Beria was defeated at the next Presidium plenums by a majority against him, and not long after, Khrushchev and Malenkov started to plan Beria's fall from power.

The compliance of the NKVD was ensured by Zhukov's troops, and after interrogation Beria was taken to the basement of the Lubyanka and shot by General Pavel Batitsky along with Beria's most trusted associates.

When the death sentence was passed, according to Moskalenko's later account, Beria pleaded on his knees for mercy before collapsing to the floor and wailing and crying energetically, but to no avail: the other six defendants were executed by firing squad on 23 December 1953, the same day as the trial, while Beria was fatally shot through the forehead by General Batitsky after the latter stuffed a rag into Beria's mouth to silence his bawling.

At Beria's trial after his June 1953 arrest, a significant number of rape and sexual assault allegations were brought to light.

Beria's sexually predatory nature was well-known to the Politburo, and though Stalin took an indulgent viewpoint ( considering Beria's wartime importance ), he was fearful after learning that his daughter Svetlana was alone with Beria at his house.

Beria's awards were rescinded after his execution.

Within a year Beria's downfall caused the MVD to be split up again ; after that, the MVD retained its " internal security " ( police ) functions, while the new KGB took on " state security " ( secret police ) functions.

* Colonel-General Grubozaboyshikov: He was selected head of SMERSH after Lavrenty Beria's death, in the From Russia, with Love novel.

Despite Beria's history as Stalin's most ruthless subordinates, he was at the forefront of destalinization and liberalisation after Stalin's death, possibly as a means of winning support for his campaign to become leader.

Beria's fall also led to criticism of Stalin ; the party leadership accused Beria of using Stalin, a sick and old man, to force his own will on the Soviet Union during Stalin's last days.

With Stalin's approval, Beria's NKVD liquidated them in the Katyn massacre.

Beria's decision to avoid immediately calling a doctor was silently supported ( or at least not opposed ) by the rest of the Politburo, which was rudderless without Stalin's micromanagement and paralyzed by a legitimate fear he would suddenly recover and wreak violent reprisal on anyone who had dared to act without his orders.

Warfarin ( 4-Hydroxycoumarins ) is cited as the likely agent ; it would have produced the symptoms reported, and administering it into Stalin's food or drink was well within the operational abilities of Beria's NKVD.

After Stalin's death from pulmonary edema brought on by the stroke, Beria's ambitions sprang into full force.

After Lavrenti Beria's arrest in 1953, Rudenko was the judge of his trial in which Beria was sentenced to death.

However, Khrushchev and Malenkov were able to gather enough support for Beria's ouster, but only when a rumour of a potential coup led by Beria began to take hold within the party leadership.

Beria's downfall led to the collapse of his " empire "; the powers of the MVD was curtailed, and the KGB was established.

" Sarkisov reported that Beria's sexual appetite had led to him contracting syphilis during the war, for which he was secretly treated without the knowledge of Stalin or the Politburo ( a fact Beria later admitted during his interrogation ).

Within days of the events in Germany, Khrushchev persuaded the other leaders to support a Party coup against Beria ; Beria's principal ally Malenkov abandoned him.

Beria's secret police soon visited Starostin at his home, giving him 24 hours to leave Moscow.

Support for the assertion that Stalin was poisoned by Beria's associates has been presented from several sources, including Edvard Radzinsky in his biography Stalin and a recent study by Miguel A. Faria in the journal Surgical Neurology International.

Many of Beria's subordinates, proteges and associates were also arrested, among them Merkulov, Bogdan Kobulov, Sergey Golgidze, Vladimir Dekanozov, Pavel Meshik, and Lev Vlodzimirskiy.

Serov became the Ukrainian Commissar of the NKVD in 1939, and from this point onwards he played a major role in many of the actions of the Soviet secret police in World War II, helping to organize the deportation of the Chechens and the peoples of the Baltic States, becoming Beria's primary lieutenant in 1941.

Stalin had begun to encourage Abakumov to form his own network inside the MGB to counter Beria's dominance of the power ministries.

Based on Beria's own statements, other leaders suspected that in the wake of the uprising, he might be willing to trade the reunification of Germany and the end of the Cold War for massive aid from the United States, as had been received in World War II.

At Lavrenty Beria's insistence, the RDS-1 bomb was designed as an implosion weapon similar to the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan ; RDS-1 also had a solid plutonium core.

The reversal caused by Beria's arrest and execution brought an end to much of the arbitrary arrest and the system of forced labour in Gulags that had marked the Stalin era.

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

It is believed that Stalin felt Beria's power was too great and threatened his own.

Beria's uncompromising ruthlessness in his duties and skill at producing results culminated in his success in overseeing the Soviet atomic bomb project.

Stalin gave it absolute priority and the project was completed in under five years in no small part due to Soviet espionage against the West organized by Beria's NKVD.

Beria's mother, Marta Ivanovna, was a deeply religious, church-going woman ( she spent so much time in church that she died there ); she was previously married and widowed before marrying Beria's father, Pavel Khukhaevich Beria, a landowner from Abkhazia, Georgia.

Although Beria's name is closely identified with the Great Purge because of his activities while deputy head of the NKVD, his leadership of the organisation marked an easing of the repression begun under Yezhov.

This was the beginning of Beria's alliance with Malenkov, which later became of central importance.

In December 1944, Beria's NKVD was assigned to supervise the Soviet atomic bomb project (" Task No. 1 "), which built and tested a bomb by 29 August 1949.

In July 1945, as Soviet police ranks were converted to a military uniform system, Beria's rank was officially converted to that of Marshal of the Soviet Union.

Also, by the summer of 1946, Beria's man Vsevolod Nikolayevich Merkulov was replaced as head of the Ministry for State Security ( MGB ) by Viktor Abakumov.

Abakumov was the head of SMERSH from 1943 to 1946 ; his relationship with Beria was marked by close collaboration ( since Abakumov owed his rise to Beria's support and esteem ), but also by rivalry.

Kruglov and Abakumov moved expeditiously to replace Beria's men in the security apparatus leadership with new people.

It can be argued that it was arrogance — overconfidence in their own supposed invincibility — which defeated the Swiss as much as the armed forces of their enemies, for at Bicocca, the Swiss mercenaries, serving the French king, attempted repeatedly to frontally storm an impregnable defensive position, only to be mown down by small-arms and artillery fire.

During and after the epic collapse, Santo never again performed the heel click, as critics decried the routine for its arrogance and overconfidence, which many believe was at the root of the late fade.

Making use of Goro's overconfidence after years of being the undefeated warrior, Liu Kang was able to secure victory.

However, inevitable overconfidence saw the Lions lose form and finish fourth after losing two hard-fought finals.