Georgy Malenkov

Georgy Malenkov Гео́ргий Маленко́в
Official portrait of Malenkov
Chairman of the Council of Ministers
In office 6 March 1953 – 8 March 1955
First Deputies	Vyacheslav Molotov Nikolai Bulganin Lavrentiy Beria Lazar Kaganovich
Preceded by	Joseph Stalin
Succeeded by	Nikolai Bulganin
Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
In office August 1948 – 13 March 1955
General Secretary	Joseph Stalin
Preceded by	Andrey Zhdanov
Succeeded by	Mikhail Suslov
Personal details
Born	8 January 1902(1902-01-08) Orenburg, Russian Empire
Died	14 January 1988(1988-01-14) (aged 86) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Nationality	Soviet
Political party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Spouse(s)	Valeriya A. Golubtsova
Children	3
Alma mater	Moscow Highest Technical School
Profession	Engineer, politician

Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov (Russian: Гео́ргий Максимилиа́нович Маленко́в, Georgij Maksimilianovič Malenkov; 8 January 1902 – 14 January 1988) was a Soviet politician, Communist Party leader and close collaborator of Joseph Stalin. After Stalin's death, he became Premier of the Soviet Union (1953–1955) and was in 1953 briefly considered the most powerful Soviet politician before being overshadowed by Nikita Khrushchev.

Early life

Malenkov was born at Orenburg, Russian Empire. His paternal ancestors were of Macedonian extraction, some of whom served as officers in the Russian Imperial Army. His mother was the daughter of a blacksmith and the granddaughter of an Orthodox priest. Malenkov graduated from high school during the revolution and was drafted into the Red Army in 1919. He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1920 and worked as a political commissar on a propaganda train in Turkestan, Central Asia, during the Russian civil war. There he had extensive experience of arresting and killing opponents of the Soviet communist party.

Career in the Communist Party

After the Russian civil war, Malenkov had a reputation of ruthless bolshevik communist. He was promoted in the party ranks, returned to his studies and received his engineering degree from the military-based Moscow Highest Technical School in 1925. After graduation he worked in the staff of the Organizational Bureau (Orgburo) of the Central Committee of the CPSU. During the next ten years Malenkov became closely associated with Stalin and was deeply involved in mass executions of political opposition during the purging of the party. In 1938 he was one of the key figures in bringing about the downfall of Yezhov, the head of the NKVD. In 1939 Malenkov became the head of the Communist party's Cadres Directorate, which gave him control over personnel matters of party bureaucracy. During the same year he also became a member and a secretary of the Central Committee and rose from his previous staff position to full member of Orgburo (predecessor of Politburo). In February 1941 Malenkov became a candidate member of the Politburo.

Career during WWII

After the German invasion of June 1941, Malenkov was promoted to the State Defense Committee (GKO), along with Beria, Voroshilov and Molotov with Stalin as the committee's head. This small group held immense power and Malenkov's membership thus made him one of the top five most powerful men in the Soviet Union during WWII. During 1941–1943 Malenkov's primary responsibility in the GKO was supervising military aircraft production. In 1943 he became a chairman of a committee that oversaw the economic rehabilitation of some liberated areas with the exception of Leningrad. In the end of WWII and shortly after, Malenkov betrayed the generals and joined Stalin's attack on Marshal Georgy Zhukov and other generals who won the war against the Nazi Germany.

Becoming Stalin's successor

In 1946 Malenkov was named a candidate member of the Politburo. Although Malenkov was trailing behind his rivals Andrei Zhdanov and Lavrentiy Beria, he soon came back into Joseph Stalin's favour, especially after Zhdanov's strange death in 1948. That same year, Malenkov became a Secretary of the Central Committee. In the end of WWII and shortly after, Malenkov implemented Stalin's plan to destroy all political and cultural competition from Leningrad/St. Petersburg, the former capital of Russia, in order to concentrate all power in Moscow. Leningrad and its leaders earned immense respect and popular support due to winning the heroic Siege of Leningrad. Both Stalin and Malenkov expressed their hatred to anyone born and educated in Leningrad/St. Petersburg, so they organized and led the attack on Leningrad elite. Beria and Malenkov together with Abakumov organized massive execution of their rivals in Leningrad Affair where all leaders of Leningrad and Zhdanov's allies were killed, and thousands more were locked up in GULAG labour camps upon Stalin's approval. Malenkov personally ordered the destruction of the Museum of the Siege of Leningrad and declared the 900-day-long defense of Leningrad "a myth designed by traitors trying to diminish the greatness of comrade Stalin." Simultaneously, Malenkov replaced all communist party and administrative leadership in Leningrad by provincial communists loyal to Stalin. After that, in order to test Malenkov as a potential successor, the ageing Stalin increasingly withdrew from the business of the Communist party secretariat, leaving the task of supervising the Soviet Communist party entirely to Malenkov. In October 1952, Stalin even had the office of General Secretary formally abolished (though in effect this did not diminish Stalin's authority).

Premiership and duumvirate

Malenkov's ambitions gave fruit upon Stalin's death on 5 March 1953. He was the top member of the Secretariat and, with Beria's support, Malenkov became Premier of the Soviet Union. However, after several sharp political attacks by Khrushchev during the year 1953 Malenkov had to resign from the Secretariat, because Khrushchev was supported by other members of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee. While Malenkov headed the government, Nikita Khrushchev eventually assumed supreme leadership of the party as First Secretary of the CPSU in September 1953, ushering in a period of a Malenkov-Khrushchev duumvirate.

Malenkov retained the office of premier for two years. During these years, he expressed his opposition to research and development of nuclear armament, declaring "a nuclear war could lead to global destruction." Malenkov also opposed promotions of younger generation of politicians which soon led to his decline. He advocated refocusing the economy on the production of consumer goods and pushed away from diversity by subsidizing only a narrow list of goods and bread. Malenkov's actions led to severe food deficit, poor housing, and shortages of basic goods due to mismanagement and drastic misbalance across Soviet national economy, something his successor Nikita Khrushchev (1955–1964) would escalate.

Malenkov as seen in September 1953

Downfall

Malenkov was forced to resign, in February 1955, after he came under attack for abuse of power and his close connection to Beria (who was executed as a traitor in December 1953). He was held responsible for the slow pace of reforms, particularly when it came to rehabilitating political prisoners.

For two more years, Malenkov remained regular member of the Politburo's successor, the Presidium. Together with Khrushchev, he flew to the island of Brioni (Yugoslavia) on the night of 1–2 November 1956 to inform Josip Broz Tito of the impending Soviet invasion of Hungary scheduled for November 4.

However, in 1957, Malenkov organized another treason against Khrushchev and Georgiy Zhukov. In a dramatic standoff in Kremlin, Malenkov was severely ostracized for the treason by both Khrushchev and Zhukov, who alarmed all military forces to be ready to fight against Malenkov and his pro-Stalinist group. Malenkov's treason failed. That was his last attempt to become dictator of the post-Stalin Soviet Union. Malenkov together with his co-conspirators Nikolai Bulganin, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Lazar Kaganovich who organized the failed Anti-Party Group were swiftly fired from Politburo. In 1961, he was expelled from the Communist Party and exiled to a remote province of the Soviet Union. He became a manager of a hydroelectric plant in Ust'-Kamenogorsk, Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic.

Malenkov fell in obscurity and suffered from depression due to loss of power and degraded quality of life in the poor province. However, some researchers say that later Malenkov found this demotion and exile somewhat a relief from the pressures of Kremlin power struggle. Malenkov in his later years became a devout Russian Orthodox Christian, as did his daughter, who has since spent part of her personal wealth building two churches in rural locations. Orthodox Church publications at the time of Malenkov's death said he had been a reader (the lowest level of Russian Orthodox clergy) and a choir singer in his final years. He died at age 85.

Historical assessments

When, in 1954, a delegation of the United Kingdom's Labour Party (including former Prime Minister Clement Attlee and former Secretary of State for Health Aneurin Bevan) passed through Moscow on their way to the People's Republic of China, Sir William Goodenough Hayter, British Ambassador to the Soviet Union, requested a dinner meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, then General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Much to Hayter's surprise, not only did Khrushchev accept the proposal, but he decided to attend in the company of Vyacheslav Molotov, Anastas Mikoyan, Andrey Vyshinsky, Nikolay Shvernik, and Georgy Malenkov. Such was the interest aroused in British political circles by this event that Sir Winston Churchill subsequently invited Sir William Hayter down to Chartwell so as to provide a full account of what had transpired at the meeting.

Malenkov seemed "easily the most intelligent and quickest to grasp what was being said" and said "no more than he wanted to say". He was considered an "extremely agreeable neighbour at the table" and was thought to have had a "pleasant, musical voice and spoke well-educated Russian". Malenkov even recommended, quietly, that British diplomatic translator Cecil Parrott should read the novels of Leonid Andreyev, an author whose literature was at that time labeled as decadent in the USSR.

Nikita Khrushchev, by contrast, struck Hayter as being "rumbustious, impetuous, loquacious, free-wheeling, and alarmingly ignorant of foreign affairs". Hayter observed that he "spoke in short sentences, in an emphatic voice and with great conviction.....grinning good-naturedly", that he often "stumbled in his choice of words" and "said the wrong thing." Hayter thought that Khrushchev seemed "incapable of grasping Bevan's line of thought, " and that Malenkov had to explain matters to him in "words of one syllable". Given to "interrupting," he (Khrushchev) seemed more eager to talk than to listen and to understand. He was "quick, but not intelligent". Convinced that Malenkov was in charge, nobody in the British delegation felt much inclined to expend effort with Khrushchev. Malenkov "spoke the best Russian of any Soviet leader I have heard", his "speeches were well constructed and logical in their development", and he seemed "a man with a more Western-oriented mind."

Honours and awards

This article incorporates information from the Russian Wikipedia.

• Hero of Socialist Labour (30 September 1943)
• Three Orders of Lenin (30 September 1943, November 1945, January 1952)

Bibliography

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

• Sebag Montefiore, Simon, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (2003)

Further sources

• "Number 2½", Time, Mar 20, 1950.

Political offices
Preceded by Joseph Stalin	Premier of the Soviet Union 1953–1955	Succeeded by Nikolai Bulganin