What happened to Yakov Stalin's daughter. Yakov Dzhugashvili - biography, information, personal life. The usual course of things
AND second: according to both German (in 1941) and domestic (half a century later) sources, Yakov Dzhugashvili was captured without documents confirming his identity, and, moreover, in civilian clothes, and not in the uniform of a Red Army commander (his He allegedly buried the uniform and documents when he realized that he was surrounded). This was doubly dangerous, because it put him outside the law both before the enemy and before his own: the Germans could not consider him a prisoner of war, and their own could declare him a deserter. Exactly a month after Yakov’s capture, on August 16, 1941, his father, as People’s Commissar of Defense, will sign order No. 270, the first paragraph of which reads: “Commanders and political workers who, during battle, tear off their insignia and desert to the rear or surrender to the enemy, be considered malicious deserters, whose families are subject to arrest as families of deserters who violated the oath and betrayed their homeland. Oblige all higher commanders and commissars to shoot on the spot such deserters from the command staff.”
Yakov’s courageous behavior in captivity, his refusal to cooperate with the Germans and join the Vlasov Russian Liberation Army (ROA), his death itself on April 14, 1943 - all this makes it unlikely that he changed his military uniform to civilian clothes and destroyed his documents. I assume that, most likely, he was detained by the Germans in civilian clothes on the morning of June 22 in a train carriage that crossed the Soviet-German border on June 20–21 and moved through Poland or Germany to the North Sea coast according to an agreement between the top leadership of Germany and the USSR about a joint transport operation. Option to detain Yakov in military uniform in a military echelon followed by changing into civilian clothes is less likely, because then the Germans would have started a propaganda campaign around the capture of Stalin's son much earlier.
If Yakov was detained as a civilian specialist, then it is possible that this was one of the main reasons for the delay of almost a month in the decision to exchange the embassies of the USSR and Germany after the start of the war. The Soviet side insisted on an exchange of “all for all” and, very likely, demanded to include among the specialists to be exchanged those who traveled on the first day of the war on trains moving through German and Soviet territory, including Yakov Dzhugashvili (who could go under a different name). This possibility is confirmed by a detailed study of Ya. Dzhugashvili’s passport (this will be discussed below), published by his daughter Galina in the book “Stalin’s Granddaughter”.
Third An interesting fact is the lack of published photographs and accurate documentary evidence about Yakov’s military service, in particular about his studies at the Artillery Academy. Dzerzhinsky. The very fact of studying is presented in various publications as indisputable, but always in different ways. For example, Yakov’s half-sister Svetlana Alliluyeva in the book “Twenty Letters to a Friend” states: “Yasha became a professional military man - in 1935 Yasha came to Moscow and entered the Military Artillery Academy” (“Moscow Artillery Academy named after Frunze”) and “went to the front already on June 23, together with his battery, along with the entire graduating class of his Academy.” Meanwhile, the Artillery Academy named after. Dzerzhinsky was transferred from Leningrad to Moscow only in the fall of 1938. Therefore, the information of Artem Sergeev, already mentioned above, is much closer to the truth: “in 1938, he entered the artillery academy immediately either as a 3rd or 4th year...”
The absence of published photographs of Yakov and his fellow students in military uniform, the absence not only of memories of him from his fellow students at the academy and colleagues from the military unit, but even just mentions of him - all this casts doubt on the dates and circumstances of his training indicated in various publications at the Artillery Academy named after. Dzerzhinsky.
The circumstances of his enrollment in the academy, first in the evening department, are not very clear from numerous, but very contradictory publications (it is not clear where he worked when he left the Stalin plant). Moreover, with the evening and distance learning in the Art Academy, the situation was like this: “at the end of 1938 - beginning of 1939, a correspondence department was opened at the academy (with the faculties of command and weapons), and at the end of 1939, an evening department (with the faculties of command, weapons and ammunition).” .
It is not known in what rank and when Yakov became a career commander of the Red Army, for in the published “certification for the 4th year from 08/15/39 to 07/15/40, a 4th year student of the command faculty of the art academy, Lieutenant Dzhugashvili Yakov Iosifovich” indicated : “in the Red Army - from 10.39, in command positions - from 12.39.” From this record it is unclear in what capacity he had studied at the academy up to this point - as a volunteer or as a student in the evening department, continuing to work somewhere as a civilian specialist, or as an ordinary student, accepted immediately into the 4th year and wearing a lieutenant's uniform. It is also unclear why this published certification (unfortunately, not in full and without a photocopy of the original) does not indicate his military rank. The ambiguous phrase “in command positions” allows one to assume that it refers not to his studies, but to his main job. For example, if he continues to remain civilian, works as a military representative at a defense plant or as a civilian teacher at a military educational institution.
In fact, there is only one photograph of Yakov in military uniform - a senior lieutenant with three “kubari” and “guns” on his buttonholes. There is no date on which the photograph was taken (the book “The Leader’s Granddaughter” states that it was May 10, 1941). There are conflicting data about the sending of the military unit in which Yakov served to the front. Various sources name several dates, starting from June 22 and ending on June 26 (there is not a single later date - obviously, due to the fact that then it would be difficult to explain the date on the postcard allegedly sent by him from Vyazma on June 26), etc. P.
The reason for such indistinctness and contradictions could well be the concealment of Yakov’s true place of service or work before the war, but not for fear of revealing military secrets of half a century ago, but because accurate and complete information may suggest the true circumstances of Yakov’s capture by the Germans, perhaps precisely on June 22, 1941. For example, if it suddenly turns out that his last place of work was a special ZIS workshop producing military equipment, or the Main Armored Directorate of the Red Army, then the answer to the question: “How did he end up in German captivity?” would sound completely different. Or, for example, if it becomes known that before the war he went to Germany to accept orders completed for the USSR, or that he went there on June 20–21, 1941 in a train, accompanying a dismantled military equipment, the assembly of which was to be supervised in Germany.
A fourthly, question: if Yakov Dzhugashvili, the son of the Soviet leader, was still in German captivity, then why have the film footage of the interrogations, the texts of which have been published many times, not yet been shown? Indeed, in July-August 1941, German planes began dropping hundreds of thousands of leaflets with photographs of Yakov in captivity, as well as with a facsimile of his note to his father, allegedly transmitted through diplomatic channels, onto the Red Army units participating in the battles.
In recent years, a version has emerged that has been repeatedly expressed by Yakov’s daughter. Galina Yakovlevna Dzhugashvili-Stalina stated that her father was not captured at all, but died in battle, and the whole story of his alleged capture was invented and played out by the German intelligence services and Goebbels propaganda (it is noteworthy that she first made such a statement after Jerry Jennings, the US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Prisoners of War and Missing in Action, conveyed to her on September 11, 2003 . blue folder with a copy of the case of Y. Dzhugashvili, captured in the archives of the RSHA in 1945).
In my opinion, all of the above proves not that Yakov Dzhugashvili was never captured, but that by inertia, only in a different form, the campaign started in 1941 to conceal the circumstances and the very fact of the capture of the son of the Soviet leader continues , and also the fact that all the documents captured in 1945 about Yakov’s time in captivity (films and audio - first of all!) were partially destroyed and partially closed for publication.
There are several reports that the interrogations of Yakov Dzhugashvili were recorded by the Germans on a tape recorder. In particular, B. Sopelnyak describes one of his interrogations as follows: “He (Yakov. - A. O.) answered Reuschle’s questions quite frankly, and he, it turns out, hid a microphone under the tablecloth, recorded their conversation, and then edited the recording so cunningly that Yakov appeared as a frantic denouncer of the Stalinist regime.”
There are also stories of Soviet front-line soldiers who heard on cutting edge in 1941-42 radio broadcasts with Jacob's voice from German propaganda vehicles. It is not clear why film footage of Yakov and tape recordings of his interrogations have not yet been made public either in our country, or in the USA, or in England, or in post-war Germany. Why is there not only a single film frame with him in the Gosfilmofond, but also not a single photo of Yakov (that’s what the employees of this archive told me when I was there searching for materials for the documentary “The Secret of June 22”), neither German nor Soviet. Probably because these footage and recordings would make it possible to reveal the true circumstances of Yakov’s captivity, which for some reason neither the German nor the Soviet leadership wanted. For the same reason, at the beginning of the war, both sides preferred to present the matter as if Yakov was a Soviet career combat commander - while the leader showed that his son was captured in battle, and the Germans argued that if the son of the Soviet leader was captured , then all other Red Army soldiers must surrender immediately.
In her book “The Leader’s Granddaughter” and in recent interviews, Galina Yakovlevna stated that all the photographs documenting Yakov Dzhugashvili’s time in captivity, as well as written documents from that period with his handwriting, are fakes. She calls the last genuine letter from her father a postcard sent by Yakov to his wife Yu. Meltzer on June 26, 1941 from Vyazma. Galina Yakovlevna quite rightly considered this last news from her father to be the most important document and even placed it on the cover of her book. She also placed in her book photographs of three documents of Yakov Dzhugashvili preserved in the house - a passport, a military ID and a pass to the garage at the Administrative Office of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, emphasizing for some reason in the caption to the photographs that these were his original documents.
One can only guess what she meant by this. Only one thing became clear to me: these documents deserve special attention. That's what I did.
Original documents of Y. Dzhugashvili
Passport(see p. 5 of the Photo Appendix) is valid until April 4, 1941, which means, firstly, it was issued on April 4, 1936, since at that time the passport was issued for 5 years, and secondly, on June 22, 1941 g. was expired (although it is quite possible that on one of its pages, not shown in the photo, there is a note about the extension of its validity). In any case, the presence of this passport in Yakov’s family indicates that in the period from June 22 to July 16, 1941, Yakov Dzhugashvili had another document proving his identity. Moreover, such a document, the issuance of which did not require the surrender of the passport to the passport office (when issuing a commander’s book, the passport was necessarily confiscated from the owner). Such a document could be his own passport, as well as any identity card issued to him in a different name. It is known that in those years, in order to travel to Germany, some Soviet specialists and responders were given documents in someone else’s name. For example, the translator of Molotov (and later Stalin) V. Berezhkov traveled under the name Bogdanov.
If the validity of the passport was not extended, then the document that Yakov had in his hands from June 22 to July 16, 1941, most likely, was received by him before April 4, 1941 on the basis of his still valid passport (otherwise it was first passport would be renewed). Moreover, received in Moscow, which is clearly indicated in the column “Permanent residence”. Noteworthy is the entry about the place of birth: “s. Badzi”, that is, the village of Badzi, contrary to all other published documents, including interrogation reports in captivity, which always indicate that he was born in Baku. It is interesting that some researchers of the fate of Yakov, including his own daughter Galina, consider the indication in the protocol of his interrogation as the place of birth of Baku, and not the village. Badzi is serious evidence that this protocol is a fake. But then all the cited Soviet documents of Yakov (including those signed by him personally), where the city of Baku is indicated as his place of birth, can be considered fakes.
The fact that at first surprised me was the fact that the photo of the passport holder was pasted onto the stamp of his last place of work and that it was certified with the seal of the regional police department was explained very simply. It turned out that from 1933 to 1937 there was no photo of the owner in the Soviet passport, and only from October 1937 they began to stick a photo card into passports (while its second copy remained in storage at the regional police department). Therefore, the presence of a photograph in Yakov’s passport indicates that in October 1937 he continued to work at ZiS, and did not become a student at the military academy. Although it can be assumed that without interruption from work he entered the evening department of some military academy in September 1937, but not the Artillery Academy, which at that time was still in Leningrad. Therefore, it may not be by chance that his half-sister Svetlana mentioned in her book the non-existent “Moscow Frunze Artillery Academy”, which Yakov allegedly entered. Perhaps this means that he began his evening military education at the Academy. Frunze, and after the transfer to Moscow of the Artillery Academy named after. Dzerzhinsky transferred to its evening department. Another possible explanation: in Moscow at the Military Academy. Frunze there was a branch of the Art Academy named after. Dzerzhinsky, whose evening department Yakov initially entered. I also heard a version that Yakov began studying at the evening department of the Artillery Academy in Leningrad during his life there. However, a study of his military ID refutes this, since the word “Moscow” is clearly visible on the seal imprint, which means that by 1930 Yakov had already returned from Leningrad to Moscow and was living in it. Of greatest interest are the marks in the passport about the place of work of Yakov Dzhugashvili - there are three of them: about his employment in the Stroitel trust on 7/V-1936 (or 7/IV - due to a poor-quality photo, the sign may not have been printed “I” in number IV) and his dismissal from it on 12/XI-1936, as well as on his employment on 14/XI-1936 at the Moscow Automobile Plant named after. Stalin. In the photo of Yakov’s documents, the name of this plant on the stamp is slightly blurred, but it is clearly readable in the title of the position of the personnel officer who issued the appointment: “Beg. subdivision for hiring ZiS.”
A careful study of the round seal that certified the stamps of the Stroitel trust showed that this trust was part of the Glavstroyprom headquarters of the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry. Considering that in November 1936 the second reconstruction of the ZiS, which began in 1933, was completed (the purpose of which was to create the production of new models of vehicles, including special vehicles for the Red Army) and that it was on November 3, 1936 that the assembly line of the first domestic seven-seater began limousine "ZIS-101", it can be assumed that it was the Stroitel trust that carried out the final stage of this reconstruction. Then Y. Dzhugashvili’s work there, his dismissal on November 12 and his hiring at ZiS on November 14, 1936 could be links in one chain of events: he could have received a solid position either in the new government vehicle assembly shop or in one of the other workshops that appeared after reconstruction. By the way, it was during this period that Andrei Sverdlov, son of Ya. M. Sverdlov, later a lieutenant colonel of the MGB, who had just graduated from the Armored Academy, became the senior foreman and then the head of one of the ZiS special workshops. Let’s not forget that it was ZiS that participated in the production of the legendary Katyusha installations.
It is interesting that among the genuine family photos Y. Dzhugashvili, there is a photograph where he and his wife Yulia are captured at one of the dachas near Moscow next to a chic black Buick - most likely the same Buick 32-90, which became the prototype of the seven-seat government limousine ZIS-101 " It is possible that Yakov was the owner or regular user of this luxury car, which somewhat destroys the stereotype of the leader’s unloved son, a loser, who, according to some authors, could only shoot himself, and he couldn’t really do that either.
Hero Soviet Union test pilot Alexander Shcherbakov, son of A. S. Shcherbakov, secretary of the Central Committee and MK of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, who also headed the Writers' Union at one time, and during the war years also the head of the Sovinformburo, and then the GlavPUR of the Red Army, in an interview with the special correspondent of the newspaper " Red Star” to Yu. Avdeev on January 17, 2007, he said: “My parents constantly communicated with Yakov and his wife, who often visited us for Sunday dinners. I remembered Dzhugashvili as an intelligent, very erudite and sociable person. He was an interesting storyteller<…>. There is one curious mystery for me in his period of study. During one of his visits to us, Dzhugashvili, as always, spoke captivatingly about the exercises he had just returned from. I don’t remember the details of my youth, but now I can’t find an answer to a seemingly simple question: what did the academy student do during the exercises in the Kiev Military District? It doesn’t seem to be due to his rank, but on the other hand, if he had been in disgrace with his father, even if he wanted to, they would have closed his way to them.”
Again a departure from the familiar image of Jacob. He really doesn’t look like a “chimney sweep engineer” at the thermal power plant of the Automobile Plant named after. Stalin,” which he allegedly worked during this period before entering the Artillery Academy.
Permanent pass in the name of Yakov to the government garage- the second authentic document given in his daughter’s book further destroys the image of a “gloomy” loser or super-modest (N.S. Vlasik, who knew him well, writes in his book “Living Pages”: “Yakov, a very sweet and modest person, with conversations and manners similar to his father." This pass gave him the right to enter and exit in a car with the number MA-97-42 from June 15 to December 31, 1938.
Galina’s memories confirm that her father had a car (or had the right to constantly use it): “We are going for a ride. Dad is driving my namesake, a black “emochka”. Galki, and we are three, Dunyunya (Galina’s nanny, but they also had a cook, that is, the family of the “academy student” Yakov Dzhugashvili, consisting of three people, was constantly served by two people! - A. O.) and the husky Vesely... in the back seat" (the same famous husky that spent the winter with the Papaninites on an ice floe, and then was presented to Stalin, and he, it turns out, gave it to Yakov’s family. - A. O.).
Galina was born on February 18, 1938, and the next day the Papaninites were evacuated by plane from a breaking ice floe. Everything matches. True, Galina Dzhugashvili’s memories of her father driving a black limousine most likely date back to 1940–1941, but most publications about him claim that at that time he was a professional military man - a student at the Artillery Academy. By the way, much earlier, Yakov, still a student at MIIT, already had a car, for V.S. Alliluyev writes in his diary: “One day in the summer of 1935, father and mother were returning home from Serebryany Bor... Suddenly they saw a car on the side of the road, near where Yakov was standing, there was some trouble in his car.”
Consideration of another authentic, according to Galina Dzhugashvili, document - the only news from Yakov Dzhugashvili from the front in the form postcards– leads to several discoveries at once. About the first of them - the incredible discrepancy between the words written to his wife (“everything is fine, the journey is quite interesting... Yasha’s dad is fine... I’m doing great”) and the ominous date “June 26, 1941” indicated on it. (in a day the Germans will break into Minsk!) - I already wrote in the book “The Great Secret...”. Everything is explained if we assume that this postcard was written by Jacob on June 21 on a train that crossed the border and was moving through Germany to North Sea. In this unsent postcard seized from Yakov during his arrest on June 22, the German secret services could have corrected the number 21 in the date to 26, and their agent could have thrown it into a mailbox in the not yet occupied Vyazma. Thus began a long-term German provocative and propaganda special operation using the fact of Yakov’s capture, which continued until his death on April 14, 1943. Very significant is the absence of a field mail number in the postcard and Yakov’s promise in a day or two to provide the address, and not the field mail number, to which you can only write in military unit. Or maybe there was simply no part, and he worked in another place?
Second discovery. The postcard shows the address where Yakov lived from 1938 to June 22, 1941: “Moscow Granovsky Street, building 3, apt. 84". This was the same house in which the secretaries of the Central Committee, members of the government and marshals lived (for example, in the same entrance as Yakov’s apartment there was the apartment of the secretary of the Central Committee, then the head of GlavPUR and Deputy People’s Commissar of Defense A. A. Shcherbakov). The son of A. A. Shcherbakov, Alexander, already mentioned above, recently speaking on television, as well as in the publication of the weekly “NVO” dated February 27, 2009, said that when their family lived in house No. 3 on Granovsky Street, their neighbor was Yakov Dzhugashvili, he and his wife and little daughter occupied a five-room apartment, because, as Shcherbakov said, there were no other apartments in this building.
In the book “The Leader’s Granddaughter,” Galina claims that the appearance of this apartment was connected with her birth. And in a conversation with the author of the book “Stalin’s Daughter” M. Shad, she said: “Immediately after their marriage, my parents received a two-room apartment, and when my mother was pregnant with me, a wonderful four-room apartment, in addition, a nanny and a cook. My father joked then that the nanny received a higher salary than his stipend.”
Not bad for an “unloved” student son, and then a “chimney sweep engineer” and a student at the evening department of a military academy, because in those years even colonels and generals who studied at academies or on courses at them lived in dormitories.
Studying extensive material about the fate of Y. Dzhugashvili in books, periodicals and the Internet, I discovered another document that for some reason was not included by Galina Yakovlevna in the list of “authentic” ones, but is quite obviously such. This is a photo of the certificate issued to him stating “that he entered the Moscow Electro-Mechanical Institute of Railway Engineers.” D. transport im. F.E. Dzerzhinsky in 1930 and graduated in 1936, defended his diploma project with a grade of “good” and was awarded the title of mechanical engineer ... with a specialty in “heat engineering of power engineering”<…>. The certificate was issued in accordance with order No. 62 of MEMIIT named after. F.E. Dzerzhinsky dated 2/III-36..." and registered under No. 1585 - unfortunately, the date indicated on it is very difficult to read - "... April 1936." (I learned from A.S. Volodina, the creator of the MIIT museum, that the registration date is April 17, 1936). At the same time, the question arises: why, in fact, a certificate? After all, a university graduate is given a diploma. Where is Jacob's diploma? Why is he forced to settle for a certificate? The first explanation: perhaps diplomas were not issued to any of the graduates at that time, because the time was such - passports had just been introduced in the country in 1933, the printing industry did not meet the huge need for printing documents on special paper, much less university diplomas with embossed coat of arms on the cover. So they gave university graduates a certificate of completion with a guarantee of its subsequent replacement with a diploma, which is written in it: “The diploma of graduation from the Institute will be replaced (inaudible, perhaps “issued.” - A. O.) for the number of this certificate." The second explanation: for an unknown reason, Yakov studied at MEMIIT not for 5, but for 6 years (as follows from the text of the certificate), and it is quite possible that he took an academic leave. Then it is possible that he did not defend his graduation project together with his fellow students, especially since this could have been necessary.
Let's say commissioning work began in the new ZiS workshop, where, most likely, Yakov would have to work in a position that could only be held by a certified engineer. That’s why he was given the opportunity to defend his thesis project later than his fellow students. By the way, it is possible that the topic of Yakov’s graduation project was the reconstruction of the ZiS, and therefore his defense was related to the timing of its implementation.
Everything coincided: in March 1936 - defense of the diploma project and an order for successful completion of the institute; in April - certificate of graduation and awarding the title of engineer; April 4 – issuance of a passport, where in the column “ social status“instead of “employee”, “engineer” is written (Yakov could no longer write “student” or “student”, and “employee” did not yet have the right, since at the time the passport was issued he had not yet worked anywhere); April 7 or May 7 – hired by the Stroitel trust.
The authenticity of certificate No. 1585 is confirmed by another document from Y. Dzhugashvili, cited among the authentic ones by Galina Yakovlevna - his military ID. The photograph of this military ID clearly shows the date of issue: “November 4, 1930.” Everything is logical - in September 1930, Yakov entered the institute, and since there was a military department there, after completing the course military training, he is exempt from conscription into the Red Army and in November receives a military ID. In the imprint of the seal certifying this entry, the word “Moscow” is clearly readable, from which it follows that in 1930 Yakov lived in Moscow, which means he began his first academic year at the Moscow, and not at the Leningrad Institute, for some reason - This is stated in some publications.
Jacob's documents from the Art Academy (unfortunately, not facsimiles, but copies)
Below are all the documents of Yakov Dzhugashvili, which were kindly provided to me by the head of the museum of the Strategic Missile Forces Military Academy. Peter the Great (this is the name today of the Artillery Academy named after F. E. Dzerzhinsky) Colonel Valentin Ivanovich Uglov. Although these are not photographs, but copies of documents, they can be considered authentic, since they were exhibited on a stand during the only conference dedicated to Yakov Dzhugashvili and held in this museum on March 18, 1998. The main character at this conference was his daughter Galina, Also present were A. S. Volodina, researcher of the life of Yakov Dzhugashvili, Doctor of Historical Sciences T. Drambyan, and others. Some documents are published here for the first time, some for the first time without cuts. Here I present previously published documents that are worth considering anew in the light of newly discovered facts, circumstances and documentary evidence.
AutobiographyBorn in 1908 in March in the city. Baku in the family of a professional revolutionary. Now my father is on party work - mountains. Moscow. Dzhugashvili’s father’s last name is Stalin I.V. Mother died in 1908.
Brother Vasily Stalin is studying at an aviation school in the city. Sevastopol. Sister Svetlana studies at high school- Moscow city.
Wife Yulia Isaakovna Meltzer was born in Odessa into the family of an employee; the wife's brother is an employee - Odessa, the wife's mother is a housewife - Odessa. Until 1935, he lived dependent on his father and studied. In 1935 he graduated from the Transport Institute - Moscow. From 1936 to 1937 he worked at el. Art. head (plant power plant. – A.O.) them. Stalin as duty officer turbine engineer.
In 1937 he entered the Vech. Dept. Art Academy of the Red Army.
In 1938 he entered the 4th year of the 1st faculty of the Art Academy of the Red Army.
(/signature DZHUGASHVILI Y.I./)(11/VI-39.")
Certification for the period from 1938 to 1939 for the student of the command faculty of the Artillery Order of Lenin Academy of the Red Army named after Dzerzhinsky Dzhugashvili Yakov IosifovichCalm. General development is good. This academic year I only passed meteorology. He completed the theory of shooting individually and advanced to the theory of errors on the plane, including the processing of experimental data.
He has large academic debt, and there are fears that he will not be able to eliminate it by the end of the new academic year.
Due to illness, I was not at the winter camp training, as well as in the camps, absent from June 24 to this time (4 months! - A.O.).
Didn't take practical classes. I don’t know much about small arms tactical training.
It is possible to transfer to the fifth year, provided that all student debt is paid by the end of the next 1939/1940 academic year.
(Head of the ground department) (Colonel /NOVIKOV/)
Due to the late transfer to the command faculty and failure to complete the subjects, leave for a repeat course. In view of the passage of the military training and having served in the academy for one year, he is worthy of being awarded the rank of lieutenant.
(Chairman of the Commission /Ivanov)(Members...)(October 22, 1939.")
Certification for the period from 15.8.39 to 15.7.1940 for a 4th year student of the command faculty of the Art Academy, Lieutenant Dzhugashvili Yakov IosifovichLoyal to the Lenin-Stalin Party and the Socialist Motherland.
General development is good, politically satisfactory. Takes part in the party and public life of the course.
He is disciplined, but has insufficient knowledge of military regulations on relationships with superiors.
Sociable.
Academic progress is good, but in the last session he had an unsatisfactory grade in a foreign language. Physically developed, but often sick.
Military training, due to short-term stay in the army, requires a lot of improvement.
(Group foreman) (Captain (signature)) (Ivanov)
I agree with the certification. It is necessary to pay attention to the elimination of hearing deficiencies that prevent normal performance of service in the future.
(Head of 4th year)(Major (signature))(Cobra)
To be transferred to the 5th year. It is necessary to pay more attention to mastering tactics and developing a clear command language.
(Chairman of the Commission)(Head of the 1st Faculty)(Major General)(Sheremetov)(Deputy Head of the Faculty)(Head of the 4th Course)(Major Kobrya)(Secretary of the Party Bureau)(Captain Timofeev)(Senior Group)(Captain Ivanov)
Certification for the period from 9/15/40 to 3/1/1941 for a 5th year student of the Command Faculty of the Art Academy, Senior Lieutenant Yakov Iosifovich DzhugashviliGeneral and political development good. Disciplined, executive. Academic performance is good. Takes an active part in the political and social work of the course. Has completed higher education (heating engineer).
He entered military service voluntarily. He loves construction work and studies it. He approaches issues thoughtfully and is careful and precise in his work. Physically developed. Tactical and artillery and rifle training is good.
Marxist-Leninist training is good. Loyal to the Lenin-Stalin Party and the Socialist Motherland.
By nature he is calm, tactful and demanding, a strong-willed commander. During his military internship as a battery commander, he revealed himself to be quite prepared. He did the job well.
After a short internship as a battery commander, he is subject to appointment to the position of division commander. Worthy of appropriation another rank"captain".
Delivered state exams with the following ratings:
1) tactics – mediocre
2) shooting – good
3) the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism – mediocre
4) basics of artillery weapons - good
5) English – good
(Commander of the 151st training department, Colonel Sapegin)
I agree with the certification, but I believe that conferring the rank of “captain” is possible only after a year of command of the battery.
(Major General of Artillery Sheremetov)
Worthy of a diploma. Can be used as a battery commander.
(Head of the Academy, Major General of Artillery Sivkov)(Major General of Artillery Sheremetov)(Brigade Commissar Krasilnikov)(Regimental Commissar Prochko)
Party (political) characteristics for a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of the 5th year of the 1st faculty of the Artillery Order of Lenin Academy named after K. A. Dzerzhinsky Dzhugashvili Yakov IosifovichMember of the CPSU(b) since 1941,
Party card No. 3524864,
born 1908, employee.
Devoted to the cause of the Lenin-Stalin party. He is working to improve his ideological and theoretical level. Particularly interested in Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Takes an active part in party work.
Working as a member of the editorial board of the wall newspaper, he proved himself to be a good organizer.
He treats his studies conscientiously. Persistently and persistently overcomes difficulties. Enjoys authority among his comrades. He has no party penalties.
The party characteristics were approved at a meeting of the party bureau on April 14, 1941.
(5th year party bureau secretary (signature))(/Timofeev/)
Diploma SupplementComrade Dzhugashvili Ya. I. during his stay at the Artillery Order of Lenin Academy of the Red Army. Dzerzhinsky passed the following disciplines:
Passed the state exams with the following grade:
Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism – mediocre
Shooting theory - good
Fundamentals of artillery weapons - good
Tactics – mediocre
English – good
(Head of the Academy)(Lieutenant General of Artillery Sivkov)(Head of Faculty)(Major General of Artillery Sheremetov)
Extracts from orders for the Artillery Academy
No. 139 dated November 26, 1938
§ 13. Transfer Yakov Iosifovich Dzhugashvili, a 4th year student (243 gr.) of the Armaments Faculty, to the same course of the Command Faculty (143 gr.) from 11/10/38.
Reference: memo Comrade Dzhugashvili.
“No. 28 dated 26.2.39
§ 1. The following named listeners are translated:
Command Faculty
From 3rd year to 4th year
48. student Dzhugashvili Yakov Iosifovich (in the course of 103 people there are only three students without an officer rank).
No. 136 dated 23.9.40
Transfer to the 5th year those who have successfully completed the 4th year:
Senior Lieutenant Dzhugashvili Yakov Iosifovich..."
Extractfrom the order of the USSR NPO on personnel No. 05000 dated 12/19/1939
Award the rank of lieutenant Dzhugashvili to Yakov Iosifovich (there are 58 junior lieutenants on the list and three students without rank).
Extractfrom the protocol of the Higher Certification Commission of NGOs of the USSR dated May 9, 1941, approved by the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR.
Command Faculty
Senior Lieutenant Dzhugashvili Yakov Iosifovich
Can be appointed commander of the 14th GAP battery.
(Chairman: Deputy Head of the Criminal Code of the GAU KA Colonel Gamov) (Secretary: Head of the 3rd Department of the Criminal Code of the GAU KA Major Bochanov)
Memoirs of Anatoly Arkadyevich BlagonravovArtillery Order of Lenin Academy
named after Dzerzhinsky
1940/1941 academic year
151 educational departments
1. Lieutenant Avdyushin Sergei Petrovich died the death of the brave
2. Lieutenant Anisimov Alexey Efimovich
3. Lieutenant Aistov Mstislav Borisovich
4. Lieutenant Blagorazumov Lev Leonidovich
5. Captain Birich Nikolai Vasilievich died the death of the brave
6. Captain Butnik Petr Afanasyevich died the death of the brave
8. Lieutenant Grigoriev Mikhail Grigorievich
9. Captain Grechukha Fyodor Ivanovich died the death of the brave
10. Lieutenant Drugoveyko Petr Emelyanovich
11. Senior Lieutenant Dzhugashvili Yakov Iosifovich died a heroic death
13. Captain Ivanov Grigory Grigorievich died the death of the brave
14. Captain Ivanov Mikhail Fedorovich died a heroic death
15. Lieutenant Ilchenko Mikhail Alexandrovich
17. Captain Kozlov Alexey Andreevich died the death of the brave
18. Captain Kryazhev Rafail Vasilievich died the death of the brave
19. Lieutenant Kurilsky Anatoly Isidorovich died the death of the brave
20. Lieutenant Leibengrub Israel Geishevich died a heroic death
21. Captain Malishevsky Grigory Avksenttievich died the death of the brave
22. Lieutenant Markov Alexander Ivanovich died the death of the brave
23. Lieutenant Moiseev Valentin Mikhailovich
24. Colonel Nikonorov Dmitry Ilyich
25. captain Rozhkov Mikhail Akimovich
26. Lieutenant Smirnov Alexander Ivanovich
27. Lieutenant Snegovoy Anatoly Semenovich
28. Colonel Sopegin Ivan Yakovlevich died the death of the brave
29. Captain Storozhev Mikhail Fedorovich died the death of the brave
30. Captain Timofeev Mikhail Emelyanovich died the death of the brave
31. captain Khizhnyakov Vladimir Fomich
32. Captain Chubakov Petr Semenovich
33. Senior Lieutenant Nikolai Logvinovich Chernyavsky died a heroic death
34. Lieutenant Shtrundt Vladimir Gustavovich
A. A. Blagonravov, lieutenant general of artillery, twice Hero of Socialist Labor, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in the period 1937–1941. was the head of the weapons department of the Artillery Academy named after. Dzerzhinsky.
I received from the head of the museum of the Strategic Missile Forces Military Academy named after. Peter the Great, Colonel Valentin Ivanovich Uglov, a photocopy of only one, page 422 of these memoirs. It begins with words from which it follows that we're talking about on replacing the head of the Art Academy named after. Dzerzhinsky Lieutenant General Sivkov (shortly after Stalin’s speech in the Kremlin to graduates of military academies on May 5, 1941, where the leader criticized the work of this academy) by Major General Govorov, “... who previously held the position of Art. Lecturer at the Department of Artillery Tactics." Then he writes:
I assumed that he received the information that Stalin spoke about from his son Yakov Dzhugashvili, who entered the Academy in 1940. At first he was enrolled in my faculty, but in the middle of the academic year he came to me with a statement that he wanted to transfer to the command faculty.
The fate of Y. Dzhugashvili was unsuccessful: during the war he died as a prisoner in one of the German concentration camps...
Further on this page Blagonravov talks about the beginning of the war and the move of the academy to Samarkand. As V.I. Uglov told me, in these voluminous memoirs of Blagonravov, Yakov Dzhugashvili is not mentioned anywhere else.
Blagonravov was a person whom Stalin highly valued; it was not for nothing that when preparing the move of the Art Academy from Leningrad to Moscow, for some reason he was tasked with choosing for it a good place and a suitable building complex. V.I. Uglov, who read Blagonravov’s memoirs in full and prepared them for publication, also told me about this.
Arriving in Moscow, Blagonravov, together with the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs (obviously, with Yezhov), traveled around the city, looking at various buildings, for example in Lefortovo, but they did not choose anything. Then a responsible NKVD employee allocated by the People's Commissar (perhaps the first Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria) got involved in this matter, and after that a complex of buildings that belonged to trade unions was immediately chosen - the Palace of Labor described by Ilf and Petrov in “The Twelve Chairs”. The relocation of the academy from Leningrad to Moscow during the academic year was also quickly organized, and from September 15, 1938 (according to the documents cited) Yakov Dzhugashvili became a student of the Academy.
However, there are two inconsistencies here.
Firstly, in his memoirs Blagonravov writes that Yakov became a student of the academy in 1940 (that is, two years later than according to academic documents). Further, for some reason, he says that Yakov did not “study”, but was “enrolled” in his faculty (this is the word Yakov will use during interrogation in captivity).
Secondly, for some reason, in Yakov’s academic documents his enrollment in the weapons department is not recorded at all, but according to Blagonravov’s recollections, he was enrolled in it for six months.
And in general, Blagonravov mentioned Yakov too sparingly, not very kindly and even rather awkwardly: “fate... turned out unsuccessfully: during the war he died as a prisoner.” If he had said such words, for example, about General Karbyshev, they would have sounded like an insult. Why did Blagonravov allow himself to say this about Yakov? Did you consider him guilty of removing General Sivkov from his post as head of the Art Academy? Did you know the true circumstances of the leader’s eldest son’s studies at the academy? For example, Yakov already held a high position, and at the Academy he was “pulled” without interruption from his main job. Why didn’t Blagonravov say whether Yakov graduated from the Academy or didn’t have time, where, by whom and how he fought? Or was he captured, not while fighting, but under completely different circumstances, about which either nothing is known, or something is known, but cannot be told? When was he captured? How did you behave there? Under what circumstances and when did he die? After all, there was talk about all this at that time.
Behind Blagonravov’s omissions and some hostility towards Yakov, a secret is discerned...
And here is another secret - a letter from Colonel I. Ya. Sapegin to Vasily Stalin. Sapegin was the commander of the 151st training department, in which Yakov studied at the academy, and Yakov mentioned him in the only postcard received after the start of the war by his wife Yulia: “Everything is fine with Sapegin” (although it is obvious that this is not related to hostilities has nothing to do with it, because Yakov has not yet reached the front. From this phrase it rather follows that either Sapegin avoided some kind of trouble, or he and Sapegin had disagreements, but now everything has been settled).
Letter from Colonel I. Ya. Sapegin to the Red Army Air Force Directorate to Stalin Vasily IosifovichDear Vasily Iosifovich!
Neither in terms of service nor in terms of relationships on these issues, I had the right to directly appeal to you. Hoping that you know me as comrade Yakov Iosifovich, with whom I studied at the Art Academy for several years and was his closest friend, I am writing this letter.
I am the colonel who was at your dacha with Yakov Iosifovich on the day of departure for the front. Five days before the war, I took over an artillery regiment in the 14th Tank Division, where Yakov Iosifovich was appointed battery commander. It is his and my desire to serve together at the front. I, therefore, took full responsibility for his fate. Moreover, I was confident that I could cope with this task completely. But Yakov Iosifovich and I were mistaken...
Suddenly in a combat situation, when fighting The regiment was extremely successful, I was recalled to army headquarters...
At that moment, when I was sent from one headquarters to another, Yakov Iosifovich was forgotten by everyone and he was thrown anywhere. With me, he never left my field of vision, and I kept the division where he served as an assistant. And finally, on July 12, without ammunition, the regiment was abandoned with a small handful of infantry [against] an enemy 10 times superior. The regiment was surrounded. The division commander abandoned them and left the battle in a tank. Driving past Yakov Iosifovich, he did not even inquire about his fate, but in a panic he broke out of the encirclement along with the division artillery chief.
I reported to the Military Council of the 20th Army and the division commissar, who told me that they decided to create a group of volunteers to search for Yakov Iosifovich, but this was done so slowly that only on the 20th the group was thrown behind enemy lines, and had no success... I blame for the fate of Yakov Iosifovich, the chief of artillery of the 7th Corps, General Kazakov, who not only did not show concern for him, but also reproached me every day that I singled out Dzhugashvili as the best commander. In fact, this is what happened. Yakov Iosifovich was one of best shooters in the regiment, and the special attention in my personal life that I paid to him as a comrade was not reflected in the service...
I know nothing more about the further fate of Yakov Iosifovich. July 10 last time I saw Yakov Iosifovich...
I earnestly ask, if you can, to recall me to Moscow, from where I will receive an appointment according to the requirements, since I served all the time in the heavy artillery.
I ask Yulia Isaakovna not to talk about this. I will be very grateful.
I. Sapegin
My address: active army. Western Front, 20th Army, commander of the 308th light artillery regiment.
Simple correspondence is sent to the following address: active army, Western Front, base letters 61 PS 108, 308 paws. Sapegin Ivan Yakovlevich. 5. UIII-41
Address on the envelope: B. Urgent. Moscow, Administration Air Force Red Army to Stalin Vasily Iosifovich.
Active army, Sapegin I. Ya.
Let me comment on some phrases from this letter.
1. “I was his closest friend”– the close friendship of the senior lieutenant with the colonel is not very clear. It remains to be assumed that within the 151st training department there was a special group of senior commanders, which included two colonels (Sapegin and Nikonorov), three majors (Vysokovsky, Zhelanov and Kobrya), as well as Dzhugashvili.
2. “I was at your dacha with Yakov Iosifovich on the day of departure for the front”- this is unlikely, since Svetlana Alliluyeva in the book “Twelve Letters to a Friend” writes: “Yasha went to the front on June 23, along with his battery”, “...we said goodbye to him by phone - it was no longer possible to meet” [p. 151]. If this was the case, then there was simply no time left for goodbye. Either it's about about leaving not for the front.
3. “It is his and my desire to serve together at the front”– if you believe Yakov’s documents from the Art Academy, then Yakov was sent to the 14th Gap on May 19, 1941 (see p. 16 of the Photo Appendix), when they still knew nothing about the war, and Sapegin, judging by the letter, accepted regiment June 17. This bears little resemblance to their simultaneous appointment to the regiment according to the wishes of both.
4. “Yakov Iosifovich was one of the best shooters in the regiment”– Sapegin, judging by the letter, commanded the 14th regiment from June 17 to July 10. Hardly for that a short time one could see who was “the best shooter in the regiment.”
5. For some unknown reason, Sapegin does not indicate who and why recalled him from the regiment, forcing him to leave Yakov unattended, and does not explain who he instructed to take care of him in his absence. Although he lists the guilty in detail, naming positions and surnames, without mincing words: “The division commander, together with the division commander... abandoned... in panic... I blame... the chief of artillery of the corps, General Kazakov...” Having traced the further fates of the commanders named in the letter, I found out that they ended the war like this:
Division commander Colonel I. D. Vasiliev - Colonel General tank troops, Hero of the Soviet Union;
the chief of artillery of the corps, Major General of Artillery V.I. Kazakov, was Colonel General of Artillery, Hero of the Soviet Union, and in 1955 he became Marshal of Artillery.
As for other commanders, the commander of the division, Colonel M. A. Lipovsky, ended the war as a major general of artillery, and the division's political officer, regimental commissar V. G. Gulyaev, became a major general, a member of the Armed Forces of the tank army.
So the incident with the capture of the leader’s son did not leave any trace in their fate and career. This could well have been the case if Yakov never actually fought as part of their corps, division and regiment. Sapegin, as indicated in the documents of the Art Academy, died in battle (it should be noted that in this document he is recorded as Sopegin). By the way, on the Mechanized Corps website it is indicated that at the beginning of the war the commander of the 14th howitzer artillery regiment was Major Koroteev, and Colonel Sapegin is not even mentioned.
6. Since Colonel Sapegin writes that he is the commander of the 308th Light Artillery Regiment, which, as I established, was part of the 144th Infantry Division, it can be assumed that he was transferred to this position after this division arrived from Yaroslavl. According to the website http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/, the 144th Infantry Division “...04–05.07.1941 unloaded near Orsha. On July 15, 1941, the division concentrated on the northern bank of the Dnieper... On July 19, 1941, Rudnya was recaptured (after a volley of Katyushas from the battery of Captain I. A. Flerov), but on the evening of July 20, 1941, it was abandoned again. By July 31, 1941, it retreated with fighting northeast of Smolensk and was surrounded. The remnants of the division, numbering about 440 people, managed to cross to the eastern bank of the Dnieper on 03–04.08.1941.”
These latest dates, August 3–4, 1941, almost coincide with the date of Sapegin’s letter to Vasily Stalin.
Therefore, it is possible that Sapegin’s letter is part of an operation to cover up the true circumstances and date of Yakov Dzhugashvili’s capture.
So, what is characteristic of all the documents listed above?
1. For some reason, none of them sets out consistently, without omissions, as was customary in those years, the life path of Yakov - where he lived, where and when he studied and worked (the years of his move to Moscow from Georgia and graduation from school are not indicated , admission to the workers' faculty and MIIT and their graduation, marriage to Yulia Meltser; Leningrad is not even mentioned, etc.). This suggests that some aspects of his life are hidden for some reason, and the main thing is his place last work and position. Apparently, this information can reveal completely different circumstances of his capture - for example, that he was interned on June 22, 1941 in Germany.
2. The documents about Yakov Dzhugashvili’s studies at the Art Academy are very unclear and contradictory, where he, it seems, studied on special grounds, most likely combining his studies with his main job.
3. There is no clarity about his military service after graduating from the Academy and his participation in combat operations after June 22, 1941.
Letter to father from captivity
There is another very important document in the fate of Jacob - a note to his father:
19.7.41. Dear father! I am a prisoner, healthy, and will soon be sent to one of the officer camps in Germany. The treatment is good. I wish you health. Hi all. Yasha.
Galina Yakovlevna and some researchers of Yakov’s fate considered this note (in general, the only known letter from him, besides the postcard mentioned above) to be a German fake for two reasons. Firstly, because it was first published in German leaflets about the capture of Yakov Dzhugashvili, along with the message that Yakov surrendered voluntarily and that this note was delivered to his father Joseph Stalin “diplomatically.” Secondly, because a facsimile copy of the note came to Galina Yakovlevna along with a copy of the Gestapo “Case No. T-176” about Ya. Dzhugashvili’s time in captivity, which was given to her by the US Assistant Secretary of Defense in 2003. And thirdly, because A comparison carried out by the Russian Ministry of Defense with Yakov's original handwritten documents - a postcard dated 6/26/41 and a notebook with his notes - showed that this is a high-quality fake.
However, there are several considerations that do not allow us to agree with all this.
We must not forget that the original letter of July 19, 1941, which was delivered to Stalin “diplomatically,” was discovered in Stalin’s safe after his death. It is unlikely that he would keep the Gestapo fake in his safe.
I also can’t believe that all the photos of Yakov in captivity were assembled from his pre-war photographs, as Galina claimed in the last years of her life. Where could Yakov get so many of his own photographs at the front? If Yakov was really killed in battle, then someone nearby, knowing whose son he was, simply had to take his documents, including photographs. After all, there was always a guard next to Stalin’s children, even at school in Peaceful time, and here, in a combat situation - and suddenly no one?! There were even publications suggesting that a German agent, or “initiator,” was acting next to Yakov in his regiment, pushing events toward Stalin’s son being captured. Well, did the German intelligence services know better than ours about the appointments and movements of the son of the Soviet leader? It's hard to even imagine. Another even more ridiculous assumption is that the photographs were given to the Germans by Yakov’s wife Julia Meltzer!
Where could the Germans get samples of his handwriting? A fantastic story mentioned by some authors with a broken German shell The headquarters vehicle of the 14th artillery regiment looks very unconvincing. Let’s say that the German special services took possession of the surviving staff papers, let’s even assume that, by coincidence, among the unburnt papers there was some paper with a sample of Yakov’s handwriting (only which one is his only signature in the statement of the financial unit for the only May salary received in June, if he was in early May graduated from the academy and began serving in a howitzer artillery regiment?) and the Germans still got the opportunity to write a letter in his handwriting, but how did they know how correspondence was conducted in Stalin’s family? But Yakov’s note contains only 24 words, but it is a whole letter, and absolutely in the “telegraphic” style of his father.
For comparison, here is a letter from Stalin to his mother, sent in 1935:
9/X. Hello, my mother! You live ten thousand years! My greetings to all old friends and comrades. Kiss. Yours Soso.
Only 18 words, and the previous letter of the same length was sent to her 3.5 months ago, and the next one will be sent in six months! Or his letter to his beloved wife N. S. Alliluyeva:
September 30, 1929 Tatka! Got a letter. Did they give you money? Our weather has improved. I think I'll come in a week. I kiss you deeply. Yours Joseph.
Just 20 words – Joseph Vissarionovich became emotional!
So the style and brevity of the letter dated July 19, 1941 indicate that it is genuine rather than fabricated.
Now let's try to understand its content. The first thing that is surprising: in the letter there is no attempt to justify himself for being captured and to explain under what circumstances, beyond his control, this happened. The authors of numerous publications about him write about them, unlike Yakov (for example, the Germans unexpectedly dropped troops behind our lines, or the battery ran out of shells, or he was seriously wounded and captured by the enemy in an unconscious state, etc.). It doesn't say where this happened. Yakov seems to mean that his father already understands perfectly well how and where this happened.
But the letter talks about Yakov’s upcoming dispatch to an officer’s camp in Germany, which, in my opinion, is a message to his father that his son has been recognized by the Germans as the commander of the Red Army with all the ensuing consequences. And this is not just a statement of fact. If Yakov was indeed detained as a civilian specialist on June 22 on a train traveling through Germany from June 20–21, then this phrase contains very important political information for his father: Hitler does not admit to the world his agreement with Stalin regarding the Great Transport Operation. Perhaps that is why the Germans interrogated Yakov not in Berlin, but in the occupied territory of the USSR near Borisov, where he was urgently taken by plane from Germany. The latter allows us to answer the question why in the first photographs of Yakov in captivity, most of the German officers and soldiers standing nearby are dressed in Luftwaffe uniforms, and not tankers, if, as stated, he was captured by units of the 4th Panzer Division.
"Healthy" And "good treatment"- also not just information from Yakov about himself, but also a request for the same attitude towards German especially important prisoners who found themselves in captivity on the territory of the USSR at the beginning of the war. It is amazing that this request was granted, and such “special” prisoners as Chief Lieutenant Leo Raubal, the favorite nephew of the Fuhrer and brother his beloved woman Eva Raubal, and then Field Marshal Paulus returned home safe and sound after the war, even despite the death of Yakov in German captivity.
“Dear father”, “I wish you health” mean that the son has no claims against his father for what happened, but he should not have any claims against his son, since everything turned out this way.
Touching "Yasha" instead of "Yakov"- a reminder that this letter is being written by a son, with the hope that the all-powerful father will still be able to help him.
And finally, the date: "July 19, 1941." The main thing in it is that the date of June 22, 1941, which would have been a cruel blow for Stalin, is not named. This means that Hitler did not risk revealing to the world their agreement on planned joint actions against the British Empire simultaneously in the west and in the east, although it was extremely beneficial for him to do this now in order to disrupt the formation of the anti-Hitler coalition, which began on July 12, 1941 with the signing in Moscow Soviet-British agreement on joint actions against Germany. After all, a message from Berlin about the capture of Stalin’s son on June 22, 1941 on German territory would inevitably raise the question: “How did he end up there?” – and would become indisputable evidence of the existence of such an agreement.
It is quite possible that Hitler hesitated for a long time, wondering how to tell the world about the circumstances of Jacob’s captivity. After all, the truth about the anti-British transport operation he and Stalin were preparing before June 22, 1941 would have dealt a serious blow to the military alliance between the USSR and England created in July, but it would not have allowed a propaganda campaign to disintegrate the Red Army, attributing Stalin’s son Yakov to voluntary surrender to captivity. On the other hand, if during a mortal battle with Russia, Hitler’s plans for a military alliance with the “Russian Bolsheviks” against the “Anglo-Saxon brothers” had been revealed, this would have undermined his authority in his own country.
It seems that these hesitations of the Fuhrer lasted almost a whole month and became another important reason for the delay in the exchange of embassies of the USSR and Germany.
Exchange of embassies
Amazing thing- one of the most interesting and important episodes of the beginning of the war - the exchange of embassies between the USSR and Germany in July 1941 - remains a mystery to this day. Its exact date and place where this exchange took place have not yet been announced; the Act on its implementation, which must have been drawn up, has not been published. There is not a single photographic evidence, although both sides were interested in confirming the very fact of the exchange and showing in what condition its citizens were transferred to the other side. It is also surprising that, despite the huge number of people participating in this exchange (140 people from the German side and about 10 times more from the Soviet side - according to Soviet data, about 400 people - according to German data), not counting the accompanying people on both sides and intermediaries , through which negotiations took place and the exchange was ensured, there are still no detailed descriptions of it in the memoirs of the participants in this action. I was personally acquainted with two of its participants, who, for some unknown reason, never said a word about the circumstances of its implementation. The fact that the Soviet diplomatic and special services managed to do this hard time achieving an exchange in such a favorable way for the USSR was a great victory; All the more incomprehensible is its complete silence in our country.
Much became clear when the first publications appeared about this important event of the Great Patriotic War. These are the memoirs of the first secretary of the Soviet embassy in Berlin (as well as the personal translator of Stalin and Molotov) V. Berezhkov, as well as the economic adviser of the German embassy in Moscow (a communist and secret agent of Soviet intelligence) Gerhard Kegel.
Berezhkov in his three books (published in 1971, 1982 and 1998) described in separate fragments that period of June - July 1941, when the staff of the Soviet embassy, as well as Soviet representatives and specialists who were at the beginning of the war in Germany, in the countries - its allies and in the countries it occupied, were detained by German intelligence services, and then transported across Europe and exchanged through Turkey for German diplomats working in the USSR.
G. Kegel not only wrote memoirs about how the German embassy, of which he was part, was taken out of Moscow, but also cited the text of the official diary of the embassy, which was kept during this month by Ambassador Schulenburg and the Ambassador's adviser Hilger (sometimes to this work Military attache General Kestring also got involved).
But here's what's interesting. For some unknown reason in his books both of these authors stubbornly do not name the main thing - the date of the exchange of embassies. Moreover, Berezhkov hides it, scattering events across different chapters and even across his different books, and generally tries to do without dates; in the same place where he indicates a date, the event following it is indicated as follows: “In a few days.” Kegel, with German scrupulousness, constantly indicates exact dates, but unexpectedly makes an omission in the events described from July 14 to 23, and the exchange of embassies took place precisely during this period (according to the German diary, on July 13, a train with German diplomats arrived at the border in Leninakan, and on July 24 July - to Berlin).
There is another serious source that allows us to calculate the date of the exchange - the memoirs of G. Hilger about the removal of the German embassy from Moscow in June - July 1941, where he writes: “The trip from Kostroma to Leninakan was much less tiring than the subsequent stop at the border , where the train was under the scorching sun for seven days.” True, on the next page for some reason he talks about “an eight-day stay in Leninakan.” It follows that the exchange was made on July 20–21 (according to the German side).
From the memoirs of Berezhkov and Kegel, it becomes clear how this exchange was made. The Soviet colony of diplomats, various representatives and specialists was brought by two trains to the Bulgarian city of Svilengrad on the Bulgarian-Turkish border, and the German embassy was brought by one train to the Soviet-Turkish border near Leninakan. Both groups were supposed to begin crossing borders at the same time and end up on the territory of neutral Turkey (the first on its European part, and the second on the Asian part).
Berezhkov does not name the date of arrival in Svilengrad of the first train, which included Soviet diplomats - embassy workers (in the publication “Hostages of the Third Reich. Diplomats were the first to enter the war” on the Internet, which refers to “MK”, it is reported that this happened on July 18 1941). Berezhkov writes that the first Soviet train stood in Svilengrad for two days, and the second arrived there a day after the first. Naturally, the Soviet side could not begin the exchange before the second train arrived. This means that the exchange took place on July 19–20 (according to the Soviet side).
From Berezhkov’s memoirs it also follows that on the day of the exchange, Soviet diplomats and other citizens delivered by the first echelon crossed the border and ended up in the Turkish city of Edirne, where they were placed in railway cars.
The next day they traveled by rail to Istanbul, where they received Soviet passports and clothes on the Soviet ship Svaneti. Ambassador Dekanozov with a small group of diplomats, including Berezhkov, drove to Istanbul by car, and in the evening of the next day, having drawn up documents at the Soviet consulate, crossed the Bosphorus by boat and left for the capital of Turkey, Ankara, by night train. After spending a day there, the next morning they flew home on a special plane, landed in Leninakan and, after spending the night in Tbilisi, returned to Moscow. That is, from the moment of crossing the Bulgarian-Turkish border until the return of Dekanozov and his colleagues to Moscow, another 6-7 days passed.
Specific date of exchange, that is, the simultaneous passage of groups of Soviet and German diplomats into Turkish territory, Berezhkov doesn’t name either. However, he either let it slip, or quite deliberately gave historians a tip to establish the date of the exchange, saying that leading employees of the Soviet embassy in Berlin (including him) flew to Moscow on that day, at the end of which German planes began heavy bombing of the capital . In addition, he writes that the very next morning upon his arrival in Moscow, he was called to work at the NKID, despite the fact that it was Sunday. During the period of July 21–30, Moscow was bombed on the nights of July 21, 22, 23, 25, 26 and 30. There was only one Sunday these days - July 27th. This means that Ambassador and Deputy People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs Dekanozov, Advisor Semenov, Military Attache Tupikov, Attaché (aka Deputy Resident foreign intelligence) Korotkov and Berezhkov himself returned to Moscow on July 26. Thus, it can be calculated that the exchange was made July 19 or 20, 1941 This can be confirmed by the fact that the first message from Berlin radio about the capture of Stalin’s son was transmitted July 20, and the first bombing of Moscow took place in the evening 21 July– both of these events could only happen after the exchange.
Documents about the captivity of Jacob and reflections on them
There are two documents about the capture of Ya. Dzhugashvili, which may well be completely fabricated by the German intelligence services, and genuine, but partially distorted in the direction they need. These two documents could have been compiled based on the results of the recording of the first interrogation after Yakov’s identification: one with the full text, the second with a summary. Or they are recordings of two different interrogations. The full text of the interrogation protocol even includes a photo of the first page of this document in German with the date July 18, 1941.
My comparison of the published texts of these two documents (the full text in the collection “Joseph Stalin in the Embrace of the Family” and the short text in A. Kolesnik’s book “Chronicle of the Life of Stalin’s Family”) showed that these are, after all, recordings of two different interrogations. This is evidenced by the following facts: the full text calls communication with Yakov an “interrogation,” and the short text calls it a “conversation”; V short text there is information that is not fully available; information on the same issue in these texts does not coincide:
1. In the interrogation protocol:
– Did you keep in touch with your father before the start of the war?
– What did his father say to him last, saying goodbye to him on June 22? (Question to the translator. – A.O.)
- Go and fight!
In the report of the conversation:
“According to him, he spoke with his father on 16 or
2. In the interrogation protocol:
- Are you speak Doutch?
– I once learned German, about 10 years ago, I remember something, there are familiar words.
In the report of the conversation:
"D. knows English, German and French languages and makes a very intelligent impression.”
3. In the interrogation protocol:
– I have been in the Red Army since 1938, I studied at the artillery academy.
In the report of the conversation:
« Visited Artillery Academy in Moscow, which he graduated in 2.5 years instead of 5 years.”
In the report of the conversation no date specified, however, there is the following clause: “Since no documents were found on the prisoner... he had to sign the attached statement in two copies.” However, its text is missing from this publication.
B. Sopelnyak’s book “Secrets of Smolensk Square” contains the full text of the statement signed by Yakov Dzhugashvili in captivity:
I, the undersigned Yakov Iosifovich Dzhugashvili, was born
March 18, 1908 in the city. Baku, Georgian, I am the eldest son of the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR from his first marriage with Ekaterina Svanidze, Art. lieutenant of the 14th howitzer artillery regiment of the 14th tank division. On July 16, 1941, he was captured by Germans near Liozno and destroyed his documents before being captured.
My father, Joseph Dzhugashvili, also bears the surname Stalin. I hereby declare that the above information is true. July 19, 1941. Signature
So, most likely, this is the same statement referred to in the conversation report. It follows from this that the “conversation” with Yakov took place the day after his interrogation by Holters and Rauschle.
5. In the interrogation protocol:
- ... I wanted to go after graduating from the institute (it doesn’t even say what type of institute it is. - A.O.).
In the report of the conversation:
“I was preparing to become a civil engineer and graduated from an engineering school in Moscow (the inaccuracy of the name of the university can be explained by double translation, because the recording was done in German. - A. O.).
6. The report on the conversation contains information missing from the interrogation protocol:
“Of the three marshals of the Soviet Union - Timoshenko, Voroshilov and Budyonny - he described the first as the most capable.”
"D. showed: ...The whole country believes that the prospects for this year’s harvest are very good.”
"D. confirmed that the destruction of the commanders involved in the Tukhachevsky scam is currently being taken with cruelty.”
“The information about the impact of German leaflets on the Red Army soldiers is interesting. So, for example, it became known from leaflets that fire would not be fired at soldiers who had abandoned their weapons and were moving in white shirts.”
7. And finally, the main difference between these two documents. The protocol does not say anywhere that it was signed by Yakov Dzhugashvili; the report on the conversation ends with his statement with his personal signature. I just wonder why they never provided a photo of this statement, which was almost certainly handwritten?
Analyzing the differences in the protocol and the report, it should be noted that their very presence indicates the reality of the interrogation of Yakov Dzhugashvili rather than its falsification, and that these documents were compiled as a result of two different interrogations.
In my opinion, the information in the report on the conversation is much more specific and, probably, closer to the truth than the information recorded in the interrogation protocol. Yakov’s statement that he studied German 10 years ago (that is, in 1931) looks unconvincing, when it is obvious that until 1936 he continuously studied foreign language at MEMIIT, and from 1938 to 1941 - at the Artillery Academy.
The words “attended the Artillery Academy in Moscow” given in the report describe the real state of affairs much more accurately than the protocol “studied at the academy,” if in fact Yakov studied at its evening department, combining his studies with his main job.
And, what seems most important to me, the report indicates the date of Yakov’s last meeting and conversation with his father, the most reliable of all those indicated in other publications that mention this event - “June 16 or 17,” 1941.
All these differences in the protocol of the interrogation of Y. Dzhugashvili on July 18 and in the recording of the “conversation” with him on July 19 are quite understandable, since they were conducted by representatives of various German services: the interrogation was Major V. Holters and Major V. Rauschle (from the title of his protocol it follows, that the interrogation took place with the commander of the aviation of the 4th Army; P. Lebedev claims that Gensger was the translator); The “conversation” was conducted by unknown employees of the IC/AO(?) department of Army Group Center.
There is another significant passage in the interrogation protocol:
– Have you ever been to Germany?
- No, they promised me, but nothing worked out, it turned out that I was not able to go.
– When was he supposed to go? (Question to the translator. – A. O.)
– I wanted to go after graduating from college.
It is not clear why he should not answer the first question with a clear “no.” Maybe he was still preparing for a trip to Germany, which the Germans knew very well? Or is he referring to the trip during which he was arrested on June 22, 1941?
It must be said that another interrogation of Yakov is known, which was conducted by the personal translator of the commander of Army Group Center, Field Marshal von Bock, Hauptmann W. Strik-Strik-feldt. He mentioned this interrogation in his book “Against Stalin and Against Hitler,” but for some reason he did not name the date of its conduct. In the publication “Jakov Stalin (Jakov Stalin) dated January 12, 2003 on the website “http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php” it is reported that Strik-Strikfeldt conducted his interrogation in the city of Borisov, and a few days later Ya. Dzhugashvili was interrogated by Major Holters. Considering that the interrogation of Holters is dated July 18, we can conclude that the interrogation of Shtrik-Shtrik-feldt took place on July 16 or even earlier and, therefore, was the very first interrogation of Yakov.
Yakov’s answers at this first interrogation boil down to the fact that he does not believe in Germany’s victory, and explains its successes at the initial stage of the war by saying that “the Germans attacked us too early,” and calls this attack “banditry.”
However, according to Shtrik-Shtrikfeldt, Yakov answered the question in the affirmative: “Isn’t Stalin afraid of a national counter-revolution in conditions of war?” Which made it possible to draw the following main conclusion in the report on this interrogation, “which Field Marshal von Bock sent to the Fuhrer Headquarters”: “Stalin, according to Yakov Dzhugashvili, Stalin’s son, is afraid of the Russian national movement. The creation of a Russian government opposed to Stalin could pave the way for an early victory.” All these answers and conclusions are given in the mentioned book by Strik-Strik-feldt. It should be noted that it does not say anything about the tape recording of the interrogation; perhaps this was mentioned in her journal publications.
So, what can we say about the first three interrogations of Ya. Dzhugashvili, which we know about?
The very first interrogation, most likely, was carried out at the headquarters of Army Group Center by specialists in the formation of the Russian liberation movement on July 14–16, 1941.
The second, longest interrogation, the protocol of which contains 150 questions and answers, was conducted with the commander of aviation of the IV Army jointly by information processing specialists of the General Staff of the Air Force and the headquarters of the IV Army on July 18;
The third interrogation, for some reason called a “conversation”, at the end of which Yakov signed a statement that he was Stalin’s son (why was this not demanded of him during the first interrogation?), was conducted in an unknown place and by an unknown person on July 19.
Comparing and analyzing the results of these three interrogations (according to published data), the following can be noted.
It is surprising that the RSHA did not participate in the interrogation of the son of the Soviet leader. However, there are reports that Reichsführer Himmler and Reich Minister for Eastern Affairs, one of the main Nazi ideologists, Rosenberg, met with him, and they talked in private, even without an interpreter, since Rosenberg, who was born and raised in Reval (Tallinn), was fluent in Russian. (By the way, a careful examination and translation from German of the contents of the registration card for prisoner of war Y. Dzhugashvili “Person Identification” (see p. 29 of the Photo Appendix) reveals that it was filled out by the departments “IVA1a” and “IVA1c” of the Gestapo).
It should also be noted a number of oddities recorded in the German interrogation protocol and in the recording of the “conversation” with Yakov Dzhugashvili:
1. To the question: “Does he know about the speech made on the radio by his father?” – Yakov replies: “I hear it for the first time.” And I've never heard of such things. I’ve never heard of it!” At the same time, to the question: “Does he know that even France broke off relations with Soviet Russia?” - he answers: “This was broadcast, I heard about it on the radio.”
This is more than strange. Yakov claims that he knows nothing about Stalin’s radio speech on July 3, 1941, that is, he did not even hear about the leader’s most important speech for the USSR after twelve days of silence since the beginning of the war. And he knows that France (with its capital in Vichy) broke off relations with the USSR (this happened on June 29), not from conversations, but heard on the radio.
This is possible only in one case - if Yakov was already a prisoner at the time of Stalin’s radio speech. Based on the fact that Pétain’s France broke off relations with the USSR, Soviet means mass media They didn’t pay much attention, but German propaganda immediately started shouting, claiming that now all of Europe was against Soviet Russia. There was no reason for the Germans to inform Russian prisoners of war that Stalin had finally spoken on the radio. It follows from this that Yakov was most likely already in captivity at that time. It should be added that when asked about the conclusion of an alliance between the USSR and England, Yakov replied that he heard about it on the radio, although the agreement was signed in Moscow on July 12, and the press reported about it on July 13, when, according to his testimony, he had already been there for about a week surrounded. But the Berlin radio constantly repeated this, since it was precisely the possibility of such a union between the USSR and England that, from June 22, was Hitler’s main explanation to the German people of why Germany attacked the USSR. All this indirectly confirms that Yakov was captured much earlier than July 16th.
2. For some unknown reason (it follows from the protocol that Yakov simply did not give consent to this), unlike the form of filling out documents for Soviet prisoners of war accepted in other cases, Y. Dzhugashvili’s form does not indicate his home address, as well as his name and patronymic and his wife's last name. It is quite possible, however, that her name and address became known to the Germans from letters found on him during his arrest, including from an unsent postcard to his wife found on him.
This is indirectly evidenced by the following question from the interrogation protocol:
“Does he know that we have found letters saying that the friends hope to see each other again this summer, if the proposed excursion to Berlin this autumn does not take place?” In response, Yakov “reads the letter and mutters to himself: “Damn it!” (as recorded in the protocol, which means that, most likely, this letter was found on him. - A.O.). The interrogator continues: “In this letter, which is correspondence between two Russian officers, there is the following phrase: “I am undergoing tests as a junior lieutenant in the reserve and would like to go home in the fall, but this will only be possible if a walk to Berlin. Signed “Victor”, 11.6.41.”
For me, the main topic of the letter I found was: "walk to Berlin"– I immediately recalled Yakov’s words from his last message to his wife Yulia – a postcard dated June 26, 1941: “everything is going well, the journey is quite interesting.”
Everything is easily explained if we assume that both letters are not talking about an attack on Germany, but about traveling through it by rail to the North Sea, because the way there lay only through Berlin! But even if Yakov mentioned this during the interrogation, not a single word on such a topic could get into the protocol.
One cannot help but pay attention to the very strange fate of the interrogation protocols of Yakov Dzhugashvili, which was reported by Valentin Zhilyaev:
“The protocol of the first interrogation of such an important prisoner, around whom the wheels of the Nazi propaganda machine turned, as shown by the analysis of archives in Saxony in 1947, was filed in the files of the 4th Panzer Division of Guderian’s corps. Another interrogation protocol ended up in the Luftwaffe archive, which also raises doubts about their authenticity.”
There is one more fact that cannot be ignored when considering the sequence and dates of the first interrogations of Yakov Dzhugashvili in captivity. A veteran and participant in the Great Patriotic War from its first day, O. Ya. Khotinsky, told me that immediately after the battles for Smolensk during the retreat from July 15 to July 20, 1941, he saw a German leaflet that said that Stalin’s son had surrendered in captivity. I expressed doubt, saying that the date of the surrender of Smolensk was considered to be July 16, and it was on this day that Yakov was captured. The Germans could not immediately, almost on the same day, report this in a leaflet, because it had to be drawn up, agreed with Berlin, printed, and only then dropped from the plane. All this took time, and if the Germans only first reported the capture of Yakov Dzhugashvili on the radio on July 20, there was no way they could have dropped such leaflets earlier.
However, Osip Yakovlevich, proving that he was right, said that when Marshal Eremenko’s book was published, in which July 16 was named as the date of the surrender of Smolensk, he wrote a letter to the marshal and pointed out this inaccuracy. Khotinsky himself is always absolutely accurate and reliable (as he says, “military representative leaven” - he worked for many years in Podlipki as a military representative at the royal company and retired as a colonel). So, most likely, he actually saw a German leaflet with information about Yakov’s capture between July 15 and July 20. His words strongly disagree with the data of numerous publications, which say that the first such leaflets were dropped from aircraft over the location of Soviet troops only August 7, 1941 near Nikopol.
If Khotinsky is right, then it turns out that Yakov found himself in German captivity earlier than indicated in the protocols of his first interrogations. Why did the Germans hold back such a big trump card in the ideological game, since at the height of the “Blitzkrieg” it was beneficial for them to use it as early as possible? The most likely explanation: because they could not name the true date and circumstances of the capture of Yakov Dzhugashvili, because this could reveal the existence of a pre-war agreement between Hitler and Stalin on the Great Transport Operation, and therefore they waited for an event that would allow them to do this.
Such an event was the surrender of Smolensk by the Red Army, after which three Soviet armies were surrounded - the 20th, 16th and 13th, as a result of which more than 180 thousand soldiers and commanders were captured.
Another reason for the publication of the message about the capture of Ya. Dzhugashvili only on July 20 could be the death of a military unit near Smolensk, in which he may never have served, but for some time he was during camp training while studying at MIIT or at the Art Academy. As a result, it became possible to declare him a professional military man and claim that Yakov was captured as a result of a lost battle, and not a treacherous capture on the territory of an allied state on a train in which he was traveling as a civilian specialist and, possibly, under a false name.
It must be admitted that the interrogation protocols of Yakov Dzhugashvili in enemy captivity, published in recent years, produce, despite his refusal to cooperate with the Germans and martyrdom, still a difficult impression, because he talks to the German officers interrogating him quite correctly and answers many of their questions . This is especially unpleasant for people of the older generation, who believe that such interrogations should have taken place as in the famous poem by Sergei Mikhalkov:
There lived three friends and comrades
In the small town of En.
There were three friends and comrades
Captured by the Nazis.They began to interrogate the first one,
They tortured him for a long time.
A tortured comrade died,
But he didn't say anything.They began to interrogate the second one.
The second one could not bear the torture -
He died and didn’t say a word
Like a real hero.The third comrade could not stand it,
The third one loosened his tongue.
– There’s nothing for us to talk about! -
He said before he died.They were buried outside the city,
Near the destroyed walls.
This is how comrades died
In the small town of En.
In my opinion, the reason for the painful impression from reading the interrogation reports of Yakov Dzhugashvili is largely not that What he says, otherwise How He says. He talks to the Germans not as “two-legged animals - fascists” (which they were for our people at that time), but as normal people. Maybe even like with yesterday’s allies: after all, if Yakov was in captivity since June 22, 1941, then he had no idea either about the scale of the disaster experienced by our country, or about the atrocities of the Nazis in the occupied territories. Moreover, at that moment, German propaganda was talking about a forced, preventive strike on the Soviet Union, since the Soviet leadership was preparing to attack Germany.
After all, even if his father, who knew the true state of affairs better than anyone in the country, in the first days of the war (until July 3) still hoped to reduce what had happened to a local conflict and, as some historians, writers and publicists believe, that is why he did not speak for ten days on the radio, what can you demand from a “senior artillery lieutenant”? However, very soon Yakov would come to understand what had happened and what was happening, and in April 1943 he would commit suicide.
Voronezh version of the theme “Capturation of Yakov Dzhugashvili”
Another version of the captivity of Yakov Dzhugashvili unexpectedly arose in recent years, and it is connected with the “Voronezh” theme in his life. This topic is developed by Voronezh resident Pavel Lebedev, claiming that Yakov attended summer training in 1940 in the regional center of the Voronezh region, Borisoglebsk, in the 584th reserve regiment. Lebedev places the main emphasis on Yakov’s personal life. He writes about the beginning of this story as follows: “In 1935, again without his father’s knowledge, Yasha became friends with Olga Golysheva, who came from Uryupinsk to enroll in the capital’s aviation technical school. From this unofficial marriage, a son, Evgeniy, was born on January 10, 1936 in Uryupinsk.” If we subtract nine months from this date, it turns out that the child was conceived in April 1935. But the entrance exams to technical schools and universities are held in the summer, which means that the circumstances of Yakov and Olga’s acquaintance and romance are somehow different, and for some reason they have not yet been clarified.
There is information that Yakov and Olga met not in Moscow, but in the Voronezh region in Uryupinsk, in the apartment of relatives of N. S. Alliluyeva, according to other sources - in Borisoglebsk, where in the summer of 1934 Olga could come to enter a technical school from the neighboring town of Uryupinsk . Yakov, after completing the 4th year of the institute, could be there at summer camps together with the guys from his institute group. Another option for meeting them is possible - in Uryupinsk, if summer camp The 584th Reserve Regiment was located next to him. There is also a version of their acquaintance during a vacation in Sochi in 1935. Having analyzed various information about this, I believe that they could have met a year earlier, when Yakov was undergoing summer camp training from military department MIIT. To continue their acquaintance, they could vacation together in Sochi in June-July 1935. Olga could come to him in Moscow, at least until he met Yulia Bessarab (Meltzer) at the end of the summer of 1935 and certainly before his marriage to Yulia ( that is, until December 1935). It turns out that the relationship between Yakov and Olga could last about a year.
Lebedev connects Yakov’s appearance in Borisoglebsk with his studies at the Artillery Academy:
In 1937, Yakov was immediately accepted into the fourth year of the evening department of the Red Army Artillery Academy. In 1940, Dzhugashvili graduated from his studies with the rank of senior lieutenant. However, the knowledge he received was clearly not enough. Yakov turned to the head of the academy with a request to allow him to study for another year.
The command sent cadet Dzhugashvili to camp training in the Central Black Earth Region. First, he ends up in the 584th reserve regiment, stationed in Borisoglebsk.
Almost everything in the above passage is untrue:
1. Yakov, who lived continuously in Moscow since 1930, could not possibly enter the Art Academy in 1937, since until 1938 it was in Leningrad;
2. The thesis about Yakov’s lack of knowledge after graduating from one of the best military academies (and even taking into account the institute diploma he had already received) and his personal request for “advanced training” in a reserve regiment in the Voronezh wilderness is very doubtful.
3. He completed his studies at the Art Academy not in 1940, but in the spring of 1941 (see pp. 16–17 Photo appendices) - its 1941 graduate, Colonel A. T. Bugrimenko, who is now living, claims that he saw Yakov on May 5, 1941 in the Kremlin at a famous reception in honor of graduates of military academies. Unfortunately, another of his classmates at the Academy has already passed away. Dzerzhinsky, Lieutenant General Irakli Ivanovich Dzhoradze, who repeatedly stated that he studied there with Yakov. In his memoirs, he claims that he was shown Stalin’s son Yakov Dzhugashvili on May 5, 1941 at a reception in the Kremlin in honor of graduates of military academies, and the outstanding military intelligence officer Colonel General Khadzhi Umar Mamsurov.
Lebedev writes that in 1940, having learned about Yakov’s appearance in Borisoglebsk, Olga came to him from Uryupinsk to show him her four-year-old son Zhenya for the first time. And suddenly his second legal wife, Yulia, who already had a wife from him, rushed from Moscow. two year old daughter Galya.
In his publication, Lebedev ends this topic like this: “Yulia found it necessary to complain to Stalin himself. He decided family problem in military terms - in a matter of days, Yakov Iosifovich was transferred further away to the 103rd Howitzer Regiment... On June 23, 1941, the 103rd Howitzer Regiment went to the front and on June 27 arrived near Smolensk. During a telephone conversation with his son, Joseph Vissarionovich said the famous phrase: “Go and fight.”
In Lebedev’s presentation, it turns out that from 1940 until the start of the war, Yakov served in Borisoglebsk - first in the 584th reserve, and then for the above reason and allegedly on the instructions of the leader, he was transferred to the 103rd howitzer artillery regiment.
But there is information that soon after the end Finnish war in the spring of 1940, the 584th reserve artillery regiment was disbanded. Maybe that’s why Lebedev wrote that Yakov was transferred to the 103rd howitzer artillery regiment? And this regiment was part of the 19th Infantry Division. The history of this division indicates that during the Great Patriotic War it was part of the Active Army from July 15, 1941, and was unloaded in Ukraine in the city of Bakhmach on the Southwestern Front, and for the first time entered into battle near Yelnya. This division was never destroyed, went through the entire war and became known as the 19th Voronezh-Shumilin Red Banner of the Order of Suvorov and the Red Banner of Labor.
Therefore, the possibility of Yakov Dzhugashvili being captured on July 16, 1941 as part of the 103rd Howitzer Artillery Regiment of the 19th Infantry Division is completely unrealistic.
The adopted son of the leader - a fellow soldier of his eldest son?
There is another very important evidence about the circumstances of the life and captivity of Yakov Dzhugashvili - the memoirs of Major General Artillery Artem Fedorovich Sergeev. He says that in the first days of the war he was the commander of a platoon (some authors write - batteries) of heavy howitzer guns and even served with Yakov in the same artillery unit (its number, like the number of the formation it was part of, A. Sergeev why - I never named it). Although A. Sergeev claims that the last time he talked with Yakov Dzhugashvili was on June 1, 1941, it is not without interest that the places in which Sergeev’s unit operated in the first days of the war are located literally next to those settlements that are named in publications about military operations and Jacob's captivity, and all this happened almost at the same time.
This is how Sergeev himself writes in his memoirs:
On July 1-2, 1941, I took part in a fierce defensive battle for the city of Borisov and crossing the Berezina River. The artillery battery I commanded suffered heavy losses and ceased to exist. I began to command a rifle company, which covered the regiment's retreat. The company suffered heavy losses, and on July 13, the Germans broke through to the east of us along the Minsk-Moscow highway and parallel roads and closed the ring in the area of the city of Gorki. We found ourselves surrounded. They began to make their way to the East to join their troops, using guerrilla methods. On July 19, in the village of Krivtsy, which is 10–12 kilometers from the city of Gorki, I was unexpectedly, precisely unexpectedly, captured by the Germans. He spent the night in a hastily created field concentration camp near the city of Gorki. Then he was in prison in the city of Orsha. On July 23 I managed to escape. These days were the most difficult test for me and a unique school that I received on Belarusian soil. After escaping I collected small detachment of the officers and sergeants who found themselves surrounded. We started acting like partisan detachment. And having met with Alexei Kanidievich Flegontov, they became his operational reconnaissance detachment. In September I was wounded and transported to the rear.
I gave such a long quotation from the memoirs of A. Sergeev only because it shows the degree of reliability of his story about the circumstances of his capture.
But there is one detail that makes you think. A. Sergeev claims that he was captured on July 19, 1941 - but this is the day of Yakov’s second interrogation! It was this date that dated his note to his father, a facsimile of which was published in German leaflets. And it was on this day that an exchange of Soviet and German diplomats and specialists took place on the Turkish border. The first group of Soviet diplomats finally arrived in Moscow on July 22 (or 26). And it was on July 23 that Sergeev managed to escape from captivity!
So maybe he was detained on June 22 along with his friend Yakov on a train or on a barge in Germany or Poland? And maybe, unlike his friend, he was exchanged with the first group of Soviet diplomats? Was he sent to the partisan detachment after an inspection or even at his personal request? After all, Flegontov’s detachment was not local - Belarusian, but was formed on Big Earth from professional security officers.
There are too many coincidences in the destinies of Artem Sergeev and Yakov Dzhugashvili: closeness to the leader, service in heavy artillery, and even in one unit, the time of departure to the front, the beginning of participation in battles (from June 26 - Artem, from June 27 - Yakov), Moreover, at the front they were almost side by side, etc. Only the ending is different - the first, unlike the second, was freed from captivity on July 23, 1941, in September 1941 he again ended up in the artillery, fought the entire war, became an artillery commander brigades. Graduated in 1950 from the Artillery Academy named after. Dzerzhinsky and later became a general.
It is impossible not to note one more fact related to the topic of the captivity of Yakov Dzhugashvili and which became known only after the death of A.F. Sergeev in January 2008, at least to me, the author of this book. After the war, A.F. Sergeev married the leader’s daughter Communist Party Spain Dolores Ibarruri, and it was with her participation that the preparation of an illegal group of Spanish intelligence officers was organized, which was abandoned under the guise of officers of the Spanish Blue Division fighting on the Eastern Front for the liberation of Yakov Stalin and which died in the German rear.
And one moment. In a film about A.F. Sergeev, shown recently on the Zvezda TV channel, it was reported that in 1950, on his wedding day, the Minister of State Security Abakumov was going to arrest him, like many other Soviet officers who were in German captivity during the war, to carry out verification. But the leader, who was invited to this wedding, presented his adopted son with a “wedding gift” - he crossed out his name from Abakum’s list, although he never came to the wedding.
Yakov listens to his father, the father listens to his son...
Quite by accident, I discovered a photo that had never before been published in the domestic press or historical publications. It was made in the conference room of the Grand Kremlin Palace during Stalin’s speech, and published on July 25, 1941 in the English magazine “War in Illustrations” No. 99 under the title “Warriors of the Valiant Red Army Listen to Stalin” (see p. 12 of the Photo Appendix). The text under the photo was:
AS STALIN SPEAKS, the Red Army soldiers gathered in the Moscow Kremlin lean forward to catch every word. In his famous address to the Soviet people on July 3, Stalin called on the Red Army and Navy, all citizens of the Soviet Union, to defend every inch of Soviet soil and fight to the last drop of blood, to defend cities and villages, showing all their courage and resourcefulness. Proposing a “scorched earth” policy, he stated that “it is necessary to create conditions intolerable for the enemy in the occupied areas.”
It is indicated that the photo was provided by the Planet News agency, although it is quite obvious that this photo was taken by a Soviet photojournalist, because foreigners were not allowed to meet with the military in the Kremlin.
It was not difficult to calculate the date of the meeting in the Kremlin captured in this photo. From the size of the hall and the characteristic architecture, it is clear that it takes place in the Grand Kremlin Palace later than June 1940, as evidenced by the major general's uniform on the man sitting on the far left in the first row (general ranks were introduced in June 1940). However, between June 1940 and July 25, 1941, Stalin spoke to the military in this hall only once - on May 5, 1941, at a meeting with graduates of military academies. The fact that this is the same meeting is also evidenced by the juxtaposition of the senior and junior command staff sitting in the hall. For example, a lieutenant sits in the same row from the general, which is typical for meetings between the country's leadership and academy graduates.
Carefully looking at the Red Army commanders listening to the leader, I unexpectedly recognized Yakov Dzhugashvili in one of them. He sits in one of the first rows, surrounded by artillery commanders, next to him is an artillery major general, who looks like the head of the weapons department of the Art Academy, Blagonravov. Yakov covered his face with his palm, pressing the earpiece to his ear; only his forehead, characteristic hairstyle and nose were visible. But why did the photographer choose this particular shooting point in a hall of many thousands? And why exactly on July 25, 1941, when one of the main topics of the world press was the capture of Stalin’s son, did the English magazine “War in Illustrations” No. 99 devote an entire page to this photograph? Whatever historians say about this photo, I am sure: in this photo, Yakov Dzhugashvili listens to his father’s speech on May 5, 1941.
By the way, a more detailed study of this image led to another unexpected conclusion. Two sleeve squares - gold chevrons on Yakov's tunic - indicate that he is a lieutenant, or major, or division commander (in June 1940 the ranks of general were introduced, but until 1942 the rank of division commander still remained). However, Yakov Dzhugashvili, according to his personal file, was awarded the rank of senior lieutenant on September 11, 1940, which means he should have three, not two, chevron squares on his sleeve. Moreover, lieutenant chevrons had a width of 4 mm, major ones - one 5 mm, the other 10 mm, while division commanders - both 12-15 mm. So what is the rank of the chief's eldest son in this photo?
This question requires a more detailed study, only one thing is clear - judging by the chevrons, Yakov Dzhugashvili was not a senior lieutenant, but a major or lieutenant colonel (at that time they had the same sleeve patches– chevrons).
After all, if he served in the Red Army from the second half of the 20s, and even more so, for example, in the Armored Directorate of his uncle, divisional engineer Pavel Alliluyev, then after the mass arrests of 1937 he could quickly advance. At that time, the majors commanded the regiments, so it is quite possible that the black Emka that Galina Dzhugashvili recalls was not her own, but her father’s personal car. Work in the special workshops of the ZiS could also well be combined with a military rank and continued service in the Red Army, NKPS, NKVD (above I already gave an example with the assignment of Andrei Sverdlov (son of Yakov Sverdlov) immediately after graduating from the Armored Academy to the ZiS, where he soon became the head of the special workshop) .
And with his rapid advancement, Yakov was not so far from division commander, after all, no matter what, but still native son leader. Let us remember the path of Vasily Stalin: at the age of nineteen - lieutenant; at twenty - captain, major; at twenty-one - straight from major to colonel, at twenty-five - major general, at twenty-eight - lieutenant general. And he, twenty years old, was given a quite decent position immediately after finishing his regular aviation school, three months of training at the Air Force Academy and three-month Lipetsk courses: inspector-pilot of the Air Force Directorate, and three months later - head of the Red Army Air Force Inspectorate! And this is without higher education, and Yakov had two. And at the age of 20, and yet Yakov was already 33 years old in 1941.
By the way, in favor high rank Yakov is also evidenced by the offer allegedly made to him in captivity to lead the ROA, the Russian army that was supposed to fight for the Germans. It is unlikely that such a post would be offered to a senior lieutenant.
The leader’s attitude towards his eldest son can also be judged by one very significant coincidence: it was in the very year when, at the insistence of his father, he decided to enter the Artillery Academy, it was immediately transferred from Leningrad to Moscow. If you believe the words of the Chief Marshal of Artillery Voronov, because in Leningrad it was “cut off from the factories, design bureaus and military institutions,” and now could “rely on a powerful team of scientists, who began to more actively help in the creation of new artillery weapons and equipment.” Blagonravov wrote in his memoirs: “In 1937, Stalin ordered the transfer of the Artillery Academy to Moscow. No one could explain what caused this decision.”
Here Blagonravov, to put it mildly, is not entirely frank. In fact, everything was not like that. The move of the Artillery Academy to Moscow from Leningrad was mysterious, lightning fast and carried out during the academic year. On September 1, 1938, the Academy began another academic year in Leningrad, and suddenly on September 13, 1938, the government decided to transfer it to Moscow. By the way, on the same day an order was signed to enroll Y. Dzhugashvili in it. And already on September 29, the academy moved to the capital (for which 1,080 carriages and two large barges were allocated: well, just a forced march during a military operation!), and on October 10, classes began there in Moscow.
And Blagonravov knew the story of the transfer of the academy better than anyone, since, as I already said, it was he who was tasked with finding a place for it in Moscow.
Of course, the following fact may be another coincidence, but it cannot be ignored. The leader's son Yakov had to combine his studies with his main job, and - wow! - “at the end of 1938 - beginning of 1939, a correspondence department was opened at the academy (with command and weapons faculties), and at the end of 1939, an evening department,” reports “History of Russian Artillery.” And further:
As of 1938, the following faculties were trained at the Artillery Academy: command staff<…>to fill positions from division commander and above<…>various workers for the central apparatus of the artillery; engineering and technical staff to occupy the positions of engineers in artillery units, warehouses, training grounds, in institutions and military representatives in factories.
By the way, the book mentioned gives detailed information on the rules for admission to the Artillery Academy named after. Dzerzhinsky at that time. From this information it follows that upon admission (or, rather, enrollment) of Yakov Dzhugashvili at the academy, serious concessions were made to him. In particular, it was violated main principle admission to this academy, which was as follows:
The command faculty accepted command personnel from the battery commander and above, from graduated from an artillery school and served in the army for at least 2–3 years and having a general secondary education, and for all other faculties - command and technical personnel in a position not lower than assistant battery commander and meeting the same requirements as for the command faculty.
But it can be assumed that in relation to Yakov Dzhugashvili, no conditions of admission were violated, just some facts of his biography and work activity have not yet been made public. For example, the fact that he worked for the terms specified in the conditions of admission in the central office of one of the departments of the People's Commissariat of Defense, in military production, in a military representative office at a factory, or even abroad.
About Stalin's special attention to the Artillery Academy named after. Dzerzhinsky during this period is also evidenced by a fragment of his speech on May 5, 1941 at a meeting in the Kremlin, which I quote from V. Karpov’s book “Generalissimo”:
Our military educational institutions lag behind the growth of the Red Army. The speaker, Comrade Smirnov, spoke here and talked about the graduates, about training them in new military experience. I don't agree with him. Our military schools still lag behind the army. They are still studying old technology. They told me that at the artillery academy they train on a three-inch gun. So, comrades artillerymen? (Addresses the artillerymen). I have an acquaintance (Stalin meant his son Yakov. - VC.), who studied at the Artillery Academy. I looked through his notes and discovered that a lot of time was spent studying the gun, which was withdrawn from service in 1916. He believes that such practice is unacceptable.
At this point, the head of the academy, Lieutenant General Sivkov, who was touched by a nerve, made a remark:
– They are also studying modern artillery.
“Please don’t interrupt me,” Stalin snapped sternly. - I know what I'm talking about! I myself read the notes of your academy<…>
Stalin's speech lasted forty minutes. The entire ceremony took one hour. By 19.00 the tables were set in the Georgievsky, Vladimirsky, Small and New halls, as well as in the Faceted Chamber. Two thousand people attended the reception. Many toasts were made, including to Stalin's health. He himself proposed toasts to the leadership and teachers of the academy; for “artillery – the god of modern war”; for tankers - “moving, armor-protected artillery.”
But the culmination, the quintessence of Stalin’s entire speech that day was his third statement. This is what happened. The head of the Artillery Academy, General Sivkov, worried about his unsuccessful remark during Stalin’s speech, decided to correct the situation and offered to drink “to peace, to Stalin’s peace policy, to the creator of this policy, to our great leader and teacher Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin!”
Stalin was very angry - not at the unctuousness of the toast, but because these words reduced the meaning of the entire previous speech to graduates. Stalin said angrily:
“This general didn’t understand anything.” He didn't understand anything! Allow me to make an amendment. Peaceful policies ensured peace in our country. Peaceful politics is a good thing. For the time being, we pursued a line of defense - until we rearmed our army, supplied the army modern means struggle. And now... we need to move from defense to offense... We need to rebuild our education, our propaganda, agitation, our press in an offensive spirit. The Red Army is a modern army, and a modern army is an offensive army.
Another participant in this meeting, Enver Muratov, states in his memoirs that Stalin ended his rebuke to Sivkov with a toast: “I propose to drink to the war, to the offensive in the war, to our victory in this war!”, which was absolutely logical in that situation: Sivkov proposed a toast for peace, and Stalin - for the war.
Stalin talked about the upcoming war, but could not even hint at who this war would be with. All participants in the meeting, who later recalled that he called Germany an enemy, already viewed those events through the prism of the Great Patriotic War. Meanwhile, Ambassador Schulenburg, an experienced politician, soon after this speech reported to Berlin that it was almost pro-German, in any case, showing that in the USSR Stalin was the leader of pro-German politics. I sure that last words Stalin's toast is the most striking confirmation of the first half of my hypothesis of the beginning of the war: the Red Army was being prepared not on the defensive. She was prepared and not to strike German troops, concentrated near the Soviet border, and to transfer through Poland and to Germany to the North Sea. And in general, words about the offensive spirit of the Red Army mean that our army had at least a threefold superiority over the enemy army. So after this, talk about the “superior forces” of the Germans as one of the main reasons for the military failures of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War!
That is why the leader’s speech on May 5, 1941 still remains a secret. That is why the fate of so many commanders who listened with delight to Stalin in the Kremlin hall, including his son Yakov and the head of the academy where he studied, turned out this way and not otherwise. Lieutenant General of Artillery Sivkov, who dared to contradict Stalin twice that day.
In relation to Sivkov, the reaction followed immediately, and in the history of the Artillery Academy. Dzerzhinsky recorded that already “on May 15, its graduate, senior teacher, Major General of Artillery Leonid Aleksandrovich Govorov, was appointed head of the academy.” There are no explanations for the reasons for the removal of General Sivkov from his post and no information about his further service.
I managed to find in the RGASPI in the Politburo collection several lines that radically changed the fate of the outstanding artilleryman and talented organizer Arkady Kuzmich Sivkov, who headed the Artillery Academy. Dzerzhinsky from 1938 to 1941 (which coincides almost day by day with the period of Yakov Dzhugashvili’s studies there):
Very urgent. Politburo decision of May 14, 41 (protocol No. 32, paragraph 13)
– July 22 TASS management brings to the attention of the country's leadership the first information from the German press about the captivity of Yakov Dzhugashvili;
– July 23 based on the results of the battles (some publications specify - for the battles on the Chernogostinka River on July 7, 1941), the regiment command nominated Yakov Dzhugashvili for the Order of the Red Banner of Battle;
– July 24 Yakov is interrogated in a new place (possibly in a concentration camp), re-filling in the prisoner of war card the information that he had already provided the day before.
– « July 25 the Political Department of the 16th Army, a group of army headquarters officers, and then an employee of the Special Counterintelligence Department of the Front joined the search;
– July 29 the documents for awarding Y. Dzhugashvili are sent by the commander of the Western direction, Marshal Timoshenko, to the Main Directorate of Personnel of NPOs;
– 5th of August member of the Military Council Western direction Bulganin sends a telegram to Stalin, informing him that the Military Council of the front left Ya. Dzhugashvili on the list of recipients;
– 5th of August Colonel Sapegin, Yakov's comrade at the Art Academy, sends a letter to the Air Force Main Directorate addressed to Vasily Stalin, in which he writes that he was best friend Yakov from the time of his studies, that he was the commander of the 14th artillery regiment, in which Yakov fought as a battery commander, and also talks about the circumstances of his captivity;
– August 7 The political department of the Northwestern Front sends by special mail to Politburo member A. A. Zhdanov three leaflets dropped from an enemy aircraft. On the leaflet, in addition to the call to surrender, there is a photograph with the caption: “German officers are talking with Yakov Dzhugashvili,” and on the back is a facsimile of his letter to his father from captivity;
– August 9 The award decree, in the draft of which Y. Dzhugashvili was included under No. 99, is published in the Pravda newspaper, but only he was excluded from the list of awardees (which could only be done on Stalin’s personal instructions);
– August 13 in the Nikopol region, the Germans are scattering leaflets with the appeal: “Follow the example of Stalin’s son!”, in which for the first time they indicate complete and accurate data about the place of service of Yakov Dzhugashvili in the Red Army: “battery commander of the 14th howitzer artillery regiment, 14th armored division”, and such a leaflet is delivered to the political department of the 6th Army of the Southern Front;
– August 15 The newspaper of the People's Commissariat of Defense "Red Star" publishes an article by the deputy commander of the Western Front, General Eremenko, in which he tells how the children of heroes heroically fight the Nazi invaders Civil War, and mentioning the sons of Parkhomenko and Chapaev, he writes: “An amazing example of true heroism and devotion to the homeland was shown in the battles near Vitebsk by battery commander Yakov Dzhugashvili. In a fierce battle he last shell did not leave his combat post, destroying the enemy";
– August 16 Order No. 27 of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command is issued, signed by its chairman I.V. Stalin and all members of the Headquarters personally (there was no other case of such a signing of an order from the Headquarters during the entire war!). Point 1 of his order looked like this: “Commanders and political workers who, during battle, tear off their insignia and desert to the rear or surrender to the enemy, are considered malicious deserters, whose families are subject to arrest as families of deserters who violated the oath and betrayed their homeland. Oblige all higher commanders and commissars to shoot on the spot such deserters from the command staff.”
– Autumn 1941 Yakov's wife Julia was arrested. Unfortunately, such an inaccurate date for this event was given by Svetlana Alliluyeva in her first book of memoirs and then was never specified by anyone. I believe that the date of her arrest is not given for one single reason - it most likely coincides with the date of Stalin’s acquaintance in July 1941 with the first German leaflet in which it was printed photo of Yakov in leather jacket , or with the date of his receipt of Yakov’s note or film about Yakov’s time in captivity, where he was filmed wearing this jacket. I am also sure that the date of Yulia Meltzer’s release from solitary confinement is not named, since it exactly coincides with the date Stalin received the message about the death of his son - in the spring of 1943.
It is probably appropriate here to talk in more detail about the fate of Yulia Meltser-Dzhugashvili and the fatal role that the mentioned leather jacket played in it.
Yulia Meltzer was arrested in Moscow in 1941 on suspicion of passing information to the Germans, including home photographs of Yakov, which they allegedly used to create photo fakes in leaflets. However, I consider this completely unrealistic, since in 1941 it was clear to all Yakov’s relatives that the texts of these leaflets were fake, and the photos of Yakov in them were real, as Svetlana Alliluyeva writes about in her first book. A much more real reason for Yulia’s arrest is indicated by an episode from Galina Dzhugashvili’s book “Stalin’s Granddaughter,” where she cites her mother’s memories: “The interrogations revolved around leather jacket. On the leaflets that the Germans dropped there was a photograph: German officers sitting at a table, holding mugs of beer. A little to the side is dad... he's not wearing a new leather jacket... he's wearing worn civilian clothes. Such things could not have been with him... Perhaps, and even most likely, among those who looked at it there was a person who knew him closely... he simply recognized the jacket in which he saw dad hunting, fishing, in Zubalovo, where he usually and wore it. There was also a photograph of him in this very jacket. How could it have migrated from the family album into the hands of the author or authors of the leaflets? Ma didn’t know what to answer..."
I am sure that those interrogating Yulia Meltzer were not talking about the photo, but about the real jacket, because they understood that the photo of Yakov in this jacket in the leaflet was real. I understood this and "a person who knew him closely"- the only one who could give the command to arrest and imprison his daughter-in-law for a year and a half (before receiving the news of Yakov’s death), depriving his own three-year-old granddaughter of his mother during this time, was Stalin himself. In my opinion, Julia most likely gave the jacket to her husband at the front, along with a penknife and a watch with a stopwatch, which he asked for in a postcard, through “front-line comrade Yakov” who came to her apartment on Granovsky Street, but in reality - a German agent abandoned in Moscow, which she, naturally, did not suspect. And this whole operation of the German special services could only begin with one thing - with the detention of Yakov on June 22, 1941, on a train, or on a barge, or in a military unit moving under its own power on German territory. During his arrest, an unsent postcard addressed to his wife Yulia was seized, the date was corrected from June 21st to June 26th, and it was sent through an agent from Vyazma (where he simply put it in the mailbox).
Another option for the jacket to appear on Yakov is also possible: he left for Germany by train on June 20–21, 1941 in civilian clothes, and it is possible that under someone else’s name, and the jacket was in his suitcase. Then, Yulia’s interrogation regarding the appearance of her husband’s jacket at the front simply concealed the very fact of his internment on German territory on June 22, 1941. This is also supported by the question from the interrogation protocol: “He is wearing relatively good clothes. Did he take this civilian clothing with him or did he get it somewhere? After all, the jacket he’s wearing now is of relatively good quality.” And Yakov’s answer is too long, confusing and unconvincing. Here are its fragments: “...This one? No, it’s not mine, it’s yours... On the 16th at about 7 p.m., no, later, I think at 12, your troops surrounded Lyasnovo... It was starting to get light... Everyone started changing clothes... I exchanged trousers and a shirt from one peasant... Yes, that’s it These are German things, they were given to me by you, boots, trousers. I gave everything to exchange it. I was in peasant clothes... I gave military clothing and received a peasant’s..." If Yakov was interned on a train in decent civilian clothes, this should have been explained somehow, which was done in the protocol. If he was captured in a combat area, dressed in civilian clothes, then this also had to be explained, and for this, his clothes had to be replaced with decent ones, in which Stalin’s son could be shown.
And one last thing. Having carefully examined several photographs of Yakov in captivity in this jacket, I realized that these were not photographs, but printed film frames, as evidenced by the vertical scratch lines on the film emulsion, inevitable after watching it multiple times. Moreover, in most of the photographs of Yakov in captivity, where he is wearing this jacket, there are vertical scratch lines. Perhaps Stalin was even given a film confirming that his son was indeed in captivity, and this could have caused him both rage and increased interest in the old leather jacket. Why was all this done?
I believe that the main task of the Germans at that time was to arouse Yakov’s hatred of his father, to instill in him that Stalin was guilty not only of the capture of hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers and commanders, but also of his personal tragedy (while the leader considers them not prisoners, but traitors). The agent’s visit to Yulia (the Germans let Stalin know about him by printing photographs of Yakov in this jacket in their leaflets, or perhaps by transmitting film footage of his interrogation along with his son’s note) led to Yulia’s arrest, and the Germans immediately informed Yakov about this. Stalin was shocked that a German agent had visited his son’s house.
This chain of events in itself is quite eloquent, since day after day it shows how the theme “The son of the Soviet leader in captivity” developed in the first months of the war in connection with a number of other important events this period. However, it is worth especially noting one important detail - the cruel order of Headquarters No. 270 was born in the process of Stalin receiving information about the capture of his eldest son and about the actions of German propaganda in this regard. And the first message from the Germans that the son of the Soviet leader was in captivity most likely appeared as an immediate response from Goebbels’s propaganda to the strict decree of the State Defense Committee on the personal responsibility of commanders of all ranks, signed personally by Stalin and ending with an instruction to all commanders and political workers, “so that they did not allow alarmists, cowards and disorganizers to discredit the great banner of the Red Army and dealt with them as oathbreakers and traitors to the Motherland.”
And although Yakov was not mentioned in order No. 270, other people were named as negative examples in other orders and decrees signed by Stalin during this difficult time (mainly defeated, and later the Soviet generals who were captured), this entire order became the leader’s public response to his son’s letter. And its essence is simple: anyone who is captured for any reason is a traitor, regardless of the circumstances under which this happened.
With this answer, Stalin tried to kill two birds with one stone: to stop the mass surrender and eliminate the witnesses of the Great Transport Operation, because they should have been captured in the first place. Therefore, the order proposed that “those who surrender to the enemy” be shot on the spot without any proceedings. But with this he also killed his son - such an order could push Yakov Dzhugashvili to suicide.
And, remembering with respect and compassion the tragedy of the father, who, for the sake of victory over the enemy, did not spare his son and did not exchange “a soldier for a marshal,” let us not forget that Yakov Dzhugashvili and another 3.8 million Soviet soldiers and commanders found themselves in 1941 in captivity not of his own free will, and not even of his own fault, but because of the monstrous strategic failure of the leader’s pre-war secret policy.
The life of Stalin's eldest son Yakov Dzhugashvili has been poorly studied to this day; there are many contradictory facts and “blank spots” in it. Historians argue about both Jacob’s captivity and his relationship with his father.
Birth
In the official biography of Yakov Dzhugashvili, 1907 is named as the year of birth. The place where the eldest son was born was the Georgian village of Badzi. Some documents, including the camp interrogation protocols, indicate a different year of birth – 1908 (the same year was indicated in Yakov Dzhugashvili’s passport) and a different place of birth – Baku.
The same place of birth is indicated in the autobiography written by Yakov on June 11, 1939. After the death of his mother, Ekaterina Svanidze, Yakov was raised in the house of her relatives. Daughter sister The mother explained the confusion in the date of birth this way: in 1908 the boy was baptized - this year he himself and many biographers considered the date of his birth.
Son
On January 10, 1936, Yakov Iosifovich had a son, Evgeniy. His mother was Olga Golysheva, Yakov’s common-law wife, whom Stalin’s son met in the early 1930s. At the age of two, Evgeny Golyshev, allegedly thanks to the efforts of his father, who, however, never saw his son, received a new surname - Dzhugashvili.
Yakov’s daughter from his third marriage, Galina, spoke extremely categorically about her “brother,” referring to her father. He was sure that “he does not and cannot have any son.” Galina claimed that her mother, Yulia Meltzer, supported the woman financially out of fear that the story would reach Stalin. This money, in her opinion, could have been mistaken for alimony from her father, which helped register Evgeniy under the name Dzhugashvili.
Father
There is an opinion that Stalin was cold in his relationship with his eldest son. Their relationship was indeed not simple. It is known that Stalin did not approve of the first marriage of his 18-year-old son, and compared Yakov’s unsuccessful attempt to take his own life with the act of a hooligan and blackmailer, ordering him to convey that his son could “from now on live where he wants and with whom he wants.”
But the most striking “proof” of Stalin’s dislike for his son is considered to be the famous “I’m not changing a soldier for a field marshal!”, said according to legend in response to an offer to save his captive son. Meanwhile, there are a number of facts confirming the father’s care for his son: from material support and living in the same apartment to a donated “emka” and the provision of a separate apartment after his marriage to Yulia Meltser.
Studies
The fact that Yakov studied at the Dzerzhinsky Artillery Academy is undeniable. Only the details of this stage of the biography of Stalin’s son are different. For example, Yakov’s sister writes that he entered the Academy in 1935, when he arrived in Moscow.
If we proceed from the fact that the Academy was transferred to Moscow from Leningrad only in 1938, more convincing is the information of Stalin’s adopted son Artem Sergeev, who said that Yakov entered the academy in 1938 “immediately either in the 3rd or 4th year "
A number of researchers draw attention to the fact that not a single photograph has been published in which Yakov was captured in military uniform and in the company of fellow students, just as there is not a single recorded memory of him from his comrades who studied with him. The only photograph of Stalin's son in a lieutenant's uniform was presumably taken on May 10, 1941, shortly before being sent to the front.
Front
Yakov Dzhugashvili, as an artillery commander, could have been sent to the front according to various sources in the period from June 22 to June 26 - the exact date is still unknown. During the battles, the 14th Tank Division and its 14th Artillery Regiment, one of whose batteries was commanded by Yakov Dzhugashvili, inflicted significant damage on the enemy. For the battle of Senno, Yakov Dzhugashvili was nominated for the Order of the Red Banner, but for some reason his name, number 99, was deleted from the Decree on the award (according to one version, on the personal instructions of Stalin).
Captivity
In July 1941, separate units of the 20th Army were surrounded. On July 8, while trying to escape the encirclement, Yakov Dzhugashvili disappeared, and, as follows from A. Rumyantsev’s report, they stopped looking for him on July 25.
According to the widespread version, Stalin’s son was captured, where he died two years later. However, his daughter Galina stated that the story of her father’s captivity was played out by the German intelligence services. Widely circulated leaflets with the image of Stalin’s son, who surrendered, according to the Nazis’ plan, were supposed to demoralize Russian soldiers.
The version that Yakov did not surrender, but died in battle, was also supported by Artem Sergeev, recalling that there was not a single reliable document confirming the fact that Stalin’s son was in captivity.
In 2002, the Ministry of Defense Forensics Center confirmed that the photographs posted on the German leaflet were falsified. It was also proven that the letter allegedly written by the captive Yakov to his father was another fake. In particular, Valentin Zhilyaev in his article “Yakov Stalin was not captured” proves the version that the role of Stalin’s captive son was played by another person.
Death
If we still agree that Yakov was in captivity, then according to one version, during a walk on April 14, 1943, he threw himself onto the barbed wire, after which a sentry named Khafrich fired; the bullet hit the head. But why shoot at an already dead prisoner of war, who died instantly from an electrical discharge?
The conclusion of the forensic expert of the SS division testifies that death was due to “destruction of the lower part of the brain” from a shot in the head, that is, not from an electrical discharge. According to the version based on the testimony of the commandant of the Jägerdorf concentration camp, Lieutenant Zelinger, Yakov Stalin died in the infirmary at the camp from a serious illness. Another question is often asked: did Yakov really not have the opportunity to commit suicide during his two years of captivity? Some researchers explain Yakov’s “indecisiveness” by the hope of liberation, which he harbored until he learned about his father’s words. By official version, the Germans cremated the body of “Stalin’s son”, and soon sent the ashes to their security department.
The biography of Stalin's eldest son Yakov Dzhugashvili is shrouded in a whole heap of myths and contradictions. Various historians give mutually exclusive information. There are several versions of what happened to him in the tragic summer of 1941. Among the many hypotheses about the fate of Stalin’s eldest son, for example, there is one according to which he became the father of the dictator of Iraq.
However, most
historians agree that
that he died in German captivity, maintaining his dignity in the most difficult moments.
The first-born of revolutionary Joseph Dzhugashvili and his wife, Ekaterina Svanidze, was born in the Georgian village of Badzi on March 18, 1907. The boy was only six months old when his mother died of tuberculosis. Joseph, who madly loved his Kato, rushed into the grave after the coffin at the funeral. For the future leader, the death of his wife was a great shock.
Stalin's revolutionary activities, associated with arrests and exiles, did not allow him to raise his son. Yakov Dzhugashvili grew up among the relatives of his mother, Ekaterina Svanidze, until at the age of 14 he moved to his father in Moscow. Stalin at this time was married to Nadezhda Alliluyeva, who began to take care of him.
Yakov took after his father in character, but mutual understanding did not develop between them. A truly serious conflict between father and son occurred in 1925, when a graduate of the electrical engineering school, Yakov Dzhugashvili, married 16-year-old Zoya Gunina.
Yakov on vacation in the late 30s
Stalin did not approve of this marriage, and then the hot-tempered young man tried to shoot himself. Fortunately, Yakov survived, but he completely lost his father’s respect. And in 1928, Stalin sent his wife a letter with the following content: “Tell Yasha from me that he acted like a hooligan and a blackmailer, with whom I have and cannot have anything else in common. Let him live where he wants and with whom he wants.”
Alas, Yakov’s marriage to Zoya Gunina, for whom he almost committed suicide, did not last long. Having fallen in love with the ballerina Julia Meltzer, he married her in 1936. This was Julia's third marriage. In February 1938, they had a daughter, who was named Galina.
Yulia Meltser and Yakov Dzhugashvili.
Yulia was ill for a long time after prison and died in 1968.
In June 1941, for Yakov Dzhugashvili there was no question of what he should do. An artillery officer, he went to the front. Farewell to his father, as far as can be judged from the scant evidence of those years, was quite dry. Stalin briefly said to Yakov: “Go and fight!”
With Stalin's security chief Nikolai Vlasek
Alas, the war for Senior Lieutenant Yakov Dzhugashvili, commander of the 6th artillery battery of the 14th howitzer regiment of the 14th tank division, was fleeting. Although on July 7 he distinguished himself in a battle near the Belarusian city of Senno, his unit was surrounded a few days later, and on July 16, 1941, near the city of Liozno, senior lieutenant Dzhugashvili went missing.
The search for Yakov continued for more than a week, but did not bring any results. And after some time, it became known from German leaflets that he was captured. At the same time, German propaganda claimed that he allegedly surrendered voluntarily.
German leaflet
Documents telling what exactly happened to him in captivity were discovered in German archives at the very end of the war. It follows from them that, taken prisoner on July 16, 1941, Senior Lieutenant Dzhugashvili behaved with dignity during interrogations, did not cooperate with the Germans, and had no doubts about the victory over fascism.
The Germans transferred Yakov Dzhugashvili from one concentration camp to another. At first they tried to persuade Yakov to cooperate with persuasion, but they encountered a sharp refusal. Then, having been handed over to the Gestapo, they used methods of intimidation against Stalin’s son. However, this did not bring the Nazis the desired result.
In the end, Yakov Dzhugashvili was sent to a special camp “A” at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where the Nazis kept relatives of high-ranking figures in the anti-Hitler coalition. In the camp, Yakov kept himself quite withdrawn, not hiding his contempt for the administration.
On April 14, 1943, Yakov Dzhugashvili suddenly rushed against the camp wire fences through which high voltage current passed. At the same time, the sentry opened fire to kill. Yakov Dzhugashvili died on the spot.
There is no exact information about the reasons for this action and, obviously, there never will be. One of the prisoners who were with Yakov claimed that he was in a depressed state after a Berlin radio broadcast in which Stalin was quoted as saying that he “does not have any son Yakov.”
Perhaps that radio broadcast really was the last straw, after which Yakov Dzhugashvili decided to commit suicide.
Jacob's body was cremated and the ashes were sent to Berlin along with a report on the incident.
Svetlana Stalina in her father's arms, 1935.
The most famous military story associated with Yakov Dzhugashvili dates back to 1943. It tells how the Nazis, through the Red Cross, offered to exchange Yakov Dzhugashvili for Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, captured at Stalingrad. But Stalin allegedly said: “I am not exchanging soldiers for field marshals!”
Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva also writes in her memoirs that such a proposal existed.
The captivity of Yakov Dzhugashvili directly affected the fate of his wife, Yulia Meltzer, who was arrested and spent a year and a half in prison. However, when it became clear that Yakov was not collaborating with the Nazis, Yakov’s wife was released.
According to the recollections of Yakov’s daughter, Galina Dzhugashvili, after the release of her mother, Stalin took care of them until his death, treating his granddaughter with special tenderness. The leader believed that Galya was very similar to Yakov.
By the way, Galya and Stalin’s adopted son Artem Sergeev adhere to a completely different version regarding the fate of Yakov Dzhugashvili. They believe that photographs of Yakov Dzhugashvili in German captivity are fabricated, since he died in battle on July 16, 1941, and the person in German captivity is his double.
Galina Dzhugashvili. Until the end of her life, she received help from a certain Chinese company and died in 2007 from a heart attack.
There are many versions that Yakov Dzhugashvili allegedly survived captivity and after the war decided not to return to the USSR. The most enchanting hypothesis can be considered that Jacob’s post-war wanderings ended in Iraq, where he started a family and became the father of... Saddam Hussein.
In its favor, photographs of the Iraqi dictator are cited, “like two peas in a pod,” similar to “grandfather,” Joseph Stalin.
This hypothesis turned out to be quite tenacious, although it is destroyed by the fact that Saddam Hussein was born in 1937, when Yakov Dzhugashvili was living quietly in the Soviet Union.
Despite all the contradictions, historians agree on one thing - Yakov Dzhugashvili was not a traitor to the Motherland and a German accomplice, he did not sully his name with treason, for which he deserves respect.
On October 27, 1977, by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Senior Lieutenant Yakov Iosifovich Dzhugashvili was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, for his steadfastness in the fight against the Nazi invaders and courageous behavior in captivity.
The name of Yakov Dzhugashvili is included on memorial plaques with the names of graduates of the two higher educational institutions in which he studied - the Moscow Institute of Transport Engineers and the Dzerzhinsky Artillery Academy - who died in the war.
Name: Yakov Dzhugashvili
Age: 36 years
Place of Birth: Badji, Kutaisi province
A place of death: Sachsenhausen
Activity: Stalin's son who died in German captivity
Family status: was married
Yakov Dzhugashvili - biography
In August 1941, Stalin was delivered from the front a German leaflet with a photograph of a young Caucasian man. “Dear father! I am a prisoner, healthy, and will soon be sent to one of the officer camps in Germany. The treatment is good. I wish you good health, greetings to everyone, Yakov,” it was written on the back.
The life of Joseph Stalin was full of tragic pages. One of them was the death of his first, most beloved wife, Catherine. After her death, Koba plunged headlong into revolutionary activities. There was no longer a place for his newborn son Yakov in his new life...
Stalin remembered his firstborn when he became a member of the Revolutionary Military Council. In his new marriage with Nadezhda Alliluyeva, a son, Vasily, was born. In addition, Koba decided to adopt the newborn son of a deceased comrade. Stalin simply could not help but take his natural child into the family.
14-year-old Yakov came to Moscow from the Georgian village of Badzhi. He did not understand Russian. His stepmother, 20-year-old Nadezhda Alliluyeva, helped the teenager get used to the new conditions. From the memoirs of Boris Bazhenov, personal secretary Stalin: “For some reason he was never called anything other than Yashka. He was a very reserved, silent and secretive young man; he was four years younger than me.
He looked downtrodden. One of his peculiarities was striking, which can be called nervous deafness. He was always immersed in his own secret inner experiences. You could turn to him and talk - he didn’t hear you, he looked absent. Then he suddenly reacted to what was being said to him, came to his senses and heard everything well.”
Yakov went to a regular school on Arbat, where at first, of course, he didn’t understand anything in class. The relationship with my father also did not work out. Yakov’s character was not easy, and his youthful maximalism was doing its job. Irritated by his son’s angularity and sometimes obstinacy, Joseph Vissarionovich disparagingly called him a wolf cub.
After graduating from school, the young man entered the electrical engineering school in Sokolniki. But he couldn’t forget his classmate Zoya Gunina and started dating her. After completing his studies in electrical engineering, 18-year-old Yakov came to his father for a blessing for marriage. He turned out to be adamant: “No!” In despair, the son decided to commit suicide. As Svetlana Alliluyeva recalled, “Yasha shot himself in our kitchen, next to his small room, at night.
The bullet went right through, but he was sick for a long time.” Yakov spent three months in the hospital with the wound. And when he came out, the father just grinned: “Ha, I didn’t hit it!” And this was almost a greater insult than the refusal to recognize his marriage. Like, you can’t even shoot yourself, let alone have a family.
In his own way, my father was right. In fact, he was still almost a child, Yakov was completely dependent on his parents and would not be able to fully provide for his family. But love blinded him, and he went against Stalin's will. A compassionate stepmother helped the young people avoid their father’s wrath: she took Yakov and Zoya to her relatives in Leningrad.
Zoya entered the Mining Institute, and Yakov graduated from electrician courses and got a job as an assistant to the electrician on duty at Lenenergo. He didn’t tell anyone that he was the son of Stalin himself, he didn’t even give his middle name. He usually answered phone calls: “Yakov Zhuk is listening!”
The young family had difficulty making ends meet. His father called Yakov several times, demanding that he return to Moscow, but he didn’t seem to hear... And three years later, Joseph Vissarionovich wrote to his wife: “Tell Yasha from me that he acted like a hooligan and a blackmailer, with whom I have there is and cannot be anything more in common. Let him live where he wants and with whomever he wants.”
In 1929, Zoya gave birth to a daughter. But when the girl was eight months old, she fell ill with pneumonia and died. The death of the baby destroyed the marriage of Yakov and Zoya - they soon separated...
By allowing the prodigal son to be convinced that he was right, Stalin changed his anger to mercy. Yakov returned to Moscow and entered the Moscow Institute of Transport Engineers. Already before his graduation, in 1935, he met 25-year-old Olga Golysheva. Love flared again in the ardent heart of the Georgian. This time, his father did not object to his novel: Yakov was allocated a two-room apartment and even a service “Emka”. But the relationship didn't work out. In the heat of a quarrel, pregnant Olga packed her bags and went home to Uryupinsk, where she gave birth to her son Evgeniy.
Yakov quickly found a replacement for her. In a restaurant, he noticed a beautiful brunette sitting with a man. He came up and asked me to dance. Her husband, the assistant chief of the NKVD for the Moscow region, answered instead. He answered rudely, and Dzhugashvili hit him. However, the fight did not prevent a new one from flaring up. strong feeling between Yakov and a beautiful stranger.
She turned out to be the ballerina Julia (Judith) Meltzer. Stalin was not happy with his Jewish daughter-in-law, but the obstinate son again acted in his own way. Three years later, the couple had a daughter, Galina.
The question of “to go to the front or not” did not arise before Yakov. In parting, the father said dryly: “Go and fight!” After three weeks of the war, the army where Yakov fought was surrounded, but put up fierce resistance. For heroism shown in the battle of Senno (Vitebsk region), Yakov was presented with a reward. He did not have time to receive it - he ended up in German captivity.
On July 16, 1941, Berlin radio reported “stunning news”: “On July 16, near Liozno, German soldiers of the motorized corps of General Schmidt captured the son of dictator Stalin, senior lieutenant Yakov Dzhugashvili...” Almost immediately, the Germans began using Jacob's photographs for propaganda. In August, leaflets with a photograph of Yakov Dzhugashvili surrounded by Wehrmacht officers rained down on the Soviet trenches. The text on them called for, following the example of Stalin’s son, to surrender. The worst thing is that the leader himself did not know how true this information was. “Just in case,” the NKVD arrested Yakov’s wife.
Stalin learned that his son had behaved with dignity only in the spring of 1943. Through the Red Cross, the Germans offered to exchange Yakov for Field Marshal Paulus, captured at Stalingrad. Stalin's answer went down in history: “I am not changing a soldier for a field marshal.”
Meanwhile, after several concentration camps, Yakov, unpromising from the point of view of recruitment, was placed in Sachsenhausen. In the archives of the memorial of this concentration camp there is a document in which an eyewitness to those events reports: “Yakov Dzhugashvili constantly felt the hopelessness of his situation. He often fell into depression, refused to eat, and was especially influenced by Stalin’s statement, repeatedly broadcast on the camp radio, that “we have no prisoners of war - we have traitors to the Motherland.” On the evening of April 14, 1943, Yakov refused to enter the barracks and rushed to the barbed wire fence. The sentry immediately fired. Death came instantly. “Killed while trying to escape,” the camp authorities reported. The prisoner's body was burned in the camp crematorium...
In March 1945, Marshal Zhukov cautiously asked Stalin about Yakov. He didn’t answer right away, gathering his thoughts. But he didn’t leave the conversation: “Yakov won’t get out of captivity. The Nazis will shoot him.” It was not yet known that the prisoner had been dead for a long time.
Stalin learned the whole truth about the death of his son only after the Victory. He finally allowed himself to show parental feelings. He did not interfere with the perpetuation of Yasha’s memory, and his wife and daughter were treated kindly by the authorities. It is a pity that reconciliation between father and son never occurred during their lifetime.
Perhaps, in the history of our country there are so many great odious personalities that it can be difficult to understand the intricacies of the myths and legends surrounding them. An ideal example from the recent past is Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. Many believe that he was an extremely insensitive and callous person. Even his son, Yakov Dzhugashvili, died in a German concentration camp. His father, as many historians claim, did nothing to save him. Is it really?
General information
More than 70 years ago, on April 14, 1943, Stalin’s eldest son died in a concentration camp. It is known that shortly before that he refused to exchange his son for Field Marshal Paulus. There is a well-known phrase by Joseph Vissarionovich, which amazed the whole world at that time: “I don’t exchange soldiers for generals!” But after the war, foreign media widely circulated rumors that Stalin nevertheless saved his son and transported him to America. Among Western researchers and domestic liberals, there was a rumor that there was some kind of “diplomatic mission” of Yakov Dzhugashvili.
Allegedly, he was captured for a reason, but to establish contacts with the German commanders-in-chief. A sort of “Soviet Hess”. However, this version does not stand up to criticism: in this case, it would have been easier to throw Yakov directly into the German rear, rather than engage in dubious manipulations with his captivity. Moreover, what were the treaties with the Germans in 1941? They were uncontrollably rushing towards Moscow, and it seemed to everyone that the USSR would fall before winter. Why should they conduct any negotiations? So the truthfulness of such rumors is close to zero.
How did Yakov get captured?
Yakov Dzhugashvili, who was 34 years old at that time, was captured by the Germans at the very beginning of the war, on July 16, 1941. This happened during the confusion that reigned during the retreat from Vitebsk. At that time, Yakov was a senior lieutenant who had barely managed to graduate from the artillery academy, who received the only parting word from his father: “Go and fight.” He served in the 14th Tank Regiment, commanding an artillery battery of anti-tank guns. He, like hundreds of other fighters, was missing after the lost battle. At that time he was listed as missing.
But a few days later, the fascists presented an extremely unpleasant surprise, scattering leaflets over Soviet territory depicting Yakov Dzhugashvili in captivity. The Germans had excellent propagandists: “Stalin’s son, like thousands of your soldiers, surrendered to the Wehrmacht troops. That’s why they feel great, they are fed and full.” This was an overt hint at mass surrender: “Soviet soldiers, why do you need to die, if even the son of your top boss has already surrendered himself...?”
Unknown pages of history
After he saw the ill-fated leaflet, Stalin said: “I don’t have a son.” What did he mean? Maybe he was suggesting misinformation? Or did he decide not to have anything to do with the traitor? Until now, nothing is known about this. But we have recorded documents of Yakov’s interrogations. Contrary to the widespread “opinions of experts” about the betrayal of Stalin’s son, there is nothing compromising in them: the younger Dzhugashvili behaved quite decently during interrogations and did not reveal any military secrets.
In general, at that time Yakov Dzhugashvili really could not know any serious secrets, since his father did not tell him anything like that... What could an ordinary lieutenant say about plans for the global movement of our troops? It is known in which concentration camp Yakov Dzhugashvili was kept. First, he and several especially valuable prisoners were kept in Hammelburg, then Lübeck, and only then transferred to Sachsenhausen. One can imagine how seriously the protection of such a “bird” was taken. Hitler intended to play this “trump card” in the event that one of his especially valuable generals was captured by the USSR.
Such an opportunity presented itself to them in the winter of 1942-43. After the grandiose defeat at Stalingrad, when not only Paulus, but also other high-ranking Wehrmacht officers fell into the hands of the Soviet command, Hitler decided to bargain. It is now believed that he tried to appeal to Stalin through the Red Cross. The refusal probably surprised him. Be that as it may, Yakov Iosifovich Dzhugashvili remained in captivity.
Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s daughter, subsequently recalled this time in her memoirs. In her book there are the following lines: “Father came home late at night and said that the Germans had offered to exchange Yasha for one of their own. He was angry then: “I won’t bargain! War is always a difficult matter.” Just a couple of months after this conversation, Yakov Iosifovich Dzhugashvili died. There is an opinion that Stalin could not stand his eldest son, considered him a rare loser and a neurasthenic. But is this really so?
Brief biography of Jacob
It must be said that there are certain grounds for such an opinion. So, Stalin, in fact, practically did not participate in the process of raising his eldest offspring. He was born in 1907, and at just six months of age he was left an orphan. The first, Kato Svanidze, died during the raging typhus epidemic, and therefore his grandmother was involved in raising Yakov.
My father was practically never at home, wandering all over the country, carrying out orders for the party. Yasha moved to Moscow only in 1921, and Stalin at that time was already a prominent person in political life countries. At this time he already had two children from his second wife: Vasily and Svetlana. Yakov, who was only 14 years old at that time and grew up in a remote mountain village, spoke very little Russian. No wonder he found it very difficult to study. As his contemporaries testify, his father was constantly dissatisfied with the results of his son’s studies.
Difficulties in personal life
He also did not like Yakov’s personal life. At the age of eighteen, he wanted to marry a girl of sixteen years old, but his father forbade him to do so. Yakov was in despair and tried to shoot himself, but he was lucky - the bullet went right through. Stalin said that he was a “hooligan and a blackmailer,” after which he completely removed him from himself: “Live where you want, live with whoever you want!” By that time, Yakov had a relationship with student Olga Golysheva. The father took this story even more seriously, since the son himself became a father, but did not recognize the child and refused to marry the girl.
In 1936, Yakov Dzhugashvili, whose photo is in the article, signs with dancer Yulia Meltzer. At that time she was already married, and her husband was an NKVD officer. However, for obvious reasons, Yakov did not care about this. When Stalin had a granddaughter Galya, he thawed out a little and gave the newlyweds a separate apartment on Granovsky Street. Yulia's further fate was still difficult: when it turned out that Yakov Dzhugashvili was in captivity, she was arrested on suspicion of having connections with German intelligence. Stalin wrote to his daughter Svetlana that: “Apparently, this woman is dishonest. We'll have to hold it until we get it completely figured out. Let Yasha’s daughter live with you for now...” The proceedings lasted less than two years, but in the end Yulia was finally released.
So did Stalin love his first son?
After the war, the marshal said in his memoirs that in fact Stalin was deeply worried about the captivity of Yakov Dzhugashvili. He spoke about an informal conversation that he had with the commander-in-chief.
“Comrade Stalin, I would like to know about Yakov. Is there any information about his fate?” Stalin paused, after which he said in a strangely dull and hoarse voice: “It will not be possible to rescue Yakov from captivity. The Germans will definitely shoot him. There is information that the Nazis are keeping him isolated from other prisoners and are agitating for treason against the Motherland.” Zhukov noted that Joseph Vissarionovich was deeply worried and suffered from the inability to help at a time when his son was suffering. They really loved Yakov Dzhugashvili, but the time was like this... What would all the citizens of a warring country think if their commander-in-chief entered into an agreement with the enemy about the release of his son? Rest assured that Goebbels certainly would not have missed such an opportunity!
Attempts at rescue from captivity
There is now evidence that he repeatedly tried to free Yakov from German captivity. Several sabotage groups were sent directly to Germany and assigned this task. Ivan Kotnev, who was in one of these teams, talked about this after the war. His group flew to Germany late at night. The operation was prepared by the best analysts of the USSR; all weather and other terrain features were taken into account, which allowed the plane to fly unnoticed to the German rear. And this is 1941, when the Germans felt like the sole masters of the sky!
They landed very successfully in the rear, hid their parachutes and prepared to set off. Since the group dropped out over a large area, they gathered together before dawn. We left as a group; at that time there were two dozen kilometers left to the concentration camp. And then the station in Germany transmitted an encrypted message that said Yakov would be transferred to another concentration camp: the saboteurs were literally a day late. As the front-line soldier recalled, they were immediately given the order to return. The return journey was difficult, the group lost several people.
The well-known Spanish communist Dolores Ibarruri also wrote in her memoirs about a similar group. To make it easier to penetrate the German rear, they obtained documents in the name of one of the Blue Division officers. These saboteurs were abandoned already in 1942 to try to save Yakov from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. This time everything ended much sadder - all the abandoned saboteurs were captured and shot. There is evidence of the existence of several other similar groups, but there is no specific information about them. It is possible that this data is still stored in some classified archives.
Death of Stalin's son
So how did Yakov Dzhugashvili die? On April 14, 1943, he simply ran out of his barracks and ran to the camp fence with the words: “Shoot me!” Yakov rushed straight onto the barbed wire. The sentry shot him in the head... This is how Yakov Dzhugashvili died. The Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was kept, became his last refuge. Many "experts" say that he was kept there in "royal" conditions, which were "inaccessible to millions of Soviet prisoners of war." This is a blatant lie, which is refuted by German archives.
At first they actually tried to get him to talk and persuade him to cooperate, but nothing came of it. Moreover, several “mother hens” (decoy “prisoners”) only managed to find out that “Dzhugashvili sincerely believes in the victory of the USSR and regrets that he will no longer see the triumph of his country.” The Gestapo did not like the prisoner’s stubbornness so much that he was immediately transferred to the Central Prison. There he was not only interrogated, but also tortured. The investigation materials contain information that Yakov tried to commit suicide twice. The captive captain Uzhinsky, who was in the same camp and was friends with Yakov, spent long hours after the war recording his testimony. The military was interested in Stalin’s son: how he behaved, what he looked like, what he did. Here is an excerpt from his memoirs.
“When Yakov was brought to the camp, he looked terrible. Before the war, seeing him on the street, I would have said that this man had just suffered a serious illness. He had a gray, sallow complexion and terribly sunken cheeks. The soldier's overcoat simply hung on his shoulders. Everything was old and worn out. His diet was no different; they ate from a common cauldron: a loaf of bread for six people a day, a little rutabaga gruel and tea, the color of which resembled colored water. The days when we received some jacket potatoes were a holiday. Yakov suffered greatly from the lack of tobacco, and often exchanged his portion of bread for shag. Unlike other prisoners, he was constantly searched, and several spies were stationed nearby.”
Work, transfer to Sachsenhausen
Prisoner Yakov Dzhugashvili, whose biography is given on the pages of this article, worked in a local workshop along with other prisoners. They made mouthpieces, boxes, toys. If the camp authorities ordered a bone product, they had a holiday: for this purpose, the prisoners received boneless bones, completely cleared of meat. They cooked them for a long time, making “soup” for themselves. By the way, Yakov proved himself in the field of “craftsman” just fine. Once he made a magnificent set of chess out of bone, which he exchanged for several kilograms of potatoes from the guard. That day, all the residents of the barracks ate well for the first time during their captivity. Later, the chess was bought from the camp authorities by some German officer. Surely this set now occupies an important place in some private collection.
But even this “resort” was soon closed. Having failed to achieve anything from Yakov, the Germans again threw him into the Central Prison. Again torture, again many hours of interrogation and beatings... After this, the prisoner Dzhugashvili was sent to the notorious Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Isn’t it difficult to consider such conditions “royal”? Moreover, Soviet historians learned about the true circumstances of his death much later, when the military managed to seize the necessary German archives, saving them from destruction. Surely it was for this reason that until the end of the war there were rumors about Yakov’s miraculous salvation... Stalin took care of his son’s wife Yulia and their daughter Galina until the end of his life. Galina Dzhugashvili herself later recalled that her grandfather loved her very much and constantly compared her to dead son: “It’s as similar as it is!” So Yakov Dzhugashvili, Stalin’s son, showed himself to be a true patriot and son of his country, without betraying it and not agreeing to cooperate with the Germans, which could save his life.
Historians cannot understand only one thing. German archives claim that, at the moment of his capture, Yakov immediately told enemy soldiers who he was. Such a stupid act, if it took place at all, is puzzling. After all, he couldn’t help but understand what the exposure would lead to? If an ordinary prisoner of war still had a chance to escape, then Stalin’s son would be expected to be guarded “at the highest level”! One can only assume that Yakov was simply handed over. In a word, there are still enough questions in this story, but we obviously won’t be able to get all the answers.