The Brezhnev Syndrome

Long-simmering rumors about Leonid Brezhnev's failing health boiled up last week into a wild journalistic borsch of speculation. In Europe, the U.S. and the Middle East, newsmen variously reported that the 68-year-old Soviet party chief had been struck down by a staggering variety of ailments, ranging from abscessed teeth, bursitis, gout, influenza, pneumonia to heart attack and--most ominously--leukemia. The Boston Globe carried the electrifying tale that Brezhnev was momentarily expected to arrive at the Sidney Farber Cancer Center for treatment of this deadly blood disease. Despite Brezhnev's conspicuous nonappearance at Logan Airport, and vehement denials of the stories by directors of the Boston clinic as well as by ranking American diplomats, the rumors persisted. Inevitably, so did speculation that a power struggle was mounting in the Kremlin for Brezhnev's top job as General Secretary of the Communist Party.

Certainly there was no hard evidence to support the rumors that Brezhnev was on the brink of physical or political disablement. Nonetheless, a few faint signs and portents over the past two months pointed to a possible diminution of Brezhnev's vigor and perhaps even of his commanding position in the Kremlin. Some observers at the Vladivostok summit meeting with Gerald Ford thought that Brezhnev was not his usual doughty, ebullient self. Although he held up well during his initial seven-hour meeting with the U.S. President, he slept late the following day and looked peaked. In Paris for a state visit two weeks later, Brezhnev declined a sumptuous lunch offered him by President Valery Giscard d'Estaing. On the other hand, the Soviet chief was sufficiently revived that night to give a dinner for French Communist Boss Georges Marchais.

In Pajamas. The mystery of Brezhnev's health was compounded by the medical and diplomatic ambiguities involved in the abrupt cancellation of his scheduled trip to Cairo. Although this was apparently related to Soviet-Egyptian diplomatic disagreements, an unprecedented effort was made in Moscow to display Brezhnev as a sick man. Summoned to Moscow to be informed of the cancellation, the Egyptian Foreign and Defense ministers were given white surgical gowns before being received by Brezhnev, who was lying on a couch in pajamas. According to the Egyptian visitors, the Soviet leader told them that his doctor had ordered him to abstain fully from political activity.

At this point, some of the arcane details dear to Kremlinologists began to assume significance. It was noted that Brezhnev had not been photographed, televised--or seen by foreigners--since Dec. 29. The Kremlin's New Year's greeting to the Soviet people, which traditionally has been broadcast by a ranking party leader, was read by a radio announcer in 1975. These incidents could be explained by the death of Brezhnev's 87-year-old mother over the New Year holidays. Indeed, the Soviet press agency Tass reported that Brezhnev had attended the funeral last week. Nonetheless, there were such unusually heavy police and security precautions around Moscow's Novodevichi Cemetery that no Western observers were able to verify his presence. At week's end Tass had not yet released promised photos of the party leader at his mother's grave.

Two Failures. Knowledgeable Soviet-affairs experts in Washington and European capitals prudently dismiss the swirling speculation that Brezhnev's uncertain health presages his imminent retirement or a stage-managed ouster by his Kremlin competitors. Unless it is proved that Brezhnev is mortally ill, they believe that he will remain in office at least until the 1976 Communist Party Congress when, as one British foreign office expert put it, he might choose to bow out "in a spasm of glory."

Some Kremlin watchers are not so sure. British Sovietologist Leopold Labedz contends that any Brezhnev illness would be bound to touch off a power struggle in the Kremlin, if only because the Russians have never solved the problem of how to transfer authority in an orderly succession. According to this logic, competing factions in the Kremlin would try to exploit Brezhnev's physical weakness by pinning any recent policy failures on him as a pretext to seize power. Columbia University Political Scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski, as well as many Moscow-based diplomats, speculate that the party chief has already come under attack for two policy failures. One is his inability to improve Soviet relations with Egyptian Premier Anwar Sadat. Another is the wording of the U.S. trade bill, which Brezhnev initially hoped would grant huge dollar credits to the Soviet Union. As passed by Congress last month, it puts a paltry $300 million limit to such credits. It also makes free emigration for Soviet citizens a condition of trade concessions to the U.S.S.R. Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko's public assertion in December that there was no such agreement, combined with a new crackdown on Soviet Jewish emigration (see below), suggested to some Kremlinologists that Brezhnev's authority may be under serious challenge.

Moscow's custom is to ignore foreign speculation about possible leadership changes. But last week Tass went out of its way to denounce the stories about Brezhnev as "groundless inventions." TIME Correspondent John Shaw cabled from Moscow that if Brezhnev is physically well, he can successfully defend his policies and his pre-eminent position. "Still, there is a sense of unease in Moscow; diplomats here feel that something is stirring in the Politburo, as if the ground had shifted slightly but unmistakably."

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