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.
Chen Duxiu
At the First Congress of the Communist Party in Shanghai, Chen was elected (in absentia) as the party's first General Secretary; and, with the assistance of Li Dazhao, he developed what would become a crucial cooperative relationship with the International Communist Movement, the Comintern. This cooperation with the Comintern would later prove to be a problem for the fledgling CPC over the next decade, as aggressive foreign Comintern advisors would try to force policy according to the wishes of Moscow and against the will of many prominent CPC leaders, often for the national interest of the USSR. By 1922, the size of the entire Communist Party in China was only about 200 members, not counting those overseas. Chen remained as the undisputed leader of the Chinese Communist Party until 1927, and was often referred to as "China's Lenin" during this period.