For those who are not very familiar with history, let me say a few words from myself:

Fyodor Fedorovich Raskolnikov, having been called from the diplomatic service to Moscow, was quite cautious and decided to become a defector, since everyone knew that he was a long-time protégé of Lev Davidovich Trotsky. He even went further and wrote an angry open letter to Comrade Stalin, which, despite the conflicting opinions about Raskolnikov himself, everyone considers quite sensible. The letter is dated August 17, 1939, and on September 12 of the same year the author was already buried in Nice. This sometimes happens to those who like to write open letters to the powers that be.

There remained, however, Stalin's eternal opponent, the irrepressible Comrade Trotsky, who did not mince words at any mention of Joseph Vissarionovich. Several attempts on his life failed, but finally, on August 21, 1940, in Mexico, the firm hand of an NKVD agent with an ice ax and the head of Lev Davidovich ended up in the same place at the same time, with lethal consequences for the latter.

If anyone doesn’t know, Mexico is quite far away, almost on the opposite side of the globe. This small historical excursion allows us all to better understand why in the USSR itself Comrade Stalin had no open critics at all, but only enthusiastic admirers.

Open letter to Stalin.

Stalin, you declared me “outlaw”. With this act, you equalized me in rights - or rather, in lack of rights - with all Soviet citizens who, under your rule, live outside the law.

For my part, I answer in full reciprocity: I return your entrance ticket to the “kingdom of socialism” you built and break with your regime.

Your “socialism,” during the triumph of which its builders found a place only behind prison bars, is as far from true socialism as the arbitrariness of your personal dictatorship has nothing in common with the dictatorship of the proletariat.

It will not help you if the award-winning, respected revolutionary N.A. Morozov will confirm that it was for this kind of “socialism” that he spent fifty years of his life under the arches of the Shlisselburg fortress.

The spontaneous growth of discontent among workers, peasants, and intellectuals imperiously demanded a sharp political maneuver, like Lenin’s transition to the NEP in 1921. Under the pressure of the Soviet people, you “bestowed” a democratic constitution. It was received by the whole country with genuine enthusiasm.

The honest implementation of the democratic principles of the democratic constitution of 1936, which embodied the hopes and aspirations of the entire people, would mark a new stage in the expansion of Soviet democracy.

But in your understanding, any political maneuver is synonymous with deception and deception. You cultivate politics without ethics, power without honesty, socialism without love for people.

What have you done with the constitution, Stalin?

Frightened by freedom of elections, as a “leap into the unknown” that threatened your personal power, you trampled the constitution like a piece of paper, turned the elections into a pathetic farce of voting for one single candidate, and filled the sessions of the Supreme Council with akathists and ovations in honor of yourself. In the intervals between sessions, you silently destroyed the “feinting” deputies, mocking their immunity and reminding that the owner of the Soviet land is not the Supreme Council, but you. You did everything to discredit Soviet democracy, just as you discredited socialism. Instead of following the constitutionally mandated turnaround, you are suppressing growing discontent with violence and terror. By gradually replacing the dictatorship of the proletariat with the regime of your personal dictatorship, you opened a new stage, which will go down in the history of our revolution under the name of the “era of terror.”

Nobody in the Soviet Union feels safe. No one, going to bed, knows whether he will be able to avoid night arrest; no one has mercy. The right and the guilty, the hero of October and the enemy of the revolution, the old Bolshevik and the non-party, the collective farm peasant and the plenipotentiary, the people's commissar and the worker, the intellectual and the Marshal of the Soviet Union - all are equally subject to the blows of your whip, all are spinning in a devilish bloody carousel.

Just as during a volcanic eruption, huge boulders collapse with a crash and roar into the mouth of the crater, so entire layers of Soviet society are torn off and fall into the abyss.

You began bloody reprisals against former Trotskyists, Zinovievites and Bukharinites, then moved on to the extermination of the old Bolsheviks, then destroyed party and non-party cadres who grew up in the civil war, bore on their shoulders the construction of the first five-year plans, and organized the beating of the Komsomol.

You hide behind the slogan of the fight “against Trotskyist-Bukharin spies.” But power has not been in your hands since yesterday. No one could "sneak" into a responsible position without your permission.

Who installed the so-called “enemies of the people” in the most responsible positions of the state, party, army, diplomacy?

- Joseph Stalin.

Read the old protocols of the Politburo: they are replete with the appointments and movements of only “Trotskyist-Bukharin spies”, “saboteurs” and “saboteurs”. And under them there is an inscription - I. Stalin.

You are pretending to be a gullible simpleton who has been led by the nose for years by some masked carnival monsters.

“Seek and find scapegoats,” you whisper to your associates and load the caught victims doomed to slaughter with your own sins.

You have shackled the country with a terrible fear of terror, even a daredevil cannot throw the truth in your face.

Waves of self-criticism “regardless of their faces” respectfully freeze at the foot of your pedestal.

You are infallible, like dad! You are never wrong!

But the Soviet people know very well that you, the “smith of universal happiness,” are responsible for everything.

With the help of dirty forgeries, you staged trials that surpassed the medieval witch trials familiar to you from seminar textbooks in the absurdity of their accusations.

You yourself know that Pyatakov did not fly to Oslo, M. Gorky died a natural death and Trotsky did not derail the trains.

Knowing that all this is a lie, you encourage your slanderers:

- Slander, slander, something will always remain from slander.

As you know, I have never been a Trotskyist. On the contrary, I ideologically fought all opposition in the press and at large meetings. Even now I do not agree with Trotsky’s political position, with his program and tactics. While fundamentally disagreeing with Trotsky, I consider him an honest revolutionary. I do not and will never believe in his conspiracy with Hitler and Hess.

You are a cook preparing spicy dishes that are not edible for a normal human stomach.

Over Lenin’s coffin, you took a solemn oath to fulfill his will and preserve the unity of the party like the apple of your eye. Oathbreaker, you also violated this will of Lenin.

You slandered, dishonored and shot Lenin's long-time associates: Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Rykov and others, whose innocence you knew well. Before they died, you forced them to repent of crimes they did not commit and to smear themselves with mud from head to toe.

Where are the heroes of the October Revolution? Where is Bubnov? Where is Krylenko? Where is Antonov-Ovseenko? Where is Dybenko?

You arrested them, Stalin.

Where is the old guard? She is no longer alive.

You shot her, Stalin.

You have corrupted and polluted the souls of your comrades. You forced those following you to walk in agony and disgust through the pools of blood of yesterday's comrades and friends.

In the false history of the party, written under your leadership, you robbed the dead, killed, and disgraced people and appropriated their exploits and merits.

You destroyed Lenin’s party, and on its bones you built a new “Lenin-Stalin” party, which serves as a successful cover for your autocracy.

You created it not on the basis of general theory and tactics, as any party is built, but on the unprincipled basis of personal love and devotion to you. Knowledge of the program of the first party was declared optional for its members, but love for Stalin, daily fueled by the press, was obligatory. Recognition of the party program is replaced by an explanation of love for Stalin.

You are a renegade, breaking with yesterday, betraying the cause of Lenin. You solemnly proclaimed the slogan of promoting new personnel. But how many of these young nominees are already rotting in your dungeons? How many of them did you shoot, Stalin?

With the cruelty of a sadist, you beat up personnel who are useful and needed by the country. They seem dangerous to you from the point of view of your personal dictatorship.

On the eve of the war, you are destroying the Red Army, the love and pride of the country, the stronghold of its power. You beheaded the Red Army and the Red Navy. You killed the most talented commanders, trained in the experience of world and civil wars, led by the brilliant Marshal Tukhachevsky.

You exterminated the heroes of the civil war, who transformed the Red Army with the latest military technology and made it invincible.

At the moment of greatest military danger, you continue to exterminate army leaders, mid-level command staff and junior commanders.

Where is Marshal Blucher? Where is Marshal Egorov?

You arrested them, Stalin.

To calm worried minds, you deceive the country that the Red Army, weakened by arrests and executions, has become even stronger.

Knowing that the law of military science requires unity of command in the army from the commander-in-chief to the platoon commander, you resurrected the institution of military commissars, which arose at the dawn of the Red Army and the Red Navy, when we did not yet have our own commanders, and above the military specialists of the old army we needed a political control.

By not trusting the Red commanders, you are introducing dual power into the Army and destroying military discipline.

Under pressure from the Soviet people, you hypocritically reveal the cult of historical Russian heroes: Alexander Nevsky and Dmitry Donskoy, Suvorov and Kutuzov, hoping that in a future war they will help you more than executed marshals and generals.

Taking advantage of the fact that you don’t trust anyone, real Gestapo agents and Japanese intelligence are successfully fishing in the muddy waters that you have stirred up, throwing you an abundance of false documents that discredit the best, talented and honest people.

In the rotten atmosphere of suspicion, mutual distrust, general investigation and omnipotence of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, to which you have given the Red Army and the entire country to be torn to pieces, you have created, any “intercepted” document is believed - or pretended to be believed - as indisputable evidence.

By palming Yezhov’s agents with false documents that compromised honest mission workers, the “internal line” of ROVS1 in the person of Captain Voss achieved the destruction of our embassy in Bulgaria - from the driver M.I. Kazakov to the military attache V.T. Sukhorukov.

You are destroying one after another the most important gains of October. Under the guise of fighting labor turnover, you abolished freedom of labor, enslaved Soviet workers, attaching them to factories and factories. You destroyed the economic organism of the country, disorganized industry and transport, undermined the authority of the director, engineer and foreman, accompanying the endless leapfrog of dismissals and appointments with arrests and persecution of engineers, directors and workers as “hidden, not yet exposed saboteurs.”

Having made normal work impossible, you, under the guise of fighting against “absenteeism” and “lateness” of workers, force them to work as scourges and scorpions of cruel and anti-proletarian decrees.

Your inhumane repressions make the life of Soviet workers unbearable, who are fired from work and kicked out of their apartments for the slightest offense with a wolf passport.

The working class bore with selfless heroism the burden of hard work and malnutrition, hunger, meager wages, crowded housing and lack of necessary goods. He believed that you were leading to socialism, but you betrayed his trust. He hoped that with the victory of socialism in our country, when the dream of the bright minds of humanity about the great brotherhood of people comes true, everyone would live joyfully and easily.

You took away even this hope: you declared that socialism has been built to completion. And the workers asked each other in bewilderment and whispers: “If this is socialism, then what did they fight for, comrades?”

By distorting Lenin’s theory about the withering away of the state, just as you distorted the entire theory of Marxism-Leninism, you, through the mouths of your illiterate home-grown “theorists” who took the vacant places of Bukharin, Kamenev and Lunacharsky, promise to preserve the power of the GPU even under communism.

You have deprived the collective farm peasants of every incentive to work. Under the guise of fighting the “squandering of collective farm land,” you are destroying personal plots in order to force peasants to work on collective farm fields. The organizer of the famine, with the rudeness and cruelty of indiscriminate methods that distinguish your tactics, you did everything to discredit Lenin’s idea of ​​collectivization in the eyes of the peasants.

By hypocritically proclaiming the intelligentsia “the salt of the earth,” you have deprived the work of a writer, scientist, and painter of a minimum of internal freedom. You have squeezed art into a vice from which it suffocates, withers and dies out. The frenzy of the censorship, intimidated by you, and the understandable timidity of the editors, who are responsible for everything with their own heads, led to the ossification and paralysis of Soviet literature. A writer cannot publish, a playwright cannot stage plays on the theater stage, a critic cannot express his personal opinion that is not marked with an official stamp.

You are strangling Soviet art, demanding from it courtly sycophancy, but it prefers to remain silent so as not to sing “hosanna” to you. You are instilling pseudo-art that, with annoying monotony, glorifies your notorious, tired “genius.”

Untalented graphomaniacs praise you as a demigod, “born of the Moon and the Sun,” and you, like an oriental despot, enjoy the incense of coarse flattery.

You mercilessly exterminate talented Russian writers who are personally objectionable to you. Where is Boris Pilnyak? Where is Sergei Tretyakov? Where is Alexander Arosev? Where is Mikhail Koltsov? Where is Tarasov-Rodionov? Where is Galina Serebryakova, guilty of being Sokolnikov’s wife?

You arrested them, Stalin.

Following Hitler, you have resurrected the medieval book burning.

I saw with my own eyes huge lists of books sent to Soviet libraries that were subject to immediate and unconditional destruction. When I was the plenipotentiary representative in Bulgaria, in 1937, in the list of literature doomed to the fire I received, I found my book of historical memoirs “Kronstadt and St. Petersburg in 1917.” Against the names of many authors there was a sign: “Destroy all books, brochures, portraits.”

You deprived Soviet scientists, especially in the field of humanities, of a minimum of freedom of scientific thought, without which the creative work of a scientist becomes impossible.

Self-confident ignoramuses with intrigues, squabbles and bullying prevent people from working in laboratories, universities and institutes.

You proclaimed outstanding Russian scientists of world renown - academicians Ipatiev and Chichibabin - to the whole world as “defectors”, naively thinking of dishonoring them, but you only disgraced yourself by bringing to the attention of the whole country and world public opinion the shameful fact for your regime that the best scientists are fleeing from your “paradise”, leaving you your benefits: an apartment, a car, a card for lunch in the Council of People’s Commissars canteen.

You are exterminating talented Russian scientists.

Where is the best designer of Soviet airplanes, Tupolev? You didn't even spare him. You arrested Tupolev, Stalin!

There is no area, no corner where you can calmly do what you love. Theater director, wonderful director, outstanding artist Vsevolod Meyerhold was not involved in politics. But you also arrested Meyerhold, Stalin.

Knowing that given our poverty of personnel, every cultured and experienced diplomat is especially valuable, you lured almost all Soviet plenipotentiaries to Moscow and destroyed one by one. You destroyed to the ground the entire apparatus of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs.

Destroying the golden fund of our country and its young cadres everywhere, you destroyed talented and promising diplomats in their prime.

In a terrible hour of military danger, when the edge of fascism is directed against the Soviet Union, when the struggle for Danzig and the war in China are only preparing a springboard for future intervention against the USSR, when the main object of German-Japanese aggression is our Motherland, when the only way to prevent war is open the entry of the Union of Soviets into the International Bloc of Democratic States, the speedy conclusion of a military and political alliance with England and France, you hesitate, wait and swing, like a pendulum, between two “axes”.

In all calculations of your foreign and domestic policy, you proceed not from love for the Motherland, which is alien to you, but from an animal fear of losing personal power. Your unprincipled dictatorship, like a rotten deck, lies across the road of our country. “Father of Nations”, you betrayed the defeated Spanish revolutionaries, abandoned them to their fate and left them to be taken care of by other states. Generous saving of life is not in your principles. Woe to the vanquished! You don't need them anymore.

You indifferently allowed European workers, intellectuals, and artisans fleeing fascist barbarism to perish, slamming the door of our country, which in its vast expanses can hospitably shelter many thousands of emigrants, in front of them.

Like all Soviet patriots, I worked, turning a blind eye to many things. I've been silent for too long. It was difficult for me to break my last ties not with your doomed regime, but with the remnants of the old Leninist party, in which I spent almost 30 years, and you defeated it in three years. It was excruciatingly painful for me to lose my homeland.

The further you go, the more the interests of your personal dictatorship come into constant conflict with the interests of the workers, peasants, intelligentsia, with the interests of the entire country, which you mock as a tyrant who has seized sole power.

Your social base is shrinking every day. In a frantic search for support, you hypocritically lavish compliments on the “non-party Bolsheviks”, create privileged groups one after another, shower them with favors, feed them with handouts, but are unable to guarantee the new “caliphs for an hour” not only their privileges, but even the right to life.

Your crazy bacchanalia cannot last long. The list of your crimes is endless. The list of your victims is endless, there is no way to list them.

Sooner or later, the Soviet people will put you in the dock as a traitor to socialism and the revolution, the main saboteur, the true enemy of the people, the organizer of famine and judicial fraud.

Raskolnikov Fedor Fedorovich
Born: January 28, 1892.
Died: September 12, 1939.

Biography

Fedor Fedorovich Raskolnikov (real name - Ilyin) (January 28, 1892, St. Petersburg - September 12, 1939, Nice, France) - Soviet military and statesman, diplomat. Defector.

Participation in the revolutionary movement

Descendant of the famous Russian officer Ilyin. Born into the family of a St. Petersburg priest. From 1900 he was brought up in the orphanage of the Prince of Oldenburg. In 1909 he entered the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute, and in December 1910 he joined the party, citing joint work with V. M. Molotov in the “Bolshevik faction of the Polytechnic Institute.”

In 1912-1914. - literary employee of the newspapers “Zvezda” and “Pravda”. After the outbreak of the First World War, he became a student of separate midshipman classes (to avoid conscription, since participation in the World War was contrary to his convictions), which he graduated in February 1917.

After the February Revolution he became deputy. Chairman of the Kronstadt Council. After the July crisis, he was arrested, imprisoned in Kresty, and released from there on October 13, 1917.

During the Civil War

During the October Revolution, he took part in the suppression of the Krasnov-Kerensky Campaign against Petrograd, and participated in battles in Moscow.

He was elected to the Constituent Assembly, at a meeting of which on the night of January 6, 1918 he announced a declaration on the departure of the Bolshevik faction.

Appointed Commissioner of the Naval General Staff, in the spring of 1918 he became Trotsky's Deputy Commissar for Naval Affairs. Fulfilled the instructions of the Council of People's Commissars to scuttle the Black Sea Fleet in June 1918. Since July 1918, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Eastern Front, on August 23, 1918, he was appointed commander of the Volga Military Flotilla. He took part in the capture of Kazan on September 10, 1918 and the subsequent campaign of the flotilla along the Kama. In particular, under his leadership, 432 prisoners of the “death barge” were rescued in the village of Golyany, which the whites planned to flood during the retreat (see Izhevsk-Votkinsk uprising).

In the fall of 1918 he became a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic.

On December 26, 1918, he was captured by British sailors during the voyage of the Soviet destroyers Avtroil and Spartak to Tallinn - the voyage ended with the capture of both ships and their entire crew. Held in Brixton Prison in London. May 27, 1919 in the village. Beloostrov near Petrograd was exchanged for a group of arrested British citizens (17 captured British officers).

After being released from captivity, on June 10, 1919, he was appointed commander of the Astrakhan-Caspian military flotilla, and on July 31, 1919, the Volga-Caspian military flotilla, participated in the defense of Tsaritsyn (1919) and the landing of troops in the Iranian port of Anzali (1920) in order to return those hijacked by the White Guards from there. ships of the Caspian fleet. Awarded two Orders of the Red Banner.

From June 1920 to March (end of January?) 1921, commander of the Baltic Fleet.

"Sailors Raskolnikov considered them second-class citizens,” wrote the chairman of the Kronstadt department of the Baltic Fleet Tribunal, Assar. “The sailors were starving, but the commander of the Baltic Fleet and his wife lived in a luxurious mansion, kept servants, ate delicacies and did not deny themselves anything.”

Diplomatic activities

In 1921-1923 - plenipotentiary representative (plenipotentiary representative) of the RSFSR (since 1922 - plenipotentiary representative of the USSR) in Afghanistan. In 1930-1933 - plenipotentiary representative of the USSR in Estonia. In 1933-1934 - plenipotentiary representative in Denmark. From September 1934 to April 1938 - USSR Plenipotentiary Representative in Bulgaria.

Defector. Open letter to Stalin

In April 1938, on a call from the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, he left Sofia by train with his wife and child. During a layover in Berlin, having purchased a newspaper at the station, I learned of my dismissal from the post of plenipotentiary. He refused to return to the USSR, foreseeing inevitable arrest and execution. He lived in Paris, from where he wrote letters to Stalin and M. M. Litvinov, asking to leave him Soviet citizenship and explaining the “temporary delay” abroad with various formal reasons.

On July 17, 1939, the Supreme Court of the USSR declared F. F. Raskolnikov outlawed, which, according to the resolution of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR of November 21, 1929, “On outlawing officials - citizens of the USSR abroad, who defected to the camp of enemies of the working class and peasantry and those who refuse to return to the USSR" entailed the execution of the convicted person 24 hours after his identity was confirmed.

On August 17, 1939, Raskolnikov completed work on the famous “Open Letter to Stalin,” in which he denounced the repressive Stalinist policies towards specific individuals of the former leadership of the Bolshevik Party and ordinary Soviet citizens. It was published after Raskolnikov’s death, on October 1, 1939, in the emigrant publication “New Russia” (No. 7, 1939). He died in Nice, presumably from pneumonia. According to one of the most common versions, he was killed by NKVD agents (this statement was formulated by the Russian scientist and publicist Roy Medvedev). According to Nina Berberova, set out in her book “The Iron Woman,” Raskolnikov committed suicide while in a clinic in Nice, where he was being treated for severe depression. On September 12, he allegedly jumped from the fifth floor. However, this version was refuted by Raskolnikov’s wife, M.V. Raskolnikova-Kanivez.

In 1963, he was posthumously completely rehabilitated, publications began to appear about him in the USSR, but without mentioning his flight abroad and his letter to Stalin, which began to be actively discussed only during Perestroika in the late 1980s

.

Family

Raskolnikov's wife at one time was the famous writer Larisa Reisner (1895-1926), who was next to him as commissar of the fleet headquarters on the Volga and Caspian Sea. The second wife of F. Raskolnikov was Muza Vasilievna Raskolnikova-Kanivez (maiden name Rzhechitskaya).

Children - son Fedor (1937-1939) and daughter Muza (1939 - ~1987).

His brother A.F. Ilyin-Zhenevsky (1894-1941) (the second part of the surname is from the place of pre-revolutionary emigration) was also a famous revolutionary, party and government figure, and also gained fame as a chess player.

Memory

Streets in Astrakhan, the city of Naberezhnye Chelny and Sarapul are named in honor of Raskolnikov.

After the suppression of the Izhevsk-Votkinsk uprising, the village of Golyany was renamed Raskolnikovo, but in 1938 the historical name was returned to the village. Now one of the streets in this village bears the name of Raskolnikov.

In March 1917, he was sent to Kronstadt to edit the newspaper "Voice of Truth", and he also headed the Bolshevik faction of the council. He was one of the organizers of the July mutiny in Kronstadt and was responsible for the murders of naval officers. At the end of July he was arrested, but on October 11. released. On Nov. 1917, at the head of a detachment of sailors, he was sent to Moscow to suppress anti-Bolshevik protests. Arriving in Moscow, Raskolnikov’s sailors unleashed real terror: under the pretext of searching for weapons warehouses, they carried out wholesale searches and arrests, and practiced executions on the spot. In the shortest possible time, Raskolnikov’s detachment suppressed all resistance in the city. Member of the Constituent Assembly. From 01/29/1918 deputy People's Commissar for Naval Affairs, then a member of the Revolutionary Military Council (RVS) of the Eastern Front, and from September 2, 1918, a member of the RVS of the Republic. At the end of 1918 he was appointed deputy. Commander of the 7th Army for the naval unit and member of the RVS of the Baltic Fleet. Placed at the head of a large detachment (battleship, cruiser, 2 destroyers), which was supposed to counteract the English fleet. He proved himself to be an incompetent commander and at the beginning of 1919 he was taken prisoner on the destroyer Spartak. On May 27, 1919 he was exchanged for 17 captured British officers. In 1919-20 he commanded the Astrakhan-Caspian (then Volga-Caspian) military flotilla. The cultural and educational department of the flotilla was headed by Raskolnikov’s wife, L.M. Reisner, and the political department was her father M.A. Reisner. In June 1920 - January. 1921 commander of the Baltic Fleet. During the debate on trade unions (1920) he was one of the active supporters of L.D. Trotsky. The fleet was in a half-decayed state, and Raskolnikov could not do anything to strengthen it; in addition, Raskolnikov’s extremely inept actions led to a sharp increase in discontent with the Bolsheviks in the fleet. A month after Raskolnikov left, an uprising broke out in Kronstadt. Raskolnikov fell ill from frustration, M.I. intervened. Kalinin, “they gave wine, a special table, medicine - and the crisis passed.” In 1921-1923, plenipotentiary representative in Afghanistan, which was the first country to establish diplomatic relations with the RSFSR. Raskolnikov’s too active and inept actions caused British demands for his recall from Afghanistan. The Soviet government refused to England, but after some time recalled Raskolnikov under a plausible pretext. In 1924-30, editor of the magazine "Young Guard", editor-in-chief of the publishing house "Moskovsky Rabochiy". Soon Raskolnikov also became the editor of Krasnaya Novy; his predecessor was accused of "opposing proletarian culture" and removed. Since 1928 prev. The Main Repertory Committee, which carried out the strictest censorship of all dramatic, musical and cinematic works. Since 1929, member of the Board of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR and the beginning. The Main Directorate for Arts, which included the Main Repertoire Committee. Under his direct leadership, M.A.’s plays were prohibited from being shown. Bulgakov, mediocre opportunistic editing of the writers' works was carried out. In 1930 he released the social tragedy Robespierre, which immediately began to be staged in many theaters. Even Soviet criticism of those years, which was extremely favorable to Raskolnikov, noted that he “lacks the liveliness and realism of the image.” In 1930-38 plenipotentiary representative in Estonia, Denmark, Bulgaria. In March 1938 he was called to Moscow. He delayed his return as best he could, and then on the day of departure, April 1, 1938, he received a message that he had been found guilty of “desertion.” He refused to return and became a defector. In 1939, he was expelled from the party in absentia, and on July 17, 1939, the Supreme Court of the USSR declared Raskolnikov an “enemy of the people,” “outlaw,” and deprived him of Soviet citizenship. Published in France (October 1939) the widely known “Open Letter to Stalin” (written on August 17, 1939), which became the harshest and at the same time the most justified accusation of Stalin for mass repressions. “Stalin, you declared me an “outlaw”. By this act you equalized me in rights - or rather, in lack of rights - with all Soviet citizens who, under your rule, live outside the law,” wrote Raskolnikov. “You began bloody reprisals against former Trotskyists, Zinovievites and Bukharinites, then moved

and to the extermination of the old Bolsheviks, then they destroyed the party and non-party cadres who grew up during the Civil War and bore on their shoulders the construction of the first five-year plans, and organized the extermination of the Komsomol." At the same time, extremely convincingly denouncing the dictatorship of Stalin, Raskolnikov focused only on accusations of repression against Bolsheviks, collective farmers, workers. He did not touch at all, and could not touch, the mass executions of “class enemies”, huge masses of the population who had nothing to do with the party nomenklatura. He died under suspicious circumstances (fell out of a window), according to one of the most common versions - killed by NKVD agents (This statement cannot be considered completely reliable; it was formulated by Roy Medvedev without bothering with evidence. - Ed.)

In 1963 he was rehabilitated.

Materials used from the book: Zalessky K.A. Stalin's Empire. Biographical encyclopedic dictionary. Moscow, Veche, 2000

In 1910 he joined the RSDLP(b). In 1911 he was an employee of the Zvezda newspaper; in 1912 he became the first secretary of the Pravda newspaper. He was arrested and sentenced to administrative deportation. At the beginning of 1913 he was released under an amnesty.

In 1914 he was drafted into the navy. He campaigned among sailors, wrote proclamations, and participated in the legal Petrograd publishing house Volna. In 1914-1917 he studied in separate midshipman classes in Petrograd.

After the February Revolution of 1917, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party sent Raskolnikov to Kronstadt to the editorial office of the Bolshevik newspaper "Voice of Truth". He was a comrade (deputy) of the chairman of the Kronstadt Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, chairman of the city committee of the RSDLP (b), one of the leaders of the political life of Kronstadt.

He led a column of sailors at an anti-government demonstration during the July events of 1917, was arrested, and released in October.

Since October 1917, Raskolnikov was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. After the Bolsheviks seized power, he took part in the battles near Pulkovo against the troops of General Pyotr Krasnov, then, at the head of a detachment of sailors, he went to support the revolution in Moscow.

In November 1917, he was appointed commissar at the Naval General Staff, and by a resolution of the All-Russian Congress of Navy Sailors “for devotion to the people and the revolution” he was promoted from midshipman to lieutenant.

From January 1918, he served as Deputy People's Commissar for Maritime Affairs and a member of the board of the Maritime Commissariat.

One of the leaders of the "Ice" campaign of the Baltic Fleet ships from Revel to Helsingfors and Kronstadt (February-May 1918). Raskolnikov became one of the organizers of the sinking of the ships of the Black Sea Fleet in Novorossiysk in order to prevent their capture by the Germans (June 1918).

Since July - member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Eastern Front, formed in connection with the performance of the Czechoslovak Corps, since August - commander of the Volga Military Flotilla. Participated in the capture of Kazan and the liberation of Kama. In October-December - member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic.

In December 1918, he led the reconnaissance cruise of the destroyer "Spartak" near Revel, where the ship crashed and was captured by the British. After almost five months in a London prison, Raskolnikov was exchanged for 19 captured British officers.

In June-July 1919 - commander of the Astrakhan-Caspian flotilla. He took part in the battles of Tsaritsyn, Cherny Yar, and in the defense of Astrakhan. After the capture of Baku and the proclamation of Soviet power in Azerbaijan, he was appointed commander of the naval forces of the Caspian Sea, and then commander of the Azerbaijani fleet. He led the operations to capture Fort Aleksandrovsky and the Persian port of Anzeli, where the White Guard navy was based.

From June 1920 to January 1921 he was commander of the Baltic Fleet.

In 1921-1923 he served as plenipotentiary representative of the RSFSR in Afghanistan.

Since 1924, Raskolnikov worked in the Executive Committee of the Comintern under the name Petrov.

In 1924-1926 he was the editor of the magazine "Young Guard", in 1927-1930 - "Krasnaya Nov". He was the editor-in-chief of the Moscow Worker publishing house.

In 1928-1930 he was the chairman of the censorship body for control of the repertoire of theaters and the stage of the Main Repertoire Committee, the head of the Main Art Department, and a member of the board of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR.

Fyodor Raskolnikov knew several foreign languages, was the author of a number of articles, books, the play “Robespierre”, and a dramatization of Leo Tolstoy’s novel “Sunday”. Since 1934 he was a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR.

In 1930-1933, Raskolnikov was the USSR plenipotentiary representative in Estonia, in 1933-1934 - the USSR plenipotentiary representative in Denmark. From September 1934 to April 1938 - USSR Plenipotentiary Representative in Bulgaria. The NKVD authorities established surveillance of Raskolnikov “based on data that Raskolnikov, being the plenipotentiary representative of the USSR in Bulgaria, kept Trotsky’s documents.”

In April 1938, on a call from the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, he left Sofia, but never returned to the USSR. Lived in Paris.

In July 1939, the Supreme Court of the USSR declared him an outlaw and deprived of Soviet citizenship. On July 26, 1939, he published a protest letter in the Parisian Russian emigrant newspaper “Last News” “How I was made an “enemy of the people”,” in which he demanded a public review of his case.

Raskolnikov died in Nice on September 12, 1939, presumably from pneumonia. According to another version, he was killed by NKVD agents.

After Raskolnikov's death, the widely known "Open Letter to Stalin" (written in August 1939) was published in France, becoming Stalin's most harsh accusation of mass repression.

In 1963 he was posthumously rehabilitated.

Fyodor Raskolnikov was married twice. The first wife is publicist, poetess, playwright Larisa Reisner (1895-1926). The second is Muse Canivez (1913-2006), author of the memoirs “The Shadow of a Fleeting Life.” Raskolnikov had a son, Fyodor (1937-1939), and a daughter, Muza (1940-1986), who became a historian.

The material was prepared based on information from open sources

Fyodor Fedorovich Raskolnikov (real name - Ilyin) (January 28, 1892, St. Petersburg - September 12, 1939, Nice, France) - Soviet military and statesman, diplomat, writer and journalist. Defector.

Born into the family of a St. Petersburg priest. In 1909 he entered the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute, and in December 1910 he joined the party, citing joint work with V. M. Molotov in the “Bolshevik faction of the Polytechnic Institute.” In 1912-1914. - literary employee of the newspapers “Zvezda” and “Pravda”. After the outbreak of the First World War, he became a student of separate midshipman classes (to avoid conscription, since participation in the World War was contrary to his convictions), which he graduated in February 1917.

After the February Revolution he became deputy. Chairman of the Kronstadt Council. After the July crisis, he was arrested, imprisoned in Kresty, and released from there on October 13, 1917.

Raskolnikov's wife at one time was the famous writer Larisa Reisner (1895-1926), who was next to him as commissar of the fleet headquarters on the Volga and Caspian Sea. The second wife of F. Raskolnikov was Muza Vasilievna Raskolnikova-Kanivez (maiden name Rzhechitskaya).

Children - son Fedor (1937-1939) and daughter Muza (1939-1987).

His brother A.F. Ilyin-Zhenevsky (the second part of the surname is from the place of pre-revolutionary emigration) was also a famous revolutionary, party and government figure, and also gained fame as a chess player.

Soviet military and statesman, diplomat, writer and journalist. Defector. From June 1920 to March 1921 he was commander of the Baltic Fleet.

At this time, a certain Fedor Fedorovich Raskolnikov served as the USSR Ambassador to Bulgaria. Lenin hired him, perhaps out of nostalgic motives to designate with the fictitious surname Raskolnikov those people in Russia with whom he came to power almost from childhood. Fedor Fedorovich Raskolnikov (real maternal surname - Ilyin) (1892-1939) - Russian politician, diplomat, writer. Since 1918, Deputy People's Commissar for Naval Affairs, member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Eastern Front, member of the RVSR. In 1919-20 he commanded the Volga-Caspian military flotilla. In 1920-21 he commanded the Baltic Fleet. In 1921-22 Plenipotentiary Representative in Afghanistan. In 1930-38 plenipotentiary representative in Estonia, Denmark, Bulgaria. It was recalled in 1938. Remained abroad. Fyodor Raskolnikov accused Stalin of mass repressions. Declared in absentia an “enemy of the people.” Rehabilitated posthumously. His father, Fyodor Aleksandrovich Petrov, was the protodeacon of the entire artillery of the Sergius Cathedral and, due to a slander, committed suicide when the boy was 15 years old. His mother, the daughter of a major general, came from a family that went back to Prince Galich; along her line, Ilyin’s ancestors were military men.

I, Fedor Fedorovich Ilyin, was born in 1892, January 28, in St. Petersburg, on Bolshaya Okhta, on Mironovaya Street. I am the illegitimate son of Protodeacon Sergievsky of all the artillery of the cathedral and the daughter of a major general, a wine shop saleswoman, Antonina Vasilievna Ilyina. My parents were not united by church marriage because my father, as a widowed clergyman, did not have the right to get married a second time. Both were very religious people and lived extremely amicably throughout their 19 years of marriage. The father was born in 1846 in the village of Keikino, Yamburg district, St. Petersburg province, and the mother is a native of St. Petersburg, her date of birth is June 3, 1865. The father died April 12, 1907; he committed suicide by cutting open his carotid artery with a razor. The cause of death was fear of a search and fear of legal involvement and wide publicity of a compromising nature due to his servant filing a complaint to St. Petersburg. district court about her father's rape. According to the father and those around him, the complaint was unfounded. Attorney-at-law Nikolai Platonovich Karabchevsky and his assistant, assistant attorney-at-law Atabekov, were invited as defense counsel. According to the lawyers, the outcome of the case was hopeless for the accuser due to the complete lack of evidence and eyewitnesses. But the father did not wait for the trial and, at the age of 62, took his own life. According to the testimony of everyone who knew the deceased, he had a gentle character and an outstanding voice. The mother is still alive; she serves as a saleswoman in the state-owned wine shop No. 148, located on the Vyborg side, in Finsky Lane, in house No. 3. Her salary is 750 rubles per year; in addition, she uses a government-owned apartment with 3 rooms, having ready-made lighting and heating.

To begin with, let us quote the book of memoirs “St. George's Days”, written by British reporter Robert Pollack and published in London in 1925: “On December 27 (1918), the opportunity arose to transmit the first serious message from Revel-Tallinn. Our ships captured two red destroyers, captured the big commissar - Raskolnikov, who commanded the voyage. I asked the admiral (Rear Admiral V. Cowan, who led the British squadron on the Baltic Sea. - V.U.) why the Bolsheviks surrendered easily. In response, I heard something unexpected: the lack of preparedness of the crews , disorder in management, the ambition of the flagship, who picked up ranks after the revolution, but never put a ship to sea. In a word, I managed to catch a sensation. They say that when the Times with my message from Estonia fell into the hands of Trotsky, he stamped his feet and shouted, that I have never experienced such shame before.” Robert Pollack devoted “St. George's Days” exclusively to his correspondent work for the British military mission in the Baltic states. Probably because he gained journalistic fame precisely after the publication of the capture of Fyodor Raskolnikov. This story, I note, is well known among us. But here, for obvious reasons, the truth has always been smoothed out. And this is quite understandable: Fyodor Fedorovich was part of the Soviet elite of the “first convocation” and had been in the public eye since March 1917, when, having broken away from officer service, he began to manage the newspaper “Voice of Truth” in Kronstadt and run the local Bolshevik organization. And what the former midshipman did later in Novorossiysk, on the Volga and the Caspian Sea is generally one of the Soviet classics of the civil war. “Comrade Raskolnikov acted there, whom the Moscow and St. Petersburg workers know very well from his agitation, from his party work,” this is what they say about the most devoted comrades, and the words belong to Vladimir Lenin. Therefore, the captivity was explained as follows: he was sent at the head of a detachment of ships on reconnaissance near Revel, and when the destroyer "Spartak", on which he was, suffered an accident, he was surrounded by English cruisers... The Red commander was taken to Foggy Albion, imprisoned , and in May 1919 they were exchanged for British officers captured in Soviet Russia, of whom 17 people were collected for “proper weight.” “CHANGE TASKS YOURSELF” “Officers did not like Raskolnikov, to say the least,” we read in “Notes” published in Paris, one of the commanders of the Baltic Fleet in 1917, and then, before the October coup, the Minister of Naval Rear Admiral Dmitry Verderevsky - he paid same. Having escaped from direct midshipman affairs, he became one of the organizers of the unrest, which was later called an uprising. Many officers were killed without any trial..." Raskolnikov himself, in his "fiery memoirs" - "Kronstadt and St. Petersburg in 1917" - brushed aside the bloody events: "There was by no means a general pogrom of officers, but only repressions against individuals." But there is also a dispassionate footnote-comment: "In total, 120 officers and officials were shot in the Baltic Fleet during the uprising, over 600 people were arrested." For the revolutionary, these are only "individuals", which are compared to the big goal. The next year, the eighteenth, was the first year of the civil war. The fleet, assembled in Kronstadt and Petrograd, gradually turned into iron from a lack of crews and coal. Subsequently, Fyodor Fedorovich gave it a derogatory description: “For six months, no voyages or work were carried out. To the insignificant remnants of trained sailors were added people who were completely inexperienced in maritime affairs, who often hired out to serve in order to get a job somewhere." The truth here is only one thing. More or less ready destroyers and boats were driven along canals to the Volga and Caspian Sea. But Kronstadt froze. and for another reason. According to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, concluded with the Germans, the fleet had to remain in the ports. The head of the naval forces of the Baltic Sea, former captain of the 1st rank Alexei Shchastny, who led almost 200 ships through the ice from Helsingfors (Helsinki), in May, called to Moscow, arrested, and in July shot by the verdict of the Revolutionary Tribunal, incited by Leon Trotsky. The conflict began after the nachmorsi (as the position of commander was now abbreviated) conveyed to the councils of commissars and flagships “a secret order to him from the Kremlin” about training groups of sailors for blowing up forts and ships “if necessary.” The chief military commander of the Bolsheviks at the tribunal meeting (he was the only witness) confirmed that the People’s Commissariat placed deposits in the bank for the bombers. “They don’t serve revolutions for money,” the council of commissioners issued a resolution even before Shchastny’s trial. The execution of the commander completely reduced Lev Davidovich’s authority in the Baltic. Sailors and staff began to demonstratively collect funds for the family of the deceased commander. Trotsky planned to break the “Baltic insubordination” by appointing Raskolnikov there. But he first sank the Black Sea squadron in Novorossiysk, then he was sent to the Volga and Kama, where the former midshipman fought, admittedly, very successfully.