Vorontsov, Vladimir Glebovich

Born into a wealthy Moscow family, Vladimir Vorontsov's father was a colonel in the Soviet army , and his mother was a restaurant director ^[1] . In his youth, Vladimir joined the teenage hooligan company, participated in a robbery on a kiosk. He was sent to a forced labor colony. Belonged to the "negatives", participated in a revolt against the administration. Soon after his release, he was again arrested and convicted of robbery.

According to Vorontsov’s recollections, “the second time I fell into such a regime that I came out of there as a complete anti-Soviet , there I hated the Communists ” ^[2] . He served his sentence together with convinced anti-communists , including “ forest brothers ”. The third time was tried for a fight. In total, he spent about 10 years in prison.

Freed, Vorontsov was limited in his choice of place of residence and could not return to Moscow. He settled in Kaluga , worked as a welder at a house-building plant. In 1986, he visited Tula and acquired a hunting rifle, from which he made a double - barreled sawn -off shotgun .

Vladimir Vorontsov adhered to firm anti-Soviet, anti-communist convictions. He considered the CPSU a criminal organization. In 1990 , during perestroika , he joined the Popular Front, participated in rallies and meetings. However, he was a supporter of radical actions and quickly became disillusioned with the then opposition, which was limited to verbal criticism of the CPSU.

Vorontsov compiled a list of eight (according to other sources - fifteen) names of functionaries of the CPSU and the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions . Each surname was accompanied by a list of “criminal acts”. All those listed in the "Vorontsov list" were subject, according to his plan, to physical liquidation - as leading communists.

I was in the Popular Front, went to rallies, meetings. All this did not suit me - the words ... But I am a man of action, a practitioner. I had collected files on the powers that be - facts, newspaper articles. The list included three or four party committee secretaries and regional committee workers. I decided to start with Fomin. Nevertheless, Znamenka is a regional newspaper, we read it every day. It's clear. Fomina claimed the regional committee, he himself is a member of the bureau of the OK CPSU ...
Vladimir Vorontsov, from the testimony of the investigation

January 11, 1991 Vladimir Vorontsov came to the editorial office of the newspaper Znamya , an organ of the Kaluga regional committee of the CPSU . Vorontsov considered this publication to be “reactionary-communist”; the editor-in-chief Ivan Fomin was listed. The murder of Fomin was prepared in advance, Vorontsov visited the editorial office allegedly to be a work correspondent. He left his data there and did not doubt the quick arrest after the rally.

Entering the editor’s office, Vorontsov ordered Fomin to stand up and fired three shotgun trunks three times. The photojournalist Gennady Golovkov appeared to the noise. Vorontsov ordered him to go out and fired through the door (later he regretted that "the innocent fell into the arm"). After this, Vorontsov went out into the corridor, followed by the seriously wounded Fomin. Seeing this, Vorontsov fired again - with the fourth bullet Fomin was killed. Golovkov survived, but he had to be hospitalized with a gunshot wound and severe loss of blood.

From the editorial staff, Vorontsov went to the regional committee, intending to kill several secretaries and department heads. However, he had to abandon this plan, as the watchman did not let the visitor in without a pass. Then Vorontsov went to the Stroymekhanizatsiya trust and killed with two shots the chairman of the trade union committee, Anatoly Kaluzhsky, who was also on the list.

Kaluga police were raised by alarm and equipped with signs of a killer. However, Vorontsov was not hiding. Having committed two murders, he considered his plan to be implemented to the greatest extent possible. He himself called the duty officer of the regional police department, warned of the appearance and surrendered ^[3] .

I walked, drank juice, bought cigarettes and was already going to the police department. On the street where the control is located, two came up to me, went, they say ... if I had cartridges - I would not give up.
Vladimir Vorontsov, from the testimony of the investigation

During the investigation, Vorontsov held tight, did not deny guilt. He motivated his actions with an ideological (not personal) hatred of the Communists for "duplicity" and the crimes of the regime.

I asked him: did he cross the road for you? No, he answers, he’s a normal man, but he’s a communist ... During the investigation, he told everything. He was terribly cold-blooded. But he hated communist leaders.
Ivan Boretsky, investigator of the KGB of the USSR ^[4]

The court of the Kaluga region sentenced Vladimir Vorontsov to an exceptional measure of punishment - the death penalty. The verdict was passed in March 1992 - already in another country, after August 1991 , the fall and ban of the CPSU, the collapse of the USSR .

At the trial, Vorontsov again called the Communists criminals, and his actions - an act of ideological struggle. He justified the assassination of Fomin with “attacks of the Banner on democracy,” the assassination of Kaluga with “oppression of the workers”. Proud of his participation in the anti-communist struggle, to his own destiny he showed complete indifference. According to some reviews of eyewitnesses, Vorontsov’s last word provoked applause in the hall ^[5] .

Despite a radical change in the political situation and heated anticommunism in Russia in the early 1990s, Vladimir Vorontsov refused to file a pardon. In a letter to President Yeltsin dated August 17, 1993 , Vorontsov insisted that the sentence be carried out. There was no talk of any remorse: Vorontsov stated that the state should be as consistent as he was.

Information on the enforcement of the sentence was not officially announced, but open sources say that "the sentence was executed several months before Russia adopted a moratorium on the death penalty" ^[6] . The last year when the execution of death sentences was reported in Russia was 1996 .

The double murder committed in Kaluga by Vladimir Vorontsov was the first act of individual political terror during perestroika and subsequent reforms .

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