# Semyon Ignatiev

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Soviet politician (1904-1983)

Semyon Ignatiev Семён Игнатьев Minister of State Security In office 9 August 1951 – 5 March 1953 Preceded by Sergei Ogoltsov Succeeded by Lavrentiy Beria Full member of the 19th Presidium In office 16 October 1952 – 5 March 1953 Member of the 19th Secretariat In office 5 March 1953 – 5 April 1953 Personal details Born 14 September 1904 Karlivka, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire Died 27 November 1983(1983-11-27) (aged 79) Moscow, Soviet Union Party Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1926–1961)

**Semyon Denisovich Ignatiev** ([Russian](/source/Russian_language): Семён Денисович Игнатьев; 14 September 1904 – 27 November 1983) was a Soviet politician, and the last head of the secret police appointed by [Joseph Stalin](/source/Joseph_Stalin).

## Early career

Ignatiev was the son of a peasant family of [Ukrainian](/source/Ukrainians) ethnicity. When he was ten, his parents moved to [Uzbekistan](/source/Uzbekistan), and he learnt to speak Uzbek. After the [Bolshevik Revolution](/source/October_Revolution), he joined [Komsomol](/source/Komsomol) and became a trade union organiser in [Bukhara](/source/Bukhara)[1] and an engineer, joined the [Communist Party](/source/Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union) in 1926. For most of his career, he was a discreet regional [apparatchik](/source/Apparatchik) in the border republics of the USSR.[2] In 1934-38, he worked in the central party apparatus in Moscow, but received sudden promotion in 1938, as a result of the [Great Purge](/source/Great_Purge), when he was appointed First Secretary of the communist party in the [Buryat ASSR](/source/Buryat_Autonomous_Soviet_Socialist_Republic). He was subsequently First Secretary in the [Bashkir ASSR](/source/Bashkir_Autonomous_Soviet_Socialist_Republic), in 1944-46, and served in senior party posts in the [Dagestan ASSR](/source/Dagestan_Autonomous_Soviet_Socialist_Republic), and Uzbekistan. In May or June 1946, he was summoned to Moscow to act as an inspector of party organisations, on the recommendation of [Nikolai Patolichev](/source/Nikolai_Patolichev), who had taken over as a party secretary.[3] In March 1947, he was appointed a secretary of the communist party of [Belorussia](/source/Belarus), responsible for agriculture, but was removed early in 1950, and posted to Uzbekistan.

## Head of Security

In December 1950, Ignatiev was recalled to Moscow and appointed head of the department of the [Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union](/source/Central_Committee_of_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union) that supervised party, [Komsomol](/source/Komsomol) and trade union personnel, and given the task of investigating the Minister of State Security ([MGB](/source/Ministry_of_State_Security_(Soviet_Union)) - forerunner of the [KGB](/source/KGB)), [Viktor Abakumov](/source/Viktor_Abakumov), who had been accused of corruption by a rival, [Ivan Serov](/source/Ivan_Serov)[4] When Abakumov was dismissed and arrested, in July 1951, Ignatiev was originally appointed representative of the Central Committee in the MGB. On 9 August 1951, he was appointed Minister of State Security.[4] He was a member of the [Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union](/source/Central_Committee_of_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union) from 1952 until 1961. He also briefly served as a member of the [Presidium of the Central Committee](/source/Politburo_of_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union) (previously named Politburo) in the final months before Stalin's demise.

Ignatiev's first task was to purge the security apparatus. In just over a year, he had 42,000 MGB officers sacked.[5] His tenure as its head coincided with the anti-semitic campaign that began with the arrests of every known Jew employed by the MGB - [Lev Shvartzman](/source/Lev_Shvartzman), [Leonid Eitingon](/source/Nahum_Eitingon), [Leonid Raikhman](/source/Leonid_Raikhman), [Andrei Sverdlov](/source/Andrei_Sverdlov), son of [Yakov Sverdlov](/source/Yakov_Sverdlov), and many more- and culminated in the infamous [Doctors' plot](/source/Doctors'_plot).

On 5 March 1953, after Stalin's death, Ignatiev was removed from his post in the MGB, as Beria absorbed the MGB into his [MVD](/source/Ministry_of_Internal_Affairs_(Russia)), and was appointed a Secretary of the Central Committee. In April, it was announced in *[Pravda](/source/Pravda)* and other newspapers that the Doctors' Plot had been a miscarriage of justice and that Ignatiev had been guilty of "political blindness and ignorance" in allowing it to happen.[6]

## Role in the Anti-Semitic Purge

Ignatiev's subordinate, [Mikhail Ryumin](/source/Mikhail_Ryumin), was charged with being the main instigator of the Doctors' Plot, for which he was shot. At the same time, it was Ignatiev's good fortune to be the first former head of the security services in almost 30 years to escape being arrested and executed - the fate suffered by [Genrikh Yagoda](/source/Genrikh_Yagoda), [Nikolai Yezhov](/source/Nikolai_Yezhov), [Vsevolod Merkulov](/source/Vsevolod_Merkulov), Beria and Abakumov. In later life, Ignatiev would claim that he was never really involved in the Doctors' Plot, except to pass messages between Stalin and Ryumin,[4] and that Stalin had repeatedly threatened to have him killed if he did not obey orders. [Nikita Khrushchev](/source/Nikita_Khrushchev) evidently believed him. In the famous [Secret Speech](/source/On_the_Cult_of_Personality_and_Its_Consequences) that he delivered in 1956 to the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, in which he exposed Stain's crimes for the first time, Khrushchev remarked: "Present at this Congress as a delegate is the former Minister of State Security Comrade Ignatiev. Stalin told him curtly, 'If you do not obtain confessions from the doctors we will shorten you by a head'."[7] In his memoirs, Khrushchev claimed:

I knew Ignatiev well, and I knew he was a very sick man. He had had a near fatal heart attack. He was mild, considerate and well-liked. We all knew what sort of physical condition he was in. Stalin was crazy with rage, yelling at Ignatiev and threatening him, demanding that he throw the doctors in chains, beat them to pulp, and grind them into powder.[8]

By contrast, the former MGB officer, [Pavel Sudoplatov](/source/Pavel_Sudoplatov), asserted that "at the peak of the anti-semitic campaign, not Ryumin but Mesetsov, Konyatkin and Ignatiev were in charge of the criminal investigation and the beating of the doctors"[9] He described Mesetsov and Konyatkin, who was Ryumin's deputy, as "incompetent". Ryumin was sacked in November 1952, while Ignatiev remained in office, though he collapsed on 14 November 1952 after transmitting a direct order from Stalin that the prisoners would be tortured. He may have been reluctant to have the instruction carried out, but the historians Jonathan Brent and Vladimir Naumov have noted that "Ignatiev's malaise and exhaustion did not prevent him from slavish obedience."[10]

Sudoplatov also alleged that Ignatiev planned to carry out assassinations in Germany and Paris of elderly opponents of the Soviet regime, including exiled [Mensheviks](/source/Mensheviks) and a Ukrainian nationalist who "was in this seventies, no longer active, but Ignatiev's group was eager to report his liquidation to impress the government."[11] Other planned targets for assassination allegedly included [Josip Broz Tito](/source/Josip_Broz_Tito) and [Alexander Kerensky](/source/Alexander_Kerensky).[4]

## Later career

In February 1954, Ignatiev was reappointed to the post of First secretary in the Bashkir republic, which he had held ten years earlier. In June 1957-October 1960, he was head of the communist party in [Tatarstan](/source/Tatarstan). Tatar historian credit him with having lobbied Moscow in 1958 to revive the Tatar language. According to one historian, Rimzil Valeyev "no other party leader cared for the [Tatar language](/source/Tatar_language) and culture as fundamentally and effectively as Ignatiev did in 1957-1960"[1] - partly because no other party official in Tatarstan had Ignatiev's experience of high level politics in Moscow.

Ignatiev retired "for health reasons" in 1961. He died of natural causes in 1983 and was buried in the [Novodevichy Cemetery](/source/Novodevichy_Cemetery) in Moscow, along with many members of the Soviet elite.

## References

1. ^ [***a***](#cite_ref-Valeyev_1-0) [***b***](#cite_ref-Valeyev_1-1) [""Выходец из КГБ был настоящим заступником национального образования и татарского народа" ("An ex-KGB officer was a real defender of national education and the Tatar people""](http://tatar-congress.org/ru/blog/vyhodets-iz-kgb-byl-nastoyashim-zastupnikom-natsionalnogo-obrazovaniya-i-tatarskogo-naroda/). *ТАТАРЫ: СТРАТЕГИЯ ДЕЙСТВИЙ*. 24 August 2020. Retrieved 13 February 2021.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** Zalessky, K.A. ["Семен Денисович Игнатьев, Официальная справка члена ЦК"](http://hrono.ru/biograf/bio_i/ignatev_sd.php). *Khronos*. Retrieved 13 February 2021.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-3)** Patolichev, N.S. (1983). *Measures of Maturity, My Early Life*. Oxford: Pergamon. pp. 285–86. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [0-08-024545-5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-08-024545-5).

1. ^ [***a***](#cite_ref-Birin2_4-0) [***b***](#cite_ref-Birin2_4-1) [***c***](#cite_ref-Birin2_4-2) [***d***](#cite_ref-Birin2_4-3) Birin, Mikhail. ["Семен Игнатьев: самый "бескровный" министр госбезопасности Сталина (Semyon Ignatiev: the most "bloodless" Minister of State Security of Stalin)"](https://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/136398). *БИЗНЕС Online*. Retrieved 13 February 2021.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-5)** Jonathan Brent, and Vladimir P. Naumov (2004). *Stalin's Last Crime: the Doctors' Plot*. London: John Murray. p. 153. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [0-7195-6508 1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-7195-6508_1).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-6)** Rapoport, Yakov (1991). *The Doctors' Plot, Stalin's Last Crime*. London: Fourth Estate. pp. 189–90. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [1-872180-13-2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/1-872180-13-2).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-7)** Khrushchev, Nikita. ["Khrushchev's Secret Speech, 'On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences,' Delivered at the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union"](https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/115995.pdf?v=3c22b71b65bcbbe9fdfadead9419c995) (PDF). *Wilson Center Digital Archive*. Wilson Center. Retrieved 13 February 2021.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-8)** Khrushchev, Nikita (1971). *Khrushchev Remembers*. London: Sphere. pp. 253–54.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-9)** Sudoplativ, Pavel (1995). *Special Tasks, the Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness - a Soviet Spymaster*. London: Warner Books. p. 306. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [0-7515-1240-0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-7515-1240-0).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-10)** Brent, and Naumov. *Stalin's Last Crime*. p. 221.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-11)** Sudoplatov. *Special Tasks*. p. 330.

- Gorlitzki, Yoram; Khlevniuk, Oleg (2004). *Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953*. New York: Oxford University Press. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [0-19-534735-8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-534735-8).

- Marie, Jean-Jacques (2001). [*Staline*](https://archive.org/details/staline0000mari). Paris: Fayard. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [2-213-60897-0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/2-213-60897-0).

- Sebag Montefiore, Simon (2004). *Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar*. London: Phoenix. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [0-7538-1766-7](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-7538-1766-7).

## External links

- [A biography of Semyon Ignatiev](https://web.archive.org/web/20070818114048/http://hronos.km.ru/biograf/ignattv_s.html) (in Russian)

- [Official FSB profile of Semyon Ignatiev](https://web.archive.org/web/20070222181419/http://www.fsb.ru/history/liders/ignatiev.html) (in Russian)

- [\[1\]](https://espressostalinist.com/2014/08/23/the-jewish-anti-fascist-committee-and-the-anti-jewish-plot/)

v t e 19th Presidium of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1952–1956) Full members Vasily Andrianov Averky Aristov Lavrentiy Beria Nikolai Bulganin Kliment Voroshilov Semyon Ignatiev Lazar Kaganovich Demyan Korotchenko Vasili Kuznetsov Otto Kuusinen Georgy Malenkov Vyacheslav Malyshev Leonid Melnikov Anastas Mikoyan Nikolai Mikhailov Vyacheslav Molotov Mikhail Pervukhin Panteleimon Ponomarenko Maksim Saburov Joseph Stalin Mikhail Suslov Nikita Khrushchev Dmitry Chesnokov Nikolai Shvernik Matvei Shkiryatov Alexei Kirichenko Candidate members Leonid Brezhnev Andrey Vyshinsky Arseny Zverev Nikolai Ignatov Ivan Kabanov Alexei Kosygin Nikolai Patolichev Nikolai Pegov Alexander Puzanov Ivan Tevosian Pavel Yudin Mir Jafar Baghirov Leonid Melnikov Panteleimon Ponomarenko Nikolai Shvernik Alexei Kirichenko

v t e Chiefs of Soviet secret police agencies Cheka (1917–1922) Felix Dzerzhinsky (1917–18) Jēkabs Peterss (1918)* Felix Dzerzhinsky (1918–22) GPU / OGPU (1922–1934) Felix Dzerzhinsky (1922–26) Vyacheslav Menzhinsky (1926–34) Genrikh Yagoda (1934) NKVD (1934–1941) Genrikh Yagoda (1934–36) Nikolai Yezhov (1936–38) Lavrentiy Beria (1938–41) NKGB (1941) Vsevolod Merkulov NKVD (1941–1943) Lavrentiy Beria NKGB (1943–1946) Vsevolod Merkulov MGB (1946–1953) Vsevolod Merkulov (1946) Viktor Abakumov (1946–51) Sergei Ogoltsov (1951)* Semyon Ignatiev (1951–53) MVD (1953–1954) Lavrentiy Beria (1953) Sergei Kruglov (1953–54) KGB (1954–1991) Ivan Serov (1954–58) Konstantin Lunev [ru]* Alexander Shelepin (1958–61) Pyotr Ivashutin (1961)* Vladimir Semichastny (1961–67) Yuri Andropov (1967–82) Vitaly Fedorchuk (1982) Viktor Chebrikov (1982–88) Vladimir Kryuchkov (1988–91) Leonid Shebarshin (1991)* Vadim Bakatin (1991) *Acting

Authority control databases International VIAF GND WorldCat National Poland

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Semyon Ignatiev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semyon_Ignatiev) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semyon_Ignatiev?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.