Semyon Denisovich Ignatiev (Russian: Семён Денисович Игнатьев; 14 September 1904 – 27 November 1983) was a Soviet politician, and the last head of the security forces appointed by Joseph Stalin.
[3] In March 1947, he was appointed a secretary of the communist party of Belorussia, responsible for agriculture, but was removed early in 1950, and posted to Uzbekistan.
In December 1950, Ignatiev was recalled to Moscow and appointed head of the department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that supervised party, Komsomol and trade union personnel, and given the task of investigating the Minister of State Security (MGB - forerunner of the KGB), Viktor Abakumov, who had been accused of corruption by a rival, Ivan Serov[4] When Abakumov was dismissed and arrested, in July 1951, Ignatiev was originally appointed representative of the Central Committee in the MGB.
He also briefly served as a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee (previously named Politburo) in the final months before Stalin's demise.
In April, it was announced in Pravda and other newspapers that the Doctors' Plot had been a miscarriage of justice and that Ignatiev had been guilty of "political blindness and ignorance" in allowing it to happen.
At the same time, it was Ignatiev's good fortune to be the first former head of the security services in almost 30 years to escape being arrested and executed - the fate suffered by Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov, Vsevolod Merkulov, Beria and Abakumov.
Stalin was crazy with rage, yelling at Ignatiev and threatening him, demanding that he throw the doctors in chains, beat them to pulp, and grind them into powder.
He may have been reluctant to have the instruction carried out, but the historians Jonathan Brent and Vladimir Naumov have noted that "Ignatiev's malaise and exhaustion did not prevent him from slavish obedience.