The first step of the Soviet government to restrict exit from the country was the Instruction to the commissars of border points of the Russian Republic “On the rules of entry and exit from Russia” dated December 21, 1917. According to the new rules, in order to leave the country, foreign and Russian citizens were required to have a foreign passport. Russian citizens were required to obtain permission to travel from the foreign department of the Committee of Internal Affairs in Petrograd, or in Moscow, from the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. Thus, strict supervision was established over all citizens crossing the state border.

New rules for the entry of citizens into the country from abroad were approved by the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs on January 12, 1918, and the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR "On ownerless property" dated November 3, 1920 practically excluded the possibility of the return of emigrated citizens ever in the future. Thus, the Soviet government actually deprived millions of emigrants and refugees of their property, and therefore of any basis for existence in their native land and prospects for return. If before 1920 foreign passports could be obtained from the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, then with the introduction of changes this document also had to receive a visa from the Special Department of the Cheka.

For the first time, the proposal to impose the death penalty for attempting to return from abroad without the sanction of the authorities was voiced by Lenin in May 1922 at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee during a discussion of the draft Criminal Code of the RSFSR. However, no decision was made.

According to new rules introduced on June 1, 1922, to travel abroad it was necessary to obtain special permission from the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (NKID). It is quite obvious that this further complicated the exit process, making it almost impossible. It was practically impossible for journalists, writers, or other artists to travel abroad; to travel, these people had to wait for a special decision from the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b).

The procedure for traveling abroad became more stringent every year, and the “Regulations on entry and exit from the USSR”, issued on June 5, 1925, became a new stage in tightening travel rules. The situation made the exit procedure extremely strict. All foreign countries were declared a “hostile capitalist encirclement.”

The logical continuation in the chain of tightening the procedure for traveling abroad and the construction of the “Iron Curtain” was Stalin’s law of June 9, 1935. Escaping across the border was punishable by death. At the same time, the relatives of the defectors were, naturally, also declared criminals.

The introduction of such a severe penalty for fleeing the country was dictated not only by the logic of total repression, but was also a kind of reinsurance. The authorities feared the start of mass emigration if famine recurred in the country.

The law providing for execution for illegal emigration was repealed only after the death of Joseph Stalin. Escape from the territory of the USSR was now punishable by imprisonment. Strict restrictions regarding the possibility of leaving the USSR lasted almost until its collapse. The first serious step towards liberalizing migration legislation was the Law “On Entry and Exit”, adopted in 1990.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin did not make a single official visit abroad: when the Bolshevik government began to be recognized, he remained at the head of the party and government only nominally. His successors traveled abroad, and each visit had its own characteristics.
Visits with state security
Stalin had no passion for travel. Every year, closer to autumn, the leader went to the Caucasus to rest. In the morning he boarded a specially prepared train of several cars, traffic on the line stopped, and by the evening Joseph Vissarionovich arrived at his destination. However, twice the “father of nations” still had to leave his children. Although these two visits can be called foreign rather arbitrarily. In the summer of 1943, the victorious operations of the Soviet Army aroused fears among the allies: if things continued like this, the question of opening a second front would soon disappear by itself. US President Roosevelt wanted, at all costs, to meet with Stalin. Joseph Vissarionovich, in principle, agreed. However, the location of the conference became a serious problem. The Soviet leader invited Churchill and Roosevelt to come to Arkhangelsk or Astrakhan, but the leaders of the United States and Great Britain did not want to hold a meeting on the territory of the USSR - this would be a recognition of the leading role of the Soviet Union. An exchange of telegrams followed. Churchill to Stalin: “I propose to hold a conference in Scotland.” Stalin refused. Roosevelt to Stalin: “It would be advisable to convene the conference in Cairo or Basra. If they agree, the coalition can send a ship for the Soviet delegation.” Stalin replied that he would send Molotov to the negotiations.
But this, in turn, did not suit Roosevelt. Then Fairbanks, an air base in Alaska, appeared on the map of the future conference. But the biased KGB study of the air bridge to Alaska turned out to be disappointing - the flight to Fairbanks is five to six days with all landings. Having considered the situation, Stalin responded to Roosevelt with a decisive telegram: “No matter how future generations evaluate our actions, I, as Supreme Commander-in-Chief, do not consider it advisable to go further than Tehran to the conference of the anti-Hitler coalition.”
Stalin was a homebody. Only twice did he leave the USSR
Stalin had to get to Tehran by train to Baku, and then by plane. The road to Baku went through Stalingrad, where a terrible battle had raged just a few months ago. In fact, the train with the delegation had to move parallel to the front line, so the operation was prepared with special care. Neither the drivers, nor the guards, nor the employees knew who was going and where. From the secret circular of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Lavrentiy Beria: “At stations and settlements along the entire route of the train, persons suspected of terrorism and sabotage are to be arrested, and all suspects at the stations are to be detained two days before the train passes. Conduct daily raids and document checks in villages adjacent to the railway.”
It was not for nothing that Stalin preferred trains to all types of transport: dozens of degrees of protection could be built on the railway. In front of the special train, the first locomotive followed, to which a heavily loaded carriage was attached. This was done in case the path was mined. The covering train was behind.
On the evening of November 27, the government delegation reached Baku. Next, the Soviet leader had to make a short flight. According to people close to Stalin, for many years he recalled with disgust how the plane fell into air pockets. On November 28, 1943, the world's most important news agencies broadcast an urgent message: “The conference of the leaders of the Big Three has opened in Tehran.” The world breathed a sigh of relief. A real opportunity has emerged to unite the efforts of the three most powerful states against fascism by opening a second front.

Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in Tehran, 1943
The next meeting of the heads of the great powers took place in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, in Potsdam. Both trips by the Soviet leader were accompanied by unprecedented precautions, but the July 1945 special flight was different than ever before.
The entire railway route from the USSR border to Potsdam (828 km) was “altered” from European to Soviet width, and instead of one train, three were formed at once. The main train in which the “father of nations” was traveling was guarded by 90 officers. Ahead was a control train with 40 security department operatives, and behind was a train with another 70 NKVD troops. 17,140 NKVD soldiers were allocated to guard the routes, so that there were 4 - 6 soldiers per kilometer of road from Moscow to Brest, and on the territory of Poland and Germany - one for every 150 m. In addition, for every 3 - 5 km of the path there were an operative who was responsible for intelligence and operational activities in a five-kilometer road zone. And armored trains ran in the most “unreliable” areas.
Stalin's voyage to the Potsdam Conference was guarded by 17 thousand soldiers
The last stage of preparation, the dress rehearsal, as drivers Viktor Lyon and Nikolai Kudryavkin recalled, was a test trip of the special train to Potsdam. There, everything was already ready for the conference: the meeting area of ​​the “Big Three” was guarded by more than 2 thousand soldiers and officers of the NKVD troops, and in the crown prince’s palace itself, in addition to 1 thousand soldiers, there were 150 operatives from the NKVD and NKGB.

Potsdam Conference: Winston Churchill, Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin, 1945
Stalin was pleased with the results of the conference and therefore forgave the special services for minor organizational flaws. And on September 15, 1945, Lavrentiy Beria presented the most distinguished participants in Operation Palma with awards “for the successful completion of a special government assignment.” A total of 2,851 people were awarded.
Visit with a “gift”
In one of his speeches in a narrow circle, one of the Soviet leaders closest to Khrushchev, Anastas Mikoyan, called himself and the first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee “worldwide vagabonds”: they say, they have to travel so much around the country and abroad. And it was absolutely true. Nikita Sergeevich managed to make more visits than any other first person in the USSR.
In total, Khrushchev visited abroad about 50 times
In 1960, Khrushchev took an extremely original step - he personally headed the Soviet delegation to the UN General Assembly. And in order to demonstrate his independence and importance, he ordered to go to the United States by sea on the Soviet turbo-electric ship Baltika, surrounded by the heads of the fraternal socialist countries. On September 9, the Baltika departed from the Kaliningrad pier and, accompanied by ships of the Baltic Navy, headed west. After the English Channel, before entering the Atlantic Ocean, the military escort ships turned back. By September 14, the Baltika was halfway to New York.
These days, many countries were reviewing the composition of their delegations. Wladyslaw Gomulka from Poland, Josip Broz Tito from Yugoslavia, King Hussein bin Talal of Jordan, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Fidel Castro from Cuba and many others were going to attend the UN session. There has never been such a gathering of political leaders in the history of the UN. American authorities announced that for security reasons they would limit Khrushchev's movements to Manhattan Island, where the UN buildings are located. Similar restrictions were introduced for Fidel Castro.
At 9 a.m. on September 19, the Baltika entered the port of New York, and Nikita Sergeevich, along with other statesmen, entered American soil. The Soviet delegation was given a mansion on Park Avenue, around which there were reinforced police squads and hundreds of correspondents constantly on duty. On September 20, Khrushchev went to the African-American district of the city - Harlem, where the Cuban delegation was located in a small hotel. This was the first meeting between the Soviet leader and Fidel Castro.


Nikita Khrushchev during the meeting of the 15th UN General Assembly, 1960
On September 23, Khrushchev read a report at the plenary session of the Assembly, which was then published under the title: “Freedom and independence to all colonial peoples. Solve the problem of general disarmament." The report caused a lot of response in the world press. Numerous receptions and meetings took place during the session. The Soviet leader met with Sukarno, Jawaharlal Nehru, Josip Broz Tito and many others.
Most heads of state left New York after a few days, but Khrushchev remained here for more than three weeks. On September 30, he delivered a speech to the Assembly on restoring China's legitimate rights in the UN. When the Spanish delegate took the floor to answer Khrushchev, the latter left the hall. Several times Nikita Sergeevich spoke at the UN on various issues, using the right of reply. Sometimes he lost patience, and instead of answering, he interrupted the next speaker with a lengthy remark from the spot or rudeness. “Whose cow would moo, but yours would be silent!” - he shouted during the speech of the American representative while discussing the problems of decolonization. The Soviet leader cursed the Philippine delegate even more rudely when he stated that the USSR should liberate its colonies and dependent countries. Khrushchev interrupted the speech of the Philippine minister, calling him “a slob, a nonentity, a fool, a lackey of American imperialism,” who has no right to raise issues that are not related to the matter.
A case has gone down in the history of the UN when Khrushchev, dissatisfied with the performance of a diplomat from one of the Western countries, took off his shoe and began to loudly knock on the table with it, interrupting a UN meeting. For this eccentric act of the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, the Soviet delegation was fined $10 thousand.

Khrushchev's boot, 1960
By the way, when the turbo-electric ship Baltika was still far from New York, some US politicians called on the press to ignore Khrushchev and not write about his stay on American soil. But the media were not going to follow these calls. Hundreds of correspondents were present at the press conference of the “chief communist in the world,” and reports from the UN hall often took up more space in American newspapers than the presidential election campaign, which was nearing its end. Before leaving for his homeland, Khrushchev took part in a heated discussion, which was broadcast on television. The return trip to Moscow on the Tu-114 took only 10 hours.
A visit with kisses
The unforgettable Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev did not lag behind his predecessor - he visited abroad dozens of times. The General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee not only contributed to “the cause of strengthening world peace,” but also established deeply personal and trusting relationships with heads of foreign states. And it wasn’t just about famous kisses.
During his reign, Chernenko never left the country
Old age and illness made foreign travel impossible for Leonid Ilyich's successors. Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, before the ward at the Central Clinical Hospital became his work office, only managed to travel to Czechoslovakia at the beginning of 1983. And Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko, during his short reign, did not even think about visits from his deathbed.
Visits with spouse
The “revival” of foreign tours of top officials of the USSR occurred after the election of Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev as General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. In December 1984, the Soviet politician, who served as Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Council of the Union of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, went to England, where he had a very successful meeting with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Thatcher on Gorbachev: “You can deal with this man”
Negotiations between the “Iron Lady” and the Soviet politician took place in an informal setting at the Chekkers country residence. Leonid Zamyatin’s book of memoirs, “Gorby and Maggie,” claims that Gorbachev focused on disarmament issues during the dialogue, and for greater persuasiveness he even showed his interlocutor a map with the directions of nuclear strikes on Great Britain in the event of war. The meeting was successful, and after it, Margaret Thatcher is believed to have uttered her historic phrase: “You can deal with this man.”
The success of the meeting with the British Prime Minister was predetermined by another trip by Gorbachev. The first Western politician who treated Mikhail Sergeevich with sympathy was not the “Iron Lady”, but the Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. In May 1983, Gorbachev came to Canada, where he impressed Canadian leaders with his free and at the same time careful behavior.

Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to Great Britain, 1984
But the main individual feature of Gorbachev’s tours was that for the first time in Soviet history, significant attention was paid to the first lady of the country during these trips. Evil tongues even claimed that Raisa Maksimovna, during each voyage, sought from her husband to be shown on Soviet television no less than the Secretary General himself. If you believe the same sources, sometimes these disputes even ended in assault. But this is still very difficult to believe.

In addition to diplomats, military personnel (Spain, Mongolia, China, and everywhere else), scientists, trade representatives, engineers, and doctors traveled abroad under Stalin. They all traveled on business. But was it different in other countries? It happened, but only in one country. In Germany, before the war, cruise ships were built specifically for the organization engaged in leisure activities for workers, “Strength through Joy,” so that ordinary German workers could travel around Europe on their legal vacation. 20 million people have traveled abroad in this way. This fact is exceptional because in the first half of the twentieth century, paid leave was a very new trend, and in Germany even seasonal workers had the right to leave.

I wish the shit of the nation would think: why the hell and where did the Soviet people under Stalin, who had a guaranteed right to vacation, have to go? For what? There was no fashion to lie belly up on Turkish beaches at that time. Wild Soviet people - they didn’t know what it meant to “get high”, “have a blast” and “stick out”. Their entertainment was somewhat primitive, mostly related to sports. It was generally impossible to get into the flying clubs - there were 10-15 applicants for one place. They also loved to dance to the accordion, go to the cinema, walk in the city park and read books. The villain Stalin bullied the poor Soviet people so much that they did not even want to go abroad. Horror!

Another question is more interesting: why did the Soviet shit of the nation consider the most heinous crime of the communist regime to be the fact that this filthy regime did not allow the intelligentsia to wander idly abroad? The fact is that the Soviet intelligentsia was plagued by a terrible inferiority complex. After all, the shit of the nation considered itself an elite, and wanted to behave like an elite - that is, to push around the cattle and enjoy the material joys of life. And the damned Soviet regime forced intellectuals to work. And in the West, there was a real elite, living a full-fledged elite lifestyle, and the Soviet shit of the nation sought to join this real life at any cost.

But this desire was expressed in the most primitive fetishism. The intelligentsia stupidly tried to imitate all Western fashions, even if they did not understand their meaning. Everything foreign was idolized, a trip abroad was perceived as a sacred act (well, like for a Muslim to perform the Hajj). What attracted intellectuals abroad - books, museums, architecture, nature? No way! The shit of the nation attracted only three things abroad - junk, junk, and more junk. Well, and also a little bit of the smell of freedom, because it smelled like junk.
Under Stalin, the intelligentsia was kept in a black body, and therefore the Soviet Union was a strong world power. Then the shit of the nation multiplied, became ugly, stank and killed the Soviet Union. The intelligentsia never became an elite. But she got the opportunity to shit with impunity, calmly degrade and jerk off to Western fetishes, which are shown to her on TV as a consolation for not being allowed into the elite.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin did not make a single official visit abroad: when the Bolshevik government began to be recognized, he remained at the head of the party and government only nominally. His successors traveled abroad, and each visit had its own characteristics.

Visits with state security

Stalin had no passion for travel. Every year, closer to autumn, the leader went to the Caucasus to rest. In the morning he boarded a specially prepared train of several cars, traffic on the line stopped, and by the evening Joseph Vissarionovich arrived at his destination. However, twice the “father of nations” still had to leave his children. Although these two visits can be called foreign rather arbitrarily.

In the summer of 1943, the victorious operations of the Soviet Army aroused fears among the allies: if things continued like this, the question of opening a second front would soon disappear by itself. US President Roosevelt wanted, at all costs, to meet with Stalin. Joseph Vissarionovich, in principle, agreed. However, the issue of the location of the conference became a serious problem. The Soviet leader invited Churchill and Roosevelt to come to Arkhangelsk or Astrakhan, but the leaders of the United States and Great Britain did not want to hold a meeting on the territory of the USSR - this would be a recognition of the leading role of the Soviet Union. An exchange of telegrams followed. Churchill to Stalin: “I propose to hold a conference in Scotland.” Stalin refused. Roosevelt to Stalin: “It would be advisable to convene the conference in Cairo or Basra. If they agree, the coalition can send a ship for the Soviet delegation.” Stalin replied that he would send Molotov to the negotiations.

But this, in turn, did not suit Roosevelt. Then Fairbanks, an air base in Alaska, appeared on the map of the future conference. But the biased KGB study of the air bridge to Alaska turned out to be disappointing - it’s a five to six day flight to Fairbanks with all landings. Having considered the situation, Stalin responded to Roosevelt with a decisive telegram: “No matter how future generations evaluate our actions, I, as Supreme Commander-in-Chief, do not consider it advisable to go further than Tehran to the conference of the anti-Hitler coalition.”

Stalin was a homebody. Only twice did he leave the USSR

Stalin had to get to Tehran by train to Baku, and then by plane. The road to Baku went through Stalingrad, where a terrible battle had raged just a few months ago. In fact, the train with the delegation had to move parallel to the front line, so the operation was prepared with special care. Neither the drivers, nor the guards, nor the employees knew who was going and where. From the secret circular of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Lavrentiy Beria: “At stations and settlements along the entire route of the train, persons suspected of terrorism and sabotage are to be arrested, and all suspects at the stations are to be detained two days before the train passes. Conduct daily raids and document checks in villages adjacent to the railway.”

It was not for nothing that Stalin preferred trains to all types of transport: dozens of degrees of protection could be built on the railway. In front of the special train, the first locomotive followed, to which a heavily loaded carriage was attached. This was done in case the path was mined. The covering train was behind.

On the evening of November 27, the government delegation reached Baku. Next, the Soviet leader had to make a short flight. According to people close to Stalin, for many years he recalled with disgust how the plane fell into air pockets. On November 28, 1943, the world's most important news agencies broadcast an urgent message: “The conference of the leaders of the Big Three has opened in Tehran.” The world breathed a sigh of relief. A real opportunity has emerged to unite the efforts of the three most powerful states against fascism by opening a second front.

Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in Tehran, 1943

The next meeting of the heads of the great powers took place in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, in Potsdam. Both trips by the Soviet leader were accompanied by unprecedented precautions, but the July 1945 special flight was different than ever before.

The entire railway route from the USSR border to Potsdam (828 km) was “altered” from European to Soviet width, and instead of one train, three were formed at once. The main train in which the “father of nations” was traveling was guarded by 90 officers. Ahead was a control train with 40 security department operatives, and behind was a train with another 70 NKVD troops. 17,140 NKVD soldiers were allocated to guard the routes, so that there were 4-6 soldiers per kilometer of road from Moscow to Brest, and in Poland and Germany - one for every 150 m. In addition, for every 3-5 km of the road there were an operative who was responsible for intelligence and operational activities in a five-kilometer road zone. And armored trains ran in the most “unreliable” areas.

Stalin's voyage to the Potsdam Conference was guarded by 17 thousand soldiers

The last stage of preparation, the dress rehearsal, as drivers Viktor Lyon and Nikolai Kudryavkin recalled, was a test trip of the special train to Potsdam. There, everything was already ready for the conference: the meeting area of ​​the “Big Three” was guarded by more than 2 thousand soldiers and officers of the NKVD troops, and in the crown prince’s palace itself, in addition to 1 thousand soldiers, there were 150 operatives from the NKVD and NKGB.

Potsdam Conference: Winston Churchill, Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin, 1945

Stalin was pleased with the results of the conference and therefore forgave the special services for minor organizational flaws. And on September 15, 1945, Lavrentiy Beria presented the most distinguished participants in Operation Palma with awards “for the successful completion of a special government assignment.” A total of 2,851 people were awarded.

Visit with a “gift”

In one of his speeches in a narrow circle, one of the Soviet leaders closest to Khrushchev, Anastas Mikoyan, called himself and the first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee “worldwide vagabonds”: they say, they have to travel so much around the country and abroad. And it was absolutely true. Nikita Sergeevich managed to make more visits than any other first person in the USSR.

In total, Khrushchev visited abroad about 50 times

In 1960, Khrushchev took an extremely original step - he personally headed the Soviet delegation to the UN General Assembly. And in order to demonstrate his independence and importance, he ordered to go to the United States by sea on the Soviet turbo-electric ship Baltika, surrounded by the heads of the fraternal socialist countries. On September 9, the Baltika departed from the Kaliningrad pier and, accompanied by ships of the Baltic Navy, headed west. After the English Channel, before entering the Atlantic Ocean, the military escort ships turned back. By September 14, the Baltika was halfway to New York.

These days, many countries were reviewing the composition of their delegations. Wladyslaw Gomulka from Poland, Josip Broz Tito from Yugoslavia, King Hussein bin Talal of Jordan, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Fidel Castro from Cuba and many others were going to attend the UN session. There has never been such a gathering of political leaders in the history of the UN. American authorities announced that for security reasons they would limit Khrushchev's movements to Manhattan Island, where the UN buildings are located. Similar restrictions were introduced for Fidel Castro.

At 9 a.m. on September 19, the Baltika entered the port of New York, and Nikita Sergeevich, along with other statesmen, entered American soil. The Soviet delegation was given a mansion on Park Avenue, around which there were reinforced police squads and hundreds of correspondents constantly on duty. On September 20, Khrushchev went to the African-American district of the city - Harlem, where the Cuban delegation was located in a small hotel. This was the first meeting between the Soviet leader and Fidel Castro.

Nikita Khrushchev during the meeting of the 15th UN General Assembly, 1960

On September 23, Khrushchev read a report at the plenary session of the Assembly, which was then published under the title: “Freedom and independence to all colonial peoples. Solve the problem of general disarmament." The report caused a lot of response in the world press. Numerous receptions and meetings took place during the session. The Soviet leader met with Sukarno, Jawaharlal Nehru, Josip Broz Tito and many others.

Most heads of state left New York after a few days, but Khrushchev remained here for more than three weeks. On September 30, he delivered a speech to the Assembly on restoring China's legitimate rights in the UN. When the Spanish delegate took the floor to answer Khrushchev, the latter left the hall. Several times Nikita Sergeevich spoke at the UN on various issues, using the right of reply. Sometimes he lost patience, and instead of answering, he interrupted the next speaker with a lengthy remark from the spot or rudeness. “Whose cow would moo, but yours would be silent!” - he shouted during the speech of the American representative while discussing the problems of decolonization. The Soviet leader cursed the Philippine delegate even more rudely when he stated that the USSR should liberate its colonies and dependent countries. Khrushchev interrupted the speech of the Philippine minister, calling him “a slob, a nonentity, a fool, a lackey of American imperialism,” who has no right to raise issues that are not related to the matter.

A case has gone down in the history of the UN when Khrushchev, dissatisfied with the performance of a diplomat from one of the Western countries, took off his shoe and began to loudly knock on the table with it, interrupting a UN meeting. For this eccentric act of the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, the Soviet delegation was fined $10 thousand.

Khrushchev's boot, 1960

By the way, when the turbo-electric ship Baltika was still far from New York, some US politicians called on the press to ignore Khrushchev and not write about his stay on American soil. But the media were not going to follow these calls. Hundreds of correspondents were present at the press conference of the “chief communist in the world,” and reports from the UN hall often took up more space in American newspapers than the presidential election campaign, which was nearing its end. Before leaving for his homeland, Khrushchev took part in a heated discussion, which was broadcast on television. The return trip to Moscow on the Tu-114 took only 10 hours.

A visit with kisses

The unforgettable Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev did not lag behind his predecessor - he visited abroad dozens of times. The General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee not only contributed to “the cause of strengthening world peace,” but also established deeply personal and trusting relationships with heads of foreign states. And it wasn’t just about famous kisses.

During his reign, Chernenko never left the country

Old age and illness made foreign travel impossible for Leonid Ilyich's successors. Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, before the ward at the Central Clinical Hospital became his work office, only managed to travel to Czechoslovakia at the beginning of 1983. And Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko, during his short reign, did not even think about visits from his deathbed.

Visits with spouse

The “revival” of foreign tours of top officials of the USSR occurred after the election of Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev as General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. In December 1984, the Soviet politician, who served as Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Council of the Union of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, went to England, where he had a very successful meeting with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Thatcher on Gorbachev: “You can deal with this man”

Negotiations between the “Iron Lady” and the Soviet politician took place in an informal setting at the Chekkers country residence. Leonid Zamyatin’s book of memoirs, “Gorby and Maggie,” claims that Gorbachev focused on disarmament issues during the dialogue, and for greater persuasiveness he even showed his interlocutor a map with the directions of nuclear strikes on Great Britain in the event of war. The meeting was successful, and after it, Margaret Thatcher is believed to have uttered her historic phrase: “You can deal with this man.”

The success of the meeting with the British Prime Minister was predetermined by another trip by Gorbachev. The first Western politician who treated Mikhail Sergeevich with sympathy was not the “Iron Lady”, but the Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. In May 1983, Gorbachev came to Canada, where he impressed Canadian leaders with his free and at the same time careful behavior.

Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to Great Britain, 1984

But the main individual feature of Gorbachev’s tours was that for the first time in Soviet history, significant attention was paid to the first lady of the country during these trips. Evil tongues even claimed that Raisa Maksimovna, during each voyage, sought from her husband to be shown on Soviet television no less than the Secretary General himself. If you believe the same sources, sometimes these disputes even ended in assault. But this is still very difficult to believe.

Modern attempts to rewrite and distort history sometimes reach the point of absurdity. In a number of pseudo-historical publications, comparing Hitler and Stalin, they give “arguments” that Hitler, unlike Stalin, went to the active front. In fact, the archives, now declassified many years ago, contain completely specific and contrary information. It was Hitler who was never on the front line and only went to the army in the occupied territories. Stalin and his headquarters repeatedly visited the zone of active hostilities, and in the most difficult and alarming first months and years of the war.

The archives contain numerous accounts of eyewitnesses of those events. For example, information reports from the adjutant of Marshal Voronov, senior lieutenant I.A. Sokolov about how, upon arrival at the headquarters of the Western and Kalinin fronts in 1941-1943. The general was met there personally by J.V. Stalin. Naturally, such trips were not pompously arranged; they took place in an atmosphere of extreme secrecy, because the enemy was on our territory at that time. To confirm this, you can study archival records from V. Zhilyaev, a researcher at the Center for Public Relations of the Federal Protective Service of the Russian Federation for receiving visitors by the country's leader in the Kremlin. At 22.30 on August 1, 1941, Stalin left his office and returned there only on August 5 at 21.55. This time coincides with documentary descriptions of evidence of the presence of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief in the active army.

Other facts of Stalin’s personal presence at the front were also recorded. In 1941-1942, he visited defensive lines in the area of ​​Solnechnogorsk, Mozhaisk, Zvenigorod, and was in Rokossovsky’s 16th Army in the Volokolamsk direction. There are documents recording the observation of the combat work of BM-13 (the legendary Katyushas) on the front line of Rokossovsky’s army. And after the famous parade on Red Square on November 7, 1941, I went to personally inspect the divisions that had arrived from Siberia, which were immediately unloaded to the front line, into the very “hell” of the Moscow defensive operation. In the book “Stalin at the Front,” his personal guard Rybin cites the facts of Stalin’s visit to the 316th division of General I.V. Panfilov immediately before the battle. Trips to the active army continued in 1942-1943. There are reports from generals Sokolovsky and Eremenko that Stalin personally met on the spot with the front command, analyzed the situation, participated in the development of plans for military operations, and assessed the logistics of the army in the field.

In total, there were no less than 10 such trips. There are no exact data, since they were all carried out in extreme secrecy, because Stalin went to the front in the most difficult and dangerous moments for the country, in the “hell of hell.” In total, representatives of the Supreme Command headquarters were at the fronts more than 60 times during the Second World War, 157 times the Supreme Commander-in-Chief received front commanders with reports on upcoming operations, 1413 times - representatives of the Army General Staff.