Nikita Arkadyevich Krimyan
Никита Аркадьевич Кримян
The investigator who became Armenia's security minister at thirty-one
Extracting a confession from poet Titian Tabidze in 1937, Krimyan recorded his sole co-conspirator: 17th-century folk hero Saakadze — a name every Georgian knew except the interrogator.
Born into a working-class family in Kars in 1913, Krimyan entered the security organs at eighteen as a trainee with the Transcaucasian GPU. He rose fast inside the Georgian NKVD in Tbilisi during the Great Terror, becoming chief of its Investigative Department, and led the 1937 investigation of Ivan Orakhelashvili. Appointed Armenia's Minister of State Security in 1945 at just thirty-one, he was removed in 1947 for 'un-party behavior' and demoted to Ulyanovsk. Dismissed from the organs entirely in 1951 over illegal arrests and interrogation methods, he was swept up after Beria's fall, tried at Tbilisi, and shot in 1955.
Career timeline
- 1932–1935Trainee in the Economic Department of the Transcaucasian GPU, then authorized officer
- 1935–1937Senior operative, then assistant section chief, UGB NKVD of the Georgian SSR
- 1937–1938Section chief, UGB NKVD of the Georgian SSR
- 1938–1940Deputy chief, then chief, of the Investigative Department, NKVD of the Georgian SSR
- 1940–1941Deputy chief of the NKVD Administration for Lvov Oblast
- 1941–1943Deputy chief of the NKGB and NKVD Administration for Yaroslavl Oblast
- 1943–1945Chief of the NKGB Administration for Yaroslavl Oblast
- 1945–1947People's Commissar, then Minister, of State Security of the Armenian SSR
- 1947–1950Chief of the MGB Administration for Ulyanovsk Oblast
- 1951–1953Head of the personnel department, Ministry of Food Industry of the Armenian SSR
- 1953–1955Arrested, tried at Tbilisi and executed