Sergei Ogoltsov

Sergei Ivanovich Ogoltsov (; 29 August 1900 – 30 December 1976 ) was a Soviet state security official who served as a Deputy Minister of State Security from 1946 to 1953.

Early life and education Sergei Ivanovich Ogoltsov was born on 29 August 1900 in Kanino village in Sapozhkovsky Uyezd of Ryazan Governorate in a peasant family of Russian ethnicity. In 1916 he graduated from a two-class primary school and continued his training as an apprentice of a parish clerk in the villages of Ukolovo and Prigorod. In October 1917 he became secretary of the parish executive committee, a post he held until joining the state security system in May 1918.

In 1919 he joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

Career in state security Just 17 years old, he started his career in Cheka, working from May to October 1918 as a secretary of a bureau combating profiteering. In October 1918 he was promoted to an investigator and in March 1919 became the deputy head of a bureau combating counter-revolution. In June 1919 he was transferred from the Sapozhkovsky Uyezd office to the Ryazan Governorate office, where he advanced fast – from operative commissar of search and seizure to the head of weaponry bureau to the assistant of the Cheka plenipotentiary in Ranenburgsky Uyezd. He also participated in combat activities against the units of the Cossack general Konstantin Mamontov.

In April 1920 he was transferred to Moscow, where he served as a commissar of search and seizure under direct supervision of Felix Dzerzhinsky's first deputy Ivan Ksenofontov. In May he was part of the team of security officers who accompanied Dzerzhinsky to Ukraine, where Ogoltsov remained for the next five years. From June 1920 he held various security posts in Poltava Governorate, becoming by the end of the year deputy head of the department combating banditry. In January 1921 he was appointed the head of Cheka in Lokhvytsky Uyezd and in 1922, after Cheka had been renamed the State Political Directorate (GPU), one of the plenipotentiaries in Poltava Governorate.

After spending most of the 1930s in Ukraine among various NKVD border units, he joined the NKVD administration in Leningrad in 1939. For the next few years he spent time in Leningrad and Kuibyshev until he was made the Commissar of State Security of the Kazakh SSR in 1944. While at this position, Ogoltsov participated in the deportation of many Soviet peoples to the Kazakh SSR. From 1945 he served as the Deputy Minister of State Security of the USSR (until 1946 Deputy People's Commissar of State Security).

In 1951 Ogoltsov was appointed the 1st Deputy Minister of State Security of the USSR. Joseph Stalin then nominated Ogoltsov for Minister of State Security after the removal of Vsevolod Nikolayevich Merkulov, but he initially refused, citing a lack of knowledge and experience. In 1952 Ogoltsov served as the Minister of Public Security in Uzbekistan and then became the Head of Main Intelligence Directorate of the MVD. His final position was as the First Deputy Minister of State Security.

Coordinated operations

In early 1920s Ogoltsov coordinated the operations against Ukrainian nationalists and anarchists, including the units of Nestor Makhno, in Poltava Governorate. His strategy was simple: a number of people from villages supporting the counter-revolutionaries were taken hostage and if the villagers refused to reveal the locations of counter-revolutionary units, the hostages were executed. The discovered units were completely annihilated as Ogoltsov had given a command not to take any prisoners in armed combat.

As the Deputy Minister of State Security of the USSR (1946–1951) Ogoltsov was the ministry level coordinator of several mass deportations in the Soviet Union. In October 1947 he and the Ukrainian Minister of State Security Sergei Savchenko coordinated operation West (in Russian Zapad), removing a large number of people (according to the official statistics 77,791 persons) accused of nationalism and banditry, along with their family members from Western Ukraine. In May 1948 he was the general coordinator for operation Spring (in Russian Vesna) in Lithuanian SSR, deporting, according to the official statistics, 39,482 people, along with their family members, accused of nationalism, banditry and being kulaks. In 1949 he was in charge of operation Breaking Wave (in Russian Priboy) directed against the three Baltic republics of the USSR – Estonian SSR, Latvian SSR and Lithuanian SSR. The deportations took place simultaneously in all three Soviet republics on 25 March 1949 and resulted in total of 94,775 people removed from these territories.

Major (3 April 1939) Major of State Security (21 April 1939) Senior Major of State Security (7 April 1940) Commissar of State Security, 3rd class (14 February 1943) Lieutenant General (9 July 1945)

Honours and awards During his career in state security Ogoltsov was awarded the following state decorations:

Ogoltsov had at least one daughter, Nataliya (died in 1994).