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

Like others in prison for their links to Beria, Sharia spent a decade locked up with polite warders, access to books, and an unshaken belief in Stalin, before retiring to Tbilisi. His dying words, however, were, “I’m choking in blood.”⁴⁹

Ivan Serov was well rewarded for his treachery. He headed Khrushchiov’s new KGB and died of old age in 1990. Kruglov, however, was pensioned off in 1958, expelled from the party and evicted from his large apartment for “involvement in political repression.” He was run over by a train in 1977. Some, like Mikeil Gvishiani, who murdered even more Chechens than Kruglov, were saved from retribution by being sons-in-law of prominent party leaders. Gvishiani merely lost his general’s rank in November 1954 for “discrediting himself.” The same demotion was suffered by Vasili Mikhailovich Blokhin, the NKVD’s chief executioner; a sick man, he died at the age of sixty in 1955. Nadaraia, Beria’s executioner and, with Sarkisov, his pimp, spent a short time in prison. Aleksandr Khvat, the torturer of Vavilov, was still receiving a generous pension in the 1990s.

Abakumov knew Beria had fallen when his interrogations began again; they were perfunctory, however, merely selecting material for his indictment. Abakumov was moved to the Lubianka where doctors could keep him alive. Malenkov did not care about Abakumov’s arrests of Jews or doctors; it was the framing of the aviation ministers in 1946 and of the Leningrad party in 1949 for which Malenkov wanted revenge. The officers’ club in Leningrad where Kuznetsov and Voznesensky had been sentenced to death was therefore chosen for the trial of Abakumov and five of his henchmen. Abakumov had recovered enough to fight back. He blamed Beria and Riumin for his plight; he had only obeyed Stalin’s orders in torturing his victims. He and three of his men were sentenced to death. Abakumov had no idea that the sentence would be carried out immediately and was saying, “I shall write to the Politburo—” when the bullet hit him on December 19, 1954.⁵⁰

Lavrenti Tsanava, even though arrested by Beria was kept in prison by Malenkov and Khrushchiov. He hanged himself in October 1955. Ignatiev’s deputy, the cautious Ogoltsov, was released by Khrushchiov in August 1953. He was deprived of his general’s rank for “discrediting himself while working in the organs” but lived on his pension until 1977. Ignatiev, the minister who had supervised the persecution of the Jews, was sent by Malenkov to the foothills of the Urals as Bashkir party secretary. He enjoyed an early, and long, retirement.

Riumin, who had tortured the Jews and the doctors, had to face the music. Completely isolated, Riumin did not know Beria had fallen when he wrote to him in August 1953:

Dear Lavrenti Pavlovich, in the past, when I went to the Central Committee, my thoughts often turned to you, I always expected valuable advice, help and protection from you. Now I have come to be deeply aware how hard it is to endure the tears of children, wives and mothers. . . . Now I am overwhelmed every minute by the tears of three children, my wife and my mother who is living (if she hasn’t died) her last days with heavy grief. Dear Lavrenti Pavlovich, I beg you forgive.⁵¹

Abakumov’s consolation was that his tormentor Mikhail Riumin was executed five months before him, on July 7, 1954.

Rukhadze, the fabricator of the Mingrelian affair against Beria, had expected to be released but remained in prison and was shot in 1955. By contrast, after a short spell in jail, Professor Grigori Mairanovsky, chief poisoner to Iagoda, Ezhov, and Beria, reapplied to the KGB and continued his work in a laboratory in Dagestan.

The party elite—Kaganovich, Khrushchiov, Malenkov, Molotov, and Voroshilov—had as many deaths on their consciences as Beria or Abakumov but died in their beds, surrounded by their families. Except for Khrushchiov, who had glimmers of humanity as well as peasant cunning, they died quite uncontrite.