Word: stavropol
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...glad-handing personal style: "It is nothing new in my practice . . . I did that kind of thing in Stavropol," the southern Russian region where Gorbachev got his start. "Maybe on occasion when I have been traveling in the country, the press has given it more prominence . . . But also I should say there was a need to go out and meet people more . . . It is not a question of whether I enjoy that style or not. You cannot work otherwise." If such remarks came from a Western politician, they would seem routine, but it is difficult to imagine any other Soviet...
...nowhere. Gorbachev replied with a smile that "in the Soviet Union, there are many places to hide." As late as 1978, he was well enough hidden that few Soviet citizens, let alone Americans, had ever heard his name. His biography until that point was brief: son of Stavropol peasants, law graduate of Moscow State University, holder of various regional Communist Party positions for 23 years. Much about the formative influences during his youth and early career remains obscure. It is not known, for example, whether he lived in Stavropol under the Nazi occupation in 1942-43, which began when...
...regional administrator, Gorbachev caught the eye of two powerful patrons: Mikhail Suslov, who was for many years the Soviet Union's chief ideologist, and Yuri Andropov, longtime head of the KGB secret police. Suslov, who commanded partisan forces in the Stavropol area during World War II, kept tabs on promising young apparatchiks in the region. Andropov often vacationed at hot-springs resorts near Stavropol. Gorbachev in effect served as his host. Suslov and Andropov engineered Gorbachev's appointment to higher and higher posts in the regional party and, in 1978, his sudden call to Moscow as a member...
...silver-haired, well-tailored Shevardnadze (pronounced Shevard-nad-zeh) got most of his early party training in the 1950s when he moved through the ranks of Komsomol, the Young Communist League. He almost certainly forged close personal ties with Gorbachev, who also served as a Komsomol leader in Stavropol, a district adjoining Georgia. Shevardnadze studied history, but his true specialty has long been law-and-order. In 1965 he was named Georgian minister for maintenance of public order, a euphemism for head of the local police. That has always been a challenging job in Georgia, the transcaucasian republic where residents...
...Russian Institute in West Germany. "But he made an effort to be everybody's buddy." Gorbachev soon was devoting as much time to party activities as to his studies. After graduating with a law degree in 1955, he decided on a career as a party professional. He returned to Stavropol, where he specialized in running collective farms. In 1970, at age 39, he was named first secretary of the regional party organization...