Andrei Zhdanov

Andrei Zhdanov joined the Bolsheviks in 1915 and moved up fast, becoming a Central Committee secretary in 1934 and Leningrad party chief after Sergei Kirov's assassination that same year. He played a major role in the Great Purge and rose to full Politburo membership in 1939, heading the Central Committee's Propaganda Department. His standing took hits during the Second World War - the Soviet-Finnish War and the collapsed Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact both bore his fingerprints - though he led the Soviet takeover of Estonia and helped defend Leningrad. Afterward Stalin handed him the country's cultural reins. The Zhdanovshchina that followed denounced Anna Akhmatova, Dmitri Shostakovich, and others who strayed from the line; Zhdanov also launched the Cominform in 1947. Ill health and the Tito-Stalin split dimmed his star. He died of heart failure in August 1948, and Georgy Malenkov's rise began before the body was cold.