Surprise: The Ayes Have It

By John Kohan

As Chernenko gets another title, a younger leader's star continues to rise he Soviet people know Konstantin Chernenko as a staunch fighter for Communism and peace. He has shown remarkable qualities of leadership throughout his many years of service," and has devoted "all his knowledge to building the economy and defense potential of the Soviet Union." That was but one of the tributes to their new leader that the 1,500 members of the Supreme Soviet, the country's nominal parliament, heard last week as they gathered in the Great Kremlin Palace. Speaking in a mellifluous if slightly nervous baritone, the Politburo's youngest member, Mikhail Gorbachev, went on to laud Chernenko as "a tested leader of the Leninist type" and a man of "outstanding political and organizational abilities and immense life experience." The delegates hardly needed the glowing accolades to be persuaded of Chernenko's virtues. No sooner had Gorbachev finished his brief nominating speech than all hands in the vaulted chamber shot up in unanimous approval of his proposal that Chernenko be elected President.

The decision was a personal triumph for the Siberian-born party worker and propagandist who succeeded the late Yuri Andropov in February. Leonid Brezhnev, Chernenko's longtime mentor, had waited 13 years to assume the largely ceremonial position of President, and it had taken Andropov seven months. But Chernenko, 72, had garnered the country's three key posts--General Secretary of the Communist Party, Chairman of the Defense Council, and now President--in only two months. As the parliamentary deputies rose to their feet and began to clap in rhythm, the stocky, silver-haired Chernenko savored the moment. He raised his right arm in a salute, then clasped his hands above his head like a victorious prizefighter.

Chernenko's quick election to the post seemed to indicate that Brezhnev and Andropov had established that the party leader should also be Chairman of the Defense Council and President. In his nominating speech, Gorbachev made clear that combining the two posts was of "great importance for pursuing foreign policy." But whether the new Soviet leader has the clout commensurate with his many new titles remains an open question.

Looking tan and fit, Chernenko seemed very much in charge as he moved to take his seat at center stage in the

Great Kremlin Palace. He was flanked by the men of the Politburo's old guard who now wield the most influence behind the scenes: Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, 75, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, 74, and Premier Nikolai Tikhonov, 78. But one measure of the shifting alignment of power in the post-Andropov era was the attention paid to Gorbachev, 53. Ever since Andropov's death, there have been indications that Gorbachev was in effect the country's new No. 2 man. The fact that he should be the one to nominate Chernenko for the presidency seemed to confirm that a cautious transfer of power to the next generation had begun. The same honor was given to Chernenko when Andropov got the job last June.

Gorbachev, trained in both agriculture and law, was not elected a voting member of the Politburo until 1980. During Andropov's brief time in power, Gorbachev was put in charge of a high-level committee, studying ways to improve the economy. Unusually well traveled for a Soviet leader, he has been to Canada, France and West Germany. His foreign hosts have found him to be open and in formed. Gorbachev's name was mentioned in the succession to Andropov, but the Politburo's veterans presumably thought the moment was not yet ripe for the shift to someone who was barely a teen-ager at the end of World War II.

Gorbachev followed the proceedings from his seat just behind Chernenko's. A balding figure in a gray three-piece suit and wire-rim glasses, he fidgeted restlessly and riffled through the pages of his speech, which was bound in a red folder. Two hours before he stepped up to the polished, dark wood lectern to nominate Chernenko for President, his own name came up on a list of parliamentary committee chairmen. The neoclassical hall was wrapped in a post-luncheon lethargy and few delegates were in their seats when the announcement was made that Gorbachev had been appointed head of the Foreign Affairs Commission. The choice was significant, for the post has traditionally been held by the party's second-ranking secretary. The appointment promised to give Gorbachev the experience in foreign affairs that he now lacks. Said a Western diplomat: "It looks like they are grooming him for stardom."

As part of the process of establishing his authority, Chernenko has been the beneficiary of a campaign to bolster his image. Photographs have been distributed showing the grandfatherly leader in informal poses that recall Brezhnev. The day before Chernenko was elected President, Krasnaya Zvezda, the Defense Ministry's official newspaper, published an article that patched what had been a large hole in the new leader's career: his military record. Chernenko did not fight on the front lines in World War II, but, according to Krasnaya Zvezda, he did battle bandits and anti-Soviet rebels while guarding the border in eastern Kazakhstan in 1930. The article, illustrated by a photo showing a youthful Chernenko in the back row of a group of border guards, pointed out that the future Soviet leader was not only a "skilled horseman" but also a "good marksman with a rifle and a light machine gun" who "hurled grenades accurately."

After two months the outlines of the Chernenko era remain indistinct. There was little about last week's meetings of the Communist Party Central Committee and the Supreme Soviet that suggested what direction the new leader intended to take. Chernenko has not openly abandoned the modest economic reforms begun by Andropov, but he has not pursued them with great vigor either. He devoted most of his address to the Central Committee to the topics of school reform and greater popular participation in government.

Chernenko has proved to be as inflexible as Andropov in dealing with the U.S. In a Pravda interview published last week, Chernenko expressed doubts about the conciliatory tone of recent White House statements and gave the Administration no credit for such initiatives as the proposal of a treaty banning chemical warfare. "The introduction of new words does not mean a new policy," he declared. Chernenko maintained his insistence that the Geneva arms talks, which the Soviets broke off in November after Britain and West Germany began to install new intermediate-range U.S. nuclear missiles, would only resume when the U.S. and its NATO allies took measures "to restore the situation that existed" before the deployment. Soviet policy, Chernenko warned, was not subject to "transient vacillations" or dependent on the outcome of U.S. presidential elections. Said he: "Hints about some sort of 'calculations' on our part in conjunction with the elections in the U.S. are an attempt by someone to conceal his own reluctance to reach agreements."

The White House responded that it was "disappointed by the tone" of Chernenko's remarks.

Despite the Soviet leader's disclaimer, Administration officials remain convinced that the Soviet Union will make no moves this year that could hi any way help Reagan's re-election campaign. Retired General Brent Scowcroft, head of the President's bipartisan Commission on Strategic Forces, returned from a recent visit to Moscow with a gloomy assessment of the prospects for a breakthrough in arms control. Said he: "The political and psychological atmosphere between Washington and Moscow is as bad as it's been in my memory."

The Pentagon did little to improve that atmosphere last week when it published its third edition of a glossy booklet entitled Soviet Military Power.

Generously illustrated with color photographs of Soviet warships at sea and drawings of missiles blasting off, the 136-page report singled out as particular causes for con cern the continuing deployment of SS-20 missiles (the current total: 243 launchers aimed at Western Europe and 135 launchers in Asia), the modernization of the SS-18 and SS-19 intercontinental missiles, the testing of two new strategic weapons called SS-X-24 and SS-X-25, and the imminent deployment of three long-range cruise missiles.

Unveiling the book at a special press conference, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger described the Soviet goal as nothing less than "world domination." He added:

"Everything we see in this book, and everything we see in information that we are not able to share with you at this time, confirms that that is the kind of war machine they are trying to acquire." The official Soviet News Agency TASS accused the Reagan Administration of stooping "to the most shameless lies to misrepresent the existing balance of forces between the Soviet Union and the U.S. so as to justify to world public opinion its attempts to achieve military superiority." Domestic critics had a simpler explanation: they noted that the Pentagon report now appears as regularly as cherry blossoms just about the time Congress is considering the defense budget.

Chernenko's address to the closed-door meeting of the Central Committee lacked the rhetorical bite of his predecessor's blunt statements about the sluggish Soviet economy. Instead, the new leader seemed to balance calls for change with expressions of concern for preserving the present system. Said he: "The necessary quests for the new must not be allowed to distract us from a more effective use of the existing institutions of management." Only Premier Tikhonov made direct reference to the Andropov reform program when he told the Supreme Soviet that "we must continue the economic experiments that provide flexibility and independence to some of our enterprises."

Chernenko's address focused mainly on ways to improve the work of administrative councils, known as Soviets, and to overhaul the school system. He urged local officials to pay more attention to popular opinion, and spoke out in favor of educational reforms that would add an extra year of schooling, upgrade vocational training and raise the salaries of teachers.

Reports from the party plenum were carefully scrutinized for clues indicating who was up and who was down in the Soviet leadership. Death or promotion had thinned the ranks of the Politburo's non-voting members to only six. But with the exception of Gorbachev's symbolic promotion, the ruling lineup remained unchanged. Said a Western diplomat: "There seems to be a balance in the Politburo that they do not want to change by bringing in someone new."

Given their deep-rooted fear of instability, the aging men who still wield power in the Kremlin are not likely in the near future to sanction sudden shifts in foreign or domestic policy. But pressing problems do face the Soviet Union, none more troublesome than the need to groom a younger generation to rule. In his first two months in power, Chernenko has not allied himself with the forces of modernization as Andropov tried to do. But neither has he done anything to halt his nation's uncertain course into the future. Even in the most controlled societies, change must come, however slowly.

--By John Kohan. Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/Moscow and Johanna McGeary/Washington

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