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Podcast Transcript
Few figures have inspired as much fear as Lavrentiy Beria.
As the ruthless head of Stalin’s secret police, he oversaw purges, mass arrests, deportations, and a vast system of terror that touched millions of lives.
Yet after Stalin’s death, the man who seemed untouchable found himself facing a stunning downfall of his own.
His rise and dramatic fall remain one of the darkest and most fascinating chapters of the Soviet Union.
Learn more about Lavrentiy Beria and Stalin’s terror on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
When we talk about cruel dictators and the pain they inflicted and the people they killed, we often overlook the fact that they seldom did any of those horrible things themselves.
They were certainly responsible for what happened during their rule, but they almost never personally had blood on their hands. They had underlings who did their dirty work.
…and the dirtiest of all the underlings in the Soviet Union had to be Lavrentiy Beria.
Beria was born in 1899 in the village of Merkheuli, Georgia, which, at the time, was part of the Russian Empire.
His parents were deeply religious, especially his mother, who descended from a Georgian noble family and was a member of the Georgian Orthodox Church.
By 1915, Beria had completed his early education and moved to Baku, Azerbaijan, which was also part of the Russian Empire. While in Baku, Beria attended the Baku Polytechnicum, a technical school focused on the growing petroleum industry, where he studied engineering.
Beria joined the Bolsheviks as part of the Baku City Soviet in March 1917, approximately one month after the Russian Revolution began. However, Beria wasn’t considered a true Bolshevik at this point.
During the Russian Civil War, which lasted from 1917 to 1922, Beria proved to be opportunistic, shifting allegiances as opportunities arose. This pattern set the stage for his later behavior in Soviet politics.
In 1919, Beria had relationships with both the Bolsheviks and their main opposition in Azerbaijan, the Muslim Democratic Musavat Party, or the Mussavatists.
Beria took a position as the State Secretary of the Azerbaijan Democratic Party in 1919 and began gathering information for the Bolsheviks, motivated more by the prospect of personal advancement than by ideological commitment.
When the Red Army invaded and defeated the Mussavatists in Baku in April 1920, Beria was captured as a result of the upheaval and narrowly avoided execution. Reportedly, he was spared by Sergei Kirov, a prominent Soviet political figure. Instead of being executed, Beria was imprisoned.
During his time in prison, Beria developed a relationship with his cellmate’s niece, Nina Gegechkori, whom he married in 1922.
After his release from prison, Beria decided to officially join the Cheka, an early version of the Soviet Secret police. As part of the Cheka, Beria quickly rose through the ranks, becoming the deputy chairman of the Georgian branch of the Cheka by 1922, which had been renamed the OGPU, or the Joint State Political Doctorate.
By this point, Beria appeared to be fully committed to the Bolshevik cause, and he participated in the brutal repression of the 1924 Georgian Nationalist Uprising.
His work eventually led to his promotion to Chairman of the Georgian OGPU and Deputy Chairman of the Transcaucasia OGPU, the regional branch of the secret police that encompassed modern Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.
Beria first met Joseph Stalin in 1931, when Stalin was already established as the leader of the USSR. The meeting took place during a spa trip Stalin took to Georgia, where Beria’s assignment to oversee security provided an opportunity for their connection.
Stalin took a quick liking to Beria, something he had not found with other members of the party leadership in Georgia. He found Beria to be organized, efficient, and extremely capable for the job. Also, Beria, like Stalin, was a native Georgian.
Beria’s favorable introduction to Stalin was enough for the dictator to recommend that Beria take the position of Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the Georgian Communist Party and the second Secretary of the Transcaucasian party.
In 1932, shortly after his initial promotion, Beria became First Secretary. This promotion allowed him to strengthen the region’s ties to Moscow, and he combined his previous security role with new duties, consolidating his power base.
Under Beria, by 1935, levels of electric power production and resource extraction rose dramatically. These results, however, relied heavily on forced labor, underscoring the harsh methods used to achieve them.
One unique aspect of Georgia under Beria’s leadership was his choice not to implement Stalin’s “Russification” Policies as strictly as elsewhere. These policies, designed for forced assimilation into Russian culture, conflicted with Beria’s relative tolerance for his native Georgian culture.
These assimilation policies created resistance throughout the Soviet Union; however, because Beria permitted Georgian culture and language, Georgia was somewhat less resistant to Soviet control.
During the same time, Beria became a member of the 71-member Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Baria used this position to become closer to Stalin. This was done by publishing a piece titled “On the History of the Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia”, which lionized Stalin.
In 1932, Stalin began his campaign of purges. The purges were driven by a desire to eliminate any real or imagined threats to his power. Deeply suspicious of rivals and convinced that enemies were everywhere, he used arrests, executions, and imprisonment to remove political opponents, intimidate the Communist Party, control the military, and instill fear throughout Soviet society.
The agency that carried out the purges was the NKVD, the successor to the OGPU. The NKVD, or the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, was the Soviet Union’s secret police and internal security agency from 1934 to 1946. It was responsible for law enforcement, intelligence, managing the Gulag labor camps, and carrying out Stalin’s wishes.
The Great Purge reached its height between 1936 and 1938 under NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov. Ironically, Yezhov himself became one of the purge’s victims. In August 1938, Stalin appointed Beria as Yezhov’s deputy, and within months, Beria effectively replaced him as head of the NKVD. Yezhov was arrested in 1939, accused of treason and conspiracy, tortured into confessing, and executed in 1940.
Once Beria took charge, the NKVD deepened its involvement in the Great Purge, targeting not only party rivals but also members of the police, and expanding the use of labor camps.
What particularly distinguished Beria during this period was his personal participation in acts of violence and torture, which earned him an especially infamous reputation within the party.
When Russia entered the Second World War in 1939 with their invasions of Finland and Poland, as one of Stalin’s trusted leaders and head of the Secret Police, Beria held a quasi-military rank within the Soviet system.
This elevated position put him in charge of dealing with prisoners of war from the Polish Campaign. The USSR had captured thousands of Poles, and, mirroring some Nazi tactics, the Soviet Army under Beria’s oversight committed multiple atrocities
One of the most horrific examples was the Katyn Massacre, where 22,000 Poles executed and buried in the Katyn forest. Beria orchestrated this event, claiming the POWs threatened Soviet plans in Poland.
In 1941, Beria also participated in another massive purge of the Red Army, murdering roughly 30,000 people. That also included 3 out of 5 top ranking marshals and 14 of 16 army commanders.
Simultaneously, Beria exerted significant authority over the Gulag camp system. He sent millions into forced labor to supply wartime production, furthering his reputation for brutality.
Beria is often identified as the Soviet Union’s version of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi SS, a label Stalin himself bestowed. In many ways, this comparison is accurate, given both men’s propensity towards torture and mass murder.
On top of his World War II crimes, Beria was also a known serial rapist. He cruised around Moscow in his car, picking up teenage girls off the street to be delivered to his office. The total number of rape victims is unknown, but the estimates range from a few dozen to over 100.
There is evidence that Beria may have personally murdered some of the girls. In 1993, the remains of young women were found at the location of his former home, and more bodies were discovered in 1998.
His escapades were disturbing to fellow Soviet leaders who viewed him with disgust and fear. However, what he said was often an order from Stalin, which often determined whether you lived or died.
In August 1945, after the U.S. dropped its second atomic bomb on Japan, Stalin gave Beria oversight of the Soviet Atomic Bomb program. This move further expanded his influence within the Soviet power structure.
Beria leveraged his authority as Chief of the Secret Police to establish “Department S” within the NKVD. This move was a strategic effort to centralize oversight of the atomic bomb project, thereby bolstering his personal power and the government’s capacity to safeguard critical secrets.
However, Beria was highly distrustful of the scientists and researchers who were working on the project. The decades of fear caused by political purges and war had made him highly paranoid about the project’s members. This led to the scientists being under constant surveillance.
His role in organizing the atomic bomb program and Stalin’s purges earned him a seat on the Politburo in 1946.
Beria’s success with the atomic bomb program did not mean his position was secure. Stalin was falling ill, and he was Beria primary benifactor. Outside of Stalin, many leaders of the USSR disliked and distrusted him.
When Stalin died on March 5, 1953, Beria was well-positioned to become the next leader of the Soviet Union. Following Stalin’s death, he was promoted to Deputy Prime Minister and head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. With this position, he could easily mobilize the NKVD and take over the country.
Other high-ranking officials in the Soviet Union were terrified at the prospect of this. They had just endured almost 3 decades of Stalin’s terror, and the last thing that they wanted was someone in power who might be even worse.
Amid the confusion and power struggle following Stalin’s death, an anti-Beria faction formed. Their mission was to discredit Beria as much as possible, giving them an excuse to push him out of power.
This opportunity came in the form of Beria’s opinions on the West.
Beria feared that the satellite states in the Eastern Bloc would be disloyal, especially given the poor state of the Soviet economy. He had pushed for the Soviet Union to enter diplomatic negotiations with the United States, in the hopes it would help the Soviet economy.
Other members of the Communist Party took this opportunity and claimed that Beria was harboring “imperialist” sympathies. This was enough for the Soviet leadership to organize Beria’s arrest under the justification that he was an imperialist agent and a potential spy.
Beria was arrested and tried in December 1953 by a secret tribunal. At the trial, he was accused of numerous crimes, including treason and terrorism, with his actions during the purges being used as evidence.
He was found guilty, stripped of all his titles and awards, and was immediately executed on December 23, 1953. It was reported by the executioner’s wife that he did not meet his fate bravely, groveling for mercy. An ironic end for someone who had done the same thing to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people.
His body was reportedly cremated immediately, and the ashes were buried secretly.
Beria remains one of the principal architects of Soviet state terror. Although he did not initiate the Great Purge, he inherited and institutionalized the security apparatus that sustained Stalin’s dictatorship. He oversaw some of the Soviet Union’s most brutal campaigns of repression, including mass deportations, forced labor, and political persecution.
His downfall also marked an important turning point in Soviet history. By eliminating Beria only months after Stalin’s death, the Soviet leadership ensured that no single individual would again wield the unchecked power over the security services that had characterized the Stalin era.