Maryoshka Part 2 Muddy Waters and dangerous coffee

Beria with Svetlana, Stalin's daughter, whose son Serge, she fell in love with.

Red Army high commanders were scared shitless of Lavrenti Beria ; the phrase they had for being purged was "going to have coffee with Beria".

Stalin's death agonies were grotesque. When he was breathing his last, Beria's face shone with sweat and delight. When Stalin regained consciousness, Beria dropped to his knees and lovingly kissed his hands.

After Stalin's funeral, Beria was the first to set about discrediting him in the eyes of the supreme communist leadership. Secret tapes of Stalin's conversations were played to the central committee. The "cult of the individual" was denounced.

Beria wanted a basic revision of Soviet policies at home and abroad. He was in a powerful position to become the single successor. His luck and lack of supporters failed him. In June 1953, his colleagues Nikita Khrushchev (who had himself filled lakes of blood in the Great Terror) and Georgi Malenkov had him arrested, suspecting (reasonably) that he was planning a coup d'état.

Having resumed control of the security agencies, he certainly had the institutional opportunity, and his career showed he had the ruthless ambition. Beria's dual nature as killer and reformer was not understood.

A secret military trial followed. In December 1953, despite his pleas for forgiveness, he was shot.

Is there a Beria in the Kremlin today?

Whatever (and we still have had no post mortem) killed Alexander Litvinenko we are still uncertain - forensic scientists who talked of ricin factories without ricin, who cannot now tell us what explosive the 7/7 bombs were made of , who talk nonsense about making peroxide based bombs in aircraft toilets plainly cannit be relied upon. Nor would any sane commentator.

Whoever killed Alexander Litvinenko had a dual ambition - the death of a traitorous turncoat and the desire to squarely place the blame on Putin ... perhaps Litvinenko had, " a coffee with Beria ?"

There are many players in this carefully constructed,staged and prolonged death - a cipher for a struggle of wider dimensions and deeper struggles than we can yet imagine. It would be foolish to think that Putin rides the tiger without threats to his positiomn when the Russian economy is bringing (and has brought) enormous riches to sworn foes - of whom Berezovsky is only one.

It is too soon to make a judgement. Of one thing you may be certain, Plod will make a fucking mess of the investigation .... this is way beyond them.

First thing is, find out what killed Alexander Litvinenko.