A milestone, an invaluable achievement, the natural heir to Leggett's history of the Cheka. -- John le Carre This first full-scale scholarly biography of the clever, cruel, domineering security chief whom Stalin once called 'my Himmler' casts valuable new light on various events of the Stalin period and its early aftermath. -- Robert Tucker, Professor Emeritus, Princeton University

This is the first comprehensive biography of Lavrentii Beria, Stalin's notorious police chief and for many years his most powerful lieutenant. Beria has long symbolized all the evils of Stalinism, haunting the public imagination both in the West and in the former Soviet Union. Yet because his political opponents expunged his name from public memory after his dramatic arrest and execution in 1953, little has been previously published about his long and tumultuous career.