The Chernenko Comeback

...Chernenko's designation as General Secretary, then, confounded every logical expectation...

...The result is a virtually locked-in leadership elite that can only be changed slowly—and not as fast as it ages...

...The maj or question is whether the Soviet leadership will shift its attention from chimerical schemes and sowing fears abroad to the crying economic troubles at home...

...In one of the intriguing indicators of the exact Russian sense of status, Chernenko tied with Prime Minister Tikhonov for second place (naturally following Andropov) in the number of nominations arranged for him in different districts prior to the Supreme Soviet elections last March 4. Andropov's death again presented the Politburo with the question of age and short-term stability versus youth and renovation...

...At one remove, the same principles hold for the Central Committee...

...Still, it has for years reflected an unwritten law of ticket-balancing: the Party professionals occupy four or five seats (for example, Andropov as General Secretary, Secretaries Chernenko, Grigory Romanov and Gorbachev, and Moscow Party boss Viktor Grishin...

...All three, incidentally, qualified as sons of the dominant Great Russian nationality...

...It must be seen as the result of a shifting alignment inside the Politburo—this time away from Andropov-style reform and rectitude, and back, for the short run, to the bureaucratic business-as-usual represented by Brezhnev...

...Age is important because it means a different educational and political experience—typically a genuine higher education background (if only in engineering) , and a political career commencing in earnest after the death of Stalin...

...Whatever the eventual reality, we can anticipate another relatively short Kremlin administration, and another succession that will reinforce the power of the top Party collective—but go to Romanov or a younger leader who can gain the confidence of his colleagues and the interests they represent...

...Indeed, it does not seem possible for Chernenko's contemporaries to retain their control of the Party after him...

...The presumption must therefore be that in both instances the Politburo, reflecting the pressures of the various constituencies represented in it, made its own selection...

...It was, of course, apparent from the moment Yuri V. Andropov failed to show up at the celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution last November 7 that medical factors were likely to make the era of his rule as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union the shortest by far in the history of the U.S.S.R...

...Considering the entrenched character of the Soviet regime's top bodies, it is remarkable that Andropov with his secret police background was able to make himself acceptable to a majority of the Politburo and the Central Committee...

...Secondly, the will of the previous leader does not appear to have counted for much: Brezhnev had obviously tried in vain to set up Chernenko as his heir apparent...

...collaboration with Brezhnev that would eventually result in his attaining the highest rank among the Communist elite...

...The sudden emergence of some truly dark horse is unlikely...

...Chernenko lacks the clout and the inclination to alter the reliance on military might and its projection that marked the last half-dozen years of the Brezhnev era...

...More immediately, there have been signs that Chernenko might be inclined to take a somewhat less confrontational approach than Andropov on internal and external matters...

...For instead of satisfying the impatient younger echelons of the Party hierarchy and choosing someone who would continue Andropov's reform and self-discipline initiatives, the kingmakers handed the place of honor to the very man he had upstaged in winning power 15 months ago...

...In sum, neither Chernenko nor his probable successors portend any easy breakthrough in Western dealings with the Soviet government...

...Only three men met these criteria: Chernenko, the also-ran...

...Little is known about his life prior to the end of World War II, when he surfaced as propaganda chief in the Moldavian Republic, the old province of Bessarabia that Stalin had taken back from Rumania during the fighting...

...then there are the Minister of Defense (Dmitri Ustinov), the Foreign Minister (Andrei Gro-myko) and the head of the KGB (Viktor Chebrikov at the lower "candidate" level...

...and finally three or four key regional figures, who at present include the Party chiefs of the Ukraine (Vladimir Shcherbitsky) and Kazakhstan (Dinmukhamed Kunaev), and the governmental head of the Russian Republic (Vitaly Vorotnikov...

...The events preceding and surrounding Brezhnev's death seemed to suggest that the logjam of bureaucratic immo-bilism and corruption hobbling the aging Stalinist cadre was about to be broken...

...What is clear about Chernenko's elevation is that it merely postpones— and probably not for long—the day of real generational change in the Soviet leadership...

...Thus Chernenko, like Brezhnev and Andropov, is a representative of this post-purge generation of Stalinists who have been growing old in office...

...For a substantive answer we will undoubtedly have to await the arrival of the post-Chernenko generation...

...By most reports of Soviet citizens and emigres, members of the generation now rising in the leadership are just as tough and illiberal as the elders who selected them, but are more sophisticated in addressing the Soviet Union's domestic and foreign problems...

...Several hundred thousand of them were ready to fill the vacuum created in the late '30s by Stalin's purge of practically the entire Communist bureaucracy over the age of 35...

...and the 60-year-old Romanov, distinguished by the surname of the late royal family and just arrived in Moscow this past summer from his old post as Leningrad Party boss...

...rarely would they be retained if they lost that office...

...Nevertheless, Kremlin-watchers were somewhat confounded by the Politburo's succession decision, presumably made during the 22 hours before Andropov's demise was publicly announced on February 10, and ratified by the Central Committee three days later...

...and Andropov, most commentators agree, preferred as the man to follow him Mikhail Gorbachev, at 52 the youngest member of the Politburo...

...The chronology of Chernenko's career permits some interesting interpolations...

...A Party member since 1931, he belonged to the group of promising young workers and peasants recruited by Stalin in the late '20s and early '30s for crash education programs and rapid promotion...

...Ruling out Chernenko as a loser and Gorbachev as a kid, the smart betting had to go for Romanov...

...On the one hand, these circumstances afford him the opportunity to build personal influence in the usual Soviet manner...

...This further suggests that in moments of transition power in the Soviet Union is collective, rather than individual...

...Conversely, removing someone from the Politburo usually means ousting him from the position that conferred the high status, a step not often taken lightly...

...How a successor has actually been chosen, whether the new man will make any difference in terms of policy, how secure his tenure of power is—none of these questions have clear and consistent answers...

...Nothing suggests a diminution of the police regime either, or a curb on the emotional drift toward heightened Russian nationalism and anti-Semitism...

...In practice, the men of the Politburo enjoy their seats by virtue of their specific office...

...It was there that the new Party boss began three decades of unbroken Robert V. Daniels, a long-time New Leader contributor, is Professor of History at the University of Vermont...

...He will immediately have the problem of replacing elderly Cabinet ministers and provincial Party bosses as death, illness or incapacity overtake them...

...Indeed, Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko is more closely associated than any other Soviet leader with the superannuated, bureaucratic conservatism that came to mark the later years of Leonid I. Brezhnev's regime...

...it is made up on the basis of bureaucratic job slots, too, and its members play a vital role in the outcome of the General Secretary's programs...

...Nothing puts our limited knowledge of Soviet politics to the test so much as the transfer of leadership in the Kremlin from one individual to another...

...As for what the impact of a younger Party General Secretary will be, only the loosest sort of guesswork is possible...

...At 72, the new Party chief is the oldest leader to take over in the Kremlin since the Revolution...

...These were the so-called vydvizhentsy (promotees) identified by Professor Sheila Fitzpatrick of the University of Texas in a landmark article in the Slavic Review of September 1979...

...By and large, the vydvizhentsy were attracted to power and practical results, impatient with theory except as a means of blanketing doubts, and both ignorant and suspicious of the outside world...

...Apparently there is an arena of genuine, if behind-the-scenes, politics where commitments and compromises made to secure the leadership will—at least in the short run—constrain the man who is picked to respect the interests that put him into office...

...His repositioning within the Secretariat was directly reminiscent of Andropov's switch to that body the year before...

...Yet precisely who had a voice in Andropov's election is no more known to us than who shared in the choice of Chernenko...

...But Andropov's rival, Chernenko, far from being thrust aside, kept the acknowledged number-two slot as Party Secretary in charge of ideology and remained prominently in view as a champion of ideological rigor and indoctrination...

...the nominal government is represented by the Prime Minister (now Nikolai Tik-honov) and the titular Chief of State (if the position has not been assumed by the General Secretary...

...His illness assured the extension of a trend observable ever since Josef Stalin died in 1953: a diminution in the personal power of the Party chief and his capacity to bring about memorable changes in the political and social structure of the country...

...on the other, they contribute to the generational pressures building up against the old guard...

...Conceivably some of his colleagues saw him as a compromise between the need to tighten up and the fear of a younger man with a potentially long tenure, who could gradually get his own people into the key jobs and replace the entire old guard...

...the youthful Gorbachev...

...Who accounted for this retrograde step cannot be guessed at the present juncture, though most speculation centers on Defense Minister Ustinov as the putative kingmaker...

...The most one can say with reasonable certainty is, first, that the sequence of developments in each case —particularly the quick designation of the ultimate successor to head the funeral arrangements for his predecessor —indicates the next leader was agreed upon before the Party Central Committee (currently numbering about 300 members from across the country) could convene in Moscow to give its official approval...

...Hence the occult science of Kremlinology, of attempting to discern the lines of influence within the Soviet leadership from such casual clues as who is seen speaking with whom on the platform at Supreme Soviet meetings, or who is included in the delegation to meet a certain foreign dignitary at the airport...

...The exact composition of the Politburo, consisting of anywhere from 11-15 individuals, is governed more by custom than by rule...

...If this seems too much to hope for, it at least appears that any initiatives in the direction associated with Andropov are bound to be restrained...

...Marc Zlotnik of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service in Washington, reviewing the published collections of Chernenko's speeches and articles (Problems of Communism, November-December 1982), found reason to expect of him " a heightened interest in arms control with the West, some efforts to slow defense spending, an increasing emphasis on consumer production, economic reform, and an expansion of democratic practices both within the Party and the country as a whole...

...the promotion patterns through the Party hierarchy on the basis of a person's job have been far too consistent to allow any exception...

...One man to watch, along with Gorbachev, is 59-year-old Vladimir Dolgikh, the heavy industry specialist on the Secretariat who became a candidate member of the Politburo following Brezhnev's death...

...And since with old leaders transitions become more frequent, the bureaucratic constituencies gain even greater influence and additional opportunities to entrench their resistance to change from without...

...The median age of today's 12 Politburo members is 70, and their median length of service at this level is seven years...

...Andropov's initial steps to punish venality, round up slackers, and sharpen incentives for efficiency and productivity in the sluggish Soviet economy betokened an alliance of the military, police and younger Party organization men thought to have backed his successful candidacy for the office of General Secretary...

...The process was quite obviously accelerated during the last months of Andropov's illness, and Chernenko may already have been influencing the choice of replacements by virtue of his position on the Secretariat...

...Moreover, his selection would satisfy tradition by keeping the line of succession within the Party apparatus, yet would signal the first significant move toward rejuvenating the leadership since the fall of Nikita Khrushchev...

...In a society as secretive as the Soviet Union, the laws governing its allocation and operation are particularly mysterious...

...Meanwhile, the Politburo has had a strong and growing voice not only over the person of the leader but over the initiatives he can take...

...Chernenko was born in Siberia in 1911 to what is plausibly described as a peasant family...

...The contenders, as in 1982, were restricted to those in fulltime Party organization work in the Central Secretariat, who also had full Politburo membership...

...They have dominated the Soviet system for close to 50 years, with relatively little infusion of younger blood at the upper levels...