An interesting fact is who laughed at Stalin's funeral. Ordered to take out. History of the secret funeral of Joseph Stalin. How I saw off the leader on his last journey

More about Stalin's death

Farewell to the leader
The funeral of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, who died on March 5, 1953, took place four days later, on March 9

March 5, 1953 died Joseph Stalin. Thousands of people came to say goodbye to the leader, whose body was first in the House of Unions, and then in the Mausoleum. What the newspapers wrote about and how witnesses of the events remember the days of farewell - in the Kommersant photo gallery. On this topic:

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Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet people, died on the evening of March 5, 1953. The coffin with his remains was in the House of the Unions for three days, and on March 9 it was transferred to the Mausoleum. Between these two dates, hundreds of thousands of people passed by Stalin's body. Stalin ruled for so long that the country rather felt orphaned rather than liberated. The poet Tvardovsky called these days "the hour of the greatest sadness." Sorrow and excitement at Stalin's funeral led to hundreds [exact data classified] killed in a stampede on the way to the Hall of Columns. Pravda newspaper March 6, 1953: “Dear comrades and friends! The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, with a feeling of great sorrow, inform the Party and all the working people of the Soviet Union that on March 5 at 9 o'clock. 50 minutes in the evening, the heart of the comrade-in-arms and brilliant successor of Lenin's work, the wise leader and teacher of the Communist Party and the Soviet people, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, stopped beating. The immortal name of Stalin will always live in the hearts of the Soviet people and all progressive mankind.”

2.

Decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR of March 6, 1953: “In order to perpetuate the memory of the great leaders Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, as well as prominent figures of the Communist Party and the Soviet state, buried on Red Square near the Kremlin wall, build a monumental building - the Pantheon - a monument to the eternal glory of the great people of the Soviet country. Upon completion of the construction of the Pantheon, transfer to it the sarcophagus with the body of V.I. Lenin and the sarcophagus with the body of I.V. Stalin, as well as the remains of prominent figures of the Communist Party and the Soviet state buried near the Kremlin wall, and open access to the Pantheon for the broad masses of workers ". The Pantheon was planned to be built either on the site of the historical GUM, or on a wide highway from Moscow University to the Palace of Soviets, but they never realized their plan. Stalin's remains were buried near the Kremlin wall.

3. Photo: Oleg Knorring

Stalin's death was marked by hundreds, if not thousands of deaths in the stampede on the way to the Hall of Columns. The poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko recalled how the young man found himself in this terrible crowd: “In some places on Trubnaya Square, you had to raise your legs high - they walked over the meat.”

4.

Yuri Borko, born in 1929, student of the history department of Moscow State University: “I will refrain from telling how different people perceived Stalin's death, all this surfaced later. And on March 6, the main and lasting impression from what he saw was the insanity of thousands and thousands of Muscovites who rushed into the streets to join the queue and see a dead man who, with more reason than Louis XIV himself, could say about himself: "The state is me ". "I" turned to dust, and this was perceived by millions of Soviet citizens almost as the collapse of the universe. I was shocked too. All my critical reflections, which have accumulated over the course of several years, seem to have been erased.

5.

The newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda" March 7, 1953: "A grave misfortune befell our country, our people. Cities and villages of their beloved Motherland were dressed in mourning. As soon as a message was broadcast on the radio that the coffin with the body of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was installed in the Hall of Columns, an unstoppable stream of people rushed to the center from all parts of the capital, from its outskirts, from its outposts. People walked alone in groups, walked in families, holding hands, or with large garlands of flowers and very small, modest wreaths. They walked in silence, eyebrows knitted sternly, looking at half-mast black-bordered flags hung on the pediments of the buildings. Thousands of people were moving towards the House of the Unions, but such silence reigned, as if there was not even this huge stream of people, merged in immeasurable and deepest sorrow. Everyone in those moments understood: together - it's easier.

6.

Speech of Patriarch Alexy I on the day of the funeral: “We, having gathered to pray for him, cannot remain silent about his always benevolent, sympathetic attitude towards our church needs. His memory is unforgettable for us, and our Russian Orthodox Church, mourning his departure from us, escorts him on his last journey, "on the path of all the earth," with fervent prayer. We prayed for him when the news came of his serious illness. And now we pray for the peace of his immortal soul. We believe that our prayer for the deceased will be heard by the Lord. And to our beloved and unforgettable Joseph Vissarionovich, we prayerfully, with deep, ardent love, proclaim eternal memory.

7.

Maya Nusinova, born in 1927, a school teacher: “Many told me later, and there are so many memories now, how happy they were when they learned about Stalin’s death, as they repeated: die, die. I don't know, I only remember horror. The doctors’ case was going on, they said that the process would end with a public execution, and the rest of the Jews would be loaded into wagons, like kulaks once, and taken out, that the barracks were already ready somewhere in Siberia. There was a teacher in my school, her husband worked somewhere in the Central Committee, so after Timashuk's article she shouted in the teacher's room: think, after all, the children of these nonhumans studied together with ours! Yes, I thought that without Stalin this hatred would spill out, that only he could control it, and now they would start killing us. It was naive, of course, but it seemed to me then.

8.

Sergey Agadzhanyan, born in 1929, student of Stankin: “We approached the coffin. I had a wild thought: I have never seen Stalin, but now I will see him. A few steps away. There at that moment there were no members of the Politburo, only ordinary people. But even in the Hall of Columns, I did not notice the crying people. People were frightened - by death, by the crowd - maybe they didn’t cry from fright? Fear mixed with curiosity, lostness, but not melancholy, not mourning.

9.

Oleg Basilashvili, born in 1934, student of the Moscow Art Theater Studio: “I lived on Pokrovka and went to school on foot - along Pokrovka, along Maroseyka, then along Teatralny Proyezd, then along Pushkinskaya Street (B. Dmitrovka - ed.) , up Kamergersky - and came to the studio of the Moscow Art Theater. In order to get into the studio, in those days I had to cross two queues that went to Stalin for days. Some major was standing there, and I showed him my student ID, said that they should let me through, that I should go to the studio. But as a result, I joined the queue and very soon found myself in the Hall of Columns of the House of the Unions. There was no guard of honor at the coffin, in any case, I did not pay attention. I was struck that there was no special mourning atmosphere in the hall. It was very light, very dusty, and along the walls stood a huge number of wreaths. Stalin lay in a uniform with shiny buttons. His face, which was always so kind in the photographs, seemed deadly angry to me.”

10.

The New York Times: “Moscow is stirring. Buses scurried back and forth. Mustard-colored convoy trucks were increasingly seen on the streets. I was puzzled. It seemed to me that a revolution was being prepared.”

11.

Elena Orlovskaya, born in 1940, a schoolgirl: “Everyone went quietly during the break, and at the beginning of the second lesson the teacher came in, pointed at one girl and at me: and you go with me. We arrived at the auditorium. To the right are two windows, between them there is an opening, in the opening the Generalissimo always hung, five meters high, at the parade, in full growth, in a tunic. There is such a little red step and the flowers are always alive. The teacher says: stand in the guard of honor. They walk around, run around, no one has lessons, then gradually everyone left, silence came, and we stand on a string with our hands at our sides. We stand for an hour - the clock hangs opposite, we stand for two ... I am overwhelmed by thoughts: what will I say at home? How do I confess to my dad that I was on the guard of honor? It was torment."

12.

Lyudmila Dashevskaya, born in 1930, senior laboratory engineer at the Krasnaya Zvezda plant: “And that's how I was all wrinkled and all beaten, and I went out - just in time for Stoleshnikov Lane. And there was cleanliness, emptiness and there were urns. And I was so exhausted that I sat down on one of these bins and rested. And I walked first along Stoleshnikov, then along Petrovka, then I went out along Likhov Lane to Sadovoye. Silence, the light burned everywhere, as if in a room, everything was illuminated. And what struck me: all the posters (they used to be pasted on wooden shields) - all the posters were sealed with white paper. Therefore, from time to time, these white spots were highlighted on an empty street. And there were no people."

13.

The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper on March 8, 1953: “The name of the great Stalin has been borne by the Moscow depot of the October Railway for more than a quarter of a century. 26 years ago, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin gave a speech at a meeting of workers here. The funeral rally begins. The workers are listening with deep emotion to the appeal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to all members of the Party, to all the working people of the Soviet Union. The floor is given to the driver, Hero of Socialist Labor V. I. Vyshegradtsev. He says:

The one who was our father, teacher and friend, who, together with the great Lenin, created our mighty party, our socialist state, who showed us the path to communism, has left us. The great Stalin, the creator of our happiness, has died!”

14.

Andrey Zaliznyak, born in 1935, student of the philological faculty of Moscow State University: “It became known that some distant acquaintances died, mostly boys and girls. People died in many places, on Trubnaya it was the worst and on Dmitrovka too - there quite a lot of people were simply crushed against the walls. Some ledge of the wall was enough ... corpses lay almost all over. My then friend turned out to be unusually dexterous, he was a man of a heroic disposition, and he considered it his duty to go there by all means. He said that he managed to pass by Stalin's coffin three times - maybe he exaggerated his exploits a little. Then it became clear that it was a fatal number.

15.

16.

Formally, Stalin was buried twice. The second time on the night of October 31 to November 1, 1961 at the Kremlin wall, shielding the burial place with plywood shields. Red Square was cordoned off by the military throughout the night. Stalin had already been exposed by the congress, and there were no people left in the country who did not understand what was happening.

17.

The former director of the laboratory of the Mausoleum, Professor Sergei Debov, about the autopsy of Stalin in a special gentle way, so that it would be easier to save the embalmed body later: “On the night of March 5-6, 1953, first of all, they made a cast of hands and face. Then proceeded to the autopsy and temporary embalming. There was a surprise. We never saw Stalin during our lifetime. In portraits, he was always handsome, youthful. But it turned out that the face with strong pockmarks and senile age spots. They are especially evident after death. It is impossible to put up such a face for parting in the Hall of Columns. We've done a great job removing stains. But then anyway, after installing the coffin, I had to mask everything with light. And the rest was all as usual. We are always afraid of body contact with metal, especially copper. Therefore, everything for Stalin was made of gold - buttons, shoulder straps. The order block was made of platinum.

Grigory Rozenberg, preschooler:
My grandfather - a former member of the former Society of Former Political Prisoners, an old Bolshevik, in whose illegal apartment Khalturin himself, the brother of some former bigwig in the State Bank of the USSR, was hiding - sighed heavily and said very sadly:

Mom was so shocked by this sacrilege that at first she was simply speechless. And then, without looking back, through her teeth she ordered me to leave the room. Of course, I went out, but I remembered the words of my grandfather very well.

Vladimir Sperantov, student: The conversations of the first days were like this: whoever says the funeral word, he will. Then everyone noted: but Beria said something! After the mausoleum, when the actual funeral took place; this was discussed at home. But the official successor, not a party member, was Malenkov, and then, a few days later, they somehow began to say that Malenkov, at the very first meeting of the Central Committee or the Politburo, when everyone applauded, said: no, I’m not a ballerina, please, don’t was no more. And we realized that the style began to change.

The recently opened archives of the Security Service of Ukraine contain non-public and previously unknown testimonies of contemporaries about the death of Stalin, captured by employees of the USSR Ministry of State Security:
Worker of the Kharkov selection station Krivoshey, 67 years old, non-partisan; deputy secretary of the Glavelectrosbyt party organization in Kharkov, Kaganovich, aged 60, and doctor Guzman of the Zhytomyr regional hospital, being nervously shocked by the news of the death of Comrade Stalin, suddenly died during a speech at rallies.

On the night of March 7, in the village Ostashevtsy, Zborovsky district, Ternopil region, two flags and a portrait of Comrade Stalin were stolen from a school building and a store, which were found by the task force with traces of mockery of them. The criminals are local residents Kvasnitsky, born in 1935, works in a construction team on the railway, and Popovich, born in 1934, who were detained and confessed to the crime. An investigation is underway.

On March 6, at 20:40, 2nd-year cadet of the Odessa Naval Medical School Fedorov, born in 1934, after criticizing him for reading a book at a mourning meeting, stating that "I am not indifferent and not an enemy," ran out into the street and, despite the measures taken, threw himself under a passing tram and was killed.

On March 6, Ogorinskaya, a 7th grade student of Lvov Secondary School No. 50, a Jewess, while preparing for a mourning rally, in response to Kiyashko's student's regret about the premature death of Comrade Stalin, said: "That's where he's going." Outraged by this statement, a group of students in the class beat Ogorinskaya.

Agent "Worker", citizen Terekhova N.E. She said that Aleksey Mitrofanovich Berenko, a worker from plant No. 446, came to her apartment and asked Terekhova if she cried when she heard about the death of Comrade Stalin, and when Terekhova, in turn, asked Berenko if he cried, Berenko answered:

"Yes, I cried when I went to bed, because he / Stalin / had not died before."

The director of a store in the city of Stanislav Kotlyarsky, a member of the CPSU, a Jew, at the end of his speech at a mourning meeting of city trade workers said: "Our beloved dear enemy."

At the funeral meeting in the Kherson city hospital No. 2, the secretary of the party organization Rosenblat ended his speech with a shout of "Hurrah."

Image copyright Getty Images

On March 9, 1953, the funeral of Joseph Stalin took place in Moscow. On the eve of the burial, a catastrophe occurred in the center of the city, which was not publicly discussed until the era of perestroika.

Doctors ascertained the death of the leader on March 5, at 21:50. The people were informed about it at 6 am the next day by the voice of the announcer Yuri Levitan. On the same day, the coffin was put up for farewell in the Hall of Columns.

The funeral was scheduled for Monday morning, March 9th. Until that time, according to estimates, about two million people wished to see the deceased.

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"Death of Stalin" through the eyes of a funeral witness

On the second day of farewell, the doors of the Hall of Columns were closed to ordinary visitors, only official delegations were let through. Those wishing to see Stalin's body had to queue up again the next day, and on Sunday evening, March 8, the crowd intensified sharply as people rushed to take advantage of the last opportunity.

Girded with ribbons of mourning, Moscow plunged into silence. Her sorrow for the leader is deep, her heart is squeezing with pain anguish. I am walking in the midst of a stream of people, My heart has been shackled by grief. I'm going to take a quick look At the leader of the dear person" Vladimir Vysotsky, 8th grade student, future poet and actor

The route of the bulk of the people ran along the Boulevard Ring through Trubnaya Square to Pushkinskaya Square, and further along Bolshaya Dmitrovka and Tverskaya (then Pushkinskaya and Gorky Street) to the Hall of Columns on Okhotny Ryad.

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The center of Moscow could not physically accommodate such a large number of people. The authorities did not restrict access to the distant approaches and at the same time tightly cordoned off the route along the main streets, blocked side alleys with military trucks, and did not allow the crowd to spread in different directions.

Behind them, the new arrivals continued to push. As a result, many trapped people died from chest compressions or were trampled on.

No one in the leadership of the country and the capital bothered to order the troops and the police to change tactics and somehow regulate the density of the crowd. Those responsible for criminal negligence have not been identified.

Image copyright TASS/Naum Granovsky Image caption Trubnaya Square in the late 40s - early 50s of the last century

A similar tragedy occurred in Moscow on Khodynka field on May 18, 1896, during the coronation of the last Russian tsar.

Then Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna were accused of a lack of sympathy for the victims, since they did not cancel further celebrations and did not declare mourning in the country. However, the tragedy was not hushed up: the imperial couple visited the wounded in hospitals, and the families of the dead were paid 100 rubles each - a lot of money for ordinary people in those days.

The number of victims of the first Khodynka is known exactly: 1389 dead and 1301 injured.

The communist authorities simply hid their Khodynka. No investigation was conducted, the number of dead and injured is not known even approximately. Different sources give numbers from 100 people to two thousand.

The "Memorial" Society collected memories of the participants in the events, at that time very young people. Some survived that Sunday evening, March 8, 1953, by sheer luck.

Elena Vladimirovna Pasternak (b. 1936), literary critic:

Our good friend, Irina Glebovna Glinka, was visiting a friend in a house on the corner of Dmitrovka and Stoleshnikov. Irina Glebovna was locked up there and could not get out for several days, because the gate to the courtyard was closed. And from the windows of the apartment they heard the rattle, the screams of the crushed all day long. And then they saw how they took out heaps of galoshes, shoes, pieces of people.

Yuri Antonovich Borko (b. 1929), economist:

It was a bright March morning, and we silently walked down the street, heading to the nearest morgue in the First City Hospital. I was worried, but I hoped that Tolya, a strong 30-year-old man who had gone through the war, had managed to get out of the crush.

Already from a distance we saw a crowd of people near the morgue. Their appearance left no doubt that they came here for the same reason as we did. Tolya was not in this morgue.

We found it next. There, too, were shocked and crushed by grief people who were looking for their relatives.

The identification process went quickly. The pathologist said that Tolya was found near one of the houses on Trubnaya Square, next to a low-lying window covered with a massive cast-iron grate. He was pressed into her with such force that her chest was shattered into many pieces.

Moscow morgues and registry offices were instructed to issue death certificates with a false record of its causes.

Lyudmila Ivanovna Dashevskaya (b. 1930), chemist:

From the 32nd to the 20th number on Bolshaya Dmitrovka we walked from six o'clock in the evening to twelve. Young people made their way along the roofs and fell down on top of this crowd.

Near the fence of the Prosecutor General's Office, it seemed to me that someone was breathing on me from above. She raised her eyes - this is the muzzle of a horse.

The rider says to me: "Girl, quickly crawl under the car and go home."

I crawled between the cars and, all crumpled and beaten, went out to Stoleshnikov Lane. There was cleanliness, emptiness and there were urns.

I sat down on one of these urns. I sat and found that the fur collar of my coat was torn off and someone else's galosh was put on one shoe. How could I get into it? If I wanted to, I wouldn't have been able to.

The next day, we, the young workers of the plant, were asked to go with brooms and shovels to Strastnoy Boulevard.

We collected what was lying around. And lying around - it was just amazing! It's like they threw a recycling center out on the street. There were scarves, galoshes, boots or felt boots alone, hats - there was nothing there.

Elena Vladimirovna Zaks, (b. 1934), journalist:

I understood that this was a historical event, I somehow wanted to fix it in my memory. Unfortunately, the historical event is visible on TV or from above. And if you walk in the crowd, then you don’t see anything around.

I do not quite remember where I entered this crowd, and then we went along the boulevard that leads from Pushkinskaya Square past Trubnaya Square and up.

The crowd became thicker and thicker, you were carried in this crowd, you could not do anything. And if you wanted to stop, you couldn't. There were no crushed victims yet, you just could not get out of this stream.

I was carried quite close to the fence, and soldiers were standing along the fence. These were people from the MGB, because they had other overcoats: not green, but gray-blue. And a young man, so tall, handsome, with a thoroughbred elongated face, like a German shepherd, and in a white scarf, grabbed me by the collar and the strap and threw me over the fence. He pulled me out of there because I had little weight.

Igor Borisovich Kaspe (b. 1934), civil engineer:

Turning from Mayakovsky Square to Gorky Street, I found myself in a crowd of completely unfamiliar people of all ages. Many were visitors. It was sunny but very cold.

At the Museum of the Revolution, we were met by the first barrier - mounted police. The crowd pressed silently. The horses were snoring, politely backing away from the people. At one, at last, the nerves could not stand it. She sputtered, then, neighing, stood on her hind legs. A gap opened up and the crowd poured in.

People ran, fell, crushed each other. A few steps ahead of me, a girl stumbled and fell, screaming wildly. Fortunately, several guys managed to grab her by the sleeves, skirts, and even, in my opinion, by the hair and carried her out from under the feet of those running behind. It was some kind of tsunami of people whose trampling is still remembered.

Forward, forward, free slaves worthy of Khodynka and Pipe! There, ahead, the passages are blocked. Choke, open your mouths like fish. Forward, forward, story makers! You will get the ends of the pavements, the crunch of ribs and the cast-iron fence, and the clatter of the distraught herd, and the dirt, and the blood in the corners of the bloodless lips. You can do without high pipes" Herman Plisetsky, poet, eyewitness of the tragedy

Near Pushkinskaya Square, the street was blocked off by trucks. Soldiers stood on sandbags in the bodies and fought off those who tried to climb on board with their boots.

By some miracle, I was carried into the broken window of a women's clothing store. For a long time, as I passed by, I looked at her with a feeling of gratitude.

Standing among the dummies, I heard strange sounds and did not immediately understand - it was the rubber of the wheels seized by the brakes. Under the pressure of the crowd, the trucks crawled skidding. There were screams of those pressed to the cars, some soldiers began to pull them upstairs.

And the people from the Belorussky railway station kept coming and coming.

I was frankly scared: "What have I lost here? What do I want?"

If I have ever done prudent acts in my life, then one of them did just then - I don’t remember how I got out of the shop window, then out of the crowd and ran home, past crippled galoshes, hats, and glasses lying on the pavement.

The next day, rumors spread about a much more terrible "Khodynka" - on Trubnaya Square. But they were afraid to talk about it for a long time.

Boris Sergeevich Rodionov (b. 1934), journalist:

It must have been about 11 pm or a little later. I needed to go to Kirovskaya, to the center, and I barely crossed the boulevard at the Sretensky Gate, because a continuous stream of people was going along the boulevard down to Trubnaya Square.

So gloomy, completely silent, dark, only the sound of boots, boots on asphalt is heard. Such a formidable, ominous procession.

People walked stubbornly, stubbornly, evilly, I would even say. Moreover, I don’t know what they were counting on, because the admission could open only in the morning - so they planned to spend the whole night there?

There was no police to be seen, no mouthpieces. The stream blocked Sretenka and went along the boulevards completely uncontrolled by anyone, not organized, not restrained.

In the end, this led to the tragedy on Trubnaya Square. It's like standing in a hole - on one side the boulevard goes down, and on the other side the boulevard goes down. And when people from both sides came up in huge numbers, with all the vaunted Stalinist organization, the police and the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not work.

Nikolai Viktorovich Pertsov (b. 1944), philologist:

On the day of the funeral, I remembered the beeps that sounded when the coffin was brought into the mausoleum, I heard them at home on Sokol.

Factories were humming, at some point everything was humming. It was absolutely creepy.

My older sister, who was 15 years old, went to the funeral with the school.

She did not return for some time, and at home it became known about the victims. There was an alarm in the house for two or three hours.

But those who led the children realized that they had to be taken away, because either it would be long, or it could end tragically, so she did not get to say goodbye.

Vera Davydovna Zvonareva (b. 1941), librarian:

The ambulance did not arrive - on this day, apparently, it was not up to mere mortals.

Natalya Mikhailovna Leontovich (b. 1934) mathematician:

It never occurred to anyone in our family to go to this funeral.

My father had a birthday on March 7, in 1953 he turned 50 years old. So he used to say: "I received my gift for the anniversary!"

And then we began to celebrate March 5 as a holiday. I do not remember from what year, but quite early and for many years. They called friends, laid the table, drank, put a portrait of Stalin upside down. The main toast, which was said: "So that he does not rise again!"

I have long wanted to imagine what happened in the March days of 1953, when Stalin was buried. What people looked like, what they were wearing, what Moscow looked like, how these human rivers moved. It is interesting to look at the country at the time of the turning point of epochs. Among other things, this event can be called the greatest unauthorized rally: the spilled will of hundreds of thousands of people united by one goal, which was faced by those who were taken aback, unaccustomed to such power. There is also my interest in the history of the family - many times my father, who was then five years old, mentioned what a joyful event it was when, a day later, his older brother returned home - his parents were afraid that he died in a stampede. I asked my uncle, long years to him, and his memoir lies, among others, on a wonderful thematic site. But with the visual side of things it was worse - almost everything that flies out in the pictures of the search engines "Stalin's funeral" - two or three photographs from "Spark", from which little is clear.

Recently, I stumbled upon a most interesting newsreel - only two and a half minutes - a cut of shooting different streets of Moscow. I took it apart frame by frame and my wife and I restored the approximate points where the camera was filming from. In addition, on the site with photographs of old Moscow, there were several other pictures of those days or those places. It is very interesting to look at the people and how Moscow has changed. I hope it's interesting not only for me.

Start from the end. In this frame, people enter the Hall of Columns, where Stalin's body is on display. It takes place at night - people tried to get through "to Stalin" around the clock for four days - from March 6 to March 9.

All color frames are taken from the propaganda documentary "The Great Farewell" (you can watch), filmed in the wake of the funeral. Of course, the editor tried to keep crying women and relatively well-dressed photogenic people in the frame.

The women in line are mostly in white and gray headscarves. This shot seemed interesting to me because of the girl in a hat with a pompom that looks modern against the general background.

People with children in their arms. I assume that, basically, they belong to the delegations that got into the Hall of Columns bypassing the monstrous queue.

Trucks were parked along the sidewalk to prevent anyone from entering the roadway. There were soldiers in the trucks.
Thus, a huge mass of people was squeezed between the walls of houses and trucks.<…>All around, people screamed in pain and fear, especially women.Soldiers on trucks, having the appropriate order, stopped people's attempts to crawl under trucks onto a free carriageway. At the same time, I saw how the soldiers rescued a woman who was pressed against the truck - they dragged her into the back.

At Pushkin Square, the street was blocked off by trucks. Soldiers stood on sandbags in the bodies and fought off those who tried to climb on board with their boots.

The crowd was terrible, trucks with soldiers stood in the middle of the street.<…>A terrible stampede began, screams, something impossible. The soldiers, whom they could, snatched to their trucks. My friend and I were also dragged onto a truck, our coats were torn, but it doesn’t matter ...

The people who were in these trucks <…> they snatched out who they could, who was closer, dragged them in and threw them over to the other side, to the boulevard. The only thing that saved me was that I was closer to the trucks, and they grabbed me too.

On the day of Stalin's funeral, I got into such a crush on Trubnaya that if it weren't for the soldiers who picked me up on a truck blocking the street and carried me through the cordon, I would have simply died.

Trucks on Chekhov Street (Malaya Dmitrovka). On the left you can see house 8 with 1 (with columns), but the second house has not survived to this day.

The next two photos deserve special mention (thanks for providing them vchaplina_archive ) . They were made from a third floor window at 16 Pushkinskaya Street (now Bolshaya Dmitrovka) - the communal apartment of the famous animal writer Vera Chaplina. It's not far from the Hall of Columns. Again trucks and just soldiers in the cordon.

The first picture shows how people are pressed by a chain of soldiers to the wall of the house.

The second picture was taken a little later - something happened and the tail of the queue disintegrated into a disorganized crowd.

We managed to get into the courtyard of the house overlooking Pushkinskaya (now B. Dmitrovka) about fifty meters from the Hall of Columns, climbed through the window of the entrance entrance to the visor of the entrance overlooking Pushkinskaya - and jumped from it right into the line - into a snowdrift ...

I was already buried at home: two older brothers walked (after us!), But having failed to pass, they returned, informing their parents that Khodynka was there. We soon learned that two boys from neighboring yards had died.

And this is very close to the goal. On the right - the Bolshoi Theater and the Central Department Store, on the left (with sculpture) - the metro station "Sverdlov Square" (today - "Teatralnaya")

Let's get back to the newsreel. Chekhov street (Malaya Dmitrovka), house 16 from 5.

There today.

We heard those who were on Gorky Street, they were shouting. I think my sister realized that there was no need to climb there.

I remember myself already on Gorky Street. Joined the general flow. There were a lot of people, and the flow was accelerating. And I already knew that Gorky Street was blocked off by dump trucks with sand, and in several places. Apparently, instinct guided me, because I resisted this flow in every possible way. And the flow was already carrying. I tried to move backwards, as it seemed safer to me. And all I wanted to do was stay closer to home. I think that saved me - unlike many, whom the crowd, picking up speed, carried directly to the trucks.

In the lower left corner of the next frame, you can see how a hefty man, escaping from a crush, climbs onto a lamppost.

On the left in the foreground is a policeman on a horse. There were also a lot of mounted police that day.

It's the same place today.

Other, most replicated photographs were taken from the same points. People were turning at Pushkinskaya Square in order to then get to Bolshaya Dmitrovka and from there make their way to the Hall of Columns.

Opposite the building of the Museum of the Revolution (photo from the Ogonyok magazine):

The chronicle ends on the panorama of Gorky Street. But it is worth watching in its entirety - in motion. In the last seconds, waves are clearly visible, which rolled through the crowd and led to a crush.

The crowd behaved like ocean tides. First, she dragged us to the opposite wall of the street: then - a few steps back, from the goal of our campaign. Back is especially dangerous, as people stumble, lose their shoes, and it is impossible to pick them up.

Questions about the number of those who died on the streets of Moscow in those days are still waiting for their belated investigation. Khrushchev called the smallest figure - 109 people. Rumors circulated about several thousand.

It became known that some distant acquaintances died, mostly boys and girls. People died in many places, on Trubnaya it was the worst, and on Dmitrovka too - there quite a lot of people were simply crushed against the walls. Some ledge of the wall was enough ... corpses lay almost all over.

Down to Trubnaya Square, and then to the left, there was one of the "branches". I went there a little and saw how this huge crowd was going down, and below there were trucks, blocking traffic. During my time, terrible crowds crushed people, and they, trampled down, were simply thrown into these cars.

at MIIT<…>called from Sklif with a request to send someone to identify the guys with Miit badges.

On March 24, my grandfather died when he was taken from the morgue, where people were still given out the corpses of those who died on Trubnaya.

Quite a few people who got into a crush on Trubnaya and saw the death of people with their own eyes left their memories. You can read about what was going on there from Ella Pevzner. His name was Misha Arkhipov, he was a student of school No. 657, on Chaplygin Street.

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In February 1940, the Red Army, having broken through the powerful line of fortifications of the White Finns, where thousands of Soviet soldiers and commanders had fallen a couple of months ago, dealt a decisive blow to the enemy troops.

“The Spit of Vasilyevsky Island with its Rostral Columns has been spoken of as an urban ensemble for two centuries, while the Spit of the Petrograd Side, until the cruiser stood there, seemed to not exist. Now the blue building and the cruiser have formed their own ensemble here ”(M. Glinka“ Petrovsky Embankment ”).

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The first Russian meteorological observatory was established in St. Petersburg in 1834. The collection of information about the manifestations of the climate was carried out in it for scientific and civilian purposes, but quite soon the military department became one of the main customers. And with the beginning of the era of aeronautics, knowledge of the upcoming weather turned out to be even more necessary.

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This week we celebrate March 8 - International Women's Day. Now it seems strange, but quite recently women were quite officially considered second-class citizens. The famous "Three Ks - Ktiche, Kinder, Kirche" (kitchen, children, church) - for many centuries hung like a sword of Damocles over the female sex, denying their capabilities and desires. Naturally, many women could not put up with this state of affairs and fought for their rights. Sometimes this fight was bloody...

The threat of a new war in the Middle East is growing every day. As experience shows, conflict is easily born, but it is very difficult to extinguish. And you can never be sure that a military fire that breaks out in one country will not spread to other regions. In this regard, I recall the First World War - how it began and how it ended. 10 million killed, 20 million maimed, about 10 million died of starvation and epidemics. Who started the war and how? Historians are still arguing about this.

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