Truth and lies about the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Truth and lies about our losses in the Great Patriotic War

Arsen Martirosyan: The military conspiracy of 1937-1938 was not uprooted to the end

Hitler, indeed, did not transfer German industry and the industry of the European states occupied by the Third Reich to a military footing. They did it easier - they robbed the occupied countries. For example, 5,000 steam locomotives, more than 5 million tons of crude oil, hundreds of thousands of tons of fuel and lubricants, a huge number of tanks, motor vehicles, and various other military-purpose materials were taken out of France alone. The supply of weapons, equipment and ammunition from occupied Czechoslovakia also played a colossal role. In fact, the West handed it over to Hitler, so that he could quickly and better prepare for an attack on the USSR. At that time, the Czechoslovak military-industrial complex was one of the largest arms manufacturers, providing more than 40% of the world market with its supplies.

According to the calculations of Hitler and his generals, the loot should have been enough for the blitzkrieg. After all, as Soviet intelligence managed to document, on the fifth day of the aggression, the Nazis planned to capture Minsk! It was planned to defeat the border grouping of the Red Army within a week, and in a couple of months - the "victory parade" of the Third Reich in Moscow. Alas, many of these plans came to fruition.

“But according to official history, they learned about Directive No. 21 almost on the day it was signed ...

Yes, they did, but not right away. The first information that Hitler had adopted a certain plan of aggression, indeed, came at the very end of December 1940. Further, intelligence has made tremendous efforts to detail this information. The main directions of strikes, numbers, combat composition, strategy and tactics of the Wehrmacht, and much more were established. And in the interval from June 11 to June 21, 1941, the Soviet intelligence services were able 47 times either relatively accurately or absolutely reliably to name the date and even the hour of the beginning of the aggression. Why only in this interval? Because the date of June 22 appeared on paper only on June 10 in the form of a directive from the Chief of the General Staff, Franz Halder.

-According to the version of "liberal" historians, Stalin did not believe this information ... He even wrote an obscene "resolution" on the intelligence report.

—Stalin believed intelligence information, but only verified and repeatedly rechecked. And the obscene resolution is nothing more than a clumsily made fake. In fact, this has long been documented.

Questions of war and peace do not imply sudden movements and hasty decisions. Too much is at stake. Relying precisely on verified intelligence information, Stalin gave the order to bring the troops of the First Strategic Echelon to combat readiness as early as June 18, 1941. And before that, for more than a month, the military had been repeatedly warned about the imminent start of German aggression. Moscow sent relevant directives, the movement of troops from the internal districts was authorized, and much more. In general, they did everything to arrange a "decent meeting" for the aggressor.

But the local command did not carry out all the orders, or did it extremely negligently, which means a crime for the military. But there were also facts of direct betrayal, for example, in the form of a direct cancellation of combat readiness, in particular, in the Air Force - immediately the day before the attack. Although they already knew for sure that it would be.

Even worse. When the war had already been going on for several hours, the Germans were bombing our cities, killing Soviet people, shelling the positions of the Red Army, the commander of the Kyiv Special Military District, General Mikhail Kirponos, forbade bringing troops to combat readiness until the middle of the day on June 22. And then he did everything possible to break out the catastrophe of the South-Western Front in the form of the tragedy of the "Kyiv cauldron".

- General Kirponos then died heroically ...

“More like he was just 'heroically slapped'. There is a record of identification of his body, drawn up in November 1943, it was published back in Soviet times. According to the official “heroic” version, the corpse of a general who fell in an unequal battle with the Nazis, from whom they removed insignia, orders, medals and took away all the documents, was thrown somewhere in the forest, showered with branches and leaves. And after a couple of years, the “responsible comrades” for some reason instantly identified the remains that had completely decomposed in two years ...

But it seems that the “military conspiracy” was liquidated back in 1937? ..

In 1937-1938, only the visible top was liquidated, and they did not get to the bottom of the second and third echelon of the conspirators. For reasons of state security, Stalin was forced to put a harsh end to the orgy of repression unleashed by Yezhov, including against the military.

The idea of ​​a coup d'etat in the USSR against the backdrop of a military defeat has been developed in the highest army circles of the Soviet Union since 1926. In 1935, a GRU report landed on Stalin's desk, in which this scenario was clearly outlined. Then the NKVD presented the relevant evidence. That is why 1937 followed.

In June 1941, the scenario that had been conceived five years earlier was realized. “The plan for the defeat of the USSR in the war with Germany”, compiled by Tukhachevsky and his accomplices - his arrested marshal in 1937 outlined already on the Lubyanka on 143 pages in even handwriting. However, earlier, in September 1936, Jerome Uborevich took this plan to Germany. Having received it, the Germans late autumn of the same year, they held a command-staff game on maps, where Minsk was captured on the fifth day of the still “virtual” aggression.

Did our people know about this game?

- Yes. On February 10, 1937, its results were reported to Stalin. And in 1939, one of the participants in that game fell into the hands of Soviet intelligence - a Russian emigrant, the staff captain of the tsarist army, Count Alexander Nelidov. An outstanding Soviet intelligence officer Zoya Voskresenskaya worked with him. And he also confirmed that during the game the Nazis captured Minsk on the fifth day. And in May 1941, the agent of Soviet intelligence, a member of the Red Chapel, Jon Sieg, who was one of the leaders of the Berlin railway junction, provided Soviet intelligence with a sealed written order from the Wehrmacht high command - on the fifth day from the start of hostilities against the USSR, to head the Minsk railway node.

Was Stalin informed about this?

Why did military leaders surrender their country to the enemy? After all, the Soviet generals then already enjoyed all the benefits of life.

They wanted more - to receive for personal use the “specific principality” cut off from the dismembered Russia-USSR. Fools, they did not understand that no one would give them anything. Nobody likes traitors, their fate is always sealed.

- Can you briefly talk about the “Tukhachevsky plan” and how it was implemented in June 1941?

- Tukhachevsky proposed deploying the main groupings of covering armies, taking into account the location of the border fortified areas, so that they occupy a flank position in relation to those directions where enemy strikes are most likely. According to his concept, the border battle should take on a protracted character and last for several weeks. However, the slightest sudden blow, especially inflicted by forces concentrated on a narrow section of the breakthrough front, automatically led to a bloody tragedy. This is exactly what happened on June 22, 1941.

Even worse. Like Tukhachevsky, the high command of the Red Army, represented by the "Kyiv mafia" that had formed there, stubbornly pushed through the idea that for the German General Staff the most likely direction of the main attack was the Ukrainian one. That is, the historically established main route of all aggressors from the West, the Belarusian one, was completely denied. Timoshenko and Zhukov completely ignored Belarus as the direction of the main attack. Just like Tukhachevsky, who, in his affidavit at the Lubyanka, indicated that the Belarusian direction is generally fantastic.

Simply put, knowing exactly where and with what forces the Germans would attack, and even hoping that the Germans would not change their minds about inflicting their main blow on Belarus and the Baltic states, Timoshenko and Zhukov diligently misled Stalin about this. Both stubbornly proved to Stalin that the main forces of the Germans would oppose Ukraine, and therefore the Red Army should keep its main forces there. Even after the war, they stubbornly talked about it.

On June 22, the tragedy happened exactly according to the treacherous scenario. Divisions, corps and armies were forced to occupy lines of defense that were tens, hundreds and thousands of times greater than their capabilities. The division had from 30 to 50-60 km of the defense line, although according to the Charter it was supposed to be no more than 8-10 km. It reached microscopic 0.1 soldiers (and more) per 1 meter of the front line, although it was known in advance that the Nazis would trample down with a density of up to 4.42 infantrymen per meter of the breakthrough line. Simply put, one of our divisions was supposed to withstand at least five, or even more, enemy divisions. As a result, the Nazis in the literal sense of the word "out of thin air" were granted unprecedented strategic superiority. And this is not to mention the fact that frank holes were generally organized in our defense system. The largest - 105 km - in the Western District.

Anti-tank defense was planned in the same way. Only 3-5 barrels per 1 km, although it was well known that even according to the Charter of the Panzerwaffe, they would go into a breakthrough with a density of 20-25 vehicles per kilometer. But in fact, at the time the aggression began, there were 30-50 tanks per 1 km, depending on the sector of the breakthrough front, and the General Staff of the Red Army had this data.

What Tymoshenko did (by the way, a nominee of Tukhachevsky) and Zhukov (he enjoyed the special favor of Uborevich), the former later called "an illiterate scenario for entering the war." In fact, it was an illegal, uncoordinated, criminal plan supposedly to repel aggression.

What kind of defense plan did our country have before the development of Tukhachevsky was launched? And did he exist?

- Of course it existed, it was just "replaced". Officially approved by the Soviet government on October 14, 1940, the plan to repel Germany's aggression prescribed to contain and repel the first blow of the aggressor with active defense and active actions to fetter the enemy's actions. Moreover, the central attention was paid to the Pskov-Minsk direction. Those. the main forces of the Germans were expected to the north of Polesye, in Belorussia and the Baltic states, and our main forces were to be there as well.

Under the cover of active defense, the main forces were to be mobilized and concentrated. And then, and only in the presence of favorable conditions (!), a transition to a decisive counteroffensive against the enemy could be carried out. Moreover, depending on the deployment option - there were two of them, southern and northern - the transition to this very counteroffensive was possible no earlier than on the 15th or 30th day from the start of mobilization. But not an immediate counter-frontal counteroffensive by our main forces in Ukraine against the non-main forces of the enemy - against the allies of Germany, which was staged by Zhukov and Timoshenko, ruining almost the entire border grouping of the Red Army. Especially tank troops, primarily on the Southwestern Front.

As a result of their actions, especially taking into account the advancement of mobile depots to the border, in the very first days of the war, the Red Army lost 6 million rifles out of 8 million available at the beginning, millions of shells of all calibers, tens of thousands of tons of food, fuel, ...

Therefore, there was a shortage of weapons, ammunition and everything else?

— Exactly, but they still prefer to keep quiet about it. Remember, in Konstantin Simonov’s “The Living and the Dead”, the old worker Popkov, regretting that the Red Army does not have everything, says: “Yes, in the most extreme case, I would give this apartment, I lived in one room, I would live on an eighth of bread , on the gruel, as in Civil, he lived, if only the Red Army had everything ... ". The worker, like Simonov himself, by the way, did not know what actually happened, why such an incredible shortage of everything and everything had formed. And today, few people know this. Hide.

Even worse. Right on the eve of the war, when the advance of troops to the border had already begun, they started exercises for artillery. Anti-aircraft and anti-tank artillery was taken far to the rear, and heavy, on the contrary, to training grounds close to the border. The defending group was left without air cover and completely defenseless against tanks, and heavy artillery, in fact, had to be recreated - it was instantly captured by the Germans. Little of. Right on the eve of the war, artillery was blinded in the truest sense of the word, that is, all optical devices in separate howitzer regiments in the Baltic States and Belarus, without which it cannot work, were removed, and they were sent "for repairs." And at the same time they immobilized under the pretext of replacing horse-drawn transport with a mechanical one - they took the horses away, but did not give tractors.

In units of the Air Force, especially in the Western District, on the eve of the war, combat readiness was canceled and the pilots were allowed to rest. Even holidays are allowed! Forward-based aviation stood as if on parade, or rather, as an excellent target. In many parts of the Air Force on the evening of June 21, they ordered to remove weapons and drain fuel. Have you ever wondered why our pilots started counting heroic deeds with rams? Yes, because there were no weapons on their planes, guns and machine guns were dismantled before the start of the war. Supposedly for verification. And ordinary Russian men went to ram to stop the enemy...

Didn't people see it?

“We saw, talked, wrote, protesting the decisions of the higher command as extremely dangerous. And after the tragedy happened, they openly accused the command of betrayal. This thought took possession of the whole army. With colossal difficulty, this epidemic of distrust was quelled, because it was necessary to fight. For this, Stalin had to promptly put some people against the wall. For example, there is still the “lament of Yaroslavna” of democrats and anti-Stalinists about the fact that innocent Air Force generals were shot en masse. And what, they were not supposed to answer for their betrayal, expressed in the abolition of combat readiness right on the eve of the war, when officially, with the sanction of Stalin, combat readiness was already declared by the high command? After all, the ground troops were left without air cover, and how many of them died only because of this - no one counted ...

The General Staff was headed by Georgy Zhukov. What, and he too? ... After all, the future "Marshal of Victory" in the same December 1940, in the course of operational-strategic games on cards, playing for the Germans, defeated the defending commander of the Western Special Military District Dmitry Pavlov.
-It wasn't like that another lie, which was thrown into the masses, including through cinema, in the famous film by Yuri Ozerov. But in reality, Pavlov, who was defending himself, acting within the framework of the "official" defensive strategy, developed by Boris Shaposhnikov, won against Zhukov. That is, repulsed the attack of the "Germans".

The documents describing the course of that game were declassified more than 20 years ago and now they are available, and everyone can see what really happened then.

We survived, we won. What happens, the traitors "re-educated" and became the defenders of the motherland?

- Survived and won, first of all, His Majesty the Soviet RUSSIAN SOLDIER, together with his adequately thinking and acting officers, who fought under the command of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief I.V. Stalin - an outstanding statesman, geopolitician, strategist and diplomat, a brilliant organizer and business executive.

And he did not forget what the generals had done, this is evidenced by the special investigation he launched into the causes of the disaster on June 22 (general Pokrovsky's commission).

Here are the famous five questions that Colonel General Alexander Pokrovsky asked his "wards":
Was the plan for the defense of the state border brought to the attention of the troops in the part that concerns them; when and what was done by the command and staffs to ensure the implementation of this plan?
From what time and on the basis of what order did the covering troops begin to reach the state border, and how many of them were deployed before the start of hostilities?
When was the order received to put the troops on alert in connection with the expected attack by fascist Germany on the morning of June 22?
Why was most of the artillery in training centers?
To what extent were the headquarters prepared for command and control, and to what extent did this affect the conduct of operations in the first days of the war?

Isn't it interesting questions? Especially in light of what we've been talking about. Unfortunately, the investigation was not completed at that time. Someone did everything to make the case "released on the brakes."

Three quarters of a century have passed since those events. Is it worth it to stir up the past, to expose the traitors who died long ago?

Martirosyan: Worth it. And it's not even about specific names. It's about historical justice, honesty. Stalin made Zhukov a symbol of victory. Because he deeply respected the Russian people and understood what he had to endure during this war. Although he himself knew very well that the true Suvorov of the Red Army, truly the Great Marshal of the Great Victory, the most brilliant commander, was the most intelligent and noble Konstantin Rokossovsky. But the state-forming people in the USSR - the Great Russian People - needed their own symbol. So Zhukov became him, because Rokossovsky was "let down" by the fifth count - he was a Pole.

But how did the "Marshal of Victory" thank Stalin? In a letter addressed to Khrushchev dated May 19, 1956, in which he so slandered and slandered his Supreme Commander-in-Chief that even the notorious Trotskyite maize could not stand it and soon expelled Zhukov from the post of Minister of Defense.

Stalin was not betrayed only by two marshals - Rokossovsky and the creator of Soviet long-range aviation, Marshal Alexander Golovanov. The rest blamed all the blame for June 22 on the leader. It's like they have nothing to do with it. About the fact that Zhukov even offered to hand over Moscow to adversaries, it’s somehow not customary to remember ...

The current generation should know EVERYTHING about that war. After all, he is being told that our fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers were worthless defenders of the Motherland, that they surrendered by the millions and voluntarily, and the "evil communists" did not give them weapons. Many already sincerely believe that it was Stalin who was guilty of the tragedy of June 22 - he did not heed the warnings of the wise Zhukov. A great many myths have spread, including those planted by foreign intelligence services.

On the altar of the Great Victory, the Soviet people placed 27 million lives full of strength and bright thoughts of our compatriots. And this should not be forgotten. Therefore, we must know everything, no matter how bitter this truth may be. Otherwise, we won't learn anything. We must clearly understand with whom our glorious ancestors had to fight.

Choking with delight, snatching a bunch of St. George ribbons with his teeth; by inviting former enemies and all allies of the former mortal enemy to the parade; disfiguring the streets and transport with the head of the people's executioner; The Russians are getting ready for the great booze called May 9th. We will also add a spoonful of truth to their barrel of sour honey.

We offer readers an article-research in the form of an interview with the St. Petersburg historian Kirill Mikhailovich Aleksandrov about various issues in the history of the Second World War.

Doomed to feat

For many years it was believed that 20 million of “ours” died in the war, and approx. 11 million. Are there reliable statistics now? How many citizens of the USSR died during the Second World War (civilians and military)? How many German citizens (civilian and military) died?

There is no single point of view and generally accepted statistics. A reliable assessment of the human losses of the Soviet Union during the war with Germany and its allies is one of the most difficult problems in modern historical science. Representatives of official departments and organizations, scientists and publicists, who for the last two decades have been naming a variety of figures and offering their own calculation methods, agree with each other on only one thing - that their opponents are guided by ideological predilections, and not by the desire to get closer to historical truth.

For almost half a century, our compatriot was forced to look at the war between Germany and the Soviet Union not only exclusively on the scale of one (Eastern, let's call it that for clarity) front, but also outside the events that took place before June 22, 1941 during World War II. When, for example, did the Soviet Union enter World War II?... In September 1939, the Polish state disappeared.

Do we not forget that during this undeclared Soviet-Polish war, 1,475 soldiers and commanders of the Red Army were killed? That's hundreds of lives in just two and a half weeks. By the way, let me remind the reader that the first courageous defense of the Brest Fortress from the Wehrmacht troops in mid-September 1939 was led by Brigadier General Konstantin Plisovsky, the once brave Akhtyrsky hussar, staff captain and officer of the Russian Imperial Army, who was shot by the NKVD in 1940.

As a result of the defeat of Poland, a common border arose between Germany and the USSR. From the point of view of the defense capability of the USSR, was it good or bad? This fact cannot be ignored when discussing the tragedy of the summer of 1941... Next. Soviet irretrievable losses (dead, dead and missing) during the bloody Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940 are today estimated at between 131,000 and 160,000 servicemen. From the requests of relatives on the basis of the funeral notices received, it is clear that not all the names of the dead were included in the books of the names of losses in this theater of operations.

This is the equivalent of about 12-13 divisions. The irretrievable losses of the Finns are 24.5 thousand military personnel. Is the Winter War part of World War II? Is it possible to forget its causes, course and military-political consequences when we talk, for example, about the blockade of Leningrad? Obviously not.

But then why did the just past 70th anniversary of this “not famous war”, which claimed tens of thousands of lives, remain generally unnoticed in modern Russia against the backdrop of another triumphant campaign? The war in Finland does not fit into the Stalinist concept of a “local” war between the peaceful socialist Soviet Union and aggressive National Socialist Germany, which is still dominant in the mass consciousness. Therefore, neither the authorities nor the society found any words or means to mark the sad anniversary of the Winter War and honor the memory of its victims.

But the problem is not only that the drama of 1939-1940 is inextricably linked with the tragedy of subsequent years. In my opinion, it is generally impossible to talk about the war with Germany outside the context of the history of the Soviet state. June 22, 1941 is a direct consequence of the events that took place on October 25, 1917, no matter how paradoxical it may seem to someone.

Many human actions and behavior during the war years were the result of the ongoing civil war since 1917, terror and repression, collectivization, artificial famine, Yezhovism, the creation of a system of forced labor on a state scale, the physical destruction by the Bolsheviks of the largest Local Orthodox Church in the world.

Since the late 1920s, the authorities have stubbornly and consistently forced people who lived in deprivation, fear and poverty to lie, dodge, and adapt. The Stalinist system by 1941 led to a complete devaluation of human life and personality. Slavery became a daily form of socio-economic relations, and the general hypocrisy destroyed the spirit and soul. Can we forget about this when we talk, for example, about the ratio of losses?

Last year in St. Petersburg, Nikolai Nikulin, an outstanding St. Petersburg art historian, a front-line order bearer, passed away. He was wounded many times, fought in the 311th Infantry Division, went through the entire war and ended it in Berlin as a sergeant, miraculously surviving. His courageous "Memories of the War" is one of the most piercing, honest and ruthless memoirs in terms of plausibility. Here is what, in particular, Nikolai Nikolaevich wrote about our losses, based on his own experience of fighting on the Volkhov and near the Pogostye station:

“The meanness of the Bolshevik system was especially clearly manifested in the war. How in peacetime arrests and executions of the most hard-working, honest, intelligent, active and reasonable people, and at the front the same thing happened, but in an even more open, disgusting form. I'll give you an example. An order comes from the higher spheres: to take the height. The regiment storms it week after week, losing a thousand men a day. Replenishment is continuous, there is no shortage of people.

But among them are swollen dystrophics from Leningrad, to whom doctors have just attributed bed rest and enhanced nutrition for three weeks. Among them are babies born in 1926, that is, fourteen-year-olds who are not subject to conscription into the army ... “Vperrred !!!”, and that's it. Finally, some soldier, or lieutenant, platoon commander, or captain, company commander (which is less common), seeing this blatant disgrace, exclaims: “You can’t ruin people! There, at a height, a concrete pillbox! And we only have a 76 mm fluff! She won’t break through!”... The political instructor, SMERSH and the tribunal immediately join in.

One of the informers, who are full in every unit, testifies: "Yes, in the presence of soldiers he doubted our victory." Immediately, they fill out a ready-made form, where you just need to enter the last name and it’s ready: “Shoot in front of the ranks!” or “Send to the penal company!”, which is the same. So the most honest people, who felt their responsibility to society, perished.

And the rest - “Forward, attack!” “There are no fortresses that the Bolsheviks could not take!” And the Germans dug into the ground, creating a whole labyrinth of trenches and shelters. Go get them! There was a stupid, senseless killing of our soldiers. One must think that this selection of the Russian people is a time bomb: it will explode in a few generations, in the 21st or 22nd century, when the mass of scum selected and nurtured by the Bolsheviks will give rise to new generations of their own kind.

Scary?... Try to object. In any case, it seems to me that there is a direct connection between the number of victims suffered by our people during the Second World War, starting from September 1939, and the irreversible changes that took place in the country and society after the October Revolution of 1917.

For example, it is enough to recall the consistent destruction of the Russian officer corps by the Bolsheviks. Of the 276 thousand Russian officers as of the autumn of 1917, by June 1941, there were hardly more than a few hundred in the army, and then, mainly - commanders from former ensigns and second lieutenants.

Therefore, to consider the war outside the context of the national history of the previous twenty years means again deceiving ourselves and justifying the all-Russian self-destruction of the twentieth century, as a result of which our people are steadily declining. The irretrievable military losses of Germany today, in general, are sufficiently established and systematized in one of the last fundamental studies of Rüdiger Overmans.

The third edition of his book German Military Losses in World War II was held in Munich in 2004. In total, the German Armed Forces in all theaters of military operations in 1939-1945 lost 4.13 million people, including on the Eastern Front - from 2.8 million to 3.1 million people. The fluctuation in the estimates of losses in the East is due to the continuing uncertainty about the fate of some of the missing and prisoners of war.

There is some controversy in the estimates of German military losses. Some researchers argue about whether the total number of irretrievable losses includes another 250-300 thousand dead from among the citizens of the USSR who served on the side of the enemy. Others believe that to the figure of 4.13 million, it is necessary to add 600-700 thousand people from among the allies of Germany (Hungary, Italy, Romania, Finland, etc.), who died mainly on the Eastern Front and in Soviet captivity.

Accordingly, opponents believe that the irretrievable losses of Germany's allies are included in the mentioned 4.13 million. In general, I am inclined to agree with this thesis now, but I believe that far from all the losses of Eastern volunteers from among the citizens of the USSR were taken into account here and included in the total - just the record of these servicemen was incomplete. Research and debate on these issues continues. But in general, the picture is quite presentable.

I think that the total number of irretrievable military losses of Germany and its allies, including the Eastern volunteers, can be estimated on average within the range of 4.1-5.1 million people, including 3-3.6 million on the Eastern Front. The irretrievable losses of the civilian population of Germany are estimated in Germany at about 2 million people, including the victims of allied bombing (about 500 thousand). Thus, it seems to me that the total figure of irretrievable German losses is approximately 6-7 million, of which the military losses, including the German allies, account for the most part.

The issue of irretrievable losses of the Soviet Union is much less clear. The resulting spread of figures is amazing - from 27 million to 43 million people. I’ll make a reservation right away, the upper figures, which, for example, B. V. Sokolov called back in the 1990s, do not seem convincing and reliable to me. On the contrary, the figure of 27-28 million total losses seems quite realistic.

I believe that the calculation methods used by a group of demographers headed by the well-known researcher Evgeny Mikhailovich Andreev are more perfect and fair than Sokolov's methods. Back in 1993, Andreev's group determined the total number of irretrievable losses of the population of the USSR in 1941-1945 at 27 million people - and this, which is significant, is consistent with the 1959 census data.

The problem, however, is that, in my opinion, as in the case of German losses, the main share is not the losses of the civilian population, but the losses of the Soviet Armed Forces. And from this point of view, the official figure insisted on by the Ministry of Defense - 8 million 668 thousand 400 people - does not hold water. Suffice it to mention that, in all likelihood, the figure (7 million) was simply taken as the basis for the losses, which Stalin once reported in 1946, passing it off as the total figure of irretrievable losses of the entire population.

It was obtained by mechanical summation of various unreliable information from official reports and summaries. The most surprising thing is that the real figure is estimated at hundreds of people (!), Although the members of the team of authors of Colonel-General G.F. Krivosheev, who introduced it into scientific circulation, frankly admitted that from many divisions, corps and armies in 1941 alone year there were no documents left that would allow to determine the loss of personnel at least approximately.

It seems to me that a more or less close to reality idea of ​​​​the irretrievable military losses of the USSR can be drawn up by two sources.

Firstly, these are card indexes of personal records of irretrievable losses of privates, sergeants and officers, which are stored in the funds of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense (TsAMO) in Podolsk. After selfless and painstaking work on the withdrawal of duplicate cards for privates and sergeants, which was completed by employees at the beginning of the new century, 12.6 million people were registered. Back in the 1960s, approximately 1 million people were counted among the officers, including political workers, for a total of 13.6 million dead.

The real figure was introduced into wide scientific circulation by the courageous historian, Colonel Vladimir Trofimovich Eliseev, a senior researcher at TsAMO, who boldly defended the results of his research at various scientific conferences, despite the displeasure that he caused.

Apparently, the group of General Krivosheev, who “counted” losses from the end of the 1980s, did not take personal records into account at all. 13.6 million dead - this is without the loss of conscripted reservists called up, but not counted until June 22, as well as without the loss of the fleet, border guards, troops and bodies of the NKVD, various paramilitary formations, partisans, and most importantly - the conscription contingent that poured into the troops The active army in the territories liberated from occupation and immediately rushed into battle.

According to various recollections and testimonies, in the liberated territories, the relevant authorities often took literally all men capable of holding weapons, and, regardless of age, both 16-17-year-olds and 50-year-olds as marching replenishment. There were cases when they were sent to the front line even in civilian clothes. For most, the first fight was also the last.

This was especially widely practiced in 1943-1944. The army was marching to the West, the political agencies were urging them on, and the “liberators” were not spared, especially since they had been in occupation for a long time and looked suspicious by definition. Accounting for the losses of fighters of various militia formations in 1941-1942 was also unsatisfactory.

Therefore, when the historian D. A. Volkogonov published in one of his works the total figure of irretrievable military losses of the USSR at 16.2 million people, referring to some secret document addressed to Stalin, it seems to me that he was very close to the truth. Secondly, back in 1995, work was almost completed on the introduction of personal records into the Central Data Bank of the dead, missing, those who died in captivity and from the wounds of soldiers, primarily on the basis of information received from relatives. There were approximately 19 million such records.

It must be said that the mentioned group of E. M. Andreev estimated the total number of men of military age who died in 1941-1945 at 17 million people.

Based on all the above data, it seems to me that the irretrievable military losses of the USSR in 1941-1945 can be estimated at no less than 16-17 million people, including the losses of women liable for military service, as well as men and youths of non-conscription age, nevertheless, de- de facto in military service.

The remaining irretrievable losses of the civilian population can be distributed as follows: approximately 1 million - victims of the Leningrad blockade, up to 2.2 million - victims of Nazi terror in the occupation, 300 thousand - excess mortality during the Stalinist deportations of peoples, 1.3 million - increased child mortality in the rest of the USSR, more than 5 million - increased adult mortality as a result of worsening living conditions due to wartime circumstances in the rest of the USSR (including prisoners who died in the Gulag, where the annual mortality rate in 1942-1943 was 20-25%!) .

The last two categories of civilian casualties of war are especially rarely mentioned and accounted for. The authorities concealed the fact that during the war years there were, for example, mass deaths from starvation in the Vologda region, in Yakutia and some other regions of the Soviet Union.

It is possible that approximately 450 thousand Soviet citizens who actually remained after 1945 in the West and ended up in emigration (including refugees from the Baltic states, Western Ukraine and Belarus) are also considered dead and missing during the war years. Such a sad order of numbers. The exact irretrievable losses of our people during the Second World War, I'm afraid, will never be known.

Is it possible to compare military losses during the hostilities of the German and Russian armies?

First, a fundamental disclaimer. Let's still take into account that the Russian Imperial or Russian Army, which originates from the regiments of the foreign system of the first Romanovs, and the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army, created in 1918 by L. D. Trotsky, are still completely different armies. Therefore, it is wrong to identify the Russian army and the Red Army.

The losses you are asking about can only be imagined approximately. From the above, we take the average figures: the Armed Forces of the USSR - 16.5 million, Germany and its allies on the Eastern Front - 3.3 million. The ratio of irretrievable losses is 1:5. This is strikingly close to the ratio of deadweight losses in the Finnish war - 1:6.

Are there other examples in world history when a victorious country loses several times more people than a defeated state?

As a result of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, the ratio of losses turned out to be in favor of Russia. The total irretrievable losses of the Russian troops and fleet amounted to 52.5 thousand ranks, the enemy - 88 thousand. But several times ... It is difficult for me to give such an example right away.

How many of our prisoners died?

In the Russian Imperial Army, captivity was not considered a crime; public opinion treated prisoners as sufferers. They retained ranks, awards, monetary allowance, captivity was counted in the length of service. With the active participation of Nicholas II and Russian diplomats, the famous Hague Convention of 1907 “On the Laws and Customs of War on Land” appeared, which determined the rights of prisoners of war. In 1914-1917, 2.4 million officials of the Russian army were captured, of which no more than 5% died.

In 1941-1945, according to the enemy, about 6.2 million Soviet servicemen were captured. Of these, until November 13, 1941, almost 320 thousand people were released and released in the occupied territories - mostly those who called themselves "Ukrainians" or "Belarusians". By the way, a very large figure, in fact, the equivalent of the size of two armies.

Of the remaining 5.8 million (excluding defectors, of whom there were 315 thousand during all the years of the war - two more armies in number) died of starvation and deprivation, and 3.3 million (60%) died from Nazi repressions. Of the surviving 2.4 million Soviet prisoners, approximately 950 thousand entered the service in various anti-Soviet armed formations (ROA and others), about 500 thousand fled or were liberated in 1943-1944 by Soviet troops and allies, the rest (about 1 million) waited until the spring of 1945. But their suffering didn't end there.

The words of I. V. Stalin are known: we have no prisoners, but there are traitors. He refused to give them any help. How much did this affect the mortality rate of our prisoners in German camps (compared to prisoners of other countries)?

It's not just the well-known Stalinist position. For example, even V. I. Lenin believed that the Hague Convention of 1907 "creates a selfish psychology in soldiers." As a result, approximately 15-20 thousand Red Army soldiers captured during the Soviet-Polish war of 1920 died in Polish camps, abandoned by the Council of People's Commissars to their fate. JV Stalin in 1925 called the work of the Hague Conference "an example of the unparalleled hypocrisy of bourgeois diplomacy."

It is interesting that in 1927 the plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks recognized: "The non-working elements that make up the majority of our army - the peasants, will not voluntarily fight for socialism." Therefore, the authorities were not interested in protecting the rights of their own prisoners of war. Their mass death in captivity by the enemy would reduce the likelihood of the formation of a Russian anti-Bolshevik army on the side of the enemy.

As a result, the Soviet Union, by decision of Stalin, refused to join the 1929 Geneva Convention "On the Treatment of Prisoners of War" and de jure refused to protect the rights of its citizens if they were captured by the enemy during hostilities. The recognition of the USSR in 1931 of the convention "On the improvement of the lot of the wounded and sick in active armies", as well as the well-known Soviet note of July 17, 1941 on joining the convention "On the Treatment of Prisoners of War" de facto, did not fundamentally change the situation.

Hitler considered that this state of affairs unties the hands of the National Socialists and authorizes arbitrariness in relation to Soviet prisoners of war. Their mass death would allow "to deprive Russia of its vitality." On March 30, 1941, speaking to his generals, the Fuhrer frankly stated: in the coming war, "a Red Army soldier will not be a comrade."

Taking advantage of the refusal of the USSR government to protect the rights of its citizens in captivity, the Nazis doomed them to methodical extinction from hunger and disease, to bullying and repression. Political workers and Jews taken prisoner were subject to destruction. True, at the end of 1941, the repressive policy of the Nazis in relation to political workers taken prisoner began to change.

In turn, in order No. 270 of August 16, 1941, I. V. Stalin, G. K. Zhukov and other members of the Headquarters proposed to destroy the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army captured by the enemy “by all means, both ground and air, and families of surrendered Red Army soldiers to be deprived of state benefits and assistance. On September 28, 1941, in special directive No. 4976 on the troops of the Leningrad Front, Zhukov demanded that the families of Soviet prisoners of war also be shot. Fortunately, probably, the real directive was not implemented and such terrible facts are not known to historians. But evidence of the bombing of prisoner-of-war camps by our own aircraft, especially in 1941, exists.

In 1941-1942, prisoners were kept in inhuman conditions, dying in the hundreds of thousands, primarily from starvation and typhus. In the winter of 1941-1942, about 2.2 million prisoners of war died. The tragedy of these people, betrayed by their government and fallen victim to Nazi policy, on a scale not inferior to the Holocaust.

Individual officers of the Wehrmacht (Admiral V. Canaris, Count G.D. von Moltke, Major Count K. von Stauffenberg and others) already in the autumn of 1941 protested against the nightmare that was happening, considering such a practice incompatible with the code of honor and traditions of the old German army. Some commandants, guided by personal Christian feelings, tried at their private level to somehow alleviate the suffering of the unfortunate. But such cases were still isolated.

By the way, mass mortality was also simply connected with the unpreparedness of the Wehrmacht to receive millions of prisoners of war in the first months of the war. No one expected that there would be so many of them, and there were no elementary conditions for their maintenance and reception.

It was an objective factor that influenced the fate of our prisoners. But evil will - the principled position of Stalin and the ideological attitudes of the Nazis - still played a more significant role here. Only in the autumn of 1942 did the situation begin to improve somewhat. In 1942, the Nazis became interested in the prisoners as a labor force, and in the spring of 1943, the development of the Vlasov movement began. In general, if the mortality rate among the prisoners of war of the armies of the Western Allies ranged from 0.3% to 1.6%, then among the Soviet military personnel, as I said, it amounted to 60%.

Stalin was clearly not stupid. Why were we absolutely defenseless before Germany in the first months of the war? Catastrophe: our aviation was destroyed in one fell swoop, more than 3 million citizens were taken prisoner. Couldn't this have been foreseen? There were no anti-aircraft guns, air defense, a mobilization plan, border protection? And intelligence warned. Is the whole tragedy - from the "mad leader" who blindly trusted Hitler? The topic is worn out, and yet - how could this happen?

You have raised an issue around which there has been a fierce controversy for decades. Objectively, this is good, since the discussion contributes to the discovery of new knowledge. Unfortunately, the scope of our conversation forces me to confine myself to theses. Of course, this is just my vision of the situation as a researcher.

Firstly, we were not at all defenseless against Germany in June 1941 - rather, on the contrary, the forces and means allocated by Hitler to implement the Barbarossa plan turned out to be clearly insufficient. If the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army overestimated the possible forces of the enemy, then the Abwehr, on the contrary, made a huge miscalculation in the assessment of the Soviet forces and means concentrated by the beginning of the campaign in the western military districts.

So, for example, the Germans believed that in the West the forces of the Red Army by June 11 consisted of 7 tank divisions, while there were 44. In total, the forces of the Red Army were defined by the Germans as 215 divisions, while in reality there were 303. In August, during a visit to the headquarters of Army Group Center in Borisov, Hitler grimly declared: "If I had known that Stalin had so many tanks, I would never have attacked the Soviet Union."

On June 22, 1941, the balance of power between the enemy (including Germany's allies) and the troops of the Red Army in the West (five military districts) looked like this: in terms of settlement divisions - 166 and 190, in terms of personnel - 4.3 million and 3.3 million people, for guns and mortars - 42.6 thousand and 59.7 thousand units, for tanks and assault guns - 4.1 thousand and 15.6 thousand units, for aircraft - 4.8 thousand and 10 .7 thousand units. The enemy could allocate only 2.1 thousand flight crews to participate in hostilities, while the Red Army Air Force in the West had more than 7.2 thousand crews.

In terms of quantity and quality, Soviet tanks were superior to enemy tanks. The Red Army had 51 divisions in the strategic reserve (including 16 tank and motorized), while the Wehrmacht and the allies had only 28 (including only 2 tank and motorized). How were we defenseless?

"Blind gullibility" or "madness" of Stalin is a myth of the Khrushchev era. Stalin was such a sophisticated politician, such a perfect "master of power" and political intrigue, that he did not trust anyone, including Hitler. Hitler, most likely, at the first stage of the Soviet-Nazi friendship trusted Stalin, but no later than the summer of 1940, he intuitively began to feel the danger posed by the Kremlin "partner".

And the results of Molotov's visit to Berlin in November 1940 turned this feeling into confidence. By the end of 1940, Germany was in such a position that no matter what move Hitler made, his situation worsened anyway. Therefore, "Barbarossa" is a step out of despair. I think that in fact Stalin knew on the eve of the war that the Red Army was stronger than the Wehrmacht in terms of forces and means. That's why he behaved so confidently and serenely. Perhaps Stalin even assumed that Hitler was afraid of him. Hitler was afraid.

But who could have imagined that the Fuhrer would decide to end his misgivings about the intentions of the USSR in such a specific way? Don't forget also that Germany continued to wage a hopeless war against Great Britain. 40% of Luftwaffe forces were tied up in other theaters of operations. Put yourself in Stalin's place. Under the conditions described, could you believe that Hitler would also decide on such an adventure as an attack on the Soviet Union? Intelligence reported, right, but how much was involuntary disinformation in its reports? Hitler, having attacked the USSR, from the point of view of Stalin, made a move at that moment completely illogical and unpredictable.

The reasons for our "defencelessness" lie elsewhere - in the vices of the Stalinist social system, which was built on the spot Russian state after the physical extermination by the Bolsheviks of the historical estates of traditional Russian society and the unprecedented enslavement of the peasantry. In the atmosphere of general fear, lies and hypocrisy in which this system existed. Of course, the Wehrmacht had a certain superiority - in the deployment and concentration of troops in the main directions, in the initiative, in the quality of training soldiers, officer corps and generals.

Among the staff officers and generals of the Wehrmacht, many had important experience of the First World War and service in the Reichswehr, which in the 1920s was a highly professional army. And how many, for example, commanders of Soviet divisions served in the old Russian army? Did you have a Russian military academic education and upbringing, a level of outlook and culture? Let's be honest: whom did our commanders fear more - a potential enemy or party-political bodies and NKVD bodies? By June 22, 1941, the average fighter of the Red Army was a collective farmer ...

And who could be brought up by the impoverished Stalinist collective farm with its hopeless forced labor? Today we cannot even imagine the realities of a “happy collective farm life” in pre-war USSR when one workday was paid on average at the rate of one ruble, and with inhuman exertion of forces per day, the collective farmer rarely worked out about two workdays. Moreover, the annual tax for a hut was 20 rubles, compulsory insurance (against fire, etc.) - 10 rubles, for 0.5 hectares of household plots - 100 rubles, for a cow - 5 kg of meat or 30 rubles, as well as 100 liters of milk or 15 rubles; for a piglet - 1 kg of meat or 5 rubles, compulsory subscription to a "voluntary" loan - 25-50 rubles. etc. Then such a collective farmer went to serve in the army ...

Secondly, our aviation was by no means "destroyed in one fell swoop", this is another myth. For every pair of German fighters (mostly new Bf-109s), there were almost two new (MiG-3, Yak-1) and six old (I-16, I-153) fighters of Soviet models. Only 66 out of 470 airfields were hit. Only 800 aircraft were damaged or destroyed on the ground, another 322 were shot down by the Germans in air battles, losing 114 aircraft. But what did happen to our aviation in the first weeks of the war, or rather, to its crews? This topic is still waiting for its researchers. Regarding air defense systems, I note that the enemy also allocated only 17% of air defense forces to participate in the war against the USSR.

In the summer - autumn of 1941, the Red Army suffered a crushing defeat, losing in less than five months about 18 thousand aircraft, 25 thousand tanks, more than 100 thousand guns and mortars. 2.2 million fighters and commanders were killed and died, 1.2 million deserted, remaining in the occupied territory, 3.8 million were captured. The Wehrmacht defeated 248 Soviet divisions, including 61 tank divisions, the enemy captured Kyiv, blockaded Leningrad and went to Moscow.

I believe that the main reasons for this catastrophe lie not only in the temporary retention of the initiative by the Germans, operational superiority or higher professionalism of the Wehrmacht, but also in the unwillingness of a significant part of the fighters and commanders of the Red Army to defend collective farms and power based on fear and forced labor.

At the same time, the vast expanses, mobilization capabilities and human resources of the Soviet Union, as well as the help of the allies, played an important objective role in holding the front. After the outbreak of war in 1941, more than 500 (!) formations were reorganized or re-formed in the Red Army, and the Wehrmacht traveled a long distance from Brest to Rostov in an unchanged state, having exhausted its capabilities by December.

Bogomolov writes that 37 thousand Russians fought in the ROA of General Vlasov, Wikipedia says that about 120 thousand people, and you said that more than a million citizens of the USSR were on the side of the enemy. Why such a discrepancy?

In fact, there is no discrepancy. Unfortunately, Bogomolov is simply incompetent in this matter. He mechanically summarized the strength of some units and formations of the Vlasov army - the troops of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR), which were formed from the autumn of 1944 to the spring of 1945. Indeed, most often they use the abbreviation ROA to designate them. However, this is wrong. The name "Russian Liberation Army" in 1943-1945, the Germans designated the Russian eastern battalions and some other formations in the Wehrmacht, staffed by Russians.

Not all of them were transferred to the KONR troops in 1944-1945. In addition, the abbreviation "ROA" was actively used in special propaganda. Adding up the number of the 1st and 2nd divisions, the reserve brigade and the officer school of the Vlasovites, Bogomolov received a figure of 37 thousand people. But this is less than a third of the total number of military personnel who were under the command of Lieutenant General A. A. Vlasov by April 21-22, 1945.

In the end, the central headquarters and service units, the 1st and 2nd infantry divisions, the 3rd division (in the recruitment stage, without weapons), the reserve brigade, the officer school, the separate Varyag regiment, the separate brigade in the Salzburg area (in the recruitment stage), the white émigré Russian Corps, two Cossack corps, units and subunits of the KONR Air Force, as well as some other formations - a total of 120-125 thousand military personnel, of which about 16 thousand had no weapons.

So the Wikipedia figure you mention is generally correct. The problem is that by the end of the war, the unification and reorganization of the Vlasov army according to the plan of the former teacher of the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army, Major General F. I. Trukhin, did not happen. There wasn't enough time. The Vlasovites were forced to surrender to the Western allies in parts.

Indeed, approximately 1.24 million citizens of the Soviet Union carried out military service on the side of the enemy in 1941-1945: 400 thousand Russians (including 80 thousand in Cossack formations), 250 thousand Ukrainians, 180 thousand representatives of the peoples of the Middle Asia, 90 thousand Latvians, 70 thousand Estonians, 40 thousand representatives of the peoples of the Volga region, 38.5 thousand Azerbaijanis, 37 thousand Lithuanians, 28 thousand representatives of the peoples of the North Caucasus, 20 thousand Belarusians, 20 thousand Georgians, 20 thousand Crimean Tatars, 20 thousand Soviet Germans and Volksdeutsche, 18 thousand Armenians, 5 thousand Kalmyks, 4.5 thousand Ingrians.

The latter mainly served on the side of the Finns. I do not have exact data on the number of Moldovans. In the ranks of the Vlasov army - the troops of the KONR - in 1944-1945, not only Russians, but also representatives of all other peoples, including Jews and Karaites, served. However, the Vlasovites made up only 10% of the total number of citizens of the USSR who served on the side of Germany and its allies. There is no reason to call them all "Vlasovites", as was done in the USSR.

Was there a similar example of such massive collaborationism in the history of Russia? What motivated people to betray (and can the transition to the side of the aggressor always be called betrayal)?

There is a widespread point of view, according to which the number of Soviet citizens who served in the military on the side of the enemy is not so significant relative to the population of the USSR as a whole. This is the wrong approach.

Firstly, an incomparably smaller part of the Soviet population, especially in the RSFSR, found itself under occupation in 1941-1942. It is still unknown how many "voluntary assistants" the Wehrmacht would have if the Germans, for example, reached the Tambov region.

Secondly, the recruitment of volunteers from prisoners of war began only in the spring of 1942, when more than half of those who were captured in 1941 had already died during the first military winter. No matter how one regards this tragic phenomenon and the motives of the actions of these people, it remains a fact that the citizens of the USSR, who were in the military service of the enemy, made up for his irretrievable losses on the Eastern Front by 35-40% or more than a quarter - irretrievable losses incurred in the years war in general. Citizens of the USSR accounted for approximately 6-8% of the total human resources used by Germany in military service.

Approximately every 16th or 17th enemy soldier had Soviet citizenship by June 22, 1941. Not all of them fought. But they replaced the German servicemen, who were sent, for example, from service positions to the ranks. Therefore, it is difficult to dispute the thesis of the German military historian K. G. Pfeffer, who called the help and participation of the Soviet population important conditions that determined the Wehrmacht's ability to conduct military operations on the Eastern Front for a long time.

There was nothing like this in any war waged by the Russian Empire. There was no other. Cases of high treason by Russian officers during the First Patriotic War of 1812 are rare and practically unknown during the Eastern War of 1853-1856, Russian-Turkish 1877-1878 and Russian-Japanese 1904-1905.

Of the 14 thousand officer and civilian ranks of the Russian Imperial Army captured by the enemy in 1914-1917, with the rarest exception, almost all of them remained faithful to the oath, not to mention the fact that none of them tried to create a combined arms army to participate in hostilities on side of Germany or Austria-Hungary. The enemy officers in Russian captivity behaved in the same way.

During the Second World War, the facts of high treason became noticeable only among Wehrmacht officers in Soviet captivity and representatives of the commanding staff of the Red Army in German captivity. 300-400 Wehrmacht officers took part in the activities of the anti-Nazi Union of German Officers General of Artillery W. A. ​​von Seidlitz-Kurzbach in Soviet captivity. In the Vlasov movement in 1943-1945, by name, more than 1000 representatives of the commanding and political staff of the Red Army participated.

Only Vlasov in the spring of 1945 served 5 major generals, 1 brigade commander, 1 brigade commissar, 42 colonels and lieutenant colonels of the Red Army, 1 captain of the first rank of the Navy, more than 40 majors of the Red Army, etc. On such a scale, nothing like this was noted among prisoners of war officers, for example, Poland, Yugoslavia, Great Britain or the USA.

It seems to me that regardless of motivation, the causes of mass treason are always associated with the characteristics of the state to which a citizen is cheating, if you like, a consequence of state ill health. Hitler doomed entire nations to destruction, plunged Germany into a hopeless war, put the German people on the brink of existence. Could the Fuhrer count on the unconditional loyalty of his officers and generals? The Bolsheviks exterminated entire estates in Russia, destroyed the Church and the old moral and religious basis of the military oath, introduced a new serfdom and forced labor throughout the country, unleashed mass repressions and, moreover, abandoned their own citizens who were captured. Could Stalin count on the unconditional loyalty of his fighters and commanders?...

So treason - both to Hitler and Stalin - was a natural and inevitable result of their practical policy. Another thing is that in modern Russia and Germany there is not, and there will hardly be a unanimous attitude towards those who committed this betrayal. It is interesting, for example, that in 1956 General Seidlitz was officially rehabilitated in Germany. The federal court overturned the Nazi death sentence against Seidlitz in 1944, reasoning that the general had committed treason "primarily out of his hostility to National Socialism."

In Berlin there is Stauffenbergstrasse - in honor of one of the leaders of the anti-Hitler conspiracy. Many, but still far from all, Germans agree with this. Probably even more, they believe that it is impossible to compare the actions of General Seidlitz and Colonel K. F. von Stauffenberg. It is clear that talking about General Vlasov and his like-minded people in Russia is even more difficult. This topic is probably the most painful.

The generally accepted point of view: General Vlasov is a traitor, not an ideological fighter against Bolshevism and Stalin's tyranny.

It is true that such an assessment objectively dominates contemporary Russian society. And, nevertheless, it seems to me that over the past twenty years the number of those who, under the influence of new knowledge about the history of their own country in the first half of the twentieth century, has changed their attitude towards Vlasov, or at least agree that this the topic is more complex than it seemed to us in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, the study of this topic is not facilitated by the incredible number of myths about Vlasov, which have become widespread in just the last few years, thanks to the work of some ignorant publicists and lovers of cheap sensations.

There are two arguments in favor of this. First, he was in the Bolshevik Party for many years and made a brilliant career in our army. And only after being captured did he become “an ideological fighter against the Stalinist system” (unlike some white emigrants who also supported Hitler: they did not like the Nazis, but they hated the Bolsheviks even more, so they were sincerely mistaken).

The party membership and career of Vlasov is only the external, visible side of his life in the Soviet Union, however, like many other of our compatriots. What Vlasov really thought about, honestly serving the authorities that dispossessed his fellow villagers, no one knows. You look how many millions of members of the CPSU, employees of state security agencies, military of all ranks and branches of service we had. And how many of them came out to defend Soviet power and the Soviet Union in 1991 and were ready to die for the words they uttered at party meetings?... So party membership and a career are far from an indicator of personal devotion to the Soviet state.

I would like to draw your attention to another aspect of the problem. You say - only after being captured did he become "an ideological fighter against the Stalinist system." That's right: only after being captured. It is obvious that the system of general denunciation, fear, suppression, which Stalin so skillfully and methodically built in the USSR in the 1930s for a reason, ruled out the possibility of any not only protest actions, but often even opposition plans. The future commander of the 2nd Vlasov division, Colonel of the Red Army G. A. Zverev, had a personal adjutant on the eve of the war who was the sex officer of the NKVD. What kind of struggle is there ... they were afraid of each other.

By the way, in Nazi Germany, in the Wehrmacht, Hitler failed to create such an atmosphere. As a result, he received half a dozen assassination attempts in 1943-1944. So. We completely forget that nothing threatened Vlasov in July 1942 in German captivity. No one forced him to cooperate, no one forced him to speak out against Stalin under the threat of execution or a concentration camp. The Nazis generally did not need Vlasov, they were not interested in the appearance of such a figure.

Vlasov, as a political figure, was only interested in the opponents of Hitler and his occupation policy, and this was a very narrow circle of people. Therefore, Vlasov, having become "an ideological fighter against the Stalinist system," as you said, made his decision completely freely. Unlike some other captured Soviet generals, the NKVD did not have any compromising evidence on Vlasov. At the end of June - July 1942, Stalin was very concerned about the fate of Vlasov and demanded that he be taken out of encirclement on the Volkhov, rescued at any cost, the corresponding radiograms were preserved.

In 1941-1944, 82 generals and commanders of the Red Army, whose ranks can be equated to those, were captured on the Eastern Front (including two generals and a corps commissar who died directly on the battlefield and were not captured). Of these, 25 people (30%) died and died, and if we exclude the three above-mentioned persons, then 22 people (27%). Interestingly, out of 167 Wehrmacht generals and persons equated to them who fell into Soviet captivity from June 22, 1941 to May 8, 1945, 60 people (36%) died.

62 Soviet generals and commanders in equivalent ranks refused any cooperation with the enemy. As a result, 10 people (16%) of them died from wounds, illnesses and hardships, 12 (19%) were killed under various circumstances (including 8 generals, the Germans shot for "active patriotic activity" - attempts to escape or for pro-Soviet agitation) , and the majority (40 people, or 65%, almost two-thirds) returned to the Soviet Union.

Of the generals who returned to their homeland, who remained loyal to the Soviet state in captivity, 9 people (less than a quarter) died as a result of repressions - those on whom the leaders of the SMERSH Main Directorate of Control had indisputable compromising evidence, despite their passive behavior. The rest waited for rehabilitation and pension provision.

Vlasov could well have been among them - he just had to stay in the camp and behave quite passively, without committing any drastic actions. But Vlasov, of his own free will, made a choice that dramatically increased his life risks. And this choice eventually forced him to sacrifice not only his life, but also his name. In Russian history, there were enough individuals who voluntarily sacrificed their lives in the name of a specific goal. But those who also sacrificed their own name are incomparably fewer.

By the way, very few people know that Generals Vlasov, Trukhin, Malyshkin and their other associates were convicted not by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, but by a preliminary decision of the Stalinist Politburo, the highest party body that adopted many repressive decisions in the 1920s-1940s.

All members of the Military Collegium, chaired by the infamous Colonel-General V. V. Ulrich, were members of the CPSU (b) and on the night of August 1, 1946, they simply announced the verdict of the Politburo. Let me remind you that a number of senior officials of the MGB who conducted the “investigation” in the “Vlasov case” were shot in the 1950s (Leonov, Komarov) or dismissed from the bodies (Kovalenko, Sokolov) for “gross violations of socialist legality” and the use torture on those under investigation.

The second argument, the main one: Vlasov's struggle set a utopian goal - a free and strong Russia without Stalin and his clique.

Now, after 65 years, it is obvious that the Vlasovites had almost no chance of success. I think a lot of people understood this. One of them, co-author of the Prague Manifesto, Lieutenant A. N. Zaitsev wrote in 1943 to his future wife: “30% for Hitler hanging us, 30% for Stalin hanging us, 30% for shoot the allies. And only 10% - the possibility of success. But still, you have to take the risk." Personally, it seems to me that the very attempt to challenge Stalin, whether it succeeded or not, was of undoubted importance.

About 130 thousand of our compatriots, who can be considered participants in the Vlasov movement, connected their fate with this attempt. And their attempt, whether it was utopian or not, and their fate became a tragedy. But she showed that Stalin could not suppress the will to resist. Even if this resistance originated behind the barbed wire of German prisoner of war camps. However, I agree that this view is shared by a minority today. But it has the right to exist - especially against the backdrop of unsuccessful attempts to turn Stalin into a national hero.

At the same time, Vlasov and his army marched along with the Nazis, who did not at all plan to make Russia strong and free.

Formally, you are right, of course. But there are important nuances and shades that cannot be ignored.

The action of Vlasov in the fall of 1942 and the Vlasov movement in the winter - in the spring of 1943 were supported and tried to popularize not by the Nazis (it would be more correct to say that the Nazis were only in Italy), but by their opponents in the opposition circles of the Wehrmacht. In February - March 1943, Major General H. von Treskov organized the arrival of Vlasov in the rear area of ​​Army Group Center, hoping that after the assassination of Hitler, which was to take place on March 13, Vlasov would become the head of the Russian government in Smolensk and character war will change immediately.

The bomb's detonator is known to have failed. Hitler survived, and Vlasov, on his orders, went under house arrest in June 1943 for his own public patriotic statements in the occupied territories. At the very end of the war, when Vlasov and his associates really had their own army (or its prototype), their goal was only to form as many units as possible in a short time, attract and arm as many as possible compatriots, subjugate all the Eastern volunteers ... and transfer these people to the side of the Western allies in order to save the opponents of Soviet power and the enemies of Stalin. And there were still enough of them in 1945. Violent renditions, of course, no one could have foreseen.

They write that the soldiers of the ROA took the oath to Hitler.

The soldiers of the eastern units in the Wehrmacht in 1942-1944 took the usual German oath, which meant loyalty to the Fuhrer. This is true. But before that, let me remind you, the vast majority of Eastern volunteers took the Soviet oath. I think that at the same time they were as loyal to Hitler as they were to Stalin before.

The servicemen of the Vlasov army, the troops of the KONR, in 1944-1945 did not take an oath of loyalty to Hitler. It was only about KONR and Vlasov. But in the text, at the request of representatives of the Main Directorate of the SS, a clause was introduced about loyalty to the alliance with those peoples of Europe who are fighting under the supreme leadership of Hitler. As soon as Hitler committed suicide, this paragraph automatically lost its meaning.

And, by the way, a few days later, the 1st division of the KONR troops under the command of Major General S.K. Bunyachenko intervened in the Prague uprising. Vlasov did not take an oath to Hitler, there are no documents about this. It is curious that in the 1950s and 1960s in Germany, A. Kh. Billenberg, with whom Vlasov married in April 1945, tried to achieve a general's pension, as the widow of a general. However, the federal authorities refused to do so. The relevant authorities explained that the Russian General Vlasov was not in the German military service and his widow had no pension rights. For the same reasons, as a rule, in the FRG, pensions were also denied to servicemen of the Vlasov army, whose status was considered as an allied one.

The Nazis used Vlasov as a tool to form a fifth column inside the enemy country ...

Sorry, I can't agree with you. The “fifth column” in the Soviet state was stubbornly and consistently created not by Vlasov and the Nazis, but by Lenin, Stalin and the Bolsheviks over the course of twenty pre-war years. Moreover, they created quite stubbornly and successfully. Without their efforts, there was neither Vlasov, at least in the form in which he went down in history, nor the Vlasov movement, nor the Prague Manifesto, nor the KONR troops. Vlasov became only a symbol, a leader for these people. And if he had died in 1942 on the Volkhov, some other general would have been found - but this movement would have taken place anyway. Only it would probably be associated with a different name.

- ... and if they had won - Russia would not have been reborn (Hitler would not have allowed this), but would have turned out to be a fragmented colony, a source of resources for the Reich. Do you disagree with these arguments?

You know, back in August 1942, Vlasov frankly stated during interrogations that Germany would not be able to defeat the Soviet Union - and this was at the moment when the Wehrmacht was approaching the Volga. Today, we can say that Hitler had no chance at all to win the Second World War, the resources of Germany and its opponents turned out to be too incomparable.

Vlasov did not at all connect his plans with Hitler's victory in the East - just in this case, Hitler would not need him. At first, he sincerely hoped that he would be able to create a sufficiently strong and independent Russian army in the rear of the Germans. Then hopes were associated with the activity of the conspirators and plans for a radical change in the occupation policy, as a result of which such a Russian army was about to appear. Since the summer of 1943, Vlasov had pinned his hopes on the Western allies. With any outcome, as it seemed to Vlasov, options were possible - the main thing was to get their own significant armed force. But, as history has shown, there were no options.

As for Vlasov's personal sentiments and his assessments of the prospects for turning Russia into a colony of the Reich, I will quote a German document that I found a few years ago in an American archive. This is a departmental report from a representative of Rosenberg's special headquarters in the rear area of ​​Army Group Center dated March 14, 1943.

The day before, Vlasov was in Mogilev. Frankly developing his views in a narrow circle of German listeners, Vlasov emphasized that among Stalin's opponents there are many people "with a strong character, ready to give their lives for the liberation of Russia from Bolshevism, but rejecting German bondage." However, "they are ready to cooperate closely with the German people, without prejudice to their freedom and honor." “The Russian people lived, lives and will live, they will never become a colonial people,” the former captive general firmly stated. In conclusion, according to a German source, Vlasov expressed hope "for a healthy renewal of Russia and for an explosion of the national pride of the Russian people."

I have nothing to add to this confidential report on Vlasov's moods.

What is the real contribution of our allies to the defeat of Germany?

From the loss figures cited at the beginning of our conversation, it follows that more than two-thirds of the irretrievable losses in manpower were inflicted on the common enemy by the Soviet Armed Forces, defeating and capturing 607 enemy divisions. This characterizes the main contribution of the USSR to the victory over Nazi Germany.

The Western allies made a decisive contribution to the military-industrial superiority of the anti-Hitler coalition in the economy and mobilized resources, to the victory over the common enemy at sea and in the air, and in general they destroyed about a third of manpower, defeating and capturing 176 enemy divisions.

Therefore, in my private opinion, the victory of the anti-Hitler coalition became really common. The proud attempt to single out the "Soviet" or "American" contribution from it, declaring it "decisive" or "predominant", is of a political nature and has nothing to do with history. Dividing the efforts of the allies into "major" and "secondary" is wrong.

However, it seems to me that 65 years after such a terrible war, when its extremely ruthless nature, which violated all the norms of Christian morality, is no longer in doubt, triumphalism should give way to compassion and grief for the millions of victims. Why did all this happen? ... State policy should be primarily aimed at perpetuating the memory of the dead, and providing real and tangible assistance to the very few survivors of its participants and contemporaries.

We love military parades so much, we spend multimillion-dollar funds on them, but how many soldiers' bones do we still have scattered through the forests and swamps?

We have been trumpeting our victory for 65 years, but how did the defeated live during these decades, and how did the winners live?

For our country and people, the war was a national disaster comparable only to collectivization and the artificial famine of 1932-1933. And we, as proof of our state greatness, are all talking about how many millions we have lost ... That's how wonderful we are, we did not stand up for the price. In fact, here it is not to be proud and rejoice, but to cry and pray. And if you rejoice, then only the fact that at least someone, thank God, returned home to the family alive. And, finally, it is necessary to present the historical account of the Stalinist authorities, which paid such a monstrous price not only for coming to Berlin, but also for their self-preservation.

However, these are already emotions from which the historian should refrain.

Many believe that we could have managed without them, and that they began to help us more out of fear that Stalin, having won, would not make all of Europe socialist.

Let's remember this first. Between the autumn of 1939 and the spring of 1941, Germany successfully fought in Europe. In 1940, 59% of all German imports and 49% of exports passed through the territory of the USSR, and before June 22, 1941, 72% and 64%, respectively. Thus, at the first stage of the war in Europe, the Reich successfully overcame the economic blockade with the help of the Soviet Union. Did such a position of the USSR contribute to Nazi aggression in Europe or hinder it? In 1940, Germany accounted for 52% of all Soviet exports, including 50% of phosphates, 77% of asbestos, 62% of chromium, 40% of manganese, 75% of oil, 77% of grains. After the defeat of France, Great Britain courageously resisted the Nazis almost single-handedly for a whole year.

In this difficult year, when the Luftwaffe bombed British cities, who was objectively helped by the Soviet Union?

And who did the Allies help after June 22, 1941?

During the years of the war with Germany, under the famous lend-lease, the USSR received supplies from the allies for a total of 11 billion dollars (at their cost in 1945). The Allies supplied the USSR with 22,150 aircraft, 12.7 thousand tanks, 8 thousand anti-aircraft guns, 132 thousand machine guns, 427 thousand vehicles, 8 thousand tractors, 472 million shells, 11 thousand wagons, 1.9 thousand vehicles. steam locomotives and 66 diesel-electric locomotives, 540 thousand tons of rails, 4.5 million tons of food, etc. It is impossible to name the entire range of supplies here.

The main deliveries of tanks and aircraft from the allies fall on the period from the end of 1941 to 1943 - that is, during the most difficult period of the war. Western deliveries of strategic materials amounted to Soviet production for the entire war period: for gunpowder and explosives - 53%, for aviation gasoline - more than 55%, for copper and aluminum - more than 70%, for armor plates - 46%. During the war years, the USSR produced 115.4 thousand metal-cutting machine tools. The Allies delivered another 44.6 thousand - and more high-quality and expensive. The Allies diverted almost the entire fleet of the enemy, almost two-thirds of the Luftwaffe, and after landing in Europe, about 40% of the enemy's ground forces.

So would we have managed without the help and participation of the allies?

I don't think so.

Was it military necessity that the Americans dropped atomic bombs on Japan? Many of us believe that there was not so much concern for victory over the enemy as a demonstration of strength and an attempt to put pressure on the USSR. How do you assess that bombing - a crime or an expedient military action?

Let me remind you that the United States turned out to be the side attacked by Japan. Formally, they had the right to defend themselves in any way they could. Of course, from a humanitarian and Christian point of view, the application atomic weapons, whose victims were primarily civilians, makes a terrible impression. As well as the unmotivated famous Allied bombing of Dresden.

But, I confess, it is no more terrible than, for example, medical experiments on civilians, which were carried out in the Japanese special detachment No. 731 in Manchuria. The purpose of these experiments was to develop means by which it would be possible to carry out a bacteriological attack on the American coast, for example, in California. He who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind.

Undoubtedly, the atomic bombings in the first place were to force Emperor Hirohito to lay down his arms. It is likely that the Allied invasion of the Japanese islands would have claimed even more human lives. In Europe, in the summer of 1945, the Allies had sufficient forces to show Stalin their advantage and capabilities by demonstrating their numerous bomber aircraft. It is most difficult to answer your last question, since it is necessary to proceed not from the experience and knowledge we have acquired throughout the post-war period, but from the realities of August 1945.

And it's hard to get away.

And what would happen if in the summer of 1945 such a bomb would not have been in the hands of the Americans, but only at the disposal of the leadership of the USSR? What is the most likely scenario for the behavior of Stalin and his entourage?

This is not a question for a historian. Still, I think that Stalin in any of his political steps throughout his career in the Bolshevik Party could only be stopped by questions of expediency or the threat of, let's say, an asymmetric response.

Marshal Zhukov - a brilliant commander or a man who "did not count people", that is, he won battles not by skill, but by numbers?

The ideas that I have about Marshal G.K. Zhukov and his operations allow me to agree with the last judgment. Of course, I am familiar with both the opposite point of view and the arguments of opponents, A. V. Isaev, for example.

But to be honest, they don't convince me.

We know from Russian history that sovereigns often interfered with generals. Did Stalin interfere with the military? Or was he smart enough to agree with the professionals at the right time?

Not so often. In the Moscow period, it seems to me, Ivan IV intervened most of all, but the tsars Mikhail Fedorovich and Alexei Mikhailovich behaved quite restrained in this regard. In the Petersburg period, Peter I himself considered himself a commander. Catherine II and Paul I completely trusted the professionals in the theaters of operations, although the monarchs had difficult relations with some of them.

Alexander I did not interfere so much himself as he was sometimes inclined to fall under the influence of others and defend someone else's point of view as his own. Nicholas I and Alexander II trusted professionals. Nicholas II, contrary to popular belief, having become in 1915 at the head of the Army in the field, entrusted the control of the troops to General Alekseev, who was then the best representative of the Russian Military Academy. The sovereign carefully delved into all issues, but appreciated the experience and knowledge of Alekseev, agreeing with his point of view.

Stalin was a talented self-taught. It is undeniable that he was very teachable and constantly updated his military knowledge, striving to understand complex issues. But, having brought Lenin's political plan to its logical end, Stalin created a mobilization system that existed only through violence and constant human sacrifice. There was no place for professionalism and free creativity, by definition.

Unlike Nazi Germany, in the USSR the military became part of the party nomenklatura, the collective will of which was expressed by Stalin. And relations within the nomenklatura were built on the basis of fear and personal devotion to the leader. It seems to me that Stalin did not interfere with the military, as they served him and the system he created. The executions of certain generals, practiced from time to time, were only a good educational measure: no one could feel safe, even if he seemed to enjoy the trust of the Master.

How can one assess the role of Stalin in the Second World War in general? I would like to get away from extremes, from politicized judgments. It is clear that for many people the Soviet period of history is sacred, their life, memory, ideals, and to overturn, stigmatize all this means to cross out, devalue the meaning of their life ...

From the moment he was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee in 1922, Stalin prepared for big war, the victory in which was supposed to elevate the nomenclature of the Bolshevik party to unprecedented heights. For the sake of maintaining the power of the nomenklatura of the CPSU (b), he sacrificed millions of peasants during the years of collectivization and then turned the country into one large workshop for the production of military products.

For the sake of consolidating the regime and concealing the consequences of collectivization, he unleashed the Yezhovshchina. In order to enter the war at the most advantageous moment for the Soviet Union, Stalin, to the amazement of the whole world, approached Hitler and gave him freedom of action in Europe in 1939-1940.

In the end, the system that Stalin created allowed him to again make incredible sacrifices during the war years, to preserve the Leninist state and the power of that “new class”, the party bureaucracy, whose collective will he personified. The war allowed Stalin to spread similar one-party regimes far beyond the borders of the USSR - otherwise the socialist experiment would have ended ingloriously decades earlier. It was Stalin who made lies and self-deception at all levels the most important basis for the existence of Soviet society.

The Soviet Union collapsed precisely because of the lie, which was no longer believed by those who uttered it, nor those for whom it was intended. As a result, the holy ideals of the Soviet period that you mentioned turned out to be similar to those pagan idols that the people of Kiev easily threw into the Dnieper, having adopted Christianity in 988. Nobody defended them.

But are we able to return to Christ again? Or are we increasingly drawn to Stalin?

I don't have an answer to this question.

Why is the Russian Ministry of Defense still hiding so many documents on the history of the Second World War? Embarrassed to open? Will some things come up that can become a stain on the descendants of many famous people then?

No, I believe that in fact the problem is more serious and is not related to concern for the state and possible experiences of the descendants of individual famous generals and marshals. I believe that if unhindered access to all TsAMO documents is opened, including those that are stored outside the actual archive in Podolsk, the version of the war that Stalin created for us will turn out to be completely untenable. This applies to many sore topics and issues - for example, operational planning in the first half of 1941, the circumstances of Finland's entry into the war, losses in individual operations, the battle for Rzhev, the partisan movement, military operations in Eastern Europe etc.

But the main question will be - why did we pay such a terrible price for the victory and who is responsible for this? Although, of course, I think that many documents of the army political departments, for example, concerning the moral side of the war, will make a heavy impression. The truth will not contribute to the preservation of triumphalism in society.

There is a lot of talk in the West about the atrocities of our army in Germany.

Unfortunately, not without reason.

Individual atrocities, rapes and looting are probably inevitable in such a situation, but usually they are restrained by the most severe bans and executions.

I got the impression that it was a flow that could not be stopped by any repression. And lately I've been wondering - did they try to stop him?

We also had executions of rapists and marauders, but, they say, in East Prussia a “relaxation” was given, which became a temptation for many “morally unstable” fighters. Is it so? Can it be said that in our treatment of the civilian population in Europe (and especially in Germany) we differed unfavorably from the Allies?

“Petrov, as the postman was called, who seemed so nice to me at the beginning, at the end of the war revealed himself as a criminal, marauder and rapist. In Germany, as an old friend, he told me how many gold watches and bracelets he managed to rob, how many German women he ruined. It was from him that I heard the first of an endless series of stories on the topic “ours abroad”. This story at first seemed to me a monstrous fiction, outraged me and therefore forever stuck in my memory: “I come to the battery, and there the old firemen are preparing a feast. They cannot move away from the gun, they are not supposed to.

Right on the bed, they spin dumplings from trophy flour, and at the other bed, they take turns playing with a German woman who was dragged from somewhere. The foreman disperses them with a stick: “Stop, you old fools! Do you want to bring the infection to your grandchildren!?” He takes the German woman away, leaves, and in twenty minutes everything starts again. Another story of Petrov about himself: “I am walking past a crowd of Germans, looking after a prettier woman and suddenly I look, there is a Frau with a daughter of fourteen years old. Pretty, and on her chest, like a sign, it says: “Syphilis”, which means for us not to be touched. Oh, you bastards, I think, I take the girl by the hand, my mother with a machine gun in the snout, and into the bushes. Let's check what kind of syphilis you have! The girl turned out to be appetizing...”

Troops meanwhile crossed the German border. Now the war turned to me with another of its unexpected faces. Everything seemed to be tested: death, hunger, shelling, overwork, cold. So no! There was something else very terrible, almost crushing me. On the eve of the transition to the territory of the Reich, agitators arrived in the troops. Some are in high ranks. "Death for death!!! Blood for blood!!! Let's not forget!!! We won't forgive!!! Let's take revenge!!!” and so on... Prior to this, Ehrenburg had thoroughly tried, whose crackling, biting articles everyone read: "Daddy, kill the German!" And it turned out Nazism on the contrary.

True, they behaved outrageously according to plan: a network of ghettos, a network of camps. Accounting and compilation of lists of loot. A register of punishments, planned executions, etc. With us, everything went spontaneously, in the Slavic way. Bay, guys, burn, wilderness! Spoil their women! Moreover, before the offensive, the troops were abundantly supplied with vodka. And it's gone, and it's gone! As always, the innocent suffered. The bosses, as always, fled ... Indiscriminately burned houses, killed some random old women, aimlessly shot herds of cows. A joke invented by someone was very popular: “Ivan is sitting near a burning house. "What are you doing?" they ask him. - “Yes, the footcloths had to be dried, the fire was lit” ...

Corpses, corpses, corpses. The Germans, of course, are scum, but why be like them? The army has humiliated itself. The nation has humiliated itself. It was the worst thing in the war. Corpses, corpses... Several echelons with German refugees arrived at the railway station in the city of Allenstein, which the valiant cavalry of General Oslikovsky captured unexpectedly for the enemy. They thought they were going to their rear, but they got there ... I saw the results of the reception that they received. The station platforms were covered with heaps of gutted suitcases, bundles, trunks. Everywhere clothes, children's things, ripped pillows. All this in pools of blood...

“Everyone has the right to send a parcel home once a month weighing twelve kilograms,” the authorities officially announced. And it's gone, and it's gone! Drunk Ivan burst into the bomb shelter, fucked the machine on the table and terribly popped his eyes, yelled: “URRRRRRA! You bastards!”

Trembling German women carried watches from all sides, which they raked into the “sidor” and carried away. One soldier became famous for forcing a German woman to hold a candle (there was no electricity), while he was rummaging through her chests. Rob! Grab it! Like an epidemic, this scourge swept over everyone ... Then they came to their senses, but it was too late: the devil flew out of the bottle. Kind, affectionate Russian men have turned into monsters. They were terrible alone, but in the herd they became such that it is impossible to describe!

I think comments are unnecessary.

Two mythological views of Stalin remain in the mass consciousness: either he is the source of all victories (cult), or a “serial killer” (demonization). Is an objective, impartial view possible today?

It all depends on the criteria you use and the value system. For example, some consider the highest value to be the state, whose greatness and interests of the state apparatus prevail over the interests of society and individuals. A citizen is a necessary consumable. And if Stalin littered his own people, it was solely for the sake of his good and the ultimate victorious goal.

Others consider each person to be God's Creation, inimitable and unique. From this point of view, the essence of elementary politics is to create such conditions in which the well-being of citizens would increase, their lives, security and property would be protected. The main criterion for waging war is the desire to minimize casualties among our own population and servicemen. Healthy selfishness.

It is clear that with such differences in values, it is impossible to agree on Stalin's diametrically opposed assessments.

How do you feel about the fact that many in today's Russia consider him an "effective manager"? At the same time, starting from some facts: industrialization, great construction projects, the military industry, victory in the Second World War, fast recovery after the war, atomic bomb etc. And yes, the prices have come down...

I am negative. Lenin, and even more Stalin, so devastated the country that, as a result, by the end of the Soviet period, we could not make up for the demographic losses incurred, which amounted to approximately 52-53 million people in 1917-1953 (together with the military, of course). All Stalin's achievements are ephemeral - in a civilized Russian state, much more could have been achieved, and with an increase, not a decrease in the population.

So, for example, industrialization was successfully carried out from the last third of the 19th century, and by 1913 Russia in terms of volume industrial production occupied a stable 5-6th place in the world, and in terms of economic growth - one of the first and was part of the group of such developing countries at that time as the USA, Japan and Sweden. At the same time, 100 years ago, successful industrialization and the formation of private peasant ownership of land were not accompanied by mass repressions, the creation of a system of forced labor and the death of millions of peasants.

As of January 1, 1911, 174,733 people were held in places of detention in Russia (including only 1,331 political ones) - this was 0.1% of the country's population. As of January 1, 1939, 3 million people (including 1.6 million political people) were in camps and special settlements in the USSR - this was 1.6% of the country's population. The total difference is 16 times (and according to the political ones - the difference is more than 1200 times!).

Without the Bolsheviks, Lenin and Stalin, Russia would have become one of the most densely populated and highly developed countries, and its level of well-being would hardly be inferior to at least modern Finland, which 100 years ago was part of the Russian Empire. The highly skilled engineering elite and the industrial class that the country lost after the October Revolution of 1917 would successfully complete industrialization.

I believe that there would have been no union of the historical Russian state with Hitler, and, accordingly, the conditions that allowed him to successfully wage war in Europe against the Western allies in 1939-1940. But the main thing is that the Church and Russian culture would have been preserved, such a spiritual devastation of the nation would not have taken place as a result of decades of constant lies, cynicism, self-deception and poverty.

"Prices were reduced", but at the same time the collective farm village was degraded. And as a result of Stalin's depeasantization of Russia, we have long been dependent on food imports.

Are there generally accepted objective criteria by which one can judge the effectiveness of a particular state leader?

Take a look at neighboring Finland, which does not have such natural wealth, such fertile land like Russia. In 1917 Finland became independent. In 1918, the whites won the local civil war. During the Second World War, Finland twice fought off Stalin's claims. Accurately paid all reparations to the USSR. Does it make sense today to compare the standard of living of an average Finn and a resident of the Russian Federation? Or at least the cleanliness of the streets of Helsinki and St. Petersburg?

The well-being of society and citizens, their safety and security - these are the simplest criteria. Probably, the Finnish politicians followed them, therefore they managed to preserve the independence of the country, albeit at the cost of expensive territorial losses, and the national identity of their small people.

If we take the growth of political and military power, world influence, victories in wars and expansion of territory as criteria, then Stalin was a genius.

The price just turned out to be outrageous. And what is left of this for us 50 years after Stalin's death? No power, no influence, no territory...

As for Stalin's victories, their obvious result in recent decades is the population decline. And demographic forecasts for the next quarter of a century are not very optimistic. And where is Stalin and his politics abroad now popular? Only, perhaps.

This is who we have left from the Stalinist legacy.

If we take an increase in the birth rate, a decrease in mortality, social policy, the development of culture, science, education - under Stalin, everything was far from going smoothly.

Let's put it mildly.

If political and economic rights and freedoms, then Stalin is a villain. It turns out: there are no universal criteria, and everyone judges from their own bell tower? (And in general, not so long history - it seems to be not so much science as politics).

You see, history is still a descriptive science. Even if its subject is not so old events. The task of the historian is the reconstruction of events, the collection, systematization, study of facts, the restoration of the mosaic of the past from small, disparate fragments. And he must collect as many of them as possible. Naturally, the folded picture can be perceived and evaluated in different ways. And it really depends on the criteria.

But understanding the cause-and-effect relationships of interrelated events is an even more difficult and responsible task. And in order to resolve it, competition, competitiveness, and free discussion are needed. Therefore, I am very grateful to you for the opportunity to express my not very popular points of view on various issues of such importance. As I hope - not only for the past, but also for the future.

Vladimir Beshanov

Cadres decide everything:

the harsh truth about the war of 1941-1945.

Atrocities large and serious are often referred to as brilliant and, as such, are recorded on the tablets of History.

M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin

Introduction

First came the ghost - the ghost of Communism. The first to record this phenomenon in 1848 were the outstanding scientist-mediums Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, armed with the most advanced and unmistakable theory of their own composition. The ghost wandered around Europe, shaking the chains borrowed from the proletariat, assured that the workers had no fatherland, offered them to “unite”, enroll in the ranks of the gravediggers of the bourgeoisie and “destroy everything that hitherto protected and ensured private property.” The prophecies of the communist Spirit were set forth by two friends, who are the classics of a new type of ideology, in the famous Manifesto.

The manifesto, "with brilliant clarity and brightness", outlined a new, communist "world outlook", called on all the oppressed to forcibly overthrow the existing social and political system, establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, and destroy classes and private property. Following this, according to the authors, sooner or later, Communism inevitably had to come - the highest and final stage of development human society, heaven on earth: factories - for workers, land - for peasants, women - in common use.

The international proletarian anthem - "The Internationale" - defined a clear program of action and the ultimate goal of the communist movement:

We will destroy the whole world of violence
To the bottom and then
We are ours, we will build a new world,
Who was nothing will become everything.

True, along with passages about the "conquest of democracy", terms like "expropriation", "despotic intervention", "confiscation of property" slipped through the Manifesto - of course, exclusively in relation to "exploiters", but also "industrial armies", into which for the convenience of building a new world, it was proposed to mobilize the liberated proletarians.

It is preferable to make a revolution in advanced industrial countries where the proletariat is most concentrated and organized. Therefore, for a long time communists of all stripes, including Russian Social Democrats, tried to rouse the workers to a just cause in some Germany or Switzerland. But the weakest link "in the imperialist chain" was the Russian Empire.

They immediately dubbed the coup d'état, carried out with German money by the bayonets of the "internationalists" and sailors stupefied with idleness, "proletarian dictatorship", their own power - "the power of the workers and peasants" and on behalf of the latter began to exterminate both, as well as all those who disagree.

Seven decades of the history of the world's first socialist state show that its domestic policy exactly corresponded to the three points of the "International": destruction, construction, appointment to office.

What relation to the proletariat did the writer V.I. Ulyanov (Lenin), Caucasian abrek I.V. Dzhugashvili (Stalin), Polish militant F.E. Dzerzhinsky, cosmopolitan journalist L.D. Bronstein (Trotsky) or Yekaterinburg "mafia" Ya.M. Sverdlov - it's hard to say.

Why did they do all this?

Is it really just to eat to satiety of chum salmon caviar, which Trotsky, driven by Stalinist wolfhounds into the Mexican outback, recalled with nostalgia even 20 years later: “... the first years of the revolution are painted not only in my memory with this unchanged caviar”?

Rob all the citizens? Restore feudalism in a single country? On the mountain to all the bourgeoisie to inflate the world fire? What difference does it make, the main thing is the Power itself. This is what Lenin wrote to the members of the Central Committee a day before the coup: “The seizure of power is a matter of insurrection; its political purpose will become clear after the capture.

As early as the end of the 18th century, Georges Danton, a figure in the great French revolution, gave a clear and intelligible definition: "A revolution is simply a redistribution of property." Simply put, the basis of the worldview of any revolutionary is Sharikov's "select and divide."

Indeed, in the first place in Lenin's program of action was the item on the "expropriation of the expropriators." It means total robbery. In the future, the population was promised a bright future, toilets made of gold and cooks who would run the state. In the meantime - "rob the loot", destroy the "world of violence."

The simplest thing is to destroy. True-believing Marxists, defenders of the oppressed and disadvantaged, saviors of the Fatherland, confidently determined what exactly needed to be destroyed.

The “world of violence” included: all members of the ruling dynasty, the government and the state apparatus, the army and navy, the gendarmerie and the police, the border and customs guards, the church, all owners of capital, all owners of large, medium and small enterprises, estates of nobles, merchants, Cossacks and clergy in full force, including babies, most of the peasantry (the rich, that is, "kulaks", as well as the middle peasants and the notorious "podkulakniks"), "bourgeois" writers, poets, philosophers, scientists, journalists and the intelligentsia in general, works of art created "for the needs of the exploiters", etc. etc. In a word, everything that makes up the content of such concepts as the state, history, culture, traditions, national pride.

As a result, a lot had to be destroyed and destroyed, because those “who were nothing, but became everything” had rather specific views, in the complete absence of such “bourgeois” concepts as conscience and morality:

“We do not believe in eternal morality and expose the deception of all fairy tales about morality ... For us, morality is subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat.”

Under the noise of general robbery with the help of the Cheka and the “overflowing energy of the masses”, the Bolsheviks quickly established the “highest form of statehood” in the country - the power of the Soviets.

But what could Lenin and his company offer the country instead of a monarchy or a bourgeois republic?

In April 1918, in the article "Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Power", Vladimir Ilyich briefly outlined his model of an ideal society:

“The first step in the emancipation of the working people ... is the confiscation of the landed estates, the introduction of workers' control, the nationalization of the banks. The next steps will be the nationalization of factories and plants, forced organization of the entire population into consumer societies, which are at the same time societies for the sale of products, the state monopoly of trade in bread and other necessary products ...

What images arise in a Russian citizen who is told about the beginning of the Great Patriotic War? Most likely - downcast columns of prisoners, wandering under the protection of German machine gunners, Soviet tanks broken and stuck in the mud on the roadsides and in the field, planes burned at airfields ... The series can be continued.

Most of these images came from photographs taken in the summer of 1941. Almost all of these photos, and even the documentary chronicle, were taken after the battles, when days and weeks had passed. There are relatively few pictures taken in battle, not before. In addition, most of the pictures were taken on busy highways, where huge masses of Nazis walked and drove back and forth. But not all battles, the battles took place along the main roads, a significant number of equipment knocked out in battle could be found near thousands of villages, villages, in copses, on country roads.

Therefore, there was the myth of the small-scale mechanization of the Red Army, parts of which allegedly moved only on foot or with the help of horses, and the Wehrmacht only by car. Although if we compare the states of the infantry division of the Wehrmacht and the motorized rifle division of the Red Army, then there is no lag, the mechanization is almost equal. The Red Army had plenty of mechanized corps and tank brigades.

Against the background of such a picture was created the myth of the unwillingness of Soviet soldiers to fight for the Bolsheviks, Stalin. Although even in Soviet times, enough materials were published that tell about difficult battles initial stage war, mass heroism, the exploits of border guards, pilots, tankmen, gunners, infantry.

These myths and other similar conjectures are born due to a lack of understanding of the real picture of the life of the country in the pre-war period and at the beginning of the war, or, even worse, they are created deliberately, waging an information war against our country and people. It must be understood that even the richest state cannot keep a multimillion-strong army under arms in a period when there is no war, tearing millions of healthy men from real production. In the borderlands there are troops that will become the basis of the grouping for the first operation of the war, only with the declaration of war is the gigantic mechanism of mobilization launched. But even potential military personnel, who are mobilized in the first place, do not gather in peacetime in a zone of 50-300 km from the enemy, they are mobilized where they live and work. Even the current conscription and officers may not be on the border with the enemy, but in the Caucasus, Siberia, Far East. That is, there are very limited troops on the border, far from the entire payroll of the peacetime army. Only in the case of mobilization, the troops are increased to wartime states, huge masses of people and equipment are being transported to the front, perhaps only still potential.

Mobilization can be launched even before the outbreak of hostilities, but this requires very important reasons, a political decision by the country's leadership. At this point created the myth that "intelligence reported", but the tyrant was stupid ... The beginning of mobilization is not just an internal event, but a step of great political importance, causing a huge resonance in the world. It is almost impossible to conduct it covertly, a potential enemy can use it as a pretext for war. Therefore, in order to actually start a war, very weighty, reinforced concrete grounds are needed. Starting a war, from a political and military point of view, was unreasonable, the main plans for defense construction were to be completed in 1942. The basis for such a decision could be intelligence or analysis of the political situation. But, despite the widespread opinion about the power of Soviet intelligence, the actual intelligence was highly inconsistent. Crumbs of important and useful information simply sank in a mass of gossip and outright misinformation.

From a political point of view, relations between the Reich and the Union were quite normal, there was no threat: financial and economic cooperation, the absence of territorial disputes, a non-aggression pact, delimitation of spheres of influence. In addition, which also played a crucial role in assessing the date of the start of the war, the Kremlin understood that it was very likely in the short term, the Third Reich was associated with a war with England. Until the issue with Britain was resolved, fighting the Soviet Union was an extremely adventurous step, beyond normal logic. Berlin did not send any diplomatic signals that usually start a war - territorial claims (as to Czechoslovakia, Poland), demands, ultimatums.

When Berlin did not react in any way to the TASS message of June 14 (it said that the reports published abroad about the impending war between the USSR and Germany had no basis), Stalin began the processes of mobilization, but without its announcement: they advanced to the border from the depths of the border military districts of the division, the movement of non-mobilized troops by rail from the internal districts to the border of the Western Dvina and Dnieper rivers began. There were other events that completely reject the speculation on the topic: "Stalin did not believe."

The Red Army actually entered the war without completing the mobilization, so at the beginning of the war it had 5.4 million people, and according to the mobilization plan of February 1941 (MP-41) in wartime states, it was supposed to be 8 .68 million people. That is why in the border divisions, when they entered the battle, there were approximately 10 thousand people, instead of the prescribed St. 14 thousand. Even worse was the situation in the rear units. The troops of the border and internal military districts were divided into three operationally unrelated parts - units directly at the border, units at a depth of about 100 km from the border, and troops about 300 km from the border. The Wehrmacht got the opportunity to take advantage of the number of personnel, the number of pieces of equipment and destroy the Soviet troops in parts.

By June 22, 1941, the Wehrmacht was completely mobilized, its number was increased to 7.2 million people. Strike groups were concentrated on the border and crushed the Soviet border divisions before the Red Army could change the balance of power. Only in the process of the battle for Moscow could the situation be changed.

The myth of the superiority of defense over attack, on the new western border of the USSR in 1940-1941 they built a line of fortifications, fortified areas (URs), they are also called the "Molotov line". By the war, many structures were unfinished, uncamouflaged, without communications, and so on. But, most importantly, there were not enough forces on the border to hold back the blow of the German army, even relying on the URs. The defense could not hold back the onslaught of the Wehrmacht, the German troops had vast experience in breaking defense lines since the First World War, applying it in 1940 on the border with France. For a breakthrough, assault groups with sappers, explosives, flamethrowers, aircraft, and artillery were used. For example: on the 22nd, near the city of Taurage in the Baltic States, the 125th Infantry Division took up defensive positions, but the Wehrmacht broke through it in less than a day. The divisions and units covering the border could not provide the necessary density of defense. They were sparse over a vast area, so the German strike groups quickly broke into the defenses, though not at the pace they expected.

The only way to stop the enemy's breakthrough was counterattacks with their own mechanized corps. The border districts had mechanized corps, where new types of tanks, the T-34 and KV, were sent in the first place. On June 1, 1941, the Red Army had 25,932 tanks, self-propelled guns and tankettes (although some of them were in combat readiness (as at the present time, there are a certain number of units in the parks, and 60 percent ready to go into battle right away), in Western special districts had 13,981 units.The mechanized corps were "hostages" of the general unfavorable situation, due to the collapse of the defense in several directions at once, they were forced to scatter between several targets.In addition, the mechanized corps were inferior in the organizational part, the German tank groups numbered 150-200 thousand .people from several motorized corps, reinforced by artillery, motorized infantry and other units.Soviet mechanized corps numbered about 30 thousand people.Wehrmacht tank units, having fewer tanks than the Red Army, reinforced them with more powerful motorized infantry and artillery, including anti-tank.

The general strategy of the leadership of the Red Army was absolutely correct - operational counterattacks, only they could stop the enemy strike groups (there was no tactical atomic yet). Unlike France, the Red Army, with its fierce counterattacks, was able to buy time, inflict heavy losses on the enemy, which ultimately led to the failure of the "lightning war" plan, and hence the entire war. Yes, and the leadership of the Wehrmacht drew conclusions, became more cautious (not Poland and France), began to pay more attention to the defense of the flanks, slowing down the pace of the offensive even more. It is clear that the organization of counterattacks was not up to par (but it is not for us to judge, the current cabinet prosecutors could not organize their similarities), concentration was weak, there was not enough air cover, units rushed into battle from the march, units. The mechanized corps were forced to go on the attack without suppressing the enemy's defenses with artillery, it was not enough, and the one that was behind. There was not enough of their own infantry to support the tank attack. This led to heavy losses of armored vehicles, the Germans quite easily burned old types of tanks. Tanks of new types were more effective, but they could not replace a full-fledged attack with the support of aviation, artillery and infantry. The myth of the invulnerability of tanks T-34, KV for the Wehrmacht just another guess. Like, if Stalin had ordered them to be “riveted” in sufficient quantities, then the enemy would have been stopped at the border. The Wehrmacht had 50 mm PAK-38 anti-tank guns that could penetrate even KV armor using sub-caliber shells. In addition, the Wehrmacht had anti-aircraft guns and heavy field guns, which also pierced the armor of the latest Soviet tanks. These tanks still required refinement, were technically unreliable, for example, the V-2 diesel engine, in 1941, its passport resource did not exceed 100 engine hours on the test bench and an average of 45–70 hours in the tank. This led to the frequent failure of new tanks on marches for technical reasons.

PAK-38

But it was the mechanized corps that saved the infantry from complete annihilation. They delayed the movement of the enemy, saved Leningrad from being captured on the move, and held back the advance of the German tank group E. von Kleist in the South-West direction.

The myth about the decrease in the combat capability of the command corps due to repression does not stand up to criticism. The percentage of those who were repressed from the general command staff is very small, the decrease in the quality of training of command personnel is associated with rapid growth armed forces of the USSR in the prewar period. If in August 1939 the Red Army numbered 1.7 million people, then in June 1941 - 5.4 million people. In the high command, a number of commanders came to the top, who later became the best commanders of the Second World War. A significant role was played by the lack of combat experience among a significant part of the Red Army, and the Wehrmacht was already an army that “tasted blood” and won a number of victories, the French army, for example, was then considered the best in Europe.

We must also understand the fact that the huge columns of prisoners of war, which are often shown on TV, may not be military personnel at all. The Wehrmacht in cities and other villages drove to the camps all those liable for military service from the age of 18. In addition, one must understand that not all front-line fighters are in the division - about half of them. The rest are artillerymen, signalmen, there were many builders (before the war, large-scale work was carried out to strengthen the border), military rear services. Getting into the environment, the units fought, tried to break through, while there was fuel, ammunition, food. The operational summary of Army Group Center for June 30 indicated: “A lot of trophies were captured, various weapons (mainly artillery guns), a large number various equipment and a lot of horses. The Russians are suffering huge losses in the dead, there are few prisoners. The "rear guards" were less trained, their mental training was also worse than that of the front line fighters, who mostly died with weapons in their hands. Or were injured. An impressive newsreel column of grooms, signalers and builders could easily be recruited from one corps, and entire armies were surrounded.

The Wehrmacht crushed the border divisions, the so-called "deep" corps 100-150 km from the border, they could not stop the enemy, the "weight categories" were too different, but they did the maximum - they won time and forced the enemy to throw into battle the units that they planned to introduce into fight in the second stage of the "blitzkrieg". A huge minus was the fact that the retreating Soviet units had to abandon a huge amount of equipment that ran out of fuel and which could, under other conditions, be restored. The mechanized corps burned down in the fire of war, and so far there was nothing to restore them - if in June and early July 1941 the Soviet command had mechanized corps in the hands, then by August - October they were gone. This was one of the causes of other disasters in the first year of the war: the Kyiv "boiler" in September 1941, the Vyazemsky, Bryansk and Melitopol "boilers" in October 1941.

German soldiers inspect the damaged and burnt-out T-20 Komsomolets artillery tractor. A burnt driver is seen, killed while trying to get out of the car. 1941

Sources:
Isaev A.V. Antisuvorov. Ten myths of World War II. M., 2004.
Isaev A.V., Drabkin A.V. June 22. Black day of the calendar. M., 2008.
Isaev A. V. Dubno 1941. The greatest tank battle of World War II. M., 2009.
Isaev A.V. "Boilers" of the 41st. WWII, which we did not know. M., 2005.
Isaev A.V. Unknown 1941. Stopped blitzkrieg. M., 2010.
Pykhalov I. The Great Slandered War. M., 2005.
Pykhalov I., Dyukov A. et al. Great slanderous war-2. We have nothing to repent of! M., 2008.

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According to the official version, the war for the USSR began on June 22, 1941. In a speech on the radio on June 3, 1941, and then in a report on the occasion of the 24th anniversary October revolution(October 6, 1941) Stalin named two factors that, in his opinion, led to our failures in the early stages of the war:

1) The Soviet Union lived a peaceful life, maintaining neutrality, and the mobilized and heavily armed German army treacherously attacked a peace-loving country on June 22;

2) our tanks, guns and planes are better than the German ones, but we had very few of them, much less than the enemy.

These theses are cynical and impudent lies, which does not prevent them from moving from one political and "historical" work to another. In one of the last Soviet Encyclopedic Dictionaries published in the USSR in 1986, we read: “Second World War(1939-1945) prepared by the forces of international imperialist reaction and began as a war between two coalitions of imperialist powers. Later, on the part of all states that fought against the countries of the fascist bloc, it began to accept the character of a just, anti-fascist war, which was finally determined after the entry into the war of the USSR(see Great Patriotic War 1941-1945)”. The thesis about the peaceful Soviet people, the gullible and naive Comrade Stalin, who was first “thrown” by the British and French imperialists, and then vilely and treacherously deceived by the villain Hitler, remained almost unchanged in the minds of many inhabitants and the writings of the post-Soviet “ scientists" of Russia.

Throughout its, fortunately, relatively short history, the Soviet Union has never been a peace-loving country in which "children slept peacefully." Having failed in their attempt to fan the fire of the world revolution, the Bolsheviks made a conscious bet on the war as the main instrument for solving their political and social tasks both within the country and abroad. They intervened in most major international conflicts (in China, Spain, Vietnam, Korea, Angola, Afghanistan...), helping the organizers of the national liberation struggle and the communist movement with money, weapons and so-called volunteers. The main goal of the industrialization carried out in the country since the 1930s was the creation of a powerful military-industrial complex and a well-armed Red Army. And it must be admitted that this goal is perhaps the only one that the Bolshevik government managed to achieve. It is no coincidence that, speaking at the May Day parade, which, according to the "peace-loving" tradition, opened with a military parade, People's Commissar of Defense K. Voroshilov said: "The Soviet people not only know how, but also love to fight!"

By June 22, 1941, the “peace-loving and neutral” USSR had been participating in World War II for almost two years, and participated as aggressor country.


Having signed the Molotov-va-Ribbentrop pact on August 23, which divided most of Europe between Hitler and Stalin, the Soviet Union launched an invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939. At the end of September 1939, 51% of the Polish territory was "reunited" with the USSR. At the same time, a lot of crimes were committed against the servicemen of the Polish army, which was debilitated by the German invasion and practically did not resist parts of the Red Army - Katyn alone cost the Poles almost 30 thousand officers' lives. Even more crimes were committed by the Soviet invaders against civilians, especially Polish and Ukrainian nationalities. Before the start of the war, the Soviet authorities in the reunified territories tried to drive almost the entire peasant population (and this is the vast majority of the inhabitants of Western Ukraine and Belarus) into collective farms and state farms, offering a “voluntary” alternative: “ collective farm or Siberia". Already in 1940, numerous echelons with deported Poles, Ukrainians and somewhat later Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians moved to Siberia. The Ukrainian population of Western Ukraine and Bukovina, which at first (in 1939-40) massively greeted Soviet soldiers with flowers, hoping for liberation from national oppression (by the Poles and Romanians, respectively), experienced all the charms of the Soviet authorities. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that in 1941 the Germans were already met with flowers here.

On November 30, 1939, the Soviet Union started a war with Finland, for which it was recognized as an aggressor and expelled from the League of Nations. This " unknown war"Hushed up in every possible way by Soviet propaganda, lays down an indelible shame on the reputation of the Land of Soviets. Under the far-fetched pretext of a mythical military danger, Soviet troops invaded Finnish territory. “Sweep the Finnish adventurers off the face of the earth! The time has come to destroy the vile booger that dares to threaten the Soviet Union!”- this is how journalists wrote on the eve of this invasion in the main party newspaper Pravda. It is interesting what kind of military threat to the USSR could this "boat" with a population of 3.65 million people and a poorly armed army of 130 thousand people.

When the Red Army crossed the Finnish border, the ratio of forces of the warring parties, according to official data, was as follows: 6.5:1 in personnel, 14:1 in artillery, 20:1 in aviation and 13:1 in tanks in favor of the USSR. And then the “Finnish miracle” happened - instead of a quick victorious war, the Soviet troops in this “winter war” suffered one defeat after another. According to the calculations of Russian military historians (“The stamp is classified and removed. Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and conflicts”, ed. by G. Krivosheev, M .: Voen-izdat, 1993), minimum losses The Red Army during the Finnish campaign amounted to 200 thousand people. Everything in the world is known in comparison. The land forces of the Soviet allies (England, the USA and Canada) in the battles for the liberation of Western Europe - from the landing in Normandy to the exit to El-bu - lost 156 thousand people. The occupation of Norway in 1940 cost Germany 3.7 thousand dead and missing soldiers, and the defeat of the army of France, Belgium and Holland cost 49 thousand people. Against this background, the horrendous losses of the Red Army in the Finnish war look eloquent.
Consideration of the "peace-loving and neutral" policy of the USSR in 1939-1940. raises another serious question. Who studied the methods of agitation and propaganda from whom in those days - Stalin and Molotov from Hitler and Goebbels, or vice versa? The political and ideological closeness of these methods is striking. Hitler's Germany carried out the Ansch-Lus of Austria and the occupation first of the Sudetenland, and then of the entire Czech Republic, reuniting the lands with the German population into a single Reich, and the USSR occupied half of the territory of Poland under the pretext of reuniting into a single state "fraternal Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples. Germany seized Norway and Denmark in order to protect itself from the attack of the "English aggressors" and ensure an uninterrupted supply of Swedish iron ore, and the Soviet Union, under a similar pretext of border security, occupied the Baltic countries and tried to capture Finland. This is how the peaceful policy of the USSR looked in general terms in 1939-1940, when Nazi Germany was preparing to attack the “neutral” Soviet Union.

Now about one more thesis of Stalin: “History did not let us have enough time, and we did not have time to mobilize and technically prepare for treacherous attack". It's a lie.

Documents declassified in the 1990s after the collapse of the USSR convincingly show the true picture of the country's "unpreparedness" for war. At the beginning of October 1939, according to official Soviet data, the fleet of the Soviet Air Force was 12677 aircraft and exceeded the total number of military aviation of all participants in the outbreak of the world war. By the number of tanks ( 14544 ) The Red Army at that moment was almost twice the size of the armies of Germany (3419), France (3286) and England (547) combined. The Soviet Union significantly outnumbered the warring countries not only in quantity but also in quality of weapons. In the USSR, by the beginning of 1941, the world's best fighter-interceptor MIG-3, the best guns and tanks (T-34 and KV), and already from June 21, the world's first multiple launch rocket launchers (the famous " Katyusha").

Nor is the assertion that by June 1941 Germany secretly pulled troops and military equipment to the borders of the USSR, providing a significant advantage in military equipment, preparing a perfidious surprise attack on a peaceful country, is also not true. According to German data, confirmed by European military historians ( see World War II, ed. R. Holmes, 2010, London), June 22, 1941, a three-million army of German, Hungarian and Romanian soldiers prepared for an attack on the Soviet Union, which had four tank groups with 3266 tanks and 22 fighter air groups (66 squadrons), which included 1036 aircraft.

According to declassified Soviet data, on June 22, 1941, on the western borders, the aggressor was opposed by the three and a half millionth Red Army with seven tank corps, which included 11029 tanks(more than 2000 tanks in the first two weeks were additionally brought into battle near Shepetovka, Lepel and Daugavpils) and with 64 fighter regiments (320 squadrons) armed with 4200 aircraft, to which on the fourth day of the war they transferred 400 aircraft, and by July 9 - more 452 aircraft. Outnumbering the enemy by 17%, the Red Army on the border had overwhelming superiority in military equipment - almost four times in tanks and five times in combat aircraft! The opinion that the Soviet mechanized units were equipped with obsolete equipment, and the Germans with new and effective ones, does not correspond to reality. Yes, in the Soviet tank units at the beginning of the war there were really a lot of tanks of outdated designs BT-2 and BT-5, as well as light tankettes T-37 and T-38, but almost 15% (1600 tanks) accounted for on the most modern medium and heavy tanks - T-34 and KV, which the Germans had no equal at that time. Out of 3266 tanks, the Nazis had 895 tankettes and 1039 light tanks. But only 1146 tanks could be categorized as medium. Both tankettes and light German tanks (PZ-II of Czech production and PZ-III E) were significantly inferior in their technical and tactical characteristics to even obsolete Soviet tanks, and the best German medium tank PZ-III J at that time did not go into what a comparison with the T-34 (it’s pointless to talk about comparison with the heavy KV tank).

The version about the surprise attack of the Wehrmacht does not look convincing. Even if we agree with the stupidity and naivety of the Soviet party and military leadership and Stalin personally, who categorically ignored intelligence data and Western intelligence services and overlooked the deployment of a three-million enemy army on the borders, even then, with the military equipment available to the opponents, the surprise of the first strike could ensure success in within 1-2 days and a breakthrough to a distance of no more than 40-50 km. Further, according to all the laws of hostilities, the temporarily retreating Soviet troops, using their overwhelming advantage in military equipment, they had to literally crush the aggressor. But events on the Eastern Front developed according to a completely different, tragic scenario ...

Catastrophe

Soviet historical science divided the history of the war into three periods. Least of all attention was paid to the first period of the war, especially the summer campaign of 1941. It was sparingly explained that the successes of the Germans were due to the suddenness of the attack and the unpreparedness of the USSR for war. In addition, as Comrade Stalin put it in his report (October 1941): “The Wehrmacht paid for every step deep into Soviet territory with gigantic irreparable losses” (a figure of 4.5 million killed and wounded was given, two weeks later in editorial of the Pravda newspaper, this figure of German losses increased to 6 million people). What actually happened at the beginning of the war?

From the dawn of June 22, Wehrmacht troops poured across the border along almost its entire length - 3000 km from the Baltic to the Black Seas. Armed to the teeth, the Red Army was defeated in a few weeks and thrown back hundreds of kilometers from the western borders. By mid-July, the Germans occupied the whole of Belarus, capturing 330,000 Soviet troops, capturing 3,332 tanks, 1,809 guns, and numerous other spoils of war. In almost two weeks, the entire Baltic was captured. In August-September 1941, most of Ukraine was in the hands of the Germans - in the Kiev pocket, the Germans surrounded and captured 665 thousand people, captured 884 tanks and 3718 guns. By the beginning of October, the German Army Group Center had almost reached the outskirts of Moscow. In the cauldron near Vyazma, the Germans captured another 663,000 prisoners.

According to German data, scrupulously filtered and refined after the war, for 1941 (the first 6 months of the war), the Germans captured 3806865 Soviet soldiers, captured or destroyed 21 thousand tanks, 17 thousand aircraft, 33 thousand guns and 6.5 million small arms.

The military archives declassified in the post-Soviet period generally confirm the volumes of military equipment abandoned and captured by the enemy. As for human losses, it is very difficult to calculate them in wartime, moreover, for obvious reasons, in modern Russia this topic is almost taboo. And yet, a comparison of data from military archives and other documents of that era allowed some seekers of the truth Russian historians(G. Kri-vo-sheev, M. Solonin and others) to determine with a sufficient degree of accuracy what for 1941, except for the surrender 3.8 million people, the Red Army suffered direct combat losses (killed and died from wounds in hospitals) - 567 thousand people, the wounded and sick - 1314 thousand people, deserters (who evaded captivity and the front) - from 1 to 1.5 million people and missing or wounded, abandoned in a stampede - about 1 million people The last two figures are determined from a comparison of the personnel of Soviet military units on June 22 and December 31, 1941, taking into account accurate data on the personnel replenishment of units for this period.

On January 1, 1942, according to Soviet data, 9147 were captured German soldiers and officers ( 415 times less than Soviet prisoners of war!). German, Romanian and Hungarian losses in manpower (killed, missing, wounded, sick) for 1941 amounted to 918 thousand people. - most of them were at the end of 1941 ( five times less than Comrade Stalin announced in his report).

Thus, the first months of the war on the Eastern Front led to the defeat of the Red Army and the almost complete collapse of the political and economic system created by the Bolsheviks. As the numbers of casualties, abandoned military equipment and vast territories captured by the enemy show, the dimensions of this catastrophe are unprecedented and completely dispel the myths about the wisdom of the Soviet party leadership, the high professionalism of the officer corps of the Red Army, the courage and stamina of Soviet soldiers and, most importantly, the -givenness and love for the Motherland of ordinary Soviet people. The army practically crumbled after the very first powerful blows of the German units, the top party and military leadership became confused and showed their complete incompetence, the officer corps was not ready for serious battles and the vast majority, having abandoned their units and military equipment, fled from the battlefield or surrendered to the Germans ; abandoned by officers, demoralized Soviet soldiers surrendered to the Nazis or hid from the enemy.

Direct confirmation of the painted gloomy picture are the decrees of Stalin, issued by him in the first weeks of the war, immediately after he managed to cope with the shock of a terrible catastrophe. Already on June 27, 1941, a decree was signed on the creation in the army units of the notorious barrage detachments(SO). In addition to existing special detachments NKVD, ZO existed in the Red Army until the autumn of 1944. The barrage detachments that were in each rifle division were located behind the regular units and detained or shot on the spot the soldiers who had fled from the front line. In October 1941, the 1st Deputy Head of the Department of Special Departments of the NKVD, Solomon Milshtein, reported to the Minister of the NKVD, Lavrenty Beria: “... from the beginning of the war to October 10, 1941, 657,364 servicemen who had fallen behind and fled from the front were detained by the special departments of the NKVD and the ZO” . In total, during the war years, according to Soviet official data, military tribunals condemned 994 thousand military personnel, of them 157593 - shot(7810 soldiers were shot in the Wehrmacht - 20 times less than in the Red Army). For voluntary surrender and cooperation with the invaders, they were shot or hanged 23 former Soviet generals(not counting dozens of generals who received camp terms).

Somewhat later, decrees were signed on the creation penal divisions, through which, according to official data, 427910 military personnel(penal units existed until June 6, 1945).

Based real figures and facts preserved in Soviet and German documents(decrees, secret reports, notes, etc.), one can draw a bitter conclusion: in no country that became a victim of Hitler's aggression, there was such moral decay, mass desertion and cooperation with the invaders, as in the USSR. For example, by the middle of 1944, the number of personnel of the military formations of “voluntary assistants” (the so-called Khivs), police and military units from Soviet military personnel and civilians exceeded 800 thousand people(only in the SS served more than 150 thousand former Soviet citizens).

The scale of the catastrophe that befell the Soviet Union in the first months of the war came as a surprise not only to the Soviet elite, but also to the leadership of Western countries and, to some extent, even to the Nazis. In particular, the Germans were not ready to "digest" such a number of Soviet prisoners of war - by mid-July 1941, the flow of prisoners of war exceeded the Wehrmacht's ability to protect and maintain them. On July 25, 1941, the command of the German army issues an order for the mass release of prisoners of a number of nationalities. Until November 13, by this order, 318770 Soviet prisoners of war (mainly Ukrainians, Belarusians and Balts).

catastrophic lesions Soviet troops, accompanied by mass surrender, desertion and cooperation with the enemy in the occupied territories, raise the question of the causes of these shameful phenomena. Liberal-democratic historians and political scientists often note the abundance of similarities in the two totalitarian regimes - Soviet and Nazi. But at the same time, one should not forget about their fundamental differences in attitude towards one's own people. Hitler, who came to power democratically, led Germany out of devastation and post-war humiliation, eliminated unemployment, built excellent roads, and conquered a new living space. Yes, in Germany they began to exterminate Jews and Gypsies, persecute dissidents, introduce the most severe control over the public and even private lives of citizens, but no one expropriated private property, did not massively shoot and imprison aristocrats, the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, did not drive them into collective farms and did not dispossess the peasants - the standard of living of the overwhelming majority of Germans was rising. And, most importantly, with their military, political and economic successes, the Nazis managed to inspire the majority of Germans with faith in the greatness and invincibility of their country and their people.

The Bolsheviks who seized power in tsarist Russia destroyed the best part of society and, having deceived almost all sectors of society, brought their peoples famines and deportations, and for ordinary citizens - forced collectivization and industrialization, which grossly broke the habitual way of life and lowered the standard of living of most ordinary people.

In 1937-1938. arrested by the NKVD 1345 thousand people, of which 681 thousand - shot. On the eve of the war, in January 1941, according to official Soviet statistics, 1930 thousand convicts were kept in the camps of the Gulag, another 462 thousand people. were in prisons, and 1200 thousand - in "special settlements" (total 3 million 600 thousand people). Therefore, the rhetorical question: “Could the Soviet people living in such conditions, with such orders and such power, massively show courage and heroism in battles with the Germans, defending with their breasts“ the socialist fatherland, their own communist party and the wise comrade Stalin? - hangs in the air, and a significant difference in the number of those who surrendered, deserters and military equipment abandoned on the battlefield between the Soviet and German armies in the first months of the war is convincingly explained by the different attitudes towards their citizens, soldiers and officers in the USSR and Nazi Germany.

Fracture.
We do not stand up for the price

In October 1941, Hitler, anticipating the final defeat of the Soviet Union, was preparing to receive the parade of German troops in the citadel of Bolshevism - on Red Square. However, events at the front and in the rear already at the end of 1941 began to develop not according to his scenario.

German losses in battles began to grow, logistical and food assistance from the allies (mainly the United States) to the Soviet army increased every month, military factories evacuated to the East began mass production of weapons. First, the autumn thaw, and then the severe frosts of the winter of 1941-1942, helped to slow down the offensive impulse of the fascist units. But most importantly, a radical change was gradually taking place in the attitude towards the enemy on the part of the people - soldiers, home front workers and ordinary citizens who found themselves in the occupied territories.

In November 1941, Stalin, in his report on the occasion of the next anniversary of the October Revolution, said a significant and this time absolutely truthful phrase: “ Hitler's stupid policy turned the peoples of the USSR into sworn enemies of today's Germany". These words formulate one of the most important reasons for the transformation of the Second World War, in which the Soviet Union participated from September 1939, in the Great Patriotic War, in which the leading role passed to the people. Obsessed with delusional racial ideas, narcissistic paranoid Hitler, not listening to the numerous warnings of his generals, declared the Slavs "subhuman", who should free up living space for the "Aryan race", and at first serve the representatives of the "master race". Millions of captured Soviet prisoners of war were herded like cattle to huge open areas, entangled with barbed wire, and starved and cold there. By the beginning of the winter of 1941, out of 3.8 million people. more than 2 million from such conditions and treatment were destroyed. The previously mentioned release of prisoners of a number of nationalities, initiated by the army command on November 13, 1941, was personally prohibited by Hitler. All attempts by anti-Soviet national or civil structures that collaborated with the Germans at the beginning of the war (Ukrainian nationalists, Cossacks, Balts, white émigrés) to create at least semi-independent state, military, public or regional structures were nipped in the bud. S. Bandera with part of the leadership of the OUN was sent to a concentration camp. The collective farm system was practically preserved; the civilian population was forcibly driven to work in Germany, massively taken hostage and shot on any suspicion. The terrible scenes of the genocide of Jews, the mass death of prisoners of war, the execution of hostages, public executions - all this in front of the eyes of the population - shocked the inhabitants of the occupied territories. During the first six months of the war, according to the most conservative estimates, 5-6 million Soviet civilians perished at the hands of the invaders (including about 2.5 million Soviet Jews). Not so much Soviet propaganda as news from the front, the stories of those who escaped from the occupied territories and other methods of “wireless telephone” of people's rumors convinced the people that the new enemy was waging an inhuman war of complete annihilation. An increasing number of ordinary Soviet people - soldiers, partisans, residents of the occupied territories and home front workers began to realize that in this war the question was posed unequivocally - to die or win. It was this that transformed the Second World War into the Great Patriotic (People's) War in the USSR.

The enemy was strong. The German army was distinguished by the stamina and courage of the soldiers, good weapons and a highly qualified general and officer corps. For another long three and a half years, stubborn battles continued, in which at first the Germans won local victories. But an increasing number of Germans began to understand that they would not be able to contain this impulse of almost universal popular fury. Defeat at Stalingrad, a bloody battle on Kursk Bulge, the growth of the partisan movement in the occupied territories, which, from a thin stream organized by the NKVD, turned into mass popular resistance. All this produced a radical change in the war on the Eastern Front.

Victories were given to the Red Army at a high price. This was facilitated not only by the bitterness of the resistance offered by the Nazis, but also by the "military skill" of the Soviet commanders. Brought up in the spirit of the glorious Bolshevik traditions, according to which the life of an individual, and even more so of a simple soldier, was worth nothing, many marshals and generals in their careerist rage (get ahead of a neighbor and be the first to report on the quick capture of another fortress, height or city) did not spare their lives soldier. Until now, it has not been calculated how many hundreds of thousands of lives of Soviet soldiers were worth the "rivalry" of Marshals Zhukov and Konev for the right to be the first to report to Stalin about the capture of Berlin.

From the end of 1941, the nature of the war began to change. The terrible ratio of human and military-technical losses of the Soviet and German armies have sunk into oblivion. For example, if in the first months of the war there were 415 Soviet prisoners of war per captured German, then since 1942 this ratio has approached one (out of 6.3 million captured Soviet soldiers, 2.5 million surrendered in the period from 1942 . to May 1945; during the same time, 2.2 million German soldiers surrendered). The people paid a terrible price for this Great Victory - the total human losses of the Soviet Union (10.7 million combat losses and 12.4 million civilians) in World War II amount to almost 40% of the losses of other participating countries this war (including China, which lost only 20 million people). Germany lost only 7 million 260 thousand people (of which 1.76 million were civilians).

The Soviet government did not calculate military losses - it was unprofitable for it, because the true dimensions, primarily of human losses, convincingly illustrated the "wisdom and professionalism" of Comrade Stalin personally and his party and military nomenklatura.

The last, rather gloomy and poorly clarified chord of the Second World War (still hushed up not only by post-Soviet, but also by Western historians) was the issue of repatriates. By the end of the war, about 5 million Soviet citizens remained alive outside the homeland (3 million people in the zone of action of the allies and 2 million people in the zone of the Red Army). Of these, about 3.3 million are Ostarbeiters. out of 4.3 million driven by the Germans for forced labor. However, about 1.7 million people survived. prisoners of war, including those who entered the military or police service with the enemy and voluntary refugees.

The return of repatriates to their homeland was not easy, and often tragic. About 500 thousand people remained in the West. (every tenth), many were returned by force. The allies, who did not want to spoil relations with the USSR and were bound by the need to take care of their subjects who found themselves in the zone of action of the Red Army, were often forced to yield to the Soviets in this matter, realizing that many of the forcibly returned repatriates would be shot or end their lives in the Gulag. In general, the Western allies tried to adhere to the principle of returning to the Soviet authorities repatriates who had Soviet citizenship or who had committed war crimes against the Soviet state or its citizens.

The topic of the “Ukrainian account” of the Second World War deserves special discussion. Neither in Soviet nor post-Soviet times was this topic seriously analyzed, with the exception of ideological swearing between supporters of the pro-Soviet "unrecorded history" and adherents of the national-democratic trend. Western European historians (at least, English ones in the previously mentioned book “The Second World War”) determine the loss of the civilian population of Ukraine at 7 million people. If we add here about 2 million more combat losses (in proportion to the part of the population of the Ukrainian SSR in the total population of the USSR), then we get terrible figure military losses of 9 million people. - this is about 20% of the total population of Ukraine at that time. None of the countries participating in the Second World War suffered such terrible losses.

In Ukraine, disputes between politicians and historians about the attitude towards the soldiers of the UPA do not stop. Numerous "admirers of the red flag" proclaim them traitors to the Motherland and accomplices of the Nazis, regardless of facts, documents, or the opinion of European jurisprudence. These fighters for "historical justice" stubbornly do not want to know that the vast majority of the inhabitants of Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and the Baltic States, who found themselves outside the zone of the Red Army in 1945, were not handed over to the Soviets by the Western allies because, according to international laws, they were not citizens of the USSR and did not commit crimes against a foreign homeland. So out of 10 thousand SS Galicia fighters taken prisoner by the Allies in 1945, the Soviets were given only 112 people, despite the unprecedented, almost ultimatum, pressure from representatives of the USSR Council of People's Commissars for repatriation. As for the ordinary soldiers of the UPA, they courageously fought against the German and Soviet invaders for their lands and independent Ukraine.

In conclusion, I would like to return once again to the problem of historical truth. Is it worth disturbing the memory of the fallen heroes and looking for the ambiguous truth in the tragic events of the Second World War? The point is not only and not so much in historical truth, but in the system of “Soviet values” that has been preserved in the post-Soviet space, including Ukraine. Lies, like rust, corrode not only history, but all aspects of life. "Unrewritten history", inflated heroes, "red flags", pompous military parades, renewed Leninist subbotniks, envious aggressive hostility towards the West lead directly to the preservation of the miserable unreformed "Soviet" industry, unproductive "kolkhoz" Agriculture, the “most fair” legal proceedings that are no different from Soviet times, the essentially Soviet (“thieves”) system for the selection of leadership personnel, the valiant “people’s” police and the “soviet” education and healthcare systems. The preserved system of perverted values ​​is largely to blame for the unique post-Soviet syndrome, which is characterized by the complete failure of political, economic and social reforms in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.