Word: brezhnevs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...sufficient authority to dare to oppose him." Was he describing a Tsar or a Stalin? The power alone is not unfathomable. The country itself seems both to seek subjugation and to struggle against it. It takes a special kind of oppressor to succeed in such a place. Like Brezhnev, he must appear to have sprung from the soil and descended from the sky simultaneously. He must be both the struggle and the oppression...
...After Brezhnev's 18-year rule, the U.S.S.R. gets an enigmatic new leader...
...Vremya (Time), the nightly news. The announcers, who usually dress informally, wore dark jackets or dresses. "I ran to my neighbors to find out if they knew what was going on," a Moscow secretary said. "Everyone was excited. We all thought somebody had died, but nobody guessed it was Brezhnev. We had all seen him on television three days before, reviewing the military parade, and he looked all right...
...Soviet radio and TV simultaneously broadcast the formal announcement: "The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet and the Council of Ministers of the U.S.S.R. inform with deep sorrow the party and the entire Soviet people that Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee and President of the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet, died a sudden death...
...Brezhnev, 75, who had held the most powerful post in the Soviet Union for 18 years, and who had been ill for nearly a decade, had died from complications of atherosclerosis affecting his heart and major vessels. He had actually died 26½ hours before the announcement was made...