Stalin was born in what year. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. Biographical note. General Secretary of the Central Committee

On December 6, 1878, Joseph Stalin was born in Gori. Stalin's real name is Dzhugashvili. In 1888 he entered the Gori Theological School, and later, in 1894, the Tiflis Orthodox Theological Seminary. This time became the period of spreading the ideas of Marxism in Russia.

During his studies, Stalin organized and led "Marxist circles" in the seminary, and in 1898 joined the Tiflis organization of the RSDLP. In 1899, he was expelled from the seminary for promoting the ideas of Marxism, after which he was under arrest and in exile more than once.

Stalin first got acquainted with the ideas of Lenin after the publication of the Iskra newspaper. A personal acquaintance between Lenin and Stalin took place in December 1905 in Finland at a conference. After I.V. Stalin, for a short time, until the return of Lenin, served as one of the leaders of the Central Committee. After the October coup, Joseph received the post of People's Commissar for Nationalities.

He showed himself to be an excellent military organizer, but at the same time demonstrated his commitment to terror. In 1922, he was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee, as well as to the Politburo and Orgburo of the Central Committee of the RCP. At that time, Lenin had already retired from active work, the real power belonged to the Politburo.

Even then, Stalin's disagreements with Trotsky were clear. During the 13th Congress of the RCP(b), held in May 1924, Stalin announced his resignation, but the majority of the votes received during the voting allowed him to keep his post. The strengthening of his power led to the beginning of Stalin's personality cult. Simultaneously with industrialization and the development of heavy industry, dispossession and collectivization are carried out in the villages. The result was the death of millions of Russian citizens. Stalin's repressions, begun in 1921, claimed more than 5 million lives in 32 years.

Stalin's policy led to the creation and subsequent strengthening of a rigid authoritarian regime. The beginning of the career of Lavrenty Beria belongs to this period (20s). Stalin and Beria met regularly during the General Secretary's trips to the Caucasus. Later, thanks to personal devotion to Stalin, Beria entered the inner circle of the leader's associates and during the period of Stalin's rule he held key positions and was awarded many state awards.

In a brief biography of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, it is necessary to mention the most difficult period for the country. It should be noted that Stalin already in the 30s. was convinced that a military conflict with Germany was inevitable, and sought to prepare the country as much as possible. But for this, given the economic ruin and underdevelopment of industry, it took years, if not decades.

The construction of large-scale underground fortifications, called the "Stalin Line", also confirms the preparation for war. On the western borders, 13 fortified regions were built, each of which, if necessary, was able to conduct military operations in conditions of complete isolation.

In 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was concluded, which was to be valid until 1949. The fortifications completed in 1938 were then almost completely destroyed - blown up or covered up.

Stalin understood that the probability of Germany violating this pact was very high, but believed that Germany would attack only after the defeat of England, and ignored persistent warnings about an attack being prepared in June 1941. This was largely the cause of the catastrophic situation that developed at the front on the first day of the war.

On June 23, Stalin headed the Headquarters of the High Command. On the 30th, he was appointed chairman of the State Defense Committee, and on August 8 he was declared the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union. During this most difficult period, Stalin managed to prevent the complete defeat of the army and frustrate Hitler's plans for a lightning-fast seizure of the USSR. With a strong will, Stalin was able to organize millions of people. But the price of this victory was high. World War II was the bloodiest and most brutal war for Russia in history.

During 1941-1942. the situation at the front continued to be critical. Although the attempt to capture Moscow was prevented, there was a threat of capturing the territory of the North Caucasus, which was an important energy center. Voronezh was partially taken by the Nazis. During the spring offensive, the Red Army near Kharkov suffered huge losses.

The USSR was actually on the verge of defeat. In order to tighten discipline in the army and prevent the possibility of a retreat of the troops, Stalin's order 227 "Not a step back!" Was issued, which put the detachments into action. The same order introduced penal battalions and companies as part of fronts and armies, respectively. Stalin managed to rally (at least for the duration of the Second World War) outstanding Russian commanders, the brightest of which was Zhukov. For his contribution to the victory, the Generalissimo of the USSR was awarded in 1945 the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

The post-war years of Stalin's reign were marked by the resumption of terror. But at the same time, the restoration of the economy and the destroyed economy of the country proceeded at an unprecedented pace, despite the refusal of Western countries to provide loans. In the post-war years, Stalin carried out many purges of the party, the pretext for which was the struggle against cosmopolitanism.

In the last years of his reign, Stalin was distinguished by incredible suspicion, which was partly provoked by attempts on his life. The first assassination attempt on Stalin took place as early as 1931 (November 16). It was committed by Ogarev, a "white" officer and member of British intelligence.

1937 (May 1) - possible coup attempt; 1938 (March 11) - an attempt on the leader during a walk around the Kremlin, committed by Lieutenant Danilov; 1939 - two attempts to eliminate Stalin by the secret services of Japan; 1942 (November 6) - an assassination attempt on the Execution Ground, committed by deserter S. Dmitriev. Operation "Big Jump", prepared by the Nazis in 1947, had as its goal the elimination of not only Stalin, but also Roosevelt and Churchill during the Tehran Conference. Some historians believe that Stalin's death on March 5, 1953 was not natural either. But, according to the medical report, it came as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage. Thus ended the most difficult for the country controversial era of Stalin.

The leader's body was placed in Lenin's Mausoleum. The first funeral of Stalin was marked by a bloody stampede on Trubnaya Square, as a result of which many people died. During the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, many of the deeds of Joseph Stalin were condemned, in particular, his deviation from the Leninist course and the cult of personality. His body in 1961 was buried near the Kremlin wall.

For half a year after Stalin, Malenkov ruled, and in September 1953 power passed to Khrushchev.

Speaking about the biography of Stalin, it is necessary to mention his personal life. Joseph Stalin was married twice. His first wife, who gave birth to his son Yakov (the only one who bore his father's surname), died of typhoid fever in 1907. Yakov died in 1943 in a German concentration camp.

Stalin's second wife in 1918 was Nadezhda Alliluyeva. She shot herself in 1932. Stalin's children from this marriage: Vasily and Svetlana. Stalin's son Vasily, a military pilot, died in 1962. Svetlana, Stalin's daughter, emigrated to the United States. She died in Wisconsin on November 22, 2011.

Not only “domestic and foreign pop stars”, as they used to say at the time, if you can call it that, those who today cause soreness and irritation with their obligatory, paid for years ahead appearance on TV screens, but, indeed, the idols of millions, like usually had pseudonyms. Most of the leaders of the All-Russian communist party Bolsheviks, whose intellectual leader, whose ideological inspirer was Vladimir Lenin, by birth and first passport Ulyanov, went, like him, in addition to exile and prisons, through years of underground, emigration, hiding from the gendarmes, autocratic police Russian Empire. Therefore, the presence false documents, and, consequently, surnames, biographies was a prerequisite for a long life at large. That's why real name Stalin, whom he never hid, was naturally forgotten during the years of the reign of the idol, the "leader of all peoples", since a few personal friends and party comrades-in-arms called him a long-standing pseudonym - Koba, and millions Soviet people they knew him as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.

The number of invented party nicknames, surnames, oral and printed political pseudonyms of statesmen of the Soviet Union numbered in the dozens - in all cases it is not easy, calling a spade a spade, illegal activity, life outside the laws of the Russian Empire, and other European countries. It was under them that they entered the history of our country, getting rid of their own surnames both among their environment and among the common people, who for the most part idolized them, for example, such:

One of Dzhugashvili's favorite pseudonyms was Koba, which survived until the end of his days. Researchers explain this fact by the attraction for the young revolutionary of the name of the king who conquered Eastern Georgia, since some facts from his biography were close, even coincided with the life of Joseph Vissarionovich, already ambitious at that time.

Stalin replaced the shtetl Koba, at a time when wide recognition was needed in the party, torn apart by squabbles, internal struggles, and Iosif Vissarionovich moved from Georgia to central Russia. Here, the ancient tsar, and even not Russian, was not in authority, something new was needed - a serious name that carried a symbol, charisma for party comrades and the common people, who had yet to be turned onto the path of revolutionary struggle against tsarism.

Steel, which is harder, sharper than iron, bends, but does not break, like a damask blade. So, the future head of the country of the Soviets, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, was born, the invented surname fully reflected the inner essence of the person who independently chose it. An interesting fact, for some time, apparently, by inertia, not wanting to part with Koba, he signed documents - K. Stalin.

From 1922 to 1953 I.V. Stalin was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the permanent leader of the USSR, of which he was one of the founders. He became the sovereign ruler after 1929, gradually pushing aside, as they say, even killing all, at least a little significant competitors, contenders for this role, including Sergei Kirov.

Stalin's huge contribution to the formation of the young Soviet state, surrounded by a ring of enemies - the bourgeois countries of the West, a hard-won victory over the fascist one is difficult to overestimate. At the same time, the methods used for this can only be called humane by good-hearted optimists who do not pay attention to the millions of repressed, imprisoned and labor camps “according to Trotsky”, evicted from their small homeland.

Nevertheless, sociological surveys of recent years have consistently shown that the inhabitants of our country remember the good deeds he did more and better, and therefore Stalin is usually among the five, if not the three, most respected people in Russia throughout its existence.

Based on the facts, one can come to a paradoxical conclusion: Stalin's real name is Stalin, because young Joseph Dzhugashvili remained at home in Georgia, and participated in the political struggle, built the Soviet state, defended it from numerous enemies, a completely different person, the future only Generalissimo of the Soviet Union.

From the biography of Stalin it is clear that it was an ambiguous, but bright and strong personality.

Iosif Dzhugashvili was born on December 6 (18), 1878, in the city of Gori, in a simple poor family. His father, Vissarion Ivanovich, was a shoemaker by profession. Mother , Ekaterina Georgievna, worked as a day laborer.

In 1888, Joseph became a student of the Gori Orthodox Theological School. Six years later he was enrolled in a seminary in Tiflis. As a student, Dzhugashvili got acquainted with the basics of Marxism and soon became close to the underground revolutionaries.

At the 5th year of study, he was expelled from the seminary. The certificate issued to him indicated that he could apply for a position as a teacher in a public school.

Life before the revolution

Everyone who is interested short biography Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich , should know that before the revolution he served in the newspaper Pravda and was one of its brightest employees. For his activities, Dzhugashvili was repeatedly persecuted by the authorities.

The work “Marxism and the National Question” gave weight to the future Generalissimo in the society of Marxists. After that, V. I. Lenin began to entrust him with the solution of many important issues.

During the years of the civil war, Stalin proved himself to be an excellent military organizer. On November 29, 1922, together with Lenin, Sverdlov and Trotsky, he entered the Bureau of the Central Committee.

When Lenin, on the background of illness, retired from political activity, Stalin, together with Kamenev and Zinoviev, organized a “troika”, which was opposed to L. Trotsky. In the same year he was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee.

Against the background of heavy political struggle, at the XIII Congress of the RCP, Stalin announced that he wanted to resign. He was retained as Secretary General by a majority vote.

Having strengthened himself in power, Stalin began to pursue a policy of collectivization. Under him, heavy industry began to actively develop. Against the background of the formation of collective farms and other changes, a policy of cruel terror was pursued.

Role in WWII

According to a number of historians, Stalin was guilty of the poor preparation of the USSR for war. Huge losses are also blamed on him. It is believed that he ignored intelligence reports about the imminent attack of Nazi Germany, even though he was given the exact date.

At the very beginning of the Second World War, Stalin proved himself to be a bad strategist. He made illogical, incompetent decisions. According to G. K Zhukov, the situation changed after Battle of Stalingrad when the war turned upside down.

In 1943, Stalin decided to create an atomic bomb. In February 1945, he took part in the Yalta Conference, at which a new world order was established.

Personal life

Stalin was married twice. The first wife was E. Svanidze, the second - N. Alliluyeva. He had three children of his own and an adopted son, A.F. Sergeev.

The fate of his second wife and his own sons was tragic. The daughter of Joseph Vissarionovich, Svetlana, spent her whole life in exile.

According to A.F. Sergeev, at home Stalin was good-natured, affectionate, and joked a lot and often.

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Generalissimo and sole leader of the USSR Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin is truly one of the few leaders who managed to put the country on the rails of industrialization, win the Great Patriotic War By defeating Hitler, save the whole world from the insane tyrant.

short biography

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin ( real name - Dzhugashvili) was born December 18, 1878 in the village of Gori, Tiflis province, Georgia.

His father - Vissarion Ivanovich Dzhugashvili, a shoemaker from a peasant family. His mother - Ekaterina Georgievna Geladze, a day laborer from a kind of serfs.

Childhood Soso

Stalin himself did not like to remember his childhood, as it was difficult for his family: after the birth of Soso (Joseph), his father began to drink and at the same time showed fits of rage, which often ended in beatings, both of his mother and of Soso himself, who stood up for mother.

Education

In 1886, Joseph's mother tried to identify her son in Orthodox religious school in Gori, but due to ignorance of the Russian language, the boy could not enter there.

Theological school

Later, for 2 years he studied Russian. His teachers were the children of one of the local priests. Already in 1888 Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin was able to pass the exams at the school, immediately entering the 2nd preparatory class.

In September 1889, he successfully passed the certification and entered the school itself and in 1894 finished it.

Theological Seminary in Tiflis

Immediately after graduating from college, Joseph entered Tiflis Theological Seminary, where, according to his memoirs, he first became acquainted with the works of Marx and began to meet with underground revolutionaries.

His passion and deep penetration into Marxism led to the fact that in the 5th year he was expelled from the seminary. The official reason was given as follows:

“… for failing to appear for exams for an unknown reason…”

Koba is a revolutionary

After being expelled from the Tiflis Seminary, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin entered RSDLP(Russian Social Democratic Labor Party) and with even greater zeal began to propagate revolutionary ideas. He took his party nickname Koba- the hero of the novel "Paricide".

Underground worker

March 21, 1901 The police searched the physical observatory where Stalin lived and worked. He himself, however, escaped arrest and went into hiding, becoming underground revolutionary.

Bolshevik

When in 1903 the RSDLP split into 2 camps (Bolsheviks and Mensheviks), Iosif Vissarionovich joined the Bolsheviks. In 1904, he organized a grand strike of oil workers in Baku, which ended with the conclusion of a collective agreement between the strikers and industrialists.

Trip abroad

In 1905, Stalin was sent abroad from the Caucasian Union of the RSDLP. He first visited the Finnish Tammerfors, where he first met IN AND. Lenin. Then he visited Stockholm.

In 1907, Joseph Vissarionovich visits London as a delegate of the RSDLP. It is also known that he visited Vienna and stayed there for about one month.

For him, a poorly educated Georgian guy who did not know foreign languages, the wealthy abroad remained an alien, unknown capitalist world, according to the laws of which he could never live.

Stalin

While in exile from 1908 to 1912, Joseph decided to change his party nickname "Koba" to "Stalin"- strong as steel. During this period and later, he actively helped the cause of the party, met with Lenin and spoke to people.

After the 1917 revolution

After the February and October revolutions in Russia, Stalin received a post in the new government - the Council of People's Commissars, which was led by Vladimir Lenin. He was appointed Commissioner for Nationalities.

General Secretary of the Central Committee

In 1922, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was appointed to the post General Secretary of the Central Committee. His manner of leading the party was in the style of despotism, for which Lenin himself wanted to remove the general secretary in 1823 and even wrote a letter to the party congress.

However, Vladimir Ilyich was very ill at that time and died a year later. Stalin was allowed to read the letter of the "leader of the proletariat", and he promised to behave more calmly.

The rise of the country and the purges of the NKVD

After the death of Lenin, Stalin began to gradually put the USSR on the rails of socialism. In 1928-33. there was a collectivization of private peasant farms, which united in collective farms.

The actions of the authorities to carry out collectivization led to mass resistance among the peasants, since collectivization was accompanied by the "dispossession" of all indiscriminately. The People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) declared all those dissatisfied and dispossessed as enemies of the people and sent them to special settlements in the Gulags.

In March 1930 alone, there were 6,500 riots, eight hundred of which were suppressed with the use of weapons. Overall during 1930 about 2.5 million peasants took part in 14 thousand protests against collectivization.

USSR before the war

The industrialization carried out by Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin in the 30s of the XX century bore fruit: by 1940, in terms of volume industrial production The USSR came out on top in Europe.

Metallurgy, energy, mechanical engineering received noticeable development, and the chemical industry was created. The country has its own aircraft, trucks and cars.

One of the strategic goals of the state was declared cultural revolution. Within its framework, since 1930, universal primary education was introduced in the country for the first time. In parallel with the mass construction of rest houses, museums, parks, an aggressive anti-religious campaign was also carried out.

The Great Patriotic War

Second World War started in 1939 and for almost two years, until June 22, 1941, it was under the sign of official friendship between Hitler and Stalin.

Until Hitler attacked Soviet Union collaborated with Nazi Germany. There are numerous documentary evidences of cooperation of various kinds, from friendship treaties and active trade to joint parades and conferences of the NKVD and the Gestapo.

Some historians blame Stalin personally unpreparedness of the USSR for war and huge losses, especially in the initial period of the war.

Liberator of the whole world from fascism

In a short period, a significant part of the territory of the USSR was occupied, millions of people found themselves behind enemy lines. With great difficulty, with huge sacrifices, the country was rebuilt on a war footing. The further development of events was already determined by the generals, although Stalin was nominally Supreme Commander.

The defeat of the Nazis and the end of the war in 1945 made a huge impression on the occupied countries of Europe. They began to associate the destruction of fascism with the name of Stalin, although they gave their lives for the victory over 28 million Soviet people. Stalin met with the leaders of Great Britain and the United States, planning with them the redivision of Europe.

His name was on the lips of many leaders of Eastern European countries. In the countries of people's democracy, the Stalinist authoritarian style of one-party leadership was introduced.

After the war, the difficult restoration of the country began, accompanied by repressions and purges of "enemies of the people."

Death of Stalin

In the evening March 5, 1953 Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin died in his official residence - Near dacha (Volynskoye, Kuntsevsky district, Moscow region). According to the medical report, death was the result of a cerebral hemorrhage.

His body was first buried in the Mausoleum, and in 1961 it was reburied in the necropolis near the Kremlin wall.

This life was hopelessly born. An illegitimate son attributed to a seedy drunk shoemaker. uneducated mother. Dirty Coco did not get out of the puddles near the hill of Queen Tamara. [Cm. article Stalin's Parents and Family.] Not to become the ruler of the world, but how can this child get out of the meanest, most humiliated position?

Nevertheless, the culprit of his life molested him, and bypassing church regulations, they accepted the boy from a non-clerical family - first to a religious school, then even to a seminary.

God Sabaoth from the height of the darkened iconostasis sternly called the new novice, sprawled on cold stone slabs. Oh, with what zeal the boy began to serve God! how I trusted him! For six years of study, he hammered out the Old and New Testaments, the Lives of the Saints and church history, diligently officiated at the liturgies.

Here, in the "Biography", there is this picture: a graduate of the theological school Dzhugashvili in a gray cassock with a round blind collar; dull, as if exhausted by prayers, the adolescent oval of the face; long hair, prepared for the clergy, is strictly slicked, humbly smeared with lamp oil and put on the very ears - and only the eyes and tense eyebrows betray that this novice will go, perhaps, to the metropolitan.

Stalin while studying at the seminary

And God - deceived ... A sleepy, hateful town among round green hills, in the windings of Majuda and Liakhvi, lagged behind: in noisy Tiflis, smart people had long been laughing at God. And the stairs, on which Coco tenaciously climbed, led, it turns out, not to the sky, but to the attic.

But the seething bullying age demanded action! Time was running out - nothing was done! There was no money for a university, for public service, for the beginning of trade - but there was socialism that accepted everyone, socialism that was accustomed to seminarians. There were no inclinations towards the sciences or the arts, there was no skill for craft or theft, there was no luck to become the lover of a rich lady - but with open arms she called everyone, accepted and promised everyone a place - the Revolution.

Joseph Dzhugashvili. Photo from 1896

Here, in the "Biography", he advised to include a photo of this time, his favorite shot. Here it is, almost in profile. He has no beard, no mustache, no sideburns (he has not yet decided what), but simply has not shaved for a long time, and everything is picturesquely overgrown with lush male growth. He is all ready to rush, but does not know where. What a lovely young man! An open, intelligent, energetic face, no trace of that fanatic novice. Freed from oil, the hair has risen, adorned the head with thick waves, and, swaying, cover what may have been somewhat unsuccessful in it: the forehead is low and sloping back. The young man is poor; Isn't this Tiflis plebeian already doomed to tuberculosis?

Every time Stalin looks at this photograph, his heart overflows with pity (for there are no hearts that are completely incapable of it).

How difficult everything is, how everyone is against this glorious young man, who huddles in a free cold closet at the observatory and has already been expelled from the seminary!

(He wanted to combine both for insurance, he went to social-democratic circles for four years and continued to pray and interpret the catechism for four years - but they still expelled him.) For eleven years he bowed and prayed - in vain, wasted time was weeping .. The more resolutely he moved his youth to the Revolution!

And the Revolution - also deceived ... And what kind of revolution was it - Tiflis, a game of boastful conceits in cellars for wine? Here you will perish, in this anthill of nonentities: neither the correct advancement of the stairs, nor the length of service, but - who will talk to whom. The former seminarian hates these talkers more bitterly than governors and policemen. (Why be angry with those for what? - they honestly serve for a salary and naturally have to defend themselves, but there can be no justification for these upstarts!) A revolution? among Georgian shopkeepers? - will never! And he lost the seminary, lost the right way of life.

And to hell with him in general in this revolution, in some kind of homelessness, in workers drinking away their pay, in some kind of sick old women, someone's underpaid kopecks? - why should he love them, and not himself, young, smart, beautiful and - bypassed?

Only in Batum, for the first time leading two hundred people along the street, counting onlookers, Koba (that was his nickname now) felt the germination of grains and the power of power. People followed him! Koba tasted, and he could never forget the taste of it. This one thing suited him in life, this one life he could understand: you will say - and people should do it, you will indicate - and people should go. There is nothing better than this, higher than this. This is above wealth.

A month later, the police swung, arrested him. No one was afraid of arrests then: what a deal! They will hold you for two months, release you, you will be a sufferer. Koba behaved well in the common cell and encouraged others to despise the jailers.

But they got caught up in it. All his cellmates changed, and he was sitting. What did he do? No one was punished like that for trifling demonstrations.

Passed year! - and he was transferred to the Kutaisi prison, in a dark, damp solitary confinement. Here he lost heart: life went on, and he not only did not rise, but descended lower and lower. He coughed painfully from the prison dampness. And he hated even more justly these professional loudmouths, the darlings of life: why did the revolution descend so easily to them, why were they not kept for so long?

In the meantime, a gendarmerie officer, already familiar from Batum, was arriving at the Kutaisi prison. Well, have you thought enough, Dzhugashvili? This is just the beginning, Dzhugashvili. We will keep you here until you rot from consumption or correct your behavior. We want to save you and your soul. You were five minutes away a priest, Father Joseph! Why did you go to this gang? You are a random person among them. Say you're sorry.

He was really sorry, how sorry! His second spring in prison was ending, his second prison summer was dragging on. Oh, why did he leave the humble spiritual service?

How hurried he was!.. The most unbridled imagination could not imagine a revolution in Russia earlier than fifty years later, when Joseph was seventy-three years old... Why would he need a revolution then?

Yes, not only for this reason. But Joseph had already studied and recognized himself - his unhurried character, his solid character, his love for strength and order. So it was precisely on solidity, on slowness, on strength and order, that the Russian Empire stood, and why was it to shake it?

And the officer with the wheat mustache came and came. (Joseph really liked his gendarmerie's clean uniform with beautiful shoulder straps, neat buttons, piping, buckles.) In the end, what I offer you is public service. (Iosif would have been irrevocably ready to go to the state service, but he spoiled himself, himself, in Tiflis and Batum.) You will receive maintenance from us. At first you will help us among the revolutionaries. Choose the most extreme direction. Among them - move forward. We will treat you with care everywhere. You will give us your messages in such a way that it does not cast a shadow on you. What nickname will we choose? .. And now, in order not to expose you, we will transfer you to a distant exile, and you leave immediately from there, that's what everyone does.

And Dzhugashvili made up his mind! And he placed the third stake of his youth on the secret police!

In November he was sent to the Irkutsk province. There, among the exiles, he read a letter from a certain Lenin known from Iskra. Lenin broke away to the very edge, now he was looking for supporters, sent out letters. Obviously, he should have joined.

From the terrible Irkutsk cold, Joseph left for Christmas, and even before the start Japanese war was in the sunny Caucasus.

Now a long period of impunity began for him: he met with underground workers, compiled leaflets, called for rallies - others were arrested (especially those who were not sympathetic to him), but they did not recognize him, they did not catch him. And they didn't go to war.

And suddenly! – no one was waiting for it so quickly, no one prepared it, organized it – and She came! Crowds went around Petersburg with a political petition, killed the grand dukes and nobles, Ivano-Voznesensk went on strike, Lodz rebelled, “ Potemkin”- and the manifesto was quickly squeezed out of the royal throat, and all the same, machine guns were still pounding on Presnya and the railways froze.

Koba was amazed, stunned. Was he wrong again? Why can't he see ahead?

The Okhrana deceived him! .. His third rate was beaten! Ah, they would give him back his free revolutionary soul! What is a hopeless ring? - Shake the revolution out of Russia, so that on its second day your reports are shaken out of the Okhrana archive?

Not only was his will not steel then, but completely split, he lost himself and saw no way out.

Young Joseph Stalin. Photo from 1908

However, they shot, made some noise, hung up, looked around - where is that revolution? There is no her!

At this time, the Bolsheviks adopted a good revolutionary method of expropriation. A letter was thrown to any Armenian moneybag, where to bring him ten, fifteen, twenty-five thousand. And he brought moneybags so that they would not blow up his shop, kill children. It was a method of struggle - so a method of struggle! - not scholasticism, not leaflets and demonstrations, but real revolutionary action. The chistyul-Mensheviks grumbled that robbery and terror were contrary to Marxism. Oh, how Koba mocked them, oh, chased them like cockroaches, that's why Lenin called him a "wonderful Georgian"! - exes are robbery, and revolution is not robbery? ah, lacquered sissies! Where to get money for the party, from where - for the revolutionaries themselves? A bird in the hand is better than a crane in the sky.

Of the whole revolution, Koba especially fell in love with the exes. And then no one except Koba knew how to find those only true people, like Kamo who will obey him, who will shake a revolver, who will take away a bag of gold and bring it to Kobe on a completely different street, without coercion. And when they raked out 340,000 gold from the freight forwarders of the Tiflis bank - so this was still a proletarian revolution on a small scale, and another, big revolution is expected - fools.

The police did not know this about Kobe, and such an average pleasant line was still maintained between the revolution and the police. He always had money.

And the revolution already took him by European trains, sea steamers, showed him islands, canals, medieval castles. It was no longer the smelly Kutaisi cell! In Tammerfors, Stockholm, London, Koba kept an eye on the Bolsheviks, on the obsessed Lenin. Then in Baku I breathed in vapors of this underground liquid, seething with black anger.

Vladimir Lenin. Pre-revolutionary photo

And they took care of him. The older and more famous he became in the party, the closer he was exiled, not to Baikal, but to Solvychegodsk, and not for three years, but for two. Between the links did not interfere with the revolution. Finally, after three Siberian and Ural departures from exile, he, an irreconcilable, tireless rebel, was driven ... to the city of Vologda, where he settled in an apartment with a policeman and could travel by train to St. Petersburg in one night.

But on the evening of February 1912, his junior Baku comrade Ordzhonikidze came to him in Vologda from Prague, shaking his shoulders and shouting:

Coco! Coco! You have been co-opted into the Central Committee!”

On that moonlit night, swirling with frosty fog, the thirty-two-year-old Koba, wrapped in a fur coat, walked around the yard for a long time. Again he hesitated. Member of the Central Committee!

After all, here Malinovsky- a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee - and a deputy of the State Duma. Well, let Lenin especially love Malinovsky. But after all, this is with the king! And after the revolution, today's member of the Central Committee is a loyal minister. True, don't expect any revolution now, not in our lifetime. But even without a revolution, a member of the Central Committee is some kind of power. And what will he serve in the secret police service? Not a member of the Central Committee, but a petty spy. No, we must part with the gendarmerie.

Fate Azef like a giant ghost swayed over his every day, over his every night.

In the morning they went to the station and went to Petersburg. They were captured there.

Joseph Stalin. Photo from 1912

The young inexperienced Ordzhonikidze was given three years in the Shlisselburg fortress and then an additional exile. Stalin, as usual, was given only a link, three years. True, far away - the Narym Territory, this is like a warning. But the lines of communication in the Russian Empire were well established, and at the end of the summer Stalin safely returned to St. Petersburg.

Now he shifted the pressure to party work. I went to see Lenin in Krakow (this was not difficult even for the exile). There is a printing house, there is a May Day card, there is a leaflet - and at the Kalashnikov Stock Exchange, at a party, they flunked him (Malinovsky, but this was found out much later). The Okhrana got angry - and now they drove him into a real exile - under the Arctic Circle, in Kureik's lathe. And they gave him a term - the tsarist government knew how to mold ruthless deadlines! - four years, scary to say.

And again Stalin hesitated: for what, for whose sake did he refuse a moderate, prosperous life, from the patronage of power, let himself be sent into this damn hole? "Member of the Central Committee" is a word for a fool. From all the parties there were several hundred exiles, but Stalin looked at them and was horrified: what a vile breed these professional revolutionaries are - flash blowers, wheezing, dependent, bankrupt. It was not even the Arctic Circle that was terrible for the Caucasian Stalin, but to be in the company of these lightweight, unstable, irresponsible, non-positive people. And in order to immediately separate himself from them, disconnect him - yes, among the bears it would be easier for him! - he married a sheldonka, with a body like a mammoth, and a squeaky voice, - yes, her “hee-hee-hee” and a kitchen on fetid fat are better than going to those gatherings, disputes, troubles and comradely courts. Stalin let them know that they were strangers, cut himself off from them, from everyone, and from the revolution too. Enough! It's not too late to start an honest life at thirty-five, once you have to stop rushing about in the wind, pockets like sails. (He despised himself that he had been fiddling with these clickers for so many years.) So he lived, completely apart, did not touch either the Bolsheviks or the anarchists, they went further and further. Now he was not going to run away, he was going to honestly serve the exile to the end. Yes and war began, and only here, in exile, could he save his life. He sat with his canoe, hiding; their son was born. And the war never ended. At least with your nails, at least with your teeth, stretch yourself an extra year of exile - even this feeble tsar was not able to give real terms!

No, the war is not over! And from the police department, with which he got along so well, his card and his soul were handed over to the military commander, and he, knowing nothing about either the Social Democrats or the members of the Central Committee, called on Joseph Dzhugashvili, born in 1879, who had not previously served military service , - in the Russian imperial army as a private. So the future great marshal began his military career. He had already tried three services, a fourth was about to begin.

On a sleepy sleigh he was taken along the Yenisei to Krasnoyarsk, from there to the barracks in Achinsk. He was in his thirty-eighth year, and he was nothing, a Georgian soldier, huddled in an overcoat from the Siberian frosts and carried by cannon fodder to the front. And all great life it was supposed to break off under some Belarusian farm or Jewish town.

But he had not yet learned how to roll up his overcoat rolls and load a rifle (he did not know either a commissar or a marshal later, and it was inconvenient to ask), when telegraph tapes came from Petrograd, from which strangers hugged in the streets and shouted in frosty breath: “Christ resurrected!" The king - renounced! The empire was no more!

How? Where? And they forgot to hope, and they abandoned counting. Joseph was faithfully taught in childhood: “Your ways are inscrutable, Lord!”

Do not remember when Russian society was so unanimously merry, all the shades of the party. But in order for Stalin to rejoice, one more telegram was needed; without it, the ghost of Azef, like a hanged man, kept swinging over his head.

And a day later that dispatch came: The security department was burned and destroyed, all documents were destroyed!

The revolutionaries knew that it was necessary to burn quickly. There, probably, as Stalin understood, there were many such, many like him ...

(The Okhrana burned down, but for a whole life Stalin looked askance and looked around. With his own hands he leafed through tens of thousands of archival sheets and threw entire folders into the fire without looking. And yet he missed it, almost opened in the thirty-seventh. on trial, Stalin certainly accused of informing: he learned how easy it is to fall, and it was hard for him to imagine that others would not be insured too.) February Revolution Stalin later refused the title of great, but he forgot how he himself rejoiced and sang, and flew on wings from Achinsk (now he could desert!), And did stupid things and through some provincial window sent a telegram to Lenin in Switzerland.

He arrived in Petrograd and immediately agreed with Kamenev: this is it, what we dreamed about in the underground. The revolution has been accomplished, now to consolidate what has been achieved. The time has come for positive people (especially if you are already a member of the Central Committee). All forces to support the provisional government!

So everything was clear to them, until this adventurer arrived, who did not know Russia, deprived of any positive uniform experience, and, choking, twitching and burring, did not climb with his April theses, confused everything completely! And yet he spoke to the party, dragged her on july coup!

This adventure failed, as Stalin correctly predicted, and the entire party almost perished. And where did the cock-like courage of this hero go now?

He fled to Razliv, saving his skin, and the Bolsheviks were slandered here with the latest curses. Was his freedom worth more than the authority of the party? Stalin frankly stated this to them on Sixth congress, but did not collect the majority.

In general, the seventeenth year was an unpleasant year: there were too many rallies, whoever lies more beautifully is carried in their arms, Trotsky did not leave the circus. And where did they come from, krasnobaev, like flies on honey? They weren’t seen in the exiles, they weren’t seen on the exes, they were hanging out abroad, and then they came to tear their throats, to climb into the front seat. And they judge everything like fast fleas. Another question has not arisen in life, not posed - they already know how to answer! They laughed insultingly at Stalin, they did not even hide. Okay, Stalin did not get into their disputes, and he did not climb into the stands, he kept his mouth shut for now. Stalin did not like it, did not know how - to throw out words in a race, who is bigger and louder. This is not how he envisioned the revolution. He represented the revolution: to take leadership positions and do business.

Those sharp-beards laughed at him, but why did they arrange everything difficult, everything ungrateful to blame it on Stalin? They laughed at him, but why did everyone in the Kshesinskaya palace get sick with their stomachs and not anyone else, namely Stalin, was sent to Petropavlovka, when it was necessary to convince the sailors to give the fortress to Kerensky without a fight, and to leave for Kronstadt again? Because sailors would throw stones at Grishka Zinoviev. Because you need to be able to talk with the Russian people.

The adventure was october coup, but it worked, okay. Success.

Fine. For this, you can give Lenin a five. There, what will happen next - is unknown, so far - good. Narkomnats? Okay, let. Drafting a constitution?

OK. Stalin watched.

Surprisingly, it seemed that the revolution in one year was completely successful. It was impossible to expect this - but it was a success! This clown, Trotsky, also believed in the world revolution, Brest Peace did not want to, and Lenin believed, oh, book dreamers! You have to be a donkey - to believe in the European revolution, how long they themselves lived there - they did not understand anything, Stalin drove once - he understood everything. Here you need to cross yourself that your own is a success. And sit quietly.

Think.

Stalin looked around with sober, unprejudiced eyes. And thought about it. And he clearly understood that these phrase-mongers would ruin such an important revolution. And only he, Stalin, can guide it correctly. In honor, in conscience, only he was the real leader here. He impartially compared himself with these grimaces, jumpers, and clearly saw his superiority in life, their fragility, his stability. He differed from all of them in that understood people. He understood them there, where they connect with the earth, where basis, in that place he understood them, without which they do not stand, will not stand, and what is higher than they pretend, than they show off - this superstructure, doesn't solve anything.

True, Lenin had an eagle's flight, he could simply surprise: in one night he turned - "the land - to the peasants!" (and we’ll see), in one day he came up with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (after all, it’s not that it hurts a Russian, even a Georgian, to give half of Russia to the Germans, but it doesn’t hurt him!). About NEP do not speak at all, this is the most cunning of all, it is not a shame to learn such maneuvers.

What was above all else in Lenin is super-remarkable: he firmly held real power only in his own hands. Slogans changed, topics of discussion changed, allies and opponents changed, and full power remained only in their own hands!

But there was no real reliability in this man, he had a lot of grief with his household, to get confused in it. Stalin rightly sensed in Lenin fragility, shiftiness, and finally a poor understanding of people, no understanding at all. (He verified this by himself: whichever side he wanted, he turned, and from that side Lenin saw him only.) For dark hand-to-hand combat, which is true politics, this man was not fit. Stalin felt himself more stable and firmer than Lenin, to the extent that sixty-six degrees of Turukhansk latitude is stronger than fifty-four degrees of Shushenskaya. And what did this book theorist experience in life? He did not pass low rank, humiliation, poverty, direct hunger: even if he was poor, he was a landowner.

He never left the exile, such an exemplary one! He never saw real prisons, he didn't even see Russia itself, he blabbed for fourteen years in emigration. What he wrote - Stalin did not read more than half, did not expect to get smart. (Well, he also had wonderful formulations. For example: "What is a dictatorship? An unlimited government not restrained by laws." Stalin wrote in the margin: "Good!") Yes, if Lenin had a real sober mind, he would have been from the first days brought Stalin closer than anyone, he would have said: “Help! I understand politics, I understand classes - I don’t understand living people!” And he didn’t think of a better way to send Stalin as some kind of commissioner for bread, somewhere in a corner of Russia. The person he needed most in Moscow was Stalin, and he Tsaritsyn sent...

And for the whole civil Lenin settled down to sit in the Kremlin, he took care of himself. And Stalin got to wander for three years, drive around the country, when he was shaking on horseback, when in a cart, and freezing, and warming himself by the fire. Well, it's true, Stalin loved himself during these years: like a young general without a rank, all smart, slender; cap leather with an asterisk; an officer's overcoat, double-breasted, soft, with a cavalry slit - and not fastened; chrome boots sewn along the leg; a smart, young, clean-shaven face, and only a cast mustache, not a single woman can resist (and her third wife is a beauty).

Of course, he did not take a saber in his hands and did not climb under the bullets, he was more expensive for the Revolution, he is not a man Budyonny. And when you arrive in a new place - in Tsaritsyn, in Perm, in Petrograd - you will be silent, you will ask questions, you will straighten your mustache. On one list you write “shoot”, on the other list you write “shoot” - then people start to respect you very much.

And to tell the truth, he showed himself as a great military man, as the creator of victory.

All this gang that climbed up, surrounded Lenin, fought for power, they all presented themselves as very smart, and very subtle, and very complex. It was their complexity that they boasted about. Where it was twice two is four, they all shouted in unison, which is another tenth and two hundredths. But the worst of all, but the worst of all was Trotsky. It's just that Stalin never met such a vile person in his entire life. With such frenzied self-conceit, with such pretensions to eloquence, but he never honestly argued, he never had a “yes” - so “yes”, “no” - so “no”, necessarily: and so - and so, neither - not like that! No peace, no war - what reasonable person can understand this? What about arrogance? As the tsar himself, he dangled in the saloon car. But where do you climb into the commander-in-chief if you do not have a strategic streak?

This Trotsky burned and baked so much that in the struggle with him at first Stalin broke loose, betrayed the main rule of any policy: do not show at all that you are his enemy, do not show irritation at all. Stalin openly did not obey him, and scolded him in letters, and verbally, and complained to Lenin, did not miss the opportunity. And as soon as he found out the opinion, the decision of Trotsky on any issue, he immediately put forward why it should be quite the opposite. But that's not how you win. And Trotsky kicked him out like a city stick under his feet: he kicked him out of Tsaritsyn, kicked him out of the Ukraine. And once Stalin received a harsh lesson that not all means in the struggle are good, that there are forbidden methods: together with Zinoviev, they complained to the Politburo about the arbitrary executions of Trotsky. And then Lenin took several blank forms, signed on the bottom "I approve and henceforth!" - and immediately handed over to Trotsky for filling.

The science! Ashamed! What did you complain about? It is impossible even in the most intense struggle to appeal to complacency. Lenin was right, and as an exception, Trotsky was also right: if you don’t shoot without a trial, nothing can be done in history at all.

We are all people, and feelings push us ahead of reason. From each person the smell comes, and by the smell you act even before your head. Of course, Stalin was mistaken that he opened up against Trotsky ahead of time (he never made that mistake again). But the same feelings led him in the most correct way to Lenin. If you think with your head, you had to please Lenin, to say, “Oh, how right! I am for it too!” However, with an unerring heart, Stalin found a completely different path: to be rude to him as sharply as possible, to rest against his donkey - they say, an uneducated, uncouth, wild person, you want to accept it or not. He was not only rude - he was rude to him (“I can still be at the front for two weeks, then let's rest” - who could Lenin forgive this for?), but it was just like that - unbreakable, uncompromising, won Lenin's respect. Lenin felt that this wonderful Georgian is a strong figure, such people are very much needed, and then more will be needed. Lenin listened to Trotsky very much, but he also listened to Stalin. If he presses Stalin, he will press Trotsky as well. That one is to blame for Tsaritsyn, and that one is for Astrakhan. “You will learn to cooperate,” he persuaded them, but he also accepted that they did not get along. Trotsky came running to complain that prohibition was in place throughout the republic, and Stalin was drinking the Tsar’s cellar in the Kremlin, that if they found out at the front ... Stalin laughed, Lenin laughed, turned away his beard Trotsky, left with nothing. They removed Stalin from Ukraine - so they gave the second people's commissariat, the RKI.

It was March 1919. Stalin was in his fortieth year. Who else would have had a shabby RCI inspection, but Stalin had it rise to the top people's commissariat! (That's what Lenin wanted. He knew Stalin's firmness, steadfastness, incorruptibility.) It was Stalin who Lenin instructed to monitor justice in the Republic, the cleanliness of party workers, to the highest. According to the nature of the work, if it is correctly understood, if you give your soul to it and do not spare your health, Stalin now had to secretly (but quite legally) collect incriminating materials against all responsible workers, send inspectors and collect reports, and then direct the purges. And for this it was necessary to create an apparatus, to select throughout the country just as selfless, just as unswerving, like themselves, ready to work secretly, without any obvious reward.

Painstaking work, patient work, long work, but Stalin was ready for it.

It is rightly said that forty years is our maturity. Only then do you finally understand how to live, how to behave. Only then did Stalin feel his main strength: the strength of the unspoken decision. Inside you have already made a decision, but whose head it concerns - that one does not need to know it ahead of time. (When his head rolls, then let him find out.) Second strength: never believe other people's words, don't attach importance to your own. It is necessary to say not what you will do (you yourself, maybe you don’t know, it will be seen there), but what calms your interlocutor now. The third force: if someone cheated on you, don’t forgive him; if you grabbed someone with your teeth, don’t let him out, don’t let him out for anything, even if the sun goes back and the heavenly phenomena are different. And the fourth force: not to direct your head on the theory, this has not helped anyone yet (you will say some theory later), but constantly think: with whom are you on the way now and to which pillar.

Thus, the situation with Trotsky gradually improved - first with the support of Zinoviev, then Kamenev. (Emotional relations were established with both of them.) Stalin realized to himself that he had nothing to worry about with Trotsky: a man like Trotsky should never be pushed into a pit, he would jump and fall off on his own. Stalin knew his own, he worked quietly: he slowly selected cadres, checked people, remembered everyone who would be reliable, waited for an opportunity to raise them, move them.

The time has come - and, for sure! Trotsky himself fell on trade union discussion- liberated, scolded, angered Lenin - he does not respect the party! - and Stalin is just ready with whom to replace Trotsky's people: Krestinsky- Zinoviev, Preobrazhensky – Molotov, Serebryakova – Yaroslavsky. Pulled up to the Central Committee and Voroshilov, and Ordzhonikidze, all of their own. And the famous commander-in-chief staggered on his crane legs. And Lenin understood that only Stalin was like a rock alone for the unity of the party, but he didn’t want anything for himself, he didn’t ask.

The simple-hearted, handsome Georgian, and this touched all the presenters, that he did not climb onto the podium, did not strive for popularity, for publicity, like all of them, did not boast of his knowledge of Marx, did not quote loudly, but modestly worked, picked up the apparatus - a solitary comrade, very firm , very honest, selfless, diligent, a little really ill-mannered, rude, a little narrow-minded. And when Ilyich began to get sick, they elected Stalin general secretary, as once Misha Romanov was appointed to the kingdom, because no one was afraid of him.

It was May 1922. And the other would have calmed down on that, would have sat - rejoiced. But not Stalin. Another would have read Capital, made extracts. And Stalin only pulled his nostrils and realized: the time is extreme, the gains of the revolution are in danger, there is not a minute to lose: Lenin will not retain power and will not hand it over to reliable hands. Lenin's health has deteriorated, and perhaps this is for the better. If he lingers at the leadership, you can’t vouch for anything, nothing is reliable: torn, quick-tempered, and now still sick, he was getting more and more nervous, just interfered with work. Stop everyone from working! He could scold a person for nothing, besiege, remove from an elective post.

The first idea was to send Lenin, for example, to the Caucasus, to be treated, the air is good there, the places are deaf, there is no telephone with Moscow, the telegrams take a long time, his nerves will calm down there without government work. And put to him to monitor his health - a trusted comrade, expropriator of the former, raider Kamo. And Lenin agreed, they were already negotiating with Tiflis, but somehow dragged on. And then Kamo was crushed by a car (he talked a lot about the exes).

Then, worrying about the life of the leader, Stalin, through the People's Commissariat of Health and through professors-surgeons, raised the question: after all, the bullet is not drawn out - it poisons the body, one more operation must be done, taken out. And convinced the doctors. And everyone repeated what was necessary, and Lenin agreed - but again it dragged on. And just left for Gorki.

“In relation to Lenin, firmness is needed!” Stalin wrote to Kamenev. And Kamenev and Zinoviev, his best friends at the time, agreed completely.

Firmness in treatment, firmness in the regimen, firmness in removal from business - in the interests of his own precious life. And in removal from Trotsky. AND Krupskaya also curb, she is an ordinary party comrade. Stalin was appointed “responsible for the health of Comrade Lenin” and did not consider it a dirty job for himself: to deal directly with the attending physicians and even nurses, to tell them which regimen is most useful for Lenin: it is most useful for him to forbid and forbid, even if he gets excited. The same is true in political matters. He doesn't like the bill about the Red Army - to pass it, he doesn't like it about the All-Russian Central Executive Committee - to pass it, and not to yield for anything, because he is sick, he cannot know how best. If something insists to be carried out as soon as possible - on the contrary, to carry it out more slowly, to postpone. And it may even be rude, very rude to answer him - it's the General Secretary's directness, you can't break your character.

However, despite Stalin's best efforts, Lenin did not recover well, his illness dragged on until autumn, and then the dispute about the Central Executive Committee-All-Russian Central Executive Committee escalated, and dear Ilyich managed to get to his feet for a short time. He only got up in order to restore a cordial alliance with Trotsky in December 1922 - against Stalin, of course. So for this it was not necessary to get up, it was better to lie down again. Now even stricter medical scrutiny, do not read, do not write, do not know about business, eat semolina. I thought up dear Ilyich secretly from the Secretary General to write political testament again against Stalin. He dictated for five minutes a day, they did not allow him anymore (Stalin did not allow him). But the general secretary laughed in his mustache: the stenographer tuk-tuk-tuk heels, and brought him an obligatory copy. Then I had to pull Krupskaya, as she deserved, - dear Ilyich boiled over - and the third blow! So all efforts to save his life did not help.

He died at a good time: just Trotsky was in the Caucasus, and Stalin announced the wrong day of the funeral there, because there was no need for him to come: the oath of allegiance is much more decent, very important, to pronounce the general secretary.

But Lenin left a will. From him, the comrades could create discord, misunderstanding, they even wanted to remove Stalin from the general secretary. Then even tighter Stalin made friends with Zinoviev, he so proved to him that obviously he would now be the leader of the party, and let him XIII Congress makes a report from the Central Committee, as a future leader, and Stalin will be a modest general secretary, he does not need anything. And Zinoviev showed off on the podium, made a report (only and only a report, where is he and by whom to choose, there is no such post - “leader of the party”), and for that report he persuaded the Central Committee - not even to read the will at the congress, not to dismiss Stalin, he already corrected.

All of them in the Politburo were then very friendly, and all of them were against Trotsky. And they refuted his proposals well and removed his supporters from their posts. And another secretary general would have calmed down on that. But the indefatigable vigilant Stalin knew that he was far from rest.

Was it good for Kamenev to remain on the Presovnarkom instead of Lenin? (Even when they visited sick Lenin together with Kamenev, Stalin reported in Pravda that he went without Kamenev, alone. Just in case. He foresaw that Kamenev would also not be eternal.) Wouldn't it be better - Rykov? And Kamenev himself agreed, and Zinoviev too, they lived together like that!

But soon a big blow fell on their friendship: it turned out that Zinoviev-Kamenev were hypocrites, double-dealers, that they only aspired to power, but did not value Lenin's ideas. I had to tighten them up. They became the “new opposition” (and the talker Krupskaya climbed into the same place), and Trotsky, beaten and beaten, has so far subsided. This is a very comfortable position. Here, by the way, a great cordial friendship came between Stalin and his dear Bukharchik, the first theoretician of the party. Bukharchik spoke, Bukharchik summed up the base and justifications (they give - "attack on the kulak!", and Bukharin and I give - "the bond between the city and the countryside!"). Stalin himself did not at all claim to fame or leadership, he only followed the vote and who was in what position. Already many right comrades were in the right positions and voted right.

Removed Zinoviev from Comintern took Leningrad from them.

And it would seem that they would reconcile themselves, but no: now they have united with Trotsky, and that wimp caught on for the last time, gave the slogan: "industrialization."

And Bukharchik and I give - the unity of the party! In the name of unity, all must submit! Trotsky was exiled, Zinoviev and Kamenev were shut up.

Helped a lot here Lenin set : now the majority of the party was made up of people who were not infected with intellectualism, not infected with the former squabbles of the underground and emigration, people for whom the former height of the party leaders no longer meant anything, but only their present face. Healthy people, devoted people, rose from the ranks of the party and occupied important posts.

Stalin never doubted that he would find such people, and in this way they would save the gains of the revolution.

But what a fatal surprise: Bukharin, Tomsk and Rykov also turned out to be hypocrites, they were not for the unity of the party! And Bukharin turned out to be the first confusion, not a theoretician. And his cunning slogan “the bond between the city and the countryside” concealed a restorationist meaning, surrender to the fist and disruption of industrialization! .. So here they were, finally, the correct slogans, only Stalin was able to formulate them: fist attack And forced industrialization! And - the unity of the party, of course! And this vile company of "rightists" was also dismissed from the leadership.

Bukharin once boasted that a certain wise man had deduced: "lower minds are more capable of managing." You made a mistake, Nikolai Ivanovich, together with your sage: not the lowest - healthy. Healthy minds.

And what minds were you - it's you on processes showed. Stalin sat on the gallery in a closed room, looked at them through the net, laughed: what kind of talkers were once! what a force it once seemed! and what have you come to? soaked like.

It was the knowledge of human nature, it was sobriety that always helped Stalin. He understood those people whom he saw with his eyes. But he also understood those whom he did not see with his eyes. When there were difficulties in 1931-32, there was nothing to wear or eat in the country - it seemed, just come and push outside, we will fall. And the party gave the command - to sound the alarm, the danger of intervention! But Stalin himself never believed a single finger: because he also imagined those Western talkers in advance.

One cannot calculate how much strength, how much health, how much endurance went into clearing the party, the country from enemies and clearing Leninism - this is an unmistakable teaching that Stalin never changed: he did exactly what Lenin outlined, only a little softer and without fuss.

So much effort! - but all the same, it was never calm, it was never so that no one interfered. Then this crooked-lipped sucker Tukhachevsky jumped up, as if because of Stalin he Warsaw did not take. Either it didn’t work out very cleanly with Frunze, the censor missed it, then in a crappy little story they presented Stalin on the mountain as a standing dead man, and they also slammed, idiots. That Ukraine rotted bread, Kuban shot from sawn-off shotguns, even Ivanovo went on strike.

But not once did Stalin lose his temper, after the mistake with Trotsky - never again. He knew that the millstones of history were slowly grinding, but they were spinning.

And without any ceremonial hype, all ill-wishers, all envious people will leave, die, be ground into dung. (No matter how those writers offended Stalin, he did not take revenge on them, he did not take revenge for this, it would not be instructive. He waited for another opportunity, the opportunity will always come.) And the truth: whoever civil war at least he commanded a battalion, at least a company in units not loyal to Stalin - everyone went somewhere, disappeared. And the delegates of the Twelfth, and the Thirteenth, and the Fourteenth, and the Fifteenth, and the Sixteenth, and the Seventeenth Congresses, as if simply according to the lists, went to where you can’t vote, you can’t speak. And they twice cleared troublemaker Leningrad, a dangerous place. And even friends, like Sergo, had to be sacrificed. And even diligent assistants, like Berry, How Yezhov had to be cleaned up afterwards. Finally, they reached out to Trotsky and cracked open his skull.

The main enemy on earth is gone and it seems that a respite was deserved?

But Finland poisoned her. For that shameful trampling on the isthmus I was just ashamed in front of Hitler - he walked around France with a cane! Ah, the indelible stain on the genius of a commander! These Finns, through and through a bourgeois hostile nation, would be sent in echelons to Kara-Kum up to small children, he himself would sit by the phone, write down reports: how many have already been shot, buried, how much is left.

And troubles poured in and poured out just in bulk. Hitler deceived, attacked, such a good alliance was ruined out of wit! And the lips trembled in front of the microphone, “brothers and sisters” broke, now you can’t erase from history. And these brothers and sisters ran like sheep, and no one wanted to fight to the death, although they were clearly ordered to fight to the death. Why didn't they stand? why - did not immediately stand?! .. It's a shame.

And then this departure to Kuibyshev, to empty bomb shelters... What positions I mastered, I never bent, the only time I succumbed to panic - and in vain. I went from room to room - I called for a week: have they already surrendered Moscow? passed already? - No, they didn't! It was impossible to believe that they would stop - stopped!

Well done, of course. Well done. But many had to be removed: it would not be a victory if a rumor spread that the Commander-in-Chief was temporarily leaving. (Because of this, on November 7, a small parade had to be photographed.) And the Berlin radio rinsed dirty sheets about the murder of Lenin, Frunze, Dzerzhinsky, Kuibyshev, Gorky - city higher! Old enemy, fat Churchill, a pig for chokhokhbil, flew in to gloat, smoke a couple of cigars in the Kremlin. The Ukrainians changed (there was such a dream in 1944: to evict all of Ukraine to Siberia, but there is no one to replace it, too much); the Lithuanians, Estonians, Tatars, Cossacks, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Latvians have changed - even the support of the revolution, the Latvians! And even native Georgians, protected from mobilizations - and they did not seem to be waiting for Hitler! And only Russians and Jews remained faithful to their Father.

So even the national question laughed at him in those difficult years ...

But, thank God, these misfortunes have passed. Stalin corrected a lot by how he outplayed Churchill and Roosevelt-holy. Ever since the 1920s, Stalin had not had such success as with these two bunglers. When he answered letters to them or went to his room in Yalta, he simply laughed at them.

Statesmen, how smart they think they are, but stupider than babies. Everyone asks: how will we be after the war, and how? Yes, you send planes, send canned food, and then we'll see how. Throw a word to them, well, the first passing one, they are already rejoicing, they are already writing down on a piece of paper. You pretend to soften from love, they are already twice as soft. I received from them for nothing, not for snuff: Poland, Saxony, Thuringia, Vlasov, Krasnovtsy, the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin, Port Arthur, half of Korea, and confused them on the Danube and the Balkans. The leaders of the "farmers" won the elections and immediately went to jail. And they quickly turned Mikolajczyk, Beneš's heart failed, Masaryk's, Cardinal Mindszenty confessed to the atrocities, Dimitrov in the Kremlin's heart clinic he renounced the quarrelsome Balkan Federation.

And all the Soviets who returned from European life were put in camps. And - there for the second ten years, all those who served only once.

Well, it looks like things are starting to get better!

And when, even in the rustle of the taiga, it was impossible to hear about some other version of socialism, a black dragon crawled out Tito and blocked all prospects.

Like a fairy-tale hero, Stalin was exhausted to cut off more and more growing heads of the hydra! ..

But how could one make a mistake in this scorpion soul?! - to him! connoisseur of human souls! After all, in the 36th year they were already holding by the throat - and released! .. Ai-i-i-i-ai!

Stalin, with a groan, lowered his legs from the ottoman and took hold of his head, already bald. An irremediable vexation gnawed at him. He rolled mountains - and stumbled on a stinking hillock.

Joseph stumbled on Joseph...

Stalin did not interfere at all with Kerensky, who was living somewhere. Let Nicholas II return from the coffin or Kolchak- against all of them, Stalin had no personal evil: open enemies, they did not dodge to offer some kind of their own, new, better socialism.

The best socialism! Different than Stalin! brat! Socialism without Stalin is ready-made fascism!

It's not that Tito will succeed - nothing can come out of him. Like an old horseman, who has torn up many of these bellies, cut off countless of these limbs in chicken huts, by the roads, looks at a little white medical trainee, so Stalin looked at Tito.

But Tito stirred up long-forgotten trinkets for fools: “workers' control”, “land for the peasants”, all these soap bubbles of the first years of the revolution.

The collected works of Lenin have already been changed three times, and the Founding Men twice. Everyone who argued, who was mentioned in the old footnotes, fell asleep long ago—everyone who thought otherwise to build socialism. And now, when it is clear that there is no other way, and not only socialism, but even communism would have been built long ago, if not for the arrogant nobles; not false reports; not soulless bureaucrats; not indifference to the public cause; not the weakness of organizational and explanatory work among the masses; not by chance in party education; slow pace of construction; ne downtime, ne absentia at work, ne release of poor quality products, ne bad planning, ne indifference to the introduction of new technology, ne inactivity of scientific research institutes, ne poor training of young specialists, ne the evasion of young people from being sent to the wilderness, ne sabotage of prisoners, ne the loss of grain in the field, the embezzlement of accountants, the theft at bases, the swindle of the storekeepers and store assistants, the greed of drivers, the complacency of local authorities! ne liberalism and bribes in the police! ne abuse of housing stock! ne impudent speculators! ne greedy housewives! ne spoiled children! ne tram talkers! ne criticism in literature! ne dislocations in cinematography! – when it is already clear to everyone that kamunism is on the right road and not far from completion, – this cretin Tito sticks out with his Talmudist Kardel and declares that kamunism should not be built like this !!!...