"He took the corpse of a boy of 7 years, chopped it into small pieces with an ax and cooked it"
90 years ago, 30 on January 1922, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (B.) Banned the publication of reports of mass cannibalism and murder in the starving areas of the country. Observer "Power" Eugene Zhirnov found out how the party and the government brought people to the loss of human appearance.
"They ruthlessly sweep up every grain"
In Soviet times, the 1921-1922 famine in the Volga region was written and told in a monotonous and rather boring way. It was usually said that in the summer of the 1921 of the year there was a drought and in some areas of the country the harvest was lost and famine began. But the working people of all Soviet Russia, and after them, representatives of progressive humanity came to the aid of the victims, and for a short time the famine and its consequences were eliminated. From time to time, however, articles and pamphlets that fell out of the general system appeared, telling that the American Assistance Administration (ARA), which delivered food from abroad and fed the hungry people, pursued other charitable goals as well as charity. Its employees were engaged in espionage, plotting against the Soviet power, and it was only thanks to the insight and vigilance of the KGB that their secret intentions could be revealed and the Americans expelled from the country.
Actually, this information about the Volga famine for a wide range of readers was exhausted. In those years, few of the Soviet ideologues and propagandists could have imagined that in the foreseeable future the archives of the party and its punitive organs would become available, if not completely. So, the picture of the famine in the Volga region can be restored in full detail and, first of all, it can be understood that hunger arose not only and not so much because of the weather.
Food difficulties during the Civil War arose everywhere and regularly. Moreover, the lack of products in rural areas was often the result of their ruthless seizure by the Soviet authorities in the face of representatives of food commissions of all levels with the support of specially created armed detachments. And any deviation from the delivery of grain, meat, pounds of oil, etc. established during the food distribution of the poods, led to ruthless repression. So at times even the staff of the Cheka expressed discontent with the actions of food commissions and food detachments that disrupted the process of establishing relations between the new government and the peasantry.
For example, a special department of the Saratov provincial Cheka 5 January 1920 reported to Moscow on the state of affairs in this Volga region:
"The mood of the population of the province, in particular the peasantry, is uneven everywhere. In those counties where the harvest was better, the mood of the peasantry is also better, as this county has the ability to more easily carry out the state pattern. The opposite was observed in those counties where the harvest was poor. It should be noted that the peasantry cherishes every pound of grain and according to the psychology of the peasant as a small proprietor, a materialist. A lot of misunderstandings are observed during the distribution. Prodotryady, according to the statement of the peasants, bezzh they are sweeping everything up to grain, and there are even such cases where they take hostages who have already done the sweep. Moreover, not a small, but even a big disadvantage for the successful execution of the sweep is still the fact that the turnout disproportionately unfolds. The documents of the village council show where the village council testifies in one case about the cash property status with digital data, and another document issued later indicates the amount of the imposed distribution, with than the last on 25% more than the actual amount certified by the village Council in the first document. On the basis of such inattentive attitudes towards the distribution, discontent of the peasant masses is indeed aroused. "
A similar picture was observed in other parts of the country, where famine began later. The peasants were indignant and sometimes even rebelled. But after the arrival of the armed units they resigned themselves and gave more than they could in reality give.
Often it turned out that everything was handed over, right down to the seeds for the next sowing. True, the workers 'and peasants' government promised help to the peasants and in the spring gave a loan from the grain they had selected. But it happened differently in different parts of the country. Accordingly, the results of the care shown by the state turned out to be completely different.
For example, in the report sent to the capital of Tomsk sponge "On the situation in the province for the period from April 15 to May 1 1920." it was said:
"Hunger has reached a terrible size: the peasantry ate all the substitutes, cats, dogs, at this time they eat the corpses of the dead, pulling them out of their graves"
"Peasants complain that they lose a lot of expensive time to get all sorts of certificates and permits, it is useless to run from one institution to another, and often to no avail. For greater clarity, let us give one of the most numerous examples of how much the brood pays attention to the requests of the peasants and fulfills them in a timely manner. The peasants, members of one rural communal society, petitioned Gubprodky to give them seeds for sowing fields, paying attention to the fact that the spring thaw is close and the seeds must be semi urgent response. For a long time, the answer did not work, and permission to export seeds from the nearest dumping station was obtained when the road had already gone bad and it was not possible to remove the seeds. "
As a result, the spring sowing of 1920 in the Tomsk, and in some other provinces, in essence, turned out to be frustrated. And in the fall, we had to again pass the grain on the surplus, and even fewer seeds remained for autumn sowing. The information report of the All-Russian Cheka for the 1-15 of August 1920 prepared for the leaders of the party and the state reported on the situation in the gubernias:
"Saratov. Over the province in connection with the current complete crop failure and the almost complete absence of grain for the autumn sowing of fields, a very favorable ground is created for the counter-revolutionary forces."
The same picture was observed in the Samara province, where the peasants did not have not only grain for the next sowing, but also no supplies to make it fall until spring. In part of the Volga regions, the peasants even tried to massively refuse to perform the surplus. But the Soviet government, as usual in such cases, did not stand on ceremony. In the summary of the Cheka for 26 October 1920 of the year said:
"The Tatar Republic ... The peasants are unfriendly to the Soviet government for reasons of various duties and distribution, if this age is not the case, they refused to carry out the distribution in places in the republic. In the latter case, armed detachments are sent to pacify them."
However, by spring the situation had become critical. There was simply nothing to eat or sow. The peasants were trying to return the grain brought to the state dumping stations. But authorities used proven methods. The Saratov Hubcek reported to Moscow on 19 March 1921:
“In the Saratov region, the peasants made demands for the release of the harvested grain, in case of failure they threaten to be taken by force. We sent a detachment, and the peasants presented the same demands to two more counties.”
"Mass mortality due to hunger is observed"
The result was not long in coming. In late spring and early summer 1921, pockets of hunger began to appear in different regions of the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia, the North Caucasus and Ukraine. In the summary of the Cheka for April 30 and May 1 1921 of the year said:
"Stavropol lips ... The mood of the population of some counties is bad due to lack of food. In the Alexander district a crowd of peasants came to the executive committee building crying for bread. The crowd was persuaded to wait until April 26, the county executive declined responsibility for events that may arise if by this time there is no bread.
Bashkir Republic ... The political state of the republic is unsatisfactory. There is a massive death rate from hunger. An uprising broke out in the Argayazh canton on the basis of the crisis. "
"In our village, a mass of corpses. They are lying on the streets or are formed in a public barn"
However, since the starving areas were interspersed with quite prosperous, the Soviet leadership did not take the situation seriously. Even more confusion was brought by messages from the field. From the same provinces there were reports about starvation and the expected good harvest. Local leading comrades then reported on a terrible drought that burned everything and everyone, and the onset of the locust, which was supposed to destroy all the remaining plants, then happily reported on the past rains and overcoming the effects of the heat.
As a result, even the Soviet commissars could not understand what was really happening in the Volga region and other starving areas. 30 July 1921 Foreign Secretary George Chicherin wrote to the Politburo member of the Central Committee of the RCP (B.) Lev Kamenev:
"Dear Comrade. It is necessary to introduce systematic and deliberation in the published information about the state of the crop and the situation of the starving provinces. What we publish varies between extremely alarmist pictures and consolatory indications that the potatoes are not that bad, or the buckwheat has succeeded etc. While reading our informational radio, I consider myself not entitled to suspend official information of this kind, especially since I have no right to stop the transmission of this information by radio within Russia. Meanwhile, our internal The programs, no less than our foreign radio, are tapped and intercepted in Western countries. I myself, reading our official information, do not know in the end whether there is a transformation of a dozen provinces into a solid desert, or there is partial non-breeding after the rains have corrected the situation. Our official information is notable for its inconsistency and rashness. It is heavily used abroad. Who wants to present our situation in a catastrophic form, clutches at our alarming news, others Vata for reassuring news. Lloyd George (Prime Minister of Great Britain. - “Power”) in the ward, responding to a request, said that he was bewildered by the radio-telegraph news from Russia that the rains had passed and improved the situation. ”
As a result, a commission of the Central Committee of the RCP (B) went to the Volga region, and work on organizing assistance to the starving, as it was said, began to unfold. Across the country began collecting money and food in favor of the hungry. ARA and Red Cross organizations from various countries are involved in the matter.
To help the affected areas and was held in the spring of 1921 of the year, after the announcement of the new economic policy, the surplus is replaced by a tax in kind. As the Bolsheviks argued, the food tax dramatically facilitated and improved the lives of the peasants. But in fact, everything depended on the local authorities and, above all, on the notorious food commissions. In the KGB reports it was said that the food tax in some provinces is determined by the sown area or land area available to the peasant family. In addition, taking advantage of the illiteracy of the peasants, the food workers overestimated their area by half. So the tax could exceed the collection of grain in the most fruitful years. At the same time, the food tax was levied even in the places most affected by the poor harvest of 1921, for example, in the Crimea. The Informative Cheka for 24 and 25 of September 1921 of the year said:
"Crimea ... Prodnalog income has recently declined. The pro-meeting found it necessary to use armed force, form food detachments and prohibit trade in the markets in places that did not pay the prodnalog."
As a result, despite the charitable assistance, the famine in the country grew and deepened. And besides, epidemics began. On November 18, the VChK informed the country's leadership about the state of affairs of the Volga Germans:
"The number of hungry people is increasing. In Mamadyshsky canton, the number of hungry people is 117 156 people, of which 45 460 are disabled, cases of death by starvation were 1194. The number of diseases is increasing. According to the Narkomzdrav, people have 1174 typhoid fever, 162 people died.
“The White Guard press,” Commissar Nikolai Semashko wrote to the Politburo (center in the photo), “relishes the horrors of cannibalism in Soviet Russia”
On November 19, security officers reported on the Orenburg province:
"Hunger is increasing. Mortality of children is increasing. There is an acute shortage of medicines. For lack of material resources, the fight against hunger is weak."
December 7 - about the Saratov province:
"The food situation in the northern and western Volga districts is extremely difficult. The peasants destroy the last livestock, not excluding working livestock. In Novouzensky district, the population eats dogs, cats and gophers. The mortality rate due to hunger and epidemics is increasing. The public catering organization is hampered by the lack of food. ARA contains 250 Thousands of Children. "
And December 12 - about Samara:
"Hunger is increasing, deaths on the basis of hunger increase. In November and October, 663 children died of starvation, 2735 patients were sick, 399 people were adults. Epidemics increased. During the reporting period, 269 people became sick with typhoid fever, 207 became abdominal, 249 people became ill The Swedish Red Cross Commission took over its maintenance of 10 thousand children. "
A completely logical result was the information on the Samara province, received by the leadership of the country 29 December 1921 of the year:
"Epidemic diseases are aggravated by a lack of medicines. Deaths of starvation are on the increase. There have been several cases of cannibalism."
"The unprecedented phenomenon of indiscriminate cannibalism"
In the new, 1922, year, reports of cannibalism began to arrive in Moscow with ever-increasing frequency. On January 20, the reports mentioned cannibalism in Bashkiria, and on January 23, the country's leaders were informed that in the Samara province the case went beyond a few instances:
“The famine has reached terrible proportions: the peasantry ate all the surrogates, cats, dogs, currently eating the corpses of the dead, pulling them out of the graves. In Pugachevsky and Buzuluksky counties, repeated cases of cannibalism were discovered. Cannibalism, according to members of the voliste executive committee, accepts massive forms. The ogres are isolated. "
The party press began to write about the horrors occurring in the starving areas. 21 January 1922, Pravda wrote:
"The impressions of a comrade who had been in hungry places were printed in the Simbirsk newspaper" The Economic Path. "These impressions are so vivid and characteristic that they need no comment. Here they are:
"I myself, in the end, do not know whether there is a transformation of a dozen provinces into a solid desert, or there is a partial crop failure"
"We drove together in one deaf abandoned village to warm up, relax and eat. The products were their own, you just had to find a corner.
We go in the first izba. On the bed is still a young woman, and in different corners on the floor - three little guys.
Still not understanding anything, we ask the hostess to put the samovar and to flood the stove, but the woman, not rising, not even rising, whispers weakly:
- Vaughn samovar, put yourself, but I have no silushki.
- Are you sick? What's the matter?
- The eleventh day there was no crumbs in the mouth ...
It became terribly ... We took a closer look around and we see that the children barely breathe and lie with their hands and legs bound.
- What is the mistress you have with your children, sick?
- No, my relatives are healthy, but we did not eat for ten days either ...
- But who tied them, yes, scattered in the corners?
- And I myself came to this. How hungry for four days, began to bite each other's hands, well, I tied them up, and put them apart from each other.
Like madmen, we rushed to our little basket to give perishing children a piece of bread.
But the mother could not stand it, got out of bed and began to beg on her knees so that we would quickly remove the bread and not give it to the children.
I wanted to express the censure of this mother, to express my indignation; but in a weak, crying voice she spoke:
- They suffered painfully for seven days, and then became quieter, now they don’t feel anything. Let them die in peace, or else feed them now, they will go away, and then again seven days will be tormented, biting, to calm down again just the same ... After all, tomorrow or in a week no one will give anything. So do not torment them. For Christ's sake, leave, let me die in peace ...
We jumped out of the hut, rushed to the village council, demanding explanations and immediate assistance.
But the answer is short and clear:
“There is no bread, there are a lot of hungry people, there is no way to help not only everyone, but even a few.”
And on January 27, Pravda wrote about rampant cannibalism in starving areas:
"In the rich steppe counties of the Samara province, full of bread and meat, nightmares are happening, an unprecedented phenomenon of indiscriminate cannibalism is observed. People, driven by hunger to despair and madness, after eating everything that is available to the eye and tooth, people decide to eat a human corpse and secretly devour their own dead children. From the village of Andreevka, Buzuluksky district, they report that "Natalya Semykina eats the meat of a dead person, Lukeryi Logina." The police chief of the 4 district of the Buzuluk district writes that he met on his way in three volosts e ancient cases of cannibalism the ancient Hindus, Indians and savages northern edge "and that these" experienced cases of "express the following:
1) In the village of Lyubimovka, one of the citizens dug from the grave of a dead man-girl 14, cut the corpse into several parts, put the body parts into cast iron ... When this "crime" was discovered, it turned out that the girl's head was "split in two and scorched" . It was obviously not possible to cook the corpse as an ogre.
"Hunger is increasing, deaths on the basis of hunger increase. In November and October, 663 children died of starvation, 2735 patients were sick, and 399 people died of adults. Epidemics are increasing"
2) From the words of members of the Executive Committee with. Lyubimovka shows that “wild cannibalism” in the village takes on massive forms and that “in the dead of midnight the cooking of the dead goes,” but in fact only one citizen is “persecuted”.
3) In p. Andreevka, in a police warehouse, lies in a trough of a head without a body and part of the ribs of a sixty-year-old woman: the body was eaten by a citizen of the same village, Andrey Pirogov, who confessed that he had eaten and had not given up his head and a dead body.
4) In p. A citizen Jung delivered to the Executive Committee of a certain Timofey Frolov, "explaining that on the night of 3 December he, Jungov, allowed Frolov to his apartment and fed him, went to bed. At night, Frolov got up and stole one bread, half He ate it, and put half of it in his bag. In the morning, in the same bag, he found the strangled cat Jungova. "
When asked why he had strangled a cat, Frolov explained: for personal consumption. “He strangled a cat at night quietly and put it in a bag to eat after” - the act says.
The executive committee decided: to release the detained Frolov, since he had committed the crime because of the famine. Reporting this, the Executive Committee adds that in general the citizens of the village "arrange hunting for dogs and cats and feed on caught prey."
These are the facts, or rather an insignificant part of the facts. Others have already been reported, while others escape the attention of society and the press.
What is done with cannibals? The answer is simple - they will arrest, “persecute”, forward the perpetrators together with “material evidence” - bloodied bags of meat - to the People’s Court, accusing them of cannibalism. ”
Despite the fact that further in the article foreign bourgeois and new Soviet businessmen were accused - nepmen, who eat well, while the starving are dying, the article made an unpleasant impression on the members of the Soviet leadership. Nikolay Semashko, People's Commissar of Health on the same day, January 27, wrote to members of the Politburo:
"Dear comrades! I allow myself to draw your attention to the" peresal "that our press admits in the anti-hunger campaign, in particular, to the reports multiplying every day allegedly about growing" cannibalism. "In just one guess, from 27 / 1) we have a message about mass cannibalism ("in the manner of ancient Hindus, Indians and savages of the northern region") in Buzuluk district; in N "Izvestia" from the same number about "mass cannibalism" in Ufa province, with all the detailed supposedly reliable descriptions. Considering:
1) that many of these descriptions are clearly implausible (in Izvestia it is reported that the peasant of the village of Sikterma left "his wife's corpse, having had time to eat the lungs and liver, while everyone knows what a disgusting place the dead man's lungs represent, and of course, the starving person ate would rather be meat, "found during the search the rotting bone of a slaughtered brother" - meanwhile the bones, as is known, do not rot, etc.)
2) the White Guard press relentlessly relishes "the horrors of cannibalism in Soviet Russia",
3) that, in general, in our agitation we should not be beating on the nerves of sensitive subjects, but on the feeling of solidarity and organization of the working people -
I propose, in a party order, to prescribe to our bodies:
1) is more strict about printing sensational messages from hungry places,
2) stop typing stories about any "mass cannibalism". "
"Many eat human meat"
Who knows what the reaction of Politburo members to the Semashko appeal could be, but the next day Pravda allowed herself to question the Politburo's decision about cannibals. After reporting cases of cannibalism, the Politburo decided not to judge them, but to send them to psychiatric treatment. And the organ of the Central Committee of the RCP (B.) Published such reflections of its employee:
"I have a whole bundle of documents about the famine. These are the protocols of the investigators of the Revtribunal and the People's Courts, official telegrams from the field, acts of medical expertise. Like all documents, they are a little dry. But the eerie pictures of our Volga region often make their way through. The peasant of the Buzuluk district of Efimov Mukhin parish at the inquest stated to the investigator:
"My family consists of 5 people. There is no bread from Easter. We first fed on bark, horse meat, dogs and cats, chose bones and ground them. In our village, there are a lot of corpses. They wallow in the streets or fold into a public barn. I sneaked into the evening In the barn, I took the corpse of a boy 7 for years, on a sled I brought him home, chopped me up with an ax into small pieces and cooked. During the day we ate the whole corpse. Only bones were left. Many in our village eat human meat, but they hide it. several public canteens. There they feed only juvenile x children. From my family two younger sons fed in the dining room. They give a quarter pound of bread for a child, watery soup and nothing else. In the village everyone is exhausted. I cannot work. In the whole village there are about 10 horses left on 800 yards. the year they were before 2500. We currently don’t remember the taste of human meat. We ate it in a state of unconsciousness. "
Here is another document. This is an extract from the testimony of a peasant woman of the same Chugunova volost:
"I am a widow. I have 4 children: Anna, 15 years, Anastasia, 13 years, Daria, 10 years, and Pelagia, 7 years. The last one was very sick. In December, I do not remember the number, I had no orphans products. The eldest girl pushed me to kill a smaller, sick one. I decided on it, stabbed her at night when she was sleeping. Sleepy and weak, she didn’t scream under the knife and did not resist. After that, my eldest girl, Anna, began to clean the dead that is, throw out the insides and cut it into pieces. "
“What to do with cannibals?” Asks the chief of police of one of the districts of Buzuluksky county. “Arrest? Put on trial, punish?” And local authorities are lost before this terrible truth of hunger, before these "old-time cases" of Indian cannibalism. A characteristic touch: cannibals almost all confess to the local authorities: "Better arrest, better prison, but not the same everyday hunger pangs."
"I ask only now not to return me to my homeland, - says peasant Semikhin from the village of Andreevka, Buzuluksky district, - take me wherever you want."
"Like me, I know, many are allowed to go home," said the arrested peasant from the village of Yefimovka, Konopykhin. "My wife was also allowed to go home, but she did not want to, because she would have to die at home."
What is it, criminals? Mentally abnormal? Here is the protocol of the medical examination made by the assistant professor of the Samara University:
“No evidence of mental disorder was found in all of the testimonies. From an analysis of their mental state, it turns out that the acts of necrophagy committed by them (eating corpses) were not able to produce any form of mental disorder, but were the end of a long and progressive feeling of hunger that gradually broke all obstacles, broke the struggle with oneself and immediately attracted to the form of satisfaction, which was the only possible under the given conditions, necrophagy. videtelstvuemyh showed no inclination to intentional murder and the abduction and use of corpses. "
"I want to work with all my own strength, just to be full. I can sew mittens, used to be a coachman, worked as an assistant in a bakery. Give me a job," Semykin, who consumed a woman, asks. Millions of Semykins from our Volga region are asking for the same thing. Will their request be heard? "
But criticizing the Politburo, and even publicly, was a bust, even for the party favorite and Pravda editor-in-chief Nikolai Bukharin. Politburo supported Semashko and January 30 made the following decision:
"1. Strictly relate to printing sensational messages from hungry places;
2. Stop typing stories about any "cannibalism" ".
True, from the suppression of the facts of cannibalism, cannibalism itself has not disappeared anywhere. For example, in the Informatization of the Cheka for 31 March 1922, it was said:
"Tatrespublika ... Hunger increases. Mortality due to hunger increases.
In some villages, 50% of the population has become extinct. The cattle is mercilessly destroyed. The epidemic is rampant. The incidence of cannibalism is increasing. "
The last message of cannibalism came to Moscow on July 24 1922 from Stavropol Gubernia:
“Hunger does not stop in Gratitude District. Several cases of cannibalism are registered. The population experiences an acute shortage of food. There is a physical depletion of the population due to malnutrition and a complete inoperability.”
"315 reported cases of cannibalism"
With the end of the famine, a terrible time, it would seem, should have disappeared forever, and the country's leadership could draw the appropriate conclusions from the incident. But it turned out that story soon repeated down to the smallest detail. Only every seed was taken not from specific peasant families, but from collective farms. The school friend of the head of the Soviet government, Vyacheslav Molotov, land surveyor Mikhail Chirkov 6 of September 1932, wrote to him about a strange approach to collecting grain from collective farms in the North Caucasus Territory. Winter crops, as Chirkov wrote, for many reasons (pests, lack of tractors and horses) turned out to be not successful. A grain for the supply of the state demanded in a disproportionate amount:
"The rainy weather during harvest finally ditched the already meager harvest and, moreover, spoiled the grain. Thus, it turned out that the actual wheat yield per hectare this year is reduced to 1-1,2 centner, i.e. only the seeds return and the wheat yield is set to 3,5 centners per hectare, and a plan for delivery has been developed on it. I even came across one of the collective farms in such a case where on 500 hectares of wheat seeding (at the established yield in 3,5 centners) the grain procurement plan is not given 1750 centners, as would follow arithme 2040 centners. Germans (kolkhoz - natsmenovsky - German) are doubly surprised. Firstly, how will they harvest when they have 1,2 centners per hectare of wheat for a complete and strictly accounted thresh of wheat (i.e. gross yield total 600 centners), and most of all surprised by what kind of head calculated the grain procurement plan when the assignment to the collective farm for it exceeds even the gross yield on the projected yield of wheat per hectare by the administration. "
But from the collective farms they demanded everything at once, and repressive measures were immediately applied to those who resisted. The same picture was observed in Ukraine. And when the famine began again, there were also reports of the consumption of surrogates, dogs and cats for food. And then about cannibalism. The secret political department of the OGPU 26 on April 1933 reported on the North Caucasus region:
"From February, 1 cases of cannibalism were revealed on the 108 of April ... In total, people engaged in cannibalism are 244 people, of which men are 49 people, women are 130 people, accomplices are 65 (mainly minor members of families)."
Impressive and data on Ukraine, reported to the leadership of 23 June 1933,
"In areas affected by acute prodruzhdeniyami, cases of cannibalism, murder, eating and various surrogates are common. If in February, March and first half of April in Ukraine, 206 cases of cannibalism were recorded in 166 settlements of 76 areas, from 15 in April to 1 of June, according to incomplete data, 315 cases of cannibalism were reported in 201, 66, and 15 was reported on 113 in April, but 1 was recorded on 368 in June.Only, children were killed for cannibalism. and phenomena occur especially in Kiev, Odessa, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions. "
Specific examples were terrifying no less than those that occurred in the 1922 year. However, as it turned out, the same scheme of bringing people to complete hungry despair and cannibalism also worked later - during the Great Patriotic War, and in the far rear, in areas where from the front and Victory took every last grain. And again, the security officers reported to the top leadership of the country, and measures were taken again when many people could not be returned.
But, in general, there is nothing strange in this: in a country where everything was done for great purposes, they never paid attention to the life and death of ordinary people.
Information