Word: beria
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...police state marching west across Europe, south across Asia, was embodied in the person of Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, Marshal of the Soviet Union (he never fired a shot), Hero of Socialist Labor (he never swung a pick), Member of the Politburo. He is a steady, quiet type who .has a wife, two children and a suburban villa to which he commutes in a Packard -with the shades always drawn...
...They do not complain about their rulers, far less threaten them. There is no sign of any major purges. I heard a great deal of genuine, voluntary admiration for Stalin, some for Molotov and Zhdanov. But I never heard any Russian volunteer a single word of praise for Lavrenti Beria, head of the omnipresent secret police. But then few people love policemen, and Russians have less reason to love them than most...
Policeman's Mission. Who is Beria? The known facts of his life could be handily engraved on a police badge. Beria is one of the 14 members of the all powerful Politburo; he still supervises the secret police, which he controlled directly for nine years when it was called the NKVD. Every Soviet citizen knows his name, knows that he is a Georgian, like Stalin; that he is 47 years old; that he wields great and mysterious power. But Russians and Americans both might learn a lot more about Deputy Beria and his Berlin mission through one revealing anecdote...
...time of the Yalta conference (the story goes), Beria was seated between two senior U.S. diplomats at the banquet table. Beria and his neighbors exchanged toasts-to Stalin, to Roosevelt, to peace, to friendship. Finally one American proposed: "To the people." Beria twisted his small mouth. "Why to the people?" he asked. "The people don't decide anything. The leaders decide. Now take the German people; they aren't bad people, but they got into the hands of bad leaders. So let's drink to the leaders...
Last week Beria was back in Moscow, but his subordinate leaders were determined that they-and not the 450,000 people in Berlin's trade unions, nor the U.S., British and French representatives in the four-power Berlin Kommandatura -should decide the make-up of the union congress executive committee. When the Western Allies opposed an obviously rigged election plan, Soviet Major General Alexander Kotikov (an entomologist in civil-life) attacked them, in the Soviet licensed German-language press...