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Stalin's victory, consolidated by the great purges of the '30s, was also Malenkov's victory. He climbed swiftly up the party ladder—into the Central Committee, into the Orgburo (the Central Com mittee's organization subcommittee, which handles the choice and assignment of party personnel throughout all walks of Soviet life), into a job as a deputy party secretary under General Secretary Stalin. His special task, in the years just before World War II, was to check and double-check discipline and loyalty to the party line—and he carried out the job, so he reported in 1939, through "strict scrutiny" of every one of 2,477,666 comrades.
Rude Words. In 1941, a few months before the Nazi invasion, Malenkov jarred a party conference in Moscow with a major blast of his rude common sense. He was reporting on "flaws, shortcomings and errors" in the party's direction of industry and transport.
He berated bureaucrats: "Some of them like to sit in swivel chairs and run things by correspondence." He scolded "windbags," who made excuses for the lag in production quotas, and "ignoramuses" who turned up their noses at technological improvements or "cleanliness and tidiness in a factory." He snapped at managers who "study genealogy to pick subordinates by their proletarian ancestry rather than by capacity." He added, startlingly, that there were people outside the party who were better Communists than those within it.
It might have been coincidence, but his report was followed by the demotion of several commissars and the retirement to private life of Molotov's wife, Polina Zhemchuzhina, who had bumbled first as director of the Cosmetics Trust and then as Commissar of the Fish Industry. Victor (I Chose Freedom) Kravchenko, then an engineer in the Kremlin, tells how Molotov, at a meeting of the Politburo, took his wife's dismissal deeply to heart.
"The fault, comrades," he said, "is one which I must share myself. I have failed to give sufficient attention to the matter."
Stalin cut in. "That's beside the point, Vyacheslav," he said. "The crux of the matter is that too many fish are swimming in the sea when they ought to be on citizens' tables."
As for Malenkov, the day after his tough talk he was elected a candidate (or junior) member of the Politburo.
Impressive Show. During the war years, Malenkov's organizational talent was applied to the production of Soviet armament. In charge of tank and plane manufacture, he put up an impressive performance. For days on end he stayed in his Kremlin office, snatching a cat nap now & then on an army cot set up beside his desk. His factories were turning out 40,000 planes a year by the time the tide turned on the Russian front in 1943.
In March 1946 Malenkov became a full member of the Politburo. Perhaps his fast climb made him lose the shrewd middlebrow touch, perhaps times had changed. At any rate, he made another speech, calling for a new application of party principles, and got into trouble.