Word: politburos
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...economic matters, Chou has hardly begun to try to put Mao's regime back together. He has brought some old, trusted comrades out of retirement, among them former Marshal Yeh Chien-ying, a Long March veteran, who was abruptly trotted up to the No. 4 position in the Politburo and has been on hand at Henry Kissinger's visits. Out in the provinces, where Mao was trying to put civilians back into key party positions (following his dictum that "the gun must never be allowed to control the party"), Chou has compromised. The soldiers are under pressure...
Chou's task is complicated by the fact that he has no political following. no power base other than his close, 40-year relationship with Mao Tse-tung. In the past, those have been assets. Chou has been on the Politburo for 42 years, longer (by three years) than Mao; this durability reflects his skill at avoiding passionate commitments to policies or dogma. In that sense, Chou is utterly unlike Mao. "Chou is a conformist," says Rand Corp. Sinologist Thomas Robinson. "He often swims with the tide. Mao wants to cause-and, if necessary, reverse-the tide...
...better-trained U.S. pilots. One theory has it that with the reduction of U.S. air strength, Hanoi's air chiefs have come under pressure to be less timid with their precious planes. Says a military analyst in Saigon: "I can imagine a situation in the North Vietnamese Politburo where the civilians demand of the military, 'Well, you've got the damn things. When the hell are you going to use them...
...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...
...Virtually unknown outside the U.S.S.R., Andreyev was a ruthless administrator who, as head of the nation's outmoded railway system during the early 1930s, ordered malingering workers shot. Later entrusted with responsibility for postwar farm collectivization, he was blamed by Stalin for agricultural failures and purged from the Politburo. However, he re-emerged shortly after the dictator's death as a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, a post he held for the next nine years...