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Vsevolod Merkulov

Surname Merkulov Given Name Vsevolod Born 27 Nov 1895 Died 23 Dec 1953 Country Russia, Georgia Category Government Gender Male

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseVsevolod Nikolayevich Merkulov was born in Tiflis (now Tblisi), Georgia Governorate in southern Russia to a low ranking nobleman and a captain in army of the Russian Empire. He graduated from the Tiflis Gymnasium in 1913 and moved on to study at the Petrograd Imperial University at Petrograd (later Leningrad, now Sankt-Peterburg), Russia, in the Department of Physics and Mathematics. He served in the Russian Army between 1915 and 1918. In 1921, he returned to southern Russia and worked as a detective at the Transportation Unit of the Extraordinary Commission, or VCheKa, a Soviet internal security organization, in the newly formed Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. Between 1925 and 1931, he was the head of the Secret Operations Directorate of the State Political Directorate, or GPU, another secret police organization, of Adzharistan in southern Georgia. In 1931, Lavrentiy Beria, a political ally also of Georgian descent, rose to power in the Soviet capital of Moscow and named Merkulov to the staff of the Central Committee of the Georgian Communist Party and gave him responsibility over the Special Sector for counterintelligence. In 1941, he was brought to Moscow by Beria to be the People's Commissar of State Security of the Soviet Union, or NKGB. Five months later, as NKGB was merged under the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or NKVD, he became the Deputy People's Commissar of the NKVD, reporting to Beria. In Jul 1943, NKGB was once again an organization independent of the NKVD, and Merkulov resumed his leadership role. After the war, he stepped down from his position of power at NKGB in Mar 1946. Between 1946 and the early 1950s, he served as the Minister for State Security and then the Minister of State Control. In 1953, as Beria's political opponents successfully ousted Beria from power, Beria and five of his close colleagues, including Merkulov, were arrested and executed.

ww2dbaseSources:

Vadim Birstein, SMERSH

Wikipedia



Last Major Revision: Dec 2012

Vsevolod Merkulov Timeline

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