Mikhail Ryumin
Mikhail Dmitrievich Ryumin | |
---|---|
Михаил Дмитриевич Рюмин | |
Personal details | |
Born | Bolshoye Kaban'ye , Shadrinsky Uyezd, Perm Governorate, Russian Empire (now Shadrinsky District, Kurgan Oblast, Russian Federation) | September 1, 1913
Died | July 22, 1954 Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union | (aged 40)
Mikhail Dmitrievich Ryumin Михаил Дмитриевич Рюмин (1 September 1913 – 22 July 1954) was a
Biography
Early career
Ryumin was born in
Ryumin personally tortured prisoners in the
Early in 1949, he supervised the interrogation of Boris Shimeliovich, a long-standing party member who came under suspicion because of his war time involvement in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Accused of terrorism, he refused to confess, and was beaten so badly that he had to be brought in on a stretcher for his interrogation to continue. At his trial, Shimeliovich told the judge: "I received approximately eighty to one hundred blows a day, so altogether I think I was hit about two thousand times."[5]
The Doctors' Plot
In 1950, Ryumin began the interrogation of Professor
After Etinger had been put through 37 separate interrogations between November 1950 and January 1951, Ryumin was ordered by the Minister of State Security
Ryumin was reprimanded, and fearing worse was to come, wrote to Stalin on 2 July 1951 accusing Abakumov of covering up a plot by Jewish terrorists. Reputedly the letter was largely written for him by an official named Dmitri Sukhanov, who ran the private office of
Stalin's reaction was to promote Ryumin to head of the Department for Specially Important Cases, and to dismiss Abakumov, who was arrested. The new head of the MGB,
Downfall
Ryumin was abruptly sacked on 13 November 1952, apparently because Stalin had decided that he was too incompetent to do the job. He then returned to his old profession as a book keeper. After the death of Stalin in March 1953, Lavrentiy Beria regained control of the MGB. The Doctor's Plot was denounced as a fabrication. On 17 March, Ryumin was arrested.[10]
He was the sole defendant at a trial that lasted six days, from 2 July to 7 July 1954. He was sentenced to death and executed. It has been suggested, for instance by the historian Robert Conquest, that the lengthy trial was ordered by Malenkov to exonerate himself from any involvement in the Doctors' Plot and Ryumin's other activities.[11]
In Literature
Ryumin appears as a character in
References
- ^ His first name is given in the American Jewish Yearbook for 1955, p. 408.
- ^ Pavel Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness – a Soviet Spymaster (Warner Books, 1995) p. 299.
- ^ Alexander Dolgun and Patrick Wilson, Alexander Dolgun's Story: An American in the Gulag (Random House, 1975) p. 197.
- ^ Alexander Dolgun and Patrick Wilson, Alexander Dolgun's Story: An American in the Gulag (Random House, 1975) p. 197.
- ^ Joshua Rubenstein and Vladimir P. Naumov, Stalin's Secret Pogrom, The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (Yale University Press, 2001) p. 287.
- ^ Sudoplatov, pp. 280, 306.
- ^ Jonathan Brent and Vladimir P. Naumov, Stalin's Last Crime, The Doctors' Plot (John Murray, 2004) p. 108.
- ^ Brent and Naumov, p. 101.
- ^ Sudoplatov, p. 299.
- ^ Conquesr, Robert (1961). Power and Policy in the USSR. London: Macmillan. pp. 244–46.
- ^ Conquesr, Robert (1961). Power and Policy in the USSR. London: Macmillan. pp. 244–46.
- ^ Solzhenitsyn, Alexander (1972). The First Circle. (translated from the Russian by Michael Guybon) London: Fontana. p. 95.