Lavrentiy Tsanava

Lavrentiy Fomich Tsanava (; ), born Lavrentiy Janjghava (; ; 9 August 1900 – 12 October 1955), was a Soviet politician and lieutenant general who served as the head of the Committee for State Security of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic (NKVD) from 1941 until 1951. A close confidant of Lavrentiy Beria, and likewise an ethnic Mingrelian, he was arrested after the death of Joseph Stalin and died in prison awaiting a trial.

Career Lavrentiy Tsanava was born in Nakhunavo, in the Kutaisi region of Georgia. He joined the communist party, aged 20, in August 1920 when Georgia was an independent republic governed by Mensheviks. After the Red Army invasion of Georgia, he joined the newly Georgian branch of Cheka. According to an investigation conducted 33 years later:

After his 'disappearance', Beria interceded on his behalf, and had his conviction overturned, and in 1925, he was allowed to resume police work as an officer of what was now the OGPU. After Beria's appointment as first secretary of the Georgian communist party, in 1931, Tsanava was transferred to economic work, initially as Georgia's Deputy People's Commissar for State Farms. In December 1938, after Beria had moved to Moscow and taken control of the NKVD (successor to the OGPU), Tsanava was appointed People's Commissar for Internal Affairs of the Byelorussian NKVD.

In 1944–1945, as the Soviet army recaptured territory that had been under Nazi occupation, Tsanava was in charge of wiping out guerilla groups who resisted the return of Soviet rule in Byelorussia, and together with Viktor Abakumov, supervised the ethnic cleansing in the Lublin and Łódź regions of Poland, from which tens of thousands of Belarusians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians were deported and replaced by Poles forcibly transported into the area.

Tsanava remained in office after Abakumov took over from Beria and most of the Georgians who held high office in what was now the MGB were sacked. In January 1948, Tsanava received an order that came from Joseph Stalin via Abakumov's deputy, Sergei Ogoltsov, to murder the renowned Jewish actor, Solomon Mikhoels. Mikhoels, who was visiting Minsk, was lured to Tsanava's dacha, and stabbed with a poison needle. The cause of death was officially registered as a traffic accident.

Tsanava was recalled to Moscow late in 1951, In July, unaware that Beria had been arrested, Tsanava sent him a letter praising him and promising not to "spare himself" in carrying out Beria's orders. He died on 12 October 1955.