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

The coup was staged on June 26 during another Presidium meeting. Only Malenkov, Bulganin, and Khrushchiov knew what would happen. Each Kremlin guard was shadowed by an army officer, ostensibly for training purposes. Bulganin brought his trusted generals in his limousine, all except Zhukov carrying handguns, against the rules, into the Kremlin. Marshal Zhukov, the generals, and a dozen party men lurked in the waiting room outside Stalin’s study. Khrushchiov told them to enter when a bell rang twice.

Beria arrived late, wearing a crumpled gray suit and no tie. He asked about the agenda, and was told “Lavrenti Beria.” Malenkov’s notes for the start of the meeting are the only surviving document:

Enemies have tried to place the MVD above party and government . . . Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia. Are these measures necessary? . . . Beria . . . controls the party and government. This is redolent of great dangers, if delayed, too late to put right. . . . We need a monolithic collective and we have one. . . . Comrades are not sure who’s eavesdropping on whom . . . make him minister of oil production. Next! . . . Who wants to discuss it?⁴¹

A farcical meeting began. Beria was replying to the abuse when Malenkov rang the bell and Marshal Zhukov entered with four officers. They stood behind Beria, two men putting revolvers to his head. Beria sat and wrote the word “alarm” nineteen times. He was taken to the anteroom and searched. His pince-nez, which he never saw again, was removed.

Beria was driven first to an army barracks. The next day he was visited by his former deputy Kruglov, who now took his job. Because of the rumored parachutists, Beria was moved to an underground concrete bunker. Army officers occupied the Lubianka. Tanks entered Moscow and Bulganin told the soldiers that Beria, Abakumov, and the rest of the old MGB were planning mass terror. The tanks left town to disarm two divisions of MVD troops before returning to surround the city center.

Beria’s portraits were removed from all offices. Three MVD men swept the contents of Beria’s safe into a sack; most papers were burned for fear of what they might contain. In Berlin Ulbricht breathed a sigh of relief as Beria’s agents were recalled and the danger of the GDR merging with West Germany receded.

In his first week in the bunker Beria obtained from his warder, General Batitsky, scraps of paper and a pencil. He appealed to Malenkov at once: “Egor do you really not know I’ve been picked up by some strange people I want to set out the circumstances when you summon me.” Two days later, he sent another slip of paper: “Egor, why don’t you answer?” Beria asked for his selfless work to be remembered, for forgiveness “if there was anything to forgive during these fifteen years of hard, intense work together,” and for his mother, wife, and son to be looked after. Beria’s son, pregnant daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren had been arrested the same day; Nina Beria followed them. Beria’s deaf-mute sister and elderly mother were for a time left alone.

On July 1 Beria wrote to Malenkov and his other accusers a rambling penitential letter: “My behavior toward you, where I am 100 percent in the wrong, is especially bad and unforgivable.” He reminded Malenkov that they had agreed on some of the reforms, and that his mistake had been to circulate Interior Ministry documents that might embarrass Khrushchiov and Bulganin. He regretted his proposals to free East Germany and his actions against Rákosi. Beria could not rouse Malenkov’s conscience but he could appeal to his sense of self-preservation. The letter hinted that they might go down together.

To convince Molotov that he had always spoken well of him, Beria begged him to contact his family. He also reminded Molotov how they had gone to see Stalin when war broke out to rouse him to action. He appealed to Voroshilov, Mikoyan, Kaganovich, Khrushchiov, and Bulganin: “I’ve never done anything bad to you.” Beria wanted badly to live and offered to work on a farm, a building site.