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Those decisions will be embodied in the party's political report, usually a four-or-five-hour-long discourse which, in the past, has been delivered by the Big Boss himself: Lenin, while he lived, then Stalin. This year, aging (72) Joseph Stalin, like a venerable chairman of the board, has decided to take a back seat and let Malenkov post the orders of the day.
For some years the Soviet hierarchy has been: Stalin, No. i; Molotov, No. 2; Beria, No. 3. Malenkov was rated No. 2½, between Molotov and Beria. Now, the experts who study the Russian tea leaves for signs and portents think that Malenkov has moved up to No. 1½. Though Molotov has not been officially downgraded, it is said that Stalin treats him as little more than an errand boy; Beria, the boss of Russia's secret police, seems content to wield his dreadful power in the background and is, moreover, Malenkov's pal —apparently his one & only. There has been speculation that Stalin may will his powers to these three men jointly, to rule Russia as a triumvirate after his death.* Even in that case, Malenkov, because of his friendship with Beria and his grip on party machinery, could have a good chance of eventually becoming sole boss.
Stalin knows that few dictators in history, and none in the 20th century, have managed to ensure a smooth succession. He himself had thousands of men murdered before he felt safe as Lenin's heir. It is not thought likely that he will name a successor while he still lives. For years he has kept the balance of power nicely adjusted among the pretenders to his throne. It may be that he is now trying to give Malenkov enough real power to make his succession possible without the sort of bloody struggle that Stalin himself inflicted on Russia in the '30s.
Like Stalin, Georgy Malenkov has been a party machine man from the first. Unlike Stalin, Molotov and the other "Old Bolsheviks" who plotted in cellars and brooded in jails before the Revolution of 1917, Malenkov was never a revolutionary. Little is known of his early life except that he was born in 1902 in the Cossack city of Orenburg (now Chkalov) on the Ural River, perhaps of bourgeois parents ("Maximilian," his father's name, is not one likely to be borne by a Russian peasant). When the Revolution broke out, Georgy was in high school. He joined the Red army, the Communisty party a year later. A humorless, methodical youth of 18 with a knack for mechanics, he was given such jobs as checking on the loyalty of fellow soldiers in the army and screening candidates for party membership. He did well, and was put in charge of Communist groups in Moscow schools. In 1925 he got the break he was built for: he was picked to be one of Stalin's private secretaries.
Tyrant's Standin. As good secretaries will, the 23-year-old Malenkov set about making himself indispensable. When Stalin wanted a name or a fact in a hurry, it was there, on the tip of his secretary's tongue. Malenkov's memory is phenomenal; to supplement it, he collected a monumental file of facts & figures on everyone, big or small, who might come under the leader's eye.