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
Predictions of the dissolution of the Soviet Union of man." and the next year stated that "on balance the Soviet Union does have a definite margin of superiority" compared to the U.S. military. The Reagan administration used a perceived strength of the Soviet Union to justify a significant expansion of military spending according to David Arbel and Ran Edelist. In their study "Western Intelligence and the dissolution of the Soviet Union" they argue it was this position by the Reagan administration that prevented the American intelligence agencies from predicting the demise of the USSR. Arbel and Edelist further argued that CIA analysts were encouraged to present any information