Failed the pogrom

How the last Stalinist episode of repression ended. 70 years "Doctors' affairs"

On April 6, 1953, an editorial article was published in Pravda, the next day reprinted by other central newspapers. The article set out the message of the Ministry of the Interior of the USSR and a detailed commentary on it.

“The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR has thoroughly verified all the materials of the preliminary investigation and other data in the case of a group of doctors accused of sabotage, espionage and other actions in relation to active figures of the Soviet state. As a result of the audit, it was found that Professor M.S., Professor Vinogradov V.N., Professor Kogan M.B., Professor Kogan B.B., Professor Egorov P.I., Professor Feldman A.I., Professor E.I., Professor J.G., Professor Vasilenko V.X., Professor Vasilenko A.M., Professor Grinstein A.M. V.F., Professor Preobrazhensky B.S., Professor Popova N.A., Professor Zakusov V.V., Professor Shershevsky N.A., doctor Mayorov G.I. They were arrested by the former Ministry of State Security of the USSR unreasonably without any legal basis. The audit showed that the accusations made against the listed persons are false, and the documentary data on which the investigators relied on are insolvent. It was established that the testimony of the arrested, allegedly confirming the charges against them, were obtained by employees of the investigative part of the former Ministry of State Security by applying the inhibitable and strictly prohibited techniques of the investigation. On the basis of the conclusion of the investigative commission, specially put forward by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, to verify this case, arrested <...> are completely rehabilitated in the accusations of the wrecking, terrorist and espionage activities and <...> from the custody are released. Persons guilty of improper conduct of the investigation are arrested and prosecuted. ”

Help "New"
The Case of Pattering Doctors is fabricated by the Soviet authorities against a group of prominent Soviet doctors accused of a conspiracy and the murder of a number of Soviet leaders. In the text of the official message in January 1953, it was announced that "most participants in the terrorist group were associated with the international Jewish bourgeois-nationalist organization" Joint ", created by American intelligence, supposedly to provide material assistance to Jews in other countries."

Since 1952, the “Doctors' Case” was developed by the authorities of the Lieutenant Colonel. Ryumin, who wrote in 1951 a denunciation of Stalin about the "Zionist conspiracy" in the state security organs. On October 29, 1952, the leader reported that medical specialists confirmed the fact of criminal treatment of the Kremlin leaders. Stalin immediately sanction for the arrest of the main "conspirators." Then he instructed to apply physical impact measures to arrested doctors (that is, Pyatka).

Stalin’s post -industry in early March 1953 was closed. On April 3, all arrested were released, restored at work and completely rehabilitated.

The country went crazy

The "case of doctors" lasted a little more than two and a half months. During this time, an event took place, which is still worried by someone as mourning,-Stalin died.

“... The last hour or two people were simply slowly suffocating. Agony was scary. She strangled him in front of everyone. At some point-I don’t know if it really, but it seemed so-obviously, at the last minute, he suddenly opened his eyes and looked around them all around. It was a terrible look, either crazy, or angry and complete horror before his death ... This gaze went around everyone into some share of a minute. And here-it was incomprehensible and scary, I still do not understand, but I can’t forget-then he suddenly raised his left hand upward (which moved) and either indicated it somewhere upstairs, or threatened us all. The gesture was incomprehensible, but threatening, and it is not known to whom and what he belonged to ... At the next moment the soul, making the last effort, escaped from the body ... "

So describes the daughter of Stalin Svetlana Alliluyeva what was happening on the “neighbor” on the day of the leader of the leader.

They say that when Stalin lay in a puddle of his own urine for several hours, the doctors were panicky afraid to approach him, fearing the inevitable consequences.

Ordinary citizens also tried not to go to an appointment with Jewish doctors and to doctors in general. Newspapers were crowded with anti -Semitic materials. According to the "fifth point", people were fired from work. They beat on the streets. The country went crazy.

And the "killers in white robes" sat on the cameras in anticipation of their fate. She was a foregone conclusion. A collective letter of famous Jews who asked the government to save their people from popular anger was already prepared, to take echelons to the east, to Siberia. They say that everything was stopped by Ilya Ehrenburg, who personally wrote Stalin. He expressed in a letter the fear of noise abroad and in this regard a respectful doubt about the expediency of the action. They had the courage to refuse or evade their signature, People's Artist of the USSR Reisen, Hero of the Soviet Union, commander, Colonel General Cracer and composer Dunaevsky.

"I signed that I was a German spy"

The “Pattering Doctor” Professor-Pathologist Yakov Rapoport left wonderful memories of the experience.

“Interrogations,” he writes, “went like this:

Question. You, Rapoport, are arrested as a Jewish bourgeois nationalist, an enemy of the people. Show about your crimes.

Answer. I have not committed any crimes.

Question. False hypocritical statement.

Answer. There is no hypocrisy.

Question. Do not evade and talk about your vile actions.

Answer. I did not perform any vile actions.

Question. You, Rapoport, do not evade responsibility for your crimes.

Answer. I have not committed any crimes ...

The investigation did not ask other questions.

Then Vovsi and Vinogradov told Rapoport that they were beaten, and they recognized all their fictional crimes. Vovsi even told how he was demanded that he was a German spy, that at the same time he even burst into tears. He said to them: “What do you want from me? After all, I admitted that I was an American and English spy, is it really enough for you? The Germans shot my whole family in Dvinsk, and you demand that I admit that it was their spy? " In response, I received swearing swearing and a demand: "Professor, Mr., there was nothing to lock myself, I was a German spy." I signed that I was a German spy ”...

By the way, two kogans were also named among the “monsters”: B.B. and MB - native brothers. But one of them is B.B. - He was an American spy, and the other - MB - English.

And suddenly everything magically changed.

From the memoirs of Jacob Rapoport:

“After some time, the door opened, and I was led to the room where the military was sitting in the rank of an intensive career colonel, who returned me a package with bonds of loans and orders seized during the search. From the orders returned to me, I immediately attached the Order of Lenin to the jacket. It seemed to me that, having seen him on me, my wife would immediately believe in my freedom as a visual symbol before reading a rehabilitation certificate. So, decorated with the Order of Lenin, with the rest of the orders in my pocket, I again went to boxing. Probably, for the entire time of the existence of this boxing, he first took a prisoner, on the chest of which the Order of Lenin flaunted (the orders are usually immediately removed during the arrest). ”

The wife, when Rapoport was brought home, asked if he knew that Joseph Vissarionovich died. Her question as lightning covered the whole, incomprehensible to the fact that the mechanism of a sharp change in the common fate of the doctors arrested in the case. It immediately became clear to the professor why the Ministry of State Security became “former”, as was written in the certificate of liberation, and that this is not the only change in the Soviet system, but “the offensive of a new era in it, really historically changed by the death of only one person.”

Then Rapoport was invited to a closed party meeting.

“Referring to malaise, I said that since I was excluded in my absence, they can restore without me. However, for some reason, it was necessary to observe ritual cleanliness, and I was persistently asked to arrive at this special meeting with the only point of his agenda-the restoration of me in the party. I had to meet, and I arrived.

I felt in a hostile environment, as if I had stolen something from these people, deprived of something important, brutally offended them. The expression of the persons of the Communists (mostly female) was as if they were present at the funeral, and not on the return to the life of an innocently injured party comrade. The secretary of the party organization with horror on the face informed me (confidentially) about the circulating at the Institute of my statements. I am attributed to me (not without reason) the word that only the death of Stalin freed me and others from prison and a possible shameful execution. She was shocked by such thoughts and the danger of their statements. So strong was the Stalinist spirit in the atmosphere, which for many years these comrades breathed and to free their own, they could not thoroughly saturated with the body painlessly. The secretary of the party organization reported that there is only one question - the restoration of me in the party due to my full rehabilitation and restoration at work, and suggested vote for the proposal. All, without exception, raised their hands “for” ...

Fear

And at this very time, dramatic events developed on another “flank” - in the offices of the Ministry of State Security of the USSR, as well as in the building of the Central Committee of the All -Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (b) with the participation of the very first persons of the country.

It began, as usual, with a vulgar denunciation, caused, as I understand it, by fear for his skin.

As in any documents of that time, at least somehow related to the authorities-whether it is the transcript of the Plenum of the Central Committee, a court protocol, private correspondence of government leaders, or very personal memoirs, is most amazing, and at first, even puzzles, the unprinciplity of the defendants, their immorality, readiness for betrayal, domestic immorality, and finally, with which they constantly pronounce the obvious and the obvious and the obvious and the obvious and Shameless lie ...

And the very fear that permeates their actions - people who seem to have uncontrolled power over a huge country and its unfortunate population.

Although fear, of course, will explain in the first place. After all, everyone understands: if something happened, he will immediately remember the unprincipled, betrayal, and a lie ... And they will say, with the inherent moment, without trembling, a well -deserved sentence, which he himself pronounced, just without trembling. And not to be justified by a reminder of the previous fidelity, the merits even - like the same Beria in his last, huge, confused, horror of letters to former comrades.

I will leaf the book recently published by the Russian-German publishing house of the Direct-Media-Politburo and the case of Viktor Abakumov. A collection of declassified documents under the general editorship of the Doctor of Historical Sciences Oleg Mozokhin. Amazing, I note, documents reproduced in chronological order. Almost 800 pages.

The book begins with a denunciation, which Lieutenant Colonel Ryumin (does not matter, himself or at the instigation of senior comrades) in the Central Committee, Stalin. The fact is that Ryumin perfectly understood who they would make the extreme when it would be necessary to answer: why his under investigation Professor Etinger died in prison without giving him the testimony required from him, that it was he, Professor Etinger, on the instructions of the nationalist conspirators five years ago, healing the candidate’s death in the Politburo Shcherbakov Politburo.

Ryumin calculated correctly: he accused - personally the Minister of State Security of the USSR Viktor Abakumov. He, the minister, turns out, did everything possible so that the enemy could not admit his deed.

“... after calling Comrade. Abakumov arrested Ethinger was established for him a more severe regime, and he was transferred to the Lefortovo prison to the coldest and raw chamber. The etinger had a good age - 64 years old, and he began attacks of the chest toad, about which on January 20, 1951, an official medical document was received in the investigation, which stated that "in the future, each next attack of the thong toad could lead to an adverse outcome."

Given this circumstance, I raised a question several times before the leadership of the investigation part that I was allowed to truly join in the further interrogations of the arrested eight, but I refused this. It all ended with the fact that in early March, the etgher suddenly died, and his terrorist activity remained unrelented ... "

Please note: the lieutenant colonel is outraged not by the fact that the deadly ill person was placed in the “coldest and raw chamber”, but by the fact that he, Lieutenant Colonel, was not given the opportunity to “truly join in interrogations”.

But what the interrogated minister Abakumov showed:

" Question. Did you personally give an indication of maintaining it in special conditions that are life -threatening?

Answer. In which special ones?

Question. In more tough than everyone else.

Answer. There is nothing special here, because it is an enemy. We can beat the arrested, but there were no other conditions in the Lefortovo prison.

Question. Etinger was placed in a raw camera?

Answer. There are no such cameras. We have a Lefortovo prison - an ordinary prison.

Question. Doctors warned you that the etinger is in serious condition, that, as you yourself said, more than 20 cardiac seizures were with him? In order to expose the terrorist activity of Etinger, it was necessary to take measures to maintain his health?

Answer. This is very often when the arrested is beaten, then he has a million diseases. Well, take all those arrested to the hospital? .. "

Amazing! The very first persons of the country are engaged in the preparation of lengthy papers, a thorough verification of who reported and why did not report on time. When, after the denunciation of Ryumin, they created the Politburo Commission, led by Malenkov, when they took up the leadership of the ministry, this caused a stream of new denunciations from the bowels of the department. Among which there was also information about the "methods of work" - the beating of the under investigation, daily many hours of interrogations. The compilation of linden protocols that were regularly sent up to the Central Committee was also described in detail.

From the protocol of the interrogation of Abakumov, August 10, 1951:

From the protocol
“I want to say additionally that there were no cases of incorrect use of physical impact measures to the investigation in particularly important cases. On the contrary, in the Central Committee of the All -Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and my first deputy Okholtsov, it was repeatedly warned that our Chekist apparatus was not afraid to apply physical impact measures to the arrested - spies and other criminals when necessary. Having this instruction and using this right, in the bodies of the Ministry of State Security of the USSR and in the investigation for particularly important cases, my first deputy heads were sanction to apply physical impact measures to the arrested - spies, terrorists and other criminals. They did it reasonably and gave a sanction when it was required. "

But there were also testimonies from which you can’t dissuade it so easily.

"With a pronounced Jewish physiognomy"

From the protocol of interrogation deputy. Head of the Tangiev Department, July 27, 1951:

From the protocol
“Back in 1950, I had a suspicion that Abakumov was not a great hunt for arresting Jewish nationalists. One of the reasons for this I saw that the closest friend of Abakumov is the face of Jewish nationality. Many old Chekists, including me, know that Abakumov could often be seen in theaters (especially in the Moscow Art Theater) and on the street with a man below medium height, aged seven years older than Abakumov, with a pronounced Jewish physiognomy, who was called Abakumov’s friend, sometimes coming to his office. Unfortunately, I do not know the surnames and the name of this person, since he does not work in our ministry, but persons from Abakumov should know him.

It should also be indicated that Abakumov left in the ministry on the leading or responsible work of people of Jewish nationality, such as, for example, Ryakhman Leonid Fedorovich - deputy. beginning. 2nd main management, glyera (has several names)-deputy. beginning. department, Pavlovsky - deputy. beginning. The department, which we do not like in the team of the 2nd Main Directorate and know how the big lazy people working only "to show" for the great bosses. "

By the way, to the accompaniment of the “Affairs of the Patternuts” from the MGB cleaned (and many were arrested) of all Jewish employees. However, they were no better than those who remained at work ...

Along the way, the numerous facts of the “rebirth” of the minister became “became known”.

From the letter of the Prosecutor General Stalin:

“In the apartment and in the country of Abakumov, it was found:

1. Woolen fabrics - 483 meters, silk fabrics - 1265 meters, and in total manufactory - 1883 meters. According to approximate assessment, this manufactory costs more than 300,000 rubles.

2. Shoes - 85 pairs. Chrome skin - up to 30 pieces.

3. Костюмов мужских штатских — 18, галстуков — свыше 70, подтяжек — 27, брючных поясов — 59, мужских носков — свыше 170 пар.

4. Иностранных радиол и радиоприемников — 10, телевизоров — 2, роялей — 2, аккордеонов — 4.

5. Большое количество фарфоровой и хрустальной посуды. 15 фарфоровых и хрустальных сервизов, в том числе тарелок до 500 штук, бокалов и рюмок — до 300 штук.

6. Часов ручных и карманных импортных — 23, в том числе золотых — 9.

7. Импортных духов и одеколона, преимущественно французских — 65 флаконов, чулок высококачественных импортных — 122 пары, пуговиц иностранных — около 7000 штук, в том числе перламутровых — 4600, полотенец махровых — более 100 шт.

8. Шоколада заграничного — 25 килограммов.

9. Ковров — 39.

10. Холодильников импортных — 6.

11. Свыше ста двадцати больших и малых высокохудожественных иностранных ваз и статуэток, некоторые из них в натуральную величину (собака, обезьяна, индюк и др.).

Ориентировочно общая стоимость описанного имущества Абакумова составляет около миллиона рублей».

However, this is not important.

Заявление, сделанное арестованным Абакумовым Виктором Семеновичем перед началом допроса 8 августа 1951 года:

«В каком бы я положении ни находился, я был и остаюсь преданным человеком товарищу Сталину и очень привязан к нему. Я был счастлив тем, что на протяжении десяти лет непосредственно от товарища Сталина получал указания по работе, эти указания очень твердо и крепко проводил в жизнь. Я был счастлив тем, что из этих 10 лет — 5 лет я, будучи начальником военной контрразведки и подчиняясь товарищу Сталину, был прямым очевидцем его величайшей ведущей роли, как полководца в войне, и под его руководством произошла победа наших войск. Я говорю это потому, что за это время такие выродки, как маршал Жуков, маршал Воронов, которые не прочь были себе приписывать, что они якобы чуть ли не спасли нашу страну; я должен прямо сказать, что товарищ Сталин спас нашу страну, спас наш народ в той тяжелой войне, которая была, и дал нашему народу возможность и дальше цветуще развивать нашу страну».

Но даже это не помогло!

5 марта 1953 года Сталин умер. Абакумов был расстрелян уже при Хрущеве — в 1955-м.

И о доносчике Рюмине. Он сделал бурную, но короткую карьеру. Стал полковником, начальником Следственной части, заместителем министра… Но уже в конце 1952-го был уволен. После смерти Сталина арестован. И 7 июля1954 года приговорен Военной коллегией Верховного суда СССР к высшей мере наказания с конфискацией имущества. Не реабилитирован.