Bella Borodkin-execute, can not be pardoned

Berta Naumovna Borodkina, who was called Iron Bella, during the Brezhnev stagnation, managed a catering service in Gelendzhik, although she began her career with a modest position as a barmaid. The case against her was brought against the background of Andropov's Kremlin intrigues. For embezzlement, she, as a woman, faced a maximum of 15 years with confiscation of property, but the verdict shocked both the defendant herself and everyone who followed this high-profile case.

In the era of advanced socialism, death sentences for women were extremely rare. After the war, there were only three such precedents. The exceptions were Tatiana Ivanyutina, Antonina Makarova and Berta Borodkina.

Tatiana Ivanyutina poisoned more than 40 people (13 of them fatally) out of personal hostility or simply "so as not to interfere with her life and steal" from the dining room where she worked. Tonka, a machine-gunner, shot about 1,500 people during the war and said at the investigation: "I have no remorse for what I have done, and those I have killed do not come to me in my nightmares."

But the Soviet authorities equated the crime of Berta Borodkina with the murders of dozens and hundreds of people, considering that the theft of particularly large amounts of socialist property deserves just such a punishment. Numerous petitions for clemency were repeatedly refused, and a year later the sentence was carried out.

1st Secretary of the Krasnodar Regional Committee of the CPSU S. F. Medunov and General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee L. I. Brezhnev

On the Black Sea coast, there was always a festive atmosphere, which means that it" smelled " of big money. Citizens who came on vacation to the sea, allowed to earn millions of rubles. Every day, thousands of people used the catering services, and no one noticed the shortfall, the body kit and the reduced portions. But this fact is extremely interested in the employees of the prosecutor's office and the staff of the OBHSS. In one season, the trade workers managed to get millions of "left" rubles, and the first" got under the distribution " was the head of the Gelendzhik public catering.

Berta Borodkina in her youth (maiden name-the King)

Much later, this woman was called "iron Bella". She was a natural leader, respected and feared. But when Andropov decided to discredit the" tsar " of the Krasnodar Territory Medunov, the prosecutor's office began a total check of the work of the public catering system in the cities and districts of this region. Even the most self-confident "masters of life"lost their nerve. Many of them committed suicide. There was a real panic, but Bella Borodkina thought that everything would be fine…

Later, this deeply unhappy woman was sentenced to death by firing squad. They say that after learning about this, she went crazy, and at night from her cell heard a terrible howl. Her only daughter begged the authorities for leniency.

Andropov was sure that the arrest of Medunov was a matter of time, but Brezhnev himself stood up for the Kuban "vladyka". Already terminally ill, the General Secretary still could not refuse his pet the last service-Medunov did not appear before the court. He was demoted, recalled to Moscow and allowed to live to a ripe old age, while being removed from the Central Committee and expelled from the party. The all-powerful "lord" of the Krasnodar Territory turned into a simple Soviet pensioner and died in 1999 alone and deeply unhappy. In the last interview, he did not remember "who was the shot Berta Borodkina"!