13 Facts About Mikhail Ryumin

Mikhail Ryumin was born in Bolshoye Kaban'ye, in southwest Siberia.

Mikhail Ryumin personally tortured prisoners in the Sukhanovo Prison, and appears to have enjoyed doing it.

Mikhail Ryumin's victims included a young American, Alexander Dolgun who was arrested in Moscow in 1948, but later released and deported.

Mikhail Ryumin then beat him unconscious, using a two-foot long rubber club.

In 1950, Mikhail Ryumin began the interrogation of Professor Yakov Gilyarievich Etinger, an eminent, elderly Jewish cardiologist, who had made critical remarks about the regime to family and friends.

Mikhail Ryumin tried to force him to confess to murdering them both.

Mikhail Ryumin was reprimanded, and fearing worse was to come, wrote to Stalin on 2 July 1951 accusing Abakumov of covering up a plot by Jewish terrorists.

The new head of the MGB, Semyon Ignatyev, is said to have been ordered by Stalin to allow Mikhail Ryumin pursue his persecution of Jews without interference.

Mikhail Ryumin pursued the case of the Old Bolshevik Solomon Lozovsky and a group of Jewish writers.

Mikhail Ryumin was abruptly sacked on 13 November 1952, apparently because Stalin had decided that he was too incompetent to do the job.

Mikhail Ryumin then returned to his old profession as a book keeper.

Mikhail Ryumin was the sole defendant at a trial that lasted six days, from 2 July to 7 July 1954.

Mikhail Ryumin appears as a character in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel, The First Circle, where he is described as "pink-cheeked and plump, with thin peevish lips".