KREMLIN HAWK LEONID BREZHNEV’S HARD LINE ON CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31769, 28 August 1968, Page 16

KREMLIN HAWK LEONID BREZHNEV’S HARD LINE ON CZECHOSLOVAKIA

(By

SIMON KAVANAUGH)

on tlw l So.K n J b T l L t 7n^V h \ CrUshing of Czechoslovakia lies squarely PolitbuS d f L d Brezhnev ’ leader of the Russian

Toughest of the Kremlin hawks, he has advocated force against Plague fiom the moment that Dubcek took over from Novotny. That he was overruled—temporanly—is no doubt the subject of bitter recrimination in Moscow today for Russian diplomats are arguing that the error was not in invading Czechoslovakia, but in invading tooJate.

ironically, Brezhnev was the first to congratulate Dubcek publicly on his' appointment, congratulations followed by a much-publicised handshake. But it was a mailed fist he proffered; even before the Cierna talks Red Army divisions were sent to battle stations near the border. Brezhnev appears almost to have a personal grudge against the Czechoslovaks. When Novotny appealed to him once for aid, the Russian told him merely to use stronger measures with his opponents. When he was asked to use his influence to get Russia’s allies —notably Cuba—to pay their bills for Czechoslovak arms (£lOO million was outstanding), Brezhnev’s reply was to order more, to be given away to North Vietnam.

On the day that a subdued, reflective Premier Kosygin was opening the way for a deescalation of the arms race with America, Brezhnev, in an astonishing speech, ranted against Czechoslovak liberals and intellectuals who, he added menacingly, “would get their just desserts.” So obsessed was he with the stirrings of freedom in Prague that it is said that his illness during the Cierna talks was an attack of bloodpressure brought on by a twohour denunciation of the devil Dubcek and all his works.

Kremlin Crisis? Now Dubcek is in Russian hands, but Brezhnev will have little to smile about. World reaction may produce the biggest crisis inside the Kremlin since Stalin’s death, for Brezhnev’s “victory” over the Czechoslovaks will almost certainly be at the expense of good will so carefully built up with the West during the last decade. It will have repercussions everywhere: on the United States elections, on Vietnam peace talks, on Moscow’s relations with Western Communist parties, bn East European unity, on the Russian people themselves. And already observers are saying that the real victory was one of Brezhnev over Kosygin. Strangely, perhaps, Brezhnev’s career has previously been similar to that of Khrushchev. Like Khrushchev, he is a Ukrainian. A tough, burly six-footer with a forceful personality, he dominates every meeting both by hfs harsh speech and granite face.

He was born on December 19, 1906 in Dneprodzerzhinsk, the son of a steel worker. At 15 he began work. The determination that still shows in his face manifested itself even in his, adolescence. This, coupled with ambition, pushed him through part-time training to qualify as a land sur-

veyor, and later as a steelworks engineer. After Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Khrushchev, who had been appointed political commissar to the Red Armychose Brezhnev as one of his assistants. Brezhnev rose to major-general and just after the war became First Secretary of the Dniepropetrovsk Region. Three years later the shrewd Khrushchev called his protege to Moscow.

Soon' he was promoted to party chief of the Moldavian Republic and in 1952 became a member of the central committee of the All-Union Party, a candidate member of the Presidium, and one of the secretaries of the committee. On Stalin’s death, in 1953, he was dropped from the Presidium and sent back to his last wartime job as first deputy of the chief political administration of the armed forces as a lieutenant-general. He proved his loyalty to Khrushchev and the party by helping in the fight to bring the seething Red Army under party control and bind it to its political master. Khrushchev Protege Success here brought him another tough assignment in 1954 when he was appointed secretary of the central committee of the Kazakhstan Party. This brought him the top role in Khrushchev’s “Virgin Lands” campaign which aimed at increasing Soviet grain production by cultivating vast areas of arid land. At the twentieth Party Congress in 1956 Brezhnev again became a candidate member of the Presidium and a secretary. A year later he sided with Khrushchev in the

toughest power struggle of his career against the “antiParty" group which ended with the expulsion of Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich and ethers. His strength and loyalty were rewarded when he shortly afterwards became a full member of the Presidium.

In 1960, when Marshal Voroshilov asked to be relieved of his post as President because of poor health, Brezhnev was elected to succeed him. Further steps in the grooming process followed. To give him the “feel” of world affairs—which he sadly lacked—Khrushchev sent him to Morocco in February, 1961. In the autumn of 1962. he became the first Soviet head of state to pay a state visit to Jugoslavia. Despite a shaky start—once again as a result of his ignorance of the outside world, even of policy differences within the Soviet bloc—a communique was finally issued which stated that the 1955 declaration (by which Khrushchev had recognised different approaches to Communism and accepted the Titoist variety) was a basis for future co-operation. This announcement erased the mutual Soviet-Jugoslav bitterness and suspicion caused by the 1956 uprising in Hungary.

When Brezhnev stepped down from the Presidency to give Anastas Mikoyan, undoubtedly the most politically agile man in the U.S.S.R., his reward for decades of worldwide Soviet trouble shooting, he actually stepped up. Today Kremlinologists are waiting to see if Brezhnev will succeed in putting, back the clock to Stalin's time in Prague.