2-548-313 - © Fine Art Images/Heritage Images

Soviet politician Lavrentiy Beria with Josef Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva, USSR, 1930s. Beria (1899-1953) was First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party during the 1930s. He began working in the security apparatus in the early 1920s and went on to become the feared head of the NKVD, the Soviet security and secret police organisation. At the Yalta Conference in 1945, Stalin introduced his fellow Georgian to US President Franklin D Roosevelt as our Himmler. After Stalin's death, Beria's associates within the Soviet leadership had him removed from power. Arrested on fabricated treason charges, he was interrogated by his own NKVD torturers before being shot in Moscow's Lubyanka Prison. From a private collection.