Word: brezhnevs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...years Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin ambled through the streets of Washington like a Russian bear who resembled your Uncle Ralph. There has never been anything quite like him in capital diplomacy. He survived Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev. Sighs Soviet Expert William Hyland: "That's a major achievement in itself...
...with a ready stock of one- liners and an indestructible alimentary canal. In Moscow or summiteering with his bosses, he faded into the background and became another cold-eyed lackey who, as he once did, jumped up and down like a kangaroo to open and close windows to accommodate Brezhnev's delicate health...
...doubt that he is a determined foe of social corruption and economic inefficiency. He demanded radical improvements in the feeble Soviet agricultural program and lashed out against the misuse of power by Soviet officials. He also etched an acid appraisal of the 18-year rule of the late Leonid Brezhnev, who presided over the 26th Congress in 1981. Back then, laughter from delegates would have been unthinkable...
...Although Brezhnev was not mentioned once by name, the late party leader was a prime target of Gorbachev's scorn. Said he: "For a number of years, the deeds and actions of party and government bodies tailed behind the needs of the times and of life . . . The situation called for change, but a peculiar psychology--how to improve things without changing anything--took the upper hand." His final warning: "We have to part ways with those who hope that everything will settle down and return to the old lines. That will not happen, comrades." Even to the staunchest members...
...recent months Gorbachev has been removing Brezhnev-era holdovers with a blend of maneuver and muscle. Grigory Romanov, the Politburo member responsible for the Soviet Union's military-industrial complex, who reportedly tried to block Gorbachev's rise to power and became the target of a whispering campaign about alleged alcoholism, retired from the Politburo last July. One day later Andrei Gromyko, who had served as Foreign Minister since 1957, was promoted to the honorific post of President. Last month Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, who had commanded the Soviet navy since 1956, was replaced. Nikolai Tikhonov, who had been Premier since...