Word: chernenko
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...Chernenko's early attempts to establish himself as a writer on ideological subjects were hampered by his lack of erudition. It is said that Mikhail Suslov, the party's chief ideologue in the post-Stalin period, had a poor opinion of Chernenko's abilities and was reluctant to let him publish articles in Kommunist, the party's main ideological publication. But after Suslov's death, in January 1982, Chernenko wrote frequently for Kommunist on general Soviet policy, especially on relations between Moscow and the foreign Communist parties. His attitude toward culture and the arts was as conservative and as ideologically...
...spite of a reputation for keeping out of the public eye, Konstantin Chernenko made a collection of his essays and speeches, and has published 15 of them. Many of the pieces were prepared for specific occasions. Taken as a whole, however, the selection offers a fascinating picture of the corporate Soviet mind. Except for a page-long personal history, included in the preface at the publisher's request, Chernenko's book presents an almost disembodied, albeit forceful, expression of Communist Party orthodoxy. It serves as an interesting guidebook to the official Soviet position on matters both practical...
...Chernenko challenge: westward-looking, apolitical youth
Today more than half of the Soviet Union's 274 million citizens are under 30. Had the Politburo selected one of its younger members to lead the country, young Soviets might have seen a sign that someone was trying to bridge the generation gap. Konstantin Chernenko, however, strikes the young not only as a typically uninspiring ideologue of the old school, but also as uncharacteristically voluble in decrying the youth culture brought in from the West. Only last June, Chernenko delivered a jeremiad to the Central Committee contending that "our enemy is trying to exploit for its ends...
More fundamental, Chernenko and his contemporaries are sensitive to the fact that today's youth belong to the first generation that has not been directly touched by the fervor of the Bolshevik Revolution or tempered by the monumental sacrifices of World War II. In his speech last year, Chernenko complained that "our young people have not seen firsthand the grim trials of class struggle and war, when the true face of imperialism with its hatred for the peoples of our country and for the socialist system was laid absolutely bare." Such finger wagging does not find a receptive audience...