Plot synopsis

The next episode of "Historical Chronicles" tells about Viktor Abakumov - the Minister of the MGB, the creator of the SMERSH counterintelligence department, his career and his crimes: the deportation of the peoples of the North Caucasus, the organization of the murder of S.M. Mikhoels, the falsification of the "Leningrad Affair" and the "Doctors' Plot".

1950, Moscow and Leningrad. At the dying edge of Stalin’s terror, powerful State Security Minister Viktor Abakumov masterminds the “Leningrad Affair”: a staged trial where decorated war heroes and top party officials are tortured into confessing and condemned to death. As he destroys his rivals and faithfully serves Stalin, the film rewinds his life: a poor boy recruited into special units by his godfather, a zealous enforcer during the Great Terror, head of SMERSH in wartime, architect of deportations and secret poison labs. But the machine he serves slowly turns against him: the disappearance of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, the antisemitic campaign against Jewish doctors, the liquidation of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, the arrest of Molotov’s wife — each case a future charge against its own author. When Stalin dies and the struggle for power explodes, Abakumov himself is arrested, tortured in the same freezing cell he designed for others, then tried as the leader of a “Zionist conspiracy” and executed. The story of a man who thought terror was his shield, only to learn too late that in Stalin’s world, no executioner is ever safe from the firing squad.

Commentaries

Сценарии телесериала «Исторические хроники с Николаем Сванидзе», с 1934го по 1953 год. [Scénarios de la série télévisée « Chroniques historiques avec Nikolaï Svanidzé », de 1934 à 1953], Marina ZHUKOVA, Амфора, 2014

- Screenplay

Selected in the following festivals or events :

- Historical Chronicles with Nikolay Svanidze, (kinoglaz.fr), 2026

Photos, videos, texts

Viktor ABAKOUMOV (Виктор Семёнович АБАКУМОВ) 1908-1954