Talk:Lavrentiy Beria

Unsourced

• You bring me the man, I'll find you the crime

This is by far his most famous quote, if it really is his. Can anyone find it in a reliable source? I doubt it's really his. I spent half and hour googling to no avail and it seems to be a 21st century invention. I didn't try in Russian, though.

It's often rendered now as:

• Show me the man and I'll show you the crime.

Usage has exploded in the past 5 years and it shows up routinely in print sources. I did find a few uses from earlier in the 2010s and two instances using "bring me" from the 1990s.

This article in Russian^[arch] investigates a similar popular Russian quote, «Был бы человек, а статья найдётся», roughly "For every man, there's a law to convict him under", often attributed to Stalin and sometimes to Andrey Vyshinsky^w or Molotov. The article mentions the English quote and its attribution to Beria but that Beria is rarely credited with the Russian quote. AjaxSmack (talk) 16:36, 1 November 2022 (UTC)