They stood behind Stalin's back. In the mirror of foreign press

"Who stood behind Stalin's back?": Tsentrpoligraf; Moscow; 2004

ISBN ISBN 5-9524-1349-8

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In the book offered to you, an attempt was made to trace the life path of I.V. Dzhugashvili until that March day in 1917, when he returned from Turukhansk exile and gained fame under the name Stalin.

Turning to new archival materials made it possible, on the one hand, to reveal numerous mysteries in the revolutionary biography of the leader, giving rise to suspicions about his connections with the Okhrana, on the other hand, to show that these suspicions are unfounded.

In search of an explanation of the revealed mysteries, the author invites readers behind the scenes of the revolutionary movement and shows that the revolutionary underground had "its own people" not only in the business world, but also at all levels of power, up to the emperor's court environment and the Police Department.

A. B. Ostrovsky

Who stood behind Stalin's back?

INSTEAD OF FOREWORD

About the victims of the Titanic

Of course, you remember how one of the heroes of Ilf and Petrov, a modest Soviet employee, in the past the provincial marshal of the nobility, Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, or simply Kisa, inflamed with the desire to get rich, embarked on an adventurous search for mother-in-law's treasures. Starting a new life and trying to get a more attractive look, he decided to dye his graying hair and become a brunette. To do this, he used an expensive contraband dye called "Titanic" (that was the name of the steamer that died on the eve of the First World War in the waters of the Atlantic). However, after the first acquaintance with foreign goods, Kisa's hair suddenly acquired not black, but a disgusting greenish tint. The intervention of the "great strategist" did not help either. His attempt to correct the state of affairs with the help of domestic means led to the fact that the hair on the head of the former leader of the nobility sparkled with all the colors of the rainbow.

Something similar happened to our press. For a long time she resembled a worn out, familiar, bored by everyone and for this reason many aroused squeamish feelings of a street whore. Wanting to get rid of the old dullness, to attract attention to herself and thus not only gain a new reputation, but also make capital, she quickly and in front of everyone began to repaint. And, as if repeating the fate of Kisa Vorobyaninov, she also played with all colors, from white and yellow to brown and black.

Some writers have found themselves in this position, apparently unwilling, unaware, or even noticing it. Probably, this is exactly what happened to Ales Adamovich, who published in the autumn of 1988 on the pages of the magazine "Friendship of Peoples" the chapter "Understudy" from the story "The Punishers". This publication was almost the first time in the Soviet press that JV Stalin was accused of collaborating with the tsarist secret police. It quoted a letter from “a certain Yeremin” in 1913 (No. 2838) “to the head of the Yenisei security department A.F. Zheleznyakov”, in which I.V. Stalin was characterized as a secret collaborator since 1906.

The publication provoked controversy.

And no wonder. A man who for 30 years stood at the head of one of the largest world powers, a man who for many personified the hopes for a "bright future", a man with whose name the Soviet people suffered inhuman difficulties during the Great Patriotic War, went under bullets and they rushed under the tanks, and suddenly - the most ordinary secret agent, who traded the fate of his comrades in the revolutionary underground for 30 pieces of silver.

But it is difficult to combine both. If the published exposure is not true and I. V. Stalin really was a revolutionary who sacrificed his personal life for the happiness of others, who went through prisons, stages and exile, how to explain that it was he who stood at the head of the Thermidorian, counter-revolutionary coup in its essence, it was he who defeated the party who made the revolution, liquidated many of its gains, restored the exploitation of the country by foreign capital, doomed millions of peasants to poverty.

In this respect, the version about I. V. Stalin's connections with the tsarist secret police seemed to open up the possibility of explaining the origin of the Soviet Thermidor.

But less than six months after the publication of A. Adamovich, an article by the director of the Central State Archive of the October Revolution (now the State Archive of the Russian Federation, GARF) B. I. Kaptelov and an employee of the same archive Z. I. Peregudova "Was Stalin an agent of the Okhrana?", which convincingly proved that "Eremin's letter" is a gross forgery.

It turns out that, acting as a whistleblower, A. Adamovich turned out to be a hoaxer. Wishing to appear before the readers in "white clothes", he, and with him the entire editorial staff of the Friendship of Peoples magazine, appeared before the readers in robes of a completely different color.

Anyone can be wrong. And this episode would not deserve attention if it had a private character. In fact, its significance goes beyond the creative biography of A. Adamovich and the activities of the magazine "Friendship of Peoples".

A. Adamovich was not a historian. Therefore, the question arises: who slipped him this fake, this expensive and, as it turns out, also contraband goods? Who in general is engaged in the production of such "contraband" and how does it appear on our reader's market?

To understand this, it is necessary to remember that in 1988-1989. censorship existed in the Soviet Union, without the permission of which not a single publication could be published. Censorship was subject to two masters: the Central Committee of the CPSU and the KGB of the USSR. Her main task was to "watch". If in this case she showed “negligence” and allowed such a publication, then this publication was inspired by the Central Committee of the CPSU and the KGB of the USSR, which thus, using A. Adamovich and the editors of the magazine “Friendship of Peoples”, launched a fake into circulation.

But could it really be that the Central Committee of the CPSU and the KGB of the USSR, if they really set themselves the task of discrediting I.V. Stalin, could not produce such a “work of art” that more than one generation of historians would puzzle over? If such a rude fake was put into circulation, wasn't this rudeness its main meaning? The more primitive the lie, the easier it is to refute it. And then, using the example of Friendship of Peoples, one can show even the most inexperienced reader what methods the “democratic” press has resorted to and is resorting to, anathematizing the “great leader”. After all, even a naive person understands: to expose a criminal, one does not need to falsify the facts, for this the truth is enough. If, however, in order to debunk I.V. Stalin, one has to resort to forgery, this alone should lead one to think that there are no serious criminal facts from his revolutionary biography at the disposal of critics. And therefore, whether A. Adamovich wanted it or not, his publication is an attempt to slander the name of an honest person.

That is how it was assessed by his opponents, becoming a means of discrediting not so much JV Stalin himself as the anti-Stalinist campaign.

Who will argue that the press should be different than it was before 1991. But in order not to produce victims of the Titanic, it is necessary to be more selective in the “means”. We should not forget about the fate of Kisa Vorobyaninov. How did his experiments with "contraband" dye end? The "father of Russian democracy" was cut off. Naked. And shaved. Whoever is seduced by such a prospect, hurry up. The “great strategist” is already pulling out his razor, and soon he may need our heads.

If you are interested in the truth and you really want to understand what I. V. Stalin was like before 1917, how exactly he, a revolutionary, became the “gravedigger of the revolution”, let's turn to the facts. Only on their basis can any historical figure be convicted or acquitted. Only on the basis of real facts can one understand the tragedy of the Russian revolution, the origins of the Soviet Thermidor.

Some writers have found themselves in this position, apparently unwilling, unaware, or even noticing it. Probably, this is exactly what happened to Ales Adamovich, who published in the fall of 1988 on the pages of the magazine "Friendship of Peoples" the chapter "Understudy" from the story "The Punishers". This publication was almost the first time in the Soviet press that JV Stalin was accused of collaborating with the tsarist secret police. It cited a letter from “a certain Eremin” in 1913 (No. 2838) “to the head of the Yenisei security department A.F. Zheleznyakov”, in which I.V. Stalin was characterized as a secret collaborator since 1906.

The publication provoked controversy.

In this respect, the version about I. V. Stalin's connections with the tsarist secret police seemed to open up the possibility of explaining the origin of the Soviet Thermidor.

But less than six months after the publication of A. Adamovich, an article by the director of the Central State Archive of the October Revolution (now the State Archive of the Russian Federation, GARF) B. I. Kaptelov and an employee of the same archive Z. I. Peregudova “Was Stalin an Okhrana agent?”, in which it was convincingly proved that “Eremin’s letter” is a gross forgery.

That is how it was assessed by his opponents, becoming a means of discrediting not so much JV Stalin himself as the anti-Stalinist campaign.

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1. WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT STALIN?

Official historiography

It is unlikely that so much was written about any of the leaders of our country during his lifetime, and after his death, so little is known, as about I. V. Stalin. And the point is not only that much, once written about him, turned out to be consigned to oblivion. Acquaintance with the former, now forgotten publications shows that they contain much more emotions and rhetoric than concrete facts. Even such seemingly winning material as material about the revolutionary past of the leader is presented on the pages of our press so fragmentarily that the question involuntarily arises: is it possible that more complete and accurate information has not reached us about this period of his life? And if they did, then why do they remain hidden from the eyes of readers? One gets the impression that the official historiography had to bypass some sharp corners in the leader's past.

It would seem that this topic has long been exhausted. But until recently, she was a sensation. Was Stalin in his youth an agent of the Okhrana - this question splashed out on the pages of our press and was animatedly discussed. In fact, the well-known American politician and researcher J. Kennan published documents on this subject for the first time in the West. The publication was authoritative enough, because it came from the archives of the famous Kennan Institute in Washington, the largest center for the study of Russia and the USSR. Then this topic got into fiction. As you know, in A. Solzhenitsyn's novel "In the First Circle", in the story of V. Belov "The Year of the Great Break", A. Adamovich's story "Understudy" it is said about Stalin that he was an agent of the Okhrana in his youth. But in all these works we have, first of all, the artistic image of a tyrant with his contradictions and mysteries...

Recent historical studies have not confirmed the version that the young Dzhugashvili collaborated with the Okhrana. The discussion about this seems to have ended logically ... There are no exact facts. But there is no "smoke without fire" Still, there is something left unfinished, mysterious in all this.

And here is the new version. It is expressed in the article of the historian A. Ostrovsky “Who stood behind Stalin’s back?” (almanac "From the Depths of Times" No. 1, published last year). The author of the article lived and taught in Vologda several years ago and, to prove his version, uses, among other things, materials from the Vologda archives.

What is the point of view of A. Ostrovsky? He believes that in the biography of Dzhugashvili, during the period of his arrest, there are such "blank spots" that "involuntarily give rise to the worst suspicions and give credibility to the version of Stalin's connections with the tsarist secret police." Moreover, the author refers to the documents of the Vologda exile. He draws attention to some incomprehensible benefits that Dzhugashvili had in this exile, as well as to conflicting facts about his stay in the Vologda province.

So, in 1908, Dzhugashvili was arrested in Baku, he was sentenced to exile in the Vologda province, in Solvychegodsk. The police receive new information about his revolutionary activities: an underground printing house was discovered, party documents were found, “The aforementioned manuscripts,” said the head of the Baku security department, P.P. But the captain P. P. Martynov triumphed in vain ”(A. Ostrovsky). There were no changes in the analysis of the Dzhugashvili case. He takes no punishment. He was simply exiled to the Vologda province, without any further investigation or toughening of measures against him.

On September 26, 1911, Dzhugashvili fled from Solvychegodsk to St. Petersburg. He was arrested. He was threatened with exile in Siberia for five years. However, he is again returned to the Vologda province. and "Dzhugashvili chose Vologda as his place of residence." Isn't it strange that a political exile uses such opportunities?

As an author dealing with the topic of Stalin's exile in Vologda, I would like to add that the supervision of him in Vologda was very superficial. He was followed by three Vologda detectives - Mukhin, Shibalov, Ilchukov. But these were people of a low level, they apparently did not know anything about Dzhugashvili and did not show much diligence in their surveillance. For example, such an important moment as the arrival in Vologda to Stalin Ordzhonikidze remained unknown to the police.

In February 1912, Stalin freely fled from Vologda. Actually, it was not even an escape, but a departure. Stalin openly went to the station, even taking ... a pillow! And he did not hide from the landlady that he was leaving, and did not really object to her reporting it to the police.

In April, Stalin was arrested in St. Petersburg and this time sentenced to exile in Siberia. But as A. Ostrovsky writes: “Considering that he had two years and nine months of unexpired exile and an escape with a stay in the capital, entry into which was forbidden. If we take into account that by that time the police knew about his membership in the Central Committee of the RSDLP, then “this time” we have to state not the toughening of repressions, but the preservation of “liberalism”.

And further, in his Siberian exile there is such a curious fact. In 1935-36, the Komsomol members of Solvychegodsk made a ski run Solvychegodsk - Moscow, and among the collected materials they also found information from a certain B.I. Ivanov, who was with Stalin in Siberia.

Ivanov subsequently said that the exiles had suspicions about Dzhugashvili's connections with the police. A trial was scheduled, but Dzhugashvili did not appear at it - “he went on the run, and five hundred miles to the first settlement. Such an escape could have been made only with the help of the authorities” (“Soviet Culture”, June 10, 1988).

A. Ostrovsky puts forward a completely different version. In his opinion, in the pre-revolutionary period in the highest echelons of power and the police already. there were individuals, and entire "layers of individuals" infected by the revolution and secretly sympathizing with it. "One gets the impression! - the researcher writes that Stalin (he is not alone in this respect) had very influential patrons, who, although they could not ward off the blows that did not fall, but had the opportunity to paralyze them.

Is such a thing possible. When compared with modern events, it actually looks logical. Let us recall the example of our days - even in the KGB there were employees who sympathized with the dissidents and helped them, and in the highest party circles the strength gradually grew, the nucleus of reformers who quickly came to the side of the communists formed.

And in this regard, the point of view of A. Ostrovsky seems interesting and logical. Of course, all this does not fully explain the many mysteries associated with Stalin.

In the book offered to you, an attempt was made to trace the life path of I.V. Dzhugashvili until that March day in 1917, when he returned from Turukhansk exile and gained fame under the name Stalin. Turning to new archival materials made it possible, on the one hand, to reveal numerous mysteries in revolutionary biography of the leader, giving rise to suspicions about his connections with the Okhrana, on the other hand, to show that these suspicions are unfounded. In search of an explanation for the revealed mysteries, the author invites readers behind the scenes of the revolutionary movement and shows that the revolutionary underground had "its own people" not only in the business world, but also at all levels of power, up to the court environment of the emperor and the Police Department. Without taking this into account, according to the author, it is impossible to understand the revolutionary biography of Stalin, his ascent to the pinnacle of power and transformation into the Soviet Bonaparte.

Who stood behind Stalin's back? - description and summary, author Ostrovsky Alexander Vladimirovich, read for free online on the website of the electronic library site

In the mirror of foreign press

But interest in the personality of I. V. Stalin continued to exist both in the USSR and abroad. And if in the USSR the flow of publications about him in the 50s. ceased, both articles and books continued to be published abroad.

The first articles about I.V. Stalin appeared here as early as the 1920s. (1), and in 1931 several books dedicated to him were immediately published. Their authors were Stephen Graam (2), Sergey Vasilyevich Dmitrievsky (3), Joseph Iremashvili (4), Isaac don Levin (5), Lev Nusbaum, who performed under the pseudonym Essad Bey (6). Their publications were followed by books by Christian Vindeke (7), Grigory Besedovsky (8), Emile Ludwig (9), Boris Souvarine (10), Henri Barbusse (11), Eugen Lyon (12), Victor Serge (13), Leon Trotsky ( 14), etc. Of the pre-war works, the most complete and detailed were the books of Isaac Levin, Boris Suvarin and Leon Trotsky.

All foreign publications about I.V. Stalin can be divided into two groups - pro- and anti-Stalinist. The latter clearly dominated. Pro-Stalin publications largely followed the official Soviet version of his biography and were of an apologetic nature. Anti-Stalinist publications, on the contrary, were imbued with the desire to discredit the Soviet leader, so they focused on negative facts from his biography.

The authors of the first foreign books about I.V. Stalin did not have access to archival materials, the circle of memoirs about him that appeared abroad still remains small, and many memoirs about I.V. Stalin, which were published in the USSR, remained for foreign researchers are either unknown or inaccessible. For this reason, the first foreign biographers of I.V. Stalin were forced to limit themselves to only the most superficial description of his life path, compensating for the lack of factual material with rumors circulating in emigre circles, general reasoning, very shaky assumptions, and often just speculation. Especially in this regard, the book of Essad Bey (Lev Nusbaum) stands out.

From the very beginning of the formation of foreign Stalinism, already at the turn of the 20-30s, information appeared in the press that there were some “dark pages” in the revolutionary past of the leader. So, in October 1929, the Parisian émigré newspaper Dni, edited by A.F. Kerensky, published a report that the leaders of the “right opposition” M.P. Tomsky and N.A. Uglanov had documents compromising the revolutionary career of And V. Stalin (15).

There is evidence that “in January 1931, the same correspondent of the newspaper Dni again reported rumors circulating in Moscow regarding Stalin’s past,” and “the report said that Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka, before his death received documents proving that Stalin was a spy for the Okhrana, and handed them over to Tomsky. The latter, in turn, gave them to Voroshilov for safekeeping” (16).

By the mid 30s. the rumor about I. V. Stalin’s connections with the tsarist secret police materialized in the form of a “document”, which was already discussed earlier and which later became known as “Eremin’s letters”. The emergence of rumors about him dates back to 1934 (17), but, as Richard Vraga noted in June 1956 in the pages of the Est & Quest magazine, “it first appeared on the information market in 1936-1937. It was then in the hands of a number of Russian emigrants associated with two organizations - the Brotherhood of Russian Truth (in the Baltic states) and the Union of Russian Fascists (in the Far East)”, “some argued that this“ document ”was fabricated in Riga by a former Okhrana agent D., and others in Harbin by people connected with the intelligence services of Ataman Semenov.

Be that as it may, in 1937 an attempt was made to simultaneously sell this fake - in the Far East to the Japanese, and in Bulgaria - to the Germans through the Rosenberg bureau through the mediation of persons associated with the "Inner Line", a secret counter-revolutionary organization that became the successor to the "Trust “, another Russian organization of the same kind. The Japanese demanded expertise from the Japanese intelligence services, which easily identified the fake and even its source. The Germans, on the other hand, turned to the secretary of the NTS (National Labor Union), Mr. M. A. Georgievsky, for advice, who also established the source of the fake.”

“In 1938,” Richard Vrag’s article goes on to say, “an attempt to sell this ‘document’ was made in Vienna by an international agent indirectly connected with the Soviet intelligence services. At the same time, the “document” appeared in Paris, from where it was offered to the Romanian intelligence through a minor Russian politician. At the same time, for the first time, the suspicion arose that the Soviet “agency” was interested in selling and publishing this document, apparently wishing in this way to discredit the information of Western countries (in particular, Germany). It was even assumed that the “document” was deliberately fabricated with obvious errors and absurdities, so that the fake could be more easily detected ... According to a well-informed source, this fake was brought to Berlin by a friend of General Skoblin, a certain Captain Foss, who had established relations with a group of “Russian fascists” in headed by Wonsiatsky in Harbin - on the one hand, and on the other - with the "Inner Line" ”(18) .

The first attempts to put into circulation the version of I. V. Stalin's connections with the tsarist secret police were unsuccessful. It was met with skepticism even by his most intransigent political opponents.

One of the few who was ready to admit the plausibility of this version was the former leader of the Georgian Mensheviks, Noy Zhordania. In 1936, on the pages of the newspaper Brdzolis Khma (Echo of the Struggle), published in exile, he shared his memoirs, in which, without naming, however, his last name, he cited the following testimony of one of the Bolsheviks he knew.

When I. V. Stalin left Tiflis for Baku, there he had a conflict with S. G. Shaumyan. In the midst of the struggle between them, S. G. Shaumyan was arrested. After some time, an acquaintance of N. N. Zhordania met S. G. Shaumyan, who was released from prison, and he said: “I am sure that Stalin informed the police, I have evidence<…>. I had a safe house where I sometimes slept. Only Koba knew the address, no one else. When they arrested me, they first of all asked about the apartment<…>Who could tell them?" (19) .

Since then, this testimony has received the widest circulation in anti-Stalinist literature. Meanwhile, his frivolity is obvious at first sight. You never know how the Okhrana managed to establish the existence of S. G. Shaumyan's safe house. For example, with the help of outdoor surveillance. But it's not only that. If S. G. Shaumyan suspected I. V. Stalin of having connections with the secret police, this could not but affect their relations after the release of S. G. Shaumyan. Meanwhile, we have no evidence that these relations were tense. And everything that is written on this subject has a completely unproven character and goes back to the above-cited testimony of N. Zhordania.

During the Second World War, interest in the personality of I.V. Stalin intensified. This mainly concerns the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition, where pro-Stalin literature began to push anti-Stalin literature into the background (20) .

But with the beginning of the Cold War, a wave of anti-Stalinist publications rises again in the West. It was then that within the walls of the US State Department the idea arose to bring the accusations of I. V. Stalin in connection with the Okhrana to the pages of the press, and in connection with this, interest arose in the “letter of Eremin”. Having weighed all the pros and cons, the US government did not dare to take such a step during the life of I.V. Stalin (21) .

This was done shortly after his death.

On April 18, 1956, a press conference was held in New York, at which Alexandra Lvovna (1884–1979), the daughter of the famous Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, who lived in exile, spoke to the press. It was she who publicized the above-mentioned "Eremin's letter" (22) .

From the read out text, it was clear that on July 12, 1913, the head of the Special Department of the Police Department, Colonel Alexander Mikhailovich Eremin, “informed the head of the Yenisei security department, captain Alexei Fedorovich Zheleznyakov” that I. V. Stalin-Dzhugashvili since 1906 became give undercover information on the RSDLP, but after his election in 1912 as a member of the Central Committee of the party, he declined further cooperation (photo 33) (23).

On the day of this press conference, the next issue of the American Life magazine was published, however, dated April 23. A facsimile of this "document" first appeared in print on its pages. The publication was accompanied by an article by one of the first biographers of IV Stalin, I. Levin. The latter argued that the “letter” was taken out after the Civil War to Manchuria, from there it fell into the United States in the hands of professor-emigrant M.P. Golovachev, who handed it to the former Russian ambassador B.A. I. Levin was introduced to him. The latter contacted the former gendarme general A. I. Spiridovich and received from him confirmation of the authenticity of this document (24) . In the summer of 1956, I. Levin published the book "Stalin's Great Secret" and tried to substantiate the version about I.V. Stalin's connections with the tsarist secret police. However, despite the fact that the book was more than 100 pages, he did not actually present any new arguments other than those mentioned above (25) .

Simultaneously with the "letter of Eremin", the memoirs of the former Soviet intelligence officer A. M. Orlov (real name - Felbing) appeared on the pages of Life, from which it was clear that in the mid-30s. his acquaintance, an employee of the NKVD, Stein, found in the former office of V.R. Menzhinsky a folder of undercover reports of I.V. Stalin, addressed to the vice-director of the Police Department, S.E. Vissarionov. Stein introduced this discovery to his former boss V. A. Balitsky, who headed the NKVD of Ukraine from 1934 to 1937; and others. The tops of the army began to prepare a conspiracy against I.V. Stalin, it was revealed, which was the reason for the emergence of the so-called Tukhachevsky case (26) .

The improbability of A. M. Orlov’s “memoirs” is so obvious that the question of their reliability was not even raised by critics of the version of I. V. Stalin’s connections with the tsarist secret police. But around the "letter of Eremin" on the pages of the foreign press, a stormy controversy immediately flared up. Its materials were relatively recently collected and published by Yu. Felshtinsky in the book “Was Stalin an Okhrana agent?” (27) .

One of the participants in this discussion, G. Aronson, drew attention to the fact that in the "letter of Eremin" I.V. Dzhugashvili is called Stalin, although in the summer of 1913 almost no one knew him under this literary pseudonym (28), the fact that a month before the “writing” of the letter, on June 11, 1913, A. M. Eremin was relieved of his post as head of the Special Department of the Police Department and appointed head of the Finnish Gendarmerie Directorate (29) .

At the same time, the “Eremin letter” was subjected to an examination by an employee of New York University, a criminologist by profession, Martin Teitel, who drew attention to the discrepancy between the design of this letter and the design of some other documents that came out at that time from the walls of the Special Section of the Police Department, and put it under doubt the signature of A. M. Eremin (30) .

The US government did not like the publication of the results of the examination of M. Teitel, and the Senate began a special investigation, as a result of which attention was drawn to a number of errors and inaccuracies made by M. Teitel, but one of his main conclusions about the discrepancy in the design of the “letter of Eremin” and others The documents of the Special Section of the Police Department of the same time were not refuted by the Senate (31) .

In the course of the unfolding controversy, many unsuccessful arguments were made, both on the one hand and on the other. But the vast majority of historians greeted the "Eremin's letter" with skepticism, and its authenticity raised serious doubts. Since then, many books and articles about Stalin have appeared abroad, but the version about his connections with the tsarist secret police has not received distribution (32) .

One of the few exceptions in this regard is the book of the former American intelligence officer, diplomat and journalist Edward Smith "Young Stalin" (33) . E. Smith was forced to admit the doubtfulness of the “Eremin letter”, but without any evidence he proposed a new version, according to which I. V. Stalin became a secret collaborator not in 1906, but after being expelled from the seminary, in 1899 (34) .

Refusing to use the "letter of Eremin", E. Smith put forward some new "arguments" in favor of the version of I.V. Stalin's connections with the Okhrana. So, drawing attention to the fact that in 1906 in the minutes of the IV (Stockholm) Congress of the RSDLP I.V. Stalin appears under the surname Ivanovich, and in a Stockholm hotel he lived under the surname Vissarionovich, E. Smith concluded that in In Stockholm, I. V. Stalin lived on a passport issued to him not by the party, but by the Police Department. The ridiculousness of this "discovery" made by a former intelligence officer is amazing. Ivanovich is a party pseudonym, and Vissarionovich is a surname for legal residence. But even if it were established that I. V. Stalin had two passports for both of the above-mentioned names, the police origin of one of them would require evidence that is absent in the book of E. Smith (35) .

Just as “convincing” is his other “scientific discovery”. Based on the fact that in 1909 I. Dzhugashvili fled from Solvychegodsk exile in June, and the passport with which he was detained in 1910 was issued in May 1909, E. Smith also concluded that this document was of police origin . Meanwhile, if I. V. Stalin used someone else's passport, he could be issued at any time. Any date could be put in the passport even if it was fake (36) .

Other arguments used by E. E. Smith are of a similar nature.

Since then, many books have been written about JV Stalin abroad. However, foreign historians failed to provide any evidence in favor of the version of his connections with the tsarist secret police. And all attempts to revive this version are associated only with the repetition of those "discoveries" that were made by Isaac Levin and Edward Smith.

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The key to understanding foreign reality My life and creative path is more than sixty years in journalism, forty of which (1951-1991) I worked in Pravda. Young people sometimes think that I was unlucky. Like, the best years of life had to dance to the tune

From the book Stalin. big book about him author Biographies and memoirs Team of authors --

Part III. Stalin in the mirror of memory (Lobanov M. Stalin in the memoirs of contemporaries and documents

From the book Foreign Russia author Pogodin Alexander Lvovich

History and ethnographic information about Foreign Russia. - Statistical data. - The past of foreign Russia. - Transition of Galicia to Poland under Casimir the Great. - The first partition of Poland and the transition of Galicia to Austria (1772) The main mass of the Russian tribe lives within

From the book History of the book: Textbook for universities author Govorov Alexander Alekseevich

Chapter 9. HISTORY OF FOREIGN BOOKS IN THE XIX CENTURY 9.1. THE BOOK AND THE PROGRESS IN PRINTING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Capitalist book publishing in the nineteenth century was a decisive step forward in comparison with the feudal-absolutist orders of the previous era. First of all, you need

From the book The Mission of the Russian Emigration the author Nazarov Mikhail

3. Emergence of Russia Abroad We left the Crimea in the midst of smoke and fire. I'm from the stern, all the time past, I shot my horse. And he swam exhausted Behind the high stern, All without believing, all without knowing, What is saying goodbye to me. How many times did we expect the same grave in battle ... The horse swam all the way,

From the book Oral History author Shcheglova Tatyana Kirillovna

The issue of using information about the informant and its solution in domestic and foreign practice One of the most complex and controversial problems of using oral historical sources in scientific publications is the publication of information about the informant and

From the book History of Political and Legal Doctrines: A Textbook for Universities author Team of authors

From the book Sex at the Dawn of Civilization [The Evolution of Human Sexuality from Prehistoric Times to the Present] author Jeta Casilda

From the book History of foreign literature of the XIX century. Romanticism: study guide author Modina Galina Ivanovna

Materials on the history of foreign literature XIX