Word: politburo
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...already thinking the unthinkable, why not admit the bitter truth? One cannot put the genie back into the bottle, beat plutonium into plowshares, or transform the Politburo and KGB into pacifists. Tragically, the idea whose time has come is the very idea of nuclear war. It can and should be postponed by deterrence, but it is sheer utopia to believe that there could never be a miscalculation...
...running is Andrei Kirilenko, 75, a onetime favorite who has not been seen in public since mid-February. The most visible contender for the succession is Konstantin Chernenko, 70, a longtime Brezhnev aide who has consistently appeared standing next to the President in recent months. Other Politburo members vying for the succession include Moscow Party Chief Viktor Grishin, Leningrad Party Boss Grigori Romanov and KGB Chief Yuri Andropov...
...real drama may be more offstage than on. Rumors have been circulating that Thus We Will Win was the object of an ideological tug-of-war in the Politburo. Party Theoretician Mikhail Suslov, a hard-liner who died last January, is believed to have done his best to block the production, while Brezhnev Protege Konstantin Chernenko apparently intervened to save the play. As if to dispel any notion that the leadership was divided in its feelings, virtually the entire top rung of the Politburo, including Brezhnev, showed up for a performance early last month. In what may be the start...
...country along with their families-but not before they had disclosed Moscow's hand in the martial-law crackdown. Reagan has followed the cabled details of Leonid Brezhnev's tears and grief after the recent death of Mikhail Suslov, the hard-line ideologue of the Politburo. Some of those secret reports tell of instant "personality changes" of high Soviet diplomats when they were informed of Suslov's demise. Those diplomats grew distant, their minds back in Moscow, as they worriedly waited for the changes that inevitably follow any unexpected interruption in totalitarian authority...
Upon arrival my colleagues and I were driven to Zavidovo, the Politburo hunting preserve-the Soviet Camp David-some 90 miles northeast of Moscow. This was intended as a great honor. No Western leader had ever been invited to Zavidovo; the only other foreigners to visit it, I was told, had been Tito and President Urho Kekkonen of Finland. Our hosts did their best to convey that good relations with the U.S. meant a great deal to them...