Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Beria (1899 - 1953), in full Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, was a Georgian (more specifically, Mingrelian) and notorious director of the Soviet secret police (NKVD), who played a major role in Joseph Stalinโs persecutions and murders. He was also responsible for the extensions of the Gulag network. In 1953, after Stalin's death, he was arrested in the Kremlin during Nikita Khrushchev's power struggle and tried. He was found guilty and executed in Moscow.
Amongst the charges leveled against Beria at his show trial in Moscow in 1953, was Beria's suggestion to his assistants that to improve foreign relations it was reasonable to transfer the Kaliningrad Oblast to West Germany, part of Karelia to Finland, the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic to Romania and the Kuril Islands to Japan.