Lavrenty Beria

Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria ({{lang-ka|???????? ?????}}; {{lang-ru|????????? ???????? ?????}}; (29 March, 1899 - 23 December, 1953), Soviet politician and police chief, is remembered chiefly as the executor of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of the 1930s, although in fact he presided only over the closing stages of the Purge. His period of greatest power was during and after World War II. After Stalin's death he was removed from office and executed by Stalin's successors.

Allegations against Beria

Although Beria was formally convicted for being a British spy, the Communist Leadership has early on sought to spice up the charges with informal accusations of more personal nature. These included allegations that he raped numerous women, and that he personally tortured and killed many of his political victims.

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Charges of sexual misconduct against Beria were first made in the speech by a Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Nikolay Shatalin, at the Plenary Meeting of the committee on July 10, 1953, two weeks after Beria's arrest. Shatalin said that Beria had had sexual relations with numerous women and that he had contracted syphilis as a result of his sex with prostitutes. Shatalin referred to a list (kept by Beria's bodyguard) of over 25 women with whom Beria had had sex. Over time, however, the charges became more dramatic. Khrushchev in his posthumously published memoirs wrote: "We were given a list of more than a 100 names of women. They were dragged to Beria by his people. And he had the same trick for them all: all who got to his house for the first time, Beria would invite for a dinner and would propose to drink for the health of Stalin. And in wine, he would mix in some sleeping pills..."

Related Topics:
Nikolay Shatalin - July 10 - 1953 - Syphilis

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By 1980s, the sexual misconduct stories about Beria included rape of teenage girls. The author Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, who wrote a biography of Beria, said in an interview: "At night he would cruise the streets of Moscow seeking out teenage girls. When he saw one who took his fancy he would have his guards deliver her to his house. Sometimes he would have his henchmen bring five, six or seven girls to him. He would make them strip, except for their shoes, and then force them into a circle on their hands and knees with their heads together. He would walk around in his dressing gown inspecting them. Then he would pull one out by her leg and haul her off to rape her. He called it the flower game." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/23/wruss23.xml

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Numerous stories have circulated over the years involving Beria personally beating, torturing and killing his victims. Since the 1970s, Muscovites have been retelling stories of bones found in either the back yard, cellars, or hidden inside the walls of former Beria's residence, currently the Tunisian Embassy. Such stories continue to re-appear in the news media. The London Daily Telegraph reported in December 2003: "The latest grisly find - a large thigh bone and some smaller leg bones - was only two years ago when a kitchen was re-tiled. In the basement, Anil, an Indian who has worked at the embassy for 17 years, showed a plastic bag of human bones he had found in the cellars."

Related Topics:
Daily Telegraph - 2003

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Such reports are treated with scepticism by some commentators. It should be noted that despite partial opening of Soviet archives since 1991, most of the Beria-related material remains classified. Memoirs by the people close to Beria, such as his son Sergo Beria and a former Soviet foreign intelligence chief Pavel Sudoplatov deny these charges and draw a very different portrait of Beria.

Related Topics:
1991 - Sergo Beria - Pavel Sudoplatov

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