Ghosts of Moscow

In the program "Dejavu" historian Yuri Tsurganov and a tour of Moscow streets and squares

Alexander Podrabinek: In the previous issues of the program, we talked about the details of our lives that resemble the past. We recalled laws, discussed events, compared political systems, trials and relations with the authorities. Quite real events. But sometimes the ghosts of the past catch up with us by no means in such an intricate way, but overtake us right on the street, insulting the spirit of the era with their invulnerability and willingness to rebel from the ashes. Or maybe this era has changed and carefully adapts to the past time?

The ghosts of the past live on the streets of Moscow. Hidden at metro stations. They stand openly in the squares. They look at passers -by from the walls of houses. It would seem that the rejected Soviet past is still clinging to our lives, imposing on our time its wretched aesthetics, heroic of human -naval exploits and the memory of executioners, the legitimate future of which would be public oblivion and, perhaps, several unpleasant lines in history textbooks.

Today, the guest of our program is a person who knows the story and understands the meaning of toponymy as a barometer of current political realities. Yuri Tsurganov, historian, associate professor of the Historical and Archival Institute of the RSUSU.

What do you say about the remnants of the Soviet past surrounding us?

Yuri Tsurganov: For human physical health, ecology, purity of water, air, soil is very important. But for psychological health, the toponymic environment is very important.

Alexander Podrabinek: Such a social ecology?

Yuri Tsurganov: Social Ecology, Ecology of the Soul, if you like. The names of cities, streets, squares and so on. The new government, starting in 1917, actively introduced its toponymy - these are, first of all, the names of the revolutionaries, their predecessors and their followers. In the late 1980s and especially since 1991, new times came, and we seemed to be rid of these names. So I remember how a bright event, especially for Muscovites, has disappeared-the name of the Metro station "Square Nogin" and now it is "Kitay-Gorod". Then everything somehow slowed down, and in 1994 it stopped altogether, because the policy of consent and reconciliation with the Communist Party was proclaimed.

Alexander Podrabinek: And so this policy is still, in fact, it flourishes.

Yuri Tsurganov: Yes.

Alexander Podrabinek: Today we will change the format of our program a little. I invite you to leave the studio and take a little walk around Moscow.

For many years, residents of the Northern District of the capital have been demanding to remove the name of Peter Voikov from the city map. They arrange pickets, speak out in print. Everything is useless. Apparently, the terrorist methods of this revolutionary are close and understandable to the city authorities. Yes, perhaps, federal.

Yuri Tsurganov: Peter Lazarevich Voikov, Bolshevik, bomb, party nickname intellectual, food commissar in the Urals. Even according to the estimates of the Bolsheviks themselves, the actions of Voikov was there redundancy. Then he works in colleagues of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade, where the state of the former Russian Empire is sold for nothing abroad. The main goal is to inflate the world revolution, this requires funds. But, of course, the most noticeable page in Voikov’s biography is Yekaterinburg in 1918, participating in the murder of the Romanov family. Such a detail: he chopped off a finger at the corpse of the former empress to take off the ring, and wore it, showing it to everyone and telling where this large red ruby came from. In 1927, he was killed in Warsaw by the political emigrant Boris Cover.

Alexander Podrabinek: Another high -ranking Soviet figure killed by the enemies of communism is Vaclav Vorovsky. The monument to him stands on his area of his name a stone's throw from Lubyanka. Behind him, the former building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Yuri Tsurganov: Vaclav Vaclavovich Vorovsky. After his Bolshevik party came to power, he organized a massive looting of churches and mass repressions against representatives of the clergy. Later, in 1920, he was set to lead the State Publishing House, that is, to tighten the ideological censorship nuts against the printed word. Further, the political representative in foreign countries. In 1923, in Lausanne, Maurice Konradi shot him, killed. The court took place, however, the Russian writer Ivan Shmelev granted lawyer Theodor Abera vast materials about the Bolshevik atrocities - by that time, by 1923, historian Sergey Petrovich Melgunov was finishing the Monograph “Red Terror in Russia”, and Maurice Conradi was acquitted.

Alexander Podrabinek: The revolutionary appetites of the Bolsheviks could not limit themselves only to Russia or the former Russian Empire. The war did not bother them. They needed peace and preferably all. They found their supporters in many countries. Now these people are monuments in Moscow.

Yuri Tsurganov: Next to us, a monument to Ernst Telman, a man who was born in Germany in 1886. In the 1920s that his youth fell on, the country was in decline, left glances that Ernst Telman completely absorbed. In terms of practical activity, this resulted in terrorism for him. The first noticeable milestone in his biography is participation in the rebellion on November 7, 1923 with the aim of seizing power. From prison he was saved by deputy inviolability. Further membership in the Comintern, there was such an international communist organization Communist International, which put in front of itself, no less, committing a world revolution. She initiated the coups and many crimes on the globe. Another noticeable milestone is, of course, the 6th Congress of the 1928 Comintern, on which German communists were forbidden to create a block with social democrats, and as a result, the National Socialists won the 1932 elections. Telman personally and his parties to Hitler’s coming to power. Before this happened, there were alliances. For example, a strike took place in Prussia, where a banner was shown, on which a sickle and a hammer were woven in the swastika. Nevertheless, after Hitler came to the power of the Communists, this did not save, ordinary members in the mass order joined the NSDAP. Telman himself was in a concentration camp. In 1944, at the end of the war, he was shot by the Nazis, and in the Soviet Union, accordingly, he took a proper place in an ideological structure. Pay attention to the figure of the monument that he portrays. Ask a thousand people on Moscow Street: what is a company? They will tell you - chocolate, at best - a chocolate factory. In fact, this is a terrorist communist organization translated as a "red front". And accordingly, Ernst Telman played a noticeable role in it. And this is their classic gesture, which reminds us of something in Germany in 1920-30.

Here is another foreigner, a leader of the international communist movement and another fist. When in 1933 they tried to fasten him to the case of a fabric of the Reichstag, he outplayed the Nazi court. Newspapers around the world called him "roaring lion." This factor has determined a lot in his biography. In the post -war years, when Stalin actually imposed on Eastern Europe its orders, few understood that they were Stalinist puppets. Dimitrov considered himself an independent figure. This, accordingly, was not tolerated by Joseph Vissarionovich. This caused the conflict. However, in the end, the "roaring lion" broke, responded to the proposal to come to the Soviet Union. And in 1949, during the treatment, under strange circumstances, he passed away.

Another figure in the international communist movement, who died with a strange death, but much earlier - in 1925, Mikhail Vasilievich Frunze, perceived as a professional military man. However, the biography began differently. December 1905: battles on Presnya, raids on police sections. A professional terrorist, two death sentences, replaced first by 10 years of hard labor, and then a lifelong link. He fled, hid under someone else's surname. In 1915, the Bolshevik party was sent to the army for revolutionary work. What did this mean then in their language? The moral decomposition of the tsarist army. Nevertheless, this is the future military leader. We are, of course, about the worker-peasants' Red Army. Its secret is the use of military commissars, former professional military people of the same tsarist army, they made mainly military operational decisions. His personal initiative is punitive operations as in central Russia, for example, the suppression of the Yaroslavl uprising, the uprising in Samara, the suppression of Turkestan, the punitive raid in the Ferghana Valley. Basically, he was remembered for such things. And finally, to complete, this is drug trafficking in the Far East, the use of Chinese mercenaries during the civil war, so the connections were established. Stalin, however, perceived him as a political competitor. In 1924, Lenin dies, the struggle for power begins, Frunze interferes, peptic ulcer, a person died on the operating table. The most common version is an overdose of anesthesia.

Alexander Podrabinek: Not all Soviet military leaders lived even until 40 years old, like Mikhail Frunze. Some died very young. On the Ring Line of the Moscow metro there is Dobryninskaya station. Few people know in honor of whom it is named. Maybe because Petr Dobrynin did not manage to cause Russia as much evil as his senior party comrades.

Yuri Tsurganov: Actually, few people called Peter Georgievich Dobrynin, this man passed away early enough, at the age of 23 years. A man from the working family and the worker himself, in 1917, heading the Red Army detachments, took part in the battles in Moscow. In particular, he distinguished himself by storming the building of the Moscow Military District, and there was mortally wounded there. Accordingly, his name was immortalized in Moscow toponymy. And almost here in the walking mode of Pyatnitskaya Street there is another monument, or rather, a memorial plaque. This is an ally in the party, but with a completely different biography, a different education, a different life expectancy - this is Rosalia Zemlyok. Pyatnitskaya Street, House with Leo, mansion von Reksk. Here, from 1921 to 1924, Rosalia Zemlyok lived. A person who ended the Sorbonne, who was fluent in the French language, but among the Bolsheviks, perhaps, not find another person who would hate educated people. The key episode of the biography of the countrywoman is the Crimea of 1920. The White Army of General Wrangel is actually locked in it, it is preparing for evacuation. The armies offer to remain on forgiveness. Some believe and remain. The remaining ones are recorded, and then on the same registration lists are arrested and destroyed. One of the organizers of the action Rosalia Zemlyok. Moreover, she believes that there is no need to spend cartridges on the White Guards, they are drowned in the Black Sea. However, this is not the only way to kill recent opponents in the civil war. The countrywoman inspired the horror not only to enemies, but also to the parties to the party. She headed the control organs and forced to literally tremble in front of her. She was also called Furia and another party nickname Demon. In the house, next to which we are and in which she lived earlier, was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, which was also marked by the memorial board.

Alexander Podrabinek: Rosalia Zemlyok was not the only woman among the top of Russian revolutionaries, and not even the only one who erected a monument in Moscow. At the beginning of Sretensky Boulevard, in the late Soviet years, a monument was erected by Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, the wife of Vladimir Ulyanov.

Yuri Tsurganov: Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, wife and political associate of Lenin, an indispensable assistant in underground work. It is generally accepted that after the Bolsheviks came to power, she played a noticeable role in the cultural life of Russia. Perhaps you can’t argue with this. However, what role she played. It compiled lists of books prohibited in Soviet Russia. The forbidden books were in the Russian Empire, but their list was quite small. Moreover, after the 1905 revolution, when Russia became a constitutional monarchy, censorship was canceled, it was revived only under the Bolsheviks and reached a truly monstrous size.

Alexander Podrabinek: Attempts to put Russia at the end of the 20th century on the path of democratic development, as we now understand, were unsuccessful. Reforms were half -hearted and were not completed. As a result, something strange, amorphous and very prone to relapse of totalitarianism turned out. This is remarkably seen in the example of some Moscow names that are understandable only to those who lived in Soviet times.

Metro station "Komsomolskaya" and "Pionerskaya". There are no Komsomol members, nor pioneers, and the metro stations in their honor are the old Soviet names. Or metro station "Library named after Lenin". Such a library is also gone for a long time. She was prudently renamed the Russian State Library, and the metro station was left the same. The Leningrad highway, leading to St. Petersburg, also looks funny. However, Petersburg itself is the administrative center of the Leningrad region. Modern Russian toponymy gives slightly schizophrenia.

The crafty current time not only preserves the monuments of Soviet antiquity, but also adds new ones to them. In their cynicism, they are not inferior to Soviet samples. Since the end of the 50s, the name of Stalin began to disappear from Soviet everyday life. In the totalitarian Soviet Union, Stalin was an undesirable person. And as if democratic Russia does not disdain him with his name. At the Kurskaya metro station, words were reproduced from the anthem of the Soviet Union in its Stalin version.

Signs of respect appeared in the city for other figures of the totalitarian regime. On December 19 last year, on house number 26 on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, where the Secretary General of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev lived, a memorial plaque was installed. The ceremony was inimitably solemnly opened by the announcer of the “Time” program of Soviet television Anna Shatilova.

Anna Shatilova: Good afternoon, dear friends, dear guests. Today we gathered to open the memorial plaque to the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev.

Alexander Podrabinek: The Ceremony was honored by the Minister of the Moscow Government Sergei Kapkov. Smiling vengefully, he expressed hope for the return of the Brezhnev era.

Sergey Kapkov: It was an era of a rich, strong, self -confident country.

Alexander Podrabinek: Among those present were the currently wrapped deputy Alexei Mitrofanov, who did not wander deputy Alexander Khinshtein, representative of the party nomenclature Senator Vladimir Dolgikh, the singing State Duma Joseph Kobzon and other lovers of the Secretary General.

Another communist figure lived in the same house on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. In fact, unlike military leaders, there are few monuments in Moscow outstanding Chekists. Either this is such an irony of fate, or the highest justice, but the monuments did not have time to put them. In Stalin's times, state security leaders shot faster than sculptors worked. Only three of them died their death - Dzerzhinsky, Menzhinsky and Ignatiev; The remaining six - Peters, Berry, Yezhov, Beria, Merkulov and Abakumov - were shot. Of all the Chekists, only two reached the highest senior position in the country: the current president Vladimir Putin and Yuri Andropov, the former chairman of the KGB of the USSR. In honor of it, a prospectus was named in Moscow, and a memorial plaque was installed on the house where he lived.

Yuri Tsurganov: Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, one of the last leaders of the USSR, then this was called the General Secretary, the words "president" were not yet. The first major episode of his life is associated with Hungary of 1956. We have a hearing phrase: the liberation of Europe from the West and the liberation of Europe from the East. I mean from Hitler. But liberation in the full sense was only from the West by the Anglo-American troops. In Western Europe, those social, economic, moral norms that were before the Nazi occupation were established, while in Eastern Europe, Stalin imposed its own orders. Hungary suffered more than others, mass repressions were carried out there. And in this regard, in 1956, an anti -communist revolution began there. She was brutally suppressed. Andropov was a responsible representative of the Soviet Union in Hungary and a significant part of responsibility lies on it. In addition to repressions, in the literal sense, he proved himself and as a crafty person. He persuaded Imre Nadia to give up his positions, but in the end Imre Nadi and several hundred of his associates were executed. The star hour of Andropova is his period of the leadership of the State Security Committee, as the FSB was then called, during the reign of Brezhnev. It was he who fought against dissidents. And finally, 15 months of the Secretary General of Andropov. How did the Secretary General Andropov prove himself in these several months of leadership of the country? The struggle for discipline: raids in cinemas, baths, stores and so on. "Why is this, comrade, you are not at work?" "And I am in three days." "Проверим". Вот то, на что хватило полицейских мозгов. Чекист у власти, ну что еще скажешь?

Александр Подрабинек: Однако главным чекистом, с которого Маяковский предлагал молодым "делать жизнь", был и остается Феликс Дзержинский. В сражениях советского прошлого с демократическим будущим фигура Дзержинского самая символичная. И все потому, что на бывшей площади Дзержинского в Москве раньше стоял памятник первому

Снос памятника Дзержинскому в Москве, 23 августа 1991 года

чекисту страны. Вечером 22 августа 1991 года, на площади Дзержинского собралось огромное количество людей. Воодушевленные победой над мятежным ГКЧП, москвичи требовали снести памятник Дзержинскому. Выступавшие с импровизированной трибуны прорабы перестройки, модные публицисты, новые политики демократического толка уговаривали собравшихся не спешить, памятник не сносить, потому что это опасно и нет решения властей о сносе. И только когда люди сами полезли накидывать веревки на памятник, демонстрируя свою решимость снести бронзовое изваяние, моссоветовское начальство вызвало автокран и "железного Феликса" благополучно сняли с постамента, на котором он стоял с 1958 года.

Постановление Моссовета о сносе памятника оформили задним числом. Сам памятник отвезли на задворки Центрального дома художников, где он находится и по сей день в парке искусств "Музеон".

Вот он, этот памятник человеку, который во времена революции и гражданской войны наводил на всех ужас своей беспримерной жестокостью, захватом заложников и массовыми казнями. Это он утверждал, что "право расстрела для ЧК чрезвычайно важно", даже если "меч её при этом попадает случайно на головы невиновных". А что еще можно ожидать от человека, который в первом классе гимназии остался на второй год, восьмой класс так и не закончил, а в юности убил из ружья свою сестру. Говорят случайно, но если судить по дальнейшему его кровавому пути, то вряд ли.

В советские времена Дзержинский считался одним из главных революционных героев. Его имя носят в России больше 1300 площадей, улиц, проспектов и переулков. Он мог бы ненавязчиво остаться в памяти людей инициатором создания спортивного общества "Динамо" или ассоциироваться с фотоаппаратом, названным в его честь его же инициалами – ФЭД. Но нет, его снова тащат в наше будущее как символ революционного террора.

В середине сентября президент Путин вернул Отдельной дивизии Внутренних войск МВД имя Феликса Дзержинского.

Маленький Дзержинский на Лубянке 11 сентября 2014 года

Вопрос о возврате памятника на Лубянскую площадь поднимается с завидной регулярностью. Коммунистам настолько не терпится пометить Лубянку памятником железному Феликсу, что 11 сентября этого года в очередной день рождения Дзержинского они принесли маленькую копию старого памятника и водрузили ее на клумбе в центре заветной площади. Акция не была санкционирована властями, но полиция смотрела благожелательно и не вмешивалась. Маленький Феликс был сделан то ли из гипса, то ли из папье-маше и смотрелся на Лубянской площади очень смешно.

Кстати, сам Дзержинский был среднего роста, а вовсе не такой высокий, каким его было принято изображать в советском кинематографе и живописи социалистического реализма. Когда в 1899 году он бежал из Вятской губернии, то в ориентировке на розыск был указан его рост – 2 аршина 7 вершков, то есть, выражаясь по современному, 1 метр 73 см. И еще одна занятная деталь, указанная в ориентировке: "наружностью производит впечатление нахального человека".

Апофеоз коммунистического наследия в Москве – это, конечно, места, названные в честь одного из вождей социалистической революции в России Владимира Ильича Ульянова по прозвищу Ленин. Впрочем, у него были десятки кличек: от романтической Уильям Фрей до весьма прозаических Ленивцин и Кубышкин.

Самая главная московская достопримечательность, связанная с Кубышкиным, – мавзолей Ленина на Красной площади. В 1924 году, когда Ленивцин умер, его соратники соорудили на Красной площади временный склеп, чтобы все, кто хотел, успели попрощаться с вождем мирового пролетариата. Желающих посмотреть на мертвого Ленина было так много, что мысль о похоронах как-то постепенно отпала.

Проходивший в те дни Съезд Советов постановил объявить день смерти Ленина 21 января днем траура, поставить памятники Ленину в разных городах страны, издать его сочинения массовыми тиражами и создать фонд его имени для помощи беспризорным детям. А самое главное – соорудить на Красной площади у кремлевской стены склеп, положить туда гроб с телом Ленина и хранить его там, сделав склеп доступным для посещения. Заодно Съезд Советов переименовал Петроград в Ленинград и утвердил первую Конституцию СССР.

Весной 1924 года склеп перестроили в мавзолей. Сначала он был деревянным и не слишком хорошо оборудованным. Рассказывали, что когда рыли котлован под новый мавзолей, рабочие задели трубы канализации и нечистоты затопили траурный зал с гробом. Говорят, патриарх Тихон высказался по этому поводу весьма желчно: "По мощам и елей".

Сегодня Ленин уже не столь известен, как в советские времена. Юное поколение слышало о нем что-то как о политическом деятеле, но толком ничего не знает. Доцент РГГУ Юрий Цурганов рассказывает о своих студентах.

Юрий Цурганов: Мы находимся на Красной площади в Москве, и приблизительно вот здесь уже много лет ходит мужичок, внешне похожий на Владимира Ильича Ленина. Он одевается соответствующим образом: темный костюм-тройка, галстук в крапинку, красный бант, кепка. Так вот, будучи преподавателем нескольких вузов, я иногда спрашиваю студентов всяческие даты исторические и вот однажды спросил: когда умер Владимир Ильич Ленин? Такая пауза возникла в аудитории странная. "Что значит умер? Мы его видим практически каждый день". Меня это заинтересовало. Оказывается, они этого мужичка воспринимают за чистую монету, они считают, что это Ленин. Причем я как преподаватель опытный, с 20-летним стажем всегда чувствую, когда студенты со мной шутят, а когда они искренне верят в то, что они говорят. И они действительно искренне верили. Я очень аккуратно, чтобы не спугнуть, начал эту тему раскручивать, и выяснил, что, оказывается, этот домик, на котором написано "Ленин" на Красной площади, это дом, в котором он живет, поэтому в округе и гуляет. Он, конечно, на пенсии, давно не занимается никакими государственными делами, но он жив и здоров.

Александр Подрабинек: Наверное, это неплохо, что о Ленине забывают. Разве что историкам следует знать о нем больше, чем всем остальным. Хотя бы для того, чтобы в новые времена не повторять трагических ошибок и печальных заблуждений прошлого. Ну и еще для того, чтобы когда-нибудь окончательно очистить Москву от той исторической грязи, которая досталась нам в наследство от советской эпохи.