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Only the next morning, at exactly 11, did Soviet radio and TV simultaneously broadcast the formal announcement: "Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee and President of the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet, died a sudden death at 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 10, 1982."
Brezhnev, 75, who had held the most powerful post in the Soviet Union for 18 years, and who had been ill for nearly a decade, had died from complications of atherosclerosis affecting his heart and major vessels. He had actually died 26 hours before the announcement was made.
A new era was beginning, one that would affect the destiny not just of the Soviet Union's 270 million citizens but of the entire world. As Brezhnev's surviving colleagues moved swiftly to fill the leadership void, they were eager to convey the impression of a smooth transition and lay to rest speculation about a power struggle.
Late Friday morning, black limousines began to converge on the Kremlin, bringing the nearly 300 bureaucrats, generals, diplomats, scientists, academicians and workers who make up the Central Committee of the Communist Party. They knew what they were there to do. They would ratify the choice already made by the Politburo, that of Yuri Andropov, 68, to be Brezhnev's successor as party chief.