The myth about the "Leningrad case. Leningrad case. Secret materials

On October 15, 1947, a meeting of the Orgburo of the Central Committee was held, devoted precisely to the issues of the execution of the decision on the courts of honor. "It seems to me,- said Alexei Kuznetsov at a meeting of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, - that in the implementation of the closed letter of the Central Committee, we meet with resistance. Whether one wants to admit it or not, it is a fact: we are meeting resistance both on the part of local Party leaders and on the part of economic leaders. The fact that the comrades do not want to organize a court of honor means that they are resisting the new form of education of the intelligentsia that the Central Committee has established.».

Such zeal of one of the main nominees of Zhdanov was not accidental. From the height of the Central Committee, it was Kuznetsov and Suslov who supervised the issues of the courts of honor, but most importantly, for the Zhdanov group, the courts of honor were not only a tool for mobilizing society in the conditions " cold war”, but also a means of strengthening their own influence on the entire state apparatus. Therefore, the new secretary of the Central Committee, Alexei Kuznetsov, will show unprecedented activity in organizing such courts. But the situation also had a reverse side - the deliberate growth of influence and the active intervention of the "Leningraders" of Zhdanov everywhere formed a silent consensus against them, the conspiracy of all other groups in power, oriented towards other leaders - primarily Malenkov and Beria. This consolidation of bureaucratic interests against the "Leningrad group" very soon, almost immediately after the death of Stalin's favorite Zhdanov, will give rise to the "Leningrad case" ... But while Comrade Zhdanov was still alive, the campaign of "courts of honor" developed despite the silent sabotage of the bureaucracy.

In order to set an example for the ministries, and at the same time move Malenkov's supporters, Zhdanov initiated a trial of honor in the Central Committee apparatus. The "defendants" were senior officials of the Department of Personnel and the Department of Propaganda and Agitation, who led the departments of these departments before Zhdanov's people arrived there. However, real sins were imputed to them in the form of a too obvious craving for the "sweet life", restaurants and women, in post-war Moscow.

In November 1947, a court of honor was held at the USSR Ministry of Higher Education over Professor Zhebrak of the Agricultural Academy for criticizing his opponent Lysenko not in Soviet publications, but on the pages of the American magazine Science.

Until the end of 1947, courts of honor were held at the Ministry of Geology and the Ministry of State Control, at the beginning of 1948 - at the Ministry of Electrical Industry and the Ministry of Machine Tool Building (at that time there were a large number of narrow-profile ministries). In December, it was sanctioned and in January 1948 a court of honor was held at the Ministry of the Armed Forces. The recent top leaders of the Navy - Admirals Kuznetsov, Galler, Alafuzov, Stepanov - were put on trial. This "court of honor" was held on the basis of the relevant decree on military courts of honor of 1939, but, obviously, as part of the campaign launched by Zhdanov's "Leningraders". Marshal Leonid Govorov, another ally and "nominee" of Zhdanov, acted as public prosecutor for the admirals.

The real reasons for the trial were Stalin's disagreements with Kuznetsov about the ways of developing the fleet and, most importantly, the low assessment by the country's top leadership of the Navy's activities in 1941-45. and its post-war combat readiness. The official accusation of the "court of honor" was that at the end of the war, the admirals handed over to Great Britain and the United States drawings and descriptions of some of the weapons systems of our fleet, as well as a large number of secret nautical charts. The court of honor found the admirals guilty and decided to petition the Council of Ministers of the USSR to bring them to a criminal court. This court will take place very quickly and already at the beginning of February 1948 will issue its verdict - we note that for Stalin's times it was rather mild in cases of this kind.

The Leningrad enthusiasts of the "courts of honor" did not ignore such an important body of the Stalinist state as the Ministry of State Security. Alexey Kuznetsov spoke at the elections of the court of honor of the MGB in November 1947: “State security agencies should intensify KGB work among our Soviet intelligentsia ... we will educate the intelligentsia in the spirit of eradicating cringing before foreign countries, we will judge by a court of honor ... Apparently, in relation to some of the representatives of the intelligentsia, who especially bow to the West, we will have to accept other measures are Chekist measures.”

The court of honor in the MGB took place in early March 1948 and unexpectedly aroused the displeasure of Stalin, who considered that the secretary of the Central Committee, Kuznetsov, had gone too far by organizing such an event in such a responsible Ministry without the sanction of the Politburo. This, however, did not stop Zhdanov from seeking to expand and strengthen the role of the courts of honor. On March 19, 1948, he sent Stalin a draft resolution on the creation of the Union Court of Honor. This body should have already dealt with the moral sins of the highest representatives of the Stalinist bureaucracy at the level of ministers and deputy prime ministers. The first "defendant" for the Union Court of Honor was even named - Minister of Railways Ivan Kovalev, accused of spending too much money on rebuilding his dacha.

But the project of such an all-powerful "court of honor" directly affected the interests and security of all other members of the Politburo who were not part of Zhdanov's group. Malenkov, Beria, Molotov, Mikoyan, Kaganovich, Bulganin either headed the ministries or were deputy chairmen of the Light of Ministers - i.e. directly fell under the jurisdiction of the Federal Court of Honor. In contrast, by the way, from Zhdanov himself, who did not hold any posts in the government and ministries.

Beria, Voznesensky and Malenkov. In the end, all three will lose the struggle for power...

Therefore, the Zhdanov project of the Union Court of Honor at a meeting of the "narrow group" of the Politburo in April 1948, the rest of the top leaders of the USSR, quite bureaucratically, simply drowned in amendments and discussions, eventually postponing the approval of such a court until the plenum of the Central Committee of the party. Probably, Zhdanov had no doubt that at the plenum he would “push” his project - remember that Andrei Zhdanov planned to hold plenums and party congresses much more often, he did not know that he had a little more than three months to live, and the next plenum of the Central Committee after his death take place only in 1952.

However, the honor courts campaign itself did not stop - while the top leadership authorized only those "courts of honor", the materials of which could be used with an educational effect. So in June 1948, a court of honor even took place in the Committee of Information - a body that, since 1947, united two intelligence services at once, political and military, Chekists and the GRU. This court of honor considered the case of Major General Leonid Malinin, a resident in Berlin and a Soviet representative in the Control Council for Germany. General Malinin was charged with misbehavior when communicating with former allies and, following the results of the court of honor, was transferred from foreign intelligence to petty chiefs of the railway guard.

It should be noted that today, at the suggestion of Western historians of the Cold War, “courts of honor” are assessed purely one-sidedly and negatively - as another example of “Zhdanovism” and “tightening the screws” in post-war USSR. At the same time, they usually lose sight of the fact that processes similar and even similar in form were going on at the same time on the other side of the globe - in the USA. The hostility was mutual, and the internal political hardening of American "democracy" did not lag behind that of Soviet "totalitarianism."

So, in October 1947, the “Commission to Investigate the Anti-American” will, in fact, conduct a trial similar to Zhdanov’s “court of honor” against a group of Hollywood workers caught sympathizing with the “Reds”. At the same time, “black lists” of cultural workers will be introduced in the States, a ban on covering the topics of “rich and poor” in films, and other restrictions. In this regard, the domestic policy of the United States of the era of "McCarthyism" and the "commission on un-American activities" will not fundamentally differ from the "Zhdanovshchina" - both sides, in the conditions of the beginning of the Cold War, will carry out ideological mobilization by "tightening the screws".

But now we are interested in the Courts of Honor precisely as a means of strengthening the influence and control over the entire party and bureaucratic apparatus of the USSR on the part of the “Leningraders” of Zhdanov. At the same time, we recall that the “Leningraders”, in parallel with the courts of honor, annoyed the rest of the party bureaucracy with ideological checks. Even at the very first meeting of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee, held under the chairmanship of Zhdanov on May 18, 1946, it was decided to create a commission headed by Alexei Kuznetsov and Zhdanov in order to "develop the issue of theoretical training and retraining of leading party and Soviet workers." These outwardly smooth formulations on the issues of training and testing the "theoretical" level of party and Soviet workers gave Zhdanov and his team the most powerful levers of apparatus influence in the selection and placement of leading cadres. Permanent inspections of the regional committees throughout the USSR by Zhdanov and his team flowed in 1946-48.

However, at the height of his team's influence, in July 1948 Zhdanov went on medical leave and died on the last day of that summer. His death still raises questions - but we note that even before the war Zhdanov was a very sick person, during the years of the blockade he suffered two heart attacks on his legs, so from a medical point of view, his death is not something extraordinary.

But this death changed the entire internal situation in the ruling machine of the USSR radically and quickly. By the way, the last party document signed by Zhdanov in his life is an analytical note “On the situation in Soviet biological science. On July 10, 1948, in preparation for a scientific discussion on biology, it will fall on Stalin's desk. This document will be signed not only by Zhdanov, but also by Malenkov. The beginning of the text categorically, but rightly read: "In science, as in politics, contradictions are resolved not through reconciliation, but through open struggle."

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Stalin at Zhdanov's funeral

The deceased Zhdanov was very solemnly buried on September 2, 1948. His funeral became perhaps the most significant in scope and duration of mourning events in the entire Soviet history, second only to the funerals of Lenin, Stalin and Brezhnev. Stalin stood in the mourning guard and, with other members of the Politburo, carried the coffin with the body of his deceased friend in his arms.

Malenkov, Voroshilov and Stalin in the guard of honor at the coffin of Zhdanov

As early as September 28, 1948, Malenkov would take a special part in the employment of two of Zhdanov's closest assistants, his personal secretaries Alexander Kuznetsov and Vladimir Tereshkin. Malenkov will hasten to report to Stalin that the former is becoming deputy head of the department for propaganda and agitation of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and the second - deputy head of the department for external relations of the Central Committee.

However, the main and most influential members of Zhdanov's "Leningrad group" would fall into disgrace as early as the following February 1949, just six months after the death of their "boss". It is Malenkov and the group in power behind him who will become the main initiators and executors here. The Beria group will provide them with the necessary assistance in this. If Stalin was associated with Zhdanov, albeit complicated by monstrous power, but human feelings of camaraderie and friendship, then the defendants in the “Leningrad case” for the aging Kremlin celestial, accustomed to death for decades, were just functions. The inexorably aging celestial, probably already with some fatigue, watched this fight-fuss at the foot of his throne.

The "Leningrad case" is too big and complex history to be described in even one large article, it still requires a detailed and scientific study. Historians and publicists, delving into the details of this case, usually pay attention to the reasons, leaving the reasons in the shade. But the notorious "wholesale fair", a few purged votes in the protocol of the Regional Committee, or a few unfound documents in the monstrous document flow of the State Planning Commission - these are just the reasons. They had to be found for prosecution, and they were found by Malenkov's people. If desired, something similar could be found in relation to all other party and bureaucratic groups.

So this article is primarily devoted not to reasons, but to a description of the reasons for that apparatus consensus of all bureaucratic clans in the power of the late Stalinist USSR, which was formed against the “Leningraders”. It should be noted that before our very eyes, an essentially similar thing happened in modern China around the grouping of the former member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Bo Xilai. And, probably for the same reasons, it does not stop the impressive development of this country ...

The death of Andrei Zhdanov immediately broke the balance of power in the Politburo. In addition, it was in 1949 that Malenkov and Beria and the groups behind him in the eyes of Stalin would achieve obvious and extremely important successes - remember that in those years Beria headed special committee No. 1 on the creation of nuclear weapons, and Malenkov was the head of special committees No. 2 and No. 3, which developed jet and rocket technology and radar equipment. In the context of the growing Cold War, success in this area will give them even more weight on the Stalinist Olympus.

Once, in 1937, when deciding the fate of the party leaders of Bashkiria, Comrade Zhdanov spoke as follows: “The pillars are cut down, the fences will fall down by themselves…” Now, on August 31, 1948, fate cut down the main pillar of the "Leningraders" and the fence fell down - by August 1949, all their main leaders were arrested: Nikolai Voznesensky, Alexei Kuznetsov, Pyotr Popkov, Yakov Kapustin and many others. Kuznetsov will be arrested right in Malenkov's office - this is how Georgy Maksimilianovich will practice in the future arrest of his friend Lavrenty Pavlovich.

As a result, the “Leningraders” will be blamed for both real mistakes that they really had (however, all other groups had similar ones), and those “anti-Soviet” crimes in which they were not involved. In more herbivorous times, things would have been limited to layoffs or promotions to lower positions. Then, in October 1950, the top of the "Leningrad group", after a formally open trial, but not covered by the press, was shot. Kuznetsov, Voznesensky, Popkov, Kapustin were executed, only 23 people from the Central Committee and the top leadership of the RSFSR and Leningrad. Over two hundred high-ranking officials of the "Leningrad group" received various terms imprisonment. About 2,000 lower-ranking executives from this group were fired or transferred to "less responsible jobs."

Alexey Kuznetsov in prison

Note that in other scenarios, the “Leningraders” would have cleaned out the “Malenkovites” no more humanely - Alexei Kuznetsov was no softer than Georgy Malenkov.

In the course of the investigation into the "Leningrad case" Malenkov and Beria will disperse in such a way that they will try to drown a number of competitors and even the already deceased Zhdanov. Back in October 1949, they would prepare a draft closed letter to the Central Committee: “The Politburo of the Central Committee considers it necessary to note the political responsibility that falls on A. A. Zhdanov for the hostile activities of the Leningrad elite ... Now it is difficult to explain how A. A. Zhdanov could not see the enemy face of Kuznetsov, Popkov, Kapustin, Solovyov and others ., whom he persistently put forward ... The Politburo also considers it necessary to say that the most influential of the persons involved in hostile work are people close to Comrade. Molotov. It is known that for many years Voznesensky enjoyed the special support and great confidence of Comrade Molotov, that Comrade Molotov patronized Kuznetsov, Popkov and Rodionov ... Being close to these people, Comrade Molotov cannot but bear responsibility for their actions ... It should point out the incorrect behavior of A. N. Kosygin, who, as a member of the Politburo, was not at the height of his duties ... He did not discern the anti-party, hostile nature of the Kuznetsov group, did not show the necessary political vigilance and did not report non-party conversations to the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) Kuznetsova and others."

Kosygin and Stalin...

Stalin will cross out this project of comrades Malenkov and Beria, who were too dispersed in their triumph. Moreover, he made sure that Zhdanov's name was never mentioned in connection with the "Leningrad case." The former deputy head of the Investigative Unit for Especially Important Cases of the MGB, Colonel Vladimir Komarov, who oversaw the "Leningrad case", later, before his own execution in 1954, testified, as Abakumov, the Minister of State Security, instructed him: “I went to Leningrad with ten other investigators ... Before leaving for Leningrad, Abakumov sternly warned me not to mention Zhdanov's name at the trial. “You answer with your head,” he said.

According to Stalin's times, the scope of the "purge" in the course of the "Leningrad case" was not the largest and most ferocious. But this "cause" literally swept away the upper echelons of power not only in Leningrad and the region, but also the republican leadership of the RSFSR and a number of regions, which after the war were headed by the "Leningraders" - from the Gorky region and Estonia to the Crimea. In Crimea, Khrushchev's nominees will come to the place of the arrested and shot Nikolai Solovyov, who during the war years was the head of the executive committee of the Leningrad Regional Council, which will soon largely determine the state fate of this peninsula.

After the execution of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR Mikhail Rodionov and the dismissal of Georgy Popov from the heads of the capital, Nikita Khrushchev will “advance” to Moscow. The "Leningrad Group" in the struggle for power was destroyed by the groups of Malenkov and Beria. But in the shadow of this undercover struggle, a group of Khrushchev’s supporters finally formed, which a few years later, immediately after Stalin’s death, in alliance with Malenkov, would destroy the Beria clan, and four years later (using, by the way, the accusation of falsifying the “Leningrad case” ) will throw Malenkov himself from the heights, so that, in turn, after another seven years, he will be pushed down by the people of “dear Leonid Ilyich” ... However, this is a completely different story.

NEW WAVE OF RESPRESSION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LIST OF ARRESTED

Top secret

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

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

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

First. - The accused listed in the attached list from 1 to 19 inclusive: SOLOVIEV, VERBITSKY, LEVIN, BADAEV, VOSNENSENSKY, KUBATKIN, VOSNENSENSKAYA, BONDARENKO, KHARITONOV, BURILIN, BASOV, NIKITIN, TALUSH, SAFONOV, GALKIN, IVANOV, BUROVSKY, PET CHURSINA - to the death penalty - shooting, without the right to appeal, pardon and with the enforcement of the court sentence immediately.

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

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

I ask for your permission.

V. Abakumov ABAKUMOV.

STRUGGLE FOR POWER SURROUNDED BY STALIN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

REHABILITATION

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

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

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Stalin's death, I am publishing some of my materials on one case that still raises questions ... So:

LENINGRAD CASE: "nominees"... Part I

Much has been written about the Leningrad case. Even a lot. From a variety of positions and points of view. But usually they are limited only to the “case” itself, less often preceding the post-war years.

I will take the liberty of asserting that the “Leningrad case”, which formally started in Moscow with the decision of the Politburo on February 15, 1949, began almost a quarter of a century earlier and very far from the city on the Neva, when in the fall of 1926 I arrived on the banks of the Volga with the inspection of the 25-year-old instructor of the Organizational and Distribution Department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Georgy Malenkov, to check the work of the 30-year-old secretary of the Nizhny Novgorod Provincial Committee Andrei Zhdanov ...

At the height of the NEP, the once-merchant Nizhny was shaken by workers' strikes, which, of course, made the official proletarian authorities very nervous. The 25-year-old inspector of the Central Committee zealously set to work - despite the fact that he had to recognize the work of the Nizhny Novgorod Party organization as "generally satisfactory", he revealed a number of significant shortcomings. So, for example, the reason for the discontent of the workers salary Malenkov saw that the party cells “weakly attract the working masses to the discussion of issues that concern them”. In general, the situation with the mood of the proletariat in the coverage of Malenkov looked depressing. In his opinion, the local Bolsheviks did not take any measures to attract grassroots activists to promote the party's policy, the bulk of the party members did not even attend party meetings, did not participate in public life and did not pay membership dues. Malenkov also noted a large number of embezzlement, theft, and especially drunkenness.

Following the results of the inspection in September 1926, Zhdanov was summoned with explanations to a meeting of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee. The head of the Organizational Bureau was then the authoritative comrade Stalin. Judging by the questions that the technical leader of the party, who had not yet become a leader, asked, he was not particularly interested in the alcoholic hobby of the Nizhny Novgorod communists, but he took strikes and strikes with concern. The 30-year-old "governor" Zhdanov sensibly answered all the questions of the future "father of the peoples." The Nizhny Novgorod province and its party organization experienced the same difficulties as most of the industrial regions of the country and local organizations of the CPSU (b) in the 20s. Zhdanov, on the other hand, showed himself to be a competent leader of a large and complex region, and Stalin did not raise any questions about his political reliability in the fight against "Trotskyism".

It was from this meeting that the working contacts of Zhdanov and Stalin became regular, in a few years they, comrades-in-arms in the party and factional struggle against the Trotskyists and Zinovievists, would become friends and drinking buddies.

Zhdanov, 1928
photo published for the first time

But something else must also be admitted - in the same autumn days of 1926, it seems that the enmity that persisted all his life later in the relationship between Zhdanov and Malenkov, who became the instigator of this proceedings in the Central Committee, was born. In Stalin's team, both will work side by side for a quarter of a century, they will work hard in one bundle, but they will never have human friendly relations. Without a doubt, this hostility will become one of the reasons for the behind-the-scenes struggle of the Zhdanov and Malenkov groups in the post-war future. One of…

Both fellow-competitors will almost simultaneously and in parallel climb the career ladder to the very top, gradually becoming the key Stalinist "nominees". In 1934, both will become heads of the apparatus of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Malenkov will be appointed to the post of head of the department of leading party bodies of the Central Committee, and Zhdanov will then become the third secretary of the Central Committee. Nowadays, this is the level of key figures in the presidential administration or the government apparatus. It is clear that officials of this level are no longer just politicians and people in their own right - each of them already then formed their own bureaucratic team of tens, if not hundreds of people. The same Zhdanov brought several trusted persons from the Nizhny Novgorod Territory to work in the Central Committee.

Malenkov, 1934

Until now, the mysterious murder of Kirov at the end of 1934 will transfer Zhdanov to Leningrad. The city on the Neva at that time was the second, and according to a number of scientific and industrial indicators, the first metropolis of the USSR. The Leningrad region in those years included, in fact, the entire north-west of Russia, from Pskov to Murmansk. At the same time, Zhdanov will be a unique official for those years - heading one of the most important regions, he will retain the post of secretary of the Central Committee. Until the war itself, the Politburo will adopt special resolutions - how many days a month Comrade Zhdanov will work in Leningrad in Smolny, and how many in Moscow in the Kremlin.

At the same time, Zhdanov will retain influence on the party organization of the huge Nizhny Novgorod (then already Gorky) Territory, and simultaneous leadership in the first two megacities of the country will allow him to form one of the largest and most influential "clans" in the Stalinist "vertical of power" within a few years. Already in 1935, the new head of Leningrad and secretary of the Central Committee very ambitiously stated at the plenum of the city committee in Smolny: "We, Leningraders, must provide party cadres for export." And this export of Leningrad personnel went to the capital, to Moscow, often directly to the Kremlin.

Especially this promotion of new personnel intensified in 1937-38, when, for obvious reasons, many leading posts were vacated both in Moscow and Leningrad and - let's not lie - in all the big cities of the Soviet Union. Old careers collapsed into oblivion, and often from the very bottom in their place grandiose new ones were erected ... In March 1939, Zhdanov himself at the XVIII Congress of the Bolshevik Party, in fact, spoke about this directly from the rostrum: “If a few years ago they were afraid to promote educated people and young people to leading party work, the leaders directly strangled young cadres, preventing them from rising to the top, then the biggest victory of the party is that the party succeeded in getting rid of pests and cleared the way for the advancement of grown-ups. for the last period of personnel and put them in leadership work.

It was at that time that Comrade Zhdanov "placed" thousands of people in leadership positions, including all future defendants in the "Leningrad case". But it was precisely these young cadres who advanced by the end of the 1930s, who grew up both on the basis of personal abilities and due to the “social elevator” dispersed by repression to the maximum speed, ensured survival and victory in the Great Patriotic War, then ensured the restoration of our country in the shortest possible time and its becoming a world superpower. Abundant blood on the hands of Zhdanov and other leading comrades as a result of the “repressions” has, among other things, this result, which is important for us.

So, created precisely in 1936-39. Zhdanov's "Leningrad team" during the war will endure all 872 days of the blockade on their shoulders, and many people from it during the war will work in the most key positions throughout the entire USSR.

Immediately after appearing in Leningrad, Zhdanov, in addition to the “people of Kirov”, will bring with him to the city on the Neva a number of old acquaintances from work in the Nizhny Novgorod Territory. So, Alexander Shcherbakov, who worked with him in Nizhny, and then when creating the Union of Soviet Writers, in 1936 replaced the arrested Mikhail Chudov as 2nd Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee. Already in 1937-38. this "man of Zhdanov" will head a number of regional committees decapitated by repression in Siberia and Ukraine. On the eve of the war, Shcherbakov will head the Moscow party organization, and then the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army.

journalist Alexander Shcherbakov. Not yet the "governor" of Moscow ...
photo published for the first time

But the main cadres of the Leningrad team of Zhdanov will be grown by him directly in the city on the Neva from the youth who replaced the repressed top of the old Kirov team. So, the former in 1935-37. In 1937 Nikolai Voznesensky, Chairman of the Leningrad City Planning Commission and Deputy Chairman of the City Executive Committee, was nominated to work in the State Planning Committee of the USSR and headed this key body for the Soviet economy - after the Great Patriotic War foreign media will not accidentally call him "the economic dictator of Russia." Like Zhdanov, Voznesensky on the paternal side was the grandson of a village priest.

According to Anastas Mikoyan, when in December 1937 Stalin was looking for a replacement for the arrested Valery Mezhlauk as chairman of the State Planning Commission, it was Zhdanov who proposed Voznesensky's candidacy. “Zhdanov praised him,” Mikoyan recalled.

Nikolai Voznesensky

Voznesensky's sister, Maria, who worked as a teacher at the Leningrad Communist University (now the North-Western Academy of Public Administration), was arrested in 1937 as "a member of the Trotskyist-Zinoviev organization, which knew about the Trotskyists, did not expose them and appointed obviously alien elements." During the investigation, Maria Voznesenskaya did not plead guilty to anything, however, together with her young sons and her husband, she was sent into exile in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Nikolai Voznesensky turned to Zhdanov for help - the link was canceled and the "case" was terminated. Maria Voznesenskaya was reinstated in the party and in teaching in Leningrad.

In the same 1937, the still little-known son of a worker from St. Petersburg, a former 15-year-old Red Army soldier and cooperator of the NEP era, a graduate of the textile institute, Alexei Kosygin, was approved by Zhdanov as director of the Oktyabrskaya weaving factory (one of the oldest manufactories in St. revolution, owned by a foreign concern). A year later, Zhdanov appointed an intelligent 33-year-old specialist as head of the industrial and transport department of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and then head of the Leningrad City Executive Committee. A year later, in 1939, at the XVIII Congress of the CPSU (b), Kosygin, at the suggestion of Zhdanov, was elected to the Central Committee, became People's Commissar and headed the entire textile industry of the country. And a year later, in 1940, Alexei Kosygin was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Government (Council of People's Commissars) of the USSR.

Young Kosygin, 1939

As a result of such a rapid career, Kosygin will work for 40 years in this post, and then at the head of the government of the world power of the USSR, until 1980. All economic and scientific achievements of our country in the 2nd half of the twentieth century will be associated with his name. As well as for forty years of managing the world's second economy, not a single corruption story will be connected with Kosygin's personality, which could make it possible to doubt the absolute disinterestedness of the "eternal" chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers. So this Zhdanov's personnel legacy influenced our lives for a very long time.

In addition to the leaders, who quickly left for promotion to the central bodies of the country, Zhdanov quickly formed a team of managers who “stayed” with him in Leningrad for a long time. Here, from the whole set of leading figures in the city and the region, it is worth highlighting, perhaps, the Leningrad trinity closest to Zhdanov - Alexei Kuznetsov, Pyotr Popkov and Yakov Kapustin.

All three, when they were noticed by Comrade Zhdanov, were a little over 30. All three had a worker-peasant origin and began their life path young laborers, combining proletarian labor with social and political activity and eager study.

Aleksey Aleksandrovich Kuznetsov was born in 1905 in the town of Borovichi, two hundred miles from Novgorod, as the third and youngest child in the family of a sawmill worker. At this factory, after the parochial school and the city school, at the age of 15, he began his career as a sorter of defective logs. Before the revolution, he probably would have remained among the sawdust and boards, but the beginning of the 20s already gave the working boy the opportunity for a different biography. The best student of the city school, assertive and active, he creates the first Komsomol cell at the factory. Soon he was elected to the county committee of the RKSM, and the communist youth union sent him to one of the villages of the county to work as a "hut" - the head of the reading room (they, these "huts", were then the first cultural centers in the countryside, created by the Bolsheviks even before collectivization). At the end of the 20s. Alexey Kuznetsov works in the district committees of the Komsomol in the Novgorod region. Here he went through all the vicissitudes of the internal political struggle of those years - in 1925 he actively "exposed the subversive work of the kulaks" in the Borovichi district, being the secretary of the Malovishersky Ukom, "identified and defeated the Zinoviev youths who had dug in in the district", in 1929 he fought with the "dubious public ”in the Luga district committee of the CPSU (b) ... But one should not think that all this struggle against the kulaks and supporters of the once powerful Zinoviev was then a complete fraud or a pleasant sinecure.

An active and irreconcilable young Komsomol member was seen surrounded by Kirov and in 1932 was nominated for party work in the Leningrad party apparatus. At the time of his appearance in the city of Zhdanov, Kuznetsov was the 1st secretary of the Dzerzhinsky District Committee. As Leningradskaya Pravda later wrote: “With special force Comrade. Kuznetsov deployed his organizational skills as first secretary of the Dzerzhinsky district committee of the CPSU (b). Many Soviet, economic and cultural institutions of great national importance are concentrated in the Dzerzhinsky District. The district committee did a lot to cleanse these institutions of the Trotskyist-Zinovievist and Bukharin-Rykovian scum who had entrenched themselves in them ... "

By 1937, Kuznetsov worked as the head of the Organizational and Party Department of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In September 1937, 32-year-old Alexei was appointed second secretary of the regional committee, from now on he will be Zhdanov's main assistant in Leningrad on the party and politics in general. In the midst of repressions, it is his cautious Zhdanov who delegates to the “special trio” and generally shifts the main functions in this terrible area to the tenacious and unhesitating Kuznetsov. As employees of the Leningrad NKVD department later recalled about that time: “We did not see him in the NKVD. Kuznetsov often visited ... " Zhdanov will sometimes even have to restrain the excessive zeal of his young deputy.

So, at the very end of September 1937, the head of the Leningrad UNKVD, Zakovsky, submitted to the regional committee a proposal to expel the arrested worker of the Party Control Commission for the Leningrad Region, Mikhail Bogdanov, from the party. The prisoner himself was already beaten in the "Big House" on Liteiny Prospekt in the office of the deputy head of the Regional NKVD.
In response to the proposal of the “chekists”, Kuznetsov, who had just been appointed 2nd Secretary, quickly prepared an unquestionable draft decision on expulsion: “Bogdanov M.V. was politically connected with the Strupe group, Kodatsky, Nizovev ... He restored the obviously Trotskyist-Bukharin k / r elements in the party, contributing to the preservation of agents of fascism in the ranks of the party organization ... ". The document was submitted for approval to the 1st Secretary. Zhdanov did not sign this text of Kuznetsov and, as he liked to put it, “arranged” - he changed the murderous lines of his deputy to much softer conclusions with a proposal not to expel the arrested person from the party, but only to remove him from the regional committee and city committee, “giving him the last warning”. This did not return Bogdanov's freedom, but saved him from an immediate death sentence.

In addition to Alexei Kuznetsov, Terenty Shtykov is worth mentioning among the party "promoted" members of Zhdanov's Leningrad team. Born in 1907, the son of a Belarusian peasant from the Grodno province, at the age of 20 he will finish a vocational school in Leningrad and join the party. Since 1931 he will work in the regional departments of the Leningrad Komsomol, and since 1938 he will become the closest assistant to Zhdanov and Kuznetsov in the regional party committee. Already after the Great Patriotic War, in 1945, fate would throw Terenty Fomich Shtykov very far from Leningrad, to the north of the Korean Peninsula. There, a former employee of the Leningrad Regional Committee will build the Communist Party and the state of North Korea according to Zhdanov's patterns. It is no coincidence that the draft charter of the new Workers' Party of Korea and the constitution of North Korea will be discussed in Zhdanov's Kremlin office. But we will return to this oriental story, for the time being, we note that the Zhdanov party-state recipes thrown into Korean soil still show amazing viability in the most difficult conditions ...

Shtykov, Zhdanov, Kuznetsov (second row) and Meretskov on the podium, November 7, 1939 Three weeks left before the Finnish war ...

The party was the main core of the entire state and economic apparatus of the Stalin era. But in addition to professional party workers, such as Alexei Kuznetsov or Terenty Shtykov, other people were required to manage the urban economy. Such "strong business executives" for Zhdanov were Pyotr Popkov and Yakov Kapustin.

Pyotr Sergeevich Popkov was born in 1903 in a village near Vladimir. His father was a carpenter, in addition to Peter, there were three more brothers and three sisters in the family. Therefore, from the age of 9, having barely studied in two classes of the parochial school, the boy was sent to the laborers. Until the age of 12, he tended other people's cattle. In 1915, his father took him to Vladimir, sending him as an apprentice to a private bakery. A few years later, the teenager, like his father, became a carpenter. Until 1925, Peter worked in the carpentry workshops of Vladimir. He combined work with studies at an evening school for the semi-literate. He joined the Komsomol, and in 1925 he joined the party. I wanted to go to study on a party ticket to a university, but due to my father's illness I had to return to carpentry work in order to support my family. Only in the late 20's. carpenter Petr Popkov enters the workers' faculty at the Pedagogical University of Leningrad. Working faculties in the 20-30s. carried out preparation for studying in universities of proletarian youth who did not receive a timely secondary education.

Having successfully improved his literacy at the workers' faculty, in 1931 Popkov entered the Leningrad Institute of Municipal Construction Engineers at the Faculty of Engineering and Economics. He completed his higher education in that same 1937, and after graduating from the institute he remained to work in it as the secretary of the party committee and head of the research sector. Thus, a semi-poor farm laborer, a teenage baker, and a young carpenter becomes an authoritative member of the primary organization of the ruling party and a respected engineer, a man with higher education, which is still a rarity in that semi-literate country.

Let us recall that at the end of 1937 in the USSR, under the new Constitution, elections were held for soviets at all levels. And in Leningrad, besides, Zhdanov had just carried out a new zoning in connection with plans for the reconstruction of the city. And in November 1937, Pyotr Popkov was elected to the council of one of these new urban areas. At the same time, the ongoing repressions in the country open up a lot of vacancies, launching a grandiose "social lift". So, for a variety of reasons, a technically literate and active member of the Bolshevik Party with an impeccable proletarian biography becomes the chairman of the Leninsky District Council of Workers' Deputies of the city of Leningrad.

The district council then decides all issues of local importance, from cultural construction to pressing issues of public utilities and life. And the utility systems engineer finds himself in his place - Popkov personally “builds” and controls everything in the new Leninsky district: from the veterinary inspection to the regional education department, from the registry office to the trade inspectorate and accounting. For example, he personally appoints and daily checks all building managers on his territory. According to the results of the first year of his work, all the numerous and tough checks then do not find waste and theft in the new district.

Zhdanov quickly notices a promising "business executive". The Leningrad party leader is clearly impressed by the young and intelligent practitioner with brilliant characteristics for those years. And Popkov himself during this period at working meetings with the same building managers constantly mentions his contacts with the most important Leningrad boss: “It is no coincidence that Comrade Zhdanov calls us and demands a report every ten days ...”

Under the patronage of Zhdanov, the economic career of Petr Popkov is developing rapidly. From 1938 he became deputy chairman, and in 1939 chairman of the Leningrad City Council.

Pyotr Popkov with his son, Leningrad, 1940

Another key representative of the Leningrad Zhdanov team is Yakov Kapustin. Yakov Fedorovich was born in 1904 into a peasant family in the Vesyegonsk district of the Tver province. From the age of 19, a laborer at Volkhovstroy, built by the Bolsheviks on the personal instructions of Lenin in 1918-26. the first large hydroelectric power plant in Russia. After Volkhovstroy, Kapustin worked as an assistant locksmith and riveter at the famous Putilov plant in Leningrad. In 1926-28, while in military service in the Red Army, he joined the Bolshevik Party. After the army, he works at the same Putilov, already the Kirov plant. In the early 1930s, the proletarian Kapustin went to study at the Industrial Institute (before the revolution, the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute, now the St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University). In the mid-1930s, it was the largest technical university in the country, in which over 10,000 students and postgraduates study under the guidance of almost a thousand professors and teachers. Since 1935, the Industrial Institute will be headed by a person from the "Zhdanov team", the former head of the Nizhny Novgorod regional department of public education Pyotr Tyurkin (at the end of 1937 he will become the People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR, and in 1949 he will also be one of the defendants in the "Leningrad case ... "")

In the same 1935, Yakov Kapustin, a post-graduate student of the largest technical university in the country, sent for an internship to England, where he studied the production of steam turbines. After overseas studies, engineer Kapustin in 1936 became an assistant to the shop manager of the Kirov Plant. The head of the workshop was Isaac Saltsman, the future main tank builder in the Stalinist USSR, who is also referred to as the “Zhdanov people”. Later, Western researchers and journalists will call Saltzman "the king of tanks." In 1937, between Zaltsman and Kapustin, a tough industrial conflict arose, typical at that time of forced industrialization and accelerated scientific and technological development. The dispute between Saltsman and Kapustin almost ended with the latter's expulsion from the party.

However, thanks to the intervention of Zhdanov, Kapustin not only remained at the factory and in the party, but in 1938 he already headed the party organization of this giant of the Leningrad industry. A year later, in 1939, engineer Yakov Kapustin became secretary of the Kirov District Party Committee, and in 1940 he was appointed 2nd secretary of the Leningrad City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

Yakov Kapustin

Zhdanov was the first secretary of both the regional committee and the city committee. 2-secretary of the regional committee - Alexei Kuznetsov. 2 secretary of the city committee - Kapustin. Those. Kuznetsov replaced our hero in the region, and Kapustin in the city. But in the Stalinist hierarchy, the regional committee was higher than the city committee. In fact, by 1940, when Zhdanov’s Leningrad team finally took shape, its top looked like this: in the first place, on a completely sky-high top, somewhere on the right hand of the “great leader of all peoples” stands a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee, Comrade Zhdanov, after him in Leningrad and the region, Comrade Kuznetsov is the chief, followed by Kapustin and Popkov, after them the rest of the party, Soviet and economic leaders of the city and region.

Anastas Mikoyan writes in his memoirs about Zhdanov and his Leningrad deputies: "They genuinely treated each other well, loved each other like true friends." The authors of the collection "Leningrad Case" (1990), relying on the memoirs of employees of the apparatus of the Leningrad city committee, argue that Alexei Kuznetsov was truly devoted to his patron, he literally "did not leave Zhdanov's office." The same can be said about other team leaders - Popkov, Kapustin and others. This was manifested even in small details: for example, in the purely personal notebook of the secretary of the regional committee, Shtykov, the last names appear: “Kuznetsov”, “Mikoyan”, “Kosygin” ... But it is necessary: ​​“Comrade. Stalin" and "Comrade. Zhdanov. Even in personal communication behind their backs, none of them simply said “Zhdanov” - exclusively “Andrei Alexandrovich” or “Comrade Zhdanov”.

Already after the war, when Zhdanov finally went to work in the Kremlin, the Leningrad bosses who did not directly work with him would call him “the main boss”, Alexei Kuznetsov would simply become the “chief”.

But the Zhdanov clan, as we remember, is by no means limited to Leningrad. The capital of the country, Moscow, is headed by his "man" - Alexander Shcherbakov. Zhdanov's nominees, two deputy chairmen of the Council of People's Commissars, Voznesensky and Kosygin, play a key role in the country's government. And all of this is just the tip of a big bureaucratic iceberg…

From left to right: Pyotr Popkov, Andrey Zhdanov, Alexei Kuznetsov, Yakov Kapustin

continuation in the magazine

Leningrad case

"Leningrad business"- a series of trials in the late 1940s and early 1950s against party and state leaders of the RSFSR in the USSR. All the leaders of the Leningrad regional, city and district organizations of the CPSU (b), almost all Soviet and state figures who, after the Great Patriotic War, were nominated from Leningrad for leadership work in Moscow and other regional party organizations, became victims of repression. Arrests were made both in Leningrad and throughout the country - in Moscow, Gorky, Murmansk, Simferopol, Novgorod, Ryazan, Pskov, Petrozavodsk, Tallinn.

According to the first of these processes, the chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR N. A. Voznesensky, the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR M. I. Rodionov, the secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks A. A. Kuznetsov, the first secretary of the Leningrad regional committee and city committee P. S. Popkov, second secretary of the Leningrad City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Ya. F. Kapustin, chairman of the Leningrad City Executive Committee P. G. Lazutin. All the accused were sentenced to death on September 30, 1950. The sentences were carried out on the same day.

Progress

The reason for the Leningrad case was the holding in Leningrad from January 10 to January 20, 1949 of the All-Russian Wholesale Fair. The message about the fair was an addition to the already existing compromising evidence. The leaders of the Leningrad party organization were accused of fraud during the election of a new leadership at a conference in December 1948.

G. M. Malenkov brought charges against A. A. Kuznetsov and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR M. I. Rodionov, secretaries of the Leningrad regional committee and the city committee of the party P. S. Popkov and Ya. F. Kapustin that they held a fair without the knowledge and bypassing the Central Committee and the government. Meanwhile, it is documented that the fair was held in pursuance of the decision of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. On November 11, 1948, the Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, chaired by Malenkov, adopted a resolution "On measures to improve trade." The resolution says: "organize in November-December 1948, inter-regional wholesale fairs, at which to sell surplus goods, to allow free export from one region to another of industrial goods purchased at the fair. In pursuance of this decree, the Ministry of Trade of the USSR and the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR decided to hold the All-Russian Wholesale Fair in Leningrad from January 10 to 20 and ordered the Leningrad City Executive Committee to provide practical assistance in organizing and holding it. On January 13, 1949, during the fair, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR M. I. Rodionov sent written information to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks G. M. Malenkov about the All-Russian Wholesale Fair that had opened in Leningrad with the participation of trade organizations of the Union republics.

On February 15, 1949, a resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was adopted “On the anti-party actions of a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Comrade Kuznetsov A.A. and candidates for members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Comrades. Rodionova M.I. and Popkova P.S. All three were removed from their posts. At the same time, preparations were underway for falsifications against N. A. Voznesensky. For these purposes, a memorandum from the Deputy Chairman of the USSR Gossnab, M. T. Pomaznev, was used on the understating by the USSR State Planning Committee of the USSR industrial production plan for the first quarter of 1949. This document served as the beginning for the construction of charges against N. A. Voznesensky.

On February 21, 1949, Malenkov left for Leningrad with a group of workers of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. At a joint meeting of the bureaus of the regional committee and the city committee on February 21, 1949, the secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Malenkov, using threats, forced the secretaries of the regional committee and the city committee to admit that a hostile anti-party group existed in Leningrad. On February 22, 1949, a joint plenum of the Leningrad Regional Committee and the City Party Committee was held, at which G. M. Malenkov reported on the decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of February 15, 1949. None of the speakers cited any facts about the existence of an anti-party group, only PS Popkov and Ya. F. Kapustin admitted that their activities were anti-Party. Following them, other speakers began to repent of the mistakes they had not made. In the decision of the joint plenum of the regional committee and the city committee, A. A. Kuznetsov, M. I. Rodionov, P. S. Popkov, Ya. F. Kapustin were accused of belonging to an anti-party group.

In the summer of 1949, a new stage began in the development of the so-called "Leningrad Case". Abakumov and employees of the MGB headed by him fabricated materials accusing A. A. Kuznetsov, M. I. Rodionov and the leaders of the Leningrad regional organization of the CPSU (b) of counter-revolutionary activities. Arrests were ordered, which began in July 1949.

Information about dismissal from work, bringing to party and criminal liability, about trials was not published in the press.

For more than a year, those arrested were subjected to interrogations and torture. All the convicts were charged with the fact that, having created an anti-party group, they carried out wrecking and subversive work aimed at separating and opposing the Leningrad party organization to the Central Committee of the party, turning it into a support for the fight against the party and the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). The issue of physical destruction was a foregone conclusion long before the trial, which took place on September 29-30, 1950 in Leningrad at the House of Officers on Liteiny Prospekt. It is for the sake of the “Leningraders” that the death penalty is reintroduced in the USSR. Prior to that, in 1947, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the death penalty was abolished. Already during the investigation of the Leningrad case, on January 12, 1950, the death penalty was restored in relation to traitors to the Motherland, spies and subversive bombers. Despite the fact that the rule “the law does not have retroactive effect” does not apply in this case, the introduction of the death penalty takes place three days before the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On anti-party actions ...”, and therefore the connection between the two facts is visible. October 1, 1950 at 2.00, an hour after the announcement of the verdict, N. A. Voznesensky, A. A. Kuznetsov, M. I. Rodionov, P. S. Popkov, Ya. F. Kapustin, P. G. Lazutin were shot . Their ashes were secretly buried on the Levashovskaya wasteland near Leningrad. I. M. Turko, T. V. Zakrzhevskaya and F. E. Mikheev were sentenced to long-term imprisonment.

After the massacre of the "central group", trials took place, which passed sentences on the rest of the persons involved in the "Leningrad case". 20 people were shot in Moscow. The bodies of G. F. Badaev, M. V. Basov, V. O. Belopolsky, A. A. Bubnov, A. I. Burilin, A. D. Verbitsky, M. A. Voznesenskaya, A. A. Voznesensky, V P. Galkina, V. N. Ivanov, P. N. Kubatkina, P. I. Levin, M. N. Nikitin, M. I. Petrovsky, M. I. Safonov, N. V. Solovieva, P. T Talyusha, I. S. Kharitonov, P. A. Chursin were taken to the cemetery of the Donskoy Monastery, cremated and dumped the remains into a pit.

Museum entrance (summer 2007)

Economic, trade union, Komsomol and military workers, scientists, representatives of the creative intelligentsia were also repressed (Leningrad scientists and cultural workers were convicted in separate cases not related to the Leningrad case itself).

Arrests continued later. In August 1952, more than 50 people who worked during the blockade as secretaries of district party committees and chairmen of district executive committees were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment on falsified "cases" of Smolninsky, Dzerzhinsky and other districts of the city.

Severe trials fell on the lot of relatives. From October 1950, arrests of family members began, who were awaited by torture investigations, prisons, stages, camps, exiles.

From the memorandum of the Minister of Internal Affairs Kruglov and his deputy Serov: “A total of 214 people were convicted, of which 69 people were the main defendants and 145 people from among close and distant relatives. In addition, 2 people died in prison before trial. 23 people were convicted by the military collegium to capital punishment (execution).

Documentation

Top secret

CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE AUCP(b)

At the same time, I present a list of those arrested in the Leningrad case. Apparently, it is expedient, according to the experience of the past, to condemn in a closed session of the Field Session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR in Leningrad without the participation of the parties, that is, the prosecution and the defense, a group of 9-10 main defendants. The rest of the accused are to be condemned in the general order by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. In order to draw up an indictment and prepare the case for trial, we need to know the individuals who should be convicted among the main group of accused. I ask for your instructions. With regard to the composition of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, I will report to you additionally.

V. Abakumov

Top secret

CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE AUCP(b)

Comrade Stalin I.V.

At the same time, I present a list of the rest of those arrested in the Leningrad case. The Ministry of State Security of the USSR considers it necessary to condemn the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR in the usual manner, without the participation of the parties, in Lefortovo prison, with the consideration of cases for each accused separately: First. - The accused listed in the attached list from 1 to 19, inclusive: SOLOVIEV, VERBITSKY, LEVIN, BADAEV, VOSNENSENSKY, KUBATKIN, VOSNENSENSKAYA, BONDARENKO, KHARITONOV, BURILIN, BASOVA, NIKITIN, TALUSH, SAFONOV, GALKIN, IVANOV, PETROVBNOV, CHURSINA - to the death penalty - shooting, without the right to appeal, pardon and with the enforcement of the court sentence immediately. Second. - From the 20th to the 32nd number of the list, inclusive: GRIGORYEV, KOLOBASHKIN, SINTSOVA, BUMAGINA, BOYAR, KLEMENCHUK, KUZMENKO, TAIROV, SHUMILOV, NIKANOROVA, KHOVANOV, RAKOVA and BELOPOLSKY, - to 25 years in prison each. Third. - From 33 to 38 list number: TIKHONOV, PAVLOV, LIZUNOV, PODGORSKY, VEDERNIKOV and SKRIPCHENKO - for 15 years of imprisonment in a special camp each. I ask for your permission.

V. Abakumov 7220/A 1950

OWL. SECRET

CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE AUCP(b)

Comrade Stalin I.V.

At the same time, we present the indictment in the case of KUZNETSOV, POPKOV, Voznesensky, Kapustin, Lazutin, Rodionov, Turko, Zakrzhevskaya and Mikheev, a total of nine people. We consider it necessary to condemn all of them by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, moreover, the main defendants KUZNETSOV, POPKOV, Voznesensky, Kapustin, Lazutin and Rodionov, in accordance with the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of January 12, 1950, to death - by firing squad, without the right to pardon , with the immediate execution of the sentence of the court. TURKO - to 15 years in prison, ZAKRZHEVSKY and MIKHEEV - to 10 years in prison each. The composition of the court is to be determined: the presiding officer - Deputy Chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR Major General of Justice I. O. MATULEVICH, members of the court - Major General of Justice I. M. ZARYANOV and Major General of Justice I. V. DETISTOV Hear the case in Leningrad without the participation of the parties (the prosecutor and lawyers) in a closed session, without publication in the press, but in the presence of 100-150 people. from among the party activists of the Leningrad organization. The hearing of the case, in view of the need for careful preparation of the trial, could, in our opinion, begin on September 25, 1950. We ask for your instructions. ABAKUMOV VAVILOV "" September 1950

From October 1950, arrests and interrogations of family members of the accused began. During the review of the case, a proposal was made to rehabilitate the relatives of the persons convicted in the "Leningrad case". In a memorandum dated December 10, 1953, the heads of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs S. N. Kruglov and I. A. Serov stated that “the vast majority of them had no serious grounds for criminal prosecution or expulsion to remote regions of Siberia.” The note cited the most egregious facts in this respect. Thus, the Special Meeting of the Ministry of State Security of the USSR condemned to 5 years of exile the mother of the secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee, G.F. Badaev, at the age of 67, and his two sisters, who lived independently. They sent into exile the father of the secretary of the Leningrad City Executive Committee A. A. Bubnov at the age of 72, his mother 66 years old, two brothers and two sisters.

Arrests continued later. In August 1952, more than 50 people who worked during the blockade as secretaries of district party committees and chairmen of the district executive committees of Smolninsky, Dzerzhinsky and other districts of the city were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment on falsified cases.

In 1949-1952. in Leningrad and the region alone, more than 2,000 people were released from work, expelled from the party.

Retrial in 1954

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

Opinions

The fate of Kuznetsov, Voznesensky, and the entire so-called "Leningrad case" was decided by a commission of the Central Committee, which is quite understandable, given the situation of the accused. It included Malenkov, Khrushchev and Shkiryatov. The death of the Leningrad leaders is primarily on their conscience. Only one detail, which for many years Russian historians prefer to turn a blind eye to: all the interrogations of the accused who took place in this “case” were conducted not by MGB investigators, but by members of the party commission.

Abakumov and his subordinates […] created the so-called Leningrad case. In 1950, Abakumov dealt with 150 family members of those convicted in the Leningrad case, repressing them.

M. E. Chervyakov, repressed in the "Leningrad case":

Yes, malicious, fabricated ridiculous charges were removed from us, released from prisons, returned from exile and camps, reinstated in the ranks of the CPSU ... They never remembered one thing - the honor and dignity of the repressed, trampled under the dirty boots of the Malenkov-Andrianov gang. When we were filmed, expelled, imprisoned, all these goats, Nosenkovs, raspberries, dumplings, Safronovs, and others like them found time, desire, words to explain to people the “justice” of their intriguing criminal actions, to denigrate us in the eyes of numerous labor collectives. The fact that these people, after our rehabilitation (and they “received” us) did not have a conscience, never surprised me - only that which really exists can act. But after all, forty years have passed since the beginning of the "Leningrad case" and no one - at any level: party, state - did not bring us official apologies and regrets, did not even condemn with a word everyone who took part in the fabrication of this dirty "case" ...

G.M. Malenkov, Speech at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU in June 1957:

see also

Notes

Literature

Links

• Stalin and the Betrayal of Leningrad- BBC documentary
• Olga Petrova - "Leningrad business" on the website of the socio-political magazine "Breakthrough"
• Levashovskaya Pustosh Memorials to victims of repressions

Stalinist repressions
Repression
Affairs
Processes
Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich | Category:Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin |

"Leningrad business".

After the war, Stalin was to new war- with corruption. So not just and not because of the fear of losing power, as some historians suggest, Stalin began to "tighten the screws" after the Great Patriotic War. Yes, this is not news for world history - that after devastating wars, everywhere and at all times, the restoration of the country begins with the strengthening of power (up to the introduction of a state of emergency and even dictatorship) in order to stop the discord and collapse of the economic and social management system that occurred during the war years.

By the way, due to the use of his official position for personal purposes, even the main commander, Marshal Zhukov, was held accountable. And only the “trophies from looting activities in Germany” handed over to the state saved him from severe criminal punishment, although they did not save him from a serious demotion along the party and state lines.

However, the most serious was the "Leningrad case" - the case of nepotism in the leading bodies of the party and the state, which was a direct path to the emergence and flourishing of corruption. Its peak is the abuse of office for personal interests, which began with privileges and benefits, and ended with bribes and turning the state pocket into your own ...

The “Leningrad case” is in fact a case of corruption, primarily in the leadership environment from top to bottom ... At first, like everyone else, I did not know and did not understand this. But now, having familiarized myself with a number of party documents, I come to the conclusion that purely political accusations may have been fabricated, but the corruption side of the case definitely took place! In any case, the actions committed by the accused clearly created the conditions for corruption. (I say this on the basis of party documents, and not on the basis of investigation materials, which have never enjoyed due confidence anywhere in the world. Party documents, on the other hand, appeared in an atmosphere of free showdown, and long before the institution of an investigative file.)

But ... at first, such a seemingly completely harmless example.

Agree, it is one thing when it comes to allocating money, say, to improve conditions in a kindergarten, and quite another when money is required to restore a burned-out orphanage, the pupils of which, unlike children who have a roof over their heads, simply have nowhere to go. It seems to go without saying that the first priority is to help homeless children.

However, due to relations of nepotism, the head often allocates funds not to the orphanage, but to the kindergarten, because his beloved grandson goes there ... It seems nothing special, but it is with such harmless facts that corruption begins, corroding like rust, the whole state.

It is difficult to catch dealers in such crimes, but it is possible. In order to exclude the possibility of nepotism or bribery among the inspectors, in Stalin's time several independent commissions were appointed to check the same case. They submitted inspection materials not to any one main person, but, let's say, to each member of the Politburo. This almost ruled out the possibility of hiding the results of inspections and in many ways (due to publicity) guaranteed the application of well-deserved measures.

If someone managed to neutralize all these commissions, then in this case (after the fact of conspiracy was established), no one could expect mercy, because organized crime was punished much more severely and ... unconditionally! It was a kind of party court that did not know the statute of limitations, as is the case today.

"Leningrad case" began with Politburo resolutions February 15, 1949 in connection with the irresponsible initiative taken to hold the All-Union Wholesale Fair in Leningrad (from January 10 to 20, 1949).

Nothing was really calculated, and instead of selling the goods, they were damaged and ... 4 billion rubles.
And this is in the conditions of a terrible post-war manufactured goods and food famine. Plus, it turned out that significant travel funds were squandered on a trip to the Northern capital of leaders from all over the country. Simply put, many went just to “break away from business” and go on a grand scale ... That is, even in this corruption was visible. Further more!

The Politburo Resolution stated:

“Based on the audit, it was established that the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR Comrade. Rodionov M.I. together with the Leningrad leading comrades with the assistance of a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) comrade. Kuznetsova A.A. Arbitrarily and illegally organized the All-Union Wholesale Fair with an invitation to participate in trade organizations of the territories and regions of the RSFSR, including the most remote ones, up to the Sakhalin Region, as well as representatives of trade organizations of all Union republics.

At the fair, goods worth about 9 billion rubles, including goods, which are distributed by the federal government according to a national plan, which led to the squandering of state commodity funds and to the infringement of the interests of a number of territories, regions and republics (And this is corruption ... and what else!) the movement of its participants from remote areas to Leningrad and back. (And this is also corruption!)

The Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks considers the candidates for members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, vol. Rodionov and Popkov and a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Comrade Kuznetsov A.A., who violated the elementary foundations of state and party discipline ...

The Politburo believes that the anti-state actions noted above were the result of the fact that t.t. Kuznetsova A.A., Rodionova, Popkov there is an unhealthy bias, expressed in flirting with the Leningrad organization, in attempts to present themselves as special defenders of the interests of Leningrad, in attempts to create a mediastinum (that is, an obstacle that interferes with direct relations) between the Central Committee and the Leningrad organization ...

In this regard, it should be noted that Comrade Popkov, being the first secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee and the City Committee, does not try to ensure the connection of the Leningrad Party organization with the Central Committee, does not inform the Central Committee of the Party about the state of affairs in Leningrad and, instead of submitting questions and proposals directly to The Central Committee, embarks on the path of bypassing the Central Committee of the Party, on the path of dubious behind-the-scenes, and sometimes ravenous combinations, carried out through various self-proclaimed "bosses" of Leningrad, such as comrades. Kuznetsov, Rodionov and others.

In this light, one should consider the proposal, which has only now become known to the Central Committee from Comrade Voznesensky, to “patronize” Leningrad, with which Comrade Popkov addressed Comrade N.A. Voznesensky in 1948, as well as Comrade Popkov’s incorrect behavior when he contacts trying to replace the Leningrad party organization with the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks with personal ties with the so-called chief Comrade Kuznetsov A.A.

The Politburo believes that such methods are an expression of group action ... ”(The resolution is given in abbreviated form.)

The more carefully I reread this Decree, the more thoroughly the following conclusion suggests itself: in this state of affairs, conditions are inevitably created for the emergence and development of relations according to the principle “you - to me, I - to you!”, “Well, how not to please your dear little man?” However, this is corruption!

By the way, Kuznetsov, using the post of head of the Central Committee personnel, placed "his people" - "Leningraders" in high positions throughout the country. This explains the fact that the repressions in connection with the "Leningrad case" were not limited to Leningrad, but swept throughout the Union. Corruption was then cut down to the root, in order to avoid metastases, often grabbing even uninfected places, that is, those that were nearby. True, this was already an overlap of local figures on the principle of “no matter what happened,” or even the usual settling of scores. However, all this later also had to be answered!

Attention should also be paid to such an extremely important fact, namely:

February 21, 1949 At the Plenum of the Leningrad Regional Committee, a thorough discussion took place in connection with this Decree. And, it should be noted, when clarifying relations at the Plenum, P.S. Popkov did not make excuses, but said bluntly, “that the absolute number of questions that came from the regional and city committees of the party went to the Central Committee through Kuznetsov. I thought this was correct. I saw Kuznetsov's desire to lead the Leningrad organization...

Here are some facts. Comrade Kuznetsov called me one day and shouted at me indignantly (I had to inform the Central Committee of the Party in one cry): “Why are you building a road to Terijoki? To make it easier for you to go to the country? I said: “The resort area is for rent, we need a road. There is a decision of the session of the Leningrad City Council and the city committee of the party. “You made it all up. Such questions need to be coordinated with the Central Committee…” Now I understand that in demanding the coordination of such questions with the Central Committee, he meant himself by the Central Committee.

Verbitsky arrives and says: “I visited Alexei Alexandrovich Kuznetsov, who asked me, on what basis do you want to remove the tram traffic from Engels Avenue?” Verbitsky then said: Kuznetsov requires such questions to be coordinated with him ... "

Notice! All this would be tolerable if the Central Committee entrusted Kuznetsov with responsibility for the state of affairs in Leningrad, but then he did it arbitrarily, being the head of the personnel department of the Central Committee. Moreover, he exerted pressure, using his influence in the selection, replacement and promotion of people.

Moreover, he not only went about other than his own business, but also strove to resolve all issues on his own, hiding it from the Central Committee and acting in a way that was beneficial, first of all, to him: at first from the point of view of the common cause, and then from the point of view of personal career and personal well-being ... And this also led to all-encompassing corruption, because if something is possible for the boss, then it is also possible for subordinates!
Of course, in relation to their subordinates.

This conclusion can be clearly seen on the example of the second secretary of the Leningrad City Committee Ya.F. Kapustina, who, as if nothing had happened, said:

“In our system it was like this: like a trip, it’s necessary to go to Kuznetsov in Moscow.
The last time I came with a delegation to greet the Moscow Party Conference, I again did not fail to visit him. What did you come for? What for?"

To which Malenkov quite rightly replied: “The point is not that you went or did not go to Comrade Kuznetsov - he was the secretary of the Central Committee: why not come in? But the fact is that the Central Committee did not know what you were talking about with Kuznetsov, what instructions Kuznetsov gave. All this is closed in a group ...

The Central Committee has a Secretariat, a bureau, a Politburo, and depending on the importance of the issue, the Secretariat, bureau or Politburo decides. You support a different order - the sole decision of the issue, sole instructions. That's what it's about."

Malenkov is right, because it is precisely from such silent conversations that corruption begins. And whoever does not understand this will never defeat corruption.

historical fact

Natives of Leningrad (for example, in the person of N.A. Voznesensky) and in the State Planning Committee of the USSR did not really adhere to the rule: friendship is friendship, and service is service!
As a result, “it turned out that the chairman of the State Planning Commission, Voznesensky, systematically underestimated the plan for some ministries and overestimated it for others. Accordingly, those whom he loved had good performance, bonuses and other delights. But the rest - it's better not to remember ...

How difficult such “Leningrad traditions” are for the country, the people experience to this day!

What was it

All proceedings in the "Leningrad case" took place in a purely public order and did not concern that part of the "case" that was opened six months later by the authorities, initiating a criminal investigation for inclinations of a political nature, aimed at creating a new party (RKP) and formalizing the RSFSR on this basis in ... so to speak, a full-fledged republic.

That is, the “Leningraders” were tried for those political plans that ultimately assumed what Yeltsin did in 1980-1990, namely: by declaring Russia independent within the USSR, Yeltsin thereby destroyed Soviet Union and, therefore, he committed an act that should have been prosecuted under the article "Treason to the Motherland" by destroying the constitutional foundations of the USSR, expressed in the change or overthrow of the social system.

In other words, they tried and sentenced the “Lendels” for trying to create what Yeltsin and his allies created 40 years later in the form of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Polozkov-Zyuganov and the notorious Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), from which the peoples of the former Soviet republics cannot come into yourself so far. However, it was a completely different and more scary tale, relegated to the background even the issues of corruption, discussed above.

In addition to the corruption component of the “Leningrad case”, which was revealed at the highest party and state levels, a whole series of “cases” was uncovered in the same years economic order in the sphere of action of ministries, central administrations and enterprises that directly produce products of increased and everyday demand.

"Bread business"

No matter how secretly the “tops” do something, the “bottoms” immediately (!) begin to repeat it. Because while the “tops” are still preparing, the rich imagination of the observant “bottoms” is already drawing what the “tops”, they say, have been doing for a long time ... Indeed: if it’s possible for the “tops” in relation to their subordinates, then why can’t these subordinates in relation to to their "bottom"?!

Corruption - like electricity - instantly spreads through all channels of power! And if someone gets in her way, she immediately turns him into “her own” or throws him out (!) From her system - she simply destroys those who are especially recalcitrant. That's why I call corruption a cancer of society...

This is such a difficult misfortune after the Great Patriotic War that fell on the victorious, but hungry Soviet Union. And the first of the cases that corruption took up, of course, was the “bread business”. Because hungry people were ready to give their last savings for bread!

The distribution system has become an incubator and peddler of corruption in the Russian food industry "Rosglavkhleb" led by the head of the supply department Mikhail Isaev.

The extensive network of his criminal group (except for the deputy head of the department Shulkin B.N., the chief accountant of the department Rosenbaum D.A. and the director of the Moscow interregional base Glavka Bukhman E.M.) included officials from the poorly controlled trusts of Altai and Tatarstan, as well as the Arkhangelsk , Bryansk, Ivanovo, Moscow, Orenburg and Rostov regions. There were at least 20 people...

The attention of Nevzorov and his comrades in the special services was attracted by pretty young women, whom the irritated beauties of Isaev changed like gloves. Still: when some were swaying from hunger, these tables in restaurants and dachas were bursting with food and drink, which made it possible to arrange an almost competitive selection among the weaker sex. It got to the point that Isaev's wife found out about her husband's dacha "choral orgies" and ... hanged herself. Isaev and his companions in an easy life, in order to hide the true causes of death, buried her as having died of a sudden heart attack ...

The question was: with what money and where did all this come from?

The answer was extremely simple: with the world on a thread - a shirt to the body. Indeed, for the fact that all the deficits were allocated to the indicated trusts without delay, or even in excess of the prescribed amount, their bosses “rolled back” to the Moscow authorities according to the following scheme.

They wrote out, for example, a thousand kg of flour or sugar to some bakery or confectionery factory, but they released, say, only 950 kg of sugar, leaving Isaev in the form of a “rollback” of 50 kilos. In order to cover this shortage (and even cash in on the resulting deficit), in the manufacture of, say, cookies, sugar was underinvested: instead of 1000, 900 kg went into production ... based on the fact that it’s impossible to determine how much sugar is in a kilogram of cookies - 90 g or 100! This could only be done in the laboratory.

Or let's take baking 100 thousand buns, for each of which instead of 10 pcs. raisins went 8 and instead of 30 grams of sugar - 25, etc., etc.

Direct theft was also practiced due to incomplete posting of incoming food, which in the post-war conditions was easily explained both by unidentified losses from wagons unsealed along the way, and by obvious robberies when unloading "freight trains" by members of numerous gangs who were hired as decent people, but then suddenly disappeared in an unknown direction and, of course, not empty-handed. As a result, financially responsible persons were forced to draw up acts on the damage caused. Of course, in the current situation, many of them stole themselves, and attributed everything to bandits.

The products "saved" in this way were quickly sold in the markets and through the commercial network of stores.

Be that as it may, the detective Fyodor Nevzorov and his comrades in the special services managed to bring to light not only the already named metropolitan food and criminal center M.I. Isaev, but also high-ranking provincial lovers associated with Isaev to arrange for themselves " sweet life due to the bitter tears of ordinary citizens.

According to agency data.
I list corrupt criminals and their "cases" according to the documents of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.

“LEIDERMAN L.G., a representative of the Rostov Trust, in a criminal conspiracy with Isaev and other employees of the Central Base and Supply Department of Rosglavkhleb, received various products for the baking industry in the region in the amount of 123.7 thousand rubles, but in the mountains. Rostov did not deliver them. Part of the money for these stolen products he (by agreement with the chief accountant of the supply department of Glavka Rosenbaum) transferred in cash through the Moscow State Labor Savings Bank. Part of the goods were written off for production by individual bakeries as allegedly spent on the manufacture of bakery products.

Frolov A.E., working as the manager of the Arkhangelsk trust of the baking industry, in 1945-46. received food products worth 86,928 rubles from the Rosglavkhleb base, of which he did not deliver them to the trust for 66,569 rubles and stole them.

In a similar way, they received and plundered foodstuffs:

representatives of the Tatar bakery trust forwarder Kurochkin-Savoderov F.N. and Tsanin Ya.T. - in the amount of 183 thousand rubles (of which Kurochkin-Savoderov - 136 thousand rubles);

chief engineer of the Altai, and then manager of the Bryansk trust "Rosglavkhleb" Dashkovsky M.I. - in the amount of 10,600 rubles;

Forwarder of the Buzuluk bakery of the Orenburg region Spe-vak S.M. - in the amount of 94 thousand rubles, etc.

Furthermore, the investigation found that Isaev M.AND. by order of the Ministry of Food Industry of the USSR No. 104 dated March 18, 1946, received 30 vehicles from the Moscow trust "Pechenie" to be sent according to the order to a number of trusts Russian Federation. According to a criminal agreement with the manager of the transport office of the Moscow Trust Melamed G.Ya. for sending cars to trusts, they received bribes from their representatives at the rate of 7 thousand rubles per car. In total, they received about 200 thousand rubles.

For example, the same Leiderman gave Melamed a bribe of 70 thousand rubles for 10 cars. Documentally, Leiderman reported in such a way that he allegedly spent the indicated amount on the repair of machines, which he produced at Moscow enterprises in private. Fictitious documents for the corresponding fee were compiled by the forwarder of the Central Base "Rosglavkhleb" Rabinovich I.Z.

For the release of cars to the Buzuluk bakery, Isaev received 60 kg of saccharin from his representative Spevak, which he was supposed to deliver to his bakery. As a result, in order to hide the shortage, the saccharin stolen in this way was written off for production ...

Part of the illegally obtained money went to a wild lifestyle, in particular, to drinking in restaurants and reveling with women of easy virtue. The other part was spent on the purchase of jewelry and household items. A savings book to the bearer in the amount of 100 thousand rubles was confiscated from Isaev and an expensive dacha in the Moscow region was described, where a whole warehouse of food products was discovered and seized, and among them - bags of sugar and flour, a large number of canned meat and milk, hundreds of bottles of expensive wines, vodka and sausage products worth tens of thousands of rubles, and so on.

For the period from April 14, 1945 to 1946 inclusive, Isaev's criminal group stole: sugar - 1670 kg, flour - 8500 kg, saccharin - 670 kg, raisins - 310 kg, butter- 414 kg, condensed milk - 1553 cans, jam and marmalade - 2605 kg, etc. - total at retail prices (according to the Order of the Ministry of Trade of the USSR No. 550 dated 12/14/1947) in the amount of 1,139,230 rubles. 18 kop.

Isaev and Rosenbaum to 25 years in prison each, followed by loss of voting rights for five years;

their accomplices: Kurochkin-Savoderov - to 15 years in prison;
Melamed, Spevak and Tsanina - to 10 years in prison;
Bukhman, Leiderman, Frolov and others - also to long terms of imprisonment;

all - with complete confiscation of property their relatives».

Thus, the damage caused by the criminals to the state was fully compensated. One cannot even dream of such results today ... (zanuda2: it is noteworthy that most of the participants and main organizers of these thefts are ethnic Jews - Bukhman, Leiderman, Melamed, Dashkovsky, Spevak, Tsanin and others. As well as among the current "olingarchs" - all these Berezovskys, Gusinskys, Abramovichs, Prokhorovs, Waxelbergs, Izrailevichs, Kogans, Levites, etc. True, the Jews themselves say that this is just a coincidence ...)