Lavrentiy Beria

[Cliff Paul]

Why the hell wasn't this guy killed earlier?

Edit: I should clarify - I've always heard that "Stalin kept him around for political reasons" but is that really why? Were people actually willing to overlook his careerism, anti-bolshevism, sexual predation, and general scuminess because he allegedly had Stalin's favor?

[Asero]

Probably something about how he got things done. I don't think Stalin personally liked him either.

[tuwix]

Why the hell wasn't this guy killed earlier?

Edit: I should clarify - I've always heard that "Stalin kept him around for political reasons" but is that really why? Were people actually willing to overlook his careerism, anti-bolshevism, sexual predation, and general scuminess because he allegedly had Stalin's favor?

The Soviet Union in that period were absolute monarchy. There wasn't case of acceptance or not. One who don't accept a will of absolute monarch can die in seconds. And Beria was needed because he did whatever was ordered to him and had no ideology. If you have an ideology, you can seduce people around. And Stalin was the most afraid of losing the power, so there was no ideologist needed to him and all opposition that appeared was brutally eliminated.

[John Nada]

Well, compared to Yezhov anyone looks good. IIRC about half of all executions in the Stalinist era were under Yezhovshchina. Beria's faction purged the NKVD of the Yezhov faction, and the arrest and executions dropped. It helped that he was Georgian like Stalin too.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Why the hell wasn't this guy killed earlier?

Edit: I should clarify - I've always heard that "Stalin kept him around for political reasons" but is that really why? Were people actually willing to overlook his careerism, anti-bolshevism, sexual predation, and general scuminess because he allegedly had Stalin's favor?

In the earlier period, Beria just replaced Yezhov, so there's no point replacing him then.

During WWII, Beria oversaw Soviet intelligence efforts on what would become the atomic bomb, so there's no point replacing him then.

After WWII, Beria oversaw the Soviet fission atomic bomb project itself, so there's no point replacing him then.

After the successful 1949 test, Beria oversaw the Soviet fusion hydrogen bomb project, so there's no point replacing him then, either.

However, Beria did fall out of Stalin's own favour in 1953, as the latter seemed to prefer Malenkov as his successor.