Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria Over the past decades, official historiography has presented him as one of the darkest figures in the entire history of Russia. He is often compared to Malyuta Skuratov, close to the king Ivan the Terrible, the head of the guardsmen. Beria seems to be the main " Stalin's executioner", who bears the main responsibility for political repression.
This is largely due to the fact that history is always written by the winners. Lavrentiy Beria, who lost the struggle for power after death Joseph Stalin, paid for his defeat not only with his life, but also by being declared the main “scapegoat” for all the mistakes and abuses of the Stalinist period.
Born on March 17, 1899 in a poor peasant family in Abkhazia, Lavrentiy Beria already became involved in the revolutionary struggle in Transcaucasia at the age of 16. He ended up in prison several times. After the final establishment of Soviet power, 21-year-old Beria began serving in the Cheka of Azerbaijan and then Georgia. He took part in the defeat of the counter-revolutionary underground, for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
In 1927, Lavrentiy Beria became People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR; in 1931, he took the post of first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, effectively becoming the first person in the republic.
Since this period, Beria has had a controversial reputation - on the one hand, he is accused of repressions against political competitors, on the other, they note that the 32-year-old politician showed himself to be a strong business executive, thanks to whom Georgia and the Transcaucasus as a whole began to develop rapidly economically. It was thanks to Beria that high purchasing prices were set for tea, grapes, and tangerines produced in the region. This is where the glory of Georgia began as one of the most prosperous republics of the USSR.
As an active politician and republican leader, Beria could not be uninvolved in political repressions, but, contrary to popular belief, he has nothing to do with the “Great Terror” - the period of 1937-1938, when several hundred thousand people were killed in less than two years , for the most part representing the party, state and military elite of the country.
Lavrentiy Beria appeared in the apparatus of the NKVD of the USSR in August 1938, when the scale of terror perpetrated by the People's Commissar of the NKVD Nikolai Yezhov, scared the top Soviet leadership. Beria’s appointment was intended to “besiege” the raging “silovik” and return the situation under control.
In November 1938, 39-year-old Lavrentiy Beria headed the NKVD of the USSR, replacing Nikolai Yezhov. It was the arrival of Beria that is considered the end of the “Great Terror”; moreover, over the next two years, about 200 thousand illegally arrested and convicted under Yezhov were released.
During the war, Beria was not only involved in the work of the NKVD and NKGB, but was also the curator of the defense industry and transport. He played an important role in ensuring the evacuation of industrial enterprises to the East of the country.
Memorandums of Lavrentiy Beria addressed to Joseph Stalin, stored in the State Archive of the Russian Federation. Photo: RIA Novosti
In 1944, during the war, Lavrentiy Beria was the curator of the Soviet “atomic project”. In this matter, he showed unique organizational skills, thanks to which atomic bomb the USSR appeared in 1949, much earlier than the Americans expected.
It was the success of the “atomic project” that made Beria not just one of the highest-ranking government officials, but one of those who could be considered as Stalin’s successor.
By the time of Joseph Stalin's death on March 5, 1953, there was no figure in the Soviet leadership who could assume full power. In fact, a ruling triumvirate was formed - Georgy Malenkov, the head of the Soviet government and the formal leader of the country, Nikita Khrushchev, who became the party leader after Stalin’s death, and Lavrenty Beria, who headed the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which included the Ministry state security.
Such a triarchy could not last long - each side strengthened its positions. Beria appointed his own people to senior positions in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, assuming that control over the security forces would decide the matter.
It is quite difficult to say now what would await the country under the rule of Beria. Some talk about a “harsh hand” and a new round of repression, others claim that the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was preparing a large-scale rehabilitation of political prisoners.
The most radical ones argue that Beria, as a successful business executive, was aimed at de-ideologizing the country, building a market economy, and even granting independence to the Baltic republics.
But whatever plans Beria had, they were not destined to be realized. Nikita Khrushchev, at one time one of the most active proponents of the “Great Terror” policy, began to play ahead of the curve. He managed to conclude an alliance with Georgy Malenkov and two other prominent politicians - Nikolai Bulganin And Vyacheslav Molotov directed against the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Beria clearly underestimated the threat, believing that control over the Ministry of Internal Affairs allowed him not to fear for his safety. Khrushchev, however, managed to win over the military, including himself Georgy Zhukov.
The denouement came at a meeting of the USSR Council of Ministers on June 26, 1953 in the Kremlin, where Khrushchev unexpectedly accused Beria of anti-state activities and espionage for Great Britain. Confused, Beria tried to make excuses, and some of the conspirators hesitated, offering to simply “point out the mistakes” to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. But in key moment Generals led by Zhukov appeared in the meeting room and arrested Beria.
In the car of one of the generals, Beria was taken from the Kremlin to the garrison guardhouse of the Moscow Military District, and a day later he was transferred to a specially equipped cell in a bomb shelter at the headquarters of the Moscow Military District.
On the day of Beria’s arrest, army units were deployed to Moscow in case the situation worsened. However, it did not come to street fighting. Over the next few days, Beria's closest associates were arrested, who could try to free their boss.
In December 1953, the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR, chaired by Marshal Ivan Konev, examined the “Beria case”. The charges brought against the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were not much different from those used during the years of the “Great Terror” - he was charged with espionage, abuse of power, and much more. These accusations had little to do with Beria’s real activities, and the trial itself did not set out to establish the truth.
On December 23, 1953, Lavrentiy Beria was sentenced to death and executed in the bunker of the Moscow Military District headquarters in the presence of the country's Prosecutor General Rudenko. At night, the body of the executed man was taken to the 1st Moscow Crematorium, burned, and the ashes were scattered over the Moscow River.
There is, however, an alternative version of events, which Beria’s son spoke about Sergo Lavrentievich, as well as Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva. According to it, there was no meeting of the Council of Ministers on June 26, 1953. Lavrentiy Beria was killed in a shootout in his own home when the conspirators tried to capture him.
On March 5, 1953, Stalin died. Not only was another page turned in the history of our country, but an entire era ended. And not only for the USSR, but, perhaps, for all of humanity.According to established myth, Lavrenty Beria is the most terrible villain who ever lived on one-sixth of the land that was once called the USSR. But is it? And is it really true that the homely Shvernik and Andreev, Malenkov or the imposing alcoholic Bulganin are popular popular saints in comparison with him? One can repeat as often as one likes that the unusual, extraordinary measures taken by Beria after Stalin’s death were, as they would say today, of a populist nature. But why was it he who committed them, and not the same Malenkov, who, as the head of government, had much more opportunities to do so? Whether anyone likes it or not, we have to admit that Beria in the spring of 1953 was several decades ahead of his time.
Already on April 4, a TASS report was published in the newspapers, from which the shocked country learned that the “killer doctors” were arrested without any grounds, that the investigation into their case was carried out in gross violation of Soviet laws, using “forbidden methods” , but simply - torture and beatings. All those arrested in the case of the “murderers in white coats” were immediately released with an apology and reinstated in their jobs and in the party if they were members of the CPSU (b). Such a public recognition took place for the first time in the entire history of Soviet power and was, in essence, the first case of political rehabilitation of innocently repressed people. On the same day, a Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was published canceling the previous Decree on awarding Lydia Timashuk the Order of Lenin. The ill-fated Soviet Joan of Arc did not have time to really understand at first why she was awarded the highest award of her Motherland, and then why it was taken away.
At the June 1953 Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, it turned out that everyone in the top leadership, including Nikita Khrushchev, knew that “the doctor’s business” was a linden affair. However, Lavrenty Beria was accused of making this shame public. They say that the doctors should have just been slowly released.
On April 28, 1953, at the suggestion of Beria, the former Minister of State Security Ignatiev was removed from the CPSU Central Committee for the “doctors’ cause.” Later, at the suggestion of Khrushchev, he was reinstated as a member of the CPSU Central Committee, and later he successfully worked as the first secretary of the Tatar and Bashkir regional committees of the CPSU.
Next, Beria dealt with the circumstances of the death, or rather, the destruction of Mikhoels. He personally interrogated former minister MGB of the USSR Abakumov, his first deputy Ogoltsov, as well as the former Minister of State Security of Belarus Tsanavu, at whose dacha on the then outskirts of Minsk Mikhoels and his companion were killed. Abakumov firmly stated that he received the order to liquidate Mikhoels orally personally from Stalin, and that no one in the MGB except him and the direct executors of the operation knew about it.
Beria sent a letter to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Malenkov, demanding that the participants in the double murder be deprived of government awards and brought to trial. This act cannot be called populist, since the letter was secret and published only many decades later. In the same way, Beria’s order, which categorically prohibits the use of physical coercion measures against those arrested, cannot be considered populist. The order, like the letter to Malenkov, was also secret.
One of the points of this order is noteworthy: “To liquidate in Lefortovo and internal prisons the premises organized by the leadership of the former MGB of the USSR for applying physical measures to those arrested, and to destroy all the instruments by which torture was carried out.”
This is the only official recognition of the presence of torture chambers and instruments of torture in prisons. The order on equipment special premises for torture has not yet been found.
As for Mikhoels’ killers, their orders were taken away, but no one went to trial. The “magnificent six” were saved by the arrest of Beria.
Later, Tsanava was arrested, but...as an accomplice of Beria! In 1955, he died in prison before his trial. Ogoltsov was arrested in April 1953 in connection with his participation in the murder of Mikhoels, but was released in August. In 19564, he was fired from the state security agencies, expelled from the party, and in 1959 he was stripped of his military rank.
On Beria’s proposal, Alexander Novikov, Alexey Shakhurin and others repressed in the “aviator case” were released from prison, rehabilitated and restored to their ranks. By that time, the investigation into it had been going on for 15 months, but none of those arrested pleaded guilty. By a secret order of Beria dated April 17, 1953, the investigation against them was terminated, the accused were released from custody and restored to all rights.
Yes, Beria was a cruel pragmatist and cynic, equally capable of the most noble and the most inhumane act to achieve his goals. Such were the customs in his environment. In this respect, he was no better, but no worse than other leaders in Stalin's circle. But he was head and shoulders smarter than them, more far-sighted. This ultimately ruined him. There is a saying: “They hit the head of the nail that sticks out.” So they hit him. It’s not at all because Beria was preparing some kind of conspiracy to seize power - that’s a myth. Beria understood perfectly well that the second Georgian would not be the main leader in the USSR, and he, as the first of the “first deputies”, and also a minister, had enough real power. No, all of them, Malenkov, Molotov, Voroshilov, and even the future whistleblower of Stalin, Khrushchev, were afraid for their own skin. Having dumped Beria, one could attribute his own sins, and considerable ones, to him. Yes, of course, none of them headed the political police during Stalin’s life, no matter what it was called, but each leader has no less blood on his hands than Beria. And speaking of specific services to the state, there was no question of comparison. After all, it was Beria who headed the Soviet “atomic project” and ensured the creation of an “atomic shield” in the shortest possible time, which, by the way, was never denied by outstanding scientists who worked on this problem in those years.
And both intelligence and counterintelligence, when they were led by Beria, were by no means only engaged in identifying the distributors of anti-Soviet jokes.
It seems to the author that the very next day after Stalin’s death, his heirs realized that a change in political course, the liquidation in some, preferably the mildest form, of the cult of his personality was inevitable, and therefore sooner or later the problem of pre- and post-war repressions would emerge. And someone will have to answer for them. And the one who is the first to pronounce this inevitable “a” will become the first person. Not the same, of course, as the deceased leader was, but still better than others.
And then the obviously frightened heirs formed the conviction that Beria would certainly want to become this first of the first. Because he (which corresponded to reality) had a much greater chance of this than the same Malenkov, Bulganin, Khrushchev, Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich... After all, Beria had a reputation as a man who stopped the Yezhovshchina, who freed a good third of a million innocently before the war repressed. Whereas, for example, Molotov and Kalinin did not dare to stand up for their own wives, Kaganovich did not dare to stand up for his brother...
There is no need to talk seriously about the military coup allegedly planned by Beria. Directly in Moscow, only the division was subordinate to him internal troops named after Dzerzhinsky and the Kremlin regiment. Meanwhile, the famous Tamanskaya and Kantemirovskaya divisions were stationed within the city; in the capital there were two dozen military academies and schools, which, by order of the Minister of Defense, had no trouble blocking the same division named after Dzerzhinsky.
But the Minister of Internal Affairs had at his disposal a much more terrible weapon: secret and top-secret archives, lists of those sentenced to repression of the “first category” with resolutions not only of Stalin, but also of Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev and others. This was enough for Stalin’s heirs to unitely take up arms against one of their own and simply betray him in order to save their posts and reputation. Beria was doomed not from the moment when, as Khrushchev asserted, the leadership became aware of the “conspiratorial plans of the enemy of the people and the English spy Beria,” but from that March day when they appointed him one of the first deputy chairmen of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Internal Affairs THE USSR. There really was a conspiracy. But it was headed by Khrushchev and Malenkov, and not Beria.
The energetic measures taken by Beria to restore order in the country only accelerated the maturation of the Khrushchev-Malenkov conspiracy.
Beria initiated the famous amnesty, when out of 2,256,402 prisoners held in camps and prisons, 1,203,421 people were to be released. Subsequently, in order to weaken the impression of this unprecedented step, the authorities spread rumors that Beria had maliciously released thousands of murderers, robbers and rapists. It was a lie. You can verify this by visiting any library and reading the same Amnesty Decree with your own eyes.
In fact, under the amnesty, persons who received a sentence of up to five years, those convicted of economic and official crimes, pregnant women and women with children under ten years of age, and the sick were subject to release. Of course, there was a temporary surge in criminal offenses, but it was quickly extinguished by law enforcement agencies. At the same time, Beria proposed transferring the camps from the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Ministry of Justice. This measure was implemented in Russia only forty-five years later! Beria also proposed transferring all construction sites, enterprises, and “sharashkas” of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the jurisdiction of the relevant industrial departments.
Subsequently, Beria will be accused of summoning to Moscow several dozen (sometimes they say hundreds) of Soviet intelligence residents and advisers to state security agencies in countries, as they were then called, “people's democracies,” thereby disorganizing the activities of the Kremlin’s intelligence service. In fact, Beria took measures to eliminate the shortcomings of foreign intelligence and strengthen its personnel, primarily its management. Beria considered most of the advisory apparatus in the camps of “people's democracy” to be completely unsuitable for the proper performance of the functions assigned to it. If only for the simple reason that almost not a single adviser knew either the language, history, culture, traditions, or mentality of the people of the country in which he worked. Many of them, moreover, behaved completely unceremoniously towards local workers, not so much “advising”, but openly, regardless of the pride of even the ministers and secretaries of the Central Committee of the Communist Parties, they commanded.
At the June 1953 Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, held immediately after the arrest of Beria and - in violation of the Party Charter - in his absence, the former Minister of Internal Affairs was accused of betraying the cause of socialism for reducing the number of the security apparatus in the GDR by seven times, which allegedly contributed to the outbreak of mass riots on July 17, 1953.
In fact, the mass uprisings of the workers of the GDR, suppressed only by the intervention of the Soviet occupation forces, occurred due to the clumsy policy of the leadership of the republic, which set as its goal the accelerated construction of socialism in East Germany. This policy enjoyed the full support of the USSR both under Stalin and Malenkov. It was for this reason, and not because of the reduction of the security apparatus, that hundreds of thousands of residents of the GDR and East Berlin abandoned their homes and property every year and fled to the West.
Knowing how to be sensible and better informed about the real situation than his colleagues in the Politburo (Presidium) of the CPSU Central Committee real life in the Soviet Union and abroad, Beria considered the artificial imposition of socialism in East Germany and, in general, the very theory of two German states. He believed that the best guarantee of maintaining reliable peace in Europe was not the confrontation between the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany, but the presence of a single democratic, demilitarized, albeit capitalist, German state.
As we know, the unification of Germany did not happen then, and it was due to the fault of both the USSR and the Western powers. The fuse to the powder keg in the form of two German states and two Berlins smoldered in the center of Europe for almost another forty years.
Beria at the same time expressed another heretical idea, which Khrushchev, who overthrew him, put into practice three years later, allegedly as his own initiative: he considered it necessary to restore normal relations with Yugoslavia.
But Beria’s envoy to Tito did not manage to reach any Belgrade. On June 26, 1953, Lavrentiy Beria was arrested. This was followed by the arrests or dismissals from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of many generals and senior officers, both in the central apparatus and locally.
On December 16-23, 1953, in Moscow, under the chairmanship of Marshal Ivan Konev, a Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR was held, formed to consider the case of Lavrenty Beria, Bogdan Kobulov, Vsevolod Merkulov, Vladimir Dekanozov, Pavel Meshik, Lev Vlodzimirsky and Sergei Goglidze.
Among the crimes charged against the defendants were treason and espionage for the intelligence services of the imperialist powers. These accusations could only cause bewilderment among intelligence and counterintelligence veterans who have a good understanding of what espionage is...
However, the defendants were found guilty of numerous crimes and sentenced to capital punishment.
"Act
1953, December 23.
On this date at 19:50, on the basis of the order of the chairman of the special judicial presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR dated December 23, 1953, No. 003, by me, the commandant of the special judicial presence, Colonel General Batitsky P.F., in the presence Prosecutor General USSR, Actual State Counselor of Justice R. A. Rudenko and Army General K. S. Moskalenko. The sentence of the special judicial presence was carried out in relation to the person sentenced to capital punishment - the execution of Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria.”
The act is sealed with the signatures of the three named persons.
Another act:
“On December 23, 1953, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR Comrade. Lunev, deputy General Military Prosecutor Comrade. Kitaev in the presence of Colonel General Comrade. Hetman, Lieutenant General Bakeev and Major General Sopilnik carried out the sentence of the special judicial presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR dated December 23, 1953 over the convicted:
Kobulov Bogdan Zakharyevich, born in 1904.
Merkulov Vsevolod Nikolaevich, born in 1895.
Dekanozov Vladimir Georgievich, born in 1898.
Meshik Pavel Yakovlevich, born in 1910.
Vlodzimirsky Lev Emelyanovich, born in 1902.
Goglizde Sergei Arsentievich, born in 1901. —
To the death penalty - execution.
On December 23, 1953, the above-mentioned convicts were shot.” Death was confirmed by a doctor (signature).
The archives of the FSB contain tens of thousands of certificates from special departments on the execution of death sentences. None of them mention the performer's name. They were classified persons; they could be listed as anyone in the NKVD staff: drivers, prison guards, security guards.
These two acts are the only exceptions. Executors of death sentences are named both by last name and position.
On September 1, 1953, by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Special Meeting under the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs was abolished. Finally, this body of extrajudicial execution, shameful for a country that considers itself a civilized state, has been eliminated.
Soon, the country's top leadership came to the conclusion that it was impossible to entrust the leadership of both state security and internal affairs agencies into one hand. According to the author, this decision was dictated not so much by the interests of the case as by fear. The ordinary fear is that, God forbid, such a two-headed monster is at the disposal of some new Yezhov with the ambitions of the head of the country, many in power will not be able to cut their heads off.
By the time of Joseph Stalin’s death, he headed the Ministry of Internal Affairs (which included the MGB), taking control of the entire political and economic life of the country, and was one of the most likely contenders for the position of “Leader of the Peoples” along with Malenkov and Khrushchev).
Lawrence's parents lived an ordinary peasant life: they were engaged in growing grapes, tobacco, and raising bees. Their common first-born, elder brother Lavrentiy, died at the age of 2, contracting smallpox. In 1905, in addition to Lavrenty, the youngest daughter Annette appeared in the family, who became deaf and dumb after an illness.
Since childhood, my son was a smart boy, he showed independence and character - in any weather, for lack of shoes, he walked barefoot in primary school, located three kilometers from the house. Then, in an effort to learn and escape from a miserable existence, he entered the Sukhumi Higher Primary School, where during 4 years of study he showed high abilities for natural sciences and drawing.
It was not easy for the parents to pay for their son’s life in the city; they even had to sell half of their house. The teenager also tried to earn money to the best of his ability - from the age of 12 he was engaged in tutoring.
After finishing his studies in Sukhumi in 1915, he continued his education at the Baku Secondary Mechanical and Construction School. In 1916, the young man decided to take his mother and sister to his city. He began to independently support himself and them financially, working in parallel with his studies at the oil company of the Nobel brothers. According to some reports, he also worked as a postman, delivering letters before classes. In 1919, the young man received the prestigious specialty of architect-builder.
In 1918, Lavrenty Pavlovich returned to his homeland and subsequently worked in various party and Soviet posts in Transcaucasia. In the period 1919-1921. he was a student at the Baku Polytechnic University, but was then recalled to serve in the Cheka of Azerbaijan.
Since 1931, he worked as Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, making a huge contribution to the development of the national economy of the republic. In 1938, he moved to Moscow, where he headed the State Security Directorate of the NKVD, and then the People's Commissariat itself.
While in this position, he initiated the release from prisons of persons imprisoned on false charges. In 1939, more than 11 thousand military commanders were rehabilitated. But then the arrests of the military elite continued, reducing the combat effectiveness of the army. In addition, on the eve of the Second World War, the NKVD carried out the eviction of “unreliable elements” from the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Belarus to the east of the USSR.
With the outbreak of the war, Beria joined the State Defense Committee, which had full power in the country. It was headed by Joseph Stalin, and Lavrenty Pavlovich in 1944-45. was chairman of the Operations Bureau, controlling heavy industry, coal and oil industries, and transport. He was also involved in organizing the rapid evacuation to the rear of enterprises located in the west of the country, creating roads and airfields for their work in new places in order to provide the front with everything necessary.
During wartime, he was directly involved in issues of deportation, when innocent citizens and children were resettled along with criminals. In 1941, during the Nazi offensive on Moscow, on his orders, hundreds of prisoners were shot without trial. Moreover, for all soldiers who were captured or did not want to fight, the public death penalty was applied.
In 1945, Beria led the activities of the Special Committee to create an atomic bomb, as well as the work of a network of foreign intelligence agents, thanks to which the USSR was aware of all the most important technical developments in in this direction US nuclear researchers. In 1949, the first domestic atomic bomb was successfully tested, and Beria received the Stalin Prize.
After the death of the “Father of Nations” in 1953, Beria headed the Ministry of Internal Affairs and was deputy. Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Trying to strengthen his position in power, he initiated the exit of a number of judicial reforms, an amnesty decree that released more than one million prisoners, ending the sensational “Doctors’ Plot,” and prohibiting cruel interrogation methods.
However, at the instigation of Nikita Khrushchev, a conspiracy was organized against Lavrentiy Beria, and in June 1953, at a meeting of the Presidium, he was arrested. He was accused of treason, moral corruption and connections with foreign intelligence.
In addition to her, in the last years of his life the minister had a common-law wife, at the time of their acquaintance she was still a schoolgirl, Valentina (Lalya) Drozdova, who gave birth to his daughter Marta. Joseph Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria with the daughter of the “Father of Nations” Svetlana On December 23, 1953, Lavrentiy Beria was shot
According to a number of historians and the son of the disgraced head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Sergo Lavrentievich, there was neither his father’s arrest in the Kremlin nor a trial. He was allegedly shot dead during an attempted takeover in their house on Malaya Nikitskaya.
| Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria | |
| Date of Birth: | |
|---|---|
| Place of Birth: |
With. Merheuli, Sukhumi district, Kutaisi province. |
| Date of death: | |
| A place of death: | |
| Citizenship: |
→ |
| Religion: | |
| Education: |
engineer, construction architect |
| The consignment: | |
| Key ideas: |
revolutionary, Bolshevik, Soviet state patriotism |
| Occupation: |
security officer, party worker at the republican level (later a member of the Politburo), head of the all-Union People's Commissariats (ministries), member of the State Defense Committee of the USSR |
| Awards and prizes: |
USSR: Hero of Socialist Labor, Order of Lenin (5), Order of the Red Banner (3), Order Suvorov I degrees. |
| Website: | |
Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria(Georgian ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია), (March 17 (29), 1899, Merkheuli village, Sukhumi district, Kutaisi province, - December 23 (?) 1953, Moscow) - one of the most prominent leaders of the CPSU(b) and Soviet state, faithful student and closest ally of I.V. Stalin, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd convocations.
Born in the village of Merkheuli, Sukhumi region (Georgian SSR) into a poor peasant family. In 1915, after graduating from the Sukhumi Higher Primary School, L.P., Beria left for Baku and entered the Baku Secondary Mechanical and Construction Technical School. In October 1915, L.P. Beria, together with a group of comrades, organized an illegal Marxist circle at the school. In March 1917, L.P. Beria joined the Bolshevik Party and organized a cell of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks) at the school. In June 1917, L.P. Beria was enlisted in the army hydraulic engineering unit and left Baku for the Romanian front. At the front, L.P. Beria conducted active Bolshevik political work among the troops. At the end of 1917, L.P. Beria returned to Baku and, while continuing his studies at a technical school, actively participated in the activities of the Baku Bolshevik organization. From the beginning of 1919 until the establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan (April 1920), L.P. Beria led an illegal communist organization of technicians and, on behalf of the Baku Party Committee, provided assistance to a number of Bolshevik cells. In 1919, L.P. Beria successfully graduated from a technical school and received a diploma as an architect-builder technician. Soon after the establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan, L.P. Beria was sent to illegal revolutionary work in Georgia, where, having contacted underground Bolshevik organizations, he actively participated in the preparation of an armed uprising against the Menshevik government. At this time, L.P. Beria was arrested in Tiflis and imprisoned in Kutaisi prison. In August 1920, after he organized a hunger strike of political prisoners, L.P. Beria was expelled by the Menshevik Ministry of Internal Affairs in a staged manner from Georgia.
Returning to Baku, L.P. Beria entered the Baku Polytechnic Institute to study. In April 1921, the party directed L.P. Beria to carry out Chekist work. From 1921 to 1931 L.P. Beria held senior positions in Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence agencies. L.P. Beria was deputy chairman of the Azerbaijani Extraordinary Commission, chairman of the Georgian GPU, chairman of the Transcaucasian GPU and plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU in the Trans-SFSR, was a member of the board of the OGPU of the USSR. During his activities in the bodies of the Cheka-GPU in Georgia and Transcaucasia, L.P. Beria, following the instructions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, carried out a great deal of work to defeat the anti-Soviet parties of the Mensheviks, Dashnaks, Musavatists, as well as Trotskyists and other anti-party parties that had gone deep underground. groups that slipped into the anti-Soviet underground, joining forces with the remnants of defeated anti-Soviet parties and the intelligence services of capitalist countries. For the successful fight against counter-revolution in Transcaucasia, L.P. Beria was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Georgian SSR, the Azerbaijan SSR and the Armenian SSR.
In 1931, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks exposed gross political mistakes and distortions committed by the leadership of party organizations in Transcaucasia. In its decision dated October 31, 1931, on the reports of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks of Georgia, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks of Azerbaijan and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks of Armenia, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks set before the party organizations of Transcaucasia the task of immediate correction of political distortions in work in the countryside, wide development of economic initiative and initiative of the national republics that were part of the Transcaucasian Federation. The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) obliged the party organizations to put an end to the unprincipled struggle for influence of individuals observed among the leading cadres of both Transcaucasia and the republics (elements of the “atamanshchina”) and to achieve the necessary solidity and Bolshevik cohesion of the party ranks. In connection with this decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, L.P. Beria was transferred to leading party work. In November 1931, L.P. Beria was elected first secretary of the Central Committee of the CP(b) of Georgia and secretary of the Transcaucasian regional committee of the CPSU(b), and in 1932, first secretary of the Transcaucasian regional committee of the CP(b) of Georgia and secretary of the Central Committee of the CP(b) of Georgia. Under the leadership of L.P. Beria, the party organizations of Transcaucasia and Georgia carried out a lot of work on the organizational strengthening of their ranks, on the ideological Bolshevik education of party members in the spirit of boundless devotion to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the great leader and teacher J.V. Stalin. L.P. Beria mobilized all the forces of the party organizations of Transcaucasia to carry out the tasks assigned to the Bolsheviks of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the Soviet government and personally I.V. Stalin. Under the leadership of L.P. Beria, the Transcaucasian Party Organization in short term corrected the errors noted in the Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on October 31, 1931, eliminated the distortions of party policy and excesses in the countryside, achieved the victory of the collective farm system in Transcaucasia and the organizational and economic strengthening of collective farms, ensured the Bolshevik implementation of the instructions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on economic and cultural the rise of the Transcaucasian republics. Much work has been carried out on the technical reconstruction and development of the oil industry of Baku. As a result, oil production increased sharply, and in 1936 almost half of the total production of the Baku oil industry came from new fields. Significant successes were achieved in the development of coal, manganese and metallurgy, industry, as well as in implementing the instructions of I.V. Stalin on the use of gigantic opportunities Agriculture Transcaucasia (development of cotton growing, tea culture, citrus crops, viticulture, high-value special and industrial crops, etc.). For the outstanding successes achieved over a number of years in the development of agriculture, as well as industry, the Georgian SSR and the Azerbaijan SSR, which were part of the Transcaucasian Federation, were awarded the Order of Lenin in 1935. Under the leadership of L.P. Beria, the party organizations of Transcaucasia honorably justified the trust of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the great leader J.V. Stalin, achieved decisive successes in the cause of socialist construction and ensured the successful implementation of the first Stalinist five-year plans in Transcaucasia. In 1935, L. P. Beria’s book “On the history of Bolshevik organizations in Transcaucasia” was published (report at a meeting of the Tbilisi party activists on July 21-22, 1935), which is a valuable contribution to scientific history Bolshevik party. The significance of this book lies, first of all, in the fact that it talks in detail about the school of political struggle from which came the closest associate, the most devoted and consistent ally of the great Lenin, the leader of the world proletariat J.V. Stalin. This book contains great material, testifying to the enormous revolutionary work of I.V. Stalin during the period of creating the strengthening of the Bolshevik Party under the leadership of V.I. Lenin. in 1934, at the XVII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), L.P. Beria was elected a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). In 1938, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks transferred L.P. Beria to work in Moscow.
In 1937, the Soviet Union encountered a problem - the Yezhovshchina. Having received the task of ridding the Soviet Union of the fifth column, the People's Commissar (Minister) of Internal Affairs of the USSR, the traitor N. Yezhov, selected scoundrels from the NKVD and unleashed terror, including on hundreds of thousands of innocent people. An unconditionally honest and intelligent person was needed, capable of simultaneously continuing the fight against traitors and correcting the crimes of the Yezhovshchina. In 1938, Beria, contrary to his wishes, was appointed People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR. In this post, Beria cleared the NKVD apparatus of criminals who had infiltrated positions under Yezhov, and began reviewing cases opened under Yezhov. It is characteristic that this enormous work was entrusted not to the prosecutor’s office or the court, but to the NKVD under the leadership of Beria. In 1939 alone, 330 thousand people were released, and the review of cases continued in subsequent years, while Beria continued to cleanse the country of the “fifth column.” During this period, L.P. Beria, by the leadership of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, carried out a great deal of work to improve the activities of the security forces. In February 1941, L.P. Beria was appointed deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. During the Great Patriotic War, from June 30, 1941, he was a member of the State Defense Committee, and from May 16, 1944 - deputy chairman of the State Defense Committee and carried out the most important assignments of the party both to the leadership of the socialist economy and at the front. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on September 30, 1943, L. P. Beria was awarded a Hero for special services in the field of production of weapons and ammunition in difficult wartime conditions Socialist Labor. L.P. Beria was awarded the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union.
After the war, he was released from the leadership of the NKVD, but was additionally tasked with the creation of nuclear weapons, and a little later - air defense missile systems. In August 1949, an atomic bomb was created and tested; in August 1953, after the assassination of Beria, a “dry” hydrogen bomb, that is, a hydrogen bomb accessible for transportation by air, was tested for the first time in the world.
After the death of I. Stalin, a fierce struggle for power unfolded. G. Malenkov was appointed Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and the secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee was headed by N. Khrushchev. L. Beria was preparing to seize sole power. In internal party struggle the leadership of the Communist Party was also involved Soviet republics. On June 26, 1953, at the July Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, L. Beria was removed from the Central Committee and expelled from the party as an enemy of the Communist Party and Soviet people. On December 23, 1953, a court sentenced him to death as a spy for foreign intelligence services and an “enemy.” Communist Party and the Soviet people" and was shot on the same day.
In 1956, the 20th Congress of the CPSU took place, at which N. S. Khrushchev made a report on exposing the personality cult of J. V. Stalin. Khrushchev did not raise the issue of his personal involvement in the repressions with the congress delegates. He placed the blame for them on Stalin and the heads of the internal affairs bodies - N. I. Ezhov, L. P. Beria. And although the text of the report was not published, its general orientation became known to the public. The exposure of Stalin's personality cult and the condemnation of unjustified repressions were called the “course of the 20th Congress.”
I think you will be interested in reading this opinion about this historical figure. Someone is aware of this information, someone will not accept it in any case, and someone will learn something new for themselves.
Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria is one of the most famous and at the same time the most unknown statesmen of Russia. Myths, lies and slander against him almost exceed the amount of slop poured into the name of Stalin. It is all the more important for us to understand who Beria really was.
On June 26, 1953, three tank regiments stationed near Moscow received an order from the Minister of Defense to load up with ammunition and enter the capital. The motorized rifle division also received the same order. Two air divisions and a formation of jet bombers were ordered to wait in full combat readiness for orders for a possible bombing of the Kremlin. Subsequently, a version of all these preparations was announced: the Minister of Internal Affairs Beria was preparing a coup d'etat, which had to be prevented, Beria himself was arrested, tried and shot. For 50 years this version was not questioned by anyone. Ordinary, but not very a common person knows only two things about Lavrentiy Beria: he was an executioner and a sexual maniac. Everything else has been removed from history. So it’s even strange: why did Stalin tolerate this useless and gloomy figure near him? Afraid, or what? Mystery. I wasn’t afraid at all! And there is no mystery. Moreover, without understanding the true role of this man it is impossible to understand the Stalinist era. Because in fact, everything was completely different from what the people who seized power in the USSR and privatized all the victories and achievements of their predecessors later came up with.
St. Petersburg journalist Elena Prudnikova, author of sensational historical investigations, participant in the historical and journalistic project “Riddles of History,” talks about a completely different Lavrentiy Beria on the pages of our newspaper. “Economic miracle” in Transcaucasia Many people have heard about the “Japanese economic miracle”. But who knows about Georgian? In the fall of 1931, the young security officer Lavrentiy Beria, a very remarkable personality, became the first secretary of the Communist Party of Georgia. In 20, he led an illegal network in Menshevik Georgia. In 23, when the republic came under the control of the Bolsheviks, he fought against banditry and achieved impressive results - by the beginning of this year there were 31 gangs in Georgia, by the end of the year there were only 10 of them left. In 25, Beria was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Battle. By 1929, he became both the chairman of the GPU of Transcaucasia and the plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU in the region. But, oddly enough, Beria stubbornly tried to part with the KGB service, dreaming of finally completing his education and becoming a builder. In 1930, he even wrote a desperate letter to Ordzhonikidze. “Dear Sergo! I know you will say that now is not the time to bring up the issue of studying. But what to do? I feel like I can’t do it anymore.” In Moscow, the request was fulfilled exactly the opposite. So, in the fall of 1931, Beria became the first secretary of the Communist Party of Georgia. A year later he became the first secretary of the Transcaucasian regional committee, in fact the owner of the region. And we really, really don’t like to talk about how he worked in this position. Beria still got the same district.
Industry as such did not exist. A poor, hungry outskirts. As you know, collectivization began in the USSR in 1927. By 1931, 36% of Georgian farms had been transferred to collective farms, but this did not make the population any less hungry. And then Beria made a move with his knight. He stopped collectivization. Left the private owners alone. But on collective farms they began to grow not bread or corn, which were of no use, but valuable crops: tea, citrus fruits, tobacco, grapes. And this is where large agricultural enterprises justified themselves one hundred percent! Collective farms began to grow rich at such a speed that the peasants themselves flocked to them. By 1939, without any coercion, 86% of farms were socialized. One example: in 1930, the area of tangerine plantations was one and a half thousand hectares, in 1940 - 20 thousand. The yield per tree has increased, in some farms by as much as 20 times. When you go to the market to buy Abkhaz tangerines, remember Lavrenty Pavlovich! In industry he worked just as effectively. During the first five-year plan, the volume of gross industrial output of Georgia alone increased almost 6 times. During the second five-year period - another 5 times. It was the same in the other Transcaucasian republics. It was under Beria, for example, that they began to drill on the shelves of the Caspian Sea, for which he was accused of wastefulness: why bother with all this nonsense! But now there is a real war between the superpowers over Caspian oil and over its transportation routes. At the same time, Transcaucasia became the “resort capital” of the USSR - who then thought about the “resort business”? In terms of education level, already in 1938 Georgia took one of the first places in the Union, and in terms of the number of students per thousand souls it surpassed England and Germany. In short, during the seven years that Beria held the post of “main man” in Transcaucasia, he so shaken up the economy of the backward republics that until the 90s they were among the richest in the Union. If you look into it, doctors economic sciences who carried out perestroika in the USSR have a lot to learn from this security officer. But that was a time when it was not political talkers, but business executives, who were worth their weight in gold.
Stalin could not miss such a person. And Beria’s appointment to Moscow was not the result of apparatus intrigues, as they are now trying to imagine, but a completely natural thing: a person who works in this way in the region can be entrusted with big things in the country.
Lavrenty Beria in 1934
Mad Sword of Revolution
In our country, the name of Beria is primarily associated with repression. On this occasion, allow me the simplest question: when did the “Beria repressions” take place? Date please! She's gone. The then chief of the NKVD, Comrade Yezhov, is responsible for the notorious “37th year”. There was even such an expression - “tight-knuckle gloves.” Post-war repressions were also carried out when Beria was not working in the authorities, and when he arrived there in 1953, the first thing he did was stop them. When there were “Beria’s rehabilitations” - this is clearly recorded in history. And “Beria’s repressions” are in their purest form a product of “black PR”. What really happened? The country had no luck with the leaders of the Cheka-OGPU from the very beginning. Dzerzhinsky was a strong, strong-willed and honest person, but, extremely busy with work in the government, he abandoned the department to his deputies. His successor Menzhinsky was seriously ill and did the same. The main cadres of the “bodies” were the promoters of the times Civil War, poorly educated, unprincipled and cruel, one can imagine what kind of situation reigned there. Moreover, since the end of the 20s, the leaders of this department were increasingly nervous about any kind of control over their activities: Yezhov was a new person in the “authorities”, he started well, but quickly fell under the influence of his deputy Frinovsky. He taught the new People's Commissar the basics of security service work directly “on the job.” The basics were extremely simple: the more enemies of the people we catch, the better; You can and should hit, but hitting and drinking is even more fun. Drunk on vodka, blood and impunity, the People's Commissar soon openly “swimmed.”
He did not particularly hide his new views from those around him. “What are you afraid of? - he said at one of the banquets. - After all, all the power is in our hands. Whoever we want, we execute, whoever we want, we pardon: After all, we are everything. It is necessary that everyone, starting from the secretary of the regional committee, should walk under you: “If the secretary of the regional committee had to walk under the head of the regional department of the NKVD, then who, one wonders, should have walked under Yezhov? With such personnel and such views, the NKVD became mortally dangerous both for the authorities and for the country. It is difficult to say when the Kremlin began to realize what was happening. Probably sometime in the first half of 1938. But to realize - they realized, but how to curb the monster? The solution is to imprison your own man, with such a level of loyalty, courage and professionalism that he can, on the one hand, cope with the management of the NKVD, and on the other, stop the monster. Stalin hardly had a large choice of such people. Well, at least one was found. Curbing the NKVD In 1938, Beria, with the rank of Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, became the head of the Main Directorate of State Security, seizing control of the most dangerous structure. Almost immediately, right before the November holidays, the entire top of the People's Commissariat was removed and mostly arrested. Then, having placed reliable people in key positions, Beria began to deal with what his predecessor had done. Chekists who went too far were fired, arrested, and some were shot. (By the way, later, having again become the Minister of Internal Affairs in 1953, do you know what order Beria issued the very first? On the prohibition of torture! He knew where he was going. The organs were cleaned out abruptly: 7372 people (22.9%) were dismissed from the rank and file from management - 3830 people (62%).
At the same time, they began to verify complaints and review cases. Published in Lately the data allowed us to estimate the scale of this work. For example, in 1937-38, about 30 thousand people were dismissed from the army for political reasons. 12.5 thousand were returned to service after the change of leadership of the NKVD. It turns out about 40%. According to the most approximate estimates, since full details have not yet been made public; in total, up to 1941 inclusive, 150-180 thousand people out of 630 thousand convicted during the Yezhovshchina were released from camps and prisons. That is about 30 percent. It took a long time to “normalize” the NKVD and it was not completely possible, although the work was carried out right up to 1945. Sometimes you have to deal with completely incredible facts. For example, in 1941, especially in those places where the Germans were advancing, they did not stand on ceremony with prisoners - the war, they say, would write everything off. However, it was not possible to blame it on the war. From June 22 to December 31, 1941 (the most difficult months of the war!) 227 NKVD employees were brought to criminal liability for abuse of power. Of these, 19 people received capital punishment for extrajudicial executions. Beria also owned another invention of the era - the “sharashka”. Among those arrested there were many people who were very needed by the country. Of course, these were not poets and writers, about whom they shout the most and loudest, but scientists, engineers, designers, who primarily worked for defense. Repression in this environment is a special topic. Who and under what circumstances imprisoned the developers of military equipment in the conditions of an impending war? The question is not at all rhetorical.
Firstly, in the NKVD there were real agents of Germany who, on real assignments, German intelligence they tried to neutralize people useful to the Soviet defense complex. Secondly, there were no fewer “dissidents” in those days than in the late 80s. In addition, this is an incredibly quarrelsome environment, and denunciation has always been a favorite means of settling scores and career advancement. Be that as it may, having taken over the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, Beria was faced with the fact: in his department there were hundreds of arrested scientists and designers, whose work the country simply desperately needed. As it is now fashionable to say - feel like a people's commissar! There is a case before you. This person may or may not be guilty, but he is necessary. What to do? Write: “Liberate”, showing your subordinates an example of the opposite kind of lawlessness? Check things? Yes, of course, but you have a closet with 600 thousand things in it. In fact, each of them needs to be re-investigated, but there are no personnel. If we are talking about someone who has already been convicted, it is also necessary to get the sentence overturned. Where to start? From scientists? From the military? And time passes, people sit, war is getting closer... Beria quickly got his bearings. Already on January 10, 1939, he signed an order to organize a Special Technical Bureau. The research topic is purely military: aircraft construction, shipbuilding, shells, armor steels. Entire groups were formed from specialists from these industries who were in prison. When the opportunity presented itself, Beria tried to free these people. For example, on May 25, 1940, aircraft designer Tupolev was sentenced to 15 years in the camps, and in the summer he was released under an amnesty.
Designer Petlyakov was granted amnesty on July 25 and already in January 1941 he was awarded the Stalin Prize. A large group of military equipment developers was released in the summer of 1941, another in 1943, the rest received freedom from 1944 to 1948. When you read what is written about Beria, you get the impression that he spent the entire war catching “enemies of the people.” Yes, sure! He had nothing to do! On March 21, 1941, Beria became deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. To begin with, he oversees the People's Commissariats of the forestry, coal and oil industries, non-ferrous metallurgy, soon adding ferrous metallurgy here. And from the very beginning of the war, more and more defense industries fell on his shoulders, since, first of all, he was not a security officer or a party leader, but an excellent organizer of production. That is why he was entrusted with the atomic project in 1945, on which the very existence of the Soviet Union depended. He wanted to punish Stalin's murderers. And for this he himself was killed.
Two leaders
Already a week after the start of the war, on June 30, an emergency authority was established - the State Defense Committee, in whose hands all power in the country was concentrated. Naturally, Stalin became the chairman of the State Defense Committee. But who entered the office besides him? This issue is carefully avoided in most publications. For one very simple reason: among the five members of the State Defense Committee there is one unmentioned person. IN brief history World War II (1985), in the index of names given at the end of the book, where such vitally important figures for victory as Ovid and Sandor Petofi are present, Beria is not present. Wasn’t there, didn’t fight, didn’t participate...
So: there were five of them. Stalin, Molotov, Malenkov, Beria, Voroshilov. And three commissioners: Voznesensky, Mikoyan, Kaganovich. But soon the war began to make its own adjustments. Since February 1942, Beria, instead of Voznesensky, began to oversee the production of weapons and ammunition. Officially. (But in reality, he was already doing this in the summer of 1941.) That same winter, the production of tanks also fell into his hands. Again, not because of any intrigue, but because he did better. The results of Beria's work are best seen from the numbers. If on June 22 the Germans had 47 thousand guns and mortars against our 36 thousand, then by November 1, 1942 these figures were equal, and by January 1, 1944 we had 89 thousand of them against the German 54.5 thousand. From 1942 to 1944, the USSR produced 2 thousand tanks per month, far ahead of Germany. On May 11, 1944, Beria became chairman of the GKO Operations Bureau and deputy chairman of the Committee, in fact, the second person in the country after Stalin. On August 20, 1945, he took on the most difficult task of that time, which was a matter of survival for the USSR - he became chairman of the Special Committee for the creation of an atomic bomb (there he performed another miracle - the first Soviet atomic bomb, contrary to all forecasts, was tested just four years later , August 20, 1949). Not a single person from the Politburo, and indeed not a single person in the USSR, even came close to Beria in terms of the importance of the tasks being solved, in terms of the scope of powers, and, obviously, simply in terms of the scale of his personality. In fact, the post-war USSR was at that time a double star system: the seventy-year-old Stalin and the young - in 1949 he turned only fifty - Beria.
Head of state and his natural successor.
It was this fact that Khrushchev and post-Khrushchev historians hid so diligently in holes of silence and under piles of lies. Because if on June 23, 1953, the Minister of Internal Affairs was killed, this still leads to the fight against the putsch, and if the head of state was killed, then this is what the putsch is... Stalin's Scenario If you trace the information about Beria that wanders from publication to publication, to its original source, then almost all of it follows from Khrushchev’s memoirs. A person who, in general, cannot be trusted, since a comparison of his memories with other sources reveals an exorbitant amount of unreliable information in them. Who hasn’t done “political science” analyzes of the situation in the winter of 1952-1953. What combinations were not thought of, what options were not calculated. That Beria was blocked with Malenkov, with Khrushchev, that he was on his own... These analyzes have only one sin - as a rule, they completely exclude the figure of Stalin. It is silently believed that the leader had retired by that time and was almost insanity...
There is only one source - the memories of Nikita Sergeevich. But why, exactly, should we believe them? And Beria’s son Sergo, for example, who saw Stalin fifteen times during 1952 at meetings devoted to missile weapons, recalled that the leader did not at all seem weakened in mind... The post-war period of our history is no less dark than pre-Rurik Russia. Probably no one really knows what was happening in the country then. It is known that after 1949, Stalin withdrew somewhat from business, leaving all the “turnover” to chance and to Malenkov. But one thing is clear: something was cooking. Based on indirect evidence, it can be assumed that Stalin was planning some kind of very big reform, first of all economic, and only then, perhaps, political. Another thing is clear: the leader was old and sick, he knew this very well, he did not suffer from a lack of courage and could not help but think what would happen to the state after his death, and not look for a successor. If Beria had been of any other nationality, there would have been no problems. But one Georgian after another on the throne of the empire! Even Stalin would not have done this. It is known that in the post-war years, Stalin slowly but steadily squeezed the party apparatus out of the captain's cabin. Of course, the functionaries could not be happy with this. In October 1952, at the CPSU Congress, Stalin gave the party a decisive battle, asking to be relieved of his duties. Secretary General. It didn’t work out, they didn’t let me go. Then Stalin came up with a combination that is easy to read: an obviously weak figure becomes the head of state, and the real head, the “gray cardinal,” is formally in a supporting role. And so it happened: after Stalin’s death, the lack of initiative Malenkov became the first, but Beria was really in charge of politics. He not only carried out an amnesty. For example, he has a resolution condemning the forced Russification of Lithuania and Western Ukraine; he also proposed nice solution“German” question: if Beria had remained in power, the Berlin Wall simply would not have existed. Well, and along the way, he again took up the “normalization” of the NKVD, launching the process of rehabilitation, so that Khrushchev and the company then only had to jump on an already moving locomotive, pretending that they had been there from the very beginning. It was later that they all said that they “disagreed” with Beria, that he “pressured” them. Then they said a lot of things. But in fact, they completely agreed with Beria’s initiatives. But then something happened. Calmly! This is a revolution! A meeting of either the Presidium of the Central Committee or the Presidium of the Council of Ministers was scheduled for June 26 in the Kremlin. According to the official version, the military, led by Marshal Zhukov, came to see him, members of the Presidium called them into the office, and they arrested Beria. Then he was taken to a special bunker in the courtyard of the headquarters of the Moscow Military District troops, an investigation was carried out and he was shot.
This version does not stand up to criticism. Why - it will take a long time to talk about this, but there are many obvious stretches and inconsistencies in it... Let's just say one thing: none of the outside, uninterested people saw Beria alive after June 26, 1953. The last person to see him was his son Sergo - in the morning, at the dacha. According to his recollections, his father was going to visit city apartment, then go to the Kremlin for a meeting of the Presidium. Around noon, Sergo received a call from his friend, pilot Amet-Khan, who said that there had been a shootout at Beria’s house and that his father, apparently, was no longer alive. Sergo, together with member of the Special Committee Vannikov, rushed to the address and managed to see broken windows, knocked out doors, a wall dotted with traces of bullets from a heavy machine gun. Meanwhile, members of the Presidium gathered in the Kremlin. What happened there? Wading through the rubble of lies, bit by bit recreating what happened, we managed to roughly reconstruct the events. After Beria was dealt with, the perpetrators of this operation—presumably these were military men from Khrushchev’s old, Ukrainian team, whom he dragged to Moscow, led by Moskalenko—went to the Kremlin. At the same time, another group of military men arrived there.
People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR L.P. Beria with I.V. Stalin's daughter Svetlana. 1930s. Photo from the personal archive of E. Kovalenko. RIA News
It was headed by Marshal Zhukov, and among its members was Colonel Brezhnev. Curious, isn't it? Then, presumably, everything unfolded like this. Among the putschists were at least two members of the Presidium - Khrushchev and Defense Minister Bulganin (Moskalenko and others always refer to them in their memoirs). They confronted the rest of the government with a fact: Beria had been killed, something had to be done about it. The whole team inevitably found themselves in the same boat and began to hide their ends. Another thing is much more interesting: why was Beria killed? The day before, he returned from a ten-day trip to Germany, met with Malenkov, and discussed with him the agenda for the meeting on June 26. Everything was amazing. If something happened, it happened in the last 24 hours. And, most likely, it was somehow connected with the upcoming meeting. True, there is an agenda, preserved in Malenkov’s archive. But most likely it's a linden tree. No information has been preserved about what the meeting was actually supposed to be devoted to. It would seem... But there was one person who could know about this. Sergo Beria said in an interview that his father told him in the morning at the dacha that at the upcoming meeting he was going to demand from the Presidium a sanction for the arrest of the former Minister of State Security Ignatiev.
But now everything is clear! So it couldn't be clearer. The fact is that Ignatiev was in charge of Stalin’s security in Last year his life. It was he who knew what happened at Stalin’s dacha on the night of March 1, 1953, when the leader had a stroke. And something happened there, about which many years later the surviving guards continued to lie mediocrely and too obviously. And Beria, who kissed the hand of the dying Stalin, would have torn all his secrets from Ignatiev. And then he organized a political trial for the whole world against him and his accomplices, no matter what positions they held. This is just in his style... No, these same accomplices under no circumstances should have allowed Beria to arrest Ignatiev. But how do you keep it? All that remained was to kill - which was done... Well, and then they hid the ends. By order of Defense Minister Bulganin, a grandiose “Tank Show” was organized (equally ineptly repeated in 1991). Khrushchev's lawyers, under the leadership of the new Prosecutor General Rudenko, also a native of Ukraine, staged the trial (dramatization is still a favorite pastime of the prosecutor's office). Then the memory of all the good things that Beria did was carefully erased, and vulgar tales about a bloody executioner and a sexual maniac were put into use.
In terms of “black PR,” Khrushchev was talented. It seems that this was his only talent... And he was not a sex maniac either! The idea of presenting Beria as a sexual maniac was first voiced at the Plenum of the Central Committee in July 1953. Secretary of the Central Committee Shatalin, who, as he claimed, searched Beria’s office, found in the safe “a large number of objects of a libertine man.” Then Beria's security guard, Sarkisov, spoke and spoke about his numerous relationships with women. Naturally, no one checked all this, but the gossip was started and went for a walk around the country. “Being a morally corrupt person, Beria cohabited with numerous women...” the investigators wrote in the “sentence.” There is also a list of these women on file. There’s just one problem: it almost completely coincides with the list of women with whom General Vlasik, Stalin’s security chief, who was arrested a year earlier, was accused of cohabiting with them. Wow, how unlucky Lavrenty Pavlovich was. There were such opportunities, but the women came exclusively from under Vlasik! And without laughing, it’s as simple as shelling pears: they took a list from Vlasik’s case and added it to the “Beria case.” Who will check? Nina Beria many years later in one of her interviews said very a simple phrase: “It’s an amazing thing: Lavrenty was busy working day and night when he had to deal with a legion of these women!” Drive along the streets, take them to country villas, and even to your home, where there was a Georgian wife and a son and his family lived. However, when it comes to denigrating a dangerous enemy, who cares what really happened?”
Elena Prudnikova
