This wasn't actually intended to be a full on update, merely just a short story bit like the one on Klaus Hitler, but it ended up getting longer and longer and well... I guess you guys should just read to find out the rest.
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PART 29
What Goes Around............
"Beria's death had left me very afraid in regards to what was going to happen to the Soviet Union, as Beria, despite being a bastard, was a tough bastard who had managed to successfully keep his crumbling house of cards together in the face of a multitude of enemies attacking him from all directions, without his presence to hold together the house of cards that was the USSR; it left many questions in my and other's minds in Washington about what was exactly going to happen from there on out"
-President of the United States Harold Stassen
(Excerpt from "Essay on the Beria Assassination and it's After-Effects", written by Dr. Katz Carver on June 19th, 2011)
The Assassination of Soviet President Lavrentiy Beria, an event which occurred on January 8th, 1960 in downtown Washington D.C, is widely considered by many to be an historic anomaly which was set in motion by a specific chain of events that allowed the assassin to get close enough to fire off the series of shots that would ultimately prove to be fatal in nature for Mr. Beria that day in downtown Washington, in order to understand this chain of events better; we must examine Beria's two days in the city in close detail so that we may better comprehend how such an event could happen.
Figure 1: Official state portrait of Lavrentiy Beria, taken shortly before his visit to Washington in late 1959.
Beria
- along with Foreign Minister Alexei Kosygin and a detachment of NKVD security personnel, would depart from Irkutsk International Airport on January 7th, 1960 at around 8:18 AM local time
- the plane would then subsequently land safely around 13 hours later at Franklin D. Roosevelt International Airport in Sterling, Virginia, and from there Beria and the rest of the Soviet diplomatic delegation would then be transported via automobile (escorted by Metropolitan Police) to the Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington; where accommodations had been set up for them by President Stassen several days prior as apart of the overall preparations for Beria's multi-day visit to the American capital. While Beria had hoped to get a least some work accomplished on his first night in the city, the fact that both him and the entire delegation were not only suffering from severe jet lag as a result of the long flight, but had also arrived in the city had a relatively late time as well, would ultimately influence the decision of Beria and the other Soviets to merely grab a quick dinner before heading to rest for the night on that first night; figuring that they could work on accomplishing the tasks that they had come to Washington to do once they woke the next morning.
In the grand scheme of things, the Soviet President's daily schedule of meetings and activities for his first day in the city, while still one that was considerably active in nature; was in truth somewhat tempered when compared to the daily schedules that the NKVD had meticulously planned and laid out for Beria to follow in the remaining three days that he was scheduled to be in Washington D.C. This light schedule was as it was primarily because of the fact that Beria had expressed a desire to both Stassen and his Security Chief
- Ivan Serov, to make some sort of time during his visit to Washington to take in (even if briefly) some of the "wondrous" sights of the American capital, this desire would subsequently lead him to instruct the NKVD to coordinate his daily schedule with both the White House and the CIA; so that the time needed for Beria to fulfill at least some of his sight-seeing desires could be made.
Figure 2a and Figure 2b: Alexei Kosygin, Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs (left) and Marshal Ivan Serov, Chairman of the NKVD (right); both men were present in Washington during Beria's visit to the city in early 1960.
However, as mentioned before, the first day was not without it's important activity, as Beria, Foreign Minister Kosygin and the rest of the Soviet delegation would end up meeting with an American delegation
- headed by U.S. Secretary of State Richard Nixon and Vice President Lodge; in a closed doors meeting at the White House shortly after lunch. The two sides would end up covering a wide variety of topics during the nearly two and half hour meeting between them, among which included fairly extensive discussions over several important issues that were at hand, such as Soviet-American mutual security and the proposed weapons deal between Irkutsk and Washington, in addition to a few (albeit brief) not so extensive discussions over matters that were considerably less important in their nature, such as the passing of local jokes from one culture to another; or all four men's shared love of alcohol and cinema. Upon the conclusion of the meeting, Beria and Kosygin would then depart from the White House and make their way over to Embassy Row, where they would conduct a brief visit to the Soviet Embassy located there, before subsequently returning to the hotel; where they grabbed a quick dinner and then took rest for the night.
While the meeting itself (nor anything that occurred on the first day for that matter) essentially did not accomplish much in actual progress outside of opening the chain of dialogue between the two sides, many on both sides still found that it had been a good start to what was going to be a long stretch of meetings and discussions over the next several days, and would go to bed that night satisfied with the work that they had done on the first day; blissfully unaware of the events that were still set to transpire.
Beria's second day in the city, compared to his first, was filled to the brim with meetings and events that the Soviet President was scheduled to attend in the city, of which included
- among other things, a morning speaking engagement and luncheon with President Stassen and Vice President Lodge at the Washington Hilton Hotel in downtown Washington, a second meeting with Secretary of State Nixon in the afternoon; as well as an additional meeting with Stassen and Secretary of Defense Dwight D. Eisenhower at the White House that was scheduled for later in the evening. First on Beria's docket for the day was however the aforementioned speaking engagement and subsequent luncheon downtown, and as such, the Soviet President would leave his own hotel via automobile at around 9:28 AM; taking around fifteen minutes to arrive at the entrance to the hotel. Once there, Beria
- accompanied by three NKVD security agents, would make his way to the dining hall where the luncheon was scheduled to take place, and would then speak alongside Stassen on a stage set up for the occasion to a crowd of Soviet and American diplomatic and military officials for around thirty minutes; before sitting down at a table alongside the President, the First Lady and his own wife Nina to eat.
Figure 3: The northwest exit of the Washington Hilton Hotel as seen in the modern day, and the scene of the assassination of Soviet President Lavrentiy Beria and attempted assassination of American President Harold Stassen in 1960.
The Luncheon would last around an hour, and upon it's end Beria, his wife, Stassen and the First Lady would make their departure through the Hilton's NW exit towards the street, where they were scheduled to briefly meet with the media waiting outside and pose for a few pictures; before promptly leaving in their respective limousine's to continue the rest of their daily schedules. There was however a large crowd surrounding the area as they walked out, which not only made making their respective exit's more difficult, but also concealed the presence of Yaroslav Vladimirovich Khantsev; who had come to the hotel to shoot the Soviet President as revenge for Beria ordering the execution of his wife Maria for supporting republican rebels during the early days of the Soviet Civil War.
While Mr. Khantsev (at least per his own words) had originally intended to shoot only Beria, the appearance of Harold Stassen
- whom Khantsev despised for being the embodiment of the Capitalist West and it's failures to prevent Germany from "raping" his motherland, as a potential target for assassination was an opportunity that he could not pass up; as he was not dumb enough to not know that he had little chance of making it out of the area alive or otherwise not apprehended by authorities in some shape or form. Of course, Khantsev knew full well that he had to wait for the perfect moment to strike to ensure the success of what he wanted to accomplish, and that perfect moment would come for him when both Beria and Stassen unknowingly walked directly in front of both Khantsev and his line of fire, observing this moment and knowing that he would likely never have a better chance (if he ever had another chance at all), Khantsev would promptly begin moving forward from where he was standing in the crowd and towards the two Presidents; shouting
“Long Live Chairman Vlasov!, Long Live Mother Russia!” as he began firing his Colt M1911 pistol in the direction of the two men that filled him with so much rage and anger.
There had been no prior warnings to either the Secret Service, the FBI or the NKVD that a possible assassination attempt was set to occur that day and at that time, and in honesty it probably wouldn't have occurred if every piece hadn't fallen perfectly into place for Khantsev, but they had fallen perfectly into place, and the assassin was a man who did not care about dying, only about accomplishing his task; all facts which would leave the security officials standing near the two Presidents caught completely off guard as the shots began to ran out from Khantsev's firearm. The officials, fast as they were, managed to quickly move in and subdue Khantsev to the ground, but by the time they were able to do so the damage had unfortunately already been done, as Khantsev had successfully gotten six shots off before hand, three of which directly hit Beria
- two in the chest and one in the abdomen, another which had grazed Stassen in the arm, one which had ricocheted off the ground and grazed a bystander in the abdomen (ultimately killing her); and one which had broken the one of the back windows of Beria's limousine.
Figure 4: Yaroslav Khantsev, the assassin of Lavrentiy Beria; standing in front of his automobile and house in Arlington, Virgina shortly before the date of the assassin
After being successfully subdued the ground, Khantsev would then be arrested at the scene by personnel from the NKVD, Metropolitan Police and the Secret Service, and then promptly transported to a local area jail, where he was temporarily placed in a holding cell by authorities pending further investigation into the shooting, the firearm he had used was however confiscated by the FBI and Metropolitan Police; and subsequently transported to ATF Headquarters to be analysed and traced. Beria and Stassen on the other hand were both taken away from the scene by security agents, and were subsequently rushed to George Washington University Hospital in order to receive medical treatment for the injuries they had sustained in the shooting; with both arriving at the hospital within minutes of the shooting taking place.
The injuries that President Stassen had received from the shooting would fortunately turn out to be relatively minor
- and thus easily treatable for doctors, thanks to the fact that the bullet that had hit him had merely grazed his arm, rather then hitting any vital organs or body parts, leaving Stassen to be merely stitched up by doctors, and then afterwards to be discharged early the next morning with a nearly clean bill of health (only having stayed the night as a precaution, to make sure that no unforeseen side effects from the shooting would develop). Beria on the other hand was not so lucky, as two of the bullets that had hit him had pierced his lungs, and the other had pierced through his kidney, causing massive amounts of internal damage and bleeding to the Soviet President; who was subsequently rushed into surgery by doctors upon his arrival at the hospital in an attempt to save his life.
Unfortunately, the injuries that Beria had suffered were just too extensive for even the best doctors to successfully treat, and thus in spite of all of the attempts of the staff at hand to prevent it, the Georgian that had ruled and provoked fear into the Soviet populace via his rule of both of the NKVD and the entire country for nearly three decades was now a comatose and dying wreck in a hospital bed thousands of miles from where he was born; and it was in that bed where he would ultimately end up succumbing to the injuries he had suffered during the shooting. As Lavrentiy Beria would pass away that day at 5:23 PM at the age of 60, leaving behind a wife and two children; in addition to a country that was collapsing before the world's eyes.
