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Soviet Union [USSR] THE SECURITY APPARATUS AND KREMLIN POLITICS
The Khrushchev period was important for the development of the
internal security apparatus. Legal reforms, personnel changes, and
the denunciation of Stalin had a marked effect on the position of
the police and the legal organs. As the successor to Khrushchev,
Brezhnev did much to reverse the tide of reforms, but later, under
Gorbachev, reforms progressed again. The reforms brought opposition
to Gorbachev from the police apparatus because the changes
curtailed police powers.
Khrushchev Period
One of the first reforms instituted by the post-Stalin
leadership under Khrushchev was a reorganization of the police
apparatus. On March 13, 1954 a decree of the Presidium of the
Supreme Soviet established the KGB, attached to the Council of
Ministers. The establishment of a state security apparatus separate
from that of the regular police was designed to diminish the
formidable powers that the police had wielded when its activities
were concentrated in one organization. Henceforth, the functions of
ensuring political security would be ascribed to a special police
agency, whose powers were substantially less than they had been
under Stalin.
The party leadership also instituted significant legal reforms
to protect citizens from police persecution. On May 24, 1955, a new
statute on
procurator (see Glossary) supervision was enacted by the
Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. This statute provided procedural
guarantees of procuratorial power to protest illegalities committed
by state agencies and to make proposals for eliminating these
illegalities. Another reform that restricted the powers of the
political police and protected citizens from police persecution was
the enactment in December 1958 of the Fundamental Principles of
Criminal Procedure, which were incorporated into the 1960 Russian
Republic's Code of Criminal Procedure and were still in effect in
1989, although they had been amended several times.
The new codes, which were established according to the Russian
Republic model in the other republics as well, subjected the KGB to
the same procedural rules to which other investigative agencies
were subject and specified precisely the types of crimes the KGB
was empowered to investigate. A new law on state crimes, enacted on
December 25, 1958, and incorporated into the 1960 Code of Criminal
Procedure of the Russian Republic, narrowed the range of political
crimes that were embodied in the Stalinist codes and made criminal
sanctions less severe.
Khrushchev's policy of de-Stalinization also had significance
for the role of the post-Stalin political police. His famous
"secret speech," delivered at the Twentieth Party Congress in
February 1956, called attention to the crimes committed by the
police under Stalin. This inevitably weakened the prestige of the
KGB and demoralized its
cadres (see Glossary), many of whom had
participated actively in the purges.
These police and legal reforms were diminished somewhat by the
appointment in 1954 of two long-time police officials, Ivan Serov
and Sergei Kruglov, to head the KGB and the MVD, respectively.
Serov's past was heavily tainted by his participation in the
Stalinist police repression, as was that of Kruglov. Both, however,
had lent their support to Khrushchev when he made his move against
Beria, and apparently they had to be rewarded. Although Khrushchev
and the party leadership wanted to demonstrate that they were
"cleansing the ranks" of the police by purging many officials, they
retained others who were loyal and experienced.
In December 1958, Serov was removed from his post as KGB chief
and replaced by Aleksandr Shelepin, a former
Komsomol (see Glossary) official. With his higher education
in humanities and his
untainted record, Shelepin did much to raise the stature of the KGB
and to bring renewed efficiency and legitimacy to it. By the late
1950s, efforts were under way to improve the public image of the
KGB by portraying its officials in a favorable light in the media
and by publishing works on the history of the Soviet political
police. In addition, changes in the legal codes in 1961 broadened
the KGB's investigative powers.
Shelepin himself may have been largely responsible for the
campaign to rehabilitate the security police. Although he left his
post as head of the KGB in December 1961, he continued to oversee
the police in his capacity as Central Committee secretary, and his
successor, Vladimir Semichastnyi, was a close ally. Both Shelepin
and Semichastnyi appeared to have joined the ranks of opposition to
Khrushchev sometime before his ouster in October 1964 and were
actively involved in the plot to overthrow the party leader. DeStalinization , legal reforms, and various other measures promoted
by Khrushchev to curtail the activities of the security police had
no doubt created resentment within its ranks and aroused the
displeasure of leading KGB officials.
Data as of May 1989
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