“I cleaned 14,000 chekists, but… you never cleaned”

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"Я почистил 14 000 чекистов, но… мало почистил"

Dmitry Petrov about why today so quiet monuments to the victims, and so loud — the executioners.

Recently, host of the popular talk show said: “Every time we come to the shadow of the “Great terror”, I don’t like”. And who’ll love? Would be better if there was a shadow of greater freedom. But whether we like it or not, and in 100 years after the October revolution, and after 80 after 1937, the shadow is here again with us.

Last week, almost unnoticed was the opening of the memorial to the victims of repressions of the 30-ies at the Butovo firing range in Moscow. The monument, called “Garden of remembrance”, made in the form of the open ditch, down which visitors be at the level of these shootings ditches, in which are the remains of dead people here. The slabs are carved the names of 20 thousand 762 people executed and buried in this horrible place, which is also called Russian Golgotha.

Here shot 50 employees of the Institute. Academics. Teachers. 214 associate professors of Moscow universities. Killed by a bullet in the back of the balloon. Pilots. Test pilots. 372 employee trusts, and factories. Director mills. Engineers. Eliminated the entire people’s Commissariat of the fuel industry. Coal miners. The gas companies. Energy. 156 employees of the defense industry. Put up against the wall of the head of the polar station on the Franz Joseph. The chief of the Moscow underground — to the wall. Head of Rublev’s hospital — to the wall. Killed a doctors. Shot Mosgorspravka — all…

At the opening of the Butovo memorial Natalia Solzhenitsyn reminded of a line Twardowski: “Who hides the past jealously, he is unlikely to be with the future in harmony”. Indeed,

why today so quiet, as if even a little shamefully, the country opened up monuments to the victims, and loudly, with a call — executioners?

In our time the names of the victims and perpetrators is available in the media and databases. The researchers discuss in detail their biographies and actions, are increasingly making it clear that often the victim before she participated in the killings. Sometimes over the party comrades, colleagues or friends.

80 years ago — June 11, 1937 — at a meeting of the Special bench of the Supreme Court trial took a number of the higher ranks of the red Army led by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky. A place at the judges ‘ table — a number of other ranks of the same army, who knew people from the first row.

So those whose profession is to protect the Homeland, turned into victims and executioners.

From the first row survived not one. From the second — Marshal Budyonny, Shaposhnikov, commander and military lawyer Ulrich. Other were executed as traitors and spies (exactly the same what they tried), or found a home with a bullet in the head. Affected a total of 40,000 military, including three marshals of the Soviet Union.

Along the way, were the rotation of the executioners. The head of the OGPU Genrikh Yagoda prepared the first Great Moscow trial of the leaders of the party of the time of the October revolution and the first years of Soviet power, that at the time of the struggle for power in the CPSU(b) were in opposition to Stalin. Almost all of them confessed to the plot. And all of them died.

It would seem that the Berry process counts. But in March 1937 he was sitting. A year later, on the third Moscow process, sentenced and executed. It reveals, first Deputy, Yakov agranov. But it was soon liquidated.

The turn — Nikolai Yezhov. Removing the Berries, he killed in the winter of 1940, for the preparation of the overthrow of Stalin. Although he repented in another: “I cleaned 14,000 chekists, but… it’s my fault that a little cleaned up.” Successor Yezhov and Lavrenty Beria very “clean”, 24 December 1954. Followed by hundreds of his henchmen.

Do not forget the second Moscow trial in 1937, the members of the “parallel Trotskyite center.” 13 of them were executed. For conspiracy, sabotage and espionage.

What unites these figures? The fact that they, like millions of less prominent victims, acknowledged themselves to be the enemies of government, which they themselves have created. Pests and spyware. Which, as it turned out after, they were not. Just was unnecessary in the Stalinist machine.

Remember the most famous. Bukharin, the theoretician of Soviet construction, the head of “Izvestia”, the author of the 1936 Constitution. Zinoviev in 1917, a neighbor of Lenin at the hut in Razliv “revolutionary dictator” of Petrograd, the chieftain of world revolution. Kamenev, head of the Moscow city Council, member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. Radek, a prominent publicist and master of special operations of the Comintern. Rykov — famous revolutionary, the head of the CPC, member of the Politburo.

Thousands of Communists all ranks killed “faithful disciple of Lenin” and “father of Nations”.

The Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig (in the 20’s enchanted USSR) wrote to Romain Rolland: “the veterans of the Revolution were shot like mad dogs… The same technique as that of Hitler, Robespierre: the ideological differences referred to as “conspiracy.” It is true that in a democracy the topic of discussion, when totalitarianism — the reason for the penalty.

Including journalists and writers — from Koltsov to Babel. Economists from Kondratieff to ascension. Managers — from Gasteva to Yermansky. Of the 99 arrests of academics killed 44: 23 were executed, and 13 died in prison, 8 in the link. 55 came and died on the outside. One sent (A. A. Kiesewetter). Who was sitting a few days, as Vernadsky. Someone 10 or more years as a Koshlyakov. Who, as Hrushevsky, under house arrest until the end of days.

And the workers and peasants ruined quietly. The writer Mikhail Shishkin talks about it simply: “Grandfather took in the 30-m during the collectivization. He was not a fist, but said, “Why take the only cow? What I’m going to feed two kids?”. All podkolonnik. …And my father all his life, instead of to write in the questionnaires, “the father — the enemy of the people”, wrote “my father died”. Such stories — thousand. The tens of thousands.

So power was introduced to the masses a flair for traitors. Here they are — in orders amid the banners. Their portraits on the red square. And tomorrow (or tonight): BAM, they are enemies of the people. That area goes. And there, and the people I send to dig canals, cut timber, and a hollow stone — to wear in camp dust. What is their fault? They do not know themselves. But those that free, admit guilty. Because — vigilance!

Vigilance! Vigilance! — drive citizen. And he watches the neighbor, listening to him whisper. And then — “unraveling the tangle of crimes”. And lo and behold — exempt housing. Which you can take.

As the housekeeper of the academician Tarle, when in 1930 he took on the “Case.” And how many condemned in the “Case of the industrial party”, “Shakhty”, “Labour peasant party”, the “Union Bureau of Mensheviks” and many less visible cases. And the President of the Academy of Sciences — “wingless liberal” Alexander Karpinsky was still trying to protect sitting fellow academics…

But by the late 30’s issue “of whether to participate in the persecution?” is not worth it. Silent? Not stigmatized? So soon will sing: “go to the North — term is huge.” And the actors, ushers and the miners in unison angrily stigmatized someone is told: “to unravel the tangle of crimes!”, “Mad dogs be shot!”, “Severe punishment to the wicked!”

And someone feels: that tomorrow can be demanded for him. So, today, must demand it. Fear — wild force.

…The anger of the country in one roaring the word.
I pronounce it: execution.
Shoot the traitors of the Motherland…
To shoot for our life.
And in the name of happiness is to destroy.

These lines Victor Gusev, published in the “Literary Gazette,” March 5, 1938. A little more than a year before in “news” — “Traitors” Nikolay Zabolotsky. Merciless sarcasm of the story. Two weeks after the publication of Gusev Zabolotsky was arrested. It will be released in 1943. And Guseva jail passes…

There are three things that are worth to highlight, exploring “the Great terror” or “Stalinist repression”:
1) they were not purely Stalinist;
2) they solved a number of problems;
3) and all these problems solved.

Now more detail. About Stalin. The instigator of the mischief knew them vigorously and creates a Legion of performers — kill and steal the peasants; taking, tortured, executed, imprisoned scientists, experts, and citizens. People approve, poets sing. And the victim could be anyone. So now the victims — all.

“The most terrible — not the fact that you were suddenly taken from a warm, strong life, Kolyma and Magadan and forced labor”, and “primitive struggle for life. The worst thing — the meaninglessness of what is happening,” writes Evgenia Ginzburg in “Steep route”. And not just caught in the grind of terror, but also about living as if at liberty.

This is one of the objectives of repression: set home the law in prison. To kill will and civic conscience, heart-rending struggle for life.

Further: to make the repression node of the system — the industry of terror (because “horror” in Russian means “terror”). Its employees serve as a powerful machine of investigation and control. Their sea — neither to dissolve nor to fire, without causing mass unemployment. Next: wean “sheep” to argue with the authorities and even to think about it. To make a denunciation of the norm, and submission lifestyle.

Figuratively speaking: to make nails from thousands of people. And other to drain into fixed silent monolith. “Tough mortar special cement, designed for thousands of centuries”, as in the poetry of Alexander Twardowski.

And — managed. To create one in fear and obedience to a society where, as he wrote Julius Kim, “no whispering, no murmuring, but the space for the stamping, and rattling, and knocking…”

But already in the 60-70-ies went exceptions. 80s it shook. Even after 25 years people, at least got them beat, learned how to protest and vote in the municipal elections against the “party of power”.

But the image of subordination is intact. He overshadows the future development of the country and society the shadow of the great terror. “It is, as Mayakovsky wrote, — do not drive around or walk around”, but there is hope: a new generation, to avoid parenting by fear, will dismantle it on Souvenirs. As the Berlin wall. But it is too long seemed indestructible.

 

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