First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union First Deputy Premier from 1935 to 1941 because no one was elected to the post. Molotov, one of two First Deputy Premiers under Stalin's tenure, nearly lost his position when Stalin, the Premier, took a vacation; Molotov, in his capacity as First Deputy Premier, committed what Stalin saw as grave policy violations. Stalin's successor, Malenkov, promoted Bulganin, Beria and Lazar Kaganovich to the post of First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers. In a Council of Minister resolution it was stated that the Premier, the First Deputy Premiers and the Deputy Premiers made up the Presidium of the Council
Political repression in the Soviet Union political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1937-1938. It involved the purge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, repression of peasants, deportations of ethnic minorities, and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, characterized by widespread police surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment, and killings. Estimates of the number of deaths associated with the Great Purge run from the official figure of 681,692 to nearly 2 million. In Soviet Union, political repressions targeted not only individual persons, but also whole ethnic, social, religious and other categories of population. Population transfer in the Soviet Union