Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria

Post by spaetzleesser » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 11:45 AM UTC

paganel wrote: post #72

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.

The same goes for today's leaders of organised crime, you have be CEO-material in order to manage 'Ndrangheta's ~50 billion euros business [1], it's not enough just to be able to kill some guys on a dark street in Catanzaro anymore. [1] https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210113-ndrangheta-crime...

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 11:50 AM UTC

thriftwy wrote: post #85

tada131 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russian too, yep thats not funny, but you should know one of the most must-do things for US (gov payed) historian today - eventually write story about freaky-bloody Stalin, Gulag and Beria who eats children. For the sake of Freedom and Wellfare of course. Don't forget that von Neumann was truly genious at least because he wanted to wipe that Hell from the Earth (Yep they never told you that) Somewhat expressive and s…

But they did for the most part eat children, which is often confirmed by their own investigations of each other, there's the one for Beria where he coerced dozens of women to have sex with him, including many minors.

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 11:58 AM UTC

simonh wrote: post #54

dmz73 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

The USSR had homeless, drug addicts, prostitutes and marginalised communities too. It had all the same problems, plus a whole lot more. Admittedly, there were a lot fewer people outside trying to get in though. I'll give you that.

Post by thriftwy » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 12:06 PM UTC

avmich wrote: post #39

wolverine876 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Post by Vaderv » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 12:09 PM UTC

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.