
Beria and the Beautiful Game - wholeness
https://beyondthelastman.com/2019/11/14/death-despots-dinamo-beria-the-beautiful-game/
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shrubble
Beria was a serial killer and rapist of young girls as well... strange that
this wouldn't be mentioned in passing.

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simula67
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria#Sexual_predato...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria#Sexual_predator)

~~~
Razengan
Wow. Under "Arrest, trial and execution": He was found guilty of treason,
terrorism and "counter-revolutionary activity" but not for his numerous other
depraved crimes against individuals?

How many other monsters get away with evil that we wouldn't even know about to
condemn 50-100 years later?

The recent case of Jeffrey Epstein comes to mind, and whoever his "clients"
were that still walk free.

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pcwalton
> He was found guilty of treason, terrorism and "counter-revolutionary
> activity" but not for his numerous other depraved crimes against
> individuals?

The point of the trial wasn't to deliver justice but to eliminate Beria.
Khrushchev had to consolidate power first.

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ptaipale
The hypocrisy was obvious at that time, and Khrushchev had to redirect the
country to keep it together.

Apocryphal anecdote:

 _Following Stalin 's death, Nikita Khrushchev gave a speech to the Politburo
denouncing Stalin's policies. A few minutes into Khrushchev's diatribe,
somebody shouted out, "Why didn't you challenge him then, the way you are
now?"

The room fell silent, as Khrushchev angrily swept the audience with his glare.
"Who said that?" he asked in a reasoned voice. Silence.

"Who said that?" Khrushchev demanded, leaning forward. Silence.

Pounding his fist on the podium to accent each word, he screamed, "Who - said
- that?" Still no answer.

Finally, after a long and strained silence, the elected politicians in the
room fearful to even cough, a corner of Khrushchev's mouth lifted into a
smile.

"Now you know," he said with a chuckle, "why I did not speak up against Stalin
when I sat where you now sit."_

[I can't find the link to this just now, due to company's whitelist approach
to deciding which web sites are safe]

~~~
arethuza
My 'favourite' Khrushchev story was he apparently got drunk with the British
ambassador and the latter gamely try to argue down the number of H-bombs it
would take to destroy the UK whereas Khrushchev was arguing the number up.

In case anyone is interested - the actual number the UK government estimated
it would take was 3, the Soviets targetted many hundreds of them.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
One takes out 20% of England's population, if it's London.

~~~
arethuza
I believe the UK estimates were based on the damage required before complete
societal breakdown happens rather than simple headcount of immediate
casualties. The UK government always was rather realistic about what would
happen in the event of a 'general war', even if they didn't make that
information widely known.

~~~
arethuza
Speaking of the effects of a nuclear weapon on London, here is an excellent
BBC documentary from the early 1980s on the subject:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GJttnC8PoA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GJttnC8PoA)

In best British tradition it does even manage a bit of exceedingly dark
humour.

~~~
atombender
The director, Mick Jackson, later made Threads [1], which is one of the
bleakest, most depressing films ever made. Highly recommended, though not for
the easily disturbed. It's filmed like a documentary, not too different from A
Guide To Armageddon.

He also made Connections [2] with James Burke, which is a fantastic
documentary series about the history of science.

(His later, very commercial Hollywood work is less interesting, though Steve
Martin's L.A. Story is great.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_\(TV_series\))

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IIAOPSW
Spoiler alert on Beria
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjT2FhubAf0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjT2FhubAf0)

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pmoriarty
Anyone interested in this would do well to watch _Burnt by the Sun_.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnt_by_the_Sun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnt_by_the_Sun)

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classified
Lavrentiy Beria was in deed the name that came into my mind reading this
headline. Interesting to see an article about that mass murderer here. One
consolation is that this scoundrel died of his own medicine.

~~~
flyinghamster
Indeed, the Stalinist system ate its own enablers. Not just Beria, but his
predecessors Yezhov and Yagoda were monsters in their own right.

~~~
Gibbon1
I think I read that Khrushchev wrote that the thing he was most proud of was
that after he was done officials in disfavor were merely demoted and sent away
rather than murdered.

I think also read that in the west we think of there being a 20 year peace
between WWI and WWII. Where in eastern Europe that period was one of intercine
ethno-national conflict.

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angry_octet
If you enjoyed this you'll likely enjoy the masterpiece which is Death of
Stalin.

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homonculus1
I pictured Steve Buscemi viscerally when I read the story upthread about
Kruschev. I sure hope _Death of Stalin_ is a reasonably accurate pastiche of
those figures because it's my main impression of them.

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angry_octet
The timeline is compressed and key characters in the drama are shuffled in
jobs and time for dramatic effect. It is almost as if adapted from a stage
play, very much about the egos in the room. It has been critizised for
ignoring the systematic banality of mass murder, but I think that misses the
point of the movie.

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kitd
Slightly OT, but you can get a very good impression of what it was like to
live in Stalin's Soviet Union from the Julian Barnes book "The Noise of Time",
his autobiography of Dimitry Shostakovitch who lived a precarious life at
times.

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typeformer
This just makes me think more about what is going on in China and HK.

