Charting the Soviet Course

...One has only to remember that the majority of the world's Jews live in the USSR, the U.S...

...Similarly, the suppression of dissidents (under Yuri Andropov, appointed KGB chief after Khrushchev's overthrow) has Brezhnev's encouragement...

...Mark Hopkins, a specialist in Soviet and East European affairs, writes for the Milwaukee Journal...

...While Soviet relations with China have improved slightly, the prospect of open conflict between the two will, by all signs, require increasing Soviet attention...

...Within five years, disease killed nearly 3 million...

...The spreading out coincides with an expansion of the Navy, and not only in the Mediterranean...

...The latest work of Evgeny Evtushenko, once an idol of the youth for his political poetry, was an innocuous verse in Pravda on February's Norad test-alert bungle in the U.S...

...Vladimir Semichastny, Shelepin's protege and successor in the KGB, simply dropped out of sight...

...By 1917, when Lenin's Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, only half were still alive, their dawn of adolescence already darkened by hunger, war and revolution...

...When it ended, one of every three men, one of every 10 women were dead...

...To boost popular morale, the ninth Five-Year Plan opens with the promise of a "substantial rise" in the standard of living...

...To survive, it must have seemed, took all of a man's energies, plus sheer luck...

...What minority...

...Brezhnev supposedly keeps a fine bird menagerie in his government dacha in Moscow...

...And here is Partiinaya Zhizn, instructional journal for the Party apparatus, requiring three times in one article "subordination of the minority to the majority...

...The problem facing the government is not merely whether to allow a few Jews to emigrate...

...So are the themes of the Five-Year Plan to be adopted at the 24th Congress: Labor discipline, productivity and efficiency dominate aspirations through 1975...

...The December rioting and subsequent strikes in Poland have strengthened conservative suspicions...

...Titles are bestowed and withdrawn like battlefield commissions, and few mourn the fallen...

...That the Kremlin extended credits to Poland, permitting an annulment of food-price increases, signifies two things: The Soviets do not want Edward Gierek's regime looking to the West for financial aid, nor do they want domestic unrest to reach the point where a decision on intervention would have to be made...

...The same can be said for Arvid Pelshe, Pyorr Shelest, Andrei Kirilenko and Gennadi Voronov, who also are among the senior politicians...

...For the Soviet Union's top-ranking politicians--Leonid Brezhnev, Aleksei Kosygin (1904), Nikolai Podgorny (1903) and Mikhail Suslov (1902) --these have been the normal conditions of life...

...Of late, too, in a newfound appreciation of the medium's influence, Brezhnev has taken to television--the last time on New Year's Eve for an unprecedented, if bland, greeting to the Soviet people...

...He also is said to have raged crudely at Czechoslovak leaders taken to Moscow after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion...

...In the years following Khrushchev's fall, the Soviet Union's vast war machine has continued to grow, demanding the country's finest talent and consuming much wealth...

...and Israel to appreciate the effect of this fact on the Soviets' desire to extend their global influence and power...

...KGB harassment of dissenters, vitriolic press assaults on freethinkers, and siren calls for ideological fidelity are all symptoms of the current trend...

...In Europe, the nonaggression treaty with West Germany obliges Moscow to grant concessions on the status of West Berlin--at least, this is the presumed trade-off...

...Advocates of a strong Russia probably demand at least a "two-war" army to assure Soviet security in Europe and Asia...

...Who has been saying "I am the Central Committee...

...Whether, as some educated guesses went, Kosygin tendered his resignation remains unknown...

...In that practiced Aesopian language of Soviet politics, several low-level allies have referred to him as "head of the Politburo," which at once suggests that Brezhnev yearns for that lofty position, and that his rivals might press a "cult of the individual" indictment...

...But if the Party apparatus can help it, the coming age of Soviet technocracy will not result in a market socialism managed by apolitical technocrats...

...But the "distortions" and "excesses" of the cult of the individual continue to be condemned, and Stalin has not been cleared of the charge that he failed to ready the Army for the German invasion of 1941...

...Moscow's divisions heretofore have been kept close at hand--20 in East Germany (the front line against Nato), five in Czechoslovakia (since 1968), four in Hungary, two in Poland...

...Unretouched news photographs show heavy facial creases and black, thick hair surrendering to gray...

...Stalin today serves as a litmus test for the relative strengths of the conservative and moderate camps...

...Nor is it clear whether Suslov, Shelepin and Mazurov did or did not issue a private, written criticism of Brezhnev and Kosygin last spring...

...But going beyond its impact on relations with foreign Communist parties or even domestic politics, an issue as visible as the dissident Soviet Jews complicates what to the Kremlin are its more important foreign-policy aims...

...Brezhnev's most recent maneuver was directed at Leningrad, a breeding ground of opposition since the 1920s...

...The Soviet Union's dissidents--numbering in the thousands or perhaps tens of thousands--feel the changed atmosphere in more ways than KGB trials and imprisonment in psychiatric wards or labor camps...

...Who belongs to a minority--a faction--in the monolithic Communist party...

...The most conspicuous Soviet foreign-policy development has been the falling-out with the U.S., and reactions to this underline the divisions in the country...

...Some stress American imperialist aggression--especially in Indochina--rigidity in the Middle East, a threatening Nato, and the dominance of the military-industrial complex in American politics...

...In all, some 500,000 of the class of 1906 perished...

...It is in this atmosphere that the Party General Secretary and his cohorts prepare for the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, opening on March 30...

...But it is significant that the leadership has not moved to simply squash all dissent...

...Discussion of the profit incentive, decentralized management and market forces is now confined to murmurings in the corners...

...His photographs, travels and speeches all muster more attention than a general secretary is due...

...Brezhnev would, it seems, be less willing to back down in a situation like the Cuban missile crisis of 1962...

...These do not constitute an authentic Stalinism by any means, but they suggest a future guided by values that seemed to have worked under Stalin...

...It has always been the expectation, if not the intent, in the West that detente would mellow Communist regimes...

...It remains to be seen how Brezhnev and Kosygin will define Soviet-American relations at the 24th Congress...

...This may explain why Moscow, having failed so far to fully neutralize the negative reaction flowing from its 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, has taken to linking "Zionists" with the practitioners of "quiet counterrevolution" accused of fomenting the uprising there...

...What adjective one should fasten to his name is no longer, of course, the authentic argument...

...Nonetheless, it seems clear that the dominant thrust is toward an orderly, organized, single-minded nation of 244 million people...

...There has been little sympathy for distracting, divisive speculation about Russia's soul and heart...

...Like all congresses, the 24th will serve to consolidate some power blocs and weaken others, to envision the Soviet Union's global future (Brezhnev's task) and to specify the 1971-75 economic plan (Kosygin's assigned role...

...Ambivalence in domestic affairs is evident as well in the ever present controversy over Stalin...

...Here is Kommunist, a leading theoretical journal, retelling Lenin's curt, angry words to a colleague in the 1920s: "You are mistaken in repeating [many times] that I 'am the Central Committee.'" Why select this remark just now from fully 50 volumes of Lenin...

...Such broad hacking of Soviet politics inevitably leaves ragged edges...

...A ponderous, portly man, the Party chief retains a soft, nearly lisping Ukrainian accent...

...The question of Soviet Jewry is particularly delicate, too, since the Kremlin remains acutely sensitive to the opinion of foreign Communist parties, who have on occasion supported Jewish pleas...

...Within the country--among the Jews, at least--it is being said that as many as 500,000 of the USSR's 3-3.5 million Jews would leave if they could, and that 40,000 have visa applications on file...

...But after six years of in-fighting, Brezhnev has no doubt made enemies...

...Moreover, a consumer society cannot flourish in the Soviet Union until agriculture prospers...

...Partly because of his wartime career (as a political commissar holding the rank of major general), but mostly, it seems, because of his own predilections, Brezhnev--along with Suslov--regularly supports the Soviet military-industrial complex...

...His two-volume Along Lenin's Course, a collection of reports and speeches, has been eulogized as a fresh contribution to Marxist-Leninist thought, and quotations from him are almost obligatory in policy statements...

...During the '20s and '30s they acquired meager schooling (ultimately, only 16 per cent went beyond six grades), found jobs, and absorbed the successive shocks of the first five-year plans, forced collectivization and Stalin's blood purges...

...To the authorities, these dissidents represent a threat because their demands spotlight the question of open frontiers--which in turn challenges directly the nature of the Soviet political structure...

...Not that the Soviet Union has been stymied...

...it will be nearly 71 when the 25th Party Congress convenes four years hence...

...In fact, nothing in his words suggests even a Khrushchevian tolerance of spontaneous or erratic behavior anywhere in Soviet society...

...The military and heavy-industry captains certainly have argued that expenditures on science (increased for 1971, although the overt military budget leveled off), missiles, naval forces, and Siberian and Far East resource development must take precedence over agriculture, apartment buildings and supermarkets...

...Were the archconservatives unchallenged, Stalin would be enshrined once more...

...Rapid adaptation of computer technology and creation of a new young managerial class trained in the complexities of modern industry are recognized as essential needs...

...As Soviet Ambassador to China, he is destined to linger in dead-end diplomacy...

...it hopes, apparently, to shift the blame for the Prague events and damn the Jews in one stroke...

...Of greater concern is the Middle East, where the Soviets are firmly entrenched and confront the United States...

...But other, stronger lobbies have in the past received more than their allotted share of scarce funds, and could again in the future...

...The problem of a balanced diet, including adequate meat supplies, still burdens Brezhnev and his allies (and accounts for the encouragement of peasants' private plots...

...For good political and economic reasons, then, Brezhnev fervently argues the paramount necessity of a modern agricultural system...

...Well over a thousand did so last year, mostly to Israel...

...Or, to put it another way, a return to the values that Brezhnev and the other senior members of the Soviet political establishment--the one in four--were imbued with during the Stalinist era...

...Neither does anything indicate the grand vision and steely will of a Stalin...

...The vital statistics for Russians born in 1906 and flanking years reflect a lifetime of violence, disease, terror, poverty, famine, and death...

...Even Krasnaya Zvezda, the Defense Ministry's newspaper, sermonizes, "thriftiness is a Communist trait...

...Brezhnev, who had declared at the first session that the 24th Congress would convene in 1970, in accordance with Party rules, was reversed 10 days later when the second session postponed the Congress until this month...

...Rumors of changes in the Politburo started up last spring and circulated off and on through two puzzling Central Committee sessions in July...

...Given the means at the KGB's disposal, every dissident could easily be silenced one way or another...

...Differences in the Kremlin over the likely effects of detente have produced warnings in the Soviet press of a vast conspiracy to sap Soviet resolve--employing, for example, the "convergence" theory and the lure of commercial agreements with the West...

...The "single plan"--a respectable euphemism for a consolidation of the system--dominates, with the Kremlin obviously determined to trim off the fat wherever possible...

...Career Party apparatchik and Leningrad region First Secretary Vasily Tolstikov, probably anxious to move up to the Politburo, was moved instead to Peking...

...he closets himself chiefly with foreign Communist leaders who can be expected to keep personal information to themselves...

...Cost cutting, smaller inventories, greater production per individual, higher return per ruble of investment--all the tightening devices of modern Western management are being urged upon the workers and peasants...

...An additional divisive issue involves the heated international controversy over Soviet Jews...

...Since 1965, when Brezhnev announced a large investment program for agriculture, the all-important grain harvests have averaged 165 million tons (including a record 185 million tons last year...

...Never before has the Soviet Union had so many and such large contingents of troops "overseas...

...The new Five-Year Plan envisions a 195-million-ton yearly minimum by 1975--an ambitious target even if State and collective farms receive all the fertilizer, tractors and trucks they are supposed to...

...In all likelihood this will be the last congress for both of them, as well as for Suslov, Podgorny, Kirilenko, and Pelshe...

...This marks the first such shift, explaining descriptions of the plan as "consumer-oriented...

...To go beyond that, to achieve power and position, required craftiness, uncommon ambition and an instant willingness to abandon most if not all scruples...

...Last month's conference of world Jewish leaders in Brussels generated a Soviet propaganda response of a scope reserved for major policy objectives...

...These blend into the moderates, who include opponents of great-power chauvinism and machine-like social management...

...According to estimates of the British Institute of Strategic Studies, the USSR maintains 10,000 military advisers in Egypt, 1,500 in Algeria, and 1,000 each in North Vietnam, Cuba and Syria...

...When World War II began for the Soviet Union in 1941, about 3 million of the original 6.8 million, now in their 34th and 35th years, were ready for battle...

...But the traditional confrontation between Soviet "metal eaters" and the "consumer lobby" has yet to be decided...

...Western correspondents and private visitors in Moscow have tried in vain to meet with him...

...In 1966 Shelepin lost his place in the Party Secretariat, the elite organization that administers internal Party affairs, and was shunted to the trade unions--a step down, or at best sideways...

...To get where he is now, Brezhnev neatly sidetracked former Komsomol and KGB head Aleksandr Shelepin, a young rival (and, if he survives the 24th Congress, at 52 still a contender...

...Although these political adjustments leave Brezhnev with no visible unchecked rival, there are indications that all is not well among the elite...

...The ascendant view in Moscow at the moment, however, is simply that the Nixon Administration tends to cold-war diplomacy...

...Nikolai Podgorny, long considered a Brezhnev opponent, was made President of the Supreme Soviet (the parliament), initiating a subtle dismantling of his power base...

...At the same time, increased Aeroflot routes and new trade and cultural agreements--all the paraphernalia of global influence--have helped transform the USSR into an authentic superpower...

...Thus far, though, only a modest granite bust of him has been placed over his grave near the Kremlin wall, and before that in 1969, on the 90th anniversary of his birth, Soviet newspapers issued a generally laudatory biography...

...His associate, Leningrad city First Secretary Georgi Popov, has been prematurely pensioned at 58...

...On the left, constricted circles of liberals, some of them identified dissidents, maintain a despairing vigil on the hardliners' ascendancy...

...Quite clearly, the Soviet leaders have had difficulty with East Germany's Walter Ulbricht over these negotiations, but they are also a source of dispute within the Soviet hierarchy itself...

...Yet on the key point of Jewish emigration, Soviet official policy seems increasingly equivocal: While many of the courageous and vocal Soviet Jews who petition for exit visas have been arrested, some have recently been granted exit papers...

...The average age of these men is almost 67...

...Careers properly end or advance with a line of type in a Party declaration...

...Indeed, the low-key coup of 1964 itself revealed a new style: With Brezhnev at the Party helm and Kosygin heading the government (once more dividing functions merged under Khrushchev), a collective leadership surfaced in the name of stability, rationality and political expediency...

...Yet little is really known of the General Secretary's private character beyond these sketchy items...

...But the world has not been less troublesome for the Soviet Union...

...The substantial numerical growth of Soviet ICBMS and submarine-launched nuclear missiles, noted in President Nixon's State of the World message, reflects a massive military expansion...

...Aleksandr Tvardovsky, who made the literary journal Novy Mir an organ of provocative social criticism, has lost his editorship...

...Consequently consumer goods industries are scheduled to grow by 44-48 per cent, while heavy industry--machines and armaments--has been assigned a 41-45 per cent growth rate...

...More tantalizing rewards for, quite plainly, harder work were written into the plan sometime last year...

...The press, theater and arts are being closed off to even moderately liberal thought...

...Gradually, the economic reform proposed in 1965--billed as the most daring innovation since Lenin's New Economic Policy--has been sapped of its vitality...

...Unless Brezhnev has overlooked a pocket of formidable resistance, or has been cunningly set up for a quick strike, he should emerge from the Congress in April as a lineal disciple of Lenin, not to mention first in the class of 1906...

...Others argue the need for nuclear arms limitations, expanded trade with the United States, compromise in Europe and the Middle East...

...To Brezhnev and his contemporaries--the one in four--everyone is expendable because so many have been expended...

...Even the younger members of the Communist party's 11-member Politburo--Aleksandr Shelepin, Dmitri Polyansky, Kiril Mazurov, all in their 50s--have been through the special Soviet survival school...

...Thus it was that in 1966, when Brezhnev's generation observed its 60th anniversary, only one out of four had made it...

...Its companions are neglect of the consumer, a high whine of Soviet patriotism, and unrelenting speechifying about "building Communism...

...Brezhnev's hand-over-hand climb toward the pinnacle, while conspicuous, has lacked the crunching drama and bullish drive Nikita Khrushchev displayed...

...Yet the Chronicle of Current Events, a typewritten dossier of police activities from which Westerners draw much of the news about Soviet dissenters, continues to be circulated underground...

...Like sharp swirls on the water's surface, these frustratingly obscure communications bespeak a battle...

...Moscow has been unsettled enough by the ability of discontented Polish workers in Gdansk, Szczecin and Lodz to extract political and economic favors from the Party apparatus...

...The Soviet political spectrum on this eve of a Party congress reaches far to the right, encompassing arch-conservatives (the residual Stalinists) and conservatives, whose ranks are drawn from the GKB, the military, Party and government officials of the "law and order" bent, and assorted writers and artists of the strict Socialist Realism school...

...Last spring's exercise "Okean," involving 200 warships in all oceans, underscored Soviet intentions to construct a naval force fully befitting a major merchant marine power...

...It will almost certainly be lined with the virtues of hard work, dedication, patriotism, and a constantly renewed vigor against imperialism and bourgeois ideology...

...Unlike Kosygin, he seldom has ventured beyond Communist countries (and not once since Khrushchev's fall) to be exposed to arm's-length analysis...

...It will not take much rising and falling to equalize the two growth rates, and, in any case, heavy industry still digests some 75 per cent of Soviet investment...

...Though not wholly responsible for agriculture, in the end they must answer for its performance...

...But Brezhnev no longer performs so deliberately as an equal of his associates...

...Additional tens of thousands, wounded and maimed, weakened by deprivation, were destined to short lives...

...These developments make the Soviet Union far more capable of foreign interventions today than under Khrushchev...

...So, in what may be his final grand moment, Brezhnev will chart the path to a greater Soviet Union...

...Meanwhile Andrei Kirilenko, a Brezhnev ally and Politburo member since 1962, was named to the Secretariat, making him the only one besides Brezhnev and Suslov to have a foot in both powerful agencies...