Beria - a portrait of the era
Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria is one of the most famous and at the same time the most unknown statesmen of Russia.
Myths, lies and slander in his address almost exceed the number of mud, poured in the name of Stalin.
It is all the more important for us to understand who Beria really was.
"Elena Prudnikova"
On June 26, 1953, three standing near Moscow tank regiment received an order from the Minister of Defense - to load up with ammunition and enter the capital. The motorized rifle division received the same order.
Two aircraft divisions and a combination of jet bombers were ordered to await orders about a possible bombardment of the Kremlin in full combat readiness.
Subsequently, the version of all these preparations was announced: the Minister of the Interior, Beria, was preparing a coup d'état, which was to be prevented, and Beria himself was arrested, tried and executed. 50 years this version has not been questioned by anyone.
An ordinary, and not very ordinary person knows only two things about Lavrenty Beria: he was an executioner and a sex maniac. Everything else is removed from stories. So it is even strange: why did Stalin tolerate this useless and gloomy figure beside him? I was afraid that? Riddle.
Yes, not at all afraid! And there is no riddle. Moreover, without an understanding of the true role of this person, it is impossible to understand the Stalin era. Because in fact, everything was completely different from what people invented who seized power in the USSR and privatized all the victories and achievements of their predecessors.
The St. Petersburg journalist Elena Prudnikova, the author of sensational historical investigations, the participant of the historical-journalistic project “Mysteries of History” tells about a completely different Lawrence Beria in the pages of our newspaper.
“Economic Miracle” in the Caucasus
Many have heard about the “Japanese economic miracle”. But who knows about the Georgian?
In the autumn of 1931, the young secretary of law, Lavrenti Beria, was a very remarkable person. In 20, he led an illegal network in Menshevik Georgia. In 23, when the republic passed under the control of the Bolsheviks, it fought against banditry and achieved impressive results - by the beginning of this year there were 31 gangs in Georgia, by the end of the year only 10 remained. In 25, Beria was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. By 1929, he simultaneously became the chairman of the GPU of Transcaucasia and the authorized representative of the OGPU in the region. But, oddly enough, Beria tried hard to part with the KGB service, hoping to finally complete his education and become a builder.
In 1930, he even wrote a desperate letter to Ordzhonikidze. “Dear Sergo! I know you will say that now is not the time to raise the issue of study. But what to do. I feel that I can no longer. "
Moscow fulfilled the request with the exact opposite. So, in the fall of 1931, Beria becomes the first secretary of the Communist Party of Georgia. A year later, he was the first secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee, actually the owner of the region. And about how he worked in this post, we do not like to speak very, very much.
Rayonchik Beria got one more. Industry as such did not exist. Poor, hungry outskirts. As you know, since 1927, in the USSR, collectivization was going on. By 1931, 36% of farms managed to be driven into the Georgian collective farms, but the population did not become less hungry.
And then Beria made a knight's move. He stopped collectivization. Left alone private owners. But in collective farms they began to plant not bread and not corn, from which there was no sense, but valuable crops: tea, citrus, tobacco, grapes. And it was here that large agricultural enterprises paid off one hundred percent! The collective farms began to grow rich at such a rate that the peasants themselves pushed them. By 1939, without any coercion, 86% of farms were socialized. One example: in 1930, the area of mandarin plantations was 1,500 hectares, in 1940, 20 thousands. The yield from one tree has increased, in some farms - as much as 20. When you go to the market for Abkhaz tangerines, remember Lavrentiy Pavlovich!
In industry, he worked just as efficiently. During the first five-year period, the volume of gross industrial production of Georgia alone increased almost 6 times. For the second five-year period - even 5 times. In the other Transcaucasian republics it was the same. It was under Beria, for example, that they began to drill the shelves of the Caspian Sea, for which he was accused of extravagance: why bother with any nonsense! But now for the Caspian oil and for the routes of its transportation there is a real war between the superpowers.
Then Transcaucasia also became the “resort capital” of the USSR - who then thought about the “resort business”? By the level of education, already in the 1938 year, Georgia moved into one of the first places in the Union, and by the number of students per thousand souls overtook England and Germany.
In short, for the seven years that Beria was at the post of the “main man” in Transcaucasia, he rocked the economy of the backward republics so much that, up to the 90s, they were among the richest in the Union. If you look at the doctors of economic sciences who carried out the restructuring in the USSR, there is much to learn from this security officer.
But there was a time when not political chatterboxes, but economic managers were worth their weight in gold. Stalin could not miss such a man. And Beria’s appointment to Moscow was not the result of hardware intrigues, as they are now trying to present, but a completely logical thing: a person who works in the region in this way can be entrusted with big things in the country.
Distracted sword of revolution
We have the name of Beria primarily associated with repression. On this occasion, let me ask the simplest question: when were the “Beria repressions”? Date please! She is not. For the notorious "37 year" is the then NKVD chief Comrade Yezhov. Even such an expression was - "the fiston mitts". Post-war repression was also carried out when Beria did not work in the organs, and when he arrived there in the 1953 year, the first thing he did was to stop them.
When there were “Beria rehabilitation” - this is clearly recorded in the history. And “Beria's repression” is a pure product of “black PR”.
And what was really?
With the leaders of the Cheka-OGPU country had no luck from the very beginning. Dzerzhinsky was a strong, strong-willed and honest man, but, extremely busy with work in the government, he left the department for deputies. His successor Menzhinsky was seriously ill and did the same. The main cadres of the “organs” were the promoted workers of the times of the Civil War, poorly educated, unprincipled and cruel, one can imagine what situation there prevailed. All the more so since the end of 20's, the leaders of this department have become increasingly nervous about any control over their activities:
Yezhov was a man in the "organs" of the new, started well, but quickly came under the influence of his deputy Frinovsky. He taught the new Commissar the basics of KGB work directly "at work". The basics were extremely simple: the more enemies of the people we catch, the better; beat can and should be, and beat and drink - even more fun. Drunk from vodka, blood and impunity, the People's Commissar soon openly “swam”. He did not particularly conceal his new views from those around him. “What are you afraid of? - He said at one of the banquets. - After all, all power is in our hands. Whom we want - we execute, whom we want - we love: After all, we are all. It is necessary that everyone, from the secretary of the regional committee, go under you: “If the secretary of the regional committee had to go under the head of the regional department of the NKVD, then who, I wondered, should have gone under Ezhov? With such cadres and such views, the NKVD became mortally dangerous both for the authorities and for the country.
It is difficult to say when the Kremlin began to realize what was happening. Probably around the first half of 1938. But to realize - realized, and how to curb the monster?
The way out is to put your man, such a level of loyalty, courage and professionalism, so that he can, on the one hand, cope with the management of the NKVD, and on the other - stop the monster. Hardly Stalin had a large selection of such people. Well, at least one was found.
Curbing the NKVD
In 1938, Beria, with the rank of Deputy Commissar of Internal Affairs, became the head of the State Security Directorate, intercepting the controls of the most dangerous structure. Almost immediately, right under the November holidays, the entire leadership of the People's Commissariat was dismissed and mostly arrested. Then, placing reliable people in key positions, Beria began to understand what his predecessor had done.
Burrowed security officers were fired, arrested, and some were shot. (By the way, afterwards, once again becoming Minister of the Interior in 1953, you know which order Beria issued the very first? On the prohibition of torture! He knew where he was going.
The organs were cleaned cool: 7372 people (22,9%) were dismissed from the rank and file, 3830 people (62%) from the management team. At the same time, they began to investigate complaints and review cases.
Recently published data allowed us to estimate the scope of this work. For example, in 1937-38 years, about 30 thousand people were fired from the army for political reasons. Returned to service after the change of leadership NKVD 12,5 thousands. It turns out about 40%.
According to the most approximate estimates, since complete information has not yet been made public, only up to and including 1941 were released from the 150-180 prisons and camps thousands of people from 630 thousands of convicts in the Yezhovshchina years. That is about 30 percent.
It was not possible to “normalize” the NKVD for a long time and to the end, although the work was carried out right up to the very year of 1945. Sometimes you have to face absolutely unbelievable facts. For example, in the 1941 year, especially in those places where the Germans were advancing, they didn’t stand on ceremony with the prisoners - the war, they say, would write it off. However, it was not possible to write off the war. From 22 June to 31 December 1941 (the worst months of the war!), 227 NKVD employees were prosecuted for abuse of power. Of these, 19 people received the highest measure for arbitrary executions.
Beria owns another invention of the era - "sharashki". Among those arrested there were quite a few people very necessary to the country. Of course, these were not poets and writers, about whom they shout the loudest and loudest, but scientists, engineers, designers, primarily working on defense.
Repression in this environment is a special topic. Who and under what circumstances planted the developers of military equipment in the context of an impending war? The question is not rhetorical. First, in the NKVD there were real agents of Germany, who, according to the real tasks of real German intelligence, tried to neutralize the people useful to the Soviet defense complex. Secondly, there were no less “dissidents” than at the end of 80. In addition, the environment is incredibly quarrelsome, and denunciation in it has always been a favorite means of settling accounts and career growth.
Be that as it may, by accepting the people's commissariat of internal affairs, Beria was confronted with the fact that there were hundreds of arrested scientists and designers in his department, whose work the country simply needed to do.
As it is now fashionable to say - feel yourself Commissar!
Before you is the case. This person can be guilty, and can be innocent, but he is necessary. What to do? To write: “Free”, showing the subordinates an example of lawlessness of the opposite nature? Check things out? Yes, of course, but you have a cabinet in which 600 has thousands of cases. In fact, each of them must be re-investigated, but there are no shots. If we are talking about a convicted person, we must also ensure that the sentence is annulled. From whom to start? With scientists? From the military? And time passes, people sit, the war is getting closer ...
Beria quickly oriented. Already 10 January 1939, he signs an order to organize the Special Technical Bureau. The research topics are purely military: aircraft manufacturing, shipbuilding, shells, armor steel. From the experts of these industries, sitting in prisons, formed the whole group.
When the opportunity turned up, Beria tried to free these people. For example, the aircraft designer Tupolev 25 of May 1940 of the year was sentenced - 15 years of camps, and in the summer he was released under an amnesty. Designer Petlyakov was granted amnesty on July 25 and in January 1941 was awarded the Stalin Prize. A large group of developers of military equipment was released in the summer of 1941, another one - in 1943, the rest got their freedom from 1944 to 1948.
When you read what is written about Beria, it seems that he was the whole war and caught the "enemies of the people." Yes of course! He had nothing to do! 21 March 1941, Beria becomes vice chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. To begin with, he oversees the people's commissariats of the timber, coal and petroleum industries, non-ferrous metallurgy, and soon added ferrous metallurgy to this. And from the very beginning of the war, more and more new defense industries fell on his shoulders, because first of all he was not a Chekist and not a party leader, but an excellent production organizer. That is why he was entrusted with an atomic project in 1945, on which the very existence of the Soviet Union depended.
He wanted to punish the murderers of Stalin. And for that he himself was killed
Two leaders
A week after the start of the war, 30 June, an extraordinary authority was established - the State Defense Committee, in whose hands all power in the country was concentrated. Naturally, Stalin became the chairman of the State Defense Committee. But who entered the office besides him? This issue in most publications neatly costs. For one very simple reason: among the five members of the T-bills there is one unnamed person. In the brief history of the Second World War (1985 year of release) in the index of names given at the end of the book, where there are such vital people for victory, as Ovid and Sandor Petofi, Beria does not exist. He was not, did not fight, did not participate ... So: there were five of them. Stalin, Molotov, Malenkov, Beria, Voroshilov. And three representatives: Voznesensky, Mikoyan, Kaganovich. But soon the war began to make its own adjustments. Since February, 1942, Beria, instead of Voznesensky, began to oversee the production of weapons and ammunition. Officially. (And in reality, he was doing it already in the summer of 1941.) That same winter, in his hands is the production of tanks. Again, not because of some intrigue, but because he did better. The results of Beria's work are best seen from the numbers. If 22 June, the Germans had 47 thousands of guns and mortars against our 36 thousands, by November 1 1942, these figures were equal, and by January 1 1944, we had 89 thousand against German 54,5 thousands. From 1942 to 1944 years, the USSR produced thousands of tanks per month on 2, far ahead of Germany.
11 May 1944, Beria becomes the Chairman of the State Security Bureau and the Deputy Chairman of the Committee, in fact, the second person after Stalin in the country. 20 August 1945, he takes on the most difficult task of the time, which was a matter of survival for the USSR - becoming chairman of the Atomic Bomb Special Committee (there he performed another miracle - the first Soviet atomic bomb, despite all predictions, was tested only four years later , 20 August 1949 year).
Not a single person from the Politburo, and indeed not a single person in the USSR even came close to Beria in terms of the importance of the tasks to be solved, in the scope of authority, and, obviously, simply in the scale of the individual. In fact, the post-war USSR was at that time a double-star system: the seventy-year-old Stalin and the young — in 1949, he turned only fifty — Beria. The head of state and his natural successor.
It is this fact that historians of Khrushchev and post-Khrushchev hid so diligently in the silence hoops and under piles of lies. Because if 23 of June 1953 was killed by the Minister of the Interior, it still pulls the fight against the coup, and if the head of state was killed, then he is the coup, and there is ...
Stalin's script
If you trace the information about Beria, wandering from publication to publication, to its original source, then almost all of it follows from Khrushchev's memoirs. It’s impossible to believe in a person, since comparing his memories with other sources gives them an inordinate amount of inaccurate information.
Who just did not do “political science” analyzes of the 1952 — 1953 winter situation. What combinations did not come up with, what options did not count. That Beria was blocked with Malenkov, with Khrushchev, that he was on his own ... Only these analyzes sin — one, as a rule, completely excludes the figure of Stalin. It is tacitly considered that by that time the leader retired, was almost in marasmus ... One source - the memories of Nikita Sergeyevich.
But why, in fact, should we believe them? And the son of Beria Sergo, for example, during 1952, fifteen times, who saw Stalin at meetings devoted to missile weapons, recalled that the leader did not seem to be a weakened mind ... The postwar period of our history is dark no less than the Dorurikovskaya Russia. What happened then in the country, really, nobody knows. It is known that after 1949, Stalin took a few steps away from business, leaving the entire “routine” to chance and to Malenkov. But one thing is clear: something was being prepared. According to indirect data, it can be assumed that Stalin had conceived some very big reform, primarily an economic one, and only then, perhaps, a political one. Another thing is also clear: the leader was old and ill, he knew this very well, did not suffer from a lack of courage and could not help but think about what would happen to the state after his death and not look for a successor. If Beria were of any other nationality, there would be no problems. But one Georgian after another on the throne of the empire! Even Stalin wouldn’t go for that. It is known that in the postwar years, Stalin slowly but steadily squeezed the party apparatus from the captain's cabin. Of course, the functionaries could not be satisfied with this. In October 1952, at a congress of the CPSU, Stalin gave the party a decisive battle, asking to release him from his duties as general secretary. Did not work, did not let go. Then Stalin came up with a combination that is easy to read: a weak figure is obviously becoming the head of state, and the real head, the gray cardinal, is formally on the sidelines. And so it happened: after Stalin’s death, the first to become inactive was Malenkov, and in reality, Beria was in charge of politics. He not only spent the amnesty. He is listed, for example, with a decree condemning the violent Russification of Lithuania and Western Ukraine, and he proposed a beautiful solution to the “Germanic” issue: if Beria remained in power, the Berlin Wall simply would not exist. Well, in passing, he again took up the "normalization" of the NKVD, launching the rehabilitation process, so that Khrushchev and the company then had only to jump on the locomotive already underway, pretending that they were there from the very beginning.
It was then that they all said that they “did not agree” with Beria, that he “pressed” them. Then they said a lot of things. And in fact, completely agreed with the Beria initiatives.
But then something happened.
Calm This is a coup!
A meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee, or the Presidium of the Council of Ministers was scheduled for June 26 in the Kremlin. According to the official version, military men led by Marshal Zhukov came to him, members of the Presidium summoned them to the office, and they arrested Beria. Then he was taken to a special bunker in the courtyard of the headquarters of the Moscow Military District troops, conducted an investigation and was shot. This version does not hold water. Why - talk about it for a long time, but it has a lot of overt exaggerations and inconsistencies ... We can only say one thing: none of the outsiders, disinterested people after 26 June 1953, Beria did not see alive. The last to see him was Sergo's son - in the morning, at the dacha. According to his memoirs, his father was going to call on a city apartment, then go to the Kremlin, to a meeting of the Presidium. Around midday, Sergo was called by his friend, pilot Amet-Khan, and said that Beria’s house had a gunfight and his father, apparently, was no longer alive. Sergo, along with a member of the Special Committee Vannikov, rushed to the address and managed to see the broken windows, broken doors, a wall, dotted with traces of bullets from a large-caliber machine gun.
Meanwhile, members of the Presidium gathered in the Kremlin. What happened there? Climbing through the heaps of lies, bit by bit recreating what was happening, we managed to approximately reconstruct the events. After Beria was finished, the executors of this operation — presumably they were military men from the old, still Ukrainian team of Khrushchev, whom he dragged to Moscow, led by Moskalenko — went to the Kremlin. At the same time, another military group arrived there. It was headed by Marshal Zhukov, and among its members was Colonel Brezhnev. Curious, right? Further, presumably, everything unfolded so. Among the putschists there were at least two members of the Presidium — Khrushchev and the Minister of Defense Bulganin (they are always referred to in their memoirs by Moskalenko and others). They put the rest of the government before the fact: Beria was killed, something must be done about it. The whole team unwittingly ended up in the same boat and began hiding the ends. Much more interesting is this: why did you kill Beria?
The day before, he returned from a ten-day trip to Germany, met with Malenkov, and discussed with him the agenda for the June 26 meeting. Everything was amazing. If something happened, in the last 24 hours. And, most likely, it was somehow connected with the upcoming meeting. True, there is an agenda, preserved in the archives of Malenkov. But, most likely, it is a linden. No information about what the meeting should really have been devoted to was not preserved. It would seem ... But there was one person who could know about it. Sergo Beria told in one of the interviews that his father had told him in the morning at the dacha that at the upcoming meeting he was going to demand that the Presidium sanction the arrest of the former Minister of State Security Ignatiev.
But now everything is clear! So that does not happen any clearer. The fact is that Ignatiev was in charge of the protection of Stalin in the last year of his life. It was he who was the man who knew what happened at Stalin's dacha on the night of March 1, 1953, when the leader had a stroke. And something happened there, about which, and many years later, the surviving guards continued stupidly and too obviously to lie. And so Beria, who kissed the hand of the dying Stalin, would have pulled out of Ignatiev all his secrets. And then he arranged a political process for the whole world over him and his accomplices, whatever posts they hold. This is just in his style ... No, these same accomplices should in no case be allowed to let Beria arrest Ignatiev. But how can you keep him? It remained only to kill - and that was done ... Well, and then they hid the ends. By order of the Minister of Defense Bulganin, a grandiose “Tank Show” was arranged (just as ineptly repeated in 1991). The Khrushchev lawyers, under the leadership of the new Prosecutor General Rudenko, also from Ukraine, staged a trial (dramatization is still a favorite occupation of the prosecutor’s office). Then the memory of all the good things that Beria did was carefully worn out, and vulgar tales about a bloody executioner and a sexual maniac were put into use. On the part of "black PR" Khrushchev was talented. It seems that it was his only talent ...
And he was not a sex maniac either!
The idea of introducing Beria as a sex maniac was first voiced at the Central Committee Plenum in July 1953. The secretary of the Central Committee, Shatalin, who, he claimed, searched the office room of Beria, found in the safe “a large number of items of a male libertine.” Then the guard Beria Sarkisov spoke, telling about his many connections with women. Naturally, no one checked all this, but gossip was started up and went for a walk around the country. “Being a morally decayed man, Beria lived together with numerous women ...” - the investigators recorded in a “sentence”.
There is a list of these women. That's just bad luck: it almost completely coincides with the list of women cohabiting with whom General Vlasik, the arrest officer of Stalin, who was arrested a year before, was accused. Wow, how unlucky Lawrence Pavlovich. There were such opportunities, and women got exclusively from under Vlasik! And if without laughter, then it’s easy: take the list from the Vlasik case and add to the “Beria case”. Who will check? Many years later, in one of her interviews, Nina Beria said a very simple phrase: “Surprising business: Lawrence was busy working day and night when he was dealing with the legion of these women!” Ride along the streets, carry them to country villas, and then also to his home, where there was a Georgian wife and his son lived with his family. However, when it comes to denigrating a dangerous enemy, who cares what was really? ”
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