Original subtitles

WITH THE FINANCIAL SUPPORT OF THE MINISTRY OF CULTURE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

THE RUSSIAN MILITARY HISTORY SOCIETY

Born in a small Georgian village, Beria dreamed of becoming an engineer.

The October revolution forced him to change his plans.

While studying at a mechanics and construction school, he joined the Bolsheviks

and became a professional Chekist.

The Party leaders appreciated his business skills. Having successfully

suppressed a number of anti-Soviet uprisings, he was quickly moving up the ranks.

At 33 he became head of the Transcaucasian Communist Party, supervising

the economy of the vast region.

6 years later on Stalin’s invitation he moved to Moscow to become head of the

People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs.

The Beria Thaw began, diminishing the scale of repressions.

Many inmates were released from Gulag. A network of sharashka secret labs was

created as part of the Gulag system.

Beria also headed the strategic intelligence.

He was the first to receive secret reports that Hitler was planning an attack

against the Soviet Union.

The country was preparing itself for a big war.

THE LAND OF THE SOVIETS. THE FORGOTTEN LEADERS

LAVRENTY BERIA

At 5:45 AM June 22, 1941, Beria, Molotov, and Timoshenko with his

two deputies, Mekhlis and Zhukov, entered Stalin’s office.

The war had begun that would put the whole country to a test: soldiers and

generals, workers and members of the government.

Beria realized that the road to victory won’t be an easy one

The country’s independence was at stake. Any mistakes could become irrevocable

not only for the Soviet Union but for the world.

In the first days of the war Beria’s son Sergo volunteered for the army,

meaning to enroll into an intelligence school. His parents approved his decision,

and Sergo had left home for many years.

Soviet leaders never tried to hide their sons from going to war. All Stalin’s sons

went to the front. Vasily was a pilot,

Yakov and the adopted son Artyom were gunners.

Khrushchev’s son Leonid and Voroshilov’s adopted son Timur Frunze also served

in the Air Force and both were killed in the war.

As an intelligence officer, Sergo Beria took part in missions in the enemy rear

and was awarded a Red Banner order.

Meanwhile his father had to deal with increasingly complicated tasks.

As member of the State Defense Committee, Beria was supervising the evacuation

of all manufacturing plants and production of armaments, planes, and rockets.

The insudtrialization of the 1930s allowed to decrease the country’s dependence

on the imported machinery and equipment.

9,800 big plants constructed in those years created an industrial basis

almost independent of the import. In the pre-war decade Soviet plants

had produced 700,000 tractors, or 40% of the world produce.

During the war these plants were converted to build tanks.

On the eve of the war the USSR designed and started production of new kinds

of machinery: KV heavy tank, T34 medium tank, fighter planes YaK1, LAG3, MIG3,

IG2 battle plane, PE2 bomber, Katyusha rocket launchers.

All this became possible due to the system of scientific and technical

education, design bureaus, and experimental workshops.

As a result, one year after the beginning of the war the Soviet Union matched

the Hitler Germany and occupied European countries in the production of

military hardware and by 1944 had surpassed them.

And not only in terms of quantity. By the end of the war German weapons were

inferior to the Soviet ones in terms of quality.

Beria remained at the helm of the intelligence and counterintelligence agencies.

During the war the intelligence network created by him began to yield fruit.

The information on the coming offense at the Kursk Bulge came from several

different sources.

Some of them remain unknown to this day.

From the agents’ reports the Headquarters knew about the Germans’ plans

to send the von Kleist armored army to the Caucasus.

The Edelweiss operation was aimed at capturing Europe’s biggest oil fields

in Baku and Grozny. The income of the war depended in many ways on the control

over the Caucasus oil.

The Wehrmaht offense was much more rapid than the HQ expected.

The Germans broke the frontline, captured the mountain passes,

and rushed toward Grozny and Baku.

Stalin tasked Beria with preventing further Germans’ advance toward the oil.

August 23, 1942, Beria flew from Moscow to Tbilisi.

He was accompanied by a few Georgian officers cherry-picked by him

to organize the defense of the Caucasus.

Due to a technical fault, the plane caught fire in the air over Baku.

The skills of Beria’s personal pilot Col. Grachiov allowed to knock down flame.

The plane landed in Tbilisi at nighttime.

Beria and his companions set to Mozdok immediately.

The battlefront had already approached the city outskirts.

Beria in fact took the lead in organizing the defense of the Caucasus.

He made a series of staff changes, placing young and talented commanders

in the lead of the armies.

He ordered to bring fresh regiments to the Caucasus. On Beria’s orders,

border guards had blocked the mountain passes.

Mobile mountain troops consisted of trained mountaineers and were armed with

silent weapons.

Beria’s presence had improved the soldiers’ morals.

It signified that the country leaders didn’t plan to surrender the Caucasus.

By November the German offense was stifled.

After Beria’s arrest in 1953 he was blamed for his refusal to use NKVD troops

in the fall of 1942. Was he trying to sabotage the Transcaucasian Front

and surrender the Caucasus to the Germans?

This was, of course, an absurd accusation. However, NKVD divisions in the

Caucasus, numbering 120,000, in fact didn’t take part in the battle.

Beria had another operation in mind for them, which was being planned

in strict secrecy.

Even before the German intrusion to North Caucasus local nationalists

were fighting with the Soviet bodies. The situation escalated in 1942,

with the start of the Soviets’ offence at the Caucasus. The Nazis were campaigning

for local residents to come to their side. Local nationalists supported Hitler

in capturing these territories. They would attack the Red Army caravans,

rob and kill local residents, blocked the Soviet troops regrouping.

Deserters would join these groups, many of them armed. The nationalists were,

as a rule, led by German agents. After the liberation of Caucasus the nationalists

continued their fight against the Red Army and NKVD. They killed Party leaders,

stole cattle from collective farms. The sabotage stopped only in 1944,

when the Soviet leaders decided to deport some of the Caucasus nationalities

to faraway regions of the Soviet Union: the Urals, Siberia, Kazakhstan,

and Middle Asia. The deportation was supervised by

Commissar for State Security Serov and Beria’s close companion Kobulov.

Beria controlled most of the operations.

He also approved the instructions for the operation.

People were given 24 hours to pack their belongings. Though the operation

was aimed at bandits and collaborationists, many innocent people became

its victims, including women and children.

61 nationalities were deported during the war time. By a secret instruction,

military personnel and women married to men of other nationalities weren’t

subject to deportation. The deported weren’t deprived of their right to vote

or Party membership. They could take with them up to 500 kilos of personal

belongings for one family. Money and valuables weren’t confiscated.

Mass deportations become one of the shameful chapters in the Soviet history.

Whole nations were punished for the crimes of their individual members.

In spite of the deportations, many representatives of the condemned nationalities

continued to serve in the army and fight the enemy heroically.

In 1941, the future KGB was separated from the Internal Affairs Commissariat.

Vsevolod Merkulov, member of Beria’s inner circle, became is head.

However, this didn’t make Beria’s workload any smaller.

He had to take new responsibilities. Beria was responsible for the safety of

the Soviet organization at the Tehran Conference in 1943.

He safeguarded security of Stalin’s train on its way to Baku. German troops

still remained in the Soviet territory, and the train barely escaped an air raid.

The delegation flew from Baku to Tehran by 2 Douglases, accompanied by

27 fighter planes.

At the Yalta conference in 1945 the Soviets were the hosts. This made the

People’s Commissar’s task even more complicated.

Not long before the Crimea was under the Nazis control. It was necessary

to clear the railways from mine traps, prepare buildings for being used,

set up communications and security.

The preparations for the Potsdam Conference, or the so-called Palm operation,

weren’t any easier. The plan was approved by Beria June 6, 1945.

It envisaged clearing the roads and ruined buildings, restoring bridges,

phone stations, plumbing systems; launching 2 power plants and preparing

2 airfields for receiving any types of planes.

Besides, thousands of unexploded bombs were to be defused. Dozens of trucks

had been driving them out of Berlin outskirts for a month.

17,000 NKVD soldiers and officers were responsible for the security of Stalin’s

train arriving from Moscow.

July 2, 1945, Beria reported to Stalin and Molotov that preparations for the

Palma operation were completed.

In 15 days the Potsdam Conference was opened.

In Potsdam President Truman informed Stalin of successful nuclear tests.

This wasn’t a mere desire to share good news. The US were trying to pressure

the Soviet Union which they had begun seeing as an enemy.

May 9, 1945, WWII finished for the Soviet Union. But the Potsdam Conference

gave a start to a new stage of the Soviets’ fight for state security.

Beria reported to Stalin the need to start work on nuclear research before the war.

But the progress was slow, because the front required the majority of resources.

The future academician Kurchatov stood at the helm of the project. He was indignant

at the local authorities’ reluctance to support the project.

Administrators who dealt with the project lacked the necessary knowledge

and the will to acquire it.

The nuclear project was still waiting for its manager, and the new atomic era

was coming closer.

August 6, 1945, the US dropped an A-bomb on Hiroshima. The city became

a living hell. Thousands of innocent people found themselves in its epicenter:

women, children, elderly people were killed on the spot. People were trying

to hide from the scorching heat wave, but were caught in the bomb blast.

Buildings were ruined. Numerous fires merged in a merciless fiery tornado.

3 days later, the second explosion hit Nagasaki. In these two operations

the American forces killed over 200,000 non-combatants.

These bombings weren’t a necessity. It was a signal for the USSR and the world.

The balance of power had changed overnight. The role of the Soviet Union

on the global arena depended on whether it would be able to create its own

nuclear weapon in short term.

January 15, 1946, a brief notice was published in Izvestiya,

‘The Presidium of the Supreme Council granted Comrade Beria his request

‘to retire from his post of the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs

‘in connection with his overload with other work.’

No details were revealed about the ‘other work,’ since the decision of the

Defense Committee of August 20, 1945, was labeled top secret.

This decision signed by Stalin provided for the creation of a Special Committee

with extraordinary powers for the implementation of the atomic project.

As chairman of this committee, Beria was bestowed with unusual for those years

freedom in taking decisions and controlling human and material resources.

Contrary to the popular opinion, his role never came down to accumulating

sensitive information from abroad.

However, the reconnaissance operation on collecting data related to nuclear

research, orchestrated by Beria, was unique for the whole history of intelligence.

During the war Soviet agents were planted in the US research and design centers,

working on the construction of nuclear weapons. As a result, only 12 days after

the US completed its first A-bomb, Moscow got its description. Soviet scientists

working on the atomic project: Kurchatov, Khariton, Kikoyin, Zeldovich, Landau,

Alikhanov, Fliorov and others, relied on ready-made foreign designs. It had

sped up considerably the solution of the major issue – the design of the bomb.

Still, the intelligence data didn’t solve all the problems. It wasn’t enough

to understand the design of the bomb. The explosives were even a bigger problem.

Firstly, the USSR didn’t produce enough uranium ore. A single bomb required

tons of it.

Uranium ore contains up to 0.2% of natural uranium including 3 isotopes:

Uranium 238 (99.3%), Uranium 235 (0.72%), and Uranium 234.

For military purposes, Uranium 235 is used, since, unlike the more common

238 isotope, it allows self-sustaining chain reaction.

For a nuclear bomb to explode, the fission charge has to contain at least

80% uranium. Thus, natural uranium has to be dressed. 219 kg natural uranium

is required to produce 1 kg of highly enriched uranium.

The first Uranium235-based bomb was dropped by the US on Hiroshima in 1945.

It had a fission charge of 64 kg of Uranium 235, produced from 14 tons of

natural uranium.

1 ton of uranium ore contains 2 kilos of raw uranium. Collecting 1 ton requires

at least 500 tons of ore.

By August 1945, the known uranium reserves in the USSR amounted to 300 tons.

At first its lack was compensated with captured German ore and production of

East-European uranium plants with which the USSR was able to sign contracts.

Still, this wasn’t enough. Beria had to get to grips with geology.

Prof. Althausen of the All-Union Mineral Research Institute, recalled,

‘Beria was tactful and attentive. The meeting started at midnight and ended

‘at 6 AM. Every our request was granted: work power, food supplies, equipment.

‘We were paid subsistence 4 times bigger than other geologists.’

By 1948, over 600,000 were occupied with prospecting and extracting uranium.

Thousands of Gulag prisoners and German POWs were involved in this work.

Dozens of research and design institutes and labs were being created.

Whole new branches of industry were built from the scratch.

Nuclear facilities were situated all over the country: Moscow, Leningrad, Sukhumi,

Novaya Zemlia, Semipalatinsk, the Urals.

A research center was set up in Sarny village, the future Arzamas 16, becoming a

restricted area. Leading physicists were working there.

Beria was able to get German experts involved

in the work on Soviet nuclear weapon.

A special commission was headhunting for talented scientists and students.

One of them was young physicist Andrei Sakharov, the future academician and

Noble Prize winner, one of the creators of the world’s first thermonuclear bomb.

Sakharov recalled his first meeting with Beria in 1950.

‘He rose, letting me know the meeting was over, then suddenly said,

‘Do you have any questions?’. I blurted out, ‘Why is our progress so slow?

‘Why do we always lose the technology competition to the US and other countries?’

‘He answered bluntly, ‘Because we don’t have production capacities.

‘The Americans have many firms with their own facilities.’

Beria understood the need to focus all research, industrial, and financial

resources. He also realized that planning was impossible for such a project.

Nobody could predict the scientists’ ideas or information coming from agents abroad.

Beria gave a permission to conduct works without preliminary coordination

and pay any expenses that are incurred through the State Bank.

He also gave orders to allot 1.5-2% of expenses for bonuses to the employees.

Beria would study all documents thoroughly. His subordinates knew

it would be impossible to hide any blunders from him.

Intelligence agent Sudoplatov recalls,

‘At first, fear prevailed. But in a few years people ceased fearing him and

‘became certain that Beria would support them if they were successful in their work.

‘He often gave free hand to leading administrations in solving complicated issues.’

4 years after the Special Atomic Committee was created, a testing ground

in Kazakhstan was preparing for the first RDS1 bomb testing.

It was August 29, 1949, at 7 AM.

By the time of the Semipalatinsk test, it had been known that the Americans

were working on creating germ weapons. Beria organized a research group

for defense from biological weapons. Among its members was Dr. Burgasov.

From Burgasov’s memories.

“Whenever we came to his office, he would produce a big notepad.

‘He didn’t tolerate long introductions and small talk. During our reports

‘he would keep doodling in his notepad. At first I didn’t understand that,

‘but then decided that it was his way of focusing on something.’

Another important task was creating air defense system and rocket weapons.

The Soviet rocket production was being born under Beria’s control, laying the

basis for the future space exploration.

In 1946 Sergei Koroliov was appointed Head Designer of the Special Design Bureau

developing ballistic and geophysical missiles.

The first rocket with dogs on board was launched in 1951, 8 years before

the legendary Belka and Strelka.

Being a pragmatic, Beria at first took the space travels with a grain of salt.

When Koroliov reported the successful launch of the rocket with dogs on board,

Beria asked him, ‘You mean they actually were in space?’. Koroliov replied,

’90 km is the open space, Comrade Beria.’

In February 1953 Beria signed to decisions of the Council of Ministers on

3-year plans for design and research works to create long-range missiles.

It would lay foundation for creating intercontinental and space rockets:

R7 by Koroliov, Buria by Lavochkin, and Buran by Miasishchev.

Beria was supervising not only the science. He didn’t forget his old passion

for architecture. The famous Stalin’s skyscrapers in Moscow should be called

Beria’s, because he was in control of the Moscow reconstruction.

He championed the idea of big apartments with high ceilings, which are still

called Stalinkas.

On the contrary, the campaign against cosmopolitism had nothing to do with him.

To the contrary, after Stalin’s death Beria suggested that the Doctor’s Plot case

were closed and those convicted in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee rehabilitated.

The Doctor’s Plot of the early 1950’s was officially called the case of the Zionist

plot in MGB. A group of doctors working at the Kremlin medical department

was accused of a plot to kill several Soviet leaders.

The so-called Poisoning Doctors Case was initiated by a statement by Dr. Timashuk

on faulty treatment methods leading to death of Politburo member Andrei Zhdanov.

These cases were initiated by Stalin and proceeded by the Ministry of State Defense,

headed by Viktor Abakumov. After his arrest in 1951 Ignatyev took his place.

Beria’s relations with both were strained, to say the least.

Beria was irritated with Ignatyev for ruining the intelligence system.

The dominance of unprofessional staff led to agents’ failures and defections.

Of course, Beria couldn’t fight against the new Stalin’s protege.

He felt a looming danger of an arrest initiated by that same Ignatyev.

And there were serious grounds for his apprehensions.

In November 1951, a number of Party leaders were arrested in Georgia.

All of them were Beria’s all comrades, Megrels, like himself. They were accused

of nationalism and gravitating toward Turkey. However, the real target of the

Megrel Case was Beria himself.

Stalin was letting him know that he was expendable in spite of all his

achievements. No one was indispensable, and those who imagined themselves so

were to be put into place, like Beria.

However, he wasn’t arrested then.

March 1, 1953, the guards at Stalin’s Kuntsevo dacha found him unconscious

on the floor.

They put him on the sofa and called their immediate boss Ignatyev. He redirected

them to the higher Party leadership.

That night four of those closest to Stalin – Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev,

and Bulganin, - came to his dacha to access the situation.

They didn’t dare to disturb him: the guards told them he was asleep.

Calling doctors was out of the question. Stalin regarded them as murderers,

and nobody wanted to take the risk.

On the next day the guards, for fear of being accused of failure to act,

called the bosses again.

Only then did the Politburo take a decision to call doctors. They diagnosed

Stalin with hemorrhagic stroke.

March 4, newspapers published the first announcement about Stalin’s disease.

It meant that there was no hope for recovery. On the same day Beria and Malenkov

prepared a list of names for the new country leadership. A day later they were

approved by a Central Committee plenary session in Kremlin.

Stalin’s successors were creating a system where nobody could become

a sole leader. Khrushchev was to become head of the Party. Malenkov was

appointed Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and Beria – one of his deputies.

He also became Minister for Internal Affairs.

Stalin was deprived of his posts, but remained a formal member of the Presidium.

He died March 5, 1953, at 9:50 PM.

‘We’ve lost the man who was the closest and dearest for all Soviet people

‘and millions of working people throughout the world.’

Later a version appeared that Beria had inspired a plot to poison Stalin,

but there were no grounds for it. Moreover, by that time Beria had no instruments

for such an operation.

Now, with the leader’s death, he had got a chance to implement political and

economical reforms that had been long due.

Having returned to the chair of the Internal Affairs Minister, he launched

the process of rehabilitations and reconsidering of trumped-up charges

and issued an order prohibiting interrogations under duress.

He also championed extending civil rights.

From Beria’s report to the Party Presidium on cancelling passport restrictions:

‘The existing passport regime creates problems in job placement not only

‘for ex-convicts, but also their families, who suffer financial problems.

‘Note that no other country practices such system.’

In March 1953 Beria suggested amnestying around 1,000,000 people.

The amnesty concerned several categories of convicts, including those sentenced

to less that 5 years of prison, women with minor children, elderly

and gravely ill convicts.

Beria presented his report as a working paper, without legal explanation.

A day later, without consultation with Prosecutor General and the Ministry

of Justice, Voroshilov and Pegov signed a decree on amnesty.

Such rush led to big groups of criminals being released along with the said

categories, leading to a rise in crime rates. People nicknamed this amnesty

Voroshilov’s, but later Khrushchev would put the whole blame on Beria.

Beria knew about the real standards of living in the country better than anyone.

The unresolved housing problem, lack of basic consumer goods,

the pauperization of peasants…

Beria spoke for a cutback in military expenses and freezing the costly

construction projects.

He also suggested to diminish the Party role in managing the industry

and began promoting local cadres for leading posts in the republic.

Beria was equally active in foreign affairs. He facilitated the start

of peaceful negotiations in Korea where the North was supported by

the Soviet Union and the South by the USA.

He also tried to restore diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia.

In the last years of Stalin’s life his differences with Tito had led to cessation

of diplomatic relations. As a result, the former Soviet ally became part of the US

circle of influence. Beria tried to solve this problem.

Another acute problem was the fate of the defeated Germany.

According to the Potsdam decisions, it was to remain a unified non-aligned state.

However, this wasn’t what happened in reality. In 1953 Germany was still divided

into West and East. Beria promoted reunification of Germany.

In his opinion, it was the only way to detente.

According to the Yalta Conference decisions, part of Germany’s territory

after WWII was included into the Soviet circle of influence. It included the

Eastern Lands: Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, Thuringia

and a part of Berlin.

Later the Soviet Union had repeatedly tried to reunite Germany, but the US

and Great Britain refused, since they needed grounds for their military bases

near the Soviet border. In September 1949 a new state was formed

in the British-American zone of occupation – the Federative Republic of Germany.

The Soviet Union responded in proclaiming the German Democratic Republic.

In fact, Beria suggested a broad reconstruction of the Soviet system.

His bold initiatives couldn’t but alarm Khrushchev and the Party bureaucrats.

They saw in his actions a claim for the first role in the country’s leadership.

Besides, Beria still possessed discrediting evidence on all of them.

After Stalin’s death Beria believed himself invincible. He didn’t take

Khrushchev seriously and never expected a blow from his friend Malenkov.

However, Khrushchev, who was planning a plot against Beria, was successful

in persuading Malenkov to take his side.

Minister of Defense Bulganin secured the support from the army.

Marshal Zhukov also joined the plotters.

The circumstances of Beria’s arrest and death remain a subject of discussion.

The official version is that June 26, 1953, he was summoned to a

Council of Ministers meeting. There he was accused of bourgeois degeneration

and preparations for coup d’etat. On Khrushchev’s signal, a group of generals

entered the room, led by Marshal Zhukov.

Beria was arrested and brought to the underground bunker of the Moscow

military region’s HQ. There he spent 6 months waiting for trial.

Not everybody was convinced with this story. Sergo Beria said that his father

was killed immediately after the arrest.

Also, according to him, the arrest took place at their house.

Another version says that Beria had been shot in the bunker long before his

death sentence was pronounced.

Actually, there are many inconsistencies in his case. Thus, the arrest warrant

is dated July 8, i.e. 12 days after the arrest.

There are no photos and fingerprints in the file, which was unheard of

in the Soviet records management.

There are no records of face-to-face interrogations and no signatures

by Beria himself.

Witnesses claim that a man who was escorted from the bunker to

interrogation rooms had his face covered with a towel and Beria’s hat on his head.

Many of those present at the trial December 23 state that they hadn’t seen

him there.

Beria or his double was accused of espionage for Great Britain, an attempt of

coup d’etat, and other fictional crimes.

Long before the trial, at a plenary session dedicated to Beria, Khrushchev

called him an adventurer and schemer, blaming him for his work for Musavat

counterintelligence, and concluded, ‘Shrewdness and arrogance are Beria’s

‘major traits.’

Soviet newspapers supported Khrushchev. Editorials were calling to destroy

Beria’s gang, reminding one of the Stalin era trials.

The media also published information on Beria raping women, including

underage girls.

Rumor was that they were captured in Moscow streets and brought to his house.

These accusations have proved the most long-lived of all.

Beria did like women. However, lots of evidence claim that his relationships

were based on mutual consent.

Beria’s head of administration Sarkisov was maintaining a list of women

visiting Beria. The only surviving list contains 39 names.

Next day after Beria arrest a Valentina Drozdova filed a report against Beria.

She claimed that 4 years earlier, at the age of 16, she was raped by Beria

and forced to live with him. As it became known later, Drozdova had been

Beria’s mistress for many years and had a daughter with him.

She filed the report for the fear that the state traitor’s daughter

would be taken from her.

The court didn’t go into details. The charges against Beria were considered proved.

As for Nino Beria, she had long known of her husband’s infidelity.

Since the early 1940s the couple was only maintaining their marriage as a fasade.

After Beria’s arrest Nino and Sergo were put into Lefortovo Prison.

None of them agreed to witness against their husband and father, as well as

Beria’s close colleagues who had been also arrested.

December 24 Pravda published an article on Beria’s case.

It listed the charges against Beria and his ‘partners in crime’ and proclaimed

that they were sentenced to death. In bold letters the newspaper added,

‘The sentence has been enforced.’

The exact Beria’s burial place is still unknown.

The official version says that he was buried in a common grave at the New Donskoye

cemetery, but there are no papers regarding his cremation.

In 1952 the 5th volume of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia was published,

including an article on Beria with his portrait. In 1954 the subscribers received

a letter from the editors, advising them to cut out the pages dedicated to Beria

and replace them with enclosed pages.

During the Khrushchev’s thaw media and writers were demonizing Beria

making him the sole culprit of all mass repressions. He became a scapegoat

for all Stalin era sins.

In May 2002 the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court had ruled Beria

ineligible for rehabilitation. His involvement into mass repressions outweighed

everything he had done for the country: providing state security during the war

and after it, the atomic project, the creation of germ weapons

and space-rocket forces, allowing the Soviet Union to create military parity

with the United States, the alleviation of Gulag regime, the first rehabilitations,

the attempts to democratize the system after Stalin’s death were also forgotten.

The coming generation saw him as a tyrant steeped in blood up to his elbows.

Beria didn’t treasure human lives, as well as all state leaders of his time.

Did he regret the victims of the Soviet regime, whose deaths were

on his conscience? Did he just move ahead without looking back?

This is something we will never found out.