Word: chernenko
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...Chernenko may be well suited to serve as chairman of the board in what could prove to be the most collective Soviet leadership since the first years of the Brezhnev era. A major test of his personal power will come when the Politburo decides who will assume two other posts left vacant after Andropov's death: the largely ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, in effect President, and Chairman of the Defense Council, a shadowy group that oversees national security policy (see chart). If Chernenko fails to be named to either post, he may prove...
Just as Andropov promoted several of his own men into the party machinery, Chernenko could use his power of appointment to consolidate control. But he too may run out of time. For the second time, the Politburo has postponed handing authority to the younger generation, represented by Geidar Aliyev, 60, Mikhail Gorbachev, 52, Grigori Romanov, 61 and Vitali Vorotnikov, 58. One of Chernenko's most pressing tasks will be to find ways of moving men like these into positions of power without threatening the old guard. One possibility is to give one of the "youths" the job of Premier...
...high rank in the state bureaucracy." If Andropov had been grooming Gorbachev to succeed him, as had been widely thought, Gorbachev was apparently shrewd enough not to press his claims now. In a move that could be significant, he gave the closing address at the party meeting that elected Chernenko; when Andropov was named, that honor had gone to Chernenko. Another hint of Gorbachev's rise in status came when he stood at Chernenko's right as the leadership paid its respects to Andropov at the neoclassical House of Trade Unions. Gorbachev later assumed a prominent position among the pallbearers...
Since the Central Committee session was closed to the public, it was during Andropov's burial ceremony that Soviets heard Chernenko speak for the first time as leader of the Communist Party. The performance did not inspire confidence. Standing atop the dark red marble Lenin Mausoleum in 23° F weather, Chernenko read the prepared text of his eulogy haltingly, almost gasping his words. He restated briefly the main foreign policy themes of his address to the party plenum. Noting that the Soviet Union was ready "for honest talks on the basis of equality and equal security," Chernenko also warned that...
...lowered into the ground 50 feet from the Kremlin wall. From the Moscow River, foghorns blared, joining with sirens, wheezing factory whistles and rolling gunfire in a mournful cacophony. When the noisy tribute had ended, an eerie silence hung for five minutes over Red Square?and the nation. Then Chernenko and his eleven comrades on the Politburo regrouped on the mausoleum to review troops from the Moscow garrison, parading briskly past them to the strains of a stirring march. The Andropov era, brief as it was, had ended...