Date
Author
Анатолий БЕРШТЕЙН и Дмитрий КАРЦЕВ
Source
Preserved copy
Translated material
Ship of non-fools
Nobody's people
Having come to power and defended it in the Civil War, the Bolsheviks purposefully and consciously began to pursue a line of breaking with the old intelligentsia. It was an open struggle against free thought, against thought as a cultural phenomenon and a phenomenon of social consciousness. The Bolsheviks, more than anyone else, understood the destructive power of words and independent thought. Because it destroys the closed mythological structure of the society created by this power. Any sober consciousness in such a society does not fit into the norm. That is why it was not the obvious enemies of the Soviet regime that were first subjected to a massive attack (we even managed to come to an agreement with some of them), but independent, independent thinkers. One of them was the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, who said: “I have always been no one’s man, I was only my own man, a man of my idea, my calling, my search for truth.”
And so, in mid-August 1922, several hundred of these “nobody’s people,” famous figures of Russian culture, were arrested. An operation has begun to expel them from the country. At first, 160 people were deported, among whom were mainly doctors, professors, teachers, scientists, philosophers, and writers. In total, according to historians, about 500 people were ostracized in the first half of the 1920s.
Originating in Ancient Greece as a democratic procedure that protected against tyranny, and soon degenerating into an instrument of political struggle, ostracism was used by the Bolsheviks as a measure of revolutionary defense of Soviet power.
“The goal is quite practical”
Lenin never hid his opinion about the intelligentsia. Coming from a family of intellectuals himself, he never tired of emphasizing his contempt for her. By the way, Russian philologist and cultural critic Sergei Averintsev called hatred against his guild, to which he included the intelligentsia, a mental pathology.
The new government hastily prepared a rotation of the educated class: the old, pre-revolutionary intelligentsia should have been replaced by personnel from workers' schools. True, back in 1925 there were 30 thousand practically illiterate people in the party. And in 1930, at the Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, among its participants there were 74.5% of delegates with only primary and incomplete secondary education.
Beginning the persecution against the free-thinking intelligentsia, Lenin did not hide the fact that, while weeding, he was pulling out weeds, but was not going to grow new ones. According to the memoirs of the artist Yuri Annenkov, who made sketches for the portrait of Lenin and had several frank conversations with him, the leader of the world proletariat stated: “As you know, I don’t have much sympathy for the intelligentsia, and our slogan “Eliminate illiteracy” should not be interpreted as a desire to the birth of a new intelligentsia. Illiteracy should be eliminated only so that every peasant, every worker can independently, without the help of others, read our decrees, orders, and appeals. The goal is quite practical. That's all."
Expulsion instead of execution
But while a literate Soviet “intelligentsia” had not yet been created, it was necessary to quickly deal with the educated old one. In order to quickly get rid of it, the Bolsheviks hastily developed a legal framework. Lenin was dissatisfied with the level of rigidity of the criminal code of the new state. Noteworthy is his comment made in May 1922 on the draft “Introductory Law to the Criminal Code of the RSFSR” sent to him by People's Commissar of Justice D.I. Kursky. The draft says: “Pending the establishment of conditions that guarantee Soviet power from counter-revolutionary attacks on it, revolutionary tribunals are given the right to apply both capital punishment - execution, and deportation abroad, which replaces execution.” Lenin writes in the margins of the project: “T. Kursky, in my opinion, it is necessary to expand the use of execution (with the replacement of deportation abroad). For all types of activities of the Mensheviks, sr. etc. Find a formulation that puts these actions in connection with the international bourgeoisie in its fight against us (bribery of the press and agents, preparations for war, etc.).”
Lenin seemed to be in a hurry, feeling that time was pressing on him. On May 19, 1922 - six days before the serious attack that sent him to bed - he writes a secret letter to Dzerzhinsky, outlining the plan for the operation, which, apparently, was conceived and discussed in advance: “Comrade. Dzerzhinsky! On the question of the expulsion abroad of writers and professors who help the counter-revolution. We need to prepare this more carefully. Without preparation, we will become stupid..." The names of the first candidates for exile are also named here - the authors of the magazine "The Economist", which caught the eye of the leader of the world proletariat: "This, in my opinion, is an obvious center of the White Guards, in No. 3... published On the cover there is a list of employees. These, I think, are almost all legitimate candidates for deportation abroad.” And further: “All of these are obvious counter-revolutionaries, accomplices of the Entente, an organization of its servants and spies and molesters of student youth. We must arrange things in such a way that these “military spies” are caught and captured constantly and systematically and sent abroad.”
Lenin is trying to achieve consensus on the issue of deportation of the intelligentsia from all prominent members of the Central Committee. Despite his progressive illness, on July 16, 1922, he dictated to Stalin: “... Several hundred such gentlemen should be sent abroad mercilessly. We will cleanse Russia for a long time... Arrest several hundred, and without announcing the motives: leave, gentlemen!
As a result, more than a dozen articles providing for execution were immediately included in the criminal code of the RSFSR. But a new measure of punishment appeared - deportation. It was equivalent to execution, replacing it. Later, having become the prerogative of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, it was deportation that was often cynically called the “true capital measure,” since it deprived not even life, but the Motherland.
Feeling vulnerable
So, a formal legal basis has emerged to practically begin an operation to expel part of the Russian intelligentsia disloyal to the Bolshevik government. Now indoctrination was important. The “heavy artillery” comes into play - Leon Trotsky. The signal for the beginning of the persecution of dissidents was his article in Pravda, “Dictatorship, where is your whip?” In it, the author trashed the tiny book by critic Yu. Aikhenvald about poetry. Trotsky did not mince words, calling it “scum and rubbish” and demanding with the whip of dictatorship to force the author and others like him “to get beyond the line, into the camp of content to which they rightfully belong with their aesthetics and their religion.”
Now the GPU was given an urgent task: to collect dossiers on “writers and professors” (“entrust all this to an intelligent, educated and careful person”), select the most unreliable from this public and throw them out of the country. Those with whom it would be impossible to come to an agreement and win over to one’s side were supposed to be included in the proscription.
Actually, it was not even a matter of loyalty or disagreement to cooperate: the Soviet government needed its sincere, internal acceptance. Here is what Fyodor Stepun, one of those who were “lucky” to leave, wrote about this: “The Bolsheviks, obviously, do not have enough loyalty alone, that is, little recognition of Soviet power as a fact and force; they also require internal acceptance of oneself, recognition of oneself and one’s power as truth and goodness. Strange as it may seem, in the pursuit of the inner state of the soul there is a note of some kind of perverted idealism. Very often in conversations with the Bolsheviks, both with very small fry and with fairly high-ranking people, I felt their deep wounded by the fact that, in fact, the victors over Russia, they are still its spiritual renegades, that, despite the fact that they won complete victory over Russian life through the skillful exploitation of the people’s element - they still have not merged with this element, that it remains under them as a stolen war horse, on which they have nowhere to ride out of the battle.”
To Berlin or to Siberia
According to recollections, the mood of those leaving was different. “When they told me that I was being deported, I felt sad,” wrote Berdyaev. But Stepun notes in his memoirs: “In the first minute of receiving this news, it sounded like joy and liberation. The forbidden “wants” in relation to Europe and all the temptations of “cultural” life suddenly became not only not forbidden, but actually obligatory and morally justified: not to actually go to Siberia instead of Berlin. Brute force is the best medicine against the torment of complex multidimensional consciousness. Not being able to choose, not having any freedom, is sometimes the greatest happiness. I definitely experienced this happiness while filling out forms at the GPU for traveling abroad.”
In fact, by this time, for the majority of those expelled, the question of whether this was bad for them or for their good did not arise. So, already on the ship “Jeanne” Fr. S. Bulgakov wrote: “...Everything that I experienced during these three months was so terrible in its cruel nonsense and at the same time so grandiose that now I cannot yet describe or even fully comprehend. But this gave the final stamp of what had happened in the soul and facilitated to the last possible opportunity the inevitable and - I believe - beneficial expatriation. It’s scary to describe this word to me, for whom just two years ago, during the general flight, expatriation was equal to death. But these two years did not pass without a trace: I suffered and lived, and at the same time I received my sight, and I am going to the West not as a country of “bourgeois culture” or a former country of “holy miracles,” now “rotting,” but as a country still preserved Christian culture and, most importantly, the place of the Holy Roman See of the universal Catholic Church. “Russia,” rotting in a coffin, cast me out as unnecessary, after branding me as a slave.”
Another thing is what and with whom Russia was left with.
Subscription not to enter
Professors, doctors, and teachers released from prison were given a day to get ready. Before this, the issue with visas was settled. The Germans refused to give a collective visa for everyone. They demanded that Russian writers and scientists apply for visas in person. Now it was necessary to get money for the trip, to select the necessary things for the whole family (the minimum allowed per person was one winter and one summer coat, one suit, two shirts, one sheet). You were not allowed to take any jewelry with you, not even crosses. And it is not known how they managed to smuggle books and some papers: they were not allowed to take them either. Farewell to family and friends was short. Those who left were finally (many understood - forever) removed from this life. A characteristic detail is that before leaving, each of them had to sign: “This is given by me, citizen such and such, to the State Political Administration that I undertake not to return to the territory of the RSFSR without the permission of the Soviet authorities. Article 71 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, which punishes unauthorized return to the borders of the RSFSR with capital punishment, has been announced to me, and I will sign it.”
...The first steamship " Ober-burgomaster Haken" with the expelled Russian intellectuals left Petrograd early in the morning. According to the recollections of passengers, a purely German breakfast was served. In honor of liberation from Soviet rule, the captain ordered champagne to be distributed, and everyone drank. Another memorable sign: the exiles were given the “Golden Book”, which was kept on the ship - for the memorial records of eminent passengers. It was decorated with a drawing by Chaliapin, who left Russia a little earlier. The great singer depicted himself naked from behind, wading across the sea. The inscription said that the whole world is his home.
For some reason, the ship's passengers were confident that they would be greeted with great fanfare in Germany. They were preparing for the reception, coming up with speeches. But there was not a soul on the pier...
"Preventive Mercy"
Regarding those who left, someone cynically joked that deportation was “preventive mercy.” But in every joke, as you know, there is only a grain of joke. The fates of those rejected by the Motherland and thrown, like ballast, beyond its borders, of people who loved it passionately, turned out differently, but nevertheless incomparably better than those that were prepared for those who remained. In a sense, the deportees really seemed to be put on a rescue boat, sailing away from a ship that had become deadly dangerous for them. Their colleagues, philosophers P. Florensky, G. Shpet, M. Feldstein, remained in the USSR and were shot, and A. Losev was arrested in the 30s. Fate especially noted L. Karsavin, who was deported along with everyone else, but then lived and worked in Vilnius. After the war, on the territory of Soviet Lithuania, he was repressed and died in a camp.
However, despite the obvious danger, if it were their will, the majority would not leave. They believed in their country until the last moment. The same Karsavin said: “The future of Russia does not lie in emigration.” But they were left no choice.
...Exactly one year after the departure of the “philosophical steamer”, on October 13, 1923, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR will adopt a resolution marked “Not subject to publication” on the organization of the Solovetsky special-purpose forced labor camp and two transit and distribution points in Arkhangelsk and Kemi. This is where the Gulag archipelago began...