Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1947 by politician Nikolai Bulganin. Two Marshals were executed in postwar purges: Kulik in 1950 and Beria in 1953, following Stalin's death. Thereafter the rank was awarded only to professional soldiers, with the exception of Leonid Brezhnev, who made himself a Marshal in 1976, and Ustinov, who was prominent in the arms industry and was appointed Defence Minister in July 1976. The last Marshal of the Soviet Union was Dmitry Yazov, appointed in 1990, who was imprisoned after the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. Marshal Sergei Akhromeev committed suicide in 1991 during the fall of the Soviet
Government of the Soviet Union Government of the Soviet Union The Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Russian: Правительство СССР, "Pravitel'stvo SSSR") was the main part of the executive branch of government of the USSR. Its head of government was the officeholder known generally in the West as the Premier of the Soviet Union. However, the USSR was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the power of which was derived from the Constitution of the Soviet Union. The Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was "de facto" the most important policy-making organ of