While officially every one of the fifteen republics of the USSR was run by its own Ministerial Council, led by a prime minister, in practice it was the national leader of each republican Communist Party—the first secretary—who was in control. Above them all, handing down directives from Moscow, sat Leonid Brezhnev, granite-faced general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, chairman of the Politburo, and de facto ruler of 242 million people. This institutionalized meddling proved confusing and counterproductive to the smooth running of a modern state, but the Party always had
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