Challenge/Discussion: Beriawank?

Okay, so for the past few days I've been reading and thinking about Lavrentiy P. Beria, and how he ran Russia for a short time after Stalin's death before being Kangaroo-Courted and promptly executed by men loyal to Krushchev.

... And damn, I'd never known that this guy was actually pretty cool.

Aside from his remarkably villainous look with his bald head and glasses which seemed to shine unnaturally in photographs all the damn time, during the brief period he ruled after Stalin died, he got quite a lot of liberalisation done. He was instrumental in both the truly Herculean Soviet Industrial Production effort during World War II (which gives an indication of how competently he could have run the economy), headed the Soviet Atomic program and Atomic espionage (success for Beria), and, while he was a murderous Stalinist thug, was a much less brutal Stalinist thug than most.

And if he really was the one that murdered Stalin, that makes him even more awesome. I could go into it, but it's easier to quote the Genocide:

After Stalin
After Stalin's death Beria was appointed First Deputy Prime Minister and reappointed head of the MVD, which he merged with the MGB. His close ally Malenkov was the new Prime Minister and initially the most powerful man in the post-Stalin leadership. Beria was second most powerful, and given Malenkov's personal weakness, was poised to become the power behind the throne and ultimately leader himself. Khrushchev became Party Secretary, which was seen as a less important post than the Prime Ministership.

Beria was at the forefront of liberalization after Stalin's death. Beria publicly denounced the "Doctors' Plot" as a "fraud," investigated and solved the murder of Solomon Mikhoels, and effectuated an amnesty that freed over a million non-political prisoners from forced labour camps. In April he signed a decree banning the use of torture in Soviet prisons.

Beria also signalled a more liberal policy towards the non-Russian nationalities in the Soviet Union. He persuaded the Presidium (as the Politburo had been renamed) and the Council of Ministers to urge the Communist regime in East Germany to allow liberal economic and political reforms. Beria maneuvered to marginalize the role of the Party apparatus in the decision-making process in policy and economic matters.

Some writers have held that Beria's liberal policies after Stalin's death were a tactic to maneuver himself into power. Even if he was sincere, they argue, Beria's past made it impossible for him to lead a liberalizing regime in the Soviet Union, a role which later fell to Khrushchev. The essential task of Soviet reformers was to bring the secret police under party control, and Beria could not do this since the police were the basis of his own power.

Others have argued that he represented a truly reformist agenda, and that his eventual removal from power delayed a radical political and economic reform in the Soviet Union by almost forty years.
Other than the rather personal issue of his sexual proclivities (and frankly, it's hard to tell how much of the rumours of his sadism are pure propaganda and whether there's any basis for them at all), is there something to be made of a Beria... (Beriaite? Beriaist? Whatever) Soviet Union? Seeing as he was the NKVD and MGB head, he would certainly be a properly Praetorian Premier, and of course he was still a Stalinist thug, inseparable from his support in the secret police, but yeah. I just think it would make an interesting PoD. 'Could Beria save Communism?';)
 
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