Quotes About Beria

You know, boy, people criticise Stalin, but you've got to say this for him: he lived like a worker. Not like Beria – he thought he was a prince. But Comrade Stalin's room was a plain man's room. You've got to say that for Stalin. He was always one of us.

Yes," he said in return, and his voice cracked somewhat. "Yes, Comrade General Secretary." "And now," Stalin said, "let's have some soup, shall we?" Beria's heart sank. He still had too much work to do. "Oh, not you, Beria," the Vozhd said. "You are excused. Get the hell out of here and go do your job for a change. No soup for you.

No less an authority than Lavrenty Beria attacked the excesses of the Hungarian secret police (which must have stung a bit)

I love the good Russian world, the humanitarian Russian world, but I do not love the Russian world of Beria, Stalin, and Shoigu.

Every Soviet citizen committed at least three felonies a day, because the criminal statutes were written so broadly as to cover ordinary day-to-day activities. The Communist Party decided whom to prosecute from among the millions of possible criminals. They picked dissidents, refuseniks, and others who posed political dangers to the system. This began under Stalin when his KGB head, Lavrenti Beria, infamously said, "Show me the man and I'll find you the crime.

One of Beria's most cynical ruses was carried out in August 1941: NKVD agents disguised as Nazi parachutists were dropped into the Volga German autonomous region, to test the loyalty of its citizens. Villages where the new arrivals were offered shelter were liquidated wholesale; the entire region's surviving population was eventually deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan.