«Мы вас за это крепко накажем»: как Всероссийская оптовая ярмарка 1949 года в Ленинграде помогла спровоцировать последнюю политическую чистку сталинского периода
We Will Punish You Severely for This”. How the 1949All-Russian Wholesale Trade Fair in Leningrad Helped Provoke the Last Political Purge of the Stalin Period

Summary/Abstract: Based on documents from four archives (Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, State Archive of the Russian Federation, Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, Central State Archive of Historical and Political Documentation of the City of St. Petersburg), the article demonstrates the role that the 1949 All-Russian Wholesale Trade Fair in Leningrad played in the formation of the “Leningrad Affair” — one of the largest political purges of “late” Stalinism. The authors demonstrate that in the historiography there are different points of view on the role of this wholesale trade fair in triggering the “Leningrad Affair”. Thus, some historians consider the accusations of the top Soviet leadership against the Leningraders to be far-fetched, while others put forward conspiracy theories, suggesting that the fair was a cover for secretly discussing the creation of a Russian Communist Party. At the same time, until now, no specialist has investigated the circumstances of the fair’s origin, its conduct, or its consequences. This article examines the inception, planning, and course of the fair, as well as the scandal that it provoked. On the basis of a study of archival documents, this article shows that the exhibition was planned as an all-union event as a result of specific actions taken in the government of the RSFSR at the ministerial level and approved by the Council of Ministers of the USSR. G.M.Malenkov played a major role in fanning the flames of the scandal surrounding the All-Russian Wholesale Trade Fair in Leningrad by contending that the organization of the fair had not been approved by the central government. Malenkov used this scandal as a way of compromising M.I.Rodionov, P.S.Popkov, and A.A.Kuznetsov, although none of them took direct part in its planning or conduct. This allowed G.M.Malenkov to convince I.V.Stalin that the so-called Leningrad group committed systematic violations, which when taken together, pointed to the existence of a broad conspiracy to undermine the authority of the all-union party leadership.

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