Dear Michael,

Friday June 25 2004, Michael Haritonov writes to Mike Powell:

 >>> GB> Who is Leonid Brezhnev?
 >>> General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, and Chairmen
 >>> of the Supreme Council's Presidium.
 MP>> I am trying to remember what the American Press called him, and
 MP>> other leaders of the USSR.  It was not that long of a title, for
 MP>> sure.  They may have called them "presidents" in
error, or it may
 MP>> have been something more along the lines of "Premier"
or the more
 MP>> simple "leader."  ;-)

Last Soviet leader who was Premier was Khruschev.

 MH> Yes, I do remember they called him "president" for
simple, but that's
 MH> not correct.

It depends on how we translate 'predsedatel'. Actually 'predsedatel' is a
member-by-member translation of Latin 'president'. Pred=pre, sed=sid, atel is
roughly = ens/ent (more verbatim would be predsediaschii). Since the Soviet
political system had no President, "Predsetatel of VTsIK Sverdlov" was
translated as "President of VTsIK". And so it went with Kalinin and others.


As ever,
Mike Tyukanov

--- It gets late early out there