Word: leonid
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...Soviet relations, Moscow Bureau Chief Erik Amfitheatrof studied the record of the past and consulted dozens of Soviet and Western sources. He also drew on his on-the-scene experience of watching Gromyko at numerous Kremlin functions, including the receptions for foreign statesmen that followed the funerals of Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov. On those occasions, he reports, Gromyko lingered longer with East bloc allies and exchanged only perfunctory greetings with Western leaders. "The exception," Amfitheatrof notes, "was Britain's Margaret Thatcher, who seemed able to charm the grim-faced Foreign Minister...
...Soviets also were trying last week to depict themselves as conciliatory. At a press conference eleven hours before Reagan's, chief Kremlin Spokesman Leonid Zamyatin raised similar hopes for a summit. "We want to have negotiations with the U.S. on a whole complex of issues," he said. But like Reagan, he did not drop the condition that the agenda be carefully worked out beforehand. Also like Reagan, he was primarily concerned with imagery. Neither side wants to be seen by the rest of the world as outrageously bellicose; each accuses the other of being the intransigent party. Reagan said...
Ever since Leonid Brezhnev became seriously ill, the Soviet Union has had no strong direction from the top. As Brezhnev's health deteriorated, decision making was virtually paralyzed. His successor, Andropov, began his tenure by projecting a forceful image, particularly in cracking down on corruption, absenteeism and economic inefficiency. But soon he too was mortally ill; from Aug. 18, 1983, until his death last February, he was not seen in public. Again, decisions were postponed as his colleagues waited and presumably maneuvered for position...
...confines of its own empire) as enemy territory. The Kremlin has always regarded peace as war conducted by other means, and that goes particularly for peace with its arch adversary. Nikita Khrushchev saw no contradiction between his hope for "peaceful coexistence" and his boast "We will bury you." Similarly, Leonid Brezhnev made no bones about how the "ideological struggle" would continue despite détente...
Shortly after Yuri Andropov succeeded Leonid Brezhnev as Soviet leader in November 1982, there was talk in Moscow of a face-saving pullout from the costly war of attrition. But Konstantin Chernenko, who replaced Andropov after that leader's death last February, seems uninterested in the notion. "We detected a hardening once Chernenko came to power," says Abdullah Osman, head of the Mujahedin-run Union of Afghan Doctors. Sure enough, Soviet troops recently stepped up patrols along both the southeastern border with Pakistan and the western border with Iran. "If the enemies of the motherland do not surrender," warned...