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.
Chairman of the Communist Party of China
Between 1922 and 1925, Chen Duxiu (still Party Secretary) served as Chairman of the Central Executive Committee (), but the name was changed in "General Secretary of the Central Executive Committee" in 1925. The post was first introduced in March 1943, when the Politburo decided to discharge Zhang Wentian as General Secretary. As his replacement, Mao Zedong, who had been the "de facto" leader of the party since the Long March, was named as Chairman of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee (). The seventh CPC National Congress introduced the post of Chairman of the Central Committee into the party constitution, and in 1956 the General Secretary was given the day-to-day management of the Party Secretariat. The chairman was elected by the Central Committee in plenary session and had full powers over the CC, the Politburo and its Standing Committee.