Prometheus has the disadvantage of not being real. ;)
Technically Beria was an ethnic Mingrel. There was a Purge of the Mingrels going on at the same time as the Doctor's Plot.
Samegrelo
Megrelia, Mingrelia or Samegrelo/Samargalo (Georgian: სამეგრელო Samegrelo; Mingrelian: სამარგალო Samargalo) is a historic province in the western part of Georgia, formerly also known as Odishi. It is inhabited by the Mingrelians, an ethnic subgroup of the Georgians.
Geography Mingrelia is bordered by the secessionist region of Abkhazia to the north-west, Svaneti to the north, Imereti to the east, Guria to the south and the Black Sea to the west.
Administratively, the historic province of Mingrelia is incorporated joined with the northern part of the neighboring mountainous province of Svaneti to form the Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti region, the capital of which is Mingrelia's main city, Zugdidi. History
Mingrelian prince, by Grigory Gagarin. 1840s.In ancient times Mingrelia was a major part of the kingdom of Colchis (9th-6th centuries BC) and its successor Egrisi (4th century BC-6th century AD). In the 11th-15th centuries, Mingrelia was a part of the united Kingdom of Georgia. From the 16th century to 1857, the independent Principality of Mingrelia was under the rule of the House of Dadiani and was a tributary to the Ottoman Empire and then an autonomous entity under the Russian Empire. Between 1857 and 1867 it was absorbed by the Russian empire.
In December 1803, the principality came under the patronage of the Russian Empire by an agreement between the Tsar and the Mingrelian Prince Grigol Dadiani. In 1857, the principality was abolished officially by the Tsarist Russian Empire. From 1918 to 1921, Mingrelia was part of the Democratic Republic of Georgia (DRG). In 1921, Georgia was Sovietized and later became part of the Soviet Union, as the Georgian SSR. On April 9, 1991, independence was restored to Georgia, of which Mingrelia is now part.
The first President of the post-Soviet Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was a Mingrelian. After the violent Coup d'etat of December 21, 1991-January 6, 1992, Mingrelia became the centre of a civil war, which ended with the defeat of Gamsakhurdia's Mingrelian supporters. Even so, this region was unmanageable by the central government throughout the presidency of Eduard Shevardnadze (1992-2003). Stability in the region is further deteriorated by the fact that the Georgian refugees from the Abkhazian war zone (who are considered by Georgians as victims of ethnic cleansing) are mostly Mingrelians. After the Rose Revolution of November, 2003, in 2004, newly elected Georgian President, Mikheil Saakashvili, who vowed to resolve the conflict with the breakaway region of Abkhazia solely by peaceful means, disarmed groups of Mingrelians who tried to fight a guerrilla war against the Abkhazians by incursions from Mingrelia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samegrelo
Mingrelian Affair
The Mingrelian Affair, or Mingrelian Case (Russian: Мингрельское дело, mingrel’skoe delo; Georgian: მეგრელთა საქმე, megrelt’a sak’me) was a series of criminal cases fabricated in 1951 and 1952 in order to accuse several members of the Georgian SSR Communist Party of Mingrelian extraction of secession and collaboration with the Western powers.
Initiated on the personal orders of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, the affair apparently aimed at eliminating the influence of Lavrentiy Beria, of whom Stalin was getting increasingly suspicious.[1] The fabricated accusations of forming the "Mingrelian nationalist ring", separatism, collaboration with the "Western imperialists", and the Georgian émigré centre in Paris, were followed by a purge, which delivered a hard blow to the Georgian party organization, and specifically targeted its Mingrelian (a subethnic group of the Georgians) members, mostly Beria’s protégés. Many leading officials were removed from their posts and arrested; thousands of innocent people were subjected to repressions. Candide Charkviani, who at the time occupied the position of the first secretary of the Georgian SSR, also suffered during the Mingrelian Affair. For years historians erroneously thought that Candide Charkviani was Megrelian and that he was punished because
of his links with Beria. However, the newly opened archives in Georgia provide evidence that Charkviani, who was Lechkhumian (from the Lechkhumi region of Georgia) and not Mingrelian or Svan, was accused because he allegedly failed to “detect and repress the criminal nationalist ring of counter revolutionaries within the ranks of the Georgian Communist Party”.[2] Moreover, it has emerged that Charkviani’s relations with Beria had always been strained and that Beria tolerated Charkviani only because the latter was supported by Stalin. Immediately following Stalin’s death, all Beria’s clients who suffered during the Mingrelian Affair were restored. Yet Charkviani, on Beria’s orders, was separated from his family and moved to Central Asia into exile. [3]
Many aspects of the Mingrelian Affair are still not completely understood. Beyond Stalin’s growing mistrust of his lieutenant Beria, who had particularly consolidated his positions after World War II, the affair also reflected a bitter power struggle among rival clans in the Communist élite of Georgia. It might also have echoed similar accusations of nationalism leveled against the Georgian "National Communists" in the 1922 Georgian Affair.
As a result of the events, Beria’s power was reduced significantly in Georgia, but he still managed to retain his position in the Politburo. After Stalin’s death in 1953, Beria managed to temporarily reinstate his clients in Georgia. The new Soviet government of Nikita Khrushchev admitted that the case was fabricated and eventually rehabilitated its victims.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mingrelian_Affair
--- On Mon, 8/25/08, Charles Brown <charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> wrote:
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> ^^^^^
> CB: There's also Prometheus.
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