But on the other hand. Tank commissar who stumbled
"I do what I want"
In the previous part stories the controversial figure of the director of the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant dealt with abuses and outright theft, which the general and laureate of the State Prize bred in his patrimony.
As it turned out, the first signals about the inappropriate behavior of Zaltsman, bordering on bestiality, began to come in 1942. Prosecutor Viktor Bochkov, based on an audit of the activities of Tankograd, established that the main reason for the chronic malnutrition of plant workers and their families was the theft of food by managers. On June 28, 1942, the prosecutor reported to Molotov, the curator tank topics in GKO, the following:
Further, Viktor Bochkov continues already directly about Isaac Zaltsman:
As we know, these reports did not lead to anything: in mid-1942, Zaltsman was promoted to the people's commissar of the tank industry, and all investigations by the prosecutor's office were stopped.
A little later, Zaltsman asked Vyacheslav Malyshev for the reconstruction of two summer cottages for the factory managers. The limit was allocated to the director of 200 rubles, but the “tank king” was sold at 000 rubles, which were withdrawn from the funds for the construction of housing for workers. In general, the very fact of using at the height of the war even 531480 thousand rubles, sanctioned by Malshev, for the openly lordly needs of leaders causes outrage. And then there is an almost three-fold excess of the limit due to the housing of workers. Zaltsman, in particular, for this money completely furnished the dachas, one of which he kept for himself, and presented the second to the first secretary of the Chelyabinsk regional committee N. S. Patolichev. In addition to the fact that the director of the plant kept a staff of servants at his dacha, he often spent heavily on banquets - eyewitnesses talk about 200-10 thousand rubles at a time. The regulars of the stormy gatherings at Zaltsman's dacha were the mentioned Patolichev, as well as Major General Jacob Rapopport, chief of Chelyabmetallurgstroy.
Another important drawback of Isaac Zaltsman as a leader was his intolerance towards a different opinion - this led to the departure of talented managers and engineers from tank building. So, the chief designer of the tank design bureau Boris Evgrafovich Arkhangelsky moved to another plant. After the war, he became the chief designer of the Lipetsk Tractor Plant, was awarded the Stalin Prize for the development of the design of the Kirovets D-35 tractor, which turned out to be so successful that its main components were manufactured in the USSR until 1973. He also removed the deputy chief engineer from the Salzman plant. Nikolai Nikolaevich Perovsky, an old-timer of the Chelyabinsk Tractor, who later became deputy minister and laureate of the Stalin Prize. The future director of the Kharkov Tractor and Gorky Automobile Factories, Deputy Minister of the USSR Automotive Industry, Stalin Prize laureate, deputy of the Supreme Council of the USSR Pavel Yakovlevich Lisnyak was also forced to leave ChTZ as the head of the blacksmith shop. These people and dozens of others gradually formed the anti-Salzmann lobby in the highest echelons of power, which had a great influence on the outcome of the “Salzmann case”.
Why didn’t Isaac Salzman stop in time? Indeed, literally everyone in Chelyabinsk knew about the boorish tricks of the general, corruption at the factory and outright theft. In an interview, the disgraced commissar said in this connection the following:
By the way, no one arrested Zaltsman, it was part of the myth that he carefully created in the 70-80s. But the commission that arrived to hunt for the “tank king” really was, and as a result, on September 6, 1949, the bureau of the Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks made the decision “On the misbehavior of Salzman Isaak Moiseevich (member of the All-Union Communist Party of ) since 1928, party ticket No. 3010124). ” It was formulated as follows:
It should be understood here that Zaltsman’s possible involvement in the Leningrad affair and the Jewish Antifascist Committee’s case automatically led to criminal prosecution. Even a simple charge of corruption and theft at the Chelyabinsk Kirov Plant would lead to a guaranteed camp term. And here, even the awards were not withdrawn from Zaltsman. One of the versions of such a humane attitude to the “tank king” was the recognition of his organizational merits during the Great Patriotic War by Joseph Stalin himself.
All due to overwork
On October 22, 1949, non-partisan and dismissed from all posts Zaltsman was accepted as a senior technologist and deputy head of the mechanical workshop of factory No. 480 of the Ministry of Transport Engineering in the city of Murom. We must pay tribute, the former strong-willed director did not wilted and launched a whole campaign to restore his good name. First things first, it was necessary to recover in the party, and in 1951, Salzman submitted the first relevant request. They refused him.
The second petition was filed by the former People’s Commissar being in the status of senior master of the mechanical section of the workshop of the plant No. 201 in Orel. By the way, in both letters Zaltsman admits his mistakes and asks "to find an opportunity to mitigate the measure of party penalties." This insistence is understandable - non-partisan workers actually had no opportunity to move up the career ladder.
However, the party leadership was adamant. Chance to Salzman fell with Stalin's death, and he did not fail to use it - on April 13, Salzman wrote to the chairman of the Party Control Committee under the Central Committee of the CPSU Shkiryatov:
And again, all the efforts of Zaltsman idle. And in 1954, Shkiryatov himself died, who was one of the initiators of the “Zaltsman case”.
Now I had to write to Shkiryatov’s successor, Pavel Komarov, who in April 1955 read from the former People’s Commissar, we quote the original:
This time, Zaltsman was reinstated in the CPSU, but the former “tank king” was not completely satisfied with the results. The party membership card included a break in party experience from September 1949 to April 1955 - this seriously damaged the reputation of Isaac Zaltsman, who was gaining weight again (he again became the director of the plant).
He managed to get a “clean” ticket only in February 1981, when the secretariat of the XXVI Congress of the CPSU made a decision on the disgraced commissar.
In 1988, Isaac Zaltsman celebrated the 60th anniversary of his “continuous” stay in the Communist Party and died peacefully at the age of 82.
- Evgeny Fedorov
- k.a.rf, new.warheroes.ru, missiya.info, jewmil.ru
- The Case of Isaac Salzmann. Corruption at ChTZ and the disgrace of the “tank king”
Isaac Salzman. The ambiguous fate of the "tank king" of the Soviet Union
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