The Japanese retreat  on the eastern front, saw the land border with Russia restored, and Beria became responsible  for the mass deportations of enemy soldiers, resulting in the massacre and deaths of many  enemy troops.

On the eve of the Second World War, the Soviet Union entered into a non-Aggression  pact with Nazi Germany and turned its attention to Finland, invading in November 1939 on the pretext  of defending its democratic institutions from a clique of fascists.

Stalin had expected an easy  victory in what became known as the Winter War, but the Red Army was met with staunch resistance  resulting in the deaths of up to 200,000 Bolshevik fighters.

Beria and the NKVD were sent to police  Bolshevik soldiers who deserted the battlefield, and to protect the regional border that sat close  to the front lines.

By 1940, Stalin had turned his attention to Romania, annexing both Bessarabia and  Northern Bukovina, where Beria was responsible for the transportation of political opposition into  the Gulags, where they were subjected to a regime   of intense labour, which proved to be something  of an asset to the country in the race against Germany to increase their military might.

When  military objectives soon expanded into Poland, Beria himself was responsible for the  killing of Polish troops in Katyn, with thousands of officers meeting their end at  the hands of the NKVD.

Between 1939 and 1941, the Soviets deported Polish nationals, from the  eastern part of the country into the inhospitable lands of Siberia, a journey sometimes referred to  as the ‘Siberian Odyssey’, which was responsible for the deaths of at least four hundred thousand  Poles, in what can only be described as, a tragic example of ethnic cleansing.

Facing the German front, Stalin remained confident in the face of Hitler’s advance, believing that  Hitler would not attack Russia, but at this point, France had collapsed under a Nazi invasion, and  the British had retreated from the continent.

However, Stalin failed to heed the advice of both  British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and his own intelligence agents, and Russia was later  attacked.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact signed in 1939 had simply stalled a German  attack, but Germany made an advance on Russia in June 1941.

Later that year, around three and  a half million Axis troops invaded the USSR, leaving the Soviets to fight a land battle  with the Germans.

As a result of the pre-war communist party purges, Russia had weakened  their fighting force.

The Russians also lacked experienced tank commanders and troops, and had  failed to maintain their obsolete fleet, which was abandoned shortly after the war began due to a  lack of fuel, however, Russia would overcome their mistakes by harnessing their massive manpower,  to eventually maximise their military force.

Russia was later credited with marking  the beginning of Hitler’s decline, with their defeats of Germany on their western  front, between January and March 1942, and in August of that year, Beria, as head of the NKVD,  oversaw an operation in the northern Caucasus, in which he was responsible for policing front-line  deserters, deflecting subversive Nazi propaganda, punishing saboteurs, and fighting political  banditry, whilst also representing the State Defence Council, and reporting directly to  Stalin.

In the northern Caucasus, Beria had a tremendous amount of political latitude,  and replaced inadequate military commanders, with his own NKVD officers, exhibiting  Beria’s inclination towards authoritarian control over his political inferiors.

By the 1940’s, Beria was constantly by Stalin’s side, and was one of his closest advisers, and  it has been suggested that Beria appealed to the Soviet dictator’s neurotic and paranoid traits,  and was one of only a few people, who could psychologically manipulate the leader, pandering  to his need for praise, but also perhaps as a means to ensure his own safety, should Stalin have  entertained the thought of removing Beria from his position.

In May 1944, Beria was commissioned  to carry out raids on counter-revolutionaries in the Soviet Union, resulting in ethnic cleansing  of the Crimean Tartars, a Turkic ethnic group, who sided with Germany in the second world war.

The regime sent many Crimean Tartars from their homes in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea on the  north shores of the Black Sea, to Uzbekistan, as a means of punishment for their political dissent.

Diplomatic tensions between Turkey and Russia remained high after the war, and as a result those  from the Crimean peninsula were placed into forced labour camps, where nearly half the Crimean  population died, as a result of the horrendous conditions in which they lived and worked.

Following the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945 by the United States, which  hastened the end of the Second World War, Stalin initiated his own atomic research, with  Beria leading the operation, whilst relinquishing control over the NKVD in 1946.

During his time in  office, Beria had retained considerable influence in the Soviet Union, overseeing security and  police operations, whilst acting as a Politburo member, and as a Deputy Chairman of the Council  of Ministers.

The atomic project however was being conducted, under a shroud of secrecy and paranoia,  and delegated to trusted scientists by Stalin and Beria themselves.

Soviet nuclear physicists  Igor Kurchatov and Yulii Khariton, developed a plutonium implosion bomb, which was successfully  detonated on the 29th of August, 1949, at the Semipalatinsk test site in present day Kazakhstan  marking the first test of the Soviet Bomb Project, aptly named, ‘First Lightning.

’ Around this time, members of the Kremlin began  to grow wary of Beria, due to his tyrannical treatment of political rivals and the repressive  nature of his political ideology.

However, physicist Yurii Khariton had a different opinion  of Beria, and stated in his book ‘The First War of Physics that quote: “Beria understood the  necessary scope and dynamics of research.

This man, who was the personification of evil to modern  Russian history, also possessed the great energy and capacity to work.

The scientists who met him  could not fail to recognize his intelligence, his will power, and his purposefulness.

They  found him a first-class administrator who could carry a job through to completion.

” Due to zealous Russian secrecy, information about the Stalin regime in the years following  The Second World War is difficult to find.

However, one man, Milovan Djilas, a Yugoslavian  communist, does give some insight into the dynamics of Stalin’s inner-circle in 1949, when  he describes the meals they shared in which, true to Georgian tradition, Beria would eat greens  with his hands, much to the distaste of some of the gathered guests.

After the meal, drinking  games would take place, with those involved, including Beria, discussing politics, philosophy,  as well as general anecdotes.

By the 1950s, the political battle to succeed Stalin had  begun, as the weakened dictator failed to hold the same grip he once did over both his  allies and enemies.

As his health declined, he became distrustful of the medical staff  treating him, often having them imprisoned.

Stalin’s paranoia also extended to his closest  advisers, and he even grew sceptical of Beria, but was too weak and frail to investigate him  further, or to have him removed from office.

As Stalin lay ill in his house assisted by his  staff, Beria is said to have shown delight, that his once closest ally was so near to death.

But he was also seen kissing Stalin’s hand as he lay on his deathbed.

Once the dictator had passed  away in March 1953, Beria would move quickly to control the NKVD police agency, something that was  looked on with suspicion by others in the party.

Concern was also mounting   surrounding Beria’s move to de-Stalinise the USSR,  reversing many of the hard-line policies put in place by the late leader, but even though this  excited the Russian people, his colleagues began to grow distrustful of him, and his actions were  considered to be one of the reasons for his arrest and subsequent execution.

Upon Stalin’s death,  Beria became Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union and Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs,  making him the second most powerful individual in Russia, behind Prime Minister, Georgy Malenkov,  and despite him positioning himself to become supreme leader, Beria was subsequently removed  from power, and charged with treason, for his involvement in the opposition to Bolshevism.

This  was traced back to his time as a political actor, during the Russian civil-war, some thirty years  earlier when he was acting undercover, on behalf of the state and the communist party.

Following a  bout of political manoeuvring, after which Nikita Khrushchevemerged as leader, Beria was indicted  on terror charges related to his purge of the communist party in 1941, and for trying to strike  a peace deal with Hitler, after attempting to allow the German military to occupy the Caucasus  region of the Middle East.

Having begged for his life to be spared, whilst imprisoned at a military  bunker in Moscow, Beria was tried for treason, accused of being an ‘imperialist agent’ and  siding with western liberal philosophies, after suggesting that Russia and the United States  should enter into negotiations to end the Cold War, in order to avoid the financial hardships  facing Russia’s increasingly unstable economy.

Beria maintained that his political involvement in  his alleged crimes was due to him following orders from his superiors, stating that he never intended  to harm the communist government, although, his words were dismissed by the court and his trial  proceeded.

Also made public during the trial, was Beria’s involvement in the kidnapping, abuse  and killing of numerous young girls, largely carried out during the Second World War, when  two of Beria’s bodyguards who acted as witnesses, Colonel Rafael Semyonovich Sarkisov and Colonel  Sardion Nikolaevich Nadaraia stated, that the former NKVD Head officer, would pre-select  girls whilst out driving in his limousine, and insist that they be detained and brought to  his mansion, Beria would abuse them after dining with them and the bodyguards would hand them a  bouquet of flowers as they left, accepting it, would mean that the liaison had been consensual.

Refusal to accept would lead to their arrest, many were killed and buried in his garden.

During his trial on December 23rd, 1953, the 54-year-old Beria pleaded for mercy, but  despite his attempt to obtain a reprieve, he was executed by firing squad, separately from  the other six prisoners by General Pavel Batitsky.

It was reported that when he realised his pleas  were to be ignored, he dropped to his knees, then collapsed on the floor, and began wailing,  and so the general stuffed a rag in Beria’s mouth to silence the once prominent figure.

He was shot through the forehead, following which his body was cremated and his remains  were then buried in a forest near Moscow.

Beria will forever be known, as the right-hand man  of one of the most brutal dictators of the 20th century, and has been the focus of much interest,  not only in the academic world but also in popular culture.

He shared a similar background to Stalin,  growing up in a time of political turmoil.

But he endured those uncertain times, rising to  become a senior politician in Soviet Russia, something that would normally be regarded as an  impressive achievement, had it not been for the unfortunate victims of his brutal communist  experiments and mass murders.

He was also a ruthless and malevolent man, responsible for many  crimes, whose violent tendencies overshadowed his intelligence and efficiency as an agent of  the state.

Following the demise of Stalin, Beria also briefly argued for liberal policies and  government reform.

Nikita Khrushchev once said of him, that like Stalin, Beria was an immediately  likeable, witty individual, but as time went on, he came to despise his political ideology,  calling him a two-faced hypocrite.

Furthermore, the Russian atomic scientist Khariton called  Beria, the personification of evil, whilst also admitting he had a sharp intellect.

But  whatever the case, he will forever be remembered as the ‘Russian Himmler’, or the ‘Architect of  Terror’.

During his lifetime Beria’s acts secured his place, among the most infamous leaders of the  20th century.

In the modern world, Lavrentiy Beria is considered by many to be one of the greatest  mass murderers in the history of the Soviet Union and indeed the world, as he was responsible for  ordering and overseeing the deaths of millions, while at the same time he used his position  to rape and murder women and even children, whose survival he held in the palm of his hand.

Although he was a cunning and ruthless politician with a Machiavellian mindset, Beria’s campaign  of murder and fear, in the end proved to be his downfall.

Almost at the very moment he would  rise to take control over the Soviet Union, he met his demise, at the hands of his one-time  comrades he had made his enemies.

In the end, although Beria much like Stalin, may have  thought of himself as a good Communist, who sought to bring about the workers’ paradise on  earth, he found the only way that collectivisation of private property could be achieved was by the  forced confiscation of land, the incarceration of innocent people, forced labour, and the  murder, of countless millions of people.

What do you think of Lavrentiy Beria? Was  he an exemplary politician, who would do anything to build a Communist Russia? Or  was he merely Joseph Stalin’s hatchet man, who helped bring about the most effective  and terrible dictatorship in human history, only to be swallowed by the fear and terror  he helped create.

Please let us know in the comment section, and in the meantime,  thank you very much for watching.

 

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