Word: chernenko
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...machine. "During his last months, Andropov ran the U.S.S.R. through Gorbachev," says one Soviet historian. Gorbachev's time to run the country in his own name had not yet come when Andropov died in February 1984. The Kremlin Old Guard conferred the leadership on the 72-year- old Konstantin Chernenko. But Chernenko was all too obviously an interim leader, and when he also became too ill to function, Gorbachev conducted the weekly Politburo meetings and headed the government in all but name. The final step occurred on March 10, 1985, when Chernenko died and the Secretariat elected Gorbachev General Secretary...
...been designated only a candidate member of the Politburo rather than a full member, as his immediate predecessors were, and a number of his subordinates have been replaced. On the other hand, Gorbachev has restored to grace Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, 67, who was removed as chief of staff by Chernenko. Ogarkov has been made operational commander of the Soviet Union's western front. His ideas sometimes clash with mainstream military thinking; he is thought to favor more emphasis on conventional, and less on nuclear, weapons. Says one senior Western diplomat: "The military cannot be too happy with the way things...
What did all the moving and shaking mean? One thing for certain: less than four months after he took office as General Secretary of the Communist Party following Chernenko's death, Gorbachev, 54, was consolidating his power, as one U.S. Kremlinologist put it, "faster than any previous leader in Soviet history." In April the urbane, affable Soviet leader had gained three new places for his supporters on a newly expanded, 13-member Politburo. The latest shake-up was apparently aimed at giving Gorbachev the same kind of free hand, and perhaps a wider range of policy choices, in his dealings...
...Supreme Soviet, the Soviet Union's nominal parliament. Gorbachev had been widely expected to use that session to assume the presidency, formally known as the Chairmanship of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. That would have followed the example of his three predecessors, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Chernenko. Instead, Gorbachev rose in Moscow's columned Great Kremlin Palace to declare that his duties demanded such "intensity" that he should concentrate on the party leadership. He then nominated Gromyko, 75, who he described as an "eminent political figure" and also, significantly, as "one of the oldest party members." Then came...
Whatever else the moves implied, it appeared that Gorbachev had found a novel and relatively graceful way to ring down the curtain on an era while continuing his rejuvenation of the Politburo. Since the end of Chernenko's painfully indecisive 13-month reign, Gromyko has been widely viewed as the foremost member of the Kremlin's Old Guard. His personal power reached an apogee last March when, it is believed, he played a principal role in winning the party leadership for Gorbachev. Gromyko nominated Gorbachev in an impassioned speech to the Politburo (subsequently published) that was seemingly designed to overcome...