Released in 1938, shot in 1955
In 1937 Khazan opened an investigative file on the 17th-century Georgian national hero Giorgi Saakadze with the resolution 'Investigate, identify connections, and arrest' — because a prisoner had mentioned his name.
Born to a Jewish family in Odessa, Khazan was dismissed from the OGPU Higher School in 1933 and posted to the NKVD of Georgia, where as an SPO investigator under Beria and Goglidze he became notorious for fabricating cases and torturing detainees. During the Great Terror he sent even colleagues to execution. Arrested in February 1938, he was released on Beria's orders and merely discharged. He later served in the NKVD central apparatus during the war and, in grim irony, published a 1948 book titled On the Moral Character of the Soviet Person. After Beria's fall he was tried at Tbilisi and shot in November 1955.
Career Timeline
- 1928–1933Operative, Odessa GPU regional department; student at the Higher School of the OGPU
- 1933–1937Operative, then section head, NKVD of the Georgian SSR
- 1937–1938Head of the 1st section and assistant head of the Secret-Political Department, NKVD of the Georgian SSR
- 1938Arrested, released after two months and discharged
- 1942–1945Officer, central apparatus of the NKVD
- 1953–1955Arrested, tried at Tbilisi and executed
Related historical events
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeThe Georgian Secret-Political DepartmentHe became head of the 1st section of the Georgian NKVD's Secret-Political Department in 1937, was arrested in February 1938 for provocative investigative methods, and was released two months later on Beria's instructions.
- 1953The Fall of BeriaThe Tbilisi trial, 1955He had already left the security service in 1945, but was arrested after Beria's fall, tried as one of the Georgian NKVD investigators, and shot in 1955.
The 1955 Tbilisi Trial
After Lavrentiy Beria's execution in December 1953, Soviet prosecutors began systematically investigating the crimes committed by Beria's inner circle in Georgia. On January 10, 1955, KGB Chairman Ivan Serov submitted an indictment to the CPSU Central Committee against eight defendants: Rapava, Rukhadze, Tsereteli, Savitsky, Krimyan, Khazan, Paramonov, and Nadaraia. Signed by Procurator General Roman Rudenko, the document characterized the accused as "morally corrupt and compromised" individuals who had acted on orders from Beria, Goglidze, and Kobulov, charging them with treason (Article 58-1b), terrorism (Article 58-8), and anti-Soviet conspiracy (Article 58-11).
The trial opened in Tbilisi in November 1955 as a public proceeding, one of the first major post-Stalin trials to put the NKVD's own crimes before a court. The defendants stood accused of torture, fabrication, and mass murder during the Great Terror. Prosecutors presented testimony that Khazan and his fellow investigators beat prisoners with rubber truncheons, rope, and metal rods, lacerated the soles of their feet until they became a single bloody wound, and operated the notorious "hot" and "cold" torture chambers in the NKVD internal prison. Prison doctors and guards testified to detainees carried out unconscious, deaths during interrogations, and death certificates falsified with the standard diagnosis of "heart failure."
The court sentenced six of the defendants, Khazan among them, to death; Beria's bodyguard Nadaraia and translator Paramonov received prison terms. The sentences were carried out on November 22, 1955. The Georgian party newspaper Zarya Vostoka reported the executions, as did The New York Times. The Soviet state, whose terror apparatus Khazan had once served as an instrument, now added him to its roster of its own victims.