Empire corporation

The Publishing House "New Literary Review" represents the book of the Doctor of Historical Sciences Oleg Khlevnyuk "Empire Corporation . Shadow economy and corruption in the Stalin USSR. ”

At the beginning of 1948, Nikolai Pavlenko, the former chairman of the cooperative construction artel, assigning himself the title of Colonel of the Engineering Forces, and his subordinates - other military ranks, created a shadow organization with the help of false documents. This fictitious corporation, which at different times was called the Military Construction Department No. 1 and No. 10, entered into numerous agreements with state structures and built dozens of highways and railways in the USSR in several years. How was Pavlenko's organization arranged? How did she manage to exist for such a long time - from 1948 to 1952? In his book, Oleg Khlevnyuk, on the basis of new archival materials, explores the history of Pavlenko as an example of social mimicry, adaptation to life in the conditions of totalitarianism and at the same time as part of the Soviet shadow economy, demonstrating the hidden realities of the country's social development in Late Nestinsky time.

We offer to read a fragment of the book.

Outside of the homeland: trophy property and lynching

It would be wrong to say that crimes and violence were characteristic during the war only for organizing Pavlenko due to its initially criminal nature. The movement of many millions of armed people, among whom were criminals, prematurely freed from the camps for sending to the front, and susceptible to a low level of responsibility, was accompanied by numerous excesses, often the impaired mass consumption of alcoholic beverages. Heroism and selflessness were adjacent to meanness and baseness. A sense of duty, compassion and decency - with crimes and bitterness. Complexes of relevant documents are not sufficiently studied, primarily due to limited availability. Existing sources indicate a fairly wide spread of violence in the army1. Such information was regularly received by the senior leaders of the country, which testified to the significance and widespread prevalence of this phenomenon.

So, in August 1943, the NKVD Office of the Kursk Region sent L.P. Beria a special message about the gangster group consisting of 16 slaves of the 2nd Air Army2. For us, this information can be of particular interest, because it was about a unit similar to the one in which the Pavlenko team will flush in a few months-12 slaves of the 4th Air Army. In the special community, it was said that the command of 16 slaves in early August 1943 sent to Belgorod the Lieutenant of Lipsky at the head of the technical platoon for the collection of captured vehicles and aviation property. “Due to the uncontrolled, the officers were drunk, and the rank -and -file staff was engaged in speculation, selling various products made by him on the market.”

At a certain moment, Lipsky gave the foreman of the platoon to rob the three elderly Vasilyev teachers, who, as the criminals believed, had “many values ​​and things”. Having previously drunk two Red Army soldiers, the foreman organized a raid with their weapons with them. Employees of the NKVD in hot pursuit managed to find stolen things and determine the raiders. However, during the interrogation, Lipsky and his colleague broke into the building of the city department of the NKVD. They made an attempt to free the arrested and, during the detention, tried to put armed resistance.

This information about the raid in Belgorod by order of Beria was sent to Stalin. When accumulating, such signals caused the reaction of the leadership of the country and the army. So, on May 30, 1944, the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR (the People’s Commissar of Defense was Stalin himself) Marshal A. M. Vasilevsky signed an order under the eloquent heading "On the atrocities, armed robberies, thefts of the civilian population and the murders created by individual military personnel in the front line, and events against them." It spoke of the crimes of the military and the failure to accept the command of the "decisive measures" of the struggle with them.

The order listed the theft of personal property of citizens, goods in stores, the property of collective farms in the western regions of the USSR. The leadership of the People’s Commissariat of Defense instructed to strengthen control over the movements of military personnel, limit business trips, strengthen the identification of deserters, etc. Cases related to robberies, thefts, killings and other crimes committed by military personnel were ordered to “disassemble the military tribunal to the court immediately and guilty people.

However, judging by the documents, such signals from above were not enough. The NKVD bodies continued to report the country's senior leadership about the crimes of military personnel against the civilian population. So, at the end of July 1944, Beria informed Stalin about the arrest of a group of soldiers and junior officers of the tank repair unit in Moldova. Changing the uniforms for alcohol and products, in a state of intoxication, they robbed several peasants, took 12 sheep from the shepherd, raped a woman4. In the summary of the reports of local NKVD bodies on crimes of military personnel in June - July 1944, other facts of this kind were given5.

A similar report sent by Beria Stalin at the end of September, opened with a message about the rape of the Red Army residents of the Crimea. The following were the usual examples of robberies on trains, armed clashes with police, etc. In Moscow, several military personnel made an armed robbery of the supply department of the air factory, in the Kharkiv region - a rural store, in the Voronezh region - a collective farm grain, etc. 6 of the reports of military personnel for September - October 1944 and December 1944 They contained descriptions of robberies, rape and murders committed both in deep rear and not far from the front in the USSR7. All these are crimes against Soviet citizens in Soviet territory. The situation was greatly aggravated when the army entered other people's lands, especially to Germany.

A group of Pavlenko went with the Red Army to Germany, or, as it was written in the court’s sentence, “made it out there“ following the advancing troops of the Soviet Army ”. The organization continued to carry out construction work consisting of 12 slaves of the 4th Air Army. In addition, according to the court, in 1944-1945, in Poland and Germany, she was engaged in massive trophy property: cars, tractors, motorcycles, radio receivers, livestock, food, etc.

So, in the summer of 1945, a large number of rye, several cows, a horse, a piano and furniture were captured in the city of Shenbek (Germany) on one of the UVR-2 mills. A significant amount of rye was ground for flour and taken to the USSR, it was divided between participants in the UVR-2, was spent on food and partially sold. According to the tribunal, according to incomplete data, about 80 horses, at least 50 cattle, a large number of pigs, about 20 trucks and cars, up to 20 tractors, electric motors, auto -tractor trailers, a significant amount of flour, cereals and sugar8 were stolen in Germany. In total, as stated in the verdict, this property from Germany was sold on the territory of Poland and the USSR by 1.1 million rubles 9

In fairness, in this case, it is necessary to give the floor to the accused who represented the situation differently. In statements about pardon, Pavlenko wrote:

I don’t know what the theft of state funds and property is expressed in the enemy, that is, Germany, during the end of the war, if 10-15 wheel tractors were selected, some of which were out of order during the construction of construction work, several cars and trucks were also taken, 40–50 horses, 10-15 cows were selected. We did not take the indicated property at trophy warehouses and bases, and in Germany there were hundreds of goals of horses, cows, pigs, which were ownerless and in some cases died in some cases. The question is how this property and the earned money is considered a prediction, because it might not have been. In addition, the indicated funds were issued as benefits from the army, issuing money in cash in advance, paying business trips, tariffs for railway wagons, buying products and gasoline ... In addition, funds were spent on issuing benefits, because they could not receive from the state, because they were not in military units on monetary clothing and some others. Pigs, cows, flour, etc. were spent on the power of personnel10.

It is difficult to say whether the property captured by the Pavlenko team was truly ownerless, or he was taken away from the locals. It could be both. However, as indicated by numerous facts, the hunting for trophies in this particular case was only the microscopic part of the mass seizure of material values ​​in the enemy’s territories. The first signs of awareness of the seriousness of this problem by the highest leadership of the country appeared even before the Red Army in the territory of enemy states.

So, on August 3, 1944, an order was issued by the First Deputy People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR, Marshal G.K. Zhukov on the prohibition of rewarding by vehicles of the personnel of the Red Army. It said that "military councils and commanders of fronts and armies, as well as commanders of formations and units, awarded individual military personnel and citizens by cars from a cash fleet and military trophies of the Red Army." The order prohibited such actions without a special decision of the government in each individual case11. On September 26, 1944, this order was also extended to reward motorcycles12.

However, as the Red Army advanced to the west, the situation with trophies was aggravated. On December 1, 1944, in connection with the mass assignment of material assets in Romania, the USSR GKO adopted a resolution on the illegal use of trophy property. It spoke of the mass export of material values, as well as the abuses of high -ranking military. “There were facts,” the resolution noted, “when military personnel for personal purposes took trophy furniture, radio receivers, musical instruments and other things even by planes.”

Stalin showed particular interest in this document and carefully edited it. A number of generals and heads of quartermaster services were reprimanded or removed from his post. As indicated in the resolution, trophy resources were subject to concentration in the hands of the state. Their distribution and transportation to the rear should have been carried out centrally by government decisions. The decision, in particular, established such norms for sending personal parcels by military personnel no more than once a month: for ordinary and sergeants 5 kilograms, for officers - 10, for generals - 1613.

However, as further events showed, in many cases, such instructions were ignored. For high -ranking Soviet generals and marshals, heads of state security, for employees of drug addicts who came to Germany on business trips to dismantle the equipment on account of reparations, and many other values ​​were taken out by wagons14. An example of the organization Pavlenko proves that the possibilities for uncontrolled and large -scale decoration of resources were not only among high -ranking commanders and managers. Although ordinary military personnel did not have such access to values ​​(gold, jewelry, antiques, etc.), which had high -ranking leaders in the occupied territories.

In addition to the assignment of trophy values, the central point of accusations against Pavlenko during his organization in Germany was several martyr executions. According to the version of the investigation and the court, based on the testimony of some defendants, it was about three episodes. The verdict of the tribunal stated that at the end of 1944, when the UVR-2 was in Germany, Pavlenko with the help of several participants in the organization "personally shot citizen Mikhailov, shortly before that involved in the ATC."

In the spring of 1945, in Germany, at the direction of Pavlenko, the prisoner of war was shot, whom Pavlenko took in 1944 from the military commandant’s office of Minsk as a specialist in the repair of vehicles. Shortly after the end of the war, on the direction of Poland, at the direction of Pavlenko, the driver of Koptev was shot, who moved to the UVR at the end of 1944 along with a truck.

Rejecting these accusations, Pavlenko said:

Indeed, in the spring of 1945, in Germany, by my order for repeated violence and looting over the population, two troops were shot, and I did this after I found out that the guilty commander in chief for these actions was shot. I did not do this for revenge or terror ... Also, at my direction, the prisoner of war was shot, which was fascist and was hidden from the location (from part. - Author ) 15.

In response to such excuses, Pavlenko in the sentence indicated: “All the executions of these persons were carried out without any verification of their allegedly impermissible behavior among the local population” 16. This phrase, designed to prove Pavlenko’s guilt, was inherently ambiguous. It turned out that Pavlenko was accused not of a hopeless execution (in fact, of murder), but in the fact that these, in principle, were made in the absence of proper reasons.

Obviously, such a formula for the accusation reflected the reality of wartime, well known to military lawyers from the tribunal. Bessed executions in general and at the front in particular received widespread during the war17. The legitimacy of this measure was confirmed by the well -known orders of the headquarters of the Supreme High Command No. 270 “On the responsibility of military personnel for surrender and leaving the enemy of weapons” of August 16, 1941 and No. 227 of July 28, 1942. The latter, in particular, said: “Panicires and panties should be destroyed on the spot” 19.

In general, according to O.V. Budnitsky, the number of victims of razor executions in the army during the war during the war could be comparable to the number of military tribunals executed by sentences, which amounted to 130-150 thousand people20. Although at the final stage of the war, the number of lynching could decline, they remained a serious problem. This was evidenced, for example, by the draft order of Stalin "On the self -official executions of military personnel", dated February 1945. In the document, the military councils of the fronts proposed "taking decisive measures to prevent and suppress the facts of excess of power, lawlessness and arbitrariness by individual commanders and chiefs, severely punishing the perpetrators." Numerous examples of hopeless reproduction21 were also given in it.

In general, the actions of Pavlenko, who performed his court at about the same time when Stalin’s order was preparing for self-executions, did not represent anything special and extraordinary. Although the personality of Pavlenko himself is undoubtedly characterized accordingly.

The court also did not dispute Pavlenko’s links to Stalin's order about executions for violence and looting over the population. This is amazing, because in fact, such an order did not exist and the court was easy to refute Pavlenko’s claim to the legitimacy of his actions. Obviously, in this case, Pavlenko quite inventively appealed to the facts of mass atrocities in the territory of occupied Germany well -known in the military environment. Reacting to such phenomena, Stalin really signed on April 20, 1945 the directive of the headquarters of the Supreme High Command, which said:

1. To demand from the troops to change their attitude towards the Germans, both prisoners of war and the civilian population and treat the Germans better. Cruel treatment with the Germans causes their fear and makes them stubbornly resisted, not surrendering. The civilian population, fearing revenge, is organized in gangs. This situation is not profitable for us. A more humane attitude towards the Germans will facilitate the conduct of hostilities on their territory and will undoubtedly reduce the persistence of the Germans in defense.

2. In the regions of Germany to the west of the line of the mouth of the river. Oder, p. Obser to Fyurstenberg and further the river. Neisa (Western) to create a German administration, and in cities to put the Burgomists of the Germans. Ordinary members of the National Socialist Party, if they are loyal to the Red Army, not to touch, but to detain only leaders if they did not have time to escape.

3. Improving the attitude towards the Germans should not lead to a decrease in vigilance and to the panibration with the Germans22.

With a high degree of probability, it was this directive, widely brought to the troops, was also known to Pavlenko and was used by it for its protection. However, in it, apparently, we are talking about any tightening of the punishments of those responsible for violence against the civilian population. Especially about executions. Pavlenko clearly distorted the facts. However, the motives of his lynching are highly likely to be calculated. At the final stage of the war, when the intensity of military operations (and, accordingly, the loading of UVR-2 construction work has decreased), and the number of trophy temptations increased, Pavlenko was important to keep his subordinates in certain disciplinary framework.

Any scandal threatened with increased attention to the organization and unpredictable consequences. The same concerned the prisoner of war German-mechanic, whom Pavlenko acquired in Soviet territory in fact as a slave. It was impossible without the risk of detention to just release. His possible flight and capture also threatened the investigation.

In general, as often happened during the war and not only, the problems were solved by the most “simple” way. Pavlenko was important to close the military page of his activity and dissolve the UVR-2 without conflicts and revelations.

1. For various aspects of this problem, see: Edele M., Slaveski F. Violence from Below: Explaining Crimes Against Civilians Across Soviet Space, 1943–1947 // Europe-Asia Studies. 2016. Vol. 68. No. 6. P. 1020–1035.

2. GA of the Russian Federation. R-8131. OP. 37. D. 981. L. 190–193.

3. Russian archive. Great Patriotic War. Orders of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR / Ed. V.A. Zolotareva. T. 13 (2-3). M.: Terra, 1997. S. 290–293.

4. GA of the Russian Federation. R-9401. OP. 2. D. 66. L. 9–10.

5. Ibid. L. 51–53.

6. Ibid. L. 334–340.

7. Ibid. D. 67. L. 319–324; D. 68. L. 268–273.

8. Ibid. F. R-7523. OP. 89. D. 8176. L. 49 vol.

9. Ibid. L. 74 vol.

10 hectares of the Russian Federation. F. R-7523. OP. 89. D. 8176. L. 17.

11. Russian archive. Great Patriotic War. Orders of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR / Ed. V.A. Zolotareva. T. 13 (2–2). M.: Terra, 1997. S. 308.

12. Ibid. S. 316.

13. RGASPI. F. 644. Op. 2. D. 420. L. 86–90.

14. Petrov N.V. First Chairman of the KGB Ivan Serov. M.: Main, 2005. S. 83–86; Military archives of Russia. 1993. No. 1. S. 184–222; Teplyakov A. G. On corruption in the bodies of the NKGB -MGB of the USSR.

15. GA of the Russian Federation. F. R-7523. OP. 89. D. 8176. L. 14.

16. Ibid. L. 48.

17. See more: Budnitskii O. in Parentses: Extrajudicial Executions During the Great Patriotic War // Cahiers du Monde Russe. Vol. 63. No. 1. P. 223–242.

18. Russian archive. Great Patriotic War. Orders of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR. T. 13 (2–2). S. 58–60.

19. Ibid. S. 277.

20. Budnitskii O. in Parentheses. P. 231.

21. Ibid. P. 229.

22. Russian Archive: Great Patriotic War. VGK rate: documents and materials 1944–1945 / Ed. V.A. Zolotareva. T. 16 (5–4). M.: Terra, 1999. S. 229.