Word: pincenez
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Ironically, Andropov may owe his rise to the bungling of one of the nation's most notorious secret police chiefs, Lavrenti Beria. After the death of Stalin in 1953, the tiny Georgian with the trademark pincenez tried to bully his way to power by incorporating the Ministry of the Interior into his vast security empire. That incautious move roused a vengeance-minded Politburo to action. Beria was arrested and executed. First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, in a famous secret speech to the 20th Party Congress in 1956, vowed that the state security forces would be subservient to the principles of "revolutionary...