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HOW DICTATORS END. March 2, 1953, the “Red Tsar” will soon breathe his last, his “comrades in arms” are agitated around him.
By Marc Nexon
Published on
Reading time: 12 mins
Ithey are four. They have always belonged to his close circle. In those days of March 1953 when Stalin, 74, was dying, they had only one obsession: to retain power. Their names are Gueorgui Malenkov, 52, an architect of the great purges of the 1930s, directly responsible for the death of 150,000 people; Lavrenti Beria, 54, former head of the secret police, renowned for his cruelty, also behind mass arrests and executions; Nikolai Bulganin, 58, marshal and former Minister of the Armed Forces; finally Nikita Khrushchev, 59, a former blacksmith, leader of the Moscow Party, known for having drawn up lists of thousands of those sentenced to death. Everyone hates each other.
Stalin himself manipulates them, despises them and regularly threatens to e…
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