Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov

Portrait of Kryuchkov on his tombstone in the Troyekurovo cemetery in Moscow .

Kryuchkov in front of journalists, 1990

Vladimir Alexandrowitsch Krjutschkow ( Russian Владимир Александрович Крючков , scientific transliteration Vladimir Aleksandrovič Krjučkov ; born February 29, 1924 in Tsaritsyn ; † November 23, 2007 in Moscow ) was the Soviet chairman of the Soviet secret service of the KGB from October 1, 1988 to August 22, 1991 .

Life

Kryuchkov grew up as the son of a worker in Stalingrad (Tsaritsyn until 1925, now Volgograd). During the Great Patriotic War , as the war against Germany 1941-1945 in Russia is called, he joined the Komsomol , the youth organization of the CPSU . In 1944 he became the first secretary of the Komsomol district committee and in 1946 he moved from the post of second secretary to the city administration of Stalingrad, where he worked until 1954.

From 1945 to 1946 Kryuchkov studied law at the Saratov Institute of Law . In 1949 he completed his degree in law at the legal institute for distance learning (now Kutafin State Legal University, Moscow ) and worked briefly for the public prosecutor's office. After studying at the Foreign Ministry's diplomatic college, he switched to the diplomatic service in 1954.

As the third secretary of the embassy in Hungary , Kryuchkov met with Yuri Andropov , the Soviet ambassador to Hungary. During his further career within the nomenklatura he was a follower of Andropov. In 1956 he took an active part in the suppression of the Hungarian uprising .

After Andropov became secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU for relations with the communist and workers' parties of Eastern Europe in 1957 , he made Kryuchkov in 1959 head of the Hungary section. At that time Kryuchkov participated in several books on Hungary and the socialist system.

At the KGB

When Andropov became chairman of the KGB in 1967, Kryuchkov also moved there. He was initially head of the Secretariat of the 1st Headquarters (foreign intelligence), later Deputy Head and finally from 1974 to 1988 Chairman of the 1st Headquarters. From 1978 he was Deputy KGB Chairman. In 1982 he became Colonel General of the KGB and in 1984 a member of the Chamber of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet . In 1986 he became a full member of the Central Committee of the CPSU and on October 1, 1988 he was appointed chairman of the KGB and at the same time army general. From 1989 he was a full member of the Politburo of the CPSU.

From 1989/90 he increasingly represented a conservative political stance in the reform process in the Soviet Union. As a member of the State Committee for the State of Emergency from August 19 to 22, 1991, he was one of the initiators of the unsuccessful August putsch against Gorbachev . Kryuchkov was then replaced as KGB chairman by Leonid Vladimirovich Schebarschin and then by Vadim Viktorovich Bakatin . Kryuchkov was sentenced to prison for his involvement in the coup, but was later given amnesty .

During Vladimir Putin's presidency , Kryuchkov was a frequent guest of the president ; he praised Putin's policies and lastly at the end of October 2007 admonished the Russian security services to jointly support the president.

literature

• Mikhail Gorbachev: Memories; 1995, Siedler-Verlag, ISBN 978-3-88680-524-2
• He had to stay alive . In: Der Spiegel . No. 41 , 1991, pp. 202 ff . ( online - excerpt from the interrogation protocol after the coup attempt ).

Web links

Commons : Vladimir Kryuchkov  - collection of images

• Literature by and about Vladimir Alexandrowitsch Krjutschkow in the catalog of the German National Library