Word: brezhnevs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...diplomat who may have to be content with the largely symbolic post of Soviet President. Or Boris Ponomarev, 77, a onetime historian, who seemed the ideal candidate to fill the role of party "theologian" before Andropov took the job held by the late Mikhail Suslov. Not elder statesmen like Brezhnev's Premier, Nikolai Tikhonov, 77, a man with more experience in government than in the party apparatus, or the widely traveled and urbane Central Committee Secretary Konstantin Rusakov, 72, who lacks a vital prerequisite: Politburo membership. One contender seems to be on the way out. Party Secretary Andrei Kirilenko...
Political Valet: When Konstantin Chernenko, 71, won East Germany's highest honor in 1979 (the Order of Karl Marx), Party Chief Erich Honecker described him as Brezhnev's "closest comrade-in-arms." Others have had less kind things to say of the stocky, silver-haired bureaucrat, labeling him Brezhnev's "briefcase carrier." "page turner" and "political valet." No one else on the Politburo owed his position so completely to Brezhnev...
Born to a Russian peasant family in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, Chernenko was trained as a party propagandist. After a meeting in postwar Moldavia with Brezhnev, then local party boss, Chernenko was brought to Moscow in 1956. By the time Brezhnev took over the party in 1964, he had made Chernenko his chief of staff. Chernenko arranged Brezhnev's appointment schedule and kept close watch on the daily operation of the party bureaucracy...
Chernenko traveled widely with Brezhnev, giving rise to speculation that the Soviet President had picked him as his heir apparent. But without his patron's protection, Chernenko was apparently unable to win votes from Politburo members who remembered all too well how he had opened mineral-water bottles for his boss during Kremlin meetings...
...Young Brezhnev: Tall, dark-haired and well-dressed, Vladimir Dolgikh, 57, moves graciously at party functions, chatting and smiling with the ease of a youthful Brezhnev. He has traveled more widely in non-Communist-bloc countries-Austria, Algeria, Japan, West Germany-than most of his peers, impressing Western observers as an intelligent manager. Now that he has attained nonvoting membership in the Politburo, he could...