Word: brezhnevs
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Things were different when Richard Nixon met with Leonid Brezhnev...
...head of the receiving line in the Starlight Roof of the Waldorf-Astoria. Reporters timed their handshake at a long 23 seconds. Gromyko reminded Reagan that they had greeted each other once before, in 1973, when the then Governor of California was introduced to Soviet officials accompanying Leonid Brezhnev on a visit to President Nixon in San Clemente.* Reagan and Gromyko encountered each other again during the "mix and mingle" portion of the reception, and the Soviet leader indulged in some skeptical banter. Referring to Reagan's forthcoming speech to the U.N., Gromyko asked the President, in English...
...being made in the twelve-man Soviet Politburo. Specialist opinion varies widely, but there is broad agreement that the Kremlin is preoccupied by the recurring problem of succession. The process is more complicated and painful than usual because it is the third period of uncertainty in two years (Leonid Brezhnev died in November 1982, Yuri Andropov last February). The upshot, says Harvard University Professor Richard Pipes, is "a profound crisis and lack of direction." Kremlinologist Marshall Goldman of Wellesley College in Massachusetts calls the Politburo situation "the worst of all circumstances. Everyone knows Chernenko is sick, so no change...
...paper. Eyeball to eyeball he softens, not hardens. He listens, smiles, talks softly, encouragingly. What will Gromyko hear? How will he size up the leader of the free world? We still wonder whether Nikita Khrushchev's assessment of John Kennedy launched the Cuban missile crisis and whether Leonid Brezhnev's contempt for Jimmy Carter encouraged the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan...
...fact that he has not been seen or heard from since he began his vacation at an undisclosed location on July 15. The new Soviet leader has issued no policy statements and summoned no leaders from the Warsaw Pact for private chats in the Crimea, as did Leonid Brezhnev during his summer vacations. Chernenko also passed up the opening ceremonies of the Friendship '84 Games, Moscow's answer to the Los Angeles Olympics, letting Politburo Member Mikhail Gorbachev preside in his place. None of this proved that Chernenko's health, already frail, has deteriorated. But suspicious Soviets...