Ber·i·a, Lavrenti Pavlovich 1899–1953.
Soviet secret police chief (1938–1953) during the regime of Joseph Stalin. In the power struggle following Stalin's death, Beria was convicted of conspiracy and executed.
Beria, Lavrenti Pavlovich, 1899–1953, Soviet Communist leader, b. Georgia. He rose to prominence in the Cheka (secret police) in Georgia and the Transcaucasus, became party secretary in these areas, and in 1938 became head of the secret police. As commissar (later minister) of internal affairs, Beria wielded great power, and he was the first in this post to become (1946) a member of the politburo. After Stalin's death (Mar., 1953), Beria was made first deputy premier under Premier Malenkov, but the alliance was shaky; in the ensuing struggle for power Beria was arrested (July) on charges of conspiracy. He and six alleged accomplices were tried secretly and shot in Dec., 1953.
The noun Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria has one meaning:
Meaning #1: Soviet chief of secret police under Joseph Stalin; was executed by his associates in the power struggle following Stalin's death (1899-1953)
Synonym: Beria
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Lavrenty BeriaLavrenty Pavlovich Beria (Georgian: ლავრენტი ბერია; Russian: Лаврентий Павлович Берия; (29 March, 1899 – 23 December, 1953), Soviet politician and chief of the Soviet security and police apparatus.
Beria is now remembered chiefly as the executor of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of the 1930s, even though he actually presided only over the closing stages of the purge. His period of greatest power and influence was during and immediately after World War II — after Stalin's death he was removed from office and executed by Stalin's successors.
Rise to power
Beria was born the son of Pavel Khukhaevich Beria, a peasant, in Merkheuli, near Sukhumi in the Abkhazian region of Georgia. He was a member of the Mingrelian ethnic group and grew up in a Georgian Orthodox family. His mother, Marta Ivanovna, was a deeply religious, church-going woman; she was previously married and widowed before marrying Beria's father, and had a son from her first marriage.[1] He was educated at a technical school in Sukhumi, and is recorded as having joined the Bolshevik Party in March 1917 while an engineering student in Baku. (Some sources say that the Baku Party records are forgeries and that Beria actually joined the Party in 1919. It is also alleged that Beria joined and then deserted from the Red Army at this time, but this has not been established.)
In 1920 or 1921 (accounts vary) Beria joined the Cheka (All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage), the original Bolshevik political police. At that time, a Bolshevik revolt, supported by the Red Army, occurred in the Menshevik Democratic Republic of Georgia, and the Vecheka was heavily involved in this conflict. By 1922 Beria was deputy head of the Vecheka's successor, the OGPU (Combined State Political Directorate), in Georgia. Some sources allege that Beria was at this time an agent of the British and/or Turkish intelligence services, but this has never been proved.
Beria, as a fellow Georgian, was an early ally of Joseph Stalin in his rise to power within the Communist Party and the Soviet regime. Disputed, Beria was not introduced to Stalin until 1926, and worked hard to further his own cause by wooing Stalin to get into the inner circles of the Soviet regime; and he was hardly an "ally", more of a henchman. In 1924 he led the repression of nationalist disturbances in Tbilisi, after which it is said that up to 5,000 people were executed. For this display of "Bolshevik ruthlessness" Beria was appointed head of the "secret-political division" of the Transcaucasian OGPU and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. In 1926 he became head of the Georgian OGPU. He was appointed Party Secretary in Georgia in 1931, and for the whole Transcaucasian region in 1932. He became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1934. Even after moving on from Georgia, he continued to effectively control the republic's Communist Party until it was purged in July 1953.