the security service in Leningrad during the hardest months of the
900-day German siege. Ogoltsov ensured that order was maintained
during the winter of 1941–1942, when more than 600,000
Leningraders starved and froze to death. He was awarded the Order
of the Red Banner and promoted for his effort.
In 1946 Ogoltsov was promoted to lieutenant general and made
head of the section for “special questions.” He planned the murder of
the Jewish actor Solomon Mikhoels, whose death Joseph Stalinhad
personally insisted on. Ogoltsov received the Order of the Red Ban-
ner for this operation. At the time of Stalin’s death, Ogoltsov worked
closely with Minister of State Security Semyon Ignatievto ensure
power passed quietly to the next generation. Ogoltsov was arrested
following Stalin’s death for Mikhoels’s murder, but he was released
four months later, a reward for having smoothed the transition of
power following Stalin’s death.OGPU (OBYEDINENNOE GOSUDARTVENNOE POLITICH-
ESKOE UPRAVLENIYE).The OGPU (Unified State Political Di-
rectorate) was founded on 2 November 1923 as a successor to the
GPU, and it was replaced by the NKVDin June 1934. Under Joseph
Stalin’s ever watchful eyes, the OGPU became an important player
in the execution of Soviet foreign and domestic policies. Stalin relied
on the OGPU for information on political rivals, such as Leon Trot-
skyand Nikolai Bukharin. The OGPU also played a critical role in
the industrialization of the country and the collectivizationof agri-
culture. The OGPU crushed resistance to collectivization and de-
portedmillions of peasants and their families to Siberia and Central
Asia. The majority of the exiledpeasants were imprisoned in the
OGPU’s growing network of forced labor camps in the gulagsystem.
In the field of foreign policy, the OGPU concentrated on counter-
intelligenceoperations against émigrégroups. It also recruited and
ran agents with access to political and economic information. The
OGPU also acted as Stalin’s avenging arms, killing two critical White
generals in Paris as well as Ukrainian émigré leaders in Poland.
OGPU illegals recruited important signals intelligenceagents as
sources of cryptological information.
The leadership of the OGPU was drawn from those who had
served in the Revolutionof 1917 and the civil war. Jewish, Polish,180 •OGPU (OBYEDINENNOE GOSUDARTVENNOE POLITICHESKOE UPRAVLENIYE)06-313 G-P.qxd 7/27/06 7:56 AM Page 180