Gorbachev removes Brezhnev politicians

Press, 27 April 1989, Page 8

Gorbachev removes Brezhnev politicians

NZPA-Reuter Moscow In a single stroke, the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, has rid the Kremlin leadership of more than 100 relics of the era of his disgraced predecessor, Leonid Brezhnev. But after four years, Mr Gorbachev still has not engineered the promotion to the Communist Party Central Committee, the party’s top policy-making body, of some of his key crusaders for his perestroika reform programme. The slimmed-down Cen-

tral Committee which emerged from a plenary session yesterday lacked reformist party chiefs from six Soviet republics. Also missing were 88 of the 115 local party bosses, most of whom were named since Mr Gorbachev came to power. The Kremlin ideology chief, Vadim Medvedev, who gave the figures after the meeting, complained that the absence of many new leaders on the top body “cannot but affect the work of the Central Committee.” The list of resignations

read like a list of Who’s Who from the Brezhnev period, now officially condemned as an era of stagnation and corruption. They included the former leader’s Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko; his party control chief, Mikhail Solomentsev; his last Prime Minister, Nikolai Tikhonov; his Vice-President, Vasily Kuznetsov; and his ideological aide, Boris Ponomaryov. The Central Committee now numbers 251, down from 301, Mr Medvedev said.