(3 of 3)
In 1978 Gorbachev made his second major move: he went to Moscow as a member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, a kind of inner cabinet that runs the Soviet Union from day to day. He was apparently being pushed upward by Suslov, who was something of a mentor to him. Once in Moscow, Gorbachev reportedly established an almost filial relationship with an even more influential patron: Andropov. The then KGB chief is believed to have been behind the 1980 decision to make Gorbachev a full member of the Politburo at the remarkably young age of 49. Between 1978 and 1984 Gorbachev was in charge of the country's agriculture. Despite a string of disastrous Soviet harvests, which normally would have doomed the future of the man in charge, Gorbachev's career flowered. After Andropov became General Secretary in 1982, it is believed that he relied on Gorbachev as his closest lieutenant.
Though Gorbachev was rumored to be Andropov's chosen heir, he failed to make it to the top after the leader's death in February 1984. Yet there was little doubt who was second-in-command behind Chernenko. Gorbachev ran the Secretariat and brought loyalists into key party jobs. His reported chairing of Politburo meetings as early as last summer would have made him the de facto leader of the Soviet Union. His ascension last week formally acknowledged what has long been known in the Kremlin: the boy from Stavropol is a practiced politician of formidable skills. It is now the world's turn to learn about the substance behind the style.
FOOTNOTE: *Western doctors suspect that Gorbachev's birthmark is a hemangioma, which is caused by an increase in small blood vessels within and beneath the skin. Soviet newspapers routinely airbrush the mark out of his photographs.