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
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