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

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

security and intelligence officer, head of

counterintelligence Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or o ...

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

NKGB The People's Commissariat for State Security (russian: Народный комиссариат государственной безопасности) or NKGB, was the name of the Soviet secret police, intelligence and counter-intelligence f ...

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. A committee is not itself considered to be a form of assembly. Usually, the assembly sends matters into a committee as a way to explore them more ...

. Fedotov was born in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

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

Russian Civil War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Russian Civil War , partof = the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War I , image = , caption = Clockwise from top left: {{flatlist, *Soldiers ...

, he served in the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...

. In 1921, Fedotov joined the new Soviet security organization, the Cheka. He first served in the local Cheka/ GPU/

OGPU The Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU; russian: Объединённое государственное политическое управление) was the intelligence and state security service and secret police of the Soviet Union ...

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. Between 1939 and 1941, he was the head of the GUGB 2nd Department (''SPO''). In 1940, he took part in the killing of Polish prisoners of war – the Katyn massacre. In 1941, after the creation of the People's Commissariat for State Security (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. ; (;. 9 March O. S. 25 February">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O. S. 25 February1890 – 8 November 1986) was a Russian politician and diplomat, an Old Bol ...

and then under

Andrey Vyshinsky Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky (russian: Андре́й Януа́рьевич Выши́нский; pl, Andrzej Wyszyński) ( – 22 November 1954) was a Soviet politician, jurist and diplomat. He is known as a state prosecutor of Josep ...

. 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, 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 1900 births 1963 deaths {{Soviet-bio-stub