Word: brezhnevs
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...denied that such a letter had been circulated, there was little doubt of its existence. Its corrosive contents fit perfectly with the nationalistic attitudes of Rumania's Nicolae Ceausescu, whose stinging anti-Soviet speech only a week earlier had triggered a flying visit from Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev...
Still, Ceausescu has something to gain merely by causing tremors in the Iron Curtain. At the Soviet 23rd Party Congress last March, Brezhnev called for a "strengthening" of the Communist alliance, and later hinted at a Warsaw Pact meeting to be held, of all places, in Bucharest. Such a meeting would dangerously strengthen Russian restraint on Rumania's independence of action. By circulating the anti-alliance note, Ceausescu might well have torpedoed the meeting, and at the same time won greater maneuvering room for his own nation...
...Berlin to the Caribbean no longer occur. Instead the Russians seem anxious to avoid direct conflict with the U.S. Still, the Russian rulers have to maintain anti-imperialist face in order to argue convincingly against their Red Chinese ideological rivals. That task fell last week to Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev...
Speaking at Vladivostok, where he presented an Order of Lenin for economic achievement, Brezhnev spouted a violent torrent of abuse at the U.S. for its stand in Viet Nam. Americans, he said, were "beating all records for cruelty and cynicism. Can we forget even for a minute that the Pentagon's air pirates, murderers and arsonists carry out criminal raids daily on the towns and villages of a fraternal socialist country? Let the American imperialists understand that they will collide with the most tangible demonstration of the combat solidarity of revolutionaries...
Whatever the spark for the summit, it was one that Brezhnev could not avoid. The Russian leader had been planning to go to Bucharest anyway, but Ceausescu's startling speech must have made the trip much more compelling...