Beria archive. The secret of Beria's mansion. Beria's personal archive. Political testament of the genius of power

The execution of the “bloody” Stalinist Commissar 65 years ago was staged. Khrushchev and Malenkov hid their former colleague in South America, researchers say.

According to the official version, Lavrenty Beria was arrested on June 26, 1953 in the Kremlin and on December 23 the same year, by a court verdict, he was shot in an underground bunker in the courtyard of the headquarters of the Moscow Military District.

However, there is a lot of darkness in this story. There is a document about the death of Beria. It was signed by three officials - Colonel General Batitsky, Prosecutor General of the USSR Rudenko and General of the Army Moskalenko. The document is titled: “Act. 1953, December 23 days.

The document raises no doubts about its authenticity, unless, of course, it is compared with other similar documents. Now there is such an opportunity. And, as the archives testify, the official data of those years too often diverge from reality. Therefore, the attention of historians is attracted by other versions about the fate of Beria, living in the form of rumors. Two of them are especially sensational.

The first suggests that Beria somehow managed to avoid the trap prepared against him during the conspiracy of former associates, or even escape from the arrest that had already happened and hide in Latin America. And so he was able to stay alive.

The second rumor says that during the arrest of Beria, the marshal and his guards resisted and were killed. They even name the author of the fatal shot, namely Khrushchev. There are those who say that the pre-trial execution took place in the already mentioned bunker almost immediately after Beria's arrest in the Kremlin.

Which of these versions to believe? Especially in light of the fact that no one has ever seen the ashes of Beria, and no one knows where he is buried. Not so long ago, two versions were confirmed at once that Beria still survived.

Marshal's trap

As the well-known researcher of Soviet history Nikolai Zenkovich notes, Khrushchev liked to tell his foreign interlocutors how the action against Beria was carried out. The plot, with some changes, is basically the same.

According to one of Khrushchev's stories, Beria's end was like this. Khrushchev first convinced G. M. Malenkov and N. A. Bulganin, and then the rest of the members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, that if Beria was not liquidated in June 1953, then he would send all members of the Presidium to prison. Everyone probably thought so, although everyone was afraid to say it out loud. Khrushchev was not afraid. Only the technique of carrying out the operation against Beria was difficult. The normal procedure - an open discussion of the accusation against the marshal in the Presidium of the Central Committee or at the plenum of the party - fell away. There was a danger that as soon as Beria found out about the accusations against him, he would immediately carry out a coup d'état and shoot all his rival comrades-in-arms. According to one, very common, version, Beria intended to arrest the entire Presidium of the Central Committee at the Bolshoi Theater, at the premiere of Yuri Shaporin's opera The Decembrists.

The action was allegedly scheduled for June 27th. Although, as N. Zenkovich notes, these rumors could be spread in order to convince the public that the villain Beria himself was plotting against the leadership of the USSR, and the “core” of the Central Committee of the party had no choice but a preemptive strike.
Thus, in the fight against Beria, the conspirators had only one way: to deceive and lure him into a trap. According to one version, the operation against Beria was timed to coincide with the beginning of the summer army maneuvers (interestingly, there is no mention of maneuvers in the memoirs of the military themselves). Several Siberian divisions were also to take part in the exercises of the Moscow Military District (MVO) (just in case, if Beria's supporters were in the Moscow divisions). At a meeting of the Council of Ministers held on June 26, the leadership of the Ministry of Defense and the chief of the General Staff reported on the progress of the maneuvers. A group of military men was also present in the hall, headed by Marshal Zhukov (he had already been transferred from Sverdlovsk to Moscow and held the post of Deputy Minister of Defense) and the commander of the Moscow Military District, General K. S. Moskalenko.

Malenkov declared the joint meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers open. And then he turned to Zhukov, so that he "on behalf of the Soviet government" detained Beria. Zhukov commanded Beria: "Hands up!" Moskalenko and other generals drew their weapons to prevent provocation from Beria.

Then the generals took Beria into custody and took him to the next room, next to Malenkov's office. At the suggestion of Khrushchev, he was immediately dismissed from his post as Prosecutor General of the USSR and Rudenko, Khrushchev's man, was appointed in his place.

Then the Presidium of the Central Committee discussed the future fate of Beria: what to do with him next and what to do with him? There were two solutions: to keep Beria under arrest and conduct an investigation, or to immediately shoot him, and then retroactively formalize the death sentence in a legal manner. It was dangerous to make the first decision: the entire state security apparatus and internal troops stood behind Beria, and he could easily be released. To make the second decision - to immediately shoot Beria - there were no legal grounds.

After discussing both options, they came to the conclusion: Beria still needs to be shot immediately in order to exclude the possibility of a riot. The executor of this sentence - in the same next room - in Khrushchev's stories was once General Moskalenko, in another - Mikoyan, and in the third - even Khrushchev himself (he added: further investigation of the Beria case, they say, fully confirmed that they shot him correctly) .

Where is Beria buried?

Russian researchers N. Zenkovich and S. Gribanov collected many documents about the fate of Beria after his arrest. But especially valuable evidence on this subject was found in the archives of Hero Soviet Union, scout and former head of the Union of Writers of the USSR Vladimir Karpov. Studying the life of Marshal G. Zhukov, he put an end to the dispute whether Zhukov participated in the arrest of Beria. In the secret handwritten memoirs of the marshal he found, it is directly stated: he not only participated, but also led the capture group. So, the statement of Beria's son Sergo, they say, Zhukov had nothing to do with the arrest of his father, is not true!

In the opinion of historians, Karpov's find is also important because it refutes the rumor about Nikita Khrushchev's heroic shot during the arrest of the all-powerful Minister of the Interior.
What happened after the arrest, Zhukov did not personally see and therefore wrote what he learned from other people's words, namely: “After the trial, Beria was shot by those who guarded him. During the execution, Beria behaved very badly, like the very last coward, wept hysterically, knelt down, and, finally, got all dirty. In a word, he lived ugly and died even more ugly. Note: Zhukov was told so, but he himself did not see it.

And here is what the military journalist S. Gribanov managed to learn from the “real” “author” of the bullet for Beria, then Colonel General P.F. Batitsky: “We took Beria up the stairs to the dungeon. That's where I shot him."

Everything would be fine, researcher Nikolai Dobryukha notes, if other witnesses to the execution, and even General Batitsky himself, said the same thing everywhere. Although, inconsistencies could also occur due to negligence or literary fantasies of researchers. One of them, for example, the son of the revolutionary Antonov-Ovseenko, wrote that, they say, Beria was executed in the bunker of the MVO headquarters, in the presence of Prosecutor General Rudenko, who read out the verdict. The marshal was shot by General Batitsky. After examining the body by a doctor, "Beria's body was wrapped in canvas and sent to the crematorium."
Everything would be fine, the researchers notice, only where are the documents confirming the execution and burning of Beria? It remains a mystery, for example, that, as follows from the act of execution dated 12/23/1953, for some reason the doctor required in such cases was not present at the death of Beria. Yes and published by different authors The lists of those present at the execution do not match. No one saw another act - cremation, as well as the body of the executed one. Of course, with the exception of the three who signed the act. So, the question arises: “Was it Beria who was shot?”
These discrepancies could have been ignored if Beria's son Sergo had not insisted that a member of that same court, Shvernik, personally told him: "I was a member of the tribunal in the case of your father, but I never saw him." Even more doubts were raised in Sergo by the confessions of a member of the court, the former secretary of the Central Committee Mikhailov, who stated more frankly: “A completely different person was sitting in the courtroom.” But then he explained this: either instead of Beria, an actor was put in the dock, or did the marshal himself change beyond recognition during his arrest? It is possible, some researchers suggest, that Beria could have twins. ((A man with a mustache from Argentina
And now about the South American trace of the post-execution biography of Lavrenty Beria.
In 1958, Beria's son Sergo and wife Nina Teimurazovna lived in Sverdlovsk under their wife's maiden name, Gegechkori (immediately after her husband's arrest, Nina Teimurazovna ended up in Butyrka prison). Once, in her mailbox, Nina Teimurazovna found a photograph in which Lavrenty Beria was depicted with some lady on May Square in the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires. The picture was taken against the backdrop of the presidential palace. As N. Zenkovich describes, when Nina Teimurazovna saw the photograph, she said: “This is her husband.”

In the mailbox, along with the picture, there was also a mysterious message: "In Anaklia, on the Black Sea coast, a man with very important information about his father will be waiting for you." Nina Teimurazovna invented a disease for herself, received a sick leave and flew to Georgia to meet with an unknown bearer of news. However, no one came to the meeting. Probably, the anonymous person wanted to see Beria's son, Sergo.

The story of the mysterious picture did not end there. Many decades later, an archival documentary filming of one of the squares of Buenos Aires fell into the hands of Russian documentary filmmakers. On it, against the background of the monument, surrounded by idle passers-by, a walking man in a light raincoat and a dark hat is clearly visible. The moment he passes right in front of where the cameraman is, he momentarily turns his head towards the camera and looks straight into the lens. At the same time, his face, mustache and pince-nez on his nose are clearly visible. The first reaction of everyone who saw these shots was almost the same: “This man looks like Beria!”

To make sure that the footage of the newsreel is not a skilful forgery, filmmakers turned to specialists. After a thorough examination of the film, video editing experts stated that there were no traces of artificial editing of frames and images - the shooting was real.
The film was then shown to experts, who compared the physical appearance of the man filmed in Argentina with that of Beria, so that they could draw a conclusion about their possible resemblance, or vice versa. With the help of computer analysis, experts studied the face of the mysterious “Argentinean” and Lavrenty Beria and concluded with a probability of more than 90% that this is one and the same person.

To avoid a possible mistake, if a man from Argentina could turn out to be a double or just a person very similar to Beria, the film was also given to experts in psychodynamics to study. Based on a special technique that allows, on the basis of a person’s normal movements, to identify his mental characteristics and, on this basis, to determine the psychotype of a person as a whole, experts, comparing the frames of the Argentinean shooting with the shots of Beria’s lifetime shooting, came to the conclusion that they depict the same person . It is simply impossible to fake such skillfully movements, even if desired, experts say.

It turns out that the allegedly shot Beria, in fact, after his official death, remained alive for a long time and lived safely in Argentina? Who and for what purpose filmed Beria in Buenos Aires (if it really was him) remains a mystery. Although, there is by no means an accidental coincidence of the place and time of shooting and the fact that, passing by the operator, the man turned his head and “looked” directly into the camera lens. This gives reason to assume that the shooting was carried out intentionally.

For what purpose could this be done? Probably to remind in this way about the existence of Beria to those who continued to rule the Soviet country at that time. But why then, one wonders, did the leadership of the USSR need to create the greatest hoax with the execution of Beria, as well as release him alive in South America? Most likely, the version here is that many of Stalin's and Beria's associates, who after the death of the leader stood at the helm of the USSR, were themselves afraid that Beria, having for many years had enormous opportunities to collect compromising evidence on the entire Soviet elite, would not expose their old ones, " bloody" "sins" before the people, starting with participation in mass repression. On the other hand, it was also impossible to leave Beria inside the country: many had a fear of his former power too great. Apparently, this is why Stalin's heirs and Beria's former comrades-in-arms agreed on a "neutral" option: save the marshal's life, but send him to live as a private person away from the USSR, as was previously done with Leon Trotsky.

Is it not for this reason that Malenkov was silent about the events of those years? Even his son Andrei lamented that even after a third of a century, his father preferred to avoid talking about what happened to Beria?
So where is the grave of the "bloody" marshal?

Prepared by Oleg Lobanov
according to the materials Soviet Belarus", Zenkovich N. A. "Assassination and staging: from Lenin to Yeltsin", Sergo Beria. "Evening Moscow" "My father is Lavrenty Beria", , TRC "Russia"

Vladimir Tolts: He was shot on Western Christmas Eve. December 23, 1953. Although Sergei Lavrentievich, his son, assured me and many other journalists and historians that his father had been killed back in June. He, son, repeated this in his memoirs. But now, thanks to the hundreds of documents published on the Beria case, it is clear that this, like many other things composed by his son, is very far from reality.

Finding myself in the early 1980s in the West, where Christmas was celebrated everywhere and, in comparison with the current politically correct times, much more magnificently, I wondered why in the USSR, an atheistic state, the execution was timed to coincide with the eve of the Christmas holidays in the West? Did you want foreign public attention, focused on the upcoming celebrations, not particularly attracted to her? Or is it just a coincidence? Or one more thing: how did they form a “company” of his accomplices, who were executed on the same day? After all, many others were already sentenced next year? ... And this is only part of the questions that we will try to find answers to today - exactly 59 years after the execution on Christmas Eve 1953 of one of the Soviet leaders Lavrenty Beria and six of his entourage ....
So, executions at Christmas. 59 years later.
Now, it seems, it is clear to everyone who is interested in the past why Beria was so afraid of his fellow party members of the Areopagus. And why, if he was really as powerful as they imagined, he, after the death of Stalin, managed to be destroyed first. Even 16 years ago, discussing these issues in one of the Freedom programs, the researcher of the history of state power in the USSR, Professor Rudolf Pikhoya, explained to me:

Rudolf Pihoya: Why were they afraid of him? - I think that they were afraid of him not only because he exercised this total control - we can judge the degree of this total control by the way he was arrested. This total control at that moment, obviously, he could no longer exercise.
Another thing - for what reasons? Beria had a very serious shortcoming for a party and statesman of the Soviet Union - he had a lot of ideas at that moment.
He interferes in domestic politics. He is actively engaged foreign policy, he climbs into interethnic relations ...
And in this sense, it becomes uncomfortable for everyone.
Secondly, well, do not discount the fact that he is the head of this colossal information system, which was called the Ministry of Internal Affairs, plus the MGB. Beria did not forget that he instructed his archival department to collect materials on the activities of Malenkov, including activities related to repression. Beria was feared because he, having information, could really blow up the then Presidium of the Central Committee.
Why was he arrested in the first place? Because in this "circle of friends" called the Presidium of the Central Committee, relations were always quite tense, and this strip of endless crises that went on from 1953, ended in the end with the October Plenum of 1964, testified that it was always a "terrarium friends."
But Beria in this situation was the weakest link among the entire top party and state leadership. This may sound somewhat unexpected, but I want to draw your attention to the fact that Beria moved to the Ministry of Internal Affairs 8 years after he worked in this department. After 1945, he returned in 1953. People changed, the situation changed, he no longer had the control mechanism that was before.
In addition, Beria united the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security. Formally, this strengthened the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security, but it brought in all the contradictions that had accumulated over the years of independent existence of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security. By that time, these departments had existed independently for 10 years and, let's say, they lived very difficultly among themselves, and at times they were simply in open confrontation. That is, his trench - his Ministry of the Interior was not too deep and not too protected. In addition, Beria, of course, did not have support in the party apparatus, they were afraid of him in the state apparatus. All these circumstances made Beria very vulnerable as a figure.

Vladimir Tolts: Now, when many of the documents that once could only be seen by the former chief archivist of Russia, Professor Rudolf Pikhoya, have become available to us, we can try to clarify: the point is not that the “Beria trench” - the united Ministry of Internal Affairs turned out to be weakened by internal contradictions between the Chekists and the cops among themselves. Judging by the documents, Beria's arrest turned out to be brilliant. military operation, as a result of which the army outplayed the emvedeshniks. However, as it is now clear from the declassified materials of the investigation, the latter did not show any resistance, and quite soon, and without any tortures that were customary for them, of which many of them were masters, they began to hand over their arrested boss “to the fullest”. And if the power was behind them, they would just as zealously crack down on those who decided on the Anti-Beria plot. So the military operation was not in vain!
Despite the considerable distance, the tank regiments of the Kantemirovskaya and Tamanskaya divisions were able to quickly and secretly reach the capital and take key positions there before the divisions of the internal troops reacted. (Actually, they did not react.) Air support was organized just in case. Luckily, she didn't need to... The commander of the Moscow Military District, Colonel General Artemiev, who was at the command and staff exercises in Kalinin, was promptly removed and replaced by General Moskalenko, loyal to the conspirators. The neutralization of the Kremlin guard and other organizational substitutions went just as quickly and smoothly - Beria's ministerial office was taken by his deputy Kruglov, and the dismissed Prosecutor General Safonov was replaced by Rudenko, who immediately took up investigative actions and legitimized the anti-Beria plot.
It has long been known that not everything went so smoothly. - Although the arrested Beria was quickly and without problems taken out of the Kremlin, the original place of his imprisonment - Aleshkinsky barracks - was recognized as unsafe and vulnerable. I had to move the prisoner to the MVO guardhouse ...
Far less known and analyzed are the problems of formulating charges, the course and tactics of the investigation, determining the circle of accomplices and their arrests and conducting a trial ....

June 26, 1953. PRESIDIUM OF THE SUPREME SOVIET OF THE USSR.
DECREE“On the criminal anti-state actions of L.P. Beria"
In view of the fact that the criminal anti-state actions of L.P. Beria, aimed at undermining the Soviet state in the interests of foreign capital, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, having considered the report of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on this issue, decides:
1. Deprive L.P. Beria of the powers of the deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
2. Remove L.P. Beria from the post of First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and from the post of Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR.
3. Deprive L.P. Beria of all the titles assigned to him, as well as orders, medals and other honorary awards.
4. The case of the criminal actions of L.P. Beria to submit to the Supreme Court of the USSR.

Vladimir Tolts: So - to transfer to the court before the investigation. (The criminal case, as we now know, was initiated only on June 30).

From the protocol No. 12 of the meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of June 29, 1953
1. Entrust the investigation into the case of Beria to the Prosecutor General of the USSR.
2. To oblige Comrade Rudenko to select the appropriate investigative apparatus within a day, reporting on the personal composition to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, and immediately begin, taking into account the instructions given at the meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee, to identify and investigate the facts of hostile anti-party and anti-state activities of Beria through his entourage ( Kobulov B., Kobulov A., Meshik, Sarkisov, Goglidze, Sharia and others), as well as to investigate issues related to the removal of comrade Strokach

Vladimir Tolts: Timofey Strokach, the former Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, who was reduced by Beria after Stalin's death to the post of head of the Lviv regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, already scribbled on the 30th in the name of Malenkov that Beria and his henchmen were collecting compromising evidence on the party nomenclature, and Amayak Kobulov, whose name surfaced in the protocol of the Presidium The Central Committee (he was shot almost a year later than Beria) allegedly even said that the Ministry of Internal Affairs would no longer be dependent on party organs.
Well, before the start of the investigation, Lavrenty Pavlovich himself managed to roll out several letters to his former comrades Malenkov, Khrushchev, Bulganin, Molotov, begging for mercy, repenting, stressing his merits ... In response, yesterday's comrades ordered to take away his pencil, paper and pince-nez ...
But the Kremlin had no time for his prison messages. It was necessary to urgently neutralize the people closest to Beria who could organize resistance. During the day, already on June 27, they arrested the 1st Deputy Beria Bogdan Kobulov and the former 1st Deputy Minister of State Security of the Union (in the Beria "big Ministry of Internal Affairs" he headed the 3rd Directorate) Sergei Goglidze, the 30th Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and Georgia Pavel Meshik and Vladimir Dekanozov. The other two of those shot on Christmas Day 1953 - the head of the investigation department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs Lev Vlodzimirsky (he was arrested only on June 17) and the Minister of State Control Vsevolod Merkulov, who ended up in Butyrka on September 18, were much more limited in terms of their ability to organize resistance to Beria's Kremlin opponents, That's why they weren't arrested right away. Although the former Minister of State Security of the USSR Merkulov was among those listed here, the person closest to Beria. - The co-author of an essay signed with the name of Beria and the author of a pamphlet that praised Lavrenty is the only one of the accomplices who addressed Beria as “you”. That, however, did not prevent Vsevolod Nikolaevich from signing up to speak at the plenum of the Central Committee that opened on July 2 on the Beria case. He was not allowed to speak. But another long-time comrade of Beria, Mir Jafar Baghirov, the first secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, spoke and branded, as expected (“ Beria is a chameleon, the worst enemy of our Party. I couldn't figure it out." But this did not prevent him from being shot as Beria's accomplice. True, already in 1956.
In general, at this plenum, all yesterday's comrades and colleagues spoke quite amicably. But since the investigation had not yet begun, they operated on emotions rather than facts.

Vladimir Tolts: Some authors claim that among Beria's closest collaborators of the post-war period, there was still one person who categorically refused to support the choir of his "friends" - accusers at the Plenum. This is the "father" of the Soviet atomic bomb, Academician Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov.
Immediately after Beria was imprisoned, arrests began of those who became accused in the near-Beria trials and were convicted and sentenced later. 3 days after Beria's arrest, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Solomon Milshtein, who was previously a big shot in the Gulag system, was arrested (He was shot in October 1954.) On June 27, Deputy Minister of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs Konstantin Savitsky was arrested, on August 12 - Deputy Head of the Investigation Department for the Department of Internal Affairs of the Beria "big" Ministry of Internal Affairs Georgy Paramonov, September 25 - former Minister of State Security of Armenia Nikita Krimyan. All of them, together with Alexander Khazan, who was arrested in the same case, were investigators of the Georgian NKVD before the war, who tortured more than a dozen people there under the leadership of Beria. All of them gave extensive evidence against him, his accomplices and each other. All of them were executed after the trial in Tbilisi in November 1955...
Another group of those arrested, whose testimony was regarded by the newly appointed prosecutor Rudenko as extremely important for the upcoming interrogations of Beria, was previously arrested in the "Mingrelian case", but after Stalin's death, completely rehabilitated and becoming Beria's assistant in the Council of Ministers, Pyotr Sharia (sentenced in September 1954 to 10 years in Vladimir prison), head of department in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia Stepan Mamulov (15 years in Vladimirka), Boris Ludvigov - head of Beria's secretariat in the Ministry of Internal Affairs (15 years in Vladimirka, but pardoned and released in 1965), Grigory Ordyntsev - head of Beria's secretariat in the Council of Ministers (in 1954 sentenced to 8 years of exile, released in 1959) and Beria's personal secretary, Colonel Fyodor Mukhanov, who was arrested for "misreporting".
And in the summer of 1953, the arrests of the “special contingent” followed - former illegal immigrants engaged in espionage and terrorist actions abroad. Among them, first of all, the leaders of the operation to assassinate Trotsky Naum Eitingon and Pavel Sudoplatov should be mentioned. Eitingon had already been arrested in 1951 in the "case of a Zionist conspiracy in the MGB", but after Stalin's death he was released, rehabilitated, and Beria appointed him head of a department in the new Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1957 he was given 12 years. He was released only in 1963. Sudoplatov was arrested on August 21, 1953, and he left the Vladimir prison, where he feigned insanity, exactly 15 years later, on August 21, 1968, on the day when Soviet tanks entered Czechoslovakia.
From the verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR of September 12, 1958:

A special laboratory, set up to carry out experiments to test the effects of poisons on a living person, worked under the supervision of Sudoplatov and his deputy Eitingon from 1942 to 1946, who demanded poisons only tested on people from the laboratory workers. After the liquidation of the special laboratory, on behalf of Sudoplatov, a new drug with poison was tested several times on living people.

Vladimir Tolts: It is impossible not to mention another "grand master" of special operations - Yakov Serebryansky, who was arrested at the end of July 1953. Before that, he, a former Socialist-Revolutionary, who became famous for the daring kidnapping of the White Guard General Kutepov in Paris, was arrested twice - in 1921 and in 1941. But each time he was released and amnestied. The authorities needed specialists in secret murders!.. But this time it was not possible to get free: Yakov Isaakovich died in Butyrka during interrogation...
And also, at least briefly, about one group of arrested persons, whose interrogations began even before the first interrogation of Beria. These are his and other accused relatives. Only one list of relatives of those executed on December 23, 1953 includes 35 names and surnames Tam and an elderly mother, sister, husband of Beria's sister, wives and children of the remaining six executed. All were not only interrogated, but also expelled from Georgia and the capitals. Of course, both the son and the wife of Lavrenty himself were arrested. On June 29, she wrote to her husband's former friends - Malenkov, Khrushchev, Voroshilov, Molotov, Kaganovich:

On the 26th of this month, my son [Sergey] was taken away with his family (two children 5 and 2.5 years old and a wife who is 7 months pregnant) and I don't know where they are. Nor do I know what happened to Lavrenty Beria, whose wife I [have been] for more than 30 years.<…>So please call me and talk to me for a few minutes. I can perhaps shed some light on some of the events compromising him. I can’t stay in this state and ignorance for a long time!
If Lavrenty Beria has already made an irreparable mistake, which has caused damage to the Soviet country, and his fate is sealed, give me the opportunity to share his fate, whatever it may be.
I ask you only one thing. Spare my son.

Vladimir Tolts: Deprived of awards scientific degrees and titles, who admitted during interrogations that his dissertations were to a large extent the fruit of the labors of prisoners from the "sharashka" Sergei Beria, after a year and a half in prison, was exiled to Sverdlovsk with his mother ...
***
The first interrogation of Lavrenty Beria took place only almost 2 weeks after his arrest. It was led by Prosecutor General Rudenko. Excerpts from the protocol:

“Question: You are under arrest for anti-Soviet conspiratorial activity against the Party and the Soviet state. Do you intend to tell the investigation about your criminal activities?
Beria: I categorically deny this.

Vladimir Tolts: Rudenko began from afar: from the service of Beria in the Musavatist counterintelligence, connected, as the investigation believed, with the British. Beria retorted:

The question of working in counterintelligence was raised by Kaminsky in 1937 in the Central Committee of the party, and this accusation against me was recognized as unfounded. This issue was also raised in 1938 in the Central Committee of the party, and this accusation was also not confirmed.<…>
Question: In his testimony, Sharia claims that lately Bonapartist, dictatorial habits have been noticeable on your part. Is this correct?
Answer: This is absolutely not true! I can't explain why Sharia says that. I have no personal accounts with Sharia.

Vladimir Tolts: But something at this interrogation, as well as at the next, Beria gradually admitted. Mostly episodes and deeds that could not lead to "the death penalty" as a punishment.

Question: Do you recognize your criminal moral decay?

Answer: There is little. This is my fault.

Question: Do you know Sarkisov? Is this your confidant?

Answer: Yes.

Question: In his testimony, Sarkisov says that he mainly played the role of pimp. Is it so?

Answer: Did something. I will not deny this.

Vladimir Tolts: And then in many interrogations, the same plot with variations - “about a venereal disease”, about lovers at different stages life path, about "raped-not raped" ...
But there were worse things. At one of the interrogations, Beria was presented with the testimony of the head of the toxicological laboratory of the NKVD-MGB, Grigory Mairanovsky, who was arrested in 1951 in the case of "the Zionist conspiracy in the MGB" and in February 1953 was sentenced to ten years in prison for illegal possession of poisons and abuse of office:
During my experiments on the use of poisons, which I tested on those condemned to the Higher M[era] N[punishment]<…>, I came across the fact that some of the poisons can be used to detect the so-called "candor" in persons under investigation. These substances turned out to be chloral scopolamine and phenamine benzedrine (cola-s).
When using chloral-scopolamine (CS), I noticed that, firstly, the doses indicated in the pharmacopoeia as lethal, in reality, are not. This has been verified by me many times on many subjects. In addition, I noticed a stunning effect on a person after using the CS, which lasts about an average of about a day. At the moment when the complete stupor begins to pass and glimpses of consciousness begin to appear, then at the same time the inhibitory functions of the cerebral cortex are still absent. When conducting the reflexology method at this time (shocks, pinches, dousing with water), the subject can reveal a number of monosyllabic answers to short questions.
When using Cola-s, the subject develops a strong excited state of the cerebral cortex, prolonged insomnia for several days, depending on the dose. There is an irresistible need to speak out.
These data led me to the idea of ​​using these substances during the investigation to obtain the so-called "frankness" from the persons under investigation ...
... For this purpose, the Fedotovs assigned five investigators, whose names I do not remember (one of them seemed to be Kozyrev), as well as three types of persons under investigation: those who confessed, those who did not confess, and those who partially confessed. It was over them that I conducted experiments together with the investigators. Briefly, the investigators informed me about the circumstances of the case and about those issues that were of interest to the investigation ...

Vladimir Tolts: When these testimonies were read out by Beria, he was indignant:
"This is a monstrous crime, but this is the first time I hear about it."

Vladimir Tolts: He heard a lot during the investigation, and allegedly for the first time at the trial. About the falsification of investigation cases and the torture of those under investigation, in which his accomplices and himself took part, about secret murders and extrajudicial reprisals ... Well, a lot of absurd and unproven, too. For example, that he is an English spy. Or that he was trying to undermine the Soviet Agriculture. He denied many things. Another tried to blame on accomplices:

I recall that when speaking to me about the case of Meretskov, Vannikov and others, Merkulov presented it from the standpoint of his achievements, that he uncovered an underground government organized almost by Hitler. I believe that Merkulov is the main culprit in the fabrication of this case, and he must bear full responsibility for this.

Vladimir Tolts: This is from the protocol of interrogation of Beria dated October 7, 1953. By the way, it has not yet been published. As the archivists tell me, they probably haven't declassified it yet. However, Khrushchev told about the “secret” of the Meretskov case in his memoirs:

Beria, even during Stalin's lifetime, spoke about the history of Meretskov's arrest and credited his release. “I came to Comrade Stalin and said: “Comrade Stalin, Meretskov is sitting like an English spy. What kind of spy is he? He is an honest man. The war is on, and he is sitting. I could take the lead."<…>And so, continues Beria - Stalin said: "That's right, call Meretskov and talk to him." I called him and said: “Meretskov, you wrote nonsense, you are not a spy. You are an honest man, you are a Russian man.” Meretskov looks at me and answers: “I have said everything. I wrote in my own hand that I was an English spy. I can't add anything more."<…>[Beria:] "Go to the cell, sit still, think, sleep, I'll call you."<…>Then, on the second day, I called Meretskov and asked: “Well, what did you think?” He began to cry: “How could I be a spy? I am a Russian person, I love my people.” He was released from prison, dressed in a general's uniform, and he went to command at the front.

Vladimir Tolts: But no "merits" could save Beria and his accomplices who had betrayed him. They were all doomed...
***
All serious newspapers wrote about their execution in the West. But at that time she attracted much less attention than reports of Beria's arrest. It's still Christmas. Not before that ... And besides, there were some news that fit much more into the usual “Christmas format”. For example, the visit of the British Queen to New Zealand and the grandiose railway accident that happened in that distant country. Yes, and the Russian-language newspapers on Western Christmas were busy with other things there. One of the news of those days was the birth of the heiress of the Russian Imperial House, Maria Vladimirovna ...
We do not have documents confirming the hypothesis that the execution of Beria was specifically timed to coincide with Christmas in order to reduce its resonance abroad. More like New Years. - Normal Soviet stereotype: finish the job by the holidays and report back. And mark it.
My now deceased colleague, who served in the British embassy in Moscow in the first half of the 1950s, told how she and her colleagues were struck by their hitherto unprecedented freedom, relaxedness and jubilation at the Kremlin receptions, starting with New Year's Eve 1954. The Kremlin was celebrating its victory and deliverance from fear. Few of the jubilant winners knew then that this was just the end of the first round. And in the following victims, many of the winners of Beria, who joyfully raised their glasses on New Year's Eve, a week after his execution, will fall.

6 594

One thing is clear: if the party elite went to murder, somehow this person was very dangerous to her. And not with terrible plans to throw her off the throne - Beria made it clear that he was not going to do this. Of course, he was potentially dangerous - but we don't get killed for that. At least that's not how they kill, openly and frankly. The normal Soviet course in the struggle for power was worked out as early as 1937 - to move, remove, and then arrest and falsify the case in the usual manner. By the way, this openness and frankness also contains a mystery - after all, it was possible to wait and remove it quietly and imperceptibly. It looks like the killers were in a hurry...

Khrushchev, in his revelations to foreign interlocutors, is cunning in some ways. He presents the decision on the immediate execution of Beria as a collegial verdict of all members of the Politburo. “After a comprehensive discussion of the pros and cons of both options, we came to the conclusion: Beria must be shot immediately” ... “We!” So now we will believe that nine people, middle-aged, indecisive and rather cowardly, will stamp such a decision - to shoot one of the first persons of the state without trial or investigation. Yes, never in their lives will these people, who have worked meekly under a strong leader all their lives, take on such a responsibility! They will drown the issue in discussions and in the end, even if there are grounds, everything will end with deportation somewhere in Baku or Tyumen to the post of director of the plant - let him seize power there if he can.

So it was, and there is convincing evidence of this. The Secretary of the Central Committee, Malenkov, in the process of preparing the meeting of the Presidium, wrote a draft of its work. This draft has been published, and it clearly shows what was to be discussed at this meeting. To prevent the possibility of abuse of power, Beria was supposed to be deprived of the post of Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and, perhaps, if the discussion goes on the right track, to release him also from the post of Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, appointing him Minister of the Oil Industry as a last resort. And that's it. There was no talk of any arrest, and even more so of any execution without trial. And it is difficult even to imagine, with all the tension of imagination, what could happen for the Presidium, contrary to the prepared scenario, to make such a decision impromptu. It couldn't be. And if it couldn't, then it didn't. And the fact that this did not happen, that this issue was not considered at the Presidium at all, is evidenced by the fact that the draft was found in Malenkov's archive - otherwise it would have been submitted for processing the decision and then destroyed.

So there was no "we". Beria was first killed, and then the Presidium was confronted with a fact, and he had to get out, covering up the killers. But who exactly?
And here it is very easy to guess. Firstly, it is easy to calculate the number of the second - the artist. The fact is that - and no one denies this - that day the army was widely involved in the events. In the incident with Beria, as Khrushchev himself admits, the air defense commander of the Moscow Military District, Colonel General Moskalenko and the Air Force Chief of Staff, Major General Batitsky, were directly involved, and Marshal Zhukov himself does not seem to refuse. But, more importantly, for some reason, apparently, to stage the fight against "parts of Beria", troops were brought into the capital. And then a very important name comes up - a person who could ensure contact with the military and the participation of the army in the events - Minister of Defense Bulganin.

It is not difficult to calculate the number one. Who most of all poured dirt on Beria, completely losing self-control and presenting him at the same time as a fiend? Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. By the way, not only Bulganin, but also Moskalenko and Batitsky were people from his team.
Bulganin and Khrushchev - somewhere we have already met this combination. Where? Yes, at Stalin's dacha, on that fateful Sunday, March 1, 1953.

Compromising evidence?
There is one mystery in the events that took place after Stalin's death - the fate of his papers. The archive of Stalin as such does not exist - all his documents are gone. On March 7, some special group, according to Svetlana, “on the orders of Beria” (but this is not a fact) removed all the furniture from the Near Dacha. Later, the furniture was returned to the dacha, but without papers. All the documents from the Kremlin office and even from the leader's safe have also disappeared. Where they are and what happened to them is still unknown.

Naturally, it is believed that Beria, as the super-powerful chief of the special services, took possession of the archives, especially since the guards were subordinate to the MGB department. Yes, but the guards were subordinate to state security while the guarded was alive. Interestingly, to whom was the Kuntsevo dacha subordinated after Stalin's death? Also to the Ministry of State Security or, perhaps, this empty shell was disposed of by some government AHO - the administrative and economic department? According to another version, the entire elite of that time took part in the seizure of the archive, preoccupied with the liquidation of the dossiers that Stalin collected on them. Beria, of course, was also afraid that compromising information on him, located in these archives, would be made public. It’s also hard to believe - with so many accomplices, someone in so many years would certainly let it slip.

Who knew nothing about the fate of the archive, so it is Malenkov. Why - more on that later. There are two options left: either Khrushchev or Beria. If we assume that the archive fell into the hands of Khrushchev, then his fate, most likely, is sad. There could have been a lot of compromising evidence on Nikita Sergeevich - one participation in Yezhov's repressions was worth something! Neither he nor his associates had time to look for all these “dossiers” among the mountains of papers, it was easier to burn everything in bulk. But if Beria was the first to succeed, then here the situation is completely different. He had nothing to be afraid of some mysterious "documents" in the Stalinist archive, which, if made public, could destroy him - there was hardly anything on him, even if by the efforts of the entire jurisprudence of the USSR, despite the fact that it was very necessary, they could not dig up material for one more or less decent shooting case. But he was vitally interested in compromising evidence on Stalin's former comrades-in-arms - both for future possible occasions and to ensure his own security.

Indirectly, the fact that the archive most likely fell into the hands of Beria is evidenced by his son Sergo. After the murder of his father, he was arrested, and one day he was summoned for interrogation, and in the investigator's office he saw Malenkov. This was not the first visit of a distinguished guest, once he had already come and persuaded Sergo to testify against his father, but did not persuade him. However, this time he came for something else.
“Maybe you can help with something else? He said it in a very human way. - Have you heard anything about the personal archives of Joseph Vissarionovich?
“I have no idea,” I answer. “We never talked about it at home.
- Well, how about ... Your father also had archives, didn’t he?
I don't know either, never heard of it.
- How did you not hear it? - here Malenkov could not restrain himself. “He must have archives, he must!
He's obviously very upset."
That is, not only the archives of Stalin disappeared, but also the archives of Beria, and Malenkov knew nothing about their fate. Of course, theoretically, Khrushchev could have seized and liquidated them, but to do it in such a way that no one saw, heard or recognized anything? Doubtful. Stalin's archives were still all right, but Beria's archives could no longer be secretly destroyed. Yes, and Khrushchev was not such a person to carry out such an operation and not spill the beans.

So, most likely, Beria still took possession of Stalin's archive. I repeat once again that it did not make sense for him to destroy him, and even more so to destroy his own archive, and there are nine chances out of ten that he hid all the papers somewhere. But where?

Chesterton in one of the stories about Father Brown wrote: “Where does a smart person hide a leaf? In the woods". Exactly. Where were the relics of the great Russian saint Alexander Svirsky hidden? In the anatomical museum. And if you need to hide the archive, where does a smart person hide it? Naturally, in the archive!

It is only in novels that our archives are ordered, systematized and catalogued. Reality looks a little different. I once had a conversation with a man who had been in the archives of the Radio House. He was shocked by what he saw there, told how he sorted through boxes with records that were not listed in any catalogs, but simply piled up in a heap - there were recordings of performances, next to which were praised Gergiev's productions - like a donkey next to an Arabian horse . This is one example.

Another example can be found in the newspapers, which from time to time report a sensational discovery in one of the archives, where they found something absolutely amazing. How are these discoveries made? It's very simple: some curious intern looks into the chest, into which no one has ever put his nose before him, and finds it. And what about the story of the rarest antique vases that disappeared peacefully for decades in the basement of the Hermitage? So the easiest way to hide an archive of any size is to dump it in one of the pantry of another archive, where it will lie in complete secrecy and security until some curious intern looks into it and asks: what are those dusty bags lying in the corner. And, opening one of the bags, he will pick up a paper with the inscription: “To my archive. I.St.”

But still, they don’t kill for possessing compromising evidence either. On the contrary, it becomes especially dangerous, because it is possible that in the secret safe of a faithful person are the most important papers in an envelope with the inscription: “In case of my death. L. Beria. No, something absolutely extraordinary had to happen for such rather cowardly people as Khrushchev and his company to decide on a murder, and even such a hasty one. What could it be?

The answer came by chance. Deciding to cite Ignatiev's biography in this book, I came across the following phrase there: on June 25, in a note to Malenkov, Beria suggested arresting Ignatiev, but did not have time. There may be a mistake in the date, because on June 26 Beria himself was "arrested", but, on the other hand, he may have spoken about it with someone orally a few days before, or a secret spy in the Ministry of Internal Affairs informed Khrushchev. It was also clear that the new people's commissar was not going to leave the old one alone. On April 6, “for political blindness and idleness,” Ignatiev was removed from the post of secretary of the Central Committee, and on April 28 he was removed from the Central Committee. At the suggestion of Beria, the CPC was instructed to consider the issue of Ignatiev's party responsibility. But all this was not that, all this is not terrible. And then information came that Beria was asking Malenkov for permission for this arrest.

For the conspirators, this was not a danger, it was death! It is not difficult to guess that at the Lubyanka the former chief of the Stalinist guard would have been split like a nut and squeezed like a lemon. What would happen next is not difficult to predict if you remember how Beria kissed the hand of the dying Stalin. None of the conspirators would have met the new year 1954 alive, they would have been killed in Beria’s Lubyanka cellars, spitting on legality for the sake of such an occasion, personally slaughtered with boots.

This is what usually happens with “brilliant impromptu”. What to do? Remove Ignatiev? Dangerous: where is the guarantee that a reliable person does not have a description of the night at Stalin's dacha in a safe place, and maybe many other things. He knew who he was dealing with. So what to do?

And this is the motive! Because of this, Beria really could have been killed, moreover, they should have been killed, and exactly the way it was done. For there was nothing to arrest him for, and because of the dead Beria, as Khrushchev rightly noted, hardly anyone would raise a fuss: what's done is done, you can't return the dead. Especially if you imagine everything as if he offered armed resistance during the arrest. Well, then let propaganda work to present him as a monster and a supervillain, so that grateful descendants can say: "It could be a crime, but it was not a mistake."

In order for the label “secret” to actually appear, the state needs good reasons. Most of these cases are state secrets. But many personal archives of famous people become secret at the request of the heirs, who do not want their ancestors to appear in an unflattering light.

The most secret documents became in 1938

A radical change in the classification of information occurred in 1918, when the Main Directorate of Archives was organized under the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR. The brochure “Keep the Archives” published by Bonch-Bruevich was distributed through the “Windows of ROSTA” to all state institutions, where, in particular, there was a provision on the secrecy of certain information. And in 1938, the management of all archival affairs was transferred to the NKVD of the USSR, which classified a huge amount of information, numbering tens of thousands of files, as classified. Since 1946, this department has received the name MIA USSR, since 1995 - FSB. Since 2016, all archives have been reassigned directly to the President of Russia.

Questions for the royal family

The so-called famous Novoromanovsky archive of the royal family has not been fully declassified, most of which was initially classified by the Bolshevik leadership, and after the 90s, part of the archival documents was widely publicized. It is noteworthy that the work of the archive itself was strictly confidential. And one could guess about his activities only from indirect documents of employees: certificates, passes, payroll records, personal files of employees - that's what was left of the work of the secret Soviet archive. But the correspondence Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna is not fully disclosed. Palace materials relating to the relationship between the court and the ministries and departments of the First World War are also not available.

KGB Archives

Most of the KGB archives are classified on the grounds that the operational-search activities of many agents can still cause damage to counterintelligence work, reveal the methodology of its work. Some of the successful cases in the field of terrorism, espionage, smuggling are also mothballed. This also applies to cases related to intelligence and operational work in the GULAG camps.

Stalin's affairs

From the archive of the President of the Russian Federation to the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, 1,700 files were transferred, formed in the 11th inventory of the Stalin Fund, of which about 200 files were classified as secret. Of considerable interest are the cases of Yezhov and Beria, but they were published only in parts, and there is still no complete information on the cases of “executed enemies of the people”.

Confirmation of the fact that there are still many documents to be declassified is the fact that in 2015, at four meetings of the Interdepartmental Expert Commission for the Declassification of Documents under the Governor of St. Petersburg, 4,420 cases for 1919-1991 were completely declassified. Party archives are also a "secret". Of considerable interest to researchers are the resolutions of the Council of People's Commissars or the resolutions of the Council of Ministers, the decisions of the Politburo. But most of the party archives are classified.

New archives and new secrets

The main task of the archive of the President formed in 1991 Russian Federation there was a combination of documents from the former archive of the President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, and then the subsequent period of reign Boris Yeltsin. The presidential archive has about 15 million different documents, but only a third of them, five million, are in the public domain today.

Secret personal archives of Vladi, Vysotsky, Solzhenitsyn

Personal funds of the Soviet leader Nikolai Ryzhkov, Vladimir Vysotsky and Marina Vladi closed to the general public. Do not think that the documents appear classified "secret" only with the help of government officials. For example, personal fund Alexandra Solzhenitsyn, stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, is in secret storage because the heir - the wife of the writer Natalya Dmitrievna personally decides whether or not to make the documents public. She justified her decision by the fact that Solzhenitsyn's poems are often found in documents, which are not particularly good, and she would not want others to know about it.

In order to make public the materials of the investigation file, according to which Solzhenitsyn ended up in the Gulag, it was necessary to obtain the consent of two archives - Ministry of Defense and Lubyanka.

Plan for "secrets"

Head of Rosarkhiv Andrey Artizov in one of his interviews, he said: “We declassify documents in accordance with our national interests. There is a declassification plan. To make a decision on declassification, three to four experts with knowledge are needed foreign languages, historical context, legislation on state secrets”.

Special commission on declassification

In order to declassify the materials, a special commission was created in each archive. Usually - from three people who decided on what basis to betray or not to give wide publicity to this or that document. Secret materials are of undoubted interest to a wide range of people, but historians warn that working with archives is a delicate matter and requires certain knowledge. This is especially true of secret archival materials. Not many people have access to them - thousands of documents from the times Russian Empire and the Soviet Union are classified for various reasons.