Word: beria
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...sort of understanding of Beria, the new kind of policeman whose beat runs around the world, the citizens of democracy, where his type is unknown, must look into his antecedents...
Something New. Russia, long before the Bolsheviks, developed the sinister side of the policeman's role much farther than any democracy has to this day. The reason has an important bearing on Beria. The 19th Century Russian satirist, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, noted: "In every other country little boys wear trousers, but not our boys . . . everywhere else reason rules, but here only the whistle of the lash. . . . [In Russia] no independent form of social order [has] yet developed...
After two years, Stalin called a hait. Yezhov disappeared. Some think he is still in an insane asylum. In 1938, with war threatening in Europe, began the reign of Lavrenty Beria...
...Last, Sanity. It was no accident that Beria's four predecessors were, to say the least, neurotics. But Beria seems to be a sane, well-balanced man. In that fact lies the deepening horror of Russia. For Beria, without shrieks or dark yearnings, plods along, like the efficient bureaucrat he is, in the bloody footsteps of Dzerzhinsky. Some time ago a former Communist explained: "The task of the Soviet government is to create a new man with a new 'morale,' according to which it will be as easy to kill on the party's orders...
...Beria; he is the normalcy of the Soviet state. Has he established a society whose normal members can be trusted to "keep order"? In a way, yes. An active Yezhov-type terror no longer stalks Russia. Most Soviet citizens go to bed at night without fearing that Beria's MVD will pound on their doors. This security, however, is bought at a terrible price. The Russian people live in a sort of "house arrest." They dare not shift from city to city in search of work. They do not talk or even think too long about how they...