During the first months of 1946, Stalin was changing his policy toward former Western allies. On February 9, 1946, in a speech at a meeting at the Bolshoi Theater, Stalin stressed the economic progress in the Soviet Union that, according to him, was the basis of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.4 Stalin did not mention the role of the Western Allies in WWII and their crucial economic aid to the USSR. He did, however, discuss the inevitable clash between the two world systems of power, capitalism and Communism. This was the first step toward Soviet isolationism.
The reaction of the West was quick. On March 15, 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous ‘iron curtain’ speech in Fulton, Missouri, calling for a unified British–American response to the growing Soviet aggression.5 The Cold War had begun, and according to Stalin, the Soviet Union needed better-organized management of its economy and tighter political control over the country.
On March 15, 1946, the same day Churchill gave his speech in Missouri, the names of all commissariats were changed to ministries on Stalin’s suggestion. Stalin’s reasoning was that the title ‘commissar reflects the period of Civil War and revolutionary changes… The war [WWII] showed that our social organization is very strong… It is time to replace the title “commissar” with the title “minister.”’6 Four days later the Council of Commissars was renamed the Council of Ministers, and Stalin was appointed its Chairman, with Beria as one of his deputies. Kruglov became Minister of Internal Affairs or head of the MVD, and Merkulov was named State Security Minister, head of the MGB—a position he held for only a month and a half.
Before Merkulov was dismissed, on November 29, 1945, the Politburo replaced Merkulov’s First Deputy Bogdan Kobulov, whom Beria brought from Georgia to Moscow in 1939, with Sergei Ogoltsov. Ogoltsov joined the CheKa in 1918 and made his career mostly in provincial special departments. Stalin chose Ogoltsov for the new MGB post because from December 1942 till March 1944, Ogoltsov headed the NKVD/NKGB regional branch in the city of Kuibyshev, the second Soviet capital during the war, where most governmental offices and foreign embassies were evacuated. Stalin considered Ogoltsov as a possible replacement of Merkulov. But for the next five years, Ogoltsov remained the second person in the MGB and became an acting minister for only a month after Abakumov’s arrest in July 1951.
In April 1946, a decision to replace Merkulov with Abakumov was made. On the evening of April 24, Abakumov, Merkulov, and Ogoltsov were summoned to the meeting of ‘the Six’ (minus one) in Stalin’s office.7 Stalin, Beria, Zhdanov, Malenkov, and Mikoyan attended the meeting; Molotov was traveling abroad. The meeting started at 11:35 p.m. and most probably included a discussion of the reorganization of the MGB and the replacement of Merkulov with Abakumov. At 12:30 a.m., Abakumov, Merkulov, and Ogoltsov left the office, having been ordered to prepare a draft of the new MGB structure.
On May 4–7, 1946, the Politburo approved the draft.8 Merkulov was dismissed, and Abakumov was appointed the new MGB Minister. The reasons behind Merkulov’s dismissal became clear only after August 20, 1946, when Stalin dictated a Politburo resolution that stated: ‘Comrade Merkulov, while holding an extremely responsible position [i.e., State Security Commissar/Minister] was dishonest and did not inform the Central Committee about a difficult situation in the CheKa [Stalin continued to call the Soviet secret service by its earliest name], and until the last moment concealed from the Central Committee the fact of the failure of the [intelligence] work abroad.’9
Apparently, Stalin was referring to three serious failures of the 1st NKGB Directorate (foreign intelligence). In September 1945, the cipher clerk of the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, Igor Gouzenko, defected to the Canadian authorities.10 He provided the Canadian, British, and American security services with detailed information on about two hundred GRU and NKGB spies in Canada and the United States who were involved in Soviet atomic espionage. Additionally, two months later, in November 1945, the former Soviet agent Elizabeth Bentley began revealing to the FBI her knowledge of NKGB operations in the United States.11
Finally, the NKGB deputy rezident (leader of a spy group) in Turkey, Konstantin Volkov, tried to defect to the British. This time the NKGB reacted immediately and a team of NKGB agent-boeviki (combat agents), headed by Andrei Onishchenko, was sent to Turkey without delay.12 Onishchenko was an experienced intelligence officer and in 1943, while he was in charge of security in Tehran during the meeting of Stalin with Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Onishchenko ‘overplayed’ the German intelligence terrorist group headed by the legendary Otto Skorzeny. In 1945, he headed the Middle East Department within the 1st NKGB Directorate.
On September 21, 1945 the team arrived in Turkey; Onishchenko had a cover of a diplomatic courier. Three days later the team put the captured and sedated Volkov and his wife on a plane to Moscow. Volkov was secretly tried, sentenced to death, and executed. But this small triumph by the NKGB boeviki who prevented Volkov’s defection was not enough to save Merkulov.
At Stalin’s suggestion, the Politburo not only dismissed Merkulov but also demoted him to a candidate for the Central Committee membership.13 After this, his high-level party career was over. In August 1946, Merkulov was appointed a deputy head, and from April 1947, head of the Main Directorate of Soviet Property Abroad of the Council of Ministers—an organization through which the Soviet Union managed the operation of plants, mines, and oil fields in the occupied territories of Austria, Germany, and Romania. Pavel Fitin, head of the 1st NKGB Directorate who was in charge of all operations of Soviet foreign intelligence during WWII, was also dismissed and for three months, he had no job at all.
The NKGB intelligence failures were only an excuse for the dismissals. Merkulov was a devoted ally of Beria and felt uneasy about dealing with Stalin. After his dismissal, Merkulov wrote to Stalin: ‘You, Comrade Stalin, once called me “shy.” Unfortunately, this was true. I felt uncomfortable calling you on the phone and I was even more uncomfortable about writing you regarding many issues that I wrongly believed were not important enough for your attention during the war, because I knew how busy you were. The shyness I felt resulted in my making mistakes. Mainly, there were a few occasions when I didn’t inform you at all, or informed you in smoothed-over terms, about issues that I should have reported to you immediately.’14
Stalin clearly wanted an MGB Minister who wasn’t shy, and who was totally devoted and subordinated to him. And from April 1943 onwards, Abakumov was subordinated directly to and only to Stalin. Most probably, Stalin had already been planning some future trials in his mind and Abakumov, who had organized the very efficient operation of SMERSH, was the best candidate for the job.
Later Merkulov blamed Abakumov for his fall from grace, saying that Abakumov ‘was no less ambitious and power-loving than Beria, but [far] more stupid.’ In June 1953, Merkulov wrote to Nikita Khrushchev about the situation back in 1946: ‘Abakumov stopped taking into consideration the opinion of the Politburo members… Beria was extremely afraid of Abakumov and tried to preserve a good relationship with him against all odds, although he knew that Abakumov was a dishonest man… Abakumov complained about me to Comrade Stalin and the Central Committee… For two years I did not even shake hands with Abakumov.’15 But even if Abakumov hated Merkulov and had intrigued against him, this was not enough to prompt Stalin’s decision to replace Merkulov by Abakumov. More like he was seeking, through Abakumov, to put the MGB under his direct control. In October 1950, Stalin ‘pardoned’ Merkulov and appointed him Minister of State Control.