62 Facts About Lavrentiy Beria

Lavrentiy Beria simultaneously administered vast sections of the Soviet state, and acted as the de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union in command of NKVD field units responsible for barrier troops and Soviet partisan intelligence and sabotage operations on the Eastern Front.

Lavrentiy Beria administered the expansion of the Gulag labour camps, and was primarily responsible for overseeing the secret detention facilities for scientists and engineers known as.

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was born in Merkheuli, near Sukhumi, in the Sukhum Okrug of the Kutais Governorate.

Lavrentiy Beria grew up in a Georgian Orthodox family; his mother, Marta Jaqeli, was deeply religious and church-going.

Lavrentiy Beria attended a technical school in Sukhumi, and later claimed to have joined the Bolsheviks in March 1917 while a student in the Baku Polytechnicum.

Lavrentiy Beria had earlier worked for the anti-Bolshevik Mussavatists in Baku.

In 1919, at the age of 20, Lavrentiy Beria started his career in state security when the security service of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic hired him while he was still a student at the Polytechnicum.

Lavrentiy Beria led the repression of a Georgian nationalist uprising in 1924, after which up to 10,000 people were executed.

In 1926, Lavrentiy Beria took control of the Georgian OGPU; Sergo Ordzhonikidze, head of the Transcaucasian party, introduced him to fellow-Georgian Joseph Stalin.

Lavrentiy Beria was appointed First Secretary of the Communist Party of Georgia in 1931, and party leader for the whole Transcaucasian region in 1932.

Lavrentiy Beria became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1934.

Lavrentiy Beria ordered the executions of Devdariani's brothers George and Shalva.

Lavrentiy Beria cemented his place in Stalin's entourage with a lengthy oration titled, "On the History of the Bolshevik Organisations in Transcaucasia", which emphasised Stalin's role.

When Stalin's purge of the Communist Party and Soviet government began in 1934 after the assassination of Leningrad party boss Sergei Kirov, Lavrentiy Beria ran the purges in Transcaucasia.

Lavrentiy Beria's appointment marked an easing of the repression begun under Yezhov.

On 16 January 1940, Lavrentiy Beria sent Stalin a list of 457 "enemies of the people" of whom 346 were marked to be shot.

Some NKVD officers Lavrentiy Beria promoted, such as Boris Rodos, Lev Shvartzman, and Bogdan Kobulov were brutal torturers who were executed in the 1950s.

In March 1939, Lavrentiy Beria was appointed as a candidate member of the Communist Party's Politburo.

From October 1940 to February 1942, the NKVD under Lavrentiy Beria carried out a new purge of the Red Army and related industries.

In February 1941, Lavrentiy Beria became deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, and in June, following Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, he became a member of the State Defense Committee.

Lavrentiy Beria took control of the manufacture of armaments, and aircraft and aircraft engines.

In July 1945, as Soviet police ranks were converted to a military uniform system, Lavrentiy Beria's rank was officially converted to that of Marshal of the Soviet Union.

Abroad, Lavrentiy Beria had met with Kim Il Sung, the future leader of North Korea, several times when the Soviet troops had declared war on Japan and occupied the northern half of Korea from August 1945.

Lavrentiy Beria recommended that Stalin install a communist leader in the occupied territories.

In January 1946, Lavrentiy 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.

Abakumov had headed SMERSH from 1943 to 1946; his relationship with Lavrentiy Beria involved close collaboration but rivalry.

However, Lavrentiy Beria was unable to purge Mikhail Suslov, whom he hated.

Lavrentiy Beria felt increasingly uncomfortable with Suslov's growing relationship with Stalin.

Evidently, Lavrentiy 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".

Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that Lavrentiy Beria had, immediately after Stalin's stroke, gone about "spewing hatred against [Stalin] and mocking him".

When Stalin showed signs of consciousness, Lavrentiy Beria dropped to his knees and kissed his hand.

When Stalin fell unconscious again, Lavrentiy Beria immediately stood and spat.

When Lavrentiy Beria left the room, he broke the sombre atmosphere by shouting loudly for his driver, his voice echoing with what Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva called "the ring of triumph unconcealed".

Shortly after Stalin's death, Lavrentiy 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 Lavrentiy Beria's associates has been supported by Edvard Radzinsky and other authors.

Lavrentiy Beria was second-most powerful, and given Malenkov's personal weakness, was poised to become the power behind the throne and ultimately leader himself.

Lavrentiy Beria undertook some measures of liberalisation immediately after Stalin's death.

Lavrentiy Beria reorganised the MVD and drastically reduced its economic power and penal responsibilities.

Lavrentiy Beria questioned the traditional policy of Russification and encouraged local officials to assert their own identities.

Lavrentiy Beria first turned to Georgia, where Stalin's fabricated Mingrelian affair was called off and the republic's key posts were filled by pro-Beria Georgians.

Lavrentiy Beria's policies of granting more autonomy to the Ukrainian SSR alarmed Khrushchev, for whom Ukraine was a power base.

Khrushchev then tried to draw Malenkov to his side, warning that "Lavrentiy Beria is sharpening his knives".

Lavrentiy Beria craved the vast financial resources that another relationship with the US could provide.

The East German uprising convinced Molotov, Malenkov and Bulganin that Lavrentiy Beria's policies were dangerous and destabilising to Soviet power.

On 26 June 1953, Lavrentiy Beria was arrested and held in an undisclosed location near Moscow.

When Lavrentiy Beria finally realized what was happening and plaintively appealed to Malenkov to speak for him, Malenkov silently hung his head and pressed a button on his desk.

Lavrentiy Beria was taken first to the Moscow guardhouse and then to the bunker of the headquarters of Moscow Military District.

Defence Minister Bulganin ordered the Kantemirovskaya Tank Division and Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division to move into Moscow to prevent security forces loyal to Lavrentiy Beria from rescuing him.

Lavrentiy Beria was executed separately; he allegedly pleaded on his knees before collapsing to the floor wailing.

Lavrentiy Beria was shot through the forehead by General Pavel Batitsky.

Lavrentiy Beria's body was cremated and the remains buried in Communal Grave No 3 at Donskoi Monastery Cemetery in Moscow.

Lavrentiy Beria's bodyguards reported that their duties included handing each victim a flower bouquet as she left the house.

In one case, Lavrentiy Beria picked up Tatiana Okunevskaya, a well-known Soviet actress, under the pretence of bringing her to perform for the Politburo.

Lavrentiy Beria knew that Okunevskaya's relatives had been executed months earlier.

When Lavrentiy Beria complimented Alexander Poskrebyshev's daughter on her beauty, Poskrebyshev quickly pulled her aside and instructed her, "Don't ever accept a lift from Lavrentiy Beria".

Lavrentiy Beria was deprived of all titles and awards on 23 December 1953.

Lavrentiy Beria is the central character in Good Night, Uncle Joe by Canadian playwright David Elendune.

Lavrentiy Beria was played by British actor Bob Hoskins in the 1991 film Inner Circle, and by David Suchet in Red Monarch.

Lavrentiy Beria appears in the third episode of the four-part 2007 BBC docudrama series Nuclear Secrets, played by Boris Isarov.

Lavrentiy Beria is a significant character in the opening chapters of the 1998 novel Archangel by British novelist Robert Harris.

Lavrentiy Beria is a minor character in the 2009 novel The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson.

Lavrentiy Beria is described as the boss of the Soviet state's security and is in attendance at a meal with the main character and Stalin.