Nikolai Nikolayevich Mesyatsev
Николай Николаевич Месяцев
1920–2011
○ Natural death; later reassessed
The official who exposed the fabricated Doctors' Plot
The review team's conclusion in 1953 was unequivocal: “The Doctors' Plot was fabricated, the doctors were innocent, and they should be released.”
Nikolai Mesyatsev was a postwar Soviet Komsomol and state official whose career reveals the tension between political direction and factual investigation. In 1953, assigned by Malenkov to review the Doctors' Plot and the Abakumov case, he helped establish quickly that the doctors' case had been fabricated. He later recalled that Stalin himself had ordered a review before his death, a disputed testimony that must be weighed alongside other evidence. He subsequently led Soviet state television and radio, overseeing the construction of the Ostankino center and the expansion of multi-program broadcasting.
Career Timeline
- 1941–1945Investigator, Navy commissariat, NKVD Special Departments and SMERSH
- 1946–1952Official, Central Committee of the Komsomol
- 1953State security investigative unit, review of the Doctors' Plot
- 1955–1959Secretary, Komsomol Central Committee
- 1962–1964Minister-counsellor in China; deputy head of CPSU international-relations department
- 1964–1970Chairman, Soviet State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting
- 1970–1972Soviet Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Australia
- 1972–1988Senior researcher and head of historical sciences, INION