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Channel: Исторический факультет МГУ

МГУ

исторический факультет

истфак

исторический лекторий

Хронограф

история России

XX век

О.В.Хлевнюк

00:00:00

[music]

00:00:09

good afternoon

00:00:13

Victoria, the question is being lined up and we

00:00:17

talked a little more about this and it’s very

00:00:44

cool that some healthy teeth began to appear,

00:00:50

statistics that

00:00:53

leave us allowing that palm tree terror

00:01:01

[music] the

00:01:04

first beast is this wall of sorrow of the garden

00:01:10

ring,

00:01:11

come on, a lesser-known family one,

00:01:13

we even more about this glass and

00:01:16

confused

00:01:20

red look guess if

00:01:23

you can watch when we decided to

00:01:27

talk about yes no doubts and

00:01:35

hesitations in the house someone will put this

00:01:38

topic we didn’t have I’m happy to

00:01:40

introduce you we’ll let you know a

00:01:42

friend Oleg medal our profession don’t

00:01:46

wait then he is now a professor at the Higher School of

00:01:48

Human Economics who, but look at

00:01:51

Pegida. for many international

00:01:54

and our buildings

00:01:57

and in grief and we are upset not to retell it, it’s

00:02:02

not just an honor,

00:02:03

but there weren’t 200 works instead of

00:02:07

such projects in public, you handed over to the plenum of the Central

00:02:09

Committee of the CPSU, we handed over the transcript of the manicure

00:02:12

vase of the year and it was a great time, a

00:02:15

great time of cooperation in this

00:02:18

regard 2 the last academic sheet of

00:02:26

geography which, in my opinion,

00:02:31

which has already been held on May 21 bonuses and

00:02:37

probably the Korean seriousness did

00:02:47

not understand the great way to

00:02:57

honor our academic tradition of

00:03:00

the listener by dumping the guest, but as if there is no

00:03:03

need to explain yourself because there will be

00:03:05

slides sitting on both, it will probably not be

00:03:09

very, very convenient minimal in itself the

00:03:13

last academic our rule

00:03:16

the pattern is small if you can

00:03:18

pick up on the sand in writing so that the

00:03:23

ends of the tape are a little oriented to

00:03:27

how much how much

00:03:29

and we need to leave for the presentation I did

00:03:32

not specifically devote or go deep into the

00:03:35

problems with the content of the problems from the

00:03:38

holders why because I think that our

00:03:41

today's lecturer Oleg loves this very much

00:03:43

and will do it in a wonderful way

00:03:45

please thank you

00:03:48

[applause]

00:03:52

hello it really happened

00:03:55

that this year the anniversary of the October

00:03:58

Revolution coincided with another sad

00:04:03

anniversary, the 80th anniversary of the terror of the

00:04:06

year thirty-seven, monuments were indeed opened,

00:04:08

many other

00:04:11

public events took place and

00:04:14

this undoubtedly aroused increased interest in the

00:04:17

problems of the thirty-seventh year in the

00:04:21

media on

00:04:23

television on the Internet, as always,

00:04:28

debates arose, sometimes very heated;

00:04:32

however, today, in full accordance with the

00:04:35

traditions of our chronograph lecture hall, I

00:04:37

will not talk about these momentary,

00:04:40

fickle, and often disappearing and

00:04:43

returning waves of interests,

00:04:49

the problem but about a more

00:04:51

fundamentally more permanent subject, namely the

00:04:54

scientific historiography of the Great Terror,

00:04:58

I am very briefly forced to briefly

00:05:01

talk about how historians studied this

00:05:04

phenomenon, what conclusions they came to, what

00:05:08

sources are at their disposal,

00:05:11

and finally, what they continue to argue about,

00:05:14

it must be said, of course, that the first

00:05:17

information about terror appeared ahead,

00:05:21

in fact, the emergence of the development of

00:05:24

this phenomenon; initially there were

00:05:29

rumors, of course,

00:05:31

mainly rumors because

00:05:33

no one knew exactly what was happening, but the

00:05:35

first documentary

00:05:37

evidence had already appeared, the first official

00:05:39

materials about this phenomenon, first of all, I,

00:05:43

of course, mean the transcripts of the large

00:05:46

Moscow trials which took place in

00:05:49

36-37-38 and again at which many former opposition leaders were

00:05:55

usually sentenced to death. It

00:05:58

must be

00:06:02

said that the materials of these rights were

00:06:04

not only published in

00:06:07

Soviet periodicals but were

00:06:10

purposefully

00:06:12

translated into foreign languages and

00:06:15

distributed throughout the world, well, first of

00:06:18

all Of course, in Europe and the United

00:06:20

States of America, such is the means of

00:06:23

propaganda influence of the Soviet

00:06:26

government on public opinion in

00:06:29

other countries;

00:06:31

however, it should be noted that in subsequent

00:06:35

years and even decades this

00:06:41

problem was taboo, at least

00:06:43

in the Soviet Union, and when

00:06:46

it was opened again, it became, to a certain

00:06:49

extent, you know well,

00:06:51

thanks to Khrushchev’s report at the twentieth

00:06:55

party congress, he had a good grasp of fairly

00:06:59

complete information about what happened in

00:07:01

thirty-seven thirty-eight,

00:07:03

however, in accordance with his own

00:07:06

political interests and with the

00:07:07

political interests of the regime

00:07:10

that he represented, he, one might say,

00:07:15

cut off this knowledge of his and presented

00:07:19

this a truncated, very politicized

00:07:22

concept of the terror of 37-38,

00:07:28

you can see the main provisions of this concept

00:07:31

on this slide, of

00:07:33

course Khrushchev paid the main attention

00:07:35

precisely to the mid and second half of

00:07:39

the thirties,

00:07:40

that is, he did not say anything, so to speak,

00:07:43

about the prehistory of these events, he did not say

00:07:47

anything in particular about collectivization

00:07:49

it is clear why because

00:07:51

collectivization has always traditionally

00:07:53

been recognized as absolutely correct, although with

00:07:56

certain excesses, the actions

00:07:58

carried out by the Soviet government for

00:08:02

a number of reasons, Khrushchev was profitable

00:08:05

to start terror with the murder of Kirov from

00:08:10

1934, in particular

00:08:13

because the main thesis of Khrushchev’s concept

00:08:18

was the assertion that the main victim of these

00:08:22

[music]

00:08:23

events it was first of all the party that it was the

00:08:26

party members who suffered, the

00:08:28

leaders,

00:08:29

but not the ordinary people, and from this the

00:08:33

conclusion followed that the party was of course guilty

00:08:36

of what happened in

00:08:39

1937, but at the same time it suffered the

00:08:42

most from these repressions and, finally, the

00:08:46

causes of the terror were Of course, they were not

00:08:49

explained by the nature of the system;

00:08:51

they, of course, were not explained by some

00:08:53

more fundamental reasons, but it was

00:08:58

primarily about Stalin’s intentions about the

00:09:03

factor of the cult of personality, as

00:09:06

Khrushchev said to Stalin, and this, in principle, did not cause,

00:09:09

so to speak, complete rejection;

00:09:15

the truth was correct, but not complete but from the

00:09:23

point of view of the development of scientific

00:09:25

historiography, of course it must be said that

00:09:27

Khrushchev’s report had a certain

00:09:30

significance; it, if you like, gave impetus

00:09:33

to our knowledge about the events of

00:09:37

37-38 becoming more significant and

00:09:39

richer thanks to

00:09:42

Khrushchev’s speech, in particular, a large

00:09:45

number of memoirs of various kinds of

00:09:48

memories of evidence appeared which were

00:09:50

partly published and partly

00:09:53

distributed in lists, but at

00:09:55

least they became famous and the first

00:10:00

significant authors who, relying

00:10:04

on this source, not on the archives,

00:10:06

which of course were closed then, but

00:10:08

primarily on the

00:10:10

memory of the testimony, wrote

00:10:14

their books about terror, these were

00:10:19

two English writers writer and

00:10:22

historian Robert Competition and our

00:10:25

compatriot Alexander Isaevich

00:10:27

Solzhenitsyn know these works well, the

00:10:30

book competition actually gave the name to

00:10:33

this phenomenon, it was his invention,

00:10:35

great great terror,

00:10:37

and the seedling wrote his famous

00:10:40

book, the Gulag Archipelago,

00:10:42

of course, this direction is still not

00:10:47

entirely scientific historiography

00:10:49

historiography may be based on

00:10:51

journalism of political historiography

00:10:54

based on a narrow range of sources,

00:10:56

primarily memoirs, this direction

00:11:00

was forced to have certain, so to

00:11:03

speak, gaps and, first of all, it was about the fact that it was

00:11:09

not clear how it was all

00:11:12

organized, very high figures were called,

00:11:14

the number of victims of terror, literally

00:11:18

dozens millions of people, sometimes terror

00:11:23

was seen as an organic part of the

00:11:25

Soviet system,

00:11:26

here we see the impact, of course,

00:11:29

first of all, of various kinds of theories of a

00:11:32

totalitarian nature,

00:11:35

a lot was also said about the leading role of Stalin and, in

00:11:39

principle, such approaches

00:11:42

were in demand for a very long time in Western

00:11:45

historiography until a

00:11:48

new direction also appeared

00:11:52

Western historiography, in particular in

00:11:54

American historiography, the so-

00:11:56

called revisionists were young

00:12:00

scientists who were just beginning their

00:12:03

scientific careers and wanting to make themselves known,

00:12:06

they paid attention to the social

00:12:10

aspects

00:12:11

of terror, they tried to find sources

00:12:14

that may not have been used

00:12:17

before by the same contrast and tried to

00:12:21

present their concepts it was a

00:12:24

rather complex mixture of

00:12:28

partly scientific approaches, partly

00:12:30

politicized approaches, partly shocking

00:12:33

approaches, partly

00:12:35

borrowing from German

00:12:38

historiography, which at that time

00:12:40

developed theories of the weak

00:12:42

dictator Hitler as a weak dictator

00:12:45

constrained by various kinds of

00:12:47

institutional

00:12:48

restrictions, chaos in management, and so

00:12:51

on, and these are the

00:12:54

theories, these views the revisionists

00:12:58

adopted one of them, the most

00:13:01

famous may be one of those who worked

00:13:03

and continues to do something in this

00:13:05

area in the field of terror arsh children

00:13:09

now he is already a professor then he was an

00:13:11

aspiring scientist released this

00:13:13

famous book and ideas in fact

00:13:16

he then developed throughout his entire

00:13:18

creative career the main thesis of the

00:13:21

revisionists in this area was that

00:13:25

terror is not a centralized,

00:13:29

not purposeful phenomenon, it is chaos,

00:13:33

chaos, a war of all against all three, the

00:13:37

result of an initiative from below on the part of

00:13:40

regional leaders

00:13:42

who, out of fear, expected elections and

00:13:45

elections should have taken place on

00:13:48

Based on the new constitution of 1936, they were

00:13:50

afraid of losing these elections and therefore

00:13:54

launched terror and even forced them

00:13:58

to accept this line and approve

00:14:03

these repressive actions, the

00:14:09

revisionists called quite low numbers of

00:14:10

terror, that is, in this work and by

00:14:14

the way, arch children wrote about thousands of

00:14:17

repressed which caused a flurry of

00:14:21

dissatisfaction and thus

00:14:25

the representative said that the school competition

00:14:27

and the representatives of Ryazan were

00:14:29

at an equal distance from the real numbers,

00:14:32

some spoke about tens of millions,

00:14:34

others

00:14:35

about thousands, in fact, we got the

00:14:38

result of

00:14:39

millions of people, but it must be said that

00:14:44

this is the direction of the revisionist it is

00:14:47

of course many of her positions were not

00:14:50

clarified and many things were incomprehensible,

00:14:54

she was formulated in very general terms, and of course,

00:14:59

when the archives were opened and

00:15:01

the opportunity arose to work with sources, it was

00:15:05

revisionist and the school,

00:15:07

well, let’s say, came under certain

00:15:10

blows because

00:15:11

the archives showed that these statements are

00:15:14

largely

00:15:17

untrue however, as

00:15:21

many of the statements of the conquest and its

00:15:24

supporters did not correspond to reality, historians began to work with

00:15:27

sources and paying tribute to their

00:15:30

predecessors, Cont Vist Sapling and well, the

00:15:33

American revisionists, historians

00:15:36

focused on considering the solution to

00:15:38

real problems of real documents;

00:15:41

the truth of the development of historical thought is

00:15:47

never too direct and

00:15:49

therefore

00:15:50

In a paradoxical and perhaps unexpected

00:15:52

way, in modern Russia in the

00:15:56

2000s, under the influence of

00:15:58

various reasons, revisionist theories were raised on accounts 5,

00:16:04

which had already

00:16:07

gone out of fashion in the West, but

00:16:10

as often happens,

00:16:11

they reached our latitudes and began to be widely

00:16:17

used by some, I would say

00:16:22

political journalists who

00:16:24

at least write in the genre of political

00:16:27

journalism, despite the fact that in

00:16:30

some cases they have scientific degrees, in

00:16:34

fact, they completely reproduced and

00:16:36

repeated the

00:16:37

basic concepts of the American

00:16:41

revisionists, they were talking about elections as the

00:16:44

most important factor of terror, about chaos, about the

00:16:48

significant role of

00:16:49

regional committee secretaries of oligarchs, so let's

00:16:52

say in the thirties

00:16:54

that Stalin was forced to

00:16:56

submit to these oligarchs, and he himself

00:16:59

only wanted to introduce a new democratic

00:17:02

constitution and hold democratic elections on the basis of this

00:17:05

constitution and

00:17:08

thus change the system to make

00:17:12

it more democratic, but he did not succeed

00:17:15

in this because the apparatus the apparatus had a

00:17:19

powerful terrible

00:17:20

pressure and ultimately Stalin

00:17:24

was defeated in these

00:17:26

intentions, of course, historians perfectly

00:17:30

understood, well, to put it mildly,

00:17:33

the vulnerability of these statements, they were not

00:17:36

supported by a single real

00:17:38

factor and this was an additional

00:17:42

additional argument in favor of the

00:17:44

need to work with documents with

00:17:47

sources from historians throughout

00:17:49

several decades,

00:17:50

as they now say, they worked closely very

00:17:53

diligently in the archives and extracted

00:17:57

from them a huge number of documents of the

00:18:00

events of 37-38 and not only studied

00:18:04

them but made them available to a

00:18:07

wide reader, a

00:18:09

significant

00:18:11

number of various kinds of series of

00:18:13

documentary separate publications were published,

00:18:15

this history of the Stalinist gulag of this

00:18:18

Lubyanka Stalin material from the president's archives, this

00:18:22

and documents from regional archives

00:18:26

that showed how the terror

00:18:29

unfolded on the ground, there is a very

00:18:31

brief description of the groups of

00:18:34

sources that we

00:18:36

have today, I would suggest first of

00:18:41

all to pay attention to the statistics of

00:18:42

terror, the fact is that the NKVD is like any

00:18:48

other The Soviet department reported

00:18:52

and accordingly kept certain records of

00:18:54

its activities, but since

00:18:58

one of the people's commissariats, suppose they smelted

00:19:01

steel and accordingly counted the

00:19:03

number of tons of steel, the KVD dealt with

00:19:05

arrests and executions and accordingly took into

00:19:09

account the number of those arrested and

00:19:12

executed sent to the camps, and so on

00:19:15

and so forth, these kinds of

00:19:20

reporting materials

00:19:22

sometimes large sheets that

00:19:25

reflected the

00:19:26

statistics of these local repressions

00:19:30

and so on, they were preserved in the archive and

00:19:32

historians got access to them. In principle, it

00:19:35

must be said honestly that historians did

00:19:39

not work very much with these documents in

00:19:42

the sense that they simply, as a rule,

00:19:44

reproduced them in their works

00:19:46

since they were preserved in the archive,

00:19:49

some serious analysis of these

00:19:52

statistics is still likely to be done, but even

00:19:54

today we at least know about the

00:19:57

order of the numbers that were measured during

00:20:00

this time of repression, changing at this time,

00:20:02

and this order in relation to

00:20:05

37-38 turned out to be very significant

00:20:10

you you see on this on this slide in this

00:20:16

table how the dynamics of the dynamics of repression have changed

00:20:19

over the course of several

00:20:21

years, we of course have

00:20:24

annual data, sometimes even more

00:20:26

detailed data than for a year, but I

00:20:29

just took a few years, this is my 20th year and

00:20:33

the end of the 30th year this collectivization, we

00:20:36

see a sharp jump in arrests and executions,

00:20:40

then 3-6 is a period of relative

00:20:44

pacification which is studied

00:20:46

quite carefully in

00:20:47

the historiography of me,

00:20:48

we see only 130 thousand arrested and

00:20:52

only a thousand executed, and then in the

00:20:55

thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth year

00:20:56

there is an unprecedented sharp surge in

00:21:00

arrests, more than one and a half million people were

00:21:03

arrested and especially the unprecedented

00:21:07

surge in executions according to official data,

00:21:11

official data, I must once again

00:21:14

emphasize, according to departmental

00:21:15

statistics, more than 680 thousand people

00:21:20

were shot during this period,

00:21:23

thus the thesis that something extraordinary

00:21:26

happened in the year thirty-seven and thirty-eight

00:21:28

was fully

00:21:31

confirmed thanks to archives, the

00:21:34

next group of documents about which I

00:21:36

would like to tell you is various kinds of

00:21:38

non-directive materials,

00:21:40

this is a Politburo resolution, these are orders of the

00:21:43

NKVD, on the basis of which

00:21:47

decisions were made to conduct so-called

00:21:50

mass operations, and I received these

00:21:53

documents,

00:21:54

having discovered them in the archives, after carefully

00:21:57

studying them, historians

00:21:59

were able to radically change their ideas about

00:22:02

what the year 37-38 is like, it’s

00:22:08

not chaos, it’s not a case, it’s not incomprehensible,

00:22:11

some actions are already centralized,

00:22:15

launched from above, what is called a

00:22:18

centralized operation of the NKVD against

00:22:21

certain groups of the country’s population,

00:22:24

one of the largest operations that

00:22:28

formed the essence of what we used to be

00:22:30

called the great terror and now we have

00:22:32

every reason to call it massive The

00:22:35

period of mass operations of the NKVD

00:22:37

was an operation on the basis of NKVD order

00:22:41

number 2 0 447 2 0 means the highest

00:22:46

degree of secrecy in Soviet

00:22:48

office work, it really was an

00:22:50

extremely secret order

00:22:52

approved by the Politburo,

00:22:54

in accordance with which in August

00:22:57

1937 they deployed operations against so-

00:23:00

called anti-Soviet elements, this

00:23:04

order,

00:23:05

as you can see, ordered

00:23:09

these purges to be carried out on the basis of

00:23:13

certain limits of certain

00:23:15

tasks

00:23:16

that were carried out to each region, the

00:23:19

first column is repressed in the so

00:23:25

-called first category, that is,

00:23:27

shot, and the second column is

00:23:30

repressed in category 2, that is

00:23:33

people who were sent to the camps, the third

00:23:35

column is the general current, and so each

00:23:38

region, each republic received

00:23:40

certain digital tasks on the

00:23:44

basis of which

00:23:46

local branches of the NKVD then worked, carrying out

00:23:50

arrests, order 2 0 447

00:23:56

also provided for contingents who were subject to

00:24:00

this arrest and execution, these were

00:24:03

former kulaks members anti-Soviet parties,

00:24:06

former white officers, gendarmes, officials,

00:24:10

members of the so-called fascist

00:24:12

terrorist organizations, they were all

00:24:14

subject to

00:24:15

repression in the first and second categories,

00:24:20

in order to carry out these repressions

00:24:23

quickly enough, and we were talking about, as we have

00:24:27

already talked about a large number of

00:24:29

people, such an extra-judicial body was created the

00:24:32

troika that claimed

00:24:37

quite formally approved the

00:24:39

decisions that the investigators proposed to him

00:24:41

and thus, within a

00:24:45

very short time, each troika

00:24:47

could pass through its meetings

00:24:50

hundreds and sometimes thousands of people and this

00:24:54

provided a

00:24:55

certain appearance of orderliness of

00:24:59

this terror, although in fact this

00:25:03

orderliness was like this terrible

00:25:05

tragic nature,

00:25:07

in addition to the operation by order of 2 0 447,

00:25:13

NKVD operations were carried out against the so-called national

00:25:16

counter-revolutionary contingents against

00:25:19

Poles, Germans, Latvians, Romanians, and so on and so forth, a

00:25:22

separate operation

00:25:24

was carried out

00:25:25

and we also include the composition of these

00:25:28

national operations against Harbin with

00:25:30

Soviet citizens who lived in

00:25:34

northern Manchuria and then, after the

00:25:35

sale of the Chinese Eastern

00:25:37

Railway to Japan, returned to their homeland in the USSR

00:25:42

and here naturally came under

00:25:45

suspicion as Japanese spies, as a

00:25:49

rule, charges of espionage

00:25:50

were also brought against Soviet citizens,

00:25:53

arrested Poles, Germans, Latvians and

00:25:56

others are listed on this slide you

00:26:00

see By the way, here is the decision of the Politburo,

00:26:04

so one of the decisions of the Politburo on

00:26:06

this matter was endorsed and all

00:26:08

members of the Politburo, headed by Stalin,

00:26:10

came to the conclusion that the Soviet leadership

00:26:13

believed that these national categories

00:26:17

are a breeding ground for espionage

00:26:19

and, at least in the case of a military threat,

00:26:22

can be sympathetic to those

00:26:27

countries in which they are somehow connected by

00:26:33

ethnic ties,

00:26:36

for example with Poland or Germany,

00:26:39

Poland and Germany were, of course,

00:26:41

enemies of the USSR at that time, according to the same logic,

00:26:45

in the year thirty-seven, Soviet Koreans were

00:26:48

completely evicted

00:26:51

from the Far East

00:26:54

because their they considered this directly

00:26:57

stated in the decisions made as

00:27:00

fertile ground for espionage in favor of

00:27:04

Japan. The following type of sources about

00:27:08

which I would like to say very briefly

00:27:11

are

00:27:12

materials concerning the activities of

00:27:15

Stalin and the leadership of the NKVD during the whole of

00:27:19

Yezhov

00:27:20

in thirty-seven in thirty-

00:27:21

eight, this is various kinds of correspondence between

00:27:24

them these are various kinds of information

00:27:26

reports, this is finally a log of visits to

00:27:30

Stalin’s Kremlin office, which

00:27:33

allows us to understand with whom Stalin

00:27:35

communicated during this period, with whom he communicated more often,

00:27:38

with whom less often, and thus try to

00:27:40

reconstruct the

00:27:42

circle of his mood and interests, these

00:27:46

documents

00:27:47

show us, to put it very

00:27:49

briefly Of course, we can write about this,

00:27:51

maybe even a big book, they demonstrate to us

00:27:55

Stalin’s special interest in

00:27:58

what happened in the third thirty-

00:27:59

eighth year in the Soviet Union, for the

00:28:01

first time in many years, since 22,

00:28:05

starting from not going to this at this time

00:28:08

in the 37th thirty-eighth year on vacation

00:28:10

he stayed in Moscow, as they say, kept his

00:28:12

finger on the pulse of

00:28:14

these massive operations that I

00:28:16

told you about in 37-38, Stalin received Yezhov

00:28:21

in his office 288 times spent

00:28:24

850 hours with him, that is, he met with him for

00:28:28

most of a significant part of that

00:28:33

and 37-38 years Yezhov sent Stalin this

00:28:39

year over these two years 37 he thirty-

00:28:42

eighth more than 15,000 various kinds of

00:28:45

documents and Stalin followed

00:28:49

these documents with interest and at least

00:28:51

we know for sure that he read many of these

00:28:54

documents because on some of

00:28:57

them he left his resolutions also

00:29:00

indicating the mood stood up for

00:29:03

his intentions,

00:29:05

but for example, such comrade Yezhov is very

00:29:08

important to walk through the Udmurt

00:29:09

Mari Chuvash Mordovian

00:29:11

republics walk with a broom

00:29:13

beat the elevator for not giving out

00:29:16

agents anymore comrade Yezhov dig very well clean

00:29:18

up from now on this search for

00:29:21

spy dirt do not check

00:29:23

arrest you need Voltaire the German to beat

00:29:25

Voltaire and so on and so forth the

00:29:30

following type of sources about which

00:29:32

documents I would like to

00:29:34

tell you about are investigative cases

00:29:36

investigative cases of course there are two

00:29:40

types, first of all these are cases against

00:29:42

victims of terror against those who were

00:29:45

arrested they have been preserved quite well on their

00:29:48

basis, numerous

00:29:50

books of memory are now being compiled, various

00:29:52

kinds of databases, but there were also

00:29:54

investigative cases and of another kind,

00:29:57

these are investigative cases against the

00:30:00

security officers themselves, who at different periods and the

00:30:04

further towards the end of the terror,

00:30:07

the more often they themselves were arrested, they were also

00:30:10

interrogated, they were also conducted by the enemy

00:30:12

the investigations were put on trial and these

00:30:15

materials also remained, and the

00:30:17

totality of these documents, responsible

00:30:21

cases of both victims of terror and

00:30:24

executive terror,

00:30:25

allows us to explore, well, let’s say the

00:30:28

micro-level of implementation of these

00:30:31

mass operations that I told you about,

00:30:33

I’ve collected all these documents together and their

00:30:36

even more, I simply don’t have time to

00:30:39

tell you about this, yes, I’m afraid that it

00:30:41

will be too boring, let’s

00:30:43

move forward a little, but

00:30:45

having collected all these documents about which I

00:30:48

said, historians have written quite a

00:30:51

large number of serious

00:30:53

academic works, they touch on a

00:30:56

variety of aspects of the most various

00:30:59

aspects of the history of 37-38, including

00:31:02

political biographies of the Yezhovs, we

00:31:05

have several works and works specifically

00:31:07

devoted to various operations, operations under the

00:31:13

order of 2 0 447 and national operations,

00:31:17

works devoted to terror in certain

00:31:22

regions, for example, Siberian historians are very active in this

00:31:24

sense, there is a

00:31:27

very good book which I

00:31:29

personally love very much is a book of terror on a

00:31:33

regional scale

00:31:34

by the author who represented me here today

00:31:36

and in fact he could, by

00:31:38

the way, read this lecture instead of

00:31:40

me quite competently, so to speak,

00:31:44

because he works on these problems,

00:31:47

that is, what Alexander actually

00:31:52

did he took the materials of the Kuntsevo

00:31:56

department of the NKVD, investigative cases and

00:31:59

showed in great detail how in fact in

00:32:01

this Kuntsevo district, which then,

00:32:03

by the way, was not part of Moscow and the Moscow

00:32:06

region, part of how it all

00:32:08

happened, how it all happened and the book aroused

00:32:11

great interest, it has already been translated into

00:32:13

other languages and there are a lot of such works,

00:32:17

that is, if you want, if you

00:32:20

want,

00:32:21

and if you want to know about what

00:32:24

happened and

00:32:26

how it was done, it can be done without

00:32:30

much difficulty, and thanks to these works,

00:32:33

thanks to this rich historiography, we

00:32:35

have received such very important

00:32:38

ideas about how

00:32:41

terror developed first of all, and this is what I

00:32:44

will talk about today because it

00:32:47

will simply be difficult for me to delve into many details

00:32:50

due to lack of time, it all began with

00:32:52

repression against the elites around the

00:32:57

year 36, apparently and even almost

00:33:00

certainly how Stalin

00:33:04

had documents a plan to purge the elites of former

00:33:07

oppositionists, those who were friends with them, those

00:33:11

who hesitated, those who once

00:33:13

criticized Stalin and so on, or those

00:33:16

whom Stalin considered dangerous for his

00:33:19

power, the most famous example of these

00:33:23

purges is, of course, the work of the Red Army;

00:33:26

repressions in the Red Army that

00:33:29

ended in court in June of

00:33:32

'37, charges were brought

00:33:35

against

00:33:36

Marshal of the Soviet Union Tukhachevsky

00:33:39

and his other, so to speak, colleagues, but the

00:33:45

army was not limited to, in

00:33:47

fact, during this period

00:33:50

quite large-scale purges were carried out at various

00:33:54

levels of the

00:33:56

apparatus, the economic apparatus, the

00:34:00

party apparatus,

00:34:02

local party committees, and so on.

00:34:05

these purges were very carefully

00:34:07

controlled and directed by Stalin and

00:34:10

together with him other members of the Politburo, as

00:34:14

a rule, everyone who was supposed to come under

00:34:17

attack and these arrests were recorded in

00:34:21

special execution

00:34:24

lists like they are called now; in

00:34:26

fact, they were simply called

00:34:28

lists for condemnation At the military

00:34:31

collegium of the Supreme Court, a total of

00:34:33

383 such lists were preserved; they are in the

00:34:36

archive for 44 thousand people; most of them

00:34:43

dated back to 1937, and

00:34:46

almost all of them were

00:34:48

endorsed in this way, as you can see

00:34:49

on these slides, Stalin sometimes

00:34:53

corrected something, sometimes transferred a person from

00:34:55

the category of execution to the category of, say, 10

00:34:58

years, and sometimes, on the contrary, the one who was

00:35:01

proposed to be sentenced to 10 years was transferred

00:35:04

to the category of execution, well, the leadership of the

00:35:06

shaft, of

00:35:07

course, we won’t tell them today, but at

00:35:09

least somehow he really liked to

00:35:12

manipulate such

00:35:15

lists like this in in any case, we are,

00:35:20

of course, talking about 40 thousand

00:35:22

about 40 thousand approximately convicted

00:35:25

representatives of the elite, which, by

00:35:29

the way, categorically disagree with

00:35:31

Khrushchev’s statements, remember he said

00:35:34

that the blow fell primarily on the

00:35:35

party, in fact, out of one and a half

00:35:37

million people, party leaders

00:35:40

suffered only a few tens of

00:35:42

thousands and if If the whole matter were limited

00:35:45

only to these personnel purges,

00:35:47

purges in the party, then of course you would

00:35:51

never call this phenomenon which

00:35:53

today we are talking about great

00:35:55

terror because precisely because these

00:35:58

repressions fell on ordinary citizens of

00:36:01

the country due to the fact that they

00:36:03

took on the nature of mass operations

00:36:06

primarily against ordinary citizens

00:36:08

because in mass operations

00:36:10

the commanders were not arrested and were not convicted; the

00:36:13

mass operation concerned exclusively

00:36:15

ordinary citizens; the boss condemned him like this,

00:36:18

according to the lists, Stalin and members of

00:36:21

the Politburo personally,

00:36:23

it is quite obvious that the terror became

00:36:27

greater precisely because it collapsed

00:36:30

on a significant part of the country's population, the

00:36:33

first stage of this great terror of these

00:36:37

mass operations was based on arrests

00:36:42

according to records in the NKVD,

00:36:44

which this meant the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs,

00:36:48

as probably other intelligence services in other

00:36:51

countries of the world kept certain records of those

00:36:55

suspicious categories of the population

00:36:58

who lived but were not arrested and were not

00:37:03

subjected to for the time being, until the time of

00:37:04

repression, the accounting categories could be

00:37:08

the following: former nobles, tsarist

00:37:11

official, officers of the tsarist army, former

00:37:14

kulaks, previously convicted, and so on, then

00:37:17

clergymen, of course, also not the

00:37:20

least of

00:37:21

these people, as they say, they were monitored, they were

00:37:26

tracked,

00:37:27

they were developed with the help of agents, and

00:37:30

so on, but for the time being until time and they didn’t

00:37:33

touch only from time to time from this

00:37:36

of these sub-accounting categories, as they

00:37:39

say, they snatched this or that

00:37:41

person, brought him to trial and

00:37:46

thus reported that

00:37:48

certain work had been carried out, what happened in the

00:37:51

thirty-seventh year in the thirty-seventh

00:37:53

year, a decision was made Apparently,

00:37:56

Stalin didn’t just

00:37:59

periodically arrest representatives of

00:38:03

these sub-account categories, but

00:38:06

liquidate them completely, completely

00:38:11

liquidate all these

00:38:12

suspicious

00:38:13

and potentially dangerous

00:38:15

people who, from the point of view of the

00:38:18

country’s leadership, could pose a danger,

00:38:23

that is,

00:38:26

liquidate partly physically, partly

00:38:30

sent to camps and, strictly speaking, the

00:38:33

meaning of the operation under the order of double 447

00:38:36

was that these people under

00:38:38

the registration categories

00:38:40

were arrested and summarily

00:38:44

convicted,

00:38:47

but the problem was that the

00:38:51

system was established and order 2 0 447 from the

00:38:56

very beginning was aimed at the

00:39:00

escalation of terror and its release far away

00:39:05

beyond these sub-accounting categories and

00:39:09

thus it affected people who

00:39:12

had no signs

00:39:15

of hostility at all, it cannot be said that these sub-

00:39:20

accounting people were enemies and were

00:39:22

guilty of something, no, but at least there

00:39:25

was some logic here as it

00:39:26

spread terror, this

00:39:29

logic completely disappeared, it turned out that the

00:39:35

NKVD officers arrested a person and

00:39:39

interrogated him

00:39:41

because they were required to identify not

00:39:44

just individual enemies, but networks of enemies of the

00:39:48

organization, under torture, they obtained

00:39:52

certain testimony from this person and

00:39:55

arrested those whom he pointed to;

00:39:58

these were relatives, colleagues,

00:40:01

acquaintances, and so on often name

00:40:04

the names the person might not have suspected that the

00:40:07

investigator would interpret these

00:40:10

people as members of an anti-Soviet

00:40:12

organization, however, you happened

00:40:15

very quickly, so the security officers went

00:40:19

beyond the established plans and beyond the scope of

00:40:23

their records and arrested a large

00:40:27

number of people

00:40:28

and beyond the plans established by the order of

00:40:32

November 2, 447

00:40:33

but this was not scary for them

00:40:36

because in fact this order

00:40:38

provided for a mechanism for

00:40:41

increasing plans, a mechanism for

00:40:44

spreading terror to new

00:40:46

categories of the population, for this it was necessary to

00:40:49

simply request permission from Moscow for

00:40:52

additional arrests and Moscow gave

00:40:55

these permissions; we have now received a large

00:40:59

number of different kinds of

00:41:00

documents testifying to how

00:41:03

these permissions were formulated, as a

00:41:05

rule, they were formalized either by deprivations of

00:41:08

the Politburo

00:41:09

or by the sole instructions of Stalin

00:41:12

or by the sole instructions of

00:41:14

Yezhov. Here you see the telegrams and steel

00:41:17

on which he sent to the place

00:41:19

allowing local NKVD bodies

00:41:22

additional arrests, initially these

00:41:27

mass operations that we are talking about now

00:41:30

we are talking about it was planned to

00:41:32

finish in the thirty-seventh year at the

00:41:35

end of the thirty-seventh year, however, as

00:41:40

subsequent events showed,

00:41:42

decisions were made to extend the

00:41:45

operation period also for 1938, and here we

00:41:49

can talk about a kind of second

00:41:52

stage of mass operations that are already

00:41:55

opening in the thirty-eighth year, which was not

00:41:58

foreseen among other things, the

00:42:00

initial

00:42:01

decisions of how this happened, the documents

00:42:04

again testify to us

00:42:06

that the order to

00:42:10

extend the operation in the thirty-eighth

00:42:12

year was also sent down from above, signed

00:42:17

in fact became, in fact, it

00:42:19

was again a series of decisions of the Politburo to

00:42:23

extend the

00:42:24

operation by order 2 0 447 and operations

00:42:29

against national counter-revolutionary

00:42:33

contingents, individual letters have been preserved;

00:42:35

notes from Stalin in particular to Yezhov,

00:42:39

how he directly directs the leadership of the

00:42:42

NKVD to extend the operation, here is one of

00:42:45

the letters dated January 17, 1938, the Ser line has

00:42:50

not been unwound, but

00:42:51

you need to keep in mind that there are a lot of Socialist Revolutionaries in our

00:42:54

army and outside the army, well

00:43:00

you can read it needs to act more

00:43:02

quickly and efficiently as they say Stalin is

00:43:06

cheap, on the basis of these general instructions,

00:43:11

decisions were made to extend these

00:43:16

massive operations, but the security officers, of

00:43:20

course, faced a big problem: how to

00:43:23

continue these operations, where to look for the so-

00:43:26

called contingents for arrests and

00:43:28

executions of all those who was

00:43:31

recorded in their file cabinets, they have already, as they

00:43:34

say, been brought to justice and have

00:43:36

already either sent moisture or shot

00:43:39

what to do next, where to look for new

00:43:42

enemies and then the entrance in order to

00:43:47

carry out all these orders, all these plans

00:43:49

went through a variety of methods,

00:43:52

well, first of all, it was the method using the

00:43:55

so-called confessions of those arrested,

00:43:58

which I already spoke about in the NKVD in this

00:44:02

period of 3-7 years, torture is widely used,

00:44:05

as we now know on the basis of a

00:44:08

special directive signed by Stalin’s

00:44:10

telegram and

00:44:11

which stated that ck

00:44:14

allows the use of methods of physical

00:44:17

coercion, as it was called at that time

00:44:20

methods of physical influence and of course,

00:44:23

under the influence of these methods, people either

00:44:28

died if they refused to confess,

00:44:31

and in fact, the mortality rate in

00:44:35

NKVD prisons during that period was incredibly

00:44:37

high, we still cannot count

00:44:40

how many were killed in this way and

00:44:43

died from such difficult conditions of

00:44:47

detention, but according to As a separate example, we

00:44:48

know that there was a lot

00:44:50

or they had another opportunity to

00:44:53

confess, to admit of course in

00:44:56

quotes what the investigators require of them,

00:44:59

many confessed, however, this was not

00:45:03

enough and therefore in many regions and there

00:45:05

are many documents on this subject,

00:45:07

the security officers resorted to various kinds using a different

00:45:10

method, for example, they carried out mass

00:45:12

raids,

00:45:13

surrounded, say, the city market,

00:45:17

arrested people who, in their opinion,

00:45:19

looked, well, let’s say, suspicious

00:45:22

with a beard, for example, they were there and brought them to the

00:45:27

NKVD, where they were charged with

00:45:30

enemy activity and

00:45:33

this conveyor mechanism was repeated, they

00:45:35

took testimony from aristo, they were convicted themselves

00:45:39

and those people whom they called

00:45:42

enemies in order to carry out these

00:45:44

plans for the second period of mass operations,

00:45:47

they also declared on other grounds, well, for example,

00:45:50

by addresses at the addresses, that is, the

00:45:54

port for the Polish operation, this was

00:45:56

especially typical, just an

00:45:59

NKVD employee went to the address desk and

00:46:00

signed out people with surnames that

00:46:03

ended in and

00:46:04

and well, it was assumed that they were probably

00:46:08

Poles, but who knows, there could be

00:46:11

anyone there, Jews, Ukrainians, and Russians,

00:46:14

but nevertheless, they

00:46:17

were also arrested using various kinds of

00:46:19

lists of village councils about what they had

00:46:22

once imposed on someone a fine or

00:46:24

something like that, these people were also

00:46:27

identified and arrested, thus

00:46:30

the terror acquired colossal proportions, I

00:46:33

will repeat once again, in two years I was

00:46:35

arrested, at least some

00:46:38

think a little more, but we can

00:46:40

stick to it, this is the official website of the NKVD

00:46:44

1 and 60 million people in just

00:46:47

two years, and let’s take into account this fact that

00:46:51

the operations, as I already said, began in

00:46:54

August of 1937 and ended in

00:46:58

November of 1938, which I will talk about later,

00:47:01

so if we divide, for example,

00:47:03

the number of those shot by this period, it

00:47:05

turns out that every day they shot

00:47:08

approximately one and a half to two thousand

00:47:10

people every day every day two

00:47:12

thousand two thousand two thousand so and

00:47:16

so these massive operations,

00:47:18

of course, involved involved a

00:47:21

huge number of very different

00:47:24

people, who were these people, historians have been

00:47:28

working more and more

00:47:30

actively lately on these problems let's

00:47:33

say the socio-demographic

00:47:35

characteristics of the victims of terror in particular,

00:47:38

here at the Faculty of History we have a

00:47:41

laboratory at the Department of Historical

00:47:46

Informatics under the leadership of Ice

00:47:48

Beard, a corresponding member of the

00:47:51

Academy of Sciences, young employees

00:47:55

write and defend dissertations on this

00:47:59

topic, that is, they use data from

00:48:02

investigative files of memory books and they are trying to

00:48:06

count who

00:48:08

came under the blow of repression for what time,

00:48:11

very very briefly, I will talk about what,

00:48:15

so to speak, what conclusions they came to,

00:48:18

what are some social and

00:48:20

demographic characteristics of the victims of

00:48:22

mass operations who, from my point of

00:48:24

view, listen to attention based on social

00:48:26

status, mostly these are Christians, workers,

00:48:28

ordinary employees which is generally understandable

00:48:30

because, as I already said, the bosses

00:48:33

during the mass operations were not condemned;

00:48:35

most of them were of

00:48:37

working age, approximately

00:48:39

30 to 50 years old;

00:48:42

women made up less than ten

00:48:44

percent; they were arrested; this is an extremely

00:48:46

interesting fact, which in many ways, from my

00:48:49

point of view, is evidence of deep

00:48:50

patriarchy of Soviet society,

00:48:53

where a woman was considered so not

00:48:59

[music]

00:49:01

after all, an independent person that she

00:49:04

could not even be a spy and an enemy,

00:49:08

older people were mostly

00:49:11

sentenced to death, which is even

00:49:13

understandable why they should be taken to camps, where

00:49:16

it would be better to mess with them right away, and so on further and

00:49:20

so on, I think many conclusions

00:49:22

will be further clarified and we will learn a lot of

00:49:24

new and interesting things,

00:49:26

although terribly interesting in the sense of the

00:49:31

tragedy of these events, about who

00:49:34

came under the blow of massive mass

00:49:38

operations, and now after historians

00:49:41

realized that these

00:49:42

great terror is not house that it

00:49:45

represents centralized

00:49:47

mass operations that are carried out on

00:49:50

orders from above, which are controlled from

00:49:53

above, which are controlled at the level of the

00:49:55

NKVD, which capture increasingly

00:49:59

wider sections of the country's population, has become a

00:50:02

logical question: what are the reasons for

00:50:05

all this, why why, for what

00:50:11

reason, the terror of the thirty-seventh year 38

00:50:16

was carried out precisely in the form of these massive

00:50:18

operations, and here historians entered into

00:50:23

various kinds of disputes about which

00:50:25

I will tell you very briefly now, well, the first

00:50:31

reason can be called this reason

00:50:36

formulated by the revisionists of the ahause in the

00:50:38

management of the plot of the nomenklatura and so

00:50:41

on, as I already said, the documents and and

00:50:43

categorically not confirmed I will give

00:50:48

just one fact: these so-called

00:50:52

conspirators who allegedly put pressure on

00:50:54

Stalin, the secretaries of the regional committees,

00:50:56

they were in fact the first victims

00:51:01

of terror and, in fact, almost

00:51:06

all of them were destroyed already in the thirty-

00:51:09

seventh year, so it is unclear

00:51:11

how they could finish off someone

00:51:14

and demand carrying out these

00:51:18

terrorist actions, that is, we, well, it doesn’t

00:51:25

work out for us, this version doesn’t

00:51:27

work out, the documents reject

00:51:29

reprisal against the old party guard in

00:51:31

order for Stalin to finally

00:51:34

establish himself as the sole

00:51:36

dictator, of course, such a motive was

00:51:39

undoubtedly during the purges, but I

00:51:42

will repeat it again approximately several

00:51:45

tens of thousands of nomenklatura

00:51:48

workers were arrested in 30 minutes in

00:51:50

1938, the

00:51:51

bulk of one and a half million, at

00:51:54

least they were ordinary citizens,

00:51:56

so this is the purge of the nomenklatura

00:52:00

as an explanation for everything and the entire set of

00:52:03

mass operations, of course, it doesn’t work,

00:52:07

some say, but with the special predilection of

00:52:11

authoritarian leaders dictators and societies in general of

00:52:14

modern societies of the 20th century to not

00:52:18

to unification to some kind of social

00:52:21

engineering

00:52:22

when the state tries to make

00:52:26

its citizens, first of all, an obedient

00:52:28

mass; to trim

00:52:31

society like grass on a lawn; to

00:52:34

make everyone more or less equal; well, in a

00:52:39

general form, perhaps such an explanation

00:52:44

should not be completely rejected however, from my

00:52:46

point of view, from the point of view of many of my

00:52:48

colleagues, it is so abstract and

00:52:50

so not concrete that it does not allow

00:52:53

us to answer at least 1 question:

00:52:55

why did Stalin decide to carry out this cutting of this clearing

00:52:58

in thirty-seven

00:53:01

thirty-eight,

00:53:02

why not earlier why not Later

00:53:06

historians should answer such questions and

00:53:09

some of them answer them in the

00:53:12

spirit that Stalin was preparing for elections according to the

00:53:15

constitution of 3-6 and the elections were supposed to

00:53:19

take place in the thirty-seventh year,

00:53:23

perhaps such a motive was present in the

00:53:27

calculations of the

00:53:28

country's top leadership, but for

00:53:31

me personally it is the same It seems to me very

00:53:32

convincing for one simple reason, it’s

00:53:35

much simpler and in general there and the zone

00:53:38

we understand that it was quite simple

00:53:41

just to count the number of ballots

00:53:45

since it was necessary to count it, it’s not at all difficult to

00:53:49

do and, in fact, that’s what

00:53:51

was done and for this there was no need to

00:53:53

destroy hundreds of thousands people

00:53:55

in order to get a certain result in the

00:53:57

elections, some are burning about the need to

00:54:00

replenish the labor force of the gulag economy;

00:54:03

indeed, the gulag economy in this

00:54:05

period is already acquiring

00:54:06

significant large sizes if it

00:54:09

needs labor, but let’s think about what

00:54:14

happened in 30 years of thirty-eight,

00:54:17

680,000 at least executed, what

00:54:21

a here the calculation is for a labor force of

00:54:25

680 thousand of which at least

00:54:27

probably several hundred thousand were

00:54:30

qualified full-time

00:54:32

workers; they were not sent to the camps with donkeys; they

00:54:34

were shot, therefore, after all,

00:54:38

some political motive, the motive of

00:54:40

political purge prevailed in these

00:54:43

actions and recently it has been quite a

00:54:48

long time in fact Historians are

00:54:51

more and more inclined towards that version; I,

00:54:55

too, seem to

00:54:56

be committed to this version, that it was

00:55:00

about the fact that in 1937–38, the

00:55:02

country’s leadership

00:55:05

was pursuing a course of destruction of the mythical

00:55:08

potential fifth column; communication with the

00:55:10

increase in

00:55:11

military threats as the key words in this

00:55:16

thesis is mythical mythical fifth

00:55:19

column

00:55:21

Here we cannot limit ourselves to

00:55:24

saying Stalin fought the fifth column

00:55:26

.

00:55:29

Stalin fought against the fictitious fifth

00:55:31

column,

00:55:32

as I have already tried to show you,

00:55:35

many of the majority of these people not only did

00:55:40

not have any compromising

00:55:42

moments in their lives in the past, but were

00:55:46

absolutely not compromised in any way and were

00:55:50

not guilty before the Soviet regime, and

00:55:56

indeed what is attractive about this

00:55:58

thesis about the

00:56:00

growing military threat as basically

00:56:03

factory of

00:56:04

these mass purges

00:56:07

we see a certain synchronization during

00:56:10

this period of

00:56:11

growing international tension and

00:56:15

intensifying terror in the country in the

00:56:17

thirty-sixth year the first

00:56:20

trials against the oppositionists are being prepared

00:56:22

and before that such an important event takes place

00:56:26

as the re-militarization of the Rhine

00:56:28

zone, indicating that war is

00:56:30

quite possible not behind the mountains and that

00:56:33

Western democracies are not able

00:56:35

to resist Hitler,

00:56:37

then the war in Spain begins and

00:56:39

becomes more and more fierce and

00:56:42

they began to follow this war very closely,

00:56:44

there are a huge number of

00:56:46

documents about how he reads the report of the

00:56:51

incoming Spain, what instructions he

00:56:54

gives to the Spanish communists and the Soviet

00:56:56

adviser in Spain among these instructions,

00:57:01

the main thing is to look for enemies and spies of your

00:57:04

slaves; they are preventing you from fighting; they are

00:57:09

preventing you from defeating Franco; then

00:57:13

Japan begins; the German

00:57:15

rapprochement; that Italy joins the alliance of Japan and Germany in

00:57:20

the year thirty-seven; the

00:57:23

war in Spain intensifies; Japan

00:57:27

attacks China; and some are considered to be

00:57:31

the one in general the key moment is

00:57:33

the progress towards the Second World War and,

00:57:37

by the way, after this, deportations are carried out

00:57:40

to the Koreans from the Far East,

00:57:42

which really becomes a theater of

00:57:46

military operations, this synchronization

00:57:51

between the increased military threat and the

00:57:53

increased repression within the USSR, in

00:57:56

my opinion, looks quite convincing

00:57:59

and allows us to put forward the thesis of

00:58:02

eliminating

00:58:04

potential mythical fifth column

00:58:07

as a reliable thesis explaining the

00:58:13

calculations and plans of the top Soviet

00:58:16

leadership when organizing

00:58:19

great terror when organizing

00:58:21

mass operations, it is obvious that the

00:58:25

mass operations organized in this way,

00:58:27

which provoked a

00:58:30

kind of snowball, the

00:58:32

snowball of arrests grew, they

00:58:36

could continue indefinitely, more and more

00:58:40

new people ended up in these

00:58:42

fat repressions, the more

00:58:44

arrested there were, the more there were those

00:58:48

who could potentially be arrested again,

00:58:51

and so on and so forth, and

00:58:54

here it all ended

00:58:58

as could be expected, it should have

00:59:00

happened also centrally,

00:59:03

as the decision was made to start

00:59:04

terror, the decision was made to its

00:59:07

termination, the

00:59:09

Politburo made a decision on November 17, 1938

00:59:18

to terminate the operation of arrests and

00:59:23

mass operations of arrests of amusements;

00:59:26

before that,

00:59:31

preparations for the termination of

00:59:35

mass operations were carried out in an equally centralized manner, in particular Stalin and

00:59:38

appointed as Yezhov’s deputy

00:59:40

Beria a man whom [ __ ] Yezhov,

00:59:43

of course, would never have imagined took

00:59:45

to replace it, he understood everything, in fact,

00:59:47

he understood everything that a mine had already been placed under him, so to

00:59:49

speak,

00:59:51

only the question was when

00:59:54

it was not when this mine would explode and it

00:59:58

exploded on November 24, 1938, when

01:00:02

Yezhov was released, he was soon arrested and

01:00:05

was appointed People's Commissar I believe after this

01:00:10

there were purges in the NKVD apparatus, arrests,

01:00:14

however, just as it happened under Yezhov

01:00:18

when he replaced the previous People's Commissar and

01:00:21

then he also carried out purges and

01:00:24

got rid of people and a year and now

01:00:26

they got rid of the will of the people and

01:00:30

party workers were sent to the NKVD to

01:00:33

strengthening the ranks of security officers, this was called

01:00:39

strengthening party influence in

01:00:42

state security bodies in the complex of

01:00:46

reshuffles in the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs,

01:00:48

stopping mass operations, arrests of security

01:00:54

officers, sending

01:00:57

party workers to state security agencies,

01:01:00

we characterize it as a situation of emerging from

01:01:05

terror and it was no less important from the

01:01:10

point of view of course the functioning of the

01:01:12

mechanism of power than Unfortunately, it is necessary to enter into it,

01:01:20

but it must be said that this is one of

01:01:22

those issues that has not yet been

01:01:26

sufficiently studied and is

01:01:29

waiting to be explored, although much in

01:01:33

this direction has been done in recent years as an

01:01:37

integral part of this campaign

01:01:40

to get out of terror, there was also a campaign

01:01:43

to fight the so-called slanderers

01:01:47

who is to blame for what happened in

01:01:50

thirty-seven and thirty-eight,

01:01:51

well, it’s clear, on the one hand, the hedgehogs and other

01:01:57

security officers infiltrated the

01:01:59

enemies who actually penetrated the NKVD organs,

01:02:02

but were they the only ones who wondered in

01:02:05

those years, the Soviet press, no, the

01:02:09

slanderers are also to blame, it was the slanderers

01:02:13

who contributed to this that

01:02:16

innocent people were arrested because slanderers

01:02:20

wrote denunciations, often against hundreds of innocent people, the

01:02:26

internal affairs bodies were forced to

01:02:28

react, of course, to find denunciations and thus

01:02:34

the terror acquired an avalanche-like

01:02:37

character and those who, in

01:02:43

general, should not have been arrested were arrested and

01:02:46

in many newspapers they were hiding in newspaper,

01:02:49

it’s true, this is one of the examples that could be

01:02:52

seen in those years in that period,

01:02:55

it’s better to say at the end of ’38, that is, in the

01:02:58

ninth year, at the beginning,

01:02:59

such messages from you see the column for

01:03:02

you on the lower right side,

01:03:04

which is called the slanderer spichak from the

01:03:08

courtroom of this particular

01:03:11

citizen by name spichak was arrested,

01:03:16

tried, accused of being arrested because of his fault,

01:03:18

people were arrested, a certain number of such trials were

01:03:23

held,

01:03:24

how many we don’t know yet, but at least

01:03:28

we were talking about dozens, so

01:03:33

this discontent that was accumulating in

01:03:35

the country was, as they say, directed

01:03:39

against certain

01:03:41

perpetrators against enemies in the NKVD and against

01:03:45

slanderers, how effective

01:03:49

such explanations turned out to be, it seems to me that

01:03:54

very effective is that you

01:03:58

can still hear

01:03:59

in our country mass ideas about

01:04:03

terror, that its causes were given by

01:04:10

Dovlatov, who gave the

01:04:13

figure of 4 million from somewhere unknown,

01:04:15

but he himself gave it to our people, they like to talk about dreams

01:04:17

publicists

01:04:19

in general, this bright image of a non-commissioned officer

01:04:22

sky widow who flogged herself, that

01:04:25

is, about people who

01:04:27

repressed themselves, we can say that he is alive and

01:04:30

well in our mass ideas

01:04:33

about that era and in particular about the great

01:04:38

terror, although as I tried

01:04:42

to show you the wonderfulness of this period they worked in a

01:04:44

completely different algorithm, they worked

01:04:47

from materials from file cabinets, they worked from

01:04:51

materials obtained as a result of

01:04:53

interrogation during the investigation,

01:04:55

they worked conducting raids and they were

01:04:59

extremely uninterested in

01:05:01

working with denunciations because denunciations

01:05:04

still required verification, they required

01:05:09

some kind of efforts for which there was simply

01:05:13

not enough time at that time and of course a

01:05:18

certain confirmation of this is not

01:05:25

significant, I do not completely deny the

01:05:28

full significance of this factor, but it

01:05:31

was relatively insignificant

01:05:33

compared to other factors in the

01:05:36

organization of terror, this was

01:05:39

evidenced by reports that went

01:05:42

to Moscow from the field one fine day,

01:05:45

Yezhov wanted to know how public

01:05:48

activity

01:05:49

helps the

01:05:51

state security agencies to work, requests were sent out

01:05:53

with a unique questionnaire, how many

01:05:59

enemies were identified thanks to the signal of the

01:06:01

workers, and such answers came from many places,

01:06:08

not a single one for us,

01:06:12

but nevertheless, of course, the leadership of

01:06:16

the country and, above all, Stalin Such

01:06:18

explanations about the slanderer of the

01:06:20

ravines who disappeared in the NKVD suited themselves quite well

01:06:23

and I won’t even explain

01:06:26

why at one fine moment Stalin

01:06:30

told

01:06:31

our famous aircraft designer

01:06:34

Yakovlev I’m going to the bastard, a decomposed

01:06:38

man killed many innocents, we

01:06:42

shot him for this,

01:06:44

well, there was a lot of Stalin in these words

01:06:46

truth,

01:06:47

Ezhov really was a scoundrel, Ezhov,

01:06:52

who every day supervised the

01:06:55

destruction of a huge number of people,

01:06:57

he really decomposed, he drank,

01:07:00

debauchery, nothing, appeared less and less in his

01:07:03

office, and so on, Ezhov

01:07:06

really killed many innocent

01:07:09

people, I would even say more, he killed

01:07:13

almost everyone, almost everyone he killed was the

01:07:17

innocent people of Yezhov

01:07:22

were actually shot for this in the

01:07:23

forties, although they did not quietly

01:07:26

take him to an open trial and

01:07:28

this is also quite easy to explain, well,

01:07:33

did Stalin tell Yakovlevo the whole truth, we

01:07:37

now know very well that no, he didn’t say

01:07:40

thank you

01:07:43

[applause] a

01:07:50

range of questions regarding time, only the

01:08:01

question of wasting

01:08:02

three four questions and then, but maybe I’ll

01:08:09

first answer the note the clothes themselves,

01:08:12

this will be the last one, how did the great

01:08:16

terror affect the party, what changed in it

01:08:19

after the repressions, how did this

01:08:21

change affect its further

01:08:23

history, this is a very interesting big

01:08:25

big question that we are recording in this

01:08:31

period this period, if we talk about the

01:08:35

relationship between the NKVD party,

01:08:37

these are the two main supports and systems under

01:08:42

Stalin,

01:08:43

we see, well, let’s say a swing in which

01:08:49

for some time the

01:08:50

NKVD bodies outweighed the party apparatus,

01:08:55

why because they received too

01:08:58

much power, including the ability to

01:09:00

repress party leaders and

01:09:03

widely took advantage of this opportunity,

01:09:06

the most striking evidence

01:09:09

of what enormous power and influence the

01:09:11

security officers showed when they arrived at this time

01:09:14

was the appointment of a number of them as secretaries of

01:09:17

regional party committees; the arrests were so

01:09:20

enormous that there

01:09:23

simply weren’t enough party workers and therefore they preferred to

01:09:28

appoint security officers to this post, apparently

01:09:30

counting but he wo

01:09:32

n’t arrest himself, this of course was

01:09:37

evidence that the party found itself

01:09:40

in a vulnerable position during this period, if

01:09:46

we talk about numbers,

01:09:48

it suffered relatively, but still

01:09:52

not as significant as we

01:09:55

sometimes imagine, we are talking about that

01:10:02

no more than

01:10:03

100 thousand people were expelled from the party in 1938, and not all of them were

01:10:07

arrested;

01:10:08

some were later reinstated in the party,

01:10:12

but this experience, the experience of the predominance of the

01:10:19

NKVD over the party, turned out to be very important both

01:10:23

for the party apparatus itself and for

01:10:25

Stalin in particular, never again such

01:10:29

he did not repeat the experiments; in the thirty-

01:10:32

ninth year, a campaign was carried out

01:10:35

to strengthen the party leadership in the NKVD,

01:10:38

which I spoke about, and in particular, after the

01:10:41

arrest of a large number of security officers,

01:10:44

pure party workers were put in their places,

01:10:47

and Beria himself, by the way,

01:10:49

was a kind of intermediate type on the one

01:10:52

hand former security officer of the other side,

01:10:54

head of the Communist Party of Georgia during this

01:10:59

period, a number of decisions were made that were

01:11:01

in effect until the end of Soviet power,

01:11:05

these are the names in the thirty-ninth year in 38

01:11:07

39 at the end of 300 looks like the ninth year, in the

01:11:10

wake of the exit from terror, these decisions were made,

01:11:12

for example, the most important of these

01:11:16

party decisions a worker could not be

01:11:23

arrested without the consent of the relevant

01:11:26

party committee;

01:11:29

this rule was in effect until the end of

01:11:33

the Soviet Union; the second, no less important

01:11:37

rule, which is evidence that the

01:11:39

party organs had acquired a certain level of

01:11:43

protection and very strong protection,

01:11:48

the security officers were forbidden to recruit

01:11:52

agents to the party apparatus, and all those already

01:11:57

recruited were ordered to release

01:12:00

this and the duty to sever ties with them

01:12:02

and liquidate with them and

01:12:05

liquidate their personal files, the agent’s personal files

01:12:09

and until the end of Soviet power in the

01:12:12

party apparatus,

01:12:15

intelligence agents were not recruited; this was

01:12:19

strictly prohibited;

01:12:22

thus, we see such a phenomenon as

01:12:26

shock, terror, which contributed to the

01:12:30

weakening from the beginning of the role of the party then

01:12:33

he contributed to a new strengthening of the strengthening of the

01:12:37

role of the party in the Soviet system,

01:12:41

I think this is the main thing that can be said

01:12:46

today, if we talk about the impact of

01:12:49

terror on the party, more notes and of

01:13:07

course a tasty question, then how

01:13:16

will it affect

01:13:19

and let's gather friends, just remember,

01:13:30

please, too, yes yes, I will remember

01:13:49

[music]

01:13:54

from yes yes yes

01:14:19

your question is up there

01:14:31

we are

01:14:37

foamy in this and it’s clear yes well I

01:14:56

ask

01:15:05

what a fool or so that the last one

01:15:32

[music]

01:15:43

[music]

01:15:49

[music]

01:15:50

thank you for opening the standard for or

01:15:53

I will answer very briefly and to and I

01:15:56

’ll start Excuse me all the same, while I remember from the

01:16:00

questions that were asked from the spot, I think

01:16:03

the census of 3-7 years of course played a

01:16:05

certain role in, so to speak,

01:16:10

the formation of the mindset of the Soviet

01:16:13

leadership and you probably ask a question about everything and then

01:16:17

you know well, I will give

01:16:20

only one example, the census showed that

01:16:23

despite a long period of suppression of

01:16:26

religion, arrests of

01:16:29

religious clergy, and so on and so forth,

01:16:31

more than half of the country's

01:16:33

adult population declared themselves in this census,

01:16:36

there was a point about religion,

01:16:41

they declared themselves believers,

01:16:43

and this despite the fact that there were rumors throughout the country

01:16:46

that the one who declared

01:16:53

himself how can believers be subject to tribute,

01:16:55

nevertheless, people spoke of themselves as

01:16:58

believers, I think that of course for the

01:17:02

suspicious Stalin this was a

01:17:04

fairly important argument that

01:17:06

society still failed, as

01:17:09

they say, to blind it to the extent that it is a

01:17:16

hotel that concerns purges and knapsacks,

01:17:23

as a rule, from the southern region from the southern

01:17:26

regions of the southern borders, yes, you

01:17:28

know better, I think this problem since

01:17:30

the fuss did not work specifically with this

01:17:32

problem, then of course I don’t think that

01:17:37

Stalin loved the Iranians or anyone Solis

01:17:40

Stalin in general he loved, having worked with

01:17:43

this man for many years, to let him, he loved himself,

01:17:46

he used everyone else to

01:17:51

varying degrees, so to speak, that is, apparently the

01:17:53

Iranians, in his opinion, did not

01:17:56

pose

01:17:57

a threat, which, for example, the Poles, where the

01:18:00

executions actually reached a

01:18:03

huge

01:18:04

huge percentage, and the Germans and therefore they

01:18:08

were to a lesser extent, they were shot, to a

01:18:11

greater extent, they were simply deported so

01:18:15

that they would not live on the borders with

01:18:18

Iran, so that they would again create the same

01:18:21

logic as with the Koreans before the Koreans, after all, they did

01:18:24

n’t shoot Arisov either, but what is

01:18:26

called deported, but there was a

01:18:28

special

01:18:29

Iranian Iranian operation what

01:18:34

about the question about Tukhachevsky, yes,

01:18:42

you know, I’m watching all the time, I’ve been

01:18:45

studying history for almost 30 years now and I’m

01:18:47

constantly observing these

01:18:49

revivals of these fairy tales about how there

01:18:51

was a conspiracy among the

01:18:54

generals and in fact it all

01:18:57

originates in the well-known book of 56 years old,

01:19:01

Alexander Orlova, the

01:19:02

secret history of Stalin’s crimes, and

01:19:05

but since then it has been many times, this

01:19:07

fake has already been exposed and there are a large

01:19:11

number of works on this topic, if anyone

01:19:14

is interested, I can

01:19:16

recommend you the book by Vladimir Khaustov

01:19:20

and Leonardo Samuelson, Stalin NKVD and

01:19:24

repression and Khaustov, he is a professor,

01:19:30

head of the department even at the Academy of the

01:19:33

Federal Security Service, he had

01:19:35

access to all the necessary archives, he

01:19:37

wrote this wonderful book and he

01:19:39

studied the primary documents and in general, no, there is

01:19:42

no conspiracy there, there are

01:19:45

no traces of it,

01:19:48

it was fabricated, as they say in the NKVD

01:19:52

only in this sense he he he

01:19:54

existed

01:19:56

logic logic is clear about this I already

01:19:59

said of course the military especially

01:20:03

such independent military maps in

01:20:05

Czech posed a certain

01:20:07

definite threat to Stalin, or

01:20:14

more precisely, let’s say he thought that they

01:20:16

posed a certain threat to him

01:20:17

because it’s not clear how they

01:20:19

behaved in some critical

01:20:21

situation and so on and so forth,

01:20:23

therefore it is better to destroy them, bring in

01:20:25

young generals who

01:20:28

have no history at all, as they say,

01:20:30

behind them, who received power

01:20:33

from the leader,

01:20:34

who are in every possible way loyal to him, and so on and so

01:20:36

forth, he, in

01:20:38

fact, as you know,

01:20:40

this is what he did with regard to the problems and

01:20:45

resistance of steel, well, the

01:20:52

party elite,

01:20:53

or this process, it was gradual,

01:20:57

as Stalin was called by one of his

01:21:02

colleagues, so to speak, he is a great dosage,

01:21:05

he knew how to carry this out, however, this applies

01:21:10

not only to Stalin, this a very

01:21:11

characteristic feature of so many

01:21:12

dictators, he knew how to carry out his

01:21:16

policies in such a way that those around him and

01:21:20

with whom he seemed to share power had no

01:21:25

reason, until a certain moment, to

01:21:27

suspect him of some,

01:21:29

so to speak, intentions to destroy this

01:21:34

old party, I say everyone hoped to

01:21:37

embroider some actually survived the

01:21:41

majority no but everyone hoped

01:21:43

to

01:21:44

unite, it was not so easy in

01:21:47

fact because behind each, well, for

01:21:50

example, this is how the members of the

01:21:51

Politburo lived, these were the so-called

01:21:55

protected people, each of them had their own

01:22:00

security guard, a driver, a cook from the NKVD, a servant

01:22:07

from the NKVD regarding the movement of each

01:22:11

of them constant reports were compiled on

01:22:14

where I went, where I was, and so on,

01:22:16

try in these conditions, not just to

01:22:19

go somewhere uncontrollably, so to speak, to

01:22:22

meet uncontrollably to come to an

01:22:25

agreement with someone, no one

01:22:27

trusted each other, and the system was

01:22:32

built in such a way that it is

01:22:34

quite difficult to resist, but I repeat this

01:22:36

applies to literally all dictatorships

01:22:38

literally all dictatorships as a rule

01:22:42

the dictator is one of his main goals 2

01:22:48

c the first goal is to keep the country in obedience

01:22:50

the second goal is to keep obedience

01:22:53

his circle of so-called oligarchs

01:22:56

with whom he supposedly has to allocate

01:22:59

power, in fact he tries not to share

01:23:02

so they became here, no, there was no exception,

01:23:05

this can be said about anyone, because

01:23:08

most dictators in history

01:23:11

quite easily

01:23:13

dealt with some kind of potential

01:23:19

threat that came from the environment,

01:23:24

as for the questions in the notes, what is the

01:23:31

total number of victims of terror from 28 to

01:23:33

53 years you you know, I must

01:23:36

tell you that this question,

01:23:39

strangely enough, is not easy to answer,

01:23:41

although, as I already said, we have a huge

01:23:44

amount of departmental statistics and

01:23:47

so on, there are many questions that

01:23:56

historians find it difficult to answer, firstly,

01:23:59

the statistics were very different, they came from

01:24:04

different types of power of the

01:24:05

NKVD there were statistics from the People's Commissariat of Justice

01:24:08

because not all cases went

01:24:11

through the NKVD, they were arrested

01:24:14

at a certain stage by the police, which,

01:24:16

by the way, was not part of the NKVD at a certain

01:24:18

stage, it was such an

01:24:21

independent structure,

01:24:23

some cases were initiated by the prosecutor's office

01:24:25

and they should also be considered separately, but it

01:24:27

is not clear which ones we have We have

01:24:31

very rough calculations on this score, we

01:24:36

know exactly how mass

01:24:39

operations developed, that’s what we

01:24:41

talked about today, these numbers are the most

01:24:43

stable and

01:24:44

reliable because the angel has a special

01:24:47

accounting, when it comes to the total number of

01:24:51

repressed people, we have

01:24:52

to approximate such figures from approximately

01:24:57

30 to 53, that is, we

01:25:01

consider this time more or less the

01:25:03

Stalinist dictatorship,

01:25:12

probably about 18 underwear were arrested,

01:25:16

about 18 20 million

01:25:20

sentences were passed, but I will emphasize

01:25:24

sentences, you see, you understand that the

01:25:26

same person could Let's say they were arrested, they got hit

01:25:29

by Su-2 and maybe 3 times,

01:25:32

who knows from the prisoner they got caught again, but we

01:25:37

can't isolate this category, we can't

01:25:41

calculate this category with a sufficient

01:25:43

degree of certainty, we know, of course,

01:25:47

this one, we know almost certainly how many

01:25:50

were sent into exile like this called

01:25:53

kulaks,

01:25:54

other special settlers, the work of a settler, and

01:25:57

so on, this is about six million

01:25:59

people, this is no less known, we

01:26:04

have the number of those executed here, just

01:26:08

count it because a person has already been

01:26:09

shot;

01:26:16

Well, taking into account possible shortcomings, taking into account the fact

01:26:20

that some were killed during the

01:26:22

investigation and in fact were then registered as

01:26:25

sick, but in fact they were

01:26:27

physically destroyed,

01:26:28

we can talk about something and the numbers are

01:26:30

approaching the menu, there

01:26:32

was a large, very large

01:26:36

number of judgments

01:26:37

to the so-called not a sentence, an

01:26:43

unrelated conclusion, these are various types of

01:26:45

fines, forced labor, and so on, there

01:26:51

were about 30 million such convictions in such sentences during this period,

01:26:53

for example, you know by the labor decree for

01:26:57

being late for work, they were sentenced to

01:27:02

a fine and serving the sentence at the

01:27:05

workplace, but that is, here this is

01:27:10

some kind of general order of numbers

01:27:12

and then more disputes begin as to who should

01:27:16

be considered

01:27:17

political victims of the regime, in

01:27:19

particular victims of the regime, some

01:27:21

say we should only count those who

01:27:23

passed under Article 58 under the political

01:27:28

article, is that

01:27:31

correct then all the kulaks

01:27:34

who did not pass under Article 58 but

01:27:37

undoubtedly they were victims of political

01:27:38

repressions do not fall into this category,

01:27:41

for example, can one consider as victims

01:27:50

criminals those well, really

01:27:57

bandits who in

01:28:00

1937-38 were arrested not

01:28:03

because they did something and

01:28:04

were shot not because they

01:28:06

did something but because that they had once

01:28:09

done something, they were considered potentially dangerous,

01:28:12

suspicious, that is, in fact, they were

01:28:15

shot,

01:28:16

but because they had already been

01:28:18

convicted as such a person once, we can

01:28:21

say so if we qualify from a

01:28:24

legal point of view whether he was a

01:28:27

victim of political terror or a

01:28:30

criminal, too. the question is from my point of

01:28:36

view, of course he was a victim of

01:28:37

political purges because, in principle,

01:28:40

he was shot for something that he

01:28:44

did not do, but simply because maybe

01:28:48

he would someday do something else,

01:28:55

in 1947 the

01:28:58

famous decrees on thefts were adopted,

01:29:02

according to which people they were arrested for

01:29:07

petty thefts for large sentences,

01:29:09

there were many cases about this, even the

01:29:11

prosecutor general of the country wrote to

01:29:13

Stalin in one of his letters when people,

01:29:16

for example, women, widows whose husbands

01:29:20

died at the front, women burdened with

01:29:23

families and children, were sentenced there once to

01:29:27

sentenced to 7 years, say, imprisonment in

01:29:29

camps for the fact that she took a

01:29:32

loaf of bread from the factory where she worked, but following the

01:29:37

formal logic, she was a criminal, but for

01:29:43

example, I can’t even

01:29:45

name the street corners, and also go here, there is such a

01:29:50

huge number of these nuances

01:29:52

that here, of course, you need to study all this,

01:29:54

think, consider, but what are the

01:29:58

general figures, so I called it

01:30:01

somewhere between 18 and 20 million people sentenced to

01:30:05

imprisonment, about 800 thousand million

01:30:09

shot or otherwise

01:30:12

destroyed and

01:30:14

6 million sent into exile, not to

01:30:19

mention those sentenced to suspended sentences and

01:30:23

penalties of various kinds

01:30:25

regarding archives in their degree of openness

01:30:29

departmental party that something is

01:30:32

changing, of course, unfortunately

01:30:35

the archives of the federal security service are

01:30:38

still hopelessly closed to

01:30:40

researchers, although a lot has already been

01:30:42

published, but something is changing

01:30:45

due to the fact that in some

01:30:47

republics of the former, for example in Georgia, and

01:30:51

now in in Ukraine, open archives of the

01:30:55

relevant special services are open

01:30:58

very widely and on their basis historians

01:31:02

began to study those issues that

01:31:04

cannot be studied on the basis of

01:31:07

Russian archives and are doing this

01:31:09

quite

01:31:10

successfully; in particular, a

01:31:16

huge complex of

01:31:19

investigative and judicial cases against

01:31:22

security officers is now being increasingly introduced into circulation, which allows us study

01:31:25

what they call me about history, micro

01:31:28

history, terror, is it possible to

01:31:29

justify the terror of victory in the

01:31:32

Great Patriotic War?

01:31:34

Well, it seems to me that killing people cannot

01:31:38

be justified with anything, but this is of course

01:31:41

a bit of a moral point of view, and

01:31:44

probably if you take the point of view of

01:31:47

Stalin, then you can justify the terror of

01:31:50

victory in the Great Patriotic War

01:31:52

but at the same time, I would not forget that,

01:31:58

as many historians believe, it is not clear

01:32:04

whether terror helped to win the war, but the

01:32:08

fact that it was one of the factors

01:32:10

of defeat and one of the factors of

01:32:13

mass collaboration during the years of the

01:32:17

Great Patriotic War is that many

01:32:18

historians

01:32:19

undoubtedly consider the years of terror to be a twister of

01:32:23

thirty in the eighth year, not only was a

01:32:26

significant part of the

01:32:34

so-called labor potential of our

01:32:36

society destroyed, hundreds of thousands of able-bodied

01:32:41

people were destroyed; qualified personnel were destroyed,

01:32:46

not completely, of course, but also to a

01:32:49

noticeable extent; most often they talk about the

01:32:52

military, and this is correct, but in addition to

01:32:54

the military, they destroyed engineers,

01:32:56

managers of enterprises,

01:32:58

so on and so forth similar, if you are in the

01:33:01

thirty-eighth year, we are observing a

01:33:02

sharp drop in labor productivity

01:33:04

and a decrease in production growth, which

01:33:09

of course could be caused by a complex of

01:33:12

reasons, but no one denies that you

01:33:15

played a significant role,

01:33:17

it was all the more dangerous because it was

01:33:20

really a war and it

01:33:21

was necessary, on the contrary, to increase

01:33:23

production and so on, similar to

01:33:26

these arguments, I can continue in this

01:33:31

way, I would say that the thesis

01:33:36

that the victories of the Great Patriotic War

01:33:38

can be justified in general, everything, including the

01:33:41

mass murder of people, from my point of

01:33:43

view does

01:33:44

not correspond to the moral standards of

01:33:49

life in society, especially modern

01:33:53

society, not factual data that

01:33:58

show that terror rather caused

01:34:01

enormous damage to the country

01:34:04

than allowed it to strengthen its, so to speak,

01:34:08

moral and political unity, why did they

01:34:11

so blindly believe in the justice of

01:34:14

repressive measures?

01:34:28

it means they were

01:34:33

accepted before this was a very complex problem

01:34:39

and there was this and there was another thing top

01:34:43

as it was that many wrote

01:34:45

a statement proving the innocence of those

01:34:50

arrested and thanks to this they themselves

01:34:53

came under attack, by the way there were many

01:34:56

who took in the

01:34:57

children of the repressed for upbringing this

01:35:01

was also very dangerous by the way, but

01:35:03

people went for it,

01:35:08

what can I say, you understand, in order

01:35:12

to fully understand why people

01:35:15

believed or tried to believe, you have to live

01:35:21

to live at this time, one of the eyewitnesses

01:35:27

explained very well the dilemmas that

01:35:30

people had at that time,

01:35:31

it was possible to criticize politics and

01:35:37

in this case the result was very

01:35:42

possible, as they say, to keep the

01:35:46

truth somewhere in your pocket and pretend

01:35:51

that you actually approve of it all,

01:35:57

although inside you understand that it’s all

01:36:01

untrue, that it’s all a lie, that they are destroying

01:36:03

innocent people, and so on and so forth

01:36:05

something similar, in the opinion of this person whom

01:36:08

I quote, threatened with terrible

01:36:10

psychological mistakes, living a double

01:36:14

life, they are afraid about what is being said about what you

01:36:21

really think, this terrible

01:36:24

terrible stress is psy psychological

01:36:28

and finally says this person

01:36:30

there was the simplest and safest

01:36:33

method in these conditions to force yourself to

01:36:36

believe in that what is happening is the way it

01:36:40

should be, that it’s all true, that these are

01:36:43

really enemies, that our leaders are

01:36:46

really not infallible and that the NKVD

01:36:51

is doing everything correctly,

01:36:52

that we are surrounded by enemies and therefore we must

01:36:55

act this way, this was the

01:36:57

simplest and safest method, which

01:37:00

of course is not at all survival did not react

01:37:02

because, as I already said,

01:37:05

people fell under terror, and even the

01:37:11

most devout were more expensive, but

01:37:14

nevertheless, for the existence of this, it

01:37:16

was the most comfortable, if you

01:37:18

like, and justified from the point of view of

01:37:22

many places, that’s why they believed, that’s why

01:37:25

they believed, powerful propaganda Moreover,

01:37:29

propaganda that did not encounter

01:37:31

any opposition is that today we have

01:37:33

open borders, there is the Internet, there are

01:37:36

various resources that can be

01:37:38

used then you could

01:37:40

only read the newspaper, true

01:37:43

rumors, yes,

01:37:44

but these rumors spread so widely, after

01:37:47

all, they also imprisoned parents for rumors, could

01:37:51

some children now

01:37:53

they remember, but they are no longer children, they are

01:37:56

also grandfathers themselves, but remembering their

01:37:59

youth they say, but my parents

01:38:01

believed, they said there, that’s how it was,

01:38:03

and I listened to it too, let’s choose, well, you have to

01:38:07

understand all these real

01:38:09

things and what parents could do in the presence

01:38:12

of their child, to say that they could

01:38:14

say that Stalin the executioner is destroying

01:38:18

innocent people, so to speak, and so on, this is

01:38:22

putting this child at risk,

01:38:25

putting this child under attack,

01:38:26

naturally, everyone said what they

01:38:29

had to say and declare these

01:38:33

statements to be what people really

01:38:37

thought, this is this just at least, well,

01:38:40

let’s say, well, it’s not correct from a

01:38:43

historical point of view to think that

01:38:46

if you were taken to a rally and you

01:38:49

voted for killing the

01:38:52

spy dogs there, Kamenev Zinoviev

01:38:56

Rodek and others, and so on, everyone of course

01:38:58

raised their hand unanimously and then today

01:39:02

history says, well, look, after all Faith,

01:39:05

I think that these sources require a

01:39:09

more subtle analysis,

01:39:10

such sources as collections of materials

01:39:13

from rallies and so on,

01:39:16

this did not always reflect the real

01:39:20

real

01:39:22

mood of the people, and I’m confused; nevertheless,

01:39:27

the historian should approach these issues

01:39:28

more responsibly and not take what

01:39:33

is called literally

01:39:36

all the interpretations that the source gives are

01:39:39

straight directly onto the paper, there’s

01:39:42

no need to avoid politicization, it’s

01:39:44

all very often politicians who want to

01:39:46

justify Stalin today, they come up with

01:39:49

what he didn’t know, they come up with that there

01:39:53

was actually a conspiracy and he was forced to prevent it, they

01:39:57

come up with that, and the

01:40:01

repressed were in

01:40:04

fact not at all, as they say,

01:40:08

innocent of anything, in fact, basically

01:40:10

all the enemies were and they did the right thing by

01:40:12

shooting them, they would have shot them that way and

01:40:15

you didn’t win the war, well, you understand,

01:40:16

these are all politically motivated

01:40:19

excuses that at least At least we need to

01:40:23

substantiate this with sources and documents, and

01:40:26

this is not always done, or rather, in

01:40:29

this case it is never done, so

01:40:32

I would answer these questions so briefly,

01:40:34

thank you,

01:40:41

the blood of our sector, alektra, thank you, and

01:40:45

the value is a wonderful lecture, I understand

01:40:48

what it is already a little

01:40:49

pre-Christmas, the pre-New Year

01:40:51

mood can be sanitized by amarte

01:40:53

although the weather is quite

01:40:55

gloomy, but I would like to

01:40:57

thank all those who were our

01:40:59

faithful rescuers during the first year of

01:41:01

feeling our Victoria Victoria

01:41:03

chronograph birds then some Sergei

01:41:05

Vladimir Ninka was conducted by the

01:41:07

many-faced director Garf and enough from

01:41:10

her Russian Federation where, by the way, or the

01:41:12

quality was asked by this 6 volume of the gulag how it is

01:41:16

worth being on the labors of the Soviet Union I

01:41:19

hope that your consent is

01:41:22

attentive and participation in our lecture

01:41:25

allows you to hope for next year

01:41:27

put under the New Year tree until the summer of

01:41:30

next year Sorochinsk place and

01:41:32

very different topics starting from ancient

01:41:34

archaeological monuments on the territory of

01:41:36

Russia and ending, of course, with linear

01:41:39

topics, we will talk about the civil war,

01:41:41

we will talk about Sergei, you own Mironenko,

01:41:45

he promised a lecture at the protest, and the realities of myths are

01:41:48

associated with the murder of a star with bones, so

01:41:50

in the rain in this neighboring audience, we

01:41:52

wait for fate and wish you a successful,

01:41:55

pleasant thank you

01:41:58

[applause]

01:42:01

[music]

Description:

16 декабря 2017 года в рамках исторического лектория "Хронограф" с лекцией "«Большой террор». 1937-1938 гг. Архивные исследования и споры историков" выступил д.и.н., профессор кафедры истории России XX - XXI веков исторического факультета МГУ Олег Витальевич Хлевнюк. В последние двадцать лет историки интенсивно работали с ранее секретными советскими архивами. Это позволило подробно изучить многие ранее непонятные и малопонятные события и явления советской истории. К их числу относится и так называемый "большой террор" — серия массовых операций НКВД СССР, проведенных в 1937-1938 гг. О причинах, механизмах и последствиях этих операций, жертвами которых стали более полутора миллионов человек, шла речь в этой лекции.

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