He ran the Georgian police apparatus for a decade
Arrested in the 1951 Mingrelian affair, Rapava was thrown into the internal prison he had run for a decade, denied sleep for 160 days, and left naked in handcuffs in an ice-cold cell — the very torture methods he had once ordered his subordinates to use.
A Mingrelian who joined the Cheka in the 1920s, Rapava headed the Georgian NKVD and then the MGB for a decade starting in 1938, serving as the republic's chief security officer throughout the Great Terror and the war years. A close associate of Beria, he built Georgia's interwar security apparatus, but was caught in Stalin's 1951 'Mingrelian affair,' freed after Stalin's death, then re-arrested in July 1953 after Beria's fall and shot in 1955 after a public trial.
Career Timeline
- 1930–1931Head of the Adjarian GPU
- 1931–1933Deputy chairman of the Georgian GPU
- 1936–1937Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Transcaucasian SFSR and Georgian SSR
- 1937–1938Chairman of the Abkhaz Central Executive Committee, then of the Abkhaz Council of People's Commissars
- 1938–1943People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Georgian SSR
- 1943–1948People's Commissar, then Minister, of State Security, Georgian SSR
- 1948–1951Minister of Justice, Georgian SSR
- 1953Minister of State Control, Georgian SSR
- 1953–1955Arrested, tried at Tbilisi and executed
Related historical events
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeMember of the Georgian special troikaHe sat on the NKVD special troika empowered by Order No. 00447 in 1937 to pass extrajudicial death sentences, and headed the Georgian NKVD from the following year.
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarGeorgian NKVD chief involved in security and deportation operations near the front
- 1953The Fall of BeriaThe Tbilisi trial, 1955After running the Georgian police apparatus for a decade he was re-arrested in July 1953, sentenced to death at the public Tbilisi trial in September 1955, and shot on 15 November.
The Mingrelian Affair and the 1955 Tbilisi Trial
Rapava's fate was entwined with the power struggles of Stalin's final years. In November 1951, on Stalin's personal instruction, the "Mingrelian Affair" was launched. Ostensibly targeting bribery and nationalism among Georgian prosecutors and MVD cadres, the case was in reality a political operation aimed at the power base of Rapava's patron, Lavrenty Beria. The case was driven by Georgian MGB minister Nikolai Rukhadze and supervised on Stalin's behalf by First Secretary Akaki Mgeladze.
Rapava was arrested in November 1951 and thrown into the very internal prison he had overseen for a decade. Rukhadze's interrogators applied the same torture methods Rapava himself had taught his subordinates, leaving him naked and handcuffed in an ice-cold cell, and depriving him of sleep for 160 days. Alongside him, Beria-aligned Mingrelian cadres including Mikhail Baramiya and Vladimir Shoniya were arrested, and more than 500 people were implicated.
After Stalin's death in March 1953, Beria freed and rehabilitated Rapava and other victims of the Mingrelian case. Rapava was appointed Minister of State Control of Georgia in April 1953, but after Beria's arrest in June, Rapava was re-arrested on 17 July 1953 as a member of the "Beria gang." At the public trial held in Tbilisi in September 1955, Rapava was sentenced to death alongside Rukhadze, Shalva Tsereteli, Konstantin Savitsky, Nikita Krimyan, and Abram Khazan. He was shot on 15 November 1955 and was never rehabilitated.