Word: brezhnevs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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During a meeting about the De Gaulle visit, I was struck by the contrast between Brezhnev and Khrushchev. Brezhnev's well-tailored suit, an elegant shirt with French cuffs and a pretentiously mannered style were very far from Khrushchev's baggy clothes and hearty, unaffected approach. Brezhnev exuded smug self-confidence, but he was also pleasant and cordial. After some small talk he slowly read the material prepared by us. I sensed in his platitudinous observations about our proposals that he was not sure what he was talking about...
Unlike Khrushchev, Brezhnev seemed to have no ideas of his own to contribute. He seemed to dramatize the truth of another joke making the rounds: "There can be no personality cult where there is no personality." Brezhnev was certainly no visionary, or even an intellectual. His strength was ^ that he was a man of unusual organizational ability. He also had a gift for compromise and was adept at maintaining a fine balance among different--even opposing--forces. He was an uninspiring leader whose illusion of strong and steady helmsmanship was mainly a scaffolding built by his subordinates...
Kosygin retained his role as Kremlin spokesman on foreign affairs, although his position was much weakened by Brezhnev's expanded authority in the field. Kosygin had risen and survived by pursuing a technocrat's career. Dry even by Soviet standards, free of personal foibles or idiosyncrasies, he was so ascetic that in New York, his daughter Ludmilla, armed with a long shopping list of her own, could not think of anything to buy that her father would want or need...
...believed that Kosygin, out of self-preservation, deliberately chose to avoid the many intrigues and power plays in the Kremlin. Later on, Brezhnev pushed him still further aside, and several times Kosygin submitted his resignation to the Politburo. Although there was little rapport between the two men, Brezhnev turned these offers down and continued to pretend respect for Kosygin while in fact ignoring his views more and more. Once Brezhnev took command of foreign affairs, he edged Kosygin aside altogether and moved Gromyko from the role of mentor and confidant to that of co-architect...
When Henry Kissinger had begun his triangular diplomacy by secretly visiting Peking the year before, it was a shock to the Soviet leadership. Gromyko went about for weeks with a black expression. His deputy Makarov said that Brezhnev had given Gromyko a thorough dressing-down for not anticipating the American-Chinese rapprochement...