This is a totally moot what-if question, but it interests me so I’ll ask it.
When Stalin died there was a power struggle within his entourage. Beria, the head of his secret police and almost as murderous as Stalin himself, lost. The other comrades invited him to a meeting and gunned him down– I think that’s how it went.
Now from the point of view of Beria’s colleagues whom he certainly would have liquidated, his death was a good thing, probably too for the Russian people, who didn’t need another mass murderer in charge.
But monster that Beria was, he favored (so I’ve read anyway) reaching a live and let live accommodation with the West. So we might have avoided 50 years of the Cold War. I’d have been tempted to shake hands on that deal.
You guys?
