DISPLAYING FEATURED GENERAL SECRETARIES ARTICLES
- Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin, secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–53) and premier of the Soviet state (1941–53), who for a quarter of a century dictatorially ruled the Soviet Union and transformed it into a major world power. During the quarter of a century preceding his death, the…
- Mikhail GorbachevMikhail Gorbachev, Soviet official, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1985 to 1991 and president of the Soviet Union in 1990–91. His efforts to democratize his country’s political system and decentralize its economy led to the downfall of communism and the…
- Nikita Sergeyevich KhrushchevNikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1953–64) and premier of the Soviet Union (1958–64) whose policy of de-Stalinization had widespread repercussions throughout the communist world. In foreign policy he pursued a policy of “peaceful coexistence”…
- Deng XiaopingDeng Xiaoping, Chinese communist leader, who was the most powerful figure in the People’s Republic of China from the late 1970s until his death in 1997. He abandoned many orthodox communist doctrines and attempted to incorporate elements of the free-enterprise system and other reforms into the…
- Leonid BrezhnevLeonid Brezhnev, Soviet statesman and Communist Party official who was, in effect, the leader of the Soviet Union for 18 years. Having been a land surveyor in the 1920s, Brezhnev became a full member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1931 and studied at the metallurgical…
- Gustav HusakGustav Husak, Slovak Communist who was Czechoslovakia’s leader from 1969 to 1989. Husak joined the Communist Party in Slovakia in 1933 while studying law at Comenius University in Bratislava, and after obtaining his law degree (1937) he worked as a lawyer while participating in underground…
- Jiang ZeminJiang Zemin, Chinese official who was general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP; 1989–2002) and president of China (1993–2003). Jiang joined the CCP in 1946 and graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University the following year with a degree in electrical engineering. He worked in several…
- Georgy Maksimilianovich MalenkovGeorgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov, prominent Soviet statesman and Communist Party official, a close collaborator of Joseph Stalin, and the prime minister (March 1953–February 1955) after Stalin’s death. Having entered the Red Army (1919) during the civil war that followed the 1917 October…
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