(2nd July 1953)
V.M. Molotov
Bulganin: Comrade Molotov has the word.
Molotov: Comrades, we are discussing the following issue: Beria’s issue, in relation to which both the special circumstances of the recent months, and the special position of Beria as the manager of the Ministry of Interior Affairs and one of the members of the core of the leadership, must be considered. The special nature of the circumstances, as the comrades here have told already, was that in the aftermath of Stalin’s death we had to demonstrate unity of the Central Committee. It was necessary from both the internal and the international perspectives.
The special nature of the circumstances, in which Beria had found himself, also requires serious attention. Having achieved the position of the leader of the Ministry, which combined the Ministry of State Security with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Beria – as can be seen now – decided to use the apparatus of the Ministry for his anti-Party and anti-Soviet purposes. It was becoming clearer and clearer that he persistently made his way through to the seizure of the leading post in the government. The decisions about the alignment of forces in the Soviet of Ministers and the Central Committee, which were taken during March, were considered by him as no more than a short-term, transitory stage.
His calculations failed. It took only three months for him to be exposed as a traitor, as an enemy of our party and the Soviet State. But these three and a half months deserve special attention.
I consider necessary, first of all, to share some of my personal observations for the last 3 and a half months with the comrades from the Central Committee. These observations, together with the observations made by the other members of the Presidium of the Central Committee, required caution at first, and then imposed certain decisive conclusions, of which you have been informed now.
Here is the first fact, which belongs to these observations.
You, the members of the Plenum of the Central Committee, remember, who stepped forward with the proposal about the Chairman of the Soviet of Ministers in March. It was Beria, who at that time assigned himself this right without prior notice. After that, as you know, the Supreme Soviet gathered. And it was at the Supreme Soviet meeting that Beria came forward with the proposal about the Chairman of the Soviet of Ministers, although he did it again without any decision by the Central Committee.
We, the members of the Presidium of the Central Committee, could not avoid paying attention to this. It was still before the meeting of the Supreme Soviet that I called him on the phone and tried to talk him out of this intention. It seemed to me that it would be more appropriate if our party’s proposal about the Head of the Soviet Government at the Supreme Soviet session came out directly from the Secretary of the Central Committee, comrade Khrushchev. And it was exactly what I had proposed in my conversation with Beria. However, he did not agree with this proposal and insisted that it was him who should step forward with the proposal at the Supreme Soviet. In order not to bring in the difference of opinions, but on the opposite, to demonstrate unity of the leadership core of the party, we had to abstain from bringing this question up for the consideration by the Presidium of the Central Committee.
There was another fact that could not escape attention. You must have been reading the minutes from the Presidium of the Central Committee, and you must have asked yourselves: why is there no signature by the Secretary of the Central Committee under those minutes. There is a no-name signature – “Presidium of the Central Committee”. There had been for a long time, however, a tradition that the minutes of the Presidium of the Central Committee – and prior to that, Politbureau of the Central Committee – were signed by the Secretary of the Central Committee. And this was quite natural. This is how things in all republican central committees and provincial committees were done.
There had been an old established rule, observed under both Lenin and Stalin, that the Chairman of the Council of Ministers presided at the Politbureau meetings, and the Secretary of the Central Committee was responsible for the minutes. So, we also needed the signature by the secretary of the Central Committee. There were no grounds for changing this order of things in the month of March, either. However, it was changed. In relation to this, I addressed comrade Khrushchev: why was there no signature by the Secretary of the Central Committee under the minutes of Presidium? Why did not they bear any name? He agreed that this was not normal, and the previous order had to be restored. I called Malenkov – he too agreed with that. I called Beria – and here I met with objection. To my proposal to restore the normal order, he answered: if this issue was to be solved in such way, other important issues were to be decided, too. Beria did not disclose what “other important issues” he meant. However, itbecame clear that he was waiting for something, and that he did not want to talk about the plans he had on the alignment of forces within the leadership core of the Central Committee.
On the 26th of June the Presidium of the Central Committee was occupied with the issue of Beria’s criminal behaviour, and in the course of two and a half hours demanded explanations on many issues from him. It was then that we asked him to explain, what had he meant when he had been saying that “other important issues” had to be allegedly decided before restoring the signature of the Secretary of the CC under the minutes of Presidium. But he still did not say anything reasonable about it then, except mentioning that allegedly, in relation to this, the way the agenda for the Presidium was put together had to be decided. Seemingly, he still did not want to disclose his plans and simply lied, continuing to hide his thoughts and “plans”.
A third fact which cannot be passed by.
Since March, an abnormal state of affairs regarding the discussion of various important issues had occurred. For some reason, all the questions of international politics were transferred to the Presidium of the Soviet of Ministers and, contrary to the unchanged Bolshevik tradition, ceased to be discussed in the Presidium of CC. It removed from the discussion of international issues comrades Voroshilov, Saburov, Pervukhin, who were not in the Presidium of the Soviet of Ministers. Khrushchev, though, was being invited to the corresponding sessions of the Presidium of the Soviet of Ministers, but his status was, in such case, not quite definite. All this was done under pressure from Beria. Given all this, from his side, as is obvious now, the goal of undermining the authority and the job of the Central Committee was pursued.
The fourth fact, which finally and completely made us cautious in relation to Beria.
For the majority of us, the true political face of Beria became definite when we started the discussion of the German question in May.
A series of facts, which became known to us in recent times, made perfectly clear, that an unfavourable political and economic situation had occurred in the German Democratic Republic; that serious discontent existed among the broad masses of the population of the GDR. This, by the way, was expressed in the fact that for the period since January, 1951 till April, 1953, 450,000 persons moved from the GDR to the West Germany. It was found that the movement of people towards the West Germany especially increased during the first months of this year. Among the ones who ran away, there had been a significant number of workers, including several thousand members of the United Socialist Party of Germany and the Union of Free German Youth. Clearly, it was an indicator of serious shortcomings in our East German friends’ work. Such situation could only be beneficial to Adenauer’s government, to the West German bourgeoisie, and to the foreign imperialist circles.
When the issue was considered, one vivid thing we saw was the excessively rapid course upon industrialisation and the huge new construction that did not match the opportunities. All this was conducted under the conditions when East Germany, among other things, had to bear significant costs of occupation and reparation payments – not to mention the large post-war reconstruction works. At the same time, one should not forget, that East Germany finds itself in special unfavourable conditions, when the governments of the U.S., England and France, as well as West Germany, – using their status of the occupation powers in Berlin, – have the opportunity to undertake such moves that disorganise the political and economic state of affairs in the GDR. One should also not forget that Germany remains to be split in two parts, while the traces of Hitlerite influence are far from being gotten rid of – all over Germany.
In such conditions, we reckoned as our duty to take urgent measures to help our German friends to correct as soon as possible the clearly leftist course that was taken in the GDR, especially since the summer of 1952. And we did so.
When the German question was discussed in the Presidium of the Soviet of Ministers it was uncovered, however, that Beria stood on positions completely alien to our party. At that time, he started to say that we should not occupy ourselves with the construction of socialism in East Germany, and that it would be sufficient if only the West and East Germany united as a peace-loving bourgeois state.
These talks by Beria could not escape our attention. None of us could forget the quite large responsibility lying on Germany for unleashing World War I, and the hence larger responsibility lying on bourgeois Germany for unleashing the second World War. For us as Marxists it was and remains clear that given the existing state of affairs, i.e. the conditions of today’s imperialist era, to start out of the prospect that a bourgeois Germany could be a state that would be peace-loving or neutral towards the USSR, was not only an illusion, but a position alien to communism. One could ask if Beria’s talk about the “peace-loving” bourgeois Germany could be a polemic exaggeration; that it could be said in a temper. It soon became clear though that it was completely otherwise.
The draft of the decision by the Presidium of the Soviet of Ministers on this question proposed by Beria suggested to recognise “the course upon the construction of Socialism, which is followed in the GDR, erroneous in today’s conditions”. In relation to this, it was proposed to “retreat, at present, from the course upon construction of socialism in the GDR”. This, of course, we could not accept. On my objection, Beria tried to reply that, look, he suggested to reject the course upon the construction of socialism in the GDR “at present”, but not in general. But this trick did not help him either.
In the draft of the decision, it was proposed by me in both of the above mentioned cases that the words about the erroneousness of the “course upon construction of socialism” should be changed to the “course upon accelerated construction of socialism”, with which everyone agreed. And so it was written in the decision by the Presidium of the Soviet of Ministers of the 27th May despite the initial proposal by Beria.
It can be seen from the above that the talks by Beria at the previous meetings of the Presidium of Soviet of Ministers on the German question had not been accidental. He at that time already went as far as to refuse the course upon Socialism in East Germany and pushed us in all possible ways to accept that the party could reject its main tendency with regard to Germany. He orated that it would be enough for the U.S.S.R. if Germany united as a single state – on capitalist beginnings; as though modern bourgeois Germany could not be connected by close ties with other imperialist states, and as though in present conditions a bourgeois Germany that would not be at the same time an aggressive, imperialist Germany, could exist. Thus the fact that Beria did not stand on communist positions started to reveal itself. In such situation we felt that we had, in case of Beria, a person who had nothing to do with our party; that this was a man of the bourgeois camp, that this was an enemy of the U.S.S.R.
The capitulationary nature of Beria’s suggestions on the German question is evident. De facto he demanded capitulation in front of the so called “Western” bourgeois states. He insisted that we reject the course upon strengthening the people’s democratic system in the GDR, which leads to socialism. He insisted on releasing German imperialism’s hands not only in the Western, but also in the Eastern Germany. This would mean abandoning what was conquered by the blood of our soldiers, blood of our people in the hard struggle against Hitlerism, for it should be clear to us that the existence of the German Democratic Republic which is strengthening the people’s democratic system and implementing its course upon the construction of Socialism step-by-step is a serious blow not only to the German imperialism, but to the whole imperialist System in Europe. Holding the right political course, the German Democratic Republic will become a closer and closer friend to the Soviet Union, and turn into a most serious obstacle to the implementation of imperialist plans in Europe.
So, you see now, how in the political portrait of Beria, what he had been hiding in all possible ways started to reveal itself. At the same time the fact that we had not looked at this man carefully enough started to reveal itself, too. It became clear to us that it was an alien man – the one of the anti-Soviet camp.
Voices. That is correct.
[Molotov] It was not so easy to expose Beria. He kept disguising himself artfully, and for a number of years, he kept sitting in the leadership centre, hiding, with his true face covered. However, the last three-and-a-half months made many things more clear to us. The fact that during this time Beria clearly loosened himself and showed excessive self-confidence also helped to it. As a result of all this, he has been exposed and imprisoned. I suggest – this decision by the Presidium of the Central Committee should be approved. (Stormy ovation).
Voices. That is correct.
[Molotov.] For a period of several years we, the members of the Presidium of the Central Committee, stood close to Beria, and often had to deal with him. But only now it has become clear to us, how alien this man was to us and what a dirty, immoral specimen this was. Now it is clear that he had caused a lot of harm to our party and the Soviet state, and that it was a gross criminal and a dangerous chevalier of fortune. There cannot be any doubt that he had been making his way through, or, to say better, stealthily creeping up to conquering the highest position in the state. He made plans to use the Ministry of Internal Affairs to clear his way, in order to stand above the Government and the Party. But he turned out to be too shortsighted and made a rough miscalculation.
Due to his political short-sightedness, he relied too much on a number of certain protégés of his in the Internal Ministry apparatus. As it turned out, he listened upon everyone of us. He watched our every step. He already started to make open attempts to break the party’s line, and at the same time to bring down certain inconvenient people, whom he wanted to finish off as soon as possible.
For what reason did he need this? Would it be necessary for him if he, in the same way as everyone else, held his way towards the victory of Communism? Of course, not! Whoever wants to walk the way of construction of Communism in our country, will not find better comrades than those who are the members of our Central Committee and its leadership core. And he went against the line of the CC, against the leadership core. It is absolutely evident that he was hiding a plan against building Communism in our country. He had another course – a course on Capitalism. He had nothing else, this capitulator-traitor, except returning to Capitalism, just like the other capitulators-traitors whom the party finished off earlier.
I will have to draw your attention one more time to Beria’s attempt to establish a connection with Rankovich and Tito, which comrade Malenkov has already talked about.
It is known that our Central Committee has recently made a decision aimed at changing the official relations with the government of Yugoslavia. In relation to this, certain steps have been made which are known, and it was decided to exchange ambassadors with Yugoslavia.
Malenkov. Naturally, we wanted a normalization of relationships. [Molotov.] The Presidium of the CC came to the conclusion that the line in relation to Yugoslavia that had recently been followed could not be continued. It became clear that as we had failed to solve a certain issue by a frontal attack, we had to change to other methods. It was decided to establish the same relations with Yugoslavia which we had with other bourgeois states connected with the North Atlantic aggressive block: ambassadors, official telegrams, business meetings, and so on.
Beria wanted to use this moment in a completely different way.
According to his plan, a certain representative of the Internal Ministry in Yugoslavia had to pass a letter to Rankovich in Belgrade, in which views alien to our party and the Soviet system were expressed with reference to Beria. According to the plan, the representative of the Internal Ministry had to announce at the meeting with Rankovich: “I am taking the opportunity, in order to pass to you, comrade Rankovich, kind greetings from comrade Beria”, after which it had to be stated that Beria and his friends “stand for the necessity of a fundamental reconsideration and improvement of bilateral relations”, and that “in relation to this, Comrade Beria has asked You (i.e. Rankovich) to personally inform comrade Tito, that if comrade Tito agrees to this point of view, then it would be expedient to organise a confidential meeting of the persons carrying special authorisation on this”, and so on, and so forth. This whole letter made up by Beria counts on establishing close relations with “Com. Rankovich” and “Com. Tito”. Beria failed to send this letter to Yugoslavia – he was arrested as a traitor with the draft of this letter in his pocket.
But isn’t it clear, what this attempt by Beria to conspire with Rankovich and Tito, who behave as enemies of the USSR, means? Isn’t it clear, that this letter, made up by Beria in secret from the real Government, is just another brazen attempt to stab the Soviet State in its back, and to do a direct favour to the Imperialist camp? One this fact would be sufficient to make a conclusion: Beria is an agent of the alien camp, agent of the class enemy.
Voices. That is true.
[Molotov.] Beria had crawled inside our military headquarters, and, hiding in there, was sitting there for a long time. Having waited, he, of course, did not sit with his hands idle. We still have to sort out carefully his deals and petty dealings. Now we have all the necessary means for that.
He wanted to use comrade Stalin’s death for his hostile purposes. Just like our enemies abroad, he counted upon the possibility that our Party would be weakened, and dismay will be in our environment, which he would be able to use for his purposes. We can see now that his calculations were related first of all to the use of the apparatus of the Internal Ministry, though I have no doubt that these calculations had no grounds at all: it cannot be doubted that the overwhelming majority of the chekists would not follow him.
Voices. Correct.
[Molotov.] Of course, certain scoundrels could be found among the Internal Ministry personnel– especially among the people selected by Beria himself. But there are enough of steadfast communists among the staff of the Internal Ministry – just like in other major organisations. And therefore, Beria’s treasonous calculations about the Internal Ministry apparatus could not be correct, although it certainly does not follow from this that the attempts to put these calculations into practice could not cause great harm to the Soviet state.
What are the internal forces in the country, which Beria could count upon?
Could Beria and his affiliates count on support for their hidden plans from the side of the workers, or collective farmers, or the intelligentsia? Of course, not. No real support could be found inside the country – in the working class, among the toilers – for him and his anti-Soviet plans.
His anti-Soviet plans were linked to counting on support from the imperialist camp.
He could mainly count on sympathy and support from certain foreign bourgeois circles – say, the churchills, dullesses, or titos-rankoviches. It was nobody, except bitter enemies of the USSR, that he could count upon in his plans to seize power. It follows from this that we should dig carefully in his biography, in his past, in order to understand completely his heinous treasonous role in our country, in our party.
We studied his biography too little – now we will occupy ourselves with it more seriously. How could this happen, that a mature enemy like Beria could get into our party and its leading body?
This question – if one does not go deep into the reasons for this type of facts – could be given a simple answer: it is a result of insufficient vigilance of the Central Committee, including comrade Stalin. Beria found certain human weaknesses in comrade Stalin – and who does not have them? He skillfully exploited them, which he was successful at for years.
I have had to work in Moscow for a long period of time. Recalling the past, I see, that since the time when Beria came to Moscow in 1938, the general climate and the working environment in the Central Committee started to notably get worse. He spoiled the atmosphere with his intrigues earlier, but especially since the time of his transfer to his job in Moscow.
Beria also played his heinous role in the work by the Central Committee being weakened to the point when plenums of the CC did not meet for several years. The Politbureau of the CC stopped its normal work and did not normally gather in full and so on. All of us, who worked in the centre, did not pay enough attention to Beria’s criminal role in relation to this.
But one cannot be satisfied with the above mentioned answer to the question of how it could happen that Beria made it to the leading centre of our party.
In relation to this, one should pay attention to one principal question: the question of only one party, – i.e. the Communist Party, which is in power, – existing in our country. We were not always fully aware of the significance of this essential political circumstance. However, due to this circumstance, elements who are alien to our party – careerists, non- committed dealers, who want to make use of the party’s stand in power, as well as hidden agents of the class enemy – aspire to join it beside the main mass of the communists who enter our party in order to struggle for Communism as its honest committed supporters. The danger of this must not be underestimated.
There are no antagonistic classes anymore in the USSR, as there are no more capitalists, estate owners, kulaks, etc. There are only two classes in the USSR: workers and peasants, who are friendly related to each other. The friendly union that has been established between the workers and peasants of our country is directed towards the single purpose – the arrival of Communism. Due to the special social conditions that have been pointed out, there is no ground in our country for two or several parties, and only our party – the Communist Party, which heads and leads the union of workers and peasants – exists.
However, the question of the existence of only one party in the USSR is related not only to such a major fact as the lack of antagonistic classes in our country. As we know, even at the time when the kulaks were in existence, the experience of the struggle for the existence of the Soviet state in the conditions of capitalist encirclement showed that the existence of other parties must not be allowed in such conditions. Any other political organisation, which would want to differ in some way from the Communist Party, in our conditions would transform into the class enemy’s weapon, into the foreign capital’s weapon, into an agent of the imperialist powers’ intelligence bodies. At least, for instance, the story of the Left-wing Socialist Revolutionaries should not be forgotten, which is quite educational in this sense.
One need not doubt that the foreign capital would throw any millions and billions of roubles in order to just have an opportunity to rely on a certain political organization in the USSR that would position itself against the Communist Party standing in power. Such a special political organisation could have a most leftist stand and to carry any shop sign, but it would certainly be used in this or other way by the foreign capital and the imperialist intelligence agencies to create a fissure and a split between the working masses of the USSR, which is the dream of the imperialists.
A special organization of such type would be used by them for the purpose of undermining the union of workers and peasants, for the purpose of all kinds of digging under the socialist construction, for the purpose of intriguing and degeneration of the Soviet state. Look, the anticommunist Tito’s clique seized power in Yugoslavia under the mask of Communism. It is this clique that even now calls itself “communist” , although it already serves the North Atlantic imperialist bloc openly. Why wouldn’t it also happen in our country that someone like Beria faked himself as a communist and used all cunning means to win the trust of certain persons and make it up to the main headquarters of our party? The class of bourgeoisie would be, of course, ready to pour a golden rain on such an agent of theirs, and to support him at an appropriate time not only financially, but also by other means. Only such relationship could explain the appearance of such a mature enemy as Beria in our party’s ranks – the one who waited and wriggled for such a long time to use a more appropriate moment, but in the end still failed with shame.
Now we can see that the provocateur Beria had to camouflage himself for a long time, to carry the mask of a communist during many years. It is just one more bright example of how mean the methods that our class enemy use are, and how dodgy it is.
Given all this, Beria used various methods of camouflage.
For instance, he did not abstain from any loud words, by talking – when he considered necessary – about his devotion to the party. To show an image of an ideologically prepared person, Beria used well-known methods of dogmatic reading in his speeches. It was already in the 1930s that a brochure named “On the History of the Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia” appeared under his name. Linked together pretty skillfully, the brochure touches upon pre-revolutionary history of the Bolshevik organizations in Trans-Caucasia and I. V. Stalin’s role in these organisations, which, as we know, does make up remarkable pages in the history of our party. The brochure teems with citations from I. V. Stalin’s articles, and its purpose clearly is to never abstain from all kinds of methods of flattery, in order to attract attention of a certain person. Now it appears that the brochure published under the name “L. Beria” was not at all written by Beria, but by such close friends of his as Sharia, – who crawled inside our party for hostile purposes, – and some others. Beria did not get ashamed to sign his name under a brochure written by some dealers from the circle of his helpers, which served the purpose of contributing to his advancement to a job in the Centre.
For his careerist purposes, Beria also used other methods: methods of a dealer and shameless careerist, whose activity on the job is explained not by considerations of commitment or genuine devotion to the party. One cannot deny his organising abilities, which made a difference in the organisation and implementation of a series of economic undertakings. The party could not refuse using such abilities, when they were directed at the implementation of assignments that were needed. The Party does not refuse even the use of abilities of exposed wreckers, when there are opportunities for this.
Khrushchev: Ramzin got awarded with a Lenin Order.
Molotov. Also, such former wreckers are known, who gave us good models of airplanes and rejected their anti-Soviet past so decisively in the later years that they turned into large-scale activists of our industry as leading engineers-constructors.
Beria, of course, knew that in order to reach leading positions in the state, one had to hold a party membership card and have certain merits in state service. Whether you want it or not, in order to reach high-level positions to influence the work of the central bodies in our country, one has to be trusted by the party. Beria, of course, knew it from long time ago. Now it can be seen that, while remaining always alien to the ideas and goals of our party, he still revealed a lot of skill and even ingenuity, in order to attract attention toward himself, by imitating the corresponding methods used by the active statesmen and true communists. For a period of many years, he had been successful at that, and we should not forget that it is an evidence of insufficient vigilance from our side.
Sometimes we truly underestimated some of his non-bolshevik methods.
In particular, it can be shown in one example, when Beria succeeded in pushing a clearly wrong decision about his friend Sharia, who is alien to our party, through the top partisan bodies. This man, whom I already mentioned in relation with the brochure “On the Question of History of Bolshevik Organizations in the Trans-Caucasia”, was a special protégé of Beria, and he was probably considered by the latter as his ideological inspirer.
In 1948, the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the bolsheviks of Georgia had to consider the case of the brochure by Sharia, at that time a secretary of the CC CP(b) of Georgia. The case was about one of the poetic works by Sharia, completely hostile by its ideological character to our party, which this, excuse me, literary author published by the method of typography printing in 1943 in small number and distributed among people who knew him as handwritten work. Here I have no need to go into details regarding the content of the brochure. It would be enough to read the starting lines from the decision by the Bureau of the CC CP(b) of Georgia in relation to this brochure, in order to understand what the whole deal is about. This decision by the Bureau of the CC CP(b) of Georgia says: “The Bureau of the Georgian Central Committee considers this as a verified fact that in 1943, Sharia wrote an ideologically harmful product of poetry, full of deep pessimism and the mood of religious mysticism, in relation to his son’s death (died of tuberculosis – V.M.). Instead of expelling this alien from the ranks of the party, the Bureau of the CC CP(b) of Georgia, as though formally, denounced the publishing of the “ideologically harmful poetry book” by Sharia, prescribed to release him from the position of the secretary of the CC CP(b) of Georgia on propaganda, and to send him as a teacher to one of the highest education institutes in Tbilisi, which basically meant “releasing the sins” of this passer-by. The decision was based on consideration that Sharia admitted his guilt in relation to publishing this religious mystical brochure.
The deal went further though. The above mentioned decision by the Bureau of the CC CP(b) of Georgia was put forward to the CC VKP(b) for confirmation. Due to Beria’s influence, the Politbureau of the CC VKP(b) approved the decision by the CC CP(b) of Georgia on Sharia without change on May 31, 1948. Besides that, it must be admitted that the Politbureau of the CC VKP(b) had no grounds to confirm the above mentioned decision by the Bureau of the CC CP(b) of Georgia on Sharia. Quite the opposite step should have been taken: the incorrect decision by the CC CP(b) of Georgia on Sharia is cancelled, and the mystical rattle-box purged from the ranks of the party.
Yet, for Beria he was not just a buddy, but an ideologically close person. It would be enough to say that up until Beria’s arrest, this very Sharia worked in his secretariat and was his aid on ideological questions, put together speeches for him, formulated drafts on various kinds of political issues, which Beria put forward for consideration by the highest bodies of the party.
I will go on to other issues.
One must not disregard the fact that it has also been recently that we have taken a few hasty decisions under pressure from Beria. These include, first of all, the decisions made not so long ago in relation to wrongdoing found in national policies in Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus. Here, Beria was especially fierce. He demanded, for instance, comrade Patolichev, the secretary of the Belorussian Central Committee, be removed and replaced with another person, although there were no grounds for this. And Beria excessively inflated the issue of flaws in the national policy in Western Ukraine. The same has to be said about Lithuania.
Having clung to separately taken flaws in party’s work in Ukraine, Belorussia, Lithuania, Beria aspired to turn the correction of the corresponding flaws into such direction, that a blow not to these or other nationalistic sentiments, great imperial or local, but to the time-tested party cadres in these republics, would have been made. At the same time, he tried to undermine the authority of a whole series of responsibility-carrying party personnel. As a result of this, openly nationalist elements, and not only the hesitant ones, came back to life and raised their head. One needs to be aware of this lesson. Such facts are evidence of the fact that we are still far behind in our party work, and that we need to significantly strengthen our struggle with the flaws in it, particularly with regards to the educational party work.
Malenkov. True.
[Molotov.] Yes, comrades, we have to admit, in the form of self-criticism, the existence of such serious shortcomings. One must also admit that some of the recent decisions – as certain pressure from Beria did contribute to them – have to be carefully reconsidered, with the one-sidedness and hastiness in the formulations, revealed in certain cases, gotten rid of.
What did Beria count upon, when he recently started to impose some of his proposals against the party line and the basic party cadres with such insolence? Obviously, he wanted to use the first period after I.V. Stalin’s death as the most appropriate time to strike the party. But it was not only about this.
He could not be unaware of the strength of the political situation in the country. He could not avoid seeing that our country was at a bloom; that it was getting stronger economically; that its technical and scientific achievements were growing every day, that numerous well-qualified cadres for the future immanent upgrade of the socialist construction were being created.
But, comrades, let us not forget that we also have many drawbacks in our work, and that there are such disorders and neglected things in the national economy that for a long time have not received proper attention. In recent years, – often clearly in a rush, – certain decisions have been taken that we need to reconsider and correct urgently. We have already been forced to make a series of such decisions – having cancelled, for example, the decision to build the Turkmen canal. The decision about building this canal was taken at a time without serious preparation. In the beginning, the cost of the construction was estimated at approximately several billion rubles, and the deal was considered more or less justified. However, it soon turned out that the construction of this canal – together with all irrigation and other related works – would cost thirty billion rubles.Everyone also remembers that it was not some Soviet or Party organisations in Turkmenistan who initiated this construction. The corresponding decision was taken at the will of central bodies, and without the necessary discussions with the comrades from Turkmenistan and without any serious preparation at all. At present day, we are not aware of any institutions or comrades in the leadership who would insist on urgency of building this canal. Naturally, we came to the conclusion – cancel the previously taken decision about this construction.The same unpreparedness also played its role in other decisions about certain other construction works, for which many billions of roubles were supposed to be allocated, but the urgency of which had not been proved at all.
On the other hand, you hear from the speeches by comrades Malenkov and Khrushchev, how urgent are, for example, such agricultural issues as animal farming, and vegetable farming, which have not received any attention in recent years. We immediately have to take upon issues of this kind without any delay. A lot of state funding, materials, machine equipment will have to be allocated for this purpose already in the nearest time.
The urgency of these issues was also known to the provocateur Beria. It was exactly for this reason, as can be seen, that not only did not he help to correct or improve the above mentioned branches of economic work, but also took quite the opposite steps. It was clearly noticeable that he hampered the attempts to correct the state of affairs, created obstacles to discussion of these issues and delaying the corresponding measures by all possible means. But no provocateur will be successful in achieving his mean purposes. One just has to occupy oneself with these issues in earnest – without any fear to correct something seriously in our work.
Voices from the audience. True!
[Molotov.] One also has to concentrate on the international situation for a while. Indeed, after the World War II, such changes took place in the international situation that increased the USSR’s weight on the international arena to previously unseen levels. The USSR, together with its friendly states, now unifies 800 million people into one body. In the same ranks with the USSR, such countries as China, North Korea, Poland, Czechoslovakia, GDR, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania, and People’s Republic of Mongolia are standing. Two world markets have been formed, as mentioned so spectacularly and correctly in comrade Stalin’s “Economic Problems”. And the formation of the two world markets, for one of which the USSR is the base, represents a historical event of great importance. The balance of international powers fundamentally changed in favour of the USSR and its friendly states after the Second World War. One cannot deny that there is serious attention toward these events in the capitalist world. Concern is growing in the capitalist states for their future, for their existence, and the governments of imperialist states do not at all sit with their hands folded. New and new adventures against the USSR and people’s democratic countries take place in front of our eyes. In the middle of June, the well- known Berlin adventure, which resulted in a coup of some kind, made a lot of noise. Recently, everything possible is being done to delay the Korean ceasefire, although the measures taken in relation to strengthening the peace-loving steps from the Soviet, Chinese and North Korean side make the implementation of aggressive imperialist plans of this kind difficult. You know that in recent months, we waged the so-called “peace initiative” by the USSR, which brought a lot of hesitation into the ranks of our aggressive opponents. They can smell in the imperialist camp that the
powers of our country and its friends are growing persistently.
If one considers all these circumstances, it will be clear why, in today’s conditions, our class enemies abroad are trying to make their anti-Soviet work more active. Now they have started to resort to open actions of diversion, terror and sabotage in relation to the countries belonging to the camp of socialism and democracy. They are prepared to use almost all possible means to bring disorganisation, or at least in confidence, to the countries of people’s democracy and the USSR. It seems to me that it is in connection to this that we must consider the issue of Beria who became already too loose in the recent weeks, and by doing so, had contributed to his exposal against his will.
During the last three months, it became characteristic for Beria’s behaviour that he started to get more insolent and hasty in his outings against our party and the Soviet government. Clearly, it was not only his personal wish – the fact that he was being rushed also affected this. As can be seen, he was hurried from abroad. It looks like those imperialist circles whom he served as an agent in our environment probably feared to lose the appropriate – in their opinion – moment and, losing their patience, started to push their agent-provocateur towards hasty adventurous activities. The business ended up in complete failure for Beria – another agent of the imperialists, whom they significantly counted upon using.
The class enemy has made another attempt to weaken the leadership of our party, of the combative headquarters of our country. It counted upon weakening our state, but its calculations completely failed. We have cleaned ourselves of one of the most dangerous agents of our class enemy. By doing this, we made our party and the Soviet state stronger [Stormy ovation.] Today, just like before, we stand firmly on our feet. Having purged a dangerous agent-provocateur from our central body, we have become yet more firm.
In our environment, in our leadership core, the relationships have now clarified, which is of huge positive significance: we are not scared to talk or even argue with each other, when it is needed, although it was only recently that we had to watch around, so that we would not be listened to or struck in our back.
Simple, but serious Bolshevik conclusions follow from all this: we have to raise the banner of Bolshevik partisanship, vigilance and adherence to principles even higher, and then we will be able to look forward with more confidence – further and bigger success in construction of Communism will be guaranteed in our country.[Ovation.]
Lavrentiy Beriya. 1953, Stenogramma iyul’kovo plenuma TsK KPSS i drugie dokumenty, sosaviteli V. Naumov, Yu Sigachev, Moskva, Mezhdunarodnyye fond ‘Demokratiya’, 1999, pages 241-254.
Translated from the Russian by Vitaly Pershin.
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