The enemies of the Soviet state calculate that the heavy loss we have borne will lead to disorder and confusion in our ranks. But their expectations are in vain: bitter disillusionment awaits them. He who is not blind sees that our party, during its difficult days, is closing its ranks still more closely, that it is united and unshakable.(c) Lavrentiy BeriaDisclaimer: This time we had to use the
wiki text, as in this case it was both very informative and well-written. Additionally, it touches on very sensitive matters, so we decided to leave it as is. All in-game characters are written in
bold.
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (/ˈbɛriə/; Russian: Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия, 17 March 1899 – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Bolshevik and Soviet politician, Marshal of the Soviet Union and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security, and chief of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) under
Joseph Stalin during World War II, and promoted to deputy premier under Stalin from 1941.
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. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, he was responsible for organizing the Katyn massacre. He simultaneously administered vast sections of the Soviet state and acted as the de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union in command of NKVD field units responsible for barrier troops and Soviet partisan intelligence and sabotage operations on the Eastern Front during World War II.
Beria administered the vast expansion of the Gulag labour camps, and was primarily responsible for overseeing the secret detention facilities for scientists and engineers known as sharashkas.
Beria 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 in central and eastern Europe and political repressions in these countries.
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.
After
Stalin's death in March 1953,
Beria became the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In this dual capacity, he formed a troika, alongside Georgy Malenkov and
Vyacheslav Molotov, that briefly led the country in Stalin's place. A coup d'état by Nikita Khrushchev, with help from Marshal of the Soviet Union
Georgy Zhukov in June 1953, removed
Beria from power. He was arrested on charges of 357 counts of rape and treason. He was sentenced to death and was executed on 23 December 1953.
"Now it's not a bouquet, it's a wreath! May it rot on your grave!" (c) Lavrentiy BeriaAt Beria's trial in 1953, it became known that he had committed numerous rapes during the years he was NKVD chief. Simon Sebag-Montefiore, a biographer of
Stalin, concluded the information "reveals a sexual predator who used his power to indulge himself in obsessive depravity". After his death, charges of sexual abuse and rape were disputed by people close to him including his wife Nina and his son Sergo.
According to official testimony, in Soviet archives, of Colonel Rafael Semyonovich Sarkisov and Colonel Sardion Nikolaevich Nadaraia – two of Beria's bodyguards – on warm nights during the war
Beria was often driven around Moscow in his limousine. He would point out young women to be taken to his mansion, where wine and a feast awaited them. After dining,
Beria would take the women into his soundproofed office and rape them. Beria's bodyguards reported that their duties included handing each victim a flower bouquet as she left the house. Accepting it implied that the sex had been consensual; refusal would mean arrest. Sarkisov reported that after one woman rejected Beria's advances and ran out of his office, Sarkisov mistakenly handed her the flowers anyway. The enraged
Beria declared, "Now it's not a bouquet, it's a wreath! May it rot on your grave!" The NKVD arrested the woman the next day.
"Scream or not, it doesn't matter." (c) Lavrentiy BeriaWomen also submitted to Beria's sexual advances in exchange for the promise of freedom for imprisoned relatives. In one case,
Beria picked up Tatiana Okunevskaya, a well-known Soviet actress, under the pretence of bringing her to perform for the Politburo. Instead he took her to his dacha, where he offered to free her father and grandmother from prison if she submitted. He then raped her, telling her: "Scream or not, it doesn't matter." In fact
Beria knew that Okunevskaya's relatives had been executed months earlier. Okunevskaya was arrested shortly afterwards and sentenced to solitary confinement in the Gulag, which she survived.
Stalin expressed distrust of
Beria. In one instance, when
Stalin learned his daughter Svetlana was alone with
Beria at his house, he telephoned her and told her to leave immediately. When
Beria complimented Alexander Poskrebyshev's daughter on her beauty, Poskrebyshev quickly pulled her aside and instructed her, "Don't ever accept a lift from
Beria." After taking an interest in Marshal of the Soviet Union
Kliment Voroshilov's daughter-in-law during a party at their summer dacha,
Beria shadowed their car closely all the way back to the Kremlin, terrifying
Voroshilov's wife.
Before and during the war,
Beria directed Sarkisov to keep a list of the names and phone numbers of his sexual encounters. Eventually, he ordered Sarkisov to destroy the list as a security risk, but Sarkisov retained a secret copy. When Beria's fall from power began, Sarkisov passed the list to Viktor Abakumov, the former wartime head of SMERSH and now chief of the MGB – the successor to the NKVD. Abakumov was already aggressively building a case against
Beria.
Stalin, who was also seeking to undermine
Beria, was thrilled by the detailed records kept by Sarkisov, demanding: "Send me everything this asshole writes down!" Sarkisov reported that
Beria had contracted syphilis during the war, for which he was secretly treated (a fact
Beria later admitted during his interrogation). The Russian government acknowledged Sarkisov's handwritten list of Beria's victims in 2003; the victims' names will be released in 2028.
Evidence suggests that
Beria murdered some of these women. In the mid 1990s, the skeletal remains of several young women were discovered in the garden of his Moscow villa (now the Tunisian Embassy). According to Martin Sixsmith, in a BBC documentary, "
Beria spent his nights having teenagers abducted from the streets and brought here for him to rape. Those who resisted were strangled and buried in his wife's rose garden."
The testimony of Sarkisov and Nadaraia has been partially corroborated by Edward Ellis Smith, an American who served in the U.S. embassy in Moscow after the war. According to historian Amy Knight, "Smith noted that Beria's escapades were common knowledge among embassy personnel because his house was on the same street as a residence for Americans, and those who lived there saw girls brought to Beria's house late at night in a limousine."
