Women sentenced to death in the USSR. How death sentences were carried out in the USSR (8 photos)

War is a terrible time, and it is very difficult to remain human when the lifeless bodies of your comrades are nearby. Only one thought pulsates in my temples: to be able to survive! This is how monsters are born from good people with good goals. Three women were officially executed in the USSR for terrible acts in the post-war years. And everyone assumed that they would be pardoned, but no one could forget the toughness that the weaker sex showed...

History of the crimes of Antonina Makarova (1920 - 1979)
And perhaps Antonina’s fate would have turned out differently, but only in the first grade there was an unexpected change in her last name, which foreshadowed a new round in the girl’s life. On the first day of school, due to shyness, she could not say her last name - Parfenova. Classmates began shouting “Yes, she’s Makarova!”, meaning that Tony’s father’s name is Makar. So she became Antonina Makarova, who already at that time had her own revolutionary heroine - Anka the Machine Gunner. Even this, years later, does not seem like a strange coincidence, but rather a sign of fate.
The Great Patriotic War found Antonina in Moscow, where she went to study after school. The girl could not remain indifferent to the misfortune that happened to her country, so she immediately signed up to volunteer for the front.
Hoping to help the victims, 19-year-old Komsomol member Makarova experienced all the horrors of the infamous “Vyazma Cauldron.” After the hardest battles, completely surrounded, of the entire unit, only soldier Nikolai Fedchuk found himself next to the young nurse Tonya. She wandered through the local forests with him, he made her his “camping wife,” but this was not the worst thing she had to endure while they were trying to survive.

In January 1942, they went to the village of Krasny Kolodets, and then Fedchuk admitted that he was married and his family lived nearby. He left Tonya alone
Tonya decided to stay in the village, but her desire to start a family with a local man quickly turned everyone against her, so she had to leave. Tonya Makarova’s wanderings ended in the area of ​​the village of Lokot in the Bryansk region. The notorious “Lokot Republic”, an administrative-territorial formation of Russian collaborators, operated here. In essence, these were the same German lackeys as in other places, only more clearly formalized. A police patrol spotted a new girl, detained her, gave her food, drink and rape. Compared to the horrors of war, this did not seem to the girl something shameful; then she desperately wanted to live.
In fact, the police immediately noticed the girl, but not for the purpose discussed above, but for more dirty work. One day, a drunken Tonya was put behind a Maxim machine gun. There were people standing in front of the machine gun - men, women, old people, children. She was ordered to shoot. For Tony, who had completed not only nursing courses, but also machine gunners, this was not difficult; even being very drunk, she coped with the task. Then she didn’t think about why and why - she was guided by only one thought that pulsated in her head throughout the war: “Live!”

The next day Makarova found out that she was now an official - an executioner with a salary of 30 German marks and with her own bed
In the Lokot Republic they mercilessly fought against the enemies of the new order - partisans, underground fighters, communists, other unreliable elements, as well as members of their families. The barn, which served as a prison, was not designed for a large number of prisoners, so every day those arrested were shot, and new ones were driven in their place. No one wanted to take on such work: neither the Germans nor the local police, so the appearance of a girl who could successfully handle a machine gun was to everyone’s advantage. And Tonya herself was happy: she didn’t know who she was killing, for her it was ordinary work, a daily routine that helped her survive.
Antonina Makarova’s work schedule looked something like this: execution in the morning, finishing off survivors with a pistol, cleaning weapons, schnapps and dancing in a German club in the evening, and love with some cute German at night. Life seemed like a dream to the girl: she had money, everything was fine, even her wardrobe was regularly updated, even though she had to sew up holes every time after being killed.
Sometimes it’s true that Tonya left her children alive. She fired bullets above their heads, and later local residents took the children along with the corpses from the village to transfer the living ones to the partisan ranks. This scheme may have appeared because Tonya was tormented by her conscience. Rumors about a female executioner, “Tonka the machine gunner,” and “Tonka the Muscovite” spread throughout the area. Local partisans even announced a hunt for the executioner, but were unable to reach her. In 1943, the girl’s life changed dramatically.

Photo shows confrontation: witness identifies Makarova
The Red Army began to liberate the Bryansk region. Antonina realized what awaited her if Soviet soldiers found her and found out what she was doing. The Germans evacuated their own, but they did not care about accomplices like Tonya. The girl escaped and found herself surrounded, but in a Soviet environment. During the time that she was in the German rear, Tonya learned a lot, now she knew how to survive. The girl managed to get documents confirming that all this time Makarova was a nurse in a Soviet hospital. Then there were not enough people, and she managed to get a job in a hospital. There she met a real war hero who fell desperately in love with her. So the female executioner Antonina Makarova disappeared, and her place was taken by the honored veteran Antonina Ginzburg. After the end of the war, the young people left for the Belarusian city of Lepel, their husband’s homeland.
While Antonina was living her new correct life, the remains of about one and a half thousand people were found in mass graves in the Bryansk region. Soviet investigators took the investigation seriously, but only 200 people were identified. The KGB was never able to get on the trail of the punisher, until one day a certain Parfenov decided to cross the border... In his documents, Tonya Makarova was listed as his sister, so the teacher’s mistake helped the woman hide from justice for more than 30 years.
The KGB could not accuse a person with an ideal reputation, the wife of a brave front-line soldier, an exemplary mother of two children, of horrific atrocities, so they began to act very carefully. They brought witnesses to Lepel, even policemen-lovers, they all recognized Antonina Ginzburg as Tonka the Machine Gunner. She was arrested, and she did not deny it.
The front-line husband ran through the authorities, threatened Brezhnev and the UN, but only until the investigators told him the truth. The family renounced Antonina and left Lepel.

Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg was tried in Bryansk in the fall of 1978
At the trial, Antonina was proven guilty of 168 murders, and more than 1,300 more remained unidentified victims. Antonina herself and the investigators were convinced that over the years the punishment could not be too severe; the woman only regretted that she had disgraced herself and would have to change jobs, but on November 20, 1978, the court sentenced Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg to capital punishment - execution.
At six in the morning on August 11, 1979, after all requests for clemency were rejected, the sentence against Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg was carried out.

Berta Borodkina (1927 - 1983)
Berta Borodkina began building her career as a waitress in a Gelendzhik public catering establishment in 1951. She did not even have a secondary education, but she rose first to a barmaid, then to a manager, and later became the head of a trust of restaurants and canteens. It was not by chance that she was appointed; it could not have happened without the participation of the first secretary of the city committee of the CPSU Nikolai Pogodin. Borodkina was not afraid of any audits; from 1974 to 1982, she received assistance from high-ranking officials, and she, in turn, took bribes from her subordinates and transferred them to patrons. The total amount was about 15,000 rubles, which was a lot of money at that time. The workers of the Gelendzhik catering industry were subject to a “tribute”, everyone knew how much money he had to transfer along the chain, as well as what awaited him in case of refusal - the loss of a “grain” position.
The source of illegal income was various frauds that Borodkina put into practice, receiving at least 100,000 rubles from it, for example: sour cream was diluted with water, bread and cereals were added to minced meat, the strength of vodka and other alcohol was reduced. But it was considered especially profitable to mix cheaper “starka” (rye vodka infused with apple or pear leaves) into expensive Armenian cognac. According to the investigator, even an examination could not establish that the cognac was diluted. There was also the usual miscalculation; the holiday season became a real breeding ground for scammers.

They were nicknamed the resort mafia, it was impossible to join their ranks, everyone else suffered losses, knowing about all the fraud. The leftist income Olympus was strengthening, tourists were arriving, but not everyone was so hopelessly blind, so complaints about “underfilling” and shortchanges regularly entered the guest book, but no one cared. The City Committee's "roof" in the person of the first secretary, as well as inspectors of the OBKhSS, the head of the region Medunov, made it invulnerable to the discontent of the mass consumer.
Borodkina demonstrated a completely different attitude towards high-ranking party and government officials who came to Gelendzhik during the holiday season from Moscow and the Union republics, but even here she pursued primarily her own interests - the acquisition of future influential patrons. Among her “friends” is the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Fyodor Kulakov. Borodkin provided the highest ranks not only with rare delicacies, but also with young girls, and in general did everything possible to make the officials’ stay comfortable.
Borodkina did not like her name, she wanted to be called Bella, and she was nicknamed “Iron Bella”. Lack of education did not prevent her from skillfully hiding the tails of her expenses and writing off shortcomings. All her work was as transparent as possible from the outside. But this could not go on forever, even those in power could not cover her for so long, although they made good money thanks to Bella’s machinations.

Most likely, Borodkina’s trail was not discovered by chance, and everything was set up by those same top officials, but Bella was arrested not for fraud, but for distributing pornography. The prosecutor's office received a statement from a local resident that in one of the cafes, pornographic films were secretly shown to selected guests. The organizers of the clandestine screenings admitted during interrogations that the director of the trust gave her consent, and part of the money from the proceeds went to her. Thus, Borodkina herself was accused of complicity in this offense and receiving a bribe.
During the search in Bella’s apartment, various precious jewelry, furs, crystal items, sets of bed linen that were in short supply at that time were found, in addition, large amounts of dengue were unsuccessfully hidden in different places: radiators, bricks, etc. The total amount seized during the search amounted to more than 500,000 rubles.

“Iron Bella” kept threatening the investigation and waited for release, but high officials never intervened...
In the early 1980s, investigations began in the Krasnodar region into numerous criminal cases related to large-scale manifestations of bribery and theft, which received the general name of the Sochi-Krasnodar case. The owner of Kuban Medunov, a close friend of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev and the Secretary of the Central Committee Konstantin Chernenko, interfered with the investigation, however, with the election of KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov, the fight against corruption took a completely different turn. Many were shot for embezzlement, and Medunov was simply fired. The head of the Gelendzhik party organization, Pogodin, disappeared. No one could help her anymore, and she began to confess...
Bella's testimony took up 20 volumes, another 30 criminal cases were opened, and she named difficult names. During the investigation, Borodkina tried to feign schizophrenia. But a forensic examination recognized her acting as talented, and Borodkina was found guilty of repeatedly accepting bribes totaling 561,834 rubles. 89 kopecks
This is how the case of the director of the trust of restaurants and canteens of the city of Gelendzhik, Honored Worker of Trade and Public Catering of the RSFSR Berta Borodkina, who knew too much about high-ranking people and flaunted it, ended. Then she fell silent forever.

Tamara Ivanyutina (1941 - 1987)
In 1986, Tamara got a job in a school canteen in Kyiv using a fake work book. She wanted to live well, so she looked for ways to take food home to feed herself and the livestock she raised. Tamara worked as a dishwasher, and began to punish those who, in her opinion, behaved badly, and especially those who made comments to her or suspected her of stealing food. Both adults and children fell under her wrath. The victims were a school party organizer (died) and a chemistry teacher (survived). They prevented Ivanyutina from stealing food from the catering department. Pupils of the 1st and 5th grades who asked her for leftover cutlets for their pets were also poisoned. This story became known quite quickly.
How did it all turn out? One day, 4 people ended up in intensive care. Everyone was diagnosed with an intestinal infection and flu after lunch in the same school cafeteria. Everything would be fine, but only after some time the patients’ hair began to fall out, and later death occurred. Investigators interviewed survivors and quickly determined who was involved. During searches of the canteen workers at Tamara’s house, Clerici liquid was discovered, which was the cause of the death of the visitors. Tamara Ivanyutina explained that she committed such a crime because the sixth-graders who were having lunch refused to arrange chairs and tables. She decided to punish them and poisoned them. However, she subsequently stated that the confession was made under pressure from investigators. She refused to testify.

Everyone knew about Tamara’s case at that time. It horrified visitors to all the canteens of the union. It turned out that not only Tamara, but also all members of her family had been using the highly toxic solution to deal with unwanted people for 11 years. Serial poisoners remained unpunished for a long time.
Tamara began her murderous activities when she realized that she could get rid of a person without attracting attention at all. So she got an apartment from her first husband, who died suddenly. She did not want to kill her second husband, but only gave him poison to reduce sexual activity. The victims were the husband's parents: Tamara wanted to live on their plot of land.
Tamara's sister, Nina Matsibora, used the same liquid to get an apartment from her husband. And the girls’ parents killed relatives, communal neighbors, and animals that did not please them.

At the trial, the family was charged with numerous poisonings, including fatal ones.
The court found that for 11 years, the criminal family, for mercenary reasons, as well as out of personal enmity, committed murders and attempted intentional deprivation of life of various individuals using the so-called Clerici liquid - a highly toxic solution based on a potent toxic substance - thallium. The total number of victims reached 40 people, 13 of which were fatal, and these are only the recorded cases about which the investigation managed to find out something. The process dragged on for a year, during which time they managed to attribute about 20 assassination attempts to Tamara.
In her last word, Ivanyutina did not admit her guilt in any of the episodes. While still in pre-trial detention, she stated: in order to achieve what you want, you don’t need to write any complaints. It is necessary to be friends with everyone and treat them. And add poison to especially evil people. Ivanyutin was declared sane and sentenced to death. The accomplices were given different prison terms. So, sister Nina was sentenced to 15 years. Her subsequent fate is unknown. The mother received 13, and the father - 10 years in prison. Parents died in prison.

Finally, Antonina Makarovna Makarova (nee Parfenova, according to other sources - Panfilova; 1922, Malaya Volkovka, Sychevsky district, Smolensk province, according to other sources, in 1923 in Moscow - August 11, 1979, Bryansk).

At birth, Makarova was named Antonina Makarovna Parfenova. However, when the girl went to the first grade of a village school, an incident occurred with her name - the teacher, writing down the children’s names in the class register, confused Antonina’s middle name with her last name, and as a result, in school documents she was listed as Antonina Makarova. This confusion was the beginning of the fact that in all subsequent documents, including in the passport, Antonina’s name was written down as Antonina Makarovna Makarova.
In 1941, when the Great Patriotic War began, 21-year-old Makarova found herself at the front as a nurse. In the fall of the same year, she was one of the few who miraculously survived the Vyazemsk operation, and after the defeat of her unit, she hid in the forest for several days, but was ultimately arrested by the Germans. After some time, she and soldier Nikolai Fedchuk, seizing the moment, escaped from captivity. For several months, the two of them wandered around the area, trying to get out of the German encirclement. Much later, during interrogation, Makarova said that she was too scared and therefore, in fact, she herself followed Fedchuk, offering him herself as a so-called “camping wife.”
In January 1942, the couple reached the village of Krasny Kolodets, where Fedchuk’s wife and children lived, and he, despite Makarova’s requests, broke up with her.
Makarova wandered around the villages for some time, not staying anywhere for long, and eventually ended up on the territory of the newly formed Lokot Republic in the village of Lokot, where she was again detained by the Germans.

The Lokot Republic is an administrative-territorial national entity in the part of Soviet territory occupied by Nazi Germany during the Great Patriotic War.
Existed from November 1941 to August 1943. The administrative center was located in the working-class village of Lokot, which was proclaimed a city. The district included several districts of the pre-war Oryol and Kursk regions (now the territory is predominantly Bryansk region).
All local power belonged here not to the German commandant's offices, but to local governments. Any German authorities were prohibited from interfering in the internal affairs of the Lokot volost. German institutions on the territory of the Lokot district limited their activities only to assistance and advice to the leaders of the district and its districts.
At the end of November 1941, the head of Lokot self-government K.P. Voskoboinik published the manifesto of the People's Socialist Party "Viking", which provided for the destruction of the communist and collective farm system, the provision of arable land and personal plots to peasants, the development of private initiative and the "merciless destruction of all Jews, former commissioners."
The population of the district was 581 thousand people. The territory of the district, despite the fact that it was an occupied territory, had its own Criminal Procedure and Criminal Code.
It had its own armed forces - the Russian Liberation People's Army (RONA) - a relatively combat-ready association created in the image of the people's militia and consisting of 14 battalions (according to various sources, from 12 to 20 thousand people).
Property confiscated during dispossession by the Soviet government was returned free of charge to its former owners; in case of loss, appropriate compensation was provided. The size of the per capita plot for each resident of the local government was about 10 hectares.
During the existence of the self-government, many industrial enterprises engaged in processing agricultural products were restored and put into use, churches were restored, 9 hospitals and 37 outpatient medical centers operated, 345 secondary schools and 3 orphanages operated, the city art and drama theater named after K. P. Voskoboynik in the city of Lokot.
The main monetary unit in the district was the Soviet ruble. The district budget consisted of taxes on the population. Cash taxes were taken from buildings, all types of agricultural products, livestock, poultry and handicrafts. On average, each household received about 600 rubles annually; in addition, they took out fire insurance, but no compensation was paid to fire victims.
The status of the Lokot District as an autonomous national entity was based on the support of the commander of the 2nd German Tank Army, G. Guderian.
Soviet partisans associated with the NKVD attacked the civilian population of the district and fought with the RONA; the actions of the parties in the territory of the district were in the nature of a civil war.
From May to October 1942, partisans tried to attack the district security forces 540 times.
The district leadership maintained order with brutal repressions against persons suspected of having connections with the partisans.
The Jewish population of the Lokot district was completely destroyed by the police. In Suzemka, 223 Jews were shot, and in Navlya - 39.
The executioner of the Lokot district, Antonina Makarova, carried out the death sentences, executing about 1,500 people, including partisans, members of their families, women and teenagers.
On September 5, 1943, Lokot was taken by the 2nd Tank Battalion of the 197th Tank Brigade of the 30th Ural Volunteer Tank Corps together with units of the 250th Rifle Division. During the retreat of the German army, the armed formations of the Lokot district under the command of Bronislav Kaminsky, as well as family members of military personnel and everyone who did not want to remain on Soviet territory (30 thousand people), left in August 1943 with the German army in the city of Lepel, Vitebsk region , where for some time the “Lepel Republic” was created, and RONA participated in military operations against Soviet partisans until the summer of 1944. From here, the RONA brigade as part of the SS troops was transferred to Poland, where, in particular, it participated in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising.

In the future, giving testimony, Makarova stated that she simply pursued the elementary goals of surviving and warming up after long wanderings, and at the same time she was very afraid of death, which is why, when the Germans began to question her, she began to scold the Soviet government. She attributed her fears to the reason why she voluntarily enlisted in the Lokot auxiliary police, where she was given a Maxim machine gun to carry out death sentences to which Soviet partisans and members of their families were sentenced. According to Makarova herself, the Germans clearly did not want to get their hands dirty and they decided that it would be even better if it was a Soviet girl who executed the Soviet partisans. For agreeing to participate in the executions, the Germans settled Makarova in a room at a local stud farm, where she kept the machine gun itself.
“I didn’t know those I was shooting. They didn't know me. Therefore, I was not ashamed in front of them. It happened that you would shoot, come closer, and someone else would twitch. Then she shot him in the head again so that the person would not suffer. Sometimes several prisoners had a piece of plywood with the inscription “partisan” hung on their chests. Some people sang something before they died. After the executions, I cleaned the machine gun in the guardhouse or in the yard. There was plenty of ammunition..."
She also stated that she was never tormented by remorse, and none of the killed appeared to her in her dreams, since the executions themselves were not perceived by her as something unusual.
Prisoners were sent to her for execution in groups of about 27 people. There were days when she carried out death sentences three times a day. According to official data, she shot about 1,500 people, but only 168 people were able to recover their passport data. For each execution, Makarova received 30 Reichsmarks. After the executions, Makarova took off the clothes she liked from the corpses, motivating it like this: “Why should good things go to waste?” She often complained that large blood stains and bullet holes remained on the clothes of the dead. Eyewitnesses recalled that often at night Makarova came to the local stud farm, where the Germans had set up a prison for the condemned, and closely examined the prisoners, as if she was looking at their things in advance.
Makarova often relieved tension at a local music club, where she drank a lot of alcohol and, along with several other local girls, worked as a prostitute for German soldiers. Such a wild life led to Makarova being sent to a German rear hospital in the summer of 1943 for treatment for venereal diseases, and thus avoiding capture by the partisans and the Red Army when they captured Lokot on September 5 of that year. In the rear, Makarova started an affair with a German cook-corporal, who secretly took her in his wagon train to Ukraine, and from there to Poland. There the corporal was killed, and the Germans sent Makarov to a concentration camp in Königsberg. When the Red Army captured the city in 1945, Makarova posed as a Soviet nurse thanks to a stolen military ID, in which she indicated that she had worked in the 422nd Medical Battalion from 1941 to 1944, and got a job as a nurse in a Soviet mobile hospital.
Here, in a local hospital, she met the Belarusian soldier Viktor Ginzburg, who was wounded during the assault on the city. A week later they signed, Makarova took her husband’s last name.

Antonina and her husband settled in Lepel (Belarusian SSR) (this was Victor’s hometown) and they had two daughters. Antonina worked as a supervisor in the sewing workshop at a local clothing factory, where she carried out product quality control. She was considered a responsible and conscientious worker, and her photograph often appeared on the local honor board. However, after working there for many years, Antonina did not make any friends. The then inspector of the factory’s HR department, Faina Tarasik, recalled that Antonina was very reserved, quiet and during collective holidays she tried to drink alcohol as little as possible (she was probably afraid to spill the beans). The Ginsburgs were considered respected front-line soldiers and received all the benefits due to veterans. Neither her husband, nor neighbors, nor family acquaintances knew about Antonina’s real identity.
The KGB began looking for Makarova immediately after Lokot was liberated from the Germans. However, the surviving residents of the village could only provide the investigators with meager information, since they all knew Makarova only as Tonka the Machine Gunner. The search for Makarova lasted for 30 years, and only in 1976 the matter moved from a dead point, when in Bryansk on the city square one man attacked a certain Nikolai Ivanin with his fists, whom he recognized as the head of the Lokot prison during the German occupation. Ivanin, who, like Makarova, had been hiding all this time, did not deny it and spoke in detail about his activities at that time, at the same time mentioning Makarova (with whom he had a short-term affair). And although he mistakenly gave her full name to the investigators as Antonina Anatolyevna Makarova (and at the same time erroneously reported that she was a Muscovite), this was a major clue, and the KGB began to develop a list of USSR citizens with the name Antonina Makarova. However, the Makarova they needed was not on it, because the list contained only those women who were registered under this name at birth.
Her real name became known when one of her brothers, who lived in Tyumen and was an employee of the Ministry of Defense, filled out a form to travel abroad in 1976. In Lepel, Makarova was under surveillance, but after a week it had to be stopped because Makarova began to suspect something. After that, the investigators left her alone for a whole year and all this time they collected materials and evidence on her. At one of the concerts dedicated to Victory Day, the dispatched security officer started a conversation with Makarova: Makarova could not answer his questions about the locations of the military units where she served, and about the names of her commanders - she referred to bad memory and the remoteness of the events.
In July 1978, investigators decided to conduct an experiment: they brought one of the witnesses to the factory, while Makarova, under a fictitious pretext, was taken out onto the street in front of the building. The witness, watching her from the window, identified her, but this identification alone was not enough, and so the investigators staged another experiment. They brought two more witnesses to Lepel, one of whom played a local social security worker, where Makarova was allegedly summoned to recalculate her pension. She recognized Tonka the machine gunner. The second witness was sitting outside the building with a KGB investigator and also recognized Antonina. In September of the same year, Makarova was arrested on her way from her place of work to the head of the personnel department. Investigator Leonid Savoskin, who was present at her arrest, later recalled that Makarova behaved very calmly and immediately understood everything.
Makarova was taken to Bryansk. At first, investigators feared that she would decide to commit suicide, so they put a woman “whisperer” in her cell. She recalled that Makarova was still very calm and confident that she would be given a maximum of three years, both because of her age and because of how long ago those events were (she even made plans for her future life after serving time). She didn't remember her family.
She volunteered for interrogation herself, where she demonstrated the same composure, answering questions directly. Antonina was sincerely convinced that there was nothing to punish her for, and she blamed everything on the war. She behaved no less calmly during investigative experiments when she was brought to Lokot. During the investigation, she never once remembered her family. Victor Ginzburg, not knowing the reasons for his wife’s arrest, constantly tried to achieve her release, after which the investigators had to tell him the truth, which is why Ginzburg and his children left Lepel in an unknown direction (their further fate remained unknown).
On November 20, 1978, she was sentenced to capital punishment - the death penalty. Makarova took this, as always, calmly, but from the same day she began to submit petitions for pardon to the CPSU Central Committee and other authorities, which were all rejected. Most of all, she insisted that she needed eye surgery and that 1979 was the year of the woman.
On August 11, 1979, the sentence was carried out.

In general, Tonka’s story alone would be enough for the series - it is amazing in itself, and then there are a lot of murders, and stupid ones at that. The story about this unfortunate Raisa. Very often, ends do not meet, although the image of a woman who takes into account only the interests of her family in life and hates everyone else is a success.

Officially, during all the post-war years, three women were executed in the USSR. Death sentences were handed down to the fairer sex, but were not carried out. And then the matter was brought to execution. Who were these women, and for what crimes were they shot? The story of Antonina Makarova's crimes.

An incident with a surname.

Antonina Makarova was born in 1921 in the Smolensk region, in the village of Malaya Volkovka, into the large peasant family of Makar Parfenov. She studied at a rural school, and it was there that an episode occurred that influenced her future life. When Tonya came to first grade, because of shyness she could not say her last name - Parfenova. Classmates began shouting “Yes, she’s Makarova!”, meaning that Tony’s father’s name is Makar. So, with the light hand of the teacher, at that time perhaps the only literate person in the village, Tonya Makarova appeared in the Parfyonov family. The girl studied diligently, with diligence. She also had her own revolutionary heroine - Anka the machine gunner. This film image had a real prototype - Maria Popova, a nurse from the Chapaev division, who once in battle actually had to replace a killed machine gunner. After graduating from school, Antonina went to study in Moscow, where the beginning of the Great Patriotic War found her. The girl went to the front as a volunteer.

The traveling wife of an encirclement.

and 19-year-old Komsomol member Makarova suffered all the horrors of the infamous “Vyazma Cauldron.” After the hardest battles, completely surrounded, of the entire unit, only soldier Nikolai Fedchuk found himself next to the young nurse Tonya. With him she wandered through the local forests, just trying to survive. They didn’t look for partisans, they didn’t try to get through to their own - they fed on whatever they had, and sometimes stole. The soldier did not stand on ceremony with Tonya, making her his “camp wife.” Antonina did not resist - she just wanted to live. In January 1942, they went to the village of Krasny Kolodets, and then Fedchuk admitted that he was married and his family lived nearby. He left Tonya alone. Tonya was not expelled from the Red Well, but the local residents already had plenty of worries. But the strange girl did not try to go to the partisans, did not strive to make her way to ours, but strived to make love with one of the men remaining in the village. Having turned the locals against her, Tonya was forced to leave.

A killer with a salary.

Tonya Makarova’s wanderings ended in the area of ​​the village of Lokot in the Bryansk region. The notorious “Lokot Republic”, an administrative-territorial formation of Russian collaborators, operated here. In essence, these were the same German lackeys as in other places, only more clearly formalized. A police patrol detained Tonya, but they did not suspect her of being a partisan or underground woman. She attracted the attention of the police, who took her in, gave her drink, food and rape. However, the latter is very relative - the girl, who only wanted to survive, agreed to everything. Tonya did not play the role of a prostitute for the police for long - one day, drunk, she was taken out into the yard and put behind a Maxim machine gun. There were people standing in front of the machine gun - men, women, old people, children. She was ordered to shoot. For Tony, who completed not only nursing courses, but also machine gunners, this was not a big deal. True, the dead drunk woman didn’t really understand what she was doing. But, nevertheless, she coped with the task. The next day, Makarova learned that she was now an official - an executioner with a salary of 30 German marks and with her own bed. The Lokot Republic ruthlessly fought the enemies of the new order - partisans, underground fighters, communists, other unreliable elements, as well as members of their families. Those arrested were herded into a barn that served as a prison, and in the morning they were taken out to be shot. The cell could accommodate 27 people, and all of them had to be eliminated in order to make room for new ones. Neither the Germans nor even the local policemen wanted to take on this work. And here Tonya, who appeared out of nowhere with her shooting abilities, came in very handy. The girl did not go crazy, but on the contrary, felt that her dream had come true. And let Anka shoot her enemies, and she shoots women and children - the war will write off everything! But her life finally got better.

1500 lives lost.

Antonina Makarova's daily routine was as follows: in the morning, shooting 27 people with a machine gun, finishing off the survivors with a pistol, cleaning weapons, in the evening schnapps and dancing in a German club, and at night making love with some cute German guy or, at worst, with a policeman. As an incentive, she was allowed to take the belongings of the dead. So Tonya acquired a bunch of outfits, which, however, had to be repaired - traces of blood and bullet holes made it difficult to wear. However, sometimes Tonya allowed a “marriage” - several children managed to survive because, due to their small stature, the bullets passed over their heads. The children were taken out along with the corpses by local residents who were burying the dead and handed over to the partisans. Rumors about a female executioner, “Tonka the machine gunner”, “Tonka the Muscovite” spread throughout the area. Local partisans even announced a hunt for the executioner, but were unable to reach her. In total, about 1,500 people became victims of Antonina Makarova. By the summer of 1943, Tony's life again took a sharp turn - the Red Army moved to the West, beginning the liberation of the Bryansk region. This did not bode well for the girl, but then she conveniently fell ill with syphilis, and the Germans sent her to the rear so that she would not re-infect the valiant sons of Greater Germany.

An honored veteran instead of a war criminal.

In the German hospital, however, it also soon became uncomfortable - the Soviet troops were approaching so quickly that only the Germans had time to evacuate, and there was no longer any concern for the accomplices. Realizing this, Tonya escaped from the hospital, again finding herself surrounded, but now Soviet. But her survival skills were honed - she managed to obtain documents proving that all this time Makarova was a nurse in a Soviet hospital. Antonina successfully managed to enlist in a Soviet hospital, where at the beginning of 1945 a young soldier, a real war hero, fell in love with her. The guy proposed to Tonya, she agreed, and, having gotten married, after the end of the war, the young couple left for the Belarusian city of Lepel, her husband’s homeland. So the female executioner Antonina Makarova disappeared, and her place was taken by the honored veteran Antonina Ginzburg.

They searched for her for thirty years

Soviet investigators learned about the monstrous acts of “Tonka the Machine Gunner” immediately after the liberation of the Bryansk region. The remains of about one and a half thousand people were found in mass graves, but the identities of only two hundred could be established. They interrogated witnesses, checked, clarified - but they could not get on the trail of the female punisher. Meanwhile, Antonina Ginzburg led the ordinary life of a Soviet person - she lived, worked, raised two daughters, even met with schoolchildren, talking about her heroic military past. Of course, without mentioning the actions of “Tonka the Machine Gunner”. The KGB spent more than three decades searching for her, but found her almost by accident. A certain citizen Parfyonov, going abroad, submitted forms with information about his relatives. There, among the solid Parfenovs, for some reason Antonina Makarova, after her husband Ginzburg, was listed as her sister. Yes, how that teacher’s mistake helped Tonya, how many years thanks to it she remained out of reach of justice! The KGB operatives worked like a jewel - it was impossible to accuse an innocent person of such atrocities. Antonina Ginzburg was checked from all sides, witnesses were secretly brought to Lepel, even a former policeman-lover. And only after they all confirmed that Antonina Ginzburg was “Tonka the Machine Gunner”, she was arrested. She didn’t deny it, she talked about everything calmly, and said that nightmares didn’t torment her. She didn’t want to communicate with either her daughters or her husband. And the front-line husband ran through the authorities, threatened to complain to Brezhnev, even to the UN - demanded the release of his wife. Exactly until the investigators decided to tell him what his beloved Tonya was accused of. After that, the dashing, dashing veteran turned gray and aged overnight. The family disowned Antonina Ginzburg and left Lepel. You wouldn’t wish what these people had to endure on your enemy.

Retribution.

Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg was tried in Bryansk in the fall of 1978. This was the last major trial of traitors to the Motherland in the USSR and the only trial of a female punisher. Antonina herself was convinced that, due to the passage of time, the punishment could not be too severe; she even believed that she would receive a suspended sentence. My only regret was that because of the shame I had to move again and change jobs. Even the investigators, knowing about Antonina Ginzburg’s exemplary post-war biography, believed that the court would show leniency. Moreover, 1979 was declared the Year of the Woman in the USSR. However, on November 20, 1978, the court sentenced Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg to capital punishment - execution. At the trial, her guilt in the murder of 168 of those whose identities could be established was documented. More than 1,300 more remained unknown victims of “Tonka the Machine Gunner.” There are crimes that cannot be forgiven. At six in the morning on August 11, 1979, after all requests for clemency were rejected, the sentence against Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg was carried out.

Berta Borodkina.

Berta Borodkina, known in certain circles as “Iron Bella,” was one of 3 women executed in the late USSR. By a fateful coincidence, this mournful list included, along with the murderers, the honored trade worker Berta Naumovna Borodkina, who did not kill anyone. She was sentenced to death for theft of socialist property on an especially large scale.
Among those who provided patronage to the director of catering in the resort city were members of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, as well as the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Fyodor Kulakov. For a long time, connections at the very top made Berta Borodkina invulnerable to any auditors, but ultimately played a tragic role in her fate. In April 1984, the Krasnodar Regional Court considered criminal case No. 2-4/84 against the director of the trust of restaurants and canteens in the city of Gelendzhik, Honored Worker of Trade and Public Catering of the RSFSR Berta Borodkina. The main charge against the defendant is Part 2 of Art. 173 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (taking a bribe) - provided for punishment in the form of imprisonment for a term of five to fifteen years with confiscation of property. However, reality surpassed the worst fears of 57-year-old Borodkina - she was sentenced to death. The court's decision also came as a surprise to lawyers who followed the high-profile trial with interest: an exceptional measure of punishment “up to its complete abolition,” according to the then current Criminal Code of the RSFSR, was allowed for treason (Article 64), espionage (Article 65), terrorism act (Articles 66 and 67), sabotage (Article 68), banditry (Article 77), premeditated murder under aggravating circumstances specified in Art. 102 and paragraph “c” of Art. 240, and in wartime or in a combat situation - and for other especially serious crimes in cases specifically provided for by the legislation of the USSR.

Pay or lose...

The successful career of Borodkina (maiden name - Korol), who did not even have a complete secondary education, in Gelendzhik public catering began in 1951 as a waitress, then she successively occupied the positions of barmaid and canteen manager, and in 1974 her meteoric rise to the nomenklatura took place. post of head of the trust of restaurants and canteens. Such an appointment could not have taken place without the participation of the first secretary of the city committee of the CPSU Nikolai Pogodin; his preference for a candidate without special education was not openly questioned by anyone in the city committee, and the hidden motives for choosing the party leader became known eight years later. “During the specified period [from 1974 to 1982], being an official in a responsible position,” the indictment in the Borodkina case says, “she repeatedly personally and through intermediaries in her apartment and at her place of work received bribes from a large group of subordinates to her at work. From the bribes she received, Borodkina herself transferred bribes to responsible employees of the city of Gelendzhik for assistance and support in their work... Thus, over the past two years, 15,000 rubles worth of valuables, money and products were transferred to the secretary of the city party committee Pogodin.” The last amount in the 1980s was approximately the cost of three Zhiguli cars. The investigation materials contain a graphic diagram of the corruption relationships of the director of the trust, compiled by employees of the USSR Chief Prosecutor's Office. It resembles a thick web with Borodkina in the center, to which numerous threads stretch from the restaurants “Gelendzhik”, “Caucasus”, “Yuzhny”, “Platan”, “Yachta”, canteens and cafes, pancake houses, barbecue and food stalls, and from her They disperse to the city committee of the CPSU and the city executive committee, the BKhSS department of the city police department (combating the theft of socialist property), to the regional trust and further to the Glavkurorttorg of the Ministry of Trade of the RSFSR. Gelendzhik catering workers - directors and managers, bartenders and bartenders, cashiers and waiters, cooks and forwarders, cloakroom attendants and doormen - were all subject to "tribute", everyone knew how much money he had to transfer along the chain, as well as what awaited him in case of refusal – loss of the “grain” position.

Stolen degrees.

During her time working in various areas of public catering, Borodkina perfectly mastered the techniques of deceiving consumers in order to obtain “illegal” income, which were practiced in Soviet trade, and put them into practice in her department. It was common practice to dilute sour cream with water, and to color liquid tea or coffee with burnt sugar. But one of the most profitable frauds was the abundant addition of bread or cereal to minced meat, reducing the established standards of meat for preparing first and second courses. The head of the trust transferred the product “saved” in this way to the kebab shops for sale. In two years, according to Kalinichenko, Borodkina earned 80,000 rubles from this alone. Another source of illegal income was manipulation of alcohol. Here, too, she did not discover anything new: in restaurants, cafes, bars and buffets, the traditional “underfilling”, as well as “degree theft,” was widely used. For example, visitors to a drinking establishment simply did not notice a decrease in the strength of vodka due to dilution by two degrees, but it brought big profits to trade workers. But it was considered especially profitable to mix cheaper “starka” (rye vodka infused with apple or pear leaves) into expensive Armenian cognac. According to the investigator, even an examination could not establish that the cognac was diluted. Primitive counting was also common - both for individual visitors to restaurants, bars, buffets and cafes, and for large companies. Musician Georgy Mimikonov, who played in Gelendzhik restaurants in those years, told Moscow television journalists that during the holiday season, entire groups of shift workers from Siberia and the Arctic would fly here for the weekend to revel in the “zone of beautiful life,” as the musician put it. Such clients were billed for tens and hundreds of rubles.

Bertha, aka Iron Bella.

In those days, the Black Sea health resorts received more than 10 million vacationers a year, serving as a bonanza for the resort mafia. Borodkina had her own classification of people who came to Gelendzhik on vacation. Those who rented corners in the private sector, stood in line in cafes and canteens, and then left complaints about the quality of food in catering establishments in the book of complaints and suggestions, wrote about shortchanges and “under-filling”, she, according to her former colleagues, called rats . The City Committee's "roof" in the person of the first secretary, as well as inspectors of the OBHSS, made it invulnerable to the discontent of the mass consumer, whom Borodkina considered exclusively as a source of "leftist" income. Borodkina demonstrated a completely different attitude towards high-ranking party and government officials who came to Gelendzhik during the holiday season from Moscow and the Union republics, but even here she pursued primarily her own interests - the acquisition of future influential patrons. Borodkina did everything to make their stay on the Black Sea coast pleasant and memorable. Borodkina, as it turned out, not only provided the nomenklatura guests with scarce products for picnics in the mountains and sea excursions, and set tables laden with delicacies, but could, at their request, invite young women into the men's company. Her “hospitality” did not cost anything for the guests themselves and the region’s party treasury - Borodkina knew how to write off expenses. These qualities were appreciated in her by the first secretary of the Krasnodar regional committee of the CPSU Sergei Medunov. Among those who provided Borodkina with their patronage were even members of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, as well as the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Fyodor Kulakov. When Kulakov died, the family invited only two people from the Krasnodar region to his funeral - Medunov and Borodkina. For a long time, connections at the very top provided Borodkina with immunity from any revisions, so behind her back they called her “Iron Bella” in Gelendzhik (Borodkina did not like her own name, she preferred to be called Bella).

The case of the sale of pornographic products.

When Borodkina was arrested, she initially considered it an annoying misunderstanding and warned the operatives that they would not have to apologize today. There was still an element of chance in the fact that she was placed in the bullpen, note those who are well acquainted with the details of this long-standing story. The prosecutor's office received a statement from a local resident that in one of the cafes, pornographic films were secretly shown to selected guests. The organizers of the underground screenings - the director of the cafe, the production manager and the bartender - were caught red-handed and charged under Art. 228 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (production or sale of pornographic products, punishable by imprisonment for up to three years with confiscation of pornographic items and means of their production). During interrogations, catering workers testified that the demonstrations were secretly authorized by the director of the trust, and part of the proceeds was transferred to her. Thus, Borodkina herself was accused of complicity in this offense and receiving a bribe. A search was carried out in the house of "Iron Bella", the results of which unexpectedly went far beyond the scope of the "clandestine cinema" case. Borodkina’s home resembled museum storerooms, in which numerous precious jewelry, furs, crystal products, and sets of bed linen, which were then in short supply, were stored. In addition, Borodkina kept large sums of money at home, which investigators found in the most unexpected places - in water heating radiators and under carpets in rooms, rolled up cans in the basement, in bricks stored in the yard. The total amount seized during the search amounted to more than 500,000 rubles.

The mysterious disappearance of the first secretary of the city committee of the CPSU.

Borodkina refused to testify at the very first interrogation and continued to threaten the investigation with punishment for sweeping accusations against her and the arrest of a “respected leader in the region.” “She was sure that she was about to be released, but there was still no help.” "Iron Bella" never waited for her, and here's why. In the early 1980s, investigations began in the Krasnodar region into numerous criminal cases related to large-scale manifestations of bribery and theft, which received the general name of the Sochi-Krasnodar case. The owner of Kuban Medunov, a close friend of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev and the Secretary of the Central Committee Konstantin Chernenko, in every possible way interfered with the work of the Investigative Unit of the Prosecutor General's Office. However, in Moscow he found himself with a powerful opponent - KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov. And with his election as Secretary General in November 1982, the prosecutor’s office had a completely free hand. As a result of one of the most high-profile anti-corruption campaigns in the USSR, more than 5,000 party and Soviet leaders were dismissed from their posts and expelled from the ranks of the CPSU, about 1,500 people were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, and the Deputy Minister of Fisheries of the USSR, Vladimir Rytov, was convicted and executed. . Medunov was relieved of his post as first secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU and removed from the CPSU Central Committee with the wording: “For mistakes made in his work.” When the defendant was made to understand that she had no one to count on and that she could ease her fate only by a sincere admission of guilt, “Iron Bella” broke down and began to testify. Her criminal case took up 20 volumes, said former investigator Alexander Chernov; based on the testimony of the former director of the trust, another three dozen criminal cases were opened, in which 70 people were convicted. And the head of the Gelendzhik party organization, Pogodin, disappeared without a trace after Borodkina’s arrest. One evening he left the house, telling his wife that he needed to go to the city committee for a while, and did not return. The police of the Krasnodar region were sent to search for him, divers examined the waters of Gelendzhik Bay, but everything was in vain - he was never seen again, either alive or dead. There is a version that Pogodin left the country on one of the foreign ships stationed in Gelendzhik Bay, but factual evidence of this has not yet been found.

She knew too much.

During the investigation, Borodkina tried to feign schizophrenia. It was “very talented,” but the forensic examination recognized the game and the case was transferred to the regional court, which found Borodkina guilty of repeatedly accepting bribes totaling 561,834 rubles. 89 kopecks (Part 2 of Article 173 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR). According to Art. 93-1 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (theft of state property on an especially large scale) and Art. 156 part 2 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (consumer deception), she was acquitted “due to insufficient evidence of the defendant’s participation in the commission of the crime.” She was sentenced to an exceptional punishment - execution. The Supreme Court of the USSR left the verdict unchanged. The convict did not file a petition for pardon. Borodkina was let down by precisely what she was very proud of - meeting high-ranking people whose names she constantly trumped. In the current situation, former patrons were interested in keeping Iron Bell silent forever - she knew too much. She was not only disproportionately punished for her crimes, she was dealt with.

Antonina Makarova (Tonka the Machine Gunner) (1921–1979)

In fact, her name was Antonina Makarovna Parfenova, but at school the teacher mixed up her name when writing in the journal, so in school documents she was recorded as Antonina Makarova.

She volunteered for the front and worked as a nurse. During the defense of Moscow she was captured, from which she was able to escape. She wandered through the forest for several months until she reached the village of Krasny Kolodets in the company of soldier Fedchuk, with whom she managed to escape from captivity. Fedchuk had a family living in this village, so he left Makarova, who during their wanderings became his “camping wife.”

Now the girl came alone to the village of Lokot, occupied by the German invaders. Here she decided to get a job with the occupiers. In all likelihood, the girl wanted a full life after many months of wandering through the forests.

Antonina Makarova was given a machine gun. Now her job was to shoot Soviet partisans.

At the first execution, Makarova was a little confused, but they poured her vodka and things went well. At a local club, after a “hard day of work,” Makarova drank vodka and worked as a prostitute, pleasing German soldiers.

According to official data, she shot more than 1,500 people, and only the names of 168 of the fallen were restored. This woman did not disdain anything. She gladly took off the clothes she liked from those who were shot and sometimes complained that very large blood stains remained on the partisans’ things, which were then difficult to remove.

In 1945, Makarova used forged documents to pose as a nurse. She got a job in a mobile hospital, where she met the wounded Victor Ginzbur. The young people registered their relationship, and Makarova took her husband’s surname.

They were an exemplary family of honored people; they had two daughters. They lived in the city of Lepel and worked together in a garment factory.

The KGB began looking for Tonka the Machine Gunner immediately after the liberation of the village of Lokot from the Germans. For more than 30 years, investigators have been checking all women with the name Antonina Makarova to no avail.

Chance helped. One of Antonina's brothers filled out documents to travel abroad and indicated his sister's real name.

The collection of evidence began. Makarova was identified by several witnesses, and Tonka the Machine Gunner was arrested on her way home from work.

It should be noted that during the investigation Makarova behaved very calmly. She believed that a lot of time had passed and the sentence she would receive would not be very severe.

Her husband and children did not know about the true reason for the arrest and actively began to seek her release, however, when Viktor Ginzburg found out the truth, he left Lepel together.

On November 20, 1978, the court sentenced Antonina Makarova to death. She reacted very calmly to the sentence and immediately began submitting petitions for pardon, but they were all rejected.

Tamara Ivanyutina (?-1987)

In 1986, Ivanyutina got a job as a dishwasher at a school. On March 17 and 18, 1987, several school employees and students sought medical help. Four people died immediately, and another 9 were in intensive care in serious condition.

The investigation turned to Tamara Ivanyutina, who, during a search of her apartment, was found to have a toxic thalium-based solution.

Further investigation showed that since 1976, the Ivanyutin family actively used the waist to eliminate nasty acquaintances and, of course, for selfish purposes.

It turned out that Tamara Ivanyutina poisoned her first husband in order to take over his living space, and then remarried. In her second marriage, she already managed to send her father-in-law to the next world and slowly poisoned her husband so that he would not have the desire to cheat on her.

I would like to note that Tamara Ivanyutina’s sister and parents also poisoned many people. The investigation proved 40 poisonings, 13 of which resulted in the death of the victims.

Tamara Ivanyutina was sentenced to death, her sister Nina to 15 years in prison, her mother to 13, and her father to 10.

Berta Borodkina (1927–1983)

By a fateful coincidence, the honored trade worker Berta Naumovna Borodkina, who did not kill anyone, also fell into this mournful situation. She was sentenced to death for theft of socialist property on an especially large scale.

In the 80s, a confrontation broke out in the Kremlin between KGB Chairman Andropov and the Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Shchelokov. Andropov tried to spin cases of large thefts in order to discredit the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was in charge of the OBKhSS. At the same time, Andropov tried to neutralize the head of Kuban, Medunov, who at that time was considered the main contender for the post of General Secretary of the CPSU.

Berta Borodkina has headed a trust of restaurants and canteens in Gelendzhik since 1974. During her “reign” she received the nickname “Iron Bertha”. There is even a legend among the people; they say that Berta Naumovna developed her own special “Gelendzhik-style” meat, which was cooked in seven minutes and at the end had almost the same weight as in its raw form.

The scale of her theft was simply colossal. Every waiter, bartender and canteen manager in the city was obliged to give her a certain amount of money in order to continue working in their “bread job”. Sometimes the tribute turned out to be simply unaffordable, but Iron Bertha was adamant: either work as you should, or give way to another contender.

Borodkina was arrested in 1982. The investigation revealed that over the years of her leadership of the trust of restaurants and canteens, she stole more than 1,000,000 rubles from the state (at that time it was simply a fantastic amount).

In 1982, she was sentenced to death. Bertha’s sister says that in prison she was tortured and given psychotropic drugs, as a result of which Borodkina eventually lost her mind. There is no longer any left of the former Iron Bertha. From a blooming woman, she turned into a very old woman in a short time.

In August 1983, the sentence was carried out.

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Anna Timireva was the last love of the famous Admiral Kolchak, who accompanied him everywhere. Some believe that she was shot after the execution of the military commander, but in fact this is not so.

Anna Vasilievna Timireva lived a long, but very difficult and tragic life. She was not executed because no crime was found. However, she spent the latter years in exile and arrests, which totaled 30 years.

Payback for love

As a young girl, Anna Timireva met the famous Russian sailor Alexander Kolchak. He was 19 years older than her, but this did not become an obstacle to their intimacy. Anna was devoted to her lover until the end of her life, but never became his legal wife.

Timireva had to pay for her devotion and feelings for 30 long years.

After the execution of Kolchak, who was shot, Anna was released from arrest. However, a little later she was arrested again and sent to a camp in Omsk, where she served 2 years. After her release, the woman wanted to return to the place where her first husband lived. However, instead of approval, the authorities arrested her for another 1 year.

In 1922, Timireva was exiled again, a short respite after the exile was replaced by a new arrest for 3 years. Anna was mainly accused of having contacts with foreigners and enemies. After her next release, she managed to become the wife of engineer Kniper, whose last name she took. But this did not save her from further exile.

The fifth arrest and far-fetched accusation that Anna was hiding her past occurred in 1935. After the camps and exile, she worked whatever she had to, but for only a short time, she was persecuted again and again. Timireva's subsequent final arrests occurred during the war years. Anna was finally free only after the end of the war.

During the years of arrests and exiles, she lost her son, who was shot in 1938. Her husband Kniper died of a heart attack because he could not survive the persecution of his wife, whom he sincerely loved. Anna ended her ordeal in Yaroslavskaya, where she found work at the small Shcherbakov Drama Theater.

New times, but the same fears

The changed politics, the new ranks in power still looked incredulously at the former lover of the famous white admiral; she was for them a living reminder of his exploits and the era that was shot with him. She is arrested again on suspicion of propaganda against the Soviet state system. Anna Vasilyevna will leave exile only at the age of 60; she will return again to, where she was loved for her quiet disposition and impeccable upbringing. This woman managed to find a common language with ardent revolutionaries and women who were bargaining chips for the men of the new system.

According to Anna Timireva herself, she was not shot due to the lack of true accusations, since there were no facts of her participation in the political events of that time.

In 1960, Anna Timireva was rehabilitated. She was buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery.

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Tonka the Machine Gunner, as she was called then, worked on Soviet territory occupied by German troops from 1941 to 1943, carrying out mass death sentences of Nazis on partisan families.
Jerking the bolt of the machine gun, she did not think about those whom she was shooting - children, women, old people - it was just work for her. “What nonsense that you are then tormented by remorse. That those you kill come at night in nightmares. I still haven’t had a single dream,” she told her investigators during interrogations, when she was finally identified and detained - through 35 years after her last execution.
The criminal case of the Bryansk punisher Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg still rests in the depths of the FSB special storage facility. Access to it is strictly prohibited, and this is understandable, because there is nothing to be proud of here: in no other country in the world has a woman been born who personally killed one and a half thousand people.

Thirty-three years after the Victory, this woman’s name was Antonina Makarovna Ginzburg. She was a front-line soldier, a labor veteran, respected and revered in her town. Her family had all the benefits required by their status: an apartment, insignia for milestone dates, and scarce sausage in their food rations. Her husband was also a participant in the war, with orders and medals. The two adult daughters were proud of their mother.
They looked up to her, they took an example from her: what a heroic fate: to march throughout the war as a simple nurse from Moscow to Koenigsberg. School teachers invited Antonina Makarovna to speak at the line, to tell the younger generation that in the life of every person there is always a place for heroic deeds. And the most important thing in war is not to be afraid to look death in the face. And who, if not Antonina Makarovna, knew about this best...
She was arrested in the summer of 1978 in the Belarusian town of Lepel. A completely ordinary woman in a sand-colored raincoat with a string bag in her hands was walking down the street when a car stopped nearby and inconspicuous men in civilian clothes jumped out of it and said: “You urgently need to come with us!” surrounded her, not allowing her to escape.
"Can you guess why you were brought here?" - asked the investigator of the Bryansk KGB when she was brought in for the first interrogation. “Some kind of mistake,” the woman grinned in response.
“You are not Antonina Makarovna Ginzburg. You are Antonina Makarova, better known as Tonka the Muscovite or Tonka the Machine Gunner. You are a punitive woman, you worked for the Germans, carried out mass executions. Your atrocities in the village of Lokot, near Bryansk, are still being talked about legends. We have been looking for you for more than thirty years - now it is time to answer for what you have committed.
“So, it’s not in vain that last year my heart began to feel anxious, as if I felt that you would appear,” the woman said. “How long ago it was. It’s like it wasn’t with me at all. Almost my whole life has already passed. Well, write it down...”

Birth of a legend

From the interrogation protocol of Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg, June 1978:
“All those sentenced to death were the same for me. Only their number changed. Usually I was ordered to shoot a group of 27 people - that’s how many partisans the cell could accommodate. I shot about 500 meters from the prison near some pit. Those arrested were placed in a chain facing pit. One of the men rolled my machine gun to the execution site. At the command of my superiors, I knelt down and shot at the people until everyone fell dead..."
“Lead into nettles” - in Tony’s jargon this meant leading to execution. She herself died three times. The first time was in the fall of 1941, in the terrible “Vyazma cauldron,” as a young girl-medicine instructor. Hitler's troops were then advancing on Moscow as part of Operation Typhoon. Soviet commanders abandoned their armies to death, and this was not considered a crime - war has a different morality. More than a million Soviet boys and girls died in that Vyazemsk meat grinder in just six days, five hundred thousand were captured. The death of ordinary soldiers at that moment did not solve anything and did not bring victory closer, it was simply meaningless. Just like a nurse helping the dead...
19-year-old nurse Tonya Makarova woke up after a battle in the forest. The air smelled of burnt flesh. An unfamiliar soldier lay nearby. “Hey, are you still safe? My name is Nikolai Fedchuk.” “And I’m Tonya,” she didn’t feel anything, didn’t hear, didn’t understand, as if her soul had been shell-shocked, and only a human shell was left, and inside there was emptiness. She reached out to him, trembling: “Mom, it’s so cold!” “Well, beautiful, don’t cry. We’ll get out together,” Nikolai answered and unbuttoned the top button of her tunic.
For three months, until the first snow, they wandered together through the thickets, getting out of the encirclement, not knowing either the direction of movement, or their final goal, or where their friends were, or where their enemies were. They were starving, breaking stolen slices of bread for two. During the day they shied away from military convoys, and at night they kept each other warm. Tonya washed both of their foot wraps in cold water and prepared a simple dinner. Did she love Nikolai? Rather, she drove out, burned out with a hot iron, fear and cold from within.
“I’m almost a Muscovite,” Tonya proudly lied to Nikolai. “There are many children in our family. And we are all Parfenovs. I’m the eldest, like Gorky, I came out into the world early. I grew up like a beech, taciturn. Once I came to a village school, to the first grade, and I forgot my last name. The teacher asks: “What is your name, girl?” And I know that it’s Parfenova, but I’m afraid to say. The kids from the back desk shout: “Yes, she’s Makarova, her father is Makar.” one in all the documents and wrote it down. After school I left for Moscow, then the war began. I had a different dream - I wanted to shoot a machine gun like Anka the machine gunner from Chapaev. “When we get to our people, let’s ask for a machine gun...”
In January 1942, dirty and ragged, Tonya and Nikolai finally came to the village of Krasny Kolodets. And then they had to part forever. “You know, my home village is nearby. I’m there now, I have a wife and children,” Nikolai told her goodbye. “I couldn’t confess to you before, forgive me. Thank you for the company. Then you’ll get out on your own somehow.” “Don’t leave me, Kolya,” Tonya begged, hanging on him. However, Nikolai shook it off like ash from a cigarette and left.
For several days, Tonya wandered around the huts, rejoiced in Christ, and asked to stay. The compassionate housewives let her in at first, but after a few days they invariably refused the shelter, explaining that they themselves had nothing to eat. “She has a bad look in her eyes,” the women said. “She pesters our men, who is not at the front, climbs into the attic with them, asks them to warm her up.”
It is possible that Tonya really lost her mind at that moment. Perhaps Nikolai’s betrayal finished her off, or she simply ran out of strength - one way or another, she only had physical needs: she wanted to eat, drink, wash with soap in a hot bath and sleep with someone, just so as not to be left alone in the cold darkness. She didn't want to be a heroine, she just wanted to survive. At any cost. And she succeeded.
In the village where Tonya stopped at the beginning, there were no policemen. Almost all its inhabitants joined the partisans. In the neighboring village, on the contrary, only punitive forces were registered. The front line here ran in the middle of the outskirts. One day she wandered around the outskirts, half-mad, lost, not knowing where, how and with whom she would spend that night. People in uniform stopped her and asked in Russian: “Who is she?” “I’m Antonina, Makarova. From Moscow,” the girl answered.
She was brought to the administration of the village of Lokot. The policemen complimented her, then took turns “loving” her. Then they gave her a whole glass of moonshine to drink, after which they put a machine gun in her hands. As she dreamed of - to disperse the emptiness inside with a continuous machine-gun line. For living people.
“Makarova-Ginzburg said during interrogations that the first time she was taken out to be shot by the partisans completely drunk, she did not understand what she was doing,” recalls the investigator on her case, Leonid Savoskin. “But they paid me well - 30 marks, and offered cooperation on an ongoing basis. After all, none of the Russian policemen wanted to get dirty; they preferred that the executions of the partisans and members of their families be carried out by a woman. Homeless and lonely, Antonina was given a bed in a room at a local stud farm, where she could spend the night and store a machine gun. In the morning, she voluntarily went to work.
“I didn’t know those I was shooting. They didn’t know me. That’s why I wasn’t ashamed in front of them. Sometimes, I’d shoot, come closer, and someone would still twitch. Then I’d shoot again in the head so that the person wouldn’t suffer. Sometimes several the prisoners had a piece of plywood hung on their chests with the inscription “partisans.” Some of them sang something before their death. After the executions, I cleaned the machine gun in the guardhouse or in the yard. There was plenty of cartridges..."
Tony's former landlady from Krasny Kolodets, one of those who once also kicked her out of her house, came to the village of Elbow for salt. She was detained by police and taken to a local prison, citing connections with the partisans. “I’m not a partisan. Just ask your Tonka the machine gunner,” the woman was frightened. Tonya looked at her carefully and chuckled: “Come on, I’ll give you salt.”
There was order in the tiny room where Antonina lived. There was a machine gun, glistening with machine oil. Nearby, on a chair, clothes were folded in a neat pile: elegant dresses, skirts, white blouses with ricocheting holes in the back. And a washing trough on the floor.
“If I like things from the condemned, then I take them off the dead, why should I waste them,” explained Tonya. “Once I shot a teacher, I liked her blouse, pink, silk, but it was too covered in blood, I was afraid that I didn’t wash it - I had to leave it in the grave. It’s a pity... So how much salt do you need?”
“I don’t need anything from you,” the woman backed towards the door. “Fear God, Tonya, he’s there, he sees everything - there’s so much blood on you, you can’t wash it off!” “Well, since you’re brave, why did you ask me for help when they were taking you to prison?” Antonina shouted after him. “You would have died like a hero! So, when you need to save your skin, then Tonka’s friendship is good?” .
In the evenings, Antonina dressed up and went to a German club to dance. Other girls who worked as prostitutes for the Germans were not friends with her. Tonya turned up her nose, boasting that she was a Muscovite. She also did not open up with her roommate, the typist for the village elder, and she was afraid of her for some kind of spoiled look and for the wrinkle that appeared early on her forehead, as if Tonya was thinking too much.
At the dances, Tonya got drunk and changed partners like gloves, laughed, clinked glasses, and shot cigarettes from the officers. And she didn’t think about those next 27 whom she had to execute in the morning. It’s scary to kill only the first, the second, then, when the count goes into hundreds, it just becomes hard work.
Before dawn, when the groans of the partisans sentenced to execution died down after torture, Tonya quietly crawled out of her bed and spent hours wandering around the former stable, hastily converted into a prison, peering into the faces of those whom she was to kill.
From the interrogation of Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg, June 1978:
“It seemed to me that the war would write off everything. I was simply doing my job, for which I was paid. I had to shoot not only partisans, but also members of their families, women, teenagers. I tried not to remember this. Although I remember the circumstances of one execution - before By shooting, a guy sentenced to death shouted to me: “We won’t see you again, goodbye, sister!”
She was incredibly lucky. In the summer of 1943, when the battles for the liberation of the Bryansk region began, Tony and several local prostitutes were diagnosed with venereal disease. The Germans ordered them to be treated, sending them to a hospital in their distant rear. When Soviet troops entered the village of Lokot, sending traitors to the Motherland and former policemen to the gallows, only terrible legends remained from the atrocities of Tonka the Machine Gunner.
Among the material things - hastily sprinkled bones in mass graves in an unmarked field, where, according to the most conservative estimates, the remains of one and a half thousand people rested. It was possible to restore the passport data of only about two hundred people shot by Tonya. The death of these people formed the basis for the in absentia prosecution of Antonina Makarovna Makarova, born in 1921, presumably a resident of Moscow. They didn't know anything else about her...

Retribution

“Our employees conducted the search for Antonina Makarova for more than thirty years, passing it on to each other by inheritance,” said KGB Major Pyotr Nikolaevich Golovachev, who was involved in the search for Antonina Makarova in the 70s. “Periodically it ended up in the archive, then when we caught and interrogated another traitor to the Motherland, it again surfaced. Couldn’t Tonka have disappeared without a trace?! Now we can blame the authorities for incompetence and illiteracy. But during the post-war years, the KGB officers secretly and carefully checked all the women of the Soviet Union. who bore this name, patronymic and surname and who were suitable in age - there were about 250 such Tonka Makarovs in the USSR. But it’s useless. The real Tonka the machine gunner disappeared into thin air..."
“Don’t scold Tonka too much,” said Golovachev. “You know, I even feel sorry for her. It’s all the damned war’s fault, it broke her... She had no choice - she could have remained human and then she herself would have been one of the shot. But she chose to live, becoming an executioner. But she was only 20 years old in 1941.”

But it was impossible to just take it and forget about it. “Her crimes were too terrible,” says Golovachev. “It was simply impossible to comprehend how many lives she took. Several people managed to escape, they were the main witnesses in the case. And so, when we interrogated them, they said that Tonka still comes to them in their dreams, young, with a machine gun, looking intently - and does not take her eyes off. They were convinced that the executioner girl was alive, and they asked that they find her in order to stop these nightmares. could have gotten married a long time ago and changed her passport, so we thoroughly studied the life path of all her possible relatives named Makarov..."
However, none of the investigators realized that they had to start looking for Antonina not from the Makarovs, but from the Parfenovs. Yes, it was the accidental mistake of the village teacher Tony in the first grade, who wrote down her patronymic as a surname, that allowed the “machine gunner” to elude retribution for so many years. Her real relatives, of course, never fell into the circle of interests of the investigation in this case.
But in 1976, one of the Moscow officials named Parfenov was going abroad. When filling out the application form for a foreign passport, he honestly listed the names and surnames of his siblings; the family was large, as many as five children. All of them were Parfenovs, and for some reason only one was Antonina Makarovna Makarov, married to Ginzburg in 1945, now living in Belarus. The man was summoned to the OVIR for additional explanations. Naturally, people from the KGB in civilian clothes were also present at the fateful meeting.
“We were terribly afraid to jeopardize the reputation of a woman respected by everyone, a front-line soldier, a wonderful mother and wife,” recalls Golovachev. “Therefore, our employees went to the Belarusian Lepel secretly, watched Antonina Ginzburg for a whole year, brought there one by one the surviving witnesses, the former punisher, one of her lovers, for identification. Only when everyone said the same thing - it was she, Tonka the Machine Gunner, we recognized her by a noticeable crease on her forehead - doubts disappeared."
Antonina's husband, Victor Ginzburg, a war and labor veteran, promised to complain to the UN after her unexpected arrest. “We didn’t admit to him what they were accusing the one with whom he had lived a happy life. We were afraid that the man simply wouldn’t survive this,” the investigators said.
Victor Ginzburg bombarded various organizations with complaints, assuring that he loved his wife very much, and even if she had committed some crime - for example, embezzlement - he would forgive her everything. He also talked about how, as a wounded boy in April 1945, he was lying in a hospital near Koenigsberg, and suddenly she, a new nurse, Tonechka, entered the room. Innocent, pure, as if she had not been at war - and he fell in love with her at first sight, and a few days later they married.
Antonina took her husband’s surname, and after demobilization she went with him to the Belarusian Lepel, forgotten by God and people, and not to Moscow, from where she was once called to the front. When the old man was told the truth, he turned gray overnight. And I didn’t write any more complaints.
“The woman who was arrested did not give a single line to her husband from the pre-trial detention center. And, by the way, she also did not write anything to her two daughters, whom she gave birth to after the war, and did not ask to see him,” says investigator Leonid Savoskin. “When we managed to find contact with our accused, she started talking about tell everyone about how she escaped from a German hospital and ended up in our surroundings, straightened out someone else’s veteran’s documents, according to which she began to live, but this was the most terrible thing. Why was she imprisoned, what was SUCH a terrible thing she did? It was as if there was some kind of block in her head from the war, so that she herself would probably not go crazy. She remembered everything, every execution, but did not regret anything. She seemed to me to be a very cruel woman. I don’t know what she was like in her youth. And what made her commit these crimes? The horrors of the war? In any case, this does not justify her. and your own family. She simply destroyed them with her exposure. A mental examination showed that Antonina Makarovna Makarova is sane."
The investigators were very afraid of any excesses on the part of the accused: before there were cases when former policemen, healthy men, remembering past crimes, committed suicide right in the cell. The aged Tonya did not suffer from attacks of remorse. “It’s impossible to be constantly afraid,” she said. “For the first ten years I waited for a knock on the door, and then I calmed down. There are no such sins that a person will be tormented all his life.”
During the investigative experiment, she was taken to Lokot, to the very field where she carried out the executions. The villagers spat after her like a revived ghost, and Antonina only looked sideways at them in bewilderment, scrupulously explaining how, where, whom and with what she killed... For her it was the distant past, another life.
“They disgraced me in my old age,” she complained in the evenings, sitting in her cell, to her jailers. “Now after the verdict I’ll have to leave Lepel, otherwise every fool will point a finger at me. I think they’ll give me three years’ probation. For what?” more? Then you need to somehow arrange your life again. How much is your salary in the pre-trial detention center, girls? Maybe I should get a job with you - it’s a familiar job..."
Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg was shot at six o'clock in the morning on August 11, 1978, almost immediately after the death sentence was pronounced. The court's decision came as a complete surprise even to the people who led the investigation, not to mention the defendant herself. All requests for clemency from 55-year-old Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg in Moscow were rejected.
In the Soviet Union, this was the last major case of traitors to the Motherland during the Great Patriotic War, and the only one in which a female punisher appeared.
After Tonka, two more women were executed: Berta Borodkina in 1983 for speculation on an especially large scale and Tamara Ivanyutina in 1987 for poisoning 9 people.

Probably, Antonina herself was also interested in looking at an execution at least once in her life through the eyes of the victim, and not the executioner...