Georgy Malenkov

In 1920, in Turkestan, Malenkov started living together with Soviet scientist Valeriya Golubtsova (15 May 1901 – 1 October 1987), daughter of Aleksei Golubtsov, former State Councilor of the Russian Empire in Nizhny Novgorod and dean of the Imperial Cadet School.

Golubtsova and Malenkov never officially registered their union and remained unregistered partners for the rest of their lives.

She had a direct connection to Vladimir Lenin through her mother; one of the "Nevzorov sisters" who were apprentices of Lenin and studied together with him for years, long before the Revolution.

This connection helped both Golubtsova and Malenkov in their communist career.

Later Golubtsova was the director of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, a centre for nuclear power research in USSR.

Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov (8 January 1902 [ O.S. 26 December 1901] – 14 January 1988) was a Soviet politician who briefly succeeded Joseph Stalin as the leader of the Soviet Union.

However, at the insistence of the rest of the Presidium, he relinquished control over the party apparatus in exchange for remaining Premier and first among equals within the Soviet collective leadership.

Malenkov was born in Orenburg in the Russian Empire on January 8, 1902.

Malenkov graduated from Orenburg gymnasium just a few months prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917.

In 1918, Malenkov joined the Red Army as a volunteer and fought alongside the Communists against White Russian forces in the Civil War.

He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1920 and worked as a political commissar on a propaganda train in Turkestan during the Civil War.

After the Russian civil war, Malenkov quickly built himself a reputation of a tough communist Bolshevik.

He was promoted in the Communist party ranks and was appointed Communist secretary at the military-based Moscow Higher Technical School in the 1920s.

Russian sources state that, rather than continuing with his studies, Malenkov took a career of a Soviet politician.

His university degree was never completed, and his records have been indefinitely classified.

Around this time, Malenkov forged a close friendship with Vyacheslav Malyshev, who later became chief of the Soviet nuclear program alongside Igor Kurchatov.

In 1924, Stalin noticed Malenkov and assigned him to the Orgburo of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party.

By 1925, he was entrusted with overseeing the party's records.

This brought him into contact with Stalin who had by then successfully consolidated power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to become the de facto leader of the Soviet Union.

As a result of this association, Malenkov became heavily involved in Stalin's purges before later being given sole responsibility over the Soviet missile program during World War II.

In 1925, Malenkov worked in the staff of the Organizational Bureau (Orgburo) of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

Malenkov was in charge of keeping records on the members of the Soviet communist party; two million files were made under his supervision during the next ten years.

In this work Malenkov became closely associated with Stalin and was later heavily involved in the treason trials during the purging of the party.

In 1938, he was one of the key figures in bringing about downfall of Yezhov, the head of the NKVD.

From 1946 to 1947, he chaired the Council of Ministers Special Committee on Rocket Technology.

In order to secure his position as Stalin's favorite, he successfully discredited Andrey Zhdanov's protegés (Alexey Kuznetsov and Nikolai Voznesensky) and Marshal Georgy Zhukov and suppressed all glory associated with Leningrad during World War II so that Moscow maintained its image as the Soviet Union's sole cultural and political capital.

Following Stalin's death on 5 March 1953, Malenkov temporarily emerged as the Soviet leader's undisputed successor by replacing him as both Chairman of the Council of Ministers (or Premier) and head of the party apparatus.

However, only nine days later, the Politburo (then known as the Presidium) forced him to give up the latter position while letting him retain the premiership.

Subsequently, Malenkov contented himself serving as the Presidium’s highest-ranking member and acting chairman until being eclipsed in early 1954 by the party's First Secretary, Nikita Khrushchev.

He then became embroiled in a power struggle with Nikita Khrushchev that culminated in his removal from the premiership in 1955 as well as the Presidium in 1957.

Throughout his political career, Malenkov's personal connections with Vladimir Lenin significantly facilitated his ascent within the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

By 1955, he was also forced to resign as Premier.

After later organizing a failed palace coup against Khrushchev in 1957, Malenkov was expelled from the Presidium and exiled to the Kazakh SSR in 1957, before ultimately being expelled from the Party altogether in November 1961.

He officially retired from politics shortly afterwards.

After a short sojourn in Kazakhstan, he returned to Moscow and kept a low profile for the remainder of his life.

His paternal ancestors immigrated during the 18th century from the area of Ohrid in the Ottoman Rumelia Eyalet (present day North Macedonia).

Some of them served as officers in the Russian Imperial Army.

His father was a wealthy farmer in Orenburg province.

Young Malenkov occasionally helped his father to do business selling the harvest.

His mother was a daughter of a blacksmith and a granddaughter of an Orthodox priest.