Stalin era. The fake Stalin era through the eyes of eyewitnesses The Stalin era briefly

Fifty years have passed since Stalin's death. But Stalin and everything connected with his activities did not become a distant past indifferent to living people. Quite a few representatives of generations are still alive for whom the Stalinist era was and remains their era, regardless of how they relate to it. And most importantly, Stalin is one of those great historical personalities who forever remain significant phenomena of our time for all subsequent generations. So a half-century round date is just an excuse to speak out on eternally relevant topics. In this essay, I intend to consider not the specific facts and events of the Stalin era and Stalin's life, but only their social essence.

Stalin era. To give an objective description of the Stalinist era, it is necessary first of all to determine its place in the history of Russian (Soviet) communism. Now we can state as a fact such four periods in the history of Russian communism: 1) birth; 2) adolescence (or maturation); 3) maturity; 4) crisis and death. The first period covers the years from the October Revolution of 1917 to the election of Stalin as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the party in 1922 or until Lenin's death in 1924. This period can be called Leninist in the role that Lenin played in it. The second period covers the years after the first period until Stalin's death in 1953 or until the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956. This is the Stalinist period. The third began after the second and. continued until Gorbachev came to power in the country in 1985. This is the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period. And the fourth period began with the seizure of the highest power by Gorbachev and ended with the anti-communist coup in August 1991, led by Yeltsin, and the destruction of Russian (Soviet) communism. After the 20th Congress of the CPSU (1956), the idea of ​​the Stalinist period as a period of villainy was firmly established. and about Stalin himself - as about the most villainous villain of all villains in the history of mankind. And now only the exposure of the ulcers of Stalinism and the defects of Stalin is accepted as the truth. Attempts to speak objectively about this period and about Stalin's personality are regarded as an apologetics for Stalinism. And yet, I would venture to retreat from the line of revelation and speak out in defense of ... no, not Stalin and Stalinism, but their objective understanding. I think that I have a moral right to this, since from early youth I was a staunch anti-Stalinist, in 1939 I was a member of a terrorist group intending to assassinate Stalin, was arrested for publicly speaking out against the cult of Stalin, and until Stalin's death conducted illegal anti-Stalinist propaganda. After Stalin's death, I stopped it, guided by the principle: even a donkey can kick a dead lion. Dead Stalin could not be my enemy. Attacks on Stalin became unpunished, common, and even encouraged. And besides, by this time I had already embarked on the path of a scientific approach to Soviet society, including the Stalin era. Below I will summarize the main conclusions about Stalin and Stalinism, which I came to as a result of many years of scientific research.

Lenin and Stalin. Soviet ideology and propaganda during the Stalin years presented Stalin as "Lenin today." Now I think this is true. Of course, there were differences between Lenin and Stalin, but the main thing is that Stalinism was a continuation and development of Leninism both in theory and in the practice of building real communism. Stalin gave the best exposition of Leninism as an ideology. He was a faithful student and follower of Lenin. Whatever their specific personal relationships, from a sociological point of view, they form a single historical personality. This is a unique case in history. I do not know of any other case when one large-scale political figure literally raised his predecessor in power to the divine height, as Stalin did with Lenin. After the XXth Congress of the CPSU, they began to oppose Stalin to Lenin, and Stalinism began to be seen as a deviation from Leninism. Stalin really "retreated" from Leninism, but not in the sense of betraying him, but in the sense that he made such a significant contribution to it that we have the right to speak of Stalinism as a special phenomenon.

Political and social revolution. Lenin's great historical role was that he developed the ideology of the socialist revolution, created an organization of professional revolutionaries designed to seize power, led the forces to seize and retain power, when the opportunity presented itself, assessed this case and took the risk of seizing power, used power to destruction of the existing social system, organized the masses to defend the gains of the revolution from counter-revolutionaries and interventionists, in short, to create the necessary conditions for building a communist social system in Russia. But this system itself took shape after him, in the Stalinist period, took shape under the leadership of Stalin. The role of these people is so enormous that one can safely say that without Lenin they would not have won socialist revolution , and without Stalin, the first communist society of a huge scale in history would not have arisen. Someday, when humanity, in the interests of self-preservation, nevertheless again turns to communism as the only way to avoid death, the twentieth century will be called the century of Lenin and Stalin. I distinguish between political and social revolution. In the Russian revolution, they merged into one. But in the Leninist period the former dominated, in the Stalinist period the latter came to the fore. The social revolution did not consist in the abolition of the capitalist and landlord classes, but in the abolition of private ownership of land, factories and plants, and the means of production. It was only a negative, destructive aspect of the political revolution. The social revolution as such, in its positive, constructive content, meant the creation of a new social organization of the masses of the country's multimillion population. It was a grandiose and unprecedented process of uniting millions of people into communist collectives with a new social structure and new relationships between people, the process of creating many hundreds of thousands of business cells of an unprecedented type and uniting them in the same way into an unprecedented single whole. It was a grandiose process of creating a new way of life for millions of people with a new psychology and ideology. I want to draw special attention to the following circumstance. Both critics and apologists of Stalinism portray this process as if Stalin and his associates were only implementing Marxist-Leninist projects. This is a deep misconception. There were no such projects at all. There were general ideas and slogans that could be interpreted and which in fact were interpreted, as they say, at random. The Stalinists and Stalin himself did not have such projects. Here historical creativity took place in the full sense of the word. The builders of the new society had specific tasks to establish public order, fight crime, fight homelessness, provide people with food and housing, create schools and hospitals, create means of transport, build factories for the production of necessary consumer goods, etc. due to vital necessity, due to available means and conditions, due to objective social laws, about which they did not have the slightest idea, but which they had to reckon with in practice, acting on the principle of trial and error. They did not think that by doing so they created the cells of a new social organism with their regular structure and objective social relations independent of their will. Their activities were successful to the extent that they, one way or another, reckoned with the objective conditions and laws of social organization. In general, Stalin and his comrades-in-arms acted in accordance with the vital necessity and objective tendencies of real life, and not with some kind of ideological dogma, as the falsifiers attribute to them. Soviet history By the way, I will note that the material and cultural values ​​created in the Stalin years were so enormous that the values ​​inherited from pre-revolutionary Russia look like a drop in the ocean in comparison with them. What was nationalized and socialized after the revolution, in fact, was not as significant as it is customary to say about it. The material and cultural basis of the new society had to be rebuilt after the revolution, using the new system of power. Over time, the specific tasks that forced the builders of the new society to carry out collectivization, industrialization and other large-scale events receded into the background or exhausted themselves, and the unconscious and unplanned social aspect declared itself as one of the main achievements of this period in the history of Russian communism. Perhaps the result of the social revolution, which attracted the overwhelming majority of the country's population to the side of the new system, was the formation of business collectives, thanks to which people joined public life and felt that society and government took care of themselves. The craving of people for a collective life without private owners and with the active participation of all was unheard of before anywhere and never. Demonstrations and meetings were voluntary. They were treated like holidays. Despite all the difficulties, the illusion that power in the country belongs to the people was an overwhelming illusion of those years. The phenomena of collectivism were perceived as indicators of democracy by the people. Democracy not in the sense of Western democracy, but literally. Representatives of the lower strata of the population (and they were the majority) occupied the lower floors of the social scene and took part in the social performance not only as spectators, but also as actors. The actors on the higher floors of the stage and in more important roles were then also for the most part from the people. History did not know such a vertical population dynamics as in those years.

Collectivization and industrialization. There is a strong belief that the collective farms were invented by Stalin's villains for purely ideological reasons. This is a monstrous absurdity. The idea of ​​collective farms is not a Marxist idea. It has nothing to do with classical Marxism at all. It was not brought into life from theory. She was born in the 'most practical life of real, not imaginary communism. Ideology was only used as a means of justifying one's own historical creativity. Collectivization was not malicious intent, but a tragic inevitability. The flight of people to the cities could not be stopped anyway. Collectivization hastened it. Without it, this process would have become, perhaps, even more painful, stretching over several generations. It was not at all the case that the top Soviet leadership had the opportunity to choose a path. For Russia, under historically formed conditions, there was one choice: to survive or perish. There was no choice in terms of survival. Stalin was not the inventor of the Russian tragedy, but only its spokesman. Collective farms were evil, but far from absolute. Without them, in those real conditions, industrialization was impossible, and without the latter, our country would have been defeated already in the thirties, if not earlier. But the collective farms themselves had not only drawbacks. One of the temptations and one of the achievements of real communism is that it frees people from the anxieties and responsibilities of property. Although in a negative form, collective farms have played this role for tens of millions of people. Young people got the opportunity to become tractor drivers, mechanics, accountants, foremen. Outside the collective farms, "intelligent" positions appeared in clubs, medical centers, schools, and machine-tractor stations. The joint work of many people became a social life, bringing entertainment by the very fact of being together. Meetings, conferences, conversations, propaganda lectures and other phenomena of the new life associated with collective farms and accompanying them made people's lives more interesting than before. At the level of culture at which the mass of the population was, all this played a huge role, despite the wretchedness and formality of these events. The industrialization of Soviet society was as poorly understood as collectivization. Its most important aspect, namely, the sociological one, fell out of sight of both apologists and critics of Stalinism. Critics viewed it, firstly, with the criteria of the Western economy, as economically unprofitable (in their terms, meaningless) and, secondly, as voluntaristic, dictated by ideological considerations. And the apologists did not notice that a qualitatively new phenomenon of super-economy was born here, thanks to which the Soviet Union in a surprisingly short time became a powerful industrial power. And what is most striking, they did not notice what role industrialization played in the social organization of the masses of the population.

Organization of power. During these years, on the one hand, the unification of various peoples scattered over a vast territory into a single social organism took place, and on the other hand, internal differentiation and structural complication of this organism took place. This process inevitably gave rise to the growth and complication of the system of power and management of society. And in the new conditions, he gave rise to new functions of power and administration. It was in the Stalinist era that the system of party-state power and administration was created. But she was not born immediately after the revolution. It took many years to create it. And the country needed government from the very first days of the new society. How was she managed? Of course, the state apparatus of Russia existed before the revolution. But it was destroyed by the revolution. His wreckage and experience were used to create a new state machine. But again, something else was needed to do this. And this other means of governing the country in conditions of post-revolutionary devastation and a means of creating a normal system of power was the power of the people born by the revolution. When I use the expression “people’s power” or “people’s power,” I don’t put any evaluative meaning into them. I do not share the illusion that the power of the people is good. I AM I mean here only a certain structure of power in certain historical circumstances and nothing more. These are the main features of democracy. The overwhelming majority of leading positions from the very bottom to the very top were occupied by people from the lower strata of the population. And these are millions of people. The leader who came out of the people addresses in his leadership activities directly to the people themselves, ignoring official apparatus ... For the masses, this apparatus is presented as something hostile to them and as a hindrance to their leader-leader. Hence the voluntaristic methods of leadership. Therefore, the top leader can arbitrarily manipulate the officials of the lower apparatus of the official power, remove them, arrest them. The leader looked like a people's leader. Power over people was felt directly, without any intermediate links and disguises. People's rule is the organization of the masses of the population. The people must be organized in a certain way so that their leaders can lead them at will. The will of the leader is nothing without the proper training and organization of the population. There were also certain means for this. These are, first of all, all kinds of activists, pioneers, initiators, shock workers, heroes ... The mass of people is, in principle, passive. To keep it in tension and move in the right direction, it is necessary to highlight a relatively small active part in it. This part should be encouraged, given some advantages, and given actual power over the rest of the passive part of the population. And in all institutions, unofficial groups of activists were formed, which actually kept under their supervision and control the entire life of the collective and its members. It was almost impossible to run the institution without their support. Activists were usually people of relatively low social status, and sometimes the lowest. They were often selfless enthusiasts. But gradually this grassroots asset grew into the mafia, terrorizing all employees of institutions and setting the tone in everything. They had support from the team and from above. And this was their strength. The supreme power in the Stalinist system of power was not the state, but the superstate apparatus of power, not bound by any legislative norms. It consisted of a clique of people personally indebted to the ringleader (leader) for their position in the clique and the share of power given to him. Such cliques developed at all levels of the hierarchy, from the highest, headed by Stalin himself, to the level of districts and enterprises. The main levers of power were: the party apparatus and the party as a whole, trade unions, the Komsomol, state security bodies, internal order forces, the army command, the diplomatic corps, heads of institutions and enterprises performing tasks of special state importance, the scientific and cultural elite, etc. State power (councils) was subordinate to the superstate. An important component of Stalin's power was what came to be called the "nomenklatura." The role of this phenomenon was greatly exaggerated and distorted in anti-Soviet propaganda. What is nomenclature really? In the Stalin years, the nomenclature included specially selected and reliable party workers from the point of view of the central government, who led large masses of people in various regions of the country and in various spheres of society. The leadership situation was relatively simple, the general attitudes were clear and stable, the methods of leadership were primitive and standard, the cultural and professional level of the masses being led was low, the tasks of the masses' activities and the rules of their organization were relatively simple and more or less uniform. So almost any party leader included in the nomenclature could with equal success manage literature, an entire territorial region, heavy industry, music, and sports. The main task of this kind of leadership was to create and maintain the unity and centralization of the country's leadership, to accustom the population to new forms of relationship with the authorities, to solve some problems of national importance at any cost. And this task was fulfilled by the nomenklatura workers of the Stalinist period.

Repression. The issue of repression is of fundamental importance for understanding both the history of the formation of Russian communism and its essence as a social system. In them, there was a coincidence of factors of various kinds, associated not only with the essence of the communist social system, but also with specific historical conditions, as well as with the natural conditions of Russia, its historical traditions and the nature of the available human material. There was a world war. The tsarist empire collapsed, and the communists were least to blame for this. A revolution has taken place. There is disorganization, devastation, hunger, poverty, and the flourishing of crime in the country. A new revolution, this time a socialist one. Civil war, intervention, uprisings. No government could establish an elementary social order without massive repression. The very formation of a new social system was accompanied by literally an orgy of crime in all spheres of society, in all regions of the country, at all levels of the emerging hierarchy, including the authorities themselves. control and punishment. Communism entered life as a liberation, but liberation not only from the shackles of the old system, but also the liberation of the masses of people from elementary restraining factors. Trash, fraud, theft, corruption, drunkenness, abuse of office, etc., which flourished in pre-revolutionary times, literally turned into the norms of the universal way of life for Russians (now Soviet people). Party organizations, the Komsomol, collectives, propaganda, educational bodies, etc., made titanic efforts to prevent this. And they really achieved a lot. But they were powerless without the organs of punishment. The Stalinist system of mass repression grew up as a self-defending measure of the new society against the crime epidemic born by the totality of circumstances. She became a constantly acting factor of the new society, a necessary element of its self-preservation.

Economic revolution. It is too little to say about the economy of the Stalinist era that collectivization and industrialization took place in it. It has developed a specifically communist form of economy, I would even say - a super-economy. I will name its main features: during the Stalin years, a huge number of primary business collectives (cells) were created, which together formed a specifically communist super-economy. These cells were created not spontaneously, not by private order, but by decisions of the authorities. The latter decided what these cells were supposed to do, how many hired workers to have and which ones, how to pay for them and all other aspects of their life. This was not a matter of complete arbitrariness of the authorities. The latter took into account the real situation and real possibilities. The created economic (economic) cells were included in the system of other cells, that is, they were parts of large economic associations (both sectoral and territorial) and, ultimately, the economy as a whole. They, of course, had some kind of autonomy in their activities. But they were mainly limited by the tasks and conditions of the above-mentioned associations. Above the economic cells, a hierarchical and network structure of institutions of power and administration was created, which ensured their coordinated activity. It was organized according to the principles of command and control, as well as centralization. In the West, this was called the command economy and was considered the greatest evil, opposing it with their market economy, glorifying it as the greatest good. The communist super-economy, organized and controlled from above, had a certain goal setting. The latter was as follows. First, to provide the country with material resources that allow it to survive in the surrounding world, maintain independence and keep pace with progress. Secondly, to provide the citizens of the country with the necessary means of subsistence. Thirdly, to provide all able-bodied people with work as the main and for the majority the only source of livelihood. Fourthly, to involve the entire working-age population in labor activity in primary collectives. The need to plan the activities of the economy, starting with the primary cells and ending with the economy as a whole, was organically linked to this attitude. Hence the famous Stalinist five-year plans. This planning of the Soviet economy caused especially strong irritation in the West and was subjected to all kinds of ridicule. And yet it is completely unfounded. The Soviet economy had its drawbacks. But their reason was not planning as such. On the contrary, planning made it possible to contain these shortcomings and achieve successes that were recognized throughout the world as unprecedented in those years. It is generally accepted that the Western economy is more efficient than the Soviet one. This opinion is simply meaningless scientifically. It is necessary to distinguish between economic and social criteria for assessing the effectiveness of the economy. The social efficiency of the economy is characterized by the ability to exist without unemployment and without / ruining unprofitable enterprises, easier working conditions, the ability to concentrate large funds and efforts on solving large-scale problems, and other signs. From this point of view, it was the Stalinist economy that turned out to be the most effective, which became one of the factors behind the victories of an epoch-making and global scale.

Cultural Revolution. The Stalinist period was a period of a cultural revolution unprecedented in the history of mankind, which affected the multimillion masses of the population of all countries. This revolution was absolutely essential for the survival of the new society. The human material inherited from the past did not meet the needs of the new society in all aspects of its life, especially in production, in the management system, in science, in the army. Millions of educated and professionally trained people were required. In solving this problem, the new society has demonstrated its advantage over all other types of social systems! the most easily accessible for him turned out to be what was the most difficult for the past history - education and culture. It turned out that it is easier to give people a better education to open them access to the heights of culture than to give them decent housing, clothes, food. Access to education and culture was the most powerful compensation for everyday poverty. People endured such everyday difficulties, which are now scary to remember, just to get an education and join the culture. The urge of millions of people for this was so strong that no force in the world could stop it. Any attempt to return the country to its pre-revolutionary state was perceived as the most terrible threat to this conquest of the revolution. At the same time, everyday life played a secondary role. It was necessary to personally experience this time in order to appreciate this state. Then, when education and culture became something taken for granted, familiar and everyday, this state disappeared and was forgotten. But it was and played its historical role. It didn't come by itself. It was one of the achievements of the Stalinist social strategy. It was created deliberately, systematically, in a planned way. A high educational and cultural level of people was considered a necessary condition for communism in the very foundations of Marxist ideology. At this point, as in many others, the practical necessities of life coincided with the postulates of ideology. In the Stalin years, Marxism as an ideology was still adequate to the needs of the real course of history.

Ideological revolution. All those who write about the Stalinist era pay a lot of attention to collectivization, industrialization and mass repression. But in this era there were other events of a huge scale, about which they write little or are silent at all. These include primarily the ideological revolution. From the point of view of the formation of real communism, it is, in my opinion, no less important than other events of the era. Here it was about the formation of the third main pillar of any modern society, along with the system of power and the economy - a single state secular and non-religious) ideology and a centralized ideological mechanism, without which the success of building communism would have been unthinkable. The Stalin years determined the content of ideology, defined its functions in society, methods of influencing the masses of people, the structure of ideological institutions was outlined and the rules for their work were developed. The culminating point of the ideological revolution was the publication of Stalin's work "On Dialectical and Historical Materialism." There is an opinion that this work was not written by Stalin himself. But even if Stalin appropriated someone else's work, in its appearance he played a role immeasurably more important than the composition of this rather primitive, from an intellectual point of view, text: he understood the need for such an ideological text, gave it his own name and imposed a huge historical role on it. This relatively short article was a real ideological (not scientific, but ideological) masterpiece in the full sense of the word. After the revolution and the Civil War, the party that seized power was faced with the task of imposing its party ideology on the entire society. Otherwise, she would not have stayed in power. And this practically meant the ideological indoctrination of the broad masses of the population, the creation for this purpose of an army of specialists - ideological workers, the creation of a permanent apparatus of ideological work, the penetration of ideology into all spheres of life. What did you have to start with? Illiterate and ninety percent of the religious population. Ideological chaos and confusion among the intelligentsia. Party workers are half-educated people, educators and dogmatists, entangled in all kinds of ideological currents. And they knew Marxism itself so-so. And now, when the vital task of reorienting ideological work to the masses of a low educational level and infected with the old religious and autocratic ideology arose, the party theorists turned out to be completely helpless. We needed ideological texts with which one could confidently, persistently and systematically address the masses. The main problem was not the development of Marxism as a phenomenon of an abstract philosophical culture, but the search for the most easy way composing Marxist-shaped phrases, speeches, slogans, articles, books. It was necessary to underestimate the level of historically given Marxism so that it would become the ideology of the intellectually primitive and poorly educated majority of the population. By underestimating and vulgarizing Marxism, the Stalinists thereby squeezed out of it a rational core, the only one worth what was in it at all. Let the reader pay attention to the ideological chaos that takes place in today's Russia, to the fruitless search for a certain "national idea", to the endless complaints about the lack of an effective ideology! But the educational level of the population is immeasurably higher than it was at the beginning of the Stalinist era, huge intellectual forces are involved in the search for ideology, behind many decades of experience in this area of ​​world progress! And the result is zero. To appreciate Stalinism in this regard, it is enough to compare those times with the present. Of course, Marxism eventually became the subject of ridicule. But this happened several decades later, and in relatively narrow circles of intellectuals, when the Stalinist ideological revolution had already fulfilled its great historical mission. And the Soviet ideology, which was born in the Stalin years, did not die a natural death, but was simply discarded as a result of the anti-communist coup. The ideological state that replaced it was a colossal spiritual degradation of Russia.

Stalinist nationality policy. One of the many injustices in assessing Stalin and Stalinism is that they are blamed for the national problems that arose as a result of the defeat of the Soviet Union and the Soviet (communist) social system in the countries of this region. And yet it was precisely in the Stalin years that the best solution to national problems of all that was known in the history of mankind took place. It was in the Stalin years that the formation of a new, supranational and truly fraternal (in terms of attitudes and in the main trend) human community began. Now that the Stalinist era has become the property of history, it is more important not to look for its shortcomings, but to emphasize the successes of internationalism achieved in reality. I am not able to dwell on this topic in this article. I will only note one thing: for my generation, formed in the pre-war years, national problems were considered resolved. They began to be artificially inflated and provoked in the post-Stalin years as one of the means of the "cold" war of the West against our country.

Stalin and International Communism. The topic of the international role of Stalin and Stalinism is also beyond the scope of the purpose of my article. I will confine myself to just a brief remark: Stalin began his great mission of building a real communist society with a decisive denial of the generally accepted dogma of classical Marxism that communism can only be built in many advanced Western countries at the same time, and with the proclamation of the slogan of building communism in one separate country. And he fulfilled this intention. Moreover, he deliberately embarked on the path of using the achievements of communism in one country to spread it throughout the planet. By the end of Stalin's rule, communism really began to rapidly conquer the planet. The slogan of communism as a bright future for all mankind began to look more real than ever. And no matter how we relate to communism and Stalin, the indisputable fact remains that no other political figure in history has achieved such success as Stalin. And hatred for him still does not fade away not so much because of the harm he inflicted (many have surpassed him in this respect), but because of this his unparalleled personal success.

Triumph of Stalinism. The 1941-1945 war against Nazi Germany was the greatest test for Stalinism and personally for Stalin himself. And it must be admitted as an indisputable fact that they passed this test: the greatest war in the history of mankind against the strongest and most terrible enemy in military and in all other aspects ended in a triumphant victory of our country, moreover, the main factors of victory were, firstly, the communist social system , established in our country as a result of the October Revolution of 1917, and, secondly, Stalinism as the builder of this system and Stalin personally as the leader of this construction and as the organizer of the country's life during the war years and the commander-in-chief of the country's armed forces. Napoleon in the aggregate is nothing in comparison with this battle of Stalin. Napoleon was ultimately defeated, and Stalin won a triumphant victory, moreover, contrary to all the forecasts of those years, which predicted a quick victory for Hitler. It would seem that the winner is not being judged. But in relation to Stalin, everything is done the other way around: the darkness of pygmies of all sorts is making titanic efforts to falsify history and steal this great historical act from Stalin and Stalinism. To my shame, I must confess that I paid tribute to this attitude towards Stalin as the leader of the country during the years of preparation for the war and during the war years, when I was an anti-Stalinist and eyewitness to the events of those years. Many years of study, research and reflection passed before the question "What would you do yourself if you were in Stalin's place?" I replied to myself: I could not have done better than Stalin. And that only Stalin is not accused in connection with the war! To listen to these "strategists" (the poet said about them back in the 19th century: "Everyone imagines himself to be a strategist, looking at the battle from the sidelines"), you cannot imagine a more stupid, cowardly, etc. person at the pinnacle of power than Stalin in those years ... Stalin allegedly did not prepare the country for war. In fact, Stalin knew from the first days of his stay in power that we could not avoid an attack from the West. And with the coming of Hitler to power in Germany, he knew that we would have to fight with the Germans. Even we, schoolchildren of those years, knew this as an axiom. And Stalin not only foresaw this, he was preparing the country for war. But it is one thing to organize and mobilize available resources to prepare for war. And it's another matter to create these resources. And in order to create them in the conditions of the country of those years, industrialization was needed, “and industrialization needed the collectivization of agriculture, a cultural and ideological revolution was needed, the education of the population was needed, and much more. And all this required a titanic effort for many years. I doubt that any other leadership of the country, different from the Stalinist one, would have coped with this task. Stalin's coped with it. It began to literally ascribe to Stalin with a cliché that he had missed the beginning of the war, that he did not believe the intelligence reports, that he believed Hitler, etc. I don’t know what is more in this kind of statements - intellectual idiocy or deliberate meanness. Stalin was preparing the country for war. But not everything depended on him. We simply did not have time to properly prepare. And the Western strategists who manipulated Hitler, like Hitler himself, were not fools. They needed to crush the Soviet Union by attacking it before it was better prepared to repel the attack. This is all trite. Didn't one of the most prominent political strategists in the history of mankind understand such platitudes ?! I understood. But he also took part in the global strategic "game" and tried to delay the start of the war at any cost. Let's say he lost in this step of the story. But he more than compensated for the failure in other steps. History did not stop there. Stalin is blamed for the defeat of the Soviet army at the beginning of the war and much more. I will not bother the reader with an analysis of such phenomena. I will only formulate my general conclusion. I AM I am convinced that in understanding the overall situation on the planet during the Second World War, including as part of the war of the Soviet Union against Germany, Stalin was head and shoulders above all the major politicians, theorists and generals, one way or another involved in the war. It would be an exaggeration to say that Stalin foresaw and planned everything during the war. Of course, there was foresight and planning. But there was no less unforeseen, unplanned and undesirable. It is obvious. But something else is important here: Stalin correctly assessed what was happening and used even our heavy defeats in the interests of victory. He thought and acted, one might say, in the Kutuzov way. And it was a military strategy, the most adequate to the real and concrete, and not imaginary conditions of those years. Even if we admit that Stalin succumbed to Hitler’s deception at the beginning of the war (which I cannot believe), he brilliantly used the fact of Hitler’s aggression to attract world public opinion to his side, which played a role in the split of the West and education anti-Hitler coalition... Something similar took place in other difficult situations for our country. Stalin's merits in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 are so significant and indisputable that it would be a manifestation of elementary historical justice to return the name of Stalin to the city on the Volga, where the most important battle of the war took place. The fiftieth anniversary of Stalin's death is a good reason for this.

Stalin and Hitler. One of the ways to falsify and discredit Stalin and Stalinism is to identify them with Hitler and, accordingly, with German Nazism. The fact that there is a similarity between these phenomena does not give grounds for their identification. On this basis, one can accuse Brezhnev, and Gorbachev, and Yeltsin, and Putin, and Bush and many others of Stalinism. Of course, there was influence here. But Stalin's influence on Hitler was greater than the second on the first. In addition, the social law of mutual assimilation of social opponents was at work here. Such an assimilation was once recorded by Western sociologists in relation to the Soviet and Western social systems - I mean the theory of convergence (rapprochement) of these systems, but the main thing is not in the similarity of Stalinism and Nazism (and fascism), but in their qualitative difference. Nazism (and fascism) is a phenomenon within the Western (capitalist) social system, in its political and ideological spheres. And Stalinism is a social revolution in the very foundations of the social system and the initial stage of the evolution of the communist social system, and not just a phenomenon in politics and ideology. It is no coincidence that such hatred of the Nazis (fascists) for communism took place. The masters of the Western world encouraged Nazism (fascism) as anti-communism, as a means of fighting communism. And do not forget that Hitler suffered a shameful defeat and Stalin won an unprecedented victory in history. And it would not hurt today's anti-Stalinists to think about what specific historical conditions this took place and what a tremendous impact this victory had on humanity and on the course of world history. Hitler's follower is the historical pygmy Bush Jr. But the current anti-Stalinists are silent about such a deep and far-reaching analogy.

Destalinization. The actual struggle against the extremes of Stalinism began in the Stalinist years long before Khrushchev's exaggerated speech at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU. She walked in the depths of Soviet society. Stalin himself noticed the need for change, and there was enough evidence of this. Khrushchev's report was not the beginning of de-Stalinization, but the result of the beginning of the struggle for it among the mass of the population. Khrushchev used the de-Stalinization of the country that had actually begun in the interests of personal power. Having come to power, he partly contributed to the process of de-Stalinization, and partly made efforts to keep it within certain limits. After all, he was one of the leaders of the Stalinist ruling elite. On his conscience there were no less crimes of Stalinism than on other close associates of Stalin. He was a Stalinist to the core. And even de-Stalinization carried out voluntarist Stalinist methods. De-Stalinization was a complex and controversial process. And it is absurd to attribute it to the efforts and will of one person with the intelligence of an average party official and with the habits of a clown. What did de-Stalinization mean in essence, from a sociological point of view? Historical Stalinism as a specific set of principles for organizing the country's business life, the masses of the population, governance, maintaining order, indoctrination, upbringing and education of the country's population, etc., played a great historical role, having built the foundations of communist social organization in the most difficult conditions and protecting them from attacks from the outside. But he has exhausted himself, becoming an obstacle to the normal life of the country and its further evolution. In the country, partly thanks to and partly in spite of it, the forces and opportunities have ripened to overcome it. Precisely for overcoming in the sense of transition to a new, higher stage of the evolution of communism. In the Brezhnev years, this stage was called developed socialism. But whatever they call it, the rise actually took place. During the war and in the postwar years, the country's enterprises and institutions began to function in many ways not in the Stalinist way. Suffice it to say that the number of business collectives of state importance (factories, schools, institutes, hospitals, theaters, etc.) by the middle of the Brezhnev years increased hundreds of times compared to the Stalin years, so that the assessment of the Brezhnev years as stagnant is an ideological lie. Thanks to the Stalinist cultural revolution, the human material of the country has changed qualitatively. In the sphere of power and administration, a state bureaucratic apparatus and a party superstate apparatus were formed, more effective than the Stalinist rule of the people, and making the latter superfluous. The level of state ideology has ceased to correspond to the increased educational level of the population. In a word, de-Stalinization took place as a natural process of the maturation of Russian communism, its transition into a routine mature state. The removal of Khrushchev and the arrival of Brezhnev in his place took place as an ordinary spectacle in the ordinary life of the party ruling elite, as the replacement of one ruling clique by another. Khrushchev's "coup", in spite of the fact that it was also the top one in terms of the change of personalities in power, was, first of all, a social coup. Brezhnev's "coup" was such only in the highest spheres of power. It was directed not against the state of society that had developed in the Khrushchev years, but against the absurdities of the Khrushchev leadership, against Khrushchev personally, against Khrushchev's voluntarism, which grew into adventurism. From a sociological point of view, the Brezhnev period was a continuation of the Khrushchev period, but without the extremes of the transition period. As a result of de-Stalinization, the communist dictatorship of the Stalinist period was replaced by the communist democracy of the Khrushchev and then Brezhnev periods. I AM I associate this period with the name of Brezhnev, not Khrushchev, since the Khrushchev period was only transitional to the Brezhnev one. It was the second that was the alternative to Stalinism, and the most radical within the framework of communism. The Stalinist style of leadership was voluntaristic: the highest authorities sought to force those subject to live and work as they wanted, the authorities. Brezhnev's leadership style turned out to be opportunistic: the highest authorities themselves were adapting to the objectively evolving circumstances ... Another feature of Brezhnevism is that the system of Stalinist rule of the people gave way to an administrative-bureaucratic system. And the third feature is the transformation of the party apparatus into the basis, core and skeleton of the entire system of power and administration. Stalinism did not fail, as the anti-Stalinists, anti-communists, anti-Sovietists have argued and still maintain. He left the arena of history, having won his great role and exhausted himself even in the post-war years. Laughed and convicted, but misunderstood even in the Soviet years, left. And now, in the conditions of rabid anti-communism and the unrestrained falsification of Soviet history, one cannot count on an objective understanding of it at all. The triumphant pygmies of post-Sovietism, who destroyed Russian (Soviet) communism, in every possible way belittle and pervert the deeds of the giants of the Soviet past, in order to justify their betrayal of this past and to look like giants in the eyes of their contemporaries.

The text of this report was published in the book. "The end of the prehistory of mankind: socialism as an alternative to capitalism" (Omsk, 2004, pp. 207-215) - a collection of materials of the international scientific-practical conference of the same name, held on the basis of the open academic theoretical seminar "Marx's Readings" at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (27-29 May 2003).

Many documents portray the actions of the Soviet leadership of the Stalinist era in a completely different way than can be imagined based on the inventions of liberal leaders.

“Were the people afraid of Stalin? And how! - the "historians of the new wave" assert. And we won out of fright - they say, the Soviet people were less afraid of Hitler and the Gestapo than Stalin and the NKVD. That is why he enrolled en masse as a volunteer, just to avoid "execution cellars". And in the rear, people worked solely for fear of ending up in the Gulag for "ten years without the right to correspond" just for absenteeism or being late. In general, fear is the driving force behind Victory.

Meanwhile, in order to understand how it really was, it is enough just to look into the archive. In any case, to the Ulyanovsk Regional Archive of Contemporary History (formerly a party archive). Here, the most interesting documents are kept in free access, which the authors of the "new look" on our history prefer not to notice. Well, that's their choice. On the contrary, we will carefully read and analyze the documents.

For example, a memo addressed to the assistant director of the Volodarsky plant for recruitment and dismissal, lieutenant of the state. safety of comrade Kulagin. (F.13, op. 1, d. 2028, l. 13-17).

A very interesting document. But before moving on to its content, a number of explanations are needed.

What is Volodarka?

By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Ulyanovsk was located approximately in the same borders in which it (then still Simbirsk) was found by the First World War. The city was mainly located on the right, high bank of the Volga. Here was its historical and administrative center. There were only a few settlements on the left bank.

In 1916, the grandiose construction of the railway bridge named after His Imperial Majesty Nicholas II - one of the largest in the Volga region - was completed in Simbirsk. Having connected the two banks of the Volga, the bridge also connected two parts of the city, in one of which - in the low-lying left bank - the construction of the Simbirsk Cartridge Plant began in the same year. In July 1917, he gave the first production.

After the revolution, the enterprise retained its specialization, but changed its name - in 1922 it was renamed the Volodarsky Cartridge Plant No. 3.

By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Volodarka had become one of the most important strategic enterprises in the country. The plant produced ammunition for small arms, for machine guns, including large-caliber DShK. According to some sources, every fifth, and according to others - every third cartridge, shot by the Red Army at the enemy, was made here.

At the same time, a grandiose construction was going on - new workshops and housing were erected for workers, of whom thousands were required. For example, from the letter of the already mentioned assistant to the head of the plant for the hiring and dismissal of Kulagin addressed to the first secretary of the Ulyanovsk city committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) Greben dated March 5, 1942, it can be seen that due to the expansion of production in the first quarter of that year alone, the enterprise needed an additional 7,500 workers ...

Now let's move on to the text of the note.

"In the workshop, as in battle."

At the very beginning, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 06/26/1940 is mentioned. It is called "On the transition to an eight-hour working day, on a seven-day working week and on the prohibition of unauthorized departure of workers and employees from enterprises and institutions."

We read and are surprised: it turns out that under the "bloody Stalinist regime", in the USSR the working day at enterprises lasted seven hours, and in institutions - generally six! Only on the eve of a terrible war, it was increased to modern eight. And one day off a week - Sunday - was also left on the eve of the war. Before that, there were two. Like now.

And, finally, the worst thing is criminal punishment for violations of labor discipline. This is stated in paragraph 5 of the Decree. I will cite it in full.

“To establish that workers and employees who have voluntarily left state, cooperative and public enterprises or institutions, are brought to trial and, by the verdict of the people's court, are imprisoned for a term of 2 months to 4 months (here and hereinafter, it was emphasized by me - V. M.). To establish that for absenteeism without a valid reason, workers and employees of state, cooperative and public enterprises and institutions are brought to trial and, by the verdict of the people's court, are punished with corrective labor at the place of work for a period of up to 6 months with a deduction of up to 25% from wages. In this regard, cancel mandatory dismissal for absenteeism without good reason. To propose to the people's courts all the cases referred to in this article to be considered no more than within 5 days and to carry out sentences in these cases immediately. ”Perhaps, from a modern point of view, these measures seem draconian. However, in the conditions of the impending war, six months of corrective labor for absenteeism and even a "term" of 2-4 months for desertion is a more sobering punishment than a punishing one.

So in the "Report" notes that with the introduction of the decree and "in parallel with this work in workshops of a social and educational nature," the number of violations of labor discipline decreased by half.

This was only before the start of the war. Already in July 1941 the number of violations almost doubled again! This process continued in the first quarter of 1942: "cases of violation of labor discipline are consistently increasing from month to month," the document states. At the same time, the main violator was the working youth who came to the plant. At first, even the new Decree of the PVS of the USSR "On the responsibility of workers and employees of military industry enterprises for unauthorized departure from enterprises", issued on December 26, 1941, did not help much to cope with this freemen. Here the sanctions are already stricter - the real term is from 5 to 8 years. But! It's no longer about truancy. They are punished for unauthorized departure from the enterprise, which in the conditions of war is considered as desertion. Moreover, not from everyone, but only from the military, to which the Decree includes enterprises of the aviation and tank industries, weapons, ammunition, military shipbuilding and military chemistry. And also enterprises of other industries serving the military industry on the principle of cooperation. The workers of all these plants and factories are considered mobilized for the period of the war and are assigned for permanent work at the enterprises in which they work.

Let us note that delays are not mentioned in the decrees at all. As for absenteeism, they are still punished mainly with corrections or a short term of imprisonment. By the way, the memo contains a list of those who managed to be on trial for this, including serving ... four or five times! There are, however, few of them.

"I went out because there are no clothes and shoes."

This is a quote from the worker's explanation given in the Report. Many were late because they simply overslept: “I have no watch. They are not in the hostel either. Nobody woke me up. " In addition, as already mentioned, a significant part of the workers lived on the right bank, and went to the plant on the so-called working train, which ran on schedule. And it did not coincide with the opening hours of the stores, which boiled ration cards. Therefore, people faced a choice - either to be in time for work, but leave the family hungry, or to receive food, but be late for the shop. We were also late because of the queues in the canteens - we could not have lunch at the time allotted for this.

As you can see, the bulk of the violations lay not in some exceptional laxity of workers, but in elementary everyday problems.

Although, of course, there were those who refused to go to hard work, referring to real or imaginary ill health, who did not want to work outside their specialty, some simply slept at their workplace (we will dwell on this in more detail a little later), and of course, there were absentees on a drunken business.

Regarding the latter, the "Report" says: "If in the first year of the application of judicial responsibility for violations of labor discipline, there were cases of drunkenness at work, then this is completely lost in subsequent years."

However, the rest of the facts were not left without "organizational conclusions." As such, Lieutenant of the State Security Kulagin is recommended: to provide all hostels with hours and appoint officers on duty who would wake up workers for shifts in advance. Revise the working hours of stores so that employees have time to stock up cards without delays in production, organize the work of canteens, etc. In a word, it is quite an adequate response to the current situation. At the same time - not a word about repressions: imprisonment, arrest, prosecution, and even more so, shoot!

And further. Perhaps I am wrong, but the people, crushed by terrible fear, must behave somehow differently.

Victims of Stalinist repression

What, there, there were repressions. And there were victims too.

In addition to mobilized civilian workers, the plant was also built so-called stroykolnny - militarized construction units, consisting of fighters called up through the military registration and enlistment offices. One of these units was construction column No. 784, which arrived in Ulyanovsk, at the disposal of Trust No. 58 in October 1941.

On the situation in this semi-military unit on August 2, 1942, in a secret letter addressed to the secretary of the Kuibyshev Regional Committee of the CPSU (b) Muratov (Ulyanovsk was then part of the Kuibyshev region), the secretary of the Ulyanovsk City Committee of the CPSU (b) for the defense industry, Artamonov, reported. (F.13, op. 1, d.2028, l.18).

The division was peculiar. It consisted of 634 soldiers. Among them were 45.4% Germans, 40% Ukrainians-Westerners, 10% Poles and Czechs and 5% of other nationalities. For obvious reasons, they did not dare to entrust these people with weapons. And they sent him to the labor front. However, as can be seen from the report, they worked poorly and did not systematically fulfill the production plan. Moreover, in May-June, 64 soldiers deserted from the construction column. This is at the time of war! The reason for the desertion was the complete absence of labor and military discipline.

Although, what else to expect from enemies? Albeit hidden. Under their machine guns and all the cases! This is exactly what the bloody regime should have done, sparing neither strangers, let alone its own. The regime that some claim defeated the fascists by literally filling them with corpses Soviet soldiers... But that's in theory. Now let's see how it really was.

An inspection from the party city committee raided the column and found a complete mess there. “The consumer service was also poor,” the inspectors said in the report. - If linen and clothes were given a relatively sufficient amount, then the fighters were almost not given bed linen throughout the year. So, for example, only 34 sheets were given out, pillowcases on pillows 20 pcs. As a result, the soldiers sleep on bare boards. One of the reasons for the desertion was the fact that some of the fighters live in private apartments and, thanks to this, they are cut off from everyday observation of them. "

The measures to restore order turned out to be quite liberal: one of the oil depots of the NCO oil depot was converted into a temporary hostel. We have established political and educational work among the personnel. Of course, they provided everyone with the proper bedding and established normal food: “A soldier receives four hot meals daily, 800 gr. bread, 18 gr. sugar. At present, the convoy receives vegetables from the subsidiary farm, which are used to feed the fighters in the boiler. " As a result, "The convoy has a well-conducted subscription to the II money and clothing lottery, the subscription has reached an average of 20%, some fighters have subscribed to 30-40% of their earnings." But, most importantly, “labor discipline is currently being established, the number of absenteeism has decreased by 2.5 times, and labor productivity has increased significantly. So, for example, for the II quarter. the construction plan was fulfilled by 106%, for July mts - approximately by 120%. "

As a punitive and preventive measure, one can only consider the fact that "all documents - passports and military cards from the fighters were taken away and kept by the command of the column."

And now about the repressions: “On the former. Column commander Karasev and column commissar Litvak for self-supply and plundering of socialist property, as well as for a number of other outrages - the material was transferred to the Special Department of PRIVO.

The further fate of these commanders is not known. However, it may very well be that they have added themselves to the list of "innocent victims of Stalinist repressions."

And finally, the last, in my opinion, the most striking, most egregious fact of "the atrocities of the bloody communist regime."

The case of "pests"

"Sov. Secret.

Secretary of the Volodarsky District Committee of the CPSU (b)

mountains. Ulyanovsk

Comrade Groshev.

Copy: To the secretary of the party committee of the plant

them. Volodarsky to T. Markov.

30 / V-1942. No. 53

According to the materials available in the city party committee, it was established that in shop number 9 of the plant. Volodarsky, the machines of the 3rd hood systematically fail, and that the failure of the machines occurs for the same reasons. As a result of the check, it was found that in shop No. 9 a group of workers was systematically disabling the machines, including BITYAKOVA Rose, born in 1924, LIVANOVA, Nina Mikhailovna, born in 1925, LEPINOVA and GRIGORIEVA. This group of women workers, by placing the third drawing of iron plates in the feeder of the machine, achieved the failure of the dies or punches.

Through interrogation, it was established that the workers did this with the aim of creating additional rest for themselves at the time when the adjuster would change the damaged part ... ”. (Form 13, op. 1, file 2027, l 16).

Remember the Memorandum? Sleep in the workplace is named in it as one of the main violations of labor discipline. Apparently, the work was so hard that the girls (and the "culprits" are 16-17 years old) were exhausted and looked for any opportunity to take a breath. But what does the "bloody regime" care about? Do this! At the defense plant! In wartime! Deliberate damage to equipment! Pure sabotage and sabotage!

And, most importantly, the "executioners from the NKVD" do not even need to invent anything, they do not need to fantasize and fabricate something, torture someone by beating out testimony. The villains are caught, and they confessed everything. You can display them on loud process with all the cruel consequences arising from the law of wartime. Moreover, the party is already in the know.

But, alas, the ending of this story was not at all in the spirit of the "bloody gebny".

“... The City Party Committee invites you to additionally check the above facts and discuss the culprits at the trade union meeting of the shop.

To demand that the director of the plant be dismissed from the plant for such facts, and at a trade union meeting to raise the issue of their stay in trade union members.

Secretary of the City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for the defense industry Artamonov.

Agree, this is not quite what one would expect from the "cannibalistic Stalinist regime." Or maybe he was not so cannibalistic as he was painted for us for many years?

Let's take a closer look at the archives. And then it will be much more difficult to deceive us again.

I.V. Stalin, thanks to his personal qualities as closely as possible to the deep goals of the Bolshevik government, built on the suppression and exploitation of the masses, became the true Leader of the Soviet state.

All of Stalin's activities were devoted to the service and self-reproduction of the sole form of power of the "leader of the tribe of man-cogs", in which the person's personality was replaced by a function. The very life of a Stalinist man-cog depended on the degree of loyalty to the authorities, the party, personally to the Leader, and on the ability-inability to fulfill the function prescribed by the authorities. The quality of performance of the function determined the social status and quality of life. Soviet man.

The combination of the Soviet administrative-command System of government and the charismatic Leader, free from any social and moral responsibility, created ideal conditions for the functioning of the totalitarian Soviet state and the strengthening of the party-state bureaucratic apparatus, the conductor of the political course of power in life. Stalin managed to form “a special apparatus consisting of people who are devoted, executive and rather impersonal, since any manifestations of individuality, even within the framework of personal devotion to the leader, become dangerous. Finally, this apparatus must be under constant threat: everyone must feel that they can be replaced by another. This is the only way to ensure complete loyalty. "

“By the mid-30s. finally established " nomenclature”, That is, a list of positions for which the approval of the highest party authorities, and therefore Stalin personally, was required. Their financial situation was excellent not only in comparison with the majority of the population, but also in comparison with many statesmen of the pre-October period ”.

The military-mobilization economy, with its planning and distribution mechanism, ensured by the presence of the GULAG, fully corresponded to the era.

The consolidation of the totalitarian regime was facilitated by the ideology of the country's life in a hostile environment and the aggravated expectation of the inevitability of an imminent war with German fascism. There can be no better conditions for intensifying exploitation and repression against the people, and the Stalinist regime took full advantage of the situation.

“A new generation has grown up, eager for politics, for power, for taking office. They came from among those who began to get involved in politics during the years of fighting the opposition. Their consciousness demanded internal enemies, constant struggle. They believed that the places at the top were theirs, while others were not rightfully occupying them. "

“Changing personnel in a totalitarian regime could only go through repression. The reason for them was the murder of S.M. Kirov at the end of 1934 ". “The first result of this murder was repression against all those who survived the“ red terror ”: former nobles, clergymen, officers, merchants, the old intelligentsia. At the same time, a massive purge of the party took place, during which the survivors were obliged to unquestioningly prove their loyalty to the leadership. "

In 1936-1939, political repressions continued with the "great terror" against the "old revolutionaries", against the "red marshals", which resulted in the destruction of 40 thousand officers and ended with the purge of repressive bodies, party and economic leaders, scientists and cultural figures.

In the pre-war years, all social strata of society fell under the "millstones" of Stalin's repressions, fear and the threat of repression suppressed all free-thinking and personal dignity of Soviet people, ensuring the preservation of the regime until the death of the Leader.

The country, under the conditions of totalitarian power, had to go through the trials of the Great Patriotic War and the difficult years of post-war restoration of the national economy.

The structure of the Soviet state, whose main goal was to oppose hostile capitalism, in fact to the rest of the world, could and was "effective" only in conditions of life in a state of war, or in anticipation of war. Peaceful life destroyed the foundations of the state, peace conditions stimulate in the minds of people the desire to improve living conditions, to develop science, technology and economy, which the totalitarian regime cannot provide, which was the reason for the destruction of the Stalinist legacy in the era of the “Khrushchev thaw”.

Results of the Stalin era.

State administration- the totalitarian-repressive model of the personal power of the Leader.

Economic policy- all the resources of the country in the service of the Soviet state (Leader).

Social politics- complete submission to the will of the Leader, nothing else is given.

Domestic policy- bayonet, whip and biscuit.

Living environment- survival in conditions of mass repressions, expectations of war and in conditions of war, in a country destroyed and exhausted by war.

Foreign policy- determination of enemies, search for allies, joint opposition to fascism, determination of a new world order, opposition of political systems.

Human status- soldiers both at the front and in the rear.

7. "Khrushchev thaw".

Partial weakening of the military mobilization economy began during Stalin's lifetime - "the 8-hour working day was restored, annual vacations were canceled, mandatory overtime work was canceled," but still "the main efforts to develop and implement scientific and technical achievements were concentrated in defense industry, which has made a major breakthrough in the nuclear missile field ”. At the end of 1947, the rationing system was abolished, with a simultaneous threefold increase in prices in relation to the pre-war level. This overstatement allowed the authorities in the following years to carry out a centralized reduction in prices, but these measures did not in any way contribute to an increase in the purchasing power of the population, leaving most of the Soviet people in a state of dire need. The government also burdened the workers with annual loans, which constituted the size of a monthly salary, thus, all workers worked for one month a year for free.

“The difficulties of life did not affect only an extremely narrow layer of highly paid scientists, cultural workers, and major production managers. For the highest and middle circles of the party-state apparatus, the introduced by Stalin from the 30s continued to operate. the practice of so-called packages, that is, significant cash payments that did not go through any statements. "

“In cities, communal apartments and barracks have become an integral part of the times. Semi-basements, although expensive pompous administrative buildings were being erected all around. "

In the postwar years, the Gulag continued to function, replenished with prisoners of war of the Soviet army, freed from German captivity and millions of repatriated citizens.

N.S. Khrushchev, coming to power after Stalin's death.

Having made drastic changes in relation to the role of the repressive organs and the GULAG, their place in the new political course of the party, Khrushchev left unchanged the command-administrative system of state leadership and the centralized distribution-planning economy of the socialist type.

All the actions taken, while maintaining the command-administrative System, were determined to fail and were of a temporary nature, for the period of adaptation of the System to existence without the Leader. The authorities again applied a policy of half measures. Having abandoned the people to the development of virgin lands in the steppe regions of the Orenburg region and Kazakhstan, the Central Russian arable lands were left without attention.

Solving the problems of food supply for the country, the authorities decided to abolish the Stalinist restrictions on rural residents. In the collective farms, monetary wages were introduced, the collective farms were allowed to purchase equipment, and the collective farmers began to issue passports. One thing remained untouched by the authorities - the collective farm-state farm system of farming in the countryside, under the watchful supervision of the party-state apparatus. That apparatus, which, for the sake of victorious reports and reports, was ready for any tricks, from "postscripts" to direct violations of laws.

The temporary concessions of Soviet power to the population, which allowed many people to survive in the post-war years, ended in 1959 with another attack on the private ownership of the thoughts of the Soviet people, which resulted in persecution of private subsidiary plots, first of the townspeople, and then of the rural residents. “From 1958 to 1962, the number of cows in the private household was reduced from 22 million to 10 million heads. It was a real defeat for the peasantry, which had just begun to recover from Stalinism. The slogans were sounded again that the main thing is public and not private economy, that the main enemy is “speculators and parasites” who trade in the markets. The collective farmers were expelled from the markets, and the real speculators began to inflate prices. "

During this period, Soviet industry underwent a scientific and technological revolution, begun in the Stalinist era, in response to the nuclear threat from the United States.

The atomic bombing of Japanese cities by the Americans forced Stalin to concentrate the entire scientific and technical potential of the country on creating his own nuclear weapons and rocketry capable of delivering atomic bombs to the American continent. The most Active participation the repressive organs also played a role in the creation of atomic weapons and rocketry, creating the so-called "sharashki" in which convicted scientists and engineers were gathered. The "cold war" that arose between the former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition and the confrontation between systems had a most serious impact on the growth of the country's scientific and technological potential.

Thus, the main reason for the scientific and technological revolution and the development of industry in the USSR was the need to ensure the country's defense capability, and, consequently, to preserve power in the hands of the party and state elite.

The solution of this, the main task for the System, no one and nothing could interfere, including the possible financial costs. The entire economy of the country was mobilized to ensure defense capability and, above all, heavy industry. Once again, the light industry was left outside the scope of the priorities of the Soviet government and, consequently, the residual funding.

The country's super efforts were realized by a breakthrough in nuclear technologies, which made it possible to create an atomic bomb in 1949, build the world's first nuclear icebreaker "Lenin", and open an institute for nuclear research. Even greater results were achieved by Soviet scientists, designers and engineers in the rocket and space industry, thanks to whose efforts the Soviet Union was the first to launch artificial satellite and send the first astronaut to space flight.

Soviet designers and developers of rocket technology solved the main task assigned to them - they provided the country's "nuclear shield" by creating strategic missiles capable of carrying nuclear charges anywhere in the world.

Having got involved in the "arms race", the Soviet government doomed the category B industry, focused on the production of civilian products, to a miserable existence and technological backwardness, and the working people of the country to live in conditions of an all-embracing deficit.

The success of the scientific and technological revolution in the defense industries was achieved thanks to the preservation of the mobilization model of functioning at the enterprises of the military-industrial complex and in specialized research institutes, the allocation of unlimited resources and "chief designers", their strong-willed, professional and personal qualities.

The main merit of the board of N.S. Khrushchev, from a historical point of view, nevertheless, is the debunking of Stalin's "personality cult" and the subsequent disbandment of the GULAG, thereby destroying the holding together of the entire totalitarian system of Soviet power.

The three basic foundations of the Stalinist totalitarian regime - the charismatic Leader, the military mobilization economy and the GULAG - collapsed during the Khrushchev era and, as it turned out, the very coexistence of the socialist form of state structure was impossible.

Partial preservation of the mobilization model in the military-industrial complex made it possible to make a scientific and technical breakthrough and gain leading positions in the rocket and space industry and the nuclear industry. In all other industries, a systemic technological lag behind the capitalist world began.

The new state of the Soviet economy required changes and Khrushchev made an attempt to reform the economy. “The existing super-centralized sectoral ministries, according to Khrushchev, were unable to ensure the rapid growth of industrial production. Instead of them, territorial administrations were established - the councils of the national economy. The very idea of ​​decentralizing economic management for such a huge country initially met with positive responses. However, this reform was presented by its authors as a miraculous one-time act that could radically change the economic situation in the country. "

“A distinctive feature of the reforms of this time was the advancement of deliberately unrealizable goals and objectives,“ voluntarism ”.

“The task was set - in the shortest possible time to catch up and overtake the most developed capitalist countries in production per capita. Looking into the future, N.S. Khrushchev figured that this would happen around 1970. In this sense, Khrushchev repeated the tricks of Lenin and Stalin, who also always claimed that 10-15 years would be enough to achieve this goal.

If in the first years of the development of virgin lands it was possible to significantly increase the volume of grain crops, but a lean 1963 broke out and the Soviet Union began to buy grain abroad. The agricultural policy of the authorities turned the country from the largest grain exporter at the beginning of the century, into a major grain importer, starting from the 60s and up to the beginning of the 21st century.

Khrushchev's attempts to rectify the situation in the country ended in failure. Bread cards appeared again in the country, prices for butter and meat rose, which caused workers to protest in a number of Soviet cities and ended in tragedy in the city of Novocherkassk.

The policy of the “Khrushchev thaw” turned out to be unviable under the conditions of the dominance of socialist principles of state governance.

Results of the "Khrushchev thaw".

State administration- command-administrative system of government.

Economic policy- a planned distribution economy, with a partial emancipation of agriculture and an attempt to decentralize the economy, the formed division of the economy into heavy - group A and light - group B, with the leading role of heavy industry.

Social politics- the propaganda of the advantages of socialism and the promise to catch up and overtake the developed countries in production per capita by 1970.

Domestic policy- rejection of the repressive form of government, stimulation of the scientific and technological revolution in the military-industrial complex, attempts to reform the economy, expansion of cultivated areas through the development of "virgin lands".

Living environment- the expansion of civil liberties, the weakening of the pressure of the repressive authorities, the "emancipation" of the peasantry, the transition to cash wages in agriculture, the transition to the purchase of products from agricultural producers, which caused an increase in prices for butter and meat in cities, mass demonstrations of workers in cities.

Foreign policy- a political demonstration of the advantages of socialism, based on achievements in space exploration and the use of nuclear energy. Feeling of military strength. Formation of the Superpower status. The confrontation between the USSR and the USA, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear catastrophe during the Caribbean crisis.

Human status - a semi-free person.

Stalin period

Stalin period- the period in the history of the USSR when its leader was actually I. V. Stalin. The beginning of this period is usually dated by the interval between the XIV Congress of the CPSU (b) and the defeat of the "right opposition" in the CPSU (b) (1926-1929); the end falls on the death of Stalin on March 5, 1953. During this period, Stalin actually possessed the greatest power, although formally in 1923-1940 he did not hold positions in the structures of the executive power. The propaganda of the Stalinist period pathetically called it the Epoch of Stalin.

The period when Stalin was in power was marked by:

• On the one hand: the forced industrialization of the country, massive labor and front-line heroism, victory in the Great Patriotic War, the transformation of the USSR into a superpower with significant scientific, industrial and military potential, an unprecedented increase in the geopolitical influence of the Soviet Union in the world, the establishment of pro-Soviet communist regimes in Eastern Europe and a number of countries in Southeast Asia;
• On the other hand: the establishment of a totalitarian dictatorial regime, massive repressions, sometimes directed against entire social strata and ethnic groups (for example, deportation Crimean Tatars, Chechens and Ingush, Balkars, Kalmyks, Koreans), violent collectivization, which led at an early stage to a sharp decline in agriculture and famine in 1932-1933, numerous human losses (as a result of wars, deportations, German occupation, hunger and repression), the division of the world community into two warring camps and the beginning of the Cold War.

Period characteristics

An analysis of the Politburo's decisions shows that their main goal was to maximize the difference between output and consumption, which required massive coercion. The growth of the accumulation fund entailed a struggle between various administrative and regional interests for influence on the process of preparing and implementing political decisions. The competition of these interests partially smoothed out the destructive consequences of hypercentralization.

Modern researchers believe that the most important economic decisions in the 1920s were made after open, wide and heated public discussions, through open democratic voting at plenums of the Central Committee and congresses of the Communist Party.

According to Trotsky's point of view, as outlined in his book Revolution Betrayed: What Is the USSR and Where Is It Going ?, the Stalinist Soviet Union was a degenerated workers' state.

Collectivization and industrialization

Real wheat prices in foreign markets fell from $ 5-6 per bushel to less than $ 1.

Collectivization led to a decline in agriculture: according to official data, the gross grain harvest fell from 733.3 million centners in 1928 to 696.7 million centners in 1931-32. The grain yield in 1932 was 5.7 c / ha against 8.2 c / ha in 1913. Gross agricultural production in 1928 was 124% compared to 1913, in 1929 - 121%, in 1930 - 117%, in 1931-114%, in 1932-107%, in 1933-101% Livestock production in 1933 was 65% of the 1913 level. But at the expense of the peasants, the harvest of marketable grain, which is so necessary for the country for industrialization, increased by 20%.

Stalin's policy of industrializing the USSR required more funds and equipment from the export of wheat and other goods abroad. For collective farms, larger plans were established for the delivery of agricultural products to the state. mass famine of 1932-33 , according to historians [ who?], were the result of these grain procurement campaigns. The average standard of living of the population in rural areas until Stalin's death did not reach the indicators of 1929 (according to US data).

Industrialization, which, due to obvious necessity, began with the creation of the basic branches of heavy industry, could not yet provide the market with the goods necessary for the village. The supply of the city through the normal exchange of goods was disrupted, the in-kind tax in kind was replaced by a cash tax in 1924. A vicious circle arose: to restore the balance, it was necessary to accelerate industrialization, for this it was necessary to increase the flow of food, export products and labor from the countryside, and for this it was necessary to increase the production of bread, increase its marketability, create a need in the countryside for the products of heavy industry (machines ). The situation was complicated by the destruction during the revolution of the basis of commercial grain production in pre-revolutionary Russia - large landowners' farms, and a project was needed to create something to replace them.

Breaking this vicious circle could only be done through a radical modernization of agriculture. In theory, there were three ways to do this. One is a new version " Stolypin reform": Support of the kulak, which is gaining strength, the redistribution of the resources of the bulk of the middle peasants' farms in their favor, the stratification of the village into large farmers and the proletariat. The second path is the elimination of the centers of the capitalist economy (kulaks) and the formation of large mechanized collective farms. The third path - the gradual development of individual labor peasant farms with their cooperation at a "natural" pace - by all accounts turned out to be too slow. After the disruption of grain procurements in 1927, when it was necessary to take extraordinary measures (fixed prices, closing markets and even repression), and an even more catastrophic campaign of grain procurements in 1928-1929. the issue had to be resolved urgently. The extraordinary procurement measures in 1929, already perceived as something completely abnormal, caused about 1,300 riots. The path to creating farming through the stratification of the peasantry was incompatible with the Soviet project for ideological reasons. A course was taken towards collectivization. This also presupposed the elimination of the kulaks.

The second cardinal question is the choice of the method of industrialization. The discussion about this was difficult and long, and its outcome predetermined the nature of the state and society. Lacking, unlike Russia at the beginning of the century, foreign loans as an important source of funds, the USSR could industrialize only at the expense of internal resources. An influential group (member of the Politburo NI Bukharin, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars AI Rykov and Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions MP Tomsky) defended the "sparing" option of gradual accumulation of funds through the continuation of the NEP. L. D. Trotsky - forced option. At first, JV Stalin took the point of view of Bukharin, but after Trotsky was expelled from the Central Committee of the party at the end of the year he changed his position to a diametrically opposite one. This led to a decisive victory for the supporters of forced industrialization.

The question of how these achievements contributed to the victory in the Great Patriotic War remains a subject of debate. During the Soviet era, the view was adopted that industrialization and pre-war rearmament played a decisive role. Critics draw attention to the fact that by the beginning of the winter of 1941 the territory was occupied, where 42% of the population of the USSR lived before the war, 63% of coal was mined, 68% of pig iron was smelted, etc. forge not with the help of the powerful potential that was created in the years of accelerated industrialization. " However, the numbers speak for themselves. Despite the fact that in 1943 the USSR produced only 8.5 million tons of steel (compared with 18.3 million tons in 1940), while the German industry this year smelted more than 35 million tons (including captured in Europe metallurgical plants), despite the colossal damage from the German invasion, the industry of the USSR was able to produce much more weapons than the German one. In 1942, the USSR surpassed Germany in the production of tanks 3.9 times, combat aircraft 1.9 times, guns of all types 3.1 times. At the same time, the organization and technology of production were rapidly improving: in 1944 the cost of all types of military products was halved in comparison with 1940. Record military production was achieved due to the fact that the entire new industry had a dual purpose. The industrial resource base was prudently located beyond the Urals and Siberia, while in the occupied territories it was mainly pre-revolutionary industry. The evacuation of industry to the regions of the Urals, the Volga region, Siberia and Central Asia played a significant role. During the first three months of the war alone, 1,360 large (mainly military) enterprises were relocated.

The rapid growth of the urban population has led to a deterioration in the housing situation; the band of "seals" passed again, workers arriving from the village were settled in barracks. By the end of 1929, the rationing system was extended to almost all food products, and then to industrial ones. However, even with the cards it was impossible to get the necessary ration, and in 1931 additional "orders" were introduced. It was impossible to buy groceries without standing in huge queues. According to the data of the Smolensk Party Archives, in 1929 a worker in Smolensk received 600 g of bread a day, family members - 300, fats - from 200 g to a liter of vegetable oil per month, 1 kilogram of sugar per month; the worker received 30-36 meters of calico a year. In the future, the situation (until 1935) only worsened. The GPU noted acute discontent in the working environment.

Changes in living standards

• The average standard of living in the country has undergone significant fluctuations (especially associated with the first five-year plan and the war), but in 1938 and 1952 it was higher or almost the same as in 1928.
• The greatest growth in living standards was among the party and labor elite.
• The standard of living of the overwhelming majority of rural residents, according to various estimates, has not improved or has significantly deteriorated.

The introduction of the passport system in 1932-1935 provided for restrictions for residents of rural areas: peasants were forbidden to move to another area or go to work in the city without the consent of the government of the state farm or collective farm, which thus sharply limited their freedom of movement.

Cards for bread, cereals and pasta were canceled from January 1, 1935, and for other (including non-food) goods from January 1, 1936. This was accompanied by an increase in wages in the industrial sector and an even greater increase in state ration prices for all types of goods. Commenting on the abolition of the cards, Stalin uttered the catch phrase that later became: "Life has become better, life has become more fun."

Overall, per capita consumption rose by 22% between 1928 and 1938. The cards were reintroduced in July 1941. After the war and famine (drought) of 1946, they were canceled in 1947, although many goods remained in short supply, in particular, in 1947 there was another famine. In addition, on the eve of the abolition of the cards, prices for ration goods were raised. The restoration of the economy allowed in 1948-1953. reduce prices repeatedly. The price cuts significantly raised the standard of living of the Soviet people. In 1952, the cost of bread was 39% of the price of the end of 1947, milk - 72%, meat - 42%, sugar - 49%, butter - 37%. As noted at the 19th Congress of the CPSU, at the same time the price of bread increased by 28% in the USA, by 90% in England, in France - more than doubled; the cost of meat in the United States increased by 26%, in England - by 35%, in France - by 88%. If in 1948 real wages were on average 20% lower than the pre-war level, then in 1952 they already exceeded the pre-war level by 25%.

The average standard of living of the population in regions remote from large cities and specializing in crop production, that is, the majority of the country's population, did not reach the indicators of 1929 before the war began.In the year of Stalin's death, the average calorie content of the daily diet of an agricultural worker was 17% lower than the level of 1928 of the year .

Demography during the Stalin period

As a result of hunger, repression and deportation, mortality above the "normal" level in the period 1927-1938. amounted, according to various estimates, from 4 to 12 million people. However, during the 29 years of being in power, the population of the USSR increased by 60 million people.

Stalinist repression

Introduce the following changes to the existing criminal procedure codes of the Union republics for the investigation and consideration of cases of terrorist organizations and terrorist acts against workers of the Soviet government: 1. To complete the investigation of these cases within a period not exceeding ten days; 2. To serve the indictment to the accused one day before the consideration of the case in court; 3. To listen to cases without the participation of the parties; 4. Cassation appeal of sentences, as well as filing petitions for clemency, should not be allowed; 5. The sentence to capital punishment shall be carried out immediately after the sentencing.

The mass terror of the period of "Yezhovism" was carried out by the then authorities of the country throughout the entire territory of the USSR (and, at the same time, on the territories of Mongolia, Tuva and republican Spain controlled by the Soviet regime at that time), on the basis of Yezhov's "lowered into place" identification and punishment of people who harmed the Soviet regime (the so-called "enemies of the people").

In the course of the Yezhovism, torture was widely used against the arrested; sentences that were not subject to appeal (often to execution) were passed without any trial - and immediately (often even before the sentence was pronounced) were carried out; all property of the absolute majority of arrested people was immediately confiscated; the relatives of the repressed were themselves subjected to the same repressions - for the mere fact of their relationship with them; children of the repressed (regardless of their age) left without parents were also placed, as a rule, in prisons, camps, colonies, or in special "orphanages for children of enemies of the people." In 1935, it became possible to bring minors from the age of 12 to capital punishment (execution).

In 1937, 353,074 people were sentenced to death, in 1938 - 328618, in 1939-2601. According to Richard Pipes, in 1937-1938, the NKVD arrested about 1.5 million people, of which about 700 thousand were shot, that is, on average, 1,000 executions a day.

The historian V.N. Zemskov calls a similar figure, claiming that "in the most cruel period - 1937-38 - more than 1.3 million people were convicted, of which almost 700,000 were shot," and in another publication he specifies: “According to documented data, in 1937-1938. 1,344,923 people were convicted for political reasons, of which 681,692 were sentenced to death. " It should be noted that Zemskov personally participated in the work of the commission that worked in 1990-1993. and considered the issue of repression.

As a result of hunger, repression and deportation, mortality above the "normal" level in the period 1927-1938. amounted, according to various estimates, from 4 to 12 million people.

In 1937-1938. Bukharin, Rykov, Tukhachevsky and other political figures and military leaders were arrested, including those who at one time contributed to Stalin's coming to power.

The attitude of representatives of society who adhere to liberal-democratic values, in particular, is reflected in their assessment of the repressions carried out in the Stalin period against a number of nationalities of the USSR: in the Law of the RSFSR of April 26, 1991 No. 1107-I "On the rehabilitation of repressed peoples", signed by the President Of the RSFSR B.N. Yeltsin, it is argued that in relation to a number of peoples of the USSR on state level on the basis of nationality or other affiliation "A policy of slander and genocide was carried out".

War

According to modern historians, arguments about the quantitative or qualitative superiority of German technology on the eve of the war are unfounded. On the contrary, in terms of individual parameters (the number and weight of tanks, the number of aviation), the Red Army grouping along the western border of the USSR significantly exceeded the similar grouping of the Wehrmacht.

Post-war period

Soon after the end of the war, repression was carried out among the highest command personnel. Armed Forces THE USSR. So, in 1946-1948 according to the so-called. A number of major military leaders from the inner circle of Marshal of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov were arrested and put on trial, including Chief Marshal of Aviation A. A. Novikov and Lieutenant General K. F. Telegin.

The ideological split between the communist doctrine of which the USSR was guided and the democratic principles that guided the "bourgeois" countries, forgotten during the war against a common enemy, inevitably came to the fore in international relations and after Winston Churchill's famous Fulton speech, none of the former allies tried to hide this split. The Cold War began.

In the states of Eastern Europe liberated by the Soviet Army, with the open support of Stalin, pro-Soviet-oriented communist forces came to power, later entering into an economic and military alliance with the USSR in its confrontation with the United States and the NATO bloc. Post-war contradictions between the USSR and the USA in the Far East led to the Korean War, in which Soviet pilots and anti-aircraft gunners took a direct part.

The defeat of Germany and its satellites in the war radically changed the balance of power in the world. The USSR turned into one of the leading world powers, without which, according to V.M.Molotov, not a single issue of international life should now be resolved.

However, over the years of the war, the power of the United States has grown even more. Their gross national product rose by 70%, and economic and human losses were minimal. Having become an international creditor during the war years, the United States got the opportunity to expand its economic and political influence to other countries and peoples.

All this led to the fact that instead of cooperation in Soviet-American relations, there was a time of mutual competition and confrontation. The Soviet Union could not but be concerned about the US nuclear monopoly in the early post-war years. America, on the other hand, saw a threat to its security in the growing influence of the USSR in the world. All this led to the beginning of the Cold War.

At the same time, human losses did not end with the war, in which they amounted to about 27 million. The famine of 1946-1947 alone claimed the lives of 0.8 to two million people.

In the shortest possible time, the national economy, transport, housing, destroyed settlements in the former occupied territory were restored.

The state security authorities suppressed the nationalist movements that were actively manifested in the Baltic States and Western Ukraine with tough measures.

The measures taken have led to an increase in grain yield by 25-30%, vegetables - by 50-75%, herbs - by 100-200%.

In 1952, the cost of bread was 39% of the price of the end of 1947, milk - 72%, meat - 42%, sugar - 49%, butter - 37%. As noted at the 19th Congress of the CPSU, at the same time the price of bread increased by 28% in the USA, by 90% in England, in France - more than doubled; the cost of meat in the United States increased by 26%, in England - by 35%, in France - by 88%. If in 1948 real wages were on average 20% lower than the pre-war level, then in 1952 they already exceeded the pre-war level by 25%. In general, during 1928-1952. the greatest growth in living standards was among the party and labor elite, while for the overwhelming majority of rural residents it did not improve or worsened.

Fighting cosmopolitanism

V post-war time massive campaigns began against the departure from the "principle of partisanship", against the "abstract-academic spirit", "objectivism", as well as against "antipatriotism", "rootless cosmopolitanism" and "belittling of Russian science and Russian philosophy."

Almost all Jewish educational establishments, theaters, publishing houses and the media (except for the newspaper of the Jewish Autonomous Region "Birobidzhaner Stern" ( Birobidzhan star) and the magazine "Sovetish Gameland"). Mass arrests and dismissals of Jews began. In the winter of 1953, there were rumors of an alleged deportation of Jews; the question of whether these rumors corresponded to reality is debatable.

Science in the Stalinist period

Whole scientific areas, such as genetics and cybernetics, were declared bourgeois and prohibited, in these areas the USSR, after ten years, could not reach the world level. ... According to historians, many scientists, for example, academician Nikolai Vavilov and others, were repressed with the direct participation of Stalin. Ideological attacks on cybernetics could also affect the development of a closely related field of informatics, but the resistance of the dogmatists was eventually overcome thanks to the position of the military and members of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Culture of the Stalinist period

• List of films of the Stalinist period

• Stalinist architecture ("Stalinist Empire")

Stalin's time in works of art

see also

Literature

Links

Notes (edit)

1. Gregory P., Harrison M. Allocation under Dictatorship: Research in Stalin's Archives // Journal of Economic Literature. 2005. Vol. 43. P. 721. (English)
2. See review: Khlevniuk O. Stalinism and the Stalin Period after the "Archival Revolution" // Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 2001. Vol. 2, No. 2.P. 319. DOI: 10.1353 / kri.2008.0052
3. (unavailable link) Misunderstood NEP. Alexander Mechanic. Discussions about economic policy during the years of monetary reform 1921-1924. Goland Yu.M.
4. M. Geller, A. Nekrich History of Russia: 1917-1995
5. Allen R. C. The standard of living in the Soviet Union, 1928-1940 // Univ. of British Columbia, Dept. of Economics. Discussion Paper No. 97-18. August, 1997. (English)
6. Nouve A. On the fate of the NEP // Questions of history. 1989. No. 8. - P. 172
7. Lelchuk V. Industrialization
8. MFIT Reform of the defense complex. Military bulletin
9. victory.mil.ru Moving the productive forces of the USSR to the east
10. I. Economy - World Revolution and World War - V. Rogovin
11. Industrialization
12. A. Chernyavsky Shot in the Mausoleum. Khabarovsk Pacific Star, 2006-06-21
13. See overview: Demographic modernization of Russia 1900-2000 / Ed. A. Vishnevsky. M .: New publishing house, 2006. Ch. 5.
14. CHRONOLOGY OF THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENTS AND DATES. 1922-1940 World History
15. The national economy of the USSR in 1960. - M .: Gosstatizdat TsSU USSR, 1961
16. Chapman J. G. Real Wages in the Soviet Union, 1928-1952 // Review of Economics and Statistics. 1954. Vol. 36, No. 2.P. 134. DOI: 10.2307 / 1924665 (English)
17. Jasny N. Soviet industrialization, 1928-1952. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.
18. Post-war reconstruction and economic development of the USSR in the 40s - early 50s. / Katsva L. A. Distance course History of the Fatherland for applicants.
19. Popov V. Passport system of Soviet serfdom // New world. 1996. № 6.
20. Nineteenth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Bulletin No. 8, p.22 - M: Pravda, 1952.
21. Wheatcroft S. G. The first 35 years of Soviet living standards: Secular growth and conjunctural crises in a time of famines // Explorations in Economic History. 2009. Vol. 46, No. 1.P. 24. DOI: 10.1016 / j.eeh.2008.06.002 (English)
22. See review: Denisenko M. Demographic crisis in the USSR in the first half of the 1930s: estimates of losses and problems of study // Historical demography. Collection of articles / Ed. Denisenko M.B., Troitskoy I.A. - M .: MAKS Press, 2008. - P. 106-142. - (Demographic Research, issue 14)
23. Andreev E. M., et al., Population of the Soviet Union, 1922-1991... Moscow, Nauka, 1993. ISBN 5-02-013479-1
24. Resolution of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR on December 1, 1934 // SZ USSR, 1934, No. 64, art. 459
25. Repression documents
26. Great Russian Encyclopedia. Volume 4. Great terror.
27. See Explanation to the courts and prosecutors from 04/20/1935 and the previous Resolution of the Central Election Commission and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated 04/07/1935 "On measures to combat juvenile delinquency"
28. STATISTICS OF THE REPRESSIVE ACTIVITIES OF THE SECURITY BODIES OF THE USSR FOR THE PERIOD FROM 1921 TO 1940
29. Richard Pipes. Communism: A History (Modern Library Chronicles), p. 67.
30. Internet vs. TV
31. On the issue of the scale of repression in the USSR // Viktor Zemskov
32. http://www.hrono.ru/statii/2001/zemskov.html
33. Meltyukhov M.I. Stalin's missed chance. The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Europe: 1939-1941. - M .: Veche, 2000. - Ch. 12. The place of the "Eastern campaign" in the strategy of Germany 1940-1941. and the forces of the parties at the start of Operation Barbarossa. - See discussion. tab. 45-47 and 57-58.
34. Lektorsky V.A., Ogurtsov A.P.

In 1991, at the Soviet-American symposium, when our "democrats" began to scream about the "Japanese economic miracle," the Japanese billionaire Heroshi Terawama gave them an excellent "slap in the face": "You are not talking about the main thing, about your leading role in the world. In 1939 you Russians were smart, and we Japanese were fools. In 1949 you became even smarter, and we were still fools. And in 1955 we became smarter, and you turned into five-year-old children. Our entire economic system is almost completely copied from yours, with the only difference that we have capitalism, private producers, and we have never achieved more than 15% growth, while you, with public ownership of the means of production, reached 30% or more. pores ".

* * *

During the Stalinist leadership, for 30 years, an agrarian, impoverished country dependent on foreign capital turned into a powerful military-industrial power on a world scale, into the center of a new socialist civilization. The impoverished and illiterate population of tsarist Russia became one of the most literate and educated nations in the world. By the beginning of the 1950s, the political and economic literacy of workers and peasants not only did not yield, but also exceeded the level of education of workers and peasants of any developed country at that time. The population of the Soviet Union increased by 41 million.

Under Stalin, more than 1,500 major industrial facilities were built, including DneproGES, Uralmash, KhTZ, GAZ, ZIS, factories in Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk, Norilsk, Stalingrad. At the same time, over the past 20 years of democracy, not a single enterprise of this scale has been built. Already in 1947, the industrial potential of the USSR was fully restored, and in 1950 it more than doubled in relation to the pre-war 1940. None of the countries affected by the war had even reached the pre-war level by this time, despite the massive financial injections from the United States.

Prices for basic food items, for 5 post-war years in the USSR, decreased by more than 2 times, while in the largest capital countries these prices increased, and in some even 2 or more times.

This speaks of the tremendous success of the country in which the most destructive war in the history of mankind ended only five years ago and which suffered the most from this war!

In 1945, bourgeois specialists gave an official forecast that the Soviet economy would be able to reach the 1940 level only by 1965, provided that it took out foreign loans. We reached this level in 1949 without any outside help. In 1947, the USSR, the first after the war among the states of our planet, abolished the rationing system. And from 1948 annually - until 1954 - reduced prices for food and consumer goods. Child mortality in 1950 decreased in comparison with 1940 by more than 2 times. The number of doctors increased by 1.5 times. The number of scientific institutions increased by 40%. The number of university students increased by 50%.

The era of Stalin is a short historical period in the entire history of the development of human society, which was characterized by the geometric pace of development of all spheres of human life in a single country. The era of Stalin influenced not only the individual people (Soviet), but also the world as a whole. Stalin always faced the problem of how to ensure the focus of Soviet society on scientific and technological progress, technological improvement - otherwise they would be doubted. It was necessary to involve the whole people in science, to make them realize that only innovative activity and creativity give true pleasure. It was necessary to create powerful "scientific fists", and this was solved by creating science townships, which for decades anticipated the same solution proposed in the United States in the form of university camps or campuses.

It was necessary to create a mechanism of pressure on the directors of socialist enterprises, stimulating them to seek innovations, and this was done in the form of plans to reduce the cost of production. Scientists had to strive to implement their achievements, since only close work with industry allowed them to increase funding for their direction. In addition, the military, who participated in the arms race, were looking for technical solutions. Such a system for stimulating technological progress required the most powerful science and it was created.

Soviet scientists, as a counterbalance to the American atomic baton, handed the socialist state their own Soviet atomic protection and thereby protected the Soviet Union and the whole world from atomic war. The great merit of I.V. Stalin's point lies in the fact that the wise statesman, having precisely determined the limits of the atomic danger, mobilized the creative forces and material resources of the USSR to create a military atom and thereby paralyzed the possibility of unleashing an atomic war. Thanks to this colossal success, the countries and peoples of the world have been out of the world war for many years, even after Stalin's death.

The creation of the nuclear shield also had moral aspects. It was carried out for defense purposes, to protect their state. The Soviet Union never attacked anyone and did not intend to do so. Often Soviet designers, specialists in the field of nuclear physics, were asked by representatives of the journalistic corps: is it moral to have such weapons that destroy all life for many tens of kilometers around?

Here is how Academician Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov, one of the leading physicists of our country, answered such questions in 1988:
“Our bomb did not kill anyone, it prevented a large-scale atomic fire. In fact, Churchill's speech at Fulton was already a call for a nuclear war against us. Then a plan for such a war was developed and approved by the President of the United States. The date of the atomic attack on the USSR is 1957. On the territory of our country it was planned to detonate a total of 333 atomic bombs and destroy 300 cities. "

When the state is threatened with war, using the technique of mass destruction, the duty of the scientist is to help the people meet the enemy with the same or more advanced weapons. The use of weapons against an attacking enemy is the law of defense of peace-loving states. The study of the properties of the atom and its practical application in the Soviet Union was pursued by another consideration: to achieve the use of the gigantic energy of the atom for peaceful purposes, in the operation of nuclear power plants, in means of air and water transportation, and the mastery of outer space.

Since 1952, the United States of America has been a catching-up party. Only in March 1954 they conducted tests on the coral atoll Bikini (Marshall Islands) hydrogen bomb, the victims of which were thousands of aboriginals of the islands of Japan, Micronesia and Polynesia. Giving feelings of gratitude to the Leninist party, the Soviet government and Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, who with their cares saved the people of the Soviet Union and the whole world from the threat nuclear war, peoples of the USSR and the Russian Federation.

The heyday of science under Stalin

Realizing his grandiose plan, Stalin achieved remarkable successes. The scientific infrastructure created at that time was not inferior to the American one. And this is in a poverty-stricken country destroyed by war. The network of fundamental and applied research institutes, design bureaus and university laboratories covered the entire front of research. Scientists have become the country's true elite. The names of Kurchatov, Landau, Tamm, Keldysh, Korolev, Tupolev are known all over the world. The post-war decade was characterized by the growth of the prestige of scientific and teaching work. The salary of the rector increased from 2.5 thousand to 8 thousand rubles, professor of doctor of sciences from 2 thousand to 5 thousand rubles, associate professor, candidate of sciences with 10 years of experience from 1200 to 3200 rubles ... In these years, the ratio of the salary of the assistant professor , candidate of sciences and skilled worker was approximately 4 to 1, and professors, doctors of sciences 7 to 1. Domestic scientists and university teachers did not have such a level of remuneration in subsequent years, because after Stalin, with a constant rise in prices, salary increases for other categories of employees the work of scientists and teachers has remained unchanged for over 40 years.

Stalin attached particular importance to the most advanced areas of science and technology, which brought the USSR to a qualitatively new level of development. So, in 1946 alone, Stalin personally signed about sixty important documents that determined the development of nuclear science and technology, rocketry. The result of the implementation of these decisions was not only the creation of the country's nuclear shield, but also the launch of the world's first satellite of the Earth in 1957, the launching in 1957 of the world's first nuclear icebreaker "Lenin" and the subsequent development nuclear power... In addition, oil deposits were discovered in the Volga region, a huge work began on the construction of power plants as the first stage for the transition to mass housing construction.

Take 1946. The country had not yet recovered from the war, many cities and villages lay in ruins. But the Soviet leadership was well aware of the importance of computing. In that year, work began on the creation of computers. 1949 year. The first Soviet computer (MESM) was launched. It was the first computer in Europe and the second in the world. The first working computer was created in the United States in 1946. There are about 200 states in the world, of which only two were capable of creating computers - the USSR and the USA. About two dozen more countries participated in the development of other people's projects or made computers under license. The rest could not even do that. I mean exactly the manufacture of computers, and not an assembly from ready-made elements. Almost everyone who understands technology can assemble a personal computer in his apartment. After the war, the restoration of universities in the occupied zone was completed by the end of the 40s. In cities affected by the war, universities were transferred to large buildings in Minsk, Kharkov, Voronezh. Universities began to be actively created and developed in the capitals of a number of union republics (Chisinau, Ashgabat, Frunze, etc.), and by 1951 all union republics had their own universities. In 5 years, the first part of the Moscow State University complex on the Lenin Hills was erected.

If on the eve of the war in the USSR there were 29 universities, where 76 thousand students studied, then in 1955, 185 thousand students and 5 thousand graduate students were educated at 33 universities, about 10% of all students in the country. That is, there were a total of 1 million 850 thousand students in the country. Whole graduates of physicists, chemists, mechanics were distributed after graduation to prestigious research institutes and closed design bureaus. Therefore, there was a passion for scientific work. Student scientific societies developed intensively. A powerful system has grown during the Soviet years high school... If in the field of science in 1913 there were 13 thousand workers in Russia, then before the collapse of the Soviet system in 1991 their number reached 3 million.

What we call the "Stalinist Academy" emerged in the first half of the 1930s. At this time, a unified centralized system of control over the effectiveness of scientific work was created at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The centralized management of scientific research was expressed in the fact that the topics of scientific work carried out in research institutes had to be approved no lower than in the Presidium of the Academy. The same was true for issues related to budget size, recruitment and deadlines. The planning and control of scientific work was carried out by analogy with the planning and control of industrial production. The funds to be spent on research were approved at least one year in advance. If during the year there was an unscheduled need to purchase new equipment or materials necessary for research, it was extremely difficult to do this, but it was possible to agree on the use of equipment and reagents with other institutes and laboratories.

One of the most rigid principles of the organization of Stalinist science was the requirement for its close connection with practice. The main tasks of the USSR Academy of Sciences were the country's practical needs for new knowledge. Such an organization was optimal from the point of view of administrative centralized management, since it provided clear criteria for determining the "effectiveness" of a scientist's work, but it somewhat negatively affected the ability of scientists to deal with problems that are difficult to plan with an accuracy of up to a month. The archives preserved several letters from scientists to the Presidium of the Academy and to the Central Committee of the CPSU, in which attention was drawn to this organizational flaw.

The resolution of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory activist dated May 13, 1955 stated: “Applications for equipment, in all details, should be drawn up for the next year in June of this year. The researcher must foresee what he needs in a year and a half! As a result, everyone is trying to include in the application everything that is conceivable as necessary for work, and unnecessary supplies of materials are in the warehouses of institutions, which are not enough in other places. " This problem could easily be solved by transferring part of orders to cash or by creating special supply organizations, similar to Western firms serving science, but Khrushchev took a different path - he “reformed” (or rather destroyed) the established system.

By the early 1950s. the situation has become even more complicated, since in the two decades since the introduction of the Stalinist system, the number of divisions of the Academy of Sciences has increased many times over. In the mid-1950s. The USSR Academy of Sciences was experiencing a peak in quantitative growth. From 1951 to 1956 the Academy grew in number of members - from 383 to 465; by the number of scientific institutions - from 96 to 124; by the number of scientific workers - from 7 thousand to 15 thousand people. It became difficult for the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences to carry out coordination work as effectively as before. This was the reason that the members of the Presidium themselves in 1953-1954. began to come up with proposals to transfer part of the management powers to the branches of the Academy of Sciences.

Why did Stalin manage to lead the country from the era of the wooden plow to the era of the hydrogen bomb and space exploration? The "Father of Nations" realized that without the creation of elite scientific zones, where the scientific "brain" of the nation, provided with an extremely high standard of living, would be concentrated, it would not lead the country onto the main road of technical progress. The leader began to build academic cities, throwing huge funds on it and keeping the country on a modest allowance. Now these academic towns in Russia, according to the new fashion, are being renamed into "technoparks", of which there are supposedly about 80 on the territory of present-day Russia (about 600 in the world).

So, trying to create a self-sufficient system for the stable and independent development of Russia, Stalin put a lot of effort into the creation of Soviet science, and most importantly, into the creation of such a system of interaction between science and production, in which science would be needed in order for production to fulfill the plan and ensure the survival of Russia. in her competition with the West.

In the factory yard. Signing an appeal in defense of peace

Installation of new equipment

State Bearing Plant (GPZ-1)

State Bearing Plant (GPZ-1)

Klavdiya Emelyanova, inspector of quality control department

State Bearing Plant (GPZ-1)

The foreman of the assembly shop V. Perepechin (right) hands over the mortar pumps to the control foreman N. Sergeev

State Bearing Plant (GPZ-1) was established in 1932

KIM-10 car "Moscow plant of small cars" (MZMA)

"Moscow plant of small cars" (MZMA)

The first cars of 1953

1953 year. At the finishing area

Moscow 1953. Mosaic Workshop of the Combine

The monumental artists K.K.Sorochenko and L.E. Khayutina are collecting a mosaic panel

The author of the project A. V. Mizin discusses the mosaic panel with the monumental artists

Installation of a panel at the Kievskaya-Koltsevaya station

Finishing work at the Kievskaya-Koltsevaya station

The head of the site E.I. Solomatin and the foreman I.S. Shirenko check the installation of the mosaic panel

Mosaic "Leninskaya Iskra"

Mosaic "Friendship of Russian and Ukrainian collective farmers"

Mosaic "Liberation of Kiev by the Soviet Army, 1943"

Mosaic "1905 in Donbass"

Mosaic "Pereyaslavl Rada 8 \ 18 January 1654"

Mosaic "Battle of Poltava 1709"

Mosaic "Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Nekrasov and Shevchenko in St. Petersburg"

Pano-mosaic "Proclamation of Soviet power by V. I. Lenin, October 1917"

Mosaic "Struggle for Soviet power in Ukraine"

Mosaic "Festivities in Kiev"

Mosaic "Tractor brigade of the first MTS"

Mosaic "Victory Salute in Moscow"

Mosaic "Kalinin and Ordzhonikidze at the opening of Dneproges"

Mosaic "The Commonwealth of Peoples is the basis of the power of the Socialist Motherland"

Fitters A.P. Ivanov and A.I.Sizov install a plaque with the name of the station

Komsomolskaya

Moscow 1970s. Mayakovskaya metro station

Signing an appeal in defense of peace

At the bookstore in the house of car manufacturers

In the assembly shop of the elevator plant. In 1958, on the basis of the Lift plant, the Stankolinia plant was created for the production of automatic lines and special machines for processing parts such as bodies of revolution. In January 2010, machine tool production was stopped.

Driller of the Komsomol member Raya Yudokhina at the pre-May labor watch. Engine shop

Sergey Minaev

Assembling the power unit of an electric overhead crane

In the press shop stakhanovka N. Khoroshilova at work. For excellent work N. Khoroshilov is included in the factory book of honor

Preparation of the concrete pump for shipment to the consumer

In the factory yard. Preparation of products for shipment to consumers. Rostokinsky plant of construction machines

On the pre-May watch on April 25, 1952
In the mechanical workshop of the Compressor plant

At the assembly of a road bridge crane

Setting up an automatic watch making machine

1954 year. Challenge with a friend. The Sokolniki Culture and Leisure Park hosted a competition of the best certified dogs in general training techniques

State Bearing Plant (GPZ-1)