Word: beria
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Lavrenty P. Beria, a man who ordered the death of millions, was himself put to death last week. After a secret trial that lasted five days, the Kremlin announced that this "frenzied, insolent plotter . . . this contemptible Judas" had been found guilty of murder, espionage, treason, sabotage and perversion. He was condemned to the "highest degree of punishment, with confiscation of all property and removal of all titles and decorations" (seven Medals of the Soviet Union, five Orders of Lenin...
This somber announcement was greeted with what Pravda called "spontaneous demonstrations of the Russian workers and peasants." In Tiflis, capital of Beria's home state, "the entire Georgian people" was said to be condemning the traitor for "sowing poisonous seeds of distrust of our great brother Russian people...
...confession" and the carefully controlled outcry were to be expected. What was new was the publication of a list of Beria's alleged accomplices: a who's who of Communist cops. Apparently Beria's group had taken advantage of Stalin's death to establish the MVD as a private enterprise of their own. But in the labyrinthine complexity of Soviet "monolithic" leadership, no such separation of powers can be permitted: Russia's elaborate intertwining of soldiers, party, commissars and secret police is designed to prevent such coups. Beria's apparatus had to be eliminated...
Last month the commissars of Leningrad, Armenia and Tula disappeared. More recently the Minister of Agriculture, Ivan Benediktov, was publicly denounced. Last week's announcement named six ministers and MVD generals to stand trial with Beria on charges of "high treason." They were all of Cabinet rank...
Capitalists in Disguise. Together with Beria, these six men had controlled the secret police of the Soviet Union. With some 15 divisions of elite troops and informers in every workshop, they wielded power that until recently was practically unlimited. Merkulov was confirmed as Minister of State Control by Malenkov himself, and he was still officially in office until last week. Goglidze, "the czar of Soviet Siberia," controlled an area almost as big as the U.S. and was responsible, under Beria, for the vast new arms plants that Moscow hopes will one day supply the Red armies in the Orient...