Video: How the most recognizable builder of the 30s and the "standard of the Komsomol member" became a traitor to the Motherland
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
The fate of Viktor Kalmykov became exemplary for the USSR. At first, a simple illiterate guy was made the standard of a young Komsomol member who managed to get a "lucky ticket" - to come to one of the "great construction sites of communism", and then, using his case as an example, the state showed how effectively it can find traitors in its ranks and punish them mercilessly.
Viktor Kalmykov was born in the Tambov region in the small village of Kolmakovka. Arriving to work on a construction site, he accidentally found himself in the very center of a major media project. “In the 1930s, the country was in dire need of financial injections into the domestic industry from abroad. For this, the formation of a positive image of the USSR for a foreign inhabitant began. Through the efforts of Soviet propagandists, Magnitostroy was turned into an advanced construction site, and the city of Magnitogorsk under construction was turned into a reference social city of the future,”explains the local historian I. V. Stoyakin.
A prominent guy with the "poster-like appearance" of the average worker, a native of the provinces, was chosen as the "face of a PR company," as they would say today. M. Alpert and A. Smolyan became the authors of the large-scale photo-history. The main theme was formulated as "the growth of the Soviet man against the background of the growing Magnetostroi". A huge article was devoted to Viktor Kalmykov, which occupied an entire issue of the publication "USSR in Construction" for January 1932. This large-scale project was called "The Giant and the Builder".
Using the example of a simple guy from the hinterland, the working people of the USSR had to follow the happy fate of the young worker. In the photographs illustrating the release, you can see Victor, starting from the first day at Magnitka. The most famous was the photograph in which the future builder of communism had just arrived at a construction site: he was wearing sandals, in his hands he had a chest and a knapsack over his shoulder - that was all his belongings.
From the memoirs of Viktor Kalmykov:
Then, in the form of a photo report, the life of an exemplary worker was "scrolled" in front of the readers. First, Victor works as a simple digger, then studies, joins the Komsomol, marries, creates the life of a young family. Such a story allows us to understand that working at a construction site is a real “start in life”.
The journalists who "took into circulation" the guy and made a real "media personality" out of him, then said that most of the reproduced photographs were staged. For the most famous Victor was dressed in the same clothes in which he arrived at Magnitka, he picked up his old chest with a padlock … The reception turned out to be surprisingly effective. The article had a huge response, the name of Viktor Kalmykov really became known in the USSR for several years, and his face was recognizable. The young worker was bred as one of the main characters in the book "History of Magnetostroy" (edited by Maxim Gorky). Millions of readers then followed his fate, rejoiced at his successes.
The young Komsomol member really did have successes (it could not have been). After graduating from a party school, he became a member of the city committee of the Komsomol, a delegate to the VI Congress of the KIM (Communist Youth International), which was held in Moscow in the fall of 1935. In the same year, Viktor Kalmykov took the post of secretary of the Komsomol committee of the industrial construction of Magnitostroi, and then - chairman of the city council of physical education of Magnitogorsk. This "happy fairy tale" came to an end. Further, the Soviet Union showed that in its vastness they knew how not only to create heroes, but also to destroy them.
Today it is difficult to say why the end of the "legendary builder of Magnitka" was so terrible. Either the young Komsomol member turned out to be disliked by the higher authorities at some point, or he made some mistake, or just accidentally fell under the hammer of repression, but in 1936, for some reason, suddenly "surfaced" the fact that Kalmykov's parents were fists. In fact, it was not even true, by all the rules they could be attributed to the middle peasants: the father had a cow, a horse and a windmill. However, Viktor was first temporarily removed from his post as the secretary of the Komsomol committee, and then, in July 1937, he was dismissed from the City Council of Physical Education as “not providing for the physical culture parade”. A couple of months later, "for communication with enemies of the people, for systematic drunkenness and domestic corruption" Viktor was expelled from the Komsomol members, and by the end of 1937, already with the wording "enemy of the people", he was arrested.
From the memoirs of Kalmykov's sister Nina Emelyanovna Tarasova (1956): From the interrogation protocol of December 31, 1937:
On July 28, 1938, Kalmykov was sentenced to capital punishment - execution by firing squad with confiscation of all personal property. The sentence was carried out on the same day. Victor was at that time only 28 years old. His wife was first evicted from a brand new apartment, which was so often photographed by journalists. They tried to accuse the woman of “concealing her husband's counter-revolutionary activities,” but then her sentence was commuted. Perhaps due to the long term of pregnancy. She soon gave birth to a son.
In the 50s, relatives of Viktor Kalmykov began to fight for the restoration of his good name. By the decision of the Bureau of the Chelyabinsk Regional Party Committee of October 28, 1958, Kalmykov was reinstated in the party. But only thirty years later, in the early 90s, relatives were told the real date of death of the former "hero of Magnitka" and the approximate place of his burial.
The first decades after the Civil War were a difficult time for the young Soviet state. You can imagine how people lived at that time. Documentary photographs about life in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s
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