Accounts of what happened vary considerably, but it seems that Beria’s downfall was engineered by Nikita Khrushchev, secretary to the Party Central Committee, who quietly secured the support of other powerful figures, including Malenkov and a number of generals. On June 26th, apparently, at a hastily convened meeting of the Presidium, Khrushchev launched a blistering attack on Beria, accusing him of being a cynical careerist, long in the pay of British intelligence, and no true Communist believer. Beria was taken aback and said, ‘What’s going on, Nikita?’, and Khrushchev told him he would soon find out. The veteran Molotov and others chimed in against Beria and Khrushchev put a motion for his instant dismissal. Before a vote could be taken, the panicky Malenkov pressed a button on his desk as the pre-arranged signal to Marshal Zhukov and a group of armed officers in a nearby room. They immediately burst in, seized Beria and manhandled him away.
Beria’s men were guarding the Kremlin, so the officers had to wait until nightfall before smuggling him out in the back of a car. He was taken first to the Lefortovo Prison and subsequently to the headquarters of General Moskalenko, commander of Moscow District Air Defence, where he was imprisoned in an underground bunker. His arrest was kept as quiet as possible while his principal lieutenants were rounded up – some were rumoured to have been shot out of hand – and regular troops were moved into Moscow.
The Central Committee spent five days convincing itself of Beria’s guilt and R.A. Rudenko, an experienced prosecutor well known to Khrushchev, was appointed to make certain that the police chief was expeditiously tried, condemned and executed with the maximum appearance of legality. Pravda announced Beria’s fall on July 10th, crediting it to the initiative of Comrade Malenkov and referring to Beria’s ‘ criminal activities against the Party and the State’. On December 17th, Rudenko’s office announced that Beria and six accomplices, encouraged by foreign intelligence agencies, had been conspiring for many years to seize power in the Soviet Union in order to restore capitalism. A special tribunal was set up. The accused were allowed no representation and no appeal. When the death sentence was passed, according to General Moskalenko, Beria fell to the floor and begged on his knees for mercy. It was not a quality he had shown to others, and it was not now shown to him. He and his confederates were taken away and promptly shot. His wife and son were sent to a Siberian labour camp.
Great Post!