Skuratov hinted to Ural Airlines to move abroad. Kirill Skuratov Ural Airlines family

Sergey Skuratov may soon get rid of the aviation business in the Russian Federation. According to sources in the airline, the CEO and owner of Ural Airlines is eyeing business projects abroad, and observers note that affiliated companies Skuratov companies can invest in real estate both in Europe and in countries Arab world. loss Skuratov market analysts' interest in the aviation business is indirectly determined by the behavioral business model of the head of the company. According to experts, Ural Airlines operates on a principle reminiscent of the strategy of operators who do not seek to strengthen and expand in the market. The company is rapidly increasing its accounts payable and urgently strengthens its "bread" areas with used liners.

Ural Airlines leased another Airbus. The A319, which, according to experts, has been flying for about 10 years, arrived at Koltsovo Airport in Yekaterinburg and, in all likelihood, was bought in Nevada.

“This is the 32nd aircraft leased by the airline. They have 31 ships on their balance sheet, and the company returned one of the aircraft to the lessor in 2013 due to the expiration of the contract,” said a source close to Sergei Skuratov.

The press service of the company confirmed that today a plane from the United States arrived at the home airport and was immediately put on the flight schedule. The board has already completed its first flight today in the direction of Yekaterinburg - Anapa.

Takeoff from Yekaterinburg

According to the same source from Ural Airlines, the company is currently significantly short of aircraft. “There are no changes at all. There are delays not only on the most profitable southern direction in the summer, but also on flights to Moscow, which are especially controlled by the owners, a lot of bosses fly, ”the source described the situation.

As confirmation of his words, the interlocutor recalled that literally on August 1, the airline's passengers flying on the Moscow-Antalya route spent 8 hours at Domodedovo Airport due to technical problems on board. The airline traditionally did not find a replacement for the broken Airbus.

Sergey Skuratov is the founder and owner of Ural Airlines. Despite the leading position in the ratings of air carriers, the company constantly falls under the indignation of the public - from passenger reviews to the opinion of specialists.

• FULL NAME:
• Date of Birth: 31.03.1950
• Education: Buguruslan Flight School, Academy civil aviation(then still Leningrad)
• Business start date/age: 43 years
• Type of activity at the start: CEO air carrier "Ural Airlines"
• Current activity: Entrepreneur, owner and CEO of Ural Airlines
• Current state companies: no data

The founder and CEO of Ural Airlines Sergey Skuratov wants to make his company no worse than Emirates. The air carrier's revenue is growing - in 2017 it amounted to 57.3 billion rubles.

The success story of Sergei Skuratov is proof of how high a real professional can fly. In the case of our hero, the statement sounds literally - the head and founder of Ural Airlines is a professional pilot himself. The sky is his life.

Becoming a professional

short biography Skuratov Sergei Nikolaevich, Russian by nationality, begins with his birth - March 31, 1950. The boy was born into the family of aviation workers - this determined the future profession. In 1967 he entered the Buguruslan Flight School.

At first it was the 2nd joint air squadron in Sverdlovsk, where Sergey began his professional career as a co-pilot in the AN-2 cockpit. However, the acquired knowledge and flights were not enough for him - in 1978, Skuratov received an additional education as a pilot engineer at the Leningrad Academy of Civil Aviation. This gave him the opportunity to work for everyone aircraft models AN, TU and IL.

Photo 1. Skuratov suits his flight uniform very well.
Source: top2tops.ru

Sergei Nikolayevich strove to constantly expand his knowledge - in 1984 he graduated from the command faculty at the same Leningrad academy. This gave him the opportunity to take the post of head of the flight safety inspectorate, and in 1987 - to go directly to the position of commander of the Sverdlovsk United Aviation Squadron.

After the collapse of the USSR, already in 1993, the Sverdlovsk air squadron itself “fell apart”. Skuratov heads the air carrier, which became Ural Airlines in the process of privatization. At the same time, he is the Chairman of the Board of the Association of Air Transport Operators.

Brief history of the airline

The activity of this company began on the basis of the Sverdlovsk aviation fleet in December 1993. This happened after the official division, as a result of which the Sverdlovsk airline was divided into an airport and a carrier.

Photo 2. The official slogan of the company.
Airline website

Today, the airline is in the top 10 Russian air transportation leaders. Its passenger turnover is increasing by 20% every year (last year it amounted to 6.4 million passengers for the first time). The base airports of the company are located in Yekaterinburg (Koltsovo) and Moscow (Domodedovo). Flights are made on domestic flights, to the CIS countries and international destinations. On this moment it is the fifth largest air carrier in the country with a fleet of 43 Airbus aircraft.

It would be interesting to learn about a man standing on the threshold of heaven. This is the "King of Domodedovo" Dmitry Kamenshchik.

Deserved recognition

The airline has repeatedly occupied a variety of nominations in its field. More details in the following table:

Photo 3. Sergei Nikolaevich - winner of numerous awards.
Source: aex.ru

In addition, Skuratov himself has the badge of honor "Excellence in Air Transport". He is also a first-class pilot, an honored worker Russian transport.

Record profit

2016 pleased the company with a record profit over the past decade. In addition, we managed to reduce the portfolio of foreign loans by 2 billion rubles. Other indicators were also good:

• profit of 2.7 billion rubles (10 times more than last year);
• traffic growth by 19%;
• withdrawal from the market of a major player Transaero.

Photo 4. Ural Airlines is one of the leaders Russian air transportation.
Source: aex.ru

Unheard of Generosity: Billion Cashback

We are talking about the withdrawal in 2016 of the cache in the amount of more than 1 billion rubles - and from the non-commodity sector. These are the dividends that Sergey Skuratov received in 2016. Shareholder payouts also increased. And from the outside, it seems, everything is clear, except for one thing - the carrier still takes very large loans.

In fact, it is enough to arm yourself with a calculator to understand that the payouts to shareholders are not so fabulous. So, according to the information that has been preserved since 1997:

1. Until 2011, payments were made in the amount of: 159.5 thousand rubles; 797.8 thousand rubles; 1.5 million rubles. At the same time, the income per share was in the range of 1-10 rubles.
2. Since 2011, the figures have already changed: 47.8 million rubles; 79.7 million rubles. The yield per share ranged from 100 to 500 rubles.

Sometimes the rewards did not reach the shareholders at all. In any case, the figure for all these years is six times less than the billionth cash. Even with a very successful result of work for 2016 of Ural Airlines, such payments did not cover all debts to shareholders.

Opinions about this event are divided. In the camp of pessimists, they say: this is a desire to withdraw profits, "put money in your pockets." But lawyers argue that there is nothing unusual in the fact that a shareholder will receive a large amount of money at a time - there are no contradictions here.

There were other versions as well. The first is the possible departure from the business of Sergei Skuratov, who is preparing a successor for himself. The second is his own desire to invest finances in another business.

It was not the sum of dividends in the amount of 1,276,504,000 rubles that received the resonance. Another thing is not clear: why, at the same time, was a loan taken from PJSC "Binbank" in the amount of 2.6 billion rubles? The rationale was "financing current activities" - that is, it turns out that there is not enough money for it?

Analysts suggested: perhaps this is a scheme for the withdrawal of own funds and the debt will once again be used to pay money to shareholders. Naturally, no bank would agree to such a substitution, which is why another goal was invented.

A few more scandals

Another wave of public discussion was caused by the 2013 deal with Sberbank. Ural Airlines received a loan of 4.5 billion rubles until 2020. However, experts remain in doubt about the return of money.

According to many independent researchers, the development of the company is assisted by regional officials from Yekaterinburg. There are unconfirmed versions:

• Alexander Levin, the former head of the city administration, controls 10% of its shares through nominees.
• the same stake is owned by Beta Investments Holdings, an offshore company in Cyprus.

Family matters, work matters

Sergey Nikolaevich has long been in a successful marriage - he and his wife have a son, Kirill, who is now the commercial director of the company.

His personality deserves special mention. Many believe that the guy does not reach the level of his father. However, despite the problem of generations, Kirill invests a lot in the family business, trying to keep up with the times. Proof of this is the collaboration with Amadeus.

Under this name operates a global booking system powered by Amadeus Web Services technology. It also includes the Amadeus Meta Pricer low-fare analyzer and the Aviasales mega search engine (with 400,000 requests per day). Thus there is more chances that the customer picking up a tourist route, will use Ural Airlines.

Kirill Skuratov notes: “Such cooperation will allow us to optimize our work with clients and partners. The market is developing rapidly, and we have something to offer our customers - an understandable and high-speed service. There are already results - reducing the load on our own site, automated convenient search and increase the efficiency of online sales.

Financial position

Skuratov is the CEO and owner of 80.22% of the shares of Ural Airlines. Along with the increase in profits, experts note a decrease in the company's manageability. And they predict: perhaps, negative trends will only deepen. A decrease in the profitability of transportation and a possible loss of a monopoly position in Koltsovo are ascertained.

So, perhaps, Sergei Skuratov will leave aviation for the "terrestrial" business. Moreover, they are talking about returning to aviation Transaero - the former executive director and founder Alexander Pleshakov has already begun the procedure for restoring the company.

Skuratov often repeats this statement: “There is no money in the air, they are all on the ground” (aviation proverb).

Maybe that's what will happen. And a prerequisite for this is the purchase of a unique training center at a cost of 8.5 million dollars. Pilots from all over Russia can come here to train.

This site European level in no way inferior to European counterparts and a similar center in Dubai. The hangar complex will soon be ready, in which aircraft maintenance will take place.

More about the hangar - in this video:

Those who complete the training receive certificates from Boeing and Airbus and will be able to provide expensive services. And this is a pretty good income for the Skuratov dynasty.

Freight transport is also a good option earnings. For example, you can do good business with China on this.

The company itself is included in the rating of 200 largest private companies in our Russian Federation (according to Forbes). Below are data on revenue for the period from 2008 to 2017, compiled based on the results of the annual financial statements of Ural Airlines (freely available on the official website) and materials from the Russian Forbes web resource.

Intelligence: Sergey Kredov about white and red terror

"Archaeology": Profession: winemaker. Mikhail Shtyrlin

Klim Zhukov about the birth of the revolution: the failed bourgeois revolution

Subtitles

I wholeheartedly welcome you! Sergey, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Let's continue, part two. About terror. In part, I repeat that here, in Russia, the conversation about the Revolution is almost identical to the conversation about terror, moreover, they calculate, compare white and red, who killed more than whom Who started it first. This is not always of interest. Who was the first to start ... it was clearly not the Bolsheviks who started, and not even those. They started at least 3.5 years before - the World War, from which all terror grew. If not for the World War, then there would be no terror, because the condition of any terror is when a human life is a penny. They compare who killed more: whites or reds? If it suddenly turns out that the whites killed less, and not so cruelly, then it means that the whites were right in this Revolution. I think that these things are completely incomparable. Revolution is one thing, and terror, of course, is certainly important to discuss, because human life is a tragedy and all that. But these things are not necessarily related, and again I want to recall the war of 1812, one of those events when terror played a huge role, because 600 thousand entered Russia, 20-30 left. Killed on the battlefields of 150 thousand, for example. And where do the rest go? As it happened in those years, they died of diarrhea. Well, where did they go? They were killed, yes. Someone who was lucky was taken prisoner. Several tens of thousands of Frenchmen remained tutors simply in Russia. And the club of the people's war punished the rest. Do you remember, there was such a Marquis de Custine, such a person of non-traditional orientation, who visited Russia in 1839 and scribbled 2 volumes of memoirs. He has wonderful moments there, that when they came in a good winter, when it was really cold, when they stopped for the night, made a fire, and those who are closer to the fire - they lived until the morning, and all the rest who stood around, they by morning they remained standing. They fought, among other things, completely wrong, and Napoleon was very offended. He said that he took 14 capitals, and everything was fine. And you are fighting wrong. Of course, this barbarism - this is terror, which was encouraged from above by His Serene Highness Prince Kutuzov, who considered it right, and even the cudgel of the people's war as a sacred act. L.N. Tolstoy said: “maybe this is true, of course, but I have much more respect for not the Frenchman who, having lost the battle, gives his sword to the enemy, and says - here’s the capital for you, come in, make yourself comfortable, take out, rob and so on and so forth." He said that I have much more respect for a man who takes the first club he comes across and starts nailing and nailing until the feeling of hatred, revenge, and offended dignity is replaced by a feeling of compassion and pity. This is true, because Napoleon never saw a single unburned city in Russia. It can be said that he has never been to Russia, and he has an idea about Russia, that it is a country of completely burned cities. In general, the war was wrong, terror in its purest form, and no one asks the question, and does not blame Russia for behaving like that. We talked last time about Civil War not quite correctly called a civil war, after all, the Civil Patriotic War begins from a certain moment, and then just a Patriotic War, as, say, during the period of Polish intervention, when all societies forgot their feuds and began to wish success to Budyonny. The talk about terror should not be rigidly tied to the talk about the value of the Revolution, the October Revolution, of course, there was no other revolution. This is a world historical event, you can take any history textbook in any language, leaf through it, and when you get to 1917, you will see what had the most worthy significance. These are truly "the days that shook the world," as John Reed said. At that time, everyone perfectly understood that all the events in the world at that time revolved around Russia, the future was determined here. A lot of things were happening in the world - monarchies were collapsing, there was a World War, and so on. And the most important thing, the main thing in the ideological sense, happened here. Terror is certainly one of these components, but we will not forget that terror has gripped the whole world, and not on that scale. We can immediately say that during the World War, the combat losses of the Russian army (per month) for 3.5 years averaged 150 thousand people. Every month. This is Kutuzov's army - every month - killed, wounded, missing. Plus, typhus, a Spaniard who mowed more more people , plus refugees from the western regions - when the Germans advanced, 10 million fled to the central region. And if at least 0.5% of these people have gone into crime, it will not seem enough. 1.5 million armed deserters are walking around somewhere, attacking the landowners, and so on, all the other delights. Therefore, it would be strange if terror were not the air of the then Russia and the whole world. As soon as this is given such importance, I will try, as far as possible, to talk about it and show some figures. Let's start with the most basic. When comparing red and white terror, this is not always a correct comparison, because it often happens that terror is one, not always even red and white can be separated, these are the same people. They can go there, they can go there, and so on. When comparing red and white terror, one of the platitudes that constantly sounds is this: “yes, the whites also slaughtered. There was also something to say, but the red terror is a state policy that is rooted in the early works of V.I. Lenin, or even deeper, and this is still its embodiment, i.e. systematic destruction of some enemies. And white terror is also not good, but these are excesses. People got excited, got excited. The White Command tried to fight them, but failed. These are excesses." This idea comes from S.P. Melgunov, the author of the book "Red Terror", and from the Socialist-Revolutionaries who settled in the early 1920s, Leningraders, who also carried this idea in their newspapers, and it turned out to be extremely tenacious. Today it is on some TV shows, talk shows, you will almost certainly hear it. “Yes, but these are excesses, and this is state massacre.” Let's, from the point of view of common sense, without plunging into history, let's look at the teeth and check what kind of excesses these are. For example, specifically Melgunov wrote: “where and when did calls for systematic murders sound in the government of Admiral Denikin, Admiral Kolchak, or Baron Wrangel?” Yes, they just sounded. It's them. Yes. They just sounded. There, sometimes they didn’t even have to be pronounced, because people, without calls, destroyed a certain category of their opponents to zero, which the Reds never did. For example, when General Kornilov, the commander of a volunteer army, left the Don at the beginning of 1918 on one of the “ice” campaigns that the whites loved so much, their Cossacks forced them out of the Don (they wanted to make peace with the Reds, and in general, they did not like generals, officers were not liked). So, a handful of White Guards, 2,000-odd of people went to no one knows where to the Kuban. Naturally, they did not have the opportunity to keep prisoners of war, they had their own wounded and so on, and General Kornilov said in the first days of February: “We will not take prisoners. I, the commander, take this sin on my conscience. This is described by Roman Gul in the book "The Ice Campaign", a participant in this campaign, a completely ardent White Guard, there is no doubt about it. This happened at the beginning of February 1918, terror at the level of the commander of the volunteer army. Then there was no such massacre of civilians, and Gul describes that the romantics who were then part of Kornilov's army - these are cadets, students - they were shocked. And now, the first battle has passed, they are lined up and they say: “who is going to be shot?”. They do not understand. We didn't go to shoot. But here they choose volunteers, 50-60 captured Red Army soldiers, click-click-click - they killed. This is 7 months before the announcement of the Red Terror. That is, the white terror is 7 months older than the red one. They may object: “In the meantime, the Reds also killed, no?” We'll talk about it, yes. With Kornilov sorted out. The White Guards had 3 months of completely continuous battles there, they got to the Kuban there, returned back, then an uprising began on the Don, they settled here, and this whole story was brewed. 3 months of continuous fighting, continuous executions (they have nothing to do with prisoners). Terror always finds an excuse for such things. Who can calculate how many prisoners they killed during this time? This time, it's Kornilov and I figured it out. Are there any numbers on this? There are numbers, of course, but I think that all these numbers are from a lantern. Suppose the Reds calculated that before the announcement of the Red Terror, 22,000 people were shot. I don't think this is an accurate number. Maybe more, maybe a lot more, maybe less. Here, for example, Kolchak A.V. says in a newspaper interview in August 1918, when he was not yet the Supreme Ruler, but the Minister of War: "I order the commanders to shoot all the captured communists." This is the summer of 1918, the war is just beginning, there is no such wild bitterness. Well, Wrangel - understandable. April 20, 1920 statement: "shoot all commissars and communists taken prisoner." This is a terrorist order. Denikin, for example, when they went to Moscow, they gathered to decide what to do with captured Moscow. They gathered their Special Meeting, their government, and decided that all communists were to be destroyed. Communists, remember, there were about 300 thousand people at that time in the country. Not all were military, there were Lunacharskys, there were doctors, but they destroyed everyone. Plus, the communists destroyed all the leaders of local councils, more or less left. The Mensheviks also sat with the Reds during the war, but where were they to go? Socialist-Revolutionaries, too, all except some "right" people. All foreigners, non-Russians, Latvians there. Although, Latvians are legal citizens of the Russian Empire. Just poor people who had nowhere to return, because the Germans were sitting there, and here they are. Well, and so on. It turns out, according to these statements, if they managed to enter Moscow, then, accordingly, half a million people ... and they were not allowed to do so. When we compare terror, we must take into account the numbers that people would not be allowed to kill. There was also spontaneous terror, such people as Shkuro, Mamontov, Kutepov - this is such an audience that they did not need commands at all. It was we who figured out Melgunov's formula that the red terror comes from above, and the "white" is kurtosis. But, such an easily exposed thing is nonetheless respectfully quoted. Let's take the textbook "History of Russia from ancient times to the present day" edited by A.N. Sakharov, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences. - a historian, which is recommended for study by applicants, students, teachers. Students learn from this textbook. So, it is written there: “The Red Terror was the primary phenomenon, the White Terror was a derivative. The Red Terror, thus, thus, is a state system, decreed from above already in the first months of the existence of the Bolshevik regime. White terror, which S.P. Melgunov, acted as excesses on the ground, with whom, albeit sluggishly, inconsistently, but the bearers of the white idea fought. So I read a lot of materials, that's how they fought, I practically did not meet. I mean commanders. With them, no one would go to Moscow - at least Mamontov and Shkuro - if it were not given to plunder the city, the impossibility of dragging carts for 60 kilometers - some people followed each of these carts, not all of them willingly gave their goods, some then apparently there were also tragedies there. We have analyzed one of such popular theses. Now about what to do with the policy of the Reds, how much it was state and consistent terror. Before the revolution, it was believed that power would pass through the barricades, this was not only for the Bolsheviks, the Socialist-Revolutionaries understood this, and the Mensheviks, but just everything. Who could have guessed that Russian empire fall apart, literally, on nothing. Accordingly, through the barricades, according to the method of the Paris Commune. And suddenly it turned out that during the Kornilov rebellion, which, jokingly, was suppressed, it turned out that it was possible somehow differently, the tsar resigned of his own free will. The Kornilov rebellion - the commander-in-chief of the Russian army could not drag his army into the capital, that's how much the country has already collapsed. And then, after October, the Cossacks Krasnov and Kerensky tried - they were also completely joking ... Nothing happens with the white movement, some small numbers of people gather. That is, white terror is not dangerous. Lenin and others begin to rush about with the idea that terror is a little bit unnecessary, the majority is already suppressing the minority. They say this very often. And at this time, certain decisions are made, when, for example, Krasnov, who is participating in the movement to Petrograd, they bring him to the Smolny, to the 75th room, and they say: “Well, you won’t fight with us anymore?” He says, "I won't." Goodbye. He goes to his place on the Don. It was just some kind of almshouse. For example, in early January they took Klyuchkevich, and he was considered the most serious figure for the revolutionaries of that time, he was caught red-handed, he collected weapons from the warehouse, wrote letters, come, we are waiting for you here. They took him, there was a court of cassation tribunal, he sat in Kresty for some time, then his son fell ill in April, he was released to look after his son for a week, and on May 1 just under an amnesty, there were permanent amnesties, and he went to to the south, and there he participated in the white movement. Recently, one politician, say there, a member of the political council of United Russia, said that February is peaceful, and October is bloody. Everyone knows it's exactly the opposite. Let's not waste time on this, I'll just give a link to the book, in my opinion, interesting. There was such Konstantin Golovachev, he headed the Petrograd security department. He wrote the book "The Truth about the Russian Revolution", an interesting enough book, it is not so easy to find. This is a very smart gendarme, very interesting memories. They are interesting in that this Globachev writes that the Bolsheviks, before they came to power, had such a reputation created by the efforts of the liberal press that we all sat and thought: “This is terrible horror, now they will come.” But, he writes, half a year has passed, in half a year they have broken firewood less than the “Februaryists”. And at the end of February, all the policemen were simply killed there. And the same Globachev was under arrest for three months simply, they scoffed there. It’s just that people came, and all the tsarist ministers they arrested, they came to talk: “How was it with you under Nicholas II?” What were they to ask? People performed their duties in another state. He is the same. And under the Bolsheviks, no one touched him. The head of the Petrograd security department lived for himself until the spring, before the civil war. There was another case, for example. In my opinion, the Moscow security department. His surname is Krivovich, general. There was a court of the revolutionary tribunal, he was acquitted by the court of the revolutionary tribunal, moreover, it helped him get a job, in a state bank, after which this same gendarme left. He surfaced already at Wrangel, and he headed counterintelligence, he transplanted many intelligence officers there. And there were quite a lot of such facts, these are not some accidents. We are now talking about the central cities, where the authorities controlled the situation. Moscow, Petrograd is a completely separate story, because in the Cheka it is believed that the first political processes began already in August 1818. Prior to that, they were mainly engaged in some kind of bandits and so on. Another thing is that blood was shed on the outskirts. Where there was an Ice Campaign and so on. But this is no central authority , there are local councils. After all, the government is Soviet. What is a local council? These are front-line soldiers who came from the front with the experience of soldiers' committees. They formed their own committees there. For them, generals and officers are the worst enemies. They fight with them there. For example, the Soviet Don Republic, described by Sholokhov, where Podtelkov and Krivoshlykov are generally non-party, no, neither Bolsheviks nor Communists. They have their own takedowns. Plus, Ukraine is a separate issue, there is Soviet power and there is a Rada, they have their own showdowns in which they participate. And everything else - peace and grace in Moscow and Petrograd. You can give a lot of examples, in May 18, the so-called dispersed constituent meetings - these are Socialist-Revolutionary factions. Another myth of the revolution that the constituent assemblies dispersed is simply utter nonsense. Just by numbers. Constituent Assembly - 710 people elected. By the time they were dispersed, it was a faction of the Socialist-Revolutionaries of 260 people. Third. They were completely illegitimate. Were you not allowed into the meeting room at the Tauride Palace? Well, go somewhere else. Gather elsewhere, as the French did, in their day, during the French Revolution. They gathered in the ballroom - there is a famous episode. Everyone - everyone came up, well, you go to the apartment and get ready. But since their people - those who are supported by the street can gather, and if no one supports you, why should you gather? Nevertheless, no one offended them, they went to Moscow, in May they held a congress quite freely, at which they adopted resolutions on the desirability of intervention, no less. They accepted and accepted, no one offended them, but the Bolsheviks had no special opportunities to offend anyone. Many examples can be cited, for example, Sokolov, who later headed Denikin's propaganda department, he was a professor in Moscow or Petrograd, and sat in the south. And he came from there to give lectures. It was impossible to move quietly around the country, but the professors were respected. He came to the Red Army soldiers, said: I am a professor, I am going to the university to give lectures. They told him - come in, please. He read it and went back. That is, it all happened in this way, and lasted quite a long time, and even such a person as Zinoviev, back in June, wrote absolutely benevolent things, that we would manage without terror, and everything would be fine in 1918. One can recall, for example, such a thing: of course, the Cheka already existed, but in March 18, when there was a wild massacre, and Kornilov was shot 150-160 people a day, F. E. Dzerzhinsky writes a memo for his employees on how to conduct a search. Academician Sakharov is resting. Felix Edmundovich is most concerned about how not to offend the person being searched. Draft instructions for March 1918, writes Dzerzhinsky. “Let all those who are instructed to conduct a search treat people with care - those who are arrested and searched, let them be much more polite with them than even with close person , remembering that the deprived of liberty cannot defend himself, and he is in our power. Threats with weapons are unacceptable. Those guilty of violating this instruction are subject to arrest for up to 3 months, removal from the commission, and expulsion from Moscow. This is how it all happened in Moscow. That is, we figured out where there was a bloody massacre, where what. At the same time, the anti-Bolshevik society says, what is Sannikov doing, he is a terrorist, why won’t he kill Lenin? Bunin wrote this in Cursed Days. Lenin walks around without guards everywhere, why don't they kill him? Everyone is waiting for something like this. And they are also waiting. There is practically no Cheka yet, it is a weak organization, they are all still defenseless. And it starts in June, when Volodarsky is killed, they think that this very terrorist thing has begun. Here comes this Leninist phrase about the mass character of terror. What did he mean? This is Leninist vocabulary, as usual. Massiveness. Kutuzov said otherwise. He said, they say, kill, partisans, we are doing a good deed, pleasing to God. And Lenin said that it is necessary to increase the mass character of terror. He writes to Zinoviev that I have information that the workers wanted to deal with these people, but you prevented them. This is by no means good! The meaning of this statement is that the public must be involved in the fight against counter-revolution, after all, one party cannot defend itself. Let these potential killers know that if you kill, they will tear you to pieces on the spot, so be it, at least. They began to understand what was going on. And then there is an attempt on Uritsky, an attempt on Lenin on August 30, and in September the Red Terror is announced, when it begins ... The decree on the Red Terror, now we will read it, but before that we will return to the figure of Melgunov, because in his book “Red Terror "It is alleged that the Cheka from the very beginning of its appearance begins a terrible massacre." Here it will not be superfluous to say about the bible of anti-Bolshevism - the book "Red Terror", what kind of book it is. She appeared in exile in the early twenties, when the trial of the murderer of the Soviet ambassador was being prepared, and in general, Melgunov was such an extreme politician - a supporter of the fact that the Union should be isolated, that no agreements should be concluded with it, that it is a terrorist state. He was in exile, and was extreme, extreme. Even from the point of view of Kerensky and Milyukov, he was simply a mad man. He wrote a book where he presents the Soviet Union as a terrorist state. Moreover, he writes about events that he could not see, since he lived in Moscow. Melgunov himself was a terrorist, he got money from Western missions for Savenkov. You perfectly understand what Savenkov is doing, he is preparing explosions, murders, he was engaged in illegal activities, and he was very lucky that he took his legs out of Soviet Russia. Judging by the book "Red Terror", a bloody river flowed immediately. In addition, Melgunov's diaries and memoirs have been published. It is very interesting to compare them - different people wrote. In his memoirs, he writes that in the summer of 1918 the Cheka was still weak. Melgunov was a member of the so-called Renaissance Union, and he said that they gathered there quite freely, and there was not a single failure. And when one foolishly failed, they held a rally, and no one dispersed it, nothing like that. Melgunov was arrested in September 1918 as a People's Socialist after the murder of Uritsky. He sat quite calmly, he was not afraid of anything, he was just being checked somewhere. In the midst of the Red Terror, it all worked out for him. This we to some extent answered the question, did they immediately shed blood, or not immediately. Naturally, the terror began with the civil war. This common law all revolutions. Terror always depends on the situation on the fronts. In the future, the repressive policy of the Reds - the Bolsheviks - will not only be repressive, it will be very, very different. 1918 is the red terror (2 months). Then they fought off the first wave of White Guards at the end of 1918, and immediately the Congress of Soviets canceled the Red Terror, and there was even talk that the Cheka should be reformed, turned into some kind of charitable organization. Then Kolchak rises, all conversations subside, then the massacre begins, then Kolchak is liquidated, and in general a moratorium on the use of the death penalty is announced, which was valid for 4 months at the beginning of 1920. Then Wrangel comes to life, the Polish intervention, and everything started again. This is war. Therefore, it is not necessary to say that the red policy, unlike the white one, was somehow dull and repressive. And how are the Bolsheviks different from any other party? There are also enough hard people, enough soft people... And everyone wants different things. Yes. That's about the red terror. Let's remember how the decree "On the Red Terror" sounded. After the assassination attempt on Lenin, when it was believed that he would die, but he miraculously escaped, a decree was issued in early September. He sounded in such a spirit that, starting from this moment, persons who were in contact with the White Guard organizations, conspiracies and rebellions would be destroyed. The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission is responsible for this, it is necessary to strengthen the recruitment to it, strengthen it with personnel, in this regard. It is necessary to publish the names of all those who were shot, and the reasons for applying this measure to them. This is the meaning of the provision on the Red Terror. What is interesting is that the day before this provision, the order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Petrovsky was issued, for some reason it came out earlier. The decree "on the Red Terror" was signed by 3 people: this is the People's Commissar of Justice Kursky, the People's Commissar Petrovsky, and the manager of the Council of People's Commissars Bonch-Bruevich. And Petrovsky’s decree sounds much tougher: “slackness and sloppiness must be immediately put an end to, all rightists and socialist-revolutionaries known to local councils must be immediately arrested, a large number of hostages must be taken from the bourgeoisie and officers, at the slightest attempt at resistance, or the slightest movement towards the White Guard mass shooting must be unconditionally applied to the environment.” Hard. People started counting. But there is not the slightest desire to justify it all. Many now think that such a horror has descended on the country, the Red Terror, and so on. Here is a little different. There was no fear back then. For example, a person like Ivanov-Razumnik is the author of the book Prisons and Exiles. He is a literary critic, a well-known character, quite tragic. He sat under the tsar, sat under Lenin, under Stalin, and also sat in a fascist concentration camp. He was a friend of Prishvin, and he wrote that already in the 30s he said, “I now remember that time, and it’s amazing that no one was afraid of anything. It is now in the 30s that we are afraid, we are waiting for the sound of tires at the entrance, and at that time it is even surprising that no one was afraid of anything. We staged performances, some extravagant things. Why were they not afraid? We'll see now, but I'll remember: which of the famous people suffered during the Red Terror in Moscow, Petrograd? Many will say that Gumilyov, for example. Gumilyov is already August 1921, and there is a slightly different story. He was also a member of a terrorist organization. He was, yes. Anyway, it's already August 1921. As soon as we forget a little that this was an outstanding poet, it suddenly turns out that this is a typical criminal who paid for his deeds. I would say that if this had happened to Gumilyov in 1918, he would simply not have been allowed to go home. If we talk about Gumilyov, he was very unlucky in a number of issues there. He admits that he was involved, he clearly says that he took the money, but he will not testify. Here it was unfortunate that they stepped on a very sore toe of Soviet power at that time. There was a Kronstadt rebellion, and the situation was very nervous, on the one hand. And what, in part, can be understood by the Bolsheviks, that the decision on the NEP has already been made, nothing can be changed. The civil war has passed, but what do you want? The economy to hell is completely destroyed, famine, crop failure. All decisions have already been made, in six months they will all work. In 1923, the country will be full, overwhelmed, there will be no more starving people. Well, well, you would dare the Bolsheviks, but who will come? Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks? And what will they do? Will they also feed you, give you drink, and so on? This can be understood. Tagantsev contacted Kronstadt, they stepped on a very sore spot. Perhaps the fact that at that time there were regular raids of the Bolshevik leadership on the Cheka played a role. After the Civil War, they wanted to reform it, ban it, and maybe they inflated this organization. All this may be, but in the case of Gumilyov, we can talk about very tough sanctions, but in principle, it’s not just that they took him and attracted him as a nobleman. Such a sad thing happened. But this is Gumilyov and August 1921. But none a famous person not injured. We will take the most ardent White Guards, there Gippius, Merezhkovsky. Which of them was afraid to sit? It was uncomfortable, they could harass you, kick you out for a subbotnik, you were hungry, and so on. But no one was afraid of any security officers. Why were they not afraid? Well, firstly, this horror, this banditry, this revelry, this lack of power got everyone there - this time. Second, who was at risk at the time? These are people of the privileged classes. How many were there? Well, 10% of the population. By that time, most of those who were afraid of something, they had already left for the south, somewhere, swept someone up. Here it is necessary to analyze the question, the Bolsheviks and the Cheka, were they persecuted for their origin or not? You can often hear that people were killed and repressed for being a nobleman, a banker, and so on. This is a perfectly legitimate question. Life was arranged very differently, in my opinion. Above everything was a principle. In St. Petersburg, in the museum in Smolny, I was enlightened that the only constitution in the world that includes the biblical commandment one to one is the first Soviet constitution, where in section 2, paragraph 18 it is written: “let not the worker not eat.” And, therefore, this principle worked: you must work. And if you are an intellectual, for example, then go to Comrade. Lunacharsky, and you don't have to be a communist, no one is forcing you. In the conditions of sabotage, they were glad to any decent person who came to them. Stepun came with a request, and Lunacharsky kicked his ass to the bone to help him. They will tell you that go work at a publishing house, go speak to the Red Army, get some rations. Lunacharsky will protect you if you have problems. They have excellent relations with Dzerzhinsky. If you are a military man, then go to Comrade. Trotsky, he will protect you. If you are a techie, then it’s very good, you comrade. Krasin will cover. This is how everything was arranged, and if someone flew somewhere, for example, into the Cheka, then these mechanisms immediately turned on. The society was small enough, no one shot at you right away. A person ended up in the Cheka for some reason, immediately relatives begin to run. Still would. Or to the old revolutionaries - Kropotkin, Vera Figner, it would immediately work for authority, to Krupskaya, to Gorky, whoever, everyone found people. And, as a rule, the case ended with the fact that a person was taken 2 recommendations, and released, as happened with the same Melgunov, for example. That's how it all ended. Well, Blok flew in somehow for a day by accident. There Lunacharsky, completely alarmed, ran to Dzerzhinsky, and they came to Blok with great apologies, but he still did not want to leave - he liked the company, they had such interesting conversations in the evening, at night. Or Yesenin flew into a hooligan for a week. It wasn't all that scary. The same Melgunov in September, at the height of the Red Terror, sitting in prison, writes in his memoirs: "I was not afraid of anything, I am not a bourgeois, no one." There is nothing to be afraid of, they talked with those and dispersed. It wasn't so gloomy. Then we will say that the most harsh life was not in these major cities , where very quickly everyone figured it out, someone with someone. After the announcement of the Red Terror, 800 people were shot in Moscow and Petrograd, who were imprisoned even after the Provisional Government, by tsarist officials. For the sake of warning, they were shot there, such as Shcheglovitov, or Khvostov. And that's it, then why shoot someone? Melgunov sits and writes "I was not afraid of anything." Dzerzhinsky calls him, and says: “I received 2 signatures, but do you know who put the second one? I." Dzerzhinsky signed for him that he would release him on bail. That's how it worked. The principle was this: who does not work, he does not eat. We still can not control anything, there is a war going on. You must be with someone. This also applied to the police. No one killed them for being policemen, nobles. You must be doing something. The work is unrelenting. Yes. Origin played, of course. It was aggravating. That is, if you did something, of course. If you were a worker, then Dzerzhinsky, and he constantly visited prisons, and he was angry when there were a lot of workers, peasants. This was called "working" the prisons. He said "let them out immediately!" As for the privileged classes, it was necessary to take a stricter look at them, but there was no such thing as to grab for their origin. Well, maybe in the province somewhere something. More were taken hostage. This can be announced after the fact, when you commit a crime and start yelling at the public, then naturally, you were arrested for origin. That's how people flew into the Cheka? Usually this way. This is very interesting, and we again discover this in Melgunov in his memoirs. When he got to the Lubyanka, he made a discovery for himself that, it turns out, it’s not the bourgeoisie who are sitting there, mostly. Well, 20 percent are sitting. Who is in the main? Well, yes, bagmen, speculators are sitting. Investigators are sitting for beating in the Cheka, for torture. Oops. The Red Army soldiers are sitting for pogroms. They are theirs! And there are no bourgeois. Why were they swept away? This is a raid tactic. Now, if the special services do not control the situation, this is a well-known trick from time immemorial. Here sits some kind of Khitrovka, and the tsar-father should come. That's it, let's go check the documents: who? what? Where? When? Hounded, checked, released, someone was hijacked Intercept plan Yes. As usual, as some kind of terrorist attack is carried out, here Melgunov got after Kannegiser killed Uritsky. He is a popular socialist. Torture is not applied to him. He sits, he lived for three months after the murder. Doesn't give evidence. They understand that this is probably a conspiracy. And they take all the popular socialists, and begin to filter them, the same Melgunov. Here they are sitting. And their relatives run around, looking for some ends. Ivanov-Razumnik was also swept up. There, some kind of terrorist attack was carried out by the Left Social Revolutionaries, for example, and he worked in the Left Socialist-Revolutionary publishing house. Here it was swept up, checked, sat. Yes, he was starving, getting cold, but no one tortured him, beat him, shot him, he was released after some time. It was extremely inconvenient. But not like they killed someone in batches. R. Gul in his book "Dzerzhinsky" has an anecdote that Felix Edmundovich once did not understand Vladimir Ilyich. At the meeting, he writes a note to Dzerzhinsky, saying, how many counters do we have there? F.E. writes: 1500. V.I. puts a cross. F.E. gets up and leaves. They are all shot. And then, allegedly Lenin's secretary says: "Felix Edmundovich, Lenin simply made it clear that he read your note, and you destroyed everyone there 1500 at night." This is R. Gul telling, but, of course, this is bullshit, so Gul's book was called a feuilleton even in exile. So it didn't work. They worked hard, sometimes, “troikas” worked, passed sentences, but it was always a very serious investigation, and people tried to understand whether you were an enemy or not an enemy. And why was the "troika" needed? These are the so-called extrajudicial killings. I would like to talk about this in a separate topic, because in Soviet times they did not write about it. In Soviet times, for some reason, about things that work well. For some reason, no one was interested in how the life of the White Guards was arranged. For some reason, it seemed that they would never rise up, would not rise again, they lost and lost, and what is there to say about them at all? And they did not write about how serious struggles were going on in the Bolshevik leadership itself around the Cheka, the troikas. There were cases when they wanted to close the Cheka at all, this was during the Civil War. You know, I remember again that you said for the first time that images form books, TV, songs, poems. I remember the Soviet cinema, film number 1 - his excellency's adjutant. There is some, I haven’t watched it for a long time, “Your Honor, you don’t need it with a boy,” when a proletarian is beaten there, but on the whole, white officers are generally decent people. They have their own truth, they are not shown with claws, and blood drips from the fangs, picking out the fur. There was nothing like it. In all films, “Two comrades served”, for example, you remember how Vysotsky shot a horse there, the last steamer to Constantinople. Feel sorry for them, empathize with them. In my opinion, The Adjutant was one of the first films where they began to show like this. I must have been young, but that's how I remember it. I read, there for the first time they showed the commander - Mai-Maevsky. By the way, about torture. Also a very important point. Even in The Elusive Avengers, Captain Ovechkin is a decent person, unlike Ataman Sidor Lyuty and his friend Burnash. These are the bastards, but these are decent ones, yes. Here, it seemed, there must have been torture. Read Melgunov, and so on. And imagine, there was no torture in the central bodies of the Cheka. It's just a medical fact. I'll explain why. The same Ivanov-Razumnik wrote about this. We will find many decisive orders from Lenin, but we will never find an order on torture. We will not find Dzerzhinsky, he is a political prisoner, they have torture in prisons - it was a terrible shame. The same Ivanov-Razumnik wrote that he heard a lot of things, but never heard that someone was tortured. The most I heard was that there were cork chambers where information about wealth was evaporated from the rich. Rumors again. Neither Dzerzhinsky nor Lenin will find orders for torture, even veiled ones. But there are many cases when for beatings, for torture they were simply kicked out of the organs. It all comes from Dzerzhinsky, and he must be given his due for this, that he simply could not stand it. In the vast expanse could be anything, of course. We are talking about central organs. This can be verified indirectly in some way. Let's take the well-known White Guard cases, how they were investigated. The largest White Guard organization was the National Center, which was headed by cadet N.N. Shchepkin is the grandson of the famous actor. In honor of which the Shchepkinskoe school. He was such a staunch anti-Soviet, it was the hottest time - August 1919, when Denikin dumped on Moscow, everything is very difficult there. And now they receive information that there is such an organization. It included members of the main headquarters of the Red Army, they sent information to Denikin, they collected information about the state here, they collected lists of who should be destroyed when Denikin entered Moscow. They were preparing all sorts of explosions when he approached, and all that kind of stuff. And Dzerzhinsky, the Cheka has information that there are such people. They take a messenger who, with a lot of money (Kolchak's officer turned out to be), goes as a messenger, they take him and arrest him. And the person admits “yes, I am such and such, but I don’t know who I’m going to.” They put him in jail, but no one tortures him. The arrests of this "National Center" begin about a month after the arrest of this officer. They conduct intra-chamber development with him, put some people on, try to find out. Later, when they took Shchepkin and others, it turned out that this officer knew them very well. Nobody tortured him. The Cheka, on the other hand, knew how to work, there was a whole operational combination, very complex. Or such a case is recalled, already near Petrograd, Peters at one time was sent for eviction. They learn that a man is coming from Petrograd to Yudenich, carrying some information. They put up a security officer under the guise of an officer, he comes from Petrograd, they meet, exchange some passwords, and this messenger takes off his heel, takes out some note, and then they take it. And why not take him and torture him, and there is no need to do anything like that, but here they are carrying out such operations at that time. At least that accusation of torture, we will never find any specifics anywhere. I’ll tell you more that the citizen Solzhenitsyn, who we are discussing with you, when he writes about torture, then, firstly, from the point of view of today, you don’t understand what torture is at all, let’s start from here, and secondly, all torture is done for so that you sign some kind of stupid document, within the framework of a certain complete legal chaos, when they grab anyone, shoot them without trial or investigation, but some kind of demon needs a signature. I, as a detective, can sign for anyone at all. If he is shot, then this, in general, does not play any role. What you invent there is not clear. This is a slightly different time ... I agree, but even there it’s somehow not very good. There ... torture is used for what, in order to extract some information that a terrorist attack is being prepared, and so on. They will be applied, and they are still being applied. Yes sir. The advanced world democracy does not restrain itself. If you want to live, you will apply, everything is correct, yes. Often they are used to find loot from a person. Certainly. But I would like the facts, but the facts, as I understand it, no one can bring. On the contrary, the facts say otherwise. The facts show that, as it were, torture and the method of influence differ very simply: the threat of execution. Here you are a member of an anti-Soviet organization. It's fair game - either you testify and you live. If you don't, it's your choice. Both in wartime and in peacetime. They took an anti-Soviet organization there, they did nothing, they just made lists of the military there, sent something else. Let's take our peaceful time. Our network was exposed in the USA - Anna Chapman. People didn't do anything. It was not the main one at all, but some kind of service, perhaps they infiltrated it to help some people settle down in America, maybe even them for these purposes. In peacetime, they did nothing at all. The Americans seized them, they put their own people there in a heavy way, and with these, the scouts told me that Vladimir Vladimirovich somehow interceded very strongly to get them out. This is in peacetime, people didn’t do anything there at all, they just came there to live. And you're just an employee of this, and that's it. And if it is at a time when the enemy is near Petrograd. People, excuse me, they make a list for you that they will kill you when they enter here. They are still making up. Courier - you are not a courier, driver - you are not a driver, but you enter - that's it, sorry, guy. You testify or you don't. It's not in its own way to say that torture, of course, it was tough. If we take torture, I myself investigated one fact. As for Dzerzhinsky. In my book, I came across this: Dzerzhinsky never called for anything like that, there to torture and other things, it was rejected from him. And before I tell this episode, I will give an even more famous and illustrative example. After all, when Dzerzhinsky left for Switzerland, in the autumn of 18, this is a separate topic, in his absence in the city of Nolinsk, a letter was published in the publication of the Cheka, where people called for torture. They say that we read in Izvestiya such information that citizen Lockhart, an English intelligence officer, was invited to the Cheka, they told him something, and he came out with some kind of upturned face. What's the deal anyway? Why did he come out of there? He needed to be interrogated properly. They wrote this. "VChK Weekly", the letter "Why are you almondy?", Signed by 4 authors, leaders of the party committee of Nolinsk. “Tell me, why didn’t you subject him, this same Lockhart, to the most subtle tortures in order to obtain information and addresses, of which such a goose should have a lot? Why did you instead let him "leave the Cheka in great embarrassment"? Extract everything you need from it and send it to the next world. Felix Edmundovich arrived, the decision of the Central Committee of October 25, 1818 was issued. It was decided, Nolinsky Bolsheviks, for their article praising torture to condemn, and to close the publication. Here is the decision that was made. Reasonable. Absolutely. As for torture, there really was one, I found in Dzerzhinsky, such a moment. It is already the 22nd year, there is a terrible famine in the country, and Dzerzhinsky is sent to Siberia for bread - he is also the People's Commissar of Railways. He goes, and from there he sends a letter to Moscow and says: "Send here comrades" stronger ", because we are talking about the extraction of bread." It is necessary to send those people who saw the famine, and it is not wrong for them to put the peasants in snow pits so that they give away bread. Something like that. Here, the local Chekists do not go for it, we must send comrades. firmer. Here is a letter from him. Not typical, it is cited everywhere. I, quite by chance, since my favorite book is "Revolution" - these are the reports of the Cheka, the NKVD, this is an extremely interesting book, thick. These are the reports that were put on the table of our leaders, it simply shows how decisions were made based on these reports. And suddenly, leafing through, I suddenly stumble upon a document. Approximately 10 days after this event. From the place where he is going, Omsk, in my opinion, a telegram from the Cheka is leaving for Moscow, here is this summary, where in the last expressions this practice of influencing the peasants, torture in fact, is criticized. This is a summary of the VChK. It was not the Chekists who did this, but the food detachments. And this means that she could not get past Dzerzhinsky, he was there, and the report goes to the Lenins and so on, he signed all this, these are his affairs. What happened? It happened that he was traveling on a train, really terrible pictures of hunger, children were dying, terrible things happened at the end of 21 and the beginning of 22, even this did not happen during the civil war. And he theoretically wrote this letter under the impression of this. Then he comes there, sees how it all happens, it all outrages him, and he sends this same dispatch to Moscow. If we describe this episode without a continuation, then this is one Dzerzhinsky, with a continuation - another. This is to the question of how dangerous it is to use just quotes. People take a quote from, say, Lenin. You can put them in such a way that your mother does not grieve what happens there. Take any of us, pull quotes from letters, he will find so many things, such a monster will grow. Anytime, yes. A person can give an order, and then Vladimir Ilyich will call him, say “well, it’s impossible, come on there ...”, - “well, to hell with him, do it.” He does not know that this order will be included in his complete works. Or it can be formulated differently, for example, Dzerzhinsky is sometimes quoted, where it is written: it is necessary to liquidate such and such. Sometimes you read, you think: to liquidate, this is complete absurdity. Here in one place he writes that it is necessary to liquidate all relatives of people who are imprisoned. And then you realize that “eliminate” is slang, it means “eliminate the threat posed by”. This is slang coming from the royal secret police, I met there. We need to eliminate the threat from. If you do not know this, then such a letter will turn out, there they will be liquidated to hell. This is quoting, making some generalizations. Before you understand why some person wrote like that, you look at what report he received, what they wrote there, maybe 10 came there, 20 were killed there, 100 there, 100 there. In the end, what is it. That's what concerns torture and Dzerzhinsky. It decorates them, it is an objective thing. Now about the numbers. Different figures are called, we do not aim to justify anyone, we need the truth. They also call 2 million, someone less. There are moments in history when the official figures - it is quite possible to operate with them. But in this case, no one was shy - you destroy the enemies of the Revolution, this is valor. Quite rightly so. They are proud of this. Yes sir. For example, there is a famous episode when Ivan the Terrible sent Malyuta Skuratov to Novgorod. And now historians write that Malyuta Skuratov dunked 40 thousand there, and so on. Yo-my, there were only 25 thousand inhabitants, how many did he soak them? They take the document of Malyuta Skuratov, where he writes to the tsar-father that, behold, I am there by beheading 1,500 thousand, 10 such and such, it turns out two thousand. Well, 10% of the population is a bit much. And why should Malyuta Skuratov downplay the number of those executed, if his tsar-father sent him there for this. Do business. Certainly. How many heads he cut off, so much he wrote. I would also note that the heads were flogged to the outright enemies of Ivan the Terrible, apparently, and these were completely specific people from some noble families and so on. And if you cut off the head of some Baryatinsky, then do not mention that it was Baryatinsky ... Malyuta did a good job, and he reported. Accordingly, if you are at war, the pilot shot down so many planes, you will not underestimate, you can exaggerate something, right? And it's the same here. After all, the meaning of terror is to instill fear in enemies. And if you killed, then why is it necessary to notify in the press? For everyone to know, fear, tremble. So they kept these statistics. On the one hand, the Cheka kept these statistics, and on the other hand, there were inspection organizations above the Cheka, and competing ones that constantly competed: this, first of all, the People's Commissariat of Justice and the system of revolutionary tribunals. Why did they have constant conflicts with the Cheka? The system of revolutionary tribunals was headed by N.V. Krylenko, and he was at odds with Dzerzhinsky all the time. He insisted that the Cheka should not issue extrajudicial verdicts, that their business was only suppression. And give everything else to the revolutionary tribunal. So this is an operational service, right? Yes. He kept arguing that there was no such order or document in general that would allow the Cheka to make extrajudicial decisions. And they kept saying “how many of these decisions you make, it’s also impossible.” And they also name numbers. This is what we are talking about: according to the data of the People's Commissariat of Justice, which coincide with the data of the Cheka, in 1918 the bodies of the Cheka in 1918 sentenced 31,389 people (of any severity). Of these, 6185 were shot. Decently. For the year 6185. There, of course, the bandits enter, and that's it. I would say that the bandits are in the majority. Almost 15,000 more were imprisoned, 6,400 were sent to concentration camps, they were a little different then. What were the concentration camps called? That's what they were called, yes. 4068 are taken hostage. They didn’t sit in prisons for a long time, they could solder you for 15 years, but they were not used as labor force then. At the very first holiday you were set free. We are interested here in the figure of 6185 executed per year. Is it all over the country? Yes. As a base it can be used. But these are the organs of the Cheka. There were also revolutionary tribunals, ordinary ones. A significant part is behind the nearest barn, or there at the front, and so on. We are now talking about the organs of the Cheka. These are not millions, these are 6185. Statistics were kept for half a year in 1919, there is approximately the same level, then it breaks off, then resumes. Maybe their number increased there, but in 1920 a moratorium on the death penalty was generally declared, and it really worked for 4 months, no one was killed. Then statistics appear again in the early 20s, again the Revolutionary Tribunal says “you pass sentences unacceptably many”, and “an unacceptably many” is 4 people a day on average. This is for the country - 4 thousand with something. Here is the level. That is, if we calculate the Civil War, then the organs of the Cheka shot approximately 20 thousand. Scientists give the exact figure: 17,500 thousand. I will probably say a cannibalistic thing: there is nothing to talk about on the scale of the world revolution. On the scale of the World War, where 150,000 people are killed a month, this is ... for peacetime, this is something, but for war, and these are real numbers, we do not invent anything. I'll tell you something like this. You know, I have such an idea, as a person who is not entirely involved, that they are all "overworked", so to speak. And Felix Edmundovich, and Iosif Vissarionovich, they all sat. And because of this, in the tsarist regime they hated precisely this, and when they crushed it, they did not want anything like that in their newly built one, so they approached it that way. I studied a lot the psychology of Felix Edmundovich, so I really wanted to understand, not to know, but simply. To understand a person is when you know how he behaves in a given situation. When I wrote a book about him, I had his portrait on the table. At night I woke up, looked, imagined myself in this trio. And it seems to me that I even got used to this psychology for a while. This man was a conscientious Samoyed. Naturally, he did not prepare himself for this position, he was a gentle person, you saw that even in March, 4 months after heading the Cheka, he actually perceived himself as a political prisoner rather than a guard. Actually, that's why he was appointed, that he was an authoritative person among political prisoners. He spent 11 years in prison, he was in authority there. However. Yes, he spent 11 and a little. 3 escapes and more. He had a heightened sense of responsibility. Since a person heads the secret service of a country - a country at war, then all the punctures in the field of security, somewhere an attempt was made there, on Lenin, someone was killed. There were several assassination attempts on Lenin. In September 19, there was an explosion in Leontievsky Lane, when the leader of the Moscow party was killed. And Lenin was supposed to be there. All these punctures are his flaw. This is where it doesn't work well. You have been appointed to this position - you must. Therefore, in the beginning, of course, they all made some kind of liberal decisions, pity and all that. Starting from a certain moment, people were brought up with such an attitude: you let him out, and he will kill you. And that's your fault. Therefore, they are brought up ruthlessness. Not only with them, with any person in the war, this is brought up. Any man in the war learns to kill. That's right. I would not want to take this position, but here it is. In his favor, he says that he did not settle personal accounts with anyone, did not take revenge on anyone, not to mention to rob someone and so on. There was an aura of cleanliness around him, shall we say. Speaking objectively, he had the main vice, one might say, in thinking: it consisted in the fact that he was brought up by the Civil War and the war in general. He was a supporter of simplified justice. In the conditions of war it is impossible to do otherwise. But in the conditions of peace, some other people should be doing this. Therefore, during the war, for example, I would prefer to get into power with Dzerzhinsky. You could catch your tongue with him, like Melgunov, start an argument, and for 3 hours he will run around the office, argue about something, then say: “leave.” It determines whether you are an enemy or not. If he says that you are an enemy, well, brother, I'm sorry, either evidence or that's it. If you are not an enemy, then you are not an enemy. In a war, I would prefer to be in the power of Dzerzhinsky than in the power of Comrade. Krylenko at the revolutionary tribunal, where I will have a defender, where I will say something, and so on. But 100% will kill me. Speak, don't speak. In conditions of adversarial justice, in conditions of war. But, of course, in peacetime there are people with such brains, they need to be moved to another job. Already in peacetime, he continued to say that the prosecutor is not a man of paragraphs and laws, a revolutionary and so on. He had this flaw of thinking, of course. In my opinion, this is his main system error. And not that he was a cruel man and so on. In his place, almost anyone would be worse. Even the whites recognized this. But this is in a war. I read a huge number of his orders, that's it. I can even say the toughest order. It is January 1920, before the moratorium on death penalty . Before that, they finished shooting the enemies that still remained. Like January 15, the troika made a decision. As part of Dzerzhinsky, Peters, Avanesov. They made a decision on 79 people. 58 executions. Because it's a trio, you don't know anything about them. I think that we need to look for what kind of people. This is not one and a half thousand, as Gul writes, this is 79. You understand that these are probably not ordinary people, even before the moratorium. And you start looking. I found 10 people. The list opens with the surname Ulyanin. Who it? In the white officers' synod, he enters. This means that this man is a white officer who worked at the headquarters for the whites, he was shot. It's not just that they were shot there. You understand that this is a serious matter. Still, it's tough stuff. This is the most that I have read. When you start digging and you know what the situation was like, I didn’t find any such decrees that would make me feel disgusted. My antipathy was caused by absolutely not rigid decrees of peacetime, stupid, to put it mildly. Felix Edmundovich, you are doing well in the economy, you are an excellent people's commissar of transport, you are even better as the head of industry, chairman of the Supreme Economic Council. Everything, you need to go there, and let people of another time do this, it seems to me. Now according to the Cheka, how they lived. We talked about how we lived, and why we were not afraid, and the following should be added. Why can't this terror be said to have plunged the whole country into horror. Firstly, there is another nuance, an analogy with today's time. Imagine that in a neighboring country, the president issued a decree to take hostages, for example. Would this decree greatly increase the number of hostages taken? If people take hostages, you want to take a ransom from someone, change comrades from someone. I think that's the reason why people take, without any orders. And if the order went, then they begin to report. It's not a fact that after the same decree "on the red terror", this curve of terror increased greatly. And so the war goes on, either you or you. And people report on the work done. And second, very important. The world war is on, and there are other numbers. There was such an episode that when the decree "on the Red Terror" was issued, a note of protest from neutral countries came to the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR. They protested this decree, signed by the head of the diplomatic corps of Switzerland. They write that it is impossible to act like this. And here Chicherin answers. He says that “the war has been going on for the fifth year. In this war, not only millions were killed at the front, but cities were bombarded, women and children died. For some reason, the so-called neutral powers do not protest against such terror. Don't foreign governments here in Russia support counter-revolutionary gangs?" And the meaning of it is, “You guys are killing us here, intervention and all that. Why are you climbing? We kill to save the Revolution, and so on. You kill a lot more for the loot. They unleashed a war for the sake of bankers, landowners, and so on. You're still messing around with your recommendations. You kill way more. Therefore, at that time, this red terror is not our current view of it. This is the episode of the huge world terror that was then. Otherwise, he would not have been untied if he had not been the way of life of people. Death flies, whistles, and so on. Now I will say a few words about the problems that the Cheka had in the Bolshevik leadership. Some Soviet myths should be dispelled. We believed that the Cheka (born of the Revolution) - it was originally created as a special service, there are people in leather jackets, recruited, recruited, and so on. It was created as one of the special services, what will happen? And the main task was to fight against sabotage, because sabotage… Well, people can be understood, some people came to power, maybe they will leave in a week, and that one is a banker. A sailor comes and says, “Here is a note from Comrade. Lenin, give us money, ”and tomorrow he will leave, and I’m used to calculating every number there. I'd rather go on vacation. And people can also be understood, they have to be paid in the Council of People's Commissars. Here they fought with this, and not with something. And they did not fight counter-revolution at all, even the sanctions are ridiculous: the deprivation of food cards is simply ridiculous. Gradually, the organization grew, and for the first time it ... I want to say right away that after the decree “The Socialist Fatherland is in Danger” was issued (the word “fatherland” was first heard then, in February 1918, it was not in the lexicon before it, this is about our previous conversation). And when the Germans began to advance (before the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk), this decree was issued, and here the Cheka began to act, including using executions against bandits. But it was illegal. The death penalty was abolished by the 2nd Congress of Soviets. And only when there was a decree "on the Red Terror" in September, the executor - the Cheka, was named for the first time, they were delegated the right to deal with it, it already rose at that moment. By the way, about the Red Terror, I will give a figure of how many decisions Dzerzhinsky himself made in September on people. In September, he personally considered about 105 cases, death sentences - 17. Not rich. 40 were acquitted, the rest are under investigation, something was sent there. That was the statistics at the height of the Red Terror. And immediately there is a confrontation between the system of revolutionary tribunals and the Cheka. We know who owns the court, who owns the investigation - he owns everything. As now, there is a constant struggle for the investigating authorities, and then the same thing. Here is N.V. Krylenko, who headed the system of revolutionary tribunals, constantly criticizes Dzerzhinsky for using extrajudicial sentences in the Cheka. Krylenko is a friend of Lenin, they went hunting together. I read in Krylenko's biography that they went hunting almost 20 times. Even somehow to his homeland - to Smolensk. They swam across the river at speed, both chess players. But Lenin, for some reason, does not rebuke him, although he says that a good communist is a good Chekist. But, nevertheless, Krylenko scolds him, criticizes him everywhere, and that's it. At the end of November, he generally holds a congress of leaders of revolutionary tribunals from all over the country, where they also say that court decisions should be transferred from the Cheka to the revolutionary tribunals, and these materials are published in Pravda, the main newspaper of the country. This happens after the military threat has been eliminated. It was in the autumn of 1918, when the Red Army began to win victories, when it seemed that maybe the war would end. At this moment, the showdown with the Cheka begins. There were different decisions, Stalin even supported the proposal to reform the Cheka. It was about subordinating everything to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. But then Kolchak begins, and again everyone forgets this conversation, Felix Edmundovich, help, save, forward, forward, forward. There is a very interesting thing going on. Unlike white counterintelligence, the Cheka fights for the purity of its ranks, they persecute their own a lot. Therefore, when the same Melgunov gives an example that there was such a sadist, some kind of sadist, and he was such a sadist that even the Reds shot him. Not even! They just shot him. And that sadist - he is a Bolshevik, not a Bolshevik, the devil knows who he is at all. There was such a case, it seems, in February 1919, the case of Kosarev, when it turned out, the Revolutionary Tribunal found out that such Kosarev heads a key unit in the Cheka (just to check the cleanliness of hands). The person who came up with a biography for himself is a political prisoner. In fact, he is not a political prisoner, he is a bandit who was imprisoned for the massacres of people, who is now extorting money - this is an employee of the Cheka. And they told him "come here." They are holding a trial in February, and both Peters and Dzerzhinsky come to this court, how nice they are, and testify. They somehow protect the honor of the uniform. They were indignant that they were smearing the name of the Cheka. In general, this person is condemned, and after 48 hours this Kosarev is shot. Take even this episode. Here, last time we gave an example, when Mamontov's Cossacks returned from a campaign, and pulled a convoy with 60 km of loot. Wrangel writes, criticizing Denikin for his inability to deal with abuse, he said that all the roads are clogged with wagons with clothes, the devil knows what, you can’t even transport equipment to the front. He has some thieves there, some kind of pilfering, it was such a mess. By the way, when these peasants, who had been taken away for 60 km, came to the Cossacks, the ending is obvious to me: I probably need to suffer in this regard in a different way. There, the conflict between the Cossacks and the peasantry has been from time immemorial. These theories of decossackization did not appear under the Bolsheviks, this is still the first Congress of Soviets, as far as I know. The Social Revolutionaries are a peasant pariah. Since there is a conflict between Cossacks and peasants on the Don, who will they support? Peasants. Wrangel was worried that all the paths were clogged, there was a huge amount of abuse, while Shulgin said that "we became criminals and bandits, and there was simply no fight against this." Denikin writes in his memoirs "Campaign to Moscow": "Every day sentences against the peasants fell on my table, but not a single official." "I tried to soften the sentences to the peasants somehow." There was practically no fight against abuses. Wrangel said that he has ¾ of the guards in prisons - these are bandits. Denikin said the same thing. They were generally a mess. This is the white terror that we don't talk about much because it doesn't deserve it. White terror is revenge and class hatred, multiplied by a complete mess. Where is the conglomerate of forces, which includes a volunteer army, Cossacks, interventionists, everyone has their own counterintelligence, what they do, no one knows, this is what Denikin writes that he had 5-6 counterintelligence, what is happening there is not clear. People work there mainly for selfish reasons. And if in the Cheka, after all, on the recommendations of the party. Dzerzhinsky writes a letter to the military: "Send comrades of the Red Army, inaccessible to the ringing of gold." And they just took everyone from the street to the whites. Therefore, there is no need to talk about any kind of legality at all. For the Reds, for example, the Budennovskaya army, this is October 1920, an elite military unit. They were so dragonized there for abuses, 100 people were only shot, and 150 people were sentenced, several hundred more were sent down. This was still Wrangel sitting in the Crimea, if I'm not mistaken. They dealt with it very harshly. So they were in order. There were many violations, but it could not be so that clothes with loot interfered with the movement of troops. What is important to understand? That important atrocities in terror did not take place in these stable cities (Moscow, Petrograd), everything was settled there. The most terrible thing happened in the border towns, where power changed hands. Here in Ukraine there were cities where 10-15 times. And each call of these troops is a settling of scores, it is blood and blood. This is well shown in the memoirs of emigrants, for example, in the archives of the Russian Revolution. Where it is simply shown that that's all, there is nowhere further violence. For example, Yekaterinoslavl, the future Dnepropetrovsk. First, conflicts with the Germans begin, murders, then the Reds come, then the Whites, and all the time the number of repressions increases. Whites are first expected as saviors, but they come and literally the next day terrible wholesale robberies begin. And you think that there is nowhere else to go, but there is where. The Makhnovists come and install cannons near the house and say, “Either you give us everything, or we will demolish everything.” That's where the terrible terror was. Trains were robbed, of course. And when a person from this mess got, say, to Moscow, he could only rejoice at his fate. Cross with both hands. This is a good chance to survive. That's where it happened, and, of course, everything depended very much on local authorities, including the Reds, because the Cheka was subordinate to local authorities. Until the end of 18, they were at the level of departments of executive committees. They were replenished by local authorities, everything is nearby here. There was such a case in the 19th century, the Cheka in Ukraine distributed this Latsis. Lenin described his activities as follows: the Cheka in Ukraine brought the darkness of evil. Latsis was offended and turned to Dzerzhinsky for help. And Dzerzhinsky says: “Comrade Latsis, you worked there in Ukraine, but we didn’t know what you were doing there in Ukraine, what do you want from us? This society was not informational. Therefore, it was such a network structure, where the level of repression depended strongly on the situation there. If it’s a front-line one, then don’t worry about mom, it’s just a massacre going on there. But there were other cases as well. Prishvin has an episode in his diaries. Prishvin suddenly meets a former policeman in the Soviet authorities in the 1920s. It seems that it was near Pereslavl somewhere. He says "how did you survive?" He says the phrase "we didn't have anything here." They did not notice the Revolution, peace, quiet, grace. And somewhere it was, in most cases it was. Everything depended on local conditions, and when the Cheka became a truly centralized organization, just like the country, after the victory in the Civil War. Therefore, all these repressions need to be looked at very specifically: what, when, where, and so on. I would like to return to what we started our last conversation with, after all, a conversation about the Revolution cannot be reduced to a conversation about terror. It would be strange in that world situation if there were no terror. Terror existed before any revolution, the terror of the world war. All these things grew out of the world war. The hostages are World War, indemnities on the cities - this is a world war. When Brusilov advanced, for example. When the Austrians advanced, they overlaid the Russian cities with indemnity. And when they retreated before Brusilov, they gave the money away, because then he would tax them. It all came from there, these things. Therefore, terror, this is how life was arranged all over the world. And the meaning of those events - the Revolution, the Civil War - is the creation of a country out of nowhere, a sovereign country, a huge country, industrialization and all that. In a different guise, the creation of the country. I would sum it up in some way. From my point of view (and not only from mine), what happened in 1917 is, in general, the Great Russian Revolution. She is great, and she is Russian. This is us, and in general the ancestors are the creators of this. Inside this very revolution, well, of course, it, like any similar action, we are all people, we are all people, the French had it, the British had it. It is clear that inside this, first, a coup d'etat, and after that - the Civil War, during which absolutely the same thing happens for everyone, but one side of this civil war wants one thing, and the other wants another. Well, as it says in the Bible: "by their fruits you will know." Here you have such fruits, and you have such fruits. You must have been doing the same thing, shooting each other in the head. The tasks were just different. To different people the heads were shot through, and they wanted completely different things, as a result of which some went to serve the Nazis, while others for some reason built their native country anew. Somehow 100 years have passed, and it is clear that there is nothing good in killing people, and cannot be. But maybe, after 100 years, it's time to somehow objectively look at it. Let's give some numbers, for example, let's show how it happened, let's see who acted how, let's talk about carts 60 km long. And we have not yet heard who they were taken from, whether they gave it away like that, or they had to be killed at the same time. What happened to the wives, what happened to the children of those who had it all taken away from them. Maybe they starved to death if they weren't all killed at once. It always pulls a completely wild trail of crimes. The whole conversation is reduced all the time, I completely agree with you, since the revolution is terror. Well, terror, for what, firstly, on what scale, secondly, what results have been achieved, thirdly. Well, the opposite side, tell us, what did they do, for what, what results did they achieve? What results could be achieved, let's at least dream up. Well, a sad picture emerges, to put it mildly. Regardless of whether we love the Bolsheviks or hate them. And in general, who are “ours” in this situation. Not who is worse or better, but who are “ours” and “not ours”. On what examples should people be educated, on what, right? It is possible, for example, and whites, in the ranks of the whites there are many worthy people. What was wrong with General Keller, for example, who remained true to his oath, the first checker of the Russian Empire. For God's sake, let's talk about it, let people know what is fidelity. Even the same Denikin also had good qualities. For example, he did not steal anything. He moved a lot of money, but he brought the children of Kornilov abroad, lived by his own labor, nothing stuck. By the way, Kolchak, by the way (according to Ustryalov), said this shortly before his capture: "I will not give money to the allies under any circumstances, I'd rather give it to the Bolsheviks." I mean, he had those things too. Why these facts? It’s not for Wrangel to say that we need to learn from him. What? Hang people on poles, as they did in Simferopol under Wrangel? The Bolsheviks had never done such a thing in their lives, when in Simferopol one day the children went to school, and there the dead were hanging on poles with their tongues hanging out, and the public went to Kutepov, or someone, and said, “what is this being done at all?” Is this something to learn from Wrangel? Apparently, yes, since monuments are being erected to him, and representatives of the Ministry of Culture are reading panegyrics. Apparently, for us, for part of our leadership, this is an ideal that we must live up to. We do not need such heroes, I think so. Thank you, Sergey, very interesting, extremely informative. And that's all for today. See you again.