On November 7, 1990, Alexander Shmonov came to Red Square, but his mood was not festive. Shmonov went to kill Gorbachev ... We remembered 7 attempts on the life of the first persons in Soviet history.

Fanny vs Lenin (08/30/1918)

If the Americans have Lee Harvey Oswald, then we have Fanny Kaplan. Of course, both the results and the circumstances of their activities are seriously different, but Fanny Kaplan remains the author of the most famous assassination attempt in Russian history.

Feiga Haimovna Roytblat (real name Fanny) was what is called "a woman of difficult destiny." Carried away early in revolutionary activities, she changed her name to a pseudonym and acquired the party nickname "Dora". At the age of 16, she participated in an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the Kiev governor-general Sukhomlinov. The attempt was even more than unsuccessful. Sukhomlinov survived, Fanny almost died, almost went blind and was sent to a ten-year hard labor.

It would seem that life should have taught Kaplan that assassination attempts are bad, but Fanny did not learn the lesson. Upon her return from penal servitude, she received a ticket to a sanatorium for political prisoners in Yevpatoria, where she met Dmitry Ulyanov. Thanks to his patronage, Kaplan managed to heal her eyesight in an eye clinic, but even the intercession of her younger brother Lenin did not divert her from the path she chose.

Kaplan justified the attempt on Lenin's life by the fact that, in her opinion, he had betrayed the cause of the revolution and therefore must die. She took all the blame upon herself, declaring at the poll: "I was in tsarist prisons, I did not say anything to the gendarmes and I will not tell you anything." There are many inconsistencies in the case of the attempt on Lenin's life, Sverdlov knew about the planned attempt several hours before it was committed and even knew that the Right Social Revolutionaries would be found guilty. Kaplan was shot very quickly, and the very fact of the attempt on Lenin's life and the murder of Uritsky legitimized the beginning of the Red Terror.

Japanese vs Stalin

The record holder for the number of assassination attempts by Soviet leaders is Joseph Stalin. The Japanese showed a special desire to end the life of the "great helmsman". The development of the operation, code-named "Bear", was carried out with the participation of the former head of the Far Eastern Directorate of the NKVD, G.S. Lyushkov. Based on the information received from the defector, it was decided to liquidate Stalin in one of his residences. For the success of the operation, the Japanese even rebuilt a life-size pavilion, copying Stalin's house in Matsesta. Stalin took a bath alone - that was what he was counting on.

The insidious plans of the Japanese were not destined to come true. Soviet intelligence was not asleep. Serious assistance in identifying the conspirators was provided by a Soviet agent codenamed Leo, who worked in Manchukuo. At the beginning of 1939, during the crossing of the Turkish-Soviet border near the village of Borchka, machine-gun fire was opened on a terrorist group, as a result of which three were killed, the rest fled. According to one version, Leo was among those killed.

Skorzeny vs Stalin

Operation Long Jump was characterized by its breadth of design and the same breadth of stupidity. Hitler planned to kill "three birds with one stone", but the miscalculation was that the "birds with one stone" were not so simple. To eliminate Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt in Tehran was entrusted to a group led by Otto Skozeny. Kaltenbrunner himself coordinated the operation.

German intelligence learned of the time and location of the conference in mid-October 1943 by decrypting the American naval code. Soviet intelligence quickly uncovered the conspiracy.

A group of Skorzeny militants was trained near Vinnitsa, where Medvedev's partisan detachment operated. According to one version of the development of events, Kuznetsov established friendly relations with an officer of the German special services Oster. Having owed Kuznetsov, Oster offered to pay him off with Iranian carpets, which he was going to bring to Vinnitsa from a business trip to Tehran. This information, transmitted by Kuznetsov to the center, coincided with other information about the upcoming action. 19-year-old Soviet intelligence agent Gevork Vartanyan has assembled a small group of agents in Iran, where his father, also an intelligence officer, posed as a wealthy merchant. Vartanyan managed to locate a group of six German radio operators and intercept their communications. The ambitious Operation Long Jump failed, leaving the Big Three unharmed.

Submariner vs Khrushchev

In April 1956, Nikita Khrushchev was on a friendly visit to England. In addition to him, the delegation on board the Ordzhonikidze cruiser included Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR N.A. Bulganin, leading aircraft designer A.N. Tupolev, academician-atomic scientist I.V. Kurchatov and other officials. The cruiser was at anchor when the watch officer of one of the destroyers standing nearby noticed that someone surfaced next to the cruiser and immediately dived back. The cruiser's acoustician also found a suspicious object under its bottom. The reconnaissance group officer Eduard Koltsov was ordered to go down under the water and act according to the circumstances. He did not disappoint: when he saw a saboteur laying a mine, he first damaged his breathing device with a knife, and then cut his throat. Soon, on one of the islands near Portsmouth, a corpse in a light diving suit was found, in which Lieutenant Commander Leonel Crabbe was identified. A serious diplomatic scandal erupted over the incident, and Koltsov was awarded the Order of the Red Star.

Ilyin vs Brezhnev

On January 22, 1969, after a solemn meeting of the Soyuz crews - cosmonauts Beregova, Leonov, Nikolaev and Nikolaeva-Tereshkova, Brezhnev's cortege, which was entering the Kremlin's Borovitsky Gate, came under a fairly massive shelling. The junior lieutenant of the Soviet Army Viktor Ilyin was shooting at the cortege. On that day, he stole two pistols with cartridges from the unit, changed into someone else's police uniform and infiltrated the cordon at the Borovitsky Gate. The offender managed to release 8 bullets until he was knocked down by a motorcyclist of the motorcade, and then seized by soldiers of the state security service. Brezhnev was saved by the fact that his car was driving third in the motorcade. The secretary general remained safe and sound, but during the assassination attempt several people were injured and the driver was killed.

On TV at that time there was a live broadcast from the Kremlin, which was immediately suspended. Soviet citizens learned about the assassination attempt only 20 years later, while Ilyin was called insane and placed in a psychiatric clinic. Interestingly, he was not even dismissed from the army, and today he lives in St. Petersburg, receiving a seniority pension. According to one version, the assassination attempt was organized by the KGB to strengthen its influence. Ilyin himself says that he was convinced that the assassination of the secretary general would strengthen democratic sentiments in society.

Shchelokova vs Andropov

The attempt on Andropov's life can be attributed to the most unusual. Both in the place of action and in motives. On February 19, 1983, Svetlana Shchelokova attempted to assassinate Andropov in the elevator of an elite house on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. They were neighbors and the secretary general was not surprised to see Svetlana, who ran after him into the elevator. Shchelokova knew Andropov's habits well enough. That he loves to ride the elevator alone to his apartment. She also knew that Andropov had kidney problems. She shot just at the kidneys. Andropov miraculously survived. Shelokova went up to her floor, entered the apartment and shot herself. Not long before that, her husband committed suicide in the same way. Andropov dismissed him from service for abuse and, knowing that the matter would not be limited to dismissal, Shchelokov put a bullet in his head. After the assassination attempt, Andropov lived for another year. Reflection: Many consider the assassination attempt a hoax.

Shmonov vs Gorbachev

Gorbachev tried to kill Shmonov. On November 7, 1990, he came to Red Square. Under the floors of his coat, a locksmith from the Izhora plant carried a double-barreled sawn-off shotgun. Alexander Shmonov thoroughly prepared for the assassination attempt: he specially put on a wig and glued his mustache, but his empty hands betrayed him. The empty-handed man looked strange during the demonstration, but Shmonov could not take the poster in his hands: his hands were holding the weapon. At a distance of fifty meters from Gorbachev, Shmonov pulled out his weapon and fired, but all the bullets went into the milk. Militia sergeant Melnikov, who was standing nearby, hit the sawn-off shotgun and knocked down the sight. However, Shmonov had no chance to kill the secretary general. Gorbachev was wearing a bulletproof vest.

On August 30, 1918, V. I. Ulyanov (Lenin) spoke to the workers of the Mikhelson plant (today the Moscow Electromechanical Plant named after Vladimir Ilyich in Zamoskvorechye). They tried to dissuade Lenin from appearing in public, referring to the murder of Uritsky, which occurred in the morning of the same day, but he was adamant. After his speech, Ulyanov went to the car, when suddenly three shots rang out from the crowd.

Fanny Kaplan was caught on Bolshaya Serpukhovskaya Street, at the nearest tram stop. She confirmed to her worker Ivanov that she was the culprit of the assassination attempt. Ivanov asked: "On whose orders did you shoot?" According to the worker, the answer came: “At the suggestion of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. I have done my duty with valor and will die with valor. "

However, after her arrest, Kaplan denied any involvement in the incident. Only after a series of interrogations did she confess. However, no threats forced the terrorist to extradite the accomplices or organizers of the assassination attempt. “I arranged everything myself,” Kaplan said. The revolutionary openly stated everything that she thinks about Lenin, the October Revolution and the Brest-Litovsk Peace, simultaneously noting that the decision to kill the leader matured in her in Simferopol in February 1918, after the idea of ​​the Constituent Assembly was finally buried.
However, except for the statement of Kaplan herself, no one else was sure that it was she who shot Lenin. A few days later, one of the Michelsonian workers brought a Browning with inventory number 150489 to the Cheka, which he allegedly found in the factory yard. The weapon was immediately brought into action. It is curious that the bullets subsequently removed from Lenin's body did not confirm their belonging to the pistol that appeared in the case. But by this time, Kaplan was no longer alive. She was shot on September 3, 1918 at 4 o'clock in the afternoon behind the arch of building No. 9 of the Moscow Kremlin. The verdict (in fact, an oral order from Sverdlov) was carried out by the commandant of the Kremlin, the former Baltic citizen Pavel Malkov. The body of the deceased was “packed” in an empty tar barrel, doused with gasoline and burned here. (Source: Fanny Kaplan: what happened to her after the assassination attempt on Lenin © Russian Seven russian7.ru).

In 1918-1921. V. I. Lenin spoke at the plant six times. In 1922, at the request of the workers, the plant was named after Vladimir Ilyich.

In October 1918, a wooden obelisk was erected at the site of the assassination attempt; in 1920, during the May Day subbotnik, as the newspapers reported, "the workers in the presence of Comrade Kalinin planted a slender oak tree."

On November 7, 1922, a memorial stone was laid at this place with the inscription: “The first stone of the monument at the site of the attempt on the life of the leader of the world proletariat, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. August 30, 1918 - November 7, 1922 " and the second - on the back of the stone: "Let the oppressed of the whole world know that in this place the bullet of the capitalist counter-revolution tried to interrupt the life and work of the leader of the world proletariat, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin."

The matter of perpetuation did not go further than this, until after the war - in 1947 - a monument to Lenin was erected, which had stood in front of the plant for 20 years. In 1967, another was erected, and since three monuments to Lenin in the same place were too much even for the Bolsheviks, one of them was removed inside the plant, and only two remained in front of the plant - the "first stone" and a five-meter bronze statue near.

Federal cultural heritage site.

On August 30, 1918, after a speech to the workers of the Michelson plant in Moscow, an attempt was made on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, as a result of which he received severe injury.
After the end of the meeting, Lenin went out into the yard of the plant, continuing the conversation with the audience and answering their questions.
According to Bonch-Bruyevich's recollections, with reference to the driver, Gil, the latter sat at the wheel and looked, half-turned, at the approaching Lenin.
Hearing the shot, he instantly turned his head and saw a woman on the left side of the car near the front fender, aiming at Lenin's back.
Then two more shots rang out, and Lenin fell.
These memories became the foundation of everyone historical works and were reproduced in the classic scene of the assassination attempt in the Soviet film "Lenin in 1918": a brunette woman with a clearly Jewish appearance aims her revolver at the back of the leader of the Russian revolution ...
According to the official version, the performer of this terrorist attack was the Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan (Feiga Haimovna Roitblat), who was shot on September 3, 1918.
Otherwise, neither her contemporaries nor historians characterized her as a "Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist" and no doubts arose about her involvement in the attempt on the life of the "leader of the world proletariat".

However, all the circumstances of this attempt are still not entirely clear and even the most superficial acquaintance with the documents shows how contradictory they are and do not give an unambiguous answer to the question of Kaplan's guilt ...
If we turn to the documents, it turns out that the time of the assassination was never precisely determined and the discrepancy in time reaches several hours.
In the appeal of the Moscow City Council, which was published in the newspaper Pravda, it was asserted that the assassination attempt took place at 7.30 pm, but the chronicle of the same newspaper reported that this event took place at about 9 pm.
A very significant amendment in determining the time of the assassination was made by Lenin's personal driver S. Gil, a punctual man and one of the few real witnesses. In his testimony, which he gave on August 30, 1918, Gil said: "I arrived with Lenin at about 10 pm at the Michelson plant" ...
Based on the fact that, in Gil's opinion, Lenin's speech at the rally lasted about an hour, the assassination attempt was most likely made around 11:00 pm, when it was finally dark and night fell. Perhaps Gil's testimony is closest to reality, since the protocol of the first interrogation of Fanny Kaplan has a clear record of "11:30 pm".
If we assume that the arrest of Kaplan and her delivery to the nearest military commissariat, where the interrogations began, took 30-40 minutes, then the time indicated by Gil should be considered the most correct.
It is difficult to assume that the suspect in the assassination attempt, Fanny Kaplan, remained unanswered for more than three hours, if the assassination was committed at 19:30.
Where did such a discrepancy in time come from?
Most likely, the shift in the time of the assassination attempt into the brighter part of the day was quite deliberately made in his memoirs by Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, the head of the Council of People's Commissars. His recollections, which became the basis of the textbook story about the assassination attempt on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, were reproached at the time of their appearance for inaccuracies and omissions, the introduction of insertions and details that the author could not remember ...
Bonch-Bruevich assures that he found out about the assassination attempt at 18:00 when he returned home from work for a short break. He needed this to create a false picture of Kaplan's detention, in the daylight, since he was adding clearly fictional details ...

In the memoirs of Bonch-Bruyevich, the so-called "story of the driver Gil" was introduced, as if reported personally to the author. This gives the memoirs the necessary reliability and in the future they are invariably referred to by both Soviet and Western historians.
But the "driver's story" according to Bonch-Bruyevich contradicts Gil's own testimony. He could not see what happened after the assassination attempt, that is, the episode of Kaplan's detention, since he was near the wounded , and then took him to the Kremlin. The details related to this episode were composed by Bonch-Bruyevich and added directly to the "story of Gil" for greater persuasiveness ...
During interrogation, Gil gave the following testimony: “I saw ... stretching out from behind several people woman's hand with Browning ". Consequently, the only witness Gil did not see the man who shot at Lenin, but only noticed the woman's outstretched hand.
Let us remind you that everything happened late in the evening, and he could really see at a distance of no more than three steps from the car. Maybe Gul made a slip?
Unfortunately, this assumption should be discarded. The observant chauffeur made an important amendment to the protocol: "I'm getting better: after the first shot I noticed a woman's hand with a Browning."
Based on this, there can be no doubts: Gul did not see the shooting woman, and the whole scene described by Bonch-Bruyevich, which became canon, was invented ...
Commissioner S. Batulin, some time after the assassination attempt, detained Fanny Kaplan, at the time of the exit from the factory was at a distance of 10 - 15 steps. Later, he changed his initial testimony, indicating that he was 15 to 20 steps away and that: “The man who shot Comrade. Lenin, I have not seen. "
Thus, it should be considered an established fact that none of the interrogated witnesses who were present at the scene of the assassination saw the person who shot Lenin in the face and could not identify Fanny Kaplan as guilty of the assassination ...

After the shots, the situation developed as follows: the crowd began to scatter, and Gil rushed in the direction from which they were shooting. What is important: not to a specific person, but to the side of the shots. Here is a quote from the memoirs of Gulya himself:
"... The woman who was shooting threw a revolver at my feet and disappeared into the crowd."
He does not give other details ...
The fate of the abandoned weapon is curious. “Nobody raised this revolver in my presence,” says Gul. Only on the road did one of the two people accompanying the wounded VI Lenin explain to Gulya: "I pushed him under the car with my foot."
During interrogations, the Kaplan revolver was not shown, and he did not appear as material evidence during the investigation.
Among the questions Kaplan asked about the things she had found (papers and money in her purse, train tickets, and so on), only one had to do with the instrument of the assassination attempt. Apparently, the chairman of the Moscow Revolutionary Tribunal A. Dyakonov, who was interrogating Fanny Kaplan, did not have a revolver in his hands. He asked only about the weapon system, to which Kaplan replied: "From which revolver I fired, I will not say, I would not want to give details" ...
Most likely, if the revolver lay in front of Dyakonov and Kaplan on the table, her answer about her unwillingness to go into details would look at least ridiculous.
While the disappeared material evidence was being pushed under the car by foot, an eyewitness to the assassination attempt S. Batulin shouted: "Hold it, catch it!"
However, later, in the written testimony that Batulin sent to the Lubyanka on September 5, 1918, he delicately corrects his bazaar cry with a politically more competent exclamation: “Stop the murderer comrade. Lenin! "
With this cry, he ran out of the factory yard onto Serpukhovskaya Street along which people, frightened by the shots and the general confusion, were running in groups and alone in various directions.
Batulin explains that with his screams he wanted to stop those people who saw Kaplan shooting at Lenin and involve them in pursuit of the criminal. But, apparently, no one took Batulin's cries and expressed a desire to help him in the search for the killer.
Such indifference of the working masses was critical for the creators of the legend about the murderer Kaplan, which is why Bonch-Bruyevich's children who were in the yard during the assassination attempt appear, who, as if “in a crowd, ran after the shooter and shouted:“ Here she is! There she is!" But in the newspaper, which was dedicated to the 5th anniversary of the assassination attempt, the same vigilant Soviet children are already going to play outside, where they help worker Ivanov to attack the trail of the fleeing Kaplan ...

But Commissioner Batulin, who twice presented his testimony, did not see any children in the eyes, and what could the children do on a gloomy and cold autumn evening on a dark street? ..
Having run from the factory to the tram stop on Serpukhovskaya Street, S. Batulin, seeing nothing suspicious, stopped. Only then did he notice a woman behind him near a tree with a briefcase and an umbrella in her hands. The commissioner twice repeats in the testimony of August 30, 1918 a detail that he remembered: he saw a woman, not running in front, but standing behind him. He did not catch up with her, and she could not overtake Batulin and come running first or follow him and suddenly stop.
In these short moments of intense attention, he would certainly have noticed a figure running with an absurd umbrella, running to hide under a tree. Besides women's clothing 1918, with a long, toe-length dress, hardly allowed a woman to run as fast as a man ran.
And what is important, at these minutes Fanny Kaplan not only run, but also walk, as it turned out a little later, was difficult, since she had nails in her boots that tormented her when walking ...
It remains to assume that Fanny Kaplan did not run anywhere at all, and perhaps she simply stood all the time in one place, on Serpukhovskaya Street, at a fairly far distance from the factory yard, where the shots were fired.
But there was an oddity in her that so amazed Batulin. “She looked like a person fleeing persecution, intimidated and hunted,” he concludes ...

Commissioner Batulin asks her a simple question: who is she and why did she come here? “To my question,” says Batulin. - she replied: "It was not me who did it."
The most striking thing about the answer is its inconsistency with the question. At first glance, it is given simply out of place, but this impression is deceiving: the answer opens the eyes to a lot.
Initially, he refutes the false claim that Fanny Kaplan immediately and voluntarily confessed to the attempted assassination attempt on Lenin. However, the main thing in the answer is its psychological coloring: Fanny is so deep in herself that she does not hear the question being asked.

Her first reaction is an acquittal reaction, but Kaplan acquits herself at a time when no one accuses her. Moreover, her childish response shows that Kaplan, in fact, does not know the details of what happened. She could not hear the shots and saw only people running shouting “Catch, hold!”.
Therefore, she says in the most general form: "It was not me who did it" ...
This rather strange response aroused the suspicion of Batulin, who, having searched her pockets, took her briefcase and umbrella, suggesting to follow him. He did not have any evidence of the detainee's guilt in the attempted murder, but the very fact of the arrest of a suspicious person created the atmosphere of a completed task and inspired the illusion that the detention was justified ...
All the further, which served as the basis for accusing Fanny Kaplan of an attempt on Lenin's life, does not fit into the legal framework.
“On the way,” continues Batulin, “I asked her, feeling in her the face that had attempted to kill Comrade. Lenin: “Why did you shoot at Comrade. Lenin? " , to which she replied: "Why do you need to know this?" which finally convinced me of this woman's assassination attempt on Comrade Lenin ".
This simple conclusion is a synthesis of the era: class instinct instead of evidence, conviction of guilt instead of proof of guilt ...
At this time, around the detainee, unrest of the crowd stunned by the assassination attempt began: someone volunteered to help Batulin accompany the detainee, someone began to shout that it was she who was shooting. Later, after newspaper reports about Fanny Kaplan's guilt and execution, it seemed to Batulin that someone from the crowd recognized this woman as the man who had shot at Lenin. This unknown "someone", of course, was not interrogated and did not leave his testimony. However, in the initial, most recent testimony, Batulin claims only that there were screams from the crowd and that this woman was shooting.
By this time, the crowd was on a rampage, angry workers shouting, “Kill! Tear to pieces! "...
In this atmosphere of mass psychosis of the crowd, which was on the verge of lynching Kaplan, to Batulin's repeated question: “You shot at Comrade. Lenin? " the detainee unexpectedly replied in the affirmative.
Confirmation of guilt, so undeniable in the eyes of the crowd, provoked such a fit of rage that it was necessary to create a chain of armed men to prevent lynching and restrain the raging masses, which demanded the death of the criminal.
Kaplan was taken to the military commissariat of the Zamoskvoretsky district, where she was first interrogated ...
When interrogated by the Chekist Peters, Fanny Kaplan described her short life as follows: “I am Fanya Efimovna Kaplan. She lived under this name since 1906. In 1906, I was arrested in Kiev in connection with the explosion. Then she sat as an anarchist. This explosion came from a bomb and I was injured. I had a bomb for a terrorist attack. I was sued by a court-martial in the mountains. Kiev. She was sentenced to eternal hard labor.
She sat in the Maltsevsky convict prison, and then in the Akatuy prison. After the revolution, she was released and moved to Chita. Then in April I came to Moscow. In Moscow, I stayed with a friend of the convict Pigit, with whom I came from Chita. And she stopped at Bolshaya Sadovaya, 10, apt. 5. Lived there for a month, then went to Evpatoria to a sanatorium for political amnesties. I stayed in the sanatorium for two months, and then went to Kharkov for an operation. After she went to Simferopol and lived there until February 1918.
In Akatuya, I sat with Spiridonova. In prison, my views were formed - I changed from an anarchist to a socialist-revolutionary. I also sat there with Bitsenko, Terentyeva and many others. I changed my views because I got into the anarchists very young.
The October Revolution found me in a Kharkov hospital. I was unhappy with this revolution, I greeted it negatively.
I stood for the Constituent Assembly and now I stand for it. Downstream in the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, I am more close to Chernov.
My parents are in America. They left in 1911. I have four brothers and three sisters. They are all workers. My father is a Jewish teacher. I received education at home. She held [position] in Simferopol as head of training courses for workers in volost zemstvos. I received a salary for everything ready-made 150 rubles a month.
I fully accept the Samara government and stand for an alliance with the allies against Germany. I shot at Lenin. I decided to take this step back in February. This thought has matured in me in Simferopol, and since then I began to prepare for this step. "
The identity of the woman detained by Batulin was immediately established, since the protocol of the first interrogation began with the words: "I, Fanya Efimovna Kaplan ..." ...
This message CHK pointedly hinted at the presence of some data that indicated the connection of the assault with a certain organization. At the same time, there followed a sensational report about the disclosure of a grand conspiracy of diplomats who tried to bribe the Latvian riflemen guarding the Kremlin.
The next night, the British consul Bruce Lockhart was arrested, who was in fact in contact with representatives of the Latvian riflemen, who were allegedly opposed to the Soviet regime, but in fact were agents of the Cheka.
Of course, the Cheka did not have any data on the connection between the attempt on Lenin's life and the so-called "Lockhart conspiracy", although Peters, who at that moment replaced F. Dzerzhinsky, who had left for Petrograd to investigate the murder of Uritsky, had a tempting idea to combine the attempt on Lenin and the Lockhart case into one gracious conspiracy, unraveled thanks to the resourcefulness of the Cheka ...
The first question that was asked to Lockhart, who was arrested and taken to the Lubyanka, was this: does he know a woman named Kaplan?
Of course, Lockhart had no idea who Kaplan was ...
Against the background of the disclosure of the "Lockhart conspiracy", interrogations of Kaplan took place and, accordingly, the nervous situation of those days could not but affect her fate.
The researchers have at their disposal 6 protocols of F. Kaplan's interrogation. The first was launched at 23:30 pm on August 30, 1918.
On the night of September 1, Lockhart was arrested, and Fanny Kaplan was brought into his cell at Lubyanka at 06:00. It is likely that Peters promised to save her life if she pointed to Lockhart as an accomplice in the assassination attempt on Lenin, but Kaplan was silent and she was quickly taken away.
The impressions of this visit left by Lockhart are unique, as they give the only surviving portrait and psychological description of Fanny Kaplan at the moment when she had already taken all suicide. This description deserves to be quoted in its entirety:
“At 6 o'clock in the morning, a woman was brought into the room. She was dressed in black. She had black hair, and her eyes, fixed intently and motionless, surrounded by black circles.
Her face was pale. The facial features, typically Jewish, were unattractive.
She could be of any age, from 20 to 35 years old. We guessed it was Kaplan. Undoubtedly, the Bolsheviks hoped that she would give us some sign.
Her calmness was unnatural. She went to the window and, tilting her chin on her hand, looked through the window at dawn. So she remained motionless, silent, submitting, apparently, to her fate, until the sentries entered and took her away. " 4
And this is the last reliable testimony of a person who saw Fanny Kaplan alive ...

In her testimony, Kaplan wrote: “In Hebrew my name is Feiga. I was always called Fanya Efimovna. "
Until the age of 16, Fanya lived under the surname Roydman, and since 1906 she began to bear the surname Kaplan, but she did not explain the reasons for changing her surname.
She also had another name, Dora, by which Maria Spiridonova, Yegor Sazonov, Steinberg and many others knew her.
Fanny ended up in imperial hard labor as a very young girl. Her revolutionary views changed greatly in prison, mainly under the influence of famous leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party with whom she was imprisoned, primarily Maria Spiridonova.
"In prison, my views took shape," wrote Kaplan, "I turned from an anarchist into a socialist-revolutionary."
But Fanny talks about the formation of views, and not about the formal entry into the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, and its official party affiliation remains very controversial. Fanny Kaplan herself, at the time of her arrest and her first interrogation, stated that she considered herself a socialist, but did not belong to any party. Later, she made it clear that in the Socialist-Revolutionary party she rather shares the views of Viktor Chernov. This was the only, albeit rather shaky, basis for declaring F. Kaplan to belong to the party of the Right SRs.
During interrogations, Kaplan, without restraining herself, said that she believed a traitor to the revolution and that his continued existence undermines faith in socialism: "The longer he lives, he removes the idea of ​​socialism for decades."
Her manic aspiration is beyond doubt, as is her complete organizational and technical helplessness.
According to her, in the spring of 1918, she offered her services in the assassination attempt on Lenin to Nil Fomin, who was then in Moscow, a former member of the Constituent Assembly, who was subsequently shot by the Kolchakites. Fomin brought this proposal to the attention of V. Zenzinov, a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, and he conveyed this to the Central Committee.
But since recognizing the possibility of waging an armed struggle against the Bolsheviks, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party had a negative attitude towards terrorist acts against the Bolshevik leaders, the proposal of N. Fomin and Kaplan was rejected. 6
After that, Kaplan was left alone, but in the summer of 1918, a certain Rudzievsky introduced her to a small group of a very motley composition and undefined ideology, which included: the old Socialist Revolutionary convict Pelevin, not inclined to terrorist activities, and a twenty-year-old girl named Marusya 7. This was the case, although later attempts were made to portray Kaplan as the creator of a terrorist organization.
This version has become firmly established with light hand the head of the actual combat organization of the SRs G. Semenov (Vasiliev).
Before the February revolution, Semyonov did not show himself in anything, he appeared on the surface political life in 1917, distinguished by an exorbitant ambition and a penchant for adventurism.
At the beginning of 1918, Semenov, together with his partner and friend Lydia Konopleva, organized a flying combat detachment in Petrograd, which included mainly Petrograd workers - former Socialist-Revolutionary militants. The detachment committed expropriations and prepared terrorist acts. The first proposals for an attempt on Lenin's life came from the Semyonov group.
In February-March 1918, practical steps were taken in this direction, which did not give any result, but on June 20, 1918, a member of Semyonov's detachment, worker Sergeev, killed a prominent Bolshevik Moses Volodarsky in Petrograd. Sergeev managed to escape.
Semyonov's violent activities worried the Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. The Socialist-Revolutionary Party dissociated itself from the murder of Volodarsky, not sanctioned by the Central Committee, and Semyonov and his detachment, after sharp clashes with members of the Central Committee, were asked to move to Moscow.
In Moscow, Semyonov began to prepare attempts on the life of Trotsky, which was unsuccessful, and Lenin, which ended with shots on August 30, 1918. Semyonov managed to make several impressive expropriations, until he was finally arrested by the Cheka in October 1918. He put up armed resistance during the arrest and tried to escape, wounding several Cheka employees.
Semyonov was charged with creating a counter-revolutionary organization, which set itself the goal of overthrowing Soviet power. Semenov was also accused of providing armed resistance during arrest.
All this contradiction was more than enough for the inevitable execution, so the further fate of Semyonov was beyond doubt. But suddenly Semenov, having weighed all the chances, realized that he could only be saved from execution by offering his services to the Cheka.
In 1919, he leaves prison already as a member of the RCP (b) with a special assignment to work in the organization of the Socialist Revolutionaries as an informant, which bought amnesty and freedom not only for himself, but also for Konopleva, who remains an active assistant to Semyonov and soon also enters RCP (b).

At the beginning of 1922, Semenov and Konopleva, as if on cue, made sensational revelations. At the end of February 1922 in Berlin, Semenov published a brochure on the military and combat work of the Social Revolutionaries in 1917-1918. At the same time, testimony from Lydia Konoplyova, directed to the GPU, appeared in the newspapers, which was devoted to "exposing" the terrorist activities of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party in the same period.
These materials gave grounds for the GPU to bring the Socialist Revolutionary Party as a whole and a number of its major figures to trial by the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal, who had been imprisoned for several years in the Cheka-GPU dungeons.
The trial of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party was the first major political trial staged with the help of denunciations, slander and false testimony.
In this trial, we are only interested in information that concerned the attempt on the life of V.I. Lenin on August 30, 1918 and the name of Fanny Kaplan.

Sources of information:
1.Wikipedia site
2. Big encyclopedic dictionary
3. Orlov B. "So who shot Lenin?" (magazine "Source" No. 2 1993)
4. Bruce-Lockhart R. H. Memoires of a British Agent.
5. Bonch-Bruevich V. "The Assassination of Lenin"
6. Zenzinov V. "The coup d'etat of Admiral Kolchak in Omsk on November 18, 1918"
7. "Testimony of Pelevin on the npouecce of the Right SRs." (newspaper "Pravda" dated July 21, 1922 N 161)

August 30 is a special date in the history of Russia. In 1918, 100 years ago, on this day in both capitals, two assassination attempts were made on prominent Bolshevik leaders, who influenced the entire course of life in the country.

Party days

In the morning in Petrograd, on Palace Square, the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka Moisei Uritsky was shot dead. And in the evening in Moscow at the Michelson SR plant Fanny Kaplan shot at Lenin. The leader of the revolution received "two blind gunshot wounds." The best surgeons were involved in the treatment. For a long time, many of the materials in this case were difficult to access.

And the other day the Presidential Library in St. Petersburg digitized and published the original documents of the criminal case stored in the State Archives Russian Federation: 105 sheets which cover the period from August 30 to September 18, 1918. They include testimony of witnesses, descriptions and photographs of investigative experiments, bulletins about the health of Vladimir Ilyich, directives of the manager of the Council of People's Commissars Bonch-Bruevich.

"The controversy about what happened on August 30, 1918, does not subside to this day," confirmed Doctor of History, Director of the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikolay Smirnov... - Versions are put forward one more fantastic than the other: the bullets that hit Lenin were poisoned, the murder was "ordered" by Yakov Sverdlov, aiming at the role of leader. Some researchers even claim that it was a staged act to start the Red Terror. Like, Lenin agreed with the Chekists that they would shoot in the air, and he would "theatrically" fall to the ground ... Sometimes it comes to the point of absurdity - for example, that the attempt on Lenin's life was Kaplan's revenge for a failed romance with Dmitry Ulyanov. "

"Three harsh dry sounds"

What happened in reality, and why did Lenin end up at the Michelson plant on the evening of August 30? In fact, everything is more prosaic. August 30, 1918 fell on a Friday, and in Moscow this day was a "party" day, when the leaders of the country and the city met with the people. In the evening, Lenin was supposed to speak at the Michelson factory, where a meeting was being prepared on the topic "The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat." When in the morning the tragic news of the murder of Uritsky came from Petrograd, they wanted to cancel the speeches of the members of the Council of People's Commissars, but then decided to leave everything so that no one would think that the Bolsheviks wavered.

At the time of the assassination attempt on Lenin, Kaplan was 28 years old. Photo: Public Domain

Lenin, as always, spoke brightly, clearly answered questions. When he finished his speech and left the podium, he was surrounded by workers and so, all together, they went out into the yard. The driver Stepan Gil had already started the engine, but then one of the workers stopped Ilyich with another question. In this moment Assistant Military Commissar of the 5th Moscow Soviet Infantry Division Batulin was at a distance of 15-20 steps from the leader. Here is his testimony, presented on the portal of the library.

“I heard three sharp dry sounds, which I mistook not for revolver shots, but for ordinary motor sounds. Following these sounds, I saw a crowd of people, before that quietly standing by the car, scattering in different directions, and I saw Comrade V. Lenin lying motionless with his face to the ground.<…>I was not at a loss and shouted: Stop the killer comrade. Lenin and with these shouts I ran out to Serpukhovka.<…>Near the tree, I saw a woman with a briefcase and an umbrella in her hands, who, with her strange appearance, caught my attention. She looked like a person fleeing persecution, intimidated and hunted. I asked this woman why she came here. To these words she replied: Why do you need this? Then I searched her pockets and took her briefcase and umbrella and invited her to follow me. On the way, I asked her, feeling in her the face that was attempting to kill Comrade. Lenin, Why did you shoot at Comrade. Lenin ?, to which she replied. Why do you need to know this, what finally convinced me of this woman's assassination attempt on Comrade Lenin ".

Was the terrorist waiting for the tram?

Fearing that the woman would not be recaptured by her associates and “a mob would not be lynched against her,” Batulin asked the armed police and Red Army men in the crowd to accompany them to the commissariat of the Zamoskvoretsky district. During the interrogation, the woman detained by him “identified herself as Kaplan and confessed to the attempt on the life of comrade. Lenin ".

A few days later, on September 2, a picture of the assassination attempt was modeled on the territory of the plant. Revolutionary Viktor Kingisepp pointed out that the distance from the car to the gate was 8 fathoms 2 feet (a little over 18 meters) and admitted that “Kaplan was detained only thanks to the proletarian children, who were not confused like adults and ran after her with a cry:“ She shot to Lenin! "

Photo: Public Domain / Painting by P. Belousov "The Assassination of V. I. Lenin in 1918"

Meanwhile, the figure of "terrorist number one" of the 20th century, Fanny Kaplan, still raises a lot of questions today. Even with her name, historians cannot fully understand. Fanny, she's Fanya, she's Feiga, she's Dora. Kaplan, Royd, Roydman, Roitblat ... She became Kaplan in 1906, when, during her arrest (for preparing, together with her common-law husband Viktor Garsky, an attempt on the life of the local governor-general in Kiev), a 16-year-old girl was found to have a fake passport in the name Feigi Kaplan. In addition, the Socialist-Revolutionary had frankly weak eyesight, and the attempt took place at almost nine in the evening, when it was already getting dark. How could a short-sighted, almost blind woman, at dusk, in a crowd of people, shoot so accurately? And they detained her at a tram stop, where she stood "with a briefcase and an umbrella in her hands." All this gave reason to assert that Fanny was captured by mistake.

However, the revolutionist herself put the points. “The October Revolution found me in a Kharkov hospital,” Kaplan wrote after the assassination attempt. - I was unhappy with this revolution, I met it negatively ... I shot at Lenin. I decided to take this step back in February. This thought has matured in me in Simferopol, and since then I began to prepare for this step. "

This story ended tragically for her. On September 3, without a trial, in the courtyard of an auto-combat detachment at the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, under the roar of working engines, she was shot. The commandant of the Kremlin Pavel Malkov and the poet Demyan Bedny who happened to be at the place of execution, following Sverdlov's instructions not to leave a trace, burned Kaplan's body in an iron barrel. "Revolutionary justice" has been done.

And two weeks later, on September 18, 1918, the last bulletin on Lenin's condition came out. Contrary to all fears, "as if he did not die," the wounds healed, the leader recovered and after a month and a half was in the ranks. In total, 36 bulletins were issued during Lenin's illness. The first was written on August 30, 1918, at 11 pm, the last one on September 12, at 8 pm. All of them have been digitized by the Presidential Library and presented on its portal. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, used the death of Uritsky and the wound of Lenin to take revenge with red fire on the “enemies of the world revolution”. Already on September 2, the head of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Yakov Sverdlov, proclaimed the policy of the Red Terror. On September 5, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars approved the decree "On the Red Terror". This is how it began new stage civil war, the consequences of which we still feel.

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On August 30, 1918, an attempt was made on the life of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, whom, according to the official version, the Socialist Revolutionary tried to shoot Fanny Kaplan... However, there are numerous inconsistencies in the case, which to this day leave the question of Kaplan's involvement in the crime open.

The name Fanny Kaplan in Soviet times was associated almost with universal evil, because she raised her hand against the leader of the world proletariat, whose authority was enormous. Nevertheless, she will forever remain among the "Leninist women" along with Nadezhda Krupskaya and Inessa Armand. Some researchers believe that her crime was not politically motivated, but was the revenge of a rejected woman. So who is Fanny Kaplan really and why did she shoot Lenin?

THE BEGINNING OF THE WAY

Feiga Haimovna Roytblat (real name Fanny) was born on February 10, 1890 in the Volyn province of Ukraine in the family of a teacher of Jewish religious primary school... She had a freedom-loving, conflicting character. In the family, which was interrupted from penny to penny, besides Fanny, there were seven more children.

At that time in Russia, anti-Semitism was in full bloom, so it is not surprising that Feigu was drawn to the anarchists. The first Russian revolution found her in their ranks. The girl received the party nickname Dora and plunged headlong into the revolutionary struggle. Youth is the time of love, and no political situation can interfere with this feeling.

Fanny's chosen one was Viktor Garsky, a wrestling comrade-in-arms, aka Yakov Schmidman. It is believed that Garsky managed to amass decent capital on contract killings, that is, in fact, he was a robber and murderer who covered up his crimes with noble revolutionary ideals.

Common interests fueled a flared feeling in the girl. Together with Tarski, they prepared in December 1906 an attempt on the life of the Kiev governor-general Sukhomlinov, which ended in failure. This was Kaplan's first terrorist experience. During the explosion in the Kiev hotel "Kupecheskaya" Fanny was seriously wounded and fell into the hands of the gendarmes, and her lover, leaving her at the scene of the crime, disappeared. However, despite this, Kaplan took the blame for what she had done.

LIFETIME CATORGA

The tsarist authorities at that time suppressed revolutionary manifestations in every possible way. And 16-year-old Fanny Kaplan was sentenced to death, but she was given a discount on her age, replacing the punishment with indefinite hard labor. Even under the threat of such a terrible sentence, Fanny did not betray either Tarski or any other comrades-in-arms to the authorities. So, the girl, who had not had time to see anything in life, ended up in the most terrible Akatuisk hard labor in Russia.

Severe injury and hard labor undermined her health, in 1909 Fanny became so blind that she needed books in Braille. It was difficult to come to terms with this, and she attempted suicide, albeit unsuccessful. But due to the loss of vision, she was given some relief in her work, and only three years later her vision partially returned to her.

Fanny did not leave thoughts of politics in hard labor, especially since there were many political prisoners with her. Under the influence of Maria Spiridonova, who in 1918 would raise a revolt of the Left SRs against the Bolsheviks, Kaplan began to consider herself not an anarchist, but an SR.

The February revolution brought her and many other political prisoners the long-awaited freedom. But the best part of life: from 16 to 27 years old for Fanny has already passed, and after the trials she fell, she looked like a deep old woman, almost blind and half deaf.

MEETING IN CRIMEA

In 1911, the Kaplan family moved to America, perhaps that is why those with whom Fanny went through hard labor became such close people to her, replacing relatives.

In 1917, to improve her health, she received a ticket to Yevpatoria, where a rest house was organized for former convicts. The climate of Crimea had a beneficial effect on Fanny, and it was there that she met with Dmitry Ulyanov, Lenin's younger brother, who served as People's Commissar for Health and Social Security in the government of the Crimean Soviet Republic. The house of convicts was under his jurisdiction.

They say that Dmitry had two passions: wine and women - and even drunk at government meetings. Exhausted by hard labor, but surrounded by a revolutionary aura, the young woman attracted the attention of the minister.

It is difficult to say whether they had a love affair: the information of contemporaries diverges on this issue.

Nevertheless, thanks to Ulyanov Jr., Fanny received a referral to the Kharkov eye clinic, where she underwent surgery and partially restored her vision. Paradoxically, it turns out that Kaplan was able to shoot her older brother thanks to the younger one. It is not known why Fanny broke up with Dmitry, and a month later the same shot thundered. It may well have been the revenge of an abandoned woman.

In Crimea, Fanny Kaplan got a job as the head of the courses for the training of workers in volost zemstvos. Of course, this is not at all what the young Socialist Revolutionary woman dreamed of. She kept hoping for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly with a Social Revolutionary majority, but the 1917 revolution destroyed all her hopes. For the Socialist Revolutionary Party, terrorism was a familiar method of struggle, but for a former convict who had nothing to lose, risk was a common thing.

If at the dawn of her revolutionary career she did not kill the Governor-General, then why not make up for this omission by killing Lenin. It is possible that the Social Revolutionaries had planned in advance the meeting of young people in order to provoke the woman to revenge. Or maybe these two events are not connected in any way, because revolutionaries perfectly knew how to separate personal from duty.

CRIME OF THE AGE

At that time, the protection of the first persons was far from modern ideas about security. Suffice it to recall the series of assassination attempts that took place then: Alexander II almost died from the bullet of the terrorist Karakozov; the death of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand; and Lenin himself was more than once exposed to danger. In such conditions, in order to destroy a well-known politician, it was enough only to gain resolve, and Fanny had enough of this quality, moreover, it was necessary to shoot from close range.

That evening, Lenin was supposed to speak at two Friday rallies at factories: first in the Basmanny District, at the former Bread Exchange, and then in Zamoskvorechye, at the Mikhelson plant. Even the fact that Uritsky was killed on August 30 in the morning in Petrograd did not serve as a reason for canceling the plans of the leader. After speaking to the workers of the Michelson plant, Lenin, surrounded by people, moved to the exit.

He almost got into the car, but then some worker approached him with a question, and while Lenin was talking to her, Kaplan came very close to him and fired three shots. Two bullets hit the leader's neck and arm, and the third wounded his interlocutor.

However, the information that has come down to us illustrates the events of that day in a very contradictory way: staging, conspiracy, second shooter, etc. actor- Kaplan admitted her guilt and again did not betray her accomplices during interrogation, explaining her actions by the fact that Lenin had betrayed the ideals of the revolution and he had to be removed as an obstacle to the advance of socialism.

For many years the official version of the assassination attempt on V.I. Lenin did not raise any doubts among the Soviet people. Everyone believed that the crime was organized by the Social Revolutionaries, and the performer was the fanatical Fanny Kaplan, who became one of the most famous women in the Land of the Soviets.

EMERGENCY

The investigation was outrageously short, only three days, which suggests that Fanny knew too much and was in a hurry to get her out. The reason could also be that the Bolsheviks, furious with two terrorist acts: the murder of Uritsky and the attempt on Lenin's life, announced the beginning of the Red Terror. And during the terror, as you know, they do not stand on ceremony with the guilty. On September 3, 1918, Sverdlov gave an oral order to shoot Kaplan.

According to the official version, Fanny Kaplan was shot by Pavel Malkov, a sailor of the Baltic Fleet, commandant of the Moscow Kremlin. The woman's corpse was burned in an iron barrel, after having poured gasoline over it. All this was done secretly - right under the windows of the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Lenin, in the Aleksandrovsky Garden, to the sound of cars with engines running. Only a few people knew about the execution. The poet Demyan Bedny became an involuntary witness.

To date, the Prosecutor General's Office has established that it was Kaplan who shot Lenin. The well-known criminal prosecutor V. Solovyov says: “We raised the interrogation protocols, drawn up in August 1918. The main subject of study was Browning, which was demonstrated for several decades at one of the stands of the Lenin Museum, and then kept in its funds. The weapon was in excellent condition. And then they decided to test it. The ballistic examination was carried out in one of the basements of the Lefortovo prison. The cartridges and casings were subjected to microscopic analysis.

The single bullet was also carefully examined. She was in Lenin's body for several years. It was taken out only after his death. Such a detailed and thorough survey has never been carried out. As a result, experts came to a definite conclusion: the attempt on Ilyich was made from this Browning. Thus, in August 1918 it was Fanny Kaplan who shot at Ulyanov-Lenin. "

But another opinion is also interesting, which was voiced by the famous writer Polina Dashkova on the basis of a study of archival documents: “By the way, why not immediately remove these bullets? The version that they were poisoned arose only in 1922, when the well-known trial of the Right Social Revolutionaries began. They called an expert and asked: "Can a bullet be impregnated with curare poison?"

To which the expert replied: "How to soak it, it is lead!" Can I soak a spoon with tea? Let's say a bullet was cut and a piece of wax mixed with curare poison was inserted into it, but they did not calculate that the bullet heats up, and at high temperatures the poison is destroyed.

So: it does not collapse! He would have died instantly from poisoned bullets! Four years later, it was as if they decided to remove one bullet, although if they were encapsulated there and do not interfere with health, why would they suddenly get them? But at the trial it was necessary to present at least some material evidence. Why was it necessary to write out the German doctor Borchard and pay him 220 thousand marks for a trifling operation, in which Dr. Rozanov, one of the best surgeons in the country, was just an assistant?

It is also strange that they decided to remove exactly the bullet that was sitting in the neck. It would be more logical to remove then the second one, which is in the shoulder, everything is much simpler there: there are fewer vessels and arteries - but they did not do this. I don't think there were any bullets at all. "

ARE THERE SHOTS?

For many years the official version of the assassination attempt on V.I. Lenin did not raise any doubts among the Soviet people. Everyone believed that the crime was organized by the Social Revolutionaries, and the performer was fanatical Fanny Kaplan, who became one of the most famous women of the Land of the Soviets - any first grader knew that "this is the aunt who killed Lenin's grandfather." But from the beginning of the 90s of the XX century, publications began to appear in the press refuting this version.

The file contains the testimony of the military commissar SN Baturin: “I heard three sharp dry sounds, which I mistook not for revolver shots, but for ordinary motor sounds. And after these sounds, I saw a crowd of people, before that calmly stood by the car, scattering in different directions, and I saw Comrade Lenin, lying motionless with his face to the ground. The man who shot at Comrade. Lenin, I have not seen. "

But on September 5, that is, 6 days after the assassination attempt, Baturin changes his testimony and claims that he caught up and detained Kaplan. And someone saw it differently: she stood, huddled against a tree, watching how shouting people ran from the gates of the Michelson factory, how sailors rushed and boys shouted: "Grab it!" She has an umbrella and a briefcase in her hands, her feet bloody with uncomfortable boots. In the afternoon, Kaplan went to the commissariat and there asked for a piece of paper - to put an insole instead, the nails so pierced the heels. She squints half-blindly, peering into the darkness. And then someone shouts: “Yes, it's her! She shot! "

The next controversial point is the main evidence of the crime - the weapon. Chekistka Z. Legonkaya recalled that during the search they didn’t find anything on the woman: “During the search I stood with a revolver at the ready. I watched Kaplan's hand movements. In the purse they found a notebook with torn off sheets, eight head pins, cigarettes. "

But a year later, Legonkaya also changes her testimony and claims that they found a seven-shot Browning at Kaplan, which the Chekist took (!) For herself. And in the case there is information that the pistol was brought to the investigator by a factory worker Kuznetsov a few days after the assassination attempt. In addition, four cartridges remained in the Browning, and four spent cartridges were found at the crime scene, not three. It turns out that there could be two arrows.

It seems very strange that Sverdlov, immediately after the assassination attempt, signed the document “On the villainous attempt on comrade. Lenin ", which claimed that this was the work of the right Social Revolutionaries. And this is even an hour before Kaplan was questioned. The next day, he ordered an end to the investigation altogether, transfer the terrorist to the Kremlin, remove her from the Chekists and shoot her. In addition, the investigator in charge of this case was acquainted with the decision of Sverdlov retroactively, after the execution of the criminal, on September 7.

When Fanny Kaplan was serving hard labor, she was only 16 years old and she was in love with Tarski. When, after a couple of years, Tarsky was still caught in some kind of robbery, he suddenly wrote a statement to the attorney general that the girl Kaplan was not to blame for the explosion. But this paper went to the authorities and got lost. Yes, and it is difficult to imagine that a person who underwent eye surgery at that time regained his sight so that he could shoot in the dark and hit the target. Besides, how could she learn to shoot after ten years in hard labor?

It is impossible to argue with medical documents. According to them, the bullet entered under Lenin's left shoulder blade and, passing obliquely, got stuck above the right collarbone, while not damaging any organs. It turns out that the bullet followed a strange trajectory - a zigzag, otherwise it must have touched either the heart, or the lungs, or, finally, important arteries and vessels.

If this had happened, Vladimir Ilyich would hardly have been able to get to bed on his own. As for the second bullet, everything is simpler there: it shattered the humerus and got stuck under the skin. Bullet wounds are dangerous sepsis. There were no antibiotics then, but Lenin never even had a fever! Modern doctors believe that, according to these documents, a person could have died ten times already.

Who benefits from it?

First of all, making Kaplan guilty was beneficial to Lenin and his associates. After all, this fully justified the subsequent Red Terror and the leader's illness. This assumption is supported by the way Lenin reacted to events: he was not interested in the investigation, which seems rather strange given his punctuality and corrosiveness. Moreover, according to eyewitnesses, as soon as a conversation about Kaplan came in his presence, he became gloomy and withdrawn into himself, and Krupskaya cried.

Some historians believe that at least three were interested in Lenin's death: Sverdlov, Trotsky and Dzerzhinsky. But these people would hardly have used the blind Socialist Revolutionary as a tool, they would have found a more effective way. However, who knows how it really was. Perhaps, by coincidence, the wounds inflicted by Kaplan were not fatal.

They didn’t even put Lenin out of action for a long time, and he seemed to understand perfectly well that his associates had almost carried out a conspiracy against him. In any case, already on October 8, seven new members were introduced to the Revolutionary Military Council, in which Trotsky wanted to gather his adherents, who were Trotsky's opponents, including JV Stalin.

If we talk about the version of the staged assassination attempt, then here it was necessary to shoot so as not to touch the vital organs, and this is much more difficult to do in the dark than to kill. Now that we know about so many inconsistencies, it can be assumed that
Kaplan was simply framed or used in the dark.

PARDON?

In the bowels of the Gulag in 1930-1940, there were persistent rumors that Fanny Kaplan survived and was seen on Solovki, allegedly working in the prison office. In the old criminal case, the protocol of the interrogation of a certain V.A.Novikov, who was in charge of Kaplan's actions, was preserved. Twenty years later, Novikov claimed to have met Fanny on a walk in one of the transfer prisons in the Sverdlovsk region.

The NKVD began a large-scale check, but no trace of Kaplan was found. Nevertheless, rumors that Fanny Kaplan lived to a ripe old age are still circulating to this day. If by some miracle she really escaped execution and burning, then only one person could cancel her murder by his secret order - Vladimir Lenin.

However, it is difficult to imagine that a Jewish Socialist-Revolutionary woman who shot at the leader of the world proletariat was not executed by the Bolsheviks. The only thing that has not yet been established is the fate of Kaplan's remains.

Galina MINNIKOVA