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Georgi Malenkov, the youngest of Stalin's inner circle and a devout student of political intrigue, had prepared carefully for the struggle for personal power and domination that would consume all post-Stalin administrators. He moved quickly to assert control, claiming the top government and party positions, prime minister and senior party secretary, for himself. A close friend and co-conspirator, Lavrenti Beria (the chief of the secret police under Stalin) received two prominent, and complementary, appointments; Minister of the Interior and first deputy prime minister. Viacheslav Molotov, a renowned Bolshevik and distinguished member of the Politburo, assumed the position of foreign minister. The three formed an uneasy alliance, a political triumvirate, which would succeed Stalin in the days immediately following his death.
The new order was quickly discredited. On March 14, only nine days after Stalin's death, Malenkov was compelled by his 'colleagues' to give up his post on the Secretariat, probably to prevent him, or anyone else, from accumulating too much power and following in Stalin's footsteps. That important job now went to Khrushchev, possibly because the three senior men did not consider him a serious candidate for power. On June 26 the crack widened when Beria, the member of the ruling group most feared by his colleagues because he controlled the secret police, was secretly arrested in his Kremlin office while army tanks surrounded the secret police headquarters.
Denounced as a 'capitalist agent', Beria was 'tried', convicted, and executed in December 1953. Malenkov, apparently tainted by a close 'personal' association with Beria, clung desperately to his sole remaining position: Chairman of the Council of Ministers.
