Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Soviet politician and one of the longest-serving and most influential of Joseph Stalin's secret police chiefs, serving as head of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) from 1938 to 1946, during the country's involvement in the Second World War. Beria was also a prolific sexual predator, who serially raped scores of girls and young women, and murdered some of his victims.
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was 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 circle stripped him of power, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier.
The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). From 1924 until the country's dissolution in 1991, the officeholder was the recognized leader of the Soviet Union. Prior to Stalin's accession, the position was not viewed as an important role in Lenin's government and previous occupants had been responsible for technical rather than political decisions.
The "doctors' plot" was a Soviet state-sponsored antisemitic campaign and conspiracy theory that alleged a cabal of prominent medical specialists, predominantly of Jewish ethnicity, 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 mostly 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.
Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov was a Soviet politician. He was the Soviet Union's "propagandist-in-chief" after the Second World War, and was responsible for developing the Soviet cultural policy, the Zhdanov Doctrine, which remained in effect until the death of Joseph Stalin. Zhdanov was considered Stalin's most likely successor but died before him.
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.
The Virgin Lands campaign was Nikita Khrushchev's 1953 plan to dramatically boost the Soviet Union's agricultural production in order to alleviate the food shortages plaguing the Soviet populace.
The Leningrad affair, or Leningrad case, was a series of criminal cases fabricated in the late 1940s–early 1950s by Joseph Stalin in order to accuse a number of prominent Leningrad based authority figures and members of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet, Russian nationalist, organization based in the city. This happened in the aftermath of the Siege of Leningrad during the war, the victorious end of which led to the mayor, his deputies and others who kept Nazi German forces out of the city earning fame and strong support as heroes all over the USSR.
A national day of mourning is a day, or one of several days, marked by mourning and memorial activities observed among the majority of a country's populace. They are designated by the national government. Such days include those marking the death or funeral of a renowned individual or individuals from that country or elsewhere or the anniversary of such a death or deaths, the anniversaries of a significant natural or man-made disaster occurring either in the country or another country, wartime commemorations or in memory of the victims of a terrorist attack. Flying a national or military flag of that country at half-mast is a common symbol.
Novo-Ogaryovo, also transliterated as Novo-Ogarevo, is an estate in the Odintsovsky District of Moscow Oblast, located by the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway west of the city of Moscow. It operates as the suburban residence of the President of Russia, officially recognized as such in 2000, although, throughout President Vladimir Putin's second tenure, he has spent progressively more time at Novo-Ogaryovo, so much so that it has been unofficially termed the de facto residence of the head of state.
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.
Tax on trees was a tax imposed on the owners of fruit trees in the USSR by Joseph Stalin's government in 1944. The tax made it expensive to have trees on a farm, and had the unintended consequence of causing a mass felling of trees by Soviet farmers. This subsequently led to shortage of fruit.
Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov was a Soviet politician who briefly succeeded Joseph Stalin as leader of the Soviet Union after his death in March 1953. After one week, Malenkov was forced to give up control of the party apparatus, but continued to serve as premier. He then entered a power struggle with party leader Nikita Khrushchev, who surpassed Malenkov in the country's leadership by late 1953 before securing Malenkov's removal as premier in 1955. At 186 days, Malenkov's rule was the shortest of any Soviet leader.
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.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the highest organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between two congresses. According to party statutes, the committee directed all party and governmental activities. The Party Congress elected its members.
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 after 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.
The Death of Stalin is a 2017 political satire black comedy film written and directed by Armando Iannucci and co-written by David Schneider and Ian Martin with Peter Fellows. Based on the French graphic novel La Mort de Staline (2010–2012), the film depicts the internal social and political power struggle among the members of the Soviet Politburo following the death of leader Joseph Stalin in 1953. The French-British-Belgian co-production stars an ensemble cast that includes Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine, Rupert Friend, Jason Isaacs, Olga Kurylenko, Michael Palin, Andrea Riseborough, Dermot Crowley, Paul Chahidi, Adrian McLoughlin, Paul Whitehouse, and Jeffrey Tambor.
Joseph Stalin, second leader of the Soviet Union, died on 5 March 1953 at his Kuntsevo Dacha after suffering a stroke, at age 74. He was given a state funeral in Moscow on 9 March, with four days of national mourning declared. On the day of the funeral, hundreds or thousands of Soviet citizens visiting the capital to pay their respects died in a human crush.
"The Plot to Kill Stalin" was an American television play broadcast on September 25, 1958, on the CBS television network. It was the first episode of the third season of the anthology television series Playhouse 90. Delbert Mann was the director, and the cast included Melvyn Douglas as Joseph Stalin, Eli Wallach as Stalin's personal secretary, and Oskar Homolka as Nikita Khrushchev. It was nominated for two Sylvania Television Awards: as the outstanding telecast of 1958 and for Douglas as outstanding actor in a television program.
Valeriya Alexeyevna Golubtsova was a Soviet scientist who was the director of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute from 1943 to 1952. She was the wife of Georgy Malenkov.
