Bits and Pieces

Among the many joys of Richard Rhodes Dark Sun are the biographical bits:

Once the magnitude of the disaster sank in, says Stalin biographer and General of the Soviet Army Dmitri Volkogonov, the dictator “simply lost control of himself and went into deep psychological shock.97 Between 28 and 30 June, according to eyewitnesses, Stalin was so depressed and shaken that he ceased to be a leader. On 29 June, as he was leaving the defense commissariat with Molotov, [Kliment] Voroshilov, [Andrei] Zhdanov and Beria, he burst out loudly, ‘Lenin left us a great inheritance and we, his heirs, have fucked it all up!’ ” Stalin retreated to his dacha at Kuntsevo; it took a visit from the Politburo, led by Molotov, to mobilize him. “We got to Stalin’s dacha,” Anastas Mikoyan recalled in his memoirs. “We found him in an armchair in the small dining room. He looked up and said, ‘What have you come for?’ He had the strangest look on his face.

Rhodes, Richard. Dark Sun: The Making Of The Hydrogen Bomb (pp. 42-43). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Beria's repellent qualities apparently extended to having teenaged girls kidnapped off the streets to be raped in his office.

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