Lavrenti Beria
Guest post by John L. Kachelman, Jr.
There is a historical reminder of the false security that a deeply enmeshed bureaucrat believes his is protected from his malevolence. Beria reminds those who are working “behind the scenes,” pursuing their own agendas, that their safety is never secure; their security is tenuous at best; and, their inevitable exposure, fall and execution by justice cannot be evaded!
Undergirding all governing is a large minion of faceless workers. These are the “Chiefs.” And the “Chiefs” actually run operations. Those elected are the “Faces”; those in the background are the “Chiefs.” This is a critical distinction that many do not see. The following discusses this factor in our government.
Here is the reality of governing—the Faces respond only to the extent the Chiefs allow. This is not the ideal but it is the real. There exists an almost impenetrable wall surrounding the elected officials that is guarded by the Chiefs. This is not for the protection of the elected officials but for the security of the Chiefs and their agenda.
The elected officials (Faces) may well have an agenda that is publicized to the public and constituents BUT the Chiefs control all matters. Legislation may pass the vote and its title sounds wonderful, but the integral working details are contrary to the title—the Chiefs have the ultimate control as they parse the legislation (Just look at the hideous “Inflation Reduction Act”). This legislation was celebrated as “the American People have won, and special interests lost.” The “Ministry of Truth” stands proud in the absurdity and fantasy of these words penned by the Chiefs and spouted by the Faces!
Go to the grocery, pharmacy, gas pump and understand how ridiculous the Chiefs’ pronouncement that inflation has been reduced is applied to daily living. Those who pay their own utility bills and repair their own vehicles look with incredulity at the Faces spouting the Chiefs’ inane verbiage!
The tragic truth in today’s governing the Chiefs run operations and the Faces are the images presented. The Faces recline, ensconced in elitism that is fueled and fed by the Chiefs who will “protect” the faces from unnecessary people and outrageous conspiracies.
Willingly the Faces surrender all authority to the Chiefs who “know better how to manage things.” And the DC Beltway becomes a shield that isolates the Faces from the reality of life in the nation it has sworn to represent. The ideals, morality, philosophy and legislation emanating from the governing body reflects NOT the electoral populace but the philosophies of the miscreants who deem themselves as “knowing better how the government should spend the people’s money.”
Thus, it is believed throughout Congress that the government knows better than the people how to command and control all aspects of every individual’s life.
There is a belief that the citizens’ individuality are the greatest threat to the Chiefs and so these are primary acquisition targets to ensure the Chiefs’ positions.
Bureaucracy is the greatest threat to individualism and is strangling our Republic!
Some enthroned in Chiefs’ positions never face termination—some have been ensconced for THIRTY YEARS!! These are “snug as a bug in a rug”! (The idiom’s origin coming from the moth larva happily feeding inside a rolled-up carpet is apropos to the parasitic proclivity of such people.). Blue Wave or Red Wave it matters little as these simply go from one position to the other and remain a permanent influence in the governing structure. The elected POLS come and go. As the Faces rotate, the Chiefs remain.
Depending on how these Chiefs deign to view one trying to navigate the perils of government red-tape, the unelected Chiefs can be either a “balm for the heart or a boil on your butt.”
And, as time passes these Chiefs assume they have served in the shadows long enough and have collected sufficient political IOUs to step forward and become one of the Faces in the political spotlight. And, they foolishly think they can remain a Chief but be a Face.
Now, this is where Lavrenti Beria enters the historic stage.
Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria was involved in Marxist revolutionary activities from his teens. By his twenties he had ascended to the bureaucratic level of the head of the secret police in Georgia. He craftily navigated the bureaucracy under Stalin. He supervised the ruthless 1930s purges in the region and arrived in Moscow in 1938. He soon became the head of the Soviet secret police. As a bureaucrat he ran the Soviet network of slave-labor camps. This bureaucratic servant of the State was notorious for his sadistic enjoyment of torture and his taste for beating and raping women and violating young girls. By the time of Stalin’s death in 1953, even though he was a fixed senior bureaucrat, he was one of the most hated men in the country. But his amazing arrogance envisioned himself as the ideal candidate to control the USSR.
With Stalin’s removal, Beria thought it was his time to step out of the shadows and become not only the Chief bureaucrat manipulating political intrigue but also the Face of the nation. He was given the combined ministries of State Security and Internal Affairs, which put him in control of both the secret and the regular police as well as a small private army of infantry divisions. It is instructive for present day readers to observe the historical precedent of bureaucrats assuming control and manipulating the law enforcement divisions in order to achieve their devilish objectives. His evil led to many fearing him almost as much as they had feared Stalin.
Although the details are shrouded in the USSR’s cloistered past, it seems Beria’s downfall was engineered by Nikita Khrushchev. On June 26th at a hastily convened meeting of the Presidium, Khrushchev launched a blistering attack on Beria, accusing him of being a cynical careerist, long in the pay of British intelligence, and no true Communist believer.
Beria was taken aback and asked, “What’s going on, Nikita?” Khrushchev told him he would soon find out. Molotov and others accused Beria. Khrushchev motioned for his instant dismissal. Before a vote could be taken, Malenkov pressed a button on his desk and Marshal Zhukov and a group of armed officers burst in, seized Beria and led him away.
Beria’s men were guarding the Kremlin, so the officers had to wait until nightfall and smuggled him out in a car. He was taken to the Lefortovo Prison and then to the headquarters of General Moskalenko, commander of Moscow District Air Defense, where he was imprisoned in an underground bunker. His arrest was kept as quiet as possible while his principal cohorts were rounded up – some were immediately shot.
The Central Committee spent five days convincing itself of Beria’s guilt. An experienced prosecutor well known to Khrushchev, was appointed to make certain that the police chief was tried, condemned and executed with the maximum appearance of legality. Pravda announced Beria’s fall on July 10th, crediting it to the initiative of Comrade Malenkov and referring to Beria’s ‘criminal activities against the Party and the State’. December 17th the Prosecutor announced that Beria and six accomplices had been conspiring for many years to seize power in the Soviet Union. Beria fell to the floor and begged on his knees for mercy. It was not a quality he had shown to others, and it was not now shown to him. He and his confederates were taken away and promptly shot. His wife and son were sent to a Siberian labor camp.
The ignominy that awaited this bureaucratic Chief and Face was a “whirlwind born of a wind”! Stalin’s security chief was executed on December 23, 1953.
Of the many bureaucrats I have known and struggled with to accomplish various actions, I have known a FEW who were serving not for self-interest but for the ideals of our Founding fathers. But it has been just a few.
To those in today’s stations of bureaucracy, look closely at the allure of entitlements that the position offers. Know well that each will ultimately face personal accountability.
There are many who sit comfortably in protective tenure and fail to be courageous heroes. There are few who boldly step up and courageously stand out exposing the swamp of bureaucratic elitism that seeks to destroy individualism and pursue an arrogant, elitist statism agenda. The prophet announces the judgment upon such as, “For they sow the wind and they reap a whirlwind (storm)” (Hosea 8:7).
Where are the heroic “whistleblowers” whose patriotic courage and inner fortitude propel them to challenge the evil that is dominant?
Some brave hearts have already stepped forward. A trickle of whistleblowers has begun. More are standing up and speaking out. There are others who need to join in the exposure now before they are destroyed in the whirlwind that will soon come. Where are the heroes?
Who are the tenured bureaucrats hesitant to come forth and expose the corruption that is destroying our nation? Are you willing to be responsible for our national demise? Are you willing to be as Beria and chronicled in history’s records as “a cynical careerist”?
