On this date,
December 23, 1953, the NKVD Chief, Lavrentiy Beria and six of his henchmen were
executed by firing squad in Moscow, Russia. I will post information about
Vladimir Dekanozov from Wikipedia.
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Vladimir Dekanozov
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Vladimir Georgievich Dekanozov (Dekanozishvili) (Russian: Влади́мир
Гео́ргиевич Декано́зов
(Деканозишви́ли)) (June 1898 - 23 December 1953) was a Soviet senior state
security operative and diplomat.
Biography
Before
Second World War
Vladimir
Dekanozov (Dekanozishvili) was born into the family of Giorgi Dekanozishvili,
founder of the Party of Georgian Social-Federalists. Dekanozishvili, in
Georgian meaning literally Son of a Deacon, were a noble Georgian family
belonging to the Georgian Orthodox Church. Albeit being born in Baku,
Azerbaijan, in all official documentation he was listed as a Georgian. Although
he self-identified as a Georgian, some sources suggested that he might have
Armenian heritage. These rumours are known to have originated as a joke from Joseph Stalin who frequently teased and
mocked Dekanozov.
Dekanozov
studied in the medical schools of Saratov University and Baku University. In
1918 he entered the Red Army, and in
1920 he joined the Bolshevik Party. From 1918 he worked as a secret agent in Transcaucasia, first in the People's
Commissariat for Health of the short-lived Azerbaijan
Democratic Republic, then in private oil companies. After the
invasion of Azerbaijan by the Red Army, Dekanozov worked for the Cheka
of Azerbaijan SSR, where he befriended Lavrenty Beria, who subsequently supported
Dekanozov. In 1921-27 Dekanozov worked for the Cheka in Azerbaijan, Georgia,
and Transcaucasia.
In 1927 he became an instructor of the Central Committee of the Communist Party
of Georgia. In 1928-1931 he worked as one of the leaders of the Georgian and
Transcaucasian OGPU. In 1931 he became a secretary of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia. From 1936 he was the Narkom of the food industry of Georgia, and from 1937 he
simultaneously worked as the Chairman of Gosplan of Georgia and a deputy Chairman of
Georgian Sovnarkom. He was a deputy of the Supreme
Soviet of the USSR in 1937-50.
He
was transferred to the NKVD in November
1938, when Lavrentii Beria was appointed its head. Dekanozov was the deputy
chief of GUGB and at the same time headed both its
foreign intelligence and counterintelligence departments from 1938 to 1939.
Dekanozov was responsible for purges of the Red
Army as well as for purging Nikolai Yezhov's supporters from the NKVD.
In
May 1939 he was appointed deputy chief of the People's
Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (NKID). His sphere of
responsibility before 1941 included Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Mongolia, and
Xinjiang, as well as the consulates, cadres, and finances of NKID.
Second
World War
Incorporation
of Lithuania into USSR
Main
article: Occupation of Baltic States § Soviet
invasion
Soviet
military forces crossed the Lithuanian border on 15 June 1940, with the
military of Lithuania being ordered not to resist. Dekanozov arrived on the
same day to organise the incorporation of Lithuania into the Soviet Union. The
Communist Party of Lithuania, headed by Antanas Sniečkus, was at his disposal.
The Soviet military established a controlling presence that allowed Dekanozov
to fulfill his function as representative of the Communist Party. The process
creating the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic was Dekanozov's work. He
installed himself in the Soviet embassy and imposed on Lithuania the Soviet
party-state structure in which the traditional governmental forms were of only
secondary importance. Dekanozov restructured the Lithuanian government, naming
Justas Paleckis, a Lithuanian leftist who was not yet a member of the Communist
Party, as Prime Minister.
Aided
by specialists for Soviet administration and Soviet security organs sent in
from Moscow, Dekanozov worked through the Lithuanian Communist Party, while the
cabinet of ministers, headed by Paleckis, served an administrative function.
Dekanozov and Paleckis brought a number of non-members of the Communist Party
(but still pro-communists) into the first "people’s government", but
in retrospect it is clear that they constituted window dressing for the Soviet
takeover. For his part, Dekanozov pushed his program carefully, concentrating
first of all on denouncing the Smetona regime in Lithuania, then promising to
respect private property, assuring Lithuanians that agriculture would not be
collectivized, and restraining any discussion of the possibility of joining the
Soviet Union until mid-July.
On
6 July Dekanozov’s government announced that on 14 July there would be
elections for a new parliament, a so-called People's Seimas. The Lithuanian
Communist Party announced the formation of the Union of the Toiling People of
Lithuania, which offered a slate of candidates, including some ten non-members
of the Communist Party, with as many people as there were seats in the new
parliament up for election. On 11 and 12 July, the Soviet authorities reduced
the possible points of opposition by arresting leading figures of the old
regime and deporting some of them to the interior of the Soviet Union, although
Lithuania was still formally an independent state.
Dekanozov
used the Lithuanian government, and the Communist Party of Lithuania, as his
instruments to carry out the will of the Soviet party leadership. Throughout
the process, Soviet propagandists insisted there was only one acceptable path
for the country, and all were obliged to follow it. They concentrated on
creating an image of mass support, and they called for determined measures
against those who somehow opposed the new order and wanted to sabotage the
elections of 14 July.
Lithuania
became a part of the Stalinist Soviet party-state, administered within the
All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) structure, long before it was formally
incorporated into the governmental structure of the Soviet Union. By the time
the new Soviet state structure in Lithuania had been formalized, Dekanozov had
long since left Lithuania. In July 1940 he had returned to Moscow, his job
completed, when the People's Seimas voted to ask for membership in the USSR. In
barely more than a month, he had reorganized the Lithuanian state, set the
social and economic development on Lithuania onto a new course, and contributed
to the enlargement of the Soviet state. The Sovietisation of Lithuania started
by Dekanozov was carried on by Nikolai Pozdniakov.
Work
in Berlin
From
November 1940 Dekanozov, remaining the deputy chief of NKID, was also the
Soviet ambassador to Berlin. In September 1943, he made a mysterious visit to
Stockholm that was interpreted by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop as a sign of Soviet
interest in making a separate peace with Germany. Adolf
Hitler, however, refused von Ribbentrop's plea that he be allowed to
dispatch an envoy to Sweden.
After
the Second World War
Dekanozov
continued to be the deputy chief of NKID and then of the Foreign Affairs
Ministry until 1947. He held other senior positions before being appointed the
Interior Minister of Georgian SSR (after Beria became the Interior Minister of
the USSR) in April 1953. A close associate of Beria, Dekanozov was arrested in
June 1953 and was sentenced to death and shot in December 1953.
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