On October 26, 1957, the Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union, Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov, was unexpectedly removed from all positions and dismissed. Marshal Rodion Malinovsky became the new head of the security department. Zhukov was accused of losing his "party conscience" and elevating his role in the history of the Great Patriotic War. The decision was made, as usual, in the absence of the "accused": when the minister was on an official visit to Yugoslavia and Albania. The initiative came from the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev, whom the Marshal had literally saved from losing power six months earlier. In June 1957, most members of the Presidium of the Central Committee tried to oust Nikita Sergeevich, but Georgi Konstantinovich threw his famous sentence at them: "The army opposes this decision, and not a single tank will move without my order." It seems that from then on Khrushchev began to see Marshall as a strong political competitor. Not a single person in the party and state leadership stood up to the military leader.