Word: vasili
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that another change in command was under way after little more than a year seemed hard to believe. Soviet citizens knew Andropov was ill, but many, uneasy with the prospect of a new transition, believed reports that he was convalescing. So a guessing game began. Some Soviets thought that Vasili Kuznetsov, the oldest member of the ruling elite, might have died on the eve of his 83rd birthday. Others figured it was Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, 75, who had canceled an official visit to India a week earlier. But a worried Moscow housewife gave voice to the fear she shared...
...blaze had broken out on Dec. 15 in a pile of boxes lying on the floor of the station. The flames destroyed important electronic monitoring devices and control panels, but no one was injured. The Soviets denied that the accident would keep the pipeline from completion in June. Said Vasili Dinkov. Soviet Minister of the Gas Industry: "All the contentions by Western propaganda that the pipeline supposedly will not be ready by the scheduled date are nothing but an attempt to engage in wishful thinking." But Western experts contend that the fire at the Urengoi station, the largest...
...Andropov came in through a side door, accompanied by Tikhonov, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Supreme Soviet Deputy Chairman Vasili Kuznetsov, the new Kremlin leader surprised everyone with his appearance. Pale and looking far older than in his official portraits, Andropov walked with a slow, distinctive gait. He put each leg forward cautiously, his head down as if he were studying the design on the red carpet laid in his path. One guest, a Briton, whispered, "Why, he can hardly see!" Indeed, as Andropov raised his head to face the waiting foreign envoys, his thick bifocal glasses betrayed a vision...
Avid Russian readers used to strip Soviet bookshops of a new novel by Vasili Aksyonov as if they were stocking up on candles before a storm. A first printing of 100,000 copies would vanish from the stores within 48 hours, and any magazine containing an Aksyonov short story, like his celebrated Halfway to the Moon, could count on the immediate sellout of a 2 million-copy press run. No other prose writer of the post-Stalin generation commanded such an impassioned following; no other offered a more radical departure from the standard Socialist Realist fare. His nonconformity came naturally...
...DIED. Vasili Chuikov, 82, Russian military commander and hero of the Soviets' stalwart defense of Stalingrad during World War II. Chuikov accepted the German surrender of Berlin and headed the Soviet occupation forces in East Germany from...