WI: Stalin had Beria executed?

What if Stalin for some reason got fed up with Beria and decided to kill him? How could Beria push Stalin to the point of getting himself purged?

Stalin has supposedly collecting evidence on Beria's sexual assaults, which could suggest he was planning to go after Beria, and that means it wouldn't take much to just have Stalin kill him in my opinion. I could see Beria raping Stalin's daughter(Stalin was once informed of his daughter being at Beria's home alone, said he didn't trust Beria, and called her and told her to leave.), and getting himself executed or sent to his own gulags for it.
 
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Going after Svetlana would certainly do it, but Beria has too finely honed a sense of self-preservation to even consider it. Stalin doesn't really need reasons to kill people; he just needs to have already identified Beria's successor. A major intelligence failure, perhaps a lack of discretion in the Soviet neclear program, could do it.
 
Stalin also really didn't like Beria after the war, he started to get suspicious and frustrated about Beria gaining power. I think if Stalin lived a bit longer he would have killed Beria.
 
In Antony Beevor's Stalingrad there's a line about how in IIRC 1942 as the Germans were marching on the Volga Beria was still torturing senior officers believing that they were German agents. Stalin eventually got tired of Beria's conspiracy theories and ordered him to stop what Beria called his " mincing machine." So perhaps Beria doesn't take the hint and continues to go after the Army, Stalin's patience finally runs out and he has Beria put up against a wall?
 
In Antony Beevor's Stalingrad there's a line about how in IIRC 1942 as the Germans were marching on the Volga Beria was still torturing senior officers believing that they were German agents. Stalin eventually got tired of Beria's conspiracy theories and ordered him to stop what Beria called his " mincing machine." So perhaps Beria doesn't take the hint and continues to go after the Army, Stalin's patience finally runs out and he has Beria put up against a wall?

I could see that. Even Stalin himself was probably less nuts than normal Beria, when he was having his nutty moments. Beria may raise hell before he's killed though.
 
Beria wasn't actually that bad. Much of what we know about him comes from the Kruschev government. Beria was cruel and very ruthless, but not an omnicidal maniac who massacred people for no reason at all. Yeah, he was a serial rapist who supervised the gulags and commanded NKVD death squads, but still a positively mellow guy compared to his precursor Yezhov.
 
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Cook

Banned
Stalin also really didn't like Beria after the war, he started to get suspicious and frustrated about Beria gaining power. I think if Stalin lived a bit longer he would have killed Beria.

That isn’t really saying much. Stalin regularly threatened to shoot all of his inner circle and start again with a fresh batch.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Actually, Stalin was planning to keep Beria around because he knew how much Beria depended on him for survival which sort of ensured his loyalty. It was Molotov and the Old Guard who were going to be gotten rid of next.

That being said, Stalin kept Abakumov and Ignatyev waiting in the wings as constant reminders to Beria that he wasn't irreplaceable.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
I could see that. Even Stalin himself was probably less nuts than normal Beria, when he was having his nutty moments. Beria may raise hell before he's killed though.
Neither Stalin nor Beria were "nuts." Both were sadistic, cruel, ruthless and thoroughly bloody bastards, but neither was insane.
 
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