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
Premier of the Soviet Union before then. After the failed August coup of 1991 and the revelation that the majority of the cabinet members endorsed the coup, the Cabinet of Ministers was dissolved and replaced by the Committee on the Operational Management of the Soviet economy during 1991. The Operational Management Committee was renamed the Inter-Republican Economic Committee of the USSR and it was replaced later by the Interstate Economic Committee (IEC). The IEC was also known officially as the Economic Community. Premier of the Soviet Union The Premier of the Soviet Union () was the head of government of the Union of Soviet Socialist