Word: beria
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Lavrenty Beria's fall, like H. Dumpty's, was a great event, and all the Russian experts in the West started trying to piece together facts, rumors and Communist propaganda lies in order to reconstruct their theories of what is going on in the Kremlin. Charles Bohlen, U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, probably knew as much about what had happened as any outsider could. But last week, when he flew home to brief the Big Three Foreign Ministers' Conference, it was apparent that even "Chip" Bohlen did not know much...
...most obvious lesson of Beria's arrest was probably the most useful: the Communist Party is not a legitimate government of Russia, and illegitimate governments cannot develop orderly succession of authority. Like gang bosses, the top men fight until one wins. Some specialists on Russian doings had recently convinced themselves that Stalin's death released a great democratic trend in the U.S.S.R., which accounted for the "soft" line in Russian foreign policy...
...unannounced appearance of the Soviet leaders at the Bolshoi was one of their rare public demonstrations of solidarity since the death of Stalin. Counting the heads, the audience found one missing; the cruel, slyly epicene face of Lavrenty Beria, first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers, chief of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (police), boss of atomic energy, was not among those in the state box. Next morning, Moscow newspapers reported the visit of the great to the Bolshoi and carefully listed the twelve leaders present. The name of Beria was not mentioned; there was no explanation...
Foreign ambassadors, including the U.S.'s Charles Bohlen (who had been denied ..admittance to the performance), passed the news on to their governments; foreign correspondents filed briefly. Rumors about Beria ran round Moscow, but there were no hard facts. Some recalled that Beria lives with his family in the posh Sadovaya district, in the direction the tanks headed-but so do many other Soviet leaders. U.S. Ambassador Bohlen asked Washington for vacation leave, and flew off to Paris, on the way to Majorca...
...suety Georgy Malenkov, the Premier, who got to his feet before them, to put the finger on Comrade Beria. This trusted man, said Malenkov, had committed "criminal anti-party and anti-state actions, intended to undermine the Soviet State in the interest of foreign capital." How had his criminality been manifested? In "perfidious attempts to place the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Internal Affairs above the government and the Communist Party...