Changes in political leadership collapse Beria test. Revisiting post-war political processes

Political activity in Russia during the period

from 1953 to 1964

Introduction

The collapse of Beria.

Exposing Stalin's personality cult.

Development of virgin lands..

Agricultural production. Real shifts in the "corn epic"

Reform fever 1962-1964

Cultural life of society: trends and contradictions.

Khrushchev's resignation.

Change in political leadership

On the eve of Stalin's funeral, a meeting was held in the Kremlin, to which only the most knowledgeable people in the state of the day in the party and state were invited. Among them there were not even a number of members of the Presidium of the Central Committee. Without convening an official plenum of the Central Committee, the meeting participants made a decision that, in their opinion, they were called upon to ensure the continuity of power.

Malenkov became the Chairman of the Council of Ministers. He was proposed for this post by Beria. In turn, Malenkov proposed to unite the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the MGB under the leadership of Beria. Other changes were made in the composition of the leadership. At this meeting, Khrushchev managed to achieve a decision on the return of G.K. Zhukov to Moscow , who at that time commanded the Ural Military District. The position of First Secretary was not introduced in the party, but Khrushchev, as the only one of the secretaries of the Central Committee of the party included in the Plenum of the Central Committee, actually took control of the cadres of the party apparatus. Thus, the most influential political figures in the leadership became Malenkov, Beria and Khrushchev. The balance was extremely unstable.

Taking advantage of the amnesty announced on the occasion of mourning, Beria ordered the release of many dangerous criminals, which sharply aggravated the situation in the country. All this was required by Beria in order to obtain emergency powers for himself and the department subordinate to him and seize power. The policy of the new leadership in the spring The days of 1953 were contradictory, reflecting the contradictions in its composition. At the request of Zhukov, most of the military returned from prison. But the Gulag continued to exist, the same slogans and portraits of Stalin hung everywhere. N.S. Khrushchev showed extraordinary activity during these weeks.

The son of a poor peasant from the Kursk province, who experienced miner's work in his youth, he did not hesitate to accept the revolution. At the end of 1917, he joined the Bolshevik Party. He was the organizer and political commissar of the miner's battalions. Since 1924, he was in party work and went through all steps of the apparatus ladder. For many years, Khrushchev treated Stalin with genuine adoration, accepting everything he said as the highest truth. Stalin trusted Khrushchev, promoting him to responsible posts in Moscow and Ukraine. While in high positions, Khrushchev was involved in Stalin’s repressions, signed sentences , denounced the “traitors.” But there was something in his activities that distinguished him from others. In the hungry 1946, he was not afraid to ask Stalin to reduce the grain procurement plan in Ukraine, although to no avail.

When the opportunity arose, he tried to make life easier for ordinary people; he could talk for a long time with ordinary collective farmers. Under Stalin, as a rule, he pretended to be a simple-minded, dutiful person. And now it was Khrushchev who took the initiative to unite members of the leadership for an action against Beria. By cunning and persuasion, threats that he would not spare anyone, Khrushchev achieved his goal. In mid-July 1953 At one of the meetings in the Kremlin, which was chaired by Malenkov, Khrushchev accused Beria of careerism, nationalism, and connections with the British and Mussavatist (i.e., Azerbaijani bourgeois) intelligence services. Khrushchev was supported by Bumanin, Molotov and others. As soon as they started voting, Malenkov pressed the bell button. Several high-ranking officers arrested Beria. The military side of this action was led by Zhukov.

On his orders, the Kantimirovskaya and Tamanskaya tank divisions were introduced into Moscow, occupying key positions in the center of the city. The Kremlin security was completely replaced. Beria's closest employees were arrested. The removal of Beria and his main assistants, and then the trial, although carried out in secret, and their execution prevented the catastrophe that would have been inevitable if they came to power.

Of course, this action, which preempted the coup, was carried out by force, essentially Stalinist methods. However, there was no alternative then. In September 1953 N.S. Khrushchev was elected First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. Articles about the dangers of the “cult of personality” began to appear in the press. The paradoxical thing was that their authors often referred to the works of Stalin, declaring that he was an opponent of the cult. A revision of the “Lenin case” began. The Kremlin was open for free visits. But at the same time, at the end of 1953, in the mines of Vorkuta, which were under the jurisdiction of the still existing Gulag, prisoner strikes were brutally suppressed.

In 1954 Khrushchev made several trips around the country, which was a significant innovation in political life. His popularity grew. Malenkov faded into the shadows. At the beginning of 1955, at a meeting as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, N.A. Bumanin, a man from Stalin’s closest circle, who, however, managed to navigate the situation in time, played a certain role in organizing the arrest of Beria. He understood economic issues better than Malenkov, but was an opponent of radical changes, acting within the framework of familiar stereotypes.

But the most important thing: on the initiative of N.S. Khrushchev and under his personal control, the Gulag was liquidated. Millions of innocently repressed people were given the opportunity to return home. This was a great humanistic process, an important step in the de-Stalinization of Soviet society. But powerful conservative forces stood on this path, such as Molotov, Kaganovich, Malenkov, Voroshilov, tainted not just by participation, but also by the leadership of mass repressions, united against Beria in fear for their lives in the face of cruelty and treachery, and did not want to go further. Soon after Stalin’s death, Khrushchev said in a personal conversation: “I am Khrushchev, you are Kim (Voroshilov), you are Lazar (Kaganovich), you are Vyacheslav Mikhailovich (Molotov) - we all must bring national repentance for the 37th year. " This was the watershed between Khrushchev and the conservative forces in the leadership on the eve of the 1956 20th Congress of the CPSU. Exposing Stalin's personality cult.

Khrushchev's role in improving the political structure of Soviet society in the field of ideology was significant. Beginning in 1954, Khrushchev made a closed report “On the cult of personality and its consequences.” The 20th Party Congress approved the provisions of the report of the Central Committee and instructed the Central Committee of the CPSU to consistently implement measures to ensure the complete opposition of the cult of personality to Marxism-Leninism, the elimination of its consequences in all areas of party, state and ideological work, strict adherence to the norms of party life and the principles of collective party guidelines developed by V.I. Lenin. Soon after the 20th Congress, a special resolution of the Central Committee “On the cult of personality and its consequences” was adopted, which spoke about the objective and subjective reasons for the emergence of Stalin’s cult of personality and its harmful consequences in the field of political, state and economic leadership of the country.

But, speaking about the positive contribution of N.S. Khrushchev to the development of Marxist-Leninist ideology, at the same time it must be emphasized that he tended to get ahead of himself, that a strict scientific analysis of reality during this period was often replaced by projectism. The most striking illustration of what has been said can be some provisions of the CPSU program adopted at the XXII Party Congress. The program, as you know, said that in the next decade (1961-1970) the USSR “by creating the material and technical base of communism, will surpass the most powerful and rich capitalist country of the United States in production per capita, the material well-being and cultural -technical level of workers." For the second decade (1971-1980), it was planned to create a powerful material and technical base of communism, which would provide an abundance of material and cultural benefits for the entire population.

The program said: “Soviet society will come close to implementing the principle of distribution according to needs, will surpass the gradual transition to a single public property. Thus, a communist society will basically be built in the USSR. Life has shown the inconsistency of these projects. Instead, in order to improve socialism, to develop it on its own basis, N.S. Khrushchev (although apparently he is not the only one to blame for the spotlight) continuing the 17th Congress of the CPSU (b) already in the late 50s and early 60s spoke about the need for the extensive construction of communism and the transition to public communist self-government of the people.

Development of virgin lands. The choice of a new political path required a change in economic guidelines. However, at that time no one in the political leadership questioned the principles of the command-administrative system. The talk was about overcoming its extremes, such as the almost complete absence of material incentives for workers and the lag in the mass introduction of scientific and technical achievements into production. Rejection of the market and commodity-money relations continued to prevail, and the advantages of socialism were considered as something given once and for all, capable of in itself ensuring development and prosperity. Agricultural production took first place among the national economic problems. Khrushchev, we must give him his due, in terms of origin and interests, was always closer to the needs of the peasants than any of the other top political

Introduction

Recently, more and more scientific and journalistic works have appeared in which Soviet historians, analyzing recently opened archives, analyze in detail the fallacy of the myths that have dominated the history of our country for the last 60 years. According to some myths, from the 30s of the 20th century until his death, Stalin was absolutely omnipotent: as soon as he wanted, all his political initiatives were immediately realized, and his political enemies instantly collapsed. Other myths describe the bloody executioner and treacherous scoundrel Beria, who wanted to seize power in the USSR in June 1953. Such myths are not only an obvious simplification that leads away from understanding complex political processes, but also an absolutely false representation of historical reality, which is much more complex and multifaceted than they want to imagine.

Very often, such political myths are created as a result of a struggle for power among several elite groups, one of which ultimately wins. In this case, all mistakes are blamed on the losing side, and all sorts of negative qualities are attributed to it. A typical example of the creation of such myths is coups d'etat.

The purpose of this work is a political analysis of the “palace” coup carried out in June 1953 in the USSR by representatives of the highest echelons of power, as a result of which one of the main contenders for supreme power in the USSR, Minister of Internal Affairs Lavrenty, was removed from all posts, arrested and subsequently shot Pavlovich Beria. The work examines the reasons that led to this conspiracy, the course of the coup, as well as the roles of the conspirators who ultimately committed the “political murder” of Beria and turned him into one of the demons of the Soviet era.

The first chapter provides a general description of the political struggle in the highest echelons of power in the USSR in the late 40s and early 50s. The main political events of those years are described, which subsequently had the greatest impact on the struggle for power in March-June 1953. The main components of the internal political struggle both between various elite groups, and these groups themselves with Stalin are analyzed.

The second chapter describes the political programs carried out in March-June 1953 by the main contenders for power: Malenkov and Beria. More attention is paid to the analysis of Beria's policies, since it was his policies that became one of the main reasons for the emergence of a conspiracy against him. The actions of other leaders of the USSR, which are important for understanding the details of the coup, are also analyzed.

Thus, chapters I and II describe the historical context on the eve of Beria's overthrow.

The third chapter examines in detail the technology and progress of the revolution. The prerequisites for the conspiracy of the USSR leaders against Beria, as well as their role in the conspiracy, are analyzed. The course of the coup, as well as the subsequent “political murder” of Beria at the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, is described step by step. The unofficial version of the murder of Beria in his mansion is considered separately.

The fourth chapter sums up the results of the coup and gives a brief description of the new configuration of the political Olympus of the USSR.

Chapter I. Political struggle in the USSR
in the late 40s - early 50s.

One of the historians who in the last twenty years has made a great contribution to exposing the myths of perestroika and has published many new historical documents is Yuri Zhukov. Zhukov is a researcher of the Stalin era who received (one of the few) access to the secret archival funds of Stalin, Yezhov and Beria. In his book “Be proud, not repent! The truth about the Stalin era,” he, analyzing documents from Politburo meetings of the 50s, proves that already in 1950-1951 Stalin, either for compelling reasons (for example, a serious deterioration in his health), or due to a loss in the political struggle, transferred a significant part of his political powers to the “triumvirate” consisting of Bulganin, Beria and Malenkov. As one of the justifications for such a statement, Zhukov cites the Politburo decision of February 16, 1951, in which Beria, Bulganin and Malenkov (at that time Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR) were allowed to make all the most important decisions in the country, and issue all resolutions and orders signed Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Comrade Stalin. Zhukov notes that such a decision has never - neither before nor later - been found in documents of this kind.

Another Soviet historian, Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov, in his book “The Mystery of Stalin’s Death,” argues that in 1952 a situation arose in which Stalin’s decisions were blocked by the actions of the “quartet” of Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev and Bulganin, and that while Stalin was still alive, they carried out a political revolution against him. Avtorkhanov notes that Stalin’s power was based on “absolute obedience to the direct managers of the machine of power” and that the “four” could cooperate to block Stalin’s decisions and prevent their execution. It should be noted that Avtorkhanov is an ardent anti-Soviet; during the Great Patriotic War he was a collaborator and subsequently fled to the United States, where, in particular, he taught Sovietology at the American Military Academy (later called the Russian Institute of the US Army).

Zhukov partially agrees with Avtorkhanov that the leaders of the USSR had the intention of eliminating Stalin from the political game, citing as confirmation the arrest of Vlasik (the head of Stalin’s personal security), the removal of Poskrebyshev (the head of Stalin’s secretariat) and the removal of the head of the Kremlin’s Lechsanupr Egorov from his post. At the same time, Zhukov notes that such actions could have been a complex game by Stalin himself against his political competitors, which he did not manage to complete.

Pavel Sudoplatov, a Soviet intelligence officer, lieutenant general of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, who was repressed in 1953 in the Beria case, notes in his memoirs that by the end of 1952 Malenkov and Beria entered into an unspoken political alliance, forming a tandem that had very great political power . At the same time, according to Sudoplatov, their union was forced; each of them, acting together, dreamed of ruling individually.

These facts do not at all mean that Stalin was a weak political figure and did not participate in the political struggle. They show that not only Stalin himself was a subject of political processes, but also other representatives of the highest political power, as well as their groups and clans, fought both with each other and together against Stalin.

Important components of the political struggle that took place at that time were political criminal cases: “Leningrad Case”, “Doctors’ Case”, “Mingrelian Case”, “Case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee”.

Rudolf Pihoya believes that the “Leningrad Affair” is a struggle between the Malenkov-Beria group and the Voznesensky-Kuznetsov group. One reason for this struggle was that Stalin could, at the end of the 40s, strengthen the position of the Voznesensky and Kuznetsov group in the Politburo, which would mean their group coming to power and removing Malenkov and Beria from supreme power. Accordingly, this forced both Malenkov and Beria to use all means to fight political opponents, including through political affairs.

Another reason was Voznesensky’s certain inclination towards “great power chauvinism.” As Anastas Mikoyan writes in his memoirs “Stalin even told us that Voznesensky was a great-power chauvinist of rare degree. “For him,” he said, “not only Georgians and Armenians, but also Ukrainians are not people.”. Apparently, the strengthening of such chauvinist sentiments in the Voznesensky-Kuznetsov group, as well as actions on the part of Malenkov and Beria directed against this group, ultimately led to Stalin explicitly or implicitly agreeing to deprive them of his support. This ultimately led to the “Leningrad Affair,” in which Malenkov played the main role, and to the execution of Voznesensky and Kuznetsov.

At the same time, there were cases directed against Malenkov and Beria. The “Mingrelian affair” hit Beria. In this case, about 500 senior party and prosecutorial figures of Georgia - Beria's nominees - were arrested and accused of bribery and nationalist sentiments. The “Aviators' Case” in 1946 hit Malenkov hard, who then managed to avoid arrest, but he was eventually deprived of senior political posts and found himself in disgrace for several years.

Speaking about Voznesensky’s inclination towards “great power chauvinism”, it is also necessary to outline other positions regarding the national question that existed among the top leaders of the USSR. Beria was a clear supporter of greater political rights for the republics of the Soviet Union, while Stalin and Malenkov stood for the position of a “single Soviet nation” and a rigid federal structure of the USSR, which in a rough approximation can even be called “unitary”. A more detailed description of the positions of Stalin, Malenkov and Beria on the national question will be given in the second and third chapters. Now it should be noted that the ideas of Beria, Voznesensky and Stalin-Malenkov regarding the national question and, as a consequence, the rights of the union republics were radically different from each other. Thus, the national question was another important factor in the political struggle.

The next component of the political struggle of those years was the clashes between different generations (or generations) of the leaders of the USSR. Three such generations can be distinguished. First, the “old Bolshevik guard”: Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov and Mikoyan. Their public authority was very high; they were considered by the people and the elite to be the main associates of Stalin since the 20s. Stalin launched a serious political attack on this group in the early 50s. It can be concluded that he wanted either the clear removal of this group from power or a serious reduction in their political influence. The second generation of leaders are the people who were promoted by Stalin in the late 30s and early 40s: Malenkov, Beria, Khrushchev, Pervukhin and Saburov. They can be conditionally considered “Stalin’s assistants,” that is, they were clearly lower in rank than the “old Bolsheviks.” This generation of USSR leaders at the time of Stalin's death had the greatest political power. In the last years of his stay in power, Stalin tried to balance the power that this generation of leaders had with the next generation of leaders, namely young promoters, whom Stalin began to gradually introduce into the highest echelons of power in the early 50s. In the eyes of this “young” generation of leaders, Stalin was an indisputable authority, a “communist god.” This generation includes Ponomarenko, Shepilov, Suslov, Brezhnev.

Another characteristic important for analyzing the political situation in the USSR in the 1950s is the gradual shift of the center of political power from the party to the state apparatus. For example, Elena Prudnikova notes that the Politburo, whose meetings were held less and less often, is beginning to lose its importance as a power structure. At the same time, many researchers of the Stalin era (Zhukov, Mukhin, Prudnikova) agree that Stalin tried to deliver the decisive blow to the separation of the party from the management of the state apparatus at the 19th Party Congress.

Thus, we can distinguish three main components of the political struggle in the USSR in the late 40s - early 50s, the subjects of which were Stalin, as well as various groups (clans) in the top leadership of the USSR.

Firstly, the struggle between the state apparatus and the party apparatus.

Secondly, the struggle between different ideas regarding the national policy of the USSR.

Thirdly, clashes between different generations of leaders: the “old Bolshevik guard”, the “mature” generation of leaders and young nominees.

XIX Party Congress

The 19th Party Congress took place on October 5–14, 1952, after a thirteen-year break (the previous congress took place in March 1939). Among all the events that took place at this congress, the most interesting within the framework of this work are the following:

I. The Politburo of the Central Committee was abolished
and the Presidium of the Central Committee of 25 people was created

The Presidium consisted of twenty-five members and eleven candidates for members of the Presidium, who had an advisory vote.

Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, elected at the 19th Congress (in brackets - the year of joining the party):

Members of the Presidium: V. M. Andrianov (1926), A. B. Aristov (1921), L. P. Beria (1917), N. A. Bulganin (1917), K. E. Voroshilov (1903), S. D. Ignatiev (1924), L. M. Kaganovich (1911), D. S. Korotchenko (1918), V. V. Kuznetsov (1927), O. V. Kuusinen (1905), G. M. Malenkov (1920), B A. Malyshev (1926), L. G. Melnikov (1928), A. I. Mikoyan (1915), N. A. Mikhailov (1930), V. M. Molotov (1906), M. G. Pervukhin ( 1919), P.K. Ponomarenko (1925), M.Z. Saburov (1920), I.V. Stalin (1898), M.A. Suslov (1921), N.S. Khrushchev (1918), D. I. Chesnokov (1939), N. M. Shvernik (1905), M. P. Shkiryatov (1906).

Candidates: L. I. Brezhnev (1931), A. Ya. Vyshinsky (1920), A. G. Zverev (1919), N. G. Ignatov (1924), I. G. Kabanov (1917), A. N. Kosygin (1927), N. S. Patolichev (1928), N. M. Pegov (1930), A. M. Puzanov (1925), I. F. Tevosyan (1918), P. F. Yudin (1928).

As some researchers note, for example, Yuri Mukhin and Elena Prudnikova, the majority of the twenty-five members of the new Presidium were not party members, but government officials responsible for industrial and party control, and, accordingly, such a replacement of the Politburo with the Presidium was one of the forms of transfer of leverage power from the party apparatus to the state apparatus.

Yuri Emelyanov in his book “Khrushchev. Troublemaker in the Kremlin,” analyzing the composition of the Presidium of the Central Committee, comes to the conclusion that the new cadres in the Presidium were more educated and more knowledgeable in modern production, and that Khrushchev treated the appearance of such people as "temporary triumph of dark forces", which could have been used by Stalin to fight members of the abolished Politburo.

In the book “Stalin before the Court of the Pygmies,” Emelyanov also cites the testimony of the USSR Minister of Agriculture in 1947–1953, Benediktov, and a member of the CPSU Central Committee since 1985, Lukyanov, who worked for a long time with Stalin’s archive and other materials of the General Department of the Central Committee, that Stalin was planning appoint Ponomarenko, elected as a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee and Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU at the 19th Congress, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and even agreed on this appointment with the majority of members of the then party leadership, but the sudden death of Stalin a few months after the congress did not allow this appointment to take place.

Avtorkhanov also suggests that Stalin was trying to balance out the old members of the Politburo with a new generation of younger leaders who had less experience and in whose eyes Stalin was the unquestioned authority. Avtorkhanov believes that by relying on them, Stalin could subsequently launch a political attack on the old members of the Politburo.

Yuri Zhukov draws attention to the fact that at the Plenum of the Central Committee on October 16, 1952, in violation of the CPSU Charter, the Bureau of the Presidium of the Central Committee was formed in the following composition: Beria, Bulganin, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Malenkov, Pervukhin, Saburov, Stalin, Khrushchev. Zhukov believes that the creation of this body gave an advantage only to Beria, Bulganin, Malenkov, Khrushchev, Saburov and Pervukhin, whom no one could balance politically. Perhaps this was a forced (and probably temporary) concession from Stalin, the purpose of which was to balance the power of the members of the old Politburo and calm them down for a while, in order to soon launch an attack on some of them and dissolve the non-statutory body.

II. Stalin's struggle with the "Old Bolshevik Guard"

At the 19th Congress, Stalin sharply criticized Molotov, Mikoyan and Voroshilov and expressed complete political distrust of them at the congress. In addition, Stalin accused Molotov of spying for America, and Voroshilov of spying for England (the spouses of both were already arrested on charges of espionage at that time).

According to Yuri Mukhin, by his struggle with the old party members, who had been members of the Politburo for the longest time, Stalin wanted to warn the party apparatus against attempting to nominate a second leader. Avtorkhanov gives another explanation. The 19th Congress was solemnly opened by Molotov, and closed by Voroshilov, and according to party tradition, this was trusted to the most popular old members of the Politburo. Therefore, Stalin, planning their defeat at the congress, from Avtorkhanov’s point of view, would not have entrusted them with these honorable affairs. Avtorkhanov concludes that this could only happen if they were nominated not by Stalin, but by the Politburo, or more precisely, by the apparatus led by Malenkov and Beria. According to Avtorkhanov, it turns out that Malenkov and Beria foresaw Stalin’s plans to attack Molotov, Mikoyan and Voroshilov and tried to organize a counterattack in order to subsequently enlist the support of the “old guard of the Bolsheviks” and form a political alliance with them.

III. Abolition of the position of Secretary General

In the new Party Charter, which was adopted at the 19th Congress, the party was renamed CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union). In this Charter, the position of the General Secretary - the leader of the party - was abolished.

It should be noted here that (as some researchers note) the position of “General Secretary” in the period from 1934 to 1953 was rarely mentioned in documents, and Stalin often signed himself as “Secretary of the Central Committee”, and many documents were addressed to “Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks” Comrade Stalin." Nevertheless, in a number of documents Stalin used the title of General Secretary of the CPSU (b), and there are documents addressed to Stalin for this period in which he was addressed as “General Secretary of the CPSU (b)”.

Yuri Mukhin believes that the change in the Charter in 1952 and the obvious failure to include the post of General Secretary in it was Stalin’s attempt to permanently abolish this party post and eliminate unity of command in the party. Now the party had ten secretaries of the Central Committee, who did not form any body, but simply all belonged to the Presidium, in which, according to the Charter, there was no chairman, no first secretary, no chief representative from the party. According to Mukhin, such a move by Stalin greatly reduced the political role of the party and its ability to strengthen this role subsequently.

At the Plenum, held immediately after the congress, Stalin was elected a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee and secretary of the Central Committee. It is interesting to note that Stalin also asked to be relieved of his position as party secretary. And although some researchers interpret this as an attempt to test the loyalty of his comrades and force them to clearly choose him as party secretary, others, for example Prudnikova, believe that with this step Stalin wanted to break the connection between himself and the party and clearly deprive it of its leadership in his person. It is interesting that, when resigning from the post of secretary, Stalin did not ask to be relieved of his post as Chairman of the Council of Ministers.

Analyzing the XIX Congress, several conclusions can be drawn:

• Stalin created a counterweight to the group of Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev, Bulganin, introducing young functionaries into the Presidium of the Central Committee and thereby endowing them with the highest party power.
• Stalin was clearly trying to cut off the old guard of the Bolsheviks from the top political leadership: Molotov, Voroshilov, Mikoyan, who were considered the closest and longest-standing associates of the leader.
• Stalin weakened the party and reduced its political role.

Accordingly, it can be assumed that Stalin was clearly preparing serious political transformations in the USSR. However, if we recall the version of Yuri Zhukov, given above, that instead of Stalin, the role of Chairman of the Council of Ministers since February 1951 was played by the “triumvirate” of Bulganin, Beria and Malenkov, then it turns out that all of Stalin’s actions should be considered as an attempt by a ruler cut off from all real levers of power if not to change the political configuration, then at least to give the vector of development of the political situation in the USSR a certain direction.

Particularly interesting in relation to the 19th Congress of the CPSU is the fact that the materials of this congress have not yet been published, the transcripts of the congress have not been published in full. During the Soviet Union, under Brezhnev, they began to release transcripts of all congresses, released transcripts of the 1st and 20th congresses at the same time, and stopped releasing transcripts at the 18th congress. Yuri Mukhin puts forward the version that this was a conscious decision of the party nomenklatura, for which the danger was posed not only by the congress, but also by the plenum, the transcript of which also had to be released along with the materials of the congress.

Indeed, as of 2014, the transcript of the plenum has still not been published, and this cannot but raise questions. Many studies regarding the 19th Congress are based on the memoirs of the writer Konstantin Simonov, a member of the Central Committee of the Party, published in 1989. The fact that historical research is based not on documents but on memories means that today's understanding of the political struggle that took place in the last years of Stalin's life may be largely erroneous. It will be possible to find out only after the publication of the materials of the 19th Congress.

However, many researchers of the Stalin era are trying to find documents that could at least indirectly tell about what happened at the 19th Congress. One of these researchers is Alexander Khansky, who collected newspaper publications from 1952, as well as materials from various collections and reference books that contain references to the 19th Congress. Khansky published all these materials in one electronic book, “The 19th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) - CPSU (October 5–14, 1952). Documents and materials." And although this book does not contain, for example, a transcript of the plenum that took place after the congress, this material seems very interesting for a more detailed study.

Division of power at the time of Stalin's death

Stalin's death in early March 1953 changed all the political processes that took place in the USSR in the last years of the leader's life. Stalin's inner circle: Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev and Bulganin - began to share power among themselves and change the policies that emerged in the last years of Stalin's life, in particular, the decisions of the 19th Congress.

On the morning of March 4, 1953, a “Governmental message on the illness of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Comrade Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin” was broadcast on Moscow radio, in which, in particular, it was reported that “...the serious illness of Comrade Stalin will entail a more or less long-term absence from participation in leadership activities. The Central Committee and the Council of Ministers, in the leadership of the party and the country, take seriously all the circumstances associated with Comrade Stalin’s temporary departure from leading state and party activities.”. Analyzing this message, as well as the newspapers that were published these days, Yuri Zhukov comes to the conclusion that already on March 3, 1953, invitations were prepared for an urgent Plenum of the Central Committee, which was originally intended to be held on the evening of March 4.

Zhukov notes that on March 3 there was no final agreement on the redistribution of power, but qualitative changes had already begun to occur: Malenkov and Beria returned Molotov to the political Olympus, from which Stalin had gradually removed him since 1949. Zhukov believes that this return was mainly made by Malenkov, because Malenkov, who could be considered Stalin's most likely successor, was not yet ready to take the full power that Stalin had, and therefore offset the influence of Beria (his most likely competitor) with Molotov , who was (or who could still be openly portrayed) one of Stalin’s closest associates. According to Zhukov, the inclusion of Molotov required the expansion of a new narrow leadership to the five Malenkov, Beria, Molotov, Bulganin, Kaganovich. Such an organization of power was subsequently presented as a “collective leadership”, the collectivity of which was not in the community and unity of goals and means of the country’s development, but in the minimum condition for balancing the conflicting views and interests of the top leadership.

Immediately after finding a compromise and establishing “collective leadership,” the reorganization of power structures began. For example, the Presidium and the Bureau of the Council of Ministers were merged, as well as the Bureau of the Presidium with the Presidium of the Central Committee. The purpose of this reorganization was an attempt to “shuffle” the existing personnel and appoint new people to the appropriate posts, while each sought to achieve the best balance of power for his team. Yuri Emelyanov also notes that Beria, Malenkov and Khrushchev were clearly in a hurry to revise the decisions of the 19th Congress and the October Plenum: concentrating great political power in their hands, they sought to exclude all of Stalin’s new nominees. The new Presidium of the Central Committee consisted of Malenkov, Beria, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Bulganin, Kaganovich, Saburov, Pervukhin, Molotov and Mikoyan. The Presidium of the Council of Ministers turned out to be half the size: Malenkov was approved as chairman, and Beria, Molotov, Bulganin and Kaganovich were appointed as his first deputies. Brezhnev, Pegov, Ignatov and Ponomarenko were removed from the Central Committee secretariat (the latter, as noted above, Stalin planned to appoint as Chairman of the Council of Ministers). To replace those removed, political supporters of Malenkov were appointed to the secretariat: Pospelov and Shatalin.

Analyzing the actions of Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev and Bulganin to redistribute political power in the country, Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov comes to the conclusion that they carried out a political revolution, distributing among themselves - bypassing the Presidium of the Central Committee - the main power in the country and removing other heirs of Stalin from the first roles in the created political configuration.

Yuri Zhukov believes that Malenkov had the greatest power at the time of Stalin’s death and therefore turned out to be more prepared for the first round of the struggle for sole power. The fact that his rivals apparently did not have time to come to an agreement and block Malenkov’s actions allowed the latter to concentrate in his hands the greatest amount of power over the state and party apparatus. As Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, he had the greatest influence on domestic and foreign policy, and as Secretary of the Central Committee, he had a direct influence on the decisions taken by the Secretariat and Presidium of the Central Committee.

The Pravda newspaper, published on the morning of March 5, 1953 with an editorial about the “Great Unity of the Party and the People,” mentioned three names: Lenin, Stalin and Malenkov. Thus, the people and elite were clearly indicated a new leader, whom they needed to focus on when making political decisions.

On the same day, March 5, 1953, at eight o’clock in the evening, a joint meeting of the Plenum of the Central Committee, the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Supreme Council took place. The meeting was short, lasting only 40 minutes. This meant that all appointments had already been agreed upon in advance and the meeting was only a form of legitimation of these appointments and a demonstration that a collective leadership had been formed (represented by Malenkov, Beria, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Bulganin, Kaganovich, Saburov, Pervukhin, Molotov and Mikoyan), which assumed full power and removed all potential competitors from it (in particular, young personnel promoted by Stalin earlier).

The facts presented by Rudolf Pihoya, who served as head of the State Archival Service of Russia from 1993 to 1996, are interesting. Since 1996, he has been vice president of the international foundation "Democracy" (Yakovlev Foundation). Pihoya mentions a note written by Beria to Malenkov on March 4, 1953, in which the most important government posts were distributed in advance, which were approved at a meeting on March 5.

Pihoya cites another interesting statement made by Malenkov on March 5, 1953 at a joint meeting of the Plenum of the Central Committee, the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Supreme Council, that the Bureau of the Presidium of the Central Committee “instructed comrade Malenkov, Beria and Khrushchev to take measures to ensure that the documents and papers of Comrade Stalin, both current and archival, are put in proper order.". According to Pihoy, access to the Stalin archive was a strong lever of influence over potential political competitors. Thus, Malenkov, Beria and Khrushchev were implicitly declared the main political leaders in the collective leadership. In his memoirs, Anastas Mikoyan also recalls that Malenkov, Beria and Khrushchev were in the last years of Stalin’s life as one team and grouped together to impose their opinion on the Presidium of the Central Committee.

An hour after the end of the joint meeting, news arrived of Stalin's death. Therefore, the new leadership decided not to inform the population about the political decisions just made. A message was prepared about Stalin's death, which also mentioned the new program of political leadership. This program did not contain theses about the need to develop heavy industry as the basis of the Soviet economy and set the goal of raising the material well-being of the population. The main enemy of the Soviet Union - imperialism and its “bastions” the USA and NATO - were not mentioned in the text of the program. Most likely, this message most fully reflected the ideas for the development of the USSR that Malenkov expressed. This conclusion can be drawn after analyzing the speeches of the country's top officials at Stalin's funeral on March 9, 1953. The programs put forward at Stalin's funeral by the main contenders for power are discussed in detail below.

Thus, following the results of the first round of political struggle, Beria became the second person in the state. He was inferior to Malenkov in terms of concentrated political power and the ability to influence key decisions. Beria headed two law enforcement agencies: State Security and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which after Stalin's death were merged into one - the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The new united ministry had its own military units and industrial enterprises, and, most importantly, gave Beria the opportunity to obtain the necessary information that could be used against political competitors. At the same time, collecting such information against Beria in these conditions became almost impossible.

In addition, Beria held a strong position in the military department, as he was responsible for secret atomic-nuclear and rocket-building programs. Beria had strong connections with industrial ministries, which were obliged to carry out orders for the secret programs he supervised out of turn and even in violation of five-year plans.

The rest of the collective leadership received significantly less political power than Beria and Malenkov. Molotov became Minister of Foreign Affairs and head of foreign policy intelligence - the Information Committee. Bulganin headed the Ministry of Defense. At the same time, both Bulganin and Molotov were appointed deputies who were clearly not among their supporters: Molotov had Malik and Vyshinsky, Bulganin had Vasilevsky and Zhukov. Kaganovich became First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and, although he oversaw several ministries, did not receive any ministerial post. Voroshilov was appointed Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council.

Khrushchev did not receive any government positions; he resigned from the post of First Secretary of the Moscow Regional Committee, since he was instructed by the decision of a joint meeting of the Plenum of the Central Committee, the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Supreme Council to “focus on work in the Central Committee.” Yuri Zhukov believes that in this way Khrushchev’s status in the Secretariat of the Central Committee was raised, although in the new composition of the Secretariat he was actually deprived of the opportunity to conduct an absolutely independent policy and was forced to coordinate his decisions with Malenkov.

Yuri Zhukov and Pavel Sudoplatov note that both Malenkov and Beria considered Khrushchev as a likely supporter in the fight against each other, and Khrushchev, taking advantage of the situation, maintained good relations with both for some time.

The evidence of Beria's son Sergo seems interesting for analysis. In his memoirs, published in 1994, and in his interviews in 1994, he mentions that Khrushchev in March 1953 advised Beria to agree to take the post of head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and said that there was no need to be afraid of Malenkov as chairman of the Council of Ministers, since he was very is associated with the repressions of 1937, and this fact can be “influenced” on him.

From a general analysis of the political struggle at the time of Stalin’s death, we can conclude that the key positions of power were occupied by representatives of the “mature” generation of leaders of the USSR, who partially returned the “old Bolshevik guard” to political life and completely removed the “young” cadres nominated by Stalin from power in recent years. At the same time, Malenkov and Beria concentrated the greatest power in their hands. Thus, the collegial leadership was a forced compromise and preserved the existing contradictions between potential heirs to sole power.

Beria, finding himself in the second most powerful position, was forced to act more actively in the next stages of the struggle for power. As all Beria researchers note, he was a decisive and very active leader and politician, so he joined the struggle for power with maximum force, especially realizing that his starting position was inferior to Malenkov’s. Other members of the collective leadership occupied weaker political positions and were considered by Malenkov and Beria as potential allies in the fight against each other.

Promotion of political programs
at Stalin's funeral

The first major political event at which the main contenders for power could outline the priorities of their future policies was Stalin's funeral on March 9, 1953. The funeral meeting, as chairman of the commission for organizing the funeral, was opened by Khrushchev, who, however, did not make a speech. Malenkov, Beria and Molotov spoke.

Malenkov was the first to speak. In domestic policy, he identified the further improvement of the material well-being of the Soviet people as his main priority. In foreign policy, Malenkov several times emphasized the thesis about the possibility of coexistence and peaceful competition between the capitalist and socialist systems.

Beria spoke next. Regarding domestic policy, he also mentioned “satisfying the growing material and cultural needs of the entire Soviet society”. In his speech, a very interesting thesis was voiced about the observance of the rights of citizens of the USSR, as written in the Soviet Constitution. At the same time, Beria also mentioned Lenin and Stalin, who “they taught us to tirelessly increase and sharpen the vigilance of the party and the people to the machinations and intrigues of the enemies of the Soviet state” and called “to further strengthen your vigilance.” Speaking about the priorities of economic development, Beria focused on strengthening the economic and military power of the state. Turning to foreign policy, he also mentioned the peace policy professed by the USSR, but did not say a word about the possible peaceful coexistence of capitalism and socialism. Separately, it should be mentioned that Beria in his speech, speaking about the peoples of the Soviet Union, placed emphasis, albeit small, not just on the friendship of peoples, but “on the lasting unification of all Soviet national republics in the system of a single great multinational state”.

Molotov, in his speech, speaking about foreign policy, just like Beria, expressed theses about the “aggressor” against whom it is necessary to strengthen the armed forces, and about the fight against “the machinations of enemies, agents of imperialist aggressive states.” Also in foreign policy, Molotov noted the importance of the national and interethnic issue, especially in connection with "with the formation of people's democracies and the growth of the national liberation movement in the colonies and dependent countries".

The speakers' theses were obviously directed not so much at the people as at the elite, who were offered various goals for the development of the USSR, as well as ways to achieve these goals. Comparing the programs of the speakers, one can clearly notice the peacemaking bias of Malenkov’s speech, his orientation in foreign policy towards the policy of détente, in domestic policy - towards the development of light industry and towards increasing the living standards of the population and the elite. Beria and Molotov, on the contrary, emphasized a possible confrontation with the enemies of the USSR both within the country and abroad, and proposed developing heavy and defense industries, which meant a much lower standard of living for the population and elite compared to Malenkov’s program.

Yuri Zhukov concludes that such a prioritization of the country's development led to the fact that Molotov was more inclined to side with Beria and, as a result, they formed a temporary alliance in order to together resist the actions of Malenkov. In support of this interpretation of events, one can cite the memoirs of Pavel Sudoplatov, who writes that on March 9, at a wake on the day of Stalin’s funeral, Beria informed Molotov, whose birthday was March 9, about a “gift” - the release of his wife Polina Zhemchuzhina. By order of Beria, she was released on March 10, 1953, rehabilitated and reinstated in the party. This also indicates Beria's attempt to build an alliance with Molotov in the future.

Thus, in March 1953, the top leaders of the USSR began to implement their programs, while at the same time waging a political struggle with each other.

First encounter

The first political clash between participants in the “collective leadership” happened a few days after Stalin’s funeral. On March 14, a session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was supposed to take place, which was suddenly postponed for a day on March 13, since an extraordinary Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee was scheduled for March 14. The actual reason for which the Plenum was held was, according to Zhukov, an attempt by the majority of members of the Presidium of the Central Committee (Beria, Molotov, Bulganin, Kaganovich, Khrushchev and Mikoyan) to curtail Malenkov’s powers through the separation of two branches of power: state and party. It was decided to no longer concentrate the highest state and party posts in the hands of one person, namely Malenkov. Malenkov at that time did not have enough authority and strength to claim the role of sole leader, and without such authority, combining the highest party and government posts was impossible. It is interesting to note that this separation of powers was officially recorded in the resolution of the Plenum as the satisfaction of Malenkov’s request to be relieved of his duties as Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, “bearing in mind the inexpediency of combining the functions of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.”

A number of researchers, for example, Prudnikova and Pihoya, believe that this was only evidence of the desire of the top leadership to once and for all separate the two branches of power. Others, for example Zhukov, on the contrary, believe that this was primarily a move against Malenkov, who, although he did not suffer a clear defeat, nevertheless, having made a forced compromise, could not immediately secure for himself the full power that had come to him initially in early March. Accordingly, the question is what was the goal and what served as a means to achieve the goal. If we assume that the goal was the separation of powers, then it is unclear why this was not done on March 4–5, when a complete reconfiguration of the political Olympus took place. The urgency and suddenness of holding the Plenum, which raised such a serious issue, is also incomprehensible. In this regard, Zhukov’s version seems closest to reality, according to which Beria cooperated with Molotov, Khrushchev, Bulganin, Kaganovich and Mikoyan in order to reduce Malenkov’s power through the division of party and state power.

As a result of this decision, the balance of power in the party apparatus also changed. Two people were removed from the recently renewed Secretariat of the Central Committee: Aristov and Mikhailov. Khrushchev, Suslov, Pospelov and Shatalin remained in the Secretariat of the Central Committee. At the same time, Khrushchev had the greatest authority in the Secretariat, but he was just one of the secretaries of the Central Committee. Yuri Zhukov notes that Malenkov not only lost, but also gained certain political benefits from these changes: Pospelov and Shatalin were supporters of Malenkov, through whom he had serious influence in the party apparatus through the Secretariat. The separation of powers also allowed Malenkov to obtain the consent of the Plenum to expand the rights of USSR ministers, which freed Malenkov from unnecessary tutelage from the departments of the Central Committee and, in particular, from Khrushchev.

Chapter II. USSR politics,
conducted by Beria and Malenkov

Malenkov's political program

In his speech at Stalin's funeral, Malenkov paid great attention to the possibility of peaceful coexistence of the capitalist and socialist systems, which made it possible to reduce military spending and redirect it to other sectors of the economy in order to improve the standard of living of the population, which Malenkov also mentioned in his speech. Yuri Zhukov believes that these two priorities - peaceful coexistence and increasing living standards - were the main ones in Malenkov’s policy in 1953.

At the Plenum, which took place on March 15, Malenkov managed to make a decision to revise the national economic plans and budget. At the same plenum, as Zhukov notes, Malenkov made a political message to his opponents that, having agreed to the redistribution of power and the refusal to combine senior party and government posts, he warned them that he would not allow any of them to claim sole leadership, with This emphasizes that in the leadership, which, although collective, Malenkov plays the main role.

According to Yuri Zhukov, Malenkov was planning a large-scale reorientation of production from military products to peaceful ones. Moreover, the extent of the reorientation was specifically hidden by Malenkov, because neither Beria, nor Bulganin, nor Molotov would support a reduction in military spending. Therefore, Malenkov made an attempt to present his transformations as a reorganization of the management system: the sectoral bureau under the Council of Ministers was eliminated, the resolution on “Expanding the rights of ministers” was revised, which now clarified that not all ministries have freedom of action, but only the ministries of industry, construction and transport . Additionally, the resolution contained clauses that allowed the director's corps to sell, buy, donate and receive surplus materials, dismantled equipment, and the funds themselves. According to Zhukov, this was the first attempt to change the conservative-bureaucratic mechanism for managing the economy, which was suitable for the first five-year plans, but was not at all suitable in the new conditions. Zhukov also notes that Malenkov’s actions led to the decentralization of the military-industrial complex, and therefore provided opportunities for its weakening and a reduction in its budget.

In May, Malenkov took the next step to reorganize the economy - reducing the staff of ministries. At the first stage alone, more than 100,000 people were released from management structures, most of whom were redirected to production. Many officials were demoted and deprived of huge salaries and privileges. At the same time, realizing that such reforms could set the bureaucratic apparatus against him, Malenkov, by secret resolution of the Council of Ministers of May 26 and June 13, significantly increased the “additional payment in envelopes” to those officials from the apparatus on whom he expected to rely in the future. Such an action, however, as Zhukov notes, also worked against Malenkov, because the “offended” were party cadres, whose additional payments in envelopes were always at the same level as ministerial ones. Zhukov cites data that party officials bombarded Khrushchev with requests in envelopes to increase additional payments for them. A few months later, after the overthrow of Beria, Khrushchev paid the party members the corresponding difference, which subsequently attracted them to his side, which allowed him to gain the upper hand in the fight against Malenkov, Molotov and Kaganovich a few years later.

Beria's political program

The policy pursued by Beria in March–June 1953 can be divided into three directions.

Reform of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, closure of political cases, rehabilitation and mass amnesty

After Stalin's death, Beria was appointed minister of the united Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was formed from the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. As many researchers note, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security were competing and even hostile departments. Therefore, from the very first minutes of his stay in power, Beria began reforming the united ministry in order to form a well-functioning department, not torn apart by contradictions within the apparatus, as well as to strengthen his position in this department.

Beria had not been Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs since 1945 and did not oversee either the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the MGB through the Politburo, so he could not truly rely on the existing leadership of the ministry. Already on March 4, before officially taking up his new position, he, having coordinated his actions with the Bureau of the Presidium of the Central Committee, appointed Goglidze, Kruglov and Serov as his first deputies, and Kobulov and Fedotov as his deputies. As Yuri Emelyanov notes, Serov was also politically close to Khrushchev, with whom he worked together in Ukraine.

The next step was the removal of giant construction projects and enterprises from the responsibility of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and their transfer to the industrial and construction ministries. For example, Dalstroy, Glavzoloto and the Norilsk Non-Ferrous and Rare Metals Plant were transferred to the Ministry of Metallurgical Industry, and Hydroproject was transferred to the Ministry of Power Plants and Electrical Industry.

Next, Beria initiated a stop, and in some cases, a cessation of the construction of huge facilities that were carried out by the Gulag. With the total estimated cost of all GULAG construction projects at that time amounting to 105 billion rubles, Beria stopped the construction of facilities, the estimated cost of which was 49.2 billion rubles. Moreover, by order of Beria, the Gulag was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice. At the same time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs included two previously independent institutions: the Main Directorate of Geodesy and Cartography and the Office of the Commissioner for the Protection of State and Military Secrets in the Press (Glavlit).

As a result, Beria withdrew all industrial and production facilities from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Thus, he relieved himself of responsibility for carrying out economic tasks (coal mining, designing canals), which made it possible to reorient the joint department to fulfill direct special service goals. As all researchers of this period note, this was a significant reform of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. After these transformations, which allowed Beria to strengthen his position in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and get rid of “non-core” tasks for the law enforcement agency, he became more actively involved in the political struggle.

Beria's next step was a mass amnesty for prisoners. As a result of this amnesty, about one million two hundred thousand people out of two and a half million prisoners were released from prison. The amnesty covered all those sentenced to a term of up to 5 years (including political prisoners), as well as women who had children under 10 years of age, pregnant women, minors, the elderly and the sick. At the same time, the sentences of those sentenced to more than 5 years were reduced by half, with the exception of sentences for counter-revolutionary activities, banditry, premeditated murders, and major thefts. According to some researchers, for example, Elena Prudnikova, this was an attempt to soften the repressive system and unload the camps. Prudnikova believes that most of those amnestied did not pose a great threat to society, and those of them who, upon release, committed crimes again, again ended up behind bars. That is, in her opinion, de facto the amnesty did not play a role for them. According to other researchers, such as Rudolf Pihoy and Andrei Sukhomlinov, the mass amnesty was a populist move by Beria and led to a sharp increase in crime. As Sukhomlinov notes, Beria also planned a broader amnesty project, which, however, was not accepted by the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee. Pavel Sudoplatov also notes that the return to freedom of a large number of prisoners led to a sharp increase in crime, which forced Beria to transfer the Ministry of Internal Affairs to work in an enhanced mode. In particular, troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs began to patrol the streets of Moscow. Another part of Beria's mass amnesty policy was the decree of May 20, 1953, which lifted passport restrictions for citizens released from prison, allowing them to find work in large cities. These restrictions, according to various estimates, affected three million people.

Still, the scale of the one-time amnesty, which covered 50% of all prisoners, cannot be attributed simply to “unloading the camps.” What seems most plausible is that this political action by Beria pursued several goals.

Firstly, it created a certain image for the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Beria of relaxing the policy of the security department.

Secondly, the scale of the amnesty suggests that Beria was trying not only to influence the perception of his image and the image of his ministry among the people (and the elite), but also to give a clear signal that this was the beginning of some new course towards the liberalization of the repressive apparatus, and a significant liberalization .

Thirdly, putting the Ministry of Internal Affairs on high alert can be interpreted as Beria’s attempt to also demonstrate to his political competitors the power potential of his department.

At the same time as the amnesty, which commuted the punishment of those convicted but did not question the legality of the sentence, Beria began to rehabilitate those illegally convicted, as well as stop the high-profile political processes that began under Stalin. In particular, special groups were created in the Ministry of Internal Affairs to check and review the “doctors’ case”, “Mingrelian case”, “MGB case” and others. Already in April 1953, resolutions were issued “On the falsification of the case in the so-called Mingrelian group”, on the rehabilitation and reversal of the verdict in the “doctors’ case” and the “aviation industry case”. Regarding the “doctors’ case,” Beria submitted a note to the Presidium of the Central Committee “On bringing to criminal responsibility the persons guilty of the murder of S. M. Mikhoels and V. I. Golubev,” in which he argued that the real organizers of the murder were Stalin, Abakumov, Ogoltsova and Tsanaeva. A number of researchers, for example Prudnikova, consider this note to be a late falsification directed against Beria.

Pavel Sudoplatov notes that Khrushchev at least helped Beria in ending the “Mingrelian affair” by passing this decision through the Central Committee. As mentioned above, the “Mingrelian affair,” which began in November 1951, was directed against Beria. Sudoplatov testifies that Beria personally went to Tbilisi after the charge of nationalism was dropped against the Georgian party organization.

Yuri Zhukov notes that when carrying out rehabilitation of MGB employees, Beria was guided not so much by the principle of justice as by the principle of political expediency: rehabilitation and restoration of rank were given to those whom Beria knew well from working together, that is, those on whom Beria could fully rely. At the same time, for example, former Minister of State Security Abakumov remained in prison. Beria also sent to prison in March 1953 the former Deputy Minister of State Security Ryumin, who was one of the initiators of the “Doctors' Case” and who contributed to the downfall of Abakumov. Yuri Zhukov believes that Beria planned, by accusing Abakumov and Ryumin of falsifying the “Doctors’ Case” and the “Mingrelian Case,” to remove all suspicion of involvement in these cases. But, according to Zhukov, there were grounds for such suspicions. Moreover, having launched an investigation into Ryumin about the falsification of political cases, Beria contacted Ryumin’s immediate superior, Ignatiev, the former Minister of State Security, under whom the “Doctors’ Case” and the “Mingrelian Case” were promoted.

In April 1953, Beria was able to cite the relevant facts in order to pass through the Central Committee a decision to relieve Ignatiev from his duties as Secretary of the Central Committee, and then to remove him from the membership of the Central Committee “in connection with the revealed new circumstances of incorrect and dishonest behavior of the former Minister of State Security... who hid a number of important state documents from the Government”. Moreover, on June 25, the day before his arrest, Beria sent Malenkov materials from Ryumin’s interrogation, from which it followed that Ignatiev was directly guilty of falsifying political cases, not only the “doctors’ case,” but also the “Leningrad case.” Yuri Zhukov and Rudolf Pihoya note that Malenkov was one of the initiators of the “Leningrad case” and therefore had every reason to fear after Ignatiev’s arrest that he would testify against Malenkov.

It is interesting to note that Beria’s actions to expose political affairs and crimes in the MGB received approval from the Presidium of the Central Committee and from the Central Committee itself. This may indicate that at least the majority of the members of the Presidium were not against Beria at that time (April 1953). Yuri Zhukov, in particular, argues that Khrushchev, choosing between Malenkov and Beria as the most likely candidates for sole power, until the last day made a choice in favor of Beria.

Regarding the topic of rehabilitation, it is also necessary to note a few more facts. Having headed the Ministry of Internal Affairs and having gained access to cases that related to political repression, Beria issued a decree in which he ordered the results of verification of these cases to be sent to the primary party organizations, and also tried to cover the rehabilitation activities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the press as much as possible. This “enlightenment” policy bore fruit - it shaped the appropriate perception of Beria both among the people and in the party and state apparatuses. For example, in his book “KGB. Chairmen of state security agencies. Declassified destinies" Leonid Mlechin writes about how three times Hero of Socialist Labor Academician Zeldovich, having learned about the release of the doctors rehabilitated by Beria, proudly told Sakharov: “But it was our Lavrenty Pavlovich who figured it out.”

Another of Beria’s initiatives that needs to be mentioned was the ban on wearing portraits of party and government leaders at demonstrations. As Pikhoya and Sukhomlinov note, it was thanks to Beria that on May 9, 1953, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee adopted a resolution “On the design of columns of demonstrators and buildings of enterprises, institutions and organizations on public holidays,” which abolished the previously existing practice of using portraits of leaders. According to researchers, this decision of Beria was directed against the emergence of a new “cult of personality” of potential contenders for sole power, especially those whom the people knew well by sight - Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich and Malenkov. Many of Beria's political rivals saw this as preparation for a change in the country's leadership.

Thus, in the mid-spring of 1953, a situation arose in which Beria, stopping high-profile political cases and rehabilitating those convicted, Firstly, closed cases whose materials were clearly directed against Beria himself (for example, the “Mingrelian case”). Secondly, acquired the image of a “liberalizer” of the repressive apparatus. Third, removed all suspicions of participation in political affairs (for example, in the “doctors’ case”). Fourth, removed unreliable people from his environment and freed himself from their guardianship (for example, Ryumin and Ignatiev). Fifthly, using Ignatiev’s testimony, Beria received a tool with which he could subsequently launch an attack on his political competitors. The most vulnerable under Beria’s strategy was Malenkov, whom Beria could potentially launch an attack through Ignatiev and accuse of participating in the falsification of political affairs, which would mean Malenkov’s political death.

Foreign policy

Beria, as Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and as a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee, began to actively participate in political decision-making in various areas of state policy, and in areas that were not directly within his competence, for example, in international politics. At the same time, the steps proposed by Beria were aimed at radically changing the policies pursued by the leaders of the USSR before.

One of the main points of Beria's position in foreign policy was his attitude towards building socialism in Germany and people's democracies.

A detailed history of the German question and the issue of the unification and division of Germany following the Second World War is beyond the scope of this work. However, some events that took place shortly before Stalin’s death still need to be mentioned.

In March 1952, the USSR issued the “Stalin Peace Note,” in which all occupying powers (with the participation of the all-German government) were invited to develop a draft peace treaty with Germany. At the same time, the USSR agreed to the unification of the two Germanys and even to the existence of the German army and military industry, subject to Germany's non-aligned status. According to some historians, Stalin was really ready to unify Germany in 1952 and liquidate the GDR, since a restored and united Germany could be opposed to the forces of the West and forced to seek an alliance with the USSR. As a result, the West rejected Stalin's proposals, as Western politicians insisted on admitting West Germany to NATO. In response to this position of the West, the Politburo in July 1952 made the final decision on building socialism in the GDR and removed the issue of German unification from the agenda.

However, the situation with the construction of socialism in the GDR was difficult. The leadership of East Germany was led by the left-wing communist Walter Ulbricht, who in his policy of accelerating the construction of socialism largely copied the early Soviet experience: collectivization, priority development of heavy industry. The internal situation in the GDR gradually began to heat up. For the first time since Stalin's death, the Kremlin reacted to the situation in the GDR on April 20, 1953, when the political adviser to the Soviet Control Commission in Germany (SCC), Semenov, was summoned to Moscow.

Beria and Molotov were most actively involved in the issue of the future of Germany. By this time, Molotov was able to significantly strengthen his position in the Foreign Ministry. He appointed people most loyal to him, for example, Gromyko, to the positions of his deputies and heads of departments, and also replaced ambassadors in several countries. The strengthening of positions in the Foreign Ministry, as well as the political weight of Molotov, one of the oldest members of the Politburo, clearly meant that he was going to claim active participation in the political life of the USSR.

On May 8, 1953, Molotov sent a note to Malenkov and Khrushchev, sharply criticizing Ulbricht’s speech a few days earlier, in which he put forward the thesis of the GDR as a state of “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

On May 18, Beria prepared a draft resolution of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers on “Issues of the GDR,” which invited Malenkov, Beria, Molotov and Bulganin to develop proposals to correct the political and economic situation of the GDR. In Beria’s project, the main reason for the unfavorable situation of the GDR was called “the course towards building socialism pursued in the GDR, which is erroneous in the current conditions.” Such a statement by Beria meant a clear rollback from the Politburo decision regarding the GDR in the fall of 1952. It is also interesting to note that Beria’s draft Resolution was endorsed by Malenkov, Bulganin and Khrushchev. However, it was opposed by Molotov, who fundamentally changed the text of the Resolution, adding the word “accelerated”. That is, it was not the course toward building socialism in the GDR that was proposed to be criticized, but its “acceleration.” At the end of May 1953, the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a Resolution on Germany, which condemned the accelerated construction of socialism in the GDR.

Pavel Sudoplatov, who at that time worked under the leadership of Beria, notes that in early May Beria instructed him to develop intelligence activities abroad to probe Western elites about the possibility of German reunification. Sudoplatov also writes that Beria told him then that a united neutral Germany under the leadership of a coalition government would strengthen the position of the USSR in the world and become a kind of buffer between the USA and the USSR in Western Europe. As Sudoplatov notes in his memoirs, work on sounding out the Western elites in relation to the unification of Germany was stopped after the arrest of Beria.

Regarding the issue of Germany, it is interesting to note that Beria also worked on a program for the rehabilitation of Volga Germans who were deported to special settlements at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.

Alexey Filitov, a professional historian in the field of international relations and foreign policy of the USSR, in his publication “USSR and the GDR: the year 1953” analyzes the memoirs of Khrushchev, Molotov, Sudoplatov, Mikoyan, Gromyko and Semenov and archival documents declassified after 1991. He comes to the conclusion that after Stalin’s death, the USSR’s policy towards Germany was not clearly formulated and changed fundamentally several times due to the struggle in the top leadership of the USSR between the position of Beria, who represented the reformers (or “statists”, as Filitov claims) and the position of the reactionaries or “Party apparatus”, which was presented by Molotov. Subsequently, Khrushchev and Suslov became the main proponents of this position.

Nikita Khrushchev and Walter Ulbricht

In June 1953, a protest by GDR workers against Ulbricht's policies in Berlin escalated into a political strike throughout the country. Beria's people were first sent to Berlin, and then he himself. Beria demanded strict restoration of order. A state of emergency was declared. As a result, in the second half of June the situation completely returned to normal. On June 26, when Beria’s arrest was not yet known, the Plenum of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) was held in Germany, at which the post of General Secretary held by Ulbricht was abolished and collegial leadership was introduced, while the recent Berlin crisis was explained by “ fair grievances of workers" However, already in July 1953, another plenum of the SED took place, at which all of Ulbricht’s political opponents were removed from their posts, and the June workers’ uprising was already called “ fascist provocation inspired by Beria and his henchmen" It should be noted that Beria’s people - Sergei Goglidze and Amayak Kobulov - were in the GDR at the end of June 1953 and, apparently, carried out Beria’s strategy to formally remove Ulbricht from power, which happened on June 26. On June 27, after the overthrow of Beria, Sergei Goglidze and Amayak Kobulov were already arrested.

Matthias Rakosi

In foreign policy, Beria dealt not only with the problem of building socialism in Germany, he generally criticized the policies pursued by the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) in people's democracies. In his note to the Presidium of the Council of Ministers dated June 1, 1953 addressed to Malenkov, he proposed eliminating the CMEA and the Military Coordination Committee and creating instead a single body that would include representatives of the people's democracies and the USSR. It can be considered that this was the first attempt to unite the countries of Eastern Europe according to the model that two years later formed the basis of the Warsaw Pact.

In the same note, Beria characterized the previous policy of the USSR towards the people's democracies as incorrect, since it was based on insufficient information about the political and economic situation in these countries. For example, Beria criticized the demands of the Coordination Committee that it made on the industry of the Soviet Union and people's democracies. Beria considered the goal of revising the USSR's policy towards these countries to be a closer link between the economies of the people's democracies and the economy of the USSR. Analyzing Beria's actions and proposals on the CMEA issue, we can conclude that Beria was ready for a significant revision of the USSR's policy towards Poland and Czechoslovakia, especially in the field of economics.

Josip Broz Tito in June 1944

Beria was also a supporter of reconciliation between the USSR and Yugoslavia. According to Sudoplatov, it was Beria who convinced Malenkov to reconcile with Tito. Beria sent his representative, Colonel Fedoseev, to Belgrade to establish contact with the Yugoslav leadership and hint to him about the USSR’s new course towards rapprochement. On June 6, 1953, the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee made a proposal for Yugoslavia to exchange ambassadors.

Another country in relation to which Beria influenced the foreign policy of the USSR was Hungary. Beria, according to Sudoplatov, planned to replace Matthias Rakosi with Imre Nagy, who had been an NKVD agent since the 30s, as prime minister. Nagy took over as head of government on June 27 and immediately set a course for liberalization in politics and economics. In April 1955, he was removed from the post of prime minister, and in 1956 he led an anti-Soviet rebellion in Hungary, which was suppressed only by the entry of Soviet troops. It should be noted that Beria, when nominating Nagy for the post of Prime Minister of Hungary, understood perfectly well what actions in economics and politics he would take once he came to power. This means that these actions fit perfectly into Beria’s vision of people’s democracies.

It is also interesting to note that at the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee on July 2–7, 1953, at which the political reprisal of Beria, who was arrested at that time, took place, Khrushchev blamed Beria for a conversation with Rakosi, in which, in response to Rakosi’s question about the division of power in the USSR, Beria allegedly said , that decisions should be made by the Council of Ministers, and the Central Committee should deal only with personnel and propaganda. No confirmation of such statements by Beria, except for the words of Khrushchev at the Plenum, could be found.

Imre Nagy, 1942

However, it should be noted that in the period from March to June 1953, the country’s leadership actually discussed the idea of ​​​​separating the party and state apparatus. One evidence of this is the article “Improving the work of the state apparatus” dated May 8, 1953 on the front page of Pravda. In it, in particular, party committees were criticized, which “replace and depersonalize Soviet bodies, work for them” And “take on administrative and administrative functions that are unusual for them”.

When describing Beria's participation in foreign policy, it is also necessary to pay attention to the fact that in March 1953, Beria convened a meeting of residents and foreign intelligence officers, at which he began to curtail the intelligence activities of Soviet foreign intelligence in the countries of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. Beria justified his actions by the decision of the Politburo and the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated April 13, 1950, which ordered the cessation of reconnaissance in the countries of Eastern Europe, "based on the unity of political goals and objectives, as well as mutual trust between the USSR and the people's democracies." Beria also ordered the reduction of the apparatus of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs under the state security agencies in these countries. Moreover, Beria replaced all heads of representative offices of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs in people's democracies.

Analyzing Beria's participation in foreign policy decisions of the USSR, we can say for sure that, firstly, Beria was very actively involved in the discussion and resolution of relevant issues. Secondly, Beria’s policy towards the countries of “people’s democracy” was clearly aimed at weakening or even changing the previous political and economic course towards liberalization in these countries. Beria wanted to agree to the unification of Germany under certain conditions (non-aligned status and compensation for the USSR) in order to use the united Germany as a buffer between the USSR and the USA and, perhaps, then include Germany in the political orbit of the USSR. Considering the lack of formalization of the new foreign policy of the USSR after the death of Stalin, Beria, having taken the initiative, judging by the documents, initially received the explicit approval of Malenkov and Khrushchev. However, he then met resistance from Molotov, especially on the issue of the GDR. Beria's initiatives regarding Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance probably only strengthened the divergence between the positions of Molotov and Beria.

National question

Just as decisively as in foreign policy affairs, Beria began to intervene in politics regarding nationalities. Beria set as his goal the “indigenization” of the population of the Soviet national republics. In particular, he proposed to abolish the institution of second secretaries, who in all republics were Russian by nationality and appointed from Moscow, and also to transfer all office work in the republics into national languages. Under pressure from Beria, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee on May 26, 1953 adopted two secret resolutions of the Central Committee on national issues “On the political and economic state of the western regions of Ukraine” and “On the situation in the Lithuanian SSR”, which criticized the work of the Soviet government in relation to the indigenous population in these republics .

Pavel Sudoplatov, who at that time worked under the command of Beria and prepared memos, data from which Beria subsequently used to adopt the above-mentioned Resolutions of the Central Committee, in his memoirs describes in detail Beria’s attitude to the national question: “ Beria insisted in every possible way on the development of national traditions in the field of culture and language. In particular, he was concerned with the problem of educating a new generation of national intelligentsia, for whom socialist ideals would be truly close. I remember Beria’s proposal to introduce their own orders and awards in the republics - this, he believed, would raise the feeling of national pride.”.

Beria also implemented his vision of national policy in the republican Ministry of Internal Affairs. In Belarus, Belarusians were appointed as the Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and his deputies instead of Russians by nationality. In Ukraine, the Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs became Meshik, a Ukrainian by nationality, who at a meeting of the Ukrainian Central Committee, at which it was customary to speak Russian, addressed everyone present in Ukrainian, and recommended to the shocked Russians to learn Ukrainian. As Sudoplatov recalls, Meshik was supported at the same meeting of the Central Committee by the writer Alexander Korneychuk, who also spoke in Ukrainian. Sudoplatov, who was personally acquainted with Meshik, also testifies that Meshik considered Beria’s steps on the national issue to be absolutely correct. It is also interesting to note one curious incident that occurred with the new Minister of Internal Affairs of Lithuania (Lithuanian by nationality), appointed by Beria, who, in the first time after his appointment, sent a report to the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, in Moscow, in Lithuanian.

Sergo Beria also mentions in his memoirs that his father discussed with Zhukov the possibility of creating national army formations. Zhukov convinced Beria that the creation of such military formations would be the end of both the army and the USSR. To which Beria objected: “We must bring the entire structure of the state to remain united for external systems, but not put pressure on the republics”. As a result, Beria was not allowed to create national units.

Analyzing Beria's actions in relation to the national issue, we can firmly say that they were aimed at a global change in the previously existing national policy. As Yuri Zhukov notes, Stalin already in the 30s set as his goal the creation of a “unified Soviet nation.” For this purpose, for example, the teaching of the Russian language was introduced in all schools of the national republics. The emergence of the institution of second secretaries - Russians by nationality - was also Stalin's idea. However, the emergence of the UN, in which the pro-American bloc had a majority, forced the leadership of the USSR to change national policy in order to at least formally give the national republics greater status within the USSR, in order to then also include them in the UN. Thus, in January 1944, People's Commissariats of Internal Affairs and Defense were created in each republic. As Yuri Zhukov notes, the strengthening role of nationalist influences forced Stalin to abandon in the first post-war period a significant weakening of the role of the party and its separation from the state, since only the party as a centripetal force could resist the revived nationalist centrifugal tendencies. According to Yuri Zhukov, Malenkov and Molotov began an attack on republican party organizations in 1951 and sought to strengthen the role of the Union ministries.

Thus, Beria’s policy towards the national republics was completely opposite to the policy pursued in the last years of Stalin’s life, as well as to the vision of the national structure of the USSR by Molotov and Malenkov, who sought to gradually achieve the elimination of the sovereignty of the union republics.

Chapter III - Technology and the progress of the revolution

Prerequisites for a conspiracy against Beria

As already noted, after Stalin’s death in March 1953, a “collective leadership” emerged in the USSR, which was based not on the common goals and means of the country’s development, but on a minimum sufficient compromise between the contenders for sole power in the USSR. The most influential political figures at this time were Malenkov, Beria, Khrushchev, Bulganin and Molotov. Malenkov and Beria were considered the most likely leaders, with Malenkov's position as Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers being the strongest.

The struggle for power within the collective leadership first appeared a few days after Stalin's death, namely on March 14, 1953, at the extraordinary Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee. Then, as already explained above, most likely there was a conspiracy between Beria, Khrushchev and Molotov against Malenkov in order to force him to leave the post of Secretary of the Central Committee and “concentrate” on the work of the Government.

Analyzing this fact, as well as the further development of events in the USSR, we can conclude that the collective leadership was very unstable and at the moment of strong strengthening of one of its participants, others began to cooperate against him in order to balance his influence.

Analyzing the actions and positions of Beria in the period from March to June 1953, several conclusions can be drawn.

Firstly, Beria’s initial political positions were inferior to those of Malenkov.

Secondly, Beria had his own political program for the development of the USSR in foreign and domestic policy, which he very effectively implemented, while actively interfering in some areas of USSR policy that were not within the area of ​​his personal responsibility. His program bore the features of liberalization of the security apparatus of the USSR, political and economic liberalization in people's democracies, the idea (or another attempt) of the unification of Germany and a radical revision of the national question of the USSR towards greater freedom of national republics. The foreign and domestic policies that Beria began to pursue were completely contrary to the vision of Molotov and Malenkov. They were supporters of the “unitary” Soviet state and were not ready to completely curtail the course towards building socialism in Germany and the countries of Eastern Europe.

Third, Beria’s investigation of falsifications in the “Leningrad case” and the “case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee”, as well as the intention to arrest Ignatiev, placed, first of all, Malenkov, who was clearly involved in these political affairs, in a very unprotected position in which he could subsequently be either accused of direct participation in the falsification of political affairs, or to become heavily politically dependent on Beria.

If Beria had won in the fight with Malenkov, he would have taken a leading position in the collective leadership and would have been able to “push through” much more easily and defend his policy on the national issue and the issue of building socialism in people’s democracies.

Thus, we can say that Malenkov and Molotov felt threatened not just by the strengthening of Beria, but by the implementation of such a policy of the USSR, which, in their opinion, was not compatible with the development of the country as they imagined it. Therefore, Malenkov and Molotov could well have cooperated to block Beria’s policy, and block not just tactically (individual decisions), but strategically. “Strategically” in this case would mean depriving Beria of the opportunity to influence the development policy of the USSR at the highest level, as well as ending the “case of falsification” in relation to Ryumin and Ignatiev. An obvious component of the “strategic decision” was the resignation of Beria from the position of Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers.

As a result, we can assume that the main conspirator against Beria was Malenkov, who was joined by Molotov for ideological reasons. The initial goal of the conspiracy was to remove Beria from the post of Minister of Internal Affairs.

However, to implement such a plan, at least three more conditions had to be met. The first and most important thing is the support of the party apparatus. The second is the security component, since the Ministry of Internal Affairs had its own armed divisions under its command, which could be used to suppress a conspiracy against the chief of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. And the third is the majority of votes in the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Central Committee, without which any initiative to remove Beria would not only be lost, but also turned against the conspirators themselves.

Regarding the question of the role of the party apparatus, it is safe to say that Malenkov was a supporter of the separation of the party and the state. In recent years, Stalin (or even decades, as Yuri Zhukov notes) pursued a policy of weakening the role of the party in the USSR and shifting the center of power to the state apparatus. Malenkov actively participated in the implementation of such a policy during Stalin’s lifetime and continued to implement it, becoming Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Evidence of this, for example, is the article of May 8, 1953 in Pravda mentioned in the previous chapter, which criticized party bodies for attempting to interfere in the administrative and economic functions of the state. Such an article simply could not appear without Malenkov’s direct participation. Another evidence of Malenkov’s intention, as noted earlier, was the refusal to increase the additional payment in envelopes for party officials (this decision was later reversed by Khrushchev). And finally, the third evidence that after Stalin’s death the role of the party was lower than the role of the state apparatus and this balance of power was not planned to be changed soon, is that Malenkov, faced with a mini-conspiracy against himself on March 14, 1953, chose namely the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and not the role of Secretary of the Central Committee.

However, the need for Beria’s resignation required that Malenkov, to one degree or another, rely on the party apparatus. If he had not done this, then Beria would have had a chance to try himself at the time of the conspiracy or later, at the Plenum, to find support from members of the Central Committee. In addition, Malenkov challenged not just Beria, but also the Ministry of Internal Affairs, so the power of the state apparatus alone might not be enough to tame the power ministry, which meant the possibility of revenge on the part of the security forces. Therefore, for the final victory over Beria, Malenkov had to, by involving the party in a conspiracy, go to strengthen its role. Therefore, it is likely that Malenkov clearly approved of Khrushchev's subsequent speech at the Plenum of July 2–7, in which Khrushchev mentioned Beria's statement that decisions should be made by the Council of Ministers, and the Central Committee should deal only with personnel and propaganda. As will be shown later, the growing influence of the party allowed Khrushchev to later defeat first Malenkov, and then Molotov, Bulganin and Kaganovich.

Regarding Beria's opinion on the role of the party, it should be noted that there are no explicit documents that would irrefutably prove that Beria wanted the party to be removed from power. And although Beria was accused of such intentions at the Plenum of July 2–7, in particular by Khrushchev, confirmation of Khrushchev’s words could not be found. It should be noted that since 1938 Beria was employed in government positions in the NKVD and the State Defense Committee, and as a member of the Politburo he oversaw branches of the defense industry related to the development of nuclear weapons and missile technology. Thus, he did not have direct political support for the party apparatus and was more associated with the “statists,” and given the fact that from March to June 1953, Beria in no way, either in speeches or in notes to the Presidium of the Council of Ministers or the Presidium of the Central Committee tried to raise the question of increasing the role of the party, it can be assumed that he at least was not against the course that Malenkov pursued in relation to the party. It can also be noted that, for example, Beria submitted foreign policy issues to the Presidium of the Council of Ministers, and not to the Presidium of the Central Committee. This means that he clearly believed that the Council of Ministers was more important than the Central Committee.

It is interesting to note that given Beria’s position on the role of the party, his national policy was to transfer greater independence to the national republics. And as noted earlier, after the creation of the UN, the party played the role of the centripetal force that kept the USSR within the de jure framework of the Union, and de facto a “unitary” state. Accordingly, a policy aimed at increasing the powers of the republics with Beria’s non-interference in the policy of pressure on the party (or with Beria’s full agreement with such a policy) suggests that Beria had some kind of plan to change the form of government of the Soviet Union towards a softer and decentralized federation .

The next important point of analysis is to clarify Khrushchev’s political position regarding the Beria-Malenkov tandem and assess his role in the Secretariat of the Central Committee.

In March–June 1953, Khrushchev's political positions were much weaker than those of Malenkov and Beria. He was one of the four secretaries of the Central Committee. After Malenkov resigned as secretary of the Central Committee on March 14, 1953, Khrushchev began to chair meetings of the Central Committee, without officially being the first secretary. At the same time, two other secretaries of the Central Committee - Pospelov and Shatalin - were people associated with Malenkov. Assessing Khrushchev's political position directly, researchers and witnesses of that era express completely different opinions. Sergo Beria in his memoirs mentions the friendship (not only personal, but also political) between Beria, Malenkov and Khrushchev. Elena Prudnikova believes that Khrushchev was initially against Beria. In her opinion, it was Khrushchev who was the center of the conspiracy. Andrey Sukhomlinov thinks the same. Yuri Zhukov, on the contrary, believes that Khrushchev, showing political sympathy for both Malenkov and Beria, until the last moment avoided making a final political choice between them, but in the end, on April 16, 1953, he sided with Beria. Pavel Sudoplatov also believes that Khrushchev, maneuvering between various centers of power in the top leadership of the USSR, politically gravitated more towards Beria and supported him.

Malenkov and Molotov were somehow able to attract Khrushchev to their side. Most likely, taking advantage of Beria’s absence in Moscow in June 1953, they could have presented Khrushchev with a choice: to join them or to be “removed from power” together with Beria. Moreover, such a threat clearly had a basis: Malenkov had the strongest political positions in the country, and Malenkov’s positions were just as strong in the Secretariat of the Central Committee, which means that if Khrushchev disagreed with the conspirators, Pospelov and Shatalin could try to secure a majority in the Central Committee without Khrushchev. Of course, this scenario was much more dangerous for Malenkov, but he, however, had to demonstrate to Khrushchev that his chances of resisting the conspirators were very small and threatened him with complete political collapse. In addition, Beria did not make any preparations for the seizure of power (other than preparations for the arrest of Ignatiev), which will be confirmed as a result of the analysis of the “Beria case” below. Accordingly, for Khrushchev it was much more profitable for political survival to join the conspiracy than to be alone, organizing a counterattack. One can also think that Khrushchev probably understood that Malenkov, in order to fight Beria, would have to rely on the party and strengthen its role, which means that Khrushchev’s political weight would increase, which would give him grounds for more active participation in the next stages of the struggle for power.

Describing the mechanism for involving Khrushchev in the conspiracy, it is interesting to note the testimony of Dmitry Sukhanov, Malenkov’s assistant, recorded by Vladimir Karpov. According to Sukhanov, on the eve of June 26, Malenkov summoned Khrushchev and Bulganin to his office and presented them with “evidence” of their participation in Beria’s conspiracy, which, according to Sukhanov, was supposed to arrest all members of the Presidium of the Central Committee on June 26. As will be shown later, there is no evidence of the existence of Beria’s conspiracy in the materials of Beria’s criminal case, however, the possibility of involving Khrushchev and Bulganin in a conspiracy against Beria (in the version of Malenkov’s assistant, in a very straightforward way) is confirmed by Sukhanov.

The next component for successfully carrying out a conspiracy against Beria was the involvement of security forces. Since the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which also included the MGB, was subordinate to Beria, the military remained the main alternative. At the same time, as noted above, Serov, Beria’s deputy in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, was connected with Khrushchev, which means that the successful involvement of Khrushchev in the conspiracy could also help to attract Serov. Apparently, in addition to Serov, it was eventually possible to involve another of Beria’s deputy, Kruglov, in the conspiracy. Kruglov and Serov either clearly participated in the conspiracy or fully supported it after the fact, since, firstly, they did not take any action to oppose the arrest of Beria, and according to some evidence from the memoirs of participants in the events, they even helped arrest Beria’s guards and cut off communications in his mansion. And, secondly, they remained in their posts after the overthrow of Beria and pursued a policy of purge of Beria personnel in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Among the military there were both people close to Beria (for example, the commander of the Moscow District, Colonel General Artemyev), and those with whom Beria was associated with work on nuclear and missile weapons. Obviously, for the conspiracy to be successful, it was necessary, on the one hand, to carefully attract those military men (and from the top generals) who were not part of any of these groups, and on the other hand, to neutralize possible actions of the military from among Beria’s supporters. At the same time, it was necessary, if possible, to block forceful actions on the part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which controlled several combat divisions located near Moscow.

Finally, the last point that determined the success of the conspiracy was the numerical superiority of supporters of Beria’s removal in the Presidium of the Central Committee, which consisted of ten people: Malenkov, Beria, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Bulganin, Kaganovich, Saburov, Pervukhin, Molotov and Mikoyan. Taking into account the support of the generals and the party apparatus, and also taking into account the existing alignment of political forces, in which Malenkov was the most influential figure, it was enough to have four to five votes out of ten to carry out the decision to remove Beria. At the same time, Malenkov, Khrushchev and Molotov are already three votes.

Bulganin, as all researchers note, was politically close to Khrushchev, and therefore would have taken the same position in the conspiracy as he did. Later, both at the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee on July 2–7, and in his memoirs, Khrushchev testified that he had involved Bulganin in a conspiracy against Beria, allegedly from the very moment of Stalin’s death. It is interesting that Bulganin, at the same Plenum, confirmed Khrushchev’s words that he and Khrushchev, from the moment of Stalin’s death, decided to unite against Beria. It is important to note that Khrushchev did not show his enmity towards Beria in any of his actions throughout 1953 (and according to Yuri Zhukov, he even made a choice in his favor against Malenkov), therefore Khrushchev’s words at the Plenum should be interpreted as an attempt to exaggerate his true role in a conspiracy. In his memoirs, written in the 1970s, Khrushchev also portrays himself as the main conspirator in the overthrow of Beria and describes how he persuaded Malenkov to see Beria as an enemy.

Another member of the Presidium of the Central Committee, Saburov, according to Yuri Zhukov, owed his rise to the political Olympus to Malenkov, which means he would have supported Malenkov’s intention to overthrow Beria. One can also hypothesize that Molotov, using his authority in the party, participated in attracting the “old guard of the Bolsheviks” to the conspiracy, namely Voroshilov, Kaganovich and Mikoyan.

Thus, the group of Malenkov, Molotov, Khrushchev and Bulganin can be considered the main conspirators in the overthrow of Beria, of which Malenkov and Molotov played the main role. Moreover, the conspirators also included military personnel involved at the very last stage of the conspiracy.

It is interesting that researchers of that era put forward completely different versions of the organization of the conspiracy against Beria. Yuri Zhukov believes that in June 1953 the main struggle took place between two groups: Malenkov–Pervukhin–Saburov against Beria–Molotov–Khrushchev–Bulganin. In his opinion, Malenkov enlisted the support of Kruglov and Serov - Beria’s deputies in the Ministry of Internal Affairs - and Zhukov, and during Beria’s departure to Berlin, Malenkov gave Khrushchev, Bulganin and Mikoyan an ultimatum: either they will support Malenkov’s position on removing Beria, or Malenkov will present evidence of their participation in anti-party actions together with Beria.

Elena Prudnikova believes that the main figure in the conspiracy was Khrushchev, who persuaded Malenkov and the military (through Bulganin) to overthrow Beria. The main motive for the overthrow of Beria, according to Prudnikova, was opposition to Beria’s intention to remove the party from power. Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov puts forward the version that Malenkov, Khrushchev and Bulganin were the main conspirators, since they were against Beria’s attempt "destroy the Stalinist system of power» through Beria's "de-Stalinization of political life", changes in national policy and attempts to shift power from the party apparatus to the state apparatus.

Preparation for a conspiracy against Beria

So, a group of conspirators consisting of Malenkov and Molotov probably formed by the end of May, when Beria’s further steps in national politics and on the issue of people’s democracies became clear. At the same time, Malenkov understood that Ryumin was giving testimony to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which steadily led to the arrest of Ignatiev, and his arrest and testimony, in turn, could soon lead to the collapse of Malenkov (and regardless of who would become the new Minister of Internal Affairs after Beria). Therefore, starting from the end of May, the conspirators needed to use every opportunity to overthrow Beria. Such an opportunity soon presented itself - Beria’s departure to Berlin on June 18, 1953 to suppress anti-Soviet protests there. Beria returned from Berlin a week later, on June 25. Apparently, during this week, Khrushchev was brought into the conspiracy, and through him, Bulganin.

Bulganin as Minister of Defense and Khrushchev as Secretary of the Central Committee were tasked with involving the military in the conspiracy, who were supposed to blockade the divisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs located near Moscow and prevent an attempt to recapture Beria with the forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. And the option of intervention by parts of the Ministry of Internal Affairs could not be ruled out, since it was obvious that following Beria, many security forces would lose their ranks, titles and even freedom, whose only chance of salvation would be an attempt to recapture Beria and “uncover” the conspiracy against him.

Bulganin brought Marshal Zhukov into the conspiracy. In his memoirs, some of which were published in the book “Beria: The End of a Career” edited by Vladimir Nekrasov, Zhukov claims that Bulganin summoned him to the Kremlin on June 26, shortly before the Presidium of the Central Committee, and in the presence of Malenkov, Molotov, Mikoyan and “ other members of the Presidium" set the task of arresting Beria. Zhukov had to wait, together with Moskalenko, Nedelin, Batitsky and adjutant Moskalenko, for the signal in the room of Malenkov’s assistant, while a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee was taking place in Malenkov’s office.

The memoirs of General Moskalenko were published in the same collection by Nekrasov. According to them, Khrushchev summoned Moskalenko to the Kremlin and ordered him to appear with weapons (which was an extreme violation of the Kremlin’s access regime, which Moskalenko could not have been unaware of). Later, Bulganin, calling Moskalenko, confirmed the order coming from Khrushchev, the secretary of the Central Committee. According to Moskalenko's description, Bulganin took him to the Kremlin in his car, which was not subject to inspection, which allowed them to smuggle weapons into the Kremlin. Moskalenko further describes that Zhukov, Brezhnev, Shatilov, Nedelin, Getman and Pronin arrived in the Kremlin in another car. All together they gathered in front of Malenkov’s office, where Khrushchev, Bulganin, Malenkov and Molotov spoke to them, who announced that they would have to arrest Beria in a few hours at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee.

Zhukov and Moskalenko were given the task of sending troops into Moscow in order to block possible actions by the Internal Troops. At the same time, there remained the danger that the division commanders might not carry out the order or carry it out incompletely, given the fact that the order to send troops into Moscow and possible clashes with the divisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was most likely given verbally. Another problem that needed to be solved was the neutralization of the military who could speak out in defense of Beria. First of all, it was necessary to resolve the issue with the commander of the Moscow Military District, Colonel General Pavel Artemyev, who before the army worked in the MVD-NKVD system and in the late 30s was the commander of Dzerzhinsky’s division.

As a result, to solve both problems, command and staff exercises of the Moscow Military District (MVO) were organized on June 26 near Tver (180 km from Moscow). Thus, both the commander of the Moscow Military District Artemyev and the commanders of the Kantemirovskaya and Taman divisions were removed from Moscow under official pretext. According to Andrei Sukhomlinov, this allowed Bulganin to subsequently give orders (most likely verbally) to send troops into Moscow not to the immediate commanders of these divisions, but to their deputies, who, by definition, should have asked fewer questions about the order of the Minister of Defense. Looking ahead, we can say that Artemyev, having learned that troops were sent to Moscow on June 26, returned on the morning of June 27, but he was no longer allowed into the headquarters of the Moscow Military District, since he had been removed from his post.

So, the conspiracy was technically completely ready by June 26, 1953. It was on this day that a meeting of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the USSR was scheduled, at which Beria, who had just returned from Berlin, was to be present.

Arrest June 26

On June 26, 1953, instead of the planned meeting of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers, at which, according to the memoirs of Sergo Beria, the case of Comrade Ignatiev was supposed to be discussed, a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee was held. What actually happened at that meeting is not known exactly, since no transcript was kept, and the participants in the meeting and those who witnessed or participated in Beria’s arrest left very different memories that often contradict each other. According to Khrushchev, Malenkov opened the meeting and proposed to discuss important party issues, after which Khrushchev made great criticism of Beria and proposed to remove him from the party. Malenkov, according to Khrushchev, was at a loss and did not even put the question to a vote, but simply pressed a secret button and called the military into the meeting room, who arrested Beria.

According to Dmitry Sukhanov, Malenkov’s assistant, which Vladimir Karpov cites in his book, Malenkov was the first to speak at the meeting and immediately raised the question of Beria’s arrest. Only Malenkov, Pervukhin and Saburov voted “for”, Molotov, Voroshilov and Kaganovich voted “against”, and Khrushchev, Bulganin and Mikoyan abstained. After this, at Malenkov’s signal, the military entered, and everyone unanimously voted for the arrest of Beria. At the same time, according to Sukhanov, Zhukov suggested that Malenkov arrest both Khrushchev and Bulganin - as people who were in collusion with Beria. Sukhanov also adds that in Beria’s office (it is not specified which one, but apparently in the Kremlin) a piece of paper was later found on which the word “Anxiety” was written (this sheet later ended up in Sukhanov’s possession), and, according to Sukhanov , Beria admitted during the investigation that this was a warning from Khrushchev and Bulganin, who participated in Beria’s conspiracy against Malenkov.

The version presented by Sukhanov seems strange for two reasons. Firstly, Andrei Sukhomlinov, who in 2000 was a member of the commission for the rehabilitation of Beria and familiarized himself with all the materials of the 45 volumes of the criminal case, does not report any confessional testimony from Beria about the participation of Khrushchev and Bulganin in the conspiracy together with Beria. Secondly, Khrushchev and Bulganin, if they wanted to warn Beria and avoid his arrest in any way, could have chosen a more subtle move to inform him.

Another important witness to those events is Molotov. In his memoirs, recorded by Felix Chuev, Molotov assigns Khrushchev the main role in organizing the conspiracy against Beria, while it was Khrushchev, according to Molotov, who brought Molotov himself into the conspiracy. Khrushchev and Molotov initially wanted to simply remove and expel Beria from the Presidium of the Central Committee, and immediately before the meeting they decided to arrest him. It is interesting to note that Molotov in his memoirs clarifies that after the opening of the meeting he was one of the first to make accusations against Beria, Beria himself also received the floor and defended himself, and at the end of the meeting he asked not to be expelled from the Party.

An interesting document for analysis is a draft note found in Malenkov’s archive. It outlines criticism of Beria and proposes to remove him from the post of Minister of Internal Affairs, appoint Kruglov instead, and appoint Beria as Minister of the Oil Industry. There is a note on the document: “From Malenkov’s archive according to inventory No. 179”.

Anastas Mikoyan provides further evidence of the existence of a plan to appoint Beria as Minister of the Oil Industry in her memoirs. He recalls that it was Khrushchev who involved him in the conspiracy against Beria on June 26 on the way to the Kremlin (their dachas were not far from each other). According to Mikoyan, Khrushchev said that he had already talked with Malenkov and Molotov and they decided to remove Beria from the post of Minister of Internal Affairs and appoint him Minister of the Oil Industry. These two pieces of evidence allow us to assume that the conspirators had a minimum program, which consisted of removing Beria from the post of Minister of Internal Affairs and the post of Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, de facto - removing him from the highest political power. However, something went wrong, and the maximum program was used, which included the arrest of Beria by the military, trial and execution. Either Beria, on June 26, when he received the floor, began to threaten his political opponents and simply did not want to give up his political positions, or even before the meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee on June 26, 1953, Beria was killed. This version will be discussed in detail below.

Marshal Zhukov’s memories of those events are very interesting. It should be noted that in the memoirs themselves, which were published as a separate book during Zhukov’s lifetime, there is no mention of his participation in the arrest of Beria. The memoirs are devoted mainly to the Great Patriotic War. However, other books that were published after Zhukov’s death contain stories recorded by witnesses from Zhukov’s words. In his book, Vladimir Karpov analyzes two stories by Zhukov about those events, set out in the books “Beria: The End of a Career” and “Zhukov: Commander and Man” of 1988. Karpov comes to the conclusion that even in many important details about the events of June 25 and 26, Zhukov's two versions contradict each other. For example, who exactly gave the order for the arrest of Beria, where it happened, how exactly the arrest took place, and so on.

So, according to the memoirs of Zhukov, Khrushchev, Molotov, Mikoyan and Sukhanov, a few hours after the start of the meeting, Beria was arrested by the military led by Zhukov and Moskalenko, who entered the meeting room when Malenkov pressed the secret button. The arrested Beria was taken a few hours later in one of the cars of members of the Presidium, handcuffed and accompanied by military personnel, to the Moscow garrison guardhouse “Aleshinsky Barracks”. Beria was not placed in a prison or pre-trial detention center because the conspirators were afraid that keeping him in the Ministry of Internal Affairs system was too dangerous. According to Moskalenko’s recollections, on June 27, Beria’s deputies in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Kruglov and Serov, came to the guardhouse to interrogate Beria. However, Moskalenko did not allow them to see Beria, citing Zhukov’s oral order. On the same day, Beria was transferred to a bunker at the Headquarters of the Moscow Military District, where he remained until his trial. In the courtyard where the bunker was located, reinforced security was placed, consisting of officers from the Moscow Military District headquarters and four tanks.

Yuri Mukhin, having analyzed the memoirs of Khrushchev, Molotov, Kaganovich, Moskalenko, Zhukov and Sukhanov and comparing the facts presented in them, comes to the conclusion that in all important details of the arrest of Beria on June 26, the testimonies of the participants in the events do not coincide. Mukhin believes that in fact Beria was not arrested on June 26 in the Kremlin, and the participants in the events are lying about what happened. Mukhin believes that a possible explanation for this discrepancy in evidence is the version according to which Beria was killed on June 26, 1953. And although there are fewer facts supporting the version of murder than facts supporting the version of Beria’s arrest in the Kremlin, these facts must also be cited.

Another possible explanation for the fundamental differences in the recollections of the participants in the events is that some of them wanted to exaggerate their role in the conspiracy, while others wanted to downplay it. In addition, some details of the conspiracy may portray the conspirators in an unfavorable light, so they omit or distort them in their memoirs.

Version of the murder of Beria on June 26

The first version of the murder of Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria in his mansion in Moscow on June 26, 1953 was expressed by his son Sergo Beria. In his memoirs and interviews, he cites the following facts.

The Government meeting on June 26 was canceled, and his father was at home that day. On the afternoon of June 26, Sergo himself was in the office of Boris Vannikov, the head of the nuclear project, when he received a call from test pilot Amet-Khan Sultan, whom he knew well from work, and said that there had been a shootout in the house of Lavrentiy Beria. Sergo Beria and Boris Vannikov, having arrived at Beria’s mansion to find out the details of what happened, found an armored personnel carrier and a group of military men there. At the same time, one of Lavrentiy Beria’s guards told Sergo that after the shootout the soldiers carried a corpse covered with a tarpaulin out of the house.

Beria’s words that he and Vannikov went to Lavrentiy Beria’s home that day, where they learned about the armed invasion, are confirmed by General Pyotr Burgasov, academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, chief state sanitary doctor of the USSR in 1965–1986. He testifies that he saw that day how Sergo Beria and Boris Vannikov unexpectedly left the Kremlin in the afternoon. Later that day, Burgasov came to see Vannikov and asked about the reasons for his unexpected departure in the middle of the workday. To which Vannikov told Burgasov that he went to Lavrentiy Beria’s home and witnessed that the house was surrounded by the military, the glass of Beria’s office was broken by bullets, and Beria himself, apparently, was killed.

Sergo Beria, in his memoirs, also cites a number of testimonies from other persons who allegedly confirmed that Lavrenty Beria was killed before the trial, which took place in December 1953. In particular, the words of Marshal Zhukov: “If your father were alive, I would be with him...”, words of Nikolai Shvernik, a candidate member of the Presidium of the Central Committee, who was part of the special trial of Beria: “I can tell you one thing: I never saw your father alive. Understand as you know, I won’t say anything more.”, the words of another member of Beria’s trial, Mikhailov, who during a conversation hinted to Sergo Beria that a double was sitting in the courtroom, and not Lavrentiy Beria himself.

Yuri Mukhin, in his book “The Murder of Stalin and Beria,” in support of the version of the murder, cites the words of Nikolai Baibakov, who was the Minister of the Oil Industry and a member of the CPSU Central Committee in 1953. According to Mukhin, he knew Baibakov and in one of the telephone conversations in the 90s he directly asked him if he knew that during the July Plenum of the Central Committee in 1953, Beria had already been killed. To which Baibakov replied: “No, I didn’t know anything then. But the fact is that he was killed.".

Another interesting evidence of the murder of Beria in his mansion is the memoirs of Lieutenant General Andrei Vedenin, which were published in 1997 in the weekly Weekly and which Alexander Kochukov cites in his article. According to Vedenin, Kruglov (Beria’s deputy at the Ministry of Internal Affairs) arrived at the army base (most likely, the 27th Guards Rifle Corps) in early June and set the task of working out an option for eliminating Beria. Over the next few weeks, the group in which Vedenin was a member received intelligence materials on Beria. Several liquidation scenarios were developed: “Car accident”, “Mansion”. As a result, early in the morning of June 26, the group received an order to liquidate Beria in his mansion in Moscow. That day, Kruglov called Beria and agreed that secret documents would be brought to him, which would be accompanied by an armed guard of three people. Under the guise of security, a group of liquidators was allowed into Beria’s house, where they committed his murder.

As can be seen from all the evidence presented, the version of the murder of Beria on June 26, 1953 in his mansion also has a right to exist. Following the logic of this version, the conspiracy against Beria involved the military and Beria’s deputy at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Kruglov, who were involved by the main group of conspirators in early June 1953. As will be shown below, the materials of the criminal case against Beria also raise many questions and may be indirect evidence that Beria was killed on June 26, 1953.

However, even among researchers and witnesses of that era there is no clear opinion about the version of the murder of Beria on June 26. Elena Prudnikova, Yuri Mukhin, Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov and Arsen Martirosyan believe that Beria was actually killed that day. Yuri Zhukov, Andrei Sukhomlinov and Pavel Sudoplatov take the position that Beria was arrested.

The first actions of the conspirators
after Beria's arrest

Even before Beria’s arrest, all communications at his dacha were cut off. As Sukhomlinov notes, Beria’s deputy at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Serov, led the operation on June 26 to isolate Beria’s guards and turn off communications. Also, even before Beria’s arrest, in the middle of the day on June 26, the Kantemirovskaya and Tamanskaya divisions were alerted, the commanders of which, as noted above, were on training exercises that day. Sukhomlinov cites in his book the memories of Kantemirov veterans. At 14:00 on June 26, the acting commander of the Kantemirovskaya division, Paramonov, received a call from Bulganin and, without explaining anything, ordered to raise three tank regiments and enter Moscow with full ammunition in 40 minutes. When the units entered Moscow, one regiment took up a position on the Lenin Hills, another blocked the Gorky Highway to block internal troops, the third regiment took up positions near train stations, post offices and telegraph offices. At the same time, ninety tanks of the Taman Division surrounded the Kremlin and took up positions in the center of Moscow. The air force of the Moscow Military District was also scrambled into the air. As Sukhomlinov notes, the command of the troops in Moscow was already carried out by Zhukov and Moskalenko. As a result, the army units did not encounter any resistance and returned to their bases three days later.

Thus, we can conclude that the first and most important part of the plan to eliminate Beria was a success. He was arrested and escorted to a military facility - the Moscow garrison guardhouse "Aleshinsky Barracks", and the actions of his supporters from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the army were successfully blocked by the forces of the Taman and Kantemirovskaya divisions with the support of the Moscow Military District troops.

Immediately after Beria’s arrest on June 26, a Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On Beria’s criminal anti-state actions” was issued, which was signed by the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council Voroshilov and Secretary Pegov. The preamble of the document states that the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR considered the message of the Council of Ministers of the USSR about Beria’s anti-state actions aimed at undermining the Soviet state in the interests of foreign capital. By this Decree, Beria is deprived of all awards and positions, removed from all posts and deprived of his powers as a deputy of the Supreme Council. In this Decree of June 26, the matter “about the criminal actions of L.P. Beria” It is already proposed to be submitted to the Supreme Court of the USSR for consideration. As Sukhomlinov notes, a criminal case has not yet been opened, an investigation has not begun, and they are already planning to transfer the case to the Supreme Court.

Along with Beria, several people were arrested in the next few days and later charged with anti-state conspiracy: Merkulov, Minister of State Control of the USSR, Dekanozov, Minister of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR, Kobulov, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Meshik, Minister of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR , Goglidze, head of the 3rd department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, Vlodzimirsky, head of the investigative unit for particularly important cases of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The next step of the conspirators in the political destruction of Beria was the organization of an investigation. The candidacy of the current Prosecutor General Grigory Safonov did not suit the conspirators, and on June 29 he was replaced by Roman Rudenko, who had previously served as prosecutor of the Ukrainian SSR. As witnesses and researchers of that era note, Rudenko was politically close to Khrushchev. It is interesting to note that in the Resolution of the Presidium of the Central Committee on the appointment of Rudenko as Prosecutor General, he is obliged to begin an investigation into the anti-party and anti-state activities of Beria “taking into account the instructions given at the meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee”. This is clear evidence of the interference of the conspirators in the investigation of the “Beria case”.

On June 30, Rudenko initiates a criminal case, within the framework of which an investigation is organized, and on July 3, he gives permission for the arrest of Beria. Thus, for eight days (from June 26 to July 3, 1953) Beria was under arrest illegally (not to mention the fact that he was arrested as a result of a conspiracy involving the military).

After the conspirators organized the arrest of Beria and the people closest to him from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, they began to pursue a policy of “cleansing” the power ministry. Pavel Sudoplatov recalls how on June 27, 1953, a meeting of all heads of independent departments and directorates of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was held at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was chaired by Kruglov and Serov. They reported the arrest of Beria and several other people who had relations with him. "criminal connection", and ordered employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to inform Kruglov about all known provocative steps of Beria. Subsequently, everyone who was in one way or another connected with Beria began to be fired from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In particular, those who were arrested in the Abakumov case, but reinstated by Beria in the Ministry of Internal Affairs in March 1953. At the same time, the personnel of the former Minister of State Security Ignatiev, dismissed by Beria in March 1953, returned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. On August 22, 1953, the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs prepared a memorandum to the Presidium of the Central Committee addressed to Malenkov and Khrushchev, which described the activities in the Ministry of Internal Affairs on “eradicating the consequences of enemy activities of Beria”. Dozens of generals, their deputies and assistants were removed from their posts. Some of them, including Pavel Sudoplatov, were immediately arrested. Mentioning the arrest of Sudoplatov, it is interesting to note that he was summoned to the Presidium of the Central Committee, where Malenkov, Molotov, Bulganin and Khrushchev persistently recommended that he brand Beria and expose him as the sole organizer of political murders in the USSR and abroad. Sudoplatov refused to make this explicit, saying that Beria did give him orders to organize political assassinations, but he received the same orders from other “instances”, which included Molotov, Khrushchev and Bulganin. Sudoplatov’s fate was then decided.

Later, according to the testimony of the Ministry of Internal Affairs officers arrested in 1953, another criminal case was created - the “case of Rapava, Rukhadze and others”, which involved the former ministers of state security of Georgia Rapava and Rukhadze, their deputies, as well as senior employees of the law enforcement agencies of Georgia. In September 1955 they were convicted and almost all were shot. In parallel, smaller cases were created in which hundreds of generals and colonels of the MGB-MVD were accused. As Sukhomlinov notes, criminal cases in the Ministry of Internal Affairs dragged on for several more years, and this was done deliberately in order to weaken the security ministry and keep it in constant tension and under the control of the party.

Plenum July 2–7, 1953

After the conspiracy was successfully implemented and the investigation began, the conspirators needed to commit a “political murder” of Beria, namely, to convene an urgent Plenum of the Central Committee and explain to the party leadership what specific crimes Beria had committed and what the new configuration of the political Olympus of the USSR would be. The plenum took place for six days: from the second to the seventh of July 1953. The verbatim report of this Plenum was not published in open sources and was classified until 1991.

The main speaker at the Plenum was Malenkov, the topic of his report was as follows: “On the criminal anti-party and anti-state actions of Beria.” First of all, Malenkov accused Beria of trying to place the Ministry of Internal Affairs over the party and government, or rather, “put the Central Committee and the Government under the control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs”. As proof of this, Beria’s policy in the national republics was cited, in which Beria sought to strengthen the role of local national cadres in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and tried to oppose them to local secretaries of the Central Committee. Malenkov further mentioned that Beria, through the personal security of the country’s leaders, conducted systematic surveillance of them. The next point of accusation from Malenkov was Beria’s international policy, namely, an attempt to normalize relations with Yugoslavia bypassing the Central Committee and Beria’s intention to stop the construction of socialism in the GDR. Malenkov further mentioned the mass amnesty of prisoners and said that this measure was correct, but Beria used it for his own purposes. At the same time, Malenkov did not disclose the goals themselves. Beria's final accusation in Malenkov's speech was that Beria was responsible for "incorrect and erroneous characteristics" Molotov and Mikoyan, given to them by Stalin at the 19th Party Congress.

Having finished with the accusations of Beria, Malenkov moved on to the conclusions and lessons that the party should have learned, given that the danger of the party subordinating the power of the Ministry of Internal Affairs lies not only in the personality of Beria. Firstly, Malenkov proposed strengthening the leadership role of the party and increasing the importance of party leadership in the work of the state apparatus. Secondly, in order to reduce the role of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it had to come completely under the control of the party through subordination to the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Government of the USSR. Malenkov further called for increased revolutionary vigilance in the ranks of the party. To do this, he proposed evaluating party workers not only from the point of view of their business qualities, but also taking into account their devotion to the party and the Soviet people and their ability to submit to the will of the party. The fourth conclusion in Malenkov’s report was the strengthening of party educational work, in particular, so that communists “with all our soul, mind and heart we have assimilated the essence of the great revolutionary teaching of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin..., its colossal transformative power”. The last conclusion was the inviolability of the principle of collectivity and cohesion of the party leadership, namely its Central Committee.

Analyzing Malenkov’s speech, one cannot help but come to the conclusion that in his struggle with Beria he made a big bet on the party apparatus. As noted in previous chapters, Malenkov had previously pursued a policy of reducing the role of the party or even removing the party from power. Accordingly, on his part it was a 180-degree turn. And it was precisely for this that he needed the support of Khrushchev, whose influence in the party was significantly strengthened - in September 1953 he was appointed First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. Malenkov's main complaints against Beria boiled down to his national policy and the strengthening of the role of the united Ministry of Internal Affairs, which Beria could rely on in the fight against the party and personally with Malenkov to promote his national and international policies. Accusations of “training” Stalin against Molotov and Mikoyan are, of course, unfounded. Malenkov tried to officially “whitewash” and increase the political weight of Molotov and Mikoyan and enlist their support.

After Malenkov’s report, a debate began, in which Khrushchev was the first to speak. It is interesting that in his speech Khrushchev contradicted himself several times. Khrushchev began by saying that he had concerns about Beria and his actions as minister of the united Ministry of Internal Affairs even before Stalin's death. However, then Khrushchev, according to him, did not dare to openly express his concerns, because Khrushchev was afraid of losing the political struggle ( “The comrades could say: he took advantage of the death of Comrade Stalin and immediately caused split and confusion in the leadership of the party.”). Further, Khrushchev accused the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security of poor work because these ministries over the past 10 years have not uncovered a single real conspiracy, but have only fabricated "inflated" political affairs, in particular, the “doctors’ case” and the “Mingrelian case”. At the same time, Khrushchev blamed Beria for the fact that, by rehabilitating people involved in these falsified cases (that is, de facto correcting mistakes in the work of the ministry), Beria returned their titles and gave them high positions in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Thus, according to Khrushchev, he surrounded himself with people on whom he could rely in order to put the party under the control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The next point of accusation against Beria from Khrushchev was Beria’s attempt or intention to divide state and party power. As proof of this, Khrushchev cites Beria’s previously mentioned statement to the Hungarian Prime Minister Rakosi about the role of the Central Committee. In his speech, Khrushchev said that the Ministry of Internal Affairs had become a power parallel to the party and state, based on which Beria wanted "destroy the party". Khrushchev also accused Beria of having an absolutely wrong national policy in the Soviet republics and of wanting to liquidate the GDR. It is interesting to note that Khrushchev also mentioned the mass amnesty carried out by Beria and called it "cheap demagoguery", the purpose of which was to raise the authority of Beria. Khrushchev also noted that Beria wiretapped the top leaders of the USSR, and also tried to turn them against each other. At the end of his speech, Khrushchev emphasized that it was necessary to strengthen the role of the party and especially party control over the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

In his speech, Khrushchev not only used various derogatory terms and comparisons to describe Beria (for example, he compared him to Hitler), but also tried to blame Beria for all the mistakes of recent years, such as responsibility for mass repressions. Also interesting for analysis are Khrushchev’s words that “... when deciding the issue of Beria, we were all unanimous - Comrade Malenkov, Comrade Molotov, Comrade Bulganin, Comrade Kaganovich and all other comrades”. Khrushchev ended his speech with the words that after "exile" Beria "Leninist-Stalinist leadership" will strengthen, and the party will move on "along the path indicated by Lenin and Stalin".

After Khrushchev, Molotov spoke. Speaking about Beria’s criminal actions, he emphasized at the very beginning of his speech that Beria sought to transfer the center of power decision-making from the party to the state apparatus. Molotov named the first example of such a policy as the proposal to appoint Malenkov as Chairman of the Council of Ministers at a session of the Supreme Council, which came not from the Secretary of the Central Committee Khrushchev, but from Beria. As another example, Molotov named Beria’s idea to issue decisions of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee not under the signature of one of the secretaries of the Central Committee, but simply of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee. The third example of Beria’s disregard for the Presidium of the Central Committee, which Molotov cited, was that the discussion of issues of international politics moved to the Presidium of the Council of Ministers and ceased to be discussed in the Presidium of the Central Committee. This, according to Molotov, “withdrawn from the discussion of international issues tt. Voroshilov, Saburov, Pervukhin, who are not members of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers". The fact that Molotov paid such attention to this, and even at the very beginning of his speech, is evidence that already at this Plenum he proposed a political alliance to Khrushchev based on the party apparatus to fight Malenkov. Moreover, by mentioning the fact that Malenkov was appointed to the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers at the suggestion of Beria, Molotov made a clear attempt to use the political friendship of Malenkov and the “enemy of the people” Beria for the subsequent political struggle with Malenkov.

Further in his speech, Molotov criticized Beria for his capitulation to the imperialist powers and "alien to the party" position on Germany. Beria's national policy was described by Molotov as aimed at increasing nationalist sentiment in the republics of the USSR. In his speech, Molotov also pointed out that Beria had a negative influence on Stalin, which led to a deterioration in the comradely atmosphere in the Central Committee already at the end of the 30s and to the fact that “plenums of the Central Committee stopped meeting for several years”. In these words of Molotov one can see his desire to shift all the blame that the party could theoretically bring against the “old guard of the Bolsheviks” (Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich) and Stalin himself, onto Beria.

Of other speeches at the plenum, the speeches of Kaganovich, former Politburo member Andreev, Minister of Metallurgical Industry Tevosyan and Bulganin were of interest. Bulganin, like previous speakers, accused Beria of trying to strike a blow at the Leninist-Stalinist national policy, of taking a bourgeois position on the GDR, and of using the Ministry of Internal Affairs to seize power. His words about those who, according to Bulganin, played the main role in the exposure and arrest of Beria are interesting: “Comrade Malenkov, Khrushchev and Molotov, who organized this matter well and brought it to the end”. Khrushchev, who was sitting in the Presidium, immediately responded to this phrase from Bulganin and asked Bulganin not to belittle his role in organizing the overthrow of Beria.

After Bulganin, Kaganovich took the floor. At the beginning of his speech, he mentioned that at the time of the decision to arrest Beria, he was in the Urals and did not play an obvious role in the “decision” regarding Beria. He was immediately corrected by Malenkov, who said that Kaganovich “unconditionally, immediately made the same decision as all of us”. Regarding the national issue, Kaganovich accused Beria of reducing the role of the Russian people and trying to set the nations living in the USSR against each other. Beria did all this, according to Kaganovich, in order to stop communist construction in the USSR and commit a bourgeois degeneration of the state system. Kaganovich also mentioned that Beria tried to build “the system of contrasting the Ministry of Internal Affairs with the party”. In Kaganovich's speech, however, unlike other speakers, there was another important point of criticism of Beria. According to Kaganovich, Beria even during Stalin’s funeral "began to overthrow the dead Stalin", and after Stalin’s death he began to discredit him, portray him in unpleasant and insulting words. Kaganovich said that because of Beria, the name of Stalin began to disappear from the pages of the press. At the same time, Kaganovich noted that there really was an excess in Stalin’s personality cult and Stalin himself reproached the Politburo for this, but this does not mean that it is necessary “to make a sharp bend in the other direction, towards silencing such leaders as Stalin”. According to Kaganovich, Beria did not want to correct certain aspects of the course that was carried out under Stalin, but rather to completely revise it.

Kaganovich’s idea about Beria’s betrayal of Stalin was continued in his speech by Andreev. Andreev accused Beria of starting to discredit the name of Stalin and “casting a shadow on the greatest man since Lenin” to make it easier to come to power. Andreev was also outraged by Beria's actions in exposing falsified political cases that cast a shadow on Stalin. Andreev further stated that with these actions Beria wanted to bury the name of Stalin, as well as “the successor of Comrade Stalin - Comrade Malenkov”. To this phrase, Malenkov immediately objected that all of them (without specifying who exactly) are Stalin’s successors, and Stalin does not have one successor. To which Andreev replied to Malenkov: “You are the Chairman of the Council of Ministers - a post held by Comrade Stalin”. After which, as the transcript of the Plenum testifies, there were "storm of applause".

Tevosyan spoke next. He also mentioned Beria’s attempts to smear Stalin’s name in the Ministry of Internal Affairs notes on the “Doctors’ Case” and the “Mingrelian Case,” which were sent to all party organizations and which indicated that the beatings of those arrested were carried out on the direct orders of Stalin. Tevosyan also noted once again that after Stalin’s death, his name began to disappear from the press. At the same time, he, referring to Kaganovich’s speech, connected this precisely with the actions "Scoundrel Beria". At the end of his speech, Tevosyan assured the Plenum that “The name of our teacher, Comrade Stalin, will forever remain in the hearts of the members of our party and the entire people”, and the party, rallying around the Lenin-Stalinist Central Committee of the party, will follow the path to communism outlined by Lenin and Stalin.

From the speeches of Kaganovich, Andreev and Tevosyan, as well as from the support of the Plenum that their words about Stalin received, it is clear that party members were dissatisfied with the policy towards Stalin carried out in the USSR after his death. Kaganovich, Andreev and Tevosyan tried to declare Beria guilty of carrying out this policy. However, the decision to suspend the policy of exalting Stalin on the scale in which it was carried out before was at least shared by Malenkov and Khrushchev. Back on March 10, 1953, at the Presidium of the Central Committee, Malenkov criticized the Soviet press and demanded “stop the personality cult policy”. At the same time, the Secretary of the Central Committee for Propaganda Pospelov was supposed to control the press, and Khrushchev was supposed to monitor all materials that were published about Stalin.

It can be assumed that Beria was also at least not against such a policy. Firstly, because he in no way expressed dissatisfaction, secondly, since the notes of the Ministry of Internal Affairs actually spoke of Stalin’s participation in falsifying cases, and thirdly, since this gave Beria and Malenkov undoubted political benefits: it was possible to write off against Stalin not only the mistakes in the policy of the USSR in the early 50s, but also the steps directed by Stalin against Beria and Malenkov, against the “late” Stalin, who was sick a lot and who moved away from the principle of collective leadership. Moreover, criticism of Stalin made it possible to greatly weaken the positions of the “old Bolshevik guard” - Molotov, Kaganovich and Voroshilov.

Malenkov needed to counteract the attempt that emerged at the Plenum at the instigation of Kaganovich to cancel the course of de-Stalinization, which began to be carried out in a mild form already in March 1953. Otherwise, firstly, Malenkov could later be accused of complicity with Beria in desecrating the name of Stalin, and secondly, the possibility of a dangerous strengthening of Molotov, Voroshilov and Kaganovich arose. That is why, in his final speech at the Plenum, Malenkov condemned the attempt to stop criticism of Stalin. Malenkov mentioned the performances of Andreev and Tevosyan, while clearly keeping silent about Kaganovich. Malenkov not only criticized Stalin’s personality cult, which “in the daily practice of leadership has taken on painful shapes and sizes”, but also proposed to write into the decision of this Plenum that the cult of personality has appeared in recent years “a retreat from the Marxist-Leninist understanding of the question of the role of the individual in history”. Malenkov was briefly supported by Khrushchev, who, however, did not reveal in detail his attitude towards the cult of personality.

It can be assumed that by criticizing Stalin’s personality cult at this Plenum, Malenkov, in addition to the goals outlined above, also wanted to protect himself from increasing the role of the head of the party. And the role of the head of the party and the party itself certainly increased, since Malenkov relied on the support of the party apparatus (and, in particular, Khrushchev) to successfully eliminate Beria. It was not for nothing that Malenkov spoke a lot at the Plenum about the “collectivity” of the new leadership, in which the primacy of making key decisions would remain with government officials, in particular with the Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Malenkov, speaking about increasing the role of the party, never said that the center of political power should move from state structures to party ones.

It is also obvious that at this Plenum the primacy in political positions remained with Malenkov. He opened and closed the Plenum, he was called Stalin's successor. All speakers referred to the theses of his report, emphasizing their correctness and importance. The post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers was also clearly recognized at the Plenum as the most important one. Obviously, Molotov was not satisfied with this alignment of political forces, and he, de facto, launched the first attack on Malenkov as Chairman of the Council of Ministers at the Plenum and offered support to Khrushchev in the fight against Malenkov, relying on the party apparatus.

As a result of the Plenum on July 7, 1953, the resolution “On Beria’s criminal anti-party and anti-state actions” was unanimously adopted. Beria was removed from the Presidium of the Central Committee and expelled from the party. The resolution was sent to all party organizations in the country in the form of a closed letter. On July 10, Pravda published an Information Report about the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, which reported on Beria’s anti-party and anti-state actions exposed at the Plenum.

Analyzing the speeches at the Plenum, we can confirm the earlier assumption that the main role in the conspiracy against Beria was played by Malenkov, Molotov, Khrushchev and Bulganin. They said this clearly in their speeches. At the same time, they do not provide objective evidence of the existence of Beria’s conspiracy against the collective leadership. Rather, on the contrary, it seems that the collective leadership did not like Beria’s policies, but they were afraid to enter into controversy with him and therefore decided to treacherously arrest him. In their speeches, they did not provide any significant facts about the existence of Beria’s conspiracy. At the Plenum, they also kept silent about the role of the military in the conspiracy against Beria. Zhukov, however, was transferred from candidate to member of the Central Committee.

Beria’s political criticism at the Plenum boiled down to the following points. Firstly, to his attempt, through a strengthened Ministry of Internal Affairs, to transfer the center of decision-making from the party apparatus to the state apparatus or even to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Secondly, in the “wrong” national policy of increasing the role of the republics. Thirdly, in an attempt to eliminate the construction of socialism in the GDR. At the same time, another of the results of the Plenum was that Beria was made guilty of all, without exception, mistakes committed by the political leadership of the USSR in recent years. Beria turned out to be guilty of the fact that disagreements arose in the Politburo during Stalin’s lifetime, that Stalin criticized Molotov and Mikoyan, that plenums of the Central Committee did not meet. This allowed the members of the collective leadership to remove all blame and responsibility for their mistakes and shift them to Beria.

Another outcome of the Plenum was the return of Ignatiev to the Central Committee and the de facto removal of all charges against him of participating in the falsification of political affairs. This also removed Malenkov from being attacked by the new Minister of Internal Affairs (and those who could potentially unite with him) in the accusation of involvement in the “Leningrad Affair” and the “Affair of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.”

Thus, Malenkov, as the main conspirator, was able to achieve all his goals. He politically destroyed his main opponent. He was able to clear himself of all charges of participating in political repression. Malenkov stopped Beria's national policy directed against the “unitary” Soviet state. He was able to push through the Plenum the decision to continue criticizing the “cult of personality” to fight Molotov, Kaganovich and Voroshilov. However, the price of victory was also very high. The role of the party apparatus and Khrushchev increased significantly. Malenkov, in the person of Beria, lost an important ally in the fight against the party apparatus. An alliance between Molotov and Khrushchev began to form against Malenkov himself, relying on the party and the Secretariat of the Central Committee.

Investigation and trial in the Beria case

The political assassination of Beria finally took place at the Plenum of July 2–7, 1953. After this, he no longer had any chance of acquittal or pardon. The investigation and trial were the last, purely technical stages of the conspiracy to overthrow Beria. However, some circumstances of how exactly they took place seem important.

The first such circumstance is that Beria’s criminal case is still classified. As noted earlier, Andrei Sukhomlinov, Honored Lawyer of the Russian Federation, a former military prosecutor, was a member of the commission for the rehabilitation of Beria in 2000 and got acquainted with all the materials of 45 volumes of his criminal case. In 2004, he published the book “Who are you, Lavrentiy Beria,” in which he analyzed the progress of the investigation and the legality of Beria’s sentence from a legal point of view.

The case against Beria was opened on June 30, the order for his arrest was issued on July 3, while the procedure for registering the arrested person, which was carried out by the investigator of the USSR Prosecutor's Office Tsaregradsky, was carried out with gross violations of the law. The questionnaire does not contain Beria's fingerprints, as well as profile and full-face photographs. At the same time, there is a 3/4 photograph of Beria in the file, in which he is depicted very calm, if not relaxed. A copy of the arrestee's profile page with Beria's photo can be found in Sukhomlinov's book.

Andrei Sukhomlinov explains the incorrectness of drawing up the arrestee’s profile by the fact that at the headquarters of the Moscow Military District the military had no experience in preparing documents for the arrestee. Therefore, for example, the photographer did not know what photos were needed for such documents. However, it is very difficult to explain the absence of fingerprints, since on the last page of the prisoner’s questionnaire, where the photograph is located and where the fingerprints should be, there is text “imprint of the index finger of the right hand (from one edge of the nail to the other)”. In any case, the question arises: how could Prosecutor Tsaregradsky and Prosecutor General Rudenko miss this? They fully possessed the necessary knowledge and could not help but know and notice that the questionnaire was filled out with gross violations. Moreover, such a mistake subsequently gave any person reason to doubt the correctness of the investigation. Elena Prudnikova explains these and other significant errors in Beria’s criminal case by the fact that he himself was killed on June 26, and there was a Beria double in the MVO bunker.

As Sukhomlinov writes, the period of Beria’s stay in the bunker of the Moscow Military District headquarters from June 27 to December 23, 1953 is not described anywhere, and Beria’s stay there can only be judged from the recollections of eyewitnesses and the materials of the criminal case.

The next unique fact in the Beria case is that Prosecutor General Rudenko personally compiled about thirty interrogations of Beria. As Sukhomlinov, who is himself a military prosecutor, notes, this is an exceptional phenomenon, since the task of the Prosecutor General is to organize the investigation and control the progress of its execution, and not to participate in direct interrogations. A possible explanation may be that Malenkov, Molotov and Khrushchev were afraid either of certain testimony that Beria might give, or that he might collude with another prosecutor and convince him that a coup d'etat had occurred. This version, however, is not very convincing, since, firstly, other prosecutors, for example, Tsaregradsky, also participated in the interrogations. And, secondly, in other similar cases where unnecessary testimony could “surface” (for example, as happened during the interrogations of Sudoplatov), ​​prosecutors and investigators simply did not include such testimony in the case materials. Thirdly, Beria’s first interrogation took place on July 8, after the end of the Plenum, when he was already “politically dead,” so he was unlikely to convince anyone that he was right.

As part of Beria’s criminal case, not a single confrontation was held with any of the suspects or with any of the witnesses. Confrontations were not carried out even in cases where suspects and witnesses contradicted each other and thus it was impossible to determine with certainty who was telling the truth.

Among other things, accusations of moral decay were brought against Beria. A fact to confirm this was the list of security guard Beria Sarkisov, which included contact details and names of 200 women. At the same time, the investigation considered only one single episode in this part of the charge - the rape of 16-year-old citizen V.S. Drozdova in 1949. According to the materials of the criminal case, on July 11, 1953, Valentina Drozdova turned to the Prosecutor General of the USSR with a statement that she was raped by Beria in 1949. At the same time, as Sukhomlinov notes, her “the handwritten statement is not registered anywhere, there are no resolutions or other marks on it, she was not warned about criminal liability for knowingly false denunciation (this was also provided for in those years)”. Sarkisov acted as a witness in this episode. He confirmed the fact that Beria raped Drozdova and that she had a child from Beria, and once she had an abortion (at the same time Beria arranged for her to be admitted to the Kremlin hospital). The interrogation of Sarkisov and Drozdova, according to Sukhomlinov, was drawn up so unprofessionally that it does not allow one to accurately establish whether rape took place or not. Nevertheless, it was in this form that this episode was transferred by the investigation to the court, which found Beria guilty of this charge. The court's verdict was subsequently also strengthened by the following paragraph: “The judicial investigation also established facts of other criminal acts of Beria, indicating his deep moral decline. Being a morally corrupt person, Beria cohabited with numerous women, including those associated with foreign intelligence officers.”. The part about foreign intelligence does not make sense to discuss, there is no evidence of this in the case, but it is important to note that cohabitation with women, as well as loss of moral character, were not criminal offenses even at that time, and therefore could not be considered crimes by the court.

The reason why such accusations were included in the materials of the criminal case and the court is that on September 17, 1953, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee issued a Resolution in which the Presidium of the Central Committee instructed the Prosecutor General, taking into account the amendments adopted at the meeting of the Presidium, to finalize the draft indictment. Moreover, the same Resolution entrusted member of the Central Committee Suslov “to take part both in the preparation by the Prosecutor General of the USSR of the draft indictment in the Beria case and the draft Report of the USSR Prosecutor’s Office”. On December 10, 1953, the Presidium of the Central Committee approved the draft verdict of guilty presented by the USSR Prosecutor General Rudenko. The same Resolution stated that the indictment in the Beria case should be sent “for information to members and candidate members of the CPSU Central Committee, as well as the first secretaries of regional committees, regional committees and the Central Committee of the Communist Parties of the Union Republics”. That is, the conspirators Malenkov, Molotov and Khrushchev clearly participated in the work of the investigators and corrected the work of the prosecutor’s office even in drawing up the charges. Sukhomlinov, as a military prosecutor, notes that the indictment was not written in the style of the prosecutor's office, but as if it were a party document published under the editorship of the Central Committee.

An even more interesting fact in Beria’s criminal case is that ninety percent of all the sheets in the criminal case are not originals, but typewritten copies certified by the Major of the Administrative Service of the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office, Yuryeva. It turns out that almost all the case materials are texts reprinted later without the signature of the investigator and the arrested person, but with the signature of Major Yuryeva, who “certified” the correctness of the copies. Sukhomlinov is very surprised by this circumstance and even concludes that “Not a single prosecutor will allow a case to be presented to him without the originals. This is an unwritten rule of the prosecutor's office. And Rudenko violated it".

After the completion of the investigation in December 1953, to consider the Beria case, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR established a special judicial procedure, which was developed in 1934 in connection with the murder of Kirov and was used to consider cases of terrorism. The trial of Beria and other accused took place at the headquarters of the Moscow Military District. Eight judges were appointed, of which only two (E.L. Zeidin and L.A. Gromov) were professional judges, and the rest represented various structures: Konev and Moskalenko - the army, N.A. Mikhailov - the party, N.M. Shvernik - trade unions, M.I. Kuchava and K.F. Lunev - Ministry of Internal Affairs. The chairman of the special judicial presence was Marshal Konev. The meetings of this temporary body were held from December 18 to 23, 1953.

As noted above, Meshik, Merkulov, Dekanozov, Kobulov, Vlodzimirsky and Goglidze were involved in the same case with Beria. Moreover, they were all kept in Butyrka prison, from where every day they were brought to the “courtroom”, to the headquarters of the Moscow Military District. During the trial, the accused were interrogated, and they were also given the opportunity to ask each other clarifying questions. According to the materials of the criminal case, this was the first opportunity for them to meet in person, since there were no confrontations during the investigation.

On December 23, 1953, the verdict was pronounced. The judicial investigation fully confirmed the materials of the preliminary investigation and the indictment. All accused were found guilty and sentenced to death. The court found Beria guilty of treason, organizing an anti-Soviet conspiratorial group in order to seize power and establish the rule of the bourgeoisie, committing terrorist acts against political figures loyal to the Communist Party and the people, as well as active struggle against the revolutionary labor movement in Baku in 1919. The original court verdict is also not in the case file; only a typewritten copy is present, not signed by the judges. As Sukhomlinov notes, “according to the rules of judicial records management in all criminal cases, no matter at what level they are considered, the original verdict must be kept in the case file and must be signed by all members of the court”.

The sentence was carried out on the same day. At the same time, Meshik, Merkulov, Dekanozov, Kobulov, Vlodzimirsky and Goglidze were shot in Butyrskaya prison at 21:20, and Beria was shot in the bunker of the Moscow Military District headquarters at 19:50. The act of execution of Beria was written by hand and signed by Batitsky, Moskalenko and Rudenko. However, it does not contain the signature of the doctor who was supposed to confirm Beria’s death. According to the act, the executor of the sentence was Colonel General Batitsky, and the execution itself took place in the presence of Prosecutor General Rudenko and Army General Moskalenko. The bodies of the six people shot in Butyrka were then cremated, about which there is a corresponding act in the criminal case. There is no act on the cremation of Beria’s body in the criminal case, so it is impossible to say what exactly happened to his corpse.

Chapter IV - Results of the coup

The first result of Beria's overthrow from the political Olympus was the cancellation of all his political decisions in the field of national and foreign policy. As noted above, after the elimination of Beria in the GDR, the Plenum of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany was held in July, as a result of which, taking into account the new policy of Moscow, Ulbricht’s position in the SED was strengthened, and the course towards socialist construction in the GDR continued. National sentiment in the republics, which Beria had begun to give strength to in 1953, was again brought under party control, which stopped potential centrifugal tendencies in these republics.

The next result of Beria’s collapse was that he was made the main and only culprit in all the mistakes of the country’s top leadership, even during Stalin’s time. Malenkov and Khrushchev, as well as others, attributed to Beria everything that they themselves were involved in: the creation of “political affairs” and participation in mass repressions. For decades, the image of a bloody executioner and an insidious scoundrel stuck with Beria in the party and people.

Another important consequence of Beria’s overthrow was a significant weakening of the role of law enforcement agencies. The functions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security were significantly curtailed; they were prohibited from monitoring the activities of party bodies. In essence, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has become a purely executive body. Now the security department was placed under the direct control of the party, that is, the Central Committee, which in reality meant control by the Secretariat of the Central Committee. Thus, the party apparatus avoided almost any threat from the security forces, since now, without the approval of the party apparatus, not a single party member could be arrested. The policy of subordination to the Ministry of Internal Affairs was made as transparent as possible. Already at the beginning of July 1953, Pravda published an article that described in detail the need for systematic control over the Ministry of Internal Affairs both in the center and locally by party organizations, because it “not only their right, but an urgent and immediate duty”. A “cleansing” of Beria’s personnel took place in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. More than a hundred generals and colonels were fired. If under Stalin and Beria the MVD-MGB had significant capabilities and allowed them to be used as a means of political struggle for power, then after July 1953 Malenkov, as the main contender for power, was deprived of the opportunity to rely on the MVD-MGB for the political struggle with the party apparatus.

Party control over the Ministry of Internal Affairs was not the only change in the political configuration in 1953. After the overthrow of Beria, the political role of the party increased significantly. The attempt to transfer the decision-making center from state power (the Council of Ministers) to the party apparatus (the Presidium of the Central Committee), which began at the plenum, continued and eventually ended in a complete victory of the party apparatus a few years later. After July 1953, assessments of Beria’s “sabotage, anti-state and anti-party activities,” which were aimed at delineating the power of party and state bodies, began to appear more and more often in the press and in speeches. Separately, it should be noted that the role of the Secretariat of the Central Committee has increased.

With the increasing role of the party and the Secretariat of the Central Committee, the political weight of Khrushchev, who had the strongest position among all the secretaries of the Central Committee, also increased significantly. This is another consequence of the overthrow of Beria. As all researchers of that era note, from July 1953, Khrushchev began to act much more actively in the struggle for supreme power. In August 1953, he restored the “envelopes” that Malenkov had canceled several months earlier, and paid the party apparatus the entire “lost” difference. As Yuri Zhukov notes, the party apparatus began to work hard to further strengthen Khrushchev’s position. In September, at the Plenum, the post of First Secretary of the Central Committee was introduced, to which Khrushchev was elected. This moment can be considered the point of balancing state and party power. If the Presidium of the Central Committee included representatives of both the state and party branches of government, now the Secretariat of the Central Committee became the main body of power of the party, and Khrushchev the main spokesman for the interests of the party. In December 1953, Khrushchev also became Deputy Chairman of the USSR Government.

Malenkov's political position weakened. Despite all the differences that existed, Beria was united with Malenkov in his desire to weaken the role of the party. Malenkov lost an important ally. At the same time, a conspiracy had already begun against him by Molotov and Khrushchev, who were probably already supported by Kaganovich and Voroshilov. Moreover, during the fight against Beria, Khrushchev was able to place his own people in the leadership of the law enforcement agencies, in the Ministry of Internal Affairs - Serov, in the prosecutor's office - Rudenko.

All this subsequently led to the fact that Khrushchev, in alliance with Molotov and relying on the party apparatus, removed Malenkov from the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers after a year and a half, and in 1957 defeated the “anti-party group” of Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich and Shepilov (which actually included actually included Bulganin, Pervukhin and Saburov) with the help of Zhukov and Serov, relying on the secretaries of regional committees and regional members of the Central Committee. A few months later, Khrushchev also removed Zhukov. As a result, the party apparatus won a final victory and became the main power in the USSR.

Conclusion

Analysis of coups d'état and conspiracies is a very difficult task, since those who come to power as a result try to hide as much as possible the true goals and methods of the coup, the real roles of the conspirators, as well as the reasons for each of them participating in the conspiracy.

As part of this study, the “palace” coup that took place in June 1953 in the USSR was examined in detail, as a result of which one of the main contenders for supreme power in the USSR, Minister of Internal Affairs Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, was removed from all posts, arrested and subsequently executed.

The conspiracy against Beria took place in the context of the political struggle in the highest echelons of power in the USSR after the death of Stalin. In March 1953, the highest power in the country was given to Malenkov, Beria, Khrushchev, Bulganin and Molotov, who formed a “collective leadership”, which was based not on the common goals and means of the country’s development, but on a minimally sufficient compromise. Beria, who became minister of the united Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Malenkov, who received the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers, were the main contenders for power.

Beria in March-June 1953 carried out a reform of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, carried out a mass amnesty for prisoners and began the process of rehabilitation in fabricated political cases of recent years. In addition, Beria was actively involved in political decision-making in the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and national policy in the USSR - areas that were not directly within his competence. His political program bore the features of liberalization of the security apparatus of the USSR, political and economic liberalization in people's democracies, it included the idea of ​​​​unifying Germany and a radical revision of the national question in the USSR towards greater freedoms and rights of national republics.

Such an active policy of Beria ran counter to the interests of the majority of members of the collective leadership, primarily Molotov and Malenkov, who, firstly, were supporters of the “unitary” Soviet state, and secondly, were not ready to completely curtail the course of construction socialism in Germany and Eastern Europe. At the same time, Malenkov also feared that Beria would soon be accused of participating in the fabrication of cases.

The main conspirator against Beria was Malenkov, who was joined by Molotov for ideological reasons. Malenkov and Molotov brought Khrushchev and Bulganin into the conspiracy, and at the last stage they involved the military. The conspirators had several programs to remove Beria from power. As a result, according to the official version, Beria was arrested by the military on June 26, 1953 at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee in the Kremlin, but there is another version according to which Beria was killed by the military in his mansion on June 26, 1953.

On the day of Beria’s arrest, the military involved in the conspiracy brought tanks of the Taman and Kantemirov divisions into Moscow, and also lifted the air force of the Moscow Military District into the air, while Beria’s supporters in the army were sent from Moscow the day before for exercises.

After the plot was successfully implemented, the conspirators committed the “political murder” of Beria at an extraordinary Plenum of the Central Committee. Next, the conspirators organized an investigation and trial against Beria, whose activities were completely controlled with the help of the newly appointed Prosecutor General Rudenko, as well as by clearly interfering in the course of the investigation. By a court decision, Beria was found guilty of organizing an anti-Soviet conspiratorial group in order to seize power and establish the rule of the bourgeoisie and was shot on December 26, 1953 (if he had not been killed six months earlier - on June 26, 1953 - in his mansion).

One of the results of Beria’s overthrow from the political Olympus was the cancellation of all his political decisions in the field of national and foreign policy. In addition, the conspirators created a black myth around Beria, in which Beria was portrayed as a bloody executioner and an insidious scoundrel, to whom all the mistakes of the country's top leadership were attributed. Another important consequence of Beria’s overthrow was that the functions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs-MGB were significantly curtailed, and the security department was placed under the direct control of the party. At the same time, the role of the party was strengthened, and the process of transferring the center of decision-making from the state branch of government to the party apparatus began.

As a result of the conspiracy, Malenkov, as the main conspirator, managed to destroy his main political competitor, but the price of victory was too high for him: over the next few years, Malenkov, as well as Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Bulganin and Zhukov, lost the struggle for power to the party apparatus led by Khrushchev .

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Death of Stalin

Stalin's sudden fatal illness forced his closest associates to urgently take measures to preserve and strengthen their positions. On March 3, 1953, an urgent call was sent out from Moscow to all members of the Central Committee to urgently arrive in the capital to participate in the Plenum. The agenda of the Plenum was not announced1. In the last hours of Stalin's life2 a meeting was in full swing on the fate of Stalin's legacy. In 40 minutes - from 20 hours to 20 hours 40 minutes on March 5, 1953, at a meeting that called itself “A joint meeting of the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR,” a redistribution of power took place3.

Khrushchev chaired this meeting. After information from the USSR Minister of Health Tretyakov about Stalin’s health, the floor was given to Malenkov. He said that the Bureau of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee instructed him to “report to you a number of measures for organizing the party and state leadership in order to adopt them as a joint decision of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party, the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.” However, Malenkov did not begin to report. The word was conveyed to Beria. Let us quote the recording of his speech: “The Bureau of the Presidium of the Central Committee carefully discussed the current situation in our country due to the fact that Comrade Stalin is absent from the leadership of the party and the country. The Bureau of the Presidium of the Central Committee considers it necessary now to appoint the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The Bureau makes a proposal to appoint Chairman of the Council Ministers of the USSR Comrade Malenkova G. M. The candidacy of Comrade Malenkova is nominated by the members of the Bureau unanimously and unanimously. We are confident that you will share this opinion that in the times our party and country are going through, we can only have one candidate for the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers USSR - candidacy of Comrade Malenkov (Numerous exclamations from the seats: “That’s right!, approve”).

Having thus received support, Malenkov began performing again. He announced that Beria, Molotov, Bulganin, and Kaganovich were recommended for the post of First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Malenkov introduced a package of personnel moves and appointments. Among them - the merger of the Ministries of Internal Affairs and State Security into one - the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the appointment of Beria as Minister of Internal Affairs; on the appointment of V. M. Molotov as Minister of Foreign Affairs and N. A. Bulganin as Minister of the Armed Forces. He made proposals to merge a significant number of ministries. Also of fundamental importance was his proposal “to have in the Central Committee of the CPSU, instead of two bodies of the Central Committee - the Presidium and the Bureau of the Presidium, one body - the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, as defined by the Party Charter.”

Jealousy in observing the Party Charter, however, was somewhat overshadowed by the fact that in practice it was not the Bureau of the Presidium that was liquidated, but the Presidium itself, which was reduced to the size of the previous Bureau of the Presidium. Instead of the previous Presidium of 25 people, a new one appeared - numbering 11 members and 4 candidates for members of the Presidium. Stalin, Malenkov, Beria, Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Bulganin, Kaganovich, Mikoyan, Saburov, Pervukhin were declared members of the Presidium. Candidates for members of the Presidium are Shvernik, Ponomarenko, Melnikov, Bagirov. The secretaries of the Central Committee were S. D. Ignatiev, P. N. Pospelov, N. N. Shatalin. In the official and abbreviated publication of the resolution adopted at this meeting and its decisions, made by Pravda on March 7, 1953, the name of Stalin was no longer mentioned among the members of the Presidium.

The changes that took place at the meeting on March 4-5 are as important as they are illegal from the point of view of the CPSU charter. The illegality of such changes was so obvious that the decisions taken at this meeting had to be formalized as a joint decision of the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The reason for such an unprecedented unification of party and state bodies is associated with the desire to give the appearance of legality, legitimacy of such a radical revision of the decisions of the 19th Congress of the CPSU.

The circumstances surrounding the preparation of these decisions became the subject of special, albeit impartial, investigations several years later. During these investigations, it was established that Malenkov’s speech was based on Beria’s proposal, set out in a note written by him in his own hand, previously agreed upon with Malenkov. In this note, dated March 4, 1953, the most important government posts were distributed in advance. This distribution was approved at the meeting on March 5. Stalin's government post - Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR - was given to G. M. Malenkov, who actually controlled the country's punitive services in the last years of Stalin's life.

His ally in recent years, L.P. Beria, received the post of first deputy of the Council of Ministers and minister of the new ministry under the old name - the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which included the Ministry of State Security. Thus, the rivalry between the former Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security was eliminated, Beria became the head of a huge department, which had its own military formations, its own judges and places of detention, industrial enterprises, direct opportunities to intervene in almost any issue of the country’s domestic and, through intelligence agencies, foreign policy. It is also important that the unification of these two ministries seemed to completely exclude the possibility of Beria’s unauthorized collection of information against him and he became the owner of all information about the past activities of his colleagues, having all the previous opportunities to control their activities.

Another Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers was N.A. Bulganin, who received the post of Minister of War. V. M. Molotov, who regained the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs after Stalin’s death, also became Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Let us note that L. M. Kaganovich also became deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers. The post of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was given to K. E. Voroshilov, who was also in the shadows in the last years of Stalin’s life.

N. S. Khrushchev, unlike his colleagues, did not receive any government positions, remaining “only” the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and a member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee. He worked in the Moscow party organization in the 30s. , having made his way in a few years from the secretary of the Baumansky district committee of the CPSU (b) in 1931 to the first secretary of the Moscow city committee in 1934 and the second secretary of the Moscow regional committee (in 1935 he simultaneously became the first secretary of the Moscow regional committee). Unlike most of his comrades - the first secretaries - he survived the "great purge" of 1936-1939. and left Moscow in 1938 as the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. It is clear that he had to take part in the repressions and be their organizer in the territory entrusted to him, and therefore collaborate with Malenkov and Beria. These were the realities of the activities of the first secretary of the republican organization of the CPSU (b). A letter from A.Z. Kobulov, who was the Deputy Minister of State Security of Ukraine since 1938, and at the time of writing the letter - in April 1954 - a prisoner in Butyrka prison addressed to G. M. Malenkov, has been preserved. This document provides information about the widest scale of repressions in Ukraine and the fact that the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine did not even try to do what he could to limit them4.

The first secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, Khrushchev, was summoned by Stalin to Moscow at the end of 1949. According to Khrushchev, Stalin told him: “We want to transfer you to Moscow. Things are bad here in Leningrad, conspiracies have been identified. Things are bad here in Moscow too.” , and we want you to lead the Moscow party organization again." In his memoirs, Khrushchev made an important remark: "I then got the impression that Stalin (he did not tell me this), by calling me to Moscow, wanted to somehow influence balance of power in the capital and reduce the role of Beria and Malenkov"5. This assumption seems quite likely, given Stalin's desire to prepare a new change in political leadership.

People who had lost their positions in the Bureau of the Presidium, formed after the 19th Congress, returned to the Presidium - A. I. Mikoyan and V. M. Molotov. The number of candidates for membership of the Presidium included M. D. Bagirov - traditionally considered “Beria’s man”, L. K. Ponomarenko, an experienced employee of the party apparatus, former first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Presidium of Belarus, head of the Central Staff of the partisan movement, Minister of Procurement of the USSR, who had considerable experience of cooperation with L.P. Beria, and N.M. Shvernik - in the previous composition - a member of the Presidium. but not a member of the Bureau of the Presidium. There were serious changes in the composition of the secretaries of the Central Committee. They were: S. D. Ignatiev, one of the creators of the Abakumov-Shvartsman case, who became the Minister of State Security after Abakumov’s arrest, an active executor of the tasks that were set for MGB investigators by I. V. Stalin and G. M. Malenkov; N. N. Shatalin, who worked as the first deputy head of the Personnel Directorate of the CPSU Central Committee (the head of this Directorate at that time was G. M. Malenkov)6. P. N. Pospelov, a party propagandist, became the Secretary of the Central Committee.

The reshuffles in the top party leadership had a peculiar consistency - on the one hand, they strengthened the position of the Stalinist party leadership of the post-war period, on the other, they preserved all the old contradictions that existed between the “sworn friends” in Stalin’s circle. In this regard, Malenkov’s statement, made at the same meeting on March 5, deserves to be noted that the Bureau of the Presidium of the Central Committee “instructed Comrades Malenkov, Beria and Khrushchev to take measures to ensure that the documents and papers of Comrade Stalin, both current and archival, were put in proper order."7 Access to the Stalinist archive is an opportunity to take advantage of those levers of power that remained in the Stalinist legacy. Three people in the country received this right. It seemed that a private question - who should dispose of the Stalinist archive - became an indicator of belonging to the true power in the post-Stalin USSR.

It seems that Stalin’s comrades who rushed to the Council of Ministers’ portfolios believed that state institutions had become the main source of power, and in Stalin’s political legacy, his post as Chairman of the Council of Ministers was more valuable than the post of Secretary of the Central Committee. There are well-known reasons for such an assumption. On March 14 - the ninth day after Stalin's death - a plenum of the CPSU Central Committee8 took place. Let us note that information about him has practically not found its way into the research literature. Meanwhile, important personnel issues were adopted at the meeting. The Plenum granted Malenkov’s request to be relieved of his duties as Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, “bearing in mind,” as stated in the resolution of the Plenum, “the inappropriateness of combining the functions of Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.” However, it would be premature to draw a conclusion from this that Malenkov’s position in the leadership is weakening. The following points of this resolution were written:

“The chairmanship of the meetings of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee is entrusted to Comrade G. M. Malenkov.

The leadership of the Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee and chairmanship at meetings of the Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee shall be entrusted to the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Comrade. Khrushcheva N.S."

The results of the Plenum indicated that among the top political leadership there was a clear tendency to separate party and state authorities. The Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Malenkov, could not be the secretary of the Central Committee, that is, manage part of the Central Committee apparatus. But, being the formal head of the executive branch, he headed the activities of the country's highest political institution - the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee. Khrushchev, the Secretary of the Central Committee, was supposed to direct the work of the apparatus of the CPSU Central Committee, and in connection with this he headed the Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee.

A certain strengthening of the executive branch of power in the post-Stalin Soviet Union is also indicated by the decision, unprecedented for Soviet history, “On the expansion of the rights of Ministers of the USSR.”

Having solemnly demonstrated their loyalty to the cause - Stalin at his funeral, the heirs hastily began to strengthen their power. To do this, many problems had to be solved - first of all, to get rid of the constant mortal threat that hovered over each of them during the life of the great leader. For this purpose, it was necessary to stop the flywheel of the “doctors’ case,” or, to more accurately follow the terminology of Ignatiev-Malenkov, the Abakumov-Shvartsman case. Then there was everything else - the distribution of power between state and party bodies, the solution of accumulated socio-economic problems and the most pressing of them - food, foreign policy - the war in Korea, the conflict with Yugoslavia...

Notes

Page 1

On the eve of Stalin's funeral, a meeting was held in the Kremlin, to which only those most knowledgeable about the state of affairs in the party and state were invited. Malenkov became Chairman of the Council of Ministers. He was nominated for this post by Beria. In turn, Malenkov proposed uniting the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security under the leadership of Beria. Other changes were made to the leadership team. At this meeting, Khrushchev managed to achieve a decision on the return to Moscow of G.K. Zhukov, who at that time commanded the Ural Military District. The position of first secretary was not introduced in the party, but Khrushchev actually took control of the cadres of the party apparatus. In addition, he took for himself some important archival documents relating to the top leaders of the party and state.

Thus, the most influential political figures in the leadership became Malenkov, Beria and Khrushchev. The balance was extremely unstable.

Taking advantage of the amnesty announced on the occasion of mourning, Beria ordered the release of many dangerous criminals, which sharply aggravated the situation in the country. Beria needed all this in order to, at the right opportunity, achieve emergency powers for himself and the department subordinate to him and seize power.

Combining cruelty, cynicism and intelligence, Beria even considered the possibility of a sharp change in political course: the dissolution of collective farms, the withdrawal of troops from Eastern Europe, the unification of Germany.

At Zhukov’s request, a large group of military personnel returned from prison. But the Gulag continued to exist, the same slogans and portraits of Stalin hung everywhere.

Each of the contenders for power sought to seize it in their own way. Beria - through control over state security agencies and troops. Malenkov - declaring his desire to pursue a popular policy of improving the well-being of the people, “to take care of the maximum satisfaction of their material and cultural needs,” calling for “in 2-3 years to achieve the creation in our country of an abundance of food for the population and raw materials for light industry.”

But Beria and Malenkov did not have connections among senior military leaders, who did not trust them. The main thing was in the mood of the party apparatus, which wanted to preserve the regime, but without repression against the apparatus. Objectively, the situation turned out favorably for Khrushchev.

For many years, Khrushchev treated Stalin with genuine adoration, accepting everything he said as the highest truth. Stalin trusted Khrushchev, promoting him to responsible positions in Moscow and Ukraine. While in high positions, Khrushchev was involved in Stalin’s repressions, signed sentences, and denounced “traitors.” But there was something in his activities that distinguished him from others. In the hungry year of 1946, he was not afraid to ask Stalin to reduce the grain procurement plan for Ukraine, although to no avail. When the opportunity arose, he tried to make life easier for ordinary people; he could talk for a long time with ordinary collective farmers. Under Stalin, as a rule, he pretended to be a simple-minded, dutiful person.

And now it was Khrushchev who took the initiative to unite members of the leadership for an action against Beria. By cunning and persuasion, threats that he would not spare anyone, Khrushchev achieved his goal. In mid-June 1953, at one of the meetings in the Kremlin, which was chaired by Malenkov, Khrushchev accused Beria of careerism, nationalism, and connections with the British and Musavatist (i.e., bourgeois Azerbaijani) intelligence services. As soon as they started voting, Malenkov pressed the hidden bell button. Several high-ranking officers arrested Beria. The other side of this action was led by G.K. Zhukov. On his orders, the Kantemirovskaya and Tamanskaya tank divisions were introduced into Moscow, occupying key positions in the city center. The Kremlin security was completely replaced, and Beria's closest employees were arrested.

Of course, this action was carried out by force. However, the then leadership simply did not know any alternative to them.

The level of political consciousness of both the leadership and the majority of ordinary party members is demonstrated by the content of the “closed letter” for members of the CPSU on the Beria case. In this letter, he was accused, among other things, of seeking to suspend the construction of socialism in the GDR, to unite Germany and make it neutral, and of proposals for reconciliation with Yugoslavia.

In September 1953, Khrushchev was elected First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. Articles about the dangers of the cult of personality began to appear in the press. The paradox was that their authors often referred to the works of Stalin, declaring that he was an opponent of the cult. A review of the Leningrad Case has begun. The Kremlin was open to free visits. But at the same time, at the end of 1953, prisoner strikes were brutally suppressed in the mines of Vorkuta, which were under the jurisdiction of the still existing Gulag.

In 1954, Khrushchev made several trips around the country, which was an innovation in political life. His popularity grew. Malenkov retreated into the shadows.

At the beginning of 1955, Malenkov made a public statement about his “mistakes” and his unpreparedness for a high position in the government. It should be noted that one of the accusations brought against Malenkov at a closed meeting of the party leadership was that he declared the impossibility of winning a nuclear war and the inevitability of universal destruction if it occurred. He was replaced as Chairman of the Council of Ministers by N.A. Bulganin, a man from Stalin’s inner circle, who, however, knew how to navigate the situation in time and played a certain role in organizing the arrest of Beria.

During the war with Turkey in 1811
In 1811, when the war with Turkey reached a dead end and the foreign policy situation required effective action, Alexander I appointed Kutuzov as commander-in-chief of the Moldavian army instead of the deceased Kamensky. In early April 1811, Kutuzov arrived in Bucharest and took command of the army, weakened by the recall of divisions to defend the western...

Treaty of Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, concluded in Vienna on May 20, 1882.
The document in question is a secret treaty, it was signed between three powers against a specific enemy - France, etc., and imposes an obligation for common participation in the war, that is, it implements the forceful principle of resolving conflicts. The main significance of this document was in the formalization of the Triple Alliance, which, in turn, had far-reaching consequences...

Transition to a quitrent system
The most important result of the rise of agriculture in Germany, as in other countries of Western Europe, was the separation of crafts from agriculture and the development of the medieval city. The rise of urban crafts had a great influence on the development of agrarian relations. With the emergence of cities, peasants began to be drawn into commodity-money relations...

Collapse of Beria

Change in political leadership

On the eve of Stalin’s funeral, a meeting was held in the Kremlin at which

rum only those most knowledgeable about the situation of the day in the party were invited

and the state of the person. Among them there were not even a number of members of the Presidium of the Central Committee.

Without convening an official plenum of the Central Committee, the meeting participants decided

nie, which, in their opinion, were designed to ensure continuity

authorities. Malenkov became Chairman of the Council of Ministers. He was proposed to

this post is Beria. In turn, Malenkov proposed merging the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security

under the leadership of Beria. Other changes were made in the composition of the leadership

Vodka. Khrushchev at this meeting managed to achieve a decision on the return

to Moscow G.K. Zhukov, who at that time commanded the Ural military

district. The post of First Secretary was not introduced in the party, but Khrushchev

as the only one of the secretaries of the Central Committee of the party actually included in the Plenum of the Central Committee

he took control of the cadres of the party apparatus. Thus, most

The most influential political figures in the leadership were Malen-

Kov, Beria and Khrushchev. The balance was extremely unstable.

Taking advantage of the amnesty announced on the occasion of mourning, Beria

ordered the release of many dangerous criminals, which is drastic

aggravated the situation in the country. All this was required by Beria, so that when

opportunity to achieve for himself and the department subordinate to him an extraordinary

tea powers and seize power. The policy of the new leadership in the century

The autumn days of 1953 were controversial, reflecting the contradictions in his

composition. At Zhukov’s request, most of the military personnel returned from prison.

nykh.But the Gulag continued to exist, the same slogans hung everywhere and

portraits of Stalin.

N.S. Khrushchev.Son showed extraordinary activity during these weeks

a poor peasant from the Kursk province, who knew the Shah in his youth

Terek labor, he did not hesitate to accept the revolution. At the end of 1917

joined the Bolshevik Party. Was an organizer and political commissar

mining battalions. Since 1924 he was at party work and

went through all the steps of the apparatus ladder. For many years, Khrushchev treated

to Stalin with genuine adoration, taking everything he said as high-

Stalin trusted Khrushchev with the greatest truth, promoting him to responsible positions

in Moscow and Ukraine. While in high positions, Khrushchev was involved

to Stalin’s repressions, signed sentences, denounced the “traitors.” But

there was something in his activity that distinguished him from others. In the hungry

In 1946, he was not afraid to ask Stalin to reduce the grain procurement plan.

wok in Ukraine, although unsuccessfully.

When the opportunity arose, I tried to make life easier for ordinary people.

day, could talk for a long time with ordinary collective farmers. Under Stalin, how

As a rule, he pretended to be a simple-minded, dutiful person.

And now it was Khrushchev who took the initiative to unite the members

new leadership for the action against Beria. By cunning and persuasion, threat -

knowing that he would not spare anyone, Khrushchev achieved his goal. In the middle of July

1953 at one of the meetings in the Kremlin, which was chaired by Malenkov, Khrushchev

made accusations against Beria of careerism, nationalism,

connections with the English and Mussavatist (i.e. Azerbaijani bourgeoisie)

noah) intelligence. Khrushchev was supported by Bumanin, Molotov and others. How

How many high-ranking officers arrested Beria? The military side of this

The action was led by Zhukov. By his order, Kantimi-

Rovskaya and Tamanskaya tank divisions, which occupied key positions in

city ​​center. The Kremlin security was completely replaced. Arrested nearby

Beria's closest collaborators. The removal of Beria and his main assistants, and

then the trial, although carried out secretly, and their execution prevented a catastrophe.

rofu, which would be inevitable if they came to power.

Of course, this action, which preempted the coup, was carried out by force.

we, in fact, use Stalin’s methods. However, any alternative

didn't exist then.

In September 1953 N.S. Khrushchev was elected First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.

Articles about the dangers of the “cult of personality” began to appear in the press. Paradox

revealing that he was an opponent of the cult. The revision of Lenin's

affairs." The Kremlin was open for free visits. But at the same time, in

at the end of 1953 in the mines of Vorkuta, which were under the jurisdiction of the still existing

In the war of the Gulag, prisoner strikes were brutally suppressed.

In 1954 Khrushchev made several trips around the country, which was

a significant innovation in political life. His popularity grew.

Malenkov retreated into the shadows. At the beginning of 1955, at a meeting at the post of Chairman

Chairman of the Council of Ministers N.A. Bumanin, a man from the nearest Stalinist

who was surrounded, who managed, however, to orient himself in time to the situation

Ke, who played a certain role in organizing the arrest of Beria. He broke

was better in economic matters than Malenkov, but was an opponent

radical changes acting within the framework of familiar stereotypes. But sa-

my important: on the initiative of N.S. Khrushchev and under his personal control was

The Gulag was liquidated. Millions of innocently repressed people received

the opportunity to return home. It was a great humanistic process,

an important step in the de-Stalinization of Soviet society. But on this path there was a

whether powerful conservative forces such as Molotov, Kaganovich, Malenkov,

Voroshilov, tainted not just by participation, but also by the leadership of mass

repressions, united against Beria in fear for their lives in front of

his cruelty and treachery, they did not want to go further. Soon

After Stalin's death, Khrushchev said in a personal conversation: “I am Khrushchev,

you-Kim (Voroshilov), you-Lazar (Kaganovich), you-Vyacheslav Mikhailovich (Mo-

lots) - we must all bring national repentance for the 37th year." In

This was the watershed between Khrushchev and the conservative forces in

leadership on the eve of the 1956 XX Congress of the CPSU.

Exposing Stalin's personality cult. Significant role

Khrushchev in the field of improving watering.

structures of Soviet society in the field of ideology. Since 1954

Khrushchev delivered a closed report “On the cult of personality and its consequences.”

twiyah." The 20th Party Congress approved the provisions of the report of the Central Committee and instructed the Central Committee of the CPSU

consistently implement measures to ensure complete counter-

substituting the cult of personality with Marxism-Leninism, eliminating its post-

consequences in all areas of party, state and ideological

work, strict adherence to the norms of party life and the principles of collective

of the party leadership developed by V.I. Lenin. Soon after XX

Congress adopted a special resolution of the Central Committee "On the cult of personality and

its consequences", which talked about objective and subjective

reasons for the emergence of Stalin’s personality cult and its harmful consequences

in the field of political, state and economic leadership

But, speaking about the positive contribution of N.S. Khrushchev to the development of Marxist

sko-Leninist ideology, at the same time it must be emphasized that he was

It is common to get ahead of ourselves that rigorous scientific analysis really

during this period it was often replaced by project-making. The brightest illu-

Some provisions of the program can illustrate what has been said

CPSU, adopted at the XXII Party Congress.

The program, as you know, stated that in the next ten

decade (1961-1970) of the USSR "creating the material and technical base of commu-

nizma, will surpass in production per capita the most powerful and

rich country of capitalism USA, the material

welfare and cultural and technical level of workers." On the second

decade (1971-1980) it was planned to create a powerful material and technical

the fundamental basis of communism, which provided an abundance of material

cultural and cultural benefits for the entire population. The program said:

"Soviet society will come close to implementing the principle of distribution

division according to needs, will surpass the gradual transition to a single social

people's property. Thus, the USSR will mainly build

It's a communist society. Life has shown the inconsistency of these

projects. Instead of,