27-12-2008, 09:15 AM
Paul Rigby Wrote:The Beria Interregnum
I wrote the brief passage years ago. I was both surprised and delighted to see that Anne Applebaum, in her “Gulag: A History” (London: Penguin edition, 2004), offers a very fine two page summary of the sweeping reforms Beria launched almost the instant Stalin died. The most profound domestically concerned a) the gulag, and b) the conduct of the secret police:
Quote:…Beria requested that an amnesty be extended to all prisoners with sentences of five years or less, to all pregnant women, to all women with young children, and to every one under eighteen – a million people in all. The amnesty was announced on 27 March. Releases began immediately…on 16 June he laid all of his cards on the table, openly declaring his intention to ‘liquidate the system of forced labour, on the grounds of economic effectiveness and lack of perspective’…
…Beria made other changes as well. He forbade all secret police cadres from using physical force against arrestees – effectively ending torture. (1)
The point isn’t to start some sort of cult of Beria, but instead to see him clearly for what he was and what he sought to do – and thence to understand the CIA’s desperate desire to thwart him and his reforms. The relevance of Beria to the Kennedy assassination? Kennedy, like Beria before him, sought to end the Cold War.
(1) Anne Applebaum. Gulag: A History (London: Penguin, 2004), pp.430-431.