The Mystery of Beria's Murder

Not a single person from the leadership of the USSR was subjected to such attacks and accusations as Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria. From the lips of  the “great” reformer and party functionary N. Khrushchev,  at first timid, and after being elected the first secretary of the CPSU, completely groundless accusations against L. Beria sounded. What did not please the clique of the nomenklatura that came to power, a man whose activities brought much more benefit to the country than the total activities of all party leaders during this period.

In the report at the congress and in subsequent speeches, N. Khrushchev always emphasized the role of the party as a victim of arbitrariness, but party comrades-in-arms, party functionaries accused of direct embezzlement and excesses of power were never mentioned. All of them appeared as lambs in white clothes bearing a heavy burden of leadership of the country, under the leadership of the "tyrant" and his "minion".

Where did the triumph of Beria begin?

In January 1938, a plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was held, which can be considered a turning point. At the plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), for the first time, the notorious "Great Terror" was criticized, the victims of which were hundreds of thousands of people - communists and non-party people, leading workers and ordinary citizens.

Historical science has accumulated a lot of facts that allow us to conclude that the "Great Terror" was initiated not by "organs", and not even by Stalin. Our country owes this terror to the regional party bureaucracy , which stubbornly did not want to carry out any transformations and dreamed of conserving the system that had developed during the civil war and the NEP. Its most important feature was the monopoly of the party apparatus on power.. So the party elite deliberately propagated the cult of the leader and not only from her usual sycophancy. Here, no doubt, there was a long-range aim: to get away from control. In the regions - regions, territories and republics - powerful centers of political power arose. Regional "barons" behaved like leaders, copying Stalin. Their busts and portraits circulated in huge numbers, streets, businesses and radio stations were named after them.

They, acting on behalf of the working class, using the name of the party and remoteness from the center, were uncrowned princelings.

The party, in the eyes of Stalin, discredited itself with large-scale embezzlement in all the People's Commissariats, Republican Party apparatuses and executive committees, as well as massive fraud in the reports of the People's Commissariat of Defense and related commissariats.

It was then that Stalin needed a person who was not connected with the central apparatus and the ability to independently solve the assigned tasks. This man turned out to be Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, who increased the tenfold growth of the Georgian economy. The gift of a successful manager, who will manifest himself in the post as deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars during the Second World War, who oversaw the work of the NKVD, the NKGB, the people's commissariats of the forest and oil industries, non-ferrous metals, and the river fleet. And also after 1945 as curator of military-strategic projects.

Their first meeting upon appointment, obviously, looked like Stalin's monologue: “Individual members of the party and party committees on the ground have come loose, neither arrests nor executions can stop nomenklatura workers from feeling their own infallibility and permissiveness. Not only do they eat each other, for the sake of career growth they are able to destroy their own mother, all this can lead to the death of everything that we have built and achieved and for the sake of which we made the revolution. It is necessary to stop the activities of not only individuals, but also not to give this pack the opportunity to solve production and strategic issues in the further industrialization of the country. Limit them only to political educational work among the population. Their task is to explain to all workers and collective farmers the need to build a society

Beria understood that he could expect the fate of his predecessors Yagoda, Yezhov as head of the NKVD.

Denunciations, intrigues, bribery and fraud with finances, all this was absolutely typical for that time, especially when everything was built on trust, both to party members and leaders of state bodies. Lavrenty Pavlovich brilliantly solves the task assigned to him, where his organizational abilities were manifested, and leaves a bright mark in the works of historians, as a man who managed to stop the wave of "repressions". But as an analyst by nature, Beria decides in an organizational way that was non-standard for that time: He organized a new State Security Service within the NKVD with the function of controlling all the People's Commissariats, the movement of financial flows, and monitoring the implementation of government plans. By this, he “chopped off” the hands of the party apparatus, to arbitrarily dispose of money, which made them their worst enemy,

Under his leadership, the Main Directorate of State Security was created (Decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks P64 / 82 of September 23, 1938 and announced by order of the NKVD No. 00641 of September 29, 1938)

The composition of the GUGB in particular included:

• 6th Department (Chekist surveillance of paramilitary organizations: police, Osoaviakhim, fire brigade, district military commissariats, sports societies, etc.)
• 7th department (Chekist supervision of the defense industry)
• 8th Department (Chekist surveillance of the entire industry)
• 9th Department (Chekist supervision of trade, procurement and agriculture)
• 5th special department (State repository of valuables) (established on June 20, 1939 by order of the NKVD No. 00697)

The Inspectorate for Boiler Supervision of the NKVD of the USSR was included in the NKVD on September 29, 1938 by order of the NKVD No. 00641;

On November 25, 1938, Beria was already People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR.

Having ensured full control over the implementation of the State plans, he proceeds to the current work. Be that as it may, having accepted the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, Beria was faced with the fact that there were hundreds of arrested scientists and designers in his department, whose work the country needed. Before him are tens of thousands of cases of prisoners, among which are those that could benefit the state. Who and under what circumstances imprisoned the developers of military equipment in the conditions of the impending war? The question is by no means rhetorical. Firstly, there were real German agents in the NKVD who, on real assignments from real German intelligence, tried to neutralize people useful to the Soviet defense complex. Secondly, there were no less "dissidents" in those days than at the present time.

In addition, the environment of the intelligentsia is incredibly quarrelsome, and denunciation in it has always been a favorite means of settling scores and career growth.

What to do? Write: “Free”, showing subordinates an example of lawlessness of the opposite nature? Check things? Yes, of course, but you have a closet with hundreds of thousands of cases. In fact, each of them needs to be re-investigated, but there are no personnel. If we are talking about someone who has already been convicted, it is also necessary to achieve an annulment of the sentence. Who to start with? From scientists? From the military? And time goes by, people are sitting, the war is getting closer ...

Beria got his bearings quickly. Already on January 10, 1939, he signed an order to organize a Special Technical Bureau. Research topics are purely military: aircraft construction, shipbuilding, shells, armor steel. Entire groups were formed from specialists in these industries who were in prisons.

When an opportunity presented itself, Beria tried to free these people. For example, on May 25, 1940, aircraft designer Tupolev was sentenced to 15 years in camps, and in the summer he was released under an amnesty. The designer Petlyakov was amnestied on July 25 and already in January 1941 he was awarded the Stalin Prize. A large group of developers of military equipment was released in the summer of 1941, another in 1943, the rest were released from 1944 to 1948.

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 supervised the work of the NKVD, the NKGB, the people's commissariats of the timber and oil industries, non-ferrous metals, and the river fleet.

From June 30, 1941, L.P. Beria was a member of the State Defense Committee (GKO).

In less than a year, more than 3,000 large industrial enterprises and 15 million specialists were transferred to the eastern regions. This required 1.5 million railway cars, and all this in the conditions of war, shelling and bombing, this current work of the NKVD made it possible to launch the production of military equipment in the shortest possible time, often even in the bare steppe.

During the war years, the NKVD of the USSR built 842 airfields, 3,573 kilometers of railways, 1,058 kilometers of oil pipelines, 4,700 kilometers of highways, dozens of aircraft factories, and so on. Could Georgy Zhukov, if there was no communication system, fully realize his military leadership talent? No, I couldn't. The army would not be able to move forward due to the lack of fuel for armored vehicles and trucks, ammunition and food. And it would be difficult to evacuate the wounded to the rear. But many after treatment again returned to duty. So here, too, Lavrenty Pavlovich, as the head of the people's commissariat, distinguished himself. We must not forget that during the war, Beria oversaw the production of ammunition, weapons and tanks.

In 1943 Beria was awarded the title of Hero of the USSR for special tasks of the government.

What kind of special task it was, one can only guess, linking his activities as the curator of the State Security. It was the safety of the country's gold reserves, which at the beginning of 1941 amounted to 2.8 thousand tons. And when the threat of a Nazi attack on Moscow loomed, only the department supervised by Beria could ensure the evacuation and safety of gold, so Stalin, having concentrated all industry and transport on Beria to provide troops, did not give him the opportunity to take part in military operations.

On February 11, 1943, I. V. Stalin signed the decision of the State Defense Committee on the program of work for the creation of an atomic bomb under the leadership of V. M. Molotov. But already in the decree of the State Defense Committee of the USSR on the laboratory of I.V. Kurchatov, adopted on December 3, 1944, it was L.P. Beria who was entrusted with "monitoring the development of work on uranium."

It was on this project that Beria showed himself not only as an effective manager, but also a person who looks far ahead, foreseeing both the Cold War declared by the West, but also the limits of the use of nuclear fusion for peaceful purposes. (In 1954, in Obninsk near Moscow, the world's first nuclear power plant gave current). The control system he created in the GUGB, which had direct access to all industrial organizations, allowed Beria, bypassing bureaucratic obstacles and approvals, to get an atomic bomb, a power plant, and a reserve for the production of a hydrogen bomb in the shortest possible time.

Even N. Khrushchev later, in his memoirs, was forced to recognize Beria’s efficiency: “However, one cannot deprive Beria of the ability to work in assigned areas, determined by special decrees and personally by Stalin, who quite often appointed him to positions in various sectors of the national economy where things were not going well, and he corrected them. This raised Beria in the eyes of the leader.

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.

As Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, he still continued to supervise the work of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of State Control.

After the death of I. Stalin, it was this person, who controls all the expenses of the state, who stood in the way of N. Khrushchev, and it was extremely necessary to compromise him in the eyes of the people - the legend as a student and follower of the cause of I. Stalin was destroyed ... In addition to tight control over finances in safes The departments kept the testimonies of former party comrades, which could serve as accusations against the imaginary "builders" and their role in building socialism.

In his memoirs, N. Khrushchev recalls his first visit to Moscow.  The Nepman capital struck him with a riotous, reckless life - it stuck in his memory for the rest of his life. The times of the NEP, or rather life with throwing money and the flow of Champagne, then clearly manifested itself among ambitious party functionaries. To regain the right to manage finances, to feel like the "owner" of such a great country became the main goal of N. Khrushchev, Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.

It was not difficult for him to find supporters and murderers, offended by the official line or convicted, and even at the request of the secretary of the Central Committee, or simply greedy people, there were always, at all times.

Transcript of the July Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU. July 2-7, 1953 was published only in 1991. The work of the entire plenum was devoted to the analysis of the personal case of L. Beria, who was no longer alive, but was simply an imitation of the analysis at the plenum, as well as the trial allegedly held at the end of 1953.

Official propaganda created a monster out of L. Beria, who oppressed the entire party and people, making him a household name, and clearly cultivated a popular interest precisely in the “bed comforts” of his father, creating a repulsive image of a sort of sexual maniac.

Together with Beria were shot:

• Merkulov V. N at that time Minister of State Control of the USSR
• Kobulov B.Z. Since 1946, Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of Soviet Property Abroad.
• Vlodzimirsky L.E. since 1943, he headed the investigation unit for especially important cases of the NKGB (MGB) of the USSR. Practically all cases regarding the party, military and economic leadership went through Vlodzimirsky.

A total of 50 people connected by service in the State Security.

1954 By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, N. Khrushchev reformed the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the State Security Committee (KGB) was formed, which was assigned the scope of activity - only intelligence.

The police remained part of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs to maintain public order

That is how the state lost control over the gold reserves and the financial activities of the government.

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