The NKGB chief named first in the Katyn order, who wrote plays under a pseudonym
After Beria's arrest he wrote to Khrushchev of Beria signing a book he had not written: “How can one put one's signature under someone else's work. This is not even plagiarism, it is something more.” The hand that drew a line at literary dishonour drew none at the death lists of 22,000 Poles.
Merkulov was the most educated man in Beria's circle and, for a decade, his executive hand. He entered the Georgian Cheka in October 1921, where he met Beria, and by December 1938 he was the NKVD's number two. When the Politburo named a troika on 5 March 1940 to dispose of some 21,857 Polish prisoners without hearings or charges, the first name written in the decision was Merkulov's; the troika called no defendants and drew no indictments, it processed lists. After the Germans found the Katyn graves in 1943 he directed the preliminary work behind the Burdenko Commission's attribution of the massacre to the Germans, so the man who organised the killing organised the denial. He headed state security twice, until May 1946, and under the pseudonym Vsevolod Rokk wrote plays that reached the Maly Theatre. He was shot with Beria in December 1953 and has never been rehabilitated.
Career Timeline
- 1921–1931Georgian Cheka and GPU: Economic Department and Information Bureau
- 1931–1934Assistant to the First Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee, Beria
- 1934–1937Head of the Soviet Trade Department, then of the Special Sector, Transcaucasian Regional Committee
- 1937–1938Head of the Industrial-Transport Department, Central Committee of the Georgian Communist Party
- 1938Deputy chief of the Main Directorate of State Security, NKVD
- 1938–1941First Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs and chief of the GUGB
- 1941People's Commissar of State Security, the first NKGB
- 1941–1943First Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs
- 1943–1946People's Commissar of State Security, and from 1946 Minister of State Security
- 1947–1950Chief of the Main Directorate of Soviet Property Abroad
- 1950–1953Minister of State Control
- 1953Arrested, tried and executed
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionCheka agent
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationFirst Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeNKVD official
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarPeople's Commissar of State SecurityHe headed the state security commissariat twice, from February 1941 and again from April 1943 until 1946, running wartime intelligence and counter-intelligence. In March 1944 he received the Order of Kutuzov 1st Class for the deportation of the Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens and Ingush; the Soviet state itself annulled it in 1962.
- 1953The Fall of BeriaTargetA close security aide of Beria, executed with him.
Katyn — From Execution to Cover-Up
On 5 March 1940, Beria proposed to Stalin that 14,700 Polish POWs and 11,000 Polish prisoners from western Ukraine and Belarus be shot without trial. The Politburo approved, and an NKVD troika was formed to expedite the death sentences. Merkulov, as Beria's first deputy, sat on this troika alongside Bogdan Kobulov and Leonid Bashtakov. The three men sentenced all 22,000 in absentia, reviewing nothing but name lists. No summons, no charges, no defence. The operation included the mass shootings in the Katyn Forest and remains one of the largest single state crimes of the Stalin era.
In spring 1943, when Nazi Germany discovered the mass graves at Katyn and exposed the atrocity internationally, Merkulov was put in charge of the Soviet cover-up. He headed the 'Commission for the Preliminary Investigation of the Katyn Case' (the Burdenko Commission), fabricating forensic evidence, coercing witnesses, and issuing a report in January 1944 that pinned the massacre on the German army. The Soviet Union maintained this forged narrative until 1990. Merkulov was the architect of the lie, just as he had overseen the killing.