Brief description of the myth
Mass political repression is a unique feature of the Russian state, especially during the Soviet period. "Stalinist mass repressions" 1921-1953 accompanied by violations of the law, tens, if not hundreds of millions of citizens of the USSR suffered. The slave labor of the GULAG prisoners is the main labor resource of Soviet modernization in the 1930s.
Meaning
First of all: the word "repression" itself, translated from Late Latin literally means "suppression". Encyclopedic dictionaries interpret it as "a punitive measure, a punishment applied by state bodies" ("Modern Encyclopedia", "Legal Dictionary") or "a punitive measure emanating from state bodies" ("Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary").
There are also criminal repressions, i.e. the use of coercive measures, including imprisonment and even life. There is also moral repression, i.e. the creation in society of a climate of intolerance in relation to some forms of behavior, undesirable from the point of view of the state. For example, the "dudes" in the USSR were not subjected to criminal repression, but were subjected to moral repression, and very serious: from cartoons and feuilletons to exclusion from the Komsomol, which in the conditions of that time entailed a sharp reduction in social opportunities.
As a fresh foreign example of repression, one can cite the current widespread practice in North America of not allowing lecturers whose views are dissatisfied with students from speaking at universities, or even dismissing them from their teaching jobs. This applies specifically to repression, and not only moral - because in this case there is the possibility of depriving a person and a source of existence.
The practice of repression has existed and exists among all peoples and at all times - simply because society is forced to defend itself against destabilizing factors the more actively the stronger the possible destabilization.
This is the general theoretical part.
In today's political turnover, the word "repression" is used in a very specific meaning - I mean "Stalinist repressions", "mass repressions in the USSR in 1921-1953. This concept, regardless of its dictionary meaning, is a kind of "ideological marker". This word itself is a ready-made argument in political discussion, it does not seem to need definition and content.
However, even in this usage, it is useful to know what is really meant.
Judicial sentences
"Stalinist repressions" were elevated to the rank of "marker word" by NS. Khrushchev exactly 60 years ago. In his well-known report at the plenum of the Central Committee, elected by the 20th Congress of the CPSU, he significantly overestimated the volume of these repressions. And he overestimated as follows: he read out quite accurately the information about the total number of convictions under the articles "treason" and "banditry" handed down from the end of 1921 (when the Civil War in the European part of the country ended) and until March 5, 1953, the day of death of I.. V. Stalin, - but he structured this part of his report in such a way that the impression was created that he was talking only about convicted communists. And since the communists constituted a small part of the country's population, then, naturally, the illusion of some incredible total volume of repression arose.
This total volume was assessed differently by different people - again, guided by considerations not scientific and historical, but political.
Meanwhile, the data on the repressions are not secret and are determined by specific official figures, which are considered to be more or less accurate. They are indicated in the certificate drawn up on behalf of N. S. Khrushchev in February 1954 by the USSR Prosecutor General V. Rudenko, the Minister of Internal Affairs S. Kruglov and the Minister of Justice K. Gorshenin.
The total number of convictions was 3,770,380. At the same time, the actual number of convicted persons is less, since quite a few were convicted of different elements of a crime, then covered by the concept of "Treason to the Motherland", several times. The total number of people affected by these repressions for 31 years, according to various estimates, is about three million people.
Of the 3,770,380 verdicts mentioned, 2,369,220 provided for serving sentences in prisons and camps, 765,180 for exile and deportation, 642,980 for capital punishment (death penalty). Taking into account the sentences under other articles and on later studies, another figure is given - about 800,000 death sentences, of which 700,000 were carried out.
It should be borne in mind that among the traitors to the Motherland were naturally all those who, in one form or another, collaborated with the German occupiers in the Great Patriotic War. In addition, thieves in law were also included in this number for refusing to work in the camps: the camp administration qualified the refusal to work as sabotage, and sabotage was then among the various forms of treason. Consequently, there are several tens of thousands of thieves in law among the repressed.
In those years, a "thief in law" was considered not a particularly authoritative member and / or leader of an organized criminal group, but anyone who obeyed the "thieves' law" - a set of rules for antisocial behavior. This code included, among other things, a strict prohibition of any form of cooperation with representatives of the authorities - from work in the camp to service in the army. The famous "bitch war" began as a confrontation between criminals who fought in the ranks of the armed forces of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War, but then committed new crimes and again ended up in places of imprisonment, with criminals who did not participate in combat activities: the former considered the latter cowards, the latter the first are traitors.
Other types of repression
In addition, to the so-called. it is customary to attribute the resettlement of peoples to Stalin's repressions. Oleg Kozinkin touched upon this issue in one of his books. He believes that only those peoples were evicted, a significant part of whose representatives could turn out to be dangerous in the course of further hostilities. In particular, those who were close to oil fields and oil transportation routes. It is worth remembering that along with the Crimean Tatars, for example, Crimean Greeks were also evicted, although the latter did not actively cooperate with the Germans. They were evicted because the Crimea played a very important role in the support system on the entire southern flank of the hostilities of the Soviet-German front.
Another group, ranked among the repressed, are the dispossessed. I will not go into the details of collectivization, I will only say that dispossessed by the decision of the villagers themselves. Do not forget that the word "kulak" did not mean at all "good boss", as it is now commonly thought. Even in pre-revolutionary times, rural usurers were called "fists". True, they gave loans and received interest in kind. It was not only the rich who were deprived of their kulaks: each kulak kept a group of the most hopeless poor, ready to do anything for him for food. They were usually called podkulachnikami.
The displaced peoples were in total about 2,000,000 people. The dispossessed - 1,800,000.
The population of the country at the beginning of dispossession was 160 million people, the population at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War was about 200 million.
According to Zemskov, the most serious researcher of the statistics of repression, about 10% of both dispossessed and resettled peoples died from reasons that can be associated with the eviction. These victims, however, were not programmed by anyone: their cause was the general socio-economic state of the country.
The ratio of the actual number of repressed (prisoners and exiles) and the total population of the USSR in this period does not allow us to consider the share of the Gulag as significant in the country's labor resources.
A question of validity and legality
A much less researched issue is the validity of the repressions, the compliance of the sentences passed with the legislation in force at that time. The reason is lack of information.
Unfortunately, during Khrushchev's rehabilitation, the cases of the repressed were destroyed; in fact, only a certificate of rehabilitation remained in the case. So the current archives do not give an unambiguous answer to the question of validity and legality.
However, before Khrushchev's rehabilitation there was a Beriev's rehabilitation. L. P. Beria, when he began to accept cases from N. I. Yezhov on November 17, 1938, the first thing he ordered to stop all ongoing investigations under the article "Treason to the Motherland" for expulsion. On November 25, having finally assumed office, he ordered to begin reviewing all convictions under this article, handed down during the time when the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs was headed by N. I. Yezhov. First of all, they reviewed all death sentences that had not yet been carried out, then they took up non-mortals.
Before the start of the Great Patriotic War, they managed to review about a million convictions. Of these, about 200 thousand, plus or minus a couple of tens of thousands, were recognized as completely unfounded (and, accordingly, the sentenced were immediately acquitted, rehabilitated and restored to their rights). Another 250 thousand sentences were recognized as purely criminal cases, qualifying as political unreasonably. I gave several examples of such sentences in my article "The Crime Against Improvement".
I can add another purely household option: let's say you dragged a sheet of iron at the factory to cover your shed. This, of course, qualifies as theft of state property under a purely criminal article. But if the plant at which you work is a defense plant, then this may be considered not just theft, but an attempt to undermine the defense capability of the state, and this is already one of the corpus delicti provided for in the article “Treason to the Motherland”.
During the period while L. P. Beria acted as the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, the practice of issuing criminality for politics and "political appendages" in purely criminal cases ceased. But on December 15, 1945, he resigned from this post, and under his successor, this practice was resumed.
Here's the thing. The then Criminal Code, adopted in 1922 and revised in 1926, proceeded from the idea of "external conditioning of crimes" - they say that a Soviet person breaks the law only under the pressure of some external circumstances, wrong upbringing or "heavy legacy of tsarism." Hence - the inconsistently mild punishments provided by the Criminal Code under serious criminal articles, for the "weighting" of which political articles were added.
Thus, it can be judged that, at least, of the convictions under the article "treason to the Motherland" handed down under N. I. Yezhov, about half of the sentences were unfounded (we pay special attention to what happened under N. I. Yezhov, since it was during this period that the peak of repression of 1937-1938 fell) How far this conclusion can be extrapolated to the entire period 1921 - 1953 is an open question.
