The Anti-Party Group was an epithet used by Nikita Khrushchev to describe Stalinist members of the Presidium of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, led by Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich and Georgii Malenkov, who attempted to depose him as First Secretary of the Party in May 1957. The "Anti-Party Group" won a vote in the Presidium to replace Khrushchev as party leader with Premier Nikolai Bulganin. Khrushchev, with the backing of Defence Minister Georgi Zhukov, argued that only the Central Committee of the CPSU could remove him from office. At an extraordinary session of the Central Committee held in late June, Khrushchev argued that his opponents were an "anti-Party Group" and won a vote reaffirming his position as First Secretary and expelling Molotov, Kaganovich and Malenkov from the Secretariat and ultimately from the Communist Party itself. In 1958, Bulganin was forced to retire with Khrushchev becoming Premier as well as First Secretary.
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