Word: konstantin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Indeed, some of the delegates wasted no time getting into the spirit of things. Konstantin Petrov, from the Voroshilovgrad region, demanded, "Why not make a movie that will teach children about coal mining? I can remember only one good book about coal miners, and that was written 30 years ago." Delegates were not surprised to learn that Petrov was a retired miner. Valentina Plenova, 55, a spunky factory worker, took the floor to complain about the inertia at many industrial enterprises. Said she: "We still work like yesterday." Later Plenova's deeper feelings surfaced. "I'm in love with...
...take radical action to rouse a lethargic country and fulfill its potential as a superpower. The changes Gorbachev has already imposed would have been unthinkable just a year ago. Three members of the party's eleven-man top decision-making body, the Politburo, have been removed since he succeeded Konstantin Chernenko. In their places are younger men who conform to Gorbachev's vision. A new Premier has been installed, and 21 government ministries have new bosses. At lower levels of the party, new chiefs have taken over 30% of the 147 regional organizations. Approximately 35% of the 319 party Central...
...said last week that his knowledge of Soviet agents and British moles enabled him to tip off British counterintelligence regarding a wide range of Soviet spying. He was also said to have provided sophisticated assessments of Soviet foreign and military policy: he reportedly advised his British contacts well before Konstantin Chernenko's death that Mikhail Gorbachev was certain to assume the Soviet leadership, and provided information on the Soviet Union's military space program...
...dialysis machine. "During his last months, Andropov ran the U.S.S.R. through Gorbachev," says one Soviet historian. Gorbachev's time to run the country in his own name had not yet come when Andropov died in February 1984. The Kremlin Old Guard conferred the leadership on the 72-year- old Konstantin Chernenko. But Chernenko was all too obviously an interim leader, and when he also became too ill to function, Gorbachev conducted the weekly Politburo meetings and headed the government in all but name. The final step occurred on March 10, 1985, when Chernenko died and the Secretariat elected Gorbachev General...
...ruling Politburo. One of the oldest and most familiar Kremlin figures of all, Andrei Gromyko, who has been his country's Foreign Minister for the past 28 years, was raised to the prestigious but largely ceremonial post of President, a position that had been vacant since the death of Konstantin Chernenko on March 10. Immediately thereafter, the Foreign Ministry passed into the untried hands of Eduard Shevardnadze, party boss of the southern Soviet republic of Georgia...