Death In The Kremlin: THE MAN THAT STALIN BUILT

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.

Hocus-Pocus. Now it was Malenkov’s turn. He may have achieved his victory by means of—of all things—an intricate debate on genetics. This week, linking fact with plausible conjecture, the New York Times’s Foreign Correspondent Cyrus L. Sulzberger put together the story. In the summer of 1948, 700 Soviet biologists met in conference to discuss solemnly the theory of Lysenkovism. Geneticist T. D. Lysenko contended that “acquired characteristics”—those attributed to environment—can be inherited. This meant that Communist education could more or less create a new species of human being, and then transmit the features to future generations.

Zhdanov & Co., like most Western scientists, recognized Lysenko’s theory for what it is: hocuspocus. But the Malenkovites, themselves the archetypes of a new Soviet Man, backed it to the last chromosome. They proved the better maneuverers.

Death of a Rival. Zhdanov’s own son, Yuri, was chief of the scientific propaganda section. Malenkov, with Stalin’s backing, forced Yuri to publish a cringing letter of apology for his “sharp and public criticism of Academician Lysenko.” Three weeks later, Zhdanov Sr. died, presumably of a heart attack. In January the Kremlin shocked the world by asserting that Zhdanov had been murdered by a group of Soviet doctors, most of them Jews.

Whatever the truth, Georgy Malenkov was certainly the man who benefited most by Zhdanov’s death. Anti-Lysenkovians were purged; 300,000 Zhdanovites and “cosmopolitans” were expelled from the party.

Malenkov’s star was rising again, this time in a clear sky. In January last year, Radio Moscow proclaimed: “True pupil of Lenin, comrade-in-arms of Stalin … on your 50th birthday we wish you, dear Georgy Malenkov, many years of health.” Georgy Malenkov had arrived.