The Security Forces. Lavrentiy Beria

The Bolsheviks created the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to fight counterrevolution and sabotage in order to deal with an army of officials who boycotted the new power and sabotaged the orders of the Council of People’s Commissars. But the party leaders quickly understood the value of the organs of state security as the most important tool for controlling the country. That is how the security forces appeared—something the old Russia did not have.

Leonid Mlechin’s book, which tells about the power triangle: party secretaries, commanders, and heads of special services, consists of three parts. The first two are named after prominent figures of the time—Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrenti Beria; the third is impersonal—"People in Uniform." But the representatives of the security structures it describes did not dissolve into history—they are remembered.

We offer you the part of the book devoted to Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria.