Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov (,
Georgij Maksimilianovič Malenkov; –
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.
Named as candidate for the
Politburo, Malenkov joined in 1946. Although Malenkov fell out of favour in place of his rivals
Andrei Zhdanov and
Lavrentiy 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 successor 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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