Lavrentii Beria
Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria (Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия, 29 March, 1899 – 23 December, 1953) was a Soviet Communist leader. He presided over the NKVD, the Soviet secret police and predecessor to the KGB, during much of Stalin's rule.
Beria was ethnic Georgian. Born in Merkheuli in Abkhazia (Georgia), Beria began his career in Georgia in the Cheka (the early Soviet secret police) and became Party Secretary in that region. In 1938, Stalin made him head of the NKVD, the Soviet Union's secret police force. He was a member of the Politburo from 1946.
On March 5, 1953, Stalin died after collapsing at an all-night dinner with Beria, Georgi Malenkov, Nikolay Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev, held on March 1. Officially, the cause of death was listed as a cerebral hemorrhage. The political memoirs of Vyacheslav Molotov, published in 1993, claimed that Beria had boasted to Molotov that he had poisoned Stalin, although no hard evidence was ever produced to support this assertion.
Beria considered himself to be the natural successor to Stalin, but 3 months after Stalin's death in 1953 Beria was ousted by Nikita Khrushchev, arrested in June of 1953, tried, and shot in December of 1953. His trial had been a closed affair and it had been learned that he had been involved in numerous rapes and tortures. In March of 2000 the Supreme Court of Russia refused to rehabilitate him. The refusal was based on the grounds of his proved crimes against humanity.
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