Foreign News: Local Boy Makes Good

Georgia is a proud and fiery republic on the Black Sea, abutting on Armenia and Turkey, where Asia and Europe meet. A mountain-girt southland, incorporated in the Soviet Union in 1921, and still resentful of it, Georgia gave Communism two of its mightiest sons: Joseph Djugashvili

Stalin and Lavrenty Beria. Last week Police Chief Beria, the home-town boy, was back in Tiflis (pop. 520,000), capital of Georgia, to undo a purge that rivaled the bizarre fantasy of the Soviet doctors.

Things began going sour in Georgia—so far as the rest of the world was told—in the fall of 1951. Hundreds, perhaps thousands,of minor...