The tsarist officer who became a covert operative
On July 8, 1939, aboard an NKVD-guarded train traveling from Moscow to Tskaltubo, Tsereteli killed Soviet plenipotentiary to China Ivan Bovkun-Luganets with a hammer and strangled his wife. The bodies were taken into the mountains and staged as a car crash.
A descendant of the Georgian princely house of Tsereteli, he served as a tsarist officer and prisoner of war before joining the Georgian Cheka in 1921. Despite his aristocratic origins, he became one of Beria's most trusted covert operatives, specializing in abduction and assassination. He sat on the NKVD special troika during the Great Terror and commanded the Transcaucasian border troops from 1939. That July, he personally murdered the Soviet ambassador to China and his wife aboard a train, staging it as a car crash. During the war he served as First Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR. Arrested after Beria's fall in 1953, he was shot in 1955.
Career Timeline
- 1914–1915Ensign in the Imperial Russian Army; prisoner of war
- 1937–1938Head of the Georgian militia; member of the NKVD "special troika"
- 1939–1941Head of the Transcaucasian border troops administration
- 1941–1946First Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Georgian SSR
- 1946–1953Deputy Minister of State Security, Georgian SSR, while retaining border troops command
- 1953–1955Arrested, tried at Tbilisi and executed
Related historical events
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationMember of NKVD troika
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeMember of the Georgian special troikaA former tsarist officer, he headed the Georgian militia in 1937 and 1938 and sat on the NKVD special troika.
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarChief of Transcaucasian border troops and counterintelligence
- 1953The Fall of BeriaThe Tbilisi trial, 1955Identified as one of the operatives used for Beria's covert work, he was arrested in August 1953 and shot on 15 November 1955.
Beria's Enforcer: A Prison Bond
Tsereteli first met Lavrenti Beria in 1920 in Kutaisi prison. Tsereteli, who had served as a staff captain in the Georgian Menshevik army, was jailed on a murder charge; Beria was imprisoned for Bolshevik underground activity. The two men forged a bond in that prison cell that would last a lifetime.
After Soviet power was established in Georgia in 1921, Tsereteli was arrested again, this time for killing a militiaman, and sentenced to five years, yet for unknown reasons never served the term. In a remarkable twist, by 1924 he was placed in charge of the personal security detail of Leon Trotsky, who was convalescing in Abkhazia, and remained in that post until 1927. That a former anti-Soviet officer and convict should guard the revolution's paramount leader is one of the strangest episodes in Tsereteli's career.
As Beria climbed the ladder of power, Tsereteli climbed with him. When Beria was appointed People's Commissar of Internal Affairs and moved to Moscow in 1938, Tsereteli was among the trusted men he brought along. During this period Tsereteli held no official title in the central apparatus; he took orders exclusively from Beria and specialized in organizing and executing arrests, reporting to no one else. Despite internal assessments describing him as 'nearly illiterate and ignorant,' Tsereteli became Beria's most trusted covert operative. Colleagues called him 'Beria's chain dog.' Beria recommended him for the Soviet delegation's security detail at the Tehran Conference in 1943 and, in 1946, installed him as Deputy Minister of State Security of Georgia despite a formal finding of unfitness for leadership. In late June 1953, just before his own arrest, Beria summoned Tsereteli urgently to Moscow: the purpose of the summons remains unknown.