Word: brezhnevs
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...Borovitsky Gate, a young man suddenly fired six pistol shots at the third car. The driver and a motorcycle outrider were wounded. Bystanders apparently overpowered the gunman and police hustled him away. Whom was he trying to kill? Possibly, the gunman thought he was aiming at Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev and Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny (Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders were reportedly in the following car). In any event, the Soviets dismissed him as a "mentally disturbed" youth of about 20. It was a convenient label, since a favorite Soviet device for dealing with political dissenters is to lock them...
...economic achievements (1968 income up 7.2%, industrial production up 8.3%). The 1,510-odd delegates were visibly unimpressed. Instead, they complained bitterly about the shoddy quality of Soviet housing and the poor reliability of farm machinery, which plagues farmers with frequent breakdowns. As Kosygin and Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev looked on, Chairman Nikolai Baibakov, of the State Planning Committee, assured the angry delegates that he would take immediate action to correct those deficiencies. Obviously, if the Russians want to upgrade their consumer and industrial goods, they cannot embark on the construction of a multibillion-dollar antimissile network throughout the country...
...lowered. Most residents of Prague consequently assumed that all was normal. In fact, Czechoslovak's President Ludvik Svoboda and Party Chief Alexander Dubcek, along with three other leaders, had flown hurriedly to the Ukrainian city of Kiev for their fourth summit meeting with Soviet Communist Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev since the Russian invasion. Only after the session ended last week were Czechoslovaks informed that it had been held. That fact, and the manner in which the meeting was convened, constituted bleak proof that Czechoslovakia remained an uneasy prey to Russia's whims...
...Brezhnev had several matters on his mind. Mostly, he wanted to talk about a meeting of the Czechoslovak Central Committee to be held later in the week to decide the fate of the country's liberal economic program that once was an integral part of Dubcek's now defunct reforms. Czechoslovakia's economy is in deep trouble; productivity has lagged far behind wage increases, and prices are in a wild upward spiral (120% for furniture, 60% for clothing). Russia, which aims to fasten the nation's industry more securely than ever to its own economic needs...
Ticket in Pocket. The Russians demanded that a large chunk of the loan go to heavy industry, even though the Czechoslovaks had planned to give primary attention to consumer and light industries. The Russians also ruled out expanded trade with the West. Moreover, Brezhnev demanded the ouster of two key liberals: National Assembly President Josef Smrkovsky and Ota Sik, the architect of Czechoslovakia's economic reforms, who retains a seat on the Central Committee despite his self-imposed exile in Switzerland since Russia's invasion. As he was about to fly home for the meeting last week...