On
this date, December 23, 1953, the NKVD Chief, Lavrentiy Beria and six of his
henchmen were executed by firing squad in Moscow, Russia. I will post
information about the head of the NKGB, Vsevolod Merkulov from Wikipedia.
Merkulov Vsevolod Nikolaevich |
Vsevolod Nikolayevich (Boris) Merkulov (Всеволод Николаевич Меркулов in
Russian)
(27 November [O.S. 25 October] 1895, Zagatala,
present-day Azerbaijan
– 23 December 1953), was the head of NKGB from February to July 1941, and again from April 1943 to
March 1946. He was a member of the so-called "Georgian mafia" of Lavrenti Beria, head of the NKVD.
In
1913, Merkulov graduated from the Tiflis Gymnasium with the gold medal and became a student at St. Petersburg University, Department of Physics and Mathematics.
From 1921-1922, he worked as a detective at the Transportation Unit of the Cheka in Georgia. From 1925-1931, Merkulov held the
posts of Head of Secret Operations Directorate and Deputy Head of GPU of Adzharistan.
Merkulov
was People's Commissar of State Security of the USSR from 3 February 1941 until
20 July 1941, when the NKGB again fell under control of the NKVD as GUGB. From
1941-1943, Merkulov was Deputy People's Commissar of the NKVD. In 1943 the GUGB
was again separated from the NKVD, and Merkulov became head of the NKGB from 20
July 1943 until 1946.
Vsevolod
Merkulov was involved with a plan to build up a network of spies inside the Manhattan
Project. The NKVD's first success was the recruitment of Klaus Fuchs.
The project was given the codename "Enormoz". In November 1944 Pavel
Fitin reported: "Despite participation by a large number of scientific
organization and workers on the problem of Enormoz in the U.S., mainly known to
us by agent data, their cultivation develops poorly. Therefore, the major part
of data on the U.S. comes from the station in England. On the basis of
information from London station, Moscow Center more than once sent to the New
York station a work orientation and sent a ready agent, too (Klaus
Fuchs)."
Another
important source was > John Cairncross. Pavel Fitin
reported to Vsevolod Merkulov: "Valuable information on Enormoz is coming
from the London station. The first materials on Enormoz were received in late
1941 from our source List (John Cairncross), containing valuable and absolutely
secret documents both on the substance of the Enormoz problem and on measures
by the British government to organize and develop work on the problem of atomic
energy in our country. In connection with American and Canadian work on
Enormoz, materials describing the state and progress of work in three countries
- England, the U.S., and Canada - are all coming from the London station."
He briefly served as Minister of the MGB in 1946, but was soon replaced by his rival Viktor Abakumov. Merkulov later served as Minister of State Control, replacing Lev Mekhlis. He was arrested and executed by firing squad along with his patron Beria and five other associates on 23 December 1953. It is rumored that all six bodies were cremated and buried in an unknown location near Moscow.
Merkulov
may be best known for a letter he wrote to his boss, Lavrenti Beria, on 2
October 1944 regarding the cooperation the Soviet Union had received from a top
scientist in the United States' program to develop an atomic bomb.
The
author Nikolai Tolstoy, in his 'Victims of Yalta' (1977),
recounts Merkulov speaking to the imprisoned Cossack general Pyotr
Krasnov in the Lubyanka in 1945. (The report is the testimony of
the general's son, Nikolai Krasnov, who was also present and later released
from the Gulag
under Kruschev's 1955 amnesty.)
"Sooner or later there will be a clash between the Communist Bear and the Western Bulldog. There will be no mercy for our sugar-coated, honey-dripping, wheedling, grovelling allies! We'll blow them to blazes with all their kings, with all their traditions, lords, castles, heralds, Orders of the Bath and Garter, and their white wigs. When the Bear's paw strikes, no-one will remain to nurse the hope that their gold can rule the world. Our healthy, socially strong young idea, the idea of Lenin and Stalin, will be the victor! (...) When we roar they sit tight on their tails! I am told that there were Tsars who watered their horses in the [River] Oder. Well, the time will come when we will water Soviet horses in the Thames!"
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