Doctors' plot
On 26 August 1951, Yepishev was posted as Deputy Minister for personnel matters in the Ministry for State Security. Yepishev was one of many officials with no prior experience in intelligence who were transferred to the MGB after it was purged of members associated with its executed former chief, Viktor Abakumov. The head of the MGB in this period, Semyon Ignatyev seems to have been an ineffectual figure, implying that Yepishev may have been the effective chief of police during the time of the Doctors' plot, the Night of the Murdered Poets, the Slansky Trial, and other notorious abuses of power - but like Ignatiev, and unlike other involved, such as Mikhail Ryumin, he was never called to account for whatever role he had in those affairs.