Word: leningrad
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When Stalin's closest friend ("Dear Sergei") Kirov was assassinated, Zhdanov got his job as party boss of Leningrad. Because Westernized, fractious Leningrad was the hottest spot, the post implied absolute trust in Zhdanov's loyalty and ability, and was regarded as the party...
Mistake. In a few months Zhdanov turned his distrust in another direction. As boss of Leningrad, he was acutely conscious of a danger he saw from nearby Finland. His fear led him into the one great boner of his career: he persuaded Stalin that the Finns would collapse easily. After the courageous Finnish defense ended that delusion, Stalin made a somber crack to Zhdanov: "So things are going normally on the Finnish front, huh? Well, when the Finns get to Bologoe [halfway between Moscow and Leningrad], let me know...
Comeback. Zhdanov came back to Stalin's favor the hard way. As the Germans approached Leningrad there was no demoralization in the city. Zhdanov, Marshal Klimenty Voroshilov and Leningrad's "Mayor" Peter Popkov turned the tide with a ringing declaration which sent 400,000 Leningraders to the fortifications. Before the 29-month siege ended in 1944, one of the great stories of human endurance had been written...
...keynote address of the anniversary was delivered by the man whom many think Stalin has picked as his successor: swart, stocky Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov, 50. He is secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and is also chairman of the Supreme Soviet (Russian parliament), boss of Leningrad, colonel-general in the Russian Army and member of the potent, 14-man Politburo...
...Germany will be better off than western Russia. Foreign and Soviet observers who have recently reached Berlin from various parts of the U.S.S.R. unanimously agree that the average German in the Soviet zone is better fed, better dressed, and better housed than the average Russian in Moscow, Sverdlovsk or Leningrad. He is incomparably better off than the average citizen of devastated Ukraine and Byelorussia...