Word: bessmertnykh
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh came down with a vaguely defined illness, one of several seeming cases of "coup flu." (Symptoms: cold feet and a weakening of the backbone.) After initially cabling Soviet ambassadors around the world to put a "good face" on the coup, Bessmertnykh climbed out of his sickbed to denounce the plot only after it was falling apart -- too late, as it turned out, to keep from getting fired. General Mikhail Moiseyev, Chief of the Soviet General Staff, was perhaps conveniently on vacation in the Crimea when the coup began. But some of his subordinates claimed...
...subservience to Washington. After Shevardnadze's resignation in December, hard-liners in the Party Central Committee and the military pressured Gorbachev to name as the new Foreign Minister a professional bureaucrat rather than a relatively independent, personally powerful figure in the Shevardnadze mold. Gorbachev obliged them by picking Alexander Bessmertnykh, a career diplomat...
However, just as Bessmertnykh took office, the coalition launched the air war against Iraq. An English-speaking Soviet major interpreted for a group of senior officers from the General Staff who had assembled in the Defense Ministry to watch the televised daily briefings from the Pentagon and coalition headquarters in Riyadh. Most of Iraq's antiaircraft batteries were made in the U.S.S.R. and manned by personnel trained by Soviet advisers. Yet the coalition's fighter-bombers and cruise missiles achieved perfect surprise, then set about to clobber Iraq with near impunity for six weeks. There was much cursing and gnashing...
...Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh are expected to be on hand to congratulate Dos Santos and Savimbi -- as well they might. Since Angola won independence from Portugal in 1975, $ Moscow has spent as much as $1 billion a year to prop up the regime, while the U.S. has contributed up to $60 million annually to the rebels...
...least the Secretary of State has kept his sense of humor. Before meeting Bessmertnykh in Kislovodsk, Baker was given a tour of the Caucasus Mountain resort. Standing atop limestone cliffs, he was asked how clearly he could see peace ahead. He gestured toward vast Mount Elbrus in the distance and deadpanned, "I can see things extraordinarily clearly." The peak was barely visible through the afternoon haze...