The power struggle in the late USSR was accompanied by a number of strange deaths
Recently, on March 11, 28 years have passed since the day Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev was elected General Secretary at the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee. Today, it is obvious that his reign was a series of betrayals and crimes, as a result of which the Soviet state collapsed. It is symbolic that Gorbachev's rise to power was also conditioned by a chain of dark Kremlin intrigues.
Let's talk about a series of strange deaths of elderly members of the Politburo, who seemed to be competing so that Mikhail Sergeevich could ascend to the party throne as soon as possible and begin his destructive experiments. But first, let's turn to the personality of the chairman of the KGB of the USSR, Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (pictured). It was his irrepressible desire to become the head of the party and state that was the spring that, in the end, threw Gorbachev to the very top of the power pyramid.
It is known that Andropov, until the death of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, was not considered a contender for the highest party post. Having become the Chairman of the KGB from the secretaries of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1967, he understood that the absolute majority of the members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU would not support his claims for the post of General Secretary. The only way out for Andropov was to wait and eliminate competitors in a timely manner. The head of the secret service had ample opportunity for this.
In this regard, some researchers offer the following version of the events that unfolded on the Old Square in 1976-1982. Andropov's plan was as follows. On the one hand, to ensure that Brezhnev remains in the post of Secretary General until the time when Andropov has real chances to become the first person himself, and on the other hand, to ensure that other contenders for the post of Secretary General are discredited or eliminated.
Dmitry Fedorovich Ustinov, secretary of the CPSU Central Committee for defense issues and candidate member of the Politburo, became Andropov's powerful ally in the implementation of this plan. But, apparently, Ustinov had no idea of the ultimate goal of Andropov's aspirations. He was a supporter of leaving Brezhnev as General Secretary, as he had unlimited influence on Leonid Ilyich. Thanks to this, Ustinov himself and the issues of increasing the country's defense capability were in the foreground.
Full mutual understanding between Andropov and Ustinov on this issue was established during the preparation for the 25th Congress of the CPSU, which was held from February 24 to March 5, 1976.
Brezhnev, in connection with deteriorating health, wanted at this congress to transfer the reins of government to Grigory Vasilyevich Romanov, who at that time had a reputation as an extremely honest, absolutely not corrupt person, a tough, intelligent technocrat, inclined to social innovation and experimentation.
53-year-old Romanov was always fit, with gray hair on the temples, he was very impressive. Both this and Romanov's sharp mind were noted by many foreign leaders.
Andropov and Ustinov were extremely undesirable for the arrival of Romanov. He was 9 years younger than Andropov, Ustinov 15, and Brezhnev 17 years. For Andropov, General Secretary Romanov meant a rejection of plans, and for Ustinov, who was considered the head of the so-called "narrow circle" of the Politburo, who had previously decided all the most important issues - the loss of a privileged position in the Politburo.
Andropov and Ustinov also understood that Romanov would immediately send them to retire. In this regard, they, with the support of Suslov, Gromyko and Chernenko, were able to convince Brezhnev of the need to remain in the post of General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.
Andropov neutralized Romanov in the most banal way. A rumor was launched that the wedding of the youngest daughter of Romanov took place with "imperial" luxury in the Tauride Palace, for which the dishes were taken from the Hermitage storerooms. And although the wedding was in 1974, they remembered it for some reason in 1976. As a result, Romanov's career was stalled.
The distributors of false information about the wedding of Romanov's daughter were made not only to the townsfolk, but also to the first secretaries of the city and district committees of the CPSU in the north-west of the USSR. They underwent retraining at the courses of the Leningrad Higher Party School, which at that time was located in the Tauride Palace. When I was on a course in 1981, I personally heard this misinformation from the senior teacher of the LHPS Dyachenko, who conducted an excursion for the students of the courses around the Tauride Palace. She confidentially informed us that, allegedly, she herself was present at this wedding.
Meanwhile, it is known for certain that Romanov did not allow himself and his family any excesses. He lived all his life in a two-room apartment. The wedding of his youngest daughter took place at the state dacha. It was attended by only 10 guests, and Grigory Vasilyevich himself was seriously late for the wedding dinner due to his official employment.
Romanov appealed to the Central Committee of the CPSU with a request to give a public refutation of the slander. But in response, I only heard "do not pay attention to the little things." Then the Central Committee's clever men, and among them was Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko, that with this answer they accelerated the collapse of the CPSU and the USSR …
But Andropov was hampered not only by Romanov, but also by the Minister of Defense of the USSR Andrei Antonovich Grechko. Due to the fact that during the war Brezhnev served under his command, the marshal more than once torpedoed the decisions of the Secretary General. This is not surprising. A stately handsome man, almost two meters tall, Andrei Antonovich was a commander by vocation. It came to direct attacks by the Marshal of the Soviet Union against the General Secretary right at the meetings of the Politburo. Brezhnev endured them patiently.
Grechko had no problems with the KGB. But he did not hide his negative attitude towards the growth of the Committee's bureaucratic structures and the strengthening of its influence. This gave rise to a certain tension in his relations with Andropov. Ustinov also struggled to share his sphere of influence with the defense minister. He, who became the People's Commissar of Armaments in June 1941, considered himself a man who had done more than anyone else to strengthen the country's defense, and did not need anyone's advice.
And on the evening of April 26, 1976, Marshal Grechko arrived at the dacha after work, went to bed and did not wake up in the morning. Contemporaries noted that, despite his 72 years old, he could give odds to the young in many matters.
To believe that Andropov's department was involved in Grechko's death is very problematic, if not for one circumstance. The strange thing is that after the death of the marshal, several more members of the Politburo died in this way.
Of course, all people are mortal, but the strange thing is that they all died somehow at the right time … In 1978 Andropov complained to the chief Kremlin physician Yevgeny Ivanovich Chazov that he did not know how to transfer Gorbachev to Moscow. A month later, a vacancy arose in a "miraculous" way, the position of Fyodor Davydovich Kulakov, the secretary of the CPSU Central Committee for agricultural issues, was vacated, just under Gorbachev.
Kulakov, like Grechko, came to the dacha, sat with the guests, went to bed and did not wake up. People who knew him closely claimed that Kulakov was healthy as a bull, did not know what a headache or a cold was, and was an incorrigible optimist. The circumstances of Kulakov's death turned out to be strange. On the eve of the evening, guards and a personal doctor attached to each member of the Politburo left his dacha under various pretexts.
Viktor Alekseevich Kaznacheev, the former second secretary of the Stavropol regional committee of the CPSU, who knew the Kulakov family well, wrote about this in the book "The Last General Secretary". Kaznacheev also reported another curious fact. On July 17, 1978, at half past nine in the morning, Gorbachev called him and very cheerfully, without a single note of regret, announced that Kulakov had died. It turns out that Gorbachev learned this news almost simultaneously with the country's top leadership. Strange awareness for a party leader of one of the provincial regions of the country. One can feel the trace of Andropov, who favored Gorbachev.
The death of Kulakov gave rise to many rumors. The chairman of the KGB Andropov himself came to the dacha where Fyodor Davydovich died, with two task forces. Death was stated personally by Chazov. The detailed, but at the same time very confusing report of the special medical commission headed by him, aroused great suspicion among specialists. It was also strange that neither Brezhnev, nor Kosygin, nor Suslov, nor Chernenko showed up on Red Square for Kulakov's funeral. The funeral was limited to a speech from the rostrum of the Mausoleum of the first secretary of the Stavropol regional party committee, M. Gorbachev.
Officially, TASS reported that on the night of June 16-17, 1978 F. D. Kulakov "died of acute heart failure with sudden cardiac arrest." At the same time, the KGB spread rumors that the secretary of the CPSU Central Committee F. Kulakov, after an unsuccessful attempt to seize power, cut his veins …
No less strange passed away the first deputy chairman of the KGB, Semyon Kuzmich Tsvigun, one of Brezhnev's trusted people. On January 19, 1982, that is, 4 months before Andropov's transfer from the KGB to the Central Committee of the CPSU, he shot himself in his dacha. People of this rank have many reasons to shoot, but in the case of Zwigun, there are too many "buts".
One gets the impression that someone really did not want this general to head the KGB in the event of Andropov's departure. At the end of 1981, Tsvigun, who did not complain about his health, at the insistence of doctors, went to the Kremlin hospital for examination. His daughter Violetta was amazed when she found out what medications her father was prescribed. He was pumped with various tranquilizers throughout the day.
They try to explain this by the fact that Tsvigun was depressed after an extremely unpleasant conversation with Mikhail Andreevich Suslov, the second person in the Politburo about Galina Brezhneva's involvement in the case of the stolen diamonds of the circus artist Irina Bugrimova. However, it is known for certain that Tsvigun and Suslov at the end of 1981 did not meet and could not meet.
Despite the "strange" course of treatment, Tsvigun did not lose his love of life. According to the official version, on the day of the so-called suicide, he and his wife decided to go to the dacha to check how the protracted repairs were going. The circumstances of Tsvigun's "suicide" are also more than strange. He asked for a pistol from the driver of the car in which he had arrived, and went to the house alone. However, on the porch of the dacha, where no one saw him, he took and shot himself. He did not leave a suicide note.
Having arrived at the place of Tsvigun's death, Andropov threw the phrase: "I will not forgive them for Tsvigun!" At the same time, it is known that Tsvigun was Brezhnev's man, sent to the KGB to supervise Andropov. Perhaps with this phrase Andropov decided to divert suspicion from himself.
Tsvigun's daughter Violetta believes that her father was killed. This indirectly confirms the fact that her attempts to familiarize herself with the materials of the investigation of her father's "suicide" were unsuccessful. These documents were not found in the archives.
The well-known Russian historian N. at the beginning of 2009 told me new details about Tsvigun's death. It turns out that Tsvigun did not come, but spent the night at the dacha. Before leaving for work, when he was already sitting in the car, the security officer said that Semyon Kuzmich was being invited to the phone. He returned to the house, and then a fatal shot sounded. Then the general's corpse was carried out into the street. Believe it or not, this information was allegedly received from people who were investigating the circumstances of Tsvigun's death.
By the fall of 1981, Brezhnev's health deteriorated. Chazov informed Andropov about this. He realized that the main contender for the post of General Secretary should work in the Central Committee on the Old Square. The traditional vacancy problem has re-emerged. And then Suslov dies in a very timely manner …
Valery Legostaev, former assistant secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Yegor Kuzmich Ligachev, says this: “Suslov, even in his eighth decade, complained about the medical part, except for pain in the joints of his arm. He died in January 1982 originally. In that sense, it is original that before his death he successfully underwent planned medical examination in Chazov's department: blood from a vein, blood from a finger, an ECG, a bicycle … And all this, mind you, on the best equipment in the USSR, under the supervision of the best Kremlin doctors. The result is usual: there are no special problems, you can go to work. He called his daughter's home, offered to have dinner together at the hospital, so that he could go straight to the service in the morning. At supper the nurse brought some pills. I drank. Stroke at night."
It is noteworthy that Chazov informed Brezhnev in advance about Suslov's imminent death. Brezhnev's assistant Aleksandrov-Agents told about this in his memoirs. He writes: “At the beginning of 1982, Leonid Ilyich took me to a far corner of his reception room at the Central Committee and, in a low voice, said:“Chazov called me. Suslov will die soon. I am thinking of transferring Andropov to the Central Committee. Yurka is stronger than Chernenko - an erudite, creatively thinking person. As a result, on May 24, 1982, Yuri Vladimirovich again became the secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, but now he already occupies Suslov's office.
There is a version that Andropov's transfer to the Central Committee of the CPSU was carried out on the initiative of Brezhnev, who began to be frightened by the lack of control and omnipotence of the chief of the secret service. It is no coincidence that, at the insistence of the General Secretary, V. Fedorchuk, the head of the KGB of Ukraine, a close friend of the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine Vladimir Vasilyevich Shcherbitsky, was appointed instead of Andropov, who was hostile to Andropov.
In this case, all the talk that Brezhnev saw his successor in Andropov is nothing more than speculation. It is also known that Brezhnev was well informed about Andropov's health problems. At that time, Brezhnev considered the previously mentioned Shcherbitsky to be his successor.
In 1982, Vladimir Vasilyevich Shcherbitsky turned 64 - the normal age for a senior statesman. By this time, he had a vast experience of political and economic work behind him. And Brezhnev decided to stake on him. Well, for peace of mind and better control, the General Secretary decided to transfer Andropov closer to his Central Committee.
Former first secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee Viktor Vasilyevich Grishin in his memoirs "From Khrushchev to Gorbachev" wrote: "V. Fedorchuk was transferred from the post of chairman of the KGB of the Ukrainian SSR. Surely, on the recommendation of V. V. Shcherbitsky, perhaps the closest person to L. I. Brezhnev, who, according to rumors, wanted to recommend Shcherbytsky as General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee at the next Central Committee plenum, and to transfer himself to the post of Chairman of the Party Central Committee."
Ivan Vasilyevich Kapitonov, who in Brezhnev's times was the secretary of the CPSU Central Committee for personnel, spoke more definitely about this. He recalled: “In mid-October 1982, Brezhnev called me to his place.
- Do you see this chair? he asked, pointing to his workplace. - In a month, Shcherbitsky will be sitting in it. Solve all personnel issues with this in mind."
After this conversation, at a meeting of the Politburo, it was decided to convene a Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU. The first was to discuss the issue of accelerating scientific and technological progress. The second, closed one, is an organizational issue. However, a few days before the plenum, Leonid Ilyich died unexpectedly.
Secretary General Brezhnev in the late 70s was not in good health. The feeling of decrepitude was created by the difficulties of his speech and sclerotic forgetfulness (which became the theme of many anecdotes). However, ordinary old people (even without the Kremlin care) in a state of deep sclerosis often live for a very long time. Can the death of Brezhnev be considered natural, which followed on the night of November 9-10, 1982?
Here's some food for thought. On the eve of the Plenum, Brezhnev decided to enlist Andropov's support in recommending Shcherbitsky's candidacy for the post of General Secretary. On this occasion, he invited Andropov to his place.
V. Legostaev described the day of the meeting between Brezhnev and Andropov: “On that day, Oleg Zakharov, with whom I had long-term friendly relations, worked as the secretary on duty in the General Secretary’s reception … around 12 o'clock and asks to invite Andropov by this time. And that was done.
Brezhnev arrived in the Kremlin at about 12 noon in a good mood, rested from the festive bustle. As always, he greeted amiably, joked and immediately invited Andropov to his office. They talked for a long time, apparently, the meeting was of an ordinary business nature. I have not the slightest doubt that Zakharov accurately recorded the fact of the last long meeting between Brezhnev and Andropov."
However, after this conversation on the night of November 9-10, 1982, Brezhnev in his sleep, like Grechko, Kulakov and Suslov, quietly died. Again, this death was accompanied by a number of oddities. So, Chazov in the book "Health and Power" declares that he received the message about Brezhnev's death by phone at 8 am on November 10. However, it is known that the head of Brezhnev's bodyguard V. Medvedev in his book "The Man Behind the Back" reports that he and the duty officer Sobachenkov entered the General Secretary's bedroom at about nine o'clock. And only then it became clear that Leonid Ilyich had died.
Further, Chazov claims that after him Andropov came to Brezhnev's dacha. However, Brezhnev's wife Victoria Petrovna reported that Andropov had appeared even before Chazov's arrival, immediately after it became clear that Brezhnev was dead. Without saying a word to anyone, he went into his bedroom, took a small black suitcase there and left.
Then he officially appeared for the second time, pretending that he had not been here. Victoria Petrovna could not answer the question of what was in the suitcase. Leonid Ilyich told her that it contained "compromising evidence on all members of the Politburo," but he spoke with a laugh, as if joking.
Brezhnev's son-in-law Yuri Churbanov confirmed: “Victoria Petrovna said that Andropov had already arrived and took the briefcase that Leonid Ilyich kept in his bedroom. It was a specially guarded "armored" briefcase with complex ciphers. What was there, I do not know. He trusted only one of the bodyguards, the shift supervisor, who drove him everywhere for Leonid Ilyich. I took it and left. " After Andropov, Chazov arrived and recorded the death of the General Secretary.
It’s ridiculous to think that this whole string of deaths and killings was carried out in order to nominate Gorbachev. The main character here was Andropov, who aspired to become the General Secretary.
By the way, many researchers are perplexed how Andropov, whom most members of the Politburo disliked, on November 12, 1982, managed to get the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee to unanimously recommend him to the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee for the post of General Secretary. Apparently, this support was provided to Andropov by compromising evidence from Leonid Ilyich's “armored portfolio”.
When analyzing the mysterious and strange deaths in the highest echelon of power in the USSR, one cannot discount the Western special services, which, by virtue of their capabilities, tried to eliminate or neutralize promising Soviet leaders. There is no doubt that articles in the Western press praising Romanov, Kulakov, Masherov as candidates for the post of General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee served as an impetus for their elimination; some politically, others physically.
Given that there is no evidence of the direct involvement of the KGB in these strange deaths and is unlikely to ever be discovered, one can only hypothetically speculate about Andropov's role in the struggle for power.
There is no doubt that during his many years of work in the KGB, Andropov began not only to operate with the concepts of the special services, but also to act from their positions. For the intelligence services of any country, human life in itself is not a value. The value of a person who comes into their field of vision is determined only by whether he contributes to the achievement of the set goal or interferes.
Hence the pragmatic approach: everything that gets in the way must be eliminated. No emotion, nothing personal, just calculation. Otherwise, the special services never solved the tasks assigned to them. An objection is possible: with regard to high-ranking party workers, especially candidates and members of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, the KGB's capabilities were limited.
However, many members of the Politburo of the Brezhnev period recalled that they felt the attention of the KGB on a daily basis.
Andropov's ability to control the top party elite increased many times over after he managed to win over to his side the head of the 4th Main Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Health Yevgeny Ivanovich Chazov. Andropov and Chazov were appointed to their positions almost simultaneously, in 1967. Between them, a very close, so to speak, relationship has developed. Chazov repeatedly emphasizes this in his memoirs.
Andropov and Chazov met regularly. According to Legostaev, their secret meetings took place either on Saturdays in the office of the KGB chairman on the square. Dzerzhinsky, or in his safe apartment on the Garden Ring, not far from the Theater of Satire.
The topic of conversation between Andropov and Chazov was the state of health of the highest party and state leaders of the USSR, the alignment of forces in the Politburo and, accordingly, possible personnel changes. It is known how sensitive elderly people are to the advice of the attending physician. The outspokenness of senior elderly patients was also quite high. Well, there is no need to talk about the doctors' ability to influence the physiological and psychological state of patients.
In this regard, it is necessary to tell one story, which he tells in the book “Temporary workers. The fate of national Russia. Her friends and enemies”famous Soviet weightlifter, Olympic champion, talented writer Yuri Petrovich Vlasov. He cites the most unique testimony of a pharmacist at the Kremlin pharmacy, who made medicines for high-ranking patients.
According to the pharmacist, from time to time a modest, inconspicuous person came to the pharmacy. He was from the KGB. After looking through the recipes, the “man” held out a package to the pharmacist and said: “Add this patient to the powder (pill, mixture, etc.)”.
Everything was already dosed there. These were not poisonous drugs. The supplements simply aggravated the patient's illness and after a while he died a natural death. The so-called "programmed death" was launched. (Yu. Vlasov. "Temporary workers …" M., 2005. S. 87).
Most likely, the person who came to the pharmacist really was from the KGB. However, it is difficult to say who gave him the assignments. It is possible that someone "above", fighting for power, cleared the way for himself. But it is impossible to establish whether the owner of the “man from the KGB” worked for himself or for someone else.
A clandestine death struggle in the highest echelons for power was also a very convenient cover for the intervention of foreign intelligence services. It is known that not only Kalugin and Gordievsky in the KGB worked for the West.
In support of the fact that in the USSR the sign of the special services, as a cover, was often used by people who solved their problems, we will cite the following fact. In 1948-1952, on the territory of Western Ukraine and Moldova, which was under the special control of the NKVD, there was a huge private construction organization hiding under the guise of the "Directorate of Military Construction-10" of the USSR Ministry of Defense.
Its leader, swindler "Colonel" Nikolai Pavlenko, using the atmosphere of secrecy prevailing in those years, presented his administration as related to the implementation of special tasks of state importance. This eliminated questions and allowed the pseudo-colonel and his entourage to appropriate all the profits from the construction of facilities. Currently, Russian television is broadcasting the television movie Black Wolves, based in part on the above facts.
If in the days of Stalin swindlers could hide behind the sign of the NKVD, then in the Brezhnev period, agents of the Western special services with no less success could hide behind the KGB. In short, it is problematic to attribute the strange deaths that followed during the Brezhnev period to the KGB. Moreover, the strange untimely death in those years, in most cases, struck the most staunch adherents of the socialist path of development.
Recall that on December 20, 1984, sudden death overtook the Minister of Defense Ustinov. Chazov in his book "Health and Power" (p. 206) writes that "the very death of Ustinov was to a certain extent absurd and left many questions regarding the causes and nature of the disease." According to Chazov, it turns out that the Kremlin doctors did not establish from what Ustinov died?
Ustinov fell ill after conducting joint exercises of Soviet and Czechoslovak troops on the territory of Czechoslovakia. Chazov notes "an amazing coincidence - at about the same time, with the same clinical picture, General Dzur," the then Minister of Defense of Czechoslovakia, who conducted exercises with Ustinov, fell ill.
Meanwhile, the official cause of death of Dmitry Ustinov and Martin Dzur is "acute heart failure." For the same reason, two more defense ministers died during 1985: Heinz Hoffmann, Minister of National Defense of the GDR and Istvan Olah, Minister of Defense of the Hungarian People's Republic.
A number of researchers believe that these deaths thwarted the planned introduction in 1984 of Soviet, Czechoslovak, Gedeer and Hungarian troops into Poland. However, whether the deaths of the defense ministers of the Warsaw Pact countries were the work of Western intelligence services remains unknown. But the fact that the American special services considered it normal to physically eliminate the leaders of other states is not a secret. More than six hundred assassination attempts were made on the leader of the Cuban revolution F. Castro alone, a number of them with the help of poisons.
As for the testimony of the old pharmacist, it has not been confirmed by anything and by anyone except Y. Vlasov. But it cannot be ignored, since the information comes from a person who has always, both in Brezhnev's and Yeltsin's troubled times, personified the "conscience of the Russian people."
The pharmacist was sure that only Vlasov would dare to make his confession public and thereby help remove sin from his soul. And so it happened. But let's not demonize this testimony as a confirmation of the "anti-humanity" of the Soviet regime. The struggle for power, right down to the grave, is characteristic of Western democracies and of all times in general … Suffice it to say that today it has actually been proven that one of the leaders of the conspiracy that led in 1963 to the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, was Vice President L. Johnson.
It is known that historians prefer to make the final assessment of the reliability of certain events based on documentary evidence. However, in some cases, even the presence of official documents cannot guarantee the establishment of the truth.
Sometimes eyewitness accounts are worth more than a mountain of documents. So it is in our case. The testimony of the old pharmacist, apparently, should be taken as a sufficiently weighty proof of the methods of the struggle for power that took place on the Kremlin Olympus.
It is said that Gorbachev was initially involved in this struggle. It is difficult to agree with this. Before Brezhnev's death, Gorbachev was only an extra in Andropov's struggle for power. But on the eve of Andropov's death, which followed in February 1984, Gorbachev was actively involved in this struggle.
However, then he lost.
Members of the Politburo preferred to stake on the predictable, comfortable, albeit terminally ill, Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko. The election of a weak old man as the head of a great power was evidence that the system of supreme political power in the USSR was seriously, or rather, terminally ill.
For Gorbachev, the election of the ailing Chernenko marked the beginning of the last decisive stage in the struggle for power. As subsequent events showed, Mikhail Sergeevich was able to masterfully implement his plans to acquire the post of General Secretary.
