Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria[a] (29 March [O.S. 17 March] 1899 – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician and one of the longest-serving and most influential ofJoseph Stalin'ssecret police chiefs, serving as head of theNKVD from 1938 to 1945, during the country's involvement in theSecond World War. Beria was also a prolificsexual predator who serially raped scores of girls and young women, and murdered some of his victims.
Beria expanded the system of forced labour, mobilizing millions of Gulag prisoners into wartime production. He also was in charge of NKVD units responsible forbarrier andpartisan intelligence and sabotage operations on theEastern Front. In 1943–44, Beria oversaw themass deportations of millions of ethnic minorities from the Caucasus, actions which have been described by many scholars asethnic cleansing orgenocide. Beria was also responsible for supervising secret Gulag detention facilities for scientists and engineers, known assharashkas. From 1945, he oversaw theSoviet atomic bomb project, to which Stalin gave priority; the project's first nuclear device was completed in 1949.[2] After the war, Beria was made aMarshal of the Soviet Union in 1945, and promoted to a full member of thePolitburo in 1946.
Beria attended a technical school in Sukhumi, and later claimed to have joined theBolsheviks in March 1917 while a student in theBaku Polytechnicum (subsequently known as theAzerbaijan State Oil Academy). Beria had earlier worked for the anti-BolshevikMussavatists inBaku. After theRed Army captured the city on 28 April 1920, he was saved from execution because there was not enough time to arrange his shooting and replacement; it may also have been thatSergei Kirov intervened.[8] While in prison, Beria formed a connection withNina Gegechkori [ru] (1905–1991),[9] his cellmate's niece, and they eloped on a train.[10]
In 1919, at the age of 20, Beria started his career in state security when the security service of theAzerbaijan Democratic Republic hired him while he was still a student at the Polytechnicum. In 1920, he was enlisted in theCheka, the original Bolsheviksecret police, byMir Jafar Baghirov.[11] At that time, a Bolshevik revolt took place in theMenshevik-controlledDemocratic Republic of Georgia, and the Red Army subsequentlyinvaded. The Cheka became heavily involved in the conflict, which resulted in the defeat of the Mensheviks and the formation of theGeorgian SSR. Between 1922 and 1924, Beria was deputy chairman of the GeorgianOGPU (as Cheka had been renamed).[12]
He then led the repression of aGeorgian nationalist uprising in 1924, after which up to 10,000 people were executed.[13] Between 1924 and 1927, he was head of the secret political department of theTranscaucasian SFSR OGPU. In December 1926, he was appointed Chairman of the Georgian OGPU, and deputy chairman for the Transcaucasian OGPU.[12]
Beria andJoseph Stalin first met in summer 1931, when Stalin took a six-week rest inTsqaltubo, and Beria took personal charge of his security.[16] Stalin was unimpressed by most of the local party leaders, chosen by the former Georgian party boss,Sergo Ordzhonikidze, but writing toLazar Kaganovich in August 1932, Stalin commented that "Beria makes a good impression. He is a good organizer, an efficient, capable functionary."[17] According to Stalin's daughterSvetlana:
He was a magnificent specimen of the artful courtier, the embodiment of Oriental perfidy, flattery and hypocrisy who had succeed[ed] in confounding even my father, a man whom it was ordinarily difficult to deceive. A good deal that this monster did is now a blot on my father's name.[18]
In October 1931, when Stalin proposed to appoint Beria Second Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party Central Committee and Second Secretary of the Transcaucasian party, the First SecretaryLavrenty Kartvelishvili exclaimed: "I refuse to work with that charlatan!"[19][page needed] Ordzhonikidze also objected to the promotion. Kartvelishvili was replaced byMamia Orakhelashvili, who wrote to Stalin and Ordzhonikidze in August 1932 asking to be allowed to resign because he could not work with Beria as his deputy.[17] On 9 October 1932, Beria was appointed party leader for the whole Transcaucasian region. He also retained his post as First Secretary of the Georgian CP. In 1933, he promoted his old ally, Baghirov, to the head of the Azerbaijani communist party. He became a member of theCentral Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1934.
During this time, he began to attack fellow members of the Georgian Communist Party, particularlyGaioz Devdariani, who served as Minister of Education of the Georgian SSR. Beria ordered the executions of Devdariani's brothers George and Shalva. In 1935, Beria cemented his place in Stalin's entourage with a lengthy oration titled, "On the History of the Bolshevik Organisations in Transcaucasia" (later published as a book), which emphasised Stalin's role.[20] It quoted from what purported to be police reports from early in the century, which identified Stalin, under his real name Jugashvili, as the leader of the Social Democrats (Marxists) in Georgia and Azerbaijan, though as the historianBertram Wolfe noted: "These new finds tell a different story and even speak another language from all police documents and Bolshevik reminiscences published [...] whileLenin was alive. The language sounds uncommonly like Beria's own."[21]
In the first couple of years of mass arrests of members of theCommunist Party and Soviet government that began after the assassination ofLeningrad party bossSergei Kirov (1 December 1934), Beria was one of the few regional party leaders considered ruthless enough to purge the region under his control, without outside interference. On 9 July 1936, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of theArmenian Communist Party,Aghasi Khanjian was found dead from a bullet wound. It was officially announced that he had committed suicide, and he was retrospectively denounced as anenemy of the people, but in 1961, the then head of theKGB,Alexander Shelepin reported that he had been murdered by Beria.[22]
On 26 December 1936, Beria summoned the head of the communist party ofAbkhazia,Nestor Lakoba, to the Party headquarters in Tbilisi. Beria had Lakoba over for dinner the next day, where he was served fried trout, a favorite of Lakoba's[23] and a glass of poisoned wine.[24] They attended theopera after the dinner, watching the playMzetchabuki (მზეჭაბუკი; "Sun-boy" in Georgian).[23] During the performance Lakoba showed the first signs of his poisoning and returned to his hotel room, where he died early the next morning.[25] Officially, Lakoba was said to have died of aheart attack, though a previous medical examination in Moscow had shown he hadarteriosclerosis (thickening of the arteries),cardiosclerosis (thickening of the heart), anderysipelas (skin inflammation) in the leftauricle that had led to his hearing loss.[26] His body was returned to Sukhumi, though notably all the internal organs (which could have helped identify the cause of death) were removed.[27] Lakoba was accused of "nationalist deviationism", of having helped Trotsky, and of trying to kill both Stalin and Beria.[28] With Lakoba dead, Beria effectively took control of Abkhazia and implemented a policy of "Georgification".[29]
In the months that followed Lakoba's death, members of his family were implicated on charges against the state. His two brothers were arrested on 9 April 1937, and his mother Sariya was arrested on 23 August of that year.[30] A trial of thirteen members of Lakoba's family was conducted between 30 October and 3 November 1937 in Sukhumi, with charges includingcounter-revolutionary activities,subversion andsabotage,espionage,terrorism, andinsurgent organization in Abkhazia. Nine of the defendants, including Lakoba's two brothers, were shot on the night of 4 November.[31] Rauf, Lakoba's 15-year-old son, tried to speak to Beria, who visited Sukhumi to view the start of the trial. He was promptly arrested as well. Sariya was taken to Tbilisi and tortured in order to extract a statement implicating Lakoba, but refused, even after Rauf was tortured in front of her.[32] Sariya would die in prison in Tbilisi on 16 May 1939.[33] Rauf was sent to alabour camp, and was eventually shot in a Sukhumi prison on 28 July 1941.[34]
In December 1936,Nikolai Yezhov, the newly appointed commissar of theNKVD, the ministry which oversaw thestate security and police forces, reported that more than 300 people had been arrested in Georgia in the previous few weeks.[35] In June 1937, Beria said in a speech, "Let our enemies know that anyone who attempts to raise a hand against the will of our people, against the will of the party ofLenin and Stalin, will be mercilessly crushed and destroyed."[36][page needed]
On 20 July, he wrote to Stalin to report that he had had 200 people shot, was about to submit a list of another 350 who were also to be shot, and thatShalva Eliava,Lavrenty Kartvelishvili, Maria Orakhelashvili (wife ofMamia Orakhelashvili), and numerous others had all confessed to counter-revolutionary activities but Mamia Orakhelashvili himself was holding out, though he repeatedly fainted under interrogation and had to be revived with camphor. The evidence against all of them was found, after Beria's execution, to have consisted of false confessions extracted under torture.[37] Reputedly, Orakhelashvili's ear drums were perforated and his eyes gouged out.[38]
The first page of Beria's notice (oversigned by Stalin and several other officials), to kill approximately 15,000 Polish officers and some 10,000 more intellectuals in theKatyn Forest and other places in the Soviet Union.
In August 1938, Stalin brought Beria toMoscow as deputy head of the NKVD. Under Yezhov, the NKVD carried out theGreat Purge: the imprisonment or execution of a huge number, possibly over a million, of citizens throughout the Soviet Union as alleged "enemies of the people". By 1938 the oppression had become so extensive that it was damaging the infrastructure, economy, and the armed forces of the Soviet state, prompting Stalin to wind the purge down. In September, Beria was appointed head of the Main Administration of State Security (GUGB) of the NKVD, and in November he succeededNikolai Yezhov as NKVD head. Yezhov was executed in 1940.
Beria as leader of the NKVD
Beria's appointment marked an easing of the repression begun under Yezhov. Over 100,000 people were released from the labour camps. The government officially admitted that there had been some injustice and "excesses" during the purges, which were blamed entirely on Yezhov. The liberalization was only relative; arrests, torture, and executions continued. On 16 January 1940, Beria sent Stalin a list of 457 "enemies of the people" of whom 346 were marked to be shot. They included Yezhov and his brother and nephews;Mikhail Frinovsky and his wife and teenage son,Yefim Yevdokimov and his wife and teenage son, dozens more former NKVD officers, and the renowned writerIsaac Babel and the journalistMikhail Koltsov.[39]
Some of the NKVD officers Beria promoted, such asBoris Rodos,Lev Shvartzman, andBogdan Kobulov were brutal torturers who were executed in the 1950s. The theatre directorVsevolod Meyerhold described being beaten on the spine and soles of his feet until "the pain was so intense that it felt as if boiling water was being poured on these sensitive areas."[40] His interrogation record was signed by Shvartzman.Robert Eikhe, a former high-ranking party official, was sadistically beaten and had an eye gouged out by Rodos, in Beria's office, while Beria watched.[41] He not only permitted and encouraged the beating of prisoners, but in some cases carried it out. One prisoner who survived to give evidence in the 1950s testified that he was brought to Beria's office and accused of plotting to blow up the Moscow metro, which he denied:
Beria hit me in the face. After that, I was given 30 minutes to think in the next room, next to his office, from where the screams and groans of the beaten could be heard. An hour later, called to the office, I was met with the words of Kobulov: "What shall we start beating?"[42]
In March 1939, Beria was appointed as a candidate member of the Communist Party'sPolitburo. Although he did not rise to full membership until 1946, he was by then one of the senior leaders of the Soviet state. In 1941, he was made a Commissar General of State Security, the highest quasi-military rank within the Soviet police system. In 1940, the pace of the purges accelerated again. During this period, Beria superviseddeportations of people identified as "political enemies" fromPoland,Lithuania,Latvia andEstonia after Sovietoccupation of those countries.
On 5 March 1940, after theGestapo–NKVD Third Conference was held inZakopane, Beria sent a note (No. 794/B) to Stalin in which he stated that the Polishprisoners of war kept at camps and prisons in western Belarus and Ukraine were enemies of the Soviet Union, and recommended their execution.[43] Most of them were military officers, but there were also intelligentsia, doctors, priests, and others in a total of 22,000 people. With Stalin's approval, Beria's NKVD executed them in what became known as theKatyn massacre.[44][45]
From October 1940 to February 1942, the NKVD under Beria carried out anew purge of the Red Army and related industries. In February 1941, Beria becamedeputy chairman of theCouncil of People's Commissars, and in June, followingOperation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, he became a member of theState Defense Committee (GKO). During theSecond World War, he took on major domestic responsibilities and mobilised the millions of people imprisoned in NKVDGulag camps into wartime production. He took control of the manufacture of armaments, and (withGeorgy Malenkov) aircraft and aircraft engines. This was the beginning of Beria's alliance with Malenkov, which later became of central importance.
In December 1944, the NKVD supervised theSoviet atomic bomb project ("Task No. 1"), which built and tested a bomb by 29 August 1949. The project was extremely labour-intensive. At least 330,000 people, including 10,000 technicians, were involved. The Gulag system provided tens of thousands of people for work inuranium mines and for the construction and operation of uranium processing plants. They also constructed test facilities, such as those atSemipalatinsk and in theNovaya Zemlya archipelago.
In July 1945, as Soviet police ranks were converted to a military uniform system, Beria's rank was officially converted to that ofMarshal of the Soviet Union. Although he had never held a traditional military command, he made a significant contribution to the victory of the Soviet Union in the war through his organisation of wartime production and his use of partisans. Abroad, Beria had met withKim Il Sung, the future leader of North Korea, several times when the Soviet troops had declared war onJapan and occupied the northern half of Korea from August 1945. Beria recommended that Stalin install a communist leader in the occupied territories.[47][48]
With Stalin nearing 70, a concealed struggle for succession amongst his entourage dominated Soviet politics. At the end of the war,Andrei Zhdanov, who had served as the Communist Party leader inLeningrad (now Saint Petersburg) during the war, seemed the most likely candidate. After 1946, Beria formed an alliance with Malenkov to counter Zhdanov's rise.[49] In December 1945, Beria resigned as chief of the NKVD while retaining general control over national security matters as Deputy Prime Minister and Curator of the Organs of State Security under Stalin. However, the new NKVD chief,Sergei Kruglov, was not a supporter of Beria. Also by the summer of 1946 Beria's man,Vsevolod Merkulov, was replaced as head of theMinistry for State Security (MGB) byViktor Abakumov.
Abakumov had headedSMERSH from 1943 to 1946; his relationship with Beria involved close collaboration (since Abakumov owed his rise to Beria's support and esteem) but also rivalry. Stalin had begun to encourage Abakumov to form his own network inside the MGB to counter Beria's dominance of the power ministries.[50] Kruglov and Abakumov moved expeditiously to replace Beria's men in the security apparatus with new people. Very soon, Deputy Minister Stepan Mamulov of theMinistry of Internal Affairs (MVD) was the only close Beria ally left outside foreign intelligence on which Beria kept a grip.
In the following months, Abakumov started carrying out important operations without consulting Beria, often working with Zhdanov, and on Stalin's direct orders. One of the first such moves involved theJewish Anti-Fascist Committee affair, which commenced in October 1946 and eventually led to the murder ofSolomon Mikhoels and the arrest of many other members. After Zhdanov died in August 1948, Beria and Malenkov consolidated their power by means of a purge of Zhdanov's associates in the so-called "Leningrad Affair". Those executed included Zhdanov's deputy,Alexey Kuznetsov; the economic chief,Nikolai Voznesensky; the Party head in Leningrad,Pyotr Popkov; and the Prime Minister of theRussian SFSR,Mikhail Rodionov.[51]
However, Beria was unable to purgeMikhail Suslov, whom he hated. Beria felt increasingly uncomfortable with Suslov's growing relationship with Stalin. Russian historianRoy Medvedev speculates in his book,Neizvestnyi Stalin, that Stalin had made Suslov his "secret heir".[52] Evidently, Beria felt so threatened by Suslov that after his arrest in 1953, documents were found in his safe labelling Suslov the No. 1 person he wanted to "eliminate".[53]
During the postwar years, Beria supervised the establishment of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and chose their Soviet-backed leaders.[54] Starting in 1948, Abakumov initiated several investigations against these leaders, which culminated with the arrest in November 1952 ofRudolf Slánský,Bedřich Geminder, and others inCzechoslovakia. These men were frequently accused ofZionism, "rootless cosmopolitanism", and providing weapons to Israel. Such charges deeply disturbed Beria, as he had directly ordered the sale of large amounts of Czech arms to Israel. Altogether, fourteen Czechoslovak communist leaders, eleven of them Jewish, weretried, convicted, and executed as part of Soviet policy to woo Arab nationalists, which culminated in the major Czech–Egyptian arms deal of 1955.[55]
TheDoctors' Plot began in 1951, when a number of the country's prominent Jewish physicians were accused of poisoning top Soviet leaders and arrested. Concurrently, the Soviet press began an anti-Semiticpropaganda campaign, euphemistically termed the "struggle against rootless cosmopolitanism". Initially, 37 men were arrested, but the number quickly grew into hundreds. Scores of Soviet Jews were dismissed from their jobs, arrested, sent to the Gulag, or executed. The "plot" was presumably invented by Stalin. A few days after Stalin's death on 5 March 1953, Beria freed all surviving arrested doctors, announced that the entire matter was fabricated, and arrested the MGB functionaries directly involved.
Stalin's aide, Vasili Lozgachev, reported that Beria and Malenkov were the first members of the Politburo to see Stalin's condition when he was found unconscious. They arrived at Stalin'sdacha atKuntsevo at 03:00 on 2 March 1953, after being called byNikita Khrushchev andNikolai Bulganin. The latter two did not want to risk Stalin's wrath by entering his private rooms.[56] Lozgachev tried to explain to Beria that the unconscious Stalin (still in his soiled clothing) was "sick and needed medical attention". Beria angrily dismissed his claims as panic-mongering and quickly left, ordering him, "Don't bother us, don't cause a panic and don't disturb Comrade Stalin!"[57] Alexei Rybin, Stalin's bodyguard, recalled, "No one wanted to telephone Beria, since most of the personal bodyguards hated Beria".[58]
Calling a doctor was deferred for a full twelve hours after Stalin was rendered paralysed, incontinent, and unable to speak. This decision is noted as "extraordinary" by the historianSimon Sebag Montefiore, but also consistent with the standard Stalinist policy of deferring all decision-making (no matter how crucial or obvious) without official orders from a higher authority.[59] Beria's decision to avoid immediately calling a doctor was tacitly supported (or at least not opposed) by the rest of the Politburo, which was rudderless without Stalin's micromanagement and paralysed by a legitimate fear that he would suddenly recover and take reprisals on anyone who had dared to act without his orders.[60] Stalin's suspicion of doctors in the wake of the Doctors' Plot was well known at the time of his sickness; his private physician was being tortured in the basement of theLubyanka for suggesting the leader required more bed rest.[61] Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that immediately after Stalin's stroke, Beria had gone about "spewing hatred against [Stalin] and mocking him". When Stalin showed signs of consciousness, Beria dropped to his knees and kissed his hand. When Stalin fell unconscious again, Beria immediately stood and spat.[62]
After Stalin's death on 5 March 1953, Beria's ambitions sprang into full force. In the uneasy silence following the cessation of Stalin's last agonies, he was the first to dart forward to kiss his lifeless form (a move likened by Montefiore to "wrenching a dead King's ring off his finger").[63] While the rest of Stalin's inner circle (even Molotov, saved from certain liquidation) stood sobbing unashamedly over the body, Beria reportedly appeared "radiant", "regenerated", and "glistening with ill-concealed relish".[63] When Beria left the room, he broke the sombre atmosphere by shouting loudly for his driver, his voice echoing with what Stalin's daughterSvetlana Alliluyeva called "the ring of triumph unconcealed".[64] Alliluyeva noticed how the Politburo seemed openly frightened of Beria and unnerved by his bold display of ambition. "He's off to take power", Mikoyan recalled muttering to Khrushchev. That prompted a "frantic" dash for their own limousines to intercept him at theKremlin.[64]
Stalin's death prevented a final purge of theOld Bolsheviks,Mikoyan and Molotov, for which Stalin had been laying the groundwork in the year prior to his death. Shortly after Stalin's death, Beria announced triumphantly to the Politburo that he had "done [Stalin] in" and "saved [us] all", according to Molotov's memoirs. The assertion that Stalin was poisoned by Beria's associates has been shared byEdvard Radzinsky and other authors.[61] From 1939 to 1953, theSoviet Poison Laboratory was under the supervision of Beriaand his deputyVsevolod Merkulov[citation needed].[65][page needed] According to Radzinsky, Stalin was poisoned by a senior bodyguard.[66][page needed][67][68] Beria's son,Sergo Beria, later recounted that after Stalin's death, his mother Nina told her husband that, "Your position now is even more precarious than when Stalin was alive".[69] Some authors have claimed that Stalin "may have been poisoned" using theanticoagulantwarfarin, although others have argued that "the description we have of Stalin's illness does not match the appearance or timeline of patients that experience severe warfarin or warfarin-related overdoses".[68][70] Towards the end of his life, Stalin was "obsessive about the possibility of being poisoned" and that given his paranoia, "it is difficult to imagine a scenario where Beria or another conspirator could have slipped an anticoagulant into his drink".[70]
After Stalin's death, Beria was appointedFirst Deputy Premier and reappointed head of the MVD, which he merged with the MGB. His close ally Malenkov was the newPremier and initially the most powerful man in the post-Stalin leadership. Beria was second-most powerful, and given Malenkov's weakness, was poised to become thepower behind the throne and ultimately leader.[according to whom?] Khrushchev became Party Secretary andKliment Voroshilov became Chairman of thePresidium of the Supreme Soviet (the nominalhead of state).
Beria undertook some measures of liberalisation immediately after Stalin's death.[71] He reorganised the MVD and drastically reduced its economic power and penal responsibilities. A number of costly construction projects, such as theSalekhard–Igarka Railway, were scrapped, and the remaining industrial enterprises became affiliated under other economic ministries.[72] The Gulag system was transferred to theMinistry of Justice, and a mass release of over a million prisoners was announced, although only prisoners convicted for "non-political" crimes were released.[73] That amnesty led to a substantial increase in crime and would later be used against Beria by his rivals.[74][75]
To consolidate power, Beria also took steps to recognise the rights of non-Russian nationalities. As a Georgian, he questioned the traditional policy of Russification and encouraged local officials to assert their own identities. He first turned to Georgia, where Stalin's fabricatedMingrelian affair was called off and the republic's key posts were filled by pro-Beria Georgians.[76] Beria's policies of granting more autonomy to theUkrainian SSR alarmed Khrushchev, for whom Ukraine was a power base. Khrushchev then tried to draw Malenkov to his side, warning that "Beria is sharpening his knives".[77]
Khrushchev opposed the alliance between Beria and Malenkov, but he was initially unable to challenge them. Khrushchev's opportunity came in June 1953 when theEast German uprising of 1953 against theEast German communist regime broke out inEast Berlin. Based on Beria's statements, other leaders suspected that in the wake of the uprising he would consider trading the reunification of Germany and the end of theCold War for support from the United States, as had been received in the Second World War.
The cost of the war still weighed heavily on the Soviet economy. Beria craved the vast financial resources that another (more sustained) relationship with the U.S. could provide. According to some later sources, he ostensibly even considered giving theEstonian,Latvian, andLithuanian SSRs "serious prospects of national autonomy", possibly similar to the Sovietsatellite states in Europe.[78][79][page needed][80] Beria said of East Germany, "It is not even a real state but one kept in being only by Soviet troops".[13] The East German uprising convinced Molotov, Malenkov and Bulganin that Beria's policies were dangerous and destabilizing to Soviet power.
On 21 June 1953, Khrushchev was contacted by MVD Chief Timofei Strokach, a wartime colleague of his, who warned him that Beria was preparing for a coup in Moscow and had threatened him, saying "we shall expel you from the MVD, arrest you, and allow you to rot in the camps". He claimed that Beria intended to send special MVD divisions to Moscow to help him seize power, and that several MVD agents had boasted that the MVD would become independent of Party bodies and "a regional MVD chief would no longer be answerable to the Party secretary". Within days, Khrushchev persuaded the other leaders to support acoup d'etat against Beria.[81]
Beria, as first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers and an influential Politburo member, saw himself as Stalin's successor, while wider Politburo members had contrasting thoughts on the leadership. On 26 June 1953, Beria was arrested and held in an undisclosed location near Moscow. Accounts of his downfall vary considerably. The historical consensus is that Khrushchev prepared an elaborate ambush, convening a meeting of the Presidium on 26 June, where he suddenly launched a scathing attack on Beria, accusing him of being a traitor and spy in the pay ofBritish intelligence agencies. Beria was taken completely by surprise. He asked, "What's going on, Nikita Sergeyevich? Why are you picking fleas in my trousers?" When Beria finally realised what was happening and plaintively appealed to Malenkov to speak for him, Malenkov silently hung his head and pressed a button on his desk. This was an arranged signal toMarshalGeorgy Zhukov and a group of armed officers in a nearby room, who burst in and arrested Beria.[b]
Following Beria's arrest, the Politburo issued a decree formally removing him from his posts as a "traitor and capitalist agent" and accused him and his co-defendants of attempting to place the MVD above the party in a bid to seize power and liquidate the Soviet regime. APravda editorial on 10 July repeated these charges and made other accusations, claiming that Beria had caused food shortages by undermining the Soviet collective farm system, and claimed his policies of liberalization (in which a number of Russian officials in Latvia were dismissed from their posts) were meant to incite ethnic hatred and undermine the friendship of the Soviet people.[85][86]
Vyacheslav Malyshev succeeded Beria as head of the Soviet nuclear weapons project. After a review of project documentation during the summer of 1953 it was found that Beria had startedthermonuclear weapons development without approval from the Central Committee, which was "shocked" by the revelation. Beria had even scratched out the signature block for Malenkov's signature and signed it himself. "Evidently Beria had been confident enough of his ascent to power to assume that he would command sole authority by the time the thermonuclear design was ready to be tested".[87]
Beria and his men were tried by a "special session" (специальное судебное присутствие) of theSupreme Court of the Soviet Union on 23 December 1953 with no defence counsel and no right of appeal.MarshalIvan Konev was the chairman of the court.[88][89] Beria was found guilty of:
Treason. It was alleged that he had maintained secret connections with foreign intelligence services. In particular, attempts to initiate peace talks withAdolf Hitler in 1941 through the ambassador of theKingdom of Bulgaria were classified as treason, though Beria had been acting on the orders of Stalin and Molotov. It was also alleged that Beria, who in 1942 helped organisethe defence of the North Caucasus, tried to let the Germans occupy the Caucasus. Beria's suggestion to his assistants that to improve foreign relations it was reasonable to transfer theKaliningrad Oblast to Germany,part of Karelia to Finland, theMoldavian SSR toRomania, and theKuril Islands to Japan also formed part of the allegations against him.
Counter-revolutionary activity during theRussian Civil War. In 1919, Beria worked in the security service of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. Beria maintained that he was assigned to that work by theHummet party, which subsequently merged with the Adalat Party, theAhrar Party, and theBaku Bolsheviks to establish theAzerbaijan Communist Party.
Beria and all the other defendants were sentenced to death on the day of the trial. The other six defendants – Dekanozov, Merkulov, Vlodzimirsky, Meshik, Goglidze, and Kobulov – were shot immediately after the trial ended.[90] Beria was executed separately; he allegedly pleaded on his knees before collapsing to the floor wailing.[91] He was shot through the forehead by GeneralPavel Batitsky.[92] His final moments bore great similarity to those of his predecessor,Nikolai Yezhov, who begged for his life before his execution in 1940.[93] Beria's body wascremated and the remains buried in Communal Grave No. 3 atDonskoye Cemetery in Moscow.[94] Beria's personal archive (said to have included "compromising" material on his former colleagues) was destroyed on Khrushchev's orders.[95]
At Beria's trial in 1953, it became known that he had committed numerousrapes during the years he was NKVD chief.[96] Montefiore concludes that the information "reveals asexual predator who used his power to indulge himself in obsessive depravity".[97] Despite evidence, charges of sexual abuse were disputed by his wife Nina and their son Sergo.[98]
According to the testimony of ColonelRafael Semyonovich Sarkisov [ru] and ColonelSardion Nikolaevich Nadaraia [ru] – two of Beria's bodyguards – on warm nights during the war, Beria was often driven around Moscow in his limousine. He would point out young women that he wanted to be taken to his dacha, where wine and a feast awaited them. After dining, Beria would take the women into his soundproofed office and rape them. An American report from 1952 quoted a former Muscovite as having "learned from one of Beria's mistresses that it was Beria's habit to order various women to become intimate with him and that he threatened them with prison if they refused".[99]
His bodyguards reported that their duties included handing each victim a flower bouquet as she left the house. Accepting it implied that the sex had been consensual; refusal would mean arrest. Sarkisov reported that after one woman rejected Beria's advances and ran out of his office, Sarkisov mistakenly handed her the flowers anyway. The enraged Beria declared, "Now, it is not a bouquet, it is a wreath! May it rot on your grave!" The NKVD arrested the woman the next day.[97]
According to the historianAmy Knight, rumors about Beria's behavior had been circulating around Moscow, with post-warUS embassy employee Edward Ellis Smith claiming that "Beria's escapades were common knowledge among embassy personnel because his house was on the same street as a residence for Americans, and those who lived there saw girls brought to Beria's house late at night in a limousine".[100]
Women also submitted to Beria's sexual advances in exchange for the promise of freedom for imprisoned relatives. In one case, Beria picked upTatiana Okunevskaya, a well-known Soviet actress, under the pretence of bringing her to perform for the Politburo. Instead he took her to his dacha, where he offered to free her father and grandmother from prison if she submitted. He then raped her, telling her, "Scream or not, it doesn't matter". In fact, Beria knew that Okunevskaya's relatives had been executed months earlier. Okunevskaya was arrested shortly afterwards and sentenced tosolitary confinement in the Gulag, which she survived.[101]
Stalin and other high-ranking officials came to distrust Beria.[102] In one instance, when Stalin learned that his teenage daughter,Svetlana, was alone with Beria at his house, he telephoned her and told her to leave immediately. When Beria complimentedAlexander Poskrebyshev's daughter on her beauty, Poskrebyshev quickly pulled her aside and instructed her, "Don't ever accept a lift from Beria".[103] After taking an interest inKliment Voroshilov's daughter-in-law during a party at their summer dacha, Beria shadowed their car closely all the way back to the Kremlin, terrifying his wife.[102]
Before and during the war, Beria directed Sarkisov to keep a list of the names and phone numbers of the women that Beria had sex with. Eventually, he ordered Sarkisov to destroy the list as a security risk, but Sarkisov retained a secret copy. When Beria's fall from power began, Sarkisov passed the list toViktor Abakumov, the former wartime head of SMERSH and now chief of the MGB – the successor to the NKVD. Abakumov was already building a case against Beria. Stalin, who was also seeking to undermine Beria, was thrilled by the detailed records kept by Sarkisov, demanding, "Send me everything this asshole writes down!"[101] In 2003, the Russian government acknowledged Sarkisov's handwritten list of Beria's victims, which reportedly contains hundreds of names. The victims' names were also released to the public in 2003.[104]
Evidence suggests that Beria also murdered some of the women. In 1993, construction workers installing streetlights unearthed human remains near Beria's formerMoscow villa (now the Tunisian embassy), which included skulls, pelvises and leg bones.[105] More were found at the site in 1998, when the skeletal remains of five young women were discovered during work carried out on the water pipes in the villa's garden.[106] In 2011, building workers digging a ditch in Moscow city centre unearthed a common grave near the same residence containing a pile of human bones, including two children's skulls covered withlime orchlorine. The lack of articles of clothing and the condition of the remains indicate that these bodies were buried naked.[citation needed]
According toMartin Sixsmith, in aBBC documentary, "Beria spent his nights having teenagers abducted from the streets and brought here for him to rape. Those who resisted were strangled and buried in his wife's rose garden".[107] Vladimir Zharov, head of the Department of Forensic Medicine atMoscow State University and then the head of the criminal forensics bureau, said a torture chamber existed in the basement of Beria's villa and that there was probably an underground passage to burial sites.[105]
Beria is the central character inGood Night, Uncle Joe by Canadian playwright David Elendune. The play is a fictionalised account of the events leading up to Stalin's death.[109]
Alan Williams wrote a spy novel titledThe Beria Papers, the plot of which revolves around Beria's alleged secret diaries recording his political and sexual depravities.
In the 1981 novelNoble House byJames Clavell, set in 1963Hong Kong, the main character Ian Dunross receives a set of secret documents regarding a Soviet spy-ring in Hong Kong code-named "Sevrin" signed by an LB (Lavrentiy Beria).
The arrest and execution of Beria is recreated in theRobert Moss novelMoscow Rules as part of the rise of main character Alexander Preobrazensky's father-in-law Marshall Zotov, a character who stands in forZhukov.
Beria is a significant character in the opening chapters of the 1998 novelArchangel by British novelistRobert Harris.
As "der Kleine Große Mann" ("the Little Big Man"), Beria appears as the abuser of one of the leading characters, Christine, in the 2014 novelDas achte Leben (Für Brilka) (translated as "The Eighth Life (For Brilka)") byNino Haratischwili.[113]
In the 2015–2017serialised science fiction novelUnsong by writerScott Alexander, Beria is mentioned as being in the nicest part of hell, reserved for the worst sinners, along withHitler andLaLaurie.[114]
Beria is a significant character inMalcolm Knox's 2024 novelThe First Friend, about his fictional childhood friend Vasil Murtov who now works as his driver, and the consequences that follow from a proposed visit byStalin to Georgia.
^Mark O'Neill (17 October 2010)."Kim Il-sung's secret history".South China Morning Post.Archived from the original on 27 February 2014. Retrieved15 April 2014.
^Kramer, Mark (1999). "The Early Post-Stalin Succession Struggle and Upheavals in East-Central Europe: Internal-External Linkages in Soviet Policy Making (Part 2)".Journal of Cold War Studies.1 (2):3–38.ISSN1520-3972.JSTOR26925014.
^The Soviet Union as Reported by Former Soviet Citizens; Interview Report No.5 (Washington D.C.: United States Department of State, September 1952), p. 4.
Hewitt, George (2013),Discordant Neighbours: A Reassessment of the Georgian–Abkhazian and Georgian–South Ossetian Conflicts, Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill,ISBN978-90-04-24892-2
Kozlov, Denis; Gilburd, Eleonory (2013).The Thaw: Soviet Society and Culture during the 1950s and 1960s. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.ISBN978-1-4426-1895-4.
Lakoba, Stanislav (2004),Абхазия после двух империй. XIX–XXI вв. [Abkhazia after two empires: XIX–XXI centuries] (in Russian), Moscow: Materik,ISBN5-85646-146-0
Stalin, Josif Vissarionovič; Kaganovič, Lazarʹ M. (2003). Davies, R. W.; Khlevniuk, Oleg; Rees, E. A. (eds.).The Stalin - Kaganovich correspondence, 1931-36. Annals of communism. Translated by Shabad, Steven. New Haven, Conn. London: Yale University Press.ISBN978-0-300-09367-4.
Stove, Robert (2003).The Unsleeping Eye: Secret Police and Their Victims. San Francisco: Encounter Books.ISBN1-893554-66-X.OCLC470173678.
Sukhomlinov, Andrey (2004).Кто вы, Лаврентий Берия?: неизвестные страницы уголовного дела (in Russian). Moscow: Detektiv-Press.ISBN5-89935-060-1.OCLC62421057.
Wittlin, Thaddeus (1972).Commissar: The Life and Death of Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria. New York: The Macmillan Co.OCLC462215687.
Yakovlev, A.N.; Naumov, V.; Sigachev, Y., eds. (1999).Lavrenty Beria, 1953. Stenographic Report of July's Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Other Documents (in Russian). Moscow: International Democracy Foundation.ISBN5-89511-006-1.
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