1953–1957: New Men, New Strategies

Abstract

With Stalin’s death, G. M. Malenkov assumed the rank both of Soviet premier and of First Secretary of the Cpsu (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), but within a week N. S. Khrushchev had taken over the Party secretaryship. The great succession struggle would last over four years, before Khrushchev established an undivided ascendancy over all his rivals,¹ but the first move by the oligarchy, including Molotov, Bulganin and Kaganovich, which succeeded Stalin, was to ensure its own physical survival. In June 1953 Beria, the head of the State Security Service, was arrested and executed later in the year as a criminal conspirator and agent of British intelligence. Thus began the operation of bringing the vast State Security apparatus, which had upheld Stalin’s tyranny by terror, under Party control, although of course the nature of the Soviet state remained totalitarian. While consolidating its internal position, the new régime pursued a conciliatory foreign policy; the Korean armistice was signed in July, and in August Malenkov made favourable references to the Afro-Asian states, while announcing that Russia now possessed the hydrogen bomb, a claim soon confirmed by Western monitoring devices on 12 August.