39 Facts About Ivan Serov

Ivan Alexandrovich Serov was a Soviet intelligence officer who served as Chairman of the KGB from March 1954 to December 1958 and Director of the GRU from December 1958 to February 1963.

Ivan Serov was active in organising NKVD activities against anti-Soviet forces during the Soviet Invasion of Poland and World War II, including the Katyn massacre.

Ivan Serov issued the Ivan Serov Instructions and helped organise the mass deportations of people from Poland, Baltic states and the Caucasus.

Ivan Serov helped establish secret police forces in the Eastern Bloc after the war and played an important role in suppressing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

Ivan Serov was removed from power in 1963 after his protege, GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, was exposed as a mole passing classified documents to both British and American intelligence.

In retaliation, Ivan Serov was stripped of his position, rank, Communist Party membership and Hero of the Soviet Union award in 1965.

Ivan Serov lived in obscurity until his death in 1990.

Ivan Alexandrovich Serov was born on 13 August 1905 in Afimskoe, a village in the Vologda Governorate of the Russian Empire, into a Russian peasant family.

In 1923, when he was 18 years old, Ivan Serov joined the Red Army shortly after the end of the Russian Civil War.

Ivan Serov married during these years and had two children: a son, Vladimir, who became an engineering officer in the USSR Air Force followed by a daughter, Svetlana.

In 1939, Ivan Serov joined the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, the main security agency and secret police of the Soviet Union.

Ivan Serov was appointed to the high-ranking position of NKVD Commissar of the Ukrainian SSR in 1940.

Ivan Serov was one of the top ranked officials responsible for the Katyn massacre of Polish officer POWs.

In 1956, an article in Time magazine accused Ivan Serov of being responsible for the death of "hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian peasants" during this period.

Ivan Serov was a colleague in Ukraine of Nikita Khrushchev, the local Head of State.

In 1941, Ivan Serov was promoted to Deputy Commissar of the NKVD as a whole, becoming one of the primary lieutenants of NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria.

Ivan Serov issued the so-called Serov Instructions, which detailed procedures for mass deportations from the Baltic States, which was for some time confused with the NKVD Order No 001223 by historians.

Ivan Serov coordinated the mass expulsion of Crimean Tatars from the Crimean ASSR at the end of World War II.

Viktor Suvorov claims that in 1946, Ivan Serov had oversight of the execution of Andrey Vlasov and the rest of the command of the Russian Liberation Army, an organisation that had co-operated with the Nazis in World War II.

Ivan Serov was one of the senior figures in SMERSH, the wartime counterintelligence department of the Red Army, Soviet Navy and NKVD troops, serving as a deputy to Viktor Abakumov.

Ivan Serov organised the repression of the anti-Soviet Home Army and helped to establish Stalinism in Poland.

In 1945, Ivan Serov was transferred to the 2nd Belorussian Front and went to Berlin in May that year.

Ivan Serov stayed there until 1947 and helped to organise a security agency that would become the Stasi, the secret police of the German Democratic Republic.

Ivan Serov, who had Beria's trust, betrayed him when he conspired with officers of GRU to avoid his own downfall.

In March 1954, Ivan Serov was appointed Chairman of the KGB, making him head of the greater part of the Soviet secret police.

Ivan Serov played a key role in the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 which attempted to overthrow the Soviet-backed Hungarian People's Republic.

Ivan Serov organised the deportation of Hungarian revolutionaries, including Nagy, and tried stopping The Workers' Council of Budapest from negotiating for the return of deportees and political rights, using Soviet troops to prevent the council from meeting in the city's Sports Hall.

Ivan Serov co-ordinated the abduction of Pal Maleter and the disruption of peace talks between the Red Army and the Hungarian forces.

In December 1958, Ivan Serov was removed from his post as Chairman of the KGB after hints by Khrushchev, who had said that Western visitors could expect that they "wouldn't see so many policemen around the place" and that the Soviet police force would undergo a restructuring.

Ivan Serov was instead appointed as the Director of the GRU, with the official reason being a need to strengthen the agency's leadership.

Ivan Serov was active in the Cuban Missile Crisis, helping the Soviet leadership with American intelligence.

In February 1963, Ivan Serov was dismissed as Director of the GRU when it was discovered that Oleg Penkovsky, a GRU colonel and his protege, was a double agent spying for the British.

Khrushchev, feeling he could no longer trust Ivan Serov, had him appointed to an unimportant position as assistant to the commander of the Turkestan Military District.

In November 1964, Ivan Serov wrote a letter to the Politburo expressing his dismay at his treatment in the aftermath of the Penkovsky affair.

Ivan Serov spent the rest of his life unsuccessfully seeking rehabilitation in the eyes of the public, restoration of his party membership, and the return of his rank of general and Hero of the Soviet Union to him.

Ivan Serov died in 1990 at the Central Military Clinical Hospital in Krasnogorsk.

Ivan Serov was buried at the cemetery in the village of Ilyinskoye in Krasnogorsky District, Moscow Oblast.

Ivan Serov displayed a considerable familiarity with detective fiction such as Sherlock Holmes.

Ivan Serov makes a brief appearance at the beginning of Ian Fleming's 1957 James Bond novel From Russia, With Love.