The case of the “machine gunners” On October 30, 1973, at 3 o’clock in the morning, during the changing of the guard in a military unit in the village of Murino, the corpse of a sentry was discovered: two dozen stab wounds were found on the body of 19-year-old private Rodionov. His machine gun and two magazines with live ammunition

"Family" business In the spring of 1987, when the snow melted, in the Petrodvorets district near the Ropshinsky highway, the corpse of a man with traces of violent death was found. According to the conclusion of forensic doctors, the victim was about 30 years old, death was the result of a craniocerebral

The "gold case" and the case of Koshkin In the seventies, Alma-Ata, right before our eyes, turned into one of the most beautiful megacities of the USSR. According to police statistics, the number of crimes has decreased by 17 percent compared to previous years. But maybe because

"The case of the aviators" In this case, we again meet with the old absurdity. It's just incomprehensible to the mind how they could connect Beria with this case. True, no one speaks directly about this, but between the lines we read that it was he who initiated it. This statement is so absurd that it doesn't even

Fight against cosmopolitanism. "The BAC Case" and "The Doctors' Case" The Jewish theme occupies a special place in the late Stalinist repressions. The policy towards the Jews was a problem not only for Stalin, but for the whole world. The late period of Stalin's rule is characterized by many as

"Mingrelian case" It is not surprising that Beria was accused of participating in all the above cases, if we take into account that his trace "was even found in the Mingrelian case." He was almost recognized as the initiator of this case. As you can see, human stupidity has no

Olga Petrova

"Leningrad business"

Ubozhko died. Died somehow. But this is not significant. In the end, he could not have attracted the attention of the market media with anything else. But the reaction of the democratic press and central television to this death is indicative: their comments were full of irony and sarcasm. The morals of journalists have changed so much over the past decade that the death of not only Novodvorskaya, but also Khakamada, for example, the media will certainly again respond with poorly concealed humor. There are fewer and fewer "sharks of Pera" who took the anti-communists of "perestroika" seriously, who showed themselves in practice as petty careerists. The liberal rhetoricians spent their political capital quickly and mediocrely. However, the self-exposure of the fools of democracy did not add credibility to the current communists. Modern communist parties were not ready to become the ideological banner of society. One of the problems that probably every communist agitator faced is the still great vitality of perestroika clichés and myths in the minds of a significant part of the intelligentsia. The editor of Ogonyok has long been forgotten, but his provocative work lives on. In every dispute, either “repressed tens / hundreds of millions”, then “bloody detachments / special departments”, or, on the contrary, “the great strategist Tukhachevsky / Yakir / Blucher” or “the excellent economist Bukharin / Voznesensky” still pop up.

During perestroika, when the “crimes of Stalinism” were listed, the “poor women” never forgot to name the “Leningrad Affair” as well. Convicted and executed in this case, of course, were declared either innocent victims or dangerous rivals of Stalin. Legends were overgrown with myths, and myths with rumors. This "case" is perhaps the most interesting in post-war history; it differs markedly in content from the pre-war show trials and, in my opinion, largely illustrates the political struggle of that period within the Party. The main defendant in the "case" was N. A. Voznesensky, who headed until March 5, 1949. USSR State Planning Committee. In order to better appreciate the scale of events, it is necessary to show what role the State Planning Committee played in the economic system of the USSR. No wonder Lenin wrote about giving the State Planning Committee legislative functions. Lenin, at the beginning of 1921, wrote about "scientific development of the state plan for the entire national economy".

The urgency and importance of the case is evidenced by the fact that in 1954 the Khrushchevites tried and shot a group of workers and leaders of the MGB who were conducting the "Leningrad case". Characteristically, the "Leningrad case" is the only one in which almost all investigators were shot. Their trial was held with great hype in the Leningrad House of Officers.

"Historians" are looking for in the events of 49-50 years the confrontation of certain clans in the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), each, to the best of his goals and fantasies, draws different clans, politicians find themselves with different authors on one side or on the other side of the "barricades". Moreover, the “unity” of specific politicians is “proved” by official photographs, or even by rumors and “impressions” of the author. Some have a clan "Beria - Malenkov - Khrushchev" against the clan "Voznesensky - Kuznetsov", other's - "Beria - Abakumov" against "Voznesensky - Kuznetsov - Malenkov", for the third - Abakumov ends up in another clan, for the fourth - the already deceased Zhdanov appears on the side of Voznesensky, for the fifth - Zhdanov turns out to be on the side of Beria, for the sixth ...

Many politicians and writers were noted for “raising” the topic, starting with Khrushchev, who first raised the issue of the “Leningrad case” at the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee back in the summer of 1953 and accused Beria “of falsifying the case.” This version became official in May 1954: first, in the Decree of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU of May 3, 1954, and then in the speeches of N.S. Khrushchev and Prosecutor General R.A. Rudenko at a closed meeting of the Leningrad party activists on May 6-7, 1954. It was announced that the “Leningrad case” was “falsified by the former Minister of State Security V.S. Abakumov and his henchmen at the direction of the enemy of the people L.P. Beria". Then this version was confirmed in the notorious Report of Khrushchev at the XX Congress of the CPSU. "About the cult of personality and its consequences" February 25, 1956:

And in this period, the so-called "Leningrad case" suddenly arises. As has now been proven, this case was falsified. Innocently died TT. Voznesensky, Kuznetsov, Rodionov, Popkov and others.

It is known that Voznesensky and Kuznetsov were prominent and capable workers ... How did it happen that these people were declared enemies of the people and destroyed?

The facts show that the "Leningrad case" is also the result of the arbitrariness that Stalin allowed in relation to the cadres of the party.

... Stalin's incredible suspicion was cleverly used by the vile provocateur, the vile enemy of Beria, who exterminated thousands of communists, honest Soviet people. The nomination of Voznesensky and Kuznetsov scared Beria. As has now been established, it was Beria who "tossed" Stalin the materials concocted by him and his henchmen in the form of statements, anonymous letters, in the form of various rumors and conversations.

Already in perestroika, such figures as Volkogonov, Antonov-Avseenko, Volkov, Radzinsky shared their "revelations" with readers, even Sobchak was noted for commenting on the "Leningrad case" in the book. "A Dozen Knives in the Back: A Cautionary Tale of Russian Political Mores", where he compared with Voznesensky ... himself.

Almost all of these figures have a literary description that looks like this:

A young member of the Politburo, Voznesensky, Stalin's first deputy as chairman of the Council of Ministers, an able economist, came to the fore during the war. The secretary of the Central Committee Kuznetsov acts in alliance with him.

... Having taken Kuznetsov to Moscow as secretary of the Central Committee, the Boss makes him the second person in the party, instructs him to oversee both departments of Beria - the MGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Kuznetsov and Voznesensky, unlike the rest of his associates, are large figures who can make independent decisions. These were needed during the war. But now the war is over. And they never understood it...

Beria and Malenkov immediately caught the Master's mood. Beria longs to throw himself at Kuznetsov, who oversees his departments. "Dogs are tearing off the leash." Increasingly, Stalin's associates begin to oppose Voznesensky and Kuznetsov.

When the Boss appointed Abakumov Minister of State Security, Kuznetsov gave an inspirational speech on the subject. But the speaker did not know that the department he supervised had already received an order to deal with him.

... The end of Voznesensky has come. Yesterday's "outstanding economist" was accused of "deliberately lowering the figures of the plan," that his workers were "cunning with the government." In March 1949, he was removed from all posts. The former deputy Boss in the government was sitting in his dacha, working on the book "The Political Economy of Communism" and waiting for the end.

Unexpectedly, he was called to the Middle Dacha. The owner hugged him, seated him next to his former friends - members of the Politburo, and even raised a toast to him during the feast. After returning from the dacha, the happy Voznesensky was arrested. Turns out it was goodbye. He loved Voznesensky, but ... what to do - he changed the old apparatus.

In the last days of September 1950, a trial took place in Leningrad in the case of Voznesensky, Kuznetsov and Leningrad party members. They confessed to all the incredible crimes and were sentenced to death. The ending of the court session was fantastic: after the announcement of the verdict, the guards threw white shrouds over the convicts, put them on their shoulders and carried them to the exit across the entire hall. On the same day they were all shot.

This is Radzinsky's description from the book "Stalin". Isn't it true that he writes not only as an eyewitness, but also as the "second self" of the characters. And this sentimental scene with the “last dinner” was copied word for word from the book by Antonov-Avseenko "Portrait of a Tyrant". Stalin's motives by the authors' fantasy range from “what to do - he changed the old apparatus” to “the tyrant got bored”.

The "oppositionists" also turned to this topic. But all the new that they have introduced is that they have changed the distribution of "roles" and moral assessments. Zhukhrai in the book "Stalin: truth and lies", for all his exaltation of Stalin, the general secretary looks like a cornered loner who is surrounded by hostile forces. And the rest of the Soviet leadership is again divided into clans:

Around individual members of the Politburo, stable groups of people connected by ties of personal friendship began to form.

Around Georgy Malenkov, whom Stalin entrusted, as already noted, to implement the personnel policy in the Central Committee, grouped: Secretary of the Central Committee Kuznetsov, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Kosygin, Tevosyan and Malyshev, Marshal Rokossovsky, head of the department of administrative bodies of the Central Committee Ignatiev.

Around member of the Politburo, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Chairman of the State Planning Committee N.A. Voznesensky: Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR Rodionov, workers of the Leningrad party organization Popkov, Kapustin, Lazutin, Turko, Mikheev and others.

Around the member of the Politburo, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Lavrenty Beria are his long-standing "comrades-in-arms", whom he achieved during their work in the state security bodies, the assignment of general ranks: Merkulov, Kobulov, Meshik, Dekanozov.

The “oppositionist” Mukhin describes the events in an even more original way. He's in the book "Murder of Stalin and Beria" he attributes all the incidents to the "Jews", with whom the "Russian patriots and statesmen" Stalin and Beria heroically fought. Moreover, not only Voznesensky and Kuznetsov, but also V.S. Abakumov, who exposed them, are recorded as “Jews”.

This is a brief digression into the description of these events in the available literature.

Not a single author went into the essence of the matter, into the content of the disagreements between Stalin and Voznesensky, at least into the essence of the accusations that were brought against the “Leningraders” and “Gosplanovites”. At best, the accusations were declared "absurd", "contrived", "fake".

And in 2002, the Collection of Documents was published “The Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of Ministers of the USSR. 1945 - 1953". Many complaints can be made against the collection itself: on the selection and layout of documents, on inaccuracies in the notes, but even those few documents that have been published allow us to take a deeper look at the events of 49-50. Unfortunately, the very form of the Collection of Documents does not allow us to hope for a MASS acquaintance of readers with the materials. Such publications are generally designed only for specialists: the circulation is only 1,500 copies and the price is 300 rubles.

Voznesensky Nikolai Alekseevich

Born in 1903 in the family of an employee. Member of the CPSU (b) since 1919. In 1921, N.A. Voznesensky was sent to study at the Communist University. Sverdlov, in the early 30s, his first scientific works appeared in print. Doctor of Economic Sciences since 1935, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR since 1943. Since 1938 he headed the State Planning Committee of the USSR. Since 1939, Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (since 1946 - the Council of Ministers). During the Great Patriotic War (1942-45) he was a member of the State Defense Committee, from February 1941 he was a candidate member, and from 1947 he was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In March 1949, he was removed from the Politburo. In 1950 he was sentenced to death. Shot.

We, unlike the creepy detectives Weiners and Mukhin, Volkov and Zhukhrai, turn to the documents. Here are the snippets Decrees of the Politburo on the State Planning Committee of the USSR dated March 5, 1949:

The government of the USSR has repeatedly pointed out that the main task of the State Planning Commission is to ensure the growth and development of the national economy in state plans, to identify the available reserves of production capacities and to combat all sorts of departmental tendencies to underestimate production plans.

As a nationwide body for planning the national economy of the USSR and monitoring the fulfillment of state plans, the USSR State Planning Committee must be an absolutely objective and one hundred percent honest body; in his work, any kind of wobbling and adjustment of figures is completely unacceptable, “for an attempt to fit figures to this or that preconceived opinion is a crime of a criminal nature” (Stalin).

However, as a result of an audit carried out by the Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the USSR in connection with a note by the USSR Gossnab (comrade Pomaznev) on the plan for industrial production for the first quarter of 1949, facts of deception by the USSR State Planning Committee of the Government were revealed, it was established that the State Planning Committee of the USSR admits a biased and dishonest approach to planning issues and assessment of the fulfillment of plans, which is expressed primarily in adjusting figures in order to gloss over the actual state of affairs, it was also revealed that the State Planning Committee of the USSR is merging with individual ministries and departments and underestimating the production capacities and economic plans of ministries.

…3. During the inspection, the Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, Comrade Voznesensky, the First Deputy Chairman, Comrade Panov, and the Head of the Consolidated Department of the National Economic Plan, Comrade Sukharevsky, instead of recognizing the anti-state actions committed by the State Planning Committee, stubbornly tried to hide the real state of affairs by adjusting the numbers, thereby showing that in the State Planning Committee The USSR has a mutual responsibility that the employees of the USSR State Planning Committee, violating state discipline, obey the wrong procedures established in the USSR State Planning Committee.

…4. Linking with individual ministries, the State Planning Committee of the USSR began to underestimate plans for a number of industries.

It should be recalled that there was a practice of supervision by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers and each of his Deputies of a number of ministries, this distribution was formalized by an official document - the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The Vice-Chairman not only had power in the supervised ministries, but was also responsible to the Government and the Politburo for their work. Voznesensky supervised the ministries of the aviation industry, heavy engineering, automotive industry, machine tool building, shipbuilding, finance, construction of military and naval enterprises, as well as the State Bank, the Main Directorate of State Material Reserves, the Main Directorate of Labor Reserves and the Committee for Accounting and Distribution of Labor. The plan was underestimated for “own” ministries, and overestimated for “not their own”, for example, the oil industry and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It is important that, by changing the plan, Voznesensky's group in Gosplan violated NATURAL PROPORTIONS in the national economy, i.e. led to a shortage of some products and an "excess" of others. Whether this was done deliberately, with the aim of unbalancing the entire economy, or “simply” to “make life easier” for “ours” is a secondary issue. What matters most is what happens in practice. Modern supporters of Voznesensky will have to admit that either Voznesensky CONSCIOUSLY HARMED, or he was ABSOLUTELY INCOMPETENT, and, being the chairman of the State Planning Committee, did not know the basic laws of a planned economy.

Since Voznesensky graduated from the Institute of the Red Professorship, was a doctor of economic sciences and even a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, he wrote a number of articles and a book "The military economy of the USSR during the Patriotic War", then the option with absolute incompetence seems unlikely. However, Voznesensky does not even look like a “sophisticated pest”, since the systematic underestimation of the plan to “his” ministries is a sign of banal nepotism rather than purposeful activity.

The situation with the adjustment of figures and the deception of the Government is a harbinger of the “additives” of the times of stagnation. This is not only a deception of the Government, which, in the end, became a deception of the working people, but also AGAIN an imbalance in the economy, a shift in the planning base for the next period. In social terms, the appearance of deficits was the economic basis for the emergence of bribery, "dexterous suppliers", i.e. revival of market relations in industry.

But, despite the proof of harm from the activities of Voznesensky and his henchmen in the State Planning Commission, no one was immediately arrested. Voznesensky was removed from his post and sent on leave.

At this time, the verification of the activities of the State Planning Commission continued.

Stalin wrote that the logic of factional struggle is stronger than the desires of individuals. He drew this conclusion by summarizing the practice of his struggle against the Trotskyites, Zinovievites, Bukharinites ... Stalin saw how some of yesterday's comrades, due to the lack of Marxist literacy, embarked on the revisionist path, very quickly became enemies not only of Stalin, but of the entire Party. Of course, not everyone who errs is a factionalist. In order to cross the line separating the theoretical struggle within the Party from sabotage, certain personal qualities are also needed. Stalin knowingly defined the majority of enemies of the people as double-dealers. Defeated in ideological battles, they formally admitted their mistakes, but in fact remained in the same positions. Forms of struggle for upholding one's opinion quickly outgrew the norms of the party charter, began to push “their own people” into the governing bodies and overwrite “not their own”, and then put their line into practice, that is, sabotage the party line.

The same thing happened with the "Leningrad group". At first there were ambitions and a rejection of the non-market nature of the Soviet economy, then wrecking acts appeared. In this article we will not go into the activities of the leaders of Leningrad - Kuznetsov, Kapustin, Rodionov. They had their own methods and their own deeds. From an ideological point of view, the most interesting is Voznesensky, who can be called the "theorist" of this faction.

Checking the work of the State Planning Commission revealed another aspect of the "activities" of this body. IN Note on the loss of secret documents in the State Planning Committee of the USSR dated August 22, 1949, there is a long list of missing documents. Here are just a few of them, and summaries:

The lack of proper order in the handling of documents led to the fact that in the State Planning Commission ... for 5 years 236 secret and top secret documents were missing, in addition, 9 secret documents were lost in the secretariat of Voznesensky.

Among the documents lost in 1944-49 are:

State plan for the restoration and development of the national economy for 1945 (capital work plan), No. 18104, on 209 sheets.

On the calculations of oil transportation for 1945, No. 128, on 3 sheets. The document provides data on the throughput capacity of oil pipelines and on the volume of transportation by rail, sea and river transport.

Perspective plan for the restoration of the national economy in the liberated regions of the USSR, No. 1521, one book.

About the five-year technical plan for 1946-1950, No. 7218, on 114 sheets.

On the organization of production of radar stations, No. 4103; on 6 sheets.

Note on the plan for the restoration of railway transport in 1946-1950, No. 7576, on 4 sheets.

About the purchase in the USA for cash of equipment not supplied by the Americans, No. 557, on 15 sheets.

Letter and draft order on organizing the production of hulls for 152 mm naval shells at the former German shipyard in Schiehau, No. 11736, on 6 sheets.

List of issues constituting state secrets and subject to classification in the offices of authorized persons of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, No. 3134, copy. No. 2.

Instructions for maintaining secret and top secret correspondence by employees of the State Planning Commission, No. 3132, copy. No. 17.

Conclusion on the proposals of the production departments of the State Planning Commission on increasing the limit of capital work and the volume of construction and installation work for 1947, No. 6439, on 10 sheets. The document shows the total number of enterprises engaged in the production of radar equipment.

Note on the status of dismantling, removal and use of equipment and materials from German and Japanese enterprises, No. 3072, on 4 sheets.

Certificate of deficits on the most important material balances, including: on non-ferrous metals, aviation gasoline and oils, No. 6505, on 4 sheets.

None of the employees responsible for the loss of government documents was brought to trial, as required by law. The vast majority of the perpetrators did not suffer any punishment even in the administrative order.

The destruction of secret documents is carried out in the State Planning Commission without observing the established rules. In 1944, the head of the 3rd department of the secret department, Beschastnov, with a group of employees, drew up an act on the destruction of a large number of documents, while 33 documents listed as destroyed under the act, he kept and kept uncontrollably until the end of 1946. Among these documents were: plan for the restoration and development of the national economy of the USSR for 1946-1950; a five-year plan for the restoration and development of railway transport for 1946-1950; materials on the balance and distribution of funds of electricity, solid and liquid fuels, ferrous and non-ferrous metals for the II quarter. 1946, data on the accumulation of petroleum products in the state reserve, and others.

The leadership of the State Planning Commission did not conduct any investigation into this criminal case and limited itself to reprimanding Beschastny. Moreover, Beschastnov was later promoted to the post of deputy. head of the secret department. At present, Beschastnov has been dismissed from the State Planning Commission, the reason for his dismissal was also the fact that he gave conflicting information about his father, who lives in the United States.

We cited such a long quote to show that it was not unimportant pieces of paper that were classified from reinsurance that were missing, but the most serious data on the country's economic security. According to this note to Voznesensky, the Commission of Party Control already has questions. Voznesensky answers with a reply, the main content of which boils down to “I don’t know, I didn’t see”, in the same cases where it is not possible to “pretend to be a broom”, Voznesensky is justified by reasoning like:

Why, then, did I not decide to bring the perpetrators to justice, but limited myself to administrative penalties and did not report these facts to the Central Committee and the Government?

When I try to comprehend the reasons for such an offense, I have to distinguish between the question: why did I not do it then, and how do I understand this matter now? Then it seemed to me that since there was no evidence that the documents were used to divulge state secrets and that, as Kuptsov told me, he was reporting the lack of documents to the Ministry of State Security, I thought that one could believe the explanations of the perpetrators and confine oneself to administrative penalties.

Now I understand that this philistine approach is unacceptable, that I committed great guilt before the Central Committee and the Government, that laws cannot be replaced by subjective interpretation, that they must be strictly observed, and that only the court and the investigation are competent to resolve this issue. All this is now clear to me because after my dismissal, at the cost of great suffering, I eliminated my illness - arrogance and self-conceit, that all attitude to Party and Soviet decisions, of course, became truly sharpened and vigilant.

Abakumov Viktor Semyonovich

Born April 11, 1908 in Moscow in a working-class family. Member of the CPSU (b) since 1930. In the NKVD since 1932. In 1941 appointed Deputy People's Commissar of the NKVD of the USSR. In 1941-1943. - Head of the Department of Special Departments of the NKVD of the USSR. Since 1943 - Head of the Main Directorate of NPO "Smersh". From 1946 to 1951 - Minister of State Security of the USSR. Colonel General. At an offsite meeting of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR in Leningrad on December 12-19. 1954 Abakumov was accused of fabricating court cases, incl. "Leningrad case", called "a member of the gang of Beria." He pleaded not guilty. Shot. Together with Abakumov, the head of the investigative unit for especially important cases of the Ministry of State Security of the USSR A.G. Leonov, his deputies V.I. Komarov and M.T. Likhachev, investigators I.Ya. Chernov and Ya.M. Broveman.

These arguments with a claim to sincere repentance look indecent for a leader of this level, they would not have gone down even to a cadet if he covered up a friend who lost a training manual "for official use." Based on the results of the CPC check, Voznesensky is expelled from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and the case is transferred to the investigating authorities. But the proceedings were not limited to organizational measures. Stalin was seriously concerned not only with the situation in the State Planning Commission, but also with the political situation around Voznesensky. As one would expect, Voznesensky tried to "bring his ideas to the masses", but he did it in a factional way too. Having enlisted the support of supporters in the Bolshevik magazine, Voznesensky began to promote his book in all ways. Here's what it says in Notes on the results of checking the work of the Bolshevik magazine:

... The audit also showed that the editorial staff of the Bolshevik magazine included various quotations in the authors' articles without due necessity. In addition to the well-known case with Comrade Andrianov’s article, quotations from N. Voznesensky’s book “The Military Economy of the USSR” were included in the articles by P. Slipper “The Combination of Personal and Public Interests under Socialism” (No. 6 for 1948) and A. Morozov “Impoverishment workers in the capitalist countries" (No. 16, 1948)

Finding out the reasons for the arbitrary inclusion of comrade Koshelev quotes from the book of N.A. Voznesensky in Comrade Andrianov's article, I must say that the economists who worked in Bolshevik had an exorbitant exaggeration of the political and theoretical significance of N.A. Voznesensky. The main bearer of the opinion about the special political significance of this book was Comrade Gatovsky, who worked until September 1948. economic department of the magazine "Bolshevik", and then involved as a consultant on some articles on economic topics.

In January 1948, on behalf of the editors, Comrade Gatovsky wrote a review of the book by N.A. Voznesensky for the Bolshevik magazine, in which he exorbitantly extolled the significance of this book. To the comments of members of the editorial board that the evaluative formulations of the book should be given more modestly, Comrade Gatovsky replied that these formulations had already been published in the press, and he could not change them ...

After the publication of Comrade Gatovsky's review in the Bolshevik magazine, he boasted to some of the journal's staff that his review was met with approval by the State Planning Commission. Obviously, when compiling the review, Gatovsky was concerned not so much about the interests of the theory, about the interests of readers, but about how this review would be viewed in the State Planning Commission. With the book of N.A. Voznesensky Comrade Gatovsky was worn as with the most authoritative manual. When the editorial staff drew Comrade Gatovsky's attention to the incorrectness or ambiguity of some of the wording of his article, he replied that it was written in the book of N. A. Voznesensky. It is clear that Comrade Gatovsky did not restrain the authors from inappropriately quoting provisions from the book of N. A. Voznesensky, he approved of the articles in which this book was abundantly cited. So, for example, Comrade Gatovsky gave a positive conclusion about the article by Sorokin, an employee of the State Planning Commission, which is replete with quotations from the book of N. A. Voznesensky (the article was published in No. 24 of the Bolshevik magazine, 1948)

In this regard, under the influence of Comrade Gatovsky, Comrade Koshelev, an employee of the economic department of the journal, who still believes that quoting N.A. Voznesensky, as a theoretical source, it was a normal phenomenon that de "everyone did it like that." T. Koshelev denies that anyone prompted him to include a quote from N. A. Voznesensky's book in Comrade Andrianov's article. Comrade Koshelev explains the inclusion of this quotation by the fact that he wanted to "improve the article."

... It should be noted that the deputy. The editor-in-chief of the journal, Comrade Kuzminov, who dealt with articles on economic issues, did not resist the tendency to plant quotations from the book of N. A. Voznesensky without any need in articles, and he himself cited several quotations from this book in his articles. When asked why he cited quotations from the said book, Comrade Kuzminov replied that the citation was not caused by the need to present the issues of the topic, but that he was afraid of reproaches for ignoring the book of N. A. Voznesensky. This unprincipled explanation shows that in preparing Comrade Andrianov's article, Comrade Kuzminov could not prevent Koshelev from including a quotation that had absolutely nothing to do with the case.

That is, the editors not only published, first of all, articles praising Voznesensky's book, but also inserted quotations from it into articles by authors who did not even think of quoting Voznesensky.

The book itself "War economy of the USSR" unremarkable - a good statistical collection with slogans and quotes instead of conclusions and recommendations. If you read a number of articles by Voznesensky of different periods, which is not difficult - in the 60-70s he was actively published, then you can see how big a role he assigns to market methods and cost accounting in particular in the construction of communism. Of course, there are curtsies towards communism, and there are plenty of quotations from the classics of Marxism, but self-financing "pops up" at every stage from the end of the NEP to the last page.

For example, in the article "Cost-accounting and planning at the present stage" he's writing:

We not only cannot abolish cost accounting, but we must strengthen it. The current economic situation has made self-financing particularly relevant(highlighted by Voznesensky)... We must transfer every shop, every brigade to self-financing ... Each self-supporting unit has fixed working capital.

The article ends with the conclusion: So our general conclusion is clear: self-financing - a powerful lever for the implementation of the Bolshevik pace, a powerful lever for socialist planning (highlighted by Voznesensky)». This article was written at the end of 1931. And here is an excerpt from a 1939 article: “Self-supporting relations are necessary in the period of socialism... That is why it is necessary to keep a monetary account of planned indicators.” Those. Voznesensky and his students believed that no matter what stage the USSR economy was at, at each stage, it was the cost accounting that was the most "needed, important and relevant."

After the completion of the investigation and trial in the "Leningrad case", a discussion on economic issues began in the party literature, at the end of which a book by Stalin was published. "Economic problems of socialism in the USSR". The course of the discussion revealed a large number of marketers among economists. Stalin noted:

The main mistake of t.t. Sanina and Venzher is that they do not understand the role and significance of commodity circulation under socialism, they do not understand that commodity circulation is incompatible with the prospect of transition from socialism to communism. They apparently think that even with commodity circulation it is possible to pass from socialism to communism, that commodity circulation cannot interfere with this matter. This is a profound delusion that arose on the basis of a misunderstanding of Marxism.

Not being able to openly introduce commodity circulation in the USSR, the commodity workers planted it "on the sly", through the so-called self-financing. They “forgot” that Lenin equated economic and capitalist calculation, and therefore proposed to revive self-supporting relations in a very limited amount, only for the period of the NEP under the strict control of the Bolshevik Soviets, until the USSR State Planning Committee reached the necessary maturity. As centralized scientific planning developed, cost accounting inevitably turned into a wild anachronism, into a brake on the building of communism.

Being ideologically defeated in 1951, the marketers showed themselves later, when “the construction of“ communism ”by introducing market mechanisms and cost accounting began to be carried out by one of Voznesensky’s employees, Kosygin.

Thus, the topic of self-financing and the history of the struggle of marketers against anti-marketers in economic science is worth special articles, which in the future will certainly be placed in our journal.

NEW WAVE OF RESPRESSION

After the death of A. Zhdanov, which followed in August 1948, the situation of people close to him became especially vulnerable. G. Malenkov, using a pathological suspicion of any manifestations of independence and initiative, acted as one of the main organizers of the "Leningrad Case". He sought to prove that there was an organized group of leaders in Leningrad that had embarked on the path of behind-the-scenes combinations directed against the central leadership. Already on February 15, 1949, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decided to remove A. A. Kuznetsov, M. I. Rodionov (Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR) and P. S. Popkov (First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee and City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks) from their posts ( b)). In 1949-1951. in Leningrad and the region, more than 2,000 senior officials were repressed.

Popkov and other Leningrad leaders were accused of trying to create a Communist Party of Russia based on the model of other union republics with headquarters in Leningrad, and also to transfer the government of the RSFSR to the city on the Neva. One of the features of the "Leningrad case" was that not only party functionaries were persecuted, but also Soviet, Komsomol, trade union leaders and members of their families.

There were purges in the universities of the city, during which many famous scientists lost their jobs. Hundreds of book and pamphlet titles were banned and removed from libraries.

From September 29 to October 1, 1950, the trial of the first group of defendants in this "case" took place in the building of the Leningrad District House of Officers. On October 1, the verdict was announced, and on the same day A. A. Kuznetsov, M. I. Rodionov, N. A. Voznesensky, P. S. Popkov, Ya. F. Kapustin and P. G. Lazutin were shot.

The list of victims of the "Leningrad case" continued to grow. At the end of October 1950, A. A. Voznesensky, Minister of Education of the RSFSR, former rector of Leningrad State University during the war years, was shot; M. A. Voznesenskaya - First Secretary of the Kuibyshev District Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of Leningrad; N. V. Solovyov - First Secretary of the Crimean Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, previously Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Leningrad Regional Council; G. F. Badaev - Second Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks; A. A. Bubnov - Secretary of the Leningrad City Executive Committee and other leaders. Arrests and trials continued in 1951-1952. The total number of deaths in the "Leningrad case" was about 30 people. Rehabilitation of convicts began after Stalin's death.

The "Leningrad case" became a kind of rehearsal for the planned series of new trials. In early July 1951, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks received a statement from the senior investigator for especially important cases of the USSR Ministry of State Security, Lieutenant Colonel M. D. Ryumin, in which he "signaled" the unfavorable state of affairs in the Ministry and blamed his immediate superior, Minister of State Security V S. Abakumova. This circumstance suited Beria and Malenkov, who in the summer of 1951 headed a special commission of the Central Committee to investigate the activities of Abakumov and did everything possible to remove him from his post. The former head of the MGB was expelled from the party and taken into custody. A new campaign was launched to identify "enemies".

In late 1951 and early 1952, Stalin inspired the "exposure" of the so-called Mingrelian nationalist organization in Georgia. Even Beria, under these conditions, could not help but feel a threat to his position, having reason to believe that he himself could become the next victim of the dictator.

I.S. Ratkovsky, M.V. Khodyakov. History of Soviet Russia

LIST OF ARRESTED

Top secret

CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE AUCP(b) to comrade I. V. STALIN

At the same time, I present a list of the rest of those arrested in the Leningrad case.

The Ministry of State Security of the USSR considers it necessary to condemn by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR in the usual manner, without the participation of the parties, in Lefortovo prison, with the consideration of cases for each accused separately:

First. - The accused listed in the attached list from 1 to 19, inclusive: SOLOVIEV, VERBITSKY, LEVIN, BADAEV, VOSNENSENSKY, KUBATKIN, VOSTENSENSKAYA, BONDARENKO, KHARITONOVA, BURILIN, BASOVA, NIKITIN, TALUSH, SAFONOV, GALKINA, IVANOV, BUB NOVA, PETROVSKY, CHURSINA - to the death penalty - shooting, without the right to appeal, pardon and with the enforcement of the court sentence immediately.

Second. - From the 20th to the 32nd number of the list inclusive: GRIGORYEV, KOLOBASHKIN, SINTSOVA, BUMAGINA, BOYAR, KLEMENCHUK, KUZMENKO, TAIROV, SHUMILOV, NIKANOROVA, KHOVANOV, RAKOV and BELOPOLSKY, - to 25 years in prison each.

Third. - From 33 to 38 list number: TIKHONOV, PAVLOV, LIZUNOV, PODGORSKY, VEDERNIKOV and SKRIPCHENKO - for 15 years of imprisonment in a special camp each.

I ask for your permission.

V. Abakumov ABAKUMOV.

STRUGGLE FOR POWER SURROUNDED BY STALIN

After the death of Zhdanov, the influence of the group headed by N.A. Voznesensky remained for some time. At the same time, the struggle between them and the Malenkov-Beria group intensifies. As noted in the official materials of the Commission of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU for additional study of materials related to the repressions that took place in the period 30-40 and early 50s. "Stalin in private conversations suggested that he saw the secretary of the Central Committee, a member of the Orgburo A.A. Kuznetsov as his successor on the party line. And on the state line - a member of the Politburo, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR N.A. Voznesensky" .

The conflict between Kuznetsov and Malenkov broke out as early as 1946. Kuznetsov was one of the executors of the "aviators' case" and, as the staff of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks later recalled, "comrade Kuznetsov revealed a number of shortcomings made by Malenkov in the leadership of the personnel department and the Ministry of Aviation industry, and subjected them to well-deserved criticism at meetings of the apparatus of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

In July 1948, Malenkov was again elected Secretary of the Central Committee. The struggle between the old and new chiefs of the Central Committee Personnel Department is entering a new phase. The external and clearly far-fetched pretext for persecuting the so-called "Leningrad anti-party group" was the accusation of A.A. Kuznetsov, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR M.I. The accusation was unfounded, since the Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, chaired by G.M. Malenkov, twice decided to hold wholesale fairs for the sale of surplus goods twice - on October 14 and November 11, 1948. A more serious reason, in our opinion, was the accusation of factionalism, banned from the party at the 10th congress and fiercely persecuted by Stalin.

In February 1949 Malenkov was sent to Leningrad. An ideological basis was brought under the struggle of groups for power, continuity was established with the political processes of a decade ago. The rest remained a matter of execution technique. As a result of the arrests, it was possible to beat out evidence that the second secretary of the Leningrad city committee, Ya.F. Kapustin, an active participant in the defense of the city during the war years, was an "English spy." He was reminded that in 1935 he had a long internship in England, in Manchester, at the factories of the Metropolitan Vicker, that he enjoyed respect and trust at the factory, that he had an affair with his English teacher, who offered him to stay in England, and all these facts "deserve special attention as a signal of a possible (our italics. Auth.) processing of Kapustin by British intelligence."

Another defendant, the former chairman of the Leningrad Regional Executive Committee, N.V. Solovyov, who was appointed First Secretary of the Crimean Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, was declared a "terry great-power chauvinist" for his proposal to create a Bureau of the Central Committee for the RSFSR, to form the Communist Party of the RSFSR. He was also accused of "being at work in the Crimea, making sharp hostile attacks against the head of the Soviet state."

On August 13, 1949, when leaving the office of G.M. Malenkov, A.A. Kuznetsov, P.S. Popkov, M.I. Rodionov, P.G. Regional Executive Committee N.V. Soloviev.

In parallel with this, there was a search for compromising evidence against N.A. Voznesensky.

Direct work to discredit N.A. Voznesensky was carried out by the chairman of the Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, M.F. Shkiryatov99. N.A. Voznesensky was accused of deliberately underestimating state plans, of distorting and falsifying statistical reporting, and, finally, of losing secret documents in the apparatus of the State Planning Commission. Considering that practically all the documentation was considered secret, this accusation was, in fact, a win-win. On September 9, 1949, Shkiryatov handed over to G.M. Malenkov the decision of the Communist Party of China with a proposal to expel Voznesensky from the party and bring him to trial FOR LOSS OF DOCUMENTS by the State Planning Committee of the USSR100. This proposal was approved by a poll of members of the Plenum of the Central Committee and on October 27, 1949, Voznesensky was arrested. The investigation was carried out by the Ministry of State Security and special investigators from among the employees of the Central Committee.

Arrested Kuznetsov, Kapustin, brothers Voznesensky, Rodionov, deputy chairman of the Lensoviet Galkin were brutally tortured. Malenkov, Beria and Bulganin were directly involved in the interrogation procedure along with MGB investigators.

The investigation (if this term can be used here at all) proceeded with exceptional, some kind of medieval cruelty. They beat pregnant women, exterminated their families (for example, in addition to N.A. Voznesensky himself, his brother, the Minister of Education of the RSFSR A.A. Voznesensky, his sister, M.A. Voznesenskaya, secretary of one of the Leningrad district committees and 14 (!) Wives and relatives of the other defendants.

The main point of the accusation against N.A. Voznesensky was that he had lost secret documents. According to this article, according to the Law "On liability for disclosure of state secrets and for the loss of documents containing state secrets", adopted in 1947, imprisonment in a forced labor camp for a term of ten to fifteen years was assumed as the maximum punishment. The death penalty in the USSR after the war was officially abolished. In a resolution of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, it was announced that "the use of the death penalty is no longer necessary in peacetime", ... "meeting the wishes of the trade unions of workers and employees and other authoritative organizations expressing the opinion of broad public circles" - Presidium of the Supreme Council The USSR abolished the death penalty.

However, the norm of the law itself was changed to punish the accused. , from trade unions, peasant organizations, as well as from cultural figures".

The court followed, its future decisions, in accordance with the usual practice, were approved in advance by Stalin and the Politburo. On October 1, 1950, at one in the morning, the verdict was announced, according to which Voznesensky, Kuznetsov, Rodionov, Popkov, Kapustin and Lazutin were sentenced to death. An hour later, the sentence was carried out. Arrests and trials continued throughout the next 1950-1952. The KGB archive preserved a draft resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, dated August 1949, which was supposed to oblige the Ministry of State Security "to evict 1,500 people living in the city of Leningrad and the Leningrad Region with their families, from among those who compromised themselves to some extent connection with the Trotskyites, Zinovievites, rightists, Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Germans and Finns for an eternal settlement in the Altai Territory, under the supervision of the organs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In the summer of 1957, F.R. Kozlov, then secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee, declared at the Plenum of the Central Committee: “Tens of thousands of innocent people were then sent from Leningrad to exile, to prisons, and many of them went to execution, many of them died Tens of thousands of innocent people were sent by train."

With the elimination of Voznesensky, Kuznetsov and their supporters from politics and life, the struggle for power in the Kremlin and Staraya Square did not weaken or become clearer. Outwardly, it was a complete victory for Beria and Malenkov. However, contradictions persisted between the members of this group (suffice it to recall that in 1946 Malenkov almost became Beria's defendant), and Stalin himself watched them suspiciously, introducing "his own people" into the political game.

R. Pikhoya. Socio-political development and struggle for power in the post-war Soviet Union (1945-1953)

REHABILITATION

An investigation currently conducted by the USSR Prosecutor's Office on behalf of the CPSU Central Committee has established that the case on charges of Kuznetsov, Popkov, Voznesensky and others of treason, counter-revolutionary sabotage and participation in an anti-Soviet group was fabricated for hostile counter-revolutionary purposes by the former Minister of State Security, now arrested Abakumov and his accomplices. Using the facts of violation of state discipline and individual misconduct by Kuznetsov, Popkov, Voznesensky and others, for which they were removed from their posts with the imposition of party penalties, Abakumov and his accomplices artificially presented these actions as the actions of an organized anti-Soviet treacherous group and beatings and threats obtained fictitious testimonies from those arrested about the alleged creation of a conspiracy by them ...

From the resolution of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On the case of Kuznetsov, Popkov, Voznesensky and others" dated May 3, 1954 (V.A. "Leningrad case": rehabilitation // University Petersburg readings: 300 years of the Northern capital. Collection of articles. St. Petersburg ., 2003).

Vladimir Dmitrievich Kuznechevsky was born in 1939 in Tyumen. Graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov. Professor, candidate of philosophical sciences, doctor of historical sciences.
Political scientist, journalist. Leading researcher at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, adviser to the Director of RISS.
He was awarded the Order for Outstanding Achievement in Information Science, the gold medal named after Yu.M. Vorontsov.

A naive attempt to create an ethnically pure Russian government was drowned in blood

One of the biggest crimes of the top of the Bolshevik regime in the post-war period, still not realized by the Russian public, remains the physical destruction of the party elite of Russian nationality in 1949-1953, which will forever remain in history under the code name "Leningrad affair". As modern experts rightly point out, the "Leningrad case" is one of the most mysterious and little studied so-called trials of the Stalin era.

However, to be more precise, at the end of I. Stalin's life, two repressive and punitive operations were carried out in the USSR. The mass extermination of Russian top, high and middle managers in Moscow, Leningrad and other large cities coincided with the expulsion of Jews from the governing bodies of politics, science, culture, health and the media. But the Russians were less fortunate than the Jews, the latter did not go to execution: on March 5, 1953, I. Stalin was overtaken by a fatal stroke.

An ethnically pure Russian government?

AND The history of any country is always the history of its people, taken as a whole, a description of achievements and failures, ups and downs. But in the eyes of generations, the historical canvas always appears in the form of descriptions of the life and work of specific people - state leaders, political leaders, scientists and artists.

In this regard, there is a gap in the history of Russia in the twentieth century. For decades now, since October 1950, Russian and foreign historians have carefully ignored the state and political activities of the leaders of the RSFSR and Leningrad who were shot in accordance with the personal will of I. Stalin.

And this is despite the fact that there is quite a lot of literature regarding the persecuted Jews in the same period. There are even fundamental studies - for example, the thorough work of G.V. Kostyrchenko, Stalin's Secret Politics: Power and Anti-Semitism (2003). But the literature on repressions against Russian leaders in those same years barely has a dozen publications in the genre of articles or is partially touched upon in books written on completely different topics.

The most surprising thing is that there is literature about those who organized the "Leningrad case", subjected its defendants to physical, psychological and moral torture and abuse, and ultimately took their lives, and their children - fathers and mothers, literature exists: they write about Beria, Malenkov, V. Abakumov, even Bulganin, but not about the Voznesensky brothers, Kuznetsov, Popkov, Rodionov, Bubnov, A. Zhdanov, Verbitsky and others.

Questions arise: why was Stalin so uncompromising with regard to the "Leningraders" and why is so little written about this event in domestic and world Stalinism?

As I see it now, after many years of studying the Stalinist theme in its entirety, the incredible cruelty shown by the General Secretary towards the “Leningraders” was apparently explained by the horror that gripped him about the fate of the main Lenin-Stalin brainchild - the Soviet Union. Back in 1937, J. Stalin warned that any politician who encroached "on the unity of the socialist state" would be destroyed. Documents and memoirs testify that by the time this phenomenon - "Leningraders" - appeared, the main concern that gnawed at I. Stalin was caused by one thought: what will happen to the Soviet Union after his death? Having announced in 1948 that he would like to see Nikolai Voznesensky and Alexei Kuznetsov as his successors in the leadership of the state and the party, the General Secretary then “changed his mind” and allowed Malenkov and Beria to convince himself that the “Leningraders” were striving to isolate the RSFSR as part of the Union and thereby destroy the USSR.

The forecast drawn by him seemed real to him, and Stalin took measures both to prevent such an option for the development of the country, and to ensure that not the slightest information about the “Leningrad case” leaked anywhere. The first he succeeded, the second - no.

In the West, those who were supposed to know about the "Leningrad case" knew almost everything about it. But this "case" in Western historiography never became popular. And this raises questions: why is there an extensive historical and journalistic literature outside our country about the destruction of party leaders and command cadres of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in the second half of the 30s and about the persecution of Jews in the late 40s, while the "Leningrad affair" of 1950 is practically in default zone?

The answer to this question lies, it seems to me, in the nationality of the repressed. In the 1930s, many people of Jewish origin were persecuted, and therefore they write about it both here and abroad, also mainly by Jews. And in the “Leningrad case”, the blow fell almost 100% on the ethnic Russian elite. Svyatoslav Rybas, one of the most erudite Russian researchers of the Stalin period, called the publication in the newspaper "Culture", with which he preceded the publication of his monograph on the "Leningraders": "The Leningrad Case": the Defeat of the "Russian Party"".

In other words, the explanation for the suppression of the “Leningrad case” must be sought in the national psychology of historians and publicists: Jews (both domestic and foreign) are not interested in writing about Russian victims, and Russians for the most part have always had little interest in the history of their fellow tribesmen.

The Russian “fleur” of this “case” scares away American historians as well: they will never arouse interest in the events of Russian history that are dangerous for them (from a geopolitical point of view). The reason for this fear was deeply and accurately recently determined by the candidate of historical sciences L.P. Reshetnikov: “The West was not afraid of the Bolshevik ideology, which he himself nurtured. He was not afraid of the dictatorship of I. Stalin, as long as it was about the dictatorship of the head of the CPSU (b). But the West and the Soviet nomenklatura were mortally afraid of the revival of historical Russia.” In this regard, the words of one of the prominent Western ideologists, S. Huntington, are noteworthy: “The conflict between liberal democracy and Marxism-Leninism was a conflict of ideologies that, despite all the differences, at least superficially set the same main goals: freedom, equality and prosperity. But traditionalist, authoritarian, nationalist Russia will strive for completely different goals. A Western democrat could well have an intellectual dispute with a Soviet Marxist. But this would be unthinkable with a Russian traditionalist. And if Russians, having ceased to be Marxists, do not accept liberal democracy and start behaving like Russians and not like Westerners, relations between Russia and the West may again become distant and hostile.”

And now the main question that the “Leningraders” posed at the cost of their lives: “ Is an ethnically Russian government possible in Russia?»

Or perhaps it would be more correct to formulate the same question in a different way: Is it advisable for us in modern Russia to strive for an ethnically pure Russian government?»

The question is not easy. According to the 2010 census, 143 million people live in the Russian Federation. Of these, 81% called themselves Russians. Russian is spoken by 99.4% of the population. Russian citizenship is 138 million people, or 99.4%. 5.6% of the registered population have not decided on their nationality, but consider Russian as their mother tongue. Thus, almost 87% of the registered population of the Russian Federation were Russians by blood and spirit.

What kind of nationality in such a country should be the government?

In one of my works, I quoted the famous Russian historian, the son of a serf, academician of the Russian Academy Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin (1800–1875), who, reflecting the opinion of the majority of the people of the Russian Empire, stated in 1836: “The Russian sovereign was born, grew out of the Russian land, he acquired all areas with Russian people, Russian labor and Russian blood. Courland, Imeretia, Aleutia and Kurilia are the resurrection of his robe, the hems of his clothes, and his soul jacket is Holy Rus'. To see in the sovereign not a Russian, but a conciliar person from the nationalities living in Russia - this is such an absurdity that no real Russian person can hear without any indignation.

But that was the case in the 19th century. What now?

S. Rybas, in his reflections on the “Leningrad case” in relation to the current situation, writes: “In human and historical terms, the “Leningrad case” continues to this day due to a number of circumstances.

The state created by the Russians was never purely Russian and more than once experienced upheavals caused precisely by the resistance of the Russian population to the imperial policy of the country's leaders.

As the Slavophile Konstantin Aksakov once said, “The Russian people are not a people; this is humanity.” And being “humanity” can be deadly difficult.

During the 20th century alone, this problem rose to a boiling point at least three times: in 1917, in 1945-1950, and in 1985 and early 1991. It has never been solved, but in the first and third cases, the case ended with the failure of all the bolts from the steam boiler, the destruction of the state and a difficult restoration process.

The destruction of the USSR, the isolation of the national republics and the “liberation” of Russia from the imperial mission did not lead to the victory of the “Russian national idea” - tens of millions of compatriots remained outside the Russian Federation, it lost many historical lands and geopolitical advantages. It seems that this problem hardly has a linear solution.

Basically, it's an interesting idea. But 1917 did not solve a “Russian” problem at all.

But what is meant by the term "nation-state"? Composition of subjects? But this has never happened anywhere - for example, to exist, for example, a purely German, purely French or purely English state. The same Germany, even in the time of Hitler, was not purely German. And Hitler himself, as you know, was not a “pure” German.

Then what is it? In my opinion, if we are talking about a nation state, then this means mainly not so much the ethnic composition of the population and government, but the political culture of the main nation that dominates the state. At the same time, we are talking about culture in the broadest sense of the word: from the norms and forms of government to artistic culture and the sphere of art, and up to the customs and norms of behavior in a public place, at home, on the street.

In this regard, Russian culture has always (always!) been dominant in the history of Rus' / Russia - from the time of the Russian Pravda of Vladimir Monomakh, fully published back in 1123 as “the final codified result of Ancient Russian law”, and until 1917.

In principle, the "Leningraders" rightly raised the question that the state-forming nation, which constitutes the absolute majority of the country's population, cannot always remain in third-rate positions and roles in the system of political management of society. The multinational composition of the population dictates the rule,according to which all non-national elements have the right to participate in power structures. However, it should be about participation in power,but not about the dominance of small nations over the interests of the state-forming nation(people). As the well-known Russian writer from St. Petersburg Alexander Melikhov once formulated it: “For any people, the prolonged humiliation of death is not only similar, but it is death itself. Because nations are created not by self-interest, but by pride.” Apparently, it is precisely this circumstance that can explain the otherwise unjustified irritation of a member of the Politburo, chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR (J. too often.

By the way, the undeservedly subordinate position of the Russians in comparison with other nations was already noted by many representatives of the narrow leadership of the country. This was manifested, in particular, in the fact that on the eve of the death of I. Stalin, no one had any doubt that a representative of the Russian nation should inherit his power. So, the same Anastas Mikoyan wrote in his memoirs: "Everyone understood that Stalin's successor would be Russian."

But the desire to create an ethnically pure Russian government on the part of the “Leningraders” was, of course, a mistake. A. Solzhenitsyn in his two-volume work "200 Years Together" came, it seems to me, to a very correct conclusion: the Russian government should basically represent the state-forming, that is, Russian, nation, but only basically.

Time has not yet made a final, well-established assessment of the historical role of the “Leningraders”. But the time has come for this assessment to start moving forward. In this regard, it is worth giving several opinions.

However, something worries him in this conclusion, and at the end of the book he returns to this topic again: “What would happen if the “Leningraders” came to power? Then the fate of the USSR would have been different. I think he would have avoided the collapse.

In fact, the author of a fundamental work on the situation of the Jews in the USSR, Doctor of Historical Sciences G. Kostyrchenko, is in fact in solidarity with S. Rybas: statehood, could in the future become very fruitful for the country.

True, the implementation of Zhdanov's idea of ​​reviving the statehood of Russia was fraught with the collapse of the empire, which, however, could not be avoided.

Having thus provoked the growth of Russian self-consciousness in the formidable pre-war and war years and pragmatically used it, including in the interests of maintaining his own power, I. Stalin, out of fear of the possible prospect of this self-consciousness going beyond what was permitted, ruthlessly trampled it.

In these arguments, one important aspect remains unsaid: Russia for these authors exists only in the imperial version, that is, with all the union republics: the Baltic states, the Caucasus and Transcaucasia, Central Asia. And this is despite the fact that all 73 years of the existence of Soviet power, these union republics, both in material and cultural and civilizational terms, developed exclusively at the expense of the RSFSR. In this regard, it seems to me that if my country is destined to exist in the form of an empire, then only as part of the three Slavic peoples - Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. All other former Soviet republics can no longer be included in a single state with Russia: it will be enough for the Russian people for centuries to drag these “civilizationally backward nations” on their labor hump, on their blood and hard work, on their world-famous culture, as a modern researcher of these problems defines them Professor of Belgrade University Dragan Simeunovich, to civilization.

And before proceeding to the description of this political Russian national tragedy itself, perhaps, looking ahead, but still a few words about the reasons for the tragic death of the defendants in the "Leningrad case".

The reasons for the political defeat of the “Leningraders” are, in my opinion, firstly, that although they were always called a “group”, they never really were a group.

But in the person of Malenkov, Beria, Khrushchev, it was really a group that opposed them, well-coordinated, fastened by mutual political interests, who had become adept at palace intrigues over many years. This group was united by a vital interest: after I. Stalin's departure from life, not to lose his position in the country's leadership. (Then these people will come together in a deadly fight with each other, but this will already be under different conditions, when only spiritually and intellectually flawed individuals will remain in the highest echelon of political power in the USSR after the death of I. Stalin.)

The political weakness of the "Leningraders" also consisted in the fact that they believed too early in what I. Stalin in 1948 sincerely called N. Voznesensky and A. Kuznetsov his successors in the state and party line. Their political naivete affected literally everything. So, the same Aleksey Kuznetsov, who had just come to the party political Olympus, did not find anything better for his approval on it, how to carry out rude attacks on Stalin's own son, K. Kuzakov. Moreover, he did it publicly, at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee, in the presence of the General Secretary himself (more on this below).

The "Leningraders" acted too straightforwardly, they clearly lacked the courtier's ability to weave intrigues, and they emphasized their national (Russian) essence too accentuated.

And now - about the content of the "Leningrad case" in detail.

T Technically, the initiators of the repression against the leadership of the Russian nation from beginning to end were three people: an ethnic Macedonian, the son of a railway employee from Orenburg, G.M. Malenkov; ethnic Georgian (Mingrelian), son of a poor peasant L.P. Beria; Ukrainianized Russian, son of a poor peasant from the village of Kalinovka, Kursk region (on the border with Ukraine) N.S. Khrushchev. The performer of the functions of the executioner, by whose direct order savage physical torture was applied to the arrested, was ethnically Russian, the son of a stoker and a laundress, Minister of State Security of the USSR V.S. Abakumov. This group was actively supported by a man who, incomprehensibly how, ended up in the narrow top leadership of the country, since, according to contemporaries, he was absolutely mediocre in all matters that, at the behest of I. Stalin, he was engaged in, the son of a flour mill clerk, ethnically Russian N.A. Bulganin.

But I. Stalin himself was the real driving force behind this entire operation. It was he who ordered the arrest of the main defendants passing through the “case”, during the trial he approved the proposal of Malenkov and Beria to return the death penalty to legal proceedings, personally corrected the text part of the guilty verdict, demanding that the judicial panel issue a death verdict to the “Leningraders”, regularly ordered V. Abakumov deliver him the protocols of the interrogations of the Voznesensky brothers, carefully read them and, right up to the execution of the accused, was interested in whether the sentence had been carried out.

On September 30, 1950, a trial took place in Leningrad, which it would be more correct to call a trial, over the central group of defendants in the "Leningrad case": N.A. Voznesensky, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences; A.A. Kuznetsov, secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, member of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee, head of the Personnel Department of the Central Committee of the party, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR; M.I. Rodionov, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, candidate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, member of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, deputy of the Supreme Soviets of the USSR and the RSFSR; P.S. Popkov, first secretary of the Leningrad regional committee and city committee of the CPSU (b), candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR; Ya.F. Kapustin, second secretary of the Leningrad City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR; P.G. Lazutin, chairman of the executive committee of the Leningrad City Council of Workers' Deputies, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. An hour after the verdict was announced, they were shot, their bodies were buried in the Levashovskaya wasteland near Leningrad and covered with quicklime. THEM. Turko, T.V. Zakrzhevskaya and F.E. Mikheev was sentenced to a long prison term.

Then, at the Moscow trial in the "Leningrad case", 20 more people were sentenced to death. After the immediate execution of their bodies, they were taken to the cemetery of the Donskoy Monastery, cremated, thrown into a pit and carelessly covered with earth. Thus, 26 leaders of the RSFSR were subjected to execution, six people died during interrogations. Members of their families were also repressed.

Lawsuits, moral and political reprisals against ethnic Russian leaders in the "Leningrad case" continued throughout the country until the death of I. Stalin.

In Leningrad, more than 50 people who worked as secretaries of district party committees and chairmen of district executive committees were sentenced to long prison terms. Over 2,000 people were expelled from the CPSU(b) and released from work. Thousands of senior officials were repressed in Novgorod, Yaroslavl, Murmansk, Saratov, Ryazan, Kaluga, Gorky, Pskov, Vladimir, Tula and Kalinin regions, in the Crimea and Ukraine, in the Central Asian republics. More than 2,000 military commanders across the country have been dismissed or demoted. In total, according to later estimates, in the USSR - but mainly in the RSFSR - more than 32 thousand ethnically Russian leaders of the party, state, economic level were subjected to repressions in this "case".

The Stalin-Beria-Abakumov repressive machine knew no pity. They rowed everyone, regardless of age, degree of kinship and acquaintance with the arrested.

So, the 11-year-old daughter of Alexei Alexandrovich Bubnov, who was shot on October 28, 1950, secretary of the executive committee of the Leningrad City Council of Workers' Deputies, Lyudmila was arrested immediately after the emergence of the "Leningrad case", was escorted to an orphanage, and then sent to a labor educational colony No. 2 in the city of Lvov. After I. Stalin's death, Lyudmila Alekseevna Bubnova (Verbitskaya) graduated from Leningrad State University, became a Doctor of Philology, professor, rector of St. Petersburg State University, and since 2008 - President of St. Petersburg State University.

The 84-year-old mother of Alexander, Nikolai, Maria and Valentina Voznesensky, Lyubov Gavrilovna Voznesenskaya, was arrested as a “person representing a public danger”, sentenced to 8 years of exile and sent to the Turukhansk region. On January 15, 1951, unable to bear the abuse and torment, she died.

I emphasize once again that only ethnically Russian leaders were subjected to repression.

In this regard, I will cite only one fact, but typical for that period, which sheds light on many things that have been closed to this day.

Known in Russia and abroad, the historian Konstantin Alexandrovich Zalessky, the author of the unique publications "Stalin's Empire: A Biographical Encyclopedic Dictionary" and the historical encyclopedia "Who's Who in the History of the USSR", having learned that I was working on a study of the "Leningrad Case", told me the story of his family, confirming the thesis that in 1949-1952 I. Stalin really opened the hunt for ethnically Russian leaders of the state, economic, party apparatus in the USSR. Here is the story.

Grandfather Zalessky A.F. Shchegolev, Russian, in 1950 worked as the Minister of Light Industry of the RSFSR. He had never heard of any "Leningrad case", and suddenly in the middle of the year he was summoned to the government, handed a work book, where an entry was already made that he was dismissed of his own free will, and, without even saying "goodbye", they took him away a pass to the ministry building. To say that the minister was shocked by what happened to him is to say nothing. In the USSR, after all, at that time there were no unemployed, but here - the nomenklatura of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was suddenly literally taken out into the street without a severance pay and an offer of a new job.

Finding himself in this position, Alexei Fedorovich began to go around his friends and acquaintances in search of work and found out that he was not alone: ​​all his Russian acquaintances of the commanding staff were fired without explanation.

The ex-minister managed to get a job only a year later in a remote corner of the Moscow region - as an engineer at a furniture factory. And only after the death of I. Stalin, Alexei Fedorovich was able to return to Moscow and become an inspector at VDNKh. Only then did he find out that he had suffered in the "Leningrad case", since in 1950 there was a strict unspoken order from the most powerful elites to dismiss all leading workers of Russian nationality.

So far, there are no serious, deep works on this event. But the fact that I. Stalin in the case of the "Leningraders" was supposedly "right" and "shot them" supposedly correctly, they write (A. Martirosyan, E. Prudnikova, S. Mironin, for example). In 2013, the first, with a claim to objectivity, monograph on this topic appeared, entitled “Moscow vs. St. Petersburg: Stalin’s “Leningrad case”, but it also demonstrates virtually the same approach. The monograph was created by the author of several political biographies of Stalin, Svyatoslav Rybas, who without any doubt considers the General Secretary a "great leader", and it is from these positions that he talks about the "Leningrad case".

In general, all the springs of the Leningrad tragedy of 1949-1952 are still largely shrouded in secrecy. Could not reveal this secret and S. Rybas. Rather, it confused readers even more. This is understandable: some of the documents on this “case” stored in the archives continue to be inaccessible to historians. Archivists say some documents won't be open to researchers until 2020. But even if they are available, the full picture will still not be restored. Immediately after the death of I. Stalin, part of the archival documents relating to the "Leningrad case" was withdrawn from the funds by G. Malenkov, and part was simply destroyed by a team sent to the archives, formed by N. Khrushchev, who purposefully covered his tracks in the repressions of the 30s and in "Leningrad business".

N. Khrushchev showed particular activity in this regard when the Presidium of the Central Committee agreed to the execution of L. Beria, who was imprisoned, and Nikita Sergeevich was faced with the prospect of becoming the first person not only in the party, but also in the state (in September 1953, Malenkov and Beria agreed appoint him first secretary of the Central Committee). The latter meant that it was necessary to hide even a hint of his participation in execution cases, not only in the 30s, but above all in the “Leningrad Case”, because this happened quite recently and the surviving Russian members of the Central Committee could personally present claims to him for the repression of the leading personnel of the RSFSR. Two weeks before the execution of L. Beria, N. Khrushchev gives a task to his slander, Army General I.A. Serov, to prepare a report on the "Leningrad case". He, being indebted to N. Khrushchev for his appointment to the post of First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, in the course of preparing this report, cleared out all traces of his participation in the Leningrad case. Therefore, in the certificate, which he presented to N. Khrushchev on December 10, 1953, together with Minister of the Interior S. Kruglov, the emphasis was not on the main defendants in the case, but on their distant and close relatives.

“Having dealt with the persons convicted in the Leningrad case,” the Minister of the Interior and his deputy reported to the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, “the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR considers it appropriate to review the archival investigation cases against the relatives of the convicted in order to issue conclusions on the abolition of the decisions of the Military Collegium and the former. A special meeting of the Ministry of State Security, since the vast majority of them do not have serious grounds for criminal prosecution or expulsion to distant regions of the country.

For example:

The mother of the former secretary of the Leningrad regional party committee Badaev at the age of 67 and his two sisters, who lived independently, were sentenced by a special meeting of the MGB to 5 years of exile;

At the former head of the Department of Komsomol and trade union bodies of the Leningrad Regional Committee, Zakrzhevskaya, three sisters and the daughter of one of the sisters, Taisiya Balashova, at the age of 20, were sentenced to exile by a Special Meeting;

The former secretary of the Leningrad City Committee, Levin, was sentenced to various terms of camps and exile: his mother, wife, and three brothers, all of whom are much older than Levin, and one of them is 60 years old;

The former deputy chairman of the Leningrad City Executive Committee Galkin, in addition to his wife, was sentenced to a brother, wife and sister for 5 years of exile each and a daughter of a brother for 3 years of exile.

The above examples show that the Special Meeting of the MGB, without legal grounds, only on family grounds, including distant ones, sentenced a large group of people to various terms of detention in prisons and camps, as well as to exile.

In connection with the foregoing, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR will review all investigative cases against this group of convicts and send the conclusions to the Prosecutor General of the USSR with a request to protest in the manner prescribed by law before the Supreme Court of the USSR and cancel the decisions of the military collegium and the Special Meeting of the MGB on persons illegally convicted.

All this work will be completed within a month.

You will be informed about the results later."

The operation carried out by N. Serov allowed N. Khrushchev in 1957 at the Plenum of the Central Committee, which removed G. Malenkov from all positions in the supreme power of the USSR, to accuse the latter of having organized the “Leningrad affair”. At this Plenum of the Central Committee, G. Malenkov also tried to fasten N. Khrushchev to participation in repressions against the leadership of the RSFSR, but he did not succeed: Khrushchev confidently declared that there were no traces of him in the “Leningrad case”. As follows from the transcript of the meeting, G. Malenkov, knowing about the work carried out by I. Serov in the archives in 1953, sarcastically threw the phrase: “Well, of course, you are with us, Nikita Sergeevich, as always clean.”

The conclusion of the Party Control Committee (CPC) under the Central Committee of the CPSU noted: “The question of the criminal role of G.M. Malenkov in the organization of the so-called "Leningrad case" was appointed after the June (1957) plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU. However, G.M. Malenkov, covering the traces of the crimes, almost completely destroyed the documents related to the “Leningrad case”.

Subjected to interrogation during this consideration, the former head of the Secretariat Malenkova A.M. Petrokovsky said that in 1957 he made an inventory of documents seized from the safe of Malenkov's assistant D. Sukhanov. As it turned out, G. Malenkov kept a special folder with the inscription "Leningrad case" in the safe. It contained explanations of the first secretary (since 1949) of the Leningrad Regional Committee V.M. Andrianov, preparatory materials for Malenkov’s speech in Leningrad at the party activists on the “Leningrad case”, draft resolutions of the Politburo of the Central Committee on the expulsion of N. Voznesensky and others from the members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In 1957, before condemning the “anti-party group of Malenkov, Molotov, and others,” G. Malenkov took home many materials from this folder (the folder contained records of the numbers of the seized sheets), but when the CPC under the CPSU Central Committee demanded that he return taken, G. Malenkov stated that he destroyed these sheets as personal documents.

In a word, the "Leningrad business" is still on the waiting list of its chronicler and analyst. In the meantime, for lack of a better one, the description (precisely the description) of this difficult phenomenon is taken up mainly by journalists, who, unfortunately, too often sin with their own guesses that are not based on facts, build versions that cannot withstand even a simple logical analysis.

In this work, of course, I cannot but touch upon these publications (fortunately there are not so many of them), but basically my text is based on an analysis of documents, both stored in archives and already published, as well as on an analysis of conversations with people, who survived the Leningrad tragedy as their own.

The course of the "Leningrad case"

P Why arose, how did the so-called "Leningrad case" begin and develop?

Judging by the texts of the guilty verdicts, the draft secret letter from the Politburo to members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks entitled “On the anti-party hostile group of Kuznetsov, Popkov, Rodionov, Kapustin, Solovyov and others.” dated October 12, 1949, the authors of which were Malenkov and Beria, and presented on January 18, 1950 to I. Stalin by the Minister of State Security of the USSR V. Abakumov, the draft “Indictment in the case of members of the enemy group of demolitionists brought to criminal responsibility in the party and Soviet apparatus” as part of ten people, "Leningraders" were charged with the following charges.

1. Holding in Leningrad, without the permission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the so-called All-Union Wholesale Trade Fair for the sale of illiquid consumer products.

2. Allegedly falsified results of the elections of leading party bodies in the Leningrad party organization at a party conference in December 1948.

3. Loss in the State Planning Committee of the USSR from 1944 to 1948 236 secret documents relating to the planning of the national economic complex of the country.

4. Underestimation of the country's economic development plans in the first quarter of 1949.

5. Embezzlement of large public funds for personal enrichment.

6. Carrying out "a line to break off the Leningrad party organization and opposing it to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks" and "expressing traitorous plans about the changes they want in the composition of the Soviet government and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks."

Most of those who write about the “Leningrad case” claim that it began with the holding of the All-Russian Wholesale Fair in Leningrad on January 10-20, 1949, which the leaders of the “second capital” allegedly arranged without authorization, turned it into an all-Union one and (also allegedly) inflicted a multi-billion dollar (in rubles) ) damage to the national economy of the country.

The historical (including archival) “excavations” I have carried out allow us to conclude that this statement is either a conscientious delusion, or a deliberate lie and juggling of facts in order to remove responsibility for the bloody “Leningrad affair” personally from Stalin (supporters of this version are both stand with their feet on the thesis: "they shot correctly").

We will return to this notorious exhibition, but now it should be noted that in fact everything began much earlier and not at all from it.

According to the chief specialist of the State Archives of the Russian Federation, Doctor of Historical Sciences O.V. Khlevnyuk, in the autumn of 1948, during the report of N. Voznesensky on the plan for the economic development of the country for 1949, it seemed to I. Stalin that the growth of industrial production in the first quarter of 1949 looked too modest, and he proposed to increase it by 5%.

There are no traces of the motivation for this Stalinist intervention in archival documents. I think that the reason was simple: the General Secretary compared quarterly industrial growth plans and did not understand why the growth rates in the first quarter were lower than in the fourth. N. Voznesensky, in theory, should have explained to the leader that, according to our old Soviet custom, in December people climb out of their skin to close the year with good indicators, receive their bonuses and celebrate the New Year in a good mood, and the first quarter of the next The year always starts with a buildup and then everything catches up along the way. N. Voznesensky, perhaps for the first time in terms of industrial development in 1949, reflected these realities, and not inflated figures, but he did not have the courage to explain this to I. Stalin. He agreed with the leader's amendment, and left the change in physical indicators in the document "for later", apparently hoping to do it along the way. But he immediately brought information about the Stalinist amendment to the attention of his subordinates and ordered that the figures for the first quarter of 1949 be revised upwards.

When finalizing the plan, Voznesensky's employees took this into account, and on December 15, 1948, three executives of the State Planning Commission sent a note to the Chairman, in which they reported that in connection with the overfulfillment of the plan for the 4th quarter of 1948, it was possible to change the physical indicators of the 1st quarter of the next year upward by 1, 7 billion rubles N. Voznesensky agreed with the proposal and, right on the text of the note, instructed to make appropriate changes to the plan for the 1st quarter of 1949.

The order was made, but something in the bureaucratic machine of the State Planning Commission did not work immediately, and someone effectively took advantage of this backlash in time (by the way, very short).

The fact is that by this moment in the corridors of the Kremlin power, I. Stalin’s phrase thrown in December 1947 (at the General Secretary’s birthday party) that he was already old and it was time to think about who could leave his legacy had already spread. In the relaxed atmosphere of the feast, the General Secretary, as if in thought, said that he would like to see N. Voznesensky instead of himself as head of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Turning to those present, among whom were Mikoyan, Malenkov, Beria, Voznesensky and others, I. Stalin asked: "Does anyone have any objections to this?" Completely dumbfounded by such an unexpected turn of thought of the leader, everyone silently nodded their heads (this situation is most fully described in the memoirs of A. Mikoyan, but there are other sources confirming this historical fact).

It is clear that from that moment N. Voznesensky's behavior, his relationship with the Boss was closely followed by those who counted on another option. Judging by the available memoirs, this topic was not discussed, but the names of the real successors of I. Stalin were still well known: Molotov, Beria, Malenkov. From the side of the latter, N. Voznesensky, who was inexperienced in palace intrigues, began to be shadowed. It worked very quickly. In January 1949, on the table of a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Secretary of the Central Committee, Chairman of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Chairman of the Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the USSR G.M. Malenkov received a denunciation from the State Planning Commission that N. Voznesensky was not following the leader's orders to manage the country's economy.

As follows from the text of O. Khlevnyuk, the experienced courtier G. Malenkov, who had long been looking for a reason to compromise N. Voznesensky in the eyes of I. Stalin, used this blunder of his Politburo colleague one hundred percent, but not directly, but in a Jesuit way. He did not himself inform I. Stalin that his order was allegedly ignored by N. Voznesensky, but attacked him in a roundabout way.

In early February 1949, associated with G. Malenkov, the first deputy chairman of the USSR Gosnab M.T. Pomaznev suddenly, for no apparent reason, sends a note to Stalin stating that N. Voznesensky, Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, lays deliberately underestimated indicators in the annual plans for the country's economic development. Of course, M. Pomaznev could not have direct access to the General Secretary, and therefore the note falls on the table to G. Malenkov, who immediately gives it to Beria, and he passes two documents to I. Stalin at once: a copy of the note of three leading employees of the State Planning Committee dated 15 December to N. Voznesensky (without a resolution on it by the latter) and a note by Pomaznev.

Apparently, I. Stalin immediately, as they say, "pricked up his ears": it turned out that N. Voznesensky not only ignored the leader's personal instructions, but also did it behind his back! The General Secretary appoints a commission of the USSR Council of Ministers to verify this fact, and, on the advice of L. Beria, puts G. Malenkov at the head of the commission.

This was exactly what G. Malenkov was striving for.

And between these events, G. Malenkov took another "fateful" step for the "Leningraders". Outwardly, it was aimed at compromising the political leadership of Leningrad and the RSFSR, but the goal was to politically get close to the main figure - Nikolai Alekseevich Voznesensky, whom I. Stalin was preparing to replace Malenkov. It was about the All-Russian Wholesale Fair in Leningrad. With this fair, from the very beginning to the very end, miracles of bureaucratic tightrope walking were performed.

The current supporters of the “correctness” of I. Stalin’s actions in the “Leningrad Case” are the St. Petersburg journalist E. Prudnikova and the Italian-Russian journalist (with dual citizenship), speaking under the pseudonym Sigismund Sigismundovich Mironin (he does not reveal his real name, getting off with a remark that the time has not yet come ), argue that the Leningrad leadership, holding the All-Russian Trade Wholesale Fair of Consumer Goods and Foodstuffs in January 1949 in Leningrad, committed an “anti-people crime”, expressed in the fact that in conditions “when the country had just begun to recover from the famine of 1947 years," allowed the damage of these goods, which allegedly led to "astronomical damage of 4 billion rubles." “For this alone,” S. Mironin writes from his Italian distance, “people who have taken such a step deserve the most serious punishment.”

However, what is it really about?

Today, no one can answer the question of how an absolutely fantastic situation was created when, after the war, in conditions of dire need, illiquid consumer goods worth more than 5 billion rubles, including foodstuffs, accumulated in the warehouses of the USSR Ministry of Trade. But the government could no longer tolerate such a situation, and on October 14, 1948, the Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, chaired by N. Voznesensky (the chairman of the Bureau at that time was Stalin, and his deputies, who alternately chaired the meetings, were Voznesensky, Malenkov and Beria) decided to development of measures for the implementation of these illiquid assets. Later, interregional wholesale fairs were named among them, where the export and sale of these goods were allowed. By the way, G. Malenkov initiated the organization of such fairs. On November 11, 1948, he signed a resolution of the Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On Measures to Improve Trade”, where all the leaders of the Union republics and regions were instructed: “Organize inter-regional wholesale fairs in November-December 1948, at which to sell excess goods, allow free export from from one region to another industrial goods purchased at the fair.

The largest number of such commodity residues was collected in the RSFSR, and the leadership of the republic (Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR M.I. Rodionov), in strict accordance with the rules established on such occasions, entered the Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the USSR with a proposal to hold January 10–20, 1949 in order to sell these illiquid assets. year in Leningrad All-Russian wholesale fair. It expressed a request to allow an invitation to participate in the fair of trade organizations of the Union republics.

The Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the USSR considered the proposal of the leadership of the RSFSR and decided to agree with it. N. Voznesensky presided (by virtue of the order) at this meeting.

Samples of 450 items of goods were brought to Leningrad. The fair was a success. As Professor V.A. Kutuzov, “transactions and contracts for the delivery of goods to various regions were concluded according to the samples. And before that, goods, including food, were stored at the bases and warehouses of manufacturers. In total, it was proposed to conclude contracts for the supply of industrial goods for 6 billion rubles and food - for 2 billion rubles. On January 8, 11 and 21, Leningradskaya Pravda reported on these transactions on its pages, that is, everything happened openly and publicly.

Distorting these facts, E. Prudnikova, S. Mironin, A. Martirosyan write that all the goods were allegedly brought to this wholesale fair, they allegedly deteriorated there, and the national economy was damaged by 4 billion rubles, and therefore, they say, And .Stalin "correctly shot" the "Leningraders". The desire of these authors to “rehabilitate” J. Stalin in the “Leningrad Case” with the help of juggling facts can be explained, but the lie has no justification.

S. Rybas in the monograph “Moscow vs. St. Petersburg: Stalin’s Leningrad Case” (2013) also accused the “Leningraders”: “Kuznetsov, Rodionov and Popkov not only did not receive permission to hold it (the fair), but also did not put The Central Committee and the Politburo were informed of the upcoming fair. There was an excess of official authority by a whole group of senior party and government officials, their collusion. The Leningrad leaders and Rodionov went directly to the union republics, bypassing the Center, creating a hitherto unprecedented administrative conflict and a dangerous precedent. In addition, the organizers of the fair could not really sell food products brought to Leningrad from all over the country, which led to their spoilage and damage of four billion rubles. It is worth recalling that it was during this period that colossal funds were directed to the restoration of the national economy and the creation of atomic weapons. The fair was held without advertising.

Here all the same juggling and distortion of facts, all the same logic (in the elderberry garden, and in Kiev the uncle) and all the same desire to justify I. Stalin with his "death sentence" to the top leaders of the RSFSR.

First, I repeat, the decision on the fair was made by the Bureau of the USSR Council of Ministers. Representatives of the Union republics present at the meeting learned about the fair and about the goods and immediately (hot information!) Notified their capitals about this. Therefore, there was no trace of any “unprecedented managerial collision”, about which S. Rybas writes with ostentatious horror.

Secondly, the position of S. Rybas on this issue as a professional historian generally leaves a strange impression. The fact is that two years earlier, in a 900-page monograph in the ZhZL series, this researcher expressed a directly opposite view on this fair. “If we take into account,” he writes, “that not an all-Union, but an All-Russian wholesale fair was held in Leningrad for the sale of commodity surpluses, then all the accusations are formally weakly motivated: the accused acted within their competence.”

However, "Let's let the dead bury their dead" and return to how events unfolded further.

Not experienced in the Kremlin's intrigues, Leningraders were absolutely sure of the routine of their actions regarding the holding of this event and did not expect any dirty trick. They did not suspect that in Moscow G. Malenkov started a big political intrigue against N. Voznesensky with the aim of eliminating him as a rival in power. In this case, Nikolai Alekseevich himself showed amazing naivety.

But three days after the start of the fair, on January 13, 1949, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR M. Rodionov felt that something was going wrong here, and decided to play it safe: he sent a special letter to G. Malenkov with a report on the progress of the fair and on the manifestation of great interest in it on the part of trade organizations of the Union republics.

But it turned out that the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR was just waiting for an excuse to develop an attack on N. Voznesensky. Immediately upon receipt of this dispatch, directly on Rodionov’s letter, Malenkov wrote: “To comrades L.P. Beria, N.A. Voznesensky, A.I. Mikoyan. and Krutikov A.D. I ask you to read the note Comrade. Rodionov. I believe that such events should be held with the permission of the Council of Ministers.”

It was this January resolution that really triggered the "Leningrad case".

Malenkov and Beria immediately expand the field of attack on, relatively speaking, "Leningraders", and in two main areas (the allegedly unprofessional and politically incorrect leadership of N. Voznesensky of the State Planning Commission and, again, the alleged excess of authority by the Leningrad leadership in holding the All-Russian Wholesale Fair, even with the permission of the Deputy Chairman of the Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the USSR N. Voznesensky) G. Malenkov added a third and also brought it to I. Stalin.

This third direction was the violations in the counting of votes during the election of party leaders in Leningrad at the end of 1948.

On December 25, 1948, the X regional and VIII city united party conference took place in Leningrad, during which elections were held for leading party bodies. P.S. was elected to the post of first secretary of the city party committee. Popkov, the first secretary of the regional party committee - S.F. Badaev, second secretary of the city committee - Ya.F. Kapustin, Chairman of the Leningrad Executive Committee - P.G. Lazutin. As was recorded in the protocols of the election commission, all leaders were elected unanimously.

But in the first days of January 1949, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks received a letter from anonymous authors addressed to I. Stalin, which stated that "very many communists" voted against the leaders of Leningrad.

The letter was anonymous, but not random. Apparently, it was inspired from Moscow, and people in the know suspected then (as they still think today) that these anonymous persons were persons associated with G. Malenkov.

Former Chief Military Prosecutor of the USSR, and then Deputy Prosecutor General of the USSR A.F. Katusev (1939–2000) shortly before his death (after his dismissal from the authorities, he worked as a consultant in private commercial firms; he committed suicide under unclear circumstances in the village of Golubinskaya, Krasnodar Territory) was a member of the “Commission of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU for additional study of materials related to repressions, that took place in the period of 30-40s and 1950”, which worked in March 1988, in this regard, he told the journalist Stolyarov under audio recording: “... Malenkov is one of the main inspirers of the “Leningrad case”. At that time he held the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Kuznetsov, Popkov, Rodionov, Lazutin and Solovyov were arrested on August 13, 1949 in Malenkov's office, and Voznesensky was arrested on the basis of the decision of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, held on September 12–13, 1949.

According to the rules that existed then, anonymous letters addressed to I. Stalin (and there were hundreds, and sometimes even thousands a day) did not, as a rule, reach the owner's desk. They were considered by his apparatus, where the final authority that made the decision to put them in a folder for a report or send them for a walk around the apparatus of the Central Committee of the party was Lieutenant General A.N. Poskrebyshev, head of the office of the General Secretary, Stalin's personal secretary. In addition to him, there were only two people in the Kremlin who could personally put Stalin on the table, that is, give him into his hands, an anonymous document - Beria and Malenkov. It is now impossible to find out how this letter from Leningrad got to the General Secretary. It is only known that Stalin held it in his hands, read it immediately and summoned G. Malenkov to clarify the situation.

G. Malenkov, apparently, at that very moment reported to the General Secretary not only about violations of party democracy during the elections of leading bodies at the Leningrad Party Conference, but also about the fact that some kind of “incomprehensible” All-Russian Wholesale Fair was taking place in Leningrad, which was attended by trade delegations from all the Union republics, and that he, Malenkov, knows nothing about this event.

I. Stalin was concerned and ordered G. Malenkov, through the Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, to deal with both the party conference and the fair. Already on January 12, the commission reported that indeed 4 votes were cast against P. Popkov at the party conference, 2 against S. Badaev, 2 against P. Lazutin, and 15 against Y. Kapustin.

After two days of work of this commission in Leningrad, on January 13, 1949, the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR M. Rodionov sent a letter to G. Malenkov about the work of the All-Russian Wholesale Fair in Leningrad, not knowing for certain that the wheel of discrediting the Russian leadership in the eyes of I. Stalin is already spinning, and G. Malenkov is standing at the helm of this wheel.

International journalist Sigismund Mironin writes about the work of the CCP as follows: “Popkov, Kapustin and Kuznetsov rigged party protocols for election to responsible positions at the joint party conference of the city and region on December 25, 1948, when 23 ballots with votes “against” were replaced with positive ones for the leadership. At that time, the most terrible crime of a high-ranking party or statesman was treason. But the falsification of party elections was no less a crime. The cause of the party was sacred, and in particular intra-party elections by secret ballot, which were considered the most effective instrument of intra-party democracy.

Let us leave aside for the time being the demagogic arguments of S. Mironin (and A. Martirosyan) about the "sacred" character of "intra-party democracy" in the CPSU(b). We will not remind the reader about how many party functionaries elected to the leading party bodies before and after the war, lost their lives according to the norms of this very “sacred intra-party democracy”, and there were hundreds of thousands of them.

It is not by chance that S. Mironin does not say that there were about 1200 delegates at the mentioned Leningrad conference and 23 votes cast "against" the old party leadership, of course, did not decide anything.

He simply, following Malenkov, Beria, Khrushchev and Stalin, repeats their lies about the actions of the Leningrad leadership. After all, Onito knew very well about the incident of the XVII Congress of the CPSU (b), which took place on January 26 - February 10, 1934, the so-called "Congress of the Victors". 1966 delegates were elected to this congress, of which: 1227 with a decisive vote and 739 with an advisory one. After the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, it became known that several hundred delegates at that congress during the elections of leading party bodies in the conditions of secret ballot opposed I. Stalin and his associates and paid for it with their lives. Member of the Counting Commission of this congress, delegate from the Moscow party organization V.M. Verkhovykh, in a note to the Party Control Committee under the Central Committee of the CPSU on November 23, 1963, recalled: “Stalin, it seems, had 122 or 123 votes against, and Molotov and Kaganovich each had more than 100 votes. But all the “against” ballots were destroyed.”

Many people in the party already knew about this incident. For which they paid with their lives: almost all the delegates of this party forum were later shot.

By the way, modern Western Sovietologists unanimously say that more than a hundred votes against I. Stalin were indeed cast at that congress, but at the same time they admit that this fact could in no way affect the fate of the elections of the governing bodies.

At the party conference in Leningrad, several votes out of 1,200 against individual members of the city and region party leadership took place, but, as the CPC managed to find out, neither Popkov, nor Lazutin, nor Kapustin, nor other leaders knew about this. Chairman of the Counting Commission of the Party Conference A.Ya. Tikhonov simply did not inform the leadership of Leningrad and the region about several who disagreed with the general opinion and announced that all the candidates were unanimous.

No words, it was a violation of party norms. It is also not surprising that G. Malenkov, and after him I. Stalin, declared this a "falsification" of the elections. They needed this fact only in order to present the Leningrad leadership to the city's party community as criminals. What is surprising is something else, namely, that some current authors writing about the "Leningrad case", following G. Malenkov and I. Stalin, repeat the words about the falsification of elections. So, S. Rybas, already on his own behalf, and not on behalf of G. Malenkov and I. Stalin, repeats: “The Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks revealed the fact of falsification.” Meanwhile, you can simply look into the explanatory dictionary of the Russian language, where it is explained that falsification is understood as a conscious change in the quality of the state of the forged object. And in the criminal law of the Russian Federation, it is precisely in this regard (a decisive change in quality) that liability is established for falsifying election documents, referendum documents or incorrect counting of votes (Article 142 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). In a word, there was no falsification of the election of party bodies at the Leningrad party conference.

I will not bore the reader with a detailed "debriefing" about the disappearance of documents in the State Planning Committee classified as "secret" and accusations of the "Leningraders" regarding the so-called personal enrichment. Upon closer examination, the situation, taken as a whole, shows that here, too, there are mostly manipulations and conjectures. I have this material at my disposal, but, frankly, messing with it is both boring and disgusting.

It is much more interesting (and more useful) to deal with the main causes of the "Leningrad case".

people winner
did not deserve
decent life?

P Those who search for the "Leningrad affair" too often reduce the entire outline of these events to a "squabble for power" between various groups under the Stalinist power veil. For example, S. Rybas ends chapter 14 of his monograph with the following maxim: “Well, the confrontation between the elites along the Moscow-Petersburg line is here (in the monograph by S. Rybas. - IN.TO.) is shown quite fully”. It is difficult to call such a conclusion reasonable. At least by outward signs: Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev, and even Stalin himself were not “Moscow” by origin, and Zhdanov, N. Voznesensky, Kuznetsov and many other defendants in the “Leningrad case” were not “Petersburg”.

There are no words, there was a confrontation between power groups. The one who constantly provoked and kindled this struggle is also known, if he saw that it was beginning to fade. But it is not enough to reduce all politics in state administration to a struggle for power. There were also deeper reasons.

Even in the last year of the war, part of the leadership of the USSR, which came to power not from the union republics, but from the central regions of Russia, made a proposal, after the end of hostilities, to change the priorities in the development of the country's economy and switch to a predominant growth not in the production of means of production, but in food and items wide consumption. These were the leaders who were gathered under his wing by a native of the Nizhny Novgorod Provincial Committee (Gorky Regional Committee) of the CPSU (b), who led the besieged Leningrad in the war, who in 1944 became Secretary of the Central Committee A.A. Zhdanov. This "wing" gradually included his nominees - the first secretary of the Moscow City Committee and the Moscow Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the secretary of the Central Committee G.M. Popov, chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee N.A. Voznesensky, Secretary of the Central Committee A.A. Kuznetsov, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR M.I. Rodionov and others, who were later called “Leningraders” in a court case (although they all came from different central regions of the RSFSR).

All of them were united by one thought: the Soviet people paid an unimaginably high price for the Victory in the Great Patriotic War and deserved a decent life at the end of their feat.

In order to implement their plans, the "Leningraders" (we will conditionally call them all so) proposed to I. Stalin to lay in the post-war plan for the country's economic development, designed for three five-year periods, outstripping the pace of development of the industries of group "B" in comparison with the industries of group "A", producing the means of production.

Such structural shifts in the economy required changes in politics and ideology, and the “Leningraders” turned to the Secretary General with the initiative to carry out a number of political events. Son A.A. Zhdanov Yuri Zhdanov recalled: “At a meeting of the Politburo immediately after the end of the war, A.A. Zhdanov turned to I. Stalin with a proposal: “Contrary to the Charter, we have not convened a party congress for a long time. We need to do this and discuss the problems of our development, our history.” Father was supported by N.A. Voznesensky. The rest were silent."

As Rudolf Pikhoya, the first archivist of independent Russia, writes, "Zhdanov and Voznesensky made an attempt to raise the living standards of the people by introducing significant changes in the management of the country's economy."

Perhaps more surprising in this story is that I. Stalin also "fired up" with this idea and allowed the "Leningraders" to prepare for this turn - to develop not only a new Party Charter, but also a new Program of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, supporting the proposal of A. Zhdanov in 1948 to hold the XIX Congress of the CPSU (b). Work "Leningraders" began immediately.

The main part of the preparation for a new turn in the economy was taken over by the chairman of the State Planning Commission, deputy chairman of the USSR government, member of the Politburo N. Voznesensky. The planned economy magazine (an organ of the State Planning Commission), which he manages, in a number of its publications began to promote the economic levers of organizing production and distribution. Thanks to the efforts of N. Voznesensky, trade in food and consumer goods was allowed in cities and workers' settlements, the task was set to expand the network of stores and shops everywhere. On January 6, 1947, an editorial in the Pravda newspaper indicated a landmark in this regard: "The wider the trade turnover is developed, the faster the well-being of the Soviet people will rise."

The drafting of a new party program was in full swing. In 1947, for this purpose, by decision of the Politburo, a special commission was created to prepare it. Stalin put A. Zhdanov at the head of the commission, and N. Voznesensky as deputy.

The main emphasis in the party program was placed on solving social problems - housing construction (by the end of the 70s to provide the majority of the urban population with separate apartments and free utilities), the transition to the mass production of cars for the population at affordable prices with the transfer of the main costs to the state, many Attention was paid to infrastructure projects, that is, in modern terms, to the creation of a human environment.

Absolutely revolutionary innovations were also identified: in the draft program, for the first time, the task was set of replacing the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat with a state of the whole people with a gradual narrowing of the political functions of the latter; it was proposed to create a mechanism for popular voting on the most important issues of state development, to provide legislative initiatives to public organizations, and to introduce the principle of competitive election of leaders.

All these innovations were formulated by A. Zhdanov and N. Voznesensky in close contact with the General Secretary. The Voznesensky family preserved information about how, even after the death of A. Zhdanov, I. Stalin spent a lot of time talking with N. Voznesensky at the Near Dacha in his office and during long walks together.

By 1948, N. Voznesensky prepared the monograph "The Political Economy of Communism" (822 typewritten pages), which until his death he considered the main work of his life.

But these long intellectual conversations could no longer change anything: there was a group of people in the top leadership of the country who held different views on the forecast development of the USSR, and this group had a more powerful influence on the mindset of the Secretary General, because it relied on the Stalinist thesis that the Soviet The Union, existing in a hostile environment of imperialist states, should give priority not to the immediate improvement of the life of the population, but to the growth of defense spending, including the nuclear component. They believed that the USSR was not able to solve simultaneously two such major tasks as defense and social problems. Therefore, the improvement of people's living standards must be sacrificed for a sharp increase in defense spending and economic support for the countries of Eastern Europe, which should be kept under tight control of Moscow. This group was headed by G. Malenkov and L. Beria. Both were close to I. Stalin and both sought to torpedo many of the initiatives of A. Zhdanov and N. Voznesensky on the development of the social sphere.

Quite unexpectedly, Academician E.S. Varga, a prominent scientist in international relations, enjoying great prestige not only in the USSR, but also abroad. E. Varga also enjoyed the authority of I. Stalin, and deservedly: in 1928 he predicted the beginning of the Great Depression in the United States, and in 1932, when all Soviet analysts convinced the Secretary General that capitalism was ending its historical existence, E. Varga predicted that President Roosevelt will lead the US economy out of the crisis. But in 1946, when the USSR was already drawn into the process of the Cold War and I. Stalin returned to V. Lenin's assumptions that the contradictions of the capitalist system should only be aggravated, and therefore it was necessary to prepare for an inevitable war for a new redivision of the world, E. Varga suddenly came out against this Stalinist thesis. The scientist publishes the book “Changes in the Economy of Capitalism as a Result of the Second World War”, where he expresses an opinion about the temporary mitigation of contradictions in the development of the capitalist system due to more vigorous state intervention in economic management (Keynes's theory).

Moreover, in special notes to I. Stalin, E. Varga recommends that the leader abandon the idea of ​​​​implanting political regimes related to the USSR in the countries of Eastern Europe and concentrate the main efforts of the Soviet state on internal economic development. In fact, E. Varga, like N. Voznesensky, opposed the line of Malenkov, Beria and others, who pushed I. Stalin to tighten economic pressure on the living standards of Soviet people, who had just emerged from the incredibly difficult conditions of the war and rightly expected from the leadership USSR a significant improvement in their lives.

I. Stalin reacted harshly to Varga's speech. The Institute of World Economy and World Politics, headed by him since 1925, was liquidated, a new Institute of Economics of the USSR Academy of Sciences was created, and the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks appointed the chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee N. Voznesensky, as the curator of this new formation, essentially making enemies of the two most authoritative academicians. E. Varga, having become an ordinary employee of the new institute, nevertheless did not give up his views.

By 1947, the political line of I. Stalin is undergoing strong changes. He begins to move away from supporting A. Zhdanov and N. Voznesensky in their plans, believing that in the face of an ever-escalating confrontation with America, it is necessary to free up financial resources for confrontation with Western countries in the Cold War, and for this it is necessary to switch to a tough tax policy states in the socio-economic sphere.

The costs of military affairs, insisted on by Beria and Malenkov, and, to no lesser extent, the costs of economic support for the political regimes of the Allies in Eastern Europe and Asia were enormous. I. Stalin and Beria and Malenkov, who supported him, had no other sources, except for the tightening of the economic pressure on their own population. By adopting a number of resolutions, the government has significantly tightened the economic pressure on the population.

The wages of factory workers fell by almost a third. In Moscow, for example, from 680 rubles a month in May 1945 to 480 rubles in 1947. And the earnings of low-skilled workers have not changed since 1937 and averaged about 200 rubles a month. But if only this. Such, in fact, a beggarly salary was also greatly reduced due to taxes and government loans. So, at some large factories of heavy industry, up to 35% was withheld from the salary on a state loan (data from Pyzhikov and Danilov).

But the village was especially under heavy pressure.

In May 1947, by a special government decree, the practice of the war years of raising the minimum workdays on collective farms and judicial liability for its non-compliance were preserved. The household plots of collective farmers were subject to additional taxes. The peasants were no longer given bread for workdays, and for the so-called “stealing of bread” (collecting spikelets from already harvested fields), execution was allowed. As the above authors write, “by giving the state not only the surplus, but also a significant part of the necessary product, the village experienced the most difficult years in its history.”

Collective farms could not even provide their workers with the necessary subsistence level of food. This forced people to look for a way out in the development of household plots. But the authorities, both central and local, vigilantly saw to it that the villagers did not expand their private economy, and constantly increased the amount of tax in kind and money from them. In addition, in the post-war years, the practice of the 1930s continued: collective farmers did not have passports, they were not entitled to vacations, pensions, disability certificates, etc.

Seeing all this, the "Leningraders" in the documents they were developing tried to change the disastrous situation for the general population. But the opposite side did not doze off either. In the middle of 1948, A. Zhdanov, in the eyes of I. Stalin, fell into disgrace. The leader removes him from political activity and sends him on a two-month vacation with uncertain prospects for a return to political life. In August, A. Zhdanov suddenly died of a heart attack, and a few months later G. Malenkov launched the last, decisive offensive against the “Leningraders”. And he does it in stages, first he strikes at the Secretary of the Central Committee A. Kuznetsov, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR M. Rodionov and the First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee and the City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks P. Popkov.

On February 15, 1949, the Politburo of the Central Committee adopts a resolution "On anti-party actions" and the dismissal of the above-named persons. G. Malenkov prepared the draft resolution with extremely harsh assessments (his personal notes remained in the typewritten text of the document), and I. Stalin made comments to the text at the Politburo meeting itself. All accusations against the discussed persons concerned only the wholesale fair in Leningrad, but G. Malenkov for the first time managed in this document to link A. Kuznetsov and N. Voznesensky to the actions of the Leningrad leadership, and also to make a substitution of concepts.

Firstly, the All-Russian Wholesale Fair in Leningrad based on samples of consumer goods and food products (as it officially took place according to documents) was named "All-Union" in the resolution of the Politburo.

And secondly, the very word “samples” disappeared from the resolution, and thus the case was presented in such a way that all (all!) Goods from the warehouses of the USSR Ministry of Trade were brought to Leningrad.

That is, from the text of the document it could be concluded that all the illiquid assets available in the RSFSR were brought to the fair, and on this basis the main charge was built. I. Stalin was also convinced of this alleged crime. I do not think that the General Secretary did not notice this fraud, but for himself, apparently, he had already decided to deal with the “Leningraders”.

Let us turn again to archival documents.

In the Resolution of the Politburo “On the anti-party actions of the member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks”, Comrade Kuznetsov A.A. and candidate members of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) vols. Rodionova M.I. and Popkov P.S.” everything was built according to the laws of hard drama.

On the basis of the audit, it was recorded in this document, it was established that the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, together with the Leningrad leading comrades, with the assistance of a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, comrade. Kuznetsova A.A. Arbitrarily and illegally organized the All-Union Wholesale Fair with an invitation to participate in it trade organizations of the territories and regions of the RSFSR, including the most remote ones, up to the Sakhalin Region, as well as representatives of trade organizations of all Union republics. At the fair, goods worth about 9 billion rubles were offered for sale, including goods that are distributed by the union government according to a national plan, which led to the squandering of state commodity funds and to the infringement of the interests of a number of territories, regions and republics. In addition, the holding of the fair caused damage to the state due to the large and unjustified expenditures of state funds for organizing the fair and for moving its participants from remote areas to Leningrad and back.

The Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks considers the candidates for members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, vol. Rodionov and Popkov and a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Comrade Kuznetsov A.A., who violated the elementary foundations of state and party discipline, since neither the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, nor the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks asked for permission from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of Ministers USSR to hold the All-Union Wholesale Fair and, bypassing the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of Ministers of the USSR, arbitrarily organized it in Leningrad.

The Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks believes that the anti-state actions noted above were the result of the fact that the comrades. Kuznetsova A.A., Rodionov, Popkov, there is an unhealthy, non-Bolshevik bias, expressed in demagogic flirting with the Leningrad organization, in scolding the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which allegedly does not help the Leningrad organization ...

In the same light, one should consider the proposal, which has only now become known to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, from Comrade Voznesensky, to “patronize” Leningrad, which Comrade Popkov addressed to Comrade N.A. Voznesensky in 1948, as well as the wrong behavior of Comrade Voznesensky. Popkov, when he tries to replace the connections of the Leningrad Party Organization with the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks with personal connections with the so-called "chief" Comrade A. Kuznetsov.

The text of the resolution saw a connection between such behavior of the "Leningraders" and the actions of A. Zinoviev, who "resorted to the same anti-party methods."

In the operative part, Rodionov, Popkov and Kuznetsov resigned from their posts.

And then came the turn of N. Voznesensky.

On March 5, 1949, a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks took place, which adopted the Decree of the Central Committee "On the State Planning Commission". His draft was again written personally by G. Malenkov and accepted without any changes. I. Stalin chaired the meeting of the Politburo.

The text of the Politburo's resolution, in its tone and vocabulary, differs sharply from all such documents. G. Malenkov invested in him all his emotions in relation to N. Voznesensky personally. From the decree, from the very first lines it was clear that N. Voznesensky would never regain his position in the top leadership of the party and the country. Here are just some of the passages from this document, which broke the fate of not only Nikolai Alekseevich, but, in fact, all the “Leningraders”.

As a national body for planning the national economy of the USSR and monitoring the implementation of state plans, the State Planning Commission must be an absolutely objective and one hundred percent honest body; in his work, wobbling and adjusting figures is completely unacceptable, “because an attempt to fit figures to one or another preconceived opinion is a crime of a criminal nature” (inscribed in the hand of I. Stalin).

However, as a result of an audit carried out by the Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the USSR in connection with a note by the USSR Gossnab (comrade Pomaznev) on the plan for industrial production for the first quarter of 1949, facts of deception by the USSR State Planning Committee of the government were revealed, it was established that the State Planning Committee of the USSR admits a biased and dishonest approach to issues planning and evaluating the implementation of plans, which is expressed primarily in the adjustment of figures in order to gloss over the actual state of affairs; It has also been revealed that there is a link between the State Planning Committee of the USSR and individual ministries and departments and an underestimation of the production capacities and economic plans of the ministries. All this is confirmed by the following.

By a resolution of September 29, 1947, the Council of Ministers of the USSR declared unacceptable the repeated practice in 1947 of a decrease in gross industrial output in the 1st quarter compared to the 4th quarter of the previous year and pointed out the need not only to prevent a decline in production in the 1st quarter of 1948, but also to achieve further significant increase in industrial output.

Gosplan of the USSR, instead of honestly carrying out the directive of the Government, embarked on the path of deceiving the Government and for this purpose introduced a suspicious innovation in planning from the first quarter of 1948, beginning to determine the rate of growth of industry without seasonal industries ...

The Council of Ministers of the USSR considers the anti-state actions noted above as resistance on the part of the State Planning Committee of the USSR to the line of the Party and the Government in the matter of ensuring a systematic increase in industrial production in the 1st quarter compared to the 4th quarter...

The Council of Ministers of the USSR decides:

1. Recognize as absolutely intolerable the facts of deception by the State Planning Commission of the USSR of the Government revealed during the verification, the criminal practice of adjusting figures, to condemn the wrong line of the State Planning Committee of the USSR ...

It should be noted that the audit showed that Comrade Voznesensky unsatisfactorily manages the USSR State Planning Committee, does not show the obligatory, especially for a member of the Politburo, party membership in the leadership of the USSR State Planning Committee and in defending the Government’s directives in the field of planning, incorrectly educates the workers of the USSR State Planning Committee, as a result of which the USSR State Planning Committee cultivated non-Party morals, anti-state actions, facts of deceiving the Government, criminal facts of adjusting figures, and, finally, facts that indicate that the leading employees of the USSR State Planning Committee are tricking the Government.

To oblige the State Planning Committee of the USSR to decisively put an end to anti-state practices ...

2. Release comrade Voznesensky from his duties as Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR ...

Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR I. Stalin.

Ya. Chadayev, manager of the USSR Council of Ministers.

The role of G. Malenkov was generally the most sinister in this "affair". His son, A.G. Malenkov, tried to challenge the role of his father in the destruction of the "Leningraders", but the documents irrefutably testify to the contrary.

If the documents of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1955 place on G. Malenkov only "moral" responsibility for the "Leningrad process", then in 1957 and in 1988 he was already directly accused of organizing this "case".

The materials of the CPC at the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1988 leave no doubt about the participation of G. Malenkov in the "Leningrad case". “In order to obtain fictitious testimony about the existence of an anti-party group in Leningrad,” the conclusion of the Commission under the Central Committee of the CPSU says, “G.M. Malenkov personally supervised the course of the investigation in the case and was directly involved in the interrogations. All those arrested were subjected to illegal methods of investigation, painful torture, beatings and torture. To create the appearance of the existence of an anti-party group in Leningrad, on the instructions of G. Malenkov, mass arrests were made. For more than a year, those arrested were prepared for trial, subjected to rude abuse, brutal torture, threats to kill their families, placed in a punishment cell, etc. The psychological processing of the accused intensified on the eve and during the trial itself. The defendants were forced to memorize the protocols of interrogations and not deviate from a pre-prepared scenario of a court farce. They were deceived, assuring that confessions of “hostile activity” are important and necessary for the party, which needs to be taught the appropriate lesson by exposing a hostile group. However, the question of the physical destruction of N.A. Voznesensky, M.I. Rodionova, P.S. Popkova, Ya.F. Kapustina, P.G. Lazutin was a foregone conclusion before the trial."

The son of L. Beria Sergo, in his memoirs, said that Kuznetsov, Popkov, Rodionov, Lazutin and Solovyov on August 13, 1949, G. Malenkov invited them to come to his office, and it was here that they were all arrested by NKVD officers even without presenting the sanction of the prosecutor.

The functions of the direct executor of repressions against the “Leningraders” were performed with great energy by the Minister of State Security V. Abakumov. At the slightest hint from I. Stalin, he ordered arrests, torture of defendants in the "Leningrad case", if they refused to sign slanders against themselves, placed them in a cold cell for several days. The arrested hundreds of times were summoned at night to the investigators and were not allowed to sleep for days. And when that did not help, they were subjected to brutal beatings.

In order to fulfill the order of the leader to obtain "confessions" from the arrested, V. Abakumov not only subjected them to torture, but also made absolutely fantastic promises and shameless deceit and lies. In the materials of the meeting of the CPC at the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1988, his testimony was recorded that he convinced those arrested that, whatever the sentence, even to the highest measure, he would never be carried out.

In the summer of 2013, I asked L.A. Voznesensky, what did the CCP document mean by the words that the investigators deceived the detainees? Referring to conversations with a member of the Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the CPSU A.I. Kuznetsov, Lev Alexandrovich said that the NKVD investigators convinced the “Leningraders” that if they signed the interrogation protocols imposed on them, then in fact they would not be shot, but sent to underground party work.

The archives have not preserved evidence of these tortures, since the “Leningraders”, if they wrote papers, then only those in which they refuted the lies erected against them. But they did not complain about the investigators, considering it below their dignity. In this they radically differed from their executioners.

And V. Abakumov was just an executioner, with great invention and no less enthusiasm. The publicist L. Mlechin told, for example, the following episode: “When Abakumov was tried after the death of I. Stalin, the Prosecutor General of the USSR Roman Rudenko said: “I do not want to decipher some forms of torture in order not to humiliate the dignity of those persons to whom they were applied "".

But V. Abakumov himself, even when he was arrested, tried to pretend that he allegedly did not know much of what the investigators directly subordinate to him were doing.

The archive preserved V. Abakumov’s complaint against his former direct subordinates, who tortured him after his own arrest (V. Abakumov was arrested in July 1951 by order of I. Stalin, and in December 1954, at the insistence of N. Khrushchev, sentenced to shooting).

Here is the letter of the arrested V. Abakumov from the prison cell:

Comrades Beria and Malenkov.

Dear L.P. and G.M.!

They did something incredible to me. For the first eight days they were kept in an almost dark, cold cell. Then, for a month, the interrogations were organized in such a way that I slept only an hour and a half a day, and the food was disgusting. At all interrogations there is a continuous obscenity, mockery, insults, ridicule and other atrocious antics. They threw me from my chair to the floor.

On the night of March 16, they seized me and brought me to the so-called punishment cell, but in fact, as it turned out later, it was a refrigeration chamber with a pipeline installation, without windows, completely empty, measuring 2 meters. In this monster, without air, without food (they gave me a piece of bread and two mugs of water a day), I spent eight days. The installation turned on, the cold intensified all the time. I fell into unconsciousness many times. I have never seen such atrocity and I did not know about the presence of such refrigerators in Lefortovo, I was deceived. This stone bag can give death, injury and a terrible disease. On March 23, it almost ended in death - they miraculously left me and put me in the medical unit, injecting heart preparations and putting rubber bladders with hot water under my feet ...

Respectful to you - V. Abakumov.

It should be added to this letter that the refrigerator chamber, which V. Abakumov describes in his letter, was the one where he personally, at the request of I. Stalin, ordered to place N.A. and A.A. Voznesensky. So he experienced “only” the same thing that he condemned the “Leningraders” to.

But all this was later, when I. Stalin had already dealt with the “Leningraders” and he no longer needed V. Abakumov. And at the very beginning of August 1950, the leader ordered his Minister of State Security to provide him with a list of those accused in the Leningrad case, and already on August 10 such a list for 10 people was ready. However, I. Stalin rudely, in obscene terms, scolded V. Abakumov for his “softness”, demanded that the list be increased to 33 people and ordered that confessions be obtained from the arrested. Since the minister did not know who else to include in the list, the leader personally wrote 23 more names in pencil.

On August 23, 1950, V. Abakumov presented to I. Stalin a new draft indictment, already for 33 people, with protocols of interrogations and personal "confessions to crimes" received over these months from those arrested.

But even such a text did not satisfy I. Stalin, then G. Malenkov got down to business.

According to the draft indictment drawn up by G. Malenkov, the General Secretary personally "walked" with a pencil in his hand and left a dense personal correction in it. Changed, in particular, the order of the listed names. He brought A. Kuznetsov to the first place, and moved N. Voznesensky to the third place, writing: “To put Kuznetsov at the head of the accused, then Popkov and then Voznesensky.” For some reason, the leader showed increased attention to Kuznetsov. This is clearly seen from his personal editing of the text of the draft indictment, which was presented to him by Malenkov and Beria. They, on their own initiative, drafted a closed appeal of the Politburo to the members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks with an explanation of the reasons for the emergence of the "Leningrad case". This project was called "On the anti-party hostile group of Kuznetsov, Popkov, Rodionov, Kapustin, Solovyov and others." I. Stalin kept this document on his desk for several days, repeatedly took it up and heavily corrected the text of the alleged letter. In particular, he introduced the name of A. Zhdanov into the text three times, writing that A. Kuznetsov was transferred to work in the Central Committee “on the recommendation of comrade. Zhdanov" that Kuznetsov abused "the trust of Comrade. Zhdanov” that personnel “appointments were made with the support of Comrade. Zhdanov, who had full confidence in Kuznetsov. At the same time, he crossed out the word “complete” twice, changed it to “limitless”, but in the end he still left the original version.

Why the General Secretary in the draft of the guilty verdict brought Kuznetsov to the first place and why in the draft of a closed letter to the members of the Central Committee he showed such strong irritation towards him remains a mystery. Perhaps S. Rybas shed light on this riddle, who told the following episode:

In the struggle between two groups - Zhdanovskaya and Malenkovskoberievskaya - one day Stalin's bastard son, Konstantin Stepanovich Kuzakov, also came under attack. He was born from Stalin's connection during the Vologda exile with the young widow Matryona Kuzakova and was recorded in the name of her husband, who died two years before the birth of the baby. After the revolution, Stalin helped them. As fate would have it, their paths crossed. Konstantin Kuzakov became deputy head of the Department of Propaganda and Agitation Aleksandrov, "the man of Malenkov."

At the end of September 1947, at a meeting of the Politburo, it was decided to create a "court of honor" in the apparatus of the Central Committee. On September 29, at a meeting of apparatus workers on Staraya Square, in the presence of Stalin, the secretary of the Central Committee Kuznetsov made a report. Speaking about the fight against anti-patriotism, he recalled the closed letters of the Central Committee of 1935 - "Lessons from the events connected with the villainous murder of Comrade Kirov" and "On the terrorist activities of the Trotskyist-Zinovievist revolutionary bloc", as well as other documents devoted to "revolutionary vigilance". Kuznetsov emphasized that "foreign intelligence puts the main task in subversive activities against our country, first of all, in the processing of our individual unstable workers." He gave many relevant examples, and the main blow was dealt to Alexandrov and other leaders of the UPiA. The key figure in the report was B.L. Suchkov, who was accused of passing atomic secrets to the Americans, as well as information about the famine in Moldova. In addition, trying to help former classmate Lev Kopelev, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for "counter-revolutionary activities", Suchkov wrote a letter in his defense to the prosecutor's office. The letter was forwarded from the prosecutor's office to the Central Committee Malenkov, where the case was hushed up in the apparatus. The frightened Suchkov consulted with Kuzakov whether he should write a penitential explanation. He advised to wait, not to open up, that is, he became an accomplice.

Stalin silently listened to Kuznetsov's report and did not interfere in further events.

On October 23-24, 1947, the “court of honor” considered the case of anti-party actions of the former head of the personnel department of the UPA M.I. Shcherbakov and the former deputy head of the UPiA Kuzakov, accused of losing political vigilance and a sense of responsibility for the work assigned in connection with the exposure of B.L. Suchkov, whom they recommended to the Central Committee apparatus. They were given a public reprimand. By decision of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, they were expelled from the party. Suchkov was sentenced to imprisonment and released only in 1955.

Perhaps Kuzakov would also have been arrested, but Stalin did not allow it. In the future, the leader's son worked at the Mosfilm film studio and at the Central Television of the USSR, as the editor-in-chief of the Main Editorial Office of Literary and Drama Programs.

But father and son never spoke to each other.

If Stalin knew about Konstantin Kuzakov and recognized him as his son, then he never remembered his second illegitimate son (born in 1914 from Lidia Pereprygina in Kureika, Turukhansk Territory). Only in 1956, the chairman of the KGB of the USSR, Ivan Serov, informed Khrushchev that Stalin's illegitimate son Alexander Davydov (his stepfather's surname) was serving in the army with the rank of major.

In general, the political naivety of A. Kuznetsov in this episode is striking. Judging by his behavior, he did not even suspect that he was striking at once on two of the strongest political figures, making them his mortal enemies: Malenkov and Stalin. After all, it was only 1947, Kuznetsov had just started working as a secretary of the Central Committee and, not knowing the whole situation, he immediately allowed himself such a political volley! Unlike him, Malenkovto knew that Kuzakov was Stalin's son and that Stalin recognized him as his blood relative.

As for Stalin, he never forgave personal insults. In 1940, for the mere phrase of a 29-year-old lieutenant general of aviation, Hero of the USSR Rychagov, thrown in Stalin's face at a meeting of the Politburo (“You are forcing us to fly on your coffins!”), He removed the pilot from his post, ordered him to be arrested, and in October 1941 in Kuibyshev prison ordered to be shot along with other political prisoners. And this was already at a time when Stalin knew that in the very first weeks of the war the Germans had practically destroyed most of the Soviet aviation and that the Air Force was sorely lacking in experienced pilots, and even more so commanders.

It should be noted that in the end, all this painstaking work of the General Secretary with the draft closed letter turned out to be largely in vain: he did not dare to acquaint not only the general public, but even members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks with the work of Malenkov and Beria. Until his death, only the narrowest circle of people knew about the executions and repressions in this "case". And those who were driven in Leningrad to the so-called "open trial" in the House of Officers were warned about non-disclosure, and none of them dared to open their mouths until the death of the General Secretary. What was the severity of this secret, can be judged by the fact that until the death of I. Stalin, even such people as the deputy head of the First Main Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, Lieutenant General P.A., did not know anything about the “Leningrad case”. Sudoplatov, about which he wrote in his memoirs two months before his death in 1996.

A natural question arises: why I. Stalin did not dare to publish this information? After all, when in the 30s he destroyed his old party comrades and military personnel, not only the whole country knew about it, but also mass public events were specially held with the condemnation of the accused. Why was such secrecy observed in the case of the trials of 1949-1950?

I think that I. Stalin was afraid of the publicity that he was carrying out massacres against representatives of the Russian leading elite. After all, he himself immediately after the war offered a toast Russian people, recognizing that it is thanks to his talent and courage, the USSR defeated Nazi Germany. Moreover, J. Stalin practically apologized to the Russian people for the military defeats of 1941 and 1942, the blame for which, as he admitted, lies primarily with him and his government.

Probably, the inhuman intuition of the leader told him that there was something to fear. Only four years have passed since the Victory, and the General Secretary subjected to bloody repressions precisely those who basically carried this Victory on their shoulders - representatives of the state, party, military and economic apparatus not only of Leningrad and the Leningrad Region, but also of almost all regions of Central Russia and nominees of the RSFSR for leadership work in other union republics.

Thus, we come to the main reason for the emergence of the "Leningrad case".

I. Stalin never said this out loud, but an analysis of all his interventions in the "Leningrad case" irrefutably shows that he accused the "Leningraders" of "Russian nationalism", which, in his opinion, could undermine the unity of the Soviet Union, and in this The General Secretary did not even want to hear about compromises. Already after the collapse of the USSR, diaries of G. Dimitrov were published in Bulgaria, in which he wrote down the toast of I. Stalin, pronounced by him on November 7, 1937, where the Secretary General expressed his attitude to the problem of the unity of the USSR. “Each part that would be torn off from the common socialist state,” said I. Stalin in this short speech, “would not only damage the latter, but would also not be able to exist independently and would inevitably fall into someone else's bondage. Therefore, anyone who tries to destroy this unity of the socialist state, who strives to separate a separate part and nationality from it, he is an enemy, a sworn enemy of the state, the peoples of the USSR. And we will destroy every such enemy, even if he were an old Bolshevik, we will destroy his entire family, his family ... we will destroy him mercilessly. For the destruction of all enemies to the end, themselves, their kind!

The General Secretary himself was a secretive and cautious man. All his life he preferred to have his real thoughts guessed and presented to him on paper by others, and he would act as an editor of these thoughts. Of course, it was not possible to deceive anyone with this manner.

Malenkov and Beria guessed the hidden thoughts of I. Stalin in the “Leningrad Case” and in the draft of a closed letter to the members of the Central Committee they wrote directly: transfer of the capital of the RSFSR from Moscow to Leningrad. Kuznetsov and others motivated these measures among themselves with slanderous arguments that the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the federal government were pursuing an anti-Russian policy and carrying out protectionism against other national republics at the expense of the Russian people. The group provided that in the event that their plans were implemented, Kuznetsov A. was to take the post of First Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) ... "

“It should be taken into account,” wrote Beria and Malenkov, “that with one of the leading members of this group, Kapustin, as it turned out now, during his stay in London in 1936, British intelligence established contact. Now it has become obvious that A. Kuznetsov and Popkov had information about this, but hid it from the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).”

But here they obviously overdid it. V. Abakumov was unable to provide the Secretary General with any evidence in this regard, and this plot was not included in either the indictment in the "case" or the verdict.

As for the fate of the letter itself to the members of the Central Committee, I. Stalin simply banned it, not daring to publicize any information about the "Leningrad case" at all. Apparently, the thesis that the Russian communists wanted to have their own institutionalized communist party, the General Secretary considered extremely dangerous. Stalin was afraid of popularizing this idea among the Russian people.

Patriotism: Soviet
or Russian?

"L the people of Leningrad" were patriots of their land, the Russian land. As best they could, they expressed it. Of course, the Soviet Union was also their homeland. But the USSR was never Russia. Therefore, their soul ached precisely for Russia. For the Russian people who created Russia and its spiritual culture. Therefore, as soon as a native of the Nizhny Novgorod province M. Rodionov in March 1946 replaced A.N. Kosygin, he immediately raised before I. Stalin questions about education, following the example of other union republics, the Communist Party of Russia and the canonization of the symbols of Russia: the tricolor banner, the anthem, and proposed to make Leningrad the capital of the RSFSR - in a word, everything that had already been done in other union republics. He did it openly, first verbally, and then officially. On September 27, 1947, Rodionov sent an official note to I. Stalin:

Comrade Stalin I.V.

On the establishment of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for the RSFSR

I ask you to consider the question of creating a Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for the RSFSR.

The creation of the Bureau, it seems to me, is necessary for the preliminary consideration of questions of the RSFSR submitted to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Federal Government, as well as for discussing the most important questions of the economic and cultural development of the RSFSR, to be considered by the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR.

The presence of such a body under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks will make it possible to draw even greater attention of local Party and Soviet organizations to the fuller use of local opportunities in the implementation of the five-year plan for the restoration and development of the national economy.

The best use of local opportunities is especially necessary, along with the union economy, in such sectors as urban economy, road construction, rural and collective farm construction, local industry, education and cultural construction work.

Realizing the originality of his request, M. Rodionov turns to the First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee and the Moscow Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Secretary of the Central Committee G. Popov for support:

To Comrade Popov G.M.

I am sending you a copy of the letter I sent to Comrade I.V. Stalin. on the creation of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for the RSFSR. I ask you, Georgy Mikhailovich, to support this request.

M. Rodionov.

Apparently, Mikhail Ivanovich relied on historical precedent: on July 19, 1936, I. Stalin himself, at a meeting of the Politburo, proposed the creation of a Bureau for the Affairs of the RSFSR under the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, headed by A.A. Andreev. And such a Bureau was created. True, it did not last long, the General Secretary did not like something in this body, and after a few months he proposed to abolish it. Only 11 questions were considered.

But the first secretary of the Moscow City Committee was more experienced than M. Rodionov in court affairs and did not answer his letter. It is possible that this saved his life. It is no coincidence that of all the appointees of A. Zhdanov after the “Leningrad case”, he was the only one left alive. Unlike N. Voznesensky and others, I. Stalin kept him in all his previous positions for almost the entire 1949 year. Only in December did the leader urgently summon N. Khrushchev from Ukraine and put him on Moscow. G. Popov, after his resignation, was first appointed Minister of Urban Affairs of the USSR, then Minister of Agriculture, then successively director of a number of aircraft factories, and after the death of I. Stalin was sent as ambassador to Poland. G. Popov retired in 1965, at the age of 59, and died at the age of 61, outliving the "whole team" of Zhdanov by as much as 17 years.

As for M. Rodionov's request for the formation of the Bureau of the Central Committee for the RSFSR, I. Stalin did not answer it. However, Mikhail Ivanovich hurried up and negotiated with D.D. Shostakovich on the subject of creating the anthem of Russia. The composer agreed immediately, but stated that he needed poetry to write music. Then M. Rodionov turned to the remarkable Russian poet Stepan Shchipachev, and he wrote the words. The Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History has preserved them. The anthem was created at an accelerated pace. And it ended with a couplet:

Hail, Russia, fatherland of freedom!

We will go forward to new victories.

In the fraternal unity of the free
peoples

Hail, our great Russian people!

In 1991, when the question arose of restoring the symbols of Russia independent of the USSR, the anthem created by the "Leningraders" was not needed for the people's deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR. He did not come to the court and the leaders of the new Russia.

Many years after the death of I. Stalin, contemporaries of the "Leningraders" in the highest echelons of the leadership of the Soviet Union argued that all of them, starting with A. Zhdanov, N. Voznesensky, A. Voznesensky, M. Rodionov and others, really felt more degree patriots of Russia than of the Soviet Union. N. Khrushchev, in his memoirs left behind, recalled that A. Zhdanov in 1945–1946, in conversations with him, more than once complained that in the socialist family of the union republics the RSFSR remains the most deprived, that the cities and villages of Central Russia look simply poor compared with those in other republics, and the standard of living of Russians is much lower compared to other nations within the USSR. A. Mikoyan recalled that in 1947 I. Stalin told him more than once that for N. Voznesensky, Russians always come first, and only then everyone else. For him, I. Stalin said, even Ukrainians are less respected than Russians.

Where did such moods arise and prevail (if they did) among the “Leningraders”? I think there is an answer to this question. Someone, and the chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, N. Voznesensky, knew well that the Lenin-Stalin creation - the Soviet Union - if viable, then only in one case: if all the Union republics exist and develop at the expense of the economy of the RSFSR.

This understanding began to come to the “Leningraders” when, one after the other, after the war, they began to be promoted to the highest echelons of power.

The fact is that immediately after the formation of the USSR, an all-Union budget was formed, and within its framework, by a decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of August 21, 1923, the Allied Republican Subsidized Fund of the USSR was created, the funds from which began to be directed to the economic and social development of the Caucasian, Central Asian and other union republics, including Ukraine. This entire fund was formed at the expense of the RSFSR (there was simply nothing to take from the Union republics). In contrast to the RSFSR, the budgets of the Union republics were fully credited with turnover tax collections (one of the main sources of budget revenues), and income tax also remained in the republics in full. And although the Russian economy played a decisive role in the formation of the mentioned fund, it never used subsidies from it. As frankly admitted in the 30s G.K. Ordzhonikidze: “Soviet Russia, replenishing our (Georgian SSR) budget, gives us 24 million gold rubles a year, and we, of course, do not pay her any interest for this. Armenia, for example, is being revived not at the expense of the labor of its own peasants, but at the expense of Soviet Russia.”

Doctor of Economic Sciences, Professor V.G. Chebotareva at an international conference in Moscow in 1995 presented her calculations, which showed how the process of transferring the surplus product from the RSFSR to the Union republics proceeded.

As noted by the scientist, primarily through cash infusions in its purest form. The published reports of the Ministry of Finance of the USSR for 1929, 1932, 1934, 1935 allow us to conclude that in these years 159.8 million rubles were allocated as subsidies to Turkmenistan, 250.7 million to Tajikistan, 86.3 to Uzbekistan, 129.1 to the ZSFSR million rubles. As for, for example, Kazakhstan, until 1923 this republic did not have its own budget at all - the financing of its development came from the budget of the RSFSR.

But the calculation should include not only pure cash injections. As Professor V. Chebotareva informed the international and Russian public, for decades, in addition to purely monetary tribute, Russia gave the Union Republics "its most precious capital - highly qualified specialists." In 1959, there were 16.2 million Russians outside Russia, in 1988 - 25.3 million. Over 30 years, their number increased by 55.5%, and within Russia - only by 22%. Representatives of the Russian diaspora created a significant part of the national income in the republics. For example, before 1992, 10% of the Russian population of Tajikistan produced up to 50% of the domestic national product.

Formed in this phenomenon and another, side, but significant effect. “The Russian people,” said V. Chebotareva, “on whom a complex of “historical guilt” was imposed for the atrocities of tsarism, did everything to put an end to the age-old backwardness of the fraternal peoples.” “But in this noble field,” she noted, “the Russian people have lost their elementary sense of self-preservation; under the influence of political propaganda, he fell into unconsciousness and destroyed many national traditions, the environment of his historical habitat.

In October 2010, an international scientific and practical conference entitled "Non-conflict reading of common history - the basis of good neighborliness" was held at the Academy for Advanced Studies of Educators, at which historians from Moscow, Saratov and Tallinn presented a report edited by the head of the Department of History of the Moscow City Pedagogical University, Professor A. Danilov , where the following facts were given on the topic under consideration.

In 1987, in Latvia, receipts from the RSFSR and Ukraine amounted to 22.8% of the total national income of the republic.

No less impressive are the figures of inter-republican exchange, which show how all the Baltic union republics developed. So, in 1972, Estonia imported goods by 135.2 million rubles more than it exported, Lithuania - by 240 million, Latvia - by 57.1 million rubles. Over the years, the gap between imports and exports has only increased. For example, in 1988 for Estonia this gap was already 700 million rubles, for Lithuania - 1 billion 530 million, for Latvia - 695 million rubles.

In other words, the entire state policy of the USSR in all areas was based on satisfying the interests of the national outskirts, and the interests of the indigenous population of the RSFSR were sacrificed to this absolute minority. While the industry and infrastructure of the union national republics grew fat and swelled, the primordially Russian cities and villages were impoverished.

In 1997, the famous writer and scientist Alexander Kuznetsov wrote: “It becomes bitter in the soul when you see the old Russian cities. Old houses with crumbling plaster, wooden one-story houses went down to the ground up to the windows, and two-story houses squinted and smelled of a toilet. The picture is familiar. This is how all the old Russian cities look now, not like the Caucasian or Central Asian ones.

Yerevan was entirely built during the years of Soviet power. Previously, it consisted of adobe and stone one-story houses, but now it was built from comfortable multi-storey and, mind you, atypical houses, lined with multi-colored tuff. And not a single old house in the whole city. The Soviet period is a golden age for Armenia. In Tbilisi, one old street was left as a historical monument. Refurbished and looks like the picture. Everything else was built anew, as in other Caucasian cities.

There is nothing to say about the Central Asian republics - palaces, theaters, parks, fountains are all in granite and marble, in stone carvings. Wealthy, heavy for 70 years, the edge of the state, so that, having had enough, then fall off. Russia, as it was poor, has remained.

Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR in 1971-1983 M.S. Solomentsev recalled how in the early 70s, on a trip to the Bryansk region, he saw an entire village living in dugouts since the Great Patriotic War. In his memoirs, he writes: “When Brezhnev recommended me for the post of Prime Minister of the RSFSR, I set only one condition: stop bugging Russia. Leonid Ilyich, I remember, did not understand me, asked: "What does it mean to shut up?" I explained: the sectoral departments of the Central Committee and the federal government directly command the Russian regions and specific enterprises, guided more by the interests of the union republics, leaving Russia only crumbs from the all-union table.

An interesting picture was drawn in this regard in Nezavisimaya Gazeta on June 12, 1992 by Ivan Silaev, the first prime minister of the Yeltsin government.

Becoming the first chairman of the Council of Ministers of independent Russia in the summer of 1990, he discovered that during all the years of Soviet power, the RSFSR annually paid the union republics, including Ukraine, and from 1940 to the Baltic republics, 46 billion rubles a year. Having recalculated this money at the exchange rate that existed in 1990 (1 dollar was equal to 60 kopecks), in June 1991 the prime minister reported to the first president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, that the RSFSR annually directed $ 76.5 billion to the development of the union republics, which was more than 30% the annual Russian budget.

After his report, the independent government of the RSFSR demanded that the practice of depleting Russia's economic resource be radically changed and that only (only!) 10 billion rubles be allocated to the subsidy fund. And even then, provided that the republic that will take funds from this fund will not do it irrevocably, but only on credit and undertakes to conclude an agreement with the government of the RSFSR on the supply of its products on account of the obligatory repayment of the loan within the agreed period. Hearing this, the republican leaders, including Ukraine and the Baltic union republics, immediately demanded that the President of the USSR M. Gorbachev "put the Russians in their place"...

This Bolshevik line also affected the personnel national policy in the Union republics.

In the central committees of the party in the Union republics of the USSR, as a rule, a representative of the so-called titular nation was appointed the first secretary of the Central Committee, and a party worker of Russian nationality was appointed the second secretary (mandatory). The tasks of the latter included mainly the observance of the rules for the functioning of a single (union) economic policy. In the political sphere, including the ideological one, this second secretary could interfere only in exceptional cases, and then not directly, but through Moscow.

He could not influence the personnel policy in the republic in any way. No matter what percentage of the population of a non-indigenous nation lived in it, all key positions in all spheres of the republic's life were invariably occupied by representatives of the indigenous nationality. Moreover, this applied to absolutely all non-indigenous nations and nationalities. In Tbilisi, for example, any large Armenian diaspora could live, but only Georgians could represent its interests in the leadership of the city or republic.

Until 1917, the tsars of the Romanov dynasty pursued a completely different policy in this regard.

Examining this problem, the well-known Russian historian Alexei Miller writes that before the revolution, the “imperial nation”, that is, the Russians, was adequately represented in the personnel of the bureaucracy, as well as other nations and nationalities that existed at that time. “Studying the composition of the bureaucracy in the western outskirts,” he writes, “it should be noted that “representatives of the local population were represented among officials in proportions that generally corresponded to the proportion of various ethnic groups in these provinces.”

In other words, since the late 1920s, I. Stalin, as the sole ruler in the USSR, radically departed from the policy of the Russian tsars in these matters, who, firstly, carefully monitored that in the power structures of the national outskirts, the proportional representation of all peoples and nations living in in these territories. And secondly, the viceroy of the "White Tsar" on the national outskirts was by no means such, in fact, a decorative figure as the second secretary of the Central Committee of any union communist party was in the union republics of the USSR.

The Bolsheviks after 1917 generally created a rather strange "empire". In relation to the small nationalities and peoples in its composition, the USSR in general was a unique state formation. It turned out that the Soviet Union was created for the purposeful pumping out of material and cultural assets in favor of small nations lagging behind in their civilizational development. This feature of Stalin's policy towards Russians is noted not only by Russian historians.

Harvard University professor Terry Martin came to the conclusion that the USSR was generally a completely new kind of empire - "an empire in reverse", and he characterizes the Soviet national policy as "a radical break with the politics of the Romanov empire."

Following T. Martin, Professor A. Miller writes: "Within the framework of Soviet policy, the state-forming people, the Russians, had to suppress their national interests and identify themselves with the affirmative action empire." The Bolsheviks even went so far as to deny “the right to national autonomy in the places of compact residence of Russians in the Union republics”, the “right to national representation in the power structures of the autonomous republics”, moreover, they condemned “Russian culture as a bourgeois landlord culture, as an imperial culture oppressors." “The Bolsheviks, in fact ... created national elites where they did not exist or where they were weak. They disseminated and supported among the masses various forms of national culture and identity where this task was on the agenda. They contributed to the territorialization of ethnicity and created national formations at different levels.”

As a result, all this policy led to the fact that the emerging national elites at the end of the existence of the Soviet Union created their own national history and, on the basis of the development in their territorial national formations of the processes of industrialization, urbanization, and the spread of literacy under the slogans of democracy, justified their separation from the Soviet empire. .

T.Martin in his study carefully analyzed the clash between I.Stalin and V.Lenin in 1922 over the formation of the Soviet Union and came to the conclusion: “From the statements of I.Stalin it is clear that the reason for his disagreement with Lenin was the Russian question. [ But] preserving the RSFSR, instead of creating the USSR, I. Stalin was not going to strengthen the positions of the Russians, on the contrary, he wanted to weaken them. Most of all, he was afraid of a separate Russian republic ... "

Strictly speaking, this conclusion of the Harvard historian contains the answer to the question why I. Stalin dealt so ruthlessly with the "Leningraders": the General Secretary was terribly afraid of the awakening of Russian national identity, seeing in it the strongest threat to his undivided power in the USSR.

From a report to I. Stalin by L. Beria: “Marshal Bulganin on the night of January 6 to 7, 1948, being in the company of two ballerinas of the Bolshoi Theater in room 348 of the N Hotel, drunk and drunk, ran in his underpants along the corridors of the third and fourth floors hotel, waving the pistachio-colored pantaloons of one of the ballerinas tied to a mop handle, and demanded from everyone he met to shout: “Hurrah for Marshal Bulganin of the Soviet Union, Minister of the Armed Forces of the USSR!” Then, going down to the restaurant, N.A. Bulganin, placing at attention several generals who were having dinner there, demanded from them to “kiss the banner”, that is, the above-mentioned pantaloons. When the generals refused, the marshal of the Soviet Union ordered the maitre d' to call the duty officer of the commandant's office with a platoon of guards and ordered the arrived colonel Sazonov to arrest the generals who refused to obey the order. The generals were arrested and taken to the commandant's office in Moscow. In the morning, Marshal Bulganin canceled his order. “The memorandum remained without consequences: Stalin needed Bulganin” (writer Alexander Golovkov).

Since 1946, the death penalty in the USSR has been abolished. But during the trial of the "Leningraders" on January 12, 1950, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR "On the application of the death penalty to traitors to the motherland, spies, subversives and saboteurs" was issued.

The only person who, after the death of Stalin, managed not only to work with archival documents of the Leningrad Case in the reading room of the KGB of the USSR in Soviet times, but also to talk with senior officials of the Party Control Committee under the Central Committee of the CPSU, who, under Khrushchev, were entrusted with the work of revising a number of Stalin's political processes, including the "Leningrad case", to this day remains L.A. Voznesensky is the son of an outstanding statesman of Russia, the Minister of Education of the RSFSR, the rector of the Leningrad State University, the brother of Nikolai Voznesensky, who was shot in 1950, Alexander Alekseevich Voznesensky. In repeated personal conversations, Lev Alexandrovich told the author of this work about the details of the Leningrad case stored in the archives. In particular, the fact that after Stalin's death G. Malenkov withdrew 36 sheets from this archive and did not return them.

The connection between Malenkov and Pomaznev is indicated by the whole further fate of Pomaznev. G. Malenkov highly appreciated the service of M. Pomaznev in the “Leningrad case”. Immediately after the Decree of the Politburo of the Central Committee on the removal of N. Voznesensky from the post of chairman of the State Planning Committee, on March 13, 1949, Stalin accepts Malenkov's proposal to appoint Pomaznev as the manager of the USSR Council of Ministers, awards him with an order, and later Pomaznev becomes a candidate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. But G. Malenkov was aware that he and M. Pomaznev were too clearly smeared in the "Leningrad case", and therefore, after the death of I. Stalin, he immediately removed Pomaznev from Moscow, sending him as chairman of the Regional Planning Commission to Ryazan, and Pomaznev's note about Voznesensky, with his written traces, is removed from the archive. Apparently, today the text of this note of the denunciation no longer exists. The only record preserved in the archive is that all these documents were confiscated by Comrade Malenkov and not returned.

“Let the dead bury their dead,” the Lord said to one of his disciples, meaning that although they are still alive in the world, those who do not believe in the Savior (that is, in the Truth), but in fact are already dead, that is, sinners because they do not have faith in the Savior (Matt. 8:22).

A.D. Krutikov- Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Chairman of the Bureau for Trade and Light Industry under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Later, at the suggestion of G. Malenkov, he lost his position.

From the resolution of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU of January 31, 1955 “On Comrade G.M. Malenkov”: “After listening to the report of comrade. Khrushcheva N.S. about tov. Malenkov G.M. and fully approving the proposals of the Presidium of the Central Committee on this issue, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU considers ... comrade. Malenkov bears moral responsibility (only moral. - IN.TO.) for the shameful "Leningrad affair" created by Beria and Abakumov, which slandered I.V. Stalin a number of leading workers ... Comrade. Malenkov, being in such close relations with Beria, could not help but know about the slanderous slander against these workers by Beria before I.V. Stalin."

Chebotareva V.G. Russia: donor or metropolis // Proceedings of the international symposium "Where is Russia going?" / Ed. T.I. Zaslavskaya. M.: Aspect Press, 1995. S. 343–344. Professor V.G. Chebotareva quite accurately determined the spiritual state of the Russian people after 27 years of Stalin's leadership of the country. In 1949, the Leningrad poetess Olga Berggolts was simply shocked by the spiritual state of the Russian people, the very ones whom she called on the radio on a high note for all 900 days of the Leningrad Siege to maintain fortitude. Arriving on May 20, 1949 near Leningrad for a vacation, in the village of Stary Rakhin, she made an entry in her diary about the life of collective farmers: “The first day of my observations brought only extra proof to the same thing, all the same: the state’s complete unwillingness to reckon with a person, complete submission, rolling it out by oneself, creating a chain, huge, terrible system for this ... That's all in this village - the winners, this is the victorious people. As they say, what does he get from this? Well, all right, post-war difficulties, a Pyrrhic victory (at least for this village) - but what are the prospects? I was struck by some kind of oppressed and submissive state of people, which I clearly felt, and almost reconciliation with the state of hopelessness” (see: Bergholz O. From the diaries (May, October 1949) // Banner. 1991. No. 3. S. 160–172).

In the events of 1949-1950. most often they see the confrontation of certain clans in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Moreover, leading party and Soviet figures turn out to be from different authors, either on one side or on the other side of the “barricades”.

Khrushchev first raised the issue of the "Leningrad case" at the June Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee in 1953. This version became official in May 1954: first, in the Decree of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU of May 3, 1954, and then in the speeches of N.S. Khrushchev and Prosecutor General R.A. Rudenko at a closed meeting of the Leningrad party activists on May 6-7, 1954. It was announced that the “Leningrad case” was “falsified by the former Minister of State Security B.C. Abakumov and his henchmen at the direction of the enemy of the people L.P. Beria". Then this version was confirmed on February 25, 1956 in the infamous Report of Khrushchev at the XX Congress of the CPSU "On the cult of personality and its consequences." Such figures as Volkogonov, Antonov-Avseenko, Volkov, Radzinsky, even Sobchak, who compared himself with Voznesensky, shared their "revelations".

Here is how Radzinsky, known for his insinuations against Stalin, describes the Leningrad case. “Beria and Malenkov immediately caught the mood of the Host. Beria longs to throw himself at Kuznetsov, who oversees his departments. "Dogs are torn off the leash" ... The end of Voznesensky has come. Yesterday's "outstanding economist" was accused of "deliberately underestimating the figures of the plan", that his workers were "cunning with the government" ... In the last days of September 1950, a trial took place in Leningrad in the case of Voznesensky, Kuznetsov and Leningrad party members. They confessed to all the incredible crimes and were sentenced to death. The ending of the court session was fantastic: after the announcement of the verdict, the guards threw white shrouds over the convicts, put them on their shoulders and carried them to the exit across the entire hall. On the same day, everyone was shot.”

Even the patriot Zhukhrai portrays Stalin as a cornered loner surrounded by hostile forces. And the rest of the Soviet leadership is again divided into clans.

The description of those convicted in the Leningrad case often bears the features of apologetics, which is inspired mainly by the memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, Nikolai Baibakov, Anastas Mikoyan and the memories of Leningraders who worked under Voznesensky and Kuznetsov. Khrushchev assessed Voznesensky as a "smart, sharp, direct and courageous person", Baibakov, who worked for a long time as the Minister of the Oil Industry and Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, considered Voznesensky "a talented organizer, a subtle psychologist of the economy."

And here is how the Leningrad case is described in one of the many current history textbooks: “The leading position of the Voznesensky-Kuznetsov group remained until 1948, when Malenkov was “forgiven” and re-elected Secretary of the Central Committee. The "second coming" of Malenkov coincides in time with the rejection of partial liberalization of the economy and a return to the ideology of forced pace and priorities, the construction of industrial giants. For the final elimination of competitors, on the initiative of Malenkov, the "Leningrad case" begins to unwind. The zeal with which the “compromising evidence” was collected on Zhdanov’s associates was fueled by the factor of personal revenge - Malenkov (and not without reason) considered Kuznetsov, who promoted the “aviator case”, the culprit of his disgrace. The “Leningrad case” followed a standard, well-established scheme: charges were brought and arrests were made of secondary figures, from which testimony was knocked out, and only then the main characters were “taken.”

Who is right? Let's try and analyze the available facts. To understand the essence of the Leningrad case, several versions can be put forward.

1. Let us suppose that the overly suspicious Stalin shuffled his cadres and initiated the Leningrad case himself in order to get rid of rapidly gaining strength rivals. But Stalin then had great authority, and no one would have dared to remove him. Moreover, there is an opinion that it was Stalin himself who nominated both Kuznetsov and Voskresensky. This story has two interpretations. According to one of them, at a meeting of the Politburo in 1947, Stalin said: “Time passes, we grow old. In my place I see Alexei Kuznetsov ... ”According to the memoirs of A.I. Mikoyan, once on Lake Ritsa, Stalin allegedly told his companions that, in view of the approach of old age, he was thinking about successors. He considers Nikolai Alekseevich Voznesensky the most suitable candidate for the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and Aleksey Aleksandrovich Kuznetsov for the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee. “What, do you mind, comrades?” Stalin asked. Nobody objected. Interestingly, Kuznetsov, a former carpenter, did not have a higher education. But it was Kuznetsov who, in 1946, was entrusted by Stalin with supervision of the repressive organs.
2. Suppose that Stalin, for some reason, was afraid to leave Voznesensky and Kuznetsov as his heirs and did not save them from their colleagues in the Politburo. In other words, the cause of the "Leningrad case" is the struggle of clans within the highest party nomenklatura - and this factor really took place. According to Sudoplatov, the motives of Stalin's assistants, the motives that forced Malenkov, Beria and Khrushchev to destroy the Leningrad group, were clear: to strengthen their power. They were afraid that the young Leningrad team would replace Stalin. Stalin was not afraid of any opposition on their part, but that they could seriously mess things up after his death, opposing Leningrad to Moscow, Russia to the Union. But it seems that the roots of Stalin's decision to punish a group of apparently promising and energetic leaders go much deeper.
3. One can think that the struggle for power within the top of the USSR led to the fact that ordinary sins were immediately promoted to the extent of a state crime. This hypothesis has the right to life, but let's see if it is.
4. Finally, there is the last hypothesis. Leningraders were shot for justice. The last hypothesis, it would seem, has one very significant objection. One gets the impression that it is for the sake of Leningraders that the death penalty is reintroduced in the USSR. Prior to that, in 1947, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the death penalty was abolished. Already during the investigation of the Leningrad case, on January 12, 1950, the death penalty was restored in relation to traitors to the Motherland, spies and subversive bombers. And according to this decree, the convicts were shot. Thus, one of the fundamental principles of law was violated - "the law has no retroactive effect." A similar situation would repeat itself in the 1960s, when those arrested in the case of illegal currency transactions were first sentenced to 15 years in prison under the amended Art. 88 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (although at the time of the crime the maximum term was 10 years), and six months later they were shot at the protest of the USSR prosecutor in accordance with the newly introduced sanction. This step is very uncharacteristic of Stalin, who sought the implementation of procedural norms. Mukhin writes about this in detail. Or it is necessary to admit that, from Stalin's point of view, the guilt of the Leningraders was so great that it was necessary to shoot them in the interests of the state. Let's check all these hypotheses for compliance with reality.

And it all started rather banally. In January 1949, the Central Committee of the Party received an anonymous letter. In it, an unknown person reported that at the joint regional and city party conference held on December 25 in Leningrad, the voting results were falsified. With this, at first glance, little remarkable event, the largest court case in post-war Soviet history begins, involving not only the leaders of the Leningrad party organization, but also a number of people from Stalin's inner circle.

Verification of the received information confirmed them. Popkov, Kapustin and Kuznetsov rigged the party protocols for election to responsible positions at the joint party conference of the city and region on December 25, 1948, when 23 ballots with votes "against" were replaced with positive ones for the leadership.

According to P. Sudoplatov, one should remember the mentality of the idealistic communists in the late 40s and early 50s. At that time, the most terrible crime of a high-ranking party or statesman was treason, but the falsification of party elections was no less a crime. The cause of the party was sacred - and in particular intra-party elections by secret ballot, which were considered the most effective tool of intra-party democracy.

SPILLAGE OF THE PEOPLE'S GOOD

But violating party norms was only the tip of the iceberg. The second anti-people crime of the Leningrad group was the organization of the All-Russian trade wholesale fair in January 1949 in Leningrad without a special decision of the central authorities. Popkov and Lazutin staged this fair in Leningrad with the permission of Voznesensky. On October 14, 1948, the Bureau of the USSR Council of Ministers considered the development of measures to sell the remnants of consumer goods in the amount of 5 billion rubles accumulated in the warehouses of the USSR Ministry of Trade. A little later, the Bureau adopts a resolution on the organization in December of the same year of inter-regional wholesale fairs, where the indicated balances must be sold, and gives permission for export. In fact, the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, represented by its chairman, N. I. Rodionov, is holding in Leningrad from January 10 to January 20, 1949, the All-Russian Wholesale Fair with the involvement of trade organizations of the Union republics.

Kuznetsov, Rodionov, and Popkov not only failed to obtain permission, but also failed to notify the Central Committee and the Politburo of the forthcoming fair. The Central Committee received notice of the work of the fair only on January 13, 1949, that is, when the "commodification" (mind you, outside the funds, and this in a planned economy) had already been going on for three days. The Council of Ministers of the USSR also did not take any decisions on this matter and did not even receive a notification: there were only decisions of the Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, that is, a lower de jure body, and, therefore, it was at least about violations of official discipline, but in fact - about exceeding official powers by a whole group of senior party and government officials. Thus, it was about the illegality of holding a wholesale fair using dubious behind-the-scenes combinations carried out through personal connections with the "chief of Leningrad" Kuznetsov. The organization of the fair led to the squandering of state commodity funds and the unjustified expenditure of state funds for organizing the fair and exporting goods to the national outskirts of the country.

Leningraders and Rodionov, as the formal leader of Russia, directly went to the union republics. The involvement of the allied-republican apparatuses of power and their direct negotiations with the “Leningraders” created a dangerous precedent for bypassing the central bodies in planning. But the creation of supply channels bypassing the centralized distribution is not the main miscalculation of the organizers of the fair. The organizers of the fair were unable to sell food products brought to Leningrad from all over the country, which led to their spoilage and astronomical damage of four billion rubles. And this is in conditions when the country has just begun to move away from the famine of 1947. For this alone, people who have taken such a step deserve the most serious punishment.

MANAGEMENT REACTION

At the Plenum on January 28, 1949, Kuznetsov was relieved of his duties as secretary of the Central Committee and in February 1949 he was appointed secretary of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which existed only on paper. On March 7, 1949, he was removed from the Orgburo.

Already on February 15, 1949, the Politburo adopted a resolution, where it qualifies the entire set of facts as anti-state actions of the named persons and non-party methods, which “are an expression of anti-party groupism, sow distrust. .. and are capable of leading to the separation of the Leningrad organization from the party, from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

On February 22, 1949, a joint plenum of the Leningrad Regional Committee and the city party committee took place. Malenkov made a big speech there. He stated that the leadership of the Leningrad party organization knew about the falsification, but hid this fact from the Central Committee. Moreover, according to him, the regional committee has become a stronghold for the fight against the Central Committee, it cultivates separatist sentiments, and strives to create an independent Russian Communist Party.

The plenum expelled the chairman of the counting committee of the conference Tikhonov from the party, approved the decision of the Central Committee to dismiss the first secretary of the OK and the Civil Code Popkov, reprimanded Kapustin, and imposed a number of party penalties on other persons involved in falsifying the election results.

ESPIONAGE POPs UP

But the matter did not end there. In the materials of the Leningrad case, a spy trail is also clearly traced. At one time, the second secretary of the Leningrad city committee of the CPSU (6), Yakov Kapustin, while on an internship in England in 1935-1936, where he studied steam turbines, entered into an intimate relationship with an English translator.

Once an English husband who suddenly returned home found his wife and Kapustin dressed as Adam and Eve. A scandal broke out, which became the subject of proceedings by the party organization of the Soviet trade mission in London. At that time, the case was put on the brakes. But in the summer of 1949, the state security of the USSR received reliable information that Kapustin had been recruited by British intelligence at that time. July 23, 1949 Kapustin was arrested on charges of spying for England. Very quickly, Kapustin admitted that he had been recruited by British intelligence in London. Of course, one can fantasize about the torture that Kapustin was subjected to, but if we recall the methods of work of British intelligence, then it is likely that the incident with the unexpected return of her husband was specially organized. Until the materials of the case are published (and whether they will ever be published), it is very difficult to judge whether Kapustin was recruited or not. At least Abakumov did not doubt it. In a report dated August 1, 1949, Abakumov wrote to Stalin: “... there are GOOD (emphasized by me. - Auth.) reasons to consider Kapustin an agent of British intelligence ...”

On August 4, Kapustin names two more participants in the conspiracy. Then Kapustin admitted that an anti-Soviet, anti-party group had formed in Leningrad, headed by a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Voznesensky, Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Kuznetsov, who was entrusted through the Central Committee with monitoring the state security organs, chairman Council of Ministers of the RSFSR Rodionov and the first secretary of the Leningrad regional committee and city party committee Popkov. That this group, in addition to him, Kapustin, included the second secretary of the Leningrad regional committee and the city committee of the party Turko, the chairman of the Leningrad city executive committee Lazutin, the head of the organizational department of the Leningrad regional committee of the party Zakrzhevskaya. As it turned out, more than 75 people from the Leningrad party activists were connected with this group to one degree or another.

Let us not forget that the international situation at that time was very serious. Spies were revealed who worked completely openly in the leadership of Yugoslavia, trials began on cases of treason and espionage in Bulgaria and Hungary.

GROUPING

The state security continued the investigation and discovered many more surprising facts for that time. Some of them were found in the Leningrad Defense Museum. Let me remind you that the museum was solemnly opened in the Salt Town near the Fontanka in May 1946. They began to create it during the blockade, first they made an exhibition, then it was turned into a permanent museum. The enfilades of the halls of the All-Russian Industrial Exhibition that was in 1870 were filled with famous planes of the Leningrad Front, authentic diaries of blockade survivors, trophies, dioramas, military maps, paintings by blockade artists, sculptures, models of city fortifications, blockade apartments, bakeries ... A total of thirty-seven thousand exhibits, or are said to be units of storage. The Museum of Defense presented the blockade as a heroic epic, as a feat of Leningraders, residents of the city and soldiers of the Leningrad Front, led by the Lenin-Stalin party.

But most of all, the role of the "Leningrad leaders" was emphasized. Portraits of the leaders of Leningrad during the years of the blockade, the same Popkov, Kuznetsov, Kapustin and others, dominated the exposition. The portrait of the secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee Popkov was equal in size to the portrait of Stalin.

The role of the Central Committee of the party in saving Leningrad was essentially hushed up. The facts that Leningrad was absolutely unprepared for the blockade were also completely ignored. This caused the death of almost half of its population. And Kuznetsov, as the main organizer of the defense of the city, among other representatives of the highest party staff, bears his share of responsibility for this. To top it off, weapons were found in the museum. The apotheosis of search activities was the discovery and seizure of gunpowder buried in the weapons workshop. It is now possible to argue that they say “there is nothing surprising in the fact that he (gunpowder. - Auth.) got into the museum, no - the exhibits were sometimes brought from the front “hot”. Gunpowder, of course, should have been handed over to specialists or burned, but some smart guy buried it in a weapons workshop. And in those difficult years, sabotage was seen everywhere.

As the investigation proceeded, a very interesting picture began to emerge. It turned out that behind the scenes a kind of Leningrad mafia was forming in the country. Having made their way to power, people from Leningrad dragged along their acquaintances, colleagues and fellow countrymen and placed them in key state and party posts. So, Kuznetsov in 1945 nominated Popov, the former director of the aircraft factory, as secretary of the Moscow Party organization, and Popov became a member of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee and secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (6) at the same time. All the main defendants in the "Leningrad case", except for Rodionov, had strong ties with Leningrad. Back in the summer of 1948, the party organization of the city of Leningrad and the region, represented by its leader P. S. Popkov, turned to the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union (6) N. A. Voznesensky with a proposal to take "patronage" over Leningrad (Petersburg ) (pay attention to the last name in brackets. - Auth.). Voznesensky refused, but did not report the incident to the Politburo. As it turned out, similar conversations were also held with A. A. Kuznetsov, a member of the Orgburo, the secretary of the Central Committee for personnel. Thus, a small close-knit inner-party group was formed behind the scenes, whose members openly supported each other and had obvious leaders at the top. It has now become a normal practice to drag your friends and fellow countrymen to the top with you. One Putin won how many of them dragged. And in those difficult years, Stalin fought cruelly against manifestations of gangsterism and nepotism.

When Zhdanov died in 1948, Popov demanded that the ministers, as party members, report to him as head of the Moscow Party Committee. Malenkov, seeking to remove Popov, interpreted his demand as evidence of a conspiracy and the emergence of an independent center of power in the Moscow Party organization. Of course, one can challenge this assessment, but Malenkov was not alone. Malenkov's opinion was supported by the ministers, who complained to Stalin that Popov constantly interfered in their work. In fact, Zhdanov and Kuznetsov exercised double control over members of the government: through Popov and through the Central Committee (Yeltsin tried to do something similar when he became secretary of the Moscow Party Committee. This is one of the reasons for his conflict with the Central Committee apparatus). Such things in those years could well be interpreted as an attempt to split the Communist Party with the help of organizing an opposition center in Leningrad.

Here is an excerpt from a letter from the Politburo to members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks: “At present, it can be considered established that at the top of the former Leningrad leadership a group hostile to the party has been formed for a long time, which included Kuznetsov A., Popkov, Kapustin, Solovyov, Verbitsky, Lazutkin . At the beginning of the war, and especially during the siege of Leningrad, the Kuznetsov group, having become cowardly and completely bewildered by the prevailing difficulties, did not believe in the possibility of victory over the Germans. Kuznetsov's group nurtured the idea of ​​taking leadership positions in the party and the state. In the enemy group of Kuznetsov, the question of transferring the capital of the RSFSR from Moscow to Leningrad was repeatedly discussed and prepared.

It is quite possible that this group was put together as early as 1938 by Politburo member Zhdanov, who was planned by Stalin for the post of General Secretary if he, Stalin, suddenly resigned for health reasons, and died unexpectedly in 1948. This is indicated by the following fact. When Zhdanov died, it seemed like they immediately forgot in the country and the leadership that there was such a “closest ally” of Stalin. Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On perpetuating the memory of A.A. Zhdanov” appeared only on October 23 - almost two months later - and ... was practically not implemented. No monuments "in Moscow and Leningrad", no publication (in 1949-1951) of Zhdanov's "works", no book entrusted to the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute with his official biography. Some renaming of cities, districts, streets, factories - but this is a simple and one-time thing in Stalin's times.

Zhdanov was one of the organizers of the August (1948) session of VASKhNIL. In a memorandum addressed to Stalin dated July 10, 1948, he formulated the proposals that formed the basis for the decision of the session and marked the beginning of the persecution of a large group of biologists. Ludwigov, head of Beria's secretariat in the Council of Ministers, told Sudoplatov how Zhdanov used this situation to increase his influence in scientific circles. He was not a supporter of the freedom of scientific activity, he was not interested in the actual scientific issues - he was rather worried about the expansion of his influence. The speeches of scientists against Lysenko helped Zhdanov to appoint his people to posts that control science and industry.

Most likely, it was the transfer of Kuznetsov to Moscow that led to the consolidation in the upper echelon of power of the Leningrad group, which included Secretary of the Central Committee Zhdanov, Chairman of the State Planning Commission Voznesensky, First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the Party Popkov and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR Rodionov adjoining them.
Having become the secretary of the Central Committee in charge of the State Security agencies, Alexei Kuznetsov used his opportunities to strengthen his positions in the medical field. At the suggestion of Kuznetsov, the medical and sanitary department of the Kremlin was headed by his protege, Dr. Yegorov, later one of the defendants in the "Doctors' Case". Moreover, through Yegorov, Kuznetsov himself, and through Kuznetsov - Zhdanov, tried to control not only the process of treating the Kremlin leaders, but also their protection and life support.

The "Leningraders" also tried to interfere in the operational work of the state security agencies. So, Kuznetsov, bypassing Minister Abakumov, tried to summon the leaders of various departments to his Central Committee for a report, inspire a review of old cases (including the murder of Kirov) and directly influence personnel policy through the MGB party committee. It is not known how the confrontation between the “Leningraders” and the “old guard” would have ended, but in the summer of 1948 Zhdanov began to have heart problems, and he was sent to Valdai for treatment. There he became ill, and Zhdanov's former comrades-in-arms in Leningrad, Kuznetsov and Voznesensky, and a group of Kremlin doctors arrived at the Valdai dacha. It was not possible to save a high-ranking patient, and later it became clear that Zhdanov's death was due to improper treatment. Of course, it was not about malicious intent, but about a medical error, from which no one is immune.

However, they did not begin to investigate the death of Zhdanov in hot pursuit. In agreement with Kuznetsov, Dr. Egorov concluded that the treatment was correct. At the same time, he proceeded from his corporate and career interests, since otherwise both he and Kuznetsov would have lost their posts, and possibly more.

August 13, 1949 Kuznetsov was arrested in the office of G.M. Malenkov. On the same day, Kuznetsov's apartment was searched. The indictment at the trial held in 1950 stated that Kuznetsov - "fraudulently sneaking into the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks ... planted his people everywhere - from Belarus to the Far East and from the North to the Crimea." Rodionov, for example, proposed not only to create the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, but also to establish their own Russian anthem and flag - the traditional tricolor, but with a hammer and sickle. Therefore, the intentions to make the Russian Federation more independent within the framework of the USSR, to raise the role of Leningrad and the Leningrad region, transferring some functions of the central government to the “northern capital”, and in the future even making it the capital of the RSFSR, were evident. Moreover, they thought of raising the status of the Russian Federation not as a revival of the true principles of federalism, but as a means of strengthening the positions of their domain - Leningrad.

At the same court, the facts of “demagogic flirting with the Leningrad organization, scolding the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (6)) ... in an attempt to present themselves as special defenders of the interests of Leningrad, in attempts to create a mediastinum between the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Leningrad organization and alienate thus organizing from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union (6). Popkov and Kapustin publicly, before the trial and arrest, admitted that their activities did not fit into the party norms and thus had an anti-party character.

VIOLATIONS OF PLANNING DISCIPLINE

But this was not all. The Council of Ministers of the USSR (and Stalin was its chairman) received a memorandum from the Deputy Chairman of the State Supply Committee M.T. Pomaznev on the understatement by the State Planning Committee of the USSR (chairman N. A. Voznesensky) of the control figures for the industrial production plan of the USSR for the first quarter of 1949.

A commission of the Central Committee was sent to Gosplan, which conducted an inspection of the activities of Gosplan during the period of his leadership by Voznesensky and found that with the active participation of Voznesensky and Rodionov, the planning and distribution of material resources was carried out on the basis of personal preferences to the detriment of the interests of the state. In other words, using his administrative capabilities in the State Planning Commission, Voznesensky actively cobbled together a group of his protégés, for whom their careers were facilitated.

The issue was considered at a meeting of the Council of Ministers. Stalin called such facts as follows: "An attempt to adjust the figures to one or another preconceived opinion is a crime of a criminal nature." As a result, a protocol entry appeared: “Comrade. Voznesensky unsatisfactorily manages the State Planning Commission, does not show the obligatory, especially for a member of the Politburo, partisanship in leading the State Planning Commission and in defending government directives in the field of planning, incorrectly educates the employees of the State Planning Commission, as a result of which non-party morals were cultivated in the State Planning Commission, anti-state actions took place, facts of deception of the government, criminal the facts of adjusting the numbers and, finally, the facts that indicate that the leading employees of the State Planning Commission are cunning with the government.

Voznesensky was charged with "deception of the state", or, in modern terms, eyewash. In an effort to make life easier for himself, Voznesensky deliberately underestimated the industrial production plan in order to later report to the management about its overfulfillment. Such actions aroused extreme indignation in Stalin. Gosplan, he repeated more than once, is the general staff of the economy, which must be absolutely objective and honest, otherwise there will be no order in the country.

According to O. Petrova, one must remember that “there was a practice of supervising a number of ministries by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers and each of his deputies, this distribution was formalized by an official document - the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The Vice-Chairman not only had power in the supervised ministries, but was also responsible to the Government and the Politburo for their work. Voznesensky supervised the ministries of the aviation industry, heavy engineering, automotive industry, machine tool building, shipbuilding, finance, construction of military and naval enterprises, as well as the State Bank, the Main Directorate of State Material Reserves, the Main Directorate of Labor Reserves and the Committee for Accounting and Distribution of Labor. The plan was underestimated for “own” ministries, and overestimated for “not their own”, for example, the oil industry and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It is important that by changing the plan, Voznesensky's group in Gosplan violated the NATURAL PROPORTIONS in the national economy, i.e. led to a shortage of some products and an "excess" of others. Whether this was done deliberately, with the aim of unbalancing the entire economy, or “simply” to “make life easier” for “ours” is a secondary issue. What matters most is what happens in practice. Modern supporters of Voznesensky will have to admit that either Voznesensky CONSCIOUSLY HARMED, or he was ABSOLUTELY INCOMPETENT and, being the chairman of the State Planning Committee, did not know the basic laws of a planned economy.

Since Voznesensky graduated from the Institute of the Red Professorship, was a doctor of economic sciences and even a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, wrote a number of articles and the book “The Military Economy of the USSR during the Patriotic War”, the option with absolute incompetence seems unlikely. However, Voznesensky does not pull on a “sophisticated pest”, since the systematic underestimation of the plan to “his” ministries is a sign of banal nepotism rather than purposeful activity.

It is characteristic that, despite the proof of harm from the activities of Voznesensky and his henchmen in the State Planning Commission, no one was immediately arrested. Voznesensky was only removed from his post and sent on vacation.

I note that after the replacement of Voznesensky, strict planning discipline was established in the planning bodies. The plans were balanced and based on physical indicators, accounting for money and using loans. The number of natural planned indicators increased from 4744 in 1940 to 9490 in 1953.

CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE

But this was not all. In the Gosplan of the USSR, which was headed by Voznesensky, a significant number of documents constituting the state secret of the USSR were lost during the period from 1944 to 1949. It turned out that Voznesensky was to blame. Judging by the lack of comments on this subject from the commission for the rehabilitation of the so-called victims of repression, headed by Yakovlev, one can indirectly conclude that the missing documents are serious.

Here is what O. Petrova writes about the disappearance: “The Note on the Loss of Secret Documents in the State Planning Committee of the USSR dated August 22, 1949 contains a long list of missing documents. Here are just a few of them, and summaries:

The lack of proper order in the handling of documents led to the fact that in the State Planning Commission for 5 years 236 secret and top secret documents were missing, in addition, 9 secret documents were lost in the secretariat of Voznesensky.

Among the documents lost in 1944-1949 are:

State plan for the restoration and development of the national economy for 1945 (capital work plan), No. 18104, on 209 sheets.

On the calculations of oil transportation for 1945, No. 128, on 3 sheets. The document provides data on the throughput capacity of oil pipelines and on the volume of transportation by rail, sea and river transport.

Perspective plan for the restoration of the national economy in the liberated regions of the USSR, No. 1521, one book.

About the five-year technical plan for 1946-1950, No. 7218, on 114 sheets.

On the organization of production of radar stations, No. 4103; on 6 sheets.

Note on the plan for the restoration of railway transport in 1946-1950, No. 7576, on 4 sheets.

About the purchase in the USA for cash of equipment not supplied by the Americans, No. 557, on 15 sheets.

Letter and draft order on organizing the production of hulls for 152 mm naval shells at the former German shipyard in Schiehau, No. 11736, on 6 sheets.

List of issues constituting state secrets and subject to classification in the offices of authorized persons of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, No. 3134, copy. No. 2.

Instructions for maintaining secret and top secret correspondence by employees of the State Planning Commission, No. 3132, copy. No. 17.

Conclusion on the proposals of the production departments of the State Planning Commission on increasing the limit of capital work and the volume of construction and installation work for 1947, No. 6439, on 10 sheets. The document shows the total number of enterprises engaged in the production of radar equipment.

Note on the status of dismantling, removal and use of equipment and materials from German and Japanese enterprises, No. 3072, on 4 sheets.

Certificate of deficits on the most important material balances, including non-ferrous metals, aviation gasoline and oils, No. 6505, on 4 sheets.

None of the employees responsible for the loss of government documents was brought to trial, as required by law. The vast majority of the perpetrators did not suffer any punishment, even administratively.

The destruction of secret documents was carried out in the State Planning Commission without observing the established rules. In 1944, the head of the 3rd department of the secret department, Beschastnov, with a group of employees, drew up an act on the destruction of a large number of documents, while 33 documents listed as destroyed under the act, he kept and kept uncontrollably until the end of 1946. Among these documents were: plan for the restoration and development of the national economy of the USSR for 1946-1950; a five-year plan for the restoration and development of railway transport for 1946-1950; materials on the balance and distribution of funds of electricity, solid and liquid fuels, ferrous and non-ferrous metals for the II quarter. 1946, data on the accumulation of petroleum products in the state reserve, and others.

The leadership of the State Planning Commission did not conduct any investigation into this criminal case and limited itself to reprimanding Beschastnov. Moreover, Beschastnov was later promoted to the post of deputy. head of the secret department.

The investigation has been going on for over a year. Colonel Vladimir Komarov, the former deputy head of the Investigative Unit for Especially Important Cases of the MGB, who was arrested together with Abakumov, told how it happened during interrogation: “I went to Leningrad with ten other investigators ... Before leaving for Leningrad, Abakumov strictly warned me that Zhdanov's name was not mentioned. “You answer with your head,” he said. But everything went as it should. The name of Zhdanov, who had been canonized by that time, was not mentioned at the trial.

On September 26, the indictment was officially approved by the Chief Military Prosecutor A.P. Vavilov. It was decided to conduct the trial in Leningrad. On September 29, 1950, an offsite session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR opened in the premises of the district House of Officers on Liteiny Prospekt. The collegium included three major generals of justice chaired by I.R. Mutalevich.

In the dead of night on October 1, 1950, at 0:59, the court proceeded to announce the verdicts. Major General of Justice Matulevich rises from the chairman's chair: “... Kuznetsov, Popkov, Voznesensky, Kapustin, Lazutin, Rodionov, Turko, Zakrzhevskaya, Mikheev were found guilty of having united in 1938 in an anti-Soviet group, carried out subversive activities in party aimed at tearing the Leningrad party organization away from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in order to turn it into a support for the struggle against the party and its Central Committee ... To do this, they tried to arouse dissatisfaction among the Communists of the Leningrad organization with the activities of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (6), spreading slanderous statements, expressed treacherous plans... And also squandered public funds. As can be seen from the materials of the case, all the accused at the preliminary investigation and at the court session fully admitted their guilt.

The military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR qualified the deeds of the convicts according to the most severe compositions of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR - Art. 58 1a (treason), art. 58-7 (sabotage), Art. 58-11 (participation in a counter-revolutionary organization). A.A. Kuznetsov, N.A. Voznesensky, P.E. Popkov, P.G. Lazutin, M.I. Rodionov and Ya.F. Kapustin were sentenced to capital punishment - execution. I.M.Turko received fifteen years in prison, T.V.Zakrzhevskaya and F.E.Mikheev each received ten. The verdict was final and not subject to appeal.

On October 1, 1950, N. A. Voznesensky, A. A. Kuznetsov, P. S. Popkov, M. I. Rodionov, Ya. F. Kapustin and P. G. Lazutin were shot. The next executions took place in 1951 and 1952. They shot M. A. Voznesenskaya (Voznesensky’s sister), Badaev, I. S. Kharitonov, P. I. Levin, P. N. Kubatkin ... The head of the Leningrad MGB, General Kubatkin, was repressed and shot after a closed trial.

In total, more than 2 thousand representatives of the Leningrad nomenklatura were convicted in the "Leningrad case", of which about 200 people were shot.

"REHABILITATION"

After the death of Stalin and Beria, already on April 30, 1954, the Supreme Court of the USSR fully rehabilitated the defendants in the Leningrad case. (However, it was only in 1988 that Kuznetsov and Voznesensky were reinstated in the party.) A few months later, the investigators in this case, the Minister of State Security, Colonel-General B.C., appeared before the court. Abakumov, the head of the investigative unit for especially important cases, Major General A.G. Leonov, his deputies, Colonels M.T. Likhachev and V.I. Komarov, who conducted the "Leningrad case". The military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR found them guilty and sentenced them to capital punishment. Characteristically, the "Leningrad case" is the only one in which almost all investigators were shot. The trial was held with great hype in the Leningrad House of Officers.

Very strange is the fact that so far the documents of the "Leningrad case" have been published only partially. The Rehabilitation Commission, headed by the notorious "communist academician" A. N. Yakovlev, did not dare to make public the arguments of the prosecution, indicating only that here "the MGB fabricated a number of materials." Without presenting the transcripts of the meeting, of course, one cannot rely on the opinion of such an odious personality.

Meanwhile, the materials cited above convincingly prove that the members of the Leningrad group committed serious crimes against the USSR. Stalin waged a tough struggle against violations of planning discipline and distortions of reporting, against negligence, groupism and the division of the USSR along national lines. This explains the harsh sentences against members of the so-called Leningrad group.