Having promoted Malenkov
to the pinnacle, Beria sat back and enjoyed the show, watching the extremely
uncomfortable Malenkov deal with the resentful Presidium comrades, who almost immediately
called for Malenkov’s dismissal from the top Party post. Beria did not mind
that at all.--- Le Roi s'Amuse.--- Allowing Malenkov, theoretically the
most powerful man in the USSR, to be so easily dismissed, he only proved the
point to everybody that, on his watch, titles meant nothing: Beria was the real
boss.--- Le Roi le Veult. Meanwhile, the terribly underestimated Nikita Khrushchev was installed as Malenkov's "safe" replacement, by consensus.
Of the crowd of the
Kremlin insiders, Beria showed special partiality to Mikoyan. His old friend
had more access to Beria now, both formal and informal, than anyone else in the
Kremlin pack, including Malenkov. But Mikoyan, more than everybody else, was
terrified, and in fear for his life… He obviously understood that, in view of
their past history together (see my entry The
Twenty-Seventh Commissar, posted on August 4-6, 2013), he had more reason
to be afraid than all the rest of them put together…
Caeterum censeo, [Beria]
delendum (sic!) esse! Beria had become too much, and had to be destroyed. In his great
arrogance, he was making it too obvious that everybody’s lives were in his
hands. No one could feel safe, while Beria was alive. The situation was even
worse than at any time during Comrade Stalin’s Golden Age. At least Stalin had
his cronies, who stuck with him through thick and thin, and could expect their
loyalty to the Master to be rewarded. Beria was an outsider who had joined the
Kremlin inner circle fairly recently, in 1938, and had never developed any
followers or commitments among the old-timers.
Therefore, every member
of the Presidium, without exception, wanted Beria dead, always on the lookout
for the blessed opportunity to get rid of him. But the risk of being exposed
was exorbitantly high, due to Beria’s ubiquitous informers and the listening
devices, installed even in the shrubbery inside the Kremlin, along the favorite
paths, where all of them liked to take walks.
Three months after
Stalin’s death, Mikoyan approached Khrushchev about someone who wanted to make
a proposition. He was Lieutenant General Pavel Batitsky, among other things,
Beria’s bodyguard. There had been a time, in Stalin’s last years, when Beria
started replacing all guards with pure Georgian natives. Stalin could not miss
the opportunity to taunt Beria that any Georgian who could not rely on anybody,
except his fellow Georgians, belonged back in Tbilisi, and not here in Moscow.
The ever arrogant Beria was offended, and immediately proceeded to demonstrate
that in his case it had not been so. Batitsky, therefore, was one of Beria’s
recent acquisitions. Unlike Stalin’s Vlasik, he had not been tested in action,
but the self-confident Beria could see no reason to question his loyalty.
Whether the offer
presented to Khrushchev was Batitsky’s own idea, or suggested by the wily
Mikoyan, the essence of it was simple. Batitsky was willing to assassinate
Comrade Beria during an appropriate occasion at the Kremlin, should Comrade
Khrushchev personally instruct him to do so. In return, he wanted a good job,
giving him prestige and respect, and a series of automatic promotions-- all the
way up to Marshal of the USSR…
Khrushchev gladly
complied. If this good man could pull it off, he deserved everything he asked
for. Soon thereafter, there was a government function at the Kremlin. During
the recess, Batitsky calmly approached Beria, pulled out his gun, and put three
bullets pointblank into him. The other guards, all Batitsky’s men, and none
of them Georgians, did not move a finger.
(This is the end of Part
II. Part III will be posted tomorrow.)
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