Vsevolod Nikolaevich Merkulov(1895-1953) was born in the village of Zakatali - Azerbaijan, in the family of a nobleman. Russian.

In 1913 he graduated with honors from a gymnasium in Tiflis and entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University.
In 1916 he was drafted into the army, served in Orenburg in a reserve regiment, was promoted to ensign and until March 1918 fought on the Southwestern Front.
He joined the Bolshevik Party late - in 1920, when it finally became clear that they would win. So, his choice was not ideological in nature.

In the Cheka - from 1921: assistant to the commissioner, then - commissioner of the economic department of the GPU of Georgia. In 1927-1929 - Head of the Department of Information, Agitation and Political Control of the GPU of the Georgian SSR, in 1929-1931. - Head of the Secret Political Department of the GPU of the Adjara Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, and, at the same time, deputy chairman of the GPU of Adjara.
In 1931, he headed the secret political department of the GPU of the Transcaucasian SFSR, but a few months later he resigned. From that time on, he was L.P.’s closest collaborator. Beria, who promoted him to the position of first head of the trade sector, and then of transport and industry of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia. He did a lot for the economic development of this region.
In November 1938, Merkulov was appointed deputy head of the GUGB NKVD of the USSR. Soon he headed this department, and until February 1941 he was L. Beria’s deputy as people’s commissar.
In 1940, V. Merkulov was part of a group of people responsible for the extermination of captured Polish officers, as well as other persons interned in Eastern Poland in 1939. It is noteworthy that later, in 1943-1944, Merkulov headed a government commission USSR to “investigate” this case (attributed then to the Germans).
Merkulov was also responsible for the repressions in the Baltic states in 1940-1941, where mass arrests and deportations of the population to Siberia were carried out.
From February to July 1941, and then from 1943 to 1946. - People's Commissar of State Security of the USSR. In June 1941, he gave the order to “cleanse” places of detention in Western Ukraine, as a result of which about 10 thousand people were shot.
In 1946-1950 V. Merkulov works in the Main Directorate of Soviet Property Abroad under the government of the USSR. In 1950-1953 - Minister of State Control of the USSR.
After Stalin’s death, he was listed on leave “for health reasons,” then went abroad (to the GDR) “on vacation,” upon returning from where he was arrested on September 18, 1953. During the investigation, Merkulov was asked to give detailed testimony against L. Beria, V. Abakumov and other persons, but he refused and was shot on December 23, 1953, as “an English and American spy.”
Not rehabilitated.
He was engaged in literary activities (wrote plays under the pseudonym V. Rokk).

Merkulov Vsevolod Nikolaevich (1895, Zakataly - 12/23/1953, Moscow), one of the heads of state security agencies, State Security Commissioner 1st rank (02/04/1943), army general (07/09/1945). An officer's son. He studied at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University (did not graduate).

He received his education at the Orenburg school of warrant officers (1917). In 1916 he was drafted into the army. Participant of the 1st World War, ensign. On Sept. 1917 served in the 331st Orsk Infantry Regiment. From March 1918 he lived in Tiflis, unemployed. Since Aug. 1918 clerk and teacher at a school for the blind. On Sept. 1921 accepted into service in the Cheka, worked in the apparatus of the Transcaucasian and Georgian Cheka (then GPU), from February. 1929 - in the GPU of the Adjara Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, from May 1931 - in the GPU of the ZSFSR. In 1925 he joined the CPSU(b). Since 1931 - at party work. In 1931-34 pom. Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, who at that time was L.P. Beria, became his closest assistant and confidant, and later always enjoyed Beria’s patronage. He wrote a brochure about Beria, “The Faithful Son of the Lenin-Stalin Party.” In 1934-37 head. Soviet-trade department of the regional committee. In 1937-50, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In 1937-38 head. industrial and transport department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia. He took part in organizing mass repressions. In Aug. 1938 Beria summoned him to Moscow and on September 1, 1938 he was appointed deputy. beginning Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) of the NKVD of the USSR. From 12/15/1938 1st deputy. People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR and the beginning. GUGB. He supervised the cleansing of the apparatus from N.I.’s proteges. Yezhov, continued the policy of arrests and repressions. He was considered one of the most cruel investigators of the NKVD, and personally supervised the torture of those under investigation. In 1939-52 a member, from 1952 a candidate member of the Central Committee of the party. Consistently defended the complete independence (including from prosecutorial supervision) of the GUGB. In the fall of 1939, he led the operation to “identify and isolate” harmful elements in Poland, and then mass purges in Western Ukraine. In 1940, he was part of the “troika”, which was involved in the preparation and approval of execution lists of captured Polish officers, and exercised chief leadership of the operation. When on February 3, 1941, the People's Commissariat of State Security of the USSR was separated from the NKVD, Merkulov became People's Commissar. On July 20, 1941, the NKGB and NKVD were reunited, and Merkulov again became 1st deputy. Beria, and he was entrusted with leading the 2nd (counterintelligence) and 3rd (secret political) departments, the department of the commandant of the Moscow Kremlin, the 3rd special department (searches, arrests, surveillance), the 1st department (government security) and the Mobilization part. Author of the play "Engineer Sergeev" about Soviet patriotism and the fight against "fascist henchmen" (under the pseudonym Vsevolod Rokk). On April 14, 1943, the NKGB of the USSR again became an independent department headed by Merkulov. On May 4, 1946, he was removed from his post and replaced by B.S. Abakumov. This became one of the defeats of Beria, who was at loggerheads with Abakumov. The Central Committee Commission chaired by A.A. Kuznetsova reviewed Merkulov's mistakes and blamed him for stopping the persecution of Trotskyists during the war. Merkulov was out of work for almost a year and only on April 25, 1947 he was appointed chief. Main Administration of Soviet Property Abroad under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. 10/27/1950 appointed Minister of State Control of the USSR. Shortly after Beria’s arrest, Merkulov was also arrested on September 18, 1953, and on December 16, 1953, he was officially removed from the post of minister “due to the fact that the USSR Prosecutor’s Office uncovered the criminal, anti-state actions of Merkulov during his work in the MGB and the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.” By the special judicial presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR, together with Beria and others, he was sentenced to death on December 23, 1953. Shot.

Vsevolod Nikolaevich Merkulov(November 7 (October 25), 1895, Zagatala, Zagatala district (Transcaucasia) of the Russian Empire, now the territory of Azerbaijan - December 23, 1953, executed) - Soviet statesman and politician, army general (07/09/1945).

Head of the GUGB NKVD of the USSR (1938-1941), People's Commissar (Minister) of State Security of the USSR (1941, 1943-1946), Minister of State Control of the USSR (1950-1953).

Became part of the inner circle L. P. Beria, worked with him since the early 1920s, enjoyed his personal trust.

Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st and 2nd convocations. Member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (1939-1946, candidate 1946-1953).

Biography

Born into the family of a hereditary nobleman, captain of the tsarist army. Mother Ketovana Nikolaevna, nee Tsinamzgvarishvili, a noblewoman - a descendant of princely blood of the Georgian family.

According to Nikita Petrov, Merkulov’s father, “a nobleman, a military man with the rank of captain, served as the head of the Zagatala district station”: “In 1899 or 1900, Merkulov’s father was convicted of embezzlement of funds in the amount of 100 rubles, and served 8 months in prison in Tiflis, filed a petition for pardon, considering himself a victim of slander... In 1908, my father died.

Since childhood, I have been interested in literary creativity.

In 1913 he graduated from the Tiflis Third Men's Gymnasium with a gold medal. At the humanitarian gymnasium, he became so interested in electrical engineering that his articles were published in a special magazine in Odessa. He continued his studies by entering the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University. There he began writing and publishing stories about student life: “While still at the university, he wrote several romantic stories, which were published in literary magazines and received positive reviews,” his son recalled. From September 1913 to October 1916 he gave private lessons.

• In October 1916, after completing the 3rd year, he was drafted into the army. In 1916-1917 service in the imperial army (He did not participate in hostilities.):
  • October - November 1916 - private student battalion, Petrograd.
  • November 1916 - March 1917 - cadet of the Orenburg school of ensigns, graduated from it.
  • April 1917 - August 1917 - ensign of the reserve regiment, Novocherkassk.
  • September 1917 - October 1917 - ensign of a marching company, Rivne.
  • October 1917 - January 1918 - ensign of the 331st Orsk Regiment of the 83rd Infantry Division of the 16th Army Corps of the 4th Army of the Southwestern Front. The regiment was located in the Lutsk direction, in the area of ​​the Stokhod River. Merkulov did not participate in hostilities.
  • In January 1918, due to illness, he was evacuated to Tiflis to stay with relatives.
  • Demobilized in March 1918.
• While living with his sister, he published a handwritten magazine, printing copies on a chapirograph and selling them for 3 rubles.

In July 1918 he married Lidia Dmitrievna Yakhontova and moved to live with her.

• From September 1918 to September 1921, he was a clerk, then a teacher at the Tiflis School for the Blind, where his mother was the director.
• In 1919, he joined the Sokol society, where he practiced gymnastics and participated in evenings and amateur performances.

In the organs of the OGPU

In contrast to the version of Merkulov’s voluntary, on his own initiative, joining the Cheka, there is also information indicating that he began working there under coercion by the security officers (as an officer) to be an informant for the white officers.

• From September 1921 to May 1923 - assistant commissioner, commissioner, senior commissioner of the Economic Department of the Cheka under the Council of People's Commissars of the SSR Georgia.

“I must say (now, 30 years later, I believe I can do this without the risk of being accused of self-praise) that at that time, despite my 27 years, I was a naive, very modest and very shy person, somewhat reserved and silent. I didn’t give speeches and I still haven’t learned how to make them. My tongue seemed to be constrained by something, and I could not do anything with it. The pen is another matter. I knew how to handle him. I was also never a suck-up, a sycophant or an upstart, but I always behaved modestly and, I think, with a sense of my own dignity. This is how I appeared before Beria when he called me then. You didn’t have to be particularly insightful to understand all this, and I think that Beria guessed my character at first glance. He saw the opportunity to use my abilities for his own purposes without the risk of having a rival or anything like that,” Merkulov later recalled.

• • As an employee of the Cheka, Merkulov twice, in 1922 and 1923, submitted an application to the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Only the second time, in May 1923, he was accepted as a candidate with a two-year probationary period. In 1925, he applied for admission to the party, it was as if he was accepted, but the party card was never issued. Only Beria's intervention saved the situation. In 1927, Merkulov was given a party card as a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) indicating his party experience since 1925.
• From 1923 to January 23, 1925 - head of the 1st department of the Economic Department of the Plenipotentiary Representation of the OGPU for the Trans-SFSR - Cheka under the Council of People's Commissars of the Trans-SFSR.
• In 1925 - head of the Information and Agents Department of the Plenipotentiary Representation of the OGPU for the Trans-SFSR - Cheka under the Council of People's Commissars of the Trans-SFSR.
• In 1925-1926 - Head of the Economic Department of the Cheka - GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the SSR Georgia.
• In 1926-1927 - Head of the Economic Department of the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the SSR Georgia.
• In 1927-1929 - Head of the Department of Information, Agitation and Political Control of the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the SSR of Georgia.
• In 1929-1931 - Head of the Secret Operations Unit and Deputy Chairman of the GPU of the Adjara Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. From May 4 to July 1930 and about. head of the Adjarian regional department of the GPU.
• From May 1931 to January 29, 1932 - head of the Secret Political Department of the Plenipotentiary Representation of the OGPU for the Trans-SFSR and the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the Trans-SFSR.

At party work

• From November 12, 1931 to February 1934 - assistant secretary of the Transcaucasian regional committee of the CPSU (b) and 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the CP (b) of Georgia.
• In March 1934 - November 1936 - head of the Department of Soviet Trade of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
• Until November 1936 - head of the Special Sector of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the CPSU (b)
• From November 11, 1936 to September 9, 1937 - head of the Special Sector of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia (Bolsheviks).
• From July 22, 1937 to October 1938 - head of the Industrial and Transport Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia.
• Since November 23, 1937 - member of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia (Bolsheviks).

In the NKVD and NKGB

In September 1938 he returned to work in the state security agencies. Merkulov recalled: “The first month after Beria arrived in Moscow, he forced me every day from morning until evening to sit in his office and watch how he, Beria, worked.”

On September 11, 1938, he was awarded the special title of Commissioner of State Security of the 3rd rank (on the same day Beria was awarded the special title of Commissioner of State Security of the 1st rank).

With the appointment of Beria as head of the GUGB, Merkulov is appointed to the position of his deputy.

• From September 29 to December 17, 1938 - Deputy Chief of the GUGB NKVD of the USSR.
• From October 26 to December 17, 1938 - head of the III department of the GUGB NKVD of the USSR.
• From December 17, 1938 to February 3, 1941 - First Deputy People's Commissar of the NKVD - Head of the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB).

“Although at the end of 1938, when Beria became the People’s Commissar, he instituted the USSR instead of Yezhov and, despite my requests not to do this, nominated me as his first deputy, he still relied mainly on Kobulov in operational work. Now it is absolutely clear to me that Beria nominated me for this position mainly only because I was the only Russian from his entourage. He understood that he could not appoint Kobulov or Dekanozov as first deputy. Such nominations will not be accepted. There was only one candidate left. I think that Beria understood, at least internally, that I was not suited by nature for this position, but apparently he had no other choice,” Merkulov recalled.

• From March 21, 1939 to August 23, 1946 - member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Transferred from member to candidate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks by the plenum of August 21 - 23, 1946 by poll.

“From the act of acceptance and delivery of cases of the Ministry of State Security, it is established that the security service work in the Ministry was carried out unsatisfactorily, that the former Minister of State Security, Comrade V.N. Merkulov. hid from the Central Committee the facts about the major shortcomings in the work of the Ministry and the fact that in a number of foreign countries the work of the Ministry was a failure. In view of this, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decides: Withdraw comrade. Merkulova V.N. from the membership of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and transferred to candidate membership of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of August 23, 1946

According to the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940, Merkulov headed the “troika” of the NKVD, which was to decide on death sentences for interned Polish officers and citizens (Katyn execution).

In November 1940, Merkulov, as part of a delegation headed by Molotov, went to Berlin for negotiations with the leaders of the German Empire. He attended a breakfast given by Hitler at the Imperial Chancellery on November 13, 1940 in honor of the Soviet delegation. And in the evening of the same day, Molotov gave a return dinner at the Soviet embassy in Berlin, to which, in addition to Ribbentrop, Reichsführer SS Himmler also arrived.

In the period from February 3, 1941 to July 20, 1941 and from April 14, 1943 to May 7, 1946 - People's Commissar (from March 1946 - Minister) of State Security of the USSR.

“Smartly using the well-known provocative Shakhurin case against me, Abakumov became the Minister of State Security of the USSR in May 1946,” Merkulov believed.

As the son of Vsevolod Merkulov recalled: “According to his father, he was fired from the post of minister because of his softness. After the war, when a new wave of repressions began, Stalin needed a tough and straightforward person in this position. Therefore, after his father, Abakumov headed the MGB... ".

He signed a decree to cleanse the prisons of Western Ukraine from “enemies of the people,” as a result of which more than 10,000 people were shot in Lviv, Rivne and other regions.

• From July 31, 1941 to April 16, 1943 - First Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs.
• From November 17, 1942 to April 14, 1943 - head of the 1st department of the NKVD of the USSR.
• On February 4, 1943, he was awarded the special rank of State Security Commissioner of the 1st rank. The special title was abolished by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of July 6, 1945.

In 1943-1944. - headed the “Commission for the preliminary investigation of the so-called Katyn case.”

From August 23, 1946 to November 18, 1953 - candidate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) - CPSU. He was removed from the list of candidates for membership in the CPSU Central Committee by poll.

In the Main Directorate of Soviet Property Abroad I was then appointed deputy head of the Main Directorate of Foreign Property and went abroad. This appointment took place on the initiative of Comrade Stalin. I regarded it as an expression of confidence on the part of Comrade Stalin, given that I was sent abroad, despite my release from such a post as the Minister of State Security of the USSR.

• From February 1947 to April 25, 1947 - Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of Soviet Property Abroad under the USSR Ministry of Foreign Trade.
• From April 25, 1947 to October 27, 1950 - Head of the Main Directorate of Soviet Property Abroad under the USSR Council of Ministers for Austria.

At the Ministry of State Control “In 1950, it was Comrade Stalin who named me as a candidate for the post of Minister of State Control of the USSR... I felt almost rehabilitated after being released from work in the MGB in 1946,” Merkulov recalled.

• From October 27, 1950 to December 16, 1953 - Minister of State Control of the USSR.

Merkulov began to have health problems. In 1952 he had his first heart attack, and four months later his second. He was in the hospital for a long time. On May 22, 1953, by decision of the USSR Council of Ministers, Merkulov was granted leave for four months for health reasons.

Arrest and death

He noted that some time after Stalin’s death “he considered it his duty to offer Beria his services to work in the Ministry of Internal Affairs... However, Beria rejected my offer, obviously, as I now believe, believing that I would not be useful for the purposes that he intended myself then, taking control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. That day I saw Beria for the last time."

• On September 18, 1953, he was arrested in connection with the Beria case. He was in solitary confinement in Butyrka.

• On December 16, 1953, he was officially removed from the post of minister “due to the fact that the USSR Prosecutor’s Office uncovered the criminal, anti-state actions of Merkulov during his work in the MGB and the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.”

• On December 23, 1953, together with Beria and others, he was sentenced to the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR under Art. 58-1 "b", 58-7, 58-8, 58–11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR to capital punishment - the death penalty and was shot on the same day at 21:20. He was buried at the Donskoye Cemetery.

By the ruling of the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation No. bn-00164/2000 dated May 29, 2002, Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria and Vsevolod Nikolaevich Merkulov were recognized as not subject to rehabilitation.

Literary activity

V. N. Merkulov wrote 2 plays. The first play was written in 1927 about the struggle of American revolutionaries. The second, “Engineer Sergeev,” in 1941 under the pseudonym Vsevolod Rokk, is about the heroism of a worker who went to the front. The play was performed in many theaters.

He recalled how at the end of the war a reception was held in the Kremlin, which was attended by Stalin, members of the Politburo, military personnel, writers, and artists. As the head of state security, my father tried to stay close to Joseph Vissarionovich. At some point, Stalin approached a group of artists and started a conversation with them. And then one artist exclaimed with admiration, saying, what wonderful plays your minister writes (by that time the People's Commissariat of State Security had been renamed the ministry). The leader was very surprised: he really did not know that his father wrote plays that were shown in theaters. However, Stalin was not delighted with this discovery. On the contrary, turning to his father, he sternly said: “The Minister of State Security should do his job - catch spies, and not write plays.” Since then, dad never wrote: like no one else, he knew that the words of Joseph Vissarionovich were not discussed. Rem Vsevolodovich Merkulov

• Merkulov participated in editing the report “On the question of the history of Bolshevik organizations in Transcaucasia,” with which L.P. Beria spoke in 1935.
• Merkulov prepared an article about L.P. for the Small Soviet Encyclopedia. Beria.
• “The faithful son of the Lenin-Stalin party” (biographical essay about L.P. Beria, volume 64 pages and circulation of 15 thousand copies), 1940.

Family

• Father - Nikolay Merkulov, served as the chief of the Zakatala district, was a captain in the tsarist army, a hereditary nobleman (died in 1903).
• Mother - Ketovana Nikolaevna, from the respected Georgian princely family of Tsinamzgvarishvili.
• Wife - Lidia Dmitrievna Yakhontova(marriage registered in July 1918). Lydia Dmitrievna had an uncle, Viktor Aleksandrovich Yakhontov, who was a major general in the tsarist army, in 1917 a comrade of the Minister of War in the government of Alexander Fedorovich Kerensky, and since 1919 he lived in the United States of America, in the city of New York.
• Son - Rem Vsevolodovich Merkulov(b. 1924), professor, candidate of technical sciences, deputy. head Department of Moscow State Technical University "MAMI".

MERKULOV VSEVOLOD NIKOLAEVICH

(1895 , Zagatala city, Zakatala district. Caucasian governorship - 23.12.1953 ). Born into the family of a captain in the royal army. Russian. In KP with 09.25 . Member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (18th Congress). 08.46 promoted to candidate. Candidate for membership Central Committee of the CPSU 23.08.46-18.11.53 . Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR 1st-2nd convocations.

Education: 3 men's gymnasium, Tiflis 1913 ; Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Petrograd University 09.13-10.16 ; Orenburg school of warrant officers 11.16-03.17 .

Gave private lessons 09.13-10.16 .

In the army: Private student battalion, Petrograd 10.16-11.16 ; reserve warrant officer infantry shelf, Novocherkassk 04.17-08.17 ; ensign of the marching company, Rivne 09.17-10.17 ; ensign of the 331st Orsky Regiment 10.17-01.18 ; Due to illness, he was evacuated to Tiflis 01.18 .

Unemployed, Tiflis 03.18-08.18 ; clerk, teacher at a school for the blind, Tiflis 09.18-09.21 .

In the bodies of the Cheka-OGPU: pom. completed Georgian Cheka 09.21-1921 ; completed IVF Georgian Cheka 1921-? ; Art. completed IVF Georgian Cheka ?-05.23 ; beginning 1st department of ECO PP OGPU for the TSFSR-Transcaucasian Cheka ?-23.01.25 ; beginning INFAGO PP OGPU for the ZSFSR-Transcaucasian Cheka 23.01.25-1925 ; beginning IVF Georgian Cheka 1925-20.07.26 ; beginning ECO GPU Georgian SSR 20.07.26-1927 ; beginning INFAGO and PC GPU Georgian SSR 1927-02.29 ; deputy prev GPU of the Adjara Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, beginning. SOC 02.29-05.31 ; vrid prev. GPU of the Adjara Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic 04.05.30-07.30 ; beginning SPO PP OGPU for the ZSFSR and GPU ZSFSR 05.31-29.01.32 .

Pom. Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee and 1 Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia 12.11.31-02.34 ; head dept. owls trade of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks 03.34-11.36 ; head special sector of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks ?-11.36 ; head special sector of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia 11.11.36-09.09.37 ; head industrial-transport dept. Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia 22.07.37-10.38 .

In the bodies of the NKVD-NKGB-MGB: deputy beginning GUGB NKVD USSR 29.09.38-17.12.38 ; beginning 3 dept. GUGB NKVD USSR 26.10.38-17.12.38 17.12.38-03.02.41 ; beginning GUGB NKVD USSR 17.12.38-03.02.41 ; People's Commissar of the State Security Service of the USSR 03.02.41-20.07.41 ; 1st deputy People's Commissar internal affairs of the USSR 31.07.41-14.04.43 ; beginning 1 department NKVD USSR 17.11.42-14.04.43 ; People's Commissar-Minister of the State Security Service of the USSR 14.04.43-04.05.46 .

Deputy beginning GUSIMZ under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR 02.47-25.04.47 ; beginning GUSIMZ under the USSR Council of Ministers 25.04.47-27.10.50 ; Minister of State Control of the USSR 27.10.50-17.09.53 .

Arrested 18.09.53 ; sentenced by the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR 23.12.53 to VMN. Shot.

Not rehabilitated.

Ranks: GB Commissioner 3rd rank 11.09.38 ; GB Commissar 1st Rank 04.02.43 ; army General 09.07.45 .

Awards: badge “Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU (V)” No. 649 1931 ; Order of Lenin No. 5837 26.04.40 ; Order of the Republic of Tuva No. 134 18.08.43 ; Order of Kutuzov 1st degree No. 160 08.03.44 ; Order of the Red Banner No. 142627 03.11.44 ; 9 medals.

Note: He switched to party work already in November 1931.

From book: N.V.Petrov, K.V.Skorkin
"Who led the NKVD. 1934-1941"

VSEVOLOD NIKOLAEVICH MERKULOV

In 1941, in the city of Krasnodar, at the height of the war, one playwright with the pompous name Vsevolod Rokk completed a play with the simple title “Engineer Sergeev.” He didn’t have to spend a long time knocking around the theater thresholds, like his colleagues in the creative workshop, and persuading the managers and directors. There was always a hunger for modern drama, and already in 1942 the play began to be staged in one theater or another.

“Engineer Sergeev” was staged in Tbilisi (in Russian and Georgian), in Baku and Yerevan, in Riga (after the liberation of Latvia), in Ulan-Ude, Yakutsk, Vologda, Syzran, Arkhangelsk, Kostroma. Every year the number of productions grew. In February 1944, the play was staged on the stage of the Maly Theater.

It was noted by the entire Soviet press.

Theater critics, who often sharply criticized the weaknesses of modern playwrights, greeted the play with a bang.

There were laudatory reviews in Pravda, Izvestia, and in the then official propaganda department of the Central Committee, Literature and Art.

“Literature and Art” especially praised the Maly Theater’s performance: “It is a great task to play the image of a patriotic engineer who has devoted himself entirely to the service of the party and the people. Vsevolod Rokk’s play, staged at the Maly Theater branch, provides rich and rewarding material for the manifestation of acting skills... Selflessly devoted to the cause of his people, the Soviet man boldly looks death in the eyes and fulfills the task of the Motherland, sacrificing his life.”

Perhaps the reviewers really liked the play. Or maybe they just knew who was hiding under the pseudonym Vsevolod Rokk. The amateur playwright was Vsevolod Nikolaevich Merkulov. When the Maly Theater turned to his work, Merkulov held the post of People's Commissar of State Security of the USSR.

"WE WILL SHOOT YOU"

Merkulov, who spent half his life working as a security officer, was fond of literary creativity. He wrote plays. “Engineer Sergeev” was the most successful. Merkulov spoke about what was close to him.

The play takes place in July - September 1941. The plot is simple: Soviet troops are retreating, and the director of the power plant, Sergeev, must blow up his creation - the station that he himself built. The Germans are trying to stop him - they need a power plant - and send their agents to him: the son of a kulak, who was dispossessed and thrown into prison, where he died, and an engineer with pre-revolutionary experience who agreed to work for the Germans back in 1918, when they were in Ukraine.

One agent is caught by the NKVD, another is hit twice in the head by engineer Sergeev with a sledgehammer. He falls dead, as the author's remark says.

The German officers in the play also speak Russian. One of them comes from Riga: his father owned an estate in the Tula province, and the general recalls how every morning he went to inspect the barnyard, kennel and mill...

The author also featured a colleague in the play - the head of the regional department of the NKVD, a senior lieutenant of state security. He tells the main character that German agents are spreading rumors, and ours stupidly pick them up.

As a result, another completely Soviet person becomes, in fact, an involuntary enemy, sowing panic and uncertainty. Quite often such talkers are brought to my department.

Of course, things cannot happen without some oddities.

In the sense that they grab those who could still be kept free.

But mostly the real enemies come across:

We'll put you in jail, we'll sort it out, look, he's a German agent. Bastards!

Here Merkulov is precise in the details, he knows his colleagues: first they put them in prison, then they start to sort it out, and here very few people do not admit that they are spies.

Along the way, a senior state security lieutenant detains a suspicious man named Soykin, but there is no evidence of his guilt. The security officer himself says:

Our district prosecutor kept pestering me: release Soykin, you don’t have sufficient grounds to keep him under arrest. So I sent him to the disposal of the regional administration, to the city. I would like to gain time... I feel in my gut that he is doing something dirty.

Of course, the senior lieutenant of state security turns out to be right: he caught a traitor who defected to the Germans. But the ideas of those years about how and who could be arrested are conveyed accurately...

The hero of the play, engineer Sergeev, despite the fact that he feels sorry for the power plant he built to tears, blows it up together with the German occupiers and in the process dies himself.

The newspaper “Literature and Art” wrote: “Sergeev is ready to sacrifice, if the Motherland needs it, his life and children. He did not immediately understand why it was necessary, in the name of the Motherland, to destroy such a magnificent structure as his hydroelectric power station so that it would not fall to the enemy. But in the first, most difficult moment, when the thought of the possibility of destruction first entered his consciousness, he says in thought: “If necessary, we will blow it up.”

Merkulov knew not only how state security works. He knew how power plants, factories and oil rigs exploded during the retreat.

Nikolai Konstantinovich Baibakov, who headed the State Planning Committee for many years, and at the beginning of the war was the commissioner of the State Defense Committee for the destruction of oil wells and oil refineries in the Caucasus region, described how he received this kind of assignment.

Stalin called him:

Comrade Baibakov, Hitler is rushing to the Caucasus. Everything must be done to ensure that not a single drop of oil goes to the Germans.

Keep in mind, if you leave even one ton of oil to the Germans, we will shoot you.

But if you destroy the fields prematurely, and the Germans never capture them and we are left without fuel, we will shoot you too.

It is amazing that half a century later, Baibakov recalls Stalin’s eerie words with admiration.

Security officer Merkulov came to Baibakov’s aid. He even brought English specialists to Baibakova, who shared their experience of how they destroyed wells on the island of Borneo so that the oil would not go to the Japanese. Baibakov rejected English methods, our specialists came up with their own.

German agents did not scare Baibakov. If he was afraid of anything, it was not to carry out Stalin’s orders. Indeed, in this case, he would have been at the disposal of Merkulov, but not the playwright, but at that moment Beria’s first deputy at the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Therefore, Baibakov recalls, they blew up oil fields and power plants when the Germans were already nearby and machine gun fire was heard.

NARCOM THEORIST

Vsevolod Nikolaevich Merkulov was four years older than Beria, but in their relationship Lavrenty Pavlovich was always older. And not only by position. Merkulov lacked the determination and ruthlessness of Beria, and his organizational talents too.

Merkulov was born in 1895 in the small town of Zagatala in Azerbaijan. His father served in the tsarist army, after retiring, he became a teacher. Vsevolod Nikolaevich graduated from a men's gymnasium in Tiflis and, unlike Beria and his entourage, continued his education. He went to the capital and in 1913 entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University. So he was the most educated in Beria’s entourage, if not in the entire state security leadership.

Merkulov stood out greatly among his illiterate comrades. Viktor Semenovich Abakumov, who replaced him as Minister of State Security, graduated from four classes. But Merkulov joined the party later than others - only in 1925.

He managed to serve in the tsarist army - in October 1916 he was drafted into a student battalion in Petrograd and almost immediately sent to the Orenburg school of warrant officers. He served in the 331st Orsk Regiment, and in January 1918, due to illness, he was sent home to Tiflis. He was unemployed for several months, then became a teacher at a school for the blind.

In October 1921, he was accepted into the Georgian Cheka as an assistant commissioner. He worked in this department for ten years. He headed the economic department, was the head of the department of information, agitation and political control of the GPU of Georgia, chairman of the GPU of Adjara, and head of the secret political department of the GPU of Transcaucasia.

In November 1931, Beria, elected second secretary of the Transcaucasian regional committee and first secretary of the Central Committee of Georgia, transferred Merkulov to his assistant, then put him in charge of a special sector.

Beria liked Merkulov not only for his education and diligence. Merkulov wrote a brochure about Beria entitled “The Faithful Son of the Lenin-Stalin Party.”

In 1937, Merkulov became head of the industrial and transport department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia. The next year, Beria took him with him to Moscow and entrusted him with the most important post. Myself? Lavrentiy Pavlovich, while still in the role of first deputy people's commissar, also headed the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD. And he made Merkulov his deputy. He was immediately given the high rank of state security commissioner of the third rank: in the army hierarchy this is a lieutenant general.

After Beria's appointment as People's Commissar on December 17, 1938, Merkulov became first deputy People's Commissar and head of the Main Directorate of State Security. Intelligence, counterintelligence, and Politburo security were subordinate to him.

At the time of the annexation of the Baltic states, Merkulov secretly came to Riga to lead the process of Sovietization of Latvia.

After the division of Poland in the fall of 1939, Merkulov went to Lviv and personally led the operation to identify and isolate hostile elements, in other words, he carried out a massive cleansing of Western Ukraine. In the spring of 1940, the intelligent commissar of the third rank, Merkulov, was directly involved in preparing the execution of captured Polish officers in Katyn, approved and signed all the execution lists and personally supervised the liquidation.

With the outbreak of war, a new stream of prisoners poured into the camps. A special meeting, for example, gave ten years for failure to comply with a government decree on handing over personal radios, which had to be taken to the district executive committee. Another wave of prisoners are those who spread “false rumors” about the German offensive and German victories, as well as those arrested for “praising German technology.”

By the decision of the State Defense Committee, a special meeting was now given the right to determine any measure of punishment, up to and including execution.

At the same time, Merkulov was not the worst in his circle. He was polite, spoke calmly, without shouting. And he tried to be reasonable if it did not conflict with his official duties.

Academician Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov recalls that when Beria was arrested, party members were given a closed letter from the PC of the CPSU to read. Sakharov, although not a party member, got acquainted with it. It said, among other things, that Beria forced his subordinates to beat those arrested with his own hands. Only Merkulov flatly refused. Beria mocked him: a theorist!

Merkulov could at least be convinced of something. When the future academician and Nobel Prize winner, the brilliant physicist Lev Davidovich Landau, was arrested, academician Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa rushed to help him out. Merkulov received him and showed Kapitsa the investigative file. Landau was accused of all anti-Soviet sins.

“I guarantee that Landau will no longer engage in counter-revolutionary activities,” Kapitsa said.

Is he a very prominent scientist? - asked Merkulov.

Yes, on a global scale,” Kapitsa answered with conviction. Landau was released.

On February 3, 1941, the day the NKVD was divided into two people's commissariats, Merkulov was appointed people's commissar of state security. His first deputy was Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov. Merkulov was assigned to intelligence and counterintelligence, secret political management, and the investigative unit. Beria was left with the police, firefighters, border guards, the Gulag and all the work in industry.

Six months later, on July 20, when the war began, the NKVD and NKGB were hastily merged into one People's Commissariat. Merkulov again became Beria's first deputy. In February 1943, he received the rank of Commissar of State Security of the first rank (Army General). And two months later, on April 14, 1943, the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs was again divided, and Merkulov again headed the People's Commissariat of State Security.

DID STIRLITZ WORK FOR MERKULOV?

Perhaps this is just a legend, a myth, a beautiful fairy tale, but many even very competent people believe in it and consider it true.

It was told to me by the famous Germanist, professor, doctor of historical sciences Vsevolod Dmitrievich Yezhov:

Somewhere on the shores of the Gulf of Riga, in Jurmala, not far from the capital of Latvia, until recently there lived a Soviet intelligence officer who was hiding not only from strangers, but also from his own. In the 1920s he was infiltrated into the Nazi Party. He made a great career, participated in everything that the SS did. At the end of the war, the Americans arrested him and were going to try him as a war criminal, and ours barely scratched him out.

The story of this man seemed to form the basis of Yulian Semenov’s famous novel “Seventeen Moments of Spring,” on which an even more famous film was made.

In any case, this beautiful legend is told by the chief scientific consultant of the film, Professor Yezhov. And the main consultant of the film was a certain Colonel General S.K. Mishin. In fact, this is the pseudonym of the first deputy chairman of the KGB of the USSR Semyon Kuzmich Tsvigun, a person very close to Brezhnev. In the presence of Tsvigun, Yuri Andropov himself did not feel very confident.

Was it Stirlitz?

The late Yulian Semenovich Semenov, whom I knew and loved well, wrote a series of novels about the Soviet intelligence officer Stirlitz-Isaev. Semyonov wrote so convincingly that Stirlitz is perceived by many almost as a real figure.

Yulian Semenov himself said that one of Stirlitz’s prototypes was the famous intelligence officer Norman Borodin, the son of Mikhail Markovich Borodin, who was the main political adviser in China in the 20s.

Lieutenant General Sergei Aleksandrovich Kondratov, who worked all his life in the German direction, believes that the prototype was the creator of illegal intelligence, Alexander Mikhailovich Korotkov.

So was Stirlitz real? Or rather, did this literary and film hero have a prototype? Did a Soviet intelligence officer, a Russian man, one of the subordinates of the first rank state security commissioner Vsevolod Merkulov, work in a high position in Nazi Germany?

The opinion of experts is clear: Stirlitz did not exist and could not exist. A Russian person or a Russified German could, of course, try to pass himself off as a native resident of Germany, but for a very short time and before the first check: the Germans also had personnel departments, and no less vigilant. Hero of the Soviet Union Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov operated quite successfully in the German rear, but he was not so much a scout as a saboteur. He appeared in different places, took on the Germans, as they say, on a blackamoor, and disappeared before they had time to become interested in him.

A Soviet citizen intelligence officer could not take a prominent place in Nazi Germany, because he would inevitably be exposed. Intelligence did not strive for this. The task was different: to recruit Germans ready to work for the Soviet Union.

In the late 20s - early 30s, Germany had one of the largest Soviet intelligence residencies with a large number of agents. Why then was the Soviet Union taken by surprise on June 22, 1941?

In 1936, a massive purge of Soviet intelligence began. Intelligence officers working abroad were called to Moscow, arrested and either shot or sent to camps. The same thing happened in military intelligence.

In December 1938, the leadership of the Army Intelligence Directorate, writes historian Valery Yakovlevich Kochik, reported to the People's Commissar of Defense: “The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army was actually left without intelligence. The illegal network of agents, which is the basis of intelligence, has been almost completely eliminated.”

Major General Vitaly Nikolsky, who on the eve of the war served in the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army, told me:

The repressions that unfolded after the “Tukhachevsky case” dealt the army such a blow from which it did not have time to recover by the beginning of the war. By 1940, there was not a single experienced employee left in the central apparatus of military intelligence. All were destroyed. Our bosses were hastily mobilized nominees, who in turn changed, as if in a kaleidoscope.

When an officer of the central apparatus was arrested in Moscow, the intelligence officers who relied on him - legal and illegal - automatically fell under suspicion. At first, their information was no longer trusted. Then they were recalled to Moscow and destroyed.

It happened that our intelligence officer was recalled so quickly that he did not have time to transfer his agency to his replacement...

Thus, the main damage to intelligence was caused not by enemy counterintelligence, but by our own superiors.

“We were better informed about the plans of the leaders of European countries than about the intentions of our own government,” said General Nikolsky. - The conclusion of a pact with Germany and the entry of Soviet troops into Polish territory was a surprise for military intelligence. We did not have time to redeploy all the agents from the eastern regions of Poland further to the West, and all our valuable informants, during the rapid advance of the Red Army to the Bug, ended up in Soviet captivity. This was a great loss for human intelligence on the eve of a terrible war.

We started the war with very low technical equipment,” continued General Nikolsky. - The radio stations were stationary, heavy, and could only be used by agents constantly working in a certain area. And marshrutniks - agents who, under a plausible pretext, were moving along a route of interest to intelligence - were deprived of operational radio communications. However, this saved them from inevitable failure.

After the war began, so much information was demanded from the permanent agents that they had to sit on the key for hours. As a result, they were detected by direction finders, and they became prey for counterintelligence...

In February 1941, there was a meeting at the intelligence department in Moscow, at which officers from the districts frankly said: the country is on the brink of war, and the intelligence service is completely unprepared for it. There are no radio stations, no parachutes, no automatic weapons suitable for sabotage and reconnaissance groups. In the first months of the war, groups armed only with pistols were sent behind enemy lines: there were no machine guns.

The summer retreat of the first year of the war was disastrous for intelligence. All reconnaissance points, personnel of intelligence officers, and radio operators were lost. In a word, everything had to be created anew: to find people, to train radio operators.

At first, we didn’t even know how to find the owners of this scarce specialty: before the war, such records did not exist,” Nikolsky recalled. “It takes four months to train a radio operator, but we had to send groups to the German rear every day. There was no record of those who knew German. They were looking all over the country for amateur radio operators, graduates of philological and pedagogical faculties who had studied German.

The intelligence service also did not have its own aircraft, suitable for sending reconnaissance and sabotage groups. 105th Squadron; created only in 1943. And before that, they dropped groups from the first plane they came across. There were many failures and tragedies. The paratroopers were destroyed right in the air.

Nevertheless, how do you generally assess the activities of military intelligence in the first period of the war? - I asked General Nikolsky.

We coped with our task because we were able to take advantage of the confusion and turmoil among the Germans. The occupation command had not yet managed to introduce population registration or create a local police force. But we still acted on our own land. In nine cases out of ten, our agent in the occupied territory could count on the help of any local person. They always gave us a piece of bread, if we had it, of course. It became difficult to work when the German field gendarmerie and the Gestapo deployed in the occupied territories, when the police created by the Germans appeared and repressions began for helping the partisans.

The losses of the reconnaissance groups were so great that questions inevitably arise: are these losses justified? Was the information brought by army intelligence worth sending people to almost certain death?

It was worth it. Otherwise we would not be able to fight. Sometimes the means to achieve the goal were terrible, but you can’t win a battle without intelligence...

During these decisive years, Stalin constantly changed the structure of the special services. The People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs was then divided into two institutions, one of which became an independent People's Commissariat of State Security, and then again it was recreated as a single organization.

Army counterintelligence was subordinated either to the People's Commissariat of Defense, then to the NKVD, then again to the People's Commissariat of Defense. Reorganizations did not bypass military intelligence either.

In October 1942, Stalin signed an order to reorganize military intelligence:

"1. Remove the GRU from the General Staff of the Red Army and subordinate it to the People's Commissar of Defense.

2. The GRU of the Red Army is entrusted with conducting human intelligence of foreign armies both abroad and in the territory of the USSR temporarily occupied by the enemy.

3. Military intelligence should be removed from the jurisdiction of the GRU.

4. To direct and organize the work of military intelligence, create a military intelligence department within the General Staff, subordinating the intelligence departments of the fronts and armies to it.”

This order fragmented and virtually paralyzed military intelligence. But the worst thing was that Stalin ordered that operational intelligence intelligence in the “army-front” link be disbanded, since it was clogged with “doubles”, provocateurs and was led by illiterate commanders. All intelligence officers should be handed over to the NKVD. Junior officers should be sent to replenish the troops.

The order found me in Stalingrad, where a new front had been created, for which we had just established a reconnaissance apparatus with great effort,” Nikolsky recalled. - And then it turns out that all our work is in vain. Commanders of armies and fronts wrote entire petitions to Stalin asking him to restore intelligence. In the end, an order was issued to restore military intelligence and create an intelligence department of the general staff...

The consequences of the blow that was dealt to intelligence in the fall of 1942 were felt for a long time. Professionals sent to the troops have already died in battle. While new officers were gaining experience, agents were dying, and the army was not receiving vital information.

But Stalin loved intelligence and at the same time, through the hands of Yezhov, he almost completely destroyed it. In 1938, only three employees remained in the Berlin station. One of them did not speak German.

The Berlin residency began to be restored only in 1939, when the Main Directorate of State Security was headed by Merkulov, but the new generation of intelligence officers was no longer able to achieve previous successes.

An extensive network of agents was formed, but the agents were of low level. Such an agent knows only what is happening in the department in which he serves. But he is unable to penetrate the thoughts and intentions of government leaders, and in fact, that’s all that matters.

Soviet agents did not have first-hand information from Hitler's entourage. Moscow did not know what the German leaders were really thinking and saying. We made assumptions and were wrong.

In addition, Amayak Zakharovich Kobulov, the brother of Bogdan Kobulov, Merkulov’s deputy in the People’s Commissariat of State Security, was appointed head of the station in Berlin.

According to Valentin Berezhkov, if the elder Kobulov was repulsively ugly, short, fat, then Amayak was tall, slender, handsome, with a mustache, courteous and charming, the soul of society and a wonderful toastmaster. But this was the end of Amayak Kobulov’s merits.

Resident Kobulov, who began his career as a cashier-accountant in Borjomi, knew neither the German language nor the situation in Germany. He grew up in the KGB department thanks to his older brother. Before his appointment to Berlin, he was the first deputy people's commissar of internal affairs of Ukraine.

German counterintelligence successfully slipped Amayak Kobulov Russian-speaking double agents who actually worked for the Main Directorate of Imperial Security. Kobulov easily swallowed the bait. Hitler took part in this big game. He himself looked through the information intended for Kobulov.

Through him, the Germans slipped Stalin reassuring information: Germany was not going to attack the Soviet Union. And in Moscow, Merkulov reported Kobulov’s encryption to Stalin.

On May 25, 1941, Merkulov sent a note to Stalin, Molotov and Beria based on reports from a Soviet intelligence agent in Berlin, a native of Latvia, Orestes Berlings, who in reality was a German counterintelligence agent nicknamed Peter. But Amayak Kobulov believed him.

So, Merkulov’s note said: “War between the Soviet Union and Germany is unlikely... German military forces assembled on the border must show the Soviet Union determination to act if forced to do so. Hitler hopes that Stalin will become more accommodating and stop all intrigues against Germany, and most importantly, give more goods, especially oil.”

Many Soviet intelligence agents were people of left-wing convictions, anti-fascists who considered the Soviet Union an ally in the fight against Hitler. Others asked for money for information. It's a piece of work - the more you bring, the more you get. And it turned out that they paid more for disinformation.

Another problem was that the information received in Moscow could not be correctly comprehended. Stalin did not trust the analytical abilities of his security officers, preferred to draw conclusions himself and demanded that Merkulov put the original intelligence reports on his desk. Therefore, Merkulov did not need to create an information and analytical service in intelligence. Such a service appeared only in 1943.

The film "Seventeen Moments of Spring" paints a funny picture: intelligence officers tell politicians what to do. In the real world, everything is different: politicians make decisions, and intelligence officers look for justification for these decisions.

Until June 22, 1941, Stalin and his circle believed in the possibility of long-term cooperation with Hitler. Therefore, in the special intelligence reports that Merkulov brought, Stalin saw only what he wanted to see.

Several years ago, the Foreign Intelligence Service suddenly announced that the real prototype of Stirlitz was a German named Willy Lehmann, a Gestapo employee who, under the pseudonym Breitenbach, had worked for Soviet intelligence since 1929. It’s as if Yulian Semenov was given the Breitenbach case, but they were advised to turn the German into a Russian.

This is wrong. At that time, the Breitenbach case was classified, and it was only recently revealed. Yulian Semenov had no idea about Breitenbach.

Gestapo officer Willy Lehmann, alias Breitenbach, was indeed the highest-ranking Soviet agent. His fate is tragic. In 1938, when the Soviet station in Germany was destroyed by Stalin, communication with Willy Lehmann ceased.

For two years he could do nothing to help the Soviet Union, because no one came to him. Communication was restored at the beginning of 1941 and was interrupted with the German attack on the Soviet Union.

In 1942, either from despair or stupidity, Willie Lehman was killed. The password to contact him was given to an inept and unprepared paratrooper who was thrown across the front line. The Gestapo immediately caught him. He betrayed Willy Lehmann, whom fate had deprived of the luck that invariably accompanied Standartenführer Stirlitz...

By the beginning of the war, the Soviet Union had an extensive intelligence network in Germany, including agents in the air force, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Economics, the Gestapo and defense plants.

The People's Commissariat of State Security had a powerful illegal organization in Berlin, which was led by the anti-fascists Harro Schulze-Boysen and Arvid Harnack, who later became famous. Possessing extensive connections, they supplied Moscow with comprehensive information that Merkulov could be proud of.

Military intelligence had illegal groups in Belgium, Holland and France.

Soviet agents provided a lot of information, especially in the first months of the war. But they quickly began to be caught, quite often due to mistakes by the center, which the Gestapo took advantage of.

The People's Commissariat of State Security, as well as the intelligence department of the Red Army, demanded the latest information, and immediately. But the connection was a weak point. The radio operators sat on the air for hours, the radios were detected, and the intelligence officers were arrested one after another.

The Gestapo was headed by the same Heinrich Muller, who was brilliantly played by Leonid Bronevoy in the film “Seventeen Moments of Spring”. In life, Muller was not such a bright and interesting person. He was simply a skilled policeman who acted methodically and thoroughly.

In Berlin, I walked along the street where Standartenführer Stirlitz allegedly worked.

There was little left of the building of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security in the German capital - only a destroyed bunker in which the SS guards were sitting. The building itself was demolished to the ground and a museum dedicated to the victims of the Gestapo was installed there, with underground chambers and many horrific photographs.

Now it is even difficult to imagine that once there was German counterintelligence here, which acted very effectively, despite the fact that the German state secret police were small - especially in comparison with the gigantic apparatus of the NKVD, NKGB and military counterintelligence SMERSH.

In 1944, the Gestapo had 32 thousand employees. Before the war there were even fewer Gestapo men. For example, in 1937 in Düsseldorf, a city with a population of four million, 291 people served in the local Gestapo office. In the city of Essen, which had a population of about a million people, there were 43 Gestapo men.

The Gestapo did not have many informants: usually there are several dozen people in a big city. There were, of course, also voluntary assistants who, with the help of denunciations to the Gestapo, settled personal scores with enemies and stroked their pride.

The strength of the Gestapo lay not in the number of men in black uniforms, but in the frightening sense of their omnipotence and omnipresence. The Germans were convinced that no one and nothing could hide from the eyes of the Gestapo.

Like the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany had military intelligence (Abwehr), counterintelligence (Gestapo) and political intelligence, which was part of the Reich Security Main Office. The Abwehr was headed by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, and political intelligence was headed by the young SS General Walter Schellenberg, who is played by Oleg Tabakov in the film “Seventeen Moments of Spring.” There is even a superficial resemblance between Schellenberg and Tabakov...

The military and political intelligence apparatuses in Germany were significantly smaller than in the Soviet Union. German intelligence could not boast of any particular successes both in the pre-war years and during the war. The Germans had almost no agents on the territory of the Soviet Union. The Germans tried to compensate for this by sending in paratroopers, but to no avail: they were caught almost immediately.

Counterintelligence in this war turned out to be stronger than intelligence, and only towards the end of the war the situation became equal. The Gestapo tracked down all illegal Soviet intelligence stations, and the intelligence network in Germany was lost. But Soviet intelligence continued to provide valuable information: Merkulov’s people, who in April 1943 again headed the People’s Commissariat of State Security, found it out not from the enemy, but from the allies.

For that matter, Stirlitz was neither German nor Russian, but rather English. Moreover, there were a lot of English Stirlitzes. There were five of the most skillful and successful. The name of one of them is known to everyone - this is Kim Philby.

For a long time it was believed that three more people worked for Soviet intelligence with Philby: his friends Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, who fled to the Soviet Union after being exposed in 1951, and Anthony Blunt, who nevertheless decided to remain in England. So they all together replaced the never-existent Stirlitz.

Foreign intelligence colonel Yuri Ivanovich Modin told me about the collective Stirlitz. He himself worked in intelligence for forty-five years. He was taken into reconnaissance during the war after learning that he knew a little English. He spent a total of about ten years in England: from 1947 to 1953 and from 1955 to 1958.

I worked with Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess,” says Modine. - Less with Philby: during my business trip he was not in London. All of them were highly qualified politicians. Without our or my instructions, they knew what was relevant and what was not, which foreign policy problem required additional coverage and which did not. My intervention was sometimes even harmful...

One day an order was received from the center to provide information on some issue in Anglo-French relations. Burgess told Modin that the matter was complicated and it would be better if he himself wrote a short and clear summary. Modin refused and asked to bring all the documents. Burgess did it.

Neither Modin nor the specialists at the center were able to figure it out and ultimately were forced to ask Burgess to explain the situation and clarify things...

During the war, the flow of information from Soviet agents in England was so great that the station did not have time to process it. Secret documents were brought literally in suitcases. And then a decision was made in Moscow: materials received from the five most valuable agents should be processed first. This is how the famous five appeared.

And yet, due to lack of time, the residency was not able to master them all; whole piles of papers remained unsorted.

It was a good security system if a lot of classified materials could be easily removed from the building of the British Foreign Office,” I told Yuri Ivanovich Modin.

In England they trust their officials, and in principle, in my opinion, they do the right thing,” he answered. - The fact that the five worked for us was a historical accident. Trust is the key to effective work...

Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt agreed not to work for Soviet intelligence, but to take part in the fight against fascism. In the 30s, they looked at Russia as an outpost of the world revolution. They came from aristocratic families, but studied under teachers known for their Marxist views. It was considered fashionable back then.

Philby was a left-wing socialist. A university teacher introduced him to the communists.

Burgess openly declared his affiliation with the Communist Party and studied Marx. He, according to Modin, knew the history of the CPSU brilliantly.

Blunt did not advertise his leftist views, but came to Marxism through his subject - art history. He believed that art in our era is dying due to the lack of patrons of the arts, such as existed in the Renaissance. Market relations are the death of art. Only subsidies from the socialist state can save him...

Maclean, the son of a British minister, came to communism through a complex combination of sensitivity to the plight of working-class Scots, nationalism and a personal penchant for preaching and charitable work.

Before the war, they helped Russia because they believed that our country was the only bastion against fascism. When the war began, they considered it their duty to help us. At the same time, they were by no means delighted with what was happening in the Soviet Union; in particular, they considered our foreign policy completely worthless.

Philby had the ability to accurately analyze any problem and propose the only correct solution, said Yuri Modin. With this, he made a career for himself in intelligence: no matter what task he is assigned, everything works out.

I think,” says Colonel Modin, “Philby never made a single mistake in his entire life.” He was actually caught and still got out!

Why did the top five fail?

The Americans managed to decipher Soviet intelligence telegrams. By analyzing them, they established the identity of the Soviet agent. This was Donald Maclean, head of the American department of the British Foreign Office, and before that an employee of the British embassy in Washington, who was also involved in Anglo-American cooperation in the creation of the atomic bomb...

How did the Americans manage to decipher Soviet radio telegrams?

In 1944, the US Office of Strategic Services acquired a half-burnt Soviet code book from the Finns, which they had picked up on the battlefield. United States Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, who considered it impossible to spy against the Allies, ordered the code book to be returned to the Russians, but American intelligence officers naturally copied it. People's Commissar of State Security Merkulov had no idea what blow would soon be dealt to his department.

After the war, this book helped decipher the telegrams exchanged between the People's Commissariat of State Security and the station in Washington and New York. It is believed that the Soviet station in New York, in turn, made an unforgivable mistake by using one-time encryption tables twice. One way or another, decoding the telegrams soon led to major failures.

The first to be exposed was Donald MacLean, who was very successful in his career. He was appointed head of a department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In London they treated him well, because his father had once been a minister.

So what happened? - I asked Yuri Modin.

Philby, who at that moment was in the United States as a liaison officer with the CIA, by virtue of his official position, learned about this and sent Burgess to London to warn both the Soviet station and Donald Maclean himself about the failure.

And then the decision was made to take McLean to the Soviet Union?

McLean immediately warned Burgess: "If I get arrested, I'll split." Nervous tension took its toll on McLean. He was forced to undergo treatment for alcoholism. This means that McLean had to be taken out. But they didn’t dare send him alone. He had to travel through Paris. He had the most romantic memories associated with this city. They were afraid that if he got to Paris, he would get drunk. And if he gets drunk, he will be caught. In short, Burgess went with him.

But the disappearance of the uncontrollable and extravagant Burgess and the unstable and suffering Maclean ruined Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt. Everyone knew that they were close friends, and the first thing they did was suspect them of espionage.

Philby was forced to leave intelligence, but he remained in England for several more years. Blunt refused to flee to Moscow. He admitted to authorities that he worked for Soviet intelligence, but revealed the details only after the death of Burgess, whom he loved very much.

And how did puritanical Moscow treat Burgess with his homosexual inclinations?

They explained to him that we have strict laws on this matter and they will have to be followed. Nevertheless, he somehow got out of the situation. But in reality he could only live in London. He desperately needed to go to the pub in the evening, at about seven o’clock. Burgess - he was a groovy, hooligan. I remember that in Ireland, while on vacation, he crushed a man to death. But he got out of it: he was everywhere full of friends, he opened any door with his foot. In England they forgave him everything. No, he couldn’t live in Moscow...

The names of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, who fled to Moscow in 1951, were the first to be named in the Soviet press by the magazine “New Time”.

In issue 40 of 1953, an anonymous article published in the magazine under the heading “Against disinformation and slander” branded “Cold War knights and swindlers of the capitalist press” who had the audacity to claim that some Burgess and Maclean had moved to Moscow and that Donald MacLean was even followed by his wife Melinda.

This message, wrote Novoye Vremya, “caused cheerful excitement in our editorial office, where they know about Burgess and Maclean only from the shrill stories of the Western press.”

In England they decided that the Soviet leadership had staged another propaganda game, they wondered what its meaning was, and they were mistaken. The article about Burgess and Maclean was an editorial initiative: after all, no one in the magazine had any idea who they were talking about. The habit of rebuffing the West on every occasion has failed the journalists this time. The day after the publication of the magazine, the editor-in-chief received a call from an angry Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, who had been returned to the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs after Stalin’s death:

Who instructed you to make such statements?

Only in 1956 did Moscow officially admit that Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean had received asylum in the Soviet Union, but for a long time denied their work for Soviet intelligence.

Guy Burgess was the unluckiest of the top Soviet intelligence agents in the British Isles. In Moscow, he received a passport in the name of Jim Andreevich Eliot. He could not stand Soviet life and asked the KGB for permission to return to England, but no one wanted this. He did not live long in Moscow and died, one might say, of melancholy.

Donald Donaldovich MacLean, who was calmer in character, did not approach the KGB leadership with such naive requests. He worked at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Academy of Sciences until his death, wrote books and was quietly indignant at socialist reality.

Harold (Kim) Philby was a born intelligence officer. Since 1939, he served in British intelligence, making a successful career. Unlike his comrades, he was not homosexual and hid his communist beliefs, if he had them. He undoubtedly enjoyed the role of a man who leads the world's largest intelligence services (British and American) by the nose, and valued the praise given to him by the KGB.

He reached the pinnacle of his career in 1945, heading the department of the British Secret Service working against the Soviet Union. Philby conveyed to Moscow the names of all the agents who in those years, with the knowledge of British intelligence, were trying to be sent to socialist countries. We are probably talking about hundreds of people who were caught and shot. When Philby was told about this, he casually waved it off: in war it’s like in war.

However, he knew that he himself was not threatened with the death penalty even if exposed: in England spies are not executed in peacetime.

The first real threat to him arose at the moment when an employee of the Soviet station in Turkey, Konstantin Volkov, met with the British consul and asked for political asylum, promising in return to name the names of three high-ranking Soviet agents, two of whom work in the British Foreign Office, and the third in intelligence.

The slow and dependent consul sent a request to London: what should he do?

A telegram from Istanbul landed on Kim Philby's desk, and he reported it to his Soviet contact. KGB officers immediately took Volkov to Moscow. You can imagine his fate.

The British government, loyal to its compatriots, even after the escape of Burgess and Maclean, defended Philby's innocence. The special services, of course, understood that Philby was a spy, but counterintelligence did not find evidence of his work for Soviet intelligence. And in England they don’t judge without evidence.

Philby's courage, composure, intelligence and professional talents inspire respect. But it is curious that he refused to serve a country where individual rights are so respected, and all his life he served a country where they were shot, without bothering to look for evidence of guilt.

After a lengthy investigation in the autumn of 1955, Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan, a true gentleman, told the House of Commons that Philby had carried out his duties with integrity and skill and there was no evidence that he had betrayed the interests of England.

Philby was allowed to go to Lebanon as a correspondent. And in 1962, when counterintelligence again became interested in him, he finally fled to Moscow. Here he was greeted wonderfully, presented with orders, but was not allowed to get to real business. His dream of sitting at the headquarters of Soviet intelligence and being the chief consultant disappeared like smoke. Like all defectors, no one needed him anymore. In addition, not everyone at Lubyanka trusted him: especially vigilant security officers believed that he was deceiving the KGB and was loyal to England.

In any case, his every move was watched, and listening equipment was installed in his apartment. Idleness and the inability to play his favorite spy games were the most difficult test for Philby. In a fit of despair, he tried to commit suicide.

Only in recent years did he find something to do: he began to study with intelligence school students who were preparing to work in England. In 1977, he was allowed to come to the headquarters of Soviet intelligence in Yasenevo so that he could speak at a ceremonial meeting of the apparatus of the First Main Directorate of the KGB.

His third wife Eleanor, who followed him to Moscow, wrote in her memoirs that Philby drank heavily and “took the wife of Donald Maclean, who suffered from impotence.” Philby also broke up with Eleanor and married again. This fourth marriage turned out to be successful and brightened up his last years of life.

The fourth Soviet agent, Anthony Blunt, one of the most famous British art historians, curator of the Royal Gallery, arranged his life somewhat better. He cooperated with British counterintelligence, told a lot, thanks to which he remained in his homeland and preserved his freedom.

“It gave me great pleasure to tell the Russians the name of every English counterintelligence officer,” admitted Anthony Blunt. Since 1940, he served in counterintelligence and at one time was a liaison officer at the headquarters of the Allied forces. In 1945, in defeated Germany, he carried out a special assignment for the royal family, after which he became the curator of the Royal Gallery.

Anthony Blunt was an elegant, charming and highly educated man. He knew five languages. He was not only involved in art - he received his first academic degree at Cambridge in mathematics.

Minister of State Control of the USSR 27th October - 22nd of May
Head of the government	Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov
Predecessor	Lev Zakharovich Mehlis
Successor	Alexander Semenovich Pavelev
Minister of State Security of the USSR March 19 - May 7
Head of the government	Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin
Predecessor	position established, he himself is like the People's Commissar of GB
Successor	Victor Semenovich Abakumov
People's Commissar of State Security of the USSR February 3rd - March 15th
Head of the government	Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin
Predecessor	position established
Successor	position abolished, he himself is like the Minister of State Security
Birth	October 25 (November 6) Zagatala, Russian empire
Death	December 23(1953-12-23 ) (58 years old) Moscow, USSR
Burial place	Don Cemetery
The consignment	CPSU(b) (since 1925)
Education	SPbSU
Awards
Military service
Rank
Battles	The Great Patriotic War

Biography

Born into the family of a hereditary nobleman, captain of the tsarist army. Mother Ketovana Nikolaevna, nee Tsinamdzgvrishvili, a noblewoman from a Georgian princely family.

Since childhood, Vsevolod has been fond of literary creativity.

In 1913 he graduated from the Tiflis Third Men's Gymnasium with a gold medal. At the humanitarian gymnasium, he became so interested in electrical engineering that his articles were published in a special magazine in Odessa. He continued his studies by entering the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University. There he began writing and publishing stories about student life: “While still at the university, he wrote several romantic stories, which were published in literary magazines and received positive reviews,” his son recalled. From September 1913 to October 1916 he gave private lessons.

In July 1918, he married Lydia Dmitrievna Yakhontova and moved to live with her.

In the organs of the OGPU

In contrast to the version of Merkulov’s voluntary, on his own initiative, joining the Cheka, there is also information indicating that he began working there under coercion by the Chekists (as an officer) to be an informant for the white officers.

• From September 1921 to May 1923 - assistant commissioner, commissioner, senior commissioner of the Economic Department of the Cheka under the Council of People's Commissars of the SSR Georgia.

“I must say (now, 30 years later, I believe I can do this without the risk of being accused of self-praise) that at that time, despite my 27 years, I was a naive, very modest and very shy person, somewhat reserved and silent. I didn’t give speeches and I still haven’t learned how to make them. My tongue seemed to be constrained by something, and I could not do anything with it. The pen is another matter. I knew how to handle him. I was also never a suck-up, a sycophant or an upstart, but I always behaved modestly and, I think, with a sense of my own dignity. This is how I appeared before Beria when he called me then. You didn’t have to be particularly insightful to understand all this, and I think that Beria guessed my character at first glance. He saw the opportunity to use my abilities for his own purposes without the risk of having a rival or anything like that,” Merkulov later recalled.

• As an employee of the Cheka, Merkulov twice, in 1922 and 1923, submitted an application to the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Only the second time, in May 1923, he was accepted as a candidate with a two-year probationary period. In 1925, he applied for admission to the party, it was as if he was accepted, but the party card was never issued. Only Beria's intervention saved the situation. In 1927, Merkulov was given a party card as a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) indicating his party experience since 1925.
• From 1923 to January 23, 1925 - head of the 1st department of the Economic Department of the Plenipotentiary Representation of the OGPU for the Trans-SFSR - Cheka under the Council of People's Commissars of the Trans-SFSR.
• In 1925 - head of the Information and Agents Department of the Plenipotentiary Representation of the OGPU for the Trans-SFSR - Cheka under the Council of People's Commissars of the Trans-SFSR.
• In 1925-1926 - Head of the Economic Department of the Cheka - GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the SSR Georgia.
• In 1926-1927 - Head of the Economic Department of the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the SSR Georgia.
• In 1927-1929 - Head of the Department of Information, Agitation and Political Control of the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the SSR of Georgia.
• In 1929-1931 - Head of the Secret Operations Unit and Deputy Chairman of the GPU of the Adjara Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. From May 4 to July 1930 And. O. head of the Adjarian regional department of the GPU.
• From May 1931 to January 29, 1932 - Head of the Secret Political Department of the Plenipotentiary Representation of the OGPU for the Trans-SFSR and the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the Trans-SFSR

At party work

• From November 12, 1931 to February 1934 - assistant secretary of the Transcaucasian regional committee of the CPSU (b) and 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the CP (b) of Georgia.
• In March 1934 - November 1936 - head of the Department of Soviet Trade of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
• Until November 1936 - head of the Special Sector of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the CPSU (b)
• From November 11, 1936 to September 9, 1937 - head of the Special Sector of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia (Bolsheviks).
• From July 22, 1937 to October 1938 - head of the Industrial and Transport Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia.
• Since November 23, 1937 - member of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia (Bolsheviks).

In the NKVD and NKGB

In September 1938 he returned to work in the state security agencies. Merkulov recalled: “The first month after Beria arrived in Moscow, he forced me every day from morning until evening to sit in his office and watch how he, Beria, worked.” On September 11, 1938, he was awarded the special title of Commissioner of State Security of the 3rd Rank (on the same day, Beria was awarded the special title of Commissioner of State Security of the 1st Rank).

With the appointment of Beria as head of the GUGB, Merkulov is appointed to the position of his deputy.

• From September 29 to December 17, 1938 - Deputy Chief of the GUGB NKVD of the USSR.
• From October 26 to December 17, 1938 - head of the III department of the GUGB NKVD of the USSR.
• From December 17, 1938 to February 3, 1941 - First Deputy People's Commissar of the NKVD - Head of the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB).

“Although at the end of 1938, when Beria became the People’s Commissar, he instituted the USSR instead of Yezhov and, despite my requests not to do this, nominated me as his first deputy, in operational work he still relied mainly on Kobulov. Now it is absolutely clear to me that Beria nominated me for this position mainly only because I was the only Russian from his entourage. He understood that he could not appoint Kobulov or Dekanozov as first deputy. Such nominations will not be accepted. There was only one candidate left. I think that Beria understood, at least internally, that I was not suited by nature for this position, but, apparently, he had no other choice,” Merkulov recalled.

• From March 21, 1939 to August 23, 1946 - member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

In 1940, Merkulov was part of the “troika” that led the execution of Polish officers (Katyn execution).

In October 1940, Beria and Merkulov met with surviving Polish prisoners of war at a dacha near Moscow with the aim of creating Polish military units in the USSR.

In November 1940, Merkulov, as part of a delegation headed by Molotov, went to Berlin for negotiations with the leaders of the German Empire. He attended a breakfast given by Hitler at the Imperial Chancellery on November 13, 1940 in honor of the Soviet delegation. And in the evening of the same day, Molotov gave a return dinner at the Soviet embassy in Berlin, to which, in addition to Ribbentrop, Reichsführer SS Himmler also arrived.

In the period from February 3, 1941 to July 20, 1941 and from April 14, 1943 to May 7, 1946 - People's Commissar (from March 1946 - Minister) of State Security of the USSR.

• From July 31, 1941 to April 16, 1943 - First Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs.
• From November 17, 1942 to April 14, 1943 - head of the 1st department of the NKVD of the USSR.
• On February 4, 1943, he was awarded the special rank of State Security Commissioner of the 1st rank (special ranks of employees of state security agencies were abolished by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of July 6, 1945).

In 1943-1944. - headed the “Commission for the preliminary investigation of the so-called Katyn case”.

On July 9, 1945, he was awarded the military rank of Army General. (Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 1664).

“Smartly using the well-known provocative Shakhurin case against me, Abakumov became the Minister of State Security of the USSR in May 1946,” Merkulov believed.

As the son of Vsevolod Merkulov recalled: “According to his father, he was fired from the post of minister because of his softness. After the war, when a new wave of repression began, Stalin needed a tough and straightforward person in this position. Therefore, after his father, the MGB was headed by Abakumov...”

By a resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, adopted by poll on August 21-23, 1946, he was transferred from member to candidate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

“From the act of acceptance and delivery of cases of the Ministry of State Security, it is established that the security work in the Ministry was carried out unsatisfactorily, that the former Minister of State Security, Comrade V.N. Merkulov, hid from the Central Committee facts about the largest shortcomings in the work of the Ministry and that in a number of foreign countries the work The ministry turned out to be a failure. In view of this, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decides: Withdraw comrade. Merkulov V.N. from the members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and transferred to candidate members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of August 23, 1946

I was then appointed deputy head of the Main Directorate of Foreign Property and went abroad. This appointment took place on the initiative of Comrade Stalin. I regarded it as an expression of confidence on the part of Comrade Stalin, given that I was sent abroad, despite my release from such a post as the Minister of State Security of the USSR.

• From February 1947 to April 25, 1947 - Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of Soviet Property Abroad under the USSR Ministry of Foreign Trade.
• From April 25, 1947 to October 27, 1950 - Head of the Main Directorate of Soviet Property Abroad under the USSR Council of Ministers for Austria.

At the Ministry of State Control

“In 1950, it was Comrade Stalin who named me as a candidate for the post of Minister of State Control of the USSR... I felt almost rehabilitated after being released from work in the MGB in 1946,” Merkulov recalled.

• From October 27, 1950 to December 16, 1953 - Minister of State Control of the USSR.

Merkulov began to have health problems. In 1952 he had his first heart attack, and four months later his second. He was in the hospital for a long time. On May 22, 1953, by decision of the USSR Council of Ministers, Merkulov was granted leave for four months for health reasons.

Arrest, trial, execution

Merkulov noted that some time after Stalin’s death “he considered it his duty to offer Beria his services to work in the Ministry of Internal Affairs... However, Beria rejected my offer, obviously, as I now believe, believing that I would not be useful for the purposes that he intended for himself.” then, taking control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. That day I saw Beria for the last time.”

Literary activity

V. N. Merkulov wrote 2 plays. The first play was written in 1927 about the struggle of American revolutionaries. The second, “Engineer Sergeev,” in 1941 under the pseudonym Vsevolod Rokk, is about the heroism of a worker who went to the front. The play was performed in many theaters.

He recalled how at the end of the war a reception was held in the Kremlin, which was attended by Stalin, members of the Politburo, military personnel, writers, and artists. As the head of state security, my father tried to stay close to Joseph Vissarionovich. At some point, Stalin approached a group of artists and started a conversation with them. And then one artist exclaimed with admiration, saying, what wonderful plays your minister writes (by that time the People's Commissariat of State Security had been renamed the ministry). The leader was very surprised: he really did not know that his father wrote plays that were shown in theaters. However, Stalin was not delighted with this discovery. On the contrary, turning to his father, he sternly said: “The Minister of State Security should mind his own business - catch spies, and not write plays.” Since then, dad never wrote: like no one else, he knew that the words of Joseph Vissarionovich were not discussed. Rem Vsevolodovich Merkulov

• Merkulov participated in editing the report “On the Question of the History of Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia,” which L.P. Beria delivered in 1935.
• Merkulov prepared an article about L.P. Beria for the Small Soviet Encyclopedia.
• “The faithful son of the Lenin-Stalin party” (biographical essay about L.P. Beria, 64 pages in volume and with a circulation of 15 thousand copies), 1940.

Awards

• Order of Lenin No. 5837 (April 26, 1940, for the successful completion of Government tasks to protect state security and in connection with the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the birth of V.I. Lenin)
• Order of the Red Banner No. 142627 (November 3, 1944, for long service)
• Order of Kutuzov, 1st degree No. 160 (March 18, 1944, for the eviction of Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens and Ingush). The decree was canceled by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council on April 4, 1962.
• 9 medals
• Order of the Republic (Tuva) No. 134 (August 18, 1943)
• Badge “Honorary Worker of the Cheka-OGPU (V)” No. 649 (1931)

By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of December 31, 1953, he was stripped of the military rank of army general and state awards.