04 Kramer 3-38

The Early Post-Stalin Succession Struggle and Upheavals in East-Central Europe Internal-External Linkages in Soviet Policy Making (Part 2)

✣ Mark Kramer

The first part of this three-part article, which was published in the previous issue of the journal, examined the changing state of Soviet-East Euro- pean relations during the first few months after the death of Josif Stalin in March 1953. Important opportunities for political reform emerged once Stalin was gone, and these quickly led to a more relaxed internal climate within the Soviet Union. This change was evidenced by the announcement of a large-scale am- nesty, efforts to curtail some of the abuses committed by the state security organs, the easing of passport restrictions and of limits on domestic travel, and the publication of official statements discrediting spurious “plots” whose existence had been alleged by Stalin. Stalin’s demise also paved the way for significant changes in Soviet foreign policy, including a reorientation of policy toward East- Central Europe. The ongoing power struggle in Moscow in the spring of 1953 buffeted Soviet foreign policy and at times led to incoherent measures, but it did not prevent Soviet leaders from encouraging (or demanding) a general loosen- ing of Stalinist controls in the East-bloc countries. The first part of the article also discussed the political and economic crises that engulfed East-Central Europe shortly after Stalin’s death. Those upheavals underscored the need for sweeping reforms in the region, but they also posed serious dangers. A vast number of Soviet troops had to be deployed on 17 June 1953 to crush a full-scale uprising and to enforce martial law in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The first part of the article considered how the domestic political changes in the Soviet Union affected Soviet policy in East- Central Europe and, conversely, how the changes in Soviet external policy al- tered the internal complexion of the East-Central European countries.

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The second and third parts of the article, presented here and in the next issue of the journal, consider the evolution of Soviet policy toward East-Cen- tral Europe in the aftermath of the East German uprising. The second part looks first at the very brief interregnum between the suppression of the East German rebellion and the arrest on 26 June 1953 of Lavrentii Beria, the powerful head of the Soviet secret police. The article then explains the reasons for Beria’s arrest, the intricacies of the move against him, and the way the plot was executed. The third part of the article, in the next issue of the journal, discusses the well- orchestrated denunciation of Beria at a hastily convened plenum of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee in early July 1953. It then looks at the short-term and longer-term consequences of the Beria affair for Soviet policy toward Germany and the political configuration of the Eastern bloc. The final section ties together the three parts of the article by exploring the theoretical implications of the linkages between internal and external events in the Soviet Union and East-Central Europe in 1953, drawing on recent theoretical literature about the connection between domestic and international politics.

From the East German Uprising to the Beria Affair

The crisis in the GDR and its immediate aftermath had enormous long-term consequences for Soviet policy toward Germany and Eastern Europe as a whole. Stalin had once boasted that a revolt in East Germany was impossible: “Revolt? Why, they won’t even cross the street unless the light is green.” Yet it was precisely in East Germany that the first nationwide rebellion against a Communist regime took place. The uprising bore out the misgivings that many Soviet leaders had been expressing about the flimsiness of the East German regime. A senior official at the Soviet foreign ministry who handled policy toward Germany in 1953 later recalled the profound impact that the crisis had:

This event came as a real jolt to the leadership in Moscow because it showed how tenuous the social base was of the regimes in the People’s Democracies. What was surprising for the Moscow leadership was not the mere fact that there was popular discontent in the GDR. The authorities in Moscow were well aware of that and had even tried to adopt some preventive measures. But what was shocking was the form that the discontent ultimately took—the overwhelming, widespread, and explosive nature of it.1

1. A. M. Aleksandrov-Agentov, Ot Kollontai do Gorbacheva: Vospominaniya diplomata, sovetnika A. A. Gromyko, pomoshchnika L. I. Brezhneva, Yu. V. Andropova, K. U. Chernenko, i M. S. Gorbacheva (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1994), p. 90.

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Of particular concern to the Soviet authorities was the distinctly anti-Soviet as well as anti-Communist overtone of the rebellion. A top-secret memorandum sent to Nikita Khrushchev on 24 June 1953 recounted the “abuse,” “vul- gar insults,” “violent threats,” and “stone-throwing” directed against Soviet troops and officials in East Germany on 17 June “not only by the demonstra- tors themselves, but also by the crowds milling on the sidewalks and the on- lookers dispersed all along the way.”2 The events on the 17th, according to the memorandum, had revealed “deeply troubling” and “ominous” senti- ments lying just below the surface in the GDR: “One must acknowledge that the mass of the [East German] population have retained a hatred toward So- viet officials, which has now been inflamed again. This hatred was openly on display during the demonstrations.”3 The fact that violent unrest occurred much sooner and on a much larger scale than anyone had expected was construed at the time in two very different ways. Neo-Stalinist officials in both Moscow and Eastern Europe claimed that their earlier warnings about the dangers of liberalization had been vindicated. This was the view put forth by Walter Ulbricht, the General Secretary of the East German Socialist Unity Party (SED), during a stormy session of the SED Politbüro on 21 June. Although Ulbricht did not propose an immediate end to the New Course in the GDR or a restoration of the hardline Construction of Socialism policies (primarily because he knew that these steps would be unacceptable in Moscow), he insisted that the sudden relax- ation on 11 June had given a wedge to “anti-socialist and fascist provocateurs and pro-Adenauer subversives.”4 The clear implication was that the measures announced on 11 June should be revoked. By contrast, a number of senior officials in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union claimed that sweeping changes were more necessary than ever to prevent another explosion. This view was expressed in Moscow by Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who had been arguing throughout the spring of 1953 that far-reaching reforms were urgently needed in East-Central Europe. He and other high-ranking Soviet officials, including Beria, had warned in early June that “what has occurred in Czechoslovakia might now be repeated in

2. “Soobshchenie o sobytiyakh v Berline 16 i 17 iyunya 1953 goda,” Report No. 235 (Secret) by P. Naumov, 22 June 1953, with a cover note dated 24 June from D. T. Shepilov to N. S. Khrushchev, in Tsentr Khraneniya Sovremennoi Dokumentatsii (TsKhSD), Fond (F.) 5, Opis’ (Op.) 30, Delo (D.) 5, Listy (Ll.) 82–83. 3. Ibid., L. 85. 4. Rudolf Herrnstadt, Das Herrnstadt-Dokument: Das Politbüro der SED und die Geschichte des 17. Juni 1953, ed. by Nadja Stulz-Herrnstadt (Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1990), pp. 98–99.

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other countries, with an enormous negative impact.”5 The uprising in the GDR amply corroborated their forebodings. Although some of Molotov’s colleagues still hoped that limited remedial measures—including an effort to integrate the East European economies more closely with the Soviet economy—would suf- fice, Molotov himself was willing to recommend much bolder steps.6 He laid out his argument in mid-June in a memorandum to the Presidium of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU) on the implications of the recent crises in East-Cen- tral Europe. Referring specifically to the Czechoslovak authorities’ decision to adopt an “iron hand” policy in the wake of the crisis in PlzeÀ on 1–2 June, Molotov averred that “the Czechoslovak friends have blatantly understated the complexities of the internal situation in their country and have failed to draw the necessary conclusions from the events that occurred. This situation is fraught with the potential for new and even more explosive difficulties in the future.”7 On 20 June, the CPSU Presidium endorsed the memorandum and authorized Molotov to send an urgent telegram to the Soviet ambassador in Prague declaring that “it is imperative for the Czechoslovak friends to develop a better sense of their current economic plans for both industry and agriculture and to make fundamental corrections in those plans.”8 The telegram left no doubt that major political reforms would also be essential. The same theme was stressed by a few leading officials in East-Central Europe who had gained prominence soon after Stalin’s death. The new prime minister in Hungary, Imre Nagy, repeatedly cited the upheavals in East Germany and PlzeÀ during preparations for a climactic meeting of the Cen- tral Leadership of the Hungarian Workers’ Party (MDP), which was set to begin on 27 June. Nagy emphasized that limited instances of strikes and unrest had already been cropping up in many parts of Hungary—in Csepel, Ózd, and Diosgyor—and warned that a “catastrophe” would befall the country unless “profound changes are made through a New Course.”9 Nagy clearly believed that the events in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, not to mention Hungary itself, would give a powerful fillip to the reform process. Reformers elsewhere in the region held out similar hopes.

5. “V Prezidium Soveta Ministrov Soyuza SSR tovarishchu Malenkovu G. M.,” No. 89/B (Top Se- cret), 1–2 June 1953, from L. P. Beria to G. M. Malenkov, in Arkhiv Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii (APRF), F. 3, Op. 66, D. 806, Ll. 98–99. 6. The notion of emphasizing closer integration of the Soviet and East European economies was raised in ibid., L. 99. 7. “V Prezidium TsK KPSS,” June 1953 (Top Secret), from V. Molotov, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 66, D. 806, Ll. 124–125. 8. “Shifrtelegramma,” 20 June 1953 (Strictly Secret), from V. Molotov to A. Bogomolov, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 66, D. 806, Ll. 126–127. 9. “Az MDP KV Politikai Bizottsága ülésének jegyzŒkönyve, 1953. június 20,” 20 June 1953 (Top Secret), in Magyar Országos Levéltár (MOL), 276, F. 53/122 Œrzési egység (Œ.e.).

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If the situation in Moscow had been more stable, the aspirations of these officials might well have been fully realized.10 But as things worked out, events in East-Central Europe were disrupted by the latest turns in the Soviet power struggle. Internal developments in the USSR once again proved to have a decisive influence on Soviet policy abroad and on domestic political alignments in East-Central Europe.

The Deceptive Interlude

The brief interlude between the suppression of the East German uprising and Beria’s arrest gave little hint that a decisive showdown in the post-Stalin succession struggle was about to occur. The CPSU Presidium was preoccupied at the time by the repercussions—political, economic, and military—of the recent uprisings in Czechoslovakia and East Germany. The rebellion in the GDR had been crushed for the time being, but serious doubts persisted about the viability of the East German state, especially in the absence of large-scale Soviet economic aid. Although Soviet public pronouncements and newspa- per commentaries vigorously endorsed the official East German line that the unrest had been fomented by Western subversives and provocateurs who wanted to instigate a “fascist takeover” on “Day X” (17 June), the secret dis- patches sent by Soviet diplomats and intelligence officials during the crisis focused mainly on internal developments and provided no evidence to support subsequent allegations of an “imperialist conspiracy.”11 Once the crisis was over, most of the reports prepared by Soviet officials in the GDR gave greater emphasis to the alleged role of “fascist organizations supported by Western intelligence services,” but these reports, too, offered no corroborating evidence.12 Moreover, even though the documents played up charges of Western involvement in the rebellion, they also contained many scathing comments about the SED’s “unacceptable blunders” and “extremely deficient” performance.

10. Interestingly enough, a classified U.S. intelligence report, completed on 24 June 1953 (two days before Beria’s downfall), predicted that major reforms would soon be implemented in East Germany to forestall a resurgence of destabilizing unrest. See U.S. Department of State, Division of Research for Western Europe, “Intelligence Report: Consequences of the Disturbances in East Germany,” No. 6330 (Confidential Security Information), 24 June 1953, in National Security Archive, Flashpoints Collection. This forecast, like many others, was quickly overtaken by the Beria affair and its aftermath. 11. See, for example, the sources adduced in footnotes 136, 138, 150, 158, 159, 162, 164, 165, 168, and 171 in Part 1 of this article. 12. See, for example, “O sobytiyakh 17–19 iyunya 1953 goda v Berline i GDR i nekotorye vyvody iz etikh sobytii,” Memorandum No. St–0024 (Top Secret), 24 June 1953, from V. Sokolovskii, V. Semyonov, and P. Yudin to V. M. Molotov and N. A. Bulganin, in Arkhiv Vneshnei Politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii (AVPRF), F. 06, Op. 12a, Papka (Pa.) 5, D. 301, Ll. 1–51

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Hence, it is clear that Soviet leaders were under no illusions about the grave problems and volatile public mood in East Germany. Both during and immediately after the crisis, they were informed that East German “workers remain profoundly dissatisfied with the situation in the GDR,” that “the mistaken policies” and “abuses” of the SED regime were the “prime cause of the disturbances and unrest on 17–19 June,” and that the suppression of the uprising had caused “widespread popular resentment” in East Germany toward the Soviet Union.13 In a lengthy report to Molotov on 24 June, the three leading Soviet officials in East Germany warned that unless Walter Ulbricht was dismissed from his posts and other “fundamental political and economic changes” were adopted in East Germany, the very existence of the GDR would be in question.14 This sentiment was shared by many senior figures in Moscow, who were worried about the potential for further instability not only in East Germany, but in Czechoslovakia and other East-Central Euro- pean countries as well. Quite apart from the distractions posed by the situation in East-Central Europe, the CPSU Presidium was busy dealing with a host of other domestic and foreign issues. Among these were the secret proposals submitted by Beria on 15 June to circumscribe the powers of the so-called Special Board (Osoboe Soveshchanie) of the Internal Affairs Ministry (MVD).15 The Special Board had operated with virtual impunity since 1934, overseeing a vast number of arbitrary arrests and executions (in which Beria himself had been fully complicit). Beria’s proposals, the latest in a series of measures he had intro- duced to impose stricter limits on the security apparatus, were due to be considered by the CPSU Presidium in late June. Numerous other domestic matters, including proposals for further changes in nationalities policy and economic affairs, were also on the agenda. In addition, a number of high-ranking Soviet officials, especially Molotov, were busy with the ongoing negotiations in Panmunjom, which were making rapid progress toward a cessation of the three-year-old Korean War. Soviet leaders had been determined to end the war since mid-March

13. Ibid., Ll. 1–51; “Soobshchenie o sobytiyakh v Berline 16 i 17 iyunya 1953 goda,” Ll. 72–86; and “Informatsiya o politicheskom sostoyanii i nastroeniyakh rabochikh na predpriyatiyakh SAO v Germanii,” Memorandum No. 54/02298 (Secret), 25 June 1953, from A. Bobylev, head of information at the Directorate of Soviet Property in Germany, in TsKhSD, F. 5, Op. 28, D. 54, Ll. 143–157. 14. “O sobytiyakh 17–19 iyunya 1953 goda v Berline i GDR i nekotorye vyvody iz etikh sobytii,” Ll. 1–51. 15. “V Prezidium TsK KPSS,” No. 109/B (Top Secret), 15 June 1953, in Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), F. R-9401, Op. 2, D. 416, Ll. 123–125, accompanied by a draft resolution of the CPSU Presidium, a draft decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, and draft guidelines for the MVD’s Special Board, Ll. 126–127, 128, and 129–131, respectively. Many other documents relating to Beria’s proposals for the MVD, internal security, and administrative matters are available at GARF in F. 9401, Op. 2, Dd. 416, 1299, 1300, 1329, and 1337.

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when, at Molotov’s behest, they decided to abandon Stalin’s “mistaken policy” of stalling and protracting the conflict for as long as possible.16 The new Soviet approach had evoked mixed reactions from Chinese leaders— Zhou Enlai strongly supported it, whereas Mao Zedong expressed deep misgivings—but Mao’s ambivalence failed to deflect Moscow’s efforts to achieve a settlement in Korea.17 When a few glitches in the Panmunjom talks arose on 21 June, Soviet officials publicly claimed that the “reactionary clique” in South Korea was working hand-in-hand with the “bandits and provocateurs” in the GDR.18 Despite these problems, the ceasefire negotiations remained a top priority in Moscow, finally bearing fruit in the armistice signed on 26 July.

Initial Preparations and Motives for the Plot Against Beria

All these pressing issues were suddenly overshadowed by the move against Beria.19 Behind the scenes, the intensity of the leadership struggle in Moscow had been steadily increasing in the late spring and early summer of 1953. Dur- ing the first several weeks after Stalin’s death, three of the top leaders—Beria, Georgii Malenkov, and Nikita Khrushchev—had been virtually inseparable. The three worked closely together and were often seen strolling around the Kremlin grounds, engrossed in conversation.20 Their partnership, however, was never based on genuine friendship.21 Malenkov and Khrushchev were in- creasingly wary of Beria, sensing that he was trying to play them off against

16. “Rasporyazhenie Soveta Ministrov SSSR ot 19 marta 1953 g.,” No. 858-372ss (Top Secret), 19 March 1953, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 65, D. 830, Ll. 60–71. For an illuminating discussion of the change in Soviet policy, see Kathryn Weathersby, “Stalin, Mao, and the End of the Korean War,” in Odd Arne Westad, ed., Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1998), pp. 90–116. 17. Mao’s position is well conveyed in “Shifrtelegramma,” 29 July 1953 (Strictly Secret/Special Dossier) from V. Kuznetsov, Soviet ambassador in Beijing, to V. M. Molotov, in AVPRF, F. 059a, Op. 5a, D. 5, Pa. 11, Ll. 156–158. See also Chai Chengwen and Zhao Yongtian, Banmendian tanpan (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe, 1992), esp. pp. 246–252. 18. “Krakh avantyury inostrannykh naimitov v Berline,” Pravda (Moscow), 23 June 1953, p. 1. 19. This account is derived from an analysis and cross-checking of all available memoirs and newly declassified sources, including documents from the 26 June meeting of the CPSU Presidium (cited below); the proceedings of three CPSU Central Committee plenums (in July 1953, January 1955, and June 1957); Beria’s prison letters; and a large volume of materials from the investigation and trial of Beria. 20. See “Vesna 1953 goda: Diktovka t. Mikoyana A. I., 30.IV.60g.,” Aide-mémoire by A. I. Mikoyan, No. 231-op (Secret/Special Dossier), 30 April 1960, in Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii (RGASPI), F. 39, Op. 3, D. 119, Ll. 57–58. Most of this document, which was highly classified until very recently, is featured in chapter 49 (“Kollektivnoe rukovodstvo i bor’ba za vlast’ posle smerti Stalina”) of Mikoyan’s newly published memoirs, Tak bylo (Moscow: Vagrius, 1999). This volume of memoirs is far more valuable than the two volumes published during Mikoyan’s lifetime. 21. This is evident from memoir accounts on all sides as well as from events in 1953–1955.

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one another. Although Khrushchev was not fully comfortable with Malenkov either, he realized that Beria posed the more immediate and formidable chal- lenge. One of Khrushchev’s associates (who was later ousted by him) recalled that, in the first few months after Stalin’s death, the new emphasis on “collective leadership” was hardly enough to forestall a looming showdown:

[Most of the new leaders] genuinely wanted to go back to the collective leadership of old times [that is, before Stalin’s consolidation of power]. . . But there were two members of the ruling core who viewed things much more practically, without any sort of romanti- cism or sentimentality. These were Nikita Khrushchev and Lavrentii Beria. Both of them yearned for power. They were well aware that the mechanism of individualized power had not been broken after Stalin’s death and had not been given away to some museum of ancient history. The mechanism was preserved intact, and all that was needed was to gain control of it and set it into motion. . . From the very start, Khrushchev clearly sensed that Malenkov, with his accommodating manner, was not the main obstacle on the road to supreme power. . . Khrushchev was fully convinced that in the whole ruling core of the party, Beria was his only serious adversary and the only serious obstacle to [Khrushchev’s] aspirations. And what is more, this adversary was a dangerous one.22

By the second week of June, Malenkov and Khrushchev had joined forces to oust Beria. Following a discussion of the matter on 12 June, the two began actively preparing to dislodge their rival.23 They realized from the outset that they would have to obtain the support or at least the acquiescence of all the other members of the CPSU Presidium (excepting Beria, of course). If anyone on the Presidium had opposed the idea, it would have given Beria a wedge to counter and perhaps thwart any action against him. It also might have risked a premature leak of the plot to Beria. Operating in strict secrecy, Malenkov and Khrushchev quickly gained support from Molotov, whose backing for the move proved crucial in winning over other Presidium members, especially Kliment Voroshilov. Voroshilov initially had been averse to the idea (in part because he suspected that he himself was being set up), but he was eventually persuaded by Malenkov and Molotov to back the move, if only reluctantly. Malenkov and Khrushchev had little problem securing the approval of Nikolai Bulganin, the

22. D. T. Shepilov, “Vospominaniya,” Voprosy istorii (Moscow), No. 8 (August 1998), pp. 11–12. 23. See the comments by Malenkov in “Plenum Tsentral’nogo Komiteta KPSS, 2–7 iyulya 1953 g.: Zasedanie pervoe,” 2 July 1953 (Strictly Secret), in TsKhSD, F. 2, Op. 1, D. 29, Ll. 22–23.

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defense minister, whose direct involvement was needed to ensure that military commanders would endorse and actively abet the conspiracy. Nor did they have any problem in winning support from Maksim Saburov. The proposal was also readily endorsed by Lazar Kaganovich, who was informed of it after returning from a brief visit to Siberia where he had been inspecting the lumber industry.24 After discerning that a majority of the Presidium already backed the proposal, Kaganovich expressed his full support. The only problems that Malenkov and Khrushchev encountered were with Voroshilov, Mikhail Pervukhin, and Anastas Mikoyan. Pervukhin gave his consent after some initial hesitation, but Mikoyan posed greater difficulty, despite his close ties to Khrushchev. Mikoyan agreed that Beria’s “negative characteristics” might justify removing him from his posts at the MVD and on the CPSU Presidium, but Mikoyan insisted that it would be worth retaining Beria in a senior government capacity.25 Khrushchev was annoyed by Mikoyan’s “special position,” but, for the time being, it gave them a sufficient basis on which to proceed. Unanimity on the basic objective of demoting Beria was assured. What Malenkov and Khrushchev failed to disclose, however, is that they intended to seek Beria’s arrest, not just his demotion. Although Molotov, Bulganin, and Saburov were informed early on that the aim was to arrest Beria, the others were deliberately kept in the dark about that. Malenkov and Khrushchev were concerned that some of the others, especially Mikoyan and Voroshilov, would not go along with the plot if they knew the full details. Mikoyan had proposed from the outset that they should transfer Beria from the MVD to a ministry responsible for economic affairs. Malenkov and Khrushchev gave the impression that they accepted this idea and would appoint Beria minister of the oil industry. However, their real intention—which they implemented on 26 June—was to begin the Presidium session by out- lining the main charges against Beria and then, after everyone had spoken in support of the allegations, suddenly ordering Beria’s arrest. They correctly surmised that the momentum of anti-Beria criticism at the session would enable them to create a fait accompli.

24. Khrushchev provides an amusing account of his meeting with Kaganovich: “When Kaganovich returned [from Siberia], I requested that he come by the Central Committee headquarters. By the time he got there, it was evening. He and I met for a very long time. He recounted to me in elaborate detail his trip to Siberia and the lumber sites. I didn’t stop him, but I was completely distracted by something very different. Displaying politeness and tact, I waited until he finally paused for breath and was finishing his report to me. When I saw that he had actually stopped speaking, I said to him: ‘That’s all good what you’ve said, but now I want to tell you what’s going on here.’” Quoted from N. S. Khrushchev, “Aktsiya,” in V. F. Nekrasov, eds., Beriya: Konets kar’ery (Moscow: Politizdat, 1991), p. 272. 25. Ibid., pp. 274–275. See also Shepilov, “Vospominaniya,” pp. 15–16.

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Even though Malenkov and Khrushchev had to mislead some of the Pre- sidium members about what would happen to Beria, there was clearly a solid consensus that Beria should be removed from the MVD and the CPSU Pre- sidium. The wariness that most of the Presidium members felt about Beria stemmed primarily from a growing fear that Beria would soon be able to consolidate his power and perhaps seek to liquidate his erstwhile rivals. Those concerns were based in part on Beria’s control over all the files and materials of the security apparatus, which documented the complicity of top leaders (including himself) in the Stalinist repressions. These files gave Beria immense leverage in the post-Stalin maneuvering, which his rivals were determined to negate.26 In addition, Beria’s colleagues were aware that he had obtained “compromising material” (kompromat) about them through a vari- ety of sources, including secret informants, eavesdropping devices, and the diversion of private documents.27 New information had been flowing in from elite bodyguards who, under the MVD’s jurisdiction, were assigned to senior party and state officials. Almost all of these guards had been replaced after Stalin’s death by personnel whose chief loyalties were to Beria. The gathering of kompromat had been a routine practice under Stalin, who kept it at his own disposal; but in the post-Stalin era the accumulated material could instead be exploited directly by Beria, whose ministry had long been responsible for collecting it. It is far from clear whether Beria actually did intend to get rid of the other leaders in the near term, but their concerns were by no means wholly irratio- nal in the context of the Soviet political system, which had always been char- acterized by Machiavellian intrigue and fierce rivalries. Well before Stalin’s death, some members of the CPSU Presidium had experienced what they construed as Beria’s hand in machinations against them. Molotov, for example, was convinced that Beria had provided kompromat to Stalin in 1945

26. On this point, see V. P. Naumov, “K istorii sekretnogo doklada N. S. Khrushcheva na XX S”ezda KPSS,” Novaya i noveishaya istoriya (Moscow), No. 4 (July–August 1996), pp. 152–153. 27. For a detailed accounting of the large volume of kompromat at Beria’s disposal, see the nine pages of handwritten lists appended to “TsK KPSS,” Memorandum No. 1169 (Top Secret/Special Dossier) from I. Serov, chairman of the Soviet Committee on State Security (KGB) and R. Rudenko, Soviet procurator-general, 4 December 1958, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 24, D. 435 (sekretno), Ll. 61–70. Following Beria’s arrest, these files were transferred to a special part of the CPSU CC General Department Archive, where they were stored until July 1954. At that point, according to the Serov/Rudenko memorandum and the appended lists, “the materials and documents [formerly] stored in the personal archive of the enemy of the people Beria (photographs, certificates, deeds), as well as documents containing inflammatory and slanderous information, were de- stroyed.” The destruction of these materials was carried out at the behest of the CPSU Presidium. See also the testimony of Nikolai Shatalin, the head of a commission formed right after Beria’s arrest to examine Beria’s personal belongings, in “Plenum Tsentral’nogo Komiteta KPSS, 2–7 iyulya 1953 g.: Zasedanie vtoroe,” 2 July 1953 (Strictly Secret), in TsKhSD, F. 2, Op. 1, Dd. 30 and 31, esp. Ll. 113–115 and 57–64, respectively.

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that facilitated the Soviet leader’s efforts to humiliate and discredit Molotov.28 Although Beria staunchly denied having supplied any such information, Molotov clearly believed that he had, and he bore a grudge against him, whether rightly or wrongly.29 Bulganin likewise suspected that Beria had turned over kompromat to Stalin in the late 1940s to forestall the appointment of Bulganin as a first deputy prime minister.30 Both Beria and Bulganin at the time were deputy prime ministers, and Bulganin sensed that Beria “was trying to achieve the post of first deputy himself by any means possible,” which would have to come at Bulganin’s expense.31 Similarly, Saburov had long believed that Beria tried to implicate him along with other high-ranking personnel in a trumped-up scandal at the State Planning Commission (Gosplan) in early 1949. The scandal led to severe punishments against a number of senior Gosplan officials, but Saburov himself emerged unscathed and in March 1949 was appointed head of the agency, a post he had held several years earlier. Despite this favorable outcome, Saburov resented Beria for allegedly having sought to implicate him in the affair.32 (Saburov was tempo-

28. For an extraordinary account of Stalin’s campaign against Molotov and of Beria’s possible role in it, drawing on still-classified materials from Stalin’s personal fond, see Vladimir Pechatnov, “‘Soyuzniki nazhimayut na tebya dlya togo, chtoby slomit’ u tebya volyu . . .’: Perepiska Stalina s Molotovym i drugimi chlenami Politbyuro na vneshnepoliticheskim voprosam v sentyabre- dekabre 1945 g.,” Istochnik, No. 2 (1999), pp. 70–85, esp. 83. This matter was raised at the July 1953 plenum of the CPSU Central Committee by several speakers; see, for example, “Doklad tov. G. M. Malenkova” and “Rech’ tov. V. A. Malysheva,” both from “Plenum Tsentral’nogo Komiteta KPSS, 2–7 iyulya 1953 g.,” July 1953 (Strictly Secret), in TsKhSD, F. 2, Op. 1, D. 45, Ll. 5, 40. 29. For Beria’s denial, which responded to criticisms voiced by Molotov at the CPSU Presidium meeting on 26 June 1953, see “V TsK KPSS tovarishchu Malenkovu,” letter from Beria to Malenkov (written from captivity), 1 July 1953, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 24, D. 463, L. 170. 30. Stalin chaired the Soviet government from May 1941 until his death in March 1953. Bulganin was one of several deputy chairmen of the government from September 1938 to May 1944 and again from March 1947 until March 1953. During this latter period, Stalin had been ready to appoint Bulganin a first deputy chairman, but never formally did. Bulganin did informally become a first deputy to Stalin and chaired meetings when Stalin was not present, but Stalin eventually became dissatisfied with Bulganin and decided to rotate the chairmanship, a step that Beria un- doubtedly welcomed. Bulganin raised this issue during the 26 June meeting of the CPSU Pre- sidium, claiming that Beria had told Stalin that Bulganin was “poorly prepared and unable to cope with his job.” Beria later denied this and said he had “always spoken to Comrade Stalin about what a wonderful comrade and Bolshevik” Bulganin was and about Bulganin’s ability to “cope with his job.” See ibid., L. 171. 31. Cited in “Pokazanie A. N. Poskrebysheva,” 14 August 1953 (Top Secret), in APRF, F. 3, Op. 24, D. 463, L. 210. 32. This issue was raised by Saburov at the CPSU Presidium meeting on 26 June, but Beria later claimed that, far from having tried to dislodge Saburov, he had “supported him for the post of chairman of Gosplan.” See “V TsK KPSS tovarishchu Malenkovu” (cited in footnote 28 supra), L. 170. Beria and Saburov were among the twelve deputy chairmen of the Council of Ministers in the late 1940s, as was Nikolai Voznesenskii, the official who headed Gosplan at the time of the alleged scandal. Voznesenskii had been slated for promotion to first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers, joining Molotov in that capacity. A high-ranking Soviet official later claimed that “the Gosplan affair was beneficial for Beria because he did not want to have competition

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rarily removed as head of Gosplan in March 1953 when he was assigned a much less prestigious spot as minister of machine-building, and he evidently blamed this on Beria as well.) Pervukhin, too, was convinced that Beria had betrayed him in 1950 when Stalin was about to appoint Pervukhin to the in- ner core of the Council of Ministers.33 The appointment was waylaid when Stalin suddenly received a “derogatory assessment” of Pervukhin from an unspecified source.34 Pervukhin assumed, both then and afterward, that his detractor was Beria. It is not clear whether any of these suspicions were well-founded, but there is little doubt that by 1953 several of Beria’s colleagues believed he had tried to undercut them in the past and would likely do it again. Their misgivings seemed to gain added credence from Beria’s behavior in the spring of 1953. Even officials like Mikoyan, who did not fear that Beria was planning to seize dictatorial power, had to acknowledge that a number of Beria’s actions in 1953 were unusual enough to raise questions about his motives.35 Beria was one of only three leaders (along with Malenkov and Khrushchev) who secretly devised the initial political arrangements for the post-Stalin era. Those arrangements were presented as a fait accompli on 5 March, when Beria nominated Malenkov to be the new prime minister and was himself given unified control over the formerly separate state security and internal affairs ministries.36 From that point on, Beria was extraordinarily active and visible on the political scene, not least during Stalin’s funeral when he, Malenkov, and Molotov were the only speakers. With help from a few top aides, Beria produced a flurry of initiatives after Stalin’s death on a wide

from Voznesenskii for the post of first deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, a spot he was aspiring to fill himself.” Statement by Nikolai Dudorov, Soviet minister of internal affairs, in “Plenum TsK KPSS: Iyun’ 1957: Zasedanie pervoe (Nepravlennaya stenogramma),” 22–29 June 1957 (Strictly Secret), in TsKhSD, F. 2, Op. 1, D. 223, Ll. 42–43. 33. See “Pokazanie A. N. Poskrebysheva,” L. 211. 34. This issue was raised by Pervukhin at the CPSU Presidium meeting on 26 June, but Beria insisted that he had never tried to undercut Pervukhin and had in fact awarded him a Socialist Hero of Labor medal in October 1949. See “V TsK KPSS tovarishchu Malenkovu,” letter from Beria to Malenkov (written from captivity), 1 July 1953, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 24, D. 463, L. 171. 35. “Konets Berii: Diktovka t. Mikoyana A. I., 21.V.60g.,” Aide-mémoire by A. I. Mikoyan, No. 231– op (Secret/Special Dossier), 21 May 1960, in RGASPI, F. 39, Op. 3, D. 119, L. 70. 36. See the sources adduced in footnote 8 of part 1 of this article. See also the first-hand account by a high-ranking CPSU official in the 1950s, Nuriddin Mukhitdinov, Gody, provedennye v kremle: Vospominaniya veterana voiny, truda i Kommunisticheskoi partii, rabotavshego so Stalinym, Malenkovym, Khrushchevym, Brezhnevym, Andropovym, 3 vols. (Tashkent: Izdatel’stvo narodnogo naslediya, 1994), Vol. 1: O deyatel’nosti TsK KPSS i ego Politbyuro v 50-e gody, p. 99. According to Mukhitdinov “some [high-ranking party and state] officials did not find out about their new appointments until the session” on 5 March. Beria was also chosen to nominate Malenkov as prime minister on 15 March at a special session of the Supreme Soviet (the figure- head Soviet parliament), which unanimously endorsed the proposal.

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range of domestic issues.37 Although most of these came within the broad purview of the MVD (for example, measures prohibiting the routine use of physical torture, transferring jurisdiction of the gulag system to the Justice Ministry, reducing the size of the security apparatus, and streamlining the economic functions of forced labor camps), a few went well beyond it. When the proposals were adopted by the CPSU Presidium and circulated to Com- munist Party organizations all around the USSR, Beria often made sure that his signed memoranda and draft resolutions were attached, thus demonstrat- ing that he was the one who had initiated the Presidium’s actions.38 This sort of practice was not as unusual as was later alleged by Beria’s opponents— Khrushchev and others had been doing the same thing—but the sheer number and importance of Beria’s signed proposals inevitably brought him a good deal of attention both inside and outside the CPSU. Much the same was true of an announcement that appeared on 4 April in the two main Soviet newspapers, Pravda and Izvestiya, debunking earlier allegations of a “Doctors’ Plot.”39 Beria had set up five commissions to inves- tigate the Doctors’ Plot and other trumped-up conspiracies shortly after Stalin’s death, and he reported to the CPSU Presidium in early April that the Doctors’ Plot had been completely falsified, a finding that the Presidium endorsed on 3 April.40 Beria then decided to follow up by publishing a statement in the name of the MVD, which made no mention of the CPSU. The announcement clearly gave the impression that the MVD—and Beria person- ally—were leading the effort to curb Stalinist abuses. This item was followed

37. See the sources adduced in footnote 15 above. For a valuable declassified selection of Beria’s proposals on various domestic issues, with an interesting (albeit unduly generous and occasionally inaccurate) introduction by A. I. Pozharov, see “‘Novyi kurs’ L. P. Berii 1953 g.,” Istoricheskii arkhiv (Moscow), No. 4 (1996), pp. 132–164. 38. This issue, which is discussed in various memoirs, was raised by Malenkov, Khrushchev, and others at the CPSU Presidium meeting on 26 June. From captivity, Beria wrote to Malenkov that “your criticism, the criticism of Cde. N. S. Khrushchev, and the criticism of the other comrades on the CPSU Presidium were completely justified regarding my improper desire, at my urging, to have the MVD’s memoranda sent out together with the CC [Presidium’s] decisions. Of course, this practice substantially detracted from the significance of the CC [Presidium’s] own decisions, thereby creating an unacceptable situation in which the MVD appeared to be correcting the [party’s earlier decisions] rather than just fulfilling the instructions of the CPSU CC and Govern- ment. I want to say forthrightly that it was stupid and politically ill-conceived for me to have insisted on the distribution of the [MVD’s] memoranda, all the more so because you advised me that it would not be wise to do it.” See “V TsK KPSS Tovarishchu Malenkovu,” 1 July 1953, from L. Beria, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 24, D. 463, Ll. 164–166. The issue was featured prominently in the top- secret report filed against Beria at the beginning of his trial; see the section on “Prestupnaya deyatel’nost’ zagovorshchikov posle konchiny I. V. Stalina /mart-iyul’ 1953 goda/,” December 1953 (Top Secret/Special Dossier), in APRF, F. 3, Op. 24, D. 471, esp. L. 93. 39. “Soobshchenie Ministerstva vnutrennikh del,” Pravda (Moscow), 4 April 1953, p. 2. 40. “Protokol No. 3 zasedaniya Prezidiuma TsK KPSS 3 aprelya 1953 goda,” 3 April 1953 (Strictly Secret), in TsKhSD, F. 3, Op. 10, D. 18, Ll. 1–3.

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two days later by the publication in Pravda of a lengthy, front-page editorial that again had been sponsored by Beria.41 The editorial blamed the fabrica- tion of the Doctors’ Plot on Beria’s nemesis Semyon Ignatiev, the minister of state security until March 1953. It accused Ignatiev and his top deputies of “criminal adventurism,” “despicable and hateful lies,” “willful abuses of power,” “political blindness,” and “egregious violations of Soviet law.”42 Af- ter making a fleeting reference to the CPSU, the editorial emphasized that the MVD and the Soviet government were taking “decisive” steps to uphold “socialist legality and protect the rights of Soviet citizens.” Upon seeing these two items in the Soviet press, the other members of the CPSU Presidium reacted with ambivalence. On the one hand, they unanimously adopted a resolution on 10 April “endorsing the measures being carried out by Cde. L. P. Beria to expose the criminal actions perpetrated over a number of years by the former State Security Ministry of the USSR, including the preparation of spurious cases against honest people.”43 On the other hand, several of Beria’s colleagues feared that the Communist Party appeared to be lag- ging behind. They instructed the editor-in-chief of Pravda, Dmitrii Shepilov, to publish articles over the next few weeks hailing the CPSU Presidium’s efforts to rectify injustices committed by the state security apparatus.44 Beria’s decision to go public with the MVD’s findings so soon, and his “penchant for sensationalism” (as Kaganovich later described it), contributed to a broader skepticism about his motives in pushing for internal reform. Few of Beria’s colleagues believed that he was genuinely interested in redressing the abuses and “excesses” of the past. Instead, his main objective, as they saw it, was to shift all blame for those crimes onto others, including Stalin.45 Beria’s choice of topics to confront (namely, the fraudulent conspiracies and large- scale arrests during the period from late 1945 to early 1953, when he had not

41. “Sovetskaya sotsialisticheskaya zakonnost’ neprikosnovenna,” Pravda (Moscow), 6 April 1953, p. 1. 42. Ibid. Ignatiev had been appointed a CPSU CC Secretary on 5 March 1953, but he was removed from that post on 5 April (the day before this editorial appeared), as stipulated by a resolution of the CPSU Presidium, “Vypiska iz protokola No. 3 zasedaniya Prezidiuma TsK KPSS 3 aprelya 1953 goda: O doklade MVD SSSR po ‘delu vrachakh-vreditelyakh’,” No. P3/IV (Strictly Secret), 3 April 1953, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 58, D. 423, L. 17. 43. “Protokol No. 4 zasedaniya Prezidiuma TsK KPSS 10 aprelya 1953 goda,” 10 April 1953 (Strictly Secret), in TsKhSD, F. 3, Op. 10, D. 20, L. 11. 44. See Shepilov’s first-hand account, “Vospominaniya,” pp. 14–15. See also the comments by Kaganovich and Nikolai Shatalin in “Plenum Tsentral’nogo Komiteta KPSS, 2–7 iyulya 1953 g.: Zasedanie vtoroe,” 2 July 1953 (Strictly Secret), in TsKhSD, F. 2, Op. 1, Dd. 30 and 31, esp. Ll. 75 and 59, respectively. 45. See, for example, Shepilov, “Vospominaniya,” pp. 13–15; Mukhitdinov, Gody, provedennye v kremle, pp. 107–109; Khrushchev, “Aktsii,” pp. 276–277; and Mikoyan, “Vesna 1953 goda” and “Konets Berii,” Ll. 57–58 and 68–69, respectively.

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been officially in charge of the state security or internal affairs ministry) fueled suspicions that his motives were less benign than they appeared.46 At no point did Beria raise questions about the mass repressions in Soviet Georgia in the 1930s or the wholesale deportations of national minorities that he organized in the 1940s. Nor did he acknowledge the slightest degree of personal culpa- bility. On the contrary, his growing behind-the-scenes criticism of Stalin in the spring of 1953 heightened the impression that Beria wanted to attribute the selective abuses predominantly to Stalin, thereby absolving himself of any responsibility.47 Such an approach, in and of itself, would not have been ad- verse from the perspective of Beria’s rivals. Indeed, it would have been beneficial, as Khruschev indirectly acknowledged when he adopted precisely this approach in his “secret speech” at the Twentieth Soviet Party Congress three years later. What many of Beria’s colleagues feared, however, is that he would not stop in just laying blame on Stalin. They suspected that he would then seek to implicate most of them as well, leaving himself without serious challengers. Not all of Beria’s rivals subscribed to this view, but many did. At the very least, skepticism about his intentions was widespread. The growing unease about Beria was reinforced by his efforts to restructure the MVD. Because Beria had not been directly in charge of the internal security apparatus and police forces since late 1945 (after he had been designated by Stalin to oversee the massive Soviet nuclear bomb and ballistic missile projects), he wanted to establish tight control over the MVD in 1953 by bringing in his own people. As soon as Beria took office, he began methodically replacing senior ministry personnel and promoting officials who were loyal to him, including Sergei Goglidze, Bogdan Kobulov, Vsevolod Merkulov, Naum Eitingon, Lev Raikhman, Lev Vlodzimirskii, Amayak Kobulov, Nikolai Gorlinskii, Boris Obruchnikov, Nikolai Sazykin, and Grigorii Zabolotnyi.48 He did the same with many of the union-republic and oblast (provincial) branches of the MVD, ap-

46. Although Beria did not formally step down as People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs until 14 January 1946, he relinquished day-to-day control over the security forces to Sergei Kruglov shortly after being appointed head of the Special Committee on nuclear weapons in August 1945. Kruglov did not formally assume the ministerial title until Beria stepped down, but the real transfer had occurred three to four months earlier. As a deputy prime minister and a senior party official, Beria retained considerable influence over the security organs, but his direct role largely ceased until March 1953. 47. On Beria’s criticism of Stalin, see “V Prezidium TsK KPSS,” No. 13/B (Top Secret), 2 April 1953, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 58, D. 536, Ll. 103–107. 48. For a very useful (though at times somewhat overstated) discussion of Beria’s changes of personnel at the MVD, based on new archival sources, see David E. Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev, and George Bailey, Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (New Haven: Yale Univer- sity Press, 1997), pp. 151–162. Although the authors rely much too heavily and uncritically on the top-secret bill of indictment against Beria (a document that is at best tendentious and misleading, and at times flatly inaccurate, as discussed below), their account is illuminating.

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pointing his own people (such as Vladimir Dekanozov, Pavel Meshik, Solomon Mil’shtein, P. A. Shariya, and M. F. Dechko) to replace officials who had gained ascendance in the mid- to late 1940s.49 Patronage of this sort was of course a standard, time-tested practice in the Soviet Union. Other Soviet leaders had been doing precisely the same both before and after Stalin’s death. (The practice, moreover, was hardly unique to the Soviet Union.) Nevertheless, the bloody history and coercive power of the state security apparatus gave extra significance to personnel changes within the MVD. Patron-client relationships in the state security organs and the MVD’s foreign intelligence service had a much greater potential impact on the leadership struggle than did such relationships in other spheres. Several of Beria’s rivals, especially Malenkov and Khrushchev, had sought to place their own people in key positions at the MVD in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and they were worried that Beria would soon replace all these officials, giving himself unassailable control of the ministry.50 Taken cumulatively, Beria’s various actions in the spring of 1953 did ap- pear highly unusual. Whether his behavior really signaled that he would try to achieve dictatorial power in the near term is far more questionable. It is unclear whether the suspicions voiced about Beria’s intentions stemmed mainly from genuine concern or were instead motivated primarily by a desire to find a pretext for getting rid of an inconvenient rival. What does seem clear is that Beria’s positions on concrete issues—whether domestic or foreign—had little or nothing to do with the effort to eliminate him. Although the top leaders were by no means always unanimous in their conceptions of specific matters, there was far more of a consensus about the general direc-

49. See the documents reproduced in V. F. Nekrasov, “Final (po materialam sudebnogo protsessa),” in Nekrasov, ed., Beriya: Konets kar’ery, p. 400. 50. It turned out, however, that Beria did not move fast enough. As of 26 June, he had not yet replaced two high-ranking officials who had long been close to Khrushchev and Malenkov, respectively: Ivan Serov and Sergei Kruglov. Beria’s willingness to retain these two officials for so long was a critical mistake because, as events showed, Serov’s and Kruglov’s loyalties ultimately lay elsewhere. Although both Serov and Kruglov had worked very closely and loyally with Beria for many years, they were willing—if only reluctantly—to cast their lot with Khrushchev and Malenkov against Beria. According to Marshal Georgii Zhukov, who led the arrest of Beria, Serov aided in the detention of Beria’s chief personal bodyguards, Rafael Sarkisov and Sardeon Nadaraya, at around the same time that Beria himself was arrested. See G. K. Zhukov, “Riskovannaya operatsiya,” in Nekrasov, ed., Beriya: Konets kar’ery, p. 282. Moreover, on that same day, when the CPSU Presidium was discussing Beria’s fate, Malenkov had proposed Kruglov as a replacement for Beria at the MVD, thus indicating that Kruglov was a full-fledged participant in the plot against Beria. The following day, both Serov and Kruglov were given responsibility for the first stage of the interrogation of Beria. Responsibility for the interrogation was soon transferred to the new Soviet procurator-general, Roman Rudenko, to resolve a jurisdictional dispute; but the very fact that this important task had been entrusted at all, albeit briefly, to Serov and Kruglov was a further sign that they were actively complicit in the conspiracy. Over the next few months, both of them facilitated the efforts of the anti-Beria forces to assert full control over the MVD.

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tion to pursue than has often been suggested. All the top leaders wanted to abandon—or at least greatly modify—the most rigid and counterproductive policies of Stalin’s final years. Naturally, disagreements arose at times about the best means of moving away from orthodox Stalinism, but the leaders’ different views (or allegedly different views) were not what drove the early power struggle. Instead, the purported differences became convenient post- hoc rationalizations. This was especially true in foreign policy. A temporary consensus on most foreign policy issues had been forged shortly after Stalin’s death, with Molotov playing the chief role. The policies that Beria espoused abroad were very much in line with those of his colleagues, including Molotov, Malenkov, and Khrushchev. The same applied to key domestic issues, including policy toward nationalities and ethnic groups. Although a senior Russian archival official, Vladimir Naumov, recently asserted that Beria’s proposals on the union republics of the Soviet Union “played a decisive role in [his] fate,” the evidence does not bear this out.51 It is true that Beria took a prominent role on the nationalities question in 1953 and that his choice of topics was highly selective. Rather than bringing up the mass deportations of the early and mid-1940s (which he himself had orchestrated), Beria sought to focus exclusively on problems that had emerged since 1945 in several republics, especially the republics on the USSR’s western flank, which had been annexed in whole or in part at the end of World War II. Confronted by armed resistance movements (known in Soviet parlance as “bandits”) in these regions, the Soviet internal security forces launched brutal and often indiscriminate reprisals against the local populations, making it all but impossible for the Soviet regime to assert its rule there until the early to mid-1950s. In three separate memoranda on the “mistakes and shortcomings” of Soviet operations in western Ukraine, Belorussia, and Lithuania, Beria advocated a change of tactics. Although he refrained from even mentioning the violent abuses committed by the state security organs, he did insist that forced Russification should cease and that local cadres should be brought into the government to replace Russian officials who could not speak the local language.52 These steps, he

51. V. P. Naumov, “Byl li zagovor Berii? Novye dokumenty o sobytiyakh 1953 g.,” Novaya i noveishaya istoriya (Moscow), No. 5 (September–October 1998), p. 23 (emphasis added). My in- terpretations diverge sharply from Naumov’s on several points, but I have benefited a good deal from his article. See also his earlier assessment, coauthored with Aleksandr Korotkov, “Beriya: tainyi i yavnyi,” Moskovskie novosti (Moscow), No. 19 (17–24 May 1998), p. 21, which gave a brief, preliminary look at his new findings. 52. “V Prezidium TsK KPSS,” No. 31/B (Top Secret), 8 May 1953, in GARF, F. R9401, Op. 2, D. 416, Ll. 72–74; “V Prezidium TsK KPSS,” No. 42/B (Top Secret), 16 May 1953, in GARF, F. R9401, Op. 2, D. 416, Ll. 79–82; and “V Prezidium TsK KPSS,” No. 98/B (Top Secret), 8 June 1953, in GARF, F. R9401, Op. 2, D. 416, Ll. 113–116. These dealt, respectively, with Lithuania, western Ukraine, and Belorussia.

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argued, would be the only way to ensure that Soviet republic governments could muster enough support to wipe out the “bandits.” Some analysts, including Naumov, have argued that Beria’s memoranda on the union republics posed a dire threat to leaders like Khrushchev, who had been complicit in the worst bloodshed and atrocities in western Ukraine. In Naumov’s view, a fundamental clash on this issue guaranteed that Beria would be removed. The problems with Naumov’s argument are threefold. First, the notion of promoting local cadres to leading positions in the union republics was hardly a radical departure. The highest bodies of the Soviet Communist Party had been moving in that direction since February 1952 when a meeting of the party’s Secretariat, chaired by Malenkov, agreed that it would be desirable to begin emphasizing the recruitment of local cadres for the republics’ security forces.53 According to Malenkov, the rationale for this move was that local elements “in their republics would trust one another more than they trust our [Soviet] state security officials.”54 Beria’s memoranda on western Ukraine, Belorussia, and Lithuania were thus in full accord with views that had been firmly accepted for over a year. For Beria and all his colleagues, the issue was not one of fairness or “being nice”; it was simply a matter of expediency in the battle against underground resistance movements. Second, Beria’s memoranda stayed well within the limits of his jurisdiction as head of the Soviet MVD and as a leading member of the CPSU Pre- sidium. In each of the documents, he gave an overview of recent personnel changes within the particular republic’s ministry of internal affairs. These changes had been carried out at the behest of the central MVD in Moscow (with the CPSU Presidium’s authorization) to bolster the capacity of the local security forces to wipe out “bandit” units. Beria then went on to list the “shortcomings” and “abnormalities” in the work of the republic’s party and state bodies, which, as he rightly pointed out, were greatly impeding the effort to consolidate a stable form of governance in the various republics. In laying out these issues, Beria merely offered recommendations to the CPSU Presidium for corrective steps that would be “worth taking.” His recommendations were fully in line with the policy changes that had been under way since February 1952. Third, there is no evidence that Beria’s proposals on national questions sparked any genuine disagreements within the CPSU Presidium before his ar-

53. “Zasedanie No. 3 Sekretariata TsK VKP(b) 20.2.1952 g.,” 20 February 1952 (Strictly Secret), in RGASPI, F. 17, Op. 116, D. 643, L. 9. 54. Quoted by A. Snechkus, first secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party, in “Plenum Tsentral’nogo Komiteta KPSS, 2–7 iyulya 1953 g.: Zasedanie vtoroe,” 2 July 1953 (Strictly Secret), in TsKhSD, F. 2, Op. 1, D. 32, Ll. 212–213.

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rest. In the outlying republics, many of the officials who had been replaced were dismayed by the changes, but in Moscow itself a high-level consensus on the matter prevailed. Far from protesting, Khrushchev and Malenkov spoke prominently and strongly in support of Beria’s memoranda, particularly the one about western Ukraine.55 Moreover, Khrushchev himself drafted memoranda about Latvia and Estonia that were nearly identical in both tone and content to Beria’s notes on Lithuania, Belorussia, and western Ukraine.56 (Khrushchev clearly relied on material provided to him by Beria.) Khrushchev’s supposed discomfiture with Beria’s views came purely after the fact. When decisions were actually being made about nationalities questions in the spring of 1953, Beria, Khrushchev, and Malenkov were all on the same side. It is possible, of course, that the tone of Beria’s memoranda may have contributed to the general unease that most of the Presidium members felt about his intentions, but this is a very different matter from saying that his view of the issue was fundamentally at odds with theirs. Even before Stalin died, a high-level consensus had emerged regarding the need to pursue a more effective strategy against the “bandits” by paying greater heed to local sentiment. From a practical standpoint, this meant that local cadres should be given leading posts in the republics and that greater leeway should be per- mitted for local languages. Beria’s views in these respects were no different from those of his colleagues. Thus, all the latest evidence suggests that the leadership struggle in Mos- cow did not hinge on concrete issues so much as it did on the simple question that was first posed by the founder of the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Lenin: kto-kogo (who will win out over whom)? Minor differences in the top leaders’ views of specific issues did not determine the answer to that question, but those differences did provide useful justifications afterward.

Final Preparations for the Move Against Beria

The crisis in East Germany caused a slight delay in the timetable for the anti- Beria conspiracy, but once the immediate crisis was over, the planning re-

55. “Protokol No. 9 zasedaniya Prezidiuma TsK KPSS 20 maya 1953 goda,” 20 May 1953 (Strictly Secret), in TsKhSD, F. 3, Op. 8, D. 27, Ll. 82–83; “Protokol No. 10 zasedaniya Prezidiuma TsK KPSS 26 maya 1953 goda,” 26 May 1953 (Strictly Secret), in TsKhSD, F. 3, Op. 8, D. 27, L. 86; and “Protokol No. 11 zasedaniya Prezidiuma TsK KPSS 12 iyunya 1953 goda,” 12 June 1953 (Strictly Secret), in TsKhSD, F. 3, Op. 10, D. 21, L. 7. 56. “V Prezidium Tsentral’nogo Komiteta KPSS,” 8 June 1953 (Top Secret), from N. S. Khrushchev, in TsKhSD, F. 5, Op. 30, D. 6, Ll. 20–29; “V Prezidium Tsentral’nogo Komiteta KPSS,” 8 June 1953 (Top Secret), from N. S. Khrushchev to the CPSU Presidium, in TsKhSD, F. 5, Op. 15, D. 445, Ll. 46, 267–277; and “V Prezidium TsK KPSS,” 13 June 1953 (Top Secret), from N. S. Khrushchev, in TsKhSD, F. 5, Op. 15, D. 443, Ll. 29–37.

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sumed in full force. Malenkov and Khrushchev moved swiftly to provoke a showdown with Beria, which occurred at a CPSU Presidium meeting on 26 June. It is still not entirely clear how the plotters were able to keep Beria from discovering their plans. It seems hard to believe that an intricate conspiracy like this, with so many people involved (including some who were unenthu- siastic about it) and at least one who had declined to participate, could have eluded the MVD’s pervasive eavesdropping and information-gathering net- work. One possibility, albeit unlikely, is that the preparations were picked up by the MVD, but that one or more senior officials in the ministry betrayed Beria and kept him from receiving the information. Another, more plausible explanation is that Beria did know something was afoot, but did not realize that the conspirators would act so soon.57 It is even possible that one or two of the conspirators (perhaps Khrushchev or Malenkov) had been plotting with Beria against the others—either sincerely or as a ruse—and then decided (or planned all along) to double-cross him.58 Whatever the case may be, it is clear that even if Beria sensed that a conspiracy was being hatched against him, he did not grasp the seriousness of it until it was too late. Although Beria, like all of Stalin’s successors, was hardly

57. Some of the retrospective comments by Molotov, as recorded in Feliks Chuev, comp., Sto sorok besed s Molotovym: Iz dnevnika F. Chueva (Moscow: Terra, 1991), pp. 334–335, suggest that Beria suspected there was a plot against him, but may not have known any of the details. 58. Dmitrii Sukhanov, who was both the chief aide to Malenkov for many years and the head of the chancellery of the CPSU Presidium from March 1953 to late 1954 (when the chancellery was replaced by the CPSU General Department headed by Vladimir Malin), wrote in 1993, when he was 89 years old, that Beria had been conspiring with Khrushchev and Bulganin to remove Malenkov and seize power on 26 June 1953. According to Sukhanov, Malenkov learned of the conspiracy (though Sukhanov does not say how), and on 25 June Malenkov “invited Khrushchev and Bulganin to his office, where instead of greeting them he told them that he had been informed both about Beria’s conspiracy and about their participation in it. Khrushchev and Bulganin were warned that they could save their lives if Bulganin’s [defense ministry] cars could be used to bring to the Kremlin a group of military commanders selected by Marshal G. K. Zhukov. Khrushchev and Bulganin, having been exposed in the plot, accepted the conditions.” Quoted from “Iz vospominanii Sukhanova D. N. byvshego pomoshchnika Malenkova G. M.,” March 1993, pp. 20–21, on microfilm reel 8 of the Volkogonov Papers. Sukhanov offers a number of other comments about Beria’s arrest that are clearly fanciful and are contravened by the documents and other evidence cited below. His allegations of a conspiracy involving Beria, Khrushchev, and Bulganin cannot be dismissed altogether, but the notion that Beria was planning to seize power on the 26th is patently incorrect. The documents cited below leave no doubt that Malenkov and the others were not at all worried that Beria was planning to oust them on the 26th; nor is there the slightest evidence that Beria had been preparing to do anything that particular day. The glaring inaccuracies in Sukhanov’s testimony are unfortunate because he could have provided an invaluable account. After all, Sukhanov was the official who was posted just outside the CPSU Presidium meeting on 26 June to wait for a signal from Malenkov indicating that it was time to arrest Beria. Some of Sukhanov’s observations in his memoirs are interesting and valuable, but his account of the Beria affair is gravely marred by his animus toward Khrushchev, whom Sukhanov blamed not only for Malenkov’s decline but also for his own arrest in May 1956 on corruption charges. These errors do not necessarily mean that a conspiracy with Beria was not afoot (either genuinely or as a ruse to trick Beria), but Sukhanov’s specific scenario for 26 June is clearly not the one that would have been pursued.

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a devout believer in “collective leadership,” he was excessively confident of his own ability to outflank his rivals. His confidence was especially great in 1953 because he had regained direct jurisdiction over the entire security apparatus. When Stalin was alive, control of the security organs was not enough to confer invincibility on the head of the apparatus (as Beria’s two immediate predecessors at the NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolai Ezhov, found out to their dismay); but in the post-Stalin era, Beria clearly assumed that his grip over the newly combined ministries of state security and internal affairs would enable him to fend off all challengers. Beria’s rivals, too, were mindful of the obstacles they faced in trying to arrest him. They knew they could not assign that task to the regular police or internal security forces, all of which reported to Beria. The only way they could circumvent the MVD was by resorting to the one organ of coercive authority that Beria did not control—the military. Malenkov as prime minister and Bulganin as defense minister had the authority to issue legitimate orders to Soviet Army officers, but they also knew that, for such a delicate mission, they would have to choose carefully which officers to enlist. One of the top-ranking commanders whom they initially approached on 25 June evidently was unwilling to take part.59 Khrushchev and Bulganin then turned to General Kirill Moskalenko, the commander of the Moscow Air Defense Region, who promptly agreed to carry out the ordered mission.60

59. See K. S. Moskalenko, “Kak byl arestovan Beriya,” Moskovskie novosti (Moscow), No. 22 (10 June 1990), pp. 10–11. Moskalenko writes that “after Beria’s arrest, during a routine report to Malenkov, he [Malenkov] happened to tell me and Cde. R. A. Rudenko, the General Procurator, that ‘before turning to K. S. Moskalenko to carry out this operation, we [Malenkov and Khrushchev] approached one of the Marshals of the Soviet Union, but he refused to do it.’ Who this marshal was, Comrade Rudenko and I didn’t ask.” The context suggests that it may have been Aleksandr Vasilevskii, who was then a deputy defense minister. (Vasilevskii and Bulganin alter- nated as defense minister from 1947 to 1955: Bulganin was minister from 1947 to 1949, Vasilevskii was minister from 1949 to March 1953, and Bulganin returned to his ministerial post in March 1953.) Moskalenko writes that when he suggested bringing Vasilevskii into the operation, Bulganin “for some reason immediately rejected this proposal.” 60. Naumov mistakenly writes that Moskalenko was commander of the Moscow Military District rather than the Moscow Air Defense Region (“Byl li zagovor Berii?” p. 27). The Moscow Air De- fense Region (renamed the Moscow Air Defense District in August 1954) and the Moscow Mili- tary District were closely tied to one another, and Moskalenko did become commander of the Moscow Military District the day after Beria’s arrest; but at the time of the arrest, Moskalenko did not yet hold that post. It was held instead by General Pavel Artem’ev. This may seem like a trivial point, but in fact it is crucial. Within the Moscow area, the anti-Beria conspirators could seek to rely on troops from the Moscow Military District, the Moscow Air Defense Region, or both. They decided not to approach the commander of the Moscow Military District, General Artem’ev, because he had been a high-ranking official in the internal affairs commissariat during Beria’s time there in the late 1930s and early 1940s. They felt far more confident about relying on Moskalenko, who had no previous ties with Beria. The officers whom Moskalenko recruited (other than Batitskii) were all from the Air Defense command and thus had no connection at all with Artem’ev. One of the officers in a supplementary group (see below), Colonel-General A. M. Pronin, was from the Moscow Military District, but he had long-standing ties with Khrushchev and thus was deemed reliable.

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Moskalenko was asked to choose four of his most reliable deputies and to instruct them to bring arms with them on the 26th. (Normally, military officers visiting the Kremlin came unarmed.) Moskalenko selected three senior Air Defense officers—Major-General Aleksei Baksov, Colonel Ivan Zub, and Major Viktor Yuferev—and also secured the help of Major-General Pavel Batitskii, the chief of staff and first deputy commander-in-chief of the Soviet Air Force. Malenkov and Khrushchev enlisted five additional officers and political commissars to serve as reinforcements.61 These officers—headed by Leonid Brezhnev, the first deputy chief of the Soviet Army’s Main Political Directorate, and General Mitrofan Nedelin, the commander of Soviet Artillery Forces (and a former deputy defense minister)—were responsible for guarding the doors and providing extra troops in case the arrest proved more diffi- cult than anticipated. Getting all these officers into the Kremlin unnoticed on 26 June seemed to be a daunting task, but Bulganin was able to make use of two defense ministry cars whose special insignia entitled them to enter the Kremlin grounds without being stopped for inspection. Bulganin arranged that one of the vehicles would carry Moskalenko and his aides, and the other would bring in the group led by Brezhnev and Nedelin. In both cases, the officers were to remain concealed in the cars behind darkened windows and then enter the building through a side door left open by aides to Malenkov and Khrushchev.62 Once inside, they were to move as quickly as possible upstairs into an anteroom next to the chamber in which the CPSU Presidium held its meetings. They were then supposed to await an electronic signal transmit- ted by Malenkov to his chief aide, Dmitrii Sukhanov, who would be stationed just outside the chamber, ready to let the officers know when they should enter. The fact that most of the officers were from the Moscow Air Defense Region and that the rest were from central military organizations gave the plotters an extra precaution. The preliminary agenda for the meeting on the 26th included an item on defense preparations and future military exercises in the Moscow Air Defense Region and Military District. Hence, in the unlikely event that these officers were spotted by Kremlin guards before the meeting, their presence could be readily explained. One final step for Malenkov and Khrushchev was to obtain the coopera- tion of Marshal Georgii Zhukov, the renowned World War II commander who in 1953 was serving as a deputy defense minister. They realized that Zhukov’s participation would be especially important because it would symbolically demonstrate to Beria that the Army was on the side of the con-

61. Moskalenko, “Kak byl arestovan Beriya,” pp. 10–11. 62. See ibid., p. 10.

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spirators. Early on the 26th, Bulganin met with Zhukov at the main defense ministry building and told him that they must leave immediately for the Kremlin to take care of an “urgent matter.”63 Upon arriving, they proceeded to the meeting hall of the CPSU Presidium, where Malenkov and Khrushchev were waiting. The two of them and Bulganin informed Zhukov that the CPSU Presidium had a special assignment for him: to oversee the arrest of Beria later that day. Zhukov was instantly receptive to the idea because of his long- standing aversion to Beria. The Soviet marshal was convinced that Beria had tried to have him arrested during one of Stalin’s postwar crackdowns.64 It is not surprising that Zhukov shared the conspirators’ view that it would be desirable to remove Beria altogether. Zhukov assured Malenkov, Khrushchev, and Bulganin that he would obey the orders of the CPSU Pre- sidium. With that, the last piece of the anti-Beria conspiracy fell into place.

The Showdown on 26 June

Until very recently, almost nothing was known about the meeting of the CPSU Presidium on 26 June 1953. No information about it at all was available until the early 1970s, when Khrushchev’s memoirs were published in the West. His recollections of the Beria affair remained the only source until the end of the 1980s; but unfortunately, his account was not fully reliable.65 Al- though Khrushchev accurately described many aspects of the affair, he dis- torted or simply fabricated other aspects and failed to mention crucial details. In the absence of corroborating material, scholars had no way to determine what parts of Khrushchev’s account were veracious. Attempts to cross-check Khrushchev’s memoirs were impossible until the late 1980s and 1990s, when new first-hand recollections of the anti-Beria plot appeared.66 Further details

63. G. K. Zhukov, “Riskovannaya operatsiya,” in Nekrasov, ed., Beriya: Konets kar’ery, p. 281. 64. Ibid., pp. 281–282. 65. In the original typescript of the memoirs, N. S. Khrushchev, Vospominaniya, the relevant portion is in Vol. II, Pt. 2 (“O Staline”), pp. 117–129. I am grateful to Khrushchev’s son Sergei for providing me with a copy of the full, 3,600-page typescript. The version in “Aktsii” (cited above) corresponds well to the typescript. 66. As with Khrushchev’s memoir, all of the newer first-hand accounts of the Beria affair must be treated with great circumspection. Some of the authors had their own bitter scores to settle, and several who had little or no first-hand knowledge of the plotting were unduly influenced by Khrushchev’s account, which they obviously had seen before writing their own versions. Of particular interest is the portion of Mikoyan’s memoir that deals with the events of late June 1953, “Konets Berii,” Ll. 70–74. Also invaluable are the recollections of several military officers who arrested Beria. See the testimony of Colonel (later General) Ivan Zub in “Zadanie osobogo svoistva: Istoriya i sud’by” (3 parts), Krasnaya zvezda (Moscow), 18, 19, and 20 March 1988, pp. 3, 6, and 4, respectively; the recollections of Colonel-General (later Marshal) Kirill Moskalenko in “Kak byl arestovan Beriya” (republished in abridged form in Nekrasov’s book, as cited above); and the brief

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were provided in the stenographic record of the July 1953 plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, which was declassified in early 1991.67 (The verbatim transcript of that plenum was not declassified until late 1995.) The transcripts of two subsequent CPSU Central Committee plenums, in January 1955 and June 1957, which were declassified in the 1990s, also contained some intriguing comments about the Beria affair.68 Three of Beria’s own letters from captivity, written in desperation in late June and early July 1953 to his former colleagues (who subsequently ordered that all pens and paper be taken away from him), were declassified and published in 1994.69 Important

but interesting account by Marshal Georgii Zhukov, “Riskovannaya operatsiya” (also cited above). In April 1985, before these accounts were published, Zub and two of the other five officers, Gen- eral Aleksei Baksov and Colonel Viktor Yuferev, wrote a top-secret letter to the CPSU Central Committee briefly reviewing the events of 26 June 1953. The letter was declassified in 1992 and published in “Net neobkhodimosti govorit’ o nashikh boevykh zaslugakh . . .,” Rodina (Moscow), No. 10 (November 1992), p. 64. Other first-hand observations well worth consulting are Shepilov, “Vospominaniya,” pp. 3–20; Mukhitdinov, Gody, provedennye v kremle, pp. 95–119; Mátyás Rákosi, Visszaemlékezések (Budapest: Napvilag, 1997), pp. 437–478; and the comments by Molotov recorded in Chuev, ed., Sto sorok besed s Molotovym, pp. 335–336. Unfortunately, the relevant section of Lazar Kaganovich’s memoir, Pamyatnye zapiski rabochego, kommunista- bol’shevika, profsoyuznogo, partiinogo i sovetsko-gosudarstvennogo rabotnika (Moscow: Vagrius, 1996), pp. 499–502, is vacuous and sheds no new light on the affair. Some of the other new accounts, especially those by children of the main actors, are too fanciful or unreliable to be of any real use. Books in this last category include Sergo Beria, Lavrentii Beriya: Moi otets (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1994); A. G. Malenkov, O moem ottse Georgii Malenkove (Moscow: NTTS Tekhnoekos, 1992); and Pavel Sudoplatov, Spetsoperatsii: Lubyanka i Kreml’, 1930–1950 gody (Moscow: Olma-press, 1997), which is a slightly expanded version of the controversial book published in English in 1994. 67. For the published version, see “Delo Beria,” two parts, in Izvestiya TsK KPSS (Moscow), No. 1 (January 1991), pp. 139–214, and No. 2 (February 1991), pp. 141–208. The full proceedings of the plenum, including the verbatim transcript, the marked-up pages, the stenographic account, and the supporting documentation, are stored in TsKhSD, F. 2, Op. 1, Dd. 27–45. Unless otherwise indicated, that is the version cited in this article. 68. The January 1955 plenum materials, stored in TsKhSD, F. 2, Op. 1, Dd. 110–138, did not become available until late 1995, but the lengthy stenographic account of the June 1957 plenum was published in six installments under the rubric “Poslednyaya ‘antipartiinaya’ gruppa” in the journal Istoricheskii arkhiv (Moscow), Nos. 3, 4, 5, and 6 (1993), pp. 4–94, 4–82, 4–78, and 4–75, respectively, and Nos. 1 and 2 (1994), pp. 4–77 and 4–88, respectively. The full proceedings of the June 1957 plenum are stored in TsKhSD, F. 2, Op. 1, Dd. 222–259. 69. “Pis’ma iz tyuremnogo bunkera—Lavrentii Beria: ‘Cherez 2–3 goda ya krepko ispravlyus’ . . .’,” Istochnik, No. 4 (1994), pp. 3–14. It is not known how many letters Beria wrote in captivity before his writing equipment was taken away. These three are the only ones unearthed so far. One of Beria’s guards during his imprisonment, General Kirill Moskalenko, later recalled that “Beria at first often wrote letters to the CC Presidium urging that the decision be reconsidered on the grounds that he was innocent, and so forth. Then he began to write letters only to Malenkov, complaining that a mistake had been made in arresting him and that they had been first getting even with me [Beria] and now will come after you, that is, with Malenkov. We handed over all these letters to members of the Presidium: Malenkov, Khrushchev, and Bulganin. We subsequently received instructions that we should no longer give [Beria] paper, pencils, or pens, that is, we should prohibit him from writing. The instructions were carried out.” Quoted from Moskalenko, “Kak byl arestovan Beriya,” pp. 10–11. Evidently, it was the letters that Beria began writing to Malenkov that prompted the order to take away his writing equipment. Dmitrii Shepilov wrote that “Beria mar- shaled all his inventiveness so that he could (as he mistakenly thought) secretly send a note to

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though all these new sources were, the biggest breakthrough in reconstruct- ing the 26 June meeting came in the late 1990s, when a key document from the meeting—Malenkov’s marked-up draft of his introductory remarks as well as his marginal notes of what others said—was unearthed in the Russian Presidential Archive. A large collection of other declassified documents from the Presidential Archive, pertaining to the investigation and trial of Beria, are also now finally available.70 These newly released materials not only fill in many crucial details, but also enrich and help tie together the scattered observations in other documents (especially Beria’s letters from captivity) and in numerous first-hand accounts. Although the session on 26 June was initially slated to be a meeting of the Presidium of the USSR Council of Ministers, the plotters scheduled it that way simply because they wanted to distract Beria, who was due to give a report to the Presidium of the Council of Ministers on an unrelated matter.71 It was easy to postpone the scheduled meeting and to convene a session of the CPSU Pre- sidium instead. All five members of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers (Malenkov, Beria, Molotov, Bulganin, and Kaganovich) were also full members of the CPSU Presidium.72 Of the five members of the CPSU Presidium who were not on the Presidium of the Council of Ministers, one (Khrushchev) had regularly been attending meetings of the Presidium of the Council of Min- isters in the spring of 1953, and three others (Mikoyan, Saburov, and Pervukhin) were themselves ministers and had occasionally been taking part in meetings of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers. Only one member of the CPSU Presidium, Voroshilov, had not been attending sessions of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers in the spring of 1953, but his participation in a meeting of that body would by no means have been extraordinary, particularly if he were representing the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (which he chaired). Hence, the plotters were confident that the presence of Khrushchev, Mikoyan, Saburov, Pervukhin, and Voroshilov at the government headquarters on 26 June would not provoke suspicion among the MVD

Malenkov. The note began as follows: ‘Georgii, don’t believe Nikita . . .’ But Malenkov immediately read this note aloud to the CC Presidium. Beria tried his best again and again.” Quoted from “Vospominaniya,” p. 20. 70. For most of these, I am grateful to the family of the late General Dmitrii Volkogonov, who obtained them from the Russian Presidential Archive and the Russian defense ministry archive. Specific items are cited below. 71. Khrushchev, “Aktsii,” pp. 274–275; and Zhukov, “Riskovannaya operatsiya,” pp. 281, 282. 72. The resolution adopted on 5 March 1953 had specified that the Presidium of the USSR Coun- cil of Ministers would consist of the chairman, first deputy chairmen, and deputy chairmen of the Council of Ministers. From 5 March until 7 December 1953, however, there were no deputy chairmen of the Council of Ministers. Hence, the Presidium consisted of only five standing members. See Vladimir Ivkin, “Rukovoditeli Sovetskogo pravitel’stva (1923–1991): Istoriko- biograficheskaya spravka,” Istochnik (Moscow), No. 4 (1996), pp. 152–192, esp. 157–163.

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guards who vetted all those entering Kremlin buildings. The plotters also surmised that a change of schedule on the 26th would be facilitated by Beria’s habit of arriving for meetings at the last minute. This greatly reduced the like- lihood that he would notice anything untoward beforehand. Beria, as usual, arrived at the meeting on 26 June with barely a moment to spare. As he entered the chamber, the conspirators informed him that the original meeting would have to be postponed because some other ministers who were supposed to report to the Presidium of the Council of Ministers were unable to attend.73 Malenkov then pointed out that all the members of the CPSU Presidium happened to be present, and he proposed that they convene that body instead to discuss party-related business. Having just arrived, Beria had no inherent reason to be suspicious of the change. Hence, without further ado, a session of the CPSU Presidium began in the late morning. Only then did Beria realize that the initial schedule and agenda had been a ruse. All available evidence indicates that he had no inkling he would be confronted so soon, and he was startled when he realized what was happen- ing. If he had known that a move was going to be made against him at the session on 26 June, he clearly would have ensured that security troops at the Kremlin, who were under the MVD’s direct jurisdiction, would be ready to enter the room to arrest the conspirators. It is clear that no such orders were ever given. Even after Beria was arrested some two-and-a-half hours into the meeting, the security guards had no idea what was going on. Beria’s failure to alert his security forces before the meeting leaves no doubt that he was caught unawares. Malenkov opened the session by declaring that the agenda would focus solely on Beria’s activities. This announcement evoked a stunned protest from Beria, but he was quickly ordered to be silent.74 Malenkov then began laying out the case against Beria:

The enemies wanted to place the MVD organs above the party and the Government. The task now is to ensure that the MVD organs are placed at the disposal of the party and Government, and to bring these organs under the party’s control. The enemies wanted to use the MVD organs to pursue their criminal aims. The task now is to eliminate any opportunity for such crimes to occur. The MVD organs occupy a place in the state apparatus that offers immense opportunities for the abuse of power. The task now is to prohibit

73. Mikoyan, “Konets Berii,” L. 71. 74. Ibid.

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any abuses of power (only such a restructuring; fixing methods; using agents; introducing party discipline).75

Turning to specific “misdeeds,” Malenkov condemned Beria’s insistence that his signed memoranda be appended to the CPSU Presidium’s resolutions when they were distributed to lower-level party organizations. By demanding such a conspicuous role for the MVD’s documents, Malenkov argued, Beria had created the impression that he—and the MVD as a whole—were “correcting the party and Government” and “relegating the Central Commit- tee to a secondary plane.” Beria’s alleged attempts to elevate the MVD (and himself) to a dominant position were, according to Malenkov, “fraught with great danger unless they are immediately corrected.”76 Among the examples cited by Malenkov were the memoranda that Beria’s staff had prepared on Lithuania, western Ukraine, and Belorussia. Ac- cording to Malenkov, the distribution of Beria’s signed reports to party organizations in those republics was an “obvious” attempt by the MVD chief to “gain prominence” in outlying regions.77 Malenkov also alleged that Beria had been seeking to displace the collective leadership and to foment discord among Presidium members. He claimed that Beria’s behavior during the recent negotiations with Hungarian and East German leaders, especially the “peremptory” nature of his interven- tions, had shown that Beria wanted to place himself above the collective leadership. Malenkov also asserted that Beria had tried to bring Khrushchev and Bulganin into conflict with one another during the discussions on Ger- many. Beria’s alleged attempt to sow rifts within the Presidium, Malenkov argued, reflected a “flagrant” disregard for the norms of collective leadership.

75. “K resheniyu voprosa o Beriya,” draft remarks by Malenkov, 26 June 1953, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 24, D. 463, L. 136. 76. Ibid., L. 137. 77. Ibid. Irrespective of whether this was Beria’s intention, declassified materials indicate that his signed memoranda did bring him a good deal of notice within the Communist parties of the three republics. See, for example, “Stenogramma V-go Plenuma Tsentral’nogo Komiteta KP Litvy, 11– 13 iyunya 1953 goda,” 13 June 1953 (Top Secret), in Lietuvos Visuomenòs Organizacij˜ Archyvas (LVOA), Fondo (F.) 1771, Apyrasas (Apy.) 131, Bylo (B.) 180, Lapai (La.) 4–289; “Postanovlenie 5- go Plenuma Tsentral’nogo Komiteta KP Litvy: O Postanovlenii TsK KPSS ‘Voprosy Litovskoi SSR’,” 13 June 1953 (Top Secret), in LVOA, F. 1771, Apy. 131, B. 178, La. 6–14; “TsK KPSS: tovarishchu N. S. Khrushchevu,” No. 2/98 (Top Secret), 10 June 1953, from A. Kyrychenko, first secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party (UkrCP), in Tsentral’nyi Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Hromads’kykh Ob’ednan’ Ukrainy (TsDAHOU), F. 1, Op. 24, Sprava (Spr.) 3474, Ll. 15–29; and “TsK KPSS tovarishchu Khrushchevu N. S.,” 15 June 1953 (Top Secret), from I. Hrushets’kyi, first secretary of the UkrCP’s Volyns’k oblast committee, in TsDAHOU, F. 1, Op. 24, Spr. 2774, Ll. 68–74. Mukhitdinov describes at some length a similar memorandum that Beria supposedly circulated about Uzbekistan, but Mukhitdinov seems to be confusing this with another document prepared by Khrushchev, not by Beria. See Mukhitdinov, Gody, provedennye v kremle, pp. 113–119.

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These charges were the only ones that Malenkov initially presented, and in that sense they were surprisingly weak. His warnings about Beria’s intentions vis-a÷-vis the MVD were vague and unsupported by specific evidence. Although Malenkov was playing upon the anxiety that most members of the Presidium felt about Beria, the lack of well-focused accusations weakened his case. Malenkov’s complaints about the distribution of Beria’s signed memoranda were more co- gent, but Beria was not the only member of the Presidium who had engaged in this practice. He had done it more frequently than others had, but if he were to be punished for it, then others would have to be, too. In any case, it hardly seemed to be a serious enough offense to warrant severe measures. Flimsier still was Malenkov’s allegation about Beria’s behavior during the recent bilateral talks with Hungarian and East German leaders. Malenkov and Khrushchev had begun plotting to get rid of Beria well before the negotiations with Hungarian leaders even took place (on 13–16 June). Hence, Beria’s de- meanor at the talks could not possibly have inspired the move against him. It is also important to note that Malenkov was not finding fault with the substance of Beria’s remarks at the bilateral meetings. After all, Beria’s comments there were little different, in terms of substance, from those expressed by the other Soviet participants. The tone of Beria’s criticisms was somewhat more acerbic than that of his colleagues, but the difference overall was minor. What Malenkov really was condemning was Beria’s alleged failure to have consulted with the other Pre- sidium members about some of the points he raised.78 This accusation, however, was disingenuous. Although Beria, as head of the MVD, did have classified information about Hungary at his disposal, there is no evidence that he was keeping any of it from his Soviet colleagues.79 All the data cited by Beria during the negotiations had already been provided to the full CPSU Presidium in cables from the Soviet embassy and in reports from the Central Committee apparatus.80 Equally misleading was Malenkov’s allegation that Beria had acted high- handedly on 13 June when he proposed that Imre Nagy be appointed prime

78. This issue had already been mentioned by Bulganin, albeit in a more positive light, during the negotiations with Hungarian leaders. Bulganin began his remarks there by claiming that “we [the Soviet leadership] have not discussed anything in advance,” and that “there are many things I heard for only the first time when Comrade Beria delivered his remarks.” Quoted from “JegyzŒkönyv a Szovjet és a Magyar párt-és állami vezetök tárgyalásairól,” 13, 14, and 16 June 1953 (Top Secret), in MOL, 276, F. 102/65, Œ.e., oldal (ol.) 4. 79. Even if Beria had been deliberately keeping information from some of his colleagues, that was (and is) a very common practice in most countries. In the United States, for example, Henry Kissinger was notorious for maintaining a tight grip on the flow of information, keeping as much as possible from others in the national security bureaucracy. Such tactics are bound to arise in the policymaking process. 80. See, for example, “Ministru inostrannykh del SSSR tov. Vyshinskomu A. Ya.” No. 251/vs (Top Se- cret), 25 December 1952, from Evgenii Kiselev, Soviet ambassador in Hungary, to Soviet foreign minister Andrei Vyshinskii, transmitting “Spravka o podpol’noi deyatel’nosti vrazhdebnykh elementov v Vengrii i o bor’be s nimi,” in AVPRF, F. 077, Op. 32, Pa. 158, D. 60, Ll. 261–262, 263–268.

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minister in Hungary, one of the posts that the Stalinist party leader, Mátyás Rákosi, had held until then. The decision to bring back Nagy, far from being a spur-of-the-moment judgment by Beria in mid-June, had been agreed upon in Moscow in late May at Molotov’s behest, and was presented to Rákosi during his brief visit to the Soviet Union at the end of May. On 3 June, Rákosi informed the other Hungarian leaders about Nagy’s imminent return.81 Beria’s mention of Nagy during the bilateral talks on 13 June thus came as a surprise to no one. On this point as on others, the notion that Beria “flagrantly” vio- lated the principle of “collective leadership” was spurious. It is puzzling why Malenkov would not have begun the Presidium session with something stron- ger. His accusations were either vague, feeble, or unfounded. After laying out these initial charges, Malenkov proposed a number of possible remedies, albeit in a guarded way.82 Because he wanted the other Presidium members to go on record as expressing strong criticisms of Beria, he carefully refrained at this point from bringing up the possibility of Beria’s arrest. Malenkov knew that some of his colleagues, especially Mikoyan and Voroshilov, would not yet go along with the physical removal of Beria. Hence, for the time being, he offered only what he knew would be widely accepted proposals: the dismissal of Beria as minister of internal affairs and the appointment of Sergei Kruglov as a replacement, tighter control of the MVD by the CPSU Central Committee,83 the dismissal of Beria as first deputy prime minister, the appointment of Beria as minister of the oil industry, the dismissal of Beria as head of the Special Committee on nuclear weapons, and the reorganization of the Special Committee into a ministry headed by Saburov or some other official such as Mikhail Khrunichev. For good mea- sure, Malenkov emphasized that the CPSU Presidium should exercise much more stringent day-to-day control over the MVD, ensuring that all important matters were subject to “special decisions” by the Presidium, which would then be signed by an unspecified “CC Secretary” (as in the past) and distributed to lower-level party organizations. Malenkov also broached the possibility of having the chairman of the Council of Ministers co-sign some of the decisions, but he was cautious about raising this matter because he did not want to give the appearance of staking out a larger role for himself.84

81. “A Titkárság határozata a hibák kijavitását szolgáló egyes intézkedésekröl, 1953. június 3,” 3 June 1953 (Top Secret), in MOL 276, F. 54/246, Œ.e. 82. Draft remarks by Malenkov (cited above), L. 137. 83. The proposals to name Kruglov as a replacement and to assert stricter control by the Central Committee were both added by Malenkov in parentheses (Kruglov + CC) right after the proposal to dismiss Beria from the MVD. 84. Malenkov’s hesitation was illustrated here by a question mark that he placed before the word “chairman.”

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Once Malenkov had finished his introductory remarks, he invited the other members of the CPSU Presidium to voice their own concerns.85 Their attitudes toward Beria were not uniform, but on the key issue of dismissing Beria they were unanimous. All the Presidium members spoke about Beria’s “mistakes” and “inappropriate actions,” particularly his insistence that his signed memoranda be appended to the Presidium’s resolutions and his alleged attempts to elevate the MVD over the CPSU Presidium and Central Committee. Several of the participants, especially Molotov, Bulganin, Saburov, and Pervukhin, condemned what they believed were Beria’s past efforts to undercut them and promote himself at their expense. Saburov and Pervukhin alleged that Beria had consistently used his “privileged position” during the Stalin era against his colleagues. The most vehement criticisms were voiced by Khrushchev, who mixed specific charges with personal in- vective and obscenities, apparently as a way of releasing the nervous ten- sion he felt as the moment for Beria’s arrest approached. Beria later expressed bewilderment that Khrushchev had so “angrily and furiously cursed at me during the last CC Presidium meeting,” an outburst that Beria found especially puzzling because he and Khrushchev “had always been such great friends [and] I had treasured our relationship.”86 Even Mikoyan, Voroshilov, and other Presidium members who were not convinced that Beria was planning to seize power were willing at this stage to offer criticisms of Beria’s “deficient” performance at the MVD. In their view, his “shortcomings” warranted his removal from the ministry and the CPSU Pre- sidium. At the same time, Mikoyan expressed full confidence that Beria “would take due account of the criticism” and would play a “useful” role if given another senior government post. The meeting went on for a considerable while to give everyone an opportunity to speak. After the last of them had finished, Malenkov began his usual task of summing up the results. As he spoke, he pressed a button transmitting two rapid signals to Dmitrii Sukhanov, who was waiting as planned in the anteroom just outside the meeting. Sukhanov in turn informed Zhukov and the other military officers that it was time to move in. Zhukov led the way (dem- onstrating to Beria that the whole Army was against him), and Moskalenko and his aides surrounded Beria from three sides. Mikoyan and a few other CPSU Presidium members who had not been told the full details of the plot were clearly surprised by this abrupt turn of events and were alarmed by the

85. This account is pieced together from Malenkov’s marginal notations and Beria’s letters from captivity, as cited above. 86. “V TsK KPSS tovarishchu Malenkovu,” letter from Beria to Malenkov (written from captivity), 1 July 1953, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 24, D. 463, L. 173.

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entry of so many uniformed military officers.87 Zhukov quickly reassured them that “everything’s okay, comrades, please sit down,” and Malenkov added his own appeal for calm.88 Their comments had the desired effect. None of the Presidium members made any further attempt to interfere or protest. Once the uproar had subsided, Malenkov called on the Presidium to “consider the question of Beria once again.” He then declared that Beria “is so cunning and so dangerous that only the devil knows what he might do now. I therefore propose that we arrest him immediately.”89 As expected, the momentum of the criticism at the meeting, and the sudden appearance of a half-dozen military officers, induced all the Presidium members to vote in favor of arresting Beria, a step that at least a few of them would not have con- doned if they had been informed of it in advance. With guns raised, Moskalenko and his subordinates arrested and searched Beria. Among the items they found was a piece of paper on which he had hurriedly scrawled the word “alarm” (trevoga) three times in large red letters, evidently in the hope of passing it on to some of the MVD personnel.90 The military officers kept Beria under tight guard as they escorted him from the meeting hall into the anteroom, closing the door behind them. The Presidium members and Zhukov remained in the meeting room for another fifteen to twenty minutes, trying to reach a consensus about what to do with Beria. Malenkov’s handwritten notes show that at least one or two of the members, especially Khrushchev, wanted to dispose of Beria right away without an investigation or trial.91 Most of the others believed that some sort of trial was essential, perhaps under the auspices of the MVD’s Special Board. They hoped that the staging of a trial would impart a veneer of legality to what had been an illegal, or at least extralegal, conspiracy. Eventually, they all agreed not to proceed with a peremptory execution of Beria and to defer any final decision about his fate until the next meeting of the Presidium, on 29 June. In the meantime, they adopted a general resolution that spelled out the main actions taken against Beria, including his removal from the CPSU

87. The reaction of these Presidium members is well conveyed by Colonel Ivan Zub, one of the officers who arrested Beria: “When we entered the room, some members of the Presidium jumped up from their seats, evidently because they did not know the details about carrying out an arrest.” Quoted from “Zadanie osobogo svoistva” (part 2), p. 6. See the nearly identical comments by Moskalenko in “Kak byl arestovan Beriya,” p. 10. 88. Ibid., p. 10. 89. Cited by Colonel Zub in “Zadanie osobogo svoistva” (part 2), p. 6. 90. Moskalenko, “Kak byl arestovan Beriya,” p. 10; and Mikoyan, “Konets Berii,” L. 71. 91. Beria’s letters from captivity (cited in footnote 69 supra) reveal that he was deeply fearful of being summarily executed without a trial. Evidently, Khrushchev had raised this possibility even before Beria had been taken out of the room.

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Presidium and Central Committee, his dismissal from his posts as first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers and minister of internal affairs, the nul- lification of all his awards and medals, and the initiation of a “case regarding the criminal actions of L. P. Beria, to be considered by the Supreme Court of the USSR.” They also arranged for the preparation of two additional resolutions, one to be issued by the Presidium of the Council of Ministers and the other by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.92 These two resolutions were essentially identical to the CPSU Presidium’s own resolution, but, instead of dealing with Beria’s party functions, they were intended to deprive him of his seat in the legislature and to confirm his dismissal from all his other state posts. With those administrative tasks completed, Zhukov and the Presidium members departed for home, leaving Beria in Moskalenko’s custody.

Beria’s Demise

Moskalenko and his aides planned to use the cover of dark to spirit Beria out of the Kremlin and elude the MVD guards stationed near the gate, but at that time of year in Moscow, nightfall always came late. They had to wait many tense hours, until nearly midnight, for darkness to set in. Throughout this time, Beria sat nervously in the anteroom, trying somehow to come up with a way of alerting his security guards, but the military officers kept him under constant watch and prevented him from making any effort to seek help. (They even accompanied him into the lavatory to ensure that he did not try something there.) A brief disruption occurred late in the evening when the first deputy minister of internal affairs, Army-General I. I. Maslennikov, and Stalin’s former chief bodyguard, Nikolai Vlasik, showed up demanding to know what had happened to Beria. A confrontation briefly loomed, but the situation was defused when Moskalenko placed an emergency phone call to Bulganin, who somehow convinced Maslennikov that everything was in order.93 In the meantime, Moskalenko had arranged for five ZIS-110 defense ministry cars to bring thirty heavily armed soldiers from the Moscow Air De- fense headquarters into the Kremlin. These troops took up positions inside the main building when the MVD guards were changing shifts. With this shield in place, Moskalenko and his aides hastily transferred Beria into one of the defense ministry cars, surrounding him with armed soldiers and send- ing another car of troops along as an escort.94 Beria’s captors were under or-

92. “Ukaz Prezidiuma Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR: O prestupnykh antigosudarstvennykh deistvii L. P. Beriya,” No. 127/13 (Top Secret), 26 June 1953, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 24, D. 463, L. 5. 93. Moskalenko, “Kak byl arestovan Beriya,” p. 11. 94. Ibid.

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ders to shoot him on the spot if he tried to escape or if MVD troops launched a rescue operation, but no such action proved necessary.95 The two vehicles brought Beria without incident to a military stockade in Lefortovo on the outskirts of Moscow, where he was kept in a holding cell. By the next day, as concern grew that MVD forces might try to free Beria, So- viet leaders gave Moskalenko command of the Moscow Military District (supplementing his earlier post as commander of the Moscow Air Defense Region) and authorized him to deploy whatever forces he needed to transfer Beria to a more secure location. Some twelve armored personnel carriers, twenty T-34 main battle tanks, twenty-three self-propelled artillery systems, and forty-eight military support vehicles moved into Moscow as temporary reinforcements.96 Troops throughout the Moscow district were put on high alert.97 On the evening of 27 June, Beria was brought to a reinforced underground bunker at the staff headquarters of the Moscow Military District, where he remained under constant guard for the next five-and-a-half months. The arrest, transfer, and imprisonment of Beria were accomplished with remarkably little disruption. No blood was shed at any stage, despite the complex series of events ranging from his arrest to the bypassing of the Kremlin Guards (who were still subordinated to Beria) and the blockade that army troops had to impose against MVD special operations forces (Spetsnaz) in various sections of Moscow. The striking success of the operation was partly attributable to meticulous planning, but it was also attributable to good luck. Any number of glitches could have thwarted this high-risk venture, yet at each stage the conspirators somehow managed to defuse potential problems. The dangers that they overcame, and their awareness that any slip-up might literally prove fatal, could not help but color their perceptions of Beria once they had him firmly in their grip. The first public intimation that something had happened to Beria came on 28 June, when his name was omitted from a list in the Soviet press of CPSU Presidium members who had attended an opera at the Bolshoi Theater the previous day.98 On 29 June, the CPSU Presidium secretly ordered the Soviet procurator-general, Roman Rudenko, to embark on a full-scale investigation

95. This order is recounted by both Colonel Zub in “Zadanie osobogo svoistva” (part 2), p. 6 and Major Hizhnyak Gurevich, an adjutant to Moskalenko who was responsible for guarding Beria during the whole period of his captivity, in Mark Franchetti, “Kremlin Guard Reveals How He Shot Hated Beria,” The Times (London), 4 January 1998, p. 3. 96. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Dispatch No. 368 (Secret), 6 April 1954, in National Archives (NA), Record Group (RG) 59, Box 3810, pp. 1–2. 97. A. Skorokhodov, “Kak nas ‘gotovili na voinu’ s Beriei,” in Nekrasov, ed., Beriya: Konets kar’ery, pp. 289–295. 98. See “Opera ‘Dekabristy’ v Bol’shom teatre,” Pravda (Moscow), 28 June 1953, p. 1.

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of Beria to expose his “criminal anti-party and anti-state activities.”99 Rudenko had been appointed to his post earlier that day because he was known to be a reliable figure who would strictly comply with the Presidium’s wishes, rather than with legal norms and requirements. (Khrushchev and his colleagues had much less faith in Rudenko’s predecessor, G. N. Safonov.100) The investigation was meant not as a dispassionate search for evidence, but as a quest to find selective material that would fit a predetermined verdict. In periodic “instructions to the General Procuracy,” the Presidium members indicated precisely what topics they wanted Rudenko to cover, what “evidence” they wanted him to collect, what witnesses they wanted him to interview, and what verdict they wanted him to produce.101 They carefully prevented the investigation from delving into certain issues, such as Beria’s role in the Great Terror, that might eventually have inculpated all of them. They also ordered the destruction of all the compromising material that Beria had collected about them.102 Not until 10 July was the arrest finally announced in public.103 Over the next two months, many of Beria’s former aides and associates were interro- gated (often under severe duress), and a preliminary bill of indictment was drafted. On 17 September, the CPSU Presidium ordered Rudenko to step up the investigation and to rework the bill of indictment, “taking account of the corrections adopted by the Presidium of the Central Committee.”104 From that point on, the investigation proceeded swiftly, and by early December a final bill of indictment against Beria was completed under the CPSU Presidium’s supervision. One of the members of the Presidium, Mikhail Suslov, had co- ordinated the whole process and prepared the main drafts himself, submit- ting them for revision and approval to the full Presidium. The final document

99. “Vypiska iz protokola No. 12 zasedaniya Prezidiuma TsK ot 29 iyunya 1953 g.: Ob organizatsii sledstviya po delu o prestupnykh antipartiinykh i antigosudarstvennykh deistviyakh Beriya,” No. P12/II (Strictly Secret), 29 June 1953, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 24, D. 463, L. 138. 100. In “Aktsii,” p. 278, Khrushchev affirmed that “it was decided [on 29 June] to dismiss the Procurator-General of the USSR [G. N. Safonov] because we did not trust him and we doubted that he would objectively carry out the investigation. Comrade Rudenko was appointed as the new Procurator-General and was instructed to carry out the investigation of Beria’s case.” Rudenko had been serving as procurator-general in Ukraine since late 1944. During his first several years there he worked under Khrushchev, who, as first secretary of the Ukrainian Commu- nist Party until 1949, was responsible for widespread atrocities and mass bloodshed. 101. These instructions are reflected in “Plan operativno-sledstvennykh materialov po delu Berii,” No. 004/R (Top Secret), 9 July 1953, from R. Rudenko to the CPSU Presidium, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 24, D. 464, Ll. 12–13. 102. See footnote 27 supra. 103. “Informatsionnoe soobshchenie,” Pravda (Moscow), 10 July 1953, p. 1. 104. “Postanovlenie Prezidiuma TsK KPSS o predlozheniyakh General’nogo Prokurora SSSR po delu Beriya,” No. P33/III (Strictly Secret), 17 September 1953, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 24, D. 468, L. 29.

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ran to hundreds of pages, supplemented by many thousands of pages of supporting documents and interrogation transcripts.105 On 10 December, the CPSU Presidium issued a number of “special direc- tives” that laid out detailed guidelines for Beria’s trial, including the verdicts to be handed down against the defendants.106 A closed trial began on 18 Decem- ber before a Special Judicial Panel (Osoboe Sudebnoe Prisutstvie) chaired by Marshal Ivan Konev, one of the most highly decorated Soviet military officers. Of the seven other members of the Panel, only two had any background in legal affairs.107 The trial lasted five days, culminating in a preordained sentence of death on 23 December against Beria and several of his closest aides for allegedly “betraying the Motherland, organizing an anti-Soviet conspiratorial group in order to seize power and restore the dominance of the bourgeoisie, and committing terrorist acts against political figures who were loyal to the Communist Party and the people.”108 Just hours after this sentence was pro- nounced, General Batitskii shot Beria in the head at point-blank range. Several other officers under Batitskii’s command followed suit. Shortly thereafter, Beria’s corpse was taken to the Donskoi crematorium and incinerated.109

105. Materials from the investigation and trial of Beria are scattered among several archives in the Moscow area: the Russian Presidential Archive (APRF), the Main Archive of the Russian Ministry of Defense (TsAMO), the Special Archive of the Main Military Procuracy in Russia (Osobyi arkhiv Glavnoi voennoi prokuratury RF, or OAGVP), and the archive of the Federal Security Service (formerly the KGB). Among the specific collections are dozens of dela (files) in APRF, F. 3, Op. 24. The dela I saw in this opis’ were 435 through 471, some of which were marked “sekretno” in parentheses after the file number, indicating that they were from a separate part of the archive that houses the most sensitive materials. In TsAMO, see “Materialy k voprosu o prestupnoi deyatel’nosti Beriya,” F. 15, Op. 178612ss, D. 86. The full trial materials are in OAGVP (and cop- ies of many are in the APRF files cited above), but the OAGVP files are not generally accessible. Some portions of the trial materials were released and published in 1989–1991. See M. I. Kuchava, “Iz dnevnika chlena Spetsial’nogo sudebnogo prisutstviya,” and V. F. Nekrasov, “Final (po materialam sudebnogo protsessa),” both in Nekrasov, ed., Beriya: Konets kar’ery, pp. 296–300 and 381–415, respectively; and the seven-part series of materials published by B. S. Popov and V. G. Oppokov, “Berievshchina,” Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal (Moscow), Nos. 5 and 7 (May and July 1989), pp. 38–41 and 82–87, respectively; Nos. 1, 3, and 5 (January, March, and May 1990), pp. 68–78, 81–90, and 85–90, respectively; and Nos. 1 and 10 (January and October 1991), pp. 44–56 and 56–62, respectively. 106. “Vypiska iz protokola No. 9 zasedaniya Prezidiuma TsK KPSS 10 dekabrya 1953 goda: Ob obrazovanii i sostave spetsial’nogo sudebnogo prisutstviya Verkhovnogo Suda SSSR dlya rassmotreniya dela po obvineniyu Beriya i drugikh,” No. P14/III (Strictly Secret), 10 December 1953, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 24, D. 468, L. 37. 107. These were L. A. Gromov, chairman of the Moscow City Court, and E. L. Zeidin, first deputy chairman of the USSR Supreme Court. The five other members were Moskalenko; Konstantin Lunev, the first deputy minister of internal affairs; Nikolai Shvernik, the head of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions; Nikolai Mikhailov, first secretary of the CPSU’s Moscow Oblast Committee; and Mitrofan Kuchava, chairman of the Georgian Council of Trade Unions. 108. “V Verkhovnom Sude SSSR,” Izvestiya (Moscow), 24 December 1953, p. 2. 109. See Gurevich’s first-hand account in “Kremlin Guard Reveals,” p. 3, which is amply corroborated by other sources, including the official report to the CPSU Presidium on Beria’s execution, “Akt 1953 goda dekabrya 23 dnya,” handwritten by Colonel-General P. F. Batitskii, 23 December

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Almost no information about the Beria affair was released for many years afterward, but Beria’s downfall soon had far-reaching effects on Soviet-East European relations. Those effects will be explored in the concluding part of this article, to be published in the next issue of the journal.

1953, co-signed by R. A. Rudenko and Army-General K. S. Moskalenko, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 24, D. 473, L. 248. Batitskii writes that, at 7:50 p.m., he “carried out the verdict of the Special Judicial Tri- bunal, which condemned Lavrentii Pavlovich Beria to be shot, the highest criminal penalty.”

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