Lavrenty Beria
Lavrenty Beria was born in Merkheuli, Russia, on 29th March, 1899. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1917 and was active in Georgia during the October Revolution.
After the revolution Beria joined the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (Cheka). He eventually became head of the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) in Georgia.
In 1938 Joseph Stalin brought Beria to Moscow and appointed him to serve under Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the NKVD. Soon afterwards Yezhov was arrested and Beria replaced him.
With the murder of Leon Trotsky in 20th August, 1940, all the leading figures involved in the Russian Revolution were dead except for Joseph Stalin. Of the fifteen members of the original Bolshevik government, ten had been executed and four had died (sometimes in mysterious circumstances).
The armed forces suffered at the hands of Beria and the NKVD. It has been estimated that a third of all officers were arrested. Three out of five marshals and fourteen out of sixteen army commanders were executed.
Milovan Djilas met Beria during the Second World War: "Beria was also a rather short man in Stalin's Politburo there was hardly anyone taller than himself. He, too, was somewhat plump, greenish, and pale, and with soft damp hands. With his square-cut mouth and bulging eyes behind his pince-nez, he suddenly reminded me of Vujkovic, one of the chiefs of the Belgrade Royal Police who specialized in torturing Communists. It took an effort to dispel the unpleasant comparison, which was all the harder to forget because the similarity extended even to his expression - a certain self-satisfaction and irony mingled with a clerk's obsequiousness and solitude."
Beria prospered under Joseph Stalin and he became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In February, 1941, he became deputy prime minister and in 1946 joined the Politburo.
After the death of Joseph Stalin in March, 1953, Beria attempted to replace him as dictator of the Soviet Union. He was defeated by a group lead by Nikita Khrushchev, Vyacheslav Molotov and Georgy Malenkov. Beria was arrested and accused of conducting "anti-state activities". Lavrenty Beria was found guilty and was executed on 23rd December, 1953.
Primary Sources
(1) Milovan Djilas, Conversations With Stalin (1962)
Beria was also a rather short man in Stalin's Politburo there was hardly anyone taller than himself. He, too, was somewhat plump, greenish, and pale, and with soft damp hands. With his square-cut mouth and bulging eyes behind his pince-nez, he suddenly reminded me of Vujkovic, one of the chiefs of the Belgrade Royal Police who specialized in torturing Communists. It took an effort to dispel the unpleasant comparison, which was all the harder to forget because the similarity extended even to his expression - a certain self-satisfaction and irony mingled with a clerk's obsequiousness and solitude. Beria was a Georgian, like Stalin, but one could not tell this at all from the looks of him. Georgians are generally bony and dark. Even in this respect he was nondescript. He could have passed more easily for a Slav or a Lett, but mostly for a mixture of some sort.