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Stalin had his own, special person, who enjoyed the unlimited confidence of the leader - the head of the NKVD, Lavrenty Beria. But after the death of their patrons, such people become too dangerous for the authorities.

How did they get rid of a man who, according to rumors, had serious compromising evidence on almost every army general and party member?
At all times, Lavrenty Beria was perceived only as a fierce beast, a killer and executor of the dictator's fierce plans. The circumstances of his death have not yet been fully clarified: there are many options and interpretations of certain events associated with his execution.
There was an opinion that Lavrenty Pavlovich had a dossier with compromising information on almost every marshal and general, and a wiretap was secretly installed in the apartments of Zhukov, Budyonny and other top military leaders. Between the head of the NKVD and the military leaders more than once arose conflict situations, which sometimes had to be resolved by the Supreme Commander himself.
After Stalin's death, as you know, three top party officials entered the struggle for power - Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov, chairman of the Council of Ministers, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, and Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria himself. Everyone understood that the established triumvirate was a temporary phenomenon. The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was the first to enter the deadly race.
His plan for progressive reforms very soon began to gain popularity in wide circles: the "cases of doctors" were terminated, the first wave of rehabilitation of political prisoners was carried out, and a ban on physical measures of influence on interrogated people was announced. Some plans of the head of the NKVD, such as the abolition of passport restrictions, the elimination of party control over economic activity, curtailing the construction of socialism in the GDR and the unification of Germany frightened and shocked the party leaders.


“We saw that Beria began to force things,” Khrushchev writes in his Memoirs. - I thought that it was necessary to act urgently, and told Malenkov that it was necessary to talk with other members of the Presidium about this ... I spoke with Bulganin on this issue before and knew his opinion. He stood on the right positions and correctly understood the danger that threatened the party and all of us from Beria. Malenkov also agreed: "Yes, it's time to act."
Meticulous and top-secret preparations began - joking with such a powerful person was extremely dangerous. First, it was necessary to enlist the support of party members, their "processing".
Beria held a mass amnesty and rehabilitation of political prisoners
But while Khrushchev was conducting secret negotiations with members of the Presidium of the Central Committee, Beria, according to supporters of Nikita Sergeevich, also did not sit idly by. His deputies and part-time Khrushchev's secret informants - Serov and Malenkov's protégé Kruglov - allegedly informed the first secretary that Beria had sent a directive to the "authorities" on the ground to switch to combat readiness mode (this directive has not yet been published, which gives reason to doubt its existence). They also informed the secretary of the Central Committee about a certain operational plan for the putsch and named the names of the conspirators. According to informants, Beria, with the support of Malenkov, planned to crack down on the "top" quite simply: to arrest members of the Presidium of the Central Committee after a collective viewing of the performance at the Bolshoi Theater, using their personal protection.


Khrushchev managed to work out a plan - to arrest Comrade Beria during plenary session Central Committee. But who is to be trusted with such a delicate matter? This point is still controversial among historians: some believe that the choice immediately fell on Marshal Zhukov, who had authority both in the army and in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, some believe that the commander entered the “capture group” by accident.
Who exactly arrested Beria is not known for certain.
On June 26, 1953, it was supposed to discuss the case of the former Minister of State Security Ignatiev at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU. However, it became known that the day before he fell ill and could not attend the meeting. The meeting was devoted to criticism of Beria, which the members of the Presidium had agreed on in advance. According to Molotov's memoirs, the discussion went on for two and a half hours. Then Comrade Malenkov timidly stood up and put forward a proposal to remove Comrade Beria from all his posts. At a prearranged signal from the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, several armed men entered the meeting room and the criticized Beria was arrested. According to Khrushchev, Beria was arrested by Zhukov, according to another, by General Moskalenko and the people accompanying him, whom the Kremlin commandant let through, having been instructed by Malenkov and Khrushchev. Zhukov in this version is given the role of a man who was ordered to search the former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Then he was transferred to the Moscow garrison guardhouse "Aleshinsky barracks". The operation was accompanied by army cover: the Kantemirovskaya and Tamanskaya divisions were raised and sent to Moscow on alarm. On June 27, Beria was transferred to the bunker of the headquarters of the Moscow Military District.


According to eyewitnesses, having barely come to his senses, Beria began to drum on the door and, in an ultimatum form, demanded from the head of the guard an immediate meeting with Malenkov, which he was denied. Then he demanded paper and a pencil. After telephone consultations with the Kremlin, Beria was given what he asked for. The former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs began to scribble letters to Malenkov, Khrushchev, Bulganin, and the entire Presidium of the Central Committee. In his messages, Beria asked for a chance to live up to expectations, and Malenkov begged to take care of his family.
Beria was accused of ties with the West and the rape of a 16-year-old girl
On the day of Beria's arrest on June 26, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR "On the criminal anti-state actions of Beria" was issued signed by Voroshilov and Secretary Pegov. The decree stated the criminal anti-state actions of L.P. Beria, aimed at undermining the Soviet state in the interests of foreign capital. By this decree, Beria was deprived of all powers, titles and awards. The last paragraph of the decree decided to immediately transfer the case of Beria to the Supreme Court of the USSR, bypassing the investigation.
It became clear that everyone would remember Stalin's former assistant.
From the transcript of the interrogation of Beria. Questions are asked by the Prosecutor General of the USSR.
"Question. Do you recognize your criminal moral decay?
Answer. There is little. This is my fault.
Question. Do you admit that, in your criminal moral decay, you have come to associate with women associated with foreign intelligence services?
Answer. Maybe, I dont know.
Question. At your direction, Sarkisov and Nadaria kept lists of your mistresses. You are presented with 9 lists containing 62 women. Are these lists of your cohabitants?
Answer. There are also my cohabitants.
Question. Have you had syphilis?
Answer. I was ill with syphilis during the war, I think in 1943, and was treated.”
On July 7, 1953, following the results of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the above resolution was adopted. Information about the plenum was published in the newspapers on 10 July. So Beria was recognized as a criminal before any investigation and trial.
Portraits of Beria were removed from everywhere, and subscribers of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia received a recommendation to remove pages 22 and 23 from volume 2, which contained the biography of the former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Beria and his accomplices were tried in the office of the commander of the Moscow Military District. Marshal Ivan Stepanovich Konev was appointed chairman of the special judicial presence. The closed court session lasted from December 16 to December 21, 1953. After the death sentence was passed, Beria was immediately shot. The sentence was carried out by Pavel Fedorovich Batitsky, later Marshal of the Soviet Union, Commander-in-Chief of the country's Air Defense Forces.
The question of how the accused behaved in the last minutes of his life causes controversy: some argue that two soldiers were dragging him in tears, others testified to the stamina of Beria, who, until the very execution of the sentence, asked for a second chance.
However, it has not yet been proven whether there was an execution at all. There are versions, moreover not unfounded, that Beria was shot back in July 1953. This point of view was defended in his book by the son of the convict, Sergei Beria. However, as it was in reality, we are unlikely to ever know.

Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev became a kind of "ram", with the help of which the plans of Stalin and Beria were crushed. And on the basis of his memoirs, many "black" myths were formed, discrediting Stalin era. Although a number of anti-Stalinist historians, like N. Werth, admit that Khrushchev's memoirs must be "treated with caution." Although, simply put, they are false. Khrushchev lied boldly, without hesitation.

Suffice it to say about the so-called. "Stalinist orgies", where the leader allegedly drunk the guests to death, etc. For some reason, only Khrushchev remembered these "orgies", other politicians, military leaders who attended Stalin's lunches and dinners do not remember them. Or remember about Stalin, who “missed” at the beginning of the war, who allegedly fled to the dacha in a panic. Although there are already published documents, including Stalin's visitor's log, saying that the leader of the USSR was at the workplace and worked hard.

Khrushchev himself was a "repentant" Trotskyist, who in the early 1920s was almost expelled from the party for "pettyrification", that is, for his passion for personal enrichment. He repented of these sins before Kaganovich, who became his first patron. In the early 1930s, he was the secretary of the party organization at the Industrial Academy. It also consisted of students Nadezhda Alliluyeva (Stalin's wife), Dora Khazan - Andreev's wife, Maria Kaganovich, Polina Zhemchuzhina - Molotov's wife. Alliluyeva, talking about a young, energetic secretary, contributed to Khrushchev's promotion up the party ladder.

During this period, supporters of Trotsky and Zinoviev were removed from their posts, so in 1935 Stalin put Khrushchev at the head of the Moscow party organization, then he entered the Central Committee and the Politburo. Khrushchev "marked" himself as an active participant in the repressions in the Moscow party organization and in Ukraine. He was not a pathological killer, a sadist, like some Chekists. Khrushchev was an ordinary soulless careerist, ready for anything for personal gain. An interesting fact is that if many of the "activists" of the repressions were then "cleaned up" themselves, Khrushchev, like Malenkov, came out "dry from the water."

Khrushchev possessed a strange "unsinkability", despite a lot of mistakes for which others paid with their lives or careers. So, in 1942, Khrushchev, being a member of the Military Council of the front, together with Marshal Timoshenko, proposed an offensive near Kharkov, from the Barvenkovsky ledge. They "overlooked" on the flank tank army von Kleist. The General Staff objected, believing that it was dangerous to advance from the ledge, it was actually a ready-made "boiler". But Khrushchev and Timoshenko insisted on their own. The matter ended in disaster, and for the entire southern strategic direction. Khrushchev was not hurt.

There is a version that Khrushchev also had a personal motive for hating Stalin. This dark history with his son. Leonid Khrushchev, an Air Force officer, committed a crime in the rear. According to one version, Khrushchev was able to beg the leader for forgiveness - he was sent to the front, and he died there. According to another version, he survived after the plane crash, was captured and collaborated with the Germans, when they found out about this after his release, he was shot. This version is indirectly confirmed in the memoirs of Vyacheslav Molotov: “Khrushchev was in his heart an opponent of Stalin. Stalin is everything and everything, but in the soul it’s different. His personal anger pushes him to any steps. Anger at Stalin for the fact that his son got into such a position that he was actually shot. After such anger, he goes to any lengths to sully Stalin's name.

In 1946-1947, Khrushchev headed the Communist Party of Ukraine. He was a bad manager, with his flow of instructions, administrative jerking, he confused the situation in agriculture. And when there was a crop failure, this situation led to famine. At first, he fell into disgrace, but soon he headed everything. Agriculture THE USSR. And here he "distinguished himself" by ill-conceived experiments and "reforms". After that, he was again not removed, he became the first secretary of the Moscow Regional Party Committee and the secretary of the Central Committee. By the way, if you remember the “Lysenkoism”, then Khrushchev was the patron of Lysenko.

It is clear that it is difficult to accuse Khrushchev himself of being a conscious agent of "world imperialism", although there was a lot of harm from his activities. The legend about his great intelligence and cunning, which he hid under the image of a "clown" and a peasant joker, is not confirmed either. Although there was a philistine cunning in him, she helped to be afloat, to make a career. But she could not make him the head of state. Khrushchev was too stupid, this is confirmed by all his activities as head of the USSR. How could he become the head of the Union? There is an impression that he was “led”, from post to post, protected from disgrace. Indeed, many needed just such a person at the head of the USSR - a former Trotskyist, an imitator of violent activity that leads to destruction. Not smart, able to "break wood" in any position, offended by Stalin.

Elimination of Beria

The reforms of Beria, the successor of Stalin's cause, were not pleasing, both to the "world behind the scenes" and to a significant part of the highest party apparatus of the USSR. Here their interests converged. Part of the then party elite of the USSR wanted to retain the levers of power, which made it possible to "live beautifully." The Western elites needed confrontation, it gave super-profits.

It is clear that the myth of the "Beria conspiracy" was invented. If Beria had made such a conspiracy, would he have been so careless. Allowed himself to be destroyed so easily? The conspirator was Khrushchev and those who stood behind him. It is Khrushchev who is to blame for this. palace coup", which interrupted quite interesting scenario for the future USSR. Other leaders of the Union also participated in the conspiracy, their motives are different. Malenkov, apparently, feared for his power, fearing the omnipotence of Beria. "Conservatives" - Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich were afraid of radical changes, and perhaps the "Jewish Wives Institute" said its weighty word. But Khrushchev's main trump card was Zhukov, who was backed by the military. For the military, Beria was a traditional competitor, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and special services. Zhukov also had a personal motive that does not paint this commander - Beria revealed the marshal's "trophy operation" when he took a lot of valuables out of Germany. Then the marshal fell into disgrace with Stalin.

On July 10, 1953, troops were marching into the capital. According to the official version, Beria was arrested as a "conspirator" and shot in December. In reality, Beria's son, Sergo, speaks about this, and Khrushchev himself blabbed, Beria was killed immediately. They were afraid that he would be beaten off. After the assassination, a Plenum of the Central Committee was convened, where they accused Lavrenty Pavlovich of "criminal encroachment on the party leadership of society", "plans for the restoration of capitalism", recognized him as an "English spy". Under the pretext of “exposing the conspiracy,” Khrushchev proposed “strengthening the party leadership at all levels of the party and the state apparatus” (i.e., completely burying the plans of Stalin and Beria to remove the party from state power), as a result, the head of the party, Khrushchev, bypassed Malenkov.

A wave of terror swept through: they shot the "executioners of Beria" - Dekanozov and Kobulov, although they had nothing to do with punitive bodies, but were engaged in intelligence and diplomacy. They carried out a "cleansing" in the scientific institutions supervised by Beria. His excellent strategic intelligence system was purposefully destroyed. The best specialists in this area - Raikhman, Eitington, Sudoplatov, Meshik, Milstein, Zarubin, Korotkov, Polyakov and others were repressed. Some were executed, others were imprisoned, and others were fired. It should be noted one more interesting point - those who ensured the creation of a nuclear weapon in the USSR and organized the liquidation of Trotsky fell under the "skating rink".

Sources:

Werth N. History of the Soviet State. M., 1994.
Kremlev S. Beria. The best manager of the 20th century. M., 2011.
Mukhin Yu. I. Why was Stalin killed? M., 2004.
Mukhin Y. Assassins of Stalin. M., 2007.
Mukhin Yu. I. USSR named after Beria. M., 2008.
Semanov S. N. Stalin. Lessons of life and activity. M., 2002.
Shambarov V. Anti-Soviet. M., 2011.

On December 18, 1953, in the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR, a closed trial began against Lavrenty Beria, a former member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR. Several other people were involved with him in this case. However, there was no trial as such - with meetings, presentation of evidence, interrogations of the defendants, speeches by lawyers - there was no. Yes, it was not intended.

Decree of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU P43 / I under the heading "strictly secret" dated December 10, 1953 "Questions of the Prosecutor General of the USSR" (stored in the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation) read: "Accept the proposal of the Prosecutor General of the USSR to consider the case on charges of Beria and his accomplices in a closed court session without the participation of the parties in the manner prescribed by the Law of December 1, 1934.

The law of December 1, 1934 is the infamous resolution of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, which provided for a special procedure for investigating and considering cases “of terrorist organizations or terrorist acts against workers Soviet power". In particular, such cases were heard without the participation of the parties - without the presence of the accused, and the presence of a defense lawyer was not provided for at all. Cassation appeals against sentences and petitions for clemency were not allowed, and the sentence to capital punishment itself was prescribed "to be carried out immediately after the verdict."

The style of the indictment, approved by the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, one to one resembled the style of Beria's accusations of the era of the Great Terror. Beria, I quote from the document, “gathered together a treacherous group of conspirators hostile to the Soviet state, whose criminal goal was to use the bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs […] against Communist Party and the government of the USSR in the interests of foreign capital […] to seize power and eliminate the Soviet worker-peasant system in order to restore capitalism and restore the rule of the bourgeoisie”, took measures “to revive the remnants of bourgeois-nationalist elements in union republics to sow enmity and discord among the peoples of the USSR.

According to the prosecutors, “Beria made connections with foreign intelligence services back in the period civil war”, collaborated with British intelligence, “maintained and expanded his secret criminal ties with foreign intelligence services through spies sent by them”, Beria and his accomplices “performed reprisals against people objectionable to them”, “committed terrorist murders of persons from whom they feared exposure” , "committed a number of traitorous acts", "acted as agents of international imperialism, as the worst enemies of the Soviet people."

It was all over already on December 23, 1953: the sentence - capital punishment - execution. According to the act on the execution of the sentence, published in 1999 in the collection of documents “Lavrenty Beria. 1953. Transcript of the July plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU and other documents "," this date, at 19 hours 50 minutes, on the basis of the order of the Chairman of the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR dated December 23, 1953, No. 003, by me, the commandant of the Special Judicial Presence, Colonel General Batitsky P.F. in the presence Prosecutor General USSR Acting State Counselor of Justice Rudenko R.A. and General of the Army Moskalenko K.S. the verdict of the Special Judicial Presence was carried out in relation to the sentenced to the highest measure of criminal punishment - execution - Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich.

The accusation looks completely absurd: neither Beria nor his accomplices, of course, were traitors, spies, and did not plan to “restore the rule of the bourgeoisie”. Of course, they all participated in the organization of mass repressions, but they were not accused of this, and in general, Beria's case in the sense of the legal procedure was carried out very clumsily. Which is quite understandable: what is the procedure if it was only a struggle for power and settling scores?

Archival investigative file of Beria in in full still not available to researchers. True, in 2012 the collection “The Politburo and the Case of Beria” was published, compiled from documents stored in the Russian state archive socio-political history (RGASPI), which published copies of some of the interrogations of Beria. However, even in terms of volume, it is impossible to call this collection a full-fledged and comprehensive publication of the “Beria case”: it contains only a little more than 1000 pages, while the investigative file is 39 volumes and 10 more voluminous application packages.

The publication contains excerpts from the protocols of interrogations, but the originals of these documents are in the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, and third-party researchers do not have access to them. It was all this secrecy that gave rise to rumors that Beria was shot by a capture group as early as June 26, 1953, that there was no trial of him at all, and all published materials are fake.

Historian Nikita Petrov, one of those few researchers who really held the materials of the “Beria case” in his hands, categorically disagrees with such a formulation of the question:

“For me, there is no doubt: Beria really lived to see the trial, was convicted and shot. There was no need for the authorities to forge documents to store them in the archives - to write letters from the conclusion by Beria's hand, to sign interrogation protocols for him, to put uncomfortable questions to the investigation - and Beria put them! Again his letters, where he prays to his former colleagues about mercy, one cannot read without some pity for the one who wrote them - I saw them myself, they really exist. By the way, during the investigation, Beria behaved quite competently, very actively entered into polemics with the investigation, he is an experienced person. For example, he argued that he joined the Musavatist counterintelligence on the instructions of party bodies.

At first he denied everything, but when he was shown the facts of the executions of 1941, he admitted that this was a gross violation of Soviet laws. When he was shown materials about Mairanovsky's laboratory for testing poisons on humans, he also could not deny that this was a direct crime. But his answer to everything was the same: these were Stalin's instructions. Did the Khrushchevites need to invent all this? For what? After all, these are absolutely secret materials that no one was going to make public either under Khrushchev or after his removal. There are acts on bringing a sentence against Beria - why would they need to be forged if no one was ever going to publish anything? Any examination will prove that this paper was drawn up at that time and by those people, executed according to the rules of office work of that time, signed with the necessary signatures.