(6 of 9)
Beria gained the reputation of being an icily cold political boss, an intellectual. But there is nothing in any of his speeches or writings to suggest more than a mediocre mind. He played stooge to Stalin's grim sense of the comic. At a dinner in which Stalin sat between Tito and Beria, Stalin turned to Tito and asked: "How many people did you kill in your revolution?" While Tito was fumbling for words, Stalin turned to Beria: "And how many did you kill in our revolution?" Said Beria calmly: "Three million."
Though a marshal of the Soviet Union, he seldom wore a uniform and he usually stood a step or two to the rear in public gatherings, a stout man with a flat hat pulled down over cold, darting eyes. On his 50th birthday (in 1949), he was awarded an Order of Lenin, with a citation as fulsome in its praise of him as he had so often been in praise of Stalin, concluding: "We wish you, our comrade in arms, our dear Lavrenty Pavlovich, many years of health, of further fruitful work." He was probably the second most hated man in the Soviet Union.
The first hint that all was not well with Lavrenty Beria was the arrest last January of nine Moscow physicians on charges of having brought about the death of Cominform Director Andrei Zhdanov (in 1948) and Sovinform Boss Alexei Shcherbakov (in 1945) and of plotting to destroy Soviet leaders, meaning—although he was not named—Stalin. The Ministry of Internal Affairs was held to have been culpable. For a while it looked as though Beria might follow Yagoda and Yezhov.
Contracting Power. Stalin, who may have been sufficiently troubled by ill health, and thoughts of his own death, to believe the story about the Kremlin doctors and assent to their arrest, died on March 5. Five months before, at the 19th Communist Party Congress (called suddenly—the first in 13 years), he had set up his succession. He spread the power: the twelve-man Politburo was replaced by a 25-man Presidium, the 71-man Central Committee widened to take in 125 full members and in nonvoting members. The day after Stalin's death an official announcement reduced the Presidium to ten, with five alternates. A few weeks later a new party and state organization, narrower than that planned by Stalin, took shape. As Premier and chairman of the Presidium of the Central Committee, Malenkov was nominally boss of the party and government.
In his funeral oration over Stalin's bier, Malenkov announced "a policy of international cooperation and development of business relations with all countries, a policy based on the . . . possibility of the prolonged coexistence and peaceful competition of two different systems, capitalist and socialist." Beria in his funeral oration promised that "the government will solicitously and incessantly guard [the people's] rights written in the Stalin Constitution," urged "an intensification of vigilance" against enemies who hope that "the heavy loss inflicted on us will lead to disarray and confusion."