Head of the unit for especially important cases
Prisoners called him 'The Stone Guest' (Kamenny Gost'). With his low, cold voice and stony face, no one could withstand his interrogations.
Beria's closest investigative chief, Vlodzimirsky handled the most sensitive political cases of the late Stalin era. As head of the NKVD Investigative Unit (1939) and NKGB Investigative Unit for Especially Important Cases (1943), he directed the case against the Red Army air force command and the interrogation of director Meyerhold, gaining a reputation for extreme brutality. Sidelined in 1946, he spent six years in clerical posts before Beria restored him in 1953 to head MVD special investigations and reverse the Doctors' Plot. Arrested with Beria's circle, he was shot that December; in 2000 a Russian military court refused even posthumous rehabilitation.
Career Timeline
- 1938–1939Deputy head, then head of the Investigative Unit of the GUGB, NKVD
- 1940–1941Head of the 3rd Department, GUGB NKVD; deputy head of investigation
- 1941–1943Head of the Investigative Unit, NKVD
- 1943–1946Head of the Investigative Unit for Especially Important Cases, NKGB and MGB
- 1946–1947Head of the MGB Directorate for Gorky Region, then discharged to the reserve
- 1947–1953Department head in the Main Directorate of Soviet Property Abroad
- 1953Head of the Investigative Unit for Especially Important Cases, MVD
- 1953Arrested, tried and executed
Related historical events
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeThe investigator who purged the purgersTransferred to the central apparatus in 1937, he worked in the Investigative Unit handling the interrogation of the Yezhov-era elite, and later became Beria's head of especially important cases.
- 1953The Fall of BeriaShot with Beria, December 1953Restored by Beria in March 1953 to head the MVD's special investigations, he was arrested four months later on 17 July and shot on 23 December.
Interrogation Methods and Notorious Cases
Vlodzimirsky's interrogation room was known as 'the meat grinder.' His instrument of choice was a rubber truncheon; when a prisoner lost consciousness, he had them revived with water and resumed the beating. During the 1941 case against the Red Army air force command, Vlodzimirsky and his subordinate Boris Rodos ordered Colonel-General Aleksandr Loktionov to lie face down on the floor, then took turns beating him with rubber truncheons. Loktionov screamed that he was innocent, lost consciousness, and was revived with water. Pavel Rychagov never confessed despite relentless beatings. Twice Hero of the Soviet Union Yakov Smushkevich was tortured in the same manner. Even Lavrentiy Beria remarked that the case had been 'a real meat grinder.'
Earlier, in late 1937, Vlodzimirsky and Viktor Abakumov, the future Minister of State Security, interrogated Dnepropetrovsk party secretary Natan Margolin. Driven to despair by the beatings and torture, Margolin tried to hang himself in his cell with a rope made from handkerchiefs; he was cut down, only to be shot in February 1938. Before Vlodzimirsky, the editor of the Turkmen newspaper Iskra, Iuda Rabinovich, 'confessed' to heading a Trotskyist organization in Turkmenistan. Sultan Segizbayev, chairman of the Uzbek Council of People's Commissars, did the same. All were posthumously rehabilitated in the mid-1950s.
Prisoners called Vlodzimirsky 'The Stone Guest' (Kamenny Gost'). When his low, resonant voice echoed down the corridor, no one could hold out. After his 1953 arrest he insisted he was merely 'following orders,' believing Beria had obtained approval from above. The court was unmoved.