Vladimir Dekanozov
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Vladimir Georgievich Dekanozov (Dekanozishvili) (Владимир Георгиевич Деканозов (Деканозишвили), June 1898, Baku - 23 December 1953) headed the Soviet foreign intelligence service INO in (GUGB), part of the NKVD, from 1938 to 1939.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Before Second World War
Vladimir Dekanozishvili was born in the family of Giorgi Dekanozishvili, founder of the Party of Georgian Social-Federalists. From 1931 to 1938, he worked in various posts in the Georgian SSR and fully participated in the Terror. He transferred to the GUGB in November, 1938. The following month he joined the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs.
[edit] Second World War
[edit] Incorporation of Lithuania into USSR
Soviet military forces (15 divisions, about 150,000 soldiers) crossed the Lithuanian border on June 15, 1940, with the military of Lithuania being ordered not to resist. Dekanozov arrived to Lithuania on the same day to organise incorporation of Lithuania into Soviet Union. Communist Party of Lithuania headed by Antanas Sniečkus was at disposal of Dekanozov. With Dekanozov came specialists for Soviet administration and for Soviet security organs. The Soviet military established the controlling presence that allowed Dekanozov to fulfill his function as representative of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). The process creating the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic was Dekanozov’s work. He installed himself in the Soviet embassy, and he imposed on Lithuania the Soviet party-state structure in which the traditional governmental forms were of only secondary importance. Dekanozov restructured the Lithuanian government, naming Justas Paleckis, a Lithuanian leftist who was not yet a member of the Communist Party, as Prime Minister [1].
Aided by specialists sent in from Moscow, Dekanozov worked through the Lithuanian Communist Party, while the cabinet of ministers, headed by Paleckis, served an administrative function. Dekanozov and Paleckis brought a number of non-members of the Communist Party (but still pro-communists) into the first "People’s government", but in historical retrospect it is clear that they constituted window dressing for the Soviet takeover. For his part, Dekanozov pushed his program carefully, concentrating first of all on denouncing the Smetona regime in Lithuania, then promising to respect private property, assuring Lithuanians that agriculture would not be collectivized, and restraining any discussion of the possibility of joining the Soviet Union until mid-July.
On July 6 Dekanozov’s government announced that on July 14 there would be elections for a new parliament, a so-called People’s Parliament. The Lithuanian Communist Party announced the formation of the Union of the Toiling People of Lithuania that offered a slate of candidates, including some ten non-members of the Communist Party, with just one person designated for every seat in the new parliament. On July 11 and 12, the Soviet authorities reduced the possible points of opposition by arresting leading figures of the old regime and deporting some of them to the interior of the Soviet Union – this although Lithuania was still formally an independent state.
The guiding hand in this process was Dekanozov’s. He used the Lithuanian government, and the Communist Party of Lithuania, as his instruments to carry out the will of the Soviet party leadership. Throughout the process, Soviet propagandists insisted there was only one acceptable path for the country, and all were obliged to follow it. They concentrated on creating an image of mass support, and they called for determined measures against those who somehow opposed the new order and wanted to sabotage the elections of July 14.
Lithuania became a part of the Stalinist Soviet party-state, administered within the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) structure long before it was formally incorporated into the governmental structure of the Soviet Union. By the time the new Soviet state structure in Lithuania had been formalized, Dekanozov had long since left Lithuania. In July 1940 he had returned to Moscow, his job completed, when the People’s Parliament voted to ask for membership in the USSR. In barely more than a month, he had reorganized the Lithuanian state, set the social and economic development on Lithuania onto a new course, and had contributed to the enlargement of the Soviet state. Sovietisation of Lithuania started by Dekanozov was carried on by Nikolai Pozdniakov [2].
Similarly annexation of Latvia was supervised by deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs Andrey Vyshinsky and annexation of Estonia was supervised by full member of the politburo Andrei Zhdanov.
[edit] Work in Berlin
From November 1940 he was Soviet ambassador to Berlin. Dekanozov, a close associate to Beria, served as a deputy to Molotov. A short man with bulging eyes, Dekanozov reported directly to Stalin and his dreaded NKVD master. His sphere of responsibility before 1941 included Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Mongolia, and Xinjiang, all consulates, cadres, and finances of the foreign minister. His duty was to keep an eye on Molotov.
[edit] After Second World War
A close associate of Lavrenty Beria, Dekanozov was arrested in June 1953 in the wake of Stalin's death and was shot.
