When Chernenko died in March 1985, Gorbachev assumed power unopposed.

On February 9, 1984 Andropov died and was succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko who in turn died on March 10, 1985.

When Chernenko died Shevardnadze's had become a strong supporter Mikhail Gorbachev's leadership candidacy.

Andropov died on February 9, 1984 and Chernenko was elected his replacement on February 13 but Chernenko was a compromise stopgap candidate as Gorbachev – Andropov's protege – lacked sufficient support in the Politburo.

However, Chernenko was already an ill man and his duties were increasingly carried out by others, particularly Gorbachev who was nominated by Andrei Gromyko to become General Secretary when Chernenko died.

There are indications Gorbachev may have been in control prior to Chernenko's death as he was announced as the new General Secretary the day after Chernenko died on March 10, 1985.

Four days after Andropov's death, on 9 February 1984, Chernenko was elected as the party's General Secretary.

Kremvax was announced on April 1, 1984 in a posting ostensibly originated there by Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko.

Original CIA file on Chernenko, seized from the former US Embassy in Tehran.

At the Central Committee plenary session on 13 February 1984, four days after Andropov's death, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Premier, and Politburo member Nikolai Tikhonov moved that Chernenko be elected general secretary, and the Committee duly voted him in.

Arkady Volsky, an aide to Andropov and other general secretaries, recounts an episode that occurred after a Politburo meeting on the day following Andropov's demise: As Politburo members filed out of the conference hall, either Andrei Gromyko or ( in later accounts ) Dmitriy Ustinov is said to have put his arm round Nikolai Tikhonov's shoulders and said: " It's okay, Kostya is an agreeable guy ( pokladisty muzhik ), one can do business with him ...." The Politburo failed to pass the decision for Gorbachev, who was nominally Chernenko's second in command, to run the meetings of the Politburo itself in the absence of Chernenko ; the latter due to his declining health, began to miss those meetings with increasing frequency.

The one major personnel change Chernenko made was the dismissal of the chief of the General Staff, Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, who had advocated less spending on consumer goods in favor of greater expenditures on weapons research and development.

On 28th February 1985, Chernenko appeared once more on television to receive parliamentary credentials and read out a brief statement on his electoral victory: the election campaign is over and now it is time to carry out the tasks set for us by the voters and the Communists who have spoken out.

He became the third Soviet leader to die in less than three years, and, upon being informed in the middle of the night of his death, US President Ronald Reagan, who was seven months older than Chernenko and just over three years older than his predecessor Andropov, is reported to have remarked " how am I supposed to get any place with the Russians if they keep dying on me?

The papers had the same format: page 1 reported the party Central Committee session on 11 March that elected Gorbachev and printed the new leader's biography and a large photograph of him ; page 2 announced the demise of Chernenko and printed his obituary.

Chernenko was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, 1976, in 1981 and in 1984 he was awarded Hero of the Socialist Labour: on the latter occasion, Minister of Defence Ustinov underlined his rule as an " outstanding political figure, a loyal and unwavering continuer of the cause of the great Lenin "; in 1981 he was awarded with the Bulgarian Order of Georgi Dimitrov and in 1982 he received the Lenin Prize for his " Human Rights in Soviet Society.

The only ones who saw him on a regular basis were Politburo members Dmitriy Ustinov, Andrei Gromyko, Konstantin Chernenko and Viktor Chebrikov.

When Chernenko came on board in 1976, Kirilenko supervised the economy.

According to historian Ilya Zemtsov, the author of Chernenko: The Last Bolshevik: The Soviet Union on the Eve of Perestroika, Brezhnev began starting a conspiracy against Khrushchev when he found out that he had chosen Podgorny, and not himself, as his potential successor.

The practice of burying dignitaries on Red Square ended with the funeral of Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985.

Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko ( 24 September 1911 – 10 March 1985 ) was a Soviet politician and the fifth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Following the death of terminally ill Konstantin Chernenko, the Politburo elected Mikhail Gorbachev to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ( CPSU ) in March 1985, marking the rise of a new generation of leadership.

In 1985, he was considered Mikhail Gorbachev's main rival in the succession struggle after the death of Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985.

In the months preceding the death of Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985, Romanov and Gorbachev were commonly regarded to be chief rivals in the succession struggle for the post of General Secretary.

However, Chernenko did strengthen his position considerably at the beginning of 1985, not long before his death.

Emphysema and the associated lung and heart damage worsened significantly for Chernenko in the last three weeks of February 1985.

" Soviet Policy: From Chernenko to Gorbachev ," Aussenpolitik, 36, No. 4, April 1985, 357 – 75.

Within three years of the deaths of Soviet Leaders Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko, Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo in 1985.

* 1911 – Konstantin Chernenko, Soviet politician ( d. 1985 )

** Konstantin Chernenko, President of the Soviet Union ( d. 1985 )

* Konstantin Chernenko ( 1911 – 1985 ), Soviet politician and General Secretary of the CPSU

Chernenko was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985.

Upon the deaths of Leonid Brezhnev ( 1982 ), Yuri Andropov ( 1984 ) and Konstantin Chernenko ( 1985 ), Kuznetzov became acting chairman of the Presidiumthe Soviet Union's acting head of state.

In an attempt to stress his closeness to Chernenko, he dragged the terminally ill Soviet leader out to vote in early 1985.

When Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary in 1985, Ligachev was promoted to become a Secretary of higher status, and was generally viewed as one of Gorbachev ’ s primary allies: he had helped organize a pro-Gorbachev faction in hope of having Gorbachev succeed Andropov in 1984, although this attempt failed ( instead, Konstantin Chernenko was chosen as a stop-gap candidate ).

Mikhail Gorbachev became the party's general secretary in 1985 following an interregnum after Brezhnev's death in 1982 when the party was led first by Yuri Andropov and then by Konstantin Chernenko.

When Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko as General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985, it signaled a dramatic change in Soviet foreign policy.

Chernenko was elected as a compromise candidate by the Politburo ; the Central Committee could never have accepted another candidate, considering that the majority of the Central Committee members were old Brezhnev appointees.

Chernenko never got complete control over the Central Committee and Party apparatus ; while Andropov never succeeded in removing the majority of Brezhnev appointees in the Central Committee, he had succeeding in dividing the Central Committee along factional lines.

The distribution of power within the Central Committee turned Chernenko into little more than a figurehead.

In contrast to previous general secretaries, Chernenko did not control the Cadre Department of the Central Committee, making Chernenko's position considerably weaker.

But Andropov's ability to reshape the top leadership was constrained by his poor health and the influence of his rival ( and longtime ally of Leonid Brezhnev ) Konstantin Chernenko, who had previously supervised personnel matters in the Central Committee.

Chernenko followed Brezhnev in 1956 to fill a similar propaganda post in the CPSU Central Committee in Moscow.

In 1971 Chernenko was promoted to full membership in the Central Committee: Overseeing Party work over the Letter Bureau, dealing with correspondence.

By the end of 1984, Chernenko could hardly leave the Central Clinical Hospital, a heavily guarded facility in west Moscow, and the Politburo was affixing a facsimile of his signature to all letters, as Chernenko had done with Andropov's when he was dying.

* Konstantin Chernenko, later leader of the Soviet Union, becomes a candidate member of the Central Committee.

In 1976, Brezhnev appointed Konstantin Chernenko to be his " counterweight " in the Central Committee ( CC ).

Konstantin Chernenko, another old Brezhnev protégé, became a " counterweight " to Kirilenko's power within the Central Committee ( CC ).