Georgy Malenkov

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(b. Orenburg, Russia, 8 Jan. 1902; d. Moscow, 23 Jan. 1988) Russian; Politbureau member 1941 – 57, Deputy Prime Minister 1946 – 53, Prime Minister 1953 – 5 From a middle-class background, Malenkov joined the Communist Party in 1920 and worked in the Central Committee apparatus after graduation from Moscow Higher Technological Institute in 1925. He became a close associate of Stalin and Beria and was heavily involved in the collectivization campaign and the purges of the 1930s. He became a Central Committee member in 1939 and candidate member of the Politbureau and State Defence Committee member in 1941. In 1946 he became a full member of the Politbureau and deputy chair of the Council of Ministers and after Zhdanov's death in 1948 was regarded as Stalin's natural successor, confirmed by his delivery of the General Report to the 19th CPSU Congress in 1952.

After Stalin's death Malenkov was briefly both chair of the Council of Ministers and party secretary, but soon ceded the latter post, considered less important, to Khrushchev. Together with Beria he launched a reform programme known as the "New Course", reviving the idea of "peaceful coexistence", laying more stress on agriculture and consumer goods and repudiating the "Doctors' Plot" of 1952. However, he was outmanœuvred by Khrushchev, who stole his liberal policies and managed to install his ally, Bulganin, as premier in February 1955. Malenkov, still a member of the Presidium (Politbureau), mobilized the state apparatus against Khrushchev, defeating him in the Presidium in 1957. However, Khrushchev appealed successfully to the Central Committee and ousted the "Anti-Party Group", including Malenkov, from the Presidium and the Central Committee. Malenkov was exiled as manager of a hydro-electric plant in Kazakhstan, but returned to a long retirement in Moscow. Not just a pen-pusher, as depicted by Khrushchev, he was an able and tough politician who started the post-Stalin liberalization.

Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov (1902-1988) emerged briefly after the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953 as the head of the Soviet government and leader of its Communist Party. A quintessential apparatchik whose claim to power rested largely on his devoted service to Stalin, Malenkov was soon outmaneuvered by Nikita Khrushchev and forced to resign his positions. Some historians have credited him with proposing initiatives which were later adopted by Soviet leaders, including the last head of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Malenkov was born on January 8, 1902, in the town of Orenburg in the Southern Urals. Although much of his biography is obscure, it is believed he grew up in a reasonably well-off white collar family which found itself dislocated during the revolution and civil war at a time when Georgy Maksimilianovich was an impressionable teenager. In 1918, at the age of 16, he joined the Red Army. He apparently served as a political commissar of some sort in Turkestan. Like others of his generation, he was rewarded after demobilization by being sent to the Bauman Higher Technical School in Moscow, from which he graduated in 1925. His first position thereafter was as a clerk or secretary in the Communist Party's Central Committee apparatus in Moscow.

In this minor but centrally located post Malenkov soon distinguished himself as an able administrator and loyal, even slavish, Stalinist. He is reported to have imitated the increasingly powerful dictator in dress and appearance and in any event became closely identified in Central Committee bureaucracy with Stalin's policies, as opposed to those of others in the party leadership. Largely for these reasons, in all likelihood, Stalin made him his personal secretary in 1934, on the eve of the Great Purges. From this position, Malenkov himself soon amassed enormous power, directing the appointment and removal of personnel and becoming deeply involved in the purge process. Many regarded him as one of Stalin's principal "triggermen." From 1939 until 1953 he served as secretary of the Central Committee. He was also deputy chairman, under Stalin, of the Council of Ministers and made the leading speech at the 19th Party Congress in 1952, shortly before Stalin's death.

Malenkov was not unintelligent. He understood the need for reform as he came to power after Stalin's death in March 1953 and quickly promised an improvement in material conditions. He also took a leading role in arresting Lavrenti Beria, head of the dreaded secret police. The "thaw" of 1954-1955 is largely associated with his name. For all his experience in the party machinery, however, Malenkov could not prevent himself from being edged aside by Nikita Khrushchev. Within weeks of Stalin's death he "requested" to be relieved of the "heavy burden" of first secretary in favor of Khrushchev, retaining his less powerful post as Council of Ministers' chairman, but he had difficulty holding this position as well. In 1955, confessing his "insufficient experience" and his "guilt and responsibility" for administrative failures, particularly in the area of Soviet agriculture, he was demoted to the minor post of minister of hydroelectric stations.

It was Malenkov's close identification with Stalin and the purges which made him a real liability for the Khrushchev regime. After the famous "Secret Speech" in February 1956 in which Khrushchev publicly exposed the "crimes of the Stalin era" for the first time, Malenkov knew his days in office were numbered. In the summer of 1957, consequently, he joined with Molotov, Kaganovich, and others in an abortive effort to drive Khrushchev from power. Denounced as a ringleader of the "anti-Soviet bloc," he was stripped of all important positions and sent to Kazakhstan as head of the Ust-Kamenogorsk hydroelectric station. His plaintive "apologies" for "incorrect thinking" hardly earned him respect. The Soviet Union was liberalizing, and he was a relic of a past many hated or wanted to forget. His heavy-set, pudgy visage (which some regarded at the time of his leadership as the West's most effective anti-Communist propaganda) quickly faded from popular consciousness. His orders as plant director were apparently ignored, leading him to resign his post in humiliation and disgrace. In April 1964 he was ousted from the party. From then on he lived in obscurity, spending time at his Moscow apartment until his death on February 1st, 1988. Some of Malenkov's proposals - such as his statement that war between the Soviet Union and America was not inevitable and that greater emphasis should be placed on increasing production of food and consumer goods, rather than heavy industry - were accepted by Krushchev and Gorbachev

Further Reading

There is no biography of Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov in English. Students might consult one of several general texts, however, to follow his career in the party apparatus, including Leonard Schapiro, History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1960); and Wolfgang Leonard, The Kremlin Since Stalin (1962); see also R. W. Petybridge, A History of Postwar Russia (London, 1966), especially chapter 4; and the excellent collection of essays edited by Stephen Cohen, Alexander Rabinowitch, and Robert Sharlet, The Soviet Union Since Stalin (1980). As with other Soviet leaders, the best source for Malenkov's public speeches and other writings during his years in power is the Current Digest of the Soviet Press, issued weekly since 1949 and with quarterly and cumulative indexes; Malenkov's obituary was in the February 2nd edition of New York Times.

(1902 - 1988), prominent Soviet party official.

Georgy Maximilyanovich Malenkov was born in Orenburg on January 13, 1902. In 1919 he joined the Red Army, where he worked in the political administration at various levels during the Russian civil war. In April 1920, he became a member of the Bolshevik Party, and during the following month he married Valentina Alexeyevna Golubtsova, a worker in the Central Committee (CC) apparatus.

Malenkov's career during the 1920s was typical of many during that period. He was a ruthless party official without any clear political views. He studied at the Moscow Higher Technical Institute between 1921 and 1925, during which time he was a member of a commission investigating "Trotskyism" among fellow students. In 1925 he became a technical secretary of the Organizational Bureau of the Central Committee.

During the early 1930s he worked in the Moscow party committee as the head of the section for mass agitation, conducting a purge of opposition members. Between 1934 and 1939 he ran the party organization for the Central Committee and reviewed party documents in preparation for the Great Purge beginning in 1936. Malenkov took an active role in various aspects of this purge, supervising particularly harsh actions in Belarus and Armenia in 1937.

In 1937 Malenkov was appointed a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (he was promoted to the Presidium in 1938), and in this same year became the deputy to Nikolai Yezhov, head of the NKVD. By 1939 Malenkov was also a member of the party Central Committee (CC), and shortly he became the head of the administration of party cadres and a CC secretary.

Before the outbreak of the war with Germany, Malenkov became a candidate member of the Politburo. During the war, he supplied planes to the Red Air Force, and he appears to have undertaken his tasks efficiently. Josef Stalin relied on Malenkov increasingly after 1943. In that year Malenkov headed a committee of the Soviet government for the restoration of farms in liberated areas, and after mid-May 1944, he was the deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR (second only to Stalin himself). From March 18, 1946, Malenkov was a member of the ruling Politburo.

During the ascendancy of Andrei Zhdanov after the war, Malenkov's career briefly declined. After the exposure of a scandal in the aviation industry, he lost both his deputy chairmanship of the government and his role as CC secretary controlling party personnel, in March and May 1946, respectively. Thanks to the intervention of Lavrenty Beria, however, he was able to recover both positions by August. In 1948 he took over the position of ideological secretary of the CC and was also given responsibility for Soviet agriculture, at that time the most backward sector of the Soviet economy.

During the late Stalin period, Malenkov once again played a leading role in new purges, including the Leningrad Affair and the exposure of the "Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee." The aging leader entrusted him to present the main report at the Nineteenth Party Congress (the first party congress in thirteen years). With Stalin's death on March 5, 1953, Malenkov became the chairman of the Council of Ministers (prime minister) and the main party secretary. On March 14, however, the latter position was given to Khrushchev.

Malenkov joined with Khrushchev to overcome a putsch by Beria in 1953, but then a power struggle between the two leaders developed. Malenkov eventually had to make a public confession regarding his failure to revive Soviet agriculture. By February 1955, he was demoted to a deputy chairman of the government and given responsibility over Soviet electric power stations. Malenkov and former old-guard Stalinists Lazar Kaganovich and Vyacheslav Molotov resented Khrushchev's de-Stalinization speech at the Twentieth Party Congress of February 1956. In 1957 the three engineered a majority vote within the Presidium for Khrushchev's removal. Khrushchev, however, was able to reverse the vote in a CC plenum, which saw the defeat of the so-called Antiparty Group. On June 29, Malenkov lost his positions in the Presidium and the Central Committee.

Though he was still relatively young, Malenkov's career was effectively over. He became the director of a hydroelectric power station in Ust-Kamengorsk, and subsequently of a thermal power station in Ekibastuz. In 1961, the Ekibastuz city party committee expelled him from membership, and Malenkov retired on a pension until his death in Moscow on January 14, 1988. He is remembered mainly as a loyal and unprincipled Stalinist with few notable achievements outside of party politics.

Bibliography

Ebon, Martin. (1953). Malenkov: A Biographical Study of Stalin's Successor. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Radzinsky, Edward. (1996). Stalin: The First In-Depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Moscow's Secret Archives. New York: Doubleday.

—DAVID R. MARPLES

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2008)

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
First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
In office March 6, 1953 – March 13, 1953
Preceded by	Joseph Stalin
Succeeded by	Nikita Khrushchev
Member of the Politburo and Presidium
In office 1946 – 1957
Born	8 January 1902(1902-01-08) Orenburg, Russian Empire
Died	14 January 1988 (aged 86) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Nationality	Russian
Political party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Religion	Russian Orthodox Church

Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov (Russian: Гео́ргий Максимилиа́нович Маленко́в, Georgij Maksimilianovič Malenkov; January 8, 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. Despite many close calls, he was one of relatively few important members of Stalin's inner circle who died a natural death in old age.

Contents 1 Career 2 Contemporary assessments 3 References 4 Bibiliography 5 Further sources

Career

Named as a 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 death. 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. The death of Stalin, in 1953, briefly brought Malenkov to the highest position he would ever hold. With Beria's support, Malenkov became Premier of the Soviet Union, but he had to resign from the Secretariat on March 13th due to the opposition of other members of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee. Nikita Khrushchev assumed the position of General Secretary of the CPSU 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.

Together with Khrushchev, he flew to the island of Brioni (Yugoslavia) on the night of November 1-November 2 to inform Josip Broz Tito of the impending (second) Soviet invasion of Hungary scheduled for November 4.^[1]

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. In 1961, he was expelled from the Communist Party and exiled within the Soviet Union. He became a manager of a hydroelectric plant in Ust'-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan.^[2]

In the last years before his death, he had returned to the Russian Orthodox faith^{[citation needed]} and was a singer in a church choir in Elokhovo Cathedral in Moscow.^{[citation needed]} His death in 1988 was ignored by Soviet officials.^{[citation needed]}

Contemporary assessments

When, in 1954, a delegation of the United Kingdom's Labour Party - including Clement Attlee and Aneurin Bevan - passed through Moscow on their way to The People's Republic of China, Malenkov gave a dinner at his dacha. Malenkov seemed "easily the most intelligent and quickest to grasp what was being said"; that he said "no more than he wants to say"; that he was an "extremely agreeable neighbour at the table"; that he had a "pleasant, musical voice and spoke well-educated Russian"; and that he even recommended quietly that British diplomat-translator Cecil Parrott should read the novels of Leonid Andreyev - who was at that moment in time, condemned as decadent. Khrushchev, by contrast, struck British ambassador Sir William Goodenough Hayter as being "rumbustious, impetuous, loquacious, free-wheeling, alarmingly ignorant of foreign affairs." He "spoke in short sentences, in an emphatic voice and with great conviction… grinning good-naturedly," he often "stumbled in his choice of words" and "said the wrong thing." He seemed "incapable of grasping Bevan's line of thought," which Malenkov had to explain to him in "words of one syllable." Given to "interrupting," he seemed more eager to talk than to listen and understand. He was "quick but not intelligent." Convinced that Malenkov was in charge, no one in the British delegation wanted to be bothered with Khrushchev. Malenkov "spoke the best Russian of any Soviet leader I have heard; his "speeches were well constructed and logical in their development"; he seemed "a man with a more Western-oriented mind."

Though not morbidly obese, Malenkov had a very full face that made him look heavier than he was, and Stalin sometimes ridiculed him for his weight. According to historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, he was derisively nicknamed "Malanya" (Melanie) due to his feminine, prominent hips.

References

1. ^ Johanna Granville, "Soviet Documents on the Hungarian Revolution, 24 October - 4 November 1956", Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 5 (Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Washington, DC), Spring, 1995, pp. 22-23, 29-34.
2. ^ [1]

Bibiliography

• Johanna, Granville, The First Domino: International Decision Making During the Hungarian Crisis of 1956, Texas A & M University Press, 2004. ISBN: 1585442984.

Further sources

• "Number 2 1/2", Time, Mar 20, 1950.

Party political offices
Preceded by Joseph Stalin	General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 5 March 1953 - 13 March 1953	Succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev
Political offices
Preceded by Joseph Stalin	Premier of the Soviet Union 1953–1955	Succeeded by Nikolai Bulganin

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