Page "Lavrentiy Beria" Paragraph 43

During the war, Beria was commonly seen on warm nights slowly driving in his armored Packard limousine through the streets of Moscow.

According to the official 1955 testimony of his NKVD bodyguards, colonels R. S.

Sarkisov and V. Nadaraia, Beria would point out young women to be detained and escorted to his mansion, where wine and a feast awaited them.

After dining, Beria would take the women into his soundproofed office and rape them.

Beria's bodyguards reported that their orders included handing each girl a flower bouquet as she left Beria's house, with the implication being that to accept his parting gift made her his consensual mistress ; those who refused risked being arrested.

In one incident reported by Colonel Sarkisov, a woman who had been brought to Beria refused his advances and ran out of his office ; Sarkisov mistakenly handed her the flowers anyway, prompting the enraged Beria to declare " Now it's not a bouquet, it's a wreath!

May it rot on your grave!

" The woman was arrested by the NKVD the next day.

Many women reportedly submitted to Beria's advances in exchange for the promise of freeing their relatives from the Gulag.

In one case, Beria picked up a well-known actress under the pretense of bringing her to perform for the Politburo ; instead, he took her to his dacha, promised to free her father and grandmother from NKVD prison if she submitted, and then raped her, telling her " Scream or not, doesn't matter.

" Beria knew her relatives had already been executed months before.

She was arrested shortly afterward and sentenced to solitary confinement in the Gulag, which she survived.