On Aug 26, 2008, at 6:48 AM, Chris Doss wrote:
>
> Technically Beria was an ethnic Mingrel. There was a Purge of the
> Mingrels going on at the same time as the Doctor's Plot.
>
This is very worth knowing. It helps explain the circumstances of
Stalin's timely decess.
>
> ...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....
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things...it consents and does not consent to be called Zeus."
Herakleitos of Ephesos