At some point during that summer of 1937, Beria traveled by car to Sukhumi, accompanied by his driver, a party functionary, and his bodyguard Boris Sokolov, as he did often, but this time they were accosted by three bandits with pistols. Sokolov was said to have covered Beria; the driver and functionary got out of the car. The bandits fled. Sokolov was taken to the hospital with bullet wounds in his hand. Beria’s star rose higher still.88
Beria’s winning ways entailed indefatigably seeking, implementing, and reporting on Stalin’s directives (written, oral, or intuited). On July 20, 1937, he wrote to Stalin (“Dear Koba”), enumerating a long list of names of arrested officials, detailing supposed spying and wrecking and when they had established “ties” to the rightists Rykov and Bukharin. The litany encompassed just about every major figure since the mid-1920s in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan—except Beria. He quoted the victims testifying against each other: “G. Mgaloblishvili and Sh. Eliava gave expansive testimony about the espionage work of David Kandelaki.” Stalin underlined that and other passages (“The scum and traitor Mamiya Orakhelashvili so far keeps silent. We are afraid to take him firmly in hand, since at every interrogation he faints”). Beria conveyed that 200 people had already been shot and that requests were pending with Yezhov to authorize 250 more arrests. “I think it will be necessary to execute not fewer than 1,000 people, including counterrevolutionary rightists, Trotskyites, spies, diversionaries, wreckers, and so on,” Beria added (Stalin underlined this, too). Nor did Beria forget about the need to arrest Lakoba’s wife and mother (“I ask for your directives”).89
Mdivani had refused to incriminate himself publicly and had to be convicted and executed at a one-day “trial” in camera (July 9, 1937).90 But Beria vigorously fulfilled Stalin’s Union-wide instructions in summer–fall 1937 to stage public trials and engage “the toilers” with broadcasts on radio and agitators facilitating collective listening. One trial centered on Zekeri Lordkipanidze, an official in Georgia’s Ajarian autonomous republic, who was said to be “linked” to émigré mullahs and the Turkish consulate in Batum and plotting to break off Muslim Ajarisa on Turkey’s behalf.91 Another trial in Abkhazia’s State Drama Theater, which Beria himself attended, centered on relatives and associates of the deceased Lakoba, a “Trotskyite pygmy.”92 The prearranged death sentences were affirmed at collective farm assemblies, precisely in accordance with Stalin’s circular. Concerning another public trial of “rightists” accused of attempting to restore capitalism in eastern Georgia, Beria boasted to Stalin (August 29, 1937) that “the trial played an exceptionally important role in raising the awareness of the broad masses of workers about counterrevolution, sabotage, and subversion by enemies of the people.”93
Stalin nonetheless saw fit to impart a lesson to Beria. On September 8, 1937, the despot sent a cipher to Armenia asserting that affairs were in an egregious state and Trotskyites were finding protection. Armenian party boss Amatouni Amatouni, the Beria creature, and Stepan Akopov, head of the Yerevan city party, had recently been reconfirmed in their posts, but there had been accusations against them of leniency toward enemies, which also raised questions about Armenia’s NKVD chief, Khachik Moughdousi (Astvatsaturov), another Beria creature.94 On September 15, Mikoyan and Malenkov arrived in Yerevan with a brigade of Chekists who arrested and tortured Moughdousi and his deputies. That day, at a plenum of the Armenian Central Committee, Malenkov read out Stalin’s recent cipher to Armenia, spurring three days of circular-firing-squad “discussion.” On September 18, seven of the nine members of the Armenian politburo were removed. That same day, Beria issued an order for the arrest of his protégé in Abkhazia, Alexei Agrba, now made into a counterrevolutionary bourgeois nationalist, and arrived in Yerevan.95 “To my complete surprise, Beria suddenly appeared,” Mikoyan recalled. “He entered the room as I was speaking at the podium. . . . I assumed Stalin had ordered him to come and arrest me there at the plenum. But I hope I was able to conceal my anxiety and he [Beria] did not notice.”96
None of the sweeping expulsions at the Armenian party plenum, which continued to September 23, had been cleared with Beria. With the dissolution of the South Caucasus Federation, Armenia no longer fell under his jurisdiction. Still, he showed up to ensure that another protégé, the former head of the Tbilisi city party organization, Grigory Arutyunov, got named as the new party boss of Armenia. (He de-Russified his name back to Harutyunyan.)97 In Sukhumi, too, where he sacrificed his Abkhaz plant, Agrba, Beria installed new clients.98