Word: brezhnevs
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...fool a first-rate newspaper like the Globe, a hoaxer has to create a story that does not seem entirely implausible. In the case of Brezhnev, there had been rumors out of Russia for weeks that the Communist Party boss was sick (see EUROPE). As it happened, the hoaxer, who is still unidentified, worked in the ideal setting to exploit the Brezhnev situation: Boston's renowned Sidney Farber Cancer Center. The hoaxer made up a fake admission schedule card for the Russian leader in the style used by clinic personnel: "L. Brezhnev. No wait. See Dr. Frei." Someone...
...happened, the Globe had a source in the clinic who spotted the same card and phoned in the startling information to the paper. The Globe was wary but then got word from one of its sources in the police department: Did the paper know that Brezhnev was coming...
While the Chinese were ratifying their own leadership, rumors continued to circulate about the health and status of Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev. Amidst official denials that anything was amiss, Soviet diplomats conceded privately that Brezhnev was suffering from pneumonia and recuperating in a dacha outside Moscow. They expressed confidence, however, that he would recover sufficiently to receive British Prime Minister Harold Wilson on his scheduled state visit to Moscow in mid-February. Meanwhile, the official party newspaper Pravda referred frequently and reverently to Brezhnev, as if to underscore his political wellbeing...
...flurry of speculation was touched off when the Press Trust of India issued a story stating that Brezhnev had temporarily "taken leave of his responsibilities." Misinterpreting this dispatch, the French news agency AFP reported that Brezhnev had actually resigned. This sent Moscow-based correspondents scurrying round the capital, vainly trying to obtain confirmation. Just as the resignation rumors were subsiding for lack of evidence, another one surfaced when an unidentified Communist diplomat in Warsaw was quoted as saying that Brezhnev had suffered a heart attack last month-just before he vanished from public view. Some Kremlin watchers favored yet another...
Although these reports seemed based on journalistic crystal gazing, there was no doubt that Brezhnev was indisposed and incommunicado. If Brezhnev should be too sick to rule, who would replace him? The answer may prove as problematical as the tangled mechanics of the transfer of power in the U.S.S.R. Although a General Secretary is supposedly elected by the 241 full members of the Central Committee, in practice he is designated by 27 men, members of the Politburo and the Central Committee Secretariat. In the past, this elite has scarcely been inclined to invest real power in any single individual...