Word: brezhnevs
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Challenging Yeltsin, Russian Communists are promising a return to the future. But the Soviet record at the beginning of the long Brezhnev era might be enough to give voters pause: "Soviet leaders are now facing their most alarming internal failure in years: a serious sag in the economy...In the Russian Republic...meat will be underproduced by 40% in 1970, eggs by 44%. Other drastic shortages will be in passenger cars, furniture, building materials and synthetic fabrics...[T]o order a pair of pants from a Soviet tailor shop...[n]o fewer than four magazine-size blanks must be filled...
...more. The party's official program looks back longingly to Yuri Andropov, a former kgb chief and Soviet party head from 1982 to 1984, crediting him somehow with establishing "freedom of speech and freedom of political associations." As for Stalin's purges and Gulag and the corruption of the Brezhnev era, they were "mistakes" to be avoided in the future, Zyuganov says...
...explained that he "wasn't feeling too bad" and considered himself "out of danger." But the public-relations ploy did little to allay suspicions about the true state of the President's health. For many Russians, it recalled the early 1980s, when the successive deaths of Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko were all preceded by assurances from the Kremlin that they were in fine fettle...
...Cuban missile crisis, communicated with Moscow via Western Union, which sent a bicycle messenger to pick up coded cables. How Moscow secretly offered financial aid to Vice President Hubert Humphrey for his 1968 presidential campaign against Richard Nixon (Humphrey declined the offer). How Soviet Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev got drunk while visiting Nixon at San Clemente and vilified Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny and Premier Alexei Kosygin. Hours later, a sleepwalking First Lady Pat Nixon appeared in a nightgown and was carried back to her bed by a kgb agent. How Brezhnev collapsed with seizures just before and after...
...involuntary tool of deceit" by maintaining that they were defensive only. Khrushchev's lack of a fallback plan once the missiles were discovered was a lesson, Dobrynin notes, that was forgotten by his successors when they invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Ignoring warnings from his generals and ambassador, Brezhnev told Dobrynin not to worry: "It'll be over in three to four weeks...