TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction…………………………………………………………………… ………………….3

Brief overview of the “Leningrad case”……………………….……….4

2. Progress of the “case”…………………….……………………………………………………… ...5
3. The trial in the “Leningrad case”……………………10
4. Revision of the “case” in 1954…………..……………………………..12
Conclusion.………………………………………… …………………………13
List of references……………………………………………………….14

INTRODUCTION

It was when I smiled

Only dead, glad for peace,

And dangled like an unnecessary pendant

Leningrad is near its prisons.

Anna Akhmatova

During the Soviet period of its history, Leningrad experienced many bitter and tragic events. Among them are post-war repressions: “The Leningrad Affair”, “the Doctors’ Case”, “the fight against cosmopolitanism”, the case of a group of people associated with the work of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.
Of these, the Leningrad Affair stands out for me. It amazes with the senselessness of the destruction of people who showed true courage and heroism, endured a 900-day blockade on their shoulders and made a huge contribution to the victory over fascism. And I.V. Stalin’s desire to maintain an atmosphere of suspicion, envy and distrust of each other among senior leaders and thereby strengthen his personal power (after all, this was partly the reason for organizing the “case”) does not evoke a response from me.
In the essay, I would like to examine in detail the course of the “case”, understand and find out its reasons, as well as the impact on the further history of Russia and Leningrad, talk about the fate of people who were directly related to the events of the 40s. 50s last century.

Brief overview of the “Leningrad case”
Of all the fabricated trials, the Leningrad Affair, the defeat of the second most important party organization in the Soviet Union and the secret execution of its leaders remains the most mysterious to this day. The beginning of the fabrication of the case can be considered the resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of February 15, 1949 “On the anti-party actions of a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Comrade A. A. Kuznetsov, and candidates for membership of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Comrade. Rodionova M.I. and Popkova P.S.” All three were removed from their posts, and along with them the chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee, Voznesensky, and the majority of members of the Leningrad apparatus were also dismissed from their jobs. In August-September 1949, all party leaders were arrested on charges of “organizing an anti-party group” associated with the Intelligence Service. Hundreds of Leningrad communists were arrested, and about 2,000 were simply expelled from the party and fired from their jobs. The repressions took on terrifying proportions, affecting even the city itself and its recent history. Thus, in August 1949, the authorities closed the Leningrad Defense Museum, created in memory of the heroic defense of the city during the Great Patriotic War. A few months later, the Party Central Committee instructed Mikhail Suslov to organize a commission to liquidate the museum, which worked until the end of February 1953.
On October 1, 1950, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced to capital punishment - execution: N. A. Voznesensky - member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR; A. A. Kuznetsov - member of the Organizing Bureau, secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks; M. I. Rodionov - member of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR; P. S. Popkov - candidate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, first secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee and City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks; Ya. F. Kapustin - second secretary of the Leningrad city committee of the CPSU (b); P. G. Lazutin - Chairman of the Leningrad City Executive Committee. I.M. Turko, secretary of the Yaroslavl regional committee of the CPSU(b); T. V. Zakrzhevskaya - head of the department of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks; F. E. Mikheev - manager of the affairs of the Leningrad regional committee and city committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. 1 In total, about 200 people were shot, and several thousand were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, and thousands more were removed from active work and appointed to low positions (among the latter, in particular, the talented Russian leader A. N. Kosygin, who was exiled to work in textile industry).
All those convicted were charged with the fact that, having created an anti-party group, they carried out sabotage and subversive work aimed at separating and opposing the Leningrad party organization to the Central Committee of the party, turning it into a support for the fight against the party and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Almost all Leningrad party leaders and Soviet statesmen who were promoted from Leningrad after the war to leadership positions in Moscow and the regions became victims of repression.

Progress of the “case”
The “Leningrad Affair” was provoked by I.V. Stalin, who sought to maintain an atmosphere of distrust of each other among the leadership and thereby strengthen his personal power. This process is also associated with the names of Stalin’s associates: G. M. Malenkov, L. P. Beria, M. F. Shkiryatov, V. S. Abakumov and others. They organized the falsification of charges and the massacre of hundreds of innocent people.
After the Great Patriotic War, changes occurred in the leadership: N. A. Voznesensky was given greater powers; the position of G. M. Malenkov was significantly strengthened, who also became Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR; A. A. Zhdanov became the second secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks; A. A. Kuznetsov was elected secretary of the Central Committee.
The reason for fabricating false accusations was the All-Russian Wholesale Fair, held from January 10 to 20, 1949. in Leningrad. Malenkov brought charges against A. A. Kuznetsov, M. I. Rodionov, P. S. Popkov and Ya. F. Kapustin that they held the fair without the knowledge of the Central Committee and the government.
In fact, on October 14, 1948, at a meeting of the Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, a report from the Ministry of Trade of the USSR and the Central Union on the remains of stale goods and measures for their sale was considered. In view of the accumulation of a large number of such goods, the Bureau gave instructions to develop measures to resolve this problem. On November 11, 1948, a resolution was adopted allowing the organization of the fair and the free export of purchased goods.
While inflating the case about the illegality of holding a fair in Leningrad, Malenkov also used other pretexts to discredit the leadership. After the end of the X regional and VIII city united Leningrad party conference, an anonymous letter was received stating that the election results were distorted, but the involvement of the leaders of the Leningrad party organization was not established. Nevertheless, on February 15, 1949, a resolution was adopted in which charges were brought against A. A. Kuznetsov, M. I. Rodionov and P. S. Popkov. The resolution noted:
“The Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks believes that the above-mentioned anti-state actions were a consequence of the fact that comrade. Kuznetsov, Rodionov, Popkov have an unhealthy, non-Bolshevik bias, expressed in demagogic flirting with the Leningrad organization, denigration of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks,<…>, in attempts to create a mediastinum between the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Leningrad organization and thus alienate the Leningrad organization from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. 2
As a result, these politicians were removed from their positions and reprimanded.
On February 21, 1949, at a joint meeting of the bureau of the regional committee and the city committee, G. M. Malenkov, through threats and abusing his official position, sought from the secretaries a recognition that there was a hostile anti-party group in Leningrad. At the same time, he added that the group is small, and no one else from the Leningrad leadership will be held accountable. Of the speakers, only P.S. Popkov and Ya. F. Kapustin admitted that their activities were anti-party in nature. Following them, other speakers began to repent of the mistakes they had not made.
In the summer of 1949, a new stage in the development of the “Leningrad Case” began. At the end of July, Ya. F. Kapustin was arrested on charges of connections with British intelligence. After a “confession” was extracted from him under torture, on August 13 in Moscow in Malenkov’s office, without the sanction of the prosecutor, A. A. Kuznetsov, P. S. Popkov, M. I. Rodionov, P. G. Lazutin, N.V. Soloviev.
At the same time, a campaign to discredit N.A. Voznesensky is unfolding. At first he was accused of unsatisfactorily managing the State Planning Committee, not showing the necessary partisanship, and cultivating non-partisan morals in the State Planning Committee. Then the accusation surfaces that the USSR State Planning Committee lost a number of documents during the period from 1944 to 1949. Charges filed by G. M. Malenkov and M. F. Shkiryatov were supported by Stalin. After this, Voznesensky was expelled from the Central Committee membership and arrested on October 27, 1949.
The indictment against those arrested stated:
“With the active participation of Voznesensky and Rodionov, they carried out sabotage in the planning and distribution of material funds to the detriment of the interests of the state, giving preference to those areas whose leadership were like-minded, and, through Voznesensky, reducing the targets of state plans for them. In the State Planning Committee of the USSR, which was headed by Voznesensky, a significant number of documents constituting state secrets of the USSR were lost.
<…>Kuznetsov, Popkov, Kapustin, Lazutin, Turko, Zakrzhevskaya and Mikheev embezzled public funds and used them for personal enrichment.” 3
In order to obtain fictitious testimony about the existence of an anti-party group in Leningrad, G. M. Malenkov personally supervised the investigation and took a direct part in interrogations. Illegal methods of investigation, torture, beatings, and torture were used against those arrested.
At the direction of the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, mass arrests were made among Leningrad party workers, people from the Leningrad party organization, to create the appearance of the existence of an anti-party group in Leningrad. As a result, in 1949-1952. Over 2 thousand managers were released from work. Many of them had great services to the party, proved their devotion to the Motherland in the harsh conditions of the blockade, but this was not taken into account.

TRIAL IN THE “LENINGRAD CASE”
For more than a year, those arrested were prepared for trial, subjected to bullying, threats to kill their families, etc. The defendants were forced to memorize the interrogation protocols and not deviate from the pre-drafted script of the judicial farce. 4 They were deceived, assured that confessions of “hostile activity” were important for the party, they were convinced that whatever the verdict, it would never be carried out and it would only be a tribute to public opinion.
On September 29-30, 1950, in Leningrad, in the premises of the district House of Officers, a trial took place in the case of N. A. Voznesensky, A. A. Kuznetsov and others. The chairman was I. O. Matulevich. The verdict in the case was announced on October 1, 1950 at 0 hours 59 minutes, according to it N. A. Voznesensky, A. A. Kuznetsov, M. I. Rodionov, P. S. Popkov, Ya. F. Kapustin, P. G Lazutin were sentenced to death. The verdict for the accused was unexpected: after all, soon after the end of the war, the death penalty was abolished. On January 12, 1950, the decree “On the application of the death penalty to traitors to the Motherland, spies, and subversive saboteurs” was adopted.
The verdict was final and not subject to appeal. The convicts were deprived of the opportunity to apply for pardon, since immediately after the verdict was pronounced, an order was given for the immediate execution of the sentence. Already at 2.00 o'clock on October 1 (i.e., an hour after the verdict was announced), Nikolai Alekseevich Voznesensky, Alexey Aleksandrovich Kuznetsov, Mikhail Ivanovich Rodionov, Pyotr Sergeevich Popkov, Yakov Fedorovich Kapustin, Pyotr Georgievich Lazutin were shot.
After the massacre of the “central group”, trials took place, which handed down sentences to the remaining persons involved in the “Leningrad case”. In Moscow, 20 people were shot by court verdict. The bodies of G. F. Badaev, M. V. Basov, V. O. Belopolsky, A. A. Bubnov, A. I. Burilin, A. D. Verbitsky, M. A. Voznesenskaya, A. A. Voznesensky, V P. Galkin, V. N. Ivanova, P. N. Kubatkin, P. I. Levin, M. N. Nikitin, M. I. Petrovsky, M. I. Safonov, N. V. Solovyova, P. T. . Talyusha, I. S. Kharitonov, P. A. Chursin were taken to the Donskoy Monastery cemetery, cremated and their bodies thrown into a pit. 5
Arrests and trials of other defendants in the Leningrad Case continued even after the execution of its main defendants. Economic, trade union, Komsomol and military workers, scientists, and representatives of the creative intelligentsia were also subjected to repression.

Re-examination of the case in 1954
The death of I.V. Stalin and the exposure of L.P. Beria changed the situation. On April 30, 1954, the Supreme Court of the USSR rehabilitated the persons involved in the “case.” On May 3, 1954, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee adopted a resolution rehabilitating A. A. Kuznetsov, P. S. Popkov, N. A. Voznesensky and others. On May 6-7, 1954, at a closed meeting of the Leningrad party activist N. S. Khrushchev and the USSR Prosecutor General R. A. Rudenko made a report about the falsification of this case by the enemy of the people Beria and his henchman - the Minister of State Security V. S. Abakumov. Their speeches said that an investigation carried out by the USSR Prosecutor's Office on behalf of the Central Committee of the Communist Party had established the falsification of the materials in this case and the falsity of all accusations in it.
etc.................

photo from the personal archive of A.A. Zhdanov (at Stalin’s dacha near Sochi in the mid-30s)

On the 60th anniversary of Stalin’s death, I am publishing some of my materials about one case that still raises questions... So:

LENINGRAD CASE: “promoters”... Part I

Much has been written about the “Leningrad Affair”. Even a lot. From a variety of positions and points of view. But usually they limit themselves only to the “case” itself, less often to the preceding post-war years.

I will take the liberty of asserting that the “Leningrad Affair”, which formally started in Moscow with the decision of the Politburo on February 15, 1949, began almost a quarter of a century earlier and very far from the city on the Neva, when in the fall of 1926 he arrived on the banks of the Volga with the inspection of the 25-year-old instructor of the Organizational and Distribution Department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Georgy Malenkov, to check the work of the 30-year-old secretary of the Nizhny Novgorod Provincial Committee Andrei Zhdanov...

At the height of the NEP, the once merchant city of Nizhny was rocked by workers’ strikes, which, understandably, greatly unnerved the officially proletarian government. The 25-year-old Central Committee inspector zealously got down to business - despite the fact that he had to recognize the work of the Nizhny Novgorod party organization as “generally satisfactory,” he identified a number of significant shortcomings. For example, Malenkov saw the reason for workers’ dissatisfaction with wages in the fact that party cells “weakly attract the working masses to discuss issues that concern them”. In general, the situation with the mood of the proletariat in Malenkov’s coverage looked depressing. In his opinion, local Bolsheviks did not take any measures to attract grassroots activists to the propaganda of the party’s policies; the bulk of party members did not even attend party meetings, did not participate in public life and did not pay membership fees. Malenkov also noted a large amount of embezzlement, theft, and especially drunkenness.

Based on the results of the inspection in September 1926, Zhdanov was summoned with explanations to a meeting of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee. The Organization Bureau was then headed by the authoritative Comrade Stalin. Judging by the questions asked by the technical leader of the party, who had not yet become a leader, he was not particularly interested in the alcoholic passion of the Nizhny Novgorod communists, but was concerned about strikes and walkouts. The 30-year-old “governor” Zhdanov sensibly answered all the questions of the future “father of nations.” The Nizhny Novgorod province and its party organization experienced the same difficulties as most industrial regions of the country and local organizations of the CPSU (b) in the 20s. Zhdanov proved himself to be a competent leader of a large and complex region, and Stalin did not raise any questions about his political reliability in the fight against “Trotskyism.”

It was from this meeting that working contacts between Zhdanov and Stalin became regular; in a few years they, comrades in the party and factional struggle against the Trotskyists and Zinovievites, would become friends and drinking buddies.

Zhdanov, 1928
photo published for the first time

But something else must be recognized - in the same autumn days of 1926, it seems that the enmity that would persist throughout life was born in the relationship between Zhdanov and Malenkov, who became the instigator of this proceeding in the Central Committee. In Stalin’s team, both would work side by side for a quarter of a century, they would work hard as one team, but they would never have humanly friendly relations. Without a doubt, this hostility will become one of the reasons for the behind-the-scenes struggle between the Zhdanov and Malenkov groups in the post-war future. One of…

Both fellow rivals will almost simultaneously and in parallel climb the career ladder to the very top, gradually becoming Stalin’s key “promoters.” In 1934, both became heads of the apparatus of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Malenkov will be appointed to the post of head of the department of the leading party bodies of the Central Committee, and Zhdanov will then become the third secretary of the Central Committee. In our time, this is the level of key figures in the presidential administration or government apparatus. It is clear that officials of this level are no longer just politicians and people in themselves - each of them already formed their own bureaucratic team of dozens, if not hundreds of people. The same Zhdanov brought with him several trusted persons from the Nizhny Novgorod region to work in the Central Committee.

Malenkov, 1934

The still mysterious murder of Kirov at the end of 1934 would transfer Zhdanov to Leningrad. The city on the Neva was at that time the second, and according to a number of scientific and industrial indicators, the first metropolis of the USSR. The Leningrad region in those years included, in fact, the entire north-west of Russia, from Pskov to Murmansk. At the same time, Zhdanov would be a unique official for those years - heading one of the most important regions, he would retain the post of Secretary of the Central Committee. Until the war itself, the Politburo will adopt special resolutions - how many days a month Comrade Zhdanov will work in Leningrad in the Smolny, and how many in Moscow in the Kremlin.

At the same time, Zhdanov will retain influence on the party organization of the huge Nizhny Novgorod (then Gorky) region, and simultaneous leadership in the country’s first two megacities will allow him to form one of the largest and most influential “clans” in the Stalinist “vertical of power” within a few years. Already in 1935, the new head of Leningrad and the secretary of the Central Committee very ambitiously declared at the plenum of the city committee in Smolny: “We, Leningraders, must provide party personnel for export.” And this export of Leningrad personnel went to the capital, to Moscow, often directly to the Kremlin.

This promotion of new personnel especially intensified in 1937-38, when, for obvious reasons, many leadership positions became vacant in Moscow and Leningrad and - let’s not lie - in all the big cities of the Soviet Union. Old careers collapsed into oblivion and often from the very bottom, grandiose new ones were erected in their place... In March 1939, Zhdanov himself, at the XVIII Congress of the Bolshevik Party, actually spoke about this directly from the rostrum: “If several years ago they were afraid to nominate educated people and young people for leadership in the party, the leaders directly stifled young cadres, not allowing them to rise up, then the biggest victory of the party is that the party managed, having gotten rid of saboteurs, to clear the way for the promotion of grown-up people.” for the last period of personnel and place them in leadership positions.”

It was at that time that Comrade Zhdanov “put thousands of people into leadership positions,” including all the future participants in the “Leningrad case.” But it was precisely these young cadres who emerged by the end of the 30s, who grew up both on the basis of personal abilities and due to the “social elevator” accelerated by repression to maximum speed, who ensured survival and victory in the Great Patriotic War, then ensured the restoration of our country in the shortest possible time and its becoming a global superpower. The abundant blood on the hands of Zhdanov and other leading comrades as a result of the “repressions” has, among other things, this result, which is important for us.

So, created precisely in 1936-39. During the war, Zhdanov’s “Leningrad team” would endure the entire 872 days of the siege, and many people from it would work in the most key positions throughout the USSR during the war.

Immediately after his appearance in Leningrad, Zhdanov, in addition to the “people of Kirov,” will bring with him to the city on the Neva a number of old acquaintances from work in the Nizhny Novgorod region. Thus, Alexander Shcherbakov, who worked with him in Nizhny, and then during the creation of the Union of Soviet Writers, in 1936 replaced the arrested Mikhail Chudov as 2nd Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee. Already in 1937-38. this “Zhdanov’s man” will head a number of regional committees decapitated by repression in Siberia and Ukraine. On the eve of the war, Shcherbakov will head the Moscow Party Organization, and then the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army.

journalist Alexander Shcherbakov. Not yet the “governor” of Moscow...
photo published for the first time

But the main cadres of Zhdanov’s Leningrad team will be raised by him directly in the city on the Neva from the youth who replaced the repressed top of the old Kirov team. So, the former in 1935-37. Chairman of the Leningrad City Planning Commission and Deputy Chairman of the City Executive Committee Nikolai Voznesensky was promoted to work in the State Planning Committee of the USSR in 1937 and headed this key body for the Soviet economy - after the Great Patriotic War, it was no coincidence that foreign media would call him “the economic dictator of Russia.” Like Zhdanov, Voznesensky on his father’s side was the grandson of a village priest.

According to Anastas Mikoyan, when in December 1937 Stalin was looking for a replacement for the arrested Valery Mezhlauk as chairman of the State Planning Committee, it was Zhdanov who proposed the candidacy of Voznesensky. “Zhdanov praised him,” Mikoyan recalled.

Nikolai Voznesensky

Voznesensky’s sister, Maria, who worked as a teacher at the Leningrad Communist University (now the North-Western Academy of Public Administration), was arrested in 1937 as “a member of the Trotskyist-Zinoviev organization that knew about the Trotskyists, did not expose them and appointed obviously alien people to teaching positions.” elements". During the investigation, Maria Voznesenskaya did not plead guilty to anything, however, together with her young sons and husband she was sent into exile in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Nikolai Voznesensky turned to Zhdanov for help - the exile was canceled and the “case” was terminated. Maria Voznesenskaya was reinstated in the party and in her teaching position in Leningrad.

In the same 1937, the little-known son of a worker from St. Petersburg, a former 15-year-old Red Army soldier and co-operator of the NEP era, a graduate of the Textile Institute, Alexei Kosygin, was approved by Zhdanov for the post of director of the Oktyabrskaya weaving factory (one of the oldest manufactories in St. Petersburg, until Revolution, owned by a foreign concern). A year later, Zhdanov appointed an intelligent 33-year-old specialist as head of the industrial and transport department of the Leningrad regional committee of the CPSU (b), and then head of the Leningrad City Executive Committee. A year later, in 1939, at the XVIII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), at the suggestion of Zhdanov, Kosygin was elected to the Central Committee, became People's Commissar and headed the entire textile industry of the country. And a year later, in 1940, Alexey Kosygin was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Government (Council of People's Commissars) of the USSR.

Young Kosygin, 1939

As a result of such a rapid career, Kosygin would work in this post, and then at the head of the government of the world power USSR, for 40 years until 1980. All economic and scientific achievements of our country in the 2nd half of the twentieth century will be associated with his name. Just as in forty years of managing the world’s second economy, not a single corruption story will be associated with Kosygin’s personality, which could allow one to doubt the absolute disinterestedness of the “eternal” chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers. So this Zhdanov personnel legacy influenced our lives for a very long time.

In addition to the managers who were quickly promoted to the central bodies of the country, Zhdanov quickly formed a team of managers who “stayed” with him in Leningrad for a long time. Here, from all the many leading figures in the city and region, it is worth highlighting, perhaps, the Leningrad trinity closest to Zhdanov - Alexei Kuznetsov, Pyotr Popkov and Yakov Kapustin.

All three, when they were noticed by Comrade Zhdanov, were just over 30. All three were of worker-peasant origin and began their life as young laborers, combining proletarian labor with socio-political activity and voracious study.

Alexey Aleksandrovich Kuznetsov was born in 1905 in the town of Borovichi, two hundred miles from Novgorod, as the third and youngest child in the family of a sawmill worker. At this factory, after attending parochial school and city school, at the age of 15 he began his career as a sorter of defective logs. Before the revolution, he probably would have remained among the sawdust and boards, but the beginning of the 20s already gave the working boy the opportunity to have a different biography. The best student at the city school, assertive and active, he creates the first Komsomol cell at the factory. Soon he is elected to the district committee of the RKSM, and the communist youth union sends him to one of the villages of the district to work as an “izbach” - the head of a hut-reading room (they, these “huts,” were then the first cultural centers in the village, created by the Bolsheviks even before collectivization). At the end of the 20s. Alexey Kuznetsov works in the district committees of the Komsomol in the Novgorod region. Here he went through all the vicissitudes of the internal political struggle of those years - in 1925 he actively “exposed the subversive work of the kulaks” in the Borovichi district, being the secretary of the Malovishera district committee, “identified and defeated the Zinoviev thugs entrenched in the district”, in 1929 he fought with the “dubious public "in the Luga District Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks... But one should not think that all this fight against the kulaks and supporters of the once powerful Zinoviev was then a complete fraud or a pleasant sinecure.

An active and irreconcilable young Komsomol member was noticed in Kirov’s circle and in 1932 he was promoted to party work in the Leningrad party apparatus. At the time of Zhdanov’s appearance in the city, Kuznetsov was the 1st secretary of the Dzerzhinsky district committee. As Leningradskaya Pravda later wrote: “With special strength, Comrade. Kuznetsov developed his organizational skills as first secretary of the Dzerzhinsky district committee of the CPSU(b). Many Soviet, economic and cultural institutions of great national importance are concentrated in the Dzerzhinsky district. The district committee has done a lot to cleanse these institutions of the Trotskyist-Zinovievite and Bukharin-Rykovite scum entrenched in them...”

By 1937, Kuznetsov worked as the head of the Organizational and Party Department of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In September 1937, 32-year-old Alexei was appointed second secretary of the regional committee, from now on he will be Zhdanov’s main assistant in Leningrad on the party and politics in general. At the height of the repressions, it is his cautious Zhdanov who delegates to the “special troika” and generally transfers the main functions in this terrible area to the tenacious and unwavering Kuznetsov. As employees of the Leningrad NKVD department later recalled about that time: “We never saw him at the NKVD. Kuznetsov visited often..." Zhdanov will sometimes even have to restrain the excessive zeal of his young deputy.

Thus, at the very end of September 1937, the head of the Leningrad NKVD Zakovsky submitted to the regional committee a proposal to expel from the party the arrested employee of the Party Control Commission for the Leningrad Region, Mikhail Bogdanov. The prisoner himself had already been beaten in the “Big House” on Liteiny Prospekt in the office of the deputy head of the Regional NKVD.
In response to the proposal of the “Chekists,” the newly appointed 2nd Secretary Kuznetsov quickly prepared an unquestionable draft decision on the expulsion: "Bogdanov M.V. was politically connected with the group of Strupe, Kodatsky, Nizovev... He restored obviously Trotskyist-Bukharinist k/r elements in the party, contributing to the preservation of agents of fascism in the ranks of the party organization...” The document was submitted to the 1st Secretary for approval. Zhdanov did not sign this text for Kuznetsov and, as he liked to put it, “sprung” him - he replaced the murderous lines of his deputy with much softer conclusions with a proposal not to expel the arrested man from the party, but only to remove him from the regional and city committees, “giving him a final warning.” This did not return Bogdanov’s freedom, but it saved him from an immediate death sentence.

In addition to Alexey Kuznetsov, Terenty Shtykov is worth mentioning among the party “promoters” of Zhdanov’s Leningrad team. Born in 1907, the son of a Belarusian peasant from the Grodno province, at the age of 20 he graduated from a vocational school in Leningrad and joined the party. From 1931 he would work in the regional departments of the Leningrad Komsomol, and from 1938 he would become the closest assistant to Zhdanov and Kuznetsov in the regional party committee. After the Great Patriotic War, in 1945, fate would throw Terenty Fomich Shtykov very far from Leningrad, to the north of the Korean Peninsula. There, a former employee of the Leningrad regional committee, using Zhdanov’s patterns, will build the Communist Party and the state of North Korea. It is no coincidence that the draft charter of the new Workers' Party of Korea and the constitution of North Korea will be discussed in Zhdanov's Kremlin office. But we will return to this oriental story, for now we note that Zhdanov’s party and state recipes, thrown into Korean soil, still show amazing viability in the harshest conditions...

Shtykov, Zhdanov, Kuznetsov (second row) and Meretskov on the podium, November 7, 1939. Three weeks left before the Finnish war...

The party was the main core of the entire state and economic apparatus of the Stalin era. But in addition to professional party workers, such as Alexey Kuznetsov or Terenty Shtykov, other people were also needed to manage the city economy. Pyotr Popkov and Yakov Kapustin became such “strong business executives” for Zhdanov.

Pyotr Sergeevich Popkov was born in 1903 in a village near Vladimir. His father was a carpenter; besides Peter, there were three more brothers and three sisters in the family. Therefore, from the age of 9, having barely studied in two classes of a parochial school, the boy was sent to work as a farm laborer. Until he was 12 years old, he tended other people's cattle. In 1915, his father took him to Vladimir, sending him as an apprentice to a private bakery. A few years later, the teenager, like his father, became a carpenter. Until 1925, Peter worked in the carpentry workshops of Vladimir. He combined work with studying at an evening school for the illiterate. He joined the Komsomol, and in 1925 he joined the party. I wanted to go to study at a university on a party ticket, but due to my father’s illness I was forced to return to carpentry work in order to support my family. Only at the end of the 20s. carpenter Pyotr Popkov enters the workers' faculty at the Leningrad Pedagogical University. Worker faculties in the 20-30s. provided training for proletarian youth who had not received a timely secondary education to study at universities.

Having successfully improved his literacy at the workers' faculty, Popkov in 1931 entered the Leningrad Institute of Municipal Construction Engineers at the Faculty of Engineering and Economics. He completed his higher education in that very year 1937 and after graduating from the institute he remained to work there as secretary of the party committee and head of the research sector. So a semi-impoverished farm boy, a teenage baker and a young carpenter becomes an authoritative member of the primary organization of the ruling party and a respected engineer, a person with a higher education, which is still a rarity in that semi-literate country.

Let us remember that at the end of 1937, under the new Constitution, elections to councils of all levels were held in the USSR. And in Leningrad, moreover, Zhdanov has just carried out a new zoning in connection with plans for the reconstruction of the city. And in November 1937, Pyotr Popkov was elected to the council of one of these new urban districts. At the same time, the ongoing repressions in the country are opening up a lot of vacancies, launching a grandiose “social elevator”. Thus, for a combination of various reasons, a technically competent and active member of the Bolshevik Party with an impeccable proletarian biography becomes the chairman of the Leninsky District Council of Workers' Deputies of the city of Leningrad.

The district council then decides all issues of local importance, from cultural construction to pressing issues of public utilities and everyday life. And the utility systems engineer finds himself in his place - Popkov personally “builds” and controls everything in the new Leninsky district: from the veterinary inspection to the regional education department, from the registry office to the trade inspectorate and accounting department. For example, he personally appoints and checks every day all the building managers in his territory. Based on the results of the first year of its work, all the numerous and stringent checks then did not find embezzlement and theft in the new area.

Zhdanov quickly notices the promising “business executive”. Leningradsky, the party leader, is clearly impressed by the young and intelligent practitioner with brilliant characteristics for those years. And Popkov himself during this period, at work meetings with the same building managers, constantly mentions his contacts with the most important Leningrad boss: “It’s no coincidence that Comrade Zhdanov calls us and demands a report every ten days...”

Under the patronage of Zhdanov, Pyotr Popkov’s economic career is developing rapidly. From 1938 he became deputy chairman, and in 1939 chairman of the Leningrad City Council.

Pyotr Popkov with his son, Leningrad, 1940

Yakov Kapustin becomes another key representative of Zhdanov’s Leningrad team. Yakov Fedorovich was born in 1904 into a peasant family in the Vesyegonsky district of the Tver province. From the age of 19, he worked as a laborer at Volkhovstroy, built by the Bolsheviks on the personal instructions of Lenin in 1918-26. the first large hydroelectric power station in Russia. After Volkhovstroy, Kapustin worked as an assistant mechanic and riveter at the famous Putilov plant in Leningrad. In 1926-28, while serving in the Red Army, he joined the Bolshevik Party. After the army he worked at the same Putilov, now Kirov, plant. In the early 30s, proletarian Kapustin went to study at the Industrial Institute (before the revolution, St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute, now St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University). In the mid-30s, it was the largest technical university in the country, in which over 10 thousand undergraduate and graduate students study under the guidance of almost a thousand professors and teachers. Since 1935, the Industrial Institute will be headed by a person from the “Zhdanov team”, the former head of the Nizhny Novgorod regional department of public education Pyotr Tyurkin (at the end of 1937 he would become the People’s Commissar of Education of the RSFSR, and in 1949 he would also be one of the defendants in the “Leningrad case... ")

In the same 1935, already a graduate student at the country's largest technical university, Yakov Kapustin, in the direction of the Kirov Plant, the largest machine-building plant in the country, went on an internship to England, where he studied the production of steam turbines. After studying overseas, engineer Kapustin in 1936 became an assistant to the head of the workshop at the Kirov plant. The head of the workshop was Isaac Zaltsman, the future main tank builder in the Stalinist USSR, who is also considered one of “Zhdanov’s people.” Later, Western researchers and journalists would call Zaltsman the “king of tanks.” In 1937, a severe industrial conflict arose between Zaltsman and Kapustin, typical of forced industrialization and accelerated scientific and technological development at that time. The dispute between Zaltsman and Kapustin almost ended in the expulsion of the latter from the party.

However, thanks to Zhdanov’s intervention, Kapustin not only remained at the plant and in the party, but in 1938 he already headed the party organization of this giant of Leningrad industry. Another year later, in 1939, engineer Yakov Kapustin became secretary of the Kirov district party committee, and in 1940 he was appointed 2nd secretary of the Leningrad city committee of the CPSU (b).

Yakov Kapustin

The first secretary of both the regional and city committees was Zhdanov. 2nd secretary of the regional committee is Alexey Kuznetsov. 2nd Secretary of the City Committee - Kapustin. Those. Kuznetsov replaced our hero in the region, and Kapustin in the city. But in the Stalinist hierarchy, the regional committee stood above the city committee. In fact, by 1940, when Zhdanov’s Leningrad team was finally formed, its top looked like this: in first place, at a completely sky-high top, somewhere on the right hand of the “great leader of all nations” is a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee, Comrade Zhdanov, The leader after him in Leningrad and the region is Comrade Kuznetsov, followed by Kapustin and Popkov, and after them the rest of the party, Soviet and economic leaders of the city and region.

Anastas Mikoyan writes in her memoirs about Zhdanov and his Leningrad deputies: “They were genuinely good to each other, loved each other like true friends.” The authors of the collection “The Leningrad Case” (1990), relying on the memories of employees of the Leningrad City Committee, claim that Alexey Kuznetsov was truly devoted to his patron, he literally “did not leave Zhdanov’s office.” The same can be said about other team leaders - Popkov, Kapustin and others. This was manifested even in small details: for example, in the purely personal notebook of the regional committee secretary Shtykov, the following names appear: “Kuznetsov”, “Mikoyan”, “Kosygin”... But always: “Comrade. Stalin" and "Comrade. Zhdanov." Even in personal communication behind the scenes, none of them simply said “Zhdanov” - exclusively “Andrei Alexandrovich” or “Comrade Zhdanov.”

After the war, when Zhdanov finally went to work in the Kremlin, the Leningrad bosses who did not directly work with him would call him “the main boss,” and Alexey Kuznetsov would simply become the “chief.”

But the Zhdanov clan, as we remember, is by no means limited to Leningrad. The capital of the country, Moscow, is headed by his “man” - Alexander Shcherbakov. In the government of the country, a key role is played by Zhdanov’s nominees, two deputy chairmen of the Council of People’s Commissars - Voznesensky and Kosygin. And all this is just the tip of a large bureaucratic iceberg...

From left to right: Pyotr Popkov, Andrey Zhdanov, Alexey Kuznetsov, Yakov Kapustin

continued in the magazine

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin and Nikolai Alekseevich Voznesensky (1903 - 1950), Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR (1942 - 1949), Doctor of Economics, member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (1939 -1949), member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (1947-1949) , academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, laureate of the Stalin Prize (1947)

Leningrad case. Secret materials:

Nikolai Alekseevich Voznesensky (1903 - 1950), Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR (1942 - 1949), Doctor of Economics, member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (1939 -1949), member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (1947-1949), academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences , laureate of the Stalin Prize (1947)

The Western scenario of killing the USSR in the late 40s did not work, but it worked in 1991.

People who grew up in the Soviet Union were raised in the spirit of national and religious tolerance. Of course, at the everyday level, attacks on the basis of nationality have always existed, but the Soviet people themselves certainly represented a new type of community - just like, for example, the American people.

The organizing and guiding force of Soviet society was the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The presence of republican communist parties in a number of union republics leveled the differences between the powerful center in Moscow and the peripheral formations subordinate to it, as if satisfying their national ambitions and giving them the opportunity to independently resolve the national question. This achieved the necessary level of decentralization and balance of all parts of the unified Soviet system.

The initial impetus for the collapse of the USSR and the entire Soviet society was the intra-party activity of individual regional groupings that capitalized on the formal absence of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The fact that these attempts were not nipped in the bud - as Stalin did in 1950 - led to the collapse of the Soviet system, interethnic conflicts, the dominance of ethnic clans in the economy, and the growing influence of Western interests in the post-Soviet space.

In this regard, the subversive activities of Boris Yeltsin, the head of the Sverdlovsk region, who headed the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU in 1985, are better known. It was under him that food fairs appeared in Moscow (one of the counts in the Leningrad case). He begins to criticize the leadership of the CPSU, declares the emergence of Gorbachev’s “cult of personality,” and in the summer of 1988, at the 19th party conference, accuses the entire Politburo as a “stagnant body.”

On May 29, 1990, Yeltsin was elected Chairman of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR. Like in a nightmare, in 1990 – 1991. On the territory of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the so-called “parade of sovereignties” followed - the declaration of independence by the union and autonomous republics, during which all the union and many autonomous republics adopted declarations of sovereignty. The ideological father of the “parade of sovereignties” was Chairman of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR Boris Yeltsin, who advised all republics:

“Grab sovereignty as much as you can!” - and at the same time arm yourself - just in case...

During this destructive process, on June 19-23, 1990, the Russian Party Conference was convened, which positioned itself as the Founding Congress of the Communist Party of the RSFSR (as part of the CPSU). The conference-congress was attended by 2,768 delegates elected to the XXVIII Congress of the CPSU from party organizations of the RSFSR. Mikhail Gorbachev, who was present at the congress, supported the proposal to create the Communist Party of Russia.

In the Politburo of the new destructive party, among others, he was elected Gennady Andreevich Zyuganov. The Chairman of the Central Control Commission of the Communist Party of Russia became Nikolai Sergeevich Stolyarov, who in the August days of 1991, when the fate of the country was being decided, found himself in the Yeltsin-Rutskov “clip”, among the most ardent anti-Sovietists, pathological haters of the socialist system, supporters of its destruction and “capitalization” of the country . Together with Rutskoy, Yeltsin’s right-hand man, Stolyarov (being, like Rutskoy, a pilot) flew to Foros to “rescue” Union President Gorbachev and make him a powerless puppet of Russian President Yeltsin, who had usurped power in the country.

Immediately after the August events, Stolyarov moved from the post of Chairman of the Central Control Commission to the position of assistant to the Chairman of the KGB, the notorious Vadim Bakatin, and together with him took up the collapse of the Soviet intelligence services,By Decree of the President of the RSFSR Yeltsin of August 23, 1991 N 79 “On the suspension of the activities of the Communist Party of the RSFSR” the party was banned. The successor to the Communist Party of the RSFSR was the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), which was created on the basis of the primary organizations of the Communist Party of the RSFSR. The number of members of the Communist Party of the RSFSR who became members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation after the Second Congress of the Communist Party of the RSFSR did not exceed 500 thousand people.

Thus, after the lifting of the ban on the activities of the primary organizations of the CPSU - the Communist Party of the RSFSR more than 6 million members of the Communist Party of the RSFSR refused to continue political activities in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which became a renegade parliamentary-type party, the results of which are notorious: having won the 1996 presidential elections, Gennady Zyuganov, under powerful pressure from liberal forces, simply “leaked” it, giving it to Yeltsin. According to Sergei Baburin and other participants in the meeting of the President of Russia with representatives of the “non-systemic opposition”, which took place on February 20, 2012, Dmitry Medvedev, speaking about the 1996 elections, literally said the following:

“Hardly anyone has any doubt who won the 1996 presidential election. It was not Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.”

Looking over the events described above, as a result of which the country turned from a powerful power into a pitiful vassal and raw materials appendage of the West, one cannot leave the feeling of deja vu - something similar once happened in Soviet history and was then decisively stopped. This is the so-called “Leningrad case”, which combines the events of 1949-1950.

Already during the investigation it became clear that the Leningrad mafia had formed in the country. Having made their way into power, people from Leningrad (nowadays “St. Petersburg”) pulled along their acquaintances, colleagues and fellow countrymen and placed them in key government and party posts. In 1945, the First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee and City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov, was transferred to work in Moscow.

Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov (1896 - 1948), born in Mariupol - Soviet party and statesman, member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks since 1930 (candidate since 1925), secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks since 1934, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks ( b) since 1939, Colonel General

A year later, in March 1946, his successor, Alexey Aleksandrovich Kuznetsov, also went there. He also became secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and took one of two key positions in the Central Committee apparatus - head of the Personnel Department. In the summer of 1948, receiver A.A. Kuznetsova, First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee and City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Pyotr Sergeevich Popkov, addressed the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR Nikolai Alekseevich Voznesensky, who in 1935-1937 was the Chairman of the Leningrad City Planning Commission and Deputy Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Leningrad City Council, with a proposal to take “patronage” over Leningrad (St. Petersburg). As it turned out, similar conversations were also held with A.A. Kuznetsov. Thus, a Leningrad intra-party group emerged that had clear leaders at the very top.

The group’s first move was the unauthorized holding of an All-Russian wholesale fair in Leningrad in October 1948 - moreover, bypassing the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the Council of Ministers of the USSR - Yeltsin subsequently started the same thing in Moscow. They wasted a lot of money, losses amounting to four billion... The fair had barely ended when almost immediately, in January 1949, voting falsification was revealed at the party conference of the Leningrad Regional Committee held on December 25 - State Security Lieutenant General Pavel Anatolyevich Sudoplatov writes about this.

And these are also seeds. This is what Popkov admits:

“I have spoken more than once - and I spoke here in Leningrad... I also said this in the reception room when I was in the Central Committee... about the Russian Communist Party. While discussing this issue, I said the following thing:

“As soon as the RCP is created, it will be easier for the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks: the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks will not lead each regional committee, but through the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party.” On the other hand, I stated that when the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party is created, then the Russian people will have party defenders.”

That is, Popkov publicly admits that he campaigned for the creation of the Russian Communist Party. This is exactly the idea that 40 years later the whole country bought into: first the creation of the Communist Party of the RSFSR, then the emergence of the President of the RSFSR - and then the elegant takeover of control from the allied structures.

But in order to facilitate this interception, it is necessary to create economic chaos in the country, sow discontent and panic among the population. In a planned economy, the easiest way to do this is through the State Planning Committee, headed by the “Leningrader” Voznesensky. Therefore, when the Commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Bureau of the Council of Ministers began checking the State Planning Committee, such additions and distortions were revealed that the hair of the inspectors stood on end. But the most important thing is that facts of direct espionage in favor of the United States were discovered there.

Over five years, from 1944 to 1948, 236 secret documents disappeared from Voznesensky’s department, including several state plans for the restoration and development of the national economy, information on the volume of oil transportation and on the organization of the production of radar stations.

In the summer of 1949, the USSR MGB received information that the second secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Yakov Fedorovich Kapustin, was an agent of the British intelligence service SIS. While on an internship in England in 1935-1936, where he studied steam turbines, he entered into an intimate relationship with an English translator. They were caught by an angry husband, but, apparently, it was a classic “honey trap” - in common parlance, a “set-up”. On July 23, 1949, Kapustin was arrested on charges of espionage for England. Minister of State Security of the USSR, Colonel General Victor Semyonovich Abakumov in his report dated August 1, 1949, he reported to Stalin:

On August 4, Kapustin confirmed that an anti-Soviet, anti-party group had formed in Leningrad, led by Voznesensky and Kuznetsov, who, through the Central Committee, supervised the work of the state security agencies. It also included Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR Rodionov, First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee and City Party Committee Popkov, Second Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee and City Party Committee Turko, Chairman of the Leningrad City Executive Committee Lazutin, Head of the Organizational Department of the Leningrad Regional Party Committee Zakrzhevskaya, Secretary of the Crimean Regional Committee Soloviev and other supporters of “Slavic purity” in the ranks of the communists.

The investigation continued for more than a year. Former deputy The head of the Investigative Unit for Particularly Important Cases of the USSR Ministry of State Security, Colonel Vladimir Komarov, said that before leaving for Leningrad, Abakumov strictly warned him not to mention Zhdanov’s name at the trial. “You answer with your head,” he said.

On September 26, the indictment was officially approved by the Chief Military Prosecutor A.P. Vavilov. The trial took place in Leningrad. On September 29, 1950, a visiting session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR opened in the premises of the district House of Officers on Liteiny Prospekt.

In the dead of night on October 1, 1950, at 0:59 a.m., the court began announcing the verdict. Deputy Chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Major General of Justice Ivan Osipovich Matulevich rose from the chair:

“...Kuznetsov, Popkov, Voznesensky, Kapustin, Lazutin, Rodionov, Turko, Zakrzhevskaya, Mikheev were found guilty of uniting in 1938 in an anti-Soviet group and carrying out subversive activities in the party aimed at separating the Leningrad party organization from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ( b) in order to turn it into a support for the fight against the party and its Central Committee... For this, they tried to arouse discontent among the communists of the Leningrad organization with the activities of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (6), spreading slanderous statements, expressing treasonous plans... And also squandering state funds. As can be seen from the case materials, all the accused fully admitted their guilt during the preliminary investigation and at the court hearing.”

The Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR qualified the acts of those convicted under the most serious elements of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR - Art. 58 1a (treason), art. 58-7 (sabotage), Art. 58-11 (participation in a counter-revolutionary organization). Kuznetsov, Voznesensky, Popkov, Lazutin, Rodionov and Kapustin were sentenced to capital punishment - execution. Turko received 15 years in prison, Zakrzhevskaya and Mikheev - ten years each. The verdict was final and not subject to appeal.

On October 1, 1950, Voznesensky, Kuznetsov, Popkov, Rodionov, Kapustin and Lazutin were shot, and later also Badaev, Kharitonov, Levin, Kubatkin and Voznesensky’s sister.

Lieutenant General Pyotr Nikolaevich Kubatkin, who from August 1941 to June 1946 headed the NKVD-NKGB Directorate for the Leningrad Region, and then was the head of the 1st Main Directorate (foreign intelligence) of the USSR Ministry of State Security, was arrested on July 23, 1949 and accused of Leningrad destroyed materials indicating espionage by the secretary of the city committee of the CPSU (b) Ya.F. Kapustin in favor of Great Britain. At the beginning of October 1950, Kubatkin was sentenced by a Special Meeting of the USSR Ministry of State Security to 20 years in prison for “criminal inaction... expressed in failure to inform.” On October 27, 1950, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR revised the sentence and replaced it with the death penalty. On the same day, Kubatkin was shot.

In total, according to a certificate from the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs addressed to Khrushchev dated December 10, 1953, 108 people were convicted in the “Leningrad” case in 1949-1951 (party workers themselves - about 60 people), of which 23 people were sentenced to capital punishment, 85 received sentences from 5 to 25 years. Another 105 people were sent into exile for a period of 5 to 8 years as members of the families of traitors to the Motherland (CSIR).

And the country breathed a sigh of relief - Stalin waged a tough struggle against groupism and the division of the USSR along ethnic lines. But the work started by the “Leningraders” did not die - in 1985 it was continued and in 1991 brought to its logical conclusion - the complete collapse of the CPSU and the Soviet Union. It was not Lenin who laid the time bomb into the foundation of the Soviet system - as it is fashionable to say - but the “Leningraders”. And Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Zyuganov blew it up.

"Leningrad affair"

“Leningrad Affair” (the case of Russian National Bolsheviks), a trial of Russian National Bolsheviks in the ranks of the Communist Party, organized by Jewish Bolsheviks in the struggle for power over the Russian People. Its main goal was the destruction of the “Russian party” in the highest echelons of power of the USSR, as well as the defeat of Russian patriots on the ground.

In fact, the “Leningrad affair” was an anti-Russian, anti-patriotic conspiracy of Jewish Bolsheviks led by Beria, Khrushchev, Malenkov and Kaganovich in order to expel the Russian cadres brought into the state apparatus by Stalin after the Great Patriotic War.

After the war and up to the “Leningrad affair,” the formation of the state apparatus proceeded on a Russian basis. Next to the old, united, predominantly cosmopolitan leadership elite, a new one emerged, made up of young people who had performed well during the war. The Council of Ministers of the Russian Federation and the Leningrad Regional Committee and City Committee become the center for creating personnel for the new leadership. The soul of the new leadership layer was N. A. Voznesensky, chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee, deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. A close-knit group of people was formed, which, in addition to Voznesensky, included a member of the Organizing Bureau, Secretary of the Central Committee A. A. Kuznetsov, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR M. I. Rodionov, candidate member of the Central Committee, first secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee and City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks P. S. Popkov , second secretary of the Leningrad city committee Ya. F. Kapustin, chairman of the Leningrad city executive committee P. G. Lazutin.

From 1946 to Aug. 1948 The Leningrad party organization trained about 800 people for Russia. new Russian leadership personnel. P. S. Popkov became a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, former secretary of the Leningrad City Council (b) and deputy chairman of the Leningrad City Council M. V. Basov became first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR. Leningraders T.V. Zakrzhevskaya, N.D. Shumilov, and P.N. Kubatkin were nominated to the Central Committee and to “central work.” The first secretaries of the regional committees and the Central Committee of the republican communist parties were M. I. Turko, N. V. Solovyov, G. T. Kedrov, A. D. Verbitsky.

During the war, the figure closest to Stalin was Malenkov, who shared his closeness to Stalin with A.S. Shcherbakov. The second row of top-echelon politicians consisted of Molotov, Beria, Voznesensky, and Kaganovich. In the third row stood Andreev, Voroshilov, Zhdanov, Kalinin, Mikoyan, Khrushchev. All of them were members of the Politburo and only Malenkov, Voznesensky and Beria were candidates for membership in the Politburo. As Molotov claimed, Khrushchev, Malenkov and Beria were friends during the war.

Immediately after the war, the balance of power in the highest echelons of power changes in favor of the Russians. Although Beria, Malenkov and Voznesensky become members of the Politburo, their role, especially Malenkov and Beria, declines. The person closest to Stalin is Zhdanov, who took second place in the state. Malenkov is sent to work in Central Asia (and he fears arrest). Beria is removed from overseeing the security agencies and focused only on the activities of the Atomic Energy Commission. Abakumov, the former head of military intelligence SMERSH and who was in conflict relations with Beria, is appointed to the post of Minister of State Security instead of Beria's protege Merkulov, on the recommendation of Zhdanov. Khrushchev is demoted from his position as First Secretary of the Central Committee of Ukraine to a less significant position - Chairman of the Council of Ministers of this republic.

In the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Zhdanov relies on Voznesensky, and in the Central Committee - on the Secretary of the Central Committee A. A. Kuznetsov, who is responsible for the selection and placement of leading personnel. Until Zhdanov's death in 1948, this balance of power was stable.

Just as in the Middle Ages, the national liberation struggle took place under the guise of religious wars, so in the highest echelons of power in post-war Russia, the national-patriotic movement of the Russian People was most often carried out under the guise of a struggle for the purity of party ranks, for the correct class approach. By bringing to the fore the usual Marxist-Leninist phraseology, opponents were actually pursuing their own hidden goals. As before the war, a fierce battle between two irreconcilable forces continued - Russian national-patriotic and anti-Russian cosmopolitan. Neither one nor the other dared to express their goals openly.

The materials at our disposal allow us to imagine the real alignment of national-Russian and cosmopolitan forces in the highest echelons of power.

Relatively speaking, the following persons belonged to the “Russian party” in the top leadership: Stalin himself, candidate member of the Politburo A.S. Shcherbakov (died in 1945), member of the Politburo A.A. Zhdanov, as well as Chairman of the State Planning Committee N.A. nominated by Zhdanov Voznesensky, Secretary of the Central Committee A. A. Kuznetsov and leaders of the Leningrad party organization.

They were opposed by a group of influential leaders - members and candidate members of the Politburo Malenkov, Beria, Kaganovich, Mikoyan, as well as a number of hesitant Politburo members married to Jewish women: Molotov, Andreev, Voroshilov.

In the 1940s, right up to Zhdanov’s death, the chances of the “Russian party” for political leadership of the country were very high. According to many testimonies, Stalin, thinking about successors, wanted to see Zhdanov first as General Secretary of the Central Committee, and after his death Kuznetsov and Voznesensky as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Stalin appeared less and less at meetings of the Council of Ministers, as a rule, appointing Voznesensky to chair in his place. Of course, such a preference caused a feeling of anxiety and hatred towards the “Russian party” among the cosmopolitan part of the leadership.

Zhdanov's death in 1948 dramatically changed the balance of power in the highest echelon of power. Malenkov again becomes Stalin's favorite, as during the war. Instead of Kuznetsov, who was removed due to a false denunciation, Khrushchev received the key post of Secretary of the Central Committee for the selection and placement of personnel. Beria also joins the Malenkov-Khrushchev alliance. Having united, they become the most influential force in the state apparatus.

As Kaganovich later recalled, 2-3 years before Stalin’s death, a strong political alliance was formed between Khrushchev, Beria and Malenkov. A particularly close friendship existed between Beria and Khrushchev.

By the late 1940s, Stalin began to lose his temper, was often in a nervous, excited state and, most importantly, became very suspicious. As Molotov claimed, “some people went to extremes.” This state of Stalin was used by the cosmopolitan group in the fight against the “Russian party”.

Zhdanov died on August 31. 1948. Just the day before he felt good. There is evidence that he did not die a natural death, perhaps poisoned by some poisons from the bacteriological laboratory created by Beria. In addition to Timashuk’s testimony already known to us about improper treatment, there is testimony from the servant of Zhdanov’s Valdai dacha, who, shortly before his death, came to an employee of the local executive committee and said that the secretary of the Central Committee was “deliberately being killed” and asked to take action. This man called Moscow, then got scared and that same night, leaving everything behind, he left, saving his life.

Zhdanov's death upset the delicate balance in the balance of power. The anti-Russian group gained an advantage in the leadership of the country. The people who were part of it were experienced in the apparatus struggle, they knew Stalin’s behavior and mood better, and therefore could, in a certain sense, control him. Beria, Khrushchev and Malenkov are trying to present to Stalin that the “Russians” in the leadership are preparing his removal from power. As evidence, Stalin is told facts about the independent economic policy pursued by Russian organizations (in particular, the organization of the All-Russian Wholesale Trade Fair in January 1948 without Stalin’s notice), about the distortion of the election results in December. 1948 in the Leningrad United Party Organization, falsification of state reports, as well as the intentions of some leaders of the RSFSR to create the Communist Party of Russia (these intentions did not go beyond talk).

On this basis, the so-called the “Leningrad affair,” which would be more correctly called the “Russian affair,” because through it the majority of the Russian cadres who came after the war to replace the old Jewish-cosmopolitan functionaries were destroyed. Many documents of the “Leningrad case” were subsequently destroyed by G. M. Malenkov. Therefore, its details have to be judged by indirect evidence. Apparently, the case began with a denunciation signed by Malenkov and Khrushchev. In 1957, during a meeting of the June plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, Malenkov removed a number of materials from the “Leningrad case”, saying that he had destroyed them as personal documents. And the fact that he was allowed to do this suggests that N.S. Khrushchev was also interested in destroying them.

Based on the said denunciation in Feb. 1949 The Politburo adopts the Resolution “On anti-party actions of members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) vol. Rodionov M.I. and Popkova P.S.,” which stated that “their anti-state actions were the result of an unhealthy, non-Bolshevik bias, expressed in demagogic flirting with the Leningrad organization, denigration of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in attempts to present themselves as special defenders of Leningrad, in attempts to create a mediastinum between the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Leningrad organization and thus alienate the Leningrad organization from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

By decision of the Politburo, A. A. Kuznetsov, M. I. Rodionov and P. S. Popkov are removed from all posts. To sort out their case, a commission is created consisting of Malenkov, Khrushchev and Shkiryatov (Beria’s man). The interrogations of the accused were conducted not by MGB investigators, but by members of the party commission.

With the goal of destroying all Russian cadres in the top leadership, members of the party commission already at the first stage “tied” the Chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee Voznesensky to this matter.

As N.K. Baibakov recalls, as compromising evidence against Voznesensky, a memorandum by the Chairman of the USSR State Supply Committee M.T. Pomaznev about the underestimation of the industrial production plan for the 1st quarter of 1949 by the USSR State Planning Committee, which at that time was headed by Voznesensky, was used. This is where it begins organized persecution of Voznesensky.

E. E. Andreev, who was appointed to the State Planning Committee for the position of authorized representative of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for personnel, in the summer of 1949 presented a note about the loss of a number of secret documents by the State Planning Committee for the period 1944-49. The note addressed to Stalin, drawn up by Beria, Malenkov and Bulganin, said: “Comrade Stalin, on your instructions, Voznesensky was interrogated and we believe that he is guilty.”

9 Sep. The chairman of the Party Control Committee, a member of the commission on the “Leningrad case” presents the decision of the CPC to the Politburo: “We propose to expel N. A. Voznesensky from the members of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) and bring him to justice.”

At first, Stalin was against the arrest of Voznesensky and Kuznetsov, but Malenkov and Beria managed to present the matter in such a way that arrest was necessary.

In 1949, mass arrests of leading Russian personnel took place in the center and locally, including secretaries of regional committees and chairmen of executive committees. In Leningrad, Moscow, Crimea, Ryazan, Yaroslavl, Murmansk, Gorky, Tallinn, Pskov, Novgorod, Petrozavodsk and other cities, on the orders of Malenkov, people were arrested, mainly Zhdanov’s promoters, who were in the 40s. in the leadership of Leningrad, their wives, relatives, friends or simply colleagues. Only in the Leningrad region. St. are arrested 2 thousand people

One of the first to be arrested (and subsequently killed) was the first secretary of the Crimean regional party committee, N.V. Solovyov, who energetically opposed the creation of a Jewish republic on the territory of Crimea. The first secretary of the Yaroslavl regional committee, M. I. Turko, is arrested and tortured.

As was subsequently noted in the conclusions of the special commission that studied this case: “In order to obtain fictitious testimony about the existence of an anti-party group in Leningrad, G. M. Malenkov personally supervised the investigation of the case and took direct part in the interrogations. All those arrested were subjected to illegal methods of investigation, painful torture, beatings and torture. To create the appearance of the existence of an anti-party group in Leningrad, on the instructions of G. M. Malenkov, mass arrests were made... For more than a year, those arrested were prepared for trial, subjected to gross bullying, brutal torture, threats to kill their families, placed in a punishment cell, etc. Psychological treatment intensified on the eve and during the trial itself. The defendants were forced to memorize the interrogation protocols and not deviate from the pre-drafted script of the judicial farce.”

The anti-Russian group of Malenkov-Khrushchev-Beria turned the investigation into the “Leningrad case” into a continuous series of torture and abuse of Russian personnel.

Immediately after the meeting of the military board on September 30. 1950, according to the testimony of witnesses, “N. A. Voznesensky, A. A. Kuznetsov, P. S. Popkov, M. I. Rodionov, Ya. F. Kapustin and P. G. Lazutin were not shot, but brutally killed.”

A little later, many other persons involved in the “Leningrad case” were killed: G. F. Badaev, I. S. Kharitonov, P. N. Kubatkin, M. V. Basov, A. D. Verbitsky, N. V. Solovyov , A. I. Burlin, V. I. Ivanov, M. N. Nikitin, M. I. Safonov, P. A. Chursin, A. T. Bondarenko. In total, about 200 people were shot, and several thousand were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, and thousands more were removed from active work and appointed to low positions (among the latter, in particular, the talented Russian leader A. N. Kosygin, who was exiled to work, suffered in the textile industry).

Having freed the hands of the anti-Russian group of Malenkov-Beria-Khrushchev, allowing it to deal with the leading Russian cadres in the leadership of the country, Stalin essentially signed his own death sentence, because he had lost support for pursuing a firm and consistent national Russian policy. As the head of the Russian state, he doomed himself to inevitable loneliness and death. The most capable and energetic, war-tested Russian leaders were exterminated; it took years to recreate them. But Stalin no longer had time for this.

Oleg Platonov

Materials used from the site Great Encyclopedia of the Russian People -

“Leningrad Affair” (the case of Russian National Bolsheviks), a trial of Russian National Bolsheviks in the ranks of the Communist Party, organized by Jewish Bolsheviks in the struggle for power over the Russian People. Its main goal was the destruction of the “Russian party” in the highest echelons of power of the USSR, as well as the defeat of Russian patriots on the ground.

In fact, the “Leningrad affair” was an anti-Russian, anti-patriotic conspiracy of Jewish Bolsheviks led by Beria, Khrushchev, Malenkov and Kaganovich in order to expel the Russian cadres brought into the state apparatus by Stalin after the Great Patriotic War.

After the war and up to the “Leningrad affair,” the formation of the state apparatus proceeded on a Russian basis. Next to the old, united, predominantly cosmopolitan leadership elite, a new one emerged, made up of young people who had performed well during the war. The Council of Ministers of the Russian Federation and the Leningrad Regional Committee and City Committee become the center for creating personnel for the new leadership. The soul of the new leadership layer was N. A. Voznesensky, chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee, deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. A close-knit group of people was formed, which, in addition to Voznesensky, included a member of the Organizing Bureau, Secretary of the Central Committee A. A. Kuznetsov, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR M. I. Rodionov, candidate member of the Central Committee, first secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee and City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks P. S. Popkov , second secretary of the Leningrad city committee Ya. F. Kapustin, chairman of the Leningrad city executive committee P. G. Lazutin.

From 1946 to Aug. 1948 The Leningrad party organization trained about 800 people for Russia. new Russian leadership personnel. P. S. Popkov became a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, former secretary of the Leningrad City Council (b) and deputy chairman of the Leningrad City Council M. V. Basov became first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR. Leningraders T.V. Zakrzhevskaya, N.D. Shumilov, and P.N. Kubatkin were nominated to the Central Committee and to “central work.” The first secretaries of the regional committees and the Central Committee of the republican communist parties were M. I. Turko, N. V. Solovyov, G. T. Kedrov, A. D. Verbitsky.

During the war, the figure closest to Stalin was Malenkov, who shared his closeness to Stalin with A.S. Shcherbakov. The second row of top-echelon politicians consisted of Molotov, Beria, Voznesensky, and Kaganovich. In the third row stood Andreev, Voroshilov, Zhdanov, Kalinin, Mikoyan, Khrushchev. All of them were members of the Politburo and only Malenkov, Voznesensky and Beria were candidates for membership in the Politburo. As Molotov claimed, Khrushchev, Malenkov and Beria were friends during the war.

Immediately after the war, the balance of power in the highest echelons of power changes in favor of the Russians. Although Beria, Malenkov and Voznesensky become members of the Politburo, their role, especially Malenkov and Beria, declines. The person closest to Stalin is Zhdanov, who took second place in the state. Malenkov is sent to work in Central Asia (and he fears arrest). Beria is removed from overseeing the security agencies and focused only on the activities of the Atomic Energy Commission. Abakumov, the former head of military intelligence SMERSH and who was in conflict relations with Beria, is appointed to the post of Minister of State Security instead of Beria's protege Merkulov, on the recommendation of Zhdanov. Khrushchev is demoted from his position as First Secretary of the Central Committee of Ukraine to a less significant position - Chairman of the Council of Ministers of this republic.

In the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Zhdanov relies on Voznesensky, and in the Central Committee - on the Secretary of the Central Committee A. A. Kuznetsov, who is responsible for the selection and placement of leading personnel. Until Zhdanov's death in 1948, this balance of power was stable.

Just as in the Middle Ages, the national liberation struggle took place under the guise of religious wars, so in the highest echelons of power in post-war Russia, the national-patriotic movement of the Russian People was most often carried out under the guise of a struggle for the purity of party ranks, for the correct class approach. By bringing to the fore the usual Marxist-Leninist phraseology, opponents were actually pursuing their own hidden goals. As before the war, a fierce battle between two irreconcilable forces continued - Russian national-patriotic and anti-Russian cosmopolitan. Neither one nor the other dared to express their goals openly.

The materials at our disposal allow us to imagine the real alignment of national-Russian and cosmopolitan forces in the highest echelons of power.

Relatively speaking, the following persons belonged to the “Russian party” in the top leadership: Stalin himself, candidate member of the Politburo A.S. Shcherbakov (died in 1945), member of the Politburo A.A. Zhdanov, as well as Chairman of the State Planning Committee N.A. nominated by Zhdanov Voznesensky, Secretary of the Central Committee A. A. Kuznetsov and leaders of the Leningrad party organization.

They were opposed by a group of influential leaders - members and candidate members of the Politburo Malenkov, Beria, Kaganovich, Mikoyan, as well as a number of hesitant Politburo members married to Jewish women: Molotov, Andreev, Voroshilov.

In the 1940s, right up to Zhdanov’s death, the chances of the “Russian party” for political leadership of the country were very high. According to many testimonies, Stalin, thinking about successors, wanted to see Zhdanov first as General Secretary of the Central Committee, and after his death Kuznetsov and Voznesensky as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Stalin appeared less and less at meetings of the Council of Ministers, as a rule, appointing Voznesensky to chair in his place. Of course, such a preference caused a feeling of anxiety and hatred towards the “Russian party” among the cosmopolitan part of the leadership.

Zhdanov's death in 1948 dramatically changed the balance of power in the highest echelon of power. Malenkov again becomes Stalin's favorite, as during the war. Instead of Kuznetsov, who was removed due to a false denunciation, Khrushchev received the key post of Secretary of the Central Committee for the selection and placement of personnel. Beria also joins the Malenkov-Khrushchev alliance. Having united, they become the most influential force in the state apparatus.

As Kaganovich later recalled, 2-3 years before Stalin’s death, a strong political alliance was formed between Khrushchev, Beria and Malenkov. A particularly close friendship existed between Beria and Khrushchev.

By the late 1940s, Stalin began to lose his temper, was often in a nervous, excited state and, most importantly, became very suspicious. As Molotov claimed, “some people went to extremes.” This state of Stalin was used by the cosmopolitan group in the fight against the “Russian party”.

Zhdanov died on August 31. 1948. Just the day before he felt good. There is evidence that he did not die a natural death, perhaps poisoned by some poisons from the bacteriological laboratory created by Beria. In addition to Timashuk’s testimony already known to us about improper treatment, there is testimony from the servant of Zhdanov’s Valdai dacha, who, shortly before his death, came to an employee of the local executive committee and said that the secretary of the Central Committee was “deliberately being killed” and asked to take action. This man called Moscow, then got scared and that same night, leaving everything behind, he left, saving his life.

Zhdanov's death upset the delicate balance in the balance of power. The anti-Russian group gained an advantage in the leadership of the country. The people who were part of it were experienced in the apparatus struggle, they knew Stalin’s behavior and mood better, and therefore could, in a certain sense, control him. Beria, Khrushchev and Malenkov are trying to present to Stalin that the “Russians” in the leadership are preparing his removal from power. As evidence, Stalin is told facts about the independent economic policy pursued by Russian organizations (in particular, the organization of the All-Russian Wholesale Trade Fair in January 1948 without Stalin’s notice), about the distortion of the election results in December. 1948 in the Leningrad United Party Organization, falsification of state reports, as well as the intentions of some leaders of the RSFSR to create the Communist Party of Russia (these intentions did not go beyond talk).

On this basis, the so-called the “Leningrad affair,” which would be more correctly called the “Russian affair,” because through it the majority of the Russian cadres who came after the war to replace the old Jewish-cosmopolitan functionaries were destroyed. Many documents of the “Leningrad case” were subsequently destroyed by G. M. Malenkov. Therefore, its details have to be judged by indirect evidence. Apparently, the case began with a denunciation signed by Malenkov and Khrushchev. In 1957, during a meeting of the June plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, Malenkov removed a number of materials from the “Leningrad case”, saying that he had destroyed them as personal documents. And the fact that he was allowed to do this suggests that N.S. Khrushchev was also interested in destroying them.

Based on the said denunciation in Feb. 1949 The Politburo adopts the Resolution “On anti-party actions of members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) vol. Rodionov M.I. and Popkova P.S.,” which stated that “their anti-state actions were the result of an unhealthy, non-Bolshevik bias, expressed in demagogic flirting with the Leningrad organization, denigration of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in attempts to present themselves as special defenders of Leningrad, in attempts to create a mediastinum between the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Leningrad organization and thus alienate the Leningrad organization from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

By decision of the Politburo, A. A. Kuznetsov, M. I. Rodionov and P. S. Popkov are removed from all posts. To sort out their case, a commission is created consisting of Malenkov, Khrushchev and Shkiryatov (Beria’s man). The interrogations of the accused were conducted not by MGB investigators, but by members of the party commission.

With the goal of destroying all Russian cadres in the top leadership, members of the party commission already at the first stage “tied” the Chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee Voznesensky to this matter.

As N.K. Baibakov recalls, as compromising evidence against Voznesensky, a memorandum by the Chairman of the USSR State Supply Committee M.T. Pomaznev about the underestimation of the industrial production plan for the 1st quarter of 1949 by the USSR State Planning Committee, which at that time was headed by Voznesensky, was used. This is where it begins organized persecution of Voznesensky.

E. E. Andreev, who was appointed to the State Planning Committee for the position of authorized representative of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for personnel, in the summer of 1949 presented a note about the loss by the State Planning Committee for the period 1944-49 of a number of secret documents. The note addressed to Stalin, drawn up by Beria, Malenkov and Bulganin, said: “Comrade Stalin, on your instructions, Voznesensky was interrogated and we believe that he is guilty.”

9 Sep. The chairman of the Party Control Committee, a member of the commission on the “Leningrad case” presents the decision of the CPC to the Politburo: “We propose to expel N. A. Voznesensky from the members of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) and bring him to justice.”

At first, Stalin was against the arrest of Voznesensky and Kuznetsov, but Malenkov and Beria managed to present the matter in such a way that arrest was necessary.

In 1949, mass arrests of leading Russian personnel took place in the center and locally, including secretaries of regional committees and chairmen of executive committees. In Leningrad, Moscow, Crimea, Ryazan, Yaroslavl, Murmansk, Gorky, Tallinn, Pskov, Novgorod, Petrozavodsk and other cities, on the orders of Malenkov, people were arrested, mainly Zhdanov’s promoters who were in the 40s. in the leadership of Leningrad, their wives, relatives, friends or simply colleagues. Only in the Leningrad region. St. are arrested 2 thousand people

One of the first to be arrested (and subsequently killed) was the first secretary of the Crimean regional party committee, N.V. Solovyov, who energetically opposed the creation of a Jewish republic on the territory of Crimea. The first secretary of the Yaroslavl regional committee, M. I. Turko, is arrested and tortured.

As was subsequently noted in the conclusions of the special commission that studied this case: “In order to obtain fictitious testimony about the existence of an anti-party group in Leningrad, G. M. Malenkov personally supervised the investigation of the case and took direct part in the interrogations. All those arrested were subjected to illegal methods of investigation, painful torture, beatings and torture. To create the appearance of the existence of an anti-party group in Leningrad, on the instructions of G. M. Malenkov, mass arrests were made... For more than a year, those arrested were prepared for trial, subjected to gross bullying, brutal torture, threats to kill their families, placed in a punishment cell, etc. Psychological treatment intensified on the eve and during the trial itself. The defendants were forced to memorize the interrogation protocols and not deviate from the pre-drafted script of the judicial farce.”

The anti-Russian group of Malenkov-Khrushchev-Beria turned the investigation into the “Leningrad case” into a continuous series of torture and abuse of Russian personnel.

Immediately after the meeting of the military board on September 30. 1950, according to the testimony of witnesses, “N. A. Voznesensky, A. A. Kuznetsov, P. S. Popkov, M. I. Rodionov, Ya. F. Kapustin and P. G. Lazutin were not shot, but brutally killed.”

A little later, many other persons involved in the “Leningrad case” were killed: G. F. Badaev, I. S. Kharitonov, P. N. Kubatkin, M. V. Basov, A. D. Verbitsky, N. V. Solovyov , A. I. Burlin, V. I. Ivanov, M. N. Nikitin, M. I. Safonov, P. A. Chursin, A. T. Bondarenko. In total, about 200 people were shot, and several thousand were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, and thousands more were removed from active work and appointed to low positions (among the latter, in particular, the talented Russian leader A. N. Kosygin, who was exiled to work, suffered in the textile industry).

Having freed the hands of the anti-Russian group of Malenkov-Beria-Khrushchev, allowing it to deal with the leading Russian cadres in the leadership of the country, Stalin essentially signed his own death sentence, because he had lost support for pursuing a firm and consistent national Russian policy. As the head of the Russian state, he doomed himself to inevitable loneliness and death. The most capable and energetic, war-tested Russian leaders were exterminated; it took years to recreate them. But Stalin no longer had time for this.

Oleg Platonov

Materials from the site Great Encyclopedia of the Russian People were used

Kapustin Yakov Fedorovich

Kapustin Yakov Fedorovich (1904, Mikheev village, Tver province - 10/1/1950), party leader. The son of a peasant. He received his education at the Industrial Institute (1934). Since 1923 he has been a laborer at Volkhovstroy. Since 1925, assistant mechanic, riveter at the Krasny Putilovets plant (Leningrad). In 1926-28 he served in the Red Army. Attracted. 1927 joined the CPSU(b). Since 1934, senior foreman at the Kirov plant. In 1935-36 he was on an internship in England, where he studied the production of steam turbines. In 1938-39, secretary of the party committee and party organizer of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks at the Kirov plant. In 1939-40, secretary of the Kirov district party committee (Leningrad).

Popkov Petr Sergeevich

Popkov Pyotr Sergeevich (23.1.1903, village of Koliseevo, Vladimir province - 1.10.1950), party leader. Son of a worker. He received his education at the Leningrad Institute of Municipal Engineers (1937). In 1917-25 he worked as a carpenter at the Krasny Stroitel plant. On Sept. 1925 joined the CPSU(b). Since 1925, secretary of the Vladimir volost committee of the Komsomol. In 1926-28 head. carpentry workshop of the Vladimir city committee. He was promoted during the mass arrests of the party and economic apparatus in 1937-38. In 1937 head.

KUZNETSOV Alexey Alexandrovich (1905 - 1950). Soviet statesman and party leader, lieutenant general (1943). In 1938-1945 - Second Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee and City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). The official biography reads: “...A. Kuznetsov was one of the faithful, energetic assistants of the glorious leader of the Leningrad Bolsheviks, Comrade. Zhdanov. Under the leadership of A.A. Zhdanova comrade Kuznetsov is doing a lot of work to root out the Trotskyist-Zinovievsky and Bukharin-Rykovsky scoundrels who made their way to the leadership in a number of districts of the Leningrad region and launched their vile sabotage and espionage activities.

Comrade fought with tireless energy. Kuznetsov for exposing the enemies of the people operating on the ideological front - in the State Hermitage, in the Russian Museum, the Museum of the Revolution and a number of other cultural institutions" (Leningradskaya Pravda. 1937. January 16)...

Kuznetsov Alexey Alexandrovich

Kuznetsov Alexey Alexandrovich (7.2.1905, Borovichi, Novgorod province - 1.10.1950), party leader, lieutenant general (1943). Son of a worker. Since 1922, a sawmill sorting worker. In 1924-32, secretary of the Orekhovsky volost committee of the Komsomol, instructor, head. department, secretary of the Borovichi and Malovishersky district committees of the RKSM, head. department of the Nizhny Novgorod district committee and secretary of the Chudovsky district committee of the Komsomol. In 1925 he joined the CPSU(b). Since 1932, instructor of the Leningrad city committee of the CPSU (b), 2nd secretary of the Smolninsky, 1st secretary of the Dzerzhinsky district party committees (Leningrad).

Voznesensky Nikolay Alekseevich (LG.E, 2013)

Voznesensky Nikolai Alekseevich (1903-1950) - Soviet politician and statesman, economist, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (1947-1949), Doctor of Economics (1935), academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1943). In 1950 he was sentenced to capital punishment in the Leningrad case. An hour after the verdict was pronounced, he was shot. Rehabilitated in 1954. Main scientific works: “Five-year plan for the restoration and development of the national economy of the USSR for 1946-1950.” (M., 1946), “The military economy of the USSR during the Patriotic War” (M., 1947).