Word: bosse
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...still a one-party dictatorship, the economy is ramshackle, the bureaucracy is a menace, and what about human rights, Mr. General Secretary? Nonetheless, Soviet writers, artists and journalists have begun issuing the sort of critiques that used to earn a one-way ticket to Siberia. So has the boss. Take, for instance, this blast at Gosplon, the state planning committee: "They do what they want, and the situation they like best is . . . when everybody...
Even so, he had opposition. Grigori Romanov, the hard-line former Leningrad party boss who was once thought to be Gorbachev's chief rival, had apparently given up on winning the top job for himself. But at the Politburo session called immediately after Chernenko's death, Romanov reportedly tried a stop- Gorbachev maneuver, nominating Moscow Party Boss Viktor Grishin for General Secretary. By some accounts, however, KGB Chief Viktor Chebrikov hinted that his agency had compiled dossiers on corruption in the Moscow party apparatus that could be highly embarrassing to Grishin. (Chebrikov was then a candidate member of the Politburo...
...Some polls disclose considerable grumbling that perestroika has so far meant only harder work for little measurable reward. Consumers may soon have to pay more for some of the necessities of life if Gorbachev follows through on his plan to trim or eliminate many state subsidies. The Kremlin boss rightly complains that the subsidies on bread, for example, make it so cheap that children sometimes use loaves as footballs. But a higher price for bread, while it might be fully justified by production costs, is likely to cause strong discontent...
...powerful leader, which reached sickening heights under Joseph Stalin in Gorbachev's student days and is thus associated in Soviet minds with Stalin's terror. Gorbachev has reacted to incipient hagiography in the Soviet press by being tight-lipped about his private life. Subordinates take their cue from the boss. A high official mentioned to a group of foreigners recently that he had known the General Secretary as a university student. "What was Gorbachev like in those days?" the man was asked. He paused reflectively, smiled and said, "I don't remember...
Gorbachev's interest in the press continued throughout the Stavropol period. As party boss of the area, he often met with regional journalists for talks similar to those he now holds in Moscow with the national press. Unlike other party officials, he would stress that it was not enough for the journalists to write articles that were ideologically correct; they also had to be interesting. "Is anyone reading what you write?" he would...