Word: commissars
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...revolution and advanced quickly in a succession of jobs: member of the secret police, no-nonsense manager of a key Soviet electrical-equipment factory and mayor of Moscow. Although he had no battlefield command experience, Bulganin became a general during World War II. Actually, he was a political commissar, charged with the task of keeping Red Army officers loyal to the Kremlin's leaders. In 1947 Stalin promoted Bulganin to Marshal of the Soviet Union and also named him Deputy Premier-a post he held until the dictator's death in March 1953, when he assumed the powerful...
...should have completely dispelled them. Teng Hsiao-ping, 70, already a party vice chairman and the government's first Vice Premier, was given the powerful, long-vacant post of Chief of Staff of the army. Chang Chun-chiao, 64, a Vice Premier, became the army's political commissar, a post once held by none other than Mao Tse-tung...
With the new appointments, China took another giant step toward consolidating the governmental and military leadership that was almost completely decimated by the Cultural Revolution and the struggles for power that followed it. There had been no Chief of Staff since 1971 and no political commissar since 1973. Now, with Teng and Chang taking up army responsibilities-joining Yeh Chien-ying, who was named Defense Minister at the National People's Congress last month-the command structure of China's 2.5 million-man army is virtually complete...
Significantly, Chang is a civilian; so is Teng, though he is a former member of Peking's National Defense Council and a political commissar who is highly respected by most army commanders. Their elevation to top army posts symbolizes Peking's ongoing effort to reassert firm civilian control over a professional military. The appointments also had political meaning. Just two years ago, Teng was still in disgrace, a victim of the Cultural Revolution's excesses; now, highly placed in all three of China's most powerful institutions, the party, the government and the army...
...Nickolai G. Kuznetsov, 72, commander of the Soviet navy in World War II. Kuznetsov's advocacy of an aggressive "oceanic" strategy for the Soviet sea arm appealed to Stalin. He quickly rose through the ranks as senior officers were liquidated in the 1937- 38 purges, and became Navy Commissar in 1939 at the age of 37. Kuznetsov embarked on a massive cruiser and battleship building program and restored czarist-style discipline on shipboard, requiring officers to wear bone-handled swords. He mapped the naval strategy used against Finland in 1940, and later led his fleet against the Nazis. Demoted...