Sardion Nikolayevich Nadaraya
Сардион Николаевич Надарая
1903–1982
○ Served ten years, died of natural causes
Beria's bodyguard chief, formerly of the internal prison
In 1937, Nadaraya had former Georgian Party secretary Samson Mamulia tied to an interrogation table and beaten for over a week, until Mamulia falsely implicated Sergo Ordzhonikidze — a confession Nadaraya himself made at his 1955 trial.
Born in the village of Sepieti in western Georgia, Nadaraya ran the NKVD internal prison of the Georgian SSR at the height of the 1937 terror, where he was involved in beatings of prisoners and the fabrication of death certificates to conceal torture deaths. In 1939 he became deputy chief of Beria's personal security, followed his patron to Moscow, and by 1953 rose to chief of the detail. Arrested after Beria's fall, he received a ten-year sentence at the 1955 Tbilisi trial and, unlike the six senior defendants, was spared execution. Released from a Mordovian camp in 1965, he died in Moscow in 1982.
Career Timeline
- 1937–1938Deputy head, then head, of the NKVD internal prison of the Georgian SSR
- 1939–1946Deputy head of Beria's personal security detail
- 1946–1952Officer, guards directorate of the MGB
- 1952–1953Deputy head of personal security unit No. 41, MGB
- 1953Chief of Beria's personal security
- 1953–1965Arrested; served a ten-year sentence
Related historical events
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeThe Georgian NKVD internal prisonHe ran the NKVD internal prison of the Georgian SSR at the height of the terror in 1937. The 1955 indictment charged him with involvement in the beating of prisoners there and with arranging falsified death certificates.
- 1953The Fall of BeriaTen yearsBeria's bodyguard chief and the eighth defendant at the 1955 Tbilisi trial, he escaped the fate of the six senior defendants, received ten years, and was released in 1965.
The 1955 Tbilisi Trial
From 7 to 19 September 1955, Nadaraya stood trial in Tbilisi alongside seven other former senior officers of the Georgian NKVD: Avksenti Rapava, Nikolai Rukhadze, Shalva Tsereteli, Konstantin Savitsky, Nikita Krimyan, Aleksandr Khazan, and Georgy Paramonov. The charges were brought under Articles 58-1(b) (treason), 58-8 (terrorism), and 58-11 (counter-revolutionary organization) of the RSFSR Criminal Code. This open trial was one of the Soviet Union's first full-scale public reckonings with Stalin-era state violence after Beria's execution in December 1953.
The indictment charged Nadaraya, as head of the internal prison, with systematically beating prisoners with 'ropes, clubs, and rubber truncheons,' operating torture chambers known as the 'hot room' and the 'cold room,' and falsifying death certificates for prisoners who died under interrogation: recording the cause of death as 'heart disease.' At trial, Nadaraya admitted to having former Georgian Party secretary Samson Mamulia tied to an interrogation table and beaten for over a week to extract a false confession implicating Sergo Ordzhonikidze.
Of the eight defendants, six, Rapava, Rukhadze, Tsereteli, Savitsky, Krimyan, and Khazan, were sentenced to death and executed. Nadaraya and Paramonov received ten-year sentences, likely because Nadaraya cooperated extensively during the investigation and his role as Beria's security chief in Moscow was judged less severely than the direct torture he had overseen in the Tbilisi internal prison.