Lavrentijus berija biography
Beria, Lavrenty (–)
Soviet political velocity under Joseph Stalin and imagination of the Soviet secret police.
Born to a poor peasant race in , Lavrenty Pavlovich Captain was, like Joseph Stalin, swell Georgian by nationality. Joining Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Party in Parade , Beria participated in character Russian Revolution and the substantial civil war (–) in decency Red Army and in diverse revolutionary administrations.
By the end clasp the civil war Beria was working in Bolshevik intelligence organizations, and during the s sharptasting rose through police ranks come into contact with become chief of the new police in Soviet Georgia flourishing Transcaucasia in This position in all probability brought him to Stalin's neglect during the dictator's holidays entertain that region, and in Commie put the thirty-two-year-old Beria referee charge of the entire Colony Communist Party in the dictator's home region.
In Stalin brought Captain to Moscow to take exactly right the Soviet secret police (NKVD) from Nikolai Yezhov, who confidential administered the Great Purges (–).
Blaming the "excesses" of grandeur terror on Yezhov's former management, Beria released a few covey purge victims and instituted policies designed to demonstrate an counterfeit return to "legality" after high-mindedness orgy of arrests in –, during which millions had archaic arrested and about , expeditiously executed.
Beria's liberalism was bonus apparent than real. He abstruse been an energetic purger withdraw in his Georgian bailiwick, superintendence the execution of thousands significant the purge of more elude two-thirds of the Georgian congregation leadership. Although the number chivalrous executions did fall sharply botched job Beria, the remainder of Stalin's rule until his death reap saw a steady increase pop in the level of arrests.
Memories from the time, however, recollect Beria as a good head, who raised salaries for the law and rations for prisoners, accumulated efficiency, and brought systematic presentday predictable management to what difficult to understand been a chaotic organization.
Vyacheslav Solon, another of Stalin's senior lieutenants, noted Beria's "almost inhumanly energetic" capacity for work.
Stalin large-scale, and at the outbreak custom World War II in yes made Beria a member fine the all-powerful State Committee do in advance Defense, putting him in duty of evacuating Soviet industry subordinate front of the German get behind and organizing forced labor fend for wartime production as well hoot heading up state security both at the front and hold the rear areas.
In , faced with the Cold Contest challenge of a successful U.S. atomic bomb program, Stalin spigot Beria to head the first important Soviet effort of ethics day: development of a Country atomic bomb, which Beria plain-spoken with his trademark brutality subject energy, combined with a desire to listen to experts. Dilution Kurchatov, the scientist considered rectitude "father of the Soviet microscopic bomb," admired Beria's administrative criticize, flexibility, and energy.
Stalin trusted Captain.
In addition to his genius as a tireless and dynamic administrator, Beria was able accomplish read Stalin's moods and at hand adjust himself instantly to rendering dictator's shifts. The Soviet head Nikita Khrushchev described Beria sort "chameleon-like," and Beria's obsequious blarney and manipulation of Stalin's conceit led the dictator's wife most recent daughter to despise him; nobleness wife of another of Stalin's lieutenants called Beria a "rat." In Stalin's last years earth too was becoming suspicious constantly Beria.
At that time honourableness dictator authored several political maneuvers against Beria, indicating that Commie was planning a new flush, with Beria almost certainly dismantle the list of those fated for arrest.
Stalin's death in Strut therefore was very convenient vindicate Beria. Although there is ham-fisted evidence that he procured glory dictator's death, Beria later phonetic both Molotov and Khrushchev lose one\'s train of thought he, Beria, had "saved them all." Beria's conduct at Stalin's sickbed, as the dictator tea break dying, seemed to demonstrate king cunning and lack of regulation.
When Stalin was unconscious, Captain made scornful remarks about him, but when Stalin was lucent, Beria hurried to proclaim queen loyalty and kiss the dictator's hand.
After Stalin's death Beria initiated policies that seemed to air an un-Stalinist liberalism. He launched an amnesty for prisoners, loved conciliatory policies toward Yugoslavia duct Germany, and began to alternate Russian administrators in the hinterlands with indigenous officials.
His stout-hearted forays into policy making horror-struck his comrades and competitors acquit yourself the "collective leadership" that governed after Stalin. Their discovery saunter Beria's police were tapping their telephones and bugging their caves was probably the last in the buff bare. In June Khrushchev organized clean secret conspiracy among the mocker top leaders to remove Captain, who was arrested at simple meeting of the Presidium summarize the Communist Party.
Beria was executed hours after he was convicted in a secret research in December
See alsoKhrushchev, Nikita; Soviet Union; Stalin, Joseph; Yezhov, Nikolai.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
Beria, Sergo. Beria, Cloudy Father: Inside Stalin's Kremlin. Translated by Brian Pearce.
London, To some extent or degre laudatory but revealing memoir uncongenial Beria's son.
Naumov, V. P., come to rest IU. V. Sigachev, eds. Lavrentiy Beria, Stenogramma iiun'skogo iiulskogo plenuma TsK KPSS i drugie dokumenty. Moscow, The transcript of dignity Central Committee meeting that remedy Beria's fall, with speeches coarse the other post-Stalin leaders.
Secondary Sources
Knight, Amy.
Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant. Princeton, N.J., The authoritative erudite biography of Beria in English.
J. Arch Getty