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Standing beside the bier of old comrade Mikhail Suslov in January 1982, Leonid Brezhnev, fifth from left, did not look well. During Brezhnev’s slow recovery from a stroke in March, the world wondered which, if any, of the old men—Andropov, Chernenko, Kirilenko, Ustinov—would succeed him. Or would a younger man, such as 50-year-old Mikhail Gorbachov, far right, emerge as the fourth successor to Vladimir Lenin?
In the beginning there was Vladimir Lenin. He died in office in 1924. Then came his three successors: Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev. Stalin’s regime was characterized by terror; Khrushchev’s by administrative chaos; Brezhnev's by bureaucratic stability.
Western experts generally agree on a scenario for ffie selection of Brezhnev’s replacement. As they see it, there will be an "interim phase” at first, during which leadership responsibility will be shared among a small group of senior Politburo members, probably a triumvirate. There is precedent for this. When Stalin died in 1953, a short-lived troika emerged that deluded Georgi Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov, ar>d Lavrenti Beria. Khrushchev, who was party secretary at the time, did not make it. It took him six years to fight his way to the top. When he was sacked in 1964, another threesome assumed control: Brezhnev, Aleksei Kosygin, and Nikolai Podgorny. They worked together smoothly enough, but by 1972 11 was President Richard M. Nixon and Brezhnev wbo jointly signed the SALT I Treaty. This left no d°ubt as to who was in charge in Moscow.
The interim phase, which could last several years, will be characterized by intense bureaucratic infighting between Politburo members. Contenders for the highest position will be weeded out by the process of survival of the fittest. Eventually there will emerge from this harsh crucible a primus inter pares with full authority to speak for the Soviet Union.
While all this is going on, a sweeping generational change will be taking place throughout the Communist Party. Starting at the apex of the bureaucracy, Father Time will be busy rearranging the membership of the Politburo (average age is now 69- plus). But he will not stop there. He will be gathering in the geriatric elite throughout the entire Party hierarchy. Not since Stalin's Great Purge of 1937-38 will there be such a turnover of leadership at every level of the Soviet Government.
As members of this younger generation move into positions of responsibility, they will inherit a severe economic crisis, the culmination of 20 years of steady deterioration of the Soviet economy. Widespread public dissatisfaction with ever-declining standards of living and with bureaucratic inefficiency will fuel
SOVFOTO
the fires of social unrest and pressures for reform. The former cannot be ignored, nor the latter long deferred.
So much for the scenario. Nevertheless, three things are certain: The Brezhnev regime is nearly ended: the Soviet economy is in deep trouble; and irresistible actuarial forces are bringing a post-Stalin generation to the fore. Everything else is speculation.
When the Communist Party’s Central Committee ousted Khrushchev at its October 1964 plenary session, it resolved never again “to permit the concentration of excessive power in the hands of one person.” It may have taken a while, but by 1977, his successor, Brezhnev, had managed to acquire the triple crowns of General Secretary of the Party, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, and, as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the titular role of Chief of State.
As it turned out, Brezhnev made good use of these offices to advance the Party’s interests. He can rightly claim a place in history for leading his country through a most successful period of domestic consolidation and international expansion.
Domestically, the conservative elements in the bureaucratic power structure were strengthened. Party members have enjoyed job security and tenure, and disastrous Khrushchev-like experiments in administrative and agricultural reform have been avoided. True, the Soviet Union still cannot feed its people; its annual rate of economic growth has declined steadily since the 1960s, and consumer goods remain in short supply. Nevertheless, the Soviet people have remained tolerant of their country’s shortcomings, obedient to Party dictates, and fiercely patriotic.
Internationally, the Soviet Union has more than confirmed its superpower status. It has achieved numerical preponderance in strategic weapons over the United States—a fact codified in the 18 June 1979 “Memorandum of Understanding” appended to the proposed SALT II Treaty. Soviet power has been projected either directly or by proxy into the far corners of the globe; the Soviet Union's rule over the Eastern European states is now legitimized by the Helsinki Agreement and enforced by the Brezhnev Doctrine. Admittedly, there were some setbacks: e.g., the break with China, expulsion from Egypt, the still-smoldering situation in Poland, the unexpected resistance in Afghanistan. But on the Kremlin’s balance sheet, the pluses probably outweigh the minuses.
While it remains to be seen what Brezhnev’s net worth to the Soviet people will be, he cannot be faulted for his service to the Party. He recognized early in life that in the Soviet state, it is not the population of 267 million that is the leader’s constituency. Instead, the Party and its supporting communist bureaucracy are the elements for power. Brezhnev worked hard to enlarge and stabilize this political base.
He saw to it that the Party nearly doubled in size during his regime. While still an elite organization, by 1981 it had 17.5 million card-carrying members. In domestic affairs, the Politburo’s decisions are implemented by the Party through an all-pervasive communist bureaucracy. The latter includes Party cadres, collectives, local Soviets, and the Komsomol and Young Pioneers youth organizations. If counted together with the Party, their combined strength comes to 51 million.
Under Brezhnev's leadership, the 26th Party Congress, which met in March 1981, was the first in Soviet history to announce no changes in the upper echelons of the Party. Instead it confirmed that the Politburo’s 14 full members and eight candidate or nonvoting members had been elected to new five- year terms. It also authorized an 11% increase in the membership of the Party’s Central Committee from 287 to 319. Such a move allows Politburo members to strengthen their positions by awarding their loyal supporters with promotions to the highest level within the Party structure.
Two Politburo members seem to have the best chance of capturing this traditional constituency during the interim phase of the transition. The senior contender, Andrei Kirilenko, who started out as a Party organizer in the Ukraine, has been a full member of the Politburo for almost 20 years. Said to be the foremost authority on the inner workings of the Party, he certainly knows in which closets the skeletons are hidden. However, at 75, his age counts against him. He has not been seen in public lately, creating an impression that he may have already been shunted aside.
Currently, expert opinion seems to favor Konstantin Chernenko, 70, the fast-rising darling of the Party, as having a better chance. A protege of Brezhnev, he was promoted to a full Politburo member in 1978 after serving only one year as an associate member. Working his way upward through Party ranks, he spent 11 years in the Department of Agitation and Propaganda of the Central Committee. He is now Secretary of the Party’s Central Committee, a post only one step below the General Secretary himself.
Although they can hardly be considered frontrunners, the Politburo's “youngsters.” Mikhail Gorbachov, only 50, and Grigori Romanov, 58, cannot be overlooked. After all, they are members of the new generation.
Gorbachov, an agricultural specialist from Stavropol, was the Central Committee's secretary in charge of grain production in 1979 when the country fell short of its quota by some 50 million tons.
Romanov, a former shipbuilder, and now Party
boss of Leningrad, has the reputation of being a tough, anti-Western hardliner with close military connections. However, his flagrantly “aristocratic” life-style has been a source of embarrassment to the Party; it earned him a reprimand from Suslov.
While it is theoretically impossible for any political constituency in the Soviet Union to exist except m Party, Western scholars have noted the growing independence of the armed forces and their colleagues from the armaments industry. The Soviet armed forces number 4.9 million and are backed up by another five million reserves. Its power comes not only from soldiers’ guns, self-contained logistics and communications systems, and nuclear-tipped missiles. It also commands 12-14 % of the Soviet Union’s gross national product each year. These enormous resources flow into a nationwide military Production base. According to the Pentagon, it is by far the world's largest” and is continuing to grow “at the expense of all other components of the Soviet economy.” As recruits are drawn from all 15 of the Soviet Union’s republics under a system °f national conscription, the armed forces provide
open a production line for these planes in India.
But in Moscow, the rumor is that this high-ranking delegation, while ostensibly visiting Indian temples famous for their erotic stone carvings, took advantage of being away from home to discuss, in this remote and relatively secure location, the armed forces’ private strategy for the fourth succession.
If the military-industrial complex should ever emerge as an independent constituency, competitive with the Party, Politburo member Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB, could well play a decisive behind-the-scenes role. Said to be one of the Politburo’s more intelligent and worldly members, his early training was in the diplomatic corps. (He served as ambassador to Hungary during the Soviet suppression of the 1956 uprising.) He played key roles in the 1968 decision to invade Czechoslovakia and in the recent instructions to General Jaruzelski to crush Poland’s Solidarity movement.
His appointment on 24 May to the Communist Party’s powerful ten-member Central Committee to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Suslov makes him a serious contender for the top post. Only three
a breeding ground for a potential constituency of the ethnic minorities and the young.
. In the Politburo, Defense Minister Marshal Dim- !tr* Ustinov, 73, acts as spokesman for this military- •ndustrial complex. Next to him in importance in Ihe armed forces is the First Deputy Defense Minister and Chief of the Soviet General Staff, Marshal bl- V. Ogarkov. Americans who have faced the deputY minister in SALT negotiations describe him as a man of high intelligence and strong opinions.
In March 1982, Marshal Ustinov and some 40 assorted generals and admirals, including the Soviet Air Force and Navy chiefs and the Army’s deputy chief, made a sudden, unprecedented, and uninvited tr'P to India. Most Western analysts assume their Purpose was to try to block a multibillion dollar deal with France to purchase 40 Mirage 2000 fighters and other men, besides Brezhnev himself, have a scat on both the Politburo and the Central Committee: Chernenko, Kirilenko, and the youngster Gorbachov.
During the interim phase in the transition of leadership, Andropov will be in an enviable strategic position. He can throw his support with the Party, or he can join forces with the military-industrial complex: as important a "swing vote" as any politician could wish for.
If the Politburo finds itself forced to deal with two powerful, competing constituencies during the interim phase, it will be because the Soviet Union’s deteriorating economy simply cannot support both its superpower ambitions and the long-deferred needs of its people.
More than a decade ago, it became clear that the Soviet economy was in bad shape. In the 1950s, it grew at an annual rate of about 6%; in the 1960s, it had dropped to around 5%; in the 1970s, it was below 4%. According to recent British Defence Ministry and CIA estimates, it is expected to average only 2.5% during the 1980s. The Soviet Union's economic performance in 1979 was probably the worst in all the years of Brezhnev’s leadership.
In the current 11th five-year plan (1981-85), the already slow pace of investment (some 3% per year) will be drastically reduced. New projects, except those in the energy sector, will be deferred. Last November, Party Secretary Chernenko warned that emphasis must be shifted from construction to “effective utilization of everything that has already been created.”
During the Brezhnev years, 1965-80, the average annual growth of total Soviet consumption was 4.6%. CIA studies now project only 1.2% growth through the mid-1980s. This will not even keep up with the population increase. The grim prospects ahead are ever-increasing shortages of consumer goods and rising socio-political instability across the country.
The key to the Soviet economy is the performance of the agricultural sector. Unfortunately, it has to contend not only with the elements, but the bureaucracy as well. The last three years have yielded poor or indifferent harvests. In his meeting last November with the Party’s Central Committee, Brezhnev candidly admitted that the 1981 grain crop (around 175 million tons) was a failure. He reminded the committee that “the food problem is, economically and politically, the central problem of the Five Year Plan.”
While working as Khrushchev’s senior assistant during the all-out effort between 1954 and 1960 to develop 100 million acres of “virgin lands,” Brezhnev learned about state management of agriculture the hard way. This experience convinced him that the solution was not more farms, but more efficient farming. This required a major capital investment in fertilizers and better farm equipment. It is to his credit that in 1976 alone, he channeled more than 34% of the nation’s gross fixed investment into agriculture. In 1980, he ordered the defense industry to use its technological know-how to produce a tractor and combine that would “meet the highest modern standards.” And on 24 May, Brezhnev announced at a special session of the Central Committee that the government expected to see a return on its huge investments in agriculture this year. He also promised that investment in farming would rise from 27% to 33% in the next five-year plan period, starting in 1986.
Yet the problems seem to be getting worse, not better. This March, at a NATO economic conference in Brussels, British experts predicted that the
Soviet Union’s farm output would have zero growth over the next four years.
Soviet state planners must know something the British do not. Either that or they refuse to face reality. The current five-year plan calls for a growth rate in agriculture of 13% and an average annual grain production of 239 million tons. (The peak harvest since 1970 was 237 million tons.)
Grain shortages mean hunger. Remembering the Polish food riots of 1970 and not wishing to face that problem at home, Brezhnev consistently authorized huge purchases of foreign grain in the bad crop years. The U. S. Department of Agriculture estimates the Soviet Union will have to import 43 million tons of grain during the 1981-82 farming season, an all-time record. In calendar year 1981, Soviet grain imports cost almost $7 billion.
The evidence of a growing economic crisis within the Soviet Union seems conclusive. As the Brezhnev regime nears its end, a historic decision confronts the fourth succession. Richard Pipes, the National Security Council’s expert on Soviet affairs, summed it up in a recent interview (Time, 1 March 1982): “They can keep making outlandish appropriations for defense and engaging in global adventures, or they can face up to their internal problems, turning away from military expansionism toward reform of their domestic system.” Guns or butter, the perennial decision.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who should know his countrymen better than Pipes, cautions Kremlinol- ogists against falling back on “their precarious assumptions about an imaginary split within the Soviet Politburo between non-existent ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals,’ ‘hawks’ and ‘doves,’ ‘right’ and ‘left,’ between old and young, bad and good—an exercise of surpassing futility. Never has the Politburo numbered a humane or peace-loving man among its members. The Communist bureaucracy is not constituted to allow men of that caliber to rise to the top—they would instantly suffocate there.” (Foreign Affairs, Spring 1980.)
Perhaps Solzhenitsyn is right: Men who reach the top in the Soviet Union are not in search of peace. A strong case can be made to support his view. And Poland seems to bear him out. There were those in the West who hoped events in Warsaw might be contagious, but it is not working out that way according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s assistant for national security affairs. Speaking at the Council of Foreign Relations in February, he suggested that the suppression of Solidarity “could have the effect of revitalizing the increasingly sterile and decaying Soviet political system . . . making its adrenalin flow again.” If the Jaru- zelski regime can hold the lid on for a prolonged period, “this is likely to give particular impetus within the Soviet Union to the political role of the secret
police and of the military, the two most vital elements of the Soviet political system.” Nevertheless, some American authorities on the Soviet Union (e.g., Seweryn Bialer, William G. Hyland, Robert C. Tucker, and Walter Lacquer) are not quite so pessimistic. They sense a yearning for change, modernization, and positive reform taking hold among the post-Stalin generation.
Tucker detects the beginnings of what he calls “a belief movement,” a search for a more worthwhile collective enterprise than the official myth of communism. Cautious though they may be, adherents can be found throughout the “nomenclature class,” the Party’s privileged elite to which the country's new leaders belong.
These varying opinions serve to underline a cau- t'on expressed by a former U. S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Malcom Toon, who points out that the only experts on the Soviet Union are those who sit on the Politburo in Moscow. The rest of us have varying degrees of ignorance .... 1 have Jong held that the beginning of wisdom in discussing Soviet politics is the humble recognition that we nave almost no direct information about what goes °n at the top of the Soviet political hierarchy.” And what composite personality might emerge in fhe Politburo of the fourth succession? They will be m their 50s or early 60s, not youngsters in their 30s like those who rose to power after Stalin's Great f’ui'ge and World War II. Whatever their specialty, Ibeir common background will be that of profes- slonal bureaucrats who have moved upward through Party ranks, armed forces, or police.
They will be completely dedicated to the “cult of Ihe State”—to a highly centralized, authoritative government which they intend to control. Having heard Khrushchev’s 1956 exposure of Stalin’s cruel e*cesses, they will be highly skeptical of Party doctrine. And having accepted the “parallel" or black market as both a necessity and a blessing, they will have a bitterly cynical attitude toward laws and regulations. Their increased contact with the West through travel, radio, and TV will make them far less tolerant of administrative inefficiency.
Their own frustrating experiences from climbing the bureaucracy’s long ladder will have convinced fhem that some measure of reform or modernization ls needed. While determined to maintain the Soviet Pinion’s hard-won strategic preponderance, internal economic realities will make them more inclined than their predecessors to assign a higher priority to domestic development than to distant, expensive mil- ltary ventures that lack tangible near-term results.
What perception of the world might these tough, Post-Brezhnev bureaucrats hold? The following is ^hat the new men in the Kremlin might list as the objective realities” of today:
* The Politburo sees the nuclear world as bipolar.
Only the United States and the Soviet Union possess overwhelming strategic power.
► The Soviet numerical preponderance in nuclear weapons over the United States is now a well-recognized fact. As far as Moscow is concerned, this is the Soviet Union’s principal deterrent against nuclear attack.
► The Russian people have an abiding fear of nuclear war, be it preemptive or accidental. The current Soviet nuclear preponderance does not entirely allay this concern. Some unexpected U. S. technological breakthrough (in space or antiballistic missile defense for example) could quickly wipe out this advantage.
► In today’s bipolar nuclear world, the threat from China is not military, but political. It centers on Beijing’s aspirations for leadership of the Third World, a role the Soviets fully intend to win for themselves.
► Europe remains the primary focus of the Soviet Union’s vital interests. Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe has been challenged by the Solidarity movement in Poland, creating an intolerable situation. It must be contained and cauterized.
► Military power is recognized as the dominant foreign policy resource of the Soviet Union. The problem is how best to employ it without setting into motion a chain of events leading to an unintentional nuclear war.
► The American concept of “linkage” between disarmament and the continuing struggle between communist and capitalist societies is totally unacceptable. It is a U. S. trick to force the Soviet Union to withdraw its support for national liberation movements, to agree to spheres of influence, and to legalize the status quo throughout the Third World.
► Economic depression is nothing new to the Soviet
people. If the people get restless, the Party can always fall back on the three Rs: regulation, rationing, and repression. .
When the members of the new generation take over in Moscow, they are unlikely to look at U. S.-Soviet relations much differently than their elders. Genrikh Trofimenko, head of the department for the study of U. S. foreign policy in the Soviet Union's Academy of Sciences, is quite frank when he writes,
“. . . any code of conduct [stands] little practical chance of success in view of the objective factors leading to revolutionary changes in the Third World .... Under the June 1973 Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War, the Soviet Union and the United States undertook ‘to act in such a manner as to prevent the development of situations capable of causing a dangerous exacerbation of their relations.’ However, as experience shows, it is very difficult for one side to show restraint when the other side is inclined to interpret such restraint as weakness which can and should be exploited.” (Foreign Affairs, Summer 1981)
The question is, who is showing restraint and whose weakness is being exploited?
Against this background, does it really matter who becomes the next Soviet leader? There is an old Chinese saying: “Heroes do not shape events; events make heroes.” If this is so, the name of the winner of the Kremlin sweepstakes is important, but not critical. What counts is the outcome of the domestic and international events that led to his selection.
If the fourth succession should have a composite personality and a common perception of the world anywhere near what was postulated above, what are the prospects for U. S.-Soviet relations for the remainder of the decade? A safe answer would be, “Things can get better; they can get worse; or they can stay the same.”
Things might get better if the economists are right and the Soviet economic situation gets out of hand. This might send the people to the streets in protest, forcing the Politburo to pay more attention to its own domestic problems. As it tries to set priorities for the allocation of shortages, it may even reexamine the high annual costs of the Kremlin's Third World political/military ventures. Cuba alone is costing the Soviet Union $3 billion a year according to U. S. State Department estimates. If Indochina, Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua are added, the figure could easily reach $8 billion. These are resources that the post-Stalin generation could put to better use at home.
Things could get worse if the military-industrial complex, supported by a cabal of opportunists, together with the KGB police, should gain control of the Politburo. Experts (including Bialer and Hyland) suggest that such a military-led coalition would try to shift public attention away from the deteriorating economy to the ever-present “external enemy,”— the arch-villain of the capitalist world—the United States. In the privacy of the Kremlin, such leaders would argue that the patriotic Soviet people would accept even harsher economic controls once they were convinced that their armed forces were seizing foreign assets (food, technology, or oil, for example) that would help alleviate the growing shortages throughout the country. First Deputy Defense Minister Marshal Ogarkov gave an indication of how unpleasant things might become. Congressman Philip M. Crane reports that in 1978 the Marshal told a visiting congressional delegation:
“Today the Soviet Union has military superiority over the United States. Henceforth, it will be the United States that is threatened, not us. You had better get used to it.”
If things stay the same, the present unhappy situation will continue. Without more reliable means of verification than that provided by satellites, and without some willingness on the part of the Soviet Union to recognize the logic of “linkage,” disarmament proposals will lack credibility to most Americans. They can easily fall by the wayside like SALT II.
In the absence of some mutually acceptable code of conduct to govern the ongoing competition between the two superpowers and their different political systems, the final arbiter of peace will remain the size and effectiveness of their respective arsenals of strategic offensive weapons. The arms race, which is really just beginning, will accelerate, requiring the wasteful expenditure of trillions of dollars by both sides over the years ahead. But as President Reagan has said, “It will be a race the Russians can't win.”
Historians agree that if anything contributed to the absence of global conflict during the 36 years since the end of World War II, it has been the unquestioned preponderance of U. S. nuclear strength. Faced with the possibility that we might not only lose that position, but slip into a posture of acknowledged inferiority, we have no choice.
The United States will, of course, continue to pursue the Holy Grail of disarmament. Yet the realities ot power remain. The United States must not allow the baton of strategic nuclear supremacy, the ultimate sanction in world politics, to pass to the Soviet Union.
If this should happen, who among us can guarantee that Moscow—dedicated to a political philosophy and way of life diametrically opposed to everything our society stands for—will be as responsible a guardian of world peace?
General Black graduated from the U. S. Military Academy with the Class of 1940 and served in the OSS in the European Theater during World War II. During his Army career, he commanded a battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division, served as Military Assistant to three Deputy Secretaries of Defense, and attended the National War College. During his third tour in Vietnam, he was Assistant Division Commander, 25th Infantry Division. General Black is presently an international consultant on alternate energy resources and on joint business ventures in Southeast Asia.