Serov, Ivan Alexandrovich

Born in a peasant family in the village of Afimskoye, Kadnikovsky district, Vologda province (now it is the territory of the urban settlement of the city of Kadnikova, Sokolsky district, Vologda region ).

He graduated from elementary rural school in the city of Kadnikov . In 1923 he graduated from the 2nd level school there, at the same time joined the Komsomol . In the same year, he was first a member of the volost executive committee and at the same time the head of the reading house of the Kadnikovsky district political enlightenment (at that time located in the village of Pokrovsky, now this territory is the eastern outskirts of the village of Zamoshye ), and then until August 1925 - chairman of the Zamosh village council in Kadnikovsky district. In 1925 he became a candidate member of the RCP (b) ^[1] .

From 1925, in the Red Army , from August 1925 to August 1928, a cadet of the Leningrad Infantry School . In June 1926 he joined the CPSU (b) .

From 1928 to January 1931, the commander of the artillery platoon of the 66th Rifle Regiment, the artillery regiment of the 22nd Rifle Division in the North Caucasus Military District . In 1931, student of the Artillery Advanced Training Courses for Command Staff ( Leningrad ). From September 1931 to March 1934, commander of the topographic battery of the 9th corps artillery regiment of the North Caucasus Military District . From March 1934 to January 1935, the assistant chief of staff, the acting chief of staff of the artillery regiment of the 24th Infantry Division in the Ukrainian military district .

In January 1935 he was sent to study at the Military Engineering Academy , in May 1936 he was transferred to the Frunze Red Army Military Academy , which he graduated in January 1939.

In the internal affairs and state security organs

After graduating from the Academy, in February 1939 he was sent to serve in the central organs of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR . From February 9, the deputy chief, from February 18, 1939, the chief of the Main Directorate of the Workers 'and Peasants' Police of the NKVD of the USSR (until July 29, 1939). Then he was transferred to work in the state security organs.

Since July 29, 1939, the head of the 2nd (secret political) department is the deputy head of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD of the USSR (until 02.09.39). The GUGB was then headed by Vsevolod Merkulov .

Since September 2, 1939, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR . He took part in the accession of Western Ukraine to the USSR in accordance with the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact ; participant in the negotiations on the surrender of the city of Lviv by the Polish Red Army during the Polish campaign of the Red Army . Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine (May 17, 1940 - May 7, 1941). By this time, the historian Nikita Petrov also attributed his acquaintance and rapprochement with the future Marshal Zhukov, who in the second half of 1940 commanded the Kiev Special Military District ^[1] .

From February to July 1941, First Deputy People's Commissar of State Security of the USSR Vsevolod Merkulov.

From July 1941 to February 1947, Deputy People's Commissar (from March 1946 - Minister) of the USSR Interior.

During the Great Patriotic War, at the same time he was the head of the rear services of the Moscow zone (October 1941 - February 1942), a member of the USSR GKO committee on the organization of defense of the North Caucasus (1942) ^[5] , one of the main executors of the decision on the deportation of the peoples of the North Caucasus (1944). Since August 1941 - Member of the Military Council of the Air Force of the NPO of the USSR.

One of the organizers of the partisan movement in the USSR, fighter squads. By the decision of the GKO of the USSR of October 8, 1941, he was appointed the head of the "five", created to mine and destroy important Moscow facilities in the event of the surrender of the city. By decision of Stalin, he was to remain in occupied Moscow as an illegal resident of the NKVD ^[6] .

In April-May 1942 he was sent to the Crimean Front, where he was directly involved in the hostilities. In August - December 1942 he participated in the defense of the Caucasus passes, was wounded and shell-shocked. On December 13, 1942, for his courage and bravery, he was awarded the Order of Lenin.

During the Second World War, he carried out many important tasks of the GKO of the USSR and personally of I.V. He traveled to besieged Leningrad, besieged Stalingrad. He led the fight against the bandit underground in the North Caucasus, Kalmykia, and Belarus.

In August 1943 he organized the only trip of JV Stalin to the front, during which he spent three days with him ^{[7] [8]} .

On the 1st Belorussian Front: authorized by the NKVD of the USSR on the 1st Belorussian Front (September 1944 - July 1945) and chief of the rear guard of the 1st Belorussian Front (1944 - May 1945), deputy commander of the 1st Belorussian Front for Civil Affairs Administration (May - June 1945).

On the proposal of Beria, on March 7, 1945, Serov was appointed adviser to the NKVD of the USSR under the Ministry of Public Security (IOB) of Poland (until April 27, 1945) ^[1] .

Direct participant in the capture of Berlin. The participant of the signing ceremony of the surrender of Germany on May 8, 1945 "For the heroic and courageous leadership of offensive operations during the capture of Berlin" on May 29, 1945 was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.

Since June 1945, at senior posts in Germany , he was the Deputy Chief of the Soviet Military Administration of Germany for Civil Administration and the NKVD Commissioner of the USSR for the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany .

Since 1946 - Member of the Special Committee on Jet Technology under the Council of Ministers of the USSR . He played a key role in the search for German specialists in the "missile program" and the restoration of rocket production in Germany. He organized the export to the USSR of German scientists and engineers for the needs of the defense industry in November 1946 .

From February 1947 to March 1954, he was First Deputy Minister of the Interior of the USSR . In March - June 1952 he supervised the construction of the Volga-Don Canal. For the able leadership and delivery of the channel on September 19, 1952 he was awarded the Order of Lenin.

On March 6, 1953 he was appointed head of the headquarters for maintaining order in Moscow in connection with the funeral of I.V. Stalin .

On March 11, 1953, after the creation of the joint USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs under the leadership of L.P. Beria, he was reappointed First Deputy Minister.

One of the few leaders of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs involved in the operation to overthrow L.P. Beria. According to the memoirs of G.K. Zhukov, upon the arrest of L.P. Beria in June 1953, Serov was instructed to arrest his personal guard ^[9] .

Since March 1954, he was the first Chairman of the State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, one of the closest associates of N. S. Khrushchev . On the relationship of Serov and Khrushchev, the son of the latter Sergey Khrushchev wrote:

They met before the war ... Father Serov liked ... He behaved as much as possible in those conditions, in relation to his father correctly, did not "overshadowed" him every minute to Moscow, but it was worth a lot ... Then the war divorced his father and Serov for a long time ... After He didn’t return to Ukraine of war ... Again they met with his father only in 1950 in Moscow, and in a cap. Serov, First Deputy Minister of the Interior, did not intersect with his father on affairs of service. Relations restored, or rather, re-emerged, only after the arrest of Beria. Father considered that he could be trusted, and was not mistaken ^[10] .

He was one of the initiators of mass rehabilitation of victims of Stalinist repressions. On March 19, 1954, along with the Prosecutor General, the Ministers of the Interior and Justice of the USSR, sent a memorandum to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee on the mass review of the cases of those convicted of "counter-revolutionary crimes."

He played an important role in the retention of power by N. S. Khrushchev at the June and October 1957 Plenums of the CPSU Central Committee . He participated in the suppression of the Hungarian uprising , led the arrests of the uprising and the creation of new security agencies in Hungary .

At the head of the GRU and after

Since December 10, 1958 - the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate - deputy chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR, was appointed in connection with the need to "... strengthen the leadership of the GRU" ^[11] , with "preserving the material content obtained from previous work" ^[12] . He was not elected a delegate to the XXII Congress of the CPSU, which opened in October 1961.

On February 2, 1963, he was removed from the post of chief of the GRU of the General Staff due to "loss of vigilance" (an agent of American and British intelligence, GRU colonel Oleg Penkovsky was exposed) ^{[13] [14]} .

Serov was removed not only because of the exposure of the British intelligence agent Penkovsky . Serov also had other “past affairs” that could undermine Khrushchev’s authority. He was engaged in the resettlement of peoples, was in charge of prisons, did not know the operational work and did not do it. Khrushchev appointed him to the post of head of the GRU. Nikita Sergeevich trusted Serov. All instructions Khrushchev Serov unconditionally complied with. The failure with Penkovsky was a blow not only to the Main Intelligence Directorate, but also to Khrushchev’s prestige. Therefore, he sent Serov away from Moscow to the Turkestan military district.

(General Ivashutin ) ^[11]

In February 1963, he was appointed assistant commander of the troops of the Turkestan military district for military educational institutions.

On March 7, 1963, he was demoted to major general , and on March 12, he was stripped of the title of Hero of the Soviet Union "for dulling political vigilance."

In August 1963 he was appointed assistant commander of the troops of the Volga Military District for military educational institutions.

I ... never thought that after 42 years of service to the Party and the Motherland, one mistake made on the scales would drag all the work of my life. I also did not think that I would have to prove that during the years of World War II I did not shy away from the sacred duty of protecting my Motherland, that I was not an accidental person in the party and in the army, that I was giving all my strength and health to the benefit of building our communist society.

- Serov in his statement to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee on November 19, 1964 ^[15]

In April 1965 he was expelled from the CPSU for "violating socialist legality and using his official position for personal purposes" ^[16] , dismissed.

Recent years

Serov for a long time and unsuccessfully sought rehabilitation in the eyes of the public, the restoration of the CPSU , the return to him of the rank of army general and Hero of the Soviet Union. These issues were never considered in the Soviet authorities ^{[17] [18] [19]} .

Died July 1, 1990 in the Central Krasnogorsk Military TsVKG them. Vishnevsky. He was buried in the cemetery of the village of Ilyinskoye, Krasnogorsk district, Moscow region ^[20] .

Memoirs

Serov’s diaries secretly kept since 1939, when he first appeared on the Lubyanka. After the resignation, the general continued to write and completed his memoirs, which were hidden by the author at his dacha in Arkhangelsk, Moscow Region. The fact that Serov writes memoirs was also testified in 1971 by the then chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov ; taking into account the specifics of Serov’s activity, there could be no talk of publishing his diaries in the USSR. In Serov’s memoirs, the eyes of the participant and witness describe the secrets of the historical events of the Stalin era, in particular the deportation of repressed peoples, the liquidation of foreign citizens in the dungeons of the NKVD , the fate of Raul Wallenberg , Soviet foreign intelligence operations and others ^{[21] [17]} .

In 2012, when demolishing a wall in a garage at Serov’s dacha in the Krasnogorsk district of the Moscow Region, his granddaughter Vera Vladimirovna Serova, according to her version, discovered two walled-up suitcases with general typewritten materials and manuscripts. It was alleged that this was Serov's mysteriously disappeared memoirs, excerpts of which were already quoted in the early 2000s by his brother-in-law, writer Eduard Khrutsky , and followed by the American historian Vadim Birshtein. The originals of Serov’s suddenly found manuscripts after their discovery were not shown to any of the independent researchers, the state examination of the paper did not pass, which raised doubts about their authenticity. Access to the original documents of Serov for scientists and experts is not currently provided, the current location of the originals that are the property of the heirs of Serov is kept secret. Editing of a scanned and systematized text that is unclear by anyone with a volume of about 100 printed sheets, providing it with their own comments, was carried out by journalist and State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein ^[17] .

In 2016, Serov’s diaries were published by the Russian Military Historical Society as a separate 700-page book under the detective title “Notes from a Suitcase”. The book includes about a third of Serov's memoirs, while the basic rules of scientific publication, according to expert estimates, were not followed. On the authenticity of Serov’s memoirs in 2016, a judicial dispute arose between Khinshtein and Vera Serova, on the one hand, and Ekho Moskvy radio station, which considers the find a fake, on the other. Doubts were caused by the “plot of the miraculous discovery of documents (a summer residence, stucco, suitcases)”, a number of texts in Hinshtein’s book, according to historians of the special services, have obvious literary predecessors, fragments about the combat swimmer Crabbe and the spy Penkovsky were considered unreliable and contradictory to Serov’s lifetime stories ^[22] . The experts also argued that even if the general’s source is genuine, his publication is carefully censored and provided with a fictitious patriotic comment, which makes the question of a new, truly scientific publication of Serov’s memoirs ^{[17] [18] [19]} relevant. In December 2016, the Presnensky District Court concluded that the historian Boris Sokolov did not make statements defaming the honor and dignity of the general in the Echo of Moscow program “Dilettantes” ^[23] . Khinshtein filed an appeal with the Moscow City Court, which was also rejected ^[24] .

• Wife - Vera Ivanovna.
  • Son - Vladimir, an intelligence officer, served in the GRU ^[14] .

Grandson - Ivan Serov.

• • • Granddaughter - Vera Serova.
  • Daughter - Svetlana, on her third marriage was married Eduard Khrutsky ^[19] .

• Hero of the Soviet Union - (Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of May 29, 1945 ( at the request of Marshal G.K. Zhukov ^[1] , deprived of ^{March 12} , 1963 )
• The Six Orders of Lenin ( 04/26/1940 , 12/13/1942 , 05/29/1945 (deprived 03/12/1963 ), 01/30/1951 , 09/19/1951 , 2/25/1955 )
• Five Orders of the Red Banner - September 20 . 1943 , 7.07 . 1944 , 3.11 . 1944 , 5.11 . 1954 , December 31 . 1955
• Order of Suvorov I degree ( March 8 , 1944 was awarded "for the deportation of Chechens and Ingush", the decree on the award was canceled April ^6, 1962 ^[26] )
• Two orders of Kutuzov I degree ( 24.04 . 1945 , 18.12 . 1956 )
• Order of the Patriotic War I degree ( 11.03 . 1985 )
• Anniversary medal "XX years of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army" (02.22.1938)
• Medal "Partisan of the Patriotic War" I degree ( July 9 , 1943 )
• Medal "For the Defense of Stalingrad" ( 1.07 . 1943 )
• Medal "For the Defense of Moscow" ( July 4 , 1944 )
• Medal "For the Defense of the Caucasus" ( 08/10/1944 )
• Medal "For the capture of Berlin" ( 10.27.1945 )
• Medal "For the Liberation of Warsaw" (1946)
• Anniversary medals of the USSR
• Order of the "Virtuti Militari" IV class ( Poland , 04.24.1946), deprived of the order in 1995
• Order "Cross of the Grunwald" II degree ( Poland , 11/11/1955)
• Order of Merit to the Fatherland in Gold ( GDR , 05/08/1959)
• Medal "For Warsaw 1939-1945" (12/27/1955)
• Medal "For the Odra, Nisa and the Baltic" (12/27/1955)
• Honored Worker of the NKVD (1940)

• Major (1936)
• Major of State Security (02.15.1939)
• Senior Major of State Security (04/30/1939)
• 3rd rank State Security Commissioner (09/04/1939)
• State Security Commissioner 2nd rank (02/02/1943)
• Colonel General (07/09/1945, recertification from the Commissioner of the GB 2nd rank)
• Army General (08/08/1955)
• Major General (03/12/1963)

• Petrov N.V. First Chairman of the KGB Ivan Serov. - M .: Mainland, 2005. - ISBN 5-85646-129-0 .
• Petrov N.V., Skorkin K.V. Who led the NKVD, 1934-1941: reference book / Ed. N. G. Okhotin and A. B. Roginsky. - M .: Links, 1999 .-- 502 p. - 3000 copies. - ISBN 5-7870-0032-3 .
• Johanna Granville. The First Domino: International Decision Making During the Hungarian Crisis of 1956. - Texas A & M University Press, 2004 .-- ISBN 1-58544-298-4 .
• Kolpakidi A., North A. GRU. Unique encyclopedia. - M .: Yauza Eksmo, 2009 .-- S. 694-695. - 720 s. - (Encyclopedia of special forces). - 5,000 copies. - ISBN 978-5-699-30920-7 .
• Serov I.A., Khinstein A.E. Notes from a suitcase. Secret diaries of the first KGB chairman, found 25 years after his death. - M .: Education, 2017 .-- 223 p. - (Biographies and Memoirs). - ISBN 978-5-09-042156-0 .

• Serov, Ivan Alexandrovich (Russian) . Site " Heroes of the country ".
• Serov I.A.
• Biography
• Biography
• Secret diaries of the first chairman of the KGB: "Stalin was dissatisfied"
• NOTES FROM A SUITCASE