It's actually one of the more debated topics in the Marxist-Leninist circles.
There are a lot of stories, i will list just some of them. [+ Some accounts that come from various individuals which were either present during his last moments or which were his personal friends, etc etc (Not conspiracy theories.)
Another, sadder example. A while after Stalin's death, I was in Molotov's study and he told me about Stalin's last moments.
'The members of the Politburo went to see Stalin, having heard he was not well. In fact, he was very ill. One day during his illness, we were standing by his bedside: Malenkov, Khrushchev, myself and other members of the Politburo. Stalin kept falling into semi-consciousness, then coming around again, but he was unable to say anything.'
'At one moment,' Molotov went on, 'he suddenly came to himself, and half opened his eyes. Seeing a familiar faces, he then pointed slowly at the wall. We looked where he was pointing. On the wall there was a photograph with a simple subject: a little girl feeding a lamb with milk through a horn. With the same slow movement of his finger, Stalin then pointed to himself. It was his last act. He closed his eyes never to open them again. Those present took it as a typical example of Stalin's wit--the dying man was comparing himself with a lamb.'
Gromyko, Andrei. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, c1989. p. 103
We did everything we could to raise Stalin to his feet. We saw he was unconscious and therefore completely oblivious of his condition. But then, while the doctors were taking a urine sample, I noticed he tried to cover himself. He must have felt the discomfort. Once, during the day, he actually returned to consciousness. Even though he still couldn't speak, his face started to move. They had been spoon-feeding him soup and sweet tea. He raised his left hand and started to point to something on the wall. His lips formed something like a smile. I realized what he was trying to say and called for attention. I explained why he was pointing with his hand. There was a picture hanging on the wall, a clipping from the magazine Ogonyok. It was a reproduction of a painting by some artist of a little girl feeding a lamb from a horn. At that moment Stalin was being spoon-fed and was trying to say, "I'm in the same position as that lamb which the girl is feeding from the horn. You're doing the same for me with a spoon."
Then he began to shake hands with us one by one. I gave him my hand, and he shook it with his left hand because his right wouldn't move. By these handshakes he conveyed his feelings.
No sooner had Stalin fallen ill than Beria started going around spewing hatred against him and mocking him. It was simply unbearable to listen to Beria. But, interestingly enough, as soon as Stalin showed these signs of consciousness on his face and made us think he might recover, Beria threw himself on his knees, seized Stalin's hand, and started kissing it. When Stalin lost consciousness again and closed his eyes, Beria stood up and spat. This was the real Beria--treacherous even toward Stalin, whom he supposedly admired and even worshipped yet whom he was now spitting on.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 318
During his [Stalin] last days I had in some sense fallen out of favor.... I had seen Stalin for five weeks before he died. He was absolutely healthy. They called for me when he was taken ill. When I arrived at the dacha some Politburo members were there. Of non-Politburo members, only Mikoyan and myself, as I recall, had been called. Beria was clearly in command.
Stalin was lying on the sofa. His eyes were closed. Now and then he would make an effort to open them and say something, but he couldn't fully regain consciousness. Whenever Stalin tried to say something, Beria ran up to him and kissed his hand.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 236
CHUEV: Was Stalin poisoned?
MOLOTOV: Possibly. But who is there to prove it now?... But all hell broke out the moment he died.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 237
CHUEV: Beria himself was said to have killed him.
MOLOTOV: Why Beria? It could have been done by a security officer or a doctor. As he was dying, there were moments when he regained consciousness. At other times he was writhing in pain. There were various episodes. Sometimes he seemed about to come to. At those moments Beria would stay close to Stalin. Oh! He was always ready...
One cannot exclude the possibility that he had a hand in Stalin's death. Judging by what he said to me and I sensed.... While on the rostrum of the Mausoleum with him on May 1st, 1953, he did drop hints.... Apparently he wanted to evoke my sympathy. He said, "I did him in!"--as if this had benefited me. Of course he wanted to ingratiate himself with me: "I saved all of you!" Khrushchev would scarcely have had a hand in it. He might have been suspicious of what had gone on. Or possibly... All of them had been close by. Malenkov knows more, much more, much more.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 237
Instead of the customary deep silence, everyone was bustling and running around. When someone finally told me that my father had had a stroke in the night and was unconscious, I even felt a little relieved. I had thought he was already dead. They'd found him at three in the morning, in the room I was standing in, right there, lying on a rug by the sofa. They decided to carry him to the next room, to the sofa he usually slept on. That's where he was now. The doctors were in there, too.
...Doctors I didn't know, who were seeing him for the first time--Academician Vinogradov, who'd looked after my father for many years, was now in jail--were making a tremendous fuss, applying leeches to his neck and the back of his head, making cardiograms and taking X-rays of his lungs. A nurse kept giving him injections and a doctor jotted it all down into notebook.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 6
They all felt that something portentous, something almost of majesty, was going on in this room and they conducted themselves accordingly.
There was only one person who was behaving in a way that was very nearly obscene. That was Beria. He was extremely agitated. His face, repulsive enough at the best of times, now was twisted by his passions--by ambition, cruelty, cunning, and a lust for power and more power still. He was trying so hard at this moment of crisis to strike exactly the right balance, to be cunning, yet not too cunning. It was written all over him. He went up to the bed and spent a long time gazing into the dying man's face. From time to time my father opened his eyes but was apparently unconscious or in a state of semiconsciousness. Beria stared fixedly at those clouded eyes, anxious even now to convince my father that he was the most loyal and devoted of them all, as he had always tried with every ounce of his strength to appear to be. Unfortunately, he had succeeded for too long.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 7
During the final minutes, as the end was approaching, Beria suddenly caught sight of me and ordered: "Take Svetlana away!" Those who were standing nearby stared, but no one moved. Afterward he darted into the hallway ahead of anybody else. The silence of the room where everyone was gathered around the deathbed was shattered by the sound of his loud voice, the ring of triumph unconcealed, as he shouted, "Khrustalyov! My car!"
He was a magnificent modern specimen of the artful courtier, the embodiment of Oriental perfidy, flattering, and hypocrisy who had succeeded in confounding even my father, a man whom it was ordinarily difficult to deceive.... But I haven't the slightest doubt that Beria used his cunning to trick my father into many other things and laughed up his sleeve about it afterwards. All the other leaders knew it.
Now all the ugliness inside him came into the open--he couldn't hold back. I was by no means the only one to see it. But they were all terrified of him. They knew that the moment my father died no one in all of Russia would have greater power in his grasp.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 8
...I loved my father more tenderly than I ever had before.... Yet even the grandchildren who never saw him loved him--and love him still.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 9
For the last 12 hours the lack of oxygen was acute. His face altered and became dark. His lips turned black and the features grew unrecognizable. The last hours were nothing but a slow strangulation. The death agony was horrible. He literally choked to death as we watched. At what seemed like the very last moment he suddenly opened his eyes and cast a glance over everyone in the room. It was a terrible glance, insane, or perhaps angry and full of the fear of death and the unfamiliar faces of the doctors bent over him. The glance swept over everyone in a second. Then something incomprehensible and awesome happened that to this day I can't forget and don't understand. He suddenly lifted his left hand as though he were pointing to something above and bringing down a curse on us all.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 10
...The members of the government then rushed for the door.
All of them except the utterly degenerate Beria spent those days in great agitation, trying to help yet at the same time fearful of what the future might bring. Many of them shed genuine tears. I saw Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Malenkov, Bulganin, and Khrushchev in tears.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 11
My father's servants and bodyguards came to say goodbye. They felt genuine grief and emotion. Cooks, chauffeurs, watchmen, gardeners, and the women who had waited on the table, all came quietly in. They went up to the bed silently and wept. They wiped their tears away as children do, with their hands and sleeves and kerchiefs. Many were sobbing. The nurse, who was also in tears, gave them drops of valerian....
Valechka, as she was called, who had been my father's housekeeper for 18 years, came in to say goodbye. She dropped heavily to her knees, put her head on my father's chest and wailed at the top of her voice as the women in villages do. She went on for a long time and nobody tried to stop her.
All these men and women who were servants of my father loved him. In little things he wasn't hard to please. On the contrary, he was courteous, unassuming, and direct with those who waited on him.... Men, women, everyone, started crying all over again. . No one was making a show of loyalty or grief.... He never scolded anyone except the top men, the generals and commandants of his bodyguard. The servants had neither bullying nor harshness to complain of. They often asked him for help, in fact, and no one was ever refused.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 12
...Like everyone who worked for my father she'll [Valechka] be convinced to her dying day that no better man ever walked the earth.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 13
No one in this room looked on him as a God or a Superman, a genius or a demon. They loved and respected him for the most ordinary human qualities, those qualities of which servants are the best judges of all.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 14
Here is more information on the case of Beria: EDITOR: Molotov wonders with good reason whether Stalin really died a natural death. Shortly before Beria was liquidated by his fearful colleagues, he took credit for Stalin's death. He confided to Molotov that he had "saved them all," implying that he had killed Stalin or at least seen to it that the stricken Stalin did not receive adequate and timely medical attention.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 161
...He [Beria] was a talented organizer but a cruel, merciless man.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 177
Beria strained might and main to grab leading positions. Among the reactionary elements he was the activist. That's why he strove to clear the way for a return of private property. Anything else lay outside his field of vision. He did not avow socialism. He thought he was leading us forward, but in fact he was pulling us back, back to the worst.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 232
Some people believe that Beria killed Stalin. I believe this possibility cannot be excluded.... Beria was treacherous and unreliable. He could have done the deed just to save his own skin.... I too am of the opinion that Stalin did not die a natural death. He wasn't seriously ill. He was working steadily... And he remained very spry.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 326
There is undocumented testimony that Beria intended to usurp power as Stalin grew older. Stalin may have known this, as their relations grew noticeably cooler in the last year and a half of his life. Among the many witnesses who have told me about this, most interesting was the testimony of M. S. Vlasik, wife of Lt. Gen. Vlasik, former chief of the Main Administration of the Ministry of State Security (the KGB). For more than 25 years, Vlasik had been Stalin's chief of personal security: he knew much and was trusted by the boss. Beria hated him, but Stalin would not allow him to be touched. A few months before Stalin died, however, Beria managed to compromise Vlasik, as well as Poskrebyshev, and to have them removed from Stalin's entourage. Vlasik was arrested and given 10 years' prison and exile. When he returned after Stalin's death, he said he was totally convinced that Beria had 'helped' Stalin to die after first removing his physicians.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 333
Stalin began to decline more rapidly after his 70th birthday. His blood pressure was continually high, but he did not want doctors, he did not trust them. He still listened half-heartedly to Academician Vinogradov, but gradually Beria convinced him that 'the old man [Vinogradov], was suspect' and tried to foist other doctors on to him. Stalin, however, would have no one new. When he heard that Vinogradov had been arrested, he cursed ominously but did nothing about it. He now finally stopped smoking, but continued his unhealthy life-style in all other respects, rising late and working into the night.... he would not entrust himself to doctors.
...His old belief in Georgian longevity was shaken by a series of dizzy spells which knocked him off balance.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 529
Beria would not call the doctors and instead turned on the servants: 'Why did you panic? Can't you see Comrade Stalin is sound asleep? All of you get out and leave our leader in peace, I shall deal with you in due course!'
Malenkov gave Beria some half-hearted support. According to Rybin, there seemed to be no intention at all of getting medical help for Stalin, who must have had the stroke some six to eight hours before. Everyone seemed to be following a scenario that best suited Beria.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 572
Beria did not hide his look of triumph. All the other members of the Politburo, including Malenkov, were afraid of this monster. The death of one tyrant promised a new orgy of bloodletting by his successor. Exhausted by all his exertions, and now sure that Stalin had crossed the dividing line between life and death, Beria dashed away to the Kremlin for some hours, leaving the other leaders at Stalin's deathbed. I have already outlined the version of Beria, as first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers, now forcing the great political game that he had long planned. His hasty departure for the Kremlin was possibly connected with his effort to remove from Stalin's safe documents which might contain instructions about how to deal with him, a last will that might not be so easy to contest, made while Stalin was in full control of his faculties.
He returned to the dacha in a mood of self-confidence and proceeded to dictate to his crestfallen colleagues that they must prepare a government statement to the effect that Stalin was ill and also publish a bulletin on the state of his health.
Meanwhile the last act of the drama was being played out. Stalin's son, Vasili, kept coming in and shouting in a drunken voice, 'They've killed my father, the bastards!'... Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Khrushchev and some others were weeping openly.
...On her knees, her head on his chest and wailing like a peasant, was Istomina, Stalin's housekeeper who for some 20 years had looked after him, accompanied him on all his trips to the south and even on two of the three international wartime conferences.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 573-574
Stalin could not be permitted to live, I believe, due to the risk that he would attempt a countercoup. The Politburo, therefore, overthrew Stalin in February 1953 to avert a purge. Stalin's timely death was the solution-- Beria's, Malenkov's, and possibly others'--to the problem of disposing of the deposed Stalin. Discounting the information from official Soviet sources, I conclude that Beria was responsible for the death of Stalin, Malenkov was his accomplice, and Khrushchev & Bulganin were accessories after the fact.
Deriabin, Peter. Inside Stalin's Kremlin. Washington [D.C.]: Brassey's, c1998, p. 131
Melodramatic accounts of Stalin's death, of which there is no shortage, claim that Stalin was murdered. It is most likely that the denial of medical care made not the slightest difference. But Beria clearly thought it had: " I did him in!" he later boasted to Molotov and Kaganovich. "I saved you all!"
Montefiore, Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Knopf, 2004, p. 641
So the staff rang through to Malenkov to alert the politburo of what had happened [to Stalin], but they could do nothing without Beria. Beria could not be found, he was out carousing with women. After finally being tracked down he marched in drunk at around 3 a.m. Looking triumphant, according to the assembled group, he glanced at the comatose Stalin and summarily dismissed their fears telling them to leave him to sleep in peace. He forbade anyone to use the telephone, ordered the politburo to reconvene in the morning, and went away. He returned at 9 a.m., again with members of the politburo, to take another look.
Stalin had lain untreated for over 24 hours; it was 10 hours since he had been found. Beria now ordered doctors to be summoned from the Academy of Medical Sciences, choosing intellectuals rather than practitioners presumably since the latter were mostly behind bars, but possibly also for his own reasons. The doctors nervously applied leeches to the back of Stalin's neck and head, took cardiograms, X-rayed his lungs and administered a series of injections. Meanwhile Beria dashed off to the Kremlin and spent some time in Stalin's study, his inner sanctuary, presumably removing from the safe documents that only she would have known about, which in his own interests should not be found. Instructions as to the political succession were never found, nor was a personal diary of Stalin's, a black exercise book in which the leader recorded his personal thoughts and plans....
Svetlana by this time had been summoned and stood immobilized amidst the frantic scene beside her father's bed. She is convinced that there was more to Stalin's stroke than met the eye.
"Beria finally plotted to murder my father. I don't know how he plotted it, and there is a lot of folklore about it. But they withdrew medical help for at least 12 hours; the whole politburo, Beria among them, arrived at the scene instead of the doctors. He was the one who had said hours earlier, "Nothing has happened. You are panicking. The man is sleeping." And then turned around and walked away.
Richardson, Rosamond. Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 248
"Beria certainly was very happy when my father died; he had always worked towards that. He had removed my father's whole entourage, starting with Vlasik, who had been there 30 years. The doctor was arrested, the personal secretary was arrested, so something had been brewing there. I hate folklore and making guesses, but something was up."
"One of the guards attended the autopsy, Vlasik's successor, a man named Krustalyov. They could not permit a post-mortem to go ahead unsupervised because by this time nobody trusted anybody. He sat there, and it made such an impression on him that afterwards he collapsed completely and drank heavily, and of course he was fired. He said that what hit him was when they opened the head, and he saw the brain. One of the medics said, "This is obviously a very fine brain, quite out of the ordinary." Krustalyov never got over it."
Richardson, Rosamond. Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 252-253
The question as to whether those close to him plotted Stalin's death remains unanswered, although Svetlana is convinced of Beria's complicity, and by implication of others' too.
Richardson, Rosamond. Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 255
However, if you ask me, it could have been a lot of people, except Kaganovich and Molotov. I believe they were loyal to him to the end. (Iron Lazar especially.)
One question for Omsk, if Beria is so suspect then why is he so well liked in ML circles? And wasn't this stuff only brought to light when Beria was about to be executed?
Well,some people admire him because of his role in the NKVD, i don't, because i think he had ulterior motives, which was proved when he tried to change the policy toward Yugoslavia and the West (1), showing him to be an actual liberal. Some ML's are supportive of him and defend him from the charges which were listed above, while some think he was neither a Marxist-Leninist, and who think that he conspired against Stalin and the USSR.
(1) Beria offered assurances to Czechoslovakia that the USSR would not continue to interfere in Czech internal affairs, and he wrote a personal letter to Marshal Tito apologizing for the manner in which Stalin had treated him. The MGB officer who would carry the letter to Tito showed it to me. The final sentence said, "Let us cast the past aside and look ahead to the resumption of diplomatic relations between our two nations."
Deriabin, Peter. Inside Stalin's Kremlin. Washington [D.C.]: Brassey's, c1998, p. 148
And wasn't this stuff only brought to light when Beria was about to be executed?
Molotov was the main ML figure in the anti-Beria circles, and he wrote about Beria a lot, you can read about it in "Molotov Remembers". Pages 336-337 , 339 , 340
Here are some short parts of it i translated.
He (Beria) was unprincipled. He was not even a communist. I consider him a parasite on the party. p 339
He was a good organizer, a good administrator--and a born security operative, of course. But quite without principles.
I had a sharp clash with Beria the first week after Stalin's death. It is quite possible that I was not the one to meet either his or Khrushchev's requirements. Their policies would not have differed greatly. p. 341
Some also suggest that Stalin himself distanced himself from Beria after the war, :
Relations between Stalin and Beria deteriorated during the years 1946 through 1948. The earliest sign of Stalin's distrust was his dismissal of Beriaites from the MGB and, on suspicion of misplaced loyalty, Georgians from the Guards Directorate. Stalin then went out of his way to slight Beria. He promoted the chiefs of bodyguard details for all Politburo members except Beria's chief, who remained a colonel as the rest moved up in rank to general. Stalin would agree to meeting Malenkov but then cancel the appointment if Malenkov said that Beria planned to join them.
Deriabin, Peter. Inside Stalin's Kremlin. Washington [D.C.]: Brassey's, c1998, p. 62
Many have the stance that Beria was a double-dealing conniver.
The relationship between Stalin and Beria was far from a close one, because the man behind Beria's rise is Malenkov. I met Beria in September of 1937, when I was in Yerevan with Mikoyan.... Beria replaced Yezhov. It is necessary to ask how Beria arrived in Moscow. There are rumors that Stalin helped Beria to come to Moscow. Definitely not! Stalin was not that warm towards Georgians, although he himself was Georgian by nationality. Malenkov was the hidden culprit, who already wormed his way into the Central Committee CPSU.
Beria immediately replaced all the other members of his Ministry, employing only his henchmen. He trumped up charges on previous Bolsheviks like Pauker, Volovich, Dagena, Kursk, Gintsel....
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 65
There is also this: They [Stalin's closest aides, Vlasik and Poskrebyshev] had been removed from the entourage at Beria's instigation a few months before, arrested and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. In his memoirs Vlasik says he is convinced that Beria "helped" Stalin to die after first removing his physicians and the two men closer to Stalin than he was himself. He believed that Beria was plotting to usurp power.
Richardson, Rosamond. Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 247
Some newspapers also called Beria (Georgian newspapers.) : " Georgia's best son, the outstanding leader of the great Soviet state." [This happened after Stalin died.]
Now,when we look into all of this, and the fact that Beria had the MGB and MVD under his control, and that he was in the position to plot and organize a murder, [of Stalin] it's not surprising that a lot of ML's feel that Beria had some serious ulterior motives and that he was certainly a dark individual.
Lev Bronsteinovich
5th July 2012, 14:19
Well,some people admire him because of his role in the NKVD, i don't, because i think he had ulterior motives, which was proved when he tried to change the policy toward Yugoslavia and the West (1), showing him to be an actual liberal. Some ML's are supportive of him and defend him from the charges which were listed above, while some think he was neither a Marxist-Leninist, and who think that he conspired against Stalin and the USSR.
(1) Beria offered assurances to Czechoslovakia that the USSR would not continue to interfere in Czech internal affairs, and he wrote a personal letter to Marshal Tito apologizing for the manner in which Stalin had treated him. The MGB officer who would carry the letter to Tito showed it to me. The final sentence said, "Let us cast the past aside and look ahead to the resumption of diplomatic relations between our two nations."
Deriabin, Peter. Inside Stalin's Kremlin. Washington [D.C.]: Brassey's, c1998, p. 148
Molotov was the main ML figure in the anti-Beria circles, and he wrote about Beria a lot, you can read about it in "Molotov Remembers". Pages 336-337 , 339 , 340
Here are some short parts of it i translated.
He (Beria) was unprincipled. He was not even a communist. I consider him a parasite on the party. p 339
He was a good organizer, a good administrator--and a born security operative, of course. But quite without principles.
I had a sharp clash with Beria the first week after Stalin's death. It is quite possible that I was not the one to meet either his or Khrushchev's requirements. Their policies would not have differed greatly. p. 341
Some also suggest that Stalin himself distanced himself from Beria after the war, :
Relations between Stalin and Beria deteriorated during the years 1946 through 1948. The earliest sign of Stalin's distrust was his dismissal of Beriaites from the MGB and, on suspicion of misplaced loyalty, Georgians from the Guards Directorate. Stalin then went out of his way to slight Beria. He promoted the chiefs of bodyguard details for all Politburo members except Beria's chief, who remained a colonel as the rest moved up in rank to general. Stalin would agree to meeting Malenkov but then cancel the appointment if Malenkov said that Beria planned to join them.
Deriabin, Peter. Inside Stalin's Kremlin. Washington [D.C.]: Brassey's, c1998, p. 62
Many have the stance that Beria was a double-dealing conniver.
The relationship between Stalin and Beria was far from a close one, because the man behind Beria's rise is Malenkov. I met Beria in September of 1937, when I was in Yerevan with Mikoyan.... Beria replaced Yezhov. It is necessary to ask how Beria arrived in Moscow. There are rumors that Stalin helped Beria to come to Moscow. Definitely not! Stalin was not that warm towards Georgians, although he himself was Georgian by nationality. Malenkov was the hidden culprit, who already wormed his way into the Central Committee CPSU.
Beria immediately replaced all the other members of his Ministry, employing only his henchmen. He trumped up charges on previous Bolsheviks like Pauker, Volovich, Dagena, Kursk, Gintsel....
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 65
There is also this: They [Stalin's closest aides, Vlasik and Poskrebyshev] had been removed from the entourage at Beria's instigation a few months before, arrested and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. In his memoirs Vlasik says he is convinced that Beria "helped" Stalin to die after first removing his physicians and the two men closer to Stalin than he was himself. He believed that Beria was plotting to usurp power.
Richardson, Rosamond. Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 247
Some newspapers also called Beria (Georgian newspapers.) : " Georgia's best son, the outstanding leader of the great Soviet state." [This happened after Stalin died.]
Now,when we look into all of this, and the fact that Beria had the MGB and MVD under his control, and that he was in the position to plot and organize a murder, [of Stalin] it's not surprising that a lot of ML's feel that Beria had some serious ulterior motives and that he was certainly a dark individual.
Does anyone else notice how non-political all of the remembrances by these folks are? It's all about who was close to whom, who was made of the right stuff -- no political content whatever. Molotov himself was a Bolshevik before the revolution -- in my mind he has a little more standing than Beria. But Molotov hitched his wagon to Stalin pretty early.
My impression about Stalin is that if there was "distance" between a soviet leader and Papa Joe after 1930, well as the song goes "Jack you dead."
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