Word: brezhnevs
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...slava [glory, glory]," echoed the cheers in Moscow's cavernous Palace of Congresses last week. The words ironically hark back to an anthem of another day that celebrated the power of the czars. As 4,963 Communist Party delegates rose in a standing ovation, General Secretary Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, 64, clasped his hands together like a prizefighter. The 24th Soviet Party Congress was nearly over, and the outpouring of praise for Brezhnev was by all odds the closest that the Soviet Union has come to the adulation of a single ruler since the collective leadership overthrew Nikita Khrushchev...
DISARMAMENT. Brezhnev dusted off several old Soviet propaganda ploys. There was some hope in the West, however, that his plea for a reduction of forces in Central Europe might lead to talks between NATO and the Warsaw Pact on mutual balanced force withdrawals. He also suggested a conference of the five nuclear powers (Britain, China, France, U.S. and U.S.S.R.) to discuss the total abolition of atomic weaponry-although both France and China sent regrets last time such a meeting was proposed...
...same day that Brezhnev delivered his speech, the Soviet chief delegate to the 25-nation U.N. disarmament talks in Geneva unexpectedly adopted a hitherto rejected Western position on the outlawing of bacteriological warfare. For two years the Soviets insisted on lumping bans on bacteriological and chemical warfare together in one treaty. The U.S. and its NATO allies refused, because large chemical warfare arsenals are already in existence, which would require on-site inspection, a procedure that invariably is vetoed by the Soviets. The Soviet switch meant that a treaty barring the production and wartime use of germs and toxins might...
Kremlinologists in Munich described Brezhnev's speech as "relatively mild." In Washington, judgments ranged from "prudent militancy" to "controlled hostility." Most analysts agreed that what Brezhnev said reaffirmed his position as primus inter pares in what is still essentially a collective leadership...
...position should become available this week when the congress "elects" a new Central Committee, which, in turn, will choose a new Politburo. The choices, of course, have already been made by the party leaders. The general assumption has been that few major shifts will take place. But Brezhnev dropped an intriguing hint in his speech that something dramatic and far reaching may be afoot. He noted that the Communist Party now has 14,455,321 card-carrying members -6% of the Soviet population-and that far too many of them, on all levels, are merely exploiting their positions. Accordingly...