What you have to understand about organization under a communist regime is that there are two sides to the coin, the party and the state. The state is how we in America think of the government, administrators and bureaucrats who serve the country in different ministries or departments of public work. The head of the state in the Soviet Union was the Premier, sometimes known as Chairman of the Council of Ministers. The party on the other hand was how we think of political parties, except in the USSR their was only one, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks). The true power lay with the party because of their solo existence and dominance over "elected" office. If you wanted to hold office in the state, you had to be a member of the party. The state was run by the party.

At the advent of the USSR, the actual power was held by the Premier. The General Secretary of the CPSU from 1917-1922 was largely just an administrative position, holding no real power. It wasn't until the 1930s, when Vyacheslav Molotov held the Premiership and Stalin the General Secretary position that the roles reversed. Stalin would take over both positions in 1941. The position of General Secretary was abolished by Stalin in 1952, although he still retained the power and privlidge.

Following Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev became the newly named First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1953 and Georgy Malenkov became Premier of the Soviet Union. The power in this relationship was held by Khrushchev, who eventually ousted Malenkov in a power struggle for control of the USSR and CPSU. Khrushchev would retain command, particularly from 1958-1964, when he held both Premiership and First Secretary. In 1964, Leonid Brezhnev led a successful coup against Khrushchev and took over as First Secretary, renaming the position once again to General Secretary in 1966. From that point on, General Secretary would always hold dominance over the Premiership.