.”

It can be understood narrowly: victims are persons arrested by the political police (security agencies) and convicted on political charges by various judicial and quasi-judicial authorities. Then, with minor errors, the number of those repressed in the period from 1921 to 1953 will be about 5.5 million people.

It can be understood as broadly as possible and include among the victims of Bolshevism not only different types of deportees who died from artificial starvation and killed during provoked conflicts, but also soldiers who died on the fronts of many wars that were fought in the name of communism, and those children who did not were born because their possible parents were repressed or died of hunger, etc. Then the number of victims of the regime will approach 100 million people (a figure of the same order as the country's population).

Nevertheless, intuitively we can always distinguish between those against whom the communist government took targeted action from those who simply lived in this unfortunate country, where disregard for human life, hard forced labor and restrictions on civil rights and freedoms were the norm rather than exception.

But, even understanding that certain categories of the population were consistently destroyed or discriminated against, we cannot simply “add up” or sum them up into one large category of “victims” - the pressure from the authorities was applied too differently, and the consequences were too different.

Let us present data on the most obvious and widespread categories of victims of repression.

I. People arrested by state security agencies (VChK - OGPU - NKVD - MGB) and sentenced to death, to various terms of imprisonment in camps and prisons, or to exile. According to preliminary estimates, about 5.5 million people fell into this category during the period from 1921 to 1953.

The summary figures that we present in Table No. 1 are the result of an analysis of various documentary sources - primarily, various statistical reports from security agencies. These data are not final; moreover, they are obviously incomplete - there are too many gaps and contradictions in the surviving documents. But although each individual figure can be adjusted, the overall scale of repression and its dynamics (see diagram), as it seems to us, correspond to historical reality.

The table has three columns:

• “Prosecuted” refers to people who have been prosecuted (most, but not all of them, have previously been arrested). The numbers in that column reflect, rather, the number of cases that state security agencies handled in a given year, rather than the number of people actually affected (for example, this number includes all those released during the investigation).
• “Convicted” - this reflects information about people who have been sentenced to various punishments by various types of tribunals or administrative commissions (“troikas”, “doubles”, “special meeting”, etc.). It must be borne in mind that those “convicted” are not necessarily among those “convicted” in the same year - often the conviction occurs in the next calendar year.
• “CMN” (capital punishment) - this column provides information about the number of people who received death sentences.

Table 1. Dynamics of political repression: 1921-1953

Years	Attracted	Convicted	Of these to VMN

Comment on the table:

1. All figures are rounded to the nearest tens.
2. Information for 1918-1920. are not given, since reporting statistics for this period have survived only fragmentarily and are partly falsified. Estimates of the scale of repressions of the era of the Civil War and the “Red Terror” range from 60 to 500 thousand people (the first figure is official information from the Cheka, the second is a reconstruction based on indirect data; the most likely average figure is 250 – 300 thousand people). It should be noted here that the information for 1921 and 1922 is also incomplete: some local bodies of the Cheka-GPU did not send reports to Moscow or reported fragmentary information. Only part of this information (for example, about the fate of the participants in the Kronstadt uprising of 1921) could be reconstructed from other sources).
3. Information in the columns “Convicted” and VMN” for 1921–1934. speculative. The fact is that the statistical materials of the security agencies recorded data only on those convicted by the Cheka-OGPU authorities. Meanwhile, many investigative cases conducted by state security agencies were then transferred to the courts (revolutionary and military tribunals, people's courts at various levels, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court, etc.). However, there are no consolidated judicial statistics for these years. In order to assess the extent of judicial practice in political cases, we had to extrapolate the percentage data of judicial statistics for 1935-1936. for the previous period (taking into account some fragments of judicial statistics for the 1920s), and then sum the result with the figures of those convicted by extrajudicial authorities.
4. The data for 1940 took into account information about the execution of Polish citizens in the so-called “Katyn case” - about 22 thousand people, although they were not taken into account in standard state security reporting.
5. In data for 1941 and 1942. information about the execution of prisoners during the evacuation of prisons from front-line regions (about 15 thousand people), which was also not included in standard reporting, was taken into account. However, since we do not know the distribution of these executions by period, we arbitrarily divided this contingent, including 5 thousand people in the 1941 data, and 10 thousand in the 1942 data.
6. A similar situation arose with people arrested and convicted by the counterintelligence agencies “SMERSH” (“Death to Spies”), which was subordinate to the Ministry of War. Since so far only generalized (but incomplete) data have been found for the period from the beginning of the war to May 1945 (627,636 were arrested, 272,410 were convicted, 66,538 were executed), we had to proportionally distribute these figures by year of the corresponding period.
7. Lack of data on UMN in 1948–1949. can be explained by the fact that from May 26, 1947 to January 12, 1950, the death penalty in the USSR was abolished by law.
8. The attentive reader will notice that in 1952 the number of those convicted was greater than the number of newly convicted/arrested persons. This is explained by the fact that this year there were massive convictions of people whose investigations had been dragging on since the first post-war years (among them there were many foreign prisoners of war and internees).

In total, in 1930-1933, according to various estimates, from 2.5 to 4 million people left their native villages, of which 1.8 million became “special settlers” in the most uninhabited areas of the European North, the Urals, Siberia and Kazakhstan. The rest were deprived of their property and resettled within their own regions, and a significant part of the “kulaks” fled to big cities and industrial construction sites. The consequence of Stalin's agricultural policies was a massive famine in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which claimed the lives of 6 or 7 million people (average estimate). The former “kulaks” were able to legally return to their homeland only after Stalin’s death, but we do not know what part of those expelled took advantage of this right.

Basically, these deportations took place during the war, in 1941–1945. Some were evicted preventively, as potential collaborators of the enemy (Koreans, Germans, Greeks, Hungarians, Italians, Romanians), others were accused of collaborating with the Germans during the occupation (Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, peoples of the Caucasus). Some of the deportees were mobilized into the so-called labor army. The total number of deportees extended to 2.5 million people(see table No. 2). During the journey, many of those evicted died from hunger and disease; Mortality at the new place of residence was also very high. Simultaneously with the deportation, administrative national autonomies were liquidated and toponymy changed. Most of those expelled were not able to return to their homeland until 1956, and some (Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars) until the end of the 1980s.

In addition to large consolidated flows, at different times there were politically motivated deportations of individual national and social groups, the total number of which is extremely difficult to determine (according to preliminary estimates, at least 450 thousand people).

Table 2. Deported peoples (1937–1944)

Nationality	Number of sent (average estimate)	Year of deportation
Finns, Ingrians, Greeks, other nationalities of states allied with Germany
Karachais
Chechens and Ingush
Balkars
Crimean Tatars
Meskhetian Turks and other peoples of Transcaucasia

The list of categories of the population subjected to political persecution and discrimination can be continued for a long time. We did not mention the hundreds of thousands of people deprived of civil rights for the “wrong” social origin, nor those killed during the suppression of peasant uprisings, nor the residents of the Baltic states, Western Ukraine, Moldova and Poland deported to the North and Siberia, nor those who lost their jobs and housing as a result of ideological persecution (for example, “cosmopolitan” Jews).

But besides these undisputed victims of political terror, there were millions more people convicted of minor “criminal” crimes and disciplinary offenses. They are not traditionally considered victims of political repression, although many of the repressive campaigns carried out by the police were politically motivated. Before the war, it was a campaign to “protect socialist property” (1932-1933), during the war they were imprisoned for violating labor discipline, after the war - for both. Some idea of ​​the scale of such campaigns is given by Table No. 3, which provides some figures from judicial statistics (as mentioned above, these statistics are not available in full).

Table 3. Total number of people convicted by courts and military tribunals in 1941 - 1956

	Convicted

Of these unimaginable millions, 1,796,1420 people were convicted during this period only under “wartime decrees” (of which 1,145,4119 were convicted for absenteeism). Punishments under these and similar decrees, as a rule, were not too severe - often the convicted were not deprived of their freedom, but simply worked for free for some time in “public works” or even at their workplace. Both this practice and the wording of these decrees show that their main focus is to extend the system of forced labor beyond the borders of camps and special settlements: unauthorized leaving the place of work (change of place of work); absenteeism (unauthorized absence from work); violation of discipline and unauthorized departure of students from factory and railway schools; desertion from military industry enterprises, railway and water transport; avoidance of mobilization for work in production and construction; evasion of mobilization for agricultural work; reluctance to work on the collective farm (“failure of collective farmers to produce the mandatory minimum of workdays”). It is interesting that these decrees were in effect for some time after Stalin’s death. A relapse of this policy occurred in the early 1960s, when the unemployed (“parasites”) began to be persecuted throughout the country - it was for this that the poet Joseph Brodsky, a future political emigrant and Nobel Prize laureate, was expelled from Leningrad in 1964.

1 - Memorial Society, Moscow.

Ours with D.R. Khapaeva article “ People, have pity on the executioners.", dedicated to the collective ideas of post-Soviet people about Soviet history, prompted a number of letters to the editor demanding that the following phrase contained in it be refuted:

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

Some readers a) considered the comparison of quantities incorrect victims from repressions with numbers dead during the war, b) found the very concept of victims of repression blurred and c) were outraged by the extremely inflated, in their opinion, estimate of the number of repressed people. If we assume that 27 million people died during the war, then the number of victims of repression, if it were twice as large, would have to be 54 million, which contradicts the data given in the famous article by V.N. Zemskov “GULAG (historical and sociological aspect)”, published in the journal “Sociological Research” (No. 6 and 7 for 1991), which says:

“...In fact, the number of people convicted for political reasons (for “counter-revolutionary crimes”) in the USSR for the period from 1921 to 1953, i.e. for 33 years, there were about 3.8 million people... Statement... of the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR V.A. Kryuchkov that in 1937-1938. no more than a million people were arrested, which is quite consistent with the current Gulag statistics we studied for the second half of the 30s.

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

In the article by V.N. Zemskov also provides other data based on archival documents (primarily on the number and composition of Gulag prisoners), which in no way confirms the estimates of the victims of terror by R. Conquest and A. Solzhenitsyn (about 60 million). So how many victims were there? This is worth understanding, and not only for the sake of evaluating our article. Let's start in order.

1.Is the quantity comparison correct? victims from repressions with numbers dead during the war?

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

The concept of “victims of repression” is indeed blurred. Sometimes you can use it without comment, and sometimes you can’t. We could not specify it for the same reason that we could compare the killed with the injured - we were interested in whether compatriots remembered the victims of terror in their families, and not at all in what percentage of them had injured relatives. But when it comes to how many “actually” were injured, who is considered injured, it is necessary to stipulate.

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

It is also appropriate to ask the question whether those convicted under criminal charges should be included in the statistics of repression. One of the readers said that he was not ready to consider criminals as victims of the regime. But not everyone who was convicted by ordinary courts on criminal charges were criminals. In the Soviet kingdom of distorting mirrors, almost all criteria were shifted. Looking ahead, let's say that V.N. Zemskov in the passage quoted above concerns only those convicted under political charges and is therefore obviously underestimated (the quantitative aspect will be discussed below). During rehabilitation, especially during the perestroika period, some people convicted of criminal charges were rehabilitated as actually victims of political repression. Of course, in many cases it is possible to understand this only individually, however, as is known, numerous “nonsense” who picked up ears of corn on a collective farm field or took home a pack of nails from a factory were also classified as criminals. During the campaigns to protect socialist property at the end of collectivization (the famous Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of August 7, 1932) and in the post-war period (Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of June 4, 1947), as well as during the struggle to improve labor discipline in the pre-war and war years (the so-called wartime decrees), millions were convicted of criminal charges. True, the majority of those convicted under the Decree of June 26, 1940, which introduced serfdom in enterprises and prohibited unauthorized departure from work, received minor sentences of corrective labor (ITR) or were given suspended sentences, but a fairly significant minority (22.9% or 4,113 thousand people for 1940-1956, judging by the statistical report of the Supreme Court of the USSR in 1958) were sentenced to imprisonment. Everything is clear with these latter ones, but what about the former? Some readers feel that they were simply treated a little harshly, and not repressed. But repression means going beyond the limits of generally accepted severity, and the sentences of technical and technical personnel for absenteeism, of course, were such an excess. Finally, in some cases, the number of which is impossible to estimate, those sentenced to technical labor force due to a misunderstanding or due to the excessive zeal of the guardians of the law ended up in camps.

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

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

A special question concerns “members of the families of traitors to the motherland.” Some of them were “definitely repressed”, others – a lot of children – were exiled to colonies or imprisoned in orphanages. Where to count such children? Where to count the people, most often the wives and mothers of convicted prisoners, who not only lost loved ones, but were also evicted from apartments, deprived of work and registration, were under surveillance and awaiting arrest? Shall we say that terror - that is, the policy of intimidation - did not touch them? On the other hand, it is difficult to include them in statistics - their numbers simply cannot be taken into account.

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

3. How can you assess the scale of repression?

3.1. What do we know and how do we know it?

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

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

Now about the historiographical context of V.N.’s work. Zemskova. The cited article, as well as the even more famous joint article written on its basis by the same author with the American historian A. Getty and the French historian G. Rittersporn, are characteristic of the formation that took shape in the 80s. the so-called “revisionist” trend in the study of Soviet history. Young (then) left-wing Western historians tried not so much to whitewash the Soviet regime as to show that the “right-wing” “anti-Soviet” historians of the older generation (such as R. Conquest and R. Pipes) wrote unscientific history, since they were not allowed into the Soviet archives. Therefore, if the “right” exaggerated the scale of repression, the “left”, partly out of dubious youth, having found much more modest figures in the archives, hastened to make them public and did not always ask themselves whether everything was reflected - and could be reflected - in the archives. Such “archival fetishism” is generally characteristic of the “tribe of historians,” including the most qualified. It is not surprising that the data of V.N. Zemskov, who reproduced the figures cited in the documents he found, in the light of a more careful analysis turn out to be underestimated indicators of the scale of repression.

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

3.2. Sentence statistics

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

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

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

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

In addition to the bodies of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD-MGB, the number of those repressed can be judged by statistics collected by the Department for the preparation of petitions for pardon under the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR for 1940 - the first half of 1955. (“Babukhin’s certificate”). According to this document, 35,830 thousand people were convicted by ordinary courts, as well as military tribunals, transport and camp courts during the specified period, including 256 thousand people sentenced to death, 15,109 thousand to imprisonment and 20,465 thousand. person to forced labor and other types of punishment. Here, of course, we are talking about all types of crimes. 1,074 thousand people (3.1%) were sentenced for counter-revolutionary crimes - slightly less than for hooliganism (3.5%), and twice as many as for serious criminal offenses (banditry, murder, robbery, robbery, rape together give 1.5%). Those convicted of military crimes amounted to almost the same number as those convicted of political offenses (1,074 thousand or 3%), and some of them can probably be considered politically repressed. Thefts of socialist and personal property - including an unknown number of "nonsense" - accounted for 16.9% of those convicted, or 6,028 thousand. 28.1% were accounted for by "other crimes." Punishments for some of them could well have been in the nature of repression - for the unauthorized seizure of collective farm lands (from 18 to 48 thousand cases per year between 1945 and 1955), resistance to power (several thousand cases per year), violation of the serfdom passport regime (from 9 to 50 thousand cases per year), failure to meet the minimum workdays (from 50 to 200 thousand per year), etc. The largest group included penalties for leaving work without permission - 15,746 thousand or 43.9%. At the same time, the statistical collection of the Supreme Court of 1958 speaks of 17,961 thousand sentenced under wartime decrees, of which 22.9% or 4,113 thousand were sentenced to imprisonment, and the rest to fines or technical technical regulations. However, not all those sentenced to short terms actually made it to the camps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

3.2. Population of Gulag

Estimating the number of repressed people can be approached in another way - through an analysis of the “population” of the Gulag. It is generally accepted that in the 20s. prisoners for political reasons were more likely to number in the thousands or a few tens of thousands. There were about the same number of exiles. The year the “real” Gulag was created was 1929. After this, the number of prisoners quickly exceeded one hundred thousand and by 1937 had grown to approximately a million. Published data show that from 1938 to 1947. it was, with some fluctuations, about 1.5 million, and then exceeded 2 million in the early 1950s. amounted to about 2.5 million (including colonies). However, the turnover of the camp population (caused by many reasons, including high mortality) was very high. Based on an analysis of data on the admission and departure of prisoners, E. Bacon suggested that between 1929 and 1953. About 18 million prisoners passed through the Gulag (including colonies). To this we must add those kept in prisons, of which at any given moment there were about 200-300-400 thousand (minimum 155 thousand in January 1944, maximum 488 thousand in January 1941). A significant portion of them probably ended up in the Gulag, but not all. Some were released, but others may have received minor sentences (for example, most of the 4.1 million people sentenced to imprisonment under wartime decrees), so there was no point in sending them to camps and perhaps even to colonies. Therefore, the figure of 18 million should probably be increased slightly (but hardly by more than 1-2 million).

How reliable are Gulag statistics? Most likely, it is quite reliable, although it was not maintained carefully. The factors that could lead to gross distortions, either in the direction of exaggeration or understatement, roughly balanced each other, not to mention the fact that, with the partial exception of the period of the Great Terror, Moscow took the economic role of the forced labor system seriously and monitored statistics and demanded a reduction in the very high mortality rate among prisoners. Camp commanders had to be prepared for reporting checks. Their interest, on the one hand, was to underestimate mortality and escape rates, and on the other, not to overinflate the total contingent so as not to obtain unrealistic production plans.

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

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

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

But this conclusion would be a simplification: after all, some of the criminals were de facto political. Thus, among 1,948 thousand prisoners convicted under criminal charges, 778 thousand were convicted of theft of socialist property (in the vast majority - 637 thousand - according to the Decree of June 4, 1947, plus 72 thousand - according to the Decree of 7 August 1932), as well as for violations of the passport regime (41 thousand), desertion (39 thousand), illegal border crossing (2 thousand) and unauthorized departure from work (26.5 thousand). In addition to this, in the late 30s and early 40s. usually there were about one percent of “family members of traitors to the motherland” (by the 50s there were only a few hundred people left in the Gulag) and from 8% (in 1934) to 21.7% (in 1939) “socially harmful and socially dangerous elements” (by the 50s there were almost none left). All of them were not officially included in the number of those repressed for political reasons. One and a half to two percent of prisoners served camp sentences for violating the passport regime. Those convicted for theft of socialist property, whose share in the Gulag population was 18.3% in 1934 and 14.2% in 1936, decreased to 2-3% by the end of the 30s, which is appropriate to associate with the special role persecution of the “nonsuns” in the mid-30s. If we assume that the absolute number of thefts during the 30s. has not changed dramatically, and if we consider that the total number of prisoners by the end of the 30s. increased approximately threefold compared to 1934 and one and a half times compared to 1936, then perhaps there is reason to assume that at least two-thirds of the victims of repression were among the plunderers of socialist property.

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

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

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

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

Despite the fact that the average number of de facto political people in the camps at a particular moment was approximately equal to the number of de jure political ones, in general, for the entire period of repression, de facto political ones should have been significantly greater than de jure political ones, because usually the sentences in criminal cases were significantly Briefly speaking. Thus, about a quarter of those convicted on political charges were sentenced to terms of imprisonment of 10 years or more, and another half - from 5 to 10 years, while in criminal cases the majority of terms were less than 5 years. It is clear that various forms of prisoner turnover (primarily mortality, including executions) could somewhat smooth out this difference. Nevertheless, de facto there should have been more than 5 million political ones.

How does this compare with a rough estimate of the number of people sentenced to imprisonment under criminal charges for actually political reasons? Most of the 4.1 million people convicted under wartime decrees probably did not make it to the camps, but some of them could well have made it to the colonies. But of the 8-9 million convicted of military and economic crimes, as well as for various forms of disobedience to authorities, the majority made it to the Gulag (the death rate during transit was supposedly quite high, but there are no accurate estimates of it). If it is true that about two-thirds of these 8-9 million were actually political prisoners, then together with those convicted under wartime decrees who reached the Gulag, this probably gives no less than 6-8 million.

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

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

3.4. In total there were repressed...

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

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

About 6-7 million peasants who died as a result of an artificially organized famine in the early 30s;

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

The 14 million who received sentences of ITR and fines under wartime decrees, as well as the majority of those 4 million who received short prison sentences under these decrees, presumably served them in prisons and therefore were not counted in the Gulag population statistics; Overall, this category probably adds at least 17 million victims of repression;

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

Up to half a million military personnel who were captured and, after liberation, passed through NKVD filtration camps (but not convicted);

Several hundred thousand administrative exiles, some of whom were subsequently arrested, but not all (O.V. Khlevniuk. P.306).

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

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

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

In connection with assessing the number of victims of repression, we should also dwell on the question of those killed during the Second World War. The fact is that these categories partially overlap: we are primarily talking about people who died during hostilities as a result of the terrorist policies of the Soviet regime. Those who were convicted by the military justice authorities are already taken into account in our statistics, but there were also those whom commanders of all ranks ordered to be shot without trial or even personally shot, based on their understanding of military discipline. Examples are probably known to everyone, but quantitative estimates do not exist here. We are not touching here on the problem of justification for purely military losses - senseless frontal attacks, which many famous commanders of Stalin’s ilk were eager for, were also, of course, a manifestation of the state’s complete disregard for the lives of citizens, but their consequences, naturally, have to be taken into account in the category of military losses.

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

By the way, I wonder why V.A. Kryuchkov spoke about a million, and not about one and a half million, repressed in 1937-1938? Perhaps he was not so much fighting to improve terror indicators in the light of perestroika as simply sharing the above-mentioned “expert assessment” of the anonymous reader of Pavlov’s certificate, convinced that 30% of the “political” are actually criminals?

We said above that the number of those executed was hardly less than a million people. However, if we talk about those killed as a result of terror, we will get a different figure: death in the camps (at least half a million in the 1930s alone - see O.V. Khlevniuk. P. 327) and in transit (which cannot be calculated), death under torture, suicides of those awaiting arrest, death of special settlers from hunger and disease both in settlement areas (where about 600 thousand kulaks died in the 1930s - see O.V. Khlevniuk, p. 327), and on the way to them, executions “alarmists” and “deserters” without trial or investigation, and finally, the death of millions of peasants as a result of a provoked famine - all this gives a figure hardly less than 10 million people. “Formal” repressions were only the tip of the iceberg of the terrorist policy of the Soviet regime.

Some readers - and, of course, historians - wonder what percentage of the population were victims of repression. O.V. Khlevnyuk in the above book (P.304) in relation to the 30s. suggests that one in six of the country's adult population was affected. However, he proceeds from an estimate of the total population according to the 1937 census, without taking into account the fact that the total number of people living in the country for ten years (and even more so throughout the almost thirty-five year period of mass repressions from 1917 to 1953 .) was greater than the number of people living in it at any given moment.

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

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

4. What does all this mean today?

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

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

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

In modern Russian historical consciousness, the desire for an “objective” approach to the past is very noticeable. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is no coincidence that we put the word “objective” in quotation marks. The point is not that complete objectivity is hardly achievable in principle, but that a call for it can mean very different things - from the honest desire of a conscientious researcher - and any interested person - to understand the complex and contradictory process that we call history, to the irritated reaction of an average person stuck on an oil needle to any attempts to disturb his peace of mind and make him think that he inherited not only valuable minerals that ensure his - alas, fragile - well-being, but also unresolved political, cultural and psychological problems , generated by seventy years of experience of “endless terror”, his own soul, which he is afraid to look into - perhaps not without reason. And, finally, the call for objectivity may hide the sober calculation of the ruling elites, who are aware of their genetic connection with the Soviet elites and are not at all inclined to “allow the lower classes to engage in criticism.”

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

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

Russian historical memory today turns away from repressions - but this, alas, does not mean at all that “the past has passed.” The structures of Russian everyday life to a large extent reproduce forms of social relations, behavior and consciousness that came from the imperial and Soviet past. This does not seem to be to the liking of the majority of respondents: increasingly imbued with pride in their past, they perceive the present quite critically. Thus, when asked in our questionnaire whether modern Russia is inferior to the West in terms of culture or superior to it, only 9.4% chose the second answer, while the same figure for all previous historical eras (including Moscow Rus' during the Soviet period) ranges from 20 to 40 %. Fellow citizens probably do not bother to think that the “golden age of Stalinism,” as well as the subsequent, albeit somewhat more faded period of Soviet history, may have something to do with what they are not happy with in our society today. Turning to the Soviet past in order to overcome it is possible only on the condition that we are ready to see the traces of this past in ourselves and recognize ourselves as heirs not only of glorious deeds, but also of the crimes of our ancestors.

Joseph Stalin died 65 years ago, but his personality and the policies he pursued are still the subject of fierce debate among historians, politicians, and ordinary people. The scale and ambiguity of this historical figure are so great that to this day the attitude towards Stalin and the Stalin era for some citizens of our country is a kind of indicator that determines their political and social position.

One of the darkest and most tragic pages in the country is political repression, which peaked in the 1930s and early 1940s. It is the repressive policy of the Soviet state during the reign of Stalin that is one of the main arguments of opponents of Stalinism. After all, on the other side of the coin is industrialization, the construction of new cities and enterprises, the development of transport infrastructure, the strengthening of the armed forces and the formation of a classical model of education, which still works “by inertia” and is one of the best in the world. But collectivization, the deportation of entire peoples to Kazakhstan and Central Asia, the extermination of political opponents and adversaries, as well as random people included in them, excessive harshness towards the country’s population is another part of the Stalin era, which also cannot be erased from people’s memory.

However, recently, publications have increasingly appeared that the scale and nature of political repressions during the reign of I.V. Stalin's claims were greatly exaggerated. It is interesting that not so long ago this position was voiced, it seemed, by those who were in no way interested in the “whitewashing” of Joseph Vissarionovich - employees of the US CIA think tank. By the way, it was in the USA that Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the main denouncer of Stalin’s repressions, lived in exile at one time and it was he who owned the frightening figures - 70 million repressed. The US CIA analytical center Rand Corporation calculated the number of those repressed during the reign of the Soviet leader and obtained slightly different figures - about 700 thousand people. Maybe the scale of repression was greater, but clearly not as much as Solzhenitsyn’s followers say.

The international human rights organization Memorial claims that from 11-12 million to 38-39 million people became victims of Stalinist repressions. The scatter, as we see, is very large. Still, 38 million is 3.5 times more than 11 million. Memorial lists the following as victims of Stalinist repression: 4.5-4.8 million convicted for political reasons, 6.5 million deported since 1920, about 4 million deprived of voting rights under the Constitution of 1918 and the resolution of 1925, about 400- 500 thousand repressed on the basis of a number of decrees, 6-7 million died from hunger in 1932-1933, 17.9 thousand victims of “labor decrees”.

As we can see, the concept of “victims of political repression” in this case is expanded to the maximum. But political repression is still specific actions aimed at arresting, imprisoning or physically destroying dissidents or those suspected of dissent. Can those who died of hunger be considered victims of political repression? Moreover, considering that at that difficult time most of the world's population was starving. Millions of people died in the African and Asian colonies of European powers, and in the “prosperous” United States of America, it was not for nothing that these years were called the “Great Depression.”

Go ahead. Another 4 million people were deprived of the right to vote during the Stalinist period. However, can the loss of rights be considered as full-fledged political repression? In this case, the multi-million African-American population of the United States, which in the first half of the twentieth century not only did not have voting rights, but was also segregated by race, is also victims of political repression by Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman and other American presidents. That is, approximately 10-12 million people from those classified by Memorial as victims of repression are already in question. Victims of time - yes, not always thoughtful economic policies - yes, but not targeted political repression.

If we approach the issue strictly, then only those convicted under “political” articles and sentenced to death or certain terms of imprisonment can be called direct victims of political repression. And this is where the fun begins. The repressed included not only “politicians,” but also many real criminals, convicted of ordinary criminal offenses, or who, for certain reasons (unpaid gambling debt, for example), tried to get away from criminals by initiating a new “political” article to political. Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky writes in his memoirs about such a story, which only took place during the “Brezhnev” time, in his memoirs - an ordinary criminal was sitting with him, who, in order not to answer to other prisoners for a gambling debt, deliberately scattered anti-Soviet leaflets in the barracks. Of course, such cases were not isolated.

To understand who can be classified as politically repressed, it is necessary to take a closer look at Soviet criminal legislation from the 1920s to the 1950s - what it was, to whom the harshest measures could be applied, and who could and who could not become a victim." execution" articles of the criminal code.

Lawyer Vladimir Postanyuk notes that when the Criminal Code of the RSFSR was adopted in 1922, Article 21 of the main criminal law of the Soviet republic emphasized that in order to combat the most serious types of crimes that threaten the foundations of Soviet power and the Soviet system, as an exceptional measure to protect the state of working people shooting is used.

For what crimes under the Criminal Code of the RSFSR and other union republics was the death penalty imposed during the Stalin years (1923-1953)? Could they be sentenced to death under Article 58 of the Criminal Code?

V. Postanyuk: Crimes punishable by an exceptional punishment - the death penalty - were included in the Special Part of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. First of all, these were the so-called. "counter-revolutionary" crimes. Among the crimes for which the death penalty was imposed, the criminal law of the RSFSR listed the organization for counter-revolutionary purposes of armed uprisings or invasion of Soviet territory by armed detachments or gangs, attempts to seize power (Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR); communication with foreign states or their individual representatives with the aim of inducing them to armed intervention in the affairs of the Republic; participation in an organization operating to commit crimes specified in Art. 58 CC; opposition to the normal activities of government institutions and enterprises; participation in an organization or assistance to an organization acting in the direction of helping the international bourgeoisie; organizing terrorist acts directed against representatives of the Soviet government or figures for counter-revolutionary purposes; organization for counter-revolutionary purposes of destruction or damage by explosion, arson or other means of railway or other routes and means of communication, public communications, water pipelines, public warehouses and other structures or structures, as well as participation in the commission of these crimes (Article 58 of the Criminal Code). The death penalty could also be received for active opposition to the revolutionary and labor movement while serving in responsible or highly secret positions in Tsarist Russia and counter-revolutionary governments during the Civil War. The death penalty followed for organizing gangs and gangs and participating in them, for counterfeiting by conspiracy of persons, for a number of official crimes. For example, Article 112 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR emphasized that execution can be ordered for abuse of power, excess of power or inaction and neglect, followed by the collapse of the managed structure. The appropriation and embezzlement of state property, the passing of an unjust sentence by a judge, the receipt of a bribe under aggravating circumstances - all these crimes could also be punishable by up to the death penalty.

During the Stalinist period, could minors be shot and for what crimes? Were there any such examples?

V. Postanyuk: During the period of its validity, the code was repeatedly amended. In particular, they extended to issues of criminal liability of minors and were associated with mitigation of penalties that could be applied to minor offenders. The rules on punishment also changed: the use of execution against minors and pregnant women was prohibited, short-term imprisonment was introduced for a period of 1 month (Law of July 10, 1923), and later for a period of 7 days (Law of October 16, 1924) .

In 1935, the famous Resolution “On measures to combat juvenile delinquency” was adopted. According to this resolution, minors over 12 years of age were allowed to be prosecuted for theft, causing violence and bodily harm, mutilation, murder or attempted murder. The resolution stated that all criminal penalties could be applied to juvenile offenders over 12 years of age. This formulation, which was not clear, gave rise to numerous allegations about the facts of the execution of children in the Soviet Union. But these statements, at least from a legal point of view, are not true. After all, the rule on the impossibility of imposing the death penalty on persons under 18 years of age, contained in Art. 13 Fundamental Principles and in Art. 22 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR was never repealed.

Was there really not a single case of execution of minors in the Soviet Union?

V. Postanyuk: There was such a case. And this is the only reliably known case of a teenager being shot in Soviet times. 15-year-old Arkady Neyland was shot on August 11, 1964. As we see, this is far from Stalin’s time. Neyland was the first and only minor officially sentenced by a Soviet court to capital punishment - execution. The crime of this criminal was that he hacked to death a woman and her three-year-old son with an ax. The teenager’s petition to pardon was rejected, and Nikita Khrushchev himself spoke out in support of capital punishment for him.

Thus, we see that Soviet criminal legislation actually provided for the death penalty under the “anti-Soviet” 58th article. However, as the lawyer noted in his interview, among the “execution” anti-Soviet acts there were crimes that in our time would be called terrorist. For example, one can hardly call a person who organized sabotage on a railroad track a “prisoner of conscience.” As for the use of execution as the ultimate punishment against corrupt officials, this practice still exists in a number of countries around the world, for example, in China. In the Soviet Union, the death penalty was seen as a temporary and exceptional, but effective measure to combat crime and the enemies of the Soviet state.

If we talk about the victims of political repression, then a huge part of those convicted under the anti-Soviet article were saboteurs, spies, organizers and members of armed and underground groups and organizations that acted against the Soviet regime. Suffice it to remember that in the 1920s and 1930s the country was in a hostile environment, and the situation in a number of regions of the Soviet Union was not particularly stable. For example, in Central Asia, individual groups of Basmachi continued to resist Soviet power in the 1930s.

Finally, you should not miss another very interesting nuance. A significant part of the Soviet citizens repressed under Stalin were senior officials of the party and the Soviet state, including law enforcement and security agencies. If we analyze the lists of senior leaders of the NKVD of the USSR at the union and republican levels in the 1930s, then most of them were subsequently shot. This indicates that harsh measures were applied not only to political opponents of the Soviet government, but also, to a much greater extent, to its representatives themselves who were guilty of abuse of power, corruption or any other malfeasance.

Mass repressions in the USSR were carried out in the period 1927 - 1953. These repressions are directly associated with the name of Joseph Stalin, who led the country during these years. Social and political persecution in the USSR began after the end of the last stage of the civil war. These phenomena began to gain momentum in the second half of the 30s and did not slow down during the Second World War, as well as after its end. Today we will talk about what the social and political repressions of the Soviet Union were, consider what phenomena underlie those events, and what consequences this led to.

They say: an entire people cannot be suppressed endlessly. Lie! Can! We see how our people have become devastated, gone wild, and indifference has descended on them not only to the fate of the country, not only to the fate of their neighbor, but even to their own fate and the fate of their children. Indifference, the last saving reaction of the body, has become our defining feature . That is why the popularity of vodka is unprecedented even on a Russian scale. This is terrible indifference when a person sees his life not chipped, not with a corner broken off, but so hopelessly fragmented, so corrupted along and across that only for the sake of alcoholic oblivion is it still worth living. Now, if vodka were banned, a revolution would immediately break out in our country.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Reasons for repression:

• Forcing the population to work on a non-economic basis. There was a lot of work to be done in the country, but there was not enough money for everything. The ideology shaped new thinking and perceptions, and was also supposed to motivate people to work for virtually nothing.
• Strengthening personal power. The new ideology needed an idol, a person who was unquestioningly trusted. After Lenin's assassination this post was vacant. Stalin had to take this place.
• Strengthening the exhaustion of a totalitarian society.

If you try to find the beginning of repression in the union, then the starting point, of course, should be 1927. This year was marked by the fact that massacres of so-called pests, as well as saboteurs, began to take place in the country. The motive for these events should be sought in the relations between the USSR and Great Britain. Thus, at the beginning of 1927, the Soviet Union became involved in a major international scandal, when the country was openly accused of trying to transfer the seat of the Soviet revolution to London. In response to these events, Great Britain broke off all relations with the USSR, both political and economic. Domestically, this step was presented as preparation by London for a new wave of intervention. At one of the party meetings, Stalin declared that the country “needs to destroy all remnants of imperialism and all supporters of the White Guard movement.” Stalin had an excellent reason for this on June 7, 1927. On this day, the political representative of the USSR, Voikov, was killed in Poland.

As a result, terror began. For example, on the night of June 10, 20 people who were in contact with the empire were shot. These were representatives of ancient noble families. In total, in June 27, more than 9 thousand people were arrested, accused of high treason, complicity with imperialism and other things that sound menacing, but are very difficult to prove. Most of those arrested were sent to prison.

Pest Control

After this, a number of major cases began in the USSR, which were aimed at combating sabotage and sabotage. The wave of these repressions was based on the fact that in most large companies that operated within the Soviet Union, leadership positions were occupied by immigrants from imperial Russia. Of course, these people for the most part did not feel sympathy for the new government. Therefore, the Soviet regime was looking for pretexts on which this intelligentsia could be removed from leadership positions and, if possible, destroyed. The problem was that this required compelling and legal reasons. Such grounds were found in a number of trials that swept across the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

Among the most striking examples of such cases are the following:

• Shakhty case. In 1928, repressions in the USSR affected miners from Donbass. This case was turned into a show trial. The entire leadership of Donbass, as well as 53 engineers, were accused of espionage activities with an attempt to sabotage the new state. As a result of the trial, 3 people were shot, 4 were acquitted, the rest received prison sentences from 1 to 10 years. This was a precedent - society enthusiastically accepted the repressions against the enemies of the people... In 2000, the Russian prosecutor's office rehabilitated all participants in the Shakhty case, due to the absence of corpus delicti.
• Pulkovo case. In June 1936, a major solar eclipse was supposed to be visible on the territory of the USSR. The Pulkovo Observatory appealed to the world community to attract personnel to study this phenomenon, as well as to obtain the necessary foreign equipment. As a result, the organization was accused of espionage ties. The number of victims is classified.
• The case of the industrial party. Those accused in this case were those whom the Soviet authorities called bourgeois. This process took place in 1930. The defendants were accused of trying to disrupt industrialization in the country.
• The case of the peasant party. The Socialist Revolutionary organization is widely known under the name of the Chayanov and Kondratiev group. In 1930, representatives of this organization were accused of attempting to disrupt industrialization and interfering in agricultural affairs.
• Union Bureau. The case of the union bureau was opened in 1931. The defendants were representatives of the Mensheviks. They were accused of undermining the creation and implementation of economic activities within the country, as well as connections with foreign intelligence.

At this moment, a massive ideological struggle was taking place in the USSR. The new regime tried its best to explain its position to the population, as well as justify its actions. But Stalin understood that ideology alone could not restore order in the country and could not allow him to retain power. Therefore, along with ideology, repression began in the USSR. Above we have already given some examples of cases from which repression began. These cases have always raised big questions, and today, when documents on many of them have been declassified, it becomes absolutely clear that most of the accusations were unfounded. It is no coincidence that the Russian prosecutor's office, having examined the documents of the Shakhty case, rehabilitated all participants in the process. And this despite the fact that in 1928, no one from the country’s party leadership had any idea about the innocence of these people. Why did this happen? This was due to the fact that, under the guise of repression, as a rule, everyone who did not agree with the new regime was destroyed.

The events of the 20s were just the beginning; the main events were ahead.

Socio-political meaning of mass repressions

A new massive wave of repressions within the country unfolded at the beginning of 1930. At this moment, a struggle began not only with political competitors, but also with the so-called kulaks. In fact, a new blow by the Soviet regime against the rich began, and this blow affected not only wealthy people, but also the middle peasants and even the poor. One of the stages of delivering this blow was dispossession. Within the framework of this material, we will not dwell in detail on the issues of dispossession, since this issue has already been studied in detail in the corresponding article on the site.

Party composition and governing bodies in repression

A new wave of political repressions in the USSR began at the end of 1934. At that time, there was a significant change in the structure of the administrative apparatus within the country. In particular, on July 10, 1934, a reorganization of the special services took place. On this day, the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR was created. This department is known by the abbreviation NKVD. This unit included the following services:

• Main Directorate of State Security. It was one of the main bodies that dealt with almost all matters.
• Main Directorate of Workers' and Peasants' Militia. This is an analogue of the modern police, with all the functions and responsibilities.
• Main Directorate of Border Guard Service. The department dealt with border and customs affairs.
• Main Directorate of Camps. This administration is now widely known by the abbreviation GULAG.
• Main Fire Department.

In addition, in November 1934, a special department was created, which was called the “Special Meeting”. This department received broad powers to combat enemies of the people. In fact, this department could, without the presence of the accused, prosecutor and lawyer, send people into exile or to the Gulag for up to 5 years. Of course, this applied only to enemies of the people, but the problem is that no one reliably knew how to identify this enemy. That is why the Special Meeting had unique functions, since virtually any person could be declared an enemy of the people. Any person could be sent into exile for 5 years on simple suspicion.

Mass repressions in the USSR

The events of December 1, 1934 became the reason for mass repressions. Then Sergei Mironovich Kirov was killed in Leningrad. As a result of these events, a special procedure for judicial proceedings was established in the country. In fact, we are talking about expedited trials. All cases where people were accused of terrorism and aiding terrorism were transferred under the simplified trial system. Again, the problem was that almost all the people who came under repression fell into this category. Above, we have already talked about a number of high-profile cases that characterize repression in the USSR, where it is clearly visible that all people, one way or another, were accused of aiding terrorism. The specificity of the simplified trial system was that the verdict had to be rendered within 10 days. The accused received a summons a day before the trial. The trial itself took place without the participation of prosecutors and lawyers. At the conclusion of the proceedings, any requests for clemency were prohibited. If during the proceedings a person was sentenced to death, this penalty was carried out immediately.

Political repression, party purge

Stalin carried out active repressions within the Bolshevik Party itself. One of the illustrative examples of the repressions that affected the Bolsheviks happened on January 14, 1936. On this day, the replacement of party documents was announced. This move had been discussed for a long time and was not unexpected. But when replacing documents, new certificates were not awarded to all party members, but only to those who “earned trust.” Thus began the purge of the party. If you believe the official data, then when new party documents were issued, 18% of the Bolsheviks were expelled from the party. These were the people to whom repression was applied primarily. And we are talking about only one of the waves of these purges. In total, the cleaning of the batch was carried out in several stages:

• In 1933. 250 people were expelled from the party's senior leadership.
• In 1934 - 1935, 20 thousand people were expelled from the Bolshevik Party.

Stalin actively destroyed people who could lay claim to power, who had power. To demonstrate this fact, it is only necessary to say that of all the members of the Politburo of 1917, after the purge, only Stalin survived (4 members were shot, and Trotsky was expelled from the party and expelled from the country). In total, there were 6 members of the Politburo at that time. In the period between the revolution and the death of Lenin, a new Politburo of 7 people was assembled. By the end of the purge, only Molotov and Kalinin remained alive. In 1934, the next congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) party took place. 1934 people took part in the congress. 1108 of them were arrested. Most were shot.

The murder of Kirov exacerbated the wave of repression, and Stalin himself made a statement to party members about the need for the final extermination of all enemies of the people. As a result, changes were made to the criminal code of the USSR. These changes stipulated that all cases of political prisoners were considered in an expedited manner without prosecutors' lawyers within 10 days. The executions were carried out immediately. In 1936, a political trial of the opposition took place. In fact, Lenin's closest associates, Zinoviev and Kamenev, were in the dock. They were accused of the murder of Kirov, as well as the attempt on Stalin's life. A new stage of political repression against the Leninist Guard began. This time Bukharin was subjected to repression, as was the head of government, Rykov. The socio-political meaning of repression in this sense was associated with the strengthening of the cult of personality.

Repression in the army

Beginning in June 1937, repressions in the USSR affected the army. In June, the first trial of the high command of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA), including the commander-in-chief Marshal Tukhachevsky, took place. The army leadership was accused of attempting a coup. According to prosecutors, the coup was supposed to take place on May 15, 1937. The accused were found guilty and most of them were shot. Tukhachevsky was also shot.

An interesting fact is that of the 8 members of the trial who sentenced Tukhachevsky to death, five were subsequently repressed and shot. However, from then on, repressions began in the army, which affected the entire leadership. As a result of such events, 3 marshals of the Soviet Union, 3 army commanders of the 1st rank, 10 army commanders of the 2nd rank, 50 corps commanders, 154 division commanders, 16 army commissars, 25 corps commissars, 58 divisional commissars, 401 regiment commanders were repressed. In total, 40 thousand people were subjected to repression in the Red Army. These were 40 thousand army leaders. As a result, more than 90% of the command staff was destroyed.

Increased repression

Beginning in 1937, the wave of repressions in the USSR began to intensify. The reason was order No. 00447 of the NKVD of the USSR dated July 30, 1937. This document stated the immediate repression of all anti-Soviet elements, namely:

• Former kulaks. All those whom the Soviet authorities called kulaks, but who escaped punishment, or were in labor camps or in exile, were subject to repression.
• All representatives of religion. Anyone who had anything to do with religion was subject to repression.
• Participants in anti-Soviet actions. Such participants included everyone who had ever actively or passively opposed Soviet power. In fact, this category included those who did not support the new government.
• Anti-Soviet politicians. Domestically, anti-Soviet politicians defined everyone who was not a member of the Bolshevik Party.
• White Guards.
• People with a criminal record. People who had a criminal record were automatically considered enemies of the Soviet regime.

• Hostile elements. Any person who was called a hostile element was sentenced to death.
• Inactive elements. The rest, who were not sentenced to death, were sent to camps or prisons for a term of 8 to 10 years.

All cases were now considered in an even more accelerated manner, where most cases were considered en masse. According to the same NKVD orders, repressions applied not only to convicts, but also to their families. In particular, the following penalties were applied to the families of those repressed:

• Families of those repressed for active anti-Soviet actions. All members of such families were sent to camps and labor camps.
• The families of the repressed who lived in the border strip were subject to resettlement inland. Often special settlements were formed for them.
• A family of repressed people who lived in major cities of the USSR. Such people were also resettled inland.

In 1940, a secret department of the NKVD was created. This department was engaged in the destruction of political opponents of Soviet power located abroad. The first victim of this department was Trotsky, who was killed in Mexico in August 1940. Subsequently, this secret department was engaged in the destruction of participants in the White Guard movement, as well as representatives of the imperialist emigration of Russia.

Subsequently, the repressions continued, although their main events had already passed. In fact, repressions in the USSR continued until 1953.

Results of repression

In total, from 1930 to 1953, 3 million 800 thousand people were repressed on charges of counter-revolution. Of these, 749,421 people were shot... And this is only according to official information... And how many more people died without trial or investigation, whose names and surnames are not included in the list?