Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Georgian Bolshevik and Soviet politician, Marshal of the Soviet Union and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security, and chief of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) under Joseph Stalin during the Second World War, and promoted to deputy premier under Stalin in 1941. He officially joined the Politburo in 1946. Beria was the longest-serving and most influential of Stalin's secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after the war. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, he was responsible for organising purges such as the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and officials.
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers (premier) from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev stunned the communist world with his denunciation of his predecessor Joseph Stalin's crimes, and embarked on a policy of de-Stalinization with his key ally Anastas Mikoyan. He sponsored the early Soviet space program and the enactment of moderate reforms in domestic policy. After some false starts, and a narrowly avoided nuclear war over Cuba, he conducted successful negotiations with the United States to reduce Cold War tensions. In 1964, the Kremlin leadership stripped him of power, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier.
In the USSR, during the eleven-year period from the death of Joseph Stalin (1953) to the political ouster of Nikita Khrushchev (1964), the national politics were dominated by the Cold War, including the U.S.–USSR struggle for the global spread of their respective socio-economic systems and ideology, and the defense of hegemonic spheres of influence. Since the mid-1950s, despite the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) having disowned Stalinism, the political culture of Stalinism — a very powerful General Secretary of the CPSU—remained in place, albeit weakened.
The "doctors' plot" was a Soviet state-sponsored antisemitic campaign and conspiracy theory that alleged a cabal of prominent medical specialists intended to murder leading government and party officials. It was also known as the case of saboteur doctors or killer doctors. In 1951–1953, a group of predominantly Jewish doctors from Moscow were accused of a conspiracy to assassinate Soviet leaders. This was later accompanied by publications of antisemitic character in the media, which talked about the threats of Zionism and condemned people with Jewish surnames. Following this, many doctors, both Jews and non-Jews, were dismissed from their jobs, arrested, and tortured to produce admissions. A few weeks after Stalin's death in 1953, the new Soviet leadership said there was a lack of evidence regarding the doctors' plot and the case was dropped. Soon after, the case was declared to have been a fabrication.
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was an Armenian Communist revolutionary, Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman. Having been elected to the Central Committee in 1923, he was the only Soviet politician who managed to remain at the highest levels of power within the Communist Party from the latter days of Lenin, through the eras of Stalin and Khrushchev, to his peaceful retirement under Brezhnev.
Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1980 and was one of the most influential Soviet policymakers in the mid-1960s along with General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev.
The Anti-Party Group, fully referenced in the Soviet political parlance as "the anti-Party group of Malenkov, Kaganovich, Molotov and Shepilov, who joined them" was a Stalinist group within the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that unsuccessfully attempted to depose Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary of the Party in June 1957. The group, given that epithet by Khrushchev, was led by former Premiers Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov and former First Deputy Premier Lazar Kaganovich. The group rejected both Khrushchev's liberalization of Soviet society and his denunciation of Joseph Stalin, and promoted the full restoration and preservation of Stalinism.
Isser Harel was spymaster of the intelligence and the security services of Israel and the Director of the Mossad (1952–1963). In his capacity as Mossad director, he oversaw the capture and covert transportation to Israel of Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann.
Dmitri Trofimovich Shepilov was a Soviet economist, lawyer and politician who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs. He joined the abortive plot to oust Nikita Khrushchev from power in 1957, and was denounced and removed from power. Rehabilitated after Khrushchev's downfall, he lived a largely obscure retirement.
Nikolai Alekseevich Voznesensky was a Soviet politician and economic planner who oversaw the running of Gosplan during the German-Soviet War of 1941–1945. A protégé of Andrei Zhdanov, Voznesensky was appointed Deputy Premier in May 1940. He became directly involved in the recovery of production associated with the evacuation of industry eastwards after the start of the war. His 1947 work The Economy of the USSR during World War II records those years.
Maksim Zakharovich Saburov was a Soviet engineer, economist and politician, three-time Chairman of Gosplan and later First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union. He was involved in the Anti-Party Group's attempt to displace Nikita Khrushchev in 1957.
Ivan Isidorovich Nosenko was a Soviet politician and from 1939 until his death in 1956. He was the People's Commissar for Shipbuilding of the USSR. He was the father of notable Soviet defector and KGB officer, Yuri Nosenko.
Mikhail Georgievich Pervukhin was a Soviet official during the Stalin Era and Khrushchev Era. He served as a First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, literally First Vice-Premier of the Soviet Union, from 1955 to 1957.
Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov 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. 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.
Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1955 to 1958. He also served as Minister of Defense, following service in the Red Army during World War II.
Collective leadership, or collectivity of leadership, was considered the ideal form of governance in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and other socialist states espousing communism. Its main task was to distribute powers and functions among the Politburo and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as well as the Council of Ministers, to hinder any attempts to create a one-man dominance over the Soviet political system by a Soviet leader, such as that seen under Joseph Stalin's rule. On the national level, the heart of the collective leadership was officially the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Collective leadership was characterised by limiting the powers of the General Secretary and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers as related to other offices by enhancing the powers of collective bodies, such as the Politburo.
On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, popularly known as the Secret Speech, was a report by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956. Khrushchev's speech was sharply critical of the rule of the deceased General Secretary and Premier Joseph Stalin, particularly with respect to the purges which had especially marked the last years of the 1930s. Khrushchev charged Stalin with having fostered a leadership cult of personality despite ostensibly maintaining support for the ideals of communism. The speech was leaked to the West by the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet, which received it from the Polish-Jewish journalist Wiktor Grajewski.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the executive leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, acting between sessions of Congress. According to party statutes, the committee directed all party and governmental activities. Its members were elected by the Party Congress.
The Nineteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was held from 5 to 14 October 1952. It was the first party congress since before World War II and the last under Joseph Stalin's leadership. It was attended by many dignitaries from foreign Communist parties, including Liu Shaoqi from China. At this Congress, Stalin gave the last public speech of his life. The 19th Central Committee was elected at the congress.
