Serghei Nicolau

Serghei Nicolau (born Sergey Nikonov; 22 September 1905 – 19 March 1999) was a Romanian communist espionage chief and a Securitate general.

Biography An ethnic Russian, Nicolau was born on 22 September (or 5 November) 1905 in Izmail, in the Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire, the son of Ion and Ecaterina. According to other sources, he was born in Cacica, Duchy of Bukovina, Austria-Hungary.

Like his future boss Emil Bodnăraș, he was recruited by the NKVD. This occurred in 1922, when he was sent to study in Belgium and France as an agent of the Comintern. In June 1935, Nicolau took over the management of a spy ring that operated on the territory of Bessarabia.

After the coup d'état of 23 August 1944, Nicolau was placed in various positions within the Allied Control Commission (Soviet side). During that time, he re-established contact with colonel Nikolai Petrovich Zudov, the chief of NKVD operations in Romania. In consultation with the local Soviet espionage bureau, the pair reorganized the SSI into four bureaus: foreign information, supervision of diplomatic missions in Bucharest, domestic information and counterespionage activities. His chief of staff, Mikhail Gavrilovich, and his personal security guard, Valerian Buchikov, were both MGB officers. In October 1949, the former communist Minister of Justice Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu and his wife, Elena, were handed over to the SSI for questioning on the personal order of Gheorghiu-Dej, acting on instructions from Aleksandr Sakharovsky, the chief MGB adviser to the Ministry of the Interior. Nicolau tasked Petre (Petr) Gonceariuc, the head of the Counterespionage Directorate of the SSI, with Pătrășcanu's interrogation, with the purpose of establishing his connection with foreign espionage agencies through the intermediary of Lena Constante.

The Soviet handlers were not content with only training and assisting Securitate officers, but they actively started recruiting some of them. Nicolau protested this practice to Gheorghiu-Dej, who refused to intervene, since he was seeking at the time the support of the Soviets in his campaign against the Ana Pauker faction of the PCR. As a result, Nicolau was removed as head of the SSI on 6 January 1953, and replaced by ; On 1 April 1953, Nicolau transferred to the information services of the Ministry of Defense. From March 1954 until 27 November 1960, Nicolau, who held the rank of lieutenant general, led the military espionage bureau of the Romanian General Staff, He died in Bucharest on 19 March 1999.