A Birthday for Lenin and a Boost for Brezhnev

IN a flurry of final preparations, Russian work crews last week hung red banners and bunting across Moscow's broad streets, while others mounted 2,000 floodlights on the Kremlin's walls or attached gaudy murals to the drab fac,ades of government buildings. Schoolchildren rehearsed, probably for the thousandth time, a song whose refrain goes:

Lenin will always live

Lenin will always give.

This week, after an unparalleled outpouring of praise and propaganda that has lasted well over a year, the Soviet Union celebrates the centennial of the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. While at least 100 delegations of foreign Communists and trade unionists look on, the Russians are staging a gigantic two-day marathon of speeches, parades, concerts and displays in honor of the founder of the Soviet Union (see TIME ESSAY). Meanwhile, the emergent Soviet navy is celebrating by sending its ships and subs on simultaneous maneuvers throughout the entire world.

However splashy, the centennial celebrations are unlikely to prove as interesting as the events that surround them. For weeks, tantalizing signs of a power struggle within the Kremlin have been trickling out of the Soviet Union. First came reports that a faction within the Politburo, led by Ideologue Mikhail Suslov and Trade Union Boss Alexander Shelepin, had criticized Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev for his role in the mishandling of the ailing Soviet economy. The suspense was heightened by the disappearance of five of the Politburo's eleven members, ostensibly for reasons of health. Among those reported to be ill with influenza were Premier Aleksei Kosygin and President Nikolai Podgorny. Together with Brezhnev, they constitute the nucleus of the collective leadership that has ruled Russia since Khrushchev's ouster in 1964. Speculation was rife that a shake-up was taking place in the Kremlin.

Persuasive Evidence. One by one, nearly all the absent Politburo members reappeared last week. At this week's celebrations, the entire Politburo in all likelihood would stand shoulder to shoulder in front of a huge portrait of Lenin on the stage of the Kremlin's Palace of Congresses, as if nothing had happened. Still, it was virtually certain that the heirs of Lenin (who in 1921 persuaded the Tenth Party Congress to pass a resolution outlawing factional fighting within the party) had indeed been engaged in a contest for dominance. For many Kremlinologists and Soviet citizens, who are accustomed to divining the fortunes of the leaders from obscure signs, the evidence was persuasive.

As Brezhnev junketed around the country in connection with the Lenin celebrations, he enjoyed a sudden burst of publicity that struck many Western diplomats as extremely unusual. Three times in four days Brezhnev appeared prominently--and usually alone--on Soviet television. Nothing like it had been seen in Russia since Khrushchev's days. While Brezhnev spoke in a Kharkov tractor factory, where he awarded the Order of Lenin to the workers, the cameras flashed back and forth from his face to huge portraits of Lenin hanging in the hall. As sustained applause greeted the very mention of his name, the TV screens showed Brezhnev embracing officials, kissing women factory workers, acknowledging the cheers of the crowd, and planting a birch tree at the dedication of a new shrine at Lenin's birthplace in Ulyanovsk. Brezhnev also filled the front pages of Soviet newspapers. Even after Kosygin and Podgorny reappeared, the party boss continued to hog the headlines and prime TV time.

Supremely Self-Assured. Brezhnev was heard as well as seen. In the past, he has often acted as spokesman for the collective leadership. On successive evenings last week, he delivered what amounted to state-of-the-nation and state-of-the-world addresses. He spoke in an authoritative and supremely self-assured manner, and discussed matters that in the past have been the provinces of Kosygin and Podgorny.

Brezhnev declared that the Soviet Union seeks a reasonable solution to the arms race with the U.S. in the SALT talks in Vienna (see box, page 33). In the next breath, however, he hastened to reassure the Soviet generals, on whom he counts for support. "If anyone tries to gain military superiority over the Soviet Union," said Brezhnev, raising and lowering his clenched fist for emphasis, "we will reply with the necessary increase in military might."

On the China problem, Brezhnev struck a moderate, almost conciliatory stance. He renewed the Soviet call for a European security conference and issued the standard warning to Israel to withdraw from occupied Arab lands. Brezhnev also declared that a U.S. defeat in Viet Nam, which he described as "inevitable," would be proof of the changing balance of power between the capitalist and Communist blocs.

Drive for Quality. In his domestic address, Brezhnev conceded what every Russian housewife already knew--that there are serious shortages of meat and other staples. He also admitted that Russia's critical housing shortage is far from solved. Brezhnev pinned most of the responsibility on inefficient management and indifferent workers. Said Brezhnev: "Not infrequently, valuable working time is squandered, people report late or are absent altogether without valid reasons, and sometimes people do not come to work because they are drunk."

In proposing his own remedies, Brezhnev almost totally ignored the so-called Liberman reforms with which Kosygin has been closely identified. Introduced in 1964, the reforms sought to stimulate Soviet industry by granting local managers more power and splitting profits with the workers. Instead, Brezhnev emphasized a need for stricter discipline and greater efficiency. Management, he said, has become a science, and he implied that those who could not master it would be fired from industrial jobs. In a departure from the traditional Soviet emphasis on quantity, Brezhnev stressed the need for greater concentration on quality. He also threatened drunken and malingering workers with stiffer penalties and called upon the party to whip up more enthusiasm for hard work among the Soviet people, especially the youth.

Economic Gamble. It was still too early to assess the effects, extent or likely duration of Brezhnev's ascendancy. Premier Kosygin and President Podgorny, who may well have been genuinely sick, have resumed their jobs, and on the surface at least, the triumvirate still seemed to be functioning.

Though there have undoubtedly been disputes within the Politburo, it seems probable that the contending factions still seek to avoid an open and embarrassing break. In fact, many Sovietologists expect that the present leadership arrangement will survive until later this year, when the party finally holds its 24th congress, which will approve the next five-year plan. The party congress, which always goes through the motions of "electing" the leadership, would provide a suitable occasion to ease out Kosygin, who at 66 is ailing and may well want to retire anyhow. But such a scenario, of course, presupposes that Brezhnev will retain his recent prominence as primus inter pares--and then some. That may well depend on whether he can quickly effect a visible improvement in the Soviet economy. At week's end, Brezhnev's chances of accomplishing at least short-term results were enhanced by an official report that an economic recovery took place during the first three months of the year.

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