Beria's reign. Lavrenty Beria and the Jewish Question

Everyone more or less knows about Stalin, at least by hearsay. But L.P. Beria - "iron mask". Therefore, I will allow myself a small experiment to show how unlike Lavrenty Pavlovich was either from his contemporaries or from many of us. Beria's archives were either destroyed or not found. In 1953, during a mock trial of him, his autobiographical statement was added to the case (based on it, L.P. Beria was “exposed” as a spy for enemy intelligence). But this document is interesting to me for a completely different reason. Lavrentiy Beria was only 24 years old at the time of writing this document. But he was already (according to his position) no less than a lieutenant general (general ranks were introduced in the USSR in the late 30s). And he asks. He needs what he asks for so much that he writes not just a statement, but his entire biography to show how good and deserved he is. He tries with all his might to convince the one he asks to be given what he asks for. But first, this is his biography-statement, dated “1923 22/X”. "Autobiography. I was born on March 17, 1899 in the village of Merkheuli (15 versts from the city of Sukhum) into a poor peasant family. Due to the fact that my education was a burden to my parents, while still a student at the Sukhumi City School, I trained junior school students, thus helping the family, and this continued intermittently until 1915. In 1915 I moved to Baku; from that moment my independent life began. From then on, while studying at a technical school, I had an old mother to support me, a deaf-mute sister and a niece aged 5. My studies, which began in 1907 in the city of Sukhum, after completing a course at a higher primary school (in 1915) with my move to Baku, continued here and proceeded as follows: having arrived in Baku, I enroll here to the secondary mechanical-construction technical school, where I studied for 4 years. In 1919, I completed a course at the school, and in 1920, with the transformation of the technical school into a polytechnic institute, I entered the latter. From that moment on, regular training ceased, and my studies were Institute continued intermittently until 1922. However, during all this time I did not lose contact with the institute, and only in 1922 in connection with the transfer of me by the Transcaucasian Regional Committee. - Yu.M.) RCP from Baku to Tiflis I stop studying, being listed as a 3rd year student by this time. Thus, my teaching in Baku, which began here in 1915 and continued with interruptions until 1922, was interrupted. In the same year, 1915, my participation in party life began for the first time, then still in its embryonic form. In October of this year, we, a group of students from the Baku Technical School, organized an illegal Marxist circle, which included students from other educational institutions. The circle existed until February 1917. I was the treasurer of this circle. The motives for creating the circle were: organization of students, mutual material support and self-education in the Marxist spirit (reading essays), analysis of books received from workers' organizations, and so on. At the same time, he was elected head of his class (illegally). In March 1917, I, together with comrade. V. Egorov, Pukhovich, Avanesov and another comrade (I don’t remember his last name) are organizing a cell of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks), where I am a member of the bureau. In 1916 (summer vacation) I served as an intern at Nobel's main office in Balakhany, earning food for my family and myself. In the course of further events, starting from 1917, in Transcaucasia, I was drawn into the general mainstream of party-Soviet work, which transferred me from place to place, from the conditions of the legal existence of the party (in 1918 in the city of Baku) to the illegal (1919 and 1920) and is interrupted by my departure to Georgia. In June 1917, as a trainee technician, I entered the hydraulic engineering organization of the army of the Romanian front and went with the latter to Odessa, from there to Romania, where I worked in the forestry detachment of the village of Negulyashti. At the same time, I am the chairman of the detachment committee elected by the workers and soldiers and a delegate from the detachment, and I often attend district congresses of district representatives in Pascani (Romania). I remained in this job until the end of 1917 and at the beginning of 1918, upon arrival in Baku, I continued to work at a technical school at an accelerated pace, quickly making up for what I missed. In January 1918, I entered the Baku Council of Workers', Soldiers' and Sailors' Deputies, working here in the secretariat of the Council as an employee, doing all the current work, and I devote a lot of energy and strength to this work. Here I remain until September 1918, but October of this year finds me in the liquidation of the commission of Soviet employees, where I remain until the city of Baku is occupied by the Turks. During the first time of the Turkish occupation, I worked in the White City at the Caspian Partnership plant as a clerk. Due to the start of intensive studies at a technical school and the need to pass some transitional exams, I was forced to quit my service. From February 1919 to April 1920, being the chairman of the communist cell of technicians, under the guidance of senior comrades he carried out individual assignments of the district committee, himself working with other cells as an instructor. In the autumn of the same 1919, from the Hummet party (a social democratic organization that operated from the end of 1904 to February 1920, created for political work among working Muslims. - Author) I entered the counterintelligence service, where I worked together with comrade Moussevi. Around March 1920, after the assassination of Comrade Moussevi, I left my job in counterintelligence and worked for a short time at the Baku customs. From the very first days after the April coup in Azerbaijan, the regional committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) from the register of the 11th Caucasian Front under the RVS12 of the 11th Army was sent to Georgia for underground work abroad as an authorized representative. In Tiflis I contact the regional committee represented by Comrade. Hmayak Nazaretyan, I spread a network of residents in Georgia and Armenia, establish contact with the headquarters of the Georgian army and guard, and regularly send couriers to the register of the city of Baku. In Tiflis I was arrested together with the Central Committee of Georgia, but according to negotiations between G. Sturua and Noah Zhordania, everyone was released with an offer 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 with Comrade Kirov, who by that time had arrived in the city of Tiflis. In May 1920, I went to Baku to the register office 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 a telegram from Noah Ramishvili and taken to Tiflis, from where, despite the efforts of Comrade Kirov, I was sent to Kutaisi prison. June and July 1920 I was in custody, only after four and a half days of hunger strike declared by political prisoners, I was gradually deported to Azerbaijan. Upon arrival (August 1920), the Central Committee of the RCP requested me from the army and appointed me manager of the affairs of the Central Committee of Azerbaijan. I remained in this position until October 1920, after which the Central Committee appointed me the executive secretary of the Extraordinary Commission for the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the improvement of the living conditions of the workers. I and Comrade Sarkis (chairman of the commission) carried out this work in an urgent manner until the liquidation of the Commission (February 1921). With the end of my work on the Commission, I managed to persuade the Central Committee to give me the opportunity to continue my education at the institute, where by that time I was listed as a student (since its opening in 1920). According to my requests, the Central Committee sent me to the institute, giving me a scholarship through the Baku Council. However, not even two weeks pass before the Central Committee sends a demand to the Caucasian Bureau to send me to work in Tiflis. As a result, the Central Committee removes me from the institute, but instead of sending me to Tiflis, by its resolution appoints me to the Azerbaijani Cheka as deputy head of the secret operational department (April 1921) and soon as the head of the secret operational department, deputy chairman of the Azerbaijani Cheka . I will not dwell on the tense and nervous nature of work in the Azerbaijani Cheka. As a result of this work, positive results soon appeared. I will dwell here on the defeat of the Muslim organization “Ittihat”, which had tens of thousands of members. Next - the defeat of the Transcaucasian organization of right Socialist Revolutionaries, for which the GPU (VChK) by its order of February 6, 1923 for No. 45 expresses gratitude to me and rewards me with weapons. The results of the same work were noted by the Council of People's Commissars of the ASSR in its letter of commendation dated September 12, 1922 and in the local press. While working in the Azerbaijani Cheka, I was also the chairman of Azmezhkom (Azerbaijan Interdepartmental Commission) from VII - 1921 to XI - 1922. Then in the commission of the Supreme Economic Council (Higher Economic Council) and in the commission for the examination of the revolutionary tribunal. Along the party line, I am attached from the BC AKP14 to workers' cells, and later, for convenience, to a cell of the Cheka, where I am a member of the bureau, was elected to almost all congresses and conferences of the AKP, and was also a member of the Baku Council. In November 1922, the Transcaucasian Regional Committee recalled me from the Azerbaijani check to the Central Committee of the KKE15, which appointed me head of the secret operational unit and deputy chairman of the Georgian Cheka. Here, taking into account the seriousness of the work and the large object, I devote all my knowledge and time to it, as a result, in a relatively short period of time, it is possible to achieve serious results that affect all areas of work: this is the elimination of banditry, which had assumed enormous proportions in Georgia, and the defeat of the Menshevik organization and the anti-Soviet party in general, despite the extreme conspiracy. The results of the work achieved were noted by the Central Committee and the Central Election Commission of Georgia in the form of awarding me the Order of the Red Banner. In Georgia, working in the Cheka, I am also a member of the bureau of the communist cell and a member of the Tiflis Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies...”72 I will interrupt Beria’s statement at this point to specifically draw the attention of the readers: before us is an honored general of the special services. He knows very well intelligence work, since he himself began as an ordinary intelligence officer. He also knows counterintelligence work very well - he has been responsible for the defeat of more than one anti-Soviet underground. He organized two military operations to defeat banditry, incomparably larger in scale than the current endless operation in Chechnya. Dzerzhinsky awarded him an honorary weapon, the government - a very rare order at that time. And he is only 24 years old! What is he asking? Appoint him People's Commissar to Moscow? Provide a palace for a dacha in Zavidovo? Transfer currency to a Swiss bank? What could a 24-year-old but already honored general want? With the permission of the readers, I will not tell you this now and I will place the end of his statement, his request, at the end of this book. Maybe you can guess from the text of this study what young Lavrenty really wanted... _ _ _ _ _ _ Completely different from the crowd of ordinary people and Beria. If readers remember, then at the beginning of the book, giving the autobiography of L.P. Beria, I wrote that this is not his actual biography, but an extended statement in which Beria asks for a very important favor for himself. I invited readers to think about the question - what could a 24-year-old general of the special services, who had distinguished himself and been awarded the highest state awards, ask for? Asked to appoint him as a minister, transfer money to a Swiss bank, build him a villa? I don’t know if you guessed what Beria asked, but his request made a deep impression on me, made me look at him in a new way and, in fact, begin an investigation into his case. Beria asked: “During my party and Soviet work, especially in the bodies of the Cheka, I fell far behind both in terms of general development, and also without completing my special education. Having a vocation for this field of knowledge, having spent a lot of time and effort, I would ask the Central Committee provide me with the opportunity to continue this education in order to complete it as quickly as possible. Completed special education will give me the opportunity to give my experience and knowledge in this area to Soviet construction, and the party to use me as it sees fit. 1923 22/X (signed) ".72 As you can see, Beria did not value his general position one penny; he did not care about the “state prospects” that opened up before him, still a very young man. He wanted to study! He wanted to become a student and then a civil engineer. He didn’t need power, he was a creator, he wanted to build and admire the creations of his hands. Therefore, I will end this book with an excerpt with which I ended my article by A.P., mentioned at the beginning of the book. Parshev. “In one century, the Georgian land gave Russia two great people. But this is not a reproach to Russia - we had and will have great compatriots of Russian origin, and without Russia, both Stalin and Beria would not have become great. But there are no monuments to them in our squares. But it doesn't matter. Go to Poklonnaya Hill, but don’t look at the terrible monuments and buildings there. From there you can clearly see the building of Moscow University - lonely, wonderful, looking up. There is nothing like it in the world. The head of the construction of this building was L.P. Beria, and this is to some extent a monument to him." _ _ _ _ _ _ As for historians, with few exceptions they have a standard “creative approach”: they strain their imagination, put themselves in Beria’s place, take facts from his life, present themselves as scoundrels (and often they don’t even need to bother with this) and give these facts a corresponding motivation, i.e. they believe that what they would have done in Beria’s place, Beria himself would have acted the same way. in the image of Lavrenty Pavlovich, they read what was written and are horrified - what a scoundrel he was! Yes, their character is really a scoundrel, but what does Beria have to do with it? (In the same way, by the way, I.V. Stalin is very often described).

In “Song about Rumors” by Vladimir Vysotsky, a neighbor is mentioned who was taken away by vigilant authorities “because he looks like Beria.” For the authorities themselves, the very mention of Beria in the 70s looked not only seditious, but unacceptable in any weather. As much as this man ascended under Stalin and after his death, they tried to erase him from our history in the following decades - as an enemy of the people, an immoral type and, in general, a bearer of all possible sins...

Biography and activities of Lavrentiy Beria

There is not much reliable information regarding the personality of Lavrenty Pavlovich - some of the archives are still classified. Georgian by nationality. Place of birth (03/17/29/1899) – the village of Merkhiuli. The mother belonged to an ancient princely family, but lived poorly. She, a widow with two children, was wooed by an equally poor man, three years younger.

She bore him three more children. Only the youngest, Lavrenty, grew up healthy, inquisitive and active. When the child was seven years old, the parents divided the property and mother and son moved to Sukhumi. She never returned to her husband. The boy was sent to study. He graduated from the Sukhumi School in 1915 with honors.

However, the fact that Beria wrote illiterately throughout his adult life suggests that his craving for new knowledge is only part of a myth, moreover, created by himself. He even managed to earn extra money by teaching French, without knowing a word of French. Beria was introduced into the bowels of the nationalist Musavat party that ruled Azerbaijan.

This was the powerful debut of the future intelligence officer. He was introduced there on the instructions of the Bolshevik Party and A. Mikoyan personally. The latter, however, categorically denied this fact. Most likely, Beria worked exclusively for himself - according to the principle of a weather vane, wanting to always be in the camp of the winners.

Beria spent two months in prison. Upon leaving, he proposed to his cellmate’s daughter, Nina Gegechkori, with whom he remained for the rest of his life. Beria graduated from the Baku Mechanical and Construction School and did it by vocation. It cannot be ruled out that a first-class builder died in it. Politics took him into its arms powerfully and forever. In the 20s, Beria served in the Georgian Cheka and so far nothing foreshadowed his rapid career rise.

Acquaintance with Stalin occurs in the early 20s. Stalin appreciated his new acquaintance and took note of him. That's why in the 30s. Beria is already the First Secretary of the Communist Central Committee in Georgia. This was no longer a purely security service, but rather a party-economic position. Beria accepted Georgia as poor, and by 1940 he made it the richest republic in the USSR. And he spared no expense for this. Beria made especially strong progress in oil production. Giants of heavy industry were erected.

In 1939, the first official biography of Beria was published. A giant granite statue was erected in his homeland. A real cult of personality has developed. In the last years of his work in Georgia, Beria not only destroyed the imaginary enemies of the people, but also finished off his personal possible competitors and enemies. He oversaw the implementation of mass repressions throughout the Transcaucasus. Soon Stalin transferred Beria to Moscow and promoted him.

In August 1938, Beria was appointed first deputy to N. Yezhov, who had already fallen out of favor, and was promoted to state security commissar of the first rank. Beria dealt with Yezhov on Stalin’s orders. Until the end of the war, Beria headed the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs and updated its apparatus. As part of the “renewal”, the writer I. Babel and the journalist M. Koltsov were shot. Under Beria, repressions began to hit those who carried them out - i.e. according to the NKVD officers themselves. Beria personally loved to be present when prisoners were tortured.

The time when Beria replaced Yezhov became a kind of “thaw” - about 200,000 people were released from prisons and camps. There were much fewer executions. However, new arrests continued. The repressive machine did not slow down. Beria also carried out mass deportations of “small” peoples.

During the war, Beria organized a department in which arrested scientists worked. With Solzhenitsyn’s light hand they were dubbed “sharashkas”. Since 1945, Beria has controlled the production and testing of atomic weapons. The atomic bomb was tested in 1949, the hydrogen bomb in 1953. Four months after Stalin’s death, Beria was arrested and another six months later he was executed.

What was going on in the government during this period is a complete puzzle. One thing is clear - there was a mortal struggle for power. Everyone without exception feared Beria like fire. And everyone wanted to eliminate him – including physically. According to the version of Beria’s son, Sergo, his father was shot on December 23, 1953. during the storming of the mansion, and everything else - the process and interrogations - is just a skillful staging.

• A certain Sergei Kremlev published a few years ago the so-called. "Beria's diaries" for the period from 1937 to 1953. Most serious historians recognize them as fakes, although very plausible. Numerous grammatical errors by the diary author also support the version of authenticity.

During the existence of the Soviet Union, the history of the country was rewritten many times. Due to modest funding, school textbooks were sometimes not reprinted; students were simply instructed to black out in ink portraits of leaders who suddenly became enemies.

Yagoda, Yezhov, Uborevich, Tukhachevsky, Blucher, Bukharin, Kamenev, Radek and many others were erased in this way from books and from memory. But the most demonized figure of the Bolshevik Party was, without a doubt, His biography was supplemented by work for British intelligence, which, of course, was not true, otherwise MI6 would proudly recall such success today.

In fact, Beria was a very ordinary Bolshevik, no worse than others. He was born in 1899 into a peasant family, and from childhood he was drawn to knowledge. At the age of sixteen, having graduated with honors from the Sukhumi primary school, he expressed a desire to continue his education at the Secondary Mechanical and Technical Construction School, where he received a diploma in architecture. A year later, he entered the Baku Polytechnic Institute, where he became involved in underground work. He was deported, but not far away, to Azerbaijan.

Thus, at the top of the social democratic underground there were few such intellectual people as Biography after the revolution demonstrates his desire to control the situation. He is involved in secret operational matters, and over time, having ousted Redens (the son-in-law of Stalin himself), he occupies the post of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of Georgia. Not without the knowledge, of course, of the secretary himself, who believed that business qualities were more important than those closest to him.

Having successfully dealt with the Mensheviks and other enemies of Soviet power, Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, whose biography could not stall in this post due to his active nature, covered Stalin with his chest during the shooting on Lake Ritsa, which was opened by no one and why.

This readiness for self-sacrifice was appreciated, but the main factor was still not it, but truly outstanding organizational skills and amazing performance. Yezhov's deputy, who soon took his place, was a candidate member of the Politburo - these steps of the career ladder were completed in 1938.

It is believed that Beria Lavrentiy Pavlovich was Stalin’s main executioner; his biography, however, refutes this. He managed state security affairs for only a short time (until 1941). The Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars is much higher than just the chief security officer. His field of attention includes the entire defense industry of the USSR during the war years, including the creation of nuclear weapons, which he supervised since 1943.

A special article for conversation - Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich and women. The wife of Stalin's closest ally, the beautiful Nino, took all the allegations about his amorous-maniacal habits with great skepticism. Her husband was known to her; he didn’t even have enough time to sleep. He had a mistress, very young, but she gave evidence that Beria committed violence against her under pressure from the investigation. In fact, the girl received an apartment on Gorky Street in Moscow, and her mother even had her teeth treated at the Kremlin hospital. So everything was entirely voluntary.

Much has been written about the bold conspiracy, as a result of which Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich was arrested and soon executed (or killed). His photo was just as quickly erased from all textbooks, like the images of previous exposed enemies of the people. The projects of economic and political reforms he proposed, in particular, the limited introduction of private property, were subsequently implemented during Gorbachev's perestroika.

Soviet statesman and politician, Marshal of the Soviet Union (1945, stripped of this title in 1953). He was part of Stalin's inner circle. As the head of the NKVD (1938-1945), he participated in Stalin’s repressions, and at the same time carried out the rehabilitation of those illegally repressed. He oversaw a number of the most important sectors of the defense industry, including all developments related to the creation of nuclear weapons.

Life story

Born in the village of Merkheuli, Sukhumi region, into a poor peasant family. Father - Pavel Khulaevich Beria (1872 - 1922). 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. From the age of 17, he supported his mother and deaf-mute sister, who moved in with him.

In March 1917, L.P. Beria organized a RSDLP (Bolshevik) cell at the school in Baku. From March 1919 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 and received a diploma as an architect-builder technician.

While preparing an armed uprising against the Menshevik government in Georgia, he was arrested and imprisoned in Kutaisi prison. In August 1920, after he organized a hunger strike of political prisoners, L.P. Beria was expelled from Georgia.

Returning to Baku, L.P. Beria entered the Baku Polytechnic Institute to study.

In April 1921, the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) sent L.P. Beria to KGB work. From 1921 to 1931, he held senior positions in Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence agencies, 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 Trans-SFSR, and was a member of the board of the OGPU of the USSR.

During his activities in the bodies of the Cheka-GPU in Georgia and Transcaucasia, L.P. Beria took an active part in the fight against the Mensheviks, Dashnaks, Musavatists, Trotskyists, foreign intelligence agents and other persons who opposed the Bolsheviks who came to power, or were accused of such confrontation. 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 with the wording “For the successful fight against counter-revolution in Transcaucasia.”

In November 1931, L.P. Beria was transferred to party work - he was elected first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia (Bolsheviks) and secretary of the Transcaucasian regional committee of the CPSU (b), and in 1932 - first secretary of the Transcaucasian regional committee of the CPSU (b) and secretary of the Central Committee Communist Party (b) of Georgia.

In 1938, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks transferred L.P. Beria to work in Moscow: on August 22, 1938, he became the first deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR N.I. Ezhov, on September 29 he headed the key Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD, and on 25 November is already replacing Yezhov as People's Commissar. Since March 22, 1939 - candidate member of the Politburo.

In February 1941, the head of the NKVD was appointed deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, and he was awarded the title "State Commissar of State Security." 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 of the State Defense Committee and carried out important assignments of the country's leadership and the ruling party, both related to the management of the national economy and at the front. In particular, Beria became the initiator and curator of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.

March 18, 1946 L.P. Beria becomes a member of the Politburo, that is, he is among the country's top leaders. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated 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.” On July 9, 1945, when special state security ranks were replaced with military ones, L.P. Beria was awarded the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. Laureate of the Stalin Prize (1949) “for organizing the production of atomic energy and the successful completion of the testing of atomic weapons.” Recipient of the “Certificate of Honorary Citizen of the Soviet Union” (1949).

Economic activity in Transcaucasia

From 1931 to 1938, while holding the posts of secretary and first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Transcaucasia, Beria consistently pursued a policy of developing agriculture and industry in Transcaucasia. Mass plantings of citrus fruits, tea, grapes, and rare industrial crops began. In exchange for these products, grain, meat, and vegetables came to Transcaucasia. Irrigation work was carried out, as a result of which the area under cultivation increased. The drainage of the Colchis Lowland and a number of other swamps in Georgia and Abkhazia, in addition to the introduction of new lands into agricultural use, also led to an improvement in the general epidemiological situation. Malaria has ceased to be the scourge of Transcaucasia.

A number of enterprises in the food, light, and construction industries, as well as machine-building plants were built, and the Baku oil fields were reconstructed and expanded. Large-scale construction of residential buildings and public buildings in Tbilisi, reconstruction and construction of a number of resorts on the Black Sea coast were also launched.

Repression

There are still different points of view on Beria’s participation in the repressions of the late 30s and 40s. No one doubts that the head of the NKVD and the Ministry of Internal Affairs in those years obviously had the most direct relation to what was happening, but the nature of Beria’s personal contribution is assessed differently by different researchers.

Alexey Barinov, a journalist for AiF, wrote in 2004 that already in the mid-thirties, heading the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, Beria personally and through the apparatus carried out mass repressions among the intelligentsia of Transcaucasia. Without citing, however, references to documents, Barinov claims that there is a lot of testimony that Beria himself participated in interrogations and torture.

Beria had nothing to do with the decision to start the repressions, since they began with the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of July 2, 1937, “On anti-Soviet elements.” At this time, Lavrenty Pavlovich was still in Transcaucasia.

It is known that in 1939, after Beria assumed the post of People's Commissar of the NKVD to replace Yezhov, the pace of repressions began to decline sharply. Moreover, in 1939, a number of (at least one hundred thousand) cases of previously “unreasonably convicted” persons were reviewed. In November 1939, an order was issued “On shortcomings in the investigative work of the NKVD bodies,” which demanded strict adherence to criminal procedural norms. However, for example, Professor Rudolf Pihoya, the former head of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, argues that this was Stalin’s game against Yezhov and to increase his own popularity, and Beria did not play a decisive role here. At the same time, A.P. Parshev, a publicist and writer, states that it was Beria who initiated the decrees to curtail repression.

The Krugosvet encyclopedia and the Memorial Society report that in 1939-1941, as a result of Beria’s activities, mass deportations of residents of the Baltic republics annexed to the USSR, Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and Moldova were carried out. Despite the slowdown in the rate of repression, the powers of the Special Meeting under the NKVD expanded (especially after the start of the Great Patriotic War, when the Special Meeting received the right to apply “capital punishment”). Opponents of his rehabilitation also associate the name of Beria with confirmation of the right to torture “obvious and undisarmed enemies of the people.” Beria is also accused of organizing the execution in 1940 of a significant part of captured Polish officers near Katyn near Smolensk and in several other camps according to a secret resolution of the Politburo. After June 22, 1941, total preventive deportations of Soviet Germans, Finns, Greeks and some other peoples took place. Beginning in 1943 and later, total deportations were applied to Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Karachais and Balkars, Crimean Tatars, Meskhetian Turks, as well as some other peoples of the North Caucasus and Crimea, accused of collaborating with the occupiers. Beria, as the head of the NKVD, is associated with the organization of these deportations.

In the collections “The Polish Underground on the Territory of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus 1939-1941.” (vol. 1,2. Warsaw-Moscow, 2001) and “Deportations of Polish citizens from Western Ukraine and Western Belarus in 1940” (Warsaw-Moscow, 2003) it is argued that deportations in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were directed mainly against hostile to Soviet power and a nationalist-minded part of the Polish population.

At the end and after the war, he devoted himself entirely to working on the nuclear potential of the USSR and could not be directly involved in subsequent repressions. At the same time, they also refer to the fact that preventive deportations were used in countries allied with the USSR in the anti-Hitler coalition, and the so-called “deportations of retribution” were more humane than imprisoning the majority of the male population of the deported peoples in camps and colonies.

Beria's son, Sergo Lavrentievich, published a book of memoirs about his father in 1994, which many regarded as an attempt to whitewash his father. In particular, L.P. Beria is described there as a supporter of democratic reforms, an end to the violent construction of socialism in the GDR, the return of the Southern Kuril Islands to Japan, and so on. At the same time, the author claims that his father, like any other supreme leader of our country at that time, bears personal responsibility for the repression and cannot be rehabilitated.

Nuclear project

On February 11, 1943, Stalin signed the decision of the State Defense Committee on the work program for the creation of an atomic bomb under the leadership of V. M. Molotov. But already in the decree of the State Defense Committee of the USSR on the laboratory 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.

After the first American atomic device was tested in the desert near Alamogordo, work in the USSR to create its own nuclear weapons was significantly accelerated.

The Special Committee was created on the basis of a resolution of the State Defense Committee of August 20, 1945. It included L. P. Beria (chairman), G. M. Malenkov, N. A. Voznesensky, B. L. Vannikov, A. P. Zavenyagin, I. V. Kurchatov, P. L. Kapitsa (soon to be suspended), V. A. Makhnev, M. G. Pervukhin. The Committee was entrusted with “the management of all work on the use of intra-atomic energy of uranium.” Later it was transformed into a Special Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Beria, on the one hand, organized and supervised the receipt of all necessary intelligence information, on the other hand, he provided general management of the entire project. 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 CPSU Central Committee of June 26, 1953 (the day of Beria’s arrest and removal), the Special Committee was liquidated, and its apparatus was transferred to the newly formed Ministry of Medium Engineering of the USSR.

On August 29, 1949, the domestic atomic bomb was successfully tested at the Semipalatinsk test site and Lavrenty Pavlovich was awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of the USSR. And the test of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb took place on August 12, 1953, soon after Beria was removed from all posts.

1953: the rise and fall of Beria

By the time of the death of I.V. Stalin, Beria as a political figure was largely relegated to the background: since December 1945, he no longer headed the internal affairs and state security agencies; in 1951-1952, the new leaders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security fabricated the so-called “Mingrelian case" against the leaders of the organizations of the Georgian Communist Party in the western regions of the republic - it is usually believed that this action was indirectly directed against Beria, who was Mingrelian by origin (however, in his passport in the nationality column it was written "Georgian"). Beria also did not control other political repressions of the last years of Stalin’s rule, in particular, the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the “doctors’ case.” Nevertheless, after the 19th Congress of the CPSU, Beria was included not only in the expanded Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, which replaced the previous Politburo, but also in the “leading five” of the Presidium, created at the suggestion of Stalin.

There is a version about Beria’s involvement in Stalin’s death, or at least that, on his orders, timely assistance was not provided to the terminally ill Stalin. Documentary materials and eyewitness accounts do not support the version according to which Stalin’s death was violent. Beria took part in Stalin's funeral on March 9, 1953, and made a speech at the funeral meeting. By this time, he had already entered the new Soviet government, headed by G. M. Malenkov, as Minister of Internal Affairs. The newly formed Ministry of Internal Affairs merged the previously existing Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security. At the same time, Beria became the first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and, in fact, the main contender for sole power in the country.

As Minister of Internal Affairs, Beria carried out a number of liberalization measures. On May 9, 1953, an amnesty was declared, freeing 1.2 million people. According to Beria’s secret order, torture during interrogations was abolished, and it was ordered to strictly follow “socialist legality.” A number of high-profile political criminal cases were dropped or reviewed. The “doctors’ case” was closed, those arrested in connection with it were released; For the first time, it was openly announced that “illegal investigative methods” were used against the accused. All those convicted in the “Leningrad case” and “Mingrelian case” were also rehabilitated. High-ranking military personnel imprisoned during the trials of the late 1940s and early 1950s were released and restored to rank (including Chief Marshal of Aviation A. A. Novikov, Marshal of Artillery N. D. Yakovlev, etc.) In total, investigative cases involving 400 thousand people were closed.

A number of measures taken during these months on Beria’s initiative concerned domestic and foreign policy. Beria advocated reducing military spending and freezing expensive construction projects. He achieved the start of negotiations on a truce in Korea and tried to restore relations with Yugoslavia. After the start of the anti-communist uprising in the GDR, he proposed to set a course for the unification of West and East Germany into a “peace-loving, bourgeois state.” Pursuing a policy of promoting national personnel, Beria sent documents to the republican Central Committee that spoke about the incorrect Russification policy and illegal repressions.

The strengthening of Beria, his claims to Stalin's inheritance and his lack of allies in the top party leadership led to his downfall. Members of the Presidium of the Central Committee were informed, on the initiative of N. S. Khrushchev, that Beria was planning to carry out a coup d'etat and arrest the Presidium at the premiere of the opera “The Decembrists.” On June 26, 1953, during a meeting of the Presidium, Beria, by prior agreement between Khrushchev and G.K. Zhukov, was arrested, tied up, taken out of the Kremlin by car and kept in custody in a bunker at the headquarters of the Moscow Air Defense District. The same day dates back to the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR depriving Beria of all titles and awards. In July 1953, at the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, he was formally removed from the Presidium and the Central Committee and expelled from the party. Only then did information about Beria’s arrest and removal appear in Soviet newspapers and cause a great public outcry.

Regarding the further fate of Beria, there are several versions of varying degrees of reliability. Beria's son in his book defended the version according to which his father was not arrested at all at a meeting of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee (thus, the memoirs of Khrushchev, the stories of Zhukov and others are tendentious lies), but was killed as a result of a special operation in his mansion in the center of Moscow. There are notes signed with Beria’s name and addressed to various members of the Presidium of the Central Committee, including Malenkov, Khrushchev and Voroshilov: in them, Beria defends his innocence, admits his foreign policy “mistakes” and complains about the lack of normal lighting and pince-nez. They are dated the first days of July 1953; if we accept their authenticity, then Beria was at least alive at that time.

According to the official version, supported by documents, Beria lived until December 1953 and appeared, along with some of his former employees from the state security agencies (V.N. Merkulov, B.Z. Kobulov, etc.), arrested during the same year, before the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR, chaired by Marshal I. S. Konev. Accused of a large number of acts that had nothing to do with Beria’s real activities: espionage for Great Britain, the desire for “the elimination of the Soviet worker-peasant system, the restoration of capitalism and the restoration of the rule of the bourgeoisie.” Contrary to rumors, Beria was not accused of raping dozens or even hundreds of women; in his file there is only one such statement from a person who was Beria’s long-term mistress, bore him a daughter and lived at his expense in an apartment in the center of Moscow; She filed a rape complaint only, apparently, to avoid persecution after his arrest.

On December 23, 1953, Beria’s case was considered by the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR, chaired by Marshal I. S. Konev. All defendants were sentenced to death and executed on the same day. Beria was shot a few hours before the execution of the other convicts. 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. A brief report about the trial of Beria and his collaborators appeared in the Soviet press.

Member of the Politburo (Presidium) of the CPSU Central Committee - 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: Sergey Nikiforovich Kruglov

First Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the CPSU (b) 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 of Georgia (Bolsheviks) 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: Sergey Arsenievich Goglidze

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

Military service
Years of service: 1938—1953
Military branch: NKVD
Rank: Marshal of the Soviet Union
Commanded by: Head of the GUGB NKVD USSR (1938)
People's Commissar of the USSR Internal Affairs (1938-1945)
Member of the State Defense Committee (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, 1st class
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 "25 Years 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
Personalized weapon - Browning system pistol
Stalin Prize
Stalin Prize

Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria (Georgian: ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია, Lavrenty Pavles dze Beria; March 17, 1899, village of Merheu li Sukhumi district of Kutaisi province, Russian Empire - December 23, 1953, Moscow) - Russian revolutionary, Soviet statesman and political figure, General Commissioner of State Security (1941), Marshal of the Soviet Union (1945), Hero of Socialist Labor (1943), deprived of these titles in 1953 due to accusations of organizing “Stalinist” repressions.

Since 1941, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers (Sovnarkom 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 Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR. Member of the USSR State Defense Committee (1941-1944), deputy chairman of the USSR State Defense Committee (1944-1945). Member of the USSR Central Executive Committee 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 CPSU Central Committee (1952-1953). He was part of J.V. Stalin's inner circle. He oversaw a number of the most important sectors of the defense industry, including all developments related to the creation of nuclear weapons and missile technology. He led the implementation of the USSR nuclear program. [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 19:50, he was executed by sentence 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 Donskoye cemetery).

Biography
Childhood and youth
In the settlement of Merkheuli, Sukhumi district, Kutaisi province (now in the Gulrypsh region of Abkhazia) in a poor peasant family.
His mother Marta Jakeli (1868-1955) was a Mingrelian, according to Sergo Beria and fellow villagers, and was distantly related to the Mingrelian princely family of Dadiani. After the death of her first husband, Martha was left with a 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.

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

In 1915, Beria, with honors (according to other sources, studied mediocrely, and was left in the fourth grade for the second year), having graduated from the Sukhumi Higher Primary School, went to 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, he simultaneously continued his studies at the school. He graduated from it in 1919, receiving a diploma as a construction technician-architect.

Since 1915, he was a member of the illegal Marxist circle of the Mechanical Engineering School and was its treasurer. In March 1917, Beria became a member of the RSDLP(b). In June - December 1917, as a technician of a hydraulic engineering detachment, he went to the Romanian front, served in Odessa, then in Pascani (Romania), was discharged 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 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 - clerk at the Caspian Partnership White City plant, Baku.

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

“During the first time 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 Moussevi. Around March 1920, after the murder of Comrade Moussevi, I left my job in counterintelligence and worked for a short time at the Baku customs "
Beria did not hide his work in counterintelligence of the ADR - 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 examined by 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 comrade. 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 register 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 represented by Comrade. Hmayak Nazaretyan, I spread a network of residents in Georgia and Armenia, establish contact with the headquarters of the Georgian army and guard, and regularly send couriers to the register of the city of Baku. In Tiflis I was arrested together with the Central Committee of Georgia, but according to negotiations between G. Sturua and Noah Zhordania, everyone was released with an offer to leave Georgia within 3 days. However, I manage to stay, entering under the pseudonym Lakerbaya to serve in the representative office of the RSFSR with 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 deported to Azerbaijan. He writes about this:

“In May 1920, I went to the register office in Baku 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 a telegram from Noah Ramishvili and taken to Tiflis, from where, despite the efforts of Comrade Kirov, I was sent to Kutaisi prison. June and July 1920, I was in custody, only after four and a half days of hunger strike declared by political prisoners, I was gradually deported to Azerbaijan. »
Shatunovskaya O.G. describes the episode of Beria’s arrest in Baku, mentioning Bagirov, who was subsequently shot (in 1956): “Beria... was not in Azerbaijan for a long time. In Azerbaijan he was put in prison... He was imprisoned as a provocateur, and Bagirov freed him. Kirov he was then a permanent representative in Tbilisi. He gave a telegram to the headquarters of the 11th Army, to the Revolutionary Military Council, to Ordzhonikidze: “The provocateur Beria has escaped, arrest him.”

In the state security agencies of Azerbaijan and Georgia
Returning to Baku, Beria tried several times to continue his studies at the Baku Polytechnic Institute, into which the school was transformed, and completed three courses. In August 1920, he became the manager of the affairs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) 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 improvement of the living conditions of workers, working in this position until February 1921. In April 1921, he was appointed deputy head of the Secret Operations 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 operations department and deputy chairman of the Azerbaijan Cheka. The Chairman of the Cheka of the Azerbaijan SSR at that time was Mir Jafar Bagirov.

In 1921, Beria was sharply criticized by the party and security service leadership of Azerbaijan for exceeding his powers and falsifying criminal cases, but escaped serious punishment. (Anastas Mikoyan interceded for him.)

In 1922, he participated in the defeat of the Muslim organization “Ittihad” and the liquidation of the Transcaucasian organization of right-wing Social Revolutionaries.

In November 1922, Beria was transferred to Tiflis, where he was appointed head of the Secret Operations 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), combining 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 and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of the USSR.

From March 1926 - Deputy Chairman of the GPU of the Georgian SSR, Head of the Secret Operations Unit.

On December 2, 1926, Lavrentiy Beria became chairman of the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the Georgian SSR (until December 3, 1931), deputy plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR in the TSFSR and deputy chairman of the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the TSFSR (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 Trans-SFSR and the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the Trans-SFSR.

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

On June 6, 1930, by a resolution of the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of the Georgian SSR, Lavrentiy 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 positions of Chairman of the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the ZSFSR, the plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR in the ZSFSR, and the 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 board 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 for 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 Georgia (until August 31). 1938), and on October 17, 1932 - 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 Regional Committee was liquidated by a resolution 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 - minutes of meetings of the Politburo, the Organizing Bureau, and the Secretariat of the Central Committee. In 1934, at the XVII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 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 a draft Regulation on the NKVD of the USSR and the Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR.

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

At the beginning of March 1935, Beria was elected a member of the USSR Central Executive Committee 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 of Georgia (Bolsheviks) (until August 31, 1938).

In 1935, he published the book “On the Question of the History of Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia” (according to researchers, its real authors were Malakia Toroshelidze and Eric Bedia). In the draft publication of Stalin's Works at the end of 1935, Beria was listed as a member of the editorial board, as well as a candidate editor 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 commissioned (Zemo-Avchala hydroelectric station, etc.). Georgia was transformed into an all-Union resort area. By 1940, the volume of industrial production in Georgia increased 10 times compared to 1913, agricultural production - 2.5 times, with a fundamental change in the structure of agriculture towards highly profitable crops of the subtropical zone. High purchasing prices were set for agricultural products produced in the subtropics (grapes, tea, tangerines, etc.): 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 named Beria as his killer.

In September 1937, together with G.M. Malenkov and A.I. Mikoyan sent from Moscow, he carried out a “cleansing” of the party organization of Armenia. The “Great Purge” also took place in Georgia, where many party and government workers were repressed. Here the so-called conspiracy was “discovered” among the party leadership of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, the participants of which allegedly planned the secession of Transcaucasia from the USSR and transition to the protectorate of Great Britain.
In Georgia, in particular, persecution began against the People's Commissar of Education of the Georgian SSR, Gaioz Devdariani. His brother Shalva, who held important positions in the state security agencies and the Communist Party, was executed. In the end, Gayoz Devdariani was accused of violating Article 58 and, on suspicion of counter-revolutionary activities, was executed in 1938 by the verdict of 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, Giorgi Eliava, Grigory Tsereteli and others.

Since January 17, 1938, from the 1st session of the USSR Supreme Council of the 1st convocation, member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council 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 M.P. Frinovsky, who headed the 1st Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR. On September 8, 1938, Frinovsky was appointed People's Commissar of the USSR Navy and left the posts of 1st Deputy People's Commissar and Head of the NKVD Directorate of the USSR; on the same day, September 8, he was replaced in the last post by L.P. Beria - from September 29, 1938 to the head of the Main Directorate of State Security, restored within the structure of the NKVD (December 17, 1938, Beria will be replaced in this post by V.N. Merkulov - 1st Deputy People's Commissar of the NKVD from 12/16/38). On September 11, 1938, L.P. Beria was awarded the title of State Security Commissioner of the 1st rank.

According to A. S. Barsenkov and A. I. Vdovin, with the arrival of L. P. Beria as head of the NKVD, the scale of repressions sharply decreased and the Great Terror ended. In 1939, 2.6 thousand people were sentenced to capital punishment on charges of counter-revolutionary crimes, in 1940 - 1.6 thousand. In 1939-1940, the overwhelming majority of people who were not convicted in 1937-1938 were released; Also, some of those convicted and sent to camps were released. According to data provided by V.N. Zemskov, in 1938, 279,966 people were released. The Moscow State University expert commission found factual errors in the textbook of Barsenkov and Vdovin and estimates the number of people released in 1939-1940 at 150-200 thousand people. “In certain circles of society, he has since had a reputation as a person who restored ‘socialist legality’ at the very end of the 30s,” noted Yakov Etinger.

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 for 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 intelligence network of Soviet foreign intelligence was created in Europe, as well as in Japan and the USA.

Since March 22, 1939 - 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 Commissioner of State Security. On February 3, 1941, he 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 oversaw the work of the NKVD, NKGB, people's commissariats of the forestry and oil industries, non-ferrous metals, and 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 decree of February 4, 1942 on the distribution of responsibilities between members of the GKO, L. P. Beria was assigned responsibilities for monitoring the implementation of GKO decisions on the production of aircraft, engines, weapons and mortars, as well as for 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 decree of the State Defense Committee of December 8, 1942, L. P. Beria was appointed a member of the Operational Bureau of the State Defense Committee. By the same decree, L.P. Beria was additionally assigned responsibilities for monitoring and monitoring 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 State Defense Committee and chairman of the Operations Bureau. The tasks of the Operations Bureau included, in particular, control and monitoring of 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 industries, and power plants.

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

During the war years, he carried out important assignments from 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. Oversaw the production of aircraft and rocketry.

By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated 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, 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 the nuclear project
On February 11, 1943, J.V. Stalin signed the decision of the State Defense Committee on the work program for the creation of an atomic bomb under the leadership of V.M. Molotov. But already in the decree of the USSR State Defense Committee on 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 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 Hitler's coalition (Hungarians, Bulgarians, many Finns) were also deported. The official reason for the deportation was mass desertion, collaboration and active anti-Soviet armed struggle of a significant part of these peoples during the Great Patriotic War.

On January 29, 1944, Lavrentiy Beria approved the “Instructions on the procedure for the eviction of Chechens and Ingush,” and on February 21, he issued an order to 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, NKGB and SMERSH, and also about 100 thousand officers and soldiers of the NKVD troops, drawn from all over the country to participate in “exercises in the mountainous areas.” On February 22, he met with the leadership of the republic and senior 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 have been 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 Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.” 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 decree on the eviction from the Design Bureau of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, and on March 8-9, the operation began. On March 11, Beria reported to Stalin that “37,103 Balkars were evicted,” 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 Meskhetian Turks, as well as Kurds and Hemshins living in the areas bordering Turkey. On July 24, Beria addressed I. Stalin with a letter (No. 7896). He wrote:

“Over the course of a number of years, a significant part of this population, connected with the residents of the border regions of Turkey through family ties and relationships, has shown emigration sentiments, engaged in smuggling and serves as a source for Turkish intelligence agencies to recruit spy elements and plant gangster groups.”
He noted that “the NKVD of the USSR considers it expedient to resettle 16,700 farms of Turks, Kurds, and Hemshins from the Akhaltsikhe, Akhalkalaki, Adigen, Aspindza, Bogdanovsky districts, some village councils of the Adjarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.” On July 31, the State Defense Committee adopted a resolution (No. 6279, “top secret”) on the eviction of 45,516 Meskhetian Turks from the Georgian SSR to the Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Uzbek SSRs, as noted in the documents of the Special Settlements Department of the NKVD of the USSR.

The liberation of the regions from the German occupiers also required new actions against the families of German collaborators. On August 24, an order from the NKVD followed, signed by Beria, “On the eviction from the cities of the Caucasian Mining Group resorts of the families of active German collaborators, traitors and traitors to the Motherland who voluntarily left with the Germans.” 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, Hemshins, the NKVD of the USSR requests that the NKVD workers who most distinguished themselves during the operation be awarded with orders and medals of the USSR. NKGB and military personnel of the NKVD troops."

Post-war years
Supervision of the USSR nuclear project[edit | edit wiki text]
See also: The creation of the Soviet atomic bomb and the 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.

Based on the State Defense Order of August 20, 1945. A special committee was created under the State Defense Committee. 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 “the management of all work on the use of intra-atomic energy of uranium.” Later it was renamed the Special Committee under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Special Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. L.P. Beria, on the one hand, organized and supervised the receipt of all necessary intelligence information, on the other hand, provided 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 staffed the organization’s areas of activity with scientific and engineering personnel 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 CPSU Central Committee of June 26, 1953 (the day of the removal and arrest of L.P. Beria), the Special Committee was liquidated, and its apparatus was transferred to the newly formed Ministry of Medium Engineering 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, 1st degree, “for organizing the production of atomic energy and the successful completion of 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 a “Certificate of Honorary Citizen of the Soviet Union.” Subsequently, 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 special state security ranks were replaced with military ones, L.P. Beria was awarded the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union.

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

Since March 1946, Beria has been one of the “seven” members of the Politburo, which included I.V. Stalin and six people close to him. This “inner circle” covered the most important issues of public administration, including: foreign policy, foreign trade, state security, armaments, and the functioning of the armed forces. On March 18, he became a member of the Politburo, and the next day he was appointed deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. As Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, he oversaw 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 L.P. Beria's position in the country's leadership, which was facilitated by the successful testing of the first atomic bomb in the USSR, the work on which L.P. Beria supervised. However, then came the Mingrelian affair directed against him.

After the 19th Congress of the CPSU, which took place in October 1952, L. P. Beria was included in the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, which replaced the former Politburo, in the Bureau of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee and in the “leading five” of the Presidium created at the suggestion of J. 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, without much debate, was appointed First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR. The newly formed Ministry of Internal Affairs merged 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, and made a speech at a funeral meeting from the platform of the Mausoleum.

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 the security agencies. L.P. Beria’s proteges were promoted 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 union republics and in most regions of the RSFSR. In turn, the newly appointed heads of the Ministry of Internal Affairs replaced personnel in the middle management.

From mid-March to June 1953, Beria, as head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, with his orders for the ministry and proposals (notes) to the Council of Ministers and the Central Committee (many of which were approved by relevant resolutions and decrees), initiated the termination of the doctors’ case, the Mingrelian case and a number of other legislative and political changes:

Order on the creation of commissions to review the “doctors’ case”, the conspiracy in the USSR MGB, the Headquarters of the USSR Ministry of Defense, the MGB of the Georgian SSR. All defendants in these cases were rehabilitated within two weeks.
Order on the creation of a commission to consider cases of deportation of citizens from Georgia.
Order to review the “aviation case”. Over the next two months, People's Commissar of the Aviation Industry Shakhurin and 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 CPSU Central Committee on the amnesty. According to Beria’s proposal, on March 27, 1953, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee approved the decree “On Amnesty,” according to which 1.203 million people were to be released from places of detention, and investigations against 401 thousand people were to be terminated. As of August 10, 1953, 1.032 million people were released from prison. the following categories of prisoners:
sentenced to a term of up to 5 years inclusive,
convicted for:
officials,
economic and
some military crimes,
and:
minors,
elderly,
sick,
women with young children and
pregnant women.

A note to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee on the rehabilitation of persons involved in the “doctors’ case.”
The note admitted that innocent major figures in Soviet medicine were presented as spies and murderers, and, as a result, as objects of anti-Semitic persecution launched in the central press. The case from beginning to end is a provocative invention of the former deputy of the USSR MGB 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, secured the sanction of I.V. Stalin to use physical coercion measures against the arrested doctors - torture and severe beatings. The subsequent resolution of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee “On the falsification of the so-called case of pest doctors” dated April 3, 1953, ordered support for 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 was already arrested.

A note to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee on bringing to criminal liability 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 coercion against those arrested.”
The subsequent resolution of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee “On approval of measures of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR to correct the consequences of violations of the law” dated April 10, 1953, read: “Approve the activities carried out by comrade. Beria L.P. measures to uncover criminal acts committed over a number of years in the former Ministry of State Security of the USSR, 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 the Soviet state and socialist legality."
A note to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee about the improper handling of the Mingrelian affair. The subsequent resolution of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee “On the falsification of the case of the so-called Mingrelian nationalist group” dated April 10, 1953 recognizes that the circumstances of the case are fictitious, all defendants are to be released and completely rehabilitated.
Note to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee “On the rehabilitation of N. D. Yakovlev, I. I. Volkotrubenko, I. A. Mirzakhanov and others.”
Note to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee “On the rehabilitation of M. M. Kaganovich.”
Note to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee “On the abolition of passport restrictions and restricted areas.”

Arrest and sentence
Circular from 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
Having secured the support of the majority of members of the Central Committee and high-ranking military personnel, Khrushchev convened a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on June 26, 1953, where he raised the issue of Beria’s suitability for his position and his removal from all posts. Among others, Khrushchev voiced accusations of revisionism, an anti-socialist approach to the aggravated situation in the GDR, and espionage for Great Britain in the 1920s. Beria tried to prove that if he was appointed by the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, then only the plenum could remove him, but following 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 of moral corruption, abuse of power, and falsification of thousands of criminal cases against his colleagues in Georgia and Transcaucasia and in organizing illegal repressions (this Beria, according to the accusation, committed, also acting for selfish and enemy purposes).

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

His closest associates from the state security agencies were accused along with him, immediately after his arrest and later called “Beria’s 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 Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs
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 particularly important cases of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs

On December 23, 1953, Beria’s case was considered by the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR, chaired by Marshal I. S. Konev. From Beria's last words at the trial:

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

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 any selfish or 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 degree of criminal punishment - execution, with confiscation of personal property belonging to them, with 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 the 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, Colonel General (later Marshal of the Soviet Union) P. F. Batitsky fired the first shot from his personal weapon. The body was burned in the oven of the 1st Moscow (Don) crematorium. He was buried at the New Donskoy Cemetery (according to other statements, Beria's ashes were scattered over the Moscow River).

A brief report about the trial of L.P. Beria and his employees was published in the Soviet press. Nevertheless, some historians admit that the arrest, trial and execution of Beria, on formal grounds, occurred 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 radically 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 the memoirs of contemporaries, proves that L. P. Beria was killed during his arrest, and the entire trial is a falsification 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 an investigative documentary film by journalist Sergei Medvedev, first shown on Channel One on June 4 2014.

After Beria’s arrest, one of his closest associates, 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 Beria's gang were convicted and shot or sentenced to long prison terms:

Abakumov V.S. - Chairman of the Collegium of the USSR MGB
Ryumin M.D. - Deputy Minister of State Security of the USSR
on the Bagirov case
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 Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
Borshchev T. M. - Minister of Internal Affairs of the Turkmen SSR
Grigoryan Kh. I. - Minister of Internal Affairs of the Armenian SSR
Atakishiev 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 to the head of the STO of the NKVD of Georgia
Paramonov G.I. - Deputy Head of the Investigative Unit for Particularly Important Cases of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs
Nadaraya S.N. - Head of the 1st Department of the 9th Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs
and others.

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

“The state scientific publishing house “Great Soviet Encyclopedia” recommends removing pages 21, 22, 23 and 24 from volume 5 of the TSB, as well as the portrait pasted between pages 22 and 23, in return for which you will be sent pages with new text.” The new page 21 contained photographs of the Bering Sea.
In 1952, the fifth volume of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia was published, which contained a portrait of L.P. Beria and an article about him. In 1954, the editors of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia sent out a letter to all its subscribers, in which it was strongly recommended that “with scissors or a razor” they cut out both the portrait and the pages dedicated to L.P. Beria, 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 “Thaw” times, the image of Beria was demonized; he, as the main initiator, was blamed for all the mass repressions.

By the ruling of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on 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 the leaders who organized at the state level and personally carried out mass repressions against their own people. And therefore, the Law “On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression” cannot apply to them as perpetrators of terror.

...Guided by Art. 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: “Recognize Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, Vsevolod Nikolaevich Merkulov, Bogdan Zakharyevich Kobulov, Sergei Arsenievich Goglidze as not subject to rehabilitation.”
— Extract from the ruling of the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation No. bn-00164/2000 dated May 29, 2002.
In the early 2000s, L.P. Beria was considered by some researchers only as an executor of Stalin’s policies.

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, Lavrentiy Beria had a second (civilian) wife. He cohabited with Valentina (Lyalya) Drozdova, who was a schoolgirl at the time they met. 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 Victor Grishin. The day after the report in the Pravda newspaper about Beria’s arrest, Lyalya Drozdova filed a statement with the prosecutor’s office that she had been raped by Beria and lived with him under the threat of physical harm. At the trial, she and her mother A.I. Akopyan acted as witnesses, giving incriminating testimony against Beria. Valentina Drozdova herself was subsequently the mistress of currency speculator Yan Rokotov, who was executed in 1961, and the wife of shadow knitwear trader Ilya Galperin, who was executed in 1967.

After Beria’s conviction, his close relatives and close relatives of those convicted along with him were deported to the Krasnoyarsk Territory, 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 Dynamo teams, especially Dynamo Tbilisi, whose defeats he took painfully.

According to G. Mirzoyan, in 1936, Beria, during interrogation in his office, shot and killed 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 design.
“Beri's orchestra” was the name given to his personal guards, 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 services in the field of enhancing 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 the successful completion of 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
Anniversary 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 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 degree (October 29, 1949 and December 6, 1951)
Badge “Honorary Worker of the Cheka-OGPU (V)” No. 100
Badge “Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU (XV)” No. 205 December 20, 1932
Personalized weapon - Browning pistol
Monogram watch

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

Berievsky district - from February to May 1944 (now Novolaksky district of Dagestan).
Berievsky district is a region of the Armenian SSR in 1939-1953 with an administrative center in the village named after Beria.
Beriaaul - Novolakskoe village, Dagestan
Beriyashen - Sharukkar, Azerbaijan SSR
Beriakend is the former name of the village of Khanlarkend, Saatli district, Azerbaijan SSR
Named after Beria - 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 name of L.P. Beria was previously named after the current Cooperative Street in Kharkov, Freedom Square in Tbilisi, Victory Avenue in Ozyorsk, Apsheronskaya Square in Vladikavkaz (Dzaudzhikau), Tsimlyanskaya Street in Khabarovsk, Gagarin Street in Sarov, Pervomaiskaya Street in Seversk, Mira Street in Ufa.

Tbilisi Dynamo Stadium was named after Beria.