On August 30, 1918, after speaking to the workers of the Mikhelson plant in Moscow, an attempt was made on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, as a result of which he received seriously injured.
After the end of the rally, Lenin went out into the courtyard of the plant, continuing the conversation with the audience and answering their questions.
According to the recollections of Bonch-Bruevich, with reference to the driver Gil, the latter sat behind the wheel and looked, half-turned, at Lenin as he approached.
Hearing the shot, he immediately turned his head and saw a woman on the left side of the car near the front fender, who was aiming at Lenin’s back.
Then two more shots rang out and Lenin fell.
These memories became the basis of all historical works and were reproduced in the classic assassination scene in the Soviet film “Lenin in 1918”: a brunette woman with a clearly Jewish appearance aims a revolver at the back of the leader of the Russian revolution...
According to the official version, the perpetrator of this terrorist attack was the Socialist Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan (Feiga Khaimovna Roitblat), who was shot on September 3, 1918.
Neither her contemporaries nor historians characterized her otherwise as a “socialist-revolutionary terrorist,” and no doubts arose about her involvement in the assassination attempt on the “leader of the world proletariat.”
However, all the circumstances of this attempt still remain not entirely clear, and even the most superficial acquaintance with the documents shows how contradictory they are and do not give a clear answer to the question of Kaplan’s guilt...
If we look at the documents, it turns out that the time of the assassination attempt was never precisely determined and the discrepancy in time reaches several hours.
The Mossovet's appeal, which was published in the Pravda newspaper, stated that the assassination attempt occurred at 7:30 pm, but the chronicle of the same newspaper reported that this event took place around 9 pm.
A very significant amendment in determining the time of the assassination attempt was made by Lenin’s personal driver S. Gil, a punctual man and one of the few real witnesses. In his testimony, which he gave on August 30, 1918, Gil stated: “I arrived with Lenin at about 10 o’clock in the evening at the Michelson plant”... 
Based on the fact that, according to Gil, Lenin’s speech at the rally lasted about an hour, the assassination attempt was most likely carried out around 23:00, when it finally got dark and night fell.
Perhaps Gil’s testimony is closest to reality, since the protocol of Fanny Kaplan’s first interrogation clearly records “11:30 pm.”
If we assume that the detention of Kaplan and her delivery to the nearest military commissariat, where the interrogations began, took 30-40 minutes, then the time indicated by Gil should be considered the most correct.
It is difficult to imagine that Fanny Kaplan, the suspect in the assassination attempt, remained unquestioned for more than three hours, if the assassination attempt took place at 19:30.
Where did this discrepancy in time come from?
Most likely, the shift in the time of the assassination attempt to a lighter part of the day was made quite deliberately in his memoirs by Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, the manager of the affairs of the Council of People's Commissars. His memoirs, which became the basis of the textbook story about the assassination attempt on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, were reproached at the time of their appearance for inaccuracies and omissions, the introduction of insertions and details that the author could not remember...
Bonch-Bruevich claims that he learned about the assassination attempt at 18:00, when he returned home from work for a short break. He needed this to create a false picture of Kaplan’s detention in daylight, since he added clearly fictitious details...
Bonch-Bruevich’s memoirs include the so-called “driver Gil’s story,” which was reported as if personally to the author. This gives the memories the necessary authenticity, and both Soviet and Western historians invariably refer to them in the future.
But the “driver’s story” according to Bonch-Bruevich contradicts Gil’s own testimony. He could not see what happened after the assassination attempt, that is, the episode of Kaplan’s detention, since he was near the wounded man 
, and then took him to the Kremlin. The details associated with this episode were composed by Bonch-Bruevich and added directly to “Gil’s story” for greater persuasiveness...
During interrogation, Gil gave the following testimony: “I saw... a woman’s hand with a Browning reaching out from behind several people.” Consequently, the only witness Gil did not see the man who shot Lenin, but only noticed the woman’s outstretched hand.
But, unfortunately, this assumption should be discarded. The observant driver made an important amendment to the protocol: “I am correcting myself: after the first shot, I noticed a woman’s hand with a Browning.”
Based on this, there can be no doubt: Gul did not see the woman who was shooting, and the entire scene described by Bonch-Bruevich, which has become canonical, was fictitious...
Commissioner S. Batulin, who detained Fanny Kaplan some time after the assassination attempt, at the time of her exit
from the factory was at a distance of 10 - 15 steps from him. Later he changed his initial testimony, indicating that he was 15 to 20 steps away and that: “The man who shot comrade. I haven’t seen Lenin.”
Thus, it should be considered an established fact that none of the interrogated witnesses present at the scene of the assassination saw the man who shot Lenin in the face and could not identify Fanny Kaplan as the perpetrator of the assassination...
After the shots, the situation developed as follows: the crowd began to scatter, and Gil rushed in the direction from which the shots were fired. What is important: not towards a specific person, but in the direction of the shots. Here's a quote from Gul's own memoirs:
“... The woman who was shooting threw a revolver at my feet and disappeared into the crowd.”
He doesn't give any other details...
The fate of the abandoned weapons is curious. “No one raised this revolver in front of me,” Gul claims. Only on the way, one of the two people accompanying the wounded V.I. Lenin explained to Gul: “I pushed him under the car with my foot.”
The Kaplan revolver was not presented during interrogations, nor did it appear as evidence during the investigation.
Among the questions Kaplan asked about the things found on her (papers and money in her purse, train tickets, etc.), only one had to do with the assassination weapon. Apparently, the chairman of the Moscow Revolutionary Tribunal, A. Dyakonov, who interrogated Fanny Kaplan, did not have a revolver in his hands. He asked only about the weapon system, to which Kaplan replied: “I won’t say what revolver I shot from, I wouldn’t like to give details”... 
Most likely, if the revolver had been lying in front of Dyakonov and Kaplan on the table, her answer about her reluctance to go into details would have looked at least ridiculous.
While the missing evidence was being pushed under the car, an eyewitness to the assassination attempt, S. Batulin, shouted: “Hold it, catch it!”
However, later, in the written testimony that Batulin sent to the Lubyanka on September 5, 1918, he delicately corrects his market cry with a more politically literate exclamation: “Stop the murderer, Comrade. Lenin!
With this cry, he ran out of the factory yard onto Serpukhovskaya Street, along which people, frightened by shots and general confusion, were running in groups and alone in different directions.
Batulin explains that with these cries he wanted to stop those people who saw Kaplan shoot at Lenin and attract them to the pursuit of the criminal. But, apparently, no one responded to Batulin’s cries and expressed a desire to help him find the killer.
Such indifference of the working masses was critical for the creators of the legend about the killer Kaplan, which is why Bonch-Bruevich appears with children who were in the yard during the assassination attempt, who seemed to “run in a crowd after the shooter and shouted: “Here she is!” Here she is!" But in the newspaper, which was dedicated to the fifth anniversary of the assassination attempt, the same vigilant Soviet children are already going to play on the street, where they help the worker Ivanov to pick up the trail of the fleeing Kaplan...
But Commissioner Batulin, who twice presented his testimony, did not see any children, and what were the children to do on a gloomy and cold autumn evening on a dark street?..
Having run from the plant to the tram stop on Serpukhovskaya Street, S. Batulin, not seeing anything suspicious, stopped. Only then did he notice a woman behind him near a tree with a briefcase and an umbrella in her hands. The commissioner repeated twice in his testimony on August 30, 1918, a detail that he remembered: he saw a woman not running in front, but standing behind him. He was not catching up with her, and she could not overtake Batulin and come running first or follow him and suddenly stop.
In these short moments of intense attention, he would certainly have noticed a figure running with an absurd umbrella, trying to hide under a tree. In addition, women's clothing in 1918, with a long dress reaching to the toes, hardly allowed a woman to run as fast as a man ran.
And what is important is that at these moments Fanny Kaplan found it difficult not only to run, but also to walk, as it turned out a little later, since she had nails in her shoes that tormented her when walking...
It remains to be assumed that Fanny Kaplan did not run anywhere at all, and perhaps simply stood all the time in one place, on Serpukhovskaya Street, at a sufficiently far distance from the factory yard where the shots were fired.
But there was a strangeness in it that so amazed Batulin. “She had the appearance of a person fleeing persecution, intimidated and hunted,” he concludes...
Commissioner Batulin asks her a simple question: who is she and why did she come here? “To my question,” says Batulin. - she replied: “IT wasn’t me who did it.”
The most striking thing about the answer is its inconsistency with the question. At first glance, it is given simply out of place, but the impression is deceptive: the answer opens your eyes to a lot.
Initially, he refutes the false claim that Fanny Kaplan immediately and voluntarily confessed to the assassination attempt on Lenin. However, the main thing in the answer is its psychological coloring: Fanny is so absorbed in herself that she does not hear the question being asked.
Her first reaction is one of justification, but Kaplan is justified at a time when no one is accusing her. Moreover, her childish response shows that Kaplan, in essence, does not know the details of what happened. She could not hear the shots and saw only people running, shouting “Catch, hold!”
Therefore, she says in the most general form: “I didn’t do THIS”...
This rather strange answer aroused the suspicion of Batulin, who, having searched her pockets, took her briefcase and umbrella, offering to follow him. He had no evidence of the detainee’s guilt in the assassination attempt, but the very fact of detaining a suspicious person created an atmosphere of a completed task and inspired the illusion that the detention was justified...
However, what further served as the basis for accusing Fanny Kaplan of the assassination attempt on V.I. Lenin does not fit into the legal framework.
“On the road,” Batulin continues, “I asked her, sensing in her the face that had attempted to assassinate Comrade. Lenin: “Why did you shoot comrade. Lenin? , to which she replied: “Why do you need to know this?” which finally convinced me of this woman’s attempt on comrade’s life. Lenin".
This simple conclusion contains a synthesis of the era: class instinct instead of evidence, conviction of guilt instead of evidence of guilt...
At this time, a crowd of people, stunned by the assassination attempt, began to riot around the detainee: someone volunteered to help Batulin accompany the detainee, someone began to shout that it was she who shot. Later, after newspaper reports about the guilt and execution of Fanny Kaplan, it seemed to Batulin that someone in the crowd recognized this woman as the person who shot Lenin. This unknown “someone,” of course, was not interrogated and did not leave his testimony. However, in the original, most recent testimony, Batulin only claims that there were screams from the crowd and that this woman fired.
By this time the crowd was in a frenzy, angry workers shouting: “Kill! Tear me to pieces!"...
In this atmosphere of mass psychosis of the crowd, which was on the verge of lynching, Kaplan, in response to Batulin’s repeated question: “Did you shoot comrade. Lenin? the detainee unexpectedly answered in the affirmative. 
The confirmation of guilt, so undeniable in the eyes of the crowd, caused such a fit of rage that it was necessary to create a chain of armed people in order to prevent lynching and contain the raging mass that demanded the death of the criminal.
Kaplan was brought to the military commissariat of the Zamoskvoretsky district, where she was interrogated for the first time...
During interrogation by security officer Peters, Fanny Kaplan described her short life as follows: “I am Fanya Efimovna Kaplan. She lived under this name since 1906. In 1906, I was arrested in Kyiv in connection with an explosion. Then she sat as an anarchist. This explosion came from a bomb and I was injured. I had the bomb for a terrorist act. I was tried by the Military Field Court in the city. Kyiv. She was sentenced to eternal hard labor.
She was imprisoned in the Maltsevskaya convict prison, and then in the Akatui prison. After the revolution she was released and moved to Chita. Then in April I came to Moscow. In Moscow, I stayed with a convict friend, Pigit, with whom I had come from Chita. And she stopped at Bolshaya Sadovaya, 10, apt. 5. I lived there for a month, then went to Yevpatoriya to a sanatorium for political amnesties. I stayed in the sanatorium for two months, and then went to Kharkov for surgery. Then she went to Simferopol and lived there until February 1918.
In Akatui I sat with Spiridonova. In prison, my views were formed - I turned from an anarchist into a socialist revolutionary. I also sat there with Bitsenko, Terentyeva and many others. I changed my views because I became an anarchist very young.
The October Revolution found me in a Kharkov hospital. I was dissatisfied with this revolution and greeted it negatively.
I stood for the Constituent Assembly and now I stand for it. Along the lines of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, I am more aligned with Chernov.
My parents are in America. They left in 1911. I have four brothers and three sisters. They are all workers. My father is a Jewish teacher. I was educated at home. She held [a position] in Simferopol as the head of courses for training workers for volost zemstvos. I received a salary of 150 rubles a month.
I accept the Samara government entirely and stand for an alliance with the allies 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.”
The identity of the woman detained by Batulin was immediately established, since the protocol of the first interrogation began with the words: “I, Fanya Efimovna Kaplan...”, but this did not prevent the Cheka from making a statement the next day that the shooter and the detained woman refused to give her last name.. .
This message Cheka pointedly hinted at the presence of some data that indicated a connection between the assassination attempt and a certain organization. At the same time, there was a sensational message about the discovery of a grand conspiracy of diplomats who tried to bribe the Latvian riflemen guarding the Kremlin.
The next night, the British consul Bruce Lockhart was arrested, who was indeed in contact with representatives of the Latvian riflemen, who were allegedly opposed to the Soviet regime, but in fact were agents of the Cheka.
Of course, the Cheka did not have any information about the connection between the attempt on Lenin and the so-called “Lockhart conspiracy,” although Peters, who at that moment was replacing F. Dzerzhinsky, who had left for Petrograd to investigate the murder of Uritsky, had a tempting idea to connect the attempt on Lenin and the Lockhart case into one vast conspiracy, uncovered thanks to the resourcefulness of the Cheka...
The first question that was asked to Lockhart, who was arrested and taken to Lubyanka, was this: does he know a woman named Kaplan?
Of course, Lockhart had no idea who Kaplan was...
Against the backdrop of the disclosure of the “Lockhart conspiracy,” Kaplan’s interrogations took place and, accordingly, the nervous atmosphere of these days could not but affect her fate.
Researchers have 6 interrogation protocols of F. Kaplan at their disposal. The first was launched at 11:30 pm on August 30, 1918.
On the night of September 1, Lockhart was arrested, and at 06:00 hours Fanny Kaplan was brought into his cell at Lubyanka. It is likely that Peters promised to spare her life if she pointed to Lockhart as an accomplice in the assassination attempt on Lenin, but Kaplan remained silent and was quickly taken away.
The impressions left by Lockhart from this visit are unique, since they provide the only surviving portrait and psychological description of Fanny Kaplan at the moment when she had already taken her own life. This description deserves to be given in its entirety:
“At 6 o’clock in the morning a woman was brought into the room. She was dressed in black. She had black hair, and her eyes, fixed intently and motionlessly, were surrounded by black circles.
Her face was pale. The facial features, typically Jewish, were unattractive.
She could be any age, from 20 to 35 years old. We realized that it was Kaplan. Undoubtedly, the Bolsheviks hoped that she would give us some kind of sign.
Her calmness was unnatural. She went to the window and, leaning her chin on her hand, looked through the window at the dawn. So she remained motionless, silent, apparently resigned to her fate, until the sentries came in and took her away.” 4
And this is the last reliable evidence of a person who saw Fanny Kaplan alive...
In her testimony, Kaplan wrote: “My Hebrew name is Feiga. Her name was always Fanya Efimovna.”
Until the age of 16, Fanya lived under the surname Roydman, and from 1906 she began to bear the surname Kaplan, but she did not explain the reasons for changing her surname.
She also had another name, Dora, under which Maria Spiridonova, Yegor Sazonov, Steinberg and many others knew her.
Fanny ended up in the royal penal servitude as a very young girl. Her revolutionary views changed greatly in prison, mainly under the influence of famous figures of the Socialist Revolutionary Party with whom she was imprisoned, especially Maria Spiridonova.
“In prison, my views took shape,” Kaplan wrote, “I turned from an anarchist into a socialist-revolutionary.”
But Fanny is talking about formalizing her views, and not about formally joining the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and her official party affiliation remains highly controversial. At the time of her arrest and her first interrogation, Fanny Kaplan herself stated that she considered herself a socialist, but did not belong to any party. Later she clarified that in the Socialist Revolutionary Party she rather shared the views of Viktor Chernov. This was the only, albeit rather shaky, basis for declaring F. Kaplan to belong to the Right Socialist Revolutionary Party.
During interrogations, Kaplan, without restraining herself, said that she believed
a traitor to the revolution and that his continued existence undermines faith in socialism: “The longer he lives, he removes the idea of socialism by decades.”
Its manic aspiration is beyond doubt, as is its complete organizational and technical helplessness. 
According to her, in the spring of 1918, she offered her services in the assassination attempt on Lenin to Nil Fomin, a former member of the Constituent Assembly who was later shot by Kolchak’s men, who was then in Moscow. Fomin brought this proposal to the attention of V. Zenzinov, a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and he conveyed this to the Central Committee.
But since, recognizing the possibility of conducting an armed struggle against the Bolsheviks, the Socialist Revolutionary Party had a negative attitude towards terrorist acts against the Bolshevik leaders, the proposal of N. Fomin and Kaplan was rejected. 6
After this, Kaplan was left alone, but in the summer of 1918, a certain Rudzievsky introduced her to a small group of very motley composition and uncertain ideology, which included: the old convict Socialist Revolutionary Pelevin, not inclined to terrorist activities, and a twenty-year-old girl named Marusya 7 . This was the case, although later attempts were made to portray Kaplan as the creator of a terrorist organization.
This version firmly came into use thanks to the light hand of the leader of the actual combat organization of the Socialist Revolutionaries, G. Semenov (Vasiliev).
Before the February Revolution, Semyonov did not show himself in any way; he appeared on the surface of political life in 1917, distinguished by exorbitant ambition and a penchant for adventurism.
At the beginning of 1918, Semenov, together with his partner and friend Lydia Konopleva, organized a flying combat detachment in Petrograd, which included mainly Petrograd workers - former Socialist Revolutionary militants. The detachment committed expropriations and prepared terrorist acts. The first proposals to assassinate Lenin came from Semenov’s group.
In February-March 1918, practical steps were taken in this direction, which did not produce any results, but on June 20, 1918, a member of Semenov’s detachment, worker Sergeev, killed the prominent Bolshevik Moses Volodarsky in Petrograd. Sergeev managed to escape.
Semenov's vigorous activity worried the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. The Socialist Revolutionary Party dissociated itself from the murder of Volodarsky, which was not sanctioned by the Central Committee, and Semenov and his detachment, after sharp clashes with members of the Central Committee, were asked to move to Moscow.
In Moscow, Semenov began preparing attempts on the lives of Trotsky, which was unsuccessful, and Lenin, which ended with shots fired on August 30, 1918. Semyonov managed to commit several impressive expropriations until he was finally arrested by the Cheka in October 1918. He offered armed resistance during arrest and tried to escape, injuring several Cheka employees.
Semenov was charged with creating a counter-revolutionary organization that set itself the goal of overthrowing Soviet power. Semenov was also accused of providing armed resistance during arrest.
All this pepper was more than enough for inevitable execution, so Semenov’s further fate was not in doubt. But unexpectedly, Semenov, having weighed all the chances, realized that he could only save himself from execution by offering his services to the Cheka.
In 1919, he was released from prison as a member of the RCP(b) with a special assignment to work in the Socialist Revolutionary organization as an informant, which bought amnesty and freedom not only for himself, but also for Konopleva, who remained an active assistant to Semyonov and soon also joined RKP(b).
At the beginning of 1922, Semenov and Konopleva, as if on cue, came out with sensational revelations. At the end of February 1922 in Berlin, Semenov published a brochure about the military and combat work of the Socialist Revolutionaries in 1917-1918.
At the same time, the newspapers published the testimony of Lydia Konopleva sent to the GPU, which was devoted to “exposing” the terrorist activities of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in the same period.
These materials gave the GPU grounds to bring to trial the Socialist Revolutionary Party as a whole and a number of its leading figures, who had been imprisoned for several years in the prison dungeons of the Cheka-GPU.
The trial of the Socialist Revolutionary Party was the first major political trial staged with the help of denunciations, slander and false testimony.
At this trial, we are only interested in information related to the assassination attempt on V.I. Lenin on August 30, 1918 and the name of Fanny Kaplan.
Information sources:
1. Wikipedia website
2. Large encyclopedic dictionary
3. Orlov B. “So who shot Lenin?” (magazine “Source” No. 2 1993)
4. Bruce-Lockhart R. N. Memoires of a British Agent.
5. Bonch-Bruevich V. “Attempt on Lenin”
6. Zenzinov V. “Coup d’etat of Admiral Kolchak in Omsk on November 18, 1918”
7. “Testimony of Pelevin on the npouecce of the right Socialist Revolutionaries.” (newspaper “Pravda” dated July 21, 1922 N 161)
Almost all political leaders of the past have experienced assassination attempts by those dissatisfied with their actions. Did not escape a similar fate. They tried to interrupt the life of the leader of the world proletariat several times. The year 1918 can be considered the “richest” in terms of assassination attempts – the time when the Bolsheviks were just beginning to settle into the very top of the power hierarchy.
The first assassination attempt was made on January 1, when a group of attackers shot at the car in which the Bolshevik leader was. The second was stopped by the perpetrator himself - the unknown soldier personally confessed to Lenin of his duty to commit the murder of the leader. However, the greatest danger is the assassination attempt committed on August 30 of the same ill-fated year.
So what do we know about this murder attempt? Historical sources report that, as he was preparing to leave a rally held on the territory of the Mikhelson plant, Lenin stopped to talk with a certain citizen Popova. The hitch could have been fatal for the leader: it was at these moments that shots rang out. Two bullets hit Vladimir Ilyich, another slightly grazed the Bolshevik leader. The fourth shell hit his interlocutor.
The facts end there. In the confusion, it was not possible to clearly see the shooter. The driver of the car waiting for Lenin, who ran up to the fallen leader, could only say with certainty that the pistol was held by a woman’s hand.
Was the would-be murderer punished?
Fanny Kaplan, a girl who had long pursued the fanatical goal of committing the murder of Lenin, was accused of attempted murder. The date September 3, 1918 became fatal for her: the accused was shot. However, is everything so simple in the case of an assassination attempt on the head of the party? It is reliably known that the accusation against Socialist-Revolutionary Kaplan was drawn up precisely on the basis of the testimony of the detainee herself. But the girl was unable to provide details to the investigation: she did not tell where the pistol from which Fanny shot Lenin came from, and she could not describe the murder weapon itself.
By the way, during her turbulent youth, Kaplan was wounded in the head, which is why she practically lost her sight. Therefore, the fact that this particular citizen was the killer raises doubts: a half-blind and extremely eccentric person would hardly have been able to prepare a murder plan so accurately, and even if she fired a shot, she would not have been able to hit so accurately.
The murder weapon was subsequently found. It later turned out that the bullets taken from Lenin’s body were of different calibers, therefore, it is worth talking about two pistols involved in the assassination attempt. The destructive power of both was amazing for those times - a shot to the head would have killed Vladimir Ilyich on the spot even at a distance of 25 meters. It follows from this that there were at least two killers, and some of them shot from afar. Being close to the stage of the theater of action, Kaplan certainly would not have been able to fire a shot at the “great Bolshevik.”
Perhaps the reason for the assassination attempt is buried a little deeper and it is not the differences between the parties that are to blame, but internal party squabbles? The consequences of the injury indicate precisely this: the head of the party, after recovery, was sent outside of Moscow, to a country estate, from where he could no longer take such an active part in the affairs of the state. However, he returned to active work quite soon, and the assassination attempt was used by the Bolsheviks to unleash the “Red Terror.”
Ekaterina Molchanova, "My Grandmother Fanny Kaplan"
On August 30, 1918, 95 years ago, shots rang out at the Moscow Mikhelson plant. The leader of the revolution, Vladimir Lenin, was seriously wounded, two bullets hit him.
The shooter turned out to be Fanny Kaplan, one of the most mysterious women in our history. Where did she come from, what was her real name, was she really, half-blind, aiming at Lenin?
One of the most famous tales of Soviet history, that Fanny Kaplan shot at Lenin, is based on such a rotten foundation that even during the times of unshakable faith in the fairness of “revolutionary justice”, this version was doubted by the Cheka investigators themselves. Already after Kaplan was shot on September 3, 1918, and her body was burned in a barrel, during the investigation of new cases, the security officers more than once tried to get answers from the defendants to the questions: who shot, who was Kaplan and what party did she belong to?
SHOOTED AFTER 3 DAYS
All this can be found in the declassified archives of the FSB.
The questions of why the foundation of case No. 2162 turned out to be so weak and why, despite doubts, Kaplan was still shot, are much easier to answer than finding out who actually shot Lenin. First of all, the investigation was carried out in a wild hurry. Judge for yourself, the attempt took place on August 30, and on September 3 the suspect was already shot.
To some extent, this haste is explained by the historical background. The revolt of the Czechoslovaks, the uprising of Savinkov’s supporters in Yaroslavl, the landing of interventionists in Arkhangelsk, the murder of Uritsky, the murder of the German ambassador von Mirbach, the so-called “conspiracy of ambassadors,” etc. At that time, the position of the Bolsheviks was extremely difficult. It is known that shortly before the murder of Mirbach, Trotsky, assessing the situation, told him: “Actually, we are already dead, but there is no one yet who could bury us.”
The assassination attempt on Lenin seemed to the Bolsheviks an ideal pretext to finally deal with all their opponents, including yesterday’s comrades - the Socialist Revolutionaries. A showdown between former partners, classic for any revolution, began. Someone had to either disappear or submit completely. Already on September 5, the Bolsheviks announced the beginning of the Red Terror. Against everyone: the white underground, the Socialist Revolutionaries, Savinkovites, anarchists, etc.
FANNY KAPLAN AND THE SRs
True, with the Social Revolutionaries everything was not so simple. The Social Revolutionaries were, after all, both left and right. And the Bolsheviks wanted everyone to clear the political field. This is where the most convenient character appeared - Fanny Kaplan. On the one hand, her party affiliation was not really defined, on the other hand, according to some evidence, while in hard labor, she was ideologically transformed from an anarchist to a Socialist Revolutionary. However, the Socialist Revolutionaries themselves (both left and right) never recognized Kaplan as one of their own. Which, of course, did not stop the Bolsheviks from using Fanny Kaplan as a trump card, which was suitable for accusations against Socialist Revolutionaries of all stripes. Her case later appeared in various trials. That is, Kaplan was artificially assigned to one political group, then to another.
A group of Socialist Revolutionaries in exile, Akatuy, winter, Finally, obvious gaps and inconsistencies in the case were inevitable, since the Cheka was still just learning the craft of detective and interrogator. Latvian Yakov Peters, Dzerzhinsky’s deputy, who was in charge of the Kaplan case, was an experienced revolutionary, but neither his work as a farm laborer in his youth nor his later agitation among peasants and soldiers prepared him for the work of an investigator.
And so it turned out that from the very beginning the investigation was conducted incompetently, hastily, and its results were adjusted to the requirements of the political moment.
FANNY KAPLAN - VERSIONS
Even today, we do not know the exact name of the woman accused of the assassination attempt on the “leader of the world proletariat.” From names to choose from: Fanny, Fani or Fanya, plus Dora and Feiga. From patronymics: Efimovna, Khaimovna and Fayvelovna. From the surnames: Kaplan, Royd, Roytblat or Roydman. There is little evidence of what Kaplan actually did after her release.
Well, what is known anyway? It is known from pre-revolutionary police reports, for example, that in December 1906 in Kiev Podil an explosion occurred in one of the hotels, after which a man and a woman ran out into the street. The man fled and the woman was detained. A fake passport in the name of Feiga Khaimovna Kaplan and a Browning car were found on her. The passport was covered in blood because the woman was slightly wounded in several places. During interrogations, the detainee remained silent or denied everything, which, however, did not save her from indefinite hard labor.
It is known that since 1907, Kaplan (or, more precisely, a woman under this name) was imprisoned in the Narchinsky penal servitude prison in Eastern Siberia, where a couple of years later she unexpectedly became blind. Apparently, the concussion received during the explosion took its toll. Until 1913, only her cellmates were interested in her blindness, but later the convict was nevertheless transferred to Irkutsk, examined and treated. Later, freed by the February revolution, Kaplan continued treatment at the Kharkov ophthalmology clinic. Her vision was not fully restored, but she still moved around the streets on her own. In other words, she was, of course, a terrible shooter.
However, the fact that the shot was fired from a distance of no more than a meter can be interpreted both in favor of Kaplan and against her. Theoretically, shooting at point-blank range, she could also hit the target. True, for this, someone had to “lead” the half-blind woman to the target. Meanwhile, the investigation did not find any accomplices.
Not to mention the inconsistent testimony of witnesses. And among them were the driver of Lenin’s car, and the assistant military commissar of one of the Soviet divisions, a certain Batulin, who detained Kaplan. During the first interrogation, Batulin claimed that during the shots, Kaplan was 10–15 steps away from him, and behind his back. On the second, that she was next to the car. At first, Batulin said that he detained Kaplan right in the factory yard, then - that on the street. The suspicion inevitably arises that he gave repeated testimony under dictation.
BROWNING FANNY KAPLAN
Finally, all the witnesses confirmed that it was a woman who shot, but no one confirmed that it was Kaplan. Everyone only remembered the hand with the Browning.
By the way, this Browning itself, from which four shots were fired, as confirmed by a repeated investigation conducted in 1992–1996, was planted. And when they examined it, it turned out to already have a full clip, and the eighth cartridge was in the chamber. There is very little chance that Kaplan, who was detained immediately after the assassination attempt, could have quickly and unnoticed by others to reload the weapon. Moreover, this disabled woman, according to the testimonies of those who knew her, was not distinguished by dexterity. Finally, the case simply does not contain an officially documented record of the search carried out at her place.
CONFESSION OF FANNY KAPLAN
Another thing is confusing. The fact is that before the assassination attempt, Lenin had almost no security. And this was well known to his opponents. So he arrived at Mikhelson’s plant that day without security. Meanwhile, given the lack of security and the Socialist Revolutionary's experience in carrying out terrorist acts, the organizers of the assassination attempt did not have the slightest reason to risk the shooter. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Social Revolutionaries in such cases have always used bombs rather than pistols. And then suddenly they bet on the half-blind Kaplan? Strange.
It was not for nothing that later all kinds of versions arose around this assassination attempt. And in a number of versions it was no longer the Socialist Revolutionaries who appeared, but the Bolsheviks themselves. They say that the assassination attempt was the result of an internal party struggle. However, this version does not shine with serious evidence.
It would be possible, of course, to reduce the whole story of the assassination attempt to the action of a lone individual. Moreover, during one of the interrogations, Kaplan allegedly stated: “I shot at Lenin because he removed the idea of socialism for decades. I committed the assassination attempt on my own behalf.” However, the words hang in the air, since this protocol was not signed by her. (In general, out of six interrogation protocols, Kaplan agreed to sign only two.) And most importantly, the Bolsheviks were categorically not happy with the option of a lone terrorist. They needed a reason for widespread repression.
Fanny Kaplan is one of the most mysterious women in our history. Where did she come from, what was her real name, was she really, half-blind, aiming at Lenin? Finally, there is a version that, by order of the wounded leader, she was not shot, but was sent to Solovki. And already in the 30s, Fanny Kaplan was apparently seen in the Sverdlovsk prison.
Version man, ghost man.
From me:
Now, across the vastness of our information space, enemies of the people have launched stable but false ideas about V.I. Lenin. The greatness of the leader of the Russian proletariat and peasantry, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin), lies in the fact that he, leading the Bolshevik Party, developed and implemented a social model prohibiting any form of slavery.
In the USSR created by Lenin, the main sources of mass suffering and fear were eliminated - poverty, unemployment, homelessness, hunger, criminal and ethnic violence, as well as mass death in wars with a stronger enemy.
Now think about the reason and who is spreading lies about the person who created the conditions for us to realize our freedom, equality and justice.
On August 30, 1918, at the capital's Mikhelson plant, 28-year-old Socialist Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan attempted to assassinate Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
First organized assassination attempt on Vladimir Lenin occurred on New Year's Day 1918. Lenin was returning from a rally in the Mikhailovsky Manege, where he spoke to the Red Army soldiers who were leaving for the front. On the Simeonovsky Bridge from the Fontanka side, his car was fired upon. The body was riddled with bullets, some of them went straight through, breaking through the front window. Lenin was not injured. The terrorists, there were 12 of them, fled.
Subsequently, there were several more attempts to assassinate Lenin.
The most famous happened on August 30, 1918 at the Mikhelson plant in the Zamoskvoretsky district of Moscow, where Lenin spoke at a workers’ rally. After the rally in the courtyard of the factory, Lenin was wounded by three shots fired by the Socialist Revolutionary leader Fanny Kaplan. She fired four bullets at the leader. Despite dangerous neck wound, Lenin remained alive. On the same day, Fanny Kaplan was caught and interrogated. She never said who was behind the assassination attempt, and the case was closed. Fanny Kaplan was shot on September 3, 1918 in the courtyard of the Moscow Kremlin under the noise of car engines, her corpse was doused with gasoline and burned in an iron barrel in the Alexander Garden by the Kremlin commandant Pavel Malkov.
Lenin's wounds were not life-threatening, and he soon recovered.
This is one of the most mysterious assassination attempts in history. Historians are still arguing whether it really happened or whether it was just a skillful staging by the Bolsheviks. And if the assassination attempt was really real, then who was behind it, and who actually shot. The official version is the Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan, however, this version has been doubted more than once, if only because a woman with very poor eyesight (which has medical evidence) could not make accurate shots from a sufficiently long distance.
On the day of the assassination attempt, four mercenaries were on duty in the city.
The Social Revolutionaries carefully prepared the assassination attempt on the leader. At that time, Lenin spoke at rallies almost every day. Terrorist agents knew in advance several of the leader's supposed performance sites. There were four key places, respectively, in each there was one performer on duty. By the way, all are women. However, it was decided to send Kaplan to the Mikhelson plant. There was the best chance of Lenin's arrival there. And Kaplan, like no one else, was obsessed with the murder of the leader.
Children helped detain Fanny Kaplan.
After Kaplan fired her shots, she dropped her weapon and began making her way through the crowd. Children helped detain Kaplan. During the revolutions, children completely lost their fear of gunfire, so the volleys that rang out did not frighten them. While the adults ran in all directions, the boys who were running in the yard during the assassination attempt ran after Kaplan and screamed, showing where she had disappeared.
The bullets fired at the leader were poisoned.
During interrogation, one of the organizers of the assassination attempt, Grigory Semenov, admitted that the bullets loaded in the pistol for greater damage were cut and poisoned with curare poison. Doctors also spoke about the bullet incision and noted uncharacteristic wounds on the leader’s body. As for the presence of poison, this still remains a mystery. However, experts claim that all the properties of the poison were, in any case, destroyed by high temperature (from the heat of the bullet flying out of the gun).
The leader's incredible willpower.
Immediately after the assassination attempt, Lenin was taken to the Kremlin. According to the memoirs of the driver, the leader, Vladimir Ilyich independently climbed to the third floor along a fairly steep staircase. In addition, the wounded Lenin undressed himself and went to bed. By the way, some historians have more than once used this fact as evidence that the assassination attempt was staged. However, the medical report still indicates the opposite. In addition, after some time Lenin was taken to the Botkin hospital, where he underwent surgery. By the way, there is currently a memorial plaque hanging next to the chamber where Vladimir Ilyich lay.
Fanny Kaplan
Fanny Efimovna Kaplan was born in 1890 in the Volyn province in Ukraine. Her real name and surname are Feiga Khaimovna Roydman, under this name she lived until she was 16 years old. Her father was a melamed teacher at a cheder, a Jewish elementary school. The family was large - Fanny had three sisters and four brothers. Feiga received her primary education at home from her father. Being a pious and loyal person to the authorities, Nahum Roydman had no idea that his daughter would become a revolutionary and terrorist.
Then the parents left for America, and the girl changed her passport details, “borrowing” a passport from the Socialist Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan.
Left without parental care, she chose the profession of a seamstress. At the same time, she joined the revolution, happily carrying out various assignments. Fanny transported revolutionary literature and sometimes bombs from city to city. It was with the latter that she was caught in Kyiv by the Tsarist secret police.
On December 30, 1906, a military court sentenced the revolutionary to death, which was commuted to indefinite hard labor due to the terrorist’s minority.
At first, Fanny Kaplan was imprisoned in the Maltsevskaya convict prison, and then in the Akatuyskaya prison - in the Nerchinsk mountain district of Transbaikalia. In Akatui she met the famous activist of the revolutionary movement, Maria Spiridonova. Under the influence of Spiridonova, F. Kaplan's views changed in hard labor: from an anarchist she became an Socialist Revolutionary (socialist revolutionary).
The weapon Fanny Kaplan used to shoot Lenin:
In prison, twenty-year-old Fanny (by the way, in revolutionary circles she was known under the name Dora) began to go blind from a head wound received while still free. It shocked her so much that she wanted to commit suicide. The Tsar's manifesto of 1913 shortened her term of hard labor by twenty years, and the order of the Minister of Justice A.F. Kerensky of March 3, 1917 granted the would-be suicide complete freedom.
Fanny Kaplan reached Moscow only in April; her vision again deteriorated sharply from the hardships of the road and excitement. But there was another convict friend nearby. Eserka Anya Pigit was a relative of the owner of the Dukat tobacco factory, on whose order the famous house No. 10 on Bolshaya Sadovaya, known today as Bulgakovsky, was built. And then Muscovites called it Pigit's house - after the name of the owner and main tenant. A wealthy relative provided Anna with apartment No. 5, which immediately acquired a reputation among residents as “bad” - its inhabitants were poorly dressed, chain-smoked, littering not only their apartments with ash, but also the main staircase, street dirt from their broken shoes stained the polished floor of the lobby.
In the house on Sadovaya, Fanny came to her senses a little, but her vision was still deteriorating. The newly created Bureau of Resort and Sanatorium Assistance gave Kaplan a referral to Evpatoria, to the House of Convicts - that was now the name of one of the best sanatoriums there. Before leaving for Crimea, Fanny was wondering how she should live next. She no longer had relatives in Russia - the entire extended Roydman family had lived in America since 1911. A letter with a new address then arrived at the Akatui prison, but Kaplan decided not to go to her relatives: her only close people during the years of prison were her revolutionary friends.
In Yevpatoria, Fanny learned to enjoy life again. The House of Convicts comfortably accommodated about 40 people; anarchists, Socialist Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks lived peacefully here. Kaplan quickly got to know everyone, and her sociability and cheerful disposition gradually returned. Even her appearance changed: Fanny gained weight, her sunken cheeks became a little rounder, and even a blush appeared.
Fanny was able to regain her sight at the Kharkov eye clinic of the famous Leonard Girshman. Girshman was famous for the fact that he operated on all poor patients for free. But Fanny heard about the miracle doctor in the sanatorium, so after her vacation she did not return to Moscow, but went to Kharkov. After surgery at the Girshman Clinic, vision was almost completely restored. Kaplan did not intend to stay in Ukraine for long. She planned to come to Moscow.
March 1917: convicts after liberation. Fanny Kaplan in the middle row near the window
In Kharkov, Kaplan learned about the October Revolution. She did not like the proletarian revolution. From Kharkov she returned to Crimea, where for some time she worked as the head of training courses for volost zemstvo workers. According to Kaplan herself, it later became known that it was then in Crimea that she came to the conclusion that it was necessary to kill Lenin as a traitor to the revolution. With this thought in mind, she went to Moscow in 1918, where she discussed the assassination plan with the Social Revolutionaries.
Fanny was again traveling on a false passport, now she again became Dora Roydman. Fanny had almost reached the capital when an uprising of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries led by Maria Spiridonova broke out in Moscow. Kaplan rushed to help her friend, but a few days later a message arrived - the rebellion was suppressed, Spiridonova was arrested. Fanny decided to continue the fight, but now she had to act differently. She had to eliminate the main figure in the Bolshevik camp - Lenin.
The last month and a half of Fanny Kaplan's life is unlikely to ever be restored.
On August 30, 1918, Fanny appears in the courtyard of the Mikhelson plant, where Lenin was supposed to come to a workers’ rally.
All the events of that day were described minute by minute, all the materials of the case were studied many times, both then and years later.
At the same time as Kaplan, the left Socialist Revolutionary Alexander Protopopov was detained, and he was shot the next day. In the case of Fanny, interrogations began immediately. It turned out that there was still a victim - one of the women who was next to Lenin was wounded by another bullet.
On the same day, Uritsky was killed in Petrograd. The killer, Leonid Kannegiser, also turned out to be a Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist and also a loner. The security officers understood that this was a new Socialist Revolutionary conspiracy.
Fanny Kaplan was rightly sentenced to death and transported from Lubyanka to the Kremlin, and on September 3, 1918 at 16:00, the commandant of the Kremlin, sailor Pavel Malkov, personally shot Kaplan in the back of the head. She was 28 years old. Her body was placed in an iron barrel, doused with gasoline and burned.
Two days later, September 5, 1918,.ist
How and when did the great man who created the first people's state of the USSR in the history of mankind die?
DEAR VLADIMIR ILYICH DIED...
TOMORROW YOU MUST LIVE, TODAY IS WORRY (1924)
Ilyich lies dead in the Hall of Columns, and Russia passes by him day and night.
This could have happened not today, but five years ago, when a hysterical woman drove her bullets into this huge, angular skull, in which the future of proletarian Russia thought and pulsated. Lenin could not die then - the revolution, still young in those days, would have collapsed with him...
It was a miracle that all these years of unheard-of labor were never, or almost never, interrupted for rest. They believed that this is how it’s supposed to be: white lights go out over the Kremlin wall in the morning and light up in the evening; lines of people come and go. They come embittered, sick with inner uncertainty, confused; they leave saturated, knowing why, how and where, they leave, spreading pieces of his sleepless brain across Russia, and Lenin always sits there somewhere.
And the disease was already sitting in him, slowly killing the huge and delicate brain cells, overpowering the walls of blood vessels with a dry and brittle shell of sclerosis. How many times had he torn the ropes that had been slowly draped over him, slowly tightened by illness. He escaped from the clutches of paralysis, lashed his deadened memory with whips of will, kicked his fallen consciousness from the ground in exhaustion, and twice thrown back into childhood by blows, twice grew from it into a giant: he learned to speak, lost one area of perception after another and conquered them back ...
Lenin paid with his life for the revolution that he bore on his shoulders... Now he is going into the ground, just as Liebknecht and Rosa, Sverdlov and Reed, who were brought into world battles by him, went under the banners, and thousands of our soldiers, eaten by typhoid louse, and other thousands who froze along the great Siberian highway, and thousands of thousands, dried up by hunger and lying in stacks from Nizhny to Astrakhan.
Ilyich now faces a long, perhaps endless life. He will rise with every rising revolution, and will die with every broken one.
Larisa Reisner, writer, fighter, commissar
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin)died at 18:50 January 21, 1924 in the former Gorki estate near Moscow at the age of 53.
Consequences of injury and overwork led Lenin to a serious illness. In March 1922, Lenin led the work of the XI Congress of the RCP (b) - the last party congress at which he spoke. In May 1922 he became seriously ill, but returned to work in early October.
Leading German specialists in nervous diseases were called in for treatment. Lenin's chief physician from December 1922 until his death in 1924 was Otfried Förster. Lenin's last public speech took place on November 20, 1922 at the plenum of the Moscow Soviet.
On December 16, 1922, his health condition again deteriorated sharply, and in May 1923, due to illness, he moved to the Gorki estate near Moscow. The last time Lenin was in Moscow was on October 18-19, 1923.
Distributed by enemies of Soviet power "historical" fake that “Lenin was sick with syphilis, which he allegedly contracted in Europe” was never confirmed by anyone.
The official conclusion on the cause of death in the autopsy report read:
“The basis of the deceased’s illness is widespread atherosclerosis of blood vessels due to their premature wear (Abnutzungssclerose). Due to the narrowing of the lumen of the arteries of the brain and disruption of its nutrition from insufficient blood flow, focal softening of the brain tissue occurred, explaining all the previous symptoms of the disease (paralysis, speech disorders).
The immediate cause of death was:
1). Increased circulatory disorders in the brain;
2). Hemorrhage into the pia mater in the quadrigeminal region.” source
Funeral procession, seeing Lenin off to the station, 1924
The first wooden and temporary version of the Mausoleum, erected on the day of the funeral of Vladimir Lenin, Moscow, 1924.
Act of pathological examination of the body of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin)
The autopsy was performed by Prof. Abrikosov, in the presence of prof. Förster, prof. Osipova, prof. Deshina, prof. Weisbrod, prof. Bunak, Dr. Getye, Dr. Elistratov, Dr. Rozanov, Dr. Obukh and People's Commissar of Health of the USSR Semashko.
EXTERNAL INSPECTION
The corpse of an elderly man of correct physique, satisfactory nutrition. Small pigment spots (aspe) are noticeable on the skin of the front surface of the chest. In the posterior part of the torso and limbs there are clearly defined cadaveric hypostases. On the skin in the area of the anterior right clavicle, a linear scar about 2 cm is noticeable. On the outer surface of the left shoulder area there is another scar of irregular shape, 2x1 cm in size. On the skin of the back, at the angle of the left shoulder blade, a roundish scar about 1 cm in diameter is noticeable. Rigor mortis is expressed very clearly. On the side of the left humerus, at the border with the lower and middle thirds, a thickening of the bone (bone callus) is felt. Above this place, at the posterior edge of the deltoid muscle, a dense roundish body is felt in the depths. On a section of this place at the border between the subcutaneous fat layer and the tissue of the deltoid muscle, it was found deformed bullet, surrounded by a connective tissue membrane.
INTERNAL INSPECTION
The covers of the skull are not changed. When removing the skull cap, a dense fusion of the dura mater with the inner surface of the bone is noticed, mainly along the longitudinal sinus. The outer surface of the dura mater is dull and pale, and in the left temporal and part of the frontal region pigmentation of a yellowish tint is noticeable. The anterior part of the left hemisphere appears to be somewhat sunken in comparison with the corresponding part of the right hemisphere. The longitudinal sinus contains a small amount of liquid blood. The inner surface of the dura mater is smooth, moist and shiny, and is easily separated from the underlying pia mater, except for the parts closest to the sagittal groove, where there are adhesions in places where Pachyon granulations bulge. The dura mater of the base of the skull is without any significant changes; the sinuses of the base contain liquid blood.
Brain. Weight without dura mater immediately after removal is 1340 g. In the left hemisphere of the brain:
1) in the area of the precentral gyri,
2) in the region of the parietal and occipital lobes,
3) in the area ... and
4) in the area of the temporal gyri, areas of strong retraction of the surface of the brain are noticeable.
In the right hemisphere, at the border of the occipital and parietal lobes, two rows of lying areas of recession of the surface of the brain are also noticeable. The pia mater of the cerebral hemispheres under the above-described areas of retractions appears cloudy, whitish, and in places with a yellowish tint. In some places, above the grooves and outside the areas of retractions, whitish areas are noticeable in the area of which the pia mater is dense and appears thickened on sections. From the courts of the base of the brain. Both... and also... are thickened and do not collapse; their walls are dense, unevenly thickened, whitish in places with a yellow tint. Their lumen in the section is in some places greatly narrowed to the size of a small slit. The same changes are noticeable from the branches of the arteries, and also appear dense with a wall that is unevenly thickened and the lumen is noticeably narrowed in places. The left internal carotid artery in its There is no intracranial part of the lumen and on a section it appears in the form of a continuous dense whitish cord. The left Sylvian artery is very thin, compacted, and on section it retains a small slit-like lumen. On the section of the superior vermis of the cerebellum, no changes in the brain tissue are noticeable. The fourth ventricle is free of any pathological contents. When the brain is cut open, it is noted that the ventricles of the brain, especially the left one, are dilated and contain clear fluid. In the above-described places of brain retractions, foci of softening of the tissue of a yellowish color are noticeable with the formation of numerous racemose cavities filled with a turbid liquid. Foci of softening involve both the white and gray matter of the brain. In other parts of the brain, its tissue is moist and pale. The choroid plexus covering the quadrigeminal region is full of blood, and foci of fresh hemorrhage are noticeable in it.
When opening the integument of the body, good development of the subcutaneous fat layer is noticed. The muscular system is sufficiently developed. The muscle tissue is a normal red color.
The position of the abdominal organs is correct with the exception of the cecum, which lies slightly above normal. The omentum and mesenteries are rich in fat. The diaphragm on the right is at the level of the 4th rib, on the left at the level of the 4th intercostal space. In the cavity of the right pleura, fibrous synechiae are noticeable in the area of the apex of the lung. In the area of the left pleura there are also synechiae in the area of the lower lobe between it and the diaphragm. No pathological accumulations are noticed in the cavity of the cardiac membrane; mediastinum without any changes.
Heart; dimensions: transverse 11 cm, longitudinal 9 cm, thickness 7 cm. The surface of the epicardium is smooth and shiny: under the epicardium, mainly in the area of the right ventricle, there is a decent accumulation of fat. The semilunar valves of the aorta are somewhat thickened at their base. On the side of the bicuspid valve, some thickening is noticeable along the edge of its closure and whitish, non-transparent plaques on the anterior valve. The valves of the right heart are without any significant changes. On the inner surface of the ascending aorta there is a small amount of bulging yellowish plaques. The thickness of the wall of the left ventricle is 3/4 cm, the right one is 1/2 cm. The coronary arteries gape when cut, their walls are strongly compacted and thickened; the lumen is clearly narrowed. On the inner surface of the descending aorta, as well as on the inner surface of, in general, larger arteries of the abdominal cavity, numerous, strongly bulging yellowish plaques are noticeable, some of which are in a state of ulceration and petrification.
Lungs. The right one is of normal sizes and configurations, with a soft airy consistency throughout. On the cut, the lung tissue is full of blood and secretes a foamy fluid. A small elongated scar is visible at the top of the piebald. The left lung is of normal size and configuration, with a soft consistency throughout. In the posteroinferior part of the upper lobe there is a scar that penetrates from the surface at a distance of 1 cm deep into the lung tissue. At the apex of the lung there is a small fibrous thickening of the pleura.
The spleen is slightly enlarged and on section, moderately plethoric.
The liver is normal in size and shape, the edge of the left lobe is somewhat pointed. The surface is smooth. On the section there is a weak degree of so-called nutmeg, the gallbladder and ducts are without any significant changes. The stomach is empty. Its cavity has collapsed. The mucous membrane has well-defined and usually located folds. There are no special effects observed from the intestines.
The buds are of normal size. Their fabric pattern is distinct; the cortical substance is well distinguished from the modular substance. The tissue is in a state of moderate blood supply. The capsule is easily removed. The surface of the kidney is smooth, with the exception of small areas where shallow recesses of the surface are noticeable. The lumen of the branches of the renal arteries gapes on the section. The pancreas is of normal size. On its section, no special changes are noted. Endocrine glands. The appendages of the brain are without any significant changes.
The adrenal glands are somewhat smaller than normal in size, especially the left one; the cortex is rich in lipoids and medullarily pigmented in a brownish color.
ANATOMICAL DIAGNOSIS
Widespread arteriosclerosis of the arteries with pronounced damage to the arteries of the brain. Arteriosclerosis of the descending aorta. Hypertrophy of the left ventricle of the heart. Multiple foci of yellow softening (due to vascular sclerosis) in the left hemisphere of the brain during the period of resorption and transformation into cysts. Fresh hemorrhage in the choroid plexus of the brain under the quadrigeminal. Callus of the left humerus. Encapsulated bullet in the soft tissues of the upper left shoulder.
CONCLUSION
The basis of the disease of the deceased is widespread arteriosclerosis of blood vessels due to their premature wear.
Due to the narrowing of the lumens of the arteries and disruption of its nutrition from insufficient blood flow, focal softening of the brain tissue occurred, explaining all the previous symptoms of the disease (paralysis, speech disorder). The immediate cause of death was:
1. Increased circulatory disorders in the brain.
2. Hemorrhage into the pia mater in the quadrigeminal region.
How the attempt to kill the leader of October was thwarted
In the twelve-volume Biochronicle V.I. Lenin, who day after day scrupulously records all the known facts of a great life, only twelve lines are devoted to this event. This is the nature of the publication: a chronicle means maximum laconicism. Something else has surprised me for a long time. The event in question is by no means ordinary, and yet even in Soviet times few people knew about it.
It just so happened that as a child I communicated with a person who can be called one of the main characters in that dramatic story. This was the driver of Lenin's car, which was fired upon by terrorists in Petrograd on January 1, 1918. The endurance, resourcefulness and skill of the driver, who was able, without being confused by surprise, to instantly maneuver and take the car out of the fire, actually saved the life of the leader of the very young Soviet Republic.
It should be noted that the Swiss social democrat Fritz Platten, who was sitting next to Lenin in the car, who would soon become a communist, also showed resourcefulness. At the decisive moment, he sharply bent Vladimir Ilyich’s head, covered him, and the bullet, intended for Ilyich, wounded Platten in the arm.
I knew all this for a long time. However, recently, while reading Lev Danilkin’s book “Lenin”, published by the publishing house “Young Guard” in the famous “ZhZL” series, I experienced a real shock from a new discovery for myself. It turns out that there was one more person in that story, thanks to whom the dramatic event did not become tragic. According to the conspirators' plan, he was supposed to throw a bomb at Lenin's car. But he didn’t quit. And the reason is amazing.
I think that this and something else, very significant, should definitely be told to the readers of Pravda.
WE WERE NEW, 1918
So, January 1, 1918. This is according to the old style, but according to the new style it will be January 14th. However, the new account of time had not yet come into effect, and the first post-October year was celebrated in Petrograd according to the old calendar - on the night of December 31. Lenin, together with Nadezhda Konstantinovna, goes to the Vyborg side, to the “district-wide New Year’s meeting,” where mainly working youth gathered.
“The boys and girls who were dancing the waltz,” L. Danilkin wrote in his book, “quickly realizing what was happening, burst out with the “Internationale” - in a thousand gulps.” But the visit did not last long: “Lenin was in no condition to walk all night.”
Indeed, that’s not the point.
Danilkin talks about one story that began on the morning of December 31 as “the Diamandi case.” At the same time, it reminds us that based on it, half a century ago, the famous Soviet writer Savva Dangulov created the script for the wonderful film “On the Same Planet,” where Lenin is played by I. Smoktunovsky.
But the essence of the matter is serious: the Romanians, who decided to snatch Bessarabia from Russia, which found itself in an extremely difficult situation, disarmed an entire division of the Russian army, returning from the battles, and confiscated its property. Moreover, the Bolsheviks were arrested and shot!
“In response, Lenin, without hesitation, takes an unprecedented step, scandalous for a “civilized society” - he orders the arrest of the Romanian ambassador Diamandi: both him and the entire staff of the embassy - to Petropavlovka, and an ultimatum: immediately release the Russian soldiers. The ambassador is a member of his corporation , and within a few hours a whole group of diplomats sends a decisive protest to the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars - who had until then been largely ignored as a non-existent authority, looking more like a threat than an offended sob. In response, Lenin snaps his fingers in satisfaction: he has been trying to get along with him for a long time. relationship with the diplomatic corps; he invites the entire “opposition” to come to see him tomorrow.”
I specifically quoted this lengthy paragraph from Lev Danilkin’s book. After all, it is very important to imagine and comprehend the first attempt to kill the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars in the context of other, most intense and complex events that literally fell on Lenin in those days and hours.
Here are all these ambassadors, whose reception he scheduled for four o’clock in the afternoon on January 1st. The most important meeting! The point is not even to “punish” Romania, although, of course, the Soviet government did not need a war with the Romanian kingdom at all. But the main thing is to make it clear to everyone, including the great powers, through ambassadors: Soviet Russia will not allow itself to be treated like a rag. And during a half-hour intense meeting (for which he spent half a day preparing!) Lenin solved this problem in his own way.
And at the door of Smolny, Fritz Platten, the one who helped organize Lenin’s passage from Switzerland through Germany, runs into the ambassadors leaving there. And Vladimir Ilyich invites him to a rally. We need to go urgently: in the Mikhailovsky Manege, the leader must speak before sending volunteer fighters of the new, socialist army to the front.
THIS LENINIST SPEECH WAS ONE OF COUNTLESS MANY
Describing the meeting that took place, Lev Aleksandrovich Danilkin emphasizes that Lenin’s speech here, “unlike all the others, was not very convincing.” Refers to the words of an eyewitness and, in this case, also a speaker - American journalist A. Williams (comrade John Reed), which I just quoted, enclosing quotes.
Moreover, Danilkin has a reference to Lenin himself, who that same evening, or rather at night, in a conversation with a Norwegian socialist he knew, allegedly admitted: “I’m no longer an orator. I don’t have a voice. For half an hour, I’m done.” And he even shared two cherished desires: “to have the voice of Alexandra Kollontai” and “to take a nap for half an hour.”
Could this be so? Probably fatigue, ordinary human fatigue, once overcomes even a genius whose abilities seem supernatural. After all, how many speeches by that time Lenin had given every day! Uncountable. Because I felt and understood their necessity. And the popular reaction to them that followed each time, John Reed called a “human storm.”
I’m sure there was such a storm after his speech. But to the fatigue that had set in at the moment with the speaker’s self-assessment, Lenin’s over-demandingness towards himself was probably added. Is it any wonder if he was not entirely satisfied with himself?
But what was “not very convincing” for others, there is good reason to doubt. Very significant! Danilkin actually brings it further, and I, of course, will bring it too.
The name of that foundation is German Ushakov.
THE SHEET OCCURRED ON THE BRIDGE OVER FONTANKA
But for now we will return to the Mikhailovsky Manege, where the rally ended. The soldiers, who received the leader's instructions, will have to go to the front, and a car has already arrived for Lenin and his companions to return to Smolny. Let me note, just like on the way here, there is no security. And there are two companions: besides Platten, Lenin’s sister, Maria Ilyinichna. Her memories of what happens next are preserved. Quite recently, the Moscow publishing house Algorithm published a book by historian Ilya Ratkovsky, “Chronicle of the White Terror in Russia,” where these memories are given.
In general, it is noteworthy that a very voluminous volume, containing many hundreds of documentary evidence about the White Terror during the Civil War, at the very beginning contains pages specifically about January 1 (14), 1918, when this first attempt was made on Vladimir Ilyich. The author of the book reports:
"Lenin's car Delaunay Belleville 45 (driver Taras Gorokhovik) was fired upon by unknown persons on the route of the car from the rally in the Mikhailovsky Manege back to Smolny. The shelling was carried out while crossing the bridge over the Fontanka, when the car slowed down. The body of the car was perforated in several places by bullets , some of them flew right through, breaking through the front window of the car. The Swiss socialist F. Platten received a slight wound in the arm, bending Lenin’s head down... "
And here - from the memoirs of Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova, which are quoted right there:
“They’re shooting,” I said. This was confirmed by Platten, who first of all grabbed Vladimir Ilyich’s head (they were sitting behind) and pulled it to the side, but Ilyich began to assure us that we were mistaken and that he did not think it was shooting. After the shots, the driver accelerated, then, turning the corner, stopped and, opening the doors, asked: “Is everyone alive?” - “Did they really shoot?” - Ilyich asked him. “Of course,” answered the driver. “...We got off happily. If we had gotten into the tire, we wouldn’t have been able to get away. And it was impossible to drive like that, it was foggy, and we were driving at risk.”
Everything around was really white from the thick St. Petersburg fog. Having reached Smolny, we began to examine the car. It turned out that the body was perforated in several places by bullets, some of which flew right through, breaking through the front window."
The driver's face was thickly covered with shards of glass, but at that moment he did not lose his head and still gave full throttle to save himself.
Indeed, they got off happily,” said Lenin. - Thank you, comrade mechanic, for your resourcefulness.
I will first meet this historical “mechanic” when I am only 6 years old. And then I find out his full name - Taras Mitrofanovich Gorokhovik. However, first they will tell me: “Your uncle Taras.”
This will happen in Moscow, almost a quarter of a century after the shelling on the Petrograd bridge over the Fontanka. Next I will tell you more about Taras Mitrofanovich. And now it’s worth tracing how that first January day ended for Lenin and who actually tried to kill him.
UNUSUAL TRANSFORMATION OF TERRORISTS
In his book, Lev Danilkin notes that Vladimir Ilyich’s endless New Year’s Day did not end with sending the bloodied Platten to the hospital. Amazingly, after everything he has experienced, at 8 pm, as if nothing had happened, he leads a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars in Smolny. I just want to exclaim: Lenin is Lenin! Very difficult problems are being discussed: the incident with the Romanian ambassador, questions about the cancellation of government loans and the creation of revolutionary tribunals...
Well, then - rest? No, it doesn't work again. A member of the French military mission, Sadoul, has arrived, and a sharp, lengthy conversation ensues about relations with the Entente.
Only after midnight Vladimir Ilyich goes to the Smolny canteen to drink tea with the visiting Norwegian socialist. It was to him, according to his memoirs, that he complained about the loss of oratorical abilities. But in vain! If only I knew WHAT the investigation into the assassination case would soon reveal...
The question of who organized it could be answered immediately and very briefly: enemies. It is clear that the Soviet Republic had enough of them, and, as we see, they aimed right at the heart of the revolution. Danilkin again refers, in particular, to the already mentioned American journalist Williams. A few weeks before the assassination attempt, he and John Reed told their Bolshevik friends what a stir the proposal of a businessman to pay a million for the murder of Lenin had caused in the bourgeois environment. Almost an auction began: everyone was ready to pay more. And no wonder: already in December 1917, Lenin recommended sending arrested capitalist saboteurs to forced labor.
However, about this assassination attempt, even in I. Ratkovsky’s newest book “Chronicle of the White Terror in Russia” I read: “The circumstances of this terrorist attack are still contradictory, in particular, the direct organizers cannot be named with absolute accuracy.”
In fact, the author names several different anti-Soviet groups and names as possible organizers of the assassination attempt, but he has no final certainty here. But I also see inconsistency regarding the perpetrators of the terrorist attack. If Danilkin has three young gentlemen of St. George, then Ratkovsky has four surnames, with the addition of “and others”, not named.
Apparently, the scientific investigation is worth continuing, but I will now highlight the main and indisputable. Firstly, officers connected with the “Union of St. George’s Cavaliers” that arose in Petrograd, that is, they went not because of money, but “out of ideological convictions,” took part in the murder of Lenin, no matter how many there were. And secondly: their convictions were greatly shaken along the way. This happened, apparently, to all participants, but especially vividly to 23-year-old second lieutenant German Ushakov.
He came from Moscow to St. Petersburg, where a plan had already matured to kill the “German spy” - a man whom Ushakov had never seen or heard of, about whom he knew virtually nothing. He undertook to throw a bomb at his car, that is, he took on the main task. But when he heard this man’s speech, when he saw how this speech was perceived by many hundreds of people crammed into the huge room of the arena, he experienced an unexpected and profound inner revolution.
Result? The bomb remained unexploded! If we call everything by its proper name, a young officer of the former tsarist army saved the life of the leader of the socialist revolution.
I’ll tell you right away what will happen a little later: Lenin will essentially save the life of this officer, and more precisely, all his comrades in misfortune, who, in accordance with the laws of revolutionary times, of course had to be shot.
But Lenin, “bloodthirsty” Lenin... He did not allow them to be shot and ordered them to be released.
How could this happen? A serious reason to think about a lot! There is evidence that Lenin closely followed the progress of the investigation, which was headed by Vladimir Dmitrievich Bonch-Bruevich, the manager of the affairs of the Council of People's Commissars and at the same time the chairman of the commission to combat pogroms in Petrograd. The leader was interested in his impressions of conversations with those arrested, and more than once advised: “Let them read more newspapers.”
It so happened that, when the investigation into the assassination attempt was already nearing its end, German troops, violating the truce, took Pskov and moved to Petrograd. The cradle of the revolution found itself in a state of siege. Lenin’s famous appeal “The Socialist Fatherland is in Danger!” is published. And then the participants in the assassination attempt asked to go to the front. Having learned about this, Lenin immediately ordered: “The case must be stopped. Released. The request must be fulfilled.”
This was an act of trust that, in the first months after October, the young Soviet government showed in many of its opponents. Apparently, in this case, those released from arrest justified their trust. Thus, German Ushakov successfully commanded a red armored train. And his comrades, who at first also did not accept the October Revolution, now honestly came to its defense. “They fought, as they promised, bravely and cold-bloodedly, atoned for their guilt with blood and caused enormous destruction in the German troops,” wrote V.D. Bonch-Bruevich in 1931 on the pages of the newspaper "Beeps of the Petrograd Proletariat".
GERMAN USHAKOV: FROM HATE TO GREAT LOVE
However, German Grigorievich Ushakov still needs to be mentioned separately. Precisely because the change in his attitude towards Lenin turned out to be completely extraordinary in depth and strength. From instilled hatred as the destroyer of Russia to conscious and great love as its true savior. He was imbued with this love, sensing the rare human merits of Vladimir Ilyich, to whom all subsequent years of his life he felt a special closeness - personal.
In January 1924, he made his way to Bonch-Bruevich with a most convincing request: to stand at least for a little while at the coffin of such a dear person. And three years later, in 1927, he went to Shushenskoye to touch the places of exile of the young Ulyanov-Lenin and communicate with people who knew him personally.
He spent four months in detailed conversations with them. Simple, not aspiring to anything, they remembered the exile in their village not as a world-famous great leader, but as Vladimir Ilyich, a person well known from their life together. Then Ushakov will write:
“In their good memory of Lenin there is a lot of sincere sincerity, warmth, which speaks for the fact that it could not be caused by anything other than the personal qualities of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov... As for us, then... in the stories of these village realists, the official icon portrait of the leader acquired the features of living humanity and in our eyes acquired much greater importance and value."
This is true! I am convinced of this by reading now those seven essays under the general title “Lenin in Shushenskoye”, which were born from the pen of German Ushakov. The manuscript was kept for a long time in the Central Party Archive of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, where it was received as part of the personal archive of V.D. Bonch-Bruevich after his death in 1955. Here the former head of the House Museum V.I. first became acquainted with it in 1982. Lenin in Shushenskoye Yu.P. Volchenkov. With his preface and a chapter about the author, the essays have now been published by the museum-reserve as a book, which (thanks to him!) I received from L.A. Danilkina.
A most interesting read. Again and again you are convinced that the truth about Lenin is bright, irresistible and limitless. And this truth is especially necessary to know today, when black clouds are trying to cover it from all sides.
For example, at the same time as reviews of Lenin from Siberians who knew him, I read in the government “Rossiyskaya Gazeta” enthusiasm for yet another caricature of this man. We are talking about the production by the Moscow Theater of Nations under the direction of Evgeny Mironov of a cycle of scenes based on Solzhenitsyn’s “Red Wheel”. Here's what they say about the fragment called "Car of the Polonceau system":
"Evgeniy Mironov plays Lenin, Evgeniy Dmitriev plays Krupskaya, Lyudmila Troshina plays her mother Elizaveta Vasilyevna. This is the funniest thing in the series, despite all the hopelessness and mercilessness. A carriage of the newest system travels around Europe. For many years this carriage, the larva of a future catastrophe, has been carrying himself, who, according to the author, is a fanatic, not connected with his homeland either by memory or love, dreaming only of a worldwide massacre; he even makes his mother-in-law snore with his speeches and dictations, only a devoted and jealous wife looks into his mouth. plays along in the slightest idea and is happy with any of his random, party-like, sexless touches."
And it’s not a shame to release this to the public! What would Lenin's contemporaries - the Shushensk peasants - say if they saw this evil cartoon on stage? What would German Grigoryevich Ushakov, who recorded their memories, and Lenin’s driver Taras Mitrofanovich Gorokhovik, who carefully kept in their souls a completely different, completely dissimilar image, say?..
THE LEADER'S SISTER WAS GRATEFUL TO THE DRIVER PEA TO THE END OF HIS LIFE
Two people - two destinies. Personally, they did not know each other, German Ushakov and Taras Gorokhovik, but that first January evening of 1918 united their names forever. Both, each in their own way, came to Lenin’s truth. And both then became the saviors of Lenin’s life.
German Grigorievich was born into a large family of a rural priest in the Vyatka province. I could also become a priest, since I studied at the theological seminary with great success. However, shortly before graduation he left it, and with the outbreak of war in 1914 he went to the front. While participating in the famous Brusilov breakthrough, he was wounded and awarded the St. George Cross for his courage. And also - he received an officer rank and with it a title of nobility, although without the right of inheritance.
After long treatment in the hospital, he was appointed to the post of adjutant to the commander of the Moscow Military District. Let me remind you that from Moscow at the end of the revolutionary year 1917, he and several of his comrades went to Petrograd - “to clarify the situation” in the capital after the October events.
Meanwhile, this situation was basically clear to Taras Mitrofanovich Gorokhovik: after all, he himself became an active participant in October. A peasant son from the village of Nikolaevka (now Krasnogorsk district, Bryansk region) was drafted into the army in 1910, where he became a military driver. The future Bolshevik did not hesitate in choosing which side to be on during the revolution. And as the best driver, he is sent to the disposal of the motor depot of the Council of People's Commissars. However, he hardly thought then that he would be driving Lenin himself...
And so it happened that this man from the Bryansk region turned out to be the husband of my father’s cousin, Aunt Marusya. He is from Nikolaevka, and his father is from Aleksandrovka, a village nearby. After graduating from the Leningrad Forestry Academy in Soviet times (at the age of over 35!), my father was sent to work in the Ryazan region, where I was later born. And when we traveled from our Mozharsky forestry enterprise and then from Shatsky to Moscow, we usually stopped at the Gorokhoviki’s: their apartment was located on Sadovaya-Samotechnaya.
It was then, while still a preschooler, that I first learned about the first attempt on Lenin’s life. My father probably told me, I don’t remember exactly. But I remember very well how impatiently and excitedly I waited for the first appearance of this “historical man.” He came home from work, clearly tired, wearing a gray, shabby raincoat on a tall, stooped figure, which, taken together, did not in any way correspond to my idea of a historical figure. The most everyday look.
And he, in fact, always remained so ordinary, very modest, during all our subsequent visits, already after the war. Continuing, despite his age, to work in the motor depot for the affairs of the Council of People's Commissars, and then the Council of Ministers of the USSR, apparently, for some time he himself did not drive a car, but was engaged in repairs and preventive maintenance. That’s what I assumed, but he didn’t talk about his work. And in general he was a little talkative, although I literally caught every word he said. And I wanted to ask you about a lot of things!
Alas, my share fell more to the children of Aunt Marusya and Uncle Taras - Misha and Kolya, Galya and Nina. Friendship with the last two remained for many years until they passed away. Parents, naturally, died even earlier. And to this day I am tormented by a dream that was not realized at one time - to record the memories of Lenin’s driver.
And what is especially etched in your memory from the impressions of that apartment on Sadovaya-Samotechnaya? Aunt Marusya once mentioned that all the years, until her death, Maria Ilyinichna, Lenin’s sister, called them. She asked about life and whether they needed help with anything. Sometimes Nadezhda Konstantinovna called with the same thing, but Maria Ilyinichna called constantly. She also visited the Gorokhoviki’s home. She invited Taras Mitrofanovich to her place in Pravda, where, as you know, she was the executive secretary.
Yes, I thought, this is Leninist. Don't forget the good.
What are you faced with now? Having decided to write these notes, I decided to ask what materials about Taras Mitrofanovich Gorokhovik were available in his small homeland, in the Bryansk region. And the first secretary of the Krasnogorsk district committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Vasily Mikhailovich Melnikov, greatly upset me.
It turns out that there were such materials in the museum of school No. 1 of the regional center Krasnaya Gora, Vasily Mikhailovich himself passed on something interesting there from Gorokhovik’s relatives, but now... there is nothing!
How is this possible? - I gasped.
Well, you understand, it has become “unfashionable” to expose Ilyich and his comrades.
Understand. In the “dashing nineties” I myself saw the bitter fate of many school museums, which were destroyed not even partially, but entirely. It turns out that the destruction is not over?
And Vasily Mikhailovich talks about the enthusiastic ascetics, the creators of the museum in Krasnaya Gora. They were the editor-in-chief of the regional newspaper "Leninsky Put" Alexander Ivanovich Snytko and his wife Elena Vasilyevna, a history teacher at school. They worked a lot to collect and present to everyone the priceless historical and local history wealth.
Collecting and creating is never easy. It is easier to destroy and scatter. But will history forgive this? Will the future forgive?
But the concepts of “fashionable” or “unfashionable” have nothing to do with Lenin’s titanic personality and all his activities.