Who first used the expression iron curtain. "Iron Curtain" - what is it? Origins of the Cold War. Iron Curtain: how our country fenced itself off from the world and turned into a large concentration camp

Alexander Podrabinek: On March 5, 1946, the leader of the British Conservatives, Winston Churchill, delivered a speech at Westminster College in the American city of Fulton, in which he said: "From Szczecin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended on the continent." Then, from that day, the countdown of the Cold War began, and the term "Iron Curtain" itself entered the international political lexicon and firmly entrenched in it, denoting a means of self-isolation of the Soviet Union from the free world. True, it should be noted that HG Wells wrote about the Iron Curtain in 1904 in his science fiction novel Food of the Gods, and in 1919 French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau spoke about the Iron Curtain at the Paris Peace Conference.

The "Iron Curtain" is one of the brightest signs of a totalitarian regime. Not the only one, but very revealing. The ban on leaving the country is a safety net for the totalitarian dictatorship in case of mass dissatisfaction of the people with the existing regime. In the Soviet Union, this system lasted until 1991, when the law "On the procedure for leaving the USSR" was adopted, abolishing the need to obtain exit visas at OVIRs - the visa and registration departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

In the Soviet Union, as, indeed, in other countries of the socialist bloc, there was a system of exit visas. That is, in order to travel to another country, it was necessary to obtain not only an entry visa from the embassy of this country, as in many cases it is still necessary today, but also an exit visa from their own authorities. It was put in the Soviet passport, and before perestroika, it was almost impossible for an ordinary person to get it. This was the privilege of the Soviet and party nomenklatura, and the issue of issuing exit visas to all Soviet citizens was also resolved with it.

The Soviet government considered the intention to emigrate from the country as a betrayal of the motherland. True, this did little to embarrass those who set themselves the goal of leaving the socialist paradise. Few have been able to do it legally.

The most massive category of Soviet emigrants were Jews who declared their intention to repatriate to their historical homeland in Israel. Over the years, this has been more difficult or easier to do, but almost always the declaration of the intention to repatriate entailed undesirable consequences. What troubles awaited people who applied for immigration to Israel?

Roman Spektor, Head of the PR and Mass Media Department of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, tells the story.

Roman Spector: The first is job loss. And this is probably the scariest thing. The second is arrest. This did not depend in any way on the quality of participation in any movement, it was in no way connected with the category of refusal itself. The Jews were by that time hostages, nothing depended on their desire. Some kind of strong KGB power decided how many Jews, when and for what reason to let them go. The very idea of ​​the vacation was, of course, a reaction to the desire of the Jews to leave the country. At first, it was the expressed, deeply tempered Zionist will, which, with such heroes as Yasha Kazakov, now Yasha Kedmi, ignited the Jews of the whole world, which began to fight for the right of Jews to emigrate to Israel. Since there was some procedure that depended on the filing, people served and fell into two traps. One of them was called a ban on leaving the country due to secrecy at work - these are the so-called "secrets", the second is the relatives of those who were banned, the category of the so-called "poor relatives". And the quantity, the region, all this was planned by the authorities only in order to somehow show somewhere that Jews still have the right to leave, but there were very few such "lucky ones". People fell under arrest and under the Gulag when there was some kind of order, everything worked for us for the sake of some inflated figure, especially when such a department ordered it. The current speaker of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, Yuli Edelstein, was imprisoned because he taught Hebrew. But Hebrew was taught by many other people, why Yulik ended up behind bars - this is a question that should be addressed not to me, but to those KGB officers who determined this.

A significant number of people who received permission went to non-Israeli or used Israeli visas to end up in Austria, Germany, the American states, and so on. The reverse flow, or re-emigration, as we call it, has always existed. This is, in general, a fairly small stream, which did not rise above 7-10%, depending on some circumstances. Since not all Jews were equally ideologically infected and in their behavior the craving for the Promised Land was not so pronounced, in search of a better life, they first went to Israel and some other countries, not having acquired the necessary social status there, not finding the necessary work there and the necessary income, they returned enriched with language and new realities. And the smallest part of them joined the ranks of activists and by that time already established Jewish institutions here in Russia.

Alexander Podrabinek: Another category of legal emigrants were dissidents, more precisely, a small part of them, whom the Soviet authorities let go abroad. Why did she do it? Says human rights activist Pavel Litvinov.

Pavel Litvinov: I think it's just that they don't stay in Russia. It was believed that they would bring less harm to Soviet power abroad, that they would be heard less there. They had a contradiction all the time: on the one hand, they wanted to get rid of the dissidents, on the other hand, they did not want there to be an easy way to emigrate, less freedom. There were different periods. When the democratic movement began in 1967-1968, emigration was a pure abstraction, that is, no one left, we did not hear that anyone left, no one returned. Communists could leave, and then not leave, but go, sometimes remain defectors. I remember we said that in principle there should be freedom of emigration, but all this had nothing to do with the matter. Then the KGB decided to use the Jewish emigration in order to push out one of the dissidents. But it was a completely new phenomenon, it began in 1970-71. I think that political emigrants played a big role, I, in particular, together with Valery Chelidze, we published the magazine "Chronicle in Defense of Human Rights", republished "Chronicle of Current Events", published books. I spoke on Radio Liberty, Voice of America. Corresponded with people in Moscow. Thus, we have created additional channels of information, the movement has become truly international. I think that it is unlikely to return to past practice, but it is impossible to predict, the regime may become so worse that these will be the details of additional fascistization of the regime. This seems unlikely to me.

Alexander Podrabinek: Ethnic Germans and Pentecostals achieved some success in the struggle to leave the country, but in general, for the majority of Soviet citizens, the border remained closed. However, there is no such lock that folk craftsmen could not crack. Escape across the border was dangerous, but not uncommon.

The simplest method was used by "defectors" - people who did not return from the West from tourist trips and business trips. It should be noted that defectors are an older concept than Soviet power. As early as the beginning of the 19th century, after the victory over Napoleon, more than 40,000 lower ranks of the Russian army became defectors and remained in the West. Alexander I even wanted to return them to Russia forcibly, but nothing happened.

Among the Soviet "defectors" one can name such famous people as the world chess champion Alexander Alekhin and the USSR chess champion Viktor Korchnoi, director Alexei Granovsky, singer Fyodor Chaliapin, geneticist Timofeev-Resovsky, Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva, ballet dancers Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev, historian Mikhail Voslensky, actor Alexander Godunov, pianist Maxim Shostakovich, Soviet Ambassador to the UN Arkady Shevchenko, film director Andrei Tarkovsky, Olympic medalist and three-time world champion hockey player Sergei Fedorov, writer Anatoly Kuznetsov. This is one of the most famous.

And there were many people who, at their own peril and risk, fled from the Soviet paradise in a variety of ways. Oceanographer Stanislav Kurilov, who was allowed by the Soviet authorities to explore the depths of the sea exclusively in the territorial waters of the USSR, took a ticket for an ocean cruise from Vladivostok to the equator and back without calling at ports. It did not require an exit visa. On the night of December 13, 1974, he jumped from the stern of the ship into the water and, with flippers, a mask and a snorkel, without food, drink or sleep, swam about 100 km for more than two days to one of the islands of the Philippine archipelago. After an investigation by the Philippine authorities, he was deported to Canada and granted Canadian citizenship. And in the Soviet Union, Kurilov received a 10-year prison sentence in absentia for treason.

Vladimir Bogorodsky, who was sitting with me in the same camp in the early 80s, to whom the Soviet authorities did not give permission to repatriate to Israel, told how he spat on legal ways to emigrate and simply crossed the Soviet-Chinese border. He demanded from the Chinese to give him the opportunity to fly to Israel or meet with American diplomats in Beijing, but the Chinese communists turned out to be no better than the Soviet ones. They offered him an alternative: either stay in China or return to the Union. So instead of Israel or America, Volodya spent three years in Shanghai, and then relations between Moscow and Beijing warmed up, the fugitive was brought to the Soviet-Chinese border and handed over to Soviet border guards. He received three years in the camp for illegally crossing the border and was happy that it was not 15 years for treason.

The plane has always been the fastest and most convenient means of transportation. Including from the socialist camp to the free world. Daredevils, one way or another involved in aviation, fled abroad on planes, usually military ones.

Most of these escapes took place after the Second World War, but there were cases before. So, for example, on May 1, 1920, four aircraft from the 4th Fighter Air Group of the First Aviation Squadron of the Red Army took off from the Slavnoye airfield near Borisov to scatter leaflets over the territory of Poland, against which the Bolsheviks fought then. Only three fighters returned. Former lieutenant colonel of the tsarist army, Pyotr Abakanovich, flew on his Nieuport-24-bis to the Poles, landing at the airfield in Zhodino. Then he served in the Polish Air Force, twice got into a plane crash, during World War II he was in the resistance, fought against the Nazis, participated in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, and after the war he continued to fight the communist regime in Poland. In 1945 he was arrested, in 1946 he was sentenced to death, but then the death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment. In 1948, he died in the Vronka prison from beatings by a guard.

In 1948, the Yak-11 training aircraft was hijacked to Turkey directly from the flight school in Grozny. It must be assumed that the cadet went to study as a military pilot, already having clear intentions.

In the same 1948, pilots Pyotr Pirogov and Anatoly Barsov flew on a Soviet Tu-2 military aircraft from the Kolomyia airbase to Austria. The American occupation authorities in Germany granted them political asylum. A year later, Anatoly Barsov, for some unknown reason, returned to the USSR, where six months later he was shot.

On May 15, 1967, pilot Vasily Yepatko flew on a MiG-17 aircraft from a Soviet air base in the GDR to West Germany. He did not land, but ejected near the city of Augsburg. He later received political asylum in the United States.

On May 27, 1973, aircraft engineer Lieutenant Evgeny Vronsky took off on a Su-7 combat aircraft from the Grossenhain airbase of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. Having minimal piloting skills obtained on the simulator, Vronsky flew the entire flight in afterburner mode and did not even remove the landing gear after takeoff. After crossing the German border, Vronsky ejected. His car crashed into a forest near the city of Braunschweig and soon the wreckage of the plane was returned to the Soviet side, and Lieutenant Vronsky received political asylum.

On September 6, 1976, Senior Lieutenant Viktor Belenko fled in a MiG-25 to the Japanese island of Hokkaido. After the study of the aircraft by American specialists, the aircraft was returned to the Soviet Union in a disassembled state. After this escape, a button appeared in the missile launch system from the fighter, which removed the lock on firing at its aircraft. She received the nickname "Belenkovskaya".

But they fled from the Soviet Union not only on military aircraft. In 1970, 16 Jewish refuseniks from Leningrad planned to hijack a civilian AN-2 aircraft, having bought all the tickets for this flight. It was supposed to land the plane in Sweden, but all the participants in the operation were arrested by the KGB at the airport, that is, before they had time to do anything. Ultimately, all were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

What the Jewish refuseniks failed to do, 30 years later, the Cuban refugees managed to do. On September 19, 2000, 36-year-old pilot Angel Lenin Iglesias, with his wife and two children, flew exactly the same AN-2 from the airport in the Cuban city of Pinar del Rio. All other passengers and the co-pilot were also relatives of Iglesias. There were 10 people on board. The plane headed for Florida, but ran out of fuel and splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico. During a hard landing on the water, one of the passengers died. The rest were picked up by a passing Panamanian cargo ship, which delivered the rescued to Miami.

The joint Russian-French film "East-West" tells about the fate of a family that returned from emigration to the Soviet Union and faced the realities of Stalin's dictatorship here. The prototype of the main character was Nina Alekseevna Krivosheina, a Russian emigrant of the first wave, the wife of the White Guard officer Igor Krivoshein, who was imprisoned under the Nazis in Buchenwald, and under the Communists in the Gulag. Unfortunately, the authors of the film did not bother to mention in the credits that the script was written based on Nina Krivosheina's book "Four Thirds of Our Life". Nina Alekseevna's son Nikita Krivoshein, a former Soviet political prisoner who was sentenced to a camp term in 1957 for an article in the French newspaper Le Monde condemning the Soviet invasion of Hungary, recalls his fellow prisoners who tried to escape from the Soviet Union.

Nikita Krivoshein: I knew Vasya Saburov, who served in the border troops, got off the tower on the Turkish border and went to Turkey. Then he ended up in the United States. Then he was told that his homeland forgives him, cannot live without him, he returned and received 10 years. I knew Lyova Nazarenko, a resident of Minsk, who took a train, went to Batumi station, had breakfast and walked to the Turkish border. There he was met by two shepherds. He got 10 years. I knew a Moscow student who, in those days it was possible, agreed with the Scandinavian crew that they would take him on board the plane. But being a good son, before leaving, he said to his father: "Dad, goodbye. I want to go to Scandinavia in this way." Dad played Pavlik Morozov in reverse and immediately called the right place. The plane landed in Riga, and he received 10 years. Here are a few examples for you, such examples are still abundant, starting with the Solonevich brothers, who managed to escape from the Solovetsky camps and move to Finland, and then to Latin America, not to mention countless defectors.

Alexander Podrabinek: In the early 1990s, with the collapse of the international communist system, the "Iron Curtain" also collapsed. Departure became free, exit visas were canceled, those who wanted to emigrated, the rest could freely travel to other countries to visit, study, work or relax during their holidays. Article 27 of the Russian Constitution, which states that "everyone can freely travel outside the Russian Federation," did not remain only on paper - it actually operated and guaranteed the right to freedom of movement.

The clouds began to thicken a few years ago. In 2008, regulations were issued in the country prohibiting free travel abroad for certain categories of persons - debtors for administrative fines and taxes, non-payers of alimony, defendants in lawsuits. In all these cases, mechanisms of recovery and coercion already existed in the legislation - from the seizure of property to administrative and criminal cases. The issue of "closing the border" for a citizen began to be decided by a judicial act, but not in a court session with a fair competition of the parties, but personally by a bailiff. For example, in 2012 bailiffs banned 469,000 citizens from leaving the country. In the first quarter of 2014, 190,000 Russians, mostly bank debtors, were banned from leaving the country.

Behind all these decisions, the shadow of the Soviet Union looms: the authorities regard travel abroad as a gift to citizens, and not as their inalienable right. Indeed, why can't a person who has monetary debts to organizations or citizens temporarily go abroad, say, for medical treatment or to visit a dying relative? Will he definitely become a defector? Run away from debt and ask for political asylum? What else can our government suspect him of? That he will spend money on himself that he could return to pay off debts? How does it look from the point of view of the law and the right of citizens to freedom of movement?

Lawyer Vadim Prokhorov shares his impressions.

Vadim Prokhorov: Article 27 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, namely the first part of it, guarantees freedom of exit and entry from the Russian Federation. In development of this provision of the constitution, a federal law was adopted on the procedure for leaving the Russian Federation and entering the Russian Federation. Article 15 of this law establishes a number of grounds on which the departure of Russian citizens from the Russian Federation may be restricted. What are these grounds? There are 7 bases. The first reason is access to information constituting state secrets or top secret information. The second ground is the passage of urgent military or alternative civilian service. The third reason is the involvement as an accused or suspected of committing a crime, from my point of view, the most obvious reason for restricting travel, this is generally quite fair. The fourth ground is those held in places of deprivation of liberty by a court sentence until the sentence is served. Fifth - this is the most slippery, delicate basis, as having some obligations of a civil law nature, as a rule, imposed by a court decision, including debt obligations, credit obligations, unfulfilled obligations. The sixth ground is when they knowingly provided false information when applying for a passport. And finally, the seventh is employees serving in the Federal Security Service, respectively, until the end of the contract. These are the grounds on which travel may be restricted. If we look at these grounds in more detail, it is clear that there is a certain conflict between the constitutional norm, which allows you to freely leave the country and enter it, and the requirements of the federal law, which allow you to restrict the corresponding exit. Some reasons seem logical enough to me. For example, those held in custody or suspected or accused of committing crimes. Another thing is how our law enforcement and judicial system works - a separate conversation. But in general, criminals or potential criminals should be appropriately restricted in travel until the issue is resolved. The most slippery grounds are those who have obligations of a civil law nature, that is, they do not comply with the relevant court decisions, evade, including maliciously, from paying alimony, and so on. There really is a certain subtle balance here, because on the one hand it is a constitutional right to enter and exit. Why is it necessary to limit a person in this? On the other hand, for example, as a practicing civil lawyer, I understand perfectly well that, unfortunately, the legal and economic situation in Russia is such that often people quite deliberately evade the fulfillment of their civil obligations. There is really a problem here, whether it is possible to restrict the constitutional right of a citizen to leave by protecting the rights of his claimants, his creditors. It seems to me that the question is not obvious, it does not have a clear answer, from my point of view. It is necessary to protect constitutional rights, on the one hand, on the other hand, unfortunately, the level of legal awareness of society is such that for some reason debts are often not considered debts for some reason. Yes, the restriction on leaving, as a kind of debt hole, can be called differently.

Alexander Podrabinek: Perhaps such a system of debt collection is really effective. In the same way, for example, torture inquiry against arrested criminals is effective - under torture, they quickly betray their accomplices. Even more effective is the blackmail of their loved ones arrested by fate - here few people can resist not to confess to committed crimes, and to imperfect ones too. However, the general question sounds like this: is it possible to protect the rights of some citizens, violating the rights of others for this? And if it is possible, then to what extent, and where is the border that cannot be crossed in a state of law?

In 2010, the ban on leaving the country affected the FSB. They were allowed to travel abroad only by special decision and only in the event of the death of close relatives or urgent treatment, which is impossible in Russia. The exact number of FSB officers is unknown to the public, but according to various estimates, it is at least 200 thousand people.

In April 2014, by interdepartmental orders, employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, the Federal Penitentiary Service, the Federal Drug Control Service, the prosecutor's office, the Federal Bailiff Service, the Federal Migration Service, and the Ministry of Emergency Situations were banned from leaving for most countries. That is, those who are usually referred to as the "power bloc". In total, this is about 4 million people. And no matter what, and these are also citizens of Russia, who have the same constitutional rights as everyone else.

Why the authorities needed such measures against the backbone of their regime is not entirely clear. These normative acts have not been published, there are no official comments. Some believe that this is a kind of revenge of the leaders of law enforcement agencies, many of whom fell under Western sanctions in connection with Russia's interference in the events in Ukraine. Others believe that this is only the first step towards a total travel ban for all Russian citizens. A kind of courtesy sign for society: we start with our own, and then it will be your turn!

Former Soviet political prisoner Nikita Krivoshein, who lives in France, does not believe in the return of the Iron Curtain.

Nikita Krivoshein: I read that there are restrictions on civil servants, certain categories of civil servants, people working in the defense industry who have access to state secrets, but the same restrictions may not be the same, but similar restrictions still exist in France for similar categories. I read that restrictions are being introduced for alimony defaulters and people who have not paid off their loans - this already seems ridiculous to me, but anyway I am convinced that the resorts of Turkey and Spain will not be empty.

Alexander Podrabinek: The assumption that the "Iron Curtain" may well return and cover the continent again is not as absurd as it might seem at first glance. In neighboring Belarus, for example, some oppositionists have been banned from leaving the country for several years.

In our country, after the capture of Crimea this year, everyone who wanted to retain Ukrainian citizenship and did not want to take Russian citizenship suddenly became foreigners. Now they must obtain a residence permit and cannot spend more than 180 days a year at home. The leader of the Crimean Tatars, former Soviet dissident and political prisoner Mustafa Dzhemilev, was banned by Russian authorities from entering Russia and Crimea altogether. Now he cannot return to his home in Bakhchisarai, to his family and to his homeland, which he and his people managed to defend under Soviet rule.

So, the prototype of the future "Iron Curtain" operates in both directions: as always, someone is not allowed to leave here, and someone is not allowed to come here.

The issue of freedom of movement, the right to leave the country and return is by no means an idle one. Today, for many people, it has a clear practical meaning. One question: leave or stay? Another question: if you leave, then when?

https://www.site/2018-04-06/zheleznyy_zanaves_kak_nasha_strana_otgorodilas_ot_mira_i_prevratilas_v_bolshoy_konclager

“Exit permits should only be given in exceptional cases”

Iron Curtain: how our country fenced itself off from the world and turned into a large concentration camp

Viktor Tolochko/RIA Novosti

The feeling that the world is approaching a new stage of the Cold War and the reincarnation of the Iron Curtain has become more and more pronounced over the past month. 20 days have passed since the UK decided to expel 23 Russian diplomats in connection with the case of the poisoning of ex-GRU colonel Sergei Skripal. During this time, the United Kingdom has already been supported by 26 states, 122 employees of Russian diplomatic missions are to be sent home from their territory. The European Union and 9 other states recalled their ambassadors to Russia for consultations. In response, Russia announced the expulsion of 23 British and 60 US diplomats, as well as the closure of the US Consulate General in St. Petersburg, which had functioned since 1972. Those are the numbers.

Crimea, the hybrid war in the southeast of Ukraine, which in 2014 killed 283 passengers and 15 crew members of the Malaysian Boeing-777, the doping scandal with Russian athletes, Syria - it seems that all this was just a preamble.

Kremlin.ru

Echoing the words of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, we can admit that the international situation has indeed become even worse now than during the Cold War. The system that began to be built back in 1986 by General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Mikhail Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik is collapsing. The system that the first president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, continued to develop and that Vladimir Putin tried to maintain at the beginning of his presidency. Russia, like the USSR a century before, is once again being positioned as a country with a "poisonous" regime, that is, a regime dangerous to others. A country that lives on its own on the other side of the fence, a country that is spoken to only when necessary. Znak.com offers to remember how the Iron Curtain fell a century ago and how it turned out for the country.

“On bayonets we will carry happiness and peace to working mankind”

Contrary to popular belief, it was not Winston Churchill who introduced the term "Iron Curtain" into international use. Yes, when delivering his famous speech at Westminster College in Fulton on March 5, 1946, he uttered this phrase twice, trying, in his own words, “to paint the shadow that in the West and in the East falls on the whole world” “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic. Another common misconception is that the term "Iron Curtain" is copyrighted by Joseph Goebbels. Although in February 1945, in the article “Das Jahr 2000” (“2000”), he really said that after the conquest of Germany, the USSR would fence off Eastern and South-Eastern Europe from the rest of it.

Formally, the first was Herbert Wells. In 1904, he used the term "iron curtain" in the book "Food of the Gods", describing with it the mechanism for restricting personal freedom. Then it was also used in 1917 by Vasily Rozanov in the collection “The Apocalypse of Our Time” dedicated to the theme of the revolution. “With a clang, a creak, a screech, an iron curtain descends over Russian history. The show is over. The audience stood up. It's time to put on your coats and go home. We looked back. But there were no fur coats, no houses, ”the philosopher stated.

However, the generally accepted meaning of the term was given in 1919 by French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. “We want to put an iron curtain around Bolshevism that will prevent it from destroying civilized Europe,” Clemenceau said at the Paris Peace Conference, which drew a line under the First World War.

Two Russian revolutions in 1917, revolutions in Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1918, the formation of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, an uprising in Bulgaria, instability in the Ottoman Empire (ending in the abolition of the Sultanate in 1922 and the formation of the Turkish Republic), events in India, where led the anti-British civil disobedience campaign of Mahatma Gandhi, the strengthening of the labor movement in Western Europe and America - Clemenceau seems to have reason to say this.

1919 French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau (left), 28th US President Woodrow Wilson (holding a bowler hat) and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George (right) at a peace conference in Paris Public domain/Wikimedia Commons

On March 25, 1919, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George wrote to him: “All Europe is saturated with the spirit of revolution. A deep sense of not only discontent, but anger and indignation reigns in the working environment.

Three weeks earlier, on March 4, 1919, the creation of the Third Communist International, the Comintern, was announced in Moscow, the main task of which was to organize and carry out the international proletarian revolution. On March 6, in his closing speech at the closing of the founding congress of the Comintern, Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) declared: “The victory of the proletarian revolution throughout the world is assured. The founding of an international Soviet republic is coming." “If today the center of the Third International is Moscow, then, we are deeply convinced of this, tomorrow this center will move to the west: to Berlin, Paris, London,” Leon Trotsky declared next on the pages of Izvestia of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. “For an international communist congress in Berlin or Paris will mean the complete triumph of the proletarian revolution in Europe, and, therefore, throughout the world.”

Public domain/Wikimedia Commons

It was with this awareness of reality that the Red Army crossed the border of Poland in July 1920 (in response to the actions of the Poles who captured Kyiv and the left bank of the Dnieper). “Through the corpse of white Poland lies the path to the world conflagration. On bayonets we will carry happiness and peace to working mankind, ”the order of the commander of the Western Front, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, read.

Did not happen. Polish "brothers in class" did not support the Red Army. In August 1920, an event known as the “miracle on the Vistula” happened - the Reds were stopped, and they began to rapidly roll back. According to the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921, Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were ceded to Poland. Soviet foreign policy took a course towards peaceful coexistence.

“You and we, Germany and the USSR, can dictate terms to the whole world”

More precisely, Soviet Russia had to maneuver. For brethren in the world communist movement, formally everything remained the same - no one removed the task of fanning the fire of the world revolution. The country itself began to take clear steps to recognize itself as a newborn in the international arena and out of global isolation.

Life pushed for this. In 1920-1921, the village, robbed by the surplus appraisal, flared up with the Antonov uprising, then the Kronstadt rebellion happened. Finally, the terrible famine of 1921-1922 with its epicenter in the Volga region and the death of about 5 million people. The country needed food and other goods of the first, second and so on. After the fratricidal frenzy, restoration was required. This was realized even by the Bolsheviks, for whom Russia was primarily a springboard and at the same time a resource base.

An interesting detail: of the 5 million gold rubles that were raised from the sale of church valuables confiscated in accordance with the decrees of 1921-1922, only 1 million went to buy food for the starving. Everything else was spent on the needs of the future world revolution. On the other hand, dozens of public and charitable organizations of the enemy bourgeois world provided assistance: the American Relief Administration, the American Quaker Society, the Organization for Pan-European Relief for the Starving Russia and the International Committee for Russia's Relief, organized by polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen, the International Red Cross, the Vatican Mission, the international Save the Children alliance. Together, by the spring of 1922, they provided food for about 7.5 million starving Russians.

In 1921-1922, about 20 million Soviet citizens went hungry, of which more than 5 million died. Public domain/Wikimedia Commons

It took about two years for the nascent Soviet diplomacy to solve the first problem - to overcome isolation. The agreements signed in 1920 by the Soviet leadership with the limitrophes of Russia - Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland - have not yet solved this problem. On the one hand, the Bolsheviks renounced their claims to the former imperial territories, thus ensuring the security of their northwestern borders by creating a buffer zone of relatively neutral newly formed states. On the other hand, all this fit perfectly into the concept of creating an "iron curtain around Bolshevism" declared by Clemenceau.

Public domain/Wikimedia Commons

The ice began to break in 1922 at the Genoa and Hague conferences. The first coincided in time with the Soviet-German negotiations, which ended with the signing of a peace treaty in Rapallo on April 16, 1922. According to it, both post-imperial states recognized each other and established diplomatic relations. By 1924, the USSR signed trade agreements and generally established diplomatic relations with England, Austria, Afghanistan, Greece, Denmark, Italy, Iran, Mexico, Norway, Turkey, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and Uruguay.

The situation, however, remained precarious for a long time. So, in May 1927, the British government announced the severance of diplomatic and trade relations with the USSR (relations were restored in 1929). The reason for this was the suspicion of the British in the support of the councils of the national liberation movements in the colonies of the United Kingdom, primarily in India, as well as in China, which the British considered the sphere of their interests.

By 1929, relations between the USSR and China itself had become aggravated. The founder of the Kuomintang party and the leader of the Second Chinese Revolution, Sun Yat-sen, who maintained relations with the USSR and accepted the help of the Comintern, was replaced by the anti-communist Chiang Kai-shek, who died in 1925 from cancer. In 1928, he takes power into his own hands. Following the summer of 1929, the Chinese launched a conflict for control over the CER, which, according to the 1924 agreement, was under the joint control of China and the USSR. In November of the same year, Chinese troops make an attempt to invade the territory of the USSR in the region of Transbaikalia and Primorye.

Public domain/Wikimedia Commons

Everything changed after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933. On the one hand, it became important for Europe to prevent a possible link between Nazi Germany and the USSR. In particular, the same Mikhail Tukhachevsky spoke for her, writing at that time: "You and we, Germany and the USSR, can dictate terms to the whole world if we are together." His position was generally shared by People's Commissar of Defense Kliment Voroshilov. On the other hand, the USSR was quite suitable for the role of a powerful counterbalance or even a lightning rod in the east. In fact, anti-Hitler and anti-fascist, in a broad sense, rhetoric became a link that allowed for a while to strengthen relations with the West. From the middle of 1936, Soviet "volunteers" (mostly military experts) fought against the Nazis of General Francisco Franco in Spain. With the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937, Soviet fighters and bombers fought in the skies of China against the Japanese, who enjoyed the tacit support of Germany.

It all ended in August 1939 with the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the secret protocol of which Germany and the USSR divided spheres of influence in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states. This, however, was preceded by the Munich Agreement of 1938. Great Britain, represented by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and France, represented by Prime Minister Edouard Daladier, agreed to the transfer of the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to Germany. And soon these countries signed agreements similar to the Soviet-German pact with the Third Reich on mutual non-aggression.

“It is impossible to lead the world labor movement from one center”

The Comintern's attitude to kindling the fire of the world revolution remained unchanged until the very dissolution. True, the very concept of how exactly this should be achieved has undergone several adjustments. In the summer of 1923, at the third congress of the Comintern, Lenin had to speak out against the supporters of the "offensive theory". Lenin's theses were now based on the need to first form the necessary prerequisites - the social base.

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Another important moment happened in August 1928. At the Sixth Congress of the Comintern, the principle of "class against class" was proclaimed. The organizers of the world revolution abandoned the principles of the united front and focused on the fight against the Social Democrats as the main enemy. In 1932, this disunity led to the victory of the Nazis in Germany in the elections to the Reichstag: 32% voted for the National Socialist German Workers' Party, 20% for the Social Democrats and 17% for the Communists. The votes for the Social Democrats and the Communists combined would have amounted to 37%.

The dissolution of the Comintern, the "headquarters of the world revolution", was announced on May 15, 1943, simultaneously with the beginning of the Washington Conference of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, from whom they expected a decision to open a second front this year. On May 21 of the same year, at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Joseph Stalin stated: “Experience has shown that both under Marx and under Lenin, and now it is impossible to lead the labor movement of all countries of the world from one international center. Especially now, in conditions of war, when the Communist Parties in Germany, Italy and other countries have the task of overthrowing their governments and carrying out defeatist tactics, while the Communist Parties of the USSR, Britain and America and others, on the contrary, have the task of supporting their governments in every possible way for the speedy defeat of the enemy.

On this side of the Iron Curtain

As the Iron Curtain came into being, life in Russia itself became tougher. "Land and Freedom", the Narodniks - all this is about the 19th century. Democracy ended between February and October 1917. It was replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat, the red terror and war communism. At the ninth congress of the RCP (b) in the spring of 1920, Trotsky insisted on the introduction of a "militia system", whose essence is "every possible approximation of the army to the production process." "Soldiers of labor" - this is how the workers and peasants now positioned themselves. The right to receive passports was given to peasants only in 1974. Since 1935, they did not even have the right to leave their native collective farm. Such is "serfdom 2.0". And this is in the most just and morally strong state in the world, as Soviet propaganda positioned it on the other side of the fence.

There was, however, a short attempt to let go of the reins in 1922-1928. The new economic policy, "state capitalism in a proletarian state", according to Lenin, was designed to help the Bolsheviks hold out until a new revolutionary upsurge in the world, settling in a country that was not yet ripe for socialism. But it just so happened that the years of the NEP became a prologue to the era of Stalinist totalitarianism.

Evgeny Zhirnykh / site

We will not describe in detail the tightening of the regime and the expansion of state terror after Stalin came to power. These facts are widely known: millions of people became victims of repression, including the Bolsheviks themselves. The power of the leader became almost absolute, the state lived in an atmosphere of fear, freedom ended not only on the political, but also on the personal, intellectual, cultural level. Repressions continued until Stalin's death in early March 1953. Almost all this time, the windows and doors through which it was possible to escape from the USSR remained tightly boarded up and caulked.

Departure not possible

About how they went, or rather did not go abroad during the Soviet era, now only our parents and grandparents remember. Holidays in Turkey, Thailand, resorts in Europe, trips to the USA and Latin America - the older generation did not have all this. The "golden sands" of Bulgaria were, it seems, the ultimate dream and, despite the ideological closeness in the socialist camp, were available only to the elite.

None of us who are now traveling abroad even thinks of learning the rules of conduct outside the USSR that were obligatory a quarter of a century ago: “While abroad in any area of ​​activity entrusted to him, a Soviet citizen is obliged to highly bear the honor and dignity of a citizen of the USSR, to strictly observe the principles of moral code of the builder of communism, conscientiously fulfill their official duties and assignments, be impeccable in their personal behavior, unswervingly defend the political, economic and other interests of the Soviet Union, strictly keep state secrets.

Jaromir Romanov / site

It is hard to believe that in the USSR, not to mention Tsarist Russia, this was not always the case. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the country was not closed from the world. The procedure for issuing foreign passports and traveling abroad in the RSFSR was established in 1919. The issuance of passports from the jurisdiction of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs and the provincial Soviets of Deputies then passed to the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs (NKID). The procedure for going abroad was adjusted again in 1922. By this time, the first foreign diplomatic missions began to appear in the young Soviet state. Foreign passports issued by the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs now had to be subject to a visa. In addition, in addition to the application for issuing a document, it was now necessary to obtain a conclusion from the State Political Directorate of the NKVD "on the absence of a legal obstacle to leaving." But until the second half of the 1920s, the procedure for leaving and entering the USSR was quite liberal. The screws began to be tightened a little later - with the beginning of Stalin's industrialization and collectivization, when there was a significant increase in those wishing to leave the country.

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On November 9, 1926, a fee was introduced for issuing passports. From working people (proletarians, peasants, employees, as well as business travelers) - 200 rubles, from "living on unearned income" and "dependents" - 300 rubles. This is about one and a half average monthly earnings of a Soviet person of those years. An application for a visa cost 5 rubles, with a return visa - 10 rubles. Privileges were provided in exceptional cases and, above all, to citizens of the “labor categories” who traveled abroad for medical treatment, visits from relatives, and emigration.

Kremlin.ru

In January 1928, they determined the procedure for citizens of the USSR to go abroad for the purpose of training. Now he was allowed only if there was a conclusion of the People's Commissariat of Education on the desirability and expediency of such a trip. From July 1928, the order of the NKVD began to operate on the need to require, when issuing passports to people traveling abroad, "certificates from financial authorities that they did not have tax arrears." These certificates were issued only to persons living in the area for at least three years. Those who lived for less than three years had to demand certificates from those authorities where they lived earlier. But most importantly, by a secret order from Moscow, the local authorities were henceforth deprived of the authority to issue permits to citizens to travel abroad. All only through the NKVD.

Historian Oleg Khlevnyuk on what happens to despotic regimes - on the example of Stalin

In 1929, they began to drastically reduce the rate of currency that was allowed to be taken abroad. This norm now depended on the country of departure. For citizens of the USSR and foreigners traveling to the border countries of Europe, it amounted to no more than 50 rubles, to other countries of Europe and the border countries of Asia - 75 rubles. Family members, including adult dependent children, could only claim half of these amounts. In February 1932, the People's Commissariat of Finance again cut the norms for obtaining foreign currency. Persons traveling to the countries of Eastern Europe bordering the USSR and Finland were now allowed to purchase currency in the amount of 25 rubles, to other European and Asian border countries - 35 rubles, to the rest - 100 rubles.

How and for what they shot the Urals in 1937. To the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Repressions

They completely cut everything off in 1931, when the following rule was introduced in the next Instruction on entering the USSR and leaving it: “Permits to travel abroad, for trips on private business, are issued to Soviet citizens in exceptional cases.” Exit visas soon came into use. The state, purposefully closing the entire First Five-Year Plan for the travel of its citizens abroad, finally coped with this task. The Iron Curtain has descended 60 years. The right to see life on the other side was left only to diplomats, seconded employees and the military. The country has turned into one big concentration camp. Stronger than others from a state with a "poisonous" regime, its own citizens suffered.

The era of closed doors ended on May 20, 1991, when the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a new law "On the procedure for exit from the USSR and entry into the USSR of citizens of the USSR." But has it ended?

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