Vladimir Yefimovich Semichastny (, January 15, 1924 – January 12, 2001) was a Soviet politician, who served as Chairman of the KGB from November 1961 to May 1967. A protégé of Alexander Shelepin, he rose through the ranks of the Communist Youth League (Komsomol). Early life Semichastny was born in January 1924 in the village of Hryhorivka, near Grishino (today Pokrovsk), in the Donetsk Oblast (later renamed Stalino Oblast) of Soviet Ukraine, to a working-class Russian family originally from Tula Province. After finishing high school in 1941, he began studying Chemistry at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Kemerovo, but his studies were interrupted by World War II; his family back in Ukraine were evacuated to Astrakhan, due to the Nazi conquest of the region, and Semichastny himself was drafted to the Red Army. After the liberation of the Donbas by the Red Army in 1943, Semichastny returned home. Later, he received a degree in History from Kiev State University. In the Communist Youth League After the end of the war, Semichastny became a full-time employee of the Communist Youth League (Komsomol), working in the fields of propaganda and administration. From 1947 to 1950 he was First Secretary of the Ukrainian Komsomol. In 1950 he was brought to Moscow to work in the central apparatus of the Komsomol, where he met and befriended Alexander Shelepin, forging very close ties with him and eventually succeeding him as First Secretary of the All-Union Komsomol, on 28 March 1958. On 29 October 1958, speaking to an audience of thousands at a rally to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the founding of Komsomol, he launched a tirade against Boris Pasternak, who had just been awarded the Nobel Prize for his novel, Doctor Zhivago, which had been published abroad after being suppressed in the USSR. Comparing him with "a pig that shits in its own sty", he called for Pasternak to be deported. It was this threat that made Pasternak decide to renounce the prize. In Azerbaijan In 1959, Semichastny was sent by the Soviet leadership to the politically sensitive and oil-rich Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan, as Second Secretary of the ruling Communist Party of Azerbaijan, a position he held for two years, until 1961, serving under the Republic's leader Vali Akhundov. Chairman of the KGB Semichastny was appointed Chairman of the KGB by Nikita Khrushchev in November 1961, again succeeding his friend and