Georgy Malenkov

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Georgy Malenkov Гео́ргий Маленко́в

Premier of the Soviet Union
In office March 6, 1953 – February 8, 1955
Preceded by	Joseph Stalin
Succeeded by	Nikolai Bulganin

Born	January 8, 1902 Orenburg, Imperial Russia
Died	January 14, 1988 Kazakh SSR, USSR
Political party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov (Russian: Гео́ргий Максимилиа́нович Маленко́в, Georgij Maksimilianovič Malenkov; January 8 [O.S. December 26, 1901] 1902 – January 14, 1988) was a Soviet politician, Communist Party leader and close collaborator of Joseph Stalin. He briefly became leader of the Soviet Union (from March to September 1953) after Stalin's death and was Premier of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1955.

[edit] Biography

Malenkov was born in Orenburg, Russia, in an army officer's family of ethnic Macedonian origin. He joined the Red Army in 1919 and the Communist Party in April 1920. During his military service, he was a political commissar. After leaving the Red Army in 1921, he studied in Moscow Higher Technical School. After graduating in 1925, he worked for the Communist Party and became one of Stalin's confidants. Together with Lavrenty Beria, Malenkov aided Stalin during the purges of the late 1930s. He became a rival of Beria.

Named as candidate for the Politburo, Malenkov joined in 1946. Although Malenkov fell out of favour in place of his rivals Andrei Zhdanov and Beria, he soon came back into Stalin's favour, especially because of Zhdanov's downfall. Beria soon joined Malenkov, and both of them saw all of Zhdanov's allies purged from the Party and sent to labour camps. In 1952, Malenkov became a Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee (member of the party Secretariat). The death of Stalin, in 1953, briefly brought Malenkov to the highest position he would ever hold. With Beria's support, Malenkov became Chairman of the Council of Ministers (Premier), but he had to resign from the Secretariat on March 13th due to the opposition of other members of the Presidium. Nikita Khrushchev assumed the position of First Secretary in September ushering in a period of a Malenkov-Khrushchev duumvirate.

Malenkov retained the office of premier for two years. During these years, he was vocal about his opposition to nuclear armament, declaring "a nuclear war could lead to global destruction." He also advocated refocusing the economy on the production of consumer goods and away from heavy industry, something his succesor Nikita Khrushchev (1955-1964) would escalate.

He was forced to resign, in February 1955, after he came under attack for his closeness to Beria (who was executed as a traitor in December 1953) and for the slow pace of reforms, particularly when it came to rehabilitating political prisoners. Malenkov remained in the Politburo's successor, the Presidium. However, in 1957, he was again forced to resign due to participation in a failed attempt together with Nikolai Bulganin, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Lazar Kaganovich (the so-called Anti-Party Group) to depose Khrushchev. Unlike the practice of Stalin, Khrushchev spared their lives and reduced their influence on Soviet politics. In 1961, he was expelled from the Communist Party and exiled within the Soviet Union. He became a manager of a hydroelectric plant in Kazakhstan. In the last years before his death, he was a singer in a church choir in Yelokhovsky Cathedral in Moscow. His death in 1988 was ignored by Soviet officials.

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