BERIA LAVRENTY PAVLOVICH - Soviet party and statesman, head of state security agencies.

Beria was born into a poor peasant family, his parents - Pavel Khukhaevich Beria (1872-1922) and Marta Dzhakeli (1868-1955) - Mingrelians. In 1906, he entered the Sukhumi Higher Primary School, where he studied for nine years and graduated with honors in 1915. He received a certificate from Beria, who showed a clear inclination to continue his studies, moved from Sukhum to the provincial center of Baku, and was enrolled in the local secondary school of mechanics and construction. During his studies, he became actively interested in Marxism and soon became a member of the illegal Marxist circle operating at the school and became its treasurer. Beria graduated from the school in 1919 as a civil engineer. Later, he tried several times to get a higher education, especially since his school turned into the Baku Polytechnic Institute, but in the early 1920s he was already completely absorbed in party and Chekist work and managed to complete only three courses, after which he dropped out.

Revolution and civil war

Shortly after the February Revolution in March 1917, Beria - according to official figures - joined the RSDLP (b) and organized a local Bolshevik cell in Baku. Then, in June 1917, he was drafted into the army and served for six months as a trainee technician in a hydraulic engineering detachment on the Romanian front. After the October Revolution, the proven Bolshevik was sent back to Baku, and in January 1918 he received a position in the secretariat of the Baku Soviet.

After Baku was occupied by units of the Caucasian Islamic Army controlled by the Turks in October 1918, Beria remained in the city - according to his official biography, on the instructions of the party. He got a job at the plant of the oil-industrial and commercial joint-stock company "Caspian Partnership" as a clerk, and already in February 1919 he headed the underground cell of the RCP (b) in Baku. During this period, in the fall of 1919, Beria became an agent of the Organization for the Fight against Counter-Revolution under the State Defense Committee of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, i.e. Musavat counterintelligence. Later, he will be accused of collaborating with the secret services, but he will be able to prove that he went to cooperate with counterintelligence on the direct instructions of the leadership of the Gummet Social Democratic Party.

In March 1920, Beria left his job in counterintelligence and got a job at the Baku customs, and the next month the 11th Red Army of the Caucasian Front entered Baku, where the creation of the Azerbaijan SSR was proclaimed. Berlia, in the same month, was appointed authorized by the Caucasian Regional Committee of the RCP (b) and the registration department at the Revolutionary Military Council of the 11th Army and sent to underground work in Georgia. As an underground worker, Beria did not manage to show himself too much: he was soon arrested by the Georgian authorities, and although he was released, he was ordered to leave Georgia within 3 days. However, he remained and under the name Lakerbaya was hired by the embassy of the RSFSR in Tbilisi. In May, he was again arrested and now ended up in the Kutaisi prison. In the end, S.M. Kirov, who these days was the plenipotentiary in Georgia, categorically demanded on July 9 that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia release several imprisoned communists, incl. and Beria, actually threatening open conflicts. The Georgian Mensheviks were not ready for the aggravation of relations with the RSFSR and soon Beria was sent to Azerbaijan .

In leadership work in the Transcaucasus

Upon his return to Baku in August 1920, he was appointed to a rather influential post of manager of the affairs of the Central Committee of the CP (b) of Azerbaijan, and from October 1920 to February 1921 he was the executive secretary of the Extraordinary Commission for the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the improvement of the life of workers in Baku. In this post, he got acquainted with the work of the special services and in April 1921 was transferred to the organs of the Cheka as deputy head of the Secret Operations Department of the Azerbaijan Cheka; here he ran into the head of the Central Committee, M.D. Bagirov, who at this stage constantly supported Beria and did a lot for his successful career (later Beria would support and promote Bagirov). In May 1921, Beria was promoted to deputy chairman of the AzChK and head of the Secret Operational Unit.

In November 1922, Beria was sent to Georgia, which had recently been transformed into the Georgian SSR, as head of the Secret Operational Unit and deputy chairman of the GruzChK (in March 1926, transformed into the GPU of the GruzSSR). From December 2, 1926 to December 3, 1931, Berlia served as chairman of the GPU of the Georgian SSR. At the same time, he held a number of influential positions, concentrating great power in his hands: deputy plenipotentiary of the OGPU in the ZSFSR, deputy chairman of the Transcaucasian GPU, head of the Secret Operations Directorate of the OGPU embassy in the ZSFSR (December 2, 1926 - April 17, 1931), People's Commissar of Internal Affairs GruzSSR (April 4, 1927 - December 1930), head of the Special Department of the OGPU of the Caucasian Red Banner Army and plenipotentiary of the OGPU in the ZSFSR - chairman of the Transcaucasian GPU (April 17 - December 3, 1931), member of the Collegium of the OGPU of the USSR (August 18 - December 3, 1931 ).

At the end of 1931, Beria's career moved to a new level: on the recommendation of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, on October 31 he was elected 2nd Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee, and on November 14 he also became the 1st Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks of Georgia, and in May 1937 also the 1st secretary of the Tbilisi City Party Committee. Moreover, from October 17, 1932 to December 5, 1936. Beria was simultaneously the 1st secretary of the Transcaucasian regional committee of the CPSU (b). In the summer of 1933, when I.V. Stalin, an attempt was made, Beria covered him with his body (the assassin was killed on the spot and this story has not been fully disclosed, according to a number of researchers - the attempt was organized by Beria himself. In February 1934, Beria was elected a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks). wide popularity after the publication in 1935 under his name of the book “On the History of Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia” (the authors were a group headed by M.G. Toroshelidze, which included E. Bediya, P.I. Sharia and others) , where the role of I.V. Stalin in the revolutionary movement was exaggerated many times over.In early March 1935, Beria was elected a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, and then a member of its Presidium (in January 1938, he became a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR).

As the head of the party organization of Georgia and Transcaucasia, Berlia became one of the leaders of the campaign of mass purges in Georgia (the NKVD Directorate for the Georgian SSR, and then the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR was his protege and confidant S.A. Goglidze). He also participated in the deployment of a company of repressions in neighboring republics: in September 1937, he was sent to Armenia to "cleanse" the republican party organization. Speaking at the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia (June 1937), Beria said: “Let the enemies know that anyone who tries to raise his hand against the will of our people, against the will of the party of Lenin - Stalin - will be mercilessly crushed and destroyed.”

Head of the NKVD

On August 22, 1938, Beria was appointed 1st Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR N.I. Yezhov. Formally, this was a serious downgrade, but it was immediately clear that it was his I.V. Stalin intended to replace the "iron people's commissar", who had already done his job - he carried out the most widespread purge of the party and Soviet apparatus. At the same time, on September 8-29, Beria headed the 1st Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR, and from September 29, the most important Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) in the NKVD of the USSR.

On November 25, 1938, Beria replaced Yezhov as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, for the first time retaining the direct leadership of the GUGB, which he handed over to his nominee V.N. Merkulov. Almost half updated the NKVD apparatus, replacing Yezhov’s associates with personally obliged people, people whom he brought with him from the Transcaucasus were appointed to the highest posts in the NKVD: Merkulov, Goglidze, V.G. Dekanozov, B.Z. Kobulov and others. For propaganda purposes, he carried out the release of part of the "unreasonably convicted" from the camps: in 1939, 223.6 thousand people were released from the camps, 103.8 thousand people from the colonies; up to 200 thousand people were arrested at the same time, not counting those deported from the western regions of Belarus and Ukraine. At the insistence of Beria, the rights of the Special Meeting under the People's Commissar to issue extrajudicial sentences were expanded. Under Beria, on January 10, 1939, the leaders of party organizations and the local internal affairs body were informed by I.V. Stalin on the legality of the use of torture (practiced since 1937): "The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union considers that the method of physical influence must continue to be applied, as an exception, against obvious and unarmed enemies of the people, as an absolutely correct and expedient method."

On March 22, 1939, Beria became a candidate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. As the head of the NKVD and a member of the highest party body, he was responsible for organizing the mass extermination of captured Poles in Katyn (1940). On February 3, 1941, Beria, without leaving the post of people's commissar, became deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (since March 15, 1946 - the Council of Ministers of the USSR), but at the same time, the state security bodies, which constituted an independent people's commissariat, were removed from his subordination.

War and post-war period

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the NKVD and the NKGB were again united under the leadership of Beria, and on June 30, 1941 he himself became part of the State Defense Committee (GKO) of the USSR. Through the GKO, Beria was entrusted with control over the production of weapons, ammunition and mortars, as well as (together with G.M. Malenkov) for the production of aircraft and aircraft engines. On October 16, 1941, on the personal orders of Beria, 138 prisoners (who previously held high positions) were shot in the country's prisons without even the appearance of a court, and then several hundred more.

Since December 1942, he was instructed to exercise supreme control over the work of the People's Commissariats of the coal industry and communications. On May 16, 1944, Beria also became deputy chairman of the State Defense Committee of the USSR and chairman of the Operations Bureau (he was a member of this bureau on December 8, 1942). Under his control were put all the people's commissariats of the defense industry, railway and water transport, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, coal, oil, chemical, rubber, paper and pulp, electrical industry, power plants.

Beria was entrusted with the development, preparation and implementation of operations to evict the peoples of the North Caucasus, as well as Meskhetian Turks, Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans, Kurds, Khemshins, etc. He personally led operations to deport Chechens and Ingush (February 1944), and then Balkars (March 1944).

On December 3, 1944, Beria was entrusted with "monitoring the development of work on uranium" ("nuclear project"). After the end of the war, Beria, in whose hands the leadership of many departments was concentrated, on December 29, 1945, he left the post of minister, transferring it to S.N. Kruglov. From August 20, 1945 to June 26, 1953, he also headed the Special Committee under the State Defense Committee (then under the Council of People's Commissars and the Council of Ministers) and the State Committee No. 1. Under the leadership and with the direct participation of Beria, the first atomic bomb in the USSR was created (tested on August 29, 1949 years), after which some began to call him "the father of the Soviet atomic bomb." Being a successful organizer, he managed, using incl. and methods of coercion, to form a system of research centers where serious discoveries were made that laid the foundation for the military power of the USSR. On March 18, 1946, Beria became a full member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

At the 19th Congress, when the CPSU (b) was renamed the CPSU, on October 16, 1952, Beria was elected a member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee and a member of its Bureau. After the party congress, at the suggestion of Stalin, a "leading five" was created as part of the Presidium, which included Beria. At the same time, Stalin took a number of measures directed against Beria: the leadership of control over the state security agencies was transferred to the proteges of G.M. Malenkov, the Mingrelian case was initiated against Beria. According to Khrushchev's memoirs, “He was a smart man, very quick-witted. He responded quickly to everything."

Death of Stalin

After the death of I.V. Stalin, Beria took a leading position in the Soviet party hierarchy, on March 5, 1953, he became the 1st Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, in addition, he personally stood at the head of the new Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, which was created on the same day by combining the old Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security of the USSR. On his initiative, an amnesty was announced in the country on May 9, according to which 1.2 million people were released, several high-profile cases were closed (including the “doctors' case”), and investigations for 400,000 people were closed. Bearia advocated a reduction in military spending, for freezing expensive construction projects (including the Main Turkmen Canal, the Volga-Balt, etc.). He achieved the beginning of negotiations on a truce in Korea, tried to restore relations with Yugoslavia. He opposed the creation of the GDR, proposing to take a course towards the unification of West and East Germany into a "peace-loving, bourgeois state." The state security apparatus abroad was drastically reduced.

Pursuing a policy of nominating national cadres, Beria sent documents to the republican Central Committee, which spoke of the wrong Russification policy and illegal repressions. The excessive activity of Beria and the strengthening of his position caused dissatisfaction with his comrades in the leadership of the country. N.S. Khrushchev, G.M. Malenkov, L.M. Kaganovich, V.M. Molotov and others united against Beria. On June 26, 1953, at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Khrushchev unfoundedly accused Beria of revisionism, an anti-socialist approach to the situation in the GDR, espionage in favor of Great Britain, and announced the removal of Beria from all posts. After that, Beria was arrested by G.K. Zhukov to the Kremlin by a group of military men of the Moscow Air Defense District (commander of the troops of the district, Colonel-General K.S. Moskalenko, his 1st deputy, Lieutenant-General P.F. Batitsky, chief of staff of the district, Major-General A.I. Baksov, head of the Political Directorate of the district Colonel I. G. Zub and officer for special assignments, Lieutenant Colonel V. I. Yuferev). Beria stayed under guard until late at night, then he was transferred to the Moscow garrison guardhouse, and a day later - to the bunker of the command post of the Moscow Air Defense District.

At the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU on July 2-7, 1953, Berlia was criticized, removed from the Presidium and the Central Committee and expelled from the party as "an enemy of the Communist Party and the Soviet people." His former associates also made accusations against him, incl. M.D. Bagirov. He was accused of a large number of crimes, the main of which were clearly absurd - spying for Great Britain, striving for the "liquidation of the Soviet worker and peasant system, the restoration of capitalism and the restoration of the rule of the bourgeoisie."

To consider the case of Beria and “his gang”, a Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR was created: Marshal of the Soviet Union I.S. Konev (Chairman), Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions N.M. Shvernik, 1st Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR E.D. Zeidin, General of the Army K.S. Moskalenko, Secretary of the Moscow Regional Party Committee N.A. Mikhailov, Chairman of the Moscow City Court L.A. Gromov, 1st Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR K.F. Lunev, Chairman of the Georgian Republican Council of Trade Unions M.I. Kuchava. The former People's Commissar for State Security of the USSR, General of the Army V.N. Merkulov, 1st Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Colonel-General B.Z. Kobulov, former 1st Deputy Minister of State Security of the USSR, Colonel General S.A. Goglidze, Minister of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR, Lieutenant-General P.Ya. Meshik, Minister of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR V.G. Dekanozov, head of the Investigative Unit for Particularly Important Cases of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, Lieutenant General L.E. Vlodzimir.

On December 23, 1953, all the defendants were found guilty and sentenced to the highest measure of criminal punishment - execution, with confiscation of their personal property, deprivation of military ranks and awards. Shot by General P.F. Batitsky. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of December 31, 1953, Beria was deprived of the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union, the title of Hero of Socialist Labor and all state awards.

In 2000, the question of the rehabilitation of Beria was raised, but again it was refused.

Family

Wife - Nina Teimurazovna Gegechkori (1905 - June 10, 1991), niece of the Bolshevik Sasha Gegechkori, cousin of the Menshevik E. Gegechkori, head of the Menshevik government of Georgia (1920). Researcher at the Agricultural Academy. YES. Timiryazeva, was arrested in July 1953, and sent to administrative exile in November 1954.

Son - Sergo (November 24, 1925 - October 11, 2000), Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, in 1948-1953 he worked in Design Bureau No. 1 at the 3rd Main Directorate. On June 26, 1953, he was arrested and deported in November 1954. He was married to the granddaughter of A.M. Gorky Marfa Maksimovna Peshkova. In 1953, his surname was changed to Gegchkori, and in the 1990s he changed his surname Gegechkori to Beria and wrote a book in which he justified his father.

Ranks

Commissar of State Security 1st rank (09/11/1938)

general commissar of state security (01/30/1941)

Marshal of the Soviet Union (07/09/1945)

Works

On the question of the history of Bolshevik organizations in Transcaucasia. Report at the meeting of the Tiflis party activists on July 21-22, 1935. Partizdat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1936.

Lado Ketskhoveli. M., 1937.

Under the great banner of Lenin-Stalin: Articles and speeches. Tbilisi, 1939.

Speech at the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on March 12, 1939. Kyiv, 1939.

Report on the work of the Central Committee of the CP(b) of Georgia at the XI Congress of the CP(b) of Georgia on June 16, 1938. Sukhumi, 1939.

The greatest man of our time [I.V. Stalin]. Kyiv, 1940.

Lado Ketskhoveli. (1876-1903) / (Life of the remarkable Bolsheviks). Alma-Ata, 1938;

About youth. Tbilisi, 1940.

The “diaries” of L.P. Beria is a fake.

Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria - 2nd Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR in the period March 5, 1953 - June 26, 1953)

Head of government: Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov

Predecessor: Sergey Nikiforovich Kruglov
Successor: Sergei Nikiforovich Kruglov
3rd People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR
November 25, 1938 - December 29, 1945
Head of Government: Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin
6th First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CP(b) of Georgia
November 14, 1931 - August 31, 1938
Predecessor: Lavrenty Iosifovich Kartvelishvili
Successor: Kandid Nesterovich Charkviani
First Secretary of the Tbilisi City Committee of the CP(b) of Georgia
May 1937 - August 31, 1938
First Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks
October 17, 1932 - April 23, 1937
Predecessor: Ivan Dmitrievich Orakhelashvili
Successor: Position abolished
People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR
April 4, 1927 - December 1930
Predecessor: Alexey Alexandrovich Gegechkori
Successor: Sergei Arsenievich Goglidze

Birth: 17 (29) March 1899
Merkheuli, Gumista area, Sukhumi district, Kutaisi province, Russian Empire
Death: December 23, 1953 (aged 54)
Moscow, RSFSR, USSR
Father: Pavel Khukhaevich Beria
Mother: Marta Vissarionovna Jakeli
Wife: Nino Teimurazovna Gegechkori
Children: son: Sergo
Party: RSDLP(b) since 1917, RCP(b) since 1918, VKP(b) since 1925, CPSU since 1952
Education: Baku Polytechnic Institute

Military service
Years of service: 1938-1953
Affiliation: (1923-1955) USSR
Title: Marshal of the Soviet Union
Commanded: Head of the GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR (1938)
People's Commissar of the USSR VD (1938-1945)
Member of the GKO (1941-1944)

Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria(Georgian ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია, Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria; March 17, 1899, Merkheuli village, Sukhum district, Kutaisi province. - December 23 1953, Moscow) - Soviet statesman and politician, General Commissar of State Security (1941), Marshal of the Soviet Union (1945).

Since 1941 Lavrenty Beria- Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers (Council of People's Commissars until 1946) of the USSR Joseph Stalin, with his death on March 5, 1953 - First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR G. Malenkov and at the same time the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR. Member of the State Defense Committee of the USSR (1941-1944), Deputy Chairman of the State Defense Committee of the USSR (1944-1945). Member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR of the 7th convocation, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st-3rd convocations. Member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (1934-1953), candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee (1939-1946), member of the Politburo (1946-1953).

He was a member of the inner circle of I.V. Stalin. He oversaw a number of the most important branches of the defense industry, including all developments related to the creation of nuclear weapons and rocket technology.

On June 26, 1953, L.P. Beria was arrested on charges of espionage and conspiracy to seize power. He was shot by the verdict of the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR on December 23, 1953.

Childhood and youth

Lavrenty Beria was born on March 17, 1899 in the village of Merkheuli, Sukhumi district, Kutaisi province (now in the Gulrypsh district of Abkhazia) into a poor peasant family.

His mother, Marta Dzhakeli (1868-1955), a Mingrelian, according to Sergo Beria and fellow villagers, was distantly related to the Mingrelian princely family of Dadiani. After the death of her first husband, Marta was left with her son and two daughters in her arms. Later, due to extreme poverty, the children from Martha's first marriage were taken in by her brother, Dmitry

Father Lawrence Beria, Pavel Khukhaevich Beria(1872-1922), moved to Merkheuli from Megrelia.

Martha and Pavel had three children in the family, but one of the sons died at the age of 2, and the daughter remained deaf and mute after an illness. Noticing Lavrenty's good abilities, his parents tried to give him a good education - at the Sukhum Higher Primary School. To pay for tuition and living, parents had to sell half the house.

In 1915, Lavrenty Beria, with honors (according to other sources, he studied mediocrely, and was left in the fourth grade for the second year), after graduating from the Sukhum Higher Primary School, he left for Baku and entered the Baku Secondary Mechanical and Technical Construction School. From the age of 17, he supported his mother and deaf-mute sister, who moved in with him. Working since 1916 as an intern at the main office of the Nobel oil company, at the same time he continued his studies at the school. In 1919 he graduated from it, having received a diploma of a technician-builder-architect.

Since 1915, he was a member of an illegal Marxist circle of a mechanical construction school, was its treasurer. In March 1917, Beria became a member of the RSDLP (b). In June-December 1917, he traveled to the Romanian front as a technician of a hydraulic engineering detachment, served in Odessa, then in Pashkani (Romania), was commissioned due to illness and returned to Baku, where from February 1918 he worked in the city organization of the Bolsheviks and the secretariat of the Baku Council workers' deputies.

The execution of the Baku commissars

After the defeat of the Baku commune and the capture of Baku by the Turkish-Azerbaijani troops (September 1918), he remained in the city and participated in the work of the underground Bolshevik organization until the establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan (April 1920).

British troops in Baku

From October 1918 to January 1919 - a clerk at the "Caspian Partnership White City" factory, Baku.

In the autumn of 1919, on the instructions of the head of the Baku Bolshevik underground, A. Mikoyan, he became an agent of the Organization for the Fight against Counter-Revolution (counterintelligence) under the State Defense Committee of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. During this period, he established a close relationship with Zinaida Krems (von Krems (Kreps)), who had connections with German military intelligence. In his autobiography, dated October 22, 1923, Beria wrote:
“During the first period of the Turkish occupation, I worked in the White City at the Caspian Partnership plant as a clerk. In the autumn of the same 1919, from the Gummet party, I entered the counterintelligence service, where I worked together with Comrade Mussevi. Approximately in March 1920, after the assassination of comrade Mussevi, I left my work in counterintelligence and worked for a short time in the Baku customs. »

Beria did not hide his work in ADR counterintelligence - for example, in a letter to G.K. Ordzhonikidze in 1933, he wrote that “he was sent to Musavat intelligence by the party and that this issue was dealt with in the Central Committee of the Azerbaijan Communist Party (b) in 1920”, that the Central Committee of the AKP (b) “completely rehabilitated” him, since “the fact of working in counterintelligence with the knowledge of the party was confirmed by the statements of comrades. Mirza Davud Huseynova, Kasum Izmailova and others.”

In April 1920, after the establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan, he was sent to work illegally in the Georgian Democratic Republic as an authorized representative of the Caucasian Regional Committee of the RCP (b) and the registration department of the Caucasian Front under the Revolutionary Military Council of the 11th Army.
In liberated Baku. 1920. From left to right: S. M. Kirov, G. K. Ordzhonikidze, A. I. Mikoyan, M. G. Efremov, M. K. Levandovsky, K. A. Mekhonoshi

Almost immediately he was arrested in Tiflis and released with an order to leave Georgia within three days. In his autobiography, Beria wrote:
“From the very first days after the April coup in Azerbaijan, the regional committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) from the registrar of the Caucasian Front under the Revolutionary Military Council of the 11th Army was sent to Georgia for underground work abroad as an authorized representative. In Tiflis, I contact the regional committee in the person of Comrade. Hmayak Nazaretyan, spreading a network of residents in Georgia and Armenia, establishing contact with the headquarters of the Georgian army and guards, regularly sending couriers to the register of the city of Baku. In Tiflis, I was arrested together with the Central Committee of Georgia, but according to the negotiations between G. Sturua and Noah Zhordania, they released everyone with a proposal to leave Georgia within 3 days. However, I manage to stay, having entered the service under the pseudonym Lakerbaya in the representative office of the RSFSR to Comrade Kirov, who by that time had arrived in the city of Tiflis. »

Later, participating in the preparation of an armed uprising against the Georgian Menshevik government, he was exposed by local counterintelligence, arrested and imprisoned in Kutaisi prison, then exiled to Azerbaijan. About this he writes:
“In May 1920, I went to Baku to register to receive directives in connection with the conclusion of a peace treaty with Georgia, but on the way back to Tiflis I was arrested by Noah Ramishvili’s telegram and taken to Tiflis, from where, despite Comrade Kirov’s troubles, I was sent to Kutaisi prison. June and July of 1920 I am imprisoned, only after four and a half days of a hunger strike declared by political prisoners, I am deported to Azerbaijan in stages. »

In the state security bodies of Azerbaijan and Georgia

Returning to Baku, Beria several times tried to continue his studies at the Baku Polytechnic Institute, into which the school was transformed, he completed three courses. In August 1920, he became the manager of the affairs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Azerbaijan, and in October of the same year, he became the executive secretary of the Extraordinary Commission for the Expropriation of the Bourgeoisie and the Improvement of the Life of the Workers, having worked in this position until February 1921. In April 1921, he was appointed deputy head of the Secret Operational Department of the Cheka under the Council of People's Commissars (SNK) of the Azerbaijan SSR, and in May he took the positions of head of the secret operational unit and deputy chairman of the Azerbaijan Cheka. The chairman of the Cheka of the Azerbaijan SSR was then Mir Jafar Baghirov.

In 1921, Beria was sharply criticized by the party and Chekist leadership of Azerbaijan for exceeding his authority and falsifying criminal cases, but he escaped serious punishment. (Anastas Mikoyan petitioned for him.)
In 1922, he participated in the defeat of the Muslim organization "Ittihad" and the liquidation of the Transcaucasian organization of the right SRs.
In November 1922, Beria was transferred to Tiflis, where he was appointed head of the Secret Operational Unit and deputy chairman of the Cheka under the Council of People's Commissars of the Georgian SSR, later transformed into the Georgian GPU (State Political Administration), with the combination of the post of head of the Special Department of the Transcaucasian Army.

In July 1923 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of the Republic by the Central Executive Committee of Georgia. In 1924 he participated in the suppression of the Menshevik uprising, was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of the USSR.
From March 1926 - Deputy Chairman of the GPU of the Georgian SSR, head of the Secret Operational Unit.
December 2, 1926 Lavrenty Beria became chairman of the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the Georgian SSR (until December 3, 1931), deputy plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR in the ZSFSR and deputy chairman of the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the ZSFSR (until April 17, 1931). At the same time, from December 1926 to April 17, 1931, he was the head of the Secret Operational Directorate of the Plenipotentiary Representation of the OGPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR in the ZSFSR and the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the ZSFSR.

At the same time, from April 1927 to December 1930, he was People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR. Apparently, his first meeting with Stalin dates back to this period.

June 6, 1930 by the decision of the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of the Georgian SSR Lavrenty Beria was appointed a member of the Presidium (later the Bureau) of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia. On April 17, 1931, he took the post of chairman of the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the ZSFSR, plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR in the ZSFSR and head of the Special Department of the OGPU of the Caucasian Red Banner Army (until December 3, 1931). At the same time, from August 18 to December 3, 1931, he was a member of the collegium of the OGPU of the USSR.

At party work in Transcaucasia

The leader of Abkhazia, Nestor Lakoba, contributed to the promotion of Beria from the KGB to party work.

Nestor Apollonovich Lakoba

On October 31, 1931, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks recommended L. P. Beria to the post of second secretary of the Transcaucasian regional committee (in the position until October 17, 1932), on November 14, 1931 he became the first secretary of the Central Committee of the CP (b) of Georgia (until August 31, 1938), and on October 17, 1932 - the first secretary of the Transcaucasian regional committee while maintaining the position First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia, was elected a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Armenia and Azerbaijan. On December 5, 1936, the ZSFSR was divided into three independent republics, the Transcaucasian Territory Committee was liquidated by the decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on April 23, 1937.

On March 10, 1933, the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks included Beria in the mailing list of materials sent to members of the Central Committee - the minutes of meetings of the Politburo, the Organizing Bureau, the Secretariat of the Central Committee. In 1934, at the 17th Congress of the CPSU(b), he was elected a member of the Central Committee.
Since February 10, 1934 L. P. Beria- Member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).
On March 20, 1934, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was included in the commission chaired by L. M. Kaganovich, created to develop the draft Regulations on the NKVD of the USSR and the Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR

In December 1934, he attended a reception at Stalin's in honor of his 55th birthday. In early March 1935 he was elected a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and its presidium. March 17, 1935 was awarded the Order of Lenin. In May 1937, he concurrently headed the Tbilisi City Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia (in this position until August 31, 1938).

From left to right: Philip Makharadze, Mir Jafar Bagirov and Lavrenty Beria, 1935.

During the leadership of L.P. Beria, the national economy of the region developed rapidly. Beria made a great contribution to the development of the oil industry in Transcaucasia, under him many large industrial facilities were put into operation (Zemo-Avchalskaya hydroelectric power station, etc.). Georgia was transformed into an all-Union resort area. By 1940, the volume of industrial production in Georgia increased by 10 times compared to 1913, agricultural production by 2.5 times, with a fundamental change in the structure of agriculture towards highly profitable crops of the subtropical zone.

For agricultural products produced in the subtropics (grapes, tea, tangerines, etc.), high purchase prices were set, the Georgian peasantry was the most prosperous in the country.

In 1935 he published the book "On the History of Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia". Beria is credited with poisoning the then leader of Abkhazia, Nestor Lakoba.

In September 1937, together with G. M. Malenkov and A. I. Mikoyan sent from Moscow, he carried out a “cleansing” of the Armenian party organization. The “Great Purge” also took place in Georgia, where many party and government officials were repressed. Here the so-called. a conspiracy among the party leadership of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, the participants of which allegedly planned the secession of Transcaucasia from the USSR and the transition under the protectorate of Great Britain.
In Georgia, in particular, the persecution of the People's Commissar for Education of the Georgian SSR, Gaioz Devdariani, began. His brother Shalva, who held important positions in the state security organs and the Communist Party, was executed. In the end, Gaioz Devdariani was accused of violating Article 58 and, on suspicion of counter-revolutionary activities, was executed in 1938 by the NKVD troika. In addition to party functionaries, local intellectuals also suffered from the purge, even those who tried to stay away from politics, including Mikheil Javakhishvili, Titian Tabidze, Sandro Akhmeteli, Yevgeny Mikeladze, Dmitry Shevardnadze, Georgy Eliava, Grigory Tsereteli and others.
From January 17, 1938, from the 1st session of the USSR Supreme Council of the 1st convocation, member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

In the NKVD of the USSR

On August 22, 1938, Beria was appointed First Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR N. I. Yezhov. Simultaneously with Beria, another 1st deputy people's commissar (from 04/15/37) was MP Frinovsky, who headed the 1st department of the NKVD of the USSR.

On September 8, 1938, Frinovsky was appointed People's Commissar of the Navy of the USSR and left the posts of the 1st Deputy People's Commissar and Head of the NKVD Department of the USSR, on the same day, September 8, L.P. Beria replaced him in his last post - from September 29, 1938 the head of the Main Directorate of State Security restored in the structure of the NKVD (December 17, 1938, Beria will be replaced by V.N. Merkulov, the 1st Deputy People's Commissar of the NKVD from 12/16/38). On September 11, 1938, L.P. Beria was awarded the title of Commissar of State Security of the 1st rank.
November 25, 1938 Beria was appointed People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR.

With the advent of L.P. Beria to the post of head of the NKVD, the scale of repressions sharply decreased, the Great Terror ended. In 1939, 2,600 people were sentenced to capital punishment on charges of counter-revolutionary crimes; in 1940, 1,600. In 1939-1940. the vast majority of people who were not convicted in 1937-1938 were released; Also, some of those convicted and sent to camps were released. The expert commission of Moscow State University estimates the number of those released in 1939-1940. in 150-200 thousand people. “In certain circles of society, he has since had a reputation as a man who restored “socialist legality” at the very end of the 30s,” notes Yakov Etinger.

According to archival documents, in 1940 Beria organized the execution of Polish prisoners and the deportation of their relatives, while sources claim that the deportations in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were directed mainly against the hostile to the Soviet government and the nationalist part of the Polish population.

He oversaw the operation to eliminate Leon Trotsky.

Lev Davidovich Trotsky before his death

On March 22, 1939, he was a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. On January 30, 1941, L.P. Beria was awarded the title of General Commissar of State Security.

February 3, 1941 was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. As deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, he oversaw the work of the NKVD, the NKGB, the people's commissariats of the timber and oil industries, non-ferrous metals, and the river fleet.

The Great Patriotic War

During the Great Patriotic War, from June 30, 1941, L.P. Beria was a member of the State Defense Committee (GKO). By the GKO resolution of February 4, 1942 on the distribution of responsibilities between GKO members, L.P. Beria was entrusted with the responsibility of monitoring the implementation of GKO decisions on the production of aircraft, engines, weapons and mortars, as well as monitoring the implementation of GKO decisions on the work of the Red Air Force Armies (formation of air regiments, their timely transfer to the front, etc.). By a GKO resolution of December 8, 1942, L.P. Beria was appointed a member of the Operations Bureau of the GKO. By the same decree, L.P. Beria was additionally entrusted with the duties of monitoring and supervising the work of the People's Commissariat of the Coal Industry and the People's Commissariat of Railways. In May 1944, Beria was appointed deputy chairman of the GKO and chairman of the Operations Bureau. The tasks of the Operational Bureau included, in particular, monitoring and monitoring the work of all people's commissariats of the defense industry, railway and water transport, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, coal, oil, chemical, rubber, paper and pulp, electrical industry, power plants.

Beria also served as permanent adviser to the Headquarters of the High Command of the Armed Forces of the USSR.

Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria and Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

During the war years, he carried out responsible assignments of the country's leadership and the ruling party, both related to the management of the national economy, and at the front. Supervised the production of aircraft and rocket technology.

By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of September 30, 1943, L.P. Beria was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor “for special services in strengthening the production of weapons and ammunition in difficult wartime conditions”.

During the war years, L.P. Beria was awarded the Order of the Red Banner (Mongolia) (July 15, 1942), the Order of the Republic (Tuva) (August 18, 1943), the Hammer and Sickle medal (September 30, 1943), two Orders of Lenin (30 September 1943, February 21, 1945), Order of the Red Banner (November 3, 1944).

Start of work on a nuclear project

An official letter from the head of the NKVD L.P. Beria addressed to I.V. Stalin with information about the work on the use of atomic energy for military purposes abroad, proposals for organizing these works in the USSR and secret acquaintance with the materials of the NKVD of prominent Soviet specialists, the variants of which were prepared by the NKVD officers back in late 1941 - early 1942, it was sent to I.V. Stalin only in October 1942, after the adoption of the GKO order to resume work on uranium in the USSR.

Already in March 1942, Beria sent Stalin all the information received from the United States, England, Scandinavia and occupied Kharkov, where German scientists on assignment began to study the results of the work of a strong physical and technical institute. Beria proposed the creation of a scientific advisory group of prominent scientists and senior officials under the State Defense Committee to coordinate the work of scientific organizations for the study of atomic energy. Beria asked for permission to acquaint a number of prominent scientists (Ioffe, Kurchatov, Kapitsa) with the information obtained through intelligence, for its assessment. Stalin agreed with this.

In February 1944, the first meeting of the leaders of military intelligence and the NKVD on the atomic problem took place in Beria's office on Lubyanka, at which Ilyichev and Milshtein were present from the military, and Fitin and Ovakimyan from the NKVD.

Already the first results of the work of the government atomic Special Committee showed the weakness of Molotov's leadership. In this regard, Kurchatov and Ioffe raised the question of replacing Molotov with Beria before Stalin.

Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov and Abram Fedorovich Ioffe

On August 20, 1945, the Decree of the State Defense Committee of the USSR No. 9887-ss / op “On the Special Committee under the GKO” appeared, according to which the production of the atomic bomb in the Soviet Union was put on an industrial basis. Two special government organizations were created: the Special Committee (SC) headed by L.P. Beria and the First Main Directorate (PGU), headed by B.L. Vannikov. The last paragraph of this document was instructed to “instruct Comrade. Beria to take all measures to organize outrageous intelligence work to obtain more complete technical and economic information about the uranium industry and atomic bombs.

The key issue for the success of all nuclear projects was the availability of uranium to the developer of nuclear materials. In defeated Germany, the Americans tried to get ahead of us, and most often they succeeded. But we also managed to do something. Kurchatov at the beginning of 1946 made the following confession:
“Until May 1945, there were no hopes of implementing a uranium-graphite boiler, since we had only 7 tons of uranium oxide at our disposal and there was no hope that the required 100 tons of uranium would be produced before 1948. In the middle of last year, comrade Beria sent to Germany a special group of workers from Laboratory No. 2 and the NKVD, headed by comrade t. Zavenyagin, Makhnev and Kikoin to search for uranium and uranium raw materials. As a result of a lot of work, the sent group found and exported to the USSR 300 tons of uranium oxide and its compounds, which seriously changed the situation not only with the uranium-graphite boiler, but also with all other uranium facilities.

Kurchatov in Moscow assembles the first nuclear reactor in Europe with his own hands, which does not yet have a heat removal system. L.P. is present at the reactor start-up. Beria and N.I. Pavlov. When Kurchatov informed Beria that the Experimental Reactor had been started up, Beria, not really understanding what had happened, grunted "That's it!". And this was the first chain reaction in Europe, but without heat removal. The reactor was started up in Moscow, and next to the reactor there was a "forester's hut" - Kurchatov's apartment. And this proved that there was no need to be afraid of a reactor explosion. Later, Kurchatov would achieve permanent operation of this reactor for many years to come.

The task of constructing the first reactor arose during the design of the first Soviet atomic bomb RDS-1. The reactor was created as an experimental site for testing technologies and processes for creating plutonium. Weapon-grade plutonium (plutonium-239), which is the result of neutron irradiation of uranium-238, was chosen as an atomic explosive for simplicity, speed and cost.
reactor "F-1"

The reactor was built at Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow (now the Kurchatov Institute). On December 25, 1946, a group of laboratory workers led by I.V. Kurchatov, the first research uranium-graphite reactor F-1 in Europe was launched and a self-sustaining chain reaction was carried out in a nuclear reactor. On the basis of the results obtained at F-1, the A-1 weapons-grade nuclear reactor, the first in the USSR and Europe, was developed.

Deportation of peoples

During the Great Patriotic War, peoples were deported from their places of compact residence. Representatives of peoples whose countries were part of the Nazi coalition (Hungarians, Bulgarians, many Finns) were also deported. The official reason for the deportation was mass desertion, collaborationism and the active anti-Soviet armed struggle of a significant part of these peoples during the Great Patriotic War.

On January 29, 1944, Lavrenty Beria approved the "Instruction on the procedure for the eviction of Chechens and Ingush", and on February 21, he issued an order for the NKVD on the deportation of Chechens and Ingush. On February 20, together with I. A. Serov, B. Z. Kobulov and S. S. Mamulov, Beria arrived in Grozny and personally led the operation, which involved up to 19 thousand operatives of the NKVD, NKGB and SMERSH, and also about 100 thousand officers and fighters of the NKVD troops drawn from all over the country to participate in "exercises in the highlands." On February 22, he met with the leadership of the republic and the highest spiritual leaders, warned them about the operation and offered to carry out the necessary work among the population, and the eviction operation began the next morning.

On February 24, Beria reported to Stalin: "The eviction is proceeding normally ... Of the persons scheduled for removal in connection with the operation, 842 people were arrested." On the same day, Beria suggested that Stalin evict the Balkars, and on February 26 he issued an order to the NKVD "On measures to evict the Balkar population from the Design Bureau of the ASSR." The day before, Beria, Serov and Kobulov held a meeting with the secretary of the Kabardino-Balkarian regional party committee, Zuber Kumekhov, during which it was planned to visit the Elbrus region in early March. On March 2, Beria, accompanied by Kobulov and Mamulov, traveled to the Elbrus region, informing Kumekhov of his intention to evict the Balkars and transfer their lands to Georgia so that it could have a defensive line on the northern slopes of the Greater Caucasus. On March 5, the State Defense Committee issued a resolution on eviction from the Design Bureau of the ASSR, and on March 8-9, the operation began. On March 11, Beria reported to Stalin that "37,103 people had been evicted from the Balkars," and on March 14 he reported to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

Another major action was the deportation of the Meskhetian Turks, as well as the Kurds and Hemshins living in the border areas with Turkey. On July 24, Beria addressed a letter (No. 7896) to I. Stalin. He wrote:
“For a number of years, a significant part of this population, connected with the residents of the border regions of Turkey by family ties, relations, has shown emigration sentiments, is engaged in smuggling and serves as a source for the Turkish intelligence agencies to recruit spy elements and plant bandit groups. »

He noted that "the NKVD of the USSR considers it expedient to relocate 16,700 households of Turks, Kurds, Hemshins from Akhaltsikhe, Akhalkalaki, Adigen, Aspindza, Bogdanovsky districts, some village councils of the Adjara ASSR." On July 31, the State Defense Committee adopted a resolution (No. 6279, “top secret”) on the deportation of 45,516 Meskhetian Turks from the Georgian SSR to the Kazakh, Kirghiz and Uzbek SSRs, as noted in the documents of the Department of Special Settlements of the NKVD of the USSR.

The liberation of the regions from the German occupiers also required new actions in relation to the families of German accomplices, traitors and traitors to the Motherland, who voluntarily left with the Germans. On August 24, the order of the NKVD signed by Beria “On the eviction from the cities of the Kavmingroup of resorts of the families of active German accomplices, traitors and traitors to the Motherland who voluntarily left with the Germans” followed. On December 2, Beria addressed Stalin with the following letter:

“In connection with the successful completion of the operation to evict from the border regions of the Georgian SSR to the regions of the Uzbek, Kazakh and Kirghiz SSR, 91,095 people - Turks, Kurds, Khemshins, the NKVD of the USSR asks to award orders and medals of the USSR to the most distinguished workers of the NKVD- NKGB and military personnel of the NKVD troops.

Postwar years

Supervision of the nuclear project of the USSR.

After testing the first American atomic device in the desert near Alamogordo, work in the USSR to create its own nuclear weapons was significantly accelerated.

nuclear explosion in Alamogordo

The Special Committee was created on the basis of the GKO decree of August 20, 1945. It included L. P. Beria (chairman), G. M. Malenkov, N. A. Voznesensky, B. L. Vannikov, A. P. Zavenyagin, I. V. Kurchatov, P. L. Kapitsa (then removed due to disagreements with L.P. Beria, formally on the basis of personal hostility), V.A. Makhnev, M.G. Pervukhin. The Committee was entrusted with "management of all work on the use of intra-atomic energy of uranium." Later it was transformed into a Special Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. L.P. Beria, on the one hand, organized and directed the receipt of all the necessary intelligence information, on the other hand, he carried out general management of the entire project. In March 1953, the Special Committee was entrusted with the management of other special works of defense significance. Based on the decision of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU of June 26, 1953 (on the day of the dismissal and arrest of L.P. Beria), the Special Committee was liquidated, and its apparatus was transferred to the newly formed Ministry of Medium Machine Building of the USSR.

On August 29, 1949, the atomic bomb was successfully tested at the Semipalatinsk test site.

We thoroughly prepared for it in order to collect as much information as possible about the effectiveness of the new weapon and the consequences of its use. On the experimental site with a diameter of 10 km, divided into sectors, buildings imitating residential and fortifications were erected, military and civilian equipment was placed, more than one and a half thousand animals, engineering structures, measuring and film-photo equipment were placed. On August 29, a 22 kiloton RDS-1 charge exploded in the center of the site on top of a 37-meter tower, raising a huge nuclear mushroom in height. This terrible and majestic spectacle could be observed not only by the military and scientists, but also by ordinary civilians who became hostages of their time. After all, no matter how paradoxical it may sound, the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site is known not only as one of the largest in the world and not only for the fact that the most advanced and deadly nuclear charges were stored on its territory, but also for the fact that local people constantly lived on its vast territory. population. This was nowhere else in the world. Due to the imperfection of the first nuclear charges from 64 kg of uranium, only about 700 g were included in the chain reaction, the rest of the uranium simply turned into radioactive dust that settled around the explosion.

Photo: RFNC-VNNIEF Museum of Nuclear Weapons

On October 29, 1949, L.P. Beria was awarded the Stalin Prize of the 1st degree "for organizing the production of atomic energy and successfully completing the testing of atomic weapons." According to the testimony of P. A. Sudoplatov, published in the book "Intelligence and the Kremlin: Notes of an Unwanted Witness" (1996), two project leaders - L. P. Beria and I. V. Kurchatov - were awarded the title "Honorary Citizen of the USSR" with the wording “for outstanding services in strengthening the power of the USSR”, it is indicated that the recipient was awarded the “Diploma of an honorary citizen of the Soviet Union”. In the future, the title "Honorary Citizen of the USSR" was not awarded.

The test of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb, the development of which was supervised by G. M. Malenkov, took place on August 12, 1953, shortly after the arrest of L. P. Beria.

Career

On July 9, 1945, when replacing special state security ranks with military ones, L.P. Beria was awarded the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union.

On September 6, 1945, the Operational Bureau of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was formed, and L.P. Beria was appointed chairman. The tasks of the Operational Bureau of the Council of People's Commissars included issues of the work of industrial enterprises and railway transport.

Since March 1946, Beria has been a member of the "seven" members of the Politburo, which included I.V. Stalin and six people close to him. This "inner circle" closed the most important issues of public administration, including: foreign policy, foreign trade, state security, armaments, the functioning of the armed forces. On March 18, he becomes a member of the Politburo, and the next day he is appointed Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. As Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, he oversaw the work of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of State Control.

In March 1949 - July 1951, there was a sharp strengthening of the position of L.P. Beria in the leadership of the country, which was facilitated by the successful testing of the first atomic bomb in the USSR, the work on the creation of which L.P. Beria supervised.

creators of the nuclear missile shield of the USSR

After the XIX Congress of the CPSU held in October 1952, L.P. Beria was included in the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which replaced the former Politburo, in the Bureau of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU and in the "leading five" of the Presidium created at the suggestion of I.V. Stalin.

Former investigator of the USSR Ministry of State Security Nikolai Mesyatsev, who audited the “doctors' case”, claimed that Stalin suspected Beria of patronizing the arrested ex-Minister of State Security Viktor Abakumov, who was accused of falsifying criminal cases.

V.S. Abakumov V.N. Merkulov L.P. Beria

Death of Stalin. Reforms and struggle for power

On the day of Stalin's death - March 5, 1953, a joint meeting of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was held, where appointments to the highest posts of the party and the Government of the USSR were approved, and, by prior agreement with the Khrushchev group -Malenkov-Molotov-Bulganin, Beria was appointed First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and Minister of the Interior of the USSR without much debate. The newly formed Ministry of Internal Affairs united the previously existing Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security.

On March 9, 1953, L.P. Beria participated in the funeral of I.V. Stalin, from the podium of the Mausoleum he delivered a speech at a funeral meeting.

funeral of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

Beria, along with Khrushchev and Malenkov, became one of the main contenders for leadership in the country. In the struggle for leadership, L.P. Beria relied on law enforcement agencies. The proteges of L.P. Beria were nominated to the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Already on March 19, the heads of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were replaced in all the Union republics and in most regions of the RSFSR. In turn, the newly appointed heads of the Ministry of Internal Affairs made replacements in the middle management.

Already a week after Stalin's death - from mid-March to June 1953, Beria, as head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, with his orders on the ministry and proposals (notes) to the Council of Ministers and the Central Committee (many of which were approved by the relevant resolutions and decrees), initiated a number of legislative and political transformations directly or indirectly exposing the Stalinist regime and the repressions of the 30-50s in general, later called by a number of historians and experts "unprecedented", or even "democratic" reforms:

Order on the creation of commissions on the revision of the “case of doctors”, a conspiracy in the USSR Ministry of State Security, Glavartupr of the USSR Ministry of Defense, and the Ministry of State Security of the Georgian SSR. All defendants in these cases were rehabilitated within two weeks.

Order on the establishment of a commission to consider cases on the deportation of citizens from Georgia.

Order to review the "aviation case". Over the next two months, the people's commissar of the aviation industry Shakhurin and the commander of the USSR Air Force Novikov, as well as other defendants in the case, were fully rehabilitated and reinstated in their positions and ranks.

Note to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU on the amnesty. According to Beria's proposal, on March 27, 1953, the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU approved the decree "On Amnesty", according to which 1.203 million people were to be released from places of detention, as well as investigative cases against 401 thousand people were to be terminated. As of August 10, 1953, 1.032 million people were released from places of detention. the following categories of prisoners: those convicted for a term of up to 5 years, convicted for official, economic and some military crimes, as well as minors, the elderly, the sick, women with young children and pregnant women.

Note to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU on the rehabilitation of persons passing through the "doctors' case" The note admitted that the leading innocent figures in Soviet medicine were presented as spies and murderers, and, as a result, objects of anti-Semitic harassment deployed in the central press. The case from beginning to end is a provocative fiction of the former deputy of the Ministry of State Security of the USSR Ryumin, who, having embarked on the criminal path of deceiving the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in order to obtain the necessary testimony, obtained the sanction of I.V. Stalin to apply physical measures to arrested doctors - torture and severe beatings. The subsequent resolution of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On the falsification of the so-called case of pest doctors" dated April 3, 1953, ordered to support Beria's proposal for the complete rehabilitation of these doctors (37 people) and the removal of Ignatiev from the post of Minister of the Ministry of State Security of the USSR, and Ryumin by that time was already arrested.

Note to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU on bringing to justice the persons involved in the death of S. M. Mikhoels and V. I. Golubov.

Order "On the Prohibition of the Use of Any Measures of Coercion and Physical Coercion against Those Arrested" Beria L.P. measures to uncover criminal acts committed over a number of years in the former USSR Ministry of State Security, expressed in the fabrication of falsified cases against honest people, as well as measures to correct the consequences of violations of Soviet laws, bearing in mind that these measures are aimed at strengthening the Soviet state and socialist legality."

Note to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU about the incorrect conduct of the Mingrelian case. The subsequent resolution of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU “On the Falsification of the Case of the So-Called Mingrelian Nationalist Group” of April 10, 1953 recognizes that the circumstances of the case are fictitious, all the defendants should be released and fully rehabilitated.

Note to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU ON THE REHABILITATION OF N. D. YAKOVLEV, I. ​​I. VOLKOTRUBENKO, I. A. MIRZAKHANOV AND OTHERS

Note to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU ON THE REHABILITATION OF M. M. KAGANOVICH

Note to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU ON ABOLISHING PASSPORT RESTRICTIONS AND REGIME AREAS

The son of L.P. Beria, Sergo Lavrentievich, in 1994 published a book of memoirs about his father.

son Sergei, wife Nino, L.P. Beria, daughter-in-law Martha (granddaughter of A.M. Gorky)

In particular, L.P. Beria is described there as a supporter of democratic reforms, an end to the forcible construction of socialism in the GDR.
Arrest and sentence

Circular of the head of the 2nd Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR K. Omelchenko on the seizure of portraits of L.P. Beria. July 27, 1953.

In June, Beria officially invited the famous writer Konstantin Simonov and presented him with execution lists from the 1930s signed by Stalin and other members of the Central Committee. All this time, the hidden confrontation between Beria and the Khrushchev-Malenkov-Bulganin group continued. Khrushchev was afraid that Beria would declassify and present to the public the archives, where his (Khrushchev's) and others' participation in the repressions of the late 1930s would become obvious.

All this time, Khrushchev was putting together a group against Beria. Enlisting the support of the majority of the members of the Central Committee and high-ranking military officers, Khrushchev convened a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on June 26, 1953, where he raised the question of his compliance with his position and his removal from all posts. Among others, Khrushchev voiced accusations of revisionism, an anti-socialist approach to the situation in the GDR, and spying for Britain in the 1920s. Beria tried to prove that if he was appointed by the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, then only he could remove him, but at the same moment a group of Marshals of the Soviet Union, led by Zhukov, entered the room at a special signal and arrested Beria.

arrest L.P. Beria

The arrested Beria was accused of spying for Great Britain and other countries, striving to eliminate the Soviet worker-peasant system, restore capitalism and restore the rule of the bourgeoisie. Beria was also accused of moral decay, abuse of power, as well as falsifying thousands of criminal cases against his colleagues in Georgia and the Caucasus and organizing illegal repressions (Beria, according to the prosecution, also committed acting for selfish and enemy purposes).

At the July plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, almost all members of the Central Committee made statements about the wrecking activities of L. Beria. On July 7, by a resolution of the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Beria was relieved of his duties as a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU and removed from the Central Committee of the CPSU. At the end of July 1953, a secret circular of the 2nd Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR was issued, which ordered the widespread seizure of any artistic images of L.P. Beria.

On December 23, 1953, the case of Beria was considered by the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR, chaired by Marshal I. S. Konev. L.P. Beria was accused along with his closest associates from the state security agencies, immediately after his arrest and later called the "Beria gang" in the media:

Merkulov V.N. - Minister of State Control of the USSR
Kobulov B.Z. - First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR
Goglidze S. A. - Head of the 3rd Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR
Meshik P. Ya. - Minister of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR
Dekanozov V. G. - Minister of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR
Vlodzimirsky L.E. - head of the investigative unit for especially important cases of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.

All the accused were sentenced to death and executed the same day. Moreover, L.P. Beria was shot a few hours before the execution of other convicts in the bunker of the headquarters of the Moscow Military District in the presence of the USSR Prosecutor General R.A. Rudenko. On his own initiative, the first shot was fired from a personal weapon by Colonel-General (later Marshal of the Soviet Union) P.F. Batitsky.

The body was burnt in the furnace of the 1st Moscow (Donskoy) crematorium. He was buried at the Donskoy cemetery (according to other statements, the ashes of Beria were scattered over the Moscow River. A brief report on the trial of L.P. Beria and his employees was published in the Soviet press.

In subsequent years, other, lower-ranking members of the "Beria gang" were convicted and shot or sentenced to long prison terms:

Abakumov V. S. - Chairman of the Collegium of the Ministry of State Security of the USSR
Ryumin M.D. - Deputy Minister of State Security of the USSR on the “Bagirov case”:

Bagirov. M. D. - 1st Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Azerbaijan SSR
Markaryan R. A. - Minister of Internal Affairs of the Dagestan ASSR
Borshchev T. M. - Minister of Internal Affairs of the Turkmen SSR
Grigoryan. Kh. I - Minister of Internal Affairs of the Armenian SSR
Atakishiyev S.I. - 1st Deputy Minister of State Security of the Azerbaijan SSR
Emelyanov S. F. - Minister of Internal Affairs of the Azerbaijan SSR on the "case of Rukhadze":

Rukhadze N.M. - Minister of State Security of the Georgian SSR
Rapava. A. N. — Minister of State Control of the Georgian SSR
Tsereteli Sh. O. - Minister of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR
Savitsky K.S. - Assistant to the First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR
Krimyan N. A. - Minister of State Security of the Armenian SSR
Khazan A. S. —
Paramonov G.I. - Deputy Head of the Investigative Unit for Particularly Important Cases of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR
Nadaraya S.N. - head of the 1st department of the 9th department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and others.

In addition, at least 50 generals were stripped of their ranks and / or awards and dismissed from the bodies with the wording “who discredited himself during his work in the bodies ... and therefore unworthy of the high rank of general.”
“The State Scientific Publishing House“ The Great Soviet Encyclopedia ”recommends that pages 21, 22, 23 and 24 be removed from Volume 5 of the TSB, as well as a portrait pasted between pages 22 and 23, in exchange for which pages with new text will be sent to you.” The new page 21 contained photographs of the Bering Sea.
“Beria is accused of having seduced about 200 women, but you read their testimonies about their relationship with the people's commissar, and it is clear that some frankly used their acquaintance with him to great benefit for themselves.
A. T. Ukolov »
“I have already shown the court what I plead guilty to. For a long time I hid my service in the Musavatist counter-revolutionary intelligence service. However, I declare that, even while serving there, I did nothing harmful. I fully acknowledge my moral decay. Numerous connections with women, which have been mentioned here, are a disgrace to me as a citizen and a former member of the party.
... Recognizing that I am responsible for the excesses and perversions of socialist legality in 1937-1938, I ask the court to take into account that I did not have selfish and hostile goals. The reason for my crimes is the situation of that time.
... I do not consider myself guilty of trying to disorganize the defense of the Caucasus during the Great Patriotic War.
When sentencing me, I ask you to carefully analyze my actions, not to consider me as a counter-revolutionary, but to apply to me only those articles of the Criminal Code that I really deserve.
From the last word of Beria at the trial "

In 1952, the fifth volume of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia was published, in which a portrait of L.P. Beria and an article about him were placed. In 1954, the editorial staff of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia sent out a letter to its subscribers (libraries), in which it was strongly recommended to cut out both the portrait and the pages dedicated to L.P. Beria with “scissors or a razor”, and paste others instead (sent in the same letter) , containing other articles starting with the same letters. As a result of the arrest of Beria, one of his closest associates, the 1st Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Azerbaijan SSR, Mir Jafar Bagirov, was arrested and executed. In the press and literature of the times of the “thaw”, the image of Beria was demonized, he was blamed for the repressions of 1937-38, and for the repressions of the post-war period, to which he had no direct relation.

By the definition of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of May 29, 2002, Beria, as the organizer of political repressions, was recognized as not subject to rehabilitation:

... Based on the foregoing, the Military Collegium comes to the conclusion that Beria, Merkulov, Kobulov and Goglidze were those leaders who organized at the state level and personally carried out mass repressions against their own people. That is why the Law “On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions” cannot apply to them as perpetrators of terror.

... Guided by Art. 8, 9, 10 of the Law of the Russian Federation "On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression" of October 18, 1991 and Art. 377-381 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation determined:
"To recognize Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich, Merkulov Vsevolod Nikolaevich, Kobulov Bogdan Zakharyevich, Goglidze Sergey Arsenyevich not subject to rehabilitation."

Family

Wife - Nina (Nino) Teimurazovna Gegechkori (1905-1991) - in 1990, at the age of 86, gave an interview where she fully justifies her husband's activities.

Son - Sergo Lavrentievich Beria (1924-2000) - advocated the moral (without claiming to be complete) rehabilitation of his father.

After the conviction of Beria, his close relatives and close relatives of the convicts were deported with him to the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Sverdlovsk Region and Kazakhstan.

Interesting Facts

In his youth, Beria was fond of football. He played for one of the Georgian teams as a left midfielder. Subsequently, he attended almost all matches of Dynamo teams, especially Dynamo Tbilisi, whose defeats he painfully perceived ..

Presumably, with his intervention, the semi-final match for the USSR Cup in 1939 between Spartak and Dynamo (Tbilisi) was replayed, when the final had already been played.

In 1936, Beria, during an interrogation in his office, shot the secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia, A. G. Khandzhyan.

Beria studied to be an architect. There is evidence that two buildings of the same type on Gagarin Square in Moscow were built according to his project.

The "Beria Orchestra" was the name given to his bodyguards, who, when traveling in open cars, hid machine guns in violin cases, and a light machine gun in a double bass case.

Awards

By the verdict of the court, he was deprived of all awards.

Hero of Socialist Labor No. 80 September 30, 1943
5 orders of Lenin
No. 1236 March 17, 1935 - for outstanding achievements over a number of years in the field of agriculture, as well as in the field of industry
No. 14839 September 30, 1943 - for special merits in the field of strengthening the production of weapons and ammunition in difficult wartime conditions
No. 27006 February 21, 1945
No. 94311 March 29, 1949 - in connection with the fiftieth anniversary of his birth and for his outstanding services to the Communist Party and the Soviet people
No. 118679 October 29, 1949
2 Orders of the Red Banner
No. 7034 April 3, 1924
No. 11517 November 3, 1944
Order of Suvorov, 1st class March 8, 1944 - for the deportation of Chechens
7 medals
Jubilee medal "XX years of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army"
Order of the Red Banner of the Georgian SSR July 3, 1923
Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Georgian SSR April 10, 1931
Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Azerbaijan SSR March 14, 1932
Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Armenian SSR
Order of the Republic (Tuva) August 18, 1943
Order of Sukhbaatar No. 31 March 29, 1949
Order of the Red Banner (Mongolia) No. 441 July 15, 1942
Medal "25 Years of the Mongolian People's Revolution" No. 3125 September 19, 1946
Stalin Prize, 1st class (29 October 1949 and 1951)
Breastplate "Honorary Worker of the Cheka-OGPU (V)" No. 100
Badge "Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU (XV)" No. 205 December 20, 1932
Named weapon - pistol "Browning"
Monogram watch

Proceedings

L. P. Beria. On the issue of the history of Bolshevik organizations in Transcaucasia. — 1935.
Under the great banner of Lenin-Stalin: Articles and speeches. Tbilisi, 1939;
Speech at the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on March 12, 1939. - Kyiv: State Political Publishing House of the Ukrainian SSR, 1939;
Report on the work of the Central Committee of the CP(b) of Georgia at the XI Congress of the CP(b) of Georgia on June 16, 1938 - Sukhumi: Abgiz, 1939;
The greatest man of our time [I. V. Stalin]. - Kyiv: State Political Publishing House of the Ukrainian SSR, 1940;
Lado Ketskhoveli. (1876-1903) / (Life of the remarkable Bolsheviks). Translation by N. Erubaev. - Alma-Ata: Kazgospolitizdat, 1938;
About youth. - Tbilisi: Detunizdat of the Georgian SSR, 1940;

Objects bearing the name of L.P. Beria

In honor of Beria were named:

Berievsky district - now Novolaksky district, Dagestan, in the period from February to May 1944.
Beriyaaul - Novolakskoye village, Dagestan
Beriyashen - Sharukkar, Azerbaijan
Beriyakend - the former name of the village of Khanlarkend, Saatli region, Azerbaijan
The name of Beria is the former name of the village of Zhdanov in the Armavir marz, Armenia

In addition, villages in Kalmykia and the Magadan region were named after him.

The current Cooperative Street in Kharkov, Freedom Square in Tbilisi, Victory Avenue in Ozersk, Apsheronskaya Square in Vladikavkaz (Dzaudzhikau), Tsimlyanskaya Street in Khabarovsk, Gagarin Street in Sarov, Pervomaiskaya Street in Seversk were previously named after L.P. Beria.

Dinamo Stadium in Tbilisi was named after Beria.

One of the bloodiest leaders of the country of the Soviets, the most important Chekist of the USSR, the man who led the repressive measures, the deportation of nationalities, organized the work on the creation of atomic weapons in the USSR, the future Marshal Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich was born in the town of Merkheuli near Sukhumi in March 1899. It happened on the 29th. Despite the fact that his mother was a descendant of an ancient family of princes, the family lived in poverty. The parents had three children, but the eldest boy died, the girl was disabled, and only little Lavrenty grew up as a healthy and inquisitive child. At the age of 16, he graduated with honors from the Sukhumi School. Soon the family moved to Baku, where Beria graduated from the Mechanical Construction School at the age of 20. It is interesting that Beria wrote with errors throughout his life.

In the capital of the future Azerbaijan SSR, Beria became interested in the ideas of communism and joined the Bolshevik Party. It was here that he became an assistant in charge of the underground. Beria was arrested twice for his activities. He spent two months in the dungeons, and after leaving there in 1922, he married Nino Gegechkori, who was the niece of his cellmate. After 2 years, their son Sergo was born.

At the dawn of the 20s, Beria met with, who highly appreciated him. Already in 1931, Beria was appointed the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Georgian SSR, and 4 years later, the chairman of the city party committee of the city of Tbilisi. During his time in power, Georgia turned into one of the most prosperous republics of the USSR. Beria actively developed oil production, contributed to the development of industry, and increased the level of well-being of the inhabitants of the republic.

In 1935, Beria published a book entitled "On the Question of the History of Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia." In this work, he did his best to exaggerate the role of Stalin in the revolutionary events. A copy of the book personally for Stalin, he signed "To my beloved master, great comrade Stalin!".

This sign has not gone unnoticed. In addition, Lavrenty Pavlovich actively led the terror in the Transcaucasus. In the summer of 1938, Beria was appointed First Deputy People's Commissar for State Security. And in November, Beria became the head of the NKVD instead of the one who was shot. In the homeland of Beria, a bronze statue of him was erected. First, Lavrenty Pavlovich released several hundred thousand people from the camps, recognizing them as falsely accused. But this was a temporary phenomenon and soon the repressions continued. There is information that Beria liked to personally be present at the torture, from the sight of which he enjoyed. Beria led the deportation of peoples from the Caucasus, the "cleansing" in the Baltic republics, was involved in the murder of Trotsky and recommended the execution of captured Poles, which happened in the Katyn forest.

In 1941, Beria took the post of General Commissar of State Security. With the outbreak of war, he was included in the State Defense Committee. Like it or not, Beria had the talent of an organizer. During the war years, he oversaw the military-industrial complex, the production of military equipment, the functioning of the railway. transport. The coordination of intelligence and counterintelligence along the lines of the NKVD and the State Security Commissariat was concentrated in the hands of Beria. In 1943 he received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. 2 months after the Victory, Beria became Marshal of the USSR.

Since 1944, Beria oversaw the activities of Soviet scientists in the development of atomic weapons. In 1945, he became the head of the special committee for the creation of the atomic bomb. The fruit of his (however, not only his) work was the testing in 1949 of the first atomic bomb of the USSR, and after 4 years - the hydrogen bomb.

By 1946, Beria had reached the peak of his power. He was considered perhaps the most influential leader in the country. By the end of the Stalin era, Beria was the chairman of the Council of Ministers and the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR. This state of affairs did not suit all contenders for power in the country, and shortly after Stalin's death, on June 26, 1953, right during the meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Council, the military under the leadership arrested Beria. He was accused of espionage and anti-Soviet activities, and also expelled from the Communist Party. On December 23, 1953, Beria was sentenced to death - and on the same day the sentence was carried out.

Stalin died on March 5, 1953. Not only was another page turned in the history of our country, but an entire era ended. And not only for the USSR, but, perhaps, for all mankind.
At a joint meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the CPSU, Georgy Malenkov was appointed Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. In the list of his first deputies, Beria was mentioned "the very first".
Four people became First Deputy Chairmen of the Council of Ministers. In the resolution, they were named not in alphabetical order, but in the following order: Lavrenty Beria, Vyacheslav Molotov, Nikolai Bulganin, Lazar Kaganovich. About Nikita Khrushchev in the resolution it was said evasively that he, they say, concentrated on work in the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
So, in the list of "first deputies" Beria was named first. This, according to Soviet tradition, meant that he was the second person in the state. Moreover, it was decided to unite the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR and the Ministry of State Security of the USSR into a single Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR. Lavrenty Beria was appointed minister. Having united in his hands two power departments, he concentrated in his hands the power, almost exceeding the power of Malenkov himself (by the way, unlike all four of his first deputies, who has no experience of independent state work).
The author is not going to enter into a debate that has been going on for decades about the personality of Lavrenty Beria, to assess his moral principles (if there were any, of course), to delve into the motives of his actions and decisions. This occupation, from my point of view, is absolutely meaningless, since the mass consciousness on this matter is based on long-term myths. And it is impossible to dispute the myths.

According to an established myth, Lavrenty Beria is the worst villain ever to live on one-sixth of the land that was once called the USSR. But is it? And is it really that the nondescript Shvernik and Andreev, Malenkov or the imposing alcoholic Bulganin are lubok saints compared to him? It can be repeated as often as you like that the unusual, extraordinary measures taken by Beria after Stalin's death were, as they would say today, populist in nature. But why was it he who made them, and not the same Malenkov, who, as the head of government, had much more opportunities for that? Whether anyone likes it or not, one has to admit that Beria in the spring of 1953 was several decades ahead of his time.
Already on April 4, a TASS report was published in the newspapers, from which the shocked country learned that the “killer doctors” were arrested without any reason, that the investigation into their case was conducted in gross violation of Soviet laws, using “forbidden methods” , but simply - torture and beatings. All those arrested in the case of "murderers in white coats" were immediately released with an apology and reinstated at work and in the party, if they were members of the CPSU (b). Such a public confession was made for the first time in the entire history of Soviet power and was, in fact, the first case of the political rehabilitation of innocently repressed people. On the same day, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the abolition of the previous Decree on awarding Lydia Timashuk with the Order of Lenin was published. The ill-fated Soviet Joan of Arc did not have time to really understand at first why she was awarded the highest award of the Motherland, and then why she was taken away.
At the June 1953 Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, it turned out that everyone in the top leadership, including Nikita Khrushchev, knew that the "doctor's business" was a fake. Nevertheless, Lavrenty Beria was blamed for making this shame public. Say, the doctors should have just been released on the sly.
On April 28, 1953, at the suggestion of Beria, the former Minister of State Security Ignatiev was removed from the Central Committee of the CPSU for the "cause of doctors". Later, at the suggestion of Khrushchev, he was reinstated as a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU, and later he successfully worked as the first secretary of the Tatar and Bashkir regional committees of the CPSU.
Further, Beria dealt with the circumstances of the death, or rather, the destruction of Mikhoels. He personally interrogated the former Minister of the Ministry of State Security of the USSR Abakumov, his first deputy Ogoltsov, as well as the former Minister of State Security of Belarus Tsanava, at whose dacha on the then outskirts of Minsk Mikhoels and his companion were killed. Abakumov firmly stated that he had received the order to eliminate Mikhoels orally from Stalin personally, and that no one in the MGB except him and the direct executors of the operation knew about this.
Beria sent a letter to Malenkov, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, demanding that the participants in the double murder be deprived of government awards and brought to justice. This act cannot be called populist in any way, since the letter was secret and was not published until many decades later. In the same way, Beria's order categorically forbidding the use of measures of physical coercion against those arrested cannot be considered populist. The order, like the letter to Malenkov, was also secret.
One of the points of this order is noteworthy: "To liquidate in Lefortovo and internal prisons the premises organized by the leadership of the former (former) Ministry of State Security of the USSR for the use of physical measures of influence on those arrested, and to destroy all the instruments through which torture was carried out."
This is the only official recognition of the existence of torture chambers and instruments of torture in prisons. The order to equip special rooms for torture has not yet been found.
As for the murderers of Mikhoels, their orders were taken away from them, but no one went to trial. The arrest of Beria saved the "magnificent six".
Later, however, Tsanava was arrested, but ... as an accomplice of Beria! In 1955, he died in prison before reaching trial. Ogoltsov was arrested in April 1953 in connection with his participation in the murder of Mikhoels, but was released in August. In 19564 he was fired from the state security agencies, expelled from the party, and in 1959 he was stripped of his military rank.
At the suggestion of Beria, Alexander Novikov, Alexei Shakhurin and others repressed in the "aviators' case" were released from prison, rehabilitated and reinstated in their ranks. By that time, the investigation had been underway for 15 months, but none of those arrested pleaded guilty. By Beria's secret order of April 17, 1953, the investigation against them was terminated, the accused were released from custody and restored to all rights.

Yes, Beria was a cruel pragmatist and a cynic, equally capable of both the most noble and the most inhuman act to achieve his goals. Such were the manners in his environment. In this respect, he was no better, but no worse than other leaders in the Stalinist environment. But he was smarter than them, more far-sighted. This is what killed him, in the end. There is a saying: "They hit the head of the nail that sticks out." That's where they hit him. Not at all because Beria was preparing some kind of conspiracy to seize power - this is a myth. Beria was well aware that the second Georgian would not be the main leader in the USSR, but he had enough real power, as the first of the "first deputies", besides the minister. No, all of them, and Malenkov, and Molotov, and Voroshilov, and even the future whistleblower of Stalin, Khrushchev, were afraid for their own skin. Having dumped Beria, it was possible to write off his own sins on him, and considerable ones. Yes, of course, none of them headed the political police during Stalin's lifetime, no matter what it was called, but in the hands of each leader there is no less blood than Beria. And as for specific merits to the state, there could be no question of comparison. After all, it was Beria who headed the Soviet “atomic project”, ensured the creation of an “atomic shield” in the shortest possible time, which, by the way, was never denied by the outstanding scientists who worked on this problem in those years.
Yes, both intelligence and counterintelligence, when they were led by Beria, were by no means only engaged in identifying the distributors of anti-Soviet jokes.
It seems to the author that the very next day after Stalin's death, his heirs realized that a change in political course, the elimination in some, preferably the mildest form, of the cult of his personality is inevitable, and therefore, sooner or later, the problem of pre-war and post-war repressions will come up. And someone will have to answer for them. And the one who first pronounces this inevitable “a” will become the first person. Not the same, of course, as the deceased leader was, but still the first.
And then the obviously frightened heirs had the conviction that Beria would certainly desire to become this first of the first. Because he (which corresponded to reality) had much more chances for this than the same Malenkov, Bulganin, Khrushchev Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich ... After all, Beria had a reputation as a man who stopped the "Yezhovshchina", freed a good third of a million innocent people before the war repressed. Whereas, for example, Molotov and Kalinin did not dare to stand up for their own wives, Kaganovich - for his own brother ...
There is no need to seriously talk about the military coup allegedly planned by Beria. Directly in Moscow, only the division of internal troops named after Dzerzhinsky and the Kremlin regiment were subordinate to him. Meanwhile, the famous Tamanskaya and Kantemirovskaya divisions were deployed within the city, in the capital there were two dozen military academies and schools, which, by order of the Minister of Defense, would not cost anything to block the same division named after Dzerzhinsky.
But at the disposal of the Minister of the Interior was a much more terrible weapon: secret and top-secret archives, lists of those sentenced to repression of the “first category” with resolutions not only of Stalin, but also of Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev and others. This was enough for Stalin's heirs to take up arms against one of their own and simply betray him in order to save their posts and reputation. Beria was doomed not from the moment when, as Khrushchev claimed, the leadership became aware of "the conspiratorial plans of the enemy of the people and the English spy Beria", but from that March day, when they appointed him one of the first deputy chairmen of the Council of Ministers and Minister of the Interior THE USSR. There was indeed a conspiracy. But it was headed by Khrushchev and Malenkov, not Beria.

The energetic measures taken by Beria to restore order in the country only accelerated the maturation of the Khrushchev-Malenkov conspiracy.
Beria initiated the famous amnesty, when out of 2,256,402 prisoners held in camps and prisons, 1,203,421 people were to be released. Subsequently, to dampen the impression of this unprecedented step, the authorities spread rumors that Beria had maliciously released thousands of murderers, robbers and rapists. That was a lie. You can be convinced of this by visiting any library in order to read the same Decree on Amnesty with your own eyes.
In fact, under the amnesty, persons who received a term of up to five years, convicted of economic and official crimes, pregnant women and women with children under ten years of age, were subject to release. Of course, there was a temporary surge in criminal offenses, but it was quickly extinguished by law enforcement agencies. At the same time, Beria proposed to transfer the camps from the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Ministry of Justice. This measure was implemented in Russia only after forty-five years! Beria also proposed to transfer all construction sites, enterprises, "sharashki" of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the jurisdiction of the relevant industrial departments.
Subsequently, Beria will be charged with calling to Moscow several dozens (sometimes they say hundreds) of Soviet intelligence residents and advisers to state security agencies in the countries, as they were then called, “people's democracy”, thereby disorganizing the activities of the Kremlin intelligence service. In fact, Beria took measures to eliminate the shortcomings of foreign intelligence and strengthen its personnel, primarily the leadership. Most of the Soviet apparatus in the camps of "people's democracy", Beria considered completely unsuitable for the proper performance of the functions assigned to him. At least for the simple reason that almost no adviser knew the language, history, culture, traditions, or mentality of the people of the country in which he worked. Many of them, moreover, behaved in a completely unceremonious manner towards local workers, not so much "advising" as frankly, disregarding the vanity of even the ministers and secretaries of the Central Committee of the Communist Parties, they commanded.
At the June 1953 Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which took place immediately after the arrest of Beria and - in violation of the Party Charter - in his absence, the former Minister of Internal Affairs was accused of betraying the cause of socialism for having reduced the number of the Chekist apparatus in the GDR by seven times, which contributed, they say, to the emergence of July 17, 1953 riots.
In fact, the mass protests of the working people of the GDR, suppressed only by the intervention of the Soviet occupation troops, occurred due to the clumsy policy of the leadership of the republic, which set as its goal the accelerated construction of socialism in East Germany. This policy enjoyed the full support of the USSR both under Stalin and under Malenkov. It was for this reason, and not because of the reduction of the Chekist apparatus, that hundreds of thousands of residents of the GDR and East Berlin annually abandoned their homes and property and fled to the West.
Knowing how to be sane and better than his colleagues in the Politburo (Presidium) of the Central Committee of the CPSU, informed about real life in the Soviet Union and abroad, Beria considered the artificial planting of socialism in East Germany and, in general, the very theory of two German states to be a pointless undertaking. He believed that the best guarantee of maintaining a reliable peace in Europe was not the confrontation between the GDR and the FRG, but the existence of a single democratic, demilitarized, albeit capitalist, German state.
As we know, the unification of Germany did not happen at that time, moreover, through the fault of both the USSR and the Western powers. The wick to the powder keg in the form of two German states and two Berlins smoldered in the center of Europe for almost forty more years.
Beria then expressed another heretical idea, which Khrushchev, who had toppled him, put into practice three years later, allegedly as his own initiative: he considered it necessary to restore normal relations with Yugoslavia.

But the envoy of Beria to Tito did not manage to reach any Belgrade. June 26, 1953 Lavrenty Beria was arrested. This was followed by arrests or dismissals from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of many generals and senior officers, both in the central office and in the field.
On December 16-23, 1953, in Moscow, under the chairmanship of Marshal Ivan Konev, a Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR was formed to consider the case of Lavrenty Beria, Bogdan Kobulov, Vsevolod Merkulov, Vladimir Dekanozov, Pavel Meshik, Lev Vlodzimirsky and Sergei Goglidze.
Among the crimes imputed to the defendants were treason and espionage for the benefit of the intelligence agencies of the imperialist powers. These accusations could only cause bewilderment among the veterans of intelligence and counterintelligence, who are well aware of what espionage is...
However, the defendants were found guilty of numerous crimes and sentenced to capital punishment.
"Act
December 23, 1953.
On this date at 19:50, on the basis of the order of the chairman of the special judicial presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR dated December 23, 1953, No. 003 by me, the commandant of the special judicial presence, Colonel-General Batitsky P.F., in the presence of the Prosecutor General of the USSR, the current State Counselor of Justice Rudenko R. A. and General of the Army Moskalenko K. S. The sentence of a special judicial presence was carried out in relation to the sentenced to capital punishment - the execution of Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich.
The act is sealed by the signatures of the named three persons.
Another act:
“On December 23, 1953, the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR Comrade. Lunev, Deputy General Military Prosecutor comrade. Kitaev in the presence of Colonel General Comrade. Hetman, Lieutenant-General Bakeev and Major-General Sopilnik were executed on December 23, 1953, by a special judicial presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR on the following convicts:
Kobulov Bogdan Zakharyevich, born in 1904
Merkulov Vsevolod Nikolaevich, born in 1895
Dekanozov Vladimir Georgievich, born in 1898
Meshik Pavel Yakovlevich, born in 1910
Vlodzimirsky Lev Emelyanovich, born in 1902
Goglizde Sergey Arsentievich, born in 1901 —
To the highest measure of punishment - execution.
On December 23, 1953, the aforementioned convicts were shot.” Death was confirmed by a doctor (signature).
The FSB archives contain tens of thousands of certificates from special departments on the execution of death sentences. None of them mention the artist's name. They were secret persons, in the states of the NKVD they could be listed as anyone: drivers, prison guards, security guards.
These two acts are the only exceptions. Executors of death sentences are named both by their last name and by their position.
On September 1, 1953, the Special Meeting under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR was abolished by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Finally, this body of extrajudicial execution, shameful for a country that considers itself a civilized state, has been liquidated.
Soon, the country's top leadership came to the conclusion that it was impossible to entrust the leadership of both state security and internal affairs agencies into one hand. According to the author, this decision was dictated not so much by the interests of the cause as by fear. The usual fear that, if you get there, God forbid, such a two-headed monster is at the disposal of some new Yezhov with the ambitions of the head of the country, many in power cannot bear their heads.

1. Name Beria (Beg e a) (translated from the Hebrew “son of misfortune”), has biblical roots: that was the name of several characters of the Old Testament and that was the name of one of the Syrian cities.

3. Many Soviet Jews blame L.P. Beria for all the Jewish sorrows of the Stalinist era: the Great Terror of 1937-38, the incitement of state anti-Semitism, the painful campaign against the "rootless cosmopolitans", the murder of S. Mikhoels, the massacre of members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and, of course, the case of "killer doctors" and preparations for the deportation of Jews.

Everything related to the Old Testament is hidden from us by the distance of time and I am not ready to draw any analogies and talk about biblical prophecies.

We will try to briefly cover the rest of the issues, illustrating, where possible, with examples of the intersection of L. Beria with Jewish contemporaries, trying to see the whole behind the details, but by no means justify it, whitewash it, wash it off from blood. My personal attitude to the issue is determined, in particular, the fact that for ten years I had a chance to work closely with the son of L.P. Beria, Sergei (Sergo) Alekseevich Gegechkori (1924 - 2000). Much was revealed to me in our numerous and, as it seemed to me, confidential conversations, both at the time when his publications and interviews about his father were still impossible, and later. The monologues of Sergei Alekseevich, to some extent, were colored by the natural desire of the son, at least in part, to “brighten” the image of the father.

L.P. Beria

The question of the attitude of the LP (hereinafter I will call the father, and the son - SA) to the Jews is actively discussed by both Jewish authors and Russian national patriots. self-rehabilitation for all the crimes of Stalinism.

There is no consensus among Jews. Some, like L. Radzikhovsky, in his short but resonant article “Judophiles and Judeophobes” (“Jewish Word”, No. 20 (193), 2004), they see him as a Judophile. Moreover, he put LP on a par with Vl. Solovyov, V.G. Korolenko, A.M. Gorky, A.D. Sakharov, G.E. Rasputin, M.S. Gorbachev and others.

Others, like the Israeli L. Katsin (“Jewish World”, 03/09/2006), indiscriminately blame him for everything, including the murder of S. Mikhoels, and identify his role in the “doctors' case” with the deeds of the biblical king Ahasuerus, who first authorized the extermination of the Jews, and then saved them.

In the eyes of the Russian national patriots, the LP is, firstly, the murderer of Stalin, and secondly, if not a Jew, then their undoubted servant, who helped purposefully destroy all the best in the Russian people.

But the LP personality is multidimensional, and cannot be reduced to any flat schemes. It is "woven" from alternative qualities, among which, in particular, nobility coexists with sophisticated intrigue, etc. As for the Jews, it seems to me personally that he was neither a Judeophobe nor a Judophile, but was a man of a specific cause. He was a born pragmatist - a perfectionist, a person charged to achieve maximum results. He aspired to this and achieved this in any task entrusted to him, abstracting from the moral conflicts accompanying the task, even if it was not only ungodly, but simply criminal and inhuman.

And he considered each person mainly through the prism of suitability in a particular case, psychological compatibility, reliability, and the ability to abstract from these same conflicts. And if a person demonstrated these qualities, he arranged the LP, regardless of nationality.

As the SA repeatedly emphasized, on a personal level, LP was not nationally blind. And indeed, in his immediate environment, where there were people of different nationalities, Jews were indispensable. This applies to all areas of the LP's activity: both to its work in the Caucasus, and in state security, and, in particular, in intelligence and the Atomic project. Even such an antipode of the LP as A. Antonov-Ovseenko does not accuse the LP of anti-Semite phobia: “ When appointing governors, the new people's commissar often gave preference to fellow countrymen, but, in essence, he was a kind of internationalist in the basest sense of the word, an omnivorous politician, ready to utilize the necessary people of any nationality for himself. Despite the fact that the above quote is permeated with hatred for LP, this facet of his psychological portrait corresponds to reality.

Equally, if the task was to eliminate a person, then there is no need to talk about Judophilia. The role of the LP in the murder of L.D. Trotsky is known. By his personal order in 1941 Jews, heroes of Spain and Khalkhin Gol, were shot without trial: twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Lieutenant General of Aviation Ya. Smushkevich and Hero of the Soviet Union, Colonel General G. Stern. In the same year, the defector V. Krivitsky, also a Jew, was liquidated in the United States. Atwhile when the LP was in Moscow, Jews were repressed: journalist M. Koltsov (arrested on 12/14/1938), writer I. Babel (arrested on 05/15/1939) and others. Of course, all this was done with the knowledge or on behalf of Stalin.

In general, according to the stories of the SA, the LP was sure that the Jews were useful to the country. That the country needed intellectual strength, the carriers of which in the mass are Jews, in the energy inherent in many of them, a creative approach to business, a sober calculation combined with reasonable risk, and a willingness to take responsibility. That it is impossible to overestimate the subtle mutual influence that manifests itself in the interaction of Jews with representatives of other cultures. But he disapproved of Jewish aspirations to enter politics and their claims to leadership positions, believing that this leads to the incitement of anti-Semitism. It seems to me that in such a position there is already something that can be perceived as a certain anti-Semitic charge. After all, the cornerstone is only nationality. Or maybe it's a tribute to the conjuncture? Knowing about the political opportunism inherent in the Jewish environment, which he himself, according to the SA, justified by centuries of persecution, the LP did not consider it possible to openly rely on them.

In summary, let's say that the LP respected the Jews, valued them and knew how to use them in the interests of the cause. Perhaps this attitude stemmed from the fact that he was, as the English say, "a man who made himself." Having not received a serious formal education, which he regretted all his life, he nevertheless understood the importance of science, knowledge, a truly creative approach and appreciated them. And in the Jewish environment, these components have always been well represented. Or maybe he spontaneously, inwardly felt what is today called the Pareto Law? According to one interpretation of this law, in any business, 20% of the people do 80% of the work. And in these 20% of Jews there are always a disproportionate number of what, in real life, the fact is confirmed that the true elite in any field are not those who are on top, but those who are wealthy.

And the last. As a top manager, LP was distinguished by his ability to find the best performer for each problem. And always and in everything, he sought to put his subordinates in conditions of intense competition. And, for its maximum sharpness, next to the Jew, usually, there was an anti-Semite. Thus, the maximum sharpness of competition was guaranteed. Moreover, if the case required, the LP often went into conflict with ideology. And the people whom he trusted and considered useful for the cause, he defended as best he could.

And now let's try to fill the outlined general assessment with concrete content.

Start over

About the origin. Forged inthe mountain village of Merkheuli inAbkhazian and by nationality was a Mingrelian. Father - a poor peasant Pavle Beria. Mother, Martha Jakeli (1882-1955), seemed to be a distant relative of the Dadiani princes. According to Avtorkhanov, when Stalin was seized by a painful passion for searching for Jewish connections among members of the Politburo, it turned out that Beria's mother, Marta Ivanovna, was a Mountain Jew. However, no evidence of this, or links to the source, is given. And her middle name does not lend credibility to the Stalinist verdict. Interestingly, of the 11 members of the Politburo, in one way or another, "smeared", in this sense, all turned out to be, except for the colorless Bulganin. Note that if Iosif Vissarionovich admitted the idea of ​​the applicability of general assessments to him, then in this sense he was also not without sin: his daughter-in-law, son-in-law and grandchildren were with the Jews.

Finishing his studies at the Sukhum real school, in his mountain village, young Lavrenty hardly saw at least one living Jew.

But I could hear about them. E. Allmendinger, a resident of the neighboring German settlement of Lindau, drew attention to a capable boy. An educated woman became his mentor, and, having revealed to him many secrets of world history and culture, she laid a healthy ideological basis in the boy. At the same time, it was impossible to bypass the question of the role of the Jews in history in general and the history of religion.

L.P. Beria

The first practical experience of business communication with Jews was acquired by LP during the period of the Chekist work in Baku. He obtained funds to finance the intelligence service and the Soviet administration by selling two tankers of oil with the help of a young Jew. The mediator received a commission and the opportunity to emigrate.

During the period of work in Georgia, there were not so many Jews surrounded by the LP. But friendly relations between his family and the married couple I.F. Stansky (Parukhov) - R.M. Veksler are known. This family also belonged to the party elite of Georgia, despite the fact that the spouse came from a bourgeois family of Odessa Jews.

It was at the turn of the 20s - 30s that an international team was formed, which, together with the LP, went through all the steps of his career ladder, first up, and then down, until the execution. It includes Russians V. Merkulov, V. Dekanozov, Armenian B. Kobulov, Georgian S. Goglidze , Jew S. Milshtein.

Now on the issue of Jewish sorrows. As indicated above, I am by no means going to justify, whitewash the LP, launder it from the blood, but the organizations of the "Great Terror" of 1937. on an allied scale, he did not and could not have relations by official position. Or rather, he had an attitude, fulfilling Moscow's directives on a scale of Georgia, which, in general, is also quite a lot.

Order of secret affairs

He was transferred to Moscow in the summer of 1938, and was appointed People's Commissar of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in December of the same year, when the repressions had already begun to decline. Moreover, with his arrival, some of the prisoners, in particular, many military men, were released and rehabilitated. After his arrival at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the repressions were significantly reduced, but did not stop. In the period 1939-1945, the LP was involved in many massacres, expulsions and deportations, but they were not of a anti-Semite nature. This, of course, does not diminish their criminal, bestial character. The Jews were repressed, so to speak, on a general basis, without singling them out in one direction or the other. In the aforementioned execution of J. Smushkevich and G. Stern, 18 other people of other nationalities were also shot without trial. And along with the Jews Babel and Koltsov, the German V. Meyerhold was repressed (arrested on 06/15/1939).

On the other hand, who can say how many scientists and engineers, Jews and non-Jews, were saved from death in the “sharashkas” organized on the initiative of the Liberal Party?

I can be pointed out that during the “post-Yezhov” purge of the apparatus of the Ministry of Internal Affairs carried out by the LP, the number of Jews decreased from 21% to 5%. Half were repressed, and the other half were fired during the purge. It seems to me that the point here is not the anti-Semitism of the LP. For the most part, they were nominees from the time of the Civil War. With the uncompromisingness, unrestraint and cruelty inherent in this generation of Chekists. In addition, they openly claimed a special role in the life of the country and, apparently, in the eyes of Stalin became dangerous.It is a sin to say so, but they did so much lawlessness that their death was, obviously, a well-deserved result of their activities.

At the same time, after this purge, a number of Jews remained in the NKVD, who occupied a fairly high position. These people, in turn, were mainly arrested or removed during the promotion of the “Zionist conspiracy” in the state security system, and later repressed again, already as “ henchmen of Beria.

In 2000-2001 in the press there was an accusation of LP in authorship"racial instructions" of 1939 (No. 00134/13, 0019/13). In the first of them, dedicated to the selection of personnel in the NKVD, in particular, it is declared: “... it is important to cut off, mainly, persons who have Jewish blood. Up to the fifth generation, it is necessary to be interested in the nationality of close relatives. Were there Jews? All other interracial marriages should be considered positive." Historian G. Kostyrchenko ("Lechaim", May 2002) showed that these documents are clumsily crafted fakes, rewriting of Nazi primary sources. Although even today national-patriots in Russia and Ukraine are not averse to reanimating and implementing such approaches.

Agents and residents

Even before the war, the LP had skillfully established the productive use of Jewish emigrants from Russia, the USSR and Europe in the interests of the USSR. The anti-Semitic practice of fascism contributed to the fact that the Jews of the whole world were inclined to help the USSR. At the disposal of the LP was a personal network of agents in many countries of Europe and in the USA. LP knew how to work with agents and took care of them. The data of his personal agents (and these are hundreds of names) did not go through the filing cabinets of the state security agencies. This order was established by him for strategic intelligence. He believed that "a real illegal immigrant should not be allowed through the apparatus." Therefore, many of his confidants and their role have not been disclosed so far. SA named only some of them in his books: O. Chekhov, M. Rokk, Zinovy ​​Peshkov and others.

Here is one illustration. The SA claimed that in September-October 1939, in Moscow, in Beria's house, an American named Robert lived for a month and a half. The boy was 15 years old, and no one, of course, devoted him to anything. Later, the father confirmed to the SA that the pre-war Robert and the head of the American Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer, are the same person. In 1939 R. Oppenheimer was by no means a "star" in physics. But by that time he was a member of the US Communist Party, he helped financially the Spanish Republicans. And for ideological reasons, as an anti-fascist, he came to make a bomb. SA slightly lets in around this “fog”:« True, he did not come directly from America, but through third countries: through Australia and so on. All this was arranged by my father through Joliot-Curie and Georgian emigrants.”

At that moment, the idea was not supported. Unfortunately, this story, which caused the effect of an exploding bomb in the United States, was not confirmed by anything, except for the words of the SA.

It should be noted that the Soviet residency abroad was to a large extent recruited from Jews.

Until the war itself, anti-Semitism in the country was muted, but at the end of the 1930s, the infection began to penetrate into the official structures of the USSR. This probably happened under the influence of the relevant state practice in Nazi Germany, with which the Stalinist leadership was moving closer at that time. In the course of the war, to some extent under the influence of fascist propaganda, anti-Semitism in the country "surged" and in all strata of Soviet society was in full swing.

Despite this, after the outbreak of the war, the LP set itself the goal of attracting the world Jewish community to the side of the USSR. Turn Jews into agents of influence on their governments, or idle agents of the secret services. In particular, he tried to use the Jewish lobby in the US to hasten America's entry into the war with Germany. As part of this area of ​​activity, on the initiative of the LP in April-May 1942. The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) was formed. His tasks were to pump out "money" from foreign Jews and to carry out propaganda actions among them. Indeed, the activities of the JAC during the war brought the USSR significant financial assistance and moral support. They also discussed the possibility of rendering assistance to the USSR for post-war reconstruction.

During a trip to the USA, in 1943, the leaders of the JAC, S. Mikhoels (1890-1948) and I. Fefer (1900-1952), convinced the American society that anti-Semitism in the USSR had been completely eliminated, talked about the great successes of Soviet Jews. According to P. Sudoplatov, the trip of S. Mikhoels and I. Fefer to the USA, at the same time, was used in order to set up the mechanism of the emerging "atomic espionage", for the organization of which the LP was responsible. A. Einstein (1879-1955), L. Szilard (1898-1964), R. Oppenheimer (1904-1967) were touched by the fact that, against the backdrop of rampant fascism in Europe, in the USSR, Jews were guaranteed a safe existence. And these great physicists began to cooperate with Soviet intelligence.

nuclear project

Let's move on to the next stage in the activities of the LP, connected with the creation of the Soviet atomic bomb. At first, V.M. Molotov was appointed the curator of the Atomic Project from the Government of the USSR, and the LP became his deputy, but in reality, the specific organizational and personnel management of the project, including intelligence issues, was assigned to the LP.

And the work on the bomb began with interesting "Jewish" collisions, in which the uncomplicated pragmatism of the LP was fully manifested. Immediately after the appointment of I.V. Kurchatov (1902-1960) as scientific director of the Atomic Project, he proposed to involve chemical physicist Yu.B. Khariton (1904-1996) in the work. By this time, Khariton was already known for his works on the physics of combustion and explosion, and in 1939-41, together with Zeldovich, he showed the feasibility of a chain reaction of uranium fission, and with the participation of I. Gurevich, the critical mass of uranium-235 was also estimated. Due to the approximate knowledge of nuclear constants, the value turned out to be underestimated by a factor of five, which does not detract from the fundamental nature of the results obtained.

But Khariton had a full bouquet of "contraindications": a non-partisan Jew who has close relatives (sister) abroad. His father at the beginning of the century was a prominent member of the Cadets, emigrated and after the capture of the Baltic States, irretrievably sunk in the camps. In addition, in 1926-1928. Khariton completed an internship with E. Rutherford and J. Chadwick at the Cavendish Laboratory. Everything is like in a joke: the bride is lame, but with a child. And it was about top-secret matters of extreme importance. Naturally, Kharitonane's personnel filter passed. But Kurchatov knew who he needed for the success of the case, showed perseverance and turned personally to Stalin. He emphasized that Khariton was the only scientist in the USSR who was simultaneously a specialist in nuclear physics, chemistry and physics of explosives and in the kinetics of branched chain reactions. Stalin and Beria, despite all the "contraindications", heeded Kurchatov's arguments and approved Khariton.

In turn, the first person Khariton tried to involve in his work was his friend and co-author of a key work, the theoretical physicist Ya.B. Zeldovich (1914-1987) . Non-party Zeldovich did not have a higher education, and also "limped" on the fifth point. But in this project, the result was desperately needed. So he, too, passed the filter. Khariton and Zeldovich worked together for a long time and fruitfully. In Arzamas-16, Khariton was the Chief Designer, and Zeldovich was the Chief Theorist of Nuclear Weapons.

It should be noted that Zeldovich was far from the last of the "limping" ones who were involved in the projects of atomic and hydrogen bombs. This list includes Colonel-General B.L. Vannikov, future academicians of the USSR Academy of Sciences I.K. Kikoin, L.D. .Landau, I.M.Khalatnikov, I.Ya.Pomeranchuk, E.M.Lifshits, A.B.Migdal, G.I.Budker, V.L.Ginzburg, L.V.Altshuler. And that's not all.

But the world-famous physicist P. L. Kapitsa was excommunicated from these works. In all likelihood, this is due to the fact that Kapitsa insisted on the original project, and the LP, having comprehensive data on the American bomb obtained by scouts in his pocket, did not have the right to even hint about this to Kapitsa. And as Yu.B. Khariton points out: “... given the public interest in the tense relations between the USSR and the United States at that time, as well as the responsibility of scientists for the success of the first test, any other solution would be unacceptable and simply frivolous.

It can be argued that the Soviet atomic and hydrogen bombs, "under the umbrella" of the LP, were largely created by Jews. In the defense and, in particular, in the nuclear industry, Stalin not only tolerated, but also protected talented Jews. They were guarded almost like members of the government. Even when the anti-Semitic Sabbath of 1949-1950 was gaining momentum in the country.

From August 20, 1945, the LP became the sole head of the Atomic Project: the chairman of the Special Committee under the State Defense Committee, which led the entire range of work on the atomic and then hydrogen bombs. . The main field of his activity was the creation of the nuclear missile shield of the USSR. The only exception was the leadership (supervision) of strategic intelligence. Remaining a candidate member of the Politburo, occupying a high official position, LP handed over his post in the NKVD to S.N. Kruglov. And the NKGB (People's Commissar V.N. Merkulov) was separated from the Ministry of Internal Affairs back in April 1943,

Switching to the nuclear problem, in all the atrocities and anti-Semitic actions that took place after that on the initiative of Stalin, Zhdanov and Malenkov, the LP did not take a direct, "executionary" part. He is not personally involved either in the murder of S.Mikhoels or in the massacre of members of the JAC. But after 1946 became a member of the Politburo, he, of course, bears political responsibility for everything, on an equal footing with other members of the criminal party Areopagus.

But back to the Atomic Project. B.L. Vannikov (1897-1962) became the deputy LP in the Committee, and, in general, the second person in the Atomic Project. Few Jews, even before the war he was accused of espionage, arrested, went through all the circles of hell in the dungeons of Lubyanka, and was sentenced to death. And only the beginning of the war saved him. All this did not stop the LP from making him his main assistant. Vannikov was a man of great intelligence and experience, externally and internally dynamic, witty, bringing restlessness and liveliness into every business he touched. LP highly valued him and classified him as a wise Jew. At the same time, neither during the arrest, nor during the bullying at the Lubyanka, he did not help Vannikov. The SA, however, claimed that the father delayed the execution of the sentence, which, in the end, turned out to be a salvation. Vannikov did not hide his dislike for the existing regime. In a conversation with the SA, to whom he had a paternal attitude, he said:

“Our system breeds only hypocrites. We are deprived of everything, and we have no right to ambition. Stalin spits on wealth, he is only interested in power. But do not allow yourself to admire his asceticism.”

B.L. Vannikov and A.P. Zavenyagin

A.P. Zavenyagin (1901-1956), a good organizer and metallurgist specialist, was appointed administrative director of all work on the bomb. But secretive, sullen, ambitious misanthrope. Vannikov and Zavenyagin were antipodes. It was exactly the case when one is a Jew, and the other is an ardent anti-Semite. Zavenyagin sometimes allowed himself to go against the instructions of the LP. But if Vannikov tried to turn the LP against him on this basis, he invariably advised him to continue cooperation. It was important for him to maintain a situation of rivalry and not allow the accusation that he surrounded himself with Jews.

In one of his interviews, SA noted:

“Lavrenty defended the nuclear scientists. No harm done. Neither before nor after the war of those who worked with his father. He didn't let them touch him."

As a vivid illustration of this, I will mention the story I heard from Sergo about how the LP stood up for Khariton. In the early 1950s, Stalin informed the LP that he had received materials in which Khariton was exposed as a British spy. I am quoting LP's answer and further conversation from a later SA book:

“- All the people who work on this project,” said the father, “are personally selected by me. I am ready to be responsible for the actions of each of them. Not for sympathies and antipathies to the Soviet system, but for actions. These people are working and will work honestly on the project that we have been entrusted with. ... And about Khariton, I can say the following, - reported the father. - This person is absolutely honest, absolutely devoted to the work he is working on, and I am sure he will never go to meanness.

The father expressed his opinion in writing and gave the paper to Stalin. Iosif Vissarionovich put it in a safe.

That's good, you will answer, if anything ...

I am responsible for the whole project with my head, and not just for Khariton, - answered the father.

In addition to that, in one of the interviews SA developed this idea:

“Khariton is one of the main creators of the atomic bomb. He really studied in England in the 1920s, lived there for a long time, was critical of the Soviet government and did not hide his attitude. But he was never a spy. Father said:

"What does it matter? Well, he does not like the Soviet regime - this is his own business. And he is an honest scientist, he works for us and works very well.”

If the interests of the case demanded to go into conflict with any ideological moments, Beria, without hesitation, went into such a conflict. So, at the request of Khariton, he defended L.V. Altshuler, who did not hide his sympathy for genetics and antipathy for T.D. Lysenko. On this basis, the security service decided to remove from the object under the pretext of unreliability. Here is a fragment from the memoirs of L.V. Alshuller, who was summoned to Moscow a few days later:“Alone with me in his office, the head of PGU B.L. Vannikov, having my“ criminal ”dossier on the table, inspired me:“ We are horrified. At the facility, where even the secretaries of the regional committees are not allowed, there turned out to be such a bad person as you, anti-party on questions of music, biology, etc. If we allowed everyone to say whatever they think, we would be crushed, crushed. I had the good sense to remain silent. He finished with the words: “Go, work.”

It is difficult to overestimate the role of Soviet intelligence and the participation of Soviet and foreign Jews in it in the success of the Atomic Project. As Sudoplatov points out, during the war, 90% of the agents from whom important information was obtained were Jews. But nuclear espionage is a topic for a separate discussion. Here I will limit myself to just a few names. These are foreigners R. Oppenheimer, A. Einstein, L. Szilard, N. Bor, B. Pontecorvo, the Rosenberg spouses. As well as Soviet residents and illegal immigrants, A. Adams, L. Vasilevsky, E. Zarubina, S. Semyonov, N. Silvermaster, G. Kheifets, Heroes of Russia Zh. Koval, Ya. Chernyak, Hero of the Soviet Union S. Kremer. Note that in the traditional sense, Oppenheimer, Szilard and Bohr were not Soviet agents, but they provided undeniable help. Later, Oppenheimer contributed to the fact that several people needed by Soviet intelligence were taken to work on the Manhattan Project. Including the German emigrant K. Fuchs. And according to A.D. Sakharov, the information transmitted by Fuchs actually contained all the American atomic secrets that could be transmitted in writing.

Of course, among foreigners, and among Soviet residents and illegal immigrants, there were people of other nationalities: Italian E. Fermi, German K. Fuchs, Polish American Hero of Russia L. Cohen, Russians V. Zarubin, N. Zabotin, M. Konenkova, P .Melkishev, L. Kvasnikov, Heroes of Russia A. Feklisov, A. Yatskov and others.

And he organized this colossal and extremely successful enterprise, which did not know failures and betrayals - LP.

After successful tests of atomic weapons, the labor of the glorious galaxy of Jews was rewarded.For work on bombs, Vannikov, Khariton and Zeldovich became Heroes of Socialist Labor 3 times each, Kikoin - 2 times and Landau - 1 time. Particularly distinguished participants were also rewarded with a large sum of money, cars "ZIS-110" or "Victory", they were presented with dachas. Eight of the above list became laureates of the Lenin Prize, the State Prize was awarded to them 27 times (Kikoin - 6 times -!!!). True, the prizes were awarded not only for work on nuclear weapons.The LP himself was awarded more modestly - the Order of Lenin.

In addition to the Atomic Project, LP in the post-war period oversaw other weapons projects: the development of missiles and the creation of an air defense system in Moscow.One of the leaders of the last project, which was called "Berkut", was SA. And in these projects, Jews were also adequately represented: S.A. Lavochkin, K. S. Alperovich, A.L. Mints.

Waiting for big changes

We turn to the last, most tragic, both for L. Beria and for the Jews, page of Soviet history.

In the postwar period, Stalin physically and psychologically began to fail. Two strokes (1945 city, 1949 d.) he was knocked down. Sometimes he did not appear in the Kremlin for a long time. And in the secretariat of the Central Committee, there is a fierce undercover struggle of potential successors for the favor of the leader and real power. First, between the groups of A. Zhdanov and G. Malenkov. LP, although he was somewhat distant from the epicenter of the fight, acted in conjunction with Malenkov, and carefully monitored the situation.

The political mosaic changed with kaleidoscopic speed: new enemies, arrests, trials, executions. But we will highlight only what is relevant to our topic.

January 12, 1948 in Minsk, on the personal instructions of Stalin, S. Mikhoels was killed. Moreover, the members of the Politburo were not informed about the circumstances of his liquidation either before or after. In March, the new Minister of the Ministry of State Security, V.S.

Against the thickening anti-Semitic background, this looks paradoxical, but on November 29, 1947. The USSR supported the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine at the UN (UN General Assembly resolution No. 181), and two days after its creation, on May 17, 1948, recognized Israel, and did so first. Moreover, it was the LP, through intelligence, who organized the supply of weapons to Israel through Czechoslovakia. Through the same Czechs, a probe was carried out regarding the participation of Soviet volunteers. The Israelis refused. Subsequently, the LP considered the USSR's pro-Arab orientation a mistake, because a stake on Israel would have provided the USSR with the support of the entire world Jewish diaspora.

The arrival in Moscow, in September, of the first ambassador of Israel, Golda Meir, was enthusiastically welcomed by Jews, including Molotov's wife, P. Zhemchuzhina. The government was irritated. In November 1948 The Politburo dissolved the JAC, and in December arrests of its members began. On December 30, the Politburo expelled P. Zhemchuzhina from the party, and on January 21, 1949. she was arrested and then exiled.

The next, extremely important, one might say landmark, event took place on January 24, 1949. Under the chairmanship of Malenkov, the party Areopagus decided to launch a campaign against the rootless cosmopolitans. What was the reason for the need for such a company? The victory in the war caused an unprecedented spiritual upsurge of the people, gave rise to colossal hopes and expectations of improvements in life. As some modern Russian historians cynically write, the government was supposed to launch a “mobilization project” that would designate a new internal enemy, which would allow the “crackdown” to begin to tighten. When replacing the Soviet-international-cosmopolitan paradigm with the Russian-great-power-national one, the emphasis shifted to the fight against "rootless cosmopolitans". This euphemism did not deceive anyone. Persecution of the Jews unfolded everywhere, they were vilified in the press and at meetings, they were expelled from the party. They were expelled from administrative posts, from scientific institutions, editorial offices and publishing houses, medicine. People not alive At this time, they will hardly be able to imagine this suffocating atmosphere of hostility and ill will.As a member of the Politburo, the LP bears full political responsibility for this anti-Semitic sabbath. At the same time, defense projects, in particular, the nuclear one, which he oversaw, remained for the Jews security islands. In fairness, we note that the LP made attempts, based on “gross flaws in the preliminary investigation,” to return the “JAC case” and the case on charges of a group of Jews at the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant for further investigation.

The clouds were thickening. In 1950 The “ZIS case” broke out. About 50 people were arrested, almost all Jews, of whom eight were shot in November.

But all this was only a prelude to the "case of doctors", which actually began in the same November, with the arrest of prof. Ya. Etingera. Investigator Ryumin set out to prove the existence of an extensive conspiracy of high-ranking doctors who harmed the health of the party and military elite. But Ryumin overdid it: Etinger in March 1951. died. Inside the MGB, a squabble began, as a result of which, according to Ryumin's denunciation, Minister V. Abakumov was removed and then arrested, allegedly for opposing the detection of the criminal activities of a group of doctors.

Abakumov was replaced by S.D. Ignatiev, a creature of Malenkov. Following the minister, the leadership of the investigative unit of the MGB, including the deputies, turned out to be behind bars. Chief Colonel L. Shvartsman. It was he who showed that the Zionist organization operates in the MGB, in which he enrolled up to 30 responsible Jews. This obvious nonsense was favorably received by the leader. October 1951 all of them were arrested, including Generals N.Eitingon, L.Raikhman, Colonel A.Sverdlov (son of Y.Sverdlov).

Stalin, longing for major political revelations, the new 1937, "clung" to this matter. The “degree” of the case was sublimated: Abakumov, the “Zionists” from the MGB, doctors and the JAC should have been tied into a spy conspiracy directed from the Politburo.

But the members of the JAC have been "steaming" in the Lubyanka for three years now. They were simply taken out of the "conspiracy": July 18, 1952 d. 13 people (except L. Stern) were sentenced to death.

They did not have time to shoot them, as the appearance of L. Timashuk. filled the "case of doctors" with details and gave it harmony. And in the twentieth of September 1952 Mr. Stalin gave the green light to the arrests of the Kremlin's doctors. The arrests began on 18 October, immediately after XIX . party congress. By mid-November, Ryumin had the entire color of elite medicine and the former leadership of the MGB in his hands. But Abakumov, Eitingon, and a number of others held firm.

But Stalin could not wait. And on November 14, Ryumin was fired from the authorities. Replaced it with S. Goglidze. From that moment on, the case becomes purely Jewish, although out of the 28 doctors arrested on the case, only 10 were Jews, and among the doctors exposed by L. Timashuk, there were no Jews.

On the evening of January 9, 1953 in the Presidium of the Central Committee, it was discussed how to present the "case of doctors" to the people and the world. We approved the TASS report "The Arrest of a Group of Pest Doctors" and the editorial of Pravda. In the Message, of the 9 given surnames, 6 are Jewish. And Stalin prudently did not attend this meeting.

Imprint TASS message appeared on January 13, almost on the fifth anniversary of the murder of S. Mikhoels. From the message it followed that the role of the main conspirator was determined by a full member of the Academy of Medical Sciences, prof. M.S. Vovsi, a brilliant diagnostician, consultant at the Kremlin Hospital. The choice of M. Vovsi for this role was determined not only by his nationality and prominent position in society, but also by the fact that he was a cousin of S. Mikhoels. And Mikhoels in the message was branded as an agent of the bourgeois-nationalist organization "Joint", which allegedly gave orders to destroy the leading cadres of the USSR. M. Vovsi allegedly received these instructions through his brother and, therefore, was an agent of the CIA and the MossadOn the same day, Pravda devoted an editorial to the cause of doctors, from which it followed that there were right-wing opportunists, bearers of anti-Marxist views, in the Presidium of the Central Committee. This was already the verdict on some members of the Areopagus. The "doctors' case" turned into a problem for the Presidium of the Central Committee: the leader was looking for a way to get rid of the old guard. And according to many signs, on which we have no opportunity to dwell, it was obvious that Molotov, Malenkov, Beria were among the first candidates. After the publication of the TASS report and the Pravda editorial, a paroxysm of anti-Semitism began in the country, which is also impossible to imagine for a person who did not experience it. Monstrous rumors were circulating in Moscow and throughout the country that Jewish doctors and pharmacists were harassing Soviet people. They just do not yet drink the blood of Christian babies, but this can be expected from them. Patients shied away from Jewish doctors and pharmacists, they were insulted and threatened. Spiritual hostility to the Kevreys was in the air, and they felt it physically. At the end of January, on Stalin's personal order, P. Zhemchuzhina was brought to Moscow, whom some of those arrested had already denounced as a Jewish nationalist. It remained to connect her and Molotov with foreign intelligence. And what, presumably, was the plan of the leader in full?It is claimed that the following scenario existed for the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". A show trial is being organized, at which I. Ehrenburg is a public prosecutor. The defendants are found guilty and sentenced to be hanged in Red Square. On the way, the indignant people of their execution begins a general Jewish pogrom. Rescuing the Jews, the government deports them far to the East. Truly, a truly educated person will not only “send, but also conduct.”

There is a lot of evidence in the press confirming the existence of such a plan. Eyewitnesses testify that barracks were being prepared in the East, and freight trains were accumulating in the European part. The existence of this plan in 1970, in a conversation with the doctor of historical sciences Ya.Ya. Etinger, was allegedly confirmed by the former member of the Presidium of the Central Committee N. Bulganin. But the historian G. Kostyrchenko, who specifically studied this issue, without denying anything in principle, claims that no documentary evidence of the plan for the deportation of Jews and its preparation could be found. Within our topic, it is important that there is no evidence and involvement in this LP plan.

Already after the 20th Party Congress, evidence appeared in the foreign press of I. Ehrenburg and the ambassador of the USSR in the Netherlands, a former member of the Presidium of the Central Committee and secretary of the Central Committee K. Ponomarenko. Ostensibly, only Beria hesitated. The leader became so excited that he suffered a stroke from which he never recovered. Can you take this seriously? Most likely, this is Khrushchev and K °, tried to convince the country and the world that when Stalin planned this atrocity, they courageously opposed him, which led him to the grave. As they say, cowardly wolves "dressed up" as brave sheep. Well, LP retroactively once again presented itself in a vile light.

The same story looks somewhat differently in A. Antonov-Ovseenko. He writes: “Speaking on the radio on July 19, 1964, Khrushchev spoke about the last meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee during Stalin’s lifetime, at the end of February 1953. They discussed the "doctors' case" and the question of the deportation of Jews. Among those who did not support the measures proposed by the Leader, he turned out to be - for the first time! - Lavrenty Beria.

After Stalin

But on March 5, 1953, the denouement came. Stalin is dead. His death was announced to the people on the Jewish holiday of Purim. The literature on the topic "The Death of Stalin" is extensive and its flow does not dry out. Most are inclined to believe that the leader was poisoned. If this is so, then it is not known who had a hand in this: Beria, Khrushchev or Malenkov. They all certainly had reasons for this. But LP had the greatest potential.

Other times have come. The MGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs were united under the leadership of the LP. The 112 days before his arrest are vividly colored by his initiatives to radically rebuild the country. No one could impose anything on him anymore, everything came from him personally, clearly reflecting his innermost views. Within the framework of our topic, we will mention only those actions that are associated with the Jews.

Already on March 10, 1953, groups were created in the united Ministry of Internal Affairs to check and review falsified cases, including the "case of arrested doctors." On the same day, P. Zhemchuzhina was released from prison. Many Chekists are released.

On March 21, the issue of the reinstatement of P. Zhemchuzhina in the party is raised, and on March 30 - N. Eitingon.

And already on April 1, Beria sends information to the Presidium of the Central Committee on the “case of doctors”, which, in particular, says: “In view of the special importance of this case, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR decided to conduct a thorough check of all investigative materials. As a result of the check, it turned out that this whole case was from beginning to end is a provocative fiction of the former Deputy Minister of State Security of the USSR Ryumin .... Not disdaining any means, grossly violating Soviet laws and the elementary rights of Soviet citizens, the leadership of the MGB sought at all costs to present innocent people, the greatest figures of Soviet medicine, as spies and murderers.

And on April 2, a note about the circumstances of the murder of S.M. Mikhoels was submitted to the same address. Stalin, V. Abakumov, S. Ogoltsov (Abakumov's deputy) and the former Minister of State Security of Belarus L. Tsanava were named as the real organizers of his murder. Moreover, as the commentator points out, the LP personally enters the name of Stalin into the prepared document: “Abakumov testified about the operation of this criminal action:“ As far as I remember, in 1948 the head of the Soviet government I.V. Stalin gave me an urgent task - to quickly organize the MGB USSR, the liquidation of Mikhoels ... When Mikhoels was liquidated and this was reported to I.V. Stalin, he highly appreciated this event and ordered to award orders, which was done.

The next day, April 3, the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which met with almost the same composition, which on January 9 of the same year launched the "cause of doctors", adopted a resolution:

“Accept the proposal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR on the full rehabilitation and release from custody of doctors and members of their families arrested in the so-called “case of pest doctors”, in the amount of 37 people.”

In the press release of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (not TASS-!) on this occasion, stronger expressions were used: the case was fabricated using "inadmissible methods of investigation." The case was closed, the doctors who survived were released and another case was opened - against investigators Ryumin and others.

Thus, the ax raised over the heads of hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews was withdrawn and their reputation was cleansed of slander. Everything was done uncompromisingly and extremely promptly. And who played a decisive role in this? Of course, L. Beria personally. He was well aware that state and everyday anti-Semitism in the USSR was an indisputable fact, but he took a number of, of course, courageous steps towards the triumph of justice.

The Jews, of course, were happy. But did they understand to whom they owe salvation? Some understood. A.D. Sakharov recalls that the happy Ya.B. Zeldovich at that time told him: “But this is our Lavrenty Pavlovich figured it out!" This phrase eloquently demonstrates the attitude towards the LP and the trust in him on the part of his closest employees. Of course, only the emotional and loving Zeldovich could say this out loud. This could not be said by the rather dry, restrained Khariton, who, during many years of cooperation, never once asked LP about the fate of his father. He could think it, but Vannikov could hardly pronounce it aloud. He then knew LP from different angles. Landau could not even think of this, who had enough of Beria's "hedgehog" mittens, hated LP and "slipped" out of the Atomic Project at the first opportunity.

But the noose thrown around the neck of Soviet Jewry was only weakened. The proposal of the LP to rehabilitate the executed members of the JAC was rejected: Malenkov was too deeply involved in this crime, literally "pushing through" the death sentence. Members of the JAC were rehabilitated only in 1955.

In May 1953, Beria petitioned the Presidium of the Central Committee for the posthumous rehabilitation of M.M. Kaganovich and reported on the results of studying the circumstances of the arrest and conviction of P. Zhemchuzhina and her predominantly Jewish entourage:

« The above-mentioned people arrested in the case of Comrade Zhemchuzhina were also sentenced by the Special Conference under the Ministry of State Security of the USSR to various terms of imprisonment and were kept in the Vladimir prison with strict isolation, as well as in a camp for especially dangerous criminals. Thus, Comrade Zhemchuzhina and her relatives mentioned above became the victims of the massacre inflicted on them by the USSR Ministry of State Security.

Recent questions

What is the "dominant" vector of the attitude of the LP towards the Jews? In my opinion, it does not exist. And there is a purely pragmatic approach, based only on the interests of the case. Nothing personal and a minimum of ideology. The presence of Judeophobic views in him, so natural for the ruling clique of the USSR, is not confirmed, and SA in his book categorically denies them: “ Anti-Semitism, like any decent person, evoked a feeling of disgust in my father ... .. But, in my opinion, sympathy, and sympathy for a long time for people of Jewish nationality, is caused, it seems to me, first of all by the fact that my father knew them well. The fact is that there were a lot of such people in intelligence, in technology, that is, in those areas in which he worked all his life. The desire to paint the image of the father with warm watercolors is completely understandable. But, based on the above, in this particular issue, it is difficult to disagree with him.

And what would happen if L. Beria stayed in politics? Perhaps perestroika in the USSR would have come thirty years earlier, and according to a different scenario. And the history of the country could be completely different. Maybe. Would he want to stop the machine of state anti-Semitism? And would he succeed? These are the main questions within our topic. But we are not destined to find out the answers to these questions.

Due to its position, the LP was forced to make global decisions in various areas. Yiu had enough energy and wisdom to delve into everything and make reasonable and balanced decisions. He was extremely punctual and strict, had an amazing ability to single out the main link in every problem and had the authority to throw all his strength, will and resources on its solution. But there was also enough rigidity.

Despite his toughness, LP enjoyed the sincere respect of his close circle of assistants. And his arrest and liquidation were a big surprise and a serious blow for them. Suffice it to say that the bust in Arzamas-16 was not destroyed, neither in 1953 nor later. It still stands in the Atomic Bomb Museum. In addition, the SA told me, and then wrote in his book, that most of the scientists who knew LP on joint work did not give discrediting testimony after his arrest.

A more or less detailed description of the activities of the LP in the management of the Atomic Project belongs to Yu.B. Khariton. In particular, he notes that with the transfer of the project into the hands of the LP, the situation has changed dramatically. He, possessing at the same time great energy and efficiency, quickly gave all the work on the project the necessary scope and dynamism, convinced everyone that he was a first-class manager who knew how to bring things to the end . Experts could not fail to note his mind, will and determination. It may seem paradoxical, but Beria, who did not hesitate to sometimes show frank rudeness, knew how to be polite, tactful and just a normal person under the circumstances. Meetings held very tough, skilled, businesslike, he tried to keep abreast of all affairs and even to give meaningful advice that surprised everyone, borrowed, no doubt, from undercover data. He was a master of unexpected and non-standard solutions.

When evaluating the effectiveness of such decisions, experts may have their own criteria, but they must be correct. The main danger for an expert is to fall into the sin of simplification, when it is not difficult for him to look smarter and more far-sighted than the person being assessed. I tried my best to avoid it.

Despite all my reservations, the reader may get the idea that my goal was to draw a blissful, retouched image of L. Beria. But we have retrospectively reviewed this ambiguouspersonality from a distance exceeding 55 years, not comprehensively, but through the "Jewish periscope", fixing only pictures of Lavrenty Pavlovich's intersections with Jews.So that “the connecting thread of days” does not break (W. Shakespeare, translated by B. Pasternak). And in this subjective retro-periscope, I saw these pictures just like that.

1. Beria S., “My father is Lavrenty Beria” - M .: Sovremennik, 1994.

2. Khariton Yu. B., Smirnov Yu. I., "Myths and reality of the Soviet atomic project." - Arzamas: Russian. federal nuclear center VNIIEF, 1994. - S. 19-56.