The Brezhnev succession

...First, there is the widespread apathy and alienation stimulated by an ideology which mocks the oppressed by describing the state as a "workers' state" and the system as a kind of "paradise on earth...

...Third, interethnic tensions in the Soviet Union not only are not going away, but in several critical regions are in fact tangibly worsening...

...Chernenko, most of whose career consisted of supervising propaganda in Moldavia, was described recently as a man better suited to selling transistor radios on a street corner...

...This public depiction of weakness on the part of the General-Secretary is unprecedented...

...Fourth, various observers have reported the spread of a religious revival among the Christian communities of the USSR over the past ten to fifteen years...

...So reliable is this pattern, however, that far from dispelling doubts, such collective visits to the theater arouse doubts and stimulate speculation...

...and insofar as a leadership succession may revive the legitimacy issue, the succession process has the potential to contribute to instability and decay...

...As the current succession drama unfolds, five leading contenders stand out: Andrei Kirilenko, 75, hitherto heir presumptive but in eclipse since Suslov's death in mid-January...

...The result is that while some thirty million new workers will have entered the labor force in the USSR in 1970-1985, only an estimated five million are expected to enter the labor force between 1985 and 2000...

...In addition to slumping birth rates, infant mortality and male mortality are, on the other side, both rising...

...Historically, declining birthrates and shrinking labor forces have been associated with the decline and decay of empires...

...Even Orthodox Georgia was rocked by anti-Russian demonstrations in the course of 1981...

...Late in May, Andropov was elected to the nine-man party Secretariat which implements the day-to-day policies set by the Politburo...

...This time the succession may be for real...

...Second, there is the demographic problem...

...These are: the Great Purge generation (including Brezhnev himself), the war generation, the late-Stalin generation, and the post-Stalin generation...

...Yet some of the Brezhnev formulae are already obsolete - among them, the endeavor to effect a steady improvement in the lot of the average Soviet citizen (the Kremlin will be hard put simply to keep the economic situation from worsening measurably), and the ambiguous approach to the nationalities question, in which the continuation of policies and programs smacking of Rus-sification has been combined with concessions to the regional elites (a balance which has repeatedly failed to achieve the desired effect, as the Kremlin's firing of high-ranking officials in Ukraine, Armenia and elsewhere in the 1970s amply demonstrates) . Hence, if the policy does not change in substance, it is likely to change in its effects, as the context itself changes...

...A brochure written by Nursakhat Bairam-sakhatov, chief of the Turkmen Communist Party's Department of Propaganda and Agitation, revealed that Turkmen-language religious broadcasts by Iran's Radio Gorgan, were being listened to regularly by Soviet Turkmen and that they were having a measurable impact on Turkmen Islamic consciousness...

...In the short run it is most probable that Brezhnev's heirs will simply continue to implement Brezhnev's reasonably successful policy formulae, i.e., to continue to place a premium on stability, on oligarchical rule, on preservation rather than innovation, and on development of military and heavy industry rather than on consumer industry...

...Third, there is the case of "Boris the Gypsy," the wealthy consort of Brezhnev's daughter Galina...

...and Andropov, 68, though Andropov may be politically compromised on account of his KGB connection...

...The notion of 'Brezhnevism without Brezhnev' is, thus, apt to be a mirage...

...Only five men occupy positions in both the Politburo and the Secretariat - Brezhnev, the ailing Kirilenko, 51-year-old Mikhail S. Gorbachev (an agricultural specialist considered out of the running), Cher-nenko, and now Andropov...

...Yet the question as to which particular individual will succeed Brezhnev is far less interesting - and less important - than the fact that the process of succession, regardless of the individuals involved, is likely to have both short-term and long-term impact on policy in the Soviet Union...

...Sixth, there are the sundry economic afflictions with which the Soviet system appears incapable of dealing effectively - including bottlenecks and irrationalities of allocation in central planning, distortions resulting from the system of fixing prices, the lack of profit incentives and resultant low labor productivity, the obstruction of innovation by bureaucratic procedures and by the failure to adequately reward innovation, and the sheer conviction on the part of some that the system is unworkable...

...second, because elites behave differently when hierarchical relations are uncertain, reverting to patterns more appropriate to an underground revolutionary party...

...The entire Great Purge generation, which has kept its hands on the levers of power, will, in the space of the next few years, largely pass from the scene...

...It could be expected that at least some Soviet leaders will come to the same conclusion relatively quickly...

...a consultant to the Rand Corporation, is a specialist in Soviet and East European affairs...

...When, however, the system in question suffers as well from an unresolved problem of legitimacy - as is the case, I would argue, with the Soviet Union - the process of decay may be sharply accelerated...

...This trend, linked in Russia with the anti-Communist neo-Slavophile movement, appears to be viewed with particular anxiety by Moscow, to judge from the sporadic intensified anti-religious campaigns being unleashed...

...And finally, there is the virtual petrification of the geronto-cratic oligarchy - exacerbated by Brezhnev's practice of replacing retiring or deceased colleagues with men as old as or older than their predecessors...

...Soviet citizens are cynical about their own press and have in recent years tallied the world's steepest increase in alcohol consumption, leading Soviet public health specialists to worry of societal degeneration through alcoholism...

...fourth, because political succession in the absence of agreed rules of succession reopens the question of legitimacy (at the simplest level, merely in the sense that there is no consensus on a "legitimate" successor, but also in the sense that the spectator is reminded that political routines in the USSR are the product of coercion, not of contract...

...Viktor Grishin, 68, First Secretary of the Moscow City Party organization, Grigorii Romanov, 58, First Secretary of the Leningrad party organization...

...There was, first of all, the publication, in the December 1981 issue of the Leningrad literary magazine, Avrora, of a satirical story about an aging and celebrated writer who "does not plan to die.'' Since Brezhnev is celebrated as the author of a number of books, the narrator's sardonic ending, in which he speaks of joy at the thought of the old writer's passing, was at once taken as a thrust at the seventy-five-year-old Brezhnev...

...Andropov, by contrast, served as Soviet ambassador to Hungary during the Soviet invasion of 1956 and later was entrusted with responsibility for relations with the Communist parties of the East bloc, before taking up the Chairmanship of the KGB in 1973...

...In addition, partly as a result of developments in Iran and Afghanistan, the Soviet elite is increasingly worried about an Islamic revival spreading to its own forty-three million Muslims...

...Yet in linking the succession with the issue of political decay, it is important to keep in mind that the decay of empires has tended, historically, to be gradual in its early stages - and thus often barely perceptible - taking as long as three hundred years or more (as in the case of the Ottoman Empire) to complete...

...Its heirs may well prove more conservative, less inclined to either populism or egalitarianism, and less attracted to the grand designs and grand visions conjured by Marxist-Leninist ideology...

...The Brezhnev succession PEDRO RAMET ABOUT FIVE YEARS AGO, when Brezhnev temporarily vanished from the stage on a private vacation on the Black Sea, Western newspapers quickly came forward with suggestions that Brezhnev might, in fact, have died and that perhaps his Kremlin colleagues were so pathologically insecure that they did not dare to announce the news...

...and fifth, because succession brings to the surface, and accentuates, the unresolved issues of the day, among which, at the present time, economic stagnation, nationalities discontent, and the Polish contagion ought to be numbered...

...West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher commented recently: "There can be no doubt that the international commitments of the Soviet Union extend far beyond their capability of economic assistance...

...Cher-nenko, 70, a Brezhnev protege and the new heir presumptive...

...As if this were not enough, many non-Jews now speak openly of their desire to leave the Soviet Union...

...On the other hand, Soviet elites worry that Western cultural infiltration may be sapping "Soviet socialist patriotism" and repeatedly condemn the fad among youth for wearing Western T-shirts, the appearance of Americanisms in increasing numbers in Russian-language conversation, and even the popularization of Western rock tunes...

...Thus, as a crucial confrontation with Beria neared in June 1953, Khrushchev, Malenkov, Molotov, and several other leaders went off to the opera together...

...There are a number of indications that the Soviet Union may in fact be entering a period of gradual decay...

...Fifth, there is the fact of rising crime in the Soviet Union as elsewhere...

...Vilfredo Pareto, the Italian sociologist, once observed that no system can survive unless it refreshes itself with the constant recruitment of new blood into the elite...

...Even aside from the circumstance that new remedies may appear imperative, the Soviet political elite currently consists, as Columbia Professor Seweryn Bialer recently pointed out, of four generational-attitudinal groups, whose basic assumptions were shaped in good part by their experiences at the time they rose in the hierarchy...

...Birth rates are slumping everywhere but in Central Asia, and the Central Asians are the least skilled in Russian and almost without exception disinclined to migrate out of Central Asia, and thus of limited utility for continued national economic development...

...Then Moscow television ran footage, in mid-February, showing a tearful Brezhnev sobbing at the funeral of his long-term associate, Colonel-General Konstantin Grushevoi...

...That the numbers of incidents of Turkmen-Russian confrontations and "incidents" began to rise sharply about the same time can only have deepened Kremlin worries...

...Violent anti-Russian demonstrations have swept the Baltic republics during the last decade, hitting Lithuania in 1972, Latvia in 1977, and Estonia in 1976, 1978 and 1980...

...All of these republics have active underground secessionist groups, as does the Ukraine...

...Hence, the Brezhnev succession may prove to be as potent in effect as the preceding Soviet successions...

...It is a curious habit of Kremlin leaders to engage in these collective cultural respites in times of crisis - ostensibly to dispel any doubts as to the prospects of successful resolution of the crisis, by showing the PEDRO RAMET...

...The politically astute Andropov enjoys a particularly strong position insofar as two of his leading rivals, Chernenko and Moscow's Grishin, are generally considered to be intellectually mediocre as well as deficient in relevant experience...

...That is to say, the succession issue is tied to the issue of the future evolution of the Soviet policy...

...complete lack of concern on the part of the leaders...

...The fact that it was aired at all suggests that Brezhnev could not prevent it...

...And finally, there is the fact that on March 3, Brezhnev and ten other senior Kremlin officials (including then-KGB chief Yuri Andropov, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Party Control Chairman Arvid Pelshe, Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov and General Department Head Konstantin Cher-nenko) ostentatiously attended a performance, at Moscow's Mkat theater, of Mikhail Shatrov's new play about Lenin's last days - which predictably has been interpreted as a comment on the impending Soviet succession...

...In Latvia, for instance, a recent session of the Riga City Soviet highlighted the seriousness of "hooliganism," warned that juvenile crime was on the rise, and called for a "law and order" campaign to roll back crime...

...Add to that the economic strain imposed by commitments to sustain the economies of Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Vietnam and Cuba, by the sizable aid already given to Poland, and by the continuing wars in Afghanistan and Kampuchea and you have the makings of trouble...

...There are at least five reasons why political succession in the Soviet Union is important: first, because up to now, at least, leadership changes have also produced long-term policy shifts of some significance and thus are unavoidably associated with the expectation of policy shift...

...Yet if one were to pinpoint the two elements in the situation most productive of change, one might underline, first, the political fluidity entailed in the succession period, and second, the current economic and political problems which promise to transform the context in which policy is made...

...And again in October 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, Khrushchev found time to take in a little theater...

...He was abruptly arrested, about the same time, for illicit diamond trafficking and currency irregularities...

...third, because succession conventionally takes four to seven years to complete, during which time short-term policy ad-justments and structural innovations may be attempted...

...Again, a survey published in a Soviet professional journal last year disclosed that only 58 percent of draft-age respondents felt positive about the prospect of serving in the Soviet armed forces...

...and Grishin has had little experience outside of trade union work and running the Moscow organization...

...LOOKING BEYOND Brezhnev, therefore, it is tempting to reject the conventional wisdom of the 1970s, which held that the Soviet Union was capable of a lengthy period of virtual stagnation-a view which conjured an image of the Soviet Union as uniquely resistant to both external and internal pressures, and which thus ironically resurrected the notion of changelessness associated with the totalitarian approaches to the Soviet polity of the 1950s-and to return to a somewhat earlier supposition that at a certain point in its evolution, the Soviet system would enter a period of decay...