• after Lavrentiy Beria was arrested in June 1953, Sergei Kruglov succeeded him as the Soviet Union's Minister of Internal Affairs?
• Nestor Lakoba, a Soviet Communist Party chief in Abkhazia, was probably poisoned by Lavrentiy Beria, who then had his wife and son killed?

Facts on topics related to Lavrentiy Beria

Joseph Stalin

• U.S. Ambassador Charles E. Bohlen received the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which contained an understanding between Hitler and Stalin to split Central Europe, from German diplomat Hans von Herwarth?
• Joseph Stalin imposed a tax on childlessness, which forced bachelors and childless families to pay an additional 6% income tax until the collapse of the Soviet Union?
• Joseph Stalin personally rewrote Falsifiers of History to respond to U.S.-released information about the German–Soviet Axis talks?
• Soviet defector Boris Bazhanov became the only assistant at Joseph Stalin's secretariat to ever turn against the Soviet regime?
• Soviet sculptor Sergey Merkurov was the author of the three biggest monuments of Joseph Stalin erected in the USSR during the period of Stalinism?
• Alexander Novikov, double Hero of the Soviet Union and pioneering commander of the Soviet Air Force, was used to frame Marshal Zhukov, then thrown in prison by Joseph Stalin?
• Miron Merzhanov was a personal architect to Joseph Stalin from 1933–1941?
• Ujazdów Avenue in Warsaw was renamed after Stalin in 1953, but the traditional name was restored three years later?
• Vasili Blokhin, chief executioner of the Stalinist NKVD, led a company of executioners that performed more than 828,000 official executions during Joseph Stalin's reign, including tens of thousands by his own hands?
• according to legend, Joseph Stalin remained in Moscow during World War II partly due to a prophecy from Matryona Nikonova, who he covertly visited while she was hiding from his government?

Leonid Brezhnev

• Japanese matinée idol Akira Kobayashi wore a gash across his face and large, Brezhnevian eyebrows for his role in the Seijun Suzuki yakuza film Kanto Wanderer?

Eastern Bloc

• Jaroslav Jiřík became the first player from an Eastern Bloc nation to play in the National Hockey League when he appeared in three games with the St. Louis Blues in 1970?
• Mieczysław Jagielski negotiated the agreement which recognized Solidarity as the first independent trade union within the Eastern Bloc?
• the Friendship Games were dubbed the "Eastern Bloc's alternative Olympics" of 1984 by the Western press?
• the events of Polish October together with Hungarian November shook the Eastern Bloc in 1956 and set the course for the Revolutions of 1989?

KGB

• flatwater canoer Vladas Česiūnas was forcibly returned by the KGB to the Soviet Union out of fear that he would publish a book on doping in the Soviet Union prior to the 1980 Summer Olympics?
• KGB head Ivan Serov did not go on tour in Britain as planned because the British press labelled him "Ivan the Terrible"?
• Russian pastor Gennadi Kryuchkov led his illegal Baptist organisation for 20 years in the USSR while hiding from the KGB?
• Russian billionaire, politician and philanthropist Alexander Lebedev started his career as a KGB agent working in London?
• British MP Anthony Courtney was blackmailed by the KGB using photographs of him with a tour guide?
• David Colville Anderson, whose career was ended by a scandal involving teenage girls, blamed it on the KGB?
• during the 1980s more than half of the personnel of the Soviet embassy in Zambia were KGB and GRU agents?
• the former KGB agent Yuri Nosenko was incarcerated for five years by the CIA including 1,277 days of interrogation, because the American agents did not believe he had truly defected?
• up to 78 percent of 1,016 leading political figures in post-Soviet Russia have served previously in organizations affiliated with Russian intelligence services like the KGB?

Hungarian Revolution of 1956

• British Labour Party Member of Parliament Martin Flannery was a Communist until the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was crushed by the Soviet Union, but remained on the far left?
• prior to screening The Round-Up in Cannes, in order to appease the Hungarian government, director Miklós Jancsó had to declare the film was not an allegory of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956?
• the events of Polish October together with Hungarian November shook the Eastern Bloc in 1956 and set the course for the Revolutions of 1989?

Cold War

• cosmonauts such as Grigori Nelyubov, dismissed from the Soviet space program, were airbrushed out of official photographs, leading to early Cold War speculation of failed missions even when the actual reasons for dismissal were sometimes mundane?
• Dave Brubeck's The Real Ambassadors was largely based on the goodwill tours of Louis Armstrong and other jazz musicians on behalf of the U.S. State Department during the Cold War?
• Hungarian ballerina Nora Kovach's 1953 defection to the West was the first highly publicized Cold War-era defection of individuals in the field of dance?
• Rear Admiral Ellis M. Zacharias, who had been deputy chief of Navy intelligence in World War II, later narrated the NBC Cold War docudrama Behind Closed Doors, titled after one of his own books?
• Building 470 at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland housed fermentor tanks for producing Bacillus anthracis during the Cold War?
• Igor Britanov captained the Soviet submarine K-219 when it sank northeast of Bermuda during the Cold War?
• at the height of the Cold War, U.S. President Ronald Reagan committed a microphone gaffe when he joked that he had signed legislation to bomb Russia?
• at the height of the Cold War, Lynne Cox became the first person to swim from the USA to the USSR?
• during the Cold War, Soviet leaders used "And you are lynching Negroes..." as an ad hominem attack against the U.S.?
• during the Cold War, Canada permitted the United States to practice photo reconnaissance over Grey Goose Island with the RB-52C Stratofortress?