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
Generalissimus of the Soviet Union considered them to be too luxurious and old-fashioned. Currently they are stored in the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic war located in Moscow at Poklonnaya Gora. Below are proposed designs of the shoulder insignia of Generalissimus of the Soviet Union. Generalissimus of the Soviet Union Generalissimus of the Soviet Union (; ) was a proposed military rank created on 27 June 1945, following the tradition of the Imperial Russian Army (the rank in question only ever having been held by Count Aleksandr Vasiliyevich Suvorov who served during the reign of Catherine II the Great.). It was granted to Joseph