Chapter 702: Stalin Dies of Illness

If this steel leader, who had been leading the Soviet Union for thirty years, were to pass away.

The future of the Soviet Union will be in the hands of who, almost everyone thinks that person should be himself.

But almost everyone, in their hearts, thought of another person who was present in the room, wearing glasses and looking civilized Beria.

This has been in charge of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for fourteen years of the Minister of the Interior, is undoubtedly present among all the people, has the greatest threat to the person, everyone understands Beria’s courteous appearance, is how terrible side.

Not to mention the current commander of the Moscow Military District, Admiral Pavel Artemyevich Artemyev.

A hand-me-down from Beria, Admiral Artemyev graduated from the Border Guard School, a school established by Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka, to train commanders of internal defense forces.

After the Civil War war with the Whites, Admiral Artemyev was engaged in political work in the Internal Guard and Border Troops. He then served as chief of the Border Sector Guard, chief of the Internal Guards, and head of the School for Troops of the Ministry of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs.

During the Second World War, he became the head of the command of combat troops of the Ministry of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs. In the same year he was appointed commander of the Moscow Military District, where he remains to this day.

But who is the boss of the Ministry of Internal Affairs? The only marshal in the USSR with a security cadre, Beria, of course.

In his hands he controls the dreaded Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Commander of the Moscow Military District is also a commander who comes from the Ministry of Internal Affairs system. This kind of threatening power has to make everyone’s mind anxious.

Resuscitation continues in the villa, no one knows what the final result will be, but everyone knows. If this kind father of all nationalities left suddenly, then a battle for supremacy would soon begin.

Throughout the day, no news has come in, and for those who are here, a basic judgment has been made in the minds of all, and some preparations should begin. The struggle for power after Stalin’s death has begun from now on.

Everyone’s heart was anxious, and when the medical team doctors examined Stalin’s body, they found that his condition was already quite bad. The most anxious were Stalin’s colleagues, who just wanted to know whether Stalin would still recover, for no one had the guts to dare to act rashly just when there was a possibility that Stalin might suddenly awaken.

Even Beria, who was himself in charge of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and had the commander of the Moscow Military District as a booster, had no desire to seize power. Stalin had led the Soviet Union for thirty years, and apart from some political rivalries in the early years, he had been a ballast for a long time, and all the big names present had long ago succumbed to that authority.

On March 3, a team of doctors told the leaders that Stalin’s awakening was unlikely. After this conclusion was reached, the people who had already endured for two days, finally, as if they had been released from their confinement, began to shake their fists.

Beria also began his own actions, Beria directly approached Malinkov, expressed his willingness to support Malinkov’s idea, Malinkov, of course, was very happy, who knows that Beria’s real power is amazingly large.

The exchange of views was that Beria supported Malinkov into the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Beria as Vice-Chairman and Minister of the Interior, that is to say, Malinkov got the government departments, while Beria got the Ministry of the Interior.

At the same time Malinkov was to endorse, Beria’s reincorporation of the already split Ministry of the Interior, restoring it to its wartime synthesis, and after deliberation, the two men had come to an agreement.

In the Kremlin there were now at least four dissidents coveting the leadership, Beria himself, Malinkov, Molotov and Khrushchev. After Beria and Malinkov have communicated, there will be an overwhelming advantage over the other two.

The threatening force here was derived mainly from Beria, not Malinkov, and by this time the general situation was settled.

An emergency meeting was then held in the Kremlin, chaired by Malinkov, who told the group that Stalin was terminally ill. At the meeting, Beria supported Marinkov, and Beria proposed that Stalin should be replaced by Marinkov, and that the future Soviet Union would be led by a collective.

Beria’s proposal was accepted by all, and a day later the news came from Villa Kontsevo that Stalin had died. It was decided that the news would be announced to the world the next day.

On March 6, the news, which had shaken the world, was reported by Pravda.

Pravda’s report was very brief, “Stalin, the leader of the international communist movement and the supreme leader of the Soviet Union, suffered a sudden cerebral hemorrhage and died in his dacha in Kuntsevo, outside Moscow, at the age of seventy-four.”

The news was announced on Soviet radio and in the leading newspaper Pravda. Since then, the Soviet Union has declared eight days of national silence, halted work, and scheduled Stalin’s burial for March 9th. Stalin’s body was to be laid to rest in the Kremlin and then in the Columnar Hall of the Trade Union Building, where it was to be honored. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union also decided that Stalin’s body would be buried next to Lenin’s tomb in Red Square after the ceremony. The Soviet leaders formed a Mourning Committee for the Memorial and Burial of Stalin.

The news, at this point in time, had almost the same effect as the explosion of a Tsarist nuclear bomb. Spread throughout London, Paris and Washington, for the assessment of the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death, the future leader of the Soviet Union is who, became the most current issue of concern.

Alan Wilson arrived at the Foreign Office building with a heavy heart, he was not supposed to be shocked by the death of any historical figure, but he was still dumbfounded by the news.

Arriving at the Foreign Office, Sir Ismay began by explaining that the Labor Cabinet was discussing whether or not to send a delegation to Stalin’s funeral. As for Whitehall’s responsibility now, it was to make an assessment of the post-Stalin Soviet Union that was of a professional nature.

“Is the government going to visit the Soviet Union at this time of year?” Alan Wilson shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. It shouldn’t have been surprising because Stalin was supposed to have that kind of influence.

Where the surprise comes in is that the British Empire is, at least currently, still the shelf of the world’s empire, and even if it is true that the Labor Party is not as hostile to the Soviet Union as the Tories are, to go directly to the Soviet Union to attend Stalin’s funeral on?

This is still debatable, but this is a matter for the government, Alan Wilson can only give advice.

“We can only advise on the government’s actions, ultimately it’s up to the Prime Minister to make the decision. Now let’s discuss the Soviet Union in the post-Stalin era, we have to give the cabinet an account.” Sir Ismay quickly handed down the required documents to open this meeting.

This Alan Wilson did not hold against anyone, it was right to bring himself in. His advice, in its unreliability, was more reliable than the Foreign Office’s blindness here. His opinion was that the new Soviet leadership, whoever it was, would adopt a strategy of détente in the short term.

The fundamental reason for this is that, analyzing with the available intelligence, Stalin has not arranged the matter of his successor. There are still a lot of candidates for the current Soviet Union’s top echelon, and because there are so many candidates, the new leader will not have Stalin’s authority.

In the case of the new leader does not have the authority, can judge all things need to be discussed, the external performance is certainly not as Stalin in so tough.

“Beria, the Soviet Union’s Minister of the Interior and Vice Chairman of the Council of Ministers, is a secret agent by trade. If he comes to lead the Soviet Union, will he be even more difficult to deal with than under Stalin.” Sir Ismay asked rhetorically.

“I find it hard to imagine a man who could be more difficult to deal with than Stalin!” Alan Wilson opened his mouth not knowing what to say, “If a leader like Stalin came out so easily? It should be the Soviet Union leading the world right now!”

When this ha was said, there was dissent in the room, even Sir Ismay frowned slightly, “Alan, are you overrating Stalin?”

“It’s a Slavic country now, from Kievan Rus’ until now, when it had the highest status in the world, bar none. Peter the Great didn’t do it, Ekaterina the Great didn’t do it. Stalin did.” Alan Wilson shrugged, “My assessment is completely in accordance with the heart, with no hint of personal bias whatsoever. But the good thing is, we are discussing, what happened after his illness and death.”

After a statement that my hands are clean and my heart is clear, the assessment session on how the new Soviet leader would handle international relations continued. Allen Wilson still insisted that in the short term the Soviet Union would surely moderate, and that perhaps the Berlin Crisis, which had been going on forever, would come to an end.

In fact, there was little need for this; the West Berlin district was now as empty as an empty city, no longer at all a window for the two camps to demonstrate their superiority, but simply a military stronghold for the British, American and French armies.

Even Eisenhower, who said before the election that he would give the Soviet Union a tough attitude, did not mention this matter after he really came to power.

The first thing the current few big shots in the Soviet Union do now, after coming to power, is to solidify their positions. It took a while to establish authority, which is to be expected.

As for Beria, whose colleagues in the Foreign Ministry had some misgivings, Allen Wilson said that he would not escape this law either.

In fact Allen Wilson knew in his heart that compromising too much with the free world was the very crime for which Beria was purged. On the question of Germany, one thing Beria, the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union four countries to withdraw from Germany, so that Germany unified into a neutral country.

This proposal, not to mention the other high level of the Soviet Union does not agree, the Soviets agree, Britain, France and the United States will not agree.

After two hours of discussion, Alan Wilson insisted that the Soviet Union needed time to stabilize the political environment and would not take a hard line against the free world, and the Foreign Ministry came up with an assessment report, which was given to the Cabinet Office to send to the Cabinet.

At this time in the Cabinet, the Prime Minister and ministers were indeed talking about whether to take this opportunity to make a visit to Moscow. And also to test what kind of attitude the new leadership of the Soviet Union has.