TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/caps/82/82guard

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,                                            ╥««Changing the Guard

November 22, 1982

After Brezhnev's 18-year rule, the U.S.S.R. gets an enigmatic new
leader

The first hint came at 7:15 p.m. Moscow time on Wednesday.  Nikolai
Shchelokov, the Minister for Public Order, had just delivered a brief
television address to celebrate Militia Day, and millions of Soviet
viewers were awaiting the live pop concert that was supposed to
follow.  Instead, without explanation, a film about Lenin was
broadcast.  Then, at 9, came Vremya (Time), the nightly news.  The
announcers, who usually dress informally, wore dark jackets or
dresses.  "I ran to my neighbors to find out if they knew what was
going on," a Moscow secretary said.  "Everyone was excited.  We all
thought somebody had died, but nobody guessed it was Brezhnev.  We
had all seen him on television three days before, reviewing the
military parade, and he looked all right."

The initial speculation centered on Politburo Member Andrei
Kirilenko, 76, who was rumored to be ailing and who was absent from
the traditional Kremlin lineup at the Nov. 7 ceremonies marking the
65th anniversary of the October Revolution.  After the news, the
nationwide first channel aired an unscheduled program of war
reminiscences.  On the second channel, an ice hockey game was
abruptly replaced by Tchaikovsky's mournful "Pathetique" Symphony.

Only the next morning, at exactly 11, did Soviet radio and TV
simultaneously broadcast the formal announcement:  "The Central
Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Presidium
of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet and the Council of Ministers of the
U.S.S.R. inform with deep sorrow the party and the entire Soviet
people that Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet
Communist Party Central Committee and President of the Presidium of
the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet, died a sudden death at 8:30 a.m. on Nov.
10, 1982."

Brezhnev, 75, who had held the most powerful post in the Soviet Union
for 18 years, and who had been ill for nearly a decade, had died from
complications of atherosclerosis affecting his heart and major
vessels.  He had actually died 26 1/2 hours before the announcement
was made.

A new era was beginning, one that would affect the destiny not just
of the Soviet Union's 270 million citizens but of the entire world.
As Brezhnev's surviving colleagues moved swiftly to fill the
leadership void, they were eager to convey the impression of a smooth
transition and lay to rest speculation about a power struggle.

Late Friday morning, black limousines began to converge on the
Kremlin, bringing the nearly 300 bureaucrats, generals, diplomats,
scientists, academicians and workers who make up the Central
Committee of the Communist Party.  Even before they entered the
yellow-and-white Council of Ministers building, they knew what they
were there to do.  They would ratify the choice already made by the
Politburo, that of Yuri Andropov, 68, to be Brezhnev's successor as
party chief.  The post has been held by only five men since the
Bolshevik Revolution:  Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Georgi
Malenkov, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev.  Shortly after noon
Friday, Andropov, the son of a railroad worker from the northern
Caucasus, became the sixth.

Andropov was, to Western experts, by far the most controversial of
the contenders.  Stern and serious behind his thick spectacles, he
was the Ambassador to Budapest during the Soviet army's efficient
repression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956.  As head of the
Committee for State Security (KGB) from 1967 to May 1982, he had also
overseen the suppression of internal dissent.  But at the same time,
Andropov developed a reputation for pragmatism and sophistication, at
least by Soviet standards.

As chairman of the committee designated to organize Brezhnev's
funeral, Andropov gave a brief oration extolling the dead leader, who
lay in state less than a quarter-mile away in the House of Trade
Unions' Hall of Columns, a handsome neoclassical building that was
once a club for the Russian aristocracy.  "A most outstanding
political leader of our times, our comrade and friend, a man with a
big soul and heart, sympathetic and well-wishing, responsive and
profoundly humane, is no more," Andropov intoned.  After calling for
a minute of silence, he continued:  "Leonid Ilyich said that not a
single day in his life could be separated from the affairs of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the entire Soviet country.
And that was really so."

Konstantin Chernenko, 71, the silver-haired party chief
administrator, then rose.  As every Soviet citizen knew, Chernenko
had been Andropov's main competitor for the succession.  Now, in a
deft and effective political gesture, the rival was moving to
nominate the winner, thus symbolizing the need to close ranks.  "Dear
Comrades, all of us are obviously aware that it is extremely
difficult to repair the loss inflicted on us by the death of Leonid
Ilyich Brezhnev," Chernenko said.  "It is now twice, three times as
important to conduct matters in the party collectively."  Chernenko,
a close protege of Brezhnev's, then proceeded to nominate Andropov,
whom he described as "a selfless Communist" and, perhaps with some
reticence, as Brezhnev's "closest associate."  The delegates approved
the choice unanimously.  By 1 p.m. the meeting was over, and the
entire Central Committee went to the Hall of Columns to open the
period of national mourning, during which Brezhnev's corpse would lie
in state.

As an orchestra played Tchaikovsky, the committee members lined up in
front of the catafalque where Brezhnev lay amid wreaths and flowers,
with row upon row of medals pinned to cushions below his feet.  After
a brief formal tribute, Andropov led the Politburo members toward the
dead man's family.  He bent over and kissed Brezhnev's widow
Victoria, 75, through her veil.  She lifted a hand to her cheek to
wipe away tears.  Andropov bent to kiss her again, then kissed
Brezhnev's daughter Galina.  Kirilenko, a leading contender for the
succession until sidelined in the past year, burst into tears as he
spoke to Brezhnev's widow.

World leaders sent messages of condolence to the Kremlin that varied
in tone.  President Reagan, who had been awakened at 3:35 a.m.
Thursday by National Security Advisor William P. Clark with the news
of Brezhnev's death, sent a respectful two-paragraph message calling
Brezhnev "one of the world's most important figures for nearly two
decades" and expressing his hope for improved U.S.-Soviet relations.
Pope John Paul II promised "a particular thought for the memory of
the illustrious departed one."  Declared former West German
Chancellor Helmut Schmidt:  "His death leaves a gap in international
politics that will be painfully felt."  The Chinese government
dispatched a terse message to Moscow conveying "deep condolences."
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, whose country has received much
of its modern weaponry from the Soviet Union, paid effusive tribute
to Brezhnev, saying that "he stood by us in our moment of need."

The police soon sealed off all of downtown Moscow.  The tight
security allowed mourners to move three abreast through unimpeded
streets.  The capital's huge avenues were guarded by long ranks of
militiamen in their metal-color greatcoats with blue shoulder boards.
Soldiers wearing black-edged red armbands stood at attention outside
the House of Trade Unions, whose light-green-and-white facade had
been freshly painted for the occasion.  Red flags and streamers
bordered in black hung limply on the building.

Inside the hall, mourners shuffled up a marble staircase beneath
chandeliers draped in black gauze.  On the stage, amid a veritable
garden of flowers, a complete symphony orchestra in black tailcoats
played classical music.  Brezhnev's embalmed body, dressed in a black
suite, white shirt and black-and-red tie, faced the long queue of
mourners.  His face was drained of color, distant and alabaster in
death.  The mourners could not pause.  They turned their faces
toward Brezhnev's head for a moment of silent communion, then filed
out, past the honor guard.

People leaving the hall and heading for the subway stopped to express
regrets and reminiscences.  "I'm really sorry for him," said a
grandmother.  "The poor man didn't even have time to play with his
grandchildren."  Said an engineer:  "We used to complain some, bitch
about this and that, and tell jokes about the old man.  But now that
Brezhnev is dead I feel sad because he conveyed a sense of security
and stability."  One middle-aged Russian intellectual recalled a
different scene, when Stalin lay in state in the House of Trade
Unions.  Then the streets outside were packed with an unruly mob of
people pushing their way toward the hall.  "Stalin was like a god to
them," he explained.  "They were swarming around trying to see the
dead god.  But Brezhnev was human, and people are calm now."

While many world leaders, including French Premier Pierre Mauroy and
Indian Prime Minister Gandhi, announced that they planned to attend
Brezhnev's funeral, Reagan rejected the arguments made by Secretary
of State George Shultz, National Security Adviser Clark and CIA
Director William Casey that the President's presence would be a
gesture of conciliation toward the new Soviet leadership.  Instead,
Reagan decided to send a delegation headed by Shultz and Vice
President George Bush, who interrupted a seven-nation visit to
Africa.  The decision drew immediate criticism. Reagan's failure to
go to Moscow, said Massachusetts Democratic Senator Paul Tsongas,
represents "a lost opportunity" to make a dramatic gesture.

Defending the decision, a Shultz aide said, "We don't think the
succession itself requires a major reassessment of the U.S.
position."  At a press conference on the day Brezhnev's death was
announced, Reagan said that he had no intention of modifying his
stern stance toward the Soviets without any give on their part.  "We
shouldn't delude ourselves," he declared.  "Peace is the product of
strength, not of weakness, of facing reality and not believing in
false hopes."  The President went on, "For ten years, detente was
based on words from them and not on any deeds to back those words
up."  Said he, "It takes two to tango," and the U.S. needs some sign
"that they want to tango also."

Much the same sentiment was expressed by Andropov.  Addressing the
Central Committee, he said, "We know well that the imperialists
cannot be talked into peace.  It must be defended by relying on the
invincible might of the Soviet armed forces."  The speech echoed
Brezhnev's last public words.  Surveying a Soviet military parade
three days before his death, he had promised to deal any aggressor "a
crushing retaliatory strike."

Thus even before Brezhnev could be properly buried it was clear that
the most important issue facing the new Soviet leadership was the
dangerous deterioration in Soviet-American relations.  The Kremlin
has been concerned that the Reagan Administration may be bent not
just on containing the U.S.S.R. but on defeating and destroying the
Soviet system.  Soviet officials say their leaders have been
dismayed by four themes in Administration police:  repeated
declarations by Reagan and his aides that Soviet Communism is
destined to end up on the ash heap of history, combined with a
presidential call for a crusade against Communism; the
Administration's military buildup; official statements and leaked
documents suggesting that the Administration is seriously preparing
for the possibility of nuclear war; reports of stepped-up covert
action by the CIA against Soviet clients around the world.

In response, the Soviet leadership is all the more determined not to
give up any part of what will doubtless be remembered as Brezhnev's
most lasting legacy, an unprecedented defense buildup that has, for
the first time, put the Soviet Union roughly on a par with the U.S.
militarily.  Some Americans, including Reagan, argue that the Soviets
under Brezhnev actually achieved a position of strategic superiority
that seriously threatens the U.S. in the years ahead.  Still, many
specialists in the U.S. and Western Europe believe that the transfer
of power in the Kremlin presents an opportunity to relieve tensions
and, ultimately, to reduce the level of nuclear and conventional
forces on both sides.  Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
expects Andropov to make friendly overtures to the West as he
attempts to consolidate his authority.  "The major impact Brezhnev's
death will have on the Soviet Union is that the country will be
preoccupied for the next months, maybe years, by leadership
problems," says Kissinger.  "Thus we may be facing a peace offensive
in which they will try to get some of the immediate tensions out of
the way."

The other important foreign policy problem inherited by Andropov is
the Soviet Union's deep, longstanding quarrel with China.  In the
months before his death, Brezhnev made several speeches that signaled
a willingness to reduce tension, but neither country is under any
illusion that a breakthrough will be possible on major points of
contention.

At home, Andropov faces an economy plagued by mismangement, low labor
productivity and sluggish technological progress.  The economic
growth rate has been steadily declining, and food shortages are
growing more acute.

How will Andropov deal with these challenges?  U.S. officials believe
that the very fact of replacing an ailing leader who was apparently
not well enough to devote more than a few hours a day to his
responsibilities will make a big difference.  Says a senior
Administration expert:  "Andropov is a far more decisive man than
Brezhnev had been for some years."

Most experts agree that Andropov does not yet possess and may never
achieve the power necessary to effect profound changes in the Soviet
Union.  It took several years before Khrushchev and Brezhnev were
able to assert themselves as the Soviet Union's unchallenged leaders.
Says Harvard's Adam Ulam:  "The process of succession does not begin
with the death of a leader, nor does it end with the designation of
his successor."

Though Andropov may soon be able to add one or two younger supporters
to the Politburo, it may be some time before significant changes in
policy are evident because the old guard is solidly entrenched.  In
the last years of his stewardship, Brezhnev was unwilling to dilute
his power by infusing new blood into a Politburo that was packed
mostly with his longtime comrades and cronies.  When Brezhnev died,
only two of the voting members of the Politburo represented the
younger generation of leaders:  Grigori Romanov, 59, and Mikhail
Gorbachev, 51.

According to Columbia University Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer, the
old guard under Andropov will be characterized, while it lasts, by
"reticence and restraint."  Bialer believes that Andropov will not
immediately have sufficient authority to try a fresh approach to
Soviet foreign and domestic policy, let alone undertake the radical
economic reforms that are needed to boost the U.S.S.R.'s declining
growth rate.  To achieve the degree of personal power exercised by
Brezhnev, the new leader will have to build a potent coalition of
supporters among the younger men in the party Central Committee who
are straining to share power at the top.  The process of forging
political alliances will take time, skill and stamina.

Under Andropov, the Politburo will be on its guard against any
attempt by Washington to take advantage of uncertainty at the top in
Moscow.  Says former British Prime Minister James Callaghan:  "This
is a time for caution in the West and particularly in Washington.  We
must be moderate in our language and discard counterproductive
rhetoric."

One of the reasons for Brezhnev's popularity among his colleagues was
that he guaranteed them life-time job security.  With the exception
of a few who personally ran afoul of Brezhnev, most Soviet top
officials did not resign; they died in office.  Now Andropov will
have to start replacing as many as 6,000 top officials in every
important governing institution in the country, including the
Politburo, the Secretariat of the Central Committee, the Presidium of
the Council of Ministers, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Such a vast change of politicians and administrators has not occurred
in the Soviet Union since the great purges of the late 1930s, when
thousands of powerful bureaucrats were shot or dispatched to the
gulag on Stalin's orders.  This time, however, the scourge is not a
paranoid and murderous dictator.  It is old age.  Most top officials
in the country's ruling bodies are the same age as the majority of
Politburo member:  in their 60s and 70s.  Roy Medvedev, the
independent-minded Marxist historian living in Moscow, believes that
younger men will move into top positions around the time of the 27th
Communist Party Congress in 1985.  "The political wheels grind very
slowly in our country," he says.  "A man who suddenly comes out of
nowhere, like Jimmy Carter, is an American phenomenon.  Here it's
like the army.  You rise through the ranks, and nobody's going to put
a general's uniform on you simply because you're capable of
leadership."

In an exclusive interview with TIME last week, Vladimir Kuzichkin,
the former KGB major who defected to Britain last June, stressed the
difference between Andropov and other top Soviet leaders.  Said
Kuzichkin:  "With the progress of time it will become clear that
Andropov is his own man.  Although he made his name as the KGB boss,
he was not a professional policeman, having much wider interests.  He
owed his KGB job to Brezhnev, but he was never Brezhnev's creature."

Given his age, Andropov could prove to be a transitional leader for
the Soviets, with the power moving on by decade's end to men like
Gorbachev and Vladimar Dolgikh, 57, who are not well known in the
Soviet Union, let alone in the U.S.  Totally obscure, of course, are
the thousands of other politicians and administrators who are seeking
to climb upward from their present middle-level party positions.
Almost all are male and in their 50s, but hardly anything is known
about the personalities or views of these people.

Sovietologists who have analyzed the backgrounds of the rising
generation of leaders have drawn a number of conclusions about them.
Unlike their predecessors, the upcoming leaders entered politics
after Stalin's death in 1953, thus escaping the paralyzing effects of
mass police terror and participation in the dictator's crimes.  As a
result, they may be less fearful, more self-confident and assertive,
than the Brezhnev generation.  Though the younger men are completely
loyal to the Soviet system, they are less suspicious and more curious
about the outside world.  Better educated than the old rulers, many
of whom attended only vocational schools, they are more aware of the
shortcomings and the backwardness of Soviet society.  At the same
time they are more confident of their ability to put the Communist
system to rights.

Most experts agree that the new leadership will be less dogmatic and
more pragmatic, but just as tough as the old.  Cautions George
Breslauer of the University of California at Berkeley:  "I completely
reject the view that younger Soviet leaders are reformists.  They are
equally hard line."

Nonetheless, any aspiring party chief, whatever his personal views,
must be responsive to the aspirations of the Soviet political elite
who constitute his power base.  What will the political elite seek in
the post-Brezhnev era?  Certainly it wants to unclog the avenues of
advancement that Brezhnev and his gerontocrats have blocked.  Beyond
that, the top priority is to get the country moving, after the sharp
economic slowdown that has set in during the past three years.  In
the next generation's struggle for power, "the domestic economy has
to be the major issue," says the Rand Corporation's Thane Gustafson.
Careers will be made or broken and alliances concluded or undone over
new proposals to revitalize the economy.  But change will not come
easily.  Brezhnev's most unwelcome legacy has been the debacle down
on the farm.  Says a Soviet journalist:  "The new man in the Kremlin
will have instant popular support if he can solve the food problems."
But unless truly radical changes are made in the centrally planned
collective farm system, agriculture is probably doomed to remain the
disaster area of the economy.

Compounding the new leaderhip's economic worries is a growing
shortage of skilled labor that will become critical by the year 2000.
Because of a rising death rate and a plummeting birth rate, the
annual net increase of the working-age population is expected to drop
from its 1976 high of 2.7 million to only 285,000 by 1986.  Murray
Feshbach, America's leading expert on Soviet population trends,
believes that the present 2% rate of Soviet economic growth could
drop to zero or even go into the minus column because of more
shortages of skilled labor, especially in European Russia, where most
of the country's industry is situated.

Diverse groups within the society will be struggling for their share
of shrinking national resources in the post-Brezhnev era.  The Soviet
leadership under Andropov is expected to maintain Soviet military
spending at its present high levels, estimated to be 12% to 14% of
the G.N.P.  What is left will have to be spread more thinly.  Says
Robert Legvold, an expert on East-West problems at the Council on
Foreign Relations:  "The Soviet Union simply does not have the
resources to invest in all the necessary sectors.  The leadership is
going to have to make tough decisions on allocations of capital, raw
materials and labor."

The loser in this battle for allocations will be the Soviet consumer.
Accustomed to a steady, though scarcely dramatic, rise in the
standard of living under Brezhnev, Soviet citizens may have to settle
for no further improvement in the 1980s.  But they are not likely to
rebel openly.  Lacking any genuine forum in which to express
dissatisfaction.  Soviet consumers will probably do little more than
grumble.  Andropov, with his KGB background, may deal more harshly
with strikes or other eruptions of anger that might occur.  Says
Historian Walter Laqueur:  "Expect tighter discipline rather than
liberalism, but expect some economic reforms."

At the same time, the new regime may be obliged to use intimidation
or raw force in Eastern Europe, where it might face unrest and
rebellion, similar to that in Poland, during the rest of the 1980s.
"The Soviet imperial system is suffering from a sickness, a deep
systemic crisis," says Bialer.  "For the Kremlin, Poland is not a
cold, but pneumonia."  With their stagnant economy, the Soviets will
not be able to apply the balm of aid to their satellite states.
This, in turn, could plunge the fragile economies of Eastern Europe
into even deeper trouble.

Therein lies the irony of the Brezhnev legacy:  all of the Soviet
Union's gigantic military might has not proved sufficient to convince
its leaders that they can depend on enjoying either domestic
tranquility or genuine security along the country's borders, even
those it shares with Communist neighbors.  On the contrary, insofar
as the military sector has drained off resources from the civilian
economy, the U.S.S.R.'s war machine has weakened the country.
According to some reports, a number of party officials and
theoreticians have even begun asking whether, as a result, their
country ought to shift its concept of strength and security from a
narrow, strictly military definition to a broader one, embracing
economic strength and social stability as well.  In other words,
should the classic guns-vs.-butter conflict be resolved, for once, in
a way that gives at least equal emphasis to butter?

It would take a true optimist to give butter the edge in this debate
or to predict that Andropov will have the power, the time, or even
the inclination to push through the reforms that are necessary to
turn the Soviet economy around.  Still, it would be a mistake to
underestimate the enduring strength of the gigantic industrial
machine that Brezhnev helped build.  Moreover, the often cumbersome
Soviet political system is still flexible enough to allow a new
generation of leaders to make crucial decisions on the allocation of
resources, industrial growth and military spending that will assure
the Soviet Union's survival as a formidable superpower.

--By Patricia Blake.
  Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/Moscow, with other bureaus