POLITICS

The aftermath of the removal of Khrushchev in October 1964 bore distinct similarities to the power struggle that followed Stalin's death. Once again the newly installed leaders insisted that they would avoid “the cult of personality” – a fault for which they blamed Khrushchev – and institute “collective leadership,” which they assured the peoples of the Soviet Union was the only appropriate form of government for a socialist country.

Leonid Brezhnev assumed the most important post, the first secretaryship of the central committee, and Alexei Kosygin became premier while remaining a member of the Politburo. Nikolai Podgornyi took the chairmanship of the Supreme Soviet – in other words, he became the president of the republic. Gradually, Brezhnev emerged as the supreme leader, and in appearance at least the Soviet Union once again had a single leader. While in the mid-1960s it was the premier – i.e., Kosygin – who met with important foreign leaders, as time went on Brezhnev more and more often assumed this role. It was Kosygin, for example, who met with Lyndon Johnson in Glassboro, N.J.; but a few years later Brezhnev received Richard Nixon in Moscow.

Brezhnev gradually developed a modest personality cult: he had a city named after himself; collections of his boring, rambling speeches were published. His idealized pictures were plastered all over the enormous country, and schoolchildren learned about his “magnificent achievements” as leader at the time of the “great patriotic war.”