Word: brezhnevs
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Rumors of Brezhnev's decline...
...years, the precarious state of Leonid Brezhnev's health has been a source of worldwide concern. The Soviet President has at various times been reported to be suffering from heart disease, emphysema, leukemia and cancer of the jaw. In public, he has sometimes appeared to be weak and unsteady, occasionally even on his deathbed. At other times, he has seemed relatively fit, meeting foreign dignitaries, delivering long speeches and even traveling to Western Europe...
Once again the alarms rang out. Returning from a four-day trip to the Central Asian city of Tashkent, Brezhnev, 75, was reportedly carried from his Ilyushin 62 jet on a stretcher. The news raised questions not only about his possible successor but, more important, about how the Soviet Union's policies might change under a new leadership...
...rumors swept through Moscow that Brezhnev had suffered a stroke during the flight, the Foreign Ministry tersely announced last week that "President Brezhnev is not ill at all." Other officials were more cautious in their choice of words. Brezhnev is "definitely not seriously ill," said one, explaining that the President was merely exhausted after his trip...
Still, Muscovites could scarcely fail to notice that Brezhnev's highly conspicuous black ZIL limousine was no longer speeding down the center lane of Kutuzovsky Prospekt around 10:15 every morning, taking the leader from his suburban dacha to his Kremlin office. Significantly, TASS reported that a visit to Moscow by South Yemen President Ali Nasser Muhammad had been canceled two days before he was to have met with Brezhnev. Reports that Brezhnev had been taken to the gray, five-story Kremlin clinic reserved for Soviet leaders were reinforced when the clinic's director, Cardiologist Yevgeni Chazov, canceled...