Word: andropov
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Some of his sharpest criticism was reserved for the shoddy consumer-goods industry. At a recent sales fair, Andropov said, officials had turned down 500,000 TV sets, 115,000 radios, 250,000 cameras, 1.5 million watches and clocks, and 160,000 refrigerators because they were of inferior quality. Such "intolerable" inefficiency, he admitted, causes "discontent among the population" and encourages "disgusting" black-marketeering...
...Since Andropov succeeded Brezhnev more than a year ago, he has moved slowly in putting his stamp on the ruling elite, but last week the long-anticipated changes finally began to take shape. Mikhail Solomentsev, 70, a former premier of the Russian Republic, was given a voting position on the Politburo commensurate with his new job on the Party Control Commission. The plenum confirmed the importance of the KGB in inner Kremlin councils by elevating the KGB chief, General Victor Chebrikov, 60, to candidate membership in the Politburo. Yegor Ligachev, 63, a technocrat from Siberia who shares Andropov...
...apparatchik who benefited most from Andropov's favor was Vitali Vorotnikov, 57, the second new member on the enlarged 13-man Politburo. Appointed deputy premier of the Russian Republic in 1975, Vorotnikov was shunted off to Cuba as ambassador in 1979 after he apparently angered Brezhnev by calling for a crackdown on official corruption. Four months before Brezhnev's death, Vorotnikov was summoned home. At last June's Central Committee meeting, he was awarded a nonvoting seat on the Politburo, only to catapult last week into the inner circle ahead of five more senior men. Said...
...After Andropov failed to appear at the Central Committee plenum, attention turned to the ensuing two-day session of the Supreme Soviet. As the delegates filed into the vaulted neoclassical chamber of the Great Kremlin Palace, visitors in the gallery kept their eyes fixed on the brightly illuminated podium. Vorotnikov, whose thatch of dark hair sets him apart from his graying and balding comrades, stepped into the second row next to Agricultural Expert Mikhail Gorbachev, 52, and former Leningrad Party Boss Grigori Romanov, 60. Members of the "young guard" in the Kremlin, both have been mentioned as possible successors...
When the name Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was first mentioned by Economic Planning Chief Nikolai Baibakov, an uneasy silence engulfed the hall. The speakers who followed made frequent references to Andropov and praised his Central Committee report; the 1,500 delegates listened silently or chatted among themselves. Finally, a resolution blaming the U.S. for "the drastic aggravation of the situation in the world" and supporting Andropov's foreign policy position was put forward, and the parliamentarians raised their arms in unison to approve...