Under an Invisible Hand

By John Kohan

In absentia, Andropov guides two key Kremlin meetings

The rush-hour traffic on Moscow's broad boulevards was moving at a crawl when the convoys of black ZIL limousines, amber lights gleaming, appeared out of the morning mist. The motorcades whipped by at 70 m.p.h., down empty center lanes marked off for official traffic. The more than 300 members of the Communist Party's Central Committee were on their way to the Kremlin for their annual winter session. All of them but one. There was no hint of the whereabouts of the Soviet Union's head of state, Yuri Andropov, 69, who had not been seen in public since Aug. 18. In his role as Party General Secretary, Andropov normally would run this very important policy meeting. Would he dramatically reappear, thus dispelling the rumors that he was too ill to lead his country effectively?

The first news from the closed-door Central Committee plenum came early in the evening. The official TASS press agency wire fell silent and then, as Western newsmen hovered over their teleprinters, the news agency's English-language service clicked back to life, teasingly printing out a test line again and again: "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs." Then came an equally puzzling message. The Central Committee members had "acquainted themselves" with the text of an Andropov speech, reported the TASS dispatch. But had they heard Andropov speak? When the text of the address finally clattered over the wire, all doubt was removed. "I deeply regret that because of temporary causes, I will not be able to attend the session of the plenum," wrote Andropov. He went on to explain that he had given the party program "much thought and was preparing to speak and outline some of my ideas."

Details of the illness that kept Andropov from delivering his message in person remain as murky as ever. Soviet spokesmen have claimed for weeks that their leader is recuperating from a cold. But Andropov's failure to appear at the all-important Central Committee meeting and, later in the week, at a session of the Supreme Soviet, the country's parliament, belied any such nonsense. Andropov is suffering from a serious illness and, presumably, is slowly recovering. Says a top-ranking U.S. official: "The truth is that no one really knows what has happened to Andropov." That apparently included Western intelligence services.

If Andropov remained invisible, his hand was very evident in the Kremlin's business last week. With one stroke, he strengthened his position on the ruling Politburo by increasing the number of voting members from eleven to 13, the highest count since October 1982. The two new men, presumed to be Andropov supporters, had been blocked from advancing further in their careers under Leonid Brezhnev. Andropov also promoted an old KGB comrade to candidate membership in the party council and gave greater authority to a like-minded technocrat on the Central Committee Secretariat. Andropov's address to the party plenum conveyed a similar feeling that he was in command. In language not heard since the days of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader railed against "intolerable" waste in the economy and accused factory managers of "marking time." Said a prominent Moscow intellectual: "Andropov came out of the plenum stronger than he went into it. He ran the show. His enemies cannot smell blood."

The push to invigorate the leadership by promoting somewhat younger, discipline-minded technocrats serves the interests of Andropov supporters in the military and security services, even if such key backers as Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, 75, and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, 74, may want to postpone the transfer of power to a younger generation. But Andropov's evident frailty could prevent the kind of firm leadership that would keep his country from drifting aimlessly both at home and abroad. Said a U.S. Kremlin watcher: "You cannot run Russia from your bed, and the Soviet leaders, sooner or later, have got to face that."

For the moment, however, it was business as usual in Moscow. To the surprise of Western diplomats, Andropov chose not to intensify the war of words with Washington in his address to the Central Committee. Instead he focused on the problem-ridden Soviet economy. Citing improved industrial production, which grew by 4% last year, compared with 2.8% in 1982, he affirmed that "a change for the better" was under way in the national economy. "The most important thing," wrote Andropov, "is not to lose the tempo and the general positive intent to get things going."

He specifically criticized factory managers who give bonuses to undeserving workers and singled out "managerial links" for their role in creating bottlenecks in the production and distribution of goods. Anyone who does not live up to his contractual obligations, the Soviet leader warned, "must answer to the extent of his guilt." Andropov cited one tractor-manufacturing plant in the Ukraine that revamped its operations according to the "rules of the scientific organization of labor" and found it could dispense with 600 jobs. He called for more such modernization efforts.

Some of his sharpest criticism was reserved for the shoddy consumer-goods industry. At a recent sales fair, Andropov said, officials had turned down 500,000 TV sets, 115,000 radios, 250,000 cameras, 1.5 million watches and clocks, and 160,000 refrigerators because they were of inferior quality. Such "intolerable" inefficiency, he admitted, causes "discontent among the population" and encourages "disgusting" black-marketeering.

Since Andropov succeeded Brezhnev more than a year ago, he has moved slowly in putting his stamp on the ruling elite, but last week the long-anticipated changes finally began to take shape. Mikhail Solomentsev, 70, a former premier of the Russian Republic, was given a voting position on the Politburo commensurate with his new job on the Party Control Commission. The plenum confirmed the importance of the KGB in inner Kremlin councils by elevating the KGB chief, General Victor Chebrikov, 60, to candidate membership in the Politburo. Yegor Ligachev, 63, a technocrat from Siberia who shares Andropov's concern for economic discipline, was given greater leeway in controlling party personnel appointments, making him one of the most powerful officials in the Secretariat.

But the apparatchik who benefited most from Andropov's favor was Vitali Vorotnikov, 57, the second new member on the enlarged 13-man Politburo. Appointed deputy premier of the Russian Republic in 1975, Vorotnikov was shunted off to Cuba as ambassador in 1979 after he apparently angered Brezhnev by calling for a crackdown on official corruption. Four months before Brezhnev's death, Vorotnikov was summoned home. At last June's Central Committee meeting, he was awarded a nonvoting seat on the Politburo, only to catapult last week into the inner circle ahead of five more senior men. Said a Western diplomat: "Vorotnikov's rapid rise indicates that there are definite plans for him." One possibility: he might eventually take over from Premier Nikolai Tikhonov.

After Andropov failed to appear at the Central Committee plenum, attention turned to the ensuing two-day session of the Supreme Soviet. As the delegates filed into the vaulted neoclassical chamber of the Great Kremlin Palace, visitors in the gallery kept their eyes fixed on the brightly illuminated podium. Vorotnikov, whose thatch of dark hair sets him apart from his graying and balding comrades, stepped into the second row next to Agricultural Expert Mikhail Gorbachev, 52, and former Leningrad Party Boss Grigori Romanov, 60. Members of the "young guard" in the Kremlin, both have been mentioned as possible successors to Andropov. Silver-haired Konstantin Chernenko, a Brezhnev crony who lost out to Andropov in the succession maneuvering in 1982, took a seat in the front row along with Gromyko and the splendidly beribboned Ustinov. Premier Tikhonov sat in Andropov's green leather chair. (Tikhonov subsequently left Andropov's seat empty and sat in the one beside it.)

When the name Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was first mentioned by Economic Planning Chief Nikolai Baibakov, an uneasy silence engulfed the hall. The speakers who followed made frequent references to Andropov and praised his Central Committee report; the 1,500 delegates listened silently or chatted among themselves. Finally, a resolution blaming the U.S. for "the drastic aggravation of the situation in the world" and supporting Andropov's foreign policy position was put forward, and the parliamentarians raised their arms in unison to approve.

(Despite that gesture, U.S. officials announced last week that Secretary of State George Shultz will meet with Foreign Minister Gromyko on Jan. 18, during a 35-nation European disarmament conference in Stockholm. The encounter will be the first between the two men since the aftermath of the shooting down in September of a South Korean airliner, and the subsequent Soviet withdrawal from both nuclear and conventional arms-control talks.)

Andropov's absence during the secret Central Committee meeting was not seen by the general public, but it was hard to ignore in the open Supreme Soviet session. Still, Soviet television went to great lengths to lessen the impact of the event. Instead of providing the customary live coverage, camera crews filmed the gathering of the Supreme Soviet for the Kremlin archives only. The evening news showed a 2 1/2-min. segment. Even at that, film footage jumped so quickly from one man to another that it was almost impossible to tell that Andropov was not present. As a U.S. official noted, "Andropov's absence seriously affects the mood in Moscow. Everyone hoped he would be a very strong leader. Now there is a sense that people are not really better off than during the last days of Brezhnev. There is the same sense of paralysis and drift." For the moment, nonetheless, the Kremlin seemed determined to convince the Soviet people -- and the world -- that Andropov was in control, even if he had to make decisions on a sickbed. One thing he does not have to worry about, at least, is an upcoming political campaign. Elections for the Supreme Soviet will be held on March 4, and the Proletarian District of Moscow has already nominated its candidate: Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov.

-- By John Kohan.

Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/ Moscow and Johanna McGeary/ Washington

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof/Moscow, Johanna McGeary/Washington