Word: brezhnevs
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Some Western specialists believe that Andropov will be more flexible than Brezhnev. Writing in the Washington Post, Sovietologist Jerry Hough hailed Andropov's election last May to the Central Committee Secretariat, which put him in line for the job of party chief, as "one of the most favorable developments to have occurred in the Soviet Union in recent years." Britain's weekly Economist declared that though Andropov is "no woolly liberal," he is an "enlightened conservative." Soviet experts in the British Foreign Office have characterized the new party chief as an "urbane" and "liberal" figure who offers the best chance...
What can be said with certitude about Andropov is that he is a master politician, adept at the behind-the-scenes maneuverings, and patient coalition building that made his rise to power possible. Few of the contenders for the succession labored under more formidable handicaps. Leonid Brezhnev, wary of Andropov, opposed his police chiefs ambitions. But Brezhnev's first choice, Andrei Kirilenko, fell ill or was disgraced last year. Then Andropov gradually undercut the heir apparent, Konstantin Chernenko, a longtime Brezhnev crony who was vulnerable because he lacked both experience and political pull...
...Brezhnev's heir will have to work with, and watch, these...
...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...