Lavrentiy Beria

File:Lavrentiy Beria.jpg

Lavrentiy Beria (March 29th, 1899 - December 23rd, 1953) was a high ranking official in the communist party, a renound and skilled politcal player, and a cold blood killer, he was one of the few men who could scare even Joseph Stalin.

History

Initally working for the Anti-Bolshevik Mussavistis in Baku, when the red army took over the city, Beria was saved from execution purely because there was no time to arrange it. In 1919, aged twenty he started his career in state security and in 1920-21 (accounts differ) he joined Cheka (the orginal Bolshevik secret police). In 1922 he was head of the Georgian branch of Cheka's successor. His ruthlessness and brutality repression of the Georgian national uprising in 1924, in which he had 10,000 people exercuted, caused him to be premoted to Transcaucasian OGPU and him recieving the Order of the Red Banner.

Throught the 1920's and 1930's he rose through the ranks at a incredible pace, speciallising in the inteligence and counter inteligence operations of Cheka and its many successors. Ultimately becoming the leader of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). According to legend, he personally strangled the man who held the job before him, to ensure the possition for his premotion. In 1935 he had become one of Stalins most trusted and capable subordinates.

Aswell as being a skilled poltical player and manipulator, Beria was a remoresless killer. As head of the NKVD he would subject suspects to extreame and brutal torture until they gave him the answer he wanted. Where ever he went people went missing, it was Beria who personally oversaw many of Stalin's political purges. The infamous Gulug work camps all worked under his supervision.

As Head of the NKVD Beria charged and convicted hundreds of thousands of Russians as Traitors, often under false accusations. Beria created an effective spy network, that streached across the world and he also dabbled in assassinations. By February 1941, Beria was the deputy prime minister, among his many duties he oversaw strategic raw materials production for the war effort, he used people who had had sent to the Gulug camps as slave labour.

And as if he wasn't evil enough, Beria was a sexual offender and deviant of the highest tier. He routinenly raped and abused women who had taken from the streets for this purpose. Anyone who tried to resist him, he would have murdered. His depravity was well now, and Stalin himself was said to be terrified when he was informed that his own daughter had been left alone with Beria.

Following Stalin's death, unlike many of his followers, Beria was described as being overjoyed, and many of the other feared that he had his eyes aimed upon taking over the Solviet union. He was appointed First Deputy Premier and made an alliance with the new Primeminster, who at the time was the most powerful man, making Beria the second. He also opted for "De-Bolishevikization" of the Solviet unions foreign policy, seeing as the war had caused serious finacial problems. However he made many enemies, and suspicious of his motives the other party leaders were against him. Taking advantage of the spontanious 1953 East Germany rising, they turned on him. Khrushchev persuaded the other leaders to support a Party coup against Beria; Beria's principal ally Malenkov abandoned him.

He was arrested, and taken away to a guard house. Where he was tortured, and held under charges of Treason, Terrorism and Counter-Revolutionary actions. He was tried under the Supream Court of the Solviet Union, with no defense or chance to appeal. He was sentanced to death, according to according to Moskalenko's later account, Beria pleaded on his knees for mercy before collapsing to the floor and wailing and crying energetically, but to no avail: the other six defendants were executed by firing squad on 23 December 1953, the same day as the trial, while Beria was fatally shot through the forehead by General Batitsky after the latter stuffed a rag into Beria's mouth to silence his bawling. The body of Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was subsequently cremated and buried around Moscow's forest.