On the evening of 5 March, two hours before Stalin’s death, his heirs met in the Kremlin to assign spheres of power. The most prominent appointments included Georgii Malenkov (Stalin’s heir apparent) as chairman of the Council of Ministers, Lavrentii Beria as head of the Ministry of Interior (reorganized to include the Ministry of State Security), and Viacheslav Molotov as Foreign Minister. After a bizarre incident involving
Initially at least, Khrushchev seemed an unlikely pretender for power: he did not even speak at Stalin’s funeral, an honour reserved for the big three—Malenkov, Beria, and Molotov. None the less, Khrushchev was the consummate party functionary, bore the imprimatur of a top-ranking Stalin aide, and had close ties throughout the party apparatus. He also had extraordinary sangfroid and the capacity to speak effectively; his role at the Central Committee plenums, in particular, shows a self-confident ‘
Beria, with the vast forces of the Interior Ministry and secret police at his command, was the most formidable contender. Recent archival disclosures have shown that, whether from conviction or cunning, Beria suddenly struck the pose of ‘liberal’ reformer. Within days of Stalin’s death, he not only spoke of the need to protect civil rights but even arranged an amnesty on 27 March that released many prisoners (too many common criminals, in Khrushchev’s view), including some people associated with the élite (for example, Molotov’s wife, Mikoyan’s son, and Khrushchev’s own daughter-in-law). Beria also shifted the GULAG from his own domain and later proposed that it be liquidated ‘in view of its economic inefficiency and lack of prospects’. He also exposed some major fabrications in late Stalinism, most notably the ‘doctors’ plot’ (4 April) and also proposed to release 58,000 former ‘counter-revolutionaries’ from permanent exile. The security chief even challenged the policy of Russian predominance in non-Russian republics; heeding Beria’s recommendation, on 12 June 1953 the party leadership agreed to condemn various ‘distortions’, to replace officials who did not speak the local language, and to require the use of the local language in republican communications. Beria also took an interest in foreign affairs, proposing to allow a unified (but neutral) Germany and to seek a
United by fear if not principle, Beria’s adversaries called a meeting of the Presidium on 26 June 1953 and, in his presence, voted unanimously for his immediate dismissal and arrest. Shortly afterwards they convened a plenum of the Central Committee to discuss the ‘criminal anti-party and anti-state activities of Beria’. An opening address by Malenkov gave a vivid description of how Beria ‘put the Ministry of Interior above the party and government’, with the result that the ministry ‘acquired too great an influence and was no longer under the control of the party’. Malenkov also castigated Beria’s newfound liberalism (in particular, his mass amnesty of criminals and proposals for a radical change in policy towards Germany and Yugoslavia) and denounced his maladroit attempts to gather information on ‘shortcomings in the work of party organs’ and even to maintain surveillance on members of the Presidium. The second main address was delivered by Khrushchev, who reiterated the attack on Beria’s belated liberalism and bluntly accused the police of fabricating ‘many falsified cases’. Six months later Beria and five of his close associates were tried, pronounced guilty, and shot.
