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Case of Beria

"The Case of Beria" - a criminal case initiated in 1953 against Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria after his removal from all party and government posts. As a result of this case, he was shot in December 1953 by a court verdict and has not been rehabilitated to this day, although most of the charges are disputed by historians and lawyers. The materials of Beria's criminal case are classified, but, despite this, significant fragments of this case were published in the Russian and foreign press.
In 1953, after the death of Stalin, L.P. Beria became one of the main contenders for power in the country. In fact, the country was headed by the Malenkov-Beria tandem: at the same time, the first person, Chairman of the Council of Ministers Malenkov, as noted by many researchers, for example, Roy and Zhores Medvedev, did not possess the necessary qualities of a leader (and was soon pushed out of power by Khrushchev).
The ambitious Beria, heading the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, started a number of reforms. Among them, which received further successful continuation:
- termination of the case of doctors and the Mingrelian case;
- mass amnesty of prisoners;
- prohibition of "measures of physical influence" (torture) during interrogations (April 4, 1953);
- the first rehabilitation of those illegally repressed under Stalin;
- restriction of the rights of the Special Meeting under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR (it was finally abolished on September 1, 1953);
- transfer from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to other ministries of construction headquarters;
- termination of a number of large-scale construction projects, including hydrotechnical ones.
Beria's proposals seemed too radical for colleagues in the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU:
- on curtailing the construction of socialism in the GDR and the unification of Germany;
- on the liquidation of party control over economic activity;
- on the appointment of representatives of indigenous nationalities to the posts of leaders of the Soviet republics;
- on the creation of national army units;
- on the ban on demonstrators to wear portraits of the leaders of the party and government (the corresponding decree was issued on May 9, 1953);
- on the abolition of passport restrictions.
All this led to a conspiracy against Beria and his removal from power.
Deposition and arrest of Beria
On June 26, 1953, it was supposed to discuss the case of the former Minister of State Security S. Ignatiev at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU. However, it became known that the day before he fell ill and could not attend the meeting. The meeting was devoted to criticism of Beria, which the members of the Presidium had agreed on in advance. According to Molotov's memoirs, the discussion went on for two and a half hours. After the meeting, the criticized Beria was arrested. According to Khrushchev, Beria was arrested by Zhukov, but Zhukov himself does not confirm this version. He was arrested, apparently, by General Moskalenko and the people accompanying him, whom the commandant of the Kremlin let through, having been instructed by Malenkov and Khrushchev. Then Beria was transferred to the Moscow garrison guardhouse "Aleshinsky barracks". The arrest of Beria was accompanied by an army cover: the Kantemirovskaya and Tamanskaya divisions were raised and sent to Moscow on alarm. On June 27, Beria was transferred to the bunker of the headquarters of the Moscow Military District.
Main allegations
On the day of Beria's arrest on June 26, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR "On Beria's criminal anti-state actions" was issued signed by Voroshilov and Secretary Pegov. The decree stated "the criminal anti-state actions of L.P. Beria, aimed at undermining the Soviet state in the interests of foreign capital." By this decree, Beria was deprived of the powers of a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, removed from the post of Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and from the post of Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, and also deprived of all titles and awards. The last paragraph of the decree decided to immediately transfer the Beria case to the Supreme Court of the USSR (that is, even before the investigation).
On July 2, 1953, at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Beria was formally removed from the Presidium and the Central Committee and expelled from the CPSU. The main accusation was that Beria allegedly tried to put the organs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs over the party. The speeches were accompanied by the epithets "bourgeois degenerate", "scum", "adventurer", "scoundrel", "scoundrel", "corrupt skin", "fascist conspirator" (Kaganovich), "pygmy, bug" (Malenkov), etc. Only then information about the arrest and removal of Beria appeared in Soviet newspapers and caused a great public outcry.
The decision of the Prosecutor General Rudenko of July 3, 1953 on the detention of Beria states that he created an anti-Soviet conspiracy to seize power, wanted to put the Ministry of Internal Affairs over the party and the government, planned the elimination of the Soviet system and the restoration of capitalism. The charge was brought under articles 58-1 "b" and 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR.
On July 7, 1953, following the results of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, a resolution "On the criminal anti-party and anti-state actions of Beria" was adopted. An information report about the plenum was published in the Pravda newspaper on July 10, and then in all other newspapers. So Beria was recognized as a criminal before any investigation and trial.
Portraits of Beria were removed from everywhere, and subscribers of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia received a recommendation to remove pages 22 and 23 from volume 2, which contained Beria's biography.
The accused
Together with Beria, people from his inner circle were arrested and accused as accomplices: V. Merkulov (Minister of State Control of the USSR), B. Kobulov (Beria's first deputy in the Ministry of Internal Affairs), S. Goglidze (head of military counterintelligence), V. Dekanozov (Minister of Internal Affairs of Georgia), P. Meshik (Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine) and L. Vlodzimirsky (head of the investigative unit for especially important cases).
The son and wife of Beria were also arrested and charged under article 58 (they were released in 1954).
In parallel with the Beria case, many other cases were conducted against employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, hundreds of people were fired.

The course of the investigation
The investigation was entrusted to the newly appointed Prosecutor General Rudenko.
At the very first interrogation on July 8, Beria was accused of anti-Soviet conspiratorial activity, he did not admit his guilt. Experienced investigators, according to lawyer Andrei Sukhomlinov, author of a book on the Beria case, understood that the main charge would not be mythical anti-Soviet activities, but specific malfeasance, and therefore tried to prove as many facts characterizing them as possible.
An important fact in the Beria case was the existence of Professor Mairanovsky's toxicological laboratory, where poisons were tested on people (Mairanovsky himself was arrested back in 1951 in the JAC case).
Investigators paid much attention to the period of Beria's activities in leadership positions in Georgia and the Transcaucasus. Beria was blamed for the repressions that took place there in 1937, one of the organizers of which was Beria.
Also, Beria and his entourage were charged with the murder of the Plenipotentiary of the USSR in China I. T. Bovkun-Lugants with his wife in 1939, the execution without trial or investigation in 1940 of the wife of Marshal G. I. Kulik - Simonich-Kulik K. I., the execution of the group of 25 people imprisoned in 1941 in Kuibyshev, Saratov and Tambov.
Contrary to rumors mass rapes Beria, the file contains only one statement about rape, which Beria allegedly carried out in 1949. The application came from a constant mistress Beria Drozdova, from whom he had an illegitimate child. Apparently, this statement was written under pressure from the investigation.

Trial
Beria and his associates were tried in December 1953 by a special judicial presence. The trial took place without the participation of the prosecutor and lawyers, according to a special procedure developed back in 1934 in connection with the murder of Kirov. In accordance with this procedure, cassation appeals and petitions for pardon were not allowed, the sentence to highest measure punishment was carried out immediately.
Contrary to the rules, eight people participated in the composition of the court presence at once, and not three. Moreover, out of eight judges, only two were professional judges: E. L. Zeidin and L. A. Gromov, the rest in a sense represented the public: the army was represented by commanders I. S. Konev and K. S. Moskalenko, the party - N. A. Mikhailov, trade unions - N. M. Shvernik, Ministry of Internal Affairs - K. F. Lunev, Georgia - M. I. Kuchava.
The trial began on December 18. The indictment was read out, the accused were heard, then the witnesses.
Beria was the last of the accused to be interrogated. He pleaded not guilty. Regarding the repressions of 1937, he said that at that time a wave of struggle against the "Right-Trotskyist underground" took place in the country, and this led to "great excesses, perversions and outright crimes."
According to Beria, he was not a traitor and conspirator, he was not going to seize power. Regarding the murders, in particular of Bovkun-Luganets and his wife, Beria said that there was an "indication of authority" (it is not clear who is meant - Stalin, Molotov, the government or the Politburo).
In his last word Beria pleaded guilty that he hid his service in the Musatist counterintelligence, but stated that while serving there, he did nothing harmful. Beria also admitted "moral decay" and his connection with Drozdova, but did not admit the fact of rape. Beria confirmed his responsibility for the "excesses" in 1937-1938, explaining them by the situation at that time. Beria did not recognize the counter-revolutionary accusations. He also denied the accusation of trying to disorganize the defense of the Caucasus during the war.
On December 23, 1953, the guilty verdict was read out.
All the defendants were found guilty of numerous crimes and called "a group of conspirators" who planned to seize power, eliminate the Soviet system and restore capitalism.
Of the specific charges in the verdict, the following are noted:
- the murder of the old Bolshevik M.S. Kedrov;
- extortion from arrested false testimonies under torture in the cases of Belakhov, Slezberg and others;
- execution of 25 prisoners in 1941;
- inhuman tests of poisons on prisoners sentenced to capital punishment;
- arrest, accusation of crimes and execution of relatives of Sergo Ordzhonikidze.
A number of episodes are blamed on Beria and are qualified as treason:
- Beria's service in the Musavat counterintelligence in Azerbaijan in 1919;
- connection in 1920 with the Okhrana of the Menshevik Georgian government;
- an attempt to establish contact with Hitler in 1941 through the Bulgarian ambassador Stamenov and to cede to Germany a significant part of the territory of the USSR in order to conclude a peace agreement;
- an attempt to open the passes through the Main Caucasian Range to the enemy in 1942;
- an attempt in May-June 1953 to establish a personal secret connection with Tito-Ranković in Yugoslavia.
Beria was charged with "cohabitation with numerous women, including those associated with foreign intelligence", as well as the rape on May 7, 1949 of a 16-year-old schoolgirl V. S. Drozdova.
The episodes with the murder of Bovkun-Luganets and his wife, as well as with the kidnapping and execution of the wife of Marshal Kulik, for some reason, were not included in the verdict.
All defendants were sentenced to death with confiscation of property. 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. Short message about the trial of Beria and the people of his entourage appeared in the Soviet press.
Currently, the vast majority of qualified lawyers, including the former chief military prosecutor Katusev, believe that accusing Beria of treason (Article 58-1 "b" of the then Criminal Code of the RSFSR) in the form of espionage is absurd. The maximum that could be charged with Beria and other participants in that process is malfeasance.

Assessments of the Beria case
Abroad in 1979 came out small book"Memo to the Russian Man", the author of which General Yu. M. Larikov (under the pseudonym V. Ushkuynik), among other things, welcomed the murder of Beria, positioning him as a Jewish conspirator. The book was first published in Russia in 1993.
Opposition politician and publicist Yuri Mukhin, in his discussion book "The Murder of Stalin and Beria", evaluates the removal and destruction of Beria as a victory for the Khrushchev-led party apparatus in the struggle for power. According to Mukhin's interpretation, late Stalin, as well as Beria, in 1953 tried to limit the power of the party apparatus and the CPSU in the country (an active supporter of limiting the power of the party was, according to the historian Yuri Zhukov and the Presovmin of the USSR, Malenkov, who headed the country immediately after Stalin's death), but this line in ended up crashing.

Denial of rehabilitation
Consideration of the criminal case of Beria and others was held on May 29, 2000 in the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in an open court session. The actions of "Beria's accomplices" - Dekanozov, Meshik and Vlodzimirsky were reclassified and regarded as "abuse of power in the presence of particularly aggravating circumstances", and the sentence was commuted to 25 years in prison for each. The sentence against Beria, Merkulov, Goglidze and Kobulov was left unchanged, and they were not recognized as victims of political repression, so that all of them are still formally considered spies and traitors to the motherland.
It is assumed that the refusal to rehabilitate Beria, Merkulov and Kobulov is due to the fact that they are officially considered one of the perpetrators.

The death of the leader of a world power always entails an inevitable struggle for power, even if an official successor has been appointed. The actions of the environment I.V. Stalin, who unexpectedly left in the spring of 1953, did not constitute an exception to the rule. Party and military functionaries, rightly fearing possible reprisals from L.P. Beria, accused him of treason, and then shot him. The only question is when it was done: illegally at the time of arrest or after the trial with all legal formalities?

Collusion of like-minded people

The fact that the party elite, tired of the constant purges of its ranks during the life of I.V. Stalin, will try to eliminate L.P. Beria, who concentrated in his hands the levers of control of the secret services of the USSR, did not cause doubts in anyone. The unfolding struggle for power did not become a revelation for Lavrenty Pavlovich himself. True, he planned to emerge from it as a winner, but he miscalculated. He was betrayed even by his closest friend and colleague G.M. Malenkov, who was immediately appointed to the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. At the same time, it should be noted that L.P. Beria was largely ruined by excessive self-confidence. At his disposal was not only the entire repressive apparatus of the country, but also a huge package of documents compromising all the leaders of the country. He knew perfectly well all the hidden pages of their biographies, which they themselves sincerely would like to forget.

However, as stated folk wisdom Don't corner your cat. The leaders of the country and the party, who remained after the death of I.V., felt themselves in the position of just such a cat. Stalin one on one with Lavrenty Pavlovich. However, they did not have a real force that could be relied upon in the confrontation with their main competitor for power in the country. In this situation, your significant role played by the military, who recently emerged victorious from the bloodiest war of mankind. The combat generals knew how to act quickly and decisively, besides, they had an army behind them, and the authority of G.K. Zhukov was indisputable.

Soon at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU (July 2-7, 1953), taking advantage of the absence of L.P. Beria, party bosses formulated the charges that they planned to bring against their victim. Beria was going to be blamed for: creating a nervous atmosphere in the circle of people surrounding I.V. Stalin; spying on members of the state and party elite; criminal connections with Josip Broz Tito; the desire to organize a united state of bourgeois Germany, as well as work in his youth for the exploration of the capitalist countries - Azerbaijan and Georgia.

The execution of Beria: the official version

When the fate of Beria was finally decided, the question arose of how to implement the plan. Further options for the development of events differ significantly. According to the official version, L.P. Beria was arrested at a meeting of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on July 26, 1953 by a group of military men led by G.K. Zhukov. True, the participants of this event subsequently described its details in different ways. However, minor inconsistencies in their words can be explained by the desire of each to attribute to himself the main merit in this matter. After the arrest of L.P. Beria was placed in the guardhouse of the headquarters bunker of the Moscow Military District. A closed trial and execution of L.P. took place here. Beria on December 23, 1953.

The version of the conspiracy theorists: a double was tried

The most surprising thing is that, according to a number of researchers, it was not L.P. who was arrested. Beria, and his double, specially prepared for similar cases. It was he who was shot on December 23, 1953. Moreover, this hypothesis arose almost immediately after the events described and was quite popular in the corridors of power of those years. Firstly, at the trial, for some reason, Beria was not recognized by his former associates, who were not involved in a conspiracy against him. Secondly, historians have not found an act on the cremation of the body of L.P. Beria, while similar documents about the cremation of his closest deputies who were shot on the same day have been preserved. Thirdly, the memoirs of contemporaries are known, who claim that, according to them, on the day of the arrest, automatic shots were heard in Beria’s mansion, and then a body covered with a tarpaulin was carried out of the building, which, judging by the outlines, could belong to Beria. The main supporter of this version is the son of L.P. Beria - Sergo.

How it all happened in reality, we will most likely never know. Intelligence agencies know how to keep their secrets.

January 1955 was the beginning of the "black" mythologisation Soviet history and the peak of Nikita Khrushchev's struggle for sole power.
Its main competitor is Lavrenty BERIA was already accused of high treason, shot and became such a scapegoat that the Soviet Encyclopedic Dictionary soon even stopped mentioning his name. Although in the famous Khrushchev report on the personality cult of STALIN, it 61 times named along with the name of the leader. Many researchers were convinced that Nikita Sergeevich not only slandered prominent statesmen, but also contributed to their murder. But they could not scientifically prove their versions. Recently discovered archival materials have allowed historian Alexander DUGIN for the first time to document Khrushchev's lies.
- Alexander Nikolaevich, what new did you find in the archive?
- I went to the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History to see what documents on the history of the 1950s were transferred to RGASPI from the archive of the President of the Russian Federation. And I discovered a lot of interesting things. First, confirmation of the words of Valentin Fadin - he prepared analytical notes for all the leaders of the country from Stalin to Yeltsin. Wrote Khrushchev's foreign policy speeches. And in 2011 he ventured to publicly declare that Khrushchev, wanting to withdraw archival documents about his participation in the repressions, ordered the creation of a group of 200 special officers not only to seize original documents, but also to make fakes. Secondly, I discovered these fakes in the "Beria case" and realized that among the forgers there were honest officers who left "beacons" for the descendants to recognize the fake.
- What are the "beacons"?
- There are several of them.

In any case of high treason, of which Khrushchev accused Beria, according to the then Code of Criminal Procedure, there must be photographs of the defendants in the case, their fingerprints, protocols of confrontations. But in materials "Beria case" there is not a single photograph of him, not a single fingerprint, not a single protocol of confrontations with any of his "accomplices".
In addition, there is not a single signature of Beria himself on the interrogation protocols, nor is there a single signature of the investigator of the Prosecutor General's Office for important cases Tsaregradsky. There is only the signature of the major of the administrative service Yuryeva. And on many protocols of interrogation of Beria there are no obligatory clerical "litters": the initials of the typist-performer, the number of printed copies, mailing addressees, etc. But all of the above is just external signs fakes.
- And there were internal signs forgery?
- Certainly. On one of the handwritten "originals" of Beria's letters, allegedly written by him when he was already under arrest, there is the date "July 28, 1953", literally screaming "do not believe it!". You can find it at the link: RGASPI, f.17, op.171, d. 463, l.163.
- What exactly "do not believe"?
- The letter is addressed to "To the Central Committee of the CPSU, Comrade Malenkov." In it, Beria speaks of his devotion to the cause of the party and asks his comrades-in-arms - Malenkov, Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Kaganovich, Bulganin and Mikoyan: "let them forgive if anything went wrong during these fifteen years of great and intense joint work."
And wishes them great success in the struggle for the cause of Lenin-Stalin. In tone, it resembles a note to friends and colleagues written by a person who is going on vacation or who decides to lie down at home for a couple of days because of a cold. And it begins like this: “I was sure that from that big criticism at the Presidium I would draw all the necessary conclusions for myself and be useful in the team. But the Central Committee decided otherwise, I think that the Central Committee did the right thing. After reading this, I was almost speechless!
The fact is that neither before nor after the death of Stalin, Beria was not subjected to any “big criticism” at any meetings of the Presidium. The first meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, at which serious accusations of anti-state and anti-party actions of Beria suddenly sounded, as you know, took place on June 29, 1953. That is, the day after this letter from Beria's cell.
- Are you a little speechless because of the date?
- Yes. If the letter had been genuine, it would have dismissed the version of a number of my colleagues, which I shared one hundred percent. The fact that Beria was killed at noon on June 26, 1953 in his mansion on Kachalova Street, now Malaya Nikitskaya.
- Killed by whom?
- A special group sent to Lavrenty Pavlovich by order of Khrushchev by Beria's first deputy for the Ministry of State Security, Sergei Kruglov. Lieutenant General Andrey Vedenin, the former commander of the rifle corps, who became the commandant of the Kremlin in September 1953, told how his unit received an order to carry out Operation Mansion to eliminate Beria. And how it was performed. Then the corpse of Beria was taken to the Kremlin and presented to the members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU. After such a “face-to-face confrontation”, the Khrushchevites could, without fear, at the Plenum of the Central Committee on July 2-7, 1953, accuse Beria of all mortal sins. Win five months to clean up the archives to destroy the traces of their crimes.
And inspire the people with the official version of Khrushchev: they say, former minister Internal Affairs of the USSR, ex-Deputy Chairman of the State Defense Committee and a member of the Stalinist Politburo was shot for treason on December 23, 1953 by court order. And with Beria alive, Khrushchev could not have concealed the poisoning of Stalin and his complicity in this crime, which I have already spoken about in detail. Let me remind you, in my opinion, in this double murder - first of Stalin, then of Beria - two people were most interested in this. The first was the Minister of State Security in 1951-1953, Semyon Ignatiev, to whom Stalin had serious questions in connection with a number of scandalous trials initiated by this man. Including in the "case of doctors" and the murder of Kirov. On March 2, 1953, the Presidium of the Central Committee was already supposed to consider the issue of removing Ignatiev from office. The second interested person is Khrushchev, the curator of Ignatiev, who since 1946 held the most important post of deputy head of the Directorate of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for checking party bodies and carried out all repressions against the leadership of the party and the state. In the event of the failure of his ward, Khrushchev would also have thundered to the fanfare. At 10:30 p.m. on March 1, Stalin was found unconscious on the floor. After his death, Beria went through Stalin's archive and, studying the history of his illness, could suspect the named couple.
There was a doppelgänger in jail.

What exactly was Stalin poisoned with?
- Commenting on the medical data published in the recently published book by Sigismund Mironin “How Stalin was poisoned. Forensic medical examination”, the chief toxicologist of Moscow, Honored Doctor of Russia Yuri Ostapenko said that the leader was probably poisoned with pills with an increased dose of a drug that reduces blood clotting. Since 1940, dicoumarin has been the first and main representative of anticoagulants; in case of vascular problems and thrombosis, it was recommended to use it in small doses constantly, as aspirin is today. However, due to its high toxicity, it was withdrawn from use at the end of the last century. Prophylactically drink it once a day, in the afternoon. The laboratories of the NKVD-NKGB-MGB did not cost anything to make tablets with an increased dosage and put them in regular packaging. After all, Ignatiev himself oversaw Stalin's personal protection.
- But someone had to see Beria alive in the cell to confirm the version that he spent five months in prison, waiting to be shot?
- He had several doppelgangers. And notice in open access there are funds of Molotov, Zhdanov and a number of other recipients of Beria's "letters", but there are still no funds of Khrushchev and Beria. And in the official collection "The Politburo and the Case of Beria" there is not a single documented fact that could be qualified as treason. But I managed to find important document from the personal archive of Stalin. He confirms that Khrushchev, accusing Beria of voluntary service in the Musavat counterintelligence, which fought against the labor movement in Azerbaijan, knew perfectly well that he was blatantly lying. This document, dated November 20, 1920, reports that Beria was introduced into the counterintelligence censorship department on the instructions of the Azerbaijani Communist Party. From the archive of Stalin, he was requested last time in July 1953, when the "Beria case" was fabricated. But for obvious reasons, he was not attached to it.
The body was filled with concrete.

- Have you made sure that the “letters from the cell” are fake?
- Yes sir. I took them to an independent handwriting examination. Mikhail Strakhov, the chief specialist of RGASPI, helped me find the original handwriting of Beria. To keep everything clean and honest, I chose lines from which it is impossible to understand who is writing to whom, and paid for the examination out of my own pocket so that no one could influence its result. According to the experts, the samples presented by me are written different people. This conclusion confirms that the massacre of Beria occurred due to the fact that, having taken the post of head of the combined Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security, he was looking for an answer to the question of the true causes of Stalin's death. Stay alive, about any revelations of the cult of personality of Joseph Vissarionovich in the midst of " cold war' The speech would not go. And in 1961, when Norwegian biochemists analyzed Napoleon's hair on the order of the French government and found out that he was poisoned with arsenic, no one would urgently convene an extraordinary congress of the CPSU. And he did not raise the unexpected question of removing Stalin's body from the Mausoleum and its concreting. Khrushchev covered his tracks!
- Why do you care so deeply about this whole story?
- I decided to do this, because I can’t calmly watch how the heroes of the Frikopedia like Rezun-Suvorov and Radzinsky try to erase all the positive moments of Soviet history from people’s memory, painting it only in dirty tones. And a person, especially a young one, who despises the past of his country, cannot respect his present and build his future in a state where his father, grandfather, great-grandfather are presented as cattle.

The Murder of Beria, or False Interrogations of Lavrenty Pavlovich Sokolov Boris Vadimovich

How Beria was killed

How Beria was killed

After the arrest of Beria, the heirs of Stalin faced the problem of what to do with Lavrenty Pavlovich. It was necessary to convince both the nomenklatura public and the broad masses of the people why suddenly a loyal ally of Stalin suddenly turned into an enemy of the people. For a variety of reasons, accusing Beria of holding illegal mass political repression was inappropriate. Firstly, Malenkov, Khrushchev and company are not yet ripe to condemn Stalinist repressions, if only because all the winners of Beria had the most direct relation to them. Just the special activity of Beria, who insisted on making public the falsification of the "doctors' case", the "Leningrad case", the murder of Mikhoels, debunking Stalin's "personality cult", etc., became one of the reasons for the emergence of a conspiracy against him.

Secondly, in Great Terror 1937-1938, directly affecting the party elite (his condemnation would have caused the greatest approval in the nomenklatura environment), Beria played a far from leading role. On the contrary, it was he who, at the behest of Stalin, stopped the “Yezhovshchina” and even rehabilitated some of those arrested. All this was well known in the Party and the people. As for the post-war repressions, Beria was not directly involved in them at all, only approving some of the arrests and sentences, as a member of the Politburo. But he did this together with the same Khrushchev, Malenkov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov and other colleagues, so bringing charges of this kind against him seemed futile.

Most of the repressions of 1939-1945, which, including the largest of them - the execution of 22 thousand people. Polish officers and civilians in Katyn and other places, to which Lavrenty Pavlovich had the most direct relation, remained in 1953 in the strictest confidence and could not be made public in any way.

It remained to come up with some kind of conspiracy led by Beria, and look for some of his intrigues as Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers. And, of course, it was useful to try to make a foreign spy out of him. At worst, one could try to accuse Lavrenty Pavlovich of moral decay, that is, of depraved acts with persons of the opposite sex. True, here some of Beria's colleagues on the Presidium of the Central Committee, in particular Bulganin, were themselves not without sin. But since no one would risk bringing such accusations against them for the time being, one could safely stigmatize Lavrenty Pavlovich for amoral behavior. This option seemed win-win, since those who overthrew Beria from the Olympus of power had at their disposal lists of Beria's mistresses and information about his Don Juan adventures, which had been provided to Abakumov by his adjutant, Colonel Sarkisov.

The only surviving list, maintained by the former head of the secretariat Beria Sarkisov, contained the names of 39 women. Later, rumor increased this number to 500 and even 800, making Lavrenty Pavlovich a real sexual giant. Although, probably, women really liked Beria, and his party comrades, zealots of high morality, were gladly accused of it. At the July plenum, Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU N.N. Shatalin stated: "The Presidium Central Committee instructed me in Beria's office in the Council of Ministers to find documents related to the activities of the former First Main Directorate ... Looking through the contents of safes and other places where documents can be stored, we came across things and objects unusual for office offices. Along with the documents, we found in large quantities all sorts of ... attributes of a women's toilet. Here are brief excerpts from the inventory: ladies' tracksuits, ladies' blouses, ladies' stockings of foreign companies - 11 pairs, women's silk combinations - 11 pairs, ladies' silk tights - 7 pairs, cuts for ladies' dresses - 5 cuts, women's silk scarves, handkerchiefs of foreign firms, silk children's combinations, some more children's things, etc., a whole list in 29 serial numbers. We have found numerous letters from women of the most intimate, I would say vulgar content. We also found a large number of objects of a male libertine. These things speak for themselves, and, as they say, no comment is required.

The chaste Nikolai Nikolaevich did not, however, specify what kind of things from the libertine's arsenal that did not require comments were found in Beria's office. One can only assume that their list was not much different from the list of devices for debauchery found during a search of the first People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR G.G. Berries (there, however, the list consisted of several hundred names - in love for luxury, the first People's Commissar of Internal Affairs significantly surpassed Lavrenty Pavlovich): a collection of pornographic photographs - 3904 pieces; 11 pornographic films; a collection of smoking pipes and mouthpieces (ivory, amber, etc.), most of them pornographic - 165; rubber artificial penis - 1. By the way, Yagoda equipped a home porno cinema in his country house. Maybe Lavrenty Pavlovich had something similar? Unfortunately, the protocol of what was seized from him after his arrest has not yet been published, and so far it is possible to judge what was found only by Shatalin's speech.

He also reported curious details about the amorous adventures of Lavrenty Pavlovich: “... To make this side of the matter more convincing, I will read the testimony of a certain Sarkisov, who worked for Beria for 18 years. Recent times he was head of security.

Here is what this same Sarkisov showed: “I know of Beria’s numerous connections with all kinds of random women. I know that through a certain citizen S. (allow me not to mention the last name), Beria was acquainted (the last name is mentioned in the testimony) with a friend of S., whose last name I do not remember. She worked in the House of Models, later I heard from Abakumov that this friend S. was the wife of a military attaché. Later, while in Beria's office, I heard Beria call Abakumov on the phone and ask why this woman had not yet been imprisoned. That is, at first he lived, and then he asks why they don’t put him in prison (this is pure fiction, which makes it possible to suspect that Sarkisov wrote his “honest testimony” under the dictation of the investigators. Viktor Semenovich and Lavrenty Pavlovich did not like each other, to put it mildly, but To put it simply, they could not stand each other. Beria was not such a fool to demand, but what to demand, even to ask Abakumov to imprison his annoying mistress, who, moreover, during the investigation could tell a lot of different things, which compromised him, Beria. Especially since Abakumov Beria did not obey, but obeyed only Stalin himself. B.S.)?

In addition, I know that Beria cohabited with Maya, a student at the Institute of Foreign Languages. Subsequently, she became pregnant from Beria, she had an abortion. Beria also cohabited with an 18-20-year-old girl Lyalya. From Beria, she had a child with whom she lived in the country (obviously, the daughter of this Lyalya was the mentioned Sergo Beria, the future wife of the son of Politburo member V.V. Grishin. I note that when editing the text of the transcript, Shatalin specified: “with whom she is now lives at Obruchnikov's former dacha." B.S.).

While in Tbilisi, Beria cohabited with citizen M., after cohabitation with Beria, M. had a child, whom, at the direction of Beria, I, together with the envoy Vitonov, were taken and handed over to Orphanage in Moscow.

I also know that Beria cohabited with a certain Sophia, the phone is such and such, he lives on such and such a street, the house is such and such. At the suggestion of Beria, she had an abortion in the medical unit (when editing the transcript, Shatalin specified that the abortion was done through the head of the medical unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Voloshin. - B.S.). I repeat that Beria had many similar connections.

At the direction of Beria, I started a whole list of women with whom he cohabited. (Laughter in the hall.) Subsequently, I destroyed this list. However, one list has survived (risen like a phoenix from the ashes? - B.S.), this list contains the names, phone numbers of 25–27 such women. This list is in my apartment, in the pocket of my tunic (in the corrected transcript, Shatalin made the following note here: “The list that Sarkisov is talking about has been discovered, it contains 39 names of women.” I note that Pushkin had a Don Juan list three times as large. also the question is why Sarkisov kept this list in the pocket of his tunic, where he would have to wrinkle or fray.If sometimes, at the request of Beria, he sometimes had to call one of his mistresses, it would be more convenient to keep this document in his office. since May 1953, Sarkisov was no longer the head of the Beria guard, but worked as an assistant to the head of a department in the 1st Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Therefore, it is completely incomprehensible why Beria did not seize the more unnecessary paper from the colonel. In general, more questions arise with this list, than to find any exact answers. B.S.). A year or a year and a half ago, I definitely found out about Beria's connections with prostitutes (as he writes). He suffered from syphilis, he was treated by a doctor of the Ministry of Internal Affairs such and such. Signature - Sarkisov.

Here it is necessary to make a reservation that formally prostitution in the USSR did not exist at that moment. And the fact that Beria had connections with prostitutes, Sarkisov, it seems, concluded only on the basis that his boss had syphilis. The edited transcript on this occasion stated quite clearly: "A year or a year and a half ago, I definitely found out that as a result of associations with prostitutes, he was ill with syphilis." It is curious that prostitutes are here - in plural, although he probably contracted syphilis only from one woman. And it is immediately necessary to make a reservation that Lavrenty Pavlovich could easily catch a bad disease both on a professional priestess of love and on a lover who had sex not for money, but only for pleasure.

Shatalin's final conclusion sounded very pathetic: “Here, comrades, is the true face of this applicant, so to speak, to the leaders of the Soviet people. And this dirty pug dared to compete with our party, with our Central Committee (which, perhaps, with its sluggishness really resembled an elephant. – B.S.). This most filthy man tried to bring discord into the ranks of our Presidium, into the ranks of the Central Committee of our Party, to introduce mistrust, that is, to destroy the very strength of our Party. But this man failed, and no one will succeed. At a time when our Central Committee, when all the people, our entire Party, the Presidium of our Central Committee are united as never before, no one will succeed in preventing us from building or fulfilling the plans that Comrade Lenin and Comrade Stalin bequeathed to us.

I, comrades, believe, and all of us together, apparently, believe that with the help of the members of the Central Committee, our Central Committee and the Presidium of the Central Committee, having cleansed itself of filth, expelled this provocateur and adventurer from their ranks, I would say, liberated from him, having no obstacles now, let us all move forward together even more united and fulfill the precepts that were given to us by Comrade Lenin and Comrade Stalin. The image of a scoundrel-libertine was intended to set off the revealing pathos, since nothing more or less concrete was imputed to Beria.

Undoubtedly, the formidable owner of the Lubyanka had his admirers. But often the partners were brought to his mansion by force, and sometimes they were ordinary prostitutes who were paid at the prevailing market rates - from 100 to 250 rubles per visit. So, at least, some publicists claim, in particular Kirill Stolyarov, referring to the testimony of Sarkisov and Nadarai, contained in the still secret case of Beria. However, it is not clear why then in the testimony of Sarkisov, which Shatalin read out at the July plenum, it was only about his assumptions that Beria knew prostitutes, and only on the basis that Lavrenty Pavlovich had contracted syphilis.

Confessions of several victims of Beria's lust were sewn to the case. Here is one of them: “I tried to evade his harassment, asked Beria not to touch me, but Beria said that philosophy was useless here, and took possession of me. I was afraid to resist him, because I was afraid that Beria could imprison my husband ... only a scoundrel can use the dependent position of a subordinate’s wife in order to take possession of her ... ”And here is the schoolgirl’s story, the most terrible of all:“ once I went to the store for bread along Malaya Nikitskaya street. At this time, an old man in pince-nez got out of the car, with him was a colonel in the uniform of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

When the old man began to examine me, I was frightened and ran away ... The next day ... a colonel came to us, who later turned out to be Sarkisov. Sarkisov fraudulently, under the guise of helping a sick mother and saving her from death, lured me to the house on Malaya Nikitskaya and began to say that his friend, a very big worker, very kind, who loves children very much and helps all the sick, will save my mother. At 5-6 pm on May 7, 1949, an old man in pince-nez, that is, Beria, came. He affectionately greeted me, said that there was no need to cry, my mother would be cured and everything would be fine. We were given lunch. I believed that this kind person would help me in such a difficult time for me (my grandmother died and my mother was dying).

I was 16 years old. I was in 7th grade. Then Beria took me to his bedroom and raped me. It is difficult to describe my state after what happened. They didn't let me out of the house for three days. Sarkisov sat for a day, Beria for a night. At the trial, a man resembling Lavrenty Pavlovich admitted in his last word that he had committed a crime by having an intimate relationship with a minor, but denied that it was rape.

There were also funny cases. One of Lavrenty Pavlovich's mistresses allegedly stated during interrogation: “Beria offered me intercourse in an unnatural way, which I refused. Then he suggested another, also unnatural way, to which I agreed. This unsolvable puzzle was born thanks to the amazing chastity of Soviet investigators, who did not dare to trust the paper with what methods of sex the hero-lover from Malaya Nikitskaya tempted his passion. By the way, some testimonies of Beria's girlfriends inspire serious doubts. For example, one of them, an artist of the Radio Committee M., whom, by the way, Lavrenty Pavlovich helped to get an apartment in Moscow, claimed that their last meeting took place on June 24 or 25, 1953, and Beria asked M. for the next meeting, scheduled in three day, come along with a friend. However, due to the arrest of the "Lubyanka Marshal", the meeting did not take place. But, as we remember, on the eve of his fall, Beria spent ten days in the fraternal GDR, where he put things in order with an iron hand, and returned to Moscow only on the morning of the 26th, having gone straight from the airfield to the fateful meeting. Therefore, he could not meet with any of his mistresses the day before. He has, as they say, a 100% alibi. Perhaps M. got it wrong, and their meeting actually took place on the eve of Lavrenty Pavlovich's departure to Berlin. Although the artist was interrogated only two or three months after the dramatic events, it was tricky to forget the dates so quickly. Rather, it can be assumed that M., like other mistresses of Beria, said what the investigators wanted from her, inventing more and more new adventures of the villain-lover, and the interrogators did not even think about the plausibility of what they were told.

By the way, Rudenko and Moskalenko, who interrogated Beria, for some reason did not know anything about Beria's trip to East Germany and therefore did not doubt the testimony of his mistress. Or maybe they dictated these testimonies, including here the absurdity about the meeting, allegedly planned by Beria on the day of the meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee.

By the way, most of the witnesses probably presented themselves as victims of violence so that they would not be suspected of sympathizing with the defeated "enemy of the people." Therefore, today it is difficult to say which of the Beria partners gave themselves voluntarily, and which - under duress.

Sarkisov's materials about Beria's love affairs, collected by Abakumov, became a real find for his colleagues who overthrew him, since nothing significant could be found to support the version of the conspiracy. Yes, and in the previous activities of Lavrenty Pavlovich, it was not possible to find a special crime, by the standards of that time.

At the July plenum, Secretary of the Central Committee A.A. Andreev pleased those present with such a revelation: “Beria tried in every possible way to ensure that all members of the Politburo were marked with something, that they were spotted, but he, you see, is clean. And in fact, look, you can’t present anything to him - he’s clean. ” The members of the Central Committee laughed in unison. They guessed that it was not difficult for Malenkov, Molotov, Khrushchev and others to swim in shit without any help from Lavrenty Pavlovich.

Voroshilov also evoked sincere, healthy laughter from the plenum participants when he provided such evidence that Lavrenty Pavlovich did not enjoy authority among his subordinates - after the arrest of Beria, not a single Chekist wrote a letter in his defense, which would say: “What did you do with our great leader how are we going to get along without our Beria?..” Party leaders knew well that there were no such letters even when Beria's predecessors were arrested: Yagoda, Yezhov, Abakumov. And even if Stalin thought of sending Kliment Efremovich "to the headquarters of Tukhachevsky", not one of the commanders and commissars of the Red Army would have dared to intercede for him.

Lavrenty Pavlovich also had real crimes: the repressions of innocent people in Georgia in the 30s, the execution of Polish officers in the 40s, the execution of Soviet generals and political prisoners in the 41s, the deportation of "punished peoples", thousands, tens of thousands of ruined lives (but still not hundreds of thousands, like Yezhov’s, and not millions, like the “Kremlin highlander”). However, he shared responsibility for all these crimes with Stalin and other party leaders. The heirs of the Generalissimo were not yet ready to stigmatize him for unjustified repressions, fearing to completely undermine the people's faith in communism.

Many of Beria's colleagues on the Presidium of the Central Committee shed much more foreign blood than Lavrenty Pavlovich. Khrushchev, at the height of the terror, happened to head the Moscow party organization, and from January 38, the Ukrainian one. Both had immeasurably more members, including senior officials, than in the Communist Party of Georgia subordinated to Beria.

In addition to everyday dirt, Khrushchev and his comrades also needed to find at least some political dirt on Beria.

At first it seemed to them that what they were looking for could be found at the head of the USSR Council of Ministers, Mikhail Trofimovich Pomaznev. At one time, he, being deputy chairman of the State Planning Commission, wrote a letter to Stalin about the shortcomings in the work of the State Planning Commission, and it was used to overthrow Voznesensky. And in a note by Pomaznev addressed to Malenkov and Khrushchev dated July 6, 1953 “On the activities of L.P. Beria” there were very terrible accusations. For example, Lavrenty Pavlovich was charged with summoning Khrushchev to the Presidium of the Council of Ministers in connection with the unsatisfactory situation with the delivery of potatoes and vegetables to Moscow in the winter of 1952/53: “Beria demanded from Comrade. Pervukhina M.G., to comrade. Khrushchev was necessarily at a meeting of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers, so that the analysis of this case was entrusted to comrade. Khrushchev N.S. He achieved this, although Comrade. Pervukhin didn't want to do that." And why, one wonders, not to discuss the problems of providing the capital with vegetables in the presence of the head of the Moscow Communists? This decision of Beria seems quite natural, and it is unlikely that at the same time he was going to somehow “lower” Nikita Sergeevich. And the denunciation that Beria ordered to allocate a room to the technical secretary of the local committee of the Bolshoi Theater of a certain Rakhmatullina sounds quite funny. Pomaznev proudly reported, as if about some kind of feat: “Beria called me at least 6-7 times about the allocation of a room to Rakhmatullina. The allocation of Rakhmatullina's room was delayed. The unfortunate typist, who evidently proved herself in the most worthy manner at love front, it remained to be consoled by the fact that she was still not made an accomplice of the "conspirator" Beria.

From what Pomaznev reported, it was impossible to construct either a decent court case or any loud revelations for the public. Just think, he delayed the adoption of decisions, gave incorrect instructions on the distribution of apartments. Firstly, other high-ranking officials sinned with this. Secondly, all this, at best, was drawn to official negligence, and not to a death sentence. And neither Khrushchev, nor Malenkov, nor Molotov were going to leave Beria alive. Only Mikoyan, who was one of those who once nominated Beria for Chekist and party work, seemed to have hesitations on this score. Anastas Ivanovich feared that Beria's harsh sentence would hit him too. But under the influence of more senior members of the Presidium of the Central Committee, Mikoyan quickly overcame his doubts.

Since there was no real Beria conspiracy, the investigators seized on everything that could compromise Beria in the eyes of the general public. The nephew of Beria's wife, Teimuraz Nikolaevich Shavdia, by the time he was captured by the Germans in July 1941, was still very young - he was only 18 years old. It is unlikely that he was a staunch opponent of Soviet power - family ties were not at all disposed to this. He just really wanted to live, that's why he signed up for the Georgian Legion, and then served in the German police in Paris. He was arrested after the start in November 1951 of the so-called. "Mingrelian case", when the former leadership of Georgia, mostly loyal to Beria, was accused of "Mingrelian nationalism" and removed from their posts, and partly arrested.

On July 3, 1953, Deputy Ministers of the Interior S.N. Kruglov and I.A. Serov wrote to Molotov about the Shavdia case: “Teimuraz Nikolaevich SHAVDIYA, convicted by the military tribunal of the Transcaucasian Military District, is being held in custody by the military tribunal of the Transcaucasian Military District for treason.

As can be seen from the materials of the archival investigation file, Shavdia was arrested b. Ministry state security Georgian SSR February 10, 1952.

The reason for the arrest was the testimony that he, while in active army, at the end of July 1941 was captured by the Germans. During the period of captivity, Shavdia, having betrayed his homeland, voluntarily joined the "Georgian National Legion" german army. As witnesses testified, the battalion in which Shavdia was enrolled took part in the battles against the Soviet Army near Tuapse. In 1943, a Georgian white émigré, Shavdia was recruited to serve in the German police and sent to Paris. In Paris, Shavdia, as a policeman, participated in the executions of French patriots, British and American paratroopers and guarded the prisoners. In the same place, he repeatedly visited his distant relative, the leader of the Mensheviks Gegechkori E.

“... Gegia (a prisoner of war) offered to go to Gegechkori's apartment and get to know him in the hope that he would be able to provide us with material support. Gegechkori greeted us cordially and began to ask me about my father. When I said who my father was, Gegechkori immediately remembered him and exclaimed: “Does Kolya really have such a father!” Further, Gegechkori remembered some of our common relatives, in particular, about my aunt Nina Teimurazovna (hereinafter entered by hand: Beria. - B.S.), nee Gegechkori. I realized that he was well informed about the life, activities and composition of the uncle's family. He even knew they had a son named Sergo."

Shavdia received from Gegechkori financial assistance and also kept in touch with other Georgian emigrants.

In April 1945, Shavdia arrived in the USSR as an escort of the museum valuables stolen by the Menshevik government during the flight from Georgia in 1921. This was preceded by the following events.

In Paris, Shavdia was in the choir of former Georgian prisoners of war. During the rehearsal, Shavdia learned that the Soviet consul Guzovsky was present in the hall (state security colonel Alexander Alexandrovich Guzovsky headed the legal residency of the NKGB in France under the cover of the post of adviser to the embassy and consul general in Paris. In 1952, he was arrested and convicted by the OSO under the Ministry of State Security of the USSR for 10 years deprivation of liberty. Shortly after the arrest of L.P. Beria was released. B.S.) and asked the head of the choir, the prisoner of war Nizharadze, to convey to Guzovsky a request that he inform Moscow about his presence in Paris.

Through the emigrant Hegelia (who is under investigation at the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia), Nizharadze conveyed Shavdia's request, and after the rehearsal, Guzovsky had a conversation with him. After some time, Shavdia, at the suggestion of Guzovsky, appeared at the consulate. In a conversation, Guzovsky, after asking in detail about his relatives, stated that he had instructions from the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR Dekanozov to inform Moscow if anything became known to him about Shavdia.

Here Guzovsky gave Shavdia 3 thousand francs and further provided him with financial assistance, a total of about 10 thousand francs.

In one of the meetings, Guzovsky told Shavdia that Sharia, the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, Sharia, would soon fly to Paris, with whom he would send him to his homeland.

In February 1945, Nizharadze told Shavdia that Sharia had flown to Paris and was summoning him to the consulate. (There is a clear confusion with dates in the letter of Serov and Kruglov. Since T.N. Shavdia returned to the USSR in April 1945, and before that in February 1945 he met with P.A. Sharia, he could not for the first time to meet with A. A. Guzovsky in April 1945. Probably, this meeting took place not in April, but in January 1945 - B.S.)

Appearing to Sharia, Shavdia told him the circumstances of his capture and about his service in the "Georgian National Legion" of the German army. Then Sharia told him that he had instructions from Moscow to deliver Shavdia to his homeland. Later, Shavdia and another prisoner of war, Meladze, went to the consulate to Guzovsky, and he explained to them that they would both fly to the USSR together with Sharia as a bodyguard museum valuables. Thus, on April 11, 1945, Shavdia arrived in Soviet Union.

The treacherous activity of Shavdia is confirmed by his personal confession, testimonies of witnesses and face-to-face confrontations.

It is characteristic to note that about the treacherous and traitorous activities of Shavdia b. The Ministry of State Security of the Georgian SSR (Minister Rapava) knew as early as 1946.

On May 12 and 15, 1946, being interrogated at the Ministry of State Security of Georgia, Shavdia testified about his treacherous activities, telling about voluntary entry into the Georgian National Legion of the German army, service in the German police in Paris, participation in executions, as well as meetings and conversations with the Menshevik leader Gegechkori.

At that time, the MGB of Georgia also had at its disposal the testimonies of Shavdia's arrested accomplices, but he was not arrested for the reason that he was his wife's nephew (handwritten: Beria. - B.S.).

Interrogated on March 11, 1952, the former Minister of State Security of the Georgian SSR Rapava testified:

“Shavdia T. was clearly not arrested because he is a relative (nephew) of Nina Teimurazovna (handwritten: Beria), nee Gegechkori.”

The investigation conducted in 1952 did not obtain anything new in the Shavdia case, but only confirmed all the data that was known to the Georgian State Security Ministry back in 1946.

From the camp where Shavdia was serving his sentence, he was taken to Moscow at the direction of KOBULOV.

We propose to use this circumstance in the investigation of the case (written by hand: Beria. - B.S.)". (RGASPI, fund 82 (V.M. Molotova), op. 2, d. 898, pp. 133–136.)

It is unlikely that Shavdia really had a chance to shoot French patriots with his own hands - rather, this is the fantasy of the investigators. Moreover, as can be assumed, in both 1952 and 1953, the investigators were much more interested not in the service of Beria's nephew in the German army and not even in his transfer, bypassing the filtration camps, to the Soviet Union with the help of one of Beria's speechwriters P.A. . Sharia (which of the party functionaries of Beria's level would act differently in such a situation?), And first of all, Shavdia's stay in Paris liberated by the allies. Enticing prospects opened up here. If necessary, it was possible to present the case in such a way that Teimuraz was recruited by the American and British intelligence and became a liaison between them and Lavrenty Pavlovich. If desired, the organization "Joint" could be dragged here. It is no coincidence that Shavdia was imprisoned, but not shot. Saved, in case you have to create a case against Beria. Lavrenty Pavlovich himself, having again become the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs after Stalin's death, did not manage to release his nephew, although he ordered his transfer to Moscow to review the case. They tried to use this fact in the hastily created case of the Beria conspiracy, but they could not. Probably, the fact of the "excuses" of the nephew from the camp seemed too small at the top. This crime could not particularly excite either the people or the nomenclature community. The option of Beria's espionage connection with England and the USA through Shavdia, firstly, was too complicated, and secondly, not very politically relevant, because after Stalin's death, even those who eliminated Beria still wanted to reduce the degree of confrontation with the West. As a result, the case of Shavdia did not incriminate Beria. And Teimuraz Nikolayevich was amnestied in 1955.

More serious information was provided by the old Chekist Yakov Mkhitarov-Gloomy. He wrote to the Secretary of the Central Committee P.N. Pospelov: “I would like to bring to your attention and to the attention of the Central Committee of our Party about a number of facts related to the enemy activities of the adventurer Beria and his inseparable component - M. D. Bagirov. According to the fragmentary information that reaches me, it seems to me, that much of what at one time revealed and revealed the political and moral insides of Beria-Bagirov is known to the Central Committee only partially or not completely.

Among the crimes of Beria, Mkhitarov-Grimny called the fact that in the 20s Lavrenty Pavlovich became a confidant of the chairman of the Azerbaijan Cheka Bagirov and was the keeper of the Chekist “common fund” hidden from the state - jewelry confiscated from those arrested and shot.

Mkhitarov-Grimny argued that even then Beria had a great weakness for women: “Back in 1921-1922. at the purge of the party organization of the AzChK, the Chairman of which was Bagirov, and in fact his deputy - the Head of the secret operational unit - Beria, one of the employees (Maria Kuznetsova) Beria exposed himself in an attempt to rape her in his office, but, having received a decisive rebuff and wanting to force her shut up, offered her a precious ring from among the valuables kept in his office in a safe. This relatively “small” touch, but in those days monstrous in nature and signaling the moral character of the Chekist, greedy and capable of official crime because of the possession of a woman, was completely intolerant in such a responsible post. But thanks to Bagirov, that case was hushed up, and Kuznetsova was soon dismissed from the authorities under a plausible pretext.

The scammer pointed out another fact compromising Beria: “During the purge of the party, it was discovered that the chief commandant of the AzChK Zharikov Alexander in 1918-1919 was an officer of the Caspian Military Flotilla and for his special activity, by order of the Commander of this flotilla, the famous white guard general Bicherahova awarded George cross for special merit. It is known that "special merit" officers The Caspian Military Flotilla, and therefore Zharikov under the command of General Bicherakhov, could have expressed itself in a fierce reprisal against the Bolsheviks ... Despite the demands of the communists to exclude Zharikov from the ranks of the party, at the urgent request of Bagirov-Beria, he was left in the ranks of the party and in the organs, and all kinds of further his crimes (appropriation of the values ​​of the executed and convicted) went unpunished.

There was compromising information on other people who worked with Beria in the early 1920s in Transcaucasia. Mkhitarov Gloomy argued that “in 1921, Beria, Bagirov, Head of the Foreign Department (INO) of the AzChK, was appointed Golikov Vladimir, the son of a well-known merchant in Baku religious cult. Despite the repeated signals of the communists, the discussion of the issue at party meetings and the purge of the party about the anti-party essence of Golikov, despite even the resolutions of the party organization to expel him from the ranks of the party as a stranger who “adhered” to the party and wormed his way into the organs, Beria-Bagirov persistently demanded and achieved to keep him both in the party and in the organs in the most responsible post mentioned above for almost ten years. Moreover, they introduced Golikov to the membership of the Collegium of the AzChK-AzGPU. And only in 1928 it was discovered that during the Civil War of 1918–1919, Golikov was the most active White Guard, the head of the White Guard punitive detachment, who betrayed the poor peasants in Saratov region(it is not very clear how Golikov managed to do this. After all, during the Civil War, white Saratov province did not occupy. - B.S.). This detachment, in its ferocity, was known among the poorest peasantry terrorized by it under the name "Golikovites". After stubborn denial at the beginning, exposed by facts, documents and testimonies, Golikov admitted his belonging to the White Guard, was arrested and sent to Tbilisi. However, instead of the execution he deserved, thanks to Beria, after some time Golikov was released and is safely in Baku at the present time.

But compromising facts of social origin and biography could be found, if desired, from very many representatives of the Soviet nomenklatura, including those who continued to work successfully in their posts even after the fall of Beria. For example, B.L. Vannikov, Beria's deputy on the Special Committee, mother in pre-revolutionary times kept a brothel known throughout Baku. So, in any case, it was stated in the letter of the engineer I.I. Nechaev, addressed to Malenkov. Other facts compromising Vannikov were cited there, in particular, his strange release after being arrested by the Georgian counterintelligence and connection with some persons who, possibly, were agents of this counterintelligence. But since Vannikov was quite loyal to both Malenkov and Khrushchev and was considered an experienced technocrat, he was not blamed for his past inappropriate social origin, and he continued to work in the field of implementing the Soviet atomic and hydrogen projects as the 1st Deputy Minister of Medium engineering. The fact that Vannikov was an unsuitable figure for the trial of Beria also played a role. After all, he was associated with Beria almost exclusively through nuclear project, and this project itself remained a mystery with seven seals.

There was something more interesting in the denunciation of Mkhitarov the Gloomy. The old Chekist claimed that Beria was an agent of the counterintelligence of Musavat Azerbaijan: “The secret department of the AzGPU in 1929 discovered the personal file of Beria as an agent who served in the Musavat counterintelligence. It was demonstrated at party meetings and assets of the AzGPU, whose communists demanded the immediate prosecution of Beria, who clearly penetrated the organs of an enemy agent provocateur, and Bagirov, who was convicted of covering up this flagrant act, as well as criminal acts of both their own and Beria.

Mkhitarov-Grimny believed that Stanislav Redens, the authorized representative of the OGPU in Transcaucasia, helped Beria avoid responsibility: “Thanks to the efforts of Bagirov and Redens and those who were misled by them, Beria not only was not exposed, but Bagirov’s version began to spread intensively that that "Beria worked in the Musavat counterintelligence on the instructions of the Bolshevik party." Their accusers were labeled “groupists”, almost the entire staff of the body was dispersed and filled with dishonest, obviously dubious Chekists.

Redens, who was shot in 1940, it was no longer possible to ask about Beria's connections with the Musavatist counterintelligence. But the idea itself seemed promising to Khrushchev and Malenkov. But it was necessary to find the case mentioned by Mkhitarov the Gloomy.

And Khrushchev turned to Merkulov, who served with Beria in the Transcaucasus in the 1920s. Nikita Sergeevich recalled: “When Rudenko began to interrogate Beria, a terrible man, a beast, who had nothing sacred, opened up before us. He did not have not only a communist, but in general a human moral character. And there’s nothing to say about his crimes, how many honest people he ruined! Well, let's say that Khrushchev himself ruined more people than Beria, but you shouldn't write about it in your memoirs.

Khrushchev argued: “Some time after the arrest of Beria, the question arose about Merkulov, who at that time was the Minister of State Control of the USSR. I confess that I used to respect Merkulov and considered him a party man. He was cultured person and generally liked me. Therefore, I told my comrades: “The fact that Merkulov was Beria’s assistant in Georgia does not yet indicate that he is his accomplice. Maybe it's not like that after all? After all, Beria occupied a very high position and selected people for himself, and not vice versa. People believed him, worked with him. Therefore, it is impossible to consider everyone who worked for him as his accomplices in crimes. Let's call Merkulov, talk to him. Perhaps he will even help us better deal with Beria. And we agreed that I would call him to the Central Committee of the party. I called Merkulov, said that we had detained Beria, that an investigation was underway. "You worked with him for many years, you could help the Central Committee." “I’m happy,” he says, “I’ll do my best.” And I suggested to him: "Put in writing everything that you see fit."

Some days passed, and he wrote a large text, which, of course, remained in the archive. But this note did nothing for us. There were general impressions, conclusions, like a certain essay. Merkulov wrote something, including plays, and got used to writing. When I sent his material to Rudenko, he directly said that Merkulov should be arrested, because the investigation into the Beria case without the arrest of Merkulov would be difficult and would be incomplete. The Central Committee of the party allowed the arrest of Merkulov. To my chagrin, it turned out that in vain I trusted him. Merkulov was associated with Beria in such crimes that he himself sat in the dock and suffered the same responsibility as him. In his last word, when the verdict was already announced by the court, Merkulov cursed the day and hour when he met with Beria. He said that it was Beria who brought him to court.

But although Khrushchev promised Merkulov that his past closeness to Beria would not be blamed on him, Vsevolod Nikolayevich, who had worked for many years in the highest echelons of power, knew perfectly well what promises of this kind were worth. And he tried to justify himself in advance and prove to the members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU that he was not at all so close to Beria, especially in last years, as was commonly believed. But Khrushchev, as expected, did not keep his promise, declaring Merkulov one of Beria's main accomplices. In September 1953, Merkulov was relieved of his post as Minister of State Control. On September 18, he was arrested. He was tried along with other associates of Beria and sentenced to capital punishment. December 23, 1953 Merkulov was shot.

It is obvious that Merkulova in this case It was not the lack of frankness towards Beria that killed him, but the nature of his closeness with Lavrenty Pavlovich. After all, Vsevolod Nikolayevich was connected with Beria primarily by joint work in the state security agencies. Consequently, he could very convincingly be presented as one of the main participants in the Beria conspiracy and brought to trial, albeit a closed one.

Merkulov's letters, classified as "secret", were sent by Khrushchev to all members of the Politburo. The first of them is dated July 21, 1953. And in it Vsevolod Nikolaevich wrote:

“Many days have passed since the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, at which the convincing facts of criminal, anti-party and anti-state actions of Beria were announced in the report of Comrade Malenkov and in the speeches of Comrades Khrushchev, Molotov, Bulganin and other members of the Presidium of the Central Committee.

But every day, the more you think about this matter, the more indignantly and indignantly you remember the very name of Beria, you are indignant at how low this man who stood so high fell. Only a person who has nothing sacred in his soul could sink to such baseness and meanness. It was rightly said at the Plenum of the Central Committee that Beria is not a communist, that there is nothing party about him.

Naturally, you ask the question of how this could happen when Beria began to degenerate, turning him into an adventurer of the worst kind, an enemy of our party and people. It doesn't happen that such things happen all of a sudden in one day. Obviously, some internal process was going on in him, more or less prolonged.

Since I had to come into fairly close contact with Beria through joint work in Tbilisi in the years 1923-1938, in accordance with your proposal, I set myself the goal of analyzing where the roots of Beria's current criminal actions are in order to help to completely expose him.

I think they lie in the character of Beria.

Analyzing in the light of what I now know about Beria, his actions and behavior in the past, you now give them a different meaning and perceive and evaluate them differently.

What used to seem easy negative sides in the character of Beria, the shortcomings that are characteristic of many people now take on a different meaning and a different meaning. Even the so-called "positive" sides in the character and work of Beria now look in a different light.

Beria had a strong, imperious character. He organically could not share power with anyone.

I have known him since 1923, when he was deputy. chairman of the Cheka of Georgia. He was then only 24 years old, but even then this position did not satisfy him. He aspired higher.

In general, he considered all people below him, especially those to whom he was subordinate at work. Usually he tried to carefully discredit them in conversations with his subordinate workers, made sharp remarks about them, or even simply scolded them obscenely. He never missed a chance to belittle a person with any phrase, to belittle him. And sometimes he did it deftly, giving his words a shade of regret: they say, it’s a pity for a person, but there’s nothing to be done!

And the deed is done - the person has already been discredited to some extent in the eyes of those present.

I can’t now specifically remember who and what exactly he was talking about, but his expressions, like: “What does he understand in this matter! Here's a fool! He, poor fellow, is capable of little! etc. - I remember well. These expressions often escaped his lips, literally as soon as, after a kind reception, the door closed behind the man who had left his office.

This is how he behaved in relation to his superior employees in our presence, in the presence of his subordinates. In all likelihood, he kept the same tactics in other places where we were not.

But he did not always do this and not with everyone. As long as a man was strong, he behaved with him obsequiously and even humblely. I remember once, in my presence, Mamia Orakhelashvili, then secretary of the Zakkraykom of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, called him on the phone - then he was still in power and was not compromised in any way. One should have seen how even outwardly Beria changed when speaking with him on the phone, how often he repeated: “I’m listening, Comrade Mamiya, it’s good, Comrade Mamiya,” etc. One might think that Mamiya is present in the office and Beria sees him in front of him, and the figure, and the face, and his posture changed, expressing the last degree of subservience. This picture terrified me at the time.

And one should have seen how Beria treated the same Mamiya Orakhelashvili when his position was shaken. Beria then became a completely different person, imperiously, rudely and impudently interrupting Orakhelashvili at meetings of the regional committee.

Skillfully acting and hiding behind the interests of the party and Soviet power, Beria gradually managed to survive one by one or arrest all those who stood in his way to power in Georgia and the Transcaucasus. Every mistake, every mistake of his opponents, Beria deftly used to his advantage. He prudently wrote information notes systematically to the Central Committee of Georgia about the shortcomings in the regions, which allowed him to prove later that he “warned in time”.

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Chapter 23
WHY DID LAVRENTY BERIA KILL?

Beria was also killed twice, and if more and more often they come out in defense of Stalin, then for some reason everyone is unanimous about Beria, except for Yuri Mukhin. Even Vadim Kozhinov, who has a good relationship with Stalin, writes: “Much of what is known about Beria does not give reason to see him as a “positive” figure ...”, but at the same time, none of this “much” is cited. And, surprisingly, not only him, no one brings any real compromising evidence on this person. All the "dogs" that are hung on him come down either to the fact that he is responsible for the mass repressions, or to the fact that he "wanted" something. I wanted to kill the Politburo, I wanted to stage a coup, to seize power, but they didn’t let me. At the same time, no evidence of this “desire” is also given, just some kind of telepathy ... Even in 1937, under all the “desires”, at least some, at least fictitious facts were placed - but nothing here, just spells! Was this terrible man really so pure in life that not a single line of real compromising evidence could be found on him? To read what he is accused of is such nonsense that the ears wither in the bud! We will get to official accusations, but for now let the writers speak:

“Khrushchev says that Beria twice, first in the forties, and then in the fifties (after Stalin's death), "did maneuvers" to become the head of the party and state. If he refused this intention, then the role was probably played by considerations of a purely psychological nature: after twenty years of tyranny in the USSR of the Georgian Stalin, another Georgian had to be Stalin twice to take his post, and even Beria had to give in to such a prospect. .. Another reason was no less compelling: in the eyes of the people, the professional Chekist Beria was not a servant of Stalin, but a sovereign accomplice, sometimes even an inspirer of Stalin's crimes "...

The funny thing is that a person who takes up writing books about that time does not understand the elementary: in 1953, in the eyes of the people about whom he talks so weightily, neither "Stalin's tyranny" nor "Stalin's crimes" existed - they appeared only after Khrushchev's report at the 20th Congress. But it's not that. Among all this rhetoric, there is a real thing: even according to Khrushchev himself, Beria “refused” his intention to become the head of the party and the state, that is, in 1953 he had no such intentions. What then is he accused of?

“Not out of love for the people, not out of hatred for Stalin, and not out of remorse for the crimes committed, but based on political calculations and personal interests in the new conditions, Beria decided to lead the movement for reforms. Staring into the dying teacher, Beria, perhaps, also did not intend to rule otherwise than Stalin, however, the silent, but formidable joy of the people over the death of a tyrant, advised him: we must take advantage of a rare case in history when the executioner himself can lead the movement of the people against the inheritance the greatest of tyrannies. What Khrushchev did to Stalin three years later at the 20th Congress, Beria wanted to start now. He started this by releasing the "wrecking doctors" on April 4, 1953 and himself accusing the Stalin-Beria police system of falsifying and fabricating cases and the Inquisition.

I don’t know what Beria “wanted” and what “didn’t want”, but I, glaring at the tattered pages of the “samizdat” Avtorkhanov, did not find anything in them, except that Beria was “for reforms”. Moreover, as soon as he became a minister for the second time, he, like the first time, immediately stopped the wave of repressions. What then is he accused of?

Yuri Zhukov, historian:

“But so far the most terrible thing lay elsewhere. The fact that Beria was in no hurry to use the weapons that he received thanks to the uncontrolled leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He didn't even hint who might be the next victim. Waited. Moreover, he suddenly acted as if he wanted to refute the idea of ​​himself as a vindictive and ruthless rival in the struggle for power.

That is, having received under the command of the combined MGB - the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Beria did not arrest anyone, did not even hint that he wanted to arrest someone, and even did something that raised doubts - does he even want to fight for power? What then is he accused of?

What happened at these landfills? One was testing a new air defense missile, the other was preparing tests hydrogen bomb. Considering that in the United States, one after another, more and more new plans for a nuclear attack on the USSR were adopted, and now not only a “retaliatory strike”, but also preventive ones, he considered that this was more important than sitting in Moscow and sharing seats and spheres of influence . However, he did all this, of course, not just like that and not for the benefit of the state, but solely for the acquisition of sole leadership.

It was this key to resolving all international issues that should have made Molotov, an outspoken hardliner, an unquestioning ally of Beria. Turn Bulganin, who was becoming the most formidable military minister of defense in the world, into an obedient satellite of Lavrenty Pavlovich. To win over to your side two of the five members of the narrow leadership who did not claim leadership ...

What a nightmare! What a villain! What a person does not go to in the struggle for power - even to honestly fulfill his official duties! He has no justification either before the court of history or before the party court! “Aleksey Ivanovich Adzhubey, in his book, opened the edge of the veil of secrecy over the motives of the preemptive strike

Khrushchev. It turns out that Beria came up with a cunning move with amnesty after Stalin's death. She touched large groups prisoners. Beria was worried that he no longer had the power to automatically extend the terms of imprisonment for those who were sent to camps during the years of mass repression and served their time. They returned home and demanded that justice be restored. And it was extremely necessary for Beria to again send into exile those who were objectionable, to detain those who remained there. It was then that they began to release criminals and recidivists. They immediately returned to their old ways. Discontent and instability could give Beria a chance to return to the old methods.

The horror of the Beria amnesty is most convincingly depicted in the famous film Cold Summer of 1953. True, it is not entirely clear under which category of the released these criminal hari fit - not otherwise, these are pregnant women disguised as raiders. Adjubey lies in the same way as his father-in-law. With the filing of Beria, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council, the following were amnestied: those convicted for up to 5 years, as well as for some official, economic, military crimes, women with children under 10 years old, pregnant, minors, elderly and seriously ill prisoners. And where in these categories is the place for repeat offenders?

Beria did a lot of bad things. He stood up for a united Germany, which would be grateful to the USSR for this, and not for a divided one, striving for unification and hating the force that divided it. He insisted that the paperwork in national republics was conducted not in Russian, but in local language and local personnel worked there, and not those sent from Moscow, and much, much more.

In general, he showed himself to be a serious and reasonable statesman, and it is completely incomprehensible what the Politburo could have against him. Beria was absolutely not dangerous, he stopped the repressions, he had no intention to fight for power, which even Khrushchev recognized, and he could not fight for it, because he had no allies in the party elite, and one in the field is not a warrior. The vaunted apparatus of the MGB - the Ministry of Internal Affairs, after seven years of rule by Abakumov, Ignatiev and Kruglov, had to be reassembled piece by piece. He could not do anything seditious and did not want anything seditious.

So what is the mystery of Beria? Why was he killed, and most importantly, why is he so hated by those at whose suggestion this man was declared a fiend of hell - namely, the Khrushchev Politburo? Suppose his hands are stained with blood - this is a lie, but let's say! But after all, the same Khrushchev has blood on his hands to the elbow, but this does not outrage anyone. Suppose he was a pathological womanizer, raped high school girls in a perverted form - this is also a lie, but let's say! But after all, the rehabilitated "victim of Stalinism" Avel Yenukidze raped 10-12 year old girls, and no one is hysterical about this. Suppose he wanted to seize sole power in the country - this is also a lie, but let's say that too! But after all, other comrades-in-arms ate each other like rats locked in the basement, and everyone takes it for granted, no one is offended by anyone. Why exactly is Beria presented in the guise of a villain of all times and peoples? For what?

The answer suggests itself somewhat paradoxical: precisely because there was nothing particularly to blame him for. It was very necessary, but it turned out to be nothing! No real serious crimes were found behind him, and it was necessary to explain why he was suddenly dealt with. And there was only one way for this - to shout so loudly and for a long time about his pathological villainy, so that everyone would hear it, remember it, and eventually believe it. This is not the guard Khrustalev, who can simply be removed, this face is noticeable, justifications are needed here.

And by the way, why is it so easy to succeed? After all, if Beria, an experienced Chekist, got involved in a struggle for power, he should have understood who he was dealing with, and should have been on his guard. One of the researchers of his life, Alexei Toptygin, writes: “If we take the unit of measurement of intuition, it should be called “beria”. And they took him with bare hands. How did he screw up like that? And here, too, a somewhat paradoxical answer arises: that is why they took it that he was not going to fight with anyone - there is some telepathic evidence that he “wanted”, but there is not a single evidence that he did at least step. Already on March 9, in his speech at the funeral ceremony, he spoke of the "steel unity of leadership" and did nothing to undermine this unity. Beria was set to normal work and even before his death, he probably did not have time to understand - what did he do wrong?

The next, at least according to Avtorkhanov, who collected all the gossip of European boulevards, Khrushchev himself voiced this version. “Khrushchev told his foreign interlocutors, especially the communists, how Beria was arrested and killed. Khrushchev's direct physical killers of Beria in different versions of the story are different faces, but the plot of the story remains the same ... "(Followed by a story about the meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee, about the trap set up by Beria, about his arrest - this story is quite well known. - E. P.). “Now,” Khrushchev said, “we are faced with a difficult, equally unpleasant dilemma: keep Beria in custody and conduct a normal investigation, or shoot him right there, and then issue a death sentence in court. It was dangerous to make the first decision, because Beria was backed by the entire apparatus of the Chekists and the Chekist troops, and he could easily be released. We had no legal grounds to make a second decision and immediately shoot Beria (and what, there may be legal grounds for execution without trial or investigation in Peaceful time? - E.P.) After a comprehensive discussion of the pros and cons of both options, we came to the conclusion: Beria must be shot immediately, because no one will rebel because of the dead Beria. The executor of this sentence (in the next room) in Khrushchev's stories is once General Moskalenko, another time Mikoyan, and the third time even Khrushchev himself. Khrushchev emphatically added: "Our further investigation of the Beria case fully confirmed that we correctly shot him."

What was this investigation and what was this case? What was Beria accused of? He was tried under articles 58 1b (espionage, giving out military or state secrets, defecting to the enemy), 588 (commission of terrorist acts), 5811 (participation in an organization), 58 "3 (active struggle against the working class under the tsarist system or among counter-revolutionary governments) and for the rape of a colossal number of women, which is most savored in this case. The list of accusations itself shows that the case was molded according to the recipes of 1937. Mukhin also examines this topic in detail, on many pages, and I again refer all those interested in the details to But even without that it is clear that since Beria was killed, then it was necessary to substantiate it somehow, and the investigative-judicial system (not only ours, but any one) can, under a certain order, substantiate anything. the arrested person is no longer alive and it does not matter to him what will be the basis of the sentence already carried out.

But we will search in vain in these paragraphs for the answer to the most important question.

SO WHY DID LAVRENTY BERIA BE KILLED?

One thing is clear: if the party elite went to murder, somehow this person was very dangerous to her. And not with terrible plans to throw her off her accustomed throne - Beria made it clear that he was not going to do this. Of course, he was potentially dangerous - but we don't get killed for that. At least that's not how they kill, openly and frankly. The normal Soviet move in the struggle for power was worked out as early as 1937 - to move, remove, and then arrest and falsify the case in the usual manner. By the way, this openness and frankness also contains a mystery - after all, it was possible to wait and remove it quietly and imperceptibly. Looks like the killers were in a hurry...

Khrushchev, in his revelations to foreign interlocutors, is cunning in some ways. He presents the decision on the immediate execution of Beria as a collegial verdict of all members of the Politburo. “After a comprehensive discussion of the pros and cons of both options, we came to the conclusion: Beria must be shot immediately” ... “We!” So now we will believe that nine people, middle-aged, indecisive and rather cowardly, will stamp such a decision - to shoot one of the first persons of the state without trial or investigation. Yes, never in their lives will these people, who have worked meekly under a strong leader all their lives, take on such a responsibility! They will drown the issue in discussions and in the end, even if there are grounds, everything will end with deportation somewhere in Baku or Tyumen to the post of director of the plant - let him seize power there if he can.

So it was, and so it is hard evidence. The Secretary of the Central Committee, Malenkov, in the process of preparing the meeting of the Presidium, wrote a draft of its work. This draft has been published, and it clearly shows what was to be discussed at this meeting. To prevent the possibility of abuse of power, Beria was supposed to be deprived of the post of Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and, perhaps, if the discussion goes on the right track, to also release him from the post of Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, appointing him Minister of the Oil Industry as last resort. And that's all. There was no talk of any arrest, and even more so of any execution without trial. And it is difficult even to imagine, with all the tension of imagination, what could happen for the Presidium, contrary to the prepared scenario, to make such a decision impromptu. It couldn't be. And if it couldn't, then it didn't. And the fact that this did not happen, that this issue was not considered at the Presidium at all, is evidenced by the fact that the draft was found in Malenkov's archive - otherwise it would have been submitted for processing the decision and then destroyed.

So there was no "we". Beria was first killed, and then the Presidium was confronted with a fact, and he had to get out, covering up the killers. But who exactly?

And here it is very easy to guess. Firstly, it is easy to calculate the number of the second - the performer. The fact is that - and no one denies this - that day the army was widely involved in the events. In the incident with Beria, as Khrushchev himself admits, the air defense commander of the Moscow Military District, Colonel General Moskalenko and the Air Force Chief of Staff, Major General Batitsky, were directly involved, and Marshal Zhukov himself does not seem to refuse. But, more importantly, for some reason, apparently, to stage the fight against "parts of Beria", troops were brought into the capital. And then it floats very important name- a person who could ensure contact with the military and the participation of the army in the events - Minister of Defense Bulganin.

It is not difficult to calculate the number one. Who most of all poured dirt on Beria, completely losing self-control and presenting him at the same time as a fiend? Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. By the way, not only Bulganin, but also Moskalenko and Batitsky were people from his team.

Bulganin and Khrushchev - somewhere we have already met this combination. Where? Yes, at Stalin's dacha, on that fateful Sunday, March 1, 1953.

COMPROMATIVE?

There is one mystery in the events that took place after Stalin's death - the fate of his papers. The archive of Stalin as such does not exist - all his documents are gone. On March 7, some special group, according to Svetlana, "on the orders of Beria" (but this is not a fact) removed all the furniture from the Near Dacha. Later, the furniture was returned to the dacha, but without papers. All the documents from the Kremlin office and even from the leader's safe have also disappeared. Where they are and what happened to them is still unknown.

Naturally, it is believed that Beria, as the super-powerful chief of the special services, took possession of the archives, especially since the guards were subordinate to the MGB department. Yes, but the guards were subordinate to state security while the guarded was alive. Interestingly, to whom was the Kuntsevo dacha subordinated after Stalin's death? Also the department of the MGB or, perhaps, this empty shell was disposed of by some government AHO - the administrative and economic department? According to another version, the entire elite of that time took part in the seizure of the archive, preoccupied with the liquidation of the dossiers that Stalin collected on them. Beria, of course, was also afraid that compromising information on him, located in these archives, would be made public. It is also hard to believe - with so many accomplices, someone for so many years would certainly let it slip.

Who knew nothing about the fate of the archive, so it is Malenkov. Why - more on that later. There are two options left: either Khrushchev or Beria. If we assume that the archive fell into the hands of Khrushchev, then his fate, most likely, is sad. There could have been a lot of compromising evidence on Nikita Sergeevich - one participation in Yezhov's repressions was worth something! Neither he nor his associates had time to look for all these “dossiers” among the mountains of papers, it was easier to burn everything in bulk. But if Beria was the first to succeed, then here the situation is completely different. He had nothing to be afraid of some mysterious "documents" in the Stalinist archive, which, if made public, could destroy him - there was hardly anything on him, even if by the efforts of the entire jurisprudence of the USSR, despite the fact that it was very necessary, they could not dig up material for one more or less decent shooting case. But he was vitally interested in compromising evidence on Stalin's former associates, and for future possible occasions, and to ensure his own security.

Indirectly, the fact that the archive most likely fell into the hands of Beria is evidenced by his son Sergo. After the murder of his father, he was arrested, and one day he was summoned for interrogation, and in the investigator's office he saw Malenkov. This was not the first visit of a distinguished guest, once he had already come and persuaded Sergo to testify against his father, but did not persuade him. However, this time he came for something else.

“Maybe you can help with something else? - he said it in a very human way. - Have you heard anything about the personal archives of Joseph Vissarionovich?

I have no idea, I answer. “We never talked about it at home.

Well, how about ... Your father also had archives, didn't he?

I don't know either, never heard of it.

How did you not hear?! - here Malenkov could not restrain himself. - He must have archives, must!

He's obviously very upset."

That is, not only the archives of Stalin disappeared, but also the archives of Beria, and Malenkov knew nothing about their fate. Of course, theoretically, Khrushchev could have seized and liquidated them, but to do it in such a way that no one saw, heard or recognized anything? Doubtful. The archives of Stalin were still all right, but it was completely impossible to secretly destroy the archives of Beria. Yes, and Khrushchev was not such a person to carry out such an operation and not spill the beans.

So, most likely, Beria still took possession of Stalin's archive. I repeat once again that it did not make sense for him to destroy him, and even more so to destroy his own archive, and there are nine chances out of ten that he hid all the papers somewhere. But where?

Chesterton in one of the stories about Father Brown wrote: “Where does a smart person hide a leaf? In the woods". Exactly. Where were the relics of the great Russian saint Alexander Svirsky hidden? In the anatomical museum. And if you need to hide the archive, where does a smart person hide it? Naturally, in the archive!

It is only in novels that our archives are ordered, systematized and catalogued. Reality looks a little different. I once had a conversation with a man who had been in the archives of the Radio House. He was shocked by what he saw there, told how he sorted through boxes with records that were not listed in any catalogs, but simply piled up in a heap - there were recordings of performances, next to which were praised Gergiev's productions - like a donkey next to an Arabian horse . This is one example.

Another example can be found in the newspapers, which report from time to time about sensational discovery in one of the archives where they found something absolutely amazing. How are these discoveries made? It's very simple: some curious intern looks into the chest, into which no one has ever put his nose before him, and finds it. And what about the story of the rarest antique vases that disappeared peacefully for decades in the basement of the Hermitage? So the easiest way to hide an archive of any size is to dump it in one of the pantry of another archive, where it will lie in complete secrecy and security until some curious intern looks into it and asks: what are those dusty bags lying in the corner. And, opening one of the bags, he will pick up a paper with the inscription: “To my archive. I.St.”

But still, they don’t kill for possessing compromising evidence either. On the contrary, it becomes especially dangerous, because it is possible that in the secret safe at faithful man the most important papers are in an envelope with the inscription: “In case of my death. L. Beria. No, something absolutely extraordinary had to happen for such rather cowardly people as Khrushchev and his company to decide on a murder, and even such a hasty one. What could it be?

The answer came by chance. Deciding to cite Ignatiev's biography in this book, I came across the following phrase there: on June 25, in a note to Malenkov, Beria suggested arresting Ignatiev, but did not have time. There may be a mistake in the date, because on June 26 Beria himself was "arrested", but, on the other hand, he may have spoken about it with someone orally a few days before, or a secret spy in the Ministry of Internal Affairs informed Khrushchev. It was also clear that the new people's commissar was not going to leave the old one alone. On April 6, “for political blindness and idleness,” Ignatiev was removed from the post of secretary of the Central Committee, and on April 28 he was removed from the Central Committee. At the suggestion of Beria, the CPC was instructed to consider the issue of Ignatiev's party responsibility. But all this was not that, all this is not terrible. And then information came that Beria was asking Malenkov for permission for this arrest.

For the conspirators, this was not a danger, it was death! It is not difficult to guess that on the Lubyanka former boss Stalin's guards would have been split like a nut and squeezed like a lemon. What would happen next is not difficult to predict if you remember how Beria kissed the hand of the dying Stalin. None of the conspirators would have met the new year 1954 alive, they would have been killed in Beria’s Lubyanka cellars, spitting on legality for the sake of such an occasion, personally slaughtered with boots.

This is what usually happens with “brilliant impromptu”. What to do? Remove Ignatiev? Dangerous: where is the guarantee that a reliable person does not have a description of the night at Stalin's dacha in a safe place, and maybe many other things. He knew who he was dealing with. So what to do?

But this is the motive! Because of this, Beria really could have been killed, moreover, they should have been killed, and exactly the way it was done. For there was nothing to arrest him for, and because of the dead Beria, as Khrushchev rightly noted, hardly anyone would raise a fuss: what's done is done, you can't return the dead. Especially if you imagine everything as if he offered armed resistance during the arrest. Well, then let propaganda work to present him as a monster and a supervillain, so that grateful descendants can say: "It could be a crime, but it was not a mistake."

HOW MONSTERS ARE MADE

We quote. Recalls retired colonel A. Skorokhodov:

“In November 1953 ... one evening they called from the Camp Collection Headquarters: “Come as soon as possible, you will get acquainted with one curious document.” The next day it was snowing, a blizzard was blowing. Flights, and therefore training, were cancelled. I went to the camp, to the chief of staff. He opened his safe and pulled out a thin book in a soft gray cover. A list was attached to the book with a paper clip. Finding my last name in it, the major put a tick next to it and handed me a book:

In the middle of the page it was written in large: “The indictment in the case of Beria under Art. Art. Code of Criminal Procedure ... "- and there was a listing of articles that I, of course, did not remember. So that's it! A state of feverish excitement seized me. Now, again, I don’t remember the whole text, but the main sections remained in my memory.

Illegal persecution and execution of Sergo Ordzhonikidze's relatives and the endless dirty adventures of the corrupt marshal of state security. Violence, drugs, deceit. Use of a high official position. Among his victims are students, girls, wives taken away from their husbands, and husbands shot because of their wives...

I read without stopping, without interruptions and reflections. First, in one gulp, then more slowly, dumbfounded, in disbelief, rereading individual passages. Nothing could be recorded. He left the room, gave the book to the cheerful major, who winked:

Well, what is Lavrenty Pavlovich like?

I plunged into a garbage pit, - I answered. At the same time, a mechanism for the future compromise of Stalin was worked out on Beria. "Closed" information, which was distributed along the party line, according to closed lists. One-time reading, with a ban on making notes - so that it was impossible to return to what was read, think and compare. And, finally, a win-win emotional move, shock therapy - to throw into the then puritanical society a story about the sexual exploits of the Minister of State Security. Especially here the raped schoolgirls looked good. After all, after so many years, what remains in the memory of Lieutenant Colonel Skorokhodov? Relatives of Sergo Ordzhonikidze and sex, nothing more. The logic here is simple: even if Beria is not guilty of everything else, then for these women alone, he, the bastard, should have been shot twice. That is, if you call a spade a spade, dirty gossip was launched through party channels, which instantly spread throughout the country. The task was completed, the enemy was disgraced and destroyed. And among other things, the second murder of Beria served as a rehearsal for the second murder of Stalin, which took place three years later.

P.S. By the way, about women - otherwise they didn’t tell about the most interesting thing. Anyone who has ever been to court, flipped through a criminal case or watched good detective, knows perfectly well that the case files clearly indicate where, when and under what circumstances the crime occurs. And if it is said that this happened at work, then at work, and if at the dacha, then it means at the dacha. Moreover, lawyers, in their meticulousness, specify in which room, at what time of day, etc. So, in the case of hundreds of raped ladies, schoolgirls, etc., the witness for the prosecution, the former guarantor of Beria Sarkisov, shows: were planned by him during his walks near his house ... Women were delivered to Beria’s apartment, as a rule, at night ... "And even Beria himself" showed "in court:" These women were brought to my house, I never did not go".

So it’s impossible to make a mistake, the case file clearly states: Beria’s house, Beria’s apartment. Everything would be fine, but the notorious mansion of the “corrupted marshal of state security” was a two-story house, where security and a communication point were located on the first floor, and he lived on the second floor with his family, occupying five rooms. And the family was like this: Beria himself, his wife, son, daughter-in-law and their two children (at the time of the arrest, the daughter-in-law was pregnant with her third child). At night, they were all, of course, at home. The son in his memoirs did not say a word about the sexual adventures of his father. Moreover, Beria's wife was not a Moscow emancipe of easy virtue, but a respectable Georgian. Anyone who knows Georgian women can imagine what will happen if a husband dares to come home with his mistress. Not otherwise, there was somewhere near the door an exit to the fifth dimension, where the people's commissar raped them. Because there's just nowhere...

I think that other charges, such as spying for the British or the intention to eliminate the leaders of the party and government, can no longer be discussed ...

P. P. S. From a letter from Beria to the members of the Politburo, written in conclusion: “Dear comrades. They want to deal with me without trial or investigation, after 5 days of imprisonment, without a single interrogation, I beg you all not to let this happen ... Once again I beg everyone, especially the comrades who worked with Lenin and Stalin, enriched with great experience and wise in solving complex cases of comrades Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Mikoyan. In the name of the memory of Lenin and Stalin, I beg you, I beg you to intervene immediately, and you will all make sure that I am absolutely clean, honest, your faithful friend, comrade, loyal member of your party ...

And so on, a mixture of despair and fear, on the model of those letters that the “oppositionists” wrote before the execution. Does anyone really think that we do not know how to forge letters? He was not a fool, he was arrested at a meeting of the Politburo with the consent of all the same "dear comrades", he perfectly knew their price, knew where he was and what awaited him. Now take a look at Beria's photograph, take a close look: will this man, even under the threat of death, lick the boots of his executioners? Isn't this extra evidence that casts doubt on the authenticity of the whole picture?

P.P.P.S. By the way, do you remember three strange letters from Basil Stalin from prison? A statement, a letter to Khrushchev and a letter condemning the “anti-party group”, which are very similar to fakes? With the second, everything is clear right away: the low-browed panegyric to Khrushchev, written by Stalin's son in the style of the worst of the district party newspapers, was supposed to warm the heart of Nikita Sergeevich and, on occasion, could come in handy. You never know, publish it or leave it for history, so that posterity knows how great he was ... But with the other two letters, everything is much more interesting. By genre, they are "a novel within a novel." The author of the letter seems to be talking about one thing, and then, using some small pretext in the text, he suddenly begins to verbosely and confusedly water Beria, so verbosely and with such hatred that one gets the feeling that the letters themselves were written for this only purpose. Here, they say, Stalin's children also hate Beria - and they already know something ... And they overdid it again. The fact that Vasily could not stand Beria can be allowed - suddenly there is something there that we don’t know, but to believe in his ardent love for Khrushchev and in cordial solidarity with the party squabble - thank you ...