Vladimir Dekanozov

Vladimir Georgievich Dekanozov (Dekanozishvili) (Владимир Георгиевич Деканозов (Деканозишвили), June 1898, Baku - 23 December 1953) was a Soviet senior state security operative and a diplomat.

Biography

Before Second World War

Vladimir Dekanozov (Dekanozishvili) was born in the family of Giorgi Dekanozishvili, founder of the Party of Georgian Social-Federalists. From 1931 to 1938, he was a high-ranking party and state official in the Georgian SSR. He transferred to NKVD in November, 1938 when Lavrentii Beria was appointed the head of NKVD. Dekanozov was the deputy chief of GUGB and at the same time headed both its foreign intelligence and counterintellegence departments from 1938 to 1939.

In May 1939 he was appointed the deputy chief of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (NKID). His sphere of responsibility before 1941 included Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Mongolia, and Xinjiang, as well as all consulates, cadres, and finances of NKID.

econd World War

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 [http://www.leonoxiiifondas.lt/index.php?id=193] .

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 [http://www.genocid.lt/Leidyba/8/nijole8.htm] .

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.

Work in Berlin

From November 1940 Dekanozov, remaining the deputy chief of NKID, was also the Soviet ambassador to Berlin.

After Second World War

Dekanozov continued to be the deputy chief of NKID and then of the Foreign Affairs Ministry until 1947. Then he held other senior positions before being appointed in April 1953 the Interior Minister of Georgian SSR (after Beria became the Interior Minister of the USSR).

A close associate of Beria, Dekanozov was arrested in June 1953 and was sentenced to death and shot in December 1953.

ee also

*Soviet-German relations before 1941

References

[http://www.genocid.lt/Leidyba/8/nijole8.htm Nijolė Maslauskienė. The Purge of Civil Servants in Soviet Occupied Lithuania between June–December 1940]