Word: brezhnevs
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They either die on the job (as Lenin, Stalin and Brezhnev did), or they are thrown out and end up as pensioners in ignominy (as Georgi Malenkov and Nikita Khrushchev were...
...from the fact that it was Friday. Many turned on their radios, expecting the usual mix of news, pop music and light entertainment. What they heard instead were the melancholy strains of Chopin, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky. Only 15 months before, such symphonic tributes had signaled the death of Leonid Brezhnev. Now the music was playing again. A Soviet office worker said it all: "Someone has died up there...
...form much of an impression of their leader?not, at least, in his latest role. They knew him well enough as chief of the dreaded KGB for 15 years and as a man accustomed to having his own way. Whatever misgivings they might have had about him, after watching Brezhnev's painful, protracted decline, many had hoped that Andropov, at 69, would project an image of strength and vigor. But soon after taking office, he too displayed the telltale signs of serious illness and completely disappeared from public view for his final 175 days in power...
Andropov's lingering illness, it was thought, had given his comrades in the Politburo ample time to plan for the succession. But at week's end the transition did not appear to be proceeding as smoothly or swiftly as it did following Brezhnev's death. Then it had taken only 52 hours for Andropov to emerge as the Central Committee's choice for General Secretary of the Communist Party. But newsmen watching the streets around the huge Central Committee building in downtown Moscow on Saturday afternoon saw no sign of unusual activity. If the Central Committee, which must elect...
...Politburo would choose the top man from their own ranks or would boldly pick a younger man. The two likeliest young candidates: Grigori Romanov, 61, and Mikhail Gorbachev, 52. With few clues to go on, Kremlin watchers seized on the appointment of Konstantin Chernenko, 72, a onetime Brezhnev protégé, to head the funeral committee as an indication that the old guard had triumphed. Although Andropov had been chosen for the same position when Brezhnev died, the signal was not as clear this time. As Andropov's nominal deputy, Chernenko was the logical choice for the ceremonial...