Beria cried like a baby when he heard he was going to be executed

Beria and Stalin

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, is a person for whom the world even if it wished in a moment of lucid embrace, would find itself with an impossible task to show sympathy for. Beria in his last moments, pleaded for his own life, it was ironic as he had been in charge of the NKVD the predecessor of the KGB, and he had personally overseen hundreds of thousands of deaths if not millions. Much of what the world knows about Beria are the horrific deeds he committed. It is likely much of his reputation has been made worse, but this is not to say that he was not instrumental in committing war crimes. His actions included acts of depravity against women, and their murder while head of the NKVD as well. Beria had not just committed crimes but been part of a system he had a major role in creating. The Soviet Union became a state which could not even exist without constant fear of arrests, accusations, torture, forced confessions and death, though these elements are not unique to it alone. This system, however, was not built for Beria, but instead for Stalin and the faction of Bolcheviks who triumphed in 1924 after Lenin. In 1953 when Stalin passed away the system did not go away but instead continued though optically changed and much of this simply to allow for the consolidation of power as opposed to a humanistic awakening. It is here where some of the facts must be analysed and deductive logic employed, for it must be understood exactly who Beria was, and what he was being executed for.




Beria with family, 1930s

Beria was a Georgian, and while in college joined the Bolsheviks in 1917, but when the city of Baku was occupied, he supported anti-Bolshevik action. His capture in 1920 would lead to a sentence of death, but incredibly the sentence was not carried out, it has been rumoured that he was spared because of political intervention. What resulted was his immediate escape from Baku on a train with a 17-year-old Nina Gegechkori who was from a formerly aristocratic family. He would later marry her.

By 1924 Beria had again established himself as a revolutionary with red credentials. He would put down a Georgian Nationalist rebellion. The number of casualties was excessive, but it did not prevent him from receiving accolades for his role. He would be made in charge of a secret organization designed to police the Transcaucasia region and prevent more uprisings. In 1926, Beria would be introduced personally to Stalin another fellow Georgian. Beria would successfully dismantle Iranian and Turkish efforts to establish intelligence gathering abilities in the Southern Soviet Union. By 1931 Beria had become the head of Stalin’s personal security. In 1935, Beria foiled an attempt to assassinate Stalin, the event has largely been disqualified as an invented event to win Beria favour. Stalin’s paranoid behaviour led to the development of Beria being handed the task of conducting purges of leaders in the Transcaucasia region once more.




Beria with Stalin’s daughter Svetlana, Stalin would later not allow Svetlana to be alone with Beria.

In 1938, Beria was made head of the NKVD. Initially, Beria released over 100,000 political prisoners, showing sympathy to those who had showed nationalist tendencies towards their ethnic status. Many were from the Transcaucasia region and they would form a basis for support of Beria. Former NKVD chief Yezhov would be executed in 1940 a year after the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland. It is alleged that Beria carried this act out personally. The same year the NKVD would see over half of its members be purged and replaced by Beria loyalists largely from Transcaucasia region. Beria’s actions would be genocidal in Poland as captured Polish officers and intelligentsia were massacred without cause in the Katyn Massacre. Stalin personally gave permission for this war crime.




Beria at the height of his power was a figure which beyond challenge in the U.S.S.R.

At a critical moment in the History of the Soviet Union, Beria and Stalin carried a purge of the Red Army. The loss of experienced commanders would be felt in June 1941, when German forces poured across the Soviet Border meeting hardly any organized resistance. Beria would now organize Gulag labour to produce armaments to prevent an outright Soviet Defeat. While Stalin met with Churchill to begin the process of getting Western Assistance to stave off the German Invasion, Beria continued with the NKVD’s campaign to ensure Soviet Citizens put every effort possible into the war effort. This “effort”, involved another purge of the Red Army though not as large as the first. Stalin would hand Beria and the NKVD complete control over the Soviet Atomic Initiative. The Soviet Union would in under 5 years produce an atomic device.

While it is speculated that Beria had a role in Stalin’s demise in 1953 as he openly claimed, another purge had been prevented. Beria’s true undoing came because he saw trading parts of Eastern Europe with the West for a financial mechanism allowing a rapid rebuilding of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev and many other high rankings Soviet Leaders saw this as treason. In 1953 Beria was unwilling in concept to put down an East German uprising, he was preparing to grant the Baltic states and East Germany the ability to leave the Soviet Bloc in exchange for a relationship with the U.S. Beria’s odd sympathy for ethic nationalism had again come back.




Shortly after Stalin’s death 1953

Beria was arrested, ally Malenkov who had been leader of the Soviet Union only for nine days, following the death of Stalin was forced to step down from having control of power within the party, Malenkov would retain Premiership of the Soviet Union for two years and would loose this 1955, in a power struggle with Khrushchev and other high ranking Soviet Officers. Ultimately Malenkov would face his own removal to Kazakhstan for several years. His fate however was to be very different than that of Beria as he managed to return to Moscow and kept a low profile. He converted to the Russian Orthodox faith and his daughter continued this legacy. He would live his life until 1988 and pass away due to natural causes.

The trial of Beria was from the very beginning one designed to convict Beria of the highest crime of treason. The elimination of Beria and Malenkov ensured the beginning of the age Khrushchev, and the trial was never going find Beria innocent of treason no matter what evidence showed. The evidence of crimes against women were concretely presented by Beria’s former bodyguards. Their testimony had complete consistency, and it was clear Beria had misused his position, there was no clear case for treason..




Beria was sentenced to death for every count, and when his moment came, he did beg for his life. Much like Yezhov had in 1940 begged for his own life, Beria would beg, he would be shot by General Pavel Batitsky in the forehead. Beria would be denied a funeral and cremated. Whether executing Beria can be looked as act of justice depends greatly on how the development of the Soviet Union is viewed. Beria would have likely created a path for a sooner end of the Soviet Union though he had undoubtedly done more harm on a human level than the leaders who sought his execution. To state that Beria abused his power is an understatement, but to state that the Soviet System which continued was improved is an overstatement to a great extent. Yes, the Soviet Union was de-Stalinized, but arrests continued, and the Soviet Union only began to show itself to be reforming in the 1970s as it became clear that Brezhnev actually cared how the Soviet Union was perceived. Of course, by this time the economy of the Soviet Union was reaching a point beyond repair. Beria represented everything which had gone wrong in the Soviet Union and exactly how disregard of human rights had allowed it to win World War II. The Bolshevik revolution which gave birth to the Soviet Union produced Beria and Stalin, the deeds which Beria committed were not done alone and ultimately the very system they created would end itself without much global sympathy much the way Beria's ashes went.