Word: brezhnevs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Zhores Medvedev portrays Andropov as an austere, highly intelligent operator whose key weapon in his battle for Kremlin supremacy was the KGB he headed for 15 years. Andropov and his supporters relied on the intelligence agency to discredit the ailing Brezhnev, his family and network of associates. The Andropov aim was to pressure Brezhnev into resigning while besmirching potential rivals from the party chiefs camp...
Medvedev offers some compelling particulars. In early 1982, he says, Andropov ordered the KGB to arrest two close friends of Brezhnev's daughter Galina for diamond smuggling. News of the arrests was leaked to the Western press, and Galina was dispatched to the Kremlin hospital, supposedly because of a "nervous breakdown." According to the author, Brezhnev's doubly distraught daughter attended her father's funeral in the company of two well-dressed secret policemen, who appeared to be members of the family. The funeral was televised live, Medvedev explains, and the KGB was afraid that Galina might...
...Brezhnev's personal reputation was further compromised when, as a result of KGB investigations, several old cronies of his were dismissed from high positions on charges of corruption. Then, two months before his death, an invidious attempt was made to display the leader as physically and mentally incompetent. On a scheduled nationwide television broadcast, says...
Medvedev, an aide, A.M.Alexandrov-Agentov, gave Brezhnev the wrong speech to read. After seven minutes, the aide interrupted his boss and put another text in front of him. Brezhnev looked puzzled, then lamely told his television audience: "It was not my fault. I have to start all over again now." The rest of the speech was read by an announcer. Writes Medvedev: "An error of this kind was unprecedented, and was inexcusable for an aide, who would certainly expect immediate dismissal." Although all of Brezhnev's aides lost their positions after his death, Alexandrov-Agentov was kept...
According to Medvedev's unofficial sources in the Soviet Union, supporters of Brezhnev's hand-picked successor, Konstantin Chernenko, counterattacked by floating a rumor that Andropov was not Russian but half Armenian and a quarter Jewish. Since Stalin's death there has been an unwritten Kremlin rule that the party chief must be an ethnic Russian. In Medvedev's view, the tactics used by Chernenko's supporters were mere pinpricks to Andropov, who had gained the crucial support in the Politburo of Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov...