Word: politburo
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...congress also elected a new Politburo that further strengthened Gierek's position. Out went three members who had been appointed to the Politburo by Gomulka, notably Jozef Cyrankiewicz, the President of Poland, who is now expected to lose that post too, and Mieczyslaw Moczar, the hard-lining former secret police chief, who was Gierek's possible rival. Gierek, who has sacked some 10,000 middle and lower echelon bureaucrats, hinted that there might be further firings: "For bad work, and even more so for bad will, we must dismiss people from their positions...
...Politburo Opposition. Since last September, a campaign has been under way to elevate Brezhnev to the No. 1 spot in name as well as fact. There was some speculation in Moscow that Brezhnev's backers would seek to create for him a new all-powerful Council of State, along the lines of similar bodies in Bulgaria, East Germany and Rumania, that would give him the top state job as well as the ranking party post. Other speculations held that Brezhnev would shove Kosygin aside and take over both government and party leadership just as Nikita Khrushchev...
Apparently, however, the issue did not even come up at the sessions. What happened? Some Western experts speculate that Brezhnev sensed that there was so much opposition within the 15-man Politburo that he backed away from making a grab for power. According to some accounts, Brezhnev could count on only five votes. At least seven Politburo members are implacably opposed to granting greater governmental authority to Brezhnev to go along with his party leadership; to do so would be to scrap the collective leadership system that was instituted after Khrushchev's ouster as a safeguard against...
Pecking Order. At a Peking reception honoring the 30th anniversary of the Albanian Communist Party last week, a new Politburo pecking order emerged-and there were some stunning surprises. Predictably enough, Chou occupied Lin's No. 2 position. But No. 3 turned out to be none other than Mao's wife Chiang Ching. She was one of the reddest of the Red Guard leaders during the Cultural Revolution, and her rise may spell new power for the small nucleus of relatively youthful leftists in the Politburo. One of its key figures is Yao Wenyuan, who is rumored...
Chou's clique within the Politburo includes his deputy, Li Hsien-nien, and his old confidant Yeh Chien-ying, 73, a former marshal who was bumped up several places to the No. 4 position behind Mme. Mao. Yeh was with Chou in 1945 when General George C. Marshall was trying to mediate the civil war between the Nationalists and Mao's Communists. His youthful secretary at the time was Huang Hua, who arrived in New York last week as Peking's Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Yeh is expected to serve as chief of staff...