ABSTRACT
Georgy Malenkov, the number-two leader before Stalin's death, initially cornered the positions of senior party secretary and prime minister, respectively the top party and government posts, to emerge as the apparent number one. The veteran Bolshevik Vyacheslav Molotov, one of the very few pre-1917 figures left, a Politburo member since 1925 who had served long stints as both prime minister and foreign minister, now again became foreign minister and, like Beria, a first deputy prime minister. These three in effect formed an uneasy triumvirate ostensibly committed to what they solemnly called 'collective leadership'. A small step below them was Nikita Khrushchev, former party boss of the Ukraine and subsequently the first secretary of the party's Moscow organization. The Soviet reaction included organizing the Warsaw Pact, the Moscow-dominated military alliance with its Eastern European satellites that after 1955 stood opposed to NATO across the breadth of Europe.
