Word: politburo
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Anxiety and apprehension seem to pervade Moscow whenever Mikhail Gorbachev is out of town. But for much of August, with the Soviet President off on his annual vacation in the Crimea, the capital showed symptoms of panic. Conservative members of the Politburo were warning that the country could be slipping out of control. Government officials were speculating openly about the possibility of a coup. A rock group climbed the Soviet hit parade with a song whose refrain was "We are anticipating civil war." Arriving home, Gorbachev, looking tanned and vigorous after four weeks on the Black Sea shore, went straight...
Mikhail Sergeyevich the political wizard was back onstage. With seeming effortlessness, he cashiered three full members and two nonvoting members of the ruling Politburo, foot draggers all, and promoted to their posts four men he apparently considers more reliable. He won unanimous approval of his compromise plan to bring forward the next party congress to October 1990 so he can purge still more recalcitrants on the 251-member Central Committee. With Gorbachev flexing his muscles, talk of a coup -- at least the Kremlin-corridor variety that ousted Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 -- appeared misplaced. But at the same time his virtuoso...
...most enthusiastic East- bloc supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. Moreover, Gorbachev has pledged noninterference in East European affairs. At the same time, Gorbachev does not want to preside over the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Moscow's unease may in part explain the arrival of Soviet Politburo Member Yegor Ligachev in East Berlin last week. Moscow said the trip was long planned, but there was little doubt that the presence of Ligachev, a hard-liner known for his resistance to Gorbachev's reforms, could not help reassuring intransigent East Germany that its ties with Moscow remained solid. If East...
...with strikes that, if they persist, could wreck the economies of some republics. And in Moscow, Communist conservatives have seized on the Russians' plight to justify a crackdown on the nationalist movements. News reports in the capital deliver a crude subtext: ethnic Russians are the victims of nationalist extremists. Politburo members like Victor Chebrikov, former KGB chief, thunder that those whipping up ethnic strife "should not go unpunished, no matter what flags they raise and what brightly colored national costumes they wear...
...denounce them in a TV speech early this month, accusing both left and right of spreading false alarms. The Communist Party Central Committee is scheduled to meet this week to discuss the nationalities crisis; Gorbachev reportedly will seek its backing to fire more of his critics from the Politburo...