Word: nikolai
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...DIED. Nikolai Podgorny, 79, the Soviet Union's President from 1965 to 1977 who traveled the world on ceremonial missions, projecting the preferred Soviet image of stolid gray; in Kiev. The son of a foundry worker, Podgorny had a lackluster early career as a bureaucrat in the Ukraine before being brought into the Politburo in 1960 and into the Secretariat of the Central Committee in 1963. As Nikita Khrushchev's loyal protégé, he seemed his probable successor, but following Khrushchev's 1964 ouster, Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev elbowed Podgorny into the largely powerless presidency...
...self-confident leader who already felt himself to be in full control of Soviet policy. After the meeting the Vice President issued a conciliatory statement that said, "The challenges, while enormous, are far from insurmountable." Soviet officials below Andropov voiced even more soothing words. The most notable came from Nikolai Tikhonov, who holds what in the U.S.S.R. is the subordinate title of Premier. Said he: "The Soviet Union has been and is for normal and, even better, friendly relations with the United States. There were such relations in the past, and they can again become a reality...
...decade of his life was detente. Of course, he was deeply disappointed by the sharp change of policy of the U.S." After speeches by Andropov, Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, Academy of Sciences President Anatoli Alexandrov and a factory worker, pallbearers led by Andropov on the left and by Premier Nikolai Tikhonov on the right carried the coffin to another bier behind the mausoleum. There the family bade its last farewell to Brezhnev. His widow Victoria was overcome by emotion as she kissed her husband's face according to the Russian tradition. As an artillery salute boomed...
...much space to haranguing Washington, ran several front page editorials calling for "normal, and better yet, friendly" relations with the United States. Such improved relations, wrote one editorialist, "would meet the interests of both peoples and universal peace." Speeches by new Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov and Prime Minister Nikolai A. Tikhonov expressed thoughts similar to those put forth in Pravda...
...content with the largely symbolic post of Soviet President. Or Boris Ponomarev, 77, a onetime historian, who seemed the ideal candidate to fill the role of party "theologian" before Andropov took the job held by the late Mikhail Suslov. Not elder statesmen like Brezhnev's Premier, Nikolai Tikhonov, 77, a man with more experience in government than in the party apparatus, or the widely traveled and urbane Central Committee Secretary Konstantin Rusakov, 72, who lacks a vital prerequisite: Politburo membership. One contender seems to be on the way out. Party Secretary Andrei Kirilenko, 76, used to be Brezhnev...