On 23 December 1953, Lavrenti Beria was executed. Born in Georgia on 28 March 1899, Beria had risen to prominence during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and, during the 1920s, became a firm favourite of fellow-Georgian, Josef Stalin. In 1938 Beria was appointed head of the dreaded secret police, the NKVD.
‘Perfidy and cunning’
A brutish, inhumane man, he declared in 1937 that enemies ‘of the party of Lenin and Stalin will be mercilessly crushed and destroyed’. He was true to his word and played a major role in Stalin’s Great Purges of the 1930s, sending countless numbers to the gulags or to be executed.
Yugoslavian writer, Milovan Djilas, described Beria’s physical appearance as ‘plump, greenish, and pale, with soft damp hands… with [a] square-cut mouth and bulging eyes behind his pince-nez.’ Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s daughter, described him as ‘more treacherous, more practiced in perfidy and cunning, more insolent and single-minded’ than even her own father.
Uncle-figure
A lover of Rachmaninov’s music and a cuddly uncle-figure to Svetlana Alliluyeva, pictured, Beria had his bodyguards abduct young girls off the streets for Beria’s devious sexual pleasure.
Beria had risen through the ranks as first secretary of the Georgian communist party, forcing through collectivisation and quashing nationalistic tendencies. His first task as head of the NKVD, was to purge his predecessor, Nikolai Ezhov, and wind down the Great Terror that had reached a climax in 1937. The worst may have been over but the arrests continued and Beria, according to contemporary accounts, was not shy in getting his hands dirty while interrogating suspects; relishing in the torture and beatings meted out to the unfortunates brought before him.
Appointed deputy prime minister in 1941, Beria’s role mobilised mass slave labour to produce the urgently needed raw materials for the Soviet Union’s war effort.
Beria became Stalin’s most trusted and loyal aide, heaping praise on the ageing dictator, and acting with increasingly ruthlessness to win the praise of his boss. But only as a means of advancing and protecting his own position. As Stalin lay dying in his dacha, in March 1953, Beria appeared distraught, although he fooled no one. As soon as Stalin was declared dead, Beria spat on the old man’s body and left the dacha ‘beaming’.
‘None of us can feel safe’
With Beria now favourite to succeed, other members of the Politburo feared for their safety: ‘As long as that bastard’s alive, none of us can feel safe,’ said one. Beria implemented an amnesty, releasing many from the gulags, but many saw this as mere attempt to impose his claim on succeeding Stalin.
But it wasn’t enough – on 26 June Beria was arrested on trumphed-up charges, such as spying for the British. Nikita Khrushchev (who was to replace Stalin) described Beria’s reaction when arrested: ‘He dropped a load in his pants!’
From his cell, Beria wrote several groveling letters to his Politburo colleagues pleading his innocence and his devotion to the party and the communist cause. Exasperated by the flow of letters, Khrushchev ordered the removal of Beria’s pen and paper.
In December 1953 Beria was tried. The whole case was a mockery but no more than Beria had subjected so many of his victims to. He was, unsurprisingly, found guilty and sentenced to be shot. Beria fell on all fours and begged for mercy. He was taken down and promptly shot. He died as so many of his victims had.
Rupert Colley