Anatoly Wasserman: “I am a Stalinist”
Almost half of Russians in one degree or another positively assess the role of Stalin in our stories. In an interview with Anatoly Wasserman ILI AZAR (“Lenta.ru”), the mythology of modern Stalinism was embodied with almost exhaustive fullness.
- You are in favor of returning the name Stalingrad to Volgograd, and six days a year seem insufficient to you. Why?
- (sighs) Mainly because I really do not like slander. Over the past seven or eight years, I finally became convinced that all the dogs hanged on Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili are strangers. That he is accused of crimes that were not at all or that were committed by other people. And in the crimes with which he himself struggled as much as he could.
Another thing is that his strength and capabilities were extremely limited. I myself worked for a long time as a political consultant and during that time I had a lot of cases to make sure that the capabilities of any leader were small, especially when he wanted to do something that was not liked by his subordinates.
In the activities of Dzhugashvili it was manifested very clearly. For example, there is quite reliable evidence that he with all his forces opposed the Great Terror, that the terror was initiated by the efforts of two groups whose interests coincided. This is, firstly, middle-level party secretaries - regional and republican, and secondly, one of the groupings in the leadership of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, who believed that the role of the commissariat in determining the country's policy should be greater.
Unfortunately, a significant part of the recording of the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU on June 1937 was destroyed, so it is difficult to say how things really developed on it. But according to all the indirect data, it is clear that the decision about the Great Terror was pushed by rank-and-file members of the Central Committee, where the majority were regional secretaries, and the Politburo headed by Dzhugashvili strongly resisted.
We often find ourselves in the thrall of a picture painted by Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, - according to it there was a one-man tyrant who controlled everything and who all obeyed simply out of fear. Whereas the people's commissar of internal affairs, and the secretary of the Central Committee, Nikolai Ivanovich Ezhov, was not even formally subordinate to Dzhugashvili. As a party discipline, he could follow the decisions of the Central Committee, but not the sole decisions of the secretary general.
Moreover, under Khrushchev, an event occurred that completely reversed this picture. I mean 1957 the year when the Politburo decided to send Khrushchev to resign, but two of his supporters - Defense Minister Zhukov and Secretary of the Central Committee Furtsev - urgently organized a plenum of the Central Committee, and he dismissed all the Politbureau except Khrushchev. This is a very real balance of power. When the Plenum took up some position, the Politburo could no longer resist it. I can talk for a long time, but it would be safer to name two books where the then picture is objectively expounded: “Khrushchev. The creators of terror ”Elena Anatolyevna Prudnikova and“ Ina Stalin ”by Yury Nikolaevich Zhukov.
So, I do not see any valid reasons for renaming Stalingrad to Volgograd and I consider it necessary to return the name taken away unreasonably.
- This is a rather unorthodox look at Stalin. Do you think so long?
“Back in 2004 — 2005, I was piously convinced that the bloody tyrant Stalin simply did not manage to kill the whole country by a miracle, I unconditionally believed in Nikita’s grandfather’s tales. Fortunately, I have since become familiar with a variety of materials from a variety of studies, both for and against, compared them and made sure that Khrushchev was composing stories about a bloody tyrant, standing in front of a mirror. That is, he attributed Dzhugashvili all his own shortcomings. It was Dzhugashvili who actively and in various ways tried to resist the Great Terror. It was he who, through the January-February Plenum of 1938, pressed through a ruling by which the party organization did not have the right to immediately exclude arrested persons from its ranks, and was obliged to monitor the entire course of the investigation. It was he who, with a series of personnel manipulations, replaced Yezhov with Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, who, thanks to the previous experience of the KGB work, did not fall into the traps that Yezhov had placed in his time, his closest subordinates, and managed to stop the meat grinder of terror.
- That is, this Beria stopped the terror?
- It is Beria. 17 November 1938 of the year he became the people's commissioner and immediately gave a series of orders that stopped the terror. Moreover, since by that time he had been the deputy commissar deputy for several months and was oriented in the internal kitchen, he achieved that the subordinates could not commit a coup. Then all the blood shed by Ezhov was piled on Beria, but in reality he carried out only the Great Purge. In 1939 — 40-s, most of the crimes of the Great Terror were investigated and most of the perpetrators incurred deserved punishment. True, not all: for example, Khrushchev, on which blood to the holes in the nose, survived.
Khrushchev beautifully out of responsibility. At the end of 1937, he offered to inspect the state of affairs in Ukraine, headed the inspection commission, and she naturally came to the conclusion that things were going badly. The entire leadership of Ukraine was withdrawn, many were later arrested, and the commission occupied the vacant posts almost at full strength. Khrushchev became the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, and thus, when they analyzed what was going on in Moscow during the Great Terror, he stood aside. And in Ukraine, he very competently played the executive fool. Since they are always needed, he was scolded and not seriously punished.
- What about the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, the case of doctors?
- The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee is most likely a case organized with the direct participation of Dzhugashvili. Although it is impossible to exclude the excesses of the executor, when the matter was brought to a greater punishment than the one that was originally expected. There is a problem in international relations. The Soviet Union was the main organizer of the creation of the State of Israel and its victories in the war of independence. After this victory, Israel was forced to reorient to the United States of America, as it was in dire need of funds for the resettlement of immigrants and the restoration of what had been destroyed during the war. The USSR — itself devastated by the war — could not help, and the MUH, since the Cold War was already under way, in exchange for their help, demanded that Israel sharply turn its back on the Soviet Union. In politics, this is not forgiven to anyone. I don’t know whose idea, to put it mildly, is not a very bright head, came up with the idea to study the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the hope that, at least for fear of the fate of its relatives, Israel will reconsider this position. And then - the horse dose of stubbornness on both sides.
With the case of doctors all smarter. First, most of the defendants in this case are completely Russian. Secondly, apparently, the initial impetus for the case was the fact that a high-ranking doctor — not having a regular mass practice — has significantly greater chances of being mistaken than a private doctor who constantly works with many patients. Actually, the whole thing began with disagreements in the diagnosis of a member of the Politburo Zhdanov. When the investigation began, first of all, a couple of investigators, including the sensational Ryumin later, tried to get rid of this case as soon as they realized that the case was an appraisal case: there is no reliable evidence, but they have to rely only on conflicting expert opinions. Ryumin was later announced the main organizer of this case, but, as far as I understand, he was just trying to get out of it. Then someone started building anti-Semitic rumors around this case, despite the fact that the majority of the defendants in this case are perfectly flawless Russians. There were very few Jews there, but it was easier to make a fuss around this business, having laid emphasis on them. Anyone who is not involved in this case is Dzhugashvili because it was not possible for a person of rather serious age - and suffering from a fair bunch of diseases - to voluntarily order to arrest his attending physician without bothering to replace him.
“And the killings of Kirov and Meyerhold?”
- And why, one wonders, did Dzhugashvili kill Kostrikov (Kirov), who supported him in all internal feuds without exception? They were friends of houses from time immemorial, Kostrikov worked for many years in Transcaucasia, which Dzhugashvili, even when he moved to Moscow, was taken very close to his heart. Kostrikov often stayed at Dzhugashvili’s house. But this is not the case: when political interests compel one can forget about personal friendship. But there were no political interests to divorce them. Dzhugashvili had no sense in killing him.
As for Mayergold, the cat’s tears are molded to the cat. Karl Emilevich Mayergold, the Ostsee German, in the pre-revolutionary years, was renamed Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold and began to pretend to be a Jew, because the attitude towards the Germans was rather tense, and the intelligentsia considered the Jews to be an absolutely persecuted people. So, Mayergold wrote so much denunciations to his colleagues that sooner or later someone had to write a denunciation to him. It is not known who wrote, since the criminal cases of all those rehabilitated under Khrushchev were simply destroyed. There was only a certificate of rehabilitation. Therefore, it is absolutely impossible to say who accused him of what.
I can give a generalized statistics. From 17 November 1938 to 22 June 1941, less than half of the convictions under the political articles issued during the Great Terror were revised. Of the 2,5 million, 100 000 (of 700) had time to revise the death sentences - those that did not have time to carry out - and about 1 a million non-death sentences. Of these, between 200 and 300, 000 - I don’t remember exactly, I read it long ago - were generally found to be unfounded, and those sentenced were fully rehabilitated, returned to their previous posts if possible. Even from 200 to 300, 000 sentences were re-qualified from political to purely criminal ones.
Why? The then Criminal Code was written in the 1922 year, edited in the 1926 year. At that time, they still quite sincerely believed that all crimes were committed due to some external circumstances - it means that circumstances need to be changed in order for a person to stop being a criminal, and it is ridiculous to punish a person for what he did under pressure. Therefore, for example, the maximum term for rape was five years. What should the investigator do if he sees that there is some kind of outright bastard sitting in front of him who in five years will not return to normal? He sees that a Komsomol member is raped and writes “an attempt on an activist of a public organization” - and this is treason against the Motherland, and you can give up to ten years. So, Beria ordered from all such sentences to remove the political component, leaving a pure criminal act, and continue not to arouse it under the policy. But since 1946, right after he left the post of People’s Commissar of the Interior, this practice has resumed, since the code has remained the same. Only with 1 in January of 1961, when the new Criminal Code came into force, did this push-up stop.
“You said that Stalin had no reason to kill Kirov.” So after all he was accused of unreasonable atrocities. And you whitewash him completely.
- As far as I can judge from all the world experience, people with murder delusions do not stay up in leading positions for a dozen years. And Dzhugashvili from 5 in May 1941 was the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, that is, he had the highest executive power in the country. I suspect that if his colleagues had reason to fear him, they would have found a way not to miss him in this place. In fact, he was dragged in for several years in a row. Back in 1930, Scriabin (Molotov) after Rykov’s resignation from the post of chairman of the Council of People's Commissars proposed Dzhugashvili for this post, but he flatly refused, and Scriabin himself had to sit in that chair for 11 years, constantly reminding Dzhugashvili that this was his place. Dzhugashvili went for it just before the war, when it became clear that the management chain from the analytical center, such as Dzhugashvili, had to be shortened to direct executors. For all his remarkable merits, Scriabin was not an analyst, but a strictly practitioner. Dzhugashvili differed precisely analytical abilities, for which the same Khrushchev declared him incapable of any analysis.
- That is, there is not a single death on Stalin's conscience?
- No, some death, of course, on his conscience. I think that if I were offered to judge those people whose fate was decided with the direct participation of Dzhugashvili, I would have decided the same way. For example, Postyshev, whom Khrushchev was the first to declare an innocent victim of bloody repressions, managed to be noted in Ukraine during the period of the famous Holodomor. The famine was then all over the grain-growing Russia, but it was in Ukraine that the local authorities thought of hiding the famine from the central leadership and as a result brought the matter to a natural disaster.
- That is, here Stalin had nothing to do with it?
- Well no. Here several unpleasant factors overlapped each other.
First, a drought, and a huge one, which struck not only our country. The same Galicians shout a lot about the Holodomor, although Galicia was then part of Poland. But the drought does not dismantle the boundaries, and she got most of Poland.
Secondly, the transition to collective methods of cultivation. Not all the leaders of the new collective farms could organize the work of the team — and there were plenty of people willing to take a ride on someone else’s hump and only pretend to work.
Elena Prudnikova in the magazine “Expert” published a series of articles where she analyzed the real state of agriculture in that period. It remains surprising that the number of victims was only 3 million. True, according to official data, the victims were 7 million, including 3 million in Ukraine, but this is the result of a statistical bias.
Simultaneously with collectivization, industrialization was going on, since the first was needed in order to introduce more efficient economic technologies and to use as much as possible the agricultural machinery that would be created in the new plants. In general, it worked, because after such a famine there was no longer a country, although before that the famine was very noticeable every four years.
In Ukraine, the demographic decline in population, that is, the difference between what was actually and what could have happened if there were no shocks, is three million, but of these, the excess mortality is only a million, and the other two are people, gone to work in new industrial regions. In new places, they indicated the nationality of "Russian", because only a fanatical separatist could have thought of calling themselves the contemptuous Polish nickname "Ukrainian." In our vocabulary this corresponds to the word "provincial". Only after the introduction of passports with the “nationality” column did the accounting system emerge from the words of the most accountable. Therefore, it turns out a huge decline in the population of Ukraine, but only an insignificant part (not more than a third) is associated with hunger. If we sum up the demographic loss data of all regions hit by hunger, 7 million are typed, but if we take the statistics for the country as a whole, then the demographic decline is 3 million, and everything else is such a migration.
- But you talked about Postyshev.
“He was one of those who led Ukraine at that time — and whose organizational shoals led to the fact that hunger in Ukraine was more acute than in other regions. In the “Raised virgin soil” the mass slaughter of working cattle in the Kuban is mentioned, because everyone hoped that they would eat their ox and work on the collective farm. And the collective farm has no other property, except that the members of the collective farm contributed to it. In central Russia, where mass slaughter was already experienced in 1921, they knew that it turned out to be a disastrous famine, since there was nothing to plow on. They took harsh measures there, threatened them with criminal penalties, and stopped the case, so after a drought, they were able to plant. And in Ukraine, the leadership did not notice it in time.
Putin gradually overcomes in himself the same delusions that I had overcome in myself seven or eight years ago.
Not to mention that Postyshev was one of the main organizers of the introduction of the very concept of "Ukrainian", and for this, in my opinion, he already deserved the death penalty - as the organizer of separatism.
By the way, another small but amusing detail: according to the number of people executed per capita, the regions headed by Khrushchev, Postyshev and Eyhe were in the first places in the Great Terror. Postyshev and Eiche were shot in 1939 year, and Khrushchev was the first to rehabilitate them and called the innocent victims of the bloody tyrant Stalin. So, sorry, who is the bloody tyrant here?
In general, unfortunately, it was only in the last decades that the then picture began to be revealed in all its details - huge archival funds were involved in the mass scientific circulation. It is important that they are huge, since it is easy to fake two or three documents. The entire famous Katyn special folder consists exclusively of fakes, and this has been proven long ago. Genuine there except a cardboard cover.
- That is, the Poles are not the NKVD shot?
- Of course. Moreover, the Germans themselves disclosed material evidence of their guilt in 1943, but then did not attach any significance to this. Modern researchers have looked closely at German documents and photographs of the 43 year and were convinced that they contain undisputed evidence of German guilt.
So, you cannot fake a large array of documents, as documents are interconnected. For example, 10 — 12 years ago, an article was published in Lechaim magazine that there was no plan for the deportation of Soviet Jews in 1953 in the year. In general, it is quite difficult to prove the non-existence of something, hence the presumption of innocence. Interestingly, evidence was found in the archives of the Ministry of Railways. It was found that traces of each deportation of the Soviet peoples remained.
By the way, there were a lot of them. For example, back in 1936, all Koreans were evicted from the Far East to Central Asia, because then the KGB could not distinguish them from the Japanese, and relations with Tokyo deteriorated sharply when Japan began the conquest of China, and we were afraid that the Japanese would send their agents under the guise of Koreans.
Since deportation is not a punishment, but resettlement for technical reasons, we prepared it very carefully. It was necessary not only to pre-order the rolling stock, adapted for mass transportation of people with a large household goods. It was necessary to bring additional food to the stations, to deploy a medical service. It was necessary to reschedule the transportation schedules to ensure the passage of additional levels. All deportations were left in the archives of the Ministry of Railways, and not only was there no evidence of the deportation plans of the Jews (one could say that all the documents were eaten by the bloody gebnya), but an enormous number of documents about current planning and current work remained, and they were in different archives are mutually consistent.
In addition, many memoirs were published, which were not published, including because they went against the current political line. The famous artillery designer Vasily Gavrilovich Grabin describes in detail the meeting with Dzhugashvili, at which he attended. From this description it is completely obvious: Grabin dealt with a first-class leader and manager from God, who simply had no reason to deal with massacres. He, on the contrary, squeezed everything out of people precisely by the will and precisely by managerial means, and not by surgical ones.
- You said that deportations are not punishment. Deportations of the Caucasian peoples, too?
- Looks like no. For a long time I myself believed that it was a punishment smeared evenly. For what the Crimean Tatars or Vainakhs managed to do during the war, according to the laws of wartime, almost every man of childbearing age should be shot or - under mitigating circumstances - imprisonment for 20 — 25. Since this would mean the total annihilation of all the people already in the next generation, they simply smeared this punishment evenly around the whole people, and it turned out that they would be expelled.
But a book by Oleg Kozinkin was recently published, where he investigated the question: which peoples were deported and which were not. For deportation from the same North Caucasus, it was not enough to be guilty, but it was also necessary that the leadership of the relevant region could not guarantee the safety of cargo transportation. That is, the Vainakhs were located near one of the key deposits at that time, the Kalmyks were near the main routes of export of Baku oil to the center of the country, and they were deported. But other nations, which gave about the same number of defectors and collaborators, did not touch, because the leadership of these peoples proved that they could take the situation under control and prevent sabotage.
- So this was a humane idea?
- Yes, since any other options that were more in line with the written law would have resulted in a significantly higher number of victims.
- Maybe even now it is worth solving the problem of the Caucasus?
- No, now the problem of the Caucasus cannot be solved this way. Now, our external enemy, fortunately, is not on the territory of our country, and we can afford a less fast-acting tool. In particular, deal with the same Vainakhs, combining local whip and federal gingerbread. Chechnya was headed by one of the former militants, who knows well how they act, and while he successfully fights with them, Chechnya receives quite substantial subsidies. There are not so many direct subsidies from the federal budget, contrary to legends, but the fact that the share of tax revenues remaining in Chechnya, the largest in the country, is much more serious help than external subsidies.
But if it came to open confrontation, then we would have to consider the issue of deportation seriously.
- So already two times there was an open confrontation.
- No, I mean open confrontation not with Vainakhs. At the same time, we also fought against the external enemy, who used the Vainakhs as his weapon.
- So the militants are financed by Arab countries.
- Yes, but so far it has not reached an open war with an external enemy, it is possible to limit the supply of militants, and therefore there is no need to resort to acute measures. If such a need arises, it is not from the fact that the evil Putin gored the good Medvedev, but from objective reasons with which both Putin and Medvedev are equally considered.
- Who is the external enemy?
- (sighs) The United States of America has long been the only export product left - instability. I proved it with elementary economic arithmetic. So, as long as they do not risk introducing instability into our territory directly on the wings of the B-52 and the "tomahawks", because they know that they will get the change in the same coin. So for now, we can allow ourselves to be kind.
- How old is there?
- Hard to say. The fact is that there are several opposing processes in the United States themselves. For them, the ideal option would be out of the WTO, closing the borders for imports and restoring its own production. But such a move is very beneficial to manufacturers, but disadvantageous to merchants. I have said and written many times: a very long time there has been a clear confrontation between production workers and traders. Although these things seem to be interconnected, but, roughly speaking, the merchants do not care what to sell - domestic products or imported ones, and therefore the opposition is objective. Accordingly, in the same United States of America, starting with the assassination of John Fitzgerald Josephovich Kennedy, the producers are traditionally grouped around Republicans, and traders around the Democratic Party. In my small homeland, Ukraine, production workers are grouped around the Party of Regions, and traders have chosen the party of the red part of the political spectrum. In Russia, production workers group around Putin, and traders around Medvedev, and, as far as I can tell, completely independent of the will of Putin and Medvedev themselves, they simply turned out to be the most convenient crystallization centers.
- So how many deaths on Stalin? Ten thousand or how much?
- On his conscience the death of about a thousand people whom he knew personally and with whom he worked. But here, not everything is clear. For example, Marshal Egorov, with whom Dzhugashvili was on the South-Western Front during the Polish 1920 campaign of the year, was included in the list of persons suspected of crimes involving the death penalty (the so-called first category) three times. Twice Dzhugashvili himself deleted him from this list. It is not known what arguments he gave for the third time: during rehabilitation, the case was destroyed.
There is a sin after the knowledge, when we evaluate events based on what we know now, and do not think at all about what these events were like for people who lived then and knew only what was available at that time. So, proceeding from the post-knowledge, they are trying every now and then in various variants of alternative history to replay the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. But still, even among the most avid alternatives, the war first develops extremely unfavorably for our country. With the most successful hands, it is possible to win not in four years, but in three.
- And the fact that the war began to fail for the USSR, Stalin is also not to blame? He's a commanding staff cut out.
- From June 1937 to June 1941, about 37 — 38 000 people of middle and senior commanders dropped out of the ranks of the Armed Forces of the USSR. Of these, for reasons related to political distrust, approximately 9000 people. Of these 9000 people, 5000 people were subsequently arrested and convicted. The rest dropped out of the ranks of the Armed Forces due to illness, death, attaining the maximum age, and most of all for drinking, party and dancing with fights. Of the total number of retired people, about half were subsequently returned to the Armed Forces, including 5000 people who were dismissed due to political distrust, and 2000 were convicted under the “treason” clause. This is not like a massacre.
The reasons for military failures in another. For the same four years, the USSR Armed Forces have grown fivefold. The existing higher military institutions simply did not have time to train commanders. In addition, in order to become a commander, you need to stay at least two or three years ago at the previous post, and it is important not to skip steps. Because if you command a regiment, you must set the battalion's combat missions, but for this you need to know its capabilities.
Army General Pavlov, who commanded the Western Front at the beginning of the war, is often accused of treason. There are some reasons for that - it hurts strangely that he behaved in the last pre-war days. But one of the most serious charges against Pavlov is the loss of command and control. This is indeed an absolutely unforgivable sin for the commander, and it deserves the death penalty. With the start of hostilities, he began to rush along the divisions of his front, trying to give immediate tasks to each of them. While he was in one division, others did not know what to do.
Why is that? Because Pavlov actually commanded no more than a division, then he went through several steps of a military career as chief of the Main Armored Directorate and, accordingly, did not have a division command skills. Therefore, he did not know what to demand from the army.
At the beginning of the war, we were experiencing growth sickness at its peak. When the lieutenant aviation in a couple of years he turns out to be a lieutenant general and leads the USSR Air Force — and this is exactly what happened with Rychagov — it is clear that he will make one managerial failure after another.
By the way, about Rychagov. At the next meeting, Dzhugashvili talked about a huge number of accidents. Literally every day at least one military plane crashed. Levers said: "You are forcing us to fly on the coffins." Dzhugashvili sharply accelerated his usual passages around the office, changed his face and said: “You shouldn't have said so” - that is, not only with an unusually strong Georgian accent, but also with an error in constructing the phrase. Again, walked back and forth and dismissed the meeting.
Usually, immediately after this, in the stories about Rychagov they say that he was arrested and shot in October 1941. So at the same time they miss that the meeting was held in January, and he was arrested on June 24. According to the results of the meeting, he was removed from his post as Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force and sent to the Frunze Academy to complete his studies on what he did not have time to learn in practice. It was the Air Force commander who was responsible for accepting aircraft at the factories, and if he stated that he was being forced to fly on coffins, then this means that he tried to transfer responsibility for Dzhugashvili for not fulfilling his official duties. I suspect that any of the subsequent Soviet leaders would not be limited to sending Rychagov to study. He was arrested after two days of war became obvious complete failure of aviation.
- That is, Stalin - a brilliant commander in chief?
- Not brilliant, but very talented. He became commander-in-chief when a serious failure was revealed with the then people's commissar of defense, Marshal Tymoshenko. Initially, the role of Dzhugashvili was only to listen to the opinion of several military experts - Tymoshenko, the Chief of the General Staff Shaposhnikov and several other people, compare their decisions and estimate which ones are correct. He began to make independent strategic decisions only in 1942.
At first, these were quite obvious solutions, such as the need to press under Rzhev, even though Rzhev himself did not decide anything. The point there was simply in the configuration of the road network of that time: it determined that the side that lost ground in the center immediately got in trouble on the flanks of the front line.
The unobvious strategic decision dates back to 1944. "Ten Stalinist strikes", when the sequence of strikes was chosen such that the Germans constantly tried to transfer troops from one sector of the front to another and were constantly delayed. This is the highest strategic pilotage. And this was his first decision, which certainly deserves the highest praise.
Prior to that, he made decisions obviously necessary, but such that no one else could take responsibility for them. Who, besides him, could take responsibility for dismantling the already launched Baikal-Amur Mainline and moving the sleepers to the left bank of the Volga, in order to unexpectedly for the Germans to build a railway there and ensure the accumulation of troops for the famous Stalingrad counter-offensive?
- But what about the accusations of excessive casualties of the Soviet army during the war?
“If we count the results of the entire war, then even according to the most advantageous estimates for our enemy, for every three enemy soldiers there were four dead Soviet soldiers. This is quite a decent level of losses.
Such a situation was formed because in the beginning we were losing far more than they were, but at the end of the war they were losing more. The causes of losses are objective. Just look at Poland. Until the mid-1930s, it was militarily stronger than Germany. The Poles even planned offensive operations against East Prussia from the beginning of the war. On September 1, hostilities began there; on September 17, the government was evacuated from Poland. For nine months, a strange war continued with France, which had almost the same number of armed forces as Germany, and covered with a huge fortification line - the Maginot Line. France had more tanks, and her tanks were more powerful than the German. And her army was generally considered the strongest in Europe. On May 10, 1940, Germany went on the offensive; on June 22, France surrendered. Against the backdrop of these events, it is somehow difficult to blame Dzhugashvili.
- You consider him the most powerful leader of the 20th century and one of the most powerful leaders in the whole history of Russia.
- Yes exactly. Because I see what he did and what others did.
- And among the Russian leaders, who else is comparable with him?
- Catherine the Great, absolutely no doubt, Peter the Great, with some reservations, since he, unlike Dzhugashvili, did not spare people. Perhaps, Alexander III the Peacemaker, but this is debatable. Under him, serious industrialization began, but unlike Dzhugashvili, he did not control the direction of industrialization. It is known that half a century before the First World War, Russia showed the best development rates in the world in terms of formal indicators. But let's see the share in world production of the three most rapidly developing countries: the United States of America, the German Empire and the Russian Empire. We take as a starting point 1874 year - for 40 years before the start of the war. Although the pace of development was better in Russia, but at the same time, its share in world production over the years lagged behind the shares of Germany and the United States of America. We ran ahead of everyone and still lagged behind, because we not only developed the economy for foreign investment, but also created conditions for the most favorable conditions for investors. The French have invested very large funds in the Russian railways, but they developed mainly roads running in the latitudinal direction - from central Russia to the western border. The French were interested in the fact that in the event of the outbreak of hostilities to speed up the mobilization of the Russian army. As a result, already in Soviet times, it was necessary to develop railways of the meridian direction. We had to finish them.
- And Putin?
“For the time being, I basically see that Putin is gradually overcoming in himself the same errors that I had overcome in myself seven or eight years ago.” I hope that he will continue on this path and become the leader of the highest level.
- Liberal misconceptions?
- Not only. The concepts of liberal in our country, unfortunately, are interpreted rather vaguely. But unlike Medvedev, he never said anything like a recognition of Soviet guilt at Katyn. Unlike Medvedev, Putin has never said that it is necessary to privatize everything immediately. In my opinion, he is gradually retreating from the fiery liberalism and libertarianism, which he was infected with in the St. Petersburg mayor's office under Anatoly Alexandrovich Sobchak. He is more difficult to do this way, because he has less time for distracted thoughts. But it is moving in the right direction.
- In the direction of state socialism, which you now profess?
- Yes. Recent research with my participation has revealed that by the 2020 year conditions in the field of information technologies will mature, making socialism in all respects more profitable than capitalism. Moreover, it is already clear that, in principle, it is possible to make a new transition from capitalism to socialism in the unstressed mode, that is, so that no one is hurt and everyone gets more than he lost. But so far it is known only at the level of the theorem of existence, that is, it is not yet clear exactly how to do this. Some features of the transition route have yet to be explored, but I hope that we will have time to complete these studies long before 2020.
The Bilalov and Magomedov brothers start to get into a lot of trouble, which means that the Silver Rain radio station and the Dozhd TV channel may soon reduce their salaries to their employees.
In our country, socialism is traditionally associated with a deficit and with a gulag. So, the deficit really was - due to the limited information technologies - and, accordingly, in the new socialism it will be overcome. But associating socialism with the gulag is at least illegal, and we need to get rid of this false association long before 2020, so that we will meet the immense expansion of human capabilities with joy, not with fright.
- GULAG what - was not there too?
- So it is now, but it is called GUIN. And there are many more people per capita in it than in the GULAG. And in the United States of America has its own prisons. In addition, in the 1930-s there were camps of public works - in terms of content worse than our GULAG. There are always places of imprisonment and, I am afraid, there will always be.
But socialism as a whole did not depend on the presence of the Gulag. The myth started by the Americans is very popular among us that Soviet goods are cheaper because they used forced labor in the USSR. Given the content of protection, given the inevitably low productivity of forced labor, it is unprofitable. In the USSR, they knew this - and used the slightest opportunity to disperse more people into their homes. Even those convicted of collaborating with the Germans during the war reduced their sentences several times in order to quickly throw them out on loose bread. The myth came from the fact that the best way to make money on the market is to nationalize losses and privatize profits. In the United States of America, the practice of transferring prisoners to work in private firms is very common. Responsibilities for the maintenance and protection of the state bears, and the company receives a net profit. In total, and the prisoner's labor is less profitable there, but since the losses go to the state, the company can reduce the price. Here they transferred their idea to us.
- From the denial of the Gulag close to the denial of the Holocaust.
- I, as you understand, the person interested. I have no doubt that the Germans really destroyed something between 5 and 6 for millions of Jews in Europe. Although at first the Germans considered the final decision to evict all Jews somewhere far away from Europe and in the 1940 year they even planned to evict Jews to Madagascar. But there is evidence that the British opposed this plan. Only after first Estonian and then Latvian Nazis reported that all Jews in the territory entrusted to them were physically destroyed, the Germans thought about such a solution and in 1942 they made a decision: since there are no other options, then you can get rid of the Jews by physical destruction. I note that in Kiev’s Babi Yar Jews were shot not so much by Germans as by local policemen.
I do not deny the fact that the National Socialists hate the Jews that they exterminated the Jews regularly and regularly, but there are many interesting details even in this fact that show that they had many accomplices.
As for the Gulag, if we proceed from Beria's rehabilitation, we can assume that there were from 1 million to 2 million that did not deserve such a fate, but in general, the Gulag under socialism is not inevitable and, moreover, socialism is absolutely not interested in the Gulag.
- And by 2020, should Putin turn Russia into the realm of state socialism?
- No, it's not about Putin and not in Russia. The transition to socialism will be beneficial all over the world at the same time. By 2020, the total computing power of the entire global computer park will be sufficient so that you can calculate a complete, accurate optimal plan for the entire world production in less than a day.
- And now?
- Now it will take about a thousand years. That is, it is a global transition. Another thing is that a country that begins to prepare in advance will be able to make the transition in more comfortable conditions. Therefore, I hope that our training will begin long before 2020.
- Last year was the rise of the liberal opposition. Not afraid that they can prevent the transition?
- Last year's rise of the liberal opposition prevented only the most liberal opposition. She quickly showed how her is small and how she is empty. She could not put forward an alternative program. Do not consider Kasparov's words that the current government wants to steal and kill and not give the opposition this right as an alternative program. I don’t think that Kasparov really believes that the right to steal and kill should be given to him, I think that he made a reservation, but no one from the opposition anyway suggested anything better. So I think that as the ideological and financial support stops, this movement will come to naught. Ideological support comes from abroad from lovely organizations like the Cato Institute. Material support will also run out: the Bilalov and Magomedov brothers start to get into a lot of trouble, which means that the Silver Rain radio station and the Dozhd TV channel may soon reduce their staff’s salaries.
- Do you consider Navalny and other oppositionists enemies of the country?
- Of course, they are not enemies of the country, but the question is what they consider to be their country and what kind of future they want for it. A person who believes that Russia will be better as a supplier to the West of cheap oil, cheap labor and cheap parts for people can quite sincerely believe that this is good. But I do not consider myself obliged to share this opinion. It is not about hostility as such, but only about what a person sincerely considers useful for a country that, in the opinion of the overwhelming majority of citizens, is deadly for this overwhelming majority.
- You use the word "execute" quite easily ...
- Almost until the Great Patriotic War in the Soviet law the term "capital punishment" was not, was the highest measure of social protection - the death penalty or expulsion from the USSR without the right of return. This is, in general, logical. Society simply defended itself against people who were dangerous to it. And he did not care: send a man abroad or to the next world. If only no more mischief.
The only problem is that after 2020, due to general socialism, there will no longer be a place where such people could be exiled without harming society. Accordingly, it is necessary either to execute such people, or to look for means of re-education. I hope that they will find quickly enough.
- Will Liberals be executed?
- Those who, on the basis of their liberalism, perform an act harmful to others.
- Mass rallies - it is harmful action?
- No, this action is sometimes stupid, but not harmful. But, for example, the fragmentation of the unified energy system of Russia is an objectively harmful action. Although I once supported him and even led him news a tape on a reform-related website, but when in a little over a year of such work I figured out a little about energy issues, I doubted the need for such a transformation. And then, based on the results of our entire management, I was convinced that planting the so-called economics instead of political economy is an objectively harmful action: a person trained in this way cannot perceive the entire economy as a whole and therefore is doomed to make decisions at his post with a high degree of probability although useful in a local place, but harmful to the economy as a whole. Therefore, the entire staff of the Higher School of Economics - with the exception of teachers of mathematics or foreign languages - will have to be transferred to work not related to education and upbringing.
- Well, at least not to execute.
- Executed for actions that really take someone's life more or less directly. And here it is enough to apply a measure of social protection.
- You are in favor of returning the name Stalingrad to Volgograd, and six days a year seem insufficient to you. Why?
- (sighs) Mainly because I really do not like slander. Over the past seven or eight years, I finally became convinced that all the dogs hanged on Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili are strangers. That he is accused of crimes that were not at all or that were committed by other people. And in the crimes with which he himself struggled as much as he could.
Another thing is that his strength and capabilities were extremely limited. I myself worked for a long time as a political consultant and during that time I had a lot of cases to make sure that the capabilities of any leader were small, especially when he wanted to do something that was not liked by his subordinates.
In the activities of Dzhugashvili it was manifested very clearly. For example, there is quite reliable evidence that he with all his forces opposed the Great Terror, that the terror was initiated by the efforts of two groups whose interests coincided. This is, firstly, middle-level party secretaries - regional and republican, and secondly, one of the groupings in the leadership of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, who believed that the role of the commissariat in determining the country's policy should be greater.
Unfortunately, a significant part of the recording of the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU on June 1937 was destroyed, so it is difficult to say how things really developed on it. But according to all the indirect data, it is clear that the decision about the Great Terror was pushed by rank-and-file members of the Central Committee, where the majority were regional secretaries, and the Politburo headed by Dzhugashvili strongly resisted.
We often find ourselves in the thrall of a picture painted by Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, - according to it there was a one-man tyrant who controlled everything and who all obeyed simply out of fear. Whereas the people's commissar of internal affairs, and the secretary of the Central Committee, Nikolai Ivanovich Ezhov, was not even formally subordinate to Dzhugashvili. As a party discipline, he could follow the decisions of the Central Committee, but not the sole decisions of the secretary general.
Moreover, under Khrushchev, an event occurred that completely reversed this picture. I mean 1957 the year when the Politburo decided to send Khrushchev to resign, but two of his supporters - Defense Minister Zhukov and Secretary of the Central Committee Furtsev - urgently organized a plenum of the Central Committee, and he dismissed all the Politbureau except Khrushchev. This is a very real balance of power. When the Plenum took up some position, the Politburo could no longer resist it. I can talk for a long time, but it would be safer to name two books where the then picture is objectively expounded: “Khrushchev. The creators of terror ”Elena Anatolyevna Prudnikova and“ Ina Stalin ”by Yury Nikolaevich Zhukov.
So, I do not see any valid reasons for renaming Stalingrad to Volgograd and I consider it necessary to return the name taken away unreasonably.
- This is a rather unorthodox look at Stalin. Do you think so long?
“Back in 2004 — 2005, I was piously convinced that the bloody tyrant Stalin simply did not manage to kill the whole country by a miracle, I unconditionally believed in Nikita’s grandfather’s tales. Fortunately, I have since become familiar with a variety of materials from a variety of studies, both for and against, compared them and made sure that Khrushchev was composing stories about a bloody tyrant, standing in front of a mirror. That is, he attributed Dzhugashvili all his own shortcomings. It was Dzhugashvili who actively and in various ways tried to resist the Great Terror. It was he who, through the January-February Plenum of 1938, pressed through a ruling by which the party organization did not have the right to immediately exclude arrested persons from its ranks, and was obliged to monitor the entire course of the investigation. It was he who, with a series of personnel manipulations, replaced Yezhov with Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, who, thanks to the previous experience of the KGB work, did not fall into the traps that Yezhov had placed in his time, his closest subordinates, and managed to stop the meat grinder of terror.
- That is, this Beria stopped the terror?
- It is Beria. 17 November 1938 of the year he became the people's commissioner and immediately gave a series of orders that stopped the terror. Moreover, since by that time he had been the deputy commissar deputy for several months and was oriented in the internal kitchen, he achieved that the subordinates could not commit a coup. Then all the blood shed by Ezhov was piled on Beria, but in reality he carried out only the Great Purge. In 1939 — 40-s, most of the crimes of the Great Terror were investigated and most of the perpetrators incurred deserved punishment. True, not all: for example, Khrushchev, on which blood to the holes in the nose, survived.
Khrushchev beautifully out of responsibility. At the end of 1937, he offered to inspect the state of affairs in Ukraine, headed the inspection commission, and she naturally came to the conclusion that things were going badly. The entire leadership of Ukraine was withdrawn, many were later arrested, and the commission occupied the vacant posts almost at full strength. Khrushchev became the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, and thus, when they analyzed what was going on in Moscow during the Great Terror, he stood aside. And in Ukraine, he very competently played the executive fool. Since they are always needed, he was scolded and not seriously punished.
- What about the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, the case of doctors?
- The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee is most likely a case organized with the direct participation of Dzhugashvili. Although it is impossible to exclude the excesses of the executor, when the matter was brought to a greater punishment than the one that was originally expected. There is a problem in international relations. The Soviet Union was the main organizer of the creation of the State of Israel and its victories in the war of independence. After this victory, Israel was forced to reorient to the United States of America, as it was in dire need of funds for the resettlement of immigrants and the restoration of what had been destroyed during the war. The USSR — itself devastated by the war — could not help, and the MUH, since the Cold War was already under way, in exchange for their help, demanded that Israel sharply turn its back on the Soviet Union. In politics, this is not forgiven to anyone. I don’t know whose idea, to put it mildly, is not a very bright head, came up with the idea to study the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the hope that, at least for fear of the fate of its relatives, Israel will reconsider this position. And then - the horse dose of stubbornness on both sides.
With the case of doctors all smarter. First, most of the defendants in this case are completely Russian. Secondly, apparently, the initial impetus for the case was the fact that a high-ranking doctor — not having a regular mass practice — has significantly greater chances of being mistaken than a private doctor who constantly works with many patients. Actually, the whole thing began with disagreements in the diagnosis of a member of the Politburo Zhdanov. When the investigation began, first of all, a couple of investigators, including the sensational Ryumin later, tried to get rid of this case as soon as they realized that the case was an appraisal case: there is no reliable evidence, but they have to rely only on conflicting expert opinions. Ryumin was later announced the main organizer of this case, but, as far as I understand, he was just trying to get out of it. Then someone started building anti-Semitic rumors around this case, despite the fact that the majority of the defendants in this case are perfectly flawless Russians. There were very few Jews there, but it was easier to make a fuss around this business, having laid emphasis on them. Anyone who is not involved in this case is Dzhugashvili because it was not possible for a person of rather serious age - and suffering from a fair bunch of diseases - to voluntarily order to arrest his attending physician without bothering to replace him.
“And the killings of Kirov and Meyerhold?”
- And why, one wonders, did Dzhugashvili kill Kostrikov (Kirov), who supported him in all internal feuds without exception? They were friends of houses from time immemorial, Kostrikov worked for many years in Transcaucasia, which Dzhugashvili, even when he moved to Moscow, was taken very close to his heart. Kostrikov often stayed at Dzhugashvili’s house. But this is not the case: when political interests compel one can forget about personal friendship. But there were no political interests to divorce them. Dzhugashvili had no sense in killing him.
As for Mayergold, the cat’s tears are molded to the cat. Karl Emilevich Mayergold, the Ostsee German, in the pre-revolutionary years, was renamed Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold and began to pretend to be a Jew, because the attitude towards the Germans was rather tense, and the intelligentsia considered the Jews to be an absolutely persecuted people. So, Mayergold wrote so much denunciations to his colleagues that sooner or later someone had to write a denunciation to him. It is not known who wrote, since the criminal cases of all those rehabilitated under Khrushchev were simply destroyed. There was only a certificate of rehabilitation. Therefore, it is absolutely impossible to say who accused him of what.
I can give a generalized statistics. From 17 November 1938 to 22 June 1941, less than half of the convictions under the political articles issued during the Great Terror were revised. Of the 2,5 million, 100 000 (of 700) had time to revise the death sentences - those that did not have time to carry out - and about 1 a million non-death sentences. Of these, between 200 and 300, 000 - I don’t remember exactly, I read it long ago - were generally found to be unfounded, and those sentenced were fully rehabilitated, returned to their previous posts if possible. Even from 200 to 300, 000 sentences were re-qualified from political to purely criminal ones.
Why? The then Criminal Code was written in the 1922 year, edited in the 1926 year. At that time, they still quite sincerely believed that all crimes were committed due to some external circumstances - it means that circumstances need to be changed in order for a person to stop being a criminal, and it is ridiculous to punish a person for what he did under pressure. Therefore, for example, the maximum term for rape was five years. What should the investigator do if he sees that there is some kind of outright bastard sitting in front of him who in five years will not return to normal? He sees that a Komsomol member is raped and writes “an attempt on an activist of a public organization” - and this is treason against the Motherland, and you can give up to ten years. So, Beria ordered from all such sentences to remove the political component, leaving a pure criminal act, and continue not to arouse it under the policy. But since 1946, right after he left the post of People’s Commissar of the Interior, this practice has resumed, since the code has remained the same. Only with 1 in January of 1961, when the new Criminal Code came into force, did this push-up stop.
“You said that Stalin had no reason to kill Kirov.” So after all he was accused of unreasonable atrocities. And you whitewash him completely.
- As far as I can judge from all the world experience, people with murder delusions do not stay up in leading positions for a dozen years. And Dzhugashvili from 5 in May 1941 was the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, that is, he had the highest executive power in the country. I suspect that if his colleagues had reason to fear him, they would have found a way not to miss him in this place. In fact, he was dragged in for several years in a row. Back in 1930, Scriabin (Molotov) after Rykov’s resignation from the post of chairman of the Council of People's Commissars proposed Dzhugashvili for this post, but he flatly refused, and Scriabin himself had to sit in that chair for 11 years, constantly reminding Dzhugashvili that this was his place. Dzhugashvili went for it just before the war, when it became clear that the management chain from the analytical center, such as Dzhugashvili, had to be shortened to direct executors. For all his remarkable merits, Scriabin was not an analyst, but a strictly practitioner. Dzhugashvili differed precisely analytical abilities, for which the same Khrushchev declared him incapable of any analysis.
- That is, there is not a single death on Stalin's conscience?
- No, some death, of course, on his conscience. I think that if I were offered to judge those people whose fate was decided with the direct participation of Dzhugashvili, I would have decided the same way. For example, Postyshev, whom Khrushchev was the first to declare an innocent victim of bloody repressions, managed to be noted in Ukraine during the period of the famous Holodomor. The famine was then all over the grain-growing Russia, but it was in Ukraine that the local authorities thought of hiding the famine from the central leadership and as a result brought the matter to a natural disaster.
- That is, here Stalin had nothing to do with it?
- Well no. Here several unpleasant factors overlapped each other.
First, a drought, and a huge one, which struck not only our country. The same Galicians shout a lot about the Holodomor, although Galicia was then part of Poland. But the drought does not dismantle the boundaries, and she got most of Poland.
Secondly, the transition to collective methods of cultivation. Not all the leaders of the new collective farms could organize the work of the team — and there were plenty of people willing to take a ride on someone else’s hump and only pretend to work.
Elena Prudnikova in the magazine “Expert” published a series of articles where she analyzed the real state of agriculture in that period. It remains surprising that the number of victims was only 3 million. True, according to official data, the victims were 7 million, including 3 million in Ukraine, but this is the result of a statistical bias.
Simultaneously with collectivization, industrialization was going on, since the first was needed in order to introduce more efficient economic technologies and to use as much as possible the agricultural machinery that would be created in the new plants. In general, it worked, because after such a famine there was no longer a country, although before that the famine was very noticeable every four years.
In Ukraine, the demographic decline in population, that is, the difference between what was actually and what could have happened if there were no shocks, is three million, but of these, the excess mortality is only a million, and the other two are people, gone to work in new industrial regions. In new places, they indicated the nationality of "Russian", because only a fanatical separatist could have thought of calling themselves the contemptuous Polish nickname "Ukrainian." In our vocabulary this corresponds to the word "provincial". Only after the introduction of passports with the “nationality” column did the accounting system emerge from the words of the most accountable. Therefore, it turns out a huge decline in the population of Ukraine, but only an insignificant part (not more than a third) is associated with hunger. If we sum up the demographic loss data of all regions hit by hunger, 7 million are typed, but if we take the statistics for the country as a whole, then the demographic decline is 3 million, and everything else is such a migration.
- But you talked about Postyshev.
“He was one of those who led Ukraine at that time — and whose organizational shoals led to the fact that hunger in Ukraine was more acute than in other regions. In the “Raised virgin soil” the mass slaughter of working cattle in the Kuban is mentioned, because everyone hoped that they would eat their ox and work on the collective farm. And the collective farm has no other property, except that the members of the collective farm contributed to it. In central Russia, where mass slaughter was already experienced in 1921, they knew that it turned out to be a disastrous famine, since there was nothing to plow on. They took harsh measures there, threatened them with criminal penalties, and stopped the case, so after a drought, they were able to plant. And in Ukraine, the leadership did not notice it in time.
Putin gradually overcomes in himself the same delusions that I had overcome in myself seven or eight years ago.
Not to mention that Postyshev was one of the main organizers of the introduction of the very concept of "Ukrainian", and for this, in my opinion, he already deserved the death penalty - as the organizer of separatism.
By the way, another small but amusing detail: according to the number of people executed per capita, the regions headed by Khrushchev, Postyshev and Eyhe were in the first places in the Great Terror. Postyshev and Eiche were shot in 1939 year, and Khrushchev was the first to rehabilitate them and called the innocent victims of the bloody tyrant Stalin. So, sorry, who is the bloody tyrant here?
In general, unfortunately, it was only in the last decades that the then picture began to be revealed in all its details - huge archival funds were involved in the mass scientific circulation. It is important that they are huge, since it is easy to fake two or three documents. The entire famous Katyn special folder consists exclusively of fakes, and this has been proven long ago. Genuine there except a cardboard cover.
- That is, the Poles are not the NKVD shot?
- Of course. Moreover, the Germans themselves disclosed material evidence of their guilt in 1943, but then did not attach any significance to this. Modern researchers have looked closely at German documents and photographs of the 43 year and were convinced that they contain undisputed evidence of German guilt.
So, you cannot fake a large array of documents, as documents are interconnected. For example, 10 — 12 years ago, an article was published in Lechaim magazine that there was no plan for the deportation of Soviet Jews in 1953 in the year. In general, it is quite difficult to prove the non-existence of something, hence the presumption of innocence. Interestingly, evidence was found in the archives of the Ministry of Railways. It was found that traces of each deportation of the Soviet peoples remained.
By the way, there were a lot of them. For example, back in 1936, all Koreans were evicted from the Far East to Central Asia, because then the KGB could not distinguish them from the Japanese, and relations with Tokyo deteriorated sharply when Japan began the conquest of China, and we were afraid that the Japanese would send their agents under the guise of Koreans.
Since deportation is not a punishment, but resettlement for technical reasons, we prepared it very carefully. It was necessary not only to pre-order the rolling stock, adapted for mass transportation of people with a large household goods. It was necessary to bring additional food to the stations, to deploy a medical service. It was necessary to reschedule the transportation schedules to ensure the passage of additional levels. All deportations were left in the archives of the Ministry of Railways, and not only was there no evidence of the deportation plans of the Jews (one could say that all the documents were eaten by the bloody gebnya), but an enormous number of documents about current planning and current work remained, and they were in different archives are mutually consistent.
In addition, many memoirs were published, which were not published, including because they went against the current political line. The famous artillery designer Vasily Gavrilovich Grabin describes in detail the meeting with Dzhugashvili, at which he attended. From this description it is completely obvious: Grabin dealt with a first-class leader and manager from God, who simply had no reason to deal with massacres. He, on the contrary, squeezed everything out of people precisely by the will and precisely by managerial means, and not by surgical ones.
- You said that deportations are not punishment. Deportations of the Caucasian peoples, too?
- Looks like no. For a long time I myself believed that it was a punishment smeared evenly. For what the Crimean Tatars or Vainakhs managed to do during the war, according to the laws of wartime, almost every man of childbearing age should be shot or - under mitigating circumstances - imprisonment for 20 — 25. Since this would mean the total annihilation of all the people already in the next generation, they simply smeared this punishment evenly around the whole people, and it turned out that they would be expelled.
But a book by Oleg Kozinkin was recently published, where he investigated the question: which peoples were deported and which were not. For deportation from the same North Caucasus, it was not enough to be guilty, but it was also necessary that the leadership of the relevant region could not guarantee the safety of cargo transportation. That is, the Vainakhs were located near one of the key deposits at that time, the Kalmyks were near the main routes of export of Baku oil to the center of the country, and they were deported. But other nations, which gave about the same number of defectors and collaborators, did not touch, because the leadership of these peoples proved that they could take the situation under control and prevent sabotage.
- So this was a humane idea?
- Yes, since any other options that were more in line with the written law would have resulted in a significantly higher number of victims.
- Maybe even now it is worth solving the problem of the Caucasus?
- No, now the problem of the Caucasus cannot be solved this way. Now, our external enemy, fortunately, is not on the territory of our country, and we can afford a less fast-acting tool. In particular, deal with the same Vainakhs, combining local whip and federal gingerbread. Chechnya was headed by one of the former militants, who knows well how they act, and while he successfully fights with them, Chechnya receives quite substantial subsidies. There are not so many direct subsidies from the federal budget, contrary to legends, but the fact that the share of tax revenues remaining in Chechnya, the largest in the country, is much more serious help than external subsidies.
But if it came to open confrontation, then we would have to consider the issue of deportation seriously.
- So already two times there was an open confrontation.
- No, I mean open confrontation not with Vainakhs. At the same time, we also fought against the external enemy, who used the Vainakhs as his weapon.
- So the militants are financed by Arab countries.
- Yes, but so far it has not reached an open war with an external enemy, it is possible to limit the supply of militants, and therefore there is no need to resort to acute measures. If such a need arises, it is not from the fact that the evil Putin gored the good Medvedev, but from objective reasons with which both Putin and Medvedev are equally considered.
- Who is the external enemy?
- (sighs) The United States of America has long been the only export product left - instability. I proved it with elementary economic arithmetic. So, as long as they do not risk introducing instability into our territory directly on the wings of the B-52 and the "tomahawks", because they know that they will get the change in the same coin. So for now, we can allow ourselves to be kind.
- How old is there?
- Hard to say. The fact is that there are several opposing processes in the United States themselves. For them, the ideal option would be out of the WTO, closing the borders for imports and restoring its own production. But such a move is very beneficial to manufacturers, but disadvantageous to merchants. I have said and written many times: a very long time there has been a clear confrontation between production workers and traders. Although these things seem to be interconnected, but, roughly speaking, the merchants do not care what to sell - domestic products or imported ones, and therefore the opposition is objective. Accordingly, in the same United States of America, starting with the assassination of John Fitzgerald Josephovich Kennedy, the producers are traditionally grouped around Republicans, and traders around the Democratic Party. In my small homeland, Ukraine, production workers are grouped around the Party of Regions, and traders have chosen the party of the red part of the political spectrum. In Russia, production workers group around Putin, and traders around Medvedev, and, as far as I can tell, completely independent of the will of Putin and Medvedev themselves, they simply turned out to be the most convenient crystallization centers.
- So how many deaths on Stalin? Ten thousand or how much?
- On his conscience the death of about a thousand people whom he knew personally and with whom he worked. But here, not everything is clear. For example, Marshal Egorov, with whom Dzhugashvili was on the South-Western Front during the Polish 1920 campaign of the year, was included in the list of persons suspected of crimes involving the death penalty (the so-called first category) three times. Twice Dzhugashvili himself deleted him from this list. It is not known what arguments he gave for the third time: during rehabilitation, the case was destroyed.
There is a sin after the knowledge, when we evaluate events based on what we know now, and do not think at all about what these events were like for people who lived then and knew only what was available at that time. So, proceeding from the post-knowledge, they are trying every now and then in various variants of alternative history to replay the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. But still, even among the most avid alternatives, the war first develops extremely unfavorably for our country. With the most successful hands, it is possible to win not in four years, but in three.
- And the fact that the war began to fail for the USSR, Stalin is also not to blame? He's a commanding staff cut out.
- From June 1937 to June 1941, about 37 — 38 000 people of middle and senior commanders dropped out of the ranks of the Armed Forces of the USSR. Of these, for reasons related to political distrust, approximately 9000 people. Of these 9000 people, 5000 people were subsequently arrested and convicted. The rest dropped out of the ranks of the Armed Forces due to illness, death, attaining the maximum age, and most of all for drinking, party and dancing with fights. Of the total number of retired people, about half were subsequently returned to the Armed Forces, including 5000 people who were dismissed due to political distrust, and 2000 were convicted under the “treason” clause. This is not like a massacre.
The reasons for military failures in another. For the same four years, the USSR Armed Forces have grown fivefold. The existing higher military institutions simply did not have time to train commanders. In addition, in order to become a commander, you need to stay at least two or three years ago at the previous post, and it is important not to skip steps. Because if you command a regiment, you must set the battalion's combat missions, but for this you need to know its capabilities.
Army General Pavlov, who commanded the Western Front at the beginning of the war, is often accused of treason. There are some reasons for that - it hurts strangely that he behaved in the last pre-war days. But one of the most serious charges against Pavlov is the loss of command and control. This is indeed an absolutely unforgivable sin for the commander, and it deserves the death penalty. With the start of hostilities, he began to rush along the divisions of his front, trying to give immediate tasks to each of them. While he was in one division, others did not know what to do.
Why is that? Because Pavlov actually commanded no more than a division, then he went through several steps of a military career as chief of the Main Armored Directorate and, accordingly, did not have a division command skills. Therefore, he did not know what to demand from the army.
At the beginning of the war, we were experiencing growth sickness at its peak. When the lieutenant aviation in a couple of years he turns out to be a lieutenant general and leads the USSR Air Force — and this is exactly what happened with Rychagov — it is clear that he will make one managerial failure after another.
By the way, about Rychagov. At the next meeting, Dzhugashvili talked about a huge number of accidents. Literally every day at least one military plane crashed. Levers said: "You are forcing us to fly on the coffins." Dzhugashvili sharply accelerated his usual passages around the office, changed his face and said: “You shouldn't have said so” - that is, not only with an unusually strong Georgian accent, but also with an error in constructing the phrase. Again, walked back and forth and dismissed the meeting.
Usually, immediately after this, in the stories about Rychagov they say that he was arrested and shot in October 1941. So at the same time they miss that the meeting was held in January, and he was arrested on June 24. According to the results of the meeting, he was removed from his post as Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force and sent to the Frunze Academy to complete his studies on what he did not have time to learn in practice. It was the Air Force commander who was responsible for accepting aircraft at the factories, and if he stated that he was being forced to fly on coffins, then this means that he tried to transfer responsibility for Dzhugashvili for not fulfilling his official duties. I suspect that any of the subsequent Soviet leaders would not be limited to sending Rychagov to study. He was arrested after two days of war became obvious complete failure of aviation.
- That is, Stalin - a brilliant commander in chief?
- Not brilliant, but very talented. He became commander-in-chief when a serious failure was revealed with the then people's commissar of defense, Marshal Tymoshenko. Initially, the role of Dzhugashvili was only to listen to the opinion of several military experts - Tymoshenko, the Chief of the General Staff Shaposhnikov and several other people, compare their decisions and estimate which ones are correct. He began to make independent strategic decisions only in 1942.
At first, these were quite obvious solutions, such as the need to press under Rzhev, even though Rzhev himself did not decide anything. The point there was simply in the configuration of the road network of that time: it determined that the side that lost ground in the center immediately got in trouble on the flanks of the front line.
The unobvious strategic decision dates back to 1944. "Ten Stalinist strikes", when the sequence of strikes was chosen such that the Germans constantly tried to transfer troops from one sector of the front to another and were constantly delayed. This is the highest strategic pilotage. And this was his first decision, which certainly deserves the highest praise.
Prior to that, he made decisions obviously necessary, but such that no one else could take responsibility for them. Who, besides him, could take responsibility for dismantling the already launched Baikal-Amur Mainline and moving the sleepers to the left bank of the Volga, in order to unexpectedly for the Germans to build a railway there and ensure the accumulation of troops for the famous Stalingrad counter-offensive?
- But what about the accusations of excessive casualties of the Soviet army during the war?
“If we count the results of the entire war, then even according to the most advantageous estimates for our enemy, for every three enemy soldiers there were four dead Soviet soldiers. This is quite a decent level of losses.
Such a situation was formed because in the beginning we were losing far more than they were, but at the end of the war they were losing more. The causes of losses are objective. Just look at Poland. Until the mid-1930s, it was militarily stronger than Germany. The Poles even planned offensive operations against East Prussia from the beginning of the war. On September 1, hostilities began there; on September 17, the government was evacuated from Poland. For nine months, a strange war continued with France, which had almost the same number of armed forces as Germany, and covered with a huge fortification line - the Maginot Line. France had more tanks, and her tanks were more powerful than the German. And her army was generally considered the strongest in Europe. On May 10, 1940, Germany went on the offensive; on June 22, France surrendered. Against the backdrop of these events, it is somehow difficult to blame Dzhugashvili.
- You consider him the most powerful leader of the 20th century and one of the most powerful leaders in the whole history of Russia.
- Yes exactly. Because I see what he did and what others did.
- And among the Russian leaders, who else is comparable with him?
- Catherine the Great, absolutely no doubt, Peter the Great, with some reservations, since he, unlike Dzhugashvili, did not spare people. Perhaps, Alexander III the Peacemaker, but this is debatable. Under him, serious industrialization began, but unlike Dzhugashvili, he did not control the direction of industrialization. It is known that half a century before the First World War, Russia showed the best development rates in the world in terms of formal indicators. But let's see the share in world production of the three most rapidly developing countries: the United States of America, the German Empire and the Russian Empire. We take as a starting point 1874 year - for 40 years before the start of the war. Although the pace of development was better in Russia, but at the same time, its share in world production over the years lagged behind the shares of Germany and the United States of America. We ran ahead of everyone and still lagged behind, because we not only developed the economy for foreign investment, but also created conditions for the most favorable conditions for investors. The French have invested very large funds in the Russian railways, but they developed mainly roads running in the latitudinal direction - from central Russia to the western border. The French were interested in the fact that in the event of the outbreak of hostilities to speed up the mobilization of the Russian army. As a result, already in Soviet times, it was necessary to develop railways of the meridian direction. We had to finish them.
- And Putin?
“For the time being, I basically see that Putin is gradually overcoming in himself the same errors that I had overcome in myself seven or eight years ago.” I hope that he will continue on this path and become the leader of the highest level.
- Liberal misconceptions?
- Not only. The concepts of liberal in our country, unfortunately, are interpreted rather vaguely. But unlike Medvedev, he never said anything like a recognition of Soviet guilt at Katyn. Unlike Medvedev, Putin has never said that it is necessary to privatize everything immediately. In my opinion, he is gradually retreating from the fiery liberalism and libertarianism, which he was infected with in the St. Petersburg mayor's office under Anatoly Alexandrovich Sobchak. He is more difficult to do this way, because he has less time for distracted thoughts. But it is moving in the right direction.
- In the direction of state socialism, which you now profess?
- Yes. Recent research with my participation has revealed that by the 2020 year conditions in the field of information technologies will mature, making socialism in all respects more profitable than capitalism. Moreover, it is already clear that, in principle, it is possible to make a new transition from capitalism to socialism in the unstressed mode, that is, so that no one is hurt and everyone gets more than he lost. But so far it is known only at the level of the theorem of existence, that is, it is not yet clear exactly how to do this. Some features of the transition route have yet to be explored, but I hope that we will have time to complete these studies long before 2020.
The Bilalov and Magomedov brothers start to get into a lot of trouble, which means that the Silver Rain radio station and the Dozhd TV channel may soon reduce their salaries to their employees.
In our country, socialism is traditionally associated with a deficit and with a gulag. So, the deficit really was - due to the limited information technologies - and, accordingly, in the new socialism it will be overcome. But associating socialism with the gulag is at least illegal, and we need to get rid of this false association long before 2020, so that we will meet the immense expansion of human capabilities with joy, not with fright.
- GULAG what - was not there too?
- So it is now, but it is called GUIN. And there are many more people per capita in it than in the GULAG. And in the United States of America has its own prisons. In addition, in the 1930-s there were camps of public works - in terms of content worse than our GULAG. There are always places of imprisonment and, I am afraid, there will always be.
But socialism as a whole did not depend on the presence of the Gulag. The myth started by the Americans is very popular among us that Soviet goods are cheaper because they used forced labor in the USSR. Given the content of protection, given the inevitably low productivity of forced labor, it is unprofitable. In the USSR, they knew this - and used the slightest opportunity to disperse more people into their homes. Even those convicted of collaborating with the Germans during the war reduced their sentences several times in order to quickly throw them out on loose bread. The myth came from the fact that the best way to make money on the market is to nationalize losses and privatize profits. In the United States of America, the practice of transferring prisoners to work in private firms is very common. Responsibilities for the maintenance and protection of the state bears, and the company receives a net profit. In total, and the prisoner's labor is less profitable there, but since the losses go to the state, the company can reduce the price. Here they transferred their idea to us.
- From the denial of the Gulag close to the denial of the Holocaust.
- I, as you understand, the person interested. I have no doubt that the Germans really destroyed something between 5 and 6 for millions of Jews in Europe. Although at first the Germans considered the final decision to evict all Jews somewhere far away from Europe and in the 1940 year they even planned to evict Jews to Madagascar. But there is evidence that the British opposed this plan. Only after first Estonian and then Latvian Nazis reported that all Jews in the territory entrusted to them were physically destroyed, the Germans thought about such a solution and in 1942 they made a decision: since there are no other options, then you can get rid of the Jews by physical destruction. I note that in Kiev’s Babi Yar Jews were shot not so much by Germans as by local policemen.
I do not deny the fact that the National Socialists hate the Jews that they exterminated the Jews regularly and regularly, but there are many interesting details even in this fact that show that they had many accomplices.
As for the Gulag, if we proceed from Beria's rehabilitation, we can assume that there were from 1 million to 2 million that did not deserve such a fate, but in general, the Gulag under socialism is not inevitable and, moreover, socialism is absolutely not interested in the Gulag.
- And by 2020, should Putin turn Russia into the realm of state socialism?
- No, it's not about Putin and not in Russia. The transition to socialism will be beneficial all over the world at the same time. By 2020, the total computing power of the entire global computer park will be sufficient so that you can calculate a complete, accurate optimal plan for the entire world production in less than a day.
- And now?
- Now it will take about a thousand years. That is, it is a global transition. Another thing is that a country that begins to prepare in advance will be able to make the transition in more comfortable conditions. Therefore, I hope that our training will begin long before 2020.
- Last year was the rise of the liberal opposition. Not afraid that they can prevent the transition?
- Last year's rise of the liberal opposition prevented only the most liberal opposition. She quickly showed how her is small and how she is empty. She could not put forward an alternative program. Do not consider Kasparov's words that the current government wants to steal and kill and not give the opposition this right as an alternative program. I don’t think that Kasparov really believes that the right to steal and kill should be given to him, I think that he made a reservation, but no one from the opposition anyway suggested anything better. So I think that as the ideological and financial support stops, this movement will come to naught. Ideological support comes from abroad from lovely organizations like the Cato Institute. Material support will also run out: the Bilalov and Magomedov brothers start to get into a lot of trouble, which means that the Silver Rain radio station and the Dozhd TV channel may soon reduce their staff’s salaries.
- Do you consider Navalny and other oppositionists enemies of the country?
- Of course, they are not enemies of the country, but the question is what they consider to be their country and what kind of future they want for it. A person who believes that Russia will be better as a supplier to the West of cheap oil, cheap labor and cheap parts for people can quite sincerely believe that this is good. But I do not consider myself obliged to share this opinion. It is not about hostility as such, but only about what a person sincerely considers useful for a country that, in the opinion of the overwhelming majority of citizens, is deadly for this overwhelming majority.
- You use the word "execute" quite easily ...
- Almost until the Great Patriotic War in the Soviet law the term "capital punishment" was not, was the highest measure of social protection - the death penalty or expulsion from the USSR without the right of return. This is, in general, logical. Society simply defended itself against people who were dangerous to it. And he did not care: send a man abroad or to the next world. If only no more mischief.
The only problem is that after 2020, due to general socialism, there will no longer be a place where such people could be exiled without harming society. Accordingly, it is necessary either to execute such people, or to look for means of re-education. I hope that they will find quickly enough.
- Will Liberals be executed?
- Those who, on the basis of their liberalism, perform an act harmful to others.
- Mass rallies - it is harmful action?
- No, this action is sometimes stupid, but not harmful. But, for example, the fragmentation of the unified energy system of Russia is an objectively harmful action. Although I once supported him and even led him news a tape on a reform-related website, but when in a little over a year of such work I figured out a little about energy issues, I doubted the need for such a transformation. And then, based on the results of our entire management, I was convinced that planting the so-called economics instead of political economy is an objectively harmful action: a person trained in this way cannot perceive the entire economy as a whole and therefore is doomed to make decisions at his post with a high degree of probability although useful in a local place, but harmful to the economy as a whole. Therefore, the entire staff of the Higher School of Economics - with the exception of teachers of mathematics or foreign languages - will have to be transferred to work not related to education and upbringing.
- Well, at least not to execute.
- Executed for actions that really take someone's life more or less directly. And here it is enough to apply a measure of social protection.
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