"such as control over Stalin's unstable son Vasily and daughter Svetlana. When Stalin dies, the Committee members rush back to Moscow as the NKVD loot Stalin's dacha and execute witnesses. Khrushchev goes to Molotov's home and attempts to enlist his support, but Molotov, a true believer in Stalinism, opposes any factionalism within the Party. Beria buys his loyalty by releasing his wife Polina Molotova from confinement. Malenkov is named as nominal Premier while being largely controlled by Beria. At the first Committee meeting following Stalin's death, Beria sidelines Khrushchev by putting him in charge of Stalin's funeral and suggesting many"
"Stalin died in March 1953, Lieutenant General Nikita Khrushchev was appointed the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Stalin's closest associate the NKVD chief Marshal of the Soviet Union Lavrentiy Beria along with 20 of 24 his close associates named ""Beria's gangs"" were sentenced to execution by firing squad in 1953–1956"","" the 1956 Khrushchev Thaw started with Khrushchev's 'secret speech' On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences (1956) to a closed session of the 20th Party Congress of the CPSU in February 1956 wherein both the worship of Stalin and"
"executed in January 1955. Solomon Milshtein Solomon Rafailovich Milshtein (; 1899 – 14 January 1955) was a Soviet state security official. Solomon Milshtein was born to a family of a Jewish roofer in Vilno, then in the Russian Empire. In 1920–1930, as a Bolshevik party apparatchik he worked in Georgia, where he became acquainted with Lavrentiy Beria, then head of the Georgian Communist Party . After Beria became head of NKVD in November 1938, Milshtein in December that year was appointed chief of the Investigative unit of NKVD. He was arrested in July 1953, shortly after the arrest of Beria."
"death in March 1953. Beria himself was executed in December 1953. Kruglov's long-term ally Viktor Abakumov was arrested in July 1951 in connection with the so-called Doctor's Plot; Abakumov was not released after Stalin's death and was executed in December 1954. However, in February 1956 Khruschev fired Kruglov from the position of Minister of Internal Affairs, where Kruglov was replaced by a Khruschev loyalist, Nikolay Dudorov; prior to Kruglov's dismissal his ministry came under some official criticism and the star of Kruglov's former protégé and then KGB's head Ivan Serov was seen as rising and displacing Kruglov's influence in the"
"Christian Rakovsky, Genrikh Yagoda, and sixteen other Soviet officials were found guilty of treason (having plotted with Trotsky against Stalin) and sentenced to death by the Soviet Military Board. Rykov wrote a letter to the Soviet Military board requesting clemency but was unsuccessful in convincing them to overturn the verdict. On 15 March, all were executed. The Soviet government annulled the verdict in 1988, during perestroika. Alexei Rykov Alexei Ivanovich Rykov (25 February 188115 March 1938) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician most prominent as Premier of Russia and the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1929 and"
"convocation. He held a series of senior posts in the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, and was the most trusted henchman of the NKVD chief Beria. As head of the Investigative Directorate of the NKVD from 22 December 1938 to 4 September 1939, he was one of the major organizers of the political terror. He subsequently headed the Economic Directorate until 1941. When Beria fell from power, Kobulov was arrested along with his boss on 27 June 1953; he was convicted on multiple charges, including espionage, and sentenced to death and executed on 23 December 1953. Bogdan Kobulov Bogdan Zakharovich"
"1938, the mass purges were starting to disrupt the country's infrastructure, and Stalin began winding them down. Yezhov was gradually relieved of power. Yezhov was relieved of all powers in 1939, then tried and executed in 1940. His successor as head of the NKVD (from 1938 to 1945) was Lavrentiy Beria, a Georgian friend of Stalin's. Arrests and executions continued into 1952, although nothing on the scale of the Yezhovschina ever happened again. During this period, the practice of mass arrest, torture, and imprisonment or execution without trial, of anyone suspected by the secret police of opposing Stalin's regime became"
"Several important politicians were arrested in Moscow and other cities across the Soviet Union. As a result of the first prosecution, on 30 September 1950, Nikolai Voznesensky (chairman of Gosplan), Mikhail Rodionov (Chairman of the RSFSR Council of Ministers), Alexey Kuznetsov, Pyotr Popkov, Ya. F. Kapustin and P. G. Lazutin were sentenced to death on false accusations of embezzlement of the Soviet State budget for ""unapproved business in Leningrad"", which was labeled as anti-Soviet treason. Thus old and sick Stalin eliminated some of his younger rivals and strengthened his dictatorship. The verdict was announced behind closed doors after midnight and"
"thirteen Jewish writers were executed by gunshots in the basement of Lubyanka Prison. The antisemitic pogrom was approved by Stalin and supervised by Malenkov. Malenkov's loyalty to Stalin was proven by executions of political competition and Leningrad affair and catapulted Malenkov to become the only successor of Stalin. 1952 and 1953 ""Time"" magazine covers indicate that Malenkov was generally considered to be Stalin's apprentice and successor. Malenkov's ambitions and crafty politics bore fruit upon Stalin's death on 5 March 1953. Four days later Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lavrentiy Beria and Nikita Khrushchev gave the eulogy at Stalin's funeral. On 6 March,"
"the aftermath, however: ""the bloodiest round of Stalin's terror and repression."" After Kirov's death, Stalin called for swift punishment of the traitors and those found negligent in Kirov's death. Nikolayev was tried alone and secretly by Vasili Ulrikh, Chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. He was sentenced to death by shooting on 29 December 1934, and the sentence was carried out that very night. The hapless Commissar Borisov died the day after the assassination, supposedly by falling from a moving truck while riding with a group of NKVD agents. Borisov's wife was committed to"
"the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev delivered to the 20th Communist Party congress, in 1956, denouncing crimes committed under Josif Stalin. Khrushchev said: The public trial never took place: the victims were shot after closed trials. in 1937 Zakovsky was awarded the Order of Lenin. Around this time he is said to have boasted that if he had had Karl Marx to interrogate he would make him confess to being an agent of Bismarck. On 29 January 1938, it was announced that Zakovsky had been transferred to Moscow as First Deputy head of the NKVD, second in command to the infamous"
"war, Stalin and his police chief Lavrentiy Beria began a new round of military purges due to Stalin's jealousy and suspicion of the generals' public standing. Kulik was dismissed from his posts in 1946 after ""NKVD"" telephone eavesdroppers overheard him grumbling that politicians were stealing the credit from the generals. Arrested in 1947, he remained in prison until 1950, when he was condemned to death and executed for treason. He was rehabilitated by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956 and posthumously restored to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. Grigory Kulik Grigory Ivanovich Kulik () (9 November 1890 – 24"
"Iosif Grigulevich Iosif Romualdovich Grigulevich (; May 5, 1913 – June 2, 1988) was a Soviet NKVD Operative between 1937 and 1953, when he took a leading role in assassinating Communist and Bolshevik individuals who were not loyal to Joseph Stalin. Under a false identity as Teodoro B. Castro, a wealthy Costa Rican expatriate living in Rome, Grigulevich served as the ambassador of the Republic of Costa Rica to both Italy and Yugoslavia (1952–1954). His mission as a Agent was to assassinate Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito but was later aborted by Stalin's death in 1953. Grigulevich then settled in"
"Stalin's death, Ignatiev lost most of his power, as Beria absorbed the MGB into his MVD on 5 March 1953. Ignatiev was sent back to Bashkir ASSR and ended his political career as the Party Secretary in Tatar ASSR, before retiring in 1960. Unlike Beria and Abakumov, who were executed in 1953 and 1954 respectively, Ignatiev died of natural causes. He died in 1983 and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, along with many members of the Soviet elite. Semyon Ignatyev Semyon Denisovich Ignatiev, also spelled Ignatyev (; 14 September 1904, Karlivka, Kherson Governorate – 27 November 1983,"
"and seek out other opponents of Stalin (the NKVD wiretapped Bukharin's telephone). Shortly before their executions in August 1936, Kamenev and Zinoviev had denounced Bukharin as a traitor during their show trial. At the December 1936 plenum of the Central Committee, Yezhov accused Bukharin and Alexei Rykov of treachery. Bukharin confessed to conspiring against Stalin, and was executed on 15 March 1938, on the same day that former NKVD chief, Yagoda, was also executed. Stalin eventually turned on Yezhov. He appointed Yezhov Commissar of Water Transport in April 1938 (a similar thing had happened to Yezhov's predecessor, Yagoda, shortly before"
"of the trial, the Soviet authorities belatedly cleared all of the other 20 defendants of any criminal offence, admitting that the entire trial was built on false confessions. Yagoda was the only defendant not to be posthumously rehabilitated. Genrikh Yagoda Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda (7 November 1891 – 15 March 1938), born Yenokh Gershevich Iyeguda was a secret police official who served as director of the NKVD, the Soviet Union's security and intelligence agency, from 1934 to 1936. Appointed by Joseph Stalin, Yagoda supervised the arrest, show trial, and execution of the Old Bolsheviks Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, climactic events"
"The decree signaled the end of massive Soviet purges. Nevertheless, the practice of mass arrest and exile continued until Stalin's death in 1953. Political executions also continued, but, with the exception of Katyn and other NKVD massacres during World War II, on a vastly smaller scale. One notorious example is the ""Night of the Murdered Poets"", in which at least thirteen prominent Yiddish writers were executed on 12 August 1952. Historians such as Michael Parrish have argued that while the Great Terror ended in 1938, a lesser terror continued in the 1940s. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (a Soviet Army officer who became"
"were imprisoned, killed, exiled, or silenced by fear of Stalin's attacks. A secret file on Nikolay Punin was created with numerous accusations of his anti-Soviet activity. Most accusations were fabricated by various agents of the former Soviet KGB office in Leningrad, such as Lt. Prussakov, who accused ""former professor of Leningrad University and Academy of arts, Punin"" of ""anti-Soviet"" propaganda. Punin's popular lectures about European artists, such as Rembrandt and Impressionists were seen by the communists as evidence of his anti-Soviet activity. In 1953, just months after Stalin's death, Nikolay Punin died in the Gulag camp of Vorkuta, after spending"
"10 July 1934, two months after Menzhinsky's death, Joseph Stalin appointed Yagoda People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, a position that included the oversight of both the regular and the secret police, the NKVD. Yagoda worked closely with Andrei Vyshinsky in organizing the first Moscow Show Trial, which resulted in the prosecution and subsequent execution of former Soviet politicians Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev in August 1936 as part of Stalin's Great Purge. The Red Army high command was not spared and its ranks were thinned by Yagoda, as a precursor to the later and more extensive purge in the Russian"
"by Beria at the time of his departure. After Beria's fall from power in June of the same year, Blokhin's rank was stripped from him in the de-Stalinization campaigns of Nikita Khrushchev. He reportedly sank into alcoholism, went insane, and died on 3 February 1955, with the official cause of death listed as ""suicide"". Vasily Blokhin was married to Natalia Aleksandrovna Blokhina (1901–1967), and had a son, Nikolai Vasilievich Baranov (1916–1998). Vasily Blokhin Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin (; 7 January 1895 – 3 February 1955) was a Soviet Russian Major-General who served as the chief executioner of the Stalinist NKVD under"
"peace with Germany. Adolf Hitler, however, refused von Ribbentrop's plea that he be allowed to dispatch an envoy to Sweden. Dekanozov continued to be the deputy chief of NKID and then of the Foreign Affairs Ministry until 1947. He held other senior positions before being appointed the Interior Minister of Georgian SSR (after Beria became the Interior Minister of the USSR) in April 1953. A close associate of Beria, Dekanozov was arrested in June 1953 and was sentenced to death and shot in December 1953. Vladimir Dekanozov Vladimir Georgievich Dekanozov (Dekanozishvili) ( (Деканозишви́ли)) (June 1898 – 23 December 1953) was"
"1918. Pauker joined the Cheka and became Stalin's bodyguard in 1924. Pauker took an active part in the purges, including the executions of Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev. He was dismissed in April 1937, according to Simon Sebag Montefiore, because he ""knew too much and lived too well"". He was arrested and executed quietly without trial in August 1937 and was not posthumously rehabilitated. Karl Pauker Karl Pauker (January 1893, in Lviv – 14 August 1937, in Moscow) was an NKVD officer and head of Joseph Stalin's personal security until his arrest and execution. Pauker was born into Jewish family"
"from the viewpoint of the Party might have constituted an act of treason. The death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, and Nikita Khrushchev's subsequent denunciation of his rule during his Secret Speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 created a ""thaw""; a liberal atmosphere wherein artists had more freedom to create nonsanctioned work without fearing repercussions. Furthermore, Stalin's cult of personality was recognized as detrimental, and within weeks many paintings and busts bearing his likeness were removed from public places. Artists such as Aleksandr Gerasimov, who had made their careers painting idealized portraits of Stalin, were forced out of"
"was dismissed from the MGB (successor to the NKVD) in 1952, probably because Beria had temporarily lost control of the organisation. He was head of anti-aircraft defence staff in Simferopol until his arrest on October 5, 1953. During his closed trial, at which he was convicted of extracting fake confessions under torture, he was asked whether he knew what Isaac Babel did for a living. He replied that he had been told that Babel was a writer. Asked whether he had read any of Babel's stories, he replied: ""What for?"". In February 1956, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev delivered the"
"punishment for the crimes committed by them jointly: execution, with all of their property to be confiscated."" The court also stripped the men of their medals and made petitions to remove military commendations such as the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. On August 12, 1952, thirteen of the defendants (excluding Lina Stern and Solomon Bregman) were executed in the basement of Lubyanka Prison. After the execution of the defendants, the trial and its results were kept secret. There was not a single reference to the trial or the execution in Soviet newspapers. Defendants'"
"have played a role in solidifying Stalin's belief that Adolf Hitler did not intend to attack the USSR in the spring of 1941. From July 1941 to January 1945, he was NKVD chief in Uzbekistan. In 1944, as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of Uzbekistan, he made administrative and logistical arrangements for the reception of the deported Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan. He was arrested in 1953, sentenced to death on October 1, 1954, and shot on February 2, 1955. Amayak Kobulov Amayak Zakharovich Kobulov (; 1906-1955) was a Soviet politician and member of the Soviet security and police apparatus during"
"Kosior was stripped of all Party posts and arrested by the NKVD. ""Stanislav Kosior withstood brutal tortures [at the hands of the NKVD] but cracked when his sixteen-year-old daughter was brought into the room and raped in front of him."" On 26 February 1939 he was sentenced to death by shooting and executed the same day by General Vasili Blokhin. Other Politburo members purged in this period were Jānis Rudzutaks, Roberts Eihe, Vlas Chubar and Pavel Postyshev. After Stalin's death, Kosior was rehabilitated by the Soviet government on 14 March 1956. After the fall of the USSR, on 13 January"
"the imprisonment or execution of millions of people throughout the Soviet Union as alleged ""enemies of the people."" By 1938, however, the oppression had become so extensive that it was damaging the infrastructure, economy and even the armed forces of the Soviet state, prompting Stalin to wind the purge down. Stalin had voted to appoint Georgy Malenkov as head of the NKVD, but he was overruled. In September, Beria was appointed head of the Main Administration of State Security (GUGB) of the NKVD, and in November he succeeded Yezhov as NKVD head. Yezhov was executed in 1940 and one account"
"USSR, of which he was a member until May 16, 1937. He was also head of the Chief Department of State Security of the NKVD until that same date. On May 16, 1937, Bokii was suddenly arrested by the secret police and charged with conspiratorial activity. Following a lengthy investigation, Bokii was brought before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Soviet on November 15, 1937, and sentenced to death. He was shot that same day. Bokii's fellow bureaucratic NKVD foes had conjured up fictions of his being as a sort of Dracula-like human blood drinker. On June 27, 1956, as"
"Stalin's paranoia about internal subversion and belief in his own infallible ability to detect traitors did the rest. Stalin, Yezhov and Voroshilov orchestrated the arrest and execution of thousands of Soviet military officers after Tukhachevsky was shot. Ultimately, five of the eight generals who presided over Tukhachevsky's ""trial"" were arrested and shot by the NKVD. According to Montefiore, Stalin's close friend and confidant Kaganovich later joked, ""Tukhachevsky hid Napoleon's baton in his rucksack."" ""Der rote Marschall. Tuchatschewskis Aufstieg und Fall"" (The Red Marshall: The Rise and Fall of Tukhachevsky), 1939 Mikhail Tukhachevsky Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (; – 12 June 1937)"
"sentenced to death and shot the same day in Moscow, then buried at Kommunarka. Vsevolod Balitsky Vsevolod Apollonovych Balytsky (; ; 27 November 1892 – 27 November 1937) was a Commissar of State Security 1st Class (equivalent to Four-star General) of the NKVD and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Balytsky was born in Verkhnodniprovsk, Yekaterinoslav Governorate. He directed the NKVS of Ukraine during the Great Famine. On 11 May 1937, he was transferred to the Far East, becoming Commander of the NKVD. During the Great Purge he was arrested on 7"
"His contacts at the CIA had no information about what might have happened to him. Only later, it became clear that he was betrayed by both Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames. In 1988, Polyakov was sentenced to death for treason and was executed. CIA officer Jeanne Vertefeuille said, ""He didn’t do this for money. He insisted on staying in place to help us. It was a bad day for us when we lost him."" Dmitri Polyakov Dmitri Fyodorovich Polyakov () (6 July 1921 – 15 March 1988) was a Soviet Major General, a ranking GRU officer, and a prominent Cold"
"candidates for membership in the Central Committee and from the party. The Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on November 27, 1937, was sentenced to death and shot on the same day. He was buried in the New Don Cemetery. Rehabilitated by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union on March 14, 1956. On March 22, 1956, the CCP in the CPSU Central Committee was reinstated in the party. Nikolay Kubyak Nikolay Afanasyevich Kubyak (; July 29 [August 10] 1881 — November 27, 1937) was a Soviet state and party figure. Chairman of"