Ethe name of Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria (1899-1953) was feared like almost no one else in the Soviet Union. That’s why it was deleted from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia shortly after being executed with a bullet in the back of the head on December 23, 1953. His place was taken by an article about the Mar de Bering.
His kingdom was Lubyankaon the third floor, in the office with views of the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka. From there, Georgian as Stalin, Beria led an empire of terror that caused any Muscovite to lower their heads when passing in front of the yellow building. Whoever entered the Lubyanka against his will rarely left.
Born in Merkheuli, a town in the always tense region of Abkhazia, football was always a passion for someone who was the soul of the NKVD and the security organs. The dreaded People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs He practiced that sport and made it an obsession. Like sex.
Beria made his first steps as a footballer in Tbilisi, the city where the Georgian clan that would take power after Lenin’s death would be formed. He and Grigory Ordzhonikidze They were supporters of Stalin, although they hated each other. “Beria is a shameless and dangerous swindler,” he maintained. Ordzhonikidzewho took his own life on February 18, 1937 in Moscow, they say that he was harassed by Beria’s henchmen.
The passion of Lavrenti Pavloich football led him to promote the teams that were under the mantle of the security services. The Dinamofirst the one in Tbilisi and then the one in Moscow.
Through football he openly clashed with Stalin’s son, Vasili. Beria was behind the arrest of Nikolay Starostin, star of Spartak. He ended up in the gulag Three. “This time it will be difficult for you to escape from me,” Beria had told him one day when they met in the Red Square to remind him of a match in which they had crossed paths years ago.
Stalin’s son took out Starostin from the punishment camp during his sixth year of sentence. But he could not return to Moscow.
Outraged with him NKVD Due to this prohibition, Vasili forced Nikolai to live in his own house, even sharing a bedroom. Overwhelmed by confinement, Starostin escaped one day through the window to go see his wife and his daughter. There two NKVD colonels were waiting for him to arrest him and expel him from Moscow. On the train that took him back to the East, the men of Vasili Stalin They mounted an incredible rescue operation at the Orel station. From there they flew to Moscow, where Stalin’s son displayed him in the box during a Dinamo match.
That was in Moscow. Before, in Tbilisi, Beria had put the local Dinamo under his control. He appointed coach Grigol Pachulia, a former and good left-back of the team. But his true merit lay in being the head of the NKVD in Abjasiathe eyes and hands of Beria in his homeland.
When arrested Beria after the death of Stalin, Pachulia He was accused of inhuman treatment of prisoners and sentenced to 25 years in a labor camp. The files of KGB They say that by his order a cell in the basement of the Sokhumi prison was regularly flooded with water. The prisoners did not have access to toilets or drinking water. They were forced to drink that water, as well as use it as a toilet.
Behind Beria there are many more stories linked to football: that Boris Pachiadzethe best Georgian player until Kvaratskhelia, had to play for Dinamo Tbilisi and then could not sign for the Spartak; from persecution to CSKA After the Soviet failure in the 1952 Games, signings-kidnapping for Dinamo…
At 7:50 p.m. on December 23, 1953, Colonel Batitsky He executed Beria, accused of treason to the people. His body was burned in Donskoy.
