Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the soviet union (1953–5). During the 1930s he helped to administer stalin's purges and collectivization policies, and from 1942 to 1944 he served on the inner war council. As an increasingly close associate of the Soviet leader, he emerged as designated successor. When Stalin died in 1953, Malenkov became not only general secretary of the Communist Party (see communism ) but also premier. Deprived of his predecessor's protection and lacking enough personal ruthlessness to control jealous rivals, he then found himself swiftly supplanted in the former post by khrushchev . Criticized as a “revisionist,” he was also forced to yield the premiership to bulganin in 1955. Thereafter Malenkov held an energy portfolio until dismissed in 1957 for alleged “anti-Party” activities. He was not put on trial, but allowed to retire into obscurity. ... log in or subscribe to read full text