Georgy Malenkov

Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov}} (8 January 1902 [O.S. 26 December 1901] – 14 January 1988) was a Soviet politician who briefly succeeded Joseph Stalin as leader of the Soviet Union after his death in March 1953. After one week, Malenkov was forced to give up control of the party apparatus, but continued to serve as Premier of the Soviet Union. He then entered a power struggle with the party's First Secretary, Nikita Khrushchev that culminated in his removal from the premiership in 1955 as well as the Presidium in 1957.

Malenkov served in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War and joined the Communist Party in 1920. From 1925, he served in the staff of the party's Organizational Bureau (Orgburo), where he was entrusted with overseeing member records; this role led to his heavy involvement in facilitating Stalin's purges of the party in the 1930s. From 1939, Malenkov was a member of the party Secretariat, and during World War II was made a member of the State Defense Committee, where his primary responsibilities were aircraft and missile production. In 1946, he became a full member of the Politburo, where his rivals for succession to Stalin were Andrei Zhdanov and Lavrentiy Beria. Later in 1948, Malenkov rose in stature following Zhdanov's death to become Second Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

Following Stalin's death on 5 March 1953, Malenkov succeeded Stalin as Chairman of the Council of Ministers and the highest-ranking member of the Secretariat. On 14 March, the Politburo (then known as the Presidium) forced him to give up his position in the latter thereby allowing Nikita Khrushchev to become the party's highest-ranking Secretary. Subsequently, Malenkov contented himself serving as the Presidium's highest-ranking member and acting chairman until eventually being eclipsed by Khrushchev as the country's undisputed leader. After being compelled to resign the premiership in 1955, Malenkov conspired with his colleagues in the Presidium to remove Khrushchev from the Soviet leadership. When the attempted coup by the so-called "Anti-Party Group" failed in 1957, Malenkov was dismissed from the Presidium before being 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. Provided by Wikipedia