Ivan Savchenko

Ivan Tikhonovich Savchenko (1908-2000) was a Soviet Communist Party and KGB executive. Savchenko made a career as a political officer in the Red Army during World War II. A protégé of Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, Savchenko transferred to the Ministry of State Security (the predecessor to the KGB) in 1951. In 1952 he was promoted to the chief of the Special Services Department (GUSS, a cryptanalysis and information security branch of the Central Committee), in 1953 to the Chief of the KGB's Eighth Chief Directorate. His record at the national Party and KGB levels was lackluster, and 1959 he was transferred from Moscow to Chişinău as the head of the Moldavian SSR KGB. In 1967–1979 Savchenko represented the KGB in Romania and Bulgaria.

In June 1951 Savchenko, who already earned special operations experience in the fight against Ukrainian nationalists, held an insignificant bureaucratic appointment in the national offices of the Central Committee in Moscow. In July 1951, after the fall of State Security chief Victor Abakumov, colonel Savchenko was hastily recruited to the Ministry of State Security (MGB). Savchenko temporarily held the post of the Deputy Chairman of the MGB, but apparently had not done anything notable in this office. One year later he was transferred back to the Central Committee, and appointed chief of its Special Services Department (GUSS), a SIGINT and cryptanalysis service.

GUSS was created in 1942 by (then) major Ivan Shevelev. In 1949 the service was transferred from the NKVD control under direct management of the Central Committee. Shevelev, otherwise a capable SIGINT officer, was not able to overcome the shortage of qualified staff and the departmental rivalry with the stronger GRU force. In June 1952 Shevelev, now a Lieutenant General, was replaced by Savchenko. After the death of Joseph Stalin GUSS was reincorporated into the KGB as its Eighth Directorate, with Savchenko in command. Savchenko, a career apparatchik without technical or intelligence background, "proved to be a major disappointment given his lack of understanding of the technical aspects ... and his well-advertized ambition to get promoted out of GUSS."

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