AZERBAIJAN AND LAVRENTIY BERIA
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"Show me the man and I shall find the crime" - L.P.Beria
February 19, 2025
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria is an extraordinary person for many reasons. He was involved in the intelligence service of the USSR, played a key role in orchestrating the Great Purge, and even contributed to the development of atomic bombs in Soviet Russia. However, his dossier becomes particularly intriguing during the Russian Civil War. Let’s first explore Beria’s biography.
Beria was born on the 28th of March, 1899, in Sukhumi’s Merkheuli region of Georgia. On his mother’s side, he had connections to Georgian nobility. However, his early years were marked by poverty. His mother, despite great hardship, managed to gather enough money for his education. His story gains momentum when he moves to Baku in 1915 with his mother and sister. Beria studied at Baku Polytechnic, where he joined the university's Marxist student union. His life in Baku was vibrant. He worked in various factories, but one of the most notable of his workspaces was being a trainee at the Nobel Company’s headquarters. Also, Beria briefly participated in the First World War but was discharged due to illness. So, where and how did Beria enter politics? As mentioned earlier, the real saga of Beria begins in Baku. To understand his political rise, we must first examine the historical context of Baku at that time.
Young Lavrentiy Beria
Revolutionary Baku and Tbilisi during the Tsarist Russia
Mammad Amin Rasulzadeh, in his “Revolutionary Memoirs with Stalin,” describes Baku as: “... and in Baku, an industrial center flourishing with oil mines, Bolsheviks built a nest among miners and port workers. The Social-Democratic Party usually established a headquarters in Tbilisi and Baku, and these two enemy factions tried to over the masses of the Caucasus to influence the revolutionary movement.”
There was political rivalry between these two Caucasian cities. When Tiflis was a hub for Mensheviks, Baku hosted Bolsheviks. Also, here it's worth noting that to the surprise of many, Rasulzadeh was also Bolshevik-oriented at that time. Baku's strong ideological influence was no exception for Beria—he soon joined the Bolshevik Party as well.
As soon as the Russian Civil War began, Beria joined the Baku commune. However, it quickly ended with Baku’s liberation from Bolshevik control by the Azerbaijani-Ottoman coalition. After Baku’s liberation, Beria went into clandestine work (underground) like the other Bolsheviks. His life remained quiet for some time—he briefly worked in a factory before making a surprising move by joining the intelligence service of the Azerbaijan Republic (1918–1920). What led him to cooperate with the Musavatists? Before addressing that, let’s first examine the young Republic of Azerbaijan in 1918 and its intelligence service.
Fragile Security and Beria
The Musavat government had a body responsible for security, the State Security Committee (SSC). The SSC had extraordinary powers. It could declare a general military mobilization, create a volunteer army in a war situation, declare a state of war emergency, etc.
With Denikin’s constant expansion in the Northern Caucasus, SSC had to make strict security measures. On July 11, 1919, a Counterintelligence service was created called Əksinqlabla Mübarizə Təşkilatı (ƏMT), which loosely translates to the Counter-Revolutionary Organization (CRO). CRO was problematic from the start. It had a structure where two-thirds of the organization would be Musavatist while one-third was from the socialist Hummat party. At that time, the main enemy was Denikin's White forces in the north. Thus, democratizing the intelligence service by balancing the nationalist Musavat and the Bolshevik Hummet may have seemed like a strategic move. However, by the end of 1919, it was self-evident that state security was not an issue to be dealt with by democratic means. Nonetheless, the organization was initially successful, expanding its cells and chapters across the country's districts.
This is where Beria gets into politics again. He joins the CRO. This decision would dramatically alter the course of his life. While accounts vary on his reasons for joining, some historians suggest that he did so at the behest of Anastas Mikoyan, the leader of the Baku Bolsheviks.
Anton Denikin. White Army officer which provoked governments of Georgia and Azerbaijan to take more measures in state security.
Naghi Sheykhzamanli, (also known as Naghi Keykurun) head of the CRO.
In his memoir, Naghi Bey Sheikhzamanli, chief of the CRO, writes about Beria’s activity in the organization: “I appointed Beriya to the position on the recommendation of the Hummat party. At that time, our borders were threatened by Tsar General Denikin. The general worked for the restoration of the Russian system of administration. Beria, like every socialist, was an opponent of the tsarist regime. At the age of 21, he was a seriously outstanding young man. I took it to the censorship department. I saw that he worked hard in a short time and appointed him as the head of the department. He told me that he had a mother and that they were very poor. He improved his financial situation with the salary and food he received from the office. He endeared himself to me with his honest work, his energetic Caucasian Georgianness, and his extreme hostility to Russians. He brought me interesting information that he had captured from the passengers of steamboats coming via the Caspian Sea and explained it in detail. I could see that he worked very hard.”
Sheikzamanli does mention Hummat's recommendation but he never explains who exactly proposed Beria to work in the organization.
On the eve of the Bolshevik Occupation of Azerbaijan, Sheikzamanli was aggressively
fighting against the underground activities of Bolsheviks, mainly against the faction called “Baku Bolsheviks,” comprised of Russian, Georgian, Armenian, and some Azerbaijani members. At this time, Beria abandoned his post without informing Sheikzamanli and the Musavat government.
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