Executioner with a blue pencil

The editorial office of Novye was a document that irrefutably exposed Stalin as a direct organizer of repressions (the material was first released in 2008)

This material was published in No. 23 (1341) of April 3, 2008. We published it in an anniversary issue. You can buy it here

Many still justify the atrocities of Stalinism with a certain historical necessity. Many, accustomed by the old Russian tradition to love the king, and in atrocities to blame the boyars, want to see Stalin in a white, not tarnished blood tunic and in all the serious crimes of the Soviet regime against their own people are accused exclusively in Yezhov and Beria. People often do not want to know the terrible truth and prefer to live with illusions. So calmer.

But in front of me is a handwritten draft resolution of the Central Committee, dated July 5, 1937. Decisions "On the imprisonment of the camps ... all wives of convicted members of the right -trapian ... organization." Monstrously on its own! Even if the husband is guilty (although, of course, there was no “Trotskyist spy-sabotage organization”), why should his wife also be responsible for him? Is that the same historical necessity? The need for wives - Morozov’s fastering? After all, the only thing that could save the innocent women (even in the draft decisions they are not called spy or saboteurs - only the wives of their husbands, that's all their fault!), This is a denunciation of her husband - and necessarily before his arrest. If after, this could only reduce the term. Horror!

But let's look at the document. Especially in the edits and additions made by the blue pencil. The People’s Commissariat (that is, Yezhov) proposed to enclose the wives of Trotskyists in the camps for 5 years - the blue pencil increased the period of up to eight. Yezhov proposed “to take the remaining convicted children for state support”-the blue pencil said: only “up to the age of 15”-and added: “As for children over 15 years of age, they decide the issue individually about them.” This meant: if he hid anger at his native Soviet power or is simply incontinent to the language, send after his mother to the camps or after his father into oblivion.

Also, this blue pencil carefully added to the dry “members of the right -to -thorough organization” a firing definition - “traitors of the Motherland”.

Really expressive than some “right Trotskyists”. The word went to the people. And “Algeria” appeared in Kazakhstan - the Akmola camp of the wives of the traitors of the Motherland.

Whose hands was a cruel blue pencil?

We decided to establish this and sent a document for examination to the Commonwealth of Experts of the Moscow State Law Academy (SODEX). The conclusion of experienced experts was unequivocal: “Pencils of blue color, the images of which are available in a copy of the draft Decree of the Central Committee dated 07/05/1937, were made by I.V. Stalin.”

We thank Sodex experts for operational and professional work.

And we suggest that the fans of Stalin think about such a task: who is the real author of those “excesses”, supposedly for which the Palach-Carlik Yezhov was later shot?

As for the Decree of the Central Committee itself ... Based on it on August 15, 1937, Order No. 00486, famous for its terrifying cynicism, was published, which prescribed all the details of repressions against faithful wives, and arrests began. This order acted in this form until October 17, 1938, then some mitigation followed.

How many women were sent to camps in 1937-1938?

“Memorials”* Arseniy Roginsky and Alexander Daniel write in the preface to the book “The Prisoner of Algeria” (M.: “Fores”, 2003): “The exact figure is unknown to us. It can only be restored according to the protocols of a special meeting, unfortunately, still inaccessible to us. Data from <...> Notes of October 5, 1938 in it, the NKVD leadership informed Stalin that, on the basis of order No. 00486, “under incomplete data, more than 18,000 wives of the arrested traitors ...” can serve as some landmark. The data on the "seized children" look more accurate ...

The final figures were reported on January 29, 1939. The head of the NKVD of Sumbatov in a note in the name of Beria: “... from August 15, 1937 to the present, the following work was done by the administrative and economic department:

In total, the union seized children 25,342 people.

of them:

a) directed to the children's commissar and local nursery 22,427 people.

b) transferred to guardianship and returned to mothers .... 2915 people. "

These numbers look quite reliable. But they are obviously incomplete.

They do not include data on children over 15 years old, who were recognized as “socially dangerous”, arrested and convicted <...>. The point, however, is not in numbers, but in an immutable fact - the operation by order No. 00486 was directed not only against wives, but also against the children of the “enemies of the people” ... ”.

... Is it too surprised that the play by Eugene Schwartz “Dragon”, written shortly after the war and, one might say,

Was it forbidden to commemorate Hitler in Stalin's victory?

Under the text
On October 30, 2017, on the day of memory of the victims of political repressions, Vladimir Putin opened the “Wall of Sorrow” - a monument to the Politzams, created, on the initiative of Novaya Gazeta and prohibited by all possible ways included in the Memorial Ino -agent register.

“The terrible past cannot be justified by any higher so -called benefits of the people,” the president said at the opening of the monument.

On March 23, 2023, the deputy chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev read out the defense enterprises of the telegram of Joseph Stalin.