Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Beria: Stalin's Pedophile Cop & the Soviet Oppenheimer

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

In part two, Robert continues with Joe Kassabian to tell the sordid tale of Lavrentiy Beria, the head of Stalin's secret police, prolific sex criminal and ethnic cleanser, and nuclear weapon entrepreneur. https://gofund.me/e815d59e See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Oh yeah. It's behind the bastards. A podcast that opens in a different slightly less competent way each week because When yet, you know when you're on top baby, it's time to slack off. It's time to just really really fuck up hard That's how I feel. That was so annoying. What are you doing Sophie? Telling me we are annoying Who are we? Where are we? When are we?

These are all questions. I mean, I could answer them, but I feel like it'd be also annoying. Well, speaking of not annoying. True. Joe Kasabian, our guest, host of the, co-host of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, author of numerous books of science fiction

and one book of nonfiction Joe hello. Hey, it's it's good to still be here getting you know intensely Barry a pill with everyone else oh no Barry a pill is a bad bad way to turn that Yeah, I already said it. I don't it poison quite a few people. I do already have spies coming to Oregon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, we all do, right? That's the lesson from Leverinti Beria is always be spying on your friends and coworkers. It's the only way to stay ahead of them, you know?

Which is why I've got, you know, I don't actually know what joke to make about this because it will get increasingly creepy. Just like Leverinti Ber, because it will get increasingly creepy. Just like Lavrenty Beria, who has gotten increasingly creepy by this point in the story. Now, Joe, when we left off, Lavrenty is helping to run the Cheka in Georgia.

He has helped to overthrow the nationalist movements and the Minsheviks and the rest of the caucuses and deliver them to the USSR, neatly wrapped and packaged with a bow on top. Yeah, thanks for that barrier, you dick. Yeah, thanks for that, it's gonna go great. It's gonna go great. Now Joe, one criticism often lobbied against the modern Western left is that it is basically

a bunch of cliques and friend groups organized around a political tendency and not really a mass movement capable of building or holding power. Now there are fair aspects to this criticism, but one interesting thing that you get beat over the head with when you study Stalin is that the leadership cast of the Soviet Union was just a handful of cliques and friend groups, all of which were also increasingly cults of personality, right? It was like people's friend groups and all of which were also increasingly cults of personality. It was like people's friend groups

and they were all shitty friends, but they were all kind of buddies. And the ruling cast was like a bunch of buds fucking each other over. The only thing that separates your theory reading group and the central Soviet is having a bunch of people like Beria willing to fill mass graves for you.

Yes, yes. And that is how Stalin ruled. In the early days of the USSR, after Lenin died and Trotsky was expelled, Stalin and his gang of buddies ruled from a compound in the capital and basically spent all of their time together. Stalin's gang would use the familiar form T-Y to refer to him, which I understand is the Russian equivalent of calling someone bro, but really meaning it. It's the same thing that people in Hitler's inner circle would use the familiar term do

with him, where it's like, we don't really have this in English as grammatical constructs, but it's casually referring to somebody instead of like grand leader or Fuhrer or whatever. You're like, hey buddy, you know? It only really cool dudes get to do that. You know that weird house there. You know it smell crazy in there. Oh my God. Definitely.

So one term you'll hear applied to Stalin's crew is commanda, which is the Russian word for team. Sheila Fitzpatrick, author of On Stalin's Team, which is a book about said team, prefers this word, she uses the term team, but notes, quote, alternatives are available. You could call it a gang, sheikah, if you wanted to claim that its activities,

ruling a country, had an illegitimate quality that made them essentially criminal rather than governmental. You could call it the Politburo, that is the executive organ of the Communist Party's central committee, elected by a periodic party congresses, which is semi-correct since the membership was very similar, but owing the Stalin's preference for informal working groups never quite the same. Or you could call it a faction, another pejorative term in Soviet

discourse. For my part, when I read histories that really discuss especially the social dynamics of the people around Stalin, I see a lot that's familiar to the social dynamics of the people around Stalin I see a lot that's familiar to the way that like cults of personality form online Around influential people who grow deranged and throw their followers into increasingly aggressive crusades against whoever they hate I'm thinking about a specific moment on Twitter where a lady made chili for somebody and it just drove some people out of their fucking minds Because they were all free of this one fucking freak and yeah, spend their time abusing each other on the internet. Or the door dash discourse.

Right. You get these like, you get a couple of influential people and then they're hangers on and buddies and they all just kind of like have these private little groups where they chat and lose their minds together, right? That is kind of what happens with the gang around Stalin, with him and his buddies, as the time that they're in power gets longer and thus the distance between the period of time

in which they lived anything that resembled a normal life gets further away. You can also see like when people get crazy rich suddenly, how they increasingly lose touch with reality and eventually lose their fucking minds. Yeah, exactly. And these people, once you're in power in the way that Stalin and his friends are,

you're able to bend a lot of reality around you. And it does derange you to an extent, right? There's cult dynamics that play here. Nobody can have that much power, that much wealth and end up normal, regardless of what their intentions are. It's fucking impossible. It's the last thing Kanye got right before he lost his mind for the same reasons, right? No one man should have all that power.

No one friend group should have all that power. No one man should have that much power and that one man should not have a record deal. No, no, absolutely not. So less sinister, but perhaps not much less dangerous. I also see very normal dynamics of friendship replicated in a situation where decision makers had absolutely zero outside accountability or real access to the world outside of their little circle of buds. And I'm going to quote from Sheila again here.

To a degree unusual among political leaders, Stalin's political and social life were intertwined. He socialized largely with the team in their Kremlin apartments or out at his dacha. And by the way, when we use the term dacha, this is like a normal thing and it's not just Russia in Russian life, but like, I mean, it's normal in Ukraine too. Most, a lot of people have like a little country house. Sometimes it's just like a little shack or a cabin that you like go to during the summer. You have a garden there, you know. In Stalin's case, the dacha is like a mansion, you know, but it's where you go to hang out on the weekend to get away from it. My not my people's revolutionary hero in his Soviet country house. Yeah.

Yeah. All true, you know, revolutionaries for the common man have multiple homes in picturesque places. Yes, yes, very normal behavior. Yeah. So it is important to note that Stalin's gang or friend group are not just inconsequential toadies. While Stalin always exercised the ultimate power, the men that he surrounded himself with were not just there to like fluff him up.

They ran important ministries and sometimes did so competently, right? Some of these guys know what they're doing, at least in some situations. Now, nearly all of them get into positions where the things they have power with wildly exceed their capabilities, right? That happens often, but they all, most of them have actual areas of expertise too,

where they're actually reasonably competent, which is why some stuff that like, you know, the USSR, it's not the Nazis, right? The Nazis, the only thing the Nazi state ever accomplishes is death. The Soviet Union does stuff like completely reverse the state of illiteracy in the Russian areas, right? Like it has legitimate successes.

It actually is a state. Not every empire is like black and white evil We all like to think of them that way because it makes conceptualizing them the much much much easier Yeah, that they never did anything good for their citizens and even the most horrific empires of all time Yeah, there was a net positive. Yeah for people in it for a period of time. Yeah, it's its terminal decline, right? I'm bright. It's important Remember like the USSR doesn't beat the US to getting a man into space on accident, right?

There were things they did well, right? Because unlike the Nazis, they weren't just dedicated to murdering everything around them, you know? There were things that were accomplished and it's accomplished by a lot of these guys, right? They're parts of this, because they're not bad at everything. So, you know, the kind of core group, what becomes the core group, because Barry is not part of Stalin's

inner circle yet. But as you know, if you watch the movie Death of Stalin, it eventually includes guys like Molotov of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, our buddy Laveria, Malenkov, Nikita Khrushchev. These guys are all kind of coming, they're not all in his inner circle yet, but they're kind of coming together in his inner circle during this period of time around drinking and watching cowboy movies They hated doing that Stalin loved to make them do that. Yes, it's the thing that he did that I like the most like unironically. That's pretty cool It's like an ultimate flex is we're gonna sit around watching shitty spaghetti Westerns

I'm gonna watch cowboy movies imagine like black out and pissing on yourselves for my own entertainment It's kind of a Soviet version of a court jester. Yeah, exactly exactly people's jester So for a man of Barry's ambition in this period rising up the ranks of the checka in Georgia and making a name for himself Was like this was not his ultimate goal This was he saw it as an integral part of his plan to worm his way into Stalin's gang. And Barry was savvy enough to recognize that emulating the great leader's tactics

was what was going to help him form his own power base within Georgia and later the USSR. So Barry began to gather a gang of the worst killers and rapists in the secret police around himself. They socialize together. Yeah, yeah, he's kind of doing a mimicry of Stalin's inner circle, right? He gets these guys together, they hang out together,

they socialize, they eat, they drink, they brainstorm new methods of torturing people. Just normal everyday guy stuff. Yeah, just guys being bros, you know? Victor Serge, a Russian Marxist revolutionary who fought as a Bolshevik, he starts out as an anarchist, but he fights as a Bolshevik during the revolution, and becomes a critic of Stalin, described Beria and his friends this way. The only temperaments that devoted themselves willingly and tenaciously to this task of

internal defense were those characterized by suspicion, embitterment, harshness, and sadism. The Czechs inevitably consisted of perverted men tending to see conspiracy everywhere and to live in the midst of perpetual conspiracy themselves. Now this is part two, and I'm sure after part one, we've already got some weird Soviet Union stands attacking these episodes as anti-communist propaganda,

which is why I bring up Serge. Most of the lurid details of various crimes come from other communists because that's mostly who he murdered at this point. In fact, Beria's biographers spend a lot of time busting myths about him by other communists because some of those guys were just making up shit about him to hide their own crimes

in the post-Stalinist era. Not Serge though, I think he's a pretty reasonable on the ball dude and we'll stop talking about him soon, but I do wanna show Joe a picture of Victor Serge, because my God, this guy had, look at the drip on this man. Look at this outfit. Sophie? Look at that.

Oh, hell yeah. That, he's got like a fucking fur lined cape on a military uniform, he's got these like circle glass. He's got his hair Slicked back really like he's just Undeniable drip you can't it looks like he's good. He's about to fight the photographer. Yes. He sure does He's got that look on his face Just incredible drip now another Georgian Just incredible drip. Now, another Georgian, Joranti Kikodze,

described various Czechists this way as, quote, men without kith or kin, who in most cases knew no trade, had no education and were skilled only in espionage and murder. Some were sadists by nature, some entered the service as insurance for themselves. And this is definitely in line with how most people want to view the kind of humans who carry out crimes of this nature, but I don't really think it's broadly accurate. I mean, there's some guys that that is absolutely a fitting description of who are in the Cheka,

but it doesn't fit everybody. Biographer Amy Knight tells the story of a Cheka man named Shulman, and it's like S-H-U-L-'-M-A-N. He was responsible for guarding prisons and carrying out executions and is known to have murdered at least 300 people with his bare hands. Good God. Like, I don't know if he was strangled, but like personally killed 300 people, right? Once you start hitting the hundreds,

he probably switches it up just to keep these original. Yeah, you wanna avoid getting like the murderer's equivalent of tennis elbow. Murderer's knees. Get the Tommy John surgery because you blew out your elbow killing political dissidents. Yeah, you get fucking carpal tunnel because you're strangling so many dudes.

Doctor said I gotta do a knife next. Yeah. It's a medicinal gutting knife. So despite this and contrary to Kikodze's description, Schulman was a family man, you know, outside of his murdering job, he's known as being like a pretty good husband and father and seems to have been, he's described as being inclined by nature to just be a bureaucrat, a paper pusher. He was so not naturally suited to being a killer that in order to psych himself up to execute people,

Naturally suited to being a killer that in order to psych himself up to execute people He had to quote and this is Knight writing created himself the necessary bloodthirsty mood of the commandment of death by Narcoticizing himself by every means available and bringing himself to a complete state of insanity So he basically he has to get fucking blackout drunk to murder people, right? Because he just doesn't like it very much. He's the Death Squad equivalent of a berserker. Right, right, right? Because he just doesn't like it very much. He's the death squad equivalent of a berserker. Right, right, right. I mean, that's also a lot of people want to believe the most simple thing, most easily, most easy for them to understand to them as a normal human being is like, well, I wouldn't do that. No one I know would do that.

Only insane, bloodthirsty maniacs would do something like that. And that is just demonstrably untrue throughout history. Yeah. Whether it be dudes in the Cheka, the SS, Einsatzgruppen, Gestapo, you name it. Like the vast majority of people are normal. And that is why it's terrifying. That's what's scary. It's easy to think of them as all bloodthirsty psychopaths. But the reason why it's scary is because it could be your fucking neighbor.

Yeah. And there are, don't get me wrong, there are a number, a higher number than average in an average group of people among the Czech, I just like the SS, are fucking bug fuck nuts. Oh, absolutely. But not most of them at any given point in time because there just aren't enough of those people. Foundationally normal people.

Yeah. Yeah. Like you need more people than just the crazies to get all this killing done, you know? Now we don't know how many people Beria had executed in Georgia during this period. Former Czechist Dumbadze, a major source on Beria in this time, estimates that about 80% of executions were never publicized, right?

So there was, we just will not know how many people were killed. One of the bloodiest moments in Beria's tenure came after a rebel leader, Valiko Zugele, was captured. He had been planning a revolt revolt and once he gets captured, he begs the Czech, hey, let me tell my comrades, don't do this, like give up trying to fight the state. It'll save a lot of lives.

But Barry is like, no, no, no, we want there to be an uprising. Cause when there's an uprising, then we can kill a bunch of people, right? Then we can actually get rid of these folks rather than letting them lie dormant in the state. And for a few days, this revolution carries off and it's like a Minshevik uprising, right? Then we could actually get rid of these folks rather than letting them lie dormant in the state. And for a few days, this revolution carries off and it's like a Minshevik uprising, right?

Against the Bolsheviks. It has a lot of particularly in kind of like the rural and areas outside of the big cities. They hold a decent amount of territory for a while, right? Again, mostly in these areas where the Minsheviks had been dominant. But by September of 1923, the Cheka had cracked down, arresting the ringleaders and Beria made an offer to the arrested prisoners as they awaited execution. You are defeated, but the fighting continues here and there. You, the committee, are able to stop

these armed detachments, make a declaration urging these isolated detachments to put down their arms and on all our side, we will not harm them. We will stop all arrests and mass executions. I feel like that was a lie Mm-hmm. Look if you are carrying out an uprising and the people say if you give up and go home We won't kill any of you. They're absolutely going to kill all of you, right? I can't believe I can't trust la rente Beria. I know who who can you even trust anymore if not an area? So the arrested leaders signed a document in which they identified themselves

as upper-class revolutionaries, which was not entirely true. And once Beria has this document, he uses it as the pretext to carry out mass arrests and executions anyway, using the signed confession to publicize this uprising had really been like wealthy, recidivist spoil sports trying to end the people's revolution.

This provided all the justification needed for a full purging of the countryside and all remaining Menshevik sympathizers therein. Knight writes, armed detachments composed of army and Cheka troops raided villages and killed entire families and one Georgian village, all families bearing one particular last name were completely annihilated, including women and small children. Some estimates on the number of those arrested and executed by the Cheka ranged as high as 7,000 to 10,000, including prominent Minshevik leaders. Good God.

So yeah, got to get those kids killed, you know? Those kids are plotting. They're not going to go to bed on time. They're not going to want to go to school in the morning. Can't handle like any like kinda revolutionary behavior. Yeah. And it's, we go back to like the killing of the Tsar and his family and I think it was absolutely justified to kill the Tsar and his wife, right?

They had done, committed crimes against humanity. They had millions of deaths on their hands. What else are you supposed to do to those people? But when you kill their kids, and I've heard the counter argument that like, well, you know, these people had been so brutalized by the czars, if those kids were alive, they would have been a threat to the revolution. And like, I understand how that logic can take hold,

but the unfortunate reality is when you start your revolution by murdering kids, you tend to keep murdering kids. Yeah, that wall has been broken down. Yeah, yeah. Like that taboo no longer exists, even though it should. And like, you know, there's troubling parts of history that were like, you can simultaneously understand

the motivations of a group of people while also saying that was incredibly fucked up. It's like Nat Turner's rebellion, where they killed the children of slave owners. And it's like, I get where their heads are, right? To the extent that it's possible, but those kids didn't do anything because they're babies, you know?

Like it's, both of those things can be true. So as is usually the case at this period of time, these corpses are tossed into mass graves and buried in secret, which is a deliberate provocation to the cultural values of the Georgian countryside in which Beria had been raised. Funerals are like this huge community endeavor, like where everybody gets together. It is supposed to be a thing with a lot of ceremony to it. And so this is specifically like him kind of turning his back on a lot of the culture he had been raised

in by wiping out these people and then denying them any kind of acknowledgement that they'd ever existed, you know? That is, that's unsurprising because the Soviet Union as a whole is a project of Russian chauvinism and as a Georgian man, he has to go above and beyond divorcing himself from his Georgian identity to advance in that culture. And that is definitely the argument you'll hear from a lot of writers, you know, especially ones who like are kind of writing more from the Georgian perspective about this guy And it works by the way in terms of like making his name, right? This is his first foray into real mass killing and Stalin takes note of the fact that like oh this guy is a talented amateur You know, we might want to bring this guy in a little bit. See how many more people he could kill for us

But the sheer scale that you seem like you're amateur. How would you like to go pro? Yeah, how would you like to be the Travis Kelsey of filling mass graves? Did I say his name right, Sovi? Nailed it. So the sheer scale of the violence necessitated some backpedaling from Moscow as well.

In October of 1924, they released a report from a commission which basically concluded that unreliable elements in the Cheka had gone too far. Some of these people were disappeared, but not Beria. For the next three years, through 1926, he would have his men shoot at least 500 communists who were allegedly too close to the old Minsheviks for the new regime's comfort. Beria was promoted in 1926 to chairman of the GPU, which is the current name that the secret police that had succeeded the Cheka were under.

I'm still gonna wind up calling them the Cheka some. It's the GPU now, you get it. We don't need to. It's the same thing. It's the same diff, baby. He survived at least one assassination attempt and according to some accounts, rather heroically fired on the people trying to kill him

to allow several other wounded Czechists to escape. He receives an award for bravery. Who knows if this is true, right? Doesn't sound like him, to be fair. Doesn't sound like him. He also owed much of his success to the man who was his superior for a good chunk of this period, Sergo Ordzhonikidz,

who I will not be saying that last name anymore. We're gonna call him Sergo from now on. Good call. And Sergo, Sergo winds up in Moscow around 1927 with this coveted position, right? Like he comes up from the sticks essentially, gets this job in Moscow and he's close to Stalin, right? So he is gonna be the first kind of prominent guy

who's gonna feed praise, this like solid drip of praise about Beria to Stalin. And it's Sergo who ensures that Beria doesn't get punished for this massacre of the Minsheviks when a bunch of other people do. And in return, Beria is going to exhibit what's his primary and undeniable skill, which is kissing ass, right?

This man licks boots with the best of them, right? There are very few people have ever licked boots to more of a shine than fucking Lavrenty Beria. He names his son, Sergo, after this guy. He sends him letters filled with oily praise, including lines like, "'Your trust in me gives me all my energy, "'initiative and ability to work.

"'Without you, Sergo, I would have no one. "'You all my energy, initiative and ability to work. Without you, Sergo, I would have no one. You are more than a brother or father to me. You're my lover. Yeah. Yeah. Just like six pages of describing his cock follow-ups. They just settled down and explored each other's bodies.

Yeah, then they get married. Yeah, he's too old for a, for a Laurenti. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. That is definitely true. Those same letters always included like in the midst of this like oily praise, rumors about the misbehavior of various colleagues, like, oh, I love you so much. You know, you're the light of,

you're my own personal Jesus, the light of my life. Also, let me tell you what this fucking dude in the office one over is doing, right? And this is probably how he gets promoted to head the checkup, right? Because he throws his then boss under the bus. He always paints himself as an innocent. He would kind of describe himself as naive.

Like, I would never have thought that my colleagues in the secret murder police would do secret murders. How could this happen? I'm just a little guy. I'm just a Can't be, I'm just a little guy, I'm just a little funny guy. I'm just a little, little man, little dude. Now obviously, he's as corrupt as anybody else. He acquires mansions and country homes during this period,

often owned by his former superiors, who he helped to get purged. I mean, that's how you're gonna get got, right? Of course. You're Lavrenty Berry's boss, you just secured your dacha from the people, the people's central committee of reassigning dachas or whatever the fuck and You know Barry who comes over to visit you're gonna put some fucking cabbage on the grill or some shit

And these berries like nice house and then you have to be like shit shit shit Speaking of nice houses if you want to make your house nicer, buy whatever comes on next. Even if that's the Washington State Highway Patrol, buy the fuckers. Put them in your living room. See if that works. They might show up in your living room whether you buy them or not. If you live in Washington, it's never impossible. it all over the world and it makes me really happy. I never imagined that I would get the chance to carry this honor and help you a part of this legacy. Listen to The Bright Side on America's number one podcast network, iHeart.

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So the abuses that Beria and other high-rank ranking men in Georgia carried out generated enough complaints that in 1929, Stalin and Sergo ordered another committee investigation. I'm going to quote from Sangster's book here. Much of this may have been prompted by Beria's letters of criticism about senior men, but he himself was aware that the investigation might look towards him and cleverly warned Sergo that everyone tended to blame him. It was an astute but crafty move of prophylactic self-defense,

pointing out that those under investigation would of course blame the GPU. In a letter to Sergo, he suggested that he should be transferred out of Georgia, undoubtedly seeking promotion, which his political mentor ignored. But on the other hand, he shielded Beria from criticism. Hey, man, just want to let you know Everybody's gonna blame me for the shit. I did but it's these other guys fault I Arrested them. Yeah, unfair. This is the worst kind of discrimination Against me. Do we really want to live in a state where men can be punished simply for their actions the things they do no We fought against that!

Now at the end of the 1920s, this is before the Great Terror or the Holodomor has kicked off, right? But an astute observer can see things ramping in that direction towards this period, during this period. One clear sign was the increasing brutality with which the regime treated peasants. A good deal of the theory that the branch of Marxist theory that these Bolsheviks are working under is focused on like urban factory workers, right? Which is the center of Bolshevik power, right?

Rather than cities in the countryside. You can see some of this is the fact that in Ukraine, there's this big anarchist revolution that like controls a significant part of the landmass for a while and winds up fighting Against the Red Army right and it's because these are peasants right peasants tend towards more Anarchists thought than they do towards this Bolshevik thought because they're not all like laborers in factories, you know Right in Georgia policies like adversely affects the normal everyday peasant like they're not serfs anymore But like yeah, they are still yeah Yeah, and you know the minchaviks had kind of been more popular with the peasantry in Georgia

And since the minchaviks are dead or hiding at this point and the peasantry It's not gonna be in anybody's good books Who's in charge why the fuck with the peasantry support them when their only contact with them is the death squad showing up and wiping out villages? Right. Yeah. That's your primary interaction with the government. So Beria focuses on the peasantry next, massively escalating the confiscation of lands and shooting so many peasants that it provokes another uprising.

And the idea here, this is justified as you've got a bunch of peasants who have huge tracts of land and there are some wealthy peasants with a lot of land and it's getting re-appropriated. A lot of this is like people who are maybe middle-class or people who just aren't Marxists, you know, but are not like wealthy peasants, right? So everyone, you know, both people who own these vast tracts of land

and also people who just have like a small farm, a lot of them get caught up in this and a lot of them get killed. Then they say that they're all part of these, you know, cool locks or- Yeah, they're cool locks, yes. And this uprising that Beria kind of incites, it plays well with Stalin's revolution from above,

which is a program to industrialize the country that involved the forcible confiscation of lands. Peasants were not happy selling their grain for the low prices mandated by the state. And thus the wealthiest of the peasants had to be wiped out. That's at least the justification at the top. In October of 1929, just 3.5% of households in Georgia had been collectivized.

A year later, more than 60% were. This is a rapid change. And you can only make a change like this through hideous, wild violence. In Georgia, Beria was the man who orchestrated it. In one noteworthy case, he shut down an uprising by peasants by again, promising like, hey, if you all go home, you'll get amnesty.

And then I don't need to tell you what he does, right? He shoots the fuckers, you know? Stalin loves all this. He grows closer to Beria, but the unthinkable scale of the violence caused outrage across the caucuses. And Stalin wrote an article in Pravda. And this article is generally known

as the dizzy with success article. And it's interesting. You see a lot about Stalin in this, where he frames it. He starts by talking about like the staggering success of the collectivization movement, right? You know, we've done this so fast, no one guessed that we could have done it this fast and done it this well, what an incredible achievement.

But then he goes on to note, the successes have their see-me side, especially when they are attained with comparative ease, unexpectedly, so to speak. Such successes sometimes induce a spirit of vanity and conceit. We can achieve anything. There's nothing we can't do. People not infrequently become intoxicated by such successes.

They become dizzy with success, lose all sense of proportion, and the capacity to understand realities. The article continues with a bunch of fun claims, like when Stalin claims that the success of collectivization rested entirely on the voluntary character of the collective farm movement, right? We did this all and everyone volunteered to have their farms taken away and then everybody clapped and then everybody clapped Now the real purpose of this article it's framed as like what a success But he's slamming the brakes on the collectivization profit products process because like it turns out that

the breaks on the collectivization process. Because like, it turns out that disrupting the way that all your food is made kind of causes problems. And this is again, you know, when I was a kid, this was framed as like a unique evil of the Soviet system, all of these famines caused by this collectivization. This is not wildly different from what the East India company does in a capitalist terms, in India in the late 1700s, which kills 30 million people.

It's this idea where you get guys who are not farmers, who don't know shit, but are sure that the farmers are dumb ingrates, who don't know the most efficient way to do things and decide to just change everything from the top. But I'm sure you're doing it wrong. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And when you do that with where all the food comes from,

you're going to have issues, which is why they need to slam the brakes on this shit to an extent. Beria and his boss, Stalin's brother-in-law, a guy called Reddens, wrote another letter blaming a bunch of other officers in Azerbaijan and Armenia and Georgia for the brutality of collectivization and the fact that it had caused shortages and stuff like tea. Knight writes, quote, Beria and Reddins painted a grim picture of the situation in the trans Caucasian countryside, deliberately exaggerating the extent

of anti-Soviet rioting and protests. Apparently they felt that the GPU had not been given enough leverage to suppress these actions because they claimed that the situation was exacerbated by the mildness of the authorities and dealing with the kulaks and other rebels, which is very cop-brained shit

Wow all the brutality we did had consequences. It's probably because we weren't allowed to be brutal enough You know that would have solved it. We would have it. We would have truly been able to bring The hammer down and secure this place, but wasn't for woke if it wasn't for the woke peasantry, I guess. So shortly thereafter, Barry is gonna throw Raidans under the bus too. He claims that Redden's had smashed down the door of a female colleague's home in a drunken rage

and gotten so hammered that he walked home naked. He makes a lot of claims about how like drunken and abusive this guy is. They all may have been true, right? You know? Sure. Whether or not it is though, doesn't matter. What matters is that it worked. and abusive this guy is, they all may have been true, right? You know? Sure. Whether or not it is though, doesn't matter. What matters is that it worked.

Stalin transferred Reddence and by November of 1930, Beria was a member of the Georgian Central Committee. By this point, he's also a friend of Stalin's. Another assassination attempt may have contributed to the growing bromance. There's a story that like a gunman tries to kill Stalin and Beria shields him with his body. May or may not have been true.

Who knows? Doesn't sound like Beria. Also though, it would sound like Beria to have a guy try to shoot Stalin, like so he can throw his body in front of the leader, right? Yeah. To like orchestrate it. I don't know. Maybe.

Just shoot high. Yeah, fake gun, who knows? By late 1930, Beria was a regular visitor to Stalin's vacation home in Sochi. He's not in the inner circle yet. He's not hanging out and drinking and eating with Stalin every day. He's not living in Moscow, right?

But he like starts going to Sochi, which is where Stalin has his vacation house every summer. And he actually like, in order to justify always being there, he gives himself the job of handling security for Stalin's dacha He's basically like your current guys. You can't trust them. They're not safe enough, you know I'll do this job and once he's in charge of security He's got an excuse to kind of always be hanging around getting face time with the big boss, right? It's a great security guy you have on your dacha. It'd be a shame if you went missing

Hey died must not have been great at security. Let me take over here So tragically, yeah, he had an accident He fell down six flights of stairs and shut himself voice in the back of the right into a pair of bullets tragic We got to stop keeping these things at the bottom of staircases Stalin responded by rapidly promoting barrier to first secretary in Georgia and second secretary of the Trans Caucuses Central Committee. By the age of 32, Beria was one of the most prominent young leaders in the whole USSR. Now I should note that 1932 to 33 were the years in Ukraine that came to be known as

the Holodomor. This was all part of the anti-Kulak forced collectivization efforts in Ukraine, which were similar but much more brutal to the ones that Beria carried out in Georgia. Beria killed thousands, maybe more. The Holodomor kills between three and a half to five million Ukrainians, right? I don't think we're ever gonna get a super precise death toll

because of how it's carried out, but it is a hideous, hideous time. And I don't mean to be papering over it, it's just, it doesn't really deal directly with Beria. It doesn't that he is doing a lot of the same stuff to Georgia, but obviously it does not lead to the same death toll in Georgia that it does in Ukraine. Anyway, the whole thing, the Holodomor is awful enough

that it reaches the ears of Stalin's wife, Nadya Alieva, one of the few people in his life who could safely talk shit about other people to Stalin. She becomes aware also of the shit that Barry has been doing. She starts talking to Stalin and being like, this guy, you can't trust him. This is a bad man. He's doing a lot of really brutal stuff.

It's interesting because one of the things that has happened in this period of time is that by the late 20s, she's grown tired of being locked away in the Kremlin with the other wives of powerful men. And because, you know, one of, again, one of the real accomplishments of the Soviet Union is that women's rights improved dramatically to where they had been in the Tsarist period. Now we are not saying there's any kind of real equality, but it's much better than it had been under the Tsars. And because the new Soviet woman was supposed to have agency, was supposed to be able to

have a career, Nadia's like, look, Stalin, I'm not just going to stay in the fucking Kremlin being your wife. I want to go learn to do something. And so she goes and becomes a chemistry student. She enrolls in college. Now the students that she's becoming friends with don't really know who she is. They certainly don't know that she's Stalin's wife. Otherwise they would not have been saying some of the things that they start to say

to Nadia. I imagine being invited over to a house party with your friends, your friend's house and it's like, oh, this is my husband. Like you look from, oh, fuck. Oh no. Oh no. Gotta go. I really don't want to watch cowboy movies.

I really gotta go home. New contact with young students brought Nadia information about the reality behind the Holodomor and the bloodshed that had backed up her husband's collectivization policy. She went to Stalin eventually and told him he was butchering the people. Stalin responded by arresting her new friends,

or rather he had Beria arrest her new friends. And Nadia fell into a deep depression, eventually taking her own life. A shitty husband as he was, he seems to have loved maybe the wrong word, but like after she dies, it is generally agreed that things get a lot darker with Stalin.

He gets a lot crueller. It does fuck him up to some extent. I don't know how you wanna translate that in terms of love or not, but it has an impact on him. Maybe the closest thing Stalin was capable of funness I don't know how you want to translate that in terms of love or not, but it has an impact on him. Maybe the closest thing Stalin was capable of fondness for another human being. Yeah, that seems to be the case.

The fringe group slash cult around Stalin and the Kremlin increasingly shuts out the rest of the world after this point, as Sheila Fitzpatrick writes. He socialized largely with the team, and their Kremlin apartments are out at his dacha. This was true in the early days of the team, when his wife Nadia was alive, and he and many of his colleagues had young children, and continued after Nadia's suicide in 1932, when the team and his in-laws from two marriages provided virtually all of his social life, which focused around his dacha. He was a lonely man after Nadia's death, and even lonelier after the Great Purges broke

up his surrogate family of in-laws. His daughter Svetlana was left for company, but that ended when she grew up and married during the war. The company of the team became all the more important to Stalin after the war, and participants have left memorable accounts of the awfulness of enforced nightly socializing at the dacha, now in contrast to the 30s without wives and children, and the burden it imposed on the team." So that's kind of Sheila's account of sort of how shit with Stalin shifts.

But you see some things are always true, which is that he is always isolated with this group of people, this ever kind of shrinking circle of people. And when Nadia is alive in the early days, it's a broader circle. He doesn't have total power over everyone yet. He's not killing everyone he has a disagreement with. And increasingly after the case with her, some people argue this feeds in a lot to the great terror. I don't know how much credence you want to give that,

but it is generally agreed that he becomes darker and crueller after her death and also lonely. Yeah. You know? His circle is growing increasingly smaller, more insular. Yeah. And his last real connection with what you'd consider

normal people being students that his wife went to school with, where he considered treasonous, whatever it was that they said. So I can only imagine the horrific feedback loop that happens in these dudes' weekends out at the dacha. These do not get to be more fun as parties. Yeah, much worse parties. They've graduated from being like the fun, happy, drunk,

or like dude who doing club drugs or whatever to like the dude doing heroin in a dark basement alone. Yeah, yeah. So Beria is again not yet a member of Stalin's close friend circle. Nor again is he a factor in the Holodomor. He is strictly a regional leader at this point, and that would not do for a man of his ambition. He is however close to Stalin, a trusted toady, and he's going to be working at getting into

that inner circle, which he knows is going to require living in and around the Kremlin. So Beria set himself up to slide into position there the only way he knew how, with his unparalleled skill in bootlicking and also his willingness to commit murder. In 1934, he was elected to full membership of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and this marks his entry as a national level figure in the USSR.

And we're gonna cover what happens after that, but first, Joe, you know who's not a national level figure in the USSR? I would assume the advertisers of products and services available to us. It would be weird if they were, right? It would be weird if they were, you know? Soviet Union famously- This had brought you

by central factory number 16. Yeah, what was it, the Lada? I forget which car they made. Oh, fuck yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll have to cut in the right name for that fucking car. Anyway, buy a fucking car. Here's some ads.

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To Die For is available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, we're back. So 1934, Beria is in the central committee of the Communist Party. He is now finally out of the caucuses, you know? There are protests about his promotion within the party because a lot of people know

Beria is a dangerous creep at this point. A number of high ranking officials send stolen letters that are like, this guy is a maniac. Please don't promote him. And Stalin of course- Keep him in the caucuses. Yeah, yeah. Stalin does not listen.

Beria sets to work, probably because they don't like him, purging every other leader in the trans caucuses region who might act as a barrier to his rise. And this means he's killing all of the veteran communist organizers who had like brought the revolution to the caucuses in the first place, you know?

That is again, when you talk about it, and to be fair, even most of like the tankies I know will say that Beria was a piece of shit. Now I think they go too far in saying everything bad that happened during Stalin was Beria. You do run into that sometimes, but I have occasionally come into people who try to rehabilitate Beria.

I think they are in a minority even within that set because again, all the people he's murdering are good Bolsheviks, right? That is his primary victim here. Well, and good Bolsheviks, right? Like that is his primary victim here. Well, and a bunch of peasants, right? But he does kill like all of these people who had done the revolution, you know? Started from the bottom, now you're dead.

Yeah, exactly. In Azerbaijan, he also presides over a massive increase in the productivity of oil wells in the Caucasus. In Stalin's personal life, he becomes a gopher, using his position as head of the social security to repeatedly visit and do small favors for his boss. He becomes like Svetlana's babysitter from time to time. Oh, that's creepy in retrospect. Yeah, horrible babysitter.

Do not let Lavrenty Beria watch your kid, you know? Not good. No, no, don't do that. Knight writes, quote, photos of Beria and Svetlana taken when the latter was young convey a proprietary manner on Beria's part. In one photograph, Svetlana, who appears to be about nine or 10 years old,

is perched uncomfortably on Beria's lap. Judging from her expression, she did not enjoy being in his possessive grasp, particularly at her age. Who would? Who would? Who would? There's never been a human being that's enjoyed the touch of Larente Berry.

No, no, and like, look, she is analyzing a photograph. That's not a thing you can say objectively, but having looked at those photographs, Svetlana does not look like she wants to be on that lap. Yeah. Not a fan. There's not many laps I would like to be on, but I especially wouldn't want to be on Laurenti Beria's lap.

No, no, no, no. Just Lee Pace. So the closer he got to Stalin, the more Beria came to understand his boss and particularly the fact that he was a massive narcissist, right? At the 17th party Congress, Stalin had received fewer votes to continue heading the party than he had expected. Now, he still easily wins re-election, but the fact that he doesn't win it by as much as he had thought he would triggers, if you know anything about J. Stahl, pretty paranoid guy, and this really, really jacks his paranoia gland into overdrive. The boss begins to rant about double-dealers within the party and complains to Beria that he stood alone. Beria responded by making himself head of Stalin's unofficial, but actually very official, cult of personality.

Sangster writes, Beria ensured Stalin's picture appeared everywhere and arranged a new monument over Stalin's birthplace in Gori. He even went so far in this obsequious behavior to bring Stalin's mother to Tbilisi, where he and his wife took care of her. When Stalin visited his mother in 1935, it was with her carer Beria. He was making every conceivable effort to ingratiate himself in the leader's eyes and behaved like a courtier looking after a dowager empress. He takes care of his mom for him. He becomes a nurse for Stalin's mom to get in on his good side. That is ace level toting.

Man, that is like some Mr. Smithers shit. That's dedication to the craft. Yeah, you have to respect the toting. Yeah, what if Smithers had one hell of a body count? Yeah, right, like what if Smithers was killing people left and right? We don't know that he wasn't. It is kind of implied in a couple of episodes. Actually, that is true.

Yeah. Despite being Georgian himself, Stalin had not been a very significant part of organizing actual Bolshevik groups in Georgia, right? This is not where he is primarily active. And he is profoundly insecure about this fact. And in fact, hated the Georgian communists who had actually done that work.

Particularly though, he hated the Marxist historians who insisted on writing accurate histories of the Bolshevik movements in the caucuses. And that is not- Those motherfuckers. If you wanna talk about an unsafe job, writing accurate histories of Bolshevik organizing into caucuses in 1931, right?

You do not want to be doing that, bro. Playing a Russian roulette with your own citations. Yeah. Yeah. This starts in late 1931 when Stalin himself wrote a letter to an academic journal to complain about an article critical of linen written by a historian with the incredible last name Slutsky spelled exactly like you'd hope exactly like amazing last name dudes rock

Sounds like you like it literally sounds like you're accusing him of being a slut and being a little racist against Russians But that's just his name amazing stuff and being a little racist against Russians, but that's just his name. Amazing stuff. Beria took note of this and he launched a series of attacks in the mid 1930s against historians who had written histories that didn't center Stalin. One of these guys later had to go before the party Congress

and apologize for leaving Stalin out in a very funny turn of phrase. He claimed that when he'd written the book, Stalin's role in the Bolshevik movements in the Caucasus quote, had not yet come to light. We weren't telling this lie yet when I wrote the book! You didn't give me the cliff notes of your last cult meeting. I didn't know I was supposed to fake this. That is so fucking funny. You love to see it. Oh my god.

So Beria published public challenges and attacks against objective historians, many of whom were purged later. He also hired a writer or writers to author a history book, which he took credit for. The book had the banger title on the history of Bolshevik organizations in Trans Caucasia, which I don't know, Joe, you and I are both title guys. I don't call that a good one. No. I mean, maybe like a mid level like young adult both title guys. I don't call that a good one. No. Mm-mm. I mean, maybe like a mid-level young adult book, sure. I would have used the title, What's Trans-Caucasian? My Bolsheviks.

That's pithy. That's got some bounce to it, right? So this book posits a wholly new view of Bolshevik history, wherein Stalin was the main organizer and figurehead of the Bolshevik movements in Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Now, the book is fucking nonsense, as this passage by Knight makes clear.

Beria attributed to him an incredibly active role in practical revolutionary work at the time that he was still a student. Thus, Beria's book stated that in 1898, Stalin led no fewer than eight workers' circles. By the seventh edition, the number was increased to 11, and also organized a large railway strike. As the historian Bertram Wolfe observed, these were rather remarkable feats considering that Stalin was enrolled at the Tiflis Seminary, where students were virtually

kept under lock and key. Beria's claim did not accord with earlier accounts about the same time period, including one given by Stalin himself. Berius' history asserted that Stalin was leading a large movement. In fact, the Georgian social democratic movement was overwhelmingly Menshevik, and as one observer pointed out, Stalin had only a small following.

Quote, he succeeded in gaining only a few adherents, rarely more than 10 supporters, whom he would quickly organize into groups or clusters, giving immediately the grand title of committee so that rules so hard like very funny historians and Barious slides this book up in front of you is like go ahead Prove you wrong. Yeah. Yeah, I fucking dare you. Yeah, let's do some peer review guys. What do you think? Dare you yeah, let's do some peer review guys. What do you think?

Nobody even cracks the first page like looks good boss. It's good stuff good stuff red stamp. Do you need a jacket quote? Need a blurb. Yeah, and why don't you just write it and sign my name to it? We're good And again, so you know today if you were doing this in a revolution you would just use chat GPT to generate, cause no one's gonna read this fucking thing, to generate your bullshit book about how Stalin did everything. In this case, you had to get ghost writers. And I, Barry would later say there were multiple ghost writers. He says this when he's like being tortured basically.

So who knows how many there were. It's generally agreed that at least one of the guys who wrote this book was a real writer, not a historian, just a writer named Bedia, B-E-D-I-I-A is the anglicization. And this guy, so Beria has Bedia write this book for him, and then he has him shot in 1937. He uses the great purchase of cover to kill his ghost. He makes him a literal ghost writer.

Nobody tell James Patterson this. Yeah, I think James Patterson is already doing this. Ha ha ha ha. Yeah. Great work on the Pelican Brief 3. Why don't you come into my office for a second? Turn your back, look out this window. I'm just gonna rummage around in my desk for a second.

If you hear a click, don't stop looking out the window. Close that suspiciously thick door behind you when you come in, please. Ha ha ha ha. Now, the book is a huge hit. Stop looking out the window. Close that suspiciously thick door behind you when you come in, please. Now the book is a huge hit, by which I mean Stalin liked it. And so everyone else had to pretend it was great and buy a copy, which I have considered becoming the center of a revolutionary movement, murdering my enemies and becoming the totalitarian ruler of a state because it would really be good for my book sales. Yeah, I mean, that is how I'll finally secure my nebula,

is creating a personality cult. All of the other writers are dead. Congratulations. You have no choice but one vote. So yeah, it does great. And this is, you know, Stalin likes this a lot. This is maybe the biggest thing Beria does for him in this period, even more than the murders

because Stalin is a weird egomaniac. But Stalin also, he never wants to give any of his minions too much praise. So after thanking Beria for this, he has the Politburo reprimand Beria for republishing some of Stalin's old writing without getting permission. Basically like a copyright violation. Revolutionary nagging.

It is so funny. Starting in 1936, the same year the terror began, Beria launched his own regional cult of personality. He starts naming everything he can across the caucuses after himself, from movie theaters to farms to sports stadiums. His portrait gets put in schools and government buildings across the area, newspapers start putting out regular articles about all the

great shit he's doing. And Beria follows this with a slurry of new articles, rewriting Stalin's history and thus the history of the whole revolution. He was not a particularly revolutionary thinker himself, and his decision to do this was basically he's not like even inventing propaganda for Stalin. He was not a particularly revolutionary thinker himself, and his decision to do this was basically, he's not like even inventing propaganda for Stalin. He's copying less successful Soviet propagandists who were just worse at toting than them. He's like plagiarizing other bootlickers, but just better at it.

They can't give him the Soviet version of a copyright strike if they're all dead. That's right, that's right. Forty chest, baby. Yeah, that's fucking. 40 chest, baby. Yeah, that's fucking where Sam Altman's heading. Barry was able to get away with this because by 1936, he had become one of the few pillars of Stalin's emotional support.

This is a difficult time for Jay Stahl, the mid, late, early, late 1930s. It's my emotional support, Barry. Yeah, my emotional support mass murderer. This is my comfort checkist. So it is a tough time for Stalin. Trotsky is still alive and abroad in exile at this point and has called for his removal. Stalin started facing more internal resistance within the Soviet Union because the economy

is kind of in the shitter right now, right? You know, the it turns out doing a starvation genocide not great for food production or economics Yeah, yeah Burn your your area known as like the breadbasket of your empire. Yeah, I burn this to the ground. Yeah Yeah, it's like Ukraine is so valuable In that sense that like the Nazis are willing to risk everything to have it and Stalin and his friends Just light it on fire. Yeah, you can't kill everybody if we kill everybody first. Yeah, we'll show you killing everybody in the late 1934 Sergei Kirov a popular and powerful politician who becomes the namesake of the Kirov worship and red alert to

One of the better redv Warship in Red Alert 2, one of the better Red Alert games, was assassinated. Kirov had been close to Stalin, but he's also, he's one of these, he's kind of one of the last guys in Stalin's inner circle that everybody really likes, right? Like Kirov is just like really popular. I think he was probably just a cool dude to hang out with. That's why he had to go.

But he's killed mysteriously, and there are theories that it was Stalin who did it. Most of the historians I've read think that that probably isn't what happened, but it's not impossible. Because of how popular he is, it wouldn't be against Stalin's later behavior to have this guy worked.

There can't be a cool guy in the group. Yeah. It's also, some people will say Beria probably kills Kirov, maybe on Stalin's orders, maybe he's doing it for himself. We don't really know, right? This is still a mystery today. You can read a bunch of theories on it.

You know, I'm not competent to say what's most likely, but he's dead and this causes a huge uproar. For one thing, because this guy is so popular and so powerful, there's legitimate paranoia on behalf of everyone that's Stalin or the people around him, but like, oh shit, who's next, right? They can get Kirov, assuming Stalin didn't do it,

Stalin's literally like kind of scared because they were able to kill Kirov, you know? We don't really know, but the NKVD, which is what the secret police go by at this point, spends 1935 carrying out an investigation, by which I mean they torture a shitload of people until said people admit that they had been plotting to kill Stalin, and that's how Kirov got murdered, right?

It's unclear if there was really a plot. There may have been. It wouldn't be weird if there had been a plot to kill Stalin, right? No, all these fucking people are always plotting. Right, exactly. But this is the pretext that Stalin needs to tell the NKVD to really ramp up the mass arrests

and murder of everyone who'd ever looked at him funny. Now, Kirov's death came at a great time for Stalin. The economic collapse that followed collectivization had done a lot of damage to his standing and to the Soviet Union. And in some ways, the great terror comes out of the, like you could also, you could, and a lot of people do, basically say that the terror

kind of starts in the reaction to Kirov's assassination, right? That's what gets the balls rolling that become the great terror. And in some ways, it's a great distraction campaign from the problems that Stalin's government is having at this period of time. And it also allows him to consolidate his power, which is a big part of why so many people think It's a great distraction campaign from the problems that Stalin's government is having at this period of time. And it also allows him to consolidate his power,

which is a big part of why so many people think he killed Gerov, right? Because like, well, it kind of works out for him. But like, as we all know with 9-11, things can work out great for a mass murdering piece of shit and they didn't necessarily start the process. You know? Something can blow up in your face

and you still take advantage of it. Yeah, exactly. And these guys are all, the only reason these people are alive is they're skilled opportunists. Like Stalin and Maria are both very good at taking opportunity of events that occur. Starting in 1936, the NKVD begins jailing

and killing people who had been influential Bolsheviks. A lot of them were people who had just been close to Stalin. Like anyone who had been his Bolsheviks. A lot of them were people who had just been close to Stalin. Like anyone who had been his friend that he knew well in previous periods, he kills a lot of people just because they knew too much about him, right? At least that's kind of the way you'll hear this described. A lot of them wind up in camps, the infamous Gulags,

and the only people who are spared are kind of his current friend group, guys like Molotov and Kaganovich, right? Now I say spared, but it's worth noting, even the guys that he's close to who don't get killed or imprisoned often get charged with something at some point. Vyacheslav Molotov is indicted for the killing of Kirov, right?

And I don't know if it's because Stalin legitimately didn't trust him for a while, or if he's like what he did with Beria when he like gives the copyright strike to him, if he just wanted to make sure Molotov wasn't too comfortable, right? So there's a period- He had to know his place.

That he, you might be the foreign minister, but you're not untouchable. And he's not at this point, by the way, the foreign minister yet. We will be talking about that process, but like Molotov gets indicted for killing Kirov for a while, but then he gets dropped from the indictment and when he comes back into favor, he's added in.

In retrospect, he was like, oh, they were gonna kill Molotov, you know? That's how Molotov knows that things are okay when he gets added to the list of potential victims. They get a retcon on his personal history, but you know, it's a Molotov rebuild. Like you can't make other, except for the horrible body count. Like it's all really funny.

Like these are, Stalin and his inner circle are the messiest bitches in history. Yeah. It's amazing. It's the cruelty of the absurd and the absurdity of cruelty in one incredibly annoying group of dickheads. Yeah. It's interesting to me that like as horrible, maybe it's just because he didn't get all that long in power.

Hitler's in power a little more than a third of the time that Stalin's in power, right? Like 12 years, you know? Stalin's like 30. It's interesting to me that like, Hitler has the night of long knives. He does have that one big spate of purges. And then maybe it's just because the war starts so soon after

and he really can't afford it. But like, he doesn't, we don't have the same kind of purges of Hitler's friends that you get. People fall out of favor, they lose jobs, but he doesn't do the same thing Stalin does in terms of like absolute clean sweep. And maybe it's just because, you know, the war is on and he can't really afford to start massacring

his friends like that. He also did like targeted purges I mean, yes, especially like after the assassination attempt with and then yeah, you know He took a ton of people and then even people he was kind of remotely suspicious of like Rommel for example He's never been completely solidified if he was in a knot It was a little unclear and Hitler's always that was, very jealous of him because of how popular he was. He's like, nah, man, you gotta kill yourself. Yeah, I kinda do think that if Hitler had like,

either hadn't done World War II and had stayed in power or had somehow won, like he would have wound up doing a lot of this stuff himself, you know? Oh, fuck yeah. You probably would, but he just doesn't get the opportunity. There'd be no way around it because he was intensely paranoid.

Right, right, and everyone around him is a piece of shit, you know? Yeah. So kind of what comes out of this period, one of the things that happens to all these people who are close to Stalin, if you want to survive, part of how you solidify your position and make yourself not seem suspicious

is to go after your friends and close colleagues, the people that you like most and rely on, your subordinates and coworkers, the people that you like, not just like somebody who works in the same office, but the guy that you're really relying on to do a lot of work, right? The people who are best at their jobs,

that's who you're going to give up for execution. And in part of it, that's how you show your loyalty. It's like, this guy's my fucking brother-in-law, he's great at his job, I just had him shot in the back of the head for you, buddy. That's how loyal I am, right? What independence the Politburo had had faded away at this point.

Terrified, they passed a resolution to permit torture during interrogations, which was already common. There are field executions ordered by the NKVD, and they start assigning arrest quotas in 1937 using the same Troika system originally pioneered by the Cheka So like this the same way Barry is doing shit in in Georgia in his early career this becomes how the Great Terror is executed and

Previous to the Great Terror The Bolsheviks had had a lot of people purged obviously we were just talking about that it had generally not been the thing Particularly in like Russia to go after old Bolsheviks we were just talking about that, it had generally not been the thing, particularly in Russia, to go after old Bolsheviks. If you did, they were forced out of jobs, but you wouldn't execute them. It happens sometimes, but not in mass. This is when they start mass executing old Bolsheviks, even within the center of Russia. And somewhere between about a million and two million people are executed or worked to death in gulags by the time the Great Terror ends in 1938. It's worth noting that a major factor in the terror is anti-Semitism. About a

third of the NKVD was Jewish before the Great Terror. Many of these people are massacred and replaced with Georgians and Russians. By 1939, only about 4% of NKVD officers are Jewish. A similar purge- Those guys are sweating fucking bullets. Those guys are, and you have to assume very canny, right? Like that 4%, those are some tough sons of bitches. They had to throw a lot of people under the bus to not get killed themselves.

Yeah. A similar purge takes place in the Red Army, not just of Jews, but of most of the officer class. Yeah. 15 of 16 army commanders are arrested. And like, it's worth noting because of what a shit show the Red Army is and the invasion of Finland and in the initial, the first year or and change

of like the, of World War II of after Operation Barbarossa. It has this reputation as being a total mess until like it gets rebuilt to under guys like Zhukov during the war, right? That's not really the accurate. The Red Army that Trotsky builds is like, I mean, it's literally a revolutionary army, but it actually is like a revolutionarily advanced

fighting force. They are pioneering a lot of what will become like modern warfare tactics and Trotsky. The part of why they win the Civil War is Trotsky builds a really good army, right? The Red Army. The army that they start purging was quite competent. Yes. It will not stay that way. Because when you kill everyone who knows how to do things, they don't work as well. Yeah, the incredible amount of elimination that happened in all branches of the Red Military, specifically the Army and the Air Force, is kind of astounding when you look at statistics. There wasn't many officers at general level even left standing by the time the Winter

War begins. And one of the things this tells you is that despite what a lot of the propaganda in the USSR says about the fascists in Germany, this is not, that's not seen as the primary threat by Stalin at this point. It can't have been. You wouldn't do this if you were worried

that you were just a few years away from being invaded. Right? No fucking way. Even in Stalin's paranoid mind, would he shoot himself in the foot so spectacularly if that was the case? And if he did, then we've left the realm of paranoia and into outright insanity. Yeah, and you'll get like Molotov,

like as late as 1980 when interviewed would be like, we had to do this because these people were unreliable and we knew the war was coming. You can't have unreliable people in the military. And maybe that's what Molotov believed. But it is worth noting that in the mid thirties, the USSR has very close relations with the Nazis. They do joint military training exercises

because they are both pariahs. Yeah, they're pariah states together, right? The Nazis and the Soviet Union, not popular internationally. So they like, their armies are practicing together, you know? In one fell swoop, the Red Army is shorn of its very best officers and left in a chaotic, lobotomized state under which it would enter World War II.

This does work out very well for Finland. Uh-huh, I will say that. Best thing you could have done for the Finns. There were purges as well of people of Polish descent, like actual Soviet citizens of Polish ancestry. Part of how this happens is in 1938, internal passports are introduced to the USSR and people are required to list their ancestry

for the first time. Poles and other members of diaspora communities in the Soviet Union are then forbidden from changing their nationality. This is part of the pretext to an ethnic cleansing. Writing about this in the book Bloodlands, historian Timothy Snyder claims, the only national minority that was highly overrepresented in the NKVD at the end of the Great Terror were the Georgians, Stalin's own. This third revolution was really a counterrevolution, implicitly acknowledging that Marxism and

Leninism had failed. In its 15 or so years of existence, the Soviet Union had achieved much for those of its citizens who were still alive. As the Great Terror reached its height, for example, state pensions were introduced. Yet some essential assumptions of revolutionary doctrine had been abandoned. Existence, as the Marxists had said, was no longer preceded essence. People were guilty not because of their place in the socioeconomic order, but because of their ostensible personal identities or cultural connections. Politics was no longer comprehensible in terms of class struggle.

If the diaspora ethnicities of the Soviet Union were disloyal as the case against them went, it was not because they were bound to a previous economic order, but because they were supposedly linked to a foreign state by their ethnicity. Ah, and it's so interesting that Stalin does this, like surrounds himself, the Cheka becomes overwhelmingly Georgian because he himself, likeia attempted to divorce himself from his Georgian identity and become as Russian as I mean that's why his name is Stalin yeah and he didn't he did not rule as Joseph Juggasvili yeah yeah yeah why would you terrible name it's the same yeah rolls off the tongue yeah now

Beria is again not yet head of the NKVD theia is again, not yet head of the NKVD. The job during the Great Terror, the head of the NKVD is this insanely violent dude named Yezhov. Or Ezhov is how it's spelled in some of the books. These are anglicizations, right? Like, cause his name is not written in that way. Like it's written in a totally different set of characters. So Beria is a major figure in the organization though.

He rises to deputy commander of the NKVD by 1938, which is generally like agreed upon as the last year of the terror. And of course he was leading the secret police in Georgia during this time. So he is a part of the machinery of the great terror, but he's not directing all of it. Now, some of the books I've read,

I think Knight's book makes this case, argues that he personally informed on a number of Red Army commanders and orchestrated a significant part of the process of purging the Red Army. One Soviet official later claimed after World War II that, quote, the Beria clique had picked up a giant crystal vase containing 82,000

of the best, most experienced and qualified commanders and political workers in the army and Navy and smashed it on the rocks. That's true for what happens to the army and Navy. It seems to me, at least based on what I've read, again, not a historian here, that that's an overstatement of Beria's role, right? Because he's not, and again, some people will say he was kind of putting the whisper in Yezhov's ear and he was a major figure in this. The officer that Beria is most often accused of informing on and getting killed

is this general level officer, a major figure in the army that the Germans had also leaked information on. Like the Nazi's basically claimed that he had been spying on the government for them because they want this guy out of the way because he's a competent commander, right? They know what's gonna happen next to him. Yes.

Other accounts I've read paint Beria as just as terrified as everyone else on the central committee. You know, he is doing this. He is having people killed and stuff, but not because he is wanting to orchestrate a purge as much as because he's scrambling to save his own ass. And it's kind of a miserable period for him

under this version of events, because he's having to burn a lot of people he trusts. He's having to throw a lot of his good subordinates to the wolves. And he's not sad about that because it hurts him emotionally, but he's sad about that because useful people are useful and he's having to kill a lot of useful people, you know? And that causes problems for him down the line.

I wanna read a quote from the book On Stalin's Team by Sheila Fitzpatrick here. It was one of the conventions of the process that when there were arrests in your own bailiwick, you had to sign off on them. Well, what could you do? Voroshilov had to supervise the purging of the military, though he was not happy about it.

Zdanov, Khrushchev, and Beria, the last two not yet Politburo members, were doing the same in the regions they headed, though they did it under local NKVD direction and without particular enthusiasm, since it was their people they were purging." So again, that's kind of the two pictures of Beria, and both can't be true, right? One is that he is masterminding aspects of the terror. He's really into it. He's a major role in purging the army because he sees it as, you know,

benefiting his own consolidation of power. And the other is, well, he's wrapped up in this like everyone else, but his primary motivation is trying not to get killed. Right? And that's why he does what he does. I think both could be a little true. Like he-

Aspects of both, sure. Yeah, I mean, I do believe in that one thing that you were saying before, like, proving his loyalty through brutality of close and important people. And he's doing that because I think anybody in the Soviet Union is seeing how wildly spiraling this violence is getting, and it's coming for everyone. So it's like, I have to like go into overdrive doing what I was already doing before to save my own fucking ass. Yeah, exactly.

And I'm not one to give Beria any benefit of the doubt, but there's no real reason to believe he was not just as terrified and wrong-footed as everyone else was by this whole nightmare. The Great Purge hit most heavily at the second tier of the political hierarchy in the Soviet Union. In other words, the men who were a level below Stalin's team and the Politburo, which are nearly one in the same.

Two-thirds of the 1934 Central Committee were killed in the purges. Beria himself was not protected by close daily association with Stalin, to the extent that that even protected you. And he did come close to being annihilated. He was nearly arrested in the midsummer of 1938, but was warned ahead of time and flies to Moscow to make his case directly to Stalin. And this apparently works. Now it's unclear to me the degree to which Beria influenced Yesov's behavior, working as his deputy, but my guess is he tried to stay as clear of the man as possible. At this point, he's been through several rounds of purges, and he knows that like after the violence subsides,

the people who were doing the killing, they're going to be scapegoats, because then the government has to kind of apologize, Stalin has to backpedal a little. That's the way this process works. And the last thing you want to be is the guy at the head of the NKVD when that happens. Yeah, you want to be the next guy down. You want to be the next guy down. So when they all get wiped out, like time for my promotion. Now, one of the funny, so, Yezhov and a lot of the writing, specifically on a lot of the like writings by Soviets who were survivors of the purges when they write about Yezhov, they'll call him the bloodthirsty dwarf. And I assumed at first like, well, is he actually like a little person?

No, he's just five foot tall. Right? That's why they call him that, which is even that short for the period. You know, he's a little guy. He is a little guy, right? And he was generally seen as being terrible at anything but cruelty. You will hear some people who will argue,

actually he was like kind of a thoughtful, quiet dude and we were really surprised when he murdered all those people. I don't know, I didn't know the man. After the terror died down though, he was forced out. He's eventually executed. And in 1938, at the very end of 1938, Beria had been put in his place as head of the NKVD.

Some of Stalin's trust in Beria. Robert, Beria's 5'8". Okay, so he's taller, but not tall. I mean, he's not gonna be started on the Soviet basketball team anytime soon. No, I just don't think that that's like, you know, tiny. It's weird to call him a dwarf for being 5'8". That's what I'm saying.

Five feet is like a very normal height. Yeah, that's a perfectly like- That's fine. Well, no, no, they're calling Yezhov a dwarf because he's five feet tall. No one calls Beria that, but it's weird to me that they call Yezhov that because like five feet,

like my grandma was five feet tall. I mean, I'm six three, I I'm six Barry a bloody dwarf. Yeah Like I'll do it I'll take one yeah, I'm coming I'm stomping out of the Caucasus mountains Some of Stalin's trust in barrier was surely the result of the charm campaign that barrier was still waging on the boss Knight writes, quote, in 1937, Stalin failed to attend his mother's funeral in Georgia. Beria acting as his surrogate, making the arrangements and presiding over the ceremony. Whatever the reasons for Stalin's absence, it was not only a terrible insult to the memory of his dead mother, but also a shocking breach of the cultural and societal tradition in a country where veneration of the dead is accorded the highest importance. Beria was then not simply a sycophant who gained

Stalin's favor by insidious means. He actively encouraged Stalin's neuroses and his sense of self-alienation, stirred him up as no one else could do. Stalin depended emotionally on Beria, who was at his side constantly from the early 1940s onward. Beria acted as the unofficial toast master at Stalin's endless dinners, which all members of his inner circle were required to attend, forcing the guests to consume large quantities of alcohol

and making crude scatological jokes. What a cool group of dudes to hang out with. Beria was just a bit guy. He was a bit guy. He loved a good bit. Stalin's a bit guy too. You know, one of his favorite things was to shove a tomato in someone's pocket and you had to pretend you didn't see him put the potato there and then he'd smash it or you'd sit down and squash it. Oh, he's a prop comic.

He's a prop comic. Look, this is why we should execute Carrot Top. I've been saying this for years. I mean these days that that's going to be one hell of a fight. Yeah, no, he is, he would be tough to bring down. That man is more trend than man at this point. So I fact checked the Yezhov height and I just wanted you to know that he is described as four foot, 11 and one half inch. Oh my God. Yezhov added that one half inch. I just want. Yezoth added that one half inch.

I just want you to know, he, there's a couple. Okay. As, from my experience, there's at least a couple inches added there, but they do add that he was also called the Poison Dwarf, which is really cool. Oh, that's way cooler. Which is really cool.

That is pretty dope. That is pretty dope. It's just a hair metal band fronted by Gimli. Yeah. Yes! Oh, that'd be so cool. Oh, shout out. I'm on board. Shout out Gimli. Yeah.

He never poisoned anybody that we're aware of. No. Oh, he did. I mean, John Rhys Davies definitely has poisoned at least one person. That's why Sliders got that last season. I don't think he was even on the show at that point actually He's working behind the scenes Gimli gave us one of my favorite movie lines of all time. Toss me you're going to have to toss me

You're going to have to toss me That's what he's into he just likes being thrown I know How often do you get to use that just just just throw me just please I mean this is just like a great way to end This episode is just to like really be happy about Gimli Right Robert. Yeah, look there's a lot that's I won't go to bat for about John Rhys Davies, but he's a hell of an actor You know you got to give him that no no bad person. He's super conservative. I don't think he's me

I don't think he's a Particular I haven't heard any particular monster stuff about him. I don't care. It's fine He was he was good as Gimli. He's good in sliders There's some problematic aspects of him in the Indiana Jones movies, but by God, he's charismatic Anyway Joe, where can people find you? I am the host of the Lions Loaded by Donkeys podcast. We talk about military disasters, interesting things from military history, and much like your show, incredibly depressing things that you can fall asleep to. I'm also an author.

You can find my books anywhere. You find your books. And I currently have a science fiction series out called The Undying Legion and check that out if you like military science fiction Yes, check that out and you know what you should check out the checker by forming your own secret police You know be the secret police you want to see purge your inner circle in your life, you know Just just start digging holes folks. You know, I say it a lot but start digging holes, you know? Just start digging holes, folks. You know, I say it a lot, but start digging holes, you know, making lists. Get ready to purge people.

You never know when you're going to need to do a purge to make some weirdo happy. Get to be able to watch a cowboy movie with him. Look, always be thinking about which one of your friends and loved ones you're willing to kill so you can stay up late watching cowboy movies. Anyway, we'll be back next week with parts three and four unless we get purged. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bring a little optimism into your life with The Bright Side, a new kind of daily podcast

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