About Anatoly Ivanovich Utkin. Anatoliy Ivanovich Utkin (Anatolij Ivanovich Utkin) Utkin historian

On the night of Epiphany, January 19, two weeks before turning 66, the famous Russian historian and political scientist Anatoly Ivanovich Utkin suddenly died.

Professor, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Director of the Center for International Studies at the Institute of the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he was born on February 4, 1944 in the city of Balakovo, Saratov region. The fate of every person is written in heaven: Anatoly Utkin owes his birth, his whole life, stretched like a bowstring, until the last minute, to his parents who went through the crucible of the Battle of Stalingrad. Father is a captain, mother is a radio operator in this greatest battle of World War II.

In childhood, few people had the happiness of seeing their parents alive, with military awards on their faded tunics. Anatoly was lucky. From his parents, who defeated the most powerful army in the world, he inhaled the breath of Victory.

For this reason alone, a meager childhood, in which there was a lack of almost everything - food, clothing, square meters - was wonderful. A tangerine in a modest gift on a New Year's tree - bright orange, lavishing the smells of unknown paradise - was perceived as a miracle from an outlandish fairy tale. Summer trips for berries, autumn trips for mushrooms, a winter skating rink, sports clubs, clubs for every taste at school or in the House of Pioneers, a library, a pioneer camp - could you ask for more in the early 1950s?

“At school, all subjects were easy for him,” recalls Anatoly Ivanovich’s wife Valentina Gavrilovna Fedotova, a scientist-philosopher, with whom he lived happily for 43 years. “Mathematics, physics, and literature. But his calling was determined early - at the age of 6 already asked my grandmother to read history books to him. How did we meet? He came up to me in the Moscow State University dormitory and asked who I was, where I was from. And I was already a graduate student in the Faculty of Philosophy, “Well, historians collect facts without having anything in common. ideas about the picture of the world,” she said in defiance. “If one of the historians had told me what was happening in the world in 1211, then...” And he immediately began to tell. “And in 1256?” And again - a detailed story. This completely amazed me life".

I met Anatoly Utkin in July 1967, at a military training camp at Moscow University. A company of humanities faculties - philologists, historians, economists, journalists - spent a month near Tver (then Kalinin) in military training, daily duties, and outfits. I remember him well then - lean, agile, hardy. It was immediately clear that he devoted himself to everything with passion and utmost dedication - be it in the classroom, drill training or football. Easily ready to laugh with his infectious tenor, he radiated friendliness and helpfulness. He argued temperamentally, heatedly, but always remained within the bounds of decency.

From the university company of that year, Ruslan Grinberg, director of the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vitaly Gan, an international journalist who worked for TASS and Pravda, gained fame...

The very next year after graduating from university, from which Anatoly Ivanovich graduated with honors, we met at the entrance exams to graduate school at the newly created Institute of the USA and Canada of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Three years flew by in a flash. One Shakespearean biographer said of The Swan of Avon: “It would be surprising if such a fine wine had not fermented in its youth.” These words can be fully attributed to Anatoly Utkin. He loved life in all its manifestations - feasts, beautiful women, the heated course of long night conversations, songs with a guitar. His favorite song was:

Everything in this raging world is ghostly.

There is only a moment - hold on to it.

There is only a moment between the past and the future.

This is what is called life.

He sang it well, cleanly, in a high tenor. His hearing was excellent.

And he also loved the silence of the library halls, which he devoted himself to for years...

Anatoly Utkin quickly grew into one of the leading specialists of the institute. Having published his first book at the age of 25, he managed to write about 50 monographs until the end of his life - that is, on average, more than a book per year. And all this - in addition to chapters in collective works, more than 150 articles in leading journals and periodicals in several languages, analytical works, reviews, reference publications.

This reminded me of the ancient Greek writer Callimachus, who wrote many books and was nicknamed “the copper-womb” for his perseverance. Utka's biography of Thomas Jefferson was recognized in the United States as the best biography of this American president in a foreign language. Then there was a biography of Winston Churchill, awarded the same title, but in Britain. Then there were biographies of F.D. Roosevelt and W. Wilson. In 1972 he defended his candidate's dissertation, in 1982 - his doctorate. A great worker, he simply did not know how to rest.

Later he grew a mustache - and immediately became like the Russian infantrymen of 1945 who liberated Europe from the Nazis. To his front-line father.

Anatoly Ivanovich’s brilliant abilities, selfless service to science, and selfless diligence over the years have earned him fame as the most authoritative expert on US foreign policy, in the field of international relations, and on the history of the Cold War. In 1997, he became director of the Center for International Studies at the Institute of the USA and Canada, then adviser to the State Duma Committee on International Affairs.

He taught at the Bosphorus Institute (Istanbul), at Ecole Normale Superior (Paris), at Columbia University (New York). Colleagues called him a historian and thinker on the scale of Spengler and Toynbee.

Anatoly Ivanovich Utkin outgrew the scope of a professional “Americanist” and became a truly Russian historian with a wide range of scientific interests. This was a qualitative and - I'm not afraid of this word - great transformation of his personality as a person and a scientist.

But it would be superficial to consider him anti-Western only on the basis that in recent years he has increasingly acted as a defender of Russian national interests, Russian history, and the eternal traditions of Russian civilization. Yes, he loved his subject of study - the USA. But as a historian serving the truth, as a Russian patriot, he could not come to terms with the Western desire to present Russia as the personification of “world evil.” With disdain for Russia, with a look down on it, with a desire to teach it “democracy”. Namely, such approaches have become a rule of good manners in the West after the “US victory in the Cold War.” In the same way, he rebelled against the approaches of our home-grown liberals to national history, giving them a harsh but fair rebuke.

The son of Stalingrad veterans simply could not do otherwise.

Death tore Anatoly Ivanovich out of life on takeoff. He did not prepare to leave - and in the hospital room he worked with a laptop, preparing new materials.

What a brave fighter we lost on the march!

Victor Linnik

editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Slovo"

From the book by A.I. Utkin “Russian Wars.
Century XX"*( *An excerpt from A.I. Utkin’s book is published with the permission of his widow V.G. Fedotova.)

... We still have, firstly, our character. Special Russian character. Among his features is dominated stoicism, unconditional readiness to endure everything - provided that the meaning of the sacrifices is known, for which one should pay with sweat and blood, for what purpose the Russian people should make sacrifices. Stoicism is a grandiose mutual reserve of general trust of the inclined believe into itself a people ready for meaningful sacrifice.

Another trait of our character is looseness. Russia is a country of everyday freedom, not enslaved by petty-bourgeois norms. In Russia the pressure of bourgeois conventions is insignificant. We quote the classic: “When you compare a Russian person with a Western person, you are struck by his indeterminism, inexpediency, lack of boundaries, openness to infinity, dreaminess. This can be seen in every hero of Chekhov’s story. Western man is nailed to a certain place and profession, has a hardened formation of the soul.” .

Next is patience.. The life of Russians is based on suffering, that is, during a period of intense physical effort. The word "suffering" will be translated into all languages ​​as suffering. This means that Russians see suffering as the basis of their lives. When a Russian dies, they talk about him suffered, that is, he ended his suffering. Life as a pleasure is uncharacteristic (if not unknown) to Russians. The patience of Archpriest Avvakum and Semyon Dezhnev is simply limitless. Russia can tolerate many things, but not humiliation.

Discretion of efforts. The Russian historian V.O. Klyuchevsky defined this condition in this way: “No people in Europe are capable of such an extreme degree of activity over a short period of time as the Russians; but perhaps no one else in Europe demonstrates such an incapacity for constant, measured, unceasing work." So, on the one hand, there is an almost supernatural impulse to work, on the other hand, a great, almost unbreakable passivity - in the event that the Russian does not see an unconditional necessity or a great goal.

Freedom. The people who joined the Cossacks in the South and East chose freedom in a more radical way than the fighters for constitutions in the West. The poet O.E. Mandelstam put it this way: Russia is characterized by “moral freedom, freedom of choice. Never in the West has it been realized in such greatness, in such purity and completeness. Moral freedom is a gift of the Russian land, the best flower grown by it... She equal to everything that the West has created in the field of material culture."

Compassion. In order not to fall into bias, we will call on foreigners. Contemporary leading British Russologist Hosking: “Although the Russians are a brave people and remarkably courageous in war, they are the most peaceful and non-warlike nation in the world... The public temperament is characterized by both insensitivity and kindness. Insensitivity to their own suffering and sympathy for the suffering of others. Everyone who is able to see will discover in Russia the traits of warmth and simplicity. Responsiveness - this gift of nature, this ineradicable wealth of life - is Russia's best attractive feature." The French writer A. Gide admitted that “nowhere are relationships with people established with such ease, ease, depth and sincerity as in the USSR. Sometimes one glance is enough for warm mutual sympathy to arise. Yes, I don’t think that anywhere Apart from the USSR, one can experience a sense of human community of such depth and strength.”

Lack of arrogance. Lord Curzon, having traveled across a vast country, remarked at the beginning of the twentieth century: “The Russian fraternizes in the full sense of the word. He is completely free from that deliberate air of superiority and gloomy arrogance, which is more reminiscent of malice than cruelty itself. He does not shy away from social and family intercourse with alien and inferior races. His invincible carelessness makes it easy for him to take a position of non-interference in other people's affairs, and the tolerance with which he views the religious rites, social customs and local prejudices of his Asiatic fellows is less the result of diplomatic calculation than the result of diplomatic calculation; the fruit of carelessness." This is what Dostoevsky, flattering for Russians, called in 1880 “universal responsiveness,” something that helps them quite easily come into contact with others - in marriage, friendship, alliance: “To become a real Russian means to become the brother of all people; an all-man... For a true Russian, Europe and the destiny of the entire great Aryan tribe are as dear as Russia itself, as is the destiny of our native land, because our destiny is universality, and not acquired by the sword, but by the power of brotherhood.”

Egalitarianism. The rich are traditionally a source of hostility in Rus'. No one in modern Russia (like hundreds of years ago) doesn't admire successful people. In Russia, it is fundamentally impossible to admire the home-grown Vanderbilt, Rockefeller or Bill Gates. Flaunting your wealth is shameful. Defiant, flashy wealth caused public rejection and, as is invariably declared in today’s Russia, the desire to “let the rooster go,” to burn to the ground a house outstanding for its size and decoration. It is impossible not to take into account this national trait (characteristic, by the way, of many other peoples, the Japanese, for example). The flat, steppe character of our country, says geographer and philosopher E.N. Trubetskoy, “has left its mark on our history. In the nature of our plain there is some kind of hatred for everything that rises too much above its surroundings.”

Patriotism, unimaginable in depth. “Love for the Fatherland, or patriotism,” wrote the genius of our science D.I. Mendeleev, “is one of the most sublime differences in our social condition.” I. Ilyin called: “Whoever wants to be a “brother” of other peoples must first become and be himself - creatively, original, independently grow his spirit, strengthen and nurture his instinct their national self-preservation, in your own way, work, build, rule and pray. A real Russian is, first of all, Russian, and only to the extent of his content, quality, substantial Russianness can he turn out to be a “supranational” and “brotherly” minded “all-man”... The nationally faceless “all-man” and “all-people” cannot say anything to others people and peoples." Speaking about patriotism, Pushkin objected to the skeptic Chaadaev: "The war of Oleg and Svyatoslav and even feuds - isn't this the life full of seething fermentation and ardent and aimless activity that characterized the youth of all peoples? The Tatar invasion is a sad and great spectacle. The awakening of Russia, the development of its power, its movement towards unity... both Ivans, the greatest drama that began in Uglich and ended in the Ipatiev Monastery - how, is this really not history, but a pale, half-forgotten dream! And Peter the Great, who alone is the whole world history? And Catherine the Second, who put Russia on the threshold of Europe? And Alexander, who brought you to Paris? I swear on my honor that for nothing in the world I would not want to change my fatherland or have a different history than the history of our ancestors, as God gave it to us.”

Relying on such a national character, one can hope that the first truly national leader, who with pain for the fatherland will point to a rationally designated path of national salvation and elevation, can safely count on the sacrificial response of one and a half million Russians, on tens of millions of Russians outside the Russian Federation , on people of the Russian ethnopsychological code and culture.

Biography

Anatoly Ivanovich Utkin is a Soviet and Russian historian and political scientist, a specialist in international relations, a recognized expert on US foreign policy, and advisor to the State Duma Committee on International Affairs. A special area of ​​scientific interest is regional policy in the United States, in particular in Europe; history of the Cold War.

In 1968 he graduated from the Faculty of History of Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov. In 1972 he defended his candidate's dissertation, and in 1982 - his doctorate. Worked at the Institute of the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1994, he has been a professor at the IPPC at Moscow State University, then, since 1997, he has been director of the Center for International Studies at the Institute of the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Author of about 50 monographs, chapters in collective works, published more than 150 articles in leading journals and periodicals in several languages, as well as analytical works, reviews, and reference publications. He taught at the Bosphorus Institute (Istanbul, 1991-93), at Ecole Normale Superior (Paris, 1993-94), at Columbia University (New York, 1998).

The widow of A.I. Utkina is Doctor of Philosophy, Professor Valentina Gavrilovna Fedotova.

Main works

Sevostyanov G.N., Utkin A.I. Thomas Jefferson.. - M.: Mysl, 1976. - 392 p. - 45,000 copies. (in translation)
Utkin A.I. Woodrow Wilson's diplomacy.. - M.: International relations, 1989. - 320 p. - (From the history of diplomacy). - 60,000 copies. - ISBN 5-7133-0070-6 (translated)
Utkin A.I. Second World War. - M.: Algorithm, 2002. - 864 p.
Utkin A.I. The First World War. - M.: Algorithm, 2001. - 592 p.
Utkin A.I. Forgotten tragedy. Russia in the First World War. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. - 640 p.
Utkin A.I. At the beginning of all misfortunes. Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905. Moscow, EKSMO, 2005.
Utkin A.I. Road to Victory. Smolensk, Rusich, 2004.
Utkin A.I. World Cold War. - M.: EKSMO, 2005.
Utkin A.I. Revenge for victory is a new war. Moscow: Algorithm, 2005.
Utkin A.I. Big Eight: the price of entry. - M.: Algorithm, 2006.
Utkin A.I. Wrath of the American Gods. Moscow: Algorithm, 2006.
Utkin A.I. New world order. Moscow, EKSMO, 2006.
Utkin A.I. Russians in World War II. Moscow, Algorithm, 2007.
Utkin A.I. The truth about Iraq or the Battle in Mesopotamia. - M.: OLMA-press, 2007.
Utkin A.I. The rise and fall of the West. M., AST, 2008. - 761, p.
Utkin A.I. How to survive the economic crisis. Lessons from the Great Depression. Moscow: Eksmo, 2009.
Utkin A.I. Woodrow Wilson. M.: Cultural Revolution. 2010.
Utkin A.I. Diplomacy of Franklin Roosevelt. - Sverdlovsk: Ural University Publishing House, 1990. - 544 p.
Utkin A.I. The challenge of the West and Russia’s response. - M.: Eksmo, 2005. - 608 p.

Biography

Anatoly Ivanovich Utkin (February 4, 1944 - January 19, 2010) - historian, specialist in international relations, recognized expert on US foreign policy. A special area of ​​scientific interest is regional policy in the United States, in particular in Europe; history of the Cold War.

Born in Balakovo, Saratov region. In 1968 he graduated from the Faculty of History of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov. In 1972 he defended his candidate's dissertation, and in 1982 - his doctorate. Since 1994, he has been a professor at the IPPC at Moscow State University, then, since 1997, he has been director of the Center for International Studies at the Institute of the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

He taught at the Bosphorus Institute (Istanbul, 1991-93), at Ecole Normale Superior (Paris, 1993-94), at Columbia University (New York, 1998). Advisor to the International Affairs Committee of the State Duma.

Historian and political scientist Anatoly Utkin has passed away ()

On the night of January 19, the famous Soviet and Russian historian and political scientist, director of the Center for International Studies at the Institute of the United States and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences, adviser to the International Affairs Committee of the State Duma, specialist in the field of US regional policy and researcher of Cold War history, Anatoly Ivanovich Utkin, died.

Anatoly Ivanovich was born on February 4, 1944 in the city of Balakovo, Saratov region. Graduate of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov (1968), in 1972 he defended his candidate's thesis, and in 1982 - his doctorate. Worked at the Institute of the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The Russian scientist taught at the Bosphorus Institute (Istanbul, 1991-93), at Ecole Normale Superior (Paris, 1993-94), at Columbia University (New York, 1998). Since 1994, he has been a professor at the IPPC at Moscow State University, and since 1997, again at the Institute of the USA and Canada, director of the Center for International Studies.

Anatoly Ivanovich Utkin was a specialist in the field of international relations, a recognized expert on US foreign and regional policy, particularly in Europe, as well as an expert on the history of the Cold War; was an adviser to the State Duma Committee on International Affairs.

Professor Utkin is the author of several books, about 50 monographs, chapters in collective works; he has published more than 150 articles in leading journals and periodicals in several languages, as well as analytical works, reviews, and reference works.

“In reality, he was one of the pillars of our conservative political expertise, with a huge store of knowledge about the United States and beyond,” writes editor-in-chief of the Russian Observer Egor Kholmogorov about Anatoly Utkin. - In recent years, he was another of the bright anti-Russophobic authors who wrote about the political history of the Russian-Japanese, First and Second World Wars. His rather early death (only 66 years old) is a huge loss.”

“Russian Observer” brings its most sincere condolences to the scientist’s wife, Valentina Gavrilovna Fedotova.

“On this day, when the state is shaking...” (In memory of the famous historian Anatoly Ivanovich Utkin, http://narochnitskaia.ru/news/v-etot-den-kogda-tryaset-derzhavu.html)

The conference hall of the Center for Oriental Literature of the Russian State Library, in an old mansion on Mokhovaya, was overcrowded. In front of the portrait of the scientist are fresh flowers. Anatoly Ivanovich Utkin (1944-2010) is one of the most famous historians of our time. His specialty was US politics, and the authority of the researcher was so high that in America itself, Utkin’s books were literally swept off the shelves.

However, his interests were much broader than US history: international relations, relations with the West, wars - World War I, World War II, Russian-Japanese, Cold War...

The tuning fork of the meeting sounded the lines of the famous poem by Yuri Polikarpovich Kuznetsov:

In this age, when our life is upset,
You have grappled with many-faced evil,
You mastered hand-to-hand combat,
You fought with spirit and verse.

On this day when the state is shaking
The wrath of heaven, and weeping and howling are heard,
Your friends will rightfully call you
Veteran of the Third World War.

Without heeding the demons of defeat,
We'll drink a glass of grief,
Because World War III
It started before the First World War.

This poem was read by the director of the Bureau of Propaganda of Fiction of the Union of Writers of Russia Alla Vasilyevna Pankova. She led the evening, emphasizing in her brief opening remarks that everyone who happened to know Anatoly Ivanovich will forever retain in their memory the unforgettable image of a wonderful Russian person and historian, the Russian Americanist himself.

Together with A.V. The punk host of the evening was the widow of the scientist Valentina Gavrilovna Fedotova, Doctor of Philosophy, professor, head of the sector of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She emphasized that Anatoly Ivanovich was “among those few Americanists in Russia who not only maintained close ties with the US scientific community, but to some extent he was perceived by this community as its full member. Articles by A.I. Leading American scientific and political publications eagerly published Utkin’s talk about Russian-American relations.”

Anatoly Ivanovich’s brilliant abilities, selfless service to science, and selfless diligence over the years have earned him the fame of the most authoritative expert on the history and foreign policy of the United States, in the field of international relations. In 1997, he became director of the Center for International Studies at the Institute of the USA and Canada, then advisor to the State Duma Committee on International Affairs...

The scientist saw one of his main tasks in awakening interest in history. Therefore, in addition to purely scientific work, Anatoly Ivanovich was heavily involved in social and educational activities. He wrote not only scientific but also journalistic articles.

His legacy includes about 50 monographs, many scientific and expert works in the field of modern history, world politics and political science.

According to the speakers at this evening, a deep analysis of facts, a choice of current topics, an original formulation of problems, a lively language understandable to the common reader, combining accessibility with scientific correctness - all this distinguished the works of Anatoly Ivanovich, which are widely in demand today. Friends regret that Anatoly Utkin, having lived to only 65 years old, did not become an academician. He had everything for this - brilliant intellect, encyclopedic knowledge and genuine aristocracy.

Already the first book by A.I. Utkina’s biography of Thomas Jefferson not only became the focus of attention of both specialists and the reading public in our country, but was also highly appreciated in the United States. Here it was recognized as the best foreign biography of Jefferson.

At the end of his life, which ended so suddenly, A.I. Utkin wrote a number of works devoted to the global economic crisis. Their relevance is recognized not only in Russia, but also in the West. Anatoly Ivanovich knew perfectly well the history of the global crisis of 1929 - early 1930s, so in these studies he was able to find surprisingly accurate analogies and point out possible ways to solve the problems of modern society.

The experience of the Great Depression of 1929-1933 is more relevant today than ever. The lessons of the enormous economic disaster of 80 years ago deserve the closest attention, especially since the recipes for overcoming the crisis are universal at all times.

How can we avoid repeating that terrible tragedy? After all, the first Great Depression led not only to colossal financial losses, mass ruin, unemployment, but also to millions of human casualties... In his book “How to Survive a Crisis. Lessons from the Great Depression” by A.I. Utkin convincingly argues that in order to end the Great Depression, in addition to the decisive anti-crisis measures of the Roosevelt government, it also took the Second World War.

Will the worsening economic situation today lead to a global armed conflict? The temptation to solve your own problems and get out of the financial hole at the expense of others is too great...

Yes, this book by a scientist is devoted to the most pressing topic. Frightening conclusions and alarming forecasts! An in-depth analysis of the past and lessons for the future...

This was the reason for the choice of the theme of the memorial evening “Anatoly Utkin: Lessons of the Great Depression,” which was organized by the Russian State Library, the Historical Perspective Foundation and the Bureau of Propaganda of Fiction of the Union of Writers of Russia.

Anatoly Ivanovich knew how to instill in the authorities respect for history and his creativity. V.V. liked one of his books. Putin, after which Utkin was in demand on television as a consultant for documentaries and a commentator on current events in numerous talk shows. He willingly appeared on TV, where he was often invited as a person who knew how to behave well in front of the camera and speak in an interesting and understandable way for the audience.

Anatoly Utkin commented on the history of his country and international politics from the point of view of a Russian historian and analyst - a rather rare thing on the current Russian television screen.

The evening program included videos prepared by Irina Pankova with excerpts from speeches by A.I. Utkin in the programs of the Rossiya channel “National Interest”, as well as recordings of his conversations at the Historical Perspective Foundation with the President of the FIP, Doctor of Historical Sciences Natalia Alekseevna Narochnitskaya.

The evening was attended by members of the scientific community, writers, publishers, social and political figures, cultural figures, relatives and friends of Anatoly Ivanovich.

“At first he researched facts, found topics, posed problems, and then rose to the level of comprehension and analysis of processes,” as in one of the videos, Doctor of Historical Sciences N.A. Narochnitskaya characterized the scientific activity of A.I. Utkin, his method of work, which could serve as a model for every scientist. What was also noteworthy, in her opinion, was the attitude towards the country of study. Typically, regional studies scholars are divided into two categories: some begin to admire the country they are studying so much that they fall into national self-deprecation and are condescending towards their own. Others, on the contrary, strive to find only the bad and negative in the country they are studying. A.I. Utkin managed to refrain from these extremes.

“Anatoly Ivanovich Utkin,” says Natalia Alekseevna, “was that fundamental Americanist who, while maintaining a critical attitude towards US policy towards Russia in recent decades, never stooped to hate the United States and the American people. He loved and understood America, but in this love there was no servile admiration, so characteristic of some of our liberals.”

As a historian serving the truth, as a Russian patriot, he could not come to terms with the Western intention to present Russia as the personification of “world evil”, with disdain for Russia, with a look down on it, with the desire to teach it “democracy”. Namely, such approaches have become a rule of good manners in the West after their declared victory in the Cold War. In the same way, he rebelled against the approaches of our home-grown liberals to national history, giving them a harsh but fair rebuke.

And here is what he, in particular, said about the current paranoid fascination of our agitprop in the media and in science with the horrors of 1937:

“Historical memory must cover all events. Stalin's repressions in the 1930s were, of course, terrible, and the death toll is approximately 2 million, but no one can give an exact figure.

But during the Civil War, 15 million people died, an entire population, the best people of Russia, who made up the glory and elite of our country. Why is no one talking about this, and everyone rushed to 1937? But this was the last belch, the last clash of the old and new systems, large and small nations, and so on, that is, the Civil War is much more serious than 1937.

Why tie everything only to the Solovetsky Stone?.. We must not forget that all the commanders who died along with Tukhachevsky killed millions of Russian peasants and Russian aristocrats in 1920.

History should be voluminous and objective, but we begin to destroy Stalinism without seeing its origins, which began with the revolutions of 1917 - the February and October. After all, it was then, during the February Revolution, that officers and the best people of the Fatherland began to be killed in the back.

And immediately after the October Revolution, in the winter of 1918, they promised to build socialism in six months. In my opinion, these “six months” are still continuing for us...”

Answering the question of why we won the Second World War, the scientist, in particular, cited in his articles and television appearances the following fact: from 1928 to 1932, the USSR moved from 8th to 2nd place in its industrial development.

Many of those who were close to the scientist recalled with delight his ability to work: he woke up at six o’clock in the morning, wrote in bed until eight o’clock, then went to college.

There were legends about his phenomenal memory. Anatoly Utkin’s widow, Valentina Gavrilovna Fedotova, recalls: “Let’s say they asked us for our phone number. He named the first numbers, and then said: “The year of the capture of Kazan.” It was very strange to him that someone might not know this - 1552.”

Almost all the participants in the meeting at the RSL, starting to talk about the professional merits of A.I. Utkin was inevitably remembered for his ability to conduct dialogue and his endless human charm. He also loved feasts very much; he could sing songs not only in Russian, but also in English with his family and friends for hours.

He did not work only in the last week before his death, as he was seriously ill.

And again the piercing lines of Yuri Kuznetsov are heard, read by A.V. Pankova:

I don't know how many years
My life is different.
Outside the window there is an otherworldly light
Says there is no death
Everyone lives, no one dies!

The organizers, colleagues and relatives of the scientist propose to make such evenings of memory traditional, calling them “Utkin Readings”.

American Empire

The United States has shown the world a phenomenal example of a great industrial power, but also a country marked by a passion for the “yellow devil” and lack of spirituality. Today the United States truly appears as a superpower, imposing its order, its world order, its ideology on the whole world. What behavior to build in this situation for Russia - that is the question.

Big Eight: the price of entry

In the book of the famous political scientist and Americanist A.I. Utkina It tells how, as a result of Gorbachev’s “perestroika,” the United States managed to defeat its main enemy in the Cold War - the USSR. Having received fantastic profits after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States offered its successor - modern Russia - an “honorable” eighth place in the elite club of the leading countries of the world.

Are the losses we suffered when joining the G8 commensurate with the gains from membership in it? The reader will find the answer to this question in this book, written on the basis of a huge amount of unique documentary materials that are inaccessible to the domestic reader.

The Second World War

There are not many events in history that radically changed its course. The Second World War, in the epicenter of which Russia was, is one of a number of such turning points.

More than half a century has passed since the celebration of our Victory, when the scarlet banner soared over defeated Germany, but the echo of that war, the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, still does not subside. And now, again, under pressure not from Germany, but from the United States, half-defeated Russia, as in 1941, again found itself on defensive lines. But the victorious forty-fifth will be ahead!

The West's challenge and Russia's response

The book examines a key issue in Russian history - relations with the world leader - the West. How to carry out modernization, enter the leading group of countries, while maintaining the national identity and organic features of the mentality (the result of a special history and geography)?

The author traces Russia's contacts with the West from Ivan III to President Putin, offering the reader not a chronology of events, but his interpretation of the most burning and pressing issue of Russian reforms, during which the West plays the role of an external source of modernization.

Franklin Roosevelt's diplomacy

The monograph, based on numerous documentary and memoir materials, explores a critical period in American history - the transition from the isolationism of the 30s to the global involvement characteristic of modern America.

At the center of the story is the largest political leader of the United States in the 20th century - President Franklin Roosevelt, who purposefully brought his country from the periphery of world politics to its epicenter. This is the second book in a series of political portraits of presidents.

The only superpower

After centuries of confrontation between almost equal forces, the world system has made a sharp turn: an undisputed leader has emerged. The United States today dominates the economic, military and information spheres. And this will last for a long time, for several decades.

This book examines how America itself perceives its unexpectedly acquired omnipotence, tracing America's path to hegemony; the forces capable of resisting imperial omnipotence are designated; Russia's place in the system led by Washington is analyzed. An attempt is made to answer the questions: how and how imperial omnipotence can end.

A forgotten tragedy. Russia in the First World War

The history of the First World War still conceals many blind spots and poses questions that cannot be answered unambiguously. What are the origins of one of the bloodiest wars in human history? What are the reasons for the tragedy that befell Russia at the beginning of the century?

Why did the allies - the countries of Atlanta - abandon Russia to its fate? Is today's policy of rapprochement between Russia and the West correct, or perhaps we have our own path? The author tries to answer these questions in his book.

After World War II, the forward lines of defense of the USSR moved far to the west. In addition to its military significance, the Soviet Union's protectorate over Eastern Europe also gave our country enormous economic advantages; The Eastern European countries themselves did not lose out - within the framework of the work of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, they received benefits that they had never dared to dream of before.

And so, within just five years, in the second half of the 1980s, the USSR hastily abandoned its positions in Europe and made unprecedented concessions to the United States in the field of weapons in this region. For example, during negotiations on medium-range missiles, the Soviet side promised to destroy 1,500 such missiles already deployed in Europe, while the American side promised to destroy only 350 missiles.

The author of this book, the famous historian A.I. Utkin, talks about M. Gorbachev’s treacherous policy towards the USSR in Eastern Europe. As always, his research is based on a huge amount of factual material.

Treason of the Secretary General. Flight from Europe

Within just five years, in the second half of the 1980s, the USSR hastily abandoned its positions in Europe and made unprecedented concessions to the United States in the field of weapons in this region. For example, during negotiations on medium-range missiles, the Soviet side promised to destroy 1,500 such missiles already deployed in Europe, while the American side promised to destroy only 350 missiles.

It was then that Marshal Akhromeyev said his now famous phrase: “Maybe we should ask for political asylum in neutral Switzerland in advance?” And German Secretary of State Schultz admits that he was overcome by a “sense of triumph”...

The author of this book, the famous historian A.I., talks about M. Gorbachev’s treacherous policy towards the USSR in Eastern Europe. Utkin. As always, his research is based on a huge amount of factual material.

How to survive a crisis. Lessons from the Great Depression

Experience of the Great Depression 1929-1933. today is more relevant than ever. The lessons of the enormous economic disaster of 80 years ago deserve the closest attention, especially since the recipes for overcoming the crisis are universal at all times.

How can we avoid repeating that terrible tragedy? After all, the first Great Depression led not only to colossal financial losses, but also to millions of human victims - and we are not just talking about mass ruin, unemployment, despair and broken destinies.

This book convincingly proves that in order to end the Great Depression, in addition to the decisive anti-crisis measures of the Roosevelt government, it also took World War II. Will the worsening economic situation today lead to a global armed conflict? The temptation to solve your own problems and get out of the financial hole at the expense of others is too great...

Revenge for victory - a new war

The Great Victory of the Soviet people in World War II led to a new balance of power in Europe and the world. The sphere of influence of the USSR included countries of all continents, united by a common impulse towards a just structure of society. The West responded to the increasing influence of the people's democracies with the Cold War, which led to the defeat of the Soviet superpower and the collapse of the socialist camp.

But this is not enough: the only superpower is striving for a total revision of the results of World War II and control over the natural resources of the planet. The famous American scholar A.I. Utkin convincingly proves that a new global redivision of the world is already underway. And at the center of the battle is again Russia with its colossal reserves of raw materials. Therefore, the “velvet” and “orange” revolutions in the post-Soviet space, the wars in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, planned and unleashed by the United States recently, are not accidental. American revanchism is revenge for the Great Victory of the USSR over fascism.

World Cold War

From the point of view of the Western world, Russia was good, fighting against Germany in virtual solitude, defending civilization from Nazi barbarism, but not attractive enough in arranging the new world.

In Eastern Europe, the Americans saw the danger of what they called Soviet expansionism. However, it was clear that it was the war that finally and irrevocably destroyed the traditional Eastern European political and economic structures, and nothing could change this fact, because it was not the Soviet Union, but the leaders of the “old order” in Eastern Europe that made this collapse inevitable.

For the sake of forceful opposition to Moscow, America not only destroyed the wartime alliance in the late 1940s, but also took extreme measures: it re-armed Germany, created the North Atlantic Alliance, and tried to exercise control over global economic development.

The Cold War was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century - this is what the book is about.

New world order

After the defeat of the Soviet superpower and the collapse of the socialist camp, the United States launched a total review of the results of World War II and began a struggle for control over the natural resources of the planet.

The author of the book, famous American scholar A.I. Utkin convincingly argues that the wars launched by the United States recently in Afghanistan and the Middle East, the “velvet” and “orange” revolutions in the post-Soviet space are part of the US strategy to establish a “new world order.”

World War I

The First World War had a huge impact on the events of the 20th century: it gave impetus to the technological revolution and made violence a tool for resolving international disputes. The lessons of the First World War are still relevant today, when some powers, like Germany once, lay claim to world domination.

The Rise and Fall of the West

For five centuries, the West owned the vast expanses of the earth - mineral resources, industrial production, trade, military control. But at the end of the 20th century, the control of Western countries over world development weakened, and the sphere of Western dominance narrowed before our eyes. The usual dominance of the West began to give way to new centers of world development.

No matter how long “specialists” and amateurs talk about how low the crime rate was in the USSR and how safe life was, but, alas, it is just an illusion that in past years life in the country of the Soviets was completely devoid of a criminal touch. Not everything was so rosy in the vastness of our vast country. And at that time the gangs felt quite at ease. There was plenty of all sorts of rabble - bribe-takers, embezzlers, thieves, rapists, and murderers. In the early 60s, the problem of serial killers began to become systemic. During the “quiet Soviet times”, law enforcement agencies first encountered this type of crime; several maniacs in different regions of the country announced their existence at once. The crimes of Vladimir Ionesyan, nicknamed “Mosgaz”, who killed 5 people in Moscow and Ivanovo between 1963 and 1964, caused the greatest resonance. The same number of people were killed by Muscovite Boris Gusakov from 1963 to 1968. In Lugansk, Zaven Almazyan committed 4 murders and 12 attempted rapes over several months in 1970. And finally, Boris Serebryakov from Kuibyshev accounted for 9 victims during the period from 1969 to 1970. As a rule, information about such crimes was not widely advertised, court hearings were closed, publications in the press either did not appear at all or were limited to one line about “carrying out the sentence.” Even professionals often did not have access to this information, otherwise how to explain the revelations of many operatives and investigators who participated in the capture of Chikatilo, Slivko, Mikhasevich in the 80s, that before the 80s they had never even heard such things words like "maniac". Moreover, there is no need to say that they could have had at their disposal a clear method of searching for the killer and conducting operational investigative actions when committing a series of murders for unobvious reasons.

One of these closed cases, which we learn about many years later, was the investigation of a series of murders that occurred in Ulyanovsk and its neighboring regions at the turn of the 60-70s of the twentieth century.

The series of brutal murders began on the last day of March 1968. On March 31, a law-abiding citizen, Anatoly Utkin (b. 1942), who had never been convicted before, from the town of Barysh, Ulyanovsk region, went on his next trip (he turned the wheel - first in motor vehicle fleet No. 2, then at the Gladyshev factory. He drove heavy trucks around the country ). This time he had to go to Moscow on his Colchis. On the highway, near the village of Baidulino, Terengulsky district, his car was stopped by a teenage girl. 14-year-old Liza Makarova urgently needed to get to Terenga, where she was going to visit her sick mother in the hospital. On the way, Utkin stopped - supposedly the engine had malfunctioned. Taking advantage of the moment, he attacked the girl and raped her. Lisa screamed, begged not to touch her, and when Utkin realized that she could write a statement to the police, he decided to kill the teenager. He dumped the victim’s body with tied hands and traces of numerous stab wounds 300 km from the crime scene, not far from Penza, into the Otvel River. The killer turned out to be a fetishist: apparently, as a “memory” of the first murder, he kept the girl’s watch, her clothes and a bag of groceries.

Only a few months passed and he committed a new crime. On June 27, Utkin was driving his truck to Barysh from Ulyanovsk. Near the village of Bestuzhevka, Kuzovatovsky district, he planted a girl who was voting on the road. 17-year-old Valya Ananicheva was heading to a neighboring village. On the way, he attacked her and with one crushing blow brought the victim into a helpless state - the girl lost consciousness. I took her to the forest. There he raped and killed with extreme cruelty. He didn’t even bother burying the corpse, and as if nothing had happened, he again grabbed all the victim’s belongings.

The third victim of A. Utkin was a resident of the city of Gorodishchi, Penza region, 13-year-old Tanya Aksenova. She was walking alone on the street late at night. It was not difficult for Utkin to attack the teenager according to the same scheme he had “practised”. He hid the victim's body in the garden. But I didn’t take things anymore. Apparently someone scared him off. The girl's body with signs of violence and numerous stab wounds was discovered on the morning of September 26, 1968.

Until August 6, 1973, when the Prosecutor General's Office joined the investigation, despite the similar nature of the crimes, each of the disappearances and murders took place in different cases. The difficulty was that almost all of them took place on the highway, sometimes right in the cabin of the car, and the criminal skillfully hid all traces.

Subsequently, the maniac radically changed his style - he no longer relied entirely on chance, which could bring girls voting on the road into his hands, but he himself actively searched for the victim. Often, when going out on “business,” he armed himself with a knife, his actions were thought out in detail, and there was less impromptu in them than at the beginning. The maniac waylaid his fourth victim not on the highway, but near a residential building. Lyuba Stroganova was in a hurry to go on a date with her fiancé and was very close to her house when Utkin attacked her. He covered her mouth with his hand and stabbed her three times in the neck and shoulder, but the girl offered serious resistance to the criminal, and as a result of the ensuing struggle, she managed to escape from the rapist’s hands and run away. This happened in Ulyanovsk on October 8, 1968. The unfinished business (he failed to kill the woman) forced the criminal, without waiting several months, as he had done before, to urgently look for the next victim. He could no longer stop - the thirst for blood became stronger than the fear of being caught.

And on November 28, 1968, a new murder occurs. The victim was ten-year-old Lyuba Stoyak from Ulyanovsk. The girl was in a hurry to go to school and, when the “kind uncle” offered to give her a ride, she did not suspect anything. In the cabin, Utkin stunned a little passenger, took her out of town, where he raped her, and then inflicted numerous fatal wounds on her with a knife. Everything happened in the forest. There the body of the murdered girl lay until it was accidentally found.

After this crime, which caused great resonance, Utkin hid for seven whole months. But on May 28, 1969, he committed a crime again. This time, he simply walked into the courtyard of a house located in the center of Ulyanovsk late at night, following a young woman, raped her and killed her. And he didn’t even try to hide the traces of the crime. The victim's lifeless body remained lying on the grass.

After this crime, the police significantly intensified the search for the dangerous criminal. Utkin felt that he needed to lie low. To do this, he chose a very simple method - he committed a street robbery and easily allowed himself to be detained by police officers. In August 1969, A. Utkin was convicted under Article 145 Part 2 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. He sat down “voluntarily” - to hide in the zone. He spent more than three years on the bunk; during this period, no new brutal murders were recorded in Ulyanovsk.

But in October 1972, upon his release, Utkin was again drawn to heroic deeds, and a series of attacks on women began again... The first act of this drama did not bring any casualties. The failed rape and murder attempt occurred on October 30, 1972. In Barysh, Utkin met A. Skirdonova in a deserted place. But the woman, despite receiving blows to the head with a knife, was able to escape from her pursuer.

Meanwhile, even serial killers sometimes think about their personal lives, starting a family... When one of the girls (she rented an apartment in his parents’ house) flatly refused to marry him, Utkin, finding himself alone with her, took the minor by force. Fortunately for her, this time for some reason the maniac did not have the need to kill the victim. And in general there was a certain turning point in his actions. Subsequently, he committed crimes and robberies not so much for the purpose of rape and murder, but in order to profit from other people's goods.

On December 6, 1972, for the first and last time, a man became a victim of Utkin. He picked up N. Ignatiev at the bus station in Barysh and agreed to take him to Ulyanovsk. On the way, Utkin killed Ignatiev and took the money found from him. The body of the unfortunate passenger was found in a ravine under the bridge.

His next victims included two young women. He committed most of his crimes on the road. So, with a difference of just a week - December 15 and 22, 1972 - Utkin killed one woman, whose identity was never established, in Ulyanovsk, and another - Galina Ruzanova - not far from Mullovka.

Then there was the theft of weapons, a break-in of a kiosk and the murder of a dispatcher at the Gladyshev factory. Here he was going to profit from his salary. V. Isaeva received a large sum of money to give to the employees of the stud yard and garage. But he didn’t know that the dispatcher had locked the bills in the safe. Utkin, having stunned his colleague with a metal rod and completed the reprisal with a knife, found the key to the safe, but never managed to open the door. Embittered to the limit by the failure, he doused Isaeva’s corpse with diesel fuel, set it on fire and, taking the murdered woman’s purse, which contained her salary, went home. This crime was the last in his criminal biography.

Anatoly Utkin was taken into custody on February 9, 1973, literally hot on the heels of the latest crime. The day before, in the control room of the factory's garage. Gladyshev there was a fire. When it was extinguished, the burnt corpse of dispatcher V. Isaeva was found in the room with 14 stab wounds in the chest. That evening the woman received a large sum for payment of her salary, and the motive for the murder was not in doubt. It was also clear that the crime was committed by someone who knew about the receipt of money and where it was stored. This means, most likely, this is his own doing. Inspector Melnikov drew attention to the empty bucket in the burnt-out control room, in which the criminal had brought diesel fuel from a barrel. Drivers usually carry such buckets with them. A check of the vehicle showed that the bucket was taken from the bus assigned to the driver Utkin. The fact that A. Utkin could have been involved in this crime was also indicated by an analysis of the latter’s biography, which stated that the driver had already been in the hands of justice and was sentenced to 3 years in prison for robbery. In places of detention, he constantly violated the established regime, showing no desire to leave the gates of the correctional labor colony on parole. And only later it became clear what was hidden behind this...

It was decided to conduct a search in Utkin’s house. The search led to amazing results: the investigation obtained evidence that helped solve four crimes at once. In addition to Isaeva’s handbag, a double-barreled 16-caliber hunting rifle, stolen from the factory guardhouse on December 26, 1972, was found in the house. Some items that were stolen during the night robbery of one of the city Soyuzpechat kiosks were also found here. This happened on February 7, 1973, i.e. the day before the dispatcher was killed.

But the biggest surprise was the women’s jewelry found in Utkin’s home, which, as was later established, belonged to G. Ruzanova, a resident of the Ulyanovsk region, who was raped and killed on December 22, 1972.

The investigation, which began on February 8, 1973, ended in August 1974. But back on August 6, 1973, when the investigative authorities became convinced of Utkin’s involvement in several murders and robberies, varying in dates and geography of their commission, the scattered cases were combined into one. It was transferred to the jurisdiction of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Soviet Union. The investigative team of the Ulyanovsk Region Prosecutor's Office was entrusted to be headed by the investigator for particularly important cases under the Prosecutor General of the USSR, State Counselor of Justice 3rd class Yu. Lyubimov. It included employees of the regional prosecutor's office A. Anisimov, A. Gerasimov, N. Shelenin and G. Kostrin. In addition, prosecutors and law enforcement officials from the regions where the victims of the unidentified killer and rapist were found were involved in the work.

Having begun their work, the investigators, in particular, painstakingly studied the dates and routes of Utkin’s business trips around the region and beyond, to which he regularly went as a driver of motor vehicle fleet No. 2, and then of Ulyanovskstroytrans and a cloth factory. The coincidence of the dates of Utkin's business trips and the dates of the unsolved murders of girls in the late 60s in Ulyanovsk and neighboring regions was striking, and indicated that Utkin could be involved in each of the murders.

As you know, during the investigation the identity of the criminal is necessarily studied. They asked for his references - from the colony where he was imprisoned, from his places of work. If the zone authorities characterized him negatively (there were similar responses about him from the pre-trial detention center), then his service characteristics were positive. Moreover, his mother and father and his sister could not say anything bad about him either. They only knew him from the good side. In addition, as it turned out, Utkin managed to get married and divorced several times, and had two children of his own.

A forensic psychiatric examination found him sane. The criminal case in 34 volumes went to court. The first meeting took place on October 28, 1974. Judge Vitaly Aleksandrovich Shorin decided not to begin the trial until all witnesses and victims were brought to court. Some had to be called from other regions where they had already moved - from Perm, Ryazan and even from the Kuril Islands.

Thanks to the efforts of the presiding judge in the trial, the hearing began with the appearance of all the victims, and during the judicial investigation, almost all important witnesses were questioned. Among them were survivors of the attacks of the maniac L. Stroganov and A. Skirdonov, who recognized him as the man who attempted on their lives.

It should be noted that another, non-procedural participant in the meeting every now and then was a team of ambulance doctors, who had to be called to the courthouse to provide assistance to some of the relatives and friends of Utkin’s victims. The atmosphere of grief, anger, aggressiveness and psychosis noticeably thickened in the courtroom. The defendant contributed to this by diligently imitating a mentally ill person. However, the inpatient forensic psychiatric examination of Utkin at the Moscow Institute of Forensic Psychiatry named after. During the investigation, Serbsky established that the murderer and rapist were sane.

Utkin desperately fought for his life. First of all, during the investigation and trial, he denied his involvement in the rape and murder of the young girls L. Stoyak, T. Aksenova and L. Makarova. He did not deny guilt in other crimes, but in his last word he suddenly declared that he also did not commit the murders of A. Zheltova, V. Ananicheva and an unknown woman, and during the investigation and in court he incriminated himself. However, the investigation was carried out fully, and during its course the maniac himself went to the crime scenes, talking in detail about what was happening. The evidence was irrefutable.

December 13, 1974 V.A. Shorin announced a guilty verdict, finding Utkin guilty of all charges. Based on a combination of crimes - murder, rape, attempted murder, robbery, theft and petty theft - the court sentenced the defendant to death.

The lawyer assured Utkin: they say, they’ll give you 15 years, and you’ll be out at 45. But, taking into account the severity of the crimes committed and the onset of particularly grave consequences, the judicial panel for criminal cases of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR in March 1975 left the verdict of the Ulyanovsk Regional Court unchanged. Utkin's petition to the Supreme Council of the RSFSR for pardon and saving his life on August 25, 1975 was rejected by the Presidium of the Supreme Council.