The problem of crime in the environment of law enforcement agencies today is one of the most urgent. In the minds of the population, a stable negative attitude has been formed towards law enforcement agencies and, above all, towards the police. A policeman is perceived by the majority of Russian citizens not as a defender of the law and a fighter against crime, but as an extortionist in uniform, using his shoulder straps and certificate to obtain illegal income. This topic has been publicly discussed for the past fifteen years, however, the problem of corruption in law enforcement agencies has existed since its inception Russian state. The police of pre-revolutionary Russia in the eyes of society was associated with a system of small bribes, free service in shops, shops, ateliers, restaurants, etc. Having taken power in 1917, the Bolsheviks tried to create a new state system free from protectionism and corruption, however, it soon became infected with the same diseases. Even during the years of the Stalinist regime, when control over the life of society, as it seemed, was comprehensive, the NKVD-MVD bodies were forced to get rid of "criminal and morally corrupted elements." In the first half of 1947 alone, more than 150 employees of the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Leningrad region , and for the next 3 months of the same year - 171 people. About 30% of them were employees of POW camps, 25% - employees of the militia of Leningrad and 20% - the system of corrective labor colonies (ITK) and camps. The most common crime was the misappropriation and squandering of state property (about 30% of the convicts, and half of them were employees of POW camps), theft of state property (over 20% of the convicted, mainly officers of prisoner of war camps, correctional labor camps and individual camp units ), desertion and unauthorized absences from service (24.5% of crimes). Basically, they were typical for ordinary policemen, firefighters and security units of the Office of Correctional Labor Camps and Colonies (UITLK) 1. The leadership of the NKVD-MVD was worried about cases of bribery in the police environment. Deputy Minister of the Interior of the USSR I. Serov noted in the spring of 1947: "I have information that there is an unofficially established fee for registration in sensitive areas, for the purchase of a passport, for a passport for a car, etc." 2. So, in 1945-1946, the inspector of the administrative group of the Leningrad City Police Department, Lieutenant Kazanin, and the detective of the Vasileostrovsky Regional Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, police lieutenant Tukhvatulin organized the issuance of passes for leaving Leningrad for bribes. Kazanin wrote out passes, and Tukhvatulin was looking for people who needed to leave , received money from them and issued passes received from Kazanin. Both were sentenced by a military tribunal to five years in prison in May 1946. Govorov Igor Vasilievich - candidate of historical sciences, associate professor, doctoral student of St. Petersburg University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia Chamova, a passport officer of the 19th militia department of Leningrad, was sentenced in 1947 for illegally registering citizens for bribes. Leningrad was revealed property confiscated and stored without registration. So, the head of the OBKhSS department, Morozov, confiscated from the detainee Neskvich gold coins of royal minting in the amount of 160 rubles. gold. These coins were kept by Morozov without any documentation for more than 13 months, as a result of which one of the five-ruble coins disappeared without a trace. Having seized 300 g of gold from the speculator Kosyrev, Morozov illegally used it in an operational combination. The gold was sold by Morozov's informer. Morozov appropriated part of the proceeds, and only after the start of an investigation into his activities he handed over to the financial department. When examining his office, objects made of gold were found, the origin of which Morozov could not explain. A fairly wide field for abuse was given by the relationship of operatives with their agents. The detective of the Petrograd RO of the NKVD of Leningrad, senior lieutenant of militia Smirnov, practiced appropriation of products and money intended for issuance to secret informants for Good work(for example, he took a receipt from a secret informant, Znamenskaya, that he gave her 7 kg of food, although he handed over only 2 kg) who actually either left the region or were in places of deprivation of liberty. Characteristically, in such cases, the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs limited itself to disciplinary punishment, without initiating criminal cases. Excessively close cooperation with secret informants brought some officers of the operational police services to the brink of crime. So, the assistant to the head of the Tikhvin Regional Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Vorobyov, recruited the speculator Saigin as a secret informant. Business relations between them turned into friendly, and then intimate. Saygina introduced Vorobyov to her fellow speculators. He became a regular participant in the feasts organized by "d,eltsy", and then he began to take money and food from them. In essence, one of the leaders of the regional department became the patron of the criminal group. Several times, when OBKhSS employees caught speculators red-handed, Vorobyov saved his "d, ruzey" from trouble. When the employees of the regional department, who did not share the benevolent attitude of their boss towards speculators, arrested Saigin for making a major illegal transaction, Vorobyov organized a provocation, accusing them of embezzling valuables seized during the search. In the spring of 1947, Vorobyov was arrested and tried by a military tribunal 6. The most characteristic manifestation of corruption in the law enforcement agencies of Leningrad was the undercover development "Scorpions". In the center of it was A.I. Karnakov. was a professional swindler. Posing as a responsible employee (district prosecutor, deputy director of the bureau for the distribution of labor force, head of the supply department aviation industry, deputy director of the complaints bureau of the Leningrad City Council, etc.), Karnakov acted as the organizer of many major scams in Leningrad back in the 1930s. He was repeatedly brought to criminal responsibility. After the start of the Great Patriotic War Karnakov was evacuated to Sverdlovsk, where he continued to engage in criminal activities. In 1943 he was arrested and sentenced to 8 years in labor camp. However, six months later he is released and appears in Leningrad. Here Karnakov establishes close ties with black market dealers and a number of government officials. Such violent activity could not hide from the attention of the state security agencies. In August 1944, the NKGB Directorate handed over compromising materials on Karnakov to the OBKhSS of the Leningrad police, and he was taken into undercover development. For about two years, the Karnakov case roamed the safes of various employees of the department, but no action was taken on it. It was explained quite simply. The head of one of the OBKhSS departments, Nelidov, turned out to be a very good acquaintance of Karnakov. For bribes, he ensured the safety of Karnakov, at his request, organized the termination of criminal cases and release from custody. He also involved two of his subordinates, detectives Zakusov and Antonov 7, in a criminal connection with Karnakov. Having established undercover surveillance of him, the OBB operatives found out that Karnakov maintains close ties not only with the criminal element, but also with a number of officials from various departments. Soon, the employees involved in this case received information that Karnakov, through several police officers from the regional departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, was organizing the release from prison of persons arrested for speculation. Employees of the Special Inspectorate and the department of the counterintelligence department "SMERSH? Regional Ministry of Internal Affairs" were involved in the case, and when it was established that among Karnakov's criminal connections were employees of the prosecutor's office and the city executive committee - the Department of the Ministry of State Security of the region. The operational-investigative group was headed by one of the deputy heads of the KMGB. This case received the code name "Scorpions". Karnakov created a group of corrupt officials who solved a variety of issues - from obtaining an apartment and exemption from military service to the termination of criminal cases. About 700 connections of Karnakov with officials and illegal businessmen were revealed. Evidence sufficient to bring to trial, were collected for 316 people. Of those prosecuted, 59 people were police officers, 47 - prosecutors, lawyers and courts, 10 - city health department and social security, 7 - housing systems, 8 - officers of the Leningrad Military District (including the deputy head of the personnel department L VO Nikolaev), a number of officials of the VTEK and more than one and a half hundreds of bribe-givers (business executives, trade workers, employees of artels, bases, public catering systems, etc. ) 8. At the same time, unlike today, the facts of betrayal of service interests by police officers were quite rare. Each such case was regarded as an emergency and without fail reported to the Minister of Internal Affairs to find out the causes and factors contributing to crimes of this kind. The leadership of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs identified a number of reasons that give rise to crime in the police environment. One of the first places was put forward by the weak work of the local apparatus of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the selection of personnel. Often, enrollment in the personnel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs took place without a thorough special check. As a result, people with low moral and professional qualities ended up in the police. Another reason leading to an increase in crime in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, its leaders considered weak political and educational work with personnel, especially with newly hired ones. Most of the criminal manifestations were accounted for by persons who had worked in the Ministry of Internal Affairs for less than two years. Of the 59 people brought to justice in the first half of 1947 by the Special Inspectorate of the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Leningrad Region, 27 worked in the police for less than 1 year and 11 - from one to two years. For example, Balmont and Shvetsov, policemen of the Leningrad River Police Detachment, who were recruited in December 1946, were convicted of robbery less than six months later. They took 1,300 rubles from two train passengers on the Sabli-no-Toshio stage. and 3 kg of flour. This money "protectors of law and order" drank away. Balmont was sentenced to 18 years in prison, and Shvetsov to 6. The policemen of the cavalry squadron Trofimov and Khvoenko, without having worked in the police even for three months, stole 170 kg of oats from the food warehouse. Trofimov was sentenced to 18 years in prison, Khvoenko - to 15. The policeman of the river police Melnikov managed to rob his neighbors in the service hostel five times in six months of work, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison 9. Among the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Leningrad Region, convicted in in the first half of 1947, command personnel accounted for 27%, for members and candidate members of the CPSU (b) - 29%. In general, for Soviet Union in 1947, persons in command represented 43% of police officers brought to criminal responsibility 10. Serious negative impact, according to the documents and orders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the state of police crime was affected by alcohol abuse. For half a year, in 1947, 204 people were punished for drunkenness in the militia of Leningrad (24% of all violations), in the militia of the region - 57 people. In the second quarter of 1947, compared with the first quarter, the number of penalties for drunkenness in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Leningrad Region increased from 208 to 255 cases 11. All of the above reasons had an impact on the level of crime in law enforcement agencies. However, they were subjective. The leaders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs deliberately turned a blind eye to a number of objective reasons pushing law enforcement officers to violate the law. First of all, they must be financial situation law enforcement officials and the overall degree of corruption state system. In 1946, the salary of a city policeman was 450 rubles. policeman countryside- 200 rub. district commissioner - 600 rubles. detective - 700 rubles 12. At the same time, a family of four in Leningrad (with two working members and two children) spent about 1,800 rubles on buying food and paying for utilities. and after the abolition of food cards, the cost of living in major cities(Leningrad and Moscow) was approximately 1900 rubles. of which 946 rubles were spent on food. 720 rub. - for clothes, 98 rubles. - to pay for housing. A significant part of the policemen (including those with their families) lived in dormitories, in extremely difficult living conditions. The militia was the least provided division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The salaries of police officers, their supply of food and clothing, socio-cultural support lagged far behind other services of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1946, former military personnel transferred to the police were not issued a new police uniform until the time limit for wearing the old combined arms uniform was expired. This instruction was canceled only after mass reports began to arrive from the places that citizens were refusing to comply with the demands of policemen in general army uniform. In fact, police officers post-war period, like the majority of the country's population, lived in poverty. The level of their income did not exceed the subsistence minimum. It did not contribute to the honesty and incorruptibility of police officers and general situation in the state apparatus. It is widely believed that Stalinism, by establishing total control in society, made corruption impossible. The facts refute this assertion. Spreading government controlled for all industries National economy gave impetus to the formation of the shadow economy. The resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, devoted to the problem of bribery, noted in particular: “Bribery, which is the gravest and most intolerable crime in the Soviet state, has recently become widespread, especially in transport, in trade, supply and household organizations, where in some cases giving and receiving bribes officials is made in a hidden form under the guise of "gifts", illegal "bonuses" for early fulfillment of orders, for unscheduled dispatch of goods, for unscheduled merchandising of funds and orders, release of goods best quality etc." 14. During the financial audit of the Leningrad Region in 1949, the Ministry of Finance established numerous facts of illegal spending of public funds by the city and regional authorities and the use official position for personal purposes. The leadership of the regional committee, city committee, regional and city executive committees spent state money on organizing grandiose banquets, maintaining a hunting economy, where representatives of the nomenklatura rested, and purchasing expensive gifts for “patrons” from Moscow (A Kuznetsov, N. Voznesensky, etc.). The leaders of the city and the region were also accused of appropriating the furnishings of the Mariinsky Palace, issuing benefits to full-time employees of the executive committee from funds intended to help needy citizens, etc. 15. A similar situation was typical for all regions of the country. The atmosphere of "d, the war of morality" within the state apparatus could not but affect the situation in law enforcement agencies. The heads of the district, city, regional and republican departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs-MGB, just like the party-Soviet apparatus, were engaged in self-supply, squandered state funds for personal needs, used policemen as watchmen, gardeners, etc. The former head of the Yaskinsky district of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Leningrad Region, Chernyshev, together with the head of the financial unit of the regional department, spent over 15 thousand rubles. shameful to appropriate and take out of Germany more than 50 tons of trophy property, mainly furs, carpets, paintings, jewelry. As the former head of the NKVD operational center in Berlin, Major General A. Sidnev, testified during interrogation at the MGB: ".,.. There is hardly a person in Germany who would not know that Serov is, in fact, the main bigwig in part of the appropriation of the loot ... Serov received about a million German marks from me alone ... I simultaneously handed over to Serov's apparatus about 3 kilograms of gold and other valuables ... Over ten of the most precious things Serov took for himself ... In addition to me, a lot of gold things were given to Serov and other heads of sectors ... Serov's wife and his secretary Tuzhlov repeatedly came to the warehouse of the Berlin operational sector, where they took away carpets, tapestries, the best linen, silver utensils and cutlery, as well as other things in large quantities and took away with them ... Repeatedly seeing Serov off from the airfield in Berlin, I myself saw how his plane was loaded with chests, suitcases, bales and bundles. Serov took a lot of goods from Germany, and I can’t even I can't imagine where he could place him..." 17. Naturally, the rank-and-file employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs followed the example of high-ranking officials. It has become the norm for police officers to rob street vendors, collect fines without receipts, or draw up receipts with an underestimated amount of the fine. District and operational commissioners got drunk with the subordinate element and informers at their expense, appropriated the property of the detainees and the funds allocated for agents. The heads of departments and departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs received free food, alcoholic beverages, manufactured goods from trade institutions, collective farms, etc. The leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs considered the fight against " negative phenomena"one of the main tasks of its activity. The investigation of crimes committed by employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the consideration of complaints and statements about their misconduct was carried out by the Special Inspections of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, the Departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the field. Criminal cases against ordinary policemen were initiated with the consent of the head of the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, against officers - Sanctions of the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR The secret service of the police, i.e. the identification of bribe-takers in an operational way, was assigned in 1943-1946. to 2 departments of the Counterintelligence Department "SMERSH? NKVD-UNKVD", and after the liquidation of "SMERSH" - to the corresponding departments of the Departments of the MGB. personnel militia and bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The most common measure of punishment was arrest (it was used in 60–70% of cases). The dismissal of discredited employees was also widely used. In 1946, 1,775 people were fired from the Leningrad police. for 9 months of 1947 already 3823 people. including 948 - from operational and commanding positions 18. Responsibility for the behavior of employees was assigned personally to the heads of departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They pointed out the need to know about the behavior of their employees both at work and at home. However, all these measures did not give a significant effect. The level of malfeasance in the militia remained quite high. Along with the above reasons, this was facilitated by the fact that many local heads of services and divisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, based on false concepts of the honor of the uniform, "the need to preserve the police personnel, and even personal preferences, often" covered "guilty subordinates. Thanks" patrons" in the authorities, some police officers violated the law for a long time, even in the case of frankly criminal acts (theft, bribes) they got off with disciplinary punishments. Thus, the problem of crime in the police is traditional for the Russian state apparatus. In many respects it is connected with the standard of living society as a whole.The crimes committed by law enforcement officers differ little from the crimes committed by other social groups. In the post-war period, police crime as a whole can be characterized as "poor". The main purpose of acquisitive crimes was food, alcohol, clothing. Most of the bribes were small. The fight against uncleanliness in the law enforcement system can only be successful along with the fight against crime in general. Notes1. Department of Special Funds of the Information Center of the Main Internal Affairs Directorate of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region (OSF ITs of the Main Internal Affairs Directorate of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region), f. 1, d. 130, l. 459.2. Ibid., d. 122, l. 321; d. 87, l. 153.3. Ibid., d. 122, l. 321; d. 130, l. 460.4. Ibid., 110, l. 231-232.5. There, l. 166.6. There, l. 130, 460.7. Ibid., d. 122, l. 321.8. IVANOV V.A. "Scorpions": corruption in post-war Leningrad. Political investigation in Russia: history and modernity. SPb. 1997, p. 247.9. OSF ITs GUVD St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region, f. 2, d. 130. l. 461.10. Ibid., 102, l. 159.11. Ibid., 130, l. 461.12. There, f. 1,d. 121, l. 173.13. VAKSER A. "Miracle" of the revival or History without retouching. - Neva. 1992, - 11 - 12, p. 337.14. OSF ITs GUVD St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region, f. 2, d. 76, l. 418.15. ZUBKOVA ELO. Personnel policy and purge in the CPSU (1949-1953). - Free Thought. 1999, - 4, p. 196.16. OSF ITs GUVD St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region, f. 1, d. 130, l. 460.17. Zhukov G.K. Unknown pages of history. - Military archives of Russia, 1993, no. 1, p. 201-204.18. OSF ITs GUVD St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region, f. 2, d. 93, l. 120.
None of us expected war. On June 22, 1941, in the dining room of the school, during breakfast, we silently listened to Molotov's speech on the radio, and three days later, already in the form of an officer and with the rank of lieutenant engineer, I left for Moscow to proceed to my duty station in Vladivostok. Vladivostok was not a new city for me, in 1939 I had an internship there.I received the M-14 submarine. It was a small vessel with a crew of twelve and two torpedo tubes in the bow. The displacement of the boat is 240 tons. I have already sailed on these submarines before, but in order to fight on it, it was necessary to remember in detail the structure of the boat and everything related to its control.
I sailed on the M-14 for about three years. Positional service, protection of the coast and escort of caravans coming from the USA with cargoes for our country - such was our work.
Later I was transferred to the Shch-133 submarine. She was a medium-sized vessel with six torpedo tubes (four in the bow and two in the stern), with a crew of 36. Displacement - about 700 tons. On this submarine, I participated in the hostilities against Japan and was awarded the order Red Star. In 1945, saying goodbye to the crew of the boat, the commander of the Pike, Vladislav Garvalinsky, raised his glass and said very pleasant words for me: “My toast is to the best submarine engineer of the Pacific Fleet Boris Gribanov! ..”
After the end of the war, I handed over Shch-133 for repairs in Vladivostok, accepted a brand new S-52 submarine and went to Port Arthur on it. On all these ships I sailed as a mechanical engineer.
In 1947, I was appointed head of the Ship Survivability Laboratory in naval school, which I graduated from, and I arrived at a new duty station - I returned to Leningrad.
After the submarine, serving as head of the laboratory seemed like heaven to me. The window of my little office on the first floor of the Admiralty overlooked the greenery of the Alexander Garden. The silence, from which I had completely lost the habit on the courts, was broken only by telephone calls. At ten in the morning the cleaning lady brought fresh newspapers, at twelve - lunch in the wardroom of the school, and at six in the evening - the end of work. While still a cadet, at the dance I met Clara Schmidt, who was then finishing her tenth year. We dated for more than a year, and then Clara became my wife. A year after the start of the war, Clara came to me in Vladivostok. We were given an apartment, and our family life began. In the same place, in Vladivostok, both of our daughters were born - in 1943 Tatyana, and two years later - Olga.
Now I came home every day at half past six in the evening—gone were the days when I sailed in submarines and did not appear at home for weeks. And if he did appear, he didn’t sleep peacefully for a single night, because something always happened on the boat: either she was being repaired, or preparing for a campaign, or something broke on her, or one of my sailors got drunk, or the batteries were charging, or it was necessary to urgently take measurements of the presence of fuel and conduct a night check ...
For the first time in many years, I had free time - I'm not used to it: all the years I've been spinning like a squirrel in a wheel, not knowing either peace or rest.
Post-war Leningrad looked gloomy: the paint on the houses had peeled off, it was felt that the city had endured the difficult days of the blockade. However, the restoration of the city went quickly, the facades of houses were repaired and painted, the destroyed buildings were restored, the movement of urban transport was established, hotels and restaurants were opened, many pubs and eateries appeared.
Slowly revived and cultural life cities - there were announcements about exhibitions of paintings from the storerooms of museums and from private collections. On Sundays, the Russian Museum began to give lectures on Russian painting. I started attending lectures, started buying art books, visiting exhibitions and interacting with collectors.
I began to look closely at the picture trade in the city. There were many commission shops selling paintings. Often completely incompetent people took on a commission and sold paintings. In commission shops that sold furniture, for example, they also accepted paintings, and evaluated their artistic merits ... furniture makers, who, of course, did not understand anything in painting.
Of all the receivers of paintings that I recognized, only two understood painting: Vladimir Shibanov from the thrift store at 7 Nevsky Prospekt and Vasily Frolov from the store at 102 on the same street. There, paintings were evaluated and sold on the gallery on the second floor - on the first floor, they sold ready-made dresses, furs, and objects of applied art. We called this store "gallery".
The shop where Shibanov worked was located next to the Admiralty building and my laboratory. Returning from work, I visited him almost every evening, and that's how I got to know Shibanov. It turned out that Vladimir was also a military sailor who had served in Kronstadt throughout the war. We quickly found with him mutual language and made friends. Subsequently, our wives met, and we became friends with families. His father, a fairly well-known artist and collector Alexander Georgievich Shibanov, became famous for capturing Pushkin's places in painting. Vladimir introduced me to him. I really liked the relationship between father and son Shibanov. When the father looked to his son in the store, Vladimir always approached him and kissed him on the cheek, despite the presence of customers. He treated his father with great respect. The elder sometimes grumbled at the younger for the fact that Vladimir too often applied to alcohol - a Kronstadt sea habit.
Vladimir, in my opinion, was the most knowledgeable person in painting among those who traded paintings in Leningrad. At home he had a small reference library on painting. Vladimir received a lot of knowledge from his father, who was well versed in Russian and Western schools of painting. My father had a good collection of paintings, so Vladimir grew up among works of art, in a society of collectors and artists. His father collected paintings of a predominantly Western school, he was very fond of the British and French. Vladimir himself also collected paintings, but somehow sluggishly, without enthusiasm, carelessly - he simply acquired things that affected him in some way. He had paintings of different times and directions, but each had some kind of zest that touched him. He was always willing to explain what he saw this "zest" in, why he bought the painting. Shibanov parted with paintings without much pain and quickly found solace in new ones.
After the war, there were many collectors of paintings in Leningrad. Most of them collected the Russian school, and only a few people - the Western one. Western painting cost several times cheaper than Russian. A good Dutchman of the 17th century on a board could be purchased for 300-400 rubles. The most expensive were the works of Aivazovsky and Levitan, and Shishkin was not cheap either. In Moscow, the paintings were estimated at almost twice as much as in Leningrad.
Collectors of Russian art were divided into two camps: some collected realists, that is, itinerants, academicians and democrats of the sixties, others - the so-called "leftists", that is, the groups of the World of Arts, Jack of Diamonds and Donkey's Tail.
Abstractionists in the first post-war years, as far as I know, no one actively collected in Leningrad, but there was interest in them. The pursuit of their works began later, when our scientists and diplomats, having visited Europe, realized what kind of art it was and what importance the whole world attached to it.
In addition, the negative statements of our press about Russian left-wing artists and abstractionists eventually aroused interest in these masters among collectors and artists, and our intelligentsia seriously drew attention to the "left" artists. Those who have been abroad were struck by the high prices for the works of some Russian artists who emigrated abroad during the revolution and became famous there. These paintings paid a lot of money - thousands, tens of thousands of dollars. They cost us practically nothing.
The first collectors of abstract art were several professors of the Leningrad polytechnic institute. Western painting in Leningrad was collected by Academician Razdolsky, Professor Lozhkin, Professor Zhdanov and others. I became acquainted with the collection of Dmitry Arkadyevich Zhdanov after my move to Moscow, in 1962. He had a very impressive collection of Western masters.
And in Leningrad in 1947-1948, I got acquainted with all the prominent collectors and knew approximately who loved what and who breathes what.
Leningrad survived a terrible blockade, famine, bombing. People were waiting for the end of the war, but in the end, the coming peace brought new challenges. The city was in ruins, poverty, devastation and rampant street crime were everywhere: gangs and lone killers appeared. In the post-war years, they almost did not hunt for jewelry and money, they stole, mainly, clothes and food. Leningrad was overflowing with dubious elements and people desperate from poverty.
The townspeople no longer died of dystrophy, but most of them continued to experience a constant feeling of hunger. For example, in 1945-46, workers received 700 grams of bread per day, employees - 500 grams, and dependents and children - only 300 grams. There were plenty of products on the "black market", but for an ordinary St. Petersburg family with a modest budget, they were not available.
A bad harvest in 1946 further aggravated the situation. Not surprisingly, the crime curve in Leningrad quickly crept up. Lone robbers and organized gangs operated in all parts of the city. Robberies of food bases, shops, apartments followed one after another, armed attacks took place on the streets, in yards, entrances. After the war, the bandits had a huge amount of firearms in their hands, it was not difficult to find and get it on the sites of recent battles. In the fourth quarter of 1946 alone, more than 85 robberies and armed robberies, 20 murders, 315 cases of hooliganism, almost 4,000 thefts of all kinds were committed in the city. These figures were considered then as very high.
It must be taken into account that among the bandits there were many participants in the war. At the front, they learned to shoot and kill, and therefore they did not hesitate to solve problems with the help of weapons. For example, in one of the Leningrad cinemas, when the audience made a remark to a company that was smoking and talking loudly, shots rang out. A policeman was killed and several visitors were injured.
Criminals from the criminal environment even followed a peculiar fashion - they wore metal fixes on their teeth and caps pulled low over their foreheads. When Leningraders saw that a gang of such young people was approaching them, they first of all tightly clutched food cards. The bandits snatched out the cherished pieces of paper right on the fly, sometimes leaving the whole family to starve for a whole month.
Law enforcement officials tried to bring down the wave of crime. The clearance rate was approximately 75%.
However, in a poor, dilapidated city, not only criminal gangs were operating. Criminal activity was also carried out by some officials who understood how to benefit from their power. The evacuees returned to the city on the Neva, the issues of distribution of housing, the return of property, etc., were acute. Dishonest businessmen also used the available information - what values are poorly protected.
In 1947, 24 unique items made of gold and precious stones were stolen from the Hermitage storerooms. The kidnapper was found and convicted, and the valuables were returned. In the same year, a large gang was exposed, which included criminals and officials from the city prosecutor's office, the court, the bar, the city housing department, and the police. For bribes, they were released from custody, terminated investigative cases, illegally registered, released from conscription. Another case: the head of the motor transport department of the Leningrad City Council sent trucks to the occupied regions of Germany, allegedly for equipment. In fact, he exported valuables and materials from there, built dachas here.
The famous Black Cat gang, which became known to many thanks to the movie The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed, was actually a huge criminal community. She conducted her main activity in Moscow, but traces of her were also found in the city on the Neva.
In 1945, the Leningrad police opened a high-profile case. An investigation into a series of burglaries in house number 8 on Pushkinskaya Street led to the trail of a teenage gang. Red-handed took the top of the gang - students vocational school No. 4 by Vladimir Popov, nicknamed Garlic, Sergei Ivanov and Grigory Shneiderman. During a search of the ringleader, 16-year-old Popov, a curious document was found - the oath of the kodla "Black Cat", under which eight signatures were affixed in blood. But since only three participants managed to commit crimes, they went to the dock. In January 1946, at a meeting of the people's court of the 2nd district of the Krasnogvardeisky district of Leningrad, the verdict was announced: the teenagers received from one to three years in prison.
Organized crime was also rampant. Moreover, gangs were often made up not of criminals, but of ordinary citizens. During the day they were ordinary workers of Leningrad enterprises, and at night ...
So, a gang of Eye brothers operated in the city. It was a real organized crime community. The gang was led by the brothers Isaac and Ilya Glaz, it consisted of 28 people and was armed with two Schmeiser assault rifles, six TT pistols, eighteen grenades, as well as a car in which the bandits carried out reconnaissance of future crime scenes and bypass routes, and a truck .. In a short time, from the autumn of 1945 to March 1946, the gang committed 18 robberies, using the tactics of night raids. The zone of action of this criminal group included the Nevsky, Kalininsky, Moscow and Kirovsky districts of the city. The scope of the gang's activities can be judged by the fact that the loot sales system covered the markets of Kharkov and Rostov! The Eye Brothers gang had a whole arsenal.
The operation to defeat the gang was developed in March 1946 by the former front-line soldier Vladimir Boldyrev, an operative worker of the criminal investigation department. Employees of the threat set up ambushes in places where the next robberies were likely to take place. As a result, during the attack on the store on Volkovsky Prospekt, the criminals were blocked and detained. The operation was carried out in such a way that not a single shot was fired. In 28 apartments, 150 rolls of woolen fabrics, 28 rolls of cloth, 46 rolls of silk fabric, 732 headscarves and 85 thousand rubles were confiscated from relatives and friends of the criminals! Distinctive feature The activity of this gang consisted in the fact that its leaders managed to establish close relations with some influential employees of the state apparatus of Leningrad and the region. To bribe them, the bandits even allocated a special fund in the amount of 60 thousand rubles.
Despite serious efforts to reform the Leningrad Criminal Investigation Department, crime receded slowly. It could not be otherwise, because its main causes - the post-war devastation, the difficult economic situation of the population - changed slowly. In the period from 1946 to 1950, the Leningrad City Court considered 37 cases on charges of banditry, in which 147 people were convicted.
FIGHT AGAINST BANDITISM IN POST-WAR LENINGRAD. ******************************************************* *************************** Leningrad survived a terrible blockade, famine, bombing. People were waiting for the end of the war, but in the end, the coming peace brought new challenges. The city was in ruins, poverty, devastation and rampant street crime were everywhere: gangs and lone killers appeared. In the post-war years, they almost did not hunt for jewelry and money, they stole, mainly, clothes and food. Leningrad was overflowing with dubious elements and people desperate from poverty. The townspeople no longer died of dystrophy, but most of them continued to experience a constant feeling of hunger. For example, in 1945-46, workers received 700 grams of bread per day, employees - 500 grams, and dependents and children - only 300 grams. There were plenty of products on the "black market", but for an ordinary St. Petersburg family with a modest budget, they were not available.
A bad harvest in 1946 further aggravated the situation. Not surprisingly, the crime curve in Leningrad quickly crept up. Lone robbers and organized gangs operated in all parts of the city. Robberies of food bases, shops, apartments followed one after another, armed attacks took place on the streets, in yards, entrances. After the war, the bandits had a huge amount of firearms in their hands, it was not difficult to find and get it on the sites of recent battles. In the fourth quarter of 1946 alone, more than 85 robberies and armed robberies, 20 murders, 315 cases of hooliganism, almost 4,000 thefts of all kinds were committed in the city. These figures were considered then as very high. It must be taken into account that among the bandits there were many participants in the war. At the front, they learned to shoot and kill, and therefore they did not hesitate to solve problems with the help of weapons. For example, in one of the Leningrad cinemas, when the audience made a remark to a company that was smoking and talking loudly, shots rang out. A policeman was killed and several visitors were injured.
Criminals from the criminal environment even followed a peculiar fashion - they wore metal fixes on their teeth and caps pulled low over their foreheads. When Leningraders saw that a gang of such young people was approaching them, they first of all tightly clutched food cards. The bandits snatched out the cherished pieces of paper right on the fly, sometimes leaving the whole family to starve for a whole month. Law enforcement officials tried to bring down the wave of crime. The clearance rate was approximately 75%. However, in a poor, dilapidated city, not only criminal gangs were operating. Criminal activity was also carried out by some officials who understood how to benefit from their power. The evacuees returned to the city on the Neva, the issues of distribution of housing, the return of property, etc., were acute. Dishonest businessmen also used the available information - what values are poorly protected. In 1947, 24 unique items made of gold and precious stones were stolen from the Hermitage storerooms. The kidnapper was found and convicted, and the valuables were returned. In the same year, a large gang was exposed, which included criminals and officials from the city prosecutor's office, the court, the bar, the city housing department, and the police. For bribes, they were released from custody, terminated investigative cases, illegally registered, released from conscription. Another case: the head of the motor transport department of the Leningrad City Council sent trucks to the occupied regions of Germany, allegedly for equipment. In fact, he exported valuables and materials from there, built dachas here. The famous Black Cat gang, which became known to many thanks to the movie The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed, was actually a huge criminal community. She conducted her main activity in Moscow, but traces of her were also found in the city on the Neva.
In 1945, the Leningrad police opened a high-profile case. An investigation into a series of burglaries in house number 8 on Pushkinskaya Street led to the trail of a teenage gang. They caught red-handed the top of the gang - students of vocational school No. 4 Vladimir Popov, nicknamed Garlic, Sergei Ivanov and Grigory Shneiderman. During a search of the ringleader, 16-year-old Popov, a curious document was found - the oath of the kodla "Black Cat", under which eight signatures were affixed in blood. But since only three participants managed to commit crimes, they went to the dock. In January 1946, at a meeting of the people's court of the 2nd district of the Krasnogvardeisky district of Leningrad, the verdict was announced: the teenagers received from one to three years in prison. Organized crime was also rampant. Moreover, gangs were often made up not of criminals, but of ordinary citizens. During the day, they were ordinary workers of Leningrad enterprises, and at night ... So, a gang of the Glaz brothers operated in the city. It was a real organized crime community. The gang was led by the brothers Isaac and Ilya Glaz, it consisted of 28 people and was armed with two Schmeiser assault rifles, six TT pistols, eighteen grenades, as well as a car in which the bandits carried out reconnaissance of future crime scenes and bypass routes, and a truck .. In a short time, from the autumn of 1945 to March 1946, the gang committed 18 robberies, using the tactics of night raids. The zone of action of this criminal group included the Nevsky, Kalininsky, Moscow and Kirovsky districts of the city. The scope of the gang's activities can be judged by the fact that the loot sales system covered the markets of Kharkov and Rostov! The Eye Brothers gang had a whole arsenal. The operation to defeat the gang was developed in March 1946 by the former front-line soldier Vladimir Boldyrev, an operative worker of the criminal investigation department. Employees of the threat set up ambushes in places where the next robberies were likely to take place. As a result, during the attack on the store on Volkovsky Prospekt, the criminals were blocked and detained. The operation was carried out in such a way that not a single shot was fired. In 28 apartments, 150 rolls of woolen fabrics, 28 rolls of cloth, 46 rolls of silk fabric, 732 headscarves and 85 thousand rubles were confiscated from relatives and friends of the criminals! A distinctive feature of the activity of this gang was that its leaders managed to establish close relations with some influential employees of the state apparatus of Leningrad and the region. To bribe them, the bandits even allocated a special fund in the amount of 60 thousand rubles. Despite serious efforts to reform the Leningrad Criminal Investigation Department, crime receded slowly. It could not be otherwise, because its main causes - the post-war devastation, the difficult economic situation of the population - changed slowly. In the period from 1946 to 1950, the Leningrad City Court considered 37 cases on charges of banditry, in which 147 people were convicted.