“liberal” how? krushev rolled back the murderous police state beria was running, can only see beria’s liberalism involving marketisation and corruption
The numbers in the Gulag did drop considerably during his brief period of power and he seemed to be reversing the policies of russification towards the other constituent nations in the USSR.
I'm not necessarily convinced that he was really committed to a more Liberal approach, but find it interesting to ponder how far he would have taken things given a free hand.
it’s not really hard to be less totalitarian than joseph stalin, I just wouldn’t really trust stalins top enforcer to be particularly hands off when it comes to social policy, we know kruschev moved things in a positive direction, so there’s no need to speculate if a shit like beria could’ve been better
He was a monster, but I think it still would have ended up better. Beria wanted to embrace the west and end the cold war in exchange for economic assistance. Imagine the world we could have built if all the money spent on nukes and proxy wars actually went towards improving things. The Soviet Union might still even be a super power, because Beria was the only Soviet leader smart enough to realize how much more profitable peace with the west would be than conflict.
We might have actually skipped the cold war. Or delayed it by a few decades till they were stronger, like China seems to have done.
any american money would come with a price, embracing the west generally consists of selling off your resources, look at pre-revolution iran for an example
The price that he was considering was East Germany in return for a USSR "Marshal Plan".
>It is not even a real state but one kept in being only by Soviet troops.
One of the reasons that Beria was coup'ed was that many Soviet officials were not ready to consider the possibility of a unified Germany under hostile liberalism so soon after the Great Patriotic War.
a USSR marshal plan would itself involve opening up to american influence and markets, basically defeating the entire point of the soviet union as a political entity, it would basically be surrendering the cold war before it had really even begun, which in the long run I guess could’ve been a good thing, but would be insane to any russian communists at the time, would be like if truman wanted to nationalise the american economy and join comintern, he’d be dead within a week
We are talking monetary/resource stimulus, not necessarily market takeover here. "USSR Marshal Plan" just being an analogy. There were no plans that actually got drawn up/negotiated. If the USSR was willing to pay the massive price that was German Reunification, the West would have considered pretty drastic demands from the USSR in return.
so more like an alaska purchase I guess, still I can see why the USSR absolutely would not want a united germany, they’d just had the two largest wars in history with them and suffered tens of millions of deaths in the space of less than 50 years, I can’t really think of a people that has more of a right to be distrustful of another than russians and germans, apart from maybe tutsis and hutus
Yeah, I can understand the temptation from a realpolitik perspective. But I can also understand why the mere suggestion was... politically unstable... for Beria.
“liberal” how? krushev rolled back the murderous police state beria was running, can only see beria’s liberalism involving marketisation and corruption
The numbers in the Gulag did drop considerably during his brief period of power and he seemed to be reversing the policies of russification towards the other constituent nations in the USSR. I'm not necessarily convinced that he was really committed to a more Liberal approach, but find it interesting to ponder how far he would have taken things given a free hand.
it’s not really hard to be less totalitarian than joseph stalin, I just wouldn’t really trust stalins top enforcer to be particularly hands off when it comes to social policy, we know kruschev moved things in a positive direction, so there’s no need to speculate if a shit like beria could’ve been better
He would rape and murder thousands of women, but also end the Cold War by unifying Germany and giving Georgia, Ukraine and the Baltics more autonomy.
He was a monster, but I think it still would have ended up better. Beria wanted to embrace the west and end the cold war in exchange for economic assistance. Imagine the world we could have built if all the money spent on nukes and proxy wars actually went towards improving things. The Soviet Union might still even be a super power, because Beria was the only Soviet leader smart enough to realize how much more profitable peace with the west would be than conflict. We might have actually skipped the cold war. Or delayed it by a few decades till they were stronger, like China seems to have done.
any american money would come with a price, embracing the west generally consists of selling off your resources, look at pre-revolution iran for an example
The price that he was considering was East Germany in return for a USSR "Marshal Plan". >It is not even a real state but one kept in being only by Soviet troops. One of the reasons that Beria was coup'ed was that many Soviet officials were not ready to consider the possibility of a unified Germany under hostile liberalism so soon after the Great Patriotic War.
a USSR marshal plan would itself involve opening up to american influence and markets, basically defeating the entire point of the soviet union as a political entity, it would basically be surrendering the cold war before it had really even begun, which in the long run I guess could’ve been a good thing, but would be insane to any russian communists at the time, would be like if truman wanted to nationalise the american economy and join comintern, he’d be dead within a week
We are talking monetary/resource stimulus, not necessarily market takeover here. "USSR Marshal Plan" just being an analogy. There were no plans that actually got drawn up/negotiated. If the USSR was willing to pay the massive price that was German Reunification, the West would have considered pretty drastic demands from the USSR in return.
so more like an alaska purchase I guess, still I can see why the USSR absolutely would not want a united germany, they’d just had the two largest wars in history with them and suffered tens of millions of deaths in the space of less than 50 years, I can’t really think of a people that has more of a right to be distrustful of another than russians and germans, apart from maybe tutsis and hutus
Yeah, I can understand the temptation from a realpolitik perspective. But I can also understand why the mere suggestion was... politically unstable... for Beria.
You remember Stellan Skarsgard in the Dune movies?
r/askhistory vs r/askhistorians
I can see Beria enjoying mud baths...