askchapo

Yeah she's easy to read too. Very good at making the subject come alive

To play devils advocate (to attempt to show why its really hard for historians to say for sure one way or the other in cases like these): the archives being sealed could also suggest they dont line up with the official narrative, as well as the other reasons i suggested to electric nan.

People were scared of him and hated him, but as you say no one's saying beria's a nice guy (except perhaps his son): historians' debate here is entirely over whether or not he was a child molester, not over whether or not he signed off on mass executions and imprisonments

The thing is it does the opposite for me. Modern Russia is happy to slander the USSR. To say socialism was bad, that modern liberal Russia is superior. There's some sensitivity around slandering say the red army or going too far in slandering top leaders who are heroes even to modern Russians in the same way Washington has a legacy in the US to many USians.

There may also be sensitive sources that were cultivated that are still relevant littered through his files.

It's conceivable if there is evidence he did these things that they fear it being scandalous or opening up some public discourse but I don't think it says anything except that an intelligence director who operated in a sensitive time may have files that are still sensitive. His relationships with his western counterparts for example could contain things that would enrage the west if released or cause problems. Sources, assets of his could still have some relevance as perhaps the Russian state cultivated familial loyalty in some of those sources families that holds to this day.

Just the angle of keeping the mystique I think is enough for the liberal capitalist modern Russian state. Because if it exonerates him, if it says he only tortured Nazis and the worst fascist scum and never touched a child well then people would say how honorable, how good socialism is that even a man like that carried out his duty but was otherwise decent and make the modern situation look bad.

In light of all the slander I choose to believe Beria was an innocent man who did his duties to the revolution faithfully. No perfectly but neither was Stalin, Lenin, etc. But good enough and that given the situation we live with the slanderous lies about Stalin, the USSR, etc I don't think it helps us to engage with such slander that has no real good proof. If it should some day come out it was true then sure we condemn, disavow, etc. But those making the accusations, the interests at hand make it impossible to believe the slander. Much in the same way there's an industry around slander of the DPRK by defectors cultivated by South Korea a bigger one exists around the USSR which has a dead state people may feel even more free to make up whatever about.

I mean we know the west, the CIA has sexually tortured children as part of their mind control experiments. That there was evidence they destroyed to hide possible child sex abuse blackmail rings they ran, that Epstein operated with their consent, etc. It all comes across as so much projection from the pedophile west.

Could be yeah, but its equally possible that its locked away bc it proves khrushchev lied, or bc it incriminates some contemporary oligarch's granddaddy, or even bc no one wanted to spend the time and energy needed to sort it into more or less sensitive info and just slapped "do not open" on the whole thing and called itna day. From what ive read, theres not rly enough evidence available to make more than guesses in the dark

The Russian state is a liberal state that would very much like to harm the collective view of historical communism in the country in order to reduce its influence. If it's bad and would hurt the view of historical communists then there is little reason for a liberal party to be hiding it. On the contrary, it is more likely that it hurts existing narratives against communists that have since settled.

The opposite, if there were something bad there, it would be used long ago to bash Beria, and through him indirectly Stalin and USSR (which was the reson black legend of Beria was manufactured in the first place). Read "Khrushchev Lied". Same was with Stalin's private archive, when it was opened anticommunists made quite a ruckus about how much atrocities and lies would be found inside and then immediately shot up when it contained not only nothing of sorts, but also proven that Stalin was man of integrity between his private and public figure.