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Khrushchev made his point clearer: the accused had had a hand in the famous "Leningrad Case." This was a conspiracy that had cost the life of Politburocrat Nikolai Voznesensky, Soviet Russia's chief economic planner, in 1948-49 (during Stalin's reign). After Khrushchev became First Party Secretary, Secret Police Boss Viktor Abakumov and three subordinates were executed in December 1954 for their role in it. Said Khrushchev menacingly last week: "Malenkov, who was one of the chief organizers of the so-called Leningrad Case, simply was afraid to come to you here in Leningrad." If Malenkov had not actually been afraid for his life before, he had real cause to be now: Khrushchev had laid the basis of a criminal conspiracy charge against him, such as had brought hundreds of Soviet leaders to trial and execution in the past 30 years.
The Path to Power. Nikita Khrushchev, in appearance a man of headlong exuberance, had waited 51 months to make his coup. When it came, it was as unexpected and as ruthless as anything Stalin had done. But there was a world of difference in Khrushchev's approach to power. Whereas Stalin, utterly contemptuous of party or world opinion, had purged the army and party structure wide and deep, Khrushchev had gone to great lengths to establish support among the party rank and file, particularly in the provinces, and to make himself a popular figure with peasants and workers. He had relaxed the police control, freed many prisoners; he had associated himself with such popular projects as better housing, free farming, decentralized industry, and freedom from the threat of war.
His first victory, a few days after Stalin's death (a victory undoubtedly obtained with the support of other Old Communists), had been to ease Stalin Protégé Malenkov out of the First Party Secretaryship, and 23 months later to force him to resign the Premiership, pleading incompetence ("My insufficient experience, my guilt and responsibility") on the way. This success may have given Khrushchev the key to his later maneuverings, for they were based on the tactic of winning to his side those people persecuted by Stalin, e.g., Zhukov and other Red marshals, and boldly stigmatizing his old party rivals as associates of the hated Stalin. The fact that he himself had been a Stalin crony apparently did not embarrass Khrushchev. Who in Russia dared point this out?
As far back as his introductory report to the 20th Party Congress in 1956 (TIME, Feb. 27, 1956 et seq.), Khrushchev made passing derogatory references to Molotov's "contemptuous attitude" and to Malenkov's consumer-goods plan ("incorrigible boaster"). In his famous secret, weeping, emotional speech to the same body ten days later, in which he denounced Stalin as a "sickly suspicious," bloodthirsty tyrant, Khrushchev tried to take from Stalin even his chief glory as victor in war, and in doing so, told an anecdote which showed that Malenkov was close to Stalin's side during his most panicky moments of the war.