Word: ogarkov
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...after Chernenko walked stiffly back onto center stage, there were more signs and wonders in the Kremlin. The official news agency TASS announced in a tersely worded bulletin that Military Chief of Staff and Deputy Defense Minister Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, 66, had given up his post "in connection with a new appointment." The sudden change caught Western observers and Soviet officials alike completely off guard. Said a Washington military analyst: "It may be really important in terms of the succession struggle, or it may only be turmoil in the armed forces...
...better ways to do it than with a 747 jumbojet full of civilians." Moscow certainly remains eager to promote its version of events. It has taken the unusual step of allowing a well-known U.S. investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, to interview Soviet Chief of Staff Nikolai Ogarkov about the shooting and to visit a Soviet airbase...
...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 Ogarkov, who stepped forward to explain the Soviet decision to shoot down Korean Air Line Flight 007 last September. Now, as the Soviets go through another transition, a critical question remains unanswered. Does the military play an increasingly influential role within the closed world of the Kremlin...
...highest levels, the sprawling Soviet military narrows into a streamlined chain of command. Directly under Minister of Defense Dmitri Ustinov, a member of the top-secret Defense Council headed by Andropov, are Viktor Kulikov, commander in chief of the Warsaw Pact forces, and Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Ogarkov. The commanders of the Soviet services take their orders from Ogarkov...
There is relatively little to support such a judgment. The evidence most often cited is an article by Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, chief of staff of the Soviet armed forces, in the 1980 edition of the Soviet Military Encyclopedia. "If a nuclear war is foisted upon the Soviet Union," wrote Ogarkov, the Soviets "will have definite advantages stemming from the just goals of the war and the advanced nature of their social and state system." This, he concluded, "creates objective possibilities for them to achieve victory...