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
Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin to the collapse of the USSR and the archival revelations, some historians estimated that the numbers killed by Stalin's regime were 20 million or higher. After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives also became available, containing official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953), around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag some 390,000 deaths during kulak forced resettlement and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported to Forced settlements in the Soviet Union during the 1940’s – with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories. The deaths of at least 5.5 to 6.5 million