Georgi Malenkov

Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov 8 January 1902 OS 26 December 1901 14 January 1988 was a Soviet politician who succeeded Joseph Stalin as Premier and the overall leader of the Soviet Union in March 1953 Shortly thereafter Malenkov entered into a power struggle with the partys First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev that culminated in his removal from the premiership in 1955 as well as the Central Committee Presidium in 1957 Georgy Malenkov served in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War and joined the Communist Party in 1920 Beginning in 1925 he served in the staff of the partys Organizational Bureau Orgburo where he was entrusted with overseeing member records In this role Malenkov was heavily involved in facilitating Stalins purges of the partys ranks during the 1930s By 1939 he became a member of the Central Committee Secretariat During World War II Malenkov was appointed to the State Defense Committee where he was charged with overseeing aircraft and missile production After the wars end he became a full member of the Politburo in 1946 Later in 1948 Malenkov succeeded Andrei Zhdanov as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Upon Stalins death on 5 March 1953 Malenkov succeeded him as Chairman of the Council of Ministers and the highestranking Secretary of the Central Committee On 14 March his colleagues within the Politburo then known as the Presidium forced him to give up his membership in the Secretariat thereby allowing Nikita Khrushchev to become the partys acting First Secretary Subsequently Malenkov contented himself with serving as the Presidiums highestranking member and chairman until eventually being eclipsed by Khrushchev as the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union After being compelled to leave office as Premier in February 1955 he conspired with other members of the Presidium to remove Khrushchev from the Soviet leadership When the attempted coup by the socalled AntiParty Group failed in 1957 Malenkov was dismissed from the Presidium and expelled from the party altogether by 1961 He kept a low profile for the rest of his life and died in 1988 of natural causes Description above from the Wikipedia article Georgi Malenkov licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia