Soviet Union Staying in Line

So biting was the cold in Moscow's Red Square that the crack battalions of troops standing at attention seemed to sway slightly as soldiers moved from one leg to the other trying to keep warm. Looking down from atop the Lenin Mausoleum, members of the Politburo of the Communist Party tugged at the earflaps of their thick fur hats and pulled their coat collars tight. They had braved -7 degrees F weather last week to pay tribute to the late Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov and to witness the sealing of his ashes in a burial niche in the Kremlin wall.

If the death of Ustinov, a fixture of the Soviet military establishment for more than four decades, had been expected to bring change within the leadership, the Kremlin proved once again that it is possible to march forward and still stay in place. There had been speculation that Politburo Member Grigori Romanov, 61, a civilian defense-industry expert from Leningrad, might replace Ustinov. Instead the post went to Marshal Sergei Sokolov, the First Deputy Defense Minister, who at 73 is the oldest man ever appointed to the job. As one Western diplomat in Moscow noted, the Kremlin opted "for the safe and the obvious."

President Konstantin Chernenko, 73, was conspicuously absent from the funeral ceremonies; his doctors had apparently advised him to stay out of the cold. Later in the week he made an appearance at a Kremlin awards ceremony. In his absence Politburo Member Mikhail Gorbachev, 53, and Romanov, the most likely candidates from the younger generation to succeed to Chernenko's party- leadership job, were prominent at the ceremonies. Even without the ministerial title, Romanov may prove to be a decisive figure in allocating military expenditures and could emerge as stiff competition to Gorbachev, now believed to be the front runner in a future succession race.

( With Ustinov gone, the number of voting members in the Politburo has dropped to eleven, the lowest count in more than a decade. Sokolov may be elevated to the Politburo, but he is not expected to wield the same power that Ustinov did. A professional soldier, Sokolov began his career in the tank corps in the 1930s and rose through the ranks to become a regional military commander and, eventually, the senior administrative officer of the Defense Ministry. Said a NATO diplomat in Moscow: "The appointment does not change the basic rule that policy is made by the civilians and executed by the soldiers."

The naming of Sokolov was not expected to have much impact on next week's meeting between Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz. Whatever debate may have gone on in Moscow through much of 1984 about the wisdom of resuming arms-control talks with the U.S., the Kremlin seems determined to make every effort to limit President Reagan's so- called Star Wars plan. The selection of a defense-establishment functionary like Sokolov for the top military job seemed designed to ensure the continuity of that policy.

As the U.S. and the Soviet Union prepared for the Geneva meeting, there were signs of a slight thaw in Sino-Soviet relations. Chinese officials announced that the two Communist superpowers had negotiated three pacts on trade and scientific cooperation and a long-term treaty strengthening economic ties. But the two countries continued to be separated by wide political and ideological differences.