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 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 lunch. 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 onto 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, 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 the things of the condemned, then I take them off the dead, why waste them,” explained Tonya. “I once shot a teacher, so 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...
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 tried 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 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 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 initiated, 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.
In 1987, an unprecedented trial took place in Kyiv in the case of a family of serial killers who chose a highly toxic aqueous solution based on thallium compounds as their crime weapon. In the dock were Maria and Anton Maslenko and their daughters, Tamara Ivanyutina and Nina Matsibora. Most of the victims were 45-year-old Ivanyutina. She became the last woman in the USSR to be sentenced by a court to an exceptional punishment.
What was Tamara Ivanyutina like?
The woman’s biography before the start of the process is not distinguished by any outstanding events. Her maiden name is Maslenko. She was born in 1942 into a family with six children. Parents have always instilled in their offspring that material security and prosperity are the main conditions for a normal life. This is exactly what serial poisoner Tamara Ivanyutina was striving for.
During the investigation of the poisoning case, it turned out that Ivanyutina had previously been convicted of profiteering, and got a job at the school using a fake work book.
Since September 1986, she worked in the canteen of one of the schools in Kyiv. She was hired as a dishwasher. This work brought her considerable benefits. Tamara Ivanyutina kept a fairly large farm. Working in the canteen, she was able to provide her animals with free food, which was left over from schoolchildren with poor appetite. To make it even worse, Tamara Ivanyutina periodically added poison to the food. She also used toxic substances against those who, in her opinion, “behaved badly.” Ivanyutina’s victims included those who interfered with the theft of food from the school canteen, allowed themselves to make comments to her, and in general all those whom she did not like for one reason or another.
Poisoning.
The story of Tamara Ivanyutina became known when several employees and students of school 16 in the Podolsk district of Kyiv were admitted to the hospital. Doctors diagnosed signs of food poisoning. This happened on March 16 and 17, 1987. At the same time, four (two adults and the same number of children) died almost immediately. There were nine victims in intensive care. Initially, doctors diagnosed an intestinal infection and flu. However, after some time, patients began to lose hair. This phenomenon is not typical for these diseases.
Law enforcement agencies quickly established that Tamara Antonovna Ivanyutina was involved in the poisonings. The investigation began immediately as it became known about the deaths of students and school staff. Criminal proceedings were initiated. The investigative team conducted interrogations of the surviving victims. It was established that they all became ill after they had lunch in the school cafeteria on March 16. At the same time, they all ate liver with buckwheat porridge. Investigators decided to find out who was responsible for the quality of food at the school. It turned out that nutritionist nurse Natalya Kukharenko died 2 weeks before the proceedings were initiated. According to official data, the woman died from cardiovascular disease. However, investigators doubted the reliability of this information. As a result, an exhumation was carried out. After a study, traces of thallium were found in the tissues of the corpse. Then searches began at everyone who had anything to do with the school canteen. We also paid attention to the house in which the dishwasher of the catering unit, Tamara Antonovna Ivanyutina, lived.
Arrest.
During the search of the dishwasher in the house, a “small but quite heavy container” was discovered. Naturally, its contents interested the investigative team. The container was confiscated and handed over to experts for examination. As it turned out, it contained Clerici liquid. It is a highly toxic solution based on thallium (used in a number of branches of geology). Tamara Ivanyutina was taken into custody. First, she turned herself in and confessed to all the episodes that occurred in the school cafeteria. 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.
The case of Tamara Ivanyutina has become resonant. During further operational activities, new facts emerged. Thus, the investigation established that not only Ivanyutina herself, but also members of her family (parents and sister) used a highly toxic solution for 11 years to deal with people they disliked. At the same time, they committed poisoning both for selfish reasons and to eliminate people who were unsympathetic to them for some reason. The family received Clerici liquid from a friend who was an employee of the geological institute. The poisoners explained that they needed thallium to fight rats. The acquaintance herself later admitted that over the course of 15 years she gave the toxic solution to Ivanyutina herself, as well as to her parents and sister, at least 9 times.
Tamara's criminal activity began with her first husband. She poisoned a man and took over his apartment. After the death of her first husband, Ivanyutina married again. In her new marriage, her husband’s parents became her victims. My father-in-law and mother-in-law died within two days of each other. The second husband himself also received small portions of thallium. So she kept his sexual activity at a low level. In addition, Ivanyutina hoped to get a house and land that belonged to her husband’s parents. In September 1986, she became a dishwasher at a local school. In addition to the episodes described above, 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. These children survived.
The investigation revealed that Nina Matsibora, the older sister of the main defendant in the case, was also active in criminal activities. In particular, using the same Clerici liquid, she poisoned her husband and obtained his apartment in Kyiv. The Maslenko spouses - Ivanyutina's parents - also committed numerous poisonings. Thus, a neighbor in a communal apartment and a relative who reprimanded them were killed with a highly toxic liquid. In addition, animals that belonged to “undesirable” people also became victims of poisoners. The geography of the family’s criminal activities was not limited to Ukraine alone. Thus, it was proven that a number of poisonings were committed by criminals in the RSFSR. For example, while in Tula, Maslenko Sr. killed his relative. He mixed Clerici's liquid into the moonshine.
Court.
It examined the case of 45-year-old Ivanyutina, her older sister Nina Antonovna and their parents - Maria Fedorovna and Anton Mitrofanovich Maslenko. They were 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. According to the Deputy Chairman of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, who worked during the proceedings as a senior investigator for particularly important crimes in the Kiev prosecutor’s office, the identified episodes belong to the first criminal cases in which such a compound was used, recorded in the USSR. The total number of proven facts is 40. Of that number, 13 were fatal. Most of the murders (nine) and attempts (20) were committed personally by Tamara Ivanyutina. The process lasted about a year.
During the investigation, Ivanyutina tried to bribe the investigator several times. She promised the law enforcement officer “a lot of gold.” The unusual thing about this case in criminal practice is that the main accused was a woman sentenced to death, and the punishment was carried out.
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. Ivanyutina did not ask for forgiveness from the relatives of the victims, saying that her upbringing did not allow her to do this. She had only one regret. Her long-time dream was to buy a Volga car, but it never came true. 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. The year in which Tamara Ivanyutina was shot was 1987.
In 1987, the Soviet Union was rocked by a horrific crime: a Kyiv school dishwasher poisoned 20 people. Her name was Tamara Ivanyutina, and she became the third and last woman in the USSR to receive capital punishment for her atrocities.
Dreams of wealth
Tamara Maslenko was born in 1941. From childhood, her parents instilled in her the idea that the most important thing in life is material well-being. And little Tamara dreamed that in the future she would bathe in luxury and drive a black Volga.
After graduating from school, Tamara married a truck driver. Drivers at that time did not receive the worst money, but Tamara was much less interested in her betrothed’s salary than in his apartment. The selfish spouse did not want to share the property with anyone.
On one of the flights, Tamara’s husband felt unwell. He stopped the car and went for a swim in a nearby river. When he dried himself, he found a tuft of his hair on the towel. The truck driver was able to get home, where he died of a heart attack. Then no one suspected Tamara.
After a short time, she married Oleg Ivanyutin. His parents owned a country house and a large plot of land, which Tamara had her eye on. First, she sent her husband’s father to the next world, who died after tasting soup from his daughter-in-law. The father-in-law complained of discomfort in his legs and pain in his heart. The mother-in-law outlived her husband by only a few days: at the funeral, Ivanyutina gave her a glass of water with poison.
She intended to adapt the land of the deceased old people into a pig farm. There was only one problem - to get hold of food for the pigs. In Soviet society during the times of “developed socialism,” petty theft in the workplace was commonplace, so Tamara decided to get a job in the school canteen, where she could steal food.
Deadly breakfasts
Dishwashers were not paid decent money, and there were very few people willing to do such work. Therefore, despite the boorish and rude behavior, Ivanyutin was not fired. Then look for a new person for who knows how long. Ivanyutin was irritated by everyone around her: one said the wrong thing, another did the wrong thing, the third looked askance. The vengeful woman did not forget any of this.
Soon after Ivanyutina appeared in the cafeteria, four people rushed to the hospital with mysterious symptoms: two teachers and two students. One of the victims complained of hair loss. But health workers did not take these complaints into account.
Six months later another tragedy occurred. This time - with nutritionist Natalya Kukharenko. The poor woman's legs were numb and her heart ached. Unfortunately, it was not possible to save her.
The largest poisoning occurred in March 1987 - then 14 people were taken away from the school in an ambulance at once. The preliminary diagnosis is influenza. The symptoms are familiar: leg pain and hair loss. The treatment did not produce results, and then doctors began to lean towards the version of poisoning.
By interviewing witnesses and the victims themselves, it turned out that they all had lunch later than others and ate soup. Law enforcement officers interested in this case decided to exhume Kukharenko’s remains. As a result, thallium, a highly toxic heavy metal, was found in the body of the deceased woman.
Investigators suggested that the substance was used to bait rodents and could have gotten into food due to someone's negligence. But this version was denied by the sanitary and epidemiological station.
Then the police began checking the personal data of school staff. It turned out that the dishwasher was working under a false work book. They began to carefully check Ivanyutin. Strange details of past poisonings with similar symptoms emerged.
During a search of the poisoner, they found the same thallium solution. A friend from a geological exploration expedition supplied her with a deadly substance. Supposedly for baiting rodents.
Without a shadow of remorse
During interrogations, Ivanyutina did not regret what she had done one bit. Two sixth-graders angered her by not wanting to move the tables in the cafeteria, while others “fell out of favor” because they asked for food for the kitten. But the poisoner needed the food to feed the pigs.
The psychiatrists who examined the criminal found her sane, albeit with extremely inflated self-esteem and an exaggerated desire for wealth. These character traits came from their parents: Anton and Maria Maslenko purposefully raised their daughter in a similar way, and, as it turned out later, they used the same technique when dealing with people they disliked - they simply added poison to their food.
The court found Ivanyutina guilty of 20 poisonings, nine of which were fatal. The criminal did not admit her guilt in any of the episodes. My only regret was that I was never able to buy a black Volga.
The mother and father of the attacker were sentenced to 13 and 10 years, respectively. They ended their lives in prison. Ivanyutina herself received the death penalty - execution. The sentence was carried out at the end of 1987. She became the last woman executed in the USSR.
Since 1993, Russia has introduced a moratorium on the harshest punishment for those who have crossed the letter of the law - the death penalty. In Soviet times, death sentences were not uncommon, but they mostly affected only men. But there were also three women shot in the USSR. And that’s what we’ll talk about today, and also show their photos.
Makarova, Ivanyutin, Borodkina - these three names are known to anyone who was interested in Soviet-era criminology. They entered the annals of history as female killers who became the last suicide bombers from Soviet times to the present day.
Antonina Makarovna Makarova (Ginsburg) (1920—1978)
Antonina’s fate cannot be called easy; at a young age she went to the front, like many girls of that time, striving to repeat the feat of “Anka the Machine Gunner.” Although in the future she will receive the nickname “Tonka the Machine Gunner,” but not for her heroic merits. By the will of front-line fate, she found herself at the epicenter of the Vyazma operation, which was called the “Vyazma Cauldron” for its many losses and bloody events.
Miraculously, Makarova managed to escape; she fled with a partisan of the Soviet army and hid for a long time from the horrors of war in the forests. But soon Antonina’s “camping husband” leaves her, because they have almost reached his village, where his official wife and children are waiting for him.
Makarova’s wanderings continued until she was captured by German soldiers in the village of Lokot, at that time the “Lokot Republic” was operating in it, whose members were engaged in the extermination of Soviet partisans, prisoners, communists and people simply disliked by the fascists. The Germans did not shoot Tonya, like many other prisoners, but made her their servant and mistress.
Antonina not only was not embarrassed by her current situation, but also believed that she had pulled out a lucky ticket - the Nazis fed, watered, provided a bed, the young girl could have fun in the evenings in clubs, and at night she pleased the officers of the German army.
One of the duties of the German policemen of the village was the daily execution of prisoners of war, exactly 27 people, that’s how many could fit in the cell. None of the Germans wanted to get their hands dirty by shooting defenseless old people and children. On one of the days of the execution, as a joke, a drunken Makarova was placed at the machine gun, who, without blinking an eye, shot all the prisoners. From that day on, she became the executioner of the “Lokot Republic”, and by the end of her “career” she had more than one and a half thousand victims.
Since Antonina continued her frivolous lifestyle, she soon contracted syphilis and was sent to the rear for treatment by the Germans. This disease saved Makarova’s life, because very quickly the soldiers of the Red Army captured Lokot and moved towards the hospital where Antonina was being treated. Having rushed in time and obtained documents, she poses as a nurse working for the benefit of the Soviet army.
Soon Makarova marries Viktor Ginzburg, leads the sedate life of a war veteran, trying to forget her past life. But rumors about the bloody “Tonka the Machine Gunner” and many witnesses to the executions carried out by Makarova prompt the KGB to begin searching for her in earnest. The search for the executioner of the “Lokot Republic” continued for more than 30 years; in 1978, Antonina Ginzburg was arrested.
Until recently, she believed that she would get off with a short sentence, justifying herself for forcing her to commit these terrible acts; many years have passed, and she is also quite old. Antonina's hopes were not destined to come true. In 1979, the death sentence under the article “Treason” was carried out.
Berta Naumovna Korol (Borodkina) (1927-1983)
Another woman executed in is Berta Borodkina (King). Young Bertha began her career as a waitress, and in 1974, with the help of influential friends, she headed the trust of restaurants and canteens in Gelendzhik. This is the only woman on the list who was sentenced to death not for murder, but for theft of socialist property on an especially large scale.
To understand how great her guilt is before the state and Soviet citizens, just look at the short list of her crimes:
- receiving bribes on an especially large scale; in case of refusal to give bribes, a catering employee in Gelendzhik lost his job;
- giving bribes to top government officials;
- dilution of dairy products with water in catering establishments in Gelendzhik and, as a result, theft of saved money;
- diluting minced meat with bread crumbs in public catering establishments in Gelendzhik and, as a consequence, theft of saved money;
- dilution of alcoholic beverages in catering establishments in Gelendzhik and, as a result, theft of saved money;
- counting citizens in public catering establishments in Gelendzhik with the permission and instructions of Borodkina;
- closed broadcasts of pornographic products in institutions reporting to Borodkina.
It was because of the last point that Berta Naumovna was arrested, but she believed that her detention was a mistake, threatened retribution and, of course, expected support from her friendly superiors. But she was never helped. After her apartment was searched and furs, jewelry, valuables were seized, as well as more than half a million rubles in cash, fabulous money at that time, Borodkina began to talk about her crimes, which took up 20 volumes.
Of course, no one expected the most severe punishment, but since her economic activities were carried out with the tacit consent of the top, they simply decided to remove Borodkina. Forever. The death penalty was carried out in August 1983.
Tamara Antonovna Ivanyutina (1941—1987)
Tamara’s childhood cannot be called happy; she was raised by cruel and domineering parents along with six brothers and sisters in a communal apartment. From a young age, Ivanyutina’s parents instilled in her that in order to achieve her goal, she needed to go above and beyond. This is exactly what Tamara did, poisoning her first husband in order to obtain his apartment, as well as her father-in-law and mother-in-law from her second marriage.
She also slowly but surely tried to send her husband to the next world by mixing small doses of thallium in his food. The goal was the same - to take possession of his property. All the deaths in which Ivanyutina was involved remained unsolved until a series of mysterious fatal poisonings occurred at school No. 16 in Minsk.
In mid-March, several school students and teachers were taken to the hospital with signs of intestinal flu, two children and two adults died immediately, the remaining nine were in intensive care. The survivors soon began to lose hair, which is not typical for the initial diagnosis. After the examination, there was no doubt left - they were poisoned. An investigation team was urgently created and inspected the apartments of workers who had access to food in the school canteen. A whole jar of “Clerici liquid”, a thallium-based poison, was found in Ivanyutina’s apartment. Tamara confessed to the crimes she committed.
As it turned out, for 11 years Ivanyutina, her parents, and also her sister had been poisoning people they found inconvenient: relatives, acquaintances and colleagues. They bullied me even for the slightest offenses. Ivanyutina said that the injured sixth-graders refused to clean up the cafeteria at her request, and she decided to take revenge, and the teachers prevented the theft of food from the school cafeteria.
Tamara personally committed 29 poisonings, 9 of which were fatal. In 1987, Ivanyutin was shot. Therefore, Tamara bears the status of the last woman who was shot in the Soviet Union.
These women committed serious crimes, but also suffered the most terrible punishment for them - execution by firing squad. I would like to hope that these stories will no longer be repeated in the modern world, just as the moratorium on the death penalty in our country will never be lifted.