The Man Who Enforced Stalin’s Terror…Then Became Its Victim: Abakumov D

22 June 1941. The Soviet Union The German invasion sweeps forward   with terrifying speed, trapping entire Soviet  formations and driving millions of captured   soldiers into brutal captivity. Yet even those  who survive and later return home do not escape   danger, because the Soviet Union meets them  with cold suspicion, long interrogations,   and the constant threat of imprisonment in  Gulags.

The fear that spreads through the   army is not new. It grows from earlier years  when arrests and executions shaped the lives   of thousands long before the war begins.  Within this world of obedience, punishment,   and silent terror stands a man whose rise seems  unstoppable, though the same system will one   day turn against him with the same cruelty  he enforces. His name is Viktor Abakumov.

Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov was born on 24 April  1908 into a poor Russian family in Moscow, in the   Russian Empire. Viktor’s father Semyon Abakumov  worked as an unskilled labourer and his mother   was a nurse. The young boy grew up in a world  marked by poverty and political upheaval and at   fourteen he joined the Red Army during the final  phase of the Russian Civil War.

He served in the   2nd Special Task Brigade until the end of 1923,  learning early that survival in the Soviet state   depended on discipline, obedience, and the ability  to adapt to danger. After demobilisation he joined   the Komsomol, the communist youth organisation,  and worked as a temporary labourer in various   jobs.

Nothing in his early years suggested the  power he would later hold, but he was ambitious,   cold-minded, and loyal to authority,  qualities that became invaluable to him.  Viktor Abakumov became a member of the Communist  party and in 1932 the Party recommended him for   service in the OGPU, the Joint State Political  Directorate, the Soviet secret police.   He entered its Economic Department, which dealt  with industrial sabotage and food supply problems.

His behaviour soon caused concern because his  superiors found him unreliable, among other things   because of his high interest in women and after  a short while he was transferred into another   department, which dealt with the administration  of the system of Soviet concentration and labour   camps – the infamous Gulags.

In the world of the  Soviet intelligence and security organisations,   this was a clear demotion that reflected doubts  of Abakumov´s superiors. Yet the move shaped   him and in the vast system of Soviet forced-labour  camps, he learned how prisoners were interrogated,   how fear functioned as a tool, and how the  security organs controlled every detail of   life in the Soviet Union.

By the mid-1930s  he had returned to more central duties within   another Soviet secret service – the NKVD, the  People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs,   after the OGPU was merged with it in 1934 and  soon became involved in political investigations. The Great Purge of 1937–1938 transformed his  career. During this time in the Soviet Union   hundreds of thousands of people were  arrested as supposed spies, saboteurs,   and traitors and executed.

Abakumov survived  the purge because he proved himself to be a   loyal servant and instrument of repression.  He took part in interrogations that relied on   beatings and deprivation. Suspects were forced  to sign confessions after nights without sleep.   In this atmosphere, loyalty to Joseph Stalin  counted more than skill or morality. Abakumov   followed every order, destroyed those named as  enemies, and never questioned the system that   empowered him.

In late 1938 he was appointed  head of the NKVD office in Rostov-on-Don,   a region shaken by arrests. There he  directed mass detentions and executions,   earning a reputation for his harshness.  Abakumov remained there also when the   Second World War started on 1 September 1939  and after Soviet invasion against Poland on 17   September of the same year, when Stalin helped  Nazi Germany to destroy independence of Poland.

Everything changed when Germany invaded  the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 and Stalin   demanded absolute control over the Red Army.  Viktor Abakumov returned to Moscow earlier   that year and already in July 1941 he became  head of the NKVD Special Department responsible   for counterintelligence in the Red Army.

Officers accused of cowardice, treason,   or simply poor judgment faced immediate arrest  and many were executed after rapid investigations.   Thousands of soldiers were interrogated for  retreating or just losing equipment on the   battlefield. Abakumov enforced Stalin’s will  during these darkest months of the war, when   the front collapsed and fear spread through every  command post.

His signature appeared on orders   that condemned countless officers to their deaths. But the situation on the fronts changed and on   14 April 1943 Stalin officially created a  new counterintelligence directorate inside   the Red Army called Smersh – a portmanteau of the  Russian-language phrase „Smert Shpionam”, meaning   “Death to Spies.” Abakumov became its head.

Smersh supervised front-line interrogations,   checked returning soldiers for disloyalty, and  hunted spies, saboteurs, and deserters, real and   imagined. Millions of Soviet prisoners of war  who returned from German captivity were treated   with suspicion and large numbers of them were  arrested or sent directly to the Gulag. Abakumov’s   power reached into every unit of the wartime  army, and he reported directly to Stalin.

The   wartime climate allowed him to work with almost no  oversight, and he used this position to intimidate   Soviet generals, terrify party officials,  and eliminate those who showed hesitation. There was also another side to his activities,  during the war he also used his authority for   personal gain.

He took over a luxurious apartment  in Moscow after arresting its former resident,   a well-known singer. He arranged apartments  for his mistresses and filled his rooms with   plundered goods taken from Berlin and other  conquered German cities. Soviet officers and   soldiers returning from Germany saw train  wagons filled with furniture, artwork,   clothing, carpets, and fine objects  shipped home under the protection of   the security services. For Abakumov,  enrichment was inseparable from power.

In 1946 Stalin appointed him Minister of  State Security – although the ministry   remained formally subordinate to chief of secret  police Lavrentiy Beria and later to the Council   of Ministers. Abakumov kept direct access to  Stalin. His position made him one of the most   feared men in the country and even Beria was  allegedly “scared to death of Abakumov”.

During   this time Abakumov oversaw the investigation  that became known as the Leningrad Affair,   a political purge aimed at removing a number of  prominent Leningrad based authority figures who   had gained prestige during the war  and legendary defence of the city.   Party leaders such as Nikolai Voznesensky and  Aleksei Kuznetsov were arrested, tortured,   forced into confessions, and executed.

Respected  intellectuals, scientists, writers and educators,   many of whom were pillars of the city’s community,  were exiled or imprisoned in the Gulag prison   camps. About 2,000 of Leningrad’s public figures  together with their relatives were punished.   Abakumov supervised each step, ensuring that  Stalin’s instructions were carried out completely.  His role extended also into Stalin’s postwar  anti-Jewish campaign.

The state shifted suspicion   towards Jewish intellectuals, scientists, and  officials, accusing them of Zionism or loyalty   to foreign governments. People who had served the  Soviet Union faithfully for decades were arrested.   Among them were Solomon Lozovsky, a respected  old Bolshevik, and many members of the Jewish   Anti-Fascist Committee, which was branded  anti-Soviet.

Interrogations included shouting,   humiliation, and beatings. When the eminent  scientist, Lina Stern, was arrested and brought   before Abakumov, he shouted at her, accusing  her of being a Zionist and of plotting to turn   the Crimea into a separate Jewish state. When  she denied the accusation, he shouted at her to   which Stern coldly replied: “So that’s the way a  minister talks to an academician.

” Maybe because   of her courage, Stern was the only survivor out  of 15 who had been arrested and convicted to   death when the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was  eradicated in January 1949. Her death sentence was   changed to a prison term by Joseph Stalin,  followed by five-year exile in Kazakhstan. But soon Abakumov found himself on the other side  of the prison cell during the so-called Doctor´s   plot.

On 2 March 1951, an elderly Jewish doctor,  Yakov Gilyarievich Etinger died in custody after   being subjected to long and brutal interrogations  done by young officer Mikhail Ryumin.   Ryumin claimed that Etinger had confessed before  his death to murdering the former leader of the   Moscow communist party, Aleksandr Shcherbakov,  Abakumov dismissed these accusations as nonsense   but Ryumin, fearing punishment for mishandling  the interrogation, wrote directly to Stalin,   claiming that Abakumov was covering up  a conspiracy.

Stalin accepted Ryumin´s   version and on 11 July 1951 Abakumov was  dismissed from his post and on the next   day he was arrested and placed in solitary  confinement. He was interrogated by Ryumin,   who now used against him the same methods that  Abakumov had used against others. The cell was   kept cold, food was poor, and interrogations  lasted for long hours.

Former subordinates were   encouraged to accuse him of belonging to a Zionist  conspiracy or protecting enemies of the state. The   Doctors’ Plot expanded, and Jewish officials  linked to Abakumov were arrested as well. Stalin’s death in March 1953 helped stop the  investigation against the Jewish doctors,   but it did not save Abakumov.

The new Soviet  leadership needed to distance itself from the   crimes of Stalin’s last years, making Abakumov  a convenient symbol of those abuses. He was   accused of fabricating the Leningrad Affair,  arresting innocent people, and abusing his   authority. Confessions were extracted from  others to strengthen the case against him. In December 1954 Abakumov was put on trial during  which he was described “a criminal, falsifying   criminal cases, an adventurer, ready to commit any  crimes for the sake of his career and enemy goals,   a bourgeois degenerate”. Abakumov insisted that  he had only followed Stalin’s orders, but such a   defence was no longer accepted. He and three other  officers were sentenced to death. Viktor Abakumov,   the man who had sent so many to their deaths, was  shot on 19 December 1954. He was 46 years old.

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