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.

[4] 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.

[7] 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.

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.

[9] As the Deputy Minister of State Security of the USSR (1946–1951) Ogoltsov was the ministry level coordinator of several mass deportations in the Soviet Union.

In October 1947 he and the Ukrainian Minister of State Security Sergei Savchenko coordinated operation West (in Russian Zapad), removing a large number of people (according to the official statistics 77,791 persons) accused of nationalism and banditry, along with their family members from Western Ukraine.

[10][11][12] In May 1948 he was the general coordinator for operation Spring (in Russian Vesna) in Lithuanian SSR, deporting, according to the official statistics, 39,482 people, along with their family members, accused of nationalism, banditry and being kulaks.

Robert Conquest, a British historian and author, wrote in his book Reflections on a Ravaged Century that Mikhoels "was clubbed to death at Belorussia's KGB dacha in January 1948 under the supervision of Stalin's Deputy Minister of State Security, Sergei Ogoltsov."

When Lavrenti Beria came to power in 1953 and revised the antisemitic policies of Stalin's last years, Ogoltsov was arrested due to his involvement in Mikhoels' murder and stripped of the order awarded to him in 1948.

[2] After Stalin's death, Ogoltsov was removed from his position as the First Deputy Minister of State Security by Beria and arrested on 3 April 1953 for the murder of Solomon Mikhoels.

Ogoltsov was the head of the operation to murder the artistic director of the State Jewish Theatre Solomon Mikhailovich Mikhoels in January 1948.