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 created for Joseph Stalin. However, according to Stalin biographer Robert Service, Stalin regretted allowing himself the ostentatious military title, and asked Winston Churchill to continue to refer to him as a marshal instead. Stalin also rejected any kind of distinctions between his military rank and the other Soviet marshals, and kept using the original Marshal of the Soviet Union insignia and uniform like the other Soviet marshals. The matter about Generalissimus of the Soviet Union was mentioned again after the war, when a draft of a decree about the Soviet military ranks was presented to Stalin. Then, General Andrey Khrulyov