Fanny Kaplan assassination attempt. Guilty without guilt? Kaplan Fanny Efimovna (Roydman Feiga Khaimovna). Confrontation with the British Ambassador
Assassination attempt on Lenin
On the morning of the same day in Petrograd, Uritsky was killed in the vestibule of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the Petrocommunna by the Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist Leonid Kannegiser. The attempt on Lenin was the signal for the beginning of the Red Terror on September 5, the taking of hostages by the Bolsheviks from among the nobles and the intelligentsia and their executions.
| Not only St. Petersburg and Moscow answered for the assassination attempt on Lenin with hundreds of murders. This wave swept over the whole of Soviet Russia - both in large and small cities and in towns and villages. Information about these murders was rarely reported in the Bolshevik press, but nevertheless in the Ezhedelnik we will find references to these provincial executions, sometimes with a specific indication: he was shot for an attempt on Lenin. Let's take at least some of them.
“The criminal attempt on the life of our ideological leader, comrade Lenin,” reports the Nizhny Novgorod Cheka, “induces us to abandon sentimentality and with a firm hand to carry out the dictatorship of the proletariat” ... “Enough words!” ... “Because of this” - - commission "executed 41 people from the enemy camp". And then there was a list in which officers, priests, officials, a forester, a newspaper editor, a guard, etc., etc. appear. On this day, up to 700 hostages were taken in Nizhny just in case. "Rab. Kr. Nizh. Liszt" explained this: "For every murder of a communist or attempted murder, we will respond by shooting the hostages of the bourgeoisie, for the blood of our (42) comrades killed and wounded requires vengeance." |
Fanny Kaplan was immediately, without trial or investigation, shot on September 3 at 16:00 in the courtyard of the auto-combat detachment named after the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (behind the arch of building No. 9 of the Moscow Kremlin) on the oral instructions of the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Sverdlov. The sentence was carried out by the commandant of the Kremlin, a former Baltic sailor P. D. Malkov. The corpse was pushed into a barrel, doused with gasoline and burned near the walls of the Kremlin.
Versions and legends associated with Fanny Kaplan
Since Soviet times, there has been a legend according to which Fanny Kaplan was not shot; there are several conflicting versions about how she managed to escape execution and about her subsequent life. So, for example, witnesses claimed to have seen Fanny Kaplan in Solovki. This version is refuted by the memoirs of the Kremlin commandant P. Malkov, who quite definitely wrote that Kaplan was shot by him personally. Although the reliability of these memoirs in itself is questioned, but still the version of leaving Kaplan alive looks implausible - there are no reasons for such a step. In addition, there are memories of Demyan Poor, who confirms that he saw the execution.
Currently, there is an active distribution of the version according to which Fanny Kaplan was not involved in the assassination attempt on Lenin, in fact, carried out by members of the Cheka. This version became widespread after the collapse of the USSR, officially Kaplan's guilt in the assassination attempt was never questioned.
Malkov P.D. about the execution of Fanny Kaplan on September 3, 1918
| Already on the day of the assassination attempt on Vladimir Ilyich, August 30, 1918, the famous appeal of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee "To everyone, everyone, everyone", signed by Ya. M. Sverdlov, was published, in which merciless mass terror was declared to all enemies of the revolution.
A day or two later, Varlam Aleksandrovich Avanesov called me. Go to the Cheka immediately and pick up Kaplan. Place it here, in the Kremlin, under reliable protection. I called a car and drove to the Lubyanka. Taking Kaplan, he brought her to the Kremlin and put her in a basement room under the Children's Half of the Grand Palace. The room was spacious and tall. The barred window was three or four meters from the floor. I set up posts near the door and opposite the window, strictly instructing the guards to keep an eye on the prisoner. I personally selected the sentries, only the communists, and personally instructed each one myself. It never occurred to me that the Latvian riflemen might not see Kaplan, I had to be afraid of something else: as if one of the sentries would put a bullet into her from his carbine. Another day or two passed, Avanesov summoned me again and presented the decision of the Cheka: Kaplan - shoot, the sentence to carry out the commandant of the Kremlin Malkov. When? I briefly asked Avanesov. Varlam Alexandrovich, always so kind and sympathetic, did not tremble on his face not a single muscle. Today. Immediately. There is! Yes, I thought at that moment, the red terror is not just empty words, not just a threat. There will be no mercy for the enemies of the revolution! Turning sharply, I left Avanesov and went to my commandant's office. Calling a few Latvian communists whom I personally knew well, I instructed them in detail, and we set off for Kaplan. On my order, the sentry took Kaplan out of the room in which she was, and we ordered her to get into a car prepared in advance. It was 4 p.m. September 3, 1918. Retribution is done. The sentence was carried out. I, a member of the Bolshevik Party, a sailor of the Baltic Fleet, the commandant of the Moscow Kremlin, Pavel Dmitrievich Malkov, performed it - with my own hand. And if history were to repeat itself, if the creature that raised its hand to Ilyich again appeared before the muzzle of my pistol, my hand would not tremble, pulling the trigger, just as it did not then ... The next day, September 4, 1918, a short message was published in the Izvestia newspaper: “Yesterday, by order of the Cheka, the shooter at comrade was shot. Lenin's Right Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Royd (aka Kaplan)." |
"Monument to Fanny Kaplan" in Moscow
In 1922, at the site of the assassination attempt, the foundation stone of the future monument was erected "at the site of the attempt on the life of the leader of the world proletariat ...". At present, a large monument to V.I. Lenin is installed nearby (already the third one on this site), and the foundation stone remains in place to this day. Jokers call it a monument to Fanny Kaplan.
There are no other “Kaplan monuments” in the vicinity of the plant, despite a note that appeared in one Zamoskvoretsk newspaper and even a photograph of the monument (actually a project) http://www.zamos.ru/news/20020401_2.jpg .
Notes
- Galina Sapozhnikova No one shot at Lenin? Writer Polina Dashkova searched the archives for material for her new detective story. And found a real sensation. Komsomolskaya Pravda 07/01/2008
- “I am Fanya Efimovna Kaplan. She has lived under this surname since 1906 . In 1906, she was arrested in Kiev in connection with the explosion... She was sentenced to eternal hard labor. I sat in the Maltsev hard labor prison, and then in the Akatuev prison. After the revolution, she was released and moved to Chita. She arrived in Moscow in April. In Moscow, I stayed with a convict friend, Pigit, with whom I came from Chita together, at Bolshaya Sadovaya, 10, apt. 5. She lived there for a month, then went to Evpatoria, to a sanatorium for political pardons. I stayed in the sanatorium for two months, and then went to Kharkov for an operation. After that she went to Sevastopol and lived there until February 1918. In Akatui, I was sitting with Spiridonova. In prison, my views were formed - I went from an anarchist to a socialist-revolutionary. I changed my views because I got into the anarchists very young. The October Revolution found me in the Kharkov hospital. I was dissatisfied with this revolution, met it negatively. I stood for the Constituent Assembly and now I stand for it. In the current in the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, I am more attached to Chernov. My parents are in America. They left in 1911. I have four brothers and three sisters. All of them are working. My father is a Jewish teacher. I was raised at home. She occupied [a position] in Simferopol as the head of courses for the training of workers in volost zemstvos. I received a salary of 150 rubles a month for everything ready. I fully accept the Samara government and stand for an alliance against Germany. I shot at Lenin. I decided to take this step back in February. This idea matured in me in Simferopol, and since then I began to prepare for this step. Interrogated by Peters». ()
- Moscow Electromechanical Plant named after Vladimir Ilyich - OJSC "Electro ZVI"
- “I arrived at the rally at eight o'clock. Who gave me the revolver, I won't say. I didn't have any train ticket. I have not been to Tomilino. I didn't have any union membership card. I haven't served in a long time. Where I got the money, I will not answer. I have already said that my last name is Kaplan for eleven years. I shot with conviction. I confirm that I said that I came from the Crimea. Whether my socialism is connected with Skoropadsky, I will not answer. I didn’t tell any woman that “it’s a failure for us.” I have not heard anything about a terrorist organization associated with Savinkov. I don't want to talk about it. Whether I have any acquaintances among those arrested by the Extraordinary Commission, I do not know. During my time, none of my acquaintances in the Crimea died. I have a negative attitude towards the current government in Ukraine. How I feel about the Samara and Arkhangelsk authorities, I don’t want to answer (). I was interrogated by the People's Commissariat of Justice of Kursk. (Investigation file No. 2162).
- http://www.lib.ru/POLITOLOG/MELGUNOW/terror.txt S. P. Melgunov. "Red Terror" in Russia 1918-1923
- A. L. Litvin Red and White Terror 1918-1922. - M.: Eksmo, 2004
- Witnesses claimed to have seen Fanny Kaplan in Solovki
- P. V. Kochetkova Tatiana I. Revyako Executioners and killers Chapter III. Terrorists (Part 1) 1997
- “Our television historical journalism has long since completely separated from historical science. You have probably seen Nikolayev's "independent investigation" recently into who shot Lenin in 1918. A lot of people were attracted to the “search for truth”. A girl with a toy gun staged an assassination attempt, forensic experts spoke. The historian Sergey Zhuravlev was also present there. He was shown in front and in profile, they left some kind of replica, and the rest was cut out. Why? Yes, because the whole program would have collapsed, because Zhuravlev, on the basis of an analysis of previously unknown documents, “put an end” long ago - yes, Fanny Kaplan shot. And there is simply no problem for a new “investigation” and such a passionate debate ... ".
- V.A. Avanesov (real name S.K. Martirosov) - Secretary of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR, member of the Board of the Cheka,.
- Malkov P. Notes of the commandant of the Kremlin. - M .: Young Guard, 1968. S. 148-149.
- Monument to the unknown terrorist
- http://moscow.clow.ru/information/1/8/prim8.html#OCRUncertain90 The first monument to V. I. Lenin in Moscow
KAPLAN, Fanny Efimovna(Kaplan Feiga Khaimovna, Roytblat, Roydman Feiga Nakhumovna) (1890-1918) - a member of the revolutionary movement, an anarchist, who is credited with preparing and carrying out the assassination attempt on V.I. Lenin in 1918.
Born in 1890 in the Volyn province in a large family (8 children) of a teacher (melamed) of a Jewish religious elementary school (cheder) by the name of Roydman (Roytblat). Thanks to her father, she received her primary education at home, she did not study anywhere else. She left her family early and worked as a seamstress. During the revolution of 1905–1907, she joined the anarchists, having received from them the pseudonym “Dora” and a fake passport in the name of Feiga Khaimovna Kaplan, a girl of 19 years old (although she was 16 at that time), a milliner, a bourgeois town of Rechitsa, Minsk province.
On December 22, 1906, while living in the 1st merchant hotel on Podil in Kiev, equipping a bomb to assassinate the Kiev governor, she made a mistake: the bomb exploded, during the explosion Kaplan received minor injuries to her arms, legs and severe concussion, which resulted in damage to her eyes and hearing . During the investigation into the activities of the bombers, Kaplan's house was searched; in her things they found a Browning loaded with live ammunition and a blank passport form. The evidence gave grounds for her arrest and prosecution in the assassination case.
On December 30, 1906, the Military Field Court of Kiev sentenced her to death for "storage of explosives for purposes contrary to state security and public peace", which (due to Kaplan's minority) was replaced by life imprisonment.
On June 19, 1907, she was transferred “to the jurisdiction of the military governor of the Transbaikal region”, ended up in the Maltsev hard labor prison, then, as prone to escape, she was sent in hand and foot shackles to the Akatui hard labor prison (Nerchinsk mountain district of Transbaikalia). Here she met the famous socialist-revolutionary M.A. Spiridonova, who influenced Kaplan's transition from the position of anarchism to the position of right-wing social revolutionism.
While F. Kaplan was serving hard labor, her parents and all brothers and sisters moved to the USA (1911), communication with them was interrupted. In 1912, Kaplan was placed for eye treatment in the Chita prison hospital; while there, in 1913, in connection with the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, she received an amnesty: the replacement of life-long penal servitude with a 20-year one. However, the eye disease progressed, Kaplan was practically blind.
She was released from prison by the February Revolution of 1917. Kaplan left Chita in April 1917 for Moscow, where she lived with a friend in an apartment building on Bolshaya Sadovaya Street. (next to the writer M.A. Bulgakov, who remembered this).
She spent the summer of 1917 in Evpatoria, in a sanatorium for former political prisoners, where (according to legend) she met D.I. Ulyanov (V.I. Lenin's younger brother), on whose recommendation she was placed in the eye clinic of prof. Hirshman in Kharkov. It is believed that the rumor about the compassionate act of brother Lenin was spread by the convict F.E. Stavskaya in the 1930s. In fact, Dmitry Ulyanov did not meet with Kaplan, although he worked in those months as a doctor in the Crimea and, indeed, could be related to Prof. Hirshman. In this clinic, Kaplan partially regained her sight, she moved to Simferopol, where she managed to find work at training courses for workers of volost zemstvos.
The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly by the Bolsheviks on January 6 (19), 1918 Kaplan took it very painfully. She condemned Lenin, who at that moment became the head of the Soviet government, called him a "traitor to the cause of the revolution", whose actions "removed the idea of socialism for decades." At the beginning of 1918, she actively collaborated with the right SRs, who were in a semi-legal position. Having proposed the physical liquidation of Lenin, Kaplan, to the best of her ability, participated in the preparations for the implementation of this plan. The leaders of the right SRs, G. Semenov and L. Konoplev, supplied F. Kaplan with browning.
On August 30, 1918, on the day Lenin spoke to the workers of the Michelson plant in the Zamoskvoretsky district of Moscow, Kaplan was brought in advance to the place where Lenin was supposed to be. Preparing for the assassination attempt, the short-sighted Kaplan took a place not far from the podium where the head of government spoke, and shot him three times at close range. However, she did not kill Lenin, but only wounded him.
After that, she threw out the Browning and, forgetting about the cab that was waiting for her, tried to flee. Nearby was Lenin's driver, Stepan Gil, practically under whose feet she threw a pistol, who witnessed the assassination attempt. Kaplan herself was detained by S. Batulin, assistant military commissar of the 5th Moscow division. During a search, a railway ticket was found in her to the Tomilino station, where at that moment one of the safe houses of the members of the Central Combat Detachment of the Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party was located.
On the same day, at the very first interrogation, Kaplan confessed to the assassination attempt: “Today I shot at V.I. Lenin. I consider him a traitor to the revolution. I don’t belong to any party, I consider myself a socialist.” According to her, she made the decision to assassinate in Simferopol in February 1918 and carried it out "on her own behalf, and not on behalf of any party." Kaplan was interrogated by the deputy of F.E. Dzerzhinsky Ya. Peters, People's Commissar of Justice D.I. Kursky, head of the department of the Cheka N.A. Skrypnik.
By order of Ya.M. Sverdlov (“Destroy. We will not bury Kaplan. Destroy the remains without a trace”). Kaplan was shot without trial on September 3, 1918 in the courtyard of the Moscow Kremlin to the sound of car engines, her corpse was doused with gasoline and burned in an iron barrel in the Alexander Garden by the commandant of the Kremlin P.D. Malkov. The poet Demyan Bedny became an accidental witness to the execution and massacre of the corpse. (E.V. Pridvorov). The execution was reported by the Izvestiya VPIK newspaper of September 4, 1918, which called it in the message about the execution of the sentence "the right-wing Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Royd (aka Kaplan)". Subsequently, the story of the assassination attempt on the leader of the revolution of a middle-aged Jewish woman in glasses (in fact, absent), with a briefcase and an umbrella, forced the formation of a repulsive image of a villain-intellectual who joined the Socialist-Revolutionaries. It was intended to confirm the expediency of the "Red Terror" in relation to the intelligentsia and the remnants of the bourgeoisie.
The leader of the Left Social Revolutionaries, Maria Spiridonova, who herself was in prison at that moment, wrote to Lenin: “How was it possible for you, how did it not occur to you, Vladimir Ilyich, with your great intelligence and your personal impartiality, not to grant pardon to Dora Kaplan? How invaluable mercy could be in this time of madness and frenzy, when nothing is heard but the gnashing of teeth. However, the verdict against Kaplan remained unchanged.
But the rumor about the intercession for Kaplan of the wounded Lenin existed for a long time even after the death of Kaplan. So, one of those involved in the case of the attempt on Lenin on August 30, 1918, V.A. Novikov, claimed that he met her in the prison yard of the Sverdlovsk transit prison in 1932 and testified about this to the prison authorities. A certain Matveev insisted in 1937 (the protocols of his interrogations on this topic have been preserved) that Kaplan, under the name of Fanny Royd, worked in the Siblag Administration in Novosibirsk. Someone allegedly saw her in Vorkuta, in the Urals and in Siberia. An encyclopedia published in Israel claims that Kaplan worked in the last years of her life in the library of the Butyrskaya prison in Moscow and died only in 1950. However, this version does not have convincing evidence, as does the hypothesis that it was not Kaplan who made the attempt on Lenin, but another rightist socialist-revolutionary - terrorist L.Konoplev.
Natalya Pushkareva
Wednesday marks the 80th anniversary of the death of Vladimir Lenin. His premature death (a man who did not drink or smoke died at the age of 53; the version of a hereditary disease was not confirmed) was associated not only with incredible loads - a recent emigrant, by the will of history, found himself at the helm of a huge power in crisis. They knocked down Lenin and the bullets of Fanny Kaplan. We know very little about this woman. Meanwhile, the very fact of the assassination attempt and the events that followed it (the beginning of the "Red Terror") make us take a closer look at it.
So, on the afternoon of August 30, 1918, three shots were fired in the courtyard of the Michelson factory. Lenin is seriously wounded. The shooter was arrested...
Confession
August 30, 1918, 11:50 p.m. Lubyanka. Office of the acting chairman of the Cheka Peters.
There are five tense men in the office and a woman - dishevelled, pale, in a black blouse hastily tucked into a black skirt. Everyone is silent. One minute, three, five...
Why is she standing on one leg? Peters finally says.
Here they found something, hid it in a boot, - the chairman of the Moscow Revolutionary Tribunal, Dyakonov, answers.
Peters, Dyakonov, Sverdlov, Avanesov go into the next room. People's Commissar of Justice Kursky begins the first interrogation.
Protocol of the first interrogation of Fanny Kaplan in the Cheka(the previous two were held at the Zamoskvoretsky military registration and enlistment office, where all the detainees were taken from the scene of the assassination):
“I arrived at the rally at eight o’clock. I won’t say who gave me the revolver. I didn’t have any railway ticket. I wasn’t in Tomilin. I didn’t have any trade union ticket. I will not answer. I have already said that my last name is Kaplan for eleven years. I shot out of conviction. I confirm that I said that I came from the Crimea. Is my socialism connected with Skoropadsky, I will not answer. I will not answer any woman said that "for us, failure". I have not heard anything about the organization of terrorists associated with Savinkov. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t know if I have any acquaintances among those arrested by the Extraordinary Commission. During my time, none of my acquaintances died in the Crimea. I have a negative attitude towards the current authorities in Ukraine.As I relate to the Samara and Arkhangelsk authorities, I do not want to answer.
I was interrogated by the People's Commissariat of Justice of Kursk." (Investigation file No. 2162).
Kaplan refused to sign the protocol. Kursky interrogated her until two in the morning. "I won't say... I don't want to... I won't... I don't know..." The investigation has so far only had one thing - a confession.
"Crazy or Exalted"
At half past two the interrogation continued. Kursky was replaced by Peters. At first, Sverdlov and Avanesov were present, but Kaplan refused to speak in front of them. Sverdlov and Avanesov left. A replica-impression of Avanesov has come down to us: "It looks like some kind of crazy. Or exalted."
Peters and Kaplan remain against each other. Peters understands that putting pressure on this woman is pointless. "Crazy or exalted" is now mentally ready just to resist the pressure. Peters starts slowly. Trying to find out the political views of the arrested. He talks about himself, about his past passion for anarchism. It turns out: Kaplan, a former political convict, was imprisoned in Akatuy with "Masha Spiridonova" (the leader of the recent uprising of the Left SRs). At hard labor, Kaplan began to have vision problems: in 1906, in a Kiev hotel room, she was preparing a bomb, it exploded before the deadline, Kaplan was shell-shocked, wounded, and so she was detained; the consequences of the concussion were expressed in bouts of blindness.
"... I asked why she was imprisoned, how she became blind. She gradually began to talk. At the end of the interrogation, she burst into tears, and I still cannot understand what these tears meant: remorse or tired nerves." (J. Peters. "Proletarian Revolution" 1924, No. 10).
The result of the interrogation is the second protocol.
"I, Fanya Efimovna Kaplan. I lived under this name since 1906. In 1906 I was arrested in Kiev in the case of an explosion ... I was sentenced to eternal hard labor. I sat in the Maltsev hard labor prison, and then in the Akatuev prison. After the revolution, I was released and moved to Chita. In April I arrived in Moscow. In Moscow, I stayed with a friend of the convict Pigit, with whom I came from Chita together, at Bolshaya Sadovaya, 10, apartment 5. I lived there for a month, then went to Evpatoria, to a sanatorium for political amnesty. I stayed in the sanatorium for two months, and then went to Kharkov for an operation. After that I went to Sevastopol and lived there until February 1918. In Akatui, I sat with Spiridonova. In prison, my views were formed - I became an anarchist I changed my views because I joined the anarchists very young. The October Revolution found me in the Kharkov hospital. felny meeting and now I stand for it. Downstream in the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, I more closely follow Chernov. My parents are in America. They left in 1911. I have four brothers and three sisters. All of them are working. My father is a Jewish teacher. I was raised at home. She occupied [a position] in Simferopol as the head of courses for the training of workers in volost zemstvos. I received a salary of 150 rubles a month for everything ready. I fully accept the Samara government and stand for an alliance against Germany. I shot at Lenin. I decided to take this step back in February. This idea matured in me in Simferopol, and since then I began to prepare for this step.
Peters interrogated.
She signed this protocol.
Confrontation with the British Ambassador
August 31, 1918 - the day of active investigative actions. On the eve of the 30th, not only was Lenin wounded; in Petrograd, the chairman of the St. Petersburg Cheka, Uritsky, was killed. Dzerzhinsky went there; Chekists searched the British embassy, considering it "the headquarters of the conspirators." A day earlier, at the request of Chicherin (due to diplomatic necessity), Peters released the arrested English envoy Lockhart. But today the note from the Soviet government to the British government has already gone, and Lockhart is again put under lock and key.
Version of the investigation: both assassination attempts and the "conspiracy of ambassadors" are connected. At the head of the plan are the Right SRs, they are supported by the British. Lockhart has a confrontation with Kaplan. To no avail.
“She was dressed in black. Black hair, black eyes outlined in black circles. A colorless face with pronounced Jewish features was unattractive. She could be from 20 to 35 years old. Undoubtedly, the Bolsheviks hoped that she would give me some kind of sign. Her calmness was unnatural. She went to the window and began to look into it. (Robert Bruce Lockhart. "History from within").
Interrogations of the detainees give nothing. Lenin's driver, Stepan Gil, claims that he "saw the shooter" only "after the shots were fired." Then he remembered "a woman's hand with a Browning", from which "three shots were fired. The woman who fired threw a revolver at my feet and disappeared into the crowd. This revolver lay under my feet. Nobody raised this revolver in my presence." Later he will say that he "pushed him under the car with his foot."
Neither a revolver was found under the car, nor a Browning rifle was found at the scene of the assassination. Only four shell casings trampled into the mud. Kaplan was interrogated by the head of the department for combating counter-revolution of the Cheka, Skrypnik. The defendant answered through her teeth: she put the envelopes with the stamp of the Zamoskvoretsky military enlistment office in her shoe so that the nail would not prick, she simply found the trade union card, she does not remember the railway ticket at all. She also signed this protocol. Investigators Yurovsky and Kingisepp, together with the chairman of the factory committee of the plant, Mikhelson Ivanov, went to the scene of the assassination several times, but nothing was added to the four shell casings.
The dispute between the Lubyanka and the Kremlin
In 1920, Jacob Peters fell ill with typhus. The recovery was long and painful. To keep himself occupied, Peters began to write in his notebook "personal chronicle" - memories of two years ago. These records have been preserved. They are in English - Peters, who lived in England for a long time, English was more familiar than Russian. The old pages of the notebook make it possible to understand how the rapid turn of events around the "Kaplan case" began.
On August 31, in the evening, Sverdlov told Peters that in the morning an official message should be given to Izvestia of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee:
Write briefly, - he advised, - the shooter is a Right Social Revolutionary of the Chernov group, her connection with the Samara organization that was preparing the assassination, belongs to a group of conspirators.
These "conspirators" will have to be released - there is nothing against them, - Peters shrugged. - So far, this lady does not smell of any connections with any organization, but the fact that she is a right-wing Socialist-Revolutionary, I said. And in general, amateurs like us should be imprisoned ourselves.
Sverdlov did not answer. But a little later, when asked how things were going in the Lubyanka, he vehemently threw: "And so, the entire Cheka should be imprisoned, and the lady released. And to the whole world to repent: they say, we are amateurs, sir, excuse me!" (From the notes of Vera Bonch-Bruevich, September 1918. Seized from A. Mukhin, secretary of her husband, the old Bolshevik Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, during his arrest in 1938).
Peters himself continued interrogating Kaplan that night. The result of a long conversation was a completely unexpected document - a text drawn up in the form of a protocol, later reproduced by Peters in his notebooks.
With soap in my head
"... In the early spring of 1917, liberated by the February Revolution, we, ten political convicts, rode carts from Akatuy to Chita ... It was cold, the wind lashed our cheeks, everyone was sick, coughing ... and Masha Spiridonova gave me her downy shawl ... Then, in Kharkov, where my eyesight almost completely returned, I so wanted to go to Moscow, see my friends as soon as possible, and often sat alone, wrapped in this shawl, pressing my cheek against it ... There, in Kharkov, I met Mika, Viktor. We worked with him in the sixth year in the same group, preparing an explosion. The meeting was accidental, he remained an anarchist, and he didn’t need me ... Even dangerous. He said that he was afraid of me, my hysteria and past. And then I did not understand anything. How can I explain? Everything was in colors again, everything returned - sight, life ... I decided to go to him to explain myself. And before that I went to the market to buy soap. Good "They asked very dearly, and I sold the shawl. I bought this soap. Then... in the morning... he said, that he doesn't love me and never did, but everything happened today because I smell of Wanda's perfume. I returned to the hospital, sat down in a chair and wanted to wrap myself in my shawl, because I always hid in it from cold melancholy ... But I no longer had a shawl, but there was this soap ... and I cannot forgive myself ... I do not forgive..."
On the morning of September 1, Peters showed these notes to Lunacharsky, who arrived at Lubyanka. Lunacharsky, Bukharin and, oddly enough, Stalin were the people whom Lenin (and, in his absence, Sverdlov) usually called upon to extinguish internal party conflicts. The dialogue, which then took place in Peters's office, was preserved by Lunacharsky's personal notes.
I listened to her, - Peters sighed, - although I quickly realized that instead of some connection with Spiridonova, only her shawl would appear. But now it’s at least clear why Kaplan is like that - first complete blindness, then - unhappy love ...
A little sorry for her? Lunacharsky half asked.
She disgusts me! I went to kill, but in my head ... soap.
Mika version
The above protocol is perhaps the only document in which Kaplan says something about himself.
She was already 28. In her youth, she was beautiful, but faded early. From the age of 16 - revolutionary struggle, prisons, hard labor. No personal life. Quite in the spirit of the times. But she was a woman. Who is this mysterious Mika, the meeting with which so struck her? Today, historians believe: most likely - Viktor Garsky (aka Schmidman, Toma, "Realist", etc.), who involved her as a sixteen-year-old girl in the adventurous and chaotic life of anarchist communists, suddenly interrupted by a bomb explosion on December 22, 1906. Then this dashing militant simply ran away from the hotel room, leaving young Fanya, after putting his browning into her purse. More than ten years will pass, for him full of all kinds of "adventures" in the wild; for her, these will be years of prison, hard labor, blindness, inner loneliness and hopelessness. And suddenly - like a blinding beam - that meeting with him in Kharkov. She understood that she was unloved, not needed, but her heart dictated something else. And as a retribution for a night of happiness - another return to loneliness, but with some new flavor. "Soon you will see what was hidden in my heart!" - said in July 1793 another rejected "avenger" - Charlotte Corday to the Girondin Francois Boso who fled from the Jacobin terror. - "And you will understand what kind of heart you have rejected!" Isn't it the same thing she wanted to show her beloved and "Nemesis of 1918"?
Browning as a relic
September 1, 1918 Investigative actions continue. Kingisepp releases the daughters of Maria Popova, a woman who spoke with Lenin at the time of the assassination and was wounded by one of the bullets (at first it was believed that Popova was also a participant in the assassination). “Having interrogated both daughters of Maria Grigorievna Popova in detail, I got the quite definite impression that M.G. Popova was an ordinary philistine who, if she was interested in any social issues, then only in the question of bread. There is not a shadow of suspicion that she was involved in Right Socialist-Revolutionary or any other party, or to the conspiracy itself. Daughters are worthy daughters of their mother, they grew up in need and misfortune, and potatoes are above all politics for them ... Release Olga and Nina Popova. V. Kingisepp. "
Other witnesses are also released one by one. They took testimony and released Kaplan's acquaintances in hard labor, with whom she lived for some time or whom she met. Further, as usual, people began to come who considered themselves eyewitnesses of the assassination attempt. Savelyev's factory worker Kuznetsov brought Browning No. 150489. Kuznetsov claimed to have picked up the Browning at the scene of the assassination attempt and took it with him as an expensive relic. And having read in Izvestia of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee a request to return the weapon, now I have brought it. At first he did not understand the question where the Browning lay, he said that he had kept it on his chest all this time, then he explained that "the Browning was lying near the body of Vladimir Ilyich." It turned out to be a discrepancy with the testimony of Gil: he said that he pushed the weapon with his foot under the car. The Browning was a seven-shooter; four bullets remained in the clip. But if three shots were fired from it, then where did the fourth shell come from? Confusion, confusion...
The party said "must"
Meanwhile, Lubyanka is required to report. September 2 Sverdlov convenes the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, calls Peters. Peters says that there are new data, an investigative experiment, a fingerprint examination will be carried out. Sverdlov agrees - the investigation must continue. However, Kaplan will have to be dealt with today.
“Is there a confession in the case? There is. Comrades, I am making a proposal - to shoot citizen Kaplan today for the crime she committed (Sverdlov).
A confession is not proof of guilt (Peters)."
The protocol of the meeting ends with this phrase. Or breaks off.
Shoot... Shoot... Shoot...
Only two remarks, reproduced later by the participants in the events, have come down to us. To understand them, you need to remember: on July 7 (after the Left SR rebellion led by Maria Spiridonova), Dzerzhinsky resigned as chairman of the Cheka, not because he considered himself responsible "for penetrating the apparatus of the Left SR commission," as they wrote in Soviet textbooks, but because that he was one of the main witnesses in the case of the murder of the German ambassador Mirbach. Even then, in July, two positions clashed in the Bolshevik leadership.
"We must be guided only by the law," Dzerzhinsky said, justifying his resignation. "Here the question is political, and we must adhere to political expediency," Sverdlov objected to him. (Minutes of the meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of July 7, 1918)
Lenin was present at that meeting, and Dzerzhinsky's resignation was accepted. Now, on September 2, Lenin was gone. Sverdlov responded to Peters's protest against the execution of the main suspect with the same "political expediency" in connection with the decision of the leadership "to begin to carry out the Red Terror throughout the entire territory of the Soviet Republic against the enemies of the workers' and peasants' power."
“War has been declared on us, we will respond with war. And the tougher and more unambiguous its beginning, the closer the end will be,” Sverdlov’s words at a meeting (deleted from history) of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on September 2, 1918.
“Since the Kaplan case, we have a chance once and for all to refuse to replace the law with any expediency,” Peters said on the same September 2.
Apparently, this dispute was the main topic of the meeting. And in the evening, the commandant of the Kremlin, Malkov, came to Lubyanka with a decision to transfer Kaplan from the Cheka to the Kremlin. In his memoirs, he is silent about the fact that he then came to Lubyanka several times.
“I had a moment when I didn’t know what I should do,” Peters later told Louise Bryant, “to shoot this woman myself, whom I hated no less than my comrades, or shoot back from my comrades if they begin to take her strength, or ... shoot yourself."
"Felix with Peters - two pair of boots"
On September 2, at night, Kaplan was still in the building of the Cheka. On the morning of September 3, Lenin asked to report to him how things were going. On the 3rd, Dzerzhinsky left Petrograd for Moscow. No one doubted that he would support Peters. ("Two boots - a pair" - this is how Trotsky once put it about the chairman of the Cheka and his deputy). With the implementation of the decision of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Sverdlov decided to hurry.
Another fact: that morning Lunacharsky again came to the Lubyanka.
Once upon a time, this Russian intellectual, who heartily accepted the idea of moving towards justice and equality, by an effort of will and the violence of logic, subordinated himself to the laws of mortal struggle. Now Lunacharsky had to convince Peters not to oppose the decision of the party leadership.
"... Anatoly Vasilyevich gave me a lesson in the Russian language, once again delicately reminding me to what extent for my comrades I was still an "Englishman." a righteous man - a righteous man, a judge "... That morning I gave my judge to Malkov to be shot." (Peters. From the memoirs of Louise Bryant).
* * *
Kaplan was shot in the Kremlin on the same day, September 3. If you believe the censored memoirs of the Kremlin commandant Malkov, he did it himself at four o'clock in the afternoon with one shot, after Kaplan turned her back on him, at the command "To the car!" They shot the only person who could tell something, they shot when, in fact, nothing was clear, when Peters had just established psychological contact with the person under investigation, when he was just trying to figure out why this strange woman took her crazy step. And there were questions that today turn into countless versions ...
The investigation into the case of the attempt on Lenin continued in 1918, in 1922, in the 60s, in the 90s. It is still going on.
The assassination attempt on Lenin, carried out by the Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan, was the loudest attempt to eliminate the leader of the revolution. The controversy surrounding this event, as well as the fate of the terrorist, does not subside to this day.
One goal
The real name of Fanny Kaplan is Feiga Khaimovna Roitblat. She was born in Volyn in a poor Jewish family. Pretty early, the ambitious girl connected herself with revolutionary organizations, and at the age of 16 she ended up in hard labor for an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Kiev Governor-General Vladimir Sukhomlinov.
She was released as a half-blind, sick, noticeably aged woman, although she was only 27. Thanks to the efforts of the Provisional Government, Kaplan was treated in the health resort of Evpatoria, and with the assistance of Dmitry Ulyanov, the younger brother of the one at whom she would soon aim her gun, Fanny received referral to an eye clinic in Kharkov. She could not fully regain her sight, but at least she could distinguish the silhouettes of people.
On October 17, the socialist revolution broke out, which Fanny Kaplan, like many of her comrades, did not accept. Declared a traitor by former comrades-in-arms, Lenin was now under the gun of merciless criticism, as well as weapons. Joining the ranks of the right SRs, Fanny decided to act.
Despite the fact that attempts were made on Lenin repeatedly, he still moved around without protection. On August 30, 1918, the Bolshevik leader spoke to the workers of the Michelson plant (today the Moscow Electromechanical Plant named after Vladimir Ilyich in Zamoskvorechye). They tried to dissuade Lenin from appearing in public, referring to the murder of Uritsky, which occurred on the morning of the same day, but he was adamant. After the speech, Ulyanov went to the car, when suddenly three shots fired from the crowd.
Fanny Kaplan was caught on Bolshaya Serpukhovskaya Street, at the nearest tram stop. She confirmed to the worker Ivanov who seized her that she was the culprit of the assassination attempt. Ivanov asked: “On whose orders did you shoot?” According to the worker, the answer followed: “At the suggestion of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. I have done my duty with valor and I will die with valor."
Arranged by myself
However, after her arrest, Kaplan denied any involvement in the incident. Only after a series of interrogations did she confess. However, no threats forced the terrorist to extradite her accomplices or organizers of the assassination. “I arranged everything myself,” Kaplan repeated.
The revolutionary frankly stated everything that she thinks about Lenin, the October Revolution and the Brest peace, noting in passing that the decision to kill the leader matured in Simferopol in February 1918, after the idea of the Constituent Assembly was finally buried.
However, apart from the statement of Kaplan herself, no one else was sure that it was she who shot at Lenin. A few days later, one of the Mikhelson workers brought to the Cheka a Browning with inventory number 150489, which he allegedly found in the factory yard. The weapon was immediately brought to the case.
It is curious that the bullets subsequently removed from Lenin's body did not confirm their belonging to the pistol featured in the case. But by this time, Kaplan was no longer alive. She was shot on September 3, 1918 at 4 pm behind the arch of building No. 9 of the Moscow Kremlin. The verdict (actually an oral order from Sverdlov) was carried out by the commandant of the Kremlin, a former Baltic citizen Pavel Malkov. The body of the deceased was "packed" in an empty tar barrel, doused with gasoline and burned there.
It is known that Yakov Yurovsky, who had arrived from Yekaterinburg and had organized the execution of the royal family a month earlier, was involved in the investigation. Historian Vladimir Khrustalev draws a very obvious analogy between the destruction of the corpse of Fanny Kaplan and an attempt to eliminate the bodies of the Romanovs. In his opinion, the Kremlin may have used the experience gained by the Bolsheviks near Yekaterinburg.
There should be no doubt
Immediately after the capture of Fanny Kaplan, Yakov Sverdlov stated that he had no doubts about the involvement in the cause of the right SRs, who were hired either by the British or the French. However, today the version is being actively exaggerated that Kaplan has nothing to do with it - poor eyesight would not allow her to carry out her plans. The attempt was allegedly made by the wards of the head of the Cheka Felix Dzerzhinsky Lidia Konoplyova and Grigory Semyonov, and Yakov Sverdlov himself was its initiator.
A supporter of this version, the writer and lawyer Arkady Vaksberg, notes that there is no evidence confirming the involvement of Fanny Kaplan in the assassination attempt on Lenin. And he explains the motives of Ilyich’s comrades-in-arms with a banal struggle for power: “the leader of the revolution”, they say, was very tired of his comrades “in a common cause”, so they decided to deal with him, exposing a defenseless girl to a blow.
One way or another, but already in recent history, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation conducted its own investigation into the assassination attempt on Vladimir Ulyanov, in which it confirmed the guilt of Fanny Kaplan. To date, this case is officially considered closed.
Regarding the fate of Fanny Kaplan, there is an even bolder version. According to her, the murder was staged: in reality, Kaplan was sent to prison, where she lived until 1936. As one of the variations, there is an opinion that the terrorist spent the rest of her life on Solovki. There were even witnesses.
However, in his memoirs, Pavel Malkov insists that Kaplan was shot personally by him on the territory of the Kremlin. The memoirs of the poet Demyan Bedny have been preserved, who confirms that he witnessed the execution and liquidation of the body of Kaplan.
In 1922, a massive stone was erected at the site of the assassination attempt for a future monument, but the idea was never realized. This monument is the first one erected in honor of the leader of the world proletariat. The stone can still be seen today in the park next to the house at Pavlovskaya street, 7.
