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Lavrentiy Beria
Chief of Soviet Security
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Lavrentiy Beria was a Soviet politician, and chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Stalin. He was top deputy of the NKVD during the Great Purge, responsible for many of the millions of imprisonments and killings. Then at the end of the Purge, he became head of the NKVD, and carried out a purge of the NKVD itself. Beria was most influential during and after World War II, and immediately after Stalin's death in 1953, when as First Deputy Prime Minister he carried out a brief campaign of liberalization. However, in that same year he was arrested and executed by his political rivals. He claimed to have poisoned Stalin using warfarin, a powerful rat poison, according to Molotov.uild
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