The death penalty in the USSR: chilling stories about the fate of three convicted women. How they were executed in the USSR. interview with the executioner

Finally, Antonina Makarovna Makarova (nee Parfenova, according to other sources - Panfilova; 1922, Malaya Volkovka, Sychevsky district, Smolensk province, according to other sources, in 1923 in Moscow - August 11, 1979, Bryansk).

At birth, Makarova was named Antonina Makarovna Parfenova. However, when the girl went to the first grade of a village school, an incident occurred with her name - the teacher, writing down the children’s names in the class register, confused Antonina’s middle name with her last name and as a result, in school documents she was listed as Antonina Makarova. This confusion was the beginning of the fact that in all subsequent documents, including in the passport, Antonina’s name was written down as Antonina Makarovna Makarova.
In 1941, when the Great Patriotic War began, 21-year-old Makarova found herself at the front as a nurse. In the fall of the same year, she was one of the few who miraculously survived the Vyazemsk operation, and after the defeat of her unit, she hid in the forest for several days, but was ultimately arrested by the Germans. After some time, she and soldier Nikolai Fedchuk, seizing the moment, escaped from captivity. For several months, the two of them wandered around the area, trying to get out of the German encirclement. Much later, during interrogation, Makarova said that she was too scared and therefore, in fact, she herself followed Fedchuk, offering him herself as a so-called “camping wife.”
In January 1942, the couple reached the village of Krasny Kolodets, where Fedchuk had a wife and children, and he, despite Makarova’s requests, broke up with her.
Makarova wandered around the villages for some time, not staying anywhere for long, and eventually ended up on the territory of the newly formed Lokot Republic in the village of Lokot, where she was again detained by the Germans.

Lokot Republic - administrative-territorial national formation into parts Soviet territory occupied by Nazi Germany during the Great Patriotic War.
Existed from November 1941 to August 1943. The administrative center was located in the working-class village of Lokot, which was proclaimed a city. The district included several districts of the pre-war Oryol and Kursk regions (now the territory is predominantly Bryansk region).
All local power belonged here not to the German commandant's offices, but to local governments. Any German authorities were prohibited from interfering in the internal affairs of the Lokot volost. German institutions on the territory of the Lokot district limited their activities only to assistance and advice to the leaders of the district and its districts.
At the end of November 1941, the head of Lokot self-government K.P. Voskoboinik published the manifesto of the People's Socialist Party "Viking", which provided for the destruction of the communist and collective farm system, the provision of arable land and personal plots to peasants, the development of private initiative and the "merciless destruction of all Jews, former commissioners."
The population of the district was 581 thousand people. The territory of the district, despite the fact that it was an occupied territory, had its own Criminal Procedure and Criminal Code.
It had its own armed forces - the Russian Liberation People's Army (RONA) - a relatively combat-ready association created in the image of the people's militia and consisting of 14 battalions (according to various sources, from 12 to 20 thousand people).
Property confiscated during dispossession by the Soviet government was returned free of charge to its former owners; in case of loss, appropriate compensation was provided. The size of the per capita plot for each resident of the local government was about 10 hectares.
During the existence of self-government, many industrial enterprises involved in the processing of agricultural products were restored and put into use, churches were restored, 9 hospitals and 37 outpatient medical centers operated, 345 secondary schools and 3 orphanages, the city art and drama theater named after K.P. Voskoboynik was opened in the city of Lokot.
The main monetary unit in the district was the Soviet ruble. The district budget consisted of taxes on the population. Cash taxes were taken from buildings, all types of agricultural products, livestock, poultry and handicrafts. On average, each household received about 600 rubles annually; in addition, they took out fire insurance, but no compensation was paid to fire victims.
The status of the Lokot District as an autonomous national entity was based on the support of the commander of the 2nd German Tank Army, G. Guderian.
Soviet partisans associated with the NKVD attacked the civilian population of the district and carried out fighting with RONA, the actions of the parties on the territory of the district were in the nature of a civil war.
From May to October 1942, partisans tried to attack the district security forces 540 times.
The district leadership maintained order with brutal repressions against persons suspected of having connections with the partisans.
The Jewish population of the Lokot district was completely destroyed by the police. In Suzemka, 223 Jews were shot, and in Navlya - 39.
The death sentences were carried out by the executioner of the Lokot district, Antonina Makarova, who executed about 1,500 people, including partisans, members of their families, women and teenagers.
On September 5, 1943, Lokot was taken by the 2nd Tank Battalion of the 197th Tank Brigade of the 30th Ural Volunteer Tank Corps together with units of the 250th Rifle Division. During the retreat of the German army armed forces Lokotsky district under the command of Bronislav Kaminsky, as well as family members of military personnel and everyone who did not want to stay on Soviet territory (30 thousand people), left in August 1943 along with German army in the city of Lepel, Vitebsk region, where for some time the “Lepel Republic” was created, and RONA participated in military operations against Soviet partisans until the summer of 1944. From here the RONA brigade as part of the SS troops was transferred to Poland, where, in particular, participated in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising.

In the future, giving testimony, Makarova stated that she simply pursued the elementary goals of surviving and warming up after long wanderings, and at the same time she was very afraid of death, which is why, when the Germans began to question her, she began to scold Soviet power. She attributed her fears to the reason why she voluntarily enlisted in the Lokot auxiliary police, where she was given a Maxim machine gun to carry out death sentences to which Soviet partisans and members of their families were sentenced. According to Makarova herself, the Germans clearly did not want to get their hands dirty and they decided that it would be even better if it was a Soviet girl who executed the Soviet partisans. For agreeing to participate in the executions, the Germans settled Makarova in a room at a local stud farm, where she kept the machine gun itself.
“I didn’t know those I was shooting. They didn't know me. Therefore, I was not ashamed in front of them. It happened that you would shoot, come closer, and someone else would twitch. Then she shot him in the head again so that the person would not suffer. Sometimes several prisoners had a piece of plywood with the inscription “partisan” hung on their chests. Some people sang something before they died. After the executions, I cleaned the machine gun in the guardhouse or in the yard. There was plenty of ammunition..."
She also stated that she was never tormented by remorse, and none of the killed appeared to her in her dreams, since the executions themselves were not perceived by her as something unusual.
Prisoners were sent to her for execution in groups of about 27 people. There were days when she carried out death sentences three times a day. According to official data, she shot about 1,500 people, but only 168 people managed to recover their passport data. For each execution, Makarova received 30 Reichsmarks. After the executions, Makarova took off the clothes she liked from the corpses, motivating it like this: “Why should good things go to waste?” She often complained that large blood stains and bullet holes remained on the clothes of the dead. Eyewitnesses recalled that often at night Makarova came to the local stud farm, where the Germans had set up a prison for the condemned, and closely examined the prisoners, as if she was looking at their things in advance.
Makarova often relieved tension at a local music club, where she drank a lot of alcohol and, along with several other local girls, worked as a prostitute for German soldiers. Such a wild life led to Makarova being sent to a German rear hospital in the summer of 1943 for treatment for venereal diseases, and thus avoiding capture by the partisans and the Red Army when they captured Lokot on September 5 of that year. In the rear, Makarova started an affair with a German cook-corporal, who secretly took her in his wagon train to Ukraine, and from there to Poland. There the corporal was killed, and the Germans sent Makarov to a concentration camp in Königsberg. When the Red Army captured the city in 1945, Makarova pretended to be Soviet nurse thanks to a stolen military ID, in which she indicated that from 1941 to 1944 she worked in the 422nd medical battalion, and got a job as a nurse in a Soviet mobile hospital.
Here, in a local hospital, she met the Belarusian soldier Viktor Ginzburg, who was wounded during the assault on the city. A week later they signed, Makarova took her husband’s last name.

Antonina and her husband settled in Lepel (Belarusian SSR) (this was Victor’s hometown) and they had two daughters. Antonina worked as a supervisor in the sewing workshop at a local clothing factory, where she carried out product quality control. She was considered a responsible and conscientious worker, and her photograph often appeared on the local honor board. However, after working there for many years, Antonina did not make any friends. The then inspector of the factory’s HR department, Faina Tarasik, recalled that Antonina was very reserved, quiet and during collective holidays she tried to drink alcohol as little as possible (she was probably afraid to spill the beans). The Ginsburgs were considered respected front-line soldiers and received all the benefits due to veterans. ABOUT real personality Neither her husband, nor neighbors, nor family acquaintances knew Antonina.
The KGB began looking for Makarova immediately after Lokot was liberated from the Germans. However, the surviving residents of the village could only provide the investigators with meager information, since they all knew Makarova only as Tonka the Machine Gunner. The search for Makarova lasted for 30 years, and only in 1976 the matter moved from a dead point, when in Bryansk on the city square one man attacked a certain Nikolai Ivanin with his fists, whom he recognized as the head of the Lokot prison during the German occupation. Ivanin, who, like Makarova, had been hiding all this time, did not deny it and spoke in detail about his activities at that time, at the same time mentioning Makarova (with whom he had a short-term affair). And although she full name he mistakenly named the investigators as Antonina Anatolyevna Makarova (and at the same time mistakenly reported that she was a Muscovite), this was a major clue, and the KGB began to develop a list of USSR citizens with the name Antonina Makarova. However, the Makarova they needed was not on it, because the list contained only those women who were registered under this name at birth.
Her real name became known when one of her brothers, who lived in Tyumen and was an employee of the Ministry of Defense, filled out a form to travel abroad in 1976. In Lepel, Makarova was under surveillance, but after a week it had to be stopped because Makarova began to suspect something. After that on whole year The investigators left her alone and all this time collected materials and evidence on her. At one of the concerts dedicated to Victory Day, the dispatched security officer started a conversation with Makarova: Makarova could not answer his questions about the locations of the military units where she served, and about the names of her commanders - she referred to bad memory and the remoteness of the events.
In July 1978, investigators decided to conduct an experiment: they brought one of the witnesses to the factory, while Makarova, under a fictitious pretext, was taken out onto the street in front of the building. The witness, watching her from the window, identified her, but this identification alone was not enough, and so the investigators staged another experiment. They brought two more witnesses to Lepel, one of whom played a local social security worker, where Makarova was allegedly summoned to recalculate her pension. She recognized Tonka the machine gunner. The second witness was sitting outside the building with a KGB investigator and also recognized Antonina. In September of the same year, Makarova was arrested on her way from her place of work to the head of the personnel department. Investigator Leonid Savoskin, who was present at her arrest, later recalled that Makarova behaved very calmly and immediately understood everything.
Makarova was taken to Bryansk. At first, investigators feared that she would decide to commit suicide, so they put a woman “whisperer” in her cell. She recalled that Makarova was still very calm and confident that she would be given a maximum of three years, both because of her age and because of how long ago those events were (she even made plans for her future life after serving time). She didn't remember her family.
She volunteered for interrogation herself, where she demonstrated the same composure, answering questions directly. Antonina was sincerely convinced that there was nothing to punish her for, and she blamed everything on the war. She behaved no less calmly during investigative experiments when she was brought to Lokot. During the investigation, she never once remembered her family. Victor Ginzburg, not knowing the reasons for his wife’s arrest, constantly tried to achieve her release, after which the investigators had to tell him the truth, which is why Ginzburg and his children left Lepel in an unknown direction (their further fate remained unknown).
On November 20, 1978, she was sentenced to capital punishment - death penalty. Makarova took this, as always, calmly, but from the same day she began to submit petitions for pardon to the CPSU Central Committee and other authorities, which were all rejected. Most of all, she insisted that she needed eye surgery and that 1979 was the year of the woman.
On August 11, 1979, the sentence was carried out.

In general, Tonka’s story alone would be enough for the series - it is amazing in itself, and then there are a lot of murders, and stupid ones at that. The story about this unfortunate Raisa. Very often the ends do not meet, although the image of a woman who takes into account only the interests of her family in life and hates everyone else is a success.

Officially, during all the post-war years, three women were executed in the USSR. Death sentences were handed down to the fairer sex, but were not carried out. And then the matter was brought to execution. Who were these women, and for what crimes were they shot?

The story of Antonina Makarova's crimes.

An incident with a surname.

Antonina Makarova was born in 1921 in the Smolensk region, in the village of Malaya Volkovka, into the large peasant family of Makar Parfenov. She studied at a rural school, and it was there that an episode occurred that influenced her later life. When Tonya came to first grade, because of shyness she could not say her last name - Parfenova. Classmates began shouting “Yes, she’s Makarova!”, meaning that Tony’s father’s name is Makar.
Yes, with light hand teacher, at that time perhaps the only literate person in the village, Tonya Makarova appeared in the Parfenov family.
The girl studied diligently, with diligence. She also had her own revolutionary heroine -Anka the machine gunner. This film image had a real prototype - a nurse from the Chapaev division, Maria Popova, who once in battle actually had to replace a killed machine gunner.
After graduating from school, Antonina went to study in Moscow, where she was caught by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. The girl went to the front as a volunteer.

The traveling wife of an encirclement.

19-year-old Komsomol member Makarova suffered all the horrors of the infamous “Vyazma Cauldron.” After the hardest battles, completely surrounded, of the entire unit, only soldier Nikolai Fedchuk found himself next to the young nurse Tonya. With him she wandered through the local forests, just trying to survive. They didn’t look for partisans, they didn’t try to get through to their own people - they fed on whatever they had, and sometimes stole. The soldier did not stand on ceremony with Tonya, making her his “camp wife.” Antonina did not resist - she just wanted to live.

In January 1942, they went to the village of Krasny Kolodets, and then Fedchuk admitted that he was married and his family lived nearby. He left Tonya alone. Tonya was not expelled from the Red Well, but the local residents already had plenty of worries. But the strange girl did not try to go to the partisans, did not strive to make her way to ours, but strived to make love with one of the men remaining in the village. Having turned the locals against her, Tonya was forced to leave.

A killer with a salary.

Tonya Makarova’s wanderings ended in the area of ​​the village of Lokot in the Bryansk region. The notorious “Lokot Republic”, an administrative-territorial formation of Russian collaborators, operated here. In essence, these were the same German lackeys as in other places, only more clearly formalized.

A police patrol detained Tonya, but they did not suspect her of being a partisan or underground woman. She attracted the attention of the police, who took her in, gave her drink, food and rape. However, the latter is very relative - the girl, who only wanted to survive, agreed to everything.

Tonya did not play the role of a prostitute for the police for long - one day, drunk, she was taken out into the yard and put behind a Maxim machine gun. There were people standing in front of the machine gun - men, women, old people, children. She was ordered to shoot. For Tony, who took not only nursing courses, but also machine gunners, this did not amount to a lot of work. True, the dead drunk woman didn’t really understand what she was doing. But, nevertheless, she coped with the task.

The next day, Makarova learned that she was now an official - an executioner with a salary of 30 German marks and with her own bed. The Lokot Republic ruthlessly fought the enemies of the new order - partisans, underground fighters, communists, other unreliable elements, as well as members of their families. Those arrested were herded into a barn that served as a prison, and in the morning they were taken out to be shot.

The cell accommodated 27 people, and all of them had to be eliminated in order to make room for new ones. Neither the Germans nor even the local policemen wanted to take on this work. And here Tonya, who appeared out of nowhere with her shooting abilities, came in very handy.
The girl did not go crazy, but on the contrary, felt that her dream had come true. And let Anka shoot her enemies, and she shoots women and children - the war will write off everything! But her life finally got better.

1500 lives lost.

Antonina Makarova's daily routine was as follows: in the morning, shooting 27 people with a machine gun, finishing off the survivors with a pistol, cleaning weapons, in the evening schnapps and dancing in a German club, and at night making love with some cute German guy or, at worst, with a policeman.

As an incentive, she was allowed to take the belongings of the dead. So Tonya acquired a bunch of outfits, which, however, had to be repaired - traces of blood and bullet holes made it difficult to wear.

However, sometimes Tonya allowed “marriage” - several children managed to survive, because because of their vertically challenged the bullets went over the head. The children were taken out along with the corpses by local residents who were burying the dead and handed over to the partisans. Rumors about a female executioner, “Tonka the machine gunner”, “Tonka the Muscovite” spread throughout the area. Local partisans even announced a hunt for the executioner, but were unable to reach her.

In total, about 1,500 people became victims of Antonina Makarova.
By the summer of 1943, Tony's life had changed again sharp turn- The Red Army moved to the West, beginning the liberation of the Bryansk region. This did not bode well for the girl, but then she conveniently fell ill with syphilis, and the Germans sent her to the rear so that she would not re-infect the valiant sons of Greater Germany.

An honored veteran instead of a war criminal.

In the German hospital, however, it also soon became uncomfortable - Soviet troops They were approaching so quickly that only the Germans had time to evacuate, and there was no longer any concern for the accomplices.

Realizing this, Tonya escaped from the hospital, again finding herself surrounded, but now Soviet. But her survival skills were honed - she managed to obtain documents proving that all this time Makarova was a nurse in a Soviet hospital.

Antonina successfully managed to enlist in a Soviet hospital, where at the beginning of 1945 a young soldier fell in love with her, a real hero war. The guy proposed to Tonya, she agreed, and, having gotten married, after the end of the war, the young couple left for the Belarusian city of Lepel, her husband’s homeland.

So the female executioner Antonina Makarova disappeared, and her place was taken by the honored veteran Antonina Ginzburg.

They searched for her for thirty years

Soviet investigators learned about the monstrous acts of “Tonka the Machine Gunner” immediately after the liberation of the Bryansk region. IN mass graves The remains of about one and a half thousand people were found, but the identities of only two hundred could be established. They interrogated witnesses, checked, clarified - but they could not get on the trail of the female punisher.

Meanwhile, Antonina Ginzburg led ordinary life Soviet man- lived, worked, raised two daughters, even met with schoolchildren, talking about her heroic military past. Of course, without mentioning the actions of “Tonka the Machine Gunner”.

The KGB spent more than three decades searching for her, but found her almost by accident. A certain citizen Parfyonov, going abroad, submitted forms with information about his relatives. There, among the solid Parfenovs, for some reason Antonina Makarova, after her husband Ginzburg, was listed as her sister.

Yes, how that teacher’s mistake helped Tonya, how many years thanks to it she remained out of reach of justice!

The KGB operatives worked like a jewel - it was impossible to accuse an innocent person of such atrocities. Antonina Ginzburg was checked from all sides, witnesses were secretly brought to Lepel, even a former policeman-lover. And only after they all confirmed that Antonina Ginzburg was “Tonka the Machine Gunner”, she was arrested.

She didn’t deny it, she talked about everything calmly, and said that nightmares didn’t torment her. She didn’t want to communicate with either her daughters or her husband. And the front-line husband ran through the authorities, threatened to complain to Brezhnev, even to the UN - demanded the release of his wife. Exactly until the investigators decided to tell him what his beloved Tonya was accused of.

After that, the dashing, dashing veteran turned gray and aged overnight. The family disowned Antonina Ginzburg and left Lepel. You wouldn’t wish what these people had to endure on your enemy.

Retribution.

Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg was tried in Bryansk in the fall of 1978. This was the last major trial of traitors to the Motherland in the USSR and the only trial of a female punisher.

Antonina herself was convinced that, due to the passage of time, the punishment could not be too severe; she even believed that she would receive a suspended sentence. My only regret was that because of the shame I had to move and change jobs again. Even the investigators, knowing about Antonina Ginzburg’s exemplary post-war biography, believed that the court would show leniency. Moreover, 1979 was declared the Year of the Woman in the USSR.

However, on November 20, 1978, the court sentenced Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg to capital punishment - execution.

At the trial, her guilt in the murder of 168 of those whose identities could be established was documented. More than 1,300 more remained unknown victims of “Tonka the Machine Gunner.” There are crimes that cannot be forgiven.

At six in the morning on August 11, 1979, after all requests for clemency were rejected, the sentence against Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg was carried out.

Berta Borodkina.

Berta Borodkina, known in certain circles as “Iron Bella,” was one of 3 women executed in the late USSR.

By a fateful coincidence, this mournful list included, along with the murderers, the honored trade worker Berta Naumovna Borodkina, who did not kill anyone. She was sentenced to death for theft of socialist property on an especially large scale.

Among those who provided patronage to the director of catering in the resort city were members of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, as well as the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Fyodor Kulakov. Connections at the top for a long time made Berta Borodkina invulnerable to any auditors, but ultimately played a tragic role in her fate.

In April 1984, the Krasnodar Regional Court considered criminal case No. 2-4/84 against the director of the trust of restaurants and canteens of the city of Gelendzhik, Honored Trade Worker and Catering RSFSR Bertha Borodkina. The main charge against the defendant is Part 2 of Art. 173 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (taking a bribe) - provided for punishment in the form of imprisonment for a term of five to fifteen years with confiscation of property. However, reality surpassed the worst fears of 57-year-old Borodkina - she was sentenced to death.

The court's decision also came as a surprise to lawyers who followed the high-profile trial with interest: an exceptional measure of punishment “up to its complete abolition,” according to the then current Criminal Code of the RSFSR, was allowed for treason (Article 64), espionage (Article 65), terrorism act (Articles 66 and 67), sabotage (Article 68), banditry (Article 77), premeditated murder under aggravating circumstances specified in Art. 102 and paragraph “c” of Art. 240, and in war time or in a combat situation - and for other especially serious crimes in cases specifically provided for by the legislation of the USSR.

Pay or lose...

The successful career of Borodkina (maiden name - Korol), who did not even have a complete secondary education, in Gelendzhik public catering began in 1951 as a waitress, then she successively occupied the positions of barmaid and canteen manager, and in 1974 her meteoric rise to the nomenklatura took place. post of head of the trust of restaurants and canteens.

Such an appointment could not have taken place without the participation of the first secretary of the city committee of the CPSU Nikolai Pogodin; his preference for a candidate without special education was not openly questioned by anyone in the city committee, and the hidden motives for choosing the party leader became known eight years later.

"IN specified period[from 1974 to 1982], being an official in a responsible position, says the indictment in the Borodkina case, repeatedly personally and through intermediaries in her apartment and place of work received bribes from large group subordinates to her at work. From the bribes she received, Borodkina herself transferred bribes to responsible employees of the city of Gelendzhik for the assistance and support provided in the work... Thus, over the past two years, 15,000 rubles worth of valuables, money and products were transferred to the secretary of the city party committee Pogodin.” The last amount in the 1980s was approximately the cost of three Zhiguli cars.

The investigation materials contain a graphic diagram of the corruption relationships of the director of the trust, compiled by employees of the USSR Chief Prosecutor's Office. It resembles a thick web with Borodkina in the center, to which numerous threads stretch from the restaurants “Gelendzhik”, “Caucasus”, “Yuzhny”, “Platan”, “Yachta”, canteens and cafes, pancake houses, barbecue and food stalls, and from her They disperse to the city committee of the CPSU and the city executive committee, the BKhSS department of the city police department (combating the theft of socialist property), to the regional trust and further to the Glavkurorttorg of the Ministry of Trade of the RSFSR.

Gelendzhik catering workers - directors and managers, bartenders and bartenders, cashiers and waiters, cooks and forwarders, cloakroom attendants and doormen - were all subject to "tribute", everyone knew how much money he had to transfer along the chain, as well as what awaited him in case of refusal - loss of the “grain” position.

Stolen degrees.

During her time working in various areas of public catering, Borodkina perfectly mastered the techniques of deceiving consumers in order to obtain “illegal” income, which were practiced in Soviet trade, and put them into practice in her department.

It was common practice to dilute sour cream with water, and to color liquid tea or coffee with burnt sugar. But one of the most profitable frauds was the abundant addition of bread or cereal to minced meat, reducing the established standards of meat for preparing first and second courses. The head of the trust transferred the product “saved” in this way to the kebab shops for sale. In two years, according to Kalinichenko, Borodkina earned 80,000 rubles from this alone.

Another source of illegal income was manipulation of alcohol. Here, too, she did not discover anything new: in restaurants, cafes, bars and buffets, the traditional “underfilling”, as well as “stealing a degree,” was widely used. For example, visitors to a drinking establishment simply did not notice a decrease in the strength of vodka due to dilution by two degrees, but it brought big profits to trade workers. But it was considered especially profitable to mix cheaper “starka” (rye vodka infused with apple or pear leaves) into expensive Armenian cognac. According to the investigator, even an examination could not establish that the cognac was diluted.

Primitive counting was also common - both for individual visitors to restaurants, bars, buffets and cafes, and for large companies. Musician Georgy Mimikonov, who played in Gelendzhik restaurants in those years, told Moscow television journalists that during the holiday season, entire groups of shift workers from Siberia and the Arctic would fly here for the weekend to revel in the “zone of beautiful life,” as the musician put it. Such clients were defrauded for tens and hundreds of rubles.

Bertha, aka Iron Bella.

In those days, the Black Sea health resorts received more than 10 million vacationers a year, serving as a bonanza for the resort mafia. Borodkina had her own classification of people who came to Gelendzhik on vacation. Those who rented corners in the private sector, stood in line in cafes and canteens, and then left complaints about the quality of food in catering establishments in the book of complaints and suggestions, wrote about shortchanges and “under-filling”, she, according to her former colleagues, called them rats.

The City Committee’s “roof” in the person of the first secretary, as well as inspectors of the OBHSS, made it invulnerable to the discontent of the mass consumer, whom Borodkina considered exclusively as a source of “leftist” income.

Borodkina demonstrated a completely different attitude towards high-ranking party and government officials who came to Gelendzhik during the holiday season from Moscow and the Union republics, but even here she pursued primarily her own interests - the acquisition of future influential patrons. Borodkina did everything to make their stay on the Black Sea coast pleasant and memorable.

Borodkina, as it turned out, not only provided the nomenklatura guests with scarce products for picnics in the mountains and sea excursions, and set tables laden with delicacies, but could, at their request, invite young women into the men's company.

Her “hospitality” did not cost anything for the guests themselves and the region’s party treasury - Borodkina knew how to write off expenses. These qualities were appreciated in her by the first secretary of the Krasnodar regional committee of the CPSU Sergei Medunov.

Among those who provided Borodkina with their patronage were even members of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, as well as the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Fyodor Kulakov. When Kulakov died, the family invited only two people from the Krasnodar region to his funeral - Medunov and Borodkina. For a long time, connections at the very top provided Borodkina with immunity from any revisions, so behind her back they called her “Iron Bella” in Gelendzhik (Borodkina did not like her own name, she preferred to be called Bella).

The case of the sale of pornographic products.

When Borodkina was arrested, she initially considered it an annoying misunderstanding and warned the operatives that they would not have to apologize today. There was still an element of chance in the fact that she was placed in the bullpen, note those who are well acquainted with the details of this long-standing story.

The prosecutor's office received a statement from a local resident that in one of the cafes, pornographic films were secretly shown to selected guests. The organizers of the underground screenings - the director of the cafe, the production manager and the bartender - were caught red-handed and charged under Art. 228 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (production or sale of pornographic products, punishable by imprisonment for up to three years with confiscation of pornographic items and means of their production).

During interrogations, catering workers testified that the demonstrations were secretly authorized by the director of the trust, and part of the proceeds was transferred to her. Thus, Borodkina herself was accused of complicity in this offense and receiving a bribe.

A search was carried out in the house of Iron Bella, the results of which unexpectedly went far beyond the scope of the “clandestine cinema” case. Borodkina’s home resembled museum storerooms, in which numerous precious jewelry, furs, crystal products, and sets of bed linen, which were then in short supply, were stored. In addition, Borodkina kept large sums of money at home, which investigators found in the most unexpected places - in water heating radiators and under carpets in rooms, rolled up cans in the basement, in bricks stored in the yard. The total amount seized during the search amounted to more than 500,000 rubles.

The mysterious disappearance of the first secretary of the city committee of the CPSU.

Borodkina refused to testify at the very first interrogation and continued to threaten the investigation with punishment for sweeping accusations against her and the arrest of a “respected leader in the region.” “She was sure that she was about to be released, but there was still no help.” “Iron Bella” never waited for her, and here’s why.

In the early 1980s in Krasnodar region Investigations began into numerous criminal cases related to large-scale manifestations of bribery and theft, which received the general name of the Sochi-Krasnodar case. The owner of Kuban Medunov, close friend Secretary General The Central Committee of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev and the Secretary of the Central Committee Konstantin Chernenko, in every possible way interfered with the work of the Investigative Unit of the Prosecutor General's Office. However, in Moscow he found himself with a powerful opponent - KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov. And with his election as Secretary General in November 1982, the prosecutor’s office had a completely free hand.

As a result of one of the most high-profile anti-corruption campaigns in the USSR, more than 5,000 party and Soviet leaders were dismissed from their posts and expelled from the ranks of the CPSU, about 1,500 people were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, and the Deputy Minister of Fisheries of the USSR, Vladimir Rytov, was convicted and executed. . Medunov was relieved of his post as first secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU and removed from the CPSU Central Committee with the wording: “For mistakes made in his work.”

When the defendant is made to understand that she has no one to count on, she can only ease her fate sincere confession guilt, “Iron Bella” broke down and began to testify. Her criminal case took up 20 volumes, said former investigator Alexander Chernov; based on the testimony of the former director of the trust, another three dozen criminal cases were opened, in which 70 people were convicted. And the head of the Gelendzhik party organization, Pogodin, disappeared without a trace after Borodkina’s arrest. One evening he left the house, telling his wife that he needed to go to the city committee for a while, and did not return.

The police of the Krasnodar region were sent to search for him, divers examined the waters of Gelendzhik Bay, but everything was in vain - he was never seen again, either alive or dead. There is a version that Pogodin left the country on one of the foreign ships stationed in Gelendzhik Bay, but factual evidence of this has not yet been found.

She knew too much.

During the investigation, Borodkina tried to feign schizophrenia. It was “very talented,” but the forensic examination recognized the game and the case was transferred to the regional court, which found Borodkina guilty of repeatedly accepting bribes totaling 561,834 rubles. 89 kopecks (Part 2 of Article 173 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR).

According to Art. 93-1 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (theft of state property on an especially large scale) and Art. 156 part 2 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (consumer deception), she was acquitted “due to insufficient evidence of the defendant’s participation in the commission of the crime.” She was sentenced to an exceptional punishment - execution. The Supreme Court of the USSR left the verdict unchanged. The convict did not file a petition for pardon.

Borodkina was let down by precisely what she was very proud of - meeting high-ranking people whose names she constantly trumped. In the current situation, former patrons were interested in keeping Iron Bell silent forever - she knew too much. She was not only disproportionately punished for her crimes, she was dealt with.

Tamara Ivanyutina

In 1987, an unprecedented trial took place in Kyiv in the case of a family of serial killers who chose a highly toxic drug as the weapon of their crime. water solution based on thallium compounds. In the dock were Maria and Anton Maslenko and their daughters, Tamara Ivanyutina and Nina Matsibora. Most of the victims were 45-year-old Ivanyutina. She became the last woman in the USSR to be sentenced to extreme punishment by a court.

The woman’s biography before the start of the process is not distinguished by any outstanding events. Maiden name hers is Maslenko. She was born in 1942 into a family with six children. Parents have always instilled in their offspring that material security and prosperity are the main conditions normal life. This is exactly what serial poisoner Tamara Ivanyutina was striving for.

During the investigation of the poisoning case, it turned out that Ivanyutina had already been previously convicted of profiteering, and got a job at the school using a fake work book.

Since September 1986, she worked in the canteen of one of the schools in Kyiv. She was hired as a dishwasher. This work brought her considerable benefits. Tamara Ivanyutina kept a fairly large farm. Working in the canteen, she was able to provide her animals with free food, which was left over from schoolchildren with poor appetite. To make it even worse, Tamara Ivanyutina periodically added poison to the food.

She also used toxic substances against those who, in her opinion, “behaved badly.” Ivanyutina’s victims included those who interfered with the theft of food from the school canteen, allowed themselves to make comments to her, and in general all those whom she did not like for one reason or another.

The story of Tamara Ivanyutina became known when several employees and students of school 16 in the Podolsk district of Kyiv were admitted to the hospital. Doctors diagnosed signs of food poisoning. This happened on March 16 and 17, 1987. At the same time, four (two adults and the same number of children) died almost immediately. There were nine victims in intensive care.

Initially, doctors diagnosed an intestinal infection and flu. However, after some time, patients began to lose hair. This phenomenon is not typical for these diseases.

Law enforcement agencies quickly established that Tamara Antonovna Ivanyutina was involved in the poisonings. The investigation began as soon as it became known about the deaths of students and school staff. Criminal proceedings were initiated.

The investigative team conducted interrogations of the surviving victims. It was established that they all became ill after they had lunch in the school cafeteria on March 16. At the same time, they all ate liver with buckwheat porridge. Investigators decided to find out who was responsible for the quality of food at the school. It turned out that nutritionist nurse Natalya Kukharenko died 2 weeks before the proceedings were initiated. According to official data, the woman died from cardiovascular disease. However, investigators doubted the reliability of this information. As a result, an exhumation was carried out. After the study, traces of thallium were found in the tissues of the corpse.

Tamara Ivanyutina was taken into custody. First, she turned herself in and confessed to all the episodes that occurred in the school cafeteria. Tamara Ivanyutina explained that she committed such a crime because the sixth-graders who were having lunch refused to arrange chairs and tables. She decided to punish them and poisoned them. However, she subsequently stated that the confession was made under pressure from investigators. She refused to testify.

The case of Tamara Ivanyutina has become resonant. During further operational activities, new facts emerged. Thus, the investigation established that not only Ivanyutina herself, but also members of her family (parents and sister) used a highly toxic solution for 11 years to deal with people they disliked. At the same time, they committed poisoning both for selfish reasons and to eliminate people who were unsympathetic to them for some reason.In addition, Ivanyutina hoped to get a house and land that belonged to her husband’s parents.

In September 1986, she became a dishwasher at a local school. In addition to the episodes described above, the victims were a school party organizer (died) and a chemistry teacher (survived). They prevented Ivanyutina from stealing food from the catering department. Pupils of the 1st and 5th grades who asked her for leftover cutlets for their pets were also poisoned. These children survived.

The investigation revealed that Nina Matsibora, the older sister of the main defendant in the case, was also active in criminal activities. In particular, using the same Clerici liquid, she poisoned her husband and obtained his apartment in Kyiv.

The Maslenko spouses - Ivanyutina's parents - also committed numerous poisonings. Thus, a neighbor in a communal apartment and a relative who reprimanded them were killed with a highly toxic liquid. In addition, animals that belonged to “undesirable” people also became victims of poisoners.

The geography of the family’s criminal activities was not limited to Ukraine alone. Thus, it was proven that a number of poisonings were committed by criminals in the RSFSR. For example, while in Tula, Maslenko Sr. killed his relative. He mixed Clerici's liquid into the moonshine.

It examined the case of 45-year-old Ivanyutina, her older sister Nina Antonovna and their parents - Maria Fedorovna and Anton Mitrofanovich Maslenko. They were charged with numerous poisonings, including fatal ones.

The court found that for 11 years, the criminal family, for mercenary reasons, as well as out of personal enmity, committed murders and attempted intentional deprivation of life of various individuals using the so-called Clerici liquid - a highly toxic solution based on a potent toxic substance - thallium. According to the Deputy Chairman of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, who worked during the proceedings as a senior investigator for particularly important crimes in the Kiev prosecutor’s office, the identified episodes belong to the first criminal cases in which such a compound was used, recorded in the USSR. The total number of proven facts is 40. Of that number, 13 were fatal.

Most of the murders (nine) and attempts (20) were committed personally by Tamara Ivanyutina. The process lasted about a year.

During the investigation, Ivanyutina tried to bribe the investigator several times. She promised the law enforcement officer “a lot of gold.” The unusual thing about this case in criminal practice is that the main accused was a woman sentenced to death, and the punishment was carried out.

In her last word, Ivanyutina did not admit her guilt in any of the episodes. While still in pre-trial detention, she stated: in order to achieve what you want, you don’t need to write any complaints. It is necessary to be friends with everyone and treat them. And add poison to especially evil people.

Ivanyutina did not ask for forgiveness from the relatives of the victims, saying that her upbringing did not allow her to do this. She had only one regret. Her long-time dream was to buy a Volga car, but it never came true. Ivanyutin was declared sane and sentenced to death. The accomplices were given different prison terms. So, sister Nina was sentenced to 15 years. Her subsequent fate is unknown. The mother received 13, and the father - 10 years in prison. Parents died in prison. The year in which Tamara Ivanyutina was shot was 1987.

In the Lukyanovsky pre-trial detention center in Kyiv, dishwasher Tamara Ivanyutina was shot 30 years ago. Read about her crimes and agree with the verdict.

On March 17 and 18, 1987, three sixth-graders, four teachers, a speech therapist, a nurse, a librarian, a driver, the head of the canteen of school No. 16 in the Podolsk district of Kiev, and a technician who was repairing a refrigerator there were hospitalized. They all complained of weakness and severe joint pain. The original version was a flu epidemic caused by an unknown strain. Doctors contacted the police when the patients began to go bald. Before the beginning of May, two adults and two children will die.

It turned out that on the eve of the disease, all the victims remained at school after the end of the school day. The adults were waiting for an advance payment. The sixth graders helped carry the new chairs. In the dining room they were fed with the leftovers of lunch: buckwheat soup and fried chicken liver.

They began to figure out who controls the preparation of food. Nobody. Diet nurse Natalya Kukharenko died two weeks before the events. The diagnosis is cardiovascular failure.

“It’s strange that my hands are going numb, but I can’t warm my feet. And they also go numb. The pain in my joints is so bad that I can’t sleep at night…” she told her colleague before her death.

Kukharenko's body was exhumed. Traces of the toxic metal thallium were found in the remains. A survey of teachers revealed that at the end of 1986, two schoolchildren, a chemistry teacher and a party organizer, were ill with similar symptoms. The children recovered, the chemist lost his hair, and the party organizer died.

Maria Sidorchuk and Vasily Yurchenko from the school cafeteria ended up in intensive care and died a few days later. Screenshot from the program “The investigation was conducted... with Leonid Kanevsky” / NTV Diet nurse Natalya Kukharenko (left). Screenshot from the program “The investigation was conducted... with Leonid Kanevsky” / NTV

The trail is taken

A search in the canteen yielded nothing, but all the workers were under suspicion. One of the operatives met with the husband of the school dishwasher Tamara Ivanyutina. He was just on sick leave. Oleg Ivanyutin complained to the policeman about pain in his legs and baldness. He said that recently his parents died almost simultaneously, leaving their spouses a private house with the site.

“At my father’s funeral my mother became ill. Tamara brought Valocordin and water. After drinking the medicine, the mother staggered and immediately vomited. Two days later she died,” this is how the operative recounted Ivanyutin’s words to the investigator.

During a search of the Ivanyutins’ house, an expert removed a bottle of lubricant from the drawer of a Singer sewing machine. Analysis showed that it contained Clerici solution based on thallium. The liquid is used by geologists to determine the density of minerals.

Kyiv school No. 16, where Tamara Ivanyutina worked. Photo: Google Maps

Housing problem

Tamara Ivanyutina got a job at the school in September 1986. Since she had a criminal record for profiteering, she presented a fake work record book. The woman dreamed of getting rich and buying a black Volga. She poisoned her first husband for the sake of an apartment. The parents of the second - for the sake of the plot where they began to raise pigs.

Ivanyutina fattened the animals with waste from the dining room and killed anyone who interfered. The party organizer and the dietician, because they controlled the write-off of products. Students to create distrust in school lunches and take away more waste.

On March 17, 1987, Ivanyutina poured thallium into the canteen manager’s plate. The soup cooled, and the man poured it back into the cauldron, from which he later fed 13 people. Four did not survive this.

Tamara Ivanyutina. Screenshot from the program “The investigation was conducted... with Leonid Kanevsky” / NTV

From the memoirs of investigator Poddubny

“The worst thing is that the criminals remained unpunished for a very long time. Believing in their exclusivity, they got used to vindictively dealing with those who stood in their way, splashing a few drops of Clerici liquid into their food or into a glass of tap water.”

Family business

The police found a laboratory assistant on a geological exploration expedition who had been giving thallium solution to a friend for almost 10 years. married couple Maslenko to poison rodents. Friends had daughters - Nina and Tamara (after her second marriage she became Ivanyutina). Both buried their spouses and became apartment owners.

Already during the investigation of Tamara Ivanyutina, her parents treated a neighbor with a large pension to pancakes. She turned out to be suspicious and fed the treat to the cat, and after the animal’s painful death she called the police.

It turned out that Tamara and Nina were taught to poison unwanted people by their parents. Among their victims were a neighbor in a communal apartment who was watching TV at high volume, and a relative who reprimanded him for a puddle in the toilet.

Investigators were able to prove that the Maslenko-Ivanyutin dynasty was responsible for 40 poisonings, 13 of them fatal. Tamara committed 9 murders and 20 attempts. A psychiatric examination found all the defendants sane.

Lukyanovsky pre-trial detention center in Kyiv. There, under the USSR, death sentences were carried out. Photo: Artemka / CC BY-SA 4.0

Mentally healthy

The meeting room of the Kyiv City Court was packed throughout the entire trial. Acquaintances of the Maslenko family, friends of their victims, teachers and parents of students from school No. 16, and journalists came. Every day there was a crowd of people at the entrance who did not get inside.

The verdict sentenced the 79-year-old head of the family to 13 years in prison, his 77-year-old wife to 10, and his daughter Nina to 15. A riot almost broke out in the hall, the audience demanded a death sentence.

The court sentenced Tamara to death. When Ivanyutina was given the last word, she refused to admit guilt and ask for forgiveness from the relatives of the victims. “I didn’t have the right upbringing,” said the serial killer.

Ivanyutin was shot in the Lukyanovsky pre-trial detention center in Kyiv. This was only the third and last execution of a woman by court verdict in the post-war history of the USSR. The Nazi executioner Antonina Makarova and the plunderer of state property Berta Borodkina were executed before the serial killer.

Antonina Makarova (Ginsburg) nicknamed “Tonka the Machine Gunner”. During World War II, at the direction of the German authorities and Russian collaborators, she shot more than 1,500 people. Found and arrested in 1978, executed in 1979.

In the USSR, several women were sentenced to capital punishment; however, some of them had their sentences changed to life imprisonment at the last moment. However, three criminals were still executed. Why were they shot?

Tonka the machine gunner

Antonina Makarova was born in 1921 in the Smolensk region, in the village of Malaya Volkovka, into the large peasant family of Makar Parfenov. She bore her father’s surname, but received the “pseudonym” Makarova at school: when the girl entered the first grade of school, because of shyness she could not say either her first or last name. When the teacher asked her again, one of her classmates shouted: “Yes, she is Makarova!”, referring to the name of her father. That's what they wrote down.

Classmates recalled that Tony had a revolutionary heroine in his childhood: Anka the machine gunner. After graduating from school, Antonina went to study in Moscow: there she was caught by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. The girl went to the front as a volunteer, but did not really have time to serve her Motherland: she ended up in the Vyazma operation - the infamous battle near Moscow, in which Soviet army suffered a crushing defeat. Died whole part: Only Tonya and a soldier named Nikolai Fedchuk managed to survive. For several months they wandered through the forests, trying to get to Fedchuk’s home village. They literally ate pasture, slept on the ground and, quite naturally, became close. Feelings flared up between the young people, but when they managed to get to the soldier’s village, the “camping wife” found out that he actually had a wife. Tonya left him with her, and she went further alone and came to the village of Lokot, occupied by the German invaders. She stayed there.

There she continued to be a “camping wife” - this time of the Germans, and not Soviet soldiers. She drank a lot and often partied with the occupiers. Tonya was often raped - even in groups - and was given housing and food in return. According to legend, one day they made Tonya drunk and put her in front of a Maxim machine gun, ordering her to shoot at a crowd of prisoners. Tonya, who before the war took not only nursing courses, but also machine gunners, did not refuse. Since then, she was nicknamed the Thin Machine Gunner and, for a regular salary of 30 marks, was ordered to shoot people. And everyone indiscriminately: men, women, children and the elderly. There were often mishaps with children: sometimes bullets flew over them, and they managed to survive. The surviving children were taken out of the village along with the corpses, and partisans rescued them at the burial sites. At the same time, the Germans allowed Makarova to take the things of the dead, which she did, washing them of blood and sewing up bullet holes.

So rumors about Tonka the Machine Gunner reached the partisans, who were outraged by the betrayal of the female monster. They even put a reward on her head, but they were unable to get to Makarova. Until 1943, Antonina continued to shoot people. Then, however, the Soviet army reached the Bryansk region, and Antonina would not have fared well, but she very “successfully” contracted syphilis from someone, and the Germans sent her to the rear, to the hospital. She escaped from there, managing to obtain documents proving that all this time she allegedly worked as a nurse in the hospital.

Thanks to the documents, she even found a job, entering a Soviet hospital, where at the beginning of 1945 she met a young soldier, Viktor Ginzburg. The young people got married, and Antonina Ginzburg “appeared” instead of Tonka the Machine Gunner. After the liberation of the Bryansk region, Soviet investigators learned a lot about Tonka the Machine Gunner, but could not get on her trail. They interrogated witnesses, clarified details, checked, but they never found out where she might be hiding.

Meanwhile, Ginsburg led the life of an ordinary woman. They lived in the city of Lepel, she and her husband had two daughters, she worked and even spoke to schoolchildren, talking about the hardships of difficult wartime. Naturally, without mentioning his “exploits” in front of the German troops. As a result, the KGB hiccupped her for almost 30 years, and found her almost by accident. A certain citizen Parfyonov, going abroad, submitted forms with information about his relatives. There, among the solid Parfenovs, for some reason Antonina Makarova, after her husband Ginzburg, was listed as her sister. Antonina was detained right on the way from work. True, they did not immediately punish him; an investigation began. They say that even a former policeman-lover was brought in for interrogation so that he could confirm whether it was the same Tonka the Machine Gunner or not. Only when all the data coincided did they begin to judge Ginzburg.

At first, the husband and daughters tried to get the mother released: investigators did not say why exactly she was arrested. However, when the real reason the arrest became clear to them, they stopped trying to appeal the arrest and left Lepel. Antonin Makarov was sentenced to death on November 20, 1978. She immediately submitted several petitions for clemency, but they were all rejected. On August 11, 1979, Tonka the Machine Gunner was shot.

Berta Borodkina was born in 1927. She didn't like her name, and the girl preferred to call herself Bella. She started working as a barmaid and waitress in a Gelendzhik canteen. Soon, for her success in work, the girl was transferred to the position of canteen director: there she became an Honored Worker of Trade and Catering of the RSFSR, and also headed a trust of restaurants and canteens in Gelendzhik. They say that she had many connections: among those who provided her patronage were members of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, as well as the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Fyodor Kulakov.

The scheme of work was simple: visitors to cafes and restaurants were constantly cheated, dishes were prepared from expired products, due to which dizzying sums were released. Bella spent them on bribes to high-ranking officials and serving them at the highest level.

During the specified period [from 1974 to 1982], being an official in a responsible position, says the indictment in the Borodkina case, she repeatedly personally and through intermediaries in her apartment and at her place of work received bribes from a large group of her subordinates. work. Of the bribes she received, Borodkina herself transferred bribes to responsible employees of the city of Gelendzhik for assistance and support in their work... Thus, over the past two years, 15,000 rubles worth of valuables, money and products were transferred to the secretary of the city party committee Pogodin.

The last amount in the 1980s was approximately the cost of three Zhiguli cars.

It was a real restaurant mafia: every bartender, waiter and director of a cafe or canteen had to give Borodkina a certain amount every month, otherwise the employees were simply fired. At the same time, there were no checks or audits - connections with officials helped. But in 1982, an anonymous person reported that in one of Borodkina’s restaurants, pornographic films were shown to selected visitors. It is not known whether this information was confirmed, but during the audit it turned out that during the years of leading the trust, Borodkina stole more than a million rubles from the state - an incredible amount at that time. Borodkina's house was searched, finding furs, jewelry and huge sums of money hidden in heating radiators, in rolled up cans and even in a pile of bricks near the house. Bertha herself did not admit her guilt for a long time, however, according to her sister, in prison the defendant was tortured and given psychotropic drugs, under the influence of which she began to confess. In August 1983, Berta Borodkina was shot.

Tamara Ivanyutina, before Maslenko’s marriage, was born in large family, who lived in Kyiv. They said that from early childhood, parents instilled in their children that the most important thing in life was material security. It was not for nothing that Tamara went into trade - in Soviet times it was a grain-producing place. However, very quickly Ivanyutina fell for speculation and received a criminal record. It was very difficult for a woman with a criminal record to get a job back then, so she got herself a fake work book and in 1986 got a job as a dishwasher at school number 16 in the Minsk district of Kyiv. She later told investigators that she needed to work in the canteen in order to provide chickens and pigs with food waste. However, not only for this, as it turned out.

On March 17 and 18, 1987, several students and school staff were hospitalized with signs of severe food poisoning. At first there was a version about intestinal infection, but soon it disappeared: all the victims lost their hair. In the first hours, two children and two adults died, another 9 people were in intensive care in in serious condition. A criminal case was opened. The investigation interviewed the victims, and it turned out that all of them had lunch in the school canteen the day before and ate buckwheat porridge with liver. Later it also turned out that the nurse responsible for the quality of food died two weeks ago, according to the official conclusion - from cardiovascular disease.

All these circumstances aroused suspicion among the investigators, and it was decided to exhume the body. An examination showed that the nurse died from thallium poisoning. It is highly toxic heavy metal, striking nervous system And internal organs, as well as causing total alopecia (complete hair loss). All employees of the school canteen were searched, including Ivanyutina, in whose house they found “a small but very heavy jar.” In the laboratory it turned out that the jar contained “Clerici liquid” - a highly toxic thallium-based solution. Later, the woman confessed, saying that in this way she wanted to “punish” the sixth-graders who refused to set up tables in the cafeteria. However, it later turned out that this was not the woman’s first crime.

It turned out that poisoning people was customary in Ivanyutina’s family. Her parents and sister had been using thallium to commit poisoning for 11 years at that time - since 1976. Moreover, both for selfish purposes, and in relation to people who, for some reason, family members simply did not like. They purchased the highly toxic Clerici liquid from a friend: the woman worked at a geological institute and was sure that she was selling thallium to her friends for baiting rats. In addition, Ivanyutina poisoned her first husband, and then his parents - because of the apartment. Then she married a second time, but also unsuccessfully. Having decided to ruin the man gradually, she began to poison him with small portions of poison. He began to get sick, and Tamara hoped to receive a house and land after his death. Ivanyutina also poisoned school party organizer Ekaterina Shcherban (the woman died), a chemistry teacher (survived) and two children - first and fifth grade students. They asked the woman for the remaining cutlets for their pets, which greatly angered the criminal. The children died.

As a result, the court proved 40 episodes of poisoning committed by members of this family, 13 of which were fatal. Ivanyutina’s sister Nina was sentenced to 15 years in prison, her father and mother to 10 and 13 years. Tamara Ivanyutina was shot.

Is it true that executioners from Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan were sent on business trips to other union republics, where for years there were no people willing to carry out the “tower”? Is it true that in the Baltic states no one was executed at all, and all those sentenced to capital punishment were taken to Minsk to be shot?

Is it true that the executioners were paid substantial bonuses for each person executed? And is it true that it was not customary to shoot women in the Soviet Union? During the post-Soviet period, so many common myths have been created around the “tower” that it is hardly possible to figure out what is true and what is speculation in them without painstaking work in the archives, which can take more than a dozen years. There is no complete clarity either with the pre-war executions or with the post-war ones. But the worst situation is with the data on how death sentences were carried out in the 60–80s.

As a rule, convicts were executed in pre-trial detention centers. Each union republic had at least one such special-purpose pre-trial detention center. There were two of them in Ukraine, three in Azerbaijan, and four in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Today, death sentences are carried out only in one single Soviet-era pre-trial detention center - in the Pishchalovsky central prison in Minsk, also known as “Volodarka”. This is a unique place, the only one in Europe. About 10 people a year are executed there. But if you count execution pre-trial detention centers in Soviet republics It is relatively easy, but even the most trained historian can hardly say with confidence how many such specialized insulators there were in the RSFSR. For example, until recently it was believed that in Leningrad in the 60-80s, convicts were not executed at all - there was nowhere. But it turned out that this was not the case. Not long ago, documentary evidence was discovered in the archives that 15-year-old teenager Arkady Neyland, sentenced to capital punishment, was shot in the summer of 1964 in the Northern capital, and not in Moscow or Minsk, as previously thought. Therefore, a “prepared” pre-trial detention center was found after all. And Neyland was hardly the only one who was shot there.

There are other common myths about the “tower”. For example, it is generally accepted that since the late 50s the Baltics did not have their own execution squads at all, so all those sentenced to capital punishment from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were transported to Minsk for execution. This is not entirely true: death sentences were also carried out in the Baltic states. But the performers were actually invited from outside. Mainly from Azerbaijan. Still, three firing squads for one small republic is too much. Convicts were executed mainly in the Bailov prison in Baku, and the shoulder craftsmen from Nakhichevan were often unemployed. Their salaries were still “dripping” - the members of the firing squad received approximately 200 rubles a month, but at the same time no bonuses for “execution”, nor quarterly. And this was a lot of money - the quarterly amount was approximately 150-170 rubles, and “for performance” they paid one hundred members of the brigade and 150 directly to the performer. So we went on business trips to earn extra money. More often - to Latvia and Lithuania, less often - to Georgia, Moldova and Estonia.

Another common myth is that in last decades During the existence of the Union, women were not sentenced to death. They sentenced. IN open sources You can find information about three such executions. In 1979, collaborator Antonina Makarova was shot, in 1983, plunderer of socialist property Berta Borodkina, and in 1987, poisoner Tamara Ivanyutina. And this is against the backdrop of 24,422 death sentences handed down between 1962 and 1989! So, only men were shot? Hardly. In particular, the verdicts of currency traders Oksana Sobinova and Svetlana Pinsker (Leningrad), Tatyana Vnuchkina (Moscow), Yulia Grabovetskaya (Kyiv), handed down in the mid-60s, are still shrouded in secrecy.

They were sentenced to the “tower”, but executed or still pardoned, it’s hard to say. Their names are not among the 2,355 pardoned. This means that most likely they were shot after all.

The third myth is that people became executioners, so to speak, at the call of their hearts. In the Soviet Union, executioners were appointed - and that’s all. No volunteers. You never know what’s on their minds – what if they’re perverts? Even an ordinary OBKhSS employee could be appointed as an executioner. As a rule, those who were dissatisfied with their salaries and who urgently needed improvement were selected among law enforcement officials. living conditions. They offered me a job. They invited me for an interview. If the subject approached, he was processed. It must be said that Soviet personnel officers worked excellently: from 1960 to 1990 there was not a single case in which an executioner resigned of his own free will. And there was certainly not a single case of suicide among the execution staff - they had strong nerves Soviet executioners. “Yes, I was the one who was appointed,” recalled the former head of the institution UA-38/1 UITU of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Azerbaijan SSR, Khalid Yunusov, who was responsible for carrying out more than three dozen death sentences. – I caught bribe-takers six years ago. I’m tired of it, I’ve only made enemies for myself.”

How, in fact, did the execution procedure itself take place? After the court announced the verdict and before it was carried out, as a rule, several years passed. All this time, the condemned man was kept in solitary confinement in the prison of the city in which the trial was taking place. When all submitted requests for clemency were rejected, the condemned were transported to a special detention center - as a rule, a few days before the sad procedure. It happened that prisoners languished in anticipation of execution for several months, but these were rare exceptions. Prisoners had their heads shaved and dressed in clothes made of striped fabric (a light gray stripe alternated with a dark gray stripe). The convicts were not informed that their last request for clemency was rejected.

Meanwhile, the head of the pre-trial detention center was assembling his firing squad. In addition to the doctor and the executioner, it included an employee of the prosecutor's office and a representative of the operational information center of the Internal Affairs Directorate. These five gathered in a specially designated room. First, the prosecutor's office employee got acquainted with the personal file of the convicted person. Then the so-called supervisory inspectors, two or three people, brought the convict into the room in handcuffs. In films and books, there is usually a passage in which the death row inmate is told that all his requests for clemency have been rejected. In fact, serving in last way this was never reported. They asked what his name was, where he was born, what article he was under. They offered to sign several protocols. Then they reported that they would need to draw up another petition for pardon - in the next room where the deputies were sitting, and the papers would need to be signed in front of them. The trick, as a rule, worked flawlessly: those sentenced to death cheerfully walked towards the deputies.

And there were no deputies outside the door of the next cell - the performer was standing there. As soon as the condemned man entered the room, a shot followed in the back of the head. More precisely, “to the left occipital part of the head in the area of ​​the left ear,” as required by the instructions. The suicide bomber fell and a control shot was fired. The dead man's head was wrapped in a rag and the blood was washed off - there was a specially equipped blood drain in the room. The doctor came in and pronounced death. It is noteworthy that the executioner never shot the victim with a pistol - only with a small-caliber rifle. They say that they shot from Makarov and TT guns exclusively in Azerbaijan, but the destructive power of the weapon was such that at close range the convicts’ heads were literally blown off. And then it was decided to shoot the convicts from the revolvers of the times Civil War– they had a more gentle battle. By the way, only in Azerbaijan were those sentenced to execution tightly tied up before the procedure, and only in this republic was it customary to announce to the condemned that all their requests for clemency had been rejected. Why this is so is unknown. The binding of the victims affected them so strongly that every fourth died of a broken heart.

It is also noteworthy that the prosecutor’s office never signed documents on the execution of the sentence before the execution (as prescribed by the instructions) - only after. They said it was a bad omen, worse than ever. Next, the deceased was placed in a pre-prepared coffin and taken to the cemetery, to a special plot, where they were buried under nameless tablets. No names, no surnames - just a serial number. Firing squad a certificate was issued, and on that day all four of its members received time off.

In Ukrainian, Belarusian and Moldavian pre-trial detention centers, as a rule, they made do with one executioner. But in the Georgian special detention centers - in Tbilisi and Kutaisi - there were a good dozen of them. Of course, most of these “executioners” never executed anyone - they were only listed, receiving a large salary on the payroll. But why did the law enforcement system need to maintain such huge and unnecessary ballast? They explained it this way: it is not possible to keep secret which of the pre-trial detention center employees shoots the condemned. The accountant will always let something slip! So, in order to mislead even the accountant, Georgia introduced such a strange payment system.