Word: suslov
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Just a "friendly visit." That was how the official Polish press described the sudden jaunt to Warsaw last week of a high-level Soviet delegation headed by hawkish Politburo Ideologue Mikhail Suslov. But friendship, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. For hard-lining Polish Politburo Members Stefan Olszowski and Tadeusz Grabski, who were on hand to greet their Soviet comrades at Okecie Airport, the handshakes must have felt fraternal indeed. For Warsaw's Party Boss Stanislaw Kania, who led the delegation, and who has shown a tenacious commitment to reform, Suslov's arrival may have...
Most Western analysts saw Suslov's trip as a gloves-off bid to stem the tide of Polish reform. "They don't send Mikhail Suslov to hand out flowers," said a European diplomatic analyst in Moscow. Added a senior Western diplomat: "I have no doubt that he read them the riot act." If that was in fact Moscow's message, then Suslov was the right mailman. Unsmiling and wraithlike behind dark-rimmed glasses, the 78-year-old party theorist has long been the Kremlin's chief "liquidator of deviationists," as one Western expert...
...Suslov's visit may have been prompted by fears that Warsaw's Central Committee meeting this week would sanction further democratic reforms. Shortly before the visit, in fact, Kania told a socialist youth congress that "we have an unbending will to continue the process of social renewal, to develop democracy in the party and state, to reform the national economy, social life and government personnel." One could hardly draw up a list of goals more abhorrent to the Kremlin...
What most alarmed the Soviets, perhaps, were rumors that Olszowski and Grabski might be purged at the Central Committee plenum. If such a move was in the works, Suslov may have been out to save the two men from an ignominious sacking. Suslov may also have urged a postponement of the Polish Party Congress, now scheduled for July, and inveighed against plans to elect delegates to it by a democratic secret ballot...
...week's decision to give the Polish leadership another reprieve was also thought to have been adopted only after a fierce debate in the Kremlin. Reliable reports reaching Whitehall, TIME has learned, indicate that the case in favor of intervention was made by hard-line Party Ideologue Mikhail Suslov, supported by Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov. Brezhnev himself led the argument against invasion, backed by Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. The doves emerged victorious, but only just...