11-year keeper of the party's central document flow
October 1964, after Khrushchev's fall, as Brezhnev's aides routed documents around the General Department, Malin wrote: "A dual chain of command is emerging — you won't know where this or that document has gone."
As head of the CPSU Central Committee General Department (1954–1965), Malin controlled all document flow to and from the Politburo, making him one of the most powerful administrative officials in the party. During the war he served as deputy chief of the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement (1942–1944), organizing partisan operations in occupied territory, and later as Third Secretary of the CP of Belarus. He took the working notes of the Presidium during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the post-Khrushchev transition, leaving a unique archival record. In 1965 Brezhnev replaced him with loyalist Konstantin Chernenko, transferring Malin to head the Academy of Social Sciences: a textbook Brezhnev patronage move.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1926Joined the VKP(b)
- 1933Graduated from Leningrad Communist University
- 1938–1939First Secretary, Mogilev Regional Committee, CP(b) of Belarus
- 1939–1941Secretary for Propaganda, CC CP(b) of Belarus
- 1942–1944Political chief and deputy head, Central Staff of Partisan Movement
- 1943–1947Third Secretary, CC CP(b) of Belarus
- 1949–1952Secretary, Leningrad City Committee
- 1952–1954Inspector, CC CPSU
- 1954–1965Head, General Department, CC CPSU
- 1965–1970Rector, Academy of Social Sciences, CC CPSU
Related historical events
Political coordination of the partisan movement and postwar recovery
Malin took part in forming the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement (ЦШПД) from January 1942 and worked there from May 1942 to January 1944. From 9 October 1942 he was head of its Political Directorate and deputy to staff chief Panteleimon Ponomarenko, handling political and organizational work linking partisan units in occupied territory with central command. Malin’s two notebooks recorded unit strength and supplies of equipment, uniforms, radios, and paper for partisan printing presses; the formation of reconnaissance detachments; the use of agents in occupied areas; and the party and Komsomol composition of partisan units, as well as Soviet prisoners of war. They covered activity in regions including Crimea, Karelia, Kalmykia, and Belarus, and contacts among Soviet partisans, the Polish Home Army, and nationalist formations. The notes also recorded local attitudes toward partisan units and interest in Soviet newspapers and leaflets. Malin repeatedly noted his concern about the forced deportation of residents, especially young people, to work in Germany.
From January 1944 to February 1947, as Third Secretary of the Communist Party of Belarus’s Central Committee, Malin also took part in the republic’s post-liberation recovery. His notebooks, based on party meetings, factory visits, and discussions with party and economic officials, recorded wartime destruction and efforts to restore industry and agriculture. On 24 November 1944, a Republican Committee for Aid to the Wounded was established by decision of the Belarusian government and party Central Committee, with Malin as its chair. It supported evacuation hospitals in Belarus by arranging building repairs and conversion, collecting firewood, making bedding, and repairing shoes.