The secret of 1937. Why Stalin destroyed the revolutionary elite
Alexander Deineka. Defense of Sevastopol. 1942 g.
Russian city of Kitezh
Russian communists twice deceived the evil fate: 1) the first time, when they literally miraculously saved the victim in 1917-1920. Russian civilization and the state, reviving it in the form of Soviet civilization and the USSR; 2) the second time, when a finished country of the 1920s, with a demoralized people, a degrading culture, a barely living economy, a society that was rapidly slipping into a new turmoil, was transformed into an industrial superpower with a strong armed forces in an unprecedented time. In one historical in a moment Russia has done away with illiteracy, unemployment, has trained millions of specialists in science, technology and education. The breakthrough of the 1930s looked fantastic.
Moreover, the Russians offered the world their global project - an alternative to the Western, slave-owning, predatory and parasitic. The society of the future is a society of knowledge, service and creation. Man in this society was not a slave, servant or master, but a thinker, creator, scientist, toiler-creator.
It is the fabulousness, the fabulousness of the Soviet Union that explains the feverishness and crisis nature of its history. Everything was done for the first time in history, despite objective difficulties, faced with unprecedented challenges. Hence the mistakes, "excesses", throwing. The old world, feeling an unprecedented threat to itself, tried with all its might to destroy the Soviet Hyperborea, the fabulous city of Kitezh. Therefore, the masters of Paris, London and Washington nurtured and nurtured the Hitler project, gave him almost all of Europe, its resources, allowed the Fuhrer to use secret psychotechnologies to create a powerful Third Reich, and threw the "black sun" (the embodiment of the Western "new world order" , its very essence) against the Land of the Soviets. The West sought to crush the USSR at any cost before it was too late. Until the civilization of the future has grown stronger, matured and has not become invincible, overtaking the whole world for generations ahead.
However, Joseph Stalin managed to deceive the evil fate for the third time, to thwart the plans of the global "masons". The USSR withstood the monstrous, bloody massacre, tempered. The war ended with a Great Victory! The birth of a Soviet superpower equal in strength to the collective West.
Trying to avoid war
It was clear that a big war was inevitable. The crisis of capitalism, into which the West plunged headlong in the late 20s and early 30s, was to end in a world massacre. In the West and East, they deliberately raised three hotbeds of war - fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and militaristic Japan. These were "battering rams" that would crush the Versailles system and plunge the world into a terrible war. Italy started a war in Africa (Ethiopia), Japan invaded China, but Germany was to play the main role again - to start a war in Europe.
Stalin perfectly understood all the weaknesses of Russia and to the last tried to avoid being drawn into a new world war. He did not want to repeat the mistakes of the Russian tsars, who played other people's games and lost. In particular, the Russia of Nicholas II got involved in the First World War, which was alien and unnecessary to the Russian people, which ended in a terrible geopolitical, civilizational catastrophe of 1917. The Russia of the Romanovs exploded, burst due to overload and strain, but at the cost of its death saved France and England from the German iron corps. The West immediately rushed to plunder and rape the wreckage of the fallen Russian empire, making fabulous wealth out of our misfortune. And this was not the first time. So, just over a century ago, Russia saved Vienna, Berlin and London from the great Napoleon. Then Russia resisted, but the price of victory was great.
It is not surprising that Stalin maneuvered to the last, tried to stay away from the world war. He strove to ensure that the crisis of capitalism did not involve us in the war, and remained an internal affair of the Western world. He tried to play the game by his own rules. And he did a lot! We managed to avoid a war on two fronts: against Germany and Japan, which could lead Russia to death. Moscow diplomacy beat England and France: Stalin demanded a full-fledged military alliance against Germany, and when they complained and refused, he signed a non-aggression pact with Berlin. Postponed the war, won precious time. Stalin returns our lands in Western Belarus and Ukraine.
This is rarely remembered, but Joseph Vissarionovich, having conducted a successful and quick Winter Campaign against the Finns of 1939–1940, managed to avoid a war with the collective West. After all, England and France were already in a state of "strange" war with Germany and were already planning a war with the USSR. Strikes against Russia in Scandinavia and the Caucasus. For Hitler, this would be a fabulous gift - his main opponents started a war with each other. But Stalin was able to deal with Finland faster than the West expected. He returned Vyborg and strengthened the defense of Leningrad in the northwestern direction. Then Stalin returned our lands in the Baltics and Bessarabia. The defense in the westerly direction is getting stronger.
And now the German divisions, in contrast to 1914, are in Paris. The British are defeated and flee to their island. The Germans are beginning to "get" the British Empire, which has spoiled us so much in the past. And Russian soldiers do not fight the Germans and are in no hurry to become "cannon fodder" in the hands of London and Washington. World War began without us! The Western elite and the "financial international" could not forgive the red emperor for this. Active work is underway to return everything to the old trajectory, to play off the Germans and Russians. It is worth noting that Westerners (including Russian) still cannot forget this failure. In every way, repeating the myths about the "bloody executioner" Stalin, his "conspiracy" with Hitler in the summer of 1939, because of which the world war allegedly began. Completely hushing up the facts of their collusion with the Fuhrer (surrender of the Rhineland, Austria, Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc.), attempts to incite the Reich against the USSR.
On the weaknesses of the Union
Joseph Stalin knew better than anyone the weaknesses of the Land of the Soviets. After all, the catastrophe of 1917 was not far off, not even a quarter of a century had passed. Society was still unstable. New generations have already become the nucleus of a society of service and creation. We were full of energy and enthusiasm. The old generations were partly re-educated, partly pulled into the past. Many people, especially on the outskirts, dreamed, perhaps just at the subconscious level, to return to the past, to a stable "swamp". With khans, bays, brothels and taverns instead of research laboratories, wonders of science and technology. The process of Russia's transformation was only taking the first steps; it could be interrupted.
Therefore, the USSR of the late 30s - early 40s, as a system, was unstable. The catastrophe of 1917, its overcoming, the breakthrough of the 30s demanded unprecedented sacrifices from the people, millions died, other millions hated the Soviet regime and the communists. Someone suffered in the case, someone because of their personal limitations, someone innocently. There were many angry people in the country, “former” or their relatives, those who did not accept the new world. They could become the "fifth column" to support the invaders. There were also many simply weak people, weak-willed, indifferent, ready at the first threat to quit weapon, run home or surrender. Thus, the USSR really resembled a colossus with feet of clay.
Tension also reigned in the Soviet elite. For a long time, the myth was implanted that Stalin was an omnipotent and omnipresent dictator, an absolute monarch who cut reality at his own discretion. However, these are fairy tales.
The drama is that the Soviet elite was not united. In 1917 and later there were two powerful wings: the Russian communists (Stalinists), who dreamed of building a "bright future" for the people; internationalists, Trotskyists, who viewed Russia and the Russian people as fuel for the world revolution and the construction of the future "new world order" (again, according to Western patterns).
At first, internationalists prevailed in the upper echelons of the Soviet state. Trotsky was seen as Lenin's successor. People with such views made up a significant part of the state apparatus of the early USSR, the top of the Red Army and the Cheka. They did not want to build any new Russian state to replace the collapsed empire. They were pure destroyers, ready to demolish the entire Russian civilization to the ground. They destroyed the Russian faith, Russian monuments, shrines, history and culture. They removed from Russian textbooks Alexander Nevsky and Dmitry Donskoy, Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Suvorov, Alexander Pushkin and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Russia was for them a "prison of the peoples", the Russians were "colonizers" and "slaves".
Stalin and his supporters, who prevailed in the lower echelons of the party, created a new Russian (Soviet) state, a power. Therefore, they returned the classical school of culture and art. They stopped the destruction of the Russian Church. The achievements of socialism were objectively in the interests of the people.
With such a "train", in essence, a "fifth column" that wanted to return to the idea of a world revolution, use the resources and wealth of Russia, make the country a testing ground for creating another variation of a new global order, this could not be done.
This is the secret of 1937, the "great purge." It was necessary to "clean up", to destroy most of the revolutionary elite, as completely unfit for creative activity. In building a new civilization, a society of service and knowledge. Not only unsuitable, but also harmful. After all, she did not let new growth upstairs, strangled those who knew how to build and create. These people could be subversive, destroy, speak beautifully, but not create. Among them were people with a bourgeois-kulak psychology, imitators, opportunists, bureaucrats who did not want development, they wanted "stability", a well-fed swamp. Privatization of the people's state property.
Mystery of the 37th
Obviously, in such an environment, a "swamp", the Germans or the British would easily form a "fifth column" that would strike with the outbreak of World War II. Therefore, Stalin carried out a "cleansing" of the party-state and military nobility. Internationalists, Trotskyists, the former "Leninist Guard", the rotten top of the armed forces and special services were destroyed. It is clear that not all of them. But the blow was so powerful that we went through the Great War without serious internal problems, sabotage, unrest, uprisings, rebellions and revolutions. After all, it was the “fifth column” that killed the Russian Empire, and not the Germans defeated it in a direct battle. Despite all the numerous problems, tsarist Russia withstood the war, she was killed by a stab in the back.
Joseph Vissarionovich won a new victory - he defeated the "fifth column" (How Stalin defeated the "fifth column"). He did not allow the internal "rats" to overthrow Soviet power when the next European invasion began. But the surviving hidden Trotskyists, party officials and bureaucrats who do not want to go into the future will hate Stalin (among them, obviously, Khrushchev was also).
The Soviet leader was going to take another important step into the future - to limit the power of the Communist Party, remove it from the leadership of the state apparatus and the economy, leaving in its jurisdiction only the setting of strategic goals, ideology and personnel work. The communists were to become a kind of "order of the sword-bearers", by their example showing the way to a brighter future. But the party officials did not want to give up their power and sabotaged this process. Things were going hard, accompanied by purges, restructuring of the administrative apparatus, the people's commissariats-ministries. Before the war, Stalin was unable to solve this problem. After the war, he wanted to return to these plans, but they managed to eliminate him. After that, the irreversible degradation of the party and the Soviet state began, culminating in the catastrophe of 1985–1993.
Therefore, Hitler and the forces of the West standing behind him could well count on a possible major coup in Moscow in the event of a new big war and a major defeat for the Red Army. The defeat of the main forces of the Red Army in the western direction, the encirclement and capture of entire armies, the loss of the largest cities and the most important industrial regions - and Stalin either capitulates by signing a new Brest, or it will be removed by party functionaries and the military. Then, for the sake of maintaining power, they capitulate to Germany. The Reich will receive "living space" in the East - the Baltic States, Western Belarus, Ukraine, Crimea, the oil regions of the Caucasus. The remaining Russia, possibly split into several puppet state formations, will be a colony of the "Eternal Reich". The new government, most likely, will no longer be communist. Military dictatorship (for such a role, for example, Tukhachevsky was prepared) or nationalist regimes, setting an example of the Nazi Reich. The Communist Party will be banned, collective farms will be disbanded, part of the economy will be privatized, some will be placed under the control of the Germans (strategically important enterprises, mines).
However, Stalin learned well the lessons of the fallen Russian Empire. The "fifth column" in the party-state elite, the army, and the special services was neutralized. "Fresh blood" made the party, the state apparatus, the armed forces and the NKVD healthier. The forces of the national separatists and Basmachi were largely defeated even before the war. Hotbeds of national separatism during the war, as in Chechnya and Crimea, were mercilessly and swiftly extinguished. This was an objectively correct step.
Immaturity of the Soviet industrial civilization
Another fact of the Soviet Union's weakness was the immaturity of the industrial civilization. The bulk of the officers and soldiers of the Red Army were former peasants or children of the first generation of workers who had just settled in the cities. The bearers of archaic, peasant Russia were objectively inferior in the "war of motors" to the children of the urban, machine-industrial German civilization. The townspeople in the industrial-type war beat representatives of the agrarian society. The Germans in their industrial, technical revolution were several generations ahead of the Russians. And they remembered their technical superiority in the First World War, when German artillery destroyed entire regiments of Russian soldiers.
The USSR, unlike the Russian Empire, already had a quantitative superiority over Germany in the number of aircraft, tanks and guns. But it was quality. The machinery was run by former peasants. By the summer of 1941, the Red Army was not yet a single combat mechanism, like the Wehrmacht. Problems remained with management, organization, communication and interaction.
We have not yet learned to fully utilize the new technical strength of the Soviet armed forces. For example, tank troops. By the beginning of the war, the USSR had the best medium tank in the world - the T-34. But at the same time he was not provided with means of communication and observation. The same is true in the organization of armored formations. The German tank division included motorized infantry, artillery, anti-tank, engineer, reconnaissance, and other subunits. The result was a single, well-coordinated and rather perfect combat mechanism that could independently solve combat missions. Also, German mobile units worked well with the Luftwaffe. The Soviet mechanized corps were deprived of such opportunities, inferior in organization. And while we were learning from the Germans on the battlefield, we washed ourselves with blood. The Germans were good "teachers", pretty soon Soviet tankers will become the best in the world.
The Russians learned quickly and soon began to beat the best army in the West - the Wehrmacht. It was the agrarian, peasant past that became one of the reasons for the catastrophes of 1941. Moreover, this peasant beginning extended to the command staff, who made a lot of mistakes in the war. Before the war, the Soviet command was carried away by the number of divisions, mechanized corps, aircraft and tanks. Forgetting about the technologies of organization and communication. The German army at the beginning of the war was better organized and controlled, had a unique experience of victorious campaigns. High fighting spirit, faith in one's own "invincibility".
Thus, from a purely material standpoint, the USSR had an advantage over the Reich. Moscow knew that Germany was not ready for a long war of attrition. But psychologically, the Soviet system was young, immature, and unstable. Society and the Soviet elite were still quite unstable, were in a phase of transition to a new, higher stage. Hitler felt that Russia could be crushed with a blitzkrieg. He viewed the Red Army as a huge, poorly organized and controlled horde that could be dissected, dispersed, surrounded and destroyed. Hundreds of divisions were "raw", the former peasants had just mastered tractors and moved to tanks.
Stalin was also aware of this, who did his best to delay the start of the war. He guessed about the "dampness" of the new industrial Red Army. The war with Finland was a good lesson. The armed forces of the USSR and society suffered from many growing pains. It was necessary to play for time, hence the caution and flexibility of Moscow in relations with Berlin.
Invasion. K. Vasiliev. The beginning of the war. German troops enter the territory of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra in a column. The Assumption Cathedral, a monument of Russian architecture of the XNUMXth century, was blown up. Thunderclouds hung over the ancient Russian city. Fascist invaders are advancing. But the Russian saints are still standing on the dilapidated church. And we believe that victory will be ours
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