What did Pavlik Morozov do? What is Pavlik Morozov famous for? Pavlik Morozov: history

Pavel Trofimovich Morozov (Pavlik Morozov; November 14, 1918, Gerasimovka, Turinsky district, Tobolsk province, RSFSR - September 3, 1932, Gerasimovka, Tavdinsky district, Ural region, RSFSR, USSR) - a Soviet schoolboy, a student of the Gerasimov school of the Tavdinsky district of the Ural region, who in Soviet times received exist as a pioneer a hero who opposed the kulaks in the person of his father and paid for it with his life.

Soon, Pavel’s father abandoned his family (his wife and four children) and began cohabiting with a woman who lived next door, Antonina Amosova. According to the recollections of Pavel’s teacher, his father regularly beat his wife and children both before and after leaving the family. Pavlik’s grandfather also hated his daughter-in-law because she did not want to live in the same household with him, but insisted on a division. According to Alexei (Paul's brother), father “I loved only myself and vodka”, did not spare his wife and sons, not like other immigrants from whom “I tore three skins for forms with stamps”. The father’s parents also treated the family abandoned by their father to the mercy of fate: “Grandfather and grandmother were also strangers to us for a long time. They never treated me to anything or greeted me. My grandfather didn’t let his grandson, Danilka, go to school, all we heard was: “You’ll get by without a letter, you’ll be the owner, and Tatyana’s puppies will be your farmhands.”.

In 1931, the father, who no longer held office, was sentenced to 10 years for “being the chairman of the village council, he was friends with the kulaks, sheltered their farms from taxation, and upon leaving the village council, he contributed to the escape of special settlers by selling documents”. He was charged with issuing false certificates to dispossessed people about their membership in the Gerasimovsky village council, which gave them the opportunity to leave their place of exile. Trofim Morozov, while in prison, participated in the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal and, after working for three years, returned home with an order for shock work, and then settled in Tyumen.

According to Pavlik Morozov’s teacher L.P. Isakova, cited by Veronica Kononenko, Pavlik’s mother was “pretty-faced and very kind”. After the murder of her sons, Tatyana Morozova left the village and, fearing a meeting with her ex-husband, for many years did not dare to visit her native place. Ultimately, after the Great Patriotic War, she settled in Alupka, where she died in 1983. According to one version, Pavlik’s younger brother Roman died at the front during the war; according to another, he survived, but became disabled and died shortly after its end. Alexey became the only child of the Morozovs who got married: from different marriages he had two sons - Denis and Pavel. Having divorced his first wife, he moved to his mother in Alupka, where he tried not to talk about his relationship with Pavlik, and only spoke about him in the late 1980s, when a campaign of persecution against Pavlik began at the height of Perestroika (see his letter below).

Life

Pavel’s teacher recalled poverty in the village of Gerasimovka:

The school she was in charge of worked in two shifts. At that time we had no idea about radio or electricity; in the evenings we sat by a torch and saved kerosene. There was no ink either; they wrote with beet juice. Poverty in general was appalling. When we, teachers, started going from house to house to enroll children in school, it turned out that many of them didn’t have any clothes. The children were sitting naked on the beds, covering themselves with some rags. The kids climbed into the oven and warmed themselves in the ash. We organized a reading hut, but there were almost no books, and local newspapers arrived very rarely. To some now Pavlik seems like a boy in clean clothes stuffed with slogans. pioneer uniform. And because of our poverty this form I didn’t even see it.

Forced to provide for his family in such difficult conditions, Pavel nevertheless invariably showed a desire to learn. According to his teacher L.P. Isakova:

He was very eager to learn, he borrowed books from me, but he had no time to read, and he often missed lessons because of work in the fields and housework. Then I tried to catch up, I did well, and I also taught my mother to read and write...

After his father left for another woman, all the worries about the peasant farm fell on Pavel - he became the eldest man in the Morozov family.

Murder of Pavlik and his younger brother Fyodor

Pavlik and his younger brother went into the forest to pick berries. They were found dead from stab wounds. From the indictment:

Morozov Pavel, being a pioneer throughout the current year, led a devoted, active struggle against the class enemy, the kulaks and their subkulakists, spoke at public meetings, exposed kulak tricks and stated this repeatedly...

Pavel had a very difficult relationship with his father's relatives. M.E. Chulkova describes the following episode:

…One day Danila hit Pavel’s hand with a shaft so hard that it began to swell. Mother Tatyana Semyonovna stood between them, and Danila hit her in the face so that blood came out of her mouth. The grandmother came running and shouted:

Kill this snotty communist!

Let's skin them! - Danila yelled...

On September 2, Pavel and Fyodor went to the forest, planning to spend the night there (in the absence of their mother, who had gone to Tavda to sell a calf). On September 6, Dmitry Shatrakov found their corpses in an aspen forest.

The brothers' mother describes the events of these days in a conversation with the investigator as follows:

On September 2, I left for Tavda, and on September 3, Pavel and Fyodor went into the forest to pick berries. I returned on the 5th and found out that Pasha and Fedya had not returned from the forest. I began to worry and turned to a policeman, who gathered people, and people went into the forest to look for my children. They were soon found stabbed to death.

My middle son Alexey, he is 11 years old, said that on September 3rd he saw Danila walking very quickly out of the forest, and our dog was running after him. Alexey asked if he had seen Pavel and Fyodor, to which Danila did not answer anything and only laughed. He was dressed in homespun pants and a black shirt - Alexey remembered this well. It was these pants and shirt that were found on Sergei Sergeevich Morozov during the search.

I cannot help but note that on September 6, when my slaughtered children were brought from the forest, grandmother Aksinya met me on the street and said with a grin: “Tatiana, we made you meat, and now you eat it!”

The first act of examining the bodies, drawn up by local police officer Yakov Titov, in the presence of the paramedic of the Gorodishchevo medical post P. Makarov, witnesses Pyotr Ermakov, Abraham Knigi and Ivan Barkin, reports that:

Pavel Morozov lay 10 meters from the road, with his head to the east. There is a red bag on his head. Pavel was dealt a fatal blow to the stomach. The second blow was delivered to the chest near the heart, under which there were scattered cranberries. One basket stood near Paul, the other was thrown aside. His shirt is torn in two places, and there is a purple blood stain on his back. Hair color is light brown, face is white, eyes are blue, open, mouth closed. There are two birch trees at the feet (...) The corpse of Fyodor Morozov was located fifteen meters from Pavel in a swamp and shallow aspen forest. Fedor was hit in the left temple with a stick, his right cheek was stained with blood. The knife dealt a fatal blow to the abdomen above the navel, where the intestines came out, and also cut the arm with a knife to the bone.

The second inspection report, made by the city paramedic Markov after washing the bodies, states that:

Pavel Morozov has one superficial wound measuring 4 centimeters on the chest on the right side in the area of ​​the 5-6th rib, a second superficial wound in the epigastric region, a third wound from the left side in the stomach, subcostal area measuring 3 centimeters, through which part of the intestines came out, and the fourth wound on the right side (from the Poupart ligament) measuring 3 centimeters, through which part of the intestines came out, and death followed. In addition, a large wound 6 centimeters long was inflicted on the left hand, along the metacarpus of the thumb.

Pavel and Fyodor Morozov were buried at the Gerasimovka cemetery. An obelisk with a red star was erected on the grave hill, and a cross was buried next to it with the inscription: “On September 3, 1932, two Morozov brothers died from the evil of a man from a sharp knife - Pavel Trofimovich, born in 1918, and Fyodor Trofimovich.”

Trial of the murder of Pavlik Morozov

During the investigation of the murder, its close connection with the previous case against Pavlik’s father, Trofim Morozov, became clear.

Early trial of Trofim Morozov

Pavel testified at the preliminary investigation, confirming his mother’s words that his father beat his mother and brought into the house things received as payment for issuing false documents (one of the researchers, Yuri Druzhnikov, suggests that Pavel could not have seen this, because his father had not been married for a long time lived with his family). According to Druzhnikov, in the murder case it is noted that “On November 25, 1931, Pavel Morozov submitted a statement to the investigative authorities that his father Trofim Sergeevich Morozov, being the chairman of the village council and being associated with local kulaks, was engaged in forging documents and selling them to kulaks - special settlers." The statement was related to the investigation into the case of a false certificate issued by the Gerasimovsky village council to a special settler; he allowed Trofim to be involved in the case. Trofim Morozov was arrested and tried in February of the following year.

In the indictment for the murder of the Morozovs, investigator Elizar Vasilyevich Shepelev stated that “Pavel Morozov filed a statement with the investigative authorities on November 25, 1931.” In an interview with journalist Veronica Kononenko and senior justice adviser Igor Titov, Shepelev said:

Trofim Morozov and other village council chairmen were arrested on November 26 and 27, the day after the “denunciation.” Based on the results of a journalistic investigation by Evgenia Medyakova, published in the Ural magazine in 1982, it was found that Pavel Morozov was not involved in his father’s arrest. On November 22, 1931, a certain Zvorykin was detained at the Tavda station. He was found to have two blank forms with stamps from the Gerasimovsky Village Council, for which, according to him, he paid 105 rubles. The certificate attached to the case states that before his arrest Trofim was no longer the chairman of the village council, but “the clerk of the Gorodishche general store.” Medyakova also writes that “Tavda and Gerasimovka have more than once received requests from the construction of Magnitogorsk, from many factories, factories and collective farms about whether the citizens (a number of names) are really residents of Gerasimovka.” Consequently, verification of holders of false certificates began. “And most importantly, Medyakova did not find the boy’s testimony in the investigative case! Tatyana Semyonovna’s testimony is there, but Pavlik’s is not! Because he did not make any “statements to the investigative authorities!”

Pavel, following his mother, spoke in court, but in the end was stopped by the judge due to his youth. In the case of Morozov’s murder it is said: “During the trial, son Pavel outlined all the details about his father, his tricks.” The speech delivered by Pavlik is known in 12 versions, mostly dating back to the book by journalist Pyotr Solomein. In a recording from the archive of Solomein himself, this accusatory speech is conveyed as follows:

Prosecution version

The version of the prosecution and the court was as follows. On September 3, fist Arseny Kulukanov, having learned about the boys going out to pick berries, conspired with Danila Morozov, who came to his house, to kill Pavel, giving him 5 rubles and asking him to invite Sergei Morozov, “with whom Kulukanov had previously conspired,” to also kill him. Having returned from Kulukanov and having finished harrowing (that is, harrowing, loosening the soil), Danila went home and conveyed the conversation to his grandfather Sergei. The latter, seeing that Danila was taking a knife, left the house without saying a word and went with Danila, telling him: “Let’s go kill, don’t be afraid.” Having found the children, Danila, without saying a word, took out a knife and hit Pavel; Fedya rushed to run, but was detained by Sergei and also stabbed to death by Danila. " After making sure that Fedya was dead, Danila returned to Pavel and stabbed him several more times with a knife.».

The murder of Morozov was widely publicized as a manifestation of kulak terror (against a member of the pioneer organization) and served as the reason for widespread repression on an all-Union scale; in Gerasimovka itself it finally made it possible to organize a collective farm (before that, all attempts were thwarted by the peasants). In Tavda, in the club named after Stalin, a show trial of the alleged murderers took place. At the trial, Danila Morozov confirmed all the charges; Sergei Morozov behaved contradictorily, either confessing or denying guilt. All other defendants denied guilt. The main evidence was a utility knife found on Sergei Morozov, and Danila’s bloody clothes, soaked but not washed by Ksenia (allegedly, Danila had previously slaughtered a calf for Tatyana Morozova).

Verdict of the Ural Regional Court

By the decision of the Ural Regional Court, their own grandfather Sergei (father of Trofim Morozov) and 19-year-old cousin Danil, as well as grandmother Ksenia (as an accomplice) and Pavel’s godfather Arseny Kulukanov, who was his uncle, were found guilty of the murder of Pavel Morozov and his brother Fyodor (as a village kulak - as the initiator and organizer of the murder). After the trial, Arseniy Kulukanov and Danila Morozov were shot, eighty-year-old Sergei and Ksenia Morozov died in prison. Pavlik’s other uncle, Arseny Silin, was also accused of complicity in the murder, but he was acquitted during the trial.

Version of Yu. I. Druzhnikov and criticism of the version

Druzhnikov's version

According to the statements of the writer Yuri Druzhnikov, who published the book “Informer 001, or the Ascension of Pavlik Morozov” in the UK in 1987, many circumstances related to the life of Pavel Morozov are distorted by propaganda and are controversial.

In particular, Druzhnikov questions the idea that Pavlik Morozov was a pioneer. According to Druzhnikov, he was declared a pioneer almost immediately after his death (the latter, according to Druzhnikov, was important for the investigation, as it brought his murder under the article of political terror).

Druzhnikov claims that by testifying against his father, Pavlik deserved to be in the village "universal hatred"; they began to call him “Pashka the Kumanist” (communist). Druzhnikov considers the official statements that Pavel actively helped identify "bread squeezers", those who hide weapons, plot crimes against the Soviet regime, etc. According to the author, according to fellow villagers, Pavel was not "a serious informer", because “reporting is, you know, a serious job, but he was such a nit, a petty dirty trick”. According to Druzhnikov, only two such cases were documented in the murder case. "denunciation" .

He considers the behavior of the alleged murderers illogical, who did not take any measures to hide traces of the crime (they did not drown the corpses in the swamp, throwing them near the road; they did not wash bloody clothes in time; they did not clean the knife from traces of blood, putting it in the place where they look first during a search). All this is especially strange, considering that Morozov’s grandfather was a gendarme in the past, and his grandmother was a professional horse thief.

According to Druzhnikov, the murder was the result of a provocation by the OGPU, organized with the participation of assistant commissioner of the OGPU Spiridon Kartashov and Pavel’s cousin - informant Ivan Potupchik. In this regard, the author describes a document that, according to him, he discovered in the materials of case No. 374 (about the murder of the Morozov brothers). This paper was drawn up by Kartashov and represents the protocol of the interrogation of Potupchik as a witness in the case of the murder of Pavel and Fedor. The document is dated September 4, that is, according to the date, it was drawn up two days before the discovery of the corpses.

According to Yuri Druzhnikov, expressed in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta:

Criticism and refutation of Druzhnikov's statements

Outrage between brother and teacher

Criticism of the author and his book

Druzhnikov’s words contradict the memories of Pavel’s first teacher, Larisa Pavlovna Isakova: “I didn’t have time to organize the pioneer detachment in Gerasimovka then; it was created after me by Zoya Kabina<…>. One day I brought a red tie from Tavda, tied it on Pavel, and he ran home joyfully. And at home, his father tore off his tie and beat him terribly. [..] The commune fell apart, and my husband was beaten half to death by fists. Ustinya Potupchik saved me and warned me that Kulakanov and his company were going to be killed. [..] It’s probably since then that Pavlik hated Kulakanova; he was the first to join the pioneers when the detachment was organized.”. Journalist V.P. Kononenko, with reference to Pavel Morozov’s teacher Zoya Kabina, confirms that “it was she who created the first pioneer detachment in the village, which was headed by Pavel Morozov” .

Yuri Druzhnikov stated that Kelly used his work not only in acceptable references, but also by repeating the composition of the book, the selection of details, and descriptions. In addition, Dr. Kelly, according to Druzhnikov, came to the exact opposite conclusion about the role of the OGPU-NKVD in the murder of Pavlik.

According to Dr. Kelly, Mr. Druzhnikov considered Soviet official materials unreliable, but used them when it was beneficial to bolster his case. According to Catriona Kelly, Druzhnikov published, instead of a scientific presentation of criticism of her book, a “denunciation” with the assumption of Kelly’s connection with the “organs.” Dr. Kelly did not find much difference between the books' conclusions and attributed some of Mr. Druzhnikov's criticisms to his lack of knowledge of the English language and English culture.

Investigation of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office, personal inquiries of Alexander Liskin

Alexander Alekseevich Liskin took part in an additional investigation of the case in 1967 and requested murder case No. N-7825-66 from the archives of the KGB of the USSR. In an article published between 1998 and 2001, Liskin pointed to the “massacre” and “falsification” on the part of Inspector Titov, revealed during the investigation. In 1995, Liskin requested official certificates about the alleged criminal record of Pavlik’s father, but the internal affairs bodies of the Sverdlovsk and Tyumen regions did not find such information. Liskin suggested checking the “secret corners of dusty archives” to find the real killers of the Morozov brothers.

Liskin agreed with the arguments of the department editor of the magazine “Man and Law” Veronica Kononenko about the witness nature of Pavlik’s speech at his father’s trial and about the absence of secret denunciations.

Decision of the Supreme Court of Russia

In the spring of 1999, co-chairman of the Kurgan Memorial Society Innokenty Khlebnikov, on behalf of Arseny Kulukanov’s daughter Matryona Shatrakova, sent a petition to the Prosecutor General’s Office to review the decision of the Ural Regional Court, which sentenced the teenager’s relatives to death. The Russian Prosecutor General's Office came to the following conclusion:

The verdict of the Ural Regional Court dated November 28, 1932 and the ruling of the cassation board of the Supreme Court of the USSR dated February 28, 1933 in relation to Arseniy Ignatievich Kulukanov and Ksenia Ilyinichna Morozova are amended: to reclassify their actions from Art. 58-8 of the Criminal Code of the USSR at Art. 17 and 58-8 of the Criminal Code of the USSR, leaving the previous penalty.

Recognize Sergei Sergeevich Morozov and Daniil Ivanovich Morozov as reasonably convicted in the present case for committing a counter-revolutionary crime and not subject to rehabilitation.

The General Prosecutor's Office, which is involved in the rehabilitation of victims of political repression, came to the conclusion that the murder of Pavlik Morozov is purely criminal in nature, and the killers are not subject to rehabilitation on political grounds. This conclusion, together with the materials of an additional audit of case No. 374, was sent to the Supreme Court of Russia, which decided to deny rehabilitation to the alleged killers of Pavlik Morozov and his brother Fedor.

Opinions on the Supreme Court decision

According to Boris Sopelnyak, “at the height of perestroika hysteria [..] the so-called ideologists who were allowed in to the dollar trough tried most of all [to knock out love for the Motherland from young people].” According to Sopelnyak, the Prosecutor General's Office carefully reviewed the case.

According to Maura Reynolds, Matryona Shatrakova died three months before the Supreme Court's decision arrived in 2001, and the postman refused to give the decision to her daughter.

Perpetuation of the name

• On July 2, 1936, a resolution was adopted by the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on the construction of a monument to Pavlik Morozov in Moscow at the entrance to Red Square.
• Monuments were erected to Pavlik Morozov: in Moscow (in 1948, in the children’s park named after him on Krasnaya Presnya; demolished in 1991), the village of Gerasimovka (1954), in Sverdlovsk (1957), the village of Russky Aktash, Almetyevsk district (Republic of Tatarstan), in the city of Ostrov, in the city of Glazov, in the city of Ukhta (Komi Republic), in Kaliningrad.
• The name of Pavlik Morozov was given to Gerasimovsky and other collective farms, schools, and pioneer squads.
• Novovagankovsky Lane in Moscow was renamed Pavlik Morozov Street in 1939, and a club named after him was organized in the Church of St. Nicholas on Three Mountains.
• The Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Puppet Theater was named after Pavlik Morozov.
• In 1935, film director Sergei Eisenstein began working on the script “Bezhin Meadow” by Alexander Rzheshevsky about Pavlik Morozov. The work could not be completed because, based on the draft version of the film, Eisenstein was accused of “deliberately downplaying ideological content” and “exercising in formalism.”
• Maxim Gorky called Pavlik “one of the small miracles of our era.”
• In 1954, composer Yuri Balkashin composed the musical poem Pavlik Morozov.
• In 1955, he was listed under No. 1 in the Book of Honor of the All-Union Pioneer Organization named after. V. I. Lenin. Kolya Myagotin was listed under No. 2 in the same book.
• In Yekaterinburg there is a park named after Pavlik Morozov. In the park there was a monument depicting Pavlik. In the 90s, the monument was torn from its pedestal, lay in the bushes for some time and disappeared.
• In Turinsk, Sverdlovsk region, there was a Pavlik Morozov square; in the center of the square there was a monument depicting Pavlik in full height and with a pioneer tie. In the 90s, the monument was stolen by unidentified persons. Now the square has been renamed “Historical Square”.
• In Chelyabinsk on the Malaya Yuzhno-Uralskaya Railway there is a station named after Pavlik Morozov.
• In the Children's Park of Simferopol there is a bust of P. Morozov on the Alley of Pioneer Heroes.
• In the Children's Park of the city of Ukhta (Komi Republic), a monument to P. Morozov was unveiled on June 20, 1968. According to other sources, in 1972. The author is the sculptor A.K. Ambrulyavius.

Many streets in cities and villages of the former Soviet Union are named in honor of Pavlik Morozov, many streets still bear this name: in Perm and Krasnokamsk (streets), in Ufa (street and lane), Tula (street and passage), Ashe - the regional center Chelyabinsk region,

About who he was after all Pavlik Morozov- an informer or an innocent victim, they are still arguing. In Soviet times, everything was clear: a pioneer boy pawned his father, who (as stated in the documents) “being the chairman of the village council, was friends with the kulaks, sheltered their farms from taxation...” The father, naturally, was arrested, and honest Pavlusha and his younger brother Fedya was killed in the forest by his grandfather and uncle, again, with their fists.

“With Pavlik’s betrayal and the “malicious” activities of his father, Trofim Morozov, the picture is not entirely clear, says Anna Pastukhova, Chairman of the Yekaterinburg Memorial Society. - Trofim issued empty certificates for food and false documents to those who fled to the settlements. But just imagine what settlements in the remote taiga are like! Whether he did it selfishly or disinterestedly is now unknown, but he still saved these people.

And it’s unlikely that anyone will be able to say for certain who exactly wrote the denunciation against his father: Pavlik himself, his mother with her own hand, or the woman forced her son to do it. Please note: the child grew up in a strictly ideologized society and could firmly believe that by exposing his pest father, he was benefiting society. In those days, people seriously believed that this was the right thing to do. My mother said that at one time she seriously watched my grandmother, because it seemed to her that my grandmother was engaged in anti-Soviet activities.”

Not long ago, a version appeared that Pavlik betrayed his father not at all out of communist beliefs - the boy was offended because Trofim abandoned his large family and went to his neighbor-lover.

“The only thing known for certain in this whole story is that the boys were killed,” says writer Vladimir Bushin. - Could the boy and his younger brother become victims of “animal” relatives? They could. Pavlik’s father beat his wife and children, and then left the family altogether for another woman. Of course, it was painful for the boy to survive such a betrayal. Maybe Pavlik said something to someone about his father, but he didn’t do it out of malice - he just thought that by doing this he was protecting his family, saving his mother.”

“Indeed, Pavlik’s father left for another woman,” confirms Anna Pastukhova. - And this could just be the reason for the mother to turn her son against his father and provoke this whole story. I talked to Pavlik's cousin Matryona Kulukanova. She was 19 years old when the murder occurred. Matryona said that Pavlik was accepted into his father’s new family, took care of him, and felt sorry for him. And the villagers condemned the father for leaving his wife and children. Although the neighbors treated Pavlik’s mother without any respect, because she was a slob and did not know how to run a house. Matryona also said that after the death of Pavlik and Fedya, after this staged trial of his grandfather, grandmother and uncle, who were accused of killing children, Pavlik’s mother came to Tavda and stayed at the house of her ex-husband’s relatives. Just think: would she live with those whom she considered the murderers of her sons?”

The most famous traitors. Infographics: AiF

Poor Pavlik

“I believe that Pavlik Morozov was killed by the Soviet regime - Soviet propaganda at that time needed a symbolic sacrifice. And it’s better if it’s a child, because such a story would touch everyone to the core. Poor Pavlik became such a victim, says Vladimir Bushin. - In the Tavda region, where everything happened, there were always soils, swamps, and swamps unsuitable for agriculture. But after the Stolypin reforms, settlers came there and made this region fertile. From there the products were exported to Europe. The revolution and the Civil War began, Soviet power came and began to drive the people who raised this region into collective farms. Of course, no one wanted to give away what they had acquired. Therefore, people had to be intimidated. It is known for certain that the case with Pavlik and his father was actively used to fight the kulaks and alienate property. The goal was also logical - to break family ties.

The Soviet government needed a provocation similar to the arson of the Reichstag, which was organized Hitler to come to power in Germany in order to be able to take forceful action. Why in such a remote village and why Pavlik? The fact is that in the same area, in Kurgan, a similar incident occurred with Kolya Myagotin. They said that this pioneer hero was killed by fists. But it turned out that the pioneer hero was already 19 years old and that he was carrying sunflowers from a collective farm field, that is, he was stealing state property, and the guard shot him. When the first plot about the pioneer hero, with Kolya, failed, they began to work on the second - with Pavlik.

The performers acted quickly, but thoughtlessly. When the boys went to pick cranberries and disappeared, they were searched for three days. And then suddenly the bodies appeared at the edge of the forest - they had clearly been planted. And note: everyone talked about Pavlik as a hero, but they were silent about little Fedya. Because Pavlik was needed as a symbol, and Fedya just fell into place.”

Pavlik Morozov posthumously became a national hero. He was idolized and talked about in every school in the country. Sergei Eisenstein, inspired by Pavlik’s “feat”, began making a film, Sergey Mikhalkov sang it in verse. And after perestroika, the pendulum swung in the other direction - writers and publicists vying with each other began to overthrow the legend, calling the 13-year-old teenager a traitor and shouting: “Serves him right!”

“Today, when the Soviet era is behind us, when perestroika is becoming a thing of the past, we must understand and feel sorry for the child,” Anna Pastukhova is sure. - Pavlik became a double victim - propaganda and murderers.

The artist and I Yuri Kalmykov When they made an exhibition at the Pavlik Morozov Museum, they wanted to present all versions of the murder so that people could decide for themselves what really happened. But decisions on this issue need to be made not under the influence of ideology.”

What is Pavlik Morozov famous for? What feat did he accomplish?

Morozov, Pavel Trofimovich (November 14, 1918, the village of Gerasimovka, Tavdinsky district, Ural region of the RSFSR - September 3, 1932, ibid.) - prototype of Pavlik Morozov, a hero of Soviet propaganda.

During the investigation into the criminal case against his father, the chairman of the Gerasimovsky village council, Trofim Morozov, confirmed the testimony of his mother given to her against her husband. Together with his brother Fedor, he was killed by his own grandfather, the father of Trofim Morozov.

At the trial, Pavel Morozov did not speak against his father and did not write denunciations against him. During the preliminary investigation, he gave evidence that his father beat his mother and brought into the house things received as payment for issuing false documents.
The story of the murder of minor Pavel Morozov was picked up by Soviet propaganda. In various works, the image of the brave pioneer Pavlik Morozov was depicted, who denounced his father, a kulak, who was hiding grain from the collective farm. In fact, Pavel Morozov was not a member of the pioneer organization. In the Book of Honor of the All-Union Pioneer Organization named after. V.I. Lenin, it was listed only in 1955, 23 years after his death.

Trofim Morozov was subjected to criminal prosecution not for hiding grain, but for “falsifying documents that he supplied to members of a counter-revolutionary group and persons hiding from Soviet power.” Specifically, he was arrested for issuing, as chairman of the village council, fake certificates to dispossessed people about their belonging to the Tavdinsky village council, which gave them the opportunity to leave their place of exile.

In 1935, film director Sergei Eisenstein began working on Alexander Rzheshevsky’s script “Bezhin Meadow” about Pavlik Morozov. The job could not be completed.

November 14 marked the 100th anniversary of Pavlik Morozov, perhaps the most famous Soviet pioneer.

Photo: Nikita Chebakov. “Pavlik Morozov”/RIA Novosti

According to the official version, at the age of 13 he exposed the crimes of his father-kulak and was killed by his relatives for this.

Pavlik was made a cult hero. His name was entered in the Book of Honor of the All-Union Pioneer Organization under No. 001.

In a painting by artist Nikita Chebakov created in 1952, a teenager in a red tie, holding his head high, throws angry words into the faces of bearded obscurantists. In fact, Pavlik never wore a tie.

Pavlik found followers.

On March 16, 1934, “Pionerskaya Pravda” published a letter from Olya Balykina, which began with the words: “I bring to the attention of the OGPU authorities that outrages are happening in the village of Otrada...” and ended: “I am taking everyone out to fresh water. Then let the higher authorities do what they want with them.”

Tanker "Pavlik Morozov" in the port of Baku, 1981. Photo: TASS

The girl listed everyone who, from her point of view, violated something, not forgetting her own father.

Pronya Kolybin reported on his mother, who went into the field to collect fallen grains to feed him. The mother was imprisoned, the son was sent to rest in Artek.

Mitya Gordienko caught hungry people in the field several times. After his denunciation of a certain married couple, the husband was sentenced to death, and the wife to ten years in the camps. Mitya received a personalized watch, a pioneer suit, boots and an annual subscription to the local newspaper Lenin's Grandchildren.

In 1936, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR decided to erect a monument to Pavlik Morozov in the Alexander Garden near the Kremlin. True, in the end it was staged 12 years later in a children's park on Presnya.

Morozov Pavel led a devoted, active struggle against the class enemy, exposing kulak tricks.

From the indictment for the murder of Pavlik Morozov, 1932

In August 1991, the monument was demolished. The attitude towards the former hero turned 180 degrees. “Don’t be Pavlik Morozov!” the elders now say to the little sneaks.

Writer Yuri Druzhnikov published an exposing book “Informer 001, or the Ascension of Pavlik Morozov.” The rock band “Crematorium” wrote the song “Pavlik Morozov” about how all our troubles come from people like them.

Meanwhile, an investigation conducted by Ural journalist Evgenia Medyakova led to a completely unexpected result: Pavlik did not do what was attributed to him at all, and had nothing to do with his father’s arrest.

Dysfunctional family

Pavlik's father, Stolypin settler Trofim Morozov, settled in the village of Gerasimovka, Tobolsk province, in 1910 and got married. Pavel was the eldest of five children.

According to the memoirs of his brother Alexei, his father “loved only himself and vodka.” Morozov Sr. first drank and fought with his wife, then left for another woman. So Paul had reasons to dislike him even without politics.

The boy was never a member of the pioneer organization due to the absence of one in the village.

Relations with his father’s relatives, who blamed Pavel’s mother Tatyana for the breakup, led to scandals and fights.

All men's household chores fell on the teenager. According to the recollections of his school teacher Lydia Isakova, he often missed lessons due to work in the fields.

“To some now Pavlik seems like a boy stuffed with slogans in a clean pioneer uniform. But because of his poverty, he never even saw this uniform; he didn’t take part in pioneer parades, didn’t wear portraits, and didn’t shout out greetings to the leaders,” she said.

Trofim Morozov was not a kulak, but a poor man, which is why he became the chairman of the village council. His “crimes” consisted in the fact that he issued certificates to kulaks from central Russia exiled beyond the Urals, allowing them to leave and get a job at a factory or construction site, that is, he actually saved people.

True, according to the recollections of fellow villagers and the investigation materials, he did not do this disinterestedly, but “took three skins for forms with stamps” in money and things.

On November 22, 1931, during a police raid at the Tavda station, special settler Zvorykin was detained. He had with him two blank forms with stamps from the Gerasimovsky Village Council, for which, according to him, he paid Trofim Morozov 105 rubles.

On November 26, Morozov was arrested and put on trial. Nothing particularly terrible, by the standards of that time, happened to him: according to the sentence, he received 10 years, but after working for three years on the construction of the White Sea Canal, he was released early and was even awarded an order for hard work.

It turned out that several other chairmen of local village councils were doing the same thing.

At the trial, Pavlik testified against his father, as did his mother, who, after the release of Trofim Morozov, left the village, afraid of meeting her ex-husband. But there are no traces of him denouncing his father.

There is no testimony from Pavlik in the investigative case of Trofim Morozov, because he did not make any statements

Evgenia Medyakova, journalist

The version that the persecution of Trofim Morozov began with Pavlik’s statement filed on November 25, 1931, arose from the light hand of the investigator in the case of his murder, Elizar Shepelev.

Many years later, in an interview with the magazine “Man and Law,” Shepelev, who was retired by that time, said: “I can’t understand why on earth I wrote all this, there is no evidence in the case that the boy contacted the investigative authorities and what exactly was the reason for this.” he was killed. I probably meant that Pavel testified when Trofim was tried. It turns out that because of my inaccurately written words, the boy is accused of informing!”

Tragedy in the forest

On September 2, 1932, that is, approximately nine months after the arrest of Trofim Morozov, Pavel and his 8-year-old brother Fedor went into the forest to pick berries and did not return. On September 6, a fellow villager found their corpses in an aspen forest with numerous stab wounds.

The court ruled that the murder was committed by Trofim's father and, accordingly, the boys' grandfather Sergei Morozov and their cousin 19-year-old Danila, and local kulak Arseniy Kulukanov incited them to commit an evil deed. Pavel and Fyodor’s grandmother Ksenia was also an accomplice. Danila Morozov and Kulukanov were shot, grandfather and grandmother died in prison.

Previously, people came to him with bugles and drums. Now - with censer and prayers. Today it is clear that he is neither a hero nor a traitor. And certainly not a pioneer. We have distorted history beyond recognition

Nina Kupratsevich, director of the Pavlik Morozov Museum in Gerasimovka

Local journalist, recent collectivization commissioner Pyotr Solomein, on instructions from the regional party committee, quickly wrote a book about the “brave Ural eaglet” and the “brutal fist,” which formed the basis of the legend about Pavlik Morozov. The story was widely disseminated.

According to Russian historian and professor at Oxford University Catherine Kelly, the children became victims of a property dispute between their grandfather and mother.

It is also likely that the killers really considered Pavlik an informer - why not, if they wrote about it in the newspapers and talked about it on the radio?

Who is he, Pavlik Morozov? In the post-war years, many controversies flared up around his legendary personality. Some saw a hero in his face, others argued that he was an informer and had not accomplished any feat. The information that has been reliably established is not enough to restore all the details of the event. Therefore, many of the nuances were added by the journalists themselves. Official confirmation is only the fact of his death from a knife, the date of birth and death. All other events serve as a reason for discussion.

Official version

In the Soviet Union, Pavel belonged to the host of so-called pioneer heroes. Pavlik Morozov was born in the Urals in 1918. He studied well at school and was a leader among his peers; evidence that he studied well and was a leader among his peers. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia contains information that Pavel Morozov organized the first pioneer detachment in his village. The boy grew up in a large family. At an early age, he lost his father, who left for another woman, leaving the children in the care of his mother. Despite the fact that many worries fell on Pavel’s shoulders after his father left, he showed a great desire to study. His teacher L.P. Isakova later spoke about this.

At his young age, he firmly believed in communist ideas. In 1930, according to the official version, he reported on his father, who, as chairman of the village council, forged certificates for kulaks stating that they were allegedly dispossessed.

As a result, Father Pavel was sentenced to 10 years. The boy paid with his life for his heroic act: he and his younger brother were stabbed to death in the forest while the boys were picking berries. All members of the Morozov family were later accused of the massacre. His own paternal grandfather Sergei and 19-year-old cousin Danila were found guilty of murder, as well as grandmother Ksenia (as an accomplice) and Pavel’s godfather, Arseny Kulukanov, who was his uncle (as a village kulak - as the initiator and organizer of the murder) . After the trial, Arseniy Kulukanov and Danila Morozov were shot, eighty-year-old Sergei and Ksenia Morozov died in prison. Pavlik’s other uncle, Arseny Silin, was also accused of complicity in the murder, but he was acquitted during the trial.

It is interesting that Pavlik’s father, convicted of forgery of documents, returned from the camps three years later. He participated in the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal and, after working for three years, returned home with an order for shock work, and then settled in Tyumen.

The Soviet government regarded the action of Pavel Morozov as a feat for the good of the people. He believed in a bright future and made a significant contribution to the building of communism, for which he paid with his life. They made Pavlik a real hero, while hiding some dubious facts from his life. Over time, this whole story turned into a legend, which became an example for many compatriots.