69. That same month, April 1921, Beria married the sixteen-year-old upper-class Georgian Nino Gegechkori, whose uncle had been a member of the tsarist State Duma and foreign minister in the overturned Georgian Menshevik government. The pair may have met in prison, when Nino and her mother came to visit her Bolshevik father, Alexander Gegechkori, who had been arrested and held along with Beria in the Kutaisi prison. Nino went on to graduate university in economics. Sokolov, Beriia, 40–2. See also Dumbadze, Na sluzhbe cheka i kominterna, 93 Beria’s patron Bagirov was expelled from the party for torture, oppressing national minorities (Armenians, Russians), and bribe-taking. He was sacked from the secret police in May 1927 for “exceeding his authority, intrigues, and using the organs against the party.” But Stalin, writing to Molotov in 1929, decided that “Bagirov (despite his past sins) will have to be confirmed as chairman of the Cheka in Azerbaijan: he is now the only person who can cope with the Musavatists and Ittikhadists who have reared their heads in the Azerbaijan countryside. This is serious business, and there should be no fooling around.” Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 168. See also “Iz otchetov komiteta partiinogo kontrolia pri TsK KPSS o partiinoi reabilitatsii kommunistov v 50-kh-nachale 60-kh gg.,” 47; and RGASPI, f. 613, op. 1, d. 90, l. 47. In 1930, Bagirov would be brought to Moscow to study Marxism-Leninism for twenty-four months. Zaria vostoka, Dec. 15, 1933; Knight, Beria, 39. In Oct. 1932, Bagirov was returned to Azerbaijan as chairman of the republic’s Council of People’s Commissars, and in Dec. 1933 he became party boss of Azerbaijan. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 396n2; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 935, l. 2, 32–4. Bagirov occupied the mansion of the former Baku agent of the Rothschilds.
70. Iusif-Zade, Chekisty Azerbaidzhana, 26, 31–57. Mikhail Kedrov, head of a traveling commission on secret police abuses, relayed a damning report on Beria to Dzierżyński, who in Dec. 1921 issued an arrest order. Beria desperately appealed to the local top man, Orjonikidze, arguing that Kedrov did not understand Baku’s rough conditions. Orjonikidze supposedly later told a secretary that upon learning of Beria’s service in Musavat counterintelligence, Dzierżyński had wanted to execute him, but that Orjonikidze interceded to save Beria’s life. In another version, the son of the arresting officer claimed Stalin telephoned Dzierżyński and vouched for Beria, citing the word of Mikoyan. Whatever the cause, Dzierżyński countermanded the warrant. Berezin, “Istoriia ordera na arrest Berii,” 195–6 (recollections of the son of Yan Berezin); Agabekov, G.P.U., 170; Leggett, Cheka, 270–1. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 134 (citing TsA FSB, ASD P-771, l. 5, testimony of Orjonikidze’s secretary). All the paperwork would later disappear from Dzierżyński’s files except a document indicating that there had been paperwork. Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 168–9. On June 27, 1922, Kirov, then party boss in Azerbaijan, directed him to cease police surveillance on Bolshevik officials. (Beria wrote back denying any involvement.) Popov and Oppokov, “Berievshchina” (1990, no. 1): 68. A denunciation of Beria in the later 1920s accused him of surrounding himself with dubious types. Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 236 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 9, l. 78–85).
71. In Sept. 1929, after a torrent of complaints, Orjonikidze had sent in a Central Control Commission team. Beria once again begged to be relieved of his post and allowed to resume his studies. “Time passes, all around people are growing, developing, and those who yesterday were far behind me today moved ahead,” Beria noted. “My backwardness is painful and humiliating, the more so when one knows that the country now needs people with expertise . . . Dear Sergo, I implore you to take me from the Caucasus and, if I cannot be sent to study, then transfer me to different work in one of the regions of the USSR . . . After all, I cannot argue with everyone for my lifetime, it will ruin my nerves.” But Orjonikidze blocked the Georgian push for disciplinary action against Beria in spring 1930. Toptygin, Nezivestnyi Beriia, 27–8; Knight, Beria, 39–40 (citing RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 71, l. 1–6); Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 236 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 9, l. 78–85).
72. In 1925, a Junkers airplane en route to Sukhum had caught fire and crashed near the Tiflis aerodrome, killing the chairman of the South Caucasus Council of People’s Commissars and another high government official as well as Mogilevsky. Trudovaia Abkhazia, March 25, 1925; Biulleten’ oppozitsii (Jan. 1939): 2–15. Beria transformed an obituary for Mogilevsky into a self-tribute. Antonov-Ovseenko, Beriia, 31.
