Word: brezhnevs
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...Ronald Reagan's chief advisers thought they had a unique opportunity to affect the post-Brezhnev transition. They knew that the actuarial tables, combined with the obvious evidence of Brezhnev's declining health, made it quite likely that he would be replaced during their own term of office. Furthermore, there was good reason to suspect that the economic and demographic problems besetting the Soviet empire had touched off a debate behind the Kremlin walls over the best course to follow in the future...
...defector tells how Afghanistan became Brezhnev's Viet...
Vladimir Kuzichkin, 35, a former KGB major whose presence in Britain was announced by the British government last month, has given an extraordinary account of Soviet involvement in Afghanistan-perhaps the greatest blot on Brezhnev's career-as seen by the KGB. Kuzichkin, who defected to the British last June, had served under cover in Iran for five years. He was in the ultrasecret "Directorate S, "which controls "illegals," Soviet-born agents abroad. In an exclusive interview in London last week with TIME's Frank Melville, Kuzichkin said: 1) Brezhnev himself overruled repeated advice from Yuri Andropov...
...began by simply backing a friendly regime; slowly we got more deeply involved; then we started manipulating the regime-sometimes using desperate measures-and now? Now we are bogged down in a war we cannot win and cannot abandon. It's ridiculous. A mess. And but for Brezhnev and company we would never have got into it in the first place." The general had said what many of us involved with Afghanistan-in the KGB, the army and outside-felt but would not stick our necks...
...coup succeeded, and Afghanistan went Communist. But Mr. Brezhnev and his colleagues brushed aside the vitally important warnings that the KGB was giving them-and disaster ensued. At the outset the Politburo felt it now had a chance to make some real headway in Afghanistan. It would pour in money and advisers. Afghanistan's links with the West would be gradually severed. Afghanistan would be not only a neighboring country with whom we had good relations, like Finland, but a new member of the "Communist family...