The Georgian interior minister who survived the purge
Arrested in April 1952 in the 'Mingrelian affair' — a case aimed at Beria — he was freed by Beria after Stalin's death. When Beria fell and his inner circle was executed, Karanadze alone escaped trial, dismissed only for 'discrediting facts' and dying naturally in 1970.
A Georgian protégé of Beria who headed the NKVD in Crimea and Dagestan before serving as Georgia's interior minister (1943–1952). Arrested in the Mingrelian affair, he was rehabilitated after Stalin's death and alone among Beria's lieutenants escaped execution.
Career Timeline
- 1935–1937First secretary of the Tbilisi and Signakhi district party committees
- 1938–1941People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Crimean ASSR
- 1942–1943People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Dagestan ASSR
- 1943–1952People's Commissar, then Minister, of Internal Affairs, Georgian SSR
- 1952–1953Arrested in the "Mingrelian affair", later rehabilitated
- 1953Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, Georgian SSR
- 1957–1970Deputy chairman, State Forestry Committee of the Georgian Council of Ministers
Related historical events
The Mingrelian Affair — A Purge Aimed at Beria
In November 1951, Stalin received a report alleging the existence of a 'Mingrelian nationalist organization' within the Georgian Communist Party and state security apparatus. The informant was Nikolai Rukhadze, Georgia's Minister of State Security, and behind him stood forces in Moscow wary of Beria's expanding influence. The so-called 'Mingrelian affair' was in reality a flanking attack on Beria himself: Beria was of Mingrelian origin, and most of the lieutenants he had placed in the Georgian NKVD and party over the preceding decade were Mingrelians.
A resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on 9 November 1951 launched the investigation, and arrests began the following day. Ultimately more than 500 people were arrested, among them Beria's key protégés: Mikhail Baramiya (Second Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party), Avksenty Rapava (former Minister of Internal Affairs), and Konstantin Bziava (Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs). Karanadze, a Mingrelian himself and a direct client of Beria's network, was a natural target.
Karanadze was arrested on 8 April 1952. Rukhadze and a special investigative brigade of ten men dispatched from Moscow (led by Tsetskov) extracted 'confessions' through torture: hot and cold punishment cells, beatings, sleep deprivation, and starvation. The detainees were forced to testify to an 'anti-Soviet conspiracy linked to Turkey,' with the investigation increasingly converging on the 'big Mingrelian': Beria.
Stalin's death on 5 March 1953 transformed the situation overnight. Beria returned as head of the newly unified Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), ordered a review of the case in mid-March, and on 8 April submitted a formal conclusion to the Party Presidium declaring the Mingrelian affair 'a provocative fabrication' by former Georgian MGB chief Rukhadze. The surviving detainees, including Karanadze, were released and rehabilitated; Karanadze was reinstated as Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR on 10 April.
His rehabilitation was short-lived. When Beria himself was arrested in June 1953 and executed in December, a sweeping purge of his associates followed. Rapava and Rukhadze (ironically, both persecutor and persecuted) were shot as members of 'Beria's gang.' Karanadze was transferred to the reserve on 12 October and dismissed from the organs on 19 December for 'discrediting facts,' but he escaped indictment. Alone among Beria's inner circle, he was neither tried nor executed. From 1957 until his death in 1970, he held a quiet administrative post as deputy chairman of the State Forestry Committee of the Georgian Council of Ministers.