The peak of Stalin's repressions occurred in 1937 (353,047 people were shot) and 1938 (328,681 people were killed). From the archival data it is clear that later the number of executions decreased: in 1939 - 2552 people, in 1940 - 1694, in 1950 - 1609 people. 60% of the deaths occurred in Moscow, where, after interrogation and a short period of imprisonment in the Lubyanka, the “troika” passed a verdict.

Initially, the Cheka did not provide for such a position as a full-time executioner: if a sentence is passed, then every security officer is obliged to carry it out. In practice, the same people were involved in the execution of convicts for decades. They were unofficially called a special group. They were able to participate in executions every day. Not every security officer could withstand this.

These people had a “stable” psyche and were dedicated to the cause. Often even their families did not know what they really did. One of the members of the firing squad, security officer Alexander Emelyanov, recalled that they all drank vodka until they lost consciousness and were very tired from “work.” In order to get rid of the smell of blood, they literally had to douse themselves in cologne, but the dogs on the streets still smelled the bloody spirit and shied away from the executioners.

Emelyanov was involved in executions for two decades and was dismissed from service in 1949 due to the development of schizophrenia. Subsequently, the executioner received disability and a pension.

General Blokhin – “record holder” of executions

Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin personally shot, according to one source, 15 thousand people, but there is an opinion that he is responsible for up to 50 thousand human lives. He killed Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Uborevich, Kosior and other prominent figures of that time. Unlike his colleagues in the deadly craft, he lived to old age and did not go crazy. During the executions, he always observed safety precautions, did not drink alcohol, and wore a leather apron and gloves so as not to stain his clothes with blood.

At the beginning of 1939 L.P. Beria wanted to arrest Blokhin for his connection with the previously convicted NKVD Secretary Bulanov and People's Commissar Yagoda. Lavrentiy Pavlovich asked Stalin for permission to arrest, but he refused. The leader of the peoples said that there is no need to imprison such people, they do menial work and do it well.

Blokhin prepared himself for executions: he read books about horses, which he loved very much, and drank several cups of strong tea. In Katyn, 700 people were killed. He carried out sentences passed on his colleagues in the NKVD. In 1945, he received the rank of major general and a pension of 3,150 rubles, which was 5 times the average salary. After Beria's arrest, he was demoted and deprived of his pension. In 1955 he died of a heart attack; according to another version, he shot himself.

Petr Maggo is a fan of his work

Latvian Petr Ivanovich Maggo killed more than 10 thousand people over many years of participation in executions. He began serving in a punitive detachment, after which he became the head of the internal prison of the Cheka, and later the commandant of the Lubyanka. According to the recollections of his colleagues, Maggo liked to kill, and often he went into a rage. For example, he once forced a fellow security officer Popov, whom he did not recognize due to excitement, to stand against the wall.

The executioner considered execution a special art and loved to share his experience. He taught novices how to take convicts to execution and how to fire a shot so that there would be less blood: the barrel of the pistol should be aimed at the base of the neck and raised slightly up, so the bullet would fly out of the eye and there would be little blood. In 1940, after 20 years of “service,” the executioner was retired. A year later, Maggo finally drank himself to death and died from cirrhosis of the liver.

Sardion Nadaraya - Beria's personal guard

Nadaraya Sardion Nikolaevich worked as the head of the internal prison of the NKVD of the Georgian SSR, and later became the head of the personal security of Lavrentiy Beria. On his account, up to 10 thousand were executed.

Vasily and Ivan Shigalev - a family contract of executioners

Brothers Vasily and Ivan Shigalev were distinguished by their responsibility and diligence. When the authorities received a denunciation against Vasily, who was allegedly collaborating with the enemies of the people, the commanders did not proceed with the matter. They understood that the charges were concocted, and they did not want to lose such a valuable employee. During their almost 20 years of service, the brothers received many awards, including military ones, although they had never been to the front. After dismissal, both executioners quickly died: Vasily in 1942, and Ivan in 1945.

Ernst Mach: from shepherd to NKVD major

In his youth, Latvian Ernst Ansovich Mach tended cattle, but the revolution helped him become a prison guard, and later an employee of the NKVD. For 26 years, Mach participated in the execution of prisoners. It is not known exactly how many people he has killed over the years, but it is clear that the number is in the thousands.

Having completed his career as an executioner, Ernst Ansovich was engaged in training young security officers - he passed on to them his knowledge of the master’s shoulder work. Mach was fired from service due to a mental disorder caused by his previous “nervous” work.

A man in a leather apron. The NKVD executioner personally killed more than 10,000 innocent people

General Vasily Blokhin, holder of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, which was given for significant achievements in work. This non-human's entire “work” is murder. The descendants of millions of people tortured in the KGB dungeons must remember both this man and the entire family of the murderer.

In 1937-1938, the chief executioner of Lubyanka, Vasily Blokhin, took part in the most notorious executions. He commanded the execution of Marshal Tukhachevsky and other high-ranking military personnel. on his personal account more than ten thousand victims. Recently a new monument was erected to him...

Name of the permanent executioner Stalin era Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin is in the news today. His signature is attached to a huge number of acts on the execution of execution sentences stored in the Lubyanka archives.
People not privy to the intricacies of Blokhin’s executioner’s craft had to experience shock and awe when they saw him in action. One of the rare testimonies was left by the head of the NKVD for the Kalinin region, Dmitry Tokarev.

He spoke about the arrival in Kalinin in the spring of 1940 of a group of high-ranking NKVD workers led by Blokhin to shoot the Poles held in the Ostashkov camp.

When everything was ready for the start of the first execution, Blokhin, as Tokarev said, came after him:
“Well, let’s go...” We went, and then I saw all this horror...

Blokhin put on his special clothes: a brown leather cap, a long brown leather apron, brown leather gloves with cuffs above the elbows.

It made a huge impression on me - I saw the executioner!” On the first night, the team led by Blokhin shot 343 people. In the following days, Blokhin ordered that no more than 250 people be delivered to him for execution.

In the spring of 1940, under the leadership and with the direct participation of Blokhin, 6,311 Polish prisoners of war were shot in Kalinin. It can be assumed that with such a “shock” action he doubled his previous personal count of those executed.

In relation to Tokarev, who was not directly involved in the executions, Blokhin showed the condescending “nobility” of a professional executioner, aware that not everyone is capable of what he is capable of. When compiling a list of participants in the executions for bonuses, he included the head of the NKVD Tokarev in it...

Who was this man, whose hand carried out Stalin’s tyranny?

The meager lines of his autobiography tell us that he was born in 1895 in the village of Gavrilovskoye, Suzdal region Ivanovo region in the family of a poor peasant. From 1905, while studying, he worked as a shepherd, then as a mason, and also worked on his father’s farm. On June 5, 1915, he enlisted as a private in the 82nd Infantry Regiment in Vladimir and rose to the rank of junior non-commissioned officer.

From June 2, 1917 - senior non-commissioned officer of the 218th Gorbatovsky Infantry Regiment on the German front, was wounded, was treated in a hospital in Polotsk until December 29, 1917. Then, until October 1918, remaining aloof from political storms, he worked as a peasant on his father’s farm, and on October 25, 1918, he volunteered to serve in the Yanovsky volost military registration and enlistment office of the Suzdal region.

Soon Blokhin made his political choice - in April 1921 he joined the Communist Party and immediately, on May 25, 1921, he was assigned to the 62nd battalion of the Cheka troops in Stavropol.

Now his KGB career is developing. From November 24, 1921, he was a platoon commander in the detachment special purpose at the Collegium of the Cheka, from May 5, 1922, platoon commander there, from July 16, 1924, assistant commander of the 61st special purpose division at the OGPU Collegium. On August 22, 1924, Blokhin was promoted to the post of Commissioner of Special Assignments of the Special Branch of the OGPU Collegium.

Now, among other things, his responsibilities include carrying out execution sentences. And indeed, since the spring of 1925, Blokhin’s signature is regularly found under execution certificates.

Perhaps he would have continued to be just one of the ordinary executioners, but a high vacancy suddenly opened up. On March 3, 1926, Blokhin was appointed acting commandant of the OGPU (instead of the absent K.I. Weiss). And already on June 1, 1926, Blokhin was confirmed in this position.

The fate of his predecessor Karl Weiss was unenviable. OGPU Order No. 131/47 dated July 5, 1926, signed by Yagoda, stated the reasons for his removal from office and conviction:

“On May 31, 1926, by a resolution of the OGPU Collegium, the Commandant of the Cheka/OGPU Weiss Karl Ivanovich was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment with strict isolation on charges of relations with employees of foreign missions, obvious spies. Based on the established data available in the case, Weiss is characterized as completely decomposed, having lost all understanding of the responsibility that lay on him as a security officer and communard, and did not stop in the face of the fact of extreme discrediting of the United State Political Administration, of which he was an employee.”

Unlike Weiss, Blokhin behaved correctly and worked continuously as commandant for many years until his retirement.

While at work at the OGPU, Blokhin passed his college tests as an external student in 1932, and completed 3 years of the construction department at the Institute for Advanced Training of Engineering and Technical Workers. But that was where his education ended.

The firing squad, or “special group,” as it was called in the documents, operating under the leadership of Blokhin, was formed from employees of different units. In the late 1920s - early 1930s, there were employees of a special department at the OGPU Collegium, which was responsible for protecting Soviet leaders and Stalin personally. That is, they combined the task of protecting the leaders with participation in regular executions of “enemies of the people.”

In the staff of the central apparatus of the OGPU they were listed as “commissars for special assignments”: A.P. Rogov, I.F. Yusis, F.I. Sotnikov, R.M. Gabalin, A.K. Chernov, P.P. Pakaln, J.F. Rodovansky. Another part of the performers served in the OGPU commandant's office. This is Blokhin himself, as well as P.I. Mago and V.I. Shigalev.

Later, the “special group” included I.I. Shigalev (brother of V.I. Shigalev), P.A. Yakovlev (head of the government garage, then head of the OGPU automobile department), I.I. Antonov, A.D. Dmitriev, A.M. Emelyanov, E.A. Mach, I.I. Feldman, D.E. Semenikhin.

The fate of the executioners was not easy. They were seen quite rarely in families, and when they came after night “work”, they were most often drunk. It is not surprising that the performers died early, before their time, or went crazy.

Grigory Khrustalev died a natural death - in October 1930; Ivan Yusis - in 1931; Peter Mago - in 1941; Vasily Shigalev - in 1942, and his brother Ivan Shigalev - in 1945. Many retired due to disability due to schizophrenia, like Alexander Emelyanov, or a neuropsychiatric illness, like Ernst Mach.

But the repressions did not spare the executioners themselves. Some of them fell into the hands of Blokhin - they were taken to the execution room as victims. So in 1937, Grigory Golov, Petr Pakaln, Ferdinand Sotnikov were shot. I wonder what Blokhin and Mago felt when they shot their former comrades?

Particularly unnerving to the executioners were certain condemned prisoners who glorified Stalin at the time of execution.

Heading a group of executioners who carried out the decisions of the “troika” of the NKVD of the Moscow region in 1937-1938, Isai Berg, being arrested, testified that he received strict instructions from his superiors to “not allow such phenomena in the future” and among the employees of the NKVD special group to “raise mood, try to prove to them that the people they are shooting are enemies.” Although Berg immediately admitted: “We shot a lot of innocent people.”

Berg became famous for the fact that with his direct participation in the Moscow NKVD, a “gas chamber” machine was created, in which the condemned were killed by exhaust gas.

In part, this saved the nerves of the Moscow executioners. They loaded the living into the Taganskaya or Butyrskaya prisons - they unloaded the dead into Butovo, and all the work. And no praise for Stalin. Berg himself explained to the investigation that without such an improvement “it would have been impossible to carry out such a large number of executions."

And in the central group of executioners under the leadership of Blokhin they were ordered to “carry out educational work among those sentenced to death, so that at such an inopportune moment they would not sully the name of the leader.”

In 1937-1938, Blokhin took part in the most notorious executions. He commanded the execution of Marshal Tukhachevsky and high-ranking military officers sentenced along with him. Present at the execution were USSR Prosecutor Vyshinsky and Chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court Ulrich.

Sometimes the “iron commissar” Yezhov himself indulged in his presence. Under him, the execution took on the features of an artistic production. In the fall of 1937: “Before the execution of his former friend Yakovlev, Yezhov placed him next to him to watch the execution of the sentence.” Yakovlev, standing next to Yezhov, addressed him with the following words: “Nikolai Ivanovich! I see in your eyes that you feel sorry for me.” Yezhov did not answer, but was noticeably embarrassed and immediately ordered Yakovlev to be shot.

An equally memorable scene took place when, in March 1938, the sentence in the case of Bukharin, Rykov, Yagoda and other convicts was carried out at the demonstration “Trial of the Right-Trotskyist Bloc.”

Yagoda was the last to be shot, and before that he and Bukharin were put on chairs and forced to watch as the sentence was carried out against other convicts. Yezhov was present and, most likely, was the author of such a sophisticated undertaking.

Before the execution, Yezhov ordered the head of the Kremlin security Dagin to beat the former People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yagoda: “Come on, give it to him for all of us.” At the same time, the shooting of Bulanov’s drinking companion upset Yezhov, and he even ordered that he be given cognac first.

It’s amazing how many of his former colleagues, and even bosses, whom he used to look into the mouth, Blokhin shot.

Closeness to the exposed leadership of the NKVD could cost him his own life. But Stalin valued reliable “performers,” and for some reason he was not afraid that they, accustomed to shooting in the back of the head, constantly loomed behind him as security.

At the beginning of 1939, when Beria was in full force purging the NKVD of Yezhov cadres, material was received that Commandant Blokhin was too close to former secretary NKVD Bulanov, and even to the executed People's Commissar Yagoda himself. At the time, this was seen as evidence of participation in their “conspiratorial plans.”

Beria, having prepared a decree for the arrest of Blokhin, went to Stalin for permission. However, to my surprise, I was refused. In 1953, Beria testified during the investigation: “I.V. is with me. Stalin did not agree, saying that there is no need to imprison such people, they are fulfilling grunt work. He immediately called the head of security N.S. Vlasik and asked him if Blokhin was involved in the execution of sentences and whether he should be arrested? Vlasik replied that he was participating and his assistant A.M. was participating with him. Rakov, and spoke positively about Blokhin.”

Beria, returning to his office, summoned Blokhin and the workers of the “special group” for a conversation. The People's Commissar reflected the results of the “educational” conversation in a decree sent to the archives, which was never executed:
"Owl" secret. I summoned Blokhin and the leading employees of the commandant's office, to whom I reported some of the testimony against them. They promised to work hard and continue to be loyal to the party and Soviet power. February 20, 1939 L. Beria.”

Stalin did not return to the question of Blokhin again.

Usually the condemned were brought to the place of execution in Varsonofevsky Lane, where Blokhin and his team were waiting for them. But sometimes Blokhin himself had to go after the victim. This happened in 1940, when it was necessary to deliver former candidate member of the Politburo Robert Eiche, sentenced to VMN, from Sukhanovskaya prison to execution.

Immediately before being sent to be executed, he was brutally beaten in Beria’s office in the Sukhanovskaya prison: “During the beating, Eikhe’s eye was knocked out and leaking out. After the beating, when Beria was convinced that he could not get any confession of espionage from Eikhe, he ordered him to be taken away to be shot.” And on February 6, 1940, Blokhin had the honor of shooting People’s Commissar Yezhov himself.

The management valued Blokhin. He quickly rose in rank: in 1935 - GB captain, in 1940 - GB major, in 1943 - GB colonel, in 1944 - GB commissar, and in July 1945 received the rank of major general. He was also generously showered with state awards: the Order of Lenin (1945), three Orders of the Red Banner (1940, 1944, 1949), Patriotic War I degree (1945), Red Banner of Labor (1943), Red Star (1936), “Badge of Honor” (1937), as well as two “Honorary Security Officer” badges and a gold watch. He was also awarded an honorary weapon - a Mauser, although he preferred to shoot with a German Walther (it didn’t get so hot).

When Blokhin’s tenure as commandant turned 20, he was awarded a bonus a passenger car"M-20" ("Victory").

It is noteworthy that Blokhin and his henchmen from the “special group” were usually generously rewarded not after, but before, serious execution campaigns.

According to various estimates, the total number of people shot personally by Blokhin over all the years of his service at Lubyanka is at least 10-15 thousand people.

Immediately after Stalin’s death and Beria’s second rise to leadership of the “organs,” Blokhin was sent into retirement. Former commandant Blokhin, by order of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs No. 107 of April 2, 1953, was dismissed due to illness with a declaration of gratitude for 34 years of “impeccable service” in the OGPU-NKVD-MGB-MVD of the USSR.

As Beria explained, Blokhin was relieved of his position as “overstaying his time” - there was a bureaucratic term that denoted a long stay of an employee in the same position and the loss of proper activity and work efficiency. Although, as we know, Blokhin’s work was not sedentary at all, and his health suffered greatly from it.

So, in 1953, Blokhin was solemnly escorted to his well-deserved rest. After the death of the dictator, the need for his services disappeared. No, of course, the new commandant who replaced him, Colonel D.V. Brovkin did not risk being left without “night work” at all, it’s just that its scale immediately became not the same.

Although the former victims were replaced by those who had previously carried out trials and reprisals themselves: under the new post-Stalin leadership, former henchmen of Beria and Abakumov began to be executed. Their cases were actively investigated, and it turned out that Blokhin also had no peace in retirement. He frequently attended interrogations at the Prosecutor General's Office.

During the investigation of the case of Beria and his closest henchmen, the truly invaluable knowledge of the former commandant was needed. After all, he was the performer of all the most important executions. And yet Blokhin was not included as a defendant, although he was the perpetrator of criminal acts.

They probably decided: after all, this was just an executioner, carrying out orders. This is his job, and nothing personal.

After his dismissal, Blokhin was awarded a pension of 3,150 rubles for 36 years of service in the authorities. However, after the deprivation of the rank of general on November 23, 1954, the payment of pensions from the KGB was stopped. It is not clear whether he managed to obtain a regular old-age pension.

According to a medical report, Blokhin suffered from grade 3 hypertension and died on February 3, 1955 from a myocardial infarction.

Ironically, Blokhin was buried in the same place where the ashes of most of his victims rest - at the Donskoye Cemetery. Although the bodies of those executed were burned here in the crematorium and the ashes were poured into unmarked common pits, a new beautiful tombstone with a portrait recently appeared on Blokhin’s grave. Don't forget!

P.S. Vasily Blokhin also led the executions in Katyn, where he personally killed about 700 Poles.

Many security officers served their Motherland without sparing their bellies. But many did not spare someone else’s belly. Killing was not just their job, but their calling. And the first name on this list is Vasily Blokhin, the main executioner of the state security agencies for many years.

20 thousand ruined human lives are the result of a long-term career in the NKVD-MGB-KGB of a native of the Vladimir province, Vasily Blokhin. Some historians estimate the number of his victims at 15-17 thousand, which, however, does not make this number any less terrible. His first signature on execution lists appeared in 1924.

Serious attitude towards work

Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin was born in 1895 into the family of a poor peasant. He joined the ranks of the security officers in 1921. He was immediately appointed commissar for special assignments of the special department at the OGPU board. The duties of this department included executions. So Blokhin became an executioner and killed people until the end of his career. He carried out his last execution a few days before his death in March 1953.

He destroyed people in cramped rooms in the basement of a Moscow building at the intersection of the great Lubyanka and Varsonofevsky Lane. The punitive Soviet service was located there at that time. Thick walls without windows reliably muffled both the screams of the doomed and the sounds of gunfire. Writer Mikhail Osorgin, who miraculously escaped execution, recalled what the Lubyanka basements looked like in 1919: “The floor is paved with tiled tiles. At the entrance there is a balcony where there is a guard. The balcony surrounds the pit, where you descend along a twisted staircase and where 70 people lie down, on planks, on the floor, on a polished big table, and two inside the table - awaiting their fate. Fates are bullets."

In the GPU-NKVD, Vasily Blokhin served under the leadership of the “enemy of the people” Genrikh Yagoda, then enjoyed the favor of Nikolai Yezhov. When Lavrentiy Beria came to power, Blokhin escaped internal purges and even moved up the ranks.

Moreover, he was an executioner with a higher education (unlike many illiterate “colleagues” in the craft). Without interrupting his main job, he managed to graduate from the Moscow Institute of Architecture and Civil Engineering.

Eyewitnesses recall that Vasily Blokhin approached executions scrupulously and decisively. Each time he put on a special leather uniform: a long apron, high chrome boots and a cap. He always shot when he was sober, which made him very different from most other performers who quickly became drunk or ended up in a mental hospital. Before the execution, he liked to relax: drink tea, read a book about horses, do a crossword puzzle, and only then...

List of victims

Blokhin participated in the executions of many famous figures. He considered the Walter system pistol to be his favorite “tool” - it did not overheat so much during shooting. From this weapon, he personally put a bullet in the back of the head of the repressed Soviet military leaders Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Jonah Yakir and Ieronymus Uborevich. Party leaders Ivar Smilga, Lev Karakhan, Emmanuel Quiring and Stanislav Kosior. Writers Mikhail Koltsov and Isaac Babel, playwright Vsevolod Meyerhold. And also to his former bosses and patrons Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolai Yezhov.

When particularly fanatical Stalinists who fell under the tide of repression were executed, unpleasant situations arose. Some of them (for example, Tukhachevsky) before their death loudly shouted: “Glory to Comrade Stalin!”, which demoralized the executioners. The Kremlin accidentally found out about this and ordered Blokhin to carry out educational work with his subordinates before the executions. To cheer them up, to prove that the people they are shooting at are real enemies.

In 1940, Vasily Blokhin led the mass execution of Polish officers in the village of Mednoye near Kalinin (now Tver). At the same time, he personally shot almost 700 people. For which he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. One of his subordinates, the former head of the NKVD for the Kalinin region Dmitry Tokarev, recalled how everything happened then: “Blokhin gave a signal, saying: “Well, let’s go, let’s start.” Blokhin put down his special clothes: a brown leather hat, a long leather coat, brown leather gloves with leggings above the elbow. It was a great impression for me - I saw the executioner...”

To shoot the Poles in Kalinin, together with Blokhin, NKVD Major Nikolai Sinegubov and Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of NKVD Convoy Troops, Brigade Commander Mikhail Krivenko, were sent from Moscow from Moscow. And in order to bury the corpses, Blokhin deliberately brought two excavator operators from Moscow, one of them was an NKVD employee, actually a full-time gravedigger, named Antonov.

One of the performers who worked under Blokhin, named Emelyanov, recalled: “Of course, they drank vodka until they lost consciousness. Whatever you say, the job was not easy. We were so tired that we could barely stand on our feet. And they washed themselves with cologne up to the waist. Otherwise, you won’t be able to get rid of the smell of blood and gunpowder. Even the dogs shied away from us, and if they barked, it was from afar.”

Personal pension

Another excerpt from Dmitry Tokarev’s memoirs about the execution of Poles in 1940: “Blokhin and Rubanov brought people one by one through the corridor, turned to the left, where the “red room” was located. There were various propaganda posters hanging, and there was a plaster statue of Lenin. The “Red Room” or “Lenin Room” was 5 by 5 meters in size. Here the prisoner's identity was checked for the last time, asking for his name and date of birth. Then they marked it on the list so that there was no mistake. Finally, the Polish officer or policeman was handcuffed and taken to the “execution chamber.” Here the prisoner’s life ended with a shot to the back of the head. Experienced executioners shot in the neck, holding the barrel obliquely upward. Then there was a chance that the bullet would exit through the eye or mouth. Then there will be only a little blood, while a bullet shot in the back of the head leads to extensive bleeding (more than one liter of blood flows out). And at least 250 people were killed a day. The corpses of the dead were thrown out of the cell where the murder took place, through the spare doors to the yard where the truck was waiting. The car bodies were washed every day from fragments of brain and blood. The corpses (25-30 for each car) were covered with a tarpaulin, which at the end of the “operation” Blokhin ordered to be burned. The bodies thrown into cars were transported to common trenches in the forest..."

After the destruction of the prisoners (about 6,300 people), Vasily Blokhin and his assistants organized a farewell party. The most “hardworking” were awarded with valuable gifts - a bicycle, a gramophone, a personalized weapon. Blokhin himself received a bonus in the amount of a month’s salary.

Today, when talking about Stalin’s repressions, most often only the Gulag system is remembered. However, he was only part of the repressive machine. Hundreds of thousands of people simply did not make it to the Gulag, ending their journey in execution rooms or training grounds. Most of the death sentences during the years of great terror were carried out directly in Moscow, after short interrogations, time in the Lubyanka and a quick extrajudicial verdict by the “troika”. Therefore, the executioners of the NKVD operated mainly in the capital. Their circle was very limited - only 10-15 people in all of Moscow.

Their small number was explained not so much by the fact that it is difficult to find a person to perform such duties, but by high requirements. A real executioner had to have a stable psyche, professional skills as a killer, possess secrecy (even the closest relatives of the executioners did not know what their work was in the NKVD) and extreme dedication to the job.

Many performers died quite early. Others retired after receiving disability with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. After the death of Stalin and Beria, the star of Vasily Blokhin also went out. He was stripped of the rank of major general and all eight orders with which he was awarded. They also took away my personal pension of 3,150 rubles.

In 1955, at the age of 60, executioner Blokhin passed away. According to one version, he died of a heart attack, according to another, he shot himself. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. Some other Stalinist executioners are also buried there, in places of honor. At the end of the 1960s, during the Brezhnev stagnation, Blokhin was posthumously returned with his titles and orders, effectively rehabilitating him. The whole truth about his affairs came to light only in the 1990s.

Victor Volynsky

General Abakumov. Executioner or victim? Smyslov Oleg Sergeevich

Who are they, executioners from the NKVD?

Who are they, executioners from the NKVD?

Executioner - a person who carries out a sentence of death or corporal punishment, who carries out torture...

At the end of 1937, a certain Lukhovitsky, an ordinary investigator from the NKVD, was in charge of the case of Arkady Emelyanov, the former head of the Main Construction Directorate of the People's Commissariat of Food Industry of the USSR.

In 1955, after rehabilitation, Emelyanov, in his testimony to the military prosecutor of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the USSR, Major of Justice Kozhura, will tell how that same investigator “worked” with him: ““...Do you know why you were arrested?” - Lukhovitsky asks me. "No, I do not know". Lukhovitsky took a step forward, spat in the face and cursed. I rushed at him. He was waiting for this and kicked me in the groin. I fainted. I woke up on the floor in the restroom, which was opposite the investigator’s room, in wet and bloody clothes with broken lips and nose. Lukhovitsky stood next to me and the paramedic who gave the medicine, felt my pulse and said: “There’s nothing terrible.” I was brought back into the room and stood against the wall. Lukhovitsky warned that I would stand on the “conveyor belt” until I signed the testimony. He bullied me until the morning. He was replaced by another 23-25 ​​year old with curly blond hair. I was there until mid-day, trying to persuade him not to torture himself and to give evidence. Then he came in civilian clothes, 20–22 years old. He was replaced late in the evening by Lukhovitsky. So - three days. I was on my feet the whole time. They didn't give us food. While on duty, Lukhovitsky was not given water and was not allowed to smoke. On the fourth day, the blood vessels on my swollen legs burst and my legs turned into a shapeless bloody mass. Hallucinations appeared, at times I lost consciousness and fell. They lifted me up and, as Lukhovitsky put it, “encouraged me with punches”: the bottle caps were pierced with needles and pins that protruded 2–3 millimeters. They pricked the sides and the bottom of the legs. They also used other methods of “encouraging me”: when I closed my eyes, they pulled out hair from my beard and mustache. “Write on a piece of paper who recruited you, we won’t draw up a protocol.” - “Who exactly should I testify against?” - “You yourself should know. But this person must be known in the country and must belong to the leadership of the party.” - "Member of the Central Committee?" - “Don’t let it bother you, even if it’s a member of the Politburo, and keep in mind that we already have Politburo members Rudzutak, Kosior, Chubar, Eikhe.” - “What testimony might interest you?” - “Get your theses. You just need to develop them.” Unable to withstand the “conveyor”, he wrote: “I consider further resistance to the investigator pointless. I admit that I was part of...” A few days later he called: “Do you think of giving evidence?” - “I’ve already given, what else do you need?” - “This is nonsense. We need real testimony.” I was silent. “You will go to Lefortovo prison and write everything that is required there.” Two or three days later, at night, Lukhovitsky was interrogated in Lefortovo with two more investigators and beaten for an hour with a rubber baton, twisted from a naked copper wire, stamped his feet.

The two left and brought Temkin (Aron Temkin, head of the supply department of the People's Commissariat for Food Industry...). Temkin: “I witnessed when the People’s Commissar of the Food Industry gave Emelyanov the order to kill Mikoyan.” Temkin was immediately taken away.

"Do you confirm what Tiomkin said?" - "I understand everything".

“Tyomkin’s testimony is a guaranteed death sentence, and your fate now depends on you.” I did not sign the fabricated interrogation report. They beat me again and put me in a standing position. They stepped on their toes with their heels and tore off their nails. In October I signed without reading."

By the way, Arkady Yemelyanov was forced to sign 82 pages of “handwritten” testimony, that is, dictated by the investigator. For which he received “only” 15 years in the camps

Viktor Semenovich Abakumov simply could not help but be an executioner when he crossed the threshold of the Secret Political Department of the GUGB NKVD of the USSR in 1937. He worked there, the worst thing for the Soviet people and for Soviet country time: 1937 and 1938.

Could it really have passed him by or bypassed him? After all, if he didn’t know how to do something, then he was taught, and he had to learn. How else?

The writer Yuri Druzhnikov once wrote down the memoirs of security officer Spiridon Kartashev: “I had hatred, but at first I didn’t know how to kill, I learned. IN Civil War I served in CHON. We caught deserters from the Red Army in the forests and shot them on the spot. Once they caught two white officers, and after the execution I was ordered to trample them on horseback to see if they were dead. One was alive, and I finished him off...

I personally shot 37 people and sent a large number to camps. I know how to kill people so that the shot is not heard... The secret is this: I force the mouth to open and shoot close. I just feel warm blood, like cologne, but I can’t hear a sound. If it weren’t for the seizures, I wouldn’t have retired so early.”

On July 30, 1937, Nikolai Yezhov signed order No. 00447 “On the operation to repress former kulaks, criminals and other anti-Soviet elements.” According to this order, being in the first category of repressed people meant execution, and in the second - in the Gulag. Unfortunately, there was no third category.

The beginning of the events, called decades later the “Great Terror,” dates back to July 3, 1937, when the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Stalin handed over to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR N.I. Yezhov and the regional governing bodies of the party, the decision of the Politburo taken a day earlier to begin a campaign of repression... And after July 4, absolutely all units of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD of the USSR immediately began looking through their file cabinets and archives in search of the victims indicated in the order...

There was a lot of work, but when the implementation of order No. 00447 began, it became much more. There was a catastrophic shortage of people...

For example, in 1937 alone, 936,750 were arrested in connection with the NKVD (for counter-revolutionary crimes, including anti-Soviet agitation - 234,301, for other crimes - 157,301). In total, 790,665 were convicted (including 353,074 to capital punishment).

In 1938, 638,509 were arrested on behalf of the NKVD (for counter-revolutionary crimes - 593,326, including for anti-Soviet agitation - 57,366, for other crimes - 45,183). In total, 554,258 were convicted (including 328,618 to capital punishment).

That is, in 1937–1938, 681,692 were sentenced to capital punishment. For comparison, from 1921 to 1929, in the cases of the Cheka-OGPU, only 23,391 were sentenced to capital punishment. From 1930 to 1936, in the cases of the OGPU-NKVD, to capital punishment 40,137 were convicted. And from 1939 to the first half of 1953, 54,235 were sentenced to capital punishment. Agree that the figures very accurately reproduce the dynamics of the “Great Terror” and those two years (1937, 1938) in this regard are indicative.

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn in his famous “Archipelago” wrote about the investigation in the USSR security agencies: “If Chekhov’s intellectuals, who were all wondering what would happen in twenty, thirty, forty years, were told that in forty years there would be a torture investigation in Rus', they will squeeze the skull with an iron ring, lower a person into a bath of acids, torture him naked and tied with ants, bedbugs, push a ramrod hot on a primus stove into the anus (“secret brand”), slowly crush the genitals with a boot, and in the easiest case, torture a week of insomnia, thirst and being beaten into bloody pulp - not a single Chekhov play would have reached the end, all the heroes would have gone to a madhouse.”

Further, Alexander Isaevich emphasizes that there was no such list of torture and abuse that would be handed over to investigators in printed form. It was simply required that each investigative department, within a given time frame, supply the tribunal with a given number of rabbits who had confessed to everything. But it was simply said (orally, but often) that all measures and means are good, since they are aimed at a high goal; that no one will question the investigator for the death of the person under investigation; that the prison doctor should interfere as little as possible with the investigation. Probably, they organized a friendly exchange of experience, “learned from the advanced”; Well, “material interest” was declared - increased pay for night hours, bonuses for compressing the investigation time; it was warned that investigators who would not cope with the task...

Realizing that the elders were insuring themselves, some of the ordinary investigators (not those who frantically revel) also tried to start with weaker methods, and in the build-up to avoid those that left too obvious traces: a knocked out eye, a torn off ear, a broken spine, and even a complete body blue

That is why in 1937 we do not observe - except for insomnia - complete unity in different regional departments, among different investigators of the same department. There is a rumor that Rostov-on-Don and Krasnodar were notable for the cruelty of torture. In Krasnodar they came up with something original: they forced people to sign blank sheets of paper, and then filled them in with lies. However, why torture: in 1937 there was no disinfection, typhus, corpses lay in crowded conditions for 5 days, those who went crazy in the cells were finished off with sticks in the corridor.”

He gives a list of some of the simplest techniques that broke the will and personality of the prisoners, leaving no traces on his body.

1. Night. At night, a prisoner torn from sleep cannot be balanced and sober during the day; he is pliable.

2. Persuasion in a sincere tone.

3. Strong language.

4. Impact of psychological contrast.

5. Preliminary humiliation.

6. Any technique that leads the defendant into confusion.

7. Intimidation.

9. Playing on affection for loved ones.

10. Sound method.

11. Tickling.

12. Extinguishes a cigarette on the suspect’s skin.

13. Light method, etc.

There was another way to force someone to speak - beating, which leaves no traces:

“They beat me with rubber bands, they beat me with mallets, and they beat me with sandbags. It is very painful when they hit the bones, for example with an investigator’s boot on the shin, where the bone is almost on the surface. Brigade commander Karpunich-Braven was beaten for 21 days in a row. (Now he says: “And after 30 years, all my bones and my head hurt.”) Recalling his own experience and according to his stories, he counts 52 methods of torture. Or here’s another way: they clamp their hands in a special device - so that the defendant’s palms lie flat on the table, and then they hit the joints with the edge of a ruler - you can scream! Should I distinguish between beatings and knocking out teeth? (Karpunich was knocked out eight.).”

There was such an investigator, Alexander Grigorievich Khvat. In 1938, from the post of head of the Organizational Department of the Central Committee of OSOAVIAKHIM, he came to work in the NKVD in the 2nd department of the 6th department of the 1st directorate. He was already 30 years old then. Naturally, they immediately appointed him a detective officer and awarded him the rank of junior lieutenant of the State Security Service.

Already in November 1938, Khvat participated in the investigation into the case of those arrested executives Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, accused of belonging to an anti-Soviet organization headed by the 1st Secretary of the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks B.E. Kalmykov. During interrogations by Khvat, Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the KBASSR Kh.B. Khaburov, initially denying his guilt, eventually admitted to involvement in the above-mentioned organization, although he later retracted his confession and stated that he had incriminated himself and others after using physical force against him.

In 1939–1940, as an investigator and assistant to the head of the investigative unit of the State Main Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR, Khvat was in charge of the affairs of M.I.’s wife. Kalinin, former deputy people's commissar of the KBASSR D.V. Kashcheev, and in 1940–1941 - the case of the vice-president of VASKhNIL, academician N.I. Vavilova.

"Famous business"! Khvat tormented the vice-president of VASKhNIL, academician Vavilov, for eleven months - calling him four hundred times for long, hours-long interrogations.

“That, according to eyewitnesses, after these interrogations, Vavilov could not go on his own: the guards dragged him to cell No. 27 in Butyrka prison and threw him near the door. Cellmates helped Vavilov climb onto the bunks and take off his boots from his huge, swollen, blue feet. The academician was placed on the so-called “stands” - this torture meant that a person was ten and more hours(sometimes it lasted for days, and then the veins in the legs of the tortured burst) they were not allowed to sit down... After six months of such an investigation (Vavilov was accused of espionage and sabotage), from a strong, fit, even slightly dapper fifty-year-old man, the academician turned into a very elderly man.” , says Evgenia Albats.

She miraculously managed to meet with that same investigator...

“I went up to the third floor of this house and called. A middle-aged woman opened the door.

Does Alexander Grigorievich Khvat live here?

“Dad,” she called quietly.

He came out of the next room. Broad-chested. Once, apparently, tall. Bare skull framed by short hair gray hair. Old age, although he looked younger than his eighty years, was betrayed by a shuffling gait and a kind of hunched figure. No, more precisely, not hunched over - bent over: as if something was pressing on him from above and bending him more and more in a strange half-bow, pressing him more and more to the ground. Then I will understand: it was not only age that pressed him - fear.

With a professional gesture, Hvat opened my editorial ID, read it carefully, and checked the photograph.

On what issue? - asked.

Let’s go into the room,” I said, delaying the possibility of being expelled.

Please,” he obediently opened the door of the room and let me go forward.

There was a double bed in the room - it was clear from the rumpled pillows that he was lying down when I arrived. There were also two bedside tables for linen, a wardrobe, and a couple of chairs. Nothing else.

Hvat placed a chair by the window so that the light fell on my face. He sat down against the wall.

I started straight away:

Did you work as an NKVD investigator?

Remember, in 1940 you handled the case of Vavilov, an academician...

Of course I remember...

Hvat's submission amazed and shackled me. I expected anything, but not this. All the aggression prepared ahead of time turned out to be unnecessary.

An old man was sitting in front of me. Just an old man. Tired and seemingly sick...

I awkwardly squeezed out:

Witnesses claim that you used harsh investigative methods against Vavilov... (I was looking for a softer word)...

Albogachiev - he was a poorly educated person. Well, the national people, you understand... - Khvat repeated again. - He had a relationship with him... it wasn’t very good...

Tell me, did you believe that Vavilov was a spy?

Of course, I didn’t believe in espionage - there was no data. That is, there was a conclusion from the intelligence department - there was one in the Main Economic Directorate of the NKVD: so and so, a spy. The intelligence department “developed” it, but they did not transfer the data to us - they kept it for themselves. They also wrote arrest warrants for such cases. Well, as for sabotage, he did something wrong in his agricultural science. Here I collected an examination - the academician headed it, and went to see Trofim Lysenko. They, that is, academicians and professors, confirmed: yes, it did harm.

Didn't you feel sorry for Vavilov? After all, he was threatened with execution. So, humanly speaking, wasn’t it a pity?...

Hvat laughed:

What do you mean sorry? - That's what he said. - Well, is he alone, or what?...”

For his ruthless work, Khvat received the rank of “Colonel” already in September 1944. That is, in just six years, from 1938 to 1944, he was promoted from junior lieutenant of the GB to that high rank. He had orders and medals.

He was fired from the authorities in 1955. The spirit was not lost: from the same year he worked as the head of the 1st department of the Institute of Applied Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in 1958 he got a job as the head of the department and secretary of the party bureau of the Directorate of the Ministry of Medium Engineering of the USSR.

We remembered about Khvat at the end of 1958, during the period of rehabilitation. Now, to change the previous wording: dismissed from service due to official inconsistency with the application of the restriction in pension provision provided for by Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 2509 of September 24, 1953. And in September 1962 “for a gross violation of Soviet legality while at work in bodies of the NKVD-MGB of the USSR" by decision of the CPC under the Central Committee of the CPSU, he was expelled from the party.

The head of the NKVD for the Kalinin region, D. Tokarev, once testified about the arrival in the spring of 1940 of a group of high-ranking NKVD workers led by Blokhin in the city of Kalinin to shoot the Poles held in the Ostashkov camp. “When everything was ready for the start of the first execution, Blokhin, as Tokarev said, came after him: “Well, let’s go...” We went, and then I saw all this horror... Blokhin put on his special clothes: a brown leather cap, a long brown leather cap apron, brown leather gloves with leggings above the elbows. It made a huge impression on me - I saw the executioner!” On the first night, the team led by Blokhin shot 343 people. In the following days, Blokhin ordered that no more than 250 people be delivered to him for execution. In the spring of 1940, under the leadership and with the direct participation of Blokhin, 6,311 Polish prisoners of war were shot in Kalinin,” writes N. Petrov.

Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin began his security service in 1921, having received an appointment to the 62nd battalion of the Cheka troops in Stavropol. He is only 26 years old.

Three years later, Blokhin was promoted to the post of Commissioner of Special Assignments of the Special Branch under the OGPU Collegium. In fact, since August 22, 1924, his duties included carrying out execution sentences.

In March 1926, Blokhin was appointed temporary acting commandant of the OGPU, and on June 1 of the same year he was confirmed in this position.

As N. Petrov writes, “in 1937–1938, Blokhin took part in the most notorious executions. He commanded the execution of Marshal Tukhachevsky and high-ranking military officers sentenced along with him. Present at the execution were USSR Prosecutor Vyshinsky and Chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court Ulrich. Sometimes the “iron commissar” Yezhov himself indulged in his presence. Under him, the execution took on the features of an artistic production. In the fall of 1937: “Before the execution of his former friend Yakovlev, Yezhov placed him next to him to watch the execution of the sentence.” Yakovlev, standing next to Yezhov, addressed him with the following words: “Nikolai Ivanovich! I see in your eyes that you feel sorry for me.” Yezhov did not answer, but was noticeably embarrassed and immediately ordered Yakovlev to be shot.”

Blokhin’s career turned out to be rapid due to the special demand for professionals like him.

If in 1935 he was awarded the rank of “GB Captain,” then already in 1944 he became a GB Commissioner, and in 1945 - Major General. On the chest of this executioner-general sparkled: the Order of Lenin, three Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of the Patriotic War of the first degree, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, the Order of the Red Star, the Order of the Badge of Honor, two badges of the “Honorary Chekist”, etc.

Today it is difficult to even imagine a general shooting people with a German Walther. They say that during all his years of service he personally shot at least 10-15 thousand people at Lubyanka. It was for these merits that he was awarded and rewarded. For example, he was awarded an honorary weapon - a Mauser, a gold watch, and even an M-20 (Victory) passenger car.

In 1953, Blokhin was retired by order of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs No. 107 dated April 2, 1953, with a declaration of gratitude for 34 years of “impeccable service” in the authorities. For 36 years of service, he was awarded a pension in the amount of 3,150 rubles. Huge money for those times! But, after deprivation of the rank of general in November 1954, the payment of pensions from the KGB was stopped. He died on February 3, 1955 from a myocardial infarction. It turns out that the executioner had long suffered from stage 3 hypertension. Who knows, maybe she was professional?

Blokhin had both colleagues and subordinates. For example, in 1922–1929, acts of execution were signed by G. Khrustalev, G.V. Golov, P.I. Maggo, A.K. Chernov, A.P. Rogov, F.I. Sotnikov, V.I. Shigalev, P.P. Pakaln, P.M. Gabalin, I.F. Yusis.

Moreover, most of them were employees of a special department at the OGPU Collegium, which was responsible for protecting Soviet leaders. They were listed as “commissars for special assignments” (A.P. Rogov, I.F. Yusis, F.I. Sotnikov, R.M. Gabalin, A.K. Chernov, P.P. Pakaln, Ya.F. Rodovansky. Others were their hard service in the OGPU commandant's office under Blokhin: P. I. Maggo and V. I. Shigalev.Later they would be joined by I. I. Shigalev, P. Ya. Yakovlev, I. I. Antonov, A. D. Dmitriev, A. M. Emelyanov, E. A. Mach, I. I. Feldman, D. E. Semenikhin.

After the executions, as after any hard work, these men went on a drinking spree. One of them remembers: “Of course, they drank vodka until they lost consciousness. Whatever you say, the work was not easy. We were so tired that sometimes we could barely stand on our feet. And they washed themselves with cologne. To the waist. Otherwise, you won’t be able to get rid of the smell of blood and gunpowder. Even the dogs shied away from us, and if they barked, it was from afar.”

B. Sopelnyak in his book “Executioners of the Stalin era” says: “Nature took its toll and punished the executioners in its own way: they retired deeply disabled. The same Maggo finally became an alcoholic, acquired a whole bunch of various diseases and died shortly before the war. Pyotr Yakovlev developed cardiosclerosis, pulmonary emphysema, varicose veins, and deafness in the right ear - a sure sign that he shot with the right hand.

His colleague Ivan Feldman retired as a disabled person with so many diseases that he did not live even a year. And Lieutenant Colonel Emelyanov, as they say now, has gone crazy. The order on his dismissal says: “Comrade Emelyanov is being transferred to retirement due to illness (schizophrenia), associated exclusively with long-term operational work in the authorities.”

The former Latvian shepherd, then the prison guard and, finally, the exemplary employee for special assignments Ernest Mach found himself in the same position. Mach devoted twenty-six years to his beloved work, rose to the rank of major, was appointed teacher of the “youngsters” - as young security officers were called, received several orders and became a psychopath.

In any case, his immediate superior, in a report to management, asks that Mach be dismissed from the authorities as a person “suffering from a neuropsychic illness.”

Lieutenant Colonel Dmitriev is retiring as a first group disabled...

But two brave colonels Antonov and Semenikhin retired not due to illness, but due to age. Judging by their track records, they realized in time what daily shooting at live targets leads to, and made their way to group leaders - in other words, they themselves did not shoot in recent years, but only watched as their subordinates did it.”

By the way, in 1937 they themselves turned out to be victims and were shot by G.V. Golov, P.P. Pakaln, F.I. Sotnikov. Yusis (1931), Maggo (1941), V. Shigalev (1942), I. Shigalev (1944) died of natural causes.

Indeed, it was not easy to be an executioner!

Returning to the executioner Boris Rhodes, whom N.S. Khrushchev called a worthless man, with a chicken mind, literally a degenerate in moral terms, I would like to dwell on some of the thoughts of his son.

In particular, Valery Rhodes recalls: “Then in Moscow I didn’t see him for weeks: I woke up - he was gone, at work, went to bed - he was still at work. He came at night, left at night - such gangster work.”

The son did not see his father, and the father did not find time to talk to his son. He had no time. In 1938–1941, Rhodes conducted the most high-profile cases, interrogating prominent leaders of the country, scientists and artists. These are members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks S. Kosior and V. Chubar; candidates for Politburo members P. Postyshev and R. Eikhe; general secretary Central Committee of the Komsomol A. Kosarev; members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks A. Stetsky and N. Antipov; a number of secretaries of regional committees: Kabardino-Balkarian - B. Kalmykov, Omsk - D. Bulatov, Ivanovsky - I. Nosov; prominent military leaders Meretskov, Stern, Loktionov, Smushkevich, Rychagov and other military men, and leaders of the defense industry, arrested in 1941; writer I. Babel, director V. Meyerhold.

It was he, Rhodes, who tortured them and forced them under torture to give false testimony against themselves.

And so his son reflects: “Dozens of times I myself mercilessly sentenced my father to death, I myself led him to execution, mentally cocked and pressed the trigger, and a bullet of remorse pierced my own head...

Sometimes, if no one close to me was around for a long time, I would bring myself to tears, to sobs, to fainting with these masochistic exercises. I an old man, this is not easy, it’s a shame to admit, but what is this shame worth next to the greater shame for my own father.

Hundreds of times I built a defense for my father, selected excuses, frantically searched for and found lies and flaws in Khrushchev’s speech, in himself. In the CPSU, in Beria’s management of the punitive body, in the legitimacy of the existence and activities of this body itself, in the policies of Stalin, in the Leninist revolution, in Marxist ideology, in the structure of the state.”

And so he finally speaks in defense: “Well, my father wouldn’t exist. In general, it would not have existed, would not have been born, would not have joined the security officers, but would have become, as befits a Jew, a men's tailor, like his father, my grandfather... What then? Would these Chubar, Kosior and Kosarev have remained alive? Wouldn't they even be arrested? Nonsense!

It wasn’t him, it wasn’t my father who opened a case against them, signed warrants for their arrest. He's just a helper. Executor. The main killer is not he, not the father! If it weren’t for him, all the same, these and all the others tortured by my father would have been arrested, beaten, tortured, broken, extorting confessions, tried and shot in exactly the same way and at the same time! It was not my father who needed their lives, their blood—the damned revolution.”

Here he defines guilt: “My father is personally guilty of not wanting to cut men’s trousers, he wanted to reorganize the world, to compete with the Lord God.

Guilty of joining the demonic Komsomol... the satanic team of “moral degenerates” - he did not disdain to join the security officers.

Because he tried to be better than others in the demonic camarilla, he became a fanatic.

My father is to blame for the fact that, once he realized where he was and with whom, he was unable to get out, and, having failed to get out, he did not shoot himself.”

But he finds a mitigating circumstance: “His older brother Lev, the kindest of them, told me that his father shared with him, complained about fate, about his bloody debt, repented, revealed the secret that he often thinks of shooting himself. I feel sorry for my wife and small children - well, yes, but what about him, a moral degenerate.

Lev was a simple-minded guy, not much of an invention, but I didn’t believe him. I would like to believe it, I would dream it, but I thought and worried about it all too much and too hard.

But Nelya, my older sister, also told me the same thing once. She and I, my father’s beloved daughter... only spoke about him a couple of times, and even then briefly. And she knew more than me. He often talked to her and told her something about himself. And so she told me that one day my father admitted that life was not so nice to him and if it weren’t for her, not for the family, not for my mother, he would have shot himself.”

I would like to believe in all this, but what about the sophisticated fantasy of the executioner, when he did not just interrogate with passion, he tortured as no one had tortured before...

He became sophisticated in these executions and, apparently, enjoyed it. But, being a weak man (he tortured people who did not have the opportunity to answer him), he would never have been able to shoot himself. To do this, he had to be at least a little stronger, more courageous, and also have at least some kind of soul that could be at least a little compassionate... But it, apparently, was not there, or it rotted in the executioner along with the man!