Word: brezhnevs
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...Brezhnev's personal reputation was further compromised when, as a result of KGB investigations, several old cronies of his were dismissed from high positions on charges of corruption. Then, two months before his death, an invidious attempt was made to display the leader as physically and mentally incompetent. On a scheduled nationwide television broadcast, says...
Medvedev, an aide, A.M.Alexandrov-Agentov, gave Brezhnev the wrong speech to read. After seven minutes, the aide interrupted his boss and put another text in front of him. Brezhnev looked puzzled, then lamely told his television audience: "It was not my fault. I have to start all over again now." The rest of the speech was read by an announcer. Writes Medvedev: "An error of this kind was unprecedented, and was inexcusable for an aide, who would certainly expect immediate dismissal." Although all of Brezhnev's aides lost their positions after his death, Alexandrov-Agentov was kept...
According to Medvedev's unofficial sources in the Soviet Union, supporters of Brezhnev's hand-picked successor, Konstantin Chernenko, counterattacked by floating a rumor that Andropov was not Russian but half Armenian and a quarter Jewish. Since Stalin's death there has been an unwritten Kremlin rule that the party chief must be an ethnic Russian. In Medvedev's view, the tactics used by Chernenko's supporters were mere pinpricks to Andropov, who had gained the crucial support in the Politburo of Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov...
Medvedev's description of Brezhnev's funeral rites contains some wondrously macabre details. When the overweight leader's body was placed in its coffin at Moscow's Hall of Trade Unions, the bottom of the shoddily made box collapsed, and the body fell to the floor. A new, metal-reinforced casket was later taken to the burial site on Red Square, where it was supposed to be reverently lowered into an open grave. What actually happened remained unexplained to the millions of Soviet citizens watching the televised interment. The coffin proved too heavy...
Since then, Andropov has barely mentioned his predecessor. Meanwhile, his much touted drive against corruption has continued to target Brezhnev's old pals, including General Nikolai Shchelokov, the former Minister of Internal Affairs. But the anticorruption campaign has affected too many highly placed officials, Medvedev notes, and Andropov's policy has met with powerful resistance. As a result, the drive has recently been toned down...