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.

Beria's fall

Accounts of Beria's fall vary considerably. According to the most recent accounts Khrushchev convened a meeting of the Praesidium on June 26, where he launched an attack on Beria, accusing him of being in the pay of British intelligence. Beria was taken completely by surprise. He asked, "What's going on, Nikita Sergeyevich?" Molotov and others then also spoke against Beria, and Khrushchev put a motion for his instant dismissal. Malenkov then pressed a button on his desk as the pre-arranged signal to Marshal Georgy Zhukov and a group of armed officers in a nearby room. They immediately burst in and arrested Beria. Some accounts say that Beria was killed on the spot, but this is incorrect.

Related Topics:
June 26 - Georgy Zhukov

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Beria was taken first to the Lefortovo prison and then to the headquarters of General Kirill Moskalenko, commander of Moscow District Air Defence and a wartime friend of Khrushchev's. His arrest was kept secret until his principal lieutenants could be arrested. The NKVD troops in Moscow which had been under Beria's command were disarmed by regular Army units. Pravda announced Beria's arrest only on July 10, crediting it to Malenkov and referring to Beria's "criminal activities against the Party and the State." In December it was announced that Beria and six accomplices, "in the pay of foreign intelligence agencies," had been "conspiring for many years to seize power in the Soviet Union and restore capitalism."

Related Topics:
Lefortovo prison - Kirill Moskalenko - Pravda - July 10

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Beria was tried by a "special tribunal" in the absence of the sides and no appeal. When the death sentence was passed, according to Moskalenko's later account, Beria begged on his knees for mercy, but he and his subordinates were immediately executed.

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However, according to other accounts including his son's, Beria's house was assaulted on 26 June 1953, by military units and Beria himself was killed on the spot. A member of the special tribunal, Nikolay Schwernik, has subsequently told Beria's son that he had never seen Beria alive.

Related Topics:
26 June - 1953 - Nikolay Schwernik

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Beria's wife and son were sent to a labour camp, but survived and were later released. His son Sergo Beria is still alive and defending his father's reputation. After Beria's death the MVD was reduced from the status of a Ministry to a Committee (known as the KGB), and no Soviet police chief ever again held the kind of power Beria had wielded.

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In May 2000 the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation refused an application by members of Beria's family to overturn his 1953 conviction. The application was based on a Russian law that provided for rehabilitation of victims of false political accusations. The court argued, however, that "Beria was the organizer of repression against his own people, and therefore could not be considered a victim".

Related Topics:
2000 - Russian Federation - 1953

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