Word: zavidovo
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Upon arrival my colleagues and I were driven to Zavidovo, the Politburo hunting preserve-the Soviet Camp David-some 90 miles northeast of Moscow. This was intended as a great honor. No Western leader had ever been invited to Zavidovo; the only other foreigners to visit it, I was told, had been Tito and President Urho Kekkonen of Finland. Our hosts did their best to convey that good relations with the U.S. meant a great deal to them...
During the Zavidovo visit, Brezhnev's vulnerability allowed a human contact that was not to recur. One afternoon I returned to my villa and found hunting attire, an elegant, military-looking olive drab, with high boots, for which I am unlikely to have any future use. Brezhnev, similarly attired, collected me in a jeep. I hate the killing of animals for sport, but Brezhnev said some wild boars had already been earmarked for me. Given my marksmanship, I replied, the cause of death would have to be heart failure. Still, I would be willing to go along...
Nonetheless, there is strong suspicion that Brezhnev's "illness" was more diplomatic than physical. TIME Moscow Correspondent John Shaw reported that Fahmy and Gamassy did not meet Brezhnev in a sanatorium but were driven in a high-speed, police-escorted convoy to Brezhnev's hunting lodge at Zavidovo, about 80 miles north of Moscow...
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