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A fanatical Bolshevik from an early age, Beria was Stalin's personal assassin as well as head of the NKVD & MVD. Cruel and ruthless, he later relished the role as head of the Soviet Unions dreaded secret police. Joining the Bolshevik party first Beria later joined the Cheka the secret police established by the Lenin to protect the revolution. Beria rose through the ranks of its successors, the GPU, OGPU and the NKVD by a combination of treachery and talent. He compromised countless party functionaries to obtain their jobs. Those he could not compromise, he murdered, some by his own hands. Stalin became increasingly indebted to his fellow Georgian who had carried out a large number of murders on his behalf. Following Lenin's death in 1924, Beria had supported Stalin bid for power and in 1934 Stalin named Beria a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in gratitude.
Stalin was supported by a succession of mass murderers, Vyachesiav Menzhinsky who headed the OGPU in the 1920s, having poisoned his predecessor Felix Dzerzhinsky. Menzhinsky was purged by Stalin in 1934 and replaced by the mass murderer Genrikh Yagoda. Nicolai Yezhov, a bloodthirsty fanatic who became the first chief of the NKVD, deposed Yagoda in 1936. Stalin soon realised that he had placed a maniac at the head of the secret police, a man who potentially wielded more actual power than he did himself. Stalin turned yet again to Beria in December 1938 and Yezhov soon disappeared forever, control passing to Beria for the best part of the next 16 years. One report had it that Beria personally strangled Yezhov, known as 'the bloody red dwarf' as he sat at his desk in NKVD headquarters
When the Germans invaded Russia in 1941, Beria was named deputy Prime Minister, in charge of all security behind the Russian lines. Beria's execution squads summarily executed any soldier who malingered or appeared disgruntled. They shot tens of thousands of old style Bolsheviks at the same time since, in the chaos of war, Stalin thought it the perfect time to eliminate the last of his political enemies. Those whom Beria did not execute he sent to labour camps but these became an embarrassment as the Germans threatened to overrun these camps as they pushed deep into Russia. As the German Army approached Minsk, Beria ordered the political detention camp in that city to be eliminated. The NKVD machine gunned to death more than 10,000 prisoners then blew up the camp with explosive charges. What was left of the camp and its inmates was then burned. Stalin had no intention of allowing political prisoners to escape and possibly mount opposition to his dictatorial regime either from Germany or the West and similar atrocities were carried out in other areas as the Germans advanced. Even at the height of the war with Germany, Beria, a man of perverted habits would tour the darkened streets of Moscow in his official car to kidnap young girls who would then be raped brutally and often murdered or handed over to his favourite henchmen to be tortured for his amusement. A serial rapist and murderer, Beria was probably ultimately responsible directly or indirectly for the deaths of over 10 million Soviet citizens. Beria was to be deeply involved in the take over of post war Eastern Europe and the creation of what Churchill was to call, 'an Iron Curtain'. It was Beria who directed the imposition of a Communist regime on Czechoslovakia and who planned the murder of the Czech Foreign Minister, Jan Masaryk who was proving such stubborn opposition to the Soviet Unions ambitions. In 1948 Masaryk's body was found sprawled in the courtyard of the Czernin Palace in Prague in a crude Soviet attempt to make it a appear to have been a suicide, jumping to his death from a balcony several floors above.
After the war ended Beria made several ill thought out attempts to streamline the Soviet intelligence and security services, but only succeeded in creating confusion and fear within the newly created MVD and its many offshoots. Indeed the constant purges and changes of direction led to an increasing number of defections by Soviet intelligence officers to the West. Beria continued to increase the power of his secret police within the Soviet Union and with its enormous strength of over 250,000 and a vast budget Stalin became increasingly suspicious of Beria, believing that Beria was actually plotting to replace him. However Stalin died before he could effectively deal with Beria, but his successors also had no intention of allowing Beria to take over. He had little support within the communist Party and the Army never forgave him for the vicious murder of tens of thousands of their colleagues before the War. He was arrested, tried in secret and condemned as a traitor. On December 23rd, 1953, Beria was placed before a wall in the Lubyanka Headquarters of the new KGB and shot by a firing squad.
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