#ivan serov

[commiearabgirll]

Out of all people fucked over by Khrushchev, Serov was fucked over the most.

[commiearabgirll]

For a soviet intelligence chief and for the first head of the KGB, Ivan Serov is deathly underrated. Like I'd expect the guy who succeeded Beria and was the head of the Soviet espionage during the first years of the cold War to be a bit more well known.

Instead here I am reading fucking CIA documents because nobody has any fics about him and I don't know enough to make my own. Despicable.

[spookystrangerpersona]

interesting pictures of serov and zhukov and serov yay

in good news i found a site where his memoirs are available to read for free (записки из чемодана)

https://libking.ru/books/nonf-/nonf-biography/612145-309-ivan-serov-zapiski-iz-chemodana.html#book

[commiearabgirll]

My double standards are insane, I hate on Zhukov for aiding Khrushchev in his coup yet love Serov who did the exact same thing. Serov was also probably one of the only reasons he stayed in power so long because, KGB ig

[newstfionline]

From a Dacha Wall, a Clue to Raoul Wallenberg’s Cold War Fate

By Neil MacFarquhar, NY Times, Aug. 6, 2016

MOSCOW--The 1945 disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg--a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi gas chambers--ranks among the most enduring mysteries of World War II.

Suspicion for the snatching of Wallenberg off the streets near Budapest fell almost immediately on the Soviet Union. To the Soviets occupying Budapest, the ties that Wallenberg had forged with senior Nazis and Americans smelled like espionage, with rescuing Jews an implausible cover story. But his disappearance went unexplained, right through the Gorbachev era of glasnost and the chaos after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This summer, however, the newly published diaries of the original head of the K.G.B.--found secreted inside the wall of a dacha--have shed fresh light on the case by stating outright for the first time that Wallenberg was executed in a Moscow prison.

“I have no doubts that Wallenberg was liquidated in 1947,” wrote Ivan A. Serov, a Soviet military man who ran the K.G.B. from 1954 to 1958.

Tantalizing hints that Wallenberg, the scion of a rich, prominent family of Swedish industrialists, was imprisoned in Moscow emerged immediately, then dripped out at long intervals. Alexandra M. Kollontai, the domineering Soviet ambassador to Sweden, initially told Wallenberg’s mother that the diplomat was in custody, but backtracked after the Kremlin announced that it knew nothing of the case.

In the 1950s, Moscow began releasing war prisoners, and some reported meeting a V.I.P. inmate. Some called him mysterious; some knew his name. Sweden started asking pointed questions, and seeking to improve ties, the Kremlin released a report in 1957. It said a newly discovered, partial medical report indicated that Wallenberg, age 34, died of a heart attack in prison in July 1947--a stock Soviet cover story.

The next halting step toward resolution came with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. The Kremlin agreed to cooperate with a comprehensive Russian-Swedish effort that included archival research and interviews with retired state security employees.

But the final report in 2000 reached no definitive conclusion about Wallenberg’s fate, and found that documents had been destroyed or altered to eliminate all traces of him.

The mystery of his fate seemed likely to endure forever--until the Serov diaries came to light.

Memoirs from high-ranking Kremlin officials are exceedingly rare, and this one, while hardly definitive, contains several references to previously unknown documents on Wallenberg.

They include a report about Wallenberg’s cremation, and another quoting Viktor Abakumov, who preceded Serov as head of state security but was tried and executed in 1954 in the last Stalin purges. Abakumov apparently revealed during his interrogation that the order to “liquidate” Wallenberg had come from Stalin and Vyacheslav M. Molotov, the foreign minister.

The word “killed” has never appeared in any official documents released from the Soviet side, according to Nikita Petrov, a historian with the Memorial organization in Moscow who specializes in the Stalinist era and Serov himself.

“They did not use this word,” Mr. Petrov said. “They said it appears he was killed, but we know nothing about this, we don’t have any documents. In Serov’s diary, you can find this word as a fact.”

Four years ago, Serov’s only grandchild, Vera Serova, 57, a retired ballet dancer, hired workers to renovate the garage at the dacha she inherited from her grandfather in northwestern Moscow. The workers demolishing the internal walls stumbled upon a few hidden suitcases.

“They thought it was money or gold, but it was only papers,” she said in an interview, flashing a smile. Mr. Petrov said the suitcases probably went into the wall around 1971, when the Central Committee first got wind of the writing project and had Serov followed.

Mrs. Serova turned over a copy of the diaries to a publisher, who condensed them into a single, 632-page volume. The book was released in conjunction with a small museum exhibition curated by the Russian Military-Historical Society.

After leaving the K.G.B. for military intelligence, Serov was eventually disgraced after one of his underlings was exposed as a Western spy. He died of a heart attack in 1990 at 84.

The media office of the F.S.B. did not immediately respond to questions about whether it would release the documents Serov mentioned or cooperate with renewed research.

Perhaps the underlying Russian attitude was succinctly summed up by Khrushchev, whom Serov quoted as uttering a blunt Russian expression after being briefed on the case.

“These scoundrels,” he barked, naming Stalin and his coterie, “brewed this rotten porridge, while we have to gulp down the sewage.”