Ivan Serov

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Aleksandrovich and the family name is Serov.
Ivan Serov
Иван Серов
Aleksandr Shelepin
People's Commissar for Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR
In office
1939–1941
Personal details
Born
Ivan Alexandrovich Serov
Иван Александрович Серов

13 August 1905
GRU
Years of service1923–1965
Rank Major general

Ivan Alexandrovich Serov (

Ukrainian SSR from 1939 to 1941 and Deputy Commissar of the NKVD under Lavrentiy Beria
from 1941 to 1954.

Serov was active in organizing NKVD activities against

mass deportations of people from Poland, Baltic states and the Caucasus. Serov helped establish secret police forces in the Eastern Bloc after the war and played an important role in suppressing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.[1][page needed] Serov was removed from power in 1963 when his protégé Oleg Penkovsky was exposed as a double agent. Serov was stripped of his position, Communist Party membership and Hero of the Soviet Union
award in 1965, and lived in obscurity until his death in 1990.

Early life and military career

Ivan Alexandrovich Serov was born on 13 August 1905 in

Leningrad.[3] A major step in his career as a Red Army officer was his attendance in the mid-1930s of Higher Academic Courses in the prestigious Frunze Military Academy.[4] He married during these years and had two children: a son, Vladimir, who became an engineering officer in the USSR Air Force followed by a daughter, Svetlana.[5]

Commissar of Ukraine

In 1939, Serov joined the

Baltic States and Poland.[5] He was one of the top ranked officials responsible for the Katyn massacre of Polish officer POWs.[6][7]

In 1956, an article in

Time magazine accused Serov of being responsible for the death of "hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian peasants" during this period.[8] Serov was also a colleague in Ukraine of Nikita Khrushchev, the local Head of State.[5][9]

Deputy Commissar of the NKVD

In 1941, Serov was promoted to Deputy Commissar of the NKVD as a whole, becoming one of the primary lieutenants of NKVD chief

Nazis in World War II.[6]

Serov was one of the senior figures in

Home Army and helped to establish Stalinism
in Poland.

In 1945, Serov was transferred to the

German Democratic Republic.[11] Serov was also there to monitor and spy on Marshal Georgy Zhukov
(who Stalin was personally suspicious of) while acting as his political advisor.

Chairman of the KGB

After the

GRU
to avoid his own downfall.

In March 1954, Serov was appointed Chairman of the

British media as "Ivan the Terrible" and "the Butcher".[10]

Hungary

Serov played a key role in the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 which attempted to overthrow the Soviet-backed Hungarian People's Republic. Serov was active in Hungary, sending reports to the Kremlin from Budapest, and escorting visiting Soviet Presidium leaders Anastas Mikoyan and Mikhail Suslov via an armoured personnel carrier into Budapest on 24 October, as there was too much shooting in the streets.[12] Serov organized the deportation of Hungarian revolutionaries, including Nagy, and also tried stopping The Workers' Council of Budapest from negotiating for the return of deportees and political rights, using Soviet troops to prevent the council from meeting in the city's Sports Hall.[8] Serov co-ordinated the abduction of Pál Maléter and the disruption of peace talks between the Red Army and the Hungarian forces.[5]

Director of the GRU

In December 1958, Serov was removed from his post as Chairman of the KGB after hints by Khrushchev, who had said that Western visitors could expect that they "wouldn't see so many policemen around the place" and that the Soviet police force would undergo a restructuring. Serov was instead appointed as the Director of the GRU, with the official reason being a need to strengthen the agency's leadership. Serov was active in the Cuban Missile Crisis, helping the Soviet leadership with American intelligence.

Removal from power

In February 1963, Serov was dismissed as Director of the GRU when it was discovered that

general and Hero of the Soviet Union
to him.

Death

Serov died in 1990 at the Central Military Clinical Hospital in Krasnogorsk. He was buried at the cemetery in the village of Ilyinskoye in Krasnogorsky District, Moscow Oblast.[13]

Awards and decorations

Soviet Union
Hero of the Soviet Union (29 May 1945) (deprived on 12 March 1963)
Order of Lenin, seven times (26 April 1940, 13 December 1942, 29 May 1945, 30 January 1951, 19 September 1952, 25 August 1955) (third award deprived on 12 March 1963)
Order of the Red Banner, five times (20 September 1943, 7 July 1944, 3 November 1944, 5 November 1954, 31 December 1955)
Order of Suvorov, 1st class (8 March 1944) (deprived on 6 April 1962)
Order of Kutuzov, 1st class, twice (24 April 1945, 18 December 1956)
Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class (11 March 1985)
Medal "For the Defence of Stalingrad" (22 December 1942)
Medal "For the Defence of Moscow" (1 May 1944)
Medal "For the Defence of Leningrad" (22 December 1942)
Medal "For the Defence of the Caucasus" (1 May 1944)
Medal "For the Liberation of Warsaw" (9 June 1945)
Medal "For the Capture of Berlin" (9 June 1945)
Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (9 May 1945)
  • jubilee medals

SOURCE:[14]

Foreign
Patriotic Order of Merit in gold (East Germany)
Gold's Cross of the Virtuti Militari (Poland)
Order of the Cross of Grunwald, 2nd class (Poland)
Medal "For Oder, Neisse and the Baltic"
(Poland)
Medal "For Warsaw 1939-1945"
(Poland)

Serov's award of the Gold's Cross of the Virtuti Militari was posthumously deprived in 1995 by the decision of the President of Poland Lech Wałęsa.[15]

Personality

In MI5 files about Serov, British agents who had met him called him "something of a ladies' man," good mannered, carefully dressed and a moderate drinker. He displayed a considerable familiarity with detective fiction such as Sherlock Holmes. His sense of humour was somewhat heavy, and his jokes were broadly sarcastic and, on occasion, strongly anti-Semitic.[16]

According to the MI5 reports, Serov was "a capable organiser with a cunning mind".[16]

Significance

Serov, although generally considered less significant than Beria in modern literature, helped to bring

Urząd Bezpieczeństwa (Polish Intelligence Service) in Poland and the Stasi
in East Germany.

Cultural references

Serov makes a brief appearance at the beginning of

Khrushchev
, now ruled Russia. One day, he might even stand on the peak, alone."

Serov also briefly features in the 1950s novel Berlin by the German anti-Nazi writer Theodor Plievier, who lived in the USSR throughout the Hitler years. Plievier says Serov was nicknamed chramoi (which he translates as "Old Cripple Foot", Russian: хромой, lit. 'lame, limping'), a reference to a supposed deformity (presumably a club foot).[17]

Sources

References

  1. ISBN 978-1-84603-079-6
  2. ^ "Серов Иван Александрович". warheroes.ru. Retrieved 2024-03-02.
  3. ^ Jeanne Vronskaya, Vladimir Chuguev, A biographical dictionary of the Soviet Union 1917-1988, 1989. p. 375
  4. ^ H.W. Wilson Company, Current biography yearbook, vol 17, 1957
  5. ^ a b c d Arneson, R. Gordon (30 September 1958). "Biography of Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov" (PDF). CIA Reading Room. Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency. pp. 4–5. Retrieved 9 October 2023.
  6. ^ a b Suvorov, V.: Inside Soviet Military Intelligence. Appendix A.
  7. ISBN 0-393-32484-2
    ), p. 370: "He had helped organize the Katyn Forest massacre of Polish officers, had helped Stalinize Ukraine and the Baltics, had deported the Crimean Tatars and other 'lesser' peoples, had pacified Soviet-occupied East Germany, and had been Beria's MVD first deputy in Stalin's last years."
  8. ^ a b "The Shadow of Ivan Serov": Time, December 3, 1956. Retrieved November 25, 2007.
  9. ^ BBC h2g2: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: retrieved November 25, 2007.
  10. ^ a b "Dropping the Cop": Time, December 22, 1958. Retrieved November 25, 2007.
  11. ISBN 0-8133-3409-8
  12. ^ Johanna Granville, trans., "Soviet Documents on the Hungarian Revolution, 24 October - 4 November 1956", Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 5 (Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Washington, DC), Spring, 1995, pp. 22-23, 29-34.
  13. ^ "СЕРОВ Иван Александрович (1905 – 1990)". moscow-tombs.ru. Retrieved May 21, 2022.
  14. ^ "Ива́н Алекса́ндрович Серóв". warheroes.ru. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  15. ^ Łydka, Andrzej (2015-03-27). "Aresztowanie przywódców Państwa Podziemnego" [Arrest of leaders of the Underground State]. Polska Zbrojna (in Polish). Retrieved May 22, 2022.
  16. ^ a b Archives, The National (February 28, 2014). "The National Archives - When 'Ivan the terrible' visited Britain". The National Archives blog.
  17. ISBN 0-586-02906-0

External links
Government offices
Preceded by
Minister of State Security
 Chairman of the
Committee for State Security
1954–1958 		Succeeded by
Aleksandr Shelepin
Preceded by People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of Ukraine
1939–1941 		Succeeded by
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