STALIN'S MALENKOV

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP68-00046R000200080056-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 20, 2014
• Sequence Number: 56
• Publication Date: October 6, 1952
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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CIA-RDP68-00046R000200080056-9
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/03/20: CIA-RDP68-00046R000200080056-9
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0 RI 1:G-N:rN E W. S
RUSSIA
Stalin's Stooge
ISee Cover)
) " 0
,Affix the,dread -Signature of Stalia to cer- . party's political report, usually a four-or-
tain documents, with a -pe. Li I tialaber , five-hottr-lotlg discourse Which, in the past,
stamp. And more is rumored: that this has built delivered by the 'Big Boss him-
short (aft. 71107 fat (23o lbs:), 3O-year-, " self: Lenirt2.while...he lived, then Stalin.
He. is not a man ari, one- wuulti ( }loose old man- vill inlihit Stalin's power. this This year, aging (72) Joseph ?Stalin, like
to ,siti. next 14. at dinner. His face is pale. week. :is the rth Convess Or:the Rus-1:n a vc1Aerable chairnan of the board, has
round and eapre,sionless: his cheeks are Cilagiunist Party eonv-tnes in Mose%) Ac decided to take a back seat and let
flabhy, his chin is double, but his eyes Ire.if new honors will coilie td the wielder Maletikov post the orders of the day.
ru
ire For some years the Soviet hierarchy
,illirti As carhorui1dUrrl. His stiffiblack ,) Of taiiii's libtk sta0.?
b_.-looks as if it hid ;:?,:m 1-1 isti,c1 (.4.1. Tie The succession. "( dr 'country lives in has been: Stalin, No. i; Molotov, No. 2;
' does hot at tempt to .111.,ke niraself azree- exciting days.- ikoclaiiined,the party news- Beria, No. 3. Malenkov was rated No.
-able. 'Georgy Maximilianovich MLilenkov , paper Prat du last week. All over Russia, zi, between Molotov and Beria. Nu*, the
is not."Wh an describe ;.i
:it yone could s from the smallest raypti ( precinct) to the experts who study the Russian ten leaves
cuddlyTersona lily.
ct l eapitals.,of the 1'6 rc*Ilics which m,ike for signs and portents think that Malenkov
i A. pronunent diplomatic visitor ince ...? up t,,li 'U.S.S.R.. party losses N; ere pick- ' has moved up to No. ti-. Though?P:dotov
idescribed meeting him at a Nloseow din.; ingtlthiagates for the 14 event. Daily, the has not been officially downgraded, it is
ner: "My most vivid memory is the sight prft:ron stories about. Stakhatiovite work- said that Stalin treats him as little more
of Malenkov. It- \ \ .1.6 the most siniSfer ers Aitintrling and tri'Pliog.,,,their output in than an errand boy; Beria, the boss of
' thing in thte$ovictiVnion. I was struck. )4 -Ionor of,the,Arthcoming congress. Mos. Russia's secret police, seems content to
his repulsive appearance, bulbous. flabby cow 's Hote4,3.1etropole set. aside its entire ' wield his dreadful power in the back-
and sAllow . ..0 He was apparently oh- alee..nd iloor_ior the incoming delegates. ground and is, moreover, Malenkov' f pal
livioUs of what was going on around hint "But. as usuiiirtid preparations were for ? ?apparently his one & only. There has
at the table. Wlifti7inats were made. he the most part hidden in secrecy. Even the been speculation' that Stalin may will his
would. lift his OW automatically, then location of the hall in which the .co powers to these three men jointly, to rule
relapse into sneering:silence." Said another aelt?totes were to, meet was being kept Russia as a triumvirate after his death.*
diplomat: -I would hate to he at the merey under careful INYtti's until the last moment. Even in that case, Malenkov, because of
of that: man.- Irk,...intirked -contrast with. an American . his friendship. with ,Beria,and.hirt grip on
- ?? Georgy Malenkov holds millions :it his tOtical convention. there Would he no ,
mercy. As a secretary of the Centra "' m- prying TV .eyes. no creepie-peepies to
r * Gossip is tireless about Stalin's,heial and the
Mittee, a member of the Politburo_ of eavesdrop on, unrehearsed moments. no
? ? fantastic precautions he takes?toOes( e it. The
latest, from the Swiss weekly Wet oche, de-
scribes a clinic in the Caucasus, where a group of
40 carefully .selected Georgians,of Stalin's age
and general physical rnake-up,are forced to lead
a life precisely patterned on hist eating the same
meals, keeping the same hours,...while a cords of
doctors observe and test them with' life-twolong-
ing serums. Weltuwche does not explain' VOA, the
worries of thq most feared 5hil...fowetlul Man on
earth are simidated, or whether Stalin gets the
serum too. Stalin, aCcordineto French Ambas-
sador-Louis Jose, ',Cho saw him last August, looks
like e'rebust; healthy Mat
' t :, ' I . 1 ?' '
the Orgburo he controls the party ma- hooting and ltng frorn,1 spectiitors in
tithing to be really
chinery, a vast, complex, mechanism
reaches into every corner ? of Russia
heti:Hid Russia' boundaries into the sa
lie ga
vote
Asq. 46-1,1.Thtes had been called
lite nations and the /sally cells in the to MosoiwAitAut abugh the act, ohedi-
free nations.-. - ?ently "-votin4as they are told to vote.
s ?
Americans are beginning to recognize-. obedierkly, applaU4ing when they are told
his face: a pudgy. petulant Lice which lii.p im apikfaik ,,will be tiler( to hear-and
cli
begun to appear in official Soyiet phottli 'eee - Ins already made by the
graphs next to Stalin's -aging, feline mask. Party'4fro
Ongh command-.
Malenkov was once ,even empowered to Thote'ulecisionslwill be efilbodied in the
1.1111111"11MIMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMilligtiallailliggik" ?t. 11111111111111111111 I
0
party machinery; would have a good
chance of eventually becoming sole boss.
Stalin knows that few dictators in his-
tory, and none in the 2oth century, have
managed to ensure a smooth succession.
He himself had thousands of men mur-
dered before he felt safe as Lenin's heir.
It is not thought likely that he will name
a successor while he still lives. For years
he has kept the balance of power nicely
adjusted among the pretenders to his
I throne. It may be that he is now trying to
give Malenkov enough real power to make
hi?..; succession possible without the sort
of bloody struggle that Stalin himself
inflicted on Russia in the '30s.?
Like Stalin, Georgy Malenkov has been
a party machine man from the first. Un-
like Stalin, Molotov and the other "Old
Bolsheviks" who plotted in cellars and
brooded in jails before the Revolution of
1917, Malenkov was never a revolutionary.
Little is known of his early life except that
he was born in 1902 in the Cossack city of
Orenburg (now Chkalov) on the Ural
River, perhaps of bourgeois parents
("Maximilian," his father's name, is not
. one likely to be borne by a Russian
peasant). When the Revolution broke out,
Georgy was in high school. He joined the
Red army, the Communist party a year
later. A humorless, methodical youth of
18 with a knack for mechanks, he was
given such jobs as checking on the loyalty
of fellow soldiers in the army and screen-
ing candidates for party membership. He
did well, and was put in charge of Commu-
nist groups in Moscow schools. In 1925
he got the break he was built for: he
was picked to be one of Stalin's private
secretaries.
Tyrant's Stand-In. As good secretaries
will, the 23-year-old Malenkov set about
making himself indispensable. When Stalin
wanted a name or a fact in a hurry, it
was there, on the tip of his secretary's
tongue. Malenkov's memory is phenom-
enal; to supplement it, he collected a
monumental file of facts & figures on
everyone, big or small, who might come
under the leader's eye.
The young secretary's duties were ex-
panded to include several important ex-
ecutive posts (organizing secretary, Mos-
cow Party Committee, 1930-34; personnel_
chief, All:Union Party Central Commit-
tee, etc.). but he managed to remain the
eyes & ears of Stalin. During the gory
purges of the 1930s, Malenkov's inex-
haustible memory worked late hours be-
hind the scenes. He kept his own head so
.carefully below the parapet that in 1939,
when Malenkov was chosen to make a
minor report to the i8th Party Congress,
his name was till virtually unknown to
all except a few high party officials.
Two years later Malenkov was appoint-
ed to the all-powerful Politburo. It was a
long way up, but not quite the top yet.
The war carried him there: when Com-
rade Stalin became Generalissimo Stalin,
he gave most of his purely party func-
tions and many of his home-front tasks to
Malenkov. More & more. while Stalin
ran the war, Malenkov ran Russia. -
Setback. Now his head was over the
parapet, and now' the snipers had some-
thing to shoot at. Even in Russia. seniors.
pushed aside, resent young upstarts. Mol-
otov, for one, could bear him a grudge
because Malenkov exposed Mrs. Mob-
toy's inefficiency. She lost her job first as
head of the Cosmetics Trust, then as
head of the Fish Industry. Kaganovich, a
ranking Politburocrat and a Jew. could
resent Malenkov's ill-concealed anti-SeM-
itism. But Malenkov, unlike Judy Holli-
day (see CINEMA), was not born yester-
day: he cultivated one mighty friend in
the Politburo..Latyenty Beria, head of
the secret police.
He felt, and failed to conceal, an utter
contempt for the Old Bolsheviks' senti-
mental, old-grad memories and their pi-
ous reverence for the prophets Marx and
Engels. "It is impossible to believe," wrote
a British observer, "that there is no con-
tempt in [Malenkov's] eye as he watches
older men putting themselves through ab-
surd and elaborate contortions to recon-
cile what is with what was supposed to
4. His is the world that is." Apparently
he did not mind being considered a heretic
by such passionately doctrinaire Marx-
ists as Andrei Zhdanov (touted frequent-
ly in the mid-'4os: as Stalin's heir appar- ?
ent). In fact, Malenkov put his heresy to
the test in a 1946 party addreis: "We
have people, rightly called bookworms,
who have quotations from Marx and En-
gels ready for every occasion . . . Instead
of laboring to think up something new or
to study experience, they have one an-
swer: 'No, that was not said by Marx,' or
'Engels said something else.' If Marx or
Engels could rise from the grave . . . they
would disown them immediately."
This proclamation cost Malenkov his
job as party secretary and resulted in a ?
vigorous campaign by Zhdanov for the
revival of strict Marxist orthodoxy in the
party. But Malenkov had bet on the right
horse. ? Zhdanov died unexpectedly* in
1948. Soon afterwards, most of his parti-
sans lost their jobs. The Five-Year-Plan-
ner Vosnesensky, Zhdanov's. most ardent
disciple, was liquidated so completely that
his name was erased from the Soviet his- *
* There has been no serious suggestion that
Zhdanov was murdered. Natural deaths do oc-
cur in the Soviet Union.
RUSSIA'S HIuti culak/41) is shown in this picture of the,1
Jkoviet "elite-a the 18th Party Congress in 19.9. Piroit
Vhn here 13 yearn ago are still tIW'tiey figures in
S?vietpt,1tics. Rear row, Teft to right: Nikolai ShverrA- who
now is chairman. of. the Praesidiuna of the/Supreme Soviet
(i.e President of the "Soviet Unfori) M. A. i3urmistenko,
ILLEGIB
ranking delegate from Kharkov; Georgy Malenkov; V. A.
lionskoi?delegate from Khabarovsk near the Manchurfha bor-
crer; Mart-hal Semen Budenny (mustache); Matvey Shkiiyatov,
now'a top Malenkov lieutenant in the party reitichinel Nikita
Khrushchev, Politguio'member and.one of the four secretaries
of the atnfral-Comrbittee, who-will deliver one of the majc.r
TIME, OCTOBER 6, 1952
'3
reports at the forthcoming congress (last week he made a
blustering speech ab-out "capitalist encirclement") ; Shcherbakov,
member of the Central Committee, who died in 1945; Andrei
Andreev, top boss of Russia's collectivized farms; Mikhail
Kalinin (goatee), former President of the U.S.S.R. who died in
..946; Andrei Zhdanov, Malenkov's arch-rival, who died in
TIME, OCTOBER 6, 1952
Sovfoto
1948; Lavrenty Beria, boss of the secret police (peering from
behind the bobbed head of the "Soviet heroine" on the
speaker's stand); Vyacheslav Molotov (veteran foreign policy-
maker); Anaitas Mikoyan, politburocrat in charge of trade;
Lazar Kaganovich, Stalin's brother-in-law and politburocrat in
charge of industry; Marshal Klement Voroshilov; Joseph Stalin.
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/03/20: CIA-RDP68-00046R000200080?56-9
u0.0 pcItuttuance. tine aay, When one or her
fellow actors got into trouble with .the
secret police over some ideological im-
purity in a pamphlet he had written,
Mrs. Malenkov announced who she was
and arranged for the man to go to see her
husband. He found Malenkov, in a box in
Moscow's Bolshoi .Theater. "Malenkov
was having tea and -French pastry," said
the actor. "He didn't offer.me any but he
. snid: `My wife has told me everything; it
is all pure nonsense. Come to`see Me to-
morrow at the Central Committee.'." ?
Mrs., Malenkov'S, fellow actors occa7:.
sionally. got a glimpse of her -home life.
"One morning," recalls one, "Mrs. Malen-
kov came in and,.told me she hadn't slept-
a wink all night 'because her husband had
a toothache and the dentist came in with
all his machines to fix his teeth::
- Purge Ahead? Malenkov still has a
boss and alms to please him. While other
'Soviet bigwigs have gone in for gold-
apparently had a clear track.
Wan & Wife. Little is known about his
petional life beyond the facts that r) lie
is a tireless worker. who can go for days
without sleep; 2) he lives in a Kremlin
apartment with a wife & two children;
3) he smokes expensive cigarettes (North:.
ern Palmyras); 4).like all Politburocrats,
he has a. dacha outside Moscow' to which
. he commutes by bulletproof limousine,
. and likes to go duck hunting. -
-Malenkov's' first wife was Molotov's
former secretary. He divorced her in 194o
and married again. The present Mrs. Mal-
enkov seems to have been bored by her
husband's late hours, and sought relief by
? becoming an actress. One dV she ap-
`0 peared at a Moscow little theater group,
and, giving a false name, got a job.
Her colleagues wondered about her fine
clothes and the fact that a car and
chauffeur often picked her up after the
WHAT COMMUNIST CONGRESSES HAVE DONE
The past congresses of the Russian Communist Party
check off the stages by which an underground gang of
amateur conspirators became a world-powerful ?gang of
ruthless professionals.
Conspiracy. Lenin, -in a Czarist political prison,
dreamed up the First Congress. Out of his cell, the little
father of Soviet Russia smuggled a. program for a new
Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party. Only nine
delegates managed to _ get past the police and mutter
hurriedly for three days at Minsk in 1898. They just had
time to draft a manifesto before the police caught up
with them.
The next four congresses, all. convened outside of Rus-
sia, saw the Bolsheviks ? wiggle into absolute control of
the party. Lenin, who got out of Siberia in 1900, won the argument for armed
rebellion. "The Congress," he insisted, "must be . .? a council to organize
war." The name of Joseph Stalin began to appear in the minutes.
Revolution. The Seventh Congress (Petrograd, 1918), held five months
after the Revolution, was the first open-air assembly of the triumphant party.
It put "Communist" into the party's title (in full: "Russian Communist Party
of Bolsheviks"). This meeting, and the next three, set up these revolutionary
milestones: r) the Red army; 2) the "New Economic Policy," a temporary
retreat from state ownership of industry and trade, permitting some private
enterprise; 3) the Comintern, Communism's international arm.
The last congress Lenin went to '(he died in 1924) was the Eleventh, which
set up the powerful office of general secretary, designed to watchdog the party
machinery. Stalin got the job. The ailing Lenin had his misgivings. "This cook,"
he said of Stalin, "can only serve peppery dishes."
The peppery sauce that Stalin favored became apparent in the next four con-
gresses (1923-25): the base of the recipe was blood. "You will run into a wall
against which you will smash your head," Stalin warned his rivals.
Stalinism. By the r5th Congress Stalin was cooking with gas, and the smell
of blood pudding was all through the kitchen. Everyone in Russia had had a
bellyful:A new slogan was shouted: "Stalin is the Lenin of Today!"
Stalin was in. He used the 16th Congress (1930) to speed up the First Five-
Year Plan, announced at the previous congress. The 27th Congress (1934)
gauged the brutal success of enforced collectivization, which cost millions of
peasants their lives, and the emergence of Russia (by Stalin's verbal bookkeep-
ing) from "an agrarian country" into "an industrial country." ?
The r8th Congress (1939), on the eve of World War II, laid down a new
zig in Russia's zigzag foreign policy. Stalin denounced the Western democracies
for "urging Germany on to march farther East." Thus he foreshadowed his deal
with the Nazis (the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of August 1939), which helped
unleash Hitler's invasion of Poland. Stalin told the delegates: "It is now a
question of a new redivision'of-the world ..."
The 29th Congress, the first in the past 13 years, will meet this week in
Moscow (see above).
Sovfoto
LENIN .?
spangled uniforms or the blue serge suits
detectives have made famontis, Malenkov
wears the high-buttoned, grey military tu-
nic that Stalin once affected. There seems
to be little reason to doubt that, as long
. as St'alin lives, and probably even after,
-Malenkov will continue to speak with his
master's voice, and continue to be his
master's rubber stamp.' Will Charley-Mc-
Carthy-Malenkov present the world with
any major?surprises this week? It is 'pos-
sible but not -likely. The 'congress seems
.to have two main aims: r) whip up en
. thusiasm for the new, five-year plan; 2)
tighten party discipline sand organization.
Malenkov's party machine has devel-
oped a few ominous knocks in the last
decade. Party membership has almost tri-
pled and party discipline has loosened.
The new party rules (e.g., the Politburo
and the Orgburo are merged into a new
presidium) are calculated to cut away
the dead wood in the party, and open
the way to an axing of lax officials hy urg-
ing all party members to inform against
delinquent: comrades. All over Russia, a
wave of denunciations and self-criticism
is rapidly rising. ?
To the Western world, the only inter:
esting possibility in the congress is the
chance of getting a slightly better look at
the man who seems likely, some day, to
hold the issue of war & peace in his pudgy
fingers. There is no reason to expect that
that chancy glance will be in any sense
reassuring.* For no one in the Western
world can honestly envision a dinner table
at which it would be a pleasure to sit
down with Georgy Malenkov. Even the
nursery-rhyme liberals have given up hope
in such fairy -tales. If that metaphorical
meeting ever does take place. Malenkov's
fellow diners will have to come equipped
with very long spoons.
FRANCE
Submarine.Dowp
Among the British navy best little
ships 'n World War II was the submarine
spar Sinalt. Once, after wai ng days for
an qnemy ship to come out f an Aegean-
har or, she went right up to the boom,
-sen a spread of torpedoes rough the har--
bor gates and sank her. 7 war's end the
Spo tsinan had account for 31,000 tons
of e emy,shipping. T s year the British
turne her over to ti French navy as a
trainirlg ship. The Frinch made a lady out
of the% Sportsman, rechristened her La
Sib ylle.
Last keek La jibylle, commanded by
32-year-old Lieu ... Gus.tave Curot, was
? \
Last spring: w en he left for Moscow as the
new U.S. Am sador. the State Department's'
top Russian E 0,1SGeorge F. Kennan expressed
the cautious op that Russian-U.S. relations
might possibl be king a turn for the better.
Last fortnig
that his sta
cold" isol
ment
W
Kenn told reporters in Berlin
in Mosc has been one of "icy,
li 6 di ent from the treat-
azi Geri ny back in 1941
interned as an diplomat.
mbassador, snarled Pravda in reply
was an "ecstatic liar ... an enemy of
and rhence] of the Soviet Union."
TIME, OCTOBER 6, 1952
ILLEGIB
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