Lavrenty Beria

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (also Anglicised Lavrenty; Russian, Лаврентий Павлович Берия; Georgian, ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია) (29 March 1899 – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician, and chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Joseph Stalin. By the end of the Great Purge he had become deputy head and subsequently head of the NKVD and carried out a purge of the NKVD itself. Beria was most influential during and after World War II, and immediately after Stalin's death in 1953, when as First Deputy Prime Minister he carried out a brief campaign of liberalization. He was briefly a part of the ruling "troika" with Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov until the political maneuvering of his political enemies, spear-headed by Nikita Khruschev, saw Beria arrested for treason and executed with a bullet to the head in short order.

According to several sources, including Molotov, Beria claimed to have killed Stalin, although whether or not he meant he'd directly poisoned Stalin or simply prevented Stalin from getting proper treatment through his own inaction is unclear. Prior to his execution, Beria confessed to a variety of crimes under torture, but directly assassinating Stalin was not one of them.

Lavrenty Beria in The Man With the Iron Heart
Lavrenty Beria's name inspired great fear in Soviet citizens, even among the generals of the Red Army. Moisei Shteinberg used Beria's name to intimidate General Yuri Vlasov when Vlasov hampered the NKVD's efforts to fight the German Freedom Front.

Lavrenty Beria in Worldwar
Lavrenty Beria (1899-1963) was head of the NKVD in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov until he was killed leading a coup to overthrow the latter.

In 1942, when the Race's Conquest Fleet invaded Earth, Beria was critical to the Soviet effort to resist conquest by the aliens. Under his leadership, the NKVD took part in a number of special ops missions against the Race, some in conjunction with the German SS; one such mission captured for the Soviets a sample of plutonium from a Lizard starship, allowing Soviet physicists to build and the Red Army to use a working explosive-metal bomb against Race forces in 1943, nearly two years before the Soviets were able to build such bombs entirely on their own. He also suppressed political dissent in the Soviet government and in areas the Soviet Union continued to control, and he handled both human and Lizard prisoners.

Beria remained head of the NKVD after the Peace of Cairo and for the remainder of Stalin's life. He continued to hold the position under Stalin's successor as General Secretary, Vyacheslav Molotov. During this time he was instrumental in getting material support to Mao Tse-Tung's Communist rebellion in China without the Race's notice.

Molotov distrusted both Beria and Georgy Zhukov, who were, along with Andrei Gromyko, Molotov's most important advisers. Molotov attempted to play Zhukov and Beria, two long time rivals, against one another. Molotov also correctly suspected that Heinrich Himmler's rise to power in Germany further stoked Beria's own ambition, as Himmler had fulfilled the same functions in Germany that Beria had in the USSR.

In 1963, Beria attempted a coup to replace Molotov. He succeeded in imprisoning Molotov in an NKVD jail in Moscow, but his plans to execute Zhukov were thwarted, thanks in no small part to Zhukov's popularity with the rank and file of the GRU. Additionally, NKVD agent David Nussboym opportunistically helped Molotov escape. Zhukov led a counter-coup to rescue and restore Molotov. Beria was killed by Red Army forces. Zhukov made a glib remark to Molotov that the carpet of Molotov's office would need replacement, suggesting that Zhukov personally killed Beria.

Lavrenty Beria in The War That Came Early
Lavrenty Beria was one of several people from the Caucasus region who'd "cut a swath" through Soviet politics. Beria himself came to run the NKVD during the Second World War.

Literary Comment
In the short story, Lavrenty Beria is the head of the Soviet security force under Leon Trotsky, drawing parallels to Heinrich Himmler of Germany and J. Edgar Hoover of America. In the novel, Genrikh Yagoda remains the head of the NKVD in the 1950s, and Beria is not mentioned at all.