Kobulov's personal secretary, condemned in 1955
At Tbilisi executions, Savitsky and fellow NKVD officers 'pounced like chained dogs on bound prisoners, beating them with pistol grips' — a 1954 eyewitness account.
An NKVD officer born in Tashkent, Savitsky was the son of a tsarist colonel who organized White Guard detachments against Soviet power. He joined the Georgian NKVD in 1931 and rose rapidly under the patronage of Bogdan Kobulov, personally participating in the torture of detainees and fabrication of cases in the 4th department during the Great Terror. He became Kobulov's personal secretary and a key operative in Beria's faction, later serving in the NKGB secretariat and the administration of Soviet property abroad. Though he only attained the rank of colonel, he was arrested days after Beria's fall in 1953 and shot in 1955.
Career Timeline
- 1931–1939Operative, then section head and assistant head of the 4th department, NKVD of the Georgian SSR
- 1941–1943Deputy section chief, 4th directorate, NKVD
- 1943–1945Personal secretary to Bogdan Kobulov
- 1945–1953Deputy chief of the NKGB secretariat; later assistant in the Main Administration of Soviet Property Abroad
- 1953Assistant to Bogdan Kobulov, first deputy minister of internal affairs
- 1953–1955Arrested, tried at Tbilisi and executed
Related historical events
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeThe Georgian NKVD's 4th departmentHe served as an operative, section head and assistant head of the Georgian NKVD's 4th department in 1937 and 1938, and was sentenced to death for that work at the 1955 Tbilisi trial.
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarNKVD 4th Directorate agent conducting special operations behind enemy lines
- 1953The Fall of BeriaThe Tbilisi trial, 1955Bogdan Kobulov's personal secretary and assistant, he was arrested on 1 July 1953, days after Beria's fall, and became a capital defendant despite holding only the rank of colonel.
The 1955 Tbilisi Trial and Execution
Savitsky was arrested on July 1, 1953, just five days after Beria's own arrest, as part of the 'Rukhadze case.' From September 7 to 19, 1955, he stood trial in the open sessions of the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court, held at the Tbilisi Railway Workers' House of Culture. He appeared alongside seven other core figures of Beria's Georgian NKVD faction: Rapava, Rukhadze, Tsereteli, Krimyan, Khazan, Paramonov, and Nadaraya. The trial was presided over by the Military Collegium, with USSR Prosecutor General Roman Rudenko himself leading the prosecution. The charges were under Articles 58-1(b) (treason against the Motherland), 58-8 (terror), and 58-11 (counter-revolutionary organization) of the RSFSR Criminal Code.
In pretrial interrogations, Savitsky admitted he had been a key executor of the illegal system of mass arrests, torture, and case fabrication built by Beria, Kobulov, and Goglidze in 1937–38. A spravka (certificate) he personally composed on April 11, 1938, listing five individuals for arrest with no incriminating evidence, bore handwritten orders from both Beria and Kobulov: 'Arrest all.' During the trial, multiple witnesses testified that Savitsky had personally participated in operating 'hot' and 'cold' torture chambers in the Tbilisi internal prison, beatings with rubber truncheons and ropes, and 'conveyor-belt' interrogations. The court also heard the testimony of an eyewitness who recalled Beria's instruction: 'Before sending them to the next world, smash their faces' and described how Savitsky and his fellow officers beat bound prisoners with pistol grips at the execution site.
On September 19, 1955, the Military Collegium sentenced Savitsky to death, and the sentence was carried out shortly thereafter. Though he only attained the rank of colonel, relatively junior among the defendants, he was one of those executed in the first major trial that imposed judicial accountability for the Georgian NKVD's illegal violence following Beria's downfall.