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Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

blog.nuclearsecrecy.com

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Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#31

Post by DoreenMichele »

lmilcin wrote: post #15
spaetzleesser wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" he was apparently good at managing the program." That's one thing a lot of people don't understand. A lot of these monsters aren't just monsters but they are also very capable. Beria was a good manager, so was Himmler who led the Nazi SS. Stalin also was a hard worker and a master bureaucrat.

You are underestimating how effective a "management" technique is demonstrating that you can shoot underperforming minions. A lot of that "management" was simply terrorizing people to do your bidding. So, no, he most likely wasn't a good manager the same way a bank robber isn't showing "good interpersonal skills" because he was able to convince all patrons to sit by the wall and employees to open the vault.

You are underestimating how effective a "management" technique is demonstrating that you can shoot underperforming minions.

I am somewhat skeptical of this take. I think if heaping abuse and threats of worse on people worked magic, there would be no homeless people in the US.

Threats only work if the capacity is there -- or almost there -- and it's feasible to extract X with sufficient pressure. But you still can't get blood from a turnip.

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#32

Post by Synaesthesia »

gilmore606 wrote: post #14
throwaway984393 wrote: post #11

Surely we shouldn't look at these subjects with blinders on. I'm sure the Soviet Union has done some evil deeds and killed scores of people in service of national zealotry, then tried to cover it up. But what global superpower hasn't? Realpolitik is an inevitable consequence of the modern world.

"scores of people"? You should read Gulag Archipelago.

Wow he must be naive of history...

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#33

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #11

Surely we shouldn't look at these subjects with blinders on. I'm sure the Soviet Union has done some evil deeds and killed scores of people in service of national zealotry, then tried to cover it up. But what global superpower hasn't? Realpolitik is an inevitable consequence of the modern world.

[deleted]

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#34

Post by dmz73 »

motohagiography wrote: post #17

I ask people who say they don't belive in hell whether they have heard and understand the Russian sense of humor, as when you do, there's no other place it could have come from. na zdarovye my friends! Joking about the annhialiation of cities of people, and potentially the species, is dark - but to call it merely "problematic" as though there were some solution to said problem instead of recognizing the existential h…

Life in the west can be much more horrible for a lot of people than life in USSR was for most but dark humor is very mild and looked down upon. I would say cultural differences play much bigger role. Whose life is worse in the west? Homeless, outlaws (drug addicts, prostitutes), arrested illegal immigrants, some aboriginal communities. I am wrong about that? I lived in a communist country as a child and young adult. Life in the west can be better...or much worse.

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#35

Post by wolverine876 »

Animats wrote: post #2

Beria really was in charge of the early Soviet nuclear weapons program, and, while everyone was terrified of him, he was apparently good at managing the program. The classic joke about that, and it may not have been a joke, is that after the first bomb worked, the people who would have been shot if it failed got the Hero of the Soviet Union award. The ones that would have been sent to a labor camp got some lesser awa…

If Beria was a good manager, they wouldn't have to threaten to shoot people. Or, another approach is that managers who threaten their employees' lives are awful at their jobs.

In the free world, managers don't threaten that and they achieve far more. Even in the military, whatever the law, even in wartime it's never done afaik.

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#36

Post by zaphirplane »

lmilcin wrote: post #15
spaetzleesser wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" he was apparently good at managing the program." That's one thing a lot of people don't understand. A lot of these monsters aren't just monsters but they are also very capable. Beria was a good manager, so was Himmler who led the Nazi SS. Stalin also was a hard worker and a master bureaucrat.

You are underestimating how effective a "management" technique is demonstrating that you can shoot underperforming minions. A lot of that "management" was simply terrorizing people to do your bidding. So, no, he most likely wasn't a good manager the same way a bank robber isn't showing "good interpersonal skills" because he was able to convince all patrons to sit by the wall and employees to open the vault.

Developing and motivating people is just 1 aspect of a manager’s role, there are many other hats like project manager, vision, drive incentivising Arguably not many managers have it

I have no idea if those people were great manager or great despots there maybe a relation with how hard working they were

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#37

Post by oblio »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #28
gilmore606 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"scores of people"? You should read Gulag Archipelago.

I think you missed the point of my comment. The Soviet Union is not alone in committing atrocity or "evil". Every developed nation is guilty of it. And the scale of atrocity shouldn't be measured by the body count alone.

Then what do you measure it by and how is the Soviet Union not near the top of those rankings?

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#38

Post by refurb »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #28
gilmore606 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"scores of people"? You should read Gulag Archipelago.

I think you missed the point of my comment. The Soviet Union is not alone in committing atrocity or "evil". Every developed nation is guilty of it. And the scale of atrocity shouldn't be measured by the body count alone.

So a country that commit “evil” and claimed one innocent life should be lumped together with one that claimed 5 million innocent lives?

If your argument is there is no country who hasn’t committed evil in some form I’m not sure you’ll get much opposition or really be saying something people don’t already know.

If your excusing mass genocide because “everyone does bad stuff” then I’ll have to disagree.

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#39

Post by avmich »

wolverine876 wrote: post #35
Animats wrote: post #2

Beria really was in charge of the early Soviet nuclear weapons program, and, while everyone was terrified of him, he was apparently good at managing the program. The classic joke about that, and it may not have been a joke, is that after the first bomb worked, the people who would have been shot if it failed got the Hero of the Soviet Union award. The ones that would have been sent to a labor camp got some lesser awa…

If Beria was a good manager, they wouldn't have to threaten to shoot people. Or, another approach is that managers who threaten their employees' lives are awful at their jobs. In the free world, managers don't threaten that and they achieve far more. Even in the military, whatever the law, even in wartime it's never done afaik.

Beria was, without a doubt, a cruel maniac.

Chertok in his books - https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/rockets_people_vol1_deta... , but the episod is, I think, from volume IV - tells the following story. Soviet space designers are in the beginning of the work on the manned Moon expedition. Korolev and Glushko - two towering figures, the best rocket constructor and best engine constructor of the country - can't find common ground, at all, and have completely deteriorated relationships (mildly speaking). The disagreement is about rocket engines. Discussing this, one rocket scientist (Chertok or Bushuyev) says that if Father of Nation - Stalin - was alive, he'd invited everybody involved, set the deadline, asked how to help - and USSR had engines no worse than in USA. "Great people", wrote Chertok, "aren't saints, and like to show off. If the fear is added and also everything which is needed for design bureaus and manufacturers, they can produce miracles. This Stalin understood and used in full." Regarding Beria, a story said, that Beria invites two disagreeing managers to talk and says, "if two communists can't find an agreement, then one of them is enemy. I don't have time to find out who's who. I give you 24 hours, find the common ground", and it worked.

It's probably very hard to realize what it was to live in those times - especially at the visible positions.

Re: Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

#40

Post by IgorPartola »

I was born in the USSR and speak Russian. I generally get Russian humor and some Russian jokes are quite funny. However I share the author’s opinion here: finding the humor in these jokes is rough. I watched the first video where the jokes are being told and honestly event the funniest of these are barely funny. You have to really place yourself into the situation where these people are considered larger than life and treated with all manner of deference and respect. To see them doing things like cursing like a trucker, to realize that they are fallible in some way, etc. can be made humorous but a lot of these jokes seem to fall under the category of “you had to have been there”.
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