Word: malenkov
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World War II gave Malenkov his biggest break. While Stalin ran Russia's war, he ran its airplane factories, and did it very well. His reward was the task of reconstruction. Malenkov got results-and never stopped to count the cost in human misery. In 1946, he stood second only to Stalin at the May Day parade...
...Rivalry. Malenkov became bold enough to denounce the Old Bolsheviks as "people rightly called bookworms, who have quotations from Marx and Engels ready for every question . . ." That was a mistake: Malenkov was judged "erroneous" for questioning the Sacred Books. A jealous rival moved in, Andrei Zhdanov. He was of Malenkov's age, but he fought for the Older Bolsheviks by leading a "Back to Marx" movement...
...Malenkov represented himself as the longtime advocate of Asia First. He dipped into Soviet Scriptures: "Lenin pointed out in 1923 that the outcome of the world's struggle between capitalism and Communism depends in the long run on the fact that Russia, China and India comprise the overwhelming majority of the [earth's] population." With the Communist conquest of China, the Asia Firsters had something to brag about...
Hocus-Pocus. Now it was Malenkov's turn. He may have achieved his victory by means of-of all things-an intricate debate on genetics. This week, linking fact with plausible conjecture, the New York Times's Foreign Correspondent Cyrus L. Sulzberger put together the story. In the summer of 1948, 700 Soviet biologists met in conference to discuss solemnly the theory of Lysenkovism. Geneticist T. D. Lysenko contended that "acquired characteristics"-those attributed to environment-can be inherited. This meant that Communist education could more or less create a new species of human being, and then transmit...
Death of a Rival. Zhdanov's own son, Yuri, was chief of the scientific propaganda section. Malenkov, with Stalin's backing, forced Yuri to publish a cringing letter of apology for his "sharp and public criticism of Academician Lysenko." Three weeks later, Zhdanov Sr. died, presumably of a heart attack. In January the Kremlin shocked the world by asserting that Zhdanov had been murdered by a group of Soviet doctors, most of them Jews...