How and why Soviet people resisted "de-Stalinization"

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

It is believed that the personality cult of Joseph Stalin, who was born 140 years ago, was imposed from above and, after being exposed at the 20th Party Congress, came to naught. In fact, both among the people and among the intelligentsia there were many attempts to resist de-Stalinization. Although the state punished for this no less harshly than for liberal dissent.

The dissident movement in the USSR is today associated almost exclusively with a pro-Western opposition against Soviet power. Like those who came out to Red Square in 1968, during the suppression of the Prague Spring, with a poster "For our and your freedom", eight people. Or Valeria Novodvorskaya, who scattered anti-Soviet leaflets in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses a year later. In an extreme case - with "honest Marxists" who criticized the Stalinist and later orders, like the historian Roy Medvedev.

Meanwhile, there was a powerful opposition to the CPSU of the era of thaw and stagnation from a completely different side: they say, it degenerated, crushed, rotten, bureaucrats came to power and betrayed the Lenin-Stalin cause. And in the kitchens millions of people reasoned this way, thousands of the most active ones came to the attention of law enforcement agencies, and some went on to political struggle - they carried out mass agitation, even created corresponding circles and underground organizations.

The latter evoked an especially quick response from the special services. “Dissidents on the contrary” received considerable sentences, going to prisons or mental hospitals. And no Western voices stood up for them, and no one exchanged such "hooligans" (like the writer Vladimir Bukovsky for the Chilean communist Luis Corvalan) …

In the reference book "58.10 Supervision Proceedings of the USSR Prosecutor's Office 1953-1991", which contains information about criminal cases for anti-Soviet propaganda, you can find many such examples.

Wine and blood at the monuments to the leader

On February 25, 1956, Nikita Khrushchev read out his famous report "On the Cult of the Personality". Despite the secrecy, the sensational news quickly spread throughout the country. For obvious reasons, it caused an especially sharp reaction in Georgia. Popular unrest began with mourning events on March 5 on the occasion of the three-year anniversary of Stalin's death.

The laying of wreaths and spontaneous rallies, accompanied by the local tradition of watering the monuments with wine, took place in Tbilisi, Gori and Sukhumi. Those present sang songs, swore allegiance to the leader and even appealed to the Chinese Marshal Zhu Te, who was then visiting Georgia. He calmly dispatched several members of his delegation to lay flowers.

At a rally in Gori on March 9, a participant in the war I. Kukhinadze, an officer of the military registration and enlistment office, scolded Anastas Mikoyan (the Armenian who held the post of first deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers was especially disliked in Georgia, considering, along with Khrushchev, one of the main culprits of what was happening), demanded not transport Stalin's body to Gori, and leave in Moscow, since he is the leader of the entire Soviet people, he said that the army would support the people and could provide weapons.

And the head of the department of the district executive committee of workers' deputies T. Banetishvili, out of dissatisfaction with the exposure of the personality cult, sent two anonymous letters to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, in which she cursed the leaders of the party.

In Tbilisi, on March 9, a crowd of thousands tried to take the telegraph in Lenin's way in order to notify Moscow and the world about their demands. Several young people who entered the building as delegates were detained, after which the first clashes with the police took place. It turned out that the majority of local law enforcement officers sympathize with the protesters.

For example, policeman Khundadze reported that citizen Kobidze spoke at the monument to Stalin, read a poem of his own composition "He did not die", and then tore up and threw away the portrait of the same hated Mikoyan. But the Interior Ministry officers asked Khundadze to withdraw the statement, and then they even arrested him for libel. As a result, a few months later the case was dismissed by the Supreme Court of the Georgian SSR.

The security officers were instructed to urgently solve the problem. The suppression of the riots was supervised by the then head of the Leningrad regional department of the KGB, General Sergei Belchenko, as well as by Lieutenant Colonel Philip Bobkov, the future head of the 5th department of the Committee, and then the head of the analytical department of the Most group of oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky. According to Belchenko's recollections, the unrest quickly took on a nationalist character, slogans were heard about the separation of Georgia from the USSR, as well as against the Russians and Armenians. It is difficult to judge how objective the general is here, however, it is obvious that the reason for what happened lay precisely in Khrushchev's report.

The riots were stopped with the participation of the army. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Georgian USSR, 15 people were killed and 54 wounded, about 200 were arrested. In the recollections of the participants in the events, the number of victims grows to several hundred, even machine guns shooting at the crowd appear, which is an obvious stretch. But the fact that dissatisfaction with de-Stalinization in Georgia was general in nature is beyond doubt.

And the nobleman Khrushchev rules the country, And every Furtseva too

In June 1957, there was an unsuccessful speech by the old Stalinist associates Vyacheslav Molotov, Georgy Malenkov and Lazar Kaganovich against Khrushchev, whom they tried to remove from leading posts. With the support of Marshal Georgy Zhukov and the party nomenclature, Nikita Sergeevich managed to repulse the attack. They were removed from all posts and expelled from the CPSU. Molotov was sent as ambassador to Mongolia, Malenkov was sent to command the power plant in Ust-Kamenogorsk, and Kaganovich was sent to the construction trust in Asbest.

However, the "anti-party group" found many supporters who expressed their indignation in different ways.

Some engaged in careless conversations, which vigilant citizens notified the competent authorities.

Bokuchava, a student of the Leningrad Institute of Physical Education, having listened to the radio news about the plenum, said that “Molotov, Malenkov and Kaganovich are very popular among the people. If Molotov throws a cry in Georgia, then all Georgians will follow him."

Not working and not quite sober Gimatdinov on June 19, 1957, at a trolleybus stop in the sunny capital of Kyrgyzstan, Frunze shouted: "Khrushchev offended Malenkov, Molotov, they let the people live, I will kill Khrushchev!"

He was echoed by the barman Biryukov from Zelenogorsk, who on August 5, 1957, also drunk, said that "he would only leave Molotov, Malenkov and Kaganovich, and hang the rest."

Others themselves wrote to the higher party organs.

School teacher N. Sitnikov from Moscow region in September-October 1957 sent six anonymous letters to the Central Committee of the party, in which he called its policy anti-Leninist, wrote that the government feeds the people with fairy tales instead of food, and expressed disagreement with the decision on the "anti-party group."

N. Printsev from the Smolensk region wrote to the Central Committee of the CPSU that Khrushchev was "a traitor to the Soviet people, who goes to all the demands of the US imperialists."

And the chief mechanic of the Leningrad plant V. Kreslov sent a message personally to the chairman of the Council of Ministers Nikolai Bulganin on behalf of the Union of Struggle Against You, which includes “old, sincere revolutionaries, Leninists-Bolsheviks”: “Khrushchev is intolerant of the working people of Russia … bosses - slandered the leader of the peoples of Stalin."

Moscow freelance artist Shatov circulated his poems:

“The rulers have removed the people from the accounts, their skin is more dear to them. And the country is ruled by the nobleman Khrushchev, and every Furtseva too”.

Some made flyers and even made graffiti.

In the Tambov region, on July 4, 1957, the Fateevs made and scattered 12 leaflets around the village against the decree on an anti-party group that fell victim to the "careerist Khrushchev."

The next day in Leningrad, the worker Vorobyov pasted a proclamation on the factory advertisement window: “Khrushchev is a man thirsty for power…. We will demand that Malenkov stay with the government, as well as Molotov."

On the same day, July 5, in Orel, 17 inscriptions appeared about the reinstatement of Molotov, Malenkov and Kaganovich at their former posts, of which the local workers Nizamov and Belyaev were exposed.

"Nikita wanted to take Stalin's place for himself, but Lenin did not order the guard to let him in."

The removal of Stalin's body from the mausoleum, as you know, was carried out on the night of October 30-31, 1961 - exactly on Halloween. This was the order of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU at the suggestion of the first secretary of the Leningrad regional party committee, Ivan Spiridonov, who in turn received such a "mandate" from the workers of the Kirov and Nevsky factories.

They buried Stalin specially under cover of night, fearing popular demonstrations. And although there were no mass protests, there were individual ones.

Retired Colonel V. Khodos from Kursk sent a letter criticizing the Soviet system and threatening to kill Khrushchev. After being interrogated, he explained his act by "a strong emotional excitement that arose in him in connection with the decision to transfer Comrade Stalin's ashes from the mausoleum and the renaming of some cities."

And a handyman Sergeev from the village of Yuzhno-Kurilskoye, Sakhalin Oblast, planted the following verses in the building of a local school:

What kind of punishments followed such freethinking? The severity of the punishment was different.

Worker Kulakov from the Irkutsk Region, who wrote in 1962 in a letter to Nikita Sergeevich that "the bulk of Soviet people consider you an enemy of the Lenin-Stalin party … During the life of Comrade Stalin, he kissed his ass, and now you pour dirt on him", received a year of imprisonment …

The chairman of a collective farm from near Kiev, a member of the CPSU Boris Loskutov in the same 1962 th for the memorandum "Long live the Leninist government without the talker and traitor Khrushchev" thundered into the zone for four years.

Well, E. Morokhina, who scattered leaflets across Syktyvkar: “Khrushchev is an enemy of the people. Fat piglet, he'd rather die,”and got off lightly at all. Since the "criminal" turned out to be a teenage schoolgirl, the case ended up with the transfer of bail to the Komsomol activists.

Stalinism and transport problems

All these are examples of the spontaneous creativity of the masses, and if we talk about underground organizations, then first of all it is necessary to name the Fetisov Group, whose members called themselves National Bolsheviks.

Moscow scientists Alexander Fetisov and Mikhail Antonov worked at the Institute for Complex Transport Problems. Starting with the question of the reasons for the ineffectiveness of the introduction of new technology, they came to the conclusion that the economy of the USSR is "insufficiently Soviet", "insufficiently socialist", that it is necessary to increase the role of the working class in management. In the work "Building Communism and the Problems of Transport" it was said about the possibility of building communism faster than it was envisaged by the "revisionist" Khrushchev program.

In a conversation with the author of these lines, Antonov characterized National Bolshevism as a desire to improve Soviet power with the decisive role of the Russian people. “I am a Soviet, Russian, Orthodox person,” he argued. "And neither I, nor Fetisov have ever opposed the Soviet regime, as the dissidents did."

Nevertheless, the members of the group, to whom a number of intellectuals from the capital joined in the 60s, actively opposed de-Stalinization. Fetisov even left the CPSU in protest. Soon they began distributing leaflets in the capital's high-rise buildings, accusing the party of rebirth. The KGB, which had been watching them for a long time, arrested four people in 1968, who were convicted and then sent to special psychiatric hospitals.

Fetisov left the psychiatric hospital four years later as a completely sick person and died in 1990. And Mikhail Fedorovich Antonov, despite the fact that he is already over 90 years old, continues to engage in journalism and public activities, without changing his convictions and having considerable authority in patriotic circles.

This article takes only one aspect of “reverse dissidence,” directly related to the name of Stalin. And the phenomenon itself was much broader. For example, a separate trend was the Cultural Revolution in China, which excited the minds of the Soviet students. According to the historian Alexei Volynts, dozens of underground Maoist groups operated in the USSR in the 1960s and 1970s, including in Leningrad. There were also supporters of the ideas of the Albanian leader, the faithful Stalinist Enver Hoxha….

In general, the Soviet society of the 50s-80s was not at all as homogeneous as we imagine. And it is all the more wrong to reduce the complex processes taking place in it to the confrontation between liberal knights-human rights defenders and a bureaucratic leviathan … It seems that the phenomenon of “reverse dissidence” is still waiting for its thoughtful researcher.

PS. The title photo shows a poster with Stalin in Balakhna, hung on the occasion of the 140th anniversary of Stalin's birth. Those who hung up declare that he was the largest poster with Stalin in Russia.

In my opinion, the main criterion should not be the size, but the beauty of the performance.