Word: beria
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Russia. The great prison administrations of central Siberia took in millions of foreign deportees, then dispersed them to distant parts of the Soviet Union, later-with the characteristic switch to benevolence-parceling them back to their own countries. The countries were often grateful. It was a technique Stalin and Beria had learned through experience. Then he returned to the MVD and became Minister of Internal Affairs...
...Extent of Power. Because many of these events involved police action, or its withdrawal, they were attributed by foreign observers to Beria. But if the charges made against him last week are to be accepted, it would seem now that Beria's activity was restricted to the shake-ups in Georgia, Latvia and the Ukraine and the freeing of the doctors. The fact that the general "softening" of Soviet policy has continued since his arrest (including the most sweeping relaxation of all, in Hungary) would indicate that he was not its author. Was he against it? The answer...
...liberties and favors showered on Beria by Stalin created the impression among outsiders that Beria was all-powerful in his Ministry of Internal Affairs. But an old killer like Stalin was not the kind of man to turn over such power to another. Evidently, a super-police apparatus channeled directly from Stalin to key control points in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Such an apparatus was already created in the Orgburo and the Party Control Commission, by which Stalin organized himself into power after Lenin's death, and which later became a department of personnel in the Kremlin. Only...
Sensing that his number was up, and knowing that no Soviet police boss has ever outlived his job, Beria may have maneuvered himself, may have tried to build himself a citadel in Georgia, or even to have effected arrests among top party members. No outsider can yet judge how extensive was his control in his ministry, except that it was not sufficient to protect him. That a detachment of tanks and soldiers probably backed up the arresting officers does not necessarily indicate army interest; his own elite secret police formations have that much armor. Beria at the key moment could...
...Ministry of Internal Affairs prepared Beria's arrest? If the tradition of the service holds, it may well have been his successor: clam-faced Colonel General Sergei Nikiforovich Kruglov, long a liaison man between the ministry and the Kremlin. At Yalta and Potsdam, Kruglov set up the protection screen which surrounded the Big Three,-was one of the very few who had free access to Stalin's quarters. At the San Francisco Conference, turned out in a blue serge suit and broad-toed shoes, he was Molotov's bodyguard. Although Kruglov's police career dates from...