26-01-2009, 10:34 PM
Paul Rigby Wrote:“Did Beria really intend to introduce a new regime, grant more freedom to the oppressed nations, abolish collective farming, initiate a policy of concilitation with the West – in short, revert to the Menshevik, Social-Democratic ideals of his youth?
One thing is certain: nobody knew better than he, Beria, in his position of potent, omniscient Chief of Secret Police, that extensive reforms were objectively necessary to get the Soviet system out of the blind alley into which Stalin had led it. And nobody but he could make such an attempt, for his Cheka was not, like the Party, entwined with the whole machine of State and economy. The Cheka was isolated, and therefore efficient; Cheka officials were in no danger of losing their jobs in the course of such radical reforms, as would be the case with Party officials, but would rather gain new positions of influence. Most important of all, the Cheka was not, like the Party, tied to a rigid ideology. The Cheka was an instrument of power for power’s sake. It can do without any ideology, can serve any ideology and betray any ideology. It has no ideology of its own, because it is the abstract organisation of absolute power which is not ashamed of its nakedness and therefore does not need the fig-leaf of an ideology…” (4).
(4) Bernhard Roeder. Katorga: An Aspect of Modern Slavery (London: William Heinemann,1958), p.210.
“His generation of Chekists contained many such: indeed, the leadership of the KGB had to a large extent thrown in their lot with Beria - knowing, from their unillusioned intelligence of the state of the Soviet economy and of Soviet morale, that only radical reform might save it. In the event, it did not: the KGB leadership turned against Beria, and helped organise the abortive coup against him. But for Lebedev and a few like him, Beria was a ticket out of a dead end.”
OK, I confess, I did substitute "Beria" for "Gorbachev" throughout the above paragraph, but I think you'll agree, eerily familiar, is it not?
John Lloyd, "Why nobody lords it over the press barons: As a former KGB man takes over London's evening paper, John Lloyd calls for him to be held to account," The Guardian, Media, Monday, 26 January 2009, p.3
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jan...ng-murdoch
By the way, Lloyd has it about-face: The Chekists dumped Gorby precisely because he couldn't bring himself to dissolve the Soviet Union.