Lavrenty Beria

High school (ages 12+)
History & Culture

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Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/lavrenty-beria

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. When was Lavrenty Beria born?March 29, 1899
2. Where was Lavrenty Beria born?Merkheuli, Russian Empire (now Georgia)
3. When did Lavrenty Beria die?December 23, 1953 (executed)
4. Who was Lavrenty Beria?Lavrenty Beria was a Soviet leader who ran the secret police and helped create the first Soviet atomic bomb.
5. What did Beria do as head of the NKVD?He led many arrests, deportations, and executions, and expanded the Gulag labor camps to hold millions of prisoners.

Great Purge: A campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938, involving mass arrests and executions of Communist Party members and others.
Gulag System: The network of Soviet forced labor camps where millions of political prisoners and others were incarcerated and subjected to harsh conditions.
De-Stalinization: The process of denouncing and eliminating the cult of personality around Joseph Stalin and reversing his policies after his death.