Semyon Denisovich Ignatiev

Ignatiev's grave

Semyon Denisovich Ignatiev ( Russian Семён Денисович Игнатьев ; born September 1 ^{. Jul} / 14. September  1904 ^greg. In Karlovka , Kherson Gubernia , Russian empire ; † 27. November 1983 in Moscow ) was a Soviet politician .

biography

Ignatiev joined the Komsomol youth organization as a worker in 1919 and the Soviet secret police GPU in the early 1920s . After joining the CPSU , he worked as a party official until 1951 .

In the following years he was from 1937 to 1943 secretary of the CP in the Buryat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) , from 1943 to 1946 first secretary of the CP of the Bashkir ASSR , from 1946 to 1949 secretary of the CP of the Belarusian SSR and from 1949 to 1951 Secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR .

On August 9, 1951, he succeeded Sergei Ogolzow as Minister for State Security of the USSR . He was also a member of the Central Committee (ZK) of the CPSU from 1952 to 1961 and a member of the Politburo of the CPSU from October 1952 to March 1953 .

In this function he was according to the secret speech of Nikita Khrushchev on the XX. CPSU party congress in February 1956 responsible for investigating the so-called " doctors' conspiracy ". He was commissioned by Josef Stalin, under threat of his own death, to investigate a possible conspiracy by a number of Jewish doctors from the Kremlin . The reason for the investigation was in particular the circumstances of the death of Stalin's close confidante and member of the Politburo of the CPSU Andrei Alexandrowitsch Zhdanov on August 31, 1948, as well as the alleged damage to the health of other leading figures in the state and party leadership. Two of the doctors died during the investigation, while the remaining accused were released immediately after Stalin's death on March 5, 1953.

Ignatiev himself was dismissed as Minister of State Security after a heart attack on the day of Stalin's death and the ministry was dissolved as an independent ministry and the area of ​​responsibility was subordinated to the Minister of the Interior Lavrenti Beria .

He himself was first deposed on March 6, 1953, secretary of the Central Committee (ZK) of the CPSU , but a month later on April 6, 1953 because of “political blindness and gullibility” in the medical conspiracy. According to Khrushchev in his later secret speech, this conspiracy was “fabricated from beginning to end”.

In 1954, however, he was rehabilitated by Khrushchev and appointed First Secretary of the CPSU in the Bashkir ASSR. In 1957 he became first secretary of the CPSU in the neighboring Tatar ASSR . He held this position until his retirement on October 28, 1960.

In 1974, on the occasion of his 70th birthday, he was awarded the Order of the October Revolution for his services . In addition, he was awarded the Order of Lenin four times .

After his death, he was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery , one of the most famous cemeteries in Russia .

Web links

• rulers.org