Many other people, both associates and victims, gave testimony as well, and the scenario that emerged, as in the Zhemchuzhina case back in 1949, came to focus on his sex life, with lurid allegations of multipleremoveds, forcible abduction of young women from the street, and so on. Although this subsequently entered into Soviet folklore, the story of Beria as a sexual predator seems, though not wholly unfounded, to have been wildly exaggerated. His own account under interrogation of how he conducted his relations with the women he had affairs with, including a young one picked out on the street for him by a subordinate, is basically supported by that of a singer claiming to have been his mistress, after catching his eye during a performance, who described seduction (admittedly under intimidating circumstances) rather thanremoved

from Sheila Fitzpatrick’s On Stalin’s Team, seems to be the most cited and accepted take. he was a cop so it’s very easy to believe, and the charges have some credibility from being unneeded to secure the death sentence, but it’s also easy to see why exaggeration/fabrication could be in the interest of his detractors.