Beria was a murderer and torturer by trade and a rapist by avocation.

He was also the major Stalinist magnate who was not a Communist true believer. After Stalin died, he wanted to cut a deal with the West to let Germany reunify, he wanted to decollectivize agriculture, and he wanted to reintroduce private property to jump start the Soviet economy.

He failed, because the other magnates were scared of him but also because he talked too openly and loosely about his plans to take a step back from Communist economics. He probably also talked down Stalin too much right from the start.

Here is your challenge: have the Beria-Malenkov duo succeed enough to reunify Germany and to loosen the Soviet economy. Having Beria lose power or get killed after that is acceptable if the changes they made cannot easily be reversed.

What are the long term effects for the Soviet Union and its satellites?
What are the long term effects for the West?
What are the implications for China?
 
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ReenX

Banned
Beria should have been more energetic and initiated a purge of his political opponents the moment Stalin died and people were still in shock. His enemies feared him and he wasted his opportunity, so they wasted him. As horrible of a human being he was on a personal level, I believe Soviet Union might have been a more humane place, and longer lasting with Beria in power. Cold war might have also come to a relative end, but that really depends on Beria's successor. Economic difficulties and shortages might have been averted as well.

Satelites, some of them would be given up on, though a more friendly policy with China would have been kept and pursued.
 
Assuming Beria gets in power and goes through with his reforms, then he has a good chance of stating in power. Frankly, the Russians have been without political freedom for a long time (like forever) and continuing the police state but with more goods and food would be quite acceptable. This is following a path much like post-Mao China, basically keep your mouth shut and you will have a better standard of living and be positively incentivized to work hard and have more. Open your mouth and ask for political freedom, well the GULAG can always use more workers. I am pretty sure the west would accept a unified but neutral and demilitarized Germany, and "Russia" aligned dictatorships in most of Eastern Europe without a true WP and an aggressive communist ideology could certainly be lived with.

I agree with @ReenX that as odious as Beria was, and he was certainly a pedophilic rapist on top of his other qualities, had he reformed the USSR on the post-Mao China the Soviet Union and the world could have been a better place than the extended Cold War.
 

Deleted member 1487

Here is your challenge: have the Beria-Malenkov duo succeed enough to reunify Germany and to loosen the Soviet economy.
For one thing, Malenkov abandoned Beria quickly because of his reform policies; Malenkov was a strong Stalinist afterall:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria#Stalin.27s_death
The East German uprising convinced Molotov, Malenkov, and Nikolai Bulganin that Beria's policies were dangerous and destabilizing to Soviet power. Within days of the events in Germany, Khrushchev persuaded the other leaders to support a Party coup against Beria; Beria's principal ally Malenkov abandoned him.
 
Yes, I think Beria would have needed to move quicker to secure power and slower to make it clear that he thought Stalinist economics were stupid.

The problem is that Beria was not a Russian and he probably needed someone like Malenkov to front the system.
 

Deleted member 1487

Actually reading quickly on Zhukov and his role in the fall of Beria, as well as the reasons for his fall post-war under Stalin, he had a good relationship with Eisenhower and had he been able to leverage his position post-Beria he might have been someone to help thaw things with the Americans.
 
Beria's only chance to gain power is through an outright coup IMO. His problem is that he was trying to build himself a political, not just a police base, and to associate himself with policies that might be popular, like a better deal for the non-Russian peoples of the USSR. *If* the struggle could have been kept on a political plane, this might make sense--nationally-minded cadres in the non-Russian republics might gradually be attracted to him. But as it was, his attempt to use the "nationalities card" not only did not benefit him (he got Melnikov removed as First Secretary of Ukraine for his Russifying policies, but Melnikov's replacement was Kirichenko--a Khrushchev man, not a Beria supporter) but helped to alarm his colleagues and make them more determined to get rid of him.

Was such a coup possible? One indication that the Presidium at least thought it was is that the commanders of the Moscow District (Pavel Artemyev), the City of Moscow (K. R. Smilov), and the Kremlin (N. K. Spridinov) were all replaced after Beria's fall. One interesting question, though: Would the military in the rest of the country (e.g., Leningrad, where Marshal Govorov was commander) accept the results of an MVD coup in Moscow?
 
Yeah. You might need a secondary POD of Zhukhov dying of natural causes; or having been killed by Stalin; or trying something coup-like himself, getting put down by the magnates collectively, and then Beria couping the rest of the magnates.

Because its hard to see the rest of the country's Red Army accepting a Beria coup if Zhukhov is eliminated as part of it.
 
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nbcman

Donor
Beria had far too many enemies in 1953 for the loss of a single enemy to change his fate. It would take another 1938 level purge to keep him safe after Stalin expired. Beria didn't have sufficient authority to pull that off.
 
See, I don't know if I agree. Although most of the magnates were scared of him, in a weird way he had also spent the last few years acting as their confidante and comforter whenever Stalin started making threatening noises at someone (which he invariably did from time to time). I think he needs to eliminate or have eliminated a couple of key enemies right off, but mostly needs to avoid scaring Stalinist bigwigs too soon with his NEP type talk. At minimum, I think there is a way where he can get power long enough to implement some of these policies in a way that the Left Reaction will have a hard time overturning even if they re-coup him in a couple of years.
 
See, I don't know if I agree. Although most of the magnates were scared of him, in a weird way he had also spent the last few years acting as their confidante and comforter whenever Stalin started making threatening noises at someone (which he invariably did from time to time). I think he needs to eliminate or have eliminated a couple of key enemies right off, but mostly needs to avoid scaring Stalinist bigwigs too soon with his NEP type talk. At minimum, I think there is a way where he can get power long enough to implement some of these policies in a way that the Left Reaction will have a hard time overturning even if they re-coup him in a couple of years.

Anyhow, its an AHC. Rise to the challenge or not, its up to you.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
I thought that the 1953 East German Workers Rising was catalytic in the ouster of Beria. Could Beria get more time to make a real policy difference if circumstances in East Germany are altered just enough so that East Germany is quiet through 1953?
 

Deleted member 1487

I thought that the 1953 East German Workers Rising was catalytic in the ouster of Beria. Could Beria get more time to make a real policy difference if circumstances in East Germany are altered just enough so that East Germany is quiet through 1953?
It would delay things a bit, but it was coming unless he found a way to remove some political threats and scare the others into passivity. BTW has anyone seen the move "the death of stalin" that just came out? Even though it is a black comedy, maybe it has some interesting perspectives on the power struggles and political maneuvering of this point in time?
 
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