Among the Communist leaders in Moscow, Stalin's death provoked a mixture of grief, relief, and anxiety for the future. With no clear successor evident, the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet publicly declared a form of collective leadership. But this merely masked the beginnings of a bitter power struggle. Georgi Malenkov was appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers, in effect premier, with Lavrenti Beria as his deputy and chief of state security. Molotov returned as foreign minister and Nikolai Bulganin as minister of the armed forces. Nikita Khrushchev's role was not entirely clear initially, but his name was listed first among the five secretaries of the party secretariat. Malenkov was also appointed first secretary of the Communist Party, Stalin's old position, but nine days later he was forced to surrender this post (which in six months would fall to Khrushchev) when the new leadership decided that all the top offices should never again be held by one person. Still, to the West, it seemed that the progressive Malenkov, then just fifty-one years old, was emerging as Stalin's heir