Beria, Lavrenti P. (1899–1953),a Georgian by birth who was, after Stalin, the most feared man in the Soviet Union during the Second World War. He had joined the Bolsheviks in the revolutionary period and became a member of the secret police at the end of the Russian civil war. Having risen through the police ranks, he was transferred to the highest party offices in Georgia in 1931 and in the Transcaucasus as a whole in 1932. Stalin brought him to Moscow to head the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (or NKVD) from 1938; he was consequently in charge of the country's security apparatus. It is true that, under his auspices and at Stalin's command, the Great Terror did not rage in full spate. But Beria was no ‘moderate’ nor was his tenure of office marked by moderation in the techniques of keeping law and order. The labour camps (see GUlag) retained their millions of starved slave-labourers; and citizens who had their freedom learned to walk in fear of the NKVD.

Beria was responsible for the incursion of security troops into the areas incorporated into the USSR in 1939–40: eastern Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bessarabia, southern Finland. In all instances there were hundreds of thousands of arrests. Beria's functionaries were instructed to regard the administrative, cultural, and military élites with extreme suspicion. The arrest and summary mass execution of Polish army officers in Katyń forest was but one among many examples of his grisly handiwork. In his private life, too, he was a moral reprobate. He is said to have married his wife only after forcibly abducting her, and to have ordered his associates to kidnap very young women off the street for his sexual gratification. He also interrogated and beat prominent purge victims in person. Among the generals in the 1940s the shorthand for being arrested and beaten up was ‘having coffee with Beria’.

His position as Stalin's confederate was enhanced with the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 (see BARBAROSSA). Beria was appointed to the State Committee of Defence at its formation in June 1941. Oversight of security remained his main function. The deportations of nationalities thought suspect by Stalin—Chechens, Kalmucks, Crimean Tatars, and Volga Germans—were handled by him. His men also intimidated the High Command with sporadic arrests. It was in the Second World War, moreover, that Beria assumed a role outside the NKVD. In particular, he was charged by Stalin with making the abortive overture via the Bulgarian envoy to Hitler in quest of a separate peace with Germany in July 1941.

As the Red Army's successes mounted in 1943–4, Beria not only tightened the regime's grip on the armed forces but also redeployed the instrumentalities of the purges in the reincorporated regions of the USSR. After the campaign crossed into non-Soviet territory he recruited and trained communist-dominated bodies which, when communist regimes were established, were turned into local security apparatuses subject to his direction in Moscow. He was moved by Stalin at the end of the war from direct control of the secret police, but his influence with it endured since his protégé Viktor Abakumov was appointed in his place. Beria, while ingratiating himself with Stalin, became ever friendlier with Georgy Malenkov (1902–88), who was widely regarded as Stalin's favourite to succeed him; and Stalin showed much hostility to Beria in 1951–2.

Only Stalin's death removed the threat to Beria. But Beria's own lunge at power was thwarted, and he paid for the hatred he had incurred for so keenly purging military commanders in wartime, when his arrest was effected with the help of the high command in June 1953. He was executed in December.

Robert Service

Bibliography

Knight, A. Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant (Princeton, 1994)

Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria

The Soviet secret-police chief and political leader Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria (1899-1953) was a close associate of Stalin and was responsible for internal security—and terror—during the last 15 years of Stalin's rule.

Lavrenty Beria was the son of a Georgian peasant. In 1917, while a student at a technical school in Baku, he joined the Bolshevik party. He was involved in secutiry affairs for the Bolsheviks in Transcaucasia and quickly became the chief of Soviet security operations there. In the 1930s, under Stalin's patronage, he rose to national prominence and in 1934 was elected to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party. In 1935 he wrote an important book on the history of the Bolsheviks in Transcaucasia, a book that started the myth of a romantic young Stalin leading the revolutionary movement. Its publication firmly established his close relationship with Stalin. At the end of 1938, Beria—who had hitherto not been directly involved in the purge trials of the mid-1930s—became the head of Soviet security, then known as the NKVD. He concluded the era of the "Great Purge" by liquidating police officials, including his erstwhile superior, Yezhov. Though he ended the party purge, Beria initiated terrorist activities of his own, including wholesale deportations from the Baltic areas to forced labor camps.

During World War II Beria enhanced his prestige by assuming a wide variety of party, government, and military posts, even becoming a marshal of the Soviet Union. In 1946 he became a full member of the Politburo, the highest-ranking echelon of the Bolshevik party. However, he devoted most of his attention to secret-police work and was undoubtedly responsible for the lesser purges of 1949 (such as the "Leningrad Case"). According to some accounts, by 1952 Stalin himself was alarmed by the amount of power wielded by Beria and planned to oust him.

When Stalin died in March 1953, Beria, V. M. Molotov, and G. M. Malenkov formed a triumvirate in an apparent effort to rule the Soviet Union. However, other Bolsheviks, fearing that once again power would be concentrated in one man, conspired to purge Beria. Officially, it was announced that Beria had been arrested in the summer of 1953, charged with espionage and various other offenses, and then tried and executed at the end of the year. But there are persistent and well-placed rumors that he was shot to death at a Politburo meeting soon after Stalin's death. In any case, news of his death was received with great relief by all levels of the population. As far as is known, Beria and his top aides were the last Bolsheviks of stature to have been executed. His name has been expunged from Soviet works, and he is generally regarded as one of the most heinous villains of the Stalin era.

Further Reading

There is no biography of Beria in English, but he is discussed at length in works concerning the Stalin era. These include Abdura Khman Avtokharnov, Stalin and the Soviet Communist Party (1959), and John Alexander Armstrong, The Politics of Totalitarianism (1961). Beria emerges as a particularly sinister character in the memoirs of Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters to a Friend (1967). □

Beria, Lavrentii Pavlovich (b. 29 Mar. 1899, d. 23 Dec. 1953). Head of the Soviet Security Systems 1938–53 Born in Merkehuli (Georgia), in 1917 he joined the Bolsheviks while a student and, after propaganda activities in Azerbaijan and Georgia he became head of the Georgian secret police (Cheka) in 1921. He continued to rise within the Georgian Communist Party, whose First Secretary he became in 1931. He was thus responsible for Stalin's terror and collectivization campaigns in Georgia. From 1934 he was also a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. In 1938, he was appointed by his fellow Georgian Stalin to take charge of the NKVD secret police as head of internal affairs, and to organize Soviet prison camps. His appointment, which marked the end of the Great Purge, was at first greeted with relief. However, he introduced much greater efficiency and sophistication to the internal security machine, which he used mercilessly to increase his own power, and that of Stalin. In consequence, prison camps expanded to record numbers. His position became increasingly unassailable, so that during World War II he was Stalin's deputy as head of state and as head of the defence committee. After the war, he played an important part in the build-up of the security systems of Eastern European states, which helped greatly to tie these countries closer to the Soviet Union. He also gave them a helping hand in their Stalinist purges after 1948 (Slánski, Rajk). After Stalin's death, he failed to take over the leadership himself, and was instead outmanoeuvred by Khrushchev, who had him imprisoned and shot.

Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria , 1899–1953, Soviet Communist leader, b. Georgia. He rose to prominence in the Cheka (secret police) in Georgia and the Transcaucasus, became party secretary in these areas, and in 1938 became head of the secret police. As commissar (later minister) of internal affairs, Beria wielded great power, and he was the first in this post to become (1946) a member of the politburo. After Stalin 's death (Mar., 1953), Beria was made first deputy premier under Premier Malenkov , but the alliance was shaky; in the ensuing struggle for power Beria was arrested (July) on charges of conspiracy. He and six alleged accomplices were tried secretly and shot in Dec., 1953.

Beria, Lavrenti (Pavlovich) (1899–1953) Soviet politician and head of the secret police (NKVD and MVD) (1938–53). Born in Georgia, he rose to prominence within the Soviet Communist Party under Stalin's patronage. As head of the secret police Beria was directly involved in the infamous ‘purge trials’ in which Stalin's opponents were eliminated; he was also responsible for the deportation of thousands to forced labour camps. After Stalin's death he was rumoured to be planning to seize power; feared by rival politicians, he was arrested. Although his fate is not certain, it was officially announced that he had been tried and shot as a traitor.

Beria, Lavrenti Pavlovich (1899–1953) Soviet politician, chief (1938–53) of the secret police (NKVD). Beria headed the Cheka, predecessor of the NKVD, in Transcaucasia in the 1920s. He helped Stalin to conduct the purges of the Communist Party and ruthlessly controlled internal security. When Stalin died he was arrested and executed for treason.