Word: presidium
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...secret police, somewhat "sanitized" since Stalin's days, who remains in many ways Russia's top cop. His was the most remarkable of the new promotions, since he leapfrogged over the heads of oldtimers waiting around for membership to become the youngest member of the party Presidium. A persuasive pragmatist, Shelepin talked 350,000 Russian youths into volunteering for work in the virgin lands, served as Nikita's iceman when Khrushchev decided to re-refrigerate the thaw in Soviet art and literature two years-ago. Significantly, Shelepin is now the only man in the leadership who simultaneously...
There Khrushchev found ten members of the Presidium awaiting him. Immediately Suslov got up and launched a sharp, biting attack against him. He accused Khrushchev of trying to start a new "cult of personality." He cited Khrushchev's inability to control himself, his lengthy, "boring" speeches, his "naive provincial behavior," and his "provocative attitude" toward the Red Chinese. He described Nikita's shoe banging at the United Nations in 1960 as "harmful to the reputation of the Soviet Union throughout the world." And he raised the matter of nepotism. Khrushchev had proposed that his son-in-law, Izvestia...
Suslov's knifework lasted some four hours, but the unkindest cut of all was yet to come. Khrushchev's youngest protégé on the Presidium, Dmitry Polyansky, rose to denounce Nikita's agricultural fiascoes with sharply pointed statistics...
...work. Suslov listened quietly until Nikita ran down, then rose to his feet. "You see, Comrades," he said slowly. "It is impossible to talk to him." Khrushchev's face reddened to the point that some witnesses thought he would hit Suslov. But he contained himself while the Presidium voted. It was unanimous against Khrushchev. Remembering 1957, Nikita hotly demanded an immediate session of the Central Committee. Again Suslov replied: "The members of the Central Committee are assembled and waiting...
Room with a View. The conflict had been long in the making, at least according to the Kremlin leaks appearing last week. Khrushchev had been voted down by the Presidium last February over his polemical blast at Peking (also composed by Suslov), had to delay a month before making it public while peace feelers went out to Mao and were rejected. He had further irritated the Central Committee by taking a three-week tour of the farm lands on the lower Volga and in Kazakhstan and not reporting back to them; by erupting in anger at Indonesian President Sukarno when...