At the 25th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1976, Shevardnadze gave a speech in which he called General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev "vozhd" ("leader"), a term previously reserved for Joseph Stalin. His adulation was only surpassed by that of Andrei Kirilenko and Heydar Aliyev. As Yegor Ligachev later said, Shevardnadze never contradicted a General Secretary. During Brezhnev's last days, Shevardnadze publicly endorsed Konstantin Chernenko's candidacy for the General Secretaryship and called him a "great theoretician". However, when it became clear that the secretaryship would not go to Chernenko but to Yuri Andropov, Shevardnadze swiftly revised his position and gave his support for Andropov. Shevardnadze became the first Soviet republican head to offer his gratitude to the newly elected leader; in turn, Andropov quickly signalled his appreciation and his support for some of the reforms pioneered by Shevardnadze. According to Andropov's biographers the anti-corruption drive he launched was inspired by Shervardnadze's Georgian anti-corruption campaign. When Andropov died, Shevardnadze again became an avid supporter of Chernenko's candidacy for the General Secretaryship.