Word: kosygin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Rise to Power: Gifted with phenomenal memory and an analytical intelligence that might have taken him to the top of any capitalist corporation, Kosygin advanced swiftly as an efficient, inventive technocrat of the Stalinist era. He became overall boss of the textile industry in 1939, during the war served as deputy chairman of the U.S.S.R. Council of People's Commissars. He soon caught Stalin's eye, and in 1948 became the youngest (43) member of the Politburo...
From that time, Kosygin has seldom been far from the center of Soviet power, no matter what upheavals occurred there. Though skilled as a politician, he was not classed as a hard-line Stalinist. His success as Deputy Premier for a total of 19 years was mostly due to his talent as a masterful apparatchik, the engineer of Soviet economic machinery. Said Nikita Khrushchev in 1958: "Kosygin knows everything...
...Triumvirate: In 1964, when the party Central Committee sacked Khrushchev, it promoted Kosygin-then First Deputy Premier-to Premier. Today, Leonid Brezhnev, an ebullient and sloganeering politician, acts as Russia's chairman of the board: Kosygin is the chief Soviet operating officer and head of government. A pragmatist, he remains aloof from ideological disputes and factional politics. Under his leadership, the government is slowly absorbing many of the administrative responsibilities long held by the party. The third member of the Kremlin triumvirate, President Nikolai Podgorny, is the least powerful, although in recent months he has emerged as a traveling...
Personality: Oddly, younger Russians admire the sober Kosygin more than they do Brezhnev. Correct, levelheaded, with a taste for anonymity and a dull, if cultured, public speaking voice, Kosygin emphasizes moderation and maintenance of peace. He is a widower-his wife Klavdia died of cancer last month-and has a married daughter, Liudmila Gvishiani. For all his drab public façade, Kosygin is capable of sharp, dry wit. On a visit to Britain last February, while dining with Tory Leader Ted Heath, he observed: "It is less fun to be in opposition in some countries than in others...
...VIET NAM. Though the U.S. is deeply and painfully embroiled in Viet Nam, the Southeast Asian war has yielded scant prospect of benefit for Moscow either. Kosygin and Communist Boss Leonid Brezhnev, reversing Khrushchev's policy of noninvolvement in Southeast Asia, began aiding Hanoi early in 1965, when a Viet Cong victory seemed imminent. Large-scale U.S. intervention thwarted their hopes of a quick, cheap victory and exposed Russia to the charge that it will retreat from its involvement in any war of national liberation if the stakes get too high...