How many flags there were The Soviet command attached exceptional importance to the battles to capture Berlin, and therefore the Military Council of the 3rd Shock Army, even before the start of the offensive, established the Red Banners of the Military Council, which were distributed to all rifle divisions

Appendix How many were there? Although concentration camps in the USSR numbered in the thousands, and the people who passed through them in the millions, for decades the exact number of victims was known only to a handful of officials. Therefore, during the years of Soviet power, trying to estimate the number

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

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

Some readers a) found it incorrect to compare the number affected from repression with the number dead during the war, b) found the very concept of victims of repression blurred, and c) were indignant at the extremely overestimated, in their opinion, estimate of the number of repressed. If we consider that 27 million people died during the war, then the number of victims of repression, if it were twice as large, should have been 54 million, which contradicts the data given in the well-known article by V.N. Zemskov "GULAG (historical and sociological aspect)", published in the journal "Sociological Research" (No. 6 and 7, 1991), which says:

“... In fact, the number of those convicted for political reasons (for "counter-revolutionary crimes") in the USSR for the period from 1921 to 1953, i.e. for 33 years, amounted to about 3.8 million people ... Statement ... of the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR V.A. Kryuchkov that in 1937-1938. no more than a million people were arrested, which is in full agreement with the current Gulag statistics that we studied in the second half of the 1930s.

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

In the article by V.N. Zemskov also cites other data based on archival documents (first of all, on the number and composition of the Gulag prisoners), which in no way confirm the estimates of the victims of terror by R. Conquest and A. Solzhenitsyn (about 60 million). So how many victims were there? This is worth understanding, and by no means only for the sake of evaluating our article. Let's start in order.

1. Is the quantity matching correct? affected from repression with the number dead during the war?

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

The concept of “victims of repression” is indeed vague. It can sometimes be used without comment, and sometimes not. We could not specify it for the same reason that we could compare the killed with the injured - we were interested in whether compatriots remember the victims of terror in their families, and by no means what percentage of them had injured relatives. But when it comes to how many “actually” there were victims, who should be considered victims, it is necessary to stipulate.

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

It is also appropriate to ask the question whether it is necessary to include in the statistics of repressions those convicted under criminal articles. One of the readers said that he was not ready to consider criminals victims of the regime. But not all who were convicted by ordinary courts under criminal articles were criminals. In the Soviet kingdom of distorting mirrors, almost all criteria were shifted. Looking ahead, we say that the cited V.N. Zemskov in the passage quoted above, the data relate only to those convicted under political articles and therefore are deliberately underestimated (the quantitative aspect will be discussed below). In the course of rehabilitation, especially during the period of perestroika, some convicted under criminal articles were rehabilitated as actually victims of political repression. Of course, in many cases it is possible to understand here only individually, however, as you know, the numerous "carriers" who picked up spikelets on the collective farm field or took a pack of nails home from the factory also went into the category of criminals. During campaigns to protect socialist property at the end of collectivization (the famous Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of August 7, 1932) and in the post-war period (Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of June 4, 1947), as well as in the course of the struggle to improve labor discipline in the pre-war and war years (the so-called wartime decrees), millions were convicted under criminal articles. True, the majority of those convicted under the Decree of June 26, 1940, which introduced serfdom in enterprises and forbade unauthorized leaving from work, received insignificant terms of corrective labor work (CTR) or were sentenced conditionally, but a rather significant minority (22.9% or 4,113 thousand people for 1940-1956, judging by the statistical report of the Supreme Court of the USSR in 1958) were sentenced to imprisonment. With these latter, everything is clear, but what about the former? It seems to some of the readers that they were just treated a little cool, and not repressed. But repression - this is going beyond the limits of generally accepted severity, and such an excess was the terms of the engineer for absenteeism, of course. Finally, in some cases, the number of which is impossible to estimate, those sentenced to the ITR due to a misunderstanding or due to the overzealousness of the guardians of the law still ended up in the camps.

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

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

A special question is about "members of the families of traitors to the motherland." Some of them were "definitely repressed", others - a lot of children - were exiled to colonies or imprisoned in orphanages. Where are these children to be found? Where are the people, most often the wives and mothers of convicts, who not only lost loved ones, but also evicted from apartments, deprived of work and registration, who were under surveillance and awaiting arrest? Shall we say that terror - that is, the policy of intimidation - has not touched them? On the other hand, it is difficult to include them in the statistics - their number is simply not taken into account.

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

3. How can you assess the scale of repression?

3.1. What do we know and how?

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

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

Now about the historiographical context of V.N. Zemskov. The cited article, as well as the even more famous joint article written on its basis by the same author with the American historian A. Getty and the French historian G. Rittersporn, are characteristic of the 1980s. the so-called "revisionist" direction in the study of Soviet history. Young (then) Western historians of leftist views tried not so much to whitewash the Soviet regime as to show that the "right" "anti-Soviet" historians of the older generation (such as R. Conquest and R. Pipes) wrote unscientific history, since they were not allowed into the Soviet archives. Therefore, if the “rightists” exaggerated the scale of repressions, then the “leftists”, partly from dubious youth, having found much more modest figures in the archives, were in a hurry to make them public and did not always ask themselves the question whether everything was reflected - and could be reflected - in the archives. Such "archival fetishism" is generally characteristic of the "tribe of historians", including the most qualified ones. It is not surprising that the data of V.N. Zemskov, who reproduced the figures cited in the documents he found, in the light of a more careful analysis, turn out to be underestimated indicators of the scale of repression.

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

3.2. Sentence statistics

Statistics were kept by different departments, and today it is not easy to make ends meet. Thus, the Certificate of the Special Department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs on the number of those arrested and convicted by the bodies of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD-MGB of the USSR, compiled by Colonel Pavlov on December 11, 1953 (hereinafter - Pavlov's certificate), gives the following figures: for the period 1937-1938. 1,575,000 people were arrested by these bodies, of which 1,372,000 were for counter-revolutionary crimes, and 1,345,000 were convicted, including 682,000 sentenced to capital punishment. Similar figures for 1930-1936. amounted to 2,256 thousand, 1,379 thousand, 1,391 thousand and 40 thousand people. In total, for the period from 1921 to 1938. 4,836,000 people were arrested, 3,342,000 of them for counter-revolutionary crimes, and 2,945,000 were convicted, including 745,000 sentenced to death. From 1939 to mid-1953, 1,115,000 people were convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes, of which 54,000 were sentenced to death. In total, in 1921-1953. 4,060,000 were convicted under political articles, including 799,000 sentenced to death.

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

Let us also pay attention to the fact that in the “Rudenko reference”, quoted by V.N. Zemskov, the data on the number of those convicted and executed by the verdicts of all types of courts turn out to be lower than the data of Pavlov’s certificate only on “emergency” justice, although Pavlov’s certificate was presumably only one of the documents used in Rudenko’s certificate. The reasons for such discrepancies are unknown. However, on the original of Pavlov's certificate, stored in the State Archives of the Russian Federation (GARF), to the figure 2,945 thousand (the number of convicts for 1921-1938), a note was made by an unknown hand in pencil: “30% angle. = 1062". "Corner." They are, of course, criminals. Why 30% of 2,945 thousand amounted to 1,062 thousand, one can only guess. Probably, the postscript reflected some stage of "data processing", and in the direction of underestimation. It is obvious that the figure of 30% was not derived empirically on the basis of a generalization of the initial data, but represents either an “expert assessment” given by a high rank, or an estimated “by eye” equivalent of the figure (1,062 thousand), by which the specified rank considered it necessary to reduce reference data. Where such an expert assessment could come from is unknown. Perhaps it reflected the ideologeme widespread among high officials, according to which criminals were actually condemned “for politics” in our country.

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

The number of those repressed in addition to the bodies of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD-MGB can be judged by the statistics collected by the Department for the preparation of petitions for pardon under the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR for 1940 - the first half of 1955. ("Babukhin's reference"). According to this document, 35,830 thousand people were convicted by ordinary courts, as well as military tribunals, transport and camp courts during the specified period, including 256 thousand people sentenced to death, 15,109 thousand to imprisonment and 20,465 thousand to imprisonment. person to corrective labor and other types of punishment. Here, of course, we are talking about all types of crimes. 1,074 thousand people (3.1%) were sentenced for counter-revolutionary crimes - slightly less than for hooliganism (3.5%), and twice as many as for serious criminal offenses (banditry, murder, robbery, robbery, rape together give 1.5%). Those convicted for war crimes amounted to almost the same number as those convicted under political articles (1,074 thousand or 3%), and some of them can probably be considered politically repressed. Robbers of socialist and personal property - including here an unknown number of "non-bearers" - accounted for 16.9% of those convicted, or 6,028 thousand. 28.1% accounted for "other crimes." Punishments for some of them could well have been in the nature of repression - for unauthorized seizure of collective farm lands (from 18 to 48 thousand cases a year between 1945 and 1955), resistance to the authorities (several thousand cases a year), violation of the feudal passport regime (from 9 to 50 thousand cases per year), failure to meet the minimum workdays (from 50 to 200 thousand per year), etc. The largest group was made up of punishments for unauthorized leaving work - 15,746 thousand or 43.9%. At the same time, the statistical collection of the Supreme Court of 1958 speaks of 17,961 thousand sentenced under wartime decrees, of which 22.9% or 4,113 thousand were sentenced to imprisonment, and the rest - to fines or ITR. However, not all those sentenced to short terms actually reached the camps.

So, 1,074,000 convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes by military tribunals and ordinary courts. True, if we add up the figures of the Department of Judicial Statistics of the Supreme Court of the USSR (“Khlebnikov’s certificate”) and the Office of Military Tribunals (“Maximov’s certificate”) for the same period, we get 1,104 thousand (952 thousand convicted by military tribunals and 152 thousand - ordinary courts), but this, of course, is not a very significant discrepancy. In addition, Khlebnikov's certificate contains an indication of another 23,000 convicts in 1937-1939. Taking this into account, the total sum of Khlebnikov's and Maksimov's certificates gives 1,127,000. True, the materials of the statistical collection of the Supreme Court of the USSR allow us to speak (if we summarize different tables) either about 199,000, or about 211,000 convicted by ordinary courts for counter-revolutionary crimes for 1940–1955 and, respectively, about 325 or 337 thousand for 1937-1955, but even this does not change the order of the numbers.

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

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

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

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

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

3.2. Gulag population

The assessment of the number of repressed people can be approached in another way - through the analysis of the "population" of the Gulag. It is generally accepted that in the 1920s prisoners for political reasons numbered rather in the thousands or a few tens of thousands. There were about the same number of exiles. The year of the creation of the "real" Gulag was 1929. After that, the number of prisoners quickly exceeded one hundred thousand and by 1937 had grown to about a million. Published data show that from 1938 to 1947. it was, with some fluctuations, about 1.5 million, and then exceeded 2 million and in the early 1950s. amounted to about 2.5 million (including colonies). However, the turnover of the camp population (due to many reasons, including high mortality) was very high. Based on the analysis of data on the entry and exit of prisoners, E. Bacon suggested that between 1929 and 1953. about 18 million prisoners passed through the Gulag (including the colonies). To this we must add those held in prisons, of whom at any given moment there were about 200-300-400 thousand (minimum 155 thousand in January 1944, maximum 488 thousand in January 1941). A significant part of them probably ended up in the Gulag, but not all. Some were released, others could receive minor sentences (for example, most of the 4.1 million people sentenced to imprisonment under wartime decrees), so it did not make sense to send them to camps and perhaps even to colonies. Therefore, probably, the figure of 18 million should be slightly increased (but hardly more than 1-2 million).

How reliable are the Gulag statistics? Most likely, it is quite reliable, although it was carried out carelessly. The factors that could have led to gross distortions, both exaggerated and understated, roughly balanced each other, not to mention that, with the partial exception of the Great Terror period, Moscow took seriously the economic role of the forced labor system, monitored statistics and demanded a reduction in the very high death rate among prisoners. Camp commanders had to be prepared for accountability checks. Their interest, on the one hand, was to underestimate the mortality and escape rates, and on the other hand, not to overestimate the total contingent so as not to get unrealistic production plans.

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

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

If we turn to absolute figures, then usually there were about 400-450 thousand political prisoners in the camps, plus several tens of thousands in the colonies. This was the case in the late 30's and early 40's. and again in the late 40s. In the early 1950s, the number of political figures was rather 450-500 thousand in the camps, plus 50-100 thousand in the colonies. In the mid 30s. in the Gulag, which had not yet gained strength, there were about 100 thousand political prisoners a year, in the mid-40s. - about 300 thousand. According to V.N. Zemskov, as of January 1, 1951, there were 2,528,000 prisoners in the Gulag (including 1,524,000 in camps and 994,000 in colonies). Of these, 580 thousand were “political” and 1,948 thousand “criminal”. If we extrapolate this proportion, then out of the 18 million prisoners of the Gulag, hardly more than 5 million were political.

But even this conclusion would be a simplification: after all, some of the criminal cases were still de facto political. Thus, among 1,948 thousand prisoners convicted under criminal articles, 778 thousand were convicted of embezzlement of socialist property (in the vast majority - 637 thousand - by Decree of June 4, 1947, plus 72 thousand - by Decree of June 7, 1947). August 1932), as well as for violations of the passport regime (41 thousand), desertion (39 thousand), illegal border crossing (2 thousand) and unauthorized leaving the place of work (26.5 thousand). In addition to this, in the late 30s - early 40s. there were usually about one percent of “family members of traitors to the motherland” (by the 1950s there were only a few hundred people left in the Gulag) and from 8% (in 1934) to 21.7% (in 1939) “socially harmful and socially dangerous elements” (they almost disappeared by the 1950s). All of them were not officially included in the number of those repressed under political articles. One and a half to two percent of the prisoners were serving a camp term for violating the passport regime. Convicted for theft of socialist property, whose share in the population of the Gulag was 18.3% in 1934 and 14.2% in 1936, decreased to 2-3% by the end of the 30s, which is appropriate to associate with a special role persecution of "nesuns" in the mid-30s. If we assume that the absolute number of thefts over the 30s. has not changed dramatically, and given that the total number of prisoners by the end of the 30s. increased approximately three times compared with 1934 and one and a half times compared with 1936, then, perhaps, there is reason to assume that the victims of repression among the plunderers of socialist property were at least two-thirds.

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

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

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

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

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

How does this compare with a rough estimate of the number of those sentenced to imprisonment under criminal articles for actually political reasons? The 4.1 million wartime convicts probably did not make it to the camps for the most part, but some of them could well have made it to the colonies. On the other hand, out of 8-9 million convicted of military and economic crimes, as well as for various forms of disobedience to the authorities, the majority made it to the Gulag (mortality during transit was, presumably, quite high, but there is no exact estimate of it). If it is true that about two-thirds of these 8-9 million were in fact political prisoners, then together with those convicted under wartime decrees who reached the Gulag, this probably gives at least 6-8 million.

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

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

3.4. In total, the repressed were ...

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

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

About 6-7 million peasants who died as a result of an artificially organized famine in the early 1930s;

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

The 14 million who received sentences to labor and fines under wartime decrees, as well as most of the 4 million who received short sentences under these decrees, allegedly served them in prisons and therefore were not taken into account in the statistics of the population of the Gulag; in general, this category probably adds at least 17 million victims of repression;

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

Up to half a million servicemen who were captured and, after being released, passed through the NKVD filtration camps (but not convicted);

Several hundred thousand administrative exiles, some of whom were subsequently arrested, but by no means all (O.V. Khlevniuk, p.306).

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

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

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

In connection with the assessment of the number of victims of repressions, one should dwell on the question of those who died during the Second World War. The fact is that these categories partly intersect: we are talking primarily about people who died in the course of hostilities as a result of the terrorist policy of the Soviet government. Those who were convicted by the military justice authorities are already included in our statistics, but there were also those whom commanders of all ranks ordered to be shot without trial or even personally shot, based on their understanding of military discipline. Examples are probably known to everyone, and there are no quantitative estimates here. Here we do not touch on the problem of the justification of purely military losses - senseless frontal attacks, which many famous commanders of the Stalinist era were eager for, were also, of course, a manifestation of the state’s complete disregard for the lives of citizens, but naturally, their consequences should be taken into account in the category of military losses.

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

By the way, I wonder why V.A. Kryuchkov was talking about a million, and not about a million and a half repressed in 1937-1938? Maybe he did not so much fight for the improvement of terror indicators in the light of perestroika, but simply shared the aforementioned "expert assessment" of the anonymous reader of "Pavlov's reference", who was convinced that 30% of the "political" ones are in fact criminals?

We said above that the number of those executed was hardly less than a million people. However, if we talk about those who died as a result of terror, then we get a different figure: death in the camps (at least half a million in the 1930s alone - see O.V. Khlevniuk, p. 327) and in transit (which is incalculable), death under torture, suicides of those awaiting arrest, death of special settlers from starvation and disease both in places of settlements (where about 600 thousand kulaks died in the 1930s - see O.V. Khlevniuk. С.327), and on the way to them, executions "alarmists" and "deserters" without trial or investigation, and finally, the death of millions of peasants as a result of a provoked famine - all this gives a figure hardly less than 10 million people. "Formal" repressions were only the surface part of the iceberg of the terrorist policy of the Soviet government.

Some readers - and, of course, historians - are wondering what percentage of the population were victims of repression. O.V. Khlevnyuk in the above book (p. 304) in relation to the 30s. says that among the adult population of the country, one in six suffered. However, he proceeds from an estimate of the total population according to the 1937 census, not taking into account the fact that the total number of people living in the country for ten years (and even more so throughout the almost thirty-five years of mass repression from 1917 to 1953 .) was greater than the number of people living in it at any given moment.

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

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

4. What does it all mean today?

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

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

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

In modern Russian historical consciousness, the desire for an “objective” approach to the past is very noticeable. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but the word "objective" is not accidentally put in quotation marks. The point is not that complete objectivity is hardly achievable in principle, but that the call for it can mean very different things - from the honest desire of a conscientious researcher - and any interested person - to understand that complex and contradictory process that we call history, to the irritated reaction of the layman planted on the oil needle to any attempts to embarrass his peace of mind and make him think that he inherited not only valuable minerals that ensure his - alas, fragile - well-being, but also unresolved political, cultural and psychological problems , generated by seventy years of experience of "endless terror", his own soul, which he fears to look into - perhaps not without reason. And, finally, the call for objectivity may hide the sober calculation of the ruling elites, who are aware of their genetic connection with the Soviet elites and are not at all inclined to “let the lower classes engage in criticism in a row.”

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

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

Russian historical memory today is turning its back on repressions, but this, alas, does not mean at all that "the past has passed." The structures of Russian everyday life to a large extent reproduce the forms of social relations, behavior and consciousness that came from the imperial and Soviet past. This, it seems, is not to the liking of the majority of respondents: more and more imbued with pride in their past, they perceive the present quite critically. So, to the question of our questionnaire whether modern Russia is inferior to the West in terms of culture or surpasses it, the second answer option was chosen by only 9.4%, while the same indicator for all previous historical eras (including Muscovite Rus', the Soviet period) ranges from 20 to 40 %. Fellow citizens probably do not bother to think that the "golden age of Stalinism", as well as the subsequent, albeit somewhat more faded period of Soviet history, may have something to do with what does not suit them in our society today. To turn to the Soviet past in order to overcome it is possible only on the condition that we are ready to see the traces of this past in ourselves and recognize ourselves as the heirs not only of glorious deeds, but also of the crimes of our ancestors.

The development of disputes about the period of Stalin's rule is facilitated by the fact that many documents of the NKVD are still classified. Various data are given on the number of victims of the political regime. That is why this period remains to be studied for a long time.

How many people Stalin killed: years of government, historical facts, repressions during the Stalinist regime

The historical figures who built the dictatorial regime have distinctive psychological characteristics. Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili is no exception. Stalin is not a surname, but a pseudonym that clearly reflects his personality.

Could anyone imagine that a single washerwoman mother (later a milliner - a fairly popular profession at that time) from a Georgian village would raise a son who would defeat Nazi Germany, establish an industrial industry in a vast country and make millions of people shudder just by the sound of her name?

Now that knowledge from any field is available to our generation in a ready-made form, people know that a harsh childhood forms unpredictably strong personalities. So it was not only with Stalin, but also with Ivan the Terrible, Genghis Khan and with the same Hitler. What is most interesting, the two most odious figures in the history of the last century have a similar childhood: a tyrant father, an unhappy mother, their early death, studying in schools with a spiritual bias, love of art. Few people know about such facts, because basically everyone is looking for information about how many people Stalin killed.

Path to politics

The reins of power in the hands of Dzhugashvili lasted from 1928 to 1953, until his death. About what policy he intended to pursue, Stalin announced in 1928 at an official speech. For the rest of the term, he did not retreat from his. This is evidenced by the facts about how many people Stalin killed.

When it comes to the number of victims of the system, some of the destructive decisions are attributed to his associates: N. Yezhov and L. Beria. But at the end of all documents is Stalin's signature. As a result, in 1940, N. Yezhov himself became a victim of repression and was shot.

motives

The goals of Stalin's repressions were pursued by several motives, and each of them achieved them in full. They are the following:

1. Reprisals pursued political opponents of the leader.
2. Repressions were a tool to intimidate citizens in order to strengthen Soviet power.
3. A necessary measure to raise the economy of the state (repressions were carried out in this direction as well).
4. Exploitation of free labor.

Terror at its peak

The peak of repressions is considered to be 1937-1938. Regarding how many people Stalin killed, statistics during this period give impressive figures - more than 1.5 million. The order of the NKVD under the number 00447 was different in that it chose its victims according to national and territorial criteria. Representatives of nations that differed from the ethnic composition of the USSR were especially persecuted.

How many people were killed by Stalin on the basis of Nazism? The following figures are given: more than 25,000 Germans, 85,000 Poles, about 6,000 Romanians, 11,000 Greeks, 17,000 Letts and 9,000 Finns. Those who were not killed were expelled from the territory of residence without the right to help. Their relatives were fired from their jobs, the military were excluded from the ranks of the army.

Numbers

Anti-Stalinists do not miss the opportunity to once again exaggerate the real data. For example:

• The dissident believes that there were 40 million of them.
• Another dissident, A.V. Antonov-Ovseenko, did not waste time on trifles and exaggerated the data twice at once - 80 million.
• There is also a version owned by rehabilitators of victims of repression. According to their version, the number of those killed was more than 100 million.
• The audience was most surprised by Boris Nemtsov, who in 2003 declared 150 million victims live on air.

In fact, only official documents can give an answer to the question of how many people Stalin killed. One of them is a memorandum by N. S. Khrushchev dated 1954. It contains data from 1921 to 1953. According to the document, more than 642,000 people received the death penalty, that is, a little more than half a million, and by no means 100 or 150 million. The total number of convicts was over 2 million 300 thousand. Of these, 765,180 were sent into exile.

Repression during WWII

The Great Patriotic War forced to slightly reduce the rate of destruction of the people of their country, but the phenomenon as such was not stopped. Now the "culprits" were sent to the front lines. If you ask yourself how many people Stalin killed with the hands of the Nazis, then there is no exact data. There was no time to judge the perpetrators. A catchphrase about decisions "without trial and investigation" remained from this period. The legal basis now became the order of Lavrenty Beria.

Even emigrants became victims of the system: they were returned en masse and decisions were made. Almost all cases were qualified by Article 58. But this is conditional. In practice, the law was often ignored.

Characteristic features of the Stalin period

After the war, repression took on a new mass character. How many people died under Stalin from among the intelligentsia is evidenced by the "Doctors' Case". The culprits in this case were doctors who served at the front, and many scientists. If we analyze the history of the development of science, then the vast majority of the "mysterious" deaths of scientists fall on that period. The large-scale campaign against the Jewish people is also the fruit of the politics of the time.

The degree of cruelty

Speaking about how many people died in Stalin's repressions, it cannot be said that all the accused were shot. There were many ways to torture people both physically and psychologically. For example, if the relatives of the accused are expelled from their place of residence, they were deprived of access to medical care and food products. So thousands of people died from cold, hunger or heat.

Prisoners were kept in cold rooms for long periods without food, drink or the right to sleep. Some were handcuffed for months. None of them had the right to communicate with the outside world. Notifying their relatives about their fate was also not practiced. A brutal beating with broken bones and spine did not escape anyone. Another kind of psychological torture is to arrest and "forget" for years. There were people "forgotten" for 14 years.

mass character

It is difficult to give specific figures for many reasons. First, is it necessary to count relatives of prisoners? Is it necessary to consider those who died even without arrest, "under mysterious circumstances"? Secondly, the previous population census was carried out even before the start of the civil war, in 1917, and during the reign of Stalin - only after the Second World War. There is no exact information about the total population.

Politicization and anti-nationality

It was believed that repression rid the people of spies, terrorists, saboteurs and those who did not support the ideology of Soviet power. However, in practice, completely different people became victims of the state machine: peasants, ordinary workers, public figures and entire peoples who wished to preserve their national identity.

The first preparatory work on the creation of the Gulag dates back to 1929. Today they are compared with German concentration camps, and quite rightly. If you are interested in how many people died in them during Stalin, then figures from 2 to 4 million are given.

Attack on the "cream of society"

The greatest damage was inflicted as a result of the attack on the “cream of society”. According to experts, the repression of these people greatly delayed the development of science, medicine and other aspects of society. A simple example - publishing in foreign publications, collaborating with foreign colleagues or conducting scientific experiments could easily end in arrest. Creative people published under pseudonyms.

By the middle of the Stalin period, the country was practically left without specialists. Most of those arrested and killed were graduates of monarchist educational institutions. They closed just some 10-15 years ago. There were no specialists with Soviet training. If Stalin waged an active struggle against classism, then he practically achieved this: only poor peasants and an uneducated layer remained in the country.

The study of genetics was banned, as it was "too bourgeois in nature." Psychology was the same. And psychiatry was engaged in punitive activities, concluding thousands of bright minds in special hospitals.

Judicial system

How many people died in the camps under Stalin can be clearly seen if we consider the judicial system. If at an early stage some investigations were carried out and cases were considered in court, then after 2-3 years the repressions began, a simplified system was introduced. Such a mechanism did not give the accused the right to have the defense present in court. The decision was made on the basis of the testimony of the accusing party. The decision was not subject to appeal and was put into effect no later than the next day after the adoption.

The repressions violated all the principles of human rights and freedoms, according to which other countries at that time had been living for several centuries. The researchers note that the attitude towards the repressed was no different from how the Nazis treated the captured military.

Conclusion

Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili died in 1953. After his death, it turned out that the whole system was built around his personal ambitions. An example of this is the termination of criminal cases and prosecutions in many cases. Lavrenty Beria was also known to those around him as a quick-tempered person with inappropriate behavior. But at the same time, he significantly changed the situation by banning torture against the accused and recognizing the groundlessness of many cases.

Stalin is compared with the Italian ruler - dictator Benetto Mussolini. But a total of about 40,000 people became Mussolini's victims, as opposed to Stalin's 4.5 million plus. In addition, those arrested in Italy retained the right to communication, protection, and even writing books behind bars.

It is impossible not to note the achievements of that time. Victory in the Second World War, of course, is beyond discussion. But due to the labor of the inhabitants of the Gulag, a huge number of buildings, roads, canals, railways and other structures were built throughout the country. Despite the hardships of the post-war years, the country was able to restore an acceptable standard of living.