Word: chernenko
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Lomeiko specifically knocked down speculation that Chernenko might resign at a Central Committee meeting, possibly next month. When Loory asked whether Chernenko was seriously ill, Lomeiko denied it point-blank. Said he: "All Politburo members are entitled to a monthlong winter vacation, and the General Secretary is taking his." Where? Somewhere outside Moscow...
Lomeiko's denial was a standard Soviet ploy, aimed at buttressing the Kremlin's image of monolithic authority. Veteran observers in Moscow quickly decided that Chernenko's purported answers were probably the work of Leonid Zamyatin, head of the Central Committee's international information department. But Lomeiko's bland suggestion concerning Chernenko's whereabouts was eerily similar to the explanations given out about Chernenko's predecessor, Yuri Andropov, who died last February after being out of public view for six months. Just a few weeks before his death, Andropov was said to be recuperating from a slight ailment. A similar...
...speculation that poured forth last week reflected Western eagerness to plumb, however erratically, the Kremlin's unfathomable ways. In Washington, Syndicated Columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak reported that Rumanian intelligence officials had passed word to the U.S. that Chernenko, 73, had suffered a stroke. The conservative U.S. journalists also floated the notion, citing sources in the Reagan Administration, that Politburo Member Gorbachev was out of the running for the top Kremlin job. Instead, they reported, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, 75, might take over...
...Paris, the left-leaning French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur said that Chernenko had suffered a "brain (stroke) or cardiac attack." The attack occurred a week ago and robbed Chernenko of his speech, the magazine claimed...
...London, the Sunday Times reported that Chernenko was ready to step down voluntarily as Communist Party General Secretary because of his deteriorating health. But the newspaper insisted that Gorbachev was still the likely successor, even if Chernenko might remain, in a strictly ceremonial capacity, as President of the U.S.S.R. Gorbachev's main competitor for the leadership, the Sunday Times said, was still Politburo Member Grigori Romanov, 61. Yet another rumor circulating in the corridors of Whitehall had it that the late Defense Minister Ustinov had left a last will and testament urging the Politburo to choose Gorbachev as party leader...