Ussr during the Second World War and the post-war period. Ussr during the second great patriotic war ussr during the wwii summary

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the territory of the USSR without declaring war. The Great Patriotic War began, which from the first days differed from the war in the West in its scope, bloodshed, extreme tension of the struggle, mass atrocities of the fascists, unprecedented self-sacrifice of the citizens of the USSR.

The German side presented the war as a preventive (preventive) one. The preemptive war fiction was intended to give the attack on the USSR the appearance of a moral justification. The decision to invade was made by the fascist leadership not because the USSR threatened Germany, but because Nazi Germany was striving for world domination. Germany's guilt as an aggressor cannot be questioned. On June 22, Germany carried out, as established by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, a carefully prepared attack on the USSR “without any warning and without a shadow of legitimate justification. It was obvious aggression. " At the same time, some facts of the pre-war history of our country remain the subject of controversy among historians. Of course, this cannot change the assessment of the German attack on the USSR as an act of aggression. In the national historical memory of the people, the war of 1941-1945. will forever remain as Patriotic, liberation. And no details of interest to historians can obscure this indisputable fact.

In June 1940, the German General Staff began developing a plan for a war against the USSR, and on December 18, Hitler approved the "Barbarossa" plan, which provided for the completion of the military campaign against the USSR during the "lightning war" in two to four months. The documents of the German leadership left no doubt that it was betting on the destruction of the USSR and its millions of citizens. The Nazis intended to "crush the Russians as a people," undermine their "biological strength", and destroy culture.

Germany and its allies (Finland, Hungary, Romania, Italy) concentrated 190 divisions (5.5 million soldiers and officers), 4.3 thousand tanks, 5 thousand aircraft, 47.2 thousand guns and mortars along the border of the USSR ... In the western border military districts of the USSR, 170 divisions (3 million soldiers and commanders), 14.2 thousand tanks, 9.2 thousand combat aircraft, 32.9 thousand guns and mortars were concentrated. At the same time, 16% of tanks and 18.5% of aircraft were under repair or required repair. The blow was delivered in three main directions: Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev.

There are three periods in the history of the Great Patriotic War. During the first period (June 22, 1941 - November 18, 1942), the strategic initiative belonged to Germany. The Wehrmacht was able to seize the initiative, using the factor of surprise of the attack, concentration of forces and resources in the main directions. Already in the first days and months of the war, the Red Army suffered huge losses. In three weeks of fighting, the aggressor completely defeated 28 Soviet divisions, and another 70 lost more than half of their personnel and equipment. The retreat of units of the Red Army was often chaotic. A significant part of the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army were captured. According to German documents, at the end of 1941 they had 3.9 million Soviet prisoners of war.

What were the reasons for the defeats of the Red Army at the initial stage of the war? First of all, it should be emphasized that the USSR faced the strongest and most invincible army in the world at that time. The forces and assets of Germany and its allies at the beginning of the war were 1.2 times superior to the forces and assets of the USSR. In some positions, the Armed Forces of the USSR were quantitatively superior to the enemy's army, but inferior to him in strategic deployment, in the quality of many types of weapons, in experience, training and literacy of personnel. By the beginning of the war, it was not possible to complete the rearmament of the army: there was a lack of modern tanks, aircraft, automatic small arms, communications, etc.

Secondly, serious damage to the command staff was inflicted during the repression. In 1937-1939. about 37 thousand commanders of various ranks were dismissed from the army, most of them for political reasons. 3-4 thousand of them were shot as "conspirators", 6-8 thousand were convicted. Although the overwhelming majority of those dismissed and convicted were rehabilitated and returned to the army, the repression undermined the fighting efficiency of the Red Army. A significant part of the command staff (55%) was in their posts for less than six months. This was due to the fact that the size of the Red Army had more than doubled since 1939.

Thirdly, serious military-strategic miscalculations made by the Soviet political and military leadership, in the formation of a military concept, in the assessment of the strategic situation in the spring and summer of 1941, in determining the timing of a possible attack on the USSR and the directions of the main strikes of the German troops, had an effect. strategic and tactical surprise and multiple superiority of the aggressor in the main directions.

Fourth, mistakes were made in the organization of defense and training of troops. The army was in the process of reorganization, the tank corps were not yet ready for combat, the pilots had not yet learned how to fight with new technology, the western borders had not been fully fortified, the troops had not learned to fight on the defensive, etc.

From the first days of the war, the country's life began to be rebuilt in a military manner. The restructuring of the activities of the party, government and government bodies was based on the principle of maximum centralization of leadership. On June 23, the Headquarters of the High Command was created, headed by the People's Commissar of Defense Marshal S.K. Timoshenko. On July 10, Stalin was appointed chairman of the Headquarters (Headquarters of the Supreme High Command). On June 30, the State Defense Committee was organized under the chairmanship of Stalin. All power in the country was concentrated in his hands. The main direction of the GKO's activity was work on the deployment of the Armed Forces, the preparation of reserves, providing them with weapons, equipment, and food. During the war years, the State Defense Committee adopted about 10 thousand resolutions. Under the leadership of the Committee, the Stavka planned 9 campaigns, 51 strategic operations and 250 front-line ones.

Military mobilization work has become the most important direction of the state's activity. The general mobilization of those liable for military service made it possible to replenish the army with 5.3 million people by July. During the war years, 34.5 million people (17.5% of the pre-war population) were mobilized into the army and to work in industry (including those who served before the war and volunteers). More than a third of this composition was in the army, of which 5-6.5 million people were constantly in the active army. (17.9 million people were involved in the service in the Wehrmacht - 25.8% of the population of Germany in 1939). Mobilization made it possible to form 648 new divisions during the war years, of which 410 in 1941.

Military operations at the front in 1941 were extremely tragic. In the fall of 1941, Leningrad was blockaded. On the central sector of the front, the Battle of Smolensk began on July 10. A dramatic situation developed in September in the Kiev region, where there was a threat of encirclement of Soviet troops. The enemy closed the encirclement, captured Kiev, destroying and capturing more than 600 thousand soldiers and commanders of the Red Army. Having defeated the Kiev grouping of Soviet troops, the German command resumed the offensive of Army Group Center on Moscow. The defense of Odessa continued for more than two months. From October 30, 1941, Sevastopol fought heroically for 250 days.

The attack on Moscow (Operation Typhoon) began on 30 September. Despite the heroic resistance of the Soviet troops, the enemy approached Moscow. From October 20, a state of siege was introduced in the capital. On November 7, a military parade took place on Red Square, which was of great moral, psychological and political significance. On the other hand, the morale of the German troops was severely damaged. Their losses on the Eastern Front had no precedent: in June - November 1941 they were three times more than in Poland and on the Western Front, and losses in the officer corps were five times greater than in 1939-1940. On November 16, after a two-week pause, a new German offensive against Moscow began. Simultaneously with repelling the enemy offensive, a counteroffensive was being prepared. On December 5, the troops of the Kalinin Front (I.S.Konev) went on the offensive, and on December 6 - the Western (G.K. Zhukov) and Southwest (S.K. Timoshenko). The Soviet side had 1100 thousand soldiers and officers, 7.7 thousand guns and mortars, 774 tanks, 1 thousand aircraft against 1708 thousand enemy soldiers and officers, 13.5 thousand guns and mortars, 1170 tanks, 615 aircraft ...

In the battle of Moscow from November 16 to December 5, German troops lost 155 thousand people killed and wounded, about 800 tanks, 300 guns and up to 1.5 thousand aircraft. In total, by the end of 1941, Germany and the allies had lost 273.8 thousand people killed, 802.7 thousand wounded, and 57.2 thousand missing on the Eastern Front.

Within a month of fighting, Moscow, Tula and a significant part of the Kalinin region were liberated. In January 1942, the counter-offensive near Moscow grew into a general offensive by the Red Army. However, by March 1942 the power of the offensive had dried up, and the army suffered heavy losses. It was not possible to build on the success of the counter-offensive along the entire front, which lasted until April 20, 1942. The battle for Moscow had great importance: the myth of the invincibility of the German army was dispelled, the plan for a blitzkrieg was thwarted, the international position of the USSR was strengthened.

In the spring and summer of 1942, German troops took advantage of the miscalculations of the Soviet command, which was expecting a new offensive on Moscow and concentrated here more than half of the armies, 62% of aircraft and up to 80% of tanks. The German command was preparing an offensive in the south, seeking to capture the Caucasus and the Lower Volga region. There were not enough Soviet troops in the south. Distracting offensive operations in the Crimea and in the Kharkov direction resulted in major defeats. German troops occupied the Donbass, went into the big bend of the Don. On July 24, the enemy captured Rostov-on-Don. The situation at the front was critical.

On July 28, the People's Commissar of Defense issued order No. 227 ("Not one step back!"), Which was intended to suppress manifestations of cowardice and desertion, and categorically prohibited retreat without an order from the command. The order introduced penal battalions and companies for servicemen to serve punishment for criminal and military crimes. In 1942, 25 thousand people were sent to them, in the subsequent years of the war - 403 thousand. Within each army, 3-5 detachments were created (200 people in each), who were obliged to shoot alarmists on the spot in case of panic and indiscriminate withdrawal of units ... The defensive detachments were disbanded in the fall of 1944.

In August 1942, the enemy reached the banks of the Volga in the Stalingrad region and the foothills of the Caucasian ridge. On August 25, the battle for Stalingrad began, which became fateful for the outcome of the entire war. Stalingrad has become synonymous with the mass heroism of soldiers, fortitude Soviet people... The main burden of the struggle for Stalingrad fell to the lot of the armies led by V.I. Chuikov, M.S. Shumilov, A.I. Lopatin, divisions A.I. Rodimtsev and I.I. Lednikova. The defensive operation in Stalingrad cost the lives of 324 thousand Soviet soldiers. By mid-November, the offensive capabilities of the Germans dried up, and they went over to the defensive.

The war demanded a change in the proportions in the development of the national economy, the improvement of the structure of state management of the economy. At the same time, the rigidly centralized management system created was combined with the expansion of the powers of economic bodies and the initiative of the working people. The first six months of the war were the most difficult for the Soviet economy. Industrial production has more than halved, and the production of military equipment and ammunition has dropped sharply. The evacuation of people, industrial enterprises, material and cultural values, livestock was carried out from the front-line zone. For this work, the Council for Evacuation Affairs was created (chairman N.M.Shvernik, deputies A.N. Kosygin and M.G. Pervukhin). By the beginning of 1942, more than 1.5 thousand industrial enterprises were transported, including 1360 defense ones. The number of evacuated workers reached a third of the full-time staff. From December 26, 1941, workers and employees of military enterprises were declared mobilized for the entire period of the war, unauthorized departure from the enterprise was punishable as desertion.

At the cost of tremendous efforts of the people from December 1941, the decline in industrial production stopped, and from March 1942 its volume began to grow. By the middle of 1942, the military restructuring of the Soviet economy was completed. In the context of a significant reduction in labor resources, measures to provide labor for industry, transport, and new buildings have become an important direction of economic policy. By the end of the war, the number of workers and employees reached 27.5 million, of whom 9.5 million worked in industry (by the 1940 level, this was 86-87%).

Agriculture was in an incredibly difficult situation during the war years. Tractors, cars and horses were mobilized for the needs of the army. The village was left practically without draft power. Almost the entire able-bodied male population was mobilized into the army. The peasants worked to the limit of their capabilities. During the war years, agricultural production fell catastrophically. Grain harvesting in 1942 and 1943 amounted to 30 million tons, compared with 95.5 million tons in 1940, the number of cattle decreased by half, pigs - 3.6 times. The collective farms had to hand over almost the entire harvest to the state. For 1941-1944. 66.1 million tons of grain were procured, and for 1941-1945. - 85 million tons (for comparison: for 1914-1917, 22.4 million tons were harvested). Difficulties in agriculture inevitably affected the food supply of the population. From the first days of the war, a rationing system for providing the urban population with food was introduced.

During the war, extreme conditions were created for the functioning of the financial system. During the war years, budget revenues increased due to taxes and fees from the population. To cover the deficit, government loans and money issue were used. During the war years, voluntary contributions were widespread - collection of funds from the population to the Defense Fund and the Red Army Fund. During the war, the Soviet financial system showed high mobilization capabilities and efficiency. If in 1940 military expenditures amounted to about 7% of the national income, then in 1943 - 33%. Military spending increased sharply in 1941-1945. accounted for 50.8% of all budget expenditures. At the same time, the state budget deficit amounted to only 2.6%.

As a result of the extraordinary measures and the heroic labor of the people, already from the middle of 1942, the USSR had a strong military economy, which provided the army with everything necessary in ever-increasing volumes. During the war years, the USSR produced almost twice as much military equipment and weapons as in Germany. Material and raw materials resources, equipment were used better in our country than in the German economy. During the war years, the Soviet economy turned out to be more efficient than the economy of Nazi Germany.

Thus, the model of a mobilization economy that developed in the 1930s turned out to be very effective during the war years. Rigid centralism, directive planning, concentration of the means of production in the hands of the state, lack of competition and market egoism of certain social strata, labor enthusiasm of millions of people played a decisive role in ensuring economic victory over the enemy. Other factors (lend-lease, labor of prisoners and prisoners of war) played a subordinate role.

The second period (November 19, 1942 - the end of 1943) is the period of a radical change. On November 19, 1942, Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive and on November 23 closed the ring around the enemy troops. In the cauldron were 22 divisions with a total of 330 thousand soldiers and officers. The Soviet command offered the surrounded troops to surrender, but they refused. On February 2, 1943, the grand battle of Stalingrad ended. During the liquidation of the encircled enemy grouping, 147 thousand soldiers and officers were killed, 91 thousand were taken prisoner. Among the prisoners were 24 generals, along with the commander of the 6th Army, Field Marshal F. Paulus.

The operation at Stalingrad grew into a general strategic offensive, which lasted until the end of March 1943. Stalingrad raised the authority of the USSR, led to the rise of the Resistance movement in European countries, and contributed to the strengthening anti-Hitler coalition.

The battle on the Volga predetermined the outcome of the battles in the North Caucasus. A threat was created to encircle the enemy's North Caucasian grouping, and it began to withdraw. By mid-February 1943, most of the North Caucasus was liberated. Of particular importance was the breakthrough of the enemy blockade of Leningrad in January 1943 by the troops of the Leningrad (A.A.Govorov) and Volkhovsky (K.A.Meretskov) fronts.

In the summer of 1943, the Wehrmacht command decided to organize a powerful offensive in the Kursk region. The Citadel plan was based on the idea: by unexpected counter-attacks from Orel and Belgorod, to surround and destroy Soviet troops on the Kursk salient, and then to develop an offensive inland. For this, it was supposed to use a third of the German formations on the Soviet-German front. At dawn on July 5, the Germans attacked the defenses of the Soviet fronts. Soviet units stubbornly defended every defensive line. On July 12, a tank battle unprecedented in the history of war broke out near Prokhorovka, in which about 1200 tanks took part. On August 5, Soviet troops captured Orel and Belgorod, and on August 23 they liberated Kharkov. With the capture of Kharkov, the Battle of Kursk ended. For 50 days of fighting, German troops lost half a million soldiers and officers, 2952 tanks, 844 guns, 1327 aircraft. The losses of the Soviet troops were comparable to those of the German. True, the victory at Kursk was achieved with less blood than before: if Stalingrad claimed the lives of 470 thousand soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, then 253 thousand were killed during the Battle of Kursk. The victory at Kursk consolidated a fundamental turning point in the course of the war. The omnipotence of the Wehrmacht on the battlefields ended.

Having liberated Oryol, Belgorod, Kharkov, Soviet troops launched a general strategic offensive at the front. The radical change in the course of the war, which began at Stalingrad, was completed by the battle for the Dnieper. Kiev was liberated on November 6. From November 1942 to December 1943, 46.2% of the Soviet territory was liberated. The disintegration of the fascist bloc began. Italy was withdrawn from the war.

One of the important areas of the struggle against the German fascist invaders was ideological, educational, propaganda work. Newspapers, radio, party propagandists and political workers, cultural workers explained the nature of the war, strengthened faith in victory, fostered patriotism, loyalty to duty and other high moral qualities. The Soviet side opposed the man-hating fascist ideology of racism and genocide with such universal values ​​as national independence, solidarity and friendship of peoples, justice, humanism. Class, socialist values ​​were not discarded at all, but in many respects were replaced by patriotic, traditionally national ones.

During the war years, there were changes in the relationship between the state and the church. Already on June 22, 1941, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Sergius, blessed all Orthodox Christians to defend the Fatherland. The metropolitan's word carried a tremendous charge of patriotism, pointed to the deep historical source of the people's strength and faith in victory over enemies. Like the official authorities, the church defined the war as nationwide, patriotic, patriotic. Anti-religious propaganda has stopped in the country. On September 4, 1943, Stalin met with Metropolitans Sergius, Alexy, Nicholas, and on September 12, the Council of Bishops elected Metropolitan Sergius as Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. The Council adopted a document which stated that "anyone guilty of treason to the common church cause and who went over to the side of fascism, as an enemy of the Cross of the Lord, may be considered excommunicated, and a bishop or clergyman - defrocked." By the end of the war, 10,547 Orthodox churches and 75 monasteries were in operation in the USSR (before the war there were about 380 churches and not a single monastery). Opened churches became new centers of Russian national identity, and Christian values ​​became an element of national ideology.

The third period (1944 - May 9, 1945) is the final period of the war. By the beginning of 1944, the German armed forces had 315 divisions, 198 of which fought on the Eastern Front. Together with the troops of the allies, there were 4.9 million soldiers and officers here. German industry produced a significant amount of weapons, although the economic situation in Germany was steadily deteriorating. Soviet industry surpassed that of Germany in the production of all the main types of weapons.

1944 in the history of the Great Patriotic War became the year of the offensive of the Soviet troops on all fronts. In the winter of 1943-1944. the German army group "South" was defeated, the Right Bank and part of Western Ukraine were liberated. Soviet troops reached the state border. In January 1944, the blockade of Leningrad was completely lifted. On June 6, 1944, a second front was opened in Europe. During Operation Bagration in the summer of 1944, Belarus was liberated. Interestingly, Operation Bagration was almost a mirror image of the German blitzkrieg. Hitler and his advisers believed that the Red Army would strike a decisive blow in the south, in Galicia, where the prospect of an attack on Warsaw was opening up for the Soviet troops in the rear of Army Group Center. It was in this direction that the German command concentrated its reserves, but it miscalculated. Going on June 22, 1944, on the offensive in Belarus, Soviet troops fought 700 km in five weeks. The rate of advance of the Soviet troops exceeded the rate of advancement of the Panzer groups of Guderian and Hoth in the summer of 1941. In the fall, the liberation of the Baltic States began. In the summer-autumn campaign of 1944, Soviet troops advanced 600-1100 km, completing the liberation of the USSR. The enemy's losses amounted to 1.6 million people, 6,700 tanks, more than 12 thousand aircraft, 28 thousand guns and mortars.

In January 1945, the Vistula-Oder operation began. Its main goal was to defeat the enemy grouping in Poland, reach the Oder, capture bridgeheads here and provide favorable conditions for striking Berlin. After bloody battles, Soviet troops reached the banks of the Oder on February 3. During the Vistula-Oder operation, the Nazis lost 35 divisions.

At the final stage of the war, German troops in the West ceased serious resistance. Meeting almost no resistance, the Allies advanced eastward. The Red Army was faced with the task of delivering a final blow to Nazi Germany. The Berlin offensive operation began on April 16, 1945 and lasted until May 2. It was attended by the troops of the 1st Belorussian (G.K. Zhukov), 1st Ukrainian (I.S.Konev), 2nd Belorussian (K.K.Rokossovsky) fronts. Berlin was fiercely defended by over a million German soldiers. The advancing Soviet troops numbered 2.5 million fighters, 41.6 thousand guns and mortars, 6250 tanks and self-propelled guns, 7.5 thousand aircraft. On April 25, the encirclement of the Berlin group was completed. After the German command rejected the ultimatum of surrender, the storming of Berlin began. On May 1, the banner of Victory fluttered over the Reichstag, and the next day the garrison surrendered. On the night of May 9, in the Berlin suburb of Karlshorst, an act of unconditional surrender of Germany was signed. However, German troops still held Prague. Soviet troops liberated Prague with a swift rush.

The turning point in the war and victory were the result of an incredible exertion of forces, mass heroism of the people, astonishing enemies and allies. The idea that inspired the workers of the front and rear, uniting and multiplying their strength, was the idea of ​​defending the Fatherland. The acts of the highest self-sacrifice and heroism in the name of victory will forever be preserved in the grateful memory of the descendants, as embodied by the squadron commander Nikolai Gastello, 28 Panfilov soldiers led by political instructor V.G. Klochkov, underground fighter Liza Chaikina, partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, fighter pilot Alexei Maresyev, sergeant Yakov Pavlov and his famous "Pavlov House" in Stalingrad, underground member of the "Young Guard" Oleg Koshevoy, private Alexander Matrosov, scout Nikolai Kuznetsov, young partisan , Lieutenant General D.M. Karbyshev and many thousands of other heroes of the Great Patriotic War.

For courage and heroism, the defenders of the Motherland were awarded more than 38 million orders and medals, the title of Hero of the Soviet Union was received by over 11.6 thousand people, among whom were representatives of most of the country's nationalities, including 8160 Russians, 2069 Ukrainians, 309 Belarusians, 161 Tatar, 108 Jews, 96 Kazakhs. 16 million 100 thousand home front workers were awarded the medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." The title of Hero of Socialist Labor was awarded to 202 home front workers.

Nazi Germany was defeated, but the world war was still going on. The USSR declared war on Japan. This step was dictated by both allied obligations and the interests of the Soviet Union in the Far East. Japan did not openly oppose the USSR, but throughout the war remained an ally of Germany. It concentrated a 1.5 million army near the borders of the USSR. The Japanese navy detained Soviet merchant ships, effectively blocking the ports and sea borders of the Soviet Far East. On April 5, 1945, the USSR government denounced the 1941 Soviet-Japanese treaty of neutrality.

By August, the Soviet command had transferred part of its forces to the Far East from Europe (over 400,000 men, over 7,000 guns and mortars, 2,000 tanks). Over 1.5 million soldiers, over 27 thousand guns and mortars, over 700 rocket launchers, 5.2 thousand tanks and self-propelled guns, over 3.7 thousand aircraft were concentrated against the Kwantung Army. The operations involved the forces of the Pacific Fleet (416 ships, about 165 thousand sailors), the Amur Flotilla, and border troops. The commander-in-chief of the Soviet troops was Marshal A.M. Vasilevsky.

On August 6 and 9, the US military dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union announced that from August 9, it would consider itself at war with Japan. Within 10 days, Soviet troops defeated the main forces of the Kwantung Army, which began to surrender on August 19. In the second half of August 1945, Soviet troops liberated Manchuria, Northeast China, the northern part of Korea, captured South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. The military campaign in the Far East lasted 24 days. In terms of its scope and dynamism, it occupies one of the first places among the operations of the Second World War. The losses of the Japanese totaled 83.7 thousand people killed, more than 640 thousand prisoners. Irrecoverable losses of the Soviet Army amounted to about 12 thousand people. On September 2, 1945, Japan surrendered.

With the elimination of the hotbed of war in the Far East, the Second World War ended. The main result of the Great Patriotic War was the elimination of the mortal danger of the USSR-Russia, the threat of enslavement and genocide of the Russian and other peoples of the USSR. Soviet troops liberated in whole or in part 13 countries of Europe and Asia.

The USSR made a decisive contribution to the defeat of Germany and its allies. The Soviet Union was the only country that was able to stop the victorious march of Germany in 1941. In fierce one-on-one battles with the main force of the fascist bloc, the USSR achieved a radical turning point in the world war. This created the conditions for the liberation of Europe and accelerated the opening of the second front. The USSR eliminated the fascist domination over the majority of the enslaved peoples, preserving their statehood within historically fair borders. The Red Army defeated 507 Nazi divisions and 100 divisions of its allies, which is 3.5 times more than the Anglo-American troops on all fronts of the war. On the Soviet-German front, the bulk of the Wehrmacht's military equipment was destroyed (77 thousand combat aircraft, 48 thousand tanks, 167 thousand guns, 2.5 thousand warships and vehicles). The German army suffered more than 73% of the total losses in battles with the Armed Forces of the USSR. Thus, the Soviet Union was the main military-political force that determined the victory and protection of the peoples of the world from enslavement by fascism.

The war caused enormous demographic damage to the Soviet Union. The total human losses of the USSR amounted to 26.6 million people, 13.5% of the total number of the USSR at the beginning of the war. During the war years, the losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR amounted to 11.4 million people. Of these, 5.2 million people died in battles and died from wounds during the stages of sanitary evacuation; 1.1 million died of wounds in hospitals; 0.6 million were non-combat losses; 5 million people went missing and ended up in Nazi concentration camps. Taking into account those who returned from captivity after the war (1.8 million people) and almost a million people from the number of those previously recorded as missing, but survivors and recruited into the army for the second time, the demographic losses of servicemen of the USSR Armed Forces amounted to 8.7 million people.

The war unleashed by the Nazis turned into a human tragedy for Germany itself and its allies. Only on the Soviet-German front, the irrecoverable losses of Germany amounted to 7181 thousand soldiers, and with the allies - 8649 thousand people. The ratio between Soviet and German irrecoverable losses is 1.3: 1. It should be borne in mind that the number of prisoners of war who died in Nazi camps (more than 2.5 million out of 4.6 million) was more than 5 times higher than the number of enemy servicemen who died in Soviet captivity (420 thousand people out of 4.4 million). The total irrecoverable demographic losses of the USSR (26.6 million people) are 2.2 times greater than the losses of Germany and its satellites (11.9 million). The big difference is explained by the genocide of the Nazis against the population in the occupied territories, which claimed the lives of 17.9 million people.

As noted in modern literature, “the main reasons for the collapse of the union (in addition to the disappearance of the common threat that holds it together) were growing disagreements over the post-war world order and the growing rivalry between the USSR and the United States in strategically important areas where a power vacuum formed on the ruins of World War II - Central and Eastern Europe, Middle and Far East, China and Korea. The situation was aggravated by the polarization of power between the two new superpowers against the background of a sharp weakening of other global centers of power. This geopolitical "landscape after the battle" was superimposed on the universal ideological claims of the American and Soviet models that had strengthened during the war years, which made their struggle for influence in the world especially acute and global. "

During the war years, all the peoples of the USSR suffered great irreparable losses. At the same time, the losses of Russian citizens amounted to 71.3% of the total demographic losses of the Armed Forces. Among the dead servicemen, the greatest losses were suffered by Russians - 5.7 million people (66.4% of all dead), Ukrainians - 1.4 million (15.9%), Belarusians - 253 thousand (2.9%), Tatars - 188 thousand (2.2%), Jews - 142 thousand (1.6%), Kazakhs - 125 thousand (1.5%), Uzbeks - 118 thousand (1.4%), other peoples of the USSR - 8.1%.

Similar information.

Causes of the war. Plans of Germany and the USSR. The periodization of the Great Patriotic War. USSR victory over Germany. Results of the war.

1. Causes of the war. Plans of Germany and the USSR. War is a social phenomenon, one of the forms of resolving socio-political, economic, ideological, national, religious, territorial contradictions between states, peoples, nations, classes and other means of armed violence. The main element of the essence of war is politics, it is it that determines the goals of the war, its socio-political, legal and moral-ethical character.

Causes of the Second World War:

1. In the system of ordering the world after the First World War, created by the victorious powers, the embryo of a new world conflict and a new redivision of the world was laid. World economic crisis 1929-1933 sharply exacerbated the contradictions between the capitalist countries. There were two groups (Germany, Italy, Japan - England, France), striving for world domination. The defeated states were the most aggressive. The Munich Agreement of England, France, Germany and Italy reflected their desire to solve their geopolitical problems at the expense of other states and peoples.

2. The imperialist essence of the policy of the capitalist states nullified any attempts to prevent a military redivision of the world. Western democracy coexisted peacefully with an inhuman foreign policy.

3. The decisive factor in the outbreak of the war was the coming of the fascists to power in Germany, Italy and Japan. The world community, including the USSR, until June 22, 1941, could not realize that fascism was a mortal danger to all mankind.

4. The catalyst for the world conflict was anti-Sovietism. Hitler had a plan for the destruction of the USSR long before its final approval. In 1936-1937. was created "Anti-Comintern Pact" with the aim of overthrowing the Soviet system. The governments of England and France at that time pursued a policy of "appeasement" of fascism in order to direct Germany against the USSR, which allowed her to start the war in the most favorable conditions for her. A significant share of the responsibility in this lies with the political leadership of the USSR.

5. The belief of the Bolsheviks in the inevitability of a world socialist revolution determined their conviction in the inevitability of a world imperialist war, the result of which would be the victory of world socialism. Stalin did not believe in the possibility of peaceful tendencies on the part of any capitalist powers. The Soviet leadership considered it fair to resolve the USSR's foreign policy problems by military means. The Red Army, in Stalin's opinion, could wage a victorious war in foreign territories, where it would meet the support of the working people. The Soviet military strategy was oriented towards such an offensive war until June 22, 1941.

6. The political regime created by Stalin and his entourage made it impossible to search for and implement alternative options if they did not coincide with Stalin's point of view. This had a particularly negative impact on the decision to sign the USSR secret protocols of non-aggression with Germany (August 1939).

The main reasons for the war were:

1) the struggle of competing systems claiming global domination: National Socialism and Communism;

2) Germany's desire to conquer "living space" by capturing the resource base of the USSR.

The Second World War began on September 1, 1939 and ended on September 2, 1945. It lasted 2,194 days, almost six years. It was attended by 61 states, military operations were conducted on the territory of 40 countries in Europe, Asia and Africa. 110 million people fought in the war, almost 50 million were killed.The USSR lost almost 27 million, Germany - 13.6 million, Poland - 6 million, Japan - 2.5 million, Yugoslavia - 1.7 million, USA - 900 thousand, France - 600 thousand, England - 370 thousand.

The most important part of the Second World War was The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people against the German fascist invaders. It was the forces of the Soviet army that broke the back of Nazi Germany at the turning point of the war, in 1942-1943. The Soviet economy and political system passed a merciless test. If in the First World War Russia was opposed by up to half of the troops of the central powers, and she could not achieve a decisive advantage, then in the Second World War the country coped with Germany and its many allies with practically no help from the powers of the anti-Hitler coalition, who joined the big war only at its end in 1944 g.

World War II began with Germany's attack on Poland. The heroic, but poorly organized resistance was broken by the Germans in two and a half weeks. On September 3, England and France declared war on Germany, but did not provide real assistance to Poland, hoping for an imminent German-Soviet clash in the conditions of Germany's exit to the borders of the USSR. But Hitler was in no hurry to go to the East. In April 1940, Denmark was occupied without resistance and Norway was captured with little blood. This gave the Germans access to important sea lanes and ensured control over Northern Europe. In May-June, the Germans occupied Holland, Belgium, as well as France, which had considerable forces and a well-fortified border line (Maginot Line), however, capitulatory sentiments reigned in society and the ruling circles of the country, so that already on June 14 the Germans entered Paris, and 22 June signed a truce with France. After the Churchill cabinet came to power in Britain (May 10, 1940), England unconditionally rejected the peaceful option of developing relations with Germany. Despite the barbaric bombing of British cities, the spirit of the nation to resist was not broken, and Germany was never able to land troops on the islands. In the future, England will become one of the leading forces to create an anti-Hitler coalition of powers along with the USSR and the USA. Bogged down in England, Hitler decided to change the direction of the war in the summer of 1940. On December 18, 1940, he signed a plan for an attack on the USSR, dubbed "Pan Barbarossa."

Germany's plans and goals:

1. Plan "Barbarossa"- a plan for conducting a military campaign against the USSR - was developed during the summer of 1940 in line with the strategy of a lightning-fast (6-7 weeks) war. It provided for the simultaneous delivery of strikes in three main directions. Leningradsky (Army Group "North"), Moscow ("Center") and Kiev ("South") The purpose of the plan is to reach the line Arkhangelsk - Astrakhan, to capture the European part of the USSR. Germany's strategy consisted in delivering strikes with large armored formations with the support of aviation, encircling the enemy and destroying him in "cauldrons". The order for an offensive across the border of the USSR was signed by Hitler on June 17, 1941.

2. Plan "Ost"- the plan for the dismemberment of the European territory of the USSR after the war and the exploitation of its natural resources - provided for the destruction of a significant part of the population of the USSR (up to 140 million people in 40-50 years).

The war plans of the USSR were based on the doctrine of the "red package" ("To beat the enemy on its territory with little blood"), developed by K. Ye. Voroshilov, S. K. Timoshenko. All other military theoretical developments were rejected. The doctrine was based on the experience of the Civil War. The value of only offensive actions was recognized. Defense strategy was not considered in detail.

2. Periodization of the Great Patriotic War. In the history of the Great Patriotic War, there are three major periods.

1. June 22, 1941 - November 18, 1942- the initial period of the war. The strategic initiative, that is, the ability to plan and carry out large-scale offensive operations, belonged to the Wehrmacht. Soviet troops left Belarus, the Baltic States, Ukraine and fought defensive battles for Smolensk, Kiev, Leningrad. Battle of Moscow (September 30, 1941 - January 7, 1942) - the first defeat of the enemy, disruption of the plan of the lightning war. The war became protracted. The strategic initiative temporarily passed to the USSR. In the spring and summer of 1942, Germany again seized the initiative. The beginning of the defense of Stalingrad and the battle for the Caucasus. The transfer of the economy to a war footing in the USSR has been completed, and an integral system of the military industry has been created. A partisan war began behind enemy lines (Belarus, Bryansk, Eastern Ukraine). Creation of an anti-Hitler coalition.

2. November 19, 1942 - end of 1943- a period of radical change, that is, the final transition of the strategic initiative to the USSR. The defeat of the Germans under the hail (February 2, 1943), the surrender of the 6th Army, General Field Marshal Paulus. Battle of the Kursk Bulge (July 1943). The collapse of the offensive strategy of the Wehrmacht. The battle for the Dnieper - the collapse of the defensive strategy of the Wehrmacht, the liberation of the Left-Bank Ukraine. Strengthening the Soviet war economy: by the end of 1943, an economic victory over Germany was secured. Formation of large partisan formations (Fedorov, Saburov). Liberated areas appeared behind enemy lines. Strengthening the anti-Hitler coalition. Tehran conference. The crisis of the fascist bloc.

3. 1944 - May 9, 1945 - the final period. The liberation of the entire territory of the USSR, the liberation mission of the Red Army in Europe (the liberation of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and other countries). Defeat of Nazi Germany. Conferences in Yalta (February 1945) and Potsdam (July-August 1945).

A special period (August 9, 1945 - September 2, 1945) - the war of the USSR against Japan, the defeat of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria.

3. Results of the war. The Soviet people made a decisive contribution to the defeat of fascism . Having lived themselves under the conditions of the despotic Stalinist regime, the people made a choice in defense of the independence of the Motherland and the ideals of the revolution. Heroism and self-sacrifice became a mass phenomenon. The exploits of I. Ivanov, N. Gastello, A. Matrosov, A. Meresiev were repeated by many Soviet soldiers. During the war such commanders as A.M. Vasilevsky, G.K. Zhukov, K.K.Rokossovsky, L.A. Govorov, I.S.Konev, V.I. THE USSR. According to a number of scientists, the administrative-command system made it possible to concentrate human and material resources in the most important areas for the defeat of the enemy. However, the essence of this system led to the "tragedy of victory", because the system required victory at any cost. This cost was the human life and suffering of the population in the rear.

Thus, having suffered huge losses, the Soviet Union won a difficult war:

1) during the war, a powerful military industry was created, an industrial base was formed;

2) the USSR, following the results of the war, included additional territories in the West and East;

4) the foundation has been laid for the creation of a "bloc of socialist states" of Europe and Asia;

5) opportunities have opened up for the democratic renewal of the world and the liberation of the colonies;

The victory won by the unprecedented heroism of the people at the front and the greatest self-sacrifice in the rear meant the defeat of the bloc of fascist states and had world-historical significance.

Self-test questions

1. What are the reasons for the Second World War.

2. Describe the plans and goals of Germany and the USSR.

3. Indicate the periods and main battles of the Great Patriotic War.

4. What are the results of the Great Patriotic War.

Lecture 15

USSR IN THE PERIOD OF RESTORATION
NATIONAL ECONOMY

Economic and agricultural recovery. Transformation of the state apparatus and restoration of the command-administrative system.

1. Post-war economy: main problems and development trends. After the end of the war, two options for the development of society were possible:

1. Mitigation of the pre-war mobilization model of development, rejection of repression, development of democratization processes.

2. Restoration of the pre-war model of development, preservation of the totalitarian regime.

The implementation of the second variant of development was due to the fact that Stalin and his entourage did not conceive of leading the state by other, not administrative methods. The victory in the war strengthened many in the idea that it was this regime that saved the country.

The economic recovery took place in difficult conditions: the war brought huge human, material and cultural losses.

At the end of May 1945, the State Defense Committee decided to transfer some of the defense enterprises to the production of goods for the population. A little later, a law was adopted on the demobilization of thirteen ages of army personnel, while the process of repatriation of Soviet citizens who had been hijacked by the Nazis was under way.

In accordance with the requirements of peacetime, an 8-hour working day was restored, mandatory overtime work was canceled, and the provision of annual paid leaves was allowed. The primary economic task was to transfer the national economy to a peaceful path of development, for which it was necessary: ​​to determine new proportions between sectors; to reorient a significant part of military production towards the production of peaceful products; cut military spending.

The recovery period in the history of the Soviet national economy began in full in 1946. The most difficult industrial development in the postwar period was 1946. To switch enterprises to civilian production, production technology was changed, new equipment was created, and personnel retrained. The law on the five-year plan, adopted at the first session of the USSR Supreme Soviet of the second convocation (March 1946), set the following tasks: to restore the pre-war level of development of industry and agriculture; cancel the card system; increase wages; to expand in every possible way the mass housing and cultural and domestic construction.

At the same time (from December 1945) a classified program began to be implemented - the creation of new types of weapons. The general management of this program was entrusted to the First Main Directorate under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, headed by Beria. In addition, the demilitarization of the economy was largely completed by 1947, which was accompanied by the simultaneous modernization of the military-industrial complex. Direct military expenditures were absorbed in the early 50s. about 25% of the state budget. Heavy industry was another priority industry , mainly mechanical engineering, metallurgy, fuel and energy complex. The foundations of the nuclear energy and radio-electronic industry have been laid. New enterprises arose in the Urals, Siberia, the republics of the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. In general, over the years of the 4th five-year plan (1946-1950), industrial production in the country increased and in 1950 exceeded the pre-war indicators by 73% (against the plan of 48%), which was facilitated by:

- high mobilization capabilities of the directive economy, preserved in conditions of extensive development (due to new construction, additional sources of raw materials, fuel, etc.);

- reparations from Germany ($ 4.3 billion);

- free labor of GULAG prisoners (8-9 million people) and prisoners of war (1.5 million Germans and 0.5 million Japanese);

- redistribution of funds from light industry and the social sphere in favor of industrial sectors;

- the confiscatory currency reform of 1947, during which about a third of the cash supply was not exchanged for new banknotes,

- forced purchase of government bonds.

The economy developed in an extensive way, capital investments in new construction grew, additional raw materials, energy, and human resources were involved in production. The light and food industries were financed on a leftover basis and did not meet the needs of the population. The growth rate of labor productivity in the post-war years was 6% per year.

The situation in agriculture was critical. The drought of 1946 and the subsequent famine of 1947 depleted the productive forces of the countryside. The government decided to "take over" the peasantry, control over which was weakened to a certain extent during the war. An extensive campaign has been launched to develop a network of party cells on the collective farms.

In February 1947, the plenum of the Central Committee of the party discussed the issue of "Measures to improve agriculture in the post-war period." The decisions of the plenum provided for: an increase in the supply of agricultural machinery, an increase in the culture of agriculture, the construction of reservoirs in the steppe and forest-steppe regions. In 1947-1948. the government resorted to coercive measures in relation to collective farmers. Two decrees, adopted on June 4, 1947, and close in spirit to the famous law of August 7, 1932, provided for five to twenty-five years in camps for any "encroachment on state or collective farm property."

The government continued its policy of severely limiting the personal peasant economy and pumping resources from the countryside to the city. In 1946-1949. household plots were cut and more than 10 million hectares of land were "returned" to the collective farm fund. The private household of the peasants is subject to exorbitant taxes in kind (from each fruit tree, head of cattle). The peasant could trade on the market only after the collective farm plan of supplies to the state was fulfilled. The peasants had to work on the collective farm the obligatory minimum of workdays, almost without receiving payment in kind. Without a passport, the peasant could not leave the village without permission.

At the end of 1949, the economic and financial situation of the collective farms deteriorated so much that the government had to develop a series of reforms. By the end of the five-year plan, the restoration of agriculture was basically completed. However, many problems remained unresolved: the grain problem persisted, there was a shortage of raw materials for the light and food industries, and there were many lagging collective farms.

In 1952, Stalin's work "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR" defined the basic principles of economic policy:

1) priority development of heavy industry;

2) the need to curtail cooperative-collective farm property by turning it into state property;

3) reduction of the sphere of commodity circulation.

The results of the recovery period were the abolition of the rationing system, the commissioning of 100 million square meters of living space, an increase in the number of secondary schools, the expansion of the network of universities (the pre-war number of students was exceeded), the successful development of many fundamental issues of science and technology. Thus, in the post-war period, the features of the mobilization system itself worked to preserve it. The possibility of a short-term effect of the methods of accelerated economic development manifested itself in the first post-war years in the high rates of restoration and development of heavy industry, construction, and transport. In the economic sphere, despite the existence of an alternative position of the proportional development of the economy - the use of commodity-money relations, the expansion of economic independence, the course of the predominant development of heavy industry and brutal centralism prevailed. On this basis, a general plan for the construction of communism in 1946-1965 was developed. This process proceeded at the expense of discrimination against agriculture and light industry.

Return to the development model of the 30s. caused significant economic shocks, which sharply worsened in 1951-1953. all economic indicators that have created serious tension in society. Period 1945-1953 should be considered the logical conclusion, the result of the economic and political line pursued after the NEP.

2. Transformations of the state apparatus and restoration of the command-administrative system. In September 1945, the State Defense Committee (GKO) was abolished. In March 1946, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was renamed into the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Council of People's Commissars of the union and autonomous republics - into the Councils of Ministers of the corresponding levels, and the people's commissariats - into ministries. In February 1947, the standing commissions of legislative proposals of the Council of the Union and the Council of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the second convocation were created. These commissions were entrusted with the task of preliminary consideration and preparation of draft laws for sessions of the Supreme Soviet. In 1947, the State Planning Commission of the Council of Ministers of the USSR was transformed into the State Planning Committee of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, whose tasks included planning, accounting and control over the implementation of national economic plans. The State Committee for the Supply of the National Economy of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the State Committee for the Introduction of New Technology into the National Economy of the Council of Ministers of the USSR were created.

The years 1946-1953 represented the highest flowering of Stalinism as a political system. The "democratization" of the political façade was carried out . After a long break, the congresses of public organizations, trade unions and the Komsomol resumed, and in 1952 the 19th party congress took place, which renamed the CPSU (b) into the CPSU. In fact, Stalin's autocracy remained unchanged and firmly based on common fear. Stalin solved the most important issues at his dacha in Kuntsevo, together with several members of the Politburo who were responsible for the corresponding areas of work. The Politburo (10 members and 4 candidate members) almost never met in full. Stalin preferred, as a rule, to receive members of the Politburo individually or in small groups on issues related to the "specialty" of each.

In the post-war period, another round of repressions took place. The so-called "Leningrad affair" became a reflection of the internal struggle in the leadership, as a result of which about 3.5 thousand party and state workers of Leningrad and the region were repressed.

In the ideological and political sphere, the war caused a weakening of supervision, increased the number of uncontrolled ideological movements, especially among those who were outside the system for several years (in the occupied regions or in captivity), in the national environment and among the intelligentsia. With the return to a peaceful life, the authorities tried, acting most often harshly, to regain control over the minds. The treatment of prisoners of war repatriated to the USSR, already from the summer of 1945, testified to the tightening of the regime. In general, only about 20% of the 227 thousand repatriated prisoners of war received permission to return home. Most of the former prisoners of war were either sent to camps, or sentenced to exile for at least five years, or to forced labor to rebuild war-torn areas. Such an appeal was dictated by suspicion that the stories of the repatriated about their experiences would be too different from what was officially presented as the truth.

The difficulties of post-war economic development, manifested in the difficult state of agriculture, in the household deprivations of the population, required the development of ways out of this situation. However, the attention of the state leaders was directed not so much to the development of effective measures to boost the economy as to the search for specific "culprits" of satisfactory development. For example, disruptions in the production of aviation equipment were explained by "sabotage" by the leadership of the industry. In 1946, at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), the case of these "saboteurs" was specially considered ("The Case of Shakhurin, Novikov and Others"). At the turn of the 40-50-ies. the leaders of the Politburo discussed the "cases" of persons allegedly engaged in sabotage in the automotive industry, in the Moscow health care system. In 1952, the so-called doctors' case was fabricated.

Ideological and political tightening of 1945-1953 led to the proliferation of repressive organs and concentration system , which in the postwar years reached its peak, when many sentenced in 1937-1938. to ten years in the camps without trial they received a new term on the basis of an administrative decision. On the other hand, there is reason to believe that the mortality rate among prisoners after 1948 has significantly decreased due to the authorities' awareness of the need to “save” an economically profitable labor force. Partial opening of the archives made it possible to clarify the number of the “population of the GULAG”. The data of the Gulag bureaucracy indicate 2.5 million prisoners in the ITL / ITK at the beginning of the 50s, during the years of the apogee of the camp system. To this figure it is necessary to add another 2.5 million special settlers. As for the number of those who were shot or did not “reach their destination” (who died in “transit”), it remains unknown to this day.

It was 1948-1954. were marked by several prisoner uprisings. The most famous of them occurred in Pechora (1948), in Salekhard (1950), Ekibastuz (1952), Vorkuta and Norilsk (1953), Kimgir (1954). Fermentation in the camps, especially the "special" ones, reached a very high level after the death of Stalin and the removal of Beria, that is, in the spring and summer of 1953 and in 1954.

Self-test questions

1. Give a description of the economic development of the USSR during the recovery period.

2. What factors contributed to the restoration of the national economy?

3. What are the main results of economic recovery?

4. What changes have occurred in the state apparatus of the USSR?

5.What was associated with new round repression in the post-war period?

Lecture 16

Perestroika in the USSR (1985-1991)

Restructuring: concept, prerequisites. Changes in social and political life. The folding of the multiparty system. Economic reforms.

1. The concept and prerequisites of perestroika. Perestroika is an attempt to preserve administrative-command socialism, giving it elements of democracy and market relations, without affecting the fundamental foundations of the political system.

Preconditions for the restructuring:

1. Objective:

- stagnation in the economy, growing scientific and technological lag behind the West, failures in social sphere;

- the political crisis, expressed in the disintegration of the leadership, in its inability to ensure economic progress, the merging of the party and state nomenklatura with the shadow economy;

- apathy and negative phenomena in the spiritual sphere of society.

2. Subjective:

- parish in the second half of the 70s - early 80s. to the country's leadership of relatively young politicians (M. S. Gorbachev, E. G. Ligachev, E. V. Shevardnadze, N. I. Ryzhkov) who sought not only to strengthen their power, but also advocated the renewal of the state and society;

- perestroika was brought to life by a load of accumulated problems that cannot be solved by half-measures of a cosmetic nature; the transition to perestroika was forced.

In the history of perestroika in the broad sense of this term, some researchers distinguish four periods:

2) 1987-1988 - "more democracy";

3) 1989–1991, which became a period of delimitation and splits in the perestroika camp;

2. Changes in the social and political life of the state. In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected to the post of General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. At the April Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the beginning of the policy of perestroika was announced . At this party forum, a general analysis of the state of Soviet society was given and a strategy for accelerating economic development was put forward as the main economic task, along with the proclamation of a policy of glasnost as the basis for democratizing a frozen political regime. The reforms begun did not touch the foundations of either the political or the economic mechanism, but rather pursued the task of giving them a more liberal character, capable of opening, as it were, a second wind to the existing system.

Without a sufficient understanding of ultimate goals and even more so about the ways and methods of transformations, as well as to popularize the idea of ​​perestroika, the country's leadership opens an all-union discussion on important issues of domestic and foreign policy. This is how the policy of publicity is formed . The main manifestations of the policy of publicity:

1) removal of censorship and permission to publish new newspapers;

2) the emergence of numerous public associations in support of perestroika;

3) broad discussion of the new government course at mass meetings of citizens;

4) deployment of discussions on the choice of the path of social development on the pages of periodicals.

In 1985-1986. the fight against violations of industrial discipline and corruption was launched. A number of former statesmen were punished for bribery and embezzlement. Under the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, a commission headed by A. N. Yakovlev was created with the aim of further studying the documents of those repressed in the 1930s and early 1950s. citizens.

In the context of democratic transformations, there have been changes in the relationship between church and state. Several meetings of Mikhail Gorbachev with the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Pimen and representatives of other religious confessions took place. In 1988, jubilee celebrations were held in connection with the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Rus. The new Law "Freedom of Conscience" has consolidated the course towards liberalization of the state's attitude to religion.

In the late 80s. transformations affected the structure of state power, which began with the 19th All-Union Party Conference (June 1988). The conference approved the course for the creation of the rule of law in the country. The main role in its formation was assigned to political reform. The essence of the reform consisted in a clear division of the responsibilities of party bodies and Soviets, in the transfer of power from the hands of the Communist Party to the Soviets. The implementation of this decision was postponed until the establishment of new political structures of society. The constitutional reform redistributed the highest power in favor of a democratic body - the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet, elected from among the deputies of the Congress. Thus, the two-tier system of representative bodies was restored.

At the end of 1988, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the Law on changing the system of elections to the Soviets. Henceforth, the election of people's deputies was to be carried out on an alternative basis. Elections to the supreme body of power on the basis of new electoral principles were held in the spring of 1989. Many supporters of the continuation of radical transformations were included in the deputy corps, including B. N. Yeltsin, A. D. Sakharov, A. A. Sobchak, and Yu. Chernichenko. The Congress of People's Deputies (1989) formed the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Mikhail Gorbachev was elected its Chairman. An integral part of the reform of the political system aimed at creating a democratic state was the introduction of the presidency in the country. Mikhail Gorbachev was elected the first President of the USSR in March 1990 at the Congress of People's Deputies.

3. The folding of the multiparty system. The transition to a multiparty system began in our country with the formation of "informal" organizations, when the transition to a policy of openness was proclaimed. Movements, organizations, clubs associated themselves with ideas that were called liberal, radical, etc., and at the first stage of their activities announced their opposition to the dogmatic part of the apparatus, the administrative-command system as a whole, expressing support for new initiatives of the reformist part of the party and state leadership. Initially, the new movements were predominantly intellectual in composition. But the emergence of new forms of ownership (cooperative, rental) gave rise to unions of cooperators, tenants, the most active part of which also began to raise the question that economic activity alone is not enough to protect their interests and that it is necessary to start organizing political parties. A number of new parties soon after the beginning of their activity split into several groups, trends, and independent movements. The spectrum of views they represent is very wide: from anarchists to monarchists.

In March 1990, Article 6 of the USSR Constitution on the leading role of the CPSU in society was abolished. By this time, numerous political organizations were already operating in the country. After the adoption of the law "On Public Associations" in March 1991, registration of new parties began. A massive withdrawal from the CPSU began, a significant part of the communists stopped paying membership dues. In fact, the Komsomol and the pioneer organization as the youth and children's structures of the CPSU ceased their activities. After the events of 19-21 August, the CPSU as an all-Union organization virtually ceased to exist. Mikhail Gorbachev resigned from his duties as General Secretary.

4. The beginning of economic reforms. The plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU in April 1985 formulated the task of "accelerating the socio-economic development of the country." social policy... One of the main tasks was the reconstruction of industrial production, its transfer to new scientific and technological foundations (robotization, the creation of powerful industrial complexes). The reserves of the "acceleration" were to be: a more complete utilization of the available production capacities; rationalization and mechanization of production; improving product quality; activation of the "human factor".

The new measures were supposed to be introduced within the old system. The introduction of state acceptance led to an increase in the management apparatus, an increase in material costs. Old equipment increased the accident rate. One of the indicators of the state of the economy and the mismanagement that reigned in it was the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In April 1986, during the testing of a turbine generator, an explosion of a nuclear reactor occurred at one of the units of a nuclear power plant.

The first years of perestroika showed that radical changes cannot be achieved without profound transformations of the economy and political system. There were two alternatives to the development of the USSR:

1) broad economic reforms in the absence of political freedoms;

2) implementation of democratization and economic reforms at the same time.

Gorbachev and his closest associates chose the second development option. The January Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1987 put forward the idea of ​​democratizing public life.

Realizing the importance economic issues, Gorbachev convened in June 1987 the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, at which a program of reforms in the economy was proposed. The transition from administrative to economic methods of managing the national economy was proclaimed. Two cornerstones of the reform were the laws on the state enterprise and on cooperation, passed in 1987, and the independence of enterprises was expanded. Despite all the measures taken, the planned targets in the field of the national economy were not fulfilled for most of the indicators. Moreover, the shortage of food and consumer goods has increased. The budget deficit has grown, partly helped by the reduction in revenues from oil exports.

In addition, by this time, two campaigns began to fail: the fight against drunkenness and alcoholism and the fight against unearned income.

In the late 80s. the majority of economists, business executives, and party leaders recognized the need for a broad development of market relations. The First Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR decided to begin the transition to a new model of economic development. The economic reform presupposed: reduction of state interference in the management of the national economy; expanding the independence of enterprises, self-financing, self-financing; the gradual revival of the private sector; rejection of the monopoly of foreign trade; integration into the world market; expansion of forms of farming in the countryside.

At the turn of the 80s-90s. were allowed self-employment and the creation of cooperatives for the production of several types of goods. Enterprises were vested with broad rights (Law on State Enterprise, 1987).

Lecture 11. THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR.

PLAN:

1. USSR on the eve and during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45.

2. About some problems of the Great Patriotic War.

3. Foreign policy of the USSR. Creation of an anti-Hitler coalition.

1... USSR on the eve and during the Great Patriotic War.

In the 30s. XX century. a political situation has developed in Europe, which has led to the possibility of a military conflict. Fascist Germany was building up its military potential and preparing for war. On the part of England, France and the USSR, no serious measures were taken to prevent the war. On the contrary, the Soviet leadership stepped up negotiations with Germany and expressed a desire to establish good relations with it, regardless of ideological differences.

On August 23, 1939, a non-aggression pact was signed in Moscow, and on September 28, it was supplemented by a treaty of friendship and borders. To the non-aggression pact, both sides signed a secret protocol that delimited the spheres of interests of Germany and the Soviet Union. The Soviet sphere included Latvia, Estonia, Finland, the eastern part of Poland, Bessarabia and Lithuania, for the concession of which the Soviet government was obliged to pay Germany 7.5 million dollars in gold. It was nothing more than a conspiracy between Stalin and Hitler to divide Europe.

By signing the secret protocol, the Soviet government actually ignored the norms of international law and morality, sacrificed not only the strategic interests of its country, but also the interests of the peoples of Europe.

September 1, 1939 Germany launched a treacherous attack on Poland. The Second World War began. Until the very last moment, the Soviet leadership tried to assure the whole world and its people of the strength of Soviet-German friendship, of the correctness of the course begun on August 23, 1939. The strategic miscalculations, lack of principle and adventurism of the foreign policy of the Stalinist regime cost the Soviet people dearly.

USSR IN THE YEARS OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

/ I941-I945 /

On June 22, 1941, fascist Germany, violating the 1939 non-aggression pact, treacherously attacked the USSR. The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people against Nazi Germany began, which was a serious test for our state. The plan for the attack on the USSR was developed by the German General Staff after the defeat of France in May 1940, which Hitler approved on December 18, 1940, which was called Directive No. 21 or the "Barbarossa" plan. "The German armed forces, the document says, must be ready to defeat Soviet Russia in a short-term campaign even before the war against England is over ... I will give the order on the strategic deployment of armed forces against the Soviet Union, if necessary, eight weeks before the scheduled start date of operations ...

Preparations that require a longer time, if they have not yet begun, should begin now and be completed by May 5, 1941. The decisive importance should be given to ensuring that our intentions to attack are not recognized. "

The balance of forces in human resources and in material resources at the initial stage of the war was not in favor of our country. Germany and her allies had a huge advantage.

By the summer of 1941 on the border of the USSR from the Barents to the Black Seas, 5.5 million soldiers and officers were concentrated in the composition of I90 divisions, incl. 153 German, almost 5 thousand combat aircraft, more than 3 700 tanks, over 47 thousand guns and mortars.

The Soviet armed forces in the border military districts were concentrated in 170 divisions, in which there were 2.9 million people. The remaining 1.5 million were located on the eastern and southern borders of the country. In terms of the number of military equipment, armored vehicles and aviation, the Soviet troops were not inferior to the German ones, but a significant part of the tanks and aircraft were of outdated designs. What are the reasons for the temporary setbacks of the Red Army?

The miscalculation of the country's leadership on the timing of a possible attack by Nazi Germany on the USSR.

The fallacy of the military doctrine of the political and military leadership, which underestimated the need for defensive tactics.

The military-economic resources of Germany and its satellites were 2.5 times higher than the resources of our

Germany has more than 2 years of experience in modern warfare.

Stalin's repressive policy in relation to the highest and middle command personnel caused enormous damage to the combat capability of the Red Army.

The program of rearmament of the Red Army with the latest types of weapons was not completed in time.

The Great Patriotic War in its development went through 4 major periods:

1942 - 1943 /; the liberation of the USSR and the defeat of Nazi Germany / 1944 -

The losses of the Soviet troops were enormous. June to December 1941

Red Army and Navy lost killed, died from

wounds, captured and missing 3 million 138 thousand people; wounded, shell-shocked, sick 1 million 336 thousand people: lost more than 6 million units of small arms, 20 thousand tanks and self-propelled guns, 100 thousand guns and mortars, 10 thousand aircraft. The territory of the USSR occupied by the Wehrmacht exceeded 1.5 million square kilometers. Before the war, 74.5 million people lived there.

In the first days of the war, the fascist troops met with serious resistance from the Soviet troops and our people, although the preponderance of forces was on the German side. According to the chief of staff of Nazi Germany, General Halder, on June 3, 1941. "The losses from 22 to 30 June of the German army amounted to a total

41,067 people - 1.64% of the available staff / with the number of troops equal to 2.5 million people /. Killed 524 officers, 8,362 non-commissioned officers and a private. 966 officers and 28,528 non-commissioned officers and privates were wounded. "Of course, these are not so significant losses, but every day, month and year they are acquiring colossal proportions.

The turning point in the course of the war was the Battle of Moscow, which lasted for a total of about 7 months / September 30, 1941 - April 20, 1942 / and became the largest battle in the Second World War. More than 3 million people, up to 3 thousand tanks, more than 2 thousand aircraft, over 22 thousand guns and mortars took part in it on both sides. The balance of forces was in favor of the enemy. By the beginning of the Soviet counteroffensive (December 5, 1941), the Wehrmacht had superiority in manpower by 1.5 times, in artillery - by 1.4 times and tanks - by 1.6 times. In aviation, the Red Army was 1.6 times superior to the enemy.

During the counter-offensive near Moscow, Army Group Center was dealt a crushing blow. 38 Nazi divisions suffered a major defeat. By the end of March 1942, only 140 combat-ready vehicles remained in the 16 tank divisions at the front. Losses of personnel in the Moscow direction, according to the enemy, amounted to 772 thousand people.

US President Franklin Roosevelt highly appreciated the Soviet counteroffensive, speaking on the radio on April 27, 1942: “The United States pays tribute to the crushing counteroffensive of the great Russian armies against the mighty German army. than all the rest of the United Nations put together. "

The significance of the Moscow victory over the fascist hordes was that:

She marked the beginning of a radical turn during the Great Patriotic War.

Hitler's plan for a lightning war of Germany against

THE USSR. The war becomes protracted, which was disadvantageous to the German side;

As a result of the victory near Moscow, an attempt was prevented

Japan to invade the Soviet Far East and the USSR did not find itself in a war on two fronts;

This victory contributed to the development of the mass partisan movement in the country and the Resistance movement in the countries Western Europe;

Our allies - Britain and the United States were forced to conduct specific negotiations on the consolidation of the forces of the anti-Hitler coalition in the fight against a common enemy, etc.

The second largest battle of the Great Patriotic War was the Battle of Stalingrad / July 17, 1942 - February 2, 1943 /. More than 2 million people from both sides took part in this battle, which lasted 200 days and nights. By this time, the maximum enemy forces for the entire war were concentrated on the Soviet-German front. 266 divisions / over 6.2 million people /, about 52 thousand guns and mortars, over 5 thousand tanks and assault guns, 3.5 thousand combat aircraft.

The heroic defense of Stalingrad and the counter-offensive of the Soviet troops led to the defeat of the 6th German army, led by General Field Marshal F. Paulus, on February 2, 1943. he surrendered with the remnants of the 6th Army of 91 thousand people.

The victory at Stalingrad marked the beginning of a radical change

during the Great Patriotic War. The military-strategic initiative passed into the hands of the Red Army.

Completes a fundamental turning point in the Great Patriotic War

Battle of Kursk / July - August 1943 /. To conduct a military operation called "Citadel", the Germans concentrated large forces: 50 divisions, including 16 tank divisions. As part of the drums

enemy groupings were over 900 thousand people. In the historic battle of Kursk, the Germans lost 30 elite divisions, including 7 tank divisions, over 500 thousand soldiers and officers, 1.5 thousand tanks, more than 3, 7 thousand aircraft, 3 thousand guns. Since that time, the expulsion of the German fascist troops from the territory of the USSR actually begins. There were still major military battles near Leningrad, in the Ukraine, in Belarus, but the fate of the military campaign was already predetermined in favor of the Soviet people. The attacks of the Red Army in the winter-spring campaign of 1944 forced the German command to transfer 40 new divisions to the east, where by the time of the Allied landing in Normandy / June 6, 1944 / there were about 2/3 of the most efficient divisions of the Wehrmacht. June 23, 1944. the Soviet military leadership successfully carried out one of the largest military operations of the Second World War, Belarusian. More than 4 million people, about 62 thousand guns and mortars, more than 7,500 tanks and self-propelled artillery mounts, over 7,100 aircraft took part in the battle on both sides.

By the end of August 1944, Soviet troops completely defeated Army Group Center. The Red Army liberated Belarus, part of Lithuania and Latvia, entered the territory of Poland and approached the borders of East Prussia, crossing the Narew and Vistula rivers.

By mid-April 1945, the main forces of the fascist army were defeated on the Soviet-German front, almost all of Poland, Hungary, eastern Czechoslovakia and Austria were liberated. The last decisive battle for Berlin lay ahead. The fascist Reich was in complete international isolation. The Berlin operation was the first in which planning took into account not only the forces, grouping and possible actions of the enemy, but also the actions of the allied Anglo-American forces. The allied forces had the task of preempting the Soviet army in capturing Berlin and turned from an ally into a rival, a rival. For the first time in the entire war, a whole front fought in one huge city, which could not but cause huge casualties on both sides. Berlin was taken in 9 days and on April 30, 1945. The Banner of Victory over the Reichstag was hoisted

The textbook reveals the main mechanisms of the development of the Soviet political system during the Great Patriotic War against the fascist invaders and in the subsequent, final decades of Soviet history. The complex issues of the evolution of the Soviet political system are revealed against a broad socio-economic background. Difficult, debatable issues related to the struggle for power in the highest echelons of the party and state bureaucracy were not ignored either. Based on the latest trends in historiography, the authors thoroughly trace the development of communist ideology, which repeatedly changed its appearance during the period under review, highlight the processes of its mortification, as well as the scope and consequences of this. The manual was prepared by the staff of the Department of Contemporary National History of the Moscow State Pedagogical University: E.M. Shchagin - Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, Honorary Professor of Moscow State Pedagogical University and Ryazan State University named after V.I. S. A. Yesenina, head. Department of Contemporary Russian History, Moscow State Pedagogical University, D.I. n. - Ch. 12; D.O. Churakov - Deputy. head Department of Contemporary National History of the Moscow State Pedagogical University, Acting prof., d. and. n. - Ch. 1, § 1, Ch. 2, § 1–3; A.I. Vdovin - prof., D. And. n. - Ch. 13.

* * *

company liters.

Chapter I. Soviet country during the Great Patriotic War and post-war reconstruction

§ 1. Political development of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War: directions, results, discussions

The outbreak of war: the hard road to truth

The Great Patriotic War became a serious test for the entire Soviet people. Despite the fact that the country was preparing to repel the aggression, in the first weeks of the war, luck accompanied the fascist invaders who invaded our territory. Military conditions put on the agenda the solution of many cardinal tasks, including the restructuring of the entire political system of the USSR. In modern science, it is understood that there were plans to turn the country into a single military camp even before its beginning. But reality has made its own harsh adjustments to the original intentions.

The reconstruction of the state machine had to be done in extraordinary conditions. Under the blows of superior enemy forces, the Red Army fought deeper and deeper to the East. The channels and levers of control, including the army, which had been debugged in the pre-war decades, were violated. A serious correction of ideological work was required, since before the war the confidence prevailed that the enemy was to be beaten on its territory, and victory would be achieved with little bloodshed. In a new way, it was necessary to build a system of relations between the authorities and society. Without a strong bond and mutual trust between them, victory could not have been dreamed of. It was necessary to unite the will of millions of people and direct it to achieve a common goal. Every Soviet person - from soldier to generalissimo - had to fulfill his part of the overall task. This was the only way to break the back of the enemy, who imposed on us a war of survival, an all-out war that had never been seen before in its scale and inhumanity.

The difficult conditions in which the USSR found itself in the first months of the war, the need for serious changes in the style and methods of leading the country gave rise to a whole train of black mythology, the purpose of which was to prove the collapse of the Soviet pre-war model of development. Today this mythology is actively being introduced into the mass consciousness. In a concentrated form, it was presented, for example, in one of the programs of the series "Judgment of Time", during which the question was asked for electronic voting: "Did the Stalinist system [during the war] failed or survived"? Let's try, without emotion, on the basis of facts, to understand this issue and see what happened in those fateful days?

According to one of the oldest myths about the war, the head of the Soviet state, Stalin, did not believe in Hitler's attack. Nowadays, the inconsistency of this myth with real facts is self-evident. Throughout the entire third five-year plan, the USSR was actively preparing for the defense of its western borders. In his speech at the graduation of students of the Red Army Academies on May 5, 1941, Stalin publicly outlined the inevitability of war. He compared Hitler to Napoleon - for a Russian, the parallel is more than understandable. Stalin addressed the young officers of the Red Army with a speech directly in the days when he officially headed the Soviet Government. It is clear that this appointment was not accidental at all.

At that moment, the Soviet leadership, following intelligence reports, expected Hitler to attack on May 15. German General K. Tippelskirch, who at that time headed the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the German Ground Forces, noted in his History of World War II: “Of course, Russian intelligence did not escape that the center of gravity of Germany’s military power was shifting more and more to the East. The Russian command took its countermeasures ... On May 6, Stalin, who until now was only the General Secretary of the Communist Party, albeit the most powerful man in the Soviet Union, succeeded Molotov as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and thus officially headed the government. This step meant, at least formally, strengthening the authority of the government and the unification of forces. "

The TASS statement of June 13, 1941, about which so much is written in modern historiography (including direct speculation), should be considered a turning point in preparation for war. It openly sounded an appeal to Germany to confirm its peaceful intentions. Berlin's silence in diplomatic language meant only one thing - a declaration of war. It is no accident that on these days the first orders to bring troops to combat readiness and to move to defensive positions are sent to the border districts. The repeated order is accepted on June 18th. Its text has not yet been found. At the same time, the documents of the military districts adopted in its execution have survived and are well known. In addition, exercises of a number of districts and fleets were scheduled for mid-June, several months earlier than usual. According to the recollections of the military, it was clear that under the cover of the exercises in the USSR, a hidden mobilization and transfer of additional forces to the western borders began. So, there is clearly no need to talk about the belated reaction of the political leadership.

No one had any illusions about the fact that the war could begin specifically on June 22. This is evidenced by the intense activity of the leadership of the USSR on the last peaceful day - June 21, 1941. This day is filled with continuous meetings and consultations on defense issues. In particular, the words of the leader of the capital's communists, A.S. Shcherbakov, testify to the preparation of the country's leadership for war, who told how on the evening of June 21 Stalin discussed in detail the state of Moscow's air defense. According to the memoirs of N.G. Kuznetsov, a little earlier, at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, Stalin personally called I.V. Tyulenev (who at that time was in command of the Moscow Military District) and demanded that the combat readiness of the air defense forces be increased. As you know, Moscow is located deep in Soviet territory, and if it were not for the threat of a massive invasion and possible retreat, such issues would hardly require increased attention from the head of government. The nature of the threat hanging over the country was not in doubt: according to the recollections of the chairman of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Soviet, V.P. Pronin, on Saturday, June 21, Stalin ordered the secretaries of the district committees to be detained at their workplaces and forbidden to leave the city. "Perhaps the attack of the Germans" - stressed the head of the USSR.

Intense work was carried out in the border regions of the country as well. After the XX Congress, a bike went for a wide walk, as if the commanders of the Western districts on the night of June 22, suspecting nothing, were sleeping peacefully or passing their time carefree. GK Zhukov personally had to refute it. Let's turn to the 13th edition of his memoirs. It is this edition that is called the most objective, free from censorship these days. In addition, and importantly, it was supplemented by the author's manuscripts preserved in the archives. “On the night of June 22, 1941, all employees of the General Staff and the People's Commissariat of Defense were ordered to remain in their places,” Zhukov reports. At that time, the People's Commissar and I were in continuous negotiations with the commanders of the districts and chiefs of staff, who reported to us about the growing noise on the other side of the border. "

Other measures well known to historians also speak of preparations for repelling the invasion of June 22:

- On June 12, an order is given by the Main Military Council to bring up the troops of the second echelons closer to the state border.

- Exactly the same measures are being taken in the Leningrad Military District.

- On June 19, 1941, an order to camouflage airfields, military equipment, warehouses, parks, as well as locations of military units goes to the troops.

- The mining of a number of sections of the border with Germany begins.

- In the western border districts, on command from the center, separate mechanized corps are put on alert and withdrawn to the areas of their dispersal.

- Finally, on June 19, an order is given to the military councils of the border districts to form directorates fronts, and most importantly, by June 22-23, 1941, bring them to the field command posts.

Based on the analysis of these and other similar events in June 1941, modern historians such as R.S. Irinarkhov, A. V. Isaev, A. Yu. Martirosyan conclude that by the second half of June 21, Stalin considered the outbreak of war inevitable, at least very, very likely. Already in the evening of that day, Stalin, People's Commissar of Defense SK Timoshenko and Chief of the General Staff GK Zhukov prepared the well-known "Directive No. 1". This happened no later than 22 hours 20 minutes on June 21, since at that time both military men left the office of the head of the Government. In fact, the political decision to bring the troops to combat readiness was made even earlier, at least by 20 hours and 50 minutes, when Tymoshenko was again summoned to Stalin. He was no longer summoned to confer, but to give orders. At this time, Stalin had a captain of the 1st rank, the Naval Attaché at the USSR Embassy in the Third Reich, M.A.Vorontsov. Vorontsov is a legendary and undeservedly forgotten person. A few hours before the war, he put on the table of the head of the Soviet government the German official request obtained by our intelligence to the Swedish government, in which June 22 was indicated as the date of the start of the war. On the basis of obvious facts, a decision is made to send "Directive No. 1" to the troops. Even before midnight, its text became known to the People's Commissar of the Navy, Admiral N. G. Kuznetsov.

Another, perhaps, the most common myth about the beginning of the war, speaks of the paralysis of will that struck Stalin, after the news of the beginning of the fascist invasion. Its authorship belongs directly to Khrushchev. Since at the beginning of the war, Nikita Sergeevich occupied an important, but still a secondary post of the head of one of the union republics, on June 22 he was not in Moscow and he could only judge the events there by hearsay. To give his words the appearance of plausibility, he had to refer to the alleged story of L.P. Beria. According to Khrushchev, Beria insisted that Stalin was shocked by the affairs at the front and left for his nearest dacha in Kuntsevo. There the dictator sat limply for some time. Seeing Beria and other members of the leadership who came to him, Stalin, it seems, was afraid of the arrest. But when high-ranking visitors began to persuade him to return and lead the country, he perked up and became the old Stalin.

It cannot be ruled out that the basis for Khrushchev's story, as well as for the episode with Stalin's planning of military operations on the globe, voiced at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, was cinematography. If in the episode with the globe one can read the influence of Chaplin's "Great Dictator", then in the description of the visit of the Politburo members to Stalin's dacha one can clearly see a parallel with the film "Ivan the Terrible" by S. M. Eisenstein. In the life of the real Ivan the Terrible, there was an episode when boyars came to him in the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, asking him to return to the throne, which he defiantly left. Today, some authors just write that this historical episode could have led Stalin to the idea of ​​checking the loyalty of his "boyars" in the same way. This is exactly how, with a touch of historical allegories, the act of Stalin is interpreted in the book by A. Mertsalov and L. Mertsalova "Stalinism and War". It cannot be ruled out that Khrushchev thought in the same way, announcing Stalin's seclusion from the rostrum of the congress.

The Khrushchev version of events (in the future, it will be supported by A.I. Mikoyan, who is close to Khrushchev) has so firmly entered the minds of people that even the Stalinists took it at face value. To somehow justify their idol, they proposed several historical myths at once. Thus, the writer V. Zhukhrai in his book "Stalin: Truth and Lies" reported on the sore throat that had slain the leader. V.P. Meshcheryakov goes even further. He writes about attempts by individual Soviet leaders to isolate Stalin. It is with this that he explains Molotov's speech on June 22, the absence of Stalin's signatures on some official documents, the impossibility for some high-ranking officials to get an audience with the head of government. That is, Meshcheryakov is actually writing about a creeping coup d'etat. The book in which he developed his argumentation bears an expressive title: "Stalin and the military conspiracy of 1941". The top version of the conspiracy is vulnerable to criticism. Perhaps, in making his attack on the USSR, Hitler was counting on just such a scenario. In all the countries in which his armies entered, there was a fifth column, representatives of the elite, ready to buy their wealth through betrayal. But, as you know, this did not happen in the Soviet Union, which cannot be considered an accident. So why would anyone come up with various tales on this subject in retrospect?

Initially, according to the version of Khrushchev and Mikoyan, it turned out that Stalin lost his composure in the initial hours of the war. Fearing retribution and not knowing how to justify himself, he refused to speak to the people, entrusting this to Molotov. Khrushchev and some of his supporters put a panicky phrase into Stalin's mouth, which in the form corrected by the censorship sounds like this: "What Lenin created, we have irretrievably lost all this." Later in his memoirs “Time. People. Power "Khrushchev" strengthens "his version of the outbreak of war, giving it more dynamism and flavor. At the same time, he will especially emphasize that Stalin, in addition to showing cowardice, also voluntarily removed himself from ruling the country. ““ I, ”he says,“ refuse the leadership, ”and left. He left, got into the car and drove away, "Khrushchev wrote about Stalin's behavior.

In the system of power that Stalin created, the role of the leader was central. Because of this, as noted by V.V. Cherepanov, Khrushchev accused Stalin that by his actions he paralyzed the entire management system. This is not far from the conclusion, which we read in the book of the Chechen dissident A. Avtorkhanov: the leader behaved like a deserter. Thus, the blame for the first defeats was completely shifted to Stalin. It was important for Khrushchev to voice this at the XX Congress. It was difficult to foresee the reaction of its delegates to the "exposure of the personality cult", and in case of complications, Khrushchev might need the help of Zhukov and other military men interested in preventing some unclear circumstances of the first days of the war from being revealed.

It was in this form that the version of "Stalin's prostration" became the subject of conversation in dissident kitchens in the 1960s-1970s. It was in this form that it was invested in the minds of the population of the USSR, when the policy of glasnost made possible the translation of Western history books. In particular, when the former domestic textbooks lost their credibility, and they had not yet managed to create new ones, the textbook of the Frenchman Nicolas Werth gained popularity. It spoke precisely about the long, almost two weeks, absence of Stalin. However, during the period of its greatest distribution in the 90s of the XX century, the Khrushchev version encountered an unexpected obstacle. In 1996, a journal of visits to Stalin's Kremlin office was published in the Historical Archive. It would seem that the myth has disintegrated, it can be handed over to the museum of the history of human delusions. But the followers of the Khrushchev version are our clues. If it is impossible to prove the two-week "Kuntsevo sitting", then one should try to defend at least the very fact of panic. The fact is that there is a gap in the visit log: entries in it end on the 28th, and begin again - only on July 1, 1941. And so General Volkogonov writes no longer about a few, but only about three days, during which "the first person in the state was in prostration and did not lead the country."

However, even in such a noticeably truncated form, Khrushchev's version did not last long. The fact is that June 29, obviously, immediately falls out of this scheme. On this day, Stalin actively worked on the "Directive of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to the party and Soviet organizations of the front-line regions on the mobilization of all forces and resources to defeat the fascist invaders." The fruit of collective creativity, the Directive was signed on the same day and played an important role in transforming the country into a unified military camp. In addition, as the reconstruction of V. Cherepanov shows, on June 29, Stalin twice visited the People's Commissariat of Defense, where a clarification of relations between the political and military leadership of the country took place. The head of government was furious with the results of the activities of his people's commissar and chief of the General Staff. In the literature, it is even written that with his rudeness he brought the general to Zhukov's tears - in such cases, a strong and not inclined to sentimentality.

Analyzing the recollections of the participants in the negotiations held that day in the People's Commissariat of Defense, V. Cherepanov noted: “The authors of the memoirs missed or kept silent about one, but fundamentally important point. It is about the manifestation of the first disagreements between the political and military leadership of the country and about Stalin's suppression of a possible split ... Stalin, as a wise politician, in this difficult hour made an attempt to unite the efforts of the political and military leadership, emphasizing the unconditional priority of the former. Although he did it in an extremely harsh manner. But the situation was such that there was no time to persuade subordinates ”. For Timoshenko and Zhukov, the main result of Stalin's visit will be the speedy loss of their high position (although what happened to them cannot be called "disgraced", since both commanders will remain in the thick of events at the front). And for Stalin himself, probably, such a result was the idea of ​​creating a body that would unite the leadership of the front and rear, and at the same time, would allow better control over the activities of the military.

The question of Stalin's capacity to act in the first days of the war has no independent significance. It was necessary to dwell on it in such detail only because on its example it is possible to clearly show how black myths about our country are born. Having analyzed the actual course of events, we can state that the Soviet system, good or not, did not fall apart, withstood the first blows of the Nazis. If for us living today, the question of the strength of the system and the readiness of the Soviet leadership to continue the struggle is predominantly academic in nature (hence the discussion), then for people who survived the horrors of the beginning of the war, it was a question of life and death. Their life choices, life position depended on what people thought about their leaders. The Soviet leadership has shown that it will not flinch, will not give up weak-willed hands, will not abandon its people, will not run abroad, as the leaders of Poland, France, Czechoslovakia and other countries did. From the very first hours of the war, the Soviet leadership showed a willingness to fight. Today, in comparatively prosperous days, it is not easy for everyone to understand what a colossal mobilizing significance this had. The patriotic enthusiasm of the people and the firm will of the leadership of the USSR were welded together. This became an important guarantee of future successes on the battlefields. The call for the Patriotic War, uttered by Molotov in his address to the people at noon on June 22, responded warmly in people:

“This is not the first time our people have to deal with an attacking, arrogant enemy. At one time, our people responded to Napoleon's campaign in Russia with a Patriotic War, and Napoleon was defeated, came to his collapse. The same will happen with the arrogant Hitler, who has announced a new campaign against our country. The Red Army and all our people will once again wage a victorious patriotic war for the homeland, for honor, for freedom ... The government calls on you, citizens and women of the Soviet Union, to rally your ranks even more closely around our glorious Bolshevik Party, around our Soviet government, around our great leader Comrade Stalin. Our cause is right. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours".

The heroism of the people, the strength of the Soviet system and the active position of the top leadership already in the first days of the war thwarted the plans of the blitzkrieg, which means they brought the victory closer. This, of course, does not mean that the Victory was already predetermined, that there were no miscalculations or difficulties on the way to it. Difficulties, mistakes, cowardice, desertion and betrayal were present in certain lower levels of the power apparatus. Miscalculations, sometimes very serious, were also made at the center level. But only now, having abandoned both the ceremonial gloss and black mythology, it became possible to objectively understand their reasons and nature.

In particular, the following facts can be noted, which are well known today. So, the Soviet military leadership on the eve of the war overestimated the combat power of the Red Army. General K. A. Meretskov at the January 1941 meeting of the leadership of the army, for example, said: “When developing the charter, we proceeded from the fact that our division is much stronger than the division of the German fascist army and that in a meeting engagement it will undoubtedly defeat the German division ... In defense, one of our divisions will repel the blow of two or three enemy divisions. " It is not clear what was the basis for such lofty conclusions, but they were the ones that were reported to the political leadership. They were the ones that were included in the plans to cover the western borders. It was they who found a place in the field regulations of the Red Army. The very first clashes with a well-armed and trained enemy showed their groundlessness.

Or one more thing. Today, much is said about Soviet defensive structures on the old and new border of the USSR: the Stalin line and the Molotov line, respectively. There is even a corresponding myth according to which, after moving the border far to the West, Stalin ordered the destruction of the old defensive line. In reality, there was no such order. According to the directive of the Chief of General Staff in 1940, the old fortified areas not only were not destroyed, but even initially were not preserved. Only in the future, as the construction of new SDs, the old ones were ordered to be mothballed, organizing their protection. Arms and ammunition were to be stored in special warehouses "in full combat readiness to be dropped on the line." Another thing is that in some military districts this work was organized very badly. The seized weapons were not guarded, the structures themselves were dilapidated and fell into disrepair. This was the case, for example, in the Minsk fortified area, which was in the zone of responsibility of the commander of the ZOVO D.G. Pavlov. At the same time, special observers from the center have repeatedly recorded failures in the implementation of plans for the construction of the Grodno fortified area. The situation with the Polotsk fortified area was no better. During their construction, among other things, secrecy measures were not observed. The enemy, using this circumstance, could know the state of our defensive structures.

Not everything is completely clear why the military, nevertheless, despite the extraordinary measures that were taken back in May and intensified in mid-June 1941, met the enemy in varying degrees of readiness? For example, the fleet met the enemy in full combat readiness. Here we have to deal with another deep-rooted misconception that the command of the RKKF put the fleet on alert, against the will of the center. It is unclear whether the author of this myth is Admiral Kuznetsov himself, or the corresponding words were added for him by his party editors. In any case, Kuznetsov is actually accused of rebellion - this is how the unauthorized actions of people with weapons in their hands are qualified. The rest of the content of Kuznetsov's books refutes the words about the unauthorized actions of the admiral during the critical hours for our country on June 21-22. It is known that on June 19, by order from Moscow, the fleet was transferred to combat readiness No. 2. Later, confirmation came from Moscow that the fleet could repel an enemy attack if it followed. Readiness number 1 in the fleet was announced on June 21 at 23 hours 15 minutes - that is, immediately, as the content of "Directive number 1" was brought by Zhukov to Kuznetsov. In addition, not only the sailors, but also the border guards who were subordinate to Beria, met the enemy fully armed. The troops of the Odessa Military District proved to be in the proper degree of combat readiness. Not fully, but they were ready to meet the invasion of KOVO and PribOVO. We were completely late with the deployment of troops only in the ZAPOVO. In addition, there is still no clarity on the issue of why some of the orders on the ZAPOVO contradicted the directives of the center, did not increase, but, on the contrary, lowered the combat readiness of personnel and equipment. Among them, for example, are:

- The withdrawal and transfer to the depots of ammunition from pillboxes, tanks, aircraft (many depots, at the same time, were located too close to the borders, as a result, in the first two days they were set on fire by enemy aircraft or they had to be blown up by the retreating Soviet units themselves).

- The order to withdraw automatic weapons from the border posts, allegedly for inspection.

- Received on the very eve of the attack, on June 21, an order to dry the fuel tanks of the aircraft.

- A ban on the dispersal of district aviation, etc.

The list of such orders and orders that cannot be explained from the point of view of normal logic can be continued, delving into ever smaller details. The final is known - the capital of Belarus, one of the main cities of the USSR, Minsk, was captured already on June 28. The fate of General Pavlov was also tragic. He himself, as well as some other senior officers of the ZAPOVO, were shot. During the investigation, the charges were based on Article 58, "Treason to the Motherland", but in the end the verdict was passed under the articles "Negligence" and "Non-performance of official duties."

Some party and Soviet leaders were also not up to the mark. In the Reader on the History of 1914-1945, back in the mid-90s of the last century, prepared by the staff of the Department of Contemporary National History of the Moscow State Pedagogical University, there is an interesting collection of documents on this subject for students-historians. So, in his letter to the Chairman of the State Defense Committee Stalin on July 7, 1941, a member of the CPSU (b) since 1925 S. Bolotny reported on the shameful behavior of the leadership of the Lithuanian SSR. “On the day of the treacherous military attack of Nazi Germany on our homeland, that is, on June 22 of this year,” the document says, “the government and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania (Bolsheviks) disgracefully fled from Kaunas in an unknown direction, leaving the country and people to fend for themselves, without thinking about evacuating state institutions, without destroying the most important state documents ... Kaunas, a small city, alert population saw a caravan of government vehicles traveling at top speed in the direction of the station, loaded with women, children and suitcases. All this has brought demoralization among the population. "

Some of the leaders of the Ukrainian SSR were also gripped by suitcase sentiments. This is how Stalin wrote to the leader of the Ukrainian communists Khrushchev on July 10, 1941: “Your proposals for the destruction of all property contradict the guidelines given in Comrade Stalin's speech, where the destruction of all valuable property was mentioned in connection with the forced withdrawal of the Red Army units. Your proposals mean the immediate destruction of all valuable property, grain and livestock in the zone 100-150 km from the enemy, regardless of the state of the front. Such an event can demoralize the population, cause dissatisfaction with the Soviet regime, upset the rear of the Red Army and create, both in the army and among the population, a mood of obligatory withdrawal instead of decisiveness to repulse the enemy. " Stalin, in fact, veiledly accused Khrushchev of alarmism. Was it not these reproaches that Khrushchev belatedly responded to at the 20th Congress, creating a myth of Stalin's prostration?

Unfortunately, such negative manifestations of bureaucratic negligence and lack of principle were enough not only in the first days of the war, but also later, when the enemy began to move deep into the territory of the USSR. Of course, this could not but cause the just discontent of ordinary citizens. As an employee of the British Embassy J. Russell, who worked in the USSR at that time, put it, spontaneous discontent, which had been accumulating among the people for years, was directed against the Communists and Jews. So, in October 1941, mass spontaneous demonstrations took place in the homeland of the first Soviets - in the Ivanovo region. The workers expressed dissatisfaction with the methods of mobilization for the construction of defense structures, the state of state and cooperative trade. There were protests: "All the headquarters have fled from the city, but we are left alone." When the representatives of the district committee tried to dispel the rumors spread by the provocateurs, people shouted in response: "Do not listen to them - they do not know anything, they have been deceiving us for 23 years!"

Similar sentiments, according to the head of the NKVD in Moscow and the Moscow region, MI Zhuravlev, and other sources from which the secrecy label has been removed in recent years, manifested itself in Moscow during the panic on October 14-16, 1941. It was not only former oppositionists or representatives of the overthrown classes who were in a hurry to dissociate themselves from the Soviet past. According to the testimony of GV Reshetin, a Muscovite who survived the October tragedy, a reaction of a purely protective nature (according to the principle “one's own shirt is closer to the body”) also manifested itself widely among ordinary townspeople: “On the evening of October 16, in the corridor, a neighbor, Aunt Dunyasha, lit a stove. A bright fire devours ... books, magazines. Stirring with a poker, she endlessly repeats so that everyone can hear: - And my Misha has long been non-partisan, and in general he did not go to meetings.

It should be noted that events similar to those in Moscow became possible only in conditions when, for several hours, the faint-hearted people had the illusion that the Soviet system had collapsed. Under these conditions, the maximum that ordinary Muscovites could self-organize for was blocking the roads leading to the East and smashing cars with refugees' belongings. Moreover, not only cowardly bosses, but also representatives of the intelligentsia were subjected to reprisals and humiliations. But there was a fascist at the gates of Moscow, and it was necessary to think about how to defend the city! It is just as significant how the crisis was overcome. As soon as it became known that Stalin remained in Moscow, all panic and pogrom sentiments passed. Stalin was only a symbol of the Soviet regime. Just like him, many other people remained at their workplace or at a combat post: red directors, militiamen, soldiers and officers, militias, workers, office workers - in short, all those who did not succumb to panic and defended Moscow. Making his famous toast “to the Russian people” on May 24, 1945 in the Kremlin at a reception in honor of the commanders of the Red Army, Stalin recalled: “Our government made many mistakes, we had moments of desperate situation in 1941-1942, when our the army retreated, left our native villages and cities of Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, the Leningrad region, the Karelo-Finnish Republic, left, because there was no other way out. Another people could tell the Government: you did not live up to our expectations, go away, we will install another government that will make peace with Germany and provide us with peace. But the Russian people did not agree to this, because they believed in the correctness of the policy of their Government and made sacrifices to ensure the defeat of Germany. "

Changes in the Soviet Political System in 1941-1945: The Difficult Road to Victory

Often, as evidence of the crisis and defeat of the Soviet system during the war years, they cite the fact that, after the very first shots on the Soviet-German border, its transformation began. Management methods that seemed unshakable in the late 1930s were rejected. Instead, there was a transition to new, often more democratic ones. However, one should be aware of two general theoretical and practical circumstances. First, the Soviet system changed during the war years not only under the pressure of the negative factors discussed above, including protest sentiments in society. The very abrupt transition from peace to war required a serious adjustment of the power apparatus, taking into account the rapidly changing situation. Secondly, changes took place during all the previous decades, starting in 1917. Democratic and anti-democratic tendencies fought in the society. And today many scientists, including those in the West, are in no hurry to state unequivocally that this struggle ended immediately after the civil war ended. One should not also forget the fate of Tsarist Russia. The inertia of political institutions, reluctance to take into account the trends of the times ultimately led to her death. Accordingly, the flexibility of the Soviet system is evidence of its resilience rather than a crisis.

The restructuring of the state mechanism on a military basis begins already in the first hours after the Nazi aggression. Some of the events were thought out in advance, others were a response to a rapidly changing situation. Already on the first day of the war, June 22, the Politburo, and then the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, adopted four important documents that determined the nature of mobilization measures. These are decrees: No. 95 "On the mobilization of those liable for military service": No. 96 "On the declaration of martial law in certain areas of the USSR", No. 97 "On martial law"; No. 98 "On Approval of the Regulations on Military Tribunals". In the decree "On martial law", with reference to the Constitution, it was explained that martial law in certain localities or throughout the country could be introduced to ensure public order and state security. In areas declared under martial law, all power in terms of defense was transferred to the military. For disobedience to the orders of the military authorities and for the crimes committed, criminal liability was provided for under the laws of wartime. Violators were to be dealt with by special tribunals, whose sentences were not subject to appeal. An important provision was contained in the final paragraph of the decree, which explained that the jurisdiction of this decree "also applies to areas where, due to extraordinary circumstances, there are no local bodies of state power and state administration of the USSR." It was about the territories occupied by the enemy.

The next day, June 23, the Politburo adopted a resolution "On the Headquarters of the Main Command of the Armed Forces of the USSR." Without delay, it was formalized by a joint closed resolution of the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). Thus, the headquarters became the first emergency governing body created during the war years. Its competence included the leadership of the armed forces. The People's Commissar of Defense Tymoshenko was appointed Chairman of the Headquarters. It also included Stalin, Molotov, K. E. Voroshilov, S. M. Budyonny, Zhukov and Kuznetsov. Soviet historiography did not like to emphasize this fact, but, as is easy to see, most of the "ordinary" members of the rate were in their position, and most importantly, in terms of authority in the country, incomparably higher than its formal leader. This could not but create certain difficulties. Apparently, Tymoshenko himself understood the state of affairs, who signed the documents emanating from the Headquarters not as its Chairman, but with a vague formula: "From the Headquarters of the High Command, People's Commissar of Defense S. Timoshenko."

Later, the composition and even the name of this important body of military command underwent repeated changes. So, on July 10, as it was officially explained, in connection with the formation of the High Commands of individual directions (North-West, West and South-West), it was renamed the Headquarters of the Supreme Command. Attention is drawn to the fact that on the same day, instead of Tymoshenko, Stalin became Chairman of the Headquarters. At the same time, BM Shaposhnikov was introduced into it, as it turned out very soon - with a long-range aim: on July 30, he would head the General Staff, replacing Zhukov, who was less experienced in staff turnover. A little earlier, on July 19, 1941, Tymoshenko would lose her high post. Instead, Stalin will personally head the NPO. Finally, on August 8, Stalin was appointed the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. Accordingly, the Headquarters of the Supreme Command will be transformed into the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command. Thus, the organization of command and control of the army acquires its finished form. As A. M. Vasilevsky emphasized in this regard, as a result of the reorganizations carried out, "the leadership of the Armed Forces, their construction and support has significantly improved."

An important role in the transfer of the political system and the country as a whole to a war footing was played by the above-mentioned "Directive on mobilization" of June 29, 1941. As leading modern historians rightly remarked, it formulated "the main program of action to transform the country into a single military camp." The directive was extremely laconic, but succinctly formulated the essence of the events taking place. “The treacherous attack of fascist Germany on the Soviet Union continues. The purpose of this attack is the destruction of the Soviet system, the seizure of Soviet lands, the enslavement of the peoples of the Soviet Union, the plunder of our country, the seizure of our grain and oil, the restoration of the power of the landlords and capitalists ... free or fall into enslavement. " The document noted that, despite not all the seriousness of the threat hanging over the Motherland, “some party, Soviet, trade union and Komsomol organizations and their leaders have not yet realized the significance of this threat and do not understand that the war has dramatically changed the situation”, that “the Motherland has found itself in the greatest danger ". It was necessary to throw off the veil of illusion and complacency and, rolling up our sleeves, take up the difficult task of organizing a rebuff to the aggressor.

The document sounded an appeal "to fight to the last drop of blood", "to show courage, initiative and intelligence inherent in our people." The rear was to be strengthened "by subordinating their activities to the interests of the front." To help the wounded, it was proposed to adapt the premises of schools, clubs and even government agencies. With deserters, alarmists, saboteurs, an appeal sounded to deal mercilessly, to give the court a military tribunal. Provocative rumors were named as the enemy's special weapon. The directive assessed the situation realistically and recognized the possibility of leaving part of the Soviet territory to the enemy. The document sounded a call in the event of the forced withdrawal of the Red Army "not to leave the enemy a single steam locomotive, not a single carriage, not to leave the enemy a kilogram of bread or a liter of fuel." Collective farmers were encouraged to steal livestock and export grain. Anything that could not be evacuated had to be "unconditionally destroyed." The directive demanded in the occupied areas to create unbearable conditions "for the enemy and all his accomplices, to pursue and destroy them at every step." To do this, it was supposed to kindle a partisan war in the enemy rear, as it was during the Patriotic War of 1812. The directive ended with words directed directly to the Communists: "The task of the Bolsheviks," it said, "is to rally the entire people around the Communist Party, around the Soviet government for selfless support of the Red Army, for victory."

The logical consequence of the Directive becomes almost immediately after its adoption, the creation of the above-mentioned State Defense Committee. The need for it was dictated exclusively by the conditions of the war. In the decree of June 30, from which he begins his history, it was stated that the GKO was created "in view of the current state of emergency and in order to quickly mobilize all the forces of the peoples of the USSR to repulse the enemy who treacherously attacked our Motherland." There are only three short paragraphs in the document. The first listed the composition of the GKO: Stalin (chairman), Molotov (deputy), Voroshilov, G.M. Malenkov, Beria. In the second paragraph, there was a demand "to concentrate all power in the state in the hands" of the new body. Finally, in the third paragraph, all citizens, all party, Soviet, Komsomol and military organizations were obliged to "unquestioningly fulfill the decisions and orders" of the GKO, which, in fact, acquired the force of wartime laws. In the hands of the GKO was concentrated "all the power in the state." Never again - neither before nor after the war - has there been a body with such powers that has existed for over 4 years and is not provided for by the Constitution.

In historical science, there are different points of view on who owns the idea of ​​creating GKOs. Not all historians agree that it came from Stalin himself. Some authors name such figures as Molotov, Malenkov, Beria. In particular, according to Yuri Zhukov, the creation of the GKO was a kind of palace coup. Stalin, on the other hand, was included in its composition only to give the GKO the appearance of legitimacy and greater efficiency. Only when Stalin realized that no one intended to remove him from power, he joined the work in full force. In addition to the testimonies of Khrushchev and Mikoyan, there are, for example, the records of B. S. Semenov, who at one time was the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 1964, he entered into his diary a story allegedly heard from K. E. Voroshilov at one of the Kremlin receptions:

“Stalin believed the Germans. The treachery of the Germans had such an effect on him: to break the treaty several months after the signing! .. This is despicable. Stalin was so upset that he went to bed ... Only gradually Stalin regained control of himself and got out of bed. And at this time, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich began to say that it was necessary to drive Stalin out, that he could not lead the party and the country. We began to explain to him that Stalin was gullible and had such a character. But Molotov did not want to hear, he did not understand the peculiarities of Stalin. "

As you can see, the version of Molotov as the initiator of the creation of the GKO is based on the same scheme as in relation to the "prostration of Stalin." However, this point of view is based only on the sources of the memoir plan. Apart from them, there is nothing at its core. As already shown above, no dropout of Stalin from the leadership of the country happened. And if Stalin did not find himself in a situation of inaction for a single day, then all constructions in the spirit of "conspiracy theory" lose their meaning. Further events, among other things, speak of their groundlessness. It is unlikely that Stalin, given the severity of the struggle for power in the Soviet elite, would have kept next to him the people who encroached on his leadership. The very fact that everyone whom modern authors consider to be "conspirators" continued to occupy important posts and enjoyed Stalin's trust throughout the war is sufficient reason not to take "conspiracy theory" too seriously.

In turn, studies of the latest period indicate rather the opposite, namely, that Stalin himself was the initiator of the creation of the GKO. He was dissatisfied with the impotence of some civilian and military leaders, and he wanted to decisively turn the tide. It cannot be ruled out that the legacy of the "Tukhachevsky case" also played a role, when the political leadership felt distrust of the generals. The solution to this problem lay precisely in the plane of creating such a body that would unite all branches of government in one hand. Only Stalin of all the leaders of the USSR that survived at that time had experience of working in such a body. This refers, of course, to the Leninist Council of Workers 'and Peasants' Defense (later transformed into the Council of Labor and Defense).

As you know, V. I. Lenin also established the Defense Council with the aim of curbing the power of the military, headed by Trotsky. Such a need arose when Trotsky, together with Sverdlov, after the assassination attempt on Lenin, formed the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. In fact, the RVSR had broader powers than the Leninist Council of People's Commissars. By creating the Defense Council, Vladimir Ilyich restored the status quo, since the RVSR was also supposed to be subordinate to the newly created body. The parallel between the Council of Workers 'and Peasants' Defense and the State Defense Committee was always obvious.

The idea of ​​the State Defense Committee was born to Stalin, apparently on June 29, 1941. This happened either, as already assumed, after visiting an NGO, or at the time of work on the Directive on mobilizing the country to repel the aggressor. The fact that it was Stalin who could have stood at the origins of the GKO, among other things, is evidenced by the content of his speech on July 3, 1941. Not only in meaning, but also in style, it followed from the directive on June 29 and the decree on the creation of GKO. In all three documents, there are not only semantic repetitions, common images and phrases, but also textual coincidences, which cannot be called accidental and confirms their common authorship.

Rising as a kind of superstructure over all state bodies, the GKO did not have its own large apparatus. He acted through party and state bodies, as well as public organizations. In the future, when the need for a prompt solution to a number of issues is revealed, a special institution of authorized GKOs will be established. They will begin to operate at the fronts, in the people's commissariats, individual union republics, territories and regions, at the most important enterprises and construction sites. In special cases, special committees and commissions were created under GKOs. For example, at different times there was a Trophy Commission, an Evacuation Committee, a Radar Council, a Transport Committee, etc.

In the front-line areas, the function of emergency authorities was carried out by the city defense committees created by the GKO in 1941-1942. In total, city defense committees were created in more than 60 cities, including such hero cities as Sevastopol, Odessa, Tula, etc. Just like the State, city defense committees were called upon to unite together all the levers of power: the party, army, local administration. As a rule, they were headed by the first secretaries of the regional or city committees of the CPSU (b). Representatives of local Soviet and military bodies became members of the city defense committees. The field of activity of the local emergency bodies included the management of the production and repair of military equipment and weapons, construction, the creation of the people's militia and other volunteer formations.

In areas declared under martial law, all power in terms of defense, public order and state security passed directly to the military councils of fronts (districts), armies, and where there were no military councils, to the high command of the formations operating in these territories. The decree of June 22, 1941 endowed the military authorities with the broadest powers. They controlled entry and exit from areas declared under martial law. By order of the military, any undesirable persons could be evicted from this zone by administrative procedure. The decrees issued by the military authorities for the population of this area were generally binding. For their failure to comply, the perpetrators were administratively imprisoned for up to 6 months or a fine of up to 3 thousand rubles. If necessary, the military could mobilize vehicles, establish military-apartment and labor service. They also received the right to regulate the mode of operation of enterprises, institutions, trade and utilities. The procedure for holding meetings and processions was also transferred to the jurisdiction of the military authorities.

Martial law could be introduced not only in areas facing the threat of enemy occupation, but also in certain sectors of the national economy that are especially important from a defense point of view. In particular, taking into account the experience of World War I, martial law was declared on transport. Here it meant the introduction of military discipline in the system of transport departments. In fact, transport employees and workers were equated with military personnel and, on an equal footing with them, were subject to disciplinary, and in some cases also criminal responsibility for misdemeanors and crimes. Such measures helped to maintain the high efficiency of transport throughout the war.

In conditions of an immediate threat of the capture of cities in the front-line zone by the enemy, a state of siege could also be introduced into them. The state of siege differed from the military one by the even stricter regulation of the regime. The state of siege was introduced by a GKO decree, for example, in October 1941 in Moscow. It operated in the same way in Leningrad, Stalingrad and some other cities and areas of the front line, especially important in military terms. In cities declared under a state of siege, a curfew was imposed, the movement of vehicles and the population was streamlined and subject to control. Public order was strengthened. Violators of the state of siege regime could be prosecuted with the transfer of the case to a military tribunal. Anyone who was convicted of provocative activities, espionage, or called for a violation of order was subject to execution on the spot.

To solve specific problems in the war years, also highly specialized emergency bodies were formed. In particular, such a body was the Extraordinary State Commission for the establishment and investigation of the atrocities of the German fascist invaders and their accomplices and the damage they caused to citizens, collective farms, public organizations, state enterprises and institutions of the USSR. It was created by the decree of the Presidium of the USSR Armed Forces on November 2, 1942. Secretary of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions N. M. Shvernik was appointed chairman of the commission. In addition to representatives of the party, such as A.A.Zhdanov, it included well-known, authoritative public figures: writer A.N. Tolstoy, patriotic historian E.V. Tarle, neurosurgeon N.N.Burdenko, breeder and agronomist Academician T D. Lysenko and others. A number of researchers, in particular the German historian Dieter Pohl, are trying to question the objectivity of the commission (which, however, in the context of the growing attempts in the West, including even in Germany, to revise the position of the USSR in World War II, it is quite understandable - one of the methods of belittling the role of our country's contribution to the common victory is increasingly the minimization of the atrocities of Nazism, the whitewashing of war criminals). In addition to the national one, there were similar commissions in the republics, territories, regions and cities. The results of their investigations were presented by the Soviet side at the Nuremberg trials as irrefutable evidence of the criminal activities of the occupiers.

The emergency authorities could not completely replace the entire peacetime management system, and this was not required. Along with them, the constitutional bodies of power and administration continued to operate. The war has made its own adjustments to the organization and order of their work. In particular, the conditions of war and the occupation of large territories of the USSR did not allow regular elections to the Soviets of all levels to be held within the time frames stipulated by the law. The Presidium of the USSR Armed Forces and the Presidiums of the Supreme Soviets of the Union Republics have repeatedly postponed their holding, but during the war years they were never organized. The elections took place only after the war, when the political and economic situation began to stabilize. Despite this, the Soviet authorities had to continue their work. It was decided that the deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Supreme Soviets of the republics and local Soviets, elected in the pre-war period, will continue their work as long as the need remains.

The activities of Soviet bodies were complicated not only by the impossibility of timely ensuring the holding of elections. It was also not easy to meet the deadlines for convening regular sessions, to ensure a quorum for them. This was due to the fact that many deputies, feeling their patriotic duty, went to the army. This figure is indicative: by January 1, 1945, more than 59% of the deputies elected before the war and more than 38% of the members of the executive committees of the Soviets had left the local Soviets. Most of them fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. As a result, it was necessary to make serious compromises with the law, and to recognize as plenipotentiary sessions of the Soviets, which were attended by 2/3 of the present composition of deputies, whereas in peacetime, according to the Constitution, this required the presence of 2/3 of the elected deputies. In total, during the war, sessions of the USSR Armed Forces were convened only three times, while before the war from 1937 to 1941 - 8 times. The situation was even more complicated in the union republics, which had become the object of aggression. So in Ukraine, the first session of the highest legislative body of the republic was convened only at the beginning of March 1944. In addition, the war changed the face of the deputy corps, in which women now played a much greater role than before the war.

In exactly the same way as during the years of the civil war, the ratio of the executive and representative bodies of power changed dramatically. The first, represented by the executive committees of the Soviets, have grown significantly. Among other things, the executive committees of the higher Soviets received additional rights in relation to the executive committees of the lower Soviets. In particular, if necessary, the executive committee of the superior Council could, without additional elections, through co-optation, replenish the composition of the executive committees of the inferior Councils. As a rule, the deputy corps was replenished with trusted people, representatives of the party and Soviet activists. This practice was especially widely used in the territories liberated from the enemy, where it was necessary to restore not only the economy, but also the Soviet organization of power.

The processes leading to the strengthening of the vertical of executive bodies took place not only at the local level, but also in the center. Thus, the role of the USSR Armed Forces has slightly decreased, but at the same time the role of its Presidium and, to an even greater extent, of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR has strengthened. Sessions of the USSR Armed Forces were held only in exceptional cases. So, the 9th session took place only a year later, after the start of the war - on June 18, 1942. It ratified the Soviet-British Treaty of Alliance with Britain in the war against Nazi Germany. We had to wait even longer for the 10th session of the USSR Armed Forces, which opened on January 28, 1944. Finally, the final 11 session of the USSR Armed Forces during the Great Patriotic War was held on April 24-27, 1945. Most of the changes in the country's legislation during the war hard times were adopted by the Presidium of the USSR Armed Forces. Among the legal acts approved by him during these years, one can name the decrees on mobilization; the imposition of martial law; the structure of the Armed Forces; state awards; finally, about the creation of new (including emergency) state bodies and many others.

An even greater burden during the war years fell on the Soviet Government and its subdivisions. On some of the most important, primarily military-economic issues, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR made joint decisions with the apparatus of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. The competence of the Council of People's Commissars included issues related, for example, with the evacuation of enterprises from the front-line to the eastern regions of the country. For this, the SNK was created new structure- Council for the evacuation, headed by N. M. Shvernik. The evacuation council under the SNK in its activities relied on the front-line evacuation commissions under the executive committees of local Soviets, evacuation departments created in the offices of the people's commissariats, as well as authorized branch people's commissariats responsible for the evacuation of individual enterprises. On the ground, the location of the evacuated enterprises was controlled by regional party and Soviet structures. The emergency body was created to optimize activities in such an important area as agitation and propaganda. It becomes the Sovinformburo at the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, which arose on June 24, 1941. During the Great Patriotic War, its activities were led by the leader of the Moscow communists A.S. Shcherbakov and Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs S.A. Lozovsky.

Other new structures were created under the Council of People's Commissars. Among them are Glavsnabneft, Glavsnabugol, Glavsnables and other institutions in charge of supplying the national economy. In addition, a committee for the registration and distribution of labor, the Department for the Evacuation of the Population, the Department for State Provision and Household Arrangements for the families of military personnel were formed. When in 1943 the Red Army drove the enemy to the West and the Soviet territories began to be liberated en masse, the task arose of their economic revival. Work in this direction was entrusted to a specially created resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated August 21, 1943, to the Committee under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR for the restoration of the economy in areas liberated from the German occupation, the work of which was directed by G.M. Malenkov. The tasks that were solved during the war years demanded the creation of such new People's Commissariats of the USSR as the People's Commissariat for ammunition, tank industry, mortar weapons and a number of others. In addition, new structural units were created in the already existing people's commissariats. For example, in the People's Commissariat of Trade, the Glavvoentorg is being created, in the People's Commissariat of Health - a department of hospitals, in the People's Commissariat of Railways - the Directorate of military road construction, etc.

It is important to note that during the war period, the improvement of the control mechanism proceeded not only along the line of centralization, but also through its democratization, through an increase in the responsibility and freedom of maneuver of the links included in it. So, already on July 1, 1941, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution "On expanding the rights of people's commissariats in wartime". The people's commissariats were given the right to redistribute material resources. Plant directors also received the right to provide subcontractors with the necessary materials from their stocks, if this was required to fulfill planned targets. Moreover, the people's commissariats received the right to freely maneuver finances, even direct them to completely different than previously envisaged objects. It was allowed to put into operation objects without the directives of the center only with the subsequent notification of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. It was allowed to reserve up to 5% of the approved salary fund. In addition, the rights of departments in the field of capital construction and restoration of those destroyed by the war were expanded.

The historian V. Cherepanov singles out the Stalinist personnel policy as one of the main ways of increasing the efficiency of the state mechanism. Even before the war, its main content was cast into the formula "Cadres decide everything." Nowadays, many historians admit that during the war years, in the selection of leading personnel, the main focus was not on personal loyalty to the authorities, but, first of all, on professionalism, responsibility for the assigned area of ​​work. In the face of the struggle for the survival of the Soviet system, Stalin boldly got rid of people who had shown their unwillingness to work in the new conditions. This happened even with figures whom historians call a kind of "favorite of the leader" - Mekhlis, Voroshilov, Kaganovich and others. Young and talented leaders were appointed in their place.

Thus, during the war, M.G. Pervukhin became the people's commissar of the chemical industry, I.T. simultaneously head of the Main Directorate of Logistics of the Armed Forces of the USSR, IA Benediktov - People's Commissar of Agriculture, NK Baibakov - People's Commissar of the Oil Industry. Being very young specialists, they made a significant contribution to the organization of the Victory. In his book "The Stalinist People's Commissars Speak" Academician G. A. Kumanev gave several interviews with these and other figures representing the young, active generation of leaders who grew up and strengthened already under Soviet rule and showed their best qualities just during the war. In addition to those presented in this book, in the same years D.F. Ustinov (People's Commissar of Armaments), B.L. Vannikov (People's Commissariat of Ammunition), I.F. industry), A.N. Kosygin (since 1943 - Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR) and many others.

The years of the Great Patriotic War were the finest hour of another young politician - N. A. Voznesensky. During this difficult period for the country, he headed the State Planning Committee of the USSR. In the work of this institution, the military situation also made important adjustments that should be mentioned. The most important element of the Soviet economic system in the pre-war decade was long-term planning. It represented a significant step forward over the short-term planning of the War Communist era. However, in the conditions of the war with the fascists, long-term planning could no longer play its leading role. The situation at the front was changing too quickly and unpredictably. This required a lot of flexibility from the management team. The need to make operational decisions objectively increased the role of current planning. Quarterly, monthly and even ten-day economic plans become the instrument of such planning.

Examples of the successful activities of planning bodies in emergency conditions are the mobilization national economic plan for the III quarter of 1941 developed with the participation of the State Planning Committee and adopted by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR at the very beginning of the war. And already in August of this year, the same plan for the IV quarter of the year was approved. In addition, during the war, plans were adopted for individual regions of our large country. So, for 1942, a plan was approved for the Urals, the Volga region, Western Siberia, Kazakhstan and Central Asia. The next year, 1943, a plan for the development of the Urals economy was adopted. When the Soviet troops drove the invaders to the West, the State Planning Commission launched the preparation of plans for the restoration and development of the economy in the areas liberated from the occupiers. Voznesensky later summarized the experience of his work and the development of the country's economy in those years in the book "The Military Economy of the USSR during the Patriotic War."

The reorganization also affected the administrative apparatus at the republican level. The rights of not only union, but also republican departments were expanded. If necessary, new administrative structures were created in the republics. So, in the union republics, especially badly affected by the war, new republican people's commissariats for housing and civil construction arose. Their functions included work not only with economic objects, but also with ordinary people who had lost their homes.

The changes affected not only the management of the national economy, but also more important areas of activity of the republican bodies. So, on February 1, 1944, a law was adopted "On granting the Union republics powers in the field of foreign economic relations and on the transformation of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs from an all-Union into a Union-republican". In it, among other things, it was established "that the union republics can enter into direct relations with foreign states and conclude agreements with them." This step was dictated by the desire to strengthen the role of the USSR in the international arena, in particular to expand its influence on the United Nations Organization, the creation of which was planned after the defeat of the bloc of fascist states. Stalin sought to include all 16 union republics in the UN (a corresponding proposal was voiced at the conference of the three great powers in Dumbarton Oaks on August 28, 1944). At the same time, it is obvious that such a decision strengthened the democratic principles in the state mechanism of the USSR and was a kind of step towards our allies - the so-called. countries of Western democracies.

At the same time, on February 1, 1941, a similar law was adopted on the transformation from the union to the union-republican People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR. His first article contained a very important provision that allowed the union republics to create their own military formations. Corresponding changes were made to the Constitution of the USSR. So, a new article appeared in it, which read: "Each union republic has its own republican military formations." It should be noted, however, that national formations operated during the war years and earlier. They were created, for example, in the Transcaucasia, Central Asia, the Baltic States.

Within the framework of the topic raised, one should also at least briefly dwell on the activities of the Soviet administrative apparatus in the territories occupied by the enemy. It would seem that here, behind enemy lines, the crisis of Soviet power should have manifested itself especially clearly. Hitler's totalitarian suppression machine was supposed to etch out all the seeds of the political system created by the Russian Revolution of 1917. It is no secret that this goal was designated by Hitler as one of the priorities at the dawn of his political biography, including in the program book "My Struggle". To implement their plans, the Nazis used a variety of measures: from flirting with collaborators to the merciless destruction of all recalcitrant. But all these measures did not give the desired results. The aggressor in the occupied regions of the USSR did not succeed in completely eliminating Soviet bodies, be they party or state.

Eloquent facts testify to the collapse of the Nazis' plans to eradicate Soviet organs. At different times, 2 regional party centers, 35 regional party committees, 2 inter-county committees, 40 city committees, 19 regional committees in large cities, 479 rural district committees and other party bodies at various levels. The network of state bodies also remained ramified. The Soviets of different levels were able not only to survive, but also actively performed their main function of mobilizing the population of the occupied territories to fight the enemy. Acting behind enemy lines, councils at various levels helped to preserve the Soviet way of life, to maintain Soviet traditions even in the extreme conditions of occupation. For these purposes, underground sessions of village councils and district councils were convened, and underground deputies and partisans held, as in years of peace, meetings with their voters. Such work was practiced, for example, in Ukraine, Belarus, the occupied regions of the RSFSR (Leningrad, Orel, etc.). Sometimes, in the rear of the enemy, extraordinary Soviet bodies were formed in the form of regional triplets, authorized by the Soviet government and other institutions.

The supreme republican bodies of those union republics, whose territories were completely occupied, also contributed to the organization of the victory. At the beginning of the war, they were evacuated. Their main task is to organize an anti-fascist underground. For example, the central state bodies of the Ukrainian SSR were evacuated to Saratov. Later they will be transferred to Ufa and, finally, to Moscow. While in evacuation, the central party and Soviet bodies of the republics sent their representatives to the occupied territories. They delivered information about the life of the "Big Earth", directives, instructions. In addition, experienced workers were thrown into the German rear to strengthen underground organizations and collect intelligence information. Along with information obtained by military intelligence, intelligence obtained through the local Soviet and party bodies played an extremely important role in organizing the offensives of the Soviet army. When the enemy was driven to the West, the leaders of the republics joined in the restoration of the Soviet system in the liberated territories. Thus, the leadership of Ukraine resumed its activities in Kharkov in 1943.

The mainstay of the existence of Soviet power in the territories occupied by the Nazis was a powerful partisan movement. In a number of cases, when the invaders were able to temporarily suppress the activities of the Soviet authorities, their functions were assumed by the command of the partisan detachments. During the period of the peak of the partisan movement in the summer of 1943, more than 200 thousand square meters were under the full control of the partisans. km of Soviet land in the enemy rear. In the territories liberated by the partisans, the restoration of peaceful life and traditional authorities was underway. In turn, Soviet and party bodies rendered every possible assistance to the rise of the partisan movement. It is important to emphasize that all the bodies of Soviet power operating behind the front line, even in underground conditions, were guided by the principle that the occupation did not stop the operation of Soviet laws. Thus, despite all the atrocities and demagoguery committed, the aggressor failed to tear apart the single body of the Soviet country and inflict a fatal blow on its political system even in the temporarily occupied territories.

The problems of the evolution and activity of the Soviet political system in 1941-1945 will be the subject of scientific discussions and public interest for a long time to come. Without prejudging the main results of the forthcoming work on these subjects, we present several generalizing conclusions from the facts considered above.

The control system that existed at the end of the 1930s, which in the peaceful pre-war five-year plans as a whole confirmed its effectiveness, in war conditions required restructuring in order to achieve fundamentally new tasks related to the need to repel enemy aggression, turn the USSR into a single military camp and achieve Victory.

Modern historiography (works by O. Rzheshevsky, M. Myagkov, E. Kulkov, V. Cherepanov, A. Vdovin, E. Titkov and others) shows that the priority political and legal principles of restructuring and the activity of the system of power at that time were:

1. Unity of political, state and military leadership.

2. The principle of maximum centralization and one-man management (due to which, during the war, the merger of the party and state apparatus of all levels that existed before was significantly increased).

3. The principle of clarity in the definition and formulation of tasks for each link of management.

4. The principle of responsibility of subjects of management for solving problems of public administration.

5. The principle of Soviet legality, law and order and strict state discipline.

6. The principle of control over the army by the political leadership and some others.

The model of political power in the USSR that took shape during the war years was genetically linked to the pre-war one, was its continuation, and not something fundamentally new. With a unique diversity of regions of the country and an underdeveloped system of communications, the leadership of the USSR managed to ensure the unity of the front and rear, the strictest discipline of execution at all levels from top to bottom, with unconditional subordination to the center, but at the same time to develop the personal initiative and responsibility of each performer. This combination of centralization and democracy in war conditions undoubtedly played a positive role; it made it possible for the Soviet leadership to concentrate its main efforts on the most important, decisive areas. The motto "Everything for the front, everything for the victory!" did not remain only a slogan, it was brought to life. Wars have always been a serious test of society's strength. K. Marx called this ability of wars their "redemptive side". He compared social institutions that had lost their vitality to instantly disintegrating mummies exposed to a jet of fresh air. Soviet society did not disintegrate, it was able to get rid of everything that interfered with the fight against the enemy. His political system showed vitality, withstood the most difficult conditions. This is seen as one of the most important reasons for our Great Victory in 1945.

§ 2. Creation of the collective farm-state farm system in the Soviet village and its significance in the historical victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

The Russian revolution, which went through two interrelated stages in its development - February-March, bourgeois-democratic, and October-November, Bolshevik-proletarian - liberated the peasantry, which constituted the absolute majority of the country's population, from the centuries-old oppression of labor use of practically all private land for agricultural purposes. Under the influence of these changes, the agrarian system of post-revolutionary Russia acquired a peculiar small-peasant character.

Ten years after the revolution, the country, on the basis of the compromise NEP course of the Soviet regime, was able to, in the main, restore the national economy of Russia destroyed by two wars - the First World War and the Civil War itself - as well as by the revolution itself. In 1927, there were 24-25 million peasant households in it, each of which sowed 3-5 acres of arable land on average, most often having a workhorse, a cow and several heads of small livestock. A wooden plow remained among the arable tools, and a scythe and a sickle among the harvesting implements. Only about every sixth - seventh farm had this or that machine, mainly horse-drawn.

But even in these conditions, the restoration process in the country's agrarian sector on the basis of the new economic policy proceeded much faster than in the field of industry and the national economic infrastructure. True, even here it had an uneven pace: the starting and next breakthroughs of 1924/25 and 1925/26 economic years, which in the 1920s covered the time from October one year to September 30 of the next, were replaced by periods of slow growth that fell on the third and final years. NEP. These failures were associated with the marketing crisis of 1923 and the policy of redistributing national income in the interests of the industrialization of the country, proclaimed by the XIV Congress of the RCP (b). In order to come close to the pre-war (1913) level of agricultural production, it took no more than five years, which eloquently testified to the successful use of the modest possibilities of NEP by the Russian peasantry. Let the unequal, but still "cooperation between the state and the private economy", according to the apt definition of the well-known agrarian economist B. Brutskus, which is the basis of the NEP policy, has taken place. The peasantry not only restored the productive forces of the countryside, but also helped the state to pull the entire national economy out of the quagmire of the deepest crisis. It paid with food products and raw materials for industry for devalued paper money, taking on the brunt of the financial reform of 1924. Now, not half of the burden of the state budget, but three-quarters of it fell on the shoulders of a peasant who lost 645 million full-weight NEP rubles in an unequal exchange with the city ...

The drop in the marketability of the peasant economy was especially acute. Before the revolution, half of the grain was collected in landlord and kulak (entrepreneurial) farms, which provided 71% of marketable grain, including export grain. Semi-proletarian and medium-sized small-scale farms of peasants produced (without kulaks and landowners) the other half of it, and consumed 60%, and in the second half of the 1920s. respectively 85 and 70%. In 1927/28. the state procured 630 million poods of grain against the pre-war 1,300.6 million. But if the amount of grain at the disposal of the state now turned out to be half as much, then its export had to be reduced 20 times.

The high naturalization of the majority of peasant farms was the underlying basis of grain procurement crises that constantly threatened the country at that time. Grain procurement difficulties were exacerbated by low agricultural prices, especially grain prices. Before the First World War, the agricultural ruble was equal to 90 kopecks, and in the mid-1920s. - about 50. In addition, the bread producer got only half of the price, since the rest was absorbed by the swollen overhead costs of the Vneshtorg, state and cooperative bodies involved in the procurement and sale of bread in the domestic and foreign markets.

The peasant also suffered significant losses due to the deterioration in the quality of manufactured goods purchased in exchange for bread and other agricultural products, the disappearance of imports and a constant commodity shortage in the village, which, according to the authoritative opinion of another expert on small peasant farming in post-revolutionary Russia, N. Chelintsev, received less than 70% manufactured goods.

In the NEP conditions, forcible measures of the state's withdrawal of food from the peasants began to be relatively widely used for the first time in the conditions of the grain procurement crisis of the winter of 1927-28. Formally, the object of violent measures was declared to be the kulaks, who detained the sale of bread to the state in order to raise the price of bread. A directive was issued to bring them to justice under Article 107 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, which provides for imprisonment for up to 3 years with confiscation of all or part of the property. As in the days of the notorious "war communism", in order to interest the poor in the fight against holders of large surpluses, it was recommended to distribute 25% of confiscated bread among them at low state prices or in the form of long-term loans.

The positions of the kulaks were also undermined by the strengthening of taxation, the seizure of land surpluses from them, the compulsory purchase of tractors, complex machines, and other measures. Under the influence of such a policy, wealthy farms began to curtail production, the sale of livestock and implements, especially machines, in their families, the desire to move to cities and other areas intensified. According to the Central Statistical Administration of the USSR, the number of kulak farms in the RSFSR decreased by 1927 from 3.9 to 2.2%, in Ukraine by 1929 - from 3.8 to 1.4%.

However, the use of emergency measures by the state was not limited only to the farms of the kulaks and wealthy peasants, but soon it began more and more often and more and more to hit the middle peasantry, and sometimes even the poor. Under the pressure of unbearable grain procurement assignments and pressure from the secretaries and members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), I. Stalin, V. Molotov, L. Kaganovich, A. Mikoyan, and others, specially sent to grain regions, local party and state bodies took the path of indigenous searches and arrests, not only supplies, but seed grain and even household items were often confiscated from the peasants. During the harvesting of the 1929 harvest, the bacchanalia of violence became even more widespread. Thus, the North Caucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on June 17 this year sent to the localities a directive "On measures to eliminate kulak sabotage of grain procurements" did not complete the layouts and who will have grain surpluses hidden ... or handed out for storage to other farms. " In the report on the conduct of this campaign, the secretary of the regional committee A. Andreev wrote to Stalin that all forces were thrown into grain procurement in the region - more than 5 thousand workers of the regional and district scale, fined and largely sold property from 30-35 thousand farms, given almost 20 thousand people were put on trial and about 600 people were shot. The same arbitrariness was happening in Siberia, the Lower and Middle Volga regions, in the Ukraine, in the republics of Central Asia.

These and similar facts allow us to consider the grain procurement emergency of 1928, especially 1929, as a prelude to the deployment of complete collectivization and mass dispossession of kulaks, as well as a kind of reconnaissance in force, which the Bolshevik regime conducted before deciding on a general battle in the struggle for a “new »The village.

Observant contemporaries-eyewitnesses at the same time noticed a close relationship between the one and the other economic and political campaigns in the countryside. A specific feature of the Soviet-party campaign was that “it was a direct continuation of the grain procurement campaign,” G. Ushakov (a student and follower of A. Chayanov) emphasized in his manuscript “Siberia on the Eve of Sowing”, who saw and recorded how Stalinist "revolution from above" in the West Siberian and Ural villages. “For some reason, this circumstance,” he continued, “is not taken into account in due measure. People sent to the districts for grain procurement were mechanically switched to shock work on collectivization. Together with the people, they mechanically switched to new work and methods of the grain procurement campaign. Thus, mistakes and excesses, both existing ones, were heightened, and the ground for new ones was created. "

The genetic relationship of both phenomena was captured by an inquiring eyewitness absolutely right. We only add that reconnaissance in force, carried out for two years in a row, allowed Stalin and his entourage, firstly, to make sure that the village, in which the policy of the class approach deepened the socio-political demarcation, is no longer capable of as amicably as it was in late 1920 - early 1921, to resist the radical breakdown of the traditional foundations of her economic life and everyday life, and, secondly, to check the readiness of her forces (the Bolshevik state apparatus, the OGPU, the Red Army and the young Soviet public), to extinguish the scattered outbreaks of the peasant dissatisfaction with the actions of the authorities and its individual agents. At the same time, Stalin and his associates managed to successfully complete the struggle against the former political opponents in the ranks of the party: L. Trotsky, L. Kamenev, G. Zinoviev and their supporters, and then manage to identify new ones in the face of the so-called right deviation, creating certain preconditions for its subsequent ideological and political defeat.

The new course of the socio-economic policy of the Soviet government, as a little later characterizes the actions of the ruling elite of the Bolsheviks associated with the implementation of the forced industrialization of the country and the departure on this basis from the principles of NEP, the outstanding domestic economist N.D. that unprecedentedly fast rates of industrial development were determined, and on the other hand, that the very development of industry was uneven in relation to its different sectors, with the provision of clear priorities for the production of means of production to the detriment of the production of means of consumption. In search of the necessary capital investments to ensure accelerated industrialization, the state had to take the path of redistributing the country's national income by pumping a significant part of it from the countryside to the city, from agriculture to industry.

However, the small peasant economy, on which the agricultural sector of the Russian economy was based, limited the possibility of such pumping. This circumstance, as well as the tasks of creating a socially homogeneous and politically monolithic society, predetermined the accelerated socialization of the country's small peasant economy. The same was demanded by the interests of strengthening the country's defense capability, especially if we take into account the real increase in the threat of an armed conflict after the "military alert" in 1927. Similar considerations were reflected in the report of the defense sector of the USSR State Planning Committee to the Labor and Defense Council of the country, devoted to the consideration of defense interests in the first five-year plan. The planned significant increase in the share of socialized peasant farms was recognized in this document as an event that fully met the requirements of the defense of the USSR. “There is no doubt,” the report emphasized, “that in times of war, when it is especially important to preserve the ability to regulate, the socialized sector will be of exceptional importance. Equally important is the presence of large production units that are more easily amenable to planned influence than the numerous mass of small, scattered peasant farms. "

The course of transferring peasant farms to the rails of large-scale production was outlined by the 15th Congress of the CPSU (b), held in December 1927. At the same time, he put forward the task of "developing further the offensive against the kulaks" by adopting a number of measures limiting the development of capitalism in the countryside and leading towards socialism ".

The policy of attacking the kulaks left a sad memory in itself, mainly because in the tense atmosphere of those years, the label of a "bourgeois kulak" was often hung on an independent, strong, albeit stingy worker-master, who, under normal conditions, could feed not only himself, but also the whole country. In many ways, the arbitrary escalation of measures of class violence against the kulaks intensified sharply with the publication in the summer of 1929 of the decree "On the inexpediency of admitting a kulak to the collective farms and the need for systematic work to cleanse collective farms of kulak elements trying to corrupt collective farms from within." By this decision, already subjected to economic and political ostracism, many well-to-do families were literally put in a desperate situation, being deprived of the future. With the active support of villagers, such as Ignashka Sopronov, whose collective image was talentedly recreated in the pages of the novel "Kanuny" by Vasily Belov, a campaign was launched to cleanse collective farms from kulaks, and the very entry of the latter into collective farms was considered a criminal act, and collective farms created with their participation qualified as pseudo-collective farms.

But no matter how cruel these measures were in relation to the kulak, the main vector of the new course in the countryside, as subsequent events showed, were the decisions of the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which dealt with the transfer of small-scale farming of peasants to large-scale production.

On their basis, in the spring of 1928, the People's Commissariat of Agriculture and the Collective Farm Center of the RSFSR drew up a draft five-year plan for collectivization, according to which by the end of the five-year plan, that is, by 1933 ... it was planned to involve 1.1 million farms in collective farms (4% of their total number in the republic) ... A few months later, the Union of Agricultural Cooperation Unions increased this figure to 3 million (12%). And in the five-year plan, approved in the spring of 1929, it was planned to socialize already 4–4.5 million farms, that is, 16–18% of their total number.

How can you explain the fact that in just one year the plan figures increased three times, and their last version was four times higher than the original? Firstly, this is due to the fact that the pace of the collective farm movement in practice outstripped the initially planned: by June 1929, there were already more than a million households on the collective farms, or approximately as much as was originally planned at the end of the five-year plan. Secondly, the leadership of the Party and the state hoped to accelerate the creation of collective and state farms to speed up the solution of the grain problem, which became extremely aggravated in 1928 and 1929.

And from the second half of 1929, the scale and pace of collective farm development jumped even more significantly. If by the summer of 1929 there were about one million households in collective farms, then by October of the same year - 1.9 million, and the level of collectivization rose from 3.8 to 7.6%. The number of collective farms in the main grain-growing regions: the North Caucasus and the Middle Volga region grew much faster. Here the number of collective farmers in four months (June - September 1929) increased by 2–3 times. And in the middle of this summer, the Chkalovsky District of the Sredne-Volzhsky Territory was the first to take the initiative to achieve complete collectivization. By September, 500 collective farms were created here (461 partnerships for joint cultivation of land, 34 artels and 5 communes), which included 6 441 farms (about 64% of their total number in the region) with socialized 131 thousand hectares of land (out of all available on the territory of the district is 220 thousand hectares). On the territory of the region, a similar movement soon appeared in some other regions of the republic.

To support this initiative, the department of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) for work in the countryside convened a meeting in August at which the question of socializing the peasant farms of entire regions was considered. The idea of ​​total collectivization began to be put into practice. Following the Middle Volga region, areas of continuous collectivization began to arise in other localities of the country. In the North Caucasus, seven regions began almost simultaneously to complete collectivization, on the Lower Volga - five, in the Central Black Earth Region - also five, in the Urals - three. Gradually, traffic spreads to certain areas of the consuming lane. In total, in August 1929, there were 24 regions in the RSFSR, where there was a complete collectivization. In some of them, collective farms united up to 50% of peasant households, but in most of them the coverage of collective farms did not exceed 15–20% of households.

On the same Lower Volga, an initiative arose and became a kind of symbol of the entire "revolution from above" to carry out a complete collectivization on the scale of an entire district - Khopersky. Here the district committee of the Bolsheviks decided to complete the complete collectivization by the end of the five-year plan. A week later, the Collective Farm Center of the RSFSR supported the initiative of the Khoperites, recognizing the need to "carry out a complete collectivization of the entire district within a five-year plan." At the same time, the district's initiative was approved by the Bureau of the Nizhne-Volzhsky Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and the Council of People's Commissars of the republic declared it to be an experimental collectivization. Since September 15, a month of collectivization has been held in the district. As usual, about 400 workers of party and other governing bodies were sent to the "lighthouse" district as "pushers" (as the popular rumor would later dub them). The result of all these efforts was 27 thousand households, which by October 1929 were listed in the district's collective farms.

Such quasi-successes have been achieved mainly through methods of administration and violence. This was to be recognized by the instructor of the Kolkhoz Center in a letter read out at the November 1929 Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). “Local authorities are carrying out a system of emphasis and companionship,” the letter emphasized. - All work on the organization took place under the slogan: "Who is more." In the field, the district directives were sometimes transformed into the slogan "Whoever does not go to the collective farm is the enemy of Soviet power." Widespread mass work was not carried out ... There were cases of broad promises of tractors and loans: "They will give everything - go to the collective farm" ... The combination of these reasons formally gives 60%, and maybe while I am writing a letter, and 70% of collectivization. We have not studied the qualitative aspect of the collective farms ... If we do not take measures to strengthen the collective farms, the matter may compromise itself. Collective farms will start to fall apart. "

In other words, the Khoper "sploshnyak" training ground personally demonstrated the typical ailments of the village "revolution from above", which, after spreading on an all-Union scale, will receive from Stalin the name "excesses" of the general line, redirecting them to local Soviet party and other activists who have lost their heads.

In order to better understand the origins and nature of the collective farm euphoria, which will soon overwhelm all links of the party-state system of the country, it is necessary to at least briefly describe the state of national socio-political thought on the fate of small peasant farming in connection with the forced industrialization. After the 15th Party Congress, this problem, which has long interested many domestic politicians and scientists, as the wheels of the Bolshevik NEP in the second half of the 1920s. more and more often they began to slip (until they stopped at all during the years of emergency) and moved to the forefront of the socio-economic and party-political life of Soviet society. In the ranks of the Bolshevik Party, the Stalinist stake on "revolution from above" as a more painless solution to the problem of "socialist modernization" of the countryside was opposed by the views of the leaders of the "right deviation", which in modern literature are called the Bukharin alternative.

NI Bukharin, after his rehabilitation in 1987, began to be considered by some Russian agrarian historians (V.P. Danilov and his supporters), who considered the collective farm system at first a kind of third edition of serfdom in Russia, and now the triumph of "state capitalism" in Soviet village) one of the consistent guides of Lenin's views on cooperation, through which the small private farms of the peasants, including the kulaks, will, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, as he (Bukharin) put it, "grow into socialism." At the same time, there were also opinions that he allegedly "developed his own plan for the cooperative development of the countryside", in many respects echoes the article of V. I. Lenin "On cooperation" and A. V. Chayanov's book about peasant cooperation. " But they cannot be recognized as reasonable. After all, if Lenin and Bukharin basically looked at cooperation in the same way as the best form of introducing the peasants to socialism, then the non-party Chayanov understood it fundamentally differently, who is by no means a blind admirer of V.I. Lenin and the entire Bolshevik regime of power in the country.

First, he considered the existence of market relations in the country as a natural, normal condition for the life and activity of cooperatives, while Lenin and Bukharin viewed these relations as a temporary phenomenon, calculated only for the period of transition from capitalism to socialism. Secondly, Lenin and Bukharin conceived of the socialist co-operation of the peasants exclusively under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. As for Chayanov, he directly linked the true successes of cooperating small-peasant villages with the democratic regime of power in the country, which should replace the dictatorial, Bolshevik government in a peculiar evolutionary way, counting on the so-called degeneration of Bolshevism. According to Chayanov's concept of peasant "self-collectivization", the implementation of his version of rural modernization would mean a painless, evolutionary type of restructuring of the country's agrarian sector, which, simultaneously with increasing labor productivity and raising the agricultural level of agriculture, would also solve the country's complex social problems, since cooperation had to cover and help to strengthen all social strata of the village.

By most of the above parameters, it fundamentally differed from the Stalinist forced “revolution from above”, based not so much on the force of example and the voluntary socialization of the peasant economy, but on the violent breakdown of the individual way of life and production activities of the Russian peasantry, which turned into a tragedy for several hundred thousand families of dispossessed and the death of an even larger number of the population from the famine of 1932–1933, as well as a significant, albeit, of course, temporary drop in the productive forces of the countryside in the first years of collectivization.

But the task of large-scale transfer of material and labor resources from the countryside to the city in order to ensure the industrial leap that the country made during the pre-war five-year plans, the Chayanov's way of solving the agrarian-peasant problem in the specific conditions of that time did not guarantee. Moreover, under the existing political regime, it was simply not feasible. Both the scientist himself and his associates were relatively soon convinced of this. That is why their hopes and practical actions are to try to repeat the attempt to “envelop” the Bolshevik regime, which was successfully implemented by the Cadet-Progressist opposition in relation to the tsarist autocracy, using their position of “specialists” under the corresponding Soviet people's commissariats and other state institutions. to overthrow him in February 1917. Chayanov, as I showed it over 10 years ago, has made appropriate proposals in the circle of his colleagues in cooperative work since the years of the civil war. "The NEP economic Brest of Bolshevism", as he characterized the reformist line of the Soviet leadership in the early 20s. the theoretician of changeover, N.V. Ustryalov, gave Chayanov and his associates even greater confidence that the tactics of "enveloping" are much more effective than an open confrontation of the opposition-minded layers of the intelligentsia with the communist government.

The essence of his political thoughts Chayanov outlined in a letter to a relative by his second wife, an emigrant and a prominent publicist, activist of Russian political Freemasonry, E. D. Kuskova. Towards the concessions of the West, the author of the letter advised recipients to seek political guarantees. The scientist saw the meaning of these guarantees in the fact that "one by one, non-Soviet people, but working with the Soviets, would enter the structure of Soviet power." How can all this be done in practice? - he asked and answered - “We need to come to an agreement ourselves, that is, everyone who understands what is happening in Russia, who is capable of accepting the new Russia. We need a private influence on Western European leaders - we need a conspiracy with them and a certain common front. " He associated the tactics of "enveloping" the Soviet power with intervention, not military, but economic. “It seems to me inevitable,” he explained to the addressee, “the penetration of foreign capital into Russia in the future. We ourselves will not crawl out. This intervention ... is going on now in the most ruinous forms for Russia. This intervention will intensify, since under the monetary economy in Russia, the pressure of the West will always be more real. After all, if a chervonets is quoted in the West, then any solid bank can get a concession - it is worth threatening and scaring. This is much worse than Wrangel and any military campaigns.(italics mine - E.Sch.).

The cited considerations of Chayanov, expressed in a letter written and sent during a business trip to him abroad about five years before the Fifteenth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) adopted a course on collectivization, essentially anticipated the program guidelines of the so-called Labor Peasant Party (TKP), which were presented on interrogations in the case of the Central Committee of the TKP and the group of N. N. Sukhanov - V. G. Groman A. V. Chayanov, N. D. Kondratyev and other agricultural scientists arrested in the summer and autumn of 1930.

Stalin and his entourage interpreted the testimony of those arrested as confirmation of the existence of such an anti-Bolshevik organization and, most importantly, as a justification for the beginning of political reprisals against them. Of course, the "leader of the peoples" at that time could not know the content of Chayanov's letters to Kuskova, since they entered the Soviet archives only after the end of the Second World War. But, as his correspondence from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s shows. XX century. with VM Molotov, according to the protocols of interrogations of arrested scientists, the Kremlin leader appreciated the danger of the political views of Chayanov, Kondratyev and their like-minded people for the Bolshevik regime. He was primarily worried that the tactics of the TKP assumed its blocking with the right wing of the CPSU (b) during the transfer of power to it, for this bloc was viewed by Chayanov and Kondratyev and their like-minded people as "a stage towards the implementation of the democratic principle." But a day after Kondratyev made this confession, Stalin would write to Molotov: “I have no doubt that a direct connection (through Sokolnikov and Teodorovich) between these gentlemen and the rightists - (Bukharin), Rykov, Tomsky) Kondratiev, Groman and a couple - the other scoundrels must be shot. "

Despite the fact that Chayanov and Kondratyev denied such a connection during subsequent interrogations, there is reason to believe, if not she, then the ideological dependence of the views of representatives of the "right deviation" on the so-called. "Bourgeois specialists" nevertheless existed, and the latter did not reject it.

But be that as it may, the organizational disunity of the political opponents of the Bolsheviks objectively poured water on the mill of Stalin and his entourage. Taking advantage of this disunity, the "leader of the peoples" and his comrades not only dealt with them one by one, but even resorted to defamation of some political opponents through the mouth of others. For example, a campaign of shameless mockery of Chayanov, Kondratyev and others was started at the end of 1927 by one of the leaders of the “new opposition”, and then the Trotskyist-right bloc, G. Zinoviev, who called them “Smenovekhovtsy” and “internal Ustryalovites”. And after him from the rostrum of the April Plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission of the CPSU (b) Chayanov, Kondratyev and their supporters were smashed by the leader of the right deviators himself - Bukharin, who characterized the ideas of scientists regarding the balanced development of industry and agriculture as a “decisive shift from industrialization towards the domestication of the country ". With the light hand of modern Western researchers (M. Levin, S. Cohen, T. Shanin, etc.) in the domestic modern literature on the history of collectivization, not only Chayanov's, but also Bukharin's options for solving the problem of agricultural modernization in the USSR, it has become fashionable to elevate to the rank of supposedly real alternatives to the Stalinist "revolution from above" in the Soviet countryside.

However, neither the original ideas of Chayanov, nor the more eclectic judgments of Bukharin and his so-called. schools did not get any weighty chances of implementation in the specific conditions of the country in the late 1920s and 1930s. In other words, the Russian countryside turned out to be historically doomed to forced collectivization.

This is precisely the nature of collective farm construction as a whole throughout the country acquires in the last two months of 1929 and in the first months of 1930. To a large extent, this was facilitated by Stalin's article "The Year of the Great Turning Point", published by Pravda on November 7, 1929. In wishful thinking, it argued that the party "managed to turn the bulk of the peasantry ... to a new, socialist path of development; managed to organize a radical change in the depths of the peasantry itself and lead the broad masses of the poor and middle peasants. "

In reality, everything was not so simple. Both in the USSR as a whole, and within the framework of the RSFSR, the turning point in the consciousness of the majority of peasants not only did not take place, but did not even appear in relief. Indeed, as of October 1 of this year, the collective farms of the Union and the RSFSR had, respectively, 7.6 and 7.4 of the total number of peasant households. However, the whole tone of Stalin's article directed the party towards an all-round acceleration of the pace of collectivization and had a direct impact on the course and decisions of the November (1929) Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). It is no coincidence that the report of the chairman of the Kolkhoz Center on the results and tasks of collective farm development to the Plenum participants stated that this "movement is getting such acceleration, the influence of collective farms ... on individual farming is so growing that the transition to collective rails of the rest of the peasants will be a matter of months, not years." ...

Not limiting itself to the fact that the party systematically and earlier fed the collective farm movement with its cadres, the Plenum decided to send 25 thousand industrial workers with organizational and political experience to the countryside at a time. This measure was intended to speed up collectivization. Since the collective farm movement began to outgrow the framework of districts and regions and caused the emergence of such all-Union or republican organizations as the Kolkhoz Center, Traktortsentr, Zernotrest, etc., it was decided to create an All-Union People's Commissariat of Agriculture, which, as the primary task, was entrusted with leading the construction of a large public economy in the countryside.

Considering the kulak as the main class force interested in disrupting this construction, the Plenum ordered the party and the state to intensify the struggle against the capitalist elements in the countryside, to develop a decisive offensive against the kulak, suppressing his attempts to get into the collective farms in order to destroy the latter. And although his documents did not contain direct instructions on the use of administrative-repressive measures in order to eliminate the kulaks, the experience of the state of emergency in 1928-1929. and the whole course of the discussion of the issue at the Plenum brought this closely to this.

The transition to a policy of total collectivization under the slogan "Give me a breakneck pace" logically put on the agenda the question of the fate not of individual kulak farms, but of the kulaks as a class as a whole. Forcing collectivization meant the inevitable deployment of dispossession as a policy of forcibly depriving the kulaks of the means of production, buildings, etc. in order to eliminate them as the last exploiting layer in the countryside. Both were imposed under powerful pressure from above. In the view of Stalin and his associates, the end here justified the means. The leaders of the country were well aware that otherwise it was impossible to break the resistance of the middle peasantry to go to the collective farm (that is, to solve the immediate task - to accelerate the formal socialization of the peasant economy), nor, all the more, to achieve a remake "in the spirit of socialism" of the proprietary psychology of the peasant and thereby socialize the agrarian sphere of the country in practice (that is, to carry out the main and perhaps the most difficult task of the long-term policy of the Bolsheviks in the countryside).

And the matter rested not only on the fact that the kulaks resisted collective-farm construction in every possible way. The main thing is that they personified for the majority of rural workers the life ideal of independent management, property and other prosperity, and thus essentially nullified the Bolshevik propaganda of the advantages of the collective form of farming. That is why, with the transition to mass collectivization, the fate of the kulak stratum was a foregone conclusion. Realizing this, its most far-sighted representatives, as noted above, were in a hurry to "self-exclude themselves" and move to cities, to construction sites.

However, even after the proclamation of the policy of liquidating the kulaks as a class, the question of how to carry out dispossession and what to do with dispossessed people remained unresolved. The decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated January 5, 1930 "On the rate of collectivization and measures of state assistance to collective-farm construction", prepared by a commission chaired by A. Yakovlev and personally edited by Stalin, did not clarify it properly, confining itself to just confirming the inadmissibility of accepting kulaks to collective farms.

This document established strict deadlines for the completion of collectivization: for the North Caucasus, the Lower and Middle Volga - autumn 1930, or "anyway" - spring 1932. peasant farms ". This formulation was oriented towards the completion, in the main, of collectivization in 1933, when the first five-year plan ended.

The agricultural artel was recognized as the main form of collective farm construction. When editing the text, Stalin deleted the explanation of the degree of socialization of the means of production in the artel from the draft of this document, as a result of which the grassroots workers did not receive proper clarity on this issue either. At the same time, the agricultural cartel was interpreted as a form of economy transitioning to the commune, which also aimed the collectivizers in the localities at strengthening the socialization of the means of production of peasant households and testified to the unwillingness of the party leaders to take into account the interests of the peasants, to underestimate the strength of the peasant's attachment to his economy.

End of introductory snippet.

* * *

The given introductory fragment of the book The political system of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War and the post-war decades. The tutorial (D.O. Churakov, 2012) is provided by our book partner -

Plan

1 The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people (June 1941-1945).

2 Soviet society in the post-war period (1946 -1953).

Literature

1 The Great Patriotic War 1941-1945. Military-historical essays. In 4 books. M., 1998.

2 Gorkov Yu.A. Was Stalin preparing a preemptive strike against Hitler in 1941 / New and Contemporary History. 1993. No. 3.

3 Semiryaga M.I. Secrets of Stalinist diplomacy. 1939-1941. M., 1992.

4 Ural in the strategy of the Second World War. Yekaterinburg, 2000.

The Great Patriotic War is subdivided into tribasic periods : 1) June 22, 1941. - November 1942: the period when the strategic initiative belonged mainly to Germany (excluding December 1941 - March 1942, when the Nazis were defeated near Moscow and the strategic initiative temporarily passed to the Soviet Union); 2) November 1942 - the end of 1943: a period of radical change during the Great Patriotic War and the Second World War; 3) 1944 -1945: - the period of the victorious end of the war.

At dawn June 22, 1941 d. fascist Germany began an aggression against the Soviet Union. What were the military-strategic, political, economic plans of Hitlerite Germany in the war against the Soviet Union? What was the nature and goals of the war of the Soviet people? -

The main goal Nazi Germany, which unleashed the Second World War and the war against the Soviet Union, was the establishment of world domination "The highest German race", the creation of the "thousand-year Reich" - a thousand-year slave-owning German Empire. And the main obstacle to this goal was the Soviet Union. Therefore, the political plans of the Nazis included the destruction of the Soviet state, its dismemberment into German-controlled territories. The economic plans of German imperialism included the seizure of all the economic potential and natural resources of our country. A hard fate awaited the peoples of the Soviet republics, primarily Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian. The Nazis intended to use genocide against them, exterminate most of the people, and turn the rest into slaves of German masters.

The fascists intended to implement these criminal plans through the military-strategic plan " Barbarossa ", Which was based on the strategy of" lightning war ". This plan envisaged defeating the Red Army within two or three months, entering the Arkhangelsk-Volga line and victoriously ending the war.

Thus, the war unleashed by fascist Germany against the Soviet people and its state was predatory , predatory, criminal.

It should be borne in mind that in recent years there have been publications in which the point of view is expressed that Germany struck a preventive (warning) blow against the aggression impending by the USSR (V. Suvorov). However, most researchers objectively approach the coverage of all the problems associated with the beginning and course of World War II and the Great Patriotic War.

The Soviet people led fair a war for the freedom and independence of their Fatherland, for the preservation of their statehood. He also fought for the liberation of the peoples of Europe from the fascist "new order", from the enslavement and domination of the "superior race", for progress in the development of world civilization.

The suddenness of the attack and the power of the first blows of the fascist military machine, despite the heroic resistance of the Soviet soldiers, forced the Red Army to retreat, it suffered setbacks and defeats. What are causes these defeats?

They had and objective and subjective character. The first factors included, first of all, the fact that at the time of the attack on the USSR, the army of Nazi Germany was the strongest and most prepared in the world. By the summer of 1941. it had 214 fully equipped and well-armed divisions, its personnel totaled 7,254 thousand people. The army was armed with 61 thousand guns and mortars, more than 5.6 thousand tanks, 10 thousand modern combat aircraft. The high degree of motorization made the fascist army maneuverable and made it possible to quickly cover long distances. By the time of the attack on the USSR, she had combat experience, her command staff went through the practical school of modern warfare in Poland, Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, Holland, Yugoslavia, Greece.

The German Armed Forces relied on a powerful military economy. Moreover, after the occupation of ten highly developed European states, the military-economic potential of Germany increased sharply. At its disposal were the manpower reserves, raw materials and powerful industry of almost all of Western Europe. Germany's military and economic resources significantly exceeded the resources of the Soviet Union. And with the capture of the western regions of the USSR, they increased even more.

Finally, the allies of Germany - Italy, Romania, Hungary, Finland, armies, which numbered more than 3 million people, over a thousand tanks and 3,600 aircraft - entered the war with the USSR.

Concerning subjective factors, they consisted in miscalculations and mistakes political and military leadership of the Soviet state headed by J.V. Stalin. These are pre-war repression , as a result of which the Red Army lost about 40 thousand commanders, miscalculations in the Soviet military doctrine designed for an offensive war, Stalin's disbelief that Hitler would start a war in the summer of 1941, etc.

Transformation of the country into united military camp ... In order to repel fascist aggression, the Soviet state began to restructure the entire life of the country on a war footing. First of all, was and was reformed governing bodies the state.

June 30, 1941 was formed State Defense Committee (GKO ) chaired by J.V. Stalin. In the hands of the State Defense Committee, the entire completeness of state, military and party power was concentrated. The main principle of leadership was centralization, and on a much larger scale than before the war.

In the front-line cities and regions, which were threatened by the invasion of German fascist troops, local, emergency authorities were created - city ​​defense committees ... The direct leadership of the solution of national economic problems by the party organizations has sharply increased. To this end, the number of branch departments headed by secretaries was increased in the party committees (in the Sverdlovsk regional committee of the CPSU (b), for example, there were 20 of them), the institute was expanded party organizers at enterprises. Work was being rebuilt political departments on rail, water and air transport, and in November 1941. these emergency bodies were re-established under the MTS and state farms.

The entire militarily -organizational work , within which the following measures were taken: 1) acquired a huge scale mobilization (in the first seven days of the war alone, 5.3 million people were drafted into the army); 2) created Headquarters of the Supreme Command ; 3) at the beginning of 1941. institute was introduced military commissars ; 4) a system for training command personnel, a reserve ( general , mandatory military training ); 5) military units began to form militias from the people; 6) the process has been started redistribution of communists from territorial to military party organizations (by mobilization, by facilitating the conditions for admission to the party at the front). The political composition of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army was strengthened by the most experienced workers from the members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), the Central Committee of the Communist Parties of the Union republics, regional and regional committees; 7) almost from the first days of the war, the organization began partisan movements behind enemy lines. Central Committee of the CPSU (b) July 18, 1941 adopted a resolution "On the organization of the struggle in the rear of the German troops." By the end of 1941. in the occupied territory, there were more than 250 underground party committees, which directed the actions of more than 2 thousand partisan detachments.

Military rails transferred economy country. Its main directions were: 1) maximum increase in output at defense enterprises; 2) the transfer of enterprises producing peaceful products to the production of military products (organization of the production of tanks, for example, the T-34 at the Uralmashzavod); 3) relocation to the east of industrial enterprises of great defense importance (during the year, 2.5 thousand enterprises were evacuated to the East, including 700 were located in the Urals; production at them was established in the shortest possible time); 4) construction of new defense plants in the eastern regions of the country; 5) redistribution of material and financial resources for the needs of the front; 6) strengthening of centralization in economic management; 7) solving the problem of workers: legislative consolidation in production, mobilization to the labor front, attracting housewives, teenagers 13-16 years old to work at industrial enterprises. Thus, within the country, the party and state leadership of the USSR focused on the total mobilization and use of all available resources in order to repel aggression.

The results of the restructuring of the country's life in a warlike manner affected the battle under Moscow in autumn-winter 1941 - 1942 The defeat of the German troops in the battle for Moscow was of great military and strategic importance. This was the first major defeat of the Hitlerite army, the myth of its invincibility was dispelled, the strategic plan of the "blitzkrieg" was finally buried. The war took on a completely different protracted character, for which the Hitlerite leadership was not preparing. He had to radically revise his military-strategic plans. But the Nazis were no longer destined to direct the course of the war in their favor.

The victory at Moscow was of great international importance. It was as a result of it that the process of creation was accelerated. anti-Hitler coalition ... This is a completely natural phenomenon, due, first of all, to the fact that the ruling circles of the Western powers realized what a huge threat to their national and state interests Nazi Germany posed, and also realized the impossibility of protecting these interests, breaking the powerful military machine of fascism without cooperation with the Soviet Union. The role of the population of the territories occupied by the Nazis was also great in this process. January 1, 1942 in Washington, military cooperation between the countries that fought against the aggressive bloc was officially formalized. Such an act was the signing of the Declaration by twenty-six states, among which were the USSR, USA, Great Britain, China, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Canada, etc. The creation of the anti-fascist coalition played a very important role in the victorious outcome of the war against the forces of the aggressive bloc.

Despite the fact that as a result of the total mobilization of all resources and reserves, the Nazis succeeded in the spring and summer of 1942. to seize the initiative, launch an offensive in the southern sector of the front, capture Sevastopol, break into Stalingrad and occupy a significant part of the North Caucasus, this was their last success.

Radical fracture v movemen , its victorious completion ... By the fall of 1942. The Soviet Union achieved a decisive superiority over Nazi Germany in the production of weapons. A turning point has come in the work of the rear. Here are the eloquent figures: on May 1, 1942. in the active army there were 2,070 heavy and medium tanks, 43,642 guns and mortars, 3,164 combat aircraft, and on July 1, 1943 there were 6,232 tanks, 98,790 mortars and guns and 8,293 aircraft, that is, the number of weapons increased by 2-3 times. By the end of 1943, only the Urals were producing more tanks and self-propelled artillery units (ACS) than all of Germany together with the occupied countries. Simultaneously with the quantitative growth of military equipment, its quality has significantly improved.

The increase in the output of military products made it possible to reorganize the army, to deploy the formation of units and formations that were not previously in the country: tank and air armies, breakthrough artillery corps, formations of guards mortars ("Katyusha"), a company of machine gunners, etc.

19 -20 November 1942 g. Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive under Stalingrad , as a result of which more than 300 thousand German army was surrounded and defeated. The strategic counteroffensive of the Soviet army began. Summer 1943 in the battle under Kursk ... ended radical forward during the war, and its last stage began, ending with the complete liberation of the territory of the Soviet Union, and then Eastern and Southeastern Europe and the defeat of Nazi Germany, which 8 May 1945 g. capitulated.

July 17 to August 2, 1945 v Potsdam a conference of the heads of government of the USSR, England and the United States was held. At it, decisions were made on the post-war structure of Germany, on the development of it as a single democratic, peace-loving state. Subsequent events showed, however, that the ruling circles of the United States and Britain were not going to adhere to a coordinated policy in the post-war world.

Fulfilling its obligations to the allies, the Soviet Union 8 August 1945 G. entered the war with militarist Japan. Until the end of August, Soviet troops conducted a successful operation to defeat the Kwantung Army in North China, to liberate South Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands and North Korea. Japan, like Germany, surrendered. The Great Patriotic War and the Second World War are over.

Victory went to heavy price ... In total, the country has lost up to 30% of the national wealth, 27 million human lives. The main role in achieving victory was played by the subjective factor - such traits of the Soviet people as selflessness, heroism, patriotism. Of course, there were objective reasons: the creation of a military-economic superiority over the enemy, superiority in the production of weapons, the vast expanses of the country, rich Natural resources, a large population, as well as major miscalculations of the enemy, the help of the allies.

The main the resulting wars ambiguous: the defeat of Germany and its allies eliminated a mortal threat to all mankind; several totalitarian regimes have collapsed; favorable prospects appeared for the struggle against colonialism; the influence of democratic forces in many countries has increased; there was a change in state borders in Europe and Asia; the Stalinist totalitarian regime in the USSR was strengthened; favorable conditions were created for the emergence of "Stalinist socialism" outside the borders of one country; the military-industrial complex of the Soviet Union was strengthened!

At present, our society most fully and deeply comprehends lessons stories. The most important of them are the following: The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. brought to the forefront of history its main character - the people; the reactionary forces have failed to achieve world domination; the war has shown the ability of democratic forces to rally in the face of mortal danger; the protective forces of civilization are enormous, they are quite enough to prevent a third world war and ward off other threats.

As a result of World War II, change in force ratio in the world. As in the aftermath of World War I, post-war Europe experienced significant territorial changes ... The victorious countries, primarily the Soviet Union, increased their territories at the expense of the defeated states. A significant part of East Prussia with the city of Konigsberg (now the Kaliningrad region of the Russian Federation) went to the Soviet Union, the Lithuanian SSR received the territory of the Klaipeda region, and the territories of the Transcarpathian Ukraine went to the Ukrainian SSR. In the Far East, in accordance with the agreements reached at the Crimean Conference, South Sakhalin was returned to the Soviet Union and the Kuril Islands (including 4 southern islands that were not previously part of Russia) were given. Poland increased its territory at the expense of the German lands, at the same time the territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, which became part of the Soviet Union under the agreement between the USSR and Germany (September 1939), remained Soviet.

Immeasurable increased prestige Soviet Union - a country that made a decisive contribution to the defeat of fascism. Not a single international problem was now solved without the participation of the USSR.

As a result of World War II, the environment inside the western world has changed ... Germany, Japan and Italy were defeated and temporarily lost the role of great powers, and the positions of England and France were significantly weakened. At the same time, the share of the United States has grown immeasurably. During the war years, the country's industrial production not only did not decrease, but increased by 47%. The United States controlled about 80% of the gold reserves of the capitalist world, and accounted for 46% of world industrial production.

War marked the beginning collapse of the colonial system ... For several years, such major countries as India, Indonesia, Burma, Pakistan, Ceylon, Egypt won their independence. In total, in the post-war decade, 25 states gained independence, and 1,200 million people were freed from colonial dependence.

The most important feature of the end of the war and the post-war period were anti-fascist, national liberation, folk -democratic revolutions in the countries of Eastern Europe and a number of Asian countries. In the course of the struggle against fascism in these countries, a united front of all democratic forces was formed, in which the communist parties played the leading role. After the overthrow of the fascist and collaborationist governments, governments were created that included representatives of all anti-fascist parties and movements. They carried out a series of democratic transformations. A diversified economy has developed in the economic field - the coexistence of the state, state-owned, cooperative and private sectors. In the political, a multi-party parliamentary form of political power was created, in the presence of opposition parties, with a separation of powers. It was an attempt to transition to socialist transformations in its own way.

However, since 1947. these countries were imposed on the Stalinist model of the political system, borrowed from the USSR. An extremely active role in this was played by Cominformburo , created in 1947. instead of the Comintern. With the formal preservation of the multi-party system, the power of one party was established, as a rule, through the merger of the communist and social democratic parties. Opposition political parties were banned and their leaders repressed. Reforms similar to the Soviet ones began - mass nationalization of enterprises, forced collectivization.

V political spectrum European countries occurred left shift ... Fascist and right-wing radical parties left the scene. The influence of the communists increased dramatically. 1945-1947 they were part of the governments of France, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Finland. There has been a tendency for the communists and social democrats to converge.

The term "cold war" itself was coined by US Secretary of State DF Dulles. Its essence is political, economic, ideological confrontation of two systems, balancing on the brink of war.

It makes no sense to argue about who started the Cold War - convincing arguments are made by both sides. In Western historiography, the Cold War is the response of Western democracies to the Soviet Union's attempt to export socialist revolution... In Soviet historiography, the causes of the "cold war" were called attempts by American imperialism to establish world domination by the United States, liquidate the socialist system, restore the capitalist system in the people's democracies, and suppress national liberation movements.

It is illogical and unwise to whitewash one side completely and place all the blame on the other. Today, the Cold War can be seen as the inevitable price to be paid for creating bipolar structure the post-war world, in which each of the poles (the USSR and the USA) sought to increase its influence in the world based on its geopolitical and ideological interests, while realizing the boundaries of possible expansion.

Already in the course of the war with Germany, in some circles in the United States and England, plans to start a war with Russia were seriously considered. The fact of negotiations that Germany was conducting at the end of the war with the Western powers on a separate peace (Wolf's mission) is widely known. The upcoming entry of Russia into the war with Japan, which would save the lives of millions of American guys, tipped the balance and prevented these plans from being realized.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not so much a military operation as a political act aimed at putting pressure on the USSR.

The main axis of confrontation was the relationship between the two superpowers - USSR and USA. The turn from cooperation with the Soviet Union to confrontation with it began after the death of President F. Roosevelt. It is customary to date the beginning of the Cold War with the speech of W. Churchill in an American city. Fulton v March 1946 in which he called on the people of the United States to fight together against Soviet Russia and its agents - the communist parties.

The ideological rationale for the Cold War was Truman's doctrine , nominated by the President of the United States in 1947. According to this doctrine, the conflict between Western democracy and communism is irreconcilable. The task of the United States is to fight communism throughout the world, to "contain communism", "to push communism back into the borders of the USSR." American responsibility for the events taking place all over the world was proclaimed, all these events were viewed through the prism of the confrontation between communism and Western democracy, the USSR and the USA.

Monopoly possession of the atomic bomb allowed the United States, as they believed, to dictate its will to the world. In 1945. the development of plans for an atomic strike against the USSR began. The plans for "Pinscher" (1946), "Chariotir" (1948), "Dropshot" (1949), "Troian" (1950) and others were consistently developed. American historians, without denying the existence of such plans, say that it was only about operational military plans that are drawn up in any country in case of war. But after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the existence of such plans could not but cause sharp concern in the Soviet Union.

In 1946. in the United States, a strategic military command was created, which disposed of aircraft - carriers atomic weapons... In 1948. atomic bombers were stationed in Great Britain and West Germany. The Soviet Union was surrounded by a network of American military bases. In 1949. there were more than 300 of them.

The United States pursued a policy of creating militarily -political blocs against the USSR. V 1949 was created North Atlantic bloc (NATO ). It includes: USA, England, France, Italy, Canada, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Greece and Turkey. Were created: in 1954 city ​​- organization Yugo -East Asia (SEATO ), v 1955 G. - Baghdad Pact ... A course was taken to restore the military potential of Germany. V 1949 g., in violation of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, from three zones of occupation - English, American and French - was created Federal Republic of Germany , which in the same year entered NATO.

The Soviet Union did not develop plans of aggression against other countries, in particular the United States, it did not have the necessary fleet for this (aircraft carriers of all classes, landing craft); until 1948 practically did not possess strategic aviation, until August 1949. atomic weapons. Developed in late 1946 - early 1947. The "Plan for the Active Defense of the Territory of the Soviet Union" had exclusively defensive missions. Since July 1945 to 1948 the size of the Soviet army fell from 11.4 to 2.9 million people. Despite the inequality of power, the Soviet Union sought to pursue a tough foreign policy line that led to increased confrontation. For a time, Stalin hoped to cooperate with the Americans in the technical and economic fields. However, after the death of Roosevelt, it became clear that such assistance was not part of the plans of US politicians.

At the same time, the Soviet Union also pursued a policy confrontation ... Back in 1945. Stalin demanded the creation of a system of joint defense of the Black Sea straits of the USSR and Turkey, the establishment of joint custody by the allies of the colonial possessions of Italy in Africa (while the USSR planned to provide a naval base in Libya).

In 1946. a conflict situation arose around Iran. In 1941. Soviet and British troops were brought in there. After the war, the British troops were withdrawn, while the Soviets remained. On the territory they occupied in Iranian Azerbaijan, a government was formed, which proclaimed autonomy and began to transfer part of the landlord and state lands to the peasants. At the same time, Iranian Kurdistan declared national autonomy. Western countries viewed the position of the Soviet Union as preparation for the dismemberment of Iran. The Iranian crisis prompted Churchill's speech at Fulton. The USSR was forced to withdraw its troops.

Confrontation has also emerged in Asia. Since 1946 the civil war began in China. The troops of the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek tried to occupy the territories controlled by the communists. Western countries supported Chiang Kai-shek, and the Soviet Union - the communists, transferring them a significant amount of captured Japanese weapons.

The Soviet Union agreed to the creation of a coalition government in Poland, including representatives of the London emigration, but did not go to the holding of general elections in Poland, which led to a conflict in the country.

The final disintegration of the world is associated with the nomination by the United States " Marshall's plan "(US Secretary of State) and the sharply negative attitude of the USSR towards him.

The United States became immeasurably rich during the war years. With the end of the war, they were threatened by a crisis of overproduction. At the same time, the economies of European countries were destroyed, their markets were open to American goods, but there was nothing to pay for these goods. The United States was afraid to invest in the economies of these countries, since there was a strong influence of the left forces and the environment for investment was unstable: nationalization could follow at any moment.

The Marshall Plan offered European countries assistance to rebuild their shattered economies. Loans were provided for the purchase of American goods. The proceeds were not exported, but invested in the construction of enterprises on the territory of these countries. The Marshall Plan was adopted by 16 states of Western Europe. Political condition helping was the removal of communists from governments. In 1947. the communists were withdrawn from the governments of Western European countries. Help was also offered to Eastern European countries. Poland and Czechoslovakia began negotiations, but, under pressure from the USSR, they refused to help. At the same time, the United States tore up the Soviet-American loan agreement and passed a law banning exports to the USSR. Thus, there was a division of European countries into two groups with different economic systems.

V 1949 was tested in the USSR atomic bomb , and in 1953. a thermonuclear bomb was created (earlier than in the USA). The creation of atomic weapons in the USSR marked the beginning arms race between the USSR and the USA.

In contrast to the bloc of Western states, began to form economic and militarily -political union of socialist countries ... V 1949 was created Council for Mutual Economic Aid - the body for economic cooperation of the states of Eastern Europe. The conditions for joining it were the abandonment of the Marshall Plan. In May 1955 is created Warsaw military -political union ... The world has split into two opposing camps.

This affected economic ties ... After the adoption of the Marshall Plan and the formation of the CMEA, there were actually two parallel world markets, little connected with each other. The USSR and Eastern Europe found themselves isolated from developed countries, which had a detrimental effect on their economies.

Inside most socialist camp Stalin pursued a tough policy, consistently implementing the principle "He who is not with us is against us." He wrote: “Two camps - two positions; the position of the unconditional defense of the USSR and the position of the struggle against the USSR. Here you have to choose, because there is no and cannot be a third position. Neutrality in this matter, hesitation, reservations, the search for a third position are an attempt to evade responsibility ... And what does it mean to evade responsibility? It means slipping imperceptibly into the camp of the opponents of the USSR. " Inside the socialist countries, reprisals were carried out against dissidents. If the leadership of the country took a special position, then this country was excommunicated from the socialist camp, and all relations with it were severed, as happened in 1948. with Yugoslavia , whose leadership tried to pursue an independent policy.

With the death of Stalin, the first stage of the Cold War ended. During this phase, the Cold War was perceived by both sides as a temporary, intermediate phase between the two wars. Both sides feverishly waged war preparations, expanded their alliance systems, and waged wars with each other along their periphery. The most poignant moments of this period were: Berlin crisis (summer1948 G.) when, in response to the monetary reform in the western zones of occupation, the Soviet administration imposed a blockade of West Berlin; and war v Korea (1950 - 1953 ). The United States took advantage of the fact that the USSR withdrew from participation in the UN Security Council in protest against the refusal to admit the People's Republic of China to the UN, and achieved a decision to send UN troops to Korea, and in fact, the troops of the Western bloc, which fought there with the troops of China and THE USSR.

Cardinal changes in the geopolitical situation in the post-war world, different balance of forces in the international arena, fundamental differences in the socio-political system, value system, ideology of the USSR and the West, and primarily the United States, became powerful factors that led to the split of the alliance of former victorious powers. conditioned the formation of a bipolar picture of the world. In the post-war period, the "cold war" was inevitable, it was a kind of payment for the creation of a bipolar structure of the post-war world, in which each of the poles (the USSR and the USA) sought to increase its influence based on its geopolitical and ideological interests, while realizing the boundaries of the possible expansion.

So, in the postwar period, the influence of the USSR and the United States was mutual, but the main impulses of the arms race came from the United States, which significantly surpassed the USSR in all basic technical and economic parameters and had enormous potential. The logic of Stalin's actions in the field of foreign policy was, therefore, to a large extent determined not only by his own ideas about the world, but also by the course of development of the United States, as well as by the desire to strengthen and consolidate the political, ideological and economic influence in his area of ​​responsibility, according to the ideas of a bipolar structure post-war world.

Politic system THE USSR. In the USSR, after the war, the restructuring of the country's governance began. The State Defense Committee, an emergency body created during the war, was dissolved. However, there was no return even to those limited forms of democracy that existed before the war. The Supreme Council met once a year to approve the budget. For 13 years, no party congresses have been convened, and the plenum of the Central Committee during this time was held only once.

At the same time, certain changes took place in the political system after the war. First, as the main political line, the internationalist component of "Marxism-Leninism" was replaced by state nationalism , designed to rally all forces within the country in the context of the unfolding confrontation with the West. Secondly, after the war, the center of political power shifted from the party elite to executive power - to the government. For 1947 - 1952 Minutes meetings of the Politburo were held only twice (decisions were made by the method of oral questioning), the secretariat of the Central Committee became, in fact, a personnel department. All practical work on governing the country was concentrated in the USSR Council of Ministers. Eight bureaus were created in it, among which most of the ministries and departments were distributed.

Their chairpersons - G.M. Malenkov, N.A. Voznesensky, M.Z. Saburov, L.P. Beria, A.I. Mikoyan, L.M. Kaganovich, A.N. Kosygin, K.E. Voroshilov were Bureau of the Council of Ministers , which was headed by J.V. Stalin. All state issues were resolved in a narrow circle " associates of Stalin ”, Which included VM Molotov, LP Beria, GM Malenkov, LM Kaganovich, NS Khrushchev, KE Voroshilov, NA Voznesensky, AA Zhdanov, A. Andreev. The regime of personal power of J.V. Stalin, which has been established since the end of the 1930s, has reached its highest development .

The period after the end of World War II and until the death of Stalin can be considered apogee of the total tarism in the USSR, its highest point. In the literature, various approaches have been outlined in assessing the effect of the repressive component of the Stalinist post-war regime. There was a certain general idea that repression was the most important tool for achieving stabilization of the situation in the country, mobilizing the forces of nations to solve economic problems, rallying society in the context of the outbreak of the Cold War, and solving situational tasks in the struggle for power within the ruling elites.

Summer 1946G... ideological campaigns began, which went down in history under the name “ Zhdanovshchina ", Named after A.A. Zhdanov, who directed them. A number of resolutions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on literature, music, and cinematography were issued, to which many Soviet poets, writers, filmmakers, composers were subjected to sharp and biased criticism for their "lack of ideology" and preaching "an ideology alien to the spirit of the party." The decrees emphasized that literature and art should be placed at the service of the communist education of the masses.

The following summer, this ideological campaign spread to the social sciences. A.A. Zhdanov held a conference of philosophers, at which he condemned Soviet philosophy for "excessive tolerance" to idealistic bourgeois philosophy and suggested - consistently proceed from the principle " partisanship ”And not from“ bourgeois objectivism ”. Ideological control was extended to all spheres of spiritual life. The party acted as a legislator in linguistics, biology, and mathematics. Wave mechanics, cybernetics, genetics were condemned as "bourgeois pseudosciences".

WITH late 1948 G... ideological campaigns have taken on a new direction. Their basis was “the fight against servility "Before the West. This aspect of the ideological offensive was particularly fierce. It was based on the desire to fence off from the Western states, from the "bourgeois influence" by the "iron curtain". Western culture was almost entirely declared bourgeois