mar 5, 1953 - Lavrentiy Beria becomes the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union - leads the Soviet Union in a troika with Georgii Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov

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"The men who sought to succeed [Stalin] all believed the diagnosis to be accurate and the prescription to be appropriate. Each of them set out to liberate Marxism-Leninism from the legacy of Stalinism. They found, though, that the two were inextricably intertwined: that to try to separate one from another risked killing both. (Gaddis 2006, p. 104)
"The first post-Stalinist leader who tried to do this wound up getting killed himself. Lavrenty Beria, Stalin’s secret police chief since 1938, was a member of the triumvirate - troika - which assumed power upon his death – the others were Molotov and Malenkov. A serial murderer and a sexual predator, Beria was also an impressive administrator who more than anyone else deserved credit for building the Soviet atomic bomb. (Gaddis, 2006, p. 105)

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