Finalists of the ‘race on gun carriages’. May 1982

From left to right: Konstantin Chernenko, Nikolai Tikhonov, Leonid Brezhnev.

In 6 months, Brezhnev will die and the Central Committee of the CPSU will be headed by Yuri Andropov, who will die of illness a year later and will hand over the reins of power to Konstantin Chernenko.

Chernenko will also die a year later in 1985. Brezhnev’s friend Nikolai Tikhonov will follow him. The Western press will call this phenomenon a ‘carriage race’.

After a series of dying general secretaries, the Central Committee will be headed by Mikhail Gorbachev.