Word: chernenko
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sergei, 25, a blond architect in a blue-and-red woolen hat, a blue parka and jeans: "It's sad, of course, on a human level that Chernenko died. I didn't expect him to go on forever, so it wasn't what I would call a shock. But politics? Well, we only have one party, which pursues one and the same course, so I can't see that it makes much difference who came before and who will come after. At least Gorbachev won't die after a year, I suppose...
Maria, 49, an engineer, leaning against a park bench: "I didn't know Chernenko was this ill. I thought he had asthma or something. I live in a four-room apartment with my husband. We have a dacha and a government car, so I have nothing to complain of about Chernenko. I look forward to a quiet pension with no stresses...
Familiarity is said to breed either contempt or children, but it is not supposed to enhance a mystery. The West has grown familiar with Soviet transferals of power in the past 28 months: Brezhnev became Andropov became Chernenko. Last week the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, strode under Western eyes in the now easily recognizable setting of a Moscow funeral for a head of state: Soviet citizens lined up and bundled up in what seems an eternal freeze; Chopin thudding in the background; gray-coated soldiers marching stiff legged like a row of A's; a body laid out like...
...ought to feel as if we knew considerably more about the Soviet Union after these 28 months. Certainly, we try hard enough to know. Before Konstantin Chernenko's death, Gorbachev was already being tracked like a meteor: Margaret Thatcher likes what she saw of him; he has a lovely wife and a grandchild; did you hear the delightful joke he made about Marx and the British Museum? Yes, but one has to watch the silver; just because he is educated and urbane does not mean he is soft. Clearly, he is out to kill Star Wars. And he does have...
...people who run it cling to their posts either until their comrades turn against them and throw them out, as happened with Georgi Malenkov and Nikita Khrushchev, or until Comrade Death intervenes, as occurred with Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and, last week, with Konstantin Chernenko. One of the more ironic flaws of the Soviet system is that while it is dedicated to the acquisition, consolidation and extension of power, while it prides itself on discipline and the subordination of the individual to the institution, it is incapable of providing for the timely transfer of power...