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
Stalin and His Hangmen Stalin and His Hangmen Stalin and His Hangmen: An Authoritative Portrait of a Tyrant and Those Who Served Him by Donald Rayfield, and the imprinted with another subtitle: Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him, is a 2004 political biography by Donald Rayfield, of Joseph Stalin and his subordinates who ran the Soviet secret police: Felix Dzerzhinsky, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrentiy Beria. The books are based on recent publication by Russian authors of material from Soviet archives that started to open after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and from some