Word: ustinov
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...believed to be suffering from emphysema, has been absent from public view for about a month. Soviet television last showed an apparently frail Chernenko on Dec. 27, handing out awards at a Kremlin ceremony. Three days earlier he had missed the funeral of Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, held in Red Square on a bitterly cold...
When Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, 67, was abruptly removed as Chief of Staff and Deputy Defense Minister last September, it was widely assumed that he had fallen out of favor with the Kremlin. The first official indication of his new standing came in an obituary for Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, which was published on Dec. 22. Ogarkov's name appeared in the tenth of 17 rows of official signatures. Said a Western diplomat in Moscow: "He must be in about a third-echelon position...
...warm. Looking down from atop the Lenin Mausoleum, members of the Politburo of the Communist Party tugged at the earflaps of their thick fur hats and pulled their coat collars tight. They had braved -7 degrees F weather last week to pay tribute to the late Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov and to witness the sealing of his ashes in a burial niche in the Kremlin wall...
...death of Ustinov, a fixture of the Soviet military establishment for more than four decades, had been expected to bring change within the leadership, the Kremlin proved once again that it is possible to march forward and still stay in place. There had been speculation that Politburo Member Grigori Romanov, 61, a civilian defense-industry expert from Leningrad, might replace Ustinov. Instead the post went to Marshal Sergei Sokolov, the First Deputy Defense Minister, who at 73 is the oldest man ever appointed to the job. As one Western diplomat in Moscow noted, the Kremlin opted "for the safe...
...With Ustinov gone, the number of voting members in the Politburo has dropped to eleven, the lowest count in more than a decade. Sokolov may be elevated to the Politburo, but he is not expected to wield the same power that Ustinov did. A professional soldier, Sokolov began his career in the tank corps in the 1930s and rose through the ranks to become a regional military commander and, eventually, the senior administrative officer of the Defense Ministry. Said a NATO diplomat in Moscow: "The appointment does not change the basic rule that policy is made by the civilians...