Word: leonide
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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...
...course, Gorbachev will install men of his own choosing in positions of power. He should have little difficulty in doing so, since the Politburo has only ten members, in contrast to the 14 that had been usual under Leonid Brezhnev. But he probably will take his time in choosing his team, seeking instead to allay any suspicion that he is trying to monopolize power too quickly. "Gorbachev does not need to pack the Politburo with his own men," says one diplomat. "There do not seem to be any challengers to his rule...
...enough to prompt the concern that it had happened again--a Soviet leader had died. The suspicion was all but confirmed when regularly scheduled broadcasts during the following six hours were replaced by nature films and classical music. Having mastered the macabre code used to signal the death of Leonid Brezhnev in November 1982 and that of his successor Yuri Andropov only 15 months later, millions of Soviet citizens were fully prepared for the announcement, which was finally broadcast simultaneously on radio and television at 2 p.m.: "Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party...
...strategy that he associated with the name of Yuri Andropov. The allusion was revealing. During Andropov's 15-month reign, the former KGB chief launched a campaign against worker absenteeism and nomenklatura corruption. At least one prominent black marketeer, with connections to the family of the late Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, was executed. Andropov fired several industrial ministers and began to appoint younger, more professional executives to senior posts. Andropov also set up a task force charged with streamlining the bureaucracy. It is thought to be headed by Central Committee Secretariat Member Nikolai Ryzhkov, a close associate of Gorbachev...
Pasternak, who died in 1982 at the age of 88, views prerevolutionary Moscow from a lofty perspective. His mother Rosa Koffmann was a celebrated concert pianist. His father Leonid, an impressionist painter and graphic artist, became a dominant figure in 20th century Russian art. Brother Boris started out as a promising composer and became one of Russia's greatest poets and, in 1958, a Nobel laureate...