A fatal injection to the leader and the mystery of Kirov's murder
The memoirs of Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva "Twenty Letters to a Friend", it would seem, have been studied completely. But quite recently, the researcher of the political history of the world, Nikolai Nad, managed to find a copy of the original notes of Alliluyeva. The injection that could have caused Stalin's death, Beria's involvement in Kirov's death, the unexpected emotions of the "leader of the peoples" - all references to this were deleted from the final version of the memoirs.
Half a century ago there was a big international scandal. In the West, the memoirs of Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva "Twenty Letters to a Friend" were published, containing a lot of compromising evidence on the Soviet regime.
The book was prepared and published by a “Kremlin princess” who had fled the USSR with the most active assistance from the CIA. As a result, the American "special writers" removed many fragments, composing others instead, so that the original text, the division into chapters, turned out to be largely distorted.
How did you manage to find this rarity?
- Such luck became possible, among other things, thanks to acquaintance with high-ranking employees of the State Security Service of different generations. After for long years searches, I got at my disposal miraculously preserved from the mid-1960s, yellowed from time to time and read in places to holes - in literally, - a typewritten copy, reprinted from the original of the authentic memoirs of Svetlana Alliluyeva, completed by her in 1965. Before the official publication of the book, designed in the form of twenty "letters", there were still about two years left, and this is the so-called samizdat: the manuscript was illegally copied on a typewriter and distributed "among its own." When comparing the texts of the present confession of Stalin's daughter and the Twenty Letters published later in mass circulation, very significant differences are revealed.
“I got two slaps from my father”
– Why did you become so interested in searching for authentic memories of the “Kremlin princess”?
- I was forced to take up the investigation of the "case of the falsified memoirs of Stalin's daughter" by meetings with a childhood and youth friend of Vasily Stalin, twice a Hero Soviet Union pilot Vitaly Ivanovich Popkov. A direct witness of the school and war years of Stalin's children claimed that Svetlana Alliluyeva's book "Twenty Letters to a Friend" is not memoirs, but "some kind of science fiction literature, in which science has one name."
If you read carefully, you can find many factual “blunders” on the pages of the book. For example, Svetlana, in her so-called "letters", claims that her father never worked in the garden and did not dig in the ground. However, I learned from the daughter of Marshal Budyonny that this is not so, and there is even a photo in which Stalin and Budyonny, with shovels in their hands, are preparing a plot for beds.
There are even more egregious errors! The book distorts the dates of the birth of Svetlana's brother, the death of Stalin's mother, the suicide of Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and even the patronymic of the chief of security, Iosif Vissarionovich, General Vlasik, who has ensured the safety of the "father of peoples" and his family for 25 years! - Instead of Sidorovich, he became Sergeyevich in the book.
However, it can be assumed that Alliluyeva did not correct such obvious mistakes on purpose, so that readers would understand that she wrote all this under severe pressure from her "benefactors" from the CIA.
Where did these memoirs come from? Did Svetlana herself want to write them, or did someone “advise” her?
Rarely does a book have such a confusing fate! From people who were close to its origins, I learned that in 1954 Svetlana Alliluyeva (then still Stalin), a postgraduate graduate of the Academy of Social Sciences and a teacher of a special course for State Security officers, was instructed (supposedly at the suggestion of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU) to write memoirs about her father on the eve of opening of his museum.
After 2 years, the work was completed, but the exposure of the cult of personality, which happened at the 20th Congress, dramatically changed the situation. There was a need to change everything to new way. After Khrushchev's famous report, Svetlana was forced to make appropriate changes to the text. But no matter how much the daughter rewrote her memoirs about her father, they never became anti-Stalinist enough, and therefore were not printed in the USSR at that time.
And after finishing off Stalin at the 22nd Congress and removing his body from the Mausoleum at the end of 1961, there could be no question of any normal memoirs at all. And even the replacement of the father's surname with the mother's surname did not save the daughter from the growing hostility, and sometimes outright harassment, even from those who quite recently literally stuffed themselves into her best friends.
Svetlana lived mostly in the country, often alone. Betrayal, misunderstanding of others and suffering brought her to the church. But even in God she did not find the desired salvation. And then she again returned to her memories, hoping to purify and calm her soul with revelations on paper. Such an active literary work walked with Alliluyeva in the summer of 1963, in 1965 ...
In the found copy of the author's text, Alliluyeva directly says: “This book was written in 1965 in the village of Zhukovka. What is written in it, I consider a confession ... I would like everyone who reads it to think that I am addressing him personally ... "
Still, she primarily wrote and rewrote for herself, crossed out and added her reminiscences and reflections. And it was in these difficult days that I came to the hope that, "maybe when I write what I want to write, I will forget." - These words are not in the book "Twenty Letters to a Friend", but they remained on the typewritten samizdat pages.
At first, Svetlana did not expect any "letters", deciding only on the most frank confession to herself. The technique of dividing a large text into two dozen chapters - "letters" appeared later, already in the West, it was suggested by one of the "new friends".
The original, the real Alliluyev text, from which I managed to get a samizdat copy, is a story-confession in six parts. In terms of volume, it is five times smaller than a book and contains almost no digressions, which "Twenty Letters ..." abound so much that they are more reminiscent of piece of art rather than striving for historical accuracy of memoirs on political topics.
The text in typewritten copy noticeably wins in comparison with the book. Especially where, instead of the usual - I would say: officially accepted - descriptions of Stalin, the daughter (unlike the book) gives information about her father that is accessible only to her.
- Give some examples.
Here is at least such a small episode, mentioned in the typewritten version: “Then I saw my father only in August 1945, everyone was busy reporting about atomic bombing, and my father was nervous, inattentively talking to me ... "
The words “father was nervous” are very important here. Imagine: Stalin was nervous!! Such a detail immediately conveys the tension, the real state in which the entire Soviet leadership, including Stalin, was in front of the fact that America deliberately demonstrated its atomic power near the Soviet border ... But such an important phrase is missing from the book.
As you know, Stalin's daughter from a young age was fond of men, and on this basis she had very sharp conflicts with the omnipotent father, who directly told her what irresponsible hobbies could bring if she did not stop and take up her mind ..
In the found confession of Alliluyeva, there are very frank fragments of memories “about this”, which are absent or largely “emasculated” in “Twenty Letters ...”.
Particularly revealing is the story of the well-known screenwriter and, concurrently, almost the main successful womanizer of the capital, forty-year-old Alexei (Lyusya) Kapler, who became interested in Stalin's daughter when she was barely 16 years old.
Here is what Svetlana writes in her confession: “On this day, when I was going to school, my father unexpectedly arrived and quickly walked into my room, where my nanny was petrified at one glance.
I had never seen my father like this, he was choking with anger. “Where, where is all this, where are all these letters of your writer? I know everything, everything is yours telephone conversations right here,” he patted his pocket, “come here!” Your Kapler is an English spy, he is under arrest.”
I took out from the table all the photographs with inscriptions Lucy, his notebook, outline stories, new script. “I love him,” I said, finally finding my voice. "Love!" my father shouted with unspeakable anger, and I received two slaps on the face, the first in my life. “Listen to me, nanny, what has she come to, there is a war, and she is engaged ....! (obscene)".
Kirov was killed because of a telegram?
- Do the “not retouched” memoirs of Alliluyeva that you discovered shed light on some kind of “Kremlin secrets”, events related to Joseph Vissarionovich himself and his inner circle?
- Let's pay attention to a fragment of memoirs from a samizdat copy relating to the first hours after Stalin's death: “Someone was crying loudly in the corridor. It was a nurse who gave injections at night - she locked herself in one of the rooms and cried there, as if her whole family had died ... "
Insignificant, at first glance, the episode, but nevertheless, it was noticeably changed in the book: as if her whole family died at once ... "
Please note: not a word about injections! Moreover, the nurse who gave injections at night was replaced by a sister who developed the film of the cardiogram in the bathroom. And it's not just that. There was a very good reason for this!
- What is the fundamental difference: did the sister cry, giving injections or showing the film?
- This episode is fundamentally changed in the book because it concerns not just some nurse, but nurse Moiseeva! The one who gave the injection, after which Stalin died immediately! And Moiseeva, realizing that this was her doing, then sobbed as if her whole family had died.
At one time I managed to get access to Stalin's medical archive, which was then classified again. There, in particular, a very interesting document was found, concerning just the nurses and the last injections.
In the "Folder of draft records of medicinal prescriptions and duty schedules during last illness I. V. Stalin ”is an order on the procedures for March 5-6, 1953. Nurses Panina, Vasina, Demidova, Moiseeva were supposed to perform them. And the last, as they say, fatal injections had to be done by Moiseeva ...
At 8:45 pm, she gave an injection of calcium gluconate - before that, such an injection had never been given to a patient during the entire illness! And at 21.50 in the registration journal she signed that - for the first time in the entire period of treatment! - Introduced a dose of adrenaline to the patient ... After which Stalin died immediately! (As the doctors explained to me, in the condition that was observed in the leader in the last hours of his life, adrenaline injections are contraindicated, as they cause vasospasm great circle circulation and are fatal.)
And one more important secret is "highlighted" if you read the authentic memoirs of Alliluyeva. We are talking about the murder of Kirov. In the unedited samizdat version, the author directly points to Beria's involvement in the death of Sergei Mironovich:
“Once in the Caucasus, Beria was arrested by the Reds, caught in a betrayal, and sat, waiting for punishment. There was a telegram from Kirov, the commander of Transcaucasia, demanding to shoot the traitor, this was not done, and it (telegram - NAD) became the source of Kirov's murder.
There is logic in such an accusation. Indeed, even before Kirov received the posts of head of Leningrad and secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, he headed the Transcaucasus and, apparently, could know something about the past cooperation of the then high-ranking Transcaucasian Chekist Beria with British and German intelligence. So, Lavrenty Pavlovich was interested in eliminating Kirov! Moreover, over time, he became an increasingly close friend of Stalin and could really become the second person in the country.
Apparently, from childhood, when she ran around the table at which Stalin and Kirov discussed various (including, probably, secret) issues during lunch, little Svetlana remembered Kirov's firmly expressed doubt about Beria. Having left for the West many years later, she most likely faced the refusal of the local special services to return to the "uncomfortable" topic of Beria's cooperation with foreign intelligence services. Therefore, the accusations against this person were removed from the memoirs.
- The revelations of the leader's daughter were so dangerous for those who took power after him?
- I will illustrate this with the example of another quote from Alliluyeva's confession: “Over the past two years I saw my father twice, he was ill for a long time and hard, but in the summer of 1946 he went south for the first time after 1937. I drove a car on broken roads. A huge procession stretched out, they stopped for the night at the secretaries of the regional committees and district committees. My father wanted to see with his own eyes how people live, he was nervous that they lived in dugouts, that there were only ruins around. Khrushchev came to the south to him, boasting of watermelons and melons in girth, fruits and vegetables of Ukraine. And there was famine, and peasant women plowed on cows ... "
In the book version, this paragraph is changed - at first glance, not significantly, but very "eloquently":
“... he was nervous, seeing that people were still living in dugouts, that there were only ruins around ... Then some, now high-ranking comrades, came to him to the south with a report on how things were with agriculture in Ukraine. These comrades brought watermelons and melons to the girth, vegetables and fruits, and golden sheaves of wheat - that's how rich our Ukraine is!
- That is, the mention of Khrushchev's name disappeared from the text!
- Yes! The American authors decided to “pity” Nikita Sergeevich. Thus, Khrushchev, so much needed by them then, was taken away from the criticism of the people. However, even in such an impersonal version, the fact described by Alliluyeva very clearly suggests who in question. In a bet on window dressing, on the idea of what will happen as if it already exists - all Khrushchev!
“The love for the Hindu quickly passed”
- It is known that the manuscript of her memoirs, on the basis of which the book “Twenty Letters to a Friend” later appeared, Svetlana Alilluyeva sent to the west, still remaining to live in the Union. How did she do it?
The manuscript first came to India, and from there to America. Vladimir Semichastny, then Chairman of the KGB, told me how such “political smuggling” became possible: “Svetlana handed over the typed manuscript through her friend, who was the daughter of the Indian ambassador to the Soviet Union. We were simply powerless to prevent this, since international law did not allow even the KGB to inspect diplomatic baggage, and even more so the clothes of diplomats!
This removal of Alliluyeva's memoirs took place before her departure to India, because, according to our intelligence data, an agreement appeared in Moscow to publish them abroad.
And it is possible that Svetlana's request for permission to leave for India in order to "scatter over the waters of the Ganges" the ashes of her beloved Hindu husband who died in Moscow was only a cover. The love of Stalin's daughter for this Indian passed painfully quickly abroad ... "
Alliluyeva’s book, prepared by her “curators” from the American intelligence services, became, perhaps, the first such serious Western product. cold war". It was from this book that a streak of tangible political losses began. Soviet power up to its complete defeat on the ideological and - as a result, on the economic front. The result was the collapse of the USSR.
IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER
These letters were written in the summer of 1963 in the village of Zhukovka, not far from Moscow, within thirty-five days. The free form of letters allowed me to be absolutely sincere, and I consider what is written to be a confession. At that time it was not possible for me to even think about publishing a book. Now, when such an opportunity appeared, I did not change anything in it, although four years have passed since then, and now I am already far from Russia. In addition to the necessary editing in the process of preparing the manuscript for printing, minor cuts and the addition of footnotes, the book remained in the form in which my friends in Moscow read it. I would now like everyone who reads these letters to consider that they are addressed to him personally.
Svetlana Alliluyeva. May 1967 Locust Valley.
July 16, 1963 How quiet it is here. Only thirty kilometers away is Moscow, a fire-breathing human volcano, a red-hot lava of passions, ambitions, politics, entertainment, meetings, grief, fuss, the World Women's Congress, the World Film Festival, negotiations with China, news, news from all over the world in the morning, afternoon and in the evening ... The Hungarians arrived, film actors from all over the world walk around the streets, black women choose souvenirs in GUM "e ... Red Square - whenever you come there - is full of people of all skin colors, and each person brought here his own unique destiny, his character, his soul. Moscow seethes, rages, suffocates, and endlessly craves the new - events, news, sensations, and everyone wants to be the first to know latest news, - each in Moscow. This is the rhythm modern life. And it's quiet here. The evening sun gilds the forest, the grass. This forest is a small oasis between Odintsovo, Barvikha and Romashkovo, an oasis where no more summer cottages are built, roads are not built, and the forest is cleared, the grass is mowed in the clearings, and the dead wood is cut down. Muscovites walk here. " Best holiday on a day off”, according to radio and television, is to walk with a backpack on your shoulders and with a stick in your hands from Odintsovo station to Usovo station, or to Ilyinsky, through our blessed forest, through wonderful clearings, through ravines, clearings, birch groves. For three or four hours a Muscovite wanders through the forest, breathes oxygen, and it seems to him that he has risen, strengthened, recovered, rested from all worries, and he rushes back to boiling Moscow, plugging a withered bouquet of meadow flowers on the shelf of a suburban electric train. But then he will advise you, his acquaintances, for a long time, to spend Sunday walking in the forest, and they will all follow the paths just past the fence, past the house where I live. And I live in this forest, in these parts, all my thirty-seven years. It doesn't matter that my life changed and these houses changed - the forest is still the same, and Usovo is in place, and the village of Kolchuga, and the hill above it, from where the whole neighborhood is visible. And all the same villages where they take water from wells and cook it on kerosene stoves, where in the house behind the wall a cow mooes and quoh choo chickens, but TV antennas now stick out on the gray miserable roofs, and the girls wear nylon blouses and Hungarian sandals. Much is changing here, but the forest still smells of grass and birch - as soon as you get off the train - all the same golden pines I know stand, the same country roads run away to Petrovsky, to Znamensky. Here is my home. Here, not in the city, not in the Kremlin, which I cannot stand, and where I have lived for twenty-five years, but here. And when I die, let them put me in the ground here, in Romashkovo, in the cemetery near the station, on the hill - it’s spacious there, you can see everything around, the fields are all around, the sky ... And the church on the hill, old, good - however, it doesn’t work and dilapidated , but the trees in the fence near her have grown so violently, and so gloriously she stands all in dense greenery, and still continues to serve Eternal Good on the ground. Just let them bury me there, I don’t want to go to the city for anything, to suffocate there ... I’m telling you this, my incomparable friend, to you - so that you know. You want to know everything about me, everything is interesting to you, so know this too. You say that you are interested in everything that concerns me, my life, everything that I knew and saw around me. I think that there was a lot of interesting things around, of course, a lot. And it doesn’t even matter what happened, but what you think about it now. Do you want to think with me? I will write to you about everything. The only benefit of separation is that you can write letters. I will write to you everything that and how I can - I have five weeks ahead of me being separated from you, from a friend who understands everything and who wants to know everything. It will be one long, long letter to you. You will find anything here - portraits, sketches, biographies, love, nature, well-known, outstanding, and small events, reflections, speeches and judgments of friends, acquaintances - everyone I knew. All this will be motley, disorderly, everything will fall on you unexpectedly - as it was in my life. Don't think, for God's sake don't think what I count own life very interesting. On the contrary, for my generation, my life is extremely monotonous and boring. Perhaps, when I write all this, some unbearable burden will finally fall off my shoulders, and then my life will only begin ... I secretly hope for this, I cherish this hope in the depths of my soul. I'm so tired of this stone on my back; maybe I'll finally push him off me. Yes, the generation of my peers lived much more interesting than I did. And those who are five or six years older than me are the most wonderful people; these are those who from the student audiences went to the Patriotic War with a hot head, with a burning heart. Few survived and returned, but those who returned are the very color of modernity. These are our future Decembrists, they will still teach us all how to live. They will still have their say - I am sure of this - Russia is so thirsty buzzword, so yearned for him - in word and deed. I can't keep up with them. I did not have feats, I did not act on stage. My whole life has been behind the scenes. Isn't it interesting there? There is twilight; from there you see the audience, applauding, gaping in delight, listening to speeches, blinded by sparklers and scenery; from there you can also see actors playing kings, gods, servants, extras; you can see when they play, when they talk to each other, like people. Behind the scenes is twilight; it smells of mice and glue and old junk of scenery, but how interesting it is to watch! There passes the life of make-up artists, prompters, costumers, who would not exchange their lives and fate for anything - and who knows better than them that all life is a huge theater, where it is far from always that a person gets exactly the role for which he intended. A performance is on, passions boil, heroes wave their swords, poets read odes, kings get married, fake castles collapse and grow in the blink of an eye, Yaroslavna cries like a cuckoo on the wall, fairies and evil spirits fly, the shadow of the King appears, Hamlet languishes, and - the People are silent ...
The story will be long. The letters will be long. I'll get ahead of myself and go back to the very beginning. God forbid - this is not a novel, not a biography and not a memoir; there will be no sequence. This is such a wonderful morning. Forest morning: birds whistle, the sun shines through the green forest twilight. Today I want to tell you about the very end, about those days in March 1953 that I spent at my father's house, watching him die. Was it really the end of an era and the beginning of a new one, as they say now? I'm not to judge. We will see, My work is not an era, but a person. These were then terrible days. The feeling that something habitual, stable and lasting has shifted, shaken, began for me from the moment when on March 2 I was found at the lesson French at the Academy of Social Sciences and reported that "Malenkov asks to come to the Middle." (The near one was the father's dacha in Kuntsevo, unlike other, distant dachas). It was already unbelievable - that someone other than my father would invite me to come to his dacha ... I was driving there with a strange feeling of confusion. When we drove through the gate and on the path near the house, the car was stopped by N. S. Khrushchev and N. A. Bulganin, I decided that it was all over ... I went out, they took me by the arms. Both of their faces were in tears. “Let’s go to the house,” they said, “where Beria and Malenkov will tell you everything.” In the house—already in the hall—everything was not as usual; instead of the usual silence, deep silence, someone was running and fussing. When they finally told me that my father had a stroke at night and that he was unconscious, I even felt relieved, because it seemed to me that he was no longer there. I was told that, apparently, the blow happened at night, they found him at three in the morning lying here in this room, right here, on the carpet, near the sofa, and they decided to transfer him to another room on the sofa, where he usually slept. There he is now, there are doctors - you can go there. I listened, as if in a fog, petrified. All the details no longer mattered. I felt only one thing - that he would die. I did not doubt this for a minute, although I had not yet spoken to the doctors - I just saw that everything around, this whole house, everything was already dying before my eyes. And all three days spent there, I saw only this one thing, and it was clear to me that there could be no other outcome. In the large hall where the father was lying, a mass of people crowded. Unfamiliar doctors who saw the patient for the first time (academician V. N. Vinogradov, who had been watching his father for many years, was in prison) fussed around terribly. They put leeches on the back of the head and neck, took cardiograms, took x-rays of the lungs, the nurse constantly gave some kind of injections, one of the doctors continuously wrote down the course of the disease in a journal. Everything was done as it should. Everyone fussed, saving a life that could no longer be saved. Somewhere a special session of the Academy of Medical Sciences was meeting, deciding what else to do. In a nearby small hall, some other medical council was constantly conferring, also deciding what to do. They brought an apparatus for artificial respiration from some research institute, and with it young specialists - except for them, it must be no one would have been able to use it. The bulky unit stood idle, and the young doctors looked around dumbfounded, completely depressed by what was happening. I suddenly realized that I know this young female doctor - where did I see her? ... We nodded to each other, but did not speak. Everyone tried to be silent, as in a temple, no one talked about extraneous things. Here, in the hall, something significant, almost great, was happening - everyone felt it - and behaved appropriately. Only one person behaved almost indecently - it was Beria. He was excited to the extreme, his face, already disgusting, now and then distorted from the passions bursting him. And his passions were - ambition, cruelty, cunning, power, power ... He tried so hard, at this crucial moment, how not to outwit, and how not to outwit! And it was written on his forehead. He came up to the bed, and for a long time peered into the face of the patient - the father sometimes opened his eyes, but, apparently, it was unconscious, or in a clouded consciousness. Beria looked then, glaring into those misty eyes; he wanted to be “the most faithful, the most devoted” here too - which he tried his best to seem to his father and, unfortunately, succeeded for too long ... In the last minutes, when everything was already over, Beria suddenly noticed me and ordered: “Take me away Svetlana! Those who stood around looked at him, but no one thought to move. And when it was all over, he was the first to jump out into the corridor and in the silence of the hall, where everyone stood silently around the bed, his loud voice was heard, not hiding the triumph: “Khrustalev! car! It was splendid modern type a crafty courtier, the embodiment of oriental deceit, flattery, hypocrisy, which entangled even his father - who, in general, was difficult to deceive. Much of what this hydra did has now become a stain on the father’s name, they are largely to blame together, and the fact that in many ways Lavrenty managed to trick his father, and laughed at the same time with his fist, is undoubted for me. And this was understood by everyone "above" ... Now all his nasty insides were pouring out of him, it was difficult for him to restrain himself. I'm not alone - many understood that this was so. But they were wildly afraid of him and knew that at the moment when his father was dying, no one in Russia had greater power and strength in their hands than this terrible person. The father was unconscious, as stated by the doctors. The stroke was very strong; speech was lost, the right half of the body was paralyzed. Several times he opened his eyes - his eyes were hazy, who knows if he recognized anyone. Then everyone rushed to him, trying to catch the word, or at least the desire in his eyes. I sat next to him, holding his hand, he looked at me - he hardly saw. I kissed him and kissed his hand - there was nothing else left for me. How strange, in these days of illness, in those hours when only the body lay before me, and the soul flew away from it, in last days farewell in the Hall of Columns - I loved my father more and more tenderly than in my entire life. He was very far from me, from us children, from all his neighbors. On the walls of the rooms at his dacha in last years huge, enlarged pictures of children appeared - a boy on skis, a boy at the cherry blossoms - and he never bothered to see five of his eight grandchildren. And yet he was loved - and loved now, by these grandchildren, who never saw him. And in those days when he finally calmed down on his bed, and his face became beautiful and calm, I felt how my heart was torn from sadness and from love. I have never experienced such a strong influx of feelings, so contradictory and so strong, neither before nor after. When I stood in the Hall of Columns almost all the days (I literally stood, because no matter how much they forced me to sit down and shoved a chair at me, I could not sit, I could only stand despite what was happening), petrified, without words, I understood that some kind of liberation has come. I still didn’t know and didn’t realize what it would be expressed in, but I understood that it was a liberation for everyone, and for me too, from some kind of oppression that crushed all souls, hearts and minds as a single, common block. And at the same time, I looked into a beautiful face, calm and even sad, listened to mourning music (an old Georgian lullaby, a folk song with an expressive, sad melody), and I was torn apart from sadness. I felt that I was a good-for-nothing daughter, that I had never been a good daughter, that I lived in the house like a stranger, that I did nothing to help this lonely soul, this old, sick, rejected and lonely person on his Olympus. , who is still my father, who loved me - as best he could and as best he could - and to whom I owe not only evil, but also good ... I didn’t eat anything all those days, I couldn’t cry, I was crushed by stone calmness and stone sadness. My father died terribly and hard. And that was the first—and the only—so far—death I had seen. God gives an easy death to the righteous... A cerebral hemorrhage spreads gradually to all centers, and with a healthy and strong heart, it slowly captures the centers of respiration and the person dies of suffocation. Breathing quickened and quickened. For the last twelve hours it was already clear that oxygen deprivation was increasing. His face darkened and changed, gradually his features became unrecognizable, his lips turned black. last hour or two people just slowly suffocated. The agony was terrible. She strangled him in front of everyone. At some point - I don't know if it was really so, but it seemed so - obviously at the last minute, he suddenly opened his eyes and looked around at everyone who was standing around. It was a terrible look, either insane or angry and full of horror before death and before the unfamiliar faces of the doctors who bent over him. This look went around everyone in a fraction of a minute. And then - it was incomprehensible and scary, I still don't understand, but I can't forget - then he suddenly lifted up left hand(which was moving) and either pointed it somewhere up, or threatened all of us. The gesture was incomprehensible, but threatening, and it is not known to whom and what it referred to ... In the next moment, the soul, having made the last effort, escaped from the body. I thought that I would suffocate myself, I dug my hands into a young doctor friend who was standing near - she groaned in pain, we held on to each other. The soul flew away. The body calmed down, the face turned pale and took on its familiar shape; in a few moments it became serene, calm and beautiful. Everyone stood around, petrified, in silence, for several minutes—I don’t know how long—it seemed like a long time. Then the members of the government rushed to the exit - they had to go to Moscow, to the Central Committee, where everyone sat and waited for news. They went to tell the news that everyone was secretly waiting for. Let's not sin against each other - they were torn apart by the same conflicting feelings that I was - sorrow and relief ... All of them (and I'm not talking about Beria, who was the only geek of his kind) fussed here all these days, tried to help and, together with that, they were afraid - how will it all end? But many had sincere tears in those days - I saw K. E. Voroshilov, and L. M. Kaganovich, and G. M. Malenkov, and N. A. Bulganin and N. S. Khrushchev in tears. What can I say, besides the common cause that united them with their father, the charm of his gifted nature was too great, it captured people, carried away, it was impossible to resist it. Many have experienced and known this, both those who now pretend that they have never experienced it, and those who do not pretend to do so. Everyone dispersed. There was a body left on the bed, which should have been lying here for several more hours - this is the order. N. A. Bulganin and A. I. Mikoyan remained in the hall, and I remained, sitting on the sofa against the opposite wall. They extinguished half of all the lights, the doctors left. Only the nurse remained, an old nurse whom I had known for a long time from the Kremlin hospital. She was quietly tidying up something on the huge dining table that stood in the middle of the hall. It was a hall where large feasts were held, and where a narrow circle of the Politburo gathered. At this table, at lunch or dinner, business was decided and done. “To come to dinner” to my father meant to come to solve some problem. The floor was covered with a colossal carpet. The walls were lined with armchairs and sofas; there was a fireplace in the corner, my father always loved fire in winter. In the other corner there was a radiogram with records, my father had good collection folk songs - Russian, Georgian, Ukrainian. He did not recognize other music. All the last years have passed in this room, almost twenty years. She was now saying goodbye to her master. The servants and security came to say goodbye. That's where it was true feeling, sincere sadness. Cooks, chauffeurs, guards on duty, waitresses, gardeners - they all quietly entered, approached the bed in silence, and they all cried. They wiped away tears like children, with their hands, sleeves, handkerchiefs. Many wept bitterly, and the sister gave them valerian, weeping herself. And I, stone, sat, stood, looked, and even if a tear rolled out ... And I couldn’t leave, but I kept looking, looking, I couldn’t tear myself away. Valentina Vasilievna Istomina came to say goodbye—Valechka, as everyone called her—the housekeeper who had worked for her father at that dacha for eighteen years. She fell on her knees near the sofa, fell headlong on the dead man's chest, and wept aloud, as in a village. For a long time she could not stop, and no one interfered with her. All these people who served with my father loved him. He was not capricious in everyday life - on the contrary, he was unpretentious, simple and friendly with the servants, and if he scolded, then only the "chiefs" - generals from the guards, generals-commandants. The servant could not complain about either tyranny or cruelty - on the contrary, they often asked him to help in something, and they never received a refusal. And Valechka, like all of them, knew a lot more about him in recent years and saw more than I, who lived far away and aloof. And at this large table, where she always served at large feasts, she saw people from all over the world. She saw a lot of interesting things - of course, within the framework of her horizons - but she tells me now, when we see each other, very vividly, brightly, with humor. And like all servants, until her last days, she will be convinced that there was no better person in the world than my father. And do not convince them all never and nothing. Late at night, or rather, early in the morning, they arrived to take the body away for an autopsy. Then some kind of nervous trembling began to beat me - well, at least tears, at least cry. No, it only beats. They brought a stretcher and put the body on it. For the first time I saw my father naked, - beautiful body, not at all decrepit, not old man's. And a strange pain seized me, stabbed me with a knife in my heart - and I felt and understood what it means to be “flesh of flesh”. And I realized that the body that gave me life has ceased to live and breathe, and now I will live and live on this earth. All this cannot be understood until you see with your own eyes the death of a parent. And in order to understand in general what death is, one must at least once see it, see how the “soul flies away”, and the mortal body remains. I didn’t understand all this then, but I felt it, it all passed through my heart, leaving a trace there. And the body was taken away. A white car drove up to the very doors of the dacha, and everyone got out. Those who were standing on the street, near the porch, also took off their hats. I stood at the door, someone threw a coat over me, I was pounding all over. Someone hugged his shoulders - it turned out to be N. A. Bulganin. The car closed the doors and drove off. I buried my face in Nikolai Alexandrovich's chest and finally burst into tears. He also cried and stroked my head. Everyone stood still at the door, then began to disperse. I went to the service wing, connected to the house by a long corridor, along which they carried food from the kitchen. All who remained converged here - nurses, servants, security. We sat in the dining room, a large room with a buffet and a radio. Again and again they discussed how everything happened, how it happened. They made me eat something: “Today will be a difficult day, but you didn’t sleep, and soon you will go to Hall of Columns, you need to gain strength! I ate something and sat down in a chair. It was 5 am, I went to the kitchen. Loud sobs were heard in the corridor, - this is the sister, who showed the cardiogram here, in the bathroom, crying loudly - she was crying as if her whole family had died at once ... Everyone was somehow unconsciously waiting, sitting in the dining room, for one thing: soon, at six o'clock in the morning, the news would be announced on the radio that we already knew. But everyone needed to hear it, as if without it we couldn't believe it. And finally, it's six o'clock. And the slow, slow voice of Levitan, or someone else, similar to Levitan, - a voice that always said something important, And then everyone understood: yes, it's true, it happened. And everyone began to cry again - men, women, everyone ... And I cried, and it was good for me that I was not alone, and that all these people understood what had happened and were crying with me. Here everything was genuine and sincere, and no one showed either his sorrow or his loyalty to anyone. Everyone has known each other for many years. Everyone knew me, and that I was a bad daughter, and that my father was a bad father, and that my father still loved me, and I loved him. No one here considered him to be either a god, or a superman, or a genius, or a villain - he was loved and respected for the most ordinary human qualities, which the servants always judge unmistakably.
The name of Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva became known the Soviet people only after her death. In those cold November days of 1932, people who knew this young woman intimately said goodbye to her. They did not want to make a circus out of the funeral, but Stalin ordered otherwise. funeral procession, which passed through the central streets of Moscow, gathered a crowd of thousands. Everyone wanted to spend last way wife of the "father of nations". These funerals could only be compared with the mourning ceremonies that were held earlier on the occasion of the death of the Russian empresses.
The unexpected death of a thirty-year-old woman, and the first lady of the state, could not but cause a lot of questions. Since the foreign journalists who were in Moscow at that time failed to obtain the information of interest from the official authorities, the foreign press was full of reports about the most diverse reasons for the untimely death of Stalin's wife.
Citizens of the USSR, who also wanted to know what caused this sudden death, remained in the dark for a long time. Various rumors spread around Moscow, according to which Nadezhda Alliluyeva died in a car accident, died of an acute attack of appendicitis. A number of other suggestions have also been made.
The version of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin turned out to be completely different. He officially stated that his wife, who had been ill for several weeks, got out of bed too early, this caused serious complications, resulting in death.
Stalin could not say that Nadezhda Sergeevna was seriously ill, because a few hours before her death she was seen alive and well at a concert in the Kremlin dedicated to the fifteenth anniversary of the Great October revolution. Alliluyeva cheerfully communicated with high-ranking state and party officials and their wives.
What happened the real reason so early death this young woman?
There are three versions: according to the first of them, Nadezhda Alliluyeva committed suicide; supporters of the second version (they were mostly OGPU employees) claimed that Stalin himself killed the first lady of the state; according to the third version, Nadezhda Sergeevna was shot dead on the orders of her husband. To sort this out complicated case, it is necessary to recall the entire history of the relationship between the Secretary General and his wife.
Nadezhda AlliluyevaThey got married in 1919, Stalin was then 40 years old, and his young wife was only 17 with a little. An experienced man who knows the taste family life(Alliluyeva was his second wife), and a young girl, almost a child ... Could their marriage be happy?
Nadezhda Sergeevna was, so to speak, a hereditary revolutionary. Her father, Sergei Yakovlevich, was one of the first Russian workers to join the Russian Social Democratic Party, he took an active part in three Russian revolutions and in civil war. Nadezhda's mother also participated in the revolutionary uprisings of Russian workers.
The girl was born in 1901 in Baku, her childhood fell on the Caucasian period of the life of the Alliluyev family. Here, in 1903, Sergei Yakovlevich met Iosif Dzhugashvili.
According to family tradition, the future dictator saved two-year-old Nadia when she fell into the water while playing on the Baku embankment.
After 14 years, Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva met again, this time in St. Petersburg. Nadia was studying at the gymnasium at that time, and thirty-eight-year-old Iosif Vissarionovich had recently returned from Siberia.
The sixteen-year-old girl was very far from politics. She was more interested in the pressing questions of food and shelter than global problems world revolution.
In her diary of those years, Nadezhda noted: “We are not going to leave St. Petersburg. Provision is good so far. Eggs, milk, bread, meat can be obtained, although expensive. In general, you can live, although our mood (and everyone in general) is terrible ... it’s boring, you won’t go anywhere.
Rumors about the performance of the Bolsheviks in last days October 1917 Nadezhda Sergeevna rejected as absolutely groundless. But the revolution has happened.
In January 1918, together with other schoolgirls, Nadya visited the All-Russian Congress Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies. “Quite interesting,” she wrote in her diary of the impressions of those days. “Especially when Trotsky or Lenin speak, the rest speak very languidly and without content.”
Nevertheless, Nadezhda, who considered all other politicians uninteresting, agreed to marry Joseph Stalin. The newlyweds settled in Moscow, Alliluyeva went to work in Lenin's secretariat to Fotiyeva (a few months earlier she became a member of the RCP (b)).
In 1921, the first-born appeared in the family, who was named Vasily. Nadezhda Sergeevna, who gave all her strength community service unable to give proper attention to the child. Iosif Vissarionovich was also very busy. Alliluyeva's parents took care of the upbringing of little Vasily, and the servants also provided all possible assistance.
In 1926 the second child was born. The girl was named Svetlana. This time, Nadezhda decided to raise the child on her own.
Together with a nanny who helped take care of her daughter, she lived for some time in a dacha near Moscow.
However, the cases required the presence of Alliluyeva in Moscow. Around the same time, she began to collaborate with the Revolution and Culture magazine, and often had to go on business trips.
Nadezhda Sergeevna tried not to forget about her beloved daughter: the girl had all the best - clothes, toys, food. Son Vasya also did not go unnoticed.
Nadezhda Alliluyeva was good friend for his daughter. Even without being close to Svetlana, she gave her good advice.
Unfortunately, only one letter from Nadezhda Sergeevna to her daughter has been preserved with a request to be smart and reasonable: “Vasya wrote to me, a girl is playing pranks on something. Terribly boring to receive such letters about a girl.
I thought that I left her big and reasonable, but it turns out that she is very small and does not know how to live like an adult ... Be sure to tell me how you decided to live on, in a serious way or somehow ... "
In memory of Svetlana, who lost herself early dear person, the mother remained "very beautiful, smooth, smelling of perfume."
Later, Stalin's daughter said that the first years of her life were the happiest.
This cannot be said about the marriage of Alliluyeva and Stalin. Relations between them became more and more cool every year.
Iosif Vissarionovich often went with an overnight stay to the dacha in Zubalovo. Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends, but most often accompanied by actresses, who were very fond of all high-ranking Kremlin figures.
Some contemporaries claimed that even during the life of Alliluyeva, Stalin began to meet with the sister of Lazar Kaganovich Rosa. The woman often visited the Kremlin's chambers of the leader, as well as at the Stalin's dacha.
Nadezhda Sergeevna knew perfectly well about her husband's love affairs and was very jealous of him. Apparently, she really loved this man, who could not find any other words for her, except for "fool" and other rudeness.
Stalin showed his discontent and contempt in the most offensive way, but Nadezhda endured all this. Repeatedly she made attempts to leave her husband with her children, but each time she was forced to return back.
According to some eyewitnesses, a few days before her death, Alliluyeva took important decision- finally move to relatives and end all relations with her husband.
It is worth noting that Joseph Vissarionovich was a despot not only in relation to the people of his country. Members of his family also experienced a lot of pressure, perhaps even more than everyone else.
Stalin liked his decisions not to be discussed and executed unquestioningly, but Nadezhda Sergeevna was an intelligent woman, with strong character She knew how to defend her opinion. This is evidenced by the following fact.
In 1929, Alliluyeva expressed a desire to start her studies at the institute. Stalin opposed this for a long time, he rejected all arguments as insignificant. Abel Yenukidze and Sergo Ordzhonikidze came to the aid of the woman, together they managed to convince the leader of the need for Nadezhda to receive an education.
Soon she became a student of one of the Moscow universities. Only one director knew that Stalin's wife was studying at the institute.
With his consent, two students were admitted to the faculty under the guise of students. secret agents OGPU, whose duty it was to ensure the security of Nadezhda Alliluyeva.
The Secretary General's wife came to the institute by car. The driver who took her to classes stopped a few blocks before the institute, Nadezhda covered the remaining distance on foot. Later, when she was given a new gas, she learned to drive a car on her own.
Stalin allowed big mistake, allowing his wife to enter the world of ordinary citizens. Communication with fellow students opened Nadezhda's eyes to what is happening in the country. She used to know about public policy only from newspapers and official speeches that reported that everything was fine in the Land of Soviets.
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin
In reality, everything turned out to be completely different: beautiful pictures life Soviet people overshadowed by forced collectivization and unjust expulsions of peasants, mass repression and famine in the Ukraine and the Volga region.
Naively believing that her husband did not know what was happening in the state, Alliluyeva told him and Yenukidze about the institute conversations. Stalin tried to get away from this topic, accusing his wife of collecting gossip spread by the Trotskyists everywhere. However, left alone, he cursed Nadezhda with the most bad words and threatened with a ban on attending classes at the institute.
Soon after that, ferocious purges began in all universities and technical schools. Employees of the OGPU and members of the Party Control Commission carefully checked the reliability of the students.
Stalin carried out his threat, and two months of student life fell out of the life of Nadezhda Alliluyeva. Thanks to the support of Yenukidze, who convinced the "father of peoples" that his decision was wrong, she was able to graduate from the institute.
Studying at the university contributed to the expansion of not only the range of interests, but also the circle of communication. Nadezhda made many friends and acquaintances. One of her closest comrades in those years was Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin.
Under the influence of communication with this person and fellow students, Alliluyeva soon developed independent judgments, which she openly expressed to her power-hungry husband.
Stalin's dissatisfaction grew every day, he needed an obedient like-minded person, and Nadezhda Sergeevna began to allow herself critical remarks about party and state leaders who carried out party policy under the strict guidance of the Secretary General. The desire to learn as much as possible about the life of the native people at this stage of its history made Nadezhda Sergeevna pay special attention to such problems. state significance like famine in the Volga region and Ukraine, the repressive policy of the authorities. The case of Ryutin, who dared to speak out against Stalin, did not hide from her either.
The policy pursued by her husband no longer seemed right to Alliluyeva. Differences between her and Stalin gradually intensified, in the end they grew into severe contradictions.
"Betrayal" - this is how Joseph Vissarionovich described the behavior of his wife.
It seemed to him that Nadezhda Sergeevna's communication with Bukharin was to blame, but he could not openly object to their relationship.
Only once, inaudibly approaching Nadia and Nikolai Ivanovich, who were walking along the paths of the park, Stalin dropped the terrible word “I will kill”. Bukharin took these words as a joke, but Nadezhda Sergeevna, who knew the character of her husband perfectly, was frightened. The tragedy occurred shortly after this incident.
On November 7, 1932, extensive celebrations of the fifteenth anniversary of the Great October Revolution were planned. After the parade held on Red Square, all high-ranking party and statesmen with their wives went to a reception at the Bolshoi Theater.
However, one day to celebrate such significant date there were few. The next day, November 8, another reception was held in a huge banquet hall, attended by Stalin and Alliluyeva.
According to eyewitnesses, the general secretary sat opposite his wife and threw balls rolled from bread pulp at her. According to another version, he threw tangerine peels at Alliluyeva.
For Nadezhda Sergeevna, who experienced such humiliation in front of several hundred people, the holiday was hopelessly ruined. leaving banqueting hall she headed home. Polina Zhemchuzhina, Molotov's wife, also left with her.
Some argue that the wife of Ordzhonikidze Zinaida, with whom the first lady had friendly relations, acted as a comforter. However, Alliluyeva had practically no real friends, except for Alexandra Yulianovna Kanel, the head physician of the Kremlin hospital.
On the night of the same day, Nadezhda Sergeevna was gone. Karolina Vasilievna Til, who worked as a housekeeper in the house of the Secretary General, found her lifeless body on the floor in a pool of blood.
Svetlana Alliluyeva later recalled: “Shaking with fear, she ran to our nursery and called the nanny with her, she could not say anything. They went together. Mom lay covered in blood near her bed, in her hand was a small Walter pistol. This is a lady's weapon two years before terrible tragedy Nadezhda was presented by her brother Pavel, who worked in the 1930s in the Soviet trade mission in Germany.
There is no exact information about whether Stalin was at home on the night of November 8-9, 1932. According to one version, he went to the country, Alliluyeva called him there several times, but he left her calls unanswered.
According to supporters of the second version, Iosif Vissarionovich was at home, his bedroom was located opposite his wife's room, so he could not hear the shots.
Molotov claimed that in that terrible night Stalin, having refreshed himself with alcohol at the banquet, was fast asleep in his bedroom. He was allegedly upset by the news of his wife's death, he even cried. In addition, Molotov added that Alliluyeva "was a bit of a psychopath at that time."
Fearing a leak of information, Stalin personally controlled all the reports that came to the press. It was important to demonstrate the innocence of the head Soviet state to what happened, hence the talk that he was in the country and did not see anything.
However, the opposite follows from the testimony of one of the guards. He was at work that night and dozed off when his sleep was interrupted by the sound of a door closing.
Opening his eyes, the man saw Stalin leaving his wife's room. Thus, the guard could hear both the sound of a slamming door and a pistol shot.
People involved in the study of data on the Alliluyeva case argue that Stalin did not necessarily shoot himself. He could provoke his wife, and she committed suicide in his presence.
It is known that Nadezhda Alliluyeva left a suicide letter, but Stalin destroyed it immediately after reading it. The Secretary General could not allow anyone else to know the content of this message.
The fact that Alliluyeva did not commit suicide, but was killed, is evidenced by other facts. So, on duty at the Kremlin hospital on the night of November 8-9, 1932, Dr. Kazakov, invited to witness the death of the first lady, refused to sign the suicide act drawn up earlier.
According to the doctor, the shot was fired from a distance of 3-4 m, and the deceased could not shoot herself in the left temple on her own, since she was not left-handed.
Alexandra Kanel, invited to the Kremlin apartment of Alliluyeva and Stalin on November 9, also refused to sign a medical report, according to which the Secretary General's wife died suddenly from an acute attack of appendicitis.
Other doctors of the Kremlin hospital, including Dr. Levin and Professor Pletnev, did not put their signatures under this document either. The latter were arrested during the purges of 1937 and shot.
Alexandra Kanel was removed from office a little earlier, in 1935. She soon died, allegedly from meningitis. So Stalin dealt with people who opposed his will.
February 28, 1926 was born Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of Joseph Stalin. She did not follow in her father's footsteps, preferring "life behind the scenes", and wrote memoirs in which she denounced the party elite and showed Stalin from an unexpected side.
Father's death
Svetlana developed a very controversial relationship with her fathers, whose shadow haunted her throughout her life. But even despite their numerous conflicts, his death was a real blow for Alliluyeva, turning point life: “These were then terrible days. The feeling that something habitual, stable and durable has shifted, shaken…”.
Probably, today nowhere you will find so many warm words about Joseph Stalin, as in the memoirs of Alliluyeva, who herself later admitted that in the last days of his life she loved him most of all. Iosif Vissarionovich was dying for a long time and painfully, the blow did not give him an easy death. The last moment of the leader was completely terrible: “At the last minute, he suddenly opened his eyes and looked around at everyone who was standing around. It was a terrible look, either insane or angry and full of horror before death and before the unfamiliar faces of the doctors who bent over him. This look went around everyone in a fraction of a minute. And then, it was incomprehensible and scary, he suddenly raised his left hand upwards and either pointed it somewhere up, or threatened all of us. The next moment, the soul, having made the last effort, escaped from the body.
And then the power of the so hated Alliluyeva Lavrenty Beria began, whom she would call more than once in her “letters” “a scoundrel, a creeping bastard and a murderer of her family”, only person who, according to him, rejoiced at the death of the leader: “Only one person behaved almost indecently - Beria. He was excited to the extreme, his face, already disgusting, now and then distorted from the passions bursting him. And his passions were - ambition, cruelty, cunning, power, power ... He tried so hard, at this crucial moment, how not to outwit, how not to outwit! When it was all over, he was the first to jump out into the corridor and in the silence of the hall, where everyone stood silently around the bed, his loud voice was heard, not hiding the triumph: “Khrustalev! car!
"Orders"
All children have their own games, Svetlana Alliluyeva also had her own. From childhood, the leader's daughter played "orders", the father himself came up with the tradition, and it became an obligatory component of the life of his children. The bottom line was that the daughter did not have to ask for something, only to order: “Well, what are you asking for!” - he said, "only order, and we will immediately fulfill everything." Hence the touching letters: “Setanke the hostess. You must have forgotten the folder. That's why you don't write to him. How is your health? Are you not sick? How do you spend your time? Are the dolls alive? I thought that you would send an order soon, but there is no order, how not. Not good. You offend the folder. Well, kiss. Waiting for your letter". Stalin always signed under the order: “daddy” or “secretary”.
The image of her mother, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Svetlana cherished all her life, despite the fact that she spent very little time with her, she was only six when Stalin's second wife died. And during her lifetime, Nadezhda spent little time with her daughter, it was not in the order of emancipated women to babysit children.
Nevertheless, it is life with her mother at the dacha in Zubatovo that Sveta connects her best memories. She independently managed the household, found the best educators for the children. After her death, Alliluyeva recalls, the whole house was transferred to state control, from where a crowd of servants appeared, who looked at us as "an empty place."
Stalin's second wife shot herself in her room on the night of November 8-9, 1932, the reason was another quarrel with her husband, whom she, according to her recollections, loved dearly all her life. The children, of course, were not told about it, terrible secret Sveta learned about the suicide many years later: “They told me later, when I was already an adult, that my father was shocked by what had happened. He was shocked because he did not understand: why? Why was he given such a terrible blow to the back? He said that he himself did not want to live anymore. At times, some kind of anger, rage found on him. Stalin took her death as a betrayal, besides, Nadezhda left her husband a long accusatory letter, which subsequently untied his hands. Repressions began in the country.
Lucy Kapler
But it was by no means the death of the mother that played a decisive role in aggravating the conflict between “fathers and children”.
The Stalinist daughter had many novels, and each of them is remarkable for something. Alexei Kapler, nicknamed "Lucy", became the first love of the "general's daughter", with whom she had to part very quickly - dad did not approve.
This story took place during the difficult years of the Great Patriotic War. Lucy conceived New film about the pilots and came to Zubatovo to consult with Sveta's brother, Vasily. Well, then, long walks, going to the cinema: “Lucy was for me then the smartest, kindest and most wonderful person. He opened the world of art to me - unfamiliar, unknown. Nothing foreshadowed trouble until Pravda published a careless article by an ardent lover from Stalingrad, where Kapler went on the eve of the battle. The “letter” of a certain lieutenant to his beloved completely betrayed the author, they were especially bold last words: “Now in Moscow, probably, snowing. From your window you can see the battlements of the Kremlin.”
Clouds began to gather over the couple. It became obvious to the lovers that they should part, besides, Lucy planned a business trip to Tashkent. Last meeting reminded me of “Shakespearean passions”: “We could not talk anymore. We kissed in silence, standing side by side. We were bitter and sweet. We were silent, looked into each other's eyes, and kissed. Then I went to my house, tired, broken, anticipating trouble.
And the trouble really happened, the next morning Lucy Capela was “asked” to Lubyanka, from where he went not on a business trip, but to prison on charges of having connections with foreigners. A day later, an angry dad burst into Svetlana: “No way
could find a Russian!” - Jewish roots Kapler was most irritated by Stalin.
exotic romance
Fate did not favor Svetlana with happy novels. Another personal tragedy and at the same time great happiness was her relationship with Brajesha Singh, the heir to a rich and noble Indian family. When they met in 1963 in the Kremlin hospital, Brajeshey was already terminally ill - he had advanced lung ephimesis. Nevertheless, you can’t order your heart, the lovers moved to Sochi, where soon the Hindu proposed to Svetlana. But the marriage was refused, saying that in this case, Brajeshey would take her abroad legally. Svetlana claimed that she was not going to live in India, but would like to go there as a tourist. Kosygin refused this too. Meanwhile, in Moscow, he was getting worse. Alliluyeva was sure that he was "specially treated like that." She begged Kosygin to let her and her husband (as she called Brajeshey) go to India, she was again refused. She was able to see the homeland of her lover only accompanied by his ashes, Brajesh died in her arms on October 31, 1966.
overseas epic
With the death of Brajesh, Svetlana's life abroad began. After her trip to India, she became a "non-returner", her citizenship was nullified in the USSR. “I didn’t think on December 19, 1966, that this would be my last day in Moscow and in Russia,” Alliluyeva later recalled in her book “Only One Year”. But the big name did not leave her abroad either, Svetlana was supported by the CIA officers - it was useful for America during the Cold War to have the daughter of a great dictator who had fled her own country. Another Soviet diplomat, Mikhail Trepykhalin, argued that Alliluyeva's presence in the United States could "undermine" relations between Washington and Moscow. Now it is difficult to judge exactly what connections Alliluyeva had with the US special services; her dossier, published after her death, has undergone serious revision. On the one hand, she thanked America for miraculous salvation: “Thanks to the CIA - they took me out, didn’t leave me and printed my Twenty Letters to a Friend. On the other hand, the following words are attributed to her: “For forty years of living here, America has not given me anything.”
Goodbye Russia
Svetlana spent most of her life abroad. In her memoirs, she described longing for her homeland, the joy of returning at the end of 1984: “As I understand it, everyone who returned to Russia after emigrating from France, where life was not so unsettled ... I understand those who did not leave for relatives abroad, returning from camps and prisons - no, they do not want, after all, to leave Russia! No matter how cruel our country, no matter how difficult our land<…>none of us, who are attached by heart to Russia, will ever betray her and leave her, and will not run away from her in search of Comfort. The return was not easy for her, Gorbachev personally received permission for her entry. But the shadow of her father, which inexorably pursued her all her life, did not allow her to get along peacefully in her homeland. In 1987, she left the USSR forever, which, however, did not remain long either. Svetlana Alliluyeva, the Kremlin princess, ended her days in 2011 in a nursing home in Richland, USA.
The memoirs of Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva "Twenty Letters to a Friend", it would seem, have been studied completely. But more recently, Nikolai Nad, a researcher of world political history, managed to find a copy of Alliluyeva's original notes. The injection that could have caused Stalin's death, Beria's involvement in Kirov's death, the unexpected emotions of the "leader of the peoples" - all references to this were deleted from the final version of the memoirs.
Half a century ago there was a big international scandal. In the West, the memoirs of Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva "Twenty Letters to a Friend" were published, containing a lot of compromising evidence on the Soviet regime.
The book was prepared and published by a “Kremlin princess” who had fled the USSR with the most active assistance from the CIA. As a result, the American "special writers" removed many fragments, composing others instead, so that the original text, the division into chapters, turned out to be largely distorted.
How did you manage to find this rarity?
- Such luck became possible, among other things, thanks to acquaintance with high-ranking employees of the State Security Service of different generations. After many years of searching, I got at my disposal a typewritten copy, miraculously preserved from the mid-1960s, yellowed from time to time and read in places to holes - in the literal sense, reprinted from the original of Svetlana Alliluyeva's authentic memoirs, completed by her in 1965. Before the official publication of the book, designed in the form of twenty "letters", there were still about two years left, and this is the so-called samizdat: the manuscript was illegally copied on a typewriter and distributed "among its own." When comparing the texts of the present confession of Stalin's daughter and the Twenty Letters published later in mass circulation, very significant differences are revealed.
“I got two slaps from my father”
– Why did you become so interested in searching for authentic memories of the “Kremlin princess”?
– I was forced to take up the investigation of the “case of the falsified memoirs of Stalin’s daughter” by meetings with a childhood and youth friend of Vasily Stalin, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, pilot Vitaly Ivanovich Popkov. A direct witness of the school and war years of Stalin's children claimed that Svetlana Alliluyeva's book "Twenty Letters to a Friend" is not memoirs, but "some kind of science fiction literature, in which science has one name."
If you read carefully, you can find many factual “blunders” on the pages of the book. For example, Svetlana, in her so-called "letters", claims that her father never worked in the garden and did not dig in the ground. However, I learned from the daughter of Marshal Budyonny that this is not so, and there is even a photo in which Stalin and Budyonny, with shovels in their hands, are preparing a plot for beds.
There are even more egregious errors! The book distorts the dates of the birth of Svetlana's brother, the death of Stalin's mother, the suicide of Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and even the patronymic of the chief of security, Iosif Vissarionovich, General Vlasik, who has ensured the safety of the "father of peoples" and his family for 25 years! - Instead of Sidorovich, he became Sergeyevich in the book.
However, it can be assumed that Alliluyeva did not correct such obvious mistakes on purpose, so that readers would understand that she wrote all this under severe pressure from her "benefactors" from the CIA.
Where did these memoirs come from? Did Svetlana herself want to write them, or did someone “advise” her?
Rarely does a book have such a confusing fate! From people who were close to its origins, I learned that in 1954 Svetlana Alliluyeva (then still Stalin), a postgraduate graduate of the Academy of Social Sciences and a teacher of a special course for State Security officers, was instructed (supposedly at the suggestion of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU) to write memoirs about her father on the eve of opening of his museum.
After 2 years, the work was completed, but the exposure of the cult of personality, which happened at the 20th Congress, dramatically changed the situation. There was a need to redo everything in a new way. After Khrushchev's famous report, Svetlana was forced to make appropriate changes to the text. But no matter how much the daughter rewrote her memoirs about her father, they never became anti-Stalinist enough, and therefore were not printed in the USSR at that time.
And after finishing off Stalin at the 22nd Congress and removing his body from the Mausoleum at the end of 1961, there could be no question of any normal memoirs at all. And even the replacement of the father's surname with the mother's surname did not save the daughter from the growing hostility, and sometimes outright harassment, even from those who quite recently literally stuffed themselves into her best friends.
Svetlana lived mostly in the country, often alone. Betrayal, misunderstanding of others and suffering brought her to the church. But even in God she did not find the desired salvation. And then she again returned to her memories, hoping to purify and calm her soul with revelations on paper. Such literary work was especially active with Alliluyeva in the summer of 1963, in 1965 ...
In the found copy of the author's text, Alliluyeva directly says: “This book was written in 1965 in the village of Zhukovka. What is written in it, I consider a confession ... I would like everyone who reads it to think that I am addressing him personally ... "
Still, she primarily wrote and rewrote for herself, crossed out and added her reminiscences and reflections. And it was in these difficult days that I came to the hope that, "maybe when I write what I want to write, I will forget." - These words are not in the book "Twenty Letters to a Friend", but they remained on the typewritten samizdat pages.
At first, Svetlana did not expect any "letters", deciding only on the most frank confession to herself. The technique of dividing a large text into two dozen chapters - "letters" appeared later, already in the West, it was suggested by one of the "new friends".
The original, the real Alliluyev text, from which I managed to get a samizdat copy, is a story-confession in six parts. In terms of volume, it is five times smaller than a book and contains almost no lyrical digressions, with which "Twenty Letters ..." abound so much that it more resembles a work of art than memoirs on political topics striving for historical accuracy.
The text in typewritten copy noticeably wins in comparison with the book. Especially where, instead of the usual - I would say: officially accepted - descriptions of Stalin, the daughter (unlike the book) gives information about her father that is accessible only to her.
- Give some examples.
Here is at least such a small episode, mentioned in the typewritten version: “Then I saw my father only in August 1945, everyone was busy reporting on the atomic bombing, and my father was nervous, inattentively talking to me ...”
The words “father was nervous” are very important here. Imagine: Stalin was nervous!! Such a detail immediately conveys the tension, the real state in which the entire Soviet leadership, including Stalin, was in front of the fact that America deliberately demonstrated its atomic power near the Soviet border ... But such an important phrase is missing from the book.
As you know, Stalin's daughter from a young age was fond of men, and on this basis she had very sharp conflicts with the omnipotent father, who directly told her what irresponsible hobbies could bring if she did not stop and take up her mind ..
In the found confession of Alliluyeva, there are very frank fragments of memories “about this”, which are absent or largely “emasculated” in “Twenty Letters ...”.
Particularly revealing is the story of the well-known screenwriter and, concurrently, almost the main successful womanizer of the capital, forty-year-old Alexei (Lyusya) Kapler, who became interested in Stalin's daughter when she was barely 16 years old.
Here is what Svetlana writes in her confession: “On this day, when I was going to school, my father unexpectedly arrived and quickly walked into my room, where my nanny was petrified at one glance.
I had never seen my father like this, he was choking with anger. “Where, where is all this, where are all these letters of your writer? I know everything, all your telephone conversations are here, - he patted his pocket, - come on! Your Kapler is an English spy, he is under arrest.”
I took out all the photographs with Lucy's captions from the table, his notebook, sketches of stories, a new script. “I love him,” I said, finally finding my voice. "Love!" my father shouted with unspeakable anger, and I received two slaps on the face, the first in my life. “Listen to me, nanny, what has she come to, there is a war, and she is engaged ....! (obscene)".
Kirov was killed because of a telegram?
- Do the “not retouched” memoirs of Alliluyeva that you discovered shed light on some kind of “Kremlin secrets”, events related to Joseph Vissarionovich himself and his inner circle?
- Let's pay attention to a fragment of memoirs from a samizdat copy relating to the first hours after Stalin's death: “Someone was crying loudly in the corridor. It was a nurse who gave injections at night - she locked herself in one of the rooms and cried there, as if her whole family had died ... "
Insignificant, at first glance, the episode, but nevertheless, it was noticeably changed in the book: as if her whole family died at once ... "
Please note: not a word about injections! Moreover, the nurse who gave injections at night was replaced by a sister who developed the film of the cardiogram in the bathroom. And it's not just that. There was a very good reason for this!
- What is the fundamental difference: did the sister cry, giving injections or showing the film?
- This episode is fundamentally changed in the book because it concerns not just some nurse, but nurse Moiseeva! The one who gave the injection, after which Stalin died immediately! And Moiseeva, realizing that this was her doing, then sobbed as if her whole family had died.
At one time I managed to get access to Stalin's medical archive, which was then classified again. There, in particular, a very interesting document was found, concerning just the nurses and the last injections.
In the "Folder of draft records of medicinal prescriptions and duty schedules during the last illness of I.V. Stalin" there is a prescription for procedures for March 5-6, 1953. Nurses Panina, Vasina, Demidova, Moiseeva were supposed to perform them. And the last, as they say, fatal injections had to be done by Moiseeva ...
At 8:45 pm, she gave an injection of calcium gluconate - before that, such an injection had never been given to a patient during the entire illness! And at 21.50 in the registration journal she signed that - for the first time in the entire period of treatment! - Introduced a dose of adrenaline to the patient ... After which Stalin died immediately! (As the doctors explained to me, in the condition that was observed in the leader in the last hours of his life, adrenaline injections are contraindicated, as they cause spasms of the vessels of the systemic circulation and are fraught with death.)
And one more important secret is "highlighted" if you read the authentic memoirs of Alliluyeva. We are talking about the murder of Kirov. In the unedited samizdat version, the author directly points to Beria's involvement in the death of Sergei Mironovich:
“Once in the Caucasus, Beria was arrested by the Reds, caught in a betrayal, and sat, waiting for punishment. There was a telegram from Kirov, the commander of Transcaucasia, demanding to shoot the traitor, this was not done, and it (telegram - NAD) became the source of Kirov's murder.
There is logic in such an accusation. Indeed, even before Kirov received the posts of head of Leningrad and secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, he headed the Transcaucasus and, apparently, could know something about the past cooperation of the then high-ranking Transcaucasian Chekist Beria with British and German intelligence. So, Lavrenty Pavlovich was interested in eliminating Kirov! Moreover, over time, he became an increasingly close friend of Stalin and could really become the second person in the country.
Apparently, from childhood, when she ran around the table at which Stalin and Kirov discussed various (including, probably, secret) issues during lunch, little Svetlana remembered Kirov's firmly expressed doubt about Beria. Having left for the West many years later, she most likely faced the refusal of the local special services to return to the "uncomfortable" topic of Beria's cooperation with foreign intelligence services. Therefore, the accusations against this person were removed from the memoirs.
- The revelations of the leader's daughter were so dangerous for those who took power after him?
- I will illustrate this with the example of another quote from Alliluyeva's confession: “Over the past two years I saw my father twice, he was ill for a long time and hard, but in the summer of 1946 he went south for the first time after 1937. I drove a car on broken roads. A huge procession stretched out, they stopped for the night at the secretaries of the regional committees and district committees. My father wanted to see with his own eyes how people live, he was nervous that they lived in dugouts, that there were only ruins around. Khrushchev came to the south to him, boasting of watermelons and melons in girth, fruits and vegetables of Ukraine. And there was famine, and peasant women plowed on cows ... "
In the book version, this paragraph is changed - at first glance, not significantly, but very "eloquently":
“... he was nervous, seeing that people were still living in dugouts, that there were only ruins around ... Then some, now high-ranking comrades, came to him to the south with a report on how the situation was with agriculture in Ukraine. These comrades brought watermelons and melons to the girth, vegetables and fruits, and golden sheaves of wheat - that's how rich our Ukraine is!
- That is, the mention of Khrushchev's name disappeared from the text!
- Yes! The American authors decided to "pity" the new "owner" of the USSR that had come to power, with whom they now had to deal in matters of international politics. Thus, Khrushchev, so much needed by them then, was taken away from the criticism of the people. However, even in such an impersonal version, the fact described by Alliluyeva very clearly suggests who she is talking about. In a bet on window dressing, on the idea of what will happen as if it already exists - all Khrushchev!
“The love for the Hindu quickly passed”
- It is known that the manuscript of her memoirs, on the basis of which the book “Twenty Letters to a Friend” later appeared, Svetlana Alilluyeva sent to the west, still remaining to live in the Union. How did she do it?
The manuscript first came to India, and from there to America. Vladimir Semichastny, then Chairman of the KGB, told me how such “political smuggling” became possible: “Svetlana handed over the typed manuscript through her friend, who was the daughter of the Indian ambassador to the Soviet Union. We were simply powerless to prevent this, since international law did not allow even the KGB to inspect diplomatic baggage, and even more so the clothes of diplomats!
This removal of Alliluyeva's memoirs took place before her departure to India, because, according to our intelligence data, an agreement appeared in Moscow to publish them abroad.
And it is possible that Svetlana's request for permission to leave for India in order to "scatter over the waters of the Ganges" the ashes of her beloved Hindu husband who died in Moscow was only a cover. The love of Stalin's daughter for this Indian passed painfully quickly abroad ... "
Alliluyeva's book, prepared by her "curators" from the American intelligence services, became, perhaps, the first such serious Western product of the Cold War. It was from this book that a period of tangible political losses began for the Soviet government, up to its complete defeat on the ideological and, as a result, on the economic front. The result was the collapse of the USSR.
