Beria: The End of a Career

22 hrs. 2 min.

Language Russian

Author Vladimir Nekrasov

Narrator Vladimir Sushkov

Description

The collection contains materials (memoirs, articles, and essays by political figures, writers, scientists, publicists, lawyers, documents) about the criminal activities, arrest, trial, and execution of L. P. Beria—one of the most influential and sinister figures of Stalin’s rule, who for many years led the repressive apparatus of Georgia and the Soviet Union.

The memoirs, articles, and documents gathered in this book reveal the essence of a phenomenon such as “Beriashchina”—a necessary weapon of a system of unlimited power. Because the subject is not only Beria himself, who trampled on rights, laws, and moral norms, who commanded millions of human destinies—rather, the conditions that produced him, helped elevate him and satisfy his ambitions and thirst for power.
During the establishment of Stalin’s dictatorship regime, Yagoda and Yezhov were needed to set the machinery of mass repression in motion; and then a man was required who could continue and complete the work of creating and strengthening the temple of Stalin’s personal power, and of the final transformation of the state and party apparatus into an obedient instrument of his will.

That man was Beria, for whom the lives of other people were never of any value. Under him, the punitive organs were not only a gigantic apparatus of repression, but also became the largest industrial-construction agency that exploited the prisoners’ unpaid forced labor.

After Stalin’s death, Beria attempted to create the appearance of liberalization while, at the same time, seeking to destabilize the situation in preparation for seizing power. But after Stalin’s death—on June 26, 1953—his career came to an end.