Beria had the “singular ability to inspire both fear and enthusiasm.” “Idolized” by his own henchmen even though he was often harsh and rude, he would shout: “We’ll arrest you and let you rot in the camps… we’ll turn you into camp dust.” A young man like Alyosha Mirtskhulava, whom Beria promoted in the Georgian Party, was still praising Beria for his “humanity, strength, efficiency and patriotism” when he was interviewed for this book in 2002.[134] Yet Beria liked to boast about his victims: “Let me have one night with him and I’ll have him confessing he’s the King of England.” His favourite movies were Westerns but he identified with the Mexican bandits. Beria was well-educated for a Bolshevik magnate. Nevertheless, Stalin teased this architect manqué that his pince-nez were made of clear glass, worn to give an impression of intellectual gravitas.
This deft intriguer, coarse psychopath and sexual adventurer would also have cut throats, seduced ladies-in-waiting and poisoned goblets of wine at the courts of Genghis Khan, Suleiman the Magnificent or Lucrezia Borgia. But this “zealot,” as Svetlana called him, worshipped Stalin in these earlier years—theirs was the relationship of monarch and liege—treating him like a Tsar instead of the first comrade. The older magnates treated Stalin respectfully but familiarly, but even Kaganovich praised him in the Bolshevik lexicon. Beria, however, said, “Oh yes, you are so right, absolutely true, how true” in an obsequious way, recalled Svetlana. “He was always emphasizing that he was devoted to my father and it got through to Stalin that whatever he said, this man supported him.” Bearing a flavour of his steamy Abkhazia to Stalin’s court, Beria was to become even more complex, powerful and depraved, yet less devoted to Marxism as time went on but in 1938, this “colossal figure,” as Artyom puts it, changed everything.9
Beria, like many before him, tried to refuse his promotion. There is no reason to doubt his sincerity—Yagoda had just been shot and the writing was on the wall for Yezhov. His wife Nina did not want to move—but Beria was rapaciously ambitious. When Stalin proposed Beria as NKVD First Deputy, Yezhov pathetically suggested that the Georgian might be a good commissar in his own right. “No, a good deputy,” Stalin reassured him.
Stalin sent Vlasik down to arrange the move. In August, after hurrying back to Georgia to anoint a successor to run Tiflis, Beria arrived in Moscow where, on 22 August 1938, he was appointed First Deputy Narkom of the NKVD. The family were assigned an apartment in the doom-laden House on the Embankment. Stalin arrived to inspect the flat and was not impressed. The bosses lived much better in the warm fertile Caucasus, with its traditions of luxury, wine and plentiful fruit, than elsewhere: Beria had resided in an elegant villa in Tiflis. Stalin suggested they move into the Kremlin but Beria’s wife was unenthusiastic. So finally Stalin chose the Georgian new boy an aristocratic villa on Malaya Nikitskaya in the centre of the city, once the home of a Tsarist General Kuropatkin, where he lived splendidly by Politburo standards. Only Beria had his own mansion.
Stalin treated the newly arrived Berias like a long-lost family. He adored the statuesque blonde Nina Beria whom he always treated “like a daughter”: when the new Georgian leader Candide Charkviani was invited to dinner chez Beria, there was a phone call and a sudden flurry of activity.
“Stalin’s coming!” Nina said, frantically preparing Georgian food. Moments later, Stalin swept in. At the Georgian supra, Stalin and Beria sang together. Even after the Terror, Stalin had not lost a certain spontaneity.10
Beria and Yezhov ostensibly became friends: Beria called his boss “dear Yozhik,” even staying at his dacha. But it could not last in the jungle of Stalin’s court. Beria attended most meetings with Yezhov and took over the intelligence departments. Beria waged a quiet campaign to destroy Blackberry: he invited Khrushchev for dinner where he warned him about Malenkov’s closeness to Yezhov. Khrushchev realized that Beria was really warning him about his own friendship with Yezhov. No doubt Beria had the same chat with Malenkov. But the most telling evidence is the archives: Beria finagled Vyshinsky into complaining to Stalin about Yezhov’s slowness.[135] Stalin did not react but Molotov ordered Yezhov: “It is necessary to pay special attention to Comrade Beria and hurry up. Molotov.” That weather vane of Stalin’s favour, Poskrebyshev, stopped calling Yezhov by the familiar ty and started visiting Beria instead.11
Beria brought a new spirit to the NKVD: Yezhov’s frenzy was replaced with a tight system of terror administration that became the Stalinist method of ruling Russia. But this new efficiency was no consolation to the victims. Beria worked with Yezhov on the interrogations of the fallen magnates, Kosior, Chubar and Eikhe, who were cruelly tortured. Chubar appealed to Stalin and Molotov, revealing his agonies.12
Stalin, Blackberry and Beria now turned to the Far East where the army, under the gifted Marshal Blyukher, had largely escaped the Terror. In late June, the “gloomy demon,” Mekhlis, descended on Blyukher’s command with rabid blood-lust. Setting up his headquarters in his railway carriage like a Civil War chieftain, he was soon sending Stalin and Voroshilov telegrams like this: “The Special Railway Corps leaves bits and pieces of dubious people all over the place …There are 46 German Polish Lithuanian Latvian Galician commanders… I have to go to Vladivostok to purge the corps.” Once there, he boasted to Stalin, “I dismissed 215 political workers, most of them arrested. But the purge… is not finished. I think it’s impossible to leave Khabarovsk without even more harsh investigations…”
When Voroshilov and Budyonny tried to protect officers, Mekhlis sneaked on Voroshilov (they hated each other) to Stalin: “I reported to CC and Narkom (Voroshilov) about the situation in the Secret Service Department. There are a lot of dubious people and spies there… Now C. Voroshilov orders the cancellation of the trial… I can’t agree with the situation.” Even Kaganovich thought Mekhlis “was cruel, he sometimes overdid it!”
As Mekhlis headed east, the Japanese Kwangtung Army probed Soviet defences west of Lake Khasan, leading to a full-scale battle. Blyukher attacked the Japanese between 6 and 11 August and drove them back with heavy losses. Encouraged by Mekhlis, and alarmed by the losses and Blyukher’s hesitations, Stalin berated the Marshal down the telephone: “Tell me honestly, Comrade Blyukher, do you really want to fight the Japanese? If you don’t, then tell me straight, like a good Communist.”
“The sharks have arrived,” Blyukher told his wife. “They want to eat me. Either they eat me or I eat them, but the latter is unlikely.” The killer shark sealed Blyukher’s fate. Mekhlis arrested four of Blyukher’s staff, requesting Stalin and Voroshilov to let him “shoot all four without prosecution by my special order.” Blyukher was sacked, recalled and arrested on 22 October 1938.13
“Now I am done for!” sobbed Yezhov in his office, as he went on executing any prisoners who “may turn against us.” On 29 September, he lost much of his power when Beria was appointed to run the heart of the NKVD: State Security (GUGB). He now co-signed Yezhov’s orders. Blackberry tried to strike back: he proposed to Stalin that Stanislas Redens, Beria’s enemy married to Anna Alliluyeva, become his other deputy. There was no hope of this.
134
The author is grateful to Alyosha Mirtskhulava, Beria’s Georgian Komsomol boss, and later Georgian First Secretary, for his interview in Tbilisi.
135
The case in question concerned an investigation to find the person who had mistakenly burned the books of Lenin, Stalin and Gorky in a furnace: another example of the absurdity and deadliness of the Terror.