Vsevolod Merkulov (27 November 1895-23 December 1953) was the chief of the KGB from February to July 1941 and again from April 1943 to March 1946. Appointed by Lavrentiy Beria, Merkulov and his boss would both be executed after Nikita Khrushchev's 1953 coup.
Biography[]
Vsevolod Merkulov was born in Zagatala, Azerbaijan in 1895, and he joined the Cheka secret police in the present-day Republic of Georgia in 1921 during the Russian Civil War. During World War II, Merkulov served as head of the KGB on two occasions, and he sought to build up a network of spies inside the Manhattan Project in the United States with the goal of acquiring an atomic bomb for the Soviet Union. Klaus Fuchs managed to infiltrate the project and give the atomic bomb secrets to the USSR, leading to them testing a weapon in August of 1949. Merkulov was replaced as KGB chief in March 1946 by his rival Viktor Abakumov, and he was arrested and executed with Beria and five other associates after Nikita Khrushchev's 1953 coup following Stalin's death.