History of the Soviet Union (1953–64) Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and Georgi Malenkov as Premier of the Soviet Union. However the central figure in the immediate post-Stalin period was the former head of the state security apparatus, Lavrentiy Beria. Stalin had left the Soviet Union in an unenviable state when he died. At least 2.5 million people languished in prison and in labor camps, science and the arts had been subjugated to socialist realism, and agriculture productivity on the whole was meager. The country had only one quarter of the livestock it
Stalin and the Scientists amount of study" and "deserves attention", but "a very critical form of attention". Stalin and the Scientists Stalin and the Scientists: A History of Triumph and Tragedy 1905–1953 is a 2016 popular science non-fiction book on the history of science in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin by English novelist and science writer, Simon Ings. It is Ings' second non-fiction book, the first being "The Eye: A Natural History" (2007). He had previously published eight novels. "Stalin and the Scientists" was longlisted for the 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. Ings' inspiration for "Stalin and the Scientists" came from Soviet