He staged Lithuania's annexation and took the declaration of war in Berlin
At 4 a.m. on 22 June 1941, Ribbentrop summoned Ambassador Dekanozov in Berlin and read Germany's declaration of war. Dekanozov listened calmly and said: 'I deeply regret that Hitler and Stalin did not meet in person — history would have taken a different course.'
A Georgian born in Baku, he was Beria's closest lieutenant who simultaneously headed NKVD foreign intelligence and counterintelligence, directing the final wave of purges. In 1940 he was dispatched to Lithuania as plenipotentiary and stage-managed its Soviet annexation in barely a month. As ambassador to Berlin, he personally received Germany's declaration of war from Ribbentrop on 22 June 1941. Sidelined to minor posts after the war, he briefly returned as Georgian interior minister after Beria's 1953 arrest, only to be arrested himself days later, tried as a member of the 'Beria gang,' and executed.
Career Timeline
- 1921–1931Cheka and GPU posts in Azerbaijan and Georgia
- 1936–1938People's Commissar of Food Industry, then chairman of Gosplan, Georgian SSR
- 1938–1939Head of foreign intelligence, 5th Department of the GUGB NKVD
- 1939–1947Deputy People's Commissar, later Deputy Minister, of Foreign Affairs
- 1940Soviet plenipotentiary in Lithuania, supervising its annexation
- 1940–1941USSR Ambassador to Germany
- 1953Minister of Internal Affairs, Georgian SSR
- 1953Arrested, tried and executed
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionRed Army soldier
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeNKVD agent
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarSoviet ambassador to Germany who received the German declaration of war
- 1953The Fall of BeriaShot with Beria, December 1953Arrested on 30 June 1953, three months after Beria had made him MVD minister of Georgia, he was shot on 23 December.
NKVD Leadership and the Final Wave of the Purges
When Lavrentiy Beria was appointed head of the NKVD in November 1938, Dekanozov was immediately summoned to Moscow and named deputy chief of the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB). He simultaneously headed both the 5th Department (foreign intelligence) and the 3rd Department (counterintelligence): an extraordinary concentration of power. His primary mission was to purge Nikolai Yezhov's remaining loyalists from the NKVD and to direct the continuing purges of the Red Army. Over roughly six months from December 1938 to May 1939, he served as Beria's most trusted executor, a key director of the final wave of the Great Purge. He left the NKVD in May 1939 to become Deputy People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs, but his state security career had been decisive in consolidating Beria's rise as Stalin's closest lieutenant. He received the rank of Commissar of State Security 3rd Class in December 1938 and was later promoted to lieutenant general in 1945. In 2000, the Military Collegium of the Russian Supreme Court refused his rehabilitation, citing 'systematic abuse of power including the arrest of innocent people, fabrication of criminal cases, and use of torture.' Yet in 2020, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) placed him on its official list of heroic Soviet intelligence figures.