Word: chernenko
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Moscow had declared with convincing finality that it could no longer do business with Washington. NATO had begun deployment missiles in Western Europe, in response the Soviets had stalked away from every negotiating table where the superpowers had been discussing nuclear arms control. Yet in the four months since Chernenko succeeded the late Yuri Andropov, the chill factor from Moscow has intensified. The trend is all the more noticeable because it contrasts so sharply with President Reagan's new and uncharacteristically conciliatory tone (see NATION...
Although the twelve-man Politburo makes its decisions collectively, the new ultrahard Line is widely identified with the growing influence of one man: Andrei Gromyko (see box). The combination of Chernenko's rumored weakness as a leader and his lack of experience in foreign affairs appears to have given Gromyko more power than at any other time in his 27 years as Foreign Minister. Foreign delegations that have traveled to Moscow in the past few months have been startled to observe how Gromyko interrupts Chernenko during meetings. In private sessions with Westerners, Soviet diplomats, journalists and academics disparage Chernenko...
...Kremlin's leadership crisis became even more apparent when, after four days of deliberation following Andropov's death, the Communist Party Central Committee announced that Chernenko had been named to the top position. Known more for his loyalty to Brezhnev than for his expertise in any area except the party bureaucracy, Chernenko had been conspicuously passed over 15 months earlier when Andropov succeeded Brezhnev; indeed, there was some speculation that Andropov had shunted his erstwhile rival aside...
...consensus among Western experts today is that although Chernenko quickly collected all the titles that Brezhnev and Andropov held (General Secretary of the Communist Party and President, as well as Chairman of the Defense Council), he in fact merely shares power with Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov and Foreign Minister Gromyko. It is the latter who, after more than a quarter-century as the executor of other men's policies, is thought to have been most instrumental in shaping the current hard line. There seems to be no one powerful enough to rein him in. Adam Ulam, director of Harvard...
...Talleyrand, who survived the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte and the restored Bourbon monarchy, has a statesman pursued his craft with such success under so many different masters. Gromyko has served the Soviet state through all of its tortuous transformations, from Stalinist despotism to the vicissitudes of the Andropov and Chernenko years. He has dealt with nine U.S. Presidents, starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt, and 14 Secretaries of State. Says a diplomat who meets often with Gromyko: "He remembers not because he read a brief or a book, but as often as not because he was there in person...