Beria on Channel One. Why did he come back on time

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Channel One began showing a series of documentaries “Land of the Soviets. Forgotten Leaders (produced by Media-Star with the participation of the Russian Military-Historical Society and the Ministry of Culture). There will be seven heroes in total: Dzerzhinsky, Voroshilov, Budyonny, Molotov, Abakumov, Zhdanov and Beria.

The general message is this. Over the past 30-50 years, we have become widely aware of a set of carefully tugged facts and, to varying degrees, clumsily concocted myths about these (and many, many other) characters from our history. Accordingly, every intelligent person knows well what they were criminals, executioners, maniacs, stranglers, mediocrity, inept and servile servants of the chief tyrant.

All this that is "generally known" is a mythological legacy of political technologies and agitprop legends that have long ago sunk into nowhere, which once served various court intrigues of various sizes - from an ordinary squabble for power in the 50s to a large-scale national betrayal in the 80s and 90s. …

And since this is "generally known", the authors do not get hung up on legends - unless they refute in passing some absolutely amazing ones. And they tell what kind of people they are and what they did in high government posts except, or even instead of the "well-known".

It is logical that Channel One began with Lavrenty Beria (although, according to the authors' intention, the film about this hero just closes the cycle). From this change in the places of the terms, the content has not changed at all, but the interested viewer immediately understands what it is about and which one. Beria in this case is an ideal indicator of intentions, a business card of the entire project and a guaranteed magnet for the audience.

Why? Because of all the “forgotten leaders”, it is Beria who is not just the “forgotten” one, but a character of an absolutely prohibitively idiotic caricature mythology, sewn with white threads so much that nothing can be seen behind them: no man, no history, no common sense …

In fact, as Channel One showed on Sunday, what is abundant in Beria's work biography is historical logic. What tasks faced the country - and such and solved. I decided in such a way as to get the desired result at the right time at any cost. And "any price" - yes, one that was assigned by history at a specific time, where there was no place for tolerance and pacifism. That is why the “alternative myth” is also amazing, where instead of the “maniac and murderer” invented by Khrushchev and perestroika propagandists, there is a no less invented kind uncle who is thoroughly amazed by the ideals of abstract humanism and democracy.

What is important: behind each episode of Beria's biography there are deep layers of the country's history. The civil war and its metastases, the problems of the union state and local nationalism, industrialization and a sharp modernization of agriculture, constant reform of the economic model and methods of national super-projects, the Yalta world and the fate of Germany …, in order to understand the scale and logic, or even better - additionally become interested in this once again.

Although, for my taste, it would be better if there was a place in two episodes precisely for a more detailed educational program on the logic of history than for an uninformative “Sovietology” about intrigues in the Stalinist environment. However, you can find fault with anything - and in the case of this film, it will be precisely the taste and intonation quibbles about individual elements of the high-quality and not indifferent work done.

As a result: there is a superintendent of the state, after which we are left with a nuclear shield and space, Moscow skyscrapers and that Georgia, which by inertia is still considered "flourishing", a mobilized scientific-design school and intelligence support to it. And, for that matter - the stopped flywheel of mass repressions and the rigid (in every sense) legality that has taken root in its place

Not a villain or an angel. A man of his cruel era, which, including his works, became great and triumphant for us

But this is the past. It … is gone. Happy, of course, for L. P. Beria - that the whole First Channel plunged into the swamp of committed lies, a weighty stone of historical justice. And what do we have with this today?

And today we get this from this.

First, fairness is always good. Even if it is fraught with massive stress on the verge of trampling on bonds and traditional values: because it blows to smithereens a convenient template hammered into the minds of most citizens and even into folklore (“Beria, Beria - did not justify trust”). But, in the end, if a familiar fairy tale is a lie, then there it is. We don't need such a fairy tale.

Second, fairness is also beneficial. By itself, the "black myth" about Beria is fundamental in the ideology of national inferiority. Well, this is where there is about "stupid people", "slavery", "bloody tyranny", "historically worthless state." It is the myth of Beria that is always a ready-made "unkillable argument that betraying" this country "is not shameful and even honorable. For this, the myth of Beria is even more vivid and monolithic than the myth of his supreme boss: it is nevertheless recognized as permissible to speak publicly at least something good about Stalin. Thus, the marginalization of the “black myth” about Beria is at the same time the marginalization of the ideology of national betrayal.

Third and foremost. Looking ahead, I am announcing one more facet of the Forgotten Leaders project ideology. The story about each of the heroes is invisibly, but persistently divided into two dialectically connected parts: the Bolshevik, the revolutionary, the destroyer of the state before 1917 - and the shock worker of state building after 1917. And this, I repeat, is the same person in every case.

Isn't there a contradiction in that, isn't that romanticizing the troublemakers of 100 years ago - and, accordingly, indulging modern troublemakers on their example?

No. No controversy, no indulgence.

But there is an ideology of unity, logic and continuity of the history of Russia, and the ideology of the core of this continuity - sovereign statehood.

Look: Beria, Dzerzhinsky, Zhdanov, Molotov and others like them, up to Lenin and Stalin, did nothing in the field of the country's development (well, almost nothing) that was not objectively obvious before them and that someone was interfering with the ruling classes of the Russian empire to do until 1917. Industrialization, radical and effective agrarian reform, breathtaking social modernization, scientific and technological breakthrough - nothing special. But before the Bolsheviks did not do it - and who is to blame for whom? In the end, it is not the ruling classes that are valuable to history, but Russia, its statehood and its sovereignty. If yesterday's "subversive elements" coped with this for a lovely sight, then well done. Winners are not judged, especially if they have benefited the country.

In this logic, is there any reason for the state today to tremble before the modern managers of troubles? No. Not because there are few of them and they have no ideals - which in itself nullifies the constructive potential of the “non-systemic opposition”. The main thing is different: the most decisive revolutionary and modernizing force in today's Russia is the state itself. And it is arranged, unlike itself 100 years ago, so that potential Beria and Dzerzhinsky, in general, do not need to wander about hard labor - you can make a career and bring benefit to the Motherland. Yes, all this is adjusted for the imperfection of the current state. But it does not dismiss the obvious tasks - it means, as the lessons of history teach us, from the first or from the 101st time something good will work out.

By the way, about the history lessons. "Forgotten Chiefs" in the title of the series on Channel One - they are not exactly "forgotten". Rather, we lost in due time - as it seemed, as unnecessary. But when the time has come to improve in state building, when the time has come to insist on their sovereignty, the “forgotten” have been found again. Just in time: it's not a shame to learn from them.

See also the film by Yuri Rogozin, which is unlikely to be shown on the central channels: