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Article: Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant.
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- November 29, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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IN CHARGE of Soviet terror at or around its peak, Lavrenti Beria left a special mark on this century. "This is our Himmler," as Stalin introduced the man to Ribbentrop, in Moscow in 1939 to sign the Hitler-Stalin pact. A biographer of Beria has to decide whether he had room for maneuver in respect to Stalin, or, to put it more directly, whether he had a conscience.
Unlike some Sovietologists, Amy Knight at least knows that Stalin did great evil and that Communism was unmitigated criminality. And what was the origin of that evil? In a word, power. Stalin did whatever was required for absolute power, and so did Beria. The system demanded it. Stalin unleashed ...