New Man in Town

There, photographed in a sober row at the Budapest meeting of the Warsaw Pact members, were the familiar faces of Russia's leaders: Grechko, Kosygin, Brezhnev, Gromyko, Katushev. Katushev? Neither the face nor the name was familiar. Both are likely to become more so, however, as time goes on. Konstantin Katushev is Moscow's new man around town, and his swift ascent to power has surprised even Kremlinologists. A year ago, Katushev, a stern-visaged man with a barrel chest, was an insignificant regional party secretary, one of more than a hundred such factotums scattered throughout Russia. Today he is one of the ten members of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, the most powerful executive body in the U.S.S.R. "Katushev is the man to watch," says Columbia University Sovietologist Severyn Bialer. "His rise has been spectacular, unheard of. It is largely due to Brezhnev, who may be grooming him to replace Kosygin eventually."

Mysterious Circumstances. Katushev's career is exceptional in many ways. At 41, he is ten years younger than any other member of Russia's ruling oligarchy (whose average age is over 58). Moreover, he has never been a member of the Komsomol, the Communist youth organization to which most ambitious young Russians belong. He did not join the party until 1952, another unusual lapse for a young man who was already holding a responsible job. Ka-tushev's career has been spent as an engineer and auto designer, and until lately as party boss of an auto plant in his native Gorky (pop. 1,100,000), a provincial industrial city. Such a modest career scarcely points a man straight to the Kremlin.

The turning point for Katushev came in the mid-1960s, when he became a protege of Brezhnev. Just how this happened is still a mystery in the West, since, as far as Kremlinologists are aware, the two men's careers never crossed. In 1965, Katushev became the party head of the Gorky region. Two-and-a-half years later, he was plucked out of Gorky, where he had spent his life, and set down in Moscow. Last April Katushev was given one of the party's most sensitive and difficult assignments: he was put in charge of Soviet relations with Communist countries. He is also one of the top organizers of the long delayed Moscow Communist summit that the Russians are determined to hold in May or June.

Katushev in Motion. Katushev's international debut took place when he accompanied Brezhnev to Prague in January 1968, in a vain attempt to rescue the Stalinist regime of Antonin Novotny. Since then, he has been frequent --and unwelcome--visitor to Czechoslovakia. At Cierna, where the Russians and Czechoslovaks fell out over Prague's liberal line, Czechoslovak National Assembly President Josef Smrkovsky reportedly observed that Katushev argued the Soviet case "with the toughness of two Molotovs put together." At year's end Katushev was in charge of the delegation from the Kremlin that made an inspection tour of post-invasion Czechoslovakia.

In recent weeks, Katushev has been visibly the busiest man in the capital. He shuttles back and forth to the airport to welcome visiting political leaders and ambassadors from the East bloc. On the outcome of such meetings, and of the Communist summit, rests his future. If Katushev continues to operate at the pace he has set so far, his climb should be unstoppable. Even if the older men in the Kremlin can resolve the differences that have divided them, time is on the side of dynamic young technocrats like Katushev. Within a decade, they are bound to rule Russia.

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