Lavrentiy Beria: Stalin’s Rapist-In-Chief of the Soviet Union

Lavrentiy Beria is possibly the person most synonymous with the Red Terror in the Soviet Union after Stalin and Lenin themselves, but typically Beria’s multitude of crimes have long been brushed under the rug by the mainstream media and even parts of academia. In all probability this is in part because of their desire not to have anyone eclipse their fantasy of ‘how evil’ the Third Reich allegedly was, but also probably because many of Beria’s subordinates in the NKVD were jewish. (1)

Now while Beria was head of the NKVD between 25th November 1938 and 15th January 1946 as well as the ‘power behind the throne’ in Stalin’s Soviet Union from 1946 to Stalin’s death in March 1953. He was an extremely despicable individual who even his own bodyguards absolutely despised. (2)

This is hardly surprising given that Beria’s sexual escapades were extremely well-known to those who lived and worked in and around Beria’s house including several Americans who worked at the US embassy in Moscow.

To quote Beria’s academic biographer Amy Knight:

‘Beria's escapades were common knowledge among embassy personnel because his house was on the same street as a residence for Americans, and those who lived there saw girls brought to Beria's house late at night in a limousine.’ (3)

Montefiore in his 2003 biography of Stalin gives us a detailed account of Beria’s extra-curricular activities writing how:

‘An inventory of his desk after his later arrest revealed his interests: power, terror and sex. In his office, Beria kept blackjack clubs for torturing people and array of female underwear, sex toys and pornography that seemed to be obligatory for secret police chiefs. He was found to be keeping eleven pairs of silk stockings, eleven silk corsets, seven silk nighties, female sports outfits, the equivalent of Soviet cheerleaders’ costumes, blouses, silk scarves, countless obscene love letters and ‘a large quantity of items of male debauchery’.

Despite his mountainous workload, Beria found time for a Draculean sex life that combined love, rape and perversity in almost equal measure. The war had given him the opportunity to engage in a life of sexual brigandage even more intense and reckless than that enjoyed by his predecessors in the job. The secret-police chiefs always had the greatest sexual licence: only SMERSH watched Beria; otherwise he could do whatever he wanted. It was once thought that Beria’s seductions and rapes were exaggerated but with the opening of the archives of his own interrogation, as well as the evidence of witnesses and even those who were raped by him, reveals a sexual predator who used his power to indulge himself in oppressive depravity. It is often impossible to differentiate between women he seduced who went to him to plead for loved ones – and those women he simply kidnapped and raped. Yet mothers often pimped their daughters in returns for limousines and privileges. Beria himself could be a gentleman, treating some mistresses so kindly that they never criticised him even when he had been exposed as a Soviet Bluebeard.’ (4)

Now some apologists for Stalin and his regime might be tempted to say that these were post-Stalin smears of Beria, but the fact that we have numerous witness statements from everyone from American embassy personnel, relatives of those he raped, women and girls he raped and most importantly his own long-serving bodyguards plus two different sets of several female remains were discovered in 1993 and 1998 respectively at Beria’s old house that became the Tunisian Embassy in Moscow. (5)

Why is that you ask?

Well because if a woman refused Beria’s advances, he either murdered them himself or had her murdered either there and then or soon after by his subordinates in the NKVD. (6)

This necessarily suggests that these assertions are not post-Stalinist political smears but the uncomfortable unpalatable truth that while Stalin’s Red Army was engaging in the mass rape of Germany from 1944 to 1945; the second most powerful man in the Soviet Union had been engaging in a one-man mass rape of Moscow from his assumption of power on 25th November 1938 till at least March 1953. (7)

As Montefiore explains Beria:

‘Was a familiar sight in Moscow as he cruised the streets in his armoured Packard and sent his Caucasian bodyguards Colonels Sarkisov and Nadaraia to procure women for him. The colonels were not always happy with their role – indeed, Sarkisov kept a record of Beria’s perversions with which to denounce him to Stalin.’ (8)

Further evidence is provided by the fact that on 17th January 2003 the Russian prosecutor confirmed the existence of 47 volumes about Beria’s criminal activities that were gathered after Stalin’s death including dozens of names of the women who accused Beria of raping them. (9)

Indeed, Beria seems to have believed that he caught syphilis from these activities in 1943 (10) and when the inevitable occurred and Beria’s mistresses got pregnant with his children, he simply had them aborted. (11)

Oh, and before Stalin’s defenders try to claim otherwise Stalin had been well aware of Beria’s extra-curricular activities since at least the early 1940s and actually defended Beria against the charges suggesting that they were his ‘legitimate enjoyment’. (12)

Indeed, there is also evidence that there was a torture chamber in the cellar of Beria’s home. (13)

The question then really is: did Stalin’s Rapist-in-Chief use that torture chamber as part of his own sick and perverted sex games, did he use it for his day job or was it a bit of both?

References

(1) We can extrapolate this from: Bernard Wasserstein, 2012, ‘On the Eve: The Jews of Europe before the Second World War’, 1st Edition, Profile: London, pp. 19-20; 63-67; 80-81

(2) Aleksei Rybin, 1996, ‘Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard’, 1st Edition, Northstar Compass: Toronto, p. 61

(3) Amy Knight, 1993, ‘Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant’, 1st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton, p. 97

(4) Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2003, ‘Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar’, 1st Edition, Phoenix: London, pp. 516-517

(5) Ibid., p. 517, n. 1; also see https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12574528.grim-reminder-of-beria-terror/

(6) Montefiore, Op. Cit., p. 506

(7) Donald Rayfield, 2004, ‘Stalin and his Hangmen’, 1st Edition, Random House: New York, pp. 466-467

(8) Montefiore, Op. Cit., p. 517

(9) Ibid., p. 517, n. 1; also see https://www.thetimes.com/article/berias-terror-files-are-opened-97hj6kxwsrb

(10) Montefiore, Op. Cit., p. 518

(11) Ibid.

(12) Ibid.

(13) https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12574528.grim-reminder-of-beria-terror/