And the The Welcome to Russian History Retold, episode 173, a rotten stinking mess,

Breshnev Andropov and Chernenko.

When I first started writing this episode, I was going to make it a short one on the two-year

combined range of Uri And Dropov and Constantine Shurnenko. But while researching through my library, I came to the conclusion that I needed a little bit of Brezhnev,

as they were all pretty much tightly intertwined.

Leonad Brezhnev was the leader of pretty much tightly intertwined.

Leonad Brejenev was the leader of the USSR since he deposed Nikita Krustrov in 1964.

Chernenko was his chief of staff and on drop-off was the head of the KGB since

1967. They were the men who led the Soviet Union through the era of

stagnation and were most part responsible for the collapse of the USSR and communist rule in my opinion.

Now that may seem like a pretty heady charge but when you look at the preponderance of evidence, it's hard to deny. Each

had a part in the collapse. Chernenko, of course, with the least influence. When he became

General Secretary of the Communist Party, the country was

already bankrupt. He was by then in a rapidly declining state of health, very much

like the country he was head of. of

very much like the country he was head of. You can see a strong corollary between Andropovs and Chernenko's health and the state of

Soviet affairs.

Both sickly, both fading rapidly, but both still trying to keep things

together as long as possible. The cause of Chenenko's fading health could

be tied to a smoking since the age of nine in 1920, about the time of the

Russian Civil War.

But that wasn't the only cause of his illness.

...