and scientists to rot in labor camps. In early 1949, he delivered: the
Soviet Union exploded a bomb in Kazakhstan years ahead of West-
ern intelligence predictions. Named “Joe-One” by the American in-
telligence community, it was, in the words of one of the bomb’s de-
signers, the “bomb that saved communism.”
Beria was a close and constant companion of Stalin through the
late-1930s and 1940s. A frequent guest to Stalin’s apartments in
Moscow and his vacation dachas, he was one of the dictator’s few in-
timate colleagues. They often communicated in Georgian. Survivors
of the period report that Beria frequently presided over the execution
of members of Stalin’s inner circle and family.
In the early 1950s, Beria became a target of Stalin’s suspicion, and
only Stalin’s death saved him from execution. From Stalin’s death in
March 1953 until purged in June 1953, Beria served as one of the
three de facto rulers of the Soviet Union. Beria sought to bring the
foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, police, and security ser-
vices under his sway. It was a fatal mistake and convinced the other
members of the leadership that he had to go. He was arrested at a
Communist Party Presidium meeting in the Kremlin on 26 June by
military officers commanded by Marshal Georgi Zhukov. After a
lengthy interrogation, he was tried by an ad hoc court on 23 Decem-
ber and shot the same evening with several of his closest colleagues.
He was charged with—among other real and fictitious crimes—
having spied for Great Britain since the 1920s. At the trial, his mas-
sive crimes against humanity were not mentioned.
Beria was both one of Stalin’s most odious lieutenants and a for-
midable security and intelligence generalissimo. He had a violent and
depraved sexual appetite. He picked up and raped many young
women, threatening them and their families with execution if they re-
fused his overtures. He controlled a prison camp empire of more than
2 millionzeks(prisoners), oversaw intelligence and security opera-
tions throughout Stalin’s empire, and managed the Soviet nuclear
program. A frightening boss who sent thousands of his own people to
their death, he is remembered as Stalin’s first lieutenant.BERLIN OPERATIONS.From 1947 to 1962, the German city of
Berlin was the front line of the intelligence Cold War. The KGBand
the GRUmaintained large rezidenturasin Berlin. The KGB had be-28 •BERLIN OPERATIONS06-313 A-G.qxd 7/27/06 7:55 AM Page 28