Why tried to kill Lenin
The main event of the end of August 1918 will be the famous attempt on Vladimir Lenin. Almost simultaneously with the Social Revolutionary attacks, the Cheka announced the disclosure of the so-called "Lockcard plot". The conspiracy was organized by diplomatic representatives and intelligence services of Great Britain, France and the United States with the aim of overthrowing Soviet power.
30 August 1918 in Petrograd was killed by the head of the local Cheka, Moses Uritsky, and the leader of the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Lenin, was wounded in Moscow. Uritsky was shot by the people's socialist Leonid Kannegiser. He was part of an underground anti-Bolshevik group headed by his cousin MM. Filonenko. And Filonenko maintained a close relationship with B.V. Savinkov, who ordered the liquidation of Uritsky. Kannegiser, by his own admission, decided to take revenge on Uritsky for the death of his friend, officer V. B. Perelzweig, shot by the Petrograd Cheka in the case of a counter-revolutionary conspiracy in the Mikhailovsky Artillery School. Immediately after his arrest, he declared: “I am a Jew. I killed a Jewish vampire, drop by drop who had drunk the blood of the Russian people. I tried to show the Russian people that for us Uritsky is not a Jew. He is a renegade. I killed him in the hope of restoring the good name of the Russian Jews. ”
Fanny Kaplan, who shot at Lenin, was also from a Jewish teacher family. She was a professional revolutionary and already in 16 years was preparing a major terrorist act. During preparation for the terrorist act as a result of careless handling, an improvised explosive device worked, Kaplan was wounded in the head and partially lost her sight. She was arrested and sentenced to hard labor. All her youth - before 28 years, she spent in prisons and hard labor, where she was blind and in fact became a disabled person. But after the amnesty of the Provisional Government in 1917, she managed to go to Crimea for treatment and partially restore her eyesight. 30 August 1918 of the year at the Michelson plant in Zamoskvoretsky district of Moscow held a rally of workers. Vladimir Lenin performed on it. After the rally in the yard of the plant Kaplan shot at the leader of the revolution. Two bullets hit Lenin: in the neck and arm, the third bullet hit the woman standing next to Lenin. Kaplan was immediately seized and to the question on whose orders this was done, she replied: “At the suggestion of the social revolutionaries. I have fulfilled my duty with valor and I will die with valor. "
During interrogations, Kaplan reported that she was extremely negative about the October Revolution, and supports the idea of convening a Constituent Assembly to organize power in the new Russia, sympathizes with the Komuch government (Committee of the Constituent Assembly) in Samara and the Social Revolutionary Party Chernov, but refused to answer whether it is connected with any or anti-bolshevik political forces. Later, in 1922, during the trial of the leaders and activists of the Social Revolutionaries, one of them, Grigory Semyonov, testified that even at the beginning of 1918, the Military Organization of the Social Revolutionaries decided to resume their activities and the first to eliminate the persecutor of the Petrograd press and the organizer of the election fraud Petrograd Soviet V. Volodarsky, then planned to kill Leon Trotsky, but he went to the front. Then it was decided to kill Lenin, to which Fanny Kaplan volunteered as a performer. Semenov also said that the bullets were smeared with an instantaneous poison, but the high temperature at the shot caused him to decompose. Lenin, in any case, recovered from his injury fairly quickly (he was actively working in mid-October).
However, it later emerged that Kaplan could not shoot Lenin so successfully, as she still saw poorly (she could only distinguish between silhouettes) and that the bullets caught in Lenin did not match the caliber with Kaplan Browning. Official confirmation they have not received. A few days after the assassination attempt on Uritsky and Lenin, Kannegiser and Kaplan will be shot. That is, the main witnesses were promptly “cleared out”.
Almost simultaneously with the Socialist Revolutionary attacks, the Cheka announced the disclosure of the so-called "Lockcart conspiracy" ("ambassadors conspiracy"). Robert Lockhart (Lockhart) was the head of the British diplomatic mission in Moscow. According to the official version, the conspiracy was organized by diplomats and secret services of England, France and the United States with the aim of overthrowing the Soviet government, denouncing the Brest peace and resuming hostilities of Russia and Germany on the Eastern Front. The conspiracy, in addition to Lekkard, was attended by the ambassadors of France J. Noulance and the United States D. R. Francis.
The plot was revealed as follows. In June, 1918 F. Dzerzhinsky sent two Latvians, Jan Buikis and Jan Sprogis, to Petrograd with the task of penetrating the anti-Soviet underground. With the help of the English sailors, the Chekists managed to get acquainted with the head of the counter-revolutionary organization, the naval attaché of the British Embassy F. Cromie. The naval attache introduced them to the British intelligence agent S. Reilly and advised them to go to Moscow, supplying him with a letter for transmission to Lockhart, who planned to establish contacts with influential commanders of Latvian riflemen. In Moscow, after a meeting with Dzerzhinsky and Peters, it was decided to “slip” Lokkart of the commander of the artillery division of the Latvian division E.P. Berzin, issuing it for solidity for the colonel. 14 and 15 in August Berzin met with Lockhart, and then 17, 19, 21 in August with Reilly. Reilly handed Berzin ultimately 1,2 million rubles as payment for the overthrow of the Latvian regiments of Soviet power in Moscow.
Lockhart tried to bribe the Latvian riflemen who were guarding the Kremlin to arrest and liquidate the Soviet government, and then let British troops moving to the south from Arkhangelsk to Moscow. Also, the Westerners planned to organize a series of terrorist attacks on railway transport in order to disorganize management and transport in Russia. 3 September 1918, the Izvestia Central Executive Committee published an official report on the conspiracy: “the conspiracy led by British-French diplomats, led by the British mission chief Lockhart, French Consul General Grenard, French General Lauren and others, aimed at organizing the seizure, with the help of bribing parts, was eliminated Soviet troops, the Council of People's Commissars and the proclamation of a military dictatorship in Moscow. "
On August 30, after the assassination of Uritzky and Lenin, the KGB decided that a counter-revolutionary coup began. Chekists in Petrograd broke into the British mission and arrested its members, who resisted Cromie was killed. 31 August arrested Lokkarta. After his arrest, Lockhart himself refused to answer the questions of the security officers. As a diplomat, he was soon released and expelled from Soviet Russia. In October 1918, foreign diplomats left the borders of Soviet Russia.
The response of the Soviet government to the assassination and the Western conspiracy was mass terror. On September 2, the Central Executive Committee chairman Yakov Sverdlov announced that the answer to the attempt on Lenin’s assassination, the murder of Uritzky and the conspiracy of Lockhart would be a “red terror”. September 5 will be issued and the decree of the Council of People's Commissars (SNK) on the red terror.
In this way, story The assassination attempt on Lenin is dark. Kaplan - a sick, half-blind woman, apparently, could not make a successful attempt. She was taken and quickly eliminated to hide the real conspirators. All evidence of her guilt resurfaced only in the 1922 year, on the fabricated process of the Social Revolutionaries, moreover, from the lips of the reporters provocateurs Semenov and Konopleva. The threads of the conspiracy are drawn to Yakov Sverdlov and Lev Trotsky (agents of the West), who tried to eliminate Lenin and seize power in Soviet Russia in order to complete the global experiment to create a “new world order” based on false communism (world revolution and world union of republics). Trotsky was to become the head of Russia and complete the destruction of the Russian civilization and the Russian people. The resources and wealth of Russia were to become the material basis for the creation of a "world government" and a state. Therefore, Western diplomats and special services participated in the conspiracy. However, man proposes, and God disposes. Plans of the owners of the West about the future of Russia once again misfired.
Also worth noting is the fact that Lenin decided to abandon the policy of “balancing” between the two Western imperialist camps (which Trotsky conducted). Lenin resolutely suppressed her. In this situation, the Entente powers were the most powerful and dangerous enemy. The German bloc was already collapsing, and Moscow could soon abandon the most difficult conditions of Brest. If the winners - England, USA, France and Japan will be able to gain a foothold in the territory of Russia, then it will be much more difficult to knock them out. Therefore, in contrast to the Entente, Lenin went on a further rapprochement with Germany, up to a military alliance. This was reflected in a secret agreement - the so-called. "Brest-2".
On August 27 in Berlin an additional secret treaty was concluded between Soviet Russia and the Second Reich. In accordance with this treaty, Russia now recognized the independence of not only Ukraine, but also Georgia. Confirmed the refusal of the land of Estonia and Livonia (Latvia), subject to access to the ports of Revel (now the capital of Estonia Tallinn), Riga and Windawa. Russia promised as much as possible to expel the troops of the Entente countries from its territory. In the region of Murmansk, if Soviet Russia does not cope on its own, the Germans promised assistance to the German-Finnish troops. In exchange, Soviet Russia managed to bargain for Germany’s commitment to return the Crimea and Belarus, Rostov-on-Don and part of the Donbass after the war, the obligation not to lay claim to Baku (at that time it was one of the most important oil regions of the world). Germany also promised to no longer occupy any territories of Russia and not to support separatist movements, to influence the interests of Russia on the Turks who had already stormed Baku and to withdraw their troops from the territories of Belarus east of the Berezina as a gesture of goodwill in the coming months.
The contract was the material part. Soviet Russia undertook to pay Germany, as reparations and expenses for the maintenance of Russian prisoners of war, a huge contribution - 6 billion marks, including 1,5 billion gold (245,5 tons of pure gold) and credit obligations, 1 billion raw materials. Already in September, the first "golden trains" were sent to Germany, in which 93,5 tons of gold were located. Later, Russian gold was transferred to France as a contribution imposed on Germany under the Versailles Peace Treaty.
It is clear that Western governments and special services did not like this very much. Already 30 August Lenin tried to kill, and his place was to take a Western agent of influence, Trotsky. Cards conspirators confused Dzerzhinsky. He did not at all like the unbridled rampage of Western intelligence services in the territory under his jurisdiction, he was not an agent of the West. He managed to introduce his agents into the Western network, and naval counterintelligence did a good job. As a result, the Chekists had information about the organization of the coup. And immediately after the attempt on Lenin, Dzerzhinsky struck back at Western agents, made mass arrests in Moscow and Petrograd, and foiled the plans of the conspirators.
However, further events showed that the positions of Western agents in the Soviet leadership are still very strong. Sverdlov, immediately after injuring Lenin, seized control levers. Dzerzhinsky was sent on leave and was forced into hiding until Lenin recovered; he was replaced by the creature Sverdlov-Peters. The cases of the attempted assassination of Lenin and the "conspiracy of the ambassadors" were divided. The case of the attempt on Lenin was quickly hushed up, the witnesses were removed, cutting off all the threads to the customers. Of the numerous arrested no one was executed. Foreigners fled or were expelled from the country. Of the defendants who were brought before the tribunal, some were acquitted, some were sentenced to short terms of imprisonment and soon pardoned, released.
Thus, emissaries of the "backstage of the world" had strong positions in Soviet Russia, although they could not capture the place of the party and country leaders. And they can clean up the “fifth column” in the USSR only before the beginning of the Second World War (this is one of the secrets of the “great cleansing”).
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