Beria on Channel One. Why did he come back in time

Channel One began to show the cycle documentaries"Country of the Soviets. Forgotten Leaders (produced by Media Star with the participation of the Russian Military Historical Society and the Ministry of Culture). There will be seven heroes in total: Dzerzhinsky, Voroshilov, Budyonny, Molotov, Abakumov, Zhdanov and Beria.

The general message is this. Over the past 30-50 years, we have become widely aware of a set of carefully twisted facts and, to varying degrees, clumsily concocted myths about these (and many, many other) characters from our history. Accordingly, “every intelligent person is well aware” what kind of criminals, executioners, maniacs, stranglers, mediocrity, clumsiness and obliging servants of the main tyrant they were.

All this that is “well known” is the mythological legacy of political technologies and agitprop legends that have long sunk into nowhere, which once served various court intrigues of various sizes - from an ordinary quarrel for power in the 50s to a large-scale national betrayal in the 80-90s .

And since this is “common knowledge”, then the authors do not go in cycles in legends - except that they refute in passing some of them absolutely amazing. And they tell what kind of people they are and what they did in high government positions besides, or even instead of “well-known”.

It is logical that Channel One began with Lavrenty Beria (although, according to the authors' intention, the film about this hero closes the cycle). From this change in the places of the terms, the content has not changed at all, but the interested viewer immediately understands what it is about and what it is. Beria in this case is an ideal indicator of intentions, business card of the entire project and a guaranteed magnet for the audience.

Why? Yes, because of all the “forgotten leaders” it is Beria who is not only the most “forgotten”, but the character of an absolutely prohibitively idiotic caricature mythology, sewn with white thread so much that you can’t see anything behind them: no man, no history, no common sense .

In fact, as Channel One showed on Sunday, work biography Beria - so this is historical logic. What tasks were facing the country - these were solved. I decided in such a way as to get the desired result at the right time at any cost. And "any price" - yes, one that was appointed by history at a particular time, where there was no place for tolerance and pacifism. That is why the “alternative myth” is also amazing, where instead of the “maniac and murderer” invented by Khrushchev and perestroika propagandists, there is a no less invented kind uncle, thoroughly struck by the ideals of abstract humanism and democracy.

What is important: behind each episode of Beria's biography there are deep layers of the country's history. The civil war and its metastases, the problems of the union state and small-town nationalism, industrialization and a sharp modernization of agriculture, the constant reform of the economic model and methods of national super-projects, the Yalta peace and the fate of Germany ... to understand the scale and logic, and even better - to become interested in this once again.

Although, for my taste, it would be better if there was a place in two series for a more detailed educational program on the logic of history than for uninformative “Sovietology” about intrigues in the Stalinist environment. However, you can find fault with anything - and in the case of this film, it will be precisely taste and intonation nit-picking to individual elements of a high-quality and indifferently done work.

As a result: there is a superintendent of the state, after which we were left with a nuclear shield and space, Moscow skyscrapers and that Georgia, which by inertia is still considered "blooming" by inertia, a mobilized scientific design school and intelligence support to it. And, for that matter - the stopped flywheel of mass repressions and the rigid (in every sense) legality that has established itself in its place.

Not a villain, not an angel. A man of his cruel era, which, including his works, has become great and triumphant for us.

But this is the past. It… passed. Happy, of course, for L.P. Beria - that the whole First Channel thumped into a swamp of biased lies, a weighty stone of historical justice. And what do we get from this today?

And today, this is what we get from it.

First, fairness is always good. Even if it is fraught with massive stress on the verge of trampling the bonds and traditional values: because it shatters a convenient template that has been hammered into the minds of most citizens and even into folklore (“Beria, Beria - did not live up to trust”). But, in the end, if the usual fairy tale is a lie, then it is the way to go. We don't need this story.

Secondly, justice is also useful. In itself, the "black myth" about Beria is fundamental in the ideology of national inferiority. Well, this is where it is about “stupid people”, “slavery”, “bloody tyranny”, “historically worthless state”. It is the myth about Beria that is always ready “an indestructible argument that betraying“ this country ”is not shameful and even honorable. For this, the myth about Beria is even more vivid and monolithic than the myth about his supreme boss: it is still recognized as acceptable to say at least something good in public about Stalin. Thus, the marginalization of the "black myth" about Beria is at the same time the marginalization of the ideology of national betrayal.

Thirdly and chiefly. Looking ahead, I announce another facet of the ideology of the Forgotten Leaders project. The story about each of the heroes is invisibly but persistently divided into two dialectically interconnected parts: a Bolshevik, a revolutionary, a destroyer of the state before 1917, and a striker of state building after 1917. And this, I repeat, is the same person in each case.

Isn't there a contradiction in that, isn't there a romanticization of the troublemakers of 100 years ago - and, accordingly, indulgence in their example to the troublemakers of today?

No. No contradiction, no indulgence.

But there is an ideology of unity, logic and continuity of the history of Russia, and the ideology of the core of this continuity - sovereign statehood.

Look: Beria, Dzerzhinsky, Zhdanov, Molotov and others like them up to Lenin and Stalin did nothing in the field of the country's development (well, almost nothing) that was not objectively obvious before them and that someone interfered with the ruling classes Russian Empire do before 1917. Industrialization, radical and efficient agrarian reform, breathtaking social modernization, scientific and technological breakthrough - nothing special. But they didn’t do it before the Bolsheviks - and who is to blame? In the end, it is not the ruling classes that are valuable to history, but Russia, its statehood and its sovereignty. If yesterday's "subversive elements" coped with this to a feast for the eyes, then well done. Winners are not judged, especially if they have benefited the country.

In this logic, does the state today have reason to tremble before the modern managers of unrest? No. Not because there are few of them and they are unprincipled - which in itself nullifies the constructive potential of the “non-systemic opposition”. The main thing is different: the most resolute revolutionary-modernization force in today's Russia is the state itself. And it is arranged, unlike itself 100 years ago, so that potential Beria and Dzerzhinsky, in general, do not need to hang around hard labor - you can make a career and bring benefit to the Motherland. Yes, all this is adjusted for the imperfection of the current state. But it does not brush aside obvious tasks - which means, as the lessons of history teach us, from the first or from the 101st time something worthwhile will work out.

Speaking of history lessons. “Forgotten Leaders” in the title of the series on Channel One - they are not exactly “forgotten”. Rather, lost by us in due time - as it seemed, as unnecessary. But when the time came to improve in state building, when the time came to insist on their sovereignty, the “forgotten” were found again. Very timely: it is not shameful to learn from them.

01. Lavrenty Beria

The first hero of the documentary-historical cycle is Lavrenty Beria. For recent decades in the official historiography, Beria is presented as one of the darkest figures in the entire history of Russia. In the minds of generations, a vengeful tyrant is drawn, drowning in the blood of his enemies. He is known only as the head of the NKVD and the organizer of repressions, although the scope of repressions under him has significantly decreased. As a business executive, economist and even a builder, Beria is practically unknown, although these were the main areas of his activity.
During the years of the Great Patriotic War Beria oversaw the work of Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence, was responsible for the production of weapons and military equipment, took over the defense of the Caucasus and was able to stop the Germans on the outskirts of the strategic oil reserves. In 1944, during the war, Lavrenty Beria was appointed curator of the Soviet "atomic project". In the work on the project, he showed unique organizational skills, thanks to which the USSR got the atomic bomb much earlier than the opponents expected in the Cold War that had begun by that time.
On December 23, 1953, Lavrenty Beria was sentenced to death and shot in the bunker of the MVO headquarters, but the circumstances of his arrest and death are still the subject of debate.

Part 1

Part 2

02. Felix Dzerzhinsky

Since 1917, Dzerzhinsky was not only the founder and head of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission. After the Civil War, he was involved in the restoration National economy. Dzerzhinsky was responsible for the operation of transport, the organization of the NEP and much more, without which Soviet Russia, probably would have crumbled under the weight of the post-war devastation.

03. Vyacheslav Molotov

One of the leaders revolutionary movement in Russia, a supporter of accelerated industrialization. In 1939, Molotov took the post of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR. Thanks to his efforts, a peace treaty with Germany was concluded, later called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This treaty delayed the German attack on the USSR and made it possible to push the borders of the Soviet Union hundreds of kilometers to the west, which in 1941 made it difficult for the German troops to advance and led to the collapse of the German "blitzkrieg".

04. Semyon Budyonny

Commander of the 1st Cavalry Army, whose strikes were decisive for the victory of the Reds in 1919 against the White movement in the South of Russia. It was his support that was important to Stalin in order to gain a foothold in power in the early 1920s. Budyonny advocated the preservation of the cavalry as a branch of service, and the cavalry made a significant contribution to the victory in the Great Patriotic War. Budyonny was very fond of horses, he carried this hobby through his whole life and was an excellent rider until old age.

05. Andrey Zhdanov

His work was variously evaluated even during his lifetime. He created the industry of the Soviet Union, while closing monasteries and blowing up churches. By his efforts, the besieged Leningrad survived, and Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Zoshchenko were stigmatized by his decrees. Throughout the war, state leadership in the North-West of Russia and in Leningrad was carried out by Andrei Alexandrovich. The severe blockade depleted Zhdanov's health and, in fact, predetermined his early death.

06. Kliment Voroshilov

One of the heroes of the Civil War, an ally of Stalin during the years of building the new armed forces of the USSR in the 1920-1930s. People's Commissar of Defense until 1940. Folk hero, marshal, legend of the Red Army. His name, along with Budyonny, was actively used for propaganda purposes.

07. Viktor Abakumov

The creator of the legendary SMERSH, the hero of the Great Patriotic War, who managed to defeat the powerful intelligence of those years, was the German Abwehr. In 1951 he was arrested. Three years later, he was charged with treason and sentenced to capital punishment. In 1994, the charges against Abakumov were dropped, but his personal file remains classified to this day.

Nikita Khrushchev at the UN (was there a shoe?)

As you know, history develops in a spiral. This fully applies to the history of the United Nations. For more than half a century of its existence, the UN has undergone many changes. Created in the wake of the euphoria of the victory over Nazi Germany, the Organization set itself bold and in many respects utopian tasks.

But time puts a lot in its place. And the hopes for creating a world without wars, poverty, hunger, lack of rights and inequality were replaced by a persistent confrontation between the two systems.

Natalia Terekhova tells about one of the most striking episodes of that time, the famous “Khrushchev’s shoe”.

REPORTAGE:

On October 12, 1960, the most stormy meeting of the General Assembly in the history of the United Nations was held. On this day, the delegation of the Soviet Union, headed by Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, submitted for consideration a draft resolution on granting independence to colonial countries and peoples.

Nikita Sergeevich delivered, as usual, an emotional speech that abounded in exclamation points. In his speech, Khrushchev, not sparing expressions, denounced and stigmatized colonialism and the colonialists.

After Khrushchev, the representative of the Philippines rose to the rostrum of the General Assembly. He spoke from the position of a country that experienced all the hardships of colonialism and, after many years of liberation struggle, achieved independence: “In our opinion, the declaration proposed by the Soviet Union should have covered and provided for the inalienable right to independence not only of the peoples and territories that still remain ruled by Western colonial powers, but also by peoples of Eastern Europe and other areas deprived of the opportunity to freely exercise their civil and political rights and, so to speak, swallowed up by the Soviet Union.

Listening to the simultaneous translation, Khrushchev exploded. After consulting with Gromyko, he decided to ask the Chairman for the floor on a point of order. Nikita Sergeevich raised his hand, but no one paid any attention to him.

The famous foreign ministry translator Viktor Sukhodrev, who often accompanied Nikita Sergeevich on trips, told about what happened next in his memoirs: “Khrushchev liked to take his watch off his hand and turn it around. At the UN, he began banging his fists on the table in protest at the Filipino's speech. In his hand was a watch, which simply stopped.

And then Khrushchev angrily took off his shoe, or rather, an open wicker sandal, and began to knock on the table with his heel.

This was the moment that entered world history like the famous "Khrushchev's boot". Nothing like the hall of the UN General Assembly has not yet seen. The sensation was born right before our eyes.

And finally, the head of the Soviet delegation was given the floor:
“I protest against the unequal treatment of the representatives of the states sitting here. Why is this lackey of American imperialism coming forward? It affects the issue, it does not affect the procedural issue! And the Chairman, who sympathizes with this colonial rule, he does not stop it! Is it fair? Lord! Mr Chairman! We live on earth not by the grace of God and not by your grace, but by the strength and intelligence of our great people of the Soviet Union and all peoples who are fighting for their independence.

It must be said that in the middle of Khrushchev's speech, the simultaneous translation was interrupted, as the interpreters frantically searched for an analogue of the Russian word "kholuy". Finally, after a long pause, it was found English word"jerk", which has a wide range of meanings - from "fool" to "scum". Western reporters who covered events at the UN in those years had to work hard until they found Dictionary Russian language and did not understand the meaning of Khrushchev's metaphor.

Channel One aired a docudrama series about Soviet leaders, the authors of which made an attempt to clear their names from the fictions that appeared under Khrushchev and during the years of perestroika.

The first series is dedicated to Lavrenty Beria, who appears not in the image of an insane executioner familiar to post-Soviet discourse, but as a “supervisor of the state” who carried out the most important tasks of the Soviet state, from the defeat of the Islamists in the Transcaucasus at the beginning of his career to the creation of the USSR nuclear shield at its zenith .

At the beginning of the film, Beria appears as a gifted, hard-working, disciplined young man who joins the Bolsheviks on the eve of the revolution, impressed by the oppressive social inequality in the Russian Empire. After that, thanks to his talents, Beria makes brilliant career in the state security bodies of Azerbaijan and Georgia, and then goes to the all-Union level.

The most critical moment of Beria's biography - the appointment to the post of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR after Nikolai Yezhov, who organized the Great Terror - was presented by the authors of the film without hysterics. The facts show that with the arrival of Beria, the number of executions dropped sharply, hundreds of thousands of people were released, and the organizers of abuses unprecedented in scale were punished, including Yezhov himself who lost his life.

During the Great Patriotic War, Beria became a member of the State Defense Committee and was responsible for the production of aircraft, engines and weapons.

After the war, he was given a fundamental task for the survival of the USSR - to eliminate the US nuclear monopoly, creating conditions for scientists and gunsmiths to be maximum effective in working on the creation of the Soviet atomic bomb. This order was carried out brilliantly, and the Americans abandoned their plans to bomb the cities of the USSR in the same way as they had done with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In 1953, Lavrenty Beria was defeated in a power struggle after Stalin's death by a group of supporters of Nikita Khrushchev, who had presciently enlisted the support of the army. As a result, Beria was shot after an extremely dubious trial, and his name was blackened and deleted from the Soviet officialdom. They remembered Beria only during the years of perestroika, but only then to finally turn it into a scarecrow in the form of a bloody executioner.

Despite all his state merits, in May 2002 the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court Russian Federation finally recognized Beria as not subject to rehabilitation in connection with his involvement in mass repressions and the organization of the deportation of peoples.

The release of the film about Beria did not go unnoticed on social networks.

How and why does Channel One glorify the Stalinist executioners as outstanding statesmen by showing Star Media films made with money allocated by the Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky?

The historian discusses Researcher IRI RAS Igor Kurlyandsky, scriptwriter of the film about Lavrenty Beria in the television series "Country of the Soviets. Forgotten Leaders" Alexander Kolpakidi, historian, co-author of the book "Lavrenty Beria. Bloody pragmatist" Lev Lurie, historian, associate professor of the Russian State University for the Humanities Yuri Tsurganov.

Leads the transfer Mikhail Sokolov.

Mikhail Sokolov: On the air of Channel One began showing the series "Country of the Soviets. Forgotten Leaders." This is a documentary historical cycle of seven films produced by order of the Ministry of Culture of Russia by the Military Historical Society and the Star-Media studio. Both the Ministry of Culture and this society are headed by the same politician - Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky. The authors of this work are Alexander Kolpakidi, Vasily Shevtsov and director Pavel Sergatskov. The heroes of the series are Felix Dzerzhinsky, Vyacheslav Molotov, Kliment Voroshilov, Semyon Budyonny, Andrey Zhdanov, Viktor Abakumov. And Lavrenty Beria is the first film. According to Channel One, "these names are known throughout the country today, but few people remember how they went down in history and what they did for their state." So we will try to figure out why now state funds are being spent on films about Stalin's comrades-in-arms. Historians in our studio: senior researcher at the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences Igor Kurlyandsky, historian, associate professor of the Russian State Humanitarian University Yuri Tsurganov, co-author of the script for the television series "Forgotten Leaders" Alexander Kolpakidi. And the historian, co-author of the book "Lavrenty Beria. Bloody Pragmatist" Lev Lurie will be with us via Skype from St. Petersburg. What task did the customers set for you as a screenwriter or did they not set any task at all?

Alexander Kolpakidi: No task was set. Obviously, knowing my views on the Soviet era, they, apparently, therefore turned to me. I did not see the customer in person, I talked to them on the phone. I don’t know Medinsky, I haven’t seen the director. They called me, they said: write a text. I wrote the text and sent it. As far as I understand, they shot close to the text. The most interesting thing about this story is that it was a very long time ago - this is not a recent work, it was filmed at least two years ago. So I don't think there we are talking about some government order.

Mikhail Sokolov: What about government money?

Alexander Kolpakidi: I mean that this is not some kind of state action, similar, for example, to the restoration of the cross to Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich.

Mikhail Sokolov: Is it not a task to carry out the process of rehabilitation of one of the bloodiest leaders?

Alexander Kolpakidi: Certainly not a task. And then I personally don’t understand at all why Beria needs some kind of rehabilitation, what kind of rehabilitation the Decembrists need, what kind of rehabilitation Radishchev needs, what kind of rehabilitation the Narodnaya Volya people need? Funny. History has already rehabilitated. The reaction to this film in the networks is one hundred percent positive. Everyone who writes, bloggers and others, they praise him, they say that they finally found out the truth, finally the story is shown not like a story about an elephant and Indians who pulled their tail and thought it was an elephant, but the whole story is shown an elephant, with a trunk, with thick legs and a tail, of course, and with long large ears, that is, the picture is given in its entirety.

Mikhail Sokolov: You believe that in its entirety. Igor Kurlyandsky, who wrote on the net about your script and film, tried to figure out where there is truth and where there is untruth. What are your first impressions?

Igor Kurlyandsky: My first impressions are, to be honest, negative, because I have been doing history for a long time. Soviet era, however, in the refraction of the history of the confessional policy of the Stalinist state. For my last book, which is ready now, I also dealt with the problems of the so-called Beria thaw. Those data that were voiced in this film, they did not satisfy me at all.

Mikhail Sokolov: The Beriev thaw is, relatively speaking, the arrival of Beria to the people's commissariat after Yezhov and some release of some people to freedom.

Igor Kurlyandsky: Here I just saw some details that surprised me.

Mikhail Sokolov: Do you think that everything is wrong there?

Igor Kurlyandsky: I think there is a wrong picture of events. Firstly, such a general message is given that Beria came, after Yezhov put things in order, I quote the film, "fired everyone who was associated with Yezhov's crimes." This is wrong. The creators of the film themselves cite data that is also in the KGB documents, 23% of those dismissed - this does not mean that they were all repressed, some of them were repressed, some then returned to service, some remained dismissed. If you look at the reference book that the historian Nikita Petrov published, led it, the NKVD, the MGB, the last large reference book, then you can also see there that if you take the corps of the Great Terror executors, then the main part not only survived, it continued to make a career, became big bosses and so on.

Mikhail Sokolov: By the way, I would have noticed that in the film there was such a phrase, as it were, positive about these people: "Those who ensured the country's security during the Great Patriotic War came to the authorities."

Igor Kurlyandsky: The second point: it is said that the education of personnel has increased, 10% were with higher education, it has become 39%. You need to figure out what kind of education it was. People came there according to different party sets, including under Beria. If you look at the same reference book by Nikita Petrov, then, firstly, there are many different higher party schools, institutes, communist universities or various branch institutes of means of communication, transport, the national economy, and so on. That is, not directly related to the specifics of the special services. What kind of education was it, in the first place. And the third very important objection is the size of the so-called Beria rehabilitation itself.

The film shows a table: 630,000 political prisoners during the years of the Great Terror were released, only in 1938 half. There are studies by Biener and Junge, studies on the Great Terror, there are studies by the same Nikita Petrov, that one and a half million were repressed, half were convicted, half were shot, about a hundred thousand were left outside the verdict when the "troikas" were canceled. "The process of rehabilitation began, he was associated precisely with the abolition of the "triples". When these cases went to the courts, they began to fall apart there. The main percentage of rehabilitation is not from those who were convicted, but from those who did not have time to be convicted on the "troikas". A small part was actually released from prisons.

Mikhail Sokolov: That is, you have doubts about 600 thousand?

Igor Kurlyandsky: I have no doubt that this is not true. Nikita Petrov, Roginsky, Khotin write that 100 thousand were released during the Beria thaw. I have my doubts about this number. This is a counter-revolutionary article. Here it is very important not to add up to this figure those whose term has expired, who have served 5, 10 years, and were released in 1939-40, there is such a mistake. For example, I managed to find out that the well-known church historian Shkarovsky incorrectly classifies Bishop Ioasaph (Chernov) as one of those rehabilitated during the Beria thaw. In 1940, he simply got out because his term was over.

Mikhail Sokolov: Yuri Tsurganov has just watched the film and can also speak with fresh impressions. Maybe you can tell about the ideological basis of this film, how do you understand it?

Yuri Tsurganov: You foresaw the angle, the direction of what I would like to say. Yes, of course, a very important task is to count, if possible, all the repressed, to compare the era of Beria with the previous Yezhov, with subsequent leaders of the Soviet State Security. But what do we see at the conceptual level. On the one hand, the film is unexpected, on the other hand, it is generally natural. There is such an aphorism, more than an aphorism, that if there is a God, then there must be a Devil. In Soviet propaganda, in Soviet historiography, the role of God was, of course, assigned to Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov-Lenin, Beria was chosen as a counterweight to the negative. I do not think that Beria was very different from his colleagues in the 1930s and 40s and, accordingly, in the early 1950s. Probably, he had more sins than Molotov and so on, although this is comparable.

Mikhail Sokolov: Although Molotov signed so many execution lists that there are more in number than Stalin's.

Yuri Tsurganov: Maybe. In fact, these figures are comparable. The man who initially connected in the years of the revolution and civil war his fate with Bolshevism, he cannot but be in the context of everything that happened afterwards. This film is aimed at preparing the moral rehabilitation of Beria, leaves me no doubt. He tries to be objective, but nevertheless, it is clear where the dominant is.

Mikhail Sokolov: The dominant is a major statesman. Let's ask Lev Lurie, all the more so Lev is the author of a book about Lavrenty Beria, a man who not only wrote based on some archival materials, but even traveled specially to Georgia for new material, which was also included in his book. Your impressions, it would be very interesting to speak about the concept of the film?

Lev Lurie: I only watched the first episode, it seemed to me that we were seeing Beria in the style of the 20th Congress, such a bastard that the rest faded before him. It made an impression. Artistically, the film leaves a lot to be desired.

Mikhail Sokolov: I think Alexander listened and wants to speak.

Alexander Kolpakidi: I am very happy with what I heard. Mr. Kurlyandsky said that not all Chekists were fired. Yes, they fired those who committed crimes. Many were reinstated, the so-called violators of socialist legality. The main group is the so-called "Evdokimov group", North Caucasians and people who came with Yezhov from the Central Committee - Shapiro, Zhukovsky and so on. These groups were completely exterminated, except for Litvin, who shot himself in Leningrad. These are the people who, together with Yezhov, carried out the Great Terror. Lyushkov escaped, until now the dispute, by the way, we do not know what he told the Japanese, Uspensky escaped, he was caught and also shot. Some small Chekists in the places that really remained.

Mikhail Sokolov: The heads of departments remained.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Very little. It was a check that was carried out, most of the 100% involved were shot. Some of them redeemed during the war years, as they say, on the fronts, behind enemy lines. This is all described more than once, we are talking about hundreds of Chekists who died and became heroes. These are violators of social law, who were not shot immediately, they were convicted. By the way, there are many scouts among them. The second point is education. I don’t understand how it can compromise Beria that those Chekists whom he brought in did not have a very good education.

Mikhail Sokolov: Your film can compromise not very accurate data, that's what I will say. And Igor Kurlyandsky spoke about this.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Released sizes. Even in the main measure of values ​​in modern world, in the most recent source of knowledge in the modern world on Wikipedia, and it is written that the data is different about the number of released ones.

Mikhail Sokolov: If you increase their number by 5 times, then you naturally give Lavrenty Beria a plus.

Alexander Kolpakidi: This controversial issue. The main thing is that people were released, and it was Beria who released them. Now, what Mr. Tsurganov said, I do not agree, he differed from, for example, Khrushchev, a favorite figure of our liberal intelligentsia, very much. Because Beria was the head of his republic, and Khrushchev led the Moscow party organization, and then the Ukrainian one. The percentage of those repressed where Khrushchev was is much higher than the percentage in Georgia. If you read Jung you mentioned and so on, a very average percentage of those repressed in Georgia. But after all, everyone who more or less knows the history of our republics understands that in Georgia they should have been shot the most, because Georgia was stuffed with nationalists, former Mensheviks, the uprising of 1924, the struggle over the creation of the Soviet Union precisely because of Georgia .

Who did Ordzhonikidze punch in the face? To the Georgian member of the Central Committee Kabakhidze, who called him a Stalinist donkey. And he did not calm down, he continued, and all these people continued this squabble. The Georgian party organization was simply a thorn in Stalin's eye. Of course, if Beria had not been different, he would have shot as many as Khrushchev. But he was different - he was a moderate person, he understood that it was impossible otherwise. By the way, there is such Georgiy Mamulia, a Georgian emigrant who lives in Paris and works there, he has an article, the only scientific article about repressions in Georgia, he writes in black and white there several times that Beria is not responsible, that Beria was forced to do this .

Mikhail Sokolov: And he is poor, unhappy.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Now you can be ironic as much as you like, but then people were not laughing.

Mikhail Sokolov: Let's give Lev Lurie the floor.

Mikhail Sokolov: Yuri, what do you say? It turns out that Lavrenty Beria is a moderate communist leader in the same Transcaucasus, do you agree with this?

Yuri Tsurganov: No, I do not agree. My interlocutors give different figures, but not only everything is measured by the number of corpses, there were more or less of them. In any case, this person is responsible for broken destinies, for interrupted lives. If he had been a really decent person, he would not have associated himself with Bolshevism in principle. During the civil war, there were alternatives.

Mikhail Sokolov: He worked in the Musavatist counterintelligence, we still do not know whether he was infiltrated by the Bolsheviks or whether he joined this regime, for example, and then managed to reorient himself.

Yuri Tsurganov: One of the most memorable phrases in the film is "we'll never know." There are many things we will never really know. He could go with the Mensheviks, he could become a political emigrant in the early 1920s. There were many ways.

Alexander Kolpakidi: And he went with his people.

Mikhail Sokolov: In your film, the vocabulary is as follows: if the people rebelled against the terrorist Bolshevik regime, this is a rebellion. Everything that is filed against the Soviet regime is in negative terms.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Soviet power is the power of the people. All who go against Soviet power go against their own people.

Mikhail Sokolov: Where did you get the idea that it is folk?

Alexander Kolpakidi: This is what the majority of the population thinks. Last week, a poll of students and netizens was conducted, and it turned out that in the Constituent Assembly elections, 45% would vote for the Bolsheviks, twice as many as voted in 1917. These are students, the most fooled people in our country.

Mikhail Sokolov: Question about polls. We have a poll that was made by the Levada Center: for last years there is a growing number of people who approve of repression, approve of Stalin's activities, that this was inevitable. This ratio is changing. I think, Alexander, it is your merit and such films that are being made that 36% are ready to justify human sacrifices by the results achieved in the Stalin era, only 26% consider Stalin a state criminal. The number of Russians who consider the Stalinist repressions a crime has dropped from 51% to 39% in five years. This is the result of such a wonderful activity of Mr. Medinsky, the Military Historical Society, Channel One and screenwriter Kolpakidi.

Alexander Kolpakidi: We are in a liberal forum, who spoke sharply negatively about this film the day before? "Tsargrad". It turns out that we have only two groups of the population - these are obscurantists-Black Hundreds, 10% of the population, and 10% of liberals. 80% against. There was a rather funny discussion at Tsargrad, they insisted that even if one person was shot by Beria innocent, then this is an executioner, a tyrant and all that.

Mikhail Sokolov: He also raped women.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Lev Lurie will refute, I'm sure. Yuri Zhukov says: "Tell me, well, name at least one innocent." The presenter says: "Here, please, I have acquaintances - Hmayak Nazaretyan." He is a major Bolshevik, at one time he was in charge of Stalin's secretariat. I immediately got into Wikipedia: shot in Moscow, arrested in Moscow in 1937. And what about Beria?

Mikhail Sokolov: And who arrested and killed Meyerhold, who was Babel? Dozens of such names.

Alexander Kolpakidi: We all know perfectly well, let's not dissemble, that the majority, the peak, the huge percentage of repressions are the work of the Yezhov gang.

Igor Kurlyandsky: There was one Stalinist gang, but there were various artists- Yezhov, and others Beria. The Berievskys were less arrested and shot, because the political situation was already different, the Great Terror had passed, the mechanism of terror was reduced, although it continued.

Lev Lurie: I think both sides are wrong. As for Alexander Kolpakidi, one must still remember that the investigation in the Georgian NKVD was tougher than in any other, where prisoners sentenced to death were beaten before death, where a hot punishment cell was invented, where people were boiled alive, where people were slaughtered in masses on interrogations. You are talking about the Georgian Communist Party. Indeed, the percentage of arrests in Georgia is somewhat lower than in other places. If we take the percentage of arrested communists, it is simply colossal. In essence, all members of the Communist Party with experience up to about 1920-25, all the former leaders of Beria were one way or another destroyed. So to say that there is no blood on Beria is simply meaningless. He personally took part in the torture, he has blood on him like no one else, because he was a hard-working, responsible person.

On the other hand, it is senseless to deny that there was a Beria thaw. Beria really let out, though they began to plant an order of magnitude less in 1939 in relation to 1937-38. Therefore, the question here is this: it is possible and necessary to make films about Beria and Molotov - these are figures of Russian history. As for an objective view, it seems to me that we should not sob and laugh, but establish the truth, and instead we are busy clarifying some relationships, and not looking at the sources.

Mikhail Sokolov: What is important for you then in connection with this film, do you think that this is some kind of signal to society? There are poll results, society loves Stalin more and more.

Lev Lurie: How can you believe in poll results, poll results, we know how it's done. And this is a completely strange idea that the majority of people are on the side of those who defended Soviet power and did not betray it. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin betrayed the Soviet government? Anatoly Sobchak betrayed the Soviet government? Nikolai Ryzhkov betrayed the Soviet government? Everyone betrayed the Soviet government, except for Comrade Zyuganov, and even then everything is very difficult with him. So what you are saying is completely untenable. Under Soviet rule, nothing was said about Beria at all, they didn’t talk about anyone else, they didn’t talk about Stalin.

Igor Kurlyandsky: Let's talk like historians and less politicize this story. Actually, in the film it sounded that Beria came as a restorer of justice after the Yezhov gang and so on. But Beria did not have such an independent role as the head of the punitive organs, he submitted to the rigidly political leadership of the Central Committee and Stalin. He, of course, was more of a pragmatist than the former leader. They say that Beria released so many and so many, but look at the documents related to the mechanism of the Beria thaw itself.

The "troikas" were canceled, the process of accepting complaints became possible, because the appropriate decisions were made. When the "troikas" were canceled, a lot of complaints fell down, prosecutors considered them, they went to the courts. The courts released, indeed, there was a month when the percentage of acquittals in the courts was high and the cases fell apart. Was Beria released or released by the system? Of course, Beria participated in this, the Chekists prepared documents, agreed on something, disagreed on something. But in many cases they did not agree. The heads of departments already from Beria wrote inquiries: social origin is not right, that’s why they refuse. There was a massive process of refusals back in 1939, a small percentage of satisfied complaints. The regime did everything to ensure that the amnesty was not massive, to squeeze and limit it as much as possible.

Then the process of curtailing the Beria thaw began, which you don’t talk about in the film, I must say about it. At the initiative of Stalin in March 1940, one directive was that those who were acquitted should be returned back to places of deprivation of liberty, because the NKVD should consider this, who should be released, who should not be released, the majority were refused. April 1940, when a new directive, already signed by the prosecutor Pankratiev and the same Beria, when all previous decrees that allowed for the revision of complaints were cancelled. Prosecutors can appeal, but this will be considered by another body, not by the courts - the Special Meeting of the NKVD. Biener and Junge write that this is how the insignificant Beria thaw ended.

Mikhail Sokolov: Alexander, I also watched your film, where you are a screenwriter, you have released one very important topic. You say violators of socialist legality. But after all, Lavrenty Beria himself was a violator of socialist legality. Extrajudicial contract killings, the use of poisons from the laboratory of Dr. Mairanovsky, lethal injections to "enemies of the people". It’s not for me to tell you, to give all sorts of names. The murder of Luganets, the Plenipotentiary of the USSR in China, and his wife, when he was killed with a hammer, his wife was strangled, then buried with honor. Or the kidnapping of Marshal Kulik's wife, her execution by Beria's employees. According to the testimony in the Beria case, everything is clear who did what, according to what instructions, and so on. Why are you missing these topics?

Alexander Kolpakidi: First, I am struck by the logic of Mr. Kurlyandsky. When he was summoned to Moscow, they feared a coup. Leonid Naumov believes that there was a conspiracy.

Igor Kurlyandsky: Cheap conspiracy theories, where did it come from, what do you rely on?

Alexander Kolpakidi: Do you think Leonid Naumov is a cheap conspirator?

Igor Kurlyandsky: I think he just has fantasies. I read that he has some assumptions that he socializes.

Alexander Kolpakidi: I want to note that Leonid Naumov is a man of completely liberal views, a like-minded person of Mr. Kurlyandsky. Of course, it is interesting that they did not agree with each other here. About contract killings. For what, why these people were killed, we do not know.

Mikhail Sokolov: Alexander Shumsky, one of the leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist movement.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Beria was involved in the murder of Shumsky?

Igor Kurlyandsky: By the time Shumsky is killed, he is no more. All the same, this was carried out by Beria's cadres, while the Beria people remained.

Mikhail Sokolov: Was the laboratory created under Beria?

Alexander Kolpakidi: The laboratory was created, strictly speaking, under Yezhov.

Mikhail Sokolov: Beria did not close it.

Alexander Kolpakidi: And what, in America there is no such laboratory? We don't have such a laboratory now? Name me some country where there is no such laboratory?

Mikhail Sokolov: Where are prisoners killed with poisons?

Alexander Kolpakidi: Killed those sentenced to death German criminals during the war captured, and for crimes sentenced to death. In America, voluntarily people give a subscription. President Clinton apologized to the people of Guatemala for the fact that for four years Americans conducted experiments on mentally ill Guatemalans to introduce syphilis and treat them. All people do these things.

Mikhail Sokolov: So you justify crimes?

Alexander Kolpakidi: I don't make excuses. I want to say that we do not know why they did this to Kulik's wife and why they did this to the ambassador. We just know the fact.

Mikhail Sokolov: The fact of a crime even from the point of view of Soviet legality.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Some of those present doubt that Beria received this order.

Igor Kurlyandsky: The execution of criminal orders is a crime, as established by the Nuremberg trials.

Alexander Kolpakidi: We do not know why this order was given.

Mikhail Sokolov: If you knew the reason for the murder, would it be easier for you?

Alexander Kolpakidi: Of course, if I knew whether Tukhachevsky was a conspirator or not, it would be easier for me, but I doubt it. You all know this, but I doubt it, I question everything.

Mikhail Sokolov: Alexander is leading his own line, the same as in the film, in one way or another he is trying to justify a person, I really like the headline "The verdict is not subject to appeal", a person whom the Russian court recognized as unworthy of rehabilitation - Lavrenty Beria.

Yuri Tsurganov: Beria was a major functionary of the criminal state. If we apply the Nuremberg Statutes to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, we will see a lot of analogies. At the same time, we can, looking at the twentieth century, observe the following, that the region with which Beria is connected by origin, by birth, in the same twentieth century gave a brilliant galaxy of worthy people who played a role in politics. This is Noah Zhordania, for example, if we take the beginning of the 20th century, this is Valery Chelidze, if we take practically our era, Semyon Gigilashvili, if we take approximately the middle part, a personal friend, colleague.

Mikhail Sokolov: I would remember Irakli Tsereteli.

Yuri Tsurganov: Of course, the matter is not limited to the three names that I have named. I would like to say kind words about them. And trying to rehabilitate people who hardly deserve it. It's good that more and more films about this are being produced, of course, we need a discussion, different points of view. As if I am not a Black Hundredist, but one who dares to call himself a person of a rather liberal persuasion, let it be, but let it be something else.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Interesting topic. Noah Zhordania, the main, of course, Georgian and the greatest is Ilya Chavchavadze, of course. In 1937, Beria held a magnificent anniversary in honor of his memory.

Mikhail Sokolov: At the same time, Georgian poets, Tabidze, Yashvili, were killed.

Alexander Kolpakidi: The same Noah Zhordania who said that Western imperialism is better than Eastern barbarism. I just want to clarify that Eastern barbarism is Mr. Kurlyandsky, Mr. Sokolov, these are Russians, this is Russia. Whom did he mean by Eastern barbarism? Who did the great cinematographer Otar Ioseliani mean when he said: we have endured and despised for two hundred years? They endured and despised Stalin for two hundred years?

Mikhail Sokolov: Didn't Georgia rebel against Stalin, against Bolshevism? You have in the film this plot of the most brutal suppression of the uprising.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Why are more lies poured out on Beria and Stalin now in Georgia than in all three Baltic republics taken together on some Kalnberzin or Snechkus? Because the goal is to tear Georgia away from our country, turn it into an enemy.

Mikhail Sokolov: Don't forget that Georgia has long been an independent state.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Where do American and foreign agents work, who receive grants, receive support from various American foundations, and so on.

Mikhail Sokolov: This is bad? This is an independent state.

Alexander Kolpakidi: It's great, I'm happy for these people. When they tried to erect a monument to Stalin in Gori, not in the center, but near the museum, Western diplomats forbade it.

Mikhail Sokolov: Lev Lurie was in Georgia not so long ago and seems to want to continue.

Lev Lurie: I was struck by the strangeness of your conversation that a film should be made about Jordania and Rustaveli, and not about Beria. In general, what are we talking about? Beria, no matter how you treat him, is a major historical figure. We have not yet talked about what he did in 1953 - he killed Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, one Georgian of another. He outlined a reform plan political system, which didn't launch but was wildly progressive nonetheless. He was a man who proposed to give the union republics more independence. He was the man who proposed to move the center of control from the Central Committee to the government. Isn't that enough? It is clear that they were all scoundrels in their own way, but we are historians after all, we must engage in politics.

Igor Kurlyandsky: We must not engage in politics, if we are historians, we must reconstruct the picture of events.

Mikhail Sokolov: We talked about one period, Lev Lurie translated us, quickly skipping over the war, skipping over a whole historical period, through the nuclear project, space and so on, about which Alexander says a lot in this film, he jumped right into 1953. I have no particular objections, but the thesis "Beria killed Stalin", to be honest, seems to me very controversial. Berin killed Stalin or not?

Igor Kurlyandsky: I think not. Eat historical research, sources, Stalin died of a cerebral hemorrhage, from a stroke. It is known that he lay without medical care for a day, his comrades-in-arms did not dare to call doctors.

Yuri Tsurganov: There is such a thing - failure to provide timely medical care. Probably, the classic work on this topic belongs to Avtarkhanov "The Mystery of Stalin's Death", "Beria's Conspiracy", this book has such a subtitle.

Mikhail Sokolov: Alexander, are you also for killing Lavrenty Pavlovich Joseph Vissarionovich?

Alexander Kolpakidi: I have no answers to many questions, unlike those present. I wanted to support Lev Yakovlevich in the sense that, really, what we are talking about. A man created from impoverished starving Georgia, citrus fruits did not grow there, as now, there were swamps, people were starving, he created the most powerful.

Mikhail Sokolov: The swamps began to drain, contrary to your film, long before Lavrenty Beria.

Alexander Kolpakidi: But they dried it up with him. Many things started under the tsar, but for some reason finished under Stalin. A man who played a huge role during the war. In addition to the fact that he led the NKVD, intelligence, counterintelligence, internal troops, he became a marshal.

Mikhail Sokolov: He evicted peoples, 61 people evicted.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Did he come up with it himself or was he assigned to do it?

Mikhail Sokolov: We don't know, I don't have an answer. Invented, received approval. You speak approvingly about it in the film.

Alexander Kolpakidi: The person who oversaw the State Defense Committee, being the deputy chairman of the State Defense Committee, one of the five leaders of the State Defense Committee, oversaw the production of aircraft, the Air Force, tanks, railway transport, which played a colossal role in the war, of course, incommensurable with the role of Stalin, who won the battle for the Caucasus.

Mikhail Sokolov: And in the camps, how many died at that time - about a million people.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Mortality in the camps during the war was lower than in the wild. There is such data - this is a long-established fact.

Igor Kurlyandsky: There are studies by the excellent GULAG historian Galina Mikhailovna Ivanova, she has all these figures.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Are there figures that the death rate in the Gulag was higher than in the wild?

Mikhail Sokolov: What do you think, with or without the blockade of Leningrad?

Igor Kurlyandsky: If you look at the rear, then, of course, the mortality rate was higher in 1942-43. And if you look at the front...

Alexander Kolpakidi: It is written everywhere that under Beria the death rate in the camps was halved - this is a fact.

Mikhail Sokolov: It was before the war, and then it was wild. Another question raised by Lev Lurie is about the reformer Beria. Was Lavrenty Beria a reformer who wanted to change Soviet Union in 1953?

Alexander Kolpakidi: This is the most difficult question, because these reforms have just begun. The fact that reforms were needed as early as the late 1940s is clear to everyone. They were necessary because it was difficult to repeat the modernization of the 1930s a second time, resources were exhausted, everyone understood that some kind of reforms had to be made. Stalin has already sat up. Although I am considered a Stalinist, I am not a Stalinist, I understand that since the late 1940s it would be better for Stalin to leave and make room. Unfortunately, he didn't, his associates didn't. The same situation was in Spain under Franco. He certainly carried out reforms, he started them. Undeservedly, all the laurels went to Mr. Khrushchev, a man who differed from him in every way - mediocre, inept, unable to do anything, but cunning, vile.

Mikhail Sokolov: And the 20th Congress held and released people from the camps.

Igor Kurlyandsky: And what was the meanness of Khrushchev?

Alexander Kolpakidi: The fact that he danced Kamarinsky in front of Stalin, he did not have time to die ...

Igor Kurlyandsky: The meanness of Stalin was that he organized mass illegal repressions against the citizens of his country.

Mikhail Sokolov: The question was whether Beria was a reformer.

Alexander Kolpakidi: He was not allowed to carry out reforms.

Yuri Tsurganov: Of course, he was a cunning, extraordinary man. There is a modern concept - an image maker, so he himself was one. You can refer to classic "steep route"Evgenia Ginzburg, as the camera rejoiced when they received a newspaper with a portrait of Lavrenty Pavlovich, these unfortunate women: look at what an intelligent face, he has glasses or pince-nez on his nose, he will probably be relieved. Although, according to some historian Georgy Pavlovich Khomizuri, Beria "He had excellent eyesight and did not need any glasses. But this is an intelligent image or an intelligent one, depending on who in what audience will pronounce this word. This was, of course, further, and after the Second World War. Talk about the unification of Germany, for example, in this sense, some reformist undertakings are visible. But in the name of what? Creation of one's own reputation, which is beneficial. And in the hypothetical case, although the historian should not reason like that, of course, under Beria, the Soviet Union would have remained a despotic power, in this I have no doubt.

Igor Kurlyandsky: Reformism, I agree, of course, he began to carry out reforms. Because he aspired to power, when a new leader comes to power, he seeks to put forward an alternative program and proposals. He went beyond the Soviet discourse, marked the beginning of de-Stalinization. But that doesn't justify the crimes he did. This is not a political question, the question of the historical authenticity of this film is very important here. I believe that this film does not stand up to criticism from a specific historical ground. He is tendentious, he grossly distorts history. He adjusts historical reality to the real task of creating a good image of Beria. Spectators look and think: yes, Beria is good. And the fact that he evicted peoples, that before the war, pre-war deportation, 86 thousand people from the Baltic states, mass arrests on western territories attached, 1939-41s.

Of course, fewer arrests were made inside the country, because the country was already tired of such powerful terror as it had before. But to say that under Beria the system of early release from the camps was preserved, as in the film, when in June 1939 Stalin canceled the offsets of working days, and Beria carried out this with his instructions - this is wrong. To say that salaries were paid there, although they began to pay symbolic salaries after Beria in 1946, is not true. To say that half of the political prisoners were released in 1939-40, the Beria thaw, is not true, a very small percentage were released. If we talk about the official figure of those released, this is 7% of those arrested in 1937-38. One and a half million is the 58th article, where all sorts of fictitious cases. And among the criminals, whom you kindly mentioned, in the camps on the continent, there are a lot of those who went for all sorts of spikelets, also on far-fetched economic cases.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Beria was not released for spikelets.

Mikhail Sokolov: Amnesty up to 5 years, released in 1953.

Igor Kurlyandsky: Yes, indeed, a criminal amnesty.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Why criminal? Are pregnant women criminal?

Igor Kurlyandsky: This amnesty is a great blessing, but it did not affect the counter-revolutionaries who survived in the camps, Khrushchev, whom you do not like, already did this, he released them. There may be a lot of complaints about Khrushchev, but still he was not such a bloody executioner as Beria, because he was not at the head of the punitive machine.

Alexander Kolpakidi: And who closed the temples?

Igor Kurlyandsky: Khrushchev. Temples were also closed by Stalin.

Lev Lurie: You know, you somehow do not argue about everything. According to my information and the information of Arseny Roginsky, one hundred thousand people were released - this is a lot in 1938, but more could have been released. What are we talking about, that Beria was an absolute blessing, that he was Jesus Christ? No. He, like all politicians, especially politicians of the Stalin era, such as Khrushchev, Molotov, Shepilov, who joined them, and so on, possessed a certain set of qualities that, and only those, made it possible to be at the top of this regime. The fact that Beria killed Stalin is not only my opinion, not only Avtarkhanov believes, this is also shown in the wonderful book by Edward Radzinsky, which should not be underestimated. The fact that he released the surviving participants in the "Leningrad case", closed the "doctors' case", began to rehabilitate members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, closed the senseless construction of communism, wanted to really Finlandize Germany - there is simply no doubt about it. And there is not the slightest doubt that Khrushchev was the same bloody executioner, no less than Beria.

Mikhail Sokolov: Why do you think such a film is needed today?

Lev Lurie: This is a pretty pointless question. Why do you need " Captain's daughter"was in the 1820s? Why do we need One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich? It is needed simply because they watch it, it was shot by Mr. Kolpakidi. The film, from my point of view, has nothing to do with Kolpakidi, creatively absolutely helpless. Beria looks absolutely scoundrel, Beria is the way Khrushchev described him. Why did Medinsky order this series of films? Probably because he wants to find some kind of continuity with the Soviet state. That we are breaking into open door We don't understand this, do we?

Mikhail Sokolov: I would notice that with this film there is another interesting detail- this is how it is done. This is a monologue, this is an announcer's text, this is such an indoctrination when people are inspired with thoughts, sometimes true, sometimes not very true, and they show newsreels and some kind of dummy actors who portray Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria. The kind of movie that I would say is brainwashed. I wanted to ask about one story that cannot but excite the public - the image of Beria as a person. You, Alexander, as I suspect, judging by the film, are fighting for the honest name of Lavrenty Pavlovich, proving that he was not a rapist villain who abducted women from the streets, does it seem to you that all this is invented?

Alexander Kolpakidi: I mean, as Mark Twain said, "the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated." I personally had the opportunity to talk to one of these women. There is such a book "I was the mistress of Lavrenty Beria", it was published in a huge circulation already in perestroika. This is the lady I was talking to. I can say for one hundred percent - she was an absolute schizophrenic, crazy about sex, it was just scary to talk to her. If the rest of the women.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Indeed a fact. We are now getting into personal life. As Rina Zelenaya said: "Love is a butterfly and do not scratch it with your dirty hands, otherwise the butterfly will die." I'll just say, Drozdova, there was a child. He had not lived with his wife for 7 years before, they had some problems. To the mansion, now on the Internet someone posted an excellent post about the mansion: I was in this mansion, there is nowhere for an apple to fall. How could a woman be dragged there and raped.

Mikhail Sokolov: Do you think Beria did not have safe houses?

Alexander Kolpakidi: Everyone talks about the mansion. I think this is all the dirt that Khrushchev tried to pour on him. All this is sewn with white threads. They had to conduct a face-to-face confrontation according to the law. They didn't. The same as with Rasputin. We now have a holy Rasputin, there was nothing at all.

Mikhail Sokolov: Who said he's a saint?

Alexander Kolpakidi: You are behind the times. He had mistresses, because he did not live with his wife, of course, but this is not a crime.

Mikhail Sokolov: 117?

Alexander Kolpakidi: Of course not. I think two or three. Exactly Drozdov.

Mikhail Sokolov: “The court found that Beria committed rape of women. So on May 7, having deceived a 16-year-old schoolgirl Drozdova into his mansion, he raped her. Witness Kalashnikova testified ...” and so on.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Beria denied this, according to the law they had to conduct a confrontation.

Mikhail Sokolov: I agree that the investigation into the Beria case was conducted ugly. However, all these stories are about forced cohabitation, rape and so on.

Alexander Kolpakidi: These are all tales. In 1988 there was an article about the pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union and his wife. No one reported then that the pilot had been in a psychiatric hospital three times, where he died.

Mikhail Sokolov: This is Sergey Shirov. He drank himself, by the way, after he was imprisoned for 25 years, then released.

Alexander Kolpakidi: They put him in jail because he was going to cross the state border, and not because Beria seduced his wife. Did he seduce you? The wife denied this. It is known that he also did not live with her, walked, drank, had a lot of mistresses. All these accusations against Beria are of this kind. Butterfly around.

Mikhail Sokolov: Adjutant Sarkisov did not kidnap women, did not take them?

Alexander Kolpakidi: Adjutant Sarkisov was just writing his affairs on the orders of his superiors when he was arrested, against Lavrenty Pavlovich. There is a report on this.

Mikhail Sokolov: I'm just wondering, there are facts, but there is their interpretation.

Alexander Kolpakidi: What are the facts? You yourself say - an ugly investigation, no very high stakes, no signatures, no photographs, no fingerprints.

Mikhail Sokolov: So you think that everything is falsified? Everything else - murders, torture, is it all faked too?

Alexander Kolpakidi: Now, if there was a similar volume nearby about how Beria was deputy chairman of the GKO during the war.

Igor Kurlyandsky: Do you think this will rehabilitate him? I'm not sure.

Alexander Kolpakidi: I have already said that he does not need state rehabilitation, the people have already rehabilitated him.

Mikhail Sokolov: As he was an executioner, he remained.

Igor Kurlyandsky: The people are something very many-sided and speaking for them as a whole, in my opinion, is not serious and irresponsible.

Alexander Kolpakidi: For me, "monster oblo, mischievous and laya" are those who give Beria 52% approval before the film and 26% after the film.

Igor Kurlyandsky: For me, "monster oblo, mischievous and laya" is you and the creators of this film or people like you.

Mikhail Sokolov: Did the people rehabilitate, as our guest claims, Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria?

Yuri Tsurganov: I have no data about 52%, but at the same time I can readily believe that 52% treat Beria well, I even believe in 72%. But it is very interesting to look at the level of education, culture, the profession of people who are for and against Beria, and we will see very interesting picture. Plus, one more motivation, it is called so in common parlance: to spite my mother, I will freeze my ears. If Gaidar and Chubais are bad, then Beria is good, as many argue. Therefore, 52% may well be real, but what is behind this?

Igor Kurlyandsky: We don't know what this percentage is. We talk about pathology, about rape and so on. What was there, what was not, it is necessary to open archives, interrogations and so on. In my opinion, the pathology still manifested itself in another, not at the everyday voluptuous level, namely, that a person is not just a cog, a gear, but such a large mechanism, not the most important, of course, of this system, he grinds people, grinds destinies, life and so on. Here is one touch to the portrait of Beria, which I accidentally saw today in our institute kiosk. The volume "The Politburo and Wreckers" was published, where all sorts of wrecking processes were endlessly falsified from the end of the 1920s to the end of the 1930s, when they began to falsify less. There, Beria simply writes to Stalin: "Here are such and such engineers, they have such and such projects with shortcomings. I propose to arrest them, I suspect sabotage there." Stalin writes - "arrest".

Alexander Kolpakidi: Even Academician Sakharov, your idol, wrote that Beria...

Igor Kurlyandsky: First, do not invent some nonsense, I have no idols and no idols.

Mikhail Sokolov: If Sakharov could praise Beria for the atomic project, what's wrong with that?

Igor Kurlyandsky: You sing a hymn to sharashkas, do you understand that this is humiliating?

Alexander Kolpakidi: I do not sing the hymn to sharashkas, I say that we are alive and are in an independent country thanks to the nuclear weapons that Beria created. During the war, Molotov was entrusted with tanks, he failed, Beria was entrusted, he did it. In 1949, the American monopoly collapsed, and you are probably unhappy with that. That's why you probably don't like Beria.

Mikhail Sokolov: I definitely don't like Beria.

Igor Kurlyandsky: I don't like it any other way.

Alexander Kolpakidi: You don't like it, because now we are talking with the Americans on an equal footing, and we are not their sixes, because we are not grant-suckers, and our people are not grant-suckers.

Mikhail Sokolov: Alexander, by the way, I don't like your position.

Igor Kurlyandsky: I understand your political pathos, but you do not stand on an actual source basis.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Didn't Beria create the atomic bomb? All scientists admitted that without him nothing would have happened.

Mikhail Sokolov: Without data stolen in the West, there would be no data.

Igor Kurlyandsky: He coordinated the project, of course.

Alexander Kolpakidi: In spite of Beria, would they have built an atomic bomb, in spite of Beria, would they have won the war?

Igor Kurlyandsky: I have not been involved in the research of the atomic project, a special study is needed here. 135,696 people were arrested in these political cases. 1939-40, when the Beria thaw was underway. 86,000 are being expelled from the Baltic states, western Ukraine, western Belarus, Moldova, and so on.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Have you heard of the Forest Brothers?

Mikhail Sokolov: Alexander, you were silent in the film, for example, the Katyn case, where Lavrenty Pavlovich proposed to shoot 20 thousand people.

Alexander Kolpakidi: I don't know who shot these people, there are different points of view.

Mikhail Sokolov: There are no different points view, there is a decision of the Politburo, there are documents.

Alexander Kolpakidi: I doubt everything.

Mikhail Sokolov: That's why you don't talk about it in the movie. That is why the film is monologue, that is why there are no experts in the film, that is why there are no other opinions, there is only one opinion.

Alexander Kolpakidi: I can recruit a million experts. Lev Lurie had a film, there a huge number of experts said the same thing that was in this film.

Lev Lurie: You have a rather pointless argument, you just shout at each other, but you don’t deal with Beria. One says that Beria is great, and it is not known who shot in Katyn, but Putin has already said who shot in Katyn. And others shout that nothing can be filmed about him. Beria, undoubtedly, in Soviet coordinates was a very large independent politician. He was not Molotov, not Bulganin, in this sense Khrushchev is similar to him. They had some general idea, concerning not only him personally, but concerning the fate of the country. I do not think, here I agree with Mr. Kolpakidi, that Beria was an incredibly immoral type. We see how the Khrushchev investigation failed to prove anything. Once again I want to say that it is pointless to educate people on the image of Beria, Beria is a bloody executioner, he is an insect. It is impossible to make him a man whom the youth can imitate. But it is impossible not to study Beria, believing that Beria was a nonentity or that it boiled down only to butchery.

Mikhail Sokolov: And you yourself called it an insect.

Lev Lurie: He is an insect absolutely, I do not refuse it at all. This is a man devoid of any human qualities and feelings, for which there were no friends, which first flattered in the eyes, and then killed, and killed painfully. Natural sadist - it's all true. But he killed Stalin, did not help him quite consciously. He was wildly happy when Stalin died. He said to Molotov on the podium of the Mausoleum: "I saved you all from him." These are the memories of Molotov. So we should be grateful to Lavrenty Pavlovich for delivering us from Joseph Vissarionovich.

Mikhail Sokolov: He got rid of Iosif Vissarionovich, perhaps, but he created an atomic weapon that extended the life of the communist regime, including for decades. flour Russian people also, I suspect, it was in connection with this that the attempts to finally get out of the communist regime, which Alexander Kolpakidi loves so much, were so long.

Yuri Tsurganov: I agree with you. My favorite literary hero is Innokenty Volodin. Read at least only the first chapter of Solzhenitsyn's novel "In the First Circle", you will understand what I'm talking about now.

Mikhail Sokolov: A man who tried to prevent the creation of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union.

Yuri Tsurganov: He tried to warn the Americans to stop the deal of his citizen, related to the atomic project, his contact with the Soviet agent for the transfer of this data.

Mikhail Sokolov: Alexander, why are you laughing?

Alexander Kolpakidi: Because you exposed yourself before the eyes of respected viewers.

Igor Kurlyandsky: In the eyes of Alexander, Innokenty Volodin is a traitor to the motherland.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Of course, a traitor to the motherland. This America is an empire not only of lies, but also of evil. And the Soviet Union was the best country in the history of civilization.

Mikhail Sokolov: This "best country" has killed millions of its citizens.

Alexander Kolpakidi: I didn't kill anyone, and my parents didn't. We went to a pioneer camp, we were sent abroad.

Mikhail Sokolov: How many were shot in 1937-38? 700 thousand minimum.

Igor Kurlyandsky: And how many died during the years of collectivization.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Churchill organized a famine in West Bengal in 1943, three and a half million. None of you have even heard of it.

Mikhail Sokolov: And what about the Holodomor, you do not know, organized by Stalin? We are talking about Beria and Stalin, and you are talking about Churchill.

Alexander Kolpakidi: Roosevelt put the Japanese workers in the desert, 40 degrees and zero at night.

Igor Kurlyandsky: You do not see the difference between a hostile army and your own people?

Alexander Kolpakidi: The Soviet Union is an empire of development, goodness. Communism is the future of mankind.

Mikhail Sokolov: We will never agree with you. Including according to Lavrenty Beria.

Igor Kurlyandsky: The campaigns and realities that then took place, beginning with the Chekism, do not agree with the measurement of good, if we take the period of the civil war, not only was it a reaction against the whites - it was the repressive side of the utopia "we will drive everyone by force, humanity into happiness." Accordingly, therefore, dissidents were killed, all the years of the existence of Soviet power were destroyed in one stream or another, on one scale or another, in one way or another, by Abakumov, Yezhov, Beria, various bosses, starting from Lenin, Stalin and so on. Because otherwise it was impossible to drive into communist happiness.

Mikhail Sokolov: Let's take a look at a short survey and try to understand whether the people who walk the streets in Moscow are on the side of Alexander Kolpakidi, or on the side of his opponents.

Poll on the streets of Moscow

Mikhail Sokolov: Alexander, are you satisfied, are there your like-minded people there, faithful Beria?

Alexander Kolpakidi: What am I to be pleased with, I know that most people support this position without this poll.

Lev Lurie: The problem is not whitewashing or not whitewashing, main lesson What we must learn from Beria's story is that any tyrant is killed by his henchmen. Beria organized the murder of a tyrant. Tyranny eventually comes to an end - that's what Lavrenty Pavlovich's life tells us about. Those who kill a tyrant are killed by other tyrants. This is such a beautiful story, such a parable.

Mikhail Sokolov: You are obviously looking with historical optimism.

Yuri Tsurganov: In principle, I have already said that the majority may not be right. There is such a person, Vladimir Bukovsky, who recalls his childhood, he sits on the roof of a three-story building and sees crowds of people who cry for Stalin, 1953, the month of March. Vladimir Konstantinovich said: "That's when, at a young age, I realized that the majority may not be right."

Igor Kurlyandsky: I do not understand why the majority is an indisputable argument. Why the quantitative component becomes the criterion of truth. The criterion of truth can only be reliably established facts and, accordingly, their honest, deep, comprehensive understanding.

Mikhail Sokolov: Do you see it on TV?

Igor Kurlyandsky: I don't see this on TV. I see false propaganda films, absolutely biased, distorting. I oppose this because I consider myself an honest historian.