Word: gorbachev
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Dates: during 1982-1982
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Andropov will also need to consolidate his hold on the Central Committee Secretariat, the Moscow bureaucracy that manages the day-to-day affairs of the party. Officials who hold jobs in both the Secretariat and the Politburo, like Agriculture Specialist Mikhail Gorbachev, 51, wield the most clout. Andropov and his colleagues are answerable in theory to the Central Committee, a body made up of 308 voting and 147 nonvoting members who represent a cross section of the nation. In practice, the Politburo and the Central Committee Secretariat exercise limitless power in running the Soviet Union...
...stewardship, Brezhnev was unwilling to dilute his power by infusing new blood into a Politburo that was packed mostly with his longtime comrades and cronies. When Brezhnev died, only two of the voting members of the Politburo represented the younger generation of leaders: Grigori Romanov, 59, and Mikhail Gorbachev...
Given his age, Andropov could prove to be a transitional leader for the Soviets, with the power moving on by decade's end to men like Gorbachev and Vladimir Dolgikh, 57, who are not well known in the Soviet Union, let alone in the U.S. Totally obscure, of course, are the thousands of other politicians and administrators who are seeking to climb upward from their present middle-level party positions. Almost all are male and in their 50s, but hardly anything is known about the personalities or views of these people...
...better-educated generation of Soviet leaders, Gorbachev holds a law degree from Moscow State University. Well-tailored and self-confident, the short, round-faced Gorbachev has the air of an intellectual, and can make perfunctory speeches sound almost interesting. As a newcomer to Moscow politics, he has yet to attract a following in the party bureaucracy. Says a Western analyst: "He's only served in one part of the country, dealing with one issue. His party and functional bases are very narrow." But as a member of the Party Secretariat as well as a full member of the Politburo...
...fact that each of the other three leading contenders for Brezhnev's mantle has a major handicap. Kirilenko, who has rarely been seen in public in recent months, is believed to be ill. Chernenko, though a Brezhnev protégé, has no power base of his own. Gorbachev, who runs Soviet agriculture, lacks broad experience. Still, he is young and aggressive enough to accumulate power within the next few years as the elderly Politburo members...