Poiltician; Born February 7, 1923; Died June 3, 2006 Grigory Romanov, who has died in Moscow aged 85, was a Politburo member who had been seen as the chief rival to Mikhail Gorbachev to become Soviet leader in the mid-1980s.
Romanov became a full member of the ruling Politburo in 1976, when the Soviet Union was led by Leonid Brezhnev, who treated him as his successor. But when Brezhnev died in 1982, he was succeeded by KGB chief Yuri Andropov.
Andropov, in turn, promoted Romanov from Leningrad party boss to heading the Soviet Union's military-industrial complex. Romanov maintained his post after Andropov's death during the short rule of Konstantin Chernenko. He was ousted from the Politburo shortly after Gorbachev took over in 1985 as the new Soviet leader was consolidating his power.
Romanov left political life and dropped out of sight, although he was remembered in news reports marking his 85th birthday in February.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article