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Man & Wife. Little is known about his personal life beyond the facts that i) he is a tireless worker who can go for days without sleep; 2) he lives in a Kremlin apartment with a wife & two children; 3) he smokes expensive cigarettes (Northern Palmyras); 4) like all Politburocrats, he has a dacha outside Moscow to which he commutes by bulletproof limousine, and likes to go duck hunting.
Malenkov's first wife was Molotov's former secretary. He divorced her in 1940 and married again. The present Mrs. Malenkov seems to have been bored by her husband's late hours, and sought relief by becoming an actress. One day in the late '30s, she appeared at a Moscow little theater group, and, giving a false name, got a job. Her colleagues wondered about her fine clothes and the fact that a car and chauffeur often picked her up after the performance. One day, when one of her fellow actors got into trouble with the secret police over some ideological impurity in a pamphlet he had written, Mrs. Malenkov announced who she was and arranged for the man to go to see her husband. He found Malenkov in a box in Moscow's Bolshoi Theater. "Malenkov was having tea and French pastry," said the actor. "He didn't offer me any but he said: 'My wife has told me everything; it is all pure nonsense. Come to see me tomorrow at the Central Committee.' "
Mrs. Malenkov's fellow actors occasionally got a glimpse of her home life. "One morning," recalls one, "Mrs. Malenkov came in and told me she hadn't slept a wink all night because her husband had a toothache and the dentist came in with all his machines to fix his teeth."
Purge Ahead? Malenkov still has a boss and aims to please him. While other Soviet bigwigs have gone in for goldspangled uniforms or the blue serge suits detectives have made famous, Malenkov wears the high-buttoned grey military tunic that Stalin once affected. There seems to be little reason to doubt that, as long as Stalin lives, and probably even after, Malenkov will continue to speak with his master's voice, and continue to be his master's rubber stamp. Will Charley-Mc-Carthy-Malenkov present the world with any major surprises this week? It is possible but not likely. The congress seems to have two main aims: i) whip up enthusiasm for the new five-year plan; 2) tighten party discipline and organization.
Malenkov's party machine has developed a few ominous knocks in the last decade. Party membership has almost tripled and party discipline has loosened. The new party rules (e.g., the Politburo and the Orgburo are merged into a new presidium) are calculated to cut away the dead wood in the party, and open the way to an axing of lax officials by urging all party members to inform against delinquent comrades. All over Russia, a wave of denunciations and self-criticism is rapidly rising.