For what good is it to a man if he gains the whole world, but damages his soul?"
Gospel of Mark 8:36
History and documents. Newspapers, newspapers, newspapers from the archive … How many times have I had to turn over their yellowed pages! I first looked at them somewhere in 1983, when I started working at the Department of the History of the CPSU at the Penza Polytechnic Institute and wrote the first historical and journalistic articles. It was the easiest. I went to the archive. I took the newspaper by the appropriate date and wrote about how this or that event was reflected in our press some years ago. Then work on the dissertation and the book "Tanks of Total Wars", for which we had to calculate the indicators of losses of our and German tanks according to the data of the Soviet Information Bureau. I found the "Communication of the Soviet Government on Lend-Lease Supplies of June 11, 1944" and sent my students the memoirs of our marshals and generals to read. Whoever finds a link or mention of "Messages …" in the book - top five without an exam! Nobody found! Then I searched myself - I didn't find it either … Then I read Pravda right from 1918 to 1953, and selectively - until 1991, I lived concisely the entire history of the country. And therefore I can say with full right that this reading is most interesting, even more interesting than many historical monographs and studies. But few of our people have a desire and opportunity for this. Our Penza archive, for example, is packed daily with people rummaging through their genealogies. They are not too lazy, but why? After all, no one has yet found Grafiev there in his past … "Interesting!" "I want to know the history of the past!" How is it? Commendable! And what about the Pravda newspaper? "Oh well …" And in vain, by the way, because a huge number of our citizens do not really know the history of their own country. How is Pushkin doing? "And she feeds on fables!" And this is exactly the case.
By the way, this material also appeared to a certain extent as a response to the "fables" of some connoisseurs of the history of our country - here, on "VO". It was their comments that prompted me this topic. So today we will begin to get acquainted with what the Pravda newspaper, the organ of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks), wrote about the German fascists and everything connected with them. Well, the chronological framework will be as follows: from 1933 to August 1939, because after August the phrase "German fascism" disappeared from our newspaper rhetoric - until June 22, 1941. In order not to get tired of one topic, purely for the sake of interest, we will also add here the “theme of success” (otherwise some readers are offended that they are not there!), And also rejoice at the unique photographs of domestic scientific and technological progress!
We have people on "VO" who believe that German Nazism and Italian fascism are somewhat different "things". And yes, indeed, the way it is! Only in the 1930s our newspaper Pravda did not distinguish between these two concepts and therefore wrote: "German fascism", "German fascists" and so on. This must be borne in mind when you speak and write about that era, because … it was so. Well, now let's get down to the newspapers themselves and be glad that without leaving home thanks to "VO" we have the opportunity to read all this and immerse ourselves in the world of that era!
The problem was not that Nazism and fascism were confused in the 1930s, but that fascism itself and the so-called social fascism existed. The latter term appeared again in our USSR, but only … in the 1920s. What is their difference, who was the godfather of the latter, we will tell you somehow. For now, we will only note that Pravda was careful to avoid confusion in these terms.
And here is the message about the atrocities in Hitler's prisons. It is clear that people learned about Auschwitz and Treblinka after 1945. But what they knew then was quite enough to write about the atrocities and horrors of fascism. Or is this not enough for someone?
