Word: suslov
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When Mikhail Suslov, the Soviet Communist Party's chief ideologue, made his final television appearance last December, the image that flashed on Soviet screens was a veritable icon of the Kremlin's masters. In an arresting gesture that symbolized 17 years of shared power, the lanky, 6-ft.-tall Suslov, 79, bent down to bestow a kiss on Leonid Brezhnev, who was celebrating his 75th birthday. Brezhnev will sorely miss such accolades, both ceremonial and substantive. Suslov's death last week from a stroke deprived Brezhnev of his most influential ally in the Soviet Union...
...funeral, Brezhnev appeared grief-stricken as he shuffled along, supported by aides, behind Suslov's coffin. Before the body was lowered into a grave next to Joseph Stalin's beside the Kremlin Wall, Brezhnev read a eulogy: "While saying goodbye to our comrade, I would like to tell him, 'Sleep peacefully, our dear friend; you have led a great and glorious life...
Brezhnev's advanced age and his less than robust demeanor at the nationally televised funeral underline new anxieties about who will succeed him in the key post of Communist Party chief. Had he outlived Brezhnev, Suslov was expected to use his formidable authority as senior Politburo member to ensure an orderly transfer of power. The leading contenders for Brezhnev's job now include Politburo Stalwarts Andrei Kirilenko, 75, and Konstantin Chernenko, 70. According to Yale University Kremlinologist Wolfgang Leonhard, no current Soviet leader except Brezhnev comes "anywhere near Suslov in influence, stature, administrative skill and statesmanship...
...Kania's lip service to the Soviet bloc, the Central Committee's actions seemed to fly in the face of Moscow's injunctions. Only six days before the plenum began, hard-lining Soviet Ideologue Mikhail Suslov had flown to Warsaw to deliver what was presumed to be a stiff warning to hold the line against further democratization. Shortly after that, a sizzling article published by TASS, the official Soviet news agency, charged unnamed Polish party reformists with "revisionism"-one of the gravest epithets in the Communist lexicon and one that was invoked against the reform-minded Czechoslovak...
...Suslov's personal intervention in Poland coincided with some reminders that armed intervention could ultimately enforce Moscow's injunctions. Members of the Warsaw Pact's Military Council, a phalanx of top-level generals, converged on the Bulgarian capital of Sofia last week for a three-day strategy meeting. Speaking in Moscow on the 111th anniversary of Lenin's birth, meanwhile, Soviet Politburo Member Konstantin Chernenko accused the West of trying to "destabilize" Poland and warned that "we will not allow anybody to infringe on the lawful interests of our country and our allies...