Predator Beria, Stalin's Attack against Potential Successors

漁色家ベリヤ

Despite his mountainous workload, Beria found time for a Draculean sex-life that combined love, rape and perversity in almost equal measure… It was once thought Beria’s seductions and rapes were exaggerated but the opening of the archives of his own interrogation, as well as the evidence of witnesses and even those who were raped by him, reveals a sexual predator who used his power to indulge himself in obsessive depravity. It is often impossible to differentiate between women he seduced who went to him to plead for loved ones – and those women he simply kidnapped and raped. Yet mothers often pimped their daughters in return for limousines and privileges….
… The filmstar Zoya Fyodorovna was picked up by three Chekists at a time when she was still breastfeeding her baby. Taken to a party where there were no other guests, she was joined by Beria whom she begged to let her go as her breasts were painful. ‘Beria was furious.’ The officer who was taking her home mistakenly handed her a bouquet at the door. When Beria saw, he shouted: ‘It’s a wreath not a bouquet. May they rot on your grave!’ She was arrested afterwards.
The film actress Tatiana Okunevskaya was even less lucky: at the end of the war, Beria invited her to perform for the Politburo. Instead they went to a dacha. Beria plied her with drink… Then ‘he undressed… “Scream or not, doesn’t matter,” he said. “Think and behave accordingly.”’ Beria raped her. She too was arrested soon afterwards and sentenced to solitary confinement. Felling trees in the Siberian taiga, she was saved, like many others, by the kindness of ordinary people.
These women were just the tip of a degenerate iceberg… His colonels kept the score; some say the list numbered thirty-nine, others seventy-nine: ‘Most of those women were my mistresses,’ he admitted….
Some mistresses, like ‘Sophia’ and ‘Maya’, a student at the Institute of Foreign Relations, inconveniently became pregnant. Once again, Colonels Sarkisov and Nadaraia were called upon to arrange abortions at the MVD’s Medical Department – and when a child was born, the colonels placed it in an orphanage.
… [Beria’s wife] Nina never believed the scale of his exploits: ‘When would Lavrenti have found time to make these hordes of women his mistresses? He spent all day and night at work’ so she presumed these women must have been his ‘secret agents’. (pp. 448-450)

米原万里さんの「打ちのめされるようなすごい本」がセルゴ・ベリヤ著の「僕の父はラヴレンチイ・ベリヤ」（初版1984年）について触れている。「家族思いで物静かだったという父親に対する弾劾や非難の根拠に技術者らしく淡々と事実を示して反論していくのだが、なかなか説得力がある」「“国家と党と指導部の集団責任となるべき権力犯罪と人権侵害を父一人になすりつけたのではないか、あれは個人ではなく体制の犯罪だ”という言葉には一分の理がある。さらに息子は父親の連続少女強姦説を完全否定し、“粛清の犠牲者の苦しみを軽減するよう最大限尽くした”と主張する」。

ボルシェビキ流領土拡張

… Stalin reviewed his Empire: ‘Let’s see what we’ve got then: in the north, everything’s all right, Finland greatly wronged us, so we’ve moved the frontier farther from Leningrad. The Baltic States, which were Russian territory from ancient times, are ours again, all the Belorussians are ours now, Ukrainians too, and the Moldavians are back with us. So the west everything’s okay.’ But he turned to the east: ‘What have we got here? The Kurile Islands are ours and all of Sakhalin… China, Mongolia, all as it should be.’ [His] Dunhill pipe trailed round to the south: ‘Now this frontier I don’t like at all. The Dardanelles… We also have claims to Turkish territory and to Libya.’… … Molotov understood that there was no contradiction between Bolshevism and empire-building: ‘It’s good the Russian Tsars took so much land for us in war. This makes our struggle with capitalism easier.’ (p. 456)

スターリンの後継者潰し―まずモロトフ

Some time between 9 and 15 October, Stalin suffered a serious heart attack….
During [Stalin’s holiday for a month and a half, voted on 9 October], Molotov ran the government with Beria, Mikoyan and Malenkov, the Politburo Four. But Molotov’s moment in the sun was overshadowed by unsettling rumours that Stalin was dying or already dead. On 10 October, TASS, the Soviet press agency, announced that ‘Comrade Stalin had left for a rest.’ But this only awakened curiosity and aroused Stalin’s vigilance… Stalin’s suspicious deepened when he read an interview with Zhukov in which the Marshal took the credit for victory in the war….
… Molotov was at the height of his prestige as an international statesman. He had only just returned from a series of international meetings…. In April, Molotov had visited New York, Washington and San Francisco to meet President Truman and attend the opening of the UN. In an unpleasant meeting, Truman confronted Molotov on Soviet perfidy in Poland….
In September, Molotov was in London for the Council of Foreign Ministers where he pushed for a Soviet trusteeship in Italian Libya… Molotov was a realistic gradualist in foreign policy and he knew the West would never agree to a Soviet Libya….
… Now, with Stalin recuperating and Molotov acting slightly more independently, the temperature was rising. Molotov felt the time was ripe for a deal with the West. Stalin overruled him: it was time to ‘tear off the veil of amity’. When Molotov continued to behave too softly towards the Allies, Stalin, using the formal vy, attacked him harshly. ‘Molotov’s manner of separating himself from the Government to portray himself as more liberal… is good for nothing.’ Molotov climbed down with a ritualistic apology… … Stalin and Molotov ceased to address each other informally: no more ‘Koba’, just ‘Comrade Stalin.’
On 9 November, Molotov ordered Pravda to publish a speech of Churchill’s praising Stalin… He cabled a furious message: ‘I consider the publication of Churchill’s speech with his praise of Russia and Stalin a mistake… Needless to say, Soviet leaders are not in need of praise from foreign leaders. Speaking personally, this praise only jars on me. Stalin.’
… Molotov got tipsy at the 7 November reception and proposed the easing of censorship for foreign media….
‘You blurt out anything when you’re drunk!’ [said Stalin.]
Stalin devoted the next three days of his holiday to the crushing of Molotov… On 6 December, Stalin cabled Malenkov, Beria and Mikoyan, ignoring Molotov, and attacking their ‘naïvety’ in trying to ‘paper over the affair (a New York Times article about his illness)’ while covering up ‘the sleight of hand of the fourth’… A reprimand was no longer sufficient because Molotov ‘cares more about winning popularity among certain foreign circles. I cannot consider such a comrade as my First Deputy.’ He ended that he was not sending this to Molotov ‘because I do not trust some people in his circle’. (This was an early reference to the Jewish Polina.)

Beria, Malenkov and Mikoyan, who sympathized with poor Molotov, summoned him like judges, read him Stalin’s cable and attacked him for his blunders. Molotov admitted his mistakes but thought it was unfair to mistrust him. The three reported to Stalin that Molotov had even ‘shed some tears’ which must have satisfied the Generalissimo a little. Molotov then wrote an apology to Stalin….
Stalin let Molotov stew for two days, then at 1.15 a.m. on 8 December replied to the Four again, restoring his errant deputy to his former place as First Deputy Premier. But Stalin never spoke of Molotov as his successor again and stored up these mistakes to use against him. (pp. 472-475)

そしてマレンコフとベリヤ

Having shaken Molotov, Stalin turned on Beria and Malenkov. He did not need to invent the scandal… [At Potsdam, Vasily Stalin] reported… of 80,3000 plane lost in the war, 47 per cent were due to accidents… [Stalin] ordered the investigation of an ‘Aviators’ Case’ against [the Aircraft Production Minister, A.I.] Shakhurin and the Air Force Commander, Air-Marshal [A.A.] Novikov, one of the heroes of the war….
On 2 March, Vasily Stalin was promoted to Major-General. On 18 March, Beria and Malenkov… were promoted to full Politburo membership – just as the Aviators’ Case nipped at their heels. Then Shakhurin and Novikov were arrested and tortured. … the overlord of aircraft production was Malenkov.
Abakumov, the Smersh boss and Stalin’s protégé, arranged the Aviators’ Case which was also aimed at Beria. Stalin’s old fondness for the Mingrelian had long since turned to a surly disdain… ‘He knows too much,’ Stalin told Mikoyan. ‘Traitor!’ When he dined at Beria’s house, he was charming to Nina but dismissive of Lavrenti... Beria reminisced about his first meeting with Stalin in 1926:
‘I don’t remember,’ Stalin replied crushingly.
Stalin sensed, correctly, that Beria, the industrial and nuclear magnifico, wanted to be a statesman… Stalin decided something was rotten in the Organs. During his holiday, he asked Vlasik about the conduct of Beria. Vlasik, delighted to destroy Beria, denounced his corruption, incompetence and possibly his VD….
Stalin moved swiftly against him: Beria was retired as MVD Minister in January, but remained curator of the Organs with Merkulov as MGB boss. Then Merkulov was denounced by his secretary. Beria washed his hands of him. On 4 May, Stalin, backed by Zhdanov, engineered the promotion of Abakumov to Minister of State Security….
… The coming atrocities were Abakumov’s doing, not Beria’s, even though most historians blame the latter. Beria, who, as Deputy Premier in charge of the Bomb and the missile industry, now moved his office from the Lubianka to the Kremlin, was henceforth ‘sacked’ from the Organs. He bitterly resented it.
‘Beria was scared to death of Abakumov and tried at all cost to have good relations…’ recalled Merkulov. ‘Beria met his match in Abakumov.’ Like a rat on a sinking ship, Beria’s pimp Colonel Sarkisov denounced the sexual degeneracy of the Bolshevik ‘Bluebeard’ to Abakumov who eagerly took it to Stalin: ‘Bring me everything his arsehole will write down!’ snapped Stalin. (pp. 475-477)

[Abakumov] possessed all Beria’s sadism but less of his intelligence. Abakumov unrolled a bloodstained carpet on his office floor before embarking on the torture of his victims in order not to stain his expensive Persian carpet. ‘You see… there are only two ways to thank an agent: cover his chest with medals or cut off his head.’ He was hardly alone in this Bolshevik view.
… [Abakumov and Vasily Stalin] fanned the Aviators’ Case. Vasily purloined Novikov’s dacha while the ‘father of the Soviet air force’ was tortured.
… Shakhurin received seven years’ hard labour, Novikov ten years – but their confessions implicated bigger fish.
On 4 May, Malenkov was abruptly removed from the Secretariat… Malenkov was despatched to check the harvest in Central Asia for several months, but never arrested. Beria tried to persuade Stalin to bring him back… ‘Why are you taking such trouble with that imbecile? You’ll be the first to be betrayed by him.’ (pp. 478-479)

Beria had lost his Organs and his ally, Malenkov, so the success of the Bomb was paramount. Later in the year, he rushed to Elektrostal at Noginsk, near Moscow, to see Professor Kurchatov’s experimental nuclear reactor go critical, creating the first Soviet self-sustaining nuclear reaction….
‘It’s started!’ they said.
‘Is that all?’ barked Beria, afraid of being tricked by these eggheads. ‘Nothing more? Can I go to the reactor?’ This would have been a delicious prospect for millions of Beria’s victims but they dutifully restrained him…. (p. 479)