Word: chernenko
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...more than a month, the questions and rumors have been piling up like snow flurries around the red-brown walls of the Kremlin. Where is Konstantin Chernenko, who was last seen on Dec. 27, handing out awards at a televised ceremony? How sick is he? Is the frail Soviet party leader and President, who suffers from a pulmonary disorder, dying? Is he about to resign? Above all, who will succeed...
...frenetic activity might prove to be a futile exercise. Chernenko could reappear in public at any moment, or be seen on Soviet TV. But even if the General Secretary resurfaces soon, it is apparent that the Soviet regime is once again face to face with one of its fundamental shortcomings: the lack of institutional means to ensure the orderly transfer of power. Given Chernenko's age and evident frailty, the Soviet Union may in any event soon be undergoing its third leadership succession since 1982. Indeed, Soviet analysts around the world are busy trying to assess the likely makeup...
With speculation about Chernenko running wild, Soviet officialdom finally took a clumsy hand. Last Thursday, Stuart Loory, the Moscow-based American correspondent for Cable News Network, was summoned to the press department of Moscow's Foreign Ministry, where Official Spokesman Vladimir Lomeiko handed him typewritten answers to four questions on U.S.-Soviet arms-control negotiations that Loory had submitted to Chernenko on Jan. 9. The unsigned document, Loory was told, came from the Soviet leader himself. It reiterated standard Soviet positions: "serious and purposeful" discussions with the U.S. about nuclear-arms reductions were possible, but only if tied to restrictions...
Foreign observers are fairly confident that they know the name of Chernenko's stand-in at the top of the Kremlin pyramid: Politburo Member Mikhail Gorbachev, 53. During Gorbachev's highly publicized trip to Britain last December, officials in the Soviet entourage made no effort to dampen assertions in the British press that their boss was Moscow's de facto...
Both Gorbachev's high-profile trip and Moscow's relative candor about Chernenko's illness have convinced foreign diplomats of one other thing about the Kremlin. Says a Western resident in Moscow: "They've become smarter in handling public opinion...