New monument to Stalin. Soviet monumental propaganda

On the “Stalin Line” in the Pskov region, a bust of Joseph Stalin was erected on the initiative and financial support of the Russian Military Historical Society.

On February 22, 2016, on the territory of the branch of the State Budgetary Institution of Public Institution "Military Historical Museum-Reserve" "Memorial complex "Stalin Line", on the initiative and financial support of the Russian Military Historical Society, a bust of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the USSR Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was erected.

"Stalin Line", was in the 20th century one of the most powerful systems of military-technical fortifications, which are on a par with the French Maginot Line, the German Siegfried Line, and the Finnish Mannerheim Line.”

Complex "Ostrovsky fortified area" is a fragment of the “Stalin Line” - a system of key defensive structures on the “old” (that is, before 1940) border of the USSR, consisting of fortified areas (UR) from the Karelian Isthmus to the shores of the Black Sea. The complex consists of fortifications from the late 30s in the form of bunkers with field fortifications - trenches, dugouts, various anti-personnel and anti-tank obstacles and obstacles, a collection of rare equipment, a memorial military burial,” the museum’s website reports.

Today they are quite careful about installing monuments to Stalin, for example, in Saratov we have Victory Park - an open-air museum, where they do not dare to erect a monument to him, among our great commanders: Alexander Nevsky, Mikhail Kutuzov, Fyodor Ushakov, Pyotr Nakhimov, Alexander Suvorov, Peter the Great, Dmitry Donskoy, Georgy Zhukov, Konstantin Rokossovsky.

Victory Park in the Great Patriotic War, without the author of Victory... It’s strange, to say the least, because... and Zhukov, and even more so Rokossovsky, could not imagine Victory without Stalin.
In my opinion, there should be another bust in this row, both from the point of view of historical truth, and from the point of view of the re-Sovietization taking place among us. Bust mounted with support The Russian Military Historical Society is clear evidence of this. Perhaps this event was a hidden signal to pay back what was deserved. “For the Motherland, for Stalin” is it not a shame to say again?

Other “voices” are also heard, Ramzan Kadyrov stated :
« kadyrov_95 Seventy-two years ago, Joseph Stalin deported the Chechen and Ingush peoples. The operation was led by Lavrentiy Beria. And may they both be damned forever and ever! Millions of soldiers and officers died on the fronts of the Second World War, and Stalin sent 120 thousand people to massacre the Chechen people. During the operation, about 800 residents of Chechnya were shot. The losses of the people exceeded 54% of their number. Stalin and Beria also dealt with a dozen other nations».

I would remind Ramzan that there really is a tragedy of the Chechen and other peoples, just as there is a Victory over the absolute devils, which was given to the Soviet people with great blood. If we had then lost the Caucasus (historians claim that the threat was quite real), it is not known what the outcome of the war would have been. And did the war in the Caucasus end after the Second World War? I urge you to consider not your individual grief, which exists, but also the general grief of the entire Soviet Union. Ramzan himself knows that in war, victory and tragedy are shoulder to shoulder. When defending your Fatherland, what can you sacrifice and where is the measure for this when everything is at stake? Everything for the front, everything for Victory!

The figure of Stalin cannot be separated from the Victory, which we honor throughout the country, just as it is impossible to separate it from repression. But in the end, our entire multinational country must agree, honestly, that Stalin is the most complex historical figure, where the milestones of history, victorious and tragic, are intertwined. They need to be understood based on facts and given an unambiguous assessment. And put an end to the curses and crazy praises.

Here's what they wrote about this sculpture:

“In this sculpture, made in 1939, the artist revealed an image of high humanity, humanity, and warmth. In his left hand, Stalin holds a roll of paper, his right hand, bent at the elbow, is tucked over the side of his uniform. The hem of the overcoat covers the legs, smoothly flowing around the body. For this monument, highly appreciated by the Soviet people, the artist was awarded the Stalin Prize of the first degree."
(excerpt from the book “Sculptures and Monuments in Moscow”, N. Sobolevsky, 1947)

The same monument in the courtyard of the Tretyakov Gallery

This sculpture by S.D. Merkulova, 3.5 meters high, made in red granite, was installed in front of the State Tretyakov Gallery in 1939. It is interesting that earlier there was a sculpture of Lenin in the same place, and then a sculpture of Tretyakov appeared, which exists to this day.

“Compared to the monuments of the outport and the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, in this sculptural image of I.V. Stalin, the artist modeled Stalin’s facial features more carefully and sharply, paid more attention to details and portrait resemblance, synthesized the image less, making it simpler and more understandable to the mass audience” (excerpt from the book “Sculptures and Monuments in Moscow”, N. Sobolevsky, 1947 G.).

Here's what they wrote about this sculpture of Stalin:

“One of the perfect works of Soviet sculpture depicting Stalin is the granite monument created by S.D. Merkulov for the outport of the Moscow-Volga canal.

The features of the leader of the socialist Motherland are conveyed in this work with great expressiveness. Comrade Stalin, dressed in an overcoat, stands with his hand over the side of his military suit in a characteristic gesture. The frontally deployed figure of the leader contains in its clear completeness the enormous power of realistic truth about the one to whom the best thoughts and aspirations of the Soviet people and all working humanity are dedicated, about the one who is sung by poets, ashugs, storytellers, about the one who leads the great socialist power" (excerpt from the book "Sculptures and Monuments in Moscow", N. Sobolevsky, 1947)

Lenin and Stalin in Gorki. 1937 Work of Ukrainian sculptors Yu.I. Belostotsky, G.L. Pivovarov and E.M. Friedman. Kharkiv. The monument was located at the beginning of the central alley in the Park named after. Gorky in Kharkov,

The first copy of this monument was installed in 1937 in Moscow, in the park of the Khimki railway station.
This monument was recommended from above as a model, was cast from concrete and was installed in almost all regional centers of the USSR. It shows two leaders sitting on a bench. The fact is that this monument was a success at an art exhibition in Moscow in 1938. According to rumors, Stalin himself liked him, and in different cities they hastened to please the leader of peoples. The installation of this paired monument began en masse in the late 1930s. On this monument, Lenin was depicted sitting in a relaxed pose, crossing his legs, placing his left hand behind Stalin's back, and Stalin was depicted slightly bending over, holding in his left hand some sheets of paper (possibly a map), going down to his feet. There were similar monuments, slightly different from the original. So, for example, in Kirovograd, at an agricultural exhibition, the leaders were depicted a little differently: Lenin’s legs were side by side, and not one on top of the other, and Stalin with a certain plan on his right knee. In the second variation of this monument, an open book appears in Lenin’s hand. In the third variation of the monument, the leaders talk to each other without any papers in front of them.

In the post-war years, a second version of the monument “Lenin and Stalin in Gorki” appeared. It was a copy of the previous one, with the only difference that Lenin’s legs were covered with an overcoat, while Stalin’s overcoat was thrown over his left shoulder; Stalin's legs are also covered. This option was slightly less common than the previous two. Such sculptures were located, in particular, in Alchevsk, Bendery, Grodno, Kirovograd, Lutsk, Minsk, Odessa, Syzran and other cities.

Monument to Stalin on the central square. Gori, Georgia. Sculptor Shota Mikitidze, architects Archil and Zakhary Kurdiani. Installed in 1952

Survived during N.S. Khrushchev’s campaign to dismantle monuments to Stalin. As Irakli Kandareli stated: “they wanted to remove the monument in 1956 and even tried to do it, but then all of Gori rose to its feet, and nothing happened. The population pitched tents and guarded the monument day and night so that it would not be quietly demolished.” This monument was demolished on the night of June 24-25, 2010 and moved to the courtyard of the Stalin Museum in Gori.

During the occupation of Kyiv, this monument was destroyed by the Nazis.

Kazakhstan, Ikan village, monument near the former village council building.

This monument was not demolished under Khrushchev - a resident of the village of Ikan opposed it. It has survived to this day. They decided to move the village council building - closer to the highway, to the new center of the village. The old building was bought by a local resident, along with a monument to Stalin and stands on which portraits of leading collective farmers were hung. Before his death, he looked after the monument, and now his son Alisher Akhmetov does it.

Russia - 93
Ukraine - 10
Georgia - 35
South Ossetia - 3
Lithuania - 3
Estonia - 2
Azerbaijan - 2
Belarus - 5
Kazakhstan - 3
Tajikistan - 2
Uzbekistan - 2
Czech Republic - 5
China - 3
Netherlands - 3
USA - 2

In the post-Soviet period, old monuments to Stalin were restored and new ones were installed, primarily in many cities and towns of Georgia (Kutaisi, Zestafoni, Zemo-Alvani, Sighnaghi, Dusheti, Khashuri, Tkibuli and other places), Dagestan (Chokh), North and South Ossetia (Vladikavkaz, Mozdok, Beslan, Chikola, Ardon, Mizur, Digora, Alagir, Zmeyskaya, Nogir, Kadgaron).

In addition to North Ossetia, monuments to Stalin in Russia are installed in public places in Moscow, Vladimir, Sochi, Novocherkassk, Nizhny Novgorod, Atkarsk, Mirny, Chelyabinsk (school-gymnasium No. 2), in the village of Taiginka (Kyshtym, Chelyabinsk region), now a monument from Taiginka moved to the city of Satka, Orenburg, Tambov, Chita, Penza, on Oktyabrskaya Square in the city of Ishim, in Vyritsa (Leningrad Region), in the Tyumen Region, in the museum of the Skuratovo railway station in the Tula Region and other places.

Most of the modern monuments to Stalin are in North Ossetia, as well as newly discovered monuments in Orenburg, Penza, pp. Sadovoe and Tambov, are typical busts cast from concrete according to the model of the Ossetian sculptor M. N. Dzboev.

In the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War on Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow there is a bust of Stalin as one of the commanders of the Red Army. The issue of installing a monument to Stalin on Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow was discussed. In 2009, according to the chief architect of Moscow Alexander Kuzmin, it was planned to return the monument to Stalin to the lobby of the Moscow metro station "Kurskaya", but the former mayor of Moscow Yu. M. Luzhkov denied this statement.

In Kaliningrad in 2005, on the stele of the memorial to 1,200 guardsmen of the 11th Guards Army who died during the storming of Koenigsberg, the Medal “For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945” was engraved. with Stalin's profile.

In the village of Starye Burasy, Saratov region, there are two full-length monuments to Lenin and Stalin standing next to each other. It is unknown whether these are new monuments or those preserved from Soviet times.

In the village of Konevo, Arkhangelsk region, near the local substation, a life-size monument to Stalin has been preserved. Most likely, this is not a new monument, but an old one, preserved since the 1950s.

In the early 2000s (in 2001 and 2003) there were several attempts to install a bust of Stalin on the central square of Makhachkala, for which permission was received from the city administration, but it subsequently revoked it. In 2005, a memorial plaque with a bas-relief of Stalin was installed on one of the buildings located on the Station Square of Makhachkala, in memory of the stay of I.V. Stalin at the Port-Petrovsky Station in 1920.

In the village of Lashmanka, Cheremshansky district of Tatarstan, there is a full-length monument to Stalin (model from the 1930s).

In the village of Dolina, Ussuri District, Primorsky Territory, busts of Lenin and Stalin were installed in a private courtyard called the “Alley of Communism”.

On May 9, 2012, a bust of J.V. Stalin was installed in the center of the village of Novokayakent, Kayakent region of Dagestan.

Outside of Georgia, Russia, South Ossetia, monuments to Stalin have been installed or restored in some places in Belarus (in the cities of Slutsk, Svisloch), Lithuania (in the city of Druskininkai), Azerbaijan (in the villages of Alibeyli in the Gakh region and Astrokhanovka in the Oguz region), Ukraine, as well as Albania , the Netherlands (in the cities of Amsterdam, The Hague) and in many cities and towns of China (in the cities of Harbin, Shenyang, Changchun, etc.).

On May 5, 2010, in the Ukrainian Zaporozhye, communists erected a bust of Stalin on the territory of the headquarters of the regional party committee. This caused a mixed reaction both among the citizens of Zaporozhye and in Ukraine as a whole. The bust was blown up by unknown assailants on December 31, 2010. The communists restored the monument to Stalin for the next anniversary of the October Revolution. On November 7, 2011, the monument to Stalin was unveiled in its original location. Along with him, a monument to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was erected.

In June 2012, a monument to Stalin was erected in Bratislava (Slovakia) on Stura Square

Near Odessa, an open-air Museum of Monuments of the USSR was opened, in which monuments to Lenin and Stalin are located. On the eve of Victory Day over Germany, on May 8, 2013, a monument was opened - a bust of Stalin in Yakutsk, on the territory of one of the diamond mining enterprises of the republic. It is the third in Yakutia. The first was opened in 2005 in the city of Mirny, and the second in 2009 in the village of Amga, Amginsky district of Yakutia. The opening of the monument caused protests from human rights activists and the local Yakut and Lena diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church.

On September 1, 2013, in a solemn ceremony, on the initiative of the public organization “Stalineli”, a monument to Stalin was unveiled in Telavi (Georgia). However, on September 7, city authorities demanded that the monument be dismantled within five days. The monument was dismantled on December 31, 2014.

In Volgograd, a new monument was erected on the territory of the Prichal Recreation Center.

On February 4, 2015, in Crimea, in Yalta, on the territory of the Livadia sanatorium, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Yalta Conference, a monument to the “Great Three” Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt was erected.

Granite, gray 1930s – 1938.
Park of Arts "Museon" on Krymskaya embankment.

One of the early monuments to Stalin, later replicated throughout the country in numerous copies. This represents Merkurov's first appeal to the image of the Soviet leader. The history of the monument is not easy to trace, because for many years this side of the sculptor’s work remained in the shadows for ideological reasons. Let's try to do this based on the fragmentary information collected.

The model was presumably created in 1935 - early 1936 (photo 2). For the first time this sculptural image “appears” on the May holidays of 1936, when the figures of Lenin and Stalin, made of some durable lightweight material, were installed on Teatralnaya Square in Moscow as a temporary decoration for the May celebrations (photo 3, 4).

A sculpture of Stalin, made of plaster or cement, decorated the final hall of the Soviet Pavilion at the Paris Exhibition of 1937 (photo 5). After the exhibition, it was transferred to the All-Russian Agricultural Exhibition and installed in the Far East pavilion, where it remained until the pavilion was reconstructed in 1950 (photo 6).

An enlarged copy of the sculpture, made of huge granite blocks, was installed on the canal named after. Moscow in Dubna in 1937.

The pink granite sculpture of Stalin was carved in 1938 for the Soviet Pavilion at the New York World's Fair (1939). Sculptures of leaders flanked the large epic canvas “Happy People of the Land of the Soviets” in the introductory hall of the pavilion (photo 7, 8). After the end of the exhibition, the pavilion was dismantled and transported to Moscow, where it was decided to restore it on the territory of the Central Park of Culture and Culture named after. Gorky. Because of the outbreak of war, this idea had to be abandoned, and the sculpture of Stalin was installed on a pedestal to decorate the Exhibition of captured weapons that opened in 1943 at the Central Park of Culture and Culture (photo 9). After the exposure of Stalin’s personality cult, the sculpture was put into storage, and in 1992 it was placed on display at the Muzeon Art Park, which opened on the Crimean embankment (photo 1, 10, 11).

It is also known that for the All-Russian Agricultural Exhibition, which opened in 1939, Merkurov made a copy of Stalin’s sculpture from short-lived material. It was installed on the square. Collective farms in front of the Main Pavilion.

The sculpture of Stalin in question was especially often replicated in the late 30s; the numerous copies that appeared then in most cases have nothing to do with Merkurov.

This is how the sculptor himself described his work on the image of Stalin in a 1939 magazine article, in a traditionally apologetic tone: “There are such short, clear, laconic definitions that immediately illuminate a phenomenon or image, just as lightning at night illuminates the entire landscape in an instant, and the area where he is is immediately clear to a person. This definition was for me the ending of Henri Barbusse’s book “Stalin”: “... And whoever you are, the best in your destiny is in the hands of that other person who is also awake for everyone and works - a man with the head of a scientist, with the face of a worker, in the clothes of a simple soldier."

After reading these words, I immediately imagined in all clarity (as it seemed to me) an image that I had thought a lot about. The material that could express the properties of this image became clear to me.

This material was granite: powerful, clear, eternal and simple in its forms.

For several years I have been working hard on the image of Stalin. Every work, every bust, every figure serves as a new step leading to the perfection of the image of the leader.

The first experiments were indecisive. Numerous photographs not only did not help my work, but often confused me. Not a single photograph gave a complete picture of the great man.

I eagerly listened to the stories of people who talked with Stalin, and in those cases when I had the opportunity to see Comrade Stalin directly, I tried not to miss anything, to carry in my memory everything that struck my mind and heart. Once I was lucky enough to observe Comrade Stalin for two long hours, not only to see, but also to talk with him. This was while viewing the anniversary exhibition dedicated to the 15th anniversary of the Red Army.

Everything great is simple. This was confirmed here too. During two hours of being together with Joseph Vissarionovich, it became clear to me: there is no need to complicate the image. In my search, I have so far followed the wrong path.

It seemed to me before that I had to convey a psychological image in all its complexity, that all the greatness was in the complexity of this image. The complexity had to be reflected in everything: in the treatment of the head, in the entire figure. I pictured Stalin walking against the wind, his overcoat open and his hand drawn back.

Now it has become clear: no details, no details. The main and main thing is the simple movement of the entire figure, everything is subordinated to this movement. The head is the cradle of thought. A simple overcoat, a modest gesture - a hand placed over the side of the overcoat - allowed me to attract all the viewer's attention to the head and face of the leader.

In the second version of the statue, I tried to get rid of unnecessary details and calm the entire composition. The statue turned out to be more collected, more monumental. The monument located at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition corresponds to this idea.

In the last polished granite statue, now in the studio, I simplified the composition even further and the work turned out to be even more convincing.”(S. Merkurov. The image of a leader. Magazine “Smena”, No. 324, December 1939).

Photo 2.

60 years ago, on March 5, 1953, a man who wanted to be a simple priest passed away and became the father of the Russian people and the restorer of Orthodoxy.

Stalin: “Never think that you can divide people into purely red and purely white”
Of his predecessors on the Russian throne, Stalin valued Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great most of all. It is not for nothing that Eisenstein’s film about the first of them and Alexei Tolstoy’s novel about the second were created precisely in the Stalin era. The Red Emperor was endowed with an amazingly subtle sense. He understood with a sniff who he would have to stand with, and got rid of all the critics with one phrase: “They will put a mountain of garbage on my grave, but the wind of history will disperse it!”

Since perestroika times, the image of Stalin the tyrant, Stalin the criminal and Stalin the fool has been introduced into the mass consciousness. I didn’t foresee, didn’t think through, didn’t appreciate genetics and cybernetics in time. Shame on him! Two from the spiritual heirs of the Trotskyists-Zinovievites! If they were in his place, they would have appreciated it and foreseen it! Only it was Stalin’s critics who destroyed the Soviet Union miserably. I can imagine what would have happened if not Stalin, but, for example, Gorbachev with Yeltsin and Kravchuk, who joined them, would have led the USSR in 1941. I guarantee that Guderian would have stopped only in Kamchatka. Mikhail Sergeevich would say: “The process has begun,” and Leonid Makarovich: “It’s all right.” Well, Yeltsin would have added in his own style: “Russians, sorry, I couldn’t.” And I would drink 200 grams...

The average person, whose brains are filled with Gorbatenko-Gorbachev and Kutse-Korotichev cliches, is afraid to admit: Stalin was really a leader and really a teacher. As Konstantin Simonov said already in Khrushchev’s times: “There was a cult. But there was also a personality.”

The main argument. Stalin took over the country destroyed by the revolution and made it a superpower with advanced technology

Nikita Khrushchev debunked the personality cult of his predecessor not because he was a democrat, but out of ordinary human envy. He knew that he would never be able to compare with Stalin - his personality clearly did not reach Stalin’s in scale. It was only for this reason that the cunning clown Nikitka debunked the owner from the rostrum of the 20th Congress. He remembered his puppyish horror when he demanded from Stalin in the late 1930s, at the height of repressions, to increase the quota for “enemies of the people” for Ukraine and received in response Stalin’s resolution: “Calm down, you fool!”

By the way, not everyone supported Khrushchev in his exposing courage. Felix Chuev in the book “One Hundred Conversations with Molotov” cites the following episode: “At a large meeting in the Kremlin, Khrushchev said: “The Chief of the General Staff Sokolovsky is present here, he will confirm that Stalin did not understand military issues. Am I right?" “No way, Nikita Sergeevich,” answered Marshal of the Soviet Union V. Sokolovsky. In the same book by Chuev there is another evidence. When Khrushchev asked Rokossovsky to write some nasty stuff about Stalin, he replied: “Comrade Stalin is a saint to me.” Rokossovsky’s words are all the more significant because he was one of those who, during the repressions, went to prison, from which he was released literally on the eve of the war, in which he happened to become, along with Zhukov, the most famous Soviet commander. Rokossovsky believed that it was easy to resolve any military issues with Stalin - the leader delved into everything, had a sound judgment about everything. The professionals spoke to him in the language of professionals.

Was Stalin uneducated? No. He studied well at the Tiflis Seminary and was expelled before the final exams. According to one version, because prohibited Marxist literature was found in his possession. According to another, for a rude response to the seminary authorities. In my opinion, both versions can be combined. The inquisitive teenager Joseph Dzhugashvili could not help but be interested in Marxism. If he had been quieter, more submissive, the incident could have been hushed up. As a result, Russia would receive another simple priest. But the unruly, rebellious character of young Stalin left no room for compromise. In the end it was the Lord's way. It was Stalin who became the one who restored the Orthodox Church after persecution. This happened during the Great Patriotic War. The expelled seminarian gave the opportunity to the right hand of Orthodoxy to bless a country tormented by the consequences of the unrest.

As for education, the pre-revolutionary Russian seminary was in no way inferior to the classical gymnasium, and in some ways superior to it. The ancient languages ​​that were taught to future priests allowed Stalin, in his declining years, to write a famous work on linguistics. Churchill, unlike perestroika publicists and current anti-Stalinists, for some reason did not notice the “lack of education” of the Soviet leader. Instead, he noted its effectiveness, saying that Stalin accepted Russia with a plow and left it with a nuclear one. And Hitler spoke of his opponent not without respect: “In his way, he is simply a brilliant type.”

Iron men of the Stalin era. They cannot be judged by the commercial standards of our time.

People need to be judged by the standards of their time. The first half of the 20th century is an era of global catastrophe. It was not Stalin who called her. To be fair, he was not the one who brought great power rivalry to the limit on the eve of the First World War. He was not the creator of the policy of imperialism. It was not he, nor even Lenin, who plunged the world into the carnage of Tannenberg, Verdun and the Somme. This was done by sophisticated European aristocrats who worked in the field of diplomacy, brilliant but frivolous military men who promised their sovereigns victory in six months. This was done by three all-European idiots Franz Joseph, Wilhelm II and our simpleton Tsar Nicholas. And also the most democratic politicians of France and Great Britain. They let the world war genie out of the bottle, which had been sitting there since the time of Napoleon. As a result, the crowns rolled one after another. What difference does it make, after all? Die in an idiotic frontal attack on machine guns somewhere on the Western Front in 1914 or get shot in the back of the head in 1937? I note that on the Western Front, European democrats killed much more of their citizens than Stalin did during the repressions.

Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Roosevelt appeared only because the world had gone crazy. Traditional values ​​were trampled upon. The peoples, accustomed to believing that the king is the shadow of God on earth and the father of his subjects, could not believe that these “fathers” were killing their “sons” by the millions in the trenches. The methods of the democratic President Roosevelt, by the way, were no different from Stalin’s. During World War II, the Americans imprisoned all their citizens of Japanese descent in concentration camps. As a potential fifth column. Tell me, didn’t Stalin, when evicting the Crimean Tatars three years later, acted only as a modest disciple of the American president?

To understand Stalin, you need to immerse yourself in his combat youth. He actually raided banks during the First Russian Revolution. He didn’t steal money like today’s financial scammers, he didn’t steal gas, but he personally took the cash register with a revolver in his hands, risking getting a bullet in the head. He studied the Russian people in direct communication. Stalin even escaped from Siberia, soldering coachmen along the way. He knew the Russian peasant with all his strengths and weaknesses, as not only Witte or Nicholas II, but even Stolypin did not know him.

Drew conclusions from the mistakes of Nicholas II. It was the softness and corruption of the autocracy that destroyed the country during the February Revolution. Stalin knew that any (or almost any) policeman could be bought. He knew that any (or almost any) official was corrupt, and that most soldiers and officers were cowards. Fear has disappeared from people's lives. They laughed at the Tsar, made up jokes about the Tsarina and Rasputin, and did not respect any symbol of power. There were enough gingerbreads. But the whips have decayed and the axes have become dull. Stalin brought back fear as a stimulus for social development. Not a single official, not a single general, not a single party leader felt safe with him. There were enough rations, caviar, orders and braid for these categories of especially valuable citizens. But the nomenklatura no longer swore off the scrip, the prison, or the bullet in the back of the head. General Kuropatkin under Stalin would have been shot for losing the Russian-Japanese War, like Pavlov in 1941. And they would have done the right thing. Anyone who sends soldiers to slaughter and does not bring victory to the people has no right to die in bed. In the end, why is he more valuable than a private who laid down his head in an attack? The result is obvious - in 1917, the perfectly armed, dressed, shod and fed Russian army fled to their homes due to mental weakness. In 1945, the children of these soldiers took Berlin.

The same is true with solving the mystery of the Gulag and Stalin’s repressions. Pre-revolutionary penal servitude turned into a sanatorium. In exile, Lenin poached and shot dozens of hares, wrote articles in a prison cell, and spent most of his life shirking both abroad in Paris and Zurich. The rest of the “victims” of the tsarist regime behaved in exactly the same way. Only complete scumbags were executed. Those who were caught with weapons in their hands during uprisings and terrorist attacks against the government. Stalin took into account these mistakes of his predecessors. He realized that he would fly off the handle in no time if he became liberal like Nicholas II. His own generals will arrest him, just as they arrested the tsar. So a prison must be a prison. Hard labor - hard labor. And a conspiracy by the military or the curly “left opposition” is only a theoretical possibility. The fates of Trotsky, Tukhachevsky, Bukharin and other saboteurs (I write this word without quotation marks) remarkably proved the effectiveness of Stalin’s methods of fighting the “oppositionists,” who, in fact, were ordinary conspirators. The much more frivolous and gullible Hitler only miraculously survived in 1944, when German generals decided to blow him up right in the “wolf’s den.” Stalin did not allow his potential “Colonels Staufenbergs” (all sorts of Bluchers and Yegorovs) to show their vicious inclinations. He destroyed them in the bud. If we paraphrase Stalin’s joke: “International adventurers are called international because they embark on adventures on an international scale,” it will turn out: “Stalin’s repressions are called Stalin’s because they were carried out by Comrade Stalin to strengthen the power of Comrade Stalin.”

But this does not mean that Stalin was pathologically cruel. Judas Trotsky, who became famous for his bloody executions during the Civil War, fully deserved an ice pick for his violent little head. There is no point in feeling sorry for him. But let's see how Joseph Vissarionovich treated the same writers. He personally saved Mikhail Bulgakov from reprisals by the Trotskyists. “Days of the Turbins” ran at the Moscow Art Theater until the last days of Mikhail Afanasyevich’s life. An article about him was published in both the Stalinist Literary and the Stalinist Great Soviet Encyclopedias. Mikhail Sholokhov published his best work, “Quiet Don”. Alexey Tolstoy, Zoshchenko, Kataev, Leonid Sobolev, Pasternak, Akhmatova, Yuri Tynyanov - all this is the Stalin era. Sometime in your spare time, re-read “The Cavalier of the Golden Star” by the now forgotten Stalin Prize laureate, a native of the Kharkov region, Semyon Babaevsky, and you will understand what good prose of that era is: “Seryozha! Well, take a good look around. It seems to me that we got off at the wrong stop. For some reason I don’t like this area, and I don’t see either people or a brass band”...

Young Stalin. Personally led raids on banks
There is a well-known phrase that Stalin said to one of the literary officials - it seems to Fadeev: “I don’t have any other writers for you - work with these.” But Stalin had good writers! You can still re-read it!

I am often reproached for loving whites and Stalin. How can this be? Isn't there a contradiction in this? I will answer in the words of Stalin himself, spoken after one of the viewings of “Days of the Turbins”. Let me remind you that the leader of the Soviet Union went to see this play 18 times. He said these words to the son of the famous Bolshevik Sergeev (comrade Artyom), who was actually brought up in a Stalinist family: “Never think that you can divide people into purely red and purely white.” Only someone who tried to unite both could say this. Who understood that he came into history in an era of great unrest and civil strife of the Russian people, but did not fully accept this discord either in his mind or in his heart.

Why didn't Europe defend its “democracy”? They have repeated and will repeat about Stalin: “He was “friends” with Hitler in 1939-1941. He divided Poland with him.” Gentlemen, it was not Stalin who first became friends with Hitler, but Western democrats. It was France and Britain who allowed Hitler to eat Czechoslovakia in 1938 in Munich. And Poland, together with the Nazis, even took a bite out of it! And Churchill admired Mussolini! And half of Western Europe suffered from Nazism. Hungarians, Romanians and Italians were his allies in the war against the USSR. Belgians, Norwegians, Latvians, Estonians, French, Croats and other “pagans” fought as part of the SS division with our grandfathers - do not forget this. If Stalin had been Hitler's friend, Adolf would never have justified his attack on the USSR by the fact that Stalin himself was ready to attack him. Viktor Suvorov in “Icebreaker” only repeated this Hitlerian argument. Stalin had no other options in 1939 but to enter into a non-aggression pact with Germany. Any normal politician in his place would try to pit the imperialists against each other. Is it Stalin’s fault that in 40 days the rotten democratic regime in France collapsed and only the vaunted British army flashed its heels to its islands? Why did ordinary French people not want to defend their freedom and democracy? After all, they had a parliament, and freedom of speech, and private property, but there were no detachments, no camps, no NKVD with SMERSH! Every current Western scoundrel secretly knows that he was saved by Stalin and the Red Army. If it weren’t for Stalin, the German occupation regime would have controlled Paris and Warsaw to this day.

The best thing about a person is his name. Stalin is not a pseudonym. This is just a Russian translation of the Georgian word “juga” - “steel”. He didn't impersonate anyone else. He was himself. When the people, the authorities, and the intelligentsia became spoiled and decomposed to the last limit as a result of the revolution, when everyone did what they wanted or did nothing at all, the people needed a shepherd with an iron staff. And he came.