Tsvygun, Semyon Konstantinovich

(1917–1982)

   A career KGB officer who rose to first deputy chief of the service because of his family connections to Leonid Brezhnev, Tsvygun was an important member of Brezhnev’s “Dneprepropetrovsk mafia.” Tsvygun served in Moldavia with Brezhnev in the 1950s and according to many sources was a boon drinking companion. Tsvygun wrote several books and movie scenarios on the KGB and partisan warfare, as well as a history of the Cheka.

   In early 1982 Tsvygun was attacked for professional incompetence by Mikhail Suslov, Communist Party second secretary responsible for ideology. Suslov blamed Tsvygun for allowing damning information about Brezhnev to reach the West. Later that week, Tsvygun apparently committed suicide. Brezhnev refused to sign his obituary, the first sign that the West had of growing divisions in the ruling elite. Suslov, who was in poor health, died shortly thereafter and was replaced as the number two man in the party by Yuri Andropov.