Svetlana was excited about the call from Beria. She felt that she had become the owner of some dangerous secret. Moreover, it was not clear how this person could freely enter the government house in which she lived. After all, he was constantly guarded. Soon a thunderclap thundered in her apartment.

THE MYSTERY OF THE RED MANSION Anyone who was on Berkaerstraße in Berlin in the May days of 1945 would hardly have noticed the red brick building: the house was badly damaged by bombing. Dirty scraps stuck out from the window openings, carelessly boarded up with boards.

27. “Beria’s Gang” Khrushchev: “When Stalin said that such and such should be arrested, one should have taken it on faith that this was an “enemy of the people.” And the Beria gang, which ruled the state security agencies, went out of its way to prove the guilt of the arrested persons, the correctness

Failed architect

ON THIS TOPIC

The future People's Commissar of Internal Affairs was born on March 17, 1899 in a mountain village near Sukhumi. His mother Martha Jakeli, according to some sources, was a relative of the Georgian princes Dadiani. However, the noble origin did not help the woman: the family lived poorly, she barely managed to feed the children.

Nevertheless, Lavrenty, who showed a keen interest in science and technology, received a good education at the Sukhumi Higher Primary School, and then entered the Mechanical and Technical Construction School in Baku. Why did Beria choose construction? Since childhood, he drew well, and, probably, if not for the revolution, then in the future we would have known him as a good architect. In addition, people who knew him claimed that the future People's Commissar of Internal Affairs had an amazingly subtle sense of beauty and was fond of photography.

After Beria moved to Baku, his mother and sister followed him. Only now Lavrentiy was feeding them, giving away most of their already meager earnings. When entering the Baku school, he wrote in the application form: “I had nothing and don’t have anything.”

His other passion was football. Beria's favorite team was Dynamo Tbilisi, and he himself once played on the field as a left midfielder. Beria tried not to miss matches of his favorite team, and was very upset when they suffered defeats.

Confidant

In 1931, he became the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia - in fact, the leader of the republic. In 1938, Beria moved to Moscow, where he headed the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD). His rise was due to Stalin's favor. According to one version, he earned the trust of the “leader of the people” by arranging a meeting for Stalin with his mother Ekaterina (Keke) Dzhugashvili in October 1935.

She was extremely dissatisfied with her son that he did not become a priest, but joined the “godless Bolsheviks.” To promote the cult of Stalin, propagandists from the Communist Party were required to show the “long-awaited” meeting of a loving son with his mother. And Beria’s help, as the leader of Georgia, was most welcome in this matter.

He renovated Keke's house and had several conversations with her. What was happening was covered by Soviet newspapers: they periodically issued touching reports in which the mother of the “leader of the peoples” began to regret that she had not given birth to another son like him for the benefit of humanity. Well, later photographs of the embarrassed leader and happy Keke appeared in the newspapers. Citizens wept with emotion. The task was completed, Beria coped with it perfectly.

From that moment on, the future People's Commissar of Internal Affairs became one of the close associates of the "leader of the peoples." It is not surprising that it was to him that Stalin entrusted the most important task: to cleanse the NKVD of the people of his predecessors - Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolai Yezhov.

Sexual giant

In addition to work, Beria also found time for his personal life. So much so that rumors about his sexual insatiability circulated throughout Moscow. It was rumored that he personally looked out for pretty girls on the streets of the capital. At the same time, Beria was not interested in the age and social status of women. “I’m out hunting,” the Muscovites whispered. The people Beria liked were allegedly delivered by the head of his security, State Security Colonel Rafael Sarkisov.

Beria only had to point to the woman she liked, after which Sarkisov “invited” her to follow her into the car. He also kept a list of his boss’s mistresses. But after the arrest of the all-powerful head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it became clear that there was not one, but three lists. One had 39 names, another had 75, and the third had 115.

After the arrest of the chief, Sarkisov testified that one of Beria’s women was a certain student at the institute Foreign languages named Maya, who became pregnant from him and had an abortion. In addition, the head of the People's Commissar's security claimed that in 1943 Beria contracted syphilis.

An active personal life on the side did not prevent the all-powerful People's Commissar from being an exemplary family man. He was married to Nino Gegechkori, whom he met in the early 20s, when he was at party work in Georgia. In 1924, the couple had a son, Sergo, who became a designer of radar and missile systems.

It should be noted that Beria himself confirmed information about his adventures and the role of Sarkisov. During interrogation on July 8, 1953, answering the question whether Sarkisov acted as a pimp, Beria replied that he “did something.” “I won’t deny this,” admitted former minister internal affairs.

Bad house

In Moscow, Beria lived in a one-story modern mansion on Malaya Nikitskaya. Allegedly, it was there that the People's Commissar met with the women whom Sarkisov brought to him. A rich table and sumptuous treats awaited the visitors. After the feast came an obscene proposal. Some researchers argue that if they refused intimacy, unfortunate women faced a series of troubles, including criminal prosecution. Those who stayed with the owner of the mansion could count on certain preferences, for example, a promotion at work.

In one of the episodes of the “Top Secret” program, publicist and founder of the Gulag History Museum Anton Antonov-Ovseenko claimed that during the renovation of the building, a stone crusher was discovered in one of the basements of the house. He suggested that the tool was used to destroy the remains of the victims. It is noteworthy that during the repair of the heating plant on Malaya Nikitskaya they discovered a large number of bones, and their number grew as they approached the ominous mansion.

Now "Beria's house" is occupied by the Tunisian embassy. According to embassy workers, the spirit of the former owner appears there to this day. This happens several times a month. The scenario is the same: the sound of a car approaching is heard near the house, the door opens, and inaudible male and female voices are heard moving away towards the entrance to the mansion.

Shot in the forehead

Beria was arrested a few months after Stalin's death - at the end of June 1953. The verdict of the special judicial presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR, chaired by Marshal Ivan Konev, stated that the former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs allegedly put together a hostile organization with the aim of seizing power. Beria was accused of intending to eliminate the socialist system and restore capitalism. The verdict was predictable: death penalty.

Colonel Pavel Batitsky volunteered to carry it out. In the future he will become one of the creators of the Soviet air defense, will rise to the rank of marshal. But on a gloomy winter day on December 23, he pointed a parabellum pistol at the forehead of Beria standing in front of him and immediately pulled the trigger.

The body of the executed man was not buried; it was burned in the crematorium oven. Subsequently, Beria's relatives unsuccessfully tried to achieve a review of the 1953 case and the rehabilitation of their relative. However, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of Russia in May 2000 put a final point on this issue: it is not subject to rehabilitation.

Double?

However, Beria’s son Sergo believes that his father was shot either during the arrest or immediately after. According to him, on that day, machine gun fire was heard in the mansion on Malaya Nikitskaya, and then a body covered with a sheet was carried out of the house on a stretcher. However, there is no reliable information that it was the marshal himself.

Sergo Beria stated that at the trial the role of his father was played by a double. Allegedly, this information was shared with him by a member of the special judicial presence, Mitrofan Kuchava. The son of the disgraced head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs also claimed that there was no cremation: his father’s corpse was allegedly dissolved in alkali.

Finding myself in the West in the early 1980s, where Christmas was celebrated everywhere and, in comparison with current politically correct times, much more magnificently, I wondered why in the USSR, an atheistic state, the execution was timed to coincide with the eve of the Christmas holidays in the West? Did you want foreign public attention, focused on the upcoming celebrations, not to be particularly attracted to it? Or is this just a coincidence? Or another thing: how was the “company” of his accomplices formed, who were executed on the same day? After all, many others were sentenced already next year?... And this is only part of the questions that we will try to find answers to today - exactly 59 years after the execution on Christmas Eve of 1953 of one of the Soviet leaders Lavrentiy Beria and six of his associates...
So, executions at Christmas. 59 years later.
Now, it seems, it is clear to everyone interested in the past why Beria was so afraid of his fellow party members of the Areopagus. And why, if he was really as powerful as they imagined, he was the first to be destroyed after Stalin’s death. Even 16 years ago, while discussing these issues in one of Svoboda’s programs, Professor Rudolf Pihoya, a researcher on the history of state power in the USSR, explained to me:

Rudolf Pihoya: Why were they afraid of him? - I think that they were afraid of him not only because he exercised this total control - we can judge the degree of this total control by the way he was arrested. Obviously, he could no longer exercise this total control at this moment.
Another thing is - for what reasons? Beria had a very serious drawback for a party and statesman Soviet Union- he had a lot of ideas at that moment.
He interferes in domestic politics. He is actively involved in foreign policy, he gets involved in interethnic relations...
And in this sense, it becomes inconvenient for everyone.
Secondly, well, don’t discount the fact that he’s the head of this colossal information system, which was called the Ministry of Internal Affairs, plus also the MGB. Beria did not forget that he instructed his archival department to collect materials about Malenkov’s activities, including activities related to repression. They feared Beria because he, having information, could actually blow up the then Presidium of the Central Committee.
But why was he arrested first? Because in this “circle of friends” called the Presidium of the Central Committee, relations were always quite tense, and this series of endless crises that began in 1953, ultimately ending with the October Plenum of 1964, testified that it was always a “terrarium” friends."
But Beria in this situation was the weakest link among the entire top party and state leadership. This may sound somewhat unexpected, but I want to draw your attention to the fact that Beria moved to the Ministry of Internal Affairs 8 years after he worked in this department. After 1945, he returned in 1953. People changed, the situation changed, he no longer had the control mechanism that he had before.
In addition, Beria united the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the MGB. Formally, this strengthened the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the MGB, but it brought there all the contradictions that had accumulated over the years of the independent existence of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the MGB. By that time, these departments had existed independently for 10 years and, let’s say, they lived very difficult among themselves, and at times they were simply in open confrontation. That is, his trench - his Ministry of Internal Affairs was not too deep and not too protected. In addition, Beria, of course, did not have support in the party apparatus; in the state apparatus they were afraid of him. All these circumstances made Beria very vulnerable as a figure.

Vladimir Tolts: Now that many of the documents that once could only be seen by the former chief archivist of Russia, Professor Rudolf Pihoya, have become available to us, we can try to clarify: the point is not that the “Beria trench” - the united Ministry of Internal Affairs turned out to be weakened by the internal contradictions of the security officers and the cops among themselves. Judging by the documents, the arrest of Beria turned out to be a brilliant military operation, as a result of which the army outplayed the Emvedeshniks. However, as is now clear from the declassified materials of the investigation, the latter did not offer any resistance and quite soon and without any of the torture they were accustomed to, of which many of them were masters, they began to surrender their arrested boss “in full.” And if the power had been theirs, they would have just as zealously dealt with those who decided on the anti-Beria conspiracy. So the military operation was not in vain!
Despite the considerable distance, the tank regiments of the Kantemirovskaya and Taman divisions were able to quickly and secretly reach the capital and occupy key positions there before the divisions of the internal troops responded. (Actually, they did not react.) Air support was organized just in case. - Fortunately, it was not needed... The commander of the Moscow Military District, Colonel General Artemyev, who was at command and staff exercises in Kalinin, was promptly removed and replaced by General Moskalenko, loyal to the conspirators. The neutralization of the Kremlin guards and other organizational changes took place just as quickly and smoothly - Beria’s ministerial office was taken over by his deputy Kruglov, and the removed Prosecutor General Safonov was replaced by Rudenko, who immediately took up investigative actions and legitimizing the anti-Beria conspiracy.
It has long been known that not everything went so smoothly. - Although the arrested Beria was quickly and easily taken out of the Kremlin, the original place of his imprisonment - Aleshkinsky barracks - was considered unsafe and vulnerable. We had to move the prisoner to the Moscow Military District guardhouse...
Much less known and analyzed are the problems of formulating the charge, the course and tactics of the investigation, determining the circle of accomplices and their arrests and the conduct of the trial...

June 26, 1953. PRESIDIUM OF THE SUPREME COUNCIL OF THE USSR.
DECREE“About the criminal anti-state actions of L.P. Beria"
Due to the fact that recently the criminal anti-state actions of L.P. Beria, aimed at undermining Soviet state in the interests of foreign capital, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, having considered the message of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on this issue, decides:
1. Deprive L.P. Beria's powers as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
2. Remove L.P. Beria from the post of First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and from the post of Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR.
3. Deprive L.P. Beria of all titles awarded to him, as well as orders, medals and other honorary awards.
4. The case of the criminal actions of L.P. Beria to be submitted to the Supreme Court of the USSR for consideration.

Vladimir Tolts: That's it - transfer it to court before investigation. (The criminal case, as we now know, was opened only on June 30).

From minutes No. 12 of the meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of June 29, 1953.
1. Entrust the conduct of the investigation into the Beria case to the Prosecutor General of the USSR.
2. Oblige Comrade Rudenko to select the appropriate investigative apparatus within 24 hours, reporting on the personnel to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, and immediately begin, taking into account the instructions given at the meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee, to identify and investigate the facts of hostile anti-party and anti-state activities of Beria through his entourage ( Kobulov B., Kobulov A., Meshik, Sarkisov, Goglidze, Shariya, etc.), as well as to investigate issues related to the removal of Comrade Strokach

Vladimir Tolts: Timofey Strokach, the former Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, who was demoted by Beria after the death of Stalin to the post of head of the Lviv regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, wrote already on the 30th in the name of Malenkov that Beria and his henchmen were collecting dirt on the party nomenklatura, and Amayak Kobulov, whose name appeared in the minutes of the Presidium The Central Committee (he was shot almost a year later by Beria) allegedly even said that the Ministry of Internal Affairs would no longer be dependent on party officials.
Well, before the investigation began, Lavrenty Pavlovich himself managed to scribble out several letters to his former comrades Malenkov, Khrushchev, Bulganin, Molotov, begging for mercy, repenting, emphasizing his merits... In response, yesterday’s comrades ordered to take away his pencil, paper and pince-nez...
But the Kremlin had no time for his prison messages. It was urgent to neutralize the people closest to Beria who could organize resistance. Within 24 hours, already on June 27, Beria’s 1st deputy Bogdan Kobulov and former 1st Deputy Minister of State Security of the Union (in Beria’s “big Ministry of Internal Affairs” he headed the 3rd department) Sergei Goglidze, 30th Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and Georgia were arrested Pavel Meshik and Vladimir Dekanozov. The other two of those shot at Christmas 1953 - the head of the investigative unit of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs Lev Vlodzimirsky (he was arrested only on June 17) and the Minister of State Control Vsevolod Merkulov, who found himself in Butyrka on September 18, were much more limited in terms of their ability to organize resistance to Beria’s Kremlin opponents. That’s why they weren’t arrested right away. Although the former Minister of State Security of the USSR Merkulov was among the people listed here closest to Beria. - The co-author of an essay signed with the name of Beria and the author of a brochure praising Lavrentiy is the only one of his accomplices who addressed Beria as “you.” Which, however, did not prevent Vsevolod Nikolaevich from signing up as a speaker at the Central Committee plenum that opened on July 2 on the Beria case. He was not allowed to speak. But another long-time comrade of Beria, Mir Jafar Baghirov, the first secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, spoke and branded, as expected (“ Beria is a chameleon, the worst enemy of our party. I couldn't figure it out." But this did not stop him from being shot as Beria’s accomplice. True, already in 1956.
In general, at this plenum, all yesterday’s comrades and colleagues spoke quite unanimously. But since the investigation had not yet begun, they operated with emotions rather than facts.

Vladimir Tolts: Some authors claim that among Beria’s closest collaborators in the post-war period, there was still one person who categorically refused to support the chorus of his “friends”-accusers at the Plenum. This is the “father” of the Soviet atomic bomb Academician Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov.
Immediately after Beria was imprisoned, arrests began of those who became accused in the near-Beria trials and were convicted and sentenced later. 3 days after Beria’s arrest, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Solomon Milshtein, who had previously been a big shot in the Gulag system, was arrested (Executed in October 1954.) On June 27, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR Konstantin Savitsky was arrested, on August 12 - the deputy head of the investigative unit for the Department of Internal Affairs of Beria’s “big” Ministry of Internal Affairs Georgy Paramonov, September 25 - former Minister of State Security of Armenia Nikita Krimyan. All of them, together with Alexander Khazan, who was arrested in the same case, were before the war investigators of the Georgian NKVD, who tortured more than a dozen people there under the leadership of Beria. They all gave extensive testimony against him, his accomplices and each other. All of them were executed after the trial in Tbilisi in November 1955...
Another group of those arrested, whose testimony was regarded by the newly appointed prosecutor Rudenko as extremely important for the upcoming interrogations of Beria, was Pyotr Shariya, who had previously been arrested in the “Mingrelian case”, but after Stalin’s death was completely rehabilitated and became Beria’s assistant in the Council of Ministers (sentenced in September 1954 to 10 years in Vladimir prison), head of department in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia Stepan Mamulov (15 years in prison in Vladimirka), Boris Lyudvigov - head of Beria’s secretariat in the Ministry of Internal Affairs (15 years in Vladimirka, but pardoned and released in 1965), Grigory Ordyntsev - head of Beria’s secretariat in the Council of Ministers (in 1954 sentenced to 8 years of exile, released in 1959) and Beria’s personal secretary, Colonel Fyodor Mukhanov, arrested for “failure to report.”
And in the summer of 1953, arrests followed of the “special contingent” - former illegal immigrants engaged in espionage and terrorist acts abroad. Among them it is necessary to name, first of all, the leaders of the operation to assassinate Trotsky, Naum Eitingon and Pavel Sudoplatov. Eitingon had already been arrested in 1951 in the “case of a Zionist conspiracy in the MGB,” but after Stalin’s death he was released, rehabilitated, and Beria appointed him head of a department in the new Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1957 he was given 12 years. He was released only in 1963. Sudoplatov was arrested on August 21, 1953 and he left the Vladimir prison, where he feigned madness, exactly 15 years later, on August 21, 1968, the day when soviet tanks entered Czechoslovakia.
From the verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR dated September 12, 1958:

A special laboratory, created to carry out experiments to test the effects of poisons on a living person, worked under the supervision of Sudoplatov and his deputy Eitingon from 1942 to 1946, who demanded from laboratory workers only poisons tested on humans. After the liquidation of the special laboratory, on behalf of Sudoplatov, testing of a new drug with poison was carried out several times on living people.

Vladimir Tolts: It is impossible not to mention another “grandmaster” of special operations - Yakov Serebryansky, arrested at the end of July 1953. Before this, he, a former Socialist Revolutionary, famous for the daring kidnapping of the White Guard general Kutepov in Paris, was arrested twice - in 1921 and in 1941. But each time he was released and amnestied. The authorities needed specialists in secret murders!.. But this time it was not possible to be released: Yakov Isaakovich died in Butyrka during interrogation...
And also, at least briefly, about one group of arrested persons, whose interrogations began even before Beria’s first interrogation. These are his and other accused relatives. Only one list of relatives of those executed on December 23, 1953 includes 35 names and surnames of Tam and an elderly mother, sister, sister’s husband Beria, wives and children of the other six executed. Everyone was not only interrogated, but also expelled from Georgia and the capitals. It is clear that both the son and wife of Lavrenty himself were arrested. On June 29, she wrote to her husband’s former friends - Malenkov, Khrushchev, Voroshilov, Molotov, Kaganovich:

On the 26th of this month, they took my son [Sergei] and his family (two children, 5 and 2.5 years old, and a 7-month pregnant wife) and I don’t know where they are. I also don’t know what happened to Lavrentiy Beria, whose wife I [have been] for more than 30 years.<…>Therefore, I ask you to call me and talk to me for at least a few minutes. I can perhaps clarify some of the events that compromise him. I can’t stay in this state and ignorance for long!
If Lavrentiy Beria has already made an irreparable mistake, causing damage to the Soviet country, and his fate is predetermined, give me the opportunity to share his fate, whatever it may be.
I ask you only one thing. Spare my son.

Vladimir Tolts: Deprived of awards, scientific degrees and titles, who admitted during interrogations that his dissertations were largely the fruit of the labors of sharashka prisoners, Sergei Beria, after a year and a half in prison, was exiled to Sverdlovsk with his mother...
***
The first interrogation of Lavrentiy Beria took place only almost 2 weeks after his arrest. It was led by Prosecutor General Rudenko. Excerpts from the protocol:

“Question: You have been arrested for anti-Soviet conspiratorial activities against the Party and the Soviet state. Do you intend to tell the investigation about your criminal activities?
Beria: I categorically deny this.”

Vladimir Tolts: Rudenko started from afar: from Beria’s service in the Mussavatist counterintelligence service, which, as the investigation believed, was connected with the British. Beria retorted:

The issue of working in counterintelligence was raised by Kaminsky in 1937 at the Party Central Committee, and this accusation against me was considered unfounded. This issue was also raised in 1938 in the Central Committee of the party, and also this accusation was not confirmed.<…>
Question: In her testimony, Sharia claims that Bonapartist, dictatorial habits have been noticeable on your part recently. Is this correct?
Answer: This is absolutely not true! I can’t explain in any way why Sharia says this. I have no personal accounts with Shariya.

Vladimir Tolts: But during this interrogation, as well as during the following ones, Beria gradually admitted something. Mainly episodes and acts that could not result in “capital punishment”.

Question: Do you recognize your criminal moral corruption?

Answer: There is little. This is my fault.

Question: Do you know Sarkisov? Is this your confidant?

Answer: Yes.

Question: In his testimony, Sarkisov says that he mainly played the role of a pimp. Is it so?

Answer: Did something. I won't deny this.

Vladimir Tolts: And then in many interrogations the same plot with variations - “about venereal disease”, about mistresses different stages life path, about “raped - not raped”...
But there were worse things. During one of the interrogations, Beria was presented with the testimony of the head of the toxicology laboratory of the NKVD-MGB, Grigory Mairanovsky, who was arrested in 1951 in the case of “a Zionist conspiracy in the MGB” and in February 1953 sentenced to ten years in prison for illegal possession of poisons and abuse of official position:
During my experiments in the use of poisons, which I tested on those sentenced to the Highest Measure of Punishment<…>, I came across the fact that some of the poisons can be used to identify the so-called “frankness” of persons under investigation. These substances turned out to be chloral-scopolamine and phenamine-benzedrine (Cola-s).
When using chloral-scopolamine (CS), I noticed that, firstly, its doses indicated in the pharmacopoeia as lethal, in fact, are not so. I have tested this many times on many subjects. In addition, I noticed a stunning effect on a person after using CS, which lasts on average about a day. At the moment when complete stupor begins to pass and glimpses of consciousness begin to appear, then at the same time the inhibitory functions of the cerebral cortex are still absent. When carrying out the reflexology method at this time (pushing, pinching, pouring water), a number of monosyllabic answers to briefly posed questions can be revealed from the subject.
When using “Cola-S”, the subject develops a strong excited state of the cerebral cortex, prolonged insomnia for several days, depending on the dose. There is an uncontrollable need to speak out.
These data led me to think about the use of these substances during the investigation to obtain the so-called “candor” from the persons under investigation...
...For this purpose, Fedotov assigned five investigators, whose names I don’t remember (one of them seemed to be Kozyrev), as well as three types of defendants: those who confessed, those who did not confess, and those who partially confessed. I conducted experiments on them together with the investigators. The investigators briefly informed me about the circumstances of the case and the issues that were of interest to the investigation...

Vladimir Tolts: When this testimony was read out to Beria, he was indignant:
“This is a heinous crime, but this is the first time I’ve heard about it.”

Vladimir Tolts: He heard a lot during the investigation, and allegedly for the first time at the trial. About the falsification of investigative cases and the torture of those under investigation, in which his accomplices and himself took part, about secret murders and extrajudicial executions... Well, and a lot of absurd and unsubstantiated things, too. For example, that he is an English spy. Or that he was trying to undermine the Soviet Agriculture. He denied many things to the end. He tried to blame the other on his accomplices:

I remember that when talking to me about the case of Meretskov, Vannikov and others, Merkulov presented it from the standpoint of his achievements, that he had uncovered an underground government, almost organized by Hitler. I believe that the main culprit in the fabrication of this case is Merkulov, and he should bear full responsibility for this.

Vladimir Tolts: This is from the protocol of Beria’s interrogation dated October 7, 1953. By the way, it has not yet been published. As archivists tell me, they probably still haven’t declassified it. However, Khrushchev spoke about the “secret” of the Meretskov case in his memoirs:

Beria, even during Stalin’s lifetime, talked about the history of Meretskov’s arrest and took credit for his release. “I came to Comrade Stalin and said: “Comrade Stalin, Meretskov sits like an English spy. What kind of spy is he? He is an honest man. The war is on, and he sits. I could command."<…>And so, he continues Beria - Stalin said: “That’s right, call Meretskov and talk to him.” I called him and said: “Meretskov, you wrote nonsense, you are not a spy. You are an honest man, you are a Russian man.” Meretskov looks at me and answers: “I said everything. I wrote with my own hand that I am an English spy. I can’t add anything more.”<…>[Beria:] “Go to the cell, sit still, think, sleep, I’ll call you.”<…>Then, on the second day, I called Meretskov and asked: “Well, what did you think?” He began to cry: “How could I be a spy? I am a Russian person, I love my people.” He was released from prison, dressed in a general's uniform, and he went to command the front.

Vladimir Tolts: But no amount of “merit” could save Beria and his accomplices who surrendered him. They were all doomed...
***
All serious newspapers wrote about their execution in the West. But at that time it attracted much less attention than reports of Beria’s arrest. It's Christmas after all. Not before... And besides, there was also news that fit much more into the usual “Christmas format”. For example, the visit of the British Queen to New Zealand and the enormous train accident that happened in that distant country. And Russian-language newspapers were busy with other things there during Western Christmas. One of the news of those days was the birth of the heiress of the Russian Imperial House, Maria Vladimirovna...
We have no documents confirming the hypothesis that Beria’s execution was specially timed to coincide with Christmas in order to reduce its resonance abroad. Most likely, for the New Year. - Normal Soviet stereotype: finish the job by the holidays and report. And celebrate it.
My now deceased colleague, who served in the British Embassy in Moscow in the first half of the 1950s, told how the Kremlin’s receptions, starting on New Year’s Day 1954, amazed her and her colleagues with their unprecedented freedom, relaxedness and jubilation. The Kremlin celebrated their victory and freedom from fear. Few of the jubilant winners knew then that this was only the end of the first round. And in the next years, many of Beria’s victors, who joyfully raised their glasses on New Year’s Eve, a week after his execution, will fall victim.

January 1955 marked the beginning of “black” mythologization Soviet history and the peak of Nikita KHRUSHCHEV’s struggle for sole power.
His main competitor is Lavrenty BERIA had already been accused of treason, shot and became such a scapegoat that in “Soviet encyclopedic dictionary“Soon they stopped even mentioning his name. Although in the famous Khrushchev report on STALIN’s personality cult it Named 61 times along with the name of the leader. Many researchers were convinced: Nikita Sergeevich not only slandered prominent government figures, but also contributed to their death. But they couldn’t scientifically prove their versions. Recently discovered archival materials have made it possible historian Alexander DUGIN to document Khrushchev's lies for the first time.
- Alexander Nikolaevich, what new did you find in the archive?
- I went to Russian state archive socio-political history to see what documents on the history of the 1950s were transferred to RGASPI from the archive of the President of the Russian Federation. And I discovered a lot of interesting things. Firstly, confirmation of the words of Valentin Fadin - he prepared analytical notes for all the country's leaders from Stalin to Yeltsin. Wrote Khrushchev's foreign policy speeches. And in 2011, he risked publicly declaring that Khrushchev, wanting to seize archival documents about his participation in the repressions, ordered the creation of a group of 200 special employees not only for the seizure original documents, but also for making fakes. Secondly, I discovered these forgeries in the “Beria case” and realized that among the falsifiers there were also honest officers who left “beacons” for their descendants to recognize the forgery.
- What kind of “beacons”?
- There are several of them.

In any case of high treason, which Khrushchev accused Beria of, according to the then Criminal Procedure Code, there must be photographs of the persons involved in the case, their fingerprints, and protocols of confrontations. But in materials “in the Beria case” there is not a single photograph of him, not a single fingerprint, not a single protocol of confrontations with any of his “accomplices”.
In addition, on the interrogation protocols there is not a single signature of Beria himself, nor is there a single signature of the investigator of the Prosecutor General’s Office for the most important cases of Tsaregradsky. There is only the signature of Major Administrative Service Yuryeva. And on many of the interrogation protocols of Beria there are no mandatory office-work “marks”: the initials of the executive typist, the number of printed copies, mailing addressees, etc. But all of the above are just external signs of a fake.
- Were there any internal signs of forgery?
- Certainly. One of the handwritten “originals” of Beria’s letters, allegedly written by him when he was already under arrest, bears the date “VI.28.1953,” literally screaming “don’t believe it!” You can find it at the link: RGASPI, f.17, op.171, d. 463, l.163.
- What exactly do you “don’t believe”?
- The letter is addressed to “To the Central Committee of the CPSU, Comrade Malenkov.” In it, Beria speaks of his devotion to the party’s cause and asks his comrades-in-arms - Malenkov, Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Kaganovich, Bulganin and Mikoyan: “let them forgive, if anything was wrong during these fifteen years of great and intense joint work.”
And he wishes them great success in the struggle for the cause of Lenin - Stalin. In tone, it resembles a note to friends and colleagues, written by a person who is going on vacation or who has decided to stay at home for a couple of days due to a cold. And it begins like this: “I was sure that from that great criticism at the Presidium I would draw all the necessary conclusions for myself and would be useful in the team. But the Central Committee decided otherwise, I think that the Central Committee did the right thing.” After reading this I was almost speechless!
The fact is that neither before nor after Stalin’s death Beria was subjected to any “great criticism” at any meetings of the Presidium. The first meeting of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, at which serious accusations of Beria’s anti-state and anti-party actions were suddenly heard, took place on June 29, 1953. That is, the day AFTER this letter from Beria from his cell.
- You were almost speechless because of the date?
- Yes. If the letter were genuine, it would reject the version of a number of my colleagues, which I shared one hundred percent. That Beria was killed at noon on June 26, 1953 in his mansion on Kachalova Street, now Malaya Nikitskaya.
- Killed by whom?
- A special group sent to Lavrenty Pavlovich on Khrushchev’s order by Beria’s first deputy in the Ministry of State Security, Sergei Kruglov. Lieutenant General Andrei Vedenin, the former commander of the rifle corps, who became the commandant of the Kremlin in September 1953, told how his unit received the order to carry out Operation Mansion to eliminate Beria. And how it was performed. Then Beria's corpse was taken to the Kremlin and presented to members of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee. After such a “confrontation,” the Khrushchevites could, without fear, at the Plenum of the Central Committee on July 2–7, 1953, accuse Beria of all mortal sins. Win five months to clear the archives to destroy traces of your crimes.
And to instill in the people the official version of Khrushchev: they say, the former Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, ex-Deputy Chairman of the State Defense Committee and member of the Stalinist Politburo was shot for treason on December 23, 1953 by court decision. And with Beria alive, Khrushchev could not have hidden the poisoning of Stalin and his complicity in this crime, which I have already described in detail. Let me remind you that, in my opinion, in this double murder - first of Stalin, then of Beria - two people were most interested. The first was the Minister of State Security in 1951 - 1953, Semyon Ignatiev, to whom Stalin had serious questions in connection with a number of scandalous trials initiated by this man. Including the “Doctors’ Case” and the murder of Kirov. On March 2, 1953, the Presidium of the Central Committee was already supposed to consider the issue of removing Ignatiev from his post. Second interested party- Khrushchev, supervisor of Ignatiev, who since 1946 held the most important post of deputy head of the Department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for checking party officials and carried out all repressions against the leadership of the party and the state. If his ward failed, Khrushchev would also have thundered to the fanfare. At 10:30 pm on March 1, Stalin was found unconscious on the floor. After his death, Beria sorted through Stalin’s archive and, studying the history of his illness, could have suspected the named couple.
There was a double in prison.

- What exactly was Stalin poisoned with?
- Commenting on the medical data published in the recently published book by Sigismund Mironin “How Stalin was poisoned. Forensic medical examination", the chief toxicologist of Moscow, Honored Doctor of Russia Yuri Ostapenko said that the leader was probably poisoned with tablets with an increased dose of a drug that reduces blood clotting. Since 1940, dicumarin was the first and main representative of anticoagulants; for vascular problems and thrombosis, it was recommended to use it in small doses constantly, like aspirin today. However, due to its high toxicity, it was withdrawn from use at the end of the last century. As a prophylactic measure, drink it once a day, in the afternoon. The laboratories of the NKVD-NKGB-MGB did not cost anything to produce tablets with an increased dosage and put them in regular packaging. After all, Ignatiev himself oversaw Stalin’s personal security.
- But someone had to see Beria alive in his cell to confirm the version that he spent five months in prison, awaiting execution?
- He had several doubles. And, note, the funds of Molotov, Zhdanov and a number of other recipients of Beria’s “letters” are publicly available, but there are still no funds of Khrushchev and Beria. And in the official collection “The Politburo and the Beria Case” there is not a single fact confirmed by documents that could be qualified as treason. But I managed to find important document from personal archive Stalin. He confirms that Khrushchev, accusing Beria of voluntary service in the Musavatist counterintelligence that fought the labor movement in Azerbaijan, knew very well that he was blatantly lying. This document, dated November 20, 1920, reports that Beria was infiltrated into the counterintelligence censorship department on instructions from the Azerbaijani Communist Party. It was last requested from Stalin’s archive in July 1953, when the “Beria case” was fabricated. But for obvious reasons, he was not involved in it.
The body was poured with concrete.

- Are you convinced that the “letters from the cell” are fake?
- Yes sir. I took them to an independent handwriting examination. The chief specialist of RGASPI, Mikhail Strakhov, helped me find Beria’s original handwriting. To keep everything clean and honest, I chose lines from which it is impossible to understand who is writing to whom, and I paid for the examination out of my own pocket so that no one could influence its result. According to experts, the samples I presented were written different people. This conclusion confirms that the reprisal against Beria occurred due to the fact that, having taken the post of head of the combined Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security, he was looking for an answer to the question of the real reasons for Stalin’s death. If he remained alive, there would be no revelations about the personality cult of Joseph Vissarionovich at the height of “ cold war» the conversation would not have come into play. And in 1961, when Norwegian biochemists analyzed Napoleon’s hair on behalf of the French government and found out that he was poisoned with arsenic, no one would urgently convene an extraordinary congress of the CPSU. And he did not raise the unexpected question of removing Stalin’s body from the Mausoleum and concreting it. Khrushchev covered his tracks!
- Why do you care so deeply about this whole story?
- I decided to do this because I can’t calmly watch how the heroes of “Fricopedia” like Rezun-Suvorov and Radzinsky try to erase from people’s memory all the positive moments of Soviet history, painting it only in dirty tones. And a person, especially a young person, who despises the past of his country, cannot respect his present and build his future in a state where his father, grandfather, great-grandfather are portrayed as cattle.

1. Introduction

1.1. Currently, there are two versions regarding the execution of Polish prisoners of war: the Soviet version and the Goebbels version. The Soviet version claims that the Poles were shot by the Germans in the fall of 1941. The version is based on data from the Burdenko Commission, on numerous consistent facts and reliable documents. In 1943, Goebbels accused the Soviet authorities of shooting Poles in the spring of 1940. The version rests, apart from contradictory “facts” and dubious “evidence,” mainly on two documents that mysteriously appeared in 1992: “Beria’s Note to Stalin” and “Politburo Resolution of March 5, 1940.”

Among the Russian and Ukrainian researchers who confirmed the Soviet version with their works, it is necessary to indicate Yuri Ignatievich Mukhin, Dmitry Evgenievich Dobrov, Vladislav Nikolaevich Shved, Sergei Emilievich Strygin, Arsen Benikovich Martirosyan, Yuri Maksimovich Slobodkin, Volodimir Brovko, Parmen Posokhov (pseudonym). A major contribution to the substantiation of the Soviet version was made by Viktor Ivanovich Ilyukhin, who received from an unknown (yet) person unique information about how the “Note” and “Resolution” were forged and published this important information.

On November 26, 2010, the State Duma adopted a statement “On the Katyn tragedy and its victims.” Deputies of the State Duma admitted that “the mass extermination of Polish citizens on the territory of the USSR during the 2nd World War was an act of arbitrariness of a totalitarian state, which also subjected hundreds of thousands to repression Soviet people for political and religious beliefs, on social and other grounds.”

After statements by the Duma and Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev, the version about the responsibility of the NKVD and the top Soviet leadership for the execution Polish officers in the spring of 1940 it became official.

It is necessary to understand that confirmation or refutation of a hypothesis or theory is the business of researchers and only researchers, but not of politicians.

1.2. System analysis is a method of studying an object as a system (an integral set of interconnected elements). In a targeted study, the first step is to split (divide) the system into subsystems (system analysis stage). Each of the subsystems is then considered as a system. Analysis is the operation of dividing a thing, phenomenon, property, relationship between objects (objects) or a historical document into its component parts, performed in the process of cognition and practical activity.

In the systematic analysis of historical documents, the following main operations can be distinguished:

1. Analysis of historical information.

2. Linguistic analysis.

3. Logical analysis.

3. Legal analysis.

4. Psychological analysis.

5. Geographical analysis.

6. Political analysis.

7. Analysis of statistical data.

8. Analysis from the point of view of office work.

The purpose of systematic analysis of historical documents is to explore these documents as fully as possible.

The main goal of the system analysis in this study is to identify factual, linguistic, logical and legal errors in Beria’s Note to Stalin.

2 . Object of analysis

Memorandum by the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR L.P. Beria I.V. Stalin with a proposal to instruct the NKVD of the USSR to consider in a special manner the cases of Polish citizens held in prison camps of the NKVD of the USSR and prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus. March 1940

Script. RGASPI. F.17. Op.166. D.621. L.130-133.

3. Linguistic analysis

3.1. Concept Analysis"former Polish army officer". An officer is a person of command and control in armed forces ah, and also in the police and police. Officers have military ranks assigned to them. . Thus, the content of the concept “officer” includes two characteristics: 1) the officer is in the position of commander or superior; 2) the officer has a military rank. Which of these features is an essential feature? To find out, consider the concepts of “reserve officer” and “retired officer.” The reserve of the armed forces are those registered for military service who have served their active duty. military service or exempted from it for various reasons, but fit for service in wartime. . Consequently, a reserve officer is a person who has an officer rank, who is not on active military service, but is fit for service in wartime. Resignation is one of the types of dismissal of officers. The use of the concepts “reserve officer” and “retired officer” indicates that the essential feature of the concept “officer” is military rank, and not position.

The expression “there are no former officers” is a catchphrase. An officer becomes a “former” only if he is deprived of his military (officer) rank in accordance with the procedure established by law.

In general, the concept of “former Polish Army officer” is an imprecise term. Either this person is a former officer because he was deprived of his officer rank, or because by the end of September 1939 the Polish army was defeated, or both. Prisoners of war - Polish officers were not deprived of them in 1939 - 1940 military ranks, therefore the exact term (for that time): “officer of the former Polish army.”

In NKVD documents regarding Polish prisoners of war, the word “former” was used, which is associated with the words “officers”, “gendarmes”, “landowners” and other words denoting the composition of prisoners of war, for example: “former Polish officers”, “officers of the former Polish army”, “former officers”, “former gendarmes” and so on.

Apparently, NKVD chiefs realized that the term "former Polish officers" was imprecise, but sometimes used it.

In the Note, the word “former” appears 12 times. Let's denote this number by the letter n: n = 12. The word “officers” appears 8 times in the “Note”; other words: policemen - 6, gendarmes - 5, officials - 5, landowners - 5, intelligence officers - 4, factory owners - 2, jailers - 2, spies - 2, saboteurs - 1, workers - 1, general - 1, colonels - 1 , lieutenant colonels - 1, majors - 1, captains - 1, lieutenant - 1, second lieutenant - 1, cornet - 1 time. Collectively, these words appear 48 times. Let us denote the total number of mentions of these words in the text by the letter m; m = 48.

The word “prisoner of war”, taking into account the context, is a general synonym for the phrases: “former officer”, “former policeman” and so on. In this understanding, the word “prisoners of war” appears twice. Let's denote total number mentions of this word with the letter f;. f = 2. In this case, the word “prisoners of war” is not taken into account if it is included in the phrase “prisoner of war camps”.

The relative “frequency” with which certain words occur in a text are features of the style of the author of the text. In the “Note” the word “former” is often used: the n/m ratio is 12/48 (0.25) and rarely the word “prisoners of war”: the n/f ratio is 12/2, that is, equal to 6.

Let us compare the text of the “Note” with the texts of documents, the authors (or co-authors) of which, without a doubt, are Beria and other officers. These documents were written on the same topic (about prisoners of war), three documents were sent to the same person - Stalin.

Document: Message from Beria to Stalin about Polish and Czech prisoners of war, November 2, 1939. In this document, the word “former” appears only three times: in the phrases “officers of the former Polish army”, “former Polish officers” and “former Polish military”: n = 3. Other words: the word “generals” appears 6 times, colonels - 4, lieutenant colonels - 4, majors - 2, captains - 4, lieutenants - 2, second lieutenants - 2 times, Polish military - 1 time. The total number of mentions in the text of these words (including the word “officers”) is 27 (m = 27). The word "prisoners of war" appears 10 times. Results: n/m ratio = 3/27 = 0.11 (approx); ratio n/f = 3/10 = 0.3.

Document: Beria's message to Stalin about the acceptance of Polish military internees from Lithuania. In this document, the word “former” is not mentioned at all (n = 0), the word “officers” is mentioned 2 times, “officials” - 2 times, “policemen” - 2 times. In total, these words occur 6 times (m = 6). Result: ratio n:m = 0:6.

Document: Note from L.P. Beria and L.Z. Mekhlisa I.V. Stalin on the issue of prisoners of war. In this document, the word “former” is not mentioned at all (n = 0), the word “officers” appears 4 times, the word “general” appears 2 times, lieutenant colonels - 2, policemen - 2, gendarmes - 2, jailers - 2, officials - 2, intelligence officers - 2, counterintelligence officers - 2 times. Collectively, these words (including the word “officer”) occur 20 times (m = 20). The word “prisoners of war” in the combination “prisoners of war officers” occurs 3 times and once - independently, but in a semantic connection with the word “officers”. Results: ratio n/m = 0/20 = 0; ratio n/f = 0/4 = 0.

Document: Order No. 001177 L.P. Beria.

This order does not contain the word “former” (n = 0). The word “officers” appears 2 times; other words: general - 2 times, colonels - 1, lieutenant colonels - 1, officials - 3, intelligence officers - 2, counterintelligence agents - 2, police officers - 2, gendarmes - 2, jailers - 2 times. Collectively, these words appear 19 times. Let us denote the total number of mentions in the text of these words by the letter m, m = 19. The word “prisoners of war”, which is in semantic connection with the word “officers”, occurs 5 times: f = 5. If the word “prisoners of war” applied only to soldiers, then it was not taken into account. Results: ratio n/m = 0/19 = 0; ratio n/f = 0/5 = 0.

Document: Order of the UPV NKVD of the USSR dated February 22, 1940 on the implementation of the directive of L.P. Beria.

In this document, the word “former” is not mentioned at all (n = 0), the word “officers” appears 3 times, jailers - 3, officials - 1, intelligence officers - 3, employees - 1, censors - 1, provocateurs - 3, besiegers - 3, landowners - 3, court officials - 3 times, traders and large owners - 3 times. Collectively, these words (including the word “officers”) occur 27 times (m = 27). The word “prisoners of war” in semantic connection with the word “officers” occurs 2 times: f = 2. Results: ratio n: m = 0: 27 = 0; ratio n/f = 0/2 = 0.

In this document, the word “former” is mentioned 2 times (n = 2), the word “officers” appears 1 time, policemen - 1, gendarmes - 1, public police agents - 1, secret police agents - 1, landowners - 1, factory owners - 1, officials - 1 time. In total, these words occur 9 times (m = 9). The word “prisoners of war” in semantic connection with the word “officers” occurs 5 times: f = 5. Results: ratio n: m = 2: 9 = 0.22 (approximately); ratio n/f = 2/5 = 0.4. The data obtained (with the addition of ) are summarized in the table.

*This document refers to Polish officers interned in Lithuania. Therefore, it made no sense to count how many times the word “prisoners of war” appeared.

The table shows that in the “Note” the n/m ratio is 0.25. In selected NKVD documents, including Beria's messages to Stalin, the n/m ratio ranges from 0 to 0.22. The n/f ratio in the Note is 6, while in the selected NKVD documents this ratio ranges from 0 to 0.4.

The data obtained show that the author of the “Note” preferred the word “former,” while NKVD officers, including Beria, more often used the term “prisoners of war.” There is a popular expression among career officers and retired officers: “There are no former officers.”

The author of the “Note” used the phrases “former officers” (twice), “former Polish officers” (twice), “former officers of the Polish army” (once), once the phrase “former officers of the former Polish army, but never used the term: “officers of the former Polish army.” Beria and his subordinates, as a rule, used the term “officers of the former Polish army” in relation to Polish officers and sub-officers (not only prisoners of war), see, for example.

3.2. Analysis of the phrase: "Former officers of the former Polish army."

This phrase contains a linguistic error - pleonasm. Pleonasm - (from the Greek pleonasmos - excess), verbosity, the use of words that are unnecessary for semantic completeness. The word “former” before the word “officers” is an extra word. Correct: “officers of the former Polish army.”

Pleonasm is a mistake in business and scientific texts. In literary and journalistic texts, pleonasm can be used to enhance the emotional impact. Example: "People! Maria Godunova and her son Theodore poisoned themselves. We saw their dead bodies"(A.S. Pushkin, "Boris Godunov").

3.3. Judgment Analysis:

Sworn - irreconcilable, hateful (about an enemy). . Therefore, sworn and hated are synonyms. Let us replace the word “sworn” with the word “hated” and we get: “They are all hated enemies Soviet power, filled with hatred of the Soviet system." This judgment contains a linguistic error - tautology (repetition of the same or similar words in meaning). Features of the language of official documents are the brevity of the presentation of the material; accuracy and certainty of wording, unambiguity and uniformity of terms.

Expressive expressions (such as “sworn enemies of the Soviet regime, filled with hatred of the Soviet system”) can be used in journalistic works, at meetings and rallies, but not in official memos. Expression is the basis of journalistic style. But in orders, memos, and instructions, expressive expressions are completely inappropriate. You cannot mix journalistic style with official business style. Violation of a style norm gives rise to a normative-style, or simply style error. In this case, we are talking about a type of normative-style error - an inter-style error. This term refers to errors based on the violation of inter-style boundaries, on the penetration of elements of one functional style into the system of another style. .

3.4. Analysis of the phrase: « Cases of 14,700 former Polish officers, officials, landowners, policemen, intelligence officers, gendarmes, siege guards and jailers in prisoner-of-war camps.”

The phrase contains three extra words: “about”, “man”, “former”. First, it should be noted that lawyers do not use the preposition “about” after the word “case”. Secondly, it is clear that the officers and others mentioned in the text are people and therefore “man” is a superfluous word. Thirdly, it is obvious: if officers are kept in a prisoner of war camp, then these are “former” officers, but only in the sense that they no longer hold the corresponding positions. As already indicated, an officer becomes a “former” only if he is deprived of his officer rank in the prescribed manner. Polish officers were not stripped of their military ranks and therefore were not, strictly speaking, "former". It is also obvious that if officials and others are in the camps, then they are also former. It is better to put the words “in prisoner of war camps” at the end of the phrase, since it is clear from the context that the logical emphasis falls on “the affairs of 14,700 officers (and others).” That's right: “the cases of 14,700 Polish officers, officials, landowners, policemen, intelligence officers, gendarmes, siege officers and jailers located in prisoner-of-war camps.”

We will proceed from the fact that one extra word in an expression is one linguistic error (pleonasm). Consequently, the phrase in question contains three errors.

3.5. Analysis of the phrase: “Cases about 11,000 members of various counter-revolutionary espionage and sabotage organizations, former landowners, factory owners, former Polish officers, officials and defectors, arrested and in prison in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus.”

The phrase contains extra words: “about”, “arrested”, “and”, “in”, “quantity”, “person”, “former”.

The use of the phrases “cases about those in custody” and “cases about those arrested” indicates that the “Note” was not written by a lawyer. Lawyers do not use the prepositions "about" or "about" after the word "case." For example, “Petrov’s case”, not “Petrov’s case”; “the Ivanov case, not the “Ivanov case.”

The word “arrested” is superfluous here, since the scope of the concept “those in prison” is included in the scope of the concept “arrested”. Not all those arrested may be in prison, but everyone who is (held) in prison is in custody and, therefore, is under arrest. Correct: “The cases of 11,000 members of various counter-revolutionary espionage and sabotage organizations, former landowners, factory owners, Polish officers, officials and defectors, who are in prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus.”

Beria, unlike the author of the Note, knew legal language and did not make mistakes like: “the case about Petrov” or “the case about Ivanov.” In the order on shortcomings in the investigative work of the NKVD authorities dated November 9, 1939, Beria used the following expressions: “the Zubik-Zubkovsky case”, “investigative case No. 203308 of the NKVD of the Kalinin region on charges of S. M. Stroilov”, “investigative case No. 19727 of the NKVD of the Armenian SSR on the charges of Bursiyan, Tanoyan and others”, “a resolution to terminate the Pavlov case”, “in the cases of Golubev Ya.F. and Vechtomov A.M.,” “investigative case of the special department of KOVO No. 132762 on the charge of B.P. Marushevsky,” “investigation case on the charge of Fischer,” “case on the charge of M. E. Leurd.”
It is impossible that later, in 1940, Beria suddenly forgot legal terminology and began to use the expressions: "affairs about arrested" or "affairs O There are 14,700 former Polish officers in prisoner-of-war camps.”

“Extract from the minutes No. 13 of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on March 5, 1940” contains extra words (in bold): "affairs O in prisoner of war camps 14,700 Human former Polish officers..." And "affairs about arrested And in prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus in the amount of 11,000 Human members of various counter-revolutionary espionage and sabotage organizations...».

If you believe that the “Note” was written by Beria, then you will have to believe that not only Beria, but also members of the Politburo showed legal and linguistic illiteracy. Among the members of the Politburo there were people who read legal documents many times, since at that time there was a Politburo commission on judicial affairs, which regularly reviewed decisions of the Supreme Court of the USSR.

3.6. Fragment analysis:"II. The consideration of cases should be carried out without summoning those arrested and without filing charges, a resolution to complete the investigation and an indictment in the following order:

a) for persons in prisoner of war camps - according to certificates submitted by the Directorate for Prisoners of War Affairs of the NKVD of the USSR,

b) for persons arrested - according to certificates from the cases submitted by the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR and the NKVD of the BSSR."

3.7. Analysis of the “Note” as a whole. Briefly, the essence of the “Note” can be expressed in the following judgment: “Based on the fact that all prisoners of war are inveterate enemies of Soviet power, the NKVD of the USSR considers it necessary to apply capital punishment to them.”

Let's look at the documents. From Beria’s special message to Stalin about the eviction of settlers from western Ukraine and Belarus:

"02.12.1939

№ 5332/b

In December 1920, the former Polish government issued a decree on the planting of so-called osadniks in the areas bordering the USSR.

The settlers were selected exclusively from former Polish military personnel, were allocated land of up to 25 hectares, received agricultural equipment and settled along the border of Soviet Belarus and Ukraine. Surrounded by attention and care, placed in good material conditions, the siege soldiers were the support of the former Polish government and Polish intelligence.

The NKVD authorities registered 3,998 families of sedatives in Western Belarus and 9,436 in Western Ukraine, for a total of 13,434 families. Of this number, NKVD authorities arrested 350 people.

In view of the fact that the settlers represent fertile ground for all kinds of anti-Soviet actions and in the overwhelming majority, due to their property status, are undoubtedly enemies of Soviet power, we consider it necessary to evict them together with their families from the areas they occupy.”

Several conclusions can be drawn from this document. Firstly, Beria did not use expressive expressions like "inveterate, incorrigible enemies", he wrote briefly and precisely: “by virtue of their property status they are undoubtedly enemies of Soviet power". Secondly, Beria did not say « All siegemen", He said « overwhelmingly» . Thirdly, despite the fact that the settlers “are the mainstay of Polish intelligence”, “represent fertile ground for all kinds of anti-Soviet actions” and are "certainly enemies of Soviet power", Beria proposed to evict them. Evict, not shoot!

3.8. conclusions

1. The “note” contains many errors, that is, its author had low linguistic culture.

4. Logical analysis

4.1. Judgment Analysis: “All of them are sworn enemies of the Soviet regime, filled with hatred of the Soviet system.”

Let us prove that not all officers were enemies of the Soviet regime.

Argument 1. As a first argument, we present excerpts from the report of the UPV NKVD of the USSR on the state of prisoner of war camps and the maintenance of prisoners of war:

« The political and moral state of officers and police is depressed. “A stratification has begun among the officers into personnel and reserve officers, who among themselves have different views and attitudes towards the war and the Soviet Union.”

“Colonel Malinovsky said in a conversation: “The mood of the officers is depressed. We spent 20 years building Poland and lost it in 20 days. I don’t want to go to Germany and will ask for the hospitality of the Soviet Union until the end of the war between Germany and France.”

“Reserve officers - engineers, doctors, agronomists, teachers, accountants - scold the government leadership of the former Polish state, England and France, who dragged them into the war and did not provide assistance. These officers express a desire to go to work as soon as possible, and many of them want to stay in the USSR.”

Argument 2. On February 20, 1940, Soprunenko and Nekhoroshev turned to Beria with the initiative to release some of the prisoners of war to their homes: “From among the reserve officers, residents of the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR and BSSR - agronomists, doctors, engineers and technicians, teachers, who do not have incriminating materials, will be sent home. According to preliminary data, 400-500 people from this category may be released.”

Thus the proposition: “All of them are sworn enemies of the Soviet regime, filled with hatred of the Soviet system” is false. A logical mistake was made here “from the divisive meaning to the collective meaning.” The essence of this error (, p. 425) is that something is asserted about the whole that is true only regarding the parts of this whole.

4.2. Analysis of judgments: A. “All of them are sworn enemies of the Soviet regime, filled with hatred of the Soviet system.” B. Prisoners of war officers and police, while in camps, conduct anti-Soviet agitation.

Let us prove that from the judgments A And B follows a meaningless judgment: “Sworn enemies are conducting anti-Soviet agitation among sworn enemies.” Proof. Let's consider the concept of “campaign”. “Agitation (from the Latin agitatio - setting in motion), one of the means of political influence on the masses, a weapon of struggle between classes and their parties; agitation is expressed in the dissemination of an idea or slogan that encourages the masses to take active action.” . The concept of “agitation” includes the concept of “mass” as the object of agitation. Without the “masses” there is and cannot be agitation. If all prisoners of war were sworn enemies of the Soviet regime, then who could they agitate? After all, communication between prisoners of war and camp staff was strictly regulated and limited, and, in addition, communication between prisoners of war and camp staff was hampered by the language barrier.

Therefore, from the two judgments A And B follows the judgment: “Sworn enemies are conducting anti-Soviet agitation among sworn enemies.” This is a meaningless proposition.

Judgment: “All of them are sworn enemies of the Soviet regime, filled with hatred of the Soviet system” is false and the proposition “Prisoners of war officers and police, while in camps, are conducting anti-Soviet agitation”- true. The fact is that the composition of prisoners of war was heterogeneous and among the prisoners of war there were both opponents of the Soviet regime (the majority), who conducted anti-Soviet agitation, and supporters. Agitation for Soviet power was carried out among prisoners of war by specially trained political workers.

4.3. Judgment Analysis: “Prisoners of war officers and police, while in the camps, are trying to continue counter-revolutionary work.”

From this judgment follows a false proposition: “Polish officers carried out counter-revolutionary work in the Polish army.”

Proof. The composition of the judgment: “Prisoners of war officers and police, while in the camps, are trying to continue counter-revolutionary work” includes the following judgment: “Prisoners of war officers, while in camps, are trying to continue counter-revolutionary work”. From the phrase "trying to continue" it follows that Polish officers carried out counter-revolutionary work before being placed in the camps, and in the camps they "continue" Where and when could Polish officers carry out this work? Before the war, officers served in the Polish Army. When inserted Soviet troops on the territory of Belarus and Ukraine, occupied by Poland in 1920, Polish officers participated (and not all of them) in short-term hostilities (for one or two weeks), then surrendered, spent several days in reception centers for prisoners of war, and then ended up in a prisoner of war camp. Consequently, before being captured, officers could conduct "counter-revolutionary work" only in the Polish army. In the USSR, the concept of “counter-revolutionary work” meant the struggle against the 1917 revolution for the restoration of pre-revolutionary orders. Thus, a false proposition follows from the original judgment: “Polish officers carried out counter-revolutionary work in the Polish army.”

4.4. Judgment Analysis:“Each of them is just waiting for liberation in order to be able to actively join the fight against Soviet power.”

The expression "each of them" is equivalent in meaning to "all of them." This proposition is false. To refute a general judgment, it is enough to give one example that contradicts this judgment. Let us give two examples of the fact that not all officers waited for liberation in order to fight the Soviet regime.

Example 1. Some officers waited until release to meet with relatives. Some of them were so worried about the separation that they committed suicide. For example, on December 7, the Head of the USSR NKVD Directorate for Prisoners of War Affairs, Major Soprunenko and the Commissioner of the USSR NKVD Directorate for Prisoners of War Affairs and Regimental Commissar Nekhoroshev sent Beria a message that “On December 2, 1939, in the Kozelsky camp, prisoner of war Basiliy Antonovich Zakharsky committed suicide (hanged himself). Zakharsky B. A., born in 1898, until 1919 a mechanic worker, from 1919 until recently he served in the Polish army, military rank - cornet. During his entire stay in the camps, Zakharsky B.A. I was in a depressed state, thought a lot and really missed my family who remained in Grodno.”

Example 2. Some officers waited until liberation to fight for the liberation of Poland. From the report of Soprunenko and Nekhoroshev: “The officers are mostly patriotic, saying: “When we return home, we will fight Hitler. Poland has not yet perished.”

Therefore, the proposition: “Each of them is just waiting for liberation in order to be able to actively join the fight against Soviet power.” is false. Here the author of the “Note” made a logical mistake “from the divisive meaning to the collective meaning.” The essence of this error (, p. 425) is that something is asserted about the whole that is true only regarding the parts of this whole.

4.5. Judgment Analysis:“Among the detained defectors and state border violators, a significant number of persons who are members of counter-revolutionary espionage and rebel organizations have also been identified.”

Before analyzing this text, it is necessary to read an excerpt from order No. 21/3847 of March 2, 1940 of the Main Directorate of Convoy Troops of the NKVD of the USSR: "People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Union SSR comrade. Beria ordered the People's Commissars of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR and BSSR - those convicted by the Special Meeting of the NKVD, defectors from the former territory of Poland - to be sent to serve their sentences in the Sevvostlag of the NKVD (Vladivostok). The organization of the dispatch of convicts is entrusted to the prison departments and departments of correctional labor colonies of the NKVD. The escort of these prisoners is entrusted to escort troops in echelons of 1000-1500 people under reinforced escort. There will be 6-8 echelons in total".

The order states clearly: “Beria ordered [...] defectors from the former territory of Poland to be sent for departure term of punishment to Sevvostlag NKVD". Beria could not give the order to transport defectors at almost the same time "to serve a sentence" and go to Stalin with a “request” to shoot them. The author of the “Note” either did not know about order No. 21/3847 or ignored it.

4.6. Analysis of judgments:“In the prisoner of war camps there are a total of (not counting soldiers and non-commissioned officers) 14,736 former officers, officials, landowners, policemen, gendarmes, jailers, siege guards and intelligence officers, over 97% of whom are Poles by nationality.”

“In the prisons of the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus, there are a total of 18,632 arrested (of which 10,685 are Poles)”

“Based on the fact that they are all inveterate, incorrigible enemies of Soviet power, the NKVD of the USSR considers it necessary:

I. Suggest to the NKVD of the USSR:

1) files on 14,700 former Polish officers, officials, landowners, policemen, intelligence officers, gendarmes, siege guards and jailers in prisoner-of-war camps,

2) as well as cases of 11,000 members of various counter-revolutionary espionage and sabotage organizations, former landowners, factory owners, former Polish officers, officials and defectors arrested and in prison in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus -

- be considered in a special manner, with the application of capital punishment to them - execution."

Comment by Yu.I. Mukhina: “An official has respect for numbers in his blood, he reports with them, this is the basis of his punishment and gratitude. He will never round up a figure without very strong reasons. Journalist, writer, historian - these are welcome, these can easily round up the 4.5 thousand arrested Red Army officers “to about 50 thousand killed.” An official will not do that, especially in such a case. Look: Beria “writes” that he has 14,736 officers and others in prisoner-of-war camps, but proposes to shoot only 14,700; He has 18,632 enemies in prisons, and he proposes to shoot only 11,000. To bring such a letter to Stalin is to immediately run into the question: “Lavrenty! What are you going to do with the remaining 36 officers and 7632 enemies? Salt? Are you going to support them at your own expense?” And how will Beria explain to the administrations of camps and prisons who exactly should be selected to consider cases at the “troika”?”

Comment by D.M. Dobrova: “The question arises, how were the numbers 14,700 and 11,000 obtained, if previously there were 14,736 and 18,632 (of which 10,685 were Poles)? For what reason was rounding or perhaps another action performed? How do the given numbers follow from each other? But the connection is indicated in the text: “Based on the fact that all of them,” i.e. 14,736 people and 18,632 (of which 10,685 are Poles), “are inveterate, incorrigible enemies of Soviet power, the NKVD of the USSR considers it necessary” to consider the cases of 14,700 and 11,000 people in a special manner. Excuse me, if all of them were inveterate enemies of the Soviet regime, then wouldn’t it be logical to propose the cases of all of them, and not just those elected by an unknown rule, for consideration?”

Maybe there is still a “rule” by which you can choose 14,700 from 14,736 and 11,000 from 18,632? For this assumption, consider the judgments of the author of the note (denoted by the letter N) regarding prisoners of war:

1. “Every inveterate, incorrigible enemy of Soviet power must be shot.”

2. “There are 14,736 inveterate, incorrigible enemies of Soviet power in the camps”.

3. “14,700 enemies must be shot.”

“14,736 enemies need to be shot.”

It is obvious that judgment 3 contradicts judgments 1 and 2. A mistake has been made here: a logical contradiction: “It is necessary to shoot 14,736 enemies”; “It is necessary to shoot not 14,736 enemies, but 14,700 enemies.” The author of the Note contradicts himself. Suppose he rounded the number 14736 and got 14700, but at the same time “amnestied” 36 enemies.

But maybe 14,700 are Poles, and 36 are everyone else? Let's calculate the number of Poles among prisoners of war. The “note” states that the share of Poles among prisoners of war is 97%, therefore, among 14,736 prisoners of war there were 14,736 x 0.97 = 14,293.92, that is, 14,294 Poles. It turns out that N proposed to shoot 14,700 enemies, and of these only 14,294 were Poles. But to bring the number 14294 to 14700, it is necessary to shoot 406 non-Poles out of 442 (14,736 - 14294 = 442) non-Poles; or, in other words, remove 36 people from the “hit list”. But in this case, the author of the “Note” had to indicate on what grounds 36 non-Poles out of 442 non-Poles should be excluded from the “hit list”.

From this passage follows the following judgment: “There are 18,632 arrested in the prisons of the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus,” all of them are inveterate, incorrigible enemies of the Soviet government, of which 11,000 are subject to capital punishment - execution.” Let us analyze the judgments of the author of the “Note”:

1. " Every inveterate, incorrigible enemy of Soviet power must be shot.”

2. “There are 18,632 inveterate, incorrigible enemies of Soviet power in prison.”

3. “It is necessary to shoot 11,000 enemies.”

But from propositions 1 and 2 proposition 4 follows:

“18,632 enemies need to be shot.”

It is obvious that judgment 3 contradicts judgments 1 and 2. A mistake was made here: “logical contradiction”: “It is necessary to shoot 18,632 enemies”; “It is necessary to shoot not 18,632 enemies, but 11,000 enemies.”

Let's try to find out where 11,000 “enemies” came from. Suppose N put forward one more condition: in order to be “worthy” of capital punishment (CM), one must not only be an inveterate and incorrigible enemy, but also be a Pole. N indicates that among 18,632 enemies, only 10,685 are Poles. But then N had to indicate that it was necessary to shoot 10,685 Poles. Suppose N simply rounded 10685 to 11,000. But in this mathematical operation he added 315 more non-Poles to be shot, but did not specify the “rule” by which to choose 315 non-Poles from 7947 non-Poles.

Thus, the principle of selection for “execution” based on nationality as an “unknown rule” also does not work.

The expressions: “It is necessary to shoot 14,700 enemies (out of 14,736 enemies)” and “It is necessary to shoot 11,000 enemies (out of 18,632)” allow for many interpretations, that is, they contain a logical error - "polypoly". This term was introduced in the article. Polyboly is a logical error, which consists in the fact that a grammatical expression has many interpretations (meanings), and it is not clear from the context which interpretation (which meaning) is implied in the grammatical expression.

There is a long-known error in logic "amphiboly". Amphiboly (from the Greek word amphibolia) is a logical error, which consists in the fact that a grammatical expression (a set of several words) allows for its double interpretation. (, p. 34).

Let's consider the false information contained in the “Note” in explicit and implicit form: 1. Soviet legislation in 1940 allowed execution without a corresponding decision of a court or military tribunal. 2. Soviet leaders could, at their whim, give the order to shoot anyone and in any number without initiating a criminal case or investigation, for example, according to certificates provided by the Office of Prisoners of War Affairs. 3. Soviet leaders, including Stalin, hated the Poles.

If we proceed from the assumption that the purpose of the “Note” is to introduce this false information, then it becomes clear that the author of the “Note” intentionally made logical errors: “There are 14,736 enemies in the camps, of which 14,294 are Poles, but 14,700 enemies need to be shot”; “There are 18,632 enemies in prisons, of which 10,685 are Poles, but 11,000 enemies need to be shot. In other words, the author of the “Note” attributes, to put it in everyday language, nonsense to Beria and the members of the Politburo. But who is capable of “carrying” nonsense? - Crazy, maniacs. Thus, the author of the “Note” creates a myth that Beria, Stalin, as well as other members of the Politburo could not think logically, thought chaotically, chaotically, that is, they were crazy, and bloodthirsty. And since they were bloodthirsty maniacs, it is not surprising that they gave the order to shoot the Poles, although the Poles were potential allies in the war with Germany, if one happened (we are talking about the spring of 1940). There is nothing to be surprised at the irrational hatred of the Poles, and there is nothing to be surprised at the fact that several hundred non-Poles were shot along with the Poles.

4.7. Judgment Analysis:“To propose to the NKVD of the USSR: the cases of members of various counter-revolutionary espionage and sabotage organizations, former landowners, factory owners, former Polish officers, officials and defectors in prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus - to be considered in a special manner, with application to him the ultimate punishment - execution."

It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that the author of the note proposed to shoot only those "sworn enemies" who were in “prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus”. But by the beginning of March 1940, some of the prisoners of war were in the Smolensk prison, which Beria could not have known about.

Document: Encrypted telegram from the Deputy Chief of the USSR NKVD Smolensk region F.K. Ilyina V.N. Merkulov about the delivery of prisoners of war from the Kozelsk camp to the Smolensk prison.

“03/03/1940. Smolensk No. 9447. Sov. secret. NKVD of the USSR. Input encryption No. 9447. Received on March 3, 1940 from Smolensk.

Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Comrade. Merkulov

[In] accordance [with] your instructions [in the] Kozelsk camp of the NKVD, prisoners of war were selected and taken [to] Smolensk prison. I ask for instructions [on] the procedure for registering them and conducting the investigation. Ilyin."

4.8. conclusions

1. The note contains many logical errors.

2. The “note” contains false information.

5. Psychological analysis

5.1. The myth that Beria was an executioner thirsting for the blood of the innocent has been implanted in the minds of many people. There are many documents refuting this myth. I'll give you one of them.

Document: Special message by L.P. Beria I.V. Stalin on limiting the rights of a special meeting in connection with the end of the war.

Top secret

Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks - Comrade I.V. STALIN

By a resolution of the State Defense Committee of November 17, 1941, in connection with the tense situation in the country, the Special Meeting under the NKVD of the USSR was given the right to impose penalties up to execution.

In connection with the end of the war, the NKVD of the USSR considers it expedient to cancel this resolution of the State Defense Committee, leaving behind the Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR, in accordance with the decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of 1937, the right to apply penalties of up to 8 years of imprisonment with confiscation where necessary, property.

Presenting the draft resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, I ask for your decision.”

People's Commissar of Internal Affairs USSR L. BERIA.

5.2. Briefly, the idea of ​​the author of the “Note” can be stated as follows: “In the prisoner of war camps of the NKVD of the USSR and in the prisons of the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus, a large number of sworn enemies of the Soviet regime are currently being held and therefore they must be urgently shot.”

Document. This document, dated January 5, 1940, states that the NKVD has developed an addition to questionnaire for each prisoner of war, in which the following information had to be indicated: 1) about the last position of the prisoner of war in the former Polish army; 2) about foreign languages ​​that the prisoner of war speaks (except native language); 3) about the place and time of the prisoner of war’s stay in the USSR and his occupation during his stay in the Soviet Union; 4) about all relatives and acquaintances of a prisoner of war living in the USSR; 5) about the stay of a prisoner of war abroad (outside former Poland) with the obligatory indication of where exactly, from what time and to what time and what he was doing there.

So, if you believe the supporters of Goebbels’ version, you will also have to believe that the heads of the NKVD could not shoot 14,700 prisoners of war without first finding out what position each prisoner of war held in the former Polish army, what foreign languages ​​he spoke, whether he had been abroad (outside the former Poland), including in the USSR and where exactly, what he did - and so on.

Document. From the Political Report of the head of the Starobelsky camp A. Berezhkov and the commissar of the camp Kirshin on the organization of political and educational work among prisoners of war.

“02/08/1940. Starobelsk. Sov. secret. No. 11-3. To the Commissioner of the USSR NKVD Directorate for Prisoners of War Affairs, Comrade Nekhoroshev. .

I inform you that political mass work among prisoners of war was built on the basis of your instructions. All political mass work was carried out according to the plan drawn up for the month of January. The main forms of work were showing films, periodic information from newspapers and magazines, answering questions from prisoners of war, monitoring the implementation of internal regulations in the camp and orders from the camp leadership. Providing prisoners of war with books, newspapers and radio services. Carrying out day-to-day control over the provision of prisoners of war with all necessary allowances according to established standards.

In January, the following work was carried out: 1. 39,081 prisoners of war were served with political mass work; 2. all political and mass work among prisoners of war was built according to a plan, in the implementation of which the leading place was occupied by the party and Komsomol organizations. Of the party political activities planned according to the plan, the following has been completed:

Discussions were held on the following topics: 1) The USSR is the most democratic country in the world. 2) Fraternal Union of the Peoples of the USSR. Implementation of the Leninist-Stalinist national policy.3) About the events in Finland.4) About the events in Western Europe.5) About the features of the modern imperialist war.

Reading and explanation of the material read from newspapers and magazines was carried out: 1. Results of 1939 and tasks of 19402. Scientific significance of the Sedovtsev drift.3. On the Soviet-Japanese agreement.4. ABOUT state structure in USSR. 5. 15 years of the Turkmen SSR.6. Results of the implementation of two five-year plans in the USSR.7. Bourgeois and socialist democracy.8. The struggle of the Chinese people against the Japanese invaders.

The following films were shown to prisoners of war: 1. Peter I - series 1. 2. Peter I - episode 2.

There are photo displays in the camp yard on the following topics: 1. life and work of I.V. Stalin; 2. achievements of physical education in the USSR;3. 16 years without Lenin along the Leninist path under the leadership of Comrade Stalin.

Library work. The library has 6,615 different books and brochures, receives 700 copies of various newspapers and 62 copies of magazines, and systematically serves 1,470 readers. The reading room reaches 200-250 people every day. The demand from prisoners of war for the magazines “Sputnik Agitatora”, “Bolshevik”, “Party Construction”, “Ogonyok” especially increased. Readers of the magazines were registered in the month of January - 1000 prisoners of war. There is a great demand for literature on the national question, especially many prisoners of war reading the works of Comrade Stalin “Questions of Leninism”, “Marxism and the National Question”.

Radio service for prisoners of war was organized. 52 radio points were installed to serve prisoners of war, 52 radio points were provided with loudspeakers, of which 2 loudspeakers were located in the courtyard of the camp. Prisoners of war were served by radio daily from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. at night. Prisoners of war listened in large groups - 30-50 people: a) the latest news from Moscow; b) lectures and reports for correspondence students and students of the “Short Course in the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)”; c) operas and concerts broadcast from Moscow and Kyiv.

Providing cultural equipment. Cultural property acquired and issued to prisoners of war for use: 1. chess - 60 games ; 2. checkers - 140 games; 3. dominoes - 112 games. In addition, the prisoners of war themselves made 15 games of chess and 20 games of dominoes. In January, preparations began for a new chess tournament among prisoners of war. Currently, a chess tournament is organized in the hostels, taking into account the results of the game, after which a camp-wide one will be organized at the club chess tournament. Already 114 prisoners of war - tournament participants - have signed up for the chess tournament in the dormitories.”

If you believe the “Goebbels”, you will also have to believe that the NKVD employees prepared prisoners of war for execution using very original methods: they organized chess tournaments, gave lectures on the history of the CPSU (b), discussed with them the scientific significance of the drift of the “Sedovtsev”, told them about the struggle the Chinese people against the Japanese invaders and so on and so forth.

In fact, no one was going to shoot Polish prisoners of war. They were prepared for life in Soviet society. Many prisoners of war were residents of the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR and BSSR and, therefore, became citizens of the USSR after the Resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of November 29, 1939 “On the acquisition of USSR citizenship by residents of the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR and BSSR.” .

5.2. conclusions

1. The addition to the questionnaire for each Polish prisoner of war, developed by the NKVD, contradicts Goebbels’ version.

2. A lot of political and cultural work carried out by NKVD employees with Polish prisoners of war in January-February 1940 contradicts Goebbels’ version.

3. Beria did not plan to shoot the officers of the former Polish army (a consequence of points 1 and 2).

6. Legal analysis

6.1. Judgment Analysis:“The consideration of cases and the making of decisions shall be entrusted to the troika, consisting of Comrade T. Beria(corrected: Kobulova) , Merkulov and Bashtakov (head of the 1st special department of the NKVD of the USSR).”

6.2. Preliminary information: When analyzing the “Note” legally, it should be taken into account that the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) abolished the judicial troikas on November 17, 1938, and the Special Meeting under the NKVD did not have the right to sentence people to death.

“2805/b Top Secret. State Defense Committee comrade. TO STALIN:

The republican, regional and regional bodies of the NKVD hold in custody for several months prisoners sentenced to capital punishment by district military tribunals and local judicial authorities, awaiting approval of the sentences by the highest judicial authorities.

According to the current order, sentences of military tribunals of the districts, as well as the supreme courts of the union, autonomous republics and regional, regional courts, enter into legal force only after their approval by the Military Collegium and the Criminal Judicial Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, respectively.

However, the decisions of the Supreme Court of the USSR are not essentially final, since they are considered by a commission of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which also submits its conclusion for approval by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and only after that a final decision is made on the case, which again goes down to the Supreme Court, and the latter is sent to the NKVD of the USSR for execution.

The exceptions are areas declared under martial law and areas of military operations, where by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated 27 VI. - 41, the military councils of the fronts, in particularly exceptional cases caused by the deployment of military operations, were given the right to approve sentences of military tribunals with capital punishment with immediate execution.

Currently, 10,645 prisoners sentenced to capital punishment have accumulated in the NKVD prisons of the republics, territories and regions, awaiting approval of the sentences in their cases by the highest judicial authorities.

Based on wartime conditions, the NKVD of the USSR considers it appropriate:

1. To authorize the NKVD of the USSR to carry out sentences of military tribunals of districts and republican, regional, regional judicial bodies in relation to all prisoners sentenced to capital punishment, currently held in prisons awaiting approval of sentences by higher judicial authorities.

Grant the Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR the right, with the participation of the prosecutor of the USSR, to deal with cases arising in the NKVD bodies regarding counter-revolutionary crimes and especially dangerous crimes against the order of government of the USSR, provided for in Art. 58-1a, 58-1b, 58-1c, 58-1d, 58-2, 58-3, 58-4, 58-5, 58-6, 58-7, 58-8, 58-9, 58- 10, 58-11, 58-12, 58-13, 58-14, 59-2, 59-3, 59-3a, 59-3b, 59-4, 59-7, 59-8, 59-9, 59-10, 59-12, 59-13 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, impose appropriate penalties up to and including execution. The decision of the Special Meeting shall be considered final. I ask for your decision. People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR L. Beria"

This practice of approving sentences to death penalty established after the Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of November 17, 1938 No. 81
“On arrests, prosecutorial supervision and investigation.”

Consequently, in 1940, death sentences of military tribunals of the districts, as well as the supreme courts of the union, autonomous republics and regional and regional courts, entered into legal force only after their approval by the Military Collegium and the Criminal Judicial Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. The decisions of the Supreme Court of the USSR were essentially not final, since they were then considered by a commission of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. The commission submitted its conclusion to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for approval, and only after that a final decision was made on the case. This decision was sent to the Supreme Court, and the latter was sent to the NKVD of the USSR for execution.

We see that the court's sentence to death, before entering into legal force, went a long way through the authorities.

Let's assume that the "Note" is not a fabricated document and the head of the Chief economic management NKVD B.Z. Kobulov, 1st Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR V.N. Merkulov and the head of the 1st special department of the NKVD L.F. The Bashtakovs actually signed death warrants and were sent to camps and prisons. However, not a single prison director and not a single camp director would take responsibility for the execution if the papers for the execution were not properly completed. The bosses would not violate the instructions, since violation of instructions during Stalin's time was followed by severe and inevitable punishment. Moreover, the papers signed by the “troika” would have been reported to the authorities as a malicious violation of the law.

6.2. conclusions

1.According to the legislation in force in the USSR in 1940 , The “troika” consisting of Kobulov, Merkulov and Bashtakov did not have the right to impose any punishment, including execution, which Beria and the members of the Politburo could not have been unaware of.

7. Analysis from an office management point of view

Firstly, the number (794/B) is indicated, but the exact date of the “Note” is not indicated: “_” March 1940. This is a violation of business rules.

Secondly, the "Note" gives the exact numbers of prisoners in prisons and camps, but does not indicate the date, e.g. : A.“In the prisoner of war camps there are a total of (not counting soldiers and non-commissioned officers) 14,736 former officers, officials, landowners, policemen, gendarmes, jailers, siege guards and intelligence officers, over 97% of whom are Poles by nationality.”B.“In the prisons of the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus, there are a total of 18,632 arrested (of which 10,685 are Poles).”

In a certificate intended for Stalin, Beria wrote: « For the month of September 1941 389,382 people who were previously arrested and deported to the rear areas of the USSR from the Western regions of Ukraine and Belarus (from the territory of the former Poland) were taken into account.” Therefore, one can expect that if the author of the “Note” was Beria, he would have written: « For February of this year There are a total of 14,736 former officers (not counting soldiers and non-commissioned officers) in prisoner-of-war camps...”

conclusions

1. The “note” contains violations of the rules of office work.

8. Analysis of statistical data

8.1. Over the entire period of its existence, the Special Meeting under the NKVD of the USSR sentenced 10,101 people to capital punishment. .

Firstly, the NKVD, namely the Special Meeting under the NKVD, had the right to impose the death penalty only in the period from 1941 to 1945, but not in 1940. The Special Meeting had the right to impose punishments in the form of imprisonment in forced labor camps for no more than 8 years. Secondly, during the four years of the war, the Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR sentenced 10,101 criminals to capital punishment.

8.2. In 1940, 1,649 criminals were sentenced to capital punishment for counter-revolutionary and other especially dangerous state crimes.

Table. The number of people convicted of counter-revolutionary and other especially dangerous state crimes from 1936 to 1942 (p. 434).

The table shows that in 1940, 1,649 people were sentenced to capital punishment for counter-revolutionary and other especially dangerous state crimes. (, 434 pp.).

According to Oleg Borisovich Mozokhin, in 1940, 1,863 people were sentenced to death. . Apparently, this number includes not only those convicted of counter-revolutionary and other especially dangerous state crimes. But the “Note from Beria to Stalin” and the “Politburo Resolution of March 5, 1940” talk about the execution of 25,700 people.

Forensic statisticians can probably “lose” 1,649 (or 1,863) people sentenced to death among 25,700, but they cannot lose 25,700 among 1,649 (or 1,863) people sentenced to capital punishment.

8.3. conclusions

1. In the judicial statistics of the USSR there is no data on the execution in 1940 of 14,700 prisoners of war officers of the former Polish army.

2. The so-called “Politburo Resolution on the execution of Polish officers, gendarmes, policemen, siege officers and others” is a false document (a consequence of paragraph 1).

9. NKVD officers did not shoot prisoners of war officers of the former Polish army

In March 1940, a decision was made to transfer officers of the former Polish army who had incriminating materials on them from prisoner of war camps to forced labor camps. We prepared investigative files for most of the prisoners of war. Many officers were members of Polish bourgeois organizations. It can be assumed that the Special Meeting condemned them mainly under Article 58 - 4: “Providing in any way assistance to that part of the international bourgeoisie, which, not recognizing the equality of the communist system that is replacing the capitalist system, strives to overthrow it, as well as social groups and organizations influenced or directly organized by this bourgeoisie, in the implementation of activities hostile to the USSR, entails imprisonment for a term of at least three years with confiscation of all or part of the property with an increase, in especially aggravating circumstances, up to capital punishment social protection- shooting or declaring workers as enemies with deprivation of citizenship of the USSR and expulsion from the USSR forever with confiscation of property.” .

Not all prisoners of war were convicted. These prisoners of war were transferred to the Yukhnovsky camp, according to the order of the Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR Merkulov dated April 22, 1940. A total of 395 people were sent to this camp: from Kozelsk 205, from Ostashkov 112, from Starobelsk 78. .

Document. May 25, 1940. Moscow. Certificate from the UPV NKVD of the USSR on the number of Polish prisoners of war sent from special camps to the NKVD of three regions and to the Yukhnovsky camp

Sov. secret

about sending prisoners of war

I. Ostashkovsky camp

Sent: 1) 6287 people to the NKVD in the Kalinin region.

2) There are 112 people in the Yukhnovsky camp.

Total: 6399 people.

II. Kozelsky camp

Sent: 1) 4404 people to the NKVD in the Smolensk region.

2) There are 205 people in the Yukhnovsky camp.

Total: 4609 people.

III. Starobelsky camp

Sent: 1) 3896 people to the NKVD in the Kharkov region.

2) There are 78 people in the Yukhnovsky camp.

Total: 3974 people.

Total sent: 1) 14587 people to the NKVD.

2) In Yukhnovsky there are 395 people.

Head of the USSR NKVD Directorate for Prisoners of War Affairs, State Security Captain (Soprunenko)

Head of the 2nd Department of the USSR NKVD Directorate for Prisoners of War Affairs, State Security Lieutenant (Maklyarsky)

Thus, at the end of May 1940, 14,587 prisoners of war were sent to the Gulag forced labor camps, and probably also to prisons.

In documents they began to appear no longer as “prisoners of war”, but as “arrested” or “prisoners”. Now the Main Directorate of Camps (GULAG) began to deal with them. From that time on, no information about “former” prisoners of war could be found in the Office for Prisoners of War and Internees, since it was not there. Supporters of Goebbels' version took advantage of this.

In the work of V.N. Zemskov, number 5, provides a table in which National composition camp prisoners of the Gulag in 1939-1941 (as of January 1 of each year):

The table shows that the number of camp prisoners - Poles on January 1, 1940 was equal to 16,133, and on January 1, 1941 increased to 29,457, that is, by 13,324 people.

According to O.B. Mozokhin, in the period from 1939 to 1941, Poles were convicted: in 1939 - 11,604, in 1940 - 31,681, and in 1941 - 6,415.

These data do not contradict the statement that Polish prisoners of war were not shot, but were convicted and sent to the Gulag.

General conclusions

1. It has been proven that the so-called “Note from Beria to Stalin with a proposal to shoot Polish officers, gendarmes, policemen, siege officers and others” is a false document.

2. It has been proven that the so-called “Politburo Resolution on the execution of Polish officers, gendarmes, policemen, siege officers and others” is a false document (consequence from paragraph 1).

Anatoly Vladimirovich Krasnyansky, senior researcher at the Moscow state university named after M.V. Lomonosov

Information sources

Sergei Ivanovich Ozhegov. Dictionary of the Russian language. About 50,000 words. Edition 5, stereotypical. State publishing house of foreign and national dictionaries. Moscow. 1963.

A.N. Without teeth. Introduction to Literary Editing. Tutorial. Saint Petersburg. 1997.

N.I. Kondakov. Logical dictionary-reference book. Second, corrected and expanded edition. Publishing house "Science".

Http://slovari.yandex.ru/~books/TSB/Agitation/ ]

Oleg Borisovich Mozokhin. Statistics of repressive activities of the USSR security agencies.

lost-empire.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=255&Itemid=9

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Additional Information

1. Materials containing evidence: “Beria’s Note to Stalin” is a false document,” published in the following magazines:

"Historical Sciences", 2012, No. 1, P.70 - 85.

"Modern Humanitarian Research", 2012, No. 1, pp. 20 - 35.

“Issues of the Humanities”, 2012, No. 2, pp. 123 - 142.

Magazine with article System analysis of “Beria’s Notes to Stalin” ("Modern Humanities Studies", No. 2) will be published at the end of April this year.