Pyotr Vasilyevich Fedotov (Russian: Пётр Васильевич Федотов; 18 December 1900 – 29 September 1963) was long time

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

security and intelligence officer, head of

counterintelligence Counterintelligence (counter-intelligence) or counterespionage (counter-espionage) is any activity aimed at protecting an agency's Intelligence agency, intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering informati ...

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

NKGB The People's Commissariat for State Security () or NKGB, was the name of the Soviet secret police, intelligence and counter-intelligence force that existed from 3 February 1941 to 20 July 1941, and again from 1943 to 1946, before being rename ...

and head of foreign intelligence as the deputy chairman of the

Committee of Information A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly or other form of organization. A committee may not itself be considered to be a form of assembly or a decision-making body. Usually, an assembly o ...

. Fedotov was born in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

, into a family of conductors. From 1915 to 1919, he worked for the local newspaper. After the outbreak of the

Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...

, he served in the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

. In 1921, Fedotov joined the new Soviet security organization, the

Cheka The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə, links=yes), ...

. He first served in the local Cheka/ GPU/

OGPU The Joint State Political Directorate ( rus, Объединённое государственное политическое управление, p=ɐbjɪdʲɪˈnʲɵn(ː)əjə ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əjə pəlʲɪˈtʲitɕɪskəjə ʊprɐˈv ...

offices. In 1937, he was moved to the

Moscow Headquarters, known as Lubyanka, and was put in charge of one of the ''Secret Political Department'' Sections in the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD. He rose to the top of the NKVD during the Great Purge and is known to have taken part in brutal interrogations and forgeries involving Stalin's purported enemies. Between 1939 and 1941, he was the head of the

GUGB The Main Directorate of State Security (, Главное управление государственной безопасности, ГУГБ, GUGB) was the name of the Soviet Union's most important security body within the People's Commissari ...

2nd Department (''SPO''). In 1940, he took part in the killing of Polish prisoners of war – the

Katyn massacre The Katyn massacre was a series of mass killings under Communist regimes, mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish people, Polish military officer, military and police officers, border guards, and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by t ...

. In 1941, after the creation of the

People's Commissariat for State Security The People's Commissariat for State Security () or NKGB, was the name of the Soviet secret police, intelligence and counter-intelligence force that existed from 3 February 1941 to 20 July 1941, and again from 1943 to 1946, before being rename ...

(NKGB), he became the head of the 2nd Directorate, responsible for

. He personally signed a document of an interrogation on October 20, 1942 sending/placing in a gulag for 5 years a famous polish actor Eugene Bodo (Eugeniusz Junod) who died in Kotlas in 1943, due to poor conditions therein (Russian red cross document from 1992). Then in 1946, after the People's Commissariat for State Security was renamed the Ministry for State Security (Ministerstvo Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti) or MGB, Fedotov became the head of its ''1st Directorate'', responsible for foreign intelligence. When the

was established in 1947, he was put in charge of foreign intelligence as the deputy chairman under

Vyacheslav Molotov Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov (; – 8 November 1986) was a Soviet politician, diplomat, and revolutionary who was a leading figure in the government of the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1950s, as one of Joseph Stalin's closest allies. ...

and then under

Andrey Vyshinsky Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky (; ) ( – 22 November 1954) was a Soviet politician, jurist and diplomat. He is best known as a Procurator General of the Soviet Union, state prosecutor of Joseph Stalin's Moscow Trials and in the Nuremberg trial ...

. In March 1953, he was moved to the Ministry of Internal Affairs ( MVD) and took over its 1st Chief Directorate (counterintelligence). He took over the same position in the newly created

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

, but as the head of the 2nd Chief Directorate (counterintelligence), of which he was in charge until 1956. In May 1956, he started working at the KGB school as deputy head of one of the departments. Fedotov was retired from the KGB in 1959. He died in 1963 at the age of 63.

References

Commissars 3rd Class of State Security KGB officers Cheka State Political Directorate officers 1900 births 1963 deaths People from Saint Petersburg Katyn massacre Soviet military personnel of the Russian Civil War Political commissars of the Soviet Army Communist Party of the Soviet Union members {{Soviet-bio-stub