For almost twenty years two men from Georgia dominated the Russians and its empire: Stalin and Beria as head of what was to become the KGB. This book is a memoir of daily life with these two men who sent millions to their graves. It vividly paints Stalin's increasingly psychotic nature and the dread that pervaded everyone's life, even that of Beria, but also the incomprehensible loyalty that Stalin inspired among women such as the author's mother, also a Georgian. It also contains Sergio's anecdotes like the time Svetlana, Stalin's nymphomaniac daughter, chased him. Upon Stalin's mysterious death, Beria dramatically lost the struggle for power with Khrushchev, a Russian, who murdered him with the aid of his fellow politburo members. More than any book currently available, this extraordinary document shows what it was like to grow up at the top in a duplicitous and deeply immoral and violent atmosphere. Sergo Beria has a daunting task. He seeks not to rehabilitate his notorious father but to redress the balance so that he is not remembered solely as Stalin's sinister, perverted killer-in-chief. This was Khrushchev's version. Here we meet the senior Beria, a devoted family man who quite naturally loathed Stalin and despised most of his colleagues. We read that he tried to mitigate the dictator's more murderous impulses (deportations, terror) and was brought down by the Kremlin mediocrities terrified as to where his plans for radical liberalized reforms might lead. The son, who chose a career in nuclear technology, was on the periphery of the top Soviet elite and met all the notables. His comments on them are mostly venomous. A battery of editorial notes from Thom (Sorbonne), who also wrote the introduction, question some of the author's more benign judgments. An exercise in filial devotion, this account partly amplifies Amy Knight's biography, Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant (Princeton Univ., 1993), which remains the best treatment in English. For specialized collections. Robert Johnston, McMaster Univ., Hamilton, Ontario Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. Sergo Beria grew up among the Kremlin's elite and has first hand knowledge of the key players in of history's most totalitarian and criminal regimes, one of them his own father. He chose a neutral engineering career and was one of the people who briefed Stalin on the advantages of nuclear technology, a career that he was allowed to continue after the murder of his father. Francoise Thom is a Professor at the Sorbonne. Though her thinking is staunchly anti-Communist, she got interested in Sergo Beria as one of the last living witnesses of its excesses. Her notes and introduction provide a running commentary on Sergo's assertions. Used Book in Good Condition