From We Will Bury You, Jan Sejna, 1982
[ statement in the title attributed to Khrushchev ]

With the death in 1953 of Joseph Stalin and the execution shortly afterwards of the Secret Police chief, Lavrenti Beria, there came an end to the great purges and the bloodiest period in Russian history since Ivan the Terrible. . . .

 

On Stalin�s death the Central Committee appointed Georgiy Malenkov as Party First Secretary and Prime Minister. But whereas Malenkov, Beria, and Molotov all delivered eulogies of Stalin in Red Square and committed themselves to continuing his policies, Khrushchev significantly remained silent. Three months later, in July 1953, Beria was arrested, as is now well known, by officers of the General Staff while on his way to a Politburo meeting ; they took him to a military barracks for trial on charges of spying for the West (patently absurd), plotting against the leadership, the murder of thousands of his fellow citizens (undeniably true), and a host of other crimes. Marshal Konev presided over the court martial and sentenced Beria to death ; the sentence was carried out with appropriate ceremony by a military firing squad.

London : Sedgwick & Jackson, 1982, pages 22 and 78-9.

I have witnessed acquaintances of mine questioning — or invalidating — the term 'brain-washing'.

I do not suppose that the term in question be worthy of any defenses. The problem seems to have been in that such attacks on a term have been most likely conducted by people who had been themselves duped into a distraction.

The exact provenience of the publications containing the text attributed to Beria as below has been questioned and I do not know the exact answers. Some data should be found in

Feldkeller, Paul, 1889- Title W�rterbuch der Psychopolitik. Publisher Bern, M�nchen, Franke [1967] Series Dalp-Taschenb�cher,389 D Format Book

Feldkeller, Paul, 1889- Title Psycho-Politik, zur Demokratisierung, politischen Erziehung und S�uberung. Publisher Berlin, Chronos Verlag [1947]

— (WPT).

 

AN ADDRESS BY BERIA

American students at the Lenin University, I welcome your attendance at these classes on Psychopolitics.

Psychopolitics is an important if less known division of Geo-politics. It is less known because it must necessarily deal with highly educated personnel, the very top strata of "mental healing."

By psychopolitics our chief goals are effectively carried forward. To produce a maximum of chaos in the culture of the enemy is our first most important step. Our fruits are grown in chaos, distrust, economic depression and scientific turmoil. At least a weary populace can seek peace only in our offered Communist State, at last only Communism can resolve the problems of the masses.

A psychopolitician must work hard to produce the maximum chaos in the fields of "mental healing." He must recruit and use all the agencies and facilities of "mental healing." He must labor to increase the personnel and facilities of "mental healing" until at last the entire field of mental science is entirely dominated by Communist principles and desires.

To achieve these goals the psychopolitician must crush every "home-grown" variety of mental healing in America. Actual teachings of James, Eddy and Pentecostal Bible faith healers . . . must be swept aside. . . . You must work until every teacher of psychology unknowingly or knowingly teaches only Communist doctrine under the guise of "psychology." You must labor until every doctor and psychiatrist is either a psycho-politician or an unwitting assistant to our aims.

You must labor until we have dominion over the minds and bodies of every important person in your nation. You must achieve such disrepute for the state of insanity and such authority over its pronouncement that not one statesman so labeled could again be given credence by his people. You must work until suicide arising from mental imbalance is common and calls forth no general investigation or remark.

With the institutions for the insane you have in your country prisons which can hold a million persons and can hold them without civil rights or any hope of freedom. And upon these people can be practiced shock and surgery so that never again will they draw a sane breath. You must make these treatments common and accepted. And you must sweep aside any treatment or any group of persons seeking to treat by effective means.

You must dominate as respected men the fields of psychiatry and psychology. [Etc.]

The Soviet art of brain washing : a synthesis of the Russian textbook on psychopolitics / [edited by Kenneth Goff] Publisher Torrance, Calif. : Noontide Press [1979?] Paging 64 p. ; 22 cm.