TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/82/82guard

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                                                                                November 22, 1982 

SOVIET UNION

Changing the Guard

After Brezhnev's 18-year rule, the U.S.S.R. gets an enigmatic
new leader


The first hint came at 7:15 p.m. Moscow time on Wednesday.
Nikolai Shchelokov, the Minister for Public Order, had just
delivered a brief television address to celebrate Militia Day,
and millions of Soviet viewers were awaiting the live pop
concert that was supposed to follow. Instead, without
explanation, a film about Lenin was broadcast. Then, at 9, came
Vremya (Time), the nightly news. The announcers, who usually
dress informally, wore dark jackets or dresses. "I ran to my
neighbors to find out if they knew what was going on," a Moscow
secretary said. "Everyone was excited. We all thought somebody
had died, but nobody guessed it was Brezhnev. We had all seen
him on television three days before, reviewing the military
parade, and he looked all right."

The initial speculation centered on Politburo Member Andrei
Kirilenko, 76, who was rumored to be ailing and who was absent
from the traditional Kremlin lineup at the Nov. 7 ceremonies
marking the 65th anniversary of the October Revolution. After
the news, the nationwide first channel aired an unscheduled
program of war reminiscences. On the second channel, an ice
hockey game was abruptly replaced by Tchaikovsky's mournful
"Pathetique" Symphony.

Only the next morning, at exactly 11, did Soviet radio and TV
simultaneously broadcast the formal announcement:  "The Central
Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the
Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet and the Council of
Ministers of the U.S.S.R. inform with deep sorrow the party and
the entire Soviet people that Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, General
Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee and
President of the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet, died
a sudden death at 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 10, 1982."

Brezhnev, 75, who had held the most powerful post in the Soviet
Union for 18 years, and who had been ill for nearly a decade,
had died from complications of atherosclerosis affecting his
heart and major vessels. He had actually died 26 1/2 hours
before the announcement was made.

A new era was beginning, one that would affect the destiny not
just of the Soviet Union's 270 million citizens but of the
entire world. As Brezhnev's surviving colleagues moved swiftly
to fill the leadership void, they were eager to convey the
impression of a smooth transition and lay to rest speculation
about a power struggle.

Late Friday morning, black limousines began to converge on the
Kremlin, bringing the nearly 300 bureaucrats, generals,
diplomats, scientists, academicians and workers who make up the
Central Committee of the Communist Party. Even before they
entered the yellow-and-white Council of Ministers building, they
knew what they were there to do. They would ratify the choice
already made by the Politburo, that of Yuri Andropov, 68, to be
Brezhnev's successor as party chief. The post has been held by
only five men since the Bolshevik Revolution:  Vladimir Lenin,
Joseph Stalin, Georgi Malenkov, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid
Brezhnev. Shortly after noon Friday, Andropov, the son of a
railroad worker from the northern Caucasus, became the sixth.

Andropov was, to Western experts, by far the most controversial
of the contenders. Stern and serious behind his thick
spectacles, he was the Ambassador to Budapest during the Soviet
army's efficient repression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956.
As head of the Committee for State Security (KGB) from 1967 to
May 1982, he had also overseen the suppression of internal
dissent. But at the same time, Andropov developed a reputation
for pragmatism and sophistication, at least by Soviet standards.

As chairman of the committee designated to organize Brezhnev's
funeral, Andropov gave a brief oration extolling the dead
leader, who lay in state less than a quarter-mile away in the
House of Trade Unions' Hall of Columns, a handsome neoclassical
building that was once a club for the Russian aristocracy. "A
most outstanding political leader of our times, our comrade and
friend, a man with a big soul and heart, sympathetic and
well-wishing, responsive and profoundly humane, is no more,"
Andropov intoned. After calling for a minute of silence, he
continued:  "Leonid Ilyich said that not a single day in his
life could be separated from the affairs of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union and the entire Soviet country. And that was
really so."

Konstantin Chernenko, 71, the silver-haired party chief
administrator, then rose. As every Soviet citizen knew,
Chernenko had been Andropov's main competitor for the
succession. Now, in a deft and effective political gesture, the
rival was moving to nominate the winner, thus symbolizing the
need to close ranks. "Dear Comrades, all of us are obviously
aware that it is extremely difficult to repair the loss
inflicted on us by the death of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev,"
Chernenko said. "It is now twice, three times as important to
conduct matters in the party collectively."  Chernenko, a close
protege of Brezhnev's, then proceeded to nominate Andropov, whom
he described as "a selfless Communist" and, perhaps with some
reticence, as Brezhnev's "closest associate."  The delegates
approved the choice unanimously. By 1 p.m. the meeting was over,
and the entire Central Committee went to the Hall of Columns to
open the period of national mourning, during which Brezhnev's
corpse would lie in state.

As an orchestra played Tchaikovsky, the committee members lined
up in front of the catafalque where Brezhnev lay amid wreaths
and flowers, with row upon row of medals pinned to cushions
below his feet. After a brief formal tribute, Andropov led the
Politburo members toward the dead man's family. He bent over and
kissed Brezhnev's widow Victoria, 75, through her veil. She
lifted a hand to her cheek to wipe away tears. Andropov bent to
kiss her again, then kissed Brezhnev's daughter Galina.
Kirilenko, a leading contender for the succession until
sidelined in the past year, burst into tears as he spoke to
Brezhnev's widow.

World leaders sent messages of condolence to the Kremlin that
varied in tone. President Reagan, who had been awakened at 3:35
a.m. Thursday by National Security Advisor William P. Clark with
the news of Brezhnev's death, sent a respectful two-paragraph
message calling Brezhnev "one of the world's most important
figures for nearly two decades" and expressing his hope for
improved U.S.-Soviet relations. Pope John Paul II promised "a
particular thought for the memory of the illustrious departed
one."  Declared former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt:
 "His death leaves a gap in international politics that will be
painfully felt."  The Chinese government dispatched a terse
message to Moscow conveying "deep condolences." Indian Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi, whose country has received much of its
modern weaponry from the Soviet Union, paid effusive tribute to
Brezhnev, saying that "he stood by us in our moment of need."

The police soon sealed off all of downtown Moscow. The tight
security allowed mourners to move three abreast through
unimpeded streets. The capital's huge avenues were guarded by
long ranks of militiamen in their metal-color greatcoats with
blue shoulder boards. Soldiers wearing black-edged red armbands
stood at attention outside the House of Trade Unions, whose
light-green-and-white facade had been freshly painted for the
occasion. Red flags and streamers bordered in black hung limply
on the building.

Inside the hall, mourners shuffled up a marble staircase
beneath chandeliers draped in black gauze. On the stage, amid
a veritable garden of flowers, a complete symphony orchestra in
black tailcoats played classical music. Brezhnev's embalmed
body, dressed in a black suite, white shirt and black-and-red
tie, faced the long queue of mourners. His face was drained of
color, distant and alabaster in death. The mourners could not
pause. They turned their faces toward Brezhnev's head for a
moment of silent communion, then filed out, past the honor
guard.

People leaving the hall and heading for the subway stopped to
express regrets and reminiscences. "I'm really sorry for him,"
said a grandmother. "The poor man didn't even have time to play
with his grandchildren."  Said an engineer:  "We used to
complain some, bitch about this and that, and tell jokes about
the old man. But now that Brezhnev is dead I feel sad because
he conveyed a sense of security and stability."  One middle-aged
Russian intellectual recalled a different scene, when Stalin lay
in state in the House of Trade Unions. Then the streets outside
were packed with an unruly mob of people pushing their way
toward the hall. "Stalin was like a god to them," he explained.
"They were swarming around trying to see the dead god. But
Brezhnev was human, and people are calm now."

While many world leaders, including French Premier Pierre Mauroy
and Indian Prime Minister Gandhi, announced that they planned
to attend Brezhnev's funeral, Reagan rejected the arguments made
by Secretary of State George Shultz, National Security Adviser
Clark and CIA Director William Casey that the President's
presence would be a gesture of conciliation toward the new
Soviet leadership. Instead, Reagan decided to send a delegation
headed by Shultz and Vice President George Bush, who interrupted
a seven-nation visit to Africa. The decision drew immediate
criticism. Reagan's failure to go to Moscow, said Massachusetts
Democratic Senator Paul Tsongas, represents "a lost opportunity"
to make a dramatic gesture.

Defending the decision, a Shultz aide said, "We don't think the
succession itself requires a major reassessment of the U.S.
position."  At a press conference on the day Brezhnev's death
was announced, Reagan said that he had no intention of modifying
his stern stance toward the Soviets without any give on their
part. "We shouldn't delude ourselves," he declared. "Peace is
the product of strength, not of weakness, of facing reality and
not believing in false hopes."  The President went on, "For ten
years, detente was based on words from them and not on any deeds
to back those words up."  Said he, "It takes two to tango," and
the U.S. needs some sign "that they want to tango also."

Much the same sentiment was expressed by Andropov. Addressing
the Central Committee, he said, "We know well that the
imperialists cannot be talked into peace. It must be defended
by relying on the invincible might of the Soviet armed forces."
 The speech echoed Brezhnev's last public words. Surveying a
Soviet military parade three days before his death, he had
promised to deal any aggressor "a crushing retaliatory strike."

Thus even before Brezhnev could be properly buried it was clear
that the most important issue facing the new Soviet leadership
was the dangerous deterioration in Soviet-American relations.
The Kremlin has been concerned that the Reagan Administration
may be bent not just on containing the U.S.S.R. but on defeating
and destroying the Soviet system. Soviet officials say their
leaders have been dismayed by four themes in Administration
police:  repeated declarations by Reagan and his aides that
Soviet Communism is destined to end up on the ash heap of
history, combined with a presidential call for a crusade against
Communism; the Administration's military buildup; official
statements and leaked documents suggesting that the
Administration is seriously preparing for the possibility of
nuclear war; reports of stepped-up covert action by the CIA
against Soviet clients around the world.

In response, the Soviet leadership is all the more determined
not to give up any part of what will doubtless be remembered as
Brezhnev's most lasting legacy, an unprecedented defense buildup
that has, for the first time, put the Soviet Union roughly on
a par with the U.S. militarily. Some Americans, including
Reagan, argue that the Soviets under Brezhnev actually achieved
a position of strategic superiority that seriously threatens the
U.S. in the years ahead. Still, many specialists in the U.S. and
Western Europe believe that the transfer of power in the Kremlin
presents an opportunity to relieve tensions and, ultimately, to
reduce the level of nuclear and conventional forces on both
sides. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger expects
Andropov to make friendly overtures to the West as he attempts
to consolidate his authority. "The major impact Brezhnev's death
will have on the Soviet Union is that the country will be
preoccupied for the next months, maybe years, by leadership
problems," says Kissinger. "Thus we may be facing a peace
offensive in which they will try to get some of the immediate
tensions out of the way."

The other important foreign policy problem inherited by Andropov
is the Soviet Union's deep, longstanding quarrel with China. In
the months before his death, Brezhnev made several speeches that
signaled a willingness to reduce tension, but neither country
is under any illusion that a breakthrough will be possible on
major points of contention.

At home, Andropov faces an economy plagued by mismangement, low
labor productivity and sluggish technological progress. The
economic growth rate has been steadily declining, and food
shortages are growing more acute.

How will Andropov deal with these challenges?  U.S. officials
believe that the very fact of replacing an ailing leader who was
apparently not well enough to devote more than a few hours a day
to his responsibilities will make a big difference. Says a
senior Administration expert:  "Andropov is a far more decisive
man than Brezhnev had been for some years."

Most experts agree that Andropov does not yet possess and may
never achieve the power necessary to effect profound changes in
the Soviet Union. It took several years before Khrushchev and
Brezhnev were able to assert themselves as the Soviet Union's
unchallenged leaders. Says Harvard's Adam Ulam:  "The process
of succession does not begin with the death of a leader, nor
does it end with the designation of his successor."

Though Andropov may soon be able to add one or two younger
supporters to the Politburo, it may be some time before
significant changes in policy are evident because the old guard
is solidly entrenched. In the last years of his stewardship,
Brezhnev was unwilling to dilute his power by infusing new blood
into a Politburo that was packed mostly with his longtime
comrades and cronies. When Brezhnev died, only two of the voting
members of the Politburo represented the younger generation of
leaders:  Grigori Romanov, 59, and Mikhail Gorbachev, 51.

According to Columbia University Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer,
the old guard under Andropov will be characterized, while it
lasts, by "reticence and restraint."  Bialer believes that
Andropov will not immediately have sufficient authority to try
a fresh approach to Soviet foreign and domestic policy, let
alone undertake the radical economic reforms that are needed to
boost the U.S.S.R.'s declining growth rate. To achieve the
degree of personal power exercised by Brezhnev, the new leader
will have to build a potent coalition of supporters among the
younger men in the party Central Committee who are straining to
share power at the top. The process of forging political
alliances will take time, skill and stamina.

Under Andropov, the Politburo will be on its guard against any
attempt by Washington to take advantage of uncertainty at the
top in Moscow. Says former British Prime Minister James
Callaghan:  "This is a time for caution in the West and
particularly in Washington. We must be moderate in our language
and discard counterproductive rhetoric."

One of the reasons for Brezhnev's popularity among his
colleagues was that he guaranteed them life-time job security.
With the exception of a few who personally ran afoul of
Brezhnev, most Soviet top officials did not resign; they died
in office. Now Andropov will have to start replacing as many as
6,000 top officials in every important governing institution in
the country, including the Politburo, the Secretariat of the
Central Committee, the Presidium of the Council of Ministers,
the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs.

Such a vast change of politicians and administrators has not
occurred in the Soviet Union since the great purges of the late
1930s, when thousands of powerful bureaucrats were shot or
dispatched to the gulag on Stalin's orders. This time, however,
the scourge is not a paranoid and murderous dictator. It is old
age. Most top officials in the country's ruling bodies are the
same age as the majority of Politburo member:  in their 60s and
70s. Roy Medvedev, the independent-minded Marxist historian
living in Moscow, believes that younger men will move into top
positions around the time of the 27th Communist Party Congress
in 1985. "The political wheels grind very slowly in our
country," he says. "A man who suddenly comes out of nowhere,
like Jimmy Carter, is an American phenomenon. Here it's like the
army. You rise through the ranks, and nobody's going to put a
general's uniform on you simply because you're capable of
leadership."

In an exclusive interview with TIME last week, Vladimir
Kuzichkin, the former KGB major who defected to Britain last
June, stressed the difference between Andropov and other top
Soviet leaders. Said Kuzichkin:  "With the progress of time it
will become clear that Andropov is his own man. Although he made
his name as the KGB boss, he was not a professional policeman,
having much wider interests. He owed his KGB job to Brezhnev,
but he was never Brezhnev's creature."

Given his age, Andropov could prove to be a transitional leader
for the Soviets, with the power moving on by decade's end to men
like Gorbachev and Vladimar Dolgikh, 57, who are not well known
in the Soviet Union, let alone in the U.S. Totally obscure, of
course, are the thousands of other politicians and
administrators who are seeking to climb upward from their
present middle-level party positions. Almost all are male and
in their 50s, but hardly anything is known about the
personalities or views of these people.

Sovietologists who have analyzed the backgrounds of the rising
generation of leaders have drawn a number of conclusions about
them. Unlike their predecessors, the upcoming leaders entered
politics after Stalin's death in 1953, thus escaping the
paralyzing effects of mass police terror and participation in
the dictator's crimes. As a result, they may be less fearful,
more self-confident and assertive, than the Brezhnev generation.
Though the younger men are completely loyal to the Soviet
system, they are less suspicious and more curious about the
outside world. Better educated than the old rulers, many of whom
attended only vocational schools, they are more aware of the
shortcomings and the backwardness of Soviet society. At the
same time they are more confident of their ability to put the
Communist system to rights.

Most experts agree that the new leadership will be less dogmatic
and more pragmatic, but just as tough as the old. Cautions
George Breslauer of the University of California at Berkeley:
 "I completely reject the view that younger Soviet leaders are
reformists. They are equally hard line."

Nonetheless, any aspiring party chief, whatever his personal
views, must be responsive to the aspirations of the Soviet
political elite who constitute his power base. What will the
political elite seek in the post-Brezhnev era?  Certainly it
wants to unclog the avenues of advancement that Brezhnev and his
gerontocrats have blocked. Beyond that, the top priority is to
get the country moving, after the sharp economic slowdown that
has set in during the past three years. In the next generation's
struggle for power, "the domestic economy has to be the major
issue," says the Rand Corporation's Thane Gustafson. Careers
will be made or broken and alliances concluded or undone over
new proposals to revitalize the economy. But change will not
come easily. Brezhnev's most unwelcome legacy has been the
debacle down on the farm. Says a Soviet journalist:  "The new
man in the Kremlin will have instant popular support if he can
solve the food problems." But unless truly radical changes are
made in the centrally planned collective farm system,
agriculture is probably doomed to remain the disaster area of
the economy.

Compounding the new leaderhip's economic worries is a growing
shortage of skilled labor that will become critical by the year
2000. Because of a rising death rate and a plummeting birth
rate, the annual net increase of the working-age population is
expected to drop from its 1976 high of 2.7 million to only
285,000 by 1986. Murray Feshbach, America's leading expert on
Soviet population trends, believes that the present 2% rate of
Soviet economic growth could drop to zero or even go into the
minus column because of more shortages of skilled labor,
especially in European Russia, where most of the country's
industry is situated.

Diverse groups within the society will be struggling for their
share of shrinking national resources in the post-Brezhnev era.
The Soviet leadership under Andropov is expected to maintain
Soviet military spending at its present high levels, estimated
to be 12% to 14% of the G.N.P. What is left will have to be
spread more thinly. Says Robert Legvold, an expert on East-West
problems at the Council on Foreign Relations:  "The Soviet Union
simply does not have the resources to invest in all the
necessary sectors. The leadership is going to have to make tough
decisions on allocations of capital, raw materials and labor."

The loser in this battle for allocations will be the Soviet
consumer. Accustomed to a steady, though scarcely dramatic, rise
in the standard of living under Brezhnev, Soviet citizens may
have to settle for no further improvement in the 1980s. But they
are not likely to rebel openly. Lacking any genuine forum in
which to express dissatisfaction. Soviet consumers will probably
do little more than grumble. Andropov, with his KGB background,
may deal more harshly with strikes or other eruptions of anger
that might occur. Says Historian Walter Laqueur:  "Expect
tighter discipline rather than liberalism, but expect some
economic reforms."

At the same time, the new regime may be obliged to use
intimidation or raw force in Eastern Europe, where it might face
unrest and rebellion, similar to that in Poland, during the rest
of the 1980s. "The Soviet imperial system is suffering from a
sickness, a deep systemic crisis," says Bialer. "For the
Kremlin, Poland is not a cold, but pneumonia."  With their
stagnant economy, the Soviets will not be able to apply the balm
of aid to their satellite states. This, in turn, could plunge
the fragile economies of Eastern Europe into even deeper
trouble.

Therein lies the irony of the Brezhnev legacy:  all of the
Soviet Union's gigantic military might has not proved sufficient
to convince its leaders that they can depend on enjoying either
domestic tranquility or genuine security along the country's
borders, even those it shares with Communist neighbors. On the
contrary, insofar as the military sector has drained off
resources from the civilian economy, the U.S.S.R.'s war machine
has weakened the country. According to some reports, a number
of party officials and theoreticians have even begun asking
whether, as a result, their country ought to shift its concept
of strength and security from a narrow, strictly military
definition to a broader one, embracing economic strength and
social stability as well. In other words, should the classic
guns-vs.-butter conflict be resolved, for once, in a way that
gives at least equal emphasis to butter?

It would take a true optimist to give butter the edge in this
debate or to predict that Andropov will have the power, the
time, or even the inclination to push through the reforms that
are necessary to turn the Soviet economy around. Still, it would
be a mistake to underestimate the enduring strength of the
gigantic industrial machine that Brezhnev helped build.
Moreover, the often cumbersome Soviet political system is still
flexible enough to allow a new generation of leaders to make
crucial decisions on the allocation of resources, industrial
growth and military spending that will assure the Soviet Union's
survival as a formidable superpower.

--By Patricia Blake. Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/Moscow, with
other bureaus