That’s why I said easiest answer, as in the most realistic and obvious, I don’t doubt there would of been better candidates then Malenkov if you could choose anyone. I’m not really knowledgeable enough about the various other obscure Soviet politicians of that time frame to give an answer there though.
If you look at who the most demonization and smears were spread about then certainly you get the impression that the revisionists feared Beria the most. And he does indeed seem to have been the most politically capable of the potential successors, but i’ve always thought Molotov was perhaps after Stalin the most principled and most “true believer” Marxist-Leninist of the Soviet leadership at the time.
Yes they did. If you read the famous Furr book “Khrushchev lied”, Furr explains there that at first he didn’t even paid special attention, but it’s the blatant lies Khrushchev told about Beria made him to look closer and investigate entire speech.
Are you claiming there was a soviet-union-wide conspiracy to smear Beria, consisting of falsified documents and spanning over 20 years? Involving not only the Russian SFSR, but Georgian, Azerbaijani, Abkhazian communist parties as well?
Khrushchev and his cronies managed to invent in a couple of months a trove of evidence against Beria that was corroborated by many others (co-conspirators, no doubt).
That’s why I said easiest answer, as in the most realistic and obvious, I don’t doubt there would of been better candidates then Malenkov if you could choose anyone. I’m not really knowledgeable enough about the various other obscure Soviet politicians of that time frame to give an answer there though.
If we assume Khrushchev is not a problem, then the most obvious one would be not Malenkov but Beria.
If you look at who the most demonization and smears were spread about then certainly you get the impression that the revisionists feared Beria the most. And he does indeed seem to have been the most politically capable of the potential successors, but i’ve always thought Molotov was perhaps after Stalin the most principled and most “true believer” Marxist-Leninist of the Soviet leadership at the time.
Yes they did. If you read the famous Furr book “Khrushchev lied”, Furr explains there that at first he didn’t even paid special attention, but it’s the blatant lies Khrushchev told about Beria made him to look closer and investigate entire speech.
Quite possibly
Are you claiming there was a soviet-union-wide conspiracy to smear Beria, consisting of falsified documents and spanning over 20 years? Involving not only the Russian SFSR, but Georgian, Azerbaijani, Abkhazian communist parties as well?
Khrushchev and his cronies managed to invent in a couple of months a trove of evidence against Beria that was corroborated by many others (co-conspirators, no doubt).
OR, Beria was a monster.
I’m gonna go with Occam’s razor here.