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.

Postwar politics

With Stalin nearing 70, the postwar years were dominated by a concealed struggle for the succession among his lieutenants. At the end of the war the most likely successor seemed to be Andrei Zhdanov, party leader in Leningrad during the war and placed in charge of all cultural matters in 1946. Even during the war Beria and Zhdanov had been rivals, but after 1946 Beria formed an alliance with Malenkov to block Zhdanov's rise.

Related Topics:
Andrei Zhdanov - Leningrad - 1946

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In January 1946 Beria left the post of the head of the NKVD (which was soon renamed MVD), while retaining general control over national security matters from his post of Deputy Prime Minister, under Stalin. The new head, Sergei Kruglov, was not Beria's protégé. In addition, by the Summer of 1946, Beria's loyalist Vsevolod Merkulov was replaced by Victor Abakumov as head of the MGB. Kruglov and Abakumov then moved expeditiously to replace the security apparatus leadership with new people outside of Beria's inner circle, such that very soon Deputy Minister of MVD Stepan Mamulov represented the only remnant of it outside of foreign intelligence on which Beria kept a grip. In the following months, Abakumov started carrying out important operations without consulting Beria, often working in tandem with Zhdanov, and sometimes on Stalin's direct orders. Some observers argue that these operations were aimed---initially tangentially, but with time more directly---at Beria.

Related Topics:
1946 - NKVD - MVD - Sergei Kruglov - Vsevolod Merkulov - Victor Abakumov - MGB - Stepan Mamulov

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In the context of Stalin's growing anti-semitism, one of the first such moves was the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee affair that commenced in October of 1946 and eventually led to the murder of Solomon Mikhoels and the arrest of many other members. The reason this campaign had negatively reflected on Beria was that not only did he champion creation of the committee in 1942, but his own entourage included a substantial number of Jews.

Related Topics:
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee - Solomon Mikhoels - 1942

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Zhdanov died suddenly in August 1948, and Beria and Malenkov then moved to consolidate their power with a purge of Zhdanov's associates known as the "Leningrad Affair". Among the more than 2,000 people executed were Zhdanov's deputy Aleksei Kuznetsov, the economic chief Nikolai Voznesensky, the Leningrad Party head Pyotr Popkov and the Prime Minister of the Russian Republic, Mikhail Rodionov. It was only after Zhdanov's death that Nikita Khrushchev---a staunch anti-semite himself---began to be considered as a possible alternative to the Beria-Malenkov axis.

Related Topics:
1948 - Aleksei Kuznetsov - Nikolai Voznesensky - Pyotr Popkov - Russian Republic - Mikhail Rodionov - Nikita Khrushchev

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Zhdanov's death did not, however, stop the anti-semitic campaign. During the postwar years Beria supervised the establishment of Soviet-style systems of secret police, and hand-picked the leaders, in the countries of the Eastern Europe. Again, a substantial number of these leaders were Jews. Starting in 1948, Abakumov initiated several investigations against these leaders, which culminated with the arrest in November of 1951 of Rudolf Slánský, Bedrich Geminder, and others in Prague, who were generally accused of Zionism and cosmopolitanism, but, more specifically, of using Czechoslovakia to funnel weapons to Israel. From Beria's standpoint, this charge was extremely explosive, because massive help to Israel was provided on his direct orders. Altogether, 14 leaders of Czechoslovakia, 11 of them Jewish, were tried, convicted, and executed in Prague. Similar investigations have concurrently proceeded in Poland and other Soviet satellite countries.

Related Topics:
Eastern Europe - Rudolf Slánský - Bedrich Geminder - Prague - Zionism - Cosmopolitanism - Czechoslovakia

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Around that time, Abakumov was replaced by Semion Ignatiev, who further intensified the anti-semitic campaign. In December of 1952, the widest anti-semitic affair in the Soviet Union---that later came to be known as Doctor's Plot---has started. A number of country's prominent Jewish doctors were accused of poisoning top Soviet leaders and arrested. Concurrently, hysterical anti-semitic propaganda campaign sprang in the mass-media. Altogether, 37 doctors (most of them Jewish) were arrested, and MGB, on Stalin's orders, started to prepare for deportation of the entire Jewish population to Russia's far east.

Related Topics:
Semion Ignatiev - Doctor's Plot

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Days after Stalin's death, Beria freed all the arrested doctors, announced that the entire matter was fabricated, and indeed arrested the MGB functionaries directly involved.

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