"Our father turned out to be a bitch"

80 years ago, on the night of June 11-12, 1937, the verdict of eight convicts in the case of the "military-fascist conspiracy in the Red Army", also known as the Tukhachevsky case, was carried out. 20 years later, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR overturned the previous decision and stopped the proceedings due to the absence of corpus delicti in the actions of the sentenced. Legally, all the dots over the "i" seem to be dotted. However, from the point of view of history, the Tukhachevsky case is by no means closed. The question “what was it”, which the country and the world asked after receiving the news of the verdict and execution, did not receive an unambiguous and consistent answer.

Of the first five marshals of the USSR, by the end of the purge, only two survived. Below (from left to right): Tukhachevsky (shot), Voroshilov, Yegorov (shot). Above: Budyonny, Blucher (died in prison).

Deadly race

Shots fired 80 years ago in the basement of the building of the Military Collegium of the USSR Armed Forces ended the lives of eight high-ranking Soviet military leaders. The most eminent of them, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, held the post of Deputy People's Commissar of Defense before his overthrow. Ieronim Uborevich was the commander of the Belorussian military district, Iona Yakir was the Kiev military district, Boris Feldman was the head of the command of the Red Army, August Kork was the head of the Frunze academy, Vitaly Primakov was the deputy commander of the Leningrad Military District, Vitovt Putna was the military attaché of the USSR in Great Britain, - the head of Osoaviakhim.

Color, the cream of the Red Army. However, neither the status of the exposed "enemies of the people", nor their number of Soviet citizens at that time was no longer surprising. However, this was not an ordinary episode of the Great Terror. And the point is not only in the great political, historical significance of this event, which marks a new, bloodiest phase of repression. Tukhachevsky's case differs from other sections of the Stalin's death conveyor primarily in its execution technique.

The first thing that attracts attention is the phenomenal, even by the standards of that time, the speed of the investigation. Most of the convicts were arrested in mid-May 1937. Marshal Tukhachevsky himself, who, according to the plot of the accusation, was the head of the conspiracy, was taken on May 22. The last one to get to the Lubyanka, to the inner prison of the NKVD, was Ieronim Uborevich - this happened on May 29. Thus, only 13 days passed between the arrest of the last suspect and the execution.

Until now, it took much more time to organize trials with such high-profile defendants. Months or even years. For example, more than a year and a half passed between the arrest and execution of Zinoviev and Kamenev, who were the main defendants in the so-called First Moscow Trial. Bukharin and Rykov, who figured in the Tukhachevsky case as one of the political leaders of the "military-fascist conspiracy", were arrested on February 27, 1937, that is, more than three months before the Tukhachevites were sentenced. And they were shot 9 months later.

And with ordinary "enemies of the people" - despite the fact that they were often not even honored to be summoned to court, considering cases in absentia - they fiddled, as a rule, longer. Not out of philanthropy, of course. It's just that the very logic of repression demanded to get rid of a person only after he ceased to be of interest as a means of producing revelatory testimony. The lack of intelligence and imagination among the persons under investigation was willingly made up for by the investigators themselves. But this creativity still required a certain amount of time. The investigators in the Tukhachevsky case obviously did not have enough of it.

This is evidenced, in particular, by the fact that they continued to beat out testimony from the accused even after the case was formally closed and transferred to the court. For example, Komkor Primakov gave his last testimony on June 10, on the eve of the trial. By the way, here is the theater of the absurd in all its glory: in this last confession, it was not just anyone who was brought to light, but the judges of the upcoming trial. Three of them - Kashirin, Dybenko and Shaposhnikov - were exposed by Primakov as participants in the same "military-fascist conspiracy."

Mikhail Tukhachevsky, 1936.

For reference: on the initiative of Stalin, a Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court was formed to consider the case, which included the chairman of the Military Collegium of the Armed Forces Ulrich and eight prominent military leaders - Budyonny, Blucher, Dybenko, Shaposhnikov, Alksnis, Belov, Kashirin and Goryachev. That is, the process was presented almost as a comradely court: the "conspirators" were tried by their well-known "brothers in arms", with some of them they were quite recently on friendly and even on friendly terms. At the same time, the main director of this performance hardly risked anything: no surprises from the "jury" he selected, who were themselves gripped by fear for their lives, did not have to wait.

In short, according to the laws of the genre, the participants in the "military-fascist conspiracy" had to be tortured in dungeons for at least a couple of months in order to "expose" properly, "gut" without a trace. But neither the materials of the case, nor the materials of rehabilitation contain intelligible explanations for this emergency rush.

"I have no complaints about the investigation"

Riddle number 2 - active cooperation of the arrested with the investigation. The surprise is not the fact that they were broken. The repressive machine worked in this sense almost without misfires: the percentage of those who did not confess was very small. But the amazing thing is that they were broken so quickly. Mikhail Tukhachevsky, three days after his arrest and the next day after he was taken to Moscow - he was taken into custody in Kuibyshev - wrote a statement with his own hand to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs: “I acknowledge the existence of an anti-Soviet military-Trotskyist conspiracy and that I was at the head of it. I undertake to independently explain to the investigation everything concerning the conspiracy, without hiding any of its participants and not a single fact and document ... "

At the interrogation that took place on the same day, May 26, 1937, Tukhachevsky gave the following testimony: “The purpose of the conspiracy was to overthrow the existing government by force of arms and restore capitalism ... Our anti-Soviet military organization in the army was associated with the Trotskyite-Zinovievist center and right-wing conspirators and in her plans she outlined the seizure of power by committing the so-called palace coup, that is, the seizure of the government and the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) in the Kremlin ... "After that there were several more interrogations, in which Tukhachevsky recalled the details of his" treasonous activities ", and a number of confessions written by him. According to the protocol of the last interrogation conducted by the USSR Prosecutor Vyshinsky before the case was sent to court, Tukhachevsky confirmed everything that had been said and written earlier. The last words of the marshal, recorded in the investigation file: "I have no claims to the investigation."

The commission of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which in the early 1960s was engaged in checking the charges brought against Tukhachevsky and other military personnel, came to the conclusion that the confessionary testimony had been snatched from the marshal by "moral and physical torture." As a confirmation, in particular, the fact that “brown-brown spots” were found on sheets 165-166 of case No. 967581 is cited. According to the study, these are traces of human blood. Some of them, experts specify, have the form of exclamation marks: "This form of blood stains is usually observed when blood gets from an object in motion, or when blood hits the surface at an angle ..."

However, skeptics reasonably note that the bloody sheets contain Tukhachevsky's testimony of June 1. At that time, Mikhail Nikolayevich had already “taken the path of repentance” for almost a week, so the investigators had no particular reasons for dissatisfaction with him. Blood could well run from Tukhachevsky's nose from nervous and physical overwork. And, strictly speaking, it is not known whether this is his blood at all. At the same time, the case of Tukhachevsky, of course, was not without "physical influence" - a euphemism that in the Soviet legal newspeak denoted the torture of those under investigation. The aforementioned certificate of the Central Committee Presidium Commission, also known as the Shvernik Commission, cites, among others, the testimony of Avseevich, a former employee of the Special Department of the NKVD of the USSR: “In May 1937, at one of the meetings, assistant. early department Ushakov reported to Leplevsky that Uborevich did not want to testify, Leplevsky ordered Ushakov to apply physical methods of influence to Uborevich at the meeting.

There was nothing extraordinary or unusual about this: at that time, torture was allowed for use quite officially. They were quite often used by the NKVD members even before the case of the "military-fascist conspiracy", and after, from the summer of 1937, they generally became the main method of obtaining evidence. But it is impossible not to notice that many "enemies of the people", from whom one could expect much less stamina than from the heroes of the Civil, held out much longer.

The power of lack of will

The theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold, arrested in June 1939 and shot six months later, did not confess for three whole weeks. Despite the torture he was continuously subjected to. He himself described this hell in his letter to Vyacheslav Molotov, the then prime minister: “They beat me here - a sick sixty-six-year-old man, they laid me face down on the floor, they beat me on the heels and back with a rubber band, when I was sitting on a chair, they beat me on the same rubber. legs ... And on the following days, when these places of the legs were flooded with profuse internal hemorrhage, then these red-blue-yellow bruises were again beaten with this tourniquet, and the pain was such that it seemed that boiling water was poured on the sore, sensitive parts of the legs (I screamed and cried in pain) ... "

In fairness, it must be said that the heroes of the Civil, too, did not all surrender at once. And some even remained unbroken. One of these was corps commander Epifan Kovtyukh, who was shot in June 1938. “In the course of the investigation, terrible tortures were used against Kovtyukh in order to force him to give false testimony about himself and in relation to other innocent Soviet citizens,” says Shvernik’s commission statement. - Kazakevich, a former employee of the USSR NKVD, reported in 1955: “In 1937 or 1938, I personally saw in the corridor of the Lefortovo prison how an arrested person was led from interrogation, beaten to such an extent that the guards did not lead him, but almost carried him. I asked one of the investigators: who is this arrested person? I was told that this is the corps commander Kovtyukh, whom Serafimovich described in the novel "Iron Stream" under the name of Kozhukh. " Kovtyukh never admitted to anything.

Of course, everyone has their own pain threshold and their own level of willpower. Do not judge, and you will not be judged. However, among the defendants in the Tukhachevsky case, these personal characteristics in a strange way turned out to be identical: they were confessed almost simultaneously. According to the compilers of Shvernikov's certificate, in addition to the whip, that is to say, the rubber hose, the Jesuit investigators actively used the carrot - promises that their wards would be kept alive for good behavior during the investigation and trial. Option - they will not persecute relatives and friends. Someone may have really taken the bait. But it is impossible to believe that everyone has taken a bite.

After all, they were far from children: the level of awareness of the leadership of the Red Army about what was happening in the country - including the peculiarities of the national witch hunt - was obviously higher than the average. In addition, two open Moscow trials have already passed, providing abundant food for thought. The "Tukhachevites" knew, could not help but know, that those who confess, contrary to rumors and hopes about the "conditional sentences", are not left alive. And that their family members are also being repressed.

Marshal's own handwritten testimony.

A possible explanation for the synchronized obedience of the "Tukhachevites" is some incriminating facts that remained outside the scope of the case. The fact that his materials are far from complete was noted by the Shvernikov commission: "The protocols of the initial interrogations of Tukhachevsky were either not drawn up at all, or were destroyed by the investigation." But this seems to be far from the only gap. According to one version, dating back to the 1950s, the secret materials that allegedly disarmed the "conspirators" were the so-called Heydrich dossier - false evidence of a conspiratorial connection between the "Tukhachevsky group" and the German generals, which were allegedly skillfully concocted by the Gestapo.

But the Shvernikovites rejected this assumption: “The version about Heydrich's fabrication of documents against Tukhachevsky ... does not find its confirmation ... All attempts to find these“ documents ”in the archives of the CPSU Central Committee, the archives of the Soviet Army, the OGPU-NKVD, as well as in the judicial - the investigative cases of Tukhachevsky and other Soviet commanders did not lead to anything ... Nobody even mentioned these "documents" either during the investigation or in the court session. "

To these convincing arguments - least of all, the prosecution was interested in hiding such information, inserting literally every bast in the line - it is worth adding one more consideration. It is unlikely that deliberate fakes and false denunciations could so discourage the members of the group and deprive them of their will to resist. This obviously required something stronger than the idle Gestapo "Faust patron". Some kind of real "bomb".

Nobody wanted to die

Perhaps the clue is the words of Valentin Falin, a diplomat, historian and politician, the last head of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee (1988-1991). For reference: Valentin Mikhailovich began his career in the state apparatus under Stalin. Not many of the living Cold War veterans were on such a short footing with Soviet-era state secrets. As for the secrets of its Stalinist-Khrushchev period, today, perhaps, it is impossible to find a source comparable in terms of awareness.

So, speaking for several years with a lecture on relations between Russia and the West in their historical context, Falin touched upon, among other things, the topic of “thinning out” of archives. Having criticized the West, Valentin Mikhailovich did not turn a blind eye to a similar Soviet practice: “In the Soviet Union, the shrinkage and shrinkage of archives was also practiced. True, for other reasons. The halo of the rulers should not have suffered. Nikita Sergeevich became especially adept in this field, seizing evidence of his ardent participation in the struggle against "enemies of the people." At the same time, on his order, the wiretapping of the conversations of Tukhachevsky and other military leaders, which served as the basis for the accusation of high treason against them, was destroyed. "

As far as you can understand, this is not only and not so much about intercepting telephone conversations - the leaders of the Red Army were probably not such fools to exchange thoughts using the phone at that time - but about information obtained with the help of "bugs", listening devices. As it is now known, surveillance of Tukhachevsky in the months preceding his arrest was indeed carried on rather intensively. The only thing that raises doubts about Falin's words is the assertion that the wiretaps were destroyed by Khrushchev. After all, if such documents really existed, then the absence of any mention of them in the judicial and investigative materials suggests that this truth was inconvenient, first of all, for Stalin.

What the servicemen who were part of the "Tukhachevsky group" talked about in the last months and days before their arrest, now we can only guess. But, perhaps, it would not be too bold to suggest that the main theme of these conversations was the "circle of encirclement" which was rapidly shrinking around them. The shells fell closer and closer: two of those convicted in the case, Primakov and Putna, were arrested back in August 1936. For people with little analytical abilities, and the leaders of the Red Army, undoubtedly, can be attributed to such, it was clear that the purge was gaining momentum, that their arrest was only a matter of time.

The only chance for salvation was given by a "breakout from the ring" - the seizure of power. The "Tukhachevites" did not at all want the restoration of capitalism. But they wanted to live, and such a desire will, perhaps, be more substantial than political preferences. In other words, they certainly had a motive to realize the thoughts imputed to them by the consequence. And there were all the organizational and technical possibilities for this. But there seemed to be a lack of determination. In addition, some other political and ideological justification was required. It was necessary to explain to the people why the leader was being overthrown, why "our father turned out to be a bitch." You cannot present fear for your own lives as a motive. However, according to some reports, the conspirators' sought-for justification - taking into account this information, you can already write this word without quotation marks - has appeared.

According to Alexander Orlov (Lev Feldbin), a high-ranking employee of Soviet foreign intelligence, who fled in 1938 due to imminent arrest to the West, no later than autumn 1936, a folder with lethal compromising material on the "leader of the peoples" fell into the hands of the "Tukhachevites" - his personal case as an employee of the tsarist secret police. Orlov, who was then living in the United States, published a detailed story about this in 1956 in Life magazine. The defector indicated his cousin Zinovy ​​Katsnelson as a source of information. According to Orlov, during their Paris meeting in February 1937, Zinovy ​​told him about the documents incriminating Stalin, and about the plans of the conspirators, to which he allegedly belonged. At that time, Zinoviy Katsnelson held the post of Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.

It was planned, under some plausible pretext, to convince the People's Commissar of Defense to hold a conference in the Kremlin on the problems of the districts, whose commanders were privy to the conspiracy plans. The next stage looked like this: “At a certain hour or on a signal, two elite regiments of the Red Army block the main streets leading to the Kremlin in order to block the advance of the NKVD troops. At the same moment, the conspirators announced to Stalin that he was arrested. " After that, the owner of the Kremlin, on the basis of the documents held by the conspirators, was declared an enemy of the people and the revolution.

Unfortunately, nothing can confirm this version. But the abundance of white spots in the Tukhachevsky case makes her categorical refutation impossible. Moreover, she herself perfectly fills these spots, explaining the speed of the investigation - it was necessary to end the top of the conspiracy as soon as possible, - and the behavior of the persons under investigation, and the destruction of wiretapping materials: information about the dangerous folder was not subject to disclosure. And most importantly, it explains the bloody madness into which the country plunged in the summer of 1937. Of course, the eyes of the fear that gripped Comrade Stalin opened to limits that are clearly not characteristic of a mentally healthy person. But the fear itself does not seem to have arisen from scratch.

17.01.2016 6 620 0 Jadaha

Mysteries of history

In our country, it is widely believed that in 1937 Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and his comrades actually conspired to seize power, and Stalin, having reason to fear the Marshal, struck a preemptive blow, arresting and, after a quick and unjust trial, shooting the leaders of the conspiracy. On the contrary, with regard to the dismissal in 1957 of Marshal Georgy Zhukov, accused of Bonapartism, the prevailing opinion is that Georgy Konstantinovich did not even think about seizing power, but became a victim of Khrushchev's suspicion, who was frightened when, during the fight against the "anti-party group of Malenkov, Kaganovich , Molotov and Shepilov, who joined them ”Zhukov threatened to turn to the army.

In fact, as often happens, everything happened exactly the opposite. The Tukhachevsky conspiracy did not exist in nature. But Zhukov's conspiracy did exist, although, of course, it had not yet come to a coup.

Tukhachevsky's conspiracy

First, let's deal with the Tukhachevsky conspiracy. The alarm signal for Mikhail Nikolayevich and his comrades sounded on April 22, 1937, when the Politburo canceled a planned trip to London for the coronation of King George VI. The day before, on April 21, Yezhov sent a special message to Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov:

“Today we have received data from a foreign source, which deserves full confidence, that during the trip, Comrade Tukhachevsky at the coronation celebrations in London, on the instructions of the German intelligence agencies, it is planned to commit a terrorist act over him. To prepare a terrorist act, a group of 4 people (3 Germans and 1 Pole) was created.

The source does not exclude that a terrorist act is being prepared with the intention of causing an international complication. In view of the fact that we are deprived of the opportunity to ensure the protection of Comrade Tukhachevsky, guaranteeing his complete safety, I consider it expedient for Comrade Tukhachevsky to London to cancel. Please discuss. "

On this paper, Stalin wrote: “Members of the Politburo. Sad as it may seem, we have to agree with Comrade Yezhov's proposal. It is necessary to propose to Comrade Voroshilov to present another candidate. "

The version about the assassination attempt looked very ridiculous. Why suddenly the German intelligence considers it necessary to kill Tukhachevsky, and if the Soviet delegation in London is headed by Voroshilov himself or someone else of his deputies, in particular, the head of the naval forces of the 1st rank Vladimir Orlov, who actually went to London, then on won't they try to kill him? Undoubtedly, Mikhail Nikolaevich should have interpreted the cancellation of the trip as a manifestation of mistrust of himself. Moreover, by that time, several high-ranking military personnel who were part of his group in the leadership of the Red Army had already been arrested, including the deputy commander of the Leningrad military district Vitaly Primakov, the former military attaché in London Vitovt Putna and the commander of the Ural military district Ilya Garkavy.

Subsequently, the failed trip to London was interpreted as Tukhachevsky's intention to receive a blessing from his British, French and German masters immediately before the coup d'état was being prepared. Indeed, according to the investigation, the conspirators were going to seize power on the instructions of foreign intelligence services. But in fact, in order to prepare a military coup, no connection with foreign intelligence services was not only required, but, moreover, was clearly harmful to the success of the conspiracy. In the USSR, all foreigners were under the control of the NKVD, and high-ranking military contacts with them would not have gone unnoticed. Afanasyev, a former Parisian resident of the NKVD in 1932-1938, told the commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which was engaged in reviewing the Tukhachevsky case: “We were aware of the most classified secret activities of Trotsky and Sedov. Therefore, when the question is raised whether there could have been meetings between Sedov and Tukhachevsky, Putnaya and other military leaders of the Soviet Union, as discussed at the trials that took place in Moscow from 1936 to 1938, it can be argued that this is not true ... The intelligence and documentary materials that we received in the course of the development of Trotsky, Sedov, Clement and partly of the ROVS * in Paris, neither directly nor indirectly, did not confirm the accusations that were brought against the military leaders of the Red Army in connection with the Tukhachevsky case, Cork, Gamarnik, Putny and others. " Tukhachevsky was grazed just as closely during his trips abroad in the 1930s. He had virtually no chance of establishing unauthorized contact with foreigners.

The former head of the RKKA Intelligence Directorate, Semyon Uritsky, who was also shot, stated in a letter to Voroshilov: “On May 1, 1937, after the parade in your apartment, the leader said that the enemies would be exposed, the party would grind them into powder, and raised a toast to those who, while remaining loyal , will worthily take its place at the glorious table on the October anniversary. " There was an unequivocal hint in Stalin's words that not all of those present would have the opportunity to return to this table on November 7 of the same year. If Tukhachevsky was preparing a conspiracy, he would probably have decided that the conspiracy had been discovered, and would have tried to somehow turn the tide: raise a loyal battalion or at least a company, try to seize the Kremlin, appeal to the army and people. It was according to this scenario that events in Egypt developed when the conspiracy of the Free Officers organization was revealed. The conspirators who remained at large raised their troops and carried out a coup. Likewise, in 1978 in Afghanistan, when the government became aware of a conspiracy by the military, closely associated with the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, and some of the conspirators were arrested, their associates managed to revolt and seize power, killing President Mohammed Daoud. Tukhachevsky could have followed this path and at least died in battle, so as not to experience the humiliation and torture of the subsequent investigation and trial with a predetermined death sentence. But Tukhachevsky did not do anything ... simply because he was not preparing any coup.

The most important element of any military coup is a military unit devoted to the conspirators, which at the decisive moment captures strategic objects in the capital. However, no traces of such a part were found in the materials of the investigation and the court in the case of the "military-fascist conspiracy". In addition to fantastic confessions of espionage, as well as deliberate sabotage, designed to ensure the defeat of the Red Army in a future war against Germany and other "imperialist powers", the case contains quite plausible admissions that Tukhachevsky and his comrades really planned to mix Voroshilov from the post of People's Commissar defense. But they were going to do this not by means of a conspiracy, but by appealing to Stalin and the Politburo.

The former commander of the Belarusian Military District, Ieronim Uborevich, confirmed at the trial: "We went to the government to raise the issue of Voroshilov, attack Voroshilov, in essence we agreed with Gamarnik, who said that he would firmly oppose Voroshilov." This can be called an intrigue against Voroshilov, but not a conspiracy to seize power. Voroshilov, at the beginning of June 1937, at an expanded meeting of the Military Council, entirely devoted to the “counter-revolutionary conspiracy in the Red Army,” said: “Last year, in May, at my apartment, Tukhachevsky threw an accusation against me and Budyonny, in the presence of Comrades. Stalin, Molotov and many others, in the fact that I allegedly group a small group of people around me, lead with them, direct all politics, etc. Then, on the second day, Tukhachevsky abandoned everything that was said ... Stalin then said that it was necessary to stop bickering in private, it was necessary to arrange a meeting of the Politburo and at this meeting to analyze in detail what was the matter. And at this meeting we examined all these issues and again came to the previous result. " Then Stalin made a reply: "He renounced his accusations." “Yes,” repeated Voroshilov, “he refused, although the group of Yakir and Uborevich at the meeting behaved rather aggressively towards me. Uborevich was still silent, and Gamarnik and Yakir behaved very badly towards me. " In case of failure, Tukhachevsky, Gamarnik, Uborevich and other opponents of the "cavalry group" believed, they could be moved to some insignificant posts, but in case of success, Tukhachevsky was supposed to become the people's commissar of defense and prepare the army for war according to his plan. But Stalin decided otherwise. He himself was preparing for a big war in Europe, hoping for victory, but he was seriously afraid that after the victory one of his marshals, following the example of Bonaparte, would try to seize power. Since Stalin was closely associated with the "cavalry" in civilian life, and Voroshilov was difficult to suspect of Bonapartism, both because of a rather mediocre mind and because of the obvious fear of Stalin, the secretary general made a choice in his favor over Tukhachevsky, who did not once openly argued with the secretary general and clearly demonstrated that he was not afraid of him. And Stalin decided to physically destroy the rivals of the "konarmeytsy".

Zhukov's conspiracy

It is generally believed that Khrushchev was afraid of Zhukov in June 1957, when he allegedly threatened to turn to the army if the members of the "anti-party group" opposed the convening of the Central Committee Plenum. In reality, Zhukov's phrase: "I would appeal to the people and the army" was present only in Zhukov's own story about the fight against the "anti-party group", voiced on the assets of the Ministry of Defense. Members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of Zhukov could not remember such a phrase, but this did not make it less seditious in their eyes. Even if Georgy Konstantinovich simply boasted to his subordinates, it means that such thoughts are in his head. It is widely believed that it was the insidious Khrushchev who deliberately sent the ingenuous Zhukov to Yugoslavia and Albania on a cruiser in order to have enough time to prepare for his removal, while Zhukov himself wanted to fly by plane. However, the published documents related to the displacement of Zhukov testify that the marshal himself proposed to choose a cruiser as a vehicle in order to conduct a reconnaissance of the Black and Mediterranean Seas on the way to Yugoslavia. But Khrushchev always had fear against Zhukov, and even long before the fight with Malenkov, Molotov and Kaganovich. Immediately after the XX Party Congress, in March 1956, Nikita Sergeevich appointed the former commander of the Far Eastern Military District, Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, the commander-in-chief of the ground forces and the first deputy minister of defense. Khrushchev knew very well that Marshals Zhukov and Malinovsky, to put it mildly, could not stand each other. Malinovsky recalled at the October plenum: “When Khrushchev, Bulganin and Mikoyan were leaving China, I told them in Khabarovsk that Zhukov was a dangerous and even terrible person. Bulganin said that we know his qualities. Khrushchev kept silent "(this conversation took place in 1954, and Khrushchev also remembered about it at the plenum. - BS).

“I have been working with Zhukov for 30 years. He is an autocratic, despotic, ruthless person. I decided to go work with him. I decided: if he is rude, I will be rude too. If he swears, I will swear. If he fights, I will fight him back. "

Here Rodion Yakovlevich hinted at his first meeting with Georgy Konstantinovich in 1929 in Moscow. Then Zhukov happily called out to Malinovsky: "Great, ... your mother!" Malinovsky calmly replied: "Great, and your mother is the same." After that, the future Marshal of Victory turned to him by name and patronymic, but harbored anger. By appointing Malinovsky, Khrushchev insured himself against possible attempts by Zhukov to seize power. Indeed, without the commander of the ground forces, it is difficult to carry out a military coup, since he will know about the movements of troops to the capital. At the October plenum, Khrushchev said that Zhukov, under the pretext that the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs had large military units, suggested that he appoint army generals as the heads of these ministries. In particular, Zhukov proposed to appoint Marshal Konev as the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Obviously, Georgy Konstantinovich considered Nikita Sergeevich much more stupid than he actually was. The desire of the marshal to subordinate all the power ministries to himself, Khrushchev could not regard otherwise than as preparation for a coup. But he did not show it, only gently rejecting Konev's candidacy. And the real alarm sounded when Zhukov was on a visit to Yugoslavia.

On November 1, 1957, speaking at the party activists of the Moscow region, Khrushchev recalled: “Already in the last days of Zhukov’s stay in Yugoslavia, General Mamsurov came to the Central Committee. He is a good general, strong-willed, he has a good pedigree - the old Bolsheviks are his parents. This is a Soviet general and a communist. He comes to the Central Committee and says: “I would like to talk. I received a new appointment, but I have never received an appointment that the Central Committee did not approve. And then they didn’t approve me in the Central Committee, but they told me that only Zhukov, Shtemenko and I should know about the case that I would organize. Does the Central Committee know about this or not? "

What task was he given? He was given the task of organizing a sabotage school, in which they will study for 7 years. A soldier on everything ready will receive 700 rubles of salary, a sergeant on everything that is ready - 1000 rubles, an officer even more ...

We have been teaching engineers for 4.5-5 years. And here, in order to organize a sabotage, you have to teach 7 years. "

Having learned about the formation of a special forces school of more than 2 thousand cadets near Tambov, from where saboteurs, if necessary, could be delivered to Moscow in a matter of hours, Nikita Sergeevich felt an immediate danger. Zhukov got a real military unit for the coup. Therefore, in the last days of Zhukov's visit to Yugoslavia, almost no materials about him were published in the Soviet press, since a decision had already been made to mix him up. At the plenum, Georgy Konstantinovich tried to justify himself that he only united the spetsnaz companies previously created in the military districts into a school, but was immediately exposed by Malinovsky and other military, who proved that the spetsnaz companies remained in the districts, and the school was created from completely different people.

Thus, all the elements of preparing a military coup were present: the creation of a military unit for its implementation and an attempt to take control of all power ministries. Despite the fact that the matter did not come to the practical implementation of the coup, under Stalin, the available facts would have been enough to put at least three high-ranking military men to the wall: Zhukov, Konev and Shtemenko, who under torture would probably admit that they are German- Japanese-American spies. But Khrushchev, for a very real conspiracy, which almost led to his confusion from the post of head of the party, limited himself to the exclusion of Malenkov, Kaganovich, Molotov and other members of the "anti-party group" from the CPSU Central Committee and their appointment to secondary government posts. Later they were expelled from the party and sent to retire, but not imprisoned. In the case of Zhukov, Nikita Sergeevich dismissed the marshal with a high personal pension and with the right to wear a uniform.

Shtemenko suffered the most of the potential conspirators. Sergei Matveyevich was demoted from colonel general to lieutenant general and removed from his post as chief of the GRU, being appointed deputy commander of the Volga Military District. And Marshal Konev, who condemned Zhukov at the plenum and wrote an anti-Zhukov article in Pravda, generally got off with a slight fright, retaining the posts of first deputy defense minister and commander of the united troops of the Warsaw Pact. Khrushchev wanted to show the nomenklatura - now they will not shoot or imprison anyone. Thus, he prepared his fall in October 1964, but by doing so he also guaranteed himself that after the overthrow he would not be shot, like Beria, but sent to retire.

This process went down in history as the "Tukhachevsky case." It arose 11 months before the execution of the sentence in July 1936. Then, through Czech diplomats, Stalin received information that Among the leadership of the Red Army, a conspiracy is brewing, led by Deputy People's Commissar of Defense Mikhail Tukhachevsky, and that the conspirators are in contact with the leading generals of the German high command and the German intelligence service. A dossier stolen from SS security services, which contained documents of the special department "K" - a camouflaged Reichswehr organization dealing with the production of weapons and ammunition prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles. The dossier contained recordings of conversations between German officers and representatives of the Soviet command, including the minutes of negotiations with Tukhachevsky. With these documents, a criminal case began under the code name "The Conspiracy of General Turguev" (the pseudonym of Tukhachevsky, under which he came to Germany with an official military delegation in the early 1930s).

Today, in the liberal press, the version that "stupid Stalin" became a victim of the provocation of the special services of Nazi Germany, who planted fabricated documents about the "conspiracy in the Red Army" for the purpose of decapitation Soviet Armed Forces on the eve of the war.

I happened to get acquainted with the criminal case of Tukhachevsky, but there was no confirmation of this version. I'll start with the confessions of Tukhachevsky himself. The marshal's first written statement after his arrest was dated May 26, 1937. He wrote to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov: “Being arrested on May 22, arriving in Moscow on the 24th, I was first interrogated on the 25th, and today, on May 26, I declare that I admit the existence of an anti-Soviet military Trotskyist conspiracy and that I was at the head of it. I undertake to independently explain to the investigation everything concerning the conspiracy, without hiding any of its participants, not a single fact and document. The founding of the conspiracy dates back to 1932. It was attended by: Feldman, Alafuzov, Primakov, Putna and others, which I will show in detail in addition. " During interrogation by the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Tukhachevsky said: “Back in 1928, I was dragged into the right-wing organization by Yenukidze. In 1934 I personally contacted Bukharin; I established an espionage connection with the Germans since 1925, when I went to Germany for exercises and maneuvers ... While traveling to London in 1936, Putna arranged for me to meet with Sedov (the son of L.D. Trotsky. - S.T.) .. . "

There are also materials in the criminal case previously collected on Tukhachevsky, which at one time were not given a course. For example, testimony from 1922 of two officers who served in the past in the tsarist army. They named ... Tukhachevsky the inspirer of their anti-Soviet activities. Copies of the interrogation protocols were reported to Stalin, who sent them to Ordzhonikidze with such a meaningful note: "Please read. Since this is not excluded, it is possible." Ordzhonikidze's reaction is unknown - he apparently did not believe the slander. There was another case: the secretary of the party committee of the Western Military District complained to the People's Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs about Tukhachevsky (wrong attitude towards the communists, immoral behavior). But the People's Commissar M. Frunze imposed a resolution on the information: "The party believed Comrade Tukhachevsky, believes and will believe." An interesting extract from the testimony of the arrested brigade commander Medvedev that in 1931 he became "aware" of the existence of a counterrevolutionary Trotskyist organization in the central directorates of the Red Army. On May 13, 1937, Yezhov arrested Dzerzhinsky's former comrade-in-arms A. Artuzov, and he testified that information received in 1931 from Germany reported a conspiracy in the Red Army under the leadership of a certain General Turguev (pseudonym Tukhachevsky), who was in Germany. Yezhov's predecessor, Yagoda, said at the same time: "This is not serious material, turn it over to the archive."

After the end of the Great Patriotic War, fascist documents with assessments of the "Tukhachevsky case" became known. Here are some of them.

An interesting diary entry by Goebbels dated May 8, 1943: "There was a conference of Reichsleiters and Gauleiters ... The Fuehrer remembered the incident with Tukhachevsky and expressed the opinion that we were completely wrong when we believed that Stalin would destroy the Red Army in this way. The opposite was true: Stalin got rid of the opposition in the Red Army and thus put an end to defeatism. "

In his speech before subordinates In October 1943, SS Reichsfuehrer Himmler said: “When large demonstration trials were going on in Moscow, and the former Tsarist cadet, and subsequently the Bolshevik General Tukhachevsky and other generals, all of us in Europe, including us, the members of the party and the SS, adhered to the opinion that the Bolshevik system and Stalin made one of their biggest mistakes here. By assessing the situation in this way, we have greatly deceived ourselves. We can truthfully and confidently state this. I believe that Russia would not have survived all these two years of war - and now it is already in its third - if it had kept the former tsarist generals. "

On September 16, 1944, a conversation took place between Himmler and the traitor-general A.A. Vlasov, during which Himmler asked Vlasov about the Tukhachevsky case. Why did he fail. Vlasov replied: "Tukhachevsky made the same mistake as your people on July 20 (an attempt on Hitler's life). He did not know the law of the masses." Those. and one and the second conspiracy is not denied.

IN his memoirs, a major Soviet intelligence officer Lieutenant General Pavel Sudoplatov asserts: “The myth of the involvement of German intelligence in Stalin’s reprisal against Tukhachevsky was launched for the first time in 1939 by the defector V. Krivitsky, a former officer of the Intelligence Department of the Red Army, in the book“ I was Stalin’s agent ”. In doing so, he referred to the white general Skoblin, a prominent agent of the INO NKVD among the white emigration. Skoblin, according to Krivitsky, was a double working for German intelligence. In reality, Skoblin was not a double. His undercover case completely refutes this version. The invention of Krivitsky, who became a mentally unstable person in emigration, was later used by Schellenberg in his memoirs, attributing to himself the merit in falsifying the Tukhachevsky case.

Even if Tukhachevsky turned out to be clean before the Soviet authorities, in his criminal case I found such documents, after reading which his execution seems well deserved. Here are some of them.

In March 1921, Tukhachevsky was appointed commander of the 7th Army, aimed at suppressing the uprising of the Kronstadt garrison. TO It is known to have been drowned in blood.

In 1921 Soviet Russia was engulfed in anti-Soviet uprisings, the largest of which in European Russia was the peasant uprising in the Tambov province. Regarding the Tambov uprising as a serious danger, the Politburo of the Central Committee at the beginning of May 1921 appointed Tukhachevsky as commander of the troops of the Tambov district with the task of completely suppressing it as soon as possible. According to the plan developed by Tukhachevsky, the uprising was largely suppressed by the end of July 1921.

From the orders of Tukhachevsky

10 days before the trial of Tukhachevsky and his accomplices, on June 2, 1937, Stalin speaks at an expanded meeting of the Military Council, holding the materials of the investigation. He names 13 people - the leaders of the conspiracy. These are Trotsky, Rykov, Bukharin, Yenukidze, Karakhan, Rudzutak, Yagoda, Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Uborevich, Kork, Eideman, Gamarnik. He said: “If you could read the plan of how they wanted to seize the Kremlin ... We started small - with an ideological group, and then moved on. The conversations were like this: here, guys, what a deal. The GPU is in our hands, Yagoda is in our hands ... The Kremlin is in our hands, since Peterson is with us. The Moscow District, Cork and Gorbachev are also with us. We have everything. Either move forward now, or tomorrow, when we come to power, stay on the beans. And many weak, unstable people thought that this business was real, damn it, it seemed even profitable. You miss this way, during this time the government will be arrested, the Moscow garrison and all that sort of thing will be seized, and you will be stranded. " Stalin is a politician. He speaks carefully, adapting his speech to be understood. But what did he mean?

Back in 1925, the military gathered at the apartment of Kuibyshev's older brother. Frunze was there. There was Tukhachevsky. And Stalin easily dropped in to them. Tukhachevsky, who was then 32 years old, set the tone for the general conversation, emphasizing that cooperation with the Germans is a dangerous business. Stalin, who decided to keep the conversation going, asked: “What's wrong with the Germans coming to us? After all, our people also go there. " To which Tukhachevsky coldly threw: “You are a civilian man. It's hard for you to understand. " Senior Kuibyshev hastened to turn the conversation to something else.

It is not difficult to see that yesterday's cadet of the Aleksandrovsky school behaved in the presence of two outstanding revolutionaries and statesmen, to put it mildly, incorrectly and ill-mannered. It is also clear that this was done on purpose, and it is clear for whose approval. Portraits of the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council L.D. Trotsky were still hanging in the headquarters and directorates of all levels. Tukhachevsky's career did not suffer. He eventually became the youngest marshal. But this was not enough for him, and he could not hide it. The opinion of Tukhachevsky as an unprincipled careerist was universal both in the country and in the emigration.

Dzerzhinsky was the first to make Tukhachevsky a "conspirator". The famous game with emigration - Operation Trust - assigned Tukhachevsky the role of the chief leader of the military conspiracy. This legend was perceived by everyone as quite plausible. He apparently liked it. The young marshal was frivolous. He gladly played the role of a handsome and hero-lover, not paying attention to the fact that among his favorites of the NKVD agents was "a dime a dozen."
He did not graduate from the Academy of the General Staff, which does not fit into the head of any serious person who considers him a major military leader, but he wrote many articles on military strategy in the era of the revolution - he taught everyone else the theory of military art, although he did not even command a company before his dizzying takeoff. He was also fond of music and made violins with his own hands. In short, he was an outstanding personality. At least this person was on everyone's lips. Stalin did not throw such people around, but, of course, he could not blindly trust him. Moreover, since the beginning of the 30s, there have been many testimonies about his unreliability against the young military leader. It was very easy for people like Stalin, Voroshilov, Budyonny, Kirov, Molotov, Kaganovich to see that this was “a stranger among his own people”.

But Tukhachevsky had a friend among this team. This is the soul-man Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Tukhachevsky knew how to find the keys to a simple heart. Tukhachevsky even suggested making Ordzhonikidze military commissar instead of Voroshilov. Such is the immediacy of an outstanding personality. One thing is clear: long before the aforementioned speech at an expanded meeting of the Military Council, Stalin repeatedly had to think: who are you, my youngest marshal?

But Stalin was not the only one who looked closely at Tukhachevsky. In 1927, in the political struggle, the Trotskyists were defeated, who believed that Stalin was wrongly leading the party and the country (a lot of bureaucracy and little democracy). Simply put, they did not like the dictatorial methods of Stalin's leadership, i.e. their own methods applied to themselves.
In 1929, the group of Bukharin and his supporters moved to the camp of the defeated opponents of the general line. They had their own weighty arguments. Stalin allegedly abandoned the Leninist course towards NEP and adopted the "Trotskyist policy of military-feudal exploitation of the peasantry and unprecedented rates of industrialization." This was followed by collectivization with its horrors, which was difficult for many military men, who came from the peasants, to understand and accept.
The resistance of the peasantry was disorganized, spontaneous, and the actions were scattered. The emigration tried to take over the organization of peasant uprisings and resume the Civil War. The head of the Russian Combined Arms Union (ROVS), General Kutepov, instructed a group of staff officers to develop a plan for organizing armed struggle on the territory of the USSR by the spring of 1930. It was planned to send 50 specially trained officers from abroad to direct military operations. The foreign department of the OGPU organized the kidnapping of Kutepov in January 1930. The agents of the ROVS inside the country were eradicated. At the same time, Operation Spring was carried out, the essence of which was to purge the officers and generals of the tsarist army serving in the Red Army.

And within the party there were speeches of those dissatisfied with Stalin's policies (Ryutin, Syrtsov, Lominadze). Although these people spoke openly and adhered to principles, it is difficult to exclude that there were ambitious motives in their behavior. But the main thing was that the party had already made its decisions at plenums and congresses, and they were committing a certain political crime, imposing a second discussion. And this was prohibited by the decision of the 10th Congress. There were many who did not speak out openly.

It was difficult and almost impossible for the disaffected to imagine that Stalin would be able to conduct an independent foreign policy in such a formidable environment that he would be able to create powerful armed forces of his time and, having entered into a battle with the most powerful land army in the world, relying on the resources of almost all of continental Europe, he would withstand and will win.
It was the most mysterious moment in the life of the nation. Romantics of communism, theorists of Marxism, commanders, fanned by the glory of victories in the Civil War, the entire Bolshevik elite resisted this leader, who was not like them. After all, they understood that in comparison with the battle of the giants of the world war, their war was valiant, but somewhat simplified, and even exaggerated, with shortages of ammunition and food, with unstable and mobile front lines, with disorganized rear areas and missing reserves. They remembered how, when preparing the Polish campaign, the clever staff officer Lebedev warned them: "Europe will fill us with it." Without Lenin, they ceased to be real “Leninists”, lost the main components of their virtues as revolutionaries and became themselves (“realists” and skeptics). Finding themselves outside the field of Lenin's intellect and thinking with their own minds, they no longer believed in the possibility for Russia of becoming a modern military power, and, consequently, in the possibility for it of an independent policy and an independent destiny.

And he, who was already at that time on the fronts of the Civil War, was an “unsurpassed master,” as Churchill would later note, “to find a way out of desperate situations,” no, he did not believe, but knew where to lay the only path to the revival of Russia, and led the people who followed him, alien to clever people, who hate him. And the people understood that it was Stalin, as it was supposed to be a communist, that bears his cross in the name of his interests and that he would not stop in that “fatal struggle”, as it should be for a revolutionary. The people understand even now: as soon as another lascivious campaign against Lenin or Stalin begins, it means that another deception and robbery, another round of destruction of Russia is being prepared.

Around that time, in the early 30s, the original author, the National Bolshevik Dmitrievsky, fled abroad and there published the book Stalin - the Forerunner of the National Revolution, in which he writes: “It seems incredible, but this is a fact: a caricature of Stalin abroad was created mainly under the influence of various diplomatic and trade representatives of the Soviet government. Foreigners, people of action who understand the importance of a strong personality in history, often asked them in intimate conversations: tell me, what is Stalin? And they usually got the answer: Stalin? A dirty, rude unprincipled businessman who scattered the entire color of the intelligentsia of our party and relies on the same dark and dirty people as himself ... Sooner or later life comes with its own arguments - to replace the legend it creates a real idea of ​​people and things. Stalin, like the people around him now, must be known as they are, with all their shortcomings, but also with all their strength. For only in this way can the history of our present be explained, and only in this way can one orient oneself on the complex paths of the future ... The path, which at first seemed in Russia as an abstract international proletarian revolution, turned out in the end to be a Russian revolution: having, however, like any great revolution, world tasks and world influence, but basically national. And people who in the beginning sincerely considered themselves only communists have now become national communists, and many of them are already on the verge of pure Russian nationalism.

The past year has brought many changes in Russia itself, and in particular in its current ruling strata. A year ago, at the top of power, everything was teeming with the worms of Thermidorian degeneration, people of the "swamp". It seemed: they are the gentlemen of the situation, they are leading. They have now found themselves in the overwhelming majority thrown overboard by Stalin himself. More and more people of the people are climbing upward. They carry with them upstairs a nationalism that is still unconscious for some, while for others it is already conscious nationalism. Nationalism is the idea of ​​"socialism in one country" that finally triumphed there. Nationalism is "industrialization". Nationalism is an increasingly common statement: we have our own homeland, and we will defend it. Nationalism is an increasingly frequent comparison of our era with the era of Peter the Great, which is undoubtedly true, with the only difference that the scale of our era is greater, and much wider popular strata are taking part in the revolutionary transformation of Russia ” ...

This book was first published in 1931 in Berlin. The author, although he defends Stalin, has his own convictions, which Stalin does not officially share, but, according to Dmitrievsky, he actually implements, for the simple reason that revolutions are driven by the masses, and the leaders only catch the vector of these aspirations. The analysis of Dmitrievsky, who knew the leaders of the revolution personally, and who was a living witness of that revolution, shows the social alignment of forces in the ongoing struggle. It is easy to see that as the revolution took on a popular character (Dmitrievsky, due to his specific worldview, understands this as nationalism), more and more obviously yesterday's revolutionaries turned into anti-popular counter-revolutionaries, as was the case with the Girondists, the “swamp,” the Thermidorians of the French revolution. In this maelstrom of events, Stalin and his associates became increasingly lonely at the top of political battles, like Robespierre, to whom Saint-Just suggested that the further development of the people's revolution could be guided only by establishing a personal dictatorship.
Robespierre was prevented from establishing a dictatorship by democratic prejudices. This role went to Napoleon Bonaparte, who loved to repeat: “I came out of the depths of the people. I'm not some Louis XVI for you. " Stalin could say the same thing with great reason. It is easy for our contemporaries to grasp the counter-revolutionary spirit of the forces opposing Stalin, since it invariably revived - first at the April 1953 plenum in Beria's anti-Stalinist speech, which was prepared by Pospelov, then in Khrushchev's report at the XX Congress, which was prepared by the same Pospelov and which is full of arguments and facts taken from the foreign press that have no basis at all and utterly deceitful.

And quite recently, when, on the wave of Gorbachev's and Yeltsin's “reforms”, a full tub of long-exposed fakes, which were circulating in the West at different times, poured onto our unprepared reader's head, we fully plunged into this atmosphere of counter-revolutionary anger and hatred ... This last time, the counter-revolution was a success, and its goals, the main of which is the dismemberment of our country in the interests of geopolitical forces alien to us, were realized. And then the spirit of the Russian, the first in the history of the socialist revolution, directed against the attempts of the minority to exploit the majority, was still alive.
Being constantly on clandestine work in Russia and often finding himself in prison, the unpretentious and almost impoverished Stalin had to use the sympathy of ordinary Russian people, invariably kind to the outcast. Angular, speaking with a strong Georgian accent, but shrewd and domineering Stalin, relations with representatives of the elite of the party have always been difficult, and he got used to the hostility of this environment, paying little attention to it. But in this atmosphere of enmity and ill will, people very close to him perish one after another: Nadezhda Aliluyeva in 1932, Sergei Mironovich Kirov in 1934, Sergo Ordzhonikidze in 1936.
Stalin reproached himself for having caught himself late (it was necessary to pay attention to the all-pervading stench of counter-revolution "four years ago").

He did not believe in Nikolaev's sole guilt in Kirov's murder. And Stalin understood that he had to take everything into his own hands. Already in February 1935, N.I. Ezhov became secretary of the Central Committee, and then chairman of the CPC and began to closely supervise the NKVD. Although Yagoda could not like it, the attitude towards him personally was extremely correct and benevolent. The first person to be attacked by Yezhov was Yenukidze, who was accused - and, most likely, quite rightly - of moral decay. It was said that it was Yenukidze who was the prototype of the character in Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, who demanded revelations and received them in his address. The scene ended with a frivolous song: "His Excellency loved domestic birds and took under the protection of pretty girls." But the matter was not only in the moral decay of Yenukidze. Yenukidze was in charge of the Kremlin's security and the service of the very Peterson, about whom Stalin spoke in his speech at an expanded meeting of the Military Council on June 2, 1937.

Zinoviev testified during the investigation that the decision of the Trotskyite-Zinovievist bloc to assassinate Stalin was taken at the insistence of the Trotskyists Smirnov, Mrachkovsky and Ter-Vaganyan, and they had a direct directive to do so from Trotsky. A member of the Trotskyite-Zinoviev bloc, E.A. Draitzer, admitted that he received such a directive from Trotsky in 1934.
Preparations for the palace coup also took place in Yagoda's department. His deputy Agranov, the head of the government guard Pauker, his deputy Volovich and Captain Ginzel at the beginning of 1936 formed a company of militants, ostensibly to seize the Kremlin and arrest Stalin.
There were rumors of a coup d'état scheduled for May 1, 1936.
In March 1935, Yenukidze was relieved of his duties as secretary of the USSR Central Executive Committee, and in June he was removed from the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) and expelled from the party.

In the summer of 1936, Divisional Commander Schmidt, deputy. Commander of the Leningrad Military District Corps Commander Primakov (Primakov's wife Lilya Brik was an NKVD agent and, unlike other wives, was never persecuted); Commander Putna, the military attaché in Great Britain. They were all Trotskyists.
In August 1936, the trial of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotskyists Smirnov, Mrachkovsky, Ter-Vaganyan ended with death sentences. Vyshinsky immediately reported on the investigation into Tomsky, Rykov, Bukharin, Uglanov, Radek, Pyatakov, Sokolnikov and Serebryakov.
On September 26, 1936, Yezhov replaced Yagoda as head of the NKVD.
On February 18, 1937 S. Ordzhonikidze committed suicide. Whether he was involved in the conspiracy has not been clarified. In any case, a search was carried out in his apartment a few days before Ordzhonikidze's suicide. Two other prominent members of Stalin's team, Bubnov and Rudzutak, were also among the repressed. The investigation had materials on Meretskov (Uborevich's chief of staff) and, moreover, on Budyonny and Timoshenko, but these three were not touched. It seems that they simply themselves informed Stalin about the conspiracy. And Dybenko, whom Kollontai urged to do the same as Budyonny and Tymoshenko, did not use this opportunity. Kollontai even organized a meeting at Stalin's apartment, where the three of them recalled the past, sang Ukrainian songs, but Dybenko kept silent. Saying goodbye, Stalin chuckled: “Tell me, Dybenko, why did you break up with Kollontai? You did a very stupid thing, Dybenko. " Dybenko, apparently, understood him literally and did not think about why he was invited to visit (not to sing songs).

Clever Kollontai did not save a loved one, although, of course, she understood what kind of "stupidity" Dybenko did. She also did not save another Alexander (Sanka) Shlyapnikov. Didn't even try. And David Kandelaki, a charming, friendly trade representative in Sweden, and then in Germany, she most likely ruined herself ... Stalin saved our Motherland and sometimes sacrificed people, even if these people had to be pulled out of his heart with blood. The fate of the country was at stake ... It was the famous Stalinist terror, but there were no extrajudicial shootings. Hundreds of thousands of people were shot by the verdicts of triplets. Their main fault was that their political activity could hinder the moral and political unity of the country before the mortal battle. Who among us will undertake to save the Motherland by such means? Which of us would then be able to save her by any conceivable means and defeat her? That was a different time, the time of the giants.
Wars such as World War I and II are immense crimes in themselves, and the historical blame lies with those who prepare and unleash them. In the latter case, the blame lies with the criminal policies of Chamberlain and Hitler. And all attempts to lay the blame on the leadership of our country are a cynical lie.

Another type of historical crime is the exploitation of the majority for the sake of fabulous enrichment and corruption of the minority, which inevitably leads to social catastrophes and revolutions. Without taking into account these main points, the story turns into a tangled tangle in which the one in whose hands the media is right, who has a stronger throat. Yezhov's purges in the NKVD were completed in March 1937. On April 3, Yagoda was arrested. Agranov, Pauker, Volovich, Ginzel and others were arrested. Some of Yagoda's employees committed suicide. In May, arrests began among the highest command personnel. They were arrested: the commander of the Volga Military District Marshal M.N. Tukhachevsky, the head of the personnel department of the Red Army B.M. Feldman, the chairman of the council of the Osoaviakhim R.P. Eideman, the head of the military academy. Frunze A.I.Kork, commander of the Belarusian Military District I.P. Uborevich, commander of the Leningrad Military District I.E. Yakir. The head of the political department of the Red Army Y.B. Gamarnik committed suicide. Immediately after the arrest of Tukhachevsky, Walter Krivitsky (the head of military intelligence in Europe, closely associated with Trotsky and Tukhachevsky) left the USSR. He soon fled to the West.
The arrests of the top of the military command took place from May 19 to May 31, 1937. On June 11, the verdict was pronounced. The suspects gave confessions from the first interrogations. There is a lot of evidence of the use of physical pressure on those under investigation of that terrible time. But this hardly applies to the lightning-fast investigation that Tukhachevsky and his comrades went through. Most likely, they testified in shock, under the influence of intense fear. So Feldman, in a note to investigator Ushakov, even thanks for the cookies, fruits and cigarettes that he received. It doesn't fit well with beatings. The materials of that investigation have now been published, and for all their contradictions, they create an integral picture that looks like this.
All of them admit to participation in the conspiracy, and all recognize Tukhachevsky as the leader of the conspiracy, which began in 1931-1932. Tukhachevsky's closest associates were Gamarnik, Uborevich, Feldman and Kork.

Although Primakov and Putna were Trotskyists, and the investigation was strenuously revealing a connection with Trotsky, the conspiracy appears to be oriented towards the right. Yagoda and the same Yenukidze were associated with the Rights. The arguments of Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky were close to the bulk of the military. The plan to seize the Kremlin had been prepared since 1934 and was outlined for 1936, "when Hitler will complete preparations for war." The main role here was played by: M.N. Tukhachevsky, Yu.E. Yakir, I.P. Uborevich, Ya.B. Gamarnik, N.G. Egorov (commander of the Kremlin cadets' school located on the territory of the Kremlin), B.S. Gorbachev (deputy chief of the Moscow garrison), A. Enukidze, R.A. Peterson (commandant of the Kremlin until 1935), Pauker, Bubnov. There are Tukhachevsky's confessions that he was involved in the organization of the right-wingers back in 1928. Yenukidze and since 1934 was personally connected with Bukharin, Yagoda, Karakhan, etc. The day before, on May 27, 1937, he admitted that his connection with the right was supported through Gorbachev and Peterson, who were associated with Yenukidze, Yagoda, Bukharin and Rykov. Kork asserted during the investigation: “As far back as 1931 I had a conversation with Tukhachevsky about a coup in the Kremlin. Tukhachevsky told me that what I initially learned from Yenukidze in June 1931, that is, that the right has planned a counter-revolutionary coup in the Kremlin, relying on the school of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, that Peterson, Gorbachev and Yegorov are involved in this case, - Tukhachevsky confirmed to me that we must envisage a coup in the Kremlin as the first step in the final plan of our actions ". Tukhachevsky denied this testimony, but how? He said that he learned about the preparation of the "palace coup" in 1934, and not from Cork, but from Gorbachev.
Uborevich argued that the so-called conspiratorial gatherings at Tukhachevsky were just gatherings with their wives over a cup of tea. At the same time, he confirmed that anti-Soviet sentiments among the group of people forming around Tukhachevsky were constantly growing. Uborevich claimed that he had a decisive conversation with Tukhachevsky in 1935. Then Tukhachevsky declared that the Trotskyists and the Right should be looked at as fellow travelers, but in reality he was thinking about his personal dictatorship.
The so-called conspirators acted in an extremely sloppy and disorganized manner. Their conspiracy is more like scratching with tongues in a circle of ambitious, dissatisfied, but not sophisticated enough people for such a thing. Our “conspirators” were ready to pour out their longing for the “overthrow of Stalin” in front of everyone who was ready to listen to them: in front of the Reichswehr officers who did not remain in debt, because they themselves thought about a conspiracy against Hitler, in front of their wives and mistresses.

Stalin was well aware of all this chatter of the defeated opposition and the politicking military personnel. Schellenberg's version that he and Heydrich, with Hitler's approval, transferred (even sold) information about the conspiracy to Stalin through Benes, was denied by competent people in Germany (Spalke) and here (Sudoplatov). It is believed that Schellenberg's memoirs themselves are one of the many forgeries of the Intelligence Service that this service of Britain constantly practices as ideological tools of its policy. Schellenberg did not have time to write his memoirs. They were written for him after his death.

Our idea of ​​what is happening is then confirmed by the very course of those events.
After the debunking of the hapless Yenukidze, Peterson's replacement, and the CCP's control over Yagoda, discussions of the coup d'etat plan temporarily stopped. The leaders of the conspiracy, confident that the USSR would not be able to resist Germany militarily, decided to wait for the outbreak of the war. Tukhachevsky, according to Uborevich, put forward in 1935 a new version of a coup d'etat in the form of a military mutiny when hostilities began. But after the trial over the "parallel center" in January 1937, Tukhachevsky began to rush the coup d'etat, suspecting, and apparently not without reason, that Stalin knew everything.
According to A. Orlov (the head of military intelligence in Spain, who fled to the west), as Yuri Yemelyanov, the most objective researcher of this history, puts it, events developed as follows.

A certain NKVD worker Stein allegedly finds in the archives documents about Stalin's connection with the tsarist secret police and takes them to Kiev, where he shows the head of the NKVD of Ukraine to Balitsky, who introduces them to Yakir and Kosior. In the course of the matter the deputy. Balitsky Katsnelson, who, being Orlov's cousin, informs him about this case in February 1937. Meanwhile, Yakir informs Tukhachevsky, Gamarnik and other participants in the conspiracy. A plan arises: to convince, under some pretext, Voroshilov to hold a conference on military problems and thus gather in Moscow all the conspirators, declare Stalin a provocateur and arrest him. But they again began to delay and allowed Yezhov in March-April to complete the purges in the NKVD. The last chance remained on May 1, 1937 ...

Could Stalin have done without bloodshed? I think he could. He had the opportunity to prevent the conspirators from committing a crime. He could prosecute the perpetrators both in the criminal order and in the order of party discipline and prevent the development of events to a deadly line.
But Stalin's policy style was precisely that he rarely attacked first, but prepared for a swift and merciless counteroffensive. He needed this terror to establish his unquestioning dictatorship before the inevitable military battle.
Can this be reproached with Stalin? In that state of affairs, of course not. In wars such as our Great Patriotic War or the Roman War with Hannibal, dictatorship is the optimal form of organizing total war. One thing only needs to be borne in mind: a long-term dictatorship has a negative impact on society and can have disastrous consequences. The presence of a constructive opposition, a balance of political and social forces is a necessary condition for stable and peaceful development.
Was that opposition constructive? Of course not. "Political scum" in the form of defeated left and right and political dilettantes in the form of a military clique that formed around the lordly Tukhachevsky, who hoped to get rid of political fellow travelers after the coup and establish a personal dictatorship, were a nasty, if not fatal alternative to the selfless Stalinist leadership. This leadership "was the greatest happiness for Russia." This is how the sophisticated politician Churchill appraised Stalin's leadership of the war. And if the Western press raised its usual noise about "falsification of trials" and "innocence of the accused," then sober politicians in the West did not share this point of view. Roosevelt's foreign policy associate Joseph Davis called them "the fifth column", expressing satisfaction that they had been gotten rid of before the outbreak of war.

So was there really a conspiracy of the military, connected with the Trotskyists and the right? The current official version, depicting the convicted as honest and blameless people, looks absurd in the light of what has now become known, and an absurdity built on the desire to apply the approaches of modern justice, which gave complete free rein to corruption and crime, to criticize the revolutionary justice of that harsh time. All this argumentation boils down to condemnation of the "Stalinist repressions", which are motivated by the "tyrant's bloodthirstiness." This is old and unconvincing. This is how public opinion was prepared and our people were brainwashed for decades in a row.
Now Stalin has many defenders. We can say that a new round of Stalin's personality cult began from below. Many authors portray Stalin as the defender of the Russian people from Jewish domination, the savior of Russian national values. This is a simplification. Stalin's role cannot be reduced to Russian nationalism. In terms of the depth of the performances, the politics of Lenin and Stalin was not the politics of the 19th, as it is sometimes understood by the patriotic intelligentsia, but the politics of the 21st century. The patriotism that this policy instilled in the nation was much broader than nationalism and ruled out chauvinism as a factor that humiliates the nation, but does not elevate it. Chauvinism is inherent in a battered and embittered nation. He does not suit the Russian nation, which is easy to imagine deceived, but impossible to imagine beaten. It was a carefully selected, subtle, but super-effective policy of realizing national pride. It was during this period that the assimilation of all the peoples of Russia with the Russian people took place and the transformation of the Russian language into a language carrying a common culture and forming a single national environment. The nation was turning into a monolith.
And in the dispute about Stalin, the position of the defense was expressed most objectively by the writers V.V. Karpov, Yu.V. Emelyanov, F.I. Chuev. They convincingly prove that the conspiracy took place, but they are not convincing enough in assessing the repression. The fact of repressions and excesses that took place during their implementation always confuses the defenders of Lenin, Stalin, and Soviet power. So were there massive repressions or not? Of course there were. Were the trials of the 1930s an act of justice? Of course they weren't. It was a single and merciless revolutionary process in the name of social justice, in the name of establishing Stalin's personal dictatorship as an uncontested political solution for the sake of saving our people and our country from deadly threats of a foreign and domestic political nature.

There is a rule known for centuries, formulated by Machiavelli: if the elite opposes the people, it must be eliminated and replaced by an elite loyal to the people. And this is nothing more than a political revolution from above. If the elite is eliminated, loyal to the people in the interests of the elite opposing the people, then this is a political counter-revolution. Accepting this logic, we can assert that the degradation of the ruling elite of the USSR, its slide into the position of confrontation with the people, was a process of smoldering counter-revolution. And the coup d'etat and the crushing of the USSR by Gorbachev and Yeltsin was an act of a typical counter-revolution aimed at enslaving its own people and unprecedented betrayal of national interests.
It is often said that by eliminating the military elite before the war, Stalin significantly weakened the country militarily. The experience of the war does not confirm this. Hitler, after a series of defeats suffered by the Red Army, lamented that he had not carried out a purge in the army similar to Stalin's. It seems that it is he from despair. With the loss of continuity with the Reichswehr, its traditions and spirit, the Wehrmacht, which found itself in the hands of such an improviser and dilettante as Hitler, would hardly have won. In fact, the atrocities committed by the Wehrmacht under the leadership of Hitler led to the death of the renowned military tradition and professional pride of the German army. But the wartime Red Army, the creator of which was Stalin, certainly won under his indisputable leadership.

The untenable attempts to attribute this merit to Zhukov now, when much about Zhukov has become known, look ridiculous, how ridiculous are the assertions that the creation of our nuclear and thermonuclear weapons was the merit of Beria. Both he and the other were, roughly speaking, talented drivers. No matter what Stalin undertook, no matter what he began to deal with closely, tremendous success was achieved everywhere. The change in the ruling elite as a result of "Stalinist repressions" was the pinnacle of all successes. “The old cadres,” writes Y. Yemelyanov, “were replaced by leaders who, as a rule, joined the party after 1917, often during the“ Leninist draft ”. In contrast to the old cadres, many received higher education, as a rule, technical, and had experience in managerial work at enterprises and construction sites in the five-year plan. These people were formed as leaders during the period of creative labor, not the Civil War. They had not yet been spoiled by the authorities, they were closer to the people, their aspirations, their culture. " But wanting to be objective, Yemelyanov wonders why the old elite was not retired, but, roughly speaking, was wiped off the face of the earth. Both Molotov and Kaganovich evaded answering this question. The answer, of course, is, but who will turn the tongue to voice it?

We will only dare to quote the words of Marat: "Little has been done for the fatherland, if not everything has been done." Then the country lived according to revolutionary laws. And this is not a steam bath with girls.
The new Stalinist elite was his "magic wand". These were people of rare dedication to their cause and their country. It is amazing how Stalin managed to educate these communists and internationalists in boundless devotion and love for their homeland? They say that they lived in fear that they were not free. There was no fear that paralyzes and fetters people. There was another fear - the fear of not being up to the task of the country. It was the duty of each and every responsible worker to follow the party's policy. There was no offense for the state. Everyone was responsible for the state.

So they were betrayed and they were honest. They were disciplined, selfless, and everyone was in their place. Yes, they were not free. But this was the lack of freedom of the soldiers, i.e. lack of freedom of honor. Without a doubt, these people were, by and large, happy. This was the elite of a great generation of a great country. So they felt themselves. But ... this, alas, was the elite nominated by the dictator. Although its positive influence persisted for decades after Stalin's death, it did not possess the ability to reproduce itself. And it is illogical to place this problem on Stalin, who died half a century ago. It would be a cult of personality inside out. It is much more logical to take and use everything positive not only from foreign experience, but from our own experience of unprecedented success. It doesn't matter what concept the coming generation of our leaders will adopt. If it loves its country with the same selflessness and maintains the same devotion and respect for its people, it will ultimately find the right path.

It makes no sense for us to condemn or defend Stalin. Our task is to understand this stage of our revolution, which is inseparable from the preceding Leninist stage. Nostalgia for our revolution, attempts to parody the policies of Lenin or Stalin will lead to nothing but farce. This is already history. But to disown the revolution that has recreated our country is stupidity, which will bring nothing but new misfortunes. At the same time, an analysis of the processes of our revolution projected to the present time shows: we need power directed against those forces that oppose national interests. It can be realized without leading to a revolutionary dictatorship, if things do not go too far.

But then, before the Second World War, death was approaching, knowing no mercy. All the heroes of our story fell sooner or later. The revolution is known to devour its children. The lives of those of them who honestly and disinterestedly served their people, and those countless righteous people whom they were able to lead (namely, they left us a great country) deserve the respect of descendants. They deserve the pathos of the memorial words, which on October 25, 1917 shocked the chronicler of revolutions John Reed, when at the Congress of Soviets he heard “a sad but victorious song, deeply Russian and endlessly touching”: “The time will come, and the people will wake up, great, mighty, free ... Goodbye brothers! You honestly walked your noble path of valor. "

Georgy Elevterov

Mikhail Tukhachevsky: the life and death of the "red marshal" Sokolov Boris Vadimovich

Tukhachevsky's conspiracy: truth and myth

On June 6, 1937, the newspapers published excerpts from the speech of the head of the capital's communists, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, at the Moscow regional party conference. Telling the communists of the region about what was happening at the city conference, he said with indignation that although the city committee “had elected proven Bolsheviks devoted to the cause of the party… the Trotskyist traitor, traitor to the Motherland, enemy of the people Gamarnik was also included in the GC. This fact once again proves that the enemy is despicably disguised. "

The listeners must have experienced the deepest shock. After all, the basely disguised traitor and traitor Yan Borisovich Gamarnik not only bore the high rank of army commissar of the 1st rank and served as head of the Red Army's Political Administration, but was also a member of the party Central Committee. However, by that time he was no longer alive. On May 31, when NKVD officers appeared in his apartment, Gamarnik, who already knew about the arrest of Tukhachevsky and did not doubt that he would share his fate, found the only way to avoid the shameful trial and inevitable execution - he shot himself. Neither the conference delegates nor the readers of Pravda knew about this yet. Khrushchev's words were the first mention in the press of what would soon be called a "military-fascist conspiracy." It became clear to everyone that something was happening at the top of the army. But until June 11, the population of the country remained in the dark about what exactly. On this day, newspapers published a message in the heading "In the USSR Prosecutor's Office" about the case "arrested by the NKVD at various times, Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Uborevich, Kork, Eideman, Feldman, Primakov and Putna," accused of "violating military duty (oath), treason to the Motherland, treason to the peoples of the USSR, treason to the Red Army. " It was asserted that “the investigative materials established the participation of the accused, as well as Y.B. Gamarnik, who committed suicide, in anti-state relations with the leading military circles of one of the foreign states leading an unfriendly policy towards the USSR. While in the service of the military intelligence of this state, the accused systematically provided military circles with information about the state of the Red Army, tried to prepare the defeat of the Red Army in the event of a military attack on the USSR, and had as their goal to help restore the power of landowners and capitalists in the USSR. All those accused of the charges brought against them have pleaded guilty in full. " The consideration of the case was announced at a closed session of the Special Judicial Presence of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR in the manner prescribed by law of December 1, 1934. This law, adopted immediately after the assassination of Kirov, provided for the expedited consideration of charges of terrorism and counter-revolution, without the participation of the defense and without the right to appeal sentences and petitions for pardon, which were immediately executed. The entire trial of Tukhachevsky and his comrades took one day, June 11. They were shot on the night of the 12th and in the morning of the same day the verdict was published in the newspapers. As was then accepted, he received the unanimous approval of the working class, the collective farm peasantry and the working intelligentsia. Among those who approved were the artists of the Art Theater Leonid Leonidov and Nikolai Khmelev, brothers Academicians S. I. and N. I. Vavilov (one of them, a few years later, was destined to die in prison, and the other - the presidency of the Academy), writers, “engineers of human shower "- Alexander Fadeev and Vsevolod Vishnevsky, Alexey Tolstoy and Nikolai Tikhonov, Mikhail Sholokhov and Leonid Leonov, Alexander Serafimovich and Anton Makarenko ... like the rest of the people, they knew that the authorities are not mistaken, and those who think differently risk falling straight into their tenacious paws. A collective letter from the masters of culture demanded "the shooting of the spies": "We, together with the people, in one impulse say - we will not give life to the enemies of the Soviet Union." Just like Bulgakov: "Yes, he died, he died ... But we are still alive." True, the authors of the letters and telegrams did not yet know the verdict, did not know that the disgraced military leaders were already dead, but they were not mistaken in the verdict, concluding from the text of the message of June 11 that Tukhachevsky and others are already dead people, even if they live for a few more hours or days.

When did the “red marshal's” path to the chopping block begin? To answer this question, we will have to go back a decade and a half, to the early 1920s. Then the name of Tukhachevsky was popular not only among the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, but also among the officers and politicians of the white camp who found themselves in exile. For example, here is an interesting document - the intelligence report of the Russian army of Baron P.N. Wrangel, which settled in the Balkans, dated February 15, 1922. There, in particular, it was asserted: “The only environment in Russia that could take an active role in overthrowing Soviet power is the command staff of the Red Army, that is, former Russian officers. They are a caste welded by discipline and community of interests; war and life brought up will in them ... "And here is the name of the one with whom the emigration associates certain hopes:" Persons who knew Tukhachevsky closely indicate that he is a man of outstanding abilities and with great administrative and military talent. But he is not devoid of some ambition and, realizing his strength and authority, fancies himself a Russian Napoleon. Even, they say, he tries to imitate Napoleon in everything and constantly reads his biography and history. In a friendly conversation, Tukhachevsky, when he was reproached for communism, said more than once: “Wasn't Napoleon a Jacobin? ..“ Young officers, such as Tukhachevsky and others, up to about 40 years of age, holding command positions, are not alien to the idea of ​​a single military dictatorship ”.

Here, wishful thinking is passed off as real. The overwhelming majority of former officers who served in the Red Army at that moment were not thinking about a coup, but about how to survive, keep their position and rations (after the end of the civil war, they had already begun to be dismissed, and some were repressed). Those who dreamed of a coup have long since died or found themselves outside of Russia. The rest were thinking only about organizing their own lives, and not about overthrowing Soviet power. The leaders of the Wrangel army, it would seem, should have asked the question: why did the former lieutenants and staff captains, lieutenant colonels and generals serving in the red use the much more favorable time of the civil war for the coup, when at times many thought that the power of the Bolsheviks was hanging by a thread? As soon as this question was asked, the intelligence report, solidly titled "Command staff and military experts of the Red Army," should have been sent immediately to the wastepaper basket. Instead, an unidentified high-ranking official imposed an equally solid resolution on the document: "Very interesting." Well, as you know, hope dies last.

And one more interesting document - the minutes of the meeting of the Russian National Committee in Finland on February 29, 1924, found by the soldiers of the Red Army at the Raivola border station during the "unknown" Finnish war. The meeting was chaired by a religious philosopher and church historian, cadet A. V. Kartashev. In addition to him, there were 17 people, including the former leader of the Octobrists in the State Duma, industrialist A.I.Guchkov, famous publicists V.L.Burtsev and D.S.Pasmanik, generals Yu.N. Danilov and P.N. Shatilov (the latter is the chief of staff of the Wrangel army). The question of the mood in Russia was discussed. Guchkov shared the information obtained by means of intelligence: “They say that the split is great and irreparable, there is no way out of a violent coup. A coup is only possible military, or palace, or on a larger scale. The government itself is so weak that its overthrow is inevitable. In its place a red dictatorship will be installed (as if in 1924 there was some kind of “red democracy”! - BS). A typical figure is Tukhachevsky, sitting in Smolensk. According to one knowledgeable German, he enjoys great charm among the masses (after Tambov and Kronstadt ?! - BS). Some time ago he was taken under suspicion and summoned to Moscow. It was supposed to give him an honorable but not influential post. He refused to go on call. In Smolensk there is a pogrom mood against the communists and Jews. There is open agitation in the garrison itself. " Further there is a commentary, most likely belonging to Guchkov: “The group of Rykov, Krasin, Sokolnikov is the most in keeping with the vital interests of Russia. Trotsky could have sided with them. Rykov is a man of strong will. " I can not resist, in turn, not to comment on the comment. It is unique in its own way. Here literally everything is upside down. One group includes persons who actually belong to different party factions. It is anecdotal that the drunken alcoholic AI Rykov, despite his high post of chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, who has never played an independent political role, is called a strong-willed person. And Trotsky, who "joined Rykov," is generally something transcendent, lying beyond the edge of reality, not even perceived as an anecdote. This passage shows the true level of awareness and ability to analyze the situation in Russia, characteristic of the thinkers of emigration. And also to representatives of foreign intelligence services, since, as it is clear from Guchkov's message, he relied, among others, on the materials of the German intelligence service or the Foreign Ministry: “There has been a change in the Germans' assessment of the situation in Russia recently. They used to believe in evolution. Now they consider, if not inevitable, then likely a military coup. They also point to Tukhachevsky. They do not undertake only to predict who will replace the government, whose fate is predetermined, they also recognize the complete economic collapse of the Soviet regime (before which, as the experience of history has shown, there were still 57 years left - BS). As the center becomes weaker, the population grows bolder. "

As we can see, in German circles very early they began to look closely at Tukhachevsky as a potential “red Bonaparte”. The New Economic Policy and the incipient inner-party struggle for the Leninist legacy between the supporters of Trotsky and Stalin gave rise to doubts among the Germans as to the strength of the Bolshevik domination. And yet the same Kartashev found the strength at the end of the protocol to draw a pessimistic, but correct conclusion: “The center of power is still very strong, it is premature to talk about its fall. Even Trotsky is not dangerous to her. Suspicious elements in the army have been eliminated. "

And again, information for thought. In the period from November 1921 to April 1927, the organs of the OGPU carried out an undercover development under the code name "Trust". This story is well known to readers from the novel "Dead Swell" by the biographer of Tukhachevsky Lev Nikulin and from the serial TV version of this work - "Operation Trust". So, it turns out that Mikhail Nikolayevich himself was used by the Chekists to cover the "Trust", although he did not even know about it. Let me remind you of the essence of the combination developed by the OGPU. The existence of a powerful underground "Monarchist organization of Central Russia", abbreviated as MOCR, was legendary. With her help, the Chekists established contact with the main emigrant centers and revealed a significant part of their agents in the USSR, and also for some time actually paralyzed the activities of the Russian All-Military Union in Russia, into which the Russian Army was transformed in September 24th. The leadership of the ROVS convinced that all operations in the homeland should be carried out through the MOTsR, that is, in fact, under the control of the OGPU. And to give the organization more solidity in the eyes of foreign partners, the popular name of Tukhachevsky was used, among others.

In December 1922, the head of the IOCR, an agent of the OGPU, engineer A.A. Yakushev, a hereditary nobleman, by the way, met in Berlin with the chairman of the Supreme Monarchical Council H.E. Markov II, who was at one time one of the leaders of the extreme right in the State Duma. He asked Yakushev whether such military leaders as Tukhachevsky, S. S. Kamenev, P. P. Lebedev and A. A. Brusilov were members of the ICRC. Alexander Alexandrovich, as he wrote in a report addressed to the Lubyanka, readily replied: "They are not officially part of the organization, but the first three are certainly ours, and the fourth is too old and does not represent anything interesting." Later, Mikhail Nikolaevich was made a full member of the IOCR. How this happened, the employee of the special department of the OGPU Styrne described in the report on Operation Trust, drawn up in 1931: “Repeatedly from abroad, we were recommended to involve Tukhachevsky in the Trust. Especially the monarchist youth wanted to see in him the Russian Bonaparte, assuming that he was only pretending to be a communist, in reality he was a monarchist. “Succumbing” to these sentiments, it was written abroad (the Chekist’s style is still Chekhovian: “Passing the station, my hat fell off.” - BS) that Tukhachevsky was attracted to the Trust. There (not in the "Trust", of course, but abroad. - BS) this message had an effect ... "

In the light of the KGB confessions, it remains to be seen whether the documents of the émigré organizations cited above reflect misinformation coming from the OGPU about Tukhachevsky the counterrevolutionary or the émigré aspirations independent of her about the “red Bonaparte,” for the role of which Mikhail Nikolaevich seemed the most suitable candidate. After all, rumors about quite real conflicts between Tukhachevsky and political workers in Smolensk could reach emigration and without the efforts of the Chekists (most likely, these rumors were reflected in Guchkov's report at a meeting of the Russian National Committee). In addition, Tukhachevsky, up to a certain point, almost exactly repeated the career of Napoleon, and the emigrant officers really wanted him to go the path of the "first consul" and further, becoming the gravedigger of the revolution. The Chekists, on the other hand, took into account the longing of emigration for a strong anti-Bolshevik regime and willingly supplied candidates for future dictators-monarchists. And, of course, Dzerzhinsky, Menzhinsky, Yagoda and their associates perfectly understood that the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, the same Markov 2nd and Wrangel's right hand, General Kutepov (Wrangel himself understood the provocative role of the Trust from the very beginning) would rather believe in monarchical feelings of former tsarist generals and officers, such as H.M. Potapov, CC Kamenev, Tukhachevsky or A.M. Zayonchkovsky. The latter was made the head of the military department of the "Trust", and the most respectable Andrei Medardovich, although he was an agent-informant of the OGPU, did not even dream of suspecting that the KGB fantasy had lifted him to such a high post. At the same time, the leaders of the OGPU understood perfectly well that no one abroad would have believed that the Luhansk locksmith Klim Voroshilov or the former Zemgusar, that is to say, an employee of the Union of Zemstvos and Cities, which supplied the Russian army with everything necessary during the First World War, was inclined towards the ideas of the restoration of the monarchy, Mikhail Frunze (aka Mikhailov), sentenced to death by the tsarist court, and who joined the Bolshevik Party back in 1904. Here Tukhachevsky is another matter. And the biography is Napoleonic, and the pillar nobility, and the appearance is suitable. I will only make a reservation that the arrogance in the expression of his face and imitation in the very appearance of Bonaparte, often attributed to Mikhail Nikolaevich, had an absolutely prosaic reason, which had nothing to do with the "Napoleonic complex." Tukhachevsky suffered from Graves' disease, which is why his eyes were somewhat bulging, and his neck was straight and towering above the collar of his uniform. Lydia Nord testifies: “He could not stand it when something strangled his neck - it was“ strangling ”him. Therefore, military tailors sewed him tunics and service jackets with a lower than necessary in shape, a cutout at the collar. His ill-wishers claimed that he was doing this in order to "boast of the beauty of his neck." There was also a slight bulging, which became more noticeable when he worked long and hard. " Hence the legend of the "Bonapartist" appearance and manners of the "red marshal" was born.

At the end of 1923 or at the beginning of 1924, someone decided that in the operation "Trust" the OGPU with Tukhachevsky, as they say, went too far, and gave instructions to stop using him in the case with the MOTsR. From whom this instruction originated has not yet been clarified. It is possible that this was the head of the military department Trotsky, who feared that the name of one of the popular commanders would be compromised in the emigre press due to the leakage of information about his alleged connections with the monarchists, which, in turn, would hit the prestige of the Red Army. But the Chekists took Tukhachevsky out of the game in a rather peculiar way. Styrne wrote about this in detail: “Since it was found inconvenient to 'enumerate' Tukhachevsky as part of the Trust, and an order was received to stop playing with his name (if the order really came from Trotsky, then it is clear why Styrna in the 31st year does not name the name of the former chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council was expelled from the country for two years already. - BS), - it was necessary for him to be withdrawn from the "Trust" for abroad. But this had to be done gradually. We wrote that the head of the Trust, Zayonchkovsky (who at that time did not even know that he was a member of some counter-revolutionary organization), contrary to the decision of the political council, did not allow Tukhachevsky to practice, and that on this basis a serious the conflict between Zayonchkovsky and other leaders of "Trust", it allegedly reached the point that the largest leaders of "Trust" are forced to resign and are waiting for replacement. This maneuver gave some respite, since in the role of those who had left, but had not yet surrendered their posts, the trust leaders could not show any special activity for some time. The work of the organization has temporarily stalled. " A few weeks later, the MOCR was "revived". Styrne wrote the following about this: “It was decided to report that the 'conflict' had been settled and Tukhachevsky was left alone. Paris erupted with a series of letters in which he expounded his pleasure in eliminating all misunderstandings. "

Although among the Parisian emigration "Trust" again appeared as a monolithic entity that successfully overcame internal friction, and the Chekists successfully eliminated the "misunderstanding" they themselves created, similar "misunderstandings" in relation to Tukhachevsky were just beginning. After all, what impression should have been created among the foreign monarchists: the winner of Kolchak and Denikin really thirsts for active anti-Soviet work in order to prove in practice his long and carefully concealed hatred of the Bolsheviks, but only the old General Zayonchkovsky does not allow him to do business. Either he is being overly cautious, or he sees in Tukhachevsky a dangerous rival, striving to lead the army of a new Russia liberated from the Bolsheviks, or, what the hell is not joking, even to become the new Russian emperor. Yes, by the grace of Dzerzhinsky, Tukhachevsky found himself in a very ambiguous position in the eyes of the Parisian émigré public and the intelligence services associated with it. It turned out that now Tukhachevsky was going to fight the Soviet power on his own, without any "Trusts" -MOCRs there. And not to risk sending emissaries to him - suddenly something worthwhile comes out?

I still have a persistent feeling that the OGPU workers in advance, back in the mid-20s, were preparing compromising evidence on the "socially alien" Tukhachevsky - maybe it will come in handy when it will be necessary to stop the commander who is walking too quickly up the steps of the military hierarchy.

And in exile they continued to closely follow Tukhachevsky. In October 1926, the OGPU agent Vlasov announced his meeting with Kutepov, who "for some reason showed particular interest in comrade Tukhachevsky, asked if he could be involved in the ranks of the supporters of the national movement."

In April 1927, one of the main protagonists of Operation Trust, OGPU agent Eduard Ottovich Opperput (aka Pavel Ivanovich Selyaninov, aka Staunits, aka Kasatkin - the names of this adventurer with a dark biography were innumerable) fled to Finland and revealed a clever KGB combination. After that, the Polish intelligence very thoroughly checked the report of Tukhachevsky, which had just been received through the ICRC, addressed to the Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, dated March 19, 1927. And by the end of 1928, she found out that she was dealing with ordinary disinformation designed to exaggerate the combat power of the Red Army. All the data in the report were contradicted by information obtained from other sources. This circumstance once again convinced the Poles that the unfortunate conqueror of Warsaw faithfully served the Bolsheviks and did not think of any monarchical coups. But Warsaw did not share its conclusions about Tukhachevsky with the ROVS and other émigré organizations: intelligence is a delicate occupation that does not tolerate excessive publicity.

And Kutepov continued to hope that Tukhachevsky would sooner or later become a "red Bonaparte" and help veterans of the white movement to plant two-headed eagles on the Kremlin towers. On July 28, he discussed with another OGPU agent, a certain Popov, the possibility of establishing a "firm and strong dictatorship" for the transition period from the Soviet Republic to the monarchy and tried to find out how, in this connection, the "Internal Russian National Organization" (another Chekist "Trust") evaluates Tukhachevsky. Earlier, to another emigrant, the historian S. P. Melgunov, Popov told that VNRO intends to make Tukhachevsky a dictator. But this time the agent replied cautiously to Kutepov: "We selected this candidate only because in our ranks we did not find a person who enjoyed such popularity and sympathy in the army and among the population as Tukhachevsky." And much earlier, at the end of 1925, the same Popov fooled another émigré general, V.V.Biskupsky, about Tukhachevsky, who represented those monarchists who supported the right to the throne of Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich. In the report, the agent wrote: “... When I painted Tukhachevsky as a pure Bonapartist for him (Biskupsky - BS) with a few strokes, he told us to promise him that the Tsar (Kirill Vladimirovich - BS) would appoint him an adjutant wing, if he goes over to our side at the right time, and generally would not skimp on any awards to the persons we need, if this can win them over to our side. " I suspect that the agent was a little mistaken here, either because he wrote the report in a hurry, or because of ignorance of the court hierarchy. It is absolutely incredible that, on behalf of the Grand Duke, Biskupsky promised Tukhachevsky for his support of the monarchical coup only aide-de-camp - the honorary title of officers of the imperial retinue with the rank of no higher than colonel. This award would be suitable for a second lieutenant of the Guards, but not for someone who was one of the leaders of the Red Army and held general, if not marshal's positions. Most likely, Biskupsky then promised Tukhachevsky the rank of adjutant general, which was awarded to full generals and lieutenant generals who were in the retinue. Although this, in any case, would have seemed not enough to Mikhail Nikolaevich - he obviously dreamed of a marshal's baton.

Also in London, representatives of the non-existent VRNO had to tell emigrants, as well as representatives of British political circles, that, "taking into account the properties of character, with popularity, both in society, especially in the army, and with life preparation", the organization outlined the role dictator Tukhachevsky, "who, of course, does not know about this, but his entourage in this case ... is prepared in the right direction." Therefore, the envoys of the VRNO concluded: "We have no doubts that at the decisive moment he will be with us and at the head of us." It seems that Tukhachevsky is not a traitor, but an unreliable person for the Soviet regime - at the decisive moment he will take it and go over to the whites.

The OGPU, having created a rather ambiguous reputation for Tukhachevsky abroad, did not leave him with its concerns inside the country. Back in 1924, such well-known military leaders and military theorists from the “former” as S. S. Kamenev, I. I. Vatsetis, Tukhachevsky, M. D. Bonch-Bruevich (brother of the Council of People's Commissars), A. A. Svechin, A. E. Snesarev ... The first report not from abroad, but from the territory of the USSR about Tukhachevsky's Bonapartism came from an informant agent Ovsyannikov in December 1925. It said: "At present, among the cadre officers and generals, two trends have emerged most: monarchist ... and Bonapartist, the concentration of which is around MN Tukhachevsky." Ovsyannikov named a number of former tsarist officers who allegedly constituted "Tukhachevsky's circle". Some of these officers were recruited by the OGPU, but they could not (or did not want to) report anything incriminating Mikhail Nikolaevich.

Tukhachevsky was also developed by the old proven agent Zayonchkovskaya, the daughter of a general who died in 1926. She met the German journalist Gerbing, who was in Moscow. He told her, in particular, that Tukhachevsky and S. S. Kamenev, independently of each other, were working for the German General Staff. Gerbing was known for his connections with German intelligence. However, his testimony was not worth much. The fact is that back in 1927, Opperput publicly exposed Zayonchkovskaya as an agent of the OGPU. And Gerbing told her about Tukhachevsky's work for German intelligence only in 1929. The Germans deliberately misinformed the Soviet side about Tukhachevsky. And they had their own reasons for that. Occupying senior positions in the Red Army, Tukhachevsky played an important role in military cooperation between the USSR and Germany. In 1932, he visited the Reichswehr maneuvers and several German military factories, and was in constant contact with German generals and officers who came to Moscow. However, the latter, despite all the diplomacy inherent in Mikhail Nikolaevich, had a strong impression that Tukhachevsky was hostile to Germany and saw her as the main potential enemy. So, in 1931, the German ambassador to the USSR G. von Dirksen emphasized in one of his letters that Tukhachevsky “is far from being that straightforward and handsome man who so openly spoke in favor of the German orientation, which Uborevich was (Tukhachevsky's predecessor as chief of armaments of the Red Army . - B.S.). He is rather closed, smart, restrained. " Uborevich, "an unsurpassed educator of the troops," to use Zhukov's definition, did not hide his admiration for the German army. He directly wrote in a report on his thirteen-month stay in Germany in 1927-1928 in connection with his studies at the military academy: “The Germans are for us the only outlet so far through which we can study achievements in military affairs abroad, moreover from the army, in a whole range of issues has very interesting achievements. We managed to learn a lot, and we still have a lot to finish in order to switch to more advanced methods of combat training. Now we need to shift the center of gravity to the use of the technical achievements of the Germans, mainly in the sense of learning to build and use the latest means of struggle: tanks, improvements in aviation, anti-tank weapons, communications, etc. number and military affairs, they are immeasurably higher than us ... "It is no coincidence that the adviser of the German Embassy in Moscow von Twardowski in a letter dated September 25, 1933 to the adviser of the German Foreign Ministry V. von Tippelskirhu, the brother of the famous military historian General K. von Tippelskirch, recalling the reception given by Tukhachevsky with the participation of high-ranking Soviet military leaders, noted that “our friend Uborevich was also there”. Tukhachevsky, which is significant, did not call Tukhachevsky a friend of Germany. Also, the German general K. Spalke, who until the beginning of the 30s was a liaison officer of the Reichswehr with the Red Army, confirms in his memoirs: “At Tukhachevsky, with his aristocratic Polish (rather Lithuanian. - BS) blood, one could assume much more sympathy for Paris than Berlin, and in all his type he was more in line with the ideal of an elegant and witty officer of the French General Staff than a respectable German General Staff. He went to a disagreement with Germany, was for the war with Germany on the side of the Western powers. "

It is interesting that the letters from Dirksen and Twardowski were intercepted by Soviet agents. So the OGPU was aware of how the Germans really relate to Tukhachevsky.

True, Mikhail Nikolaevich also had to lavish compliments on the Reichswehr. For example, on May 13, 1933, at a reception at Voroshilov's in honor of the German delegation led by the chief of armaments of the German army, General V. von Bockelberg. Then Tukhachevsky reminded the Germans: “Do not forget that we are divided by our policy, not our feelings, the feelings of friendship of the Red Army for the Reichswehr. And always think about this: you and we, Germany and the USSR, can dictate our terms to the whole world if we are together. " And during a visit by a German delegation to objects of the Soviet military industry and an aviation school in Kacha (the journey was accompanied by abundant libations - during one of the banquets the German general even fell under the table, having sipped Russian vodka) Tukhachevsky, as Bockelberg's report read, “at breakfast in a narrow circle repeatedly stressed that in order for Germany to get out of a difficult political situation, he wishes her, as soon as possible, to have an air fleet of 2,000 bomb carriers. " The text of the report became the property of Soviet intelligence, and Voroshilov underlined the words about 2,000 bomb carriers with three bold lines in blue pencil. However, it is obvious that there was no crime here on the part of Tukhachevsky. And not under the influence of the atmosphere of a friendly feast and alcoholic excesses, Mikhail Nikolaevich, who never got drunk at all, proclaimed toasts to the speedy rearmament of the Reichswehr.

Even before Hitler came to power, the leaders of the Reichswehr decided to gradually abandon the restrictions imposed by the Versailles Treaty, and Moscow was notified of this. Back on July 28, 1932, the adviser to the Soviet embassy in Germany S. S. Aleksandrovsky informed the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs: “Under strict secrecy, Niedermeier (the then chief of German intelligence - B. S.) announced that a military academy, prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles, would start operating in Berlin in the fall. ... Schleicher (commander of the Reichswehr. - BS) is taking a course towards the complete destruction of completely unfavorable and outdated forms prescribed to the Reichswehr by Versailles. In practice, this means the abolition of a number of such forms ... In a rather cautious form, Niedermeier made it clear that such a radical reorganization of the army is directed against the West (France) and will be carried out in spite of international prohibitions. "

The Soviet leaders seriously hoped that the rearmed German army would move first of all against the creators of the Versailles system, and the USSR would be able to remain above the battle for some time in the position of the “third rejoicing”. At the same time, no mistake was made about the Reichswehr's love for communism. Voroshilov, in one of his letters to the Soviet plenipotentiary in Berlin L. M. Khinchuk, admitted: “We never forgot that the Reichswehr is“ friends ”with us (hating us in our hearts) only because of the conditions created, because of the need to have an“ outlet ”in the East , to have at least some trump card than to scare Europe. All the "friendship" and cooperation of the Reichswehr followed the line of striving to give us less and worse, but to use us as fully as possible. " Exactly the same suspicions were on the German side, only, of course, in relation to the Red Army.

In the first weeks and even months after Hitler came to power, Stalin probably believed that the Nazi regime was fragile, and had some hopes that with the help of the Reichswehr it would be possible to oust the Fuhrer, and then form a bloc with German "friends" against England and France ... That is why Tukhachevsky spoke to the generals of the Reichswehr, after the burning of the Reichstag and the deployment of the anti-communist campaign in Germany, about the possibility of the USSR and the Reich to jointly dictate their terms to the rest of the world; not only the shackles of Versailles, but also the rise of the Nazis to power. However, very soon it became clear that Hitler's Third Reich - if not for a thousand years, as Hitler dreamed, then at least seriously and for a long time, at least for the next five years. And you will have to fight not with the Reichswehr, but against the Reichswehr. Therefore, in the summer of the 33rd, the Soviet Union refused to send its military to the exercises of the Reichswehr. The German side, in turn, did not send German officers to Soviet maneuvers. Neither the USSR nor Germany now wanted to strengthen each other's potential, seeing in the recent partner a potential adversary. And already in the fall, the property of German facilities was evacuated - a tank school near Kazan (the Kama facility), an aviation school in Lipetsk (Lipetsk facility) and, the most secret, an enterprise for the production of chemical warfare agents so dear to Tukhachevsky in the Samara region, on the Volga , not far from the city of Volsk (object "Tomka"). Soviet-German friendship ended in order to be resurrected for a short time in the 39th.

The OGPU was forced to keep under the shelter materials about Tukhachevsky's allegedly criminal ties with the German General Staff. While military cooperation with the Reichswehr continued, it was impossible to change its main characters, who possessed both experience and top-secret information. Most importantly, the arrest on such a charge of one of the highest military leaders could easily compromise mutually beneficial ties with Germany in the military field and even paralyze them. If Germany had the opportunity to train personnel for those types of troops on Soviet territory that were prohibited by Versailles, then the USSR received access to German military technologies and models of weapons and military equipment, and could also borrow the experience of combat training from the Reichswehr, which in this area was head and shoulders above the Red Army.

V.R.Menzhinsky, who replaced Dzerzhinsky, decided to probe Tukhachevsky from the other side. In 1930, during the aforementioned operation "Spring", among about 5 thousand former tsarist officers, they arrested the teachers of the military academy, H. Ye. Kakurin and I. A. Troitsky, who knew Tukhachevsky well. On August 26, 1930, the Chekists obtained compromising testimony from Kakurin against Tukhachevsky. A former colonel of the imperial army said: “In Moscow, at times they gathered at Tukhachevsky's, at times at Gai's, at times at a gypsy woman. In Leningrad, they gathered at Tukhachevsky's. The leader of all these meetings was Tukhachevsky, the participants: me, Kolesinsky, Eistreicher, Egorov, Gai, Nikonov, Chusov, Vetlin, Kaufeldt. At the moment and after the 16th Congress, the decision to sit and wait was clarified, organizing in the cadres during the time of the highest tension of the struggle between the Right and the Central Committee. But at the same time, Tukhachevsky put forward the question of political action as the goal of unleashing the right deviation and the transition to a new higher level, which was thought of as a military dictatorship that came to power through the right deviation. On the days of July 7-8 (1930, when Bukharin, Rykov and their supporters were crushed at the congress. - BS), Tukhachevsky had meetings and conversations of the aforementioned persons and made the last decisive directives, that is, wait, organize. " ... Troitsky, in his testimony, also spoke of Tukhachevsky's sympathies for the Right deviation.

Under pressure from investigators, Kakurin gave the usual military meetings in an informal setting, at dinner or, on weekends and holidays, at lunch, gave the character of conspiratorial gatherings, and presented table conversations as organizing a conspiracy to establish a dictatorship in alliance with the right. Further more. Nikolai Evgenievich told how Tukhachevsky recruited new conspirators and how popular he is in the army, so that if something happens, he can move regiments to the Kremlin. True, the unfortunate defendant on the anti-government activities of Tukhachevsky, outside of conversations, could not come up with anything concrete. And the investigators themselves did not yet know enough about Tukhachevsky and his entourage to tell Kakurin a more or less literate legend. They did not even notice that he did not even name the second "conspirator", Troitsky, among those gathered at Tukhachevsky's.

On September 10, 1930, Menzhinsky sent the minutes of the interrogations of Kakurin and Troitsky to Stalin, accompanying them with the following letter: “I reported this case to Comrade Molotov and asked permission to adhere to the version that Kakurin and Troitsky were arrested on espionage before receiving your instructions. Arresting members of a group one by one is risky. There can be two ways out: either immediately arrest the most active members of the group, or wait for your arrival, taking undercover measures so as not to be caught unawares. I consider it necessary to note that now all rebel groups are maturing very quickly and the latest decision poses a certain risk. "

However, Vyacheslav Rudolfovich did not succeed in scaring Joseph Vissarionovich, who was resting in Sochi. Stalin wrote to Ordzhonikidze on September 24: “Read the testimony of Kakurin-Troitsky as soon as possible and think about measures to eliminate this unpleasant case. This material, as you can see, is highly secret: Molotov and I know about it, and now you will know too. I don't know if Klim is aware of this. Consequently, Tukhachevsky was captured by anti-Soviet elements and was also strictly manipulated by anti-Soviet elements from the ranks of the right. So it comes out according to the materials. Is it possible? Of course it is possible, since it is not excluded. Apparently, the rightists are even ready to go for a military dictatorship, just to get rid of the Central Committee, from collective and state farms, from the Bolshevik rates of industrial development ... Well, business ... It is impossible to end this business in the usual way (immediate arrest, etc.). We need to think carefully about this matter. It would be better to postpone the solution of the question raised in Menzhinsky's note until mid-October, when we will all be assembled. Talk about all this with Molotov when you are in Moscow. "

Menzhinsky wanted to help Stalin connect Bukharin and his comrades with a military conspiracy so that they could immediately be put in the dock. But the leader did not accept the "gift". The time has not come yet. Of course, Stalin, no worse than the head of the OGPU, knew that there was no conspiracy at all, that a dozen of the military, and even in the majority - teachers of academies or, like Tukhachevsky, although the commanders of the troops of the district, but not the capital, would not carry out a military coup at all will be able to. That for such a coup it is necessary to involve many combatant commanders in the conspiracy, up to the regimental level, and with such a scale of the conspirators' activities, it cannot remain unnoticed by the agents of the OGPU and army political agencies. Menzhinsky's materials contain no reports about the lower cells of the conspiracy. And for a palace coup, it is necessary to have on your side the Kremlin guard, consisting of Chekists, and not of the military, and Tukhachevsky and his comrades are not controlled from any side. So, about the conspiracy - everything is of the purest water linden. Therefore, Stalin sent the protocols to Ordzhonikidze, being aware of his friendship with Tukhachevsky. And he directly asked not to rush into the analysis of the case, to postpone it for almost a month. Iosif Vissarionovich wanted to get a trump card for the future against both Tukhachevsky and his "dear friend" Sergo.

At that moment, Stalin was not going to arrest either Bukharin or Tukhachevsky. Too early. Tukhachevsky is needed to reorganize the Red Army. And Bukharin also has supporters in the party. It is necessary to subtract them on the sly, and then the elimination of the “favorite of the party”, “Bukharchik,” will not particularly alarm anyone. But for the future, the "great leader and teacher" made a reservation: "Of course, it is possible, since it is not excluded." It seems that he also trusts Ordzhonikidze - "the material is highly secret", only I, Molotov and you know, so justify your trust. Stalin understood that Ordzhonikidze would not believe in his friend's betrayal, he would plead for him. Now this only plays into the hands - in fact, in reality, Joseph Vissarionovich at that moment was not going to put Tukhachevsky against the wall. But when the time is ripe, this letter will make it possible to accuse "dear friend" Sergo of political myopia: Stalin had warned him about Tukhachevsky, but Grigory Konstantinovich, out of the kindness of his soul, did not believe it.

In the meantime, new testimonies were knocked out of Kakurin on October 5. Finally broken with paint, he declared: “Mikhail Nikolaevich said that ... one can count on a further exacerbation of the internal party struggle. I do not exclude the possibility, he said, as one of the prospects, that in the heat and bitterness of this struggle, passions, both political and personal, flare up so much that all frames and boundaries will be forgotten and crossed. It is also possible that the fanatic's hand for unleashing the right deviation will not stop even before the attempt on the life of Comrade. Stalin ... Mikhail Nikolaevich, perhaps, has some kind of connections with Uglanov and, possibly, with a number of other party or near-party persons who regard Tukhachevsky as a possible military leader in case of a struggle against anarchy and aggression. Now, when I had time to think deeply about everything that happened, I do not exclude the fact that, speaking as a forecast about a fanatic shooting at Stalin, Tukhachevsky simply veiled the perspective that he himself was thinking about in reality. "

Menzhinsky and his comrades sewed Tukhachevsky a firing squad: intent on a terrorist attack, and even not on someone, but on Stalin himself, not knowing that the leader had already made a decision: not to touch Tukhachevsky yet. Mikhail Nikolaevich was given a confrontation with Kakurin and Troitsky. Later, after the arrest of Tukhachevsky, Stalin, speaking at a meeting of the Military Council on June 2, 1937, recalled: “We turned to Comrade Dubovy, Yakir and Gamarnik. Is it right that Tukhachevsky should be arrested as an enemy? All three said no, it must be some kind of misunderstanding, wrong ... We made a confrontation and decided to cross out this matter. Now it turns out that two military men, who showed Tukhachevsky, showed correctly ... "Kakurin died in prison in 1936, and Troitsky, despite the" truthful testimony ", was safely shot in 1939. The fate of the military leaders who vouched for Tukhachevsky was no better. Ya. B. Gamarnik was lucky to shoot himself and thus avoid the shameful trial and execution. I.E.Yakir was shot together with Tukhachevsky, and I.N.Dubovoy a little later, in the 38th. Indeed, no good deed goes unpunished ...

Material on Tukhachevsky, as well as on other leaders of the Red Army, continued to accumulate. It will come in handy ... The ubiquitous Zayonchkovskaya, by the way, Kakurin's cousin, tried. With reference to all the same Gerbing, in 1934 she informed about the allegedly existing conspiracy of the military, planning an attempt on Stalin's life. Gerbing allegedly told her: “What are the Bolsheviks for the Russian army? These are not enemies, but those who are not enemies are essentially no longer Bolsheviks. Tukhachevsky is not a Bolshevik, he never was, Uborevich is also. Kamenev too. Not a Bolshevik and Budyonny. But their choice ... fell on Tukhachevsky. " Perhaps, after the termination of cooperation with the USSR, German intelligence became disillusioned with Uborevich's Germanophilia and decided to dissolve rumors that compromise him on a par with Tukhachevsky. However, Stalin has so far not responded to signals about the military leadership. And one of the leaders of the NKVD, the head of the Special Department M. I. Gai, on the report to Zayonchkovskaya, where she accused of treason not only Tukhachevsky, but also Putna, Cork, Eideman, Feldman, Sergeev and others, imposed an eloquent resolution: “This is sheer nonsense an old woman out of her mind. Call her to me. " Meanwhile, the "old woman who has gone out of her mind" safely survived not only the military slandered by her, but also Guy himself, who perished in the abyss of repression. Even during the Khrushchev thaw, Tatyana Andreevna, like other sex workers, was not punished for denunciations.

Only in the second half of 1936 did Stalin think that the time had come to take on Tukhachevsky and his associates. Lydia Nord thought the impetus was the controversy over the war in Spain. Modern historians, in particular N.A. Zenkovich, point to a quarrel during a banquet after the parade on May 1, 1936 as an immediate reason. Then, after a hefty dose of intoxicating drinks, Voroshilov, Budyonny and Tukhachevsky argued about the affairs of old: who was the culprit of the defeat at Warsaw, and then very soon moved on to the present. Tukhachevsky accused the former leaders of the Cavalry of placing the commanders of the Cavalry personally loyal to them in responsible posts, creating their own grouping in the Red Army. Voroshilov exasperatedly threw out: "Aren't they grouping around you?"

This text is an introductory fragment.

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