The next big test for Brezhnev was over the found-ing of the independent trade union, Solidarity, which was established in Poland in September 1980.. Brezhnev’s successor as general secr
Trang 1The next big test for Brezhnev was over the
found-ing of the independent trade union, Solidarity, which was
established in Poland in September 1980 When by the
following year Solidarity boasted a membership of 10
million, Brezhnev was keen on the Polish authorities’
act-ing quickly On December 13, 1981, the Polish
govern-ment imposed martial law and declared the Solidarity
trade union illegal Its leader, Lech Wałe˛sa, was arrested
and his release only days after Brezhnev’s death clearly
indicated Brezhnev’s role in the crackdown
When Brezhnev died on November 10, 1982, in
Mos-cow, he was buried in Red Square Apparently the team
that had embalmed Lenin and had looked after Lenin’s
body for decades expected to be asked to embalm
Brezh-nev, but this was not the case For many years Brezhnev
had been a familiar figure on the international stage He
had also received more public honors than most
Sovi-et leaders, including the Lenin Peace Prize in 1973, the
title of marshal of the Soviet Union in 1976, the Order
of Victory (the highest military honor) in 1978, and the
Lenin Prize for Literature (for his memoirs) in 1979 In
hindsight, however, the Brezhnev era was regarded as
one of economic stagnation Although published
eco-nomic figures showed that the economy was improving,
and that economic growth had accelerated, the truth
was that the Soviet infrastructure was wearing out, and
its military was unable to keep up with new technology
being designed in the United States The Brezhnev years
represented a decline in initiative, and the economy was
largely maintained through the country’s massive natural
resources
Brezhnev’s successor as general secretary of the CPSU
was Yuri Andropov, who, although he had been head of
the feared KGB, was determined to overcome the malaise
that had taken place during the 1970s He had been the
man who had actually carried out Brezhnev’s policies of
putting dissidents in mental asylums and forced internal
exile In a surprise move, Andropov immediately launched
a crackdown on official corruption Andropov also tried to
repair relations with China, but died after only 15 months
as general secretary He was replaced by one of Brezhnev’s
staunchest supporters, Konstantin Chernenko On
Chern-enko’s death after 13 months as general secretary Mikhail
Gorbachev became general secretary of the CPSU
Further reading: Anderson, Richard Public Politics in an
Authoritarian State: Making Foreign Policy During the zhnev Years Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993;
Bre-zhnev, Leonid I Memoirs Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1982;
Dallin, Alexander, ed The Khrushchev and Brezhnev Years
New York: Garland, 1992; Gelman, Harry The Brezhnev
Politburo and the Decline of Détente Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1984
Justin Corfield
Brown v Board of Education
The unanimous May 17, 1954, U.S Supreme Court
decision known informally as Brown sent shock waves
through a deeply segregated nation and strengthened the growing African-American Civil Rights movement Intended to end the racial segregation of public schools,
the Brown decision made important inroads, but
educa-tional equality for minorities remained elusive
By 1948 the National Association for the Advance-ment of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense and Educational Fund, headed by lawyer Thurgood Mar-shall, was focusing on dramatically unequal public schools Eventually they would bring to the nation’s highest court a group of five lawsuits initiated by African-American parents from South Carolina; Virgin-ia; Washington, DC; Delaware; and Topeka, Kansas
The Brown case was named for Oliver Brown, the
pastor father of Linda, a seven-year-old third-grader She daily navigated a Topeka rail yard and busy roads
to attend an all-black school although a white school was nearby Compared to other school systems in the
Brown case, Topeka provided relatively equal
facili-ties to its tiny black population; community activists emphasized that racial separation made black children there feel inferior
The combined cases reached the Supreme Court in
1952, but its ruling was postponed in anticipation of
a rehearing By then the Court had a newly appointed chief justice, Earl Warren, a former Republican governor
of California Brown would become the first of many
cases that made the Warren Court a byword for judicial activism on behalf of America’s disenfranchised
Warren read the 11-page decision aloud It invoked the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment in support
of equal protection for minorities It marshaled socio-logical and psychosocio-logical evidence showing that racial separation, especially of children, rendered them
“inher-ently unequal.” And Brown invalidated Plessy v Fergu-son, the 1896 ruling that had affirmed the doctrine of
“separate but equal.” In 1955 with a decision dubbed
Brown II, the Court urged federal judges to undo school
segregation “with all deliberate speed.”
By then a forceful white backlash had emerged Although some southern and border states began to