Source - Wikipedia
Leonid Nikitich Khrushchev (November 10, 1917 - March 11, 1943) - military pilot, went missing (there is a version of his betrayal). His first wife is Rosa Treivas, the marriage was short-lived and annulled by personal order of N. S. Khrushchev. The second wife, Lyubov Illarionovna Sizykh (December 28, 1912), lives in Kyiv, was arrested in 1942 (according to other sources, in 1943) on charges of “espionage”, released in 1954. From this marriage - adopted children born: in a civil marriage with Esther Naumovna Etinger and Leonida: son Yuri (1935-2004), and then from his legal wife Rosa Treyvas - daughter Julia.
I cannot help but touch upon the fate of Leonid Khrushchev, who fought at Stalingrad. In the "Military Historical Journal" for 1990, in the fourth issue, an article by B.E. was published. Pestov - “Dead? Missing? Alive?”, which cites a letter from retired major Andreev. Referring to the deputy head of the personnel department of the USSR Ministry of Defense in 1945-1969, I. A. Kuzovkov, he claims that in 1943 the pilot L. Khrushchev was captured by the Germans. At the urgent request of N.S. Khrushchev, Stalin agreed to the exchange of Khrushchev’s son for a German prisoner of war. The exchange took place, but NKVD officers established that Leonid, while in captivity, collaborated with the Germans. By decision of the military tribunal, Leonid Khrushchev was sentenced to death. After such a harsh sentence was imposed, Nikita Sergeevich turned to Stalin with a request to pardon his son, but Stalin refused him, citing the fact that he had neither legal nor moral rights to disagree with the decision of the military tribunal. According to I.A. Kuzovkov, N.S. Khrushchev remembered this to Stalin and subsequently launched a campaign to expose the cult of personality in revenge for his son. The author of the article says that much about the fate of N. S. Khrushchev’s son is unclear, especially since some documents disappeared from Leonid’s personal file under unknown circumstances. This is certainly thought-provoking.
Another version is presented in one of his interviews by E.Ya. Dzhugashvili, son of Yakov and Olga Golysheva. He refers to information he received from V. M. Molotov and Chief Marshal of Aviation A. E. Golovanov, commander of long-range aviation during the war:
“Khrushchev had a son, Leonid, from his first marriage. One of his pastimes was shooting at a bottle standing on a man’s head. By the way, some German officers were also fond of this. The only experimental material they had were prisoners of war. In one of these exercises, Leonid hit the bottle instead of in the head of his comrade and killed him. Stalin became aware of this. Khrushchev, as a member of the Military Council of one of the fronts, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Bolsheviks), began to save his son from punishment. At a meeting with Khrushchev, Stalin asked him: “Are you petitioning?” about his son as a member of the Politburo or as a father?" “As a father,” answered Khrushchev. Then Stalin asked him a question: “Have you thought about the father whose son your son killed? What will he say?" The war dictated the laws of wartime, and they were the law for everyone. Leonid was demoted from the officers to the rank and file and sent to a penal battalion. He was soon captured. The Germans, having learned that the son of a Politburo member was among the prisoners, began to use him for campaigning in the front line: speaking on the radio, he campaigned Soviet soldiers and officers to surrender. The matter took on a political character. Stalin gave instructions to the head of the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement P.K. Ponomarenko to kidnap Khrushchev’s son from the Germans. When Stalin was informed that Leonid had been delivered to the location of one of the partisan detachments, and they asked for a plane to deliver him to Moscow, Stalin replied: “There is no need to risk another officer, judge Leonid Khrushchev on the spot.” Khrushchev's son was shot as a traitor to the Motherland. After Stalin’s death, Khrushchev carefully hid this fact, and even a rumor was started that the pilot Leonid Khrushchev died a heroic death in a battle with several German fighters. We know how to spread rumors.
As, unfortunately, often happens among the “golden youth” - the children of high-ranking officials, the son of the first secretary of the Central Committee found himself in dubious company. It later turned out that his friends turned out to be criminals who traded in robberies and murders. When Serov was informed about what had happened, he immediately contacted my father.
“Inform Khrushchev about everything,” my father ordered, “and let’s see how he reacts.” This is a blatant violation of the law, and even the son of the first secretary of the Central Committee cannot be pulled out of this case, you understand, but it is possible to somehow soften his fate. Khrushchev's reaction to Serov was striking:
Close this case!
“How can this be, Nikita Sergeevich,” Serov objected. - The case became public. The most serious crimes have been committed, which thousands of people already know about. It is simply impossible to get your son out of this case.
And although Khrushchev insisted on his own, the investigation was completed and the trial took place. Most of the members of the criminal group, or simply put, a gang of criminals, were sentenced to capital punishment and shot. Nikita Sergeevich's son got off with ten years in prison.
When the war began, Leonid was told to ask to go to the front. He did just that. Khrushchev’s son’s request was granted, but he was sent not to the front as an ordinary soldier, but to an aviation school. Having become a pilot, Leonid courageously fought the enemy and died in battle. As far as I know, this happened in the spring of forty-three.
From official sources:
The pilot of the 18th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 1st Air Army of the Guard, Senior Lieutenant Leonid Khrushchev, did not return from a combat mission on March 11, 1943. As the commander of the 1st Air Army, Aviation Lieutenant General Khudyakov, wrote to Lieutenant General Khrushchev, a member of the Military Council of the Voronezh Front, after a battle with two Focke-Wulf-190s, Senior Lieutenant Khrushchev’s plane “went to the ground... For a month we did not We lost hope for the return of your son, but the circumstances under which he did not return, and the period that has passed since that time, force us to make a sad conclusion that your son, Guard Senior Lieutenant Leonid Nikitovich Khrushchev, died a heroic death in an air battle against the German invaders."
Before joining fighter aviation, Khrushchev’s son served in the 134th high-speed bomber aviation regiment, where he flew 33 combat missions, was seriously wounded and awarded the Order of the Red Banner. After retraining, he was sent to the 18th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment.
Links:
1. Serov Ivan Alexandrovich
2. THE ALLILUEV FAMILY AGAINST THE BACKGROUND OF WAR
3. Khrushchev Yuri Leonidovich (1935-2004)
4.
"The apple never falls far from the tree"
Russian folk proverb
Immediately after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, he walked around Moscow and the verse was popular among supporters of I.V. Stalin, truly outraged by the brazen slander that Nikita Khrushchev leveled against the national leader.
“We didn’t believe him!
An avalanche rushed past the words,
And I don't trust it
There was - and more than one reason.
They whispered - his son was captured
At the height of the war he surrendered without a fight.
Having crossed the high threshold,
Khrushchev tried to save him.
And Stalin with yellow eyes
He flashed and touched the tip of his mustache:
I didn’t save my o-r-l-a,
And you came to ask for a coward!!!”
The author of these lines chose to remain anonymous. And although under them there was a signature – El-Registan, to the co-author of Stalin’s “Hymn Soviet Union"This verse has nothing to do with Gabriel Ureklian, who had this pseudonym, since the real El-Registan died back in 1945...
Perhaps Khrushchev never uttered this phrase, but if you believe the rumor, he once carelessly said in front of his entourage: “Lenin took revenge in his time royal family for my brother, and I will show the dead Stalin for his son where Kuzka’s mother lives.”
And he showed, and so showed, that we still cannot cleanse the “Augean stables” of his most shameless slander and slander against a man who, regardless of the lies that Trotsky and his successors, Khrushchev and Gorbachev, tried to stick to him, According to the international rating of great people of all times and peoples, he is included in the top hundred, as are the now reviled K. Marx, F. Engels, V. I. Lenin, Mao Zedong, F. Castro.
But they, the detractors, are not in this row and never will be. But what kind of story happened to Khrushchev's son if it unleashed such destructive forces that ultimately destroyed the Soviet Union, a fact before which even the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki fades?
No one will ever know the complete and documented truth about senior lieutenant Leonid Nikitich Khrushchev, since his father in 1953 and 1954, having gained access to the archives, cleaned them and removed interrogation reports from his son’s personal file in German captivity and other documents compromising Leonid.
The authors of publications about Khrushchev’s son speak about this, in particular, Nikolai Nad, who is interested in: “Why were the pages relating to those war years, when questions arose about the fate of his Lyonka, so brazenly torn out from his son’s “personal file”? And in return, albeit hastily, but confidently torn out (of which, however, shreds remained), 10-15 years after the war, new ones suddenly appeared, dating back to the 60s... It turns out there was something about him that haunted Khrushchev for the rest of his life.».
However, as always happens in such cases, there are more than enough versions! One of them seems the most plausible. This is the version of a retired KGB major general, who served in counterintelligence for 37 years, a participant in the Great Patriotic War Vadim Udilov, who wrote the book “Why Khrushchev took revenge on Stalin,” a fragment of which was published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta on February 17, 1998.
And already on April 4 of the same year, the same newspaper published material received from the USA from the granddaughter of Leonid Khrushchev, Nina Khrushcheva, “Why are the Stalinists taking revenge on Khrushchev?” But the arguments that the 27-year-old Princeton University graduate made from overseas were unconvincing and did not refute the version of the knowledgeable former senior state security officer.
The point is that Leonid Khrushchev at the beginning of 1941 committed a criminal offense due to alcohol abuse; he had to stand trial, but thanks to his father he avoided not only punishment, but also trial. Dokuchaev-2 S.342.
Leonid Khrushchev’s second crime was the murder of a colleague during a drinking binge, after which, according to Stepan Mikoyan, who was friends with Leonid, he was tried and given eight years to serve at the front.
According to the testimony of V. Udilov, confirmed by other sources, the fighter plane, piloted by Khrushchev’s son, went towards the Germans and disappeared without a trace. So Leonid ended up in the fascist clutches. Most likely, he did this voluntarily, since he had nothing to lose.
So, Leonid finally entered into an agreement with the German fascists. Having convinced himself of this, I.V. Stalin set the task of the military counterintelligence “Smersh” to kidnap L. Khrushchev and deliver him to Moscow. The special task of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief was completed. Together with L. Khrushchev, documentary data was delivered to Moscow that testified to his treacherous activities.
The military tribunal sentenced him to capital punishment - execution. Having learned about the verdict of the military tribunal, Nikita Khrushchev appeals to the Politburo with a request to cancel the harsh punishment. I.V. Stalin agreed to discuss the issue of the fate of Leonid Khrushchev at a meeting of the Politburo. The head of counterintelligence "Smersh", Colonel General Abakumov, presented the materials of the case, the verdict of the military tribunal and left. The first to speak at the meeting was the Secretary of the Moscow Regional and City Committees, who is also the head of the Head of the PUR of the Red Army and candidate member of the Politburo Alexander Shcherbakov, who in his speech. It is impossible, he said, to forgive the sons of eminent fathers if they have committed a crime, and at the same time severely punish others. What will people say then? Shcherbakov proposed to uphold the verdict.
Then Beria, who was aware of the previous misdeeds of Khrushchev’s son, took the floor and recalled them and the fact that Khrushchev’s son had already been forgiven twice. After which Molotov, Kaganovich, Malenkov expressed their points of view. All members of the Politburo had the same opinion: to leave the verdict in force.
The last speaker was I.V. Stalin. It was by no means easy for him to make a decision - after all, his Jacob was also in captivity. With his decision, he thereby signed the sentence for his own son.
As you know, Stalin’s son, Yakov Dzhugashvili, flatly refused to take any part in the Nazi propaganda activities, codenamed Operation Zeppelin, and in general to cooperate with the Nazis in any form. And the Decree of the Permanent Presidium of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR on awarding the title of Hero of the Soviet Union to Yakov Iosifovich Dzhugashvili for heroism and personal courage shown during the Great Patriotic War posthumously is not only a tribute to the memory of I.V. Stalin, but also an act of historical justice, because Yakov really deserves it. He preferred death to betrayal, and it became the feat of his life.
As V. Alliluyev writes, there are eyewitnesses to such words of the legendary General D.M. Karbyshev, what he said to Yakov (in April 1942, the general was taken to Hammelburg): “Yakov Iosifovich should be treated as an unwavering Soviet patriot. This is a very honest and modest comrade. He is a man of few words and keeps to himself because he is constantly being watched. He is afraid of letting down those who communicate with him."
Udilov was told what I.V. said. Stalin, closing the meeting. He said: " Nikita Sergeevich needs to strengthen himself and agree with the opinion of his comrades. If the same thing happens to my son, I will accept this just verdict with deep paternal bitterness! ».
Leonid's granddaughter Nina Khrushchev, who jealously followed all publications about her clan, did not react in any way, reading versions in which her named grandfather Nikita Khrushchev was depicted in an extremely humiliating situation when he crawled on his knees in front of I.V. Stalin, tearfully begging him to spare his son, struggled on the carpet in convulsions, but was never able to pity the “tyrant.” And here she showed such an inadequate reaction to completely sound and truthful material. Nina’s main trump card is that the ex-chekist’s version is undocumented.
However, this is not surprising, given the unceremoniousness with which her named grandfather Nikita gutted the archives, confiscating everything that could compromise him. But there is also such a thing as indirect evidence. And this, first of all, is his deep personal dislike for I.V. Stalin, which, judging by his memoirs, he kept until his death.
This is then the reprisal against all participants in that Politburo meeting, starting with Beria, then Colonel General V.S. Abakumov. Arrested in the case of the “killer doctors,” he, by order of Khrushchev, remained in prison even after the doctors were released.
In December 1954, in the fabricated so-called “second Leningrad case,” he was sentenced to death and executed an hour and a quarter (!) after the verdict was announced, although the law stipulated a two-week period for filing a petition for clemency.
Immediately after the process is completed Attorney General Rudenko, in the presence of the Secretary of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR N.M. Polyakov, called from Leningrad to Moscow and reported to Khrushchev that the task had been completed. This only means that there was a clear and unambiguous instruction from Khrushchev regarding Abakumov, and that the ending was known in advance and the verdict was a foregone conclusion.
V. Udilov provides a list of people subjected to repression under Khrushchev. This, in addition to Stalin’s son Vasily, is State Security Lieutenant General Pavel Sudoplatov, whose people participated in the kidnapping of Leonid Khrushchev. For unknown reasons, he served 15 years “from bell to bell” in the same Vladimir prison where Vasily Stalin was imprisoned.
Sudoplatov was rehabilitated already in 1992. Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich were sent into exile under the strictest operational police supervision.
The only one whom the punishing right hand of the vindictive and vindictive Khrushchev could not reach was Alexander Shcherbakov (he died in 1945 - L.B.), but judging by the epithets with which he “awarded” the deceased in his “memoirs” a quarter of a century later, it is clear how much “Mikita” hated him: “Shcherbakov’s poisonous, serpentine character,” “we were all indignant at Shcherbakov,” “ the vile inclinations of Shcherbakov,” “this malicious sycophant Shcherbakov,” “Shcherbakov continued his vile activities,” “I evaluate Shcherbakov according to his merits, and from a very bad side,” etc. According to the testimony of the writer Ivan Stadnyuk, the rehabilitation commission, so called the “Shvernik Commission”, after the 20th Congress tried to prove to please the all-powerful father, that Khrushchev’s son, convicted during the war, is a pilot who committed heroic feat, and that he is not to blame for anything.
However, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR “did not find it possible to expunge his criminal record.”
And yet, in the book of “memoirs” of Khrushchev there is a photograph of his son with the inscription: “Leonid Nikitich Khrushchev, pilot, died in battles for his homeland».
Leonid Khrushchev volunteered for the army during the Soviet-Finnish war. In 1943, he was already a senior guard lieutenant and fighter pilot. In March, he went on a combat mission from which he did not return. In April, Stalin ordered him to be considered dead.
A decree was issued to award the brave officer the Order of the Patriotic War, first degree. But a few years after Nikita Khrushchev's campaign against Stalin's personality cult began, rumors began to spread that Leonid Khrushchev was not a hero at all.
The official version of the death of Leonid Khrushchev is set out in his personal file. The combat officer, already nominated for the Order of the Red Banner in November 1941, commanded a flight in the 18th Guards Fighter Regiment from December 19, 1942.
On March 11 of the following year, his plane was shot down near the city of Zhizdra. Then it was the Smolensk region, and now it is the Kaluga region.
The squadron commander wrote in the report: “Two of our aircraft (the leading guard, Senior Lieutenant Zamorin, and the leading guard, Senior Lieutenant Khrushchev) were attacked by two Focke-Wulf 190s.” An air battle ensued at an altitude of approximately 2500 meters - pair against pair.” A German plane fired at Khrushchev's plane. Zamorin began firing at the enemy with a machine gun: “The German, seeing his disadvantageous position, left Khrushchev and, attacked by Zamorin, went south. When Zamorin returned, he did not find Khrushchev. Our planes were flying in the distance, Zamorin decided that Khrushchev was among them, and joined the general formation.”
However, Khrushchev did not return to duty. The search for the body or wreckage of the plane also yielded no results. The parents received a sad letter. The commander of the 1st Air Army, Khudyakov, wrote: “The circumstances under which he did not return, and the period that has passed since that time, force us to make a sad conclusion that your son died a brave death in an air battle.”
Later, the fact that no one saw the plane crash and no wreckage was found became the subject of many speculations. However, during the war, the number of fighters who passed under the “did not return from mission” column was in the thousands. The aircraft were often of poor quality, assembled in difficult conditions, and the squadron pilots were focused on flying their aircraft and did not have time to notice what was happening around them. According to Zamorin's report, Khrushchev's plane went into a tailspin. But he had the opportunity to use a parachute, and, with a successful combination of circumstances, to bring the plane out of a spin. These formulations later provided food for many versions.
In 1941, Leonid Khrushchev was wounded in battle. He was able to reach the neutral zone and land the plane. For this he was nominated for an award. He went to Moscow to receive it. There, at a party, he was rumored to have killed an officer while drunk. According to another version, the murder occurred in Kuibyshev, where Leonid was being treated in a hospital. Khrushchev allegedly killed one of his fellow circus performers.
The authors of such versions write that Leonid Khrushchev had a difficult relationship with the law back in the 30s. Allegedly, he once got involved with Kyiv bandits. For example, counterintelligence officer Vadim Udilov wrote: “Even before the war, he got involved with bandits in Kyiv. They were caught and shot by court, but the son of Nikita Sergeevich, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, “miraculously” escaped punishment.” Sergo Beria even hinted that Leonid managed to serve ten years for associating with a gang, despite the fact that there is no evidence of this.
However, in the Komsomol characteristics for 1940, the most terrible offenses of Leonid Khrushchev were “indiscipline and drunkenness” (1937) and “arrears of membership fees” (1940).
They wanted to put Leonid Khrushchev on trial for the murder of Leonid Khrushchev while drinking, but, as supporters of the version write, Nikita Khrushchev was lying at Stalin’s feet and begging to spare his son. Here again the differences begin. According to one version, Stalin spared the life of young Khrushchev and sent him to the front, but according to another, he refused to pardon him. The author of the second version is KGB General Dokuchaev. “Stalin was informed that his son Khrushcheva Leonid, military pilot, committed a serious crime for which capital punishment is imposed<...>Khrushchev began to cry, and then began to sob. They say, the son is to blame, let him be severely punished, just not shot... Stalin said: in the current situation, I can’t help in any way,” Dokuchaev noted.
An equally loud version was brought to life by Zamorin’s cautious report. It is believed that Leonid Khrushchev was able to land the plane, but was captured. Then the story becomes almost detective. Stalin allegedly ordered the kidnapping of Khrushchev's son so that he would not tell the enemy valuable information about the life of the Kremlin elite. “Stealing” was entrusted to the famous Pavel Sudoplatov.
Documents were collected confirming the betrayal, and the tribunal of the Moscow Military District sentenced Leonid Khrushchev to death. However, no supporting documents were found in the archives of the institutions. Sudoplatov himself directly stated that he did not participate in the operation to “kidnap” Leonid Khrushchev; moreover, “Stalin personally decided to consider Leonid Khrushchev as killed during a combat mission, and not as missing. In those conditions, this was important for the political career of N. S. Khrushchev, and excluded the possibility of compromising one of the members of the Soviet leadership by this episode.”
According to other versions, in captivity Leonid Khrushchev went over to the side of the Germans. And he was not kidnapped, but exchanged for a German prisoner of war. A supporter of this version, N. Khotimsky, wrote: “The exchange took place, but as KGB workers established, when Leonid Khrushchev was in the filtration camp<...>, in captivity he behaved badly<...>. Based on the totality of the crimes committed, L.N. Khrushchev was convicted by a military tribunal and sentenced to death.”
Supporters of the execution version believe that the fight against Stalin’s personality cult was Khrushchev’s revenge for his son.
According to the son of Leonid Khrushchev, search parties made an important discovery: “Bryansk search engines discovered the wreckage of an airplane identical to the one on which my father flew, approximately at the site of his last fight. The remains of the pilot, or rather, his uniform, were also found. They correspond to the official list of items of clothing that Leonid Khrushchev wore on his last flight.” Perhaps, in fact, Leonid Khrushchev died the way many thousands of not so famous soldiers and officers died during the war.
After watching one of the Moscow television programs on the NTV channel from the series “Kremlin Wives” by Larisa Vasilyeva, I could not sleep peacefully for several nights. I don’t presume to judge the program as a whole, but the episode about Leonid Khrushchev, the son of Nikita Sergeevich, touched me, as they say, to the quick. The television version turned out to be a set of lies and dirt, which have been appearing on television screens and in other media for quite some time. mass media about Leonid Khrushchev. I will try to prove that he is not a traitor, but a hero. The fact is that senior lieutenant Leonid Nikitovich Khrushchev from December 1942 to March 11, 1943 was my crew commander as part of the 18th Guards Twice Red Banner, Order of Suvorov, second degree, Vitebsk Fighter Aviation Regiment. It was on my plane that Leonid Khrushchev took off on his last combat flight on March 11, 1943, paired with senior lieutenant Ivan Aleksandrovich Zamorin. Leonid then never returned from the mission. And Zamorin returned to his airfield alone on a plane damaged in battle.
Zamorin's story
When Zamorin returned from regiment headquarters, where he reported on the results of the combat mission, I tried to find out from him about the details of the battle: why my commander did not return.
Khrushchev and I flew out to reconnaissance troops in the Zhizdra area,” Zamorin said. - Behind the front line we were attacked by four Focke-Wulfs. Since the interval and distance between our planes was somewhat increased, the Fokkers attacked us in pairs at the same time. In an air battle I attacked one Fokker and shot it down. But at the same time I saw Khrushchev’s plane attacking one of the Fokkers. I managed to repel this attack by an enemy aircraft. But then another enemy plane attacked me, and a machine-gun burst hit my car. I had to sharp decline avoid further attacks by the fascist. At the same time, I lost sight of the car of my wingman Leonid Khrushchev. I did not try to continue the air battle further, since I did not see my partner. There were only Fokkers in the air, and I decided to return to my airfield. I have no idea what happened to my wingman. Whether he was shot down or not, I can’t say specifically.
After this conversation with Zamorin, I did not learn anything new and was still very worried about the loss of my commander. After all, just a few days ago I had a rather long and frank conversation with him. Leonid Khrushchev was dissatisfied with the fact that the regiment commander did not allow him, a combat pilot, to fly. Instead of constantly flying on combat missions, Senior Lieutenant Khrushchev was forced to “iron” the air over his own airfield with his partner under the plausible pretext of protecting him.
“Why is he holding me like a hothouse plant,” Khrushchev was indignant, “or am I not the same citizen of my country as others? Why should I sit at the airfield and look at other pilots who, having returned from a combat mission, pass by without noticing me?!
Khrushchev's voice trembled, he was nervous. At that time we were sitting in different cabins of the Yak-7B aircraft, and I did not see his eyes, but I felt that he was even ready to cry. Khrushchev then firmly stated that he would complain about the regiment commander to the division commander or army commander that he was not allowed into battle.
“Let them put me in any position,” the pilot got excited, “as long as I can fly on missions like others.” Otherwise, my fellow soldiers ignore me as a pilot. You can't live like this any longer!..
The pilot's fate was decided on the ground
As an aircraft technician, I could not judge the level of flight training of my commander. But as a person, seeing his condition, he tried in every possible way to calm Khrushchev, convincing him that everything would work out over time.
Soon, the commander of the First Air Army, General Khudyakov, and the commander of the 303rd Air Division, General Zakharov, arrived at our airfield. At this time, Senior Lieutenant Khrushchev probably turned to one of them, and perhaps to both at the same time. I didn’t see this, but I guess, because after they left for the regiment, there was a change in the staffing table: Khrushchev was appointed an ordinary pilot paired with Senior Lieutenant Zamorin. Leonid himself joyfully informed me about this on the same day and added:
The regiment commander was ordered to allow our couple to perform less important combat missions.
After two or three flight days, when my commander began to fly with Zamorin, his behavior changed dramatically. He looked cheerful and more animated. A smile appeared on his face. And on the eve of that fateful day there was a non-flying day. The squadron pilots trained in shooting from a Mauser pistol, which Khrushchev also had. And the next day, March 11, 1943, near the plane, before the flight, the commander gave me his pistol and asked me to clean it.
How can you fly on a mission without a weapon? - I was surprised.
“And I have another pistol, only smaller,” he answered. It seemed to me then that he good mood got into the cockpit of the plane and together with Zamorin they flew out on a mission.
A light in the end of a tunnel
After the death of Khrushchev, I became “horseless” (that’s what we called technicians and mechanics back then who found themselves without aircraft assigned to them). Only ten days passed, and an event occurred in my life that was to some extent connected with the loss of my commander.
This is the answer I expected from the German pilot. This made me very happy. This means that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that is, hope that Khrushchev did not betray anyone, but actually died.
“I have no more questions,” I told the translator and got out of the cabin. All this surprised him a lot.
Slander has its own origins: envy and revenge
Even then, when Senior Lieutenant Zamorin told me about the last flight of my commander, I noticed the strange expression on the face of the surviving pilot: it was pale, it was clear that he was nervous. Then doubt crept in: was the flight commander telling the truth? Based on the level of his flight training and combat experience, he could not help but foresee the outcome of the battle in which he lost his wingman.
In addition, strange rumors began to circulate among the squadron pilots and they did not pass by the ears of the technicians. In particular, there was a conversation between pilots Lyapunov and Zamkovsky. Their technicians Khaitovich and Kuznetsov told me about this a little later. The pilots expressed their opinion that, supposedly, Senior Lieutenant Khrushchev, due to his poor training as a fighter pilot, could have been pinched by two Fokkers, and then taken prisoner to an enemy airfield. But I did not want to believe these conversations and continued to believe that my commander died in an unequal battle.
Someone skillfully spread these rumors, and over time they broke into the wild. Slanderous fabrications against my commander began to appear in various means mass media. The question is, who needed all this dirt that appeared in the press from time to time? And who was the initiator of all these rumors?
And the initiators of this entire slanderous campaign were, most likely, the closest relatives of the enemies of Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. To take revenge on him, they decided to transfer their anger to his children and grandchildren. This became especially evident after Nikita Khrushchev was removed from the post of First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.
Journalists from even reputable publications, radio and television channels, sometimes unwittingly, without proper grounds and serious documentary evidence, referring only to rumors and fabrications, took the path of supporting slanderers. They unfoundedly claimed that Leonid Khrushchev, being in a hospital in Samara after being wounded and being drunk, allegedly shot a man with a pistol. For this, he was allegedly convicted by a military tribunal and sent to the front.
But this is a lie from beginning to end. During the war, those convicted by a military tribunal were sent not just to the front, but to penal battalions. The pilots were sent to the simplest aviation units. And Leonid Khrushchev, as you know, was sent after treatment to the best on the entire Western Front, the 18th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment, and also with a promotion, to the position of flight commander. In addition, while still in the hospital he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and was awarded military rank- senior lieutenant.
In addition, there was a rule that citizens convicted of killing a person with a weapon had a pistol or machine gun confiscated as evidence. And Khrushchev arrived at the regiment with not one, but even two pistols.
The authors of the fiction also wrote that allegedly Leonid Khrushchev voluntarily surrendered, and then actively collaborated with the Nazis. They even fantasized that Stalin himself ordered the special services to steal him from the Germans, which was apparently done, and that Leonid Khrushchev was sentenced to death, and the sentence was carried out.
Well, what can I say? This is obvious nonsense! Again, there is no documentary evidence of this.
Stalin, having become convinced of the death of Senior Lieutenant Khrushchev, ordered that he be posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree. It was awarded to Leonid's father Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, and subsequently, after his death, the order was inherited by the children of Leonid Khrushchev. This was announced on one of the Moscow television channels.
I don’t want to give other examples of slander against Leonid Khrushchev. I think that these are quite enough to put an end to this dirty business.
In conclusion, I would like to quote an excerpt from last document, whom I had the opportunity to meet. These are excerpts from the repentant letter of the pilot, former leading senior lieutenant Leonid Khrushchev - retired colonel Ivan Zamorin. He was discovered by a correspondent of the newspaper “For the Glory of the Motherland” (Belarusian Military Newspaper) in his personal file former minister Defense of the USSR, Marshal of the USSR Dmitry Fedorovich Ustinov, located in the archives of the Institute military history Russia. Excerpts from this letter were published in the newspaper “For the Glory of the Motherland” on August 28, 1999. This is what Zamorin wrote to Marshal Ustinov, reporting the falsification of the events of that ill-fated air battle. “The command of my regiment was extremely interested in accepting my version at face value. After all, it also directly shared responsibility for the death of the pilot, the son of a Politburo member. I chickened out and made a deal with my conscience, falsifying the facts.
The report did not mention that when the FV-190 rushed to attack my car, coming under my right wing from below, Lenya Khrushchev, in order to save me from death, threw his plane across the fiery salvo of the Fokker... After an armor-piercing attack Khrushchev's plane literally crumbled before my eyes! That is why it was impossible to find any traces of this catastrophe on earth. Moreover, the authorities did not immediately order the search... After all, our battle took place over territory occupied by the Germans.” In conclusion, I would like to say this. For the heroic act that Leonid Khrushchev committed, during the Great Patriotic War he was usually nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. After all, it was truly a feat performed in the name of saving the life of its commander.
So who is he - Leonid Khrushchev: a traitor or a hero? In my understanding, he is a Hero!
Ivan Pavlov, former technician Leonid Khrushchev's plane
The fate of N. S. Khrushchev’s eldest son from his first marriage, Leonid, has become a common topic of various journalistic “investigations” and speculation. A new surge of interest in this topic arose after the ORT channel showed the film “The Lost Son of Nikita Khrushchev” on March 23, 2004. It stated that during the first month of the war LeonidKhrushchevmade 27 combat missions and was awarded the Order of the Red Star. In addition, Khrushchev’s son initiated the use of head protection from fragments of enemy anti-aircraft shells in flights. By the fall of 1941, the regiment had lost 3/4 of its aircraft. Leonid Khrushchev's bomber was also hit, injuring his leg when landing...
The film is silent about the fate of the remaining crew members. . In the Kuibyshev hospital, the issue of amputation was being decided, Leonid refused it, threatening to shoot anyone who approached him for this purpose. The surgeons managed to save the damaged leg, but it became shorter. During the period of treatment, the younger Khrushchev, having argued with an unknown sailor that he would fall into the punishment assigned to him
head a bottle, committed manslaughter. Instead of a tribunal, L. Khrushchev is sent to retrain: now, instead of a bomber, he will fly a Yak-7 fighter. The training continued for a long time, until December 19, 1942, when Leonid was assigned to a fighter aviation regiment. On March 11, 1943, the squadron in which L. Khrushchev served made three sorties (Leonid participated in each). But he did not return from the last one. The pilot of this squadron, N. Zhuk, testified that he “saw how a Focke-Wulf fired at Khrushchev’s car, how Leonid’s plane crashed during a turn and went into a dive towards the ground. He doesn’t know what happened next...” See the description of the Vladimir hotel photo on our website. . An intensified search for the plane and the missing pilot yielded nothing. This was the end of an even larger search for the remains in the late 50s, carried out on the initiative of N.S. Khrushchev. Posthumously, Leonid Nikitovich was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree.
As for the “gutted” search case for the missing pilot, the authors of the film stated that N.S. Khrushchev did not give the command to destroy the “compromising evidence.” But two pages were indeed removed from the officer’s personal file. Which ones exactly were not reported in the film. In conclusion, it was announced: the pilot Leonid Khrushchev was not captured. Didn't work for the Germans. He died as a hero of the Patriotic War. Today we invite readers to familiarize themselves with the exact opposite point of view on the events that took place then.
In December 1981, a week before his death, the former assistant head of the investigative unit for special important matters USSR MGB retired colonel Alexander Alekseevich Romanov told me about the information available in the investigative apparatus of the NKGB-MGB USSR related to Leonid Khrushchev: “In 1943, I held the position of deputy chief of the 1st department of the 5th (investigative) department of the 3rd Directorate NKGB of the USSR, later assistant to the head of the Investigative Unit of the USSR Ministry of State Security for particularly important cases. At the beginning of 1943, an emergency occurred in the city of Kuibyshev: the son of Politburo member N.S. Khrushchev, Leonid, while intoxicated, shot and killed a Red Army officer. A group of NKGB investigators was sent to Kuibyshev to conduct an investigation. Due to my official position, I had the opportunity to familiarize myself with his materials.
Due to health conditions at the beginning of 1943, the pilot Leonid Khrushchev was virtually completely cured, but he was no longer drawn to the front. Without knowing the limits, he drank every day with two of his friends. One of them, a major, had a close relationship with the director of the Kuibyshev wine and vodka factory. Liquor was supplied in boxes. Participants in many drinking parties were Bolshoi Theater ballet dancers evacuated to Kuibyshev. According to their testimony, Leonid Khrushchev drank to such a state that as a man he was incapacitated, he immediately fell asleep.
One day, after drinking alcohol again, a dispute arose between Leonid and the major about which of them was a more accurate shooter. Both claimed to be unsurpassed experts in shooting from personal weapons. In a drunken stupor, they decided to immediately hold a shooting competition. Its essence was as follows: their “batman” stood against the wall, with a cap placed above his head. The task is to get into the cockade. Distance 4 meters. They shot by lot. The major fired first and hit the center of the cockade. The second is Leonid. It hit the officer in the forehead, and he died immediately.
It must be said that this was not the first crime of Leonid Khrushchev. While he was living in Moscow, he had a disagreement with his father and went to live with his friend. When N.S. Khrushchev was appointed to the post of first secretary of the Central Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, Leonid did not go with his father. The elder Khrushchev did not like this. After some time, on his instructions, workers state security Leonid was actually forcibly brought to Kyiv. Having become embittered and spending his time uncontrollably, he found himself part of a large gang that committed robberies, robberies and murders. The gang members were detained and brought to justice. Leonid Khrushchev received 10 years in labor camp, the rest of the participants were sentenced to death. N.S. Khrushchev provided powerful pressure to court to commute his son's sentence. But the court upheld the verdict and Leonid was sent to the place where he was serving his sentence. Then N.S. Khrushchev, using his power, was able to get his son unconvoyed, and instead of the ITL, he was taken to an aviation school in the city of Engels, where he immediately began studying.
The materials of the drunken murder of an officer were reported to Stalin twice. The first time as the head of the NKGB. Stalin proposed to transfer them for consideration to a military tribunal. For the second time, the Head of the Military Tribunal turned to Stalin with the question: “What should I do? It's about about the fate of the son of a Politburo member." Stalin replied: “We have the same law for both the ordinary soldier and the member of the Politburo. The military tribunal must make a decision based on the requirements of the law. If you have committed a crime, you must answer. There is a war going on, soldiers are dying at the front, and in the rear, from idleness, our officers are shooting each other...”
As for the circumstances repeatedly exaggerated by the press about Stalin’s reception of Khrushchev, who asked to spare his son, Romanov recalled that Khrushchev then told Stalin: “I know that my son does not belong to the category of those who will accomplish a feat in battle, and his criminal record will be expunged , he will die in the first battle.” Nikita Sergeevich was wrong.
Soon after Leonid Khrushchev’s mysterious non-return from a combat mission, counterintelligence agencies Smersh established that he was alive, in German captivity and actively collaborating with the Nazis. The head of Smersh, V. S. Abakumov, reported to Stalin about these facts. He was literally furious and ordered to kidnap Khrushchev’s son from the Germans by any means and deliver him to the Lubyanka.
Through the joint efforts of the Smersh GUKR and the 4th Directorate of the NKGB, a special operation was carried out behind enemy lines. It used a large partisan base and special forces brought from " Mainland" The security of the point where Leonid Khrushchev was kept, and military units that could have prevented the operation, were destroyed. Leonid Khrushchev was captured and taken to a partisan base. It was supposed to try him directly at the partisan base, but Stalin ordered Khrushchev’s son to be taken to Moscow, for which a special plane was sent, Leonid Khrushchev ended up in Lubyanka. And - without delay, he was sentenced to death, the sentence was carried out.”
It would seem that these memories of Alexander Alekseevich Romanov are refuted by the documents of the personal file of senior lieutenant Leonid Khrushchev, who performed military feats at the indicated time, and did not work for the Germans. However, all my experience working in military counterintelligence agencies shows that, given the instructions of any member of the Politburo, any documents can be either destroyed or created. It's just a matter of decency. As you know, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev did not suffer from such decency. Today it is no secret to anyone that, on his personal instructions and the instructions of people from his inner circle, most of the investigative cases to the illegal creation of which he was involved were destroyed. Is it then worth doubting that he has destroyed all traces of his own son’s criminal activities?
