Word: leonide
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Because of the new Soviet leader's long career as chief administrator of the Central Committee and as Leonid Brezhnev's appointments secretary, many Western analysts had dismissed Chernenko as a faceless bureaucrat who would always be everyone's second choice for the job. Now he was being seen as the last-gasp leader of a gerontocracy intent on keeping the younger generation from moving too quickly into the corridors of power. Said a Western diplomat in Moscow: "If Andropov had lasted another four months, I don't think Chernenko would have made...
Officially, it was described as "a bad cold." But feverish imaginations in the world press soon produced far more colorful explanations for Soviet President Yuri Andropov's total disappearance from public life last August: he had been shot by Leonid Brezhnev's son, he was suffering from Parkinson's disease, he had had a stroke, he was recovering?or not recovering?from kidney transplant surgery. What actually happened to Andropov is much less melodramatic and far more logical. Here are the details of his recent medical history, as assembled by TIME from authorities in the U.S. and abroad...
...took Andropov's place on the Lenin Mausoleum during the military parade through Red Square in November and was named chairman of Andropov's funeral committee last week. Chernenko worked his way to positions on the Politburo and the Secretariat largely by serving as an aide to Leonid Brezhnev, and he was thought to have been his boss's hand-picked heir. But he lost out, probably when the military and party colleagues decided to back Andropov. Since then, Chernenko has given every appearance of being a team player; he nominated Andropov for the top party post after Brezhnev...
...Unlike Leonid Brezhnev, who loved to wear row upon row of medals, Yuri Andropov kept his army general's uniform in the closet. But if the late Soviet leader gave every appearance of being a civilian, his ties to the military Establishment came under increasing scrutiny during his brief tenure. Andropov, it was believed, owed a debt to the military because Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov had backed him in the race to succeed Brezhnev. In what many saw as a disquieting sign of the brass hats' growing power, it was the military's Chief of Staff, Nikolai...
...Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov confounded such predictions when he assumed control of the country's Communist Party in November 1982. Within seven months, Andropov had also secured the important title of Chairman of the Defense Council and been elected President of the Soviet Union. It had taken his predecessor, Leonid Brezhnev, 13 years to accumulate all the same trappings of power. The new Soviet leader, it seemed, was a man in a hurry...