What education did Beria have. Childhood and youthful years. Beria's youth and his rise to power

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 peoples, who organized 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 that the captured Poles be executed, 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 a special committee for the creation 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 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.

Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria
2nd Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR 9 during 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 - 31 August 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,
the 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 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(Cargo. ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია, Lavrenti Pavles Dze Beria; March 17, 1899, s. Mercheulya Sukhumsky District of Kutaisa Lip. - December 23, 1953, Moscow) - Soviet state and politician, General Commissioner of the State Security (1941), Marshal of Soviet Union (1945). Lavrentia Beria - One of the main organizers of the Stalinist repressions.

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 USSR State Defense Committee (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 nuclear weapons and rocketry.

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 Jakeli (1868-1955), a Megrelian, according to Sergo Beria and fellow villagers, was distantly related to the Megrelian 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 Sukhumi 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 Sukhumi 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 oil company Nobel, while continuing 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, as a technician of a hydraulic engineering detachment, he went to the Romanian front, 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. 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). From October 1918 to January 1919 - a clerk at the plant "Caspian Association White City", 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 by 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 illegal work 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. 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 my 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 combined position 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 SNK of the Georgian SSR (until December 3, 1931), deputy plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU under the SNK of the USSR in the ZSFSR and deputy chairman of the GPU under the SNK 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 - 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. 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 industrial production in Georgia increased by 10 times compared to 1913, agricultural - by 2.5 times with a fundamental change in the structure 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 post of 1st Deputy People's Commissar and Head of the NKVD Department of the USSR, on the same day, September 8, on last post he is replaced by L.P. Beria - from September 29, 1938, at the head of the Main Directorate of State Security, restored in the structure of the NKVD (December 17, 1938, Beria will be replaced in this post by V.N. Merkulov - 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, 2.6 thousand people were sentenced to capital punishment on charges of counter-revolutionary crimes, in 1940 - 1.6 thousand. 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 person 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.

Since March 22, 1939 - 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 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.
Great Patriotic War [edit]
See also: 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 duties 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.

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 the nuclear project[edit]

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”, that is, about a year and ten months after their supposed start, which was difficult during the war.
Deportation of peoples[edit]
Main article: Deportation of peoples to the USSR

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 active anti-Soviet armed struggle 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, went 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 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, an order of the NKVD followed, signed by Beria, “On the eviction of the families of active German accomplices, traitors and traitors to the Motherland who voluntarily left with the Germans from the cities of the Kavmingroup of resorts.” 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[edit]
Curation nuclear project USSR [edit]
See also: Creation of the Soviet atomic bomb

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.

The Special Committee was created on the basis of the GKO resolution 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. October 29, 1949 L.P. Beria was awarded Stalin Prize I degree "for the organization of the production of atomic energy and the successful completion of the test 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 [edit]

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 Operations 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, weapons, 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 supervised 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 positions 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.

After the 19th 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.
Death of Stalin. Reforms and power struggles[edit]

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.

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 for the ministry and proposals (notes) to the Council of Ministers and the Central Committee (many of which were approved by 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, subsequently 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 of Soviet medicine were presented as spies and murderers, and, as a result, they were objects of anti-Semitic persecution 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, embarking on the criminal path of deceiving the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in order to obtain the necessary evidence, 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. 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[edit]
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 famous writer Konstantin Simonov and showed him the execution lists of 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 can remove him, but at the same moment a group of Marshals of the Soviet Union, led by Zhukov, entered the room on a special signal and arrested 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 Directorate 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 Investigation Department for Particularly 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 staff 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 "case of Bagirov":

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 Rukhadze case:

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 Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR

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 unworthy in connection with this high rank 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.” 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 advantage.
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) [to clarify] in which it was strongly recommended that “with scissors or a razor” cut out both the portrait and the pages dedicated to L.P. Beria, and instead paste others (sent in volume same letter) containing other articles starting with the same letters. As a result of Beria's arrest, one of his closest associates, the 1st Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Azerbaijan SSR, Mir Jafar Baghirov, was arrested and executed. In the press and literature of the times of the “thaw”, the image of Beria was demonized, he was blamed both 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 political repression, was declared unrehabilitated:

... 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 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."

Extract from the definition of the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation No. bn-00164/2000 dated 29.V.2002.
Family [edit]

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 sent with him to Krasnoyarsk region, Sverdlovsk region and Kazakhstan.
Interesting facts [edit]

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 the matches of the Dynamo teams, especially the 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 was already played ..

In 1936, Beria, during 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 [edit]

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 [edit]

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) 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 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 [edit]

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 - former name of Khanlarkend village, Saatli region, Azerbaijan
Named after Beria - former name of Zhdanov village in 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.
Film incarnations [edit]

? ("Battle of Stalingrad", 1 series, 1949)
? ("Lights of Baku", 1950)
Nikolay Mordvinov ("Donetsk Miners", 1950)
David Suchet ("Red Monarch" Red Monarch (England, 1983)
Valentin Gaft ("Feasts of Belshazzar, or Night with Stalin", USSR, 1989, "Lost in Siberia", Great Britain-USSR, 1991)
Roland Nadareishvili ("Little Giant of Big Sex", USSR, 1990)
B. Goladze (“Stalingrad”, USSR, 1989)
V. Bartashov (Nikolai Vavilov, USSR, 1990)
Vladimir Sichkar ("War on westbound", USSR, 1990)
Yan Yanakiev (“Law”, 1989, “10 years without the right to correspond”, 1990, “My best friend is General Vasily, son of Joseph”, 1991, “Under the sign of Scorpio”, 1995)
Vsevolod Abdulov ("And to hell with us!", 1991)
Bob Hoskins (Inner Circle, Italy-USA-USSR, 1992)
Roshan Set ("Stalin", USA-Hungary, 1992)
Fedya Stojanovic (Gospodja Kolontaj, Yugoslavia, 1996)
Paul Livingston ("Children of the Revolution", Australia 1996)
Farid Myazitov ("Ship of Twins", 1997)
Mumid Makoev ("Khrustalev, the car!", 1998)
Adam Ferenczi ("Journey to Moscow" Podróz do Moskwy, (Poland, 1999)
Victor Sukhorukov ("Desired", Russia, 2003)
Nikolai Chindyaykin ("Children of the Arbat", Russia, 2004)
Seyran Dalanyan (Convoy PQ-17, Russia, 2004)
Irakli Macharashvili (The Moscow Saga, Russia, 2004)
Vladimir Shcherbakov (“Two Loves”, 2004; “Death of Tairov”, Russia, 2004; “Stalin’s Wife”, Russia, 2006; “Star of the Epoch”; “Apostle”, Russia, 2007; “Beria”, Russia, 2007; “ Hitler kaput!", Russia, 2008; "The Legend of Olga", Russia, 2008; "Wolf Messing: who saw through time", Russia, 2009, "Beria. Loss", Russia, 2010)
Yervand Arzumanyan ("Archangel", England-Russia, 2005)
Malkhaz Aslamazashvili (“Stalin. Live”, 2006).
Vadim Tsallati ("Utyosov. Lifelong song", 2006).
Vyacheslav Grishechkin (“The Hunt for Beria”, Russia, 2008; “Furtseva”, 2011, “Counterplay”, 2011, “Comrade Stalin”, 2011)
Alexander Lazarev Jr. ("Zastava Zhilina", Russia, 2008)
Sergey Bagirov "Second", 2009
Adam Bulguchev ("Burnt by the Sun-2", Russia, 2010; "Zhukov", Russia, 2012, "Zoya", 2010, "Cop", 2012)
Vasily Ostafiychuk (The Ballad of the Bomber, 2011)
Alexei Zverev (Serving the Soviet Union, 2012)
Sergey Gazarov (Spy, 2012)
Alexei Eibozhenko, Jr. ("The Second Spartacus Rebellion", 2012)
Roman Grishin ("Stalin is with us", 2013)

Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich

Marshal of the Soviet Union
Hero of Socialist Labor (1943)

Andrey Parshev

It is BITTER to begin the anniversary article not with a description of merits, but with a refutation of slander, but this cannot be dispensed with.

BERIA, Lavrenty Pavlovich, did not and could not have anything to do with the organization of the so-called. "repressions" in 1937, neither due to official position, nor due to physical absence in the center of events. The decision to carry out repressions was made by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1937, and L.P. Beria was at that time at party work in Transcaucasia. He was transferred to Moscow in the summer of 1938, and was appointed People's Commissar of Internal Affairs in December 1938, when the repressions had already ended.

L.P. Beria was People's Commissar of Internal Affairs from December 1939 to 1945, and then for only three months in 1953. For 8 years after the war, contrary to popular belief, he did not supervise law enforcement agencies, as he was completely occupied with more important matters.

The young man who wanted to learn

BERIA, Lavrenty Pavlovich, was born on March 17 (30), 1899 in the village of Merkheuli, Sukhumi region, into a poor peasant family. In 1915, after graduating from the Sukhumi Higher Primary School, L.P. Beria left for Baku and entered the Baku Secondary Mechanical and Construction Technical School.

Now, in the capital's universities, an ironic attitude has developed towards students from the Caucasus - "children of the mountains" who are not interested in anything but painted blondes and foreign cars. 16-year-old Lavrenty had neither money nor patronage. There were no scholarships then, and even more so, and he could study only by earning his own living. In Sukhumi, he gave lessons, and in Baku he had to work in various places - a clerk, a customs officer. From the age of 17, he also supported his mother and deaf-mute sister, who moved in with him.

In March 1917, L.P. Beria organized a cell of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks) at the school in Baku. In June 1917, L.P. Beria went to the Romanian front as part of an army technical unit (in his autobiography he indicated that he was a volunteer, in his official biography it was written that he was enrolled. In Soviet times, patriotism shown in the First World War was not welcome). After the collapse of the army, he returned to Baku and continued his studies at a technical school, participating in the activities of the Baku Bolshevik organization under the leadership of A.I. Mikoyan.

In 1919, L.P. Beria entered the world of "twilight warfare". At that time, Azerbaijan was ruled by the "Musavatists" party - that was the name of the puppet organization created by the British to control the oil fields of the Caspian Sea. In 1919-1920, he worked in the counterintelligence of the Musavatists, passing the obtained information to the headquarters of the Tenth Army of the Bolsheviks in Tsaritsyn. Beria wrote about this in his autobiography, and no one denies it, nevertheless, it was the introduction into the Musavat secret service that was the main accusation against him in 1953.

From the beginning of 1919 (March) until the establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan (April 1920), L.P. Beria also led an illegal communist organization of technicians. In 1919, L.P. Beria successfully graduated from a technical school, received a diploma as an architect-builder and tried to study further - by that time the school had been transformed into a Polytechnic Institute. But ... L.P. Beria was sent to work illegally in Georgia to prepare an armed uprising against the Menshevik government, was arrested and imprisoned in Kutaisi prison. In August 1920, after a hunger strike organized by him for political prisoners, L.P. Beria was deported in stages from Georgia. Returning to Baku, L.P. Beria again went to study at the Baku Polytechnic University.

In April 1921, the party sent L.P. Beria to work as a Chekist. From 1921 to 1931 he was in leading positions in the organs of Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence. It is obvious that by that time in his circles the young Chekist was well known for his merits. It is unlikely that he was introduced into the leadership of the Cheka just because he was a foreign agent - this organization was somewhat different from the Ideological Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU of the 80s.

L.P. Beria was deputy chairman of the Azerbaijani Extraordinary Commission, chairman of the Georgian GPU, chairman of the Transcaucasian GPU and plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU in the ZSFSR, was a member of the collegium of the OGPU of the USSR.

Several times he tried to continue his studies at the Baku Polytechnic University. Now in the world ranking of universities it is educational institution is in second place from the bottom of the list, but at the beginning of the century there was a very high level of teaching. Baku was then one of the centers of scientific and technological progress, this is evidenced by Landau, who studied there at the same time.

During his work in the bodies of the Cheka-GPU in Georgia and the Transcaucasus, L.P. Beria did a lot of work to defeat the Mensheviks, Dashnaks, Musavatists, Trotskyists, and foreign intelligence agents. Georgia was seized by rampant banditry, as in the 90s - the GPU brought relative order. Armenian peasants worked in the field with a rifle over their shoulders - Kurdish robbers visited from abroad as if in their pantry. By the 1930s, the border was firmly sealed.

The circle of interests of the intelligence agencies of Transcaucasia also included the near abroad - Turkey, Iran, the English Middle East, ... but the details will forever remain a secret.

For the successful struggle against the counter-revolution in Transcaucasia, L.P. Beria was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Georgian SSR, the Azerbaijan SSR and the Armenian SSR. He was also awarded with personalized weapons.

At the same time, in the characteristics they wrote about him - "intellectual". Then this word did not have a negative connotation, it meant an educated, cultured person who was able to apply theoretical knowledge to practical activities. He wanted to study, most of all - to study, but time did not allow. Three courses at the Polytechnic University and a diploma in architecture - all that he managed to achieve by the age of 22 in the intervals between fronts, prisons, underground and operational work.

Style

"In 1931, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks exposed the gross political mistakes and distortions committed by the leadership of the party organizations of Transcaucasia, obliged the party organizations to put an end to the unprincipled struggle for the influence of individuals (elements of the "atamanism") observed among the leading cadres of both Transcaucasia and the republics." So it was written in the biography of L.P. Beria in 1952.

Transcaucasia is an ancient land, people have lived there since time immemorial. The tribal system has taken deep roots there, behind the facade of the state there is always a complex social structure of clans, clans, families. National, public interests are too often an empty phrase there, they serve as a cover for inter-tribal struggle.

In November 1931, L.P. Beria was transferred to party work - he was elected First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CP (b) of Georgia and Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and in 1932 - First Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and Secretary of the Central Committee CP(b) of Georgia.

"Under the leadership of L.P. Beria, the Transcaucasian Party Organization in a short time corrected the mistakes noted in the Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on October 31, 1931, eliminated the perversions of the party's policy and excesses in the countryside, achieved the victory of the collective farm system in Transcaucasia ..... ."

L.P. Beria tamed the appetites of khans and princes with party cards, having won a good memory among ordinary people and the inescapable hatred of the tribal elite.

It was Beria who owned a special lifestyle that distinguished him from the leadership. In the 70s, the first secretary of the regional committee would have looked strange, chasing a soccer ball with the boys, and not for show, but for himself. Working in Tbilisi, in the mornings he twisted the "sun" in the yard on a makeshift horizontal bar, along with the same boys.

After moving to Moscow, he began to live differently, which, in general, is natural, but he did not change his habits. A minimum of protection, and more often only a driver and a messenger. The Georgian's guarantor is an Armenian. Can you imagine?

Beria was unmercenary, although he was known as a hospitable host. In fact, after his death there was nothing to confiscate, and so he always lived. Did the people know about it? In Georgia, they knew, and it is easy to understand how they treated this.

Therefore, at the beginning of his career, Shevardnadze "mowed" under Beria. As Minister of the Interior, he lived in a communal apartment, and as First Secretary, he fought corruption. It then cost him nothing to throw a million dollars to charity. Saved from my salary...

When the First House has nothing, then it is somehow inconvenient for the rest to have a house - a full bowl. That is why, with the popularity of this lifestyle among the people, not all leaders were happy with it.

Technocrat

The land of Transcaucasia is one of the most fertile in the world. With very little effort, a person can more than provide for himself and his family, there would be land. But poor people can live even on the most fertile land, if this land is not enough. And in Transcaucasia there is always little land. In all Caucasian languages ​​there is a proverb approximately similar to the Ossetian: "skulls are always lying on the boundary." Why?

A Caucasian family has many children, but a high birth rate is not at all a consequence of low culture, as is sometimes thought completely unreasonably. The tribal system suggests that the status of a person directly depends on the number of relatives in peace, and even more so in war. Few children - few warriors, and in the struggle for land, you can lose. The cost of losing is death. But the father must leave four plots to four sons, and he has one! Where to get if the earth was divided even before our era?

From time immemorial, "human surpluses" were destroyed in wars, in ancient times with sabers and daggers, now - with volleys of "Alazani" and shells with potassium cyanide. Wild mountain tribes brought slaves to Turkey, external aggressors tried to seize priceless land, exterminating its inhabitants.

Russia covered Transcaucasia from external enemies, Soviet power tamed the mountain bandits, but where to get bread, where to get land?

In Russia, the problem was solved by the nationalization of estates and collectivization. Collective farm fields cultivated by tractors made it possible to forget about hunger. But collectivization in the Transcaucasus, due to special local conditions, did not immediately allow for an equally radical increase in productivity. And there were too many free hands. Where is the exit?

The solution was found to be the only correct one. The newly created industry absorbed the peasant youth, Georgian metallurgists, Azerbaijani oil workers appeared in Transcaucasia.

But where to get bread? Is the earth no more?

Again, the only correct answer. What could not be done on the fields of a private trader, collectivization allowed. Transcaucasia became a zone of subtropical cultures unique to the USSR. Do you think the tangerines, which now cover the ground in a thick layer in the gardens of Abkhazia, have always grown there? No, citrus orchards appeared in the 30s. Where previously only grain and vegetables were grown, now they gathered so much tea, grapes, citrus fruits, rare industrial crops, which even had defense value, that Transcaucasia became the land of rich people. And Russia was not offended - since the mid-30s, collective farm grain was already enough for bread and for exchanging it for Caucasian tangerines.

Appeared and new earth for the first time since antiquity. Unusual agricultural practices, planting eucalyptus trees allowed to drain the Colchis lowland, previously a deadly malarial area. But was left - in memory of posterity - and a site of primeval swamps, after the war received the status of a reserve.

"A lot of work has been done on the reconstruction and development of the oil industry in Baku. As a result, oil production has increased dramatically, and in 1938 almost half of the entire production of the Baku oil industry was provided by new fields. Significant success was achieved in the development of the coal, manganese and metallurgical industries, the use of gigantic opportunities agriculture in Transcaucasia (development of cotton growing, tea culture, citrus crops, viticulture, highly valuable special and industrial crops, etc.) For the outstanding successes achieved over a number of years in the development of agriculture, as well as industry, the Georgian SSR and Azerbaijan The Soviet Socialist Republics, which were part of the Transcaucasian Federation, were awarded the Order of Lenin in 1935.

Maybe you think that the first secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee had nothing to do with it at all?

Professional

In 1938, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks transferred L.P. Beria to work in Moscow.

By that time, the defeat of the Trotskyist and other opposition cadres, begun by the decision of the Politburo in 1937, for which the NKVD was headed by high-ranking party workers from the personnel department of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, was completed. It is difficult to say how sincere the position of the Politburo was, but excesses were seen in the activities of the NKVD. To carry out the rehabilitation of the illegally repressed L.P. Beria was appointed Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs.

The NKVD had to be returned to the work for which it was intended. Therefore, in December 1938, the party personnel officer Yezhov was replaced by a professional Chekist Beria.

From 1938 to 1945, L.P. Beria was People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR. He was a good people's commissar, the best assessment in such cases is the assessment of the enemy.

Compilation" World War 1939-1945", section "War on Land", General von Butlar:

"The special conditions that existed in Russia greatly interfered with the acquisition of intelligence data regarding the military potential of the Soviet Union, and therefore these data were far from complete. espionage networks made it difficult to verify the little information that the intelligence officers managed to collect ... ".

Specifically and personally in the USSR, L.P. Beria was responsible for "the impossibility of organizing a wide network of espionage".

But even under the leadership of the NKVD, a special style of work of L.P. Beria, inherent only to him, manifested itself. Much better than many leaders, both military and civilian, he understood the role of new technologies, which means not only new technology, but also its correct use.

The name of L.P. Beria is associated with the development of communications of the border troops, which made it possible not only to provide telephone communications to each border detachment in many sections of the Far Eastern border. A striking contrast was the readiness of the Border Troops and the NKVD troops to start the war, in comparison with the situation in the army. Unlike the army, the communications of the Border Troops were staffed by linear overseers, which made it possible to fully maintain control, although all control went by wire, as in the army. All outposts, except for those who died in the all-round defense, retreated from the border by order, and subsequently formed units whose work is accurately described in V. Bogomolov's book "In August 44th".

At the heart of this is a deep understanding of the role of communication in the management process.

Unfortunately, the exploits of the NKVD troops are less known, this topic is closed for study, even battle paintings about their exploits near Rostov and Stalingrad lie in the storerooms of museums. The "blue caps" did not leave without an order and did not surrender, they were well armed, full of automatic weapons.

During the war, L.P. Beria, in addition to his many duties, paid great attention to special equipment. In the special laboratories of the NKVD, walkie-talkies, radio direction finders, perfect sabotage mines, silent weapons, and infrared sights were created. During the defense of the Caucasus, the use of special groups of border guard officers armed silent rifles with night sights, thwarted the offensive impulse of the Kleist group - the usual tactics of the Germans turned out to be impossible due to the extermination of about 400 radio operators and aviation and artillery guidance officers.

And how to evaluate the merits of our "authorities" that organized round-the-clock wiretapping of the allied delegations at the Tehran conference? The dream of any diplomat is to know the real positions of the opposing side. Of course, real diplomats are also needed for such information, because information must be used in such a way that partners are not on their guard.

Unfortunately, a significant amount of falsification about the activities of L.P. Beria belongs to this period. Thus, democratic "historians" thoughtfully discuss the well-known, composed by Y. Semyonov, text: "Ambassador Dekanozov is bombarding me with disinformation ...... erased into camp dust ......". They do not even bother to think why on earth the ambassador of the Soviet Union, bypassing his immediate superior, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Molotov, would bombard some outside People's Commissar, not even a member of the Politburo, with information of Special Importance.

Until 1994, L.P. Beria's accusations of the deportation of Chechens and Ingush were very popular. Indeed, 100,000 soldiers and 20,000 operatives under his command evicted 600,000 Chechens in just a few days, with only a few casualties on both sides. But these peoples in 1941 refused to mobilize and created, in fact, in the rear of the Red Army their own armed forces, with party secretaries as commanders.

So L.P. Beria deservedly received the Order of Suvorov, but now everyone understands this.

By the way, as a result of the "Beria genocide" the number of Chechens has doubled by now.

He protected his native land from death...

"In February 1941, L.P. Beria was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and remained in this post until the end of his life. During the Great Patriotic War, from June 30, 1941 he was a member of the State Defense Committee, and from May 16, 1944 - Deputy Chairman State Defense Committee and carried out the most important tasks of the party both in the management of the socialist economy and at the front.

Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on September 30. 1943 L.P. Beria was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor for special merits in the field of strengthening the production of weapons and ammunition in difficult wartime conditions. July 9, 1945 L.P. Beria was awarded the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union.

Sadly, there is no available information about the essence of the tasks being solved then - that's where the unplowed field for the historian is. But one merit of L.P. Beria is still mentioned, even the enemies do not dare to keep silent about it. Judge for yourself how big it is.

In one of the books from the time of perestroika, the "Song of Beria" is cited with irony. The lyrics of the song are really clumsy, but there are these words:

Gardens and fields sing about Beria

He protected his native land from death ... "

From what death and how did he protect? Not the people, not the party, but the whole motherland? After all, he is not Stalin, not Zhukov, although he is a Marshal of the Soviet Union. He is a Hero, but a Hero of Socialist Labor. What's the matter?

"Since 1944, Beria oversaw all the work and research related to the creation of atomic weapons, while demonstrating outstanding organizational skills."

This phrase from the biography of L.P. Beria, given in the computer encyclopedia "Cyril and Methodius", is perhaps the only information there, except for the name and date of birth, close to reality.

The creation of Soviet nuclear weapons is a landmark event that completely changed the face of the world for decades, if not hundreds of years. We now see how Western countries are behaving, with the relative weakness of other countries. But this is despite the fact that a dozen countries of the world still have atomic bombs. There is no doubt that if the bomb had not been made in our country during a few years of peaceful respite, then, starting from the Korean War, history would have turned differently. Where? Read the book "Orbital Patrol" by the American science fiction writer R. Heinlein, which was published immediately after the war and became extremely popular in the USA. There as main goal American politics it was proposed to create a network of orbital stations with nuclear bombs under the command of the Americans, who, in the event of disobedience of any country, would immediately destroy its capital. It may sound strange (something like science fiction), but this book greatly influenced the public consciousness of the United States in terms of introducing the idea of ​​world domination based on the US monopoly on nuclear and orbital technology. It was not translated in our country until the 90s, and without reading it, it is impossible to understand why a uniform panic arose in the United States after the launch of the Soviet satellite.

The dictatorship of the West has been abolished, and, no matter what happens, forever.

Did L.P. Beria deserve at least a modest monument on Red Square for this?

Merits

The second merit is the organization of the largest breakthroughs in the scientific and technical field. And not in the form that has been actively promoted in our country since the 50s (dubious discoveries without practical utility). It has already been written about the development of an air defense missile ring around Moscow, carried out under the leadership of L.P. Beria. In its own way, no less revolutionary, this work was done contrary to all the canons of technology and, nevertheless, turned out to be successful. With a seemingly local significance, even if it concerned our capital, this development significantly influenced the direction of technical progress in the military field, and for all countries of the world. What neither cannon artillery nor aviation could provide, turned out to be within the power of rockets. Neither the Germans, nor the Japanese, nor the Western allies could do anything like this before us, although their problem of bombing directly affected them during the war. From here began the victorious march of guided missiles around the world.

These projects gave concrete results during the life of L.P. Beria, and it is impossible to deny his role - too many witnesses and documents have been preserved. But his role in missile projects is not covered, since the victorious reports of TASS were made only in 1957. Was L.P. away from heavy missiles? It is unlikely, because the development of nuclear weapons and rocket launchers for him constituted a single whole. I think that not without the participation of Beria, the government "Decree on the development of jet technology" of 1946 was developed.

There is an opinion in the mass consciousness that the boss can be completely ignorant, you just need to surround yourself with smart, but not responsible advisers, and it will be in the bag. That's where it ended up being.

This is clearly seen in economic policy. The growth rates of the Soviet economy in the 1930s and 1950s are well known. But in 1965, Kosygin, at the suggestion of a group of "advisers", carried out the first official reform of the Stalinist economy (it is known abroad as the "Lieberman reform", after the name of the head of the group of advisers). The result was not fatal, but "the process has started." Gorbachev and Ryzhkov, for their mind-blowing experiments in transferring funds from non-cash to cash with the help of small businesses, attracted another group of "economists", presumably from Shatalin, but everyone knows about the current advisers, and about the results of the reform too.

Beginning with Khrushchev, life has shown that if a leader, instead of keeping himself up to date, begins to trust advisers, then the results of his rule are bad. Expressing the same idea, but in other words, I will say: the leader must be educated and smart not only in the science of coming to power. The fate of the country depends on this. How to achieve this is another question, but attracting advisers is not a replacement for brains. Well, Gorbachev attracted Bovin, Burlatsky and Yakovlev as political advisers - and what did he come to, what did he lead the country to? But do not say anything, smart people, smarter than Gorbachev.

After all, you also need to be able to evaluate advisers. Another, with all his ranks, is a real sheep, among the specialists there are both adventurers and swindlers.

As a historical anecdote, I will tell the following story. We had such a Lev Theremin, the inventor of electric musical instruments, known for that showed his "theremin" to Lenin himself. Then Termen lived in America, then he sat in a "sharashka". So when Beria asked him if he could make an atomic bomb, he said he could. And when asked what he needed for this, he answered that "a personal car with a driver and one and a half tons of steel corner."

But this is a curiosity, but there were critical moments in the history of the "uranium project". How did we start work on the "bomb"?

The physicist Flerov was at the front, without any armor he served as an aircraft technician. And it was at the front, looking through Western scientific journals (if someone skipped this place, I repeat - being at the front and looking through Western scientific journals), he noticed that articles on the uranium problem had disappeared from them. He concluded that military work had begun in the West in this area, and therefore they were classified, and he began to write letters to Stalin (and not to the leadership of domestic physics, apparently well aware of its level), and one of them reached the addressee.

The Soviet leadership drew attention to Flerov's warning, which was the impetus for the implementation of the uranium project. The corresponding tasks were assigned to our strategic intelligence, and L.P. Beria set them, you guessed it. It was he who was in charge of our intelligence, among other things.

And Stalin had an unpleasant conversation with our "leading" physicists. For some reason, not some venerable scientist was chosen for the scientific leadership of the project, but not the too well-known Kurchatov.

Pay attention - neither Flerov nor Kurchatov were perceived by the "scientific community" as a value. Kurchatov, instead of evacuating to the East, demagnetized the hulls of ships under German bombs in Sevastopol, and Flerov fought in general, by no means on the "Kazan Front". He didn't even get armor!

This suggests that the Soviet leadership of that time itself understood the problem sufficiently to listen not to authorities, but to little-known scientists.

And imagine what would happen if Stalin and Beria relied on advisers!

Conspiracy

After the war, Khrushchev, Malenkov and Beria formed a stable group. Jealous senior members of the Politburo derisively called them "Young Turks." Beria did not believe to the last and, perhaps, did not find out that he was betrayed by those whom he considered friends - Malenkov and Khrushchev.

So why did Beria become hated by everyone?

The reason is in the unhealthy situation in the country after the war, and especially in the leadership. Stalin, apparently due to illness, clearly "released the reins", which he used to control so well. The proof of this is the fact of a fierce struggle for power between the factions - this is a clear sign of the absence of a real case. There was no one to set tasks for the "ruling elite" and ask for their solution.

War is not a school of humanism. Any, no matter how fair it may be. War is a catastrophe that disfigures all aspects of public and state life.

Ask any veteran front-line soldier, a wounded hero, and he will confirm that they were better than him, but they died. The best died in the war.

At the end of the war, people and structures associated with the war and military production begin to play an absurdly important role. After the war, they are no longer needed and should lose their importance, but do they want this?

Paradoxically, the defeated countries, whose military elite has been destroyed, suffer less from this. In Japan and Germany, there were no problems with the orientation of politics - only towards peaceful construction. But in France and the United States, for example, instead of peaceful pre-war leaders, generals and hawks came to power, soon plunging their countries into new inglorious wars.

The 10-million army was no longer needed in the USSR either. Where are the generals to go?

Look at the statistics - how much unnecessary military equipment was produced in 1945. The manufacturers themselves understood that it was no longer needed, so they drove a real marriage. Switch to products that still have to win over the buyer? This is a risk. You can't persuade a buyer! It is a completely different matter when it is enough to persuade a military receptionist, albeit in marshal's stars. Who will make consumer goods? Yes, someone will.

Here are these captains of industry, instructors of departments of district committees, regional committees, and republican committees. They gave a military plan, and they gave it well. Of course, who is unhappy that the war is over? But to give power to people who are better, and, most importantly, cheaper in tailoring dresses and assembling TV sets...? Sorry!

That is why the development of the economy took a paradoxical path - consumer goods were not evaluated by the consumer with their ruble, but by something like the Defense Council, only it was not called that.

And without a special analysis, it is clear who the main governing body of the country, the Central Committee, consisted of after the war.

And the problem was deeper - when the direction of the country's development had already been chosen in the 30s, when politics managed to be defended from the adherents of the "world revolution" (Trotskyists) and the supporters of the return to the primitive communal system (right), after that the party was no longer needed , more precisely, she remained needed only as a personnel sieve - after all, theoretically, it was possible to democratically block on initial stage promotion of the unworthy.

But after the war, the party lost its significance. In the late 40s and early 50s, everyone seemed to understand this. The words "Politburo", "Central Committee", "General Secretary" seemed to have been completely banished from the lexicon. Looking ahead, I note that all decisions on the "Beria case" were made, judging by the reports, by the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Supreme Council.

The course of the conspiracy against Beria is a separate issue, but it is obvious that two currents have collided. One is Beria's approach: the party is a political instrument that requires supervision and should not deal with economic issues that should be the responsibility of the Council of Ministers.

As we now know, the other line won then. Now it is clear that the duplication of the Council of Ministers by the industrial departments of the Central Committee, which took shape in the 50-80s, was a perversion, the result of the victory of the party nomenklatura.

The leaders of the opposing Beria line were Malenkov and Khrushchev, and Khrushchev was not very significant - he was the chief party personnel officer, like Yezhov until 1937.

But after Stalin's death, the situation escalated. There were two key events, the main pain points.

Firstly, among the cases implemented by the new Minister of Internal Affairs, the main thing was not to stop the "case of the Kremlin doctors." Especially not the amnesty of 1953. Such decisions - political ones - are not made at the level of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, this is a decision of the political leadership of the state, the Ministry of Internal Affairs is only an executor.

The main event was a meeting of the leadership of the ministry, at which Beria gave his vision of the tasks of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Among these tasks was special control for the cleanliness of the ranks of party organs - a task somewhat forgotten by those years.

The point is not that repressions after the war by that time had become less, although a kind of "era of mercy" had come - the death penalty was abolished until 1953. For some crimes, they were still shot, but to control the party elite, ... the party elite itself was used! It is hard to believe, but an investigative unit was created in the party apparatus to investigate the "Leningrad case", and even in Matrosskaya Tishina ... a party isolation ward was allocated! G.M. Malenkov conducted the case. So the NKVD not only had nothing to do with this case, it was not allowed.

But back to 1953. Information about the meeting of the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was reported to the party bosses. In particular, Khrushchev was reported by his man - General Strokach. This figure has managed to win the sincere hatred of both the Western Ukrainian rebels and, oddly enough, the border guards. During the war, he had the idea to send "border regiments" to the German rear, which were immediately destroyed by the Germans in open battle. Thousands of the best people died.

Information about possible state control over the party elite caused a unanimous reaction. It's hard to say exactly how it happened. But the indictment in the Beria case said specifically: "an attempt to put the Ministry of Internal Affairs over the Party."

Thus began an almost open confrontation. Khrushchev swore before the Central Committee that there would be no control by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

But with all his mind, L.P. Beria was completely unprepared for the fact that, without any objective prerequisites, he would be overthrown and shot. Why he did not understand the intentions of his friends is still a mystery.

In fact, in 1953 there was a coup d'état in favor of those circles that wanted to lead the country in their own interests, without being responsible in any way for the results of their rule.

By 1953, after the assassination of Beria, there were also serious decisions regulating the activities of law enforcement agencies. Since then, when applying for a job, employees of the "organs" were informed that persons in vacated party positions were not available to them. They cannot be recruited, they cannot be tracked.

It was then that vile personalities like A. Yakovlev "flopped the chip."

Frankly, I believe that such a development of events was generated by Stalin's system. For its time, it was a strong, flexible weapon - the layer of managers was tightly controlled by the top leadership, monolithic and had no other goals than the country's prosperity. What is the program of action of the then leadership, what they wanted - it is not known exactly now. It is precisely the goals, tasks, and program of action of the Stalinist leadership of the 1930s and 1940s that are the most carefully concealed secret of "democratic historians."

But the seed of destruction was also hidden in this system. With the disappearance of the leading and guiding force, the layer of managers begins to live its own life, solve its problems, following the problems of the state and society only in so far.

Beria's fault was that this man, having no personal interests, wanted to do something unprecedented, wanted to express himself in projects for the future and could force others to act not for personal, but for public purposes.

His enemies are tired of working for the future. They wanted to live "here and now" and not for others, but for themselves.

It was difficult to deceive such a person, but the conspirators succeeded for one simple reason. In the conspiracy against Beria, they relied on the full support of their class, which wanted to lead - and led - the country and the people straight into the 90s.

Awards
Order of the Red Banner of the Georgian SSR (1923)
Order of the Red Banner (1924)
Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Georgian SSR (1931)
Order of Lenin (1935, 1943, 1945 and 1949)
Order of the Red Banner (1942 and 1944)
Order of the Republic (Tannu-Tuva) (1943)
Hero of Socialist Labor (1943)
Order of Sukhbaatar (1949)
Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Armenian SSR (1949)
Order of Suvorov, 1st class (1949)
Stalin Prize, 1st class (1949)
Certificate of "Honorary Citizen of the Soviet Union" (1949)

Vladimir Vysotsky's "Song of Rumors" mentions a neighbor who was taken away by vigilant authorities "because he looks like Beria." For the authorities themselves, the very mention of Beria in the 70s did not look that seditious - unacceptable under any weather. As much as this man ascended under Stalin and after his death, so much they tried to erase him from our history in the following decades - as an enemy of the people, an immoral type and, in general, the bearer of all possible sins ...

Biography and activities of Lavrenty Beria

There is not so much reliable information in connection with the personality of Lavrenty Pavlovich - some of the archives are still classified. Georgian by nationality. Place of birth (17 (29). 03. 1899) - the village of Merkhiuli. Mother belonged to an ancient princely family, but lived in poverty. To her, a widow with two children, the same poor man, three years younger, wooed her.

She bore him three more children. Only the youngest, Lavrenty, grew up healthy, inquisitive and mobile. When the child was seven years old, the parents divided the property and the mother and son moved to Sukhumi. She never returned to her husband. The boy was sent to study. He graduated from the Sukhumi School in 1915 with honors.

However, the fact that Beria wrote illiterately throughout his conscious life suggests that his craving for new knowledge is only part of the myth, moreover, created by himself. He even managed to earn extra money with lessons French without knowing a word of French. Beria was introduced into the bowels of the nationalist Musavat Party, which ruled Azerbaijan.

Such was the powerful debut of the future intelligence officer. It was introduced there on the instructions of the Bolshevik Party and personally A. Mikoyan. The latter, however, categorically denied this fact. Most likely, Beria worked exclusively for himself - according to the principle of a weather vane, wanting to always be in the camp of the winners.

Beria spent two months in prison. Upon leaving, he proposed to the daughter of a cellmate, Nina Gegechkori, with whom he remained until the end of his life. Beria graduated from the Baku Mechanics and Construction School and did it by vocation. It cannot be ruled out that a first-class builder died in it. Politics took him into their arms imperiously and forever. In the 1920s, Beria served in the Georgian Cheka, and so far nothing foreshadows his rapid career rise.

Acquaintance with Stalin takes place in the early 1920s. Stalin appreciated the new acquaintance and took note of him. That is why in the 30s. Beria is already First Secretary of the Communist Central Committee in Georgia. It was no longer a purely Chekist, but rather a party and economic position. Beria accepted Georgia as impoverished, and by 1940 made it the richest republic in the USSR. And he spared no expense for this. Beria especially strongly pushed oil production forward. Giants of heavy industry were erected.

In 1939, the first official biography of Beria was published. A giant granite statue was erected in his homeland. There was a real cult of personality. IN last years work in Georgia, Beria not only destroyed the imaginary enemies of the people, but also finished off his personal potential competitors and enemies. He oversaw the conduct of mass repressions throughout the Transcaucasus. Stalin soon transferred Beria to Moscow and promoted him.

In August 1938, Beria was appointed first deputy to N. Yezhov, who had already fallen out of favor, and was promoted to first-rank state security commissar. Beria dealt with Yezhov on Stalin's orders. Until the end of the war, Beria headed the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, updating its apparatus. As part of the "renewal", writer I.Babel and journalist M.Koltsov were shot. Under Beria, repressions began to hit those who carried them out - i.e. by the NKVD officers themselves. Beria personally liked to be present at the torture of prisoners.

The time when Beria replaced Yezhov became a kind of "thaw" - about 200,000 people were released from prisons and camps. There were far fewer shootings. However, further arrests continued. The repressive machine did not slow down. Beria also carried out mass deportations of "small" peoples.

During the war, Beria organized a department in which the arrested scientists worked. With the light hand of Solzhenitsyn, they were dubbed "sharashkas." Since 1945, Beria has been supervising the production and testing of atomic weapons. The atomic bomb was tested in 1949, the hydrogen bomb in 1953. Four months after Stalin's death, Beria was arrested and six months later he was shot.

What happened in this period in the government is a complete puzzle. One thing is clear - there was a deadly struggle for power. Everyone, without exception, was afraid of Beria like fire. And everyone wanted to eliminate him - including the physical one. According to the version of Beria's son, Sergo, his father was shot dead on 12/23/1953. during the storming of the mansion, and everything else - the process and interrogations - is just a skillful staging.

• Someone Sergei Kremlev published a so-called. "Beria's diaries" for the period from 1937 to 1953. Most serious historians recognize them as a fake, albeit a very plausible one. Numerous grammatical errors of the author of the diaries speak in favor of the version of authenticity.

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 concerning 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. Monologues 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 strove for 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 could not do without. 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 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 a 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, as a rule, 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 the painful passion of searching for Jewish connections among members of the Politburo took over Stalin, 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. It is interesting that 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

First practical experience LP acquired business communication with Jews during the period of 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 in the least. 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 more times 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 to set up the mechanism of the emerging "atomic espionage", for 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 curator of the Atomic Project from the Government of the USSR, and LP became his deputy, but in reality, specific organizational and personnel management of the project, including intelligence issues, was assigned to LP.

And work on the bomb began with interesting "Jewish" collisions, in which the pure 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 with immediate family ( sister) Abroad. His father at the beginning of the century was a prominent member of the cadet party, 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 at the same time a specialist in nuclear physics, chemistry and physics. 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" 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 atomic 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, along 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, outwardly and inwardly 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 tough 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 pro-Arab orientation of the USSR 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. How cynically write some modern Russian historians, the government was supposed to launch a “mobilization project”, which would designate a new internal enemy, which would allow the “crackdown” to begin to be tightened. 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 was branded in the message 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 editorial of Pravda, 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, in 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 conceived 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, 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 former minister MGB of Belarus L.Tsanava. 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 is 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 aloud. This could not be said by the 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, SA told me, and later wrote in his book, that most of the scientists who knew LPpo joint work, after his arrest, no evidence discrediting him was given.

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 was not shy about showing outright rudeness at times, 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.