Nikolai Anisimovich Shchelokov was a Soviet statesman and Army General, who also served as interior minister for sixteen years from 17 September 1966 to 17 December 1982. He was fired from all posts on corruption charges and committed suicide on 13 December 1984.
Early life and education
Shchelokov was born in Almazna, a large cossack village near Luhansk in Donbas region of Russian Empire, on 26 November 1910. His father was a mine worker. He also began to work in mines when he was fifteen years old. He attended Dzerzhinsky Metallurgical Institute and received a bachelor's degree in metallurgical engineering in 1933.
Shchelokov joined the Communist Party in 1931. In 1938, he was appointed first secretary of the Communist Party committee of the Krasnogvardeysky district of Dnipropetrovsk. From 1939 to 1941 he was the chairman of the Dnipropetrovsk City Soviet under Leonid Brezhnev, who was then first secretary of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Since then Brezhnev and Schchelokov forged very strong ties and continued supporting each other in their political careers until Brezhnev's death.
At the start of World War II, Shchelokov was promoted to the rank of commissar in the Red Army while remaining the chairman of the City Soviet of Dnipropetrovsk. He served as a political commissar in the Soviet army from 1941 to 1946.
Brezhnev's clan
After the war, Shchelokov resumed to work as a politician in Ukraine from 1947 to 1951. He was part of the Dnipropetrovsk clan that refers to Soviet officials, who worked in Dnipropetrovsk together with Leonid Brezhnev in the Stalin era. Brezhnev was serving as the regional party secretary in the city. The clan also included Andrei Kirilenko and Vladimir Sherbitskii. Shchelokov became second secretary of the central committee of the Moldavian communist party in 1951 where Brezhnev was first secretary. In the same year Shchelokov was named first deputy premier of Moldova. In addition he was a member in the Supreme Soviet at that time.
Chief of the Soviet Police 1966 - 1982
Shchelokov was appointed by Brezhnev as Minister of Public Order on 17 September 1966. On 25 November 1968, the Ministry of Public Order was renamed as Ministry of Internal Affairs with the title of Shchelokov's office renamed accordingly. He was promoted to the rank of general on 12 September 1976 while serving as interior minister. He was also the Soviet Union's top police officer. One of Shchelokov's deputies at the ministry was Brezhnev's son-in-law Yuri Churbanov.
Downfall
Five weeks after the death of Brezhnev, on 17 December 1982, Shchelokov was replaced as interior minister by KGB chairman Vitaly Fedorchuk, a measure seen as influenced by Yuri Andropov, Fedorchuk's predecessor as head of the KGB and newly elected General Secretary of the CPSU, who was Shchelokov's longtime rival. Shchelokov's dismissal was due to corruption charges against him. After leaving office, Shchelokov began work as chief of a police unit at a gas pipeline construction site in Siberia. On 15 June 1983 he was dismissed from the Central Committee of the CPSU on allegations of corruption during his tenure, as part of Andropov's anti-corruption campaign. His son Igor was also removed from his post in the Komsomol shortly after. Later reports argued that his wife and son had also been involved in illegal acts of selling and buying foreign cars. It was further argued that Shchelokov spent huge amount of state money to buy luxury items for personal use. On 6 November 1984, his military rank of army general was withdrawn by the state, and on 7 December he was expelled from the Communist Party. In 1988, author Raul M. Mir-Haidarov argued that Shchelokov had been the godfather of the Uzbek mob.
Death
Shchelokov committed suicide by gunshot to his head using his own hunting rifle from his collection of rarities at his suburban mansion in Moscow on 13 December 1984. He was buried on 15 December in the Vagankovo Cemetery in Moscow. His wife Svetlana had committed suicide on 19 February 1983.
