Historical World Events

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) and informal leader of the Bolsheviks since their inception. Was leader of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) from 1917 and leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1922 until his death.

General Secretary from 3 April 1922 until 1934, when he resigned from office; the post of General Secretary itself was abolished in October 1952. Stalin served as Premier from 6 May 1941 until his death on 5 March 1953. He also held the post of the Minister of Defence from 19 July 1941 until 3 March 1947 and Chairman of the State Defense Committee during the Great Patriotic War and became the only officer to hold the office of People's Commissariat of Nationalities from 1921–1923.

Succeeded to all of Stalin's titles, but was forced to resign most of them within a month. Malenkov, through the office of Premier, was locked in a power struggle against Khrushchev.

Served as the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Soviet Union (from September 1953) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 27 March 1958 to 14 October 1964. While vacationing in Abkhazia, Khrushchev was called by Leonid Brezhnev to return to Moscow for a special meeting of the Presidium, to be held on 13 October 1964. There, at the most fiery session since the so-called "anti-party group" crisis of 1957, he was fired from all his posts. He was largely left in peace in retirement, but was made a "non-person" to the extent that his name was removed even from the thirty-volume Soviet Encyclopedia. He died in 1971. He was seen overseas as a reformer of a "petrified structure" and described his main contribution as removing the fear that Stalin had brought, but many of his reforms were later reversed.