About that our odes were not sung,
That in a dashing hour, despising the law,
He could on entire nations
Unleash your supreme wrath.
A. Tvardovsky.
On the day of Stalin's death, mass arrests began throughout Russia. Under reinforced escort in handcuffs and shackles, the following were delivered to the concrete armored basements of the Moscow Military District: the head of Stalin's secretariat, the head of the special department for spying on members of the Central Committee of the CPSU, lieutenant general, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Poskrebyshev, who at the 19th Congress of the CPSU was unanimously elected a member Central Committee of the CPSU; commandant of the Moscow Kremlin, lieutenant general, candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Spiridonov; the military commandant of the city of Moscow, Lieutenant-General Sinilov; commander of the Moscow Military District, candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Colonel-General Artemiev; the head of Stalin's personal guard, Lieutenant General Vlasik; Stalin's personal secretaries, members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU Andrianov and Chesnokov; Minister of Health, Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Tretyakov; People's Artist of the RSFSR, laureate of the Stalin Prizes, soloist of the Bolshoi Theater Vera Alexandrovna Davydova. All were put in solitary confinement. A special group of investigators, approved by Beria, Khrushchev, Malenkov, Bulganin, cross-examined around the clock, in which Marshal Zhukov, prosecutor Rudenko, prosecutor Malyarov took part.
V. A. Davydova was released five weeks later. She was ordered to leave Moscow forever, she chose the city of Tbilisi for residence. A. N. Poskrebyshev spent several months in a damp casemate underground. They demanded a name card from him and The Diary. A subtle diplomat, a sophisticated politician, circled around his finger and Malenkov, and Khrushchev, and Bulganin, and the USSR Prosecutor General Rudenko. Poskrebyshev said that during the search, all documentation was confiscated.
Uranium mines in the city of Navoi (Uzbek SSR), on Franz Josef Land and in the port of Vanino received a good replenishment. For the first time in the name of the sacred Fatherland, the former nobles had to work hard ...
On January 13, 1953, TASS reported on the Doctors' Case. Among those arrested are the largest medical forces of the country: M. V. Vovsi, B. B. Kogan, A. I. Feldman, A. M. Grinshtein, G. Ya. Etinger, N. I. Mayorov, V. V. Vinogradov, M B. Kogan, P. I. Egorov.
"For the help rendered to the government in exposing pest doctors, award the doctor Timoshchuk Lidia Fedoseyevna with the Order of Lenin."
February 20 Pravda publishes the article "Lydia Tymoshchuk's Post" prepared by special correspondents Olga Chechetkina and Elena Kononenko.
There are no words to convey
All the intolerance of pain and sorrow,
There are no words to tell them
How we mourn for you, Comrade Stalin!
The people mourn that you left us,
The earth itself mourns, all gray from grief ...
“In these difficult days, we see Stalin in all his height, we see how he walks along the roads of the earth, towers over our formidable time ... As it is understandable, the grief of a person, wherever he lives, when he learned about the death of the great defender of the world! But still people know that Stalin cannot die. He is alive not only in his writings..* He is alive in the minds of hundreds of millions of people: Russians, Chinese, Poles, Germans, French, Vietnamese, Italians, Brazilians, Koreans, Americans. When Stalin's heart stopped beating, the hearts of mankind began to beat even stronger in grief ... Simple people alive, and Stalin is alive in them.
At midnight on April 28, 1953, the commander of the Air Force of the Moscow Military District, Lieutenant General Vasily Iosifovich Stalin, was removed from all posts and arrested. He spent several years in the Vladimir hard labor prison, then he was sent for "treatment" to the Kazan psycho-prison. There, Stalin's son was kept under the most severe regime.
“Recently, a plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU was held. The Plenum, having heard and discussed the report of a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee, Comrade G. M. Malenkov, on the criminal anti-Party state actions^ L. P. Beria aimed at undermining the Soviet state in the interests of foreign capital and expressed in perfidious attempts to place the Ministry of the Interior over the government and the CPSU, made a decision - to remove L.P. Beria from the Central Committee of the CPSU and exclude him from the ranks of the CPSU as an enemy of the Communist Party and the Soviet people.
The investigation into the case lasted six months. The Military Collegium met on December 18–23, 1953. The following persons were involved in this case: Beria, Merkulov, Dekanozov, Kobulov, Goglidze, Meshik, Vladzimirsky. All of them were sentenced to death penalty and, according to the Soviet press, were shot on December 23.
On October 31, 1961, Pravda publishes on the first page the resolution of the XXII Congress on the Lenin Mausoleum:
The 22nd Congress of the CPSU decides:
1. The mausoleum on Red Square near the Kremlin wall, created to perpetuate the memory of V. I. Lenin - the immortal founder of the Communist Party and the Soviet state, the leader and teacher of the working people of the whole world, will henceforth be called the "Mausoleum of V. I. Lenin."
2. To recognize as inexpedient the further preservation of the sarcophagus with the coffin of I.V. Stalin in the Mausoleum, since Stalin’s serious violations of Lenin’s precepts, abuse of power, mass Soviet people and other actions during the period of the cult of personality make it impossible to leave the coffin with his body in the Lenin Mausoleum.
So N. S. Khrushchev settled accounts with his worst enemy.
Hypocrisy knows no bounds. For memory, I suggest turning the pages of the calendar.
February 1934 At the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Khrushchev declared:
“We carried out a purge in the Moscow Party Organization, which will further strengthen the combat readiness of our ranks ...”
In December 1936, the VIII All-Union Congress of Soviets took place, here is an excerpt from Khrushchev's speech:
“The punishing hand of the proletarian law crushed this gang of murderers and, with the general approval of all the working people of our country, wiped this vermin from the face of the earth” (Party Construction Magazine, No. 12, 1936).
Resolution on Khrushchev's report at a meeting of the Moscow party and economic activists:
“Having heard and discussed the report of Comrade N. S. Khrushchev on the terrorist activities of the counter-revolutionary agents within the Moscow Organization, the meeting of the activists of the Moscow Organization insists on the unconditional fulfillment of the demand of the Bolsheviks and the workers of Moscow and the Moscow Region - to shoot the despicable gang of murderers” (“Pravda”, August 23, 1936).
An excerpt from Khrushchev's speech at a mass rally that took place on January 30, 1937 on Red Square in Moscow:
“Raising their hand against Comrade Stalin, they raised it against all the best that mankind has, because Stalin is the hope, this is the aspiration, this is the beacon of all advanced and progressive mankind. Stalin is our banner! Stalin is our will! Stalin is our victory!” ("Pravda", January 31, 1937).
A paragraph from an article by A. I. Mikoyan:
“Comrade Stalin is the great successor of Lenin’s cause! Comrade Stalin is Lenin today! Comrade
Stalin is the genius of socialism! Comrade Stalin is the great architect of communism!”
A paragraph from an article by A. N. Kosygin:
“Comrade Stalin is leading our country along the path indicated by Lenin, along the path of building a communist society. He defended our Bolshevik Party and our state from all the enemies of socialism.”
From an article by G. M. Malenkov:
“There was no man on earth equal to Stalin. He embodied the best ideals of all mankind. Stalin is our guiding star! Stalin is our teacher and friend!”
From an article by L. M. Kaganovich:
“Stalin is the father of all the oppressed! Stalin is the banner of humanity!”
And here is what the “cannibalist”, the humanist of the 20th century, the “living” classic Mikhail Sholokhov agreed to:
“How suddenly and terribly we were orphaned! The party, the Soviet people, the working people of the whole world were orphaned... Since the day of Lenin's death, mankind has not yet suffered such an immensely heavy loss. We have lost the father of all working people…”
Quotes are enough. I understand the curiosity of readers who have the right to ask: “How did further fate the heroine of the novel "Behind the Kremlin Wall" - Vera Alexandrovna Davydova?
G. M. Malenkov and N. S. Khrushchev "offered" Vera Alexandrovna to speak at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU and at a closed meeting of the XX Congress of the CPSU with a revealing statement. Davydova categorically refused. Then Khrushchev threatened her with retribution ...
Leaving the Bolshoi Theater, V. A. Davydova, together with her husband D. S. Mchelidze-Yuzhny, left for Tbilisi. She teaches at the conservatory, in 1964 she was awarded the title of professor.
In 1976, V. A. Davydova solemnly celebrated her 70th birthday. With great success, she sang her favorite part of Carmen at the Bolshoi Theater ...
The People's Artist of the RSFSR, the laureate of state awards, was traditionally invited to the government box. There is not a single familiar face among the smiling members of the government, the temporary leaders. The poisoned and downtrodden Mekhlis, Vyshinsky who committed suicide, the elderly Andreev, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Shkiryatov, Bulganin, Shvernik, Poskrebyshev, Budyonny, Mikoyan, Zhukov went to the grave. Remembering the past, degraded leaders, deep elders Molotov, Kaganovich, Malenkov live out their lives. Lucky only "eternal" Mikoyan. He survived Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, survived his beloved wife Ashkhen, brothers, sons, writing false memoirs, he also went to the grave, catching up with enemies and friends ...
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Those hands are for common people
millions of hearths were lit.
Those hands have always heard
the beating pulse of the whole earth.
Those hands broke the frost...
And spring waters flowed.
And how many deserts bloomed
and nurtured the fields around
The warmth of his father's hands,
the warmth of his father's hands!
He carried the banner of Lenin
through the great pass,
And a terrible death sentence
need and slavery signed.
He is to millions on earth
gave freedom, life and happiness.
And how many sorrowful hearts
warmed and saved from torment
The warmth of his father's hands,
the warmth of his father's hands!
Under the sun of his genius
a man who has seen forever
From the Black Continent
to the Ganges and Chinese rivers.
Three words - Stalin, Brotherhood, Peace -
on the banner wrote our century.
And he drew strength to fight,
everywhere, any of our distant friend
In the warmth of his father's arms,
in the warmth of his father's arms.
Do not say that the cloud suddenly
from us covered the face of the sun,
Though from the tears in our eyes
the world is darkened at this moment ...
He is at the heart of the party!
he is in us
among the people - eternal and great!
And will live in the fate of people,
while the earth goes round
The warmth of his father's hands,
the warmth of his father's hands!
Samed Vurgun. translated from Azerbaijani Vladimir Derzhavin.
March 15, 1953, Pravda, USSR*
At the hour of farewell
At the hour of farewell - over the silent Moscow,
Seeing off Stalin to immortality,
Aircraft high-speed waves
They flew ahead of the sound.
At the hour of farewell - factories, plants
(For three minutes their beeps sounded)
Announce the dome of the sky
Voices of grief and sadness.
At the hour of farewell - in the frosty air,
As a sign of the loss of our irretrievable,
Rolled sadly and menacingly
Gun thunder thirtyfold.
And now, when at the Mausoleum
We are already reading the word STALIN,
We cherish his posthumous dream,
They didn't stop feeling alive.
There will be troops to parade here.
The conversation will sound multilingual ...
Sleep peacefully, great Stalin, near
With my great teacher.
We swore before the Mausoleum
In mournful moments, at the hour of farewell,
We swore that we could turn
The power of sorrow into the power of creation.
What is shoulder to shoulder, even closer
We will unite like a living wall.
Inseparable from their Party,
Everything to her, up to life, giving.
Parting
A mournful march sounds in the Hall of Columns.
Everywhere your name is on the lips.
With forever closed eyes
You lie, all in fresh flowers.
You are gone. You have fallen asleep.
The heart fell silent. The chest is motionless.
We are on guard of honor.
Leading you on your last journey.
We're walking in slow motion
It has no end, no end.
We look in deep mourning
On the features of a loved one.
We look, but we see you alive.
We feel the flame in your eyes.
Your life, any of your words -
A guide to action for us.
Always with us
He is in the love and happiness of the people,
He is our great friend and father -
Alive in every noble impulse
Our hardened hearts!
He is in the accomplishment of deeds great and small.
Warmly beloved and dear.
He is on banners, on scarlet banners,
Raised high above the country!
He led the Fatherland in the Leninist way,
Led the people - a great man!
With him we entered the era of communism,
In Stalin's invincible age.
Homeland, Fatherland dear.
Every day yours was illuminated by them ...
Let the steel party lead us!
Stalin is with us everywhere!
He is eternal!
In the Hall of Columns
My baby girl is crying for the first time
Not at all childish, heavy tears,
And I can't comfort her
Raising it above your head in the Hall of Columns.
So early you met grief.
As in early childhood, I - in that distant January.
We, peering into strict features,
We say goodbye to the leader in deep silence.
Comrade Stalin sleeps among the flowers.
The dream of our father is majestic, calm:
The leader is sure that he is as solid as a monolith,
The Soviet people are hard workers and warriors.
Stalin and the people are always united,
Stalin's people's bright genius is immortal.
He, along with Lenin, led us and is leading,
He charted the way for many generations.
Let my girl be very small
But just like me, she learned from childhood:
The Party has given us all the light.
The Fatherland and the world have been handed over to us as a legacy.
We are faithful to the holy cause of Lenin,
Faithful to the holy cause of Stalin,
The path to communism is illuminated by them eternal glory.
How much do we have to do in life?
To be worthy of your majestic era!
UNITY
When we passed near the coffin,
AT last time saying goodbye to him in silence.
We remembered the great power
The one who is quiet now and motionless,
About how he lived, the best on the planet.
Who always won, in any fight,
About the one who thought about everyone in the world
And thought too little of himself.
And grief brings people's hearts together.
How joyful the hour cannot bring,
And all the people weave their hands tightly,
On the Stalinist watch becoming.
You will lead us from yesterday's victories
To the great dawns of tomorrow's victories,
You, the Party of immortals and fearless.
Our Stalinist Central Committee!
FIVE MINUTES
When the Leader's comrades-in-arms brought
In the granite Mausoleum for burial,
People in all regions native land
Stopped moving for five minutes.
In five minutes
In our hearts rise
Great events of this life.
Hoots and volleys of mourning fireworks,
Like a hurricane, it rushes through the Fatherland ...
Sea vessels, trains on the way.
Machines in the field and workshops of factories
Reverently say "I'm sorry!"
Leader, father, teacher of nations.
And the army he led
By victories from the Volga to Berlin,
And the children of the schools created by his care
Merged in one impulse together.
And this roll call of the whole country -
Rivers and seas, cities and fields -
It tells us without words how strong we are
The unity of feelings, thoughts and will!
Leader's Immortality
Great grief befell the Soviet people:
Our teacher, leader and father closed his eyes.
After all, we are his party! He lives in each of us
Lives in our thoughts, in deeds and in the beating of hearts!
After all, just like Lenin, you saw through the centuries.
You clearly saw the features of the world to come.
You led us into the future. Got up every morning
As if you are the sun over our Motherland.
O our great leader, immortal name your
In any golden brick of our construction sites it rings.
You gave us strength, and it will not be taken away from us.
Your inspiration, Stalin, burns in all of us!
In you, the people saw the embodiment of Lenin,
And the people were right, for Lenin's wise testament
You have done well! Lenin will never die.
You are also immortal. The world does not believe that Stalin does not exist!
You are alive! And under the banner of our party go
Those new people who are now building communism.
You look into their hearts and you see: in their hearts live
Lenin himself, Stalin himself, their cause, their eternal life!
Gafur Ghulam. translated from Uzbek Leonid Martynov.
March 13, 1953, Pravda, USSR*
STALIN
Heart bleeds...
Our dear, our dear!
Grabbing your head
Motherland is crying over you.
Motherland cries without erasing
tears streaming down your face,
all my life swearing
Commander
to the leader
Father.
Everything that we started with you -
Let's finish as you intended:
let the earth shine with beauty,
the embodiment of your dreams!
You wanted with every breath
only joy was inhaled by a person ...
May your era mature
stretching from century to century!
Our dear, you are with us, with us.
In every heart you live, breathe.
Our luminous banner,
our glory, our soul.
SOLDIER'S FAREWELL
Who would lift the heavy burden of loss from the soul?
Who would order the acute pain to subside? ..
My heroes, old soldiers,
They go, go to the Hall of Columns.
I saw them on the Volga and on the Vistula.
In their military glory, in military labor,
I read holy thoughts in their hearts
About the Motherland, about the World, about the Leader.
For them, all life fit into the word - STALIN.
For them, his order was law.
Soldiers are coming...
Sad in a haze of tears
The gaze of those grief-stricken eyes.
Soldiers are coming...
Requiem is pouring
Sorrow is the victory of the trumpets that sang.
And a song about the father and the commander
Do not break the silence of clenched lips.
Faded buttonholes on the overcoat.
Chest in medals and whiskey in gray hair.
He saw death. He heard the whistle of shrapnel.
- For Stalin! - shouting, walked with hostility.
The soldier's face is gloomy and stern.
In the eyes of a soldier, the former shine of steel.
And from the lips, like a rustle, a word suddenly flies;
- Why did you leave us, dear? ..
Native! Darling! We are at war to the loss
Used to. But in this cruel hour
We, your warriors, do not believe our eyes,
We do not believe that you left us.
We don't believe that you won't get up anymore...
Get up! Give us your eagle eye.
Here - the Marshal of Poland is crying in front of the coffin,
Your never crying soldier.
Here is a sentry, not tempered in fire,
how younger son looked into your face.
Here Vasilevsky, Zhukov and Budyonny,
Mourning, they bear the guard of honor.
Our hearts burn with the silent pain of loss.
But, remembering the previous battles,
We swear again, your soldiers,
Glorious marshals are yours.
We swear by our military glory,
What if again the campaign to blow the pipe,
We all, like a shield, will raise above the state
Steel of loyalty, tested in the struggle.
We will melt steel into courage
His sorrow is immeasurable.
Decorate with labor
glorify the feat
The land that keeps your love.
The flag over your Kremlin is flowing alo.
Soldiers are coming...
Step their rosary.
Comrade Stalin!
Grief did not crush us.
We are with your party!
With your CC!
Fulfill Stalin's testament
We know - it is immutable to a person
Death comes when the hour is right.
And yet it was impossible to imagine.
That Stalin will not be among us.
And we are bitter, and there is no limit anywhere,
There is no sorrow of the human end.
That he died, - the earth was orphaned, -
The people have lost a friend and a father.
Everything that the people called happiness.
It was given to us by His hands.
And no matter how many tears shed for him,
You can't mourn him anyway.
And let the sobs we can not hold back,
In the coffin of the Leader, seeing his own, -
But if we put our hands down.
That would be unworthy of him.
And let us not be consoled in sorrow,
But he, the Teacher, always taught us:
Do not lose heart, do not hang your head.
Whatever trouble comes.
No, even in sorrow we are not defenseless -
Sons of the people, sons of Stalin
We firmly remember what we need to do,
What summit must we reach!
And we swear to the party today
That there is no hesitation in our heart,
That we are ready for work and for a feat,
That we will fulfill Stalin's testament!
Comrade Stalin
Whenever we could stand up, Comrade Stalin,
For tears you would not condemn us.
After all, we have become harder hearts from tears.
We did not lower our eyes even in trouble.
And everything that you, having foreseen, inscribed,
Let's implement it and enter communism.
At your grave, Comrade Stalin,
We swear by your name.
And Comrade Stalin will live forever
No one is able to fully believe -
After all, the trouble is so immensely great, -
That one whose life cannot be measured for centuries,
Will never smile again.
Comrade Stalin! Having met grief with the heart,
You can't express human feelings in words.
The only one in the whole wide world.
How we need to hear your voice!
And if the wish came true:
So that at least for a moment you remain in the ranks,
Any of us would give you a breath
And your blood. And your life.
Father left, hearts filled with pain,
Will not say another word to anyone.
But his genius, his steel will
He left it to his people.
We followed him through the stormy springs.
He was without sleep and rest in the Kremlin
Since he swore an oath to Lenin
And Lenin remained on earth.
He opened to us, he brought the distance closer to us.
And there is no more beautiful and straight path.
And Comrade Stalin will live forever
In the affairs of his mighty sons.
GENERAL OF COMMUNISM
How to believe in terrible words meaning?!
Grief in them, misfortune and trouble.
Frozen in sadness, in sorrowful excitement
Our villages, our cities.
Do not wipe combustible tears from your face.
Words of consolation can not be found ...
I would give everything so that death would be a passing one.
To turn her out of the way!
Good, good closed
Stalin's dear eye ..
Flags low, low bent
Bitter tears covered my eyes!
The country froze in mid-sentence,
Only snow is flying outside the windows ...
The whole country, the people at the head
Stands on mourning guard.
The whole country - both adults and children,
The Party and the Young Komsomol.
All whom in the coming centuries
The commander of Communism led!
We stand - let our tears flow!
And today as always strong
Party Children,
revolution soldiers,
Stalin the great sons!
In a difficult hour, in a harsh time,
Remembering the wise Stalinist testament -
We are united about steel solidarity,
And there is no more united us in the whole world!
Sleep, our dear,
our beloved father,
In the heart of pain, like the sea, deep! ..
We stand in the ranks unwaveringly -
Stalin is with us!
With us - forever!
Stalin with us
We will always remember that number
That mournful day at the beginning of the year,
That hard day in the history of the people,
In which grief shook us all.
Not! We don't understand everything yet.
The whole being did not realize everything ...
Comrade Stalin gave his life for us,
And now he's not with us...
Whenever we could give him
Your heartbeat and breath
We, as one, would come to him in the Kremlin,
Overcoming any distance!
The whole weight fell on us
Unexpected, unexpected grief -
It is everywhere and everywhere: in every glance,
In all hearts reflected now.
Home party! Having rallied their ranks,
We bow our banner over the Leader
And we say: Great Stalin- with us!"
And we say: “Great Stalin is alive!”
ABOUT STALIN
When he speaks his word,
It always seems to us that it
And our thought was born
And now it was ready to pour out.
At that moment we seem to be unaware,
In our most innocent delusion,
That only he, a living genius with us,
Open and say this word could.
But is it really a delusion?
After all, the word of our truth without embellishment
We really wanted to express.
We are with him. And he is one of us.
And in that is yours true happiness,
What, maybe, an ordinary from the ordinary,
You are involved in the Stalinist genius,
And you are forever - alive among the living.
There are a lot of people like me in the world.
That they did not meet with him in the Kremlin hall,
Didn't see him up close
And the voices in nature were not heard.
But everyone, probably, just like me,
He is close by equal spiritual closeness,
Like he's alone with you
Talking about life every day
About the future, about peace and war...
And everything to you, like a native, in it
To a trifle habitual and familiar.
And that conversation goes on day after day -
He is with you, you are with him, at home.
Whatever happens, you are always together.
And so any other of the majority
He sees himself in high council.
We all have equal rights to that, -
He lives for us in this world.
Features of a portrait of a dear,
Relative to each of us:
The face of an elderly soldier
With a smile of kind strict eyes.
Of those soldiers that came
In the fire of war from the spare,
That sons were taken to battles
And in a bitter hour they lost them.
And a long service imprint -
Wrinkle commemorative speech
To match the fatigue of the sloping,
Father's these lovely shoulders.
But those softened by sadness.
Eyes are always lit
And near day and far away,
Which is best seen by him.
Eyes lowered to the tube.
Known to people all over the world.
And those busy hands
That a match was brought down with a pipe.
They are strong and lean
And a strict vein winds a thread.
In a difficult age, the fate of the state
And they had to make peace.
Mustache looming shadow
The face below is darkened.
What is the word for a moment
Is it hidden from us under it?
Advice? Order? Is the reproach heavy?
Disapproval bitter tone?
Ile with a joke wise and cheerful
Will he raise his eyes now?
HOW YOU LEARNED
There are no words to convey
All the intolerance of pain and sorrow,
There are no words to tell them
How we mourn for you, Comrade Stalin!
The people mourn that you left us,
The earth itself mourns, all gray-haired from grief,
And yet we will meet this difficult hour,
As you taught - tirelessly.
Whatever happens to us - in labors or in battles -
In Stalin's way - by deeds, not by words,
Friends for pride and enemies for fear
We will prove how we were brought up by you!
Only unite stronger for the fight,
We will work without sparing any effort
And not afraid of anything in the world,
As Lenin taught us, as you taught.
We bow our heads to nothing
No wonder you led us to victories.
We will be fearless - as you taught,
Calm and firm, as you taught.
And our iron Stalinist Central Committee,
To which people you entrusted,
Toward the victory of communism for centuries (Spetsarhiv)
(Special archive)
(Special archive)
(Special archive)
(Special archive)
There are no words to convey
All the intolerance of pain and sorrow,
There are no words to tell them
How we mourn for you, Comrade Stalin.
Other then most famous Soviet poets spoke in the same vein:
Heart bleeds...
Our dear, our dear!
Grabbing your head
The Motherland is crying over you.
In this hour of greatest sorrow
I can't find those words
So that they fully express
Our nationwide misfortune.
It is easy to take this eight-verse as an excerpt from one poem composed by one poet. Meanwhile, its first four lines belong to Olga Berggolts, and the second - to Tvardovsky.
Having quoted them next to his own (of course, not in the way I did, but separately) and adding to them one more quatrain by M. Isakovsky, which differs little from them, Simonov immediately dismisses the naturally arising assumption that the similarity, and not very high the poetic level of these poems is explained by the fact that the same conductor's baton conducted the choir of these "good and different" poets.
The similarity of the poems was born not by the obligation to write them - they could not be written, but by a deep inner feeling of the enormity of the loss, the enormity of what happened. We had many more years ahead of us to try to figure out what kind of loss it was, and it would be better or worse - I'm not afraid to ask myself this rather cruel question - for all of us and for the country, if this the loss did not occur then, but even later. All this had to be dealt with, especially after the 20th Congress, but also before it.
However, the very immensity of what had happened was beyond doubt, and the strength of the influence of the personality of Stalin and the whole order of things associated with this personality, for that circle of people to which I belonged, was also beyond doubt. And the word "loss" coexisted with the word "sorrow" without the violence of the authors over themselves in those verses that we then wrote.
(K. Simonov. Stories of heavy water. P. 485).
In the same way, in the same terms, in the same words, Simonov explains WHAT prompted him to compose and publish that ill-fated paragraph in the leading article of Literaturnaya Gazeta that appeared on March 19:
The first, main feeling was that we had lost a great man. Only later did the feeling arise that it would be better to lose it early, then, perhaps, there would not be many terrible things associated with recent years his life. But what happened, happened... The first feeling of the grandiosity of the loss did not leave me for a long time, in the first months it was especially strong. Obviously, under the influence of this feeling, together with another writer who loved to demonstrate the determination of his character all his life, but in this case, when danger arose, he immediately disappeared into the bushes, composed an editorial article published in the Literary Gazette on March 19, 1953 .. The editorial was called "The Sacred Duty of a Writer", and... the first thing that was imputed to writers as their sacred duty was to create the image of Stalin in literature. Nobody forced me to write this at all, I could have written all this in a different way, but I wrote it that way, and this passage belonged to no one else, but to my pen. I also set the general tone of this advanced ...
In my then opinion, the front line was like a front line, I did not expect either good or bad from it, it was based on my speech at the meeting of writers that had taken place before, the meaning of which basically coincided with the meaning of the front line. However, the reaction to this advanced was very violent.
(Ibid., pp. 502-503).
"Very stormy" is too weak a word. The scandal erupted incredible. And the rumor about it, somewhere out there, at the very top of the scandal that broke out (I can already say this, based on my own memory) then became one of the loudest signals announcing the imminence of future changes.
The editorial issue "A Writer's Sacred Duty" came out on Thursday. Thursday after its release, I spent in the editorial office, preparing the next issue, and looking at Friday night, I left the city, to the country, to write there on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and come to the editorial office on Monday morning and do the Tuesday issue from the very morning. There was no telephone at the dacha, and I returned to Moscow on Monday morning, knowing absolutely nothing.
It was like that here, - my deputy Kosolapov met me, as soon as I had time to pick up the Saturday issue, which I had not yet read. - Better Surkov tell you about it, you call him, he asked to call as soon as you appear.
I called Surkov, we met, and it turned out the following: Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, who at that time was in charge of the work of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, having read either on Thursday evening, or on Friday morning, an issue from my editorial “The Sacred Duty of a Writer”, called the editorial office, where I was not there, then to the Writers' Union and declared that he considered it necessary to remove me from the leadership of Literaturnaya Gazeta, did not consider it possible for me to publish the next issue. From now on, until the issue is finally resolved - presumably, in the Politburo, I already thought of it myself - let the next issue, and maybe the following issues, be read and signed by Surkov as acting Secretary General Union of Writers.
From a further conversation, Surkov found out that the whole point was in the advanced "The Sacred Duty of a Writer", in which I urged writers not to go forward, not to do business and think about the future, but to look only back, only do what to sing of Stalin - with such position is out of the question for me to edit a newspaper. According to Surkov - I don't remember whether he spoke directly to Khrushchev or through third parties - Khrushchev was extremely heated and angry.
I personally, - said Surkov, - did not see anything of the kind in this front line and do not see it. Well, unsuccessful, well, really there is too much space allotted to create works about Stalin, which is the most important thing. In the end, what's wrong with that. It is possible to remove this unnecessary emphasis on the past in other editorials. At first I wanted to send a messenger to you, to call you, and then I decided not to upset you, maybe everything will work out in this time. The number, as Kosolapov told me, was ready, I arrived, looked at it and signed it. They did not demand to remove your last name, they only demanded that I read and sign the number. So I thought, is it worth it to unsettle you, you sit there, write. Come back on Monday, maybe by that time everything will be settled.
And so it ended up being. At some stage, I don't know where, in the Secretariat or in the Politburo, everything, in general, settled down. When Surkov called the agitprop in my presence, he was told that I should go to my editorial office and publish the next issue. That was the end of the matter this time. Apparently, this was a personal outburst of Khrushchev's feelings, who then, at fifty third year, probably, the idea was no longer alien to the idea after some time to try to dot the “i” and tell about Stalin what he considered it necessary to tell at the 20th Congress. Naturally, in such a mood, an editorial called "The Sacred Duty of a Writer" with a call to create an epoch-making image of Stalin hit him, as they say, across the soul. And although, apparently, he was persuaded not to take the measures proposed by him in a fever, he disliked me for a long time, for years, right up to the appearance in the press of The Living and the Dead, considering me one of the most inveterate Stalinists in literature.
(Ibid., pp. 504-505).
The last remark suggests that in fact, of course, he was not any Stalinist. But this is how to look at what to build on, with whom to compare.
THE BOOK SHOWS WELL WHAT THE SCALE OF THIS PERSON IS
Shamil Ageev- curator of the project, the book “Fikryat Tabeev. Thanks to Fate and Despite”, Chairman of the Board of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Republic of Tatarstan, Doctor of Economics:
It is with great pleasure that I congratulate Fikryat Akhmedzhanovich on his jubilee. We have known him for a long time, since long ago, when we flew together in an airplane, sat opposite each other, and I read a book ... In 1974, when I was the first secretary of the Kazan City Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, it was Tabeev who instructed me to start building the Youth Center. At that time, only the foundation and three floors were built in it. But I passed the MC in two years - they built it almost without a penny of money! Later, we crossed paths with Tabeev many times - both at KAMAZ, and when he was ambassador to Afghanistan, and when he worked in the Russian government ... Under Tabeev, there was a special situation in the republic - everyone boldly expressed their opinion, he was afraid of nothing and no one. And he was not afraid to gather smart people around him. Therefore, today so many people always gather for his anniversaries ...
Today the celebrations will be held at the Permanent Mission of Tatarstan in Moscow. President of the Republic of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov was invited to them. The TAIF group always congratulates Fikryat Akhmedzhanovich very warmly. Shafagat Takhautdinov, General Director of OAO Tatneft, will certainly be at the anniversary - he knows perfectly well how much Tabeev has done for the development of the oil industry in Tatarstan. By the way, Takhautdinov helped a lot with the release of the book “Fikryat Tabeev. Fate thanks and in spite of.
One of the reasons why we undertook the publication of this book is that citizens, especially young people, should know about the leaders of the republic, who had a colossal responsibility, including Fikryat Tabeev. Leading a region is a very difficult job. The correct decisions of the leader are returned a hundredfold, but the wrong ones ...
I am very glad that the book turned out to be warm, sincere, rich interesting facts, including some that not everyone knows about. I found a lot of new things in this book myself. I really liked Tabeev's reverent attitude towards Kazan University, where he graduated from the Faculty of History and Philosophy. Fikryat Akhmedzhanovich's love for his alma mater remains to this day, he always helped his native university. He also loved KAI very much, because fighting guys came out of there. I always supported scientists… I thought that in every field of science we should be no worse than the world level!
I would especially like to note the chapter about Tabeev's wife, Dina Mukhamedovna. She was a friend and supporter of Fikryat Akhmedzhanovich all her life, she knew how to create family comfort. But at the same time she became an outstanding scientist, professor of medicine ...
I read without interruption about the Afghan period of Tabeev's life - a colossally difficult period! How many friends he made there and how many enemies he made ... Because, as always, he thought, first of all, about business, and not about himself ...
The book shows well what scale this person is, what a great organizer he is, at the same time with a look at the new, with a wonderful vision of the future ... I want to emphasize that Tabeev, being in very high positions, did not rot anyone - the most important quality for a leader who has such broad powers.
To acquaint the people of Tatarstan with this very interesting book, we decided to distribute half of the circulation - a thousand copies - to schools, to other educational institutions, libraries ... I especially recommend reading this book to leaders and politicians, as well as those young people who dream of becoming leaders.
WITH THE NAME OF STALIN IN THE COUNTRY THE DAY STARTED AND ENDED WITH THEM
... For the USSR and its citizens, the biggest shock was the death in March 1953 of the "father of all peoples" Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. In those days mournful verses were published Konstantin Simonov:
There are no words to describe
All the intolerance of grief and sorrow.
There are no words to tell them
How we mourn for you, Comrade Stalin...
I, like many others, stood in the guard of honor at the portrait of Stalin at the funeral meeting on the occasion of his death. In those days I was in Kazan. But my young wife left with her friends for Moscow to say goodbye to Joseph Vissarionovich, leaving our infant son in the care of his mother. Thank God, she did not get into a terrible stampede during the funeral. I was against the trip, and this is one of the few cases when she ignored my opinion. Here is a picture of the attitude towards Stalin at that time.
We grew up in the country that he led, without mentioning his name then it was impossible to imagine a single celebration, not a single important article, and so on. Then, after all, even in front of the building of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow there was a monument to Stalin, made in full height. With his name in the country, the day began, and ended with him.
Of course, we didn’t know much at that time – about the Gulag and the like. But a certain tension in the social atmosphere was clearly felt. Back in the years of my childhood, in the late 1930s, there was a period when my father was a participant civil war, chairman of the village council - leaving for work, he said to his mother: they say, I don’t know if I will return home today. Sometimes they said goodbye, as if it were the last time. Although my father was non-partisan. Needless to say, in the early 1950s, it was completely unthinkable in the scientific community to imagine a brave man who dared to publicly criticize Stalin's economic considerations about the future social order. So the damage done to their development humanities, is obvious.
"STALIN TAKEN RUSSIA WITH THE POW AND LEFT IT WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS"
Disputes about Stalin do not stop until now. It is difficult, for example, to deny the assessment, as if expressed in his address Winston Churchill: "Stalin took Russia with a plow and left it with atomic weapons."
About myself I can say one thing: I am not among the Stalinists, although I recognize the magnitude of the personality of this man, his exceptional role in our victory over fascism. It is very difficult to separate his merits and deeds that are criminal in nature. And today, when the archives of the Stalin era continue to be opened, one never ceases to be amazed at the inexplicable cruelty of many of Stalin's instructions. I read somewhere that Konstantin Simonov- a person close enough to Stalin, a member of the Central Committee of the party, earlier than others began to get acquainted with documents about Stalin's direct participation in the story of the "killer doctors". And he was shocked. When he told his fellow writers about it Alexander Fadeev and Alexander Korneichuk, they could not believe the terrible truth about Stalin. Imagine now what a blow the participants of the 20th Party Congress experienced during the speech Nikita Khrushchev. The sin on Stalin lies a very big, terrible sin ...
Death of Stalin, and then arrest Lavrenty Beria in June 1953 meant the end of an entire era and the country's entry into a new phase of its history ...
REFUSING THE OFFER OF THE PARTY BOSS WAS NOT ACCEPTED
Summer 1960 Semyon Ignatiev (since 1957 - First Secretary of the Tatar Regional Committee of the CPSU -ed.) decided to retire, although he was only 55 years old. The issue of selecting a candidate for the role of the first secretary of the Tatar Regional Committee was discussed in the Central Committee of the CPSU. Among the main contenders was Salih Batiev, who at that time held the post of second secretary of the regional committee ...
According to Tabeev, Salih Galimzyanovich knew the republic perfectly and could rightfully claim the post of first secretary of the regional committee. But it turned out differently.
Returning from Moscow, Semyon Denisovich told Tabeev that, being in the Central Committee of the CPSU, he proposed it, Tabeev, to the post of chief party leader of Tatarstan. For 32-year-old Fikryat, this was news as flattering as it was shocking. But to refuse the proposals of the party boss, especially ahead of time - after all, everything was finally to be decided by the plenum - was not accepted in those circles.
Assessing that situation today, Fikryat Akhmedzhanovich believes that Ignatiev played an excellent chess combination for the republic, combining at its helm the assertiveness of youth in the face of him, Tabeev, and wisdom, as well as the necessary political conservatism in the person of Batyev, who, also on the recommendation of Ignatiev, took the post Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the TASSR.
And then came the day of October 28, 1960. The columned hall of the Kazan House of Officers (now the Kazan City Hall) gathered the color of the communists of the republic. Today, after more than half a century, it is difficult to explain to the modern reader the importance and principle of the event. The change of the first party leader of the republic meant about the same thing as today - it is the change of the governor of the region or the president of the same Tatarstan. Add to this a certain instability in the position of leaders of all ranks that took place in the Khrushchev era. And in general, society was still at a crossroads: some were afraid to mention the names of Stalin and Beria without looking back, others hoped for a return to the old order, others wanted radical changes.
THE MAIN THINGS WERE DECIDED BEYONDLY
In the corridors of the regional committee, in anticipation of the plenum, tension grew. The party elite of the republic, in today's words, assessed the ratings of possible contenders, as well as the likelihood of placing another "Varangian" at the top of the republican power. The sprouts of democracy that appeared in the country changed little in the party ranks. As before, the main thing was mostly decided behind the scenes, and the plenum was only called upon to approve the decision taken "above". But this time everything went differently.
The regional plenums, as a rule, were attended by distinguished guests from Moscow. This time to hold a plenum on liberation Seeds of Ignatiev from the post of first secretary of the republican regional committee and the election of its new leader came Petr Nikolaevich Pospelov - member of the RSDLP in 1916, Hero Socialist Labor, laureate Stalin Prize first degree, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, candidate member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU. In a word, a serious political heavyweight, previously known for his loyalty to Stalin and who easily changed his point of view on him when he came to power Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev.
After the announcement of the agenda, the floor was given to Pospelov. According to a long-established scheme, he delivered the prescribed speech, then informed the audience about the release of Ignatiev from his post at his request, thanked him on behalf of the Central Committee of the party for the work done, and left the high podium.
There was silence in the hall. After a pause that seemed very long, the one sitting in the presidium of the plenum got up but right hand from the Moscow guest Ignatiev. His face, with large, as if carved features, did not betray a trace of excitement. He thanked the communists of the republic for three years of joint work, wished Tatarstan further success. And somehow, without transition, he asked, turning to the audience, whom the communists of the republic would like to see as the first secretary of the regional committee.
From such a sharp turn to democracy, people were literally confused. But what about the usual recommendation from above, why did Pospelov keep silent? Or maybe there is some catch in all this, a check? In a word, none of those present even thought to say something.
Obviously, perfectly understanding the situation, Semyon Denisovich, already in a more liberated form, again invited people to name the person most worthy of becoming his successor. The voices of those talking among themselves rustled around the hall, then several people immediately shouted out: “Tabeeva!”
Well, there is one candidate, - said Ignatiev. - What other proposals will there be?
There were no other proposals. After that, according to the regulations, it would be necessary to introduce the candidate to the audience, give him a description, a word for speech. But they shouted from the audience that none of this should be done in the case of Fikryat Tabeev. Then Ignatiev invited the participants of the plenum to vote for the only candidate. The open vote showed a forest of hands.
Unanimously, - summed up Ignatiev.
KHRUSHCHEV WANTED TO PART WITH THE SHADOWS OF STALIN'S PAST
Of course, one must understand that such non-standard conduct of the plenum is not a spontaneous phenomenon. Candidates for the post of first secretary of the regional committee of the republic, which became the oil “breadwinner” of the Union, were not only discussed at the highest level, their biographies and dossiers were studied literally under a magnifying glass both on Staraya Square and on Lubyanka. Weighed all the pros and cons. But ... In this case, obviously, Khrushchev's attitude to rejuvenate the composition of the party and economic cadres played a decisive role. He wanted to part with the shadows of the Stalinist past and create his own team, a team of people devoted to him.
Due to age, the candidacy of Batyev, who was 17 years older than Tabeyev, was apparently also rejected. Although what is 49 years old? For a politician - the age of prosperity. However, Salih Galimzyanovich proved this. From 1960 to 1983, holding the post of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the TASSR, being also Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, he made a significant contribution to the development of Kazan and the republic. His special merit is the work at the head of the commission for the rehabilitation of political prisoners and the release of victims of political repression, including the rehabilitation of the poet Musa Jalil and awarding him the title of Hero Soviet Union. It is no coincidence that in 2011 the President of the Republic of Tatarstan, the State Advisor of the Republic of Tatarstan, the Presidium State Council RT was offered to perpetuate the memory of Salih Batyev by naming one of the new streets of Kazan after him.
At the same time, it was clear that it would not be easy for a secretary as young as Tabeev to establish himself in his role. And this democratic nomination should have become a kind of advance of confidence for him: they themselves, they say, proposed, they themselves chose! And the same Salih Batyev became one of those who at first offered a friendly shoulder to the young first secretary. Since that time, Tabeev and Batiev have worked hand in hand for almost 20 years for the benefit of the peoples of Tatarstan. Fikryat Akhmedzhanovich, even half a century later, remembered with gratitude this smart, modest and hardworking person.
To be continued.
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Reference Fikryat Akhmedzhanovich Tabeev (Tat. Father - Akhmedzhan Mukhamedzhanovich Tabeev, the eldest of four brothers. Member of the Civil War, was the commander of the Red Army detachment. Fought with Basmachi in Central Asia. He was the personal signalman of Mikhail Frunze. He died at the front in the winter of 1942. Mother - Sabira Muzipovna Tabeeva (Begisheva). In 1951 he graduated from the Kazan State University, from 1951 to 1957 - in teaching, since 1957 - in the party. Since 1959, the second, and since 1960, the first secretary of the Tatar Regional Committee of the CPSU. He was the youngest first secretary of the regional party committee. In the same year he became a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU. He played a big role in the development of the oil and petrochemical industry, mechanical engineering in the republic. Under his leadership, new oil fields were explored and put into operation, Nizhnekamsk was founded, where a number of large chemical plants were built. The Kamskaya hydroelectric power station and the Zainskaya state district power station were built. The Tatneft merger has given the country the largest volume of oil in its history. In the city of Naberezhnye Chelny, the Kama Automobile Plant (KAMAZ) was built. Nizhnekamskneftekhim was built in Nizhnekamsk. Kazanorgsintez was launched in Kazan, a plant for the production of sand-lime bricks was opened, new areas of Gorka and Savinovo were built up. A circus was built, the Tatar Academic Drama Theater named after. Kamala, the Palace of Sports, the Central Stadium, the Palace of Chemists and the swimming pool, the Tatarstan Hotel, one of the largest greenhouse facilities in the USSR were built. From 1979 to 1986 - Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the USSR to the Republic of Afghanistan. The book “Fikryat Tabeev. Fate thanks and in spite of " Published by the publishing group "Wings". |
We editors of Pravda at that time, we writers - I remember firmly that they were Fadeev, Korneichuk, I - I don’t remember exactly whether Surkov and Tvardovsky were with us - went to the editorial office of Pravda. In addition to everything that, it would seem, completely scored a head in these hours, those events and changes; besides the fact that both the very nature of the meeting and the appointments made at it indicated that Stalin was about to die, I had another feeling that I tried to get rid of and could not: I had the feeling that the emerging from there, from the back room, in the presidium, the people, the old members of the Politburo, came out with some secret, not outwardly expressed, but felt in them, a sense of relief. It somehow broke through in their faces - perhaps, with the exception of Molotov's face - motionless, as if petrified. As for Malenkov and Beria, who spoke from the podium, both of them spoke lively, energetically, in a businesslike manner. Something in their voices, in their behavior did not correspond to the preambles that preceded the text of their speeches, and the same mournful endings of these speeches, connected with Stalin's illness. There was a feeling that right there, in the presidium, people were freed from something that was pressing on them, binding them. They were kind of swaddled, or something. Maybe I didn’t think in the words that I now write about it, even probably. I thought more carefully and more uncertainly. But no doubt I thought about it. Basically, these are not today's, but then feelings, which were then remembered for a lifetime.
Twenty minutes later we were at Pravda and were sitting in Shepilov's office. The conversation was somehow muffled, especially none of us wanted to talk. They talked about the need to think about getting well-known writers to write a series of articles in Pravda on various topics, that it was necessary, that a plan should be drawn up for such articles, and so on and so forth. But all this was said as if it was necessary to talk about it, but it is said a little earlier than necessary, because, although the new composition of the Presidium of the Central Committee and the Secretariat has been determined, although the Council of Ministers has been formed with Malenkov at the head, although Voroshilov has become Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet - all this is true, but in order to write, you need some certainty in what writers should write, and in what they want from them. There was no certainty, because Stalin was still alive or it was believed that he was still alive. So forty minutes passed after this conversation, and I don’t know how long it would have dragged on - sluggish and indefinite - when the turntable rang. Shepilov picked up the phone, said several times: “Yes, yes,” and, returning to the table at which we were sitting, said: “They called that Comrade Stalin had died.”
And in spite of everything that had gone before - the meeting after which we arrived here, the decisions that had been made - still something in us, at least in me, shuddered at that moment. Something in life is over. Something else, unknown yet, has begun. It began not when, due to this and that, it turned out to be necessary to appoint Malenkov Chairman of the Council of Ministers during Stalin's lifetime and he was appointed by him - not then, but now, after this call.
I don’t remember who took it upon himself, what he was going to do and write - I said that I would write poetry, I didn’t know if I could write these poems, but I knew that I was not capable of anything else at that moment.
Without stopping at Pravda, I went home. Literaturnaya Gazeta came out only the day after tomorrow, the seventh, and when I returned home, I called my deputy Boris Sergeevich Ryurikov that I would arrive in two hours, locked myself in my room and began to write poetry. I wrote the first two stanzas and suddenly, unexpectedly for myself, sitting at the table, burst into tears. I could not admit it now, because I do not like anyone's tears - neither others', nor my own - but, probably, without this it is difficult even to explain to oneself the extent of the shock. I did not cry from grief, not from pity for the deceased, these were not sentimental tears, these were tears of shock. Something in my life turned upside down, the shock from this upheaval was so huge that it had to manifest itself somehow physically, in this case, a spasm of sobs that pounded me for several minutes. Then I finished the poems, took them to Pravda and went to Literaturnaya Gazeta to tell Ryurikov about what happened in the Kremlin. Tomorrow we had to do a newspaper issue, and he needed to know this - the sooner the better.
In front of me now lies a bundle of materials and documents of those March days, folded back then, in the year 1953. Everything is stuffed into one folder that has lain for many years: a mourning bandage with which he stood in the guard of honor, and a pass to Red Square with an overprint "passage everywhere"; a transcript of one of the two writers' mourning meetings, at which I spoke with many others, and a newspaper clipping of another writers' meeting, where I read my own, bad, despite sobs, poems; a pack of newspapers for those days - Pravda, Izvestia, Literaturka and others.
Then, years later, different writers wrote different and different things about Stalin. Then they spoke, in general, close to each other - Tikhonov, Surkov, Ehrenburg. Everything said then is very similar. Maybe some difference in vocabulary, and even then not too noticeable. The lyrics are also strikingly similar notes. Best of all - this is not surprising, given the measure of talent, - Tvardovsky wrote after all; more restrained, more precise. Almost everyone surprisingly agreed on one thing:
In this hour of greatest sorrow
I can't find those words
So that they fully express
Our nationwide misfortune...
This is Tvardovsky.
There are no words to convey
All the intolerance of pain and sorrow,
There are no words to tell them
How we mourn for you, comrade
Stalin!
And this is Simonov.
Heart bleeds...
Our dear, our dear!
Grabbing your head
The Motherland is crying over You.
This is Bergholz.
And let us not be consoled in sorrow,
But he, the Teacher, always taught us:
Do not lose heart, do not hang your head,
Whatever trouble comes.
And this is Isakovsky.
It seems that we then wrote these poems about Stalin very similarly. Olga Berggolts, who was imprisoned in the thirty-seventh, Tvardovsky - the son of a dispossessed, Simonov - a noble offspring and an old rural communist Mikhail Isakovsky, One could add to this other lines from other poems of people with the same diverse biographies associated with different twists in the fate of the individual in Stalin's era. Nevertheless, the similarity of the poems was born not by the obligation to write them - they were prayed not to write, but by a deep inner feeling of the enormity of the loss, the enormity of what had happened. We had many more years ahead of us to try to figure out what kind of loss it was, and it would be better or worse - I'm not afraid to ask myself this rather cruel question - for all of us and for the country, if this the loss did not occur then, but even later. All this had to be dealt with, especially after the 20th Congress, but also before it.
However, the very immensity of what had happened was beyond doubt, and the strength of the influence of the personality of Stalin and the whole order of things associated with this personality, for that circle of people to which I belonged, was also beyond doubt. And the word "loss" coexisted with the word "sorrow" without the violence of the authors over themselves in those verses that we then wrote. “So it was on earth,” says Tvardovsky a little later, one of the very first and much deeper than others who began to think about this.
Now, once again leafing through the newspapers of those days, I want to return to my thoughts about when Stalin did die - we were immediately prepared for this, or he died before the joint meeting that made new appointments, or he died indeed, when we heard a call to Pravda to Shepilov, at about ten o'clock in the evening on March 5th. I don’t want to speculate on material that is inaccessible to other people, but now I’m reading the decision of the joint meeting of the Central Committee, the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, which appeared the day after the announcement of Stalin’s death, I see that the preamble does not say about Stalin’s death, about death it was said the day before in an appeal to all members of the party and all the working people of the Soviet Union, and the preamble of the resolution was drawn up in such a way that it is not known on what day this joint meeting took place - whether it preceded Stalin's death or took place after his death. I will quote this preamble, it is very interesting from this point of view.
"The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in this difficult time for our
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parties and countries consider time to be the most important task of the party and government - to ensure uninterrupted and correct leadership of the entire life of the country, which in turn requires the greatest solidarity of the leadership, the prevention of any confusion and panic, in order to thus unconditionally ensure the successful implementation of the developed our party and government policy - both in the internal affairs of our country and in international affairs. Based on this, and in order to prevent any interruptions in the management of the activities of state and party bodies, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Presidium of the Supreme Council recognize it necessary to carry out a number of measures to organize the party and state leadership.
On the reverse side of this page of Pravda, where it is printed, there is a decree on the establishment of Stalin's sarcophagus next to Lenin's sarcophagus, a decree on the construction of a pantheon, a decree on mourning - on the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth of March. There is also a notification from the commission for organizing the funeral about access to the Hall of Columns and the time of the funeral, the first report from the Hall of Columns “At the coffin of I.V. Stalin." But in the preamble of the decree on measures "to organize the party and state leadership" there is no mention of Stalin's name, no mention of whether he is still alive or dead.
Logic makes us assume that everything was as it was taught to us, that is, the joint meeting was held when Stalin was in an absolutely hopeless state, his death was expected from minute to minute. The resolution has been drafted and is ready to last comma and point, its publication, apparently, was not going to be postponed in the event that Stalin had been dying for another, two or several days. And maybe it would have been published not even on the seventh, but on the sixth, right after the plenum, next to the hopeless bulletin. But Stalin died almost immediately after the end of the meeting, and therefore it was decided to first publish an appeal to the party and people about Stalin's death, and the next day - a resolution on the personal composition of the authorities and on their partial reorganization. Logic admits such a possibility, although it does not completely exclude various other assumptions.
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And now I will return to my notes of the fifty-third year, or rather, to that last entry, where in question about the Hall of Columns and Stalin's funeral:
“Although I was told by phone that I should come to the Hall of Columns at about three o'clock in the afternoon, with great difficulty I got there only around five. It was almost impossible to approach the Hall of Columns on foot...”
I will add to the record of that time that I lived at that time on the corner of Pushkinskaya Square, but it was not possible to go down either along Gorky Street, or along Dmitrovka, or along Petrovka. On Trubnaya Square we ran into the crowd with Georgy Mikhailovich Orlov, then Minister of the Forestry Industry, with whom we knew each other because we fought on the pages of Literaturnaya Gazeta over paper problems. Then we went down the Neglinnaya together and, despite our Central Committee certificates, we barely made our way through the silent confusion that reigned on the streets of Moscow: we crawled under the trucks that blocked the Neglinnaya, then climbed over the trucks that blocked it again, turned out to be so squeezed from all sides, that they could not take documents out of their pockets, they were fed with a crowd of people first forward, then back, and got out of the crush and flea market only at the very end, somewhere at the back of the Maly Theater. I don’t know how it was at other hours, but in those two hours that we made our way, the crowd was not angry with the flea market, not angry, but bitterly silent, although at the same time so powerful in the single stubbornness of its movement there, closer to the Hall of Columns, that the militia behaved bewildered in the face of the silent and united persistence of this movement. Back to the post:
“In the room behind the presidium, bandages were pricked on the sleeves of people. Some went to the guard of honor, others returned from it. This went on for probably about an hour. Finally, it was our turn. I stood next to people I didn't know, with some two women. We went out with them and stood on the right at the head of the bed. I turned my head and, just standing there, I saw the face of Stalin lying in the coffin. His face was very calm, not at all thinner or changed. hair in recent times he began to thin a little (this could be seen when he walked during meetings and, passing close to you, turned sideways). But now it was imperceptible, the hair lay quietly, thrown back, and went into the pillow. Then,
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when we, taking turns, began to walk around the coffin, I saw Stalin's face on the right, on the other side, and again I thought that this face had not changed at all, had not lost weight, and that it was very calm, not at all old man, still young. Later, after returning from the Hall of Columns, I thought that people who had not seen last years Stalin or those who saw him only from a distance and knew him from portraits mainly of the war and pre-war years, now there, in the Hall of Columns, when they suddenly saw him up close, it might seem that he had grown old, that the disease had changed his face. But in fact it was not so, the disease did not change anything in his face. His hands rested calmly on top of the gray jacket.
