Word: shelepin
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Malenkov, to diplomatic exile, or, like Nikita Khrushchev, to virtual house arrest and the ignominy of being an unperson. Since Khrushchev's overthrow in 1964, only two higher-echelon Soviet leaders have retired because of age: Anastas Mikoyan and Nikolai Shvernik. Numerous others-including the dynamic opportunist Alexander Shelepin, the Ukrainian strongman Pyotr Shelest and the moderate reformer Gennady Voronov-have been expelled from the Politburo and denounced for political sins. If there were more precedent for honorable retirement, Leonid Brezhnev might have decided, on one of his bad days, to step down long before...
Potential rivals have been dealt with ruthlessly. One, the relatively youthful Alexander Shelepin, 58, was dismissed from the Politburo almost two years ago and has not been heard of since. The sin of Whiz Kid Shelepin was that he tried to build a political base from which to promote his own post-Brezhnev candidacy for the top post. Another highly regarded younger man. Dmitri Polyansky, 59, had the misfortune of presiding as Minister of Agriculture during last year's disastrously poor grain harvest. Brezhnev blamed the harvest on bad weather but sent Polyansky packing as Ambassador to Japan anyway...
...Shelepin's meteoric rise through the Communist Party apparatus under Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev showed him to be outstandingly adroit in cultivating useful political alliances and cutting through the ossified Soviet bureaucracy. He established a substantial power base as head of the Komsomol organization of young Communists and later as chief of the KGB, the Soviet secret police...
Some experts believe he helped Brezhnev engineer the conspiracy that ousted Khrushchev. At any rate, Shelepin was soon rewarded by a promotion to the Presidium (now the Politburo). Since 1965, however, while he remained a full Politburo member, he has always lurked in the antechambers of total power. His ambition and talent could hardly have pleased the Politburo majority...
...deadly blow to Shelepin's aspirations followed a disastrous trip to Britain earlier this month (TIME, April 14). The guest of the British Trades Union Congress, he was characterized by the press as a secret police assassin, pelted by demonstrators with bricks and umbrellas and snubbed by the Labor Government. Some observers speculated last week that Shelepin's enemies in the Kremlin might have deliberately thrust him into a situation that was bound to discredit him publicly. As one authoritative Western intelligence report has it, the Soviet leadership met in special session the very day Shelepin returned...