"If you have done nothing wrong, comrade, then you have nothing to fear."
- Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria (1899 - 1953), chief of the Soviet Secret Police (NKVD) under Stalin.
Lavrenti Beria was one of the cruelest leaders in a regime known for its brutality. He first reached a position of power by working his way up the police organization in the Soviet republic of Georgia. In 1938, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin summoned him to Moscow to work as the deputy to the chief of the Soviet secret police (NKVD). Within months the chief had disappeared and Beria had replaced him. During the purges of the 1930s, many Soviet leaders issued lists of people they wanted arrested and shot, but Beria may have been the only one who personally got involved in torturing his victims. It is said that he invented the saying "Comrade, if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear," a line spoken with heavy irony by NKVD officers as they took political prisoners into custody during Stalin's purges.