I will not say in any direction on Beria regardless. I am not going to come to his defense beyond saying his file is still on lockdown and we know nothing beyond what a single unreliable pseudo-hisystorian had written. I lightly looked into him in the past and have discussed the nuances around his history in regards to people surrounding him during life such as a short interview with his wife or have on my list of to-read a copy of his son’s interpretation of his father’s life and have assembled passages that put beria’s existence and actions into context of the people and events he was present in and lastly a conversation I remember having with a user here four or five years back where we bickering over this issue and I was informed that beria was most likely a right-opportunist who may have possibly lead to the liquidation of the Warsaw pact at an earlier date than what historically occured. Sadly that user, h3doublehockeysticks I think, deleted their account and took those comments into the void. I kinda wish I saved those to a log.

But anyways. Just because there is a very likely possibility that Beria was smeared to clear the way for Khrushchev’s coup doesn’t mean he was a better candidate than Khrushchev himself. I’ve always maintained that Molotov or Kaganovich would’ve been superior candidates instead of Malenkov, Khrushchev, or Beria. Not mentioning other candidates that could’ve fill out the central committee with bolshevik loyalists - instead of the right-opportunist snakes that showed their true colors after Stalin’s death - that died too early, or were were pushed out or murdered by the post-stalin troika, such as the members of the Zhdanovites section namely Voznesensky, Kuznetsov, and Kosygin.