Paul Goble
Staunton, February 2 – The events surrounding the arrest and execution of Stalin’s secret police chief Lavrenty Beria in 1953 are among the murkiest in Soviet times, and perhaps for that reason, each new generation has invested them with new meanings, meanings that reflect not just history but the concerns of the authors and their times.
The standard version now is that Beria was killed because he frightened other members of the CPSU leadership with his reformist plans, his overly rapid deconstruction of Stalin’s GULAG, and the danger that he could threaten other leaders because of the compromising information he had on them, Maksim Artemyev says.
In addition, the Moscow journalist writes in a new article in Moskovsky komsomolets, Nikita Khrushchev wanted to use the execution of Beria to unite in blood members of the Presidium of the Central Committee and open the way for himself to win power (mk.ru/social/2021/02/02/poyavilas-novaya-versiya-smerti-berii.html).
Those factors undoubtedly played a role, Artemyev says; but there is another – and it is this additional factor which deserves attention, quite possibly, although the journalist doesn’t say so, because of its resonance with events now. He says that the leadership in 1953 was worried about leaders installing their children in positions of power and thus changing the system.
Immediately after Stalin’s death, the Presidium took steps to remove from positions of power and authority the son of Andrey Zhdanov who had been head of the Central Committee’s science and technology department and Vasily Stalin, “the crown prince” of the regime as long as his father was alive.
These moves reflected the fact, Artemyev says, that the Presidium of the Central Committee “obviously did not approve the idea of inherited positions within families.” But there was another figure whose son was still playing a significant role and against whom a case could be organized on that ground.
Zhdanov and Stalin were both dead, but Beria in March 1953 was very much alive, and his 26-year-old son Sergo had played an outsize role in the Tehran and Yalta conferences by monitoring Franklin Roosevelt’s conversations and then reporting them to Stalin “every morning,” the Moskovsky komsomolets journalist says.
After the war, Sergo took effective control of the anti-aircraft system around Moscow, “one of the two most secret and important defense projects of the Soviet Union along with the atomic power program),” Artemyev says. And Beria’s son clearly was set for higher things given the protection he enjoyed from his father.
What seems likely, the journalist says, is that Khrushchev played on opposition to the whole idea of dynasties in the leadership as a way of “intriguing against Beria the father.” Using this tactic, of course, gave the future Soviet leader leverage against another Presidium member, Anastas Mikoyan, whose brother Artem was involved in developing the MiGs.
Of course, “to reduce the entire ‘Beria affair’ to the ambitions of his son who destroyed his father would be a mistake. Had Sergo not occupied his position, another would have been found.” But using this issue to discuss moves against him very much helped Khrushchev form the alliance which led to the ouster and then execution of Lavrenty Beria.
Having used this tactic against his competitors, Khrushchev once he was in power forgot that it could be used against him. Many party leaders were less than pleased that he promoted his son in the Soviet rocket industry at a dizzying pace. And it is not unlikely that that was part of the emotional base behind Khrushchev’s ouster in 1964.
Artemyev concludes by observing that “the children of Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev did not get involved in the administration of the state and military secrets,” leaving it for his readers to reflect on what they know all too well: members of Putin’s entourage are arranging for their children to assume high positions now and for the future.
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