Andropov and the New Soviet Generation
DANIELS, ROBERT V.
REFURBISHING THE BUREAUCRACY Andropov and the New Soviet Generation BY ROBERT V. DANIELS The most striking aspect of Yuri V. Andropov's first few months as supreme Soviet leader has been his...
...Each previous change of the guard at the Kremlin has been marked initially by a move away from the absolute rule of a single individual toward a collective, or contested, stewardship...
...The tactical pattern suggests not a sudden housecleaning, but the step-by-step elevation of younger men as openings arise or are selectively created...
...A second reality is that the men who rose to Politburo rank during the '70s to fill the gaps, and who waged the brief succession battle, are hardly young themselves...
...This was the case in 1957, when Vyacheslav M. Molotov and his allies tried in vain to dislodge Khrushchev, and again in 1964 when the Brezhnev gang did so successfully...
...It is not unrealistic to surmise, therefore, that the younger contingent has begun to act within the Central Committee as a pressure group for reform, particularly for measures to break the logjam in the economy...
...These young men rose meteorically, then locked themselves in position...
...Not that a sweep will be accomplished overnight...
...Over the same span, the median age on the Central Committee increased from 53 to 62...
...REFURBISHING THE BUREAUCRACY Andropov and the New Soviet Generation BY ROBERT V. DANIELS The most striking aspect of Yuri V. Andropov's first few months as supreme Soviet leader has been his quick success in asserting personal power...
...Even if we assume that Andropov has the last word on appointments, he cannot make them randomly or capriciously...
...The age factor precluded another long period of collective rule similar to that of the original Brezhnev team...
...Aleksei N. Kosygin, the long-time Prime Minister, died in 1980 at age 76...
...The General Secretary names the secretaries of the provincial and local Party organizations, who stage-manage the conferences that pick the delegates to the national Party Congress...
...One is the disintegration, due to advancing years or political incapacity, of the circle that came to power with Brezhnev...
...Subsequently, new chiefs were put in place at the KGB, the ministries of railroads and agricultural construction, the Party propaganda department, and the Komsomol-all Central Committee-level posts...
...How these post-Stalinists will differ from today's rulers once they reach the pinnacles of authority remains a matter of conjecture...
...With Brezhnev's end imminent, the new generation was available in strength in the Central Committee to back the candidate who seemed most oriented toward change, and this was Andropov...
...One of of the two empty chairs on the 10-member Secretariat, the body that reigns supreme in matters of Party organization, was awarded at the same time to 53-year-old economic planner Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, a man with a reputation for pragmatism and efficiency...
...Only two major figures thought to be involved in the decision are under the traditional retirement age: 64-year-old Ukrainian Party chief Vladimir V. Shcherbitsky, and 59-year-old Leningrad boss Gri-gory V. Romanov...
...and Kazakhstan Party leader Dinmukhamed A. Kunaev 70...
...He has already installed one new member-geidar A. Aliev, Party chief in Azerbaijan and a former KGB colleague-and two other seats are vacant...
...The Politburo and the Central Committee are in effect assemblies whose delegates represent the different arms of the Soviet state-notably the Party organization, the civil government, and the Armed Forces...
...Andropov is starting out within easy striking distance of controlling the 14-member Politburo...
...How Andropov intends to pursue them is apparent from his early, albeit hardly dramatic, steps...
...This forum has increasingly been populated by relatively youthful politicians whose resentment of the immobility at the top has been simmering for a number of years...
...Over the past 30 years, a place on one of the Party's ruling bodies has come to be thought of as an automatic privilege of individuals who have attained certain bureaucratic offices...
...In fact, the stage is set for the most rapid renovation of the Soviet leadership since Stalin...
...Nikolai V. Podgorny, the Chief of State from 1965-77, when he was removed so that Brezhnev could assume the title, died this month at 79...
...Stalin enjoyed this condition until his death, Khrushchev for a brief period...
...We do know, however, that it has sometimes sounded the decisive voice in leadership disputes...
...Andropov is 68...
...Of course, the extent of the Central Committee's ability to operate as a political force is yet another unknown...
...They are believed to be more confident, pragmatic and sophisticated, though, and they are definitely better educated...
...To secure control, the General Secretary must find or create vacancies specifically in those positions that confer Politburo or Central Committee rank, and fill them with his proteges...
...Their long-lived preeminence is reflected most obviously in statistics on the median age of the Politburo, which went from 58 in 1961 (as a result of the Purge, there were few apparatchiks then over 60) to 72 following the last Party Congress in 1981...
...Most reports indicate that they are no more liberal than their elders...
...Konstan-tin U. Chernenko, considered to have been Brezhnev's favorite, is 71...
...After Khrushchev was overthrown by a neo-Stalinist conspiracy in 1964, Leonid I. Brezhnev served for much of the next 18 years as the chairman of a more or less collegial board...
...And the available evidence suggests that they saw Andropov's election as the best hope for breaking the old pattern...
...He was assisted in the statistical research for this article by Sam McReynolds of the university's Center for Rural Studies...
...Defense Minister Dmitri F. Ustinov 74...
...Moscow Party chief Viktor V. Grishin 68...
...A General Secretary's control may be said to be complete if he can establish a loyal majority in both the Politburo and the Central Committee...
...Thus Andropov, despite the limited term that his own advanced age dictates, will almost surely preside over a generational revolution in the Soviet ruling structure-and the changes this may entail for policy either within the Soviet Union or abroad...
...Two more-those of 77-year-old Prime Minister Nikolai A. Tikhonov and 82-year-old Chairman of the Party Control Committee Arvid I. Pelshe?are likely to be vacated soon...
...Whatever the accuracy of such speculations about Andropov's arrival at the top, the age situation in both the Politburo and the Central Committee clearly affords him a greater opportunity than Brezhnev ever had to manipulate the process that is the basis of individual dominance in the USSR...
...The roots of the Brezhnev generation's tenacious hold on power stretch all the way back to the Great Purge of 1937-38, when Stalin killed off practically everyone in the Soviet bureaucracy over the age of 35...
...The flow of power within the CPSU is circular...
...Lenin's death in 1924 was followed by half a decade of open factional struggle before Josef V. Stalin emerged as the unchallenged despot...
...Stalin's 1953 demise initiated another period of upheaval, and it took Nikita S. Khrushchev almost two years to gain firm control...
...But gradual turnover and the expansion of this body (now standing at 319 full members, up from 240 in the mid-'70s) made room for the promotion of a substantial number of middle-aged officials...
...Forty per cent of the current members were younger than 30 when Stalin died, and after the next Party Congress in 1986 this will assuredly be true of the majority...
...broader power base of the Party Central Committee...
...Andrei P. Kirilenko, 76, second-in-command for Party organization, was dropped from the Politburo ostensibly because of failing health just a few days prior to the 75-year-old Brezhnev's death last November...
...Mikhail A. Suslov, the Party ideologist, died last January, also at 79...
...As for the Central Committee, with one-quarter of its membership 69 or over, Andropov's position is rather good there, too...
...Perhaps what accounts for the ease and extent of Andropov's victory most of all, though, is a third reality: the growing generational spread between the upper crust of the Politburo and the Robert V. Daniels, a long-lime N L contributor, is a Professor of History at the University of Vermont...
...Although the alignments within the Politburo are still not entirely clear, it seems that a split developed on this issue and Ustinov played the kingmaker by joining the KGB elements and throwing the military's support behind the former head of the secret police...
...The best that could be expected by opting for a consensus regime and presumably rallying around Chernenko was a few years of caretaker government...
...Felicitous circumstances notwithstanding, these delicate maneuvers take time...
...Andropov's ability to reverse these precedents appears to reflect several realities...
...The rules of nature alone, though, insure that powerful positions will be available in rapid succession from now on...
...The Congress elects the Central Committee (almost half of those chosen being the same provincial and local secretaries), which then selects the Politburo, which confirms the power of the General Secretary...
...Aliev, 59, was named First Deputy Prime Minister and joined the Politburo scarcely a week after Brezhnev's death...
...To replace those massacred, Brezhnev, Suslov, Kosygin and thousands of other so-called vy-dvizhentsy, promotees, were plucked from the working class or peasantry and put through crash training programs...
Vol. 66 • January 1983 • No. 2
