Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him

Beria, loyal to his underlings and ruthless to his rivals, later found more subtle methods to oust his bosses. In 1926 Stalin’s brother-in-law, the Pole Stanislav Redens, who had during the civil war proved ruthless if erratic in Odessa and the Crimea, became head of the Transcaucasian GPU. Redens knew no Georgian and Beria, as head of the Georgian GPU, took advantage. Redens committed one blunder in March 1929: ignoring Beria’s advice, he made the Georgian Muslims of Ajaria close their religious schools and uncover their womenfolk’s faces. Armed rebellion ensued, and ended only when Beria undertook to settle the Ajarians’ grievances. Beria’s political rating rose; Redens’s fell. Beria finally disgraced Redens in 1931, when, after a scandal, Redens was sent by Stalin to the Ukraine.

By 1931 Beria had his own gang of henchmen, Georgians and especially fellow Mingrelians from western Georgia. His efficiency and his personal modesty—he drank only wine and dressed appallingly—in a country notorious for its leaders’ nepotism, self-indulgence, and laxity, impressed Stalin. The rebellions that swept Azerbaijan in the wake of collectivization were calmed by Beria with maximum cunning and minimal firepower.

Whatever Moscow did, Beria’s Tbilisi imitated. After Menzhinsky’s dispossession of the Russian Church, Beria attacked the Georgian Church, sending Catholicos Ambrosi to prison for nine years. In 1927 Beria “elected” the compliant Kristopore as Georgian patriarch and then stopped his “leftist” colleagues oppressing the remaining clergy. Caucasian technical specialists suffered in the 1930s at Beria’s hands, just as Russian scientists suffered from Menzhinsky and Stalin: Baku’s oil fields were allegedly run by counterrevolutionaries working for the British consulate and their prerevolution owners the Nobel brothers. In Georgia too, both left and right oppositions were exposed and smashed. For Stalin, the Caucasus was a microcosm of the USSR, and in Beria he had a viceroy to rule it with rigor. Beria did lessen the burden of collectivization on Georgia, but the only rebuke he had from Stalin was for failing to eradicate vine pests.⁶

Beria fawned on Stalin. His intermediary was Nestor Lakoba, with whom Stalin spent some weeks every summer. Beria swallowed his antipathy to the Abkhaz and tried to overcome the aversion Lakoba felt for GPU Georgians who came from Tbilisi to visit Sukhum. One such was Nadaraia, soon to be a virtuoso executioner at Tbilisi’s main prison and later employed as Beria’s pimp. Beria’s first notes to Lakoba of 1928 are already phrased in intimate terms; they are requests for various comrades from the GPU to have their crimes and failings overlooked and forgiven:

Dear Comrade Nestor! I send you greetings and our best wishes. Thanks for the letter. I would very much like to see Comrade Koba before he departs. If you get a chance it would be good if you could give him a hint about this. I have ordered Comrade Nadaraia to be recalled. Instead, a good chekist will be coming. Greetings, Your Lavrenti.

In January 1929, Beria thanked Lakoba in the only way he knew: “Dear Nestor, I am sending you my own revolver and 250 cartridges. Don’t let its appearance bother you—the revolver is a competition one. With a greeting, Your Lavrenti.” Later Beria took great trouble to find a fine edition of Jules Verne for the twelve-year-old Rauf Lakoba.

In 1931 Stalin lost patience with Georgian leaders, especially the husband and wife Mamia and Mariam Orakhelashvili, who had run both the party and the Russian-language press since 1929. They were lenient to Georgian Mensheviks and Trotskyists, and offhand about Stalin’s heroic role in the Caucasus. ⁷ Beria seemed the only real Stalinist in the Caucasus.

In March 1931 Menzhinsky gave Beria an encomium: