ABSTRACT
12 April 1984. The Supreme Soviet of the USSR has assembled in one of its infrequent plenary meetings in the Kremlin for the purpose of granting its pro forma endorsement to the new—though actually very elderly—leader of the country, Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko. Chernenko, of course, became the effective chief executive in February when the Politburo and Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union gave him their nod to succeed the deceased Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Party. The charge now to the Supreme Soviet is to confer upon Chernenko the additional office of chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet—i.e., ceremonial chief of state—an honor that both his immediate predecessors, Andropov and Brezhnev, enjoyed.
