Mikhail Zakharchuk

Telephone and Stalin

When I studied at the academy, Professor Vladimir Maksimovich Piskunov, the author of dozens of books and monographs, taught us Russian and Soviet literature. He told me the following story: “Somewhere in 1942, a professor, relatively speaking, Sidorov, because I forgot his last name, wrote a monograph about Bagration. And when the professor was giving a lecture in the cold hall of the institute, the secretary of the rector ran to him and blurted out in fright: "Professor, Comrade Stalin is calling you!"

The elderly scientist did not have time to reach the apparatus. An agitated rector warned him:
"Comrade Stalin himself will call your apartment at seven o'clock this evening!"

And I must say that the professor lived in a communal apartment. Therefore, when he returned home, he walked around all the neighbors and asked them not to use the phone at exactly nineteen o'clock. People, naturally, went to meet the scientist, although they did not know with whom their neighbor would communicate. At the appointed time, the bell rang. Stalin said something like this:

“You have written a very wonderful and interesting book. It is also dear to us as that very spoon for dinner or an egg for Christ's day. Such a huge war is going on, so the experience of the past years is very valuable to us. But I strongly disagree with some of the messages in your book. There are fourteen such items. First…"

Stalin spoke, as always, muffled and slow. Somewhere on the third or fourth point, the tenants-communal services were worried: they, they say, respected the professor, and he is rude. The poor scientist had no choice but to say to the leader with a trembling voice:

"Excuse me, Comrade Stalin, but we have a common telephone - a communal apartment, and I can no longer borrow it, people have to call."

Putting down the receiver, the professor went to his room and began to collect his prison briefcase, because he understood what tactlessness he had made in relation to his dear comrade leader. And he did the right thing (he didn’t allow it, but collected it), because three security officers came to him exactly half an hour after the telephone conversation. They put the scientist in a black funnel, brought him to one house with dark windows, took him to the fourth floor in an elevator, opened the doors, and the elder said:

“This is your apartment now. And in five minutes Comrade Stalin will call you. "

Exactly five minutes later the bell rang, and the great leader continued, as if the conversation had not been interrupted at all: "The fifth point on which I disagree with you! .."

In this story, for me personally, it is by no means what comes to mind immediately that is valuable: what a powerful man was Stalin! He took and settled the professor without any delay in a separate apartment - presumably, not in the "khrushchob", they simply did not exist then. Much more important is something else: in the midst of such a terrible war, the leader not only read a specific monograph, which not all historians still knew about, but also found time to call the author. But he could simply convey his opinion through his many assistants. Finally, he could have summoned the professor to the Kremlin for a conversation. However, Joseph Vissarionovich preferred a telephone ...

As Alexander Sergeevich used to say "our everything", we are lazy and not curious. We cannot even imagine the fact that during the 1418 days of the war alone, Stalin personally made several tens of thousands of telephone calls! And maybe even more. How much, exactly we will never establish. As never before, we will never know what was discussed by the leader in telephone conversations with the directors of thousands of military enterprises relocated beyond the Urals, with the secretaries of the party committees of these factories, with representatives of the State Defense Committee, with designers, generals, admirals, workers, collective farmers, artists, diplomats, scientists ...

During the Khrushchev zapoloshny struggle against the personality cult, the logbooks of the leader's long-distance negotiations were destroyed. But it is reliably known that Joseph Vissarionovich could simply call the chairman of some Far Eastern collective farm in the middle of the night and ask him about the harvest in the region. During the Great Patriotic War, the country lived according to the schedule established in the Kremlin: at night all the leaders were awake until six in the morning. What if Stalin calls! And this is not a beautiful author's curl for publicistic "revitalization". It was so in reality. The leader could really call anywhere, anyone, anytime. Signals in all parts of the immense Soviet Union knew this. They even developed a technology for connecting the master of the Kremlin with distant subscribers. Before Stalin was going to speak, the telephonists along the entire chain, no matter how long it was, had to "ring" all the telephone centers, wipe the plugs and cells with alcohol so that noises and crackles would not distract the "high talking parties."

... Stalin loved the telephone almost mystically. He has been his most devoted and indispensable assistant since the turbulent revolutionary years. Let us suppose that Lenin, too, never disdained telephone communication. Otherwise, where did his legendary installation about the seizure of mail, telegraph, telephone and ... banks come from? Nevertheless, Vladimir Ilyich did not leave us inspiring examples of how to use a telephone set. With the telegraph - yes, it was. There is even a famous painting by Igor Grabar “V.I. Lenin at the direct wire ", where the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars issues the Central Administration and the EBCU (valuable and even more valuable) instructions. This is understandable. During the Leninist rule of the first state of workers and peasants, the so-called long-distance telephone communication existed only between Moscow and St. Petersburg. The beginning of Stalin's vigorous activity in the party and in the country coincided with the rapid development of telephone communications. And the leader appreciated her with all Eastern wisdom and foresight. If you like, Joseph Stalin won the long and protracted battle with Leon Trotsky exclusively with the help of the telephone. And do not rush to pull the author for seditious messages. Because before every congress of the party, before every party conference, and just before any serious meeting (literally!), Joseph Vissarionovich did not hesitate to "call his comrades", ask their opinion, correct this opinion, if anything, in the right direction. And he could just call and ask: "Well, how are you doing there, Comrade Kirov?"

... For some reason, it was in this place that an old anecdote came to mind. Midnight. Stalin calls Mikoyan:

"Anastas Ivanovich, how did it happen that twenty-six Baku commissars were shot, and you alone survived?"

In a tongue twisted with fear, Mikoyan once again tells why he was not shot.

"Well, dear Anastas Ivanovich, good night."

“Comrade Scriabin, we planted your Polina Pearl. Don't you think that husband and wife are one Satan? " - "Koba, well, I have proved to you how many times that I have never been interested in her vile deeds." - "Well, good night."

"Beria, is it not surrendering to you that in recent times did you send too many people to the next world? " - "But these are our enemies, Koba!" “Enemies, you say. Okay, good night. "

And in such a way, the leader calls all his associates in the Politburo. Then, with a feeling of deeply fulfilled duty, he says to himself:

"Something like this: he reassured his comrades, now you can sleep yourself."

Have you noticed that in the joke, the telephone is in second place after the leader? And folk tales, I will tell you, never appear just like that, out of the blue. They always reflect the very essence of our being.

Returning to the aforementioned struggle between Stalin and Trotsky, it should be emphasized that the "great lion of the revolution" never condescended to talk on the phone with fellow party members, "ventilate their opinion." Comrade Leib Bronstein preferred to act through the retinue of his numerous assistants, being always confident that when the time came, he would rise to the podium, deliver his next fiery, incendiary speech and provide himself, as usual, the majority in front of this “genius mediocrity” by Stalin ... At first, it happened very often. However, Stalin, like no one else, knew how to endure and wait. And by the end of the 1920s, a cadre, selected and deployed in the field by Stalin (including with the help of a telephone set!), Threw Trotsky into the dustbin of history, where, in fact, he belongs. Joseph Vissarionovich firmly knew that cadres decide everything. Lev Davydovich did not understand this truth. Stalin outplayed Trotsky precisely as an apparatchik. Time will pass - and he will achieve exactly the same victory over Hitler.

And here I really want to be understood correctly. Of course, our soldier won the last war, because he had better martial skills and more fortitude than the enemy. In general, we released weapons more efficiently than the enemy. And in general, the potential forces of that socialist society, even with all its vices now understood by us, objectively turned out to be more progressive than the German society. (That is why Soviet totalitarianism and German totalitarianism can never be equated with each other. Because with all the twists and turns of those difficult times, socialism has never been bestial, misanthropic). But not least of all, the victory went to us thanks to the clear, reliable work of the domestic bureaucratic mechanism, the main unit of which was the GKO. And the dynamo machine of that unit was Stalin. The most remarkable thing here is that after all, the Soviet bureaucratic machine was opposed by the German one - the most reliable in the world, debugged for centuries, and even fanatically pedantic.

I understand how vulnerable such a comparison is, but I repeat, among other things, Stalin managed to outplay Hitler as an apparatchik, as a bureaucratic leader who comprehended the highest laws of administrative functionaries and skillfully applied them in extreme military conditions. The Fuhrer, by the way, also perfectly mastered all forms and methods of forcing society to war, nevertheless, he could not create anything even remotely resembling our GKO. (It is characteristic that the possessed man treated the telephone just as dismissively as Trotsky. But he liked to “broadcast for history.” Therefore, there was always (I repeat: always) a stenographer in his office. Stalin would never have thought of such a thing.)

And now, dear readers, the discovery is amazing and somewhere even incredible! Nevertheless, it is quite obvious. It turns out that even the sadly and tragically famous repressions of 1938 happened because of the telephone! At the same time, the author also perfectly understands that the main reason for repression lies in the very core of any revolution, which always devours those who start it. There are no exceptions here. But as for specific events, namely the famous trials of the "Trotskyite-Zinovievist dogs" and other "enemies of the people", they were largely, if not decisive, provoked directly by the telephone. And here we cannot do without a solid digression.

In the early 1930s, the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army (Intelligence Directorate) managed to find an approach to the imperial adviser V. Wenner, the head of the Reichswehr cryptography service, and through him to the head of the German telephone tapping service, the imperial adviser Hans Kumpf. It was a phenomenal success for Soviet military intelligence. She had never done this before! This breakthrough happened largely thanks to the efforts of Artur Artuzov. Therefore, Stalin allowed him to report directly, bypassing his immediate superior, Yan Berzin. So Artuzov became the eyes and ears of Stalin in the Intelligence Agency. He regularly wore to the leader tape tapes with telephone conversations of all the highest bosses of Germany, including Hitler himself! Joseph Vissarionovich had a good knowledge of German, although he never boasted about it. And he kept all the tapes with the conversations of his opponents, periodically listening to them. But just in case, he insured himself with the opinion of experts. They were unanimous: the records are genuine!

In April 1935, Kumpf suddenly committed suicide due to his unrequited love for a young dancer. The loss for Artuzov seemed irreparable. However, chance helped here. His subordinate went to the deputy of Kumpf - Kranke. He was an inveterate gambler, tireless walker of women, and therefore he constantly did not have enough money. And one day Kranke suggested: for a small fee, I will supply you with telephone information about the political situation not only in Germany, but also in the USSR. Stalin ordered not to spare any money for such information. And then it all began that mom do not grieve. The leader began to receive tapes with recordings of telephone conversations of his "friends-comrades-in-arms, enemies" in centners! Suppose he had previously assumed that many of his closest friends were plotting against him. Although not to the same extent!

Here I deliberately bypass the question of the fact that German intelligence deliberately and maliciously supplied the first man in the USSR with information that compromised his comrades-in-arms. This, as they say, is a topic for a separate study. Another thing is important. In any case, Stalin received cassettes with recordings of genuine telephone conversations of people who really started evil against him! You can compose something, substitute, correct something on one cassette. Especially in the middle. 1930s. But, when there are hundreds, thousands of cassettes, and each one has such wild details of the conspiracy that the hair stands on end, then no dramatization can be taken into account. Joseph Vissarionovich understood: he was betrayed by people he trusted! Somewhere to the middle. In 1935, Stalin began to receive literally the ninth wave of convincing evidence of a large-scale conspiracy to kill him and seize power in the country. The tapes of the conspirators' stunningly candid conversations confirmed this. They literally got drunk and lost their vigilance, especially when they traveled abroad.

Together with Artuzov, the leader carefully studied the conversations of Grigory Zinoviev, Alexei Rykov, Lev Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin and many others. Even Sergei Kirov, who was killed by this time! The pedantic Germans kept records of secret conversations, from which it followed that Kirov and his comrades-in-arms were the first to intend to deal with the "over-the-top Georgian." People's Commissar for Communications Rykov described in stunning detail how he would cut off communications in the Kremlin, as well as control telephone conversations between the party and government leaders. Most of all, Stalin was amazed that the entire government communications, it turns out, could be controlled by only 5–7 signalmen!

The Commissariat of Communications is in the hands of the conspirators! It is unlikely that the head of state would dream of this even in a nightmare! But that's not all. Iosif Vissarionovich listened to tape recordings of telephone conversations, in which the conspirators discussed in detail how best to organize an accident on the city telephone network so as not to arouse suspicion in anyone. He knew perfectly well the voices of his old friends. For so many years of joint revolutionary struggle, I studied their every intonation. And now, with bitterness, he stated following Plutarch: traitors betray themselves first of all.

The leader could not help but think about another important thing. If such a huge number of telephone conversations were recorded on the territory of the USSR, moreover, not only on ordinary communication lines, but even on government ones, then what an extensive spy network working under his nose must be, what the scale of betrayal in general! And then Stalin instructed Lazar Kaganovich to conduct a thorough investigation of the activities of the NKVD, especially those departments that were responsible for government communications. It was at this time, with the suggestion of Lazar Moiseevich, that the small figure of Nikolai Yezhov appeared on the political horizon of the Soviet Union. It was he who personally established that the head of the NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda, unauthorizedly intercepted the conversations of all members of the government, including Stalin himself.

Moreover, Enoch Gershevich Yehuda independently determined which conversations he had listened to should be reported to Stalin, and which not, which grossly violated the established procedure for preparing reports for Stalin. The investigation revealed the colossal scope of Yagoda's illegal activities. He learned to manipulate data obtained from telephone conversations so cleverly that he could easily influence Stalin's decisions to appoint people to leading positions in the country. Sometimes Yagoda thought (several times he even blurted it out smugly!) That this was a powerful one, Yehuda, and by no means Stalin. Upon learning of this, Joseph Vissarionovich flew into a rage. It seems to the reader that Yagoda was immediately dealt with. Not at all. How great statesman, Stalin never chopped off the shoulder. He appointed Yagoda the USSR People's Commissar of Communications. True, he ordered the NKVD employees to establish constant surveillance over the new head of the department in order to identify all his contacts with employees of the NKVD, the Red Army, the Central Committee, institutes and enterprises that produced communications equipment.

At the end of 1935, Artur Artuzov received the first information that Mikhail Tukhachevsky organized a conspiracy against Stalin in order to remove him from the post of head of government. The leader, as always, received this signal with distrust, believing it to be outright disinformation. Although, again, just in case, he ordered to strengthen control over the marshal. In a conversation with Artuzov, he complained:
"I have the feeling that someone is constantly watching me!" - "Frankly, Iosif Vissarionovich, I myself am confused." - "Could the Germans start a game with us, sending us disinformation?" “This cannot be ruled out. But what I guarantee you for sure is that all materials are genuine. Several times I have involved famous Soviet musicians in the analysis of tape recordings. Out of fifteen people, no one expressed doubts about the authenticity of the voices on the tapes. "

In December 1936, an employee of Artuzov in Germany reported that Kranke had asked for a huge amount, since he had very valuable information regarding the leader himself. The intelligence department paid the requested amount to Kranke and received ... Stalin's conversation with his wife Alliluyeva on the eve of her suicide!

… Joseph Vissarionovich possessed an unbending, truly steel will and inhuman endurance. Once in exile at a picnic, Yakov Sverdlov began jokingly to spread that Koba could easily have been recruited by the secret police by intimidating or torturing him, and he supposedly could well betray his comrades. At that time, such rumors were actively circulated in the party environment. Then Dzhugashvili silently put his left palm on the burning coals. It smelled of fried human flesh. Sverdlov felt ill. And Koba calmly remarked:

"Remember, Yakov, and tell others: I can neither be intimidated nor broken."

And yet, hearing the voice of his deceased wife, Stalin turned pale and clutched at his heart. Artuzov called doctors. Stalin was taken to the hospital with a heart attack. Having recovered from his illness, he began to act quickly and decisively. On January 11, 1937, Artuzov was released from work in the Intelligence Agency and transferred to the NKVD to deal with archives. Joseph Vissarionovich personally ordered to sever all contacts with Kranke and other German agents at the Hermann Goering Research Institute. In March 1937, Heinrich Yagoda was arrested, who confessed that he had instructed Karl Pauker to wiretap all of Stalin's telephone conversations, including those conducted over HF communications. To this end, he repeatedly sent Pauker to Germany to acquire special equipment for remote listening. She was found in his office and in one NKVD secret apartment, which was used only by Yagoda.

In April 1937, Pauker was arrested, and later Artuzov. During the search, it turned out that the latter hid from Stalin the recordings of telephone conversations between Tukhachevsky and German generals received from the Germans. They were made during his participation in the German maneuvers of 1932, where he negotiated the amount of rewards for the transfer of classified information to the German army. Artuzov also hid from Stalin the recordings of several conversations between Jerome Uborevich, Mikhail Tukhachevsky and Ion Yakir in 1935, which contained information that they were elaborating a plan for seizing power in detail. Artuzov was an old friend of Tukhachevsky and, at his own peril and risk, did not report such information to Stalin. This played a decisive role in sentencing him to death. The concealment of such information was seen as aiding German intelligence.

In May, Otto Steinbrück, Gleb Boky and Stefan Uzdansky were arrested. Thus began a grand purge: they destroyed everyone who knew at least something about the audition project. Identified those who could help Yagoda, Pauker install eavesdropping devices. Yezhov suggested improving the procedure for finding enemies. They included those who had ever met with the repressed or their relatives or spoke to them at least once on the phone, so the number of such “enemies of the people” increased many times over. The arrests covered not only the Intelligence Directorate, the NKVD, the Central Committee, the Red Army, but also many people’s commissariats that carried out orders of the Red Army, and primarily the People’s Commissariat of Communications. The materials found during the search of Artuzov served as a pretext for the arrest of M. Tukhachevsky on May 22, 1937 in Kuibyshev. On May 25, the marshal was interrogated, showing the records of more than fifty of his telephone conversations! Mikhail Nikolaevich immediately admitted that he had participated in the conspiracy.

Amazing thing: at all litigation"Enemies of the people" very quickly confessed to espionage against the USSR when they were provided with tape recordings of their conversations. Hearing their speech where they discussed in detail various topics cooperation with German intelligence, sabotage, sabotage or overthrow of the government, the arrested experienced such a psychological shock that they signed any evidence that NKVD investigators presented to them. This can partly justify the fact that many commanders, including M. Tukhachevsky, who had passed the wars, confessed to all the charges brought literally the day after the start of interrogations. This cannot be explained only by the fact that torture was used against them during interrogations. Although, of course, they were also actively used to knock out confessions. Stalin himself claimed: “The NKVD applied methods physical impact, which were allowed by the Central Committee. It was absolutely correct and necessary. " On the other hand, Kaganovich once said: "Real Bolsheviks, even under torture, will never voluntarily confess their guilt." And here a psychological paradox arises, which, by the way, has not yet been exhaustively clarified. Why did many of our scouts, partisans, officers and generals who were captured during the Great Patriotic War endure the cruel torture of the Gestapo and did not give any evidence, while many military commanders of the Red Army confessed during interrogations in the NKVD almost immediately and many of them slandered themselves?

One of the explanations may be as follows. The defendants were so shocked to hear their own voice and the voice of the interlocutor on the recording that they lost the ability to control themselves and admitted that they had never actually done it. Let us recall how the telephone recording affected the leader. But he was not a squishy, ​​like his opponents. Thus, the investigators received any testimony from the arrested. The main thing, as Stalin demanded, is that the confession of guilt must come from the arrested themselves. Why was it so necessary for Stalin? Probably because the tape recordings received from the German intelligence had a huge psychological impact on him: he stopped trusting the NKVD investigators as well.

Stalin's closest associates - Lazar Kaganovich, Kliment Voroshilov, Semyon Budyonny, frightened by such a peculiar form of technical conspiracy, sharply demanded that Stalin investigate the activities of employees of all organizations that were involved in communications, its protection and control. As a result, G. Boky's cryptographic department was practically destroyed. 70% of the employees were shot. The repressions hit the technical departments of the Intelligence Directorate and the Communications Research Institute of the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army, which led to a halt in the development of promising special equipment for interception systems. The production of new types of encryption technology has stopped. The heads of the 6th, 7th, 10th and secret-encryption departments of the RKKA Intelligence Department Yakov Faivush, Pavel Kharkevich, Alexei Lozovsky, E. Ozolin and many others were shot. In 1937, cryptography in the NKVD and Intelligence Agency was virtually destroyed in the same way as radio intelligence.

On June 2, 1937, Stalin spoke at an expanded meeting of the Military Council under the People's Commissar of Defense:

“In all areas we defeated the bourgeoisie, only in the area of ​​intelligence were we beaten, like boys, like guys. This is our main weakness. There is no intelligence, real intelligence. I take this word in the broad sense of the word, in the sense of vigilance and in the narrow sense of the word also, in the sense of a good organization of intelligence. Our intelligence along the military line is bad, weak, and infested with spies.

Our intelligence through the PU was headed by a spy Guy, and inside the KGB intelligence there was a whole group of owners of this business, working for Germany, Japan, Poland, as much as necessary, but not for us. Intelligence is an area where we have suffered a severe defeat for the first time in 20 years. And the task is to put intelligence on its feet. These are our eyes, these are our ears. "

So because of the "wiretapping empire" built by Yagoda, the whole complex of problems associated with intelligence became the chief problem. The massive betrayal of his comrades-in-arms also did not improve the mood of Joseph Vissarionovich. Worst of all, it turned out that he could no longer calmly talk on his favorite phone, fearing that he could be listened to by the "undetected traitors". Therefore, he burned with a red-hot iron the “big Soviet ear” created by Yagoda. For a while, this struggle against "internal enemies" came to the fore. Stalin was no longer up to protection from an external enemy. He deliberately did not improve the communications of his powerful army, intelligence, government and the Central Committee, if not worse.

As a result, by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in the USSR, communication in such power structures, like the Red Army, the NKVD, the Central Committee and other defense departments, eked out a miserable existence. Someone finds it hard to believe, but in the very first days of the war, Joseph Stalin and Georgy Zhukov contacted the fronts through the Central Telegraph on Gorky Street! There were no underground communication centers at all. Moreover, with the opening of the Moscow-Berlin HF communication line, which passed through Brest, German intelligence was able to listen to all the conversations of the Soviet government and the People's Commissariat of Defense! In the reserve of the High Command, communications units were absent as a class. The neglect of the connection, rightly called the nerves of war, turned out to be complete, total, all-pervading. Only by 1945 the situation here changed somewhat. Although, in general, we can safely say: if in all the main areas of armed struggle we were significantly ahead of the Germans by the end of the war, then in connection with the enemy we did not overtake them. However, this, as the reader understands, is a separate topic.

We will return to the telephone as a means of communication between Stalin and outside world... And here the recollection of Air Chief Marshal Alexander Golovanov is very eloquent:

“If Stalin called himself, then he usually greeted, inquired about business and, if it was necessary for you to come to him personally, he never said: 'I need you, come,' or something like that. He always asked: “Can you come to me?” - and, having received an affirmative answer, said: “Please, come”. Quite often he also asked about health and about the family: “Do you have everything, do you need anything, do you need to help the family with anything?” ... Even during very important meetings, Stalin never turned off his phone. This was also the case when there was a discussion of more effective application our divisions. The phone rang. Stalin, without haste, walked over to the apparatus and picked up the receiver. During a conversation, he never pressed the receiver close to his ear, but kept it at a distance, since the volume of the sound in the device was amplified. A nearby person freely heard the conversation. Corps commissar Stepanov, a member of the Air Force Military Council, called. He reported to Stalin that he was in Perkhushkovo (here, a little west of Moscow, was the headquarters Western Front). “Well, how are you doing there? Stalin asked. - The command raises the question that the front headquarters is very close to the front line of defense. It is necessary to withdraw the front headquarters to the east beyond Moscow, and organize the command post on the eastern outskirts of Moscow! “There was a rather long silence. “Comrade Stepanov, ask your comrades - do they have shovels?” Stalin said calmly. “Now…” there was a long pause again. - And what kind of shovels, Comrade Stalin? - "Now. - Quite quickly Stepanov reported: - There are shovels, Comrade Stalin! The front headquarters will remain in Perkhushkovo, and I will remain in Moscow. Goodbye". Unhurriedly, Stalin hung up. He did not even ask which comrades, who exactly raised these questions. And, as if nothing had happened, he continued the interrupted conversation. "

... As already mentioned, Iosif Vissarionovich talked on the phone with a variety of people, from the marshal to the stoker in the Kremlin boiler room. (There was a case when Stalin asked the latter to reduce the heating temperature a little.) However, the communication of the leader with the creative intelligentsia is like a special article. According to some reports, he spoke sporadically or often on the phone with writers. Stalin often spoke on the phone with the singer Ivan Kozlovsky. Ivan Semyonovich himself told the author of these lines:
“If you want to know, Stalin called me home several times. I also had a phone: K, six hundred ... so I forgot ... "-" And what did you and the leader talk about? " - “They talked about life, about art, talked about different things. He was the smartest man, although, of course, very cunning ... "-" And when did he usually call you? " - “Always after midnight. He knew when artists return home after work ... "

I have no reason not to believe the great singer, especially my fellow countryman. Except for the statement: "About life, about art." Stalin, with all his greatness and all-round intellectual development, was still a very specific, pragmatic person. And this is especially clearly seen in almost the most historically legendary telephone conversation between the leader and Boris Pasternak, which took place in 1934. The reason for that conversation was the arrest of the poet Osip Mandelstam. Nikolai Bukharin worried about Mandelstam's fate and wrote a letter to Stalin with the note: "Pasternak is also worried." Knowing that Pasternak was in Stalin's favor at that time, Bukharin wanted to emphasize with this postscript that this anxiety was, as it were, of a public nature. After reading Bukharin's note, Stalin called Pasternak.

There are 14 (fourteen!) Versions of this communication between the Master of the Kremlin and the Poet. The author is closest to the version of the friend of Osip Mandelstam and Boris Pasternak, the poetess Anna Akhmatova:
“Stalin called Boris and said that an order had been given that everything would be all right with Mandelstam. He asked Pasternak why he didn't bother. "If my friend was in trouble, I would climb the wall to save him." Pasternak replied that if he had not bothered, then Stalin would not have learned about this case. "Why didn't you contact me or the writers 'organizations?" - "Writers' organizations haven't done this since 1927." “But is he your friend?” Pasternak hesitated, and after a short pause, Stalin continued the question: “But is he a master, master?” Pasternak replied: “It doesn't matter…”. Pasternak thought that Stalin was checking whether he knew about the poetry (“We live, not feeling the country under us, / Our speeches are not heard ten steps away. / Only the Kremlin highlander is heard, - / Murder and peasant fighter.” - M.Z. ), and by this he explained his shaky answers. "Why do we talk about Mandelstam and Mandelstam all the time, I have wanted to talk to you for so long." - "About what?" - "About life and death". Stalin hung up the phone. "

Because the leader valued his time too much to waste it on idle conversations, especially on such abstract topics. The great and deep Pasternak did not understand this. He called back the chief’s secretariat, but they didn’t connect him a second time. "May I talk about this conversation?" “And this is your own business,” the secretary replied. The next day, all of Moscow knew about Stalin's call. Which, by the way, did not change one iota of his attitude towards the poet.

A no less famous telephone conversation took place between Joseph Stalin and Mikhail Bulgakov.
“Bulgakov ran, agitated, to our apartment (with Shilovsky) on Bol. Rzhevsky and told the following. He went to bed after dinner, as usual, but then the phone rang, and Lyuba (L.E.Belozerskaya, the writer's wife - M.Z.) called him over, saying that this was being asked from the Central Committee. M.A. did not believe it, deciding that it was a joke (then it was done), and disheveled, irritated took up the receiver: "Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov?" - "Yes, yes." "Comrade Stalin will speak to you now." - "What? Stalin? Stalin? "And then I heard a voice with a Georgian accent:" Yes, Stalin is talking to you. Hello, Comrade Bulgakov. " - "Hello, Joseph Vissarionovich." - „We have received your letter. We read it with comrades. You will have a favorable answer for it. Or maybe it’s true - are you asking to go abroad? Are you really tired of us? "-" I've been thinking a lot lately - can a Russian writer live outside his homeland. And it seems to me that it cannot. " - "You're right. I think so too. Where do you want to work? At the Art Theater? "-" Yes, I would like to. But I talked about it, and they turned me down. " - “And you apply there. It seems to me that they will agree. We would need to meet, talk to you. " - "Yes Yes! Joseph Vissarionovich, I really need to talk to you. " - “Yes, you need to find time and meet, be sure. And now I wish you all the best. "

... I will end these somewhat chaotic notes with what I started with. During his long leadership life (nearly four decades), Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin used the telephone a myriad of times. How much, we will never determine. Through this apparatus, simple in modern terms, first patented in 1876 by Alexander Bell, the leader practically not only exercised leadership great country, but also often directly communicated with the huge, incredible multitude of her people. Therefore, when I see an image of a leader with an indispensable pipe, it seems to me that it is not entirely accurate. Stalin often smoked cigarettes. But he never cheated on the phone.

Once, speaking at a meeting of officers-listeners of the editorial department of the military-political academy with the writer Konstantin Simonov, my classmate Senior Lieutenant Mikhail Zakharchuk said: "We will never rise to Simonov." It is true: none of us is destined to rise to the level of the leading figure of military journalism Konstantin Simonov ... He was a true master of words, at the same time a deeply decent officer-journalist, writer and poet.

The beautiful phrase uttered by Misha Zakharchuk about forty years ago is now remembered in connection with his obviously unseemly behavior and dishonesty. Here are some examples.

During his years of study at the academy, Mikhail Zakharchuk, in a team of fellow students, was distinguished by his special journalistic agility. He often visited theaters, met with famous artists, sometimes talked about them in the newspapers. But...

On one of the school days, all of us, frankly, were upset by the news: Zakharchuk got into an unpleasant story. The famous actress of the Maly Theater Elena Nikolaevna Gogoleva was indignant at the untruthfulness of the interview prepared by Zakharchuk. It got to the point that Misha was summoned to the "carpet" to the head of the academy. I remember how Misha was very upset about what had happened. I think there was no smoke without fire. Apparently, even then he tried to arbitrarily interpret and think out certain facts in newspaper publications.

Many years passed before today I became convinced of how much the journalist Mikhail Zakharchuk sometimes allows himself.

In personal correspondence, in the comments to Zakharchuk's articles, I praised him. At the same time, he gave advice and criticized. Take, for example, my response to his publication "Soviet Mozart": “It is written interestingly, but it is very drawn out, excessively detailed, sometimes you get tired of reading the same thing ... In essence, this is a compilation, a huge canvas woven from separate scraps of factual material taken from various sources. We must pay tribute to the author - for many years he succeeded in this matter, got his hand, got the hang of finding, combining, generalizing, analyzing facts. As they say, the writer writes, the readers read. Moreover, they are enthusiastically praised. What else is needed? Such huge articles, along with very successful essays about outstanding people, M. Zakharchuk accumulates and then introduces them into his books. What to say? Well done! After all, he took a benchmark not on the publication of one-day newspaper materials, but, as he once put it, "ON THE SHELF", that is, the publication of collections. He is doing well and has certainly made a name for himself. Only now, annoyingly, Misha GOT STARS DISEASE. He doesn't want to acknowledge, albeit modest so far, the creative successes of his fellow journalists. "

Once I sent Zakharchuk my miniature "Kobzon's Trick" and received an assessment: “I really have nothing to do but please you. With your spontaneity, it seems to you that your knshtuk (???) Represents something ... Now, if you wrote a large canvas about Kobzon, then it would be useful. "

I replied: “Misha, after your tactless attacks on me, I want to declare: my miniatures, short stories and stories have every right to exist. On the basis of them, even small plays can be staged, small-length films can be shot. But your journalistic "canvases" are unlikely to fit for this. So think about it: what is more expensive and worthy in creativity? The bookshelves clearly lack your works of small format (small genres). They have a kind of relish ”.

My comment on M. Zakharchuk's article "SHOELESS SOUL" (About Vladimir Vysotsky):

“In an effort to tell readers some unknown facts about Vladimir Vysotsky, the author of the article, M. Zakharchuk, went to extremes. Introduced to us his father, retired colonel of the Air Defense Forces, Semyon Vladimirovich Vysotsky, a sophisticated swearing man. What is so good about it? I personally know that Mikhail Zakharchuk is not averse to sometimes using a strong word himself. I guess that much of what Vladimir Vysotsky's father allegedly told him is the fruit of an irrepressible fantasy. Here he clearly overdid it, typing tedious paragraphs of verbal rubbish (every line, then mate). Admit it, Mikhail Alexandrovich, did you want to be original, to surprise your readers? MISTAKE! Curses do not work either for your authority, or, even more so, for the authority of Vladimir Vysotsky. Therefore, please edit and remove non-normative vocabulary from the article. Avoid vulgarity in your collection. Better shorter, less, but better. "

Do you think he heeded the advice? Where exactly. ... ...

My next letter to Zakharchuk:

“MISHA, you continue to behave tactlessly and arrogantly. The mere fact that you remove the person who called you from the conversation, without letting him finish ... How can you? Now about turning on the brains. I consider this slang phrase of yours offensive and never use it myself. When you publish content, you also "use your brains" and check grammar and punctuation. Stylistics too. More than once I found mistakes in you, albeit not numerous. You cannot remember all such cases.

For example, in the article "To spite all deaths" (to the 70th anniversary of "Wait for me" by K. Simonov) you wrote: "... I apologize to my dear readers for such a sharp turn in this topic, but if they have patience, they will So, in the fall of 1979, the Izvestia newspaper published on its pages an article with a photograph “Konstantin Simonov:“ The war was huge, nationwide ”.

WHY ARE YOU, MISHA, LIE? Customizing your material for an exclusive? This publication by General F. Stepanov appeared in Izvestia on May 8, 1986. I have a clipping of this publication. *** And how to understand your next blunder: "... General Comrade Stepanov himself personally did not keep any notes - we were doing this together with my classmate Viktor Andrusov." You know, Misha, this is similar to the words of a fly sitting on a horse with a plow attached to it: "We plowed ...". But in the initial version of the article that you sent me to Riga, you still had the conscience to write: “... Comrade. Stepanov personally did not make any tape recordings - my friend V. Andrusov was engaged in this. "

“YOU ARE NOT ASHAMED, MY CLASSMATE, MIKHAIL ZAKHARCHUK ?!

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of K. Simonov (November 28, 2015), officer-journalist Mikhail Zakharchuk published an article “The Chief Military Writer of the USSR” in the online newspapers “Russian Heroic Calendar”, “Centuries” (under the new heading “Truth of Konstantin Simonov "- read on

Perhaps the article will appear in other publications, and, for sure, in the author's book. The first part of the article is a compilation of other people's research and information. The second part of the article is structured in the form of a fictitious interview by him, entitled "From that conversation with Konstantin Simonov," in which he deliberately omits questions due to lack of space. And in essence publishes a transcript of the sound recording of the writer's speech made by me. What a rogue!

In the article, Zakharchuk cleverly avoided the fact that the speech of the writer K. Simonov was based on previously prepared, collective questions from the audience of the editorial department of the Academy, that this speech was recorded only by me on tape. Zakharchuk falsely claims that he allegedly hired three female stenographers to help record the writer's speech and print the material. In fact, he used the sound recording of Simonov's speech, which I presented to him in September 1989 in Riga, where he deliberately came to me and swore that he would never violate my copyright. HOWEVER HAVE VIOLATED! HOW IT DOES NOT COLOR MIKHAIL ZAKHARCHUK, JOURNALIST APPLYING FOR THE TITLE OF A WRITER! "

Now about what opinion about Zakharchuk have fellow newspapermen.

November 14, 2015 naval journalist Sergei Turchenko, Chief Editor"Russian Heroic Calendar", published a review of Mikhail Zakharchuk's book "Through the Great Millennium, or 20 years at the turn of the millennium. An eyewitness's diary ”. Please note: what a long and abstruse title! From him, you see, blows megalomania of the author. Well, what can you do if he wanted to show his coolness? But let's delve into the content of this "extraordinary event in literary life modern Russia ”(as stated in the first lines of the review). It turns out that apart from the author's loud claim, his vague reasoning in the preamble about life at the turn of the millennium, there is nothing original in the book. She clearly does not deserve to be considered unique. After all, it consists mainly of previously published previously compiled articles about famous people (artists, writers, musicians, artists).

Retired captain of the 1st rank Sergei Turchenko not only praised Zakharchuk, but also pointed out the flaws in his work. I quote:

“The reader will find in the book curious gems of“ everyday philosophy ”, for example:
“Our wives are given to us for our past sins. This is how God balances everything in the world, including family life. Plus, every husband is worthy of the wife he lives with. Otherwise I would have looked for another, like our mutual acquaintance Yura Belichenko. Already changed three spouses. Not realizing that all women are the same. Only their names are different ... In any case, I will not allow my daughters to remain fatherless just because their mother does not take the trouble to appreciate what a wonderful spouse she got. "

The book is densely peppered with political and other anecdotes of the times described. But ... and black humor, often bordering on blasphemy. In my opinion, the book does not paint overly frank details of relationships with women, while indicating their real names. And there is absolutely no need for the obscene words scattered throughout the text that the heroes use. There is an opinion that this gives the work a documentary flavor, as, they say, it happens in life. I think this is just linguistic hooliganism bordering on indecency. In life, there are also toilets, so what can you describe in paints their contents? "

“Dear Victor! I read your article - everything inside me is bubbling and seething! First of all, thank you very much for your civil position, for your indifferent attitude to the ugly behavior and no less ugly creativity of this shot! ... Are you, an officer, a journalist, afraid to tell the truth to a hypocrite, an opportunist who has turned into a boor ?! You cannot know that I got ahead of you by expressing my attitude to the work of Zakharchuk (and I have the right to judge, since I am an editor with extensive experience). As a result, she made an enemy for herself, and was sent by him ... (I will not specify where).

The case with the actress of the Maly Theater Elena Gogoleva almost cost this "fruit" of her career. I remember well how much noise the interview of Zakharchuk mentioned by you made. At that distant time, we lived in the dormitory of the Academy students on Pirogovskaya Street, in the "stable" built for the commissars at the expense of Gorky. Living together in tiny little rooms on either side of a long and gloomy corridor taught me a lot. Here I met Mikhail Zakharchuk, a classmate of my husband in the journalism department of the Lviv VVPU. He did not get out of our room of 9 square meters and behaved tactlessly.

However, decades later, when we met on the Internet, I was delighted with him. He boasted that his book "The Counter Lane" was published. He sold it by mail. I asked him to allocate a copy out of an old friendship. No, I did not select it, but began to selectively send individual pages by e-mail. I read, and it felt like I was plunging into some kind of surrealism. So many lies. Of course, most of the people he allegedly met in his life are real, but often already dead ... They can't refute his tales, fiery journalism, designed for simpletons. Whoever he drank with for brotherhood! I remember expressing my opinion to him about the many grammatical and stylistic mistakes, Ukrainianisms, obscene words and the too often used "I". He then restrained himself, did not send me to my mother ... Because he was a guest in "My Blog", admired my poems ...

Purely out of professional curiosity, I often read his opuses in the online edition "Century", left there objective comments with remarks. But someone's Internet hand was wiping them off ... And the scandal that threw us apart began with the suicide of one of the actors ... airport to the sea terminal in Murmansk, when no one met me, and there were a lot of things. Mikhail Alexandrovich allowed himself (and he allows himself everything) in "My Blog" to offend the memory of the artist, to call him a Jew ...

I did not respond to this attack, but interrupted my correspondence with him. For a long time he “bombarded” me with letters, appealed to my conscience, criticized my ex-husband Volodya Verkhovod (with whom we, by the way, maintained the best relations). And then, I don't remember exactly in connection with what, but I think Happy Press, I read his opus about journalists. He wrote about himself, beloved, as a luminary, a former fellow with marshals, and with actresses, and with artists, and with composers, and with singers. ... ... I advised him that it would be nice to remember the military journalists who made up the color of the profession. She cited as an example Valera Glezdenev, a journalist who died in Afghanistan in a downed helicopter. Then she was sent by Zakharchuk to. ... ... It should be noted that a shot like him can easily be whipped in the face with a filthy whip, no matter what. An officer who has spent many years within the Garden Ring hardly knows what it means to serve in remote regions ...

... Years have passed, the country has gone into oblivion, which has learned such zakharchuk, gave them a well-fed life. A lot of things have changed very badly in journalism. The time has come for boosters and upstarts, compilers and outspoken storytellers ...

THANKS TO VICTOR ANDRUSOV FOR HIS HONEST POSITION.

Victor! See how much your message hooked me up? !! It’s not a personal resentment seething in me, but resentment for those of our guys who died from bandit bullets in Afghanistan, and those who returned alive were tormented in obscurity because of the indifference of officials - because they had no cronyism, shaggy paws. They failed to make their way to the ramp to lick the handle of the prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, as Zakharchuk did ...

Victor, I am grateful to you for taking upon yourself such a responsibility - to wash this booze. Smug, he completely lost his sense of proportion. For over a year he bombarded me with references to his "works" in "Centuries". I didn't read everything, but what I read made me sick. Remains in the soul and resentment that Zakharchuk defiles the memory of really honored and even great people. "

Among the colleagues who responded to this publication are Vladimir Kaushansky, my classmate at the journalism faculty of the LPVPU, a former special correspondent for the KRASNAYA ZVEZDA newspaper, and a retired colonel. He sent a short letter:

"Vitya, hello! I carefully read your article and sadly recalled episodes of my joint work with Zakharchuk in different years... After graduation, he came to my department of the Komsomol life of the regional newspaper "On Guard" of the Baku Air Defense District. In fact, I was his first head of the department, except for his short stay in the aviation department, where Mikhail quarreled to death and quarreled with the head. I, of course, have something sonorous to add to your arguments. But, you know, I don’t want to. In his attempts to play the role of a successful journalist, Zakharchuk is simply ridiculous. I am familiar with his book opuses, which turned out to be unnecessary trash for everyone except himself. I don’t know what he’s doing now, and I don’t want to know. God will judge him! "

This letter was followed by a response from retired colonel Boris Anushkevich, former editor of the SPORTYVOENNOE OBOZRENIE magazine, the press organ of the armies of the Warsaw Pact countries. A fellow student writes the following:

"Hello, Vikandr! I remember the times when you posted links on sites to the opuses of Misha Zakharchuk, downright forcing them to read them. I responded to some of your calls regarding Misha's memories of meetings with famous cultural figures. He really flashed for some time in theater and cinema circles, rubbed in the environment of the metropolitan bohemia, knew well those of its representatives with whom he met. Of course, Misha is well acquainted with this topic. But it is unpleasant for me to read his articles and essays: they are overloaded with monotonous facts, static, written in a half-dead language. And most of all, the way Misha presents his meetings, conversations, interviews with these people is disgusting: selfishness sticks out in almost every material.

I remembered the opinion of our teacher at the Faculty of Journalism of the LPVPU Androsova about the book by Anatoly Mariengof "A Novel Without Lies", which I quickly read after that. Yesenin's friend Mariengof, with quite frank narcissism, describes his life next to the genius poet, giving the impression that many talented poems during the years of their friendship were written thanks to his recommendations and comments. In the descriptions of the poet's tavern spree, one can sense the mockery of a friend: this is what this person really is, whose verses you admire ... Misha presents himself a little differently: he boasts that with many celebrities on a short leg, we respect and love them .. Kirill Lavrov invites him to the celebration of the Lenin Prize and sits him down next to Alexei Batalov ... Lanovoy is glad to see him in his house, Pakhmutova crumbles in gratitude and compliments to Misha for an article about her work ... If Zakharchuk is on a business trip, then certainly in the regional committee hotel ...

Well, the use of your, Victor, tape recording of Simonov's speech without the appropriate reference to this is disgusting. Zakharchuk's emphasis on the importance of his own person in almost every material is not to my liking, and therefore I stopped reading his opuses. From what he, like me, is neither hot nor cold - we studied together in Lviv - and that's all! "

Such an unpleasant conversation between colleagues arose on its own. Nobody initially set out to debunk the dishonest methods of Mikhail Zakharchuk's work. It turned out that he himself asked for fair comments from his writing comrades, with whom he had once studied, collaborated, and tried to be friends. ... ...

I can't put an end to this. New facts appeared that prompted me to write:

OPEN LETTER TO PASQUILANT ZAKHARCHUK Mikhail Alexandrovich,
which sports the signature MAZ abbreviation

MAZ, it turns out why you didn’t sell and don’t give me (although you promised) your book with the loud title "Counter Lane. Epoch. People. Judgments". I was afraid of exposing my lies about me and my wife Tanya ?!

Murder will out. Your fabrications in the chapter "Moscow ... how much in this sound ..." finally became known to us after many years. How long have you been hiding this stone in your bosom, cunning and fawning, calling me "druzhban".

In order to justify the meaning of your “oncoming lane”, along which you are supposedly boldly advancing, in order to show the bugs of history along with celebrities, you, a liar, chose my modest, harmless family. My wife and I took the nonsense you wrote with surprise and laughter. Tanya called your vulgar, obscene works like this: "This is reading for convicts on a parasha." You wrote that you studied together with underdeveloped, even mentally ill journalist officers. I would like to ask: then what kind of person are you? Especially funny because of your phrase: "Vitya" entered "the academy, his wife Tatyana - a sensible, sensible woman. She arrived in Moscow ahead of time and hired a secretary at the correspondence faculty on the condition that his boss would help her unlucky husband to become a listener ... otherwise, she confessed to me, I would never have escaped from the accursed Transbaikalia. "

How simple it is: the officer's wife came from afar to the capital of the country, got a job at the academy, etc. Not a word of truth! And then I served and lived with my family not in Transbaikalia, but in the Far Eastern Military District. Everything else is also invented by you - a master of slander and slander, a shameless person. Therefore, you described the portraits of teachers, classmates, editorial staff in a disgusting, obscene manner. I am SURE: FATE WILL PUNISH YOU UNWANTED! The first retribution has already overtaken: Moscow, which you adored and in which you lived at ease, threw you overboard. The clerk of the volost now you are in a remote village of the Vladimir province. The Almighty has prepared new punishments and will never forgive you nasty things, your many sins. ... ...

SOME REVIEWS FROM READERS
TO THE OPEN LETTER OF Viktor Andrusov
libelist Mikhail Zakharchuk

Irina Korotkova, correspondent (Primorsky Territory):

I read and was amazed at how the officer behaves. How they have completely forgotten all moral principles. How a man turned into a market woman who, out of boredom or in order to rise above her neighbors, lies, puffs herself out, ascribes achievements to herself. So Zakharchuk turned into such a tradeswoman. It's good that you, Victor, told about him, dishonest. After all, many did not know about his boorish attitude towards his comrades and were friends with him. It was necessary to warn people. I think that after this, Zakharchuk's circle of contacts will narrow, if it does not come to naught. Unless the unscrupulous will remain next to him. Disgusting. ... ...

Tatiana Motorina, experienced editor, poet (Vladivostok):

Viktor Andrusov was the only one who PUBLIC spoke about the work of Mikhail Zakharchuk. And everyone needs to speak out. After all, this, if I may say so, "writer" continues to sprinkle his opuses in a variety of publications and has long occupied the vastness of the World Wide Web with his fables, and has already reached Israel ... But now we are talking about "Oncoming Lane ..." Ugly little book, I tell you, gentlemen officers. Zakharchuk is not the discoverer of the genre. Many authors wrote about his friends-comrades, about the military brotherhood, and at the same time they admitted all sorts of jokes regarding various shortcomings, character traits and even physical disabilities, but they did it kindly , delicately, with good humor.
In the book "Oncoming Lane ..." - an impermissibly offensive tone, the characteristics of his fellow classmates are caustic and sometimes murderous. It has neither historical nor artistic value, although it would seem that it mainly tells about celebrities. Correctly noted by V. Andrusov: next to these luminaries, the LPVPU cadets, the WPA students described by Zakharchuk, seem to be insects, useless, worthless people. After all, if Zakharchuk intended to receive a tough rebuff, he did not dare to write such hopeless nonsense about his comrades, classmates.
I am not writing as an outsider. Do not be offended, gentlemen, that I get involved in men's affairs. But there are lines about me in Zakharchuk's epic ... Of course, they are softer, but still, humiliating.
We will not discuss the fact that the book is illiterate: what is the author himself, so is the book ... The publication cost, according to Zakharchuk (he wrote to me about it himself), 17.5 thousand dollars! Who generously sponsored it? Or did he publish his work on a colonel's pension? And one more question torments me: did the late head of the editorial department of PVA A. Utylyev read this "crap"? I think no. Otherwise, he would not have kept silent, because he was a deeply decent, intelligent person who would never have accepted even the very tone of Zakharchuk's verbiage. Remember: Utylyev saved Mikhail from shame after the story with the artist Elena Gogoleva ...
Life has not taught Zakharchuk. His famous fairy tales about friendship with the great cannot but irritate: there are so many lies, familiarity, and in fact desecration of the memory of the departed ... He does not write about the living. And the dead, too, as Andrusov said, are harmless ... It is noteworthy that many of the heroes of the epic "Oncoming Lane ..." and do not know that the person who was considered their comrade so basely humiliated them. Some are still listed as friends with Zakharchuk. You can, of course, get together with the whole world and sue the scribe for outraged honor and dignity. Nowadays they pay good money (court practice has developed). You can stuff him in the face. And the best thing is to write an open letter to the mass media (and in the electronic first of all), so that the editors are more careful with a "brilliant memoirist" in colonel's uniform, who has neither honor nor conscience. Over the course of my long life and journalistic destiny, I have seen many such zakharchuk and tried to "ground" them when they burrowed hard ...

Vladimir Borisov, naval journalist (Moscow):

Viktor Alekseevich, was it really possible to do that? It does not fit in my head, how could Zakharchuk take up his pen and write such dirty lines about his classmates, friends, colleagues? You know, if I had a chance to learn something like this from another person, most likely, I would not believe in such a monstrous meanness, but for me you are more than an older comrade and fellow writer. Without exaggeration, I will say: you are a role model. Having read Zakharchuk's auspicious inventions, I am sure that anyone, even a stranger from our craft, with disgust and disgust will throw his "work of the century" into the trash heap. I am interested in: what reader is this tome intended for and what purpose did the author pursue? His dirt will not stick to us. I shake your hand tightly!

Lyubov Berezovskaya, wife of a journalist (Moscow):

Dear Victor! I'm terrified, shocked. ... ... Can a military journalist, a graduate of our native LPVPU do this? How did he not break his neck before with such "kooky"? And in general, is everything all right with his head? Maybe MAZ (M. A. Zakharchuk) has senile dementia, then his "tricks" can somehow be explained , but forgive for meanness - never! Victor, do not take all this nonsense to heart ... My husband and brother are graduates of the LPVPU, and I know a lot about you as a professional, a master of the pen, a worthy officer and how very good person...

Omar Khayyam said: "They will smear a person in the mud, it hurts, it is offensive, but the morning will come, the sun will rise, the mud will dry up and fall off, the person will become clean." However, this does not apply to you, since you are pure, and no one will be able to denigrate you. Your former comrade Zakharchuk finally showed what he really is, otherwise you would still continue to treat him with warmth - the way you usually treat many of your friends with love. Do not worry, instead of the vile Zakharchuk, you will have many worthy and decent friends who will not defame you and will not sell you!

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The hunt is over. "Misha Zakhar" - a drug dealer known in the criminal world, was arrested the day before in Angarsk. Almost 10 million rubles worth of heroin was seized from his accomplices.

Gosnarkokontrol. Open the door, please. Right now.

They came with a search. In this Irkutsk apartment, the drug police were met by the so-called "team leaders". These women, outraged by the number of guests, were selling heroin and collecting funds from drug outlets in the city.

Information about the active activities in the region of the criminal community that trafficked in heroin was obtained in 2013. They began to detain members of the group last summer. The operations were carried out in cities, summer cottages and on the Angarsk - Irkutsk highway.

What do you do?
- Nothing. Unemployed. I live in Angarsk.

The narcotics police note that the leading positions in the criminal community were occupied by Roma. This man, according to the operatives, is the leader of the group. He was detained in Angarsk a few days ago.

It was established that an active member of an organized criminal community called "Bratskoye" took part in this criminal community. Which included Mikhail Vasilievich Zakharchuk.

Zakharchuk Mikhail Vasilyevich is more accustomed to the nickname "Misha Zakhar". So he is widely known in the criminal environment. Angarchanin is 27 years old. He oversaw drug trafficking in large cities Baikal region. Heroin and more than 9 million rubles were confiscated from members of the group.

It has now been proven that heroin and all funds are derived from drug trafficking. More than 20 criminal cases have been initiated against this criminal community. 15 persons were brought to justice, 8 of whom were arrested, - says the deputy head of the Federal Drug Control Service for the Irkutsk region Alexander Salnik.

The drug police hope that this time "Misha Zakhar" will receive a serious prison sentence. He was already involved in the sale of drugs, but then he was only fined 25 thousand rubles.

The organizer of a gang of drug dealers is Rada Matyusheva, a 32-year-old woman from Angarsk. The members of the criminal group characterized her as a strong-willed, domineering, intelligent, aggressive and at the same time brave and proud woman with bright leadership qualities... During the investigation, Matyusheva repented of her crimes. The proven guilt of Zakharchuk and Halimov's supplier is largely the result of her cooperation with the investigating authorities. Despite this and the fact that the woman is raising two children, her own and her adopted, the court did not give her a delay in the execution of the sentence because of her organizational role and the number of crimes committed.

Lived in a big way

The income of the organizer of the gang of drug dealers, Rada Matyusheva, proved by the investigation, amounted to about 10 million rubles. In general, a woman who had a husband and two children lived on a grand scale and did not deny herself anything, she drove a BMW X5 car. According to her right hand Kalugin, in one of the Sberbank cells, the Rada kept the so-called common fund - gold bracelets, chains, earrings, diamonds. However, the investigation failed to find these values. They were taken from the bank by Matyusheva's younger sister Rubina, to whom the cell was registered.

Only numbers

The criminal case of a gang of drug dealers has 50 volumes. More than 40 forensic examinations were carried out on it, more than 50 interrogations of the accused and suspects were conducted, more than 600 phonograms of telephone conversations were listened to. All the defendants underwent psychological and psychiatric examinations, which confirmed their sanity.

Drug gang case

This gang of drug dealers appeared in the Irkutsk region in December 2011. Its organizer and leader was Rada Matyusheva, a 27-year-old woman from Angarsk. Possessing a strong-willed character and strong leadership qualities, as well as great connections among drug dealers and consumers, the gypsy quickly created an entire network of heroin sales in Irkutsk and Angarsk. Former taxi driver Vasily Kalugin became her right hand. He, like Matyusheva herself, never took drugs, but when she offered him this criminal earnings, he was seduced by easy money. His task was to coordinate the actions of members of distribution groups - he took drugs to them, took money, and solved minor work problems.

One such group was located in the 178th quarter of Angarsk. The whole family traded in drugs - Antonida Skolskaya and her two daughters. They got hooked on Matyusheva because of drug addiction - first Svetlana became addicted to heroin, and then her sister Natalya Klochkova. Drugs demanded money, and Svetlana quickly got into debt, and, of course, there was nothing to pay. It was then that Rada Matyusheva approached the sisters, offering them a "job." Drug addicts had no choice but to agree.

The second group, also built on the basis of the family principle, operated in the Irkutsk microdistrict Novo-Lenino. Her “foreman” was the drug addict Natalya Akhmetova, who was brought together with Matyusheva by Mikhail Zakharchuk, a protege of the brotherly organized criminal group, who looks after the drug turnover in Irkutsk and Angarsk, known as Misha Zakhar. Half Roma, he had extensive criminal experience and was close to the Roma diaspora involved in the distribution of heroin in Russia, of which Matyusheva was an active member. Zakharchuk, as they say, covered a gang of gypsies.

Natalya Akhmetova in her group involved the closest relatives - sisters Maria and Svetlana Kuleshova, husband of Tatyana's sister Vyacheslav Mikheev and two drug addicts - Svetlana Nazarenko and Karina Glukhova. Under Natalya's leadership, they traded heroin in the area of ​​Shkolnaya Street in Novo-Lenino. When Natalya died of pneumonia in February 2014, the next senior sister, Svetlana Kuleshova, took over the leadership of the group.

The Matyusheva gang came to the attention of law enforcement agencies in May 2013, - says the senior investigator for special important matters of the Department for Investigation of Crimes in the Sphere of Illegal Drug Trafficking of the MCh of the Main Directorate of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Irkutsk Region, Lieutenant Colonel of Justice Alexander Khankhasaev. - The ball began to unfold with the development of the usual drug addict Dmitry Ilchenko, who attracted the attention of operatives.

And as it turned out, not in vain. Ilchenko himself was not a member of the gang, he was just an intermediary between ordinary consumers and the Novo-Leninist group of Matyusheva.

Drugs would not be sold to an ordinary person, but the gang members knew and trusted Ilchenko. Therefore, drug addicts turned to him, and he, in turn, bought drugs from Akhmetova or Mikheev, continues Alexander Gennadievich. - When Ilchenko began to develop, the chain stretched. In the summer of 2014, Matyusheva and Kalugin were detained in Irkutsk. The woman was found to have a gram of heroin and synthetic drugs. Then they detained the members of the Angarsk unit, and then went after the Leninist ones. The supplier of Matyusheva, Tuychebek Halimov, a Tajik by nationality, was also detained. For 20 years, he transported heroin to Russia on an especially large scale. During a search in his house, at least a kilogram of this drug was found.

As the members of the criminal group told the investigators, they hardly saw Radu Matyusheva - the woman directed them by phone or sent her manager Kalugin.

The arrest of Zakharchuk played an important role in the strike against drug-related crime in the region. Large flows of money were tied to it, - says Alexander Khanhasaev. - Almost all members of the criminal community gave confessions, exposed themselves and others. They received a serious punishment, so they saw the only way out in complete remorse, which the court took into account when passing the sentence.

The judicial investigation into the drug traffickers' case lasted more than a year and a half. For two days, the judge of the Leninsky District Court announced the sentences to the drug dealers. The organizer of the gang Rada Matyusheva received 12 years correctional colony general regime, Antonida Skolskaya and Natalia Klochkova were sentenced to 7 years in prison. Svetlana Skolskaya and Karina Glukhova will be sent to a general regime colony for 5 years by a court decision. Svetlana Nazarenko was sentenced to 5 years and 6 months in prison. Svetlana Kuleshova and Maria Akhmetova were sentenced to 7 and 6 years in a colony with a respite until their young children reached the age of 14. Vyacheslav Mikheev was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment in a special regime colony, and Mikhail Zakharchuk was sentenced to 15 years in a maximum security colony.

The heroin dealer Tuychebek Halimov got off relatively easy - he was given 8 years in prison, since he immediately concluded a pre-trial agreement and actively cooperated with the investigation.

In relation to Vasily Kalugin, the investigation was suspended due to his illness - the man was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. For a long time, Kalugin was in serious condition in the hospital, where he underwent surgery, and he is still recovering. Mediator Dmitry Ilchenko was also unlucky - sentenced to 4 years in prison, he died of illness in prison.

Senior Investigator for Particularly Important Cases of the Department for Investigation of Crimes in the Sphere of Illegal Drug Trafficking of the MCh of the Main Directorate of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Irkutsk Region, Lieutenant Colonel of Justice Alexander Khanhasaev:

The investigation of the criminal case lasted 15 months. Many complex examinations were carried out. For the first time in the Irkutsk region, an organizational and managerial expertise was carried out. Experts assessed the structure of the criminal community. Scientists of the Baikal State University in the field of management and labor organization concluded that the criminal community created by Matyusheva has signs of an informal organization based on network marketing, at the same time they noted its structuredness - the role of each participant was agreed

Photo by the author, the department for the investigation of crimes in the sphere of illegal drug trafficking of the MCh of the Main Directorate of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Irkutsk Region, the TV program "Vesti - Irkutsk" and the press service of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Irkutsk Region

Battle of Chashniki

On October 31, 1812, a battle took place between the Russian troops under the command of Wittgenstein and the French under the command of Marshal Victor during the Patriotic War. This clash was a failed attempt by the French to rebuild their northern front along the Dvina line, which was broken after the capture of Polotsk by Wittgenstein.

Battle of Chashniki

On October 31, 1812, a battle took place between the Russian troops under the command of Wittgenstein and the French under the command of Marshal Victor during the Patriotic War. This clash was a failed attempt by the French to rebuild their northern front along the Dvina line, which was broken after the capture of Polotsk by Wittgenstein.

By the time Polotsk fell, the commander of the IX Corps, Victor, was stationed in the Smolensk region and was a reserve of Napoleon's army.

By order of Napoleon, Victor with 22 thousand soldiers went against Wittgenstein in order to restore the Dvina line. Near Chashnikov, the II French corps under the command of General Legrand, retreating from Wittgenstein, met with Victor's forward division. Legrand decided to stop and took up a defensive position. The combined forces of the French were 36 thousand.

Wittgenstein left a garrison of 9 thousand soldiers in Polotsk and went to meet Victor with 30 thousand soldiers.

The Battle of Chashniki was fought mainly by Wittgenstein's vanguard under the command of Lev Yashvil and Legrand's 2nd corps. The Russians attacked the French. Legrand, retreating, occupied intermediate positions, but in the end he was ousted from everywhere and joined Victor's corps. Wittgenstein, finding Victor's main position, ordered Yashvil to stop and began bombarding the French positions. Victor, discouraged by the successful actions of Yashvil, decided not to continue the battle and retreated. The Russians did not pursue. The loss of the French 1200 against 400 killed Russians.

As a result of the victories at Polotsk and Chashniki, Wittgenstein sent a detachment to Garpe to capture Vitebsk. On November 7, after a short battle, the French garrison of Vitebsk surrendered.

The fall of Vitebsk disrupted the plans of Napoleon, who planned to place his exhausted troops there in winter quarters. Having learned about the defeat at Chashniki, Napoleon ordered Victor to immediately attack Wittgenstein again and throw him back to Polotsk. This led to another defeat for the French at Smolyany on November 14, 1812.

Death of Frunze

On October 31, 1925, Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze (b. 1885), a revolutionary, Soviet statesman and military leader, one of the largest military leaders of the Red Army during the Civil War, died after stomach surgery in the Botkin hospital after a stomach operation. ...

Death of Frunze

On October 31, 1925, Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze (b. 1885), a revolutionary, Soviet statesman and military leader, one of the largest military leaders of the Red Army during the Civil War, died after stomach surgery in the Botkin hospital after a stomach operation. ...

The reasons for his death are still widely interpreted by experts and historians. Officially, the newspapers of that time reported that Mikhail Frunze had a stomach ulcer. On October 29, 1925, he was operated on by the most experienced surgeon V. N. Rozanov. According to the doctors' report, the operation was successful. But h After 39 hours Frunze died "with symptoms of cardiac paralysis." 10 minutes after his death on the night of October 31, I. V. Stalin, A. I. Rykov, A. S. Bubnov, I. S. Unshlikht, A. S. Yenukidze and A. I. Mikoyan arrived at the hospital. The body was examined. The projector recorded: the underdevelopment of the aorta and arteries found during the autopsy, as well as the preserved thymus gland, are the basis for the assumption of the instability of the body in relation to anesthesia and its poor resistance to infection. The main question - why there was heart failure, leading to death - remained unanswered. Confusion about this leaked to the press. The article "Comrade Frunze is recovering" was published, published by "Rabochaya Gazeta" just on the day of his death. At workers' meetings they asked: why the operation was done; why Frunze agreed to it, if you can live with an ulcer like that; what is the cause of death; why was disinformation published in a popular newspaper? In this regard, the doctor Grekov, assisting Rozanov, gave an interview with variations in different publications. According to him, the operation was necessary, since the patient was under the threat of sudden death; Frunze himself asked to operate on him as soon as possible; the operation was relatively light and was performed according to all the rules of the surgical art, but the anesthesia was difficult. At the end of the interview, Grekov, for some reason, said that after the operation, no one was allowed to see the patient, but when Frunze was informed that Stalin had sent him a note, he asked to read this note and happily smiled. Here is her text: "Dear friend! I was at Comrade Rozanov's (me and Mikoyan) today at 5 pm. We wanted to come to you, - didn’t let it go, an ulcer. We had to submit to force. Do not be bored, my dear. Hello. We we will come again, we will come again ... Koba. " This ending further fueled the distrust of official version... All the gossip on this topic was collected by the writer Pilnyak, who later wrote "The Tale of the Unquenched Moon", where everyone recognized Frunze in the image of the commander Gavrilov, who died during the operation. Part of the Novy Mir circulation, where the story was published, was confiscated, thereby confirming the version of the murder, as it were. If they are so afraid, then undoubtedly Frunze was eliminated. The version of the murder was once again repeated by director Yevgeny Tsymbal in his film "The Tale of the Unquenched Moon", in which he created a romantic and martyr's image of a "real revolutionary" who swung at unshakable dogmas.

But, apparently, the real Frunze was far from romanticism. From February 1919, he successively led several armies operating on the Eastern Front against Supreme ruler Russian Admiral A.V. Kolchak. In March, he became the commander of the southern group of this front. The units subordinate to him were so carried away by looting and plundering of the local population that they completely decomposed, and Frunze more than once sent telegrams to the Revolutionary Military Council with a request to send him other soldiers. Desperate to get an answer, he began to recruit himself a replenishment "natural method": he took out trains with bread from Samara and invited the peasants who were left without food to join the Red Army.

More than 150 thousand people took part in the peasant uprising against Frunze in the Samara Territory. The uprising was drowned in blood. Frunze's reports to the Revolutionary Military Council are full of figures of people shot under his leadership. For example, in the first ten days of May 1919, he killed about one and a half thousand peasants (whom Frunze calls "bandits and kulaks" in his report). In his report to Trotsky, Frunze writes: "Here, according to incomplete information, at least 100 people have been killed. In addition, over 600 ringleaders and kulaks have been shot." In battle - about a hundred, and then all those who were considered unreliable were simply shot. "The village of Usinskoye, in which the rebels first exterminated our entire detachment of 170 people, was completely burnt." Moreover, Frunze perfectly understands why this is happening: "The movement grew out of dissatisfaction with economic hardships and measures, and due to the lack of awareness of the population, it was directed and used properly." And with the irresponsible, we will act like this - shoot potential ringleaders and completely burn down those villages on the territory of which the Red Army soldiers were killed. Frunze in this respect was no better than Tukhachevsky, who suppressed the Tambov uprising, or Pyatakov, Bela Kun and Zemlyachki, who carried out the "Red Terror" in Crimea.

In September 1920, Frunze was appointed commander of the Southern Front, operating against the army of General P.N. Wrangel. He directed the capture of Perekop and the occupation of Crimea. In November 1920, Frunze appealed to the officers and soldiers of General Wrangel's army with the promise of complete forgiveness if they remained in Russia. After the occupation of Crimea, all these servicemen were ordered to register (refusal to register was punishable by shooting). Then the soldiers and officers of the White Army, who believed Frunze, were arrested and shot directly according to these registration lists. In total, during the Red Terror in Crimea, 50 - 75 thousand people were shot or drowned in the Black Sea.

Of course, many then might not have known about the military "arts" of Mikhail Vasilyevich. He carefully concealed the darkest aspects of his biography. Known for his own handwritten commentary on the order to award Bela Kun and Zemlyachka for the atrocities in Sevastopol. Frunze warned that the presentation of orders should be done secretly so that the public does not know what exactly these "heroes are being awarded for. civil war". In a word, if Frunze was helped to leave for another world, it was for good reason. After all, his heart paralysis began a long time ago and not in a physiological, but in a spiritual sense.

To be honest, it often looks like the Stalinist purges (when it really refers to the leader, and is not a slander against him) first of all affected those representatives of the Leninist-Trotskyist guard who dealt with ordinary Russian people with particular cruelty: “repressed” by Stalin the same Tukhachevsky, Pyatakov, Bela Kun. It is possible that Frunze was one of the first in this list of enemies of the Russian people, destroyed by Stalin. The fact is that 1925 was marked by a whole series of "accidental" disasters. In the beginning - a series of tragic incidents with responsible workers of the Transcaucasus: on March 19 in Moscow, the chairman of the Union Council of the TSFSR and one of the chairmen of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, NN Narimanov, suddenly died "of a broken heart". On March 22, the First Secretary of the Zakraikom of the RCP (Bolsheviks) AF Myasnikov, the chairman of the ZakChK S.G. Mogilevsky, and G.A. On August 27, near New York, under unclear circumstances, E. M. Sklyansky, Trotsky's permanent deputy during the civil war, removed from military activities in the spring of 1924 and appointed chairman of the board of the Mossukno trust, and the chairman of the board of the Amtorg joint-stock company I. J. Khurgin. On August 28, at the Parovo station near Moscow, Frunze's longtime acquaintance, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 6th Army during the Perekop operation, a member of the bureau of the Ivanovo-Voznesensky provincial party committee, chairman of the Aviatrest V. N. Pavlov, was killed under a train. At about the same time, the head of the Moscow State Militia F. Ya. Tsirul, who was close to the People's Commissariat for Military Affairs Frunze, died in a car accident. Yes, and Mikhail Vasilyevich himself at the beginning of September fell on full speed from a car, the door of which for some reason turned out to be faulty, and miraculously survived. So the "elimination" seems to have already begun.

In addition to the cannibalism shown by Frunze when suppressing the uprising in the Samara region, there were other reasons for its elimination. In the English monthly "Aeroplane" there was an article about Frunze "The New Russian Leader". "In this man," the article said, "all the constituent elements of the Russian Napoleon are united." And these were not just words. Frunze backed them up with deeds.

In the summer of 1923, in a grotto near Kislovodsk, a secret meeting of the party elite was held under the leadership of Zinoviev and Kamenev, later called the "cave" one. It was attended by vacationers in the Caucasus and party leaders invited from the nearest regions of that time. At first they concealed this from Stalin. Although the issue was discussed specifically about the limitation of his powers in connection with Lenin's serious illness. None of the participants in this meeting (except Voroshilov, who most likely was there with the eyes and ears of the leader) died a natural death. Frunze was present there as a military component of the "putsch".

Another fact. In 1924, on the initiative of Frunze, a complete reorganization of the Red Army was carried out. He achieved the abolition of the institution of political commissars in the army - they were replaced by assistant commanders for political affairs without the right to interfere in command decisions. In 1925, Frunze made a number of transfers and appointments in the command staff, as a result of which military districts, corps and divisions were headed by the military, selected according to the principle loyalty to Trotsky. Former secretary of Stalin B.G. Bazhanov recalled: "I asked Mekhlis what Stalin thinks about these appointments?" - “What does Stalin think? - asked Mehlis. - Nothing good. Look at the list: all those Tukhachevskies, Korki, Uborevichs, Avksentyevskies - what kind of communists they are. All this is good for the 18th Brumaire, not for the Red Army. " The question arises: which head of state would have tolerated such "loyalty" of the Minister of War? Bazhanov (and not only him) believed that Stalin had to eliminate Frunze, in order to appoint his own man - Voroshilov in his place (Bazhanov V.G. Memoirs of the former secretary of Stalin. M., 1990. S. 141). It is said that during the operation exactly the kind of anesthesia that Frunze could not bear was applied. due to the characteristics of the body... Of course, this version has not been proven. But, in our opinion, it is quite plausible.

Removal of Stalin from the Mausoleum

On October 31, 1961, at the direction of Khrushchev, the embalmed body of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was removed from the Mausoleum. A small group of politicians and servicemen at night, secretly, hiding behind urgently installed plywood shields, took Stalin's body out of the Mausoleum and placed it in a hastily dug grave near the Kremlin wall.

Removal of Stalin from the Mausoleum

On October 31, 1961, at the direction of Khrushchev, the embalmed body of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was removed from the Mausoleum. A small group of politicians and servicemen at night, secretly, hiding behind urgently installed plywood shields, took Stalin's body out of the Mausoleum and placed it in a hastily dug grave near the Kremlin wall.

The next day, visitors to the Mausoleum indignantly asked the guards: where is the leader? They answered as they had been instructed: "At the numerous requests of the workers, he was reburied."

This was the last point of Khrushchev's yapping at the "dead lion." Let me remind you: On February 14-25, 1956, the XX Congress of the CPSU was held in Moscow, at which the first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Khrushchev made a secret report "On the cult of the individual and its consequences." It listed numerous facts of crimes of the second half of the 1930s - early 1950s, the blame for which was attributed to the recent idol (however, Khrushchev himself actively participated in the repressions, along with the then members of the Politburo). The report caused an extremely controversial reaction in society, one might say, split it. Someone supported Khrushchev, especially party officials, someone considered that such sharp somersaults in politics could negatively affect the atmosphere in the country. There were also those who accused Khrushchev of unscrupulous perversion of facts.

The fact that the fight against the "cult" was for Khrushchev not a deeply felt position, not a turn towards democratization, but a way to preserve personal power and keep subordinates on a short leash is evidenced by subsequent events.

The 20th Congress gave rise to a feeling of confusion, disappointment, misunderstanding of what was happening in society, and exacerbated the conflict between generations. Moreover, active protests began against Khrushchev's debunking of Stalin, and the authorities were clearly not going to learn to speak with opponents without violence. Already in March 1956, blood was plentifully shed. Khrushchev, preparing his "revelatory" report, did not think at all about how his words would respond in Georgia. There people went to rallies. Khrushchev carried out a punitive operation. And then he demanded the disclosure of the conspiracy. High-ranking KGB officer Philip Bobkov, posted to Georgia in March 1956, later recalled: “Many figures in the center really wanted to hear from us that there was a headquarters in Tbilisi that led the protests against the decisions of the XX Congress. Someone threatened to take away our membership cards for the fact that we release the participants in the unrest - supposedly all, indiscriminately. But the Chekists of Georgia and Moscow, who were in Tbilisi, resisted and did not go for massive repressions. Has no one in Moscow thought about how the facts exposing the crimes of the deified Stalin can be perceived in Georgia? Is it not clear that it was necessary to immediately send experienced propagandists there, who would intelligibly and convincingly explain what happened to people? "

But the pro-Stalinist sentiments, apparently, did not frighten Khrushchev so much as the fact that part of society perceived de-Stalinization as the beginning of a broad democratization of not only the party, but also the country as a whole. Many people naively believed that Khrushchev's criticism of the "crimes of the Stalinist era" was the first step towards the destruction of the omnipotence of the party-state bureaucracy. Although Khrushchev subjected this bureaucracy, primarily the party apparatus, to a thorough shake-up, he never thought to democratize the way ordinary workers wanted.

Nevertheless, in the fall and winter of 1956, panic was spreading among the party functionaries, there were rumors that lists were already being secretly drawn up for future reprisals against the communists. And then Khrushchev resolutely stopped de-Stalinization. In December 1956, the Central Committee of the CPSU circulated a closed letter: "On strengthening the political work of party organizations among the masses and suppressing the sorties of anti-Soviet, hostile elements." It said, in particular, that the creative intelligentsia and students are most susceptible to the influence of alien ideology and that "the dictatorship of the proletariat in relation to anti-Soviet elements must be merciless." In May 1957, Khrushchev spoke at the board of the Union of Writers of the USSR with reproaches to writers that they perceived Stalin's criticism "one-sidedly." In November of the same year, speaking at a session of the Supreme Soviet with a report dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution, Khrushchev said that “the party fought and will fight everyone who slanders Stalin, who, under the guise of criticizing the cult of personality, incorrectly, pervertedly portrays the entire historical period of the activity of our party, when the head of the Central Committee was I.V. Stalin ... As a devoted Marxist-Leninist and staunch revolutionary, Stalin will take his rightful place in history ... "

This new somersault caused no less shock than the debunking of Stalin by the XX Congress. The creative intelligentsia and students experienced severe disappointment in Khrushchev. “People tried not to remember the XX Congress,” Ilya Ehrenburg recalled. “They tried to intimidate the youth, and the students stopped talking at the meetings about what they thought and said among themselves.” And then Khrushchev, playing up to the mood of the intelligentsia, makes a new zigzag: at the XXII Congress a decision is made to take Stalin's body out of the Mausoleum. Realizing that such a turn could cause unrest on the part of ordinary people, the action was carried out in secret.

About how the reburial took place, b Former head of the 9th KGB Directorate General Nikolai Zakharov recalled: “Together with the commandant of the Kremlin, Lieutenant-General A.Ya. Vedenin learned about the upcoming decision in advance. NS Khrushchev summoned us and said: please bear in mind that today, probably, a decision will be made on Stalin's reburial. The place is marked. The commandant of the Mausoleum knows where to dig a grave ...

By the decision of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, a special commission of five people was created, headed by the chairman of the Party Control Commission under the CPSU Central Committee, Nikolai Shvernik. It also included Vasily Mzhavanadze, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, Javakhishvili, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Georgia, Alexander Shelepin, Chairman of the KGB, Pyotr Demichev, First Secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee, and Nikolai Dygai, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Soviet ... Shvernik suggested how to secretly organize reburial. Since the November 7 parade was to be held on Red Square, under the pretext of a rehearsal for the parade it should have been cordoned off so that no one would get there. "

After Stalin was pulled out of the sarcophagus, Zakharov recalled, a strange "krokhobor" procedure was performed on him: "N.M. Shvernik ordered to remove Gold Star Hero of Socialist Labor. His other award - the Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union - was never worn by Stalin, therefore it was not in the sarcophagus either. After that, the chairman of the commission ordered to replace the golden buttons of the uniform with brass ones. All this was carried out by the commandant of the Mausoleum Mashkov. He handed over the removed award and buttons to a special security room, where the awards of all those buried near the Kremlin wall were kept. "

Former commander of the Kremlin regiment Fyodor Konev remembers the following: “I was summoned to the government building by Colonel Vladimir Yakovlevich Chekalov, the head of Khrushchev's personal protection department, and ordered to prepare one company for Stalin's reburial at the Novodevichy cemetery. But when I returned to the regiment, Chekalov called me again and said that the burial place would be behind Lenin's Mausoleum near the Kremlin wall. There was a fear that the Georgians might steal the coffin from the Novodevichy cemetery and take it home. And you can't steal from Red Square. ... I went down to the Mausoleum when Stalin was already taken out of the sarcophagus. He was lying in an adjoining small room, in a coffin covered with red cloth and half covered with a black veil. He was completely gray-haired and lay as if alive. As if he had just fallen asleep ... The commandant of the Kremlin A. Ya. Vedenin broke the deathly silence: he said that it was necessary to close the coffin and take it out of the Mausoleum. The grave was opened at approximately 9 pm. She was surrounded by sheets of plywood and lit with a searchlight. They brought ten reinforced concrete slabs approximately 100x75 cm in size. Two slabs were placed on the bottom, two on the left and two on the right, one each in the head and legs. And two more were going to close the coffin from above. To make a reinforced concrete sarcophagus. But Colonel V. D. Tarasov, the head of the household department of the Mausoleum, said to Shvernik: "Nikolai Mikhailovich, let's not put these plates down, otherwise they might break ..." Shvernik thought a little and agreed. At 22 hours 15 minutes, the coffin was brought to the grave and set on supports. And after a minute or two, silence began to be carefully lowered. Some of the officers, and I too, threw handfuls of earth. Then the soldiers began to bury the grave. When everything was over, a granite slab was placed on top, on which years of life and death were carved. There was no orchestra, no fireworks, no flowers. Only someone brought them the next day. And, you know, then flowers always lay on this grave. "

Contrary to expectations, society accepted this action without incidents. A new wave of "thaw" swept across the country. But it ended (and already finally) in June 1962. Believing that workers can achieve their rights in a democratic way, the workers of Novocherkassk went to a rally demanding to raise wages and lower prices for essential products. Khrushchev ordered army units to shoot the protesters. That was the end of the “de-Stalinization”.

Soon (in October 1964) Khrushchev was removed from office, in September 1971 he died and was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

And Stalin is still lying at the Kremlin wall. In 1970, a monument by the sculptor Nikolai Tomsky was erected on his grave. And today there are always fresh flowers on it.

In memory of Zeldin

On October 31, 2016, at the age of 102, the theater and film actor Vladimir Mikhailovich Zeldin died.

In memory of Zeldin

On October 31, 2016, at the age of 102, the theater and film actor Vladimir Mikhailovich Zeldin died.

Artist of the Central Academic Theater Russian army(1945-2016). Full Commander of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland. People's Artist of the USSR (1975). Laureate of the Stalin Prize (1951). Cavalier of the International Prize of St. Andrew the First-Called "For Faith and Loyalty". Receiving it, Zeldin said:
- I belong to the generation that passed the roads of the Great Patriotic War. And defeated the strongest opponent. During my life I have seen many events, experienced many trials that have befallen my beloved Motherland - Russia. They have always been overcome by our people, thanks to patriotism, selfless love for the Fatherland. Today it is also a difficult period in the life of Russia. The spirit of courage and perseverance, which is personified by Andrew the First-Called and the award named after him "For Faith and Loyalty", I would like to believe, will help today's generations of Russians to cope with difficulties and win.