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Article: The heir at last. (Mikhail Gorbachev) (editorial)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- April 5, 1985
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1985 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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KONSTANTIN CHERNENKO is dead, presumably of natural causes. He remained a cipher to the end, a grey apparatchik whose accession to supreme power in the Soviet Union just over a year ago seemed as much a mystery to himself as to the Western world. Chernenko had emerged from the hidden reaches of the Kremlin bureaucracy under Brezhnev, whose favor initially was his only source of power. Brezhnev liked Chernenko, pampered him, promoted him, groomed him to take over--but upon Brezhnev's death in November 1982 the KGB-backed juggernaut of Yuri Andropov swept Chernenko aside, and his power and influence waned noticeably. Yuri the liberal, the lover of jazz music and Western ...