What education did Beria have. Beria

Born into the family of a poor peasant in the village of Merkheuli, Sukhum district, Tiflis province. In 1919 he graduated from the Secondary School of Mechanics and Construction in Baku as an architect-builder. He entered the Polytechnic Institute, but studied only two courses. Joined the Bolshevik Party. During the Civil War, in the party and Soviet work in Transcaucasia, including illegal. After the Civil War - in various positions in the Cheka-GPU-OGPU-NKVD, as well as in party posts. In 1938 he headed the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD, took the post of deputy people's commissar and in the same year became the people's commissar of internal affairs, remaining in this post until the end of 1945.

After Beria was appointed head of the NKVD and before the start of the Great Patriotic War, some of the “unreasonably convicted” were released from the camps, including officers arrested on false charges. In particular, in 1939, 11,178 previously dismissed and taken into custody commanders were reinstated in the army. However, in 1940-1941. arrests of commanding officers continued, which affected the combat capability of the armed forces. Before the war, the NKVD carried out the forced eviction of "unreliable" residents of the Baltic states, the western regions of Belarus and Ukraine to the remote eastern regions of the USSR. At the insistence of Beria, the rights of the Special Meeting under the People's Commissar to issue extrajudicial sentences were expanded.

Beria was responsible for the completeness and reliability of reports to Stalin through the foreign intelligence of the NKVD about the impending German attack on the USSR. The information that he supplied the head of state was often biased, made it possible to think about the possibility of maintaining peace with Germany, at least until 1942. With the outbreak of World War II, Beria was included in the GKO, in May 1944 - September 1945 - its chairman Operational Bureau, where decisions were made on all current issues.

He controlled the production of aircraft, engines, tanks, mortars, ammunition, the work of the People's Commissariats of Railways, the coal and oil industries. Directly coordinated all intelligence and counterintelligence activities through the NKVD-NKGB. He proved to be a talented organizer. In 1943 he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. In July 1945 he was awarded the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union.

During the war years, Beria, as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, was directly responsible for the deportation of a number of peoples of the USSR to remote regions of the country, including Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Kalmyks, Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans. Not only criminal elements and accomplices of the enemy, but also many innocent people - women, children, old people - were subjected to forcible resettlement. Justice for them was restored only after 1953. In the autumn of 1941, during the offensive of the fascist troops on Moscow, by order of Beria, several dozen prisoners, including prominent military men and scientists, were shot without trial.

Since 1944, on behalf of the GKO, Beria has been dealing with the uranium problem. In 1945 he headed the Special Committee on the creation of the atomic bomb. He coordinated the activities of foreign intelligence to obtain the secrets of the American atomic bomb, which accelerated the work of Soviet nuclear physicists. On August 29, 1949, the first Soviet atomic bomb was successfully tested.

After the death of Beria, he headed the united Ministry of Internal Affairs, being also the first deputy. Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. In March-June 1953, he made a number of proposals related to domestic and foreign policy, including: amnesty for certain categories of prisoners, closing the "doctors' case", curtailing the "building of socialism" in the GDR, etc.

Influence in special agencies and the potential of Beria did not suit his opponents in the struggle for power in the Kremlin. On the initiative of N.S. Khrushchev and with the support of a number of high-ranking military officers on June 26, 1953, Beria was arrested at a meeting of the Presidium (Politburo) of the CPSU Central Committee. Accused of espionage, "moral decay", in an effort to usurp power and restore capitalism. Deprived of party and state posts, titles and awards. Special judicial presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR chaired by Marshal I.S. Konev on December 23, 1953 was sentenced to L.P. Beria and six of his accomplices to be shot. On the same day, the sentence was carried out.

Literature

Lavrenty Beria. 1953: Transcript of the July plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU and other documents / Comp. V.P. Naumov and Yu.V. Sigachev. M., 1999.

Rubin N. Lavrenty Beria: myth and reality. M., 1998.

Toptygin A.V. Unknown Beria. SPb., 2002.

Born in the village of Merkheuli, Sukhumi region, in a poor peasant family. Father - Pavel Khulaevich Beria (1872 - 1922). 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. From the age of 17, he supported his mother and deaf-mute sister, who moved in with him.

In March 1917, L.P. Beria organized a cell of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks) at the school in Baku. From March 1919 until the establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan (April 1920), L.P. Beria also led an illegal communist organization of technicians. In 1919, L.P. Beria successfully graduated from a technical school, received a diploma as a technician of an architect-builder.

While preparing an armed uprising against the Menshevik government in Georgia, he was arrested and imprisoned in Kutaisi prison. In August 1920, after a hunger strike organized by him for political prisoners, L.P. Beria was expelled from Georgia.

Returning to Baku, L.P. Beria entered the Baku Polytechnic Institute to study.

In April 1921, the RCP(b) sent L.P. Beria to the KGB work. From 1921 to 1931, he held leading positions in the Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence bodies, 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 ZSFSR, was a member of the collegium of the OGPU of the USSR.

During his work in the bodies of the Cheka-GPU in Georgia and the Transcaucasus, L.P. Beria took an active part in the fight against the Mensheviks, Dashnaks, Musavatists, Trotskyists, foreign intelligence agents and other persons who opposed the Bolsheviks who came to power, or who were accused of such confrontation. 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 with the wording "For the successful fight against counter-revolution in the Transcaucasus."

In November 1931, L.P. Beria was transferred to party work - he was elected First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CP (b) of Georgia and Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and in 1932 - First Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and Secretary of the Central Committee CP(b) of Georgia.

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In 1938, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks transferred L.P. Beria to work in Moscow: on August 22, 1938, he became the first deputy people's commissar of internal affairs of the USSR N.I. Yezhov, on September 29 he headed the key Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD, and on November already replaces Yezhov as People's Commissar. Since March 22, 1939 - a candidate member of the Politburo.

In February 1941, the head of the NKVD was appointed deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, he was awarded the title of "State Commissar of State Security." 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 responsible instructions from the country's leadership and the ruling party, both related to the management of the national economy, and at the front. In particular, Beria became the initiator and curator of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.

March 18, 1946 L.P. Beria becomes a member of the Politburo, that is, he is one of the country's top leaders. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of September 30, 1943, L.P. Beria was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor "for special services in strengthening the production of weapons and ammunition in difficult wartime conditions." On July 9, 1945, when replacing special state security ranks with military ones, L.P. Beria was awarded the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union. Laureate of the Stalin Prize (1949) "for the organization of the production of atomic energy and the successful completion of the testing of atomic weapons." Holder of the "Diploma of Honorary Citizen of the Soviet Union" (1949).

Economic activity in Transcaucasia

From 1931 to 1938, while serving as secretary and first secretary of the Central Committee of the CP (b) of Transcaucasia, Beria consistently pursued a policy of developing agriculture and industry in Transcaucasia. Mass planting of citrus fruits, tea, grapes, rare industrial crops began. In exchange for these products, grain, meat, and vegetables arrived in Transcaucasia. Irrigation work was carried out, as a result of which the sown area increased. The drainage of the Colchis lowland and a number of other swamps in Georgia and Abkhazia, in addition to introducing new lands into agricultural circulation, also led to an improvement in the overall epidemiological situation. Malaria has ceased to be the scourge of Transcaucasia.

A number of food, light, construction industries, machine-building plants were built, the Baku oil fields were reconstructed and expanded. Large-scale construction of residential buildings and public buildings in Tbilisi was also launched, as well as the reconstruction and construction of a number of resorts on the Black Sea coast.

Repression

Until now, there are different points of view on the participation of Beria in the repressions of the late 30s and 40s. No one doubts that the head of the NKVD and the Ministry of Internal Affairs in those years obviously had the most direct relation to what was happening, but the nature of Beria's personal contribution is assessed differently by different researchers.

Aleksey Barinov, a journalist for AiF, wrote in 2004 that already in the mid-thirties, heading the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, Beria personally and through the apparatus carried out mass repressions among the intelligentsia of Transcaucasia. Without citing documents, however, Barinov claims that there is a lot of evidence that Beria himself participated in interrogations and torture.

Beria had nothing to do with the decision to start repressions, since they began with the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of July 2, 1937 “On anti-Soviet elements”. At that time, Lavrenty Pavlovich was still in Transcaucasia.

It is known that in 1939, after the entry of Beria into the post of People's Commissar of the NKVD to replace Yezhov, the pace of repression sharply declined. Moreover, in 1939 there was a review of a number (at least one hundred thousand) of cases of "unreasonably convicted" persons. In November 1939, an order “On shortcomings in the investigative work of the NKVD bodies” was issued, requiring strict adherence to criminal procedural norms. However, for example, Professor Rudolf Pikhoya, the former head of the State Archives of the Russian Federation, claims that it was Stalin's game against Yezhov and to increase his own popularity, and Beria did not play a decisive role here. At the same time, A.P. Parshev, a publicist and writer, states that it was Beria who initiated the decrees on curtailing repressions.

The Krugosvet encyclopedia and the Memorial Society report that in 1939-1941, as a result of Beria’s activities, mass deportations of residents of the Baltic republics, Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and Moldova annexed to the USSR were carried out. Despite the decrease in the rate of repressions, the powers of the Special Council under the NKVD expanded (especially after the start of the Great Patriotic War, when the Special Conference received the right to apply "executive punishment"). With the name of Beria, opponents of his rehabilitation also associate the confirmation of the right to torture "obvious and unarmed enemies of the people." Beria is also accused of organizing the execution in 1940 of a significant part of the captured Polish officers near Katyn near Smolensk and in several other camps according to a secret decree of the Politburo. After June 22, 1941, there were total preventive deportations of Soviet Germans, Finns, Greeks and some other peoples. Beginning in 1943 and later, total deportations were applied to Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Karachays and Balkars, Crimean Tatars, Meskhetian Turks, and some other peoples of the North Caucasus and Crimea, accused of collaborating with the invaders. Beria, as the head of the NKVD, is associated with the organization of these deportations.

In the collections "Polish underground in the territory of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus 1939-1941" (Vol. 1.2. Warsaw-Moscow, 2001) and “Deportation of Polish Citizens from Western Ukraine and Western Belarus in 1940”, (Warsaw-Moscow, 2003) it is stated that the deportations in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were directed mainly against hostile to the Soviet regime and the nationalist-minded part of the Polish population.

At the end and after the war, he devoted himself entirely to work on the nuclear potential of the USSR and could not be directly involved in subsequent repressions. At the same time, they also refer to the fact that preventive deportations were used in the allies of the USSR in the anti-Hitler coalition, and the so-called "retribution deportations" were more humane than the imprisonment of most of the male population of the deported peoples in camps and colonies.

Beria's son, Sergo Lavrentievich, in 1994 published a book of memoirs about his father, which many regarded as an attempt to whitewash his father. In particular, L.P. Beria is described there as a supporter of democratic reforms, an end to the forced construction of socialism in the GDR, the return of the South Kuriles to Japan, and so on. At the same time, the author claims that his father, like any other top leader of our country at that time, is personally responsible for the repression and cannot be rehabilitated.

nuclear project

On February 11, 1943, Stalin signed the decision of the GKO on the program of work for the creation of an atomic bomb under the leadership of V. M. Molotov. But already in the decree of the State Defense Committee of the USSR on the laboratory of I.V. Kurchatov, adopted on December 3, 1944, it was L.P. Beria who was entrusted with “monitoring the development of work on uranium”, that is, about a year and ten months after their supposed start, which was difficult during the war.

After testing the first American atomic device in the desert near Alamogordo, work in the USSR to create its own nuclear weapons was significantly accelerated.

The Special Committee was created on the basis of the decision of the State Defense Committee of August 20, 1945. It included L. P. Beria (chairman), G. M. Malenkov, N. A. Voznesensky, B. L. Vannikov, A. P. Zavenyagin, I. V. Kurchatov, P. L. Kapitsa (soon was dismissed), V. A. Makhnev, M. G. Pervukhin. The Committee was entrusted with "management of all work on the use of intra-atomic energy of uranium." Later it was transformed into a Special Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. On the one hand, Beria organized and directed the receipt of all the necessary intelligence information, on the other hand, he carried out general management of the entire project. In March 1953, the Special Committee was entrusted with the management of other special works of defense significance. On the basis of the decision of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU of June 26, 1953 (the day Beria was arrested and dismissed), the Special Committee was liquidated, and its apparatus was transferred to the newly formed Ministry of Medium Machine Building of the USSR.

On August 29, 1949, the domestic atomic bomb was successfully tested at the Semipalatinsk test site and Lavrenty Pavlovich was awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of the USSR. And the test of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb took place on August 12, 1953, shortly after the removal of Beria from all posts.

1953: rise and fall of Beria

By the time of the death of I.V. Stalin, Beria as a political figure was largely relegated to the background: since December 1945, he no longer headed the internal affairs and state security bodies, in 1951-1952 the new leaders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security fabricated the so-called "Mingrelian case" against the leaders of the organizations of the Georgian Communist Party in the western regions of the republic - it is usually believed that this action was indirectly directed against Beria, who was a Mingrelian by origin (however, in his passport in the nationality column it was written "Georgian"). Beria did not control other political repressions of the last years of Stalin's rule, in particular, the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the "case of doctors." Nevertheless, after the XIX Congress of the CPSU, Beria was included not only in the expanded Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which replaced the former Politburo, but also in the "leading five" of the Presidium created at the suggestion of Stalin.

There is a version that Beria was involved in the death of Stalin, or at least that, on his orders, timely assistance was not provided to the terminally ill Stalin. Documentary materials and eyewitness accounts do not support the version according to which Stalin's death was violent. Beria participated in the funeral of Stalin on March 9, 1953, delivered a speech at the funeral rally. By this time, he had already entered the new Soviet government, headed by G. M. Malenkov, as the Minister of Internal Affairs. The newly formed Ministry of Internal Affairs united the previously existing Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security. At the same time, Beria became the first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and, in fact, the main contender for sole power in the country.

As Minister of the Interior, Beria carried out a series of liberalization measures. On May 9, 1953, an amnesty was declared, freeing 1.2 million people. According to Beria's secret order, torture during interrogations was abolished, and "socialist legality" was ordered to be strictly followed. A number of high-profile political criminal cases were dropped or reviewed. The “case of doctors” was closed, those arrested on it were released; for the first time, it was openly announced that "illegal methods of investigation" were used against the accused. All those convicted in the "Leningrad case" and the "Mingrelian case" were also rehabilitated. High-ranking military men imprisoned during the trials of the late 1940s and early 1950s were released and reinstated in rank (including Air Chief Marshal A. A. Novikov, Marshal of Artillery N. D. Yakovlev, etc.) In total, investigative cases were closed for 400,000 people.

A number of measures taken during these months at the initiative of Beria concerned domestic and foreign policy. Beria advocated cutting military spending and freezing expensive construction projects. He achieved the beginning of negotiations on a truce in Korea, tried to restore relations with Yugoslavia. After the start of the anti-communist uprising in the GDR, he proposed to take a course towards the unification of West and East Germany into a "peace-loving, bourgeois state." Pursuing a policy of nominating national cadres, Beria sent documents to the republican Central Committee, which spoke of the wrong Russification policy and illegal repressions.

The strengthening of Beria, his claims to Stalin's legacy and his lack of allies in the top party leadership led to his fall. On the initiative of N. S. Khrushchev, the members of the Presidium of the Central Committee were announced that Beria was planning to carry out a coup d'état and arrest the Presidium at the premiere of the opera The Decembrists. On June 26, 1953, during a meeting of the Presidium, Beria, by prior agreement between Khrushchev and G.K. Zhukov, was arrested, bound, taken out of the Kremlin by car and kept in custody in the bunker of the headquarters of the Moscow Air Defense District. On the same day, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR is dated to deprive Beria of all titles and awards. In July 1953, at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, he was formally removed from the Presidium and the Central Committee and expelled from the party. It was only then that information about the arrest and removal of Beria appeared in Soviet newspapers and caused a great public outcry.

Regarding the further fate of Beria, there are several versions of varying degrees of reliability. Beria's son in his book defended the version according to which his father was not arrested at all at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU (thus, Khrushchev's memoirs, the stories of Zhukov and others are a tendentious lie), but was killed as a result of a special operation in his mansion in the center of Moscow. There are notes signed in Beria's name and addressed to various members of the Presidium of the Central Committee, including Malenkov, Khrushchev and Voroshilov: in them Beria defends his innocence, admits his foreign policy "mistakes" and complains about the lack of proper coverage and pince-nez. They are dated the first days of July 1953; if their authenticity is recognized, then Beria, at least at that time, was alive.

According to the official version, supported by documents, Beria lived until December 1953 and appeared, along with some of his former employees from the state security agencies (V.N. Merkulov, B.Z. Kobulov and others), who were arrested during the same year, before the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR, chaired by Marshal I. S. Konev. He was accused of a large number of acts that had nothing to do with the real activities of Beria: espionage in favor of Great Britain, the desire to "eliminate the Soviet worker and peasant system, restore capitalism and restore the rule of the bourgeoisie." Contrary to rumors, Beria was not accused of raping dozens or even hundreds of women; in his case there is only one such statement from a person who was Beria's long-term mistress, gave birth to his daughter and lived at his expense in an apartment in the center of Moscow; she filed a rape complaint only, apparently, in order to avoid persecution after his arrest.

On December 23, 1953, the case of Beria was considered by the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR, chaired by Marshal I. S. Konev. All the accused were sentenced to death and executed the same day. Beria was shot a few hours before the execution of the other convicts. On his own initiative, the first shot was fired from a personal weapon by Colonel-General (later Marshal of the Soviet Union) P.F. Batitsky. A brief report on the trial of Beria and his collaborators appeared in the Soviet press.

Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria (March 17 (29), 1899 - December 23, 1953) - Soviet politician of Georgian nationality, Marshal of the Soviet Union, head of state security during the Second World War.

Beria was the most influential of the heads of Stalin's secret police and led it the longest. He also controlled many other areas of the life of the Soviet state, was the de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union, standing at the head of the NKVD detachments, which were created for partisan operations of the Great Patriotic War and as "detachments" against thousands of "defectors, deserters, cowards and simulators" . Beria carried out a huge expansion of the Gulag camp system and was the main person in charge of the secret defense institutions - "sharashki", which played the largest military role. He created an effective reconnaissance and sabotage network. Together with Stalin, Beria took part in Yalta Conference. Stalin introduced him to the President Roosevelt as "our Himmler". After the war, Beria organized the seizure of the state institutions of Central and Eastern Europe by the communists and successfully completed the project of creating Soviet atomic bomb to which Stalin gave absolute priority. This creation was completed in five years thanks to Soviet espionage in the West, carried out by Beria's NKVD.

After Stalin's death in March 1953, Beria became deputy head of government (Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR) and prepared a liberalization campaign. For a short time, together with Malenkov and Molotov, he became one of the members of the ruling "troika". Beria's self-confidence led him to underestimate the other members of the Politburo. During the coup d'état, which was led by N. Khrushchev, who had the assistance of Marshal Georgy Zhukov, Beria was arrested on charges of treason during a meeting of the Politburo. The neutralization of the NKVD was provided by Zhukov's troops. After interrogation, Beria was taken to the cellars of the Lubyanka and shot by General Batitsky.

Beria's youth and his rise to power

Beria was born in Merkheuli, near Sukhumi, Kutaisi province (now in Georgia). He belonged to the Mingrelian people and grew up in a Georgian Orthodox family. Beria's mother, Marta Jakeli (1868-1955), distantly related to the Megrelian princely family of Dadiani, was a deeply religious woman. She spent a lot of time in the church and died in one of the temples. Marta managed to become a widow once before she married Father Lavrenty, Pavel Khukhaevich Beria (1872-1922), a landowner from Abkhazia. Lavrenty had a brother (name unknown) and sister Anna, who was born deaf and mute. In his autobiography, Beria only mentions his sister and niece. His brother, apparently, was either dead or did not maintain relations with Beria after he left Merkheuli.

Beria graduated from the Sukhumi Higher Primary School. To Bolsheviks he joined in March 1917 as a student at the Baku Secondary Mechanical and Technical Construction School (later the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy), whose program was related to the oil industries.

In 1919, 20-year-old Beria began his career in the state security agencies, but not the Bolsheviks, but in counterintelligence hostile to the Soviet Republic Baku Musavatists. Later he himself claimed that he played the role of a communist agent in the Musavat camp, but this version of his own cannot be considered proven. After the capture of the city by the Red Army (April 28, 1920), Beria, according to some reports, escaped execution only by chance. Once in prison for a while, he struck up a relationship there with Nina Gegechkori, the niece of his cellmate. They managed to escape by train. 17-year-old Nina was an educated girl from an aristocratic family. One of her uncles was a minister in Menshevik government of Georgia, the other - a minister of the Bolsheviks. Subsequently, she became the wife of Beria.

In 1920 or 1921 Beria joined Cheka- Bolshevik secret police. In August 1920, he became the manager of the affairs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Azerbaijan, and in October of the same year, he became the executive secretary of the Extraordinary Commission for the Expropriation of the Bourgeoisie and the Improvement of the Life of Workers. However, he only worked in this position for about six months. In 1921, Beria was accused of abuse of power and falsification of criminal cases, but thanks to the intercession Anastas Mikoyan escaped serious punishment.

The Bolsheviks raised an uprising in what was then under the rule of the Mensheviks. Democratic Republic of Georgia. Following this, the Red Army invaded there. The Cheka actively participated in this conflict, which ended in the defeat of the Mensheviks and the creation of the Georgian SSR. Beria also participated in the preparation of the uprising against the Mensheviks. In November 1922, he was transferred from Azerbaijan to Tiflis and soon became the head of the secret operational unit of the Georgian branch there. GPU(successor of the Cheka) and its deputy head.

In 1924, Beria played a prominent role in the suppression Georgian national uprising ending in the execution of 10,000 people.

Beria in his youth. Photo from the 1920s

In December 1926, Beria became the chairman of the GPU of Georgia, and in April 1927, the Georgian People's Commissar of Internal Affairs. Sergo Ordzhonikidze, the head of the Bolsheviks of Transcaucasia, introduced him to an influential Georgian countryman - Stalin. Lavrenty Pavlovich, to the best of his ability, contributed to Stalin's ascent to power. During the years of leadership of the Georgian GPU, Beria actually destroyed the intelligence networks of Turkey and Iran in the Soviet Transcaucasia and he himself successfully recruited agents in the governments of these countries. During Stalin's vacations in the south, he was also responsible for security.

The chairman of the GPU of all Transcaucasia was then a prominent Chekist Stanislav Redens, husband Anna Alliluyeva, sisters of Stalin's wife, hopes. Beria and Redens did not get along with each other. Redens and the Georgian leadership tried to get rid of the careerist Beria and transfer him to the Lower Volga. However, Beria, in his intrigues against them, acted more deftly and ingeniously. Once Lavrenty Pavlovich got Redens drunk, undressed and sent home completely naked. In the spring of 1931, Redens was transferred from Transcaucasia to Belarus. This facilitated the further career of Beria.

In November 1931, Beria was appointed head of the Communist Party of Georgia, and in October 1932 - of the entire Transcaucasus. In February 1934, on XVII Party Congress, he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).

Beria and Stalin's Great Terror

As you know, in 1934 the old party guard made attempts to remove Stalin. When members of the Central Committee were elected at the 17th Party Congress, the head of the Leningrad Communists Sergey Kirov collected more votes than Stalin, and this fact was hidden only by the efforts of the commission for counting ballots, headed by Lazar Kaganovich. Influential communists offered Kirov to head the party instead of Stalin. Meetings about this were held at the apartment of Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Until the very end of 1934, both Stalin and the opposition to him were stubborn undercover intrigues. Stalin proposed recalling Kirov from Leningrad and appointing him one of the four secretaries of the Central Committee. Kirov refused to move to Moscow. Stalin insisted, but was forced to back down when the request to leave Kirov in Leningrad for another two years was supported Kuibyshev and Ordzhonikidze. Relations between Kirov and Stalin worsened. Counting on the support of Ordzhonikidze, Kirov hoped to consult with him in Moscow at the November plenum of the Central Committee. But Ordzhonikidze was not in Moscow. In early November, he and Beria were in Baku, where he suddenly became ill after dinner. Beria took the sick Sergo by train to Tbilisi. After the November 7 parade, Ordzhonikidze became ill again. He started bleeding internally, then had a massive heart attack. The Politburo sent three doctors to Tiflis, but they did not establish the cause of Ordzhonikidze's mysterious illness. Despite feeling unwell, Sergo wanted to return to Moscow to participate in the work of the plenum, but Stalin firmly ordered him to follow the instructions of the doctors and not come to the capital until November 26. It is more than likely that the mysterious illness of Ordzhonikidze, which kept him away from communication with Kirov, was caused by the intrigues of Beria, led by Stalin.

By 1935, Beria had become one of Stalin's most trusted subordinates. He strengthened his position in the Stalinist environment by publishing (1935) the book “On the Question of the History of Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia” (apparently, its real authors were M. Toroshelidze and E. Bedia). It inflated Stalin's role in the revolutionary movement in every possible way. "To my dear and beloved Master, the great Stalin!" - Beria signed a gift copy.

After murder of Kirov(December 1, 1934) Stalin began his Great Purge, the main goal of which was the highest party guard. Beria opened the same purge in Transcaucasia, using it as an opportunity to settle many personal scores. Committed suicide or was killed (they say even personally by Beria) Aghasi Khanjyan, the first secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia. In December 1936, after dinner at Lavrenty Pavlovich's, he died suddenly. Nestor Lakoba, the head of Soviet Abkhazia, who shortly before greatly contributed to the rise of Beria, and now, dying, called him his killer. Before the burial of Nestor, Lavrenty Pavlovich ordered to remove all the internal organs from the corpse, and later dug out the body of Lakoba and destroyed it. Nestor's widow was thrown into prison. By order of Beria, a snake was thrown into her cell, which made her go crazy. Another prominent victim of Lavrenty Pavlovich was Gaioz Devdariani, People's Commissar for Education of the Georgian SSR. Beria ordered the execution of the Devdariani brothers - Georgy and Shalva, who held high positions in the NKVD and the Communist Party. Beria also arrested Sergo Ordzhonikidze's brother, Papulia, and then dismissed another of his brothers, Valiko, from the Tiflis Council.

In June 1937, Beria said in a speech: "Let the enemies know that anyone who tries to raise his hand against the will of our people, against the will of the Lenin-Stalin party, will be mercilessly crushed and destroyed."

Beria with Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva on her knees. In the background - Stalin

Beria at the head of the NKVD

In August 1938, Stalin transferred Beria to Moscow to the post of first deputy head of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs ( NKVD), in which the state security agencies and police forces were combined. The then head of the NKVD, Nikolai Yezhov, whom Beria affectionately called "dear Hedgehog", ruthlessly carried out Stalin's Great Terror. Millions of people across the USSR were imprisoned or executed as "enemies of the people". By 1938, the suppression had assumed proportions that already threatened the collapse of the economy and the army. This forced Stalin to weaken the "purge". He decided to remove Yezhov and at first thought to make his "faithful dog" Lazar Kaganovich the new head of the NKVD, but in the end he chose Beria, apparently because he had extensive experience in punitive organs. In September 1938, Beria was appointed head of the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) of the NKVD, and in November he replaced Yezhov as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs. Yezhov, who was no longer needed by Stalin and knew too much, was shot in 1940. The NKVD underwent another purge, during which half of the leading personnel were replaced by Beria's henchmen, many of whom were natives of the Caucasus.

Although the name of Beria as the head of the NKVD is strongly associated with repression and terror, his entry into the leadership of the people's commissariat at first was marked by a weakening of the repressions of the Yezhov era. More than 100 thousand people were released from the camps. The authorities officially acknowledged that there were some "injustices" and "excesses" during the purges, placing all the blame for them solely on Yezhov. However, liberalization was only relative: arrests and executions continued into 1940, and as the war approached, the pace of the purge accelerated again. During this period, Beria led the deportations of "politically unreliable" people from the Baltic and Polish regions recently annexed to the USSR. He also organized the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico.

In March 1939, Beria became a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee. He did not receive full membership in the Politburo until 1946, but already in the pre-war era he was one of the top leaders of the Soviet state. In 1941, Beria became the general commissar of state security. This highest quasi-military rank was equated with the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union.

On March 5, 1940, after the Third Conference of the Gestapo-NKVD was held in Zakopane, Beria sent a note to Stalin (No. 794 / B), where he claimed that the Polish prisoners of war held in camps and prisons in Western Belarus and Ukraine were enemies of the Soviet Union. Beria recommended that they be destroyed. Most of these captives were soldiers, but among them were many intellectuals, doctors, priests. Their total number exceeded 22 thousand. With Stalin's approval, Beria's NKVD executed Polish prisoners, arranging " Katyn massacre».

From October 1940 to February 1942, Beria and the NKVD conducted a new purge of the Red Army and related institutions. In February 1941, Beria became deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, and in June, after Nazi Germany invaded the USSR, he became a member of the State Defense Committee ( GKO). During Great Patriotic War he transferred millions of camp prisoners Gulag in the army and in military production. Beria took control of arms production, and (together with Malenkov) - aircraft and aircraft engines. This was the beginning of an alliance between Beria and Malenkov, which later gained great importance.

Lavrenty Beria with family

In 1944, when the Germans were expelled from Soviet territory, Beria was instructed to punish a number of ethnic minorities who had cooperated with the invaders during the war years (Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, Pontic Greeks and Volga Germans). All these nations were deported from their native places to Central Asia.

In December 1944, Beria's NKVD was assigned to supervise the creation of the Soviet atomic bomb ("Task No. 1"). The bomb was created and tested on August 29, 1949. Beria directed the successful Soviet intelligence campaign against the United States Atomic Weapons Program. In the course of it, it was possible to obtain most of the necessary technologies. Beria also provided the necessary manpower for this extremely labor-intensive project. He attracted at least 330 thousand people, including 10 thousand technicians. Tens of thousands of Gulag prisoners were sent to work in uranium mines, to build and operate uranium production plants. They also built nuclear test sites in Semipalatinsk and on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. The NKVD ensured the necessary secrecy of the project. True, the physicist Pyotr Kapitsa refused to work with Beria, even after he tried to "bribe" him with a gift of a hunting rifle. Stalin supported Kapitsa in this quarrel.

In July 1945, when the Soviet police system was finally reorganized along military lines, Beria officially received the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union. He never commanded a single real army unit, but made a significant contribution to the victory over Germany through the work of organizing military production, the actions of partisans and saboteurs. However, Stalin never publicly noted the size of this contribution. Unlike most other Soviet marshals, Beria did not receive the Order of Victory.

Beria in the post-war years

As Stalin approached his 70th birthday after the war, covert struggles intensified among his inner circle. At the end of the war, the most likely successor to the Leader seemed Andrei Zhdanov, who during the war years was the head of the Leningrad party organization, and in 1946 was appointed to control ideology and culture. After 1946, Beria sealed his alliance with Malenkov to counter Zhdanov's rise.

December 30, 1945 Beria resigned as head of the NKVD, while maintaining overall control over national security issues. However, the new People's Commissar (from March 1946 - Minister) of the Interior, Sergey Kruglov, was not Beria's man. In addition, by the summer of 1946, Beria's protege Vsevolod Merkulov was replaced as head of the Ministry of State Security (MGB) Viktor Abakumov. Abakumov from 1943 to 1946 was the head of SMERSH. His relationship with Beria was marked by both close collaboration (Abakumov rose to prominence thanks to Beria's support) and rivalry. With the encouragement of Stalin, who was beginning to fear Lavrenty Pavlovich, Abakumov began to create a circle of his own supporters within the MGB in order to resist Beria's dominance over the power ministries. Kruglov and Abakumov quickly replaced Beria's people in the leadership of the state security apparatus with their own proteges. Very soon the Deputy Minister of the Interior Stepan Mamulov remained the only ally of Beria outside the foreign intelligence system, which Lavrenty Pavlovich continued to control. Abakumov began to conduct important operations without consulting Beria, often working in tandem with Zhdanov, and sometimes on direct orders from Stalin. Some historians believe that these operations - at first indirectly, but over time more and more directly - were directed against Beria.

One of the first steps was Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which was launched in October 1946 and eventually led to the murder Solomon Mikhoels and the arrest of many other members of the JAC, which revived the old Bolshevik idea of ​​handing over Crimea to the Jews as an "autonomous republic". This case caused severe damage to the influence of Beria. He actively helped the creation of the JAC in 1942, his entourage included many Jews.

After the sudden and rather strange death of Zhdanov in August 1948, Beria and Malenkov strengthened their positions with a powerful blow to the supporters of the deceased - “ the Leningrad case". Among those executed were Zhdanov's deputy Alexey Kuznetsov, prominent economist Nikolai Voznesensky, head of the Leningrad party organization Petr Popkov and head of the government of the RSFSR Mikhail Rodionov. Only after this Nikita Khrushchev began to be seen as a possible alternative to the tandem of Malenkov and Beria.

In the post-war years, Beria led the creation of communist regimes in the countries of Eastern Europe, which, as a rule, took place through coups d'état. He personally selected new Eastern European leaders dependent on the USSR. But since 1948, Abakumov initiated a number of cases against these leaders. Their culmination was the arrest in November 1951 of Rudolf Slansky, Bedrich Geminder and other leaders of Czechoslovakia. Defendants were usually charged with Zionism, cosmopolitanism and the supply of arms in Israel. Beria was quite alarmed by these allegations, since a large number of weapons from the Czech Republic were sold to Israel on his direct orders. Beria sought an alliance with Israel to advance Soviet influence in the Middle East, but other Kremlin leaders decided instead to forge a lasting alliance with the Arab countries. 14 prominent figures of communist Czechoslovakia, of whom 11 were Jews, were found guilty in court and executed. Similar trials took place then in Poland and other vassal countries of the USSR.

Abakumov was soon replaced Semyon Ignatiev which further intensified the anti-Semitic campaign. On January 13, 1953, the largest anti-Jewish case in the Soviet Union began with an article in Pravda - “ doctors case". Several prominent Jewish doctors were accused of poisoning top Soviet leaders and arrested. At the same time, an anti-Semitic campaign was launched in the Soviet press, called the struggle against "rootless cosmopolitanism." Initially, 37 people were arrested, but the number quickly rose to several hundred. Dozens of Soviet Jews were dismissed from prominent posts, arrested, sent to the Gulag or executed. Some historians say that the MGB, on Stalin's orders, was preparing the deportation of all Soviet Jews to the Far East, but such a hypothesis is almost certainly based on exaggeration; it is most often put forward by Jewish authors. Many researchers insist that the eviction of the Jews was not planned, and the persecution of them was not cruel. A few days after Stalin's death on March 5, 1953, Beria released all those arrested in this case, declared it fabricated and arrested MGB functionaries who were directly involved in it.

As for other international problems, Beria (together with Mikoyan) correctly predicted victory Mao Zedong in Chinese civil war and helped her a lot. He allowed the Communist Party of China to use Manchuria, occupied by Soviet troops, as a springboard and organized the widest supply of weapons to the "People's Liberation Army" - mainly from the captured arsenals of the Japanese Kwantung Army.

Beria and the version about the murder of Stalin

Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that immediately after Stalin's stroke, Beria "spewed hatred" against the Leader and mocked him. When suddenly it seemed that consciousness was returning to Stalin, Beria fell to his knees and kissed the Master's hand. But he soon fainted again. Then Beria immediately got up and spat.

Stalin's assistant Vasily Lozgachev, who found the Leader lying after the blow, said that Beria and Malenkov were the first members of the Politburo to come to the patient. They arrived at Kuntsevskaya Dacha at 3 am on March 2, 1953, after phone calls from Khrushchev and Bulganin, who themselves did not want to go to the scene, fearing that they would somehow incur the wrath of Stalin. Lozgachev convinced Beria that Stalin, who was unconscious and in soiled clothes, was ill and needed medical attention. But Beria angrily scolded him for "alarming" and quickly left, ordering "not to disturb us, not to stir up panic and not to disturb Comrade Stalin." The call for doctors was delayed for 12 hours, although the paralyzed Stalin could neither speak nor hold urine. Historian S. Sebag-Montefiore calls this behavior "extraordinary", but notes that it was consistent with the standard Stalinist (and generally communist) practice of postponing even absolutely necessary decisions without the official sanction of a higher authority. Beria's order to postpone the immediate call of doctors was tacitly supported by the rest of the Politburo. The situation was aggravated by the fact that then, in the midst of the “doctors' case”, all doctors were under suspicion. Stalin's personal doctor has already been tortured in the cellars of the Lubyanka, for suggesting that the Leader lie in bed more.

The Master's death prevented a new, final reprisal against the last old Bolsheviks, Mikoyan and Molotov, for which Stalin had begun to prepare a year before. Shortly after Stalin's death, Beria, according to Molotov's memoirs, triumphantly announced to the Politburo that he "removed [Stalin]" and "saved you all". Beria has never explicitly stated whether he engineered Stalin's stroke or simply left him to die without medical attention. Additional arguments in favor of the version that Beria poisoned Stalin with warfarin are provided by a recent article by Miguel A. Faria in the journal Surgical Neurology International. The anticoagulant (blood clotting agent) warfarin could well have caused the symptoms that accompanied Stalin's stroke. It was not difficult for Beria to add this remedy to the food or drink of Joseph Vissarionovich. Historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore emphasizes that Beria during this period had every reason to fear Stalin could well have used warfarin against him, but notes that he never admitted to poisoning and never remained alone with Stalin during the days of his illness. He came to the Boss, who had been struck by a blow, together with Malenkov - apparently in order to specifically remove suspicions.

After Stalin's death from pulmonary edema caused by a stroke, Beria showed the broadest claims. In the painful silence that reigned after Stalin's agony, Beria was the first to kiss his lifeless body (a step that Sebag-Montefiore likens to "removing the ring from the finger of the deceased king"). While other associates of Stalin (even Molotov, now saved from almost inevitable death) wept bitterly over the body of the deceased, Beria looked radiant, animated and did not hide his joy well. Leaving the room, Beria broke the mournful atmosphere by loudly calling his driver. His voice, according to the memoirs of Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva echoed with undisguised triumph. Alliluyeva noticed that the rest of the Politburo was clearly afraid of Beria and was preoccupied with such a daring display of ambition. “He went to take power,” Mikoyan muttered quietly to Khrushchev. Members of the Politburo immediately rushed to their limousines so as not to be late for Beria to the Kremlin.

Lavrenty Beria in the last years of his life

Fall of Beria

After Stalin's death, Beria was appointed first deputy head of government and head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which he immediately merged with the MGB. His close ally Malenkov became the head of government and, at first, the most powerful man in the USSR. Beria was second in power, but with the weakness of Malenkov, he could well soon subordinate him to his influence. Khrushchev led the party, and Voroshilov became chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (i.e., head of state).

Given Beria's reputation, it is not at all surprising that other party leaders viewed him with extreme suspicion. Khrushchev was opposed to the alliance between Beria and Malenkov, but at first he did not have the strength to challenge him. However, he took advantage of the chance that appeared in June 1953 with the onset of a natural disaster. uprisings against communist domination in Berlin and East Germany.

Based on Beria's own words, other leaders suspected that he might use this uprising to agree to German reunification and end the Cold War in exchange for massive assistance from the United States, similar to that received by the USSR during World War II. . The high cost of the war still weighed heavily on the Soviet economy. Beria coveted the enormous financial resources and other benefits that could be secured through concessions to the United States and the West. It was rumored that Beria secretly promised Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania serious prospects for national autonomy, similar to the one that the Eastern European satellites of the USSR had.

The uprising in East Germany convinced the Kremlin leaders that Beria's policies could dangerously destabilize the Soviet state. A few days after the events in Germany, Khrushchev persuaded other leaders to depose Beria. Lavrenty Pavlovich left his main ally, Malenkov, as well as Molotov, who initially leaned on his side. As they say, only Voroshilov hesitated to speak out against Beria.

Arrest, trial and execution of Beria

On June 26, 1953, Beria was arrested and taken to an unidentified location near Moscow. Information about how this happened is very different. According to the most likely stories, Khrushchev convened the Presidium of the Central Committee on June 26 and there suddenly launched a fierce attack on Beria, accusing him of betrayal and paid espionage for British intelligence. Beria was taken by surprise. He asked: “What is going on, Nikita? Why are you digging through my underwear?" Molotov and others also quickly moved against Beria, demanding his immediate resignation. When Beria finally realized what was happening and began plaintively asking for support from Malenkov, this old and close friend of his silently lowered his head, looked away, and then pressed the button on his desk. It was a prearranged signal to Marshal Georgy Zhukov and a group of armed officers in the next room (one of them is said to have been Leonid Brezhnev). They immediately ran into the meeting and arrested Beria.

Beria was first placed in a guardhouse in Moscow, and then transferred to the bunker of the headquarters of the Moscow Military District. Minister of Defense Nikolai Bulganin ordered the Kantemirovskaya tank division and the Tamanskaya motorized rifle division to arrive in Moscow in order to prevent the state security forces loyal to Beria from releasing their boss. Many of Beria's subordinates, proteges and supporters were also arrested - including Vsevolod Merkulov, Bogdan Kobulov, Sergei Goglidze, Vladimir Dekanozov, Pavel Meshik and Lev Vlodzimirsky. The Pravda newspaper was silent for a long time about the arrests and only on July 10 informed Soviet citizens about Beria's "criminal activities against the party and the state."

Beria and his supporters were convicted by the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR on December 23, 1953 without the presence of a lawyer and without the right to appeal. Marshal presided over Ivan Konev.

Beria was found guilty:

1. In treason. It was alleged (without evidence) that "until the moment of his arrest, Beria maintained and developed his secret connections with foreign intelligence services." In particular, attempts to start peace negotiations with Hitler in 1941 through the Bulgarian ambassador were classified as high treason. At the same time, no one mentioned that Beria acted on the orders of Stalin and Molotov. It was also alleged that Beria, who in 1942 helped organize the defense of the North Caucasus, tried to give it into the hands of the Germans. It was emphasized that "planning to seize power, Beria tried to get the support of the imperialist states at the cost of violating the territorial integrity of the Soviet Union and transferring part of the territory of the USSR to the capitalist states." These statements were based on what Beria told his assistants: in order to improve international relations, it would be reasonable to transfer the Kaliningrad region to Germany, part of Karelia to Finland, the Moldavian USSR to Romania, and the Kuril Islands to Japan.

2. In terrorism. Beria's participation in the purge of the Red Army in 1941 was classified as an act of terrorism.

3. In counter-revolutionary activities during the Civil War. In 1919, Beria worked in the security service of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. Beria claimed that he was appointed to this job by the Gummet party, which later merged with the Adalat, Ahrar and Baku Bolshevik parties, thus forming the Communist Party of Azerbaijan.

On the same day, December 23, 1953, Beria and the rest of the defendants were sentenced to death. When the death sentence was read, Lavrenty Pavlovich begged for mercy on his knees, and then fell to the floor and sobbed desperately. Six other defendants were shot on the day the trial ended. Beria was executed separately. As S. Sebag-Montefiore writes:

... Lavrentiy Beria was stripped down to his underwear. He was handcuffed and tied to a hook in the wall. He begged for his life and screamed so hard that a towel had to be stuffed into his mouth. His face was covered with a bandage, leaving only eyes wide with horror. General Batitsky became his executioner. For this execution, he was promoted to marshal. Batitsky fired a bullet into Beria's forehead...

Beria's behavior at trial and during execution strongly resembles how his predecessor in the NKVD, Yezhov, behaved in 1940, who also begged for his life. Beria's body was cremated, and his remains were buried in a forest near Moscow.

Beria had many awards, among which were five Orders of Lenin, three Orders of the Red Banner, the title of Hero of Socialist Labor (awarded in 1943). He was twice awarded the Stalin Prize (1949 and 1951).

About the sexual exploits of Lavrenty Pavlovich - see the article

During the existence of the Soviet Union, the history of the country was rewritten many times. Due to modest funding, school textbooks were sometimes not reprinted, students were simply ordered to obscure portraits of leaders who suddenly became enemies with ink.

Yagoda, Yezhov, Uborevich, Tukhachevsky, Blucher, Bukharin, Kamenev, Radek, and many others were blotted out of books and memory in this way. But the most demonized figure of the Bolshevik party was, without a doubt, his biography was supplemented by work for British intelligence, which, of course, was not true, otherwise MI6 would proudly recall such success today.

In fact, Beria was the most ordinary Bolshevik, no worse than others. He was born in 1899 in a peasant family, and from childhood he was drawn to knowledge. At the age of sixteen, having graduated with honors from the Sukhumi elementary school, he expressed a desire to continue his education at the Secondary Mechanical and Technical Construction School, where he received a diploma in architecture. A year later, he entered the Baku Polytechnic University, where he also got involved in underground work. He was exiled, but not far, to Azerbaijan.

Thus, there were few such intellectual people at the top of the social democratic underground as Biography after the revolution demonstrates his desire to control the situation. He is engaged in secret operational affairs, and over time, having displaced Redens (son-in-law of Stalin himself), he takes the post of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of Georgia. Not without the knowledge, of course, of the secretary himself, who believed that business qualities were more important than the closest

Having successfully dealt with the Mensheviks and other enemies of the Soviet regime, Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, whose biography could not stop in this post due to his active character, covered Stalin with his chest during the shooting on Lake Ritsa, which it was not clear who opened it and why.

Such readiness for self-sacrifice was appreciated, but the main factor was still not she, but really outstanding organizational skills and amazing performance. Deputy Yezhov, who soon took his place, a candidate member of the Politburo - these steps of the career ladder were completed in 1938.

It is believed that Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich was Stalin's main executioner, but his biography, however, refutes this. He led the affairs of state security for a very short time (until 1941). The chairman of the Council of People's Commissars is much higher than just the chief Chekist. In the field of his attention is the entire defense industry of the USSR during the war years, including the creation of nuclear weapons, which he has supervised since 1943.

A special article for conversation is Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich and women. The wife of Stalin's closest associate, the beautiful Nino, took all the allegations about his amorous-maniac habits with great skepticism. her husband was known to her, he did not even have enough time to sleep. He had a mistress, very young, but she testified that Beria committed violence against her, she gave under pressure from the investigation. In fact, the girl got an apartment on Gorky Street in Moscow, and her mother even had her teeth treated at the Kremlin hospital. So everything was entirely on a voluntary basis.

Much has been written about the bold conspiracy, as a result of which Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich was arrested and soon executed (or killed). His photo was as quickly erased from all textbooks as the images of the previous exposed enemies of the people. The projects of the economic and political reforms he proposed, in particular, the limited introduction of private property, were later implemented in the course of Gorbachev's perestroika.

Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich

Marshal of the Soviet Union
Hero of Socialist Labor (1943)

Andrey Parshev

It is BITTER to begin the anniversary article not with a description of merits, but with a refutation of slander, but this cannot be dispensed with.

BERIA, Lavrenty Pavlovich, did not and could not have anything to do with the organization of the so-called. "repressions" in 1937, neither due to official position, nor due to physical absence in the center of events. The decision to carry out repressions was made by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1937, and L.P. Beria was at that time at party work in Transcaucasia. He was transferred to Moscow in the summer of 1938, and was appointed People's Commissar of Internal Affairs in December 1938, when the repressions had already ended.

L.P. Beria was People's Commissar of Internal Affairs from December 1939 until 1945, and then for only three months in 1953. For 8 years after the war, contrary to popular belief, he did not supervise law enforcement agencies, as he was completely occupied with more important matters.

The young man who wanted to learn

BERIA, Lavrenty Pavlovich, was born on March 17 (30), 1899 in the village of Merkheuli, Sukhumi region, 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.

Now, in the capital's universities, an ironic attitude has developed towards students from the Caucasus - "children of the mountains" who are not interested in anything but painted blondes and foreign cars. 16-year-old Lavrenty had neither money nor patronage. There were no scholarships then, and even more so, and he could study only by earning his own living. In Sukhumi, he gave lessons, and in Baku he had to work in a variety of places - a clerk, a customs officer. From the age of 17, he also supported his mother and deaf-mute sister, who moved in with him.

In March 1917, L.P. Beria organized a cell of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks) at the school in Baku. In June 1917, L.P. Beria went to the Romanian front as part of an army technical unit (in his autobiography he indicated that he was a volunteer, in his official biography it was written that he was enrolled. In Soviet times, patriotism shown in the First World War was not welcome). After the collapse of the army, he returned to Baku and continued his studies at a technical school, participating in the activities of the Baku Bolshevik organization under the leadership of A.I. Mikoyan.

In 1919, L.P. Beria entered the world of "twilight warfare". At that time, Azerbaijan was ruled by the "Musavatists" party - that was the name of the puppet organization created by the British to control the oil fields of the Caspian Sea. In 1919-1920, he worked in the counterintelligence of the Musavatists, passing the obtained information to the headquarters of the Tenth Army of the Bolsheviks in Tsaritsyn. Beria wrote about this in his autobiography, and no one denies it, nevertheless, it was the introduction into the Musavat secret service that was the main accusation against him in 1953.

From the beginning of 1919 (March) until the establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan (April 1920), L.P. Beria also led an illegal communist organization of technicians. In 1919, L.P. Beria successfully graduated from a technical school, received a diploma as an architect-builder and tried to study further - by that time the school had been transformed into a Polytechnic Institute. But ... L.P. Beria was sent to work illegally in Georgia to prepare an armed uprising against the Menshevik government, was arrested and imprisoned in Kutaisi prison. In August 1920, after a hunger strike organized by him for political prisoners, L.P. Beria was deported in stages from Georgia. Returning to Baku, L.P. Beria again went to study at the Baku Polytechnic University.

In April 1921, the party sent L.P. Beria to work as a Chekist. From 1921 to 1931 he was in leading positions in the organs of Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence. It is obvious that by that time in his circles the young Chekist was well known for his merits. It is unlikely that he was introduced into the leadership of the Cheka just because he was a foreign agent - this organization was somewhat different from the Ideological Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU of the 80s.

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 ZSFSR, was a member of the collegium of the OGPU of the USSR.

Several times he tried to continue his studies at the Baku Polytechnic University. Now in the world ranking of universities, this educational institution is in second place from the bottom of the list, but at the beginning of the century there was a very high level of teaching. Baku was then one of the centers of scientific and technological progress, this is evidenced by Landau, who studied there at the same time.

During his work in the bodies of the Cheka-GPU in Georgia and the Transcaucasus, L.P. Beria did a lot of work to defeat the Mensheviks, Dashnaks, Musavatists, Trotskyists, and foreign intelligence agents. Georgia was seized by rampant banditry, as in the 90s - the GPU brought relative order. Armenian peasants worked in the field with a rifle over their shoulders - Kurdish robbers visited from abroad as if in their pantry. By the 1930s, the border was firmly sealed.

The circle of interests of the intelligence agencies of Transcaucasia also included the near abroad - Turkey, Iran, the English Middle East, ... but the details will forever remain a secret.

For the successful struggle against the 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. He was also awarded with personalized weapons.

At the same time, in the characteristics they wrote about him - "intellectual". Then this word did not have a negative connotation, it meant an educated, cultured person who was able to apply theoretical knowledge to practical activities. He wanted to study, most of all - to study, but time did not allow. Three courses at the Polytechnic University and a diploma in architecture - all that he managed to achieve by the age of 22 in the intervals between fronts, prisons, underground and operational work.

Style

"In 1931, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks exposed the gross political mistakes and distortions committed by the leadership of the party organizations of Transcaucasia, obliged the party organizations to put an end to the unprincipled struggle for the influence of individuals (elements of the "atamanism") observed among the leading cadres of both Transcaucasia and the republics." So it was written in the biography of L.P. Beria in 1952.

Transcaucasia is an ancient land, people have lived there since time immemorial. The tribal system has taken deep roots there, behind the facade of the state there is always a complex social structure of clans, clans, families. National, public interests are too often an empty phrase there, they serve as a cover for inter-tribal struggle.

In November 1931, L.P. Beria was transferred to party work - he was elected First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CP (b) of Georgia and Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and in 1932 - First Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and Secretary of the Central Committee CP(b) of Georgia.

"Under the leadership of L.P. Beria, the Transcaucasian Party Organization in a short time corrected the mistakes noted in the Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on October 31, 1931, eliminated the perversions of the party's policy and excesses in the countryside, achieved the victory of the collective farm system in Transcaucasia ..... ."

L.P. Beria tamed the appetites of khans and princes with party cards, having won a good memory among ordinary people and the inescapable hatred of the tribal elite.

It was Beria who owned a special lifestyle that distinguished him from the leadership. In the 70s, the first secretary of the regional committee would have looked strange, chasing a soccer ball with the boys, and not for show, but for himself. Working in Tbilisi, in the mornings he twisted the "sun" in the yard on a makeshift horizontal bar, along with the same boys.

After moving to Moscow, he began to live differently, which, in general, is natural, but he did not change his habits. A minimum of protection, and more often only a driver and a messenger. The Georgian's guarantor is an Armenian. Can you imagine?

Beria was unmercenary, although he was known as a hospitable host. In fact, after his death there was nothing to confiscate, and so he always lived. Did the people know about it? In Georgia, they knew, and it is easy to understand how they treated this.

Therefore, at the beginning of his career, Shevardnadze "mowed" under Beria. As Minister of the Interior, he lived in a communal apartment, and as First Secretary, he fought corruption. It then cost him nothing to throw a million dollars to charity. Saved from my salary...

When the First House has nothing, then it is somehow inconvenient for the rest to have a house - a full bowl. That is why, with the popularity of this lifestyle among the people, not all leaders were happy with it.

Technocrat

The land of Transcaucasia is one of the most fertile in the world. With very little effort, a person can more than provide for himself and his family, there would be land. But poor people can live even on the most fertile land, if this land is not enough. And in Transcaucasia there is always little land. In all Caucasian languages ​​there is a proverb approximately similar to the Ossetian: "skulls are always lying on the boundary." Why?

A Caucasian family has many children, but a high birth rate is not at all a consequence of low culture, as is sometimes thought completely unreasonably. The tribal system suggests that the status of a person directly depends on the number of relatives in peace, and even more so in war. Few children - few warriors, and in the struggle for land, you can lose. The cost of losing is death. But the father must leave four plots to four sons, and he has one! Where to get if the earth was divided even before our era?

From time immemorial, "human surpluses" were destroyed in wars, in ancient times with sabers and daggers, now - with volleys of "Alazani" and shells with potassium cyanide. Wild mountain tribes brought slaves to Turkey, external aggressors tried to seize priceless land, exterminating its inhabitants.

Russia covered Transcaucasia from external enemies, Soviet power tamed the mountain bandits, but where to get bread, where to get land?

In Russia, the problem was solved by the nationalization of estates and collectivization. Collective farm fields cultivated by tractors made it possible to forget about hunger. But collectivization in the Transcaucasus, due to special local conditions, did not immediately allow for an equally radical increase in productivity. And there were too many free hands. Where is the exit?

The solution was found to be the only correct one. The newly created industry absorbed the peasant youth, Georgian metallurgists, Azerbaijani oil workers appeared in Transcaucasia.

But where to get bread? Is the earth no more?

Again, the only correct answer. What could not be done on the fields of a private trader, collectivization allowed. Transcaucasia became a zone of subtropical cultures unique to the USSR. Do you think the tangerines, which now cover the ground in a thick layer in the gardens of Abkhazia, have always grown there? No, citrus orchards appeared in the 30s. Where previously only grain and vegetables were grown, now they gathered so much tea, grapes, citrus fruits, rare industrial crops, which even had defense value, that Transcaucasia became the land of rich people. And Russia was not offended - since the mid-30s, collective farm grain was already enough for bread and for exchanging it for Caucasian tangerines.

A new land also appeared, for the first time since ancient times. Unusual agricultural practices, planting eucalyptus trees allowed to drain the Colchis lowland, previously a deadly malarial area. But was left - in memory of posterity - and the site of primeval swamps, after the war received the status of a reserve.

"A lot of work has been done on the reconstruction and development of the oil industry in Baku. As a result, oil production has increased dramatically, and in 1938 almost half of the entire production of the Baku oil industry was provided by new fields. Significant success was achieved in the development of the coal, manganese and metallurgical industries, the use of gigantic opportunities agriculture in Transcaucasia (development of cotton growing, tea culture, citrus crops, viticulture, highly valuable 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 Azerbaijan The Soviet Socialist Republics, which were part of the Transcaucasian Federation, were awarded the Order of Lenin in 1935.

Maybe you think that the first secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee had nothing to do with it at all?

Professional

In 1938, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks transferred L.P. Beria to work in Moscow.

By that time, the defeat of the Trotskyist and other opposition cadres, begun by the decision of the Politburo in 1937, for which the NKVD was headed by high-ranking party workers from the personnel department of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, was completed. It is difficult to say how sincere the position of the Politburo was, but excesses were seen in the activities of the NKVD. To carry out the rehabilitation of the illegally repressed L.P. Beria was appointed Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs.

The NKVD had to be returned to the work for which it was intended. Therefore, in December 1938, the party personnel officer Yezhov was replaced by a professional Chekist Beria.

From 1938 to 1945, L.P. Beria was People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR. He was a good people's commissar, the best assessment in such cases is the assessment of the enemy.

Collection "World War 1939-1945", section "War on land", General von Butlar:

"The special conditions that existed in Russia greatly interfered with the acquisition of intelligence data regarding the military potential of the Soviet Union, and therefore these data were far from complete. espionage networks made it difficult to verify the little information that the intelligence officers managed to collect ... ".

Specifically and personally in the USSR, L.P. Beria was responsible for "the impossibility of organizing a wide network of espionage".

But even under the leadership of the NKVD, a special style of work of L.P. Beria, inherent only to him, manifested itself. Much better than many leaders, both military and civilian, he understood the role of new technologies, which means not only new technology, but also its correct use.

The name of L.P. Beria is associated with the development of communications of the border troops, which made it possible not only to provide telephone communications to each border detachment in many sections of the Far Eastern border. A striking contrast was the readiness of the Border Troops and the NKVD troops to start the war, in comparison with the situation in the army. Unlike the army, the communications of the Border Troops were staffed by linear overseers, which made it possible to fully maintain control, although all control went by wire, as in the army. All outposts, except for those who died in the all-round defense, retreated from the border by order, and subsequently formed units whose work is accurately described in V. Bogomolov's book "In August 44th".

At the heart of this is a deep understanding of the role of communication in the management process.

Unfortunately, the exploits of the NKVD troops are less known, this topic is closed for study, even battle paintings about their exploits near Rostov and Stalingrad lie in the storerooms of museums. The "blue caps" did not leave without an order and did not surrender, they were well armed, full of automatic weapons.

During the war, L.P. Beria, in addition to his many duties, paid great attention to special equipment. In the special laboratories of the NKVD, walkie-talkies, radio direction finders, perfect sabotage mines, silent weapons, and infrared sights were created. During the defense of the Caucasus, the use of special groups of border guard officers armed with silent rifles with night sights thwarted the offensive impulse of the Kleist group - the usual tactics of the Germans turned out to be impossible due to the extermination of about 400 radio operators and aviation and artillery guidance officers.

And how to evaluate the merits of our "authorities" that organized round-the-clock wiretapping of the allied delegations at the Tehran conference? The dream of any diplomat is to know the real positions of the opposing side. Of course, real diplomats are also needed for such information, because information must be used in such a way that partners are not on their guard.

Unfortunately, a significant amount of falsification about the activities of L.P. Beria belongs to this period. Thus, democratic "historians" thoughtfully discuss the well-known, composed by Y. Semyonov, text: "Ambassador Dekanozov is bombarding me with disinformation ...... erased into camp dust ......". They do not even bother to think why on earth the ambassador of the Soviet Union, bypassing his immediate superior, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Molotov, would bombard some outside People's Commissar, not even a member of the Politburo, with information of Special Importance.

Until 1994, L.P. Beria's accusations of the deportation of Chechens and Ingush were very popular. Indeed, 100,000 soldiers and 20,000 operatives under his command evicted 600,000 Chechens in just a few days, with only a few casualties on both sides. But these peoples in 1941 refused to mobilize and created, in fact, in the rear of the Red Army their own armed forces, with party secretaries as commanders.

So L.P. Beria deservedly received the Order of Suvorov, but now everyone understands this.

By the way, as a result of the "Beria genocide" the number of Chechens has doubled by now.

He protected his native land from death...

"In February 1941, L.P. Beria was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and remained in this post until the end of his life. 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 State Defense Committee and carried out the most important tasks of the party both in the management of the socialist economy and at the front.

Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on September 30. 1943 L.P. Beria was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor for special merits in the field of strengthening the production of weapons and ammunition in difficult wartime conditions. July 9, 1945 L.P. Beria was awarded the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union.

Sadly, there is no available information about the essence of the tasks being solved then - that's where the unplowed field for the historian is. But one merit of L.P. Beria is still mentioned, even the enemies do not dare to keep silent about it. Judge for yourself how big it is.

In one of the books from the time of perestroika, the "Song of Beria" is cited with irony. The lyrics of the song are really clumsy, but there are these words:

Gardens and fields sing about Beria

He protected his native land from death ... "

From what death and how did he protect? Not the people, not the party, but the whole native land? After all, he is not Stalin, not Zhukov, although he is a Marshal of the Soviet Union. He is a Hero, but a Hero of Socialist Labor. What's the matter?

"Since 1944, Beria oversaw all the work and research related to the creation of atomic weapons, while demonstrating outstanding organizational skills."

This phrase from the biography of L.P. Beria, given in the computer encyclopedia "Cyril and Methodius", is perhaps the only information there, except for the name and date of birth, close to reality.

The creation of Soviet nuclear weapons is a landmark event that completely changed the face of the world for decades, if not hundreds of years. We now see how Western countries are behaving, with the relative weakness of other countries. But this is despite the fact that a dozen countries of the world still have atomic bombs. There is no doubt that if the bomb had not been made in our country during a few years of peaceful respite, then, starting from the Korean War, history would have turned differently. Where? Read the book "Orbital Patrol" by the American science fiction writer R. Heinlein, which was published immediately after the war and became extremely popular in the USA. There, as the main goal of American policy, it was proposed to create a network of orbital stations with nuclear bombs under the command of the Americans, who, in the event of disobedience of any country, would immediately destroy its capital. It may sound strange (something like science fiction), but this book greatly influenced the public consciousness of the United States in terms of introducing the idea of ​​world domination based on the US monopoly on nuclear and orbital technology. In our country, it was not translated until the 90s, and without reading it, it is impossible to understand why a uniform panic arose in the United States after the launch of the Soviet satellite.

The dictatorship of the West has been abolished, and, no matter what happens, forever.

Did L.P. Beria deserve at least a modest monument on Red Square for this?

Merits

The second merit is the organization of the largest breakthroughs in the scientific and technical field. And not in the form that has been actively promoted in our country since the 50s (dubious discoveries without practical utility). It has already been written about the development of an air defense missile ring around Moscow, carried out under the leadership of L.P. Beria. In its own way, no less revolutionary, this work was done contrary to all the canons of technology and, nevertheless, turned out to be successful. With a seemingly local significance, even if it concerned our capital, this development significantly influenced the direction of technical progress in the military field, and for all countries of the world. What neither cannon artillery nor aviation could provide, turned out to be within the power of rockets. Neither the Germans, nor the Japanese, nor the Western allies could do anything like this before us, although their problem of bombing was directly related during the war. From here began the victorious march of guided missiles around the world.

These projects gave concrete results during the life of L.P. Beria, and it is impossible to deny his role - too many witnesses and documents have been preserved. But his role in rocket projects is not covered, since the victorious reports of TASS were made only in 1957. Was L.P. away from heavy missiles? It is unlikely, because the development of nuclear weapons and rocket launchers for him constituted a single whole. I think that not without the participation of Beria, the government "Decree on the development of jet technology" of 1946 was developed.

There is an opinion in the mass consciousness that the boss can be completely ignorant, you just need to surround yourself with smart, but not responsible advisers, and the matter will be in the bag. That's where it ended up being.

This is clearly seen in economic policy. The growth rates of the Soviet economy in the 1930s and 1950s are well known. But in 1965, Kosygin, at the suggestion of a group of "advisers", carried out the first official reform of the Stalinist economy (it is known abroad as the "Lieberman reform", after the name of the head of the group of advisers). The result was not fatal, but "the process has started." Gorbachev and Ryzhkov, for their mind-blowing experiments in transferring funds from non-cash to cash with the help of small businesses, attracted another group of "economists", presumably from Shatalin, but everyone knows about the current advisers, and about the results of the reform too.

Beginning with Khrushchev, life has shown that if a leader, instead of keeping himself up to date, begins to trust advisers, then the results of his rule are bad. Expressing the same idea, but in other words, I will say: the leader must be educated and smart not only in the science of coming to power. The fate of the country depends on this. How to achieve this is another question, but attracting advisers is not a replacement for brains. Well, Gorbachev attracted Bovin, Burlatsky and Yakovlev as political advisers - and what did he come to, what did he lead the country to? But do not say anything, smart people, smarter than Gorbachev.

After all, you also need to be able to evaluate advisers. Another, with all his ranks, is a real sheep, among the specialists there are both adventurers and swindlers.

As a historical anecdote, I will tell the following story. We had such a Lev Theremin, the inventor of electric musical instruments, known for showing his "theremin" to Lenin himself. Then Termen lived in America, then he sat in a "sharashka". So when Beria asked him if he could make an atomic bomb, he said he could. And when asked what he needed for this, he answered that "a personal car with a driver and one and a half tons of steel corner."

But this is a curiosity, but there were critical moments in the history of the "uranium project". How did we start work on the "bomb"?

The physicist Flerov was at the front, served as an aircraft technician without any armor. And it was at the front, looking through Western scientific journals (if someone skipped this place, I repeat - being at the front and looking through Western scientific journals), he noticed that articles on the uranium problem had disappeared from them. He concluded that military work had begun in the West in this area, and therefore they were classified, and he began to write letters to Stalin (and not to the leadership of domestic physics, apparently well aware of its level), and one of them reached the addressee.

The Soviet leadership drew attention to Flerov's warning, which was the impetus for the implementation of the uranium project. The corresponding tasks were assigned to our strategic intelligence, and L.P. Beria set them, you guessed it. It was he who was in charge of our intelligence, among other things.

And Stalin had an unpleasant conversation with our "leading" physicists. For some reason, not some venerable scientist was chosen for the scientific leadership of the project, but not the well-known Kurchatov.

Pay attention - neither Flerov nor Kurchatov were perceived by the "scientific community" as a value. Kurchatov, instead of evacuating to the East, demagnetized the hulls of ships under German bombs in Sevastopol, and Flerov fought in general, by no means on the "Kazan Front". He didn't even get armor!

This suggests that the Soviet leadership of that time itself understood the problem sufficiently to listen not to authorities, but to little-known scientists.

And imagine what would happen if Stalin and Beria relied on advisers!

CONSPIRACY

After the war, Khrushchev, Malenkov and Beria formed a stable group. Jealous senior members of the Politburo derisively called them "Young Turks." Beria did not believe to the last and, perhaps, did not find out that he was betrayed by those whom he considered friends - Malenkov and Khrushchev.

So why did Beria become hated by everyone?

The reason is in the unhealthy situation in the country after the war, and especially in the leadership. Stalin, apparently due to illness, clearly "released the reins", which he used to control so well. The proof of this is the fact of a fierce struggle for power between the factions - this is a clear sign of the absence of a real case. There was no one to set tasks for the "ruling elite" and ask for their solution.

War is not a school of humanism. Any, no matter how fair it may be. War is a catastrophe that disfigures all aspects of public and state life.

Ask any veteran front-line soldier, a wounded hero, and he will confirm that they were better than him, but they died. The best died in the war.

At the end of the war, people and structures associated with the war and military production begin to play an absurdly important role. After the war, they are no longer needed and should lose their importance, but do they want this?

Paradoxically, the defeated countries, whose military elite has been destroyed, suffer less from this. In Japan and Germany, there were no problems with the orientation of politics - only towards peaceful construction. But in France and the United States, for example, instead of peaceful pre-war leaders, generals and hawks came to power, soon plunging their countries into new inglorious wars.

The 10-million army was no longer needed in the USSR either. Where are the generals to go?

Look at the statistics - how much unnecessary military equipment was produced in 1945. The manufacturers themselves understood that it was no longer needed, so they drove a real marriage. Switch to products that still have to win over the buyer? This is a risk. You can't persuade a buyer! It is a completely different matter when it is enough to persuade a military receptionist, albeit in marshal's stars. Who will make consumer goods? Yes, someone will.

Here are these captains of industry, instructors of departments of district committees, regional committees, and republican committees. They gave a military plan, and they gave it well. Of course, who is unhappy that the war is over? But to give power to people who are better, and, most importantly, cheaper in tailoring dresses and assembling TV sets ...? Sorry!

That is why the development of the economy went along a paradoxical path - consumer goods were not evaluated by the consumer with their own ruble, but by something like the Defense Council, only it was not called that.

And without a special analysis, it is clear who the main governing body of the country, the Central Committee, consisted of after the war.

And the problem was deeper - when the direction of the country's development had already been chosen in the 30s, when politics managed to be defended from the adherents of the "world revolution" (Trotskyists) and the supporters of the return to the primitive communal system (right), after that the party was no longer needed , more precisely, it remained needed only as a personnel sieve - after all, theoretically it was possible to democratically block the promotion of the unworthy at the initial stage.

But after the war, the party lost its significance. In the late 40s and early 50s, everyone seemed to understand this. The words "Politburo", "Central Committee", "General Secretary" seemed to have been completely banished from the lexicon. Looking ahead, I note that all decisions on the "Beria case" were made, judging by the reports, by the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Supreme Council.

The course of the conspiracy against Beria is a separate issue, but it is obvious that two currents have collided. One is Beria's approach: the party is a political instrument that requires oversight and should not deal with economic issues that should be the responsibility of the Council of Ministers.

As we now know, the other line won then. Now it is clear that the duplication of the Council of Ministers by the industrial departments of the Central Committee, which took shape in the 50-80s, was a perversion, the result of the victory of the party nomenklatura.

The leaders of the opposing Beria line were Malenkov and Khrushchev, and Khrushchev was not very significant - he was the chief party personnel officer, like Yezhov until 1937.

But after Stalin's death, the situation escalated. There were two key events, the main pain points.

Firstly, among the cases implemented by the new Minister of Internal Affairs, the main thing was not to stop the "case of the Kremlin doctors." Especially not the amnesty of 1953. Such decisions - political ones - are not made at the level of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, this is a decision of the political leadership of the state, the Ministry of Internal Affairs is only an executor.

The main event was a meeting of the leadership of the ministry, at which Beria gave his vision of the tasks of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Among these tasks was special control over the cleanliness of the ranks of party bodies - a task somewhat forgotten by those years.

The point is not that there were fewer repressions after the war, although a kind of "era of mercy" had begun - the death penalty was abolished until 1953. For some crimes, they were still shot, but to control the party elite, ... the party elite itself was used! It is hard to believe, but an investigative unit was created in the party apparatus to investigate the "Leningrad case", and even in Matrosskaya Tishina ... a party isolation ward was allocated! G.M. Malenkov conducted the case. So the NKVD not only had nothing to do with this case, it was not allowed.

But back to 1953. Information about the meeting of the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was reported to the party bosses. In particular, Khrushchev was reported by his man - General Strokach. This figure has managed to win the sincere hatred of both the Western Ukrainian rebels and, oddly enough, the border guards. During the war, he had the idea to send "border regiments" to the German rear, which were immediately destroyed by the Germans in open battle. Thousands of the best people died.

Information about possible state control over the party elite caused a unanimous reaction. It's hard to say exactly how it happened. But the indictment in the Beria case said specifically: "an attempt to put the Ministry of Internal Affairs over the Party."

Thus began an almost open confrontation. Khrushchev swore before the Central Committee that there would be no control by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

But with all his mind, L.P. Beria was completely unprepared for the fact that, without any objective prerequisites, he would be overthrown and shot. Why he did not understand the intentions of his friends is still a mystery.

In fact, in 1953 there was a coup d'état in favor of those circles that wanted to lead the country in their own interests, without being responsible in any way for the results of their rule.

By 1953, after the assassination of Beria, there were also serious decisions regulating the activities of law enforcement agencies. Since then, when applying for a job, employees of the "organs" were informed that persons in vacated party positions were not available to them. They cannot be recruited, they cannot be tracked.

It was then that vile personalities like A. Yakovlev "flopped the chip."

Frankly, I believe that such a development of events was generated by Stalin's system. For its time, it was a strong, flexible weapon - the layer of managers was tightly controlled by the top leadership, monolithic and had no other goals than the prosperity of the country. What is the program of action of the then leadership, what they wanted - it is not known exactly now. It is precisely the goals, tasks, and program of action of the Stalinist leadership of the 1930s and 1940s that are the most carefully concealed secret of "democratic historians."

But the seed of destruction was also hidden in this system. With the disappearance of the leading and guiding force, the layer of managers begins to live its own life, solve its problems, following the problems of the state and society only in so far as.

Beria's fault was that this man, having no personal interests, wanted to do something unprecedented, wanted to express himself in projects for the future and could force others to act not for personal, but for public purposes.

His enemies are tired of working for the future. They wanted to live "here and now" and not for others, but for themselves.

It was difficult to deceive such a person, but the conspirators succeeded for one simple reason. In the conspiracy against Beria, they relied on the full support of their class, which wanted to lead - and led - the country and the people straight into the 90s.

Awards
Order of the Red Banner of the Georgian SSR (1923)
Order of the Red Banner (1924)
Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Georgian SSR (1931)
Order of Lenin (1935, 1943, 1945 and 1949)
Order of the Red Banner (1942 and 1944)
Order of the Republic (Tannu-Tuva) (1943)
Hero of Socialist Labor (1943)
Order of Sukhbaatar (1949)
Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Armenian SSR (1949)
Order of Suvorov, 1st class (1949)
Stalin Prize, 1st class (1949)
Certificate of "Honorary Citizen of the Soviet Union" (1949)