A while ago this exchange occured:
>
> --- andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> quoted:
> Sergo Beria's
> inevitable apologia for his father, who here stands
> for everything good and opposes everything evil,
>
> ---
>
> This isn't a very fair description of the book,
> though
> it is certainly true that it's an apologia.
--
FWIW here's what Beria Jr. says in his Author's Epilogue. I'm copying from the English translation of Beria, moi otets:
Author's Epilogue
I did not write this book in order to rehabilitate the memory of my father -- or, at least, that was not my prime purpose, I am perfectly well aware now that it was not possible to be one of the leaders of the USSR without soiling one's hands. There was always a choice to be made.
My father was a member of the Politburo and of the government. He was responsible, like the rest, for all the acts of that government, even if he disagreed with some of them. But a certain Russian intelligentsia, which I shall call chauvinist, presents the Stalin period in a way that I want to challenge. If we are to believe the representatives of this tendency, the unfortunate Russian people fell victim to non-Russians who had seized power and begun to exploit the Russians. Communism and Leninism would have borne a human face had they not been deformed by two uncouth Asiatics from the Caucasus and, above all, by the monster Beria. Well, I maintain that, whatever they may say, the Russians bear some responsibility for what happened. They welcomes with enthusiasm the plundering and expropriation preached by the Bolsheviks. They accepted the slaughtering of officers and priests. A handful of Bolsheviks would never have managed to impose this monstrous policy from 1917 onwards had they not enjoyed the active support of the Russian people. True, non-Russians were numerous among the first Bolshevik leaders. But without the backing of the Russian masses, these leaders would never have implemented any of their programmes. Besides, the influence of individuals on the Bolshevik system was always limited. The personality of one leader or another might emphasise certain features but could not modify the foundations of the regime.
My father was accused of responsibility for everything that went wrong so as to exculpate the Bolshevik system and the Party. Since he had put the Party in jeopardy it was necessary to conceal at all costs the fact that he had been a political adversary. The simplest thing to do was to show him to the masses as a bandit at all levels -- traitor, spy, rapist, ignoramus and oaf into the bargain. Yet it is enough to take cognisance of the minutes of the July 1953 Plenum to see that the charges brought against him were essentially political in nature. He was accused of having wanted to reunify Germany by abandoning the construction of socialism in the GDR, of having sabotaged the collective-farm system, of having sought to emancipate the republics and to reduce the role of the Party -- in short, of not being a Communist. Today, the Party and Bolshevism have vanished from the scene, but where my father is concerned the same line is followed, this time owing to the incurable chauvinism with which the Russian elites are infected...
He has been depicted as a careerist without any conviction. I consider that if he had wanted to take power, he could have done that in Stalin's lifetime or after his death. I want to show that, from the start, my father had a policy. Sometime she was able to put it into effect, at other times this was not possible... He was certainly no humanist who dreamt of the people's well-being. He was a pragmatic statesman who wanted to get results. He was against the repression not out of humanity but because he considered men were not to be won over by fear...
The conflict crystallized around foreign policy. My father did not want the Societ Union to dominate the world -- a useless and stupid project, in his view. He was beaten, and paid with his life. His mistake was perhaps to have gone beyond the framework of Georgia. He wanted to rescue Russia from the Bolshevik noose that was strangling her. He overestimated the common sense of those around him and underestimated their perfidy.
In this account I have based myself on what I was myself witness to. I have also mentioned fairly frequently things told me by my mother and others. I do not always remember the exact words of my informants, but I have tried to reconstitute the correct meaning of statements that have stayed in my memory.
Sergo Beria
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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