The greatest swindler of the Stalin era. The scam of “Colonel” Pavlenko (4 photos). Nikolai Maksimovich Pavlenko - the largest swindler of Stalin's times Pavlenko's Army

The celebration of the 65th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945, which ended with a grandiose military parade on Red Square in Moscow on May 9, quite naturally became the occasion for a huge number of publications in the media on this topic, dedicated to heroic deeds of the Soviet people at the front and in the rear.

From these publications we learned many, hitherto unknown or simply forgotten over the years, the names of those to whose military and labor exploits we owe our freedom and the right to life under a peaceful sky.

There was, however, another side to this Great War. And there were Antiheroes

Our story will be about one of these “anti-heroes”.

This unique criminal case, which until very recently was kept classified as “Secret”, has no analogues at all in the history of the Soviet state: for ten years in the country (and this was during the Stalinist period!) a fictitious military unit operated under the command of a fake engineer colonel Nikolai Maksimovich Pavlenko!

The history of the large-scale fictitious military construction organization created by Nikolai Pavlenko is contained in 164 volumes of the criminal case, which are stored in the Moscow District Military Court. Of all the criminal cases ever considered by the USSR Military Tribunal, this, perhaps, can be considered the most unusual.

The trial in this case began in November 1954. The judges of the tribunal read the indictment in turn for several days. It took no less time to announce the verdict. All seventeen defendants were charged with three most serious articles of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, punishing anti-Soviet agitation, the creation of a counter-revolutionary organization and the undermining of state industry.

The 18 defendants who appeared before the Military Tribunal constituted only the core of the criminal organization. In total, more than 500 people were involved in it, many of whom did not even suspect that they were working in a gangster formation disguised as a military construction unit of the USSR Ministry of Defense.

The organizer of this criminal structure, false colonel Nikolai Maksimovich Pavlenko, entered into contract agreements, as a rule, for road construction work, received vehicles, other equipment, building materials at his disposal and... built highways, access roads, residential buildings, and other facilities, restored national economy destroyed by war. He always built well and with high quality. Many of the routes and facilities he built are still in operation today...

Pavlenko invited outside specialists under contracts. He paid three to four times more in cash than at a state-owned enterprise, allegedly “for secrecy.” I came to check the work myself. If he finds shortcomings, he will not leave until they are corrected. After rolling out the completed track, he offered the workers a few barrels of beer and a snack for free, and personally presented the locomotive driver and his assistant with a bonus, right here, in public. At that time, many workers received 300-500 rubles a month, so a bonus of 1000 rubles was perceived as a great miracle and unheard of “generosity from management.”

It would seem that what's wrong with this? However, alas, there was another side to the activities of Nikolai Pavlenko and his group: the theft of state funds on a particularly large scale, the appropriation of state equipment, misrepresentations when performing contract work, and many other serious crimes.

In order to get this or that contract, Pavlenko used fictitious documents and seals, bribed officials and military personnel, was engaged in postscripts, and stole everything that came his way: from cows to tractors. In the period from 1948 to 1952 alone, Pavlenko concluded 64 contracts worth 38 million rubles. UVS accounts were opened in the 21st branch of the State Bank of the USSR, and through them it was possible to receive more than 25 million rubles in cash. Investigators determined only approximately how much of this money ended up in the pockets of Pavlenko and his accomplices, but this amount was truly enormous.

Pavlenko’s organization was well armed and secretive; it even had its own “counterintelligence” - the Special Department. Pavlenko himself told everyone that his unit was “especially secret”, and therefore its performance of various construction works was only a cover for what it was doing “of national importance” while “carrying out a secret task of the Soviet government.”

Since in those days it was extremely unsafe to ask “extra questions” on this matter, no one asked Pavlenko them, so as not to get into trouble from the “authorities.” From the very beginning until the liquidation of the fake military unit, its participants obtained large quantities of pistols, rifles, machine guns, light machine guns and grenades.

Considering the scope of activities, the good armament of the “Military Construction Directorate No. 1” of false colonel Pavlenko, as well as the dispersion of his units in the territory of several regions - the Baltic states, the Moldavian SSR, Kiev, Odessa, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov and Mogilev regions of the Ukrainian SSR - to eliminate this The organization involved considerable forces of the USSR Ministry of State Security, including the Ministry of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR and the MSSR.

It all started in the summer of 1952 with a complaint from a Moldovan collective farmer, communist Ilya Efremenko, who, as a civilian military unit of UVS-1, worked for over a year on road construction. However, upon his dismissal, for some reason he was not given a relatively small amount of bonds in the amount of 200 rubles.

Offended by this, Efremenko several times addressed written statements to the head of UVS-1, engineer-colonel Nikolai Maksimovich Pavlenko, but to no avail. Efremenko sent his complaints to several organizations known to him, both local, republican, and union. His last complaint was addressed to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, addressed to Marshal Kliment Voroshilov himself, from where it was sent to the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the USSR for verification.

The GVP employee immediately sent a request to the USSR Ministry of Defense to find out where Colonel Pavlenko’s military construction unit was located. Soon the answer that amazed him came: “the requested unit is not listed on the lists of the USSR Ministry of Defense.” A request to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and state security agencies received a similar response.

The check was continued, and in a short time it was possible to find out that “UVS-1”, which is not listed on the lists of the USSR Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security, exists completely realistically and legally. Moreover, it has an extensive branched structure: construction sites and sites subordinate to UVS-1 were located in Moldova, Belarus, and the Baltic republics.

The headquarters of the unit, located in Chisinau, was no different from other military headquarters: there was the unit’s Banner with shift guards near it, and the operational duty officer, and the heads of various services, and the Special Department, and armed guards in the form of privates and sergeants of the Soviet Army, not allowing any outsiders into the territory under the pretext of “special secrecy of the facility.” The commander of the unit, “Colonel” Nikolai Pavlenko, also turned out to be a completely real person.

The security officers carefully prepared the operation to liquidate the mysterious “military construction organization.” It was decided to take the UVS-1 headquarters and all its units scattered throughout the western regions of the country on the same day, at dawn on November 14, 1952. Separate units of the Soviet Army were also involved in the operation.

Conspiracy and surprise made it possible to take all UVS-1 participants by surprise, and therefore Pavlenko’s “fighters” did not offer armed resistance. As a result of the operation, more than 300 people were detained, of which about 50 were so-called “officers,” “sergeants,” and “privates.” Pavlenko’s “right hand” was also arrested - “chief of counterintelligence, Major” Yuri Konstantiner.

Pavlenko himself was arrested only on October 23, 1952. A group of soldiers blocked the house in Chisinau where he was supposedly hiding. In the half that was locked, Pavlenko was discovered with citizen Musya Tyutyunnik. This woman at one time managed a food stall, squandered 12 thousand rubles of government money, hid from responsibility for several years, cohabiting with “Colonel” Pavlenko.

In the process of liquidating the fictitious military construction unit, 3 light machine guns, 8 machine guns, 25 rifles and carbines, 18 pistols, 5 grenades, over 3 thousand live cartridges, 82 trucks and 10 passenger cars, 14 tractors, 9 excavators, 10 bulldozers, round seals and stamps, tens of thousands of different forms, many false identification cards and registration certificates.

Of particular interest were the so-called labor agreements and contracts between UVS-1 and government organizations and enterprises for the performance of road construction work, for which significant amounts of money were transferred to UVS-1 accounts opened in different banks using fictitious letters and powers of attorney. Only Pavlenko and Konstantiner had free access to them. During the investigation, it was found that the contracts, as a rule, significantly inflated the actual cost of work.

It was established that the fake “foremen”, “sergeants” and “privates” were paid monthly amounts that were two to three times higher than the earnings of employees of government institutions. The criminal cohesion of such “military personnel” was also facilitated by the fact that they were all recruited from among relatives or good friends of the so-called “officers,” whose salaries were even higher.

To investigate the case, a team was created from senior officials of the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office of the USSR, headed by V. Markalyanets, L. Lavrentyev and experienced military investigators from the periphery. But even they, highly qualified professionals, took two and a half years (including the trial) to completely restore the “criminal portrait” of Nikolai Pavlenko and his active accomplices.

And it all started like this. Nikolai Pavlenko was born in 1912 in the village of New Sokoly near Kiev in the family of a miller, where besides him there were seven more children. His adventurism manifested itself in his youth. In 1928, he changed his age (adding four years) and social origin in his documents, after which he ran away from home and entered the Kalinin Institute of Civil Engineering.

True, he left him after two years. Having got a job at a construction site, Pavlenko began writing denunciations against employees, accusing them of “Trotskyism.” He was noticed by the local department of the NKVD and was recommended as a “reliable person” to the Main Directorate of Military Construction of the NPO of the USSR for the position of foreman.

In 1940, Nikolai Pavlenko rose to the rank of head of the construction site and was already eyeing a position in the headquarters apparatus, but then the Great Patriotic War began.

Nikolai Pavlenko was sent to the front with the rank of military technician (senior lieutenant) as part of a rifle corps. The corps found itself in a sector of the front where fierce fighting was taking place and suffered heavy losses near Vyazma. But death in battle was not part of Nikolai Pavlenko’s plans, and therefore in September 1941, he, having issued himself a false travel certificate, together with his driver Pyotr Shcheglov, deserted from the front, heading by car to the city of Kalinin, which was well known to him, under the pretext of obtaining new equipment. .

Having safely overcome the system of barrage detachments, Pavlenko took refuge with friends in Kaliningrad. Along the way, several more deserters like him joined him. In Kalinin, Nikolai Pavlenko and a company of deserters, for whom he also issued fictitious travel orders, led a comfortable life for several months, drinking at the expense of the military technician’s many acquaintances.

At the end of March 1942, he had the daring idea to create his own military construction unit, which was facilitated by the presence of ownerless construction equipment standing idle on the territory of the former Plandorstroy artel. The backbone of the so-called Department of Military Construction Works (UVSR) consisted of Pavlenko’s closest relatives and acquaintances, who were hiding under various pretexts from conscription. Officers' uniforms were purchased directly at the bazaar, where at that time there was a brisk trade in such goods. At the same time, Pavlenko awarded himself the title of military engineer of the 1st rank.

One of his friends, sixteen-year-old Ludwig Rudnichenko, turned out to be a skilled carver and could easily cut out any official seal from rubber, not to mention stamps. At Pavlenko’s request, he made an official seal with the inscription: “Military construction site of the Kalinin Front - 5” (UVSR-5).

The conclusion of all this was a letter on letterhead signed by Nikolai Pavlenko, addressed to the city military registration and enlistment office, with a request to send to him for further military service all those who, for some reason, lagged behind their unit, and those soldiers who were discharged from hospitals .

Pavlenko managed to print forms at a local printing house (for a food bribe). Using these false documents, deserters received food and equipment from factories and warehouses in Kalinin.

Pavlenko, using fictitious documents, also opened a bank account into which money was received from customers. He shared them with his comrades. Energetic and enterprising, people liked Pavlenko. He gained the trust of the head of the Kalinin evacuation point, and he ordered to accept the military construction unit of UVSR-5 on full pay.

However, the threat of a German invasion of Kalinin disappeared. And then Pavlenko, fearing that they would be exposed in a calmer environment, became subordinate to another military unit and began building access roads to temporary airfields. At that time, the situation at the front was very tragic for our troops, so in the reigning confusion no one was surprised by the appearance of some new unit - UVSR-5.

And Pavlenko began collecting equipment abandoned on roads and construction sites: cars, bulldozers, excavators. From the deserters most loyal to him, the military engineer created an “officer corps”, and soon promoted himself to colonel. He even created his own counterintelligence, which was engaged in bribing those on whom the comfortable existence of UVSR-5 depended.

Soon the fake military unit began to be replenished with real privates and sergeants, who had no idea what kind of fraud they were involved in! By the way, these servicemen were supplied to the bandit group with the help of... the commandant's office and the military registration and enlistment office, whose leaders were bribed by Pavlenko.

Then, again for a bribe, the fake colonel agreed with the military doctor to enroll all UVSR-5 soldiers on all types of allowances. Thus, the criminal organization was legalized and... began to work!

Pavlenko, who had good experience in construction work, began to enter into business contracts for repairs and construction with real organizations. He spent the money he received on food for the rank and file, but divided most of it between himself and his “officers.”

In the fall of 1942, the Kalinin Front was liquidated. Pavlenko realized that his comfortable life was about to end and... handed over a large bribe to the commander of the 12th Air Base Area (RAB) to enroll his soldiers in pay.

Now the illegal military unit began to be called UVS-5 and operate under the reliable “roof” of the 12th RAB. It was even necessary to expand the staff - to recruit soldiers who had lagged behind their units into the structure.

Moving forward after the advancing front (but at a safe distance from it), Pavlenkovites, along with construction, were engaged in looting state and trophy property.

On the way to the USSR border, Pavlenko’s people earned about a million rubles under contracts. To increase the volume of work performed, replenishment was required. Then Pavlenko began to recruit soldiers who had lagged behind their units.

“You are a deserter! You must be judged! You'll be shot! - Pavlenko shouted at the faulty fighter. But then, changing his anger to mercy, he added: “Okay, so be it, I forgive you.” Stay in my unit.."

The chief of staff of UVR, Mikhail Zavada, testified during the investigation: “People were recruited, as a rule, from those who had lagged behind military units... Drivers were taken along with the car... When they approached the Soviet state border, there were more than two hundred people in UVR.” . Half of them are deserters and persons hiding from conscription into the active army.”

But war is war, and sometimes the fictitious military unit still had to engage in battle with the enemy. However, Pavlenko used this circumstance to his advantage: according to false representations, he received over 230 orders and medals for himself and his subordinates. In addition to medals, Pavlenko awarded himself the Order of the Red Banner of Battle, the Order of the Red Star, and the Order of the Patriotic War, I and II degrees.

Following the units of the Red Army, UVS-5 reached Germany through Ukraine, Belarus and Poland. Here Pavlenkovites turned around with all their might. German warehouses and rich houses were robbed; the looted property was transported to the USSR by wagons, where it was safely sold or stored in secluded places.

It even got to the point that residents of the German city of Stuttgart complained to the Soviet command about the atrocities of Nikolai Pavlenko’s subordinates. Then the latter, allegedly “outraged” by the looting of the personnel of his UVS-5, personally shot two “offenders” in front of the formation.

After the victory, Pavlenko, who had gained strength and became insolent, with the help of deception and large bribes, established connections with the military representatives of the Department of Clothing and Cargo Supply of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR, as well as with representatives of the temporary military commandant's office of Stuttgart and received at his disposal a railway train of thirty-five cars .

According to the investigation, only for the cars, tractors, motorcycles, pieces of cloth, wines and cognacs, tons of sugar, cereals, flour, radios, guns, accordions, bicycles exported in these thirty-five cars, as well as in a separate UVS-5 convoy from Berlin , carpets, sewing machines, hundreds of heads of livestock, Nikolai Pavlenko and his accomplices received over 30 million rubles in the USSR, as well as a large amount of gold and jewelry.

With his train, Pavlenko returned to Kalinin, profitably sold the looted livestock and food, and demobilized all the sergeants and privates in the prescribed manner, paying each of them up to 12 thousand rubles, which at that time amounted to a lot of money.

Leaving some of the removed equipment in Kalinin, Pavlenko created and headed the civil construction artel “Plandorstroy”. But under his leadership there were no longer any accomplices - they had dispersed to different cities, and without them it was difficult to carry out the business on a grand scale.

At the beginning of 1948, Pavlenko contacted his closest assistant Yuri Konstantiner, after which, having stolen 300 thousand artel funds, he disappeared, finding shelter in Lvov.

Soon other “officers” came to the city of Lviv at his call, and the craftsman Ludwig Rudnichenko also arrived here, who quickly made new seals and stamps. This is how the military construction unit “UVS-1” (Military Construction Directorate) appeared with many construction branches in the western regions of the country.

The newly created military unit was practically no different from other active units. On its territory, the daily routine was strictly observed, combat and political training classes were held, an operational duty officer was appointed every day, a guard was on guard duty, and the sentry of post No. 1 guarded the Banner of the unit.

There was no end to those wishing to enter into contract agreements with such a respected organization! The criminal case contains several top secret lists, which list dozens of enterprises and organizations that have entered into “economic relations with UVS-1 construction sites.”

Everything went in the same circle. Contracts, road construction, registrations, and thefts began again. Having a lot of money, Nikolai Pavlenko considered himself invulnerable. He had an unerring instinct for corrupt officials.

Pavlenko was truly a great schemer. Revealing the true nature of some people, he easily made very expensive gifts, knowing full well that they would not refuse him later. For example, he handed over a captured passenger car to the Tula regional military commander Rizhnev, and he ordered the deployment of the airborne forces on the territory of the Shchekinsky district. Later, using connections with Rizhnev, Pavlenko and his accomplices, under the guise of receiving demobilization benefits, embezzled public funds. Rizhnev received an “appendage”: a cow, a carpet, a radio and scarce products. More than once, using fake documents, UVS-5 received money through the Klin, Solnechnogorsk and Galich military registration and enlistment offices.

Pavlenko did not forget about himself - he bought two decent houses - in Kalinin and in Ukraine - and several Pobeda cars.
The plump and imposing Colonel Pavlenko gave a bribe even for solving the most trivial issue. He was part of the local authorities also in Chisinau and in other places where his “construction sites” were located. He was respected and taken into account. Pavlenko selected his security through local MGB agencies, which carefully checked candidates for lack of connection with Bandera.

Indeed, it was difficult to suspect Pavlenko of a criminal. A successful, respectable man, he drives a Pobeda, with security. Witness Vasily Kudrenko testified during the investigation: “I know the head of UVS-1, Colonel Pavlenko, personally. He is of average height, has a plump, almost fat figure, wears glasses with black trim, gray hair, a shaved head, brown eyes, and a large belly. I don’t know who the UVS was subordinate to. However, I know that Colonel Pavlenko himself awarded military ranks to his officers. For example, Kuritsyn was demobilized from the army as a sergeant major, and here he immediately became a senior lieutenant, and then Nevinsky was awarded the rank of captain, although before that he had no rank..."

By all appearances, the organization was criminal. But, making excuses at the prosecutor’s office, the leaders of various organizations collaborating with the UVS insisted that they could not even imagine that Pavlenko was a criminal. After all, he was a very respected person, he was constantly invited to the presidiums of ceremonial meetings, and during festive parades he always stood on the podium next to the party bosses. Moreover, in a ceremonial uniform and the radiance of military orders...

On the day of Nikolai Pavlenko’s arrest, during a search in his apartment, among other things, general’s shoulder straps were found. Pavlenko and his closest henchmen were accused of counter-revolutionary crimes. But they, while admitting “criminalism,” completely denied “anti-Sovietism.” At the trial, the failed general said: “I never set out to create an anti-Soviet organization... I assure the court that Pavlenko can still be useful and he will make his contribution to organizing the work.”

However, the verdict of the tribunal of the Moscow Military District on April 4, 1955 was harsh but fair: “Colonel” Pavlenko was sentenced to capital punishment, and Konstantiner and sixteen other “officers” were sentenced to imprisonment for a term of 5 to 25 years. The cases of minor participants were sent to other courts.

In recent years, people throughout the post-Soviet space have been talking about the omnipotence of the security agencies in the Soviet Union. All the stories about total control over the lives of Soviet citizens, in my opinion, are refuted by one criminal case. Of all the criminal cases considered by the tribunal on Arbat, 37, this case is perhaps one of the most unusual. It is unique both in volume and in the plot of the accusation, and in the composition of the participants, and in the duration of the criminal acts committed...

The circumstances of this case still, more than half a century later, attract attention. In 2005, one of the newspapers wrote: “This criminal case has no analogues in the country: for ten years a fictitious military unit operated in the Soviet Army under the command of a fictitious engineer-colonel N.M. Pavlenko." This man began to be called the “great criminal,” and his name was included in criminal encyclopedias.

The fascinating history of the powerful fictitious military construction organization created by Pavlenko is described in detail in 164 weighty volumes of the criminal case, compiled over two years of investigation and six months of trial, which are stored in the Moscow District Military Court.

The trial began on November 10, 1954. The indictment was read out by the tribunal judges one by one for several days. It took just as long for the verdict to be announced in April of the following year. There were 17 defendants: N.M. Pavlenko, I.P. Klimenko, Yu.B. Konstantinov (aka Konstantiner), S.I. Turkin, A.G. Gubsky and others. Almost all of them were charged with three articles - 587, 5810 and 58" of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (undermining state industry through the corresponding use of state enterprises, anti-Soviet agitation and participation in a counter-revolutionary organization). The persons who appeared before the court of the capital tribunal formed the backbone of the criminal organization And in total, the number of its participants reached more than 300 people. Many of them did not even suspect that they were working in a gangster structure, which quite successfully disguised itself as the military-construction part of the USSR Ministry of Defense and periodically changed its name. In court, it was most often called "UVS", which stood for the Directorate of Military Construction. The organizer of this structure, Pavlenko, entered into contract agreements in various regions of the country, mainly for road construction work, received construction equipment, materials and vehicles at his disposal. And all these years... built roads. We probably had a chance to drive along some of them.

What is criminal, and especially counter-revolutionary, about this, the reader will ask? Indeed, judging by the standards of today, Pavlenko was, perhaps, “more modest” than other newly minted oligarchs. In order to obtain one or another contract, he and his accomplices used fictitious documents and seals fabricated by them, and practiced bribery and deception of high-ranking officials. But we won’t be surprised by fictitious companies and corruption after the collapse of the USSR. And Pavlenko stole very strangely. He did not sell off the goods created by others. He created - he built objects, residential buildings, access roads and highways. In a word, he restored the national economy destroyed by the war. And, judging by the case materials, he did it not badly at all. He used, as they used to say, capitalist methods of management: he set high salaries for good specialists, paid civilian employees by the piece, and after a working day “bonded” those who had worked hard with a keg of beer. Pavlenko himself asserted both during the investigation and in court: “We did not carry out anti-Soviet activities, we simply built as best we could, and we knew how to build well.”

And this was true, but it was also true that he was even better at doing contract work, stealing government funds on a large scale, and turning government equipment into his own property. In total, criminals concluded 64 contracts totaling more than 38 million rubles between 1948 and 1952 alone. UVS accounts were opened in the 21st branch of the State Bank of the USSR, and through them it was possible to receive more than 25 million rubles. How much of this money ended up in the pockets of Pavlenko and his accomplices was established only approximately.

The organization was well armed and clandestine, had its own counterintelligence, headed by Konstantinov. From the very beginning until the liquidation of the UVS, its participants obtained large quantities, often with the help of MGB agencies, pistols, rifles, machine guns, light machine guns and grenades. Considering the scope of its activities, the good armament of the UVS and the dispersion of its units in several regions - the Baltic states, the Moldavian SSR, Kiev, Odessa, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov and Mogilev regions - considerable forces of the USSR Ministry of State Security were involved in the liquidation of this organization. According to the verdict, during the operation the following were seized: 21 rifles and carbines, 9 machine guns, 3 light machine guns, 19 pistols and revolvers, 5 grenades, more than 3,000 pieces of live ammunition, 32 trucks, 6 cars , tractors - 2, excavators - 2, fictitious official seals - 14 and thousands of different forms printed by printing...

We “identified” an organization that called itself “UVS” by chance. A party member named Efremenko decided to be vigilant and wrote a letter to Marshal Voroshilov. It followed from it that some officers distributed government loan bonds among civilians working at UVS. The workers handed over the money for them, but never received the bonds themselves.

The signal was not ignored, and on October 23, 1952, a criminal case was opened in Lvov. During the first interrogations, the circumstances stated in the letter were confirmed. It was established that the bonds were purchased on the black market in Lviv. One of the “officers” decided to earn extra money in this way, and as a result failed the entire organization. Other facts immediately surfaced that could not but alert the investigators. From the testimony of Kudrenko and other interrogated witnesses, it was clear that UVS not only hired suspicious people and did not pay wages on time. It appeared that the organization itself was criminal. This news plunged everyone into a state of shock. The worst fears were confirmed when a number of documents were requested from the Lvovugol trust, with which UVS collaborated. From the message of the trust manager it followed that after concluding an agreement with the Mukachevo mine management, UVS-1 received from them for temporary use 29 trucks and 1 excavator at a book value of 778,462 rubles and “without returning the specified units, curtailed work and left for the unknown direction."

When justifying themselves to the prosecutor's office, the trust's leaders insisted that they could not even imagine that Pavlenko was a criminal. After all, he was a very respected person, he was constantly invited to the presidiums of ceremonial meetings, and during holiday parades he always stood on the podium next to the party leaders of the region. Moreover, in a ceremonial uniform and in the radiance of military orders...

The criminal case about a fictitious organization, initiated by the military prosecutor's office of the Carpathian Military District, given its scale, was transferred on November 5, 1952 to the investigative unit for particularly important cases of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office. There it was soon established that Pavlenko had long been wanted by the All-Union. The prosecutor's office of the Kalinin region opened a criminal case against him back in February 1948. Pavlenko then headed the Plandorstroy artel and stole funds in the amount of 339,326 rubles. Both cases were combined into one proceeding. Investigators of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office asked the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security of the USSR for information about the deployment and subordination of the military construction unit called “UVS”, and received the same type of answers from everywhere - such an organization is not listed anywhere. It was time for the “important” investigators to be surprised: under the guise of the state military construction department, a powerful criminal corporation had been operating for a long time, receiving millions in construction orders from ministries and departments and using Soviet Army employees as labor.

To organize the search for Nikolai Maksimovich Pavlenko and his headquarters, the operational staff of the state security agencies of the five union republics was involved, and two weeks later traces were found in Chisinau. The arrest warrant for Pavlenko No. 97 was signed by the then little-known Deputy Minister of State Security of the Moldavian SSR, Lieutenant Colonel of State Security Semyon Tsvigun.

Pavlenko was detained on November 23, 1952. During the subsequent interrogations, he spoke in detail about his activities.

Pavlenko was born in 1908 in the village of Novye Sokoly, Kyiv region, into the family of a miller. He became a road builder, worked as a simple worker in the Glavdortrans system, and entered the road transport department of the Minsk Polytechnic Institute, where he studied for only two years. He left there because he learned that a response had come to the institute’s personnel officer’s request about his kulak origin. In 1935, Pavlenko was arrested in the city. Efremov on suspicion of committing theft, but managed to get out. And I realized that I need to be friends with the authorities. During the period of struggle against the Trotskyists, he found a way to distinguish himself - he wrote a denunciation of two employees of the construction department and “for his help in exposing the Trotskyist conspiracy,” the NKVD employees recommended Pavlenko to work in the Main Military Department. There he managed to rise to the position of construction site manager...

The war found military technician 1st rank Pavlenko in Minsk. During the aforementioned interrogation in November 1952, he told the investigator that on June 27, 1941, he was appointed to the position of assistant engineer of the 2nd Rifle Corps and retreated with the corps all the way to Vyazma. And then he was seconded to the airfield construction department of the Western Front Air Force. But neither this department nor the 12th RAB20 was in the Kalinin area, and he decided to personally create a military construction site. However, during subsequent interrogations, Pavlenko was forced to correct his testimony and admitted that he had actually deserted from the active army together with his driver Shchegolev, having forged travel documents.

This circumstance was also confirmed in court. The verdict of the military tribunal of the Moscow Military District states: “Having deserted from the Soviet Army, the defendant Pavlenko in March 1942 lured the driver Shchegolev to his place, taking with him the truck of the military unit assigned to him. Later, in the same deceptive way, he began to involve his former colleagues and acquaintances in the criminal organization he was creating - Klimenko, Filimonov, Nikolaev, Lelyuk and others...”

The history of the creation of a military construction site, or rather a gang, is as follows. In Solnechnogorsk and Klin, Pavlenko accidentally met several colleagues from the pre-war artel. During one of the feasts, his fellow villager, sixteen-year-old Rudnichenko, demonstrated his abilities to his tipsy friends - in front of their eyes, he cut out an official seal from a rubber sole with the inscription “Military construction site No. 5 of the Kalinin Front.” That's where it all started.

UVS case Fake seals and stamps After some time, an organization with the same name appeared in front-line Kalinin. In the conditions of confusion that reigned in the city, this did not surprise anyone. The local printing house managed to print several thousand forms of the illegitimate organization and obtained food and uniforms from warehouses using fake certificates.

Recalling his first criminal experience during interrogation, Pavlenko said that in those days his team consisted of several people, Shchegolev’s car and 2-3 horses. Soon its number increased to several dozen people. Pavlenko organized a drinking party with the right people, thanked them generously, and then sent official requests to the military commandant’s office and the Kalinin commissariat. And immediately the ranks of the fictitious organization began to swell with non-combatant fighters discharged from the hospital after being wounded. Here, at the front-line evacuation point, he concluded his first contract. Pavlenko easily opened a current account using fabricated documents in the Kalinin regional office of the State Bank and began to receive funds there transferred from FEP-165.

Having legalized the gang, he began to enter into other contract agreements for road and construction work with various Kalinin organizations, which regularly transferred funds to him. He spent part of the money on feeding the rank and file and issuing “monetary allowances” to the officers of the unit, and appropriated the remaining profits together with his accomplices. Pavlenko continued to work approximately according to the same scheme in subsequent years. And he always made extensive use of bribery and bribery. Among those who were drawn into the orbit of criminal activity by him, the case includes trust managers, employees of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, military commissars and military representatives, officials of banking institutions and commanders of military units.

Pavlenko, not without pride, asserted during the first interrogation that as part of the 4th Air Army, his “UVS” reached Bialystok, and then the Oder, having built many airfields and receiving nothing but gratitude from the command...

Meanwhile, as a result of the painstaking work of the investigative team of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office, and then during the trial, it was established that UVS did not direct its main efforts to the construction of military facilities. Pavlenko, Klimenko, Kuritsyn and other active members of the UVS systematically stole everything they could get their hands on - building materials, cars, fodder...

In 1944-1945, on the territory of Poland and Germany, members of the UVS, under the guise of collecting trophy property, seized cars, tractors, motorcycles, radios, guns, accordions, bicycles, carpets, sewing machines, stole livestock, stole food and other material assets.

As established in court, according to far from complete data, about 80 horses, at least 50 head of cattle, a large number of pigs, about 20 trucks and cars, up to 20 tractors, electric motors, tractor trailers, and a significant amount of flour were stolen in Germany. , cereals and sugar.

At the final stage of the war, the composition of the fictitious organization “UVS” exceeded 200 people. Many of them were criminals, deserters, people hiding from mobilization. They were armed with up to 100 firearms and huge reserves of captured property.

According to the testimony of defendants and witnesses, the criminal organization "UVS" from May 1945 to September 1946 had funds in a total amount of up to 3 million rubles.

Most of the illegally obtained property was sold by criminals. Military uniforms were sold at markets in Klin, Tula and Minsk at speculative prices - more than half a million rubles. In Poland and Belarus, they sold several captured cars and tractors, 12 cows, and two dozen horses to the local population, earning gold, Polish and Soviet money for them.

Pavlenko organized an entire operation to transport the loot to their homeland and “demobilize” the UVS participants. He agreed with representatives of the Department of Clothing and Cargo Supply of the Red Army and representatives of the Soviet military commandant's office of the city of Stuttgart to allocate a train of 30 railway cars for the UVS. They were loaded with several cars, 10 trucks, 5 tractors, motorcycles and other equipment, hundreds of heads of livestock, and a large number of bags of sugar, cereals and flour.

During the “demobilization”, he provided his accomplices with a large number of fictitious documents, in a solemn atmosphere he presented them with over 230 orders and medals of the USSR, as well as large sums of money and part of the property.

The stolen property was used to bribe officials. Thus, one passenger car was handed over to the Tula regional military commissar Rizhnev, who, at Pavlenko’s request, gave an order to the Shchekino regional military commissar to place a “UVS” in the territory of his district.

Subsequently, using connections with Rizhnev, Pavlenko and his accomplices stole funds under the guise of receiving “demobilization” benefits.

Pavlenko spent his “share” on the purchase of two houses - in Kalinin and in his homeland, not far from Kharkov, and also bought several Pobeda cars...

Traces of his organization were discovered some time later in Lvov. It was there that the core of the gang decided to create a new company called the “Military Construction Directorate” (“UVS 1”). The same L. Rudnichenko made all the necessary seals and stamps; according to a long-established scheme, the necessary forms and documents were ordered and printed. And with the help of feasts and bribes, it was easy to establish close contacts with local officials and state security agencies. Candidates for work at UVS were selected one by one, through the MGB Directorate for the Lvov Region, which checked those wishing to get a job for loyalty to the Soviet regime and the absence of any contacts or ties with Bandera.

The newly created military unit was practically no different from other active units. On its territory, the daily routine was strictly observed, combat and political training classes were held, an operational duty officer was appointed every day, a guard was on guard duty, a sentry at post No. 1 guarded the unit’s banner...

There was no end to those wishing to enter into contract agreements with such a respected organization. The file contains several top secret lists, which list dozens of “enterprises and organizations that have entered into economic relations with UVS-1 construction sites.” Among them are the Zapadshakhtostroy trust, the Zolochiv mine management of the Ministry of Coal Industry, SMU-2 of the Belkhladstroy trust of the Ministry of Meat and Dairy Industry of the BSSR, the Chisinau Winery Gratiesti, the Tiraspol Winery, UNR-193 of the Ministry of Construction of Mechanical Engineering Enterprises...

Several times UVS was on the verge of exposure. But failure was always avoided.

The question of how such a powerful and extensive criminal organization managed not only to survive, but also to thrive under the total control of state security agencies cannot but cause surprise. In those years, “sex agents” and simply vigilant Soviet citizens, available in sufficient numbers in any institution, wrote denunciations at the slightest provocation. People were sentenced to death for mere words praising the Western way of life and capitalist orders. And here, for ten years, an entire syndicate operated with impunity.

The reasons for his criminal longevity, in our opinion, lay in the fact that Pavlenko was well versed not only in the capitalist economy, but also in the laws of socialist development. Moreover, not those that were prescribed in textbooks and memorized due to the lack of any logic. And in unwritten laws. Understanding the falsity and far-fetchedness of official slogans, he lived and acted according to the rules established in real life: he admired the wise policies of the leaders and exposed disguised Trotskyists, collaborated with the MGB and constantly hinted to officials about his involvement in certain special services. Many of the officials interrogated during the investigation told how Pavlenko “accidentally” blurted out or mysteriously hinted that UVS-1 was engaged in civil construction only as a sideline, and its main objects were strictly classified. However, he never specified which department his organization was assigned to. Let us add that he was well versed in “socialist management methods” in the field of road construction, that is, he knew where to save money and where to attribute or inflate the amount of work done.

At the court hearing, Pavlenko and other defendants denied their involvement in “counter-revolutionary” crimes. While admitting the commission of a number of criminal acts, they argued that these crimes were not anti-Soviet in nature. Defendant Pavlenko stated: “I committed many crimes, but I never had anything against the Soviet state and did not set out to undermine its economic power. We did not withdraw public funds from the bank, but received legal money for the work performed. “I plead guilty to participating in the theft of public funds.”

The verdict of the military tribunal was announced in early April 1955.

The accusation against the 12 defendants that they carried out anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda was not confirmed in court, and they were acquitted under this article. However, the majority retained the main counter-revolutionary article 587 of the Criminal Code. With the exception of Monastyrsky and Maksimenko. They were lucky, since the court qualified their actions as purely criminal and significantly reduced the time they served their sentences by applying amnesty acts. At the same time, the military tribunal indicated in the verdict that “both due to the gravity of the crimes committed and their insincerity before the court, defendants Pavlenko and Kuritsyn do not deserve leniency, and no mitigating circumstances are seen in their case.”

Pavlenko, under Article 587 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR and a combination of crimes, was sentenced to capital punishment - execution, with confiscation of his personal property. The remaining defendants were sentenced to imprisonment for terms ranging from 5 to 25 years, with loss of rights, confiscation of property, deprivation of orders and medals. In accordance with the law in force at that time, the verdict against all those convicted of undermining state industry was final and was not subject to cassation appeal.

A documentary about this case can be viewed here:

The Soviet period of history is considered a time with virtually no organized crime. However, it was precisely during this period, and during its most rigid and closed segment - the late Stalin period - that the activities of a criminal organization occurred that had no analogues either before or after.
Under the constant supervision of omnipresent authorities, a group of comrades earned huge money for 11 years, pretending to be a military unit.

False seals from case materials

Born fugitive

Nikolai Maksimovich Pavlenko was born in the village of Novye Sokoly, Kyiv province of the Russian Empire in 1912 into the family of a wealthy peasant who already had six children, as well as two mills. Apparently, Kolya was not too attached to his family, since at the age of 14 he ran away from home and went to Minsk. True, some researchers see in this act the first manifestation of the phenomenal instincts of a criminal prodigy, since soon after his departure his father was dispossessed and arrested.
In the capital of the Belarusian SSR, Pavlenko began working as a road builder, choosing a profession for the rest of his life. It was then that he falsified documents for the first time, attributing four years to himself (which is why many biographers subsequently began to date his birth to 1908). This helped him to enter the Polytechnic Institute ahead of time, where he studied the same road business. However, the educational process lasted only two courses: Pavlenko ran away again, again avoiding problems with the authorities who began to investigate his social origin.
He showed up only five years later, in 1935, when he was arrested in the city of Efremov, Tula Region, for theft of socialist property. Three years earlier, Stalin’s infamous “three ears of corn” law had been passed, and Pavlenko was in for big trouble, but he managed to get out of it by becoming an NKVD informant and writing denunciations against two of his colleagues. Those were repressed as “Trotskyists,” and he was recommended for work at Glavvoenstroy - a very privileged place where only a select few ended up.

The Fraud and the War

It was in Glavvoenstroi, successfully moving up the career ladder, that the swindler met the war.
As a specialist in military construction, he was appointed assistant engineer of the 2nd Rifle Corps, which fought on the Western Front. However, Pavlenko did not like defending his homeland, and four months later, when his unit retreated to the Vyazma area, he forged documents and went on a fake business trip, taking with him a sergeant-driver in a service truck. So the fellow travelers reached Kalinin (present-day Tver), where the protagonist’s relatives lived, and lay low.
Thinking over his further actions (and, taking into account desertion in wartime, there was something to think about), Pavlenko eventually came to the main idea of ​​his life. It is reported that this happened at a drinking party in Klin, near Moscow, where the former colleagues of the swindler in construction organizations gathered - people who were also not deprived of dubious talents. One of them, woodcarver Ludwig Rudnichenko, right during the feast, as a joke, cut out an official seal and stamps from the sole of a rubber boot, on which was written “Military construction site of the Kalinin Front No. 5.” At this moment, the puzzle in Pavlenko’s head was completely formed.
With only a stolen army truck at his disposal, as well as several horses and carts and several personnel, the fraudster organized no less than his own military unit. For a bribe of food, a circulation of fake documents was printed at the Kalinin printing house, military uniforms were purchased at the market and in a local garment factory, and the personnel were divided into fake “soldiers” and “officers.”
All that was left was to find enough labor. Pavlenko brilliantly solved this problem by agreeing with the city’s military commissar to send to his unit military personnel who had lagged behind their units or had just been discharged from the hospital. Apparently, there was a bribe involved - a way of doing business, which the main character subsequently used to the maximum.
Soon the first construction contract was concluded - with the head of the local evacuation point, military doctor Bidenko. In exchange for free services, he agreed to provide UVSR with everything necessary. Other city orders followed, for which the organization opened an account in the State Bank. And after the Kalinin Front was disbanded, Pavlenko managed to attach it to the rear of the 4th Air Army for the purpose of building airfields. To do this, the talented leader agreed with a certain Lieutenant Colonel Tsyplakov. Thus, the stage of formation was completed, the structure was legalized and, moreover, invested with important functions in the defeat of the invaders. It was autumn 1942.

While others were fighting

In the three years that passed before the Victory, Pavlenko’s part achieved real prosperity. On the territory of the Soviet Union alone, under the agreements, it received about a million rubles, and its number reached two hundred. Together with the rapidly advancing army, “UVSR” (or “USR”, or “UVR” - there were several names) reached Germany itself, where it was engaged in outright robberies. At the same time, in order to avoid suspicion, Pavlenko sometimes punished the “looters” in his unit. Once, as follows from the case materials, he shot three people, and did it personally.
The valiant “construction department” ended the war in Stuttgart, Germany. In order to remove all the property “accumulated” during this time, Pavlenko managed to negotiate with the military commandant of the city about the allocation of a train of 30 (!) cars. They carried a wide variety of goods: from cars and cattle to accordions and sewing machines. It was sold out along the way, in Poland and Belarus, and was finally sold in the native markets of the Kalinin and Tula regions
The unit itself returned home along with the loot. At the same time, the enterprising boss obtained as many as 230 (!) units of awards for his subordinates. Pavlenko did not offend himself by pinning four orders (of the Patriotic War of the 1st and 2nd degrees, the Red Star and the Red Banner of Battle) and medals on his chest

Pavlenko's award list

Looking for new adventures

Upon returning to their homeland, the unit settled on the territory of the Shchekinsky district of the Tula region. For this, Pavlenko gave the regional military commissar a car. In 1946, when all the property was sold, the commander decided to disband his valiant unit. With the help of the same military commissar, all participants were “demobilized” and also generously rewarded. Privates and sergeants received 7-12 thousand rubles each, officers - 15-25. Pavlenko paid himself 90 thousand. The legendary swindler could not be accused of being tight-fisted.
With the proceeds, Pavlenko bought himself two houses - in the Kalinin and Kharkov regions - as well as 4 (!) Pobeda cars, after which he lived a peaceful life with his wife and daughter. He again took up the construction business, organizing an artel called “Plandorstroy”. This, it would seem, is the end of the fairy tale.
But soon the restless gut called to go on the road again. In 1948, together with his new mistress Nadezhda Tyutyunnik - a former saleswoman who served two years for embezzlement - Pavlenko left Kalinin, taking with him 400 thousand rubles from the artel funds. For this he was put on the all-Union wanted list, which, however, did not prevent the implementation of his further plans.
The lovers moved to Western Ukraine, to the glorious city of Lviv, where the great schemer summoned his accomplices. There the reincarnation of the “construction department” took place. The same craftsman Rudnichenko made seals and stamps, document forms were printed again, and everything started according to the old pattern. But on a much larger scale.
In just four years of its activity in its new incarnation, the organization concluded 64 agreements for a total amount of 38 million 717 thousand 600 rubles. Accounts were opened in 21 branches of the State Bank, from which 25 million rubles were withdrawn. The activities of the “administration” were carried out on the territory of six union republics: Ukrainian, Moldavian, Belarusian and three Baltic. Pavlenko moved in high circles, appearing at ceremonial events and parades next to government officials. Its part was no different from the real one: it was armed, lived according to the rules and had an exemplary appearance. In 1951, the swindler awarded himself the title of “Colonel”.

The work of the “company” was carried out according to strictly capitalist principles: Pavlenko paid hired specialists salaries three to four times higher than the state ones. He was incredibly generous with bribes, as well as with treats, always paying for luxurious dinners with the right people in restaurants, and surprising them with the amounts that he left on the table.
In order to discourage excessive curiosity, Pavlenko used another effective technique. He always hinted that civil engineering was just the tip of the iceberg, but in fact he and his comrades were carrying out orders from mysterious and powerful “authorities.” And he didn’t say which ones exactly, which created an even stronger impression.

The collapse of “Colonel” Pavlenko

And yet, one terrible day for Pavlenko, his well-functioning scheme failed. In part - either for greater credibility, or for fraudulent reasons - government loan bonds were distributed, and one of the workers did not receive them, after which he sent a letter of complaint to Marshal K. E. Voroshilov. The case unexpectedly got under way, and investigators from the military prosecutor's office, where it was sent, found out with great surprise that the military unit indicated in the letter was not on the lists of either the Ministry of Defense or the special services.
Work was carried out to establish the location of the unit's headquarters. It turned out to be difficult, but in the end it turned out that he was in Chisinau. After this, Pavlenko was put under surveillance, and soon the entire criminal network was shut down at once. This happened on November 14, 1952. 400 people were detained, including Pavlenko’s closest assistant Konstantinov (aka Konstantiner), who headed the structure’s own counterintelligence (!). He revealed to the operatives the possible location of the boss. Pavlenko was arrested at a safe house in Chisinau on November 23 along with his mistress. A general's shoulder straps were found next to him - apparently, another “promotion” was being prepared.

“We just built as best we could”

The investigation lasted for two years. During this time, Stalin managed to die and Khrushchev came to power. Finally, in November 1954, the trial began. He walked for another five months. Pavlenko and his associates were accused of anti-Soviet agitation, but no evidence of this was found. The main accused himself said the following: “We did not carry out anti-Soviet activities, we simply built as best we could, and we knew how to build well.” And it was hard to argue with that. All work undertaken by Pavlenko’s unit was carried out conscientiously. Yes, at the same time, attributions and appropriation of state property were practiced, but the swindler had nothing against the Soviet government itself.
However, the court still sentenced 40-year-old Pavlenko to death, accusing him of undermining state industry for counter-revolutionary purposes. Considering that all the other defendants in the case received only prison sentences ranging from 5 to 20 years, we can safely assume that they decided to shoot the legendary criminal not at all for encroaching on the gains of the revolution, which was not the case. And for the fact that he proved that even in the system of total control established under Stalin and considered almost the standard of iron order, there was so much chaos and loopholes for corruption that one person could avoid punishment for 11 years. At the same time, not hiding from the authorities, but developing vigorous activity in full view and becoming a respectable member of society.


The image of Colonel Klimenko from the series “Black Wolves”, played by Vladimir Yumatov, is based on the biography of Pavlenko
It is interesting that party and Soviet officials accused of having connections with Pavlenko got off very lightly. For example, the Minister of Food Industry of Moldova, Kirill Ivanovich Tsurcan, received only a reprimand. The same “punishment” befell the secretaries of the Tiraspol and Belsky city committees of the CPSU. None of the more senior officials were involved in the case. There were rumors that the then leader of Moldova, Leonid Brezhnev, was connected with Pavlenko, but they did not receive any development.
The sentence passed by the military tribunal was not subject to appeal. The day he was carried out, as well as the burial place of Soviet swindler No. 1, remain unknown.

On January 19, 1982, the first deputy chairman of the KGB, Army General Semyon Kuzmich Tsvigun, shot himself at his dacha No. 43 in the village of Usovo.

Two days later, an obituary appeared in the Pravda newspaper, under which there was no signature of the top officials of the state: Brezhnev, Kirilenko and Suslov.

This immediately gave rise to a wave of a wide variety of rumors. It was known that General Tsvigun had many years of friendly relations with the family of the Secretary General. In 1952, acting the Minister of State Security of Moldova, Colonel Tsvigun, “covered” the former first secretary of the republican party organization Brezhnev from the wrath of Stalin himself.

Leonid Ilyich had already become Secretary of the Central Committee when the investigation into the famous “Pavlenko case”, which created the first private illegal construction company in the USSR, began in Moldova.

The leaders of the republic were involved in the multimillion-dollar embezzlement of public money. In addition to the direct participants in the repair and construction scam of Nikolai Pavlenko, the heads of the highest ranks of the Moldavian SSR “rolled”. Stalin ordered a loud political trial. But Tsvigun did everything to ensure that Brezhnev’s name did not appear in any documents of this criminal case, unprecedented in scale, in the early 1950s.

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his labor according to his available money.”

Quote from Dima Semitsvetov,
from E. Ryazanov’s film “Beware of the Car”

Foreman from Ukraine

Nikolai Maksimovich Pavlenko was born in 1908 in the village of Novye Sokoly, Ivankovsky district, Kyiv region, into the family of a miller. The Pavlenki did not live in poverty: their father had a farm and two mills under his control. At one time, freed from serfdom, the dynasty accumulated its own (albeit small) capital. In 1928, Nikolai Maksimovich realized that there were few prospects in the village and ran away from home. Soon the Pavlenko family was dispossessed, Nikolai Maksimovich’s father was arrested (he later died of starvation), and their property was confiscated.

Nikolai Pavlenko ended up in Minsk. The future millionaire forged documents and entered the MPI (Minsk Polytechnic Institute) at the Faculty of Automobile and Road Transport. By that time he already had experience in road construction, as he worked as a simple road builder in the Glavdortrans system. After studying for two years, Pavlenko, knowing that the class affiliation of each student is carefully checked by “controlling authorities” and that sooner or later they will come for him, decides to leave school. Pavlenko's acquaintances offer him the position of foreman in the main military construction department. Nikolai agrees. He works well and very soon confidently moves up the career ladder. It was a rich place: after all, all the money, along with building materials, passed through his hands. But not for long. Someone reported to the NKVD that workers were being cheated at this construction site. During a trip to the city of Efremov in 1935, Nikolai Maksimovich was detained for 35 days. The second five-year plan was underway and theft was fought very brutally in the country of the Soviets. The fight against plunderers of socialist property was regulated by the famous “Law of Three Spikelets” or the law of the seventh or eighth.”

REFERENCE

The Law on “Three Spikelets” is the name adopted in historical journalism for the Resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated August 7, 1932 “On the protection of the property of state enterprises, collective farms and cooperation and the strengthening of public (socialist) property”, adopted on the initiative of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ( b) I.V. Stalin.

Punishment for theft of collective farm and cooperative property, theft of cargo on railway and water transport, included execution by execution with confiscation of property or imprisonment for a term of at least ten years.

Pavlenko faced a real prison sentence (at best), but NKVD officers Curzon and Sakhno decided to give Nikolai Maksimovich a choice: either he would go to jail, or he would identify and inform the NKVD about “traitors and traitors to the motherland in the workplace entrusted to him.” Choosing between two evils, Pavlenko agreed to the “reforging”. Soon, two denunciations were ready against their own colleagues - the “Trotskyists” Volkov and Afanasyev. For this, information was included in his personal description that “Nikolai Maksimovich Pavlenko is a conscientious and devoted citizen of the USSR.” It was from then on that Pavlenko learned a life lesson well: in order to successfully steal, you need a serious “roof.”

“To whom is war, and to whom is mother dear”

Pavlenko met the war as a 1st-rank military technician in Minsk. There was a catastrophic shortage of qualified specialists, and Pavlenko had incomplete higher education and extensive experience, so he was immediately appointed to the position of assistant engineer of the 2nd Rifle Corps. In fact, Nikolai Maksimovich Pavlenko was awarded the officer rank of senior lieutenant. In the first difficult months of the war, Pavlenko actually took part in the battles. The situation on the battlefields was extremely unfavorable. Marshal of the USSR Kirill Meretskov (1897 - 1968) recalled the situation that struck him: “I watched as one of the units was given the order to move to the other side of the Styr River to establish pontoon crossings. There are no bridges left in the area except one, which was already subject to German air raids. The crowd of equipment and people on the bridge was catastrophic: abandoned things everywhere, broken cars, people running to the east. And then the command staff decides to literally go after people. Some fell into the water, some managed to get to the other shore by running, and some remained under the wheels of the equipment.”

In a word, there were constantly not enough engineering troops at the front. In the NKVD there was a department with a difficult to understand, but fashionable, at that time, name GUSHADOR.

REFERENCE

GUSHADOR - Main Directorate of Highways and Highways. Created by NKVD order No. 0086 on March 4, 1936. Tasks: construction, repair and operation of roads of all-Union, republican, regional and regional significance.

GUSHADOR was created by one of the “fathers” of the GULAG - Naftaliy Frenkel (1883 - 1960). That is, roads in the USSR were built mainly by prisoners, and not by military engineers who knew where to build and how to build. At the initial stage of the war, GUSHADOR did not know and did not have time to build roads for the retreating units of the Red Army. In June 1941, this construction and repair office was transferred to the Ministry of Defense, but it was not possible to establish a centralized management system for engineering units until the end of the war.

If not for the lack of a sufficient number of construction units at the beginning of the war (which for some reason were pulled close to the western border of the USSR and fell to the enemy), such tragedies could have been avoided. The front went east and Pavlenko and his unit ended up in Vyazma. As a very experienced specialist, Pavlenko was “sent” to the Kalinin region. Pavlenko left the military unit in his car with a personal driver, but he never arrived at the work site entrusted to him. He was immediately put on the wanted list. Later, during interrogation, Nikolai Maksimovich admitted that he had forged documents about a “business trip” to an airfield under construction in order to leave the unit’s location. Upon arrival in Kalinin, Nikolai Maksimovich, together with his driver-sergeant Shcheglov, went to Pavlenko’s relatives who lived in Kalinin. There Pavlenko rested and thought about his future. His prospects were very vague. Desertion, according to wartime laws, was punishable by execution. Therefore, Pavlenko decided to “lay low” for a while and keep a low profile.

Nikolai Pavlenko - military technician 2nd rank of the Red Army

In Kalinin, Nikolai Maksimovich meets his future wife Zinaida, who worked at the city Main Post Office. Pavlenko loved her, so he took guardianship over her: he looked after her, fed her, got her medicine when she was sick with typhoid. Love for Zinaida determined Pavlenko’s future fate: he decided to stay with his wife in Kalinin and never return to the front.

But the family needed to be provided for, and officially getting a job was dangerous. One incident helped Pavlenko. One day, while drinking with his old colleagues in the city of Klin, Nikolai Maksimovich came up with the brilliant idea of ​​using abandoned tools and vehicles, of which there were plenty in the city. In order to legally use all this, documents were needed. At the same drinking party, Pavlenko met his fellow countryman, woodcarver and petty swindler Ludwig Rudnichenko (1925 - ?). Having drunk quite a bit, Ludwig decided to show off his “crown number” - on an ordinary shoe sole he cut out an official seal and several stamps with the inscription: “Military construction site No. 1 of the Kalinin Front.”

Fake seals and stamps of Nikolai Pavlenko's construction and engineering trust

The idea of ​​thirty-year-old Nikolai Pavlenko was to organize his own construction unit, build and repair military and civilian facilities. To organize essentially the first private construction company in the USSR.

All the necessary documents for the normal and legal existence of a seemingly ordinary military unit were printed at the Kalinin printing house for a food bribe, which Pavlenko personally handed to the director. The organization's current account, again using forged documents, was opened in the regional office of the State Bank.
Pavlenko bought uniforms for the rank and file of Military Construction Robot Section No. 1 (UVSR-1) at the market, and ordered uniforms for officers at the Kalinin Garment Factory named after. Volodarsky. Having finished equipping the senior staff of the unit, he began recruiting the personnel of his construction unit. The most faithful and trusted people (who knew about his scam), Nikolai Maksimovich, again forging documents, made officers.

Pavlenko began to bribe the right people, and some of them were slowly legalized. This made it possible to send an official request for military construction contracts, which Pavlenko personally negotiated for bribes. Using forged forms, he awarded himself the rank of military engineer of the 3rd rank (the rank of captain), and soon paid a visit to the military commandant's office and commissariat of Kalinin. Oratorical talent, the ability to win over his interlocutor, and most importantly, generous souvenirs made Pavlenko his man in these coordination military structures. Nikolai Maksimovich’s troubles boiled down to ensuring that the commandant’s office and the military registration and enlistment office sent soldiers discharged from the hospital or who had lagged behind their units to his unit for further military service. However, Pavlenko did not disdain outright deserters, draft dodgers and even criminals. Soon the motley contingent of UVSR-5 numbered about 40 (according to other sources up to 80) personnel. In order to get to work without “unnecessary questions,” the unit changed its name to UVSR-2.

At the Kalinin front-line evacuation point FEP No. 165, military construction worker Pavlenko received his first contract. The commander promised the head of the evacuation point, military doctor 1st rank Bidenko, to carry out the work completely free of charge in exchange for taking UVSR-2 under his protection. The soldiers built new ones, repaired and expanded old dugouts for the wounded. They did their job well and showed themselves to be good specialists, which is why they were put on pay as the construction and repair structure of the evacuation point.

During the liquidation of the Kalinin Front in the fall of 1942, inspectors from Moscow became interested in a unit previously unknown to them. Therefore, Nikolai Maksimovich transferred UVSR-2 to another location for a bribe. So Pavlenko’s construction unit ended up in the 4th Air Army of the 12th RAB (air base area), where his “subordinates” were also given all types of allowance. To get lost, Pavlenko comes up with a new legend. From now on, his office turned into the Department of Military Construction Works No. 5 (UVSR-5). “Golden times” have come for her. Since 1943, the front has been moving quickly and there has been no end to orders for servicing airfields. The airfields were located deep in the rear, which reduced the likelihood of surprise inspections by NKVD officers. Frequent movements of airfields did not make it possible to find the unit in the place where it was a month ago.

Later, during the investigation of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office (GVP), it turned out that some soldiers were engaged in outright looting in their free time. From time to time Pavlenko received complaints about them, but rarely gave them further action. Remaining almost unpunished, UVSR-5 fighters robbed, killed and raped.

Persons close to Pavlenko actively accumulated “ownerless” trophies: building materials, cars, construction tools, etc. But Nikolai Maksimovich always shared with the “right people” and they simply turned a blind eye to what was happening.

REFERENCE

Among those drawn by Pavlenko into the orbit of criminal activity in the case were managers of trusts, employees of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, military commissars and military representatives, officials of banking institutions and commanders of military units.

From 1942 to 1945 alone, the Pavlenkovites laundered about one million rubles in various ways. During interrogation, Pavlenko stated: “As part of the 4th Army, my unit reached Bialystok, and then the Oder, building many airfields, and received only gratitude from the authorities and not a single complaint!” But in fact, passing through Poland and Germany in 1944 - 1945, UVSR-5 was engaged in looting.

UVSR-5 received the news of the end of the war in Stuttgart. “Maksimych” gave a bribe to the rear department and for this the unit (now Colonel Pavlenko) received verbal permission to collect captured property. The fighters stole livestock, robbed houses, abandoned German food warehouses, stole cars and their parts, bicycles and carpets. According to approximate estimates of the military prosecutor's office, in Germany alone, the fighters of the fictitious unit stole: about 80 horses, up to a hundred pigs, 50 heads of cattle, 9 cars and 11 trucks, several electric motors, 20 tractors and the same number of trailers for them. Several tons of sugar, flour and various cereals were also requisitioned. Moreover, some fighters went on such rampages that they pocketed valuables declared the property of the Soviet state.

In response to constantly receiving complaints, the occupation administration of Stuttgart demanded that the perpetrators be severely punished. The colonel did not dare to disobey the order of his superiors: Nikolai Maksimovich personally shot the guilty soldiers in front of the entire unit.

The expropriated property could not remain on the territory of occupied Germany for long. Pavlenko decided to transport it to the USSR at any cost, where he had an established sales channel. Having established, through bribes, contacts with representatives of the temporary military prosecutor's office, the department of clothing and convoy supplies of the Ministry of Defense, as well as the military commandant of Stuttgart, Pavlenko began to act. Having learned that the commandant of Stuttgart was a passionate philatelist, Pavlenko presented him with a stamp sheet “Saxony. 1859." Friendship with the commandant allowed Nikolai Pavlenko to get at his disposal a railway train consisting of thirty cars. They were loaded with all the goods honestly “squeezed” from the Germans. A freight train chock-full of “trophies” set off from Stuttgart to Kalinin...

REFERENCE

According to the testimony of defendants and witnesses, the criminal organization "UVS" from May 1945 to September 1946 had funds in a total amount of up to 3 million rubles (566 thousand dollars at the official exchange rate of 1937-1950).

Most of the illegally obtained property was sold. Military uniforms were sold at markets in Klin, Tula and Minsk at speculative prices - more than half a million rubles. In Poland and Belarus, they sold several captured cars and tractors, 12 cows, and two dozen horses to the local population, earning gold, Polish and Soviet money for them.

Such phenomenal success and impunity were surprising. Evil tongues claimed that “Maksimych” was somehow connected with organs, otherwise how could such luck be explained? But situational curiosity was compensated by solid money, and those “particularly interested” preferred to keep quiet.

Once in his homeland, Nikolai Maksimovich decided to finish his “Odyssey” and return to an ordinary peaceful life with his loving wife and little daughter Alla. He decided to sell the property looted along the route of the “Pavlenkovsky hordes” gradually in different cities of the country. Pavlenko used the stolen property not only for sale, but also for bribes to officials. Nikolai Maksimovich “gifted” the car to the Tula regional military commissar Rizhnev for his order to the Shchekinsky military commissar to place a “unit” in the territory of his district. Later, together with Rizhnev, Pavlenko pocketed money under the guise of receiving demobilization benefits.

By the end of the war, Colonel Pavlenko's unit numbered about 200 people. The fictitious unit had its own banner, as well as about a hundred firearms (including captured ones) and ammunition. By the way, most of the fighters had no idea that they were serving in a fictitious military unit.

According to forged documents, Pavlenko received about 230 orders and medals, which he awarded to the “most distinguished” fighters. Pavlenko's chest was decorated with: the Order of the Red Banner of Battle, the Order of the Red Star, the Order of the Great Patriotic War, I and II degrees.

A year after the victory over Germany, the colonel decides to “retire” and disband the unit, and the first to be “demobilized” were people who knew nothing about the true purpose of UVSR-5. Medals and prizes were distributed to everyone. Privates and sergeants received from 7 to 12 thousand rubles, officers - from 15 to 25 thousand. Pavlenko embezzled 90 thousand (about 17 thousand dollars) for himself, as a leader. With this money, Nikolai Maksimovich bought himself two houses, one in his “native” Kalinin, the other in the Kharkov region, as well as four Pobeda cars.

Demobilization was necessary, since the war had already ended, and there was no point in hiding behind a military uniform in the RSFSR. However, Nikolai Maksimovich did not stay on demobilization for long. The money was running out, retirement was far away, and the craving for adventurism did not give rest. Pavlenko opened the civil construction artel “Plandorstroy” in Kalinin, a fake office created for “pumping” and “laundering” money. Nikolai and his relative and part-time right-hand man, Yuri Konstantinov (“Konstantiner”), withdrew about four hundred thousand rubles through Plandorstroy, after which they again “lay low” for a while.

In 1948, he had a beautiful mistress, Nadezhda Tyutyunnik, who had previously been convicted of embezzlement of state property. From then on, Pavlenko needed to live and provide for two families. And they lived very well. So, Tyutyunnik had her own “Victory” with a personal driver.

But money, as we know, tends to run out and Pavlenko decides to return to his former life as an adventurer. For his new scams, he chose a place where the military uniform is better than any documents, a place where they still shoot, where it is not difficult to get lost among hundreds of officers like him: Nikolai Maksimovich is moving to Western Ukraine. At that time, the OUN organization was operating in Western Ukraine, which was fighting for the liberation of Ukraine and the unity of the Ukrainian lands as part of a single and independent state. The organization fought both in word (distribution of leaflets, vision of educational conversations among the population) and in deed (destruction of enemy infrastructure). This front also needed builders to restore and create military facilities. Thus, Pavlenko’s unsinkable organization surfaced in Lvov. In Lvov, Nikolai Maksimovich “calls on” the entire previous main part of the unit. There, at the “gathering”, a decision was made to resume the existence of the fake part, but under a new name and with a slightly updated structure. Having changed the sign to the Department of Military Construction (UVS 1), the organization begins to search for personnel and create a legal field for its existence.

REFERENCE

The newly created military unit was practically no different from other active units. On its territory, the daily routine was strictly observed, combat and political training classes were held, an operational duty officer was appointed every day, a guard was on guard duty, and a sentry at post No. 1 guarded the unit’s banner. There was a stand with propaganda and a work plan, according to which the fighters not only fulfilled, but also exceeded the plan.

The seals were made by Ludwig Rudnichenko. Documents and forms were printed in the printing house. To obtain the necessary information from officials, Pavlenko had a reliable means in store - a feast. If this did not help, then we had to resort to bribery. Pavlenko attracted hired workers with a high salary, which was 3 times higher than at a government construction site.

REFERENCE

In total, criminals concluded 64 contracts for a total amount of 38 million 717 thousand 600 rubles (9.7 million dollars according to the official exchange rate of 1950-1960) during the period from 1948 to 1952 alone. Almost half of the contracts were passed through the USSR Ministry of Coal Industry.

UVS accounts were opened in the 21st branch of State Bank, and through them it was possible to receive more than 25 million rubles. Investigators have determined only approximately how much of this money ended up in the pockets of Pavlenko and his accomplices.

Having a lot of money, Pavlenko considered himself invulnerable. He had an unerring instinct for corrupt officials. The plump and imposing colonel gave a bribe even for solving a trivial issue. He belonged to local authorities. The Moldovan leadership highly valued Colonel Pavlenko. Every holiday he stood on the government podium not far from the leader of the Moldovan communists, Leonid Brezhnev.

But getting a job at UVS 1 was not so easy. Those wishing to get a job were recommended by MGB officers only after a thorough check for connections with the OUN and loyalty to the Soviet regime. Fortune smiled on Pavlenko again. Construction units, as during the war, were sorely lacking. Orders for construction and repair work are beginning to pour in at UVS as if from a cornucopia. UVS 1 receives orders from trusts, mine departments from Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. Among the most famous customers were: Zapadshakhtstroy Trust, Ukrainaneft, Zolochiv Mine Administration of the Ministry of Coal Industry, Chisinau Winery Gratiesti, Tiraspol Winery, SMU-2 of the Belkhladostroy Trust of the Ministry of Meat and Dairy Industry of the BSSR, Lvovugol, UNR-193 Ministry of Construction of Mechanical Engineering Enterprises. It should be noted that Nikolai Pavlenko’s military construction office completed all orders quickly and efficiently, so it was constantly in demand.

REFERENCE

Alexander Lyadov, one of the investigators involved in Pavlenko’s case, said: In the city of Zdolbunov (Rivne region, Ukraine), Pavlenko’s “military unit” was building access roads to a cement and brick factory that was being restored. I must say, he built it well. I invited outside specialists under contracts. I paid three to four times more in cash than at a state-owned enterprise. I came to check the work myself. If he finds shortcomings, he will not leave until they are corrected. After rolling out the completed track, he offered the workers a few barrels of beer and a snack for free, and personally presented the locomotive driver and his assistant with a bonus, right here, in public. At that time, many workers received 300 - 500 rubles a month. And Pavlenko could give a hundred for a newspaper. But I didn’t tell anyone about this, they wouldn’t believe it anyway.

The fictitious organization opened its offices in six Soviet republics: ESSR, LitSSR, LatSSR, BSSR, Ukrainian SSR, MSSR. As the scope of an organization's activities expands, the likelihood of its calculation also increases. Therefore, on Pavlenko’s initiative, “Major” Konstantiner becomes the head of the internal security service. It was thanks to him that the organization managed to avoid exposure several times. Twice police officers caused fatal accidents and twice Konstantiner “hushed up” the matter. Once, when a police officer was detained in Dnepropetrovsk for hooliganism, Konstantinov went to the prosecutor’s office and came out with the case materials. During feasts, often held in different departments, Konstantiner hinted at the involvement of his organization with the intelligence services, convincing security forces, clients and corrupt officials that he was carrying out an important government task. He never specified which department the organization belonged to. This once and for all discouraged curious people from poking their noses into things that weren’t their own business, much less making denunciations.

In the post-war period, Nikolai Pavlenko’s fictitious organization changed its name more than once (UVS-1, 2, 3, 4, 5, UVR) and even more often its location, usually somewhere in the impassable wilderness.

In the early 1950s, a split emerged in Pavlenko’s office. In 1952, Rudnichenko’s wife demanded money, threatening general exposure. Konstantiner manages to calm her down, but soon Ludwig himself began to demand money. In order to “sober up” the presumptuous chief of staff of the Ukrainian Internal Affairs Directorate, he was locked in the basement for 17 days. Ultimately, Pavlenko and Rudnichenko agreed on 25 thousand rubles, which the general director paid for silence...

The Trust That Broke

An incident helped reveal the false part. For the sake of appearance, in Pavlenko’s part, as throughout the USSR, government loan companies were held. To qualify as a genuine military unit, Pavlenko's accomplices bought bonds on the black market and distributed them to workers. By that time, UVS had grown so much that its branches were opening even in small towns. One of them was in Mogilev. In Mogilev, a certain engineer Ivan Efremenko worked at UVS 1, who, after working for a year, decided to quit. But when he was fired, he was shortchanged by withholding bonds worth 200 rubles. Outraged by this treatment, in May 1952, Efremenko wrote a complaint to the deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers, Klim Voroshilov (1881 - 1969), in which he accused Nikolai Pavlenko of disrupting a bond company of great national importance. Oddly enough, Efremenko’s complaint was given a go. Voroshilov's office appealed to the General Military Prosecutor's Office. The GVP sent a request to the Ministry of Defense. But what was the surprise of the controllers in blue uniforms when they learned that such a unit and engineer-Colonel Pavlenko were not listed in their database. The military prosecutor's office decided to check the fact of possible affiliation of Pavlenko's repair and construction office with the Soviet intelligence services. Requests were sent to the NKVD and MGB. But even there, no one knew anything about the unit or the colonel. As a result, at the request of the Main Military Prosecutor, on October 23, 1952, the military prosecutor's office of the Carpathian Military District opened a criminal case.

The exposure of UVS 1 was preceded by another “puncture”. This incident was described in his memoirs by the Soviet writer Eduard Khrutsky (1933 - 2010): “Once Konstantinov was flying from Odessa, and he had two huge suitcases. And before, boarding a plane wasn’t like it is now - you stomp along the airfield, there’s a ramp near the plane. When Konstantinov was climbing the ramp, one of his suitcases unzipped and the money flew out. We need to know what kind of money it was. Storublevkas at that time were very large. And all this scattered across the airfield. And, of course, the local opera noticed this.”

None of the Soviet citizens had ever carried so much cash on their own. Large sums were delivered with armed guards in cash-in-transit vehicles. But even after such an incredible incident at that time, Konstantinov was not just arrested, he was not even detained. There was always something wrong with this case...

The “detectives” from the prosecutor’s office first of all needed to identify the location of the metropolis of the UVS, because Efremenko did not indicate the exact location of the unit’s headquarters in the letter. It soon became known that the headquarters had moved from Lvov to Chisinau. A GVP employee set up surveillance of the headquarters and on the same day noticed Nikolai Maksimovich himself arriving at the unit. According to the testimony of Sergei Gromov, investigator of the prosecutor's office for especially important cases: “Pavlenko presented himself as a man preoccupied with something, in a well-tailored suit that was perfectly tailored to him, with all the awards. Further observation showed that other officers and even some privates wore government awards without hiding it.”

It was necessary to wear awards so that no one would dare to doubt the authenticity of the part. A unit in which front-line soldiers without awards served would look suspicious, to say the least. “Vazhnyaki” found out that Mr. Pavlenko (who has been on the all-Union wanted list since 1948) opened current accounts in the 21st branch of the State Bank, through which he received more than 25 million rubles through fictitious accounts. But this was just the tip of the iceberg.

It turned out that almost half of the orders came from the USSR Ministry of Coal Industry, and in different republics and, as the investigation showed, some orders were paid too generously. The accounts opened by Pavlenko received money received for completed orders from UVS 1 branches in different parts of the country. The GVP investigator, Sergei Gromov, will say during the investigation that: “during the surveillance of Pavlenko, it turned out that he (sometimes alternating with Konstantiner) drove his personal car every Friday at the same time to the Chisinau intercity telephone exchange. He made long-distance calls using the same numbers, although most often they called him.” These were probably weekly reports from the heads of UVS 1 branches, which made it possible to get an idea of ​​the real state of affairs and to respond immediately in case of any misunderstandings.

"UVS" was well armed and secretive and even had its own counterintelligence. From the very beginning until the liquidation of the UVS, its participants obtained large quantities, often with the help of MGB agencies, pistols, rifles, machine guns, light machine guns and grenades.

Having collected a sufficient amount of evidence, the leadership of the prosecutor's office and the MGB decided to liquidate the criminal syndicate. At dawn on November 14, 1952, security officers burst into the headquarters of UVS 1. The soldiers of the unit, according to the military regulations, tried unsuccessfully to resist.

REFERENCE

To organize the search for Nikolai Maksimovich Pavlenko and his headquarters, the operational staff of the state security agencies of the five union republics was involved. The arrest warrant for Pavlenko No. 97 was signed by the then little-known Deputy Minister of State Security of the Moldavian SSR, Lieutenant Colonel of State Security Semyon Tsvigun (1917 - 1982).

Representatives of the Soviet law enforcement agencies acted especially zealously, because there was unofficial competition between them, and the ongoing struggle between the special services added fuel to the fire.

The operation to capture the headquarters was carried out simultaneously with the capture of branches and construction sites. At the location of the unit, the MGB officers found and seized: 18 pistols, 25 rifles and carbines, 8 machine guns, 3 light machine guns and over 3 thousand live ammunition, 5 grenades. Also confiscated were: 6 cars and 62 trucks, 4 tractors, 3 excavators and one bulldozer. Official seals, stamps, certificates, forms, and certificates were found in huge quantities. Security officers detained 400 people, 140 of whom were on the territory of the Moldavian SSR. Konstantiner was also arrested, and from the very first days he agreed to cooperate with the investigation. He told the investigators the alleged location of Pavlenko. On November 23, Pavlenko was detained at a safe house in Chisinau along with his mistress. During the search, they found general's shoulder straps on him. Pavlenko never had time to assign himself the new title.

The leaders of the Lvovugol and Zapadshakhtstroy trusts, the Ukrainaneft association, and leaders from Nikolaev and other cities with which the UVS had contracts for construction work were hastily arrested and brought to the Kiev detention center.

The network created by Nikolai Pavlenko ceased to exist.

Criminal case of national importance

Understanding the scale of the case, a whole galaxy of talented GVP detectives, led by V. Markalyanets and L. Lavrentiev, and several investigators not related to the GVP were involved in the investigation. Despite the high professionalism of investigators and prosecutors, Pavlenko and his accomplices were able to appear in court only after two and a half years. The organization’s activities were too varied, and the amount of government damage at that time was unprecedented. In addition, the Secretary General himself took this matter under personal control, demanding that a high-profile political trial be organized.

REFERENCE

The trial began on November 10, 1954. The judges of the tribunal read the indictment in turn for several days. It took just as long for the verdict to be announced in April of the following year.

The persons who appeared before the capital's tribunal formed the backbone of the criminal organization. In total, the number of its participants reached more than 300 people.

The materials of the criminal case of Nikolai Pavlenko’s criminal organization consist of 164 weighty volumes, compiled over two years of investigation and six months of trial. They are still kept in the Moscow District Military Court under the heading “top secret”.

The criminals hoped for pardon after Stalin's death, but this did not happen. No one was included in the amnesty. It seems that the Soviet system considered itself offended and, in order to wash itself off, decided to take the matter seriously.

The trial lasted intermittently for about 5 months. Two of Pavlenko's lawyers suffered heart attacks. There were 17 people in the dock of the Moscow District Military Court. At first they were accused of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, which amounted to high treason. This automatically increased the term or meant capital punishment. But they were lucky, since the court qualified their actions as purely criminal, which significantly reduced their prison term. On April 4, 1955, the court verdict was announced: Konstantinov received 14 years, Rudnichenko was given 20.

UVS officers were sentenced to a term of 5 to 20 years, with the deprivation of all awards and confiscation of property.
Pavlenko’s wife, Zinaida, at the age of 29, was left with nothing, with two small children in her arms. She died in 1979, outliving her husband by 24 years.

The head of the criminal syndicate, Nikolai Pavlenko, was charged with three articles of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR: 58.7 - undermining state industry, 58.10 - anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, and 58.11 - counter-revolutionary activity. The court found him guilty only under Article 58.7 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR - undermining state industry. The investigation proved that Pavlenko illegally misappropriated 36 million government rubles. The defendant did not admit his guilt, believing that: “We did not carry out anti-Soviet activities, we simply built as best we could, and we knew how to build well.”

Nikolai Maksimovich was sentenced to capital punishment with confiscation of property and deprivation of all awards and titles.

REFERENCE

It was also established that on the territory of the Moldavian SSR, the Pavlenko group involved in its activities the Minister of Food Industry K. Turcan and his deputies Azaryev and Kudyukin, the first secretary of the Tiraspol City Committee of the Communist Party (b)M - V. Lykhvar, the secretary of the Balti City Committee of the Communist Party (b) )M - L. Rachinsky and others.

The “Pavlenko case” was considered at two meetings of the Bureau of the CPM Central Committee: December 16, 1952 and February 10, 1953. It was decided to create an investigation commission headed by the Secretary of the CPM Central Committee, A. Lazarev. Deputy ministers Azaryev and Kudyukin were fired, and Azaryev was at the same time expelled from the party. Their boss K. Tsurkan, city committee secretaries L. Rachinsky and V. Lykhvar got off with reprimands.

Thus ended the most notorious Soviet case associated with the theft of socialist property in the first half of the 20th century.

Meanwhile, the adventures of Colonel Pavlenko gave rise to many questions, the main one of which was who benefited from it? Eduard Khrutsky, who had access to the case materials, stated: “There were some official testimonies from Pavlenko and others unofficial. Tsvigun, who was friends with the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moldova, did his job: there were some testimonies for the prosecutor’s office, and others for Tsvigun personally.”.

The motivation of Semyon Tsvigun is quite understandable - to get his friend Leonid Brezhnev (1906 - 1982) out of the attack, who held the post of First Secretary of the MSSR Central Committee from June 26, 1950 to November 25, 1952, and at the same time soften the Kremlin’s blow to the “Moldavian clan”, to which also owned Konstantin Chernenko (1911 - 1985). And although none of the MSSR leadership was shot or even imprisoned, this could have ruined the careers of the future second and fourth General Secretaries of the Soviet Union.

DOSSIER

In the fall of 1952, Leonid Brezhnev will go as a delegate to the 19th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (October 5 - 14, 1952), where he will personally meet with Stalin. After the congress, Brezhnev will be elected a member of the Central Committee, secretary of the Central Committee, and also a candidate member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee. Leonid Ilyich will no longer return to a leadership position in Moldova.

MGB Colonel Semyon Tsvigun perfectly performed the role of a “lightning rod” in this story. As evidenced by the features of his autobiography, there was no rapid growth (as well as failures) of his career until the second half of the 1960s:

. From October 23, 1951 to March 23, 1953 - Tsvigun - Deputy Minister of State Security of the Moldavian SSR;

. From March 23, 1953 - May 3, 1954 - Tsvigun - Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the Moldavian SSR;

. Semyon Kuzmich holds the post of Deputy Chairman of the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the Moldavian SSR (from May 3, 1954 to August 23, 1955);

. 1st Deputy Chairman of the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the Tajik SSR (from August 23, 1955 to April 2, 1957);

. Chairman of the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the Azerbaijan SSR (from September 20, 1963 to May 23, 1967);

. 1st Deputy Chairman of the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the USSR (from November 24, 1967 to January 19, 1982), since 1971 - candidate member, since March 1981 - member of the CPSU Central Committee.

And only the accession of Brezhnev, who was indebted to Tsvigun, allowed Semyon Kuzmich to take a high position in the system of Soviet intelligence services.

Pavlenko, while in pretrial detention, was completely isolated from the outside world. No one communicated with him, and the letters he wrote mysteriously disappeared. There is an opinion that Pavlenko simply became unprofitable to the system, which is why his curators “leaked” him. This is confirmed by the fact that the fatal message from Mogilev engineer Ivan Efremenko was not intercepted.

Investigators claim that Pavlenko revealed only a small part of the schemes and people who covered him. It has been suggested that the “strings” are stretching to Moscow. But for some reason the Soviet bloodhounds were constantly being urged on and did not include their assumptions and obvious connections between Pavlenko and the capital’s bosses into the case. The investigators had the impression that their work was being closely monitored, forcing them to “dig” in the right direction.

Based on the activities of Pavlenko’s organization, the fictional series “Black Wolves” was filmed in 2011. In the film, the colonel - the head of a fictitious military construction unit - bears the name Klimenko. The artistic image complements the director's imagination and the well-known features of its real prototype.

In a word, the story of Colonel Pavlenko, almost 70 years later, looks somehow unsaid, and what we know about him is just the tip of the iceberg. Obviously, it is no coincidence that the materials of the case of the military false trust of Nikolai Pavlenko are still kept closed.

Afterword

The history of the life and work of Nikolai Maksimovich Pavlenko is in many ways indicative. And the point here is not so much in the distribution of public funds, which Pavlenko’s office simply directed “for itself,” but in the realities of Soviet reality in the 1940s - 1950s. Human vices, the desire for profit and accumulation of wealth were so firmly rooted in the consciousness of the Soviet citizen that no party postulates, repressions or general leveling could eradicate them. The primacy of the state, which dominated society throughout the entire period of the existence of the USSR, made people a “gray mass”, submissive to the will of the all-powerful party nomenklatura. Being under the constant control of the special services, the inhabitant of the world's first socialist state was a small cog in a huge authoritarian-totalitarian machine, which had nothing to do with him. Restriction of personal freedom, suppression of individualism, and creative initiative became the criteria for cloning a new anthropological community - homo soveticus, which received the nickname “scoop” among the common people.

Nikolai Pavlenko was one of those who managed to break these stereotypes. His activity (albeit adventurous and not entirely independent) is a mockery, or rather a challenge to the system, loyalty and selfless devotion to which only for a few “turned a fairy tale into reality.”

Over the course of 11 years, the fake military unit managed (both in wartime and in peacetime) to outmaneuver the Soviet intelligence services, deceive party functionaries, bribe many officials, earn millions and at the same time remain unpunished. In essence, the epic of Nikolai Pavlenko’s organization is the history of a state within a state, with its own rules and principles, more efficient logistics, high wages and fair working conditions. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the main defendant said during his closing statement: “I assure the court that Pavlenko can still be useful, and he will make his contribution to organizing the work...”

The activities of the repair and construction organization Nikolai Maksimovich Pavlenko became a harbinger of the civil society emerging in the USSR, in which a person in his actions is more and more independent of the state, and an urgent appeal to him is resolved immediately.

It is possible that Pavlenko was part of a shadow money laundering system, which in our time looks very primitive, but still original. Obviously, someone at the top realized that it is possible to make money from the state, but this must be done, if not legally, then at least in a semi-legal way. The story of Nikolai Pavlenko is evidence of the existence in the USSR of an alternative way of making money, systemic corruption, bureaucratic “protection protection” and private business. It seems that the socialist property system has cracked for the first time.

Be that as it may, the historical significance of the activities of Nikolai Maksimovich Pavlenko lies in the fact that he was one of the first who really brought to life the main slogan of socialism: “from each according to his ability, to each according to his work”!

Knowledge to the masses!

The case of a fake military unit, criminal number 1 in the USSR Nikolai Pavlenko. The largest scam of Soviet times, which lasted 11 years and caused 38 million rubles in damage.

Nikolai Pavlenko is one of the most amazing adventurers of the Stalin era. During the war he created his own military unit.

Kolya Pavlenko, the son of a miller from the village of Novye Sokoly, was perhaps the most savvy among his seven sisters and brothers. Without waiting for his father to be dispossessed, in 1928 the sixteen-year-old teenager left home for the city. He added four years to his age to get a job. Subsequently, Pavlenko more than once used this method in forged documents: he changed the year and place of birth. He entered the Institute of Civil Engineering, but after studying for two years, he dropped out.

NKVD employees, a certain Curzon and Sakhno, involved him “in the development of materials against the Trotskyists Volkov and Afanasyev” and, as “conscious” and “devoted,” recommended him to a serious organization - Glavvoenstroy. With two courses at the institute, young Pavlenko successfully coped with the work of a foreman, senior foreman, and construction site manager. Even then, Nikolai Maksimovich had mastered the method of postscripts well, learned to “work” with documents and, most importantly, realized that under the roof of the military department one could warm one’s hands well

June 1941 Nikolai Pavlenko was greeted in the uniform of a military technician of the 1st rank with a "sleeper" in his buttonhole. The rifle corps in which he served was retreating to the east with heavy fighting. In October, Pavlenko forged a travel document (he was allegedly sent to search for an airfield unit ), took with him his faithful driver Sergeant Shcheglov, and they both disappeared.

Having safely passed the posts of the detachments, Pavlenko and his accomplice reached Kalinin (now Tver). Here he had relatives who knew him from his previous work in a construction team. It would seem that it would be better for a deserter to lie low, “lay low,” acquire forged documents that would exempt him from conscription, and hide in a quiet office. But Pavlenko planned the incredible, especially considering the climate of general suspicion during the war—to create his own military unit.

Thirty-year-old Pavlenko began by preparing a documentary base for the “military” unit. In March 1942, in the table company of the first “fighters”, who were Pavlenko’s closest relatives and his friends who had evaded conscription into the army, the professional swindler L. Rudnichenko showed up. In front of the astonished spectators, in just an hour, using a simple tool, he cut out an official seal and stamps from a rubber sole with the inscription “Military construction site of the Kalinin Front” (“UVSR-5”).

Forms, product certificates, travel certificates and other documents were printed in the printing house for a bribe of products. Uniforms were purchased at bazaars. Contacts were established with some employees of the Volodarsky garment factory and the Kalinin regional industrial cooperation. Pavlenko made “officers” out of trusted people, and to begin with, he awarded himself the title of military engineer of the 3rd rank. Using fabricated official letters - on stamped forms - the commander of "UVSR-5" ensured that from the city's military commandant's office, ordinary soldiers who had lagged behind their unit or were discharged from the hospital after being wounded were sent to him for further service.

The new military unit, under contract agreements with various organizations that did not suspect anything about the true origin of UVSR-5, began to carry out road construction work. Pavlenko personally divided all cash receipts under such agreements among his officers and spent only a small part on food for the unsuspecting “ordinary personnel.”

However, the case required more reliable cover. A young, energetic, intelligent-looking military engineer of the 3rd rank inspired confidence in those around him. Having promised the head of one of the evacuation centers, doctor 1st rank Biden-ko, to repair the buildings for free, Pavlenko obtained his consent to take UVSR-5 under his protection and even enroll the soldiers in all types of allowances at the evacuation point.

After the liquidation of the Kalinin Front, part of Pavlenko moved under the wing of the 12th RAB (aircraft base area), where his people were also enrolled in all types of allowances. He carried out this operation for a large bribe in the fall of 1942, bribing a certain Lieutenant Colonel Tsyplakov.

Pavlenko’s unit, which changed the sign to “UVR-5,” moved after the advancing Soviet troops, maintaining a safe distance from the front line. On the way to the USSR border, Pavlenko’s people earned about a million rubles under contracts. To increase the volume of work performed, replenishment was required. Then Pavlenko began to recruit soldiers who had lagged behind their units. “You’re a deserter! You need to be judged! You’ll be shot!” Pavlenko shouted at the soldier who had committed a crime. But then, replacing his anger with mercy, he added: “Okay, so be it, I forgive you. Stay in my unit...” Chief of Staff “UVR” M Zavada said: “People were recruited, as a rule, from those who had lagged behind military units... Drivers were taken along with the car... When they approached the Soviet state border, there were more than two hundred people in “UVR”. Half of them - deserters and persons hiding from conscription into the active army."

Pavlenko’s unit followed the Soviet troops throughout Poland and ended its “combat” journey near Berlin. Here the “builders” began outright robbery of the local population. Honest soldiers who did not suspect anything about the criminal nature of the UVR could complain to their superiors, so Pavlenko shot the two most zealous ones, demonstrating determination in the fight against the “looters.” By the end of the war, part of Pavlenko turned into an armed gang, dressed in the uniform of Soviet military personnel.

After the victory, the UVR commander, who had gained strength and became insolent, with the help of deception and large bribes, established connections with the military representatives of the Department of Clothing and Cargo Supply of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR, as well as with representatives of the temporary military commandant's office of Stuttgart and received at his disposal a railway train of thirty cars In addition to dozens tons of flour, sugar, cereals and hundreds of heads of livestock; ten trucks, five tractors, several cars and other equipment were transported on it. The gang returned to their homeland with rich booty, orders and medals. Based on fictitious documents about the imaginary exploits of UVR fighters, Pavlenko received over 230 awards, which he distributed to his most distinguished comrades. He awarded himself two Orders of the Patriotic War, I and II degrees, the Order of the Red Banner of Battle, the Order of the Red Star, and medals.

Upon returning to Kalinin, Pavlenko immediately demobilized everyone who knew nothing about the criminal nature of the unit. After selling the loot, he paid each of his “soldiers” from 7 to 12 thousand rubles, the “officers” - from 15 to 25 thousand, and kept 90 thousand rubles for himself.

Leaving some of the removed equipment in Kalinin, Pavlenko created and headed the civil construction artel "Plandorstroy". But under his leadership there were no longer any accomplices - they had dispersed to different cities, and without them it was difficult to carry out the business on a grand scale. At the beginning of 1948, he contacted his closest assistant Yu. Konstantiner, after which, having stolen 300 thousand artel funds, he disappeared. Soon other “officers” came to Lvov at his call, and the craftsman Rudnichenko also arrived, who quickly made seals and stamps. This is how UVS-1 (Military Construction Directorate) appeared with many construction branches in the western regions of the country.

From 1948 to 1952, UVS-1, using forged documents, concluded sixty-four contracts in the amount of 38,717,600 rubles. Almost half of the contracts were carried out through the USSR Ministry of Coal Industry. On behalf of his “military unit,” Pavlenko opened current accounts in twenty-one branches of the State Bank, through which he received more than 25 million rubles from fictitious accounts.

Having a lot of money, Pavlenko considered himself invulnerable. He had an unerring instinct for corrupt officials. The plump and impressive colonel (he assigned this title to himself in 1951) gave a bribe even for solving a trivial issue. He belonged to local authorities. He was respected and taken into account. Pavlenko selected his security through local MGB agencies, which carefully checked candidates for lack of connection with Bandera.

On November 5, 1952, the investigative unit for particularly important cases of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office received a criminal case initiated by the military prosecutor's office of the Carpathian Military District about the fictitious organization "UVS-1", headed by engineer-colonel Pavlenko Nikolai Maksimovich. And this was during the reign of Stalin, when an atmosphere of general suspicion reigned! Only chance helped expose Pavlenko.

After the war, campaigns were held to subscribe to government loans. To create the appearance of a real military unit, Pavlenko and his “officers” bought bonds on the “black market” and distributed them among unsuspecting civilians. So, one of them, having received bonds for a smaller amount than he paid, wrote a complaint to the military prosecutor's office, accusing Pavlenko of disrupting a campaign of national importance.

A GVP employee sent a request to the Ministry of Defense to find out where Colonel Pavlenko’s military construction unit is located. Soon the answer came: the requested part was not listed on the ministry’s lists. A request to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and state security agencies received a similar response.

The check was continued, and in a short time it was possible to find out that UVS-1 existed completely legally. Moreover, it had an extensive branched structure: construction sites and sites subordinate to UVS-1

were located in Moldova, Belarus, and the Baltic republics. The headquarters of the unit, located in Chisinau, was no different from the present: there was a unit banner with shift sentries near it, and an operational duty officer, heads of various services, and armed guards in the form of privates and sergeants of the Soviet Army, who did not allow any outsiders into the territory under the pretext of the secrecy of the object.

The unit commander, “Colonel” Pavlenko, also turned out to be a real person. A strong, fit, intelligent-looking man with glasses, he not only did not hide from strangers, but also showed off on holidays in the stands and on the podium next to the “fathers” of the city.

The operation to liquidate the mysterious organization was carefully prepared. It was decided to take the UVS-1 headquarters and all its units scattered throughout the western regions of the country on the same day, November 14, 1952. Taken by surprise, Pavlenko’s “fighters” did not offer armed resistance. As a result of the operation, more than 300 people were detained, including about 50 so-called officers, sergeants and privates. The “Colonel” himself and his right-hand man, “Chief of Counterintelligence Major” Yu. Konstantiner, were arrested.

During the liquidation of the fictitious military construction unit, 3 light machine guns, 8 machine guns, 25 rifles and carbines, 18 pistols, 5 grenades, over 3 thousand live cartridges, 62 trucks and 6 cars, 4 tractors, 3 excavators and a bulldozer were discovered and seized , round seals and stamps, tens of thousands of different forms, many false identification cards and registration certificates...

To investigate the case, a team was created of responsible employees of the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office, led by V. Markalyants, L. Lavrentyev and experienced military investigators from the periphery. But even highly qualified professionals took two and a half years (including the trial) to completely restore the criminal portrait of Pavlenko and the active accomplices of the enterprise he conceived.

Alexander Tikhonovich Lyadov, one of the investigators involved in the Pavlenko case, said: “It was a top-secret case. In 1952, I worked as a senior investigator at the prosecutor’s office of the Central District of Railways. After interrogating those arrested and witnesses, we handed over the protocols to the senior group, and the briefcases with the case were sealed. During the investigation, I had to go to the Rivne region. In the city of Zdolbunov, Pavlenko’s “military unit” was building access roads to the restored cement and brick factories. I must say, he did an excellent job. He invited specialists from outside, under contracts. He paid three to four times more in cash than at a state-owned enterprise. He came to check the work himself. If he finds shortcomings, he will not leave until they are corrected. After rolling out the completed track, he offered the workers a few barrels of beer and a snack for free, and personally presented a bonus to the locomotive driver and his assistant, here in public. At that time, many workers received 300-500 rubles a month, while Pavlenko could pay a hundred for a newspaper. But I didn’t tell anyone about this, they wouldn’t believe it anyway.

Or this episode. During the interrogation of one head of the main department, I asked a question: did you know that Pavlenko gives expensive gifts to officials and their wives? Didn't that make you suspicious? He answers angrily: “Well, how could it have occurred to me that Pavlenko is a swindler, if during the festive parade he stands on the podium next to the regional leadership, who praises him for his work and sets him up as an example to business executives...”

“We’re sitting in a restaurant,” continues the head of the main department, “I’m mentally calculating how much I’ll have to pay. And Pavlenko, as if reading my thoughts, declares: “I’m paying!” How much do you get? Two thousand, no more?” I spontaneously blurted out: “How much are you?” He laughed and so casually: “Ten thousand... We do this civilian work, by the way, but our main work is secret” - here I bit my tongue , did not dare to ask further.

Indeed, it was difficult to suspect Pavlenko of a criminal. A successful, respectable man, drives a Pobeda...

On the day of Pavlenko’s arrest, during a search in his apartment, among other things, general’s shoulder straps were found.

At the trial, the failed general said: “I never set out to create an anti-Soviet organization.” And he further stated. “I assure the court that Pavlenko can still be useful and he will make his contribution to organizing the work...” However, the verdict of the tribunal of the Moscow Military District on April 4, 1955 was harsh: “Colonel” Pavlenko was sentenced to capital punishment, and sixteen of his "officers" - to imprisonment for a term of 5 to 25 years.