Portal:Soviet Union/Selected biography/2

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (Georgian: ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია, Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria; Russian: Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия; 29 March 1899 – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Soviet politician 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 (1946–1953).

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 against anti-Soviet ethnic groups and Nazi collaborators, and the apprehension and summary execution of thousands of "turncoats, deserters, cowards and suspected malingerers". Beria administered the vast expansion of the Gulag slave labor camps, and was primarily responsible for the Katyn massacre. He also played the decisive role in coordinating the Soviet partisans, developing an impressive intelligence and sabotage network behind German lines, thus contributing mightily to the ultimate Soviet victory. He attended the Yalta Conference with Stalin, who introduced him to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as "my Himmler". After the war, he organized the communist takeover of the countries of Central Europe and Eastern Europe, usually through coup d'etat. Beria's uncompromising ruthlessness in his duties and skill at producing results by intimidating his subordinates culminated in his success in overseeing the Soviet atomic bomb project. (more...)