Lavrentiy Beria Politician
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (Georgian: ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია, Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria; Russian: Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия; 29 March 1899 – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician, Marshal of the Soviet Union and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus (NKVD) under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and Deputy Premier in the postwar years (1946–53).Beria was the longest-lived and most influential of Stalin's secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after World War II. He simultaneously administered vast sections of the Soviet state and served as de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union in command of the NKVD field units responsible for anti-partisan operations on the Eastern Front during World War II, as well as for acting as barrier troops and the apprehension of thousands of "turncoats, deserters, cowards and suspected malingerers." Beria administered the vast expansion of the Gulag labor camps and was primarily responsible for overseeing the secret defense institutions known as sharashkas, critical to the war effort. He also played the decisive role in coordinating the Soviet partisans, developing an impressive intelligence and sabotage network behind German lines. He attended the Yalta Conference with Stalin, who introduced him to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as "our Himmler". After the war, he organized the communist takeover of the state institutions of Central and Eastern Europe. Beria's uncompromising ruthlessness in his duties and skill at producing results culminated in his success in overseeing the Soviet atomic bomb project. Stalin gave it absolute priority and the project was completed in under five years in no small part due to Soviet espionage against the West organized by Beria's NKVD.Beria was promoted to First Deputy Premier, where he carried out a campaign of liberalization. He was briefly a part of the ruling "troika" with Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov. Beria's overconfidence in his position after Stalin's death led him to misjudge other Politburo members. During the coup d'état led by Nikita Khrushchev and assisted by the military forces of Marshal Georgy Zhukov, Beria was arrested on charges of treason during a meeting in which the full Politburo condemned him. The compliance of the NKVD was ensured by Zhukov's troops, and after interrogation Beria was taken to the basement of the Lubyanka and shot by General Pavel Batitsky.
Personal facts
![Lavrentiy Beria](/photos/lavrentiy-beria.png)
Alias (AKA) | Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (full name) |
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Birth date | March 29, 1899 |
Birth name | Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria |
Birth place | |
Nationality | |
Date of death | December 23, 1953 |
Place of death |
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Office holder
military operations | |
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military rank | |
office | Candidate member of the 18th Politburo First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Georgian Communist Party Full member of the 18th 19th Politburo Minister of Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union |
party | |
successor | |
point | 55.75944444444445 37.58611111111111 |
Topical connections
Lavrentiy Beria on Wikipedia
External resources
- http://alsos.wlu.edu/qsearch.aspx?browse=people/Beria,+Lavrenti
- http://books.google.com/books?id=PxiuUGRQhUIC&dq=Beria:+Stalin's+First+Lieutenant+By+Amy+Knight&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=Uz4vxD0uOk&sig=fL2n2-cjFEB56bpjDSI_510RQgA&hl=en&ei=658tS-3tJZSAMrTEuIEJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false
- http://rbth.ru/multimedia/pictures/2013/06/27/the_best_stalin_lenin_and_rasputin_performed_by_foreign_s_27547.html
- http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/01/interviews/beria
- http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/CAESAR/caesar-04.pdf
- http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/CAESAR/caesar-10.pdf
- http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/news/2000/05/000529-beria1.htm
- http://www.marxists.org/archive/beria/1936/05/national_policy.htm
- http://www.marxists.org/archive/beria/1950/01/contrast.htm