Ministry of State Security (MGB)
국가보안부(MGB)
The Soviet state-security ministry formed on 15 March 1946, when all People's Commissariats became ministries and the People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB) was renamed. It fabricated and investigated the political cases of Stalin's last years and was merged into the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) in March 1953.
In depth
Its first minister, Vsevolod Merkulov, was replaced in May 1946 by Viktor Abakumov. Abakumov was arrested in July 1951, and after Sergei Ogoltsov's brief acting tenure Semyon Ignatiev became minister in August. The MGB covered foreign intelligence, counterintelligence and military counterintelligence as well as networks of informers in collective farms and factories, and kept the Special Conference of the MGB as its extrajudicial sentencing body.
It murdered Solomon Mikhoels in January 1948, had the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee dissolved that November and brought its members to a secret trial in 1952. In the Leningrad affair of 1949–1950 it drove Nikolai Voznesensky, Alexei Kuznetsov and other Leningrad officials to execution, and in January 1953 it announced the doctors' plot. On 5 March 1953, the day Stalin died, the MGB was merged into the MVD under Beria, and in March 1954 state security passed to the Committee for State Security (KGB).