Word: beria
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...sort of understanding of Beria, the new kind of policeman whose beat runs around the world, the citizens of democracy, where his type is unknown, must look into his antecedents...
...police state marching west across Europe, south across Asia, was embodied in the person of Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, Marshal of the Soviet Union (he never fired a shot), Hero of Socialist Labor (he never swung a pick), Member of the Politburo. He is a steady, quiet type who .has a wife, two children and a suburban villa to which he commutes in a Packard -with the shades always drawn...
Something New. Russia, long before the Bolsheviks, developed the sinister side of the policeman's role much farther than any democracy has to this day. The reason has an important bearing on Beria. The 19th Century Russian satirist, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, noted: "In every other country little boys wear trousers, but not our boys . . . everywhere else reason rules, but here only the whistle of the lash. . . . [In Russia] no independent form of social order [has] yet developed...
After two years, Stalin called a hait. Yezhov disappeared. Some think he is still in an insane asylum. In 1938, with war threatening in Europe, began the reign of Lavrenty Beria...
...They do not complain about their rulers, far less threaten them. There is no sign of any major purges. I heard a great deal of genuine, voluntary admiration for Stalin, some for Molotov and Zhdanov. But I never heard any Russian volunteer a single word of praise for Lavrenti Beria, head of the omnipresent secret police. But then few people love policemen, and Russians have less reason to love them than most...