Word: leonid
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...West does know about the Soviet Union is that the people who run it cling to their posts either until their comrades turn against them and throw them out, as happened with Georgi Malenkov and Nikita Khrushchev, or until Comrade Death intervenes, as occurred with Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and, last week, with Konstantin Chernenko. One of the more ironic flaws of the Soviet system is that while it is dedicated to the acquisition, consolidation and extension of power, while it prides itself on discipline and the subordination of the individual to the institution...
...changing life-styles of Soviet youth, Soviet military strength and scores of other stories. But no subject has preoccupied him more deeply than the waning lives and deaths of the Soviet Union's superannuated rulers. Since November 1982, Amfitheatrof has attended the obsequies for three top Soviet leaders, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, as well as those for the powerful Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov...
Khrushchev and Kennedy met in Vienna in June 1961. Leonid Zamyatin, deputy chief of the Department of the U.S. in the Foreign Ministry, told me about it. Zamyatin's amazing aplomb and self-assurance helped compensate for a lack of talent and enabled him to promote himself. He later became director-general of TASS and eventually chief of the Central Committee's International Information Department. With Georgi Arbatov and Vadim Zagladin, he was part of a troika of the most familiar Soviet faces appearing in the West when the Kremlin needed to influence public opinion...
Lomeiko's denial was a standard Soviet ploy, aimed at buttressing the Kremlin's image of monolithic authority. Veteran observers in Moscow quickly decided that Chernenko's purported answers were probably the work of Leonid Zamyatin, head of the Central Committee's international information department. But Lomeiko's bland suggestion concerning Chernenko's whereabouts was eerily similar to the explanations given out about Chernenko's predecessor, Yuri Andropov, who died last February after being out of public view for six months. Just a few weeks before his death, Andropov was said to be recuperating from a slight ailment. A similar...
...office site favored by Gorbachev is symbolic of how authority has flowed away from the center of the regime during Chernenko's waning leadership, which in turn came after the truncated rule of Andropov and the final, enfeebled years of Leonid Brezhnev. Other branches of the Soviet system have also benefited, especially Andrei Gromyko's Foreign Ministry. Gromyko's increased standing in the Politburo under Chernenko has been widely noted, as has his unquestioned command of Soviet foreign policy. For that reason, Gromyko is regarded by some foreign diplomats as a possible candidate for Chernenko's job. Another factor...