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 this stage a much more remote possibility" than alternative #3: renewed stagnation. He also predicted chances of some form of communism existing in the Soviet Union in 2017 was a little more than 50%. Finally when the end did come in a few more decades, Brzezinski wrote, it would be "most likely turbulent." Ferenc Farkas de Kisbarnak, an exiled Hungarian general and leader of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), predicted the dissolution of the Soviet Union due to nationalist pressures. From June 12–14 of 1950, the Convention of the ABN was held in Edinburgh, Scotland under the auspices of