A power struggle between Malenkov and Khrushchev began, and on 14 March Malenkov was forced to resign from the Secretariat.

The official explanation for his resignation was " to grant the request of Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers G. M. Malenkov to be released from the duties of the Party Central Committee ".

Beria was defeated at the next Presidium plenums by a majority against him, and not long after, Khrushchev and Malenkov started to plan Beria's fall from power.

Malenkov spoke twice to the plenum, but it failed to alter his position, and on 8 March 1955 he was forced to resign from his post as Chairman of the Council of Ministers ; he was succeeded by Nikolai Bulganin, a protege of Khrushchev dating back to the 1930s.

After Khruschev removed most of the old Stalinists, like Molotov and Malenkov from the party, Voroshilov's career began to fade.

Golubtsova and Malenkov never officially registered their union and remained unregistered partners for the rest of their lives ; such status allowed them to receive twice as many perks from the Soviet system.

Malenkov supervised the takeover of German V2 missile industry that was moved from Peenemünde to Moscow for further development that resulted in building Vostok missiles and orbiting Sputnik a few years later.

At the end of WWII and shortly after, Malenkov implemented Stalin's plan to destroy all political and cultural competition from Leningrad / St.

After that, in order to test Malenkov as a potential successor, the aging Stalin increasingly withdrew from the business of the Communist party secretariat, leaving the task of supervising the Soviet Communist party entirely to Malenkov.

However, after several sharp political attacks by Nikita Khrushchev during the year 1953 Malenkov had to resign from the Secretariat, because Khrushchev was supported by other members of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee.

Malenkov together with his co-conspirators Nikolai Bulganin, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Lazar Kaganovich who organized the failed Anti-Party Group were swiftly fired from Politburo.

After that Malenkov fell in obscurity and suffered from depression due to loss of power and " degraded quality of life in the poor province ".

However, some researchers say that later Malenkov found this demotion and exile somewhat a relief from the pressures of the Kremlin power struggle.

In 1957 the Central Committee fired Malenkov from jobs in the Soviet government, cancelled his Kremlin privileges, special food perks and financial allowances.

In 1961 the Central Committee fired Malenkov from the Communist Party of USSR, as people throughout USSR demanded punishment for organizers of Stalin's Purge, and Malenkov was one of them.

In order to test Georgy Malenkov as a potential successor, in the 1950s, Stalin increasingly withdrew from Secretariat business, leaving the supervision of the body to him.

Malenkov became Chairman of the Council of Ministers but was forced to resign from the Secretariat on 14 March 1953, leaving Khrushchev in effective control of the body.

In 1957 Mikoyan refused to back an attempt by Malenkov and Molotov to remove Khrushchev from power ; he thus secured his position as one of Khrushchev's closest allies.

Malenkov and Molotov had been removed from their positions as Premier and Foreign Minister the year before.

Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich and Shepilov-the only four names made public-were vilified in the press and deposed from their positions in party and government.

Then he expelled Molotov, Kaganovich and Malenkov from the Secretariat and ultimately from the Communist Party itself.

Malenkov was born at Orenburg, Russian Empire.

Sebag-Montefiore does not dispute the possibility of an assassination by poison masterminded by Beria, whose hatred for Stalin was palpable by this point, but also notes that Beria never made mention of poison or confessed to using it, even during his later interrogations, and was never alone with Stalin during the period prior to his stroke ( he always went with Malenkov to defer suspicion ).

In 1920, in Turkestan, Malenkov started living together with Valeria Golubtsova, daughter of Aleksei Golubtsov, former State Councellor of the Russian Empire in Nizhny Novgorod and dean of the Imperial Cadet School.

After the Russian civil war, Malenkov quickly built himself a reputation of a tough communist bolshevik.

Russian sources state that, rather than continuing with his studies, Malenkov took a career of a Soviet politician-his university degree was never completed, and his records have been indefinitely classified.

Malenkov in his later years became a devout Russian Orthodox Christian, as did his daughter, who has since spent part of her personal wealth building two churches in rural locations.

* Gregor Malenkov, a Russian monk in the Power of Five book Necropolis

Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Georgy Malenkov and joined by Dmitri Shepilov at the last minute after Kaganovich convinced him the group had a majority, attempted to depose Khrushchev as First Secretary of the Party in May 1957.

Malenkov's resignation made Khrushchev the senior member within the Secretariat, and made him powerful enough to set the agenda of the Presidium meetings alongside Malenkov.

Around this time, Malenkov forged a close friendship with Vyacheslav Malyshev, who later became chief of the Soviet nuclear program alongside Kurchatov.

After the ruthless attack on Georgy Zhukov, Malenkov gained strength and became closer with Stalin and several other top communists.

" Simultaneously, Malenkov replaced all communist party and administrative leadership in Leningrad by provincial communists loyal to Stalin.

Within days of the events in Germany, Khrushchev persuaded the other leaders to support a Party coup against Beria ; Beria's principal ally Malenkov abandoned him.

Pravda did not announce Beria's arrest until 10 July, crediting it to Malenkov and referring to Beria's " criminal activities against the Party and the State.

At the conclusion of World War II and shortly thereafter, Malenkov sided against several who were considered Soviet war heroes, among them Zhukov, Gordin, Rybakovsky and several other popular generals.

However, in 1957, Malenkov organized another treasonous act against Khrushchev and Georgiy Zhukov.

In a dramatic standoff in Kremlin, Malenkov was severely ostracized for the treason by both Khrushchev and Zhukov, who alerted all military forces to be ready to fight against Malenkov and his pro-Stalinist group.

In 1949 Suslov became a member, along with Georgy Malenkov, Lavrentiy Beria, and Lazar Kaganovich, of a commission created to investigate charges levied against Moscow's local Communist Party First Secretary, Georgy Popov.

Khrushchev won the support of Bulganin to move against Malenkov and at the Central Committee meeting in January 1955, Malenkov was criticized for his close relationship with Beria as well as his failure to implement promises to increase the production of consumer goods.

When Georgy Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich and other members of the so-called Anti-Party Group were expelled from the Presidium and ultimately from the party for allegedly plotting against Khrushchev they were not put on trial or imprisoned but simply demoted to minor posts ( such as ambassador to Mongolia in the case of Molotov ) or pensioned off as when Khrushchev himself was deposed in 1964.