Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him

Beria was jeopardizing party rule, Russian dominance, and the integrity of the USSR and its eastern European empire. He had to go. The reasons for removing him, Khrushchiov would argue later, were moral: Beria was utterly ruthless and depraved. This was undoubtedly true, although more went to their deaths on Molotov’s or Khrushchiov’s signature than on Beria’s. The vital difference was that they killed with a stroke of the pen or a touch of oratory whereas Beria got blood on his shirt. As for Beria’s legendary sexual proclivities, he was certainly guilty of many rapes—usually by blackmail rather than force—and of violating young girls. On the other hand, some of his mistresses were fond, or at least respectful, of him. By the standards of some Soviet leaders, who used the Bolshoi Ballet as a brothel, or even compared to J. F. Kennedy or David Lloyd George, Beria was not beyond the pale, even if at intervals during meetings he ordered women to be delivered to his house, as modern politicians order pizzas.

The Hangmen’s End

The wild plums blossom in Tbilisi—

A joy for Molotov to see,

For Voroshilov all the merrier.

But not for L. P. Beria.

Lavrenti Pavlych Beria

Has failed the main criteria.

A heap of ash, Deo volente,

Is all that’s left of our Lavrenti.

Anonymous, 1953

BERIA KNEW EVERYTHING about everyone, but from March to June 1953 he gave no hint of intending to use his knowledge to slaughter his colleagues. Never had there been fewer arrests in the USSR, and there were virtually no executions. Beria had lost his taste for blood. Dismissed party secretaries became ambassadors or managers. The MVD halted its assassinations abroad. Beria’s threat was not to Khrushchiov and Malenkov, but to the system that kept them in power. ⁴⁰ The mystery is why Beria did nothing to protect himself. For thirty-three years he had been one of the most skillful political operators on earth, and now he let a group of mediocrities forget their differences and topple him.

Personal popularity in the USSR, even among the secret police, counted for little; in any case, even if Beria had brought relief to the surviving 2 million Jews and dozens of professors of medicine, yet another Georgian governing a fundamentally Russian state would have been intolerable for the rank and file of the party. Beria started building a holiday village of dachas for government and party officials near Sukhum, but to many this bribe looked like a trap.

East Germany gave Khrushchiov an opportunity. Beria’s proposals to defuse the tension had come too late and rioting workers in Berlin and other cities had been crushed, on Beria’s own orders, by Soviet tanks. To Molotov, minister for foreign affairs, this proved Beria’s incompetence. Fear overrode caution, Molotov joined the conspiracy and his seniority ensured its success.

Khrushchiov had first to detach Malenkov, often photographed arm in arm with Beria but now worried by the demotion of many of his protégés. Khrushchiov then battled with Voroshilov’s timorousness and Kaganovich’s vacillation. The plot was hatched in parks and on the streets, lest Beria’s men were tapping their telephones or bugging their apartments. By the end of June, the Presidium was won over, although Mikoyan and Voroshilov, likewise sated with bloodshed, wanted Beria not killed but sent back to Baku where the party had found him, as minister for oil production.

Two armed forces had to be won over: at least part of the secret police and the army. In the MVD Sergei Kruglov and Ivan Serov willingly betrayed their master; they hated Beria’s Caucasians—the Kobulovs, Goglidze—being promoted over Russian heads. Khrushchiov sounded out the army through Bulganin. Beria had a few friends in the Red Army, but men like General Shtemenko, whom he had made chief of the general staff, were shunned, and many senior officers had never forgiven or forgotten Beria’s torture and murder of Bliukher in 1938. Khrushchiov won over Marshal Moskalenko and carefully seduced Marshal Zhukov, who had been demoted by Stalin and saved from death by Beria, with promises of glory.

It was hard to gather armed men without alerting Beria’s agents. In May, Bulganin sent army officers who might not have cooperated to the provinces on exercises while Malenkov and Molotov encouraged Beria to pay a flying visit to Berlin with army generals. Beria was suspicious and discovered a Presidium meeting was to be held. He flew back; the conspirators were in disarray and the meeting confined itself to tedious agricultural questions. Some witnesses report Beria alerting groups of parachutists outside Moscow and arming party workers in the Caucasus.