Georgy Zhzhenov: why the Soviet actor was in prison. Agent of Hope Georgy Zhzhenov Two and a half years in Kresty

lived long life. Not only fame and success fell to his lot, but also serious trials. So, in the era Stalin's repressions he was twice convicted on trumped-up charges.

Circus and cinema

Georgy Stepanovich Zhzhenov was born in March 1915 in Petrograd, in the family of a baker. Despite the fact that the family was poor, the children were drawn to study. Georgy's older brother Boris entered the university in the early 30s, and Georgy himself, after graduating from an eight-year school with a physics and mathematics degree, was admitted to the acrobatic department of the circus school. Soon, together with one of his fellow students, his namesake, he began performing in the arena of the Leningrad Circus in the acrobatic duet “2-Georges-2”.

It was at the circus that Lenfilm employees saw him. The young man received the main role in the film “The Hero's Mistake” (1932). After that, leaving the circus, Zhzhenov entered the Leningrad College of Performing Arts on the course of Sergei Gerasimov. He starred in several films, including the legendary Chapaev.

The Road to Calvary

In December 1934, Kirov was killed in Leningrad. Boris Zhzhenov, like other Leningrad State University students, was supposed to take part in the funeral procession. But he refused, since he did not have proper shoes to spend several hours in the cold... This was regarded as a hostile attitude towards Soviet power. Soon Boris was expelled from the university. He was later reinstated, but in December 1936 he was again summoned to the NKVD. He never returned from there, receiving seven years for “anti-Soviet activities.”

The Zhzhenov family was evicted from Leningrad. In addition to Georgy, his fellow filmmakers and Gerasimov himself stood up for him.

In the summer of 1938, Zhzhenov, together with a group of film actors, went to film in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. On the train they met an American diplomat who was traveling to Vladivostok as part of a delegation. Of course, fellow travelers were talking to each other. After the trip, the NKVD received a report about “contacts with a foreigner.” This plus the reputation of a relative of the “enemy of the people” was quite enough to accuse Zhzhonov of espionage. When Georgy returned to Leningrad, they came for him.

In the famous Leningrad prison "Crosses" Zhzhenov had to go through all the circles of hell. He was interrogated with passion - tortured, beaten, deprived of sleep... Others could not stand the bullying and confessed to the most absurd things. But the athletic, trained artist flatly refused to admit the charge of espionage. As a result, he was not shot, but given five years in the camps.

This is how Zhzhenov ended up in Kolyma, where he had to endure hunger, cold, exhausting work, and the daily struggle for survival... During the war, almost no food was delivered to the Kolyma camps, and prisoners died in the hundreds.

In 1943, the head of a traveling acting propaganda team, Nikanorov, accidentally recognized a former film actor in a scab-covered goner from a penal camp at the Glukhar mine, and first achieved his transfer to his propaganda team, and then to the Magadan Musical Drama Theater, the troupe of which was almost entirely made up of prisoners.

In 1944, the actor's prison term was coming to an end. However, he was summoned to the camp authorities and asked to sign a resolution for an additional term - another 21 months in the camps.

Second try

In 1945, Zhzhenov was finally released, and thanks to Gerasimov, he found work at the Sverdlovsk film studio, where he starred in the film “Alitet Goes to the Mountains” - about Soviet Chukotka. But in 1949, the actor was arrested again. This time, however, he was sentenced not to the camps, but to exile in Norilsk. There he got a job at the local drama theater named after Mayakovsky, where he played together with Innokenty Smoktunovsky, who went to Siberia to sit out Time of Troubles- He feared arrest for being captured by the Germans in 1943.

In Norilsk, Zhzhenov tried to start a family with actress Irina Makhaeva. For him, this was already his third marriage - the previous two were interrupted by arrests... Later they had a daughter, Marina.

Only in 1955, having been completely rehabilitated, was the actor able to return to Leningrad. At first he worked in the regional drama theater, but already in 1956 he began acting in Lenfilm. National fame came to him in the late 60s - early 70s after filming the films “Resident Error” and “Fate

resident." The actor was awarded many state awards, and in 2005 the whole country celebrated the 90th birthday of Georgy Zhzhonov - people's artist and a former prisoner.

The Zhzhenov family was evicted from Leningrad. In addition to Georgy, his fellow filmmakers and Gerasimov himself stood up for him.

In 1944, the actor's prison term was coming to an end. However, he was summoned to the camp authorities and asked to sign a resolution for an additional term - another 21 months in the camps.

Georgy Zhzhenov, having spent his entire youth in the camps, at the age of forty began new life. The films “Crew”, “The Fate of a Resident”, “Beware of the Car” made him a people's favorite. But to tell the truth - that he was in prison, dying of hunger, was beaten and tortured many times - the artist was able to tell the truth only shortly before his death, when he voluntarily went on a “raid” on places of detention.

As a child, Georgy Stepanovich was simply called Egorka. He was a “Petrograd punk,” a tomboy, who played football in the street day and night. I returned home only to quickly sip some cabbage soup - a huge saucepan always stood ready in the entryway. The mother had no time to feed a crowd of eight people! She married a widower who had “five mouths,” and he often drank and beat his mother. Only when Georgy and his older brother Boris grew up and fought back against their father did this stop.

In 1934, Sergei Kirov was killed, and Georgy Zhzhenov I didn't go to his funeral because I didn't have shoes. This was enough to get him arrested. After this, the whole family was deported to Kazakhstan, but Georgy remained in Leningrad. He was studying to be an actor, and he did not care about the threat of arrest. Georgiy believed that his brother “roared” out of stupidity.

On a summer night in 1938, when Zhzhenov was arrested, he was recorded under number 605, so many people were taken in one night... Many times, sitting in his cell, Zhzhenov reproached himself for how unfairly he treated Boris. They visited him in prison with his mother. Boris managed to hand over sheets of paper to his relatives, which described everything that was happening in prisons, the whole truth about the repressions. Zhzhenov didn’t believe it, burned the sheets, and lectured his brother: “Just work, and they’ll let you out!” Everything will be fine!" Now Zhzhenov felt firsthand everything that his brother described.

Having not slept for three days, exhausted from the beatings, he signed a slander against himself, as the investigators demanded. But the next day he came to his senses and abandoned his actions; it was not too late. No matter how much the investigators put pressure on him, there was no point.

Perhaps Zhzhenov was impressed by the suicide of his cellmate - he slandered his friends, and his conscience tormented him. After almost two years of interrogations and beatings, Zhzhenov, who never signed the slander against himself, was sentenced to five years in prison.

After changing several places, the young man ended up at the mines in the Magadan region. A remote place. There Zhzhenov was supposed to die in the first winter, because due to snowfall, transport stopped running and the mine was left without bread for many days. A real famine began. Dying from exhaustion, Georgy knew that ten kilometers from the camp a package was waiting for him from his mother, who had been looking for him in the camps for three years.

“I couldn’t think about anything else except about this package, I started hallucinating,” Zhzhenov later recalled in his memoirs. – I imagined mountains of sausage, cheese, butter, bread, tobacco...

Miraculously, Zhzhenov managed to persuade one of the “bosses” to take him with him to the place where the package was waiting. Ten kilometers on foot - through a snowstorm, a blizzard, not a single soul around... This trip ended with unheard-of luck for Zhzhenov - a seemingly heartless “boss” took him to the place in a sled! Zhzhenov could neither forget nor comprehend this until the end of his life. And he gave the parcel, which had turned into “dry mixture,” to the guards and asked that the food be given out gradually. One day, before his eyes, a hungry man attacked the food and died immediately. Zhzhenov remembered this picture and since then has never lost his head. One day he and other prisoners were transported on a barge, they were given herring, but there was no water. The distraught people drank too much river water, and three hundred people died of dysentery. Zhzhenov remained alive because he showed restraint and did not take a sip!

When the war began, there could be no question of people like Zhzhenov going to the front. No matter how many petitions Georgy wrote to be enrolled in the penal battalion, they were not even considered. During these years, he mastered the profession of a driver, but he had to end his “career” in the camp as a grain cutter. This is a person who cuts bread into pieces for prisoners; such people were often attacked, killed, and bread distribution centers were robbed. But Zhzhenov is used to treating any work honestly.

“I didn’t steal a single gram of bread!” – he later recalled. “And it was so hard that even “in the wind” I walked with two or three knives stuffed into my boot by the boot. They tried to attack me more than once.

Zhzhenov, probably fortunately for him, fell ill with jaundice. Due to illness, the artist was released from this position. But when his term came to an end, Georgy was called to the authorities and was shown a paper that his term had been extended. He realized that this would last forever, and lost heart. The cultural brigade that arrived at the camp, consisting of prisoners, flashed like a ray of light in the dark kingdom. Zhzhenov was enlisted in the brigade, and this is how he saved his life.

Georgy Stepanovich lived to be 90 years old. Shortly before his death, he visited prisons and places where former camps. He did not complain about the past, but even tried to find difficult situations and humor, and even some kind of camp justice.

There was only one question he could not answer: “For what?”

Reference

Georgy Zhzhenov was born in 1915. After school I studied at circus school to an acrobat, where filmmakers noticed him. In 1935 he graduated from the Leningrad College of Performing Arts. Before his arrest, Zhzhenov managed to star in several films, including Chapaev.

After his release, Zhzhenov played at the Magadan Theater. He was rehabilitated in 1955, after which he immediately began actively acting in films.

Business Cards Zhzhenova – commander in “Crew”, spy Tulyev in “The Fate of a Resident”, general in the film “Hot Snow”. Georgy Stepanovich passed away in 2005. The actor's camp story was filmed documentary“Russian Cross”, and in the book “From the Capercaillie to the Firebird” the actor himself spoke about what he had to experience.

Afterword

The last page of the painful memoirs of People's Artist of the USSR Georgy Stepanovich Zhzhenov has been read.

I admit, I am one of those military prosecutors who was involved in the “case” of Zhzhonov. Let me explain how this happened.

In 1954, I was appointed to the position of deputy chief military prosecutor.

At that time, a special group of military prosecutors who had no previous involvement in cases of special jurisdiction (meaning cases investigated by the NKVD - MGB) was created in the apparatus of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office to review them. The publication of the facts of arbitrariness committed by the convicted Beria, Abakumov, Ryumin and their henchmen caused numerous complaints and letters to the CPSU Central Committee and the government regarding the rehabilitation of the innocently repressed. Among them was a complaint from Maria Fedorovna Shchelkina, addressed to Malenkov, who became the head of the Soviet government after Stalin’s death. The consideration of the complaint was taken under special control. We were waiting for our decision...

Shchepkina, the mother of film actor Zhzhenov, wrote that her son became a victim of Yezhov-Beriev’s tyranny and suffered for many years in camps, and then in a special settlement in Siberia. The complaint ended with a plea: “Don’t let the mother die without seeing her son.”

We made inquiries. It turned out that Georgy Stepanovich Zhzhenov, born in 1915, a native of the city of Leningrad, was accused of espionage activities, for which he was convicted twice. So, it’s up to us to deal with this matter. Let me explain why. Cases against all persons (civilian and military) accused of espionage are assigned, by law, to the jurisdiction of military justice. How did it become possible to accuse an honest man of such a serious state crime as espionage?

First of all, I would like to emphasize that the tragedy he experienced was far from private. It exposes many negative phenomena related to the observance of human rights during the times of “Stalinism”, some of which, unfortunately, have not yet been completely eliminated to this day.

I will begin by outlining, as best I can, the situation that developed in 1935-1938 in Leningrad.

Immediately after the murder of Kirov, a commissar was appointed head of the NKVD Department of the city of Leningrad state security Zakovsky, who replaced the former chief of Medve-

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person who did not provide warning terrorist attack, for which he was arrested.

The new chief was given instructions to “cleanse Leningrad of Zinoviev’s rabble.”

Zakovsky knew well how to do this, having gained similar experience working under the direct leadership of Yagoda and consigning to oblivion the KGB traditions laid down by Dzerzhinsky. Yagoda was soon arrested. Zakovsky was not touched. He was still needed...

A “campaign” of mass arrests, convictions, and expulsions from Leningrad began. At first it affected real adherents of Zinoviev, then it spread to those who simply sympathized with the “Zinovievites”, and then... and then judge for yourself who it affected...

As one would expect from the overzealous Zakovsky, he stopped taking into account the requirements of the law. Zhzhenov’s brother, Boris, was also among the counter-revolutionaries. The whole fault of Boris Stepanovich, a talented student at Leningrad University, was that he did not take part in the farewell procession at Kirov’s funeral, citing the fact that he did not have warm shoes. It was a harsh December 1934...

Despite the obvious absence of any crime in Boris Zhzhenov’s act, which was also explained by respectful motives, he was nevertheless charged under Article 58.10 of the Criminal Code “for conducting counter-revolutionary agitation and propaganda.” He was sentenced to several years in prison and sent to one of the Gulag camps, from where he never returned.

Following Boris, almost the entire Zhzhenov family, native Leningrad residents, were repressed. Having illegally been deprived of their registration, they were expelled from Leningrad. Georgiy managed to stay. Now we know who helped him avoid this exile. But he failed to get rid of the “all-seeing and partial eye.”

The “rebellious” military prosecutors of the Leningrad Military District, who became aware of the illegal investigative methods used by Zakovsky’s employees, also did not help.

Here, by the way, I must tell about this story, since it has a certain relation to the “case” of Zhzhonov.

Military prosecutors of the Leningrad Military District received a complaint from one person arrested on suspicion of espionage that NKVD officers carried out a provocation against him. Being a believer, he asked to see a priest. They sent him a “masked” employee, who formalized the confession as an admission of the arrested person of espionage for the benefit of

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Poland. During the inspection, other facts of the use of illegal investigative methods were also revealed. The military prosecutor of the Leningrad Military District Kuznetsov made a representation to Zakovsky about the termination illegal practices falsification of investigative materials and punishment of those responsible. Zakovsky imposed a resolution: “So it was, so it will be.” And he not only blatantly rejected the demands of the military prosecutor, but also accused him of sabotage, of opposing the fight against the enemies of the people. With the connivance of the then chief military prosecutor Rozovsky, the military lawyer Kuznetsov was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison. A number of military prosecutors in the district were also punished “for weakening the fight against counter-revolution and weakening vigilance.”

This literally gave a free hand to adventurous types, who found themselves in abundance doing investigative work in the apparatus of the NKVD Directorate of Leningrad. Their chief Zakovsky celebrated the victory.

At this time, he personally signed another warrant for the arrest of G.S. Zhzhenov, another spy who was unable to escape the watchful eye. A reason for the arrest was found. The NKVD Directorate of Leningrad received information about Zhzhenov’s acquaintance with the American citizen Fyvonmil, one of the employees of the US Embassy in Moscow. As the proverb says, the beast runs to the catcher...

The arrested Zhzhonov hoped that the investigators would listen to him carefully. He will tell you how, on a trip, the group of actors who were on their way to Komsomolsk-on-Amur to star in the film “Komsomolsk” accidentally met with Fyvonmile. There was nothing reprehensible or criminal in the open conversation that took place with the American.

But Georgy Stepanovich’s hopes were not justified. In response, he heard rude language, insults, and threats from investigators Kirilenko and Morgul. The testimony that Zhzhonov gave did not suit them. They needed recognition.

Of course, no one witnessed the torture and abuse that the executioners Kirilenko and Morgul inflicted on Zhzhonov, but from our practice of involving criminal investigators in criminal liability for the use of illegal investigative methods, we know how they spoke without embarrassment in court about this “conveyor belt”, considering it one of the most " effective methods disarmament of enemies." They believed themselves and tried to convince the judges that they were doing a "just cause", fighting "enemies" who "you can't take with your bare hands", they needed " hedgehog gloves". And it was none other than Stalin himself who supplied them with them.

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Now let’s turn to the very first interrogation protocol of July 7, 1938, which follows the arrest warrant and immediately justifies the decision to arrest Georgy Stepanovich.

From the notes made in the interrogation protocol, it follows that Zhzhenov gave his consent to Fyvonmil to become an American intelligence agent and received the task of collecting information about military units the Red Army, about their location in the Leningrad Military District and weapons; establish the location of military factories in Leningrad and report on the quantity of products they produce.

The “authors” of these testimonies were not at all embarrassed by how unrealistic such tasks are for a person whose profession is a film actor.

What did Zhzhonov convey to American intelligence?

He “informed” about the prospects for the development of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, about its industrial and military significance (after all, the artist Zhzhonov had just returned from Komsomolsk-on-Amur, where he participated in the filming of a film).

He also “informed” American intelligence about “the political sentiments of the Lenfilm film workers,” where he had worked since 1932 (it turns out that American intelligence was in dire need of this!).

During subsequent interrogations, Zhzhonov demanded that investigators write down that the testimony of the first interrogation was fictitious. He confirmed only the fact of a chance acquaintance with Fyvonmile and subsequent meetings with him, emphasizing that they always took place in the presence of other persons and were completely innocent. This turn of events did not suit the investigators, but Georgy Stepanovich was firm and unshakable. He entered into an open struggle with counterfeiters, foreseeing in advance what awaited him...

Since that time, Zhzhonov has been writing one complaint after another, writing to everyone, as he puts it, on whom intervention in the objective decision of his fate may depend.

But all his letters will “sink into oblivion.” Many of them did not go beyond the prison walls or camps at all. There was strict censorship, especially with regard to written statements reporting torture and beatings.

And those complaints that nevertheless broke through the forbidden restrictions and cordons and reached the addressees, as a rule, were not properly considered.

This was the situation, to our deep regret, both in the apparatus of the USSR Prosecutor’s Office and in the apparatus of the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office, whose employees were obliged to bear increased responsibility.

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ity in monitoring compliance with the law in relation to persons under investigation or serving sentences in places of deprivation of liberty.

Several of Zhzhonov’s complaints nevertheless reached the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office. They were found in the archival basement, where they lay for almost 20 years.

It is worth quoting some excerpts from them:

“In the name of what “higher considerations” - known only to my investigators,” asks Zhzhenov, “and to no one else, was it necessary to put me in prison, slander me and make me a criminal?” But Zhzhonov never received an answer to his question.

He asked the Supreme Prosecutor to pay attention to the following:

“As a result of a rude, tendentious, anti-Soviet method of investigation, as a result of a series of moral, mental and physical order I was forced to sign a fictitious, false, detective story". And again the answer is silence. Zhzhenov even argues with a certain amount of irony:

“I am accused of espionage in the troops of the Leningrad Military District and in the defense industry of Leningrad. Monstrous and funny! With the same success, the idle imagination of my investigators could attribute to me the defeat suffered by the British from the Germans at the Battle of Jutland. In the imperialist war (forgetting the date of my birth), etc. .d."

Zhzhzhonov failed to convince anyone with his heartfelt statement:

"I have seen and suffered a lot, despite everything I was, is and will be honest Soviet man".

Last words He wrote in large letters, and still no attention was paid to them.

For thirteen months, in violation of the usual period of detention of a defendant established by law, the investigation into the Zhzhonov case was conducted. This gross violation law was not some rare phenomenon in the then practice of the NKVD. Painful, long-term detention in prison conditions while awaiting a decision on the case was also part of the arsenal of mental pressure on those arrested, especially on such “obstinate” ones as Zhzhonov.

Those arrested, who were in complete isolation from the outside world, did not know that in November 1938 events took place that directly affected them future fate. Georgy Stepanovich Zhzhenov, of course, didn’t know them either.

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In November 1938, Yezhov was arrested. Stalin did not remove Yezhov because of disobedience or because he did a “bad thing.” No, it’s just that this person became odious, intolerant beyond all measure, and it was necessary to resolutely distance oneself from him and his actions. It was in the manner of Stalin. And then a decision appeared declaring Yezhov’s actions criminal, hostile, and the illegal methods of investigation used by his accomplices and numerous collaborators - executors who carried out Yezhov’s instructions “not to stand on ceremony with those arrested” were also condemned. From now on, it was proposed that the investigation be conducted by the NKVD with “the strictest observance of all norms of criminal procedural legislation.”

Honest, principled communists, of whom there were many among the employees of the NKVD, the court and the prosecutor's office, perked up. They began to fight more confidently to comply with the requirements of the law. A number of those innocently arrested were released from prisons and camps and avoided unjust conviction. These same communists also demanded party and judicial responsibility for those who, for selfish, adventuristic purposes, committed arbitrariness and indulged in mockery of those arrested. Many criminals, whom Zhzhonov called “executioners in NKVD uniforms,” were arrested and punished extremely harshly.

Just and inevitable retribution came, although it did not “sober up” everyone...

Retribution also affected some employees of the NKVD Directorate of Leningrad and Zakovsky himself. He was arrested.

The case of the former military prosecutor of the Leningrad Military District, Kuznetsov, was also reviewed. He was released from the camp, but was not reinstated to his previous job.

This revealed the essence of a different attitude towards the above-mentioned resolution.

The new People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria, having proclaimed in his orders and directives the requirement for the strictest observance of the law in investigative work, only disguised his true attitude to legality. The “shock” that initially set in among the investigators began to quickly disappear. Beria personally demonstrated during interrogations “a merciless attitude towards those arrested who were not disarming,” whom he did not even think of releasing, although he knew that they were victims of Stalin and Yezhov. True, under the pressure of the existing intolerant attitude towards the executioner-investigators, he was forced to agree to the arrest of some of them, but retained, however, many who were considered unsurpassed masters on "extorting confessions." By the time of the arrest of Beria himself, many

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Some of these “specialists” reached high positions and military ranks.

Instead of Zakovsky, the Leningrad Directorate of the NKVD was headed by State Security Commissioner Goglidze. Beria knew who needed to be sent to Leningrad, where the work of “rooting out enemies,” in his opinion, was still far from complete and must be skillfully continued.

Goglidze lived up to his boss's hopes. It is no coincidence that he later became Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR and one of the most active accomplices in the preparation after the death of Stalin of an anti-Soviet conspiracy to seize power by Beria. Fair, inevitable retribution eventually overtook this villain, which, perhaps, is some consolation for Georgy Stepanovich and for many others who became victims of Goglidze.

After a change in the leadership of the NKVD, Zhzhonov was transferred to “Kresty” and was among those who were sent, as they aptly described, “for mothballing.”

Meanwhile, investigators were thinking about what to do with people like Zhzhenov. There is no objective, sufficient evidence of their guilt. They refused “their” testimony, wrote complaints that they were beaten, tortured, reported this to the prosecutors who appeared in the prisons, and they demanded that the statements of the defendants be included in the case. Will they really have to be released, and “in batches” at that? After all, there are many of them...

Goglidze finds a solution. The “politicians” are again returned from “Kresty” to the internal prison of the department.

It is not difficult to imagine the monologue of the new head of the department, Goglidze, in front of the investigators:

“Why are you hanging your nose?.. We cannot and should not give in to the resisting enemies. We must again let them feel that we are strong, that we will not retreat in the face of their “subterfuges”, that the matter of fighting the enemies of the people has not been removed from the agenda Read the resolution of the January 1938 Plenum, Stalin’s speech. It clearly states: to continue to increase revolutionary vigilance and to intensify the fight against enemies. And not a word about any kind of legality...”

Couldn't say it any clearer. Who is Zhzhonov? American spy. An undisarmed enemy. This means that he must continue to be treated the same as before.

Remember those pages where Zhzhonov describes new stage"attack" on him. True, other investigators are already working, but they also use the same methods as their predecessors. Nothing changed.

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But Zhzhonov did not give in even now. Then they found a way out - to send him to the camp. It's not hard to do. Investigators were given the right to make proposals on sending cases to a Special Meeting for consideration; they could even prepare in advance the minutes of the meeting of this meeting and write the period for which their “wards” should be sent to the camp. As a rule, they agreed with the investigator’s proposal. He knows better...

A few words about the history of the Special Meeting under the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR. This special extrajudicial administrative body appeared in our country in 1932, simultaneously with the formation of the NKVD to replace the liquidated OGPU.

Stalin gave the Special Meeting the right to determine the fate of those arrested by the NKVD, who were among those from the “fiercely resisting classes.” Their guilt was potentially assumed, although it was not always obvious or proven. Therefore, cases were considered in absentia, in the absence of the accused, without hearing his explanations, without calling witnesses and, of course, without the participation of a defense lawyer. The special meeting had the right to imprison in a camp for up to 8 years, send into exile for up to 5 years and evict for the same period with a ban on living in the capitals, major cities and industrial centers of the USSR, to fully or partially confiscate the personal property of convicted persons.

One can only be surprised how Stalin allowed the reactionary tsarist laws to be copied to create a Special Meeting in our country (the rules “On the procedure for the ranks of the gendarme corps to investigate crimes” dated May 19, 1871 and “Regulations” dated August 14, 1881). Stalin could not help but know that the Minister of Internal Affairs of the tsarist government was given the opportunity to punish those arrested by the gendarmerie when:

Not found obvious signs and sufficient evidence of a crime;

Acts have been committed for which the punishment has not yet been included in the punishment code or which are not mentioned at all in the law;

The incriminating information was obtained in a top secret manner and cannot be factually confirmed.”

As a result, the gendarmes had the right to arrest any person without any evidence of his guilt, for an act not recognized by law as a crime, on the basis of information that cannot be verified...

One must assume that the underground revolutionary Joseph Dzhugashvili could not help but follow the press coverage of the trial.

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trial in the case of the St. Petersburg group of the RSDLP "Trial of the 44", held in 1906 in St. Petersburg.

Attorney at law V.N. Novikov, who spoke in defense of the defendants at this trial, began his speech with the words: “Gentlemen of the judge! After all, this is not new fact that the gendarmerie inquiry, even if carried out in accordance with the Charter of Criminal Procedure, does not have reliability and that our political police does not stand up to the height of its purpose and the inquiries conducted by it have no value. Almost every page of the indictment contains the phrases: “according to information received by the security department,” “it has come to the attention of the security department.” What are these phrases? What kind of information is this?"

Exactly the same words can be said about the indictment drawn up by investigators in the “case” of Zhzhonov. Beria exercised his right and single-handedly decided his fate. By the decision of the Special Meeting, Georgy Stepanovich Zhzhonov was imprisoned in a camp for a period of 5 years. He wrote how he served this sentence. It is difficult to add anything to his words, unless we once again turn to Zhzhonov’s complaints, which he wrote from the camp. Addressing the Supreme Prosecutor, prisoner Zhzhenov categorically states:

“I protest against the Special Meeting. There are no materials of guilt. Everything is built on fiction. Not a single testimony. Despite everything I experienced during 2 years of imprisonment, I was, am and will remain an honest Soviet man. I qualify my imprisonment as an act of enemy activity of persons who have labeled me “counter-revolutionary” for the rest of my life, please remove this vile tag from me.”

And this time his protest was not heard. But the Prosecutor General was given the right to protest the unfounded decisions of the Special Meeting. But it is reliably known that not a single such protest exists. And there were a lot of unfounded decisions...

Having served an undeserved punishment, Zhzhenov returned to his favorite work - he became an artist, although not in the capital, but in the peripheral theater. He worked conscientiously. Lived honestly. Although it was a small happiness, it smiled. But not for long. A new arrest followed in 1949.

Georgy Stepanovich turned out to be right: he was labeled “counter-revolutionary” for life.

We also looked at his second “case”. There is nothing new in it. Everything is rewritten from beginning to end from the old one.

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For the same fictitious crime, repeated punishment, by the same Special Meeting, for the same period. And again there are trials, and some even more severe ones, which you cannot calmly read about. If only the “creators” of such lawlessness, and even those who still defend the integrity of “all, without exception, the ideas and deeds of the great leader,” experienced all this!

How can one not remember that Beria, even after the death of Stalin, the founder of the Special Conference, continued to preserve and hold in his insidious hands this most tested instrument of obedience and fear. Beria also needed him to carry out his conspiratorial plans.

We must pay tribute to Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. It was at his insistence, I know for sure, that immediately after Beria’s arrest a decision was made (September 1, 1953) to liquidate the Special Meeting. For over 35 years now, our state has managed without it. Soviet people spared from repeating what Zhzhonov, and not only him, had to experience in his life...

Nowadays no one can be punished criminally except in court; we make sure that every sentence is fair.

On the tag that was “awarded” to Georgy Stepanovich Zhzhonov, there was the word “counter-revolutionary”.

As a token of gratitude, let's shake his hand...

Retired Lieutenant General of Justice,

Candidate of Legal Sciences