Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria (March 17 (29), 1899 - December 23, 1953) - Soviet politician of Georgian nationality, Marshal of the Soviet Union, head of the state security agencies during the Second World War.

Beria was the most influential of the heads of Stalin's secret police and led it longer than any other. He also controlled many other areas of the life of the Soviet state, was the de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union, standing at the head of the NKVD detachments, which were created for partisan operations of the Great Patriotic War and as "detachments" against thousands of "defectors, deserters, cowards and simulators" . Beria carried out a huge expansion of the Gulag camp system and was the main person responsible for the secret defense institutions - "sharashki", which played the largest military role. He created an effective reconnaissance and sabotage network. Together with Stalin, Beria took part in Yalta Conference. Stalin introduced him to the President Roosevelt as "our Himmler". After the war, Beria organized the seizure of the state institutions of Central and Eastern Europe by the communists and successfully completed the project of creating Soviet atomic bomb to which Stalin gave absolute priority. This creation was completed in five years thanks to Soviet espionage in the West, carried out by Beria's NKVD.

After Stalin's death in March 1953, Beria became deputy head of government (Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR) and prepared a liberalization campaign. For a short time, together with Malenkov and Molotov, he became one of the members of the ruling "troika". Beria's self-confidence led him to underestimate the other members of the Politburo. During the coup d'etat, which was led by N. Khrushchev, who had the assistance of Marshal Georgy Zhukov, Beria was arrested on charges of treason during a meeting of the Politburo. The neutralization of the NKVD was provided by Zhukov's troops. After interrogation, Beria was taken to the cellars of the Lubyanka and shot by General Batitsky.

Beria's youth and his rise to power

Beria was born in Merkheuli, near Sukhumi, Kutaisi province (now in Georgia). He belonged to the Mingrelian people and grew up in a Georgian Orthodox family. Beria's mother, Marta Jakeli (1868-1955), distantly related to the Megrelian princely family of Dadiani, was a deeply religious woman. She spent a lot of time in the church and died in one of the temples. Martha managed to become a widow once before she married Father Lavrenty, Pavel Khukhaevich Beria (1872-1922), a landowner from Abkhazia. Lavrenty had a brother (name unknown) and sister Anna, who was born deaf and mute. In his autobiography, Beria only mentions his sister and niece. His brother, apparently, was either dead or did not maintain relations with Beria after he left Merkheuli.

Beria graduated from the Sukhumi Higher Primary School. TO Bolsheviks he joined in March 1917 as a student at the Baku Secondary Mechanical and Technical Construction School (later the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy), whose program was related to the oil industries.

In 1919, 20-year-old Beria began his career in the state security agencies, but not the Bolsheviks, but in counterintelligence hostile to the Soviet Republic Baku Musavatists. Later he himself claimed that he played the role of a communist agent in the Musavat camp, but this version of his own cannot be considered proven. After the capture of the city by the Red Army (April 28, 1920), Beria, according to some reports, escaped execution only by chance. Once in prison for a while, he struck up a relationship there with Nina Gegechkori, the niece of his cellmate. They managed to escape by train. 17-year-old Nina was an educated girl from an aristocratic family. One of her uncles was a minister in Menshevik government of Georgia, the other - a minister of the Bolsheviks. Subsequently, she became the wife of Beria.

In 1920 or 1921 Beria joined Cheka- Bolshevik secret police. In August 1920, he became the manager of the affairs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Azerbaijan, and in October of the same year, he became the executive secretary of the Extraordinary Commission for the Expropriation of the Bourgeoisie and the Improvement of the Life of Workers. However, he only worked in this position for about six months. In 1921, Beria was accused of abuse of power and falsification of criminal cases, but thanks to the intercession Anastas Mikoyan escaped serious punishment.

The Bolsheviks raised an uprising in what was then under the rule of the Mensheviks. Democratic Republic of Georgia. Following this, the Red Army invaded there. The Cheka actively participated in this conflict, which ended in the defeat of the Mensheviks and the creation of the Georgian SSR. Beria also participated in the preparation of the uprising against the Mensheviks. In November 1922, he was transferred from Azerbaijan to Tiflis and soon became the head of the secret operational unit of the Georgian branch there. GPU(successor of the Cheka) and its deputy head.

In 1924, Beria played a prominent role in the suppression Georgian national uprising ending in the execution of 10,000 people.

Beria in his youth. Photo from the 1920s

In December 1926, Beria became the chairman of the GPU of Georgia, and in April 1927, the Georgian People's Commissar of Internal Affairs. Sergo Ordzhonikidze, the head of the Bolsheviks of Transcaucasia, introduced him to an influential Georgian countryman - Stalin. Lavrenty Pavlovich, to the best of his ability, contributed to Stalin's ascent to power. During the years of leadership of the Georgian GPU, Beria actually destroyed the intelligence networks of Turkey and Iran in the Soviet Transcaucasia and he himself successfully recruited agents in the governments of these countries. During Stalin's vacations in the south, he was also responsible for security.

The chairman of the GPU of all Transcaucasia was then a prominent Chekist Stanislav Redens, husband Anna Alliluyeva, sisters of Stalin's wife, hopes. Beria and Redens did not get along with each other. Redens and the Georgian leadership tried to get rid of the careerist Beria and transfer him to the Lower Volga. However, Beria, in his intrigues against them, acted more deftly and ingeniously. Once Lavrenty Pavlovich got Redens drunk, undressed and sent home completely naked. In the spring of 1931, Redens was transferred from Transcaucasia to Belarus. This facilitated the further career of Beria.

In November 1931, Beria was appointed head of the Communist Party of Georgia, and in October 1932 - of the entire Transcaucasus. In February 1934, on XVII Party Congress, he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).

Beria and Stalin's Great Terror

As you know, in 1934 the old party guard made attempts to remove Stalin. When members of the Central Committee were elected at the 17th Party Congress, the head of the Leningrad Communists Sergey Kirov collected more votes than Stalin, and this fact was hidden only by the efforts of the commission for counting ballots, headed by Lazar Kaganovich. Influential communists offered Kirov to head the party instead of Stalin. Meetings about this were held at the apartment of Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Until the very end of 1934, both Stalin and the opposition to him were stubborn undercover intrigues. Stalin proposed recalling Kirov from Leningrad and appointing him one of the four secretaries of the Central Committee. Kirov refused to move to Moscow. Stalin insisted, but was forced to back down when the request to leave Kirov in Leningrad for another two years was supported Kuibyshev and Ordzhonikidze. Relations between Kirov and Stalin worsened. Counting on the support of Ordzhonikidze, Kirov hoped to consult with him in Moscow at the November plenum of the Central Committee. But Ordzhonikidze was not in Moscow. In early November, he and Beria were in Baku, where he suddenly became ill after dinner. Beria took the sick Sergo by train to Tbilisi. After the November 7 parade, Ordzhonikidze became ill again. He started bleeding internally, then had a massive heart attack. The Politburo sent three doctors to Tiflis, but they did not establish the cause of Ordzhonikidze's mysterious illness. Despite feeling unwell, Sergo wanted to return to Moscow to participate in the work of the plenum, but Stalin firmly ordered him to follow the instructions of the doctors and not come to the capital until November 26. It is more than likely that the mysterious illness of Ordzhonikidze, which kept him away from communication with Kirov, was caused by the intrigues of Beria, led by Stalin.

By 1935, Beria had become one of Stalin's most trusted subordinates. He strengthened his position in the Stalinist environment by publishing (1935) the book “On the Question of the History of Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia” (its real authors, apparently, were M. Toroshelidze and E. Bedia). It inflated Stalin's role in the revolutionary movement in every possible way. "To my dear and beloved Master, the great Stalin!" - Beria signed a gift copy.

After murder of Kirov(December 1, 1934) Stalin began his Great Purge, the main goal of which was the highest party guard. Beria opened the same purge in Transcaucasia, using it as an opportunity to settle many personal scores. Committed suicide or was killed (they say even personally by Beria) Aghasi Khanjyan, the first secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia. In December 1936, after dinner at Lavrenty Pavlovich's, he died suddenly. Nestor Lakoba, the head of Soviet Abkhazia, who shortly before greatly contributed to the rise of Beria, and now, dying, called him his killer. Before the burial of Nestor, Lavrenty Pavlovich ordered to remove all the internal organs from the corpse, and later dug out the body of Lakoba and destroyed it. Nestor's widow was thrown into prison. By order of Beria, a snake was thrown into her cell, which made her go crazy. Another prominent victim of Lavrenty Pavlovich was Gaioz Devdariani, People's Commissar for Education of the Georgian SSR. Beria ordered the execution of the Devdariani brothers, Georgy and Shalva, who held high positions in the NKVD and the Communist Party. Beria also arrested Sergo Ordzhonikidze's brother, Papulia, and then dismissed another of his brothers, Valiko, from the Tiflis Council.

In June 1937, Beria said in a speech: "Let the enemies know that anyone who tries to raise his hand against the will of our people, against the will of the Lenin-Stalin party, will be mercilessly crushed and destroyed."

Beria with Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva on her knees. In the background - Stalin

Beria at the head of the NKVD

In August 1938, Stalin transferred Beria to Moscow to the post of first deputy head of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs ( NKVD), in which the state security agencies and police forces were combined. The then head of the NKVD, Nikolai Yezhov, whom Beria affectionately called "dear Hedgehog", ruthlessly carried out Stalin's Great Terror. Millions of people across the USSR were imprisoned or executed as "enemies of the people". By 1938, the suppression had assumed proportions that already threatened the collapse of the economy and the army. This forced Stalin to weaken the "purge". He decided to remove Yezhov and at first thought to make his "faithful dog" Lazar Kaganovich the new head of the NKVD, but in the end he chose Beria, apparently because he had extensive experience in punitive organs. In September 1938, Beria was appointed head of the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) of the NKVD, and in November he replaced Yezhov as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs. Yezhov, who was no longer needed by Stalin and knew too much, was shot in 1940. The NKVD underwent another purge, during which half of the leading personnel were replaced by Beria's henchmen, many of whom were natives of the Caucasus.

Although the name of Beria as the head of the NKVD is strongly associated with repression and terror, his entry into the leadership of the people's commissariat at first was marked by a weakening of the repressions of the Yezhov era. More than 100 thousand people were released from the camps. The authorities officially acknowledged that there were some "injustices" and "excesses" during the purges, placing all the blame for them solely on Yezhov. However, liberalization was only relative: arrests and executions continued into 1940, and as the war approached, the pace of the purge accelerated again. During this period, Beria led the deportations of "politically unreliable" people from the Baltic and Polish regions recently annexed to the USSR. He also organized the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico.

In March 1939, Beria became a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee. He did not receive full membership in the Politburo until 1946, but already in the pre-war era he was one of the top leaders of the Soviet state. In 1941, Beria became the general commissar of state security. This highest quasi-military rank was equated with the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union.

On March 5, 1940, after the Third Conference of the Gestapo-NKVD was held in Zakopane, Beria sent a note to Stalin (No. 794 / B), where he claimed that the Polish prisoners of war held in camps and prisons in Western Belarus and Ukraine were enemies of the Soviet Union. Beria recommended that they be destroyed. Most of these captives were soldiers, but among them were many intellectuals, doctors, priests. Their total number exceeded 22 thousand. With Stalin's approval, Beria's NKVD executed Polish prisoners, arranging " Katyn massacre».

From October 1940 to February 1942, Beria and the NKVD conducted a new purge of the Red Army and related institutions. In February 1941, Beria became deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, and in June, after Nazi Germany invaded the USSR, he became a member of the State Defense Committee ( GKO). During Great Patriotic War he transferred millions of camp prisoners Gulag in the army and in military production. Beria took control of arms production, and (together with Malenkov) - aircraft and aircraft engines. This was the beginning of an alliance between Beria and Malenkov, which later gained great importance.

Lavrenty Beria with family

In 1944, when the Germans were expelled from Soviet territory, Beria was instructed to punish a number of ethnic minorities who had cooperated with the invaders during the war years (Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, Pontic Greeks and Volga Germans). All these nations were deported from their native places to Central Asia.

In December 1944, Beria's NKVD was assigned to supervise the creation of the Soviet atomic bomb ("Task No. 1"). The bomb was created and tested on August 29, 1949. Beria directed the successful Soviet intelligence campaign against the United States Atomic Weapons Program. In the course of it, it was possible to obtain most of the necessary technologies. Beria also provided the necessary manpower for this extremely labor-intensive project. He attracted at least 330 thousand people, including 10 thousand technicians. Tens of thousands of Gulag prisoners were sent to work in uranium mines, to build and operate uranium production plants. They also built nuclear test sites in Semipalatinsk and on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. The NKVD ensured the necessary secrecy of the project. True, the physicist Pyotr Kapitsa refused to work with Beria, even after he tried to "bribe" him with a gift of a hunting rifle. Stalin supported Kapitsa in this quarrel.

In July 1945, when the Soviet police system was finally reorganized along military lines, Beria officially received the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union. He never commanded a single real army unit, but made a significant contribution to the victory over Germany through the work of organizing military production, the actions of partisans and saboteurs. However, Stalin never publicly noted the size of this contribution. Unlike most other Soviet marshals, Beria did not receive the Order of Victory.

Beria in the post-war years

As Stalin approached his 70th birthday after the war, covert struggles intensified among his inner circle. At the end of the war, the most likely successor to the Leader seemed Andrei Zhdanov, who during the war years was the head of the Leningrad party organization, and in 1946 was appointed to control ideology and culture. After 1946, Beria sealed his alliance with Malenkov to counter Zhdanov's rise.

December 30, 1945 Beria resigned as head of the NKVD, while maintaining overall control over national security issues. However, the new People's Commissar (from March 1946 - Minister) of the Interior, Sergey Kruglov, was not Beria's man. In addition, by the summer of 1946, Beria's protege Vsevolod Merkulov was replaced as head of the Ministry of State Security (MGB) Viktor Abakumov. Abakumov from 1943 to 1946 was the head of SMERSH. His relationship with Beria was marked by both close collaboration (Abakumov rose to prominence thanks to Beria's support) and rivalry. With the encouragement of Stalin, who was beginning to fear Lavrenty Pavlovich, Abakumov began to create a circle of his own supporters within the MGB in order to resist Beria's dominance over the power ministries. Kruglov and Abakumov quickly replaced Beria's people in the leadership of the state security apparatus with their own proteges. Very soon the Deputy Minister of the Interior Stepan Mamulov remained the only ally of Beria outside the foreign intelligence system, which Lavrenty Pavlovich continued to control. Abakumov began to conduct important operations without consulting Beria, often working in tandem with Zhdanov, and sometimes on direct orders from Stalin. Some historians believe that these operations - at first indirectly, but over time more and more directly - were directed against Beria.

One of the first steps was Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which was launched in October 1946 and eventually led to the murder Solomon Mikhoels and the arrest of many other members of the JAC, which revived the old Bolshevik idea of ​​handing over Crimea to the Jews as an "autonomous republic". This case caused severe damage to the influence of Beria. He actively helped the creation of the JAC in 1942, his entourage included many Jews.

After the sudden and rather strange death of Zhdanov in August 1948, Beria and Malenkov strengthened their positions with a powerful blow to the supporters of the deceased - “ the Leningrad affair". Among those executed were Zhdanov's deputy Alexey Kuznetsov, prominent economist Nikolai Voznesensky, head of the Leningrad party organization Petr Popkov and head of the government of the RSFSR Mikhail Rodionov. Only after this Nikita Khrushchev began to be seen as a possible alternative to the tandem of Malenkov and Beria.

In the post-war years, Beria led the creation of communist regimes in the countries of Eastern Europe, which, as a rule, took place through coups d'état. He personally selected new Eastern European leaders dependent on the USSR. But since 1948, Abakumov initiated a number of cases against these leaders. Their culmination was the arrest in November 1951 of Rudolf Slansky, Bedrich Geminder and other leaders of Czechoslovakia. Defendants were usually charged with Zionism, cosmopolitanism and the supply of arms in Israel. Beria was quite alarmed by these allegations, since a large number of weapons from the Czech Republic were sold to Israel on his direct orders. Beria sought an alliance with Israel to advance Soviet influence in the Middle East, but other Kremlin leaders decided instead to forge a lasting alliance with the Arab countries. 14 prominent figures of communist Czechoslovakia, of whom 11 were Jews, were found guilty in court and executed. Similar trials took place then in Poland and other vassal countries of the USSR.

Abakumov was soon replaced Semyon Ignatiev which further intensified the anti-Semitic campaign. On January 13, 1953, the largest anti-Jewish case in the Soviet Union began with an article in Pravda - “ doctors case". Several prominent Jewish doctors were accused of poisoning top Soviet leaders and arrested. At the same time, an anti-Semitic campaign was launched in the Soviet press, called the struggle against "rootless cosmopolitanism." Initially, 37 people were arrested, but the number quickly rose to several hundred. Dozens of Soviet Jews were dismissed from prominent posts, arrested, sent to the Gulag or executed. Some historians say that the MGB, on Stalin's orders, was preparing the deportation of all Soviet Jews to the Far East, but such a hypothesis is almost certainly based on exaggeration; it is most often put forward by Jewish authors. Many researchers insist that the eviction of the Jews was not planned, and the persecution of them was not cruel. A few days after Stalin's death on March 5, 1953, Beria released all those arrested in this case, declared it fabricated and arrested MGB functionaries who were directly involved in it.

As for other international problems, Beria (together with Mikoyan) correctly predicted victory Mao Zedong V Chinese civil war and helped her a lot. He allowed the Chinese Communist Party to use Manchuria, occupied by Soviet troops, as a springboard and organized the widest supply of weapons to the "People's Liberation Army" - mainly from the captured arsenals of the Japanese Kwantung Army.

Beria and the version about the murder of Stalin

Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that immediately after Stalin's stroke, Beria "spewed hatred" against the Leader and mocked him. When suddenly it seemed that consciousness was returning to Stalin, Beria fell to his knees and kissed the Master's hand. But he soon fainted again. Then Beria immediately got up and spat.

Stalin's assistant Vasily Lozgachev, who found the Leader lying after the blow, said that Beria and Malenkov were the first members of the Politburo to come to the patient. They arrived at Kuntsevskaya dacha at 3 am on March 2, 1953, after telephone calls from Khrushchev and Bulganin, who themselves did not want to go to the scene, fearing that they would somehow incur the wrath of Stalin. Lozgachev convinced Beria that Stalin, who was unconscious and in soiled clothes, was ill and needed medical attention. But Beria angrily scolded him for "alarming" and quickly left, ordering "not to disturb us, not to fan the panic and not to disturb Comrade Stalin." The call for doctors was delayed for 12 hours, although the paralyzed Stalin could neither speak nor hold urine. Historian S. Sebag-Montefiore calls this behavior "extraordinary", but notes that it was consistent with the standard Stalinist (and generally communist) practice of postponing even absolutely necessary decisions without the official sanction of a higher authority. Beria's order to postpone the immediate call of doctors was tacitly supported by the rest of the Politburo. The situation was aggravated by the fact that then, in the midst of the “doctors' case”, all doctors were under suspicion. Stalin's personal doctor has already been tortured in the cellars of the Lubyanka, for suggesting that the Leader lie in bed more.

The Master's death prevented a new, final reprisal against the last old Bolsheviks, Mikoyan and Molotov, for which Stalin had begun to prepare a year before. Shortly after Stalin's death, Beria, according to Molotov's memoirs, triumphantly announced to the Politburo that he "removed [Stalin]" and "saved you all." Beria has never explicitly stated whether he engineered Stalin's stroke or simply left him to die without medical attention. Additional arguments in favor of the version that Beria poisoned Stalin with warfarin are provided by a recent article by Miguel A. Faria in the journal Surgical Neurology International. The anticoagulant (blood clotting agent) warfarin could well have caused the symptoms that accompanied Stalin's stroke. It was not difficult for Beria to add this remedy to the food or drink of Joseph Vissarionovich. Historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore emphasizes that Beria during this period had every reason to be afraid of Stalin, he could well have used warfarin against him, but notes that he never admitted to poisoning and never remained alone with Stalin during the days of his illness. He came to the Boss, who had been struck by a blow, together with Malenkov - apparently in order to specifically remove suspicions.

After Stalin's death from pulmonary edema caused by a stroke, Beria showed the broadest claims. In the painful silence that reigned after Stalin's agony, Beria was the first to come up to kiss his lifeless body (a step that Sebag-Montefiore likens to "removing the ring from the finger of the deceased king"). While other associates of Stalin (even Molotov, now saved from almost inevitable death) wept bitterly over the body of the deceased, Beria looked radiant, animated and did not hide his joy well. Leaving the room, Beria broke the mournful atmosphere by loudly calling his driver. His voice, according to the memoirs of Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva echoed with undisguised triumph. Alliluyeva noticed that the rest of the Politburo was clearly afraid of Beria and was preoccupied with such a daring display of ambition. “He went to take power,” Mikoyan muttered quietly to Khrushchev. Members of the Politburo immediately rushed to their limousines so as not to be late for Beria to the Kremlin.

Lavrenty Beria in the last years of his life

Fall of Beria

After Stalin's death, Beria was appointed first deputy head of government and head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which he immediately merged with the MGB. His close ally Malenkov became the head of government and, at first, the most powerful man in the USSR. Beria was second in power, but with the weakness of Malenkov, he could well soon subordinate him to his influence. Khrushchev led the party, and Voroshilov became chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (i.e., head of state).

Given Beria's reputation, it is not at all surprising that other party leaders viewed him with extreme suspicion. Khrushchev was opposed to the alliance between Beria and Malenkov, but at first he did not have the strength to challenge him. However, he took advantage of the chance that appeared in June 1953 with the onset of a natural disaster. uprisings against communist domination in Berlin and East Germany.

Based on Beria's own words, other leaders suspected that he might use this uprising to agree to German reunification and end the Cold War in exchange for extensive assistance from the United States, similar to that received by the USSR during World War II. . The high cost of the war still weighed heavily on the Soviet economy. Beria coveted the enormous financial resources and other benefits that could be secured through concessions to the United States and the West. It was rumored that Beria secretly promised Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania serious prospects for national autonomy, similar to the one that the Eastern European satellites of the USSR had.

The uprising in East Germany convinced the Kremlin leaders that Beria's policies could dangerously destabilize the Soviet state. A few days after the events in Germany, Khrushchev persuaded other leaders to depose Beria. Lavrenty Pavlovich left his main ally, Malenkov, as well as Molotov, who initially leaned on his side. As they say, only Voroshilov hesitated to speak out against Beria.

Arrest, trial and execution of Beria

On June 26, 1953, Beria was arrested and taken to an unidentified location near Moscow. Information about how this happened is very different. According to the most likely stories, Khrushchev convened the Presidium of the Central Committee on June 26 and there suddenly launched a fierce attack on Beria, accusing him of betrayal and paid espionage for British intelligence. Beria was taken by surprise. He asked: “What is going on, Nikita? Why are you digging through my underwear?" Molotov and others also quickly moved against Beria, demanding his immediate resignation. When Beria finally realized what was happening and began plaintively asking for support from Malenkov, this old and close friend of his silently lowered his head, looked away, and then pressed the button on his desk. It was a prearranged signal to Marshal Georgy Zhukov and a group of armed officers in the next room (Leonid Brezhnev is said to have been one of them). They immediately ran into the meeting and arrested Beria.

Beria was first placed in a guardhouse in Moscow, and then transferred to the bunker of the headquarters of the Moscow Military District. Minister of Defense Nikolai Bulganin ordered the Kantemirovskaya tank division and the Tamanskaya motorized rifle division to arrive in Moscow in order to prevent the state security forces loyal to Beria from releasing their boss. Many of Beria's subordinates, proteges and supporters were also arrested - including Vsevolod Merkulov, Bogdan Kobulov, Sergei Goglidze, Vladimir Dekanozov, Pavel Meshik And Lev Vlodzimirsky. The Pravda newspaper was silent for a long time about the arrests and only on July 10 informed Soviet citizens about Beria's "criminal activities against the party and the state."

Beria and his supporters were convicted by the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR on December 23, 1953 without the presence of a lawyer and without the right to appeal. Marshal presided over Ivan Konev.

Beria was found guilty:

1. In treason. It was alleged (without evidence) that “until the moment of his arrest, Beria maintained and developed his secret connections with foreign intelligence services.” In particular, attempts to start peace negotiations with Hitler in 1941 through the Bulgarian ambassador were classified as high treason. At the same time, no one mentioned that Beria acted on the orders of Stalin and Molotov. It was also alleged that Beria, who in 1942 helped organize the defense of the North Caucasus, tried to give it into the hands of the Germans. It was emphasized that "planning to seize power, Beria tried to get the support of the imperialist states at the cost of violating the territorial integrity of the Soviet Union and transferring part of the territory of the USSR to the capitalist states." These statements were based on what Beria told his assistants: in order to improve international relations, it would be reasonable to transfer the Kaliningrad region to Germany, part of Karelia to Finland, the Moldavian USSR to Romania, and the Kuril Islands to Japan.

2. In terrorism. Beria's participation in the purge of the Red Army in 1941 was classified as an act of terrorism.

3. In counter-revolutionary activities during the Civil War. In 1919, Beria worked in the security service of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. Beria claimed that he was appointed to this job by the Gummet party, which subsequently merged with the Adalat, Ahrar and Baku Bolshevik parties, thus forming the Communist Party of Azerbaijan.

On the same day, December 23, 1953, Beria and the rest of the defendants were sentenced to death. When the death sentence was read, Lavrenty Pavlovich begged for mercy on his knees, and then fell to the floor and sobbed desperately. Six other defendants were shot on the day the trial ended. Beria was executed separately. As S. Sebag-Montefiore writes:

... Lavrentiy Beria was stripped down to his underwear. He was handcuffed and tied to a hook in the wall. He begged for his life and screamed so hard that a towel had to be stuffed into his mouth. His face was covered with a bandage, leaving only eyes wide with horror. General Batitsky became his executioner. For this execution, he was promoted to marshal. Batitsky fired a bullet into Beria's forehead...

Beria's behavior at trial and during execution strongly resembles how his predecessor in the NKVD, Yezhov, behaved in 1940, who also begged for his life. Beria's body was cremated, and his remains were buried in a forest near Moscow.

Beria had many awards, among which were five Orders of Lenin, three Orders of the Red Banner, the title of Hero of Socialist Labor (awarded in 1943). He was twice awarded the Stalin Prize (1949 and 1951).

About the sexual exploits of Lavrenty Pavlovich - see the article

I think it will be interesting for you to get acquainted with such an opinion about this already historical personality. Someone is aware of this information, someone in any case will not perceive it, and someone will learn something new for themselves.

Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria is one of the most famous and at the same time the most unknown statesmen of Russia. Myths, lies and slander against him almost exceed the amount of slop poured on the name of Stalin. It is all the more important for us to understand who Beria really was.

On June 26, 1953, three tank regiments stationed near Moscow received an order from the Minister of Defense to load up on ammunition and enter the capital. The motorized rifle division received the same order. Two air divisions and a formation of jet bombers were ordered to wait in full combat readiness for an order to bombard the Kremlin. Subsequently, a version of all these preparations was voiced: the Minister of the Interior, Beria, was preparing a coup d'état, which needed to be prevented, Beria himself was arrested, tried and shot. For 50 years, this version has not been questioned by anyone. An ordinary, and not a very ordinary person knows only two things about Lavrenty Beria: he was an executioner and a sexual maniac. Everything else has been removed from history. So it’s even strange: why did Stalin endure this useless and gloomy figure near him? Afraid, right? Mystery. Yes, I was not at all afraid! And there is no mystery. Moreover, without understanding the true role of this man, it is impossible to understand the Stalin era. Because in fact, everything was completely different from what the people who seized power in the USSR and privatized all the victories and achievements of their predecessors later came up with.

St. Petersburg journalist Elena Prudnikova, the author of sensational historical investigations, a participant in the historical and journalistic project "Mysteries of History", tells about a completely different Lavrenty Beria on the pages of our newspaper. "Economic Miracle" in Transcaucasia Many of us have heard about the "Japanese economic miracle". But who knows about Georgian? In the autumn of 1931, the young security officer Lavrenty Beria became the first secretary of the Communist Party of Georgia - a very remarkable person. In 1920 he ran an illegal network in Menshevik Georgia. In the 23rd, when the republic came under the control of the Bolsheviks, he fought against banditry and achieved impressive results - by the beginning of this year there were 31 gangs in Georgia, by the end of the year there were only 10 left. In the 25th, Beria was awarded the Order of the Battle Red Banner. By 1929, he became simultaneously the chairman of the GPU of Transcaucasia and the plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU in the region. But, oddly enough, Beria stubbornly tried to part with the KGB service, dreaming of finally completing his education and becoming a builder. In 1930, he even wrote a desperate letter to Ordzhonikidze. “Dear Sergo! I know you will say that now is not the time to bring up the subject of education. But what to do. I feel like I can't take it anymore." In Moscow, they fulfilled the request exactly the opposite. So, in the fall of 1931, Beria became the first secretary of the Communist Party of Georgia. A year later - the first secretary of the Transcaucasian regional committee, in fact, the owner of the region. And we really, really don’t like to talk about how he worked in this post. Beria's district got one more.

Industry as such did not exist. A poor, hungry outskirts. As you know, since 1927, collectivization has been going on in the USSR. By 1931, 36% of the farms were driven into the collective farms of Georgia, but this did not make the population less hungry. And then Beria made a knight's move. He stopped collectivization. Leave private traders alone. But on the collective farms they began to grow not bread and not corn, from which there was no sense, but valuable crops: tea, citrus fruits, tobacco, grapes. And here the large agricultural enterprises justified themselves one hundred percent! Collective farms began to grow rich at such a rate that the peasants themselves poured into them. By 1939, without any coercion, 86% of farms were socialized. One example: in 1930, the area of ​​tangerine plantations was one and a half thousand hectares, in 1940 - 20 thousand. The yield per tree has increased, in some farms - as much as 20 times. When you go to the market for Abkhazian tangerines, remember Lavrenty Pavlovich! In industry, he worked just as effectively. During the first five-year plan, the gross industrial output of Georgia alone increased almost 6 times. For the second five-year plan - another 5 times. It was the same in other Transcaucasian republics. It was under Beria, for example, that they began to drill the shelves of the Caspian Sea, for which he was accused of extravagance: why bother with all sorts of nonsense! But now a real war between the superpowers is going on for Caspian oil and for its transportation routes. At the same time, Transcaucasia became the "resort capital" of the USSR - who then thought about the "resort business"? By the level of education already in 1938 Georgia took one of the first places in the Union, and by the number of students per thousand souls it overtook England and Germany. In short, during the seven years that Beria was in the post of "chief man" in Transcaucasia, he shook the economy of the backward republics so much that until the 90s they were among the richest in the Union. If you look at it, the doctors of economic sciences who carried out perestroika in the USSR have a lot to learn from this Chekist. But that was a time when not political talkers, but business executives were worth their weight in gold.

Stalin could not miss such a person. And the appointment of Beria to Moscow was not the result of apparatus intrigues, as they are now trying to imagine, but a completely natural thing: a person who works in the region like this can be entrusted with big things in the country.

Lavrenty Beria in 1934

Crazed Sword of Revolution

In our country, the name of Beria is primarily associated with repressions. On this occasion, let me ask you the simplest question: when were the “Beria repressions”? Date please! She is not. The then head of the NKVD, comrade Yezhov, is responsible for the notorious "37th year". There was even such an expression - "hedgehogs". Post-war repressions were also carried out when Beria did not work in the bodies, and when he came there in 1953, the first thing he did was to stop them. When there were "Beria rehabilitations" - this is clearly recorded in history. And the “Beria repressions” are in their purest form a product of “black PR”. And what was really? The country had no luck with the leaders of the Cheka-OGPU from the very beginning. Dzerzhinsky was a strong, strong-willed and honest man, but, extremely busy with work in the government, he left the department for deputies. His successor Menzhinsky was seriously ill and did the same. The main cadres of the “organs” were the nominees of the times of the Civil War, poorly educated, unprincipled and cruel, one can imagine what kind of situation prevailed there. Moreover, already from the end of the 1920s, the leaders of this department were increasingly nervous about any kind of control over their activities: Yezhov was a new person in the "organs", he started well, but quickly fell under the influence of his deputy Frinovsky. He taught the new People's Commissar the basics of Chekist work right "in production." The basics were extremely simple: the more enemies of the people we catch, the better; You can and should hit, but hitting and drinking is even more fun. Drunk on vodka, blood and impunity, the People's Commissar soon frankly "floated".

He did not particularly hide his new views from others. “What are you afraid of? he said at one of the banquets. After all, all power is in our hands. Whom we want - we execute, whom we want - we have mercy: After all, we are everything. It is necessary that everyone, starting from the secretary of the regional committee, walk under you: “If the secretary of the regional committee was supposed to walk under the head of the regional department of the NKVD, then who, one wonders, was supposed to walk under Yezhov? With such personnel and such views, the NKVD became mortally dangerous for both the authorities and the country. It is difficult to say when the Kremlin began to realize what was happening. Probably somewhere in the first half of 1938. But to realize - they realized, but how to curb the monster? The way out is to imprison your own person, of such a level of loyalty, courage and professionalism that he can, on the one hand, cope with the management of the NKVD, and on the other hand, stop the monster. It is unlikely that Stalin had a large selection of such people. Well, at least one was found. Curbing the NKVD In 1938, Beria, in the rank of deputy people's commissar of internal affairs, became the head of the Main Directorate of State Security, seizing control of the most dangerous structure. Almost immediately, just before the November holidays, the entire top of the people's commissariat was dismissed and mostly arrested. Then, placing reliable people in key positions, Beria began to deal with what his predecessor had done. Presumptuous Chekists were fired, arrested, and some were shot. (By the way, later, having again become the Minister of the Interior in 1953, do you know what order Beria issued the very first? On the prohibition of torture! He knew where he was going. The organs were cleaned up cool: 7372 people (22.9%) were fired from the rank and file, 3830 people (62%) out of the managerial one.

At the same time, they began to check complaints and review cases. Recently published data made it possible to assess the scope of this work. For example, in 1937-38, about 30 thousand people were dismissed from the army for political reasons. Returned to service after the change of leadership of the NKVD 12.5 thousand. It turns out about 40%. According to the most rough estimates, since the full details have not yet been made public, in total, up to 1941 inclusive, 150-180 thousand people out of 630 thousand convicted during the years of Yezhovshchina were released from camps and prisons. That is about 30 percent. It took a long time to “normalize” the NKVD and it was not possible to the end, although work was carried out until 1945 itself. Sometimes you have to deal with absolutely incredible facts. For example, in 1941, especially in those places where the Germans were advancing, they did not stand on ceremony with the prisoners - the war, they say, would write off everything. However, it was not possible to write off the war. From June 22 to December 31, 1941 (the most difficult months of the war!) 227 NKVD workers were brought to criminal responsibility for abuse of power. Of these, 19 people received capital punishment for extrajudicial executions. Beria also owns another invention of the era - "sharashki". Among those arrested there were many people who were very necessary for the country. Of course, these were not poets and writers, who are shouted about the most and loudest, but scientists, engineers, designers, who primarily worked for defense. Repression in this environment is a special topic. Who and under what circumstances imprisoned the developers of military equipment in the conditions of the impending war? The question is by no means rhetorical.

Firstly, there were real German agents in the NKVD who, on real assignments from real German intelligence, tried to neutralize people useful to the Soviet defense complex. Secondly, there were no less “dissidents” in those days than in the late 80s. In addition, the environment is incredibly quarrelsome, and denunciation in it has always been a favorite means of settling scores and career growth. Be that as it may, having accepted the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, Beria was faced with the fact that in his department there were hundreds of arrested scientists and designers, whose work the country desperately needs. As it is now fashionable to say - feel like a people's commissar! There is a task before you. This person may be guilty, or may be innocent, but he is necessary. What to do? Write: “Free”, showing subordinates an example of lawlessness of the opposite nature? Check things? Yes, of course, but you have a closet with 600,000 cases. In fact, each of them needs to be re-investigated, but there are no personnel. If we are talking about someone who has already been convicted, it is also necessary to achieve an annulment of the sentence. Who to start with? From scientists? From the military? And time goes by, people are sitting, the war is getting closer ... Beria quickly orientated himself. Already on January 10, 1939, he signed an order to organize a Special Technical Bureau. Research topics are purely military: aircraft construction, shipbuilding, shells, armor steel. Entire groups were formed from specialists in these industries who were in prisons. When an opportunity presented itself, Beria tried to free these people. For example, on May 25, 1940, aircraft designer Tupolev was sentenced to 15 years in camps, and in the summer he was released under an amnesty.

The designer Petlyakov was amnestied on July 25 and already in January 1941 he was awarded the Stalin Prize. A large group of developers of military equipment was released in the summer of 1941, another in 1943, the rest were released from 1944 to 1948. When you read what has been written about Beria, one gets the impression that he caught “enemies of the people” like this throughout the war. Yes, sure! He had nothing to do! On March 21, 1941, Beria became deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. To begin with, he oversees the people's commissariats of the timber, coal and oil industries, non-ferrous metallurgy, soon adding ferrous metallurgy here. And from the very beginning of the war, more and more defense industries fell on his shoulders, since in the first place he was not a Chekist and not a party leader, but an excellent organizer of production. That is why he was entrusted in 1945 with the atomic project, on which the very existence of the Soviet Union depended. He wanted to punish the murderers of Stalin. And for this he himself was killed.

Two chiefs

Already a week after the start of the war, on June 30, an emergency authority was established - the State Defense Committee, in whose hands all power in the country was concentrated. Stalin, of course, became the chairman of the GKO. But who entered the office besides him? This question is neatly avoided in most publications. For one very simple reason: among the five members of the GKO there is one unmentioned person. In a brief history of the Second World War (1985 edition) in the index of names given at the end of the book, where there are such persons vital for victory as Ovid and Shandor Petofi, Beria is not. Was not, did not fight, did not participate ...

So, there were five of them. Stalin, Molotov, Malenkov, Beria, Voroshilov. And three commissioners: Voznesensky, Mikoyan, Kaganovich. But soon the war began to make its own adjustments. From February 1942, instead of Voznesensky, Beria began to oversee the production of weapons and ammunition. Officially. (But in reality, he was already doing this in the summer of 1941.) In the same winter, the production of tanks was also in his hands. Again, not because of any intrigue, but because he was better at it. The results of Beria's work are best seen from the figures. If on June 22 the Germans had 47 thousand guns and mortars against our 36 thousand, then by November 1, 1942, these figures were equal, and by January 1, 1944, we had 89 thousand of them against the German 54.5 thousand. From 1942 to 1944, the USSR produced 2,000 tanks per month, far ahead of Germany. On May 11, 1944, Beria became chairman of the Operational Bureau of the GKO and deputy chairman of the Committee, in fact, the second person in the country after Stalin. On August 20, 1945, he takes on the most difficult task of that time, which was a matter of survival for the USSR - he becomes chairman of the Special Committee on the creation of an atomic bomb (where he performed another miracle - the first Soviet atomic bomb, contrary to all forecasts, was tested just four years later , August 20, 1949). Not a single person from the Politburo, and indeed not a single person in the USSR, even came close to Beria in terms of the importance of the tasks being solved, in terms of the scope of authority, and, obviously, simply in terms of the scale of his personality. In fact, the post-war USSR was at that time a double star system: seventy-year-old Stalin and young - in 1949 he was only fifty - Beria.

Head of state and his natural successor.

It is this fact that Khrushchev's and post-Khrushchev's historians hid so diligently in the funnels of silence and under heaps of lies. Because if the Minister of Internal Affairs was killed on June 23, 1953, this still draws on the fight against the putsch, and if the head of state was killed, then this is the putsch itself ... Stalin's scenario If we trace the information about Beria, wandering from publication to publication, to its original source, then almost all of it follows from Khrushchev's memoirs. A person who, in general, cannot be trusted, since a comparison of his memoirs with other sources gives them an exorbitant amount of unreliable information. Who just did not make "political" analyzes of the situation in the winter of 1952-1953. What combinations were not invented, what options were not calculated. That Beria blocked with Malenkov, with Khrushchev, that he was on his own ... These analyzes sin only in one thing - as a rule, the figure of Stalin is completely excluded from them. It is tacitly believed that the leader had retired by that time, was almost in insanity ...

There is only one source - the memoirs of Nikita Sergeevich. But why, exactly, should we believe them? And Beria’s son Sergo, for example, who saw Stalin fifteen times during 1952 at meetings devoted to missile weapons, recalled that the leader did not seem to have weakened his mind at all ... The post-war period of our history is no less dark than pre-Rurik Russia. What happened then in the country, no one really knows, probably. It is known that after 1949, Stalin somewhat stepped aside from business, leaving all the “turnover” to chance and to Malenkov. But one thing is clear: something was being prepared. According to indirect data, it can be assumed that Stalin conceived some very large reform, primarily economic, and only then, perhaps, political. Another thing is also clear: the leader was old and sick, he knew it very well, he did not suffer from a lack of courage and could not help but think about what would happen to the state after his death, and not look for a successor. If Beria were of any other nationality, there would be no problems. But one Georgian after another on the throne of the empire! Even Stalin would not do such a thing. It is known that in the post-war years, Stalin slowly but steadily squeezed the party apparatus out of the captain's cabin. Of course, the functionaries could not be satisfied with this. In October 1952, at the Congress of the CPSU, Stalin gave the party a decisive battle, asking to be relieved of his duties as General Secretary. It didn't work out, they didn't let go. Then Stalin came up with a combination that is easy to read: a deliberately weak figure becomes the head of state, and the real head, the "grey eminence", is formally on the sidelines. And so it happened: after the death of Stalin, the uninitiated Malenkov became the first, and in reality Beria was in charge of politics. He not only carried out an amnesty. Behind him is, for example, a decree condemning the forced Russification of Lithuania and Western Ukraine, he also proposed a beautiful solution to the “German” issue: if Beria had remained in power, the Berlin Wall simply would not exist. Well, along the way, he again took up the “normalization” of the NKVD, starting the rehabilitation process, so that Khrushchev and the company then had only to jump on an already running steam locomotive, pretending that they had been there from the very beginning. It was later that they all said that they "did not agree" with Beria, that he "pressed" them. Then they talked a lot. But in fact, they fully agreed with Beria's initiatives. But then something happened. Calmly! This is a coup! A meeting of either the Presidium of the Central Committee or the Presidium of the Council of Ministers was scheduled for June 26 in the Kremlin. According to the official version, the military, led by Marshal Zhukov, came to him, the members of the Presidium called them into the office, and they arrested Beria. Then he was taken to a special bunker in the courtyard of the headquarters of the MVO troops, an investigation was conducted and he was shot.

This version does not stand up to scrutiny. Why - talk about it for a long time, but there are a lot of frank stretches and inconsistencies in it ... Let's just say one thing: none of the outsiders, uninterested people after June 26, 1953 saw Beria alive. The last time his son Sergo saw him was in the morning, at the dacha. According to his recollections, his father was going to call on a city apartment, then go to the Kremlin, to a meeting of the Presidium. Around noon, Sergo received a call from his friend, the pilot Amet-Khan, who said that there had been a shootout at Beria's house and that his father, apparently, was no longer alive. Sergo, together with a member of the Special Committee Vannikov, rushed to the address and managed to see broken windows, broken doors, a wall covered with traces of bullets from a heavy machine gun. Meanwhile, members of the Presidium gathered in the Kremlin. What happened there? Making our way through the rubble of lies, bit by bit recreating what was happening, we managed to roughly reconstruct the events. After Beria was finished, the perpetrators of this operation - presumably they were the military from Khrushchev's old, still Ukrainian team, whom he pulled to Moscow, led by Moskalenko - went to the Kremlin. At the same time, another group of soldiers arrived there.

People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR L.P. Beria with the daughter of I.V. Stalin Svetlana. 1930s. Photo from the personal archive of E. Kovalenko. RIA News

It was headed by Marshal Zhukov, and among its members was Colonel Brezhnev. Curious, right? Further, presumably, everything unfolded like this. Among the putschists were at least two members of the Presidium - Khrushchev and Defense Minister Bulganin (they are constantly referred to in their memoirs by Moskalenko and others). They put the rest of the government members before the fact: Beria was killed, something must be done about it. The whole team involuntarily ended up in the same boat and began to hide the ends. Much more interesting is something else: why was Beria killed? The day before, he returned from a ten-day trip to Germany, met with Malenkov, and discussed with him the agenda for the June 26 meeting. Everything was amazing. If something happened, then in the last day. And, most likely, it was somehow connected with the upcoming meeting. True, there is an agenda that has been preserved in the archives of Malenkov. But it's most likely fake. No information has been preserved about what the meeting was really supposed to be devoted to. It would seem ... But there was one person who could know about it. Sergo Beria said in an interview that his father told him in the morning at the dacha that at the upcoming meeting he was going to demand authorization from the Presidium for the arrest of the former Minister of State Security Ignatiev.

And now everything is clear! So it couldn't be clearer. The fact is that Ignatiev was in charge of Stalin's security in the last year of his life. It was he who knew what happened at Stalin's dacha on the night of March 1, 1953, when the leader had a stroke. And something happened there, about which, many years later, the surviving guards continued to lie mediocrely and too obviously. And Beria, who kissed the hand of the dying Stalin, would have snatched all his secrets from Ignatiev. And then he set up a political trial for the whole world over him and his accomplices, no matter what posts they held. This is just in his style ... No, these very accomplices should never have been allowed to arrest Ignatiev by Beria. But how can you keep it? It remained only to kill - which was done ... Well, and then they hid the ends. By order of the Minister of Defense Bulganin, a grandiose "Tank Show" was arranged (just as mediocrely repeated in 1991). Khrushchev’s lawyers, under the leadership of the new Prosecutor General Rudenko, also a native of Ukraine, staged a trial (stage plays are still a favorite pastime of the prosecutor’s office). Then the memory of all the good that Beria did was carefully erased, and vulgar tales of a bloody executioner and a sexual maniac were put into use.

As part of the "black PR" Khrushchev was talented. It seems that this was his only talent ... And he was not a sex maniac either! The idea of ​​presenting Beria as a sex maniac was first voiced at the Plenum of the Central Committee in July 1953. The secretary of the Central Committee, Shatalin, who, as he claimed, did a search in Beria's office, found in the safe "a large number of objects of a lecherous man." Then Beria's security guard Sarkisov spoke, telling about his numerous connections with women. Naturally, no one checked all this, but gossip was started up and went for a walk around the country. “Being a morally decomposed person, Beria cohabited with numerous women ...” - the investigators wrote down in the “verdict”. There is also a list of these women in the file. That's just bad luck: it almost completely coincides with the list of women with whom General Vlasik, the head of Stalin's security, who was arrested a year before, was accused of cohabiting. Wow, how unlucky Lavrenty Pavlovich was. There were such opportunities, and the women got exclusively from under Vlasik! And if without laughter, then it’s as easy as shelling pears: they took a list from the Vlasik case and added it to the “Beria case”. Who will check? Many years later, in one of her interviews, Nina Beria said a very simple phrase: “An amazing thing: Lavrenty was busy day and night with work when he had to deal with a legion of these women!” Ride through the streets, take them to country villas, and even to your home, where there was a Georgian wife and a son lived with his family. However, when it comes to denigrating a dangerous enemy, who cares what really happened?

Elena Prudnikova

Member of the Politburo (Presidium) of the Central Committee of the CPSU - March 18, 1946 - July 7, 1953
Deputy Chairman of the State Defense Committee of the USSR - May 16, 1944 - September 4, 1945
Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR - March 5 - June 26, 1953
Predecessor: Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov
Successor: Sergei Nikiforovich Kruglov

First Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks October 17, 1932 - April 23, 1937
Predecessor: Ivan Dmitrievich Orakhelashvili

First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia November 14, 1931 - August 31, 1938
Predecessor: Lavrenty Iosifovich Kartvelishvili
Successor: Kandid Nesterovich Charkviani

First Secretary of the Tbilisi City Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia May 1937 - August 31, 1938
People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR - April 4, 1927 - December 1930
Predecessor: Alexey Alexandrovich Gegechkori
Successor: Sergei Arsenievich Goglidze

Birth: 17 (29) March 1899
Merkheuli, Gumista area, Sukhumi district, Kutaisi province, Russian Empire
Death: December 23, 1953 (age 54) Moscow, RSFSR, USSR
Place of burial: Donskoy cemetery
Father: Pavel Khukhaevich Beria
Mother: Marta Vissarionovna Jakeli
Wife: Nino Teimurazovna Gegechkori
Children: son: Sergo
Party: RSDLP(b) since 1917, RCP(b) since 1918, VKP(b) since 1925, CPSU since 1952
Education: Baku Polytechnic Institute

Military service
Years of service: 1938-1953
Type of troops: NKVD
Title: Marshal of the Soviet Union
Commanded: Head of the GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR (1938)
People's Commissar of the USSR VD (1938-1945)
Member of the GKO (1941-1944)
Battles: Great Patriotic War

Awards:
Hero of Socialist Labor
Order of Lenin Order of Lenin Order of Lenin Order of Lenin
Order of Lenin Order of the Red Banner Order of the Red Banner Order of Suvorov I degree
Medal "XX Years of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army"
Medal "For the Defense of Moscow"

Medal "For the Defense of the Caucasus"



MN Order Sukhebator rib1961.svg
Order of the Red Banner (Mongolia)
Medal "25th Anniversary of the Mongolian People's Revolution"
Order of the Republic (Tuva)
Order of the Red Banner of the Georgian SSR
Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Georgian SSR
Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Azerbaijan SSR Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Armenian SSR

Honorary State Security Officer
Named weapon - pistol system "Browning"
Stalin Prize
Stalin Prize

Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria (Georgian ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია, Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria; March 17, 1899, the village of Merheuli Sukhumi district of Kutaisi province., Russian Empire - December 23, 1953, Moscow) - Russian revolutionary, Soviet statesman and politician, General Commissar of State Security (1941), Marshal of the Soviet Union (1945), Hero of Socialist Labor (1943), deprived of these titles in 1953 in connection with accusations of organizing "Stalinist" repressions.

Since 1941, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers (Council of People's Commissars until 1946) of the USSR Joseph Stalin, with his death on March 5, 1953 - First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR G. Malenkov and at the same time the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR. Member of the State Defense Committee of the USSR (1941-1944), Deputy Chairman of the State Defense Committee of the USSR (1944-1945). Member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR of the 7th convocation, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st-3rd convocations. Member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (1934-1953), candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee (1939-1946), member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (1946-1952), member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU (1952-1953). He was a member of the inner circle of I.V. Stalin. He oversaw a number of the most important branches of the defense industry, including all developments related to the creation of nuclear weapons and rocket technology. Supervised the implementation of the nuclear program of the USSR. [source not specified 74 days]

On June 26, 1953, L.P. Beria was arrested (fearing arrest, Khrushchev and the conspirators initiated a criminal case) on charges of espionage and conspiracy to seize power.

On December 23, 1953, at 7:50 p.m., he was shot by the verdict of the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR. The body was cremated in the oven of the 1st Moscow crematorium (at the Donskoy cemetery).

Biography
Childhood and youth
Settlement of Merkheuli in the Sukhumi district of the Kutaisi province (now in the Gulrypsh district of Abkhazia) in a poor peasant family.
His mother, Marta Dzhakeli (1868-1955), a Mingrelian, according to Sergo Beria and fellow villagers, was distantly related to the Mingrelian princely family of Dadiani. After the death of her first husband, Marta was left with her son and two daughters in her arms. Later, due to extreme poverty, the children from Martha's first marriage were taken in by her brother, Dmitry.

Lawrence's father, Pavel Khukhaevich Beria (1872-1922), moved to Merkheuli from Megrelia. Martha and Pavel had three children in the family, but one of the sons died at the age of 2, and the daughter remained deaf and mute after an illness. Noticing Lavrenty's good abilities, his parents tried to give him a good education - at the Sukhum Higher Primary School. To pay for tuition and living, parents had to sell half the house.

In 1915, Beria, with honors (according to other sources, he studied mediocrely, and was left for the second year in the fourth grade), after graduating from the Sukhumi Higher Primary School, he left for Baku and entered the Baku Secondary Mechanical and Technical Construction School. From the age of 17, he supported his mother and deaf-mute sister, who moved in with him. Working since 1916 as an intern at the main office of the Nobel oil company, at the same time he continued his studies at the school. In 1919 he graduated from it, having received a diploma of a technician-builder-architect.

Since 1915, he was a member of an illegal Marxist circle of a mechanical construction school, was its treasurer. In March 1917, Beria became a member of the RSDLP (b). In June-December 1917, he traveled to the Romanian front as a technician of a hydraulic engineering detachment, served in Odessa, then in Pashkani (Romania), was commissioned due to illness and returned to Baku, where from February 1918 he worked in the city organization of the Bolsheviks and the secretariat of the Baku Council workers' deputies. After the defeat of the Baku commune and the capture of Baku by the Turkish-Azerbaijani troops (September 1918), he remained in the city and participated in the work of the underground Bolshevik organization until the establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan (April 1920). From October 1918 to January 1919 - a clerk at the "Caspian Partnership White City" plant, Baku.

In the autumn of 1919, on the instructions of the head of the Baku Bolshevik underground, A. Mikoyan, he became an agent of the Organization for the Fight against Counter-Revolution (counterintelligence) under the State Defense Committee of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic.
During this period, he established a close relationship with Zinaida Krems (Kreps), who had connections with German military intelligence. In his autobiography, dated October 22, 1923, Beria wrote:

“During the first period of the Turkish occupation, I worked in the White City at the Caspian Partnership plant as a clerk. In the autumn of the same 1919, from the Gummet party, I entered the counterintelligence service, where I worked together with Comrade Mussevi. Approximately in March 1920, after the assassination of Comrade Mussevi, I leave my work in counterintelligence and work for a short time in the Baku customs "
Beria did not hide his work in ADR counterintelligence - for example, in a letter to G.K. Ordzhonikidze in 1933, he wrote that “he was sent to Musavat intelligence by the party and that this issue was dealt with in the Central Committee of the Azerbaijan Communist Party (b) in 1920”, that the Central Committee of the AKP (b) “completely rehabilitated” him, since “the fact of working in counterintelligence with the knowledge of the party was confirmed by the statements of comrades. Mirza Davud Huseynova, Kasum Izmailova and others.”

In April 1920, after the establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan, he was sent to work illegally in the Georgian Democratic Republic as an authorized representative of the Caucasian Regional Committee of the RCP (b) and the registration department of the Caucasian Front under the Revolutionary Military Council of the 11th Army. Almost immediately he was arrested in Tiflis and released with an order to leave Georgia within three days. In his autobiography, Beria wrote:

“From the very first days after the April coup in Azerbaijan, the regional committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) from the registrar of the Caucasian Front under the Revolutionary Military Council of the 11th Army was sent to Georgia for underground work abroad as an authorized representative. In Tiflis, I contact the regional committee in the person of Comrade. Hmayak Nazaretyan, spreading a network of residents in Georgia and Armenia, establishing contact with the headquarters of the Georgian army and guards, regularly sending couriers to the register of the city of Baku. In Tiflis, I was arrested together with the Central Committee of Georgia, but according to the negotiations between G. Sturua and Noah Zhordania, they released everyone with a proposal to leave Georgia within 3 days. However, I manage to stay, having entered the service under the pseudonym Lakerbaya in the representative office of the RSFSR to Comrade Kirov, who by that time had arrived in the city of Tiflis.
Later, participating in the preparation of an armed uprising against the Georgian Menshevik government, he was exposed by local counterintelligence, arrested and imprisoned in Kutaisi prison, then exiled to Azerbaijan. About this he writes:

“In May 1920, I went to Baku to register to receive directives in connection with the conclusion of a peace treaty with Georgia, but on the way back to Tiflis I was arrested by Noah Ramishvili’s telegram and taken to Tiflis, from where, despite Comrade Kirov’s troubles, I was sent to Kutaisi prison. June and July of 1920 I am imprisoned, only after four and a half days of a hunger strike declared by political prisoners, I am deported to Azerbaijan in stages. »
Shatunovskaya O. G. describes the episode of Beria’s arrest in Baku, mentioning Bagirov, who was later shot (in 1956): “Beria ... was not in Azerbaijan for a long time. In Azerbaijan he was imprisoned ... He was imprisoned as a provocateur, and Bagirov released him. Kirov At that time he was a permanent representative in Tbilisi.He sent a telegram to the headquarters of the 11th Army, to the Revolutionary Military Council, Ordzhonikidze: "The provocateur Beria has escaped, arrest him."

In the state security bodies of Azerbaijan and Georgia
Returning to Baku, Beria several times tried to continue his studies at the Baku Polytechnic Institute, into which the school was transformed, he completed three courses. In August 1920, he became the manager of the affairs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Azerbaijan, and in October of the same year, he became the executive secretary of the Extraordinary Commission for the Expropriation of the Bourgeoisie and the Improvement of the Life of the Workers, having worked in this position until February 1921. In April 1921, he was appointed deputy head of the Secret Operational Department of the Cheka under the Council of People's Commissars (SNK) of the Azerbaijan SSR, and in May he took the positions of head of the secret operational unit and deputy chairman of the Azerbaijan Cheka. The chairman of the Cheka of the Azerbaijan SSR was then Mir Jafar Baghirov.

In 1921, Beria was sharply criticized by the party and Chekist leadership of Azerbaijan for exceeding his authority and falsifying criminal cases, but he escaped serious punishment. (Anastas Mikoyan petitioned for him.)

In 1922, he participated in the defeat of the Muslim organization "Ittihad" and the liquidation of the Transcaucasian organization of the right SRs.

In November 1922, Beria was transferred to Tiflis, where he was appointed head of the Secret Operational Unit and deputy chairman of the Cheka under the Council of People's Commissars of the Georgian SSR, later transformed into the Georgian GPU (State Political Administration), with the combination of the post of head of the Special Department of the Transcaucasian Army.
In July 1923 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of the Republic by the Central Executive Committee of Georgia.

In 1924 he participated in the suppression of the Menshevik uprising, was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of the USSR.

Since March 1926 - Deputy Chairman of the GPU of the Georgian SSR, head of the Secret Operational Unit.

On December 2, 1926, Lavrenty Beria became the chairman of the GPU under the SNK of the Georgian SSR (until December 3, 1931), deputy plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU under the SNK of the USSR in the TSFSR and deputy chairman of the GPU under the SNK of the ZSFSR (until April 17, 1931). At the same time, from December 1926 to April 17, 1931, he was the head of the Secret Operational Directorate of the Plenipotentiary Representation of the OGPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR in the ZSFSR and the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the ZSFSR.

At the same time, from April 1927 to December 1930, he was People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR. Apparently, his first meeting with Stalin dates back to this period.

On June 6, 1930, by the decision of the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of the Georgian SSR, Lavrenty Beria was appointed a member of the Presidium (later the Bureau) of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia. On April 17, 1931, he took the post of chairman of the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the ZSFSR, plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR in the ZSFSR and head of the Special Department of the OGPU of the Caucasian Red Banner Army (until December 3, 1931). At the same time, from August 18 to December 3, 1931, he was a member of the collegium of the OGPU of the USSR.

At party work in Transcaucasia

On October 31, 1931, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks recommended L.P. Beria to the post of second secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee (in office until October 17, 1932), on November 14, 1931, he became the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks of Georgia (until August 31 1938), and on October 17, 1932 - the first secretary of the Transcaucasian regional committee, while maintaining the post of first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia, was elected a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Armenia and Azerbaijan.
On December 5, 1936, the TSFSR was divided into three independent republics, the Transcaucasian Territory Committee was liquidated by a decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on April 23, 1937.

On March 10, 1933, the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks included Beria in the mailing list of materials sent to members of the Central Committee - the minutes of meetings of the Politburo, the Organizing Bureau, the Secretariat of the Central Committee. In 1934, at the 17th Congress of the CPSU(b), he was elected a member of the Central Committee for the first time.

On March 20, 1934, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was included in the commission chaired by L. M. Kaganovich, created to develop the draft Regulations on the NKVD of the USSR and the Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR.

In December 1934, Beria attended a reception at Stalin's in honor of his 55th birthday.

In early March 1935, Beria was elected a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and its presidium. On March 17, 1935, he was awarded his first Order of Lenin. In May 1937, he concurrently headed the Tbilisi city committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia (until August 31, 1938).

In 1935 he published the book "On the History of the Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia" (according to the researchers, its real authors were Malakia Toroshelidze and Eric Bedia). In the draft edition of Stalin's Works at the end of 1935, Beria was listed as a member of the editorial board, as well as a candidate for the editors of individual volumes.

During the leadership of L.P. Beria, the national economy of the region developed rapidly. Beria made a great contribution to the development of the oil industry in Transcaucasia, under him many large industrial facilities were put into operation (Zemo-Avchalskaya hydroelectric power station, etc.). Georgia was transformed into an all-Union resort area. By 1940, the volume of industrial production in Georgia increased by 10 times compared to 1913, agricultural production by 2.5 times, with a fundamental change in the structure of agriculture towards highly profitable crops of the subtropical zone. For agricultural products produced in the subtropics (grapes, tea, tangerines, etc.), high purchase prices were set: the Georgian peasantry was the most prosperous in the country.

It is alleged that before his death (apparently as a result of poisoning), Nestor Lakoba called Beria his killer.

In September 1937, together with G. M. Malenkov and A. I. Mikoyan sent from Moscow, he carried out a “cleansing” of the Armenian party organization. The “Great Purge” also took place in Georgia, where many party and government officials were repressed. Here, the so-called conspiracy among the party leadership of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia was "revealed", the participants of which allegedly planned the secession of Transcaucasia from the USSR and the transition under the protectorate of Great Britain.
In Georgia, in particular, the persecution of the People's Commissar for Education of the Georgian SSR, Gaioz Devdariani, began. His brother Shalva, who held important positions in the state security organs and the Communist Party, was executed. In the end, Gaioz Devdariani was accused of violating Article 58 and, on suspicion of counter-revolutionary activities, was executed in 1938 by the NKVD troika. In addition to party functionaries, local intellectuals also suffered from the purge, even those who tried to stay away from politics, including Mikheil Javakhishvili, Titian Tabidze, Sandro Akhmeteli, Yevgeny Mikeladze, Dmitry Shevardnadze, Georgy Eliava, Grigory Tsereteli and others.

From January 17, 1938, from the 1st session of the USSR Supreme Council of the 1st convocation, member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

In the NKVD of the USSR
On August 22, 1938, Beria was appointed First Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR N. I. Yezhov. Simultaneously with Beria, another 1st deputy people's commissar (from 04/15/37) was MP Frinovsky, who headed the 1st department of the NKVD of the USSR. On September 8, 1938, Frinovsky was appointed People's Commissar of the Navy of the USSR and left the posts of the 1st Deputy People's Commissar and Head of the NKVD Department of the USSR, on the same day, September 8, L.P. Beria replaced him in his last post - from September 29, 1938 the head of the Main Directorate of State Security restored in the structure of the NKVD (December 17, 1938, Beria will be replaced by V.N. Merkulov, the 1st Deputy People's Commissar of the NKVD from 12/16/38). On September 11, 1938, L.P. Beria was awarded the title of Commissar of State Security of the 1st rank.

According to Barsenkov A.S. and Vdovin A.I., with the advent of L.P. Beria to the post of head of the NKVD, the scale of repressions sharply decreased, the Great Terror ended. In 1939, 2,600 people were sentenced to capital punishment on charges of counter-revolutionary crimes, and 1,600 in 1940. In 1939-1940, the overwhelming majority of those not convicted in 1937-1938 were released; Also, some of those convicted and sent to camps were released. According to data cited by V.N. Zemskov, in 1938 279,966 people were released. The expert commission of Moscow State University found factual errors in the textbook by Barsenkov and Vdovin and estimates the number of those released in 1939-1940 at 150-200 thousand people. “In certain circles of society, he has since had a reputation as a man who restored “socialist legality” at the very end of the 30s,” noted Yakov Etinger.

He oversaw the operation to eliminate Leon Trotsky.

From November 25, 1938 to February 3, 1941, Beria led Soviet foreign intelligence (then it was part of the functions of the NKVD of the USSR; from February 3, 1941, foreign intelligence was transferred to the newly formed People's Commissariat of State Security of the USSR, which was headed by Beria's former first deputy in NKVD V. N. Merkulov). According to Martirosyan, Beria quickly stopped Yezhov's lawlessness and terror that reigned in the NKVD (including foreign intelligence) and in the army, including military intelligence. Under the leadership of Beria in 1939-1940, a powerful agent network of Soviet foreign intelligence was created in Europe, as well as in Japan and the USA.

On March 22, 1939, he was a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. On January 30, 1941, L.P. Beria was awarded the title of General Commissar of State Security. February 3, 1941 was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. As deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, he supervised the work of the NKVD, the NKGB, the people's commissariats of the timber and oil industries, non-ferrous metals, and the river fleet.

The Great Patriotic War
During the Great Patriotic War, from June 30, 1941, L.P. Beria was a member of the State Defense Committee (GKO). By the GKO resolution of February 4, 1942 on the distribution of responsibilities between GKO members, L.P. Beria was entrusted with the responsibility of monitoring the implementation of GKO decisions on the production of aircraft, engines, weapons and mortars, as well as monitoring the implementation of GKO decisions on the work of the Red Air Force Armies (formation of air regiments, their timely transfer to the front, etc.).

By a GKO resolution of December 8, 1942, L.P. Beria was appointed a member of the Operations Bureau of the GKO. By the same decree, L.P. Beria was additionally entrusted with the duties of monitoring and supervising the work of the People's Commissariat of the Coal Industry and the People's Commissariat of Railways. In May 1944, Beria was appointed deputy chairman of the GKO and chairman of the Operations Bureau. The tasks of the Operational Bureau included, in particular, monitoring and monitoring the work of all people's commissariats of the defense industry, railway and water transport, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, coal, oil, chemical, rubber, paper and pulp, electrical industry, power plants.

Beria also served as permanent adviser to the Headquarters of the High Command of the Armed Forces of the USSR.

During the war years, he carried out responsible assignments of the leadership of the country and the party, both related to the management of the national economy, and at the front. In fact, he led the defense of the Caucasus in 1942. Supervised the production of aircraft and rocket technology.

By a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of September 30, 1943, L.P. Beria was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor "for special merits in the field of strengthening the production of weapons and ammunition in difficult wartime conditions."

During the war years, L.P. Beria was awarded the Order of the Red Banner (Mongolia) (July 15, 1942), the Order of the Republic (Tuva) (August 18, 1943), the Hammer and Sickle medal (September 30, 1943), two Orders of Lenin (30 September 1943, February 21, 1945), Order of the Red Banner (November 3, 1944).

Start of work on a nuclear project
On February 11, 1943, I. V. Stalin signed the decision of the State Defense Committee on the program of work for the creation of an atomic bomb under the leadership of V. M. Molotov. But already in the decree of the GKO of the USSR on the laboratory No. 2 of I. V. Kurchatov, adopted on December 3, 1944, it was L. P. Beria who was entrusted with “monitoring the development of work on uranium”, that is, approximately a year and ten months after their supposed start which was difficult during the war.

Deportation people portation of peoples in the USSR
During the Great Patriotic War, peoples were deported from their places of compact residence. Representatives of peoples whose countries were part of the Nazi coalition (Hungarians, Bulgarians, many Finns) were also deported. The official reason for the deportation was mass desertion, collaborationism and the active anti-Soviet armed struggle of a significant part of these peoples during the Great Patriotic War.

On January 29, 1944, Lavrenty Beria approved the "Instruction on the procedure for the eviction of Chechens and Ingush", and on February 21, he issued an order for the NKVD on the deportation of Chechens and Ingush. On February 20, together with I. A. Serov, B. Z. Kobulov and S. S. Mamulov, Beria arrived in Grozny and personally led the operation, which involved up to 19 thousand operatives of the NKVD, the NKGB and SMERSH, and also about 100 thousand officers and fighters of the NKVD troops drawn from all over the country to participate in "exercises in the highlands." On February 22, he met with the leadership of the republic and the highest spiritual leaders, warned them about the operation and offered to carry out the necessary work among the population, and the eviction operation began the next morning. On February 24, Beria reported to Stalin: "The eviction is proceeding normally ... Of the persons scheduled for removal in connection with the operation, 842 people were arrested."
On the same day, Beria suggested that Stalin evict the Balkars, and on February 26 he issued an order to the NKVD "On measures to evict the Balkar population from the Design Bureau of the ASSR." The day before, Beria, Serov and Kobulov held a meeting with the secretary of the Kabardino-Balkarian regional party committee, Zuber Kumekhov, during which it was planned to visit the Elbrus region in early March. On March 2, Beria, accompanied by Kobulov and Mamulov, traveled to the Elbrus region, informing Kumekhov of his intention to evict the Balkars and transfer their lands to Georgia so that it could have a defensive line on the northern slopes of the Greater Caucasus. On March 5, the State Defense Committee issued a resolution on eviction from the Design Bureau of the ASSR, and on March 8-9, the operation began. On March 11, Beria reported to Stalin that "37,103 people had been evicted from the Balkars," and on March 14 he reported to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

Another major action was the deportation of the Meskhetian Turks, as well as the Kurds and Khemshins living in the border areas with Turkey. On July 24, Beria addressed a letter (No. 7896) to I. Stalin. He wrote:

“For a number of years, a significant part of this population, connected with the residents of the border regions of Turkey by family ties, relations, has shown emigration sentiments, is engaged in smuggling and serves as a source for Turkish intelligence agencies to recruit spy elements and plant bandit groups.”
He noted that "the NKVD of the USSR considers it expedient to relocate 16,700 households of Turks, Kurds, Khemshins from Akhaltsikhe, Akhalkalaki, Adigen, Aspindza, Bogdanovsky districts, some village councils of the Adjara ASSR." On July 31, the State Defense Committee adopted a resolution (No. 6279, “top secret”) on the deportation of 45,516 Meskhetian Turks from the Georgian SSR to the Kazakh, Kirghiz and Uzbek SSRs, as noted in the documents of the Department of Special Settlements of the NKVD of the USSR.

The liberation of the districts from the German occupiers also required new actions in relation to the families of the German accomplices. On August 24, the order of the NKVD signed by Beria “On the eviction from the cities of the Kavmingroup of resorts of the families of active German accomplices, traitors and traitors to the Motherland who voluntarily left with the Germans” followed. On December 2, Beria addressed Stalin with the following letter:

“In connection with the successful completion of the operation to evict from the border regions of the Georgian SSR to the regions of the Uzbek, Kazakh and Kirghiz SSR, 91,095 people - Turks, Kurds, Khemshins, the NKVD of the USSR asks to award orders and medals of the USSR to the most distinguished workers of the NKVD- NKGB and military personnel of the NKVD troops.

Postwar years
Supervising the nuclear project of the USSR[edit | edit wiki text]
See also: Creation of the Soviet atomic bomb and Special Committee
After testing the first American atomic device in the desert near Alamogordo, work in the USSR to create its own nuclear weapons was significantly accelerated.

On the basis of the Order of the State Defense Committee of August 20, 1945. A special committee was created under the GKO. It included L. P. Beria (chairman), G. M. Malenkov, N. A. Voznesensky, B. L. Vannikov, A. P. Zavenyagin, I. V. Kurchatov, P. L. Kapitsa (then refused from participating in the project due to disagreements with L.P. Beria)), V.A. Makhnev, M.G. Pervukhin. The Committee was entrusted with "management of all work on the use of intra-atomic energy of uranium." Later it was renamed into the Special Committee under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and into the Special Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. L.P. Beria, on the one hand, organized and directed the receipt of all the necessary intelligence information, on the other hand, he carried out general management of the entire project. Personnel issues of the project were entrusted to M. G. Pervukhin, V. A. Malyshev, B. L. Vannikov and A. P. Zavenyagin, who provided scientific and engineering personnel for the organization’s activities and selected experts to solve individual issues.

In March 1953, the Special Committee was entrusted with the management of other special works of defense significance. Based on the decision of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU of June 26, 1953 (on the day of the dismissal and arrest of L.P. Beria), the Special Committee was liquidated, and its apparatus was transferred to the newly formed Ministry of Medium Machine Building of the USSR.

On August 29, 1949, the atomic bomb was successfully tested at the Semipalatinsk test site. On October 29, 1949, L.P. Beria was awarded the Stalin Prize of the 1st degree "for organizing the production of atomic energy and successfully completing the testing of atomic weapons." According to the testimony of P. A. Sudoplatov, published in the book "Intelligence and the Kremlin: Notes of an Unwanted Witness" (1996), two project leaders - L. P. Beria and I. V. Kurchatov - were awarded the title "Honorary Citizen of the USSR" with the wording “for outstanding services in strengthening the power of the USSR”, it is indicated that the recipient was awarded the “Diploma of an honorary citizen of the Soviet Union”. In the future, the title "Honorary Citizen of the USSR" was not awarded ..

The test of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb, the development of which was supervised by G. M. Malenkov, took place on August 12, 1953, after the arrest of L. P. Beria.

Career
On July 9, 1945, when replacing special state security ranks with military ones, L.P. Beria was awarded the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union.

On September 6, 1945, the Operational Bureau of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was formed, and L.P. Beria was appointed chairman. The tasks of the Operational Bureau of the Council of People's Commissars included issues of the work of industrial enterprises and railway transport.

Since March 1946, Beria has been a member of the "seven" members of the Politburo, which included I.V. Stalin and six people close to him. This "inner circle" closed the most important issues of public administration, including: foreign policy, foreign trade, state security, armaments, the functioning of the armed forces. On March 18, he becomes a member of the Politburo, and the next day he is appointed Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. As Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, he supervised the work of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of State Control.

In March 1949 - July 1951, there was a sharp strengthening of the position of L.P. Beria in the leadership of the country, which was facilitated by the successful testing of the first atomic bomb in the USSR, the work on the creation of which L.P. Beria supervised. However, the Mingrelian case against him followed.

After the XIX Congress of the CPSU held in October 1952, L.P. Beria was included in the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which replaced the former Politburo, in the Bureau of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU and in the "leading five" of the Presidium created at the suggestion of I.V. Stalin.

Death of Stalin.
On the day of Stalin's death - March 5, 1953, a joint meeting of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was held, where appointments to the highest posts of the party and the Government of the USSR were approved, and, by prior agreement with the Khrushchev group -Malenkov-Molotov-Bulganin, Beria was appointed First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and Minister of the Interior of the USSR without much debate. The newly formed Ministry of Internal Affairs united the previously existing Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security.

On March 9, 1953, L.P. Beria participated in the funeral of I.V. Stalin, from the podium of the Mausoleum he delivered a speech at a funeral meeting.

Beria, along with Khrushchev and Malenkov, became one of the main contenders for leadership in the country. In the struggle for leadership, L.P. Beria relied on law enforcement agencies. The proteges of L.P. Beria were nominated to the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Already on March 19, the heads of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were replaced in all the Union republics and in most regions of the RSFSR. In turn, the newly appointed heads of the Ministry of Internal Affairs made replacements in the middle management.

From mid-March to June 1953, Beria, as head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, initiated the termination of the case of doctors, the Mengrelian case and a number of other legislative and political transformations:

Order on the creation of commissions on the revision of the “case of doctors”, a conspiracy in the USSR Ministry of State Security, Glavartupr of the USSR Ministry of Defense, and the Ministry of State Security of the Georgian SSR. All defendants in these cases were rehabilitated within two weeks.
Order on the establishment of a commission to consider cases on the deportation of citizens from Georgia.
Order to review the "aviation case". Over the next two months, the people's commissar of the aviation industry Shakhurin and the commander of the USSR Air Force Novikov, as well as other defendants in the case, were completely rehabilitated and reinstated in their positions and ranks.
Note to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU on the amnesty. According to Beria's proposal, on March 27, 1953, the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU approved the decree "On Amnesty", according to which 1.203 million people were to be released from places of detention, as well as investigative cases against 401 thousand people were to be terminated. As of August 10, 1953, 1.032 million people were released from places of detention. the following categories of prisoners:
sentenced to a term of up to 5 years inclusive,
convicted for:
official,
economic and
some military crimes,
and:
minors,
elderly,
sick,
women with young children and
pregnant.

Note to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU on the rehabilitation of persons undergoing the "doctors' case".
The note admitted that the leading innocent figures of Soviet medicine were presented as spies and murderers, and, as a result, the objects of anti-Semitic harassment deployed in the central press. The case from beginning to end is a provocative fiction of the former deputy of the Ministry of State Security of the USSR Ryumin, who, having embarked on the criminal path of deceiving the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in order to obtain the necessary testimony, obtained the sanction of I.V. Stalin to apply physical measures to arrested doctors - torture and severe beatings. The subsequent resolution of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On the falsification of the so-called case of pest doctors" dated April 3, 1953, ordered to support Beria's proposal for the complete rehabilitation of these doctors (37 people) and the removal of Ignatiev from the post of Minister of the Ministry of State Security of the USSR, and Ryumin to that had already been arrested.

Note to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU on bringing to justice those involved in the death of S. M. Mikhoels and V. I. Golubov.
Order "On the prohibition of the use of any measures of coercion and physical influence on the arrested."
The subsequent resolution of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On the approval of the measures of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR to correct the consequences of violations of the law" dated April 10, 1953, read: "To approve the ongoing comrade. Beria L.P. measures to uncover criminal acts committed over a number of years in the former USSR Ministry of State Security, expressed in the fabrication of falsified cases against honest people, as well as measures to correct the consequences of violations of Soviet laws, bearing in mind that these measures are aimed at strengthening of the Soviet state and socialist legality”.
Note to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU about the incorrect conduct of the Mingrelian case. The subsequent resolution of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU “On the falsification of the case on the so-called Mingrelian nationalist group” of April 10, 1953 recognizes that the circumstances of the case are fictitious, all the defendants should be released and fully rehabilitated.
Note to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On the rehabilitation of N. D. Yakovlev, I. I. Volkotrubenko, I. A. Mirzakhanov and others."
Note to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On the rehabilitation of M. M. Kaganovich."
Note to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On the abolition of passport restrictions and sensitive areas."

Arrest and sentence
Circular of the head of the 2nd Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR K. Omelchenko on the seizure of portraits of L.P. Beria. July 27, 1953
Enlisting the support of the majority of members of the Central Committee and high-ranking military officers, Khrushchev convened a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on June 26, 1953, where he raised the issue of Beria's compliance with his position and his removal from all posts. Among others, Khrushchev voiced accusations of revisionism, an anti-socialist approach to the deteriorating situation in the GDR, and spying for Britain in the 1920s. Beria tried to prove that if he was appointed by the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, then only the plenum could remove him, but on a special signal, a group of generals led by Marshal Zhukov entered the room and arrested Beria.

Beria was accused of spying for Great Britain and other countries, of striving to eliminate the Soviet worker-peasant system, to restore capitalism and restore the rule of the bourgeoisie, as well as moral decay, abuse of power, falsification of thousands of criminal cases against his colleagues in Georgia and Transcaucasia and in organizing illegal repressions (this, according to the accusation, Beria committed, also acting for selfish and enemy purposes).

At the July plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, almost all members of the Central Committee made statements about the wrecking activities of L. Beria. On July 7, by a resolution of the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Beria was relieved of his duties as a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU and removed from the Central Committee of the CPSU. On July 27, 1953, a secret circular of the 2nd Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR was issued, which ordered the widespread seizure of any artistic images of L.P. Beria.

Together with him, his closest associates from the state security agencies were accused, immediately after the arrest and later called the “Beria gang” in the media:
Merkulov V.N. - Minister of State Control of the USSR
Kobulov B.Z. - First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR
Goglidze S. A. - Head of the 3rd Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR
Meshik P. Ya. - Minister of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR
Dekanozov V. G. - Minister of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR
Vlodzimirsky L. E. - Head of the investigative unit for especially important cases of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR

On December 23, 1953, the case of Beria was considered by the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR, chaired by Marshal I. S. Konev. From the last word of Beria in court:

I have already shown the court what I plead guilty to. For a long time I hid my service in the Musavatist counter-revolutionary intelligence service. However, I declare that, even while serving there, I did nothing harmful. I fully acknowledge my moral decay. The numerous connections with women that have been mentioned here are a disgrace to me as a citizen and a former member of the party.|…

Recognizing that I am responsible for the excesses and distortions of socialist legality in 1937-1938, I ask the court to take into account that I did not have selfish and hostile goals. The reason for my crimes is the situation of that time.|…

I do not consider myself guilty of trying to disorganize the defense of the Caucasus during the Great Patriotic War.

When sentencing me, I ask you to carefully analyze my actions, not to consider me as a counter-revolutionary, but to apply to me only those articles of the Criminal Code that I really deserve.
The verdict read:

The Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR decided: to sentence Beria L.P., Merkulov V.N., Dekanozov V.G., Kobulov B.Z., Goglidze S.A., Meshik P.Ya., Vlodzimirsky L.E. to the highest measure of criminal punishment - execution, with the confiscation of their personal property, with the deprivation of military ranks and awards.

All the accused were shot on the same day, and L.P. Beria was shot a few hours before the execution of other convicts in the bunker of the headquarters of the Moscow Military District in the presence of the USSR Prosecutor General R.A. Rudenko. On his own initiative, the first shot was fired from a personal weapon by Colonel-General (later Marshal of the Soviet Union) P.F. Batitsky. The body was burnt in the furnace of the 1st Moscow (Donskoy) crematorium. He was buried at the New Donskoy Cemetery (according to other statements, the ashes of Beria were scattered over the Moscow River).

A brief report on the trial of L.P. Beria and his staff was published in the Soviet press. Nevertheless, some historians admit that the arrest, trial and execution of Beria, on formal grounds, took place illegally: unlike other defendants in the case, there was never a warrant for his arrest; interrogation protocols and letters exist only in copies, the description of the arrest by its participants is fundamentally different from each other, what happened to his body after the execution, is not confirmed by any documents (there is no certificate of cremation). These and other facts subsequently provided food for all sorts of theories, in particular, the famous writer and journalist E. A. Prudnikova, based on an analysis of written sources and memoirs of contemporaries, proves that L. P. Beria was killed during his arrest, and the entire trial It is a fabrication designed to hide the true state of affairs.

The version that Beria was killed on the orders of Khrushchev, Malenkov and Bulganin on June 26, 1953 by a capture group directly during the arrest in his mansion on Malaya Nikitskaya Street is presented in a documentary film-investigation by journalist Sergei Medvedev, which was first shown on Channel One on June 4 2014.

After the arrest of Beria, one of his closest associates, the 1st Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Azerbaijan SSR, Mir Jafar Bagirov, was arrested and executed. In subsequent years, other, lower-ranking members of the "Beria gang" were convicted and shot or sentenced to long prison terms:

Abakumov V. S. - Chairman of the Collegium of the Ministry of State Security of the USSR
Ryumin M.D. - Deputy Minister of State Security of the USSR
on the "case of Bagirov"
Bagirov M.D. - 1st Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Azerbaijan SSR
Markaryan R. A. - Minister of Internal Affairs of the Dagestan ASSR
Borshchev T. M. - Minister of Internal Affairs of the Turkmen SSR
Grigoryan Kh.I. - Minister of Internal Affairs of the Armenian SSR
Atakishiyev S.I. - 1st Deputy Minister of State Security of the Azerbaijan SSR
Emelyanov S.F. - Minister of Internal Affairs of the Azerbaijan SSR
on the Rukhadze case
Rukhadze N.M. - Minister of State Security of the Georgian SSR
Rapava. A. N. — Minister of State Control of the Georgian SSR
Tsereteli Sh. O. - Minister of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR
Savitsky K.S. - Assistant to the First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR
Krimyan N. A. - Minister of State Security of the Armenian SSR
Khazan A. S. - in 1937-1938. head of the 1st department of the SPO of the NKVD of Georgia, and then assistant head of the STO of the NKVD of Georgia
Paramonov G.I. - Deputy Head of the Investigative Unit for Particularly Important Cases of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR
Nadaraya S. N. - Head of the 1st Department of the 9th Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR
and others.

In addition, at least 100 colonels and generals were stripped of their ranks and / or awards and dismissed from the bodies with the wording “as having discredited himself during his work in the bodies ... and unworthy of a high rank in connection with this ...”.

“The State Scientific Publishing House“ The Great Soviet Encyclopedia ”recommends that pages 21, 22, 23 and 24 be removed from Volume 5 of the TSB, as well as a portrait pasted between pages 22 and 23, in exchange for which pages with new text will be sent to you.” The new page 21 contained photographs of the Bering Sea.
In 1952, the fifth volume of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia was published, in which a portrait of L.P. Beria and an article about him were placed. In 1954, the editorial staff of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia sent out a letter to all its subscribers, in which it was strongly recommended to cut out both the portrait and the pages dedicated to L.P. Beria with “scissors or a razor”, and instead paste in others (sent in the same letter) containing other articles starting with the same letters. In the press and literature of the times of the “thaw”, the image of Beria was demonized, he, as the main initiator, was blamed for all the mass repressions.

By the definition of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of May 29, 2002, Beria, as the organizer of political repressions, was recognized as not subject to rehabilitation:

... Based on the foregoing, the Military Collegium comes to the conclusion that Beria, Merkulov, Kobulov and Goglidze were those leaders who organized at the state level and personally carried out mass repressions against their own people. That is why the Law “On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions” cannot apply to them as perpetrators of terror.

... Guided by Art. 8, 9, 10 of the Law of the Russian Federation "On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression" of October 18, 1991 and Art. 377-381 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation determined: “To recognize Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich, Merkulov Vsevolod Nikolaevich, Kobulov Bogdan Zakharyevich, Goglidze Sergey Arsenyevich not subject to rehabilitation.”
- Extract from the definition of the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation No. bn-00164/2000 dated 29.V.2002.
In the early 2000s, L.P. Beria was considered by some researchers only as an executor of Stalin's policy.

Family and personal life
1930s
He was married to Nina (Nino) Teimurazovna Gegechkori (1905-1991). They had a son Sergo (1924-2000). In 1990, at the age of 86, the widow of Lavrentia Beria gave an interview in which she fully justified her husband's activities.

In recent years, Lavrenty Beria had a second (civil) wife. He cohabited with Valentina (Lalya) Drozdova, who at the time of their acquaintance was a schoolgirl. Valentina Drozdova gave birth to a daughter from Beria, named Marta or Eteri (according to the singer T. K. Avetisyan, who was personally acquainted with the family of Beria and Lyalya Drozdova - Lyudmila (Lyusya)), who later married Alexander Grishin - the son of the first secretary of the Moscow city committee of the CPSU Viktor Grishin. The day after the Pravda newspaper reported on Beria's arrest, Lyalya Drozdova filed a complaint with the prosecutor's office that she had been raped by Beria and lived with him under the threat of physical violence. At the trial, she and her mother A.I. Akopyan acted as witnesses, giving accusatory evidence against Beria. Valentina Drozdova herself later became the mistress of the currency speculator Yan Rokotov, who was shot in 1961, and the wife of the shadow knitter Ilya Galperin, who was shot in 1967.

After the conviction of Beria, his close relatives and close relatives of the convicts were deported with him to the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Sverdlovsk Region and Kazakhstan].

Data
In his youth, Beria was fond of football. He played for one of the Georgian teams as a left midfielder. Subsequently, he attended almost all the matches of the Dynamo teams, especially the Dynamo Tbilisi, whose defeats he painfully perceived.

According to G. Mirzoyan, in 1936, Beria, during an interrogation in his office, shot the secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia A. G. Khanjyan.
Beria studied to be an architect. There is evidence that two buildings of the same type on Gagarin Square in Moscow were built according to his project.
The "Beria Orchestra" was the name given to his bodyguards, who, when traveling in open cars, hid machine guns in violin cases, and a light machine gun in a double bass case.

Awards[
By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of December 31, 1953, he was deprived of the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union, the title of Hero of Socialist Labor and all state awards.

Hero of Socialist Labor No. 80 September 30, 1943
5 orders of Lenin
No. 1236 March 17, 1935 - for outstanding achievements over a number of years in the field of agriculture, as well as in the field of industry
No. 14839 September 30, 1943 - for special merits in the field of strengthening the production of weapons and ammunition in difficult wartime conditions
No. 27006 February 21, 1945
No. 94311 March 29, 1949 - in connection with the fiftieth anniversary of his birth and for his outstanding services to the Communist Party and the Soviet people
No. 118679 October 29, 1949 - for organizing the production of atomic energy and successfully completing the testing of atomic weapons
2 Orders of the Red Banner
No. 7034 April 3, 1924
No. 11517 November 3, 1944
Order of Suvorov 1st degree No. 217 March 8, 1944 - Decree canceled April 4, 1962
7 medals
Jubilee medal "XX years of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army"
Medal "For the Defense of Moscow"
Medal "For the Defense of Stalingrad"
Medal "For the Defense of the Caucasus"
Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945"
Medal "In memory of the 800th anniversary of Moscow"
Jubilee medal "30 years of the Soviet Army and Navy"
Order of the Red Banner of the Georgian SSR July 3, 1923
Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Georgian SSR April 10, 1931
Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Azerbaijan SSR March 14, 1932
Order of the Republic (Tuva) August 18, 1943
Order of Sukhbaatar No. 31 March 29, 1949
Order of the Red Banner (Mongolia) No. 441 July 15, 1942
Medal "25 Years of the Mongolian People's Revolution" No. 3125 September 19, 1946
Stalin Prize, 1st class (29 October 1949 and 6 December 1951)
Breastplate "Honorary Worker of the Cheka-OGPU (V)" No. 100
Badge "Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU (XV)" No. 205 December 20, 1932
Named weapon - pistol "Browning"
Monogram watch

Proceedings
L. Beria. On the question of the history of Bolshevik organizations in Transcaucasia. Report at the meeting of the Tiflis party activists on July 21-22, 1935 - Partizdat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union /b/, 1936.
L. Beria. Lado Ketskhoveli. M., Partizdat, 1937.
Under the great banner of Lenin-Stalin: Articles and speeches. Tbilisi, 1939;
Speech at the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on March 12, 1939. - Kyiv: State Political Publishing House of the Ukrainian SSR, 1939;
Report on the work of the Central Committee of the CP(b) of Georgia at the XI Congress of the CP(b) of Georgia on June 16, 1938 - Sukhumi: Abgiz, 1939;
The greatest man of our time [I. V. Stalin]. - Kyiv: State Political Publishing House of the Ukrainian SSR, 1940;
Lado Ketskhoveli. (1876-1903) / (Life of the remarkable Bolsheviks). Translation by N. Erubaev. - Alma-Ata: Kazgospolitizdat, 1938;
About youth. - Tbilisi: Detunizdat of the Georgian SSR, 1940;
Objects bearing the name of L.P. Beria[edit | edit wiki text]
In honor of Beria were named:

Berievsky district - in the period from February to May 1944 (now the Novolaksky district of Dagestan).
Beria district - a district of the Armenian SSR in 1939-1953 with an administrative center in the village named after Beria.
Beriyaaul - Novolakskoye village, Dagestan
Beriyashen - Sharukkar, Azerbaijan SSR
Beriyakend - the former name of the village of Khanlarkend, Saatli region, Azerbaijan SSR
The name of Beria is the former name of the village of Zhdanov in the Armenian SSR (now in the Armavir region).
In addition, villages in Kalmykia and the Magadan region were named after him.

The current Cooperative street in Kharkov, Freedom Square in Tbilisi, Victory Avenue in Ozersk, Apsheronskaya Square in Vladikavkaz (Dzaudzhikau), Tsimlyanskaya Street in Khabarovsk, Gagarin Street in Sarov, Pervomaiskaya Street in Seversk, Mira Street in Ufa.

Dinamo Stadium in Tbilisi was named after Beria.

Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich

Marshal of the Soviet Union
Hero of Socialist Labor (1943)

Andrey Parshev

It is BITTER to begin the anniversary article not with a description of merits, but with a refutation of slander, but this cannot be dispensed with.

BERIA, Lavrenty Pavlovich, did not and could not have anything to do with the organization of the so-called. "repressions" in 1937, neither due to official position, nor due to physical absence in the center of events. The decision to carry out repressions was made by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1937, and L.P. Beria was at that time at party work in Transcaucasia. He was transferred to Moscow in the summer of 1938, and was appointed People's Commissar of Internal Affairs in December 1938, when the repressions had already ended.

L.P. Beria was People's Commissar of Internal Affairs from December 1939 until 1945, and then for only three months in 1953. For 8 years after the war, contrary to popular belief, he did not supervise law enforcement agencies, as he was completely occupied with more important matters.

The young man who wanted to learn

BERIA, Lavrenty Pavlovich, was born on March 17 (30), 1899 in the village of Merkheuli, Sukhumi region, into a poor peasant family. In 1915, after graduating from the Sukhumi Higher Primary School, L.P. Beria left for Baku and entered the Baku Secondary Mechanical and Construction Technical School.

Now, in the capital's universities, an ironic attitude has developed towards students from the Caucasus - "children of the mountains" who are not interested in anything but painted blondes and foreign cars. 16-year-old Lavrenty had neither money nor patronage. There were no scholarships then, and even more so, and he could study only by earning his own living. In Sukhumi, he gave lessons, and in Baku he had to work in various places - a clerk, a customs officer. From the age of 17, he also supported his mother and deaf-mute sister, who moved in with him.

In March 1917, L.P. Beria organized a cell of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks) at the school in Baku. In June 1917, L.P. Beria left for the Romanian front as part of an army technical unit (in his autobiography he indicated that he was a volunteer, in his official biography it was written that he was enrolled. In Soviet times, patriotism shown in the First World War was not welcome). After the collapse of the army, he returned to Baku and continued his studies at a technical school, participating in the activities of the Baku Bolshevik organization under the leadership of A.I. Mikoyan.

In 1919, L.P. Beria entered the world of "twilight warfare". At that time, Azerbaijan was ruled by the "Musavatists" party - that was the name of the puppet organization created by the British to control the oil fields of the Caspian Sea. In 1919-1920, he worked in the counterintelligence of the Musavatists, passing the obtained information to the headquarters of the Tenth Army of the Bolsheviks in Tsaritsyn. Beria wrote about this in his autobiography, and no one denies it, nevertheless, it was the introduction into the Musavat secret service that was the main accusation against him in 1953.

From the beginning of 1919 (March) until the establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan (April 1920), L.P. Beria also led an illegal communist organization of technicians. In 1919, L.P. Beria successfully graduated from a technical school, received a diploma as an architect-builder and tried to study further - by that time the school had been transformed into a Polytechnic Institute. But ... L.P. Beria was sent to illegal work in Georgia to prepare an armed uprising against the Menshevik government, was arrested and imprisoned in Kutaisi prison. In August 1920, after a hunger strike organized by him for political prisoners, L.P. Beria was deported in stages from Georgia. Returning to Baku, L.P. Beria again went to study at the Baku Polytechnic University.

In April 1921, the party sent L.P. Beria to work as a Chekist. From 1921 to 1931 he was in leading positions in the organs of Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence. It is obvious that by that time in his circles the young Chekist was well known for his merits. It is unlikely that he was introduced into the leadership of the Cheka just because he was a foreign agent - this organization was somewhat different from the Ideological Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU of the 80s.

L.P. Beria was deputy chairman of the Azerbaijani Extraordinary Commission, chairman of the Georgian GPU, chairman of the Transcaucasian GPU and plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU in the ZSFSR, was a member of the collegium of the OGPU of the USSR.

Several times he tried to continue his studies at the Baku Polytechnic University. Now in the world ranking of universities, this educational institution is in second place from the bottom of the list, but at the beginning of the century there was a very high level of teaching. Baku was then one of the centers of scientific and technological progress, this is evidenced by Landau, who studied there at the same time.

During his work in the bodies of the Cheka-GPU in Georgia and Transcaucasia, L.P. Beria did a lot of work to defeat the Mensheviks, Dashnaks, Musavatists, Trotskyists, and foreign intelligence agents. Georgia was seized by rampant banditry, as in the 90s - the GPU brought relative order. Armenian peasants worked in the field with a rifle over their shoulders - Kurdish robbers visited from abroad as if in their pantry. By the 1930s, the border was firmly sealed.

The circle of interests of the intelligence agencies of Transcaucasia also included the near abroad - Turkey, Iran, the English Middle East, ... but the details will forever remain a secret.

For the successful struggle against the counter-revolution in Transcaucasia, L.P. Beria was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Georgian SSR, the Azerbaijan SSR and the Armenian SSR. He was also awarded with personalized weapons.

At the same time, in the characteristics they wrote about him - "intellectual". Then this word did not have a negative connotation, it meant an educated, cultured person who was able to apply theoretical knowledge to practical activities. He wanted to study, most of all - to study, but time did not allow. Three courses at the Polytechnic University and a diploma in architecture - all that he managed to achieve by the age of 22 in the intervals between fronts, prisons, underground and operational work.

Style

"In 1931, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks exposed the gross political mistakes and distortions committed by the leadership of the party organizations of Transcaucasia, obliged the party organizations to put an end to the unprincipled struggle for the influence of individuals (elements of the "atamanism") observed among the leading cadres of both Transcaucasia and the republics." So it was written in the biography of L.P. Beria in 1952.

Transcaucasia is an ancient land, people have lived there since time immemorial. The tribal system has taken deep roots there, behind the facade of the state there is always a complex social structure of clans, clans, families. National, public interests are too often an empty phrase there, they serve as a cover for inter-tribal struggle.

In November 1931, L.P. Beria was transferred to party work - he was elected First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CP (b) of Georgia and Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and in 1932 - First Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and Secretary of the Central Committee CP(b) of Georgia.

"Under the leadership of L.P. Beria, the Transcaucasian Party Organization in a short time corrected the mistakes noted in the Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on October 31, 1931, eliminated the perversions of the party's policy and excesses in the countryside, achieved the victory of the collective farm system in Transcaucasia ..... ."

L.P. Beria tamed the appetites of khans and princes with party cards, having won a good memory among ordinary people and the inescapable hatred of the tribal elite.

It was Beria who owned a special lifestyle that distinguished him from the leadership. In the 70s, the first secretary of the regional committee would have looked strange, chasing a soccer ball with the boys, and not for show, but for himself. While working in Tbilisi, in the mornings he was spinning the "sun" in the yard on a makeshift horizontal bar, along with the same boys.

After moving to Moscow, he began to live differently, which, in general, is natural, but he did not change his habits. A minimum of protection, and more often only a driver and a messenger. The Georgian's guarantor is an Armenian. Can you imagine?

Beria was unmercenary, although he was known as a hospitable host. In fact, after his death there was nothing to confiscate, and so he always lived. Did the people know about it? In Georgia, they knew, and it is easy to understand how they treated this.

Therefore, at the beginning of his career, Shevardnadze "mowed" under Beria. As Minister of the Interior, he lived in a communal apartment, and as First Secretary, he fought corruption. It then cost him nothing to throw a million dollars to charity. Saved from my salary...

When the First House has nothing, then it is somehow inconvenient for the rest to have a house - a full bowl. That is why, with the popularity of this lifestyle among the people, not all leaders were happy with it.

Technocrat

The land of Transcaucasia is one of the most fertile in the world. With very little effort, a person can more than provide for himself and his family, there would be land. But poor people can live even on the most fertile land, if this land is not enough. And in Transcaucasia there is always little land. In all Caucasian languages ​​there is a proverb approximately similar to the Ossetian: "skulls are always lying on the boundary." Why?

A Caucasian family has many children, but a high birth rate is not at all a consequence of low culture, as is sometimes thought completely unreasonably. The tribal system suggests that the status of a person directly depends on the number of relatives in peace, and even more so in war. Few children - few warriors, and in the struggle for land, you can lose. The cost of losing is death. But the father must leave four plots to four sons, and he has one! Where to get if the earth was divided even before our era?

From time immemorial, "human surpluses" were destroyed in wars, in ancient times with sabers and daggers, now - with volleys of "Alazani" and shells with potassium cyanide. Wild mountain tribes brought slaves to Turkey, external aggressors tried to seize priceless land, exterminating its inhabitants.

Russia covered Transcaucasia from external enemies, Soviet power tamed the mountain bandits, but where to get bread, where to get land?

In Russia, the problem was solved by the nationalization of estates and collectivization. Collective farm fields cultivated by tractors made it possible to forget about hunger. But collectivization in the Transcaucasus, due to special local conditions, did not immediately allow for an equally radical increase in productivity. And there were too many free hands. Where is the exit?

The solution was found to be the only correct one. The newly created industry absorbed the peasant youth, Georgian metallurgists, Azerbaijani oil workers appeared in Transcaucasia.

But where to get bread? Is the earth no more?

Again, the only correct answer. What could not be done on the fields of a private trader, collectivization allowed. Transcaucasia became a zone of subtropical cultures unique to the USSR. Do you think the tangerines, which now cover the ground in a thick layer in the gardens of Abkhazia, have always grown there? No, citrus orchards appeared in the 30s. Where previously only grain and vegetables were grown, now they gathered so much tea, grapes, citrus fruits, rare industrial crops, which even had defense value, that Transcaucasia became the land of rich people. And Russia was not offended - since the mid-30s, collective farm grain was already enough for bread and for exchanging it for Caucasian tangerines.

A new land also appeared, for the first time since ancient times. Unusual agricultural practices, planting eucalyptus trees allowed to drain the Colchis lowland, previously a deadly malarial area. But was left - in memory of posterity - and the site of primeval swamps, after the war received the status of a reserve.

"A lot of work has been done on the reconstruction and development of the oil industry in Baku. As a result, oil production has increased dramatically, and in 1938, almost half of the entire production of the Baku oil industry came from new fields. Significant success was achieved in the development of the coal, manganese and metallurgical industries, the use of gigantic opportunities agriculture in Transcaucasia (development of cotton growing, tea culture, citrus crops, viticulture, highly valuable special and industrial crops, etc.) For the outstanding successes achieved over a number of years in the development of agriculture, as well as industry, the Georgian SSR and Azerbaijan The Soviet Socialist Republics, which were part of the Transcaucasian Federation, were awarded the Order of Lenin in 1935.

Maybe you think that the first secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee had nothing to do with it at all?

Professional

In 1938, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks transferred L.P. Beria to work in Moscow.

By that time, the defeat of the Trotskyist and other opposition cadres, begun by the decision of the Politburo in 1937, for which the NKVD was headed by high-ranking party workers from the personnel department of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, was completed. It is difficult to say how sincere the position of the Politburo was, but excesses were seen in the activities of the NKVD. To carry out the rehabilitation of the illegally repressed L.P. Beria was appointed Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs.

The NKVD had to be returned to the work for which it was intended. Therefore, in December 1938, the party personnel officer Yezhov was replaced by a professional Chekist Beria.

From 1938 to 1945, L.P. Beria was People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR. He was a good people's commissar, the best assessment in such cases is the assessment of the enemy.

Collection "World War 1939-1945", section "War on land", General von Butlar:

"The special conditions that existed in Russia greatly hindered the acquisition of intelligence data regarding the military potential of the Soviet Union, and therefore these data were far from complete. espionage networks made it difficult to verify the little information that the intelligence officers managed to collect ... ".

Specifically and personally in the USSR, L.P. Beria was responsible for "the impossibility of organizing a wide network of espionage".

But even under the leadership of the NKVD, a special style of work of L.P. Beria, inherent only to him, manifested itself. Much better than many leaders, both military and civilian, he understood the role of new technologies, which means not only new technology, but also its correct use.

The name of L.P. Beria is associated with the development of communications of the border troops, which made it possible not only to provide telephone communications to each border detachment in many sections of the Far Eastern border. A striking contrast was the readiness of the Border Troops and the NKVD troops to start the war, in comparison with the situation in the army. Unlike the army, the communications of the Border Troops were staffed by line overseers, which made it possible to fully maintain control, although all control went by wire, as in the army. All outposts, except for those who died in the all-round defense, retreated from the border by order, and subsequently formed units whose work is accurately described in V. Bogomolov's book "In August 44th".

At the heart of this is a deep understanding of the role of communication in the management process.

Unfortunately, the exploits of the NKVD troops are less known, this topic is closed for study, even battle paintings about their exploits near Rostov and Stalingrad lie in the storerooms of museums. The "blue caps" did not leave without an order and did not surrender, they were well armed, full of automatic weapons.

During the war, L.P. Beria, in addition to his many duties, paid great attention to special equipment. In the special laboratories of the NKVD, walkie-talkies, radio direction finders, perfect sabotage mines, silent weapons, and infrared sights were created. During the defense of the Caucasus, the use of special groups of border guard officers armed with silent rifles with night sights thwarted the offensive impulse of the Kleist group - the usual tactics of the Germans turned out to be impossible due to the extermination of about 400 radio operators and aviation and artillery guidance officers.

And how to evaluate the merits of our "authorities" that organized round-the-clock wiretapping of the allied delegations at the Tehran conference? The dream of any diplomat is to know the real positions of the opposing side. Of course, real diplomats are also needed for such information, because information must be used in such a way that partners are not on their guard.

Unfortunately, a significant amount of falsification about the activities of L.P. Beria belongs to this period. Thus, democratic "historians" thoughtfully discuss the well-known, composed by Y. Semyonov, text: "Ambassador Dekanozov is bombarding me with disinformation ...... erased into camp dust ......". They do not even bother to think why on earth the ambassador of the Soviet Union, bypassing his immediate superior, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Molotov, would bombard some outside People's Commissar, not even a member of the Politburo, with information of Special Importance.

Until 1994, L.P. Beria's accusations of the deportation of Chechens and Ingush were very popular. Indeed, 100,000 soldiers and 20,000 operatives under his command evicted 600,000 Chechens in just a few days, with only a few casualties on both sides. But these peoples in 1941 refused to mobilize and created, in fact, in the rear of the Red Army their armed forces, with party secretaries as commanders.

So L.P. Beria deservedly received the Order of Suvorov, but now everyone understands this.

By the way, as a result of the "Beria genocide" the number of Chechens has doubled by now.

He protected his native land from death...

"In February 1941, L.P. Beria was appointed deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and remained in this post until the end of his life. During the Great Patriotic War, from June 30, 1941 he was a member of the State Defense Committee, and from May 16, 1944 - deputy chairman State Defense Committee and carried out the most important tasks of the party both in the management of the socialist economy and at the front.

Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on September 30. 1943 L.P. Beria was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor for special merits in the field of strengthening the production of weapons and ammunition in difficult wartime conditions. July 9, 1945 L.P. Beria was awarded the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union.

Sadly, there is no available information about the essence of the tasks being solved then - that's where the unplowed field for the historian is. But one merit of L.P. Beria is still mentioned, even the enemies do not dare to keep silent about it. Judge for yourself how big it is.

In one of the books from the time of perestroika, the "Song of Beria" is cited with irony. The lyrics of the song are really clumsy, but there are these words:

Gardens and fields sing about Beria

He protected his native land from death ... "

From what death and how did he protect? Not the people, not the party, but the whole native land? After all, he is not Stalin, not Zhukov, although he is a Marshal of the Soviet Union. He is a Hero, but a Hero of Socialist Labor. What's the matter?

"Since 1944, Beria oversaw all the work and research related to the creation of atomic weapons, while demonstrating outstanding organizational skills."

This phrase from the biography of L.P. Beria, given in the computer encyclopedia "Cyril and Methodius", is perhaps the only information there, except for the name and date of birth, close to reality.

The creation of Soviet nuclear weapons is a landmark event that completely changed the face of the world for decades, if not hundreds of years. We now see how Western countries are behaving, with the relative weakness of other countries. But this is despite the fact that a dozen countries of the world still have atomic bombs. There is no doubt that if the bomb had not been made in our country during a few years of peaceful respite, then, starting from the Korean War, history would have turned differently. Where? Read the book "Orbital Patrol" by the American science fiction writer R. Heinlein, which was published immediately after the war and became extremely popular in the United States. There, as the main goal of American policy, it was proposed to create a network of orbital stations with nuclear bombs under the command of the Americans, who, in the event of disobedience of any country, would immediately destroy its capital. Maybe it sounds strange (what is there, some kind of science fiction), but this book greatly influenced the public consciousness of the United States in terms of introducing the idea of ​​​​world domination based on the US monopoly on nuclear and orbital technology. In our country, it was not translated until the 90s, and without reading it, it is impossible to understand why a uniform panic arose in the United States after the launch of the Soviet satellite.

The dictatorship of the West has been abolished, and, no matter what happens, forever.

Did L.P. Beria deserve at least a modest monument on Red Square for this?

Merits

The second merit is the organization of the largest breakthroughs in the scientific and technical field. And not in the form that has been actively promoted in our country since the 50s (dubious discoveries without practical utility). It has already been written about the development of an air defense missile ring around Moscow, carried out under the leadership of L.P. Beria. In its own way, no less revolutionary, this work was done contrary to all the canons of technology and, nevertheless, turned out to be successful. With a seemingly local significance, even if it concerned our capital, this development significantly influenced the direction of technical progress in the military field, and for all countries of the world. What neither cannon artillery nor aviation could provide, turned out to be within the power of missiles. Neither the Germans, nor the Japanese, nor the Western allies could do anything like this before us, although their problem of bombing was directly related during the war. From here began the victorious march of guided missiles around the world.

These projects gave concrete results during the life of L.P. Beria, and it is impossible to deny his role - too many witnesses and documents have been preserved. But his role in rocket projects is not covered, since the victorious reports of TASS were made only in 1957. Was L.P. away from heavy missiles? It is unlikely, because the development of nuclear weapons and rocket launchers for him constituted a single whole. I think that not without the participation of Beria, the government "Decree on the development of jet technology" of 1946 was developed.

There is an opinion in the mass consciousness that the boss can be completely ignorant, you just need to surround yourself with smart, but not responsible advisers, and the matter will be in the bag. That's where it ended up being.

This is clearly seen in economic policy. The growth rates of the Soviet economy in the 1930s and 1950s are well known. But in 1965, Kosygin, at the suggestion of a group of "advisers", carried out the first official reform of the Stalinist economy (it is known abroad as the "Lieberman reform", after the name of the head of the group of advisers). The result was not fatal, but "the process has started." Gorbachev and Ryzhkov, for their mind-blowing experiments in transferring funds from non-cash to cash with the help of small businesses, attracted another group of "economists", presumably from Shatalin, but everyone knows about the current advisers, and about the results of the reform too.

Beginning with Khrushchev, life has shown that if a leader, instead of keeping himself up to date, begins to trust advisers, then the results of his rule are bad. Expressing the same idea, but in other words, I will say: the leader must be educated and smart not only in the science of coming to power. The fate of the country depends on this. How to achieve this is another question, but attracting advisers is not a replacement for brains. Well, Gorbachev attracted Bovin, Burlatsky and Yakovlev as political advisers - and what did he come to, what did he lead the country to? But do not say anything, smart people, smarter than Gorbachev.

After all, you also need to be able to evaluate advisers. Another, with all his ranks, is a real sheep, among the specialists there are both adventurers and swindlers.

As a historical anecdote, I will tell the following story. We had such a Lev Theremin, the inventor of electric musical instruments, known for showing his "theremin" to Lenin himself. Then Termen lived in America, then he sat in a "sharashka". So when Beria asked him if he could make an atomic bomb, he said he could. And when asked what he needed for this, he answered that "a personal car with a driver and one and a half tons of steel corner."

But this is a curiosity, but there were critical moments in the history of the "uranium project". How did we start work on the "bomb"?

The physicist Flerov was at the front, served as an aircraft technician without any armor. And it was at the front, looking through Western scientific journals (if someone skipped this place, I repeat - being at the front and looking through Western scientific journals), he noticed that articles on the uranium problem had disappeared from them. He concluded that military work had begun in the West in this area, and therefore they were classified, and began to write letters to Stalin (and not to the leadership of domestic physics, apparently having a good idea of ​​his level), and one of them reached the addressee.

The Soviet leadership drew attention to Flerov's warning, which was the impetus for the implementation of the uranium project. The corresponding tasks were assigned to our strategic intelligence, and L.P. Beria set them, you guessed it. It was he who was in charge of our intelligence, among other things.

And Stalin had an unpleasant conversation with our "leading" physicists. For some reason, not some venerable scientist was chosen for the scientific leadership of the project, but not the well-known Kurchatov.

Pay attention - neither Flerov nor Kurchatov were perceived by the "scientific community" as a value. Kurchatov, instead of evacuating to the East, demagnetized the hulls of ships under German bombs in Sevastopol, and Flerov fought in general, by no means on the "Kazan Front". He didn't even get armor!

This suggests that the Soviet leadership of that time itself understood the problem sufficiently to listen not to authorities, but to little-known scientists.

And imagine what would happen if Stalin and Beria relied on advisers!

CONSPIRACY

After the war, Khrushchev, Malenkov and Beria formed a stable group. Jealous senior members of the Politburo derisively called them "Young Turks." Beria did not believe to the last and, perhaps, did not find out that he was betrayed by those whom he considered friends - Malenkov and Khrushchev.

So why did Beria become hated by everyone?

The reason is in the unhealthy situation in the country after the war, and especially in the leadership. Stalin, apparently due to illness, clearly "released the reins", which he used to control so well. The proof of this is the fact of a fierce struggle for power between the factions - this is a clear sign of the absence of a real case. There was no one to set tasks for the "ruling elite" and ask for their solution.

War is not a school of humanism. Any, no matter how fair it may be. War is a catastrophe that disfigures all aspects of public and state life.

Ask any veteran front-line soldier, a wounded hero, and he will confirm that they were better than him, but they died. The best died in the war.

At the end of the war, people and structures associated with the war and military production begin to play an absurdly important role. After the war, they are no longer needed and should lose their importance, but do they want this?

Paradoxically, the defeated countries, whose military elite has been destroyed, suffer less from this. In Japan and Germany, there were no problems with the orientation of politics - only towards peaceful construction. But in France and the United States, for example, instead of peaceful pre-war leaders, generals and hawks came to power, soon plunging their countries into new inglorious wars.

The 10-million army was no longer needed in the USSR either. Where are the generals to go?

Look at the statistics - how much unnecessary military equipment was produced in 1945. The manufacturers themselves understood that it was no longer needed, so they drove a real marriage. Switch to products that still have to win over the buyer? This is a risk. You can't persuade a buyer! It is a completely different matter when it is enough to persuade a military receptionist, albeit in marshal's stars. Who will make consumer goods? Yes, someone will.

Here are these captains of industry, instructors of departments of district committees, regional committees, and republican committees. They gave a military plan, and they gave it well. Of course, who is unhappy that the war is over? But to give power to people who are better, and, most importantly, cheaper in tailoring dresses and assembling TV sets ...? Sorry!

That is why the development of the economy went along a paradoxical path - consumer goods were not evaluated by the consumer with their own ruble, but by something like the Defense Council, only it was not called that.

And without a special analysis, it is clear who the main governing body of the country, the Central Committee, consisted of after the war.

And the problem was deeper - when the direction of the country's development had already been chosen in the 30s, when politics managed to be defended from the adherents of the "world revolution" (Trotskyists) and the supporters of the return to the primitive communal system (right), after that the party was no longer needed , more precisely, it remained needed only as a personnel sieve - after all, theoretically it was possible to democratically block the promotion of the unworthy at the initial stage.

But after the war, the party lost its significance. In the late 40s and early 50s, everyone seemed to understand this. The words "Politburo", "Central Committee", "General Secretary" seemed to have been completely banished from the lexicon. Looking ahead, I note that all decisions on the "Beria case" were made, judging by the reports, by the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Supreme Council.

The course of the conspiracy against Beria is a separate issue, but it is obvious that two currents have collided. One is Beria's approach: the party is a political instrument that requires oversight and should not deal with economic issues that should be the responsibility of the Council of Ministers.

As we now know, the other line won then. Now it is clear that the duplication of the Council of Ministers by the industrial departments of the Central Committee, which took shape in the 50-80s, was a perversion, the result of the victory of the party nomenklatura.

The leaders of the opposing Beria line were Malenkov and Khrushchev, and Khrushchev was not very significant - he was the chief party personnel officer, like Yezhov until 1937.

But after Stalin's death, the situation escalated. There were two key events, the main pain points.

Firstly, among the cases implemented by the new Minister of Internal Affairs, the main thing was not to stop the "case of the Kremlin doctors." Especially not the amnesty of 1953. Such decisions - political ones - are not made at the level of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, this is a decision of the political leadership of the state, the Ministry of Internal Affairs is only an executor.

The main event was a meeting of the leadership of the ministry, at which Beria gave his vision of the tasks of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Among these tasks was special control over the cleanliness of the ranks of party bodies - a task somewhat forgotten by those years.

The point is not that there were fewer repressions after the war, although a kind of "era of mercy" had begun - the death penalty was abolished until 1953. For some crimes, they were still shot, but to control the party elite, ... the party elite itself was used! It is hard to believe, but an investigative unit was created in the party apparatus to investigate the "Leningrad case", and even in Matrosskaya Tishina ... a party isolation ward was allocated! G.M. Malenkov conducted the case. So the NKVD not only had nothing to do with this case, it was not allowed.

But back to 1953. Information about the meeting of the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was reported to the party bosses. In particular, Khrushchev was reported by his man - General Strokach. This figure has managed to win the sincere hatred of both the Western Ukrainian rebels and, oddly enough, the border guards. During the war, he had the idea to send "border regiments" to the German rear, which were immediately destroyed by the Germans in open battle. Thousands of the best people died.

Information about possible state control over the party elite caused a unanimous reaction. It's hard to say exactly how it happened. But the indictment in the Beria case said specifically: "an attempt to put the Ministry of Internal Affairs over the Party."

Thus began an almost open confrontation. Khrushchev swore before the Central Committee that there would be no control by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

But with all his mind, L.P. Beria was completely unprepared for the fact that, without any objective prerequisites, he would be overthrown and shot. Why he did not understand the intentions of his friends is still a mystery.

In fact, in 1953 there was a coup d'état in favor of those circles that wanted to lead the country in their own interests, without being responsible in any way for the results of their rule.

By 1953, after the assassination of Beria, there were also serious decisions regulating the activities of law enforcement agencies. Since then, when applying for a job, employees of the "organs" were informed that persons in vacated party positions were not available to them. They cannot be recruited, they cannot be tracked.

It was then that vile personalities like A. Yakovlev "flopped the chip."

Frankly, I believe that such a development of events was generated by Stalin's system. For its time, it was a strong, flexible weapon - the layer of managers was tightly controlled by the top leadership, monolithic and had no other goals than the prosperity of the country. What is the program of action of the then leadership, what they wanted - it is not known exactly now. It is precisely the goals, tasks, and program of action of the Stalinist leadership of the 1930s and 1940s that are the most carefully concealed secret of "democratic historians."

But the seed of destruction was also hidden in this system. With the disappearance of the leading and guiding force, the layer of managers begins to live its own life, solve its problems, following the problems of the state and society only in so far as.

Beria's fault was that this man, having no personal interests, wanted to do something unprecedented, wanted to express himself in projects for the future and could force others to act not for personal, but for public purposes.

His enemies are tired of working for the future. They wanted to live "here and now" and not for others, but for themselves.

It was difficult to deceive such a person, but the conspirators succeeded for one simple reason. In the conspiracy against Beria, they relied on the full support of their class, which wanted to lead - and led - the country and the people straight into the 90s.

Awards
Order of the Red Banner of the Georgian SSR (1923)
Order of the Red Banner (1924)
Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Georgian SSR (1931)
Order of Lenin (1935, 1943, 1945 and 1949)
Order of the Red Banner (1942 and 1944)
Order of the Republic (Tannu-Tuva) (1943)
Hero of Socialist Labor (1943)
Order of Sukhbaatar (1949)
Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Armenian SSR (1949)
Order of Suvorov, 1st class (1949)
Stalin Prize, 1st class (1949)
Certificate of "Honorary Citizen of the Soviet Union" (1949)

Born into the family of a poor peasant in the village of Merkheuli, Sukhum district, Tiflis province. In 1919 he graduated from the Secondary School of Mechanics and Construction in Baku as an architect-builder. He entered the Polytechnic Institute, but studied only two courses. Joined the Bolshevik Party. During the Civil War, in the party and Soviet work in Transcaucasia, including illegal. After the Civil War - in various positions in the Cheka-GPU-OGPU-NKVD, as well as in party posts. In 1938 he headed the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD, took the post of deputy people's commissar and in the same year became the people's commissar of internal affairs, remaining in this post until the end of 1945.

After Beria was appointed head of the NKVD and before the start of the Great Patriotic War, some of the “unreasonably convicted” were released from the camps, including officers arrested on false charges. In particular, in 1939, 11,178 previously dismissed and taken into custody commanders were reinstated in the army. However, in 1940-1941. arrests of commanding officers continued, which affected the combat capability of the armed forces. Before the war, the NKVD carried out the forced eviction of "unreliable" residents of the Baltic states, the western regions of Belarus and Ukraine to the remote eastern regions of the USSR. At the insistence of Beria, the rights of the Special Meeting under the People's Commissar to issue extrajudicial sentences were expanded.

Beria was responsible for the completeness and reliability of reports to Stalin through the foreign intelligence of the NKVD about the impending German attack on the USSR. The information that he supplied the head of state was often biased, made it possible to think about the possibility of maintaining peace with Germany, at least until 1942. With the outbreak of World War II, Beria was included in the GKO, in May 1944 - September 1945 - its chairman Operational Bureau, where decisions were made on all current issues.

He controlled the production of aircraft, engines, tanks, mortars, ammunition, the work of the People's Commissariats of Railways, the coal and oil industries. Directly coordinated all intelligence and counterintelligence activities through the NKVD-NKGB. He proved to be a talented organizer. In 1943 he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. In July 1945 he was awarded the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union.

During the war years, Beria, as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, was directly responsible for the deportation of a number of peoples of the USSR to remote regions of the country, including Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Kalmyks, Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans. Not only criminal elements and accomplices of the enemy, but also many innocent people - women, children, old people - were subjected to forcible resettlement. Justice for them was restored only after 1953. In the autumn of 1941, during the offensive of the fascist troops on Moscow, several dozen prisoners, including prominent military men and scientists, were shot without trial by order of Beria.

Since 1944, on behalf of the GKO, Beria has been dealing with the uranium problem. In 1945 he headed the Special Committee on the creation of the atomic bomb. He coordinated the activities of foreign intelligence to obtain the secrets of the American atomic bomb, which accelerated the work of Soviet nuclear physicists. On August 29, 1949, the first Soviet atomic bomb was successfully tested.

After the death of Beria, he headed the united Ministry of Internal Affairs, being also the first deputy. Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. In March-June 1953, he made a number of proposals related to domestic and foreign policy, including: amnesty for certain categories of prisoners, closing the "doctors' case", curtailing the "building of socialism" in the GDR, etc.

Influence in special agencies and the potential of Beria did not suit his opponents in the struggle for power in the Kremlin. On the initiative of N.S. Khrushchev and with the support of a number of high-ranking military officers on June 26, 1953, Beria was arrested at a meeting of the Presidium (Politburo) of the CPSU Central Committee. Accused of espionage, "moral decay", in an effort to usurp power and restore capitalism. Deprived of party and state posts, titles and awards. Special judicial presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR chaired by Marshal I.S. Konev on December 23, 1953 was sentenced to L.P. Beria and six of his accomplices to be shot. On the same day, the sentence was carried out.

Literature

Lavrenty Beria. 1953: Transcript of the July plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU and other documents / Comp. V.P. Naumov and Yu.V. Sigachev. M., 1999.

Rubin N. Lavrenty Beria: myth and reality. M., 1998.

Toptygin A.V. Unknown Beria. SPb., 2002.