In the history of the Soviet Union, there is a famous figure who ended up with a tragic end, being executed by firing squad, and he wrote to ask the presidium controlled by his political enemies to spare his life, but the other side ignored him.
Beria
There are also different accounts of Beria's death, the official version is that he was executed after the trial, or that he was shot directly at home, and that he fell victim to political struggles in any case.
Stills from Beria in Diplomatic Affair
It is true that Beria committed unforgivable crimes in stalin's time, but he was only one of them, and Stalin's assistants such as Khrushchev, Molotov, Malenkov, Mikoyan, and others were also involved, and there was no less blood on their hands than Beria.
Molotov
Beria had been in charge of the Ministry of Internal Affairs since the Stalin era and gradually became the second most important person in the Soviet Union, mastering the secrets of many political figures.
After Stalin's death, Khrushchev and others were still extremely jealous of Beria, so they united with Malenkov, Molotov, Zhukov and other Soviet politicians to decide to preemptively eliminate this potential threat.
On June 26, 1953, at the Kremlin meeting, Malenkov and others suddenly launched a siege of Beria and arrested him with the assistance of Moskalenko, Zhukov and other soldiers.
Beria's mother, mother-in-law, wife, sister and son, including 20 others, were sentenced to exile, and the political struggle was so brutal that the losers often harmed their families.
Less than six months after his imprisonment, Beria was executed on December 18 on charges of treason, terrorism and counter-revolution, and the once-powerful Soviet minister of internal affairs and vice-president of the Council of Ministers fell to the gunpoint of "his own people" in this way.
He died on a "false" charge, so did Beria, who was in charge of the Ministry of the Interior, really not have the slightest ability to protect himself on the eve of his opponents' death?
Before his arrest, Beria was minister of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs, which until March 1946 was known as the "NKVD Ministry", a police apparatus of the Stalinist era and the main executive organ of the Great Purge in the 1930s, successively by Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria.
If Yagoda and Yezhov had not died well before Beria, did he not plan ahead? Didn't he think about the worst outcome? Or did he think that Stalin was dead, that the age of terror was over, and that he could get through?
On March 6, 1953, the second day after Stalin's death, Beria merged the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of State Security to form a new "Ministry of the Interior", at which point the power of this institution reached its peak.
Supreme Leader of the Soviet Union Stalin
The paramilitary force directly controlled by Beria, the Internal Guard Unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, has at least hundreds of thousands of soldiers, although the unit mainly undertakes conventional tasks such as public security, patrol, and stability maintenance, but it also has a certain combat effectiveness.
Internal Guard Unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR
It has been said that Beria transferred a division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to Moscow, but later scholars have shown that the division shows no signs of being moved, but remains stationed in place.
If Beria at that time used his authority to mobilize part of the armed forces under the Ministry of Internal Affairs into Moscow, would he be able to protect himself?
Kremlin
The answer is no, the reason why the former Beria was powerful was the power given to him by Stalin, and without Stalin, when the military power was divided by political opponents, he was basically in a state of internal and external helplessness in politics.
At that time, even if Beria "jumped the wall in a hurry", it would not help, to know that the regular army of the Soviet Union was much stronger than the internal guard unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and in terms of number, the Soviet army had 5 million people, and the internal guard troops were not vulnerable to these troops.
Worst of all, Zhukov, who represents the military, is also on the side of Beria, who offended many people during the Stalin era, so he has few really credible allies.
Therefore, whether Beria prepared in advance or not, his end was already doomed, unless he defected to the West in advance, he may be able to save his life, but such a prominent figure as him, every move is concerned, it is difficult to escape silently, most likely just escaped to the border or the airport has been known to political enemies, and his treason is confirmed.
In Stalin's time, Beria had been worried all day, afraid that Stalin would not be satisfied and end up like his predecessor, and it was difficult to survive that time, thinking that there was no danger of life, but he did not expect that his former arbitrariness had offended many people, and they would unite to completely eliminate him just when the time came.