General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union more than determine party membership composition. Stalin, its first incumbent, used the principles of democratic centralism to transform his office into that of party leader, and later leader of the Soviet Union. In 1934, the 17th Party Congress refrained from formally re-electing Stalin as General Secretary. However, Stalin was re-elected into all other positions and remained leader of the party without diminishment. In the 1950s, Stalin increasingly withdrew from Secretariat business, leaving the supervision of the body to Georgy Malenkov, possibly to test him as a potential successor. In October 1952, at the 19th Party Congress, Stalin restructured the party's
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 Stalin following World War II; however, Stalin refused to officially approve the rank and died with the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. It would have been the highest military rank in the Soviet Union. This military rank was specifically