Viktor Abakumov

Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov (Виктор Семёнович Абакумов; 24 April 1908 – 19 December 1954) was a high-level Soviet security official who from 1943 to 1946 was the head of SMERSH in the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense, and from 1946 to 1951 of the Minister of State Security or MGB (ex-NKGB).

At the age of 14, Abakumov joined the Soviet Red Army in spring 1922 and served with the 2nd Special Task Moscow Brigade in the Russian Civil War until demobilization in December 1923.

He then joined the Komsomol.

He became a candidate member of the Communist Party in 1930, and worked in the People's Commissariat of Supplies until 1932, while being responsible for the Military Section of the Communist Youth League in the Moscow area (raion).

In early 1932, recommended by the Party to join the security services (OGPU), he was assigned to the Economic Department and possibly to the Investigation Department.

In 1933, he was dismissed from the Economic Department and assigned as an overseer to the GULAG.

This was a clear demotion; Abakumov was a compulsive womanizer, and his superior, M.P. Shreider (ru), regarded Abakumov as unfit to be a Chekist.

In 1934, after the reorganization of the security apparatus (the OGPU was joined to the NKVD as a GUGB), Abakumov started his work in a 1st Section of Economics Department (EKO) by the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) of NKVD.

On 1 August 1934, he was transferred to the Chief Directorate of Camps and Labour Colonies (GULAG), where he served until 1937, mainly as an operative officer in the 3rd Section of Security Department of GULAG of the NKVD.

In April 1937, Abakumov was moved to the 4th Department (OO) of GUGB of the NKVD where he served until March 1938.

After the next reorganization of NKVD structure in March 1938, he became assistant to the chief of the 4th Department in the 1st Directorate of the NKVD.

From 29 September to 1 November 1938, he was an assistant to Pyotr Fedotov, the head of the 2nd Department (Secret Political Dep – or. SPO) of GUGB of the NKVD.

Until the end of 1938, he worked in the SPO GUGB NKVD as a head of one of the sections.

Abakumov survived the Great Purge by participating in it.

He executed each order without scruple, probably saving him from facing an execution squad himself.

Near the end of December 1938, Abakumov was moved from Moscow to Rostov-on-Don, where he became the head of the UNKVD of the Rostov Oblast (the head of the local NKVD Office).

Abakumov returned to Moscow HQ on 12 February 1941 as a Senior Major of State Security and, after the reorganization and creation of the new NKGB, he became one of the deputies of Lavrentiy Beria, who was the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs (head of the NKVD).

On 19 July 1941, he became the head of Special Department (OO) of the NKVD which was responsible for Counterintelligence and internal security in the RKKA (Red Army).

In this position, after the attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union and the defeats experienced by the Red Army, on Stalin's order he led the purges of RKKA commanders accused of betrayal and cowardice.

For example, Beria disclaimed responsibility for the arrest in 1941 of the Red Army Marshal, Kirill Meretskov, for which he blamed Stalin and Abakumov.

However, Nikita Khrushchev – who later denounced Stalin and had both Beria and Abakumov executed – did not believe him.

He claimed that Stalin "thought he had found in Abakumov a bright young man who was dutifully carrying out his orders, but actually Abakumov was reporting to Stalin what Beria had told him Stalin wanted to hear".

He used his position to enrich himself.

He took over a 'splendid' apartment, whose previous occupant, a soprano, he had arrested, and "stashed his mistresses in the Moskva Hotel and imported trainloads of plunder from Berlin."

In 1943, from 19 April to 20 May 1943, Abakumov was one of Stalin’s deputies, when he held the post of People's Commissar of Defence of the USSR.

In April 1943, when Chief Counterintelligence Directorate of the People's Commissariat of Defence of the USSR (or GUKR NKO USSR) better known as SMERSH was created, Abakumov was put in charge of it, in the rank of Commissar (2nd rank) of State Security, and held the title of vice-Commissar of Defense.

During the war, he reported directly to Joseph Stalin, and appears to have been able to bypass Beria.

In 1946, Stalin appointed Abakumov Minister of State Security (MGB).

Although the ministry was under the general supervision of Beria, Stalin hoped to curb the latter's power.

Beria was said by Vsevolod Merkulov to be "scared to death of Abakumov" and tried to "have good relations" with him.

In his capacity in the MGB he was in charge of the 1949 purge known as the "Leningrad Affair," in which the Politburo members Nikolai Voznesensky and Aleksei Kuznetsov were executed.

He also carried out the early stages of the anti-semitic campaign that Stalin ordered, as the second pro-Arab phase of Stalin's Middle East plans following the enormous military support he had given to help establish the state of Israel, involving the arrest and torture of numerous prominent Jews, including an Old Bolshevik, Solomon Lozovsky.

When the eminent scientist, Lina Stern, was arrested and brought before Abakumov, he shouted at her, accusing her of being a Zionist and of plotting to turn the Crimea in a separate Jewish state.

When she denied the accusation, he shouted: "Why you old whore!"

Stern replied: "So that's the way a minister talks to an academician."

He was removed from office and arrested in 1951 on charges of failing to investigate the Doctors' Plot.

After the death of Joseph Stalin, Abakumov was tried for fabricating the Leningrad Affair, sentenced to death and executed in 1954.

Abakumov was an ethnic Russian.

Recent scholarship suggests that he was born in Moscow, though he was previously said to be from the Don Cossack region of south Russia.

His father was an unskilled labourer and his mother a nurse.