On August 31, 1948, the second secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov, died in the Moscow Kremlin hospital, and the official cause of death was "heart failure".

In honor of Zhdanov's contribution to the Soviet Union, the Central Committee of the CPSU decided to rename his birthplace, Mariupol, Ukraine, as the "city of Zhdanov", and the Leningrad Plimovsky district, where he once worked, was renamed "Zhdanov district".

Zhdanov's death was undoubtedly a major blow to the Leningrad faction. It was precisely because of the existence of Zhdanov, the second secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, that the revisionist remarks made by Voznesensky and other Leningradists were not held accountable and that they were able to maintain their high positions in the CPSU Central Committee.

But as soon as Zhdanov died, Manturov, as the third secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, rose to the top and became the second person in the Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee after Stalin.

In addition, he was in charge of personnel and concurrently served as the head of the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which gave him enough power to control the fate of the cadres of the whole country, and he was even able to use the power in his hands to easily demote his "opponents" or transfer them to some useless positions, at least in the eyes of outsiders.

However, it was not so easy for Manturov to get rid of Voznesensky and others, not to mention that he was still a member of the Politburo, and the forces behind him were not small, as long as there was no evidence of corruption or anti-Soviet remarks, it would be difficult to deal with them.

But for Beria, it was easy to get rid of the top CPSU officials. Although he is no longer the Minister of Internal Affairs, the entire Ministry of Internal Affairs (including the Minister of Internal Affairs Abakumov) still listens to him.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs is one of the most important law enforcement agencies in the Soviet Union, overseeing the Soviet Union's anti-anti-terrorism agencies, the police, and the border guards. Even the Central Supervisory Commission of the CPSU, which has the same function as the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, needs the cooperation of law enforcement officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs in order to bring party members and cadres who violate discipline to justice.

However, the Ministry of Internal Affairs is not just a law enforcement agency, but also a powerful tool used by Beria to suppress dissent.

This department can not only bring to justice those who have violated the law, but also frame any good man and good citizen as an anti-Soviet, no matter how loyal to the Party and how much he has contributed to the revolution, and as long as his status is not high enough, but he is targeted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the final result will not be much better.

Generally speaking, the Ministry of Internal Affairs' method of rectifying people is nothing more than fabricating some so-called "evidence" and using these fabricated "evidence" to fabricate charges, and finally arresting the "target person", arresting him and beating him into a trick, and then he can shoot the "criminal" or send him to the Gulag to participate in labor and reform after he is forced to admit the crime.

But this trick sometimes didn't work very well, especially against Stalin's cronies, or high-ranking CPSU officials like Zhdanov, even if the Ministry of Internal Affairs falsified a lot of evidence and fabricated enough charges, it had to pass Stalin's level.

Even if it passes Stalin's pass and gets Stalin's tacit approval, it will take a lot of effort to get rid of such a figure who holds great power or is deeply loved by Stalin, at least the Ministry of Internal Affairs cannot arrest a high-ranking person at will, and before arresting it, it must also collect enough "evidence" and at the same time obtain the support of other forces in the Central Committee of the CPSU.

The relationship between Beria and Zhdanov has not been very good, but Zhdanov's status is too high, there is no personal stain, and he has always been deeply trusted by Stalin, Beria simply cannot use ordinary means to get rid of Zhdanov, who is the second secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, let alone the members of the Leningrad faction under Zhdanov's protection.

In history, it was not until August 1948, after the death of Zhdanov, that Beria had the opportunity to shoot at Voznesensky and Kuznetsov and other members of the Leningrad faction, and after the entire Leningrad faction was wiped out, Beria and his ally Malenkov became the most powerful figures under Stalin.

However, in this plane, Zhdanov's death does not seem to have brought much benefit to Beria, and Beria's ally Malenkov did not get a chance to return to the center.

In order to gain state power, Beria, who was still weak in the Central Committee of the CPSU for the time being, had to get rid of the Leningrad and Siberian factions first.

But judging from the current situation, it is still a little difficult for Beria to get rid of the Leningrad faction, and if he wants to get rid of the Siberian faction, I am afraid it will not be as simple as the difficulty, but the difficulty of hell, unless he can win over a new ally in the Politburo or the Secretariat of the Central Committee.

For this reason, Beria tried his best to speak good things about Malenkov in front of Stalin, hoping that Stalin would allow Malenkov to return to the Secretariat of the Central Committee and replace the dead Zhdanov as the secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee in charge of ideology.

However, Stalin did not buy Beria's account very much, because Stalin no longer had the same trust in Malenkov as he used to be, and Stalin, who had worked with Malenkov for several years, did not consider Malenkov to be a suitable figure for ideological work.

Back then, when Malenkov was still a secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, he helped Stalin manage some simple tasks such as personnel establishment and personnel files.

These jobs are not complicated for a person like Malenkov who has no ability to think independently, but ideological work requires brains and the ability to think independently, and Malenkov happened to lack this, so Stalin decisively shirked Beria's request.

Of course, in addition to Beria, the Leningrad and Siberian factions were also trying to persuade Stalin to let his own people fill the post of secretary of the Central Committee.

The Leningrad faction put forward candidates such as Patolicev, first secretary of the Chelyabinsk regional party committee, and Rodionov, chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Federation (the equivalent of Russian prime minister), but both of them had made or expressed support for some revisionist statements, and it was impossible for Stalin to appoint these people as the secretary of the ideological Central Committee.

The Siberians put forward the candidate of Chernenko, the first secretary of the Ukrainian party committee, and some people wrote to Stalin to recommend Katya. Both of them had worked in the propaganda department of the party (Chernenko had been engaged in propaganda work in the Krasnoyaysk Territory before coming to Novosibirsk), and Katya was the head of the propaganda department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, so it was more appropriate for them to be in charge of ideological work.

But the problem is that the relationship between these two men and Manturov is too close, and if one of them becomes secretary of the Central Secretariat, I am afraid that the Siberian faction will be able to obtain an absolute majority of seats in the Central Secretariat, and then the control of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPSU will fall into the hands of the Siberian faction, and even Stalin, the general secretary, will have a hard time suppressing them.

In the end, Stalin did not accept Chernenko and Katia for the sake of his own political stability, on the grounds that they were too young and needed to gain more experience in the Ukrainian/Moscow local party committees.

However, Stalin's candidate, that is, Pegov, the first secretary of the Kazakh party committee, did not have such a problem, he had rich work experience in both grassroots party organizations and local party committees, and he was deeply trusted by Stalin, and his theoretical attainment and personal quality were also relatively high, and he was absolutely qualified for this position in terms of ability and reliability.

What Stalin did not know, however, was that Pegov had already been a member of the Siberian faction, but because he was in charge of Central Asia and had few meetings with Manturov in Moscow, he had not been noticed by Stalin.