Sergei Ivanovich Ogoltsov (; 29 August 1900 – 30 December 1976) was a Soviet state security official who served as a Deputy Minister of State Security from 1946 to 1953.
Early life and education
Sergei Ivanovich Ogoltsov was born on 29 August 1900 in Kanino village in Sapozhkovsky Uyezd of Ryazan Governorate in a peasant family of Russian ethnicity. In 1916 he graduated from a two-class primary school and continued his training as an apprentice of a parish clerk in the villages of Ukolovo and Prigorod. In October 1917 he became secretary of the parish executive committee, a post he held until joining the state security system in May 1918.
In 1919 he joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
In 1925 he was sent to study in the Higher Border Guard School of the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) that he graduated in 1927.
Career in state security
Just 17 years old, he started his career in Cheka, working from May to October 1918 as a secretary of a bureau combating profiteering. In October 1918 he was promoted to an investigator and in March 1919 became the deputy head of a bureau combating counter-revolution. In June 1919 he was transferred from the Sapozhkovsky Uyezd office to the Ryazan Governorate office, where he advanced fast – from operative commissar of search and seizure to the head of weaponry bureau to the assistant of the Cheka plenipotentiary in Ranenburgsky Uyezd. He also participated in combat activities against the units of the Cossack general Konstantin Mamontov. Although Ogoltsov could barely read, he was apparently very effective in finding "counter-revolutionary literature" during his search and seizure operations and soon his name was brought to the attention of Cheka top executives.
In April 1920 he was transferred to Moscow, where he served as a commissar of search and seizure under direct supervision of Felix Dzerzhinsky's first deputy Ivan Ksenofontov. In May he was part of the team of security officers who accompanied Dzerzhinsky to Ukraine, where Ogoltsov remained for the next five years. From June 1920 he held various security posts in Poltava Governorate, becoming by the end of the year deputy head of the department combating banditry. In January 1921 he was appointed the head of Cheka in Lokhvytsky Uyezd and in 1922, after Cheka had been renamed the State Political Directorate (GPU), one of the plenipotentiaries in Poltava Governorate.
In 1923, Ogoltsov became the Inspector for the Special Branch 14 Infantry Corps based in Kiev. His command was continually transferred in the 1930s to different units within Ukraine, including the 22nd Volochisskogo NKVD border unit, the 26th NKVD border detachment in Odessa, and the 27th NKVD border unit in Sevastopol. He was promoted to the commander officer of the 27th Crimean NKVD border group in 1936.
After spending most of the 1930s in Ukraine among various NKVD border units, he joined the NKVD administration in Leningrad in 1939. For the next few years he spent time in Leningrad and Kuibyshev until he was made the Commissar of State Security of the Kazakh SSR in 1944. While at this position, Ogoltsov participated in the deportation of many Soviet peoples to the Kazakh SSR. From 1945 he served as the Deputy Minister of State Security of the USSR (until 1946 Deputy People's Commissar of State Security).
In 1951 Ogoltsov was appointed the 1st Deputy Minister of State Security of the USSR. Joseph Stalin then nominated Ogoltsov for Minister of State Security after the removal of Vsevolod Nikolayevich Merkulov, but he initially refused, citing a lack of knowledge and experience. In 1952 Ogoltsov served as the Minister of Public Security in Uzbekistan and then became the Head of Main Intelligence Directorate of the MVD. His final position was as the First Deputy Minister of State Security.
Coordinated operations
In early 1920s Ogoltsov coordinated the operations against Ukrainian nationalists and anarchists, including the units of Nestor Makhno, in Poltava Governorate. His strategy was simple: a number of people from villages supporting the counter-revolutionaries were taken hostage and if the villagers refused to reveal the locations of counter-revolutionary units, the hostages were executed. The discovered units were completely annihilated as Ogoltsov had given a command not to take any prisoners in armed combat.