Viktor Abakumov

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 was a nurse. ==Career==

Early career At age 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. However, Nikita Khrushchev – who later denounced Stalin and had both Beria and Abakumov executed – did not believe him. He claimed that Stalin "thought he had found in Abakumov a bright young man who was dutifully carrying out his orders, but actually Abakumov was reporting to Stalin what Beria had told him Stalin wanted to hear". He also carried out the early stages of the anti-semitic campaign that Stalin ordered, as the second pro-Arab phase of Stalin's Middle East plans following the enormous military support he had given to help establish the state of Israel, == Arrest and execution ==

In March 1951, an elderly Jewish doctor, Yakov Gilyarievich Etinger, died in custody after being subjected to interrogations lasting up to 12 hours a session by a junior officer, Mikhail Ryumin. Ryumin claimed that Etinger had confessed to murdering the former leader of the Moscow communist party, Aleksandr Shcherbakov, but neither Abakumov nor his deputy, Mikhail Likhachev, believed his story, and Likhachev proposed that Ryumin be disciplined for mishandling the case. Ryumin retaliated by writing to Stalin alleging that Abakumov and Likhachev were covering up Shcherbakov's "murder". This fabrication became known as the Doctors' plot. Abakumov was dismissed on 11 July, and arrested the following day. For three months, he was held in a freezing cell, whilst being interrogated by Ryumin, a vicious torturer. Most of the leading Jewish officers who had worked with Abakumov were dismissed, and several were arrested. Ryumin planned to build a case in which Abakumov and Lev Shvartzman were at the head of a Zionist plot. Shvartzman "confessed" not only to being part of a Zionist plot, but to having had homosexual relations with Abakumov, and his son. In March 1953 Stalin died, Beria regained control of the police, Ryumin was arrested, and the Doctors' plot was declared to have been a fabrication, but Abakumov and his associates remained in prison. On 2 April, Beria sent a note to the Praesidium of the Central Committee saying that Abakumov had been questioned about the suspicious death of the actor, Solomon Mikhoels, and had confessed that he was murdered on Stalin's orders. On 12 May, Beria sent another note, accusing Abakumov of having fabricated the case against Polina Zhemchuzhina, Jewish wife of the Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, who had been arrested as a suspected Zionist in 1948. On 26 May, Beria submitted another memorandum, accusing Abakumov of fabricating the case against the former Minister of Aviation, Aleksey Shakhurin and other leaders of the air force, who were released after seven years in prison. The case against Abakumov continued after Beria's arrest, with the additional detail that he was now accused of being "an accomplice in the crimes of Beria". The most serious charge against him was that he had been involved in fabricating the charges against Nikolai Voznesensky and other victims of the "Leningrad affair". During a meeting of Leningrad party members, on 6 May 1954, the USSR Procurator General, Roman Rudenko described Abakumov as "a criminal, falsifying criminal cases, an adventurer, ready to commit any crimes for the sake of his careeristic, enemy goals, a bourgeois degenerate." Abakumov and five others were brought to a six-day trial in December 1954, accused of falsifying the "Leningrad Affair" and other charges. Abakumov and three former deputy heads of the MGB Section for Investigating Specially Important Cases, Aleksandr Leonov, Vladimir Komarov and Mikhail Likhachev, were sentenced to death and shot after the trial ended on 19 December. Two others, Yakov M. Broverman and I. A. Chernov were sentenced, respectively, to 25 years and 15 years in the Gulag. In 1970, it was reported that Yakov Broverman was enjoying a relatively privileged position as a trustee in a labour camp. He was released in 1976. ==Awards==

Abakumov was deprived of all titles and awards on November 14, 1955. == In literature and film ==

Abakumov is portrayed as a cunning courtier, not altogether trusted by Stalin, in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel, The First Circle. In the 1992 film version of the book, he was played by Christopher Plummer and in a Russian language mini-series broadcast in 2006, he was played by Roman Madyanov. There is another fictional portrayal of him in the novel Dust and Ashes by Anatoly Rybakov. In Solzhenitsyn's famous non-fiction text, The Gulag Archipelago, he accused Abakumov of personally engaging in the beatings and torture of prisoners during interrogations. ==References==