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
Predictions of the dissolution of the Soviet Union German Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union, and the Red Army retreated. Military observers around the world watched closely. It appears that most of them shared Hitler's opinion, expecting Germany to win, destroy the Soviet system, and establish its New Order in Europe. Very few American experts thought the Soviet Union would survive. After the beginning of the German invasion, the United States Department of War advised Franklin D. Roosevelt that the German army would conquer the Soviet Union within one to three months. In July 1941, the American general staff issued memoranda to the American press that a Soviet collapse