What is the exact quote? - 'show me the man, i'll find you the crime.' (<-- not the exact quote)

I’m not sure I understand what we’re supposed to be answering…

what is the quote and who said it

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, head of Stalin’s secret police and a right bastard. He told Stalin, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”

@aprilsimnel that’s it, thanks.

Googling turns up a bunch of instances of, “Show me the man and I’ll show you his crime.” Are you aware of any source material? (probably secondary or tertiary, huh?)

Also, in my experience quite a few people have heard this quote, but most tend to think it’s a slogan of sorts of the KGB, and certainly don’t know it was spoken by Beria during his time as NKVD. Was wondering if it did in fact become a KGB slogan, officially or unofficially, or if it’s just a frequently mis-attributed quote?

@flange – Search me! It’s just one of the things I remember from my post-WWII European History class at uni.

“Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Soviet politician of Georgian ethnicity, Marshal of the Soviet Union and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and promoted to deputy premier under Stalin from 1941. He later officially joined the Politburo in 1946.”

I wouldn’t worry about the exact words: they were said in Russian anyway. Free v. exact translation issue. Exact translations usually don’t scan right because of differences in syntax and idioms.

BTW: I just googled it.