Word: secretariat
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...rules of thumb that have applied in past races will undoubtedly hold true this time as well. The new Soviet leader will be chosen from among the twelve voting members of the Politburo. He is likely to be a member of the powerful party Secretariat, which controls the day-to-day affairs of the Communist Party, and he will probably be an ethnic Russian. To rule effectively, he will have to count on the support of some combination of backers from the three main pillars of Soviet power: the party bureaucracy, the military and the technocratic elite. But imponderables remain...
...youth, there was always standby Candidate Konstantin Chernenko, 72, who took Andropov's place on the Lenin Mausoleum during the military parade through Red Square in November and was named chairman of Andropov's funeral committee last week. Chernenko worked his way to positions on the Politburo and the Secretariat largely by serving as an aide to Leonid Brezhnev, and he was thought to have been his boss's hand-picked heir. But he lost out, probably when the military and party colleagues decided to back Andropov. Since then, Chernenko has given every appearance of being a team player...
...party bureaucracy and saw something of the world when he traveled abroad as leader of the official trade unions movement. A younger member of the old elite, Grishin is not likely to rock the boat and could lead a caretaker government, but he lacks a position on the party Secretariat...
...steady rise of the Soviet military Establishment over the past decade has enhanced Ustinov's power, it may ultimately keep him from becoming party leader. Ustinov does not currently have a foothold in the Secretariat. Indeed, the aging defense planner may be too closely linked to the military for the comfort of many party bureaucrats. Says Daniel Papp of the Georgia Institute of Technology: "Some people will oppose Ustinov for precisely the same reason that others will support him, because of his strong identification with the military-industrial complex of the Soviet Union...
...peasants from the rich farming region of Stavropol in southwest Russia, Gorbachev holds a law degree from Moscow State University and another degree in agronomy from the Stavropol Agricultural Institute. His knowledge of farming, the weak link in Soviet economic planning, won him a place in the Secretariat and catapulted him into the Politburo's inner circle at the tender age of 49. Continuing failures on the farm have cut short the careers of past agricultural experts, but Gorbachev appears to be flourishing even though he has presided over a string of bad harvests (before the much improved 200 million...