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
1937 Soviet Union legislative election 1937 Soviet Union legislative election Elections to the Supreme Soviet were held in the Soviet Union on 12 December 1937. It was the first election held under the 1936 Soviet Constitution, which had formed the Supreme Soviet to replace the old legislature, the Congress of Soviets of the Soviet Union. On 11 December, on the eve of the election, Joseph Stalin gave a speech to voters in Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre, greeted by a loud ovation lasting for several minutes with cries of "Long live great Stalin, Hurrah!" "Hurrah for Comrade Stalin, the creator of the Soviet Constitution, the most democratic