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Lavrentiy Beria (March 5, 1953 – June 26, 1953) Sergei Kruglov (June 1953 – March 13, 1954) The 1954 ukase establishing the KGB. March 13, 1954: Newly independent force became the KGB, as Beria was purged and the MVD divested itself again of the functions of secret policing. After renamings and tumults, the KGB remained stable until 1991.
His ascent marked the end of the Stalinist Great Purge carried out by previous chief Nikolai Yezhov, whom Beria purged. After the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, Beria organized the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and intelligentsia, and after the occupation of the Baltic states and parts of Romania in 1940, he oversaw the ...
The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) secret police organization, and thus had a monopoly on intelligence and state security functions. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] The NKVD is known for carrying out political repression and the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin , as well as counterintelligence and other operations on the ...
At the time, Soviet leaders reportedly feared that Beria would use his control of the secret police to fully seize power. Beria was later tried and convicted of treason and was executed in Moscow ...
The People's Commissariat for State Security (Russian: Народный комиссариат государственной безопасности, romanized: Narodnyy komissariat gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti) or NKGB, was the name of the Soviet secret police, intelligence and counter-intelligence force that existed from 3 February 1941 to 20 July 1941, and again from 1943 to 1946, before ...
It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, OGPU, and NKVD. Attached to the Council of Ministers, it was the chief government agency of "union-republican jurisdiction", carrying out internal security, foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence and secret police functions.
Bolton's statement referenced Lavrentiy Beria, who was the head of the Soviet secret police under Stalin. Beria is one of the most infamous figures in Russian history, having organized and ...
The Division was also responsible for guarding important agencies and installations of the secret police themselves. [18] A number of the top officials from this department were implicated in the Doctors' Plot, showing the inherent mistrust and suspicion within the Soviet security apparatus. [19]