Word: soviet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1980
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...death had been circulating insistently in Moscow, the official communiqué had been postponed while the Kremlin leaders apparently considered how much posthumous praise should be accorded their late comrade. There was an inconvenient fact: Kosygin had died on the eve of Brezhnev's birthday, when the Soviet press traditionally publishes panegyrics to the Soviet President, now 74. When the birthday celebrations were over, Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders finally paid tribute to Kosygin with such ritual phrases as: "he labored selflessly for the good of the Soviet state...
...Nikolai Tikhonov two months ago, he had maintained an iron grip over the vast state bureaucracy that he commanded. World leaders had learned not to judge Kosygin by appearances. In spite of his characteristically hangdog expression, he had been capable of driving as hard a bargain as any Soviet leader since Joseph Stalin. Equally tough and tenacious in the Kremlin corridors of power, Kosygin was unsurpassed in his ability to sidestep the purges that had swept away other Soviet leaders of his generation. Justifiably, he earned a reputation as the U.S.S.R.'s great survivor...
...early supporter of Khrushchev's, Kosygin continued his rise in the Soviet hierarchy as a Deputy Premier after Khrushchev was made party chief in 1953. Following the Kremlin conspiracy to oust Khrushchev in 1964, Kosygin and Brezhnev divided up the two posts that their predecessor had held simultaneously. Brezhnev took over the much more powerful job of Party Secretary, while Kosygin became Premier, which put him in control of the day-to-day management of the Soviet government. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger viewed Kosygin as a pragmatist, with "a glacial exterior" who was "orthodox if not rigid...
Like factory and office workers, farmers suffered through a year of upheaval. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Carter suspended shipment of $2.6 billion worth of corn, wheat and soybeans to the Soviet Union. Farm prices immediately collapsed, with the price of corn falling by 10% within three days of trading, the price of soybeans by 8% and that of wheat by 9%. Many farmers suffered a second disaster when a searing summer heat wave and drought scorched crops and pasture lands from Texas to North Dakota. The temperature in Dallas was over 100° for 53 days...
DIED. Alexei Kosygin, 76, longtime Soviet Premier who with Leonid Brezhnev and Nikolai Podgorny formed the "troika" that wrested power from Nikita Khrushchev in 1964; of a heart attack; in Moscow (see WORLD...