Word: politburos
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Stanley Cloud, who joined the bureau last September, found the leaders' TV appearances and play in the press invaluable as indicators. After receiving a coveted invitation to the Lenin memorial celebrations, Schecter bought a pair of 6 x 24 binoculars in order to get a better look at Politburo members from the foreign press balcony. "A Kremlinologist could construct a whole theory of leadership," reports Schecter, "on the basis of who talked to whom, who frowned, who rubbed his eyes or who pulled his earphones out during what speech." But this, of course, is only one small part...
...Podgorny, 67. Yet Brezhnev completely dominated the Lenin observances. He delivered four major addresses that were broadcast over prime-time television and accorded saturation press coverage. At Lenin's wreath-bedecked mausoleum in Red Square, Brezhnev stood slightly but perceptibly apart from the rest of the eleven-man Soviet Politburo, several of whom have recently reappeared after recovery from reported illnesses. He is the only Soviet leader who has spoken authoritatively of late on the two consuming issues of Kremlin policy: the state of military preparedness and the Soviet's stumbling economy...
...Politburo, the supreme decision-making body in the Soviet Union. Its eleven members occupy the key executive positions in the Soviet party and state. The hierarchy that enjoys the strongest representation within the Politburo is the Communist Party's vast administrative bureaucracy, which functions, in effect, as a parallel government in the Soviet Union. For each area covered by the ministerial offices?heavy industry, agriculture, propaganda, etc.?the party maintains a counterpart agency and staff. These full-time party professionals, numbering some 200,000, exercise broad supervisory powers over their governmental opposites. The party's chief means of maintaining...
Brezhnev has lately gone out of his way to cement relations with the power groups outside the Politburo, particularly the military...
...same cannot be said of his Politburo colleagues. Several?notably Mikhail Suslov, 67, Arvid Pelshe, 71, as well as Kosygin?are aging and sickly. Kosygin is said to have asked permission to retire several times; he was reportedly turned down in the interests of preserving a balance in the collective leadership. The Politburo membership has remained virtually unchanged for five years, however, and it is possible that Brezhnev may soon encourage a number of its members to retire. At least some Politburo appointments would probably go to younger men, refleeting the fact that three-fourths of Russia's 14 million...