Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union the CPSU, who was also a Politburo member, was the leader of the Secretariat and of the Party. Dual membership in the Secretariat and the Politburo was in practice reserved for two or three very senior members of the Soviet leadership, and in the post-Stalin era (after March 1953) was a stepping-stone to ultimate power. The last five Soviet leaders (Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko and Mikhail Gorbachev) were all senior Secretaries before becoming First or General Secretaries. Additionally, Georgy Malenkov was briefly reckoned as the leader of the Party for a week after Stalin's death by
History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953) constrained but where Communist parties enjoyed widespread appeal. In response, the United States sustained a massive anti-communist ideological offensive. The United States aimed to contain communism through both aggressive diplomacy and interventionist policies. In retrospect, this initiative appears largely successful: Washington brandished its role as the leader of the "Free World" at least as effectively as the Soviet Union brandished its position as the leader of the "progressive" and "anti-imperialist" camp. In 1950, the Soviet Union protested against the fact that the Chinese seat at the United Nations Security Council was held by the Nationalist government of China, and boycotted