Georgy
Malenkov was born in Orenburg, Russia,
on 13th January, 1902. He was too young to take part in the October
Revolution but in 1919 he joined the Red
Army. The following year he joined the Communist Party and in
1925 Joseph Stalin appointed him as his
personal secretary.
In the
Second World War Malenkov was part of the five-man
defence council which managed the Soviet Union's war effort.
In 1946
Joseph Stalin appointed Malenkov as his
deputy prime minister and became a full member of the Politburo. When
Stalin died in 1953 Malenkov became both prime minister and head of
the Communist Party. He appeared to be a reformer and called for a
higher priority to be given to consumer goods. Described as a revisionist
by Nikita Khrushchev, he was forced
to resign in 1955.
Malenkov
remained on the Politburo but in the summer of 1956 he joined with
Nikolai Bulganin, Vyacheslav
Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich in an
attempt to oust Nikita Khrushchev.
This was unsuccessful and Malenkov was expelled from the Presidium
and the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
Georgy
Malenkov, who became the manager of a hydroelectric plant in Kazakhstan,
died on 14th January, 1988.
(1)
Milovan
Djilas,
Conversations With Stalin (1962)
Malenkov was even smaller
and plumper, but a typical Russian with a Mongol admixture-dark, with
prominent cheekbones, and slightly pock-marked. He gave one the impression
of being a withdrawn, cautious, and not very personable man. It seemed
as though under the layers and rolls of fat there moved about still
another man, lively and adept, with intelligent and alert black eyes.
He had been known for some time as Stalin's unofficial stand-in in
Party matters. Practically all matters pertaining to Party organization
and the promotion and demotion of officials were in his hands. He
was the one who had invented 'cadre lists' - detailed biographies
and autobiographies of all members and candidates of a Party of many
millions - which were guarded and systematically maintained in Moscow.
I took advantage of my meeting with him to ask for Stalin's work On
the Opposition, which had been withdrawn from public circulation
because of the numerous citations from Trotsky, Bukharin, and others
it contained. The next day I received a used copy of the work, and
it is now in my library.
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