Word: brezhnevs
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...greatest happiness is being able to live under the sun of the Stalin constitution, each article of which is sacred for us." So declared Izvestiya three decades ago. Last week there loomed on the horizon of Soviet citizens a new constitution-Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev's proudest creation and the product of 15 years of labor and behind-the-scenes controversy...
...intriguing feature of the new constitution is Article 118, which allows for creation of a First Vice President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. The provision may allow Brezhnev, 70, to take over the presidency without having to assume all the administrative and ceremonial duties carried out by Nikolai Podgorny before his ouster from the Politburo earlier this month (TIME, June 6). The constitution is also the first in Soviet history to assert the primacy of the Communist Party in the political life of the U.S.S.R., although this has long been manifestly the case. This declaration could strengthen Brezhnev...
...Brezhnev constitution is predictably comprehensive in the multiplicity of guarantees it offers of happiness, freedom and material well-being to Soviet citizens. The old constitution also ensured a wide range of freedoms -press, assembly, religion and speech. As it happened, the 1936 constitution was adopted just as Stalin began his Great Purges, which cost 1 million lives, including that of the document's author, Bolshevik Leader Nikolai Bukharin. The new model not only reiterates most of the old guarantees but also promises Soviet citizens the right to have a house, income and savings, livestock and an assortment of "articles...
...unhitching of Podgorny from the troika may also have been Brezhnev's first step in breaking up the ruling hierarchy. Also dismissed last week was Konstantin Katushev, 49, once the youngest member of the powerful Secretariat of the Central Committee, who was believed to be on a meteoric rise. Katushev apparently lost favor for having organized last June's summit meeting of Europe's Communist parties, at which several party bosses flaunted their independence from Moscow. His replacement is Konstantin Rusakov, 68, a Brezhnev protégé with long experience in Eastern Europe who may have...
...PUBLIC. In March, by revealing the U.S. negotiating position with considerable fanfare even before Cyrus Vance had his first meeting with Leonid Brezhnev, Jimmy Carter learned a vivid lesson in how not to deal with Moscow. The Soviets are conservative and secretive; they publicize the workings of government only for purposes of propaganda. Nor do they appreciate or even understand the Western practice of leaking information to the press...