by James Millar
Berdyayev’s philosophy is anthroposophic, personalistic, subjective, and eschatological. He emphasized the supreme value of the person, opposed all forms of objectification, and exalted a freedom
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unconstrained by norms or laws, including the laws of nature. Rejecting all dogmas, orthodoxies, systems, and institutions, and all forms of determinism, he linked freedom with creativity, which he considered man’s true vocation, and taught that man is a co-creator with God. By “man” he meant men; he regarded “woman” as “generative but not creative.” He interpreted the Bolshevik Revolution as part of a pan-European crisis, the imminent end of the civilization that began in the Renaissance, and looked forward to a period he called the new middle ages.
The literature on Berdyayev is extensive and varied. Some authors exalt him as a philosopher of freedom, others emphasize his utopianism, and still others consider him a heretic.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Berdiaev, Nicolas. (1955). The Meaning of the Creative Act, tr. Donald Lowrie. New York: Harper. Lowrie, Donald. (1960). Rebellious Prophet: A Life of Nikolai Berdiaev. New York: Harper. Zenkovsky, V. V. (1953). A History of Russian Philosophy, tr. George L. Kline. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press.
BERNICE GLATZER ROSENTHAL
BERIA, LAVRENTI PAVLOVICH
(1899-1953), Soviet politician and police official, chief of the NKVD 1938-1946.
Born in Merkheuli, a village in the Georgian Republic, Lavrenti Beria enrolled in the Baku Polytechnic for Mechanical Construction in 1915 and graduated four years later. Meanwhile, after joining the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in March 1917, he participated in the Russian Revolution as an underground soldier and counterintelligence agent in the Caucasus. Be-ria’s career with the Soviet secret police began in early 1921, when the ruling Bolsheviks assigned him to the notorious Cheka (Extraordinary Commission for Fighting Revolution and Sabotage) in the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. As a deputy to the ruthless Cheka chief in that republic, Mir Dzhafar Bagirov, Beria engaged in bloody reprisals against the opponents of Bolshevik rule, even drawing criticism from some Caucasian Bolshevik leaders for the violent methods he used. By late 1922, with the antiBolshevik rebels in Azerbaijan subdued, Beria was transferred to Georgia, where there were still serious challenges to the Soviet regime. He assumed the post of deputy chairman of the Georgian Cheka, throwing himself into the job of fighting political dissent among his fellow Georgians. Beria’s influence grew as the political police played an increasing role in Georgian politics. His career was successful because he helped to engineer the defeat of the national communists, who wanted Georgia to retain some form of independence from Moscow, and the consequent victory of those who favored strong centralized control by the Bolsheviks.
By 1926 Beria had risen to the post of chairman of the Georgian GPU (State Political Administration, the successor organization to the Cheka). Beria was the consumate Soviet politician. His political fortunes were furthered not only by his effectiveness in using the secret police to enforce Soviet rule, but also by his ability to win favor with Soviet party leader Josef Stalin, a Georgian by nationality, by playing on Stalin’s suspicions of the native Georgian party leadership. Having extended his influence into the party apparatus, Beria was elected in 1931 to the post of first secretary of the Georgian party apparatus, a remarkable achievement for a man of only thirty-two years. Henceforth Beria would continue to ingratiate himself with Stalin by furthering Stalin’s personality cult in Georgia. In 1935 Beria published a lengthy treatise, On the History of Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia, which greatly exaggerated Stalin’s role in the revolutionary movement in the Caucasus before 1917. The book was serialized in the major party newspaper, Pravda, and made Beria a figure of national stature.
When Stalin embarked on his policy of terrorizing the party and the country through his bloody purges of the Communist Party apparatus from 1936 through 1938, Beria was a willing accomplice. In Georgia alone, thousands perished at the hands of the secret police, and thousands more were condemned to prisons and labor camps, as part of a nationwide Stalinist vendetta against the Soviet people. Although many party leaders perished in the purges, Beria emerged unscathed, and in 1938 Stalin rewarded him with the post of head of the NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, as the secret police was then called) in Moscow. After carrying out a full-scale purge of the NKVD leadership, Beria brought in his associates from the party and police in Georgia to fill the top NKVD posts, thereby creating an extensive power base in
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the NKVD and increasing his political influence in the Kremlin.
After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Beria, as a deputy Soviet premier, oversaw the enormous job of evacuating defense industries from western regions and converting peacetime industry to war production. He drew upon the NKVD’s vast forced labor empire, under the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Colonies, or gulag, to produce weapons and ammunition for the Red Army, as well as to mine coal and metals and construct railway lines. The NKVD was also responsible for internal security, foreign intelligence, and counterintelligence, and its thousands of border and internal troops performed rear security functions. Under Beria’s direct supervision, NKVD troops deported to Siberia hundreds of thousands of non-Russian nationals within the Soviet Union who were suspected of disloyalty to the regime.
By the war’s end, Beria had earned a reputation as a ruthless but highly effective administrator. Stalin made him a full member of the party’s ruling Politburo in 1946 and placed him in charge of developing the Soviet atomic bomb in 1945. Although Beria relinquished his post as head of the NKVD in early 1946, his prot?g?s were still in charge, and he continued to oversee the police and intelligence apparatus as a deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers. Beria threw himself into work on the bomb, enlisting top Soviet scientists, ensuring the availability of raw materials like uranium, and using secret intelligence on atomic bomb production in the West. As a result of his efforts, the Soviets surprised the West by successfully producing and testing their first atomic bomb (plutonium) in August 1949.
Although Beria was one of Stalin’s closest advisors, he nonetheless fell victim to Stalin’s intense paranoia in the early 1950s and suffered a series of attacks on his fiefdom in Georgia and in the secret police. Had it not been for Stalin’s sudden death in March 1953, Beria might have been removed from power altogether. Instead Beria formed an alliance with Georgy Malenkov, who became party first secretary, and took direct control of the police and intelligence apparatus (known at this time as the MVD). He also embarked on a series of liberal initiatives aimed at reversing many of Stalin’s policies. The changes he introduced were so bold and far-reaching that they alarmed his colleagues, in particular Nikita Khrushchev, who aspired to become the Soviet leader. A bitter power struggle en Lavrenti Beria led Stalin’s purges until Nikita Khrushchev ordered his execution in 1953. © HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/ CORBIS sued, and Beria was outmaneuvered by Khrushchev, who managed to have Beria arrested in June 1953. Charged with high treason, Beria was executed in December 1953, along with six others. Although Beria was best known for being a ruthless police administrator and a loyal follower of Stalin, archival materials released in 1990s have made it clear that Beria’s role went far beyond this and that he was one of the most influential politicians of the Soviet period. See also: GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS; GULAG; PURGES, THE GREAT; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH; STATE SECURITY, ORGANS OF
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beria, Sergo. (2001). Beria My Father: Inside Stalin’s Kremlin. London: Duckworth. Knight, Amy. (1993). Beria: Stalin’s First Lieutenant. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
AMY KNIGHT
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BERING, VITUS JONASSEN
BERING, VITUS JONASSEN
(1681-1741), Russian explorer of Danish descent.
Vitus Bering was the captain-commander of two expeditions exploring the relative positions of the coasts of Siberia and North America. Bringing back the valuable sea otter and other pelts from the islands of the North Pacific to Siberia, the second of these expeditions sparked the fur rush that resulted in the Russian conquest of the Commander and Aleutian Islands and, eventually, all of Alaska, which was claimed by the Russian Empire until it was sold to the United States in 1867.
On the first expedition, which sailed in 1728 from the coast of Kamchatka northward well into the Arctic Ocean, passed through what is now known as the Bering Strait, and discovered St. Lawrence Island and the Diomede Islands, Bering did not sight the coast of North America; but he was convinced that Asia and North America were not joined by land. However, when Bering arrived in St. Petersburg, his critics at the Admiralty found the results of his exploration inconclusive, and a second expedition was ordered.
On the second expedition, Bering, commanding the St. Peter, and his second officer, Alexei Chirikov, commanding the St. Paul, left the Kamchatka coast together; but their ships lost sight of each other in the Pacific Ocean. Consequently, Chirikov’s party sighted the coast of southeast Alaska (apparently anchoring off of Cape Addington, around latitude 58?28?), and Bering’s party sighted Mt. St. Elias several days later, both in July 1741. On the return voyage the two ships separately sighted and explored a few of the Aleutian Islands. Chirikov’s party returned successfully to the Siberian shore, but Bering’s wrecked on what today is known as Bering Island, where Bering and nineteen of his men died. The survivors built a small boat out of the wreckage and sailed successfully for Kamchatka the following year. See also: ALASKA; CHIRIKOV, ALEXEI ILICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fisher, Raymond H. (1977). Bering’s Voyages: Whither and Why. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Frost, O. W., ed. (1992). Bering and Chirikov: The American Voyages and Their Impact. Anchorage: Alaska Historical Society.
ILYA VINKOVETSKY
BERLIN, BATTLE OF See WORLD WAR II.
BERLIN BLOCKADE
In 1945 the victorious World War II allies-the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union divided Germany into four occupation zones, an arrangement that was reflected in the division of Berlin, as the national capital, into four sectors. Despite these divisions, the country was supposed to be treated as a single economic unit by the Allied Control Council, and an Allied Kom-mandatura (governing council) was likewise supposed to manage affairs in Berlin.
For a variety of political and economic reasons, these aims never came close to realization. In January 1948 the Soviets bitterly criticized Anglo-American moves to combat the economic paralysis of the country by integrating the Western zones of Germany into the Western Bloc, and in March the Soviet delegation walked out of the control council, which was never to meet again. This meant that any chance of a four-power agreement on a desperately needed currency reform had vanished. On March 31 the Soviet military government announced that for so-called administrative reasons Soviet officials would henceforth inspect passengers and baggage on trains from the West bound for Berlin, which was wholly surrounded by what would become East Germany-which was at this point occupied by the Soviet Union-and the Russians went on to clamp restrictions on freight service and river traffic.
On June 18, matters took a new turn when, abandoning attempts to reach agreement with the Russians on steps to combat the soaring German inflation, the Western powers introduced their new deutsche mark into their zones. Fearing the impact of the D-mark on their Eastern-zone currency, the Soviets introduced their own new mark, and on the same day (June 23) they cut off electricity to the Western zones and stopped all deliveries of coal, food, milk, and other supplies. The next day all traffic, land and water, between West Berlin and the West came to a stop-the blockade was now complete-and the Soviets declared that the Western powers no longer had any rights in the administration of Berlin.
Rejecting a proposal by General Lucius D. Clay, the U.S. commander in Germany, to send an armed
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highway convoy to Berlin, his superiors in Washington decided to react to the Soviet pressure not by force or by abandoning Berlin but by mounting an attempt to supply the city by air. Nobody saw this as more than a temporary effort to be tried while Allied representatives negotiated with the Russians to solve the overall problem. By July 20, however, the airlift was bringing in about six times as much cargo daily as had been the case three weeks earlier, and the people of the city, supporting the effort, were drawing their belts tight.
When Josef Stalin told the Western ambassadors in Moscow in a meeting in August that he had no intention of forcing the Allies out of Berlin, he was simply indulging in an exercise in disinformation. On March 26 he had told the Soviet Zone Communist leader, Wilhelm Pieck, that the Soviets and their German dependents should try to ensure victory in the coming municipal election by expelling the Allies from the city. This discussion made it plain that the currency issue was only one of the motives behind the establishment of the blockade.
By November the airlift, under the expert management of Maj. Gen. William H. Tunner, had become an established success, bringing in 4,000 tons a day regardless of the weather, and early in 1949 the Soviets began to backpedal. On April 26 the Soviet press agency TASS announced that the government would lift the blockade if the Western powers would simultaneously abandon their coun-termeasures (one important economic factor among these countermeasures had been the toll taken by the embargo placed on a range of exports from the East) and would agree to convene a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers to discuss all issues relating to Germany. At 12:01 A.M. on May 12 the blockade came to its end.
The status quo ante did not return to Berlin. With the Communist coup in Prague in February, the passage of the European Recovery Program (the Marshall Plan) in March, and the Soviet blockade of Berlin, the year 1948 proved to be the turning point in the development of the Cold War. The year 1949 would see the creation of two Germanys, East and West; until the end of the Cold War four decades later, Berlin would exist as two cities, with two governments. See also: COLD WAR; GERMANY, RELATIONS WITH; WORLD WAR II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Parrish, Thomas. (1998). Berlin in the Balance: The Blockade, the Airlift, the First Major Battle of the Cold War. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
THOMAS PARRISH
BERLIN, CONGRESS OF
The diplomatic conclusion to the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 and postwar crisis.
Before the war, Russian diplomats promised Austria-Hungary that no “large, compact Slavic or other state” would result from the expected reorganization of the Balkans, and that Russia would allow Austrian occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and prevent Montenegro from acquiring a seaport in return for Russia’s reacquisition of Southern Bessarabia and annexation of Batum (Reichstadt, July 1876; Budapest, April 1877). Russian councils, however, were divided. Court factions and generals backed the more ambitious ambassador to Istanbul, Nikolai P. Ignatiev, over Foreign Minister Alexander Gorchakov and Russia’s cautious envoys in Vienna and London, Yevgeny Novikov and Peter Shuvalov.
The initial bilateral Treaty of San Stefano, forced upon Istanbul in March 1878, followed Ig-natiev’s line. It stipulated a large Bulgaria with an Aegean coast and an indefinite occupation by fifty thousand Russian troops until the Bulgarians established their own army. In addition, it called for an enlarged Montenegro with the three small Adriatic ports she had occupied; a less enlarged Serbia with most of the Sanjak of Novi Bazar divided between the two Serbian states; and the Russian acquisition of Batum and most of Turkish Armenia east of Erzerum down to Bayazid, as well as Southern Bessarabia, in place of most of the huge indemnity assessed at 1.4 billion rubles.
As the Turks expected, both the British, who had already sent a naval squadron inside the Sea of Marmora, and the Austro-Hungarians objected, as did the Serbians and Romanians, who felt c
heated. Russia’s weak financial situation (the ruble had fallen 40%) rendered war with Britain unthinkable, so Gorchakov agreed with the Austro-Hungarian proposal for a Berlin congress under Otto von Bismarck’s leadership to settle outstanding issues. Shu-valov worked out the essential compromises in
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London before the congress met, and joined Pavel P. Oubril, the ambassador to Berlin, and the now senile Gorchakov as Russia’s delegates there.
The congress was a resounding success for the British led by Benjamin Disraeli, whose threats to leave (“waiting train” tactics) forced a division of Bulgaria intro three parts-only the northern one being truly autonomous under Russian tutelage with far fewer Russia troops there-and made Russia limit its acquisitions in Asiatic Turkey, while he stood by London’s separate arrangements with Istanbul regarding the Straits and Cyprus. Shuvalov did salvage the port of Varna for autonomous Bulgaria and one Adriatic port for Montenegro, as well as Southern Bessarabia, Kars, Ardahan, and Batum (nominally an open port) for Russia.
The Treaty of Berlin, signed by Britain, France, and Germany, as well as Russia, Turkey, and Austria-Hungary, achieved a tenuous Balkan peace lasting thirty-four years, but left Serbian and Russian nationalists seething-a catalyst for the secret Austro-German Dual Alliance of 1879 and mounting German distrust of Russia. Russia and Austria-Hungary dared agree on the latter’s eventual annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina only by a secret agreement (1881), which caused a storm when implemented in 1908. The southern Balkan settlement collapsed in 1885, when Bulgarians on their own, in defiance of the Russians, united the southern third with the north. See also: BALKAN WARS; GORCHAKOV, ALEXANDER MIKHAILOVICH; RUSSO-TURKISH WARS; SAN STEFANO, TREATY OF
BIBLIOGRAPHY
