NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs)
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (1899-1953), Soviet security chief. From 1926, he rose to power as an ally of Joseph Stalin. By 1938, Stalin had appointed him deputy of the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) at the height of the Great Purge, when hundreds of thousands were being imprisoned and killed.