Word: politburo
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...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 and ultimately jettisoned him altogether...
Every one of the 5,000 seats in the Kremlin's huge, modernistic Palace of Congresses was filled as Communist Party General Secretary Yuri Andropov and his eleven colleagues on the ruling Politburo filed on stage last week. The new Soviet leader moved slowly to his place beneath a monumental bust of Lenin, turning to acknowledge Communist leaders who had come from as far as Cuba and Viet Nam to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Union. Dressed in a smartly tailored blue suit and maroon tie, Andropov looked well-rested and healthier than...
Kennan believes that American leaders have excessively "militarized" policy toward the U.S.S.R. partly because they have "dehumanized" their Soviet counterparts. He views the Politburo as "a group of troubled men-elderly men, for the most part-whose choices and possibilities are severely constrained." They are driven by a paranoid, secretive and conspiratorial view of the world rather than by a master plan for its domination. He urges more and closer analysis of Soviet objectives and less preoccupation with Soviet capabilities. Despite the vast numbers of tanks and missiles in the Warsaw Pact, Kennan argues, the U.S.S.R. has "no intention...
...beginning to reap the rewards of having gained numerical superiority. This is hardly a time to change course. From the Soviet point of view, the purpose of these weapons is to promote the likelihood of using them for intimidation purposes. I see, from the point of view of the Politburo, no reason to expect change, rather a lot of patting themselves and each other on the back for the successes they have achieved...
...have not had a change of government-nor a coup d'état! The change of leader can have some importance, of course, but we have had a collective leadership in the Soviet Union for years. The Central Committee and the Politburo were the chief decision-making bodies under Brezhnev, and they will be under Andropov...