(7 of 9)
Then followed the succession of carefully controlled gestures of easing up: 1) an amnesty, signed by Voroshilov, for short-term prisoners; 2) foreigners held in Soviet prisons on espionage counts were released; 3) retail prices were reduced on 125 categories of consumer goods; 4) the Ministry of Internal Affairs announced that the doctors' plot was a frame-up, freed the doctors who had been unjustly tortured; 5) a year-long purge in Georgia was ended with the appointment of a new Premier and new party secretaries; 6) the Communists in Korea announced that they were ready to make important concessions to get a truce; 7) in Austria and in East Germany there was a switch from military to civilian control; 8) the unexpected and damaging June 17 riots in East Germany were followed by confession of error and a promise to make life easier for East Germany; 9) in Latvia and the Ukraine, Communist Party shake-ups took place.
The Extent of Power. Because many of these events involved police action, or its withdrawal, they were attributed by foreign observers to Beria. But if the charges made against him last week are to be accepted, it would seem now that Beria's activity was restricted to the shake-ups in Georgia, Latvia and the Ukraine and the freeing of the doctors. The fact that the general "softening" of Soviet policy has continued since his arrest (including the most sweeping relaxation of all, in Hungary) would indicate that he was not its author. Was he against it? The answer is immaterial. There is nothing in the record, or in the accusations against Beria, to indicate that his fall resulted from anything but a power struggle within the Kremlin.
The liberties and favors showered on Beria by Stalin created the impression among outsiders that Beria was all-powerful in his Ministry of Internal Affairs. But an old killer like Stalin was not the kind of man to turn over such power to another. Evidently, a super-police apparatus channeled directly from Stalin to key control points in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Such an apparatus was already created in the Orgburo and the Party Control Commission, by which Stalin organized himself into power after Lenin's death, and which later became a department of personnel in the Kremlin. Only such an apparatus could have arrested and destroyed former police chief Yagoda. From being dossier clerk to Yezhov, the young Malenkov is said to have graduated to secretarial head of this tidy personnel department. He may well have inherited the apparatus after Stalin's death.
Sensing that his number was up, and knowing that no Soviet police boss has ever outlived his job, Beria may have maneuvered himself, may have tried to build himself a citadel in Georgia, or even to have effected arrests among top party members. No outsider can yet judge how extensive was his control in his ministry, except that it was not sufficient to protect him. That a detachment of tanks and soldiers probably backed up the arresting officers does not necessarily indicate army interest; his own elite secret police formations have that much armor. Beria at the key moment could not control his own ministry. Malenkov was emerging as the actual, as well as the nominal, head of party and state.