Word: beria
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...become apparent in practical policies. Last week the Russian attitude was stiffening like a wet sheet in Berlin's icy wind. Some observers guessed that the Soviet's local representatives were laying groundwork for the Moscow conference. They noted that the new intransigence followed soon after Lavrenty Beria's visit to Berlin last month...
Policeman's Mission. Who is Beria? The known facts of his life could be handily engraved on a police badge. Beria is one of the 14 members of the all powerful Politburo; he still supervises the secret police, which he controlled directly for nine years when it was called the NKVD. Every Soviet citizen knows his name, knows that he is a Georgian, like Stalin; that he is 47 years old; that he wields great and mysterious power. But Russians and Americans both might learn a lot more about Deputy Beria and his Berlin mission through one revealing anecdote...
...time of the Yalta conference (the story goes), Beria was seated between two senior U.S. diplomats at the banquet table. Beria and his neighbors exchanged toasts-to Stalin, to Roosevelt, to peace, to friendship. Finally one American proposed: "To the people." Beria twisted his small mouth. "Why to the people?" he asked. "The people don't decide anything. The leaders decide. Now take the German people; they aren't bad people, but they got into the hands of bad leaders. So let's drink to the leaders...
Last week Beria was back in Moscow, but his subordinate leaders were determined that they-and not the 450,000 people in Berlin's trade unions, nor the U.S., British and French representatives in the four-power Berlin Kommandatura -should decide the make-up of the union congress executive committee. When the Western Allies opposed an obviously rigged election plan, Soviet Major General Alexander Kotikov (an entomologist in civil-life) attacked them, in the Soviet licensed German-language press...
Survival of the Fittest. This arrangement of the succession fits all known factors. Molotov has long been Stalin's chief administrative assistant, and with Beria in the next top post, the new Government can hope for the full support of the secret police. As for the Army, the other force on which the Kremlin has to reckon, the new marshals like Zhukov, who might have Bonapartist ambitions, are suspect. Voroshilov and Budenny, as old party warhorses, are politically much more reliable...