Kremlin succession — opening for the West?

Press, 9 June 1978, Page 12

Kremlin succession — opening for the West?

By

VICTOR ZORZA

in Washington

Even if we could say with assurance who is going to succeed Mr Brezhnev, this would not help us to predict what policies the Kremlin might follow in his absence. Any analysis must be based on something other than the little we know of the grey individuals who comprise most of the Politburo. Perhaps they are not even as grey as we think they are. Even American Central Intelligence Agency analysts whose job it is to study their personalities and characters . confess that. they, know far less about them than they would like to, Before he succeeded Stalin, Mr Khrushchev was regarded as one of the colourless Politburo figures, and the same was thought of Mr Alexander Dubcek before he led Czechoslovakia into its experiment with democracy. Even if somebody had to'd us in advance that Mr Khrushchev and Mr Dubcek were going to emerge as the top leaders, we would Still have had no grounds for assuming that they were going to make the dramatic policy changes they did. Three possible lines of development have emerged in the debate among Western analysts about the future of the Soviet Union aff r Mr Brezhnev. Most of the government analysts and some of the older academic experts on the Soviet Union whose opinions I have sampled assume that things will go on much as before. Some of the intelligence and academic experts believe that a turn to the right, to a more conservative and hardline policy, is quite likely. And some of the academic experts, mostly the younger ones, and very few intelligence analysts, believe that a more liberal regime

might conceivably follow the Brezhnev era. I am firmly on the side of this liberal ‘‘faction”. But I would add that its prediction is likely to come true only if Western policy makers help it to come true. This column is the last I will write for some time to come, and in some small way it is a summing up of whatever insight I have acquired since I began analysing Kremlin policies in 1950. The most telling lesson I have learned is that there are always policy struggles going on in the Kremlin between the Right and the Left, between a conservative wing on the one hand and a moderate or more liberal wing on the other, even if the evidence of such struggles does not become available to us until much later. The most discouraging lesson I have learned is how difficult it is to persuade the powers that be in the Western capitals, particularly in Washington, that such struggles are in progress, and that in shaping our own policies we ought to take that into consideration. That is not to say that the West ought necessarily to support one Kremlin leader against another, but th— it ought to act in a way that would help the Kremlin to decide on the policies that would be to the mutual benefit of both East and West. But in Washington, domestic political reasons often prevent the pursuit of policies which would take such struggles into account. When Sir Winston Churchill proposed to President Eisenhower after the death of Stalin a summit meeting with the new Soviet leaders, the American Secretary of State, Mr John Foster

Dulles, advised firmly against it, and a rare opportunity to devise a new relationship with the Kremlin was lost. Only later did it become generally accepted that one of the Kremlin factions had wanted at the time to develop a more co-oper-ative relationship with the West. There have been several other such missed opportunities since then. Sometimes the failure to act on such opportunities is due more to a failure of analysis than to a failure of Western policy. The present majority view that a conservative regime is more likely to prevail after Mr Brezhnev is based on a number of assumptions. One of these is that the Soviet leadership is committed first of all to its own perpetuation, which is a view I share. But it is then argued, and this is where ' I disagree, that the instinct for self-preservation will make the new Soviet leaders follow the conservative policies which have helped in the past to curb dissent, to prevent political reform, to avert innovation. I believe this is the wrong view, because there is a good deal of evidence that a new generation of Soviet leaders is emerging which holds that without innovation and reform, without economic experimentation and political change, the Soviet regime will find it difficult to retain its place as a leading power in the modern World. They are just as interested in self” perpetuation, both for themselves and for the regime, as their conservative colleagues. But they believe that their ends would be best achieved by following more liberal policies, both at home and abroad, and this is where we can help ourselves by helping them.

In the transition period which the Soviet leadership has already entered, and in the struggle for the succession to Mr Brezhnev which will come into the open sooner or later, these conservative leaders and their “liberal” — for want of a better word — opponents are bound to clash, repeatedly. By devising our foreign policies in ways which might help the “liberals,” by meeting them half-way in economic and arms negotiations (provided always that we do not thereby injure the West’s basic interests) we can do a great deal to promote the kind of East-West understanding that has seemed to be almost within our grasp several times since the death of Stalin. All one can do in the space of a column is to express some conclusions based on several decades of work in this field, although others who have worked equally long have come to quite different views. In the end it comes down to a personal opinion, and it is often said that those who urge the kind of policy I discuss here are personally “soft” on the Kremlin, that they would give it anything it wants. So far as my own views are concerned, this is easily refuted by the hard line I have taken so often in the face of what I have considered Soviet excesses. I thus believe that the West can, and should, take firm action to arrest the expansion of Soviet power in Africa. If we fail to do that, we will in effect be helping the Kremlin hardliners, for they will come to believe that they can get away with anything, and will therefore be encouraged to try even more risky adventures and to follow an even less accommodating policy in other negotiations with the West.

But our resistance to the Kremlin’s excesses must be part of a constructive policy designed to evolve a new relationship which could be opened up by the present transition from the Brezhnev rule to a new regime that will be represented, sooner or later, by a new generation of Soviet leaders. Above all, we must beware of missing the opportunities we have repeatedly missed ip the past, and the such Opportunity is presenting itself now, and is being intensively discussed by United States policy makers. Should President Carter invite Mr Brezhnev to a summit meeting? Mr Brezhnev, it is argued, is too weak physically and therefore politically to make such a meeting worth while. The struggle for the succession, it is said, is already in progress, and Mr Carter should therefore wait until it is resolved, and meet Mr Brezhnev’s successor who would be eager to gain the international prestige conferred by a summit meeting, and

would therefore be willing to pay a political price for it. But if the struggle for the succession is indeed in progress, and if, as there is every reason to believe, it is concerned with policies as well as personalities, then the time for Washington to try to influence the direction of developments in Moscow is now. A summit meeting with Mr Brezhnev, even if he is largely a figurehead, would give Mr Carter the opportunity to convey to the whole Soviet leadership something of the gains which could result from a favourable development of United States-Soviet relations, and of the dangers if no such development takes place. It would then be up to those Soviet leaders who want to make the best of the existing opportunities to take the matter up with their colleagues. Yes, in doing this Mr Carter would be taking a hand in the Soviet succession struggle, but in doing this he could hardly be accused of backing a particular Soviet leader, or of interfering in the Kremlin’s internal affairs. He would simply be presenting to the Kremlin his view of what the United States-Soviet relationship might be, and he would be doing this in good time to strengthen the hand of those of Mr Brezhnev’s possible successors who want a more co-operative relationship with the West. For once, we would be anticipating a change of guard in the Kremlin and the change of policy which has always followed it, instead of merely reacting to it after it happened. — Copyright, 1978, Victor Zorza. [Victor Zorza is writing a book and will resume his regular weekly column in several months time.]