ABSTRACT

Leonid Brezhnev's consolidation of power was slow but relatively smooth. While he took longer to establish his dominance than had Stalin or Nikita Khrushchev, he managed to do so without the upheavals and eruptions of open conflict that had characterised their struggles for supremacy. Brezhnev had become party leader largely because of the party elite's hostility towards Khrushchev's frequent reorganisations and even more frequent redeployment of subordinates. When Konstantin Chernenko readmitted Stalin's old henchman, the 94-year-old Vyacheslav Molotov, to the party, more than a quarter-century after his expulsion by Khrushchev, sharp-tongued Muscovites suggested that Chernenko must be grooming a successor. Brezhnev slowly but surely promoted a growing number of former subordinates who had served under him in Moldavia and Ukraine to key positions at the centre. The rise of the so-called 'Dnepropetrovsk mafia' was particularly clear evidence of Brezhnev's ascendance.