[1] On 29 October [2] 1958, speaking to an audience of thousands at a rally to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the founding of Komsomol, he attacked Boris Pasternak, who had just been awarded the Nobel Prize for his novel, Doctor Zhivago, which had been published abroad after being suppressed in the USSR.

He also put much emphasis on developing the security and intelligence services of the Soviet satellite states, and on assisting the communist forces in the Vietnam War.

[3] The two rarely had one-on-one meetings (although there were some instances where they would have breakfast together, or a walk in the Kremlin where Semichastny would brief him on important matters) and Khrushchev was adamant in his belief that the KGB was to be confined to intelligence, counterintelligence and state security, and was not expected to have any policy recommendations of its own ("executor, not formulator of policy"), especially in foreign affairs, where Semichastny usually deferred to Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko.

[3] During his tenure Semichasnty attempted to create a new, more positive public image for the KGB, permitting an article to appear in the newspaper Izvestia that included an interview with an unnamed "senior KGB officer" (himself); he stated many young Communist Party and Communist Youth League workers have joined the KGB, and none of the people who, during the time of Joseph Stalin's cult of personality, took part in the repressions against innocent Soviet people, is now in the Service.More articles, books and films on the security organs appeared, and Soviet spies became heroes in print and cinema — Rudolf Abel, Gordon Lonsdale, Harold (Kim) Philby, and Richard Sorge.

Semichastny hoped that by charging Barghoorn as a spy he could induce the United States to release Igor Ivanov, arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that month for espionage.

Subsequently, Semichastny and his mentor Shelepin participated in the successful coup against Khrushchev in October 1964, an act that undoubtedly led to his being initially retained as KGB chief by the new, more hard-line Soviet leadership.

[6] In March 1967, Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, defected to the USA; Semichastny ordered the KGB to kidnap her and bring her back.

but in May, he was hospitalised for eight days after an operation, and in his absence, on 18 May 1967, the Politburo held a ten-minute discussion in which they decided to appoint Yuri Andropov, who was ten years older than Semichastny, as his replacement.

[5] After U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Semichastny investigated the background of Lee Harvey Oswald, who was arrested for the murder and was himself shot dead.

[6] Markus Wolf, the intelligence chief of East Germany, who worked closely with Semichastny, described him as follows: "He was as kind and friendly as might be expected from a former leader of the Komsomol, the party's youth wing.