Viktor Chebrikov
KGB officer (1923-1999)
Viktor Mikhailovich Chebrikov (Russian: Виктор Михайлович Че́бриков; 27 April 1923 – 2 July 1999) was a Soviet public official and security administrator and head of the KGB from December 1982 to October 1988.
Life and career
Born in the industrial city of Yekaterinoslav in eastern Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Dnipro, Ukraine) on 27 April 1923, he finished military school in 1942 and served in World War II as a battalion commander. From July 1942, he commanded a platoon of a cadet rifle regiment in the 64th Army on the Stalingrad Front, but on August 14, 1942, he was seriously wounded. After his recovery, he was deputy platoon commander and commander of a mortar platoon in the 262nd Infantry Regiment of the 184th Infantry Division on the Southwestern and Stalingrad fronts. From 1943 until the end of the war he fought in the ranks of the 575th Infantry Regiment of the 161st Infantry Division on Stepnoye, from August 1943 - on Voronezh, from October 1943 - on the 1st Ukrainian, from August 1944 - on the 4th Ukrainian fronts. His contemporaries describe him as having fought bravely and selflessly. At the front, he was wounded three times (one severe wound and two medium ones), shell-shocked and frostbitten, but each time he returned to duty.
After the war Chebrikov wanted to continue his military career, but was refused by the prestigious Frunze Military Academy because of his bad eyesight; abandoning his military ambitions, he earned an engineering degree, joined the Communist Party in 1950, and embarked on a political-administrative career, rising through the Ukrainian party ranks until he became First Secretary of the Dnipropetrovsk Party Committee in 1961. In 1967, he was brought to Moscow as personnel manager for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He was Deputy chairman of the KGB under Yuri Andropov from 1968-1982.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q954743. VIAF identifies the subject as 13774176. The Library of Congress control number is n85366419. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1923, 1999, 1982 and 1988.
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This entry incorporates text from “Viktor Chebrikov” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.