Inside Brezhnev's Office

The man in the gray-blue flannel suit leaned across his tidy teak desk, past the elegant brown calf briefcase with gold combination locks, and pressed one of the 30 buttons on his elaborate intercom. "What's on TV tonight?" he asked. "Only some weight lifting," a male secretary replied. "Oh, all right," the button-pusher said. "We haven't got time anyway."

Thus, with executive flair, Leonid Brezhnev last week showed himself comfortably at home in his Kremlin office suite. On the eve of his departure for Washington, the Soviet

Communist Party chief invited over eleven Moscow-based U.S. correspondents, including TIME'S John Shaw. It was not only the first time that the newsmen had ever met with Brezhnev but the first time that they had been inside the inner sanctum of Soviet power. In wry allusion to how the Western press sometimes refers to his office, Brezhnev explained that he wanted to help his visitors unravel "the mysterious unknown wafting above the Kremlin."

Some mysteries remain, of course, but Brezhnev spent three hours and 20 minutes with the correspondents, expansively showing off the trappings of his office and cleverly fielding questions. His main, rectangular office, on the third floor of the Council of Ministers block, is larger but less elegant than the Oval Office in the White House. Pointing to his intercom, he proudly noted that he can use it to contact any member of the ruling Politburo.

On his desk was a copy of a new English edition of his collected speeches. On the floor was a small white spittoon. On a side table were that day's issues of the ten major Soviet newspapers. Nearby were photographs of his meetings with President Nixon in Moscow last year and with Chancellor Willy Brandt on the Black Sea in 1971.

Obviously enjoying his role as tour director, the Soviet boss jokingly pretended to the newsmen that silk curtains down one wall were covers for his bookshelves. Then he parted the curtains to reveal double glass doors leading to a private hideaway that included a TV set, a refrigerator and a medicine cabinet. "This is where I usually eat," he said. "You see this little couch in there? If I get a chance, maybe I can get a nap there." Brezhnev added that he spent "a terrifying amount of time" in his offices--one in the Kremlin, another on the opposite side of Red Square in the Communist Party headquarters building, where the Moscow-Washington hot line is located. He could not remember the last time that he had used the hot line.

Brezhnev appeared a little tired as he sat down to conduct a press conference in a large room that is used for meetings by the Politburo every Thursday afternoon. Sipping black coffee and alternately smoking Russian and American cigarettes (Philip Morris multifilter), he seemed to revive as the translated questions and answers progressed across a 50-ft.-long, green-felt-covered table. Among his comments:

ON WATERGATE. It is not our affair. I would regard it as indecent for me to discuss it here or there.

ON PRESIDENT NIXON. My attitude to the President is of great respect. He chose to take a realistic and constructive approach to improving our relations.

ON SOVIET JEWS. There is no Jewish problem, no Jewish question here ... Some of my closest friends from school days onward have been Jews.

ON THE POLITBURO. Our decision making is collective. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time we decide by discussion, not by vote. But if discussion fails, we postpone the issue, or set up a small group of members to talk it over further.

ON PRESS CONFERENCES. I don't like the question and answer system. A meeting with the press is not a school exam.

A free discussion is better than just shooting questions. Journalists always ask too many questions.

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