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
Foreign trade of the Soviet Union Soviet Union formally requested observer status in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and in 1988 signed a normalization agreement with the European Economic Community. Structural changes in the foreign trade bureaucracy, granting direct trading rights to select enterprises, and legislation establishing joint ventures with foreigners opened up the economy to the Western technical and managerial expertise necessary to achieve the goals established by General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's program of economic restructuring (perestroika). The government of the Soviet Union has always held a monopoly on all foreign trade activity, but only after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953