Rumblings in the Kremlin

...Against the background of these strains in the ruling class, the Politburo met on October 14 and, following some discussion (according to Piavda), approved the final draft of the 1971-75 economic plan This seemed to rule out the speculation in Moscow diplomatic circles that the unexpected delay in submitting the draft plan to the Soviet Parliament signified policy differences over military vs civilian spending But the views of two energetic Politburo members could not possibly have been expressed at this crucial session A day earlier, Shelepin had left Moscow for a visit to Tokyo, and Nikolai Podgorny had flown to Iran on a ceremonial mission Both were Party Secretaries until dislodged??to Brezhnev's advantage??a few years ago...

...In addition to silent purgings and Politburo manipulations, Brezhnev has tried to throttle his critics by exaggerating the extent of his personal power The communique issued after his meetings with Chancellor Biandt contained a unique reference to the Soviet leader's private "secretanat " Previously only Stalin had commanded a full-scale technical cabinet bearing that designation, standing above the nominally supreme Politburo and Party Secretariat, it operated as the actual director of Soviet policy Since Brezhnev's authority is a mere fraction of what Stalin's was, it is logical to infer that the announcement of his "secret cabinet" was designed to intimidate any who might support a new aspirant to the Politburo chairmanship What does this maneuvering in the Kremlin augur for the future of U S -Soviet relations'' If Brezhnev remains in the saddle but fails to oust his high-level critics, he will probably keep to the center of the political road, consenting at most to a marginal limit on the output of strategic weapons This would assure Brezhnev of Washington's goodwill at a moment when U S relations with Peking are improving and could conceivably evolve in an anti-Soviet direction It would also enable him to shift a portion of the Soviets' scarce resources to the production of consumer goods, which the scientific-technological revolution has barely touched On the level of Soviet elite politics, Brezhnev's prestige would be enhanced by an arms pact that achieved the foregoing objectives while involving no serious reduction of the Soviets' vast strategic might In the wake of such an accord, defense considerations would hardly cease to be the foundation of Soviet-American relations, nor would peace and harmony settle upon the world at large But a coincidence of interests between the major antagonists in the cold war would for a time diminish the acuteness of that deeply looted conflict...

...Brezhnev s remaining military opposition, however, could not hope to be successful without sympathizers in the highest echelon of the Party One such friend of the Army seems to be Aleksandi Shelepin, a ruthless opportunist whose personal stock has been declining steadily While Brezhnev has of late leaned toward a balancing of production and consumption, Shelepin has continued to advance the orthodox dogma of absolute priority for heavy industry As it in gratitude, the military press has lately been giving Shelepin far more exposure than have the Party dailies...

...Thus it appears that Brezhnev took advantage of the absence of two probable dissenters to force his own version of the Five Year Plan through the inner circle Lest this factional interpretation of events sound fanciful, it should be recalled that Marshal Zhukov and Khrushchev lost the plenitude of then power while out of the country or vacationing on the shores of the Black Sea...

...Sidney I Ploss, a past contributor, is a research fellow at Harvard University's Russian Research Center...

...OPPOSING THE BREZHNEV CULT Rumblings in the Kremlin BY SIDNEY I PLOSS Although Pravda has been hailing Leonid Brezhnev's new diplomatic offensive as a great success, not all of the Soviet Party leader's colleagues seem to agree Relaxing tension on the western front, they argue, will tend to weaken Soviet defense and undermine East Germany's Communist system, which owes its endurance in large measure to the iron police controls justified by cold-war rhetoric Brezhnev's critics also contend that his resolute anti-China stance fails to take account of signs that potential friends of the USSR are gaming influence in Peking And in counterpoint to this dispute over foreign policy is the continuing controversy over division of the national income between the military and civilian sectors On September 4, just one day after the four-nation agreement on West Berlin was signed, Pravda carried a major article on China by "I Aleksandrov," a pseudonym signifying top-level origin It criticized those who lately had been struck by the dearth of radical anti-Soviet slogans in Peking and by the removal from centerstage of several officials who had zealously executed the Cultural Revolution Aleksandrov declared that only China's tactics were changing, and that its leaders were without exception hostile to Moscow Other Soviet observers have meanwhile been trying to distinguish between Peking radicals and moderates, depicting Premier Chou En-lai as a middle-of-the-roader who does not share Mao's loathing of the USSR That Aleksandrov was defending Brezhnev's tough China position against a more conciliatory Kremlin faction became clear from the conflicting remarks in the Soviet media on October 1, China's National Day Some commentators, reiterating Brezhnev's chilly pronouncement that "an improvement of relations between our countries would be in line with the basic interests o( the USSR and PRC," insisted anti-Sovietism was Peking's long-term policy Others expressed confidence that "an improvement of relations between the USSR and PRC will be achieved ". Domestic anxiety over Brezhnev's global maneuvers was further evidenced during his talks with West German Chancellor Willy Brandt in the Crimea Piavda urged teachers of Party doctrine to wage a struggle against "revisionistic views,' adding that "in this connection serious attention must be paid to study of the foreign policy program which the Party has worked out " Shortly thereatter the Party magazine Kommunist also launched a spirited defense of Brezhnev's opening to the West "International practice has brought shame upon those woebegone critics who have tried to detract from the importance of the new historic initiative of the CPSU In our epoch, when the peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems is an objective necessity of human society's development, all and sundry resistance to this policy??whether it arises from imperialistic circles or revisionists of the Right or 'Left' sect??s reactionary and anti-historic and, therefore, inevitably doomed " Army leaders in particular have displayed misgivings about Biezhnev's quest tor limited detente and its implied cuts in military spending Viewed from a historical perspective, this is hardly surprising In 1953, Lavrenti Bena's fellow heirs of Stalin were able to rally Army support for purging him in part because he sought a compromise with the Western democracies on the German question Brezhnev himself joined a conspiracy against Nikita Khrushchev in 1964, when the late Premier showed a similar readiness to bargain over the interests of East Germany Then, too, the Soviet marshals threw decisive political weight behind the anti-Western militants More recently, the military daily Red Stai decried "the Utopian hope" that "cardinal problems of our age can be solved by means of a simple agreement of people to do good " Soviet armed might, one Red Stai editorial subsequently warned, is "the main restiaming factor on the path of the imperialistic policy of international bugandage " Such outspoken statements may explain the removal of Marshal IN V Zakharov as Chief of Staff Shortly after Krushchev's overthrow, Zakharov had tried to obtain for the officer corps a kind of veto power in the shaping of defense policy The new Chief of Staff, 50-year-old General V G Kuhkov is apt to play a less important role in policy discussions because of his relative youth and notable lack of experience in higher staff work...