Word: beria
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...weeks before the December 1953 execution of Lavrenty Beria, Stalin's fellow Georgian who became boss of the Soviet secret police. Foreign Minister Molotov gave a big party at the old Spiri-donovka Palace in Moscow. Except for Malenkov, Khrushchev and Voroshilov, all the Soviet leaders were there, rubbing shoulders with several hundred foreign diplomats and newsmen. In a corner of the ornate reception room, Politburocrats matched toasts with the ambassadors of Britain, France, Red China and the U.S., and for once vodka seemed to relax the occupationally tight-mouthed...
...peculiar Soviet connotation, had a special meaning for Mikoyan that day. An Armenian who served Stalin in the transCaucasus area during Stalin's early struggle for power. Mikoyan was made commissar for trade in 1926, not only survived the purges, but is credited with having brought Lavrenty Beria to Stalin's attention...
...offender was Comrade Pietro Secchia, the party's deputy secretary general and one of Togliatti's two topmost lieutenants. As chief of the party's organizational apparatus, and the late Lavrenty Beria's representative in Italy, Moscow-trained Comrade Secchia had long possessed authority, secret dossiers and generous allocations of funds with which to build a personal machine within the party. But at the national party conference a fortnight ago, he rashly got himself identified with party diehards, who want to discard Palmiro Togliatti's "soft" policy for tough methods (TIME, Jan. 24). Because Moscow...
...official communique said that Abakumov, "having been placed in the post of Minister of State Security by Beria, was a direct participant in the criminal subversive group that carried out Beria's orders." Abakumov, onetime chief of SMERSH, Russia's World War II counterespionage organization, was tried in Leningrad a fortnight ago before the military tribunal of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. The indictment accused Viktor Abakumov of having: 1) "framed up and falsified charges against individual workers of the party and Soviet government and representatives of the Soviet intelligentsia"; 2) "using methods of investigation prohibited...
...assassination was beginning to fade from the Soviet scene-to be replaced by that subtler perfume called peaceful coexistence-the Soviet government last week reminded the world that murder is still very much a part of Kremlin politics. The government deliberately chose the anniversary of former Police Boss Lavrenty Beria's execution as "an imperialist agent" to announce the shooting of Viktor Abakumov and three other Beria associates...