Do you remember Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko? Perhaps not. But he held a most important post. In title, anyway. He was, for just 13 months until March 1985, the leader of the Soviet Union. In title, anyway.
Every Thursday morning, says one sad witness, Chernenko's soon-to-be successor, Mikhail Gorbachev, “would sit in his office like a little orphan nervously awaiting a telephone call from the sick Chernenko: would he come to the Politburo himself or would he ask Gorbachev to stand in for him this time again?”
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