Word: diplomatic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...place. There had been speculation that Politburo Member Grigori Romanov, 61, a civilian defense-industry expert from Leningrad, might replace Ustinov. Instead the post went to Marshal Sergei Sokolov, the First Deputy Defense Minister, who at 73 is the oldest man ever appointed to the job. As one Western diplomat in Moscow noted, the Kremlin opted "for the safe and the obvious...
...expected to wield the same power that Ustinov did. A professional soldier, Sokolov began his career in the tank corps in the 1930s and rose through the ranks to become a regional military commander and, eventually, the senior administrative officer of the Defense Ministry. Said a NATO diplomat in Moscow: "The appointment does not change the basic rule that policy is made by the civilians and executed by the soldiers...
...less than the 27% they claim as their traditional electoral base. Ever since the Communists shattered Mitterrand's vaunted "Union of the Left" by leaving the government last summer, the Socialists have had "to face some hard questions about their own identity," in the words of one diplomat in Paris...
Said a Western diplomat in Moscow: "This is a big moment for Gorbachev. He will be watched by the foreign audience, but he will also be watched very closely by the Soviet leadership. He can help himself or hurt himself...
...Development. The Ethiopian charges were "just absurd," he said. "Frankly, I think this is the classic example of biting the hand that feeds you." U.S. officials note that Ethiopia's Marxist government had spent more than $100 million on its tenth anniversary celebration last September. Said a Western diplomat in Addis Ababa: "Once they got the anniversary out of the way, they could turn their attention to the drought...