Справа подільського райхарчоторгу в м. Києві (1953 р.)

Abstract

At the beginning of 1953, at the height of Stalin's totalitarian regime, economic crime in the Soviet state continued to remain at a fairly high level. This is evidenced by the case of the Podilskyi district grocery store in Kyiv, which was quite typical for that time. A criminal gang of 13 people, which included several directors of this district grocery store, store managers and sellers in this structure, during 1945-1952, taking advantage of their official position, access to products that were scarce throughout Soviet times, using fraudulent methods (increasing the humidity of baked buns, increasing the humidity of smoked fish, a system of issuing double invoices, drawing up fictitious acts) committed thefts on a particularly large scale, the total amount of which amounted to 5.66 million rubles. Their activities were qualified as the activities of “enemies of the people” in the style of 1937. The large scale of the embezzlement gave this case a resonant significance, so the head of the republic – the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine – L.G. Melnikov was reported on the progress of the trial. The significance of the trial is also emphasized by the fact that the state prosecution in court was supported by prosecutor I.D. Arderikhin – deputy prosecutor of the Ukrainian SSR, and the final report on the trial was signed by the Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR P. Kh. Noshchenko. Daily reports in the name of L.G. Melnikov were prepared in the administrative department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, which was responsible for all law enforcement agencies, and its head I. Golynny allowed himself to make critical remarks about the deputy prosecutor of the Ukrainian SSR, which once again indicates that the “leading and directing force” in the republic at that time was the Communist Party. The audience in the courtroom was also selected by representatives of the Communist Party from the Kyiv City Communist Party, that is, it was also under the control of the ruling party. The defendants, judging by the materials of the trial, were people of low moral qualities, most of them were members of the Communist Party, their actions were guided by greed and the desire to achieve a high standard of living by any, even illegal, means. They took advantage of the shortcomings of socialism, the inability of the Soviet state to provide its citizens with the necessary amount of food, the venality of the Communist Party and Soviet leaders of the Podolsk district, and insufficient control over the activities of the district food market by higher authorities. And all this happened during the reign of Stalin, and there was no notorious “order”.