Lavrentiy Beria rose to the top of the political map in 1938 by taking charge of the NKVD. In this role he displaced Nikolai Yezhov, a key figure behind the Great Terror, and his departure coincided with a waning of the most brutal wave of repression. Yet Beria was not a humanitarian hero, and under his watch the NKVD plotted executions of thousands of Polish officers taken at Katyn and continued to oppress various communities including Chechens, other North Caucasus peoples, Turks, and Kurds. Still, he is often credited with building a formidable worldwide intelligence network that helped the USSR during World War II.
After his major achievements, Beria left the NKVD and turned his attention to the atomic project, with Sergei Kruglov stepping in as deputy on the farm. By 1949 the nuclear program showed progress, and Beria effectively became the country’s second most powerful figure. When Stalin died in March 1953, Beria stood as an influential, unofficial successor even though his official role retained the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Some accounts suggest Beria may have influenced Stalin’s death by delaying medical care after the leader suffered a stroke.
Berievskaya thaw
Beria’s time in power was brief. In June of that year a coalition led by Nikita Khrushchev moved to arrest him. Remarkably, Beria had already begun a gradual reformist thaw, having halted the Doctors’ Conspiracy long before Khrushchev took action. That move is seen by many as an early repudiation of the Great Terror, with thousands of people originally held in the Gulag system released or spared from persecution. Detainees faced less brutal interrogation in many cases, and travel and passport restrictions began to ease.
This episode highlighted the culpability of Stalin for the harsh policy of repression and signaled a break from some of the most oppressive practices. Yet Beria, a man with years of security experience and a key facilitator of the nuclear program, proposed even more sweeping reforms than merely curbing repression.
First, Beria aimed to restore a clearer line between party bodies and state administration. Unlike the era when party leadership effectively ran the country, he envisioned the Council of Ministers assuming day to day governance while the Central Committee of the CPSU focused on personnel and ideological work. He also reportedly pushed for limits on displaying the portraits of Soviet leaders during public celebrations.
Second, he rejected the Stalinist model of mobilizing all resources around the leader and instead advocated economic reorganization. Several large ministries and enterprises under internal affairs control were to be moved to separate ministries, including Dalspetsstroy in the Far East and Hydroproekt, which focused on hydroelectric construction. He halted several grand construction schemes that fed the centralized push for an all out wartime economy.
National communism without collective farms
Beria’s approach to national policy surprised many. He appeared to support a form of national communism where each nation would push its own path to communism and the power of one people over another would be rejected. The most striking manifestation of this was his push for indigenization in the republics, reshaping how leadership and administration were distributed by nationality. In practice this meant appointing locals to positions of influence in local ministries according to their ethnicity. The shift extended across the state apparatus and many sectors of governance.
In May 1953 Beria issued orders to adjust leadership in Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine to reflect this principle. The policy drew mixed reactions, with some national elites welcoming the change while many minority groups feared discrimination. Critics argued the reforms were uneven and sometimes out of touch with the realities on the ground, and Khrushchev later used these inconsistencies to justify pushing Beria aside.
The reforms also included proposals for outreach to Western nations. Although some ideas remained speculative, there were discussions about possible steps to ease economic tension with East Germany and reshape relations with other Western states. Beria reportedly questioned the aggressive protectionist stance of collective farms and advocated for a pragmatic approach to socialist development in Eastern Europe. Some sources quote Sergo Beria as describing hopes that Eastern Germany might reconcile with the West, potentially altering the Cold War balance. These plans suggested a more open stance toward a cooperative European order.
Ultimately, Beria faced his downfall on June 26, 1953, when Khrushchev-led forces arrested him. Six months later he was found guilty of conspiracy and treason, and on December 23 Beria was executed. The historical record leaves many questions about his exact intentions and the feasibility of his reform program, but his brief tenure clearly signaled a shift away from the most extreme coercive methods of the regime.