Foolish terrorists

How the last Russian blessed were destroyed

It was cold outside. April even here, in the very south of the Sverdlovsk region, is a winter month. A man in a hospital bed tossed and turned under a thin government-issued blanket in sweet half-asleep. Dull aching pain in frostbitten toes did not reach ...

It was cold outside. April even here, in the very south of the Sverdlovsk region, is a winter month.

A man in a hospital bed tossed and turned under a thin government-issued blanket in sweet half-asleep. Dull aching pain in frostbitten toes did not reach his consciousness. Little got there.

By evening, the ward was heated. There were thick shadows in the corners of the wooden floor. The remains of burnt firewood fell into the blower and glowed in the ashes with hundreds of sparks. A lying person could see something similar in the icy transparency of the August sky. If, turning from the country road to the village for the night, he suddenly stopped and looked up.

The man was as happy as can be. For supper he received a slice of bread and a mug of boiling water. Doctor Kuznetsov is kind. It's warm here and you can sleep as long as you want. Here he was washed and cut with a manual machine. Tomorrow we will have porridge for lunch. And he enjoyed this peace, warmth and satiety for the seventeenth day. However, he could not even count to ten. He slept the sleep of a righteous man, and he could not even dream that in three days he would be discharged, and in another four he would be arrested. As a member of the mobile battle group. Leading to the same active anti-Soviet agitation. His lame fate will turn out to be one of the threads woven by the skillful hands of the NKVD operatives into the sinister tangle of the Ural insurgent headquarters.

Once upon a time, a drunken father who beat his mother threw him out of a rocking cradle. To the street through the window. Had it happened otherwise, a person would have realized in time that only the conscientiousness and devotion to duty of four doctors saved him from a bullet in the back of the head.

But he will never be able to understand this - Pyotr Vasilievich Sevastyanov.

Village idiot. Holy fool.

clinical idiot.

Terrorist.

Details of the biography of the "terrorist" Sevastyanov, his appearance and mental development were reconstructed on the basis of data contained in a certificate dated May 9, 1937 from the Ryabkovskaya hospital in the Chernushinsky district: - 37 with frostbite of the fingers of both lower extremities. Observation of the patient showed that the patient is really weak-minded. ... Doctor N. Kuznetsov "; certificates dated May 8, 1937 from the Chernushinsky outpatient clinic, the certificate of examination of Sevastyanov P.V. in the Judicial Department of the Perm Psychiatric Hospital dated July 8, 1937: “We, the undersigned, examined on 8/VII-37 in the Judicial Department of the Perm Psychiatric Hospital Pyotr Vasilyevich Sevastyanov, accused under Art. 58-10 hours 2 and 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR and sent by the Sverdlovsk prison according to the decision of the Chernushkinsky RO NKVD dated 14/6-37. An objective examination revealed: Dysplastic physique, moderate nutrition, swollen abdomen, significant protrusion of the frontal tubercles on the skull. <…> Speech is poorly developed. On the part of the psyche: consciousness is clear, oriented in place and surroundings, does not understand time, does not know the day and month, does not know the reckoning even within the first 10 natural numbers, the stock of ideas is extremely limited. In behavior, he is calm, smiling good-naturedly when talking. Based on the foregoing, the Commission concludes that: Sevastyanov P.The. discovers congenital mental deficiency (dementia in a deep degree) and is not responsible for his actions ... Members of the commission: Dr. Wertheim. Dr. Staritsin"; and the protocol of interrogation of Sevastyanov dated May 8, 1937: “As a child, as my mother told me that my father, being drunk during her beating, allegedly threw me out of the rocking chair into the street through the window, since that time I have had some limitations” . (PermGANI. F. 641/1. D. 13385, the same source is further cited.)

The perspective is different - direct and reverse, linear or non-linear. In the case of Pyotr Sevastyanov, the temptation is great to start with a close-up. Draw a portrait of one of the main characters of this story in the perspective of a “kulak operation”. And to make it as alive as possible - in all its tragicomic and impossible fantasy. To do this, in two volumes of the archival investigation file No. 13385, all information relating to the personality and fate of the person whose thumbprint adorns the arrest warrant was revealed. After all, we have before us literally a “leaving nature”, a representative of an anthropological type that is less and less common in the landscape of a collective farm village - the classic holy fool. Moreover, a holy fool, turned into a member of an insurgent organization.

The case of terrorists from Chernushka "sounded". Still, after all, it was mentioned in a directive letter to the “City and District Committees of the CPSU (b)” then (and very briefly later) by the all-powerful “owner of the Urals” - 1st Secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee I.D. Kabakov. The preamble reported that "recently in the region, in a number of districts, clergymen and sectarians have been developing active counter-revolutionary activities, which, along with attempts to use the legal possibilities of the new Constitution, have switched to sharp forms of counter-revolutionary work."

I.D. Kabakov expressed fear that churchmen and sectarians would try to use the coincidence of Easter and May Day to disrupt the May Day holidays and "reverse the sowing." This was followed by a sacramental phrase: "At present, the following facts have been established," after which a dozen or two incidents were listed. The Chernushinsky region was mentioned twice: “In the Tagil, Chernushinsky, Kirovograd, Chermozsky and other regions, recently there have been openings of previously closed churches” and “In the Chernushinsky region, returning from a concentration camp, priest Kalashnikov, together with two other priests, organized a group of wandering monastics from seven people, before whom they set the goal of committing railway wrecks, especially with trains in which members of the Soviet government would travel ”(hereinafter, my italics. - A.K.).

At the end of the letter, Kabakov made a sharp attack on his subordinates: "The district committees of the party are not engaged in anti-religious propaganda, political agitation, they do not know what the churchmen and sectarians are doing in their districts."

This recognition of the chief party chief of the Urals is puzzling. It clearly follows from it that the secretaries of the regional committees, the departments of agitation and propaganda "on the ground", together with the Union of Militant Atheists (and the Komsomol - by the way) at the beginning of 1937 were in a state that the lexicon of those years defined as "idiotic complacency." They saw neither a sharp intensification of the activities of sectarians and churchmen, nor the acute forms of counter-revolutionary work practiced by the latter. And this was after all the “acting causes” that determined the situation were already in place: the new Constitution was discussed and last December, 1936, was adopted. In January, the All-Union Census of the population was held, in the questionnaire of which there was a question about attitudes towards religion. The country was preparing for the first general elections, which A. Zhdanov spoke about at the February-March plenum of the Central Committee precisely in connection with the urgent tasks on the “anti-religious front”: the priests, they say, are working with might and main, but we are only swaying.

Historical studies teach in relation to the thirties of the twentieth century not to be surprised at anything. Let's say subordinates I.D. Kabakov really did not notice those egregious facts that are given in the letter of the secretary of the regional committee. Or they did not attach due importance to them - in the end, the “reversal of sowing” is more important, and did not begin to report to the regional committee. The most intriguing thing about this whole story is that he himself somehow found out about them. Where?

We have no way to find out the source of information about each of the approximately two dozen cases. But regarding the "group of wandering monastics of 7 people" under the leadership of the priest Kalashnikov, everything is more or less clear. The first arrests in Chernushka were made by the district department of the NKVD on April 17, 1937. Information about the terrorist group clearly came from the "competent authorities". Most likely, behind each mentioned I.D. Kabakov's fact was the recently initiated and obviously unfinished investigative case. It turns out that a high-ranking party functionary literally "ate from the hands" of the head of the UNKVD of the Sverdlovsk Region, Commissioner of State Security of the III rank D.M. Dmitriev.

Since one of the terrorists, allegedly mobilized by the churchmen to organize train wrecks with members of the Soviet government (P. Sevastyanov), was subsequently disqualified by a psychiatric examination, it makes sense to undertake a microhistorical reconstruction of the events in Chernushka. This will allow us to see, firstly, a fragment of the everyday life of the “churchmen” in 1936-1937. Secondly, perhaps it will be possible, if not to solve, then at least to identify the question: does the thesis about the activation of churchmen and sectarians (which the NKVD will then “operate”) reflect any reality, or is this activation itself a fruit of constructing the leadership of the UNKVD of the Sverdlovsk region ( designed to justify the need for surgery).

The main blow to the church (as elsewhere) in the Chernushinsky district was inflicted during the years of collectivization, but the closure of churches and the displacement of rural priests continued later.

The church in Chernushka itself remained active until 1937. Iosif Fedorovich Kalashnikov served and acted as Dean there. By the time of the events described, he was 39 years old, he was a local native. Kalashnikov’s parents are residents of the village of Ananyino, before the revolution they were peasants and had a middle-peasant economy: “Sowing 3 acres, and all the land 18 acres, a house 1, a horse, a cow, small livestock 3 heads.” The family was distinguished by piety, the father served as church warden for many years.

Despite his relative youth, Fr. Joseph, as they say, "had a biography." After graduating from a two-year school, he entered an electrical engineering school, and in 1918, being twenty years old, he went to serve in the Red Army. In the ranks of the Red Army, the future father went from private to commander of a communications company and was demobilized in 1922. Back in the fifties of the twentieth century, elderly residents of Chernushka, who were interrogated in connection with the activities of the rehabilitation commission, told legends about his military exploits on the fronts of the Civil War.

It was not possible to find out what exactly happened next, but by 1925 Iosif Fedorovich became a priest and an implacable enemy of the Soviet government, which had contributed a lot to the establishment earlier. In the period from 1925 to 1937, he was arrested by the police 9 times, by the OGPU - once.

Returning from exile in 1935, Kalashnikov quickly obtained from the bishop of the Sverdlovsk diocese (Tikhonovsky, or, as they sometimes say, the Sergian direction) Pyotr Savelyev, appointment to serve in Chernushka. There he began to act in the same way as before his arrest for anti-Soviet agitation. He refused to accept in the church the parents of children who were not born in a church marriage and were not baptized, he achieved the opening of a church in the village of Ananyino (in the summer of 1936). The collective farm for him was the anti-world, the kingdom of Antichrist, communism was a false doctrine, the appearance of which was predicted in the Apocalypse. Confessing the peasants, Fr. Joseph was firmly convinced that they fully shared his views and attitude towards the Soviet government.

Around him, the energetic dean seemed to be trying to unfold the world of a bygone era, in which religious processions were made “into the fields”, people from all over the area gathered for church holidays, often spending the night in the house of Kalashnikov himself, after the service they drank tea and had unhurried conversations about politics , Certainly. House about. Joseph became a center of attraction for priests from all over the area, whether they continued to serve or were "outsourced." But the most curious detail was still the colorful figures of the holy fools.

There are three of them in the orbit of Kalashnikov's influence: Pyotr Sevastyanov, Veniamin Plotnikov and Stepan Lukanin. All of them led a wandering life befitting their status, begging for alms. In their wanderings (which can be traced from the protocols of interrogations and reports of agents), each of them traveled the area far and wide. Their element is the market square, where Sevastyanov, Lukanin and Plotnikov were engaged in the original business of holy fools, which, as you know, is to "swear at the world." What is the world - such is abuse. Let's give the floor to Pyotr Lukanin: "I was at Kalashnikov's, he fed me and said that pray, but that's not enough, do as Pyotr Sevastyanov does - he scolds the communists, nothing will happen to you as an idiot."

Although only Sevastyanov was officially recognized as weak-minded of the whole trinity, one can also conclude with all certainty about the intellect of Lukanin and Plotnikov. Plotnikov, for example, at the very first interrogation made the following statement: "I am a convinced monarchist, but I declare that I did not conduct any counter-revolutionary work among the population of the villages I visited." About Lukanin, one of the witnesses reported: “Lukanin has almost no dementia at all, and he spoke about it sensibly, but at times he cannot speak at all from fright ...”

The tradition of the inviolability of the holy fools, apparently, was still so authoritative that it seemed to be supported even by the detectives of the Chernushinsky regional department of the NKVD. At least one character from the trinity mentioned above (V. Plotnikov) regularly received undercover information. The source "Chernov" (who lives in the village of Klyuchi pop) reported that it was Plotnikov who spoke on the market squares, and his first reports date back to 1934. And Plotnikov chatted famously. Here are some typical dated messages from Chernov:

"April 20, 1934" Citizen of the village. Etysh Tashkinlov Nikolai says that deacon Veniamin Plotnikov goes begging and conducts anti-Soviet propaganda, leads provocative rumors about the outbreak of war and the imminent fall of Soviet power. Plotnikov reinforces this by the fact that supposedly Japan in the Far East is gradually starting a war, and that she will win one way or another.

November 19, 1934 the source talked to deacon Plotnikov regarding the payment of taxes, where he said, “that anyway you can’t fool the communists with taxes, before they were the last, and now they are being served.”

Such confessions were simply (just in case) kept in the district department of the NKVD. No measures have been taken against our heroes for three years. But one day this almost idyllic connivance came to an end.

“In the second half of August, 1936, when Kalashnikov came to church in the morning, he told me that the newspapers were writing about the opened k[countr]-r[revolutionary] Trotskyist-Zinoviev center, after that, the next day or the third, I began to ask him the details of this affairs, and he told me about their sabotage terrorist activities against the leaders of the Soviet government and the CPSU (b), said that “their actions were correct, because if Stalin had been killed, then there could have been a big change and then we would have lived again old." This is how the deacon of the Ananyino church, Mikhail Ivanovich Kotov, tells about the beginning of the events that led to the tragic denouement.

O. Joseph was involuntarily carried away by the myth composed by the Soviet propaganda machine. With his closest like-minded people, he began to often and willingly discuss the possible consequences of the elimination of the first persons of the state. His passionate desire to "live the old way" found expression in inventing ways to commit terrorist acts. Apparently, among friends, he more than once verbally eliminated Stalin and with pleasure made predictions about a change in the “political line”.

Conversations about politics (even in a narrow circle) in the mid-30s at any moment could be deadly. Usually three people took part in discussions of current events: I.F. Kalashnikov, as well as priests N.K. Zaborskikh and V.E. Savintsev. But Nikolai Konstantinovich Zaborsky had a son, Veniamin, 27 years old, who had 6 classes of education (at that time - a lot) and had just served urgent service in the Red Army. It was he who was the author of the denunciation.

In his testimony, given on April 19 to the temporary head of the Chernushinsky District Department of the NKVD, Sergeant GB Kataev, he reproduced information that he could hear only in a private conversation and tell "where necessary" only in person. Here it is: “At the end of December 1936, Kalashnikov, in a conversation about the international and domestic situation, referring to the issue of terror produced by the Trotskyists-Zinovievites, Kalashnikov said: “Their (Trotskyists) order and installation is correct, that through terror to destroy the top of Soviet power, but the approach was done wrong - by killing Kirov, they showed themselves, but it was necessary to kill Stalin first, and then the grassroots and secondary leading workers of the CPSU (b), then there would be a big change in life within the country, I knew how it should have been done, and Kostyrev and I thought to do something, he knew when and what trains were passing and who among the leaders of the government was passing, I hope that you would not refuse to participate in this matter either. I know that Kostyrev worked then as a worker for the conductor crews at the station. Chernushka of the Moscow-Kazan Railway, who often visits Kalashnikov and is also anti-Soviet and his counter-revolutionary statements coincide with the views of Kalashnikov, he is a religious man ”(the spelling and punctuation of the original are preserved, as in the previous quoted texts. - A.K.).

It is quite obvious that this is the very version that, through the UNKVD of the Sverdlovsk region, reached I.D. Kabakov, including the following detail: “I know that Kalashnikov uses wandering churchmen for anti-Soviet agitation among the population.” With this, the enrollment of the holy fool as saboteurs began: from agitation to terrorist acts, it turned out to be within easy reach. The result was an understandable scheme: Kalashnikov - Kostyrev - sabotage in transport - a mobile detachment of seven people.

The protocols of interrogations of Ivan Ignatievich Kostyrev, an employee of the Moscow-Kazan railway, produce the strangest impression. He is the key figure in the case, the only link between the "churchmen" and trains with members of the government. Meanwhile, here is a sample of testimony and questions asked to the arrested person: “Being at Art. Tyurlema, I was in vil. Türlem, where he bought about 10 kilograms of apples. I stayed with a citizen, I do not know her last name, named Alexandra, whose address I received from my mother. In addition, I went to the mountains. Kazan, where I bought 10 loaves of baked bread. I traveled on a single ticket, which was not previously used. <…>

Question: By buying baked bread, you thereby violated the law on trade in it and created interruptions - do you admit it? ” * Apples, baked bread, citizen Alexandra - that's right. And no letter compositions with Klim Voroshilov. Not a word. Neither in these, nor in other testimonies.

Of the trio of holy fools, Pyotr Sevastyanov and Veniamin Plotnikov were arrested. Why they were limited only to them is not clear. On the decision to select a measure of restraint for Sevastyanov, there is a prosecutor’s visa: “I authorize the arrest, with immediate referral to an expert specialist for testing.” This determined his fate - the verdict of psychiatrists from Perm, who diagnosed profound dementia, turned out to be more weighty than the prescriptions.

Chatterbox Plotnikov passed through the second category, like the former priest Savintsev.

The rest of the "terrorists" from Chernushka were brutally repressed: their cases were considered by the "troika" at the UNKVD of the Sverdlovsk Region on September 25, 1937. Priests Kalashnikov, Zaborskikh, deacon Kotov, the railway worker Kostyrev and - at the same time - the fugitive home guard Zuev (who posed as a subdeacon) were sentenced to death.

Of course, this whole story is nothing but bloated gossip. But the gossip is cleverly picked up, carefully processed (except for the blunder with the “official idiot” Sevastyanov), raised on stilts and put into circulation at the right moment. Here you can feel the confident hand of the Commissar (this is how the employees of the UNKVD of the Sverdlovsk region affectionately called D.M. Dmitriev). And this case is one of a number of similar ones. On April 1, 1937, the church was closed in the village of Aleksandrovsk, and soon the captain of the GB Kostin went to investigate an unheard-of crime - the story of the marriage of the local deacon to a kindergarten teacher. On March 27, the lieutenant of the State Security Service F. Mozzherin accepted the case of the former worker-priest workers with an unambiguous instruction: to give it an espionage and sabotage orientation.

Let's summarize, albeit not claiming to be universal. In the Sverdlovsk region, “increased activity of churchmen and sectarians” was probably observed insofar as the observer was interested in this, he is the only source of processed, stylized, falsified information about her: the NKVD administration of the Sverdlovsk region. Having passed through the party channels, the signaled alarm was returned to the source (NKVD) in the form of a sanction for emergency measures. The foolish "terrorists", with the exception of the idiot Sevastyanov, were shot.

So the Stalinist regime destroyed the last blessed in Rus'.

* Testimony of Kostyreva I.I. dated May 10, 1937 PermGANI. F. 641/1. D. 13385. T. 2. L. 68v.