Who has today's gabists learned to knock out confessions: Leonid Mlechin's study

With Anatoly Zhigulin, we lived in the same house. But for the time being, few knew why the good poet Zhigulin had such mournful and tragic motifs in verses.

In 1947, when Anatoly Zhigulin studied in Voronezh in the ninth grade, he and his friends created an underground communist youth party. The purpose of the party is the spread of genuine Marxism-Leninism as opposed to the deification of Stalin. The guys did not stick leaflets, did not prepare for terrorist activities. They read the Leninist “letter to the congress” and sowed doubts about the impeccability of the Stalinist regime with their conversations. This was considered a terrible crime.

Operators from other cities to Voronezh were thrown to be arrested.

One hundred and fifty Chekists gathered to fight schoolchildren!

They were declared enemies of the people and sent to the camps. Children behaved very courageously and were carriers of genuine morality, that moral principle that is absolutely necessary for the nation.

In the autobiographical story “Black Stones”, Anatoly Zhigulin described how the warders beat the young men.

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From the novel "Black Stones" Anatoly Zhigulin

“Gradually, we learned to reduce the likelihood of death or a very severe injury with such a beat. It was necessary to curl into a lump, pull it up, lying on his left side , legs to his stomach. As far as possible, protect the scrotum and stomach with your feet, with your hands bent at the elbows, elbows - the heart and liver, the palms of the hands - the face, fingers - whiskey. And as deep as possible, pull the head into the shoulders. This is the optimal pose with such a beat. Let them break their hands, legs, chop your fingers - this is not fatal. ”

Torture is allowed

Why did the accused admit the most incredible crimes in the Stalinist years? They simply could not stand the torture.

In 1917, professional underground, militants and terrorists, despising morality and morality, suddenly found themselves at the helm of a huge state and began to ruthlessly destroy those whom they considered enemies.

Having taken power, the Bolsheviks canceled all restraining factors - laws, traditions, moral prohibitions ... The creator of state security organs Felix Dzerzhinsky said that there is no objective honesty for the revolutionary. Honestly what leads to the goal. Political expediency is more important than law. The authorities do not administer justice, it eliminates political enemies.

On January 10, 1939, Stalin signed the secretaries of the regional committees, regional committees, and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of National Republics.

Telegram from Stalin
“The application of physical impact in the practice of the NKVD has been allowed since 1937 with the permission of the Central Committee ... of the Central Committee of the All -Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (b) believes that the method of physical impact should be appropriately applied in the form of exclusion in relation to the obvious and uninvited enemies of the people as a completely correct and appropriate method.”

In the process in the case of the former head of the Main Directorate of Military Counterintelligence Smersh, and then the Minister of State Security of Colonel General Viktor Abakumov in December 1954, General Prosecutor of the USSR Roman Rudenko said:

- I do not want to decipher some forms of torture in order not to humiliate the dignity of those persons to whom they were applied, who remained alive and are present on the process.

Rudenko, the former chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR Vladimir Terebilov, "apparently meant cases when, for example, the interrogated was undressed and put on the leg of an inverted stool so that it fell into the rectum."

The investigator wrote the interrogation protocol as he needed. Then he forced the arrested to sign him. If he refused, beat.

In the investigation, there was a division of labor. Some, illiterate, knocked out testimonies. Others, with education, wrote protocols. They were called: “slaughterers” and “clerk”.

Why did they demand confessions?

Planted and shot innocent people. How to get evidence of non -existent crimes? Make the arrested to admit everything!

The Chairman of the KGB of the USSR, Army General Ivan Serov in 1956 reported to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee on how the Stalinist processes were being prepared:

“The materials obtained during the verification process indicate gross arbitrariness and provocations, as a result of which the recognition of the arrested were obtained. A number of former NKVD employees have shown about the existence of such a procedure when the very fact of the premises of the investigator in the Lefortovo prison already obliged the investigator to beat him. ”

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From the testimony of the head of the medical unit of Lefortovo Prison in 1937-1938

“I saw many arrested in serious condition after the beatings inflicted on the investigation. Krestinsky ( First Deputy People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the USSR - ed.), From interrogation, was taken to our medical unit in an unconscious state. He was heavily beaten, his whole back was a continuous wound, there was no living place on it. ”

It was the time of the greatest rampant violence in the investigation, it was then that the beating acquired such a character that cases of murders at interrogations became not single.

The investigation were especially carefully prepared by the arrested court. Here everything was done strictly according to the plan developed, the arrested repeatedly rehearsed “their” testimonies. ”

"We will beat and cripple"

Interrogations with addiction and torture considered the leader to consider it necessary. The People's Commissar of the Interior of the era of the Great Terror Nikolai Yezhov liked Stalin because he did not disdain the draft work. One of the investigators of the Secret and Political Department of the NKVD told his comrades how he went into the office of the People's Commissar. He asked if the investigation is recognized?

- When I said that no, Nikolai Ivanovich will turn out - and his bang according to physiognomy. And he explained: “That's how they need to be interrogated!”

Yezhov came to the Central Committee from Lubyanka. One of the members of the Politburo noticed a blood spot on his tunic:

- What's happened?

“You can be proud of such spots,” Yezhov answered. - This is the blood of the enemies of the revolution.

The arrested could not withstand torture, even as strong as the former Baltic sailor Pavel Dybenko or Marshal Vasily Blucher, who died in the cell from beatings. After the death of Stalin, the former assistant to the head of the Lefortovskaya prison, the Lieutenant of State Security, Yuri Kharkiv, said:

“I personally witnessed how Beria and Kobulov in his office were beaten with a rubber club of prisoner Blucher.”

Orders came from the very top. Stalin ordered the arrest of the head of the medical and sanitary department of the Kremlin Professor Peter Egorov. As soon as he was taken, he asked:

- Put him shackles?

Hearing that the professor is not handcuffs, Stalin burst into an evil tirade:

- You are political blinders, not the Chekists. They don’t do this with enemies anywhere, as you do. You do not understand the devil in Chekist business, but as a result in particular.

“Two employees have been selected and already used in the case, who could carry out special tasks (apply physical punishments) in relation to especially important and especially dangerous criminals,” Stalin reported. “Physical influence measures were applied to Egorov, Vinogradov and Vasilenko, their interrogations were strengthened, especially about relations with foreign intelligence.”

The hero of the Soviet Union, General Vladimir Kryukov, was delivered to the Minister of State Security Abakumov. The minister explained: "You will persist, we will beat and cripple for life."

They accused Kryukov, like the other arrested, of the fact that he participated in the conspiracy, at the head of which Marshal Zhukov stood ... the general was beaten to loss of consciousness, demanding that he testify about the "betrayal" of Zhukov. Following the general, he was sent to the camp and his wife, a talented performer of Russian folk songs by Lydia Ruslanov.

Stalin's order

The owners of the Lubyanka adapted to any turn of the party line: who needed to be shot. They beat at night when there were no technical workers in the building. Aloud about beatings, torture and executions did not talk. Used euphemisms.

They began to feel fear from the destruction machine they created, when they themselves became its victims. The wife of the First Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs (under Yezhov) Mikhail Frinovsky at the interrogation said: “The husband was returning from work very late. He said that it was difficult. At night I could not sleep, went out into the garden and walked all night. He said: "The same fate awaits me." And I was not mistaken. He was shot - after Yezhov.

The leader changed to Abakumov, and the Minister of State Security himself was sent to jail.

A group of Chekists was given rubber sticks, promised vouchers to the recreation house, a cash allowance and an extraordinary assignment of military ranks. They tried.

On interrogations, Abakumov was beaten so that he could not walk. The conclusion of a prison doctor indicates that Abakumov (he was only forty and small and he did not complain about his health) into a complete disabled person: “The prisoner number fifteen barely stands on his feet, moves with extraneous help, complains about pain in the heart, weakness, dizziness. For health reasons, it needs to be transferred from a curtain into a camera. ”

The recent minister was kept in the Kartsere-Kholodilnik. Floor with hunger. Abakumov asked for paper and a pencil. He wrote a letter to the members of the Politburo Beria and Malenkov.

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Letter Viktor Abakumov - members of the Politburo

At night, they grabbed me and brought me to the so -called punishment cell, but in fact, as it turned out, it was a refrigerator with a pipeline installation, without windows, completely empty, two meters in size.

In this monster without air, without nutrition (they gave a piece of bread and two mugs of water per day) I spent eight days. The installation turned on, the cold intensified all the time. I fell into unconsciousness many times. I never saw such atrocities and did not know about the presence of such refrigerators in Lefortovo - they would be deceived. This stone bag can give death, injury and a terrible ailment. ”

In the prison cell, Abakumov did not think that he repeated the fate of the people whom he was putting!

The new state security minister Semen Ignatiev, the new Minister of State Security, handed over to the Stalinist instructions to beat the arrested by the “mortal battle”.

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From the testimony of Colonel Fedotov (investigative part of especially important matters of the MGB of the USSR)

"Comrade. Ignatiev informed us that the course of investigation in our proceedings is assessed by the government as clearly unsatisfactory, and said that we need to “take off white gloves” and “in compliance with caution” to resort to the beatings of the arrested, ”Colonel Fedotov from the investigative part for especially important matters of the Ministry of State Security of the USSR reported. - Comrade. Ignatiev made it clear that there were instructions from above on this subject. A separate room for beating was equipped in an internal prison, and a group of prison workers was allocated for torture ...

Comrade Ignatiev, calling me to himself and, having transmitted the comments on the protocol of the interrogation of Vlasik presented by Comrade Stalin, suggested applying physical measures of influence to him. Comrade Stalin, having learned that Vlasika was not beaten, expressed a rebuke that the investigation "sorry his own."

Lieutenant General Nikolai Vlasik was considered one of the most entrusted people of the leader and was devoted to Stalin.

Why tormented wives and children?

For several decades of the Soviet system, the results gave the results. There were no protective mechanisms left in society. The court has become the final part of the suppression system. Morality and morality were crushed by total hypocrisy. They shot without guilt. The executed wives were planted. And even a sad fate was waiting for the children: those who were older were sent to a forced labor colonies, they were given small people to orphanages.

Subsequently, Molotov, who was then the head of government, asked: why did the repressions apply to women and children?

- What does it mean why? - Vyacheslav Mikhailovich was surprised at the naive question. -They must be isolated to some extent. And so, of course, they would be distributors of complaints of all kinds of ... and decompositions to a certain extent.

Molotov himself did not dare to object when they put his own wife. The pearl was brought to Polina on charges of relations with the "enemies of the people and spies."

In June 1939, she took her recent subordinate doctor Ilya Belakhov, director of the Institute of Cosmetics and Hygiene. The testimony of Molotov’s wife was urgently needed, so the doctor was interrogated with particular cruelty.

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From the statement of the doctor Ilya Belakhov to the prosecutor's office on the facts of beatings

“I was mercilessly beaten 3-4 times a day,” wrote Belakhov in a statement to the prosecutor. - They were beaten with rubber sticks, steel springs and ruler, and beat in the floor parts. I lost consciousness. They doused with water, brought to life and beat again. Then they tied it in an outpatient clinic, threw it into a punishment cell, and the next day was beaten again. I urinated with blood, the spine overwhelmed, I began to lose my sight.

I was demanded that I confess that I cohabited with a citizen pearl and that I was a spy. I could not slander a woman, for this is a lie. I have never been engaged in spy activity. ”

The arrested led to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria. He generously promised: "Be frank, you will return to freedom and you will work."

Belahov did not want to slander Polina Semenovna. Beria ordered the arrested to go to the floor. Deputy People's Commissar Bogdan Kobulov himself beat him with a rubber stick.

Keep a secret

After the death of Stalin, Beria and his closest henchmen were put on the bench of the defendants. Read the indictment, approved by the Prosecutor General Rudenko, is now scary. It is clear why many decades kept him secret. The testimonies of those who were interrogated by investigators of the Union prosecutor's office draw a picture of how the state security authorities acted in Stalin's times.

From the testimony

The paramedic of the internal prison of the NKVD:

“Usually, after interrogations, the arrested returned strongly beaten, some of them were delivered to the cells unconscious. The feet of the arrested legs were beaten to such an extent that all the skin was getting from them, and they represented one bleeding wound. ”

The wife of a former NKVD Osipov employee, who survived after the arrest:

“At night I was called for interrogation. I was introduced to the big office. When I entered, I saw my husband. His face was all bloodied, in bruising, his hair was abundantly soaked in blood and stood on end. He looked like a half -dead man. In an incredibly weak voice, barely moving his hands and with great effort slightly turning his head to me, he asked: "Where is the child?" I replied: "I don't know." After that, he told me: "I am not to blame for anything, I do not understand what is happening." From horror, I was numb and fell into a half -fainting state. ”

Former chief of prison:

“The former division commander Buachidze was beaten to a half -dead state. He could not speak, only moaned. The whole body of Buachidze was covered with continuous bruises and bruises. He could not urinate in a natural way, since his bladder was damaged, and the urine went out through his stomach ... Buachidze was a strong addition, healthy, and therefore his condition was especially evident. The day after Buachidze's delivery, he died to prison. ”

***

A month after the death of Stalin, Beria, who built big plans, signed the one-of-a-kind order in the Ministry of the Interior: “On the prohibition of the application of any coercion and physical impact measures to the arrested.” And a few months later he himself was arrested. Investigators were looking for a suitable explanation for the crimes of Beria and his team. Found: Beria is an agent of foreign intelligence, because he killed Soviet people.

The prosecutor Rudenko demanded from him during interrogation:

- Admit that, having become an agent of English intelligence during the civil war, you served English imperialism all subsequent years, up to your exposure and arrest! That you acted as the enemy of the party and the people in your criminal counter -revolutionary planes to seize power and the liquidation of the Soviet system!

The leaders of the country could not and did not want to call everything with their names. And it is clear why: I would have to admit that the system itself naturally leads to mass crimes, to which they are personally involved.

As a result, society did not recognize and did not realize what was happening. Not horrified! Did not condemn the criminals. And yourself - for complicity. Not removed lessons from the tragic past and retained the possibility of repeating it.