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Mikhail Ryumin
Mikhail Dmitrievich Ryumin Михаил Дмитриевич Рюмин (1 September 1913 – 22 July 1954) was a Soviet security officer and deputy head of the Soviet MGB (Ministry of State Security) who engineered the "Doctors' Plot" in 1952–1953. The case was dismissed on Joseph Stalin's death and Ryumin was arrested and executed. Biography Early career Ryumin was born in a peasant village in the Kuban area. Reputedly, his family were wealthy farmers, his brother and sister were convicted thieves, and his father in law fought against the Bolsheviks in the White Army commanded by Admiral Kolchak. Despite his background, he survived the wholesale arrests of 'kulaks' instigated by Josif Stalin. By about 1931 was working as bookkeeper on a collective farm in the Urals. His next break came after Nikolai Yezhov ordered the mass arrest of NKVD officers suspected of loyalty to his predecessor, Genrikh Yagoda in 1937, when Ryumin joined the NKVD as a bookkeeper. He worked ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk ( Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boris Shimeliovich
Boris Abramovich Shimeliovich (russian: Борис Абрамович Шимелиович, 1892 – 1952) was the medical director of Moscow's , a well known and widely respected institution. Born in Riga, he was an active revolutionary who participated in the Russian Civil War and eventually became active in Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC). Shimeliovich was arrested on January 13, 1949, for espionage. He was so severely beaten during the interrogations that he had to be carried on a stretcher into the court three years after. He was executed in August 1952 together with other members of JAC, which became known as the Night of the Murdered Poets. On November 22, 1955 (well after Joseph Stalin's death in 1953), military collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union withdrew the indictments against the JAC members due to the lack of evidence. Shimeliovich's Communist Party of the Soviet Union membership was restored only in 1988. His brother was (1890-1919), a for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, in particular the Gulag system. Solzhenitsyn was born into a family that defied the Soviet anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and remained devout members of the Russian Orthodox Church. While still young, Solzhenitsyn lost his faith in Christianity, became an atheist, and embraced Marxism–Leninism. While serving as a captain in the Red Army during World War II, Solzhenitsyn was arrested by the SMERSH and sentenced to eight years in the Gulag and then internal exile for criticizing Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in a private letter. As a result of his experience in prison and the camps, he gradually became a philosophically-minded Eastern Orthodox Christian. As a result of the Khrushchev Thaw, Solzhenitsyn was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (; rus, Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия, Lavréntiy Pávlovich Bériya, p=ˈbʲerʲiə; ka, ლავრენტი ბერია, tr, ; – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Bolshevik and Soviet politician, Marshal of the Soviet Union and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security, and chief of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) under Joseph Stalin during the Second World War, and promoted to deputy premier under Stalin in 1941. He officially joined the Politburo in 1946. Beria was the longest-lived and most influential of Stalin's secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after the war. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, he was responsible for organizing purges such as the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and officials. He would later also orchestrate the forced upheaval of minorities from the Caucasus as head of the NKVD, an act ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solomon Lozovsky
Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky (russian: Соломон Абрамович Лозовский, family birth name: Dridzo russian: Дридзо, 1878–1952) was a prominent Communist and Bolshevik revolutionary, a high-ranking official in the Soviet government, including as a Presidium member of the All-Union Central Council of Soviet Trade Unions, a Central Committee member of the Communist Party, a member of the Supreme Soviet, a deputy people's commissar for foreign affairs and the head of the Soviet Information Bureau ( Sovinformburo). He was also the chair of the department of International Relations at the Higher Party School. Lozovsky was executed in 1952, together with thirteen other members of Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, in an event known as the Night of the Murdered Poets. He was the last and oldest Old Bolshevik to be murdered on Stalin's orders. Biography Born in 1878 in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of Ukraine in Russian Empire to a Jewish family (of possibly Sepha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boris Rodos
Boris Veniaminovich Rodos (russian: Борис Вениаминович Родос; 22 June 1905 in Melitopol 20 April 1956 in Butyrka prison, Moscow) was an officer of the OGPU, colonel of the NKVD and Ministry of State Security, deputy head of the Investigative Department of the Main Board of State Security and People's Commissariat of State Security who was notorious for torturing prisoners during interrogations. His victims came from a variety of high-ranking communists and military officials who fell victim to purges, including Yakov Smushkevich, Grigory Shtern, and Aleksandr Loktionov. Biography Rodos was the son of a Jewish tailor from Melitopol, Russian Empire. Reputedly, he left school at the age of 11, possibly because his education was disrupted by the February Revolution. As an office worker in Melitopol, he joined Komsomol (the Young Communist League) but was expelled in 1930 for attempted rape. He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1931 and, around ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lev Shvartzman
Lev Leonidovich (Aronovich) Shvartzman (russian: Лев Леони́дович (Аронович) Шва́рцман; 25 July 1907 13 May 1955) was a Soviet MGB officer, notorious for his brutality, who was executed for using torture to extract false confessions from prisoners. His victims included Marshal Blyukher, the writer Isaac Babel and the theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold. Biography Early career He was born in Shpola, in Ukraine, the son of a Jewish bank official. During the Russian Civil War, his parents supported the White army against the Bolsheviks. His father served in the army of General Yudenich, and was killed in battle in 1919. His mother served as a military doctor. His two brothers fought in the army of Rüdiger von der Goltz. Lev Shvartzman left school at 14. Despite his family background, he was allowed to join Komsomol in 1925. Having worked as a newspaper seller, he was taken on as a reporter in Kiev, and in February 1929, was transferred to M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semyon Ignatyev
Semyon Denisovich Ignatyev (russian: Семён Денисович Игнатьев; 14 September 1904, Karlivka – 27 November 1983, Moscow) was a Soviet politician, and the last head of the security forces appointed by Joseph Stalin. Early career Ignatyev, the son of a peasant family of Ukrainian ethnicity. When he was 10, his parents moved to Uzbekistan, and he learnt to speak Uzbek. After the Bolshevik Revolution, he joined Komsomol and became a trade union organiser in Bukhara and an engineer, joined the Communist Party in 1926. For most of his career, he was a discreet regional apparatchik in the border republics of the USSR. In 1934-38, he worked in the central party apparatus in Moscow, but received sudden promotion in 1938, as a result of the Great Purge, when he was appointed First Secretary of the communist party in the Buryat-Mongolian Republic. He was subsequently First Secretary in the Bashkir ASSR, in 1944-46, and served in senior party posts in Dagestan, and Uzbek ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georgi Malenkov
Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov ( – 14 January 1988) was a Soviet politician who briefly succeeded Joseph Stalin as the leader of the Soviet Union. However, at the insistence of the rest of the Presidium, he relinquished control over the party apparatus in exchange for remaining Premier and first among equals within the Soviet collective leadership. He then became embroiled in a power struggle with Nikita Khrushchev that culminated in his removal from the premiership in 1955 as well as the Presidium in 1957. Throughout his political career, Malenkov's personal connections with Vladimir Lenin significantly facilitated his ascent within the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union. By 1925, he was entrusted with overseeing the party's records. This brought him into contact with Stalin who had by then successfully consolidated power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to become the de facto leader of the Soviet Union. As a result of this associa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov
Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov (russian: link=no, Виктор Семёнович Абакумов; 24 April 1908 – 19 December 1954) was a high-level Soviet security official from 1943 to 1946, the head of SMERSH in the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense, and from 1946 to 1951 Minister of State Security or MGB (ex- NKGB). He was removed from office and arrested in 1951 on fabricated 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. Early life and career 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. 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 demobil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aleksandr Shcherbakov (20th-century Politician)
Aleksandr Sergeyevich Shcherbakov (russian: Алекса́ндр Серге́евич Щербако́в; – 10 May 1945) was a Soviet politician and statesman who was a wartime head of the Political Directorate of the Red Army as well as the director of the Soviet Information Bureau. Career Shcherbakov was born into a working-class family in Ruza, Ruzsky District, Moscow Oblast, Ruza, near Moscow. The family moved to Rybinsk after his father's death in 1907. After primary school, he was sent to work as an apprentice, at the age of 12, in a Rybinsk print works. He was sent to work in a factory at the age of 10. He joined the Red Guards in 1917, and joined the Communist Party in 1918. He worked for Komsomol in Rybinsk during the Russian Civil War. In 1921–24, he studied at Sverdlov University, Moscow. In 1924, he started work as a party official in Nizhny Novgorod, where he gained the trust of the provincial party boss, Andrei Zhdanov. In 1930–32, he studied at the Institu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrei Zhdanov
Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov ( rus, Андре́й Алекса́ндрович Жда́нов, p=ɐnˈdrej ɐlʲɪˈksandrəvʲɪtɕ ˈʐdanəf, links=yes; – 31 August 1948) was a Soviet politician and cultural ideologist. After World War II, Zhdanov was thought to be the successor-in-waiting to Joseph Stalin but died before him. He has been described as the "propagandist-in-chief" of the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1948.V. M. Zubok and Konstantin Pleshakov. Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: from Stalin to Khrushchev. Harvard: Harvard UP, 1996, p.119 Early life Zhdanov was born in Mariupol (now Ukraine), where his father was a school inspector. His maternal grandfather was the former rector of the Moscow Theological Academy. He studied at the Moscow Commercial Institute. In 1914, he was drafted into the Russian army, graduated from an officers' school and served in the reserves. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1915. In 1917, he was chairman of the Shadrinsk committee of the Bols ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
