General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
In the 1950s, Stalin increasingly withdrew from Secretariat business, leaving the supervision of the body to Georgy Malenkov, possibly to test him as a potential successor. In October 1952, at the 19th Party Congress, Stalin restructured the party's leadership. His request, voiced through Malenkov, to be relieved of his duties in the party secretariat due to his age, was rejected by the party congress, as delegates were unsure about Stalin's intentions. In the end, the congress formally abolished Stalin's office of General Secretary, though Stalin remained one of the party secretaries and maintained ultimate control of the Party. When Stalin died on 5 March 1953, Malenkov was the most important member of the Secretariat, which also included Nikita Khrushchev, among others. Under a short-lived troika of Malenkov, Beria, and Molotov, Malenkov became Chairman of the Council of Ministers but was forced to resign from the Secretariat nine days later on 14 March, leaving Khrushchev in effective control of the body. Khrushchev was elected to the new office of First Secretary at the Central Committee plenum on 14 September of the same year. Originally conceived as a collective leadership, Khrushchev removed his rivals from power in both 1955 and (especially) 1957 and reinforced the supremacy of the First Secretary.
Central Committee elected by the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
In a similar vein, Gorbachev managed to get close advisers elected to the Central Committee. Anatoly Chernyaev (Gorbachev's foreign adviser) and Anatoly Lukyanov, (head of the party's General Department) were promoted to full membership, while Valery Boldin was elected to the 27th Central Committee as a candidate member. Several figures within the Central Academy of Social Sciences, most notably Evgeny Velikhov, were appointed to the Central Committee as candidate members. Notably the 27th Congress did not reelect Richard Kosolapov, the longtime editor of the party's theoretical journal "Kommunist", and was replaced by Ivan Frolov. Several Brezhnev appointed heads of Central Committee departments failed to be reelected to the Central Committee; Ivan Sakhnyuk (Agricultural-Machine Building Department), Kirill Simonov (Transport and Communications Department) and Vasily Shauro (Culture Department). Nikolay Savkin (Administrative Organs Department) and Vladimir Karlov (Agriculture and Food Industry Department) were the two last remaining Central Committee departments heads appointed by Brezhnev. Of the 23 department heads, fourteen were replaced by the 1st Plenary Session. Four leading officials from the Brezhnev era, who retired from the Politburo and the Secretariat at the 27th Congress, were reelected to the Central Committee; Nikolai Tikhonov (former Chairman of the Council of Ministers), Nikolai Baibakov (the former Chairman of the State Planning Committee), Boris Ponomarev (former Head of the International Department) and Vasili Kuznetsov (the former First Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet).