Unfulfilled hopes and promises

The first concern of Stalin's successors, said the statement they issued almost simultaneously with the announcement of the General Secretary's decease, was to avert “disarray and panic” by ensuring “uninterrupted and correct leadership.” Their second concern was to divide power in such a fashion that would — at least on the surface — institutionalize a collective leadership and some sort of equilibrium among themselves. That there was a huge gap between the theory and practice of the new order and that all was not working smoothly became clear when Malenkov resigned from the Secretariat of the Central Committee on 14 March 1953 less than ten days after Stalin died, although he retained his leadership of the government apparatus and his position in the Presidium. Nikita Khrushchev was listed first in the new five-man Secretariat and on 1 September he was officially appointed First Secretary of the party; a further seventeen months passed before the rivalry between him and Malenkov — and between the apparatuses they headed — was finally decided in his favor and that of the party. During this time Lavrentii Beriia had been ousted from the leading junta and executed by his colleagues, ostensibly for threatening their physical security: Beriia had headed the new Ministry of the Interior (MVD), which amalgamated the MVD and the Ministry of State Security (MGB). As we have seen, Beriia, himself a Mingrelian, was associated with a favorable policy toward the USSR's national minorities, which seems also to have been regarded disapprovingly by his Great Russian companions.