1937 the vast majority of Soviet people perceived as part of the happy pre-war times.

So, G.K. Zhukov wrote in his memoirs: “ Each time of peace has its own characteristics, its own flavor and its own charm. But I would like to say a kind word about the time before the war. It was distinguished by a unique, peculiar uplifting mood, optimism, some kind of spirituality and at the same time efficiency, modesty and simplicity in people’s communication. Well, very well we started to live»!

And life itself provided serious grounds for this, both in the field of material and spiritual development of the country.

1937 was the year of the twentieth anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. He seemed to be summing up the twenty years of existence of the world's first state of workers and peasants. And the results were very successful. This year the second five-year plan ended, radically transforming the appearance of the country.

During the second five-year plan, the USSR overtook Great Britain and France in terms of production of iron, steel, and electricity. The USSR was ahead of all capitalist countries in terms of growth rates. Stalin remarked about this: “ Our industry has grown in comparison with pre-war level more than nine times, while the industry of the main capitalist countries continues to stagnate around the pre-war level, exceeding it by only 20-30 percent».

During the years of the Second Five-Year Plan, 4,500 new large industrial enterprises were built. Mechanical engineering developed especially quickly - its output increased almost 3 times instead of 2.1 times according to plan.

The production of ferrous metallurgy tripled, and the production of electric steel increased by 8.4 times; In terms of electric steel production, the USSR overtook all capitalist countries. Copper smelting increased more than 2 times, aluminum - 41 times; an industry was created for the production of nickel, tin, magnesium.

The output of the chemical industry tripled, and new major industries emerged for the production of synthetic rubber, nitrogen and potassium fertilizers. 80% of all industrial output was obtained from enterprises that were new or radically reconstructed during the 1st and 2nd Five-Year Plans.

The USSR turned into a powerful industrial country, economically independent from the capitalist world and providing the national economy and the Armed Forces with new equipment and weapons.

The decisive victory won by the Soviet people in the field of industry made it possible to finally eliminate the country's former dependence in technical and economic terms on the advanced capitalist countries. The USSR now fully provided its industry, agriculture and defense needs with the necessary equipment.

Import stopped tractors, agricultural machines, steam locomotives, carriages, cutters and many other machines and mechanisms. During the years of the Second Five-Year Plan, dozens of new cities appeared and old ones were rebuilt.

Describing Moscow in 1937 in his book, Lion Feuchtwanger wrote: “ Everywhere they are constantly digging, digging, knocking, building, streets disappear and appear; What seemed big today, tomorrow seems small, because suddenly a tower appears nearby - everything flows, everything changes».

The collectivization of agriculture was completed. Collective farms united 93% of peasant households and had over 99% of all sown areas. Major successes were achieved in technical equipment and in the organizational and economic strengthening of collective farms. 456 thousand tractors, 129 thousand combines, 146 thousand trucks worked in agriculture. Cultivated area increased from 105 million hectares in 1913 to 135.3 million hectares in 1937.

The welfare of workers has improved. The number of workers and employees in 1937 reached 26.7 million people; their salary fund increased 2.5 times. The cash income of collective farms increased 3 times.

By 1937, for 20 years of Soviet power illiteracy was completely eliminated(in 1930-32 alone, 30 million people studied in educational schools). In 1930, universal compulsory primary education was introduced in rural areas and seven-year education in cities and workers' towns. in the languages ​​of 70 nationalities. Between 1929 and 1937, 32 thousand schools were built.

1937 is also June 18 - 20 - the world's first non-stop flight of Heroes of the Soviet Union V.P. Chkalov, G.F. Baidukov and A.V. Belyakov along the route Moscow - Portland (USA) through the North Pole; this is July 15 - the opening of the Moscow Canal; December 12 - the first elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR under the new Stalinist Constitution; 1937 - 1938 - work of the 1st Soviet drifting scientific station (I.D. Papanin, P.P. Shirshov, E.K. Fedorov, E.T. Krenkel) in the ice of the Arctic Ocean near the North Pole; this is also the popularly celebrated centenary of the death (1837 - 1937) of A.S. Pushkin - numerous performances, films, books were reminiscent of Tsar Saltan, Tsarevich Guidon, the Golden Cockerel, Prince Elisha, Balda and other characters from Pushkin’s fairy-tale world; Vera Mukhina created the immortal sculpture “Worker and Collective Farm Woman”; in music it is Dmitri Shostakovich's 5th symphony; in opera, ballet, and performing arts, let’s name only one incomparable Ulanova.

What is “North Pole” (“SP-1”)? This is the world's first Soviet polar research drifting station. On February 13, 1936 in the Kremlin, at a meeting on the organization of transport flights, O.Yu. Schmidt outlined the developed plan for an air expedition to the North Pole and the establishment of a station in its area.

Based on the plan, Stalin and Voroshilov adopted a government decree instructing the Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Route (Glavsevmorput) to organize an expedition to the North Pole region in 1937 and deliver there by plane the equipment of the scientific station and winterers. Management was entrusted to O.Yu. Schmidt. The official opening of SP-1 took place on June 6, 1937 (near the North Pole).

Composition: station manager Ivan Dmitrievich Papanin, meteorologist and geophysicist Evgeny Konstantinovich Fedorov, radio operator Ernst Teodorovich Krenkel, hydrobiologist and oceanographer Pyotr Petrovich Shirshov.

The SP-1 station, created in the area of ​​the North Pole, after 9 months (274 days) of drifting south, was carried out into the Greenland Sea, the ice floe floated more than 2000 km. The icebreaking steamships “Taimyr” and “Murman” picked up four winterers on February 19, 1938, beyond the 70th latitude, several tens of kilometers from the coast of Greenland.

The scientific results obtained in the unique drift were presented to the General Meeting of the USSR Academy of Sciences on March 6, 1938 and were highly appreciated by specialists. The scientific staff of the expedition were awarded academic degrees. Ivan Dmitrievich Papanin and Ernest Teodorovich Krenkel received the title of Doctor of Geographical Sciences. For the outstanding feat accomplished for the glory of Soviet science and in the development of the Arctic, four polar explorers were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. This title was also awarded to pilots A. D. Alekseev, P. G. Golovin, I. P. Mazuruk and M. I. Shevelev.

But 1937 was very far from an idyll. This includes Italy’s entry into the Anti-Comintern Pact on November 6, 1937, the riots provoked by the Nazis in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia on October 17, the merger of fascist groups in Hungary into the National Socialist Party on October 16, Hitler’s meeting with Mussolini in September 1937 and other events that were clear harbingers of the coming world war.

Soviet Government, I.V. Stalin understood the terrible danger that threatened the state of workers and peasants. Everything possible was done to strengthen the socialist state: this included accelerated industrialization, self-reliance, and numerous (alas, unsuccessful) attempts to consolidate the “democratic” countries of Western Europe for future confrontation with the Nazi bloc; These include tough measures to strengthen the country’s rear, destroy the “fifth column” and possible traitors.

On January 23, 1937, the trial of Karl Radek and 16 other prominent communists, accused of organizing a conspiracy involving Trotsky, Germany and Japan, takes place in Moscow. Radek and three other defendants were sentenced to prison, and the rest were sentenced to death.

The German writer Lion Feuchtwanger, who was present at the Moscow trial, wrote: “ The people who stood before the court could in no way be considered tortured, desperate creatures. The accused themselves were sleek, well-dressed men with relaxed manners. They were drinking tea, newspapers were sticking out of their pockets...

In general, it looked more like a discussion... conducted in the tone of a conversation by educated people. It seemed as if the accused, the prosecutor and the judges were all passionate about the same, I almost said sporting, interest in finding out with the maximum degree of accuracy everything that happened.

If a director had been entrusted with staging this trial, he would probably have needed many years, many rehearsals to achieve such teamwork from the accused.”

Treason also made its way into the army. In June, several military leaders in the USSR were arrested on charges of collaboration with Germany, put on trial and executed. That there was a conspiracy in the Red Army Churchill, Hitler and Goebbels knew.

In his memoirs Churchill noted that there was a conspiracy So what " this was followed by a ruthless, useful purge among the military and politicians in Soviet Russia…».

Goebbels wrote in his diary, shortly before committing suicide: “ Stalin carried out this reform in a timely manner(purge in the army) and therefore now enjoys its benefits…».

Looking back at 1937, at the events that happened eighty years ago, only now do you understand with all clarity how deep the penetration of I.V. Stalin, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the Soviet Government into the essence of the foreign policy and domestic political situation in 1937 and in subsequent years. Only this, this deep understanding, and ensured the victory of “Worker and Collective Farm Woman” over Hitler’s swastika, victory in the Great Patriotic War, guaranteed the Soviet country’s survival and the prospect of further peaceful development.

You will be mistaken if you decide that this is the end of the assessment of the role of 1937 in Soviet history. No, far from it! Since 1956, starting with the slanderous report of N.S. Khrushchev at the 20th Congress, which marked the victory of the counter-revolution, a new stage begins, the stage of pouring mud over both 1937 and the entire Stalin era, covering it with black paint.

The main tool of this work for decades was slander, falsification, lies, lies completely in the Goebbelsian spirit- the more blatant the lie, the more likely it is to be believed. Let's look at a few typical examples of the lies of the “democrats”.

One of the “offences” accused of Stalin by his critics is the words about “cogs”, with which he once compared people. Today's opponents accuse him of this statement as almost one of the most important sins. And they claim that this comparison already expresses the highest degree of disrespect and contempt for the one who was called a “cog.”

And the most interesting thing is that Stalin really said this. More precisely, something similar. Yes, he actually used this comparison. The question is that all this kind of myths are created this way: they take something that really happened, and weaves into something that was not or it was not like that at all.

Stalin spoke about “cogs” on June 25, 1945, at a gala reception in the Kremlin in honor of the Victory of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany. And the following was said:

“Don't think I'll say anything out of the ordinary. I have the simplest, ordinary toast. I would like to drink to the health of people who have few ranks and an unenviable title. For the people I consider ut"cogs" of the great state mechanism, but without which we all- marshals and commanders of fronts and armies, - roughly speaking, we're not worth a damn. Any “cog” goes wrong and it’s over.

I raise a toast to simple, ordinary, modest people, to the “cogs” who keep our great state mechanism in a state of activity in all branches of science, economics and military affairs. There are a lot of them, their name is legion, because they are tens of millions of people.

These are modest people. Nobody writes anything about them, they have no title, few ranks, but these are the people who hold us up, like the foundation holds the top. I drink to the health of these people, our dear comrades».

This is how the TRUTH is transformed by enemies into a LIE.

There is probably not a single “democrat”, liberal, or, simply put, anti-Soviet, who would not kick “this monster” - Andrei Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky for his words “RECOGNITION IS THE QUEEN OF EVIDENCE.”

For those to whom the name Vyshinsky does not mean anything, it is worth recalling that this is the chief prosecutor in the political trials of the 30s, who allegedly successfully introduced the postulate “CONFESSION IS THE QUEEN OF EVIDENCE” into Soviet legal theory and practice.

In fact this phrase was used in ancient Rome. Queen of evidence (Latin - Regina probationum) - this is how in Roman law they called the admission of guilt by the defendant himself, which makes all other evidence, evidence and further investigative actions unnecessary.

Vyshinsky himself, as follows from his work “The Theory of Judicial Evidence in Soviet Law”, had the exact opposite opinion:

“It would be a mistake to give the accused or the defendant, or rather, their explanations, more importance than they deserve... In fairly distant times, in the era of dominance in the process of the theory of so-called legal (formal) evidence, the revaluation of the significance of the confessions of the defendant or the accused reached to such an extent that the accused’s admission of guilt was considered an immutable, unquestionable truth, even if this confession was wrested from him by torture, which in those days was almost the only procedural evidence, in any case considered the most serious evidence, the “queen of evidence” (regina probationum).

This principle is completely unacceptable for Soviet law and judicial practice.

Indeed, if OTHER circumstances established in the case prove the guilt of the person brought to justice, then the consciousness of this person loses the value of evidence and in this regard becomes redundant.

Its significance in this case can be reduced only to being the basis for assessing certain moral qualities of the defendant, for reducing or increasing the punishment determined by the court.”

What is the main thing in the technique of lying on A.Ya used here? Vyshinsky? There is only one thing - relying on our laziness, our gullibility, but we must act completely differently - everything, even what seems to us to be the ultimate truth, must be checked, verified by independent sources, carefully compared and thought through.

Political processes of 1937 - what do foreigners say about them? The trials were attended by dozens, if not hundreds of correspondents from Western newspapers, and numerous representatives of the diplomatic corps.

Here is the opinion of the US Ambassador to the USSR in 1936-1938. Joseph W. Davis:

« The defendants appear physically healthy and quite normal. The procedure is very different from that adopted in America, however, given the fact that the nature of people is the same everywhere, and based on our own experience as lawyers, we can conclude that the accused are telling the truth when they admit their guilt in committing serious crimes.

The general opinion of the diplomatic corps is that the government achieved its goal during the trial and proved that the accused participated in some kind of conspiracy.

Conversation with the Lithuanian ambassador: he believes that all the talk about torture and drugs allegedly used in relation to the defendants is without any basis».

Joseph W. Davis wrote in his diary on July 7, 1941: “... Today we know, thanks to the efforts of the FBI, that Hitler's agents are everywhere, even in the United States and South America.

The German entry into Prague was accompanied by active support from Henlein's military organizations.

The same thing happened in Norway (Quisling), Slovakia(Tiso), Belgium(Degrel)…

However, we don’t see anything like this in Russia. “Where are Hitler’s Russian accomplices?” — they ask me often. “They were shot,” I answer».

Speaking about the processes of 1937 - 1938 V.M. Molotov told the writer Felix Chuev a phrase that says a lot: “ We didn’t wait to be betrayed, we took the initiative into our own hands and got ahead of them».

It is appropriate here to recall the story of General A.A. Vlasova. After all, just a few months before the betrayal, he showed himself well in the defense of Moscow. But he betrayed him - and the secrets of his soul were revealed - I hate communists, I hate Soviet power, I hate Stalin.

It must be said that counter-revolutionary, starting with N.S. Khrushchev, the leadership of the Soviet Union created ideal conditions for anti-Soviet, anti-Stalinist elements to slander the processes of 1937-1938.

What did this give rise to? MYTHS, one meaner than the other. So, V.I. Alksnis says in an interview about Tukhachevsky: “... But the strangest thing is the behavior of the accused. The newspapers wrote that they denied everything and did not agree with anything. And the transcript contains full confession. The very fact of confession, I understand, can be achieved through torture.

But there is something completely different: an abundance of details, a long dialogue, mutual accusations, a lot of clarifications... Today I am completely convinced that a conspiracy within the Red Army really existed, and Tukhachevsky was a participant in it.”

Particularly harmful, interfering with honest historians and researchers ( and through them the general public) find out the truth about the Soviet country, and about repressions, and about I.V. Stalin - is the secrecy of the funds of many state archives, especially with regard to political repressions, i.e. events eighty years ago.

This order causes indignation even among “memorial” Nikita Petrov:

« The requirements imposed on the researcher by archival officials to obtain written consent from the descendants of the repressed for access to archival and investigative files do not comply with the law.

Why on earth does the right to dispose of the archives of a repressed person belong to his descendants? In Russia, according to the law, only the right to property and copyright is inherited, but not the right to control access to documents in state archives (note, state, not personal)!”

He (Nikita Petrov) says:

« At one time I helped four friends who also had family members"someone repressed" find information about them. People spent a lot of time going to various archives, and a lot of money too.

In the end, it turned out that one of them had a grandmother who was imprisoned not because “she was the daughter of a tsar’s officer,” but because she, being an accountant at the factory, took money from the factory cash register and bought herself a fur coat.

Another’s grandfather did not sit down “for a joke about Stalin,” and for participating in gang rape.

The third’s grandfather turned out to be not a “dispossessed peasant for nothing” but a repeat offender who received punishment for killing an entire family(father, mother and two teenage children).

Only one’s grandfather turned out to be truly politically repressed, but again not"for the joke about Stalin" but because during the war he was a policeman and worked for the Germans.

This is about the question of whether we should trust family legends about repressed relatives.”

Analyzing the struggle as a whole both around the repressed and around the entire Soviet history, you understand that its causes and its essence are the fierce hatred of the class enemy for the very essence of Soviet power - the power of workers and peasants, the power of labor.

The enemies of Soviet power hate everything about it - the people faithful to the principles of communism, the laws of the Soviet state, and the social transformations that freed the working people. And to slander Soviet society, its enemies readily use any vile lie, any slander.

Defending Stalin, defending Soviet history, we, the Bolsheviks, carry forward the glorious red banner of the struggle of the working people for a fair social order, for the equality of people, for a society in which there is no exploitation of man by man.

We will win!

S.V. Khristenko

Stalin, preparing for a difficult battle with European fascism, in 1937 began purges of the “fifth column” from the Red Army...
On June 11, 1937, in Moscow, senior commanders and political workers Tukhachevsky, Primakov, Yakir, Uborevich, Eideman and others, accused of organizing a “military-fascist conspiracy in the Red Army,” were shot by a military tribunal.
This process went down in history as the “Tukhachevsky case.” It arose 11 months before the execution of the sentence in July 1936. Then, through Czech diplomats, Stalin received information that a conspiracy was brewing among the leadership of the Red Army, led by Deputy People's Commissar of Defense Mikhail Tukhachevsky, and that the conspirators were in contact with leading generals of the German High Command and the German intelligence service. As confirmation, a dossier stolen from the SS security service was handed over, which contained documents from the special department “K” - a camouflaged organization of the Reichswehr that dealt with the production of weapons and ammunition prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles. The dossier contained recordings of conversations between German officers and representatives of the Soviet command, including protocols of negotiations with Tukhachevsky. These documents began a criminal case under the code name “Conspiracy of General Turguev” (the pseudonym of Tukhachevsky, under which he came to Germany with an official military delegation in the early 30s of the last century).
Today in the liberal press there is a fairly widespread version that “stupid Stalin” became a victim of a provocation by the secret services of Nazi Germany, who planted fabricated documents about a “conspiracy in the Red Army” to decapitate the Soviet Armed Forces on the eve of the war.
Tukhachevsky's first written statement after his arrest was dated May 26, 1937. He wrote to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov: “Having been arrested on May 22, arriving in Moscow on the 24th, first interrogated on the 25th, and today, May 26, I declare that I recognize the existence of an anti-Soviet military-Trotskyist conspiracy and that I was at its head. I undertake to independently present to the investigation everything concerning the conspiracy, without concealing any of its participants, not a single fact or document. The foundation of the conspiracy dates back to 1932. The following people took part in it: Feldman, Alafuzov, Primakov, Putna, etc., which I will show in detail later.” During interrogation by the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Tukhachevsky said: “Back in 1928, I was drawn into a right-wing organization by Yenukidze. In 1934 I personally contacted Bukharin; I established espionage connections with the Germans since 1925, when I traveled to Germany for exercises and maneuvers... During a trip to London in 1936, Putna arranged a meeting for me with Sedov (the son of L.D. Trotsky - S.T.).. ."
There are also materials in the criminal case that were previously collected on Tukhachevsky, but which were not put to use at the time. For example, testimony from 1922 of two officers who served in the past in the tsarist army. They named... Tukhachevsky as the inspirer of their anti-Soviet activities. Copies of the interrogation protocols were reported to Stalin, who sent them to Ordzhonikidze with the following meaningful note: “Please read. Since this is not impossible, it is possible.” Ordzhonikidze's reaction is unknown - he apparently did not believe the slander. There was another case: the secretary of the party committee of the Western Military District complained to the People's Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs about Tukhachevsky (wrong attitude towards communists, immoral behavior). But People's Commissar M. Frunze imposed a resolution on the information: “The party believed comrade Tukhachevsky, believes and will believe.” An interesting excerpt from the testimony of the arrested brigade commander Medvedev states that back in 1931 he “became aware” of the existence of a counter-revolutionary Trotskyist organization in the central departments of the Red Army. On May 13, 1937, Yezhov arrested Dzerzhinsky’s former ally A. Artuzov, and he testified that information received from Germany in 1931 reported a conspiracy in the Red Army under the leadership of a certain General Turguev (pseudonym Tukhachevsky), who had been in Germany. Yezhov’s predecessor Yagoda said at the same time: “This is frivolous material, hand it over to the archives.”
After the end of the Great Patriotic War, fascist documents with assessments of the “Tukhachevsky case” became known. Here are some of them.
Goebbels’ diary entry dated May 8, 1943 is interesting: “There was a conference of Reichsleiter and Gauleiter... The Fuhrer remembered the incident with Tukhachevsky and expressed the opinion that we were completely wrong when we believed that Stalin would destroy the Red Army in this way. The opposite was true: Stalin got rid of the opposition in the Red Army and thus put an end to defeatism."
In his speech to his subordinates in October 1943, Reichsführer SS Himmler stated: “When large show trials were going on in Moscow, and the former Tsarist cadet, and subsequently the Bolshevik General Tukhachevsky and other generals, were executed, all of us in Europe, including us, members Party and SS, were of the opinion that the Bolshevik system and Stalin made one of their biggest mistakes here. By assessing the situation this way, we greatly deceived ourselves. We can state this truthfully and confidently. I believe that Russia would not have survived all these two years of war - and now it is already in its third - if it had retained the former tsarist generals.”
On September 16, 1944, a conversation took place between Himmler and the traitor general A.A. Vlasov, during which Himmler asked Vlasov about the Tukhachevsky case. Why did he fail? Vlasov replied: “Tukhachevsky made the same mistake as your people on July 20 (attempt on Hitler). He did not know the law of masses.” Those. and the first and second conspiracy do not deny.
In his memoirs, a major Soviet intelligence officer, Lieutenant General Pavel Sudoplatov, states: “The myth about the involvement of German intelligence in Stalin’s massacre of Tukhachevsky was first started in 1939 by defector V. Krivitsky, a former officer of the Red Army Intelligence Department, in the book “I Was an Agent of Stalin” . At the same time, he referred to the white General Skoblin, a prominent agent of the INO NKVD among the white emigration. Skoblin, according to Krivitsky, was a double who worked for German intelligence. In reality, Skoblin was not a double. His intelligence file completely refutes this version. The invention of Krivitsky, who became a mentally unstable person in emigration, was later used by Schellenberg in his memoirs, taking credit for falsifying the Tukhachevsky case.”
Even if Tukhachevsky had turned out to be clean before the Soviet authorities, in his criminal case I found such documents that, after reading them, his execution seems well deserved. I will give some of them.
In March 1921, Tukhachevsky was appointed commander of the 7th Army, aimed at suppressing the uprising of the Kronstadt garrison. As you know, it was drowned in blood.
In 1921, Soviet Russia was engulfed in anti-Soviet uprisings, the largest of which in European Russia was a peasant uprising in the Tambov province. Considering the Tambov rebellion as a serious danger, the Politburo of the Central Committee in early May 1921 appointed Tukhachevsky commander of the troops of the Tambov district with the task of completely suppressing it as soon as possible. According to the plan developed by Tukhachevsky, the uprising was largely suppressed by the end of July 1921.

For residents of the former USSR, 1937 became a household name, a symbol of the Great Terror, a senseless and merciless conveyor belt of arrests, torture, trials and executions. During that year, about 350 thousand people were killed, 315 times more compared to the previous year, 1936. Approximately the same number were sent to camps for “counter-revolutionary crimes.”
However, in parallel with the bloody bacchanalia in the country, everyday life somehow continued with its joys and worries, newspaper reports on trials were densely interspersed with reports of new successes in socialist construction and the exploits of brave pilots. And for Western tourists who came to the USSR in 1937, the horror of mass executions remained completely behind the scenes.
I propose to look at a small kaleidoscope of visual evidence of that hectic time.

On January 6, the USSR population census took place:

However, its preliminary results were almost immediately (10 days later) declared “sabotage”; The responsible workers who carried it out were arrested and repressed. It seems that several million were missing and those at the top didn’t like it.

With unexpectedly great pomp in 1937, the USSR celebrated the centenary of the death of A.S. Pushkin (poster by Buev and Iordansky):

Pushkin was glorified even in the Mountain Mari language:

Cultural life was in full swing: citizens were encouraged to actively subscribe to foreign literature:

In 1937, it was the second year since “Life has become better, life has become more fun” and the theme of people’s happiness was actively played up by the authors of the posters.

“Thank you to the party, thank you to dear Stalin for a happy, cheerful childhood!”, 1937:

Painters did not lag behind either. In this painting by Alexander Deineka we see a fashion show of 1937 in Moscow:

Propaganda fostered a cult of good spirits and a healthy, strong body.

The painting “Soviet Physical Education” by A. Samokhvalov was painted in 1937:

They did not shy away from erotic motives. The famous sculpture of a girl with an oar by Shadr in Moscow's Gorky Park, 1937:

New resorts for workers were built in the Caucasus.

City buses on Stalinsky Prospekt in Sochi, 1937:

“Citizens of the USSR have the right to rest” V.I. Govorkov, 1937:

Particular attention in the USSR was paid to the emancipation of women. In 1937, ladies motorists became a fashionable theme.

“We are learning to drive a car,” S. Shore, 1937:

And motorcyclists! "Motorcycle ride of engineers' wives", A. Yar-Kravchenko, 1937:

And pilots, of course. Poster by P. Karachentsev, 1937:

The path to the very top was open for successful women. “An Unforgettable Meeting”, Vasily Efanov, 1937:

The year 1937 was marked by further successes in the industrial and technological development of the country.
Automobile factories built on a turnkey basis by Americans increased production of American car models.
Main conveyor of ZIS, I. Shagin, 1937:

The futuristic giant steam locomotive "Joseph Stalin" (1937) entered the steel highways:

Beautiful motor ships of unprecedented shape took to the waterways, 1937:

One of the main events of the year was the opening of the Moscow - Volga channel:

A large group of photographers, journalists and writers were immediately transported along the canal; as a result of the trip, a luxurious photo album was published:

However, the greatest pride of the USSR was aviation!

In June 1937, the American city of Vancouver met the Soviet ANT-25 aircraft under the command of Chkalov:

While the authorities were mercilessly exterminating the command staff of the Red Army, the country was popularly preparing for war.
Exercises in the Leningrad region, 1937:

“Collective farmers greet tankers during maneuvers,” Ekaterina Zernova, 1937:

Back in 1937, the “architectural genocide” reached its peak - the massive destruction of Orthodox and other churches.
Demolition of Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Baku, 1937:

At the end of the year, elections were held to the Supreme Council, according to the new Stalinist Constitution of 1936:

The Soviet leadership did its best to advertise the country's successes in the West.
The highlight of the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris was the Soviet pavilion with a sculpture by Vera Mukhina:

In 1937, the USSR was visited by thousands of Western tourists. Foreign tourists in Leningrad, 1937:

Back in 1937, the USSR was visited by a fairly famous German writer

Who were the repressions of 1937–1938 directed against? Who fell under the definition of “anti-Soviet elements” according to NKVD order No. 00447? What reasons do historians identify?

Historian Oleg Khlevnyuk about anti-Soviet elements and the role of Stalin in the Great Terror.

It is difficult to imagine a person in our country who would not know the concept of “1937”. Of course, different people, depending on their political preferences, level of knowledge, and interests, interpret this concept differently. And historians did not immediately come to any consensus about what happened in 1937–38, during the so-called Great Terror.

To understand what we knew before and what we know now, it’s a good idea to compare the old concept - Khrushchev’s concept, the concept of the 20th Party Congress - with what we know now based on new documents. Khrushchev's concept was based on the fact that in 1937–38 mass repressions were carried out; these repressions, as a rule, concerned nomenklatura workers. Much was said about prominent party members who suffered, about business executives, military men, writers, and so on.

However, today we know that in 1937-38 repressions, that is, executions and imprisonment in camps, fell on at least 1 million 600 thousand people, 680 thousand of them, according to official statistics, were shot. We are talking about only two years of our history. And of this huge number of people, at best, about 100 thousand were Komsomol members, party leaders, or simply party members. That is, a fairly small percentage of people among the victims of terror were so-called nomenklatura workers and well-known figures in the country.

The bulk of the victims of terror are ordinary citizens of the country, who suffered for reasons that remained unknown to us for a long time. We also did not understand what terrorism was, because for a long time it was believed that these were some chaotic and not very controlled actions that arose spontaneously and ended just as spontaneously.

In the early 90s, in connection with the opening of archives, historians became aware of all the key documents about the organization and conduct of the terror of 1937–38. First of all, these are the so-called operational orders of the NKVD, which were approved by the Politburo and Stalin personally, orders to conduct mass operations. The most famous of these operations was carried out on the basis of order No. 00447 on the destruction of anti-Soviet elements, and this operation began on August 1, 1937.

Who are the anti-Soviet elements according to this order? These are former kulaks, members of parties hostile to the Bolsheviks, for example, former Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks; these are various kinds of employees of the tsarist administration, former officers of the tsarist army, and so on. Thanks to this order, it became clear which groups the terror was aimed at, which risk groups were, which segments of the population were primarily targeted by repression. We saw that we are talking about those categories, about those citizens of the country who were perceived by the regime as potentially dangerous, potentially hostile to Soviet power. It is important to emphasize that, as a rule, these people did not commit anything illegal and were considered potentially hostile solely due to their origin, due to their belonging to one or another party unfriendly to the Bolsheviks, social strata, and so on.

We learned how these operations were carried out. They were carried out on orders from Moscow, according to certain plans - each region was given certain tasks for execution, for imprisonment in camps. And in accordance with these tasks, local NKVD workers carried out arrests, troikas worked, and mass executions were carried out.

During these operations, citizens of the country who belonged to counter-revolutionary nationalities were destroyed: Poles, Germans - that is, representatives of those nationalities, those countries that had rather tense, conflictual relations with the Soviet Union during this period. And, accordingly, these people were considered as a potential fifth column, as potential ground for espionage.

Having learned almost everything about the organization of these operations and the number of those repressed, historians came to the following question: why? Why was it precisely in 1937–38 that decisions were made to organize the Great Terror, the mass operations that were the essence of the Great Terror? Almost everyone agreed that those social elements that the regime considered potentially hostile were destroyed. And why all this happened in 1937–38 - opinions were divided. Some believe this was related to the decision to hold elections. Others draw attention to the fact that the threat of World War II really intensified - this was connected with events in the Far East, with Japan’s attack on China, and with the Spanish War, and with many other events that indicated that peace was getting closer and closer to another disaster.

I think that there is no sharp contradiction between the concept of pre-election purge and the concept of purge on the eve of an impending war. We are still talking about the fact that a certain preventive social cleansing was carried out against the fifth column. By the way, the term “fifth column” itself appeared at this time during the civil war in Spain.

There are, of course, exotic points of view that serious historians do not accept. This is the point of view that Stalin was allegedly forced to carry out repressions by certain forces in the party, namely the leaders of regional party committees, in order to maintain his power, so as not to be exposed to additional political risks in connection with the elections. This concept is not supported by any documents and does not seem logical, if only because these secretaries were the first victims of repression.

As for Stalin himself, he also gave an explanation for why these events happened and why it turned out that too many people were repressed; as was recognized already in the 30s, at least some of them were repressed without reason. Stalin stated - or rather, this was formulated in many documents that were issued on behalf of the party leadership - that the main culprits of this tragedy were the enemies who made their way into the NKVD. Accordingly, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov was arrested and soon shot, and many of his employees were also arrested. Historians checked this version and tried to figure out how the operations were actually carried out, and to what extent the NKVD could act independently. Documents do not support this version. Now we know for sure that the NKVD acted on direct and literally daily instructions from the country’s leadership. In particular, Yezhov received constant instructions from Stalin.

Stalin put forward another concept during this period. More precisely, this concept was formulated by his comrades at the XVIII Party Congress in early 1939. The so-called slanderers were accused of terror, that is, informers who wrote denunciations against honest Soviet citizens and thus contributed to the spread of terror. This is a kind of theory of a non-commissioned officer's widow who flogged herself, in this case the Soviet people acted in this capacity, who allegedly informed on each other, and thus the terror acquired enormous uncontrollable forms.

Unfortunately, we still use this concept, we use it somewhat uncritically. Meanwhile, historians, based on a large number of documents, have shown that, of course, denunciations existed during this period, they were mass denunciations, but they did not play the significant role that is now attributed to them.

Denunciations existed, but the security officers, as a rule, ignored them.

The centralized nature of these events, that the terror was organized from above and controlled from above, was also evidenced by the fact that it was stopped as centrally as it was organized. One fine November day in 1938, a resolution was adopted and the repressions stopped. The so-called stage of emerging from terror began, during which some of the organizers and perpetrators of terror were arrested, and some, a very small number, victims of terror were rehabilitated. The large majority of those who were arrested or shot during these years were left as enemies for many years, until the process of rehabilitation began after Stalin’s death.

Oleg Khlevnyuk – Doctor of Historical Sciences, leading researcher at the International Center for History and Sociology of the Second World War and its Consequences at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, professor of the Department of Russian History of the 20th-21st centuries at the Faculty of History of Moscow State University, chief specialist of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, corresponding member of the Royal Historical Society (Great Britain).

Documents from the “Special” folder of the NKVD

How NKVD workers fulfilled and exceeded plans for executions and deportations (scans of telegrams)

Order No. 00447 of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov established limits on executions and deportations for each republic and region. Both were ordered to be carried out without trial or investigation by decision of extrajudicial bodies - “troikas”, consisting of the chairman of the regional or republican committee of the Communist Party, the head of the local NKVD and the chief prosecutor.

According to the initial limits, it was planned to shoot up to 75,950 people, and send up to 193,000 people to concentration camps. Here are telegrams “from the ground” to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to Comrade Stalin. The part is marked with the summer months of 1937. The text shows that the estimates were serious: in some places they were ready to shoot four thousand, and in others all ten. Each telegram bears Stalin’s signature - in blue pencil “Approve I.St.” Below, everyone to whom the telegram was signed for review put their names - Kaganovich, Molotov, Kalinin, Mikoyan, Zhdanov, Kosior, Andreev... As the direct executor of the encryption, the messages were sent to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov, his signature is also present everywhere.

Another part of the encryption dates back to the year 1938. They also go to the Kremlin, but they are talking about increasing limits. “We ask the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to allow an additional limit for the first category for the Irkutsk region of 4 thousand people.” “I ask you to additionally approve 1000 for execution. 1500 for condemnation.” The frontline workers exceeded the norm. Some increased milk yields, others melted steel beyond schedule. And someone killed in the Stakhanov style. Ten thousand people were safely shot, but a couple thousand more need to be spent, so if you would be so kind as to allow it, raise the limit. The resolutions on these encryptions are the same as before. Stalin is in favor. Everyone else, of course, is also in favor. Not a single one wrote “against”. Look at these documents.

Read the words that are written in them. These yellowed pages tell more about the history of our country than any living person can tell. No additional words are needed, everything is clear.

From the funds of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI):

1) Encryption from Irkutsk entrance no. 472/sh departure. 15-54 26.4.1938
Request by Filippov and Malyshev for limits on 4 thousand executions in the Irkutsk region - signatures: Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Yezhov + for: Mikoyan and Chubar

2) Encryption from Omsk, entry No. 2662/Sh departure. 13-30 11/19/1937
Naumov's request for additional limits in the Omsk region. for executions (1 thousand to the selected 10 thousand) and concentration camps (1.5 thousand to the selected 4.5 thousand) - signatures: Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Zhdanov, Yezhov.

3) Encryption from Sverdlovsk entrance No. 1179/sh departure. 23-23 8.7.1937
Stolyar's request for limits on executions, exiles and concentration camps in the Sverdlovsk region. - 5 thousand to be shot, 7 thousand to be sent into exile and concentration camps. Signatures: Stalin, (Molotov?), Kaganovich + for: Voroshilov, Chubar, Mikoyan

4) Encryption 1157/Sh from Novosibirsk entry no. 1157/Sh outp. 11-56 8.7.1937
Eikhe's request for limits on executions in the West Siberian Territory - 11 thousand. Signatures: Stalin, (Molotov?), (???), Kaganovich, Voroshilov + for: Chubar, Kalinin, Mikoyan
A direct indication in the text of the encryption that it is a response to encryption No. 863/sh

2017 marks the 80th anniversary of one of the most tragic events in the history of the 20th century - the mass repressions of 1937-1938. In people's memory they remained under the name Yezhovshchina (after the name of Stalin's People's Commissar of State Security); modern historians more often use the term “Great Terror”. St. Petersburg historian, candidate of historical sciences Kirill Alexandrov spoke about its causes and consequences.

Execution statistics

What was unique about the Great Terror of 1937-1938? After all, the Soviet government used violence almost all the years of its existence.

The uniqueness of the Great Terror lay in the unprecedented and large-scale massacres organized by the governing bodies in peacetime. The pre-war decade was a disaster for the population of the USSR. During the period from 1930 to 1940, more than 8.5 million people became victims of Stalin’s social policy: more than 760 thousand were shot for “counter-revolutionary crimes”, about a million dispossessed people died during the stages of dispossession and in special settlements, about half a million prisoners died in the Gulag . Finally, 6.5 million people died as a result of the 1933 famine, which was estimated to have resulted from the "forced collectivization of agriculture."

The main victims occurred in 1930, 1931, 1932 and 1933 - approximately 7 million people. For comparison: demographers estimate the total number of deaths in the occupied territories of the USSR in 1941–1944 to be between 4–4.5 million people. At the same time, the Yezhovshchina of 1937–1938 became a direct and inevitable consequence of collectivization

Is there accurate data on the number of victims of the repressions of 1937-1938?

According to reference data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR in 1953, in 1937-1938 the NKVD authorities arrested 1 million 575 thousand 259 people, of which 1 million 372 thousand 382 (87.1 percent) were for “counter-revolutionary crimes”. 1 million 344 thousand 923 people were convicted (including 681,692 people who were shot).

Those sentenced to capital punishment were not only shot. For example, in the Vologda NKVD, the executors - with the knowledge of the order-bearing chief, state security major Sergei Zhupakhin - chopped off the heads of those sentenced to death with an ax. In the Kuibyshev NKVD, out of almost two thousand executed in 1937-1938, approximately 600 people were strangled with ropes. In Barnaul, convicts were killed with crowbars. In Altai and the Novosibirsk region, women were subjected to sexual violence before execution. In the Novosibirsk NKVD prison, employees competed to see who could kill a prisoner with one blow to the groin.

In total, during the period from 1930 to 1940, more than 760 thousand people were convicted and executed in the USSR for political reasons (more than 680 thousand of them during the Yezhovshchina). For comparison: in the Russian Empire for 37 years (1875-1912), no more than six thousand people were executed for all offenses, including serious criminal offenses, as well as for sentences of military field and military district courts during the first Russian Revolution. In 1937-1939 in Germany, the People's Tribunal (Volksgericht) - the Reich's extraordinary judicial body for cases of treason, espionage and other political crimes - convicted 1,709 people and handed down 85 death sentences.

Causes of the Great Terror

Why do you think the peak of state terror in the USSR occurred in 1937? Your colleague believes that Stalin's main motive was the elimination of potentially dissatisfied and class alien people in anticipation of the coming war. Do you agree with him? If so, did Stalin achieve his goal?

I would like to complement the point of view of respected Oleg Vitalievich. As a result of the October Revolution and the victory of the Bolsheviks in the civil war, the dictatorship of the Central Committee of the Communist Party arose in our country. The main task of Lenin, Stalin and their comrades was to retain the seized power at any cost - its loss threatened not only political, but also personal risks for tens of thousands of Bolsheviks.

The bulk of the population of the USSR were peasants: according to the 1926 census, the share of the rural population exceeded 80 percent. During the well-fed years of NEP (1923-1925), the village became rich, and the demand for industrial goods increased. But there were not enough manufactured goods on the Soviet market, since the Bolsheviks artificially limited private initiative, fearing the growth and influence of “capitalist elements.” As a result, prices for scarce manufactured goods began to rise, and peasants, in turn, began to raise selling prices for food. But the Bolsheviks did not want to buy bread at market prices. This is how the crises of 1927-1928 arose, during which the communists returned to the practice of forced grain procurements. With the help of tough measures, they managed, as Molotov said, to “pump up the grain,” but the threat of mass unrest in the cities - due to supply problems - remained.

It became clear to Stalin that as long as the free and independent peasant producer remained on earth, he would always pose a danger to the Communist Party. And in 1928, Stalin openly called the peasantry “a class that distinguishes from its midst, gives birth to and feeds capitalists, kulaks and all sorts of exploiters in general.” It was necessary to destroy the most hardworking part of the peasants, expropriate their resources, and attach the rest to the land as state-owned farm laborers - to work for a nominal fee. Only such a collective farm system, despite its low profitability, allowed the party to retain power.

That is, without the great turning point of 1929, the Great Terror of 1937 would have been impossible?

Yes, collectivization was inevitable: Stalin and his comrades explained its necessity by the interests of industrialization, but in fact they were primarily fighting for their political survival in a peasant country. The Bolsheviks dispossessed approximately one million peasant farms (5-6 million people), about four million people were expelled and deported from their homes. The village desperately resisted: according to the OGPU, in 1930 in the USSR there were 13,453 mass peasant uprisings (including 176 rebel ones) and 55 armed uprisings. Collectively, almost 2.5 million people took part in them - three times more than in the White movement during the Civil War.

Despite the fact that in 1930-1933 the authorities managed to break the peasant resistance, a hidden protest against the “happy collective farm life” persisted and posed a great danger. In addition, in 1935-1936, peasants who were convicted in the early 1930s began to return from places of imprisonment and exile. And the bulk of those shot during the Yezhovshchina (approximately 60 percent) were villagers - collective farmers and individual farmers, formerly dispossessed kulaks, who were registered with. The primary goal of the “Yezhovshchina” on the eve of the great war was to suppress protest sentiments against collectivization and the collective farm system.

Beriev's “liberalization”

Who else, besides the peasants, suffered from Stalinist repressions?

Along the way, other “enemies of the people” were also destroyed. For example, a complete disaster befell the Russian Orthodox Church. By 1917, there were 146 thousand Orthodox clergy and monastics in Russia, almost 56 thousand parishes, more than 67 thousand churches and chapels. In 1917–1939, out of 146 thousand clergy and monastics, the Bolsheviks destroyed more than 120 thousand, the absolute majority in the 1930s under Stalin, especially in 1937–1938. By the fall of 1939, only 150 to 300 Orthodox parishes and no more than 350 churches remained active in the USSR. The Bolsheviks - with the indifference of the vast majority of the baptized Orthodox population - managed to almost completely destroy the largest local church in the world.

Why did many perpetrators of terror later become victims themselves? Was Stalin afraid of becoming a hostage to his secret services?

His actions were determined by criminal inclinations, the desire to manage the Communist Party as a mafia organization in which all its leaders are tied to complicity in murders; finally, the readiness to destroy not only real and imaginary enemies, but also members of their families. As a Chechen, who was a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1937, wrote, “Stalin was a brilliant political criminal, whose state crimes were legitimized by the state itself. From the amalgam of criminality and politics, a unique thing was born: Stalinism.” In the Stalinist system, the perpetrators of mass crimes were doomed: the organizers eliminated them as unnecessary accomplices. Therefore, for example, not only the aforementioned state security major Sergei Zhupakhin was shot, but also the general commissioner of state security Nikolai Yezhov.

However, one should not exaggerate the scale of repression among security officers. Of the 25 thousand NKVD employees working in the state security system as of March 1937, 2,273 people were arrested for all crimes, including criminality and domestic violence, by mid-August 1938. In 1939, 7,372 employees were fired, of which only 937 security officers who served under Yezhov were arrested.

It is known that when Beria replaced Yezhov at the head of the NKVD, mass arrests stopped, and some people under investigation were even released. Why do you think such a thaw occurred at the end of 1938?

Firstly, the country needed a respite after a two-year bloody nightmare - everyone was tired of Yezhovshchina, including the security officers. Secondly, in the fall of 1938 the international situation changed. Hitler's ambitions could provoke a war between Germany and the Western democracies, and Stalin wanted to make the most of this conflict. Therefore, now all attention should be focused on international relations. “Beria's liberalization” has arrived, but this does not mean that the Bolsheviks abandoned terror. In 1939-1940, 135,695 people were sentenced for “counter-revolutionary crimes” in the USSR, including 4,201 to death.

Where did the authorities get the personnel to form a gigantic repressive apparatus?

Since the end of 1917, the Bolsheviks waged a continuous social war in Russia. The enemies were declared to be nobles, merchants, representatives of the clergy, Cossacks, former officers, members of other political parties, White Guards and White emigrants, then kulaks and subkulak members, “bourgeois specialists”, saboteurs, again clergy, members of opposition groups. Society was kept in constant tension. Mass propaganda campaigns made it possible to mobilize representatives of the lower social classes into punitive bodies, for whom the persecution of imaginary, obvious and potential enemies opened up career opportunities. A typical example is the future Minister of State Security and Colonel General Viktor Abakumov, who, according to the official version, was born in the family of a washerwoman and a worker and was promoted during the Yezhovshchina.

Sad results

What consequences did the events of 1937-1938 lead to for the country and society?

Stalin and his subordinates killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people. They ruined the lives of millions of people, including family members of the repressed. In a climate of terror, incredible spiritual corruption of many millions of people took place - with lies, fear, duplicity, opportunism. They killed not only human bodies, but also the souls of the survivors.

Scientific, economic, military personnel, cultural and artistic workers suffered heavy losses, huge human capital was destroyed - all this weakened society and the country. By what measure, for example, can one measure the consequences of the death of division commander Alexander Svechin, scientist Georgy Langemak, poet, physicist Lev Shubnikov, courageous (Smirnov)?

The Yezhovshchina did not suppress protest sentiments in society, it only made them more acute and angry. The Stalinist government itself multiplied the number of its opponents. In 1924, approximately 300 thousand potential “enemies” were operationally registered with the state security agencies, and in March 1941 (after collectivization and Yezhovshchina) - more than 1.2 million. 3.5 million prisoners of war and approximately 200 thousand defectors in the summer and autumn of 1941, the cooperation of part of the population with the enemy during the war years is a natural result of collectivization, the collective farm system, the system of forced labor and Yezhovshchina.

Can we say that mass repressions in the absence of normal mechanisms of vertical mobility became a kind of social elevator for the new generation of Bolshevik party nomenklatura?

Yes, you can. But at the same time, until 1953, Stalin remained a hostage of Lenin’s “vertical” - the dictatorship of the Party Central Committee. Stalin could manipulate congresses, destroy any party member, initiate personnel purges and reshuffles. But he could not ignore the solidary interests of the party nomenklatura, much less get rid of it. The nomenklatura turned into a new elite.

“The revolution, which was carried out in the name of the destruction of classes,” wrote Milovan Djilas, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, “led to the unlimited power of one new class. Everything else is disguise and illusion.” In the winter of 1952-1953, the extravagant plans of Stalin, who conceived a new Yezhovshchina, caused legitimate concern among the leaders: Beria, Khrushchev, Malenkov, Bulganin and others. I think this was the real reason for his death - most likely, Stalin fell victim to his environment. Whether they killed him through medication or did not provide him with medical assistance on time is not so important.

Still, in the long term, Stalin turned out to be political bankrupt. Lenin created the Soviet state, Stalin gave it comprehensive forms, but this state did not exist even forty years after Stalin's death. By historical standards, this is an insignificant period.