"Andropov died the following month, to be succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko, an enfeebled geriatric so zombie-like as to be beyond assessing intelligence reports, alarming or not. Having failed to prevent the NATO missile deployments, Foreign Minister Gromyko soon grudgingly agreed to resume arms control negotiations. Meanwhile Reagan was running for re-election as both a hawk and a dove: in November he trounced his Democratic opponent, Walter Mondale. And when Chernenko died in March, 1985, at the age of seventy-four, it seemed an all-too-literal validation of Reagan's predictions about "last pages" and historical "ash-heaps." Seventy-four himself at the time, the president had another line ready: "How am I supposed to get anyplace with the Russians, if they keep dying on me?""
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Heads of stateGeneral Secretaries of the Communist Party of the Soviet UnionAtheists from RussiaPeople of the Cold WarCommunist Party of the Soviet Union members
Original Language: English
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Sources
John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (2006), p. 228
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Konstantin_Chernenko
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Konstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko (24 September 1911 – 10 March 1985) was a Soviet politician, who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
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