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This smoothly written book is laudable, not just for its speculation on the Beria that might have been, but also for its naked portrait of the Beria that was. -- David Gordon, Newsweek, International Edition
The first serious book-length study of Beria's public career. . . . Knight's staidness and deliberation bring a refreshing change of approach. . . . A major contribution to our knowledge of Soviet politics. -- Robert Service, The Times Literary Supplement
Beria is ripe for revisionism. The danger is that too much can be made of Beria's relative liberalism. . . . Amy Knight does not fall into this trap. Hers is a strictly political biography and a very good one. -- Simon Sebag Montefiore, The [London] Times
The first serious book-length study of Beria's public career. . . . Knight's staidness and deliberation bring a refreshing change of approach. . . . A major contribution to our knowledge of Soviet politics. -- Robert Service, The Times Literary Supplement
Beria is ripe for revisionism. The danger is that too much can be made of Beria's relative liberalism. . . . Amy Knight does not fall into this trap. Hers is a strictly political biography and a very good one. -- Simon Sebag Montefiore, The [London] Times
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This is the first comprehensive biography of Lavrentii Beria, Stalin's notorious police chief and for many years his most powerful lieutenant. Beria has long symbolized all the evils of Stalinism, haunting the public imagination both in the West and in the former Soviet Union. Yet because his political opponents expunged his name from public memory after his dramatic arrest and execution in 1953, little has been previously published about his long and tumultuous career.
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IT IS ONE of Soviet history's great ironies that Stalian and Beria, two of its most notorious political villains, were both born and raised in Georgia, a country renowned for the beauty and charm of its people, as well as for its rich cultural history. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
IT IS ONE of Soviet history's great ironies that Stalian and Beria, two of its most notorious political villains, were both born and raised in Georgia, a country renowned for the beauty and charm of its people, as well as for its rich cultural history. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a really excellent piece of work. Amy Knight has produced what is billed as the first biography of Beria and one it will be hard for any future writer to outdo. The book is determinedly unsensational, meticulously researched and annotated, and well-written. We are given a rounded picture of a brutal opportunist who could be pragmatic when the occasion called for it. The book speculates interestingly and plausibly on what might have happened had Beria succeeded in his bid to succeed Stalin. Khrushchev, who got the job in the end, adopted many of Beria's policies. My only minor gripe is that the switch from looking at Beria's myriad bad points to his good ones jars sometimes. But if you want to know more about a key, but shadowy, figure from the Stalin era, read this book. They don't come much better.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Amy Knight has done an excellent job of unmasking the evil Lavrenty Beria, for many years Stalin's head of secret police. But the book veers off course towards the end, after Stalin's death, when Knight tries to persuade us that the mass murderer was in fact a closet reformer who proposed freeing many of the prisoners he himself had incarcerated and wanted a more relaxed line with East Germany. An intriguing book, nevertheless
1 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Well, and Beria? How was he? This book I think doesn’t explain very much of the deep of the real person although yes of the personage, intended as his exploits as chief of the Soviet Police. Perhaps one can take a glimpse: Beria was an intelligent man and therefore he should be an educated man, and I think he was, in the external sense. He was a communist, but I believe he knew how to distinguish the fork and spoon of meat from these of fish. But these things are only good external manners, and this is the case most people was inexplicably frightened in the presence of Beria although they were “friends” or companions. As I'm Spanish I can say in Spain people too much well mannered use to be culprits of something bad. Also, this facet didn't passed overlooked by Jugoslav communists, at last persons of free spirit. He had a wife but sometimes too much proximity can deceit. These facts are I think trustworthy indicators that Beria was a bad man, a terrible man, and all these before he ordered you must be shot or something poor.
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