Lavrentiy Beria

Lavrentiy Beria
Лаврентий Берия ლავრენტი ბერია
Beria in 1939
First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union
In office 5 March – 26 June 1953 (1953-03-05 – 1953-06-26)
Premier	Georgy Malenkov
Minister of Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union
In office 5 March – 26 June 1953 (1953-03-05 – 1953-06-26)
Premier	Georgy Malenkov
Preceded by	Sergei Kruglov
Succeeded by	Sergei Kruglov
People's Commissar for Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union
In office 25 November 1938 – 15 January 1946 (1938-11-25 – 1946-01-15)
Preceded by	Nikolai Yezhov
Succeeded by	Sergei Kruglov
Additional positions Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union In office 19 March 1946 – 5 March 1953 (1946-03-19 – 1953-03-05) Premier Joseph Stalin First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party In office 15 January 1934 – 31 August 1938 (1934-01-15 – 1938-08-31) Preceded by Petre Agniashvili Succeeded by Candide Charkviani In office 14 November 1931 – 18 October 1932 (1931-11-14 – 1932-10-18) Preceded by Lavrenty Kartvelishvili Succeeded by Petre Agniashvili Full member of the 18th, 19th Politburo In office 18 March 1946 – 7 July 1953 (1946-03-18 – 1953-07-07) Candidate member of the 18th Politburo In office 22 March 1939 – 18 March 1946 (1939-03-22 – 1946-03-18)
Personal details
Born	Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (1899-03-29)29 March 1899 Merkheuli, Imperial Russia
Died	23 December 1953(1953-12-23) (aged 54) Moscow, Soviet Union
Cause of death	Execution by shooting
Citizenship	Russian (1899–1917) Azerbaijani (1918–1920) Soviet (1920–1953)
Political party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1917–1953)
Spouse	Nina Gegechkori
Parents	Pavel Beria (father) Marta Jaqeli (mother)
Awards	Hero of Socialist Labour
Signature
Military service
Branch/service	NKVD
Rank	Marshal of the Soviet Union
Wars	World War II

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (/ˈbɛriə/ BERR-ee-ə; Russian: Лаврентий Павлович Берия, IPA: [lɐˈvrʲenʲtʲɪj ˈpavləvʲɪdʑ ˈbʲerʲɪjə]; Georgian: ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია, romanized: Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria; 29 March [O.S. 17 March] 1899 – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician and one of the longest-serving and most influential of Joseph Stalin's secret police chiefs, serving as head of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) from 1938 to 1946, during the country's involvement in the Second World War.

An ethnic Georgian, Beria enlisted in the Cheka in 1920, and quickly rose through its ranks. He transferred to Communist Party work in the Caucasus in the 1930s, and in 1938 was appointed head of the NKVD by Stalin. His ascent marked the end of the Stalinist Great Purge carried out by previous chief Nikolai Yezhov, whom Beria purged. After the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, Beria organized the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and intelligentsia, and after the occupation of the Baltic states and parts of Romania in 1940, he oversaw the deportations of hundreds of thousands of Poles, Balts, and Romanians to remote areas or Gulag camps. In 1941, Beria began a new purge of the Red Army. After Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union later that year, he was appointed to the State Defense Committee, overseeing security.

Beria expanded the system of forced labour, mobilizing millions of Gulag prisoners into wartime production, and acted as the de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union in command of NKVD units responsible for barrier and partisan intelligence and sabotage operations on the Eastern Front. In 1943–1944, Beria oversaw the deportation of millions of people from ethnic minorities in the Caucasus, an act which has been described by many scholars as ethnic cleansing or genocide. Beria was also responsible for supervising secret Gulag detention facilities for scientists and engineers, known as sharashkas. From 1945, he personally oversaw the Soviet atomic bomb project, which Stalin gave absolute priority to; the project was completed in 1949.^[1] After the war, Beria was made a Marshal in 1945, and promoted to a full member of the Politburo in 1946.

After Stalin's death in March 1953, Beria became head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and a First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers. In this dual capacity, he formed a troika with Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov that briefly led the country in Stalin's place. The Gulag system was transferred to the Ministry of Justice, and a mass release of over a million prisoners was undertaken. In June 1953, a coup d'état by Nikita Khrushchev, with the support of Marshal Georgy Zhukov, removed Beria from power. He was arrested, tried for treason and other offences, and executed in December. A prolific sexual predator, Beria serially raped scores of girls and young women; there is evidence he murdered some of his victims.