Single page 8 ˝" x 7 ˝", front only. The document is a report addressed to the Chief of the Transcaucasian Department of Georgian Cheka updating status of a search for a person suspected in some, apparently economic or financial, violations. The suspect, Dmitry Shilov, had reportedly fled to an unknown destination. The reporter outlines four suggested steps for his capture and arrest. Beria's hand signature is in the upper left-hand corner, in black ink, under his directive to check for the suspect in Manglis, a small town about 40 miles west of Tbilisi, Georgia's capital.

In exce

Single page 8 ˝" x 7 ˝", front only. The document is a report addressed to the Chief of the Transcaucasian Department of Georgian Cheka updating status of a search for a person suspected in some, apparently economic or financial, violations. The suspect, Dmitry Shilov, had reportedly fled to an unknown destination. The reporter outlines four suggested steps for his capture and arrest. Beria's hand signature is in the upper left-hand corner, in black ink, under his directive to check for the suspect in Manglis, a small town about 40 miles west of Tbilisi, Georgia's capital.

In excellent condition. The ink of Beria's signature is vibrant, as are the other three signatures in the document. The typewritten text is clear and perfectly legible. The paper is slightly age-toned, wrinkle-free and mostly clean, showing just a faint smudge of black ink above Beria's signature and mild discoloration to the right edge. The vertical fold in the center is mostly intact but shows a couple of tiny see-through areas of wear, easily repairable with acid-free tape on the verso, if desired. The verso is clean and unmarked.

Born in 1899 in Georgia, Lavrentiy Beria joined a Marxist organization two years before the revolution. During the Russian Civil War, he was a member of Bolshevik underground in Azerbaijan (according to many reports, he also worked for the opposite side as a counterintelligence officer.) In 1920, he joined Cheka (later, OGPU) and quickly rose through its ranks becoming Chairman of the OGPU of Georgia by the end of 1926. He held this position through 1931, at which point he took charge of the OGPU of the newly created Transcaucasian Federation that included Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Starting from the early 1930s, Beria, having gained Stalin's trust, made a rapid advance as a party functionary and in 1935, was appointed a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.

From 1938 until his arrest in 1953, Beria was Chief of the Soviet State Security. During WW2, he was also a Deputy Chairman of the Sovnarkom (Council of the People's Commissars) and a member of the State Defense Committee headed by Stalin. As the head of Soviet Intelligence, Beria among other things ran the network of spies who infiltrated the Manhattan Project and stole American atomic bomb secrets. Following the death of Stalin in 1953, Beria assumed even greater power by combining the Ministry of State Security (MGB) and Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) into a single mammoth law enforcement agency under his direct control. Later that year however, he was deposed in a Kremlin coup d'état and promptly executed.
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