Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant

by Amy Knight

Overview

This is the first comprehensive biography of Lavrentii Beria, Stalin's notorious police chief and for many years his most powerful lieutenant. Beria has long symbolized all the evils of Stalinism, haunting the public imagination both in the West and in the former Soviet Union. Yet because his political opponents expunged his name from public memory after his dramatic arrest and execution in 1953, little has been previously published about his long and tumultuous career.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691010939
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	12/31/1995
Series:	Stalin's First Lieutenant
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	344
Sales rank:	675,974
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Amy Knight is a Senior Research Analyst at the Library of Congress and a former Woodrow Wilson Fellow. She is also the author of The KGB: Police and Politics in the Soviet Union.

What People are Saying About This

Robert Tucker

This first full-scale scholarly biography of the clever, cruel, domineering security chief whom Stalin once called 'my Himmler' casts valuable new light on various events of the Stalin period and its early aftermath.
— Robert Tucker, Professor Emeritus, Princeton University

John le Carre

A milestone, an invaluable achievement, the natural heir to Leggett's history of the Cheka.

From the Publisher

"A milestone, an invaluable achievement, the natural heir to Leggett's history of the Cheka."—John le Carré

"This first full-scale scholarly biography of the clever, cruel, domineering security chief whom Stalin once called 'my Himmler' casts valuable new light on various events of the Stalin period and its early aftermath."—Robert Tucker, Professor Emeritus, Princeton University

Editorial Reviews

Beria is ripe for revisionism. The danger is that too much can be made of Beria's relative liberalism. . . . Amy Knight does not fall into this trap. Hers is a strictly political biography and a very good one.

The [London] Times - Simon Sebag Montefiore

The first serious book-length study of Beria's public career. . . . Knight's staidness and deliberation bring a refreshing change of approach. . . . A major contribution to our knowledge of Soviet politics.

The Times Literary Supplement - Robert Service

This smoothly written book is laudable, not just for its speculation on the Beria that might have been, but also for its naked portrait of the Beria that was.

Newsweek, International Edition - David Gordon

Beria is ripe for revisionism. The danger is that too much can be made of Beria's relative liberalism. . . . Amy Knight does not fall into this trap. Hers is a strictly political biography and a very good one.
— Simon Sebag Montefiore

The [London] Times

The first serious book-length study of Beria's public career. . . . Knight's staidness and deliberation bring a refreshing change of approach. . . . A major contribution to our knowledge of Soviet politics.
— Robert Service

The Times Literary Supplement

This smoothly written book is laudable, not just for its speculation on the Beria that might have been, but also for its naked portrait of the Beria that was.
— David Gordon

Newsweek (International Edition)

As Stalin's police chief, right-hand man and commander of the Gulag slave-labor network, Lavrenty Beria (1899-1953) was a mass murderer whose weapons included torture, deportation and execution. Yet, after Stalin died in 1953, this devious, cold-blooded Bolshevik embarked on a short-lived liberalization program designed to curb the Communist Party apparatus and to give the non-Russian minorities more decision-making powers and limited recognition of their national and cultural identities. Arrested in a coup led by Khrushchev, Beria was executed. Critics view Beria's de-Stalinization proposals as mere tools in a succession struggle, but Knight, a Library of Congress scholar who did extensive research in the former Soviet Union, portrays the Georgian-born police chief as a would-be reformer who saw change as inevitable but was motivated above all by a desire to further his own power. A provocative biography of one of history's most evil men. Photos. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A strong entry in the wave of post-glasnost biographies, Knight's book is an accessible study of one of the most sinister members of Stalin's inner circle. Yet Knight, a senior research analyst in Soviet affairs at the Library of Congress, points out in her introduction that she is not attempting to ``rehabilitate'' Beria but to ``challenge some basic assumptions, both about Beria and about the Stalinist system in general.'' Using recently released documents, Knight succeeds in describing the life of Lavrentii Beria, from his student days in Baku, to his role as Stalin's most powerful henchmen, chief of security, and head of the slave-labor network in the gulag, to his rapid fall after the death of Stalin in the power struggles that brought Khrushchev to power. This work is recommended for undergraduates and informed lay readers.-- John Sandstrom, Houston P.L., Tex.

Library Journal

"This smoothly written book is laudable, not just for its speculation on the Beria that might have been, but also for its naked portrait of the Beria that was."—-David Gordon, Newsweek, International Edition

"The first serious book-length study of Beria's public career. . . . Knight's staidness and deliberation bring a refreshing change of approach. . . . A major contribution to our knowledge of Soviet politics."—-Robert Service, The Times Literary Supplement

"Beria is ripe for revisionism. The danger is that too much can be made of Beria's relative liberalism. . . . Amy Knight does not fall into this trap. Hers is a strictly political biography and a very good one."—-Simon Sebag Montefiore, The [London] Times

From the Publisher