NAME: Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov.
BORN: Jan. 8, 1902. ORIGIN: Cossack from Ural region. PHYSICAL DIMENSIONS: Height, 5 ft. 7 in.; weight, 250 Ibs. FAMILY STATUS: Married to an actress, his second wife; two children.
So much—and not much more—is known about the new Soviet Premier: Georgy (pronounced Gay-oŕ-gee) Maximilianovich (Maxy-milly-ya'-no-vitch) Malenkov (Mah-len-koff).
All his adult life Georgy Malenkov understudied the Master—as secretary, filing clerk, hatchetman and intimate. He aped Stalin's manners, parroted his phrases, affected the same shapeless grey cap and simple soldier's tunic. Like Stalin he proved himself devious, inscrutable and cruel, but where the master had muscle, Malenkov is as pale and pasty as the cream buns he loves. He was almost certainly the son of a Czarist subaltern—an offense against "proletarian biology" which he long tried to expiate by scolding Marxist scholars for their "researches into who is [a man's] grandmother . . ." Too young in 1917 to become a hero of the October Revolution, he is of the new generation of Soviet Man.
It was probably Kaganovich who brought him to Stalin's notice. As chief of Stalin's personal secretariat for nearly five years, Malenkov had a key to the leader's safe and to the party's private files. He burrowed deep, learned much, and kept his mouth shut. Soon he was preparing the dossiers of those to be liquidated in the Great Purges of 1935-38. He replaced those who died with men loyal to himself, slowly built up a personal apparatus within the party "cadres."
World War II gave Malenkov his biggest break. While Stalin ran Russia's war, he ran its airplane factories, and did it very well. His reward was the task of reconstruction. Malenkov got results—and never stopped to count the cost in human misery. In 1946, he stood second only to Stalin at the May Day parade.
The Rivalry. Malenkov became bold enough to denounce the Old Bolsheviks as "people rightly called bookworms, who have quotations from Marx and Engels ready for every question . . ." That was a mistake: Malenkov was judged "erroneous" for questioning the Sacred Books. A jealous rival moved in, Andrei Zhdanov. He was of Malenkov's age, but he fought for the Older Bolsheviks by leading a "Back to Marx" movement.
Asia Firster. Great issues of foreign policy, as well as the narrower one of Marxolatry, were involved in the rivalry. Zhdanov and his followers seem to have sold Stalin on a Europe First policy that brought the tide of Soviet power to its maximum westward penetration: Czechoslovakia, seized in a Communist Putsch in February 1948. But in their year of victory the Zhdanovites suffered two reverses: Tito defected, the airlift saved Berlin.
Malenkov represented himself as the longtime advocate of Asia First. He dipped into Soviet Scriptures: "Lenin pointed out in 1923 that the outcome of the world's struggle between capitalism and Communism depends in the long run on the fact that Russia, China and India comprise the overwhelming majority of the [earth's] population." With the Communist conquest of China, the Asia Firsters had something to brag about.