Word: chernenko
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...about Gorbachev is his ability to steer away from political cant when talking with Westerners. He is also able to mask his feelings when the occasion calls for it. When French President Francois Mitterrand mentioned Soviet Dissident Andrei Sakharov during a state banquet in the Kremlin last June, Konstantin Chernenko and Andrei Gromyko looked annoyed, but Gorbachev betrayed no emotion. "He has great control," said a French diplomat. "He was the only one who did not show anything...
...words of Mikhail Gorbachev last week, "a faithful servant of our party and people, a staunch champion of the ideals of Communism." That final tribute to Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko was in keeping with the official adulation that enveloped the late Soviet leader during the 13 months that he ruled in the Kremlin. But there was always a hollow ring to the praise...
Tens of thousands of volumes of Chernenko's collected essays and speeches and countless propaganda posters emblazoned with his quotations could not quite conceal the flaws of a man whose only real claim to power was his skill as a Communist Party functionary. Nor could they dispel the fact that Chernenko had come to power with little time to live. The record of his brief tenure in the Kremlin was etched with the painful images of his faltering struggle to rule and hold back the ravages of illness...
Speculation about who would eventually replace Chernenko began almost from the moment he was appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party in February 1984. He delivered a wheezing, gasping eulogy at the Red Square funeral of Yuri Andropov and could not hold his hand up in a salute. During the months that followed, bouts of poor health forced him to slip out of public view for weeks at a time, but he always reappeared at Kremlin ceremonies that were carefully contrived to hide his trembling hand and stumbling step. Chernenko made his last public appearance on Feb. 28 to receive...
...Chernenko was passed over once for his nation's highest office and would probably have been relegated to a footnote in Soviet history books had Andropov not died after only 15 months in office. The Old Guard in the Kremlin turned to Chernenko, the oldest man ever to become party leader, to maintain the power balance in the leadership until a younger generation was ready to take over. Within two months of assuming power, Chernenko secured the additional titles of President and chairman of the Defense Council. They carried more honor than substance: Chernenko was said to defer to Foreign...