(From my father Artem’s
reminiscences of Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria:
“A dark impression… Whenever Beria would come,
he was overpowering. But you cannot take it from him, he was a colossal figure.
All atomic energy was on his shoulders. It wasn’t for nothing that Kurchatov
asked, and even insisted, that, instead of Molotov, Beria ought to be at the
head of the atomic project…”…No, no matter what they say about Beria’s fall from power in the months following Stalin’s death, a man of such a colossal stature could never be arrested. The only way to get rid of him was to kill him.)
The following story is
extremely unconventional, and I cannot fully vouchsafe for it, for the sole
reason that I could not possibly have been a firsthand witness to it. Still,
this story makes far more sense to me than the inept official version of
Beria’s arrest, trial, and subsequent execution, and it is primarily in this
capacity that I stand by it…
What does it take to
become Marshal? Three bullets pointblank. This was the inside-the-Kremlin reference
to a very important assassination performed by Lieutenant General Pavel
Fedorovich Batitsky in June 1953, for which he was rewarded with a prompt
promotion to the rank of Colonel General, the highly prestigious and much-coveted
post of Air Defense Commander for the city of Moscow, and, eventually, with the
rank of Marshal, and the title of Hero of the USSR. The man receiving three
bullets pointblank was none other than Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria, Stalin’s
heir apparent.
Both during the
Nineteenth Party Congress and afterwards, Stalin had become rather detached,
and allowed Beria to run most of the show. Therefore, in the wake of Stalin’s
death, in March 1953, there was never any power struggle in the Kremlin. Beria
knew his business very well. He was the only man calling the shots.
Beria had all those
unique qualities that Stalin had been looking for in his successor, making him
capable of ruling the nation. Like Stalin, he was a natural-born prototype of
the Machiavellian Prince; and, like Stalin, he had shown his deep
political insight by establishing himself as the head of a vast criminal
empire. And, also like Stalin, he was a Georgian…
Beria was not the Leader
of the Communist Party, nor the Prime Minister, nor the President of the USSR.
But after Stalin’s death, he epitomized the basic trademark qualities of the
Soviet regime, gathering in his hands all the police power of the
police state. No one among the rest of the Soviet leadership was able to
challenge him. He reigned supreme over the Soviet “equivalents” of the federal,
state, and local police, the FBI, the CIA, and the Secret Service. Wherever the
party and government officials met: in the Kremlin, in the Bolshoi Theater, or
elsewhere, they were always surrounded by Beria-controlled guards. Only Beria’s
men were allowed to carry arms around the Soviet leaders. Even the senior
military officers were routinely disarmed before entering the Kremlin, or
attending any other official function.
Beria was conspicuously
the one giant among dwarfs. A cunning and devious man, he manipulated people
with relish. On his urging, one of the top contenders for political leadership,
Georgi Malenkov, was made First Secretary of the Central Committee and Prime
Minister, a powerful combination of the two highest posts in the nation. Yet
Malenkov was only a powerless puppet in Beria’s hands, treated with suspicion
by other Presidium members, who believed exactly what Beria wanted them to
believe, which was that Comrade Malenkov was Beria’s spy…
(This is the end of Part
I. Part II will be posted tomorrow.)
No comments:
Post a Comment