The fate of Leonid Khrushchev's son Nikita. Khrushchev clan

There are many legends about the death of Leonid Khrushchev, the eldest son of Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev from his first marriage. According to one version, a fighter pilot, Guards Senior Lieutenant Leonid Khrushchev died as a hero in an air battle in 1943. According to another, he was shot on the orders of Stalin as a traitor to the Motherland. These are just two of several assumptions about the reliability of which researchers, historians and journalists are still arguing.

All the greatest mysteries of history / M. A. Pankova, I. Yu. Romanenko and others.

Most readers know only one son of N. S. Khrushchev - Sergei, a very prosperous person, already long time residing in the USA. Very few people heard about the existence of his older half-brother Leonid until about the end of the 1980s. Nikita Khrushchev himself never mentioned him. However, in memoirs, documentaries, newspaper and magazine publications recent years appeared great amount information on the fate of Leonid Khrushchev. Officially, senior lieutenant Leonid Khrushchev is listed as missing during an air battle on March 11, 1943 near the village of Mashutino near the town of Zhizdra, Oryol region. Most of the published materials not only refute the death of the pilot in battle, but also claim that he voluntarily surrendered and was then shot as a traitor. Numerous arguments cited by the authors do not complement, and often simply contradict each other. Which of the versions is genuine or at least somewhat close to the truth?

In the late 1990s, first Leonid's half-brother Sergei, and then Leonid's son Yuri and granddaughter Nina living in the United States publicly announced that all published materials about the betrayal of Leonid Khrushchev were lies, and demanded retractions through legal authorities. The Khrushchevs claimed that during the life of Nikita Sergeevich there were no publications about the betrayal of his son, since he would have denied them; there is also no documentary evidence of the conviction of Leonid. In addition, the family never talked about anything like that - the children always knew from their parents that Leonid died heroically in an air battle.

Indeed, the documents, one way or another confirming the guilt of Leonid Khrushchev, have never been found anywhere by any of the researchers. Some explain this by a thorough purge of state and party archives, which was carried out by N. S. Khrushchev at the very beginning of his reign. All materials compromising him in any way were confiscated and, most likely, destroyed. Some of the former employees of the Kremlin guard claim that a special aircraft of a special squadron often traveled between Kyiv and Moscow, delivering documents to Nikita Sergeevich, which he got rid of with relief.

However, documents relating to L. Khrushchev, stitched and numbered, are stored in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation in the city of Podolsk. An appeal to them, and in particular to the personal file of Senior Lieutenant L. N. Khrushchev, does not provide any evidence that he was ever convicted. In the original autobiography written by Leonid Khrushchev on May 22, 1940, one can read: “I was born in the Donbass (Stalino) on November 10, 1917 in a working class family. Before the revolution, my father worked as a mechanic in the mines and the Bosse factory. Currently a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b), secretary of the Central Committee of the CP(b) of Ukraine. There are no relatives abroad. Married. His wife works as a navigator-pilot of a flying club squadron in Moscow. The wife's father is a worker. Brother - Air Force serviceman, Odessa. Sister is a housewife. General and special education received, studying in the seven-year plan, FZU, the school of pilots of the Civil Air Fleet, at the preparatory course of the academy. He graduated from the Civil Air Fleet School in 1937. In the Red Army, voluntarily since February 1939, a student of the preparatory course of the VVA them. Zhukovsky. From February 1940 - EVASH (Engels Military Aviation School). I haven’t been abroad, I haven’t been on trial.”

Although there is no information about a criminal record in the autobiography, some legends, which are many not only about the death of Leonid Khrushchev, but also about his whole life, say that he was convicted, and more than once. Many authors portray Leonid Khrushchev as a man capable of both betrayal and murder. So, Sergo Beria in his book “My father is Lavrenty Beria” claims that even before the war, the son of Nikita Khrushchev contacted a gang of criminals who traded in murders and robberies. For the crimes committed, his accomplices were shot, and Leonid himself, being the son of a high-ranking statesman, escaped with ten years in prison. However, there are no traces of the ten years of imprisonment mentioned by the son of Lavrenty Beria in any of the documents.

As you know, after studying at EVASH, Leonid Khrushchev, having received his first military rank lieutenant, was appointed junior pilot in the 134th High-speed Bomber Aviation Regiment of the Moscow Military District. And already in the first months of 1941 he bravely fought, which is documented. In the presentation of the commander of the 46th Air Division for awarding the Order of the Red Banner, it is said: “Comrade. Khrushchev has 12 sorties. Courageous, fearless pilot. In an air battle on 07/06/41, he bravely fought with enemy fighters until their attack was repulsed. From the battle of Comrade. Khrushchev came out with a riddled car." No less positive is his combat characteristic dated January 9, 1942: “Disciplined. The piloting technique on SB and AR-2 aircraft is excellent. In the air, calm and prudent. Tireless in battle, fearless, always eager to fight. On the Western front spent two months in initial period, i.e. at the very difficult period when the regiment flew without cover. He made 27 sorties over enemy troops. In battle, he was shot down by the enemy and broke his leg during landing.

The injured Leonid Khrushchev was immediately taken to a hospital in Kuibyshev, where the families of many senior workers were then evacuated. It is to this period of his life that another story belongs, the reliability of which is still in question. She tells that in 1942 in Kuibyshev, in a drunken stupor, Leonid Khrushchev allegedly shot a naval officer, was convicted and sent to the front line. In her book Children of the Kremlin, Larisa Vasilyeva writes about this: “Stalin was informed that Khrushchev’s son, Leonid, a military pilot with the rank of senior lieutenant, was in a state of strong alcohol intoxication shot a major of the Red Army. Stepan Mikoyan, the son of A.I. Mikoyan, clarifies: “There was a party, there was some kind of sailor from the front. Well, they started talking about who shoots how. The sailor insisted that Leonid knock the bottle off his head. Shot and hit the neck. The sailor insisted: hit the bottle. And he fired a second time and hit that sailor in the forehead. He was given 8 years with departure at the front. The tragic case of shooting at a bottle is confirmed by other eyewitnesses of the event. However, they all only heard that “either Lenya shot, or they shot at him, or he was only present at the same time.” Therefore, the version of the murder of a naval officer, again, has no documentary evidence.

In addition, after his recovery, Leonid Khrushchev was not sent to a penal battalion, as many wrote, but for retraining in a training aviation regiment, after which he was appointed commander of the 18th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment. The regiment had a good training base, and the young pilot, who had previously fought in bomber aircraft, quickly got used to the new place. Soon he began to participate in combat missions on the Yak-7B aircraft. True, it was rumored that Leonid Nikitovich allegedly went to the front in order to avoid punishment for a brawl with a brawl and an accidental murder. Others resolutely did not believe such a slander: “Leonid is a man of the most honest soul, he simply fell into the millstones of circumstances at a time when they didn’t break off like that either.” In any case, the son of an important statesman did not sit in the rear and went to the front himself - this is already worthy of respect.

Leonid Khrushchev got into the new air regiment just a few days before his last flight. In the fatal battle for him, Khrushchev was the wingman on his Yak-7B, the leader - one of the best combat pilots of the Zamorin regiment. The link was attacked by two German fighter"Focke-Wulf-190". At an altitude of 2500 meters, an air battle ensued - a couple for a couple. There are still too many legends about the last battle of the guards of Senior Lieutenant Khrushchev. The two versions are the most popular. According to the first, he was shot down, he managed to jump out with a parachute, landed on the territory occupied by the Germans and surrendered. According to the second, he was not shot down, but simply voluntarily flew to an enemy airfield. In one newspaper they even wrote that "he flew over to the Germans with his entire unit ...".

The host, Guard Senior Lieutenant Zamorin, gives three versions of that fateful battle, and all are different! As Zamorin himself later admitted, it was scary - both he and the command of the regiment were afraid of punishment for not saving the son of a member of the Politburo. Therefore, in the first report, Zamorin writes that Khrushchev's plane fell into a tailspin, in the second - that Leonid, saving him, put his plane under the line of the Focke-Wulf, in the third - that in the heat of battle he did not notice at all what happened to his wingman . After the war, and even after the death of the former leader of the USSR Nikita Khrushchev, Zamorin sent in the name of Marshal Soviet Union Ustinov, a letter in which he confessed: “In the report, I kept silent about the fact that when the German FV-190 rushed to attack my car, going under my right wing from below, Lenya Khrushchev, in order to save me from death, abandoned his plane across the fire salvo of the Fokker. After an armor-piercing strike, Khrushchev's plane literally crumbled before my eyes! .. That is why it was impossible to find any traces of this catastrophe on the ground. Moreover, the authorities did not immediately order to search - our battle took place over the territory occupied by the Germans. Nevertheless, in Zamorin's letter, one thing is indisputable - the former leader tried his best to save the reputation of the deceased follower, tried to protect his partner from accusations of betrayal and explain why nothing was found on the ground.

In a sad message, with which exactly one month after the incident - on April 11, 1943 - the commander of the 1st Air Army, Lieutenant General Khudyakov, addressed a member of the Military Council of the Voronezh Front, Lieutenant General Khrushchev, a picture of the battle was reproduced and a version was put forward that Leonid Khrushchev went into a tailspin: “For a month we did not lose hope for the return of your son,” Khudyakov reported, “but the circumstances under which he did not return, and the period that has passed since that time, force us to draw the sad conclusion that your son is a guard Senior Lieutenant Khrushchev Leonid Nikitovich died a heroic death in an air battle against the German invaders.

The most thorough searches organized by Khudyakov from the air and through the partisans (did the Soviet pilot fall into German captivity?) yielded no results. Leonid Khrushchev seemed to have fallen through the ground - neither the wreckage of the aircraft nor the remains of the pilot could be found. What happened to L. Khrushchev's plane has not yet been reliably clarified and is unlikely to succeed. Probably, information about this does not exist at all, or they are in archives that are inaccessible for research. According to some reports, comprehensive information was contained in the dossier on N. S. Khrushchev, stored in personal archive Stalin, but where this dossier is located and whether it is intact is unknown.

Search the deceased pilot continue to this day. In May 1998, while combing the Kaluga forests for meteorites, members of the Kosmopoisk association accidentally found parts of a Soviet Yak-7B fighter. The technique of the times of the Great Patriotic War is not uncommon in these parts. However, this time the search engines were waiting for a sensation. After rummaging through archival documents, they came to the conclusion that the fragments they found could be parts of the plane on which Leonid Khrushchev flew. The search engines polled local residents, and some of them confirmed the Cosmopoisk hypothesis. According to their information, in April 1943, they, at that time just boys, saw how the plane crashed and exploded on the ground. One of them, P. F. Ubryatov from the village of Vaskovo, Lyudinovsky district, told how, before his eyes, a German fighter went into the tail and shot down our plane in two bursts: “No one jumped out of the car, the plane crashed into the ground with a howl, the boys ran to funnel and managed to find the pilot's three fingers and some documents. They could no longer dig into the wreckage - the Germans who arrived on motorcycles drove away. We buried our fingers in the garden, and hid the documents in a closet at my house. After liberation, the documents were handed over to Soviet officers. They praised us, but when they saw the surname in the certificate (“Looks like the surname was important!”), Strictly ordered to be silent about what they saw. Of course, this was Khrushchev's son, otherwise why such strictness!? Thus, the members of the Kosmopoisk expedition were almost sure that the fragments of the aircraft they found belonged to the combat vehicle of Leonid Khrushchev, although it is certainly impossible to state this unequivocally.

The search results were commented on by close relatives of Leonid Khrushchev. His son Yuri said: “The last time I saw my father was in 1941, when he was leaving for the front. I was six years old. Since then, I have been surrounded by continuous rumors and speculation about him: he “ran away” to the front from a term for hooliganism, flew over to the side of the Germans and, in general, he, they say, did not know how to fly ... All this is nonsense. My father went to the front as a regular military man: even before the war he was an instructor pilot in an flying club. In 1941 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner - such awards are not given just like that. Could the search engines have stumbled upon the remains of his plane? I guess, yes. But expertise is required before anything can be approved. Although I know without examination that my father died like a real hero. He was a good man, a great pilot. I followed in his footsteps and became a test pilot. He retired only four years ago with the rank of colonel, with the title of Honored Test Pilot of Russia. But R. N. Adzhubey, L. Khrushchev’s sister, treats such “finds” with great caution: “We have been looking for the remains of Leonid’s aircraft for a long time and with the help of experienced specialists, but nothing definite can be said so far. Several years ago in Kaluga region indeed found fragments of a Soviet combat aircraft and the remains of a pilot. But it was not possible to identify him, although the famous Russian geneticist Ivanov was engaged in this - the same one who identified the remains royal family In Ekaterinburg. And there is a lot of military equipment here: intense battles were going on here. There are a lot of rumors and gossip around the name of my brother. I never believed in dirty fiction. When he was wounded in one of the first battles, I was with him in the hospital. He behaved well, although he almost lost his leg then. If I could find at least something that was left of him and bury it, I would be happy. But it's too early to talk about it."

As for the legend of the betrayal of Leonid Khrushchev, it is based, in particular, on the story of the former deputy head of the Main Personnel Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Defense, Colonel-General I. A. Kuzovlev. According to his version, Leonid Khrushchev was captured by the Germans in 1943. At the urgent request of Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin agreed to the exchange of his son for a German prisoner of war. The exchange took place (according to some reports, Khrushchev was captured by partisans, and some even claim that he was ransomed, and the capture was simply staged). But, as KGB officials established, when L. Khrushchev was in a filtration camp for former servicemen, he agreed to cooperate with the Nazis. According to the totality of the crimes committed, L. N. Khrushchev was convicted by a military tribunal and sentenced to death. Nikita Khrushchev begged Stalin to spare his son, but was rebuffed. Numerous publications contain vivid descriptions of their meeting. For persuasiveness, the authors, as a rule, refer to the memoirs of P. Sudoplatov, A. Poskrebyshev, M. Dokuchaev, and others, although none of them was a direct witness to the conversation, but only "heard something from someone."

In 1999 Home military prosecutor's office conducted its own investigation. The conclusion, which was signed by Colonel of Justice L. Kopalin, states that "the Main Military Prosecutor's Office does not have information about the commission of any crimes by Senior Lieutenant L. N. Khrushchev." But people continue to argue about the fate of Leonid Khrushchev to this day. Everyone defends his opinion, believing that it is the truth. Probably, L. Vovenarg was right when he said: “There can be as many truths between people as there are errors, as many good qualities There are as many pleasures as there are bad ones as there are sorrows.

HistoryLost.Ru - Mysteries of history

FALSE DMITRY KHRUSHCHEV

Nikolai Nepomniachtchi - 100 great mysteries of the 20th century...

On September 11, 1971, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev passed away. For a quarter of a century, his ill-wishers of all stripes continue to take revenge on him, already dead, for the report at the XX Congress of the CPSU, for the subsequent defeat of the "anti-party group", for the removal (by decision of the XXII Congress of the CPSU) of Stalin's body from the Mausoleum on Red Square. Those who hate Khrushchev try to convince public opinion that the main reason for Khrushchev's criticism of Stalin and Stalinism was personal motives associated with the death of his eldest son Leonid. The author of this article on archival documents and eyewitness accounts tried to trace true story Leonid and the roots of rumors about his death.

From time to time in the Russian press, desperately fighting for circulation, various "sensations" appear. These include stories about the extraordinary fate of Khrushchev's son from his first marriage. The echo of these stories even flew across the ocean. In the US newspaper New Russian word” (January 26, 1996) was reprinted from the December 1995 issue of the Moscow Express Gazeta article former general KGB Vadim Udilov about how Khrushchev's son Dmitry was allegedly kidnapped from German captivity by KGB General Sudoplatov and shot for treason - he agreed to cooperate with the enemy. Everything in this post is a lie.

Let's start with the fact that Nikita Sergeevich did not have a son Dmitry. One can only guess that we are talking about Khrushchev's son from his first marriage (his first wife died in 1919 from typhus) named Leonid. Pilot, senior lieutenant, he participated in sorties from the first days of the war. He managed to make a couple of dozen sorties, was presented for an award, but on July 26, 1941, his plane was shot down after the bombing of the Izocha station and barely reached the neutral zone. When the plane landed on the field, Leonid broke his leg, then spent a long time in a hospital in Kuibyshev. Here, according to General Stepan Mikoyan (he was then treated in the same hospital with the rank of lieutenant), the following happened:

“Once, in the company of the wounded, there was a sailor. When everyone was very "under the degree", someone said that Leonid Khrushchev was a very accurate shooter. The sailor - on a dare - invited Leonid to knock the bottle off his head. He refused for a long time, but then he nevertheless fired and beat off the neck of the bottle. The sailor began to argue, to prove that the neck "does not count", you have to get into the bottle itself. Leonid fired again and hit the sailor in the forehead.

A simple pilot would have been severely punished for this "play of William Tell" (such a game was in use in hospitals, rear retraining, etc.). But in this case it was about a combat pilot who was being treated after a serious wound, and even the son of a member of the Politburo. All eyewitnesses testified that the initiative in this sad story did not come from Leonid, but from the deceased sailor. The tribunal sentenced Leonid to a penal battalion (according to other sources, to 8 years in camps), but as an indulgence he allowed him to serve his sentence in aviation.

Leonid asked for a fighter and fought desperately. On March 11, 1943, his plane was shot down near the village of Zhizdra over the occupied territory. The front commander suggested that Nikita Khrushchev send a search party, but he refused: the risk of not finding anything, but killing people was too great.

There were no documents or information that Leonid Khrushchev was allegedly taken prisoner. In February 1995 Russian newspaper” in the article “Did they find Khrushchev’s grave?” (a fuller version of this article under the title "N. S. Khrushchev's son died in the Bryansk region?" was published in "Bryansk Rabochiy" dated January 20, 1995) reported that in a dried-up swamp near the town of Fokino (45 kilometers from Zhizdra) the local search group (headed by Valery Kondrashov) found the wreckage of the aircraft, and in it the remains of the pilot. According to some signs (type of the Yak-7 fighter, a fur headset of the same type that Leonid wore, the date on the machine gun is 1943) it looks like this is Leonid's plane. I am writing so carefully because the type of fighter is the same, but this is not the modification that Leonid usually flew. Perhaps he went on this flight on another plane. Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to find documents for the plane that died near Fokino; if it is possible to verify the engine number with the form (it should have been preserved in the archives of the Ministry of Defense), it will be possible to say for sure about the fate of Leonid.

And now about the fate of the legend about his imaginary capture, abduction and execution.

Until 1969, there was no talk about this. But in 1969, "above" began to lean towards the need to rehabilitate Comrade Stalin - his 90th birthday was approaching. Pravda prepared a jubilee laudatory article about Stalin's "outstanding" services to the revolution, the country and the world. Upon learning of this, a group of prominent scientists and writers wrote a sharp protest to the Central Committee (the well-known publicist Ernst Henry showed great activity). The letter worked, the article was removed from the issue. But the matrix of the newspaper was already flying on Far East. And the Far East issue came out with an article! Then they joked: we have two truths about Comrade Stalin.

Supporters of Stalin's rehabilitation tried to "plausibly" explain the reasons for exposing the cult of personality at the XX and XXII Congresses of the CPSU. Filipp Bobkov, deputy chairman of the KGB, in those years headed the 5th Directorate (fight against dissidents). There is evidence that it was he who had a hand in creating the legend of the "traitor, the son of Khrushchev." His subordinate, General Vadim Udilov, speaking in Express Gazeta with a “revealing” anti-Khrushchev essay, continues the same line: “Khrushchev’s son” collaborated with the enemy, agitated for the surrender of Soviet soldiers to the Germans ... Of course, the “organs” could not remain in side: the Sudoplatov group kidnapped Khrushchev's son from German captivity, and the merciless, but humane and fair Soviet tribunal decided to shoot him like a mad dog. Stalin in the presentation of Udalov looks harsh, but noble. He tells Khrushchev, who allegedly asks for leniency: "If the same thing happens to my son, I will accept this harsh but fair sentence." Not a tyrant, but downright Taras Bulba! Some comrades, alas, still remember how Comrade Stalin's body was taken out of the Mausoleum, and they are trying to create a myth about why this "disgrace" happened. Everything is very simple: Khrushchev was allegedly angry with Comrade Stalin for the execution of his son, offended that he did not hear his tearful request. And as soon as he seized power, he immediately imprisoned Sudoplatov, and spat on the “great” Stalin and orphaned Lenin in the Mausoleum ...

In November-December 1994, Komsomolskaya Pravda published three publications by the editor-in-chief of Rosinform, Yevgeny Zhirnov, under the title "Red Prince", which outlines the same version about Khrushchev's son: captivity, traitor, abduction, execution. But Zhirnov, at least, correctly calls the name: Leonid (and not Dmitry). And you can understand the newspaper: you need circulation, you need sensations. But why is there such a stir around a long-known plot again and again?

Udilov's article clearly indicates where the point is directed: the text is accompanied by a photograph of Nikita Khrushchev during the war years with the caption "General Nikita Khrushchev, father of a traitor to the motherland?". But it is noteworthy that in the book of the former Stalin's bodyguard A. T. Rybin "Next to Stalin", first published in the form of an article in 1949, there is not a word about the "traitor, the son of Khrushchev." And it is clear why: at that time there was still nothing to stigmatize Khrushchev for. But in the second edition of "Next to Stalin" (1992, without imprint), this story, sucked from the finger, already appears. And the moral from here is the same: Nikita Khrushchev allegedly slandered the "great leader" out of malice and for the purpose of revenge. But in reality, everything turns out just the opposite: these are Stalin's fosterlings out of malice and for the purpose of revenge, they are trying to slander Khrushchev for debunking the crimes committed by their master.

Material by Valery Lebedev

Most readers know only one son of N. S. Khrushchev - Sergei, a very prosperous person who has been living in the USA for a long time. Very few people heard about the existence of his older half-brother Leonid until about the end of the 1980s. Nikita Khrushchev himself never mentioned him. However, in memoirs, documentaries, newspaper and magazine publications of recent years, a huge amount of information has appeared on the fate of Leonid Khrushchev. Officially, senior lieutenant Leonid Khrushchev is listed as missing during an air battle on March 11, 1943 near the village of Mashutino near the town of Zhizdra, Oryol region. Most of the published materials not only refute the death of the pilot in battle, but also claim that he voluntarily surrendered and was then shot as a traitor. Numerous arguments cited by the authors do not complement, and often simply contradict each other. Which of the versions is genuine or at least somewhat close to the truth? In the late 1990s, first Leonid's half-brother Sergei, and then Leonid's son Yuri and granddaughter Nina living in the USA, publicly announced that all published materials about the betrayal of Leonid Khrushchev were lies, and through the legal authorities demanded denials. The Khrushchevs claimed that during the life of Nikita Sergeevich there were no publications about the betrayal of his son, since he would have denied them; there is also no documentary evidence of the conviction of Leonid. In addition, the family never talked about anything like that - the children always knew from their parents that Leonid died heroically in an air battle. Indeed, documents confirming the guilt of Leonid Khrushchev in one way or another were never found anywhere by any of the researchers. Some explain this by a thorough purge of state and party archives, which was carried out by N. S. Khrushchev at the very beginning of his reign. All materials compromising him in any way were confiscated and, most likely, destroyed. Some of the former employees of the Kremlin guard claim that a special aircraft of a special air detachment often traveled between Kyiv and Moscow, delivering documents to Nikita Sergeevich, which he got rid of with relief. Nevertheless, the documents relating to L. Khrushchev, stitched and numbered, are stored in Central archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation in the city of Podolsk. An appeal to them, and in particular to the personal file of Senior Lieutenant L. N. Khrushchev, does not provide any evidence that he was ever convicted. In the original autobiography written by Leonid Khrushchev on May 22, 1940, one can read: “I was born in the Donbass (Stalino) on November 10, 1917 in a working class family. Before the revolution, my father worked as a mechanic in the mines and the Bosse factory. Currently a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), secretary of the Central Committee of the CP (b) of Ukraine. There are no relatives abroad. Married. His wife works as a navigator-pilot of a flying club squadron in Moscow. The wife's father is a worker. Brother - Air Force serviceman, Odessa. Sister is a housewife. He received general and special education while studying at the seven-year school, FZU, the school of pilots of the Civil Air Fleet, at the preparatory course of the academy. He graduated from the Civil Air Fleet School in 1937. In the Red Army, voluntarily since February 1939, a student of the preparatory course of the VVA them. Zhukovsky. From February 1940 - EVASCH (Engels Military Aviation School). He was not abroad, he was not on trial. ”Although there is no information about a criminal record in the autobiography, some legends, which are many not only about the death of Leonid Khrushchev, but also about his whole life, say that he was convicted, and more than once. Many authors portray Leonid Khrushchev as a man capable of both betrayal and murder. So, Sergo Beria in his book “My father is Lavrenty Beria” claims that even before the war, the son of Nikita Khrushchev contacted a gang of criminals who traded in murders and robberies. For the crimes committed, his accomplices were shot, and Leonid himself, being the son of a high-ranking statesman, got off with ten years in prison. However, there are no traces of the ten years of imprisonment mentioned by the son of Lavrenty Beria in any of the documents. As you know, after studying at EVASH, Leonid Khrushchev, having received the first military rank of lieutenant, was appointed junior pilot in the 134th air regiment of high-speed bombers Moscow military district. And already in the first months of 1941 he bravely fought, which is documented. In the presentation of the commander of the 46th Air Division for awarding the Order of the Red Banner, it is said: “Comrade. Khrushchev has 12 sorties. Courageous, fearless pilot. In an air battle on 07/06/41, he bravely fought with enemy fighters until their attack was repulsed. From the battle of Comrade. Khrushchev came out with a riddled car." No less positive is his combat characteristic dated January 9, 1942: “Disciplined. The piloting technique on SB and AR-2 aircraft is excellent. In the air, calm and prudent. Tireless in battle, fearless, always eager to fight. He spent two months on the Western Front in the initial period, i. That is, in the most difficult period, when the regiment flew without cover. He made 27 sorties over enemy troops. In battle, he was shot down by the enemy and broke his leg during landing. The injured Leonid Khrushchev was immediately taken to a hospital in Kuibyshev, where the families of many senior workers were then evacuated. It is to this period of his life that another story belongs, the reliability of which is still in question. She tells that in 1942 in Kuibyshev, in a drunken stupor, Leonid Khrushchev allegedly shot a naval officer, was convicted and sent to the front line. In her book “Children of the Kremlin”, Larisa Vasilyeva writes about this: “Stalin was informed that Khrushchev’s son, Leonid, a military pilot with the rank of senior lieutenant, shot a major of the Red Army in a state of extreme intoxication.” Stepan Mikoyan, the son of A.I. Mikoyan, clarifies: “There was a party, there was some kind of sailor from the front. Well, they started talking about who shoots how. The sailor insisted that Leonid knocked a bottle off his head ... He fired and beat off the neck. The sailor insisted: hit the bottle. And he fired a second time and hit that sailor in the forehead. He was given 8 years with departure at the front. The tragic case of shooting at a bottle is confirmed by other eyewitnesses of the event. However, they all only heard that “either Lenya shot, or they shot at him, or he was only present at the same time.” Therefore, the version of the murder of a naval officer, again, has no documentary evidence. In addition, after his recovery, Leonid Khrushchev was not sent to a penal battalion, as many wrote, but for retraining in a training aviation regiment, after which he was appointed commander of the 18th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment. The regiment had a good training base, and the young pilot, who had previously fought in bomber aircraft, quickly got used to the new place. Soon he began to participate in combat missions on the Yak-7B aircraft. True, it was rumored that Leonid Nikitovich allegedly went to the front in order to avoid punishment for a brawl with a brawl and an accidental murder. Others resolutely did not believe such a slander: “Leonid is a man of the most honest soul, he simply fell into the millstones of circumstances at a time when they didn’t break off like that either.” In any case, the son of an important statesman did not sit in the rear, and went to the front himself - this is already worthy of respect. Leonid Khrushchev got into the new air regiment just a few days before his last flight. In the fatal battle for him, Khrushchev, on his Yak-7B, was the wingman, the leader - one of the best combat pilots of the Zamorin regiment. The link was attacked by two German Focke-Wulf-190 fighters. At an altitude of 2500 meters, an air battle ensued - a couple for a couple. There are still too many legends about the last battle of the guards of Senior Lieutenant Khrushchev. The two versions are the most popular. According to the first, he was shot down, he managed to jump out with a parachute, landed on the territory occupied by the Germans and surrendered. According to the second, he was not shot down, but simply voluntarily flew to an enemy airfield. In one newspaper they even wrote that “he flew over to the Germans with his entire unit ...” The leader, senior lieutenant of the guard Zamorin, gives three versions regarding that fatal battle, and all are different! As Zamorin himself later admitted, it was scary - both he and the command of the regiment were afraid of punishment for not saving the son of a member of the Politburo. Therefore, in the first report, Zamorin writes that Khrushchev's plane fell into a tailspin, in the second - that Leonid, saving him, substituted his plane under the turn of the Focke-Wulf, in the third - that in the heat of battle he did not notice at all what happened to his wingman . Already after the war, and even after the death of the former leader of the USSR Nikita Khrushchev, Zamorin sent a letter addressed to Marshal of the Soviet Union Ustinov, in which he admitted: “I kept silent in the report that when the German FV-190 rushed to my car in attack, going under my right wing from below, Lenya Khrushchev, in order to save me from death, threw his plane across the Fokker's fire salvo. After an armor-piercing strike, Khrushchev's plane literally crumbled before my eyes! .. That is why it was impossible to find any traces of this catastrophe on the ground. Moreover, the authorities did not immediately order to search - our battle took place over the territory occupied by the Germans. Nevertheless, in Zamorin’s letter, one thing is indisputable - the former leader tried his best to save the reputation of the deceased follower, tried to protect his partner from accusations of betrayal and explain why nothing was found on earth. In a sad message, with which exactly a month after the incident - April 11 1943 - the commander of the 1st Air Army, Lieutenant General Khudyakov, addressed a member of the Military Council of the Voronezh Front, Lieutenant General Khrushchev, a picture of the battle was reproduced and a version was put forward that Leonid Khrushchev fell into a tailspin: “For a month we did not lose hope for the return of your son,” Khudyakov reported, “but the circumstances under which he did not return, and the period that has passed since that time, force us to draw the sad conclusion that your son, Senior Lieutenant Khrushchev Leonid Nikitovich, died a heroic death in an air battle against the German invaders ". The most thorough searches organized by Khudyakov from the air and through the partisans (did the Soviet pilot fall into German captivity?) yielded no results. Leonid Khrushchev seemed to have fallen through the ground - neither the wreckage of the aircraft nor the remains of the pilot could be found. What happened to L. Khrushchev's plane has not yet been reliably clarified and is unlikely to succeed. Probably, information about this does not exist at all, or they are in archives inaccessible for research. According to some reports, exhaustive information was contained in the dossier on N. S. Khrushchev, kept in Stalin's personal archive, but where this dossier is located and whether it is intact is unknown.

Khrushchev's reign (1953-1964) is the only period in Soviet history that people remember kind words. The hero of the article is Khrushchev's son Leonid, whose biography is still the subject of controversy among historians who have not come to a consensus.

Parents

It is known for certain that the young man was born on the territory of modern Donbass - in the village of metallurgists Yuzovka, three days after October revolution. Date of birth - 11/10/1917. He was the youngest son of Nikita Sergeevich and Efrosinya Ivanovna Khrushchev (nee Pisarev). 02/07/1914 in the documents of the Nicholas Church of the Bakhmut district (the Rutchenkovskiy mine) there is a record of their official marriage registration. Until Nikita Sergeevich retires, this union will be the only documented one.

Efrosinya was one of the five daughters of the owner of the house, at which Khrushchev was "dining" at that time. Leonid in childhood almost did not remember his father. In 1918, he went to the Civil War to fight for the Bolsheviks, and his wife went to Kursk province, to his parents. In 1920, she died of typhus, leaving her daughter Yulia, born in 1915, to her husband. and son. A photo of the woman can be seen in the article below. For Nikita Sergeevich, this was a heavy blow, from which he would recover only after 4 years, having created a new family.

Childhood

The children stayed with their grandparents until their father took them to him. His party career went uphill, and in 1931 Khrushchev moved to Moscow. Yulia and Nikita Sergeevich's new wife, Nina Kukharchuk, got along a good relationship, which can not be said about Leonid. He actually grew up on the street, being left to himself. After graduating from seven classes, he entered the FZU, at 17 he began working at the factory.

Leonid Khrushchev enjoyed great success with women. By the age of twenty, he had already left two cohabitants, and one with a child in her arms. Both were Jewish. With Rosalia Treivas, an actress, he even signed, but his father defiantly tore up the marriage certificate. Esfir Etinger, the daughter of an aircraft designer, in 1935 gave birth to his son Yuri, who all his life bore the patronymic and surname of Leonid Khrushchev. A year earlier, his father had been appointed First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee, which provided his son with new opportunities.

"Youth - to the sky!"

Stalin's call to aviation had an effect on the "golden youth" of his time. The sons of the first persons studied at the VVA them. Zhukovsky. It was very honorable, they were equal. With his education, Leonid Khrushchev could not qualify for Zhukovka, but went to the Civil Air Fleet pilot school (Balashov). After graduating from it in 1937, he was enrolled in the academy, but did not sit down at his desk. In 1939, he voluntarily joined the Red Army, continuing his studies at the EVASH (Engels Aviation School).

During the Soviet-Finnish war, he volunteered for the front, flying Ar-2 bombers. The commander of the air division gave an excellent description of the lieutenant who took part in the bombing

Myth one - the first conviction

In 1938, his father (N. S. Khrushchev) was transferred to Ukraine, where he went with a promotion. A year later, Leonid married the pilot of the Moscow flying club, Lyubov Sizykh, and in January 1940, their daughter Yulia was born. The wife resembled her own husband in character: a fearless parachutist, famously handling a motorcycle. He, too, was reputed to be bold and even reckless. He could move on his hands along the bridge supports from one bank of the Dnieper to the other. The young woman already had a child, but this did not prevent Nikita Sergeevich from accepting the choice of his son.

It was during these years, according to the memoirs of Sergo Beria, that Leonid Khrushchev, the son of Nikita Khrushchev, contacted criminals. The gang was engaged in robbery attacks and was exposed on the eve of the war. Many were shot, and the son of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine allegedly received 10 years in prison. So the first myth was born, which does not find any documentary evidence. In the personal file of L. Khrushchev, stored in the archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (Podolsk), there is no mention of a criminal record in the original autobiography.

The beginning of the war

From the first day of the war, like other "Kremlin lieutenants" - the Mikoyan brothers, Timur Frunze, Vasily Stalin, the son of Nikita Sergeyevich went to the front. For the first two months, the regiment flew without cover, losing most their pilots. German aces, who had flight practice in Europe, were opposed by yesterday's graduates of schools, who sat at the helm for the first time.

Among them, the already experienced and fearless Khrushchev stood out. Leonid fought in the 134th air regiment (46th division), having made 27 sorties in July alone. Having completed the task of destroying the bridge across the river, he was presented with a combat award. To receive the Order of the Red Banner at the beginning of the war was a real rarity. On January 9, 1942, his plane was shot down and landed on neutral territory. The crew was rescued, but the pilot was seriously injured. As a result of an open fracture, the bone broke through the boot, and the hospital was preparing for an operation to amputate the leg.

Treatment in Kuibyshev

For a young man, life without heaven was impossible. Eyewitnesses say that he, threatening the doctors with a gun, demanded that they refuse the operation. I lay in bed for two months, but the young organism coped. The lameness due to the fact that one leg has become a little shorter than the other will remain with him until the end of his days. The pilot was sent to Kuibyshev, where the best luminaries of medicine were evacuated. The family also lived here. Nikita Sergeevich personally came from the front to visit his wounded son, whom he treated with special tenderness.

Leonid Khrushchev found himself in the same room with Ruben Ibarruri. In the hospital he met Stepan Mikoyan, who became the main eyewitness to his Kuibyshev period of life. According to Mikoyan, the wounded pilots often drank, made friends with the dancers of the Bolshoi Theater, evacuated to the city. At the end of the rehabilitation, they were involved in a drunken story with a tragic ending.

Myth two: second conviction

At one of the parties, young people arranged a real game of Russian roulette. A naval officer, who learned that Leonid Khrushchev was a great shooter, suggested that he hit a bottle on his head with a pistol. The shooter pierced the neck. This did not suit the sailor, and he forced the pilot to repeat the attraction. With the second shot, Khrushchev hit right in the forehead, killing the officer. tells this story from other people's words, not being an eyewitness to what is happening. The fact that his brother had some dubious story was also said by his sister

In the memoirs of Khrushchev's opponents (all of which appeared after his death), it is said that Nikita Sergeevich personally begged forgiveness from Stalin for his son. But he was still sentenced to 8 years with serving his sentence at the front.

Was it or wasn't it?

No investigative journalism this fact was not successful. There is no documentary evidence either. Rumors about the incident are so varied that it is impossible to draw any conclusions. All subsequent events violate the logic of imposing any punishment on the pilot, because in the fall of 1942 he was sent not to the penal battalion, but to retraining, retraining as a fighter pilot. In November, he passes the exam with a mark of "good", receives under his command a link and shoulder straps of a senior lieutenant. Moreover, he arrives in the army with a weapon, which, if convicted, would be confiscated.

Leonid Khrushchev, whose biography is today the subject of close study, continued to fight in the 18th air regiment, switching to the maneuverable Yak-7. He got practice by ferrying aircraft from a military factory to the front. Experts say that in order to new technology, the pilot needs time, and he didn’t exist during the war years.

Events March 11, 1943

There is evidence that Khrushchev was transferred to the Army Headquarters, but he refused. Heaven was his calling. During his service, he made 172 sorties, but only 32 - on a fighter (the flight time was only 4 hours 27 minutes). 11. 03. 1943 two planes flew to the Zhizdra area for reconnaissance of troops. In a couple, he was a follower. In place of the leader - Art. Lieutenant Zamorin, who became the main witness to the events of the historic battle, from which the son of a prominent party leader was not destined to return.

The fighters met four Fokkers, who attacked the Soviet pilots in pairs. Only the flight commander returned from a combat mission on a damaged fighter. The mystery of the death of Leonid Khrushchev is connected with two circumstances: changes in the testimony of I. Zamorin and the inability to find the remains of the Yak-7 aircraft due to swampy terrain and air combat over enemy territory.

Ivan Zamorin's testimony

The first report was written by the senior lieutenant after visiting the headquarters of the regiment. In it, he indicated: pursuing the Fokker, he let L. Khrushchev's plane out of sight. I only saw how he went into a tailspin, rushing to the ground. Later, the partisans organized searches for the remains of the aircraft, which were unsuccessful. First, the father was informed that the eldest son was missing. A month later, on the night of April 12, Stalin personally expressed condolences to his comrade-in-arms, saying that there was no more hope. In June, the father received the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree for his son (posthumously).

In the 80s, rumors began to spread about how Leonid Khrushchev got to the Germans. Allegedly, he remained alive and was captured, becoming a traitor. Rumors appeared before, therefore, after an investigation was carried out into the death of the pilot (investigator Tokarev S.I.), during which no evidence of his betrayal was found. Zamorin changed his testimony, saying that the wingman saved him by throwing his Yak-7 in front of the Fokker's fire attack. The plane actually disintegrated in the air. He explained his previous report: the command of the regiment was afraid of responsibility for not saving the son of a high-ranking official, so they preferred to present him as missing.

Version of betrayal

Military journalist I. Stadnyuk, historians G. Kumanev, N. Dobryukha, writer F. Chuev and some others adhere to the version that Leonid Khrushchev was shot. They refer to the fact that N. Khrushchev destroyed documents incriminating his son during his reign. Referring to the testimonies of the NKVD generals (V. Udilov), Molotov, the son of Beria, they describe the picture of how the pilot managed to eject, having fallen into enemy captivity. There he began to give evidence that undermined the security of the country. Stalin ordered the SMERSH special group to steal the traitor. The operation was successful, and Khrushchev's son was taken to Moscow.

The father on his knees begged for forgiveness, but Stalin relied on the decision of the members of the Politburo, who sentenced the traitor to death. It was carried out. This explains the hatred of N. S. Khrushchev for the members of the Central Committee: Beria is shot, the Shcherbakovsky district of Moscow is renamed, and Kaganovich, Molotov and Malenkov are sent into exile. An indirect confirmation of the version can be the arrest of Lyubov Sizykh in 1943 and sending her to camps on charges of espionage. Subsequently, it turned out that these two events are in no way connected with each other.

Official version

Self-confident, stubborn and cheerful, the 25-year-old youth became a hostage to the confrontation between Nikita Khrushchev, the main author of the "thaw" of the 60s, and the NKVD generals, who did everything to denigrate the name former First Secretary Drawing an analogy with the fate of Yakov Dzhugashvili, who was captured by the Germans, after the capture of the son of a high politician the reaction of the fascists was to be expected: propaganda leaflets, radio messages, any hype. But there are no sources from the German side confirming the presence of the pilot in captivity.

The stories about how Leonid Khrushchev was killed also differ. His execution is described in different ways by "eyewitnesses", while Metrostroy employees found the wreckage of the Yak-7 aircraft, which matches the number of the Art. lieutenant. Data about this is stored in the archives of the city of Podolsk. On the mass grave of the city of Zhizdra, the name of Khrushchev is mentioned, which gives reason to talk about his burial in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bdeath.

Afterword

His relatives and those who personally knew him do not believe in the betrayal of the young pilot. Son Yuri and granddaughter Nina demanded a public refutation of the information that is given in many publications without reference to any documents. Direct command, comrades-in-arms, including the equipment of the Yak-7 aircraft, give the most flattering characteristics to the pilot: Leonid Nikitovich Khrushchev was brave and fearless man. He was eager to fight, not hiding behind the backs of his comrades, and the report of I. Zamorin is another confirmation of this. The reputation of a hero is more important than the pursuit of cheap sensations. Conducting additional research is a matter of honor for historians who must put an end to the spread of speculation and rumors.

March 11, 1943. An aircraft of the 18th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment did not return from a sortie. War... No wonder. The plane was piloted by Senior Lieutenant Leonid Khrushchev. The spring of 1943 is the height of the Great Patriotic War. Combat pilots were dying constantly, in large numbers. But the command of not only the 18th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment, but also the 303rd Fighter Aviation Division, was alarmed in earnest. 25-year-old senior lieutenant Leonid Khrushchev was the eldest son of Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, who at that time served as the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine.

The place of the alleged crash of the plane, which was piloted by Leonid Khrushchev, was studied thoroughly - even local partisans were attracted. But neither the wreckage of the aircraft nor the body of the pilot was found. Leonid Nikitovich Khrushchev is missing. The fate of the son of the future Soviet leader is still unknown. The official version says that he was captured and died in a German camp - like the son of Joseph Stalin, Yakov Dzhugashvili. If this was indeed the case, then this explains a lot - including why neither the plane nor the corpse of Leonid Khrushchev was found.

Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, future general secretary The Central Committee of the CPSU was married three times in his life. The first time he married in 1914, still a twenty-year-old boy - a mine mechanic. His wife was Efrosinya Ivanovna Pisareva, who gave birth to Nikita Khrushchev two children - daughter Yulia in 1916 and son Leonid in 1917. In 1920, Euphrosyne died of typhus. Young Khrushchev was left with two children, but in 1922 he married a certain Marusa, a single mother. With her, Nikita Sergeevich lived a little and already in 1924 he married Nina Kukharchuk, who became his companion for the rest of his life. Thus, Leonid Nikitovich Khrushchev was the son of Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev from his first marriage. He was born on November 10, 1917 in Yuzovka, where Nikita Sergeevich lived and worked at that time.
The career of Nikita Khrushchev rapidly went uphill from the beginning of the 1930s. If in 1922 Nikita was still a modest student of the workers' faculty, then in 1929 he entered the Industrial Academy and was elected secretary of the party committee. In 1931, 36-year-old Nikita Khrushchev became the first secretary of the Bauman district committee of the All-Union Communist Party (b) of the city of Moscow - a colossal position for yesterday's provincial party leader. By this time, Leonid Khrushchev was almost fourteen years old. It is now the son of the prefect of some metropolitan area that has a cloudless future in elite university- Russian or foreign, and then successful business or a quick career in government. Then, in the 1930s, there were somewhat different orders. Leonid Khrushchev, after studying at a school for working youth, went to work at a factory. Apparently, like his father, Lenya Khrushchev was “young and early” - by the age of 18 he had already been married twice. The first wife was Rosa Treivas, but Leonid broke up with her quickly - under pressure from Nikita. Married to his second wife, Esfir Naumovna Etinger, 17-year-old Leonid Khrushchev had a son, Yuri Leonidovich (1935-2003).

“First of all, planes, and then girls,” was sung in a popular Soviet song of those years. But Leonid Khrushchev had girls a little earlier than planes. In 1935, 20-year-old Leonid entered the Balashov Civil Aviation Pilot School. air fleet, which he graduated in 1937 and began working as an instructor pilot. In 1939, Leonid voluntarily asked to join the Red Army and was enrolled in preparatory Course command faculty Air Force Academy them. Zhukovsky, but did not study at the academy, limiting himself to graduating from the Engels Military Aviation School in 1940. When the Soviet-Finnish war began, Leonid Khrushchev asked to go to the front.

The young officer was a brave pilot. He made more than thirty sorties, flew an Ar-2 plane, and participated in the bombing of the Mannerheim Line. Naturally, when the Great Patriotic War, Leonid Khrushchev went to the front. He fought from the beginning of July 1941 - as part of the 134th bomber aviation regiment, which was part of the 46th aviation division. Already in the summer of 1941, Khrushchev Jr. made 12 sorties and was presented to the Order of the Red Banner.

On July 27, 1941, Leonid Khrushchev's plane was shot down near the Izocha station. The pilot barely managed to fly to the front line and landed in no man's land, having received a severe leg injury upon landing. For almost a whole year, Leonid was out of action. Leonid was sent to Kuibyshev to restore his health. Another Soviet combat pilot from a high-ranking family, Stepan Mikoyan, the son of the People's Commissar for Foreign Trade of the USSR Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan, was treated there after severe wounds. Leonid Khrushchev and Stepan Mikoyan became friends. In February 1942, Leonid Khrushchev finally found an award. Senior pilot of the 134th Bomber Aviation Regiment Lieutenant Khrushchev was awarded the order Red Banner for 27 sorties and bombing German tanks, artillery and crossings in the Desna area.
It was at the time when Leonid Khrushchev was in the rear that the first strange story, the validity of which is still unknown. In favor of the veracity of this story is the fact that Stepan Mikoyan, a close friend of Leonid, and Rada Adzhubey, the daughter of Nikita Sergeevich from his third marriage and Leonid's half-sister, told about her. Allegedly, while recovering in the rear, Leonid Khrushchev, like many soldiers and officers waiting to return to the front, whiled away the time in drunken feasts. On one of these evenings, he amused himself by shooting at a bottle and, through negligence, shot one of his drinking companions - a military sailor. Leonid Khrushchev was arrested and given 8 years - serving at the front. It was not advisable to send a good combat pilot, an order bearer, and even the son of the first secretary of the CP (b) of the Ukrainian SSR to the camp. Leonid, who had not yet completely recovered from the wound, was sent to the front and enrolled in the 18th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment - the very one that included the French pilots of the Normandie-Niemen. Again, we note that this is an unofficial version, which some sources do not share.

Be that as it may, but in December 1942, Leonid Khrushchev was again at the front. He managed to make 28 training and 6 sorties, participate in 2 dogfights before going missing on March 11, 1943. After a month and a half of unsuccessful searches, the name of Leonid Khrushchev was excluded from the lists of the military unit, and in June 1943 he was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree. Then it starts very interesting events. It would seem that the family of the deceased war hero, and even the son of the main communist of Ukraine, should have bathed in honors.

But, shortly after the tragedy that happened to Leonid Khrushchev, his wife Lyubov Sizykh was arrested. No one was even embarrassed by the fact that the widow of the deceased pilot had a daughter from Leonid - at that time three-year-old Yulia Leonidovna Khrushcheva. Could not or did not want to protect his daughter-in-law and Nikita Sergeevich. Lyubov Sizykh was accused of espionage and sent to a camp for five years. She served her term “from call to call”, and after the camp, in 1948, she was left in exile in Kazakhstan and was finally released only in 1956, after spending thirteen years in places of detention and exile. What was it and why did they do this to the hero's widow and the mother of his little daughter? Was Lyubov Sizykh really a spy, a traitor to the Motherland? But what data could she have to do with? And why was she not pardoned, at least for the sake of her husband's memory and for the sake of her daughter?

Vadim Nikolaevich Udilov served in the authorities state security almost forty years, having completed his service in the rank of major general and deputy head of one of the departments of the KGB of the USSR. Back on February 17, 1998, an article was published with his memoirs, in which the former counterintelligence officer told a very interesting version of the "death" of Leonid Khrushchev. Allegedly, Leonid Khrushchev flew to the other side of the front and surrendered to the Germans. The pilot was quickly persuaded to cooperate. The escape of Leonid became known in Moscow. Soon a special SMERSH group carried out a brilliant operation to capture Leonid. He was brought to Moscow. Nikita Khrushchev also urgently arrived in the capital from the front. He ran to the reception personally to Joseph Stalin.

According to the memoirs of another high-ranking security officer, General Mikhail Dokuchaev, who served as deputy head of the 9th Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR, who guarded the first persons of the state, Nikita Sergeevich threw a real tantrum at Stalin - with tears in his eyes he begged not to shoot his son. But Joseph Vissarionovich was adamant. It was possible to turn a blind eye to the drunken shooting in Kuibyshev and give the opportunity to atone for guilt at the front with blood. But betrayal is too much. Leonid Nikitovich Khrushchev was shot. Again, this is just one of the versions of the death of the son of Nikita Sergeevich.

But, if everything was as the veterans of the security agencies later told, then much in further developments becomes clear. Then there are no questions about the arrest of Lyubov Sizykh - she was convicted as the wife of a traitor to the Motherland and given only five years in the camps (by the way, if Lyubov was really a spy, then in war time would have received a much longer sentence or death penalty). For obvious reasons, did not stand up for Lyubov Sizykh and Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. Moreover, he distanced himself from her as much as possible and even released Lyubov from exile only in 1956 - by this time Khrushchev had been heading the Soviet state for the third year, what did it cost him to release his former daughter-in-law and the mother of his granddaughter? True, the daughter of Leonid and Lyubov, Yulia Nikita Sergeevich, nevertheless adopted.

According to the version of the betrayal of Leonid Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich was very upset by the execution of his eldest son. Although he himself miraculously remained in a leadership position - at that time, any leak of information that the son of the first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine had betrayed the Motherland would seriously discredit the Soviet government, Khrushchev harbored a grudge against Joseph Stalin for life. Nikita Sergeevich's hatred of Stalin, if we accept this version, was not political, but personal. omnipotent leader Soviet state and communist party turned for Khrushchev into personal enemy He couldn't forgive his son's death.
If this is so, then the reasons for the harsh criticism that Nikita Khrushchev brought down on the late Stalin from the rostrum of the 20th Congress of the CPSU are understandable. It turns out that the de-Stalinization of the Soviet state had personal reasons. Of course, it was beneficial for both Soviet dissidents and the West to view de-Stalinization as an "objective process" that supposedly even the Soviet leaders understood the "criminal nature of Stalin's regime." For the same reason, the details of the true fate of Leonid Nikitovich Khrushchev were also kept in deep secrecy. It was extremely unprofitable to present the son of Nikita Khrushchev as a traitor, as this would cast a shadow on the very de-Stalinization - that Nikita was guided by personal motives, starting to criticize the Stalinist system.

On the other hand, there is no real evidence in favor of the version of the betrayal of Leonid Nikitovich Khrushchev. The counterintelligence officer Udilov himself said that all the documents that could tell about this were carefully destroyed back in Soviet time. In addition, many contemporaries of Leonid Khrushchev still adhered to the version that Senior Lieutenant Khrushchev died in German captivity. Of course, being captured Soviet officer, according to the dominant ideology, did not paint, but still this is not a betrayal. Especially if, in the end, Leonid was really killed by the Nazis.

Yulia Leonidovna Khrushcheva, daughter of Leonid, is already in our time - in 2006-2008. - has repeatedly filed lawsuits against Channel One. The fact is that back in 2006, the film "Star of the Epoch" was shown on television, in which the version about the betrayal of Leonid Khrushchev was presented. This outraged Yulia Leonidovna and she demanded to compensate her for moral damage, but all the courts left the claims of the granddaughter of the Soviet General Secretary unsatisfied. Some observers argued that the memory of Leonid Khrushchev was deliberately denigrated - now, they say, reformers are not in vogue, and the authorities want to rehabilitate harsh methods and an authoritarian style of government. Other analysts are less categorical - who now, more than 70 years later, cares about the fate of the son of the future Soviet general secretary who died young. It is now impossible to assert either the correctness of this version or its fallacy. Along with the Soviet era, many of its secrets have gone into the past.

On June 8, 2017 at 10:35 a.m., on the section of the Solnechnaya - Vnukovo stations, the Vnukovo - Moscow electric train fatally knocked down an elderly woman who was crossing railways in the wrong place. The police identified the deceased - it was 77-year-old Yulia Leonidovna Khrushcheva, the daughter of Leonid Khrushchev and the adopted daughter of Nikita Sergeevich.

Nikita Khrushchev's report on the exposure of the cult of personality had an indelible effect on the country. But why did he actually decide to do this: is a family tragedy involved here or big politics? How did Leonid Khrushchev die, and what is behind the rumors about his desertion? TV channel "Moscow Trust" prepared a special report.

"Golden Child"

Rada Khrushcheva had just finished 4th grade. The holidays have begun, and the family moves to a dacha 20 km from the city.

“Father was not in Kyiv, I thought that he traveled around the Ukrainian regions, but it turns out that he was in Moscow,” says daughter N.S. Khrushchev Rada Adjubey.

Nikita Khrushchev returns to Kyiv, when only a few hours remain before the war. His daughter Rada recalls that their government dacha unwittingly served as a guide for the Germans as they flew to the capital.

Leonid Khrushchev

“Such three large white houses, the roofs were covered with camouflage netting. We saw how a formation of bombers was flying, turning towards Kyiv,” recalls Adjubey.

These days, Rada's older brother, bomber pilot Leonid, was not at home - he was at the location of his unit. By the beginning of the war, he was one of the most experienced here: after the school of the air fleet in 1940, he volunteered for Soviet-Finnish war and managed to make dozens of sorties.

Publicist historian Nikolai Dobryukha has been researching the fate of General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev's son for many years.

"I am one of the few who higher ranks state security officers revealed many secrets and helped to obtain unique documents. KGB Chairman Vladimir Semichastny, whom I helped write and publish reflections in national newspapers, talked directly about Leonid with Nikita Sergeevich," says Dobryukha.

Leonid is Khrushchev's son from his first marriage. His mother died early, and his father soon goes to civil war where he served in the Red Army.

"The boy grew up without a father and without a mother, was left to himself and had sufficient material opportunities. This had a bad effect on his fate. When Khrushchev was the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Leonid got in touch with bandits, participated in robberies. He was very brave, and there was a case when he, holding on to the supports of the bridge, moved from one bank of the Dnieper to the other," says Mykola Dobryukha.

"Missed"

When the Great Patriotic War began, Leonid was already in the rank of lieutenant. During the first week, he makes 12 sorties. But soon he is out of action - on July 27, 1941 he has to make an emergency landing.

Hero of the Soviet Union test pilot Stepan Mikoyan met Leonid in the hospital, which was located in the rear in Kuibyshev.

“I was injured as a result of the landing - a broken leg, burns, and after the hospital I was sent for outpatient treatment, where we met,” Mikoyan recalls.

On the podium of the mausoleum of V.I. Lenin (from left to right) N.S. Khrushchev, I.V. Stalin, V.M. Molotov and N.M. Shvernik. Photo: ITAR-TASS

Despite the fact that both are children of the ruling elite of the country, they see each other for the first time. Mikoyan draws attention to Khrushchev, because he is in the form of a pilot. It turns out that Leonid has been in the hospital for more than a year.

"They landed in no man's land, killed the shooter, and pulled him out with difficulty, because the Germans could intercept. In field hospital They wanted to cut off his leg, but he did not let it, threatening the doctor with a gun," says Stepan Mikoyan.

The leg heals slowly: earth got into the wound, infection began. He is often visited by his family, which has just been evacuated to Kuibyshev. Rada adored her brother. To entertain her, he often talked about his flights.

“It is strange and ridiculous to assume that they flew to bomb Berlin unaccompanied. It was suicide. Most of their planes were destroyed at the airfields, and those that remained could not resist the German Messerschmitts,” says Rada Adzhubey.

Unexpectedly, Leonid is presented to the Order of the Red Banner. The order was signed after that emergency flight, when he was able to reach the neutral zone and was not captured. Leonid goes with his whole family to Moscow to receive an award. About what will happen to Leonid at the party, Stepan Mikoyan learns much later from friends. Leonid himself, when they meet again in Moscow, will not say a word about it. From that moment on, white spots appear in the biography of N.S. Khrushchev.

“In one of the parties there was a strong booze, and they began to compete who shoots better. Leonid boasted that he could knock a bottle off a person’s head. They put some officer, and he accidentally killed him. Leonid was put on trial,” says Nikolai Dobryuha.

He still continues to serve in the army, and even receives a transfer to the elite fighter aircraft.

“Due to the fact that the son of such a high-ranking leader, the case was deliberately confused, and he was given only 8 years. But such documents really exist in the Samara Regional Archive. There is no direct evidence that it was Leonid who shot. the group that participated in that party was arrested, there was a trial," says Dobryukha.

Deserter or hero?

The fact that Leonid did not fall under the tribunal, the historian Nikolai Dobryukha considers the personal merit of his father. He begged for his son the opportunity to atone for his guilt.

“Khrushchev on his knees begged Stalin to spare his son, even grabbed Stalin by the legs, and he ordered the guards to call doctors for Khrushchev, said that he had lost his temper, fearing for the fate of his son,” Dobryukha claims.

When Stepan Mikoyan heard the story about the fatal shot, he was surprised: he did not remember Leonid like that.

“I must say that he liked to drink, but he became even kinder than he was at all, did not swear and quickly fell asleep,” says Mikoyan.

Khrushchev is not sent to the penal battalion. He is retrained from a bomber to a fighter, eager to fight.

"There were such cases during the war. We had one pilot in our regiment, who received several years for a drunken fight with his departure at the front. And he flew with us, fought, although he was convicted. So this was the norm for officers then," Stepan Mikoyan says

Leonid takes less than 3 months to study, and after that he managed to make only 7 sorties.

“A fighter can fly on everything, but vice versa - not always. Apparently, Leonid did not fully learn the new things when he got into the fighter regiment. I was then in another regiment, and now the pilot Kolya Zhuk, who had previously served with Leonid. He said that Khrushchev was chasing a German plane, and at that time a German was attached to his tail, gave a burst, Leonid rolled over and began to dive down, "says Mikoyan.

Leonid Khrushchev

This happened near the town of Zhizdra, Kaluga Region, on March 11, 1943. The remains of the aircraft could not be found, the area is completely covered with swamps. Nikolai Dobryukha knows a different version of those events. It was told to him by Ivan Stadnyuk, a front-line correspondent, screenwriter of the films "Maxim Perepelitsa" and "I Serve the Soviet Union!".

“Stadnyuk said that he had seen documents that clearly stated that the shot down (or not shot down, but flown to the side of the Germans) Leonid was stolen from captivity and put on trial. The court, despite Khrushchev’s appeal to Stalin, did not acquit him, and Leonid shot. That is, it was a shooting. I have not seen such documents, they are classified," says Dobryukha.

Disputes among historians do not subside. The wording "missing" during the war years was the most terrible. Andrey Svitenko adheres to official version the death of Khrushchev Jr.

“As Serpilin said in the person of Anatoly Papanov in the film, “I’m not afraid of death, I can’t be lost without a trace.” If there is such a wording, suspicions are immediately born that he went over to the camp of the enemy,” Svitenko explains.

Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense. All documents for the war period are stored here. Olga Chasovitina has been working in this repository for 30 years, where reports, orders, award lists and lists are collected. Soviet pilots. There is no separate case of Leonid Khrushchev here. His documents in the chronicle of hostilities appear in the general list, they were declassified back in the early 60s.

“We keep the primary sources: documents of regiments, divisions. Nothing has disappeared from us and it was impossible to correct anything. If a case is needed, a decree is drawn up with a number, date, and then the case is returned,” says Chasovitina.

"He was awarded on February 20, 1942. Because of the wound, he was in the hospital, the papers went for a long time, and the award happened later. He was not in the regiment, although the commander of the 134th regiment requested that he return to them. But he went for retraining ", - says Olga Chasovitina.

Revenge of the fallen

1956 XX Congress of the CPSU. Speech by General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. At first, the text does not portend anything, Khrushchev makes a report on debunking the cult of personality at the end of the congress, when it has already officially ended. This takes place on February 25 at a closed meeting. The most curious thing is that the name of Stalin was not directly named.

"The motivation for this report was hostility towards Stalin, he never hid it. He constantly talked about him, for many years of acquaintance he had something to say - he appreciated him moral qualities, wrote about "games at court" - how they put a tomato to the one who got up from the chair, and he sat on it, laughed like that. Such artless morals reigned. And things are more serious, young people need to know what country we live in, that the leaders always slept with a suitcase ready, always ready to be picked up from 2 to 4, as was usually done," says Andriy Svitenko.

XX Congress of the CPSU, 1956. Photo: ITAR-TASS

Stalinist repressions affected almost every second family in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev's report made a lot of noise, although it was not published anywhere until Perestroika itself. Its content was transmitted orally.

“Yes, this was no revenge on Stalin, he was his student, comrade-in-arms, he was brought up in this. But he found the strength in himself to take this step,” Rada Adzhubey believes.

Would Khrushchev have decided to take such a step if there had been compromising evidence against him? Since the death of Stalin, there has been a struggle for power in the inner circle. Leonid's plane has not yet been found - this is a reason to undermine the authority of the current Secretary General. But no one will use them.

"Only those who have no idea what Stalin and Khrushchev are, their relationship can believe in this. There were many rumors about the death of Leonid. His daughter, Yulia, sent a request to the prosecutor's office, but a letter came from there that there was nothing like that" - Adjubey says.

The death of Leonid Khrushchev affected the service of his friend Stepan Mikoyan. He is rarely taken to the front line. "Golden Youth" behind the scenes will be protected from bullets.

"When my brother died, Timur Frunze, Leonid Khrushchev, I was on Northwestern Front. And Stalin took care of his son Vasily, and me. And I did not understand why they did not take me, I thought that I was less prepared than other pilots. But after the war, Vasya himself told me about it," Mikoyan recalls.

In all unofficial versions of Leonid's fate, there is one weak point. Why was the desertion of the son of the then leader of Ukraine not used by the enemy?

"Here is Yakov Dzhugashvili - leaflets were scattered in millions of copies about him. And about Molotov's son, that he is a prisoner. And here - nothing," says Andrey Svitenko.

The search for Leonid Khrushchev's plane is still going on. It seems that only his discovery will be able to put an end to this story. And yet, Leonid's wife, after he disappeared, was arrested. Nikita Khrushchev will raise his daughter as his own. It is him that she will call her father in front of everyone. And the younger sister Rada believed for a long time that one day her brother would return.

“I’m leaving school late in the evening (I studied on the third shift), and I think: I’ll come, and his leather jacket is hanging on a hanger ...” - says Rada Adjubey.