Mironov, Nikolai Romanovich

(1913–1964)

   Mironov began his career in Smersh during World War II and served in the 1950s in Moscow and Leningrad as a senior counterintelligence officer. In 1959 Nikita Khrushchev selected Mironov to head the Administrative Organs Department of the Central Committee. As one of Khrushchev’s key deputies, Mironov served as the party’s watchdog on intelligence and security matters. He wrote a number of articles in the press, emphasizing the party’s role in establishing a regime of socialist legality. Mironov was reportedly feared by intelligence professionals: Oleg Penkovskiy noted in his journal that “this Mironov is tsar and God over us.” Mironov perished in an airplane crash in Yugoslavia in October 1964, just a few days before the anti-Khrushchev coup. His death limited Khrushchev’s control over the KGB, which took an important role in the coup.