Alexander Nikolayevich Schelepin

Alexander Nikolajewitsch Schelepin ( Russian Александр Николаевич Шелепин , scientific transliteration Aleksandr Nikolaevič Šelepin ; born August 18, 1918 in Voronezh ; † October 24, 1994 in Moscow ) was a Soviet politician. He was chairman of the KGB from 1958 to 1961 .

Portrait of Schelepin from his tombstone in the Novodevichy Cemetery

Life

Ascent

Schelepin became a member of the WKP (B) in 1940 . At the beginning of the Second World War he studied in Moscow at the Institute for Philosophy and Literature. Since 1940 he rose in the youth organization Komsomol in Moscow. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union , Schelepin was involved in organizing the partisan movement in the Moscow area. From 1943 to 1952 he was secretary and from 1952 to 1958 he was first secretary (chairman) of the youth organization. In these functions he mobilized the youth for the economic projects of Nikita Khrushchev in Central Asia. In the Central Committee of the party he was since 1952. He accompanied Khrushchev in 1954 on his visit to the People's Republic of China .

KGB chairman

After Stalin's death in 1953, Khrushchev initially appointed him deputy chairman of the KGB. On December 25, 1958, he replaced Ivan Serov as chairman of the KGB. The aim of the appointment was after the attempted coup against Khrushchev in 1957 to get the KGB more under control of the party. Schelepin replaced many high-ranking officers with confidants from the party and in particular from the Komsomol. In 1958 he was also head of the department for party organs in the Central Committee.

After his replacement as chairman of the KGB on November 13, 1961 by his protégé Vladimir Semitschastny , he was secretary of the Central Committee from October 1961 to 1967 , responsible for the security facilities of the USSR.

At the center of power

As party secretary, however, he retained control of the KGB. From 1962 to 1965 he was Deputy Prime Minister in the cabinets of Khrushchev and Alexei Kosygin . 1962 also became chairman of the party control commission. The offices endowed him with extensive administrative powers.

Schelepin was involved in the overthrow of Khrushchev in 1964 by winning the KGB over to the overthrow. On November 16, 1964, he was promoted to the highest political body in the USSR. Schelepin was a full member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1975 , most recently he headed the umbrella organization of the Soviet trade unions. Although in this office he was not responsible for the defense of workers' rights, but for monitoring work discipline, he was invited as a partner for talks by the DGB . At that time it was also ignored that Schelepin, in his former function as head of the KGB, was responsible for two murders carried out in Germany, which was also determined by a German court. (BGH judgment of October 19, 1962 Az. 9 StE 4/62)

From then on his power begins to wane. Leonid Brezhnev saw in him a rival for the party leadership. On April 16, 1975 he lost his position as a member of the Politburo. He was during the XXV. At the 1976 party congress, he was also not re-elected to the Central Committee of the CPSU.

literature

• Bertold Spuler : Regents and Governments of the World, Minister-Ploetz Vol. 4 , 1964, ISBN 3-87640-026-0
• Michel Tatu: Power and Powerlessness in the Kremlin. From Khrushchev to collective leadership. Ullstein, Frankfurt, 1967.
• Merle Fainsod : How Russia is governed , Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1965.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Borys Lewytzkyj, The Soviet Trade Unions in the Age of Technical Progress, in: trade union monthly books, 13.1962, pp. 652–657
2. ↑ Der Spiegel, March 3, 1975, p. 21.
3. ↑ SOVIET UNION: hour of vengeance . In: Spiegel Online . tape April 17 , 1975 ( spiegel.de [accessed October 11, 2019]).