Garegin Apresov

Garegin Abramovich Apresov (Гарегин Абрамович Апресов; 6 January 1890 – 11 September 1941) was a Soviet diplomat and intelligence officer, most notable for his tenure in Xinjiang during Sheng Shicai's rule.

Life
Garegin A. Apresov (Apresoff, Apresof) was born to an Armenian family in Qusar in what was then Baku Governorate in Caucasus Viceroyalty of the Russian Empire. His parents lived in Baku, but they had a dacha in Qusar.

He studied law at the Moscow University and graduated in 1914. He spoke several foreign languages.

From 1914 until 1917 he served in the army.

He joined the Communist Party in 1918.

From 1917 to 1918 he was the President of the Lankaran Municipal Council. In March 1918 he was named a member of a government's directorate in Baku and later a member of the Directorate for Food in Baku. In the same year, he became a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal in Saratov.

From 1918 to 1919 he was the Leader of the Provincial Justice Department in Saratov.

In 1920, he was involved in underground activity in the Caucasus.

From 1921 to 1921, Apresov served as Deputy People's Commissar for Justice of the Azerbaijan SSR and as a commander of a brigade of the Red Army. Between 1921 and 1922 he was a member of the Collegiate of the People's Commissars for Justice in the Georgian SSR.

From 1922 to 1923 he served as the Soviet Consul in Rasht, Persia, from 1924 to 1925 in Isfahan, Persia, and from 1923 to 1926 in Mashhad, Persia. For some time he was also a representative of the Foreign Department of the Joint State Political Directorate (INO OGPU) and Soviet Interim Commissioner for Persia (1923–24). According to G.S. Agabekov, he was also a representative of Soviet military intelligence and the Comintern. G.S. Agabekov spoke about G.A. Apresov as follows: "A lawyer by training, very intelligent, well versed in the psychology of the East, fluent in Persian and the Turkic dialect, loving risk and adventure, he was created by nature to work in the OGPU in the East. In addition, he had some practice in his work. While being the Soviet consul in Rasht, he managed to steal the consul's archive through the mistress of the English consul in Rasht, thereby winning the full trust of this institution. Apresov got to work, and by the middle of 1923, copies of all the secret correspondence of the British consulate in Meshed with the British envoy in Tehran and with the Indian general staff began to arrive from him." Between September 1927 and July 1928, Apresov served as a member of the Military Collegiate of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, but resigned at his own request. From 1927 to 1932 he was a People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (NKID) agent in Baku. He was NKID's plenipotentiary before the Council of People's Commissars of the Azerbaijan SSR in 1929 and the Uzbek SSR and the Soviet Central Asia in 1930.

In 1935, he was named the Soviet General Consul and Representative of the INO OGPU in Urumqi, Xinjiang, China. At the same time, he was the Commissioner of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, whose tasks included ensuring that representatives of all departments pursue a single line; employees of other people's commissariats were prohibited from taking any actions that had or could have political significance for the USSR without the prior permission of the Commissioner of the Central Committee. He wielded so much power in Xinjiang that he became generally known as "Tsar" Apresoff.

In 1935 he was awarded the Order of Lenin.

From 1935 to 1936 he was Chief of the Second Eastern Department of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union (NKID).

Arrest and death
In 1937, Chinese warlord Sheng Shicai launched his own purge to coincide with Stalin's Great Purge. He received assistance from the NKVD. Sheng and the Soviets alleged a massive Trotskyist conspiracy and a "Fascist Trotskyite plot" to destroy the Soviet Union. G. A. Apresov was among the 435 alleged conspirators; moreover, he allegedly led the conspiracy.

In March 1937 he was recalled from service in China and arrested. He was dismissed from the NKID on 13 July 1937. On 13 July 1940 he was sentenced to 10 years in prison under the accusation of the anti-Soviet activity based on the Art. 58-10 RSFSR Penal Code.

For some time, he was held in the Sukhanovo special security prison for important political prisoners ("particularly dangerous enemies of the people").

On 8 September 1941, on the basis of Decree No. GKO-634ss, without initiating a criminal case and conducting preliminary and trial proceedings, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, chaired by Vasily Ulrich (members of the collegium D. Ya. Kandibin and Vasiliy Bukanov), sentenced Apresov and 161 prisoners of the Oryol Prison to death penalty under Art. 58-10 RSFSR Penal Code. He was shot on 11 September 1941 in the Medvedev Forest near Oryol, in an event known as the Medvedev Forest massacre.

G. A. Apresov was rehabilitated in 1956.

Family
Wife - Lidiya Artemyevna Apresova

Brother - Sergei Abramovich Apresov (10.1.1895, Baku - 4.7.1938) - graduate of the Military Medical Academy, head of the hospital in Baku. He was arrested on March 3, 1938, and charged under Art. 21/64, 21/70, 73, 72 of the Criminal Code of the AzSSR by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. On July 4, 1938, he was sentenced to capital punishment and shot on the same day. S. A. Apresov was rehabilitated by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on April 14, 1956, for lack of corpus delicti.

Brother - Konstantin Abramovich Apresov

Brother - Tsovak Abramovich Apresov

Brother - Gurgen Abramovich Apresov

Brother - Grigory Abramovich Apresov