The guy carrying Stalin's boombox was OG Scarface Khrushchev. :)
Here's Sergo Beria 1999 (presumably translated) BBC broadcast:
Broadcast on Thursday 15th July 1999
SERGO BERIA
I am now 74 years old. I am a Georgian* And my father was Lavrenty Beria. Now I have a different name that was given to me. They told me that I couldn't live in the Soviet Union with the name of my father. Well, I have heard some problems about that: that my father was somehow active in killing - or some such rumours. But I know that it isn't true. It isn't true. In our family and our friends' families, we were very much in love with Stalin. He was like a god. He was occasionally very strict (laughs) but it was my fault. About '43, when the War was going on, I came from the Front to Moscow and met Svetlana, his daughter. And I brought her a little revolver. Some months afterwards, I was in Leningrad, at the Academy. And his chief General came to the Academy, took me to an aeroplane, and I was taken to Moscow and brought to Stalin. We had dinner. We were alone. He told me to sit, and asked me; "Did you give to Svetlana a revolver?" I told him: "Yes". And he very rudely told me; "Are you, in your brains, are you mad? A girl with an unstable nervous system - you give her a revolver! You know how her mother died?" I told him: "I don't know." And I really didn't know that she killed herself. And he looked at me and spoke and he saw that I didn't know. "Now you are free. Go to your Academy and study there!" Well, (Laughs), I was afraid.
But I must say that I have two sides of his portrait Yes, I saw that he was really a genius. Churchill is for me a very great person - but Stalin - not his politics, about Communism and so on, but as a person - he was much greater. He was a real dark genius. His thoughts were for him everything. And everything that was against them could be demolished and disgraced. He liked humour very much and was very humoristic. But in his humour - you laughed; and then you could see that it was not so funny, what he said. Every time he made such things. It was his character. I am angry. He was a clever man. And he understood everything that was good and that was bad. He was not a fanatic who didn't understand what he was doing. And it is very sad that such a man was the State's head. He was a very lonely man. His character was such that his behaviour made him quite alone.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/features/mycentury/transcript/wk28d4.shtml
--- Jim Devine <jdevine03 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >God knows certainly all Stalin's Bolshie
> entourage went along with [him] with nary [a] second
> thought.<
>
> of course, there were consequence if they didn't go
> along. Further,
> Deutscher presents evidence that a lot of Mensheviks
> joined the
> government and the Party in the 1920s, so presumably
> a lot of the
> entourage were Menshies... of course toadies come
> from all walks of
> life.
>
> BTW, who carried the boom-box in Stalin's entourage?
> --
> Jim Devine
> "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go
> your own way and let
> people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
>
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Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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