MOUNTAINS OF SPECULATION

SEPARATE CONVERSATION

The co-author of the script and director of the film "Bastards" Alexander Atanesyan in an interview with Novaya Gazeta (No. 8, 06-08.02.2006) did not confirm the authenticity of the events described in the work of the same name by Vladimir Kunin. In doing so, he referred to...

The co-author of the script and director of the film "Bastards" Alexander Atanesyan in an interview with Novaya Gazeta (No. 8, 06-08.02.2006) did not confirm the authenticity of the events described in the work of the same name by Vladimir Kunin. At the same time, he referred to the contradictory statements of V. Kunin himself.

Nevertheless, on the same page of the newspaper, Alexander Melenberg categorically claims that a school like the one shown in the movie "Bastards" really existed in a place called Gorelnik. As evidence, he points to a memorial plaque installed in 2003 near the building of the former school, which in the period from 1943 to 1945 trained more than 1,500 instructors and 12,000 mountain shooters for the front. Further, the conclusion is made: “It is clear that these instructors and mountain shooters were divided into scouts, explosives, etc. They taught in a similar school and the specialty of mountain saboteurs.

There is no need to dispute that special centers and schools in the warring states trained scouts, bombers, and saboteurs. It is also known that such "institutions" existed, exist and function constantly, not only during the years of military confrontation between states. But the statement about the existence of such a school "in the town of Gorelnik" is a fiction. I declare this with full responsibility, because in 1943-1945 I was a cadet, and then an instructor of the All-Union School in Gorelnik, where pre-conscripts took short-term courses in mountaineering and alpine skiing.

At the beginning of 1943, together with my classmate and closest friend Alexander Tomberg, we ended up in this school by chance. At the next physical education lesson, an employee of the district military registration and enlistment office (a disabled veteran of the Patriotic War) Anatoly Medvedev spoke about the school in Gorelnik and the possibility of sending those who wish there. From among those who wished, those with the best indicators in physical culture were selected.

The school in Gorelnik was under the jurisdiction of the All-Union Committee for Physical Culture and Sports and the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR. We learned about this at the district military registration and enlistment office and at the first meeting with the head of the school, Honored Master of Sports of the USSR and world-famous mountaineer Mikhail Timofeevich Pogrebetsky.

The contingent of the school consisted of young men of pre-conscription age. After a short-term training in mountaineering, and in the winter months also in alpine skiing, they returned to their place of residence and participated in the organization of such courses by the district military commissariats for pre-conscripts. It is possible that after being drafted into the army, they were sent to mountain units.

In March 1944, the Embekshi-Kazakh District Military Commissariat drafted me and Alexander Tomberg into the army. Then, by order of the Kazvoenkomat, we were sent to Gorelnik already as instructors of the named school. There were no children or adolescents younger than pre-conscription age at the school located in Gorelnik. And the head of the school T.M. Pogrebetsky was not a colonel in the NKVD. The chief of physical training of the Red Army, Colonel Gorin, periodically came to Gorelnik, accompanied by his adjutant Yerokhin. They were mountaineers and in the intervals between the regular races of cadets with a group of instructors climbed the peaks of the Trans-Ili Ala-Tau.

The school management, instructors and all cadets did not wear military uniforms, the school did not train any type of weapon. The school was of a sports direction; during the war years, pre-conscripts were trained in mountaineering and alpine skiing. It is likely that they underwent purely military training after being drafted into the army.

In an attempt to strengthen his arguments, A. Melenberg writes: “In addition to Vladimir Kunin ..., at least one other person involved in the Alma-Ata school wrote: Yuri Nikolayevich Menzhulin. He left memories of how military climbers were trained at the school. Knowing Yuri Menzhulin for many years and his moral principles, I am absolutely convinced that he could not write about the training of scouts, demolitionists and saboteurs in Gorelnik, especially from children and adolescents. He could not write about what was not in reality.

As for the memorial plaque, it is obvious that the organizations that installed it, more than half a century later, indicated the approximate (as a keepsake) name of the school and its purpose. Does it follow from the content of the inscription on the board that children and teenagers were trained there for reconnaissance and sabotage?

The leadership and instructors of the school in Gorelnik included highly educated and highly moral personalities, many of whom, God forbid, are still alive today - M.T. Pogrebetsky, his deputies Kolenov and Neuronsky, instructors Menzhulin, Semenov, Tomberg and others. From time to time, the country's first champion in slalom Preobrazhensky, the famous skier Basalova, a photojournalist for the Ogonyok magazine, and the skier Gippenreiter, the famous yachtsman, champion of the country Pinegin, came to school and worked with the cadets from time to time. Alpine skiers and actors from Lenfilm Sobolevsky, Schildknecht and others worked at the school for months. Communication of the contingent of the school with such people was of great importance for his intellectual and spiritual development.

For everyone who worked and studied mountaineering and skiing at this school, Gorelnik and Chinbulak remained in their memory as a bright corner of human communication. No one has the right to desecrate this corner and good human memory with their "artistic inventions."

Mr. A. Melenberg and his like-minded people may suspect me of trying to mitigate the numerous crimes of the totalitarian regime of Stalinism. Calm down gentlemen. Together with my parents, brothers and sisters, I drank the cup of Stalinist lawlessness in full at the age of 12. Back in October 1937, my father (a collective farmer and production leader) was arrested, together with his family they were driven into a freight car, for about two months they were transported from the village of Nor-Artik in the Armenian SSR to God knows where and landed on the outskirts of the village of Issyk in the Alma-Ata region. There was a struggle for survival... So I know firsthand about totalitarian lawlessness. The consequences of the totalitarian regime of Stalinism and undemocratic manifestations in the practical politics of modern "liberal democrats" are covered in my publications.

Parental upbringing and the difficult life path I have traveled do not allow me to calmly perceive any injustice, including the absurd "fiction" of individual authors and the conjectures of their commentators.

It is puzzling that the Agency for Physical Culture and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation do not clarify the issue of the work of the school in Gorelnik. The archives of these departments should contain reliable information about its work in 1943-1945.