Viktor Abakumov

Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov (; 24 April 1908 – 19 December 1954) was a high-level Soviet security official from 1943 to 1946, the head of SMERSH in the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense, and from 1946 to 1951 Minister of State Security or MGB (ex-NKGB). He was removed from office and arrested in 1951 on fabricated charges of failing to investigate the Doctors' Plot. After the death of Joseph Stalin, Abakumov was tried for fabricating the Leningrad Affair, sentenced to death and executed in 1954. Early life and career Abakumov was an ethnic Russian. Recent scholarship suggests that he was born in Moscow, though he was previously said to be from the Don Cossack region of south Russia. His father was an unskilled labourer and his mother a nurse. At the age of 14, Abakumov joined the Soviet Red Army in spring 1922 and served with the 2nd Special Task Moscow Brigade in the Russian Civil War until demobilization in December 1923. He then joined the Komsomol. He became a candidate member of the Communist Party in 1930, and worked in the People's Commissariat of Supplies until 1932, while being responsible for the Military Section of the Communist Youth League in the Moscow area (raion).