Brezhnev's eminence grise. Big people
You write that the communists are traitors and betrayed us, people don’t understand. The CPSU as a party in its entirety betrayed the country and did not fight for it. And this still doesn’t REACH people! Fantastic. They all love the USSR. The only country in the world in which almost all the children and grandchildren of the leaders live abroad!
Stalin's daughter Svetlana renounced Soviet citizenship and lived in America until her death. She preferred staying in a nursing home to life in the Russian Federation. Stalin's granddaughter - Chris Evans. She is 40 years old, lives in Portland, and owns a vintage store.
US citizen Sergei Khrushchev visits Moscow on visits, mainly to the presentations of his books and the funerals of his relatives.
Nikita Sergeevich’s great-granddaughter, Nina Lvovna Khrushcheva, teaches at the Faculty of International Relations at New School University in New York.
The granddaughter of the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR and the General Secretary of the CPSU Yuri Andropov, Tatyana Igorevna Andropova, taught choreography in Miami. Her brother Konstantin Igorevich Andropov also lives there, in the USA.
Leonid Ilyich's great-grandson on his son's side, Dmitry, is now studying political science at Oxford University. Leonid Brezhnev’s niece, Lyubov Yakovlevna, also lives in California.
The daughter of the main ideologist of late communism, the ascetic Mikhail Suslov, Maya Mikhailovna Sumarokova, has lived in Austria with her husband and two sons since 1990.
Gorbachev's daughter Irina Virganskaya lives mainly in San Francisco, where the main office of the Gorbachev Foundation is located, where she works as vice president.
It is surprising that all the passionate admirers of the cult of the USSR do not notice or do not want to notice one simple historical pattern. Not a single descendant of top US leaders moved for permanent residence either to the Soviet Union or to modern Putin’s Russia. But the descendants of almost all Soviet leaders, with the exception of Lenin, who has no descendants, and Chernenko, who led the country for less than a year, live and work in Western countries. ...
Reviews
Don’t you think that those who betrayed their homeland for the money of the United States and its satellites have left? Why should top US leaders go to the USSR if they have a lot of money that you can’t spend in the USSR?
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Where do the descendants of the Kremlin leaders live today?
Read: 11736Under their leadership, the country moved by leaps and bounds towards a bright communist future, not for itself (they never dreamed of themselves), for their children and grandchildren... Where do the descendants of our Soviet leaders live now, who offered everyone to sacrifice themselves for the sake of future descendants.
After the collapse of the communist experiment, the descendants of its builders did not go to China, North Korea or Cuba to complete the implementation of the Great Dream.They all moved to normal countries, the EU and the USA.
Which shows the true attitude towards the values of the “special path” in the families of those who promoted it.But some of the subjects left to the mercy of fate still run through the streets with icons of Stalin...
This is Stalin's granddaughter - Chris Evans. She is 40 years old, lives in Portland, and owns a vintage store.
"U.S. Citizen Sergei Khrushchev visits Moscow on short visits, mainly at presentations of his books and funerals of his relatives.
Great-granddaughter of Nikita Sergeevich, Nina Lvovna Khrushcheva, teaches in the Department of International Relations at New School University in New York.
The granddaughter of the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR and the General Secretary of the CPSU Yuri Andropov taught choreography in Miami, Tatyana Igorevna Andropova. Her brother also lives there, in the USA. Konstantin Igorevich Andropov.
Leonid Ilyich's great-grandson on his son's side, Dmitry, is now studying political science at Oxford University.
Leonid Brezhnev’s niece also lives in California - Lyubov Yakovlevna.
Daughter of the main ideologist of late communism, ascetic Mikhail Suslov, Maya Mikhailovna Sumarokova, has lived in Austria with her husband and two sons since 1990.
Having lived for almost 80 years, by his very appearance he seemed to preserve time, remaining an adherent of the unchanged long-skirted drape coat, astrakhan pie hat and old-fashioned rubber galoshes with a scarlet flannelette lining. Arriving at a Politburo meeting, he carefully placed his galoshes under the hanger, and everyone who came knew that the galoshes were there, which meant Mikhail Andreevich had arrived. And one day, for some reason, he took off his galoshes before getting into the car and leaving for work. Caring guards set up a post near them. In the evening, Mikhail Andreevich got out of the limousine, put on his galoshes and entered the house.
He could not stand driving a car at speeds over 40 kilometers per hour. Officials rushing to work tried to get through before Suslov's limousine pulled out onto the Rublevo-Uspenskoye Highway. Like many other Politburo colleagues, he loved volleyball and dominoes. When I went for a walk, I made sure to pick up all the twigs and branches that fell from the tree and put them in neat piles. If I saw mushrooms along the way, I picked them up too. I was angry with the dacha commandant when the workers painting the fence touched the bird cherry bushes. At the same time, he referred to Lenin, who, according to legend, fired his commandant for such an attitude towards plants. At Kremlin receptions and banquets, when approaching the table with drinks, he carefully took a glass of juice with two fingers and specified what juice was in it. Didn't drink alcohol at all.
Once in the Stavropol region, one nurse from the regional hospital said that she was caring for the wife of Mikhail Andreevich Suslov - then he held the position of first secretary of the Stavropol regional party committee. According to the nurse, Mikhail Andreevich’s wife was a kind and pretty woman. And, leaving the hospital, she said: “You saved me, literally pulled me out of the other world. If you ever need my help, come and call. I will try to help you. I am in your debt." And in fact, she really helped many people in difficult life situations.
Suslova's wife, Elizaveta Alekseevna, was a doctor, candidate of medical sciences, and during the war she actively worked in military hospitals. She died in 1972. Sumarokov’s daughter Maya Mikhailovna is a Doctor of Historical Sciences in the field of Balkan studies. Granddaughter - Elena. She graduated, of course, from MGIMO University of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs and married the son of the then famous international journalist Melor Sturua - Andrey.
M.A. Suslov, who died on January 26, 1982, was buried on Red Square near the Kremlin wall, the funeral was broadcast throughout the Soviet Union. Three days of mourning were declared.
And the mackintosh of a member of the Politburo, secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, twice Hero of Socialist Labor Mikhail Andreevich Suslov - a leader of the communist party, the Soviet state and the international communist movement is kept in the Khvalynsky Museum of the Ulyanovsk region. According to the description: “Classic cut mackintosh: single-breasted with three button fastening; The sleeve is sewn in, barely narrowed at the bottom. English collar. Two lower side welt pockets are located vertically along the hem. The color is beige-gray, slightly faded. Passed on in 1982 by M.A. Suslov’s daughter, Maya Mikhailovna Sumarokova.”
All these everyday details from the memories of former close associates would not have been of public interest if not for the scale of the position of the second person in the party, and therefore in the state, which he held for many years.
His contemporaries recalled how Mikhail Andreevich twisted his feet in a special way when walking and cracked his fingers, like the famous literary character Alexei Karenin, whose temperament and demeanor were strikingly similar to the main ideologist of the CPSU. And he was also compared with the non-fictional main ideologist of the Russian Empire - Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev. Or maybe this is a genetic trait of “zealots” and “guardians”, necessary to maintain the mechanisms of imperial spirituality and its specific intellectual activity in good condition?
One way or another, Suslov, like his historical predecessors, performed these functions with the maximum efficiency possible for the circumstances offered by history. Not only by him, of course, but with his direct participation, and subsequently under his direct leadership, a comprehensive system of ideological control (and not only control, but, perhaps, ideological existence) was built, which was in many ways an essential characteristic of the system.
What was the “ideological work” that Mikhail Andreevich supervised? Formally, this is the third group of tasks in the hierarchy of the management system that operated in Soviet times. The party-state managed the economy, placed personnel, maintained the administrative and repressive apparatus, and the armed forces in working order. “Ideology” according to the staffing table was assigned to the “third secretary”. But this was only a formal distribution.
For ideology, or rather, for the gaps on this front, they asked, first of all, from the “first”, but the “first” was rarely allowed to interpret “issues of theory” and formulate ideological assessments. Until 1953, this was the indisputable prerogative of the leader. Afterwards - for 30 years - this was done by specially trained priests, the main one among whom was the man who occupied a difficult corner office on the fifth floor of building number 4 on Old Square. Then these apartments were occupied successively by Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, Mikhail Gorbachev, and after the August 1991 revolution - by Gennady Burbulis, who bore the title of “gray eminence” under early Yeltsin.
Anyone who was a member of the party or Komsomol will easily remember the ideological absurdities of that time - the boredom of political education, the casuistry of formulations, and the open discrepancy between slogans and reality. But the ideological apparatus of the Central Committee, which may seem strange today, was a motley conglomerate of adherents of the most diverse scientific and political views; philosophers and political scientists of the most diverse views coexisted in it.
In our opinion today, the implanted party education, political education and other ideological techniques of the apparatus headed by Suslov were worthless and did not seem to bring any benefit to society. However, one cannot help but notice something else - after all, even information planted like potatoes still remained information, that is, whatever one may say, a cultural factor. And whether you like it or not, some amount of knowledge about what was happening was deposited in the heads of the masses.
And society paradoxically owes the vigorous political activity at the turn of the 80s and 90s to the forced introduction of political knowledge, which was carried out by the system of party political education. And the post-Soviet feeling of ideological vacuum, which was by no means compensated by the artificial search for a national idea in the mid-90s, makes itself felt today.
The horrors of repressions and executions, the Gulag and the Holodomor - it was all for the sake of a bright communist future.
Under the leadership of the Bolsheviks and Soviet leaders, the country took leaps and bounds towards a bright communist future - not for itself (they didn’t dream of it), for its children and grandchildren. But the descendants of these leaders, who proposed that everyone sacrifice themselves for the sake of future generations, prefer to live and live in the West (in “decaying” Europe and “damned” America).
The main figure in this epic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, had no children. But look at the geography of settlement of the scions of the Bolshevik-communist elite, including also the contemporaries of the post-Soviet society, the families of current deputies and ministers.
After the collapse of the communist experiment, the descendants of its builders did not go to China, North Korea or Cuba to complete the implementation of the Great Dream. They all moved to normal countries, the EU and the USA.
Stalin's son Vasily died at the age of 40. Daughter Svetlana, in 1966 in friendly India, came to the American embassy and asked for political asylum. In 1970, she married an American and changed her name to Lana Peters. Chris Evans gave birth to a daughter.
In 1984, she came to the USSR and restored Soviet citizenship, but 2 years later she renounced it for the second time and returned to the USA. The older children, son and daughter, whom she abandoned in the USSR after her escape, never found a common language with their mother.
In 2008, in one of her rare television interviews with a Russian journalist, Svetlana refused to speak Russian, citing the fact that she is not Russian: her father is Georgian, and her mother is half German, half Gypsy. She died in 2011 in the USA, her body was cremated. It is unknown where the ashes of Stalin's only daughter are buried. Stalin's granddaughter Chris Evans lives in the USA, does not understand Russian and works in a clothing store.
Stalin's granddaughter - Chris Evans. She is 40 years old, lives in Portland, and owns a vintage store.
The son of Nikita Khrushchev, Sergei Khrushchev, was awarded the Star of the Hero of Socialist Labor and the title of Lenin Prize laureate, has lived in the USA since 1991, and received American citizenship.
America also became a home for Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev through his eldest son Leonid, the circumstances of whose death historians still argue about.
The son of the former first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, Sergei Nikitich Khrushchev, went to Brown University (USA) in 1991 to lecture on the history of the Cold War, in which he now specializes. Remained a permanent resident in the United States, currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and has American citizenship. He is a professor at the Thomas Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University.
Nikita Sergeevich’s great-granddaughter, Nina Lvovna Khrushcheva, teaches at the Faculty of International Relations at New School University in New York.
Choreography teacher in Miami, granddaughter of the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR and General Secretary of the CPSU Yuri Andropov - Tatyana Igorevna Andropova. Her brother, Konstantin Igorevich Andropov, lives there in the USA.
The great-grandsons of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev on his son’s side, Dmitry Andreevich and Leonid Andreevich, graduated from Oxford University.
The niece of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, Lyubov Yakovlevna Brezhneva, lives in California.
The daughter of the main ideologist of late communism, the ascetic Mikhail Suslov, Maya Mikhailovna Sumarokova, has lived in Austria with her husband and two sons since 1990.
Gorbachev's daughter, Irina Virganskaya, lives mainly in San Francisco, where the main office of the Gorbachev Foundation, of which she is vice president, is located.
Irina Virganskaya admitted in an interview that she could easily imagine herself outside of Russia. She often travels around the world. The German press wrote that the former president of the USSR has a castle in the Bavarian Alps (he himself denies this). Mikhail Sergeevich’s eldest granddaughter, Ksenia Pyrchenko (Virganskaya), lives in Germany. “I have many friends in Berlin, and I feel free in Germany,” she told a German journalist.
As we see, all the children of the leaders of the USSR chose to live abroad. None of them lives in the house that they built (their fathers and grandfathers built it). Apparently they built this house for us, and not for themselves. This is such a “communist paradise” from which everyone is leaving.
Touches to the personal portrait of Suslov.
(Appendix to the text of the main publication. Entries from the author’s diary, made mainly in 1982, and some later entries).
Working style.
Organization of personal time. Clock in the house.
Relationships with colleagues and the form of addressing them.
Demeanor and politeness.
Information about activities at work.
Attitude to requests from family members.
Attitude to native places. Theme of the Motherland.
What he loved.
Walks.
Watching movies.
Reasonable moderation in everything.
Present.
Contacts with artists. A portrait painted by Glazunov, and a little about another painting.
About the guests.
A case in a social studies exam.
The situation in the house.
More about books and things.
- "The Case" of Suslov
Academician Kirillin about Suslov.
Suslov's assistant is Gavrilov. Why did he suddenly remember the author and come to his work?
A failed attempt at government reform at the end of Brezhnev's reign (information that the author learned about later).
About the death of Suslov.
About the book "The Age of Stalin" by American journalist Anna Louise Strong. Section "Stalin. After Stalin".
WORK STYLE.
I know from eyewitnesses who participated in meetings of the Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee (they were usually chaired by Suslov, and in Brezhnev’s absence he also chaired Politburo meetings) that the procedure for holding these meetings was organized clearly, collectedly and usually lasted no more than an hour and a half. He prepared extremely carefully for meetings and controlled their progress. If someone was “distracted” during a speech, Suslov intervened and asked to be “closer to the point.” Accuracy, punctuality and neatness were the most important features of Suslov’s personal work style. The same applies to the maintenance of his personal records and archives; working with letters, receiving visitors, order in the workplace.
To say that this was the general style among his colleagues would be incorrect. The former editor-in-chief of Ogonyok, in his interview with a BBC correspondent, recalls how during the procedure for his approval by the Politburo (this was after Suslov’s death), the elderly Solomentsev suddenly spoke completely out of place: “I watched the television news yesterday, and so there...”. Ligachev (he chaired the meeting), sensing something was wrong, was forced to curtail the procedure and release Korotich. Under Suslov, this was simply unthinkable.
ORGANIZATION OF PERSONAL TIME. CLOCK IN THE HOUSE.
Of course, everyone in the house had their own clock. But apparently there were still two “main” clocks. Some, the ones that were on Mikhail Andreevich’s hand. They were quite simple, with a dial already darkened with age. Suslov wore them on a thin leather strap with a “lining” and never changed them. Once he revealed to me a “secret” - he got used to them and set them 10 minutes ahead “so as not to be late and have a reserve of time.” The second - tall, in a mahogany wooden case, English, with a pendulum on a long chain and a striker, were a mandatory part of government furniture at every state dacha. The clock stood in the dining room and played a very important role, regulating the household rhythm of the whole family. In any case, when entering the room where this clock stood and family members were gathering for some common event, I usually always glanced at it to make sure I had not kept myself waiting.
There was a strict routine in the house, introduced once and for all and strictly observed by the head of the family. For example, on Saturday and Sunday at exactly 8 o’clock - breakfast (everyone gathered together here), a walk, reading. At 11 (you didn’t have to show up here) he drank a glass of tea with lemon. At 13 (all together) - lunch. In the evening at 20 o'clock (all together again) - dinner. During breaks - walks and work. I repeat, I really liked that everyone else followed this routine and gathered at the table together. On ordinary days, I had breakfast half an hour earlier, having time to chat with my grandchildren going to school. After a short walk, he left for work (often giving me a ride to the metro). Exactly at 8.30 he appeared at the Central Committee building on Old Square, where they were already waiting for him at the open elevator. In the evening at 20 o'clock, if they were not late at work, everyone gathered together again “under the clock” at the table. After this - a walk, “free” time, when you could joke and exchange opinions on current (but never work-related) issues. At 9 pm, often everyone together, including his grandchildren, watched the “Time” program, then read or listened to something, and recently his daughter often helped him.
Only one person knew how to wind a watch, the maid Nina, who worked with Suslov for 35 years. Then I seem to have mastered this “wisdom” of winding a watch. But when Suslov died, the clock suddenly stopped. I don’t know what exactly happened to them, it looks like mysticism, but no one managed to get them. Nina didn’t go to work anymore, and the clock stayed that way for another three months, until we moved out of the government-owned dacha.
RELATIONS WITH COLLEAGUES AND FORM OF CONTACTING THEM.
Speaking about colleagues, even behind their backs, he always appealed to them in an emphatically formal manner, always using the word “comrade” (for example, Comrade Pelshe will speak there). No familiarity was allowed. The same applies to Brezhnev. However, if we were not talking about official matters, in this case an exception was sometimes made. Then “Leonid Ilyich” spoke. Relations between them were good. When Suslov died, the old Leonid Ilyich cried. He said through tears: “Misha was not saved.” It was as if he felt that he was behind him, like behind a stone wall, and that a crisis of power and troubled times were brewing ahead. At Brezhnev’s 75th birthday, already at the end of the celebration in the Kremlin, Galina Leonidovna Brezhneva suddenly approached Suslov’s daughter (in the near future, very difficult and cruel times awaited her, God forbid for everyone). She said: - Mayechka, take care of your father, the rest...
For the time being, relations with Khrushchev seemed to be quite good. Then, apparently, something began to go wrong (Khrushchev did not always control his public statements, and this led to misunderstandings, and sometimes to the leakage of classified information). I remember at Mikhail Andreevich’s sixtieth birthday in November 1962, outside the city, at one of the state dachas, it seems in Ogarevo, on the occasion of the anniversary and the awarding of the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, members of the Politburo gathered. Members of Suslov's family were also invited (the only case, later this never happened again). Khrushchev, raising a toast to Suslov, suddenly said: “Well, they say, Suslov will remove me from my post...”. He said it seemingly not maliciously, as if as a joke, clinked his glass with everyone, nodded even to me. And I also thought: “They apparently have their own problems,” not everything is as simple as one might understand from the newspapers”...
Almost two years later, on October 14, Khrushchev was removed from power. Foreign media (see, for example, the memoirs of the former Indian Ambassador to the USSR Kaul; a link to this name will appear below) wrote that the reason for this was self-confidence, inattention to his colleagues, excessive talkativeness, unpredictability of actions, the desire for individual decisions, nepotism , an attempt to eliminate the unity of the party by dividing its governing bodies into industrial and agricultural, which contradicted the accepted territorial principle of its construction. The Politburo convened an emergency meeting in Khrushchev's absence and summoned him from his vacation in the south to Moscow on October 13, under the pretext that a crisis had arisen in relations with China. Khrushchev was taken straight from the airfield to a meeting of the Plenum, where he was faced with the fact of removal from all posts. The speaker on the issue was Suslov (why it was him, I don’t know; there was quite a bit of speculation about this in the foreign and later our press). As a result of the decision of the Plenum, Brezhnev became the First (later General) Secretary of the party, Kosygin became the Prime Minister, and Podgorny became the President. The division of posts emphasized the impression of collective leadership, in contrast to the situation when Khrushchev was really the sole leader (and this was increasingly exaggerated by the press), while holding the posts of First Secretary and Prime Minister at the same time.
Leaders of various levels, including foreign ones and ours, for example, regional committee secretaries, often called Suslov on HF not only at work, but also at home or during his vacation to the south, to consult, and perhaps remind him of himself. The conversation was almost always smooth, friendly, businesslike and usually did not drag on. Mikhail Andreevich was interested in production indicators, crop prospects, people’s mood, and current problems. However, once, I remember, I almost lost my temper while talking with one of the foreign leaders, who apparently made some inappropriate request. I heard him say angrily: “Are you men or not? You definitely want to drag us in! Do you think someone will put things in order for you? Decide for yourself”...
His authority as a leading ideologist was recognized unconditionally. Members of the Politburo, who were tasked with making political reports at representative events, for example, ceremonial meetings dedicated to the next anniversary of Lenin's birth, always tried to show the text of their speech to Suslov beforehand.
DETERMINANCE AND POLITENESS.
He was always emphatically polite. At the same time, it was obvious that he did not need to make any special additional efforts for this. It was part of his nature. He never swore, he even got angry in his own way. I don’t remember that he raised his voice sharply, but everyone treated his statements and opinions with extreme caution and always with respect. Didn't use foul language at all.
He never “pressed”, but if he expressed his opinion, the issue was usually not discussed further. We tried to do as he said. How he managed to behave and behave in all sorts of situations and environments, God alone knows.
He himself was emphatically modest and, on occasion, demanded this from others. The guarantor told me how, during breaks between discussions at the Secretariat or the Politburo, he repeatedly exhorted his colleagues: - Be more modest! More modest! Remember that people are looking at you...
INFORMATION ABOUT OFFICE CASES.
He never spoke to his family about what was discussed at work. This was a very strict rule that was never broken. Everyone had long been accustomed to this, took it for granted, and did not ask questions on this topic. The Dutch have a good saying with deep inner meaning: when entering a house, leave your shoes at the door.
When Gorbachev began repeating publicly that he shared almost all the information about his work affairs at home (I remember there was even a special television program on this matter, organized by some foreign journalist), this caused me, at least, bewilderment. This is not supposed to happen. It felt like he was chatty, but did he really share everything? The more time passes, and the more we manage to learn, including from Raisa Maksimovna’s books about her attitude to what happened, the more I doubt it. However, maybe I'm wrong...
ATTITUDE TO REQUESTS FROM FAMILY MEMBERS.
It so happened from the very beginning that I understood “in my gut” that I simply shouldn’t approach him with requests. Inconvenient, and generally not the case... The same, as far as I know, is his daughter. As a rule, I didn’t apply. Over a quarter of a century, I remember literally two (maybe one or two more, I don’t remember which) cases. The first of them is the question of an apartment for one of our leading defense scientists (his huge institute was located in the south-west of Moscow and stretched for almost a kilometer). By the way, I must be fair, the scientist did not contact me, I realized that it would be good for him to try to help, just from some random conversation. The second is a request to obtain permission to hold in the Kremlin Theater the procedure for awarding MEPhI, which was awarded to the institute in connection with its thirtieth anniversary with the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. Then the party leadership of the institute, where I then worked as an engineer, came out with a request through me. The then party secretary told me: “Leonid, help the institute,” I was worried, but where could I go?
Probably Mikhail Andreevich, in his own way, appreciated that we practically never turn to him with our questions, and once we did, it was necessary and therefore did not refuse, especially in a harsh form. I remember in both cases I said: write a short note, about a third of a page, no more. When I helped with the apartment, I was pleased. The only thing I was perplexed about was why “Comrade Ustinov” didn’t do this earlier. In the evening, returning from work, he said: “I called the manager of the Central Committee, Comrade Pavlov, now they must not deceive me...” I remember I was still surprised, did he really not have confidence? As for the second question, when I explained that we were talking about a leading “atomic” institute, which, together with its branches, numbers several tens of thousands of people, I said that the issue could be considered. I checked, agreed and helped.
As for the attitude towards other personal requests, I know little about it. However, I will cite one fact that has become known to me. Once the secretary of the party organization of the CPSU Central Committee came to him with a request to give instructions to allow him to use the Kremlin ration. Suslov, in turn, asked the following question: “Are you supposed to?” This seems to be the end of it all.
ATTITUDE TO NATIVE PLACES. THE THEME OF THE MOTHERLAND.
He was proud to be a Volzhanian. It was felt in everything. There was a bit of an "oak" in the conversation. They said that it was at his insistence that the Zhiguli production plant was built on the Volga, although there were other alternatives. He felt very warmly about his native place (the village of Shakhovskoye in the Saratov region). I transferred my money to the local school for a library and equipment. Before his death, I managed to go there with my daughter and grandchildren. He was received there extremely warmly. Somewhere, I think, an amateur film shot at that time has been preserved. I have very rarely seen such a happy face on Suslov as in these frames.
At the rural library in Shakhovskoye, in his homeland, where a monument was erected to him. After his death, the local leadership had the idea of organizing a modest museum dedicated to him. They sent a “rafik”, and we sent some things from the family there as possible exhibits (a lot of things, even earlier, immediately after death, were handed over to some kind of storage facility or fund, along with an accompanying note, through the economic department of the Central Committee). They say that such a museum still exists; fellow villagers and local leadership, thanks to them, carefully preserve all this; It’s not often true, but I call there on the phone, and Suslov’s son keeps in contact constantly). They also sometimes call, but they complain that going abroad is expensive. I also heard that when, already during perestroika, correspondents once arrived with some dubious intentions (there was such a campaign), the villagers sorted it out and drove them away with clods of earth and everything that came to hand.
The theme of the Motherland was extremely close to him. In front of me is a yellowed stack of M.A. Suslov’s handwritten materials - several dozen pages written in straight, legible handwriting in purple ink, and sometimes, much less frequently, in pencil. They were included in the book "Motherland. (Collection of statements by Russian writers about the Motherland)", now, I believe, a bibliographic rarity (published by OGIZ in Moscow in 1942). Here, nearby, is a selection - more than two hundred pages torn from magazines, newspaper publications and tear-off calendars, mostly from wartime, more than 60 years ago. The chief of staff of the partisan detachments of the North Caucasus, the secretary of the regional committee, Suslov, then prepared and spoke during a critical period for the country with his reports and conversations. I think it is appropriate to mention this now, on the 60th anniversary of the Victory. Here are the sections: “To the lecture on the Motherland” (July 6, 1943); "Russian writers about German philistines"; "On the necessary qualities of a commander"; "On strategy and tactics of war"; "To the essence of war"; "Economic recovery, defense capability, war"; "About Russia and the resilience of Russians"; "On Comrade Stalin's teaching on war"; "On the question of military strategy as a science"; "Lenin on the essence of war"; "Russian writers about the Germans and Prussianism" and much more. Names, quotes and links to statements by N. Chernyshevsky, N. Dobrolyubov, A. Herzen, N. Gogol, F. Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy, M. Saltykov-Shchedrin, G. Uspensky, A. Gorky, German poets Schiller, Goethe , Hans Sachs and others.
Reading, I find a lot in tune with the topic indicated in the title of this article, dedicated to our Motherland - Russia. And I’ll probably end with the words of A. Radishchev from the same mentioned stack of handwritten materials about the traits of a Russian person, relevant today and always: “I noticed from numerous examples that the Russian people are very patient, and patient to the extreme; but when the end If he puts his patience to the test, nothing can hold him back." (“Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”). And also from F. Dostoevsky (Critical articles, 1861): “The Russian nation is an extraordinary phenomenon in the history of all mankind... The Russian person does not have European angularity, impenetrability, intractability. He gets along with everyone..., he sympathizes with all humanity regardless of nationality, blood and soil. He is popular and immediately admits rationality in everything in which there is at least some universal human interest. He has an instinct for universal humanity."
Members of the Politburo who reached 60 (or 65?, I don’t remember) years of age had the right to take vacation twice a year for a total of two to two and a half (?) months. Suslov also used this right. I used to like to vacation in Crimea, but in recent years I went to Sochi in the winter and to Pitsunda in the summer (I think so that he would be less distracted and not forced to participate in feasts). The routine during the rest remained close to how it was on Saturdays and Sundays in Moscow, except that breakfast was half an hour later. Otherwise, the same morning walk, usually with family members, swimming, reading business papers (they were delivered every day by field communication). Phone calls and conversations are usually short. After lunch - an hour and a half rest, reading, walking. I watched movies a couple of times a week. I watched news on television regularly. Sometimes, about once a week, leaving the territory, walking around Yalta or Sochi, or on a sea boat to nearby interesting places.
Many other leaders were fond of hunting, Suslov was not. I have not seen him ever hold a hunting rifle or fishing equipment in his hands. Accordingly, I never went hunting, although, it seems, I was sympathetic to this passion and form of recreation for others. However, I remember somehow suddenly quite sharply throwing out a question about one of these invitations and a protracted hunt: “Someone has to work!” Brezhnev, a great lover of hunting, from time to time sent his hunting trophies (ducks, wild boar or deer meat) from Zavidovo. Mikhail Andreevich usually tried only the smallest piece), and always praised: “what fragrant meat,” perhaps with slight irony. Everything else, to their great pleasure, went to a few family members and service personnel. Once in the late 60s, my family and I went to Zavidovo. We looked at the hunting grounds there and took a walk. I don't remember him going there anymore.
As for his relaxation, he loved walks. Games include dominoes, especially during vacation. I used to regularly play volleyball, sometimes go to the billiard table, but I clearly preferred reading to everything.
WHAT HE LOVED.
Loved plants. I got it through some friends at a nursery and planted Canadian cedar and larch at my dacha in Sosnovka. He always admired them and told me about it. Of course I was pleased to hear this. What's wrong with them now? They probably grew up big and beautiful, but they say the dacha was privatized. I do not know who. (Written almost three years ago, now everyone knows who).
He loved all kinds of birds: tits, finches, bullfinches, blackbirds, woodpeckers. He poured cereal and bread into their feeders. My gift lay on the desk at the dacha for a long time - a guide to bird species (I still have it, I also keep it on the table). He loved animals, for example, dogs, but not purebred, polished ones, but ordinary mongrels. In general, he loved every little thing: squirrels, puppies, chicks.
At the dacha in Sosnovka, he loved to sit in a small secluded wooden glassed-in gazebo, built in the last years of his life among the pine trees, away from the house and telephone calls. I often went there to work on papers.
He loved his grandchildren dearly, tried to spend a lot of time with them, rejoiced at their academic success, drawings and conversations with them.
As already noted, I really loved books. Systematized, laid out on shelves. I entered my notes and notes there. I read extremely a lot and seriously. There weren’t many things on the desk at the dacha, but as far as I remember, there was always a small bronze bust of Gorky (I still have it). In the library in an old apartment on the street. Granovsky, there was a photograph of Gorky hanging in a neat, simple frame.
Once I brought 3-4 of the cheapest lithographs (one, I remember, from a painting by Aivazovsky), 12-15 rubles each, no more. He ordered it to be hung in the rooms and praised everything.
In the last years of my life I enjoyed watching some (but not all) types of sports competitions on television. Then I got a taste for it and even went several times to Luzhniki to watch hockey matches held by the Izvestia newspaper. Here he took us and his grandchildren with him. There we once met Mikoyan, another time with Raul Castro (I still keep the pen with his initials, received as a gift). And I watched the Olympic Games that took place in Moscow in 1980 (just during his vacation) from beginning to end. I counted the medals and was very proud of our successes (at that time we were unconditionally ahead).
WALKS.
He loved to walk. While we lived in the city (Granovsky Street, then Bolshaya Bronnaya) we walked with him along quiet, back streets, accompanied by just one security guard. Is this conceivable today? He was walking in the area of Volkhonka Street, not far from the Pushkin Museum, where he spent his youth (studying at the workers' faculty). He said that when he was studying, he went there every day on foot from Tushino. Towards the end of his life, he lived most of the time at his dacha (the now infamous Sosnovka), fortunately it was located 20-25 minutes from the center, in Moscow itself, inside the ring road. I hardly spoke during walks. Walking around the site, he collected branches that had fallen from the trees and put them in piles. The path was not wide, I walked slightly behind. In recent years, I feel tired (along the perimeter - just a kilometer). Suddenly he stopped to rest, stood leaning his back against some tree. Thought. I kept wondering: what is he thinking about? But he was silent, and I didn’t ask. I wonder if he assumed what would soon happen to the country? For some reason I'm sure not. Otherwise I would have done something. Without a doubt. The trouble is, you never know how much time you have ahead of you. Bulgakov wrote this, and I will return to this below.
WATCHING MOVIES.
On Saturdays and Sundays they brought films to the dacha to watch. This was considered part of the work, and it is understandable - ideology. However, other members of the Politburo also watched films (I don’t know which ones), but probably to be able to exchange opinions on this matter. I remember one screenwriter persistently contacted me through his brother - did they watch his film or not? And being young, I couldn’t understand why he needed this... There was practically no video at that time. The KGB service had a special position - projectionist.
Mikhail Andreevich himself loved visual films and chronicles. Of feature films, I usually preferred domestic ones (foreign ones, with some exceptions, for example, with Lolita Thores or Richard, I did not particularly like). I remember watching with pleasure “The Dawns Here Are Quiet”, “Seventeen Moments of Spring”. I laughed merrily with my grandchildren when I watched “The Diamond Arm” or “Prisoner of the Caucasus.” But it happened (and not so rarely) that the film was not to his taste. He would get angry, mutter something, but not angrily, and leave, but we didn’t always understand what exactly he didn’t like and we watched the film without him. Only over the years (in youth, sometimes you don’t value time) I began to better understand this “quirk” that seemed to me then - there is a lot of nonsense and all kinds of absurdities in other films. If you value your time and there is an opportunity or need to do something else, it’s a pity to waste your time.
REASONABLE MODERATION IN EVERYTHING.
Including food, sleep, rest. When he woke up, he immediately got up. He said: - God forbid I lie in bed for an extra half hour, then I have a headache all day (and I kept remembering Churchill, who had the exact opposite habit - lying in bed until noon). I practically did not drink alcohol. Sometimes, maybe once or twice a week, I drank a glass of Ukrainian red wine - Oksamit. In the morning I ate little: a little porridge or mashed potatoes and half a cutlet, tea with lemon and again half a fresh apple. He wrapped the second half of the cutlet in a napkin and took it outside to the dog who was waiting for him - a beautiful, tall mongrel, Dzhulbars - a common family favorite, whom my wife, son and I bought at the Poultry Market. Dzhulbars, or simply, Dzhulka, was already waiting and trying to put his paws on his shoulders, and Mikhail Andreevich laughed and dodged. Both were very pleased with this. When Suslov died, I don’t know how Dzhulbars immediately felt it, although the dacha was located several kilometers from Kuntsevo. Howled and cried.
Much has been written about Suslov’s supposedly “old-fashioned clothes,” to which he allegedly did not attach importance. This is not entirely true, I think not even true at all. It cannot be said that he was indifferent to clothes, much less disdainful (the family still has a photograph of him in his youth with a flower in his buttonhole). It’s just that, I think, as with his demeanor, he has developed his own style over the years. The suits fit his figure perfectly. The shirts were always immaculately fresh and ironed, the cuffs had gold cufflinks with beautiful Russian stones, and the tie was well chosen. He used to wear a “party” cap, and in recent years he wore a hat, which suited him very well. But the main criterion still remained convenience and comfort. Possessing an impressive appearance, in his clothes he looked very respectable, like a “gentleman” (he himself would definitely be angry if he knew about such an assessment) and was in no way inferior to his domestic and foreign colleagues. Quite the contrary.
In this regard, I will again refer to the opinion of the prominent Indian diplomat and intellectual T. Kaul (maybe because after Suslov’s death, fate unexpectedly brought me together with him - I became co-chairman of the Soviet-Indian Commission on Scientific, Technical and Partially Military Cooperation), and we met from time to time at joint events in our country and in India, or at the Indian embassy. Kaul worked for many years as an ambassador to a number of countries, including England, China, the USA and others. At different times he was twice the ambassador of India to the USSR. In his book “From Stalin to Gorbachev and Beyond,” he describes his impressions of the meeting with Suslov at the CPSU Central Committee when Indira Gandhi came to Moscow in 1964 and Kaul accompanied her to this meeting as an ambassador: “We were taken to the office... there was a modest, gentle, professor-like Suslov." And a little lower again: “Suslov was calm, soft, tall, thin. He gave the impression of a scientist...”.
Undoubtedly, in some sense he was conservative in his dress, but this did not prevent him from looking elegant. Let me refer to the British (the country where I had the opportunity to do my postgraduate internship): representatives of the so-called “establishment” are proud of their conservative traditions, including in business attire. It would be simply unthinkable to imagine Suslov, say, in an Austrian hunting suit, golf trousers and a hat with a feather, as in one of the photographs of Brezhnev, published in the anniversary album that I have preserved and donated to Suslov. I am not at all against such clothes; having lived in Austria for quite a long time, from time to time I meet people dressed in this way. It is beautiful and practical, but Suslov had his own, completely different style.
I never wore any orders or pads that replaced them. True, at official events he wore the Star (later - two) of the hero. Usually he only wore a deputy badge.
One of the publications that appeared in December 2001, dedicated to the 95th anniversary of Brezhnev’s birth, contains an interesting fragment that indirectly characterizes Suslov. They write that during the funeral of Leonid Ilyich, the “standard” ritual, when the coffin is accompanied by officers, each of whom carries one award of the deceased, was changed. Otherwise, 240 officers would be required! And that’s why some of them carried several awards. The publication mentioned Suslov; including military awards, he had “only (!)” 14 orders. Among them are two gold stars, five Orders of Lenin, five high foreign orders, the Order of the Patriotic War and the Order of the October Revolution. There were also a dozen medals, including for personal contribution in connection with the creation of an oil pipeline from Siberia - a great deed of the country, now one of the main sources of foreign exchange earnings for the country.
He usually didn’t accept gifts, and if suddenly, without his knowledge, for example, during visits to the country of guests from abroad, some gifts were brought home on their behalf, say, boxes of wine, they stood there for a long time, undisassembled, somewhere... then in the kitchen area, and no one knew what to do with them. If Suslov was reminded of this, he frowned and usually said: “well, look there...”. The family did not know where it went afterwards.
Let me give you a fairly typical case. The Vologda leadership once sent a box of the famous Vologda butter, I don’t remember how much there was. Found out. He demanded it back. But the service staff has already opened the box, it is not convenient to return it. Then he ordered that money be sent to the regional committee. Angry. He said: “They want to buy it! But letters are coming to us at the Central Committee saying that good varieties of oil have disappeared from sale, so they send it here as if everything is in order. You can ask them later!”
In 1981 I was in the GDR. When he was returning back, he accidentally learned on the plane that the then Ambassador Abrasimov had given him a chandelier as a gift. He was outraged and demanded it be returned immediately. They tell him that it is impossible, we are already in the air. He reprimanded the guarantors for not speaking earlier and also returned the money to the ambassador. I don’t know whether he bought it with his own money or with government money, and how it was processed later.
Although he did not tolerate gifts for himself, especially expensive ones, he himself really liked to give small gifts to loved ones on the eve of holidays (notepads, pens, gloves, calendars, wallets, watch straps, boxes of candy, etc.) and did this for as long as he could. I remember regularly. He brought his grandchildren early berries and fruits from work, which he left for them from his work lunch.
CONTACTS WITH ARTISTS. A PORTRAIT WRITTEN BY GLAZUNOV, AND A LITTLE ABOUT ANOTHER PICTURE.
I, the author of this short story, a native of Arkhangelsk, like the patriotic artist Glazunov, and for a number of reasons, there is no need to go into details. In the newspaper "World of News" dated June 14, 2005. An article with Glazunov’s statements and assessments was published. The article is interesting and I enjoyed reading it. Among other facts and impressions, the article mentions the artist’s meeting with Suslov. Moreover (although the article does not mention this), the People's Artist of the USSR painted his portrait. The portrait, in my non-specialist opinion, is good, quite similar, although somewhat sketchy. Or maybe it seemed so to me because of the very concentrated expression on my face. He was probably working on some serious documents, and that’s how the artist saw him. He sits half-turned at his desk, writing something... This is how I still imagine Mikhail Andreevich in a business setting, only his face is still more lively. A strict dark suit, glasses with gray frames. Nearby is a bouquet of lilies of the valley. It’s beautiful, the flowers certainly enliven the picture, but they’re not real (Suslov was allergic to lilies of the valley). Later I saw another portrait of the artist, made, it seems to me, in exactly the same style, depicting the former UN Secretary General, the Austrian Kurt Waldheim. It still hangs in the building of the Vienna International Center on the ground floor near the so-called Rotunda.
And we had a portrait of Suslov in our family for some time (I can’t imagine its artistic value, but it’s Glazunov!). Then, immediately after the death of Mikhail Andreevich, the family sent a number of things, including a portrait to Chernenko’s secretariat and the village museum-library along with some other gifts, souvenirs, models of enterprises, commemorative medals and landmarks kept in the family (with the list, I remember, is about three hundred items). The family, thank God, has preserved the art album "Ilya Glazunov", publishing house "Fine Arts, 1973 with a dedicatory inscription: - To dear Mikhail Andreevich Suslov - with constant deep respect and gratitude. Yours Ilya Glazunov, 1973 X / 26 Moscow." Mikhail Andreevich himself never spoke about this meeting at home; as far as I know, no one has ever drawn any other portraits of him. I also don’t know how the meeting took place and what the artist thanked Suslov for. I learned about one or two remarks during the meeting from an article by Glazunov, who, however, refers more to his conversations with one of Suslov’s assistants (Vorontsov). However, I am sure that if Suslov had not established a good, trusting relationship with the artist, he would never have agreed to have him paint his portrait.
I won’t lie, it’s nice that we managed to save something, but back then little was thought about such things. I remember that my wife, shortly after her father’s funeral, came from the Central Committee, where she was invited and offered to pick up some of his personal belongings. The assistant showed some small painting by A. Shilov (by the way, the only one there was - a gift from the author), hanging in the rest room next to the office: -Will you take it? -No, I won’t take it. Dispose of this yourself as you should... I’ll be honest, I’m a little sorry for this painting (I like this artist), although I don’t remember it (I think it’s some kind of sketch), although once Mikhail Andreevich invited us, family members, to look to his office, but will you look at it? But one can understand the daughter, especially in that situation, she had grief. As for her things, she loved her father most of all. She did not know then that Andropov would soon move into the office. Then some other people were sitting there, it is clear that the bosses, including those from the perestroika and Yeltsinists... Well, the family also managed to keep the book-album with paintings and Shilov’s dedicatory inscription. It says: “To the deeply respected Mikhail Andreevich Suslov, in fond memory with wishes of happiness, health, with gratitude for your attention. 1.X.1980, A. Shilov.” A copy of Suslov’s response, included in the book, has also been preserved: “Thank you, Comrade Shilov, for the collection of paintings and graphics you sent. I read it with great attention and satisfaction. The impression is wonderful. I am pleased with the bright, warm, rich vitality of your works. "I sincerely wish you new success in your work and, as they say, keep it up! M. Suslov. October 8, 1980."
ABOUT THE GUESTS.
I don’t remember us going to visit anyone as a family. Suslov himself received guests at home quite rarely, and less and less over the years. I remember during a summer vacation in the south, Brezhnev and his family came a couple of times, once Kapitonov, and to a dacha near Moscow, and even then not to Sosnovka, but to some other one, it seemed like one of the little-visited “Stalinist dachas” along Dmitrovskoe Highway , once the then recently appointed Gorbachev came with his wife (I think he wrote about this somewhere). That's probably all. Official, or rather comradely informal meetings with the leaders of foreign communist parties, often in the south during the summer holidays, took place, as a rule, on “neutral territory” in one of the vacant neighboring government dachas. I remember his meetings with Maurice Thorez, Jeanette Vermes, Palmiro Togliatti, Ho Chi Minh, leaders and party leaders of India, Laos, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia; Sometimes we, family members, were also invited to these meetings. No one except his relatives ever came to his apartment or his Moscow dacha. In recent years, even the son and his wife did not come so often, although they were always welcome. It ended with the fact that on holidays or memorable days, in addition to family members, only my parents, modest employees, forestry specialists from Arkhangelsk, and grandparents of the grandchildren I shared with Suslov were there.
A CASE ON THE SOCIAL STUDIES EXAM.
Somehow, in his youth, during an exam, either at the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy (he graduated from it in 1928), or later in graduate school at the Institute of Red Professorship, he passed some subject to a professor. One day he told me the following in connection with this. The professor was known for his rigor and knowledge, but suddenly he feels that the student is answering all the questions and somehow especially confidently and competently. For some reason, this even suddenly bothered the professor. A student cannot know everything like an examiner, or even, God forbid, better! A kind of “competition” arose: the professor asks more and more new questions, and Suslov, as if he himself was involved in this game, answers little, and also encourages him: “you still can’t cut it!” The professor's partner had already intervened. The argument stopped, but it never ended.
SIZE IN THE HOUSE.
Here, as in his clothes, he was quite conservative. He didn't like it when something he was used to was changed without his knowledge. The commandant of the dacha where he lived for a quarter of a century, apparently fulfilling the “order,” tried 3-4 times to replace the furniture with more modern ones (the furniture was government-owned). Usually after a few days there was a request to return something to which he was already accustomed. They returned it. However, sometimes something remained. As a result, the furniture in the dacha was of “all styles,” some from pre-war, “Stalinist” times, which can sometimes be seen in old movies, but there was little so-called “modern” furniture. The furniture in his personal apartment, to put it mildly, was also very modest, varied in style, although his own (remember Churbanov’s impression in the main part? In general, everything is correct, except for the “tags”, maybe he somehow penetrated to the apartment?). Living in the city on Bronnaya, I slept in a small room, about 12 square meters, and even then it was almost half filled with bookcases. In the next room, office - the same story: books, books, books... He was absolutely indifferent to any home decorations, say, vases, figurines, trays.
MORE ABOUT BOOKS AND THINGS.
At the state-owned dacha "Sosnovka" at the end of Rublevskoye Highway, where Suslov lived for the last 25 years, there were practically no belongings of his own, so when we moved out of it after the death of Mikhail Andreevich, there were almost no special problems in connection with this. There was still one serious problem - books. There were a lot of them, and there was simply no room for them in our apartment in Moscow. Some of the books, along with some other things, were sent to the school library in the village of Shakhovskoye, where Suslov was born. There, according to the regulations (Suslov, as already mentioned, was twice awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor), a bust was erected in his homeland and a modest museum began to be organized there in the hut allocated for this purpose. At that time, they sent “rafik” for books. The other part of the books, especially the relatively “old” ones on the social sciences, remained unsorted in the boxes. The library of the IML - Institute of Marxism - Leninism, where we applied, did not accept them, they said that everything was there, but they were clearly not suitable for school).
The management showed concern and asked whether Suslov still had his personal dacha, where the family could move with government money and live there in the summer. The manager of the Central Committee, Pavlov, gave instructions to check; there was no such thing. They couldn’t give us a dacha (and we didn’t even ask), but they allocated half a house for a fee in the boarding house of the Central Committee “Usovo”, where our family (daughter and husband and their two children - Suslov’s grandchildren) received the right to go. In the rather dry basement of the house we placed these boxes of books (some with his notes), hoping to attach them somewhere later. But soon a pipe burst in the neighbors’ basement, which was common to the entire house, and the entire basement was flooded with cold water. Having arrived from work, I went downstairs and, standing waist-deep in the water, tried to save at least something. I caught several swollen publications, including, I remember, some book by Spinoza and “City of the Sun” by Campanella. I remember there was, perhaps not an old, but still a pre-revolutionary edition of Thomas More’s “Utopia,” which probably remained underwater in cardboard boxes. Almost everything else died. Where did these books come from? At one time, in the early 20s of the last century, a young workers' faculty student Suslov went to a book "flea market" on Stoleshnikov Lane, selected and bought there with his savings socio-political books that seemed important to him.
Later I read in F. Chuev’s book “One Hundred and Forty Conversations with Molotov” that exactly the same fate befell his huge personal library - 57 large boxes of another person, who at one time for many pre-war years was the de facto leader No. 2 of our country. At one time, these books were also loaded into the Foreign Ministry’s basement. Later, as in the described case, they were flooded with water, and they died. It’s a pity, of course, but can you really foresee everything? This is how our spiritual values sometimes perish. Sometimes I blame myself for the fact that I probably wasn’t able to bring something to the “mind”. They say that in America universities are willing to accept such personal libraries. We didn’t have this then, and the universities were poorer.
And recently I read a note in LG (June 2004) about another loss. This time - a massive criminal loss in the mentioned former IML library (now the State Social and Political Library, supervised by the department of the then Minister of Culture M. Shvydkoy). Only now there are incomparably more valuable books. The same “Utopia” by Thomas More, published in 1516, 150 kg of ancient manuscripts donated to the Russian monarch by the rulers of Iran after the death of A. Griboedov, more than 400 books from Stalin’s personal library and much, much more. The situation is not very comforting. I also remember when later, during perestroika, I was appointed deputy chairman of the State Committee for Science and Technology of the USSR, among my many responsibilities were the problems of scientific and technical libraries in the country. I was literally bombarded with numerous complaints related to the organization of book storage. I especially remember the case when, under the pressure of active party functionaries, books from the State Public Scientific and Technical Library (SPNTB) were transferred to a completely damp, rat-filled basement (the bed of the Yauza River is underground there). Library management - come to me. Well, I came there then, looked around, was horrified, and what could I do? We started looking for another room, but how quickly can we find it? In the meantime, the “vacated” premises on Kuznetsky Most were transferred to the Russian edition of the fashion magazine “Burda”, which was then under the patronage of R. Gorbacheva (I don’t know if she knew at what price this “pleasure” was acquired, I hope not).
SUSLOV'S "CASE".
In 1937 Suslov's "case" was brewing. He was almost arrested. The essence of the “case” was that he was then sent as a representative of the center to conduct elections for the leadership of the party organization in the Rostov region. Three days later, the newly elected first secretary of the regional committee was arrested as an “enemy of the people.” High-ranking figures immediately appeared who accused Suslov of facilitating the penetration of hostile cadres into power. According to Suslov (a rare case when he himself told his family about this), the matter took a very serious turn. Suslov built his defense against the accusers this way: you undoubtedly had information about the candidacy even before the elections. How could you allow the elections to take place without informing me, the representative of the center, about it? It turns out that it’s not my fault, but yours, and you compromised the party’s installation! The arguments were considered quite convincing, and the “case” against Suslov was closed. I don’t know the details, but it seems that Stalin’s assistant at the time, Dvinsky (whom, they say, Stalin trusted very much; I admit, I tried to find this name, but never met it anywhere) and Stalin himself personally helped.
However, this kind of risk hung then, especially over people of his level, constantly, and he was no exception here. When, for example, in 1953, the safe of the arrested Beria was opened, it was discovered that Suslov appeared on his list as persons to be eliminated at number 1. I think that the reasons, of course, were political. But I know for sure that Beria loved to “be mischievous,” sometimes even in the presence of Stalin, during meals with him with the participation of members of the Politburo. Either he puts a tomato under the seat, or he spills sauce on someone’s suit. Once he tried to do a similar dirty trick to Suslov. He stood up and said loudly, “If something like this ever happens again, this plate of borscht will pour out on you.” Beria remained silent. How this matter “settled down” then, I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t calm down at all; the all-powerful KGB officer was a vindictive man.
In those years, it was customary to work at night, and people stayed at work for a long time. Suslov's wife (in recent years, together with her daughter) did not sleep, and stood for hours looking out the window, waiting for her husband to return from work, every day not being completely sure whether he would come at all. Such was the time, and my wife, his daughter, had the habit of waiting if someone in the family was suddenly late, and it has remained so to this day.
ACADEMICIAN KIRILLIN ABOUT SUSLOV.
Despite the difference in age, we established close contact with Academician Vladimir Alekseevich Kirillin, and we were close friends for more than twenty years until his death in 1999. Once he visited my institute, which was supervised directly by the State Committee for Science and Technology of the USSR, got acquainted with the information systems and, in my opinion, was satisfied. Once he invited me to his home, and I began to visit his academic dacha in Zhukovka quite often, fortunately we were not far from each other. The atmosphere was very unusual and interesting; many different people from the scientific world often came there. Kirillin himself was an exceptionally extraordinary person, literally a walking encyclopedia. He had an amazing, one might say, unique memory, a huge horizon, sober judgment, knew classical literature well, and could recite many poems by heart. He loved walking and playing chess, and here our interests coincided, and at the same time served as a reason for many of our conversations. In his youth he served as a sailor in the navy, fought at the front, and by the way, knew many soldiers’ stories and jokes.
Later he became a prominent thermophysicist and taught at the Moscow Energy Institute. He was the largest organizer of Soviet science. He worked as Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, Chairman of the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology. He performed excellently and almost always without “cheat sheets”. He had enormous, unquestioned authority in the scientific world, the closest relationships with people who constitute the flower of science in our country. I remember that under him, the State Committee for Science and Technology, next to the Mossovet on Gorky Street, was literally a place of pilgrimage for scientists. He was close friends with the legendary chief theoretician of our space program, Academician Keldysh. I often met at the dacha with academicians Sheindlin, Ishlinsky, Glushkov, Velikhov, Khariton, Zeldovich, Dollezhal, Mesyats, Khristianovich, and at one time Sakharov (some of them lived nearby in Zhukovka). He maintained friendly relations with Aleksandrov, Marchuk, Kotelnikov, Logunov, Semenikhin, Chelomey, Legasov, Makarov, Frolov, Avduevsky. Sometimes I was a participant in his meetings. It was especially interesting when he invited me to visit some large institute with him or on foreign business trips.
It was always interesting to witness his conversations. Here is just one of the small episodes that I discovered in my diary. One day Vladimir Alekseevich called me and said that at the end of the day he was going to meet with the then Minister of Gas Industry S.A. Orudzhev at his ministry and offered to take part in the conversation. Naturally, I agreed with joy; I understood the significance and scale of the issue, and our institute tried to monitor the information support of the problem and maintained contacts with the industry through its own line. Sabit Atayevich, a very honored man, Hero of Socialist Labor, laureate of the Lenin and state prizes, received us very cordially. Posters hung on the walls of the office, and he informed Kirillin in detail about the state, plans for the development of the industry and, of course, about the system of operation and development of gas pipelines. New technology and problematic issues were discussed. I remember this story from Orudzhev. One day in the winter, gas pressure began to drop sharply, and there was a danger of interruptions in gas supply. The ministry took additional measures, but the problem could not be resolved quickly and the situation remained tense. And then, one Sunday, the minister was working in his office, when suddenly the phone rang. Chairman of the Council of Ministers Kosygin calls and asks: “What are you doing at work on Sunday?” Orudzhev: -I’m waiting for your call Alexey Nikolaevich... He grinned into the phone, but apparently was satisfied. I made sure the matter was under control.
He allowed me to bring some of my colleagues from the scientific world to him (and even encouraged me when I did this), he warmly received them and listened to them. In general, his ability to listen with interest, while never interrupting, was extraordinary. He had amazing, what they call, human qualities, tact. Of course, it was impossible to compete with him in knowledge, but he never let me feel his superiority, and when turning, for example, to some topic even remote from me, he always began something like this: - Leonid Nikolaevich, you, of course, know about that , that... and so on. You could talk to him about absolutely anything.
Once upon a time, while still very young, he worked in a high position as head of the science department in the CPSU Central Committee, which was supervised by Suslov; this, apparently, was where the roots of their acquaintance lay. He told a lot of interesting things about our nuclear, space and energy programs, about the problems of the development of biology and Lysenkoism. There wasn't much talk about politics. However, I remember this episode: once in the second half of the 80s, as usual, I came to visit him at his dacha. He was sitting on the terrace alone, suddenly he picked me up and invited me to take a walk. They went out into the street and he, somehow very excitedly, which was not typical for him, began to say: “Well, what is he doing, this Gorbachev, this is not smart!” He doesn't think so, does he? After all, everything will fall apart... Then somehow he quickly seemed to calm down. It was the height of the anti-alcohol campaign, I asked: “You used to often meet with him in the south when you came on vacation, and he was a secretary there.” Didn't he drink then? -No, he says why? I drank normally...
After retiring, he wrote an excellent book, “Pages in the History of the Development of Science and Technology,” and said that he had long dreamed of the opportunity to do such work. I was a constant witness to how this book was written. One did what the entire academic institute of the History of Natural Sciences failed to do. The last time I saw Kirillin, it seems, was in the winter of 1997 (or 98?) I had a short business trip to Moscow, someone helped me with the car, and I ended up in such a close and memorable place for me - at Kirillin’s dacha in the academic village “Zhukovka”. The academician was already 85 or so. He, very old and somehow all dried out, was sitting at the dining table on the insulated terrace, at the end in his usual place, as before, when he received guests. He offered to drink tea. I remember for some reason I refused. Then he took a large plastic bottle of Coca-Cola from the next table and said, pouring it into my glass: “Now this is what we are playing with with our grandson (he was sitting next to me), the drink is good.” He gave me his latest small, modestly published small edition, and very personal book about ten outstanding Soviet scientists, “Meetings with Interesting People.” He began to make a dedicatory inscription, but apparently he was no longer so confident in his hand. I asked my grandson, dictated the text to him, re-read it again and signed it. Then, he suddenly switched to another topic and sadly, as if not addressing me, said: “We rent out a city apartment, that’s how we live. Nowadays everything has changed and become different. These are the times now. A different era...” However, everything that is connected for me with Kirillin is another story and, if it happens, I will try to write about it specifically.
During Suslov’s life, Vladimir Alekseevich and I almost didn’t talk about him, and when Mikhail Andreevich died, I remember that Kirillin, at the next meeting, expressing condolences through me to family members, said that he treated Suslov with the highest respect. Here are his words (I wrote them down in my diary at the time): - in the field of economics, we still have many unresolved problems, but in the field of international, interethnic relations and ideology, everything is being done correctly. I don’t know if this is possible, but God grant that another person like Mikhail Andreevich is found to lead in these directions...
SUSLOV'S ASSISTANT - GAVRILOV. WHY DID HE SUDDENLY REMEMBER ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND COME TO HIM TO WORK?
Stepan Petrovich Gavrilov was one of Suslov’s assistants and, among other members of his staff, apparently the person closest to him. They worked together for several decades, as far as I heard, starting in wartime, and Gavrilov had great and well-deserved authority in the Central Committee apparatus. 2-3 years before Suslov’s death, Gavrilov was diagnosed with cancer. He could not help but tell Suslov about this, and expressed his readiness and intention to retire in order to focus on treatment and to give someone the opportunity to take his place. Suslov did not react quite traditionally. He said: “You are needed here at work, forget about your illness and continue to work - this is the best medicine.” And Stepan Petrovich stayed. The surprising thing was that this approach may have been the most effective. Gavrilov continued to work as before and even outlived Suslov himself.
And then one day, about three months after the death of Mikhail Andreevich, Stepan Petrovich suddenly found me and came to my work. Previously, we had no contact at all, not even by phone, although, as it turned out when we met, we knew and heard a lot about each other. In addition, we had a mutual close friend - Academician V.A. Kirillin, and both of us, Stepan Petrovich, and I knew this well (Kirillin himself told me about this more than once). I think now that Gavrilov came deliberately. Clearly he wanted to say something. And he told a lot, but he did it somehow not intrusively, I would say delicately... The meeting turned out to be very interesting, meaningful and gave rise to certain thoughts. I remember that I then showed him the institute, and our experience of working with searching in remote databases using satellite communications (the prototype of the Internet, which originated in our country at our Institute and was first introduced by us at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy), which was still a novelty , and then in other organizations, by the way, the Pravda newspaper wrote about this then on the front page). When saying goodbye, Gavrilov said that he liked the institute and regretted that he did not know about this work earlier: “I would have helped you with something then.” I think Gavrilov understood that there would be no second meeting. He died soon after.
I especially remember two things he said. In particular, that Kirillin was considered as a real contender for the post of Prime Minister after Kosygin’s retirement. Did not work out. Brezhnev preferred the “Dnepropetrovsk resident” - his fellow countryman, 75-year-old Tikhonov (Zenkovich believes that on the recommendation of Andropov - LS). By the way, Kirillin immediately submitted his application and resigned (the only such case, but they were not compatible with Tikhonov, Kirillin himself told me about this then). He also spoke about Brezhnev’s intention to meet with Suslov on January 22. The question, according to Gavrilov, concerned Brezhnev’s family problems related to his daughter, and this meeting was being prepared. None of the other members of the Politburo dared to talk about this topic, but by that time the “case” was “promoted” and became widely known (literally all of Moscow was talking about it). Brezhnev’s joke about Suslov was also known: “He’s not afraid of anything except drafts... Colleagues “entrusted” Suslov with the delicate conversation. Actually, what does “entrusted” mean? There was simply no other person who could take it upon himself (by the way, as in the case when Khrushchev was removed). On this day, on the morning of January 22, Suslov was supposed to leave the hospital, where, at Chazov’s unexpectedly stubborn insistence, he went for a preventive examination. It was planned and known in the narrowest circle that another person who should be present at the meeting would be Tsvigun - Andropov’s First Deputy, Brezhnev’s confidant in the KGB (as they said, his “watchful eye”). The meeting did not take place.
A FAILED ATTEMPT OF GOVERNMENT REFORM AT THE END OF BREZHNEV'S RULE (INFORMATION ABOUT WHICH THE AUTHOR LEARNED LATER.).
So, after a stormy celebration in the Kremlin in the presence of many guests of Brezhnev’s 75th anniversary, a New Year’s respite and Suslov’s planned return to work, a meeting of Brezhnev with Suslov and Tsvigun was scheduled for January 22. In terms of the intended topic of discussion, the meeting could have brought many surprises, but instead there comes a denouement of a completely different kind. Three days before the meeting, Tsvigun was found dead at his dacha in the far corner of the plot on the path, shot in the head from the pistol of his guard. No investigation was carried out. The official version is that he shot himself because he had been suffering from a serious illness for a long time. Why, as they said, he asked the guard for a pistol (although he had his own at the dacha) remains unclear. Further. On the eve of going to work, Suslov, undergoing a routine medical examination (by the way, completed it with excellent marks), on the afternoon of January 21, the attending physician Kumachev gives a tablet with some new medicine. The pill turned out to be fatal for him. A few hours later on the same day he loses consciousness and does not come to his senses until physiological death. The blood supply to the brain stops, soon the useless “life support” device is turned off, and he dies. (Was it really possible that everything was done without Chazov’s knowledge? But in any case, without the knowledge of the daughter, who was with her father almost all the time and closely followed the procedures and treatment. Everything happened before her eyes. Then, by the way, for some reason I was sent to business trip to Prague).
Suslov was no longer young, to put it mildly; it is known that in a few months (in November 1982) he would have turned 80 years old. And although no one could blame him for any mistakes associated with loss of ability to work (he usually went to work at the Central Committee even on Saturdays), he no longer claimed a position near the top of the power pyramid and firmly decided to retire, at the same time setting an example for others, as he did in the case of an attempt to assign him another Hero star.
But before that, his task is to organize and participate in resolving the issue of government reform, and here Brezhnev really counted on Suslov with his experience and ability to find reasonable and balanced government decisions. The Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee was scheduled for the month of November, dedicated to serious changes in the leadership of the party. In particular, it was assumed that the post of Party Chairman would be introduced (to be occupied by Brezhnev). The question of who would take the post of General Secretary in its final form remained open (later, closer to the Plenum, Brezhnev decided that it would be taken by Politburo member Shcherbitsky). Other issues related to the mechanism for updating the party leadership were also planned. If the said meeting with Brezhnev had not been scheduled and Suslov had not been in the “hands of Chazov” during this period, perhaps he would have been able to realize his intention to retire, complete the tasks facing him in preparing the Plenum and overcome or significantly mitigate increasingly a brewing crisis of power. Although unlikely. Too much depended on him. At the same time, Andropov was uncontrollably striving for power. Suslov, as mentioned above in the publication of Roy Medvedev, represented an insurmountable barrier for him in this regard. Andropov understood this and knew that his influence was not enough to achieve his goal while Suslov was in charge. How to be? And he waits as long as possible. But we can’t wait any longer, the count is no longer days, but hours, and the faithful “squire of Sancho Panza”, Chazov, is always at hand if necessary. So what, a fatal coincidence, or rather several such fatal coincidences at once? I don’t know, this topic was not raised then, and now hardly anyone will answer this question.
Suslov's death takes Brezhnev by surprise. Now Andropov comes into the game as one of the main participants. According to the opinion and testimony of V. Legostaev, a member of the CPSU Central Committee, the issue of reform of party power was precisely discussed by Brezhnev with Andropov on the eve of Brezhnev’s death on the night of November 10. After all, it was Andropov who took Suslov’s place in the party hierarchy; he, as they say, holds the cards in his hands, and it was he who should have prepared the said Plenum. Even purely technically, Brezhnev cannot nominate himself for the new post of Party Chairman. He now absolutely needs a person who occupies precisely Andropov’s position in his new capacity. And so, having returned from Zavidovo, rested and, according to the testimony of his assistant and security guard, in a great mood, on the eve of the Plenum he invited Andropov to his office on November 9. Another fatal coincidence: having become General Secretary the day after Brezhnev’s death, Andropov was the last of the highest-level figures to have a personal meeting with Brezhnev.
And now about the continuity of power, the participation and role of the “current” leader in organizing its transfer. And here it may be appropriate to recall the words of the English writer Charles Snow: “People who hold power do not believe until the last minute that they can lose it.” So, from Brezhnev’s position, everything seemed logical and reliable. And so it was. In theory. The plenum is here. Tomorrow other members of the Politburo, and therefore, in reality, everyone around them, should officially learn about the upcoming appointment. But almost everything happened differently. The scheme is amazingly the same: on the eve of the decisive events, on the night of November 9-10, Brezhnev “suddenly” dies in his bed (as M. Bulgakov said, it’s not only scary that a person is mortal, but that he is suddenly mortal). According to the available evidence of Brezhnev’s relatives, who are located here at the dacha where the death occurred, the first person who finds out about this and comes to the dead Brezhnev is the same Andropov. “With a straight face,” he goes to Brezhnev’s bedroom and takes away a certain suitcase, supposedly containing “compromising evidence.” And then, for the second time, he appears at the dacha together with other members of the Politburo, but not a word about the first visit (for more details, see the author’s publication “Andropov. Further, further, further...”, it also contains links to other publications). And a day later, deeply ill and well aware of this, Andropov, presented by Ustinov as a “faithful Leninist,” becomes the new leader of a great country - the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.
In the second half of the 70s of the last century, a crisis of power quickly developed in the country. I can’t say when it arose, but by the end of Brezhnev’s rule it began to be felt so clearly that they almost began to talk about it openly at various levels. The crisis turned out to be protracted and deep, its consequences have not been overcome to this day. It is now clear that it had several seemingly independent, but in fact interconnected stages. It should be noted that this is not the first, but the second major crisis of power that took place in the country in the 20th century, with consequences on a global scale. The first ended with the October Revolution, a change of ideology and system, and many other subsequent changes, and not only our country. The second is defeat in the Cold War, a mechanism of self-destruction of a seemingly unshakable system, a new change of system, the collapse of the country and dramatic changes in the form of ownership and the economy. This crisis once again had a huge impact on global development processes. In each of the crises, objective and subjective factors were at work. The first are quite well described by historians and observers. The latter are less known for various reasons.
Before continuing, I consider it necessary to refer to an important, in my opinion, from the point of view of further presentation, V. Legostaev’s publication “The Magnetic Gebist,” dedicated to Andropov. It was she who influenced my intention to once again rethink and publish the material that was somewhat consonant with me, which is what I did. I called it "Andropov. Further, further, further...", meaning the analogy with Shatrov's famous play, when over time a certain large image, in this case the personality of Andropov, appears more and more clearly and clearly, and the logic of behavior and activity of this Personalities sometimes acquire new meaning for others. In the process of my work, I used not only Legostaev’s publication, but also other sources, as well as personal information. As for Legostaev himself and the trust in his material, I will express the opinion that he is not only, of course, an informed person, but also a good logical thinker. I was also influenced by the fact that I had the opportunity to meet the author earlier, and under a variety of, sometimes unexpected, circumstances. Although there have never been close contacts and a frank exchange of opinions, I have a pretty good idea of Legostaev, having been watching him from the outside for some time (at one time we lived in neighboring dachas in a boarding house). Once I had a chance to meet with him at the Central Committee, where Ligachev invited me, soon after his appointment to a high post in the State Committee for Science and Technology of the USSR (Central Committee member Legostaev was his assistant), and later in the Federation Council. I can say that I have deep confidence in his judgments and assessments contained in the publication, and I have no doubt about his decency and sincerity.
One of the characteristic features of the crisis was that there was a struggle in the corridors of supreme power, and if we describe it purely conventionally in the systemic terms of the well-known game theory, then it was, figuratively speaking, a kind of complex “game”, where, on the one hand, cooperation, and on the other hand, a competitive struggle for survival. But it had a specific character and, purely outwardly, bore little resemblance to wrestling. The goals of the “players” (in this case, members of the Politburo) were different. Someone applied for the first roles. Some (especially the “old men”) just wanted to maintain their positions longer. The main behavioral tactic in this struggle was (how can I put it better?) “tense waiting.” Almost no one wanted to make sudden, careless moves. However, there was at least one such person who not only waited, but at some moments actively acted. We are talking about Andropov. From some time on, he very persistently and consistently strove for supreme power. This was a kind of “super project” of his, which he implemented step by step. He was very careful, for the time being he was in no hurry, fearing that his intentions would be revealed ahead of time. At the same time, he emphasized and skillfully demonstrated his loyal feelings towards Brezhnev.
I read from Legostaev: “...it was he (Andropov) who was the indisputable role model in the Politburo in terms of mastery of subtle flattery, unobtrusive servility, intelligent demonstration of feelings of personal devotion to the Secretary General. ... Andrei Gromyko: - in him loyalty to Brezhnev outgrew all reasonable framework"... And further, when Brezhnev utters a thoughtful phrase: "Shouldn't I retire? I feel bad more and more often... Andropov, according to Gromyko, reacted instantly and very emotionally: "Leonid Ilyich, you just live and don’t care about anything don't worry, just live. I hear this phrase, spoken in some unnatural pitiful tone for him, even now" (and then, I confess, for some reason I remembered the above question of General Lebed to Yakovlev at the party congress: "How many faces do you have...?" Is it the same case here, only now in relation to Andropov? - LS) And one more thing: “... it is an indisputable fact that being a terminally ill man, Andropov, nevertheless, for many years sought the highest political power in the USSR, and in 1982, relying on the power capabilities of the KGB and the Soviet military bureaucracy, he actually usurped this power, being purely physically unable to keep it in his hands."
It is appropriate to recall that Andropov had a unique resource and means of influencing other players. Among the means that he actively used or imitated are: the fight against corruption and economic crimes; the struggle to strengthen positions in the external arena (intelligence, including technical, counterintelligence); the fight against dissent and much more. About Andropov’s inflated campaign against dissidents, Legostaev writes: “The ugly word “dissidents” arose and spread across the country like the bubonic plague. He further ironically: “... if it weren’t for Andropov, we would never have known what it meant...” From him, the head of the most powerful, resourced and authoritative body - the KGB, there was almost everything that could be used to demonstrate activities aimed at strengthening the system against its weakening... Almost everything, except for the decisive influence on the promotion and work with party cadres, and this is in the country , where the leading and directing role of the Communist Party was constitutionally enshrined, and was the main lever that he just lacked for complete power. It should be noted that there has been practically no internal party struggle in the country for several decades, but actually at some stage a kind of dual power was established in the country: CPSU-KGB. Andropov’s main weapon in the struggle for power were notes to the Central Committee, only not at the middle level, as in the IMEMO practice mentioned above, but at the highest level (not lower than the Politburo), sometimes - personally to the Secretary General. Members of the Politburo, or, as they were sometimes called behind their backs, “elders,” obediently swallowed this carefully selected and dosed information - Andropov’s “horror stories.” And they were very afraid at the same time, so as not to become one of the objects of his activity and analysis. However, from time to time they got hit. The game, or “hunt,” was for the big ones, for some less successful, for others more successfully, but in the end the target was Brezhnev himself and his family. The phrase “just live” stopped working. Andropov's "superproject" was entering its final phase.
It sounds like a paradox, but in reality, from the point of view of achieving the set goal of providing access to the highest political power, inflating activities dedicated to the dissident movement and imitation of an uncompromising fight against “ideological sabotage” were beneficial to Andropov. The idea was beneficial and win-win. To paraphrase Kant’s famous saying, we can say that if there were no dissidents, they should have been invented... The “cases” of Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov are a direct product of Andropovism. The same can be said about another “horse” - selectively targeted, sometimes exaggerated and unreasonably protruded accusations of corruption. Of course, corruption existed (probably an evil that will never be eradicated), but its scale cannot be compared with what happened later. And all this not only did not decrease in size, but also received a new development today, incomparable with what it was before.
I don’t know whether it’s successful or not, now Primakov in his book “Years in Big Politics” for some reason calls himself an “intra-system dissident.” Of course, this is his personal business; perhaps, at some stage, such self-esteem brought him internal satisfaction and, perhaps, even certain political dividends. The whole world knew that our country was waging a tough fight against dissidents, and this aroused sympathy for them as freedom fighters. So is it still in the country or in Andropov’s department? For the outside world, it was all the same; in the end, the Helsinki Accords were signed by Brezhnev, not Andropov. Well, Andropov had the cards in his hands, and he, relying on the formal approval of the Politburo, waged an active fight against dissidents, albeit against “ordinary” ones. And so the question arose, how to treat their other variety - “latent” dissidents, because they actually did the same thing with dissidents openly, and sometimes more subtly, without unnecessary noise and fanfare, but this does not mean that it was less effective.
It would be interesting to have more information about how Andropov treated such an intra-system, or “latent” variety, which, of course, he knew about. He simply could not help but notice such dissidents and ignore them altogether (as noted above, Sidorenko also writes about this). The question is not simple, and it is not completely clear to me. Maybe Andropov did not attach any importance to this, considering it “acceptable self-indulgence,” or maybe even secretly sympathized with it? Perhaps he had not fully decided and was saving it as a “trump card” for the future; where was the line between conservatives and reformers in the area of impending reform? He was, of course, a very smart person, but a pure practitioner, and he received a diploma of higher education, and even then through the Higher Party School, in absentia, while already working in a high position in the KGB, so he could only rely on “class instinct” and your experience. Or maybe, over time, he would have written another note to the Central Committee, similar to the critical notes about Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn. I think, however, that he probably had some ideas regarding this not entirely clear “breed”. Now we can only guess about this.
Brezhnev patronized Andropov’s activities and his notes to the Politburo - Andropov’s “horror stories”. This allowed him to maintain the role of the sole supreme judge among other members of the Politburo. He did not allow the thought that one day he himself might find himself the object of such activity and, perhaps, it was here that he was outplayed. Outwardly, everything looked like a struggle for the purity of “true Marxism-Leninism” and socialism, the essence of which, by the way, some of the members of the top leadership team sometimes had a rather vague idea (Molotov has interesting remarks about this in Chuev’s book).
I don’t know about Brezhnev, but it is possible that the first who “came to his senses” was Suslov, who was responsible through the party for ideological work. He understood perfectly well that every, even reasonable, undertaking, if it is brought to the point of absurdity, threatens to turn into its opposite. Moreover, Andropov, due to the specifics of the department he headed, and thanks to the “secrecy” factor, always had the opportunity to “go into the shadows.” As for the responsibility for his actions, in particular for the persecution of dissidents, and criticism of the West regarding “freedoms and democracy,” for which Andropov’s activities created a favorable pretext, it ultimately fell on the party, its leadership and “dogmatic "Ideological attitudes. The party reform that Suslov was preparing and for which Brezhnev was “ripe”, according to its plan, was supposed to find a reasonable solution to these issues, and, what may have been even more important at that stage, to give a specific solution regarding guarantees and a mechanism for ensuring the continuity of power and overcoming its increasingly brewing crisis.
On the other hand, Andropov himself at some stage realized that, duplicating the functions of the party and its control bodies, in his ostentatious desire to “be holier than the Pope” (read - the ideological guidelines of the party and the fight against its enemies), he “outplayed ". Having understood, he became very worried, he had less and less time, especially since his health was deteriorating, and as Legostaev writes, it was he who caused the greatest concern among other leaders in this sense, having miraculously avoided being transferred to retirement several years ago. Andropov found himself in time trouble, and his actions began to acquire an increasingly adventurous character. This became especially noticeable in connection with his campaign to create a distorted image and create compromising evidence against Brezhnev: the country is filled with gossip and rumors about a decrepit, senile old man, incapable of governing the state and mired in corruption, and the inflated “Galina Brezhneva diamond case” only accelerated the denouement . (Other examples of exaggerated cases are related to Rashidov and Medunov, who were later, by the way, rehabilitated).
According to media publications (for example, the work of Roy Medvedev mentioned above), Andropov could not advance to further power without overcoming the “Suslov barrier,” and this assessment should be considered fair. At the same time, he fears (and not without reason) possible exposure in connection with the tendentious collection of compromising evidence against the Brezhnev family, which he actively organized. He is afraid that his actions could be interpreted as attacks against Brezhnev himself. The logic of the development of events led to the fact that the party would have to either defend and protect Brezhnev from continued attacks, or, as in the case of Khrushchev, seek his departure, which seemed unlikely. Andropov himself was not yet ready for the latter, hence his pitiful: “Leonid Ilyich, you just live and don’t worry about anything... just live.” But there was also a worse, catastrophic option for him if his actions were assessed as activities directed against the party itself and its authority, as happened, for example, in 1953. At this moment, the fate of Andropov himself hung literally by a thread. Now he was in a hurry. How dramatically the events unfolded next is well known. Accidentally or not, a whole chain of unexpected political deaths followed. History suggests that something similar took place on the eve of Stalin’s death...
So the reform of the party leadership did not take place. According to Legostaev, it was Andropov’s actions that actually initiated a crisis of power in the country, and this was the beginning of an unprecedented geopolitical catastrophe. Whether this is so, “initiated” or only “aggravated”, I personally find it difficult to determine for myself. It is only clear that the party was late in developing a reasonable, democratic and balanced procedure for selecting a successor and a mechanism for transferring power. Things went south, which led to private decisions. And the well-known fact, described in the media, of the “exchange” of the posts of Secretary General and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, where, with Gorbachev’s blessing, the elder Gromyko and his son, Yakovlev and Primakov took part (who also each received their own) serves as a sad example of this, which turned out to be fatal for the country and (God grant that current leaders take this into account) a harsh lesson for the future.
It is clear that, after Andropov’s death, Chernenko was unable to overcome this crisis. However, no one expected this from him. The trouble is that the crisis was further deepened by the personal shortcomings of Gorbachev, Yeltsin and their henchmen. The result is defeat in the Cold War: discrediting of the central government; a sharp increase in centrifugal tendencies, the collapse of the country, a decline in the economy, a catastrophic decline in the living standards of the population, loss of control over many strategic resources, dependence on a former strategic enemy. This crisis, as already noted, has not been completely overcome today. Among other things, the crisis of power that developed even more under the last Secretary General gave rise to deep distrust in it, strong centrifugal tendencies and called into question not only the possibility of effective management based on existing principles, but also the very idea of the statehood that had emerged by that time. With Yeltsin coming to power, the crisis, against the backdrop of lawlessness and rising crime, worsened even more and became so aggravated that it ultimately led to irreversible, destructive consequences for the country. There was a collapse. A corrupt government was established in the country, under which its representatives actually secured unlimited opportunities for personal gain by robbing the rest of the population. Corruption has reached national proportions. The ideas of social justice, which no one formally abandoned, were trampled upon.
The end of Yeltsin's reign. The scale of economic crimes was growing. The country was being plundered. The head of the Yeltsin administration, Voloshin, said that, supposedly, during the transition period, economic crimes do not exist at all. Yeltsin, saving his skin, again changes the Prime Minister (Kiriyenko). Appointed Prime Minister after a severe economic crisis - default, Primakov is categorically against Voloshin's demagoguery. The new Prime Minister is an intelligent, wise enough person who believes in the principles of social justice, the ability to establish a reasonable state and world order, overcome corruption, find and establish the optimal combination of state and market mechanisms. He formulates the basic principles of the new government, which he expresses to the Duma upon appointment (see Primakov’s book “Eight Months Plus...”) and here, finally, although in general terms, he reveals his program... Eight months pass. There are tangible signs of improvement in the situation in the country. But Yeltsin, and even more so his thoroughly corrupt entourage, from the very beginning are mortally afraid of precisely the one who was only recently asked to save their regime - Primakov. Yeltsin's health was poor at that time. If power were to pass to the Prime Minister, it would be a “catastrophe” for the “family.” And now, having recovered a little, Yeltsin, using his rights, removes Primakov without any external grounds. He is preparing his second, just mentioned book. The book is very frank and necessary (Primakov certainly knows how to prepare critical materials; this, as already noted, is the experience of a significant part of his life). The section of the book on corruption gives the impression of a bomb exploding (the “family” was afraid for good reason). This is no longer just a crisis, but a metastasis of the outgoing government. Yeltsin’s decision to remove Primakov from the post of Prime Minister boomeranged back to the then President himself. It is clear that Yeltsin must leave, and this happened. He had the intelligence to leave on his own, which neither Brezhnev nor Khrushchev did at one time. But the crisis of power continues and has now grown into a protracted economic crisis. The country, in the words of the new President Putin, has found itself at a critical point. Active attempts to overcome the crisis situation are being made today, but the end, figuratively speaking, is not yet in sight.
The country was thrown back in its development, and the corresponding period can only be compared with the worst pages of the era of troubled times known in Rus'.
ABOUT SUSLOV'S DEATH.
When he died, Soviet television broadcast a series of impressive programs, the likes of which could not be remembered. They were buried on Red Square, right behind the Lenin Mausoleum, literally three or four meters from Stalin’s grave. Did he die on his own or by someone’s evil will? I’ll tell you straight, right after his death, we in the family didn’t think about it, such a question didn’t even occur to us. Later, analyzing and comparing the events of that time, I had to face some strange circumstances and facts. Even later, publications began to appear with assumptions and conjectures on this topic, for example, the Courier newspaper, Los Angeles, cited above. As for A.N. Yakovlev’s guess “it is impossible to exclude the possibility that he was helped to die” and the statements of the doctor E.I. Chazov that “he was over eighty, may God grant everyone to live that long,” and also that “in Regarding the official version of the cause of Suslov’s death, his relatives had a different opinion,” I will say, omitting some details that can be found in the publication “Andropov. Further, further ...”, the following.
On January 21, 1982, in the evening, while watching a television program about Lenin (who has forgotten, this is the date of his death), Suslov suddenly felt ill. He just managed to calm down his daughter who was sitting next to him and lost consciousness. It never came back to him. This happened in the Kuntsevo hospital, on the eve of leaving it. Suslov did not intend to go to the hospital and resisted it as best he could (if he had not gone to bed, most likely, then he would have remained alive), but Chazov insisted, saying that it was absolutely necessary to carry out a routine examination. At the same time (later we sadly ironized - as if he was providing an alibi), simply put, he hit the road to the south, taking Gorbachev with him for some reason. But now the examination is over. Rating - "excellent". The mood is good (I note, like his colleague Brezhnev a few hours before his death).
Chazov, speaking about Suslov’s age (see the above phrase), either through negligence or deliberately made a mistake. Suslov was not yet 80 years old when he died (I know that older people count almost every month, and here there was still almost a year left until the anniversary). Upon reaching this age, he had a firm decision to retire, and he would undoubtedly have done so and would not have created a different precedent. This was well known in the family - remember, I wrote above, here it would be the same as in the case of the third star. So this doctor’s statement is not accurate. And here Chazov is wrong. Chazov’s family still has unexplained questions related to the mysterious death of Mikhail Andreevich. He knows about this and notes it in his memoirs. And here the doctor is right, questions really remain. It must be said that with his family, especially after his death, he remained inaccessible, I will not use the term arrogantly. It was not possible to communicate with him, as they say, purely humanly, much less frankly. It seems that he avoided it then and then completely; where can you get to him (I don’t know, maybe he behaves like that with everyone, then, as they say, sorry). Brezhnev gradually faded away. Apparently, Chazov was already focusing on other high-ranking bosses, God be his judge. There was no point in seeking a meeting with him in this situation (and why?), especially since even then his opinion, expressed above in slightly different words, “he’s lived enough,” was more or less known to us. And then, as it turned out from the mentioned American publication, for some reason he really cares about his alibi (he writes: “Gorbachev is a witness to how I was dragged out of the North Caucasus to Suslov. We were sitting with him in Zheleznovodsk when they called me and They said: leave urgently, things are bad with Suslov, so that you can be in Moscow by morning." Why did he then go with a “witness”, by no means the most important figure at that time, to the Caucasus, when at least two of his highest-ranking patients after Brezhnev (the second was Ustinov) were treated at the government medical complex in Kuntsevo? According to elementary logic, not to mention medical ethics, he simply had to be not far from these patients.
As soon as the events happened with Suslov, his daughter tried to contact by phone everyone on whom, as it seemed to her then, something could depend. I spoke with Andropov, and with Gorbachev, and with Chazov (both of the latter were already in Moscow). The response to the calls was immediate, the conversation was generally normal, if a bit dry. The impression is that a call from her and information about the development of events seemed to be eagerly awaited, although in the end no one doubted it. Another question is could they help in any way? Obviously, in that situation there is nothing. This was understandable; at that moment the family expected maybe a little more participation, nothing more. Later, the only question that bothered me was how best to preserve his memory.
Soon, Dr. Lev Kumachev, Suslov’s attending physician, died under mysterious circumstances, having given him a fatal, incomprehensible, potent pill a few hours before his actual death (God kill me if I believe that he himself took such a personal initiative). This doctor was a creature of the KGB (they were all from there, but now I don’t know whether that’s good or bad). Still quite young, about forty, he also had some unanswered questions; a little later they wanted to talk to him, but they didn’t have time.
Andropov, having held his high post for fifteen months, himself died, also, as they say, under rather unclear circumstances. I remember they felt sorry for him, people expected him to restore order. They said he caught a cold after sitting on a cold stone barrier while on vacation in the south. Chazov simply had to save him (but he collected factual material for the book “Health and Power”)! However, Andropov was indeed very seriously ill, why did he fight so hard for such a heavy burden? People are all different, there is no single explanation... After him, having received as a gift and having eaten some, they say, not very fresh fish, he left without having managed to do anything during the thirteen months of his reign, certainly decent and honest, but also very sick and what a something helpless Chernenko. As for the living Gorbachev, it is appropriate to recall that most of all his wife, Raisa Maksimovna, was afraid during her voluntary “imprisonment” in Foros (as she later wrote): -to take newly sent medications. Only then did the famous book by General Sudoplatov appear, which mentions a special laboratory at the KGB, where all kinds of medications were produced, including the so-called “pacifiers” (is it only?) for the “medicine addict” Brezhnev. What is true here, what is not, I don’t presume to judge. However, I remember one more phrase from the mentioned book by Molotov: “Stalin was afraid to be treated...”. Leaders, sometimes unexpectedly, come and go. In each case in its own way. The history of Russia, apparently, keeps many medical secrets related to its leaders. The crisis of power grew.
ABOUT THE BOOK "THE ERA OF STALIN" BY AMERICAN JOURNALIST ANNA LOUISE STRONG. SECTION "STALIN. AFTER STALIN".
The topic of Stalin was never specifically discussed in the family, and I, moreover, not a social scientist, seemed to have no reason to raise this issue, which was far from the profile of my scientific interests and competence. However, from the perspective of the material offered to the reader, it is still apparently important, and it would be wrong to completely bypass it when talking about Suslov. For many reasons, I think, that don’t even require special explanation. Here is one of the more or less random examples to illustrate. In 2005, a book was published in Austria and Germany, the title of which in Russian translation is: “The Red Army in Austria. Soviet occupation 1945 - 1955. Documents.” The materials were selected by an international team, including with the participation of the Russian side under the leadership of a certain A. Chubaryan (editor). I cannot and will not say anything about the book itself. This is a solid, very voluminous two-volume work, published mostly in German, in some parts with page-by-page translation into Russian (more precisely, probably the other way around). I have no doubt that the book is useful as historical material (I don’t know, however, how complete it is and whether there is a similar publication, for example, about the American occupation). But in the section “Brief Biographical Sketches” of the book, information about Suslov is given. It says, in particular, the following: “The main ideologist of Stalinism. ... In the last years of his life, one of the most influential Stalinists in the Kremlin leadership.” In passing, I note that the information on Suslov regarding dates and positions held was compiled carelessly (apparently, an oversight by the editor of the Russian side; by the way, for some unknown reason, information on Stalin is completely absent, although for hundreds of “smaller” figures, not to mention other top leaders , it, with the appropriate characteristics, is available). But the essence in this case, probably, is still in the above phrase, which, from my point of view, looks, as mentioned earlier, like one of the attempts to “stick a label.” However, this is probably not so important. For some reason, I think that many readers have their own opinions on this matter, and it is for them that the following information about the cruel but inexorable logic of those events in connection with the book by Anna Louise Strong may be of interest. This is not an epilogue, and yet this is exactly what I’m going to end the publication with.
Before me is the book mentioned in the subtitle by a famous American journalist, published in New York and republished in the Soviet Union (IL, 1957). In addition to the fact that the source itself is quite rare, the book contains Suslov’s notes, and if not for this circumstance, I would most likely have completely avoided this topic in this publication. There is no text, but some fragments are highlighted with colored pencil, others with ticks, others with bold lines in the margins or underlined. I think this is also a kind of source of information of interest. Naturally, it is impossible to provide all the notes. I will present selectively, without any comments, some of the marked fragments, taken mainly from the introductory and final (10th) parts of the book, bearing the title "Stalin. After Stalin."
- “They (Russians) have already gone far beyond the Stalin era. They analyze the past in order to better build the future. They know that any social progress is paid at the highest price: not only the death of heroes in battles, but also the death of those unjustly convicted. They also know that all the troubles they experienced during the years of socialist construction under the leadership of Stalin, whether they were caused by necessity, mistakes or crimes, are immeasurably less than the evil that the Western world deliberately inflicted on them during the period of intervention and Hitler’s invasion, less even than the suffering ", which the delay in the opening of the “second front” brought to them through the fault of the United States. They will correct their shortcomings without our advice.”
- "... it was one of the great dynamic eras in history, perhaps the greatest. None of those who participated in the deeds of this era escaped its influence. It gave birth to millions of heroes, but also many villains. The faint-hearted can now retrospectively compile a list of crimes committed in that era. But for those who went through the fire of struggle, and even many who fell in it, the troubles they experienced were only part of the price that had to be paid for building socialism. ... The shadow sides of the era were due to many reasons: the historical characteristics of Russia, the influence of a hostile environment , the activities of Hitler's fifth column and partly the character of the man who led the construction of socialism.But first of all, they were due to the fact that the working class of Western countries, with its democratic traditions and technical skills, ceded the task of building a socialist society to the illiterate, technically backward peasant people, who were aware that he was not ready to solve this problem, and yet he solved it."
Speaking about responses to the death of Stalin, the author quotes the following words: “Having expressed official condolences, “only official,” as the press emphasized, the government (USA) announced that energetic measures must be taken to take advantage of the situation that has arisen in the USSR; must "all means of propaganda and other more drastic measures be used to promote discord within Russia and a split between the Soviet Union and its satellites (Wall Street Journal, March 5, 1953)."
- “The constant threat of war, approaching old age, the expansion of personal power, increasing tension in the struggle for a better future for the world - these are the factors under the influence of which Stalin became increasingly despotic and autocratic. However, in the spread of the “cult of personality”, which is now declared the root of all the evils of the past, the one who was deified is no more guilty than those who deified him. ... Stalin said: “Either we build socialism, or in the next ten years we will be defeated by foreign invaders. ... Turning to history, it is not difficult to see that all other leaders - Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin - led to defeat."
- “At present it is impossible to give a final assessment of the Stalin era. Stalin is one of those people who are judged by history, whose activities become more understandable only with the passage of time. In any case, we know the following about Stalin’s activities: in 1928 he put forward a program building socialism in one country - in a backward peasant country surrounded by a hostile world. When Stalin began his business, Russia was a peasant, illiterate country; when he finished, Russia had become the second industrial power in the world. Stalin had to solve the problem of building a new economy twice: in the first "once before Hitler's invasion and the second time after the war, as a result of which the country was covered in ruins. Stalin was the organizer of all this work; that is why he deserved eternal glory."
End of publication.
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