Simon Russell Beale credited as playing...
Lavrenti Beria
- Vasily Stalin: I want to make a speech at my father's funeral
- Lavrenti Beria: Comrade Malenkov, your view?
- Georgy Malenkov: Well, I think, um... it can be... no problem.
- Nikita Khrushchev: Technically yes, but practically...
- Lavrenti Beria: There are programmatic complications...
- Georgy Malenkov: I think I misspoke when I said "No problem." What I meant was, "No, problem."
- [Everyone in the room looks confused]
- Georgy Malenkov: Ignore me.
- Lavrenti Beria: [hands an execution warrant to an NKVD officer] Shoot her before him, but make sure he sees it.
- [hands a second warrant to another officer]
- Lavrenti Beria: Oh, and this one, kill him, take him to his church and dump him in the pulpit.
- [hands the remaining warrants to a third officer]
- Lavrenti Beria: The rest I leave up to you.
- Vasily Stalin: I will not be silent...!
- Lavrenti Beria: [looks him in the eye and whispers] I know about the hockey team.
- Nikita Khrushchev: What was the name of the - that woman who gave evidence against the doctors?
- Georgy Malenkov: Timashuk.
- Lavrenti Beria: Yes. She's got everything we require for the situation. The location of all the remaining doctors in the Moscow area, a proven desire to survive and a talent for fellatio.
- Anastas Mikoyan: Yeah, right, she gets my vote.
- Nicolai Bulganin: Good. Let her find us some doctors.
- Anastas Mikoyan: Yeah, and if it goes badly, we pin it all on Lady Suck Suck.
- Kaganovich: Then we shoot her.
- Georgy Malenkov: You see? We're better as a committee.
- Lavrenti Beria: It's lucky we both now live in the new Soviet Union or you and your wife and your family would be a pile of dust on the floor of a crematorium toilet.
- Nikita Khrushchev: Which doctor have you called?
- Georgy Malenkov: Oh, well...
- Lavrenti Beria: The subject's currently under discussion.
- Georgy Malenkov: As acting General Secretary, I think that, well, the Committee should decide.
- Nikita Khrushchev: The Committee? But our *actual* General Secretary is lying in a puddle of indignity! I think he's saying, "get me a doctor now!"
- Georgy Malenkov: No, I-I don't agree. I think we should wait until we're quorate.
- Nikita Khrushchev: Quorate? The room is only 75% *conscious*!
- Nikita Khrushchev: You are accused of using your position as Minister of the Interior to plot against the Soviet Union...
- Zhukov's Chief of Staff: Traitor!
- Nikita Khrushchev: with the goal of forwarding the interests of foreign powers...
- Lavrenti Beria: Foreign powers? From where, the fucking moon?
- Nikita Khrushchev: You are also accused of three hundred and forty-seven counts of rape, of sexual deviancy and bourgeois immorality, and acts of perversion with children as young as seven years old!
- Lavrenti Beria: Are you wearing a corset?
- Georgy Malenkov: It's a girdle. And I have a bad back. It's functional. It's not cosmetic.
- Lavrenti Beria: You wear it well.
- [Zhukov punches Beria]
- Georgy Zhukov: Want a job done properly, you call the army. Take his belt off. It's hard to run away with your pants falling down.
- Nikita Khrushchev: [to Malenkov] If you want to talk to General Zhukov, now's your opportunity.
- Georgy Zhukov: Spit it out, Georgy. Staging a coup here.
- Georgy Malenkov: ...He's got a knife by his ankle.
- Lavrenti Beria: You're a disgrace!
- Lazar Kaganovich: Give his head a good kicking. Make you feel better.
- Vyacheslav Molotov: All in good time.
- Lavrenti Beria: Oh, I'm gonna enjoy peeling the skin from your self-satisfied face.
- Georgy Zhukov: [holds up the little knife and scoffs] Not with that, you won't.
- Lavrenti Beria: [standing over Stalin's unconscious body] Have a long sleep, old man. I'll take it from here.
- NKVD Officer Kobulov: Some women will do anything to get their husbands released.
- Lavrenti Beria: Yep, and she did everything. I thank the Union for bringing me so many devoted wives who fuck like sewing machines.
- Lavrenti Beria: Take the papers! Take them or I'll cut your eyes out one at a time so you can watch it happening!
- Georgy Malenkov: He's irreplaceable. How can we possibly - ? I - we must think of the people. As Acting General Secretary I must step up. I must - I must take his place while he's - on the floor.
- Lavrenti Beria: You just said he's irreplaceable.
- Georgy Malenkov: Irreplaceable - take his place, as in assembling the Central Committee, of course.
- Lavrenti Beria: Good. I was testing you. Get used to that sort of challenge.
- Svetlana Stalin: Why should I trust you?
- Lavrenti Beria: Because I'm the only one who's telling you. Trust no-one.
- Lavrenti Beria: Stalin destroyed the status quo.
- Georgy Malenkov: Yes.
- Lavrenti Beria: And he built a new one.
- Georgy Malenkov: Yes.
- Lavrenti Beria: The changes he made were both radical and popular.
- Georgy Malenkov: Liberalizations would be popular.
- Lavrenti Beria: Radical. Radical.
- Georgy Malenkov: And popular.
- Lavrenti Beria: You know what I'm doing? I'm offering you and that bloated soak my protection.
- Svetlana Stalin: We are not children!
- [Tarasov emerges from Vasily's room, looking grim]
- Vasily Stalin: [from inside] You are a real listener, thank you...!
- Svetlana Stalin: ...I am not a child.
- Lavrenti Beria: [standing up and collecting his papers] I will oversee the releases.
- Lavrenti Beria: You've loosened the Union's great corset.
- [Malenkov stares at Beria angrily]