[3] At the age of 14, Abakumov joined the Soviet Red Army in spring 1922 and served with the 2nd Special Task Moscow Brigade in the Russian Civil War until demobilization in December 1923.

On 19 July 1941, he became the head of newly Directorate of Special Department's (UOO) of the NKVD which was responsible for Counterintelligence and internal security in the RKKA (Red Army).

In this position, after the attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union and the defeats experienced by the Red Army, on Stalin's order he led the purges of RKKA commanders accused of betrayal and cowardice.

He took over a 'splendid' apartment, whose previous occupant, a soprano, he had arrested, and "stashed his mistresses in the Moskva Hotel and imported trainloads of plunder from Berlin.

[8] In his capacity in the MGB he was in charge of the 1949 purge known as the "Leningrad Affair," in which the Politburo members Nikolai Voznesensky and Aleksei Kuznetsov were executed.

When the eminent scientist, Lina Stern, was arrested and brought before Abakumov, he shouted at her, accusing her of being a Zionist and of plotting to turn the Crimea in a separate Jewish state.

"[10] In March 1951, an elderly Jewish doctor, Yakov Gilyarievich Etinger died in custody after being subjected to interrogations lasting up to 12 hours a session by a junior officer, Mikhail Ryumin.

[11] A Politburo commission backed Ryumin, and ruled that Abakumov had "prevented the Central Committee from exposing the undoubtedly real conspiratorial group of doctors" who were supposedly foreign agents intend on murdering leaders of the communist party.

[13] In March 1953 Stalin died, Beria regained control of the police, Ryumin was arrested, and the Doctors' plot was declared to have been a fabrication, but Abakumov and his associates remained in prison.

On 2 April, Beria sent a note to the Praesidium of the Central Committee saying that Abakumov had been questioned about the suspicious death of the actor, Solomon Mikhoels, and had confessed that he was murdered on Stalin's orders.

[14] On 12 May, Beria sent another note, accusing Abakumov of having fabricated the case against Polina Zhemchuzhina,[15] Jewish wife of the Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, who had been arrested as a suspected Zionist in 1948.

On 26 May, Beria submitted another memorandum, accusing Abakumov of fabricating the case against the former Minister of Aviation, Aleksey Shakhurin and other leaders of the air force,[16] who were released after seven years in prison.

Abakumov and three former deputy heads of the MGB Section for Investigating Specially Important Cases, Aleksandr Leonov, Vladimir Komarov and Mikhail Likhachev, were sentenced to death and shot after the trial ended on 19 December.

In Solzhenitsyn's famous non-fiction text, The Gulag Archipelago, he accused Abakumov of personally engaging in the beatings and torture of prisoners during interrogations.