THE PRESS SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1982. An election, Moscow-style

Press, 13 November 1982, Page 14

THE PRESS SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1982. An election, Moscow-style

Dictators have great difficulty in determining who shall succeed them. Men who have achieved high political office by the suppression of rivals seldom encourage the appearance of a successor, a new potential rival, in their own lifetimes. The choice in Moscow of one successor to Mr Brezhnev has been impressively swift. The presidency has yet to be filled. In the Soviet Union the questions of succession have brought much uneasiness, since Lenin’s last illness 60 years ago. Careers, even lives, have been in the balance because no accepted hereditary principle, or established system of election or appointment, exists. The succession problem in Moscow is made more difficult because the people concerned, high in the offices of army, police, and party, have had little practice in deciding who shall be supreme. Since the Revolution 65 years ago only four men - Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev - have led the country. By comparison, in the same period the United States has had 13 Presidents; New Zealand has changed its Prime Minister 15 times. Democracy, as the West understands it, offers less stability, but a good deal more variety than the closed Soviet system.

A handful of leaders, each supreme in an important realm of Soviet life, were in line for the leadership of the Communist Party. The closest comparison from Western history is probably with a group of feudal barons meeting to decide who among them should be king. Instead of drawing their individual strength from land with its peasantry, the modern Russian barons draw theirs from bureaucracies and the people who fill them: the armed forces, the Communist Party, the police, trade unions, and important economic ministries. Although Mr Yuri Andropov has been chosen to be general secretary of the party, a secure result in settling the leadership of the Soviet Union may take time to achieve. When Stalin died, Bulganin and Khrushchev existed as an uneasy partnership for several years before Khrushchev was able to establish supremacy. For the rest of the world, this must be an uncertain time. One means to dominance in the Soviet Union, one means to establish who is the “best” communist of all, might well be to take a harder line in foreign affairs. To pose the matter in its starkest form: no-one in the West can yet be absolutely sure whose finger is on the button in Moscow now, or how the owner of that finger might choose to assert the power it gives. Whatever the outcome, no startling changes are likely in Soviet policy, at home or abroad. The new leaders will inherit a super-Power that may be the strongest military State in the world. It is also a State beset by the problems of suppressed dissent among a small but important fraction of its population; and a State that remains unable to feed itself, in spite of spectacular advances in technology and armaments.

Political and economic constraints will, in the end, decide policies will be followed. Nonew leader who proposed to reduce military spending in favour of providing more goods for the people could hope to survive. Yet the new leader is likely to have to go some way, at least, towards promising an improvement in the quality of Soviet life. The contest for investment and production, between the armed forces and the Soviet population, will continue as it has in Russia since before the Revolution.

Mr Brezhnev is being acclaimed in his own country as a “great fighter for peace.” Outside the Soviet Union the words sound false, even silly. In his own country they make sense. Mr Brezhnev kept his country out of a major war for 18 years. He chose to fight, but outside the boundaries of the Soviet Union. He could claim a series of military victories, some of them fought by proxy, in Czechoslovakia, Angola, IndoChina, and Ethiopia. A scrap against China was drawn. Struggles continue in Poland, Afghanistan, and Central America. In the war between Iran and Iraq, Mr Brezhnev has succeeded in having a bet both ways. This adds up to a policy of “forward defence” with a vengeance. Twenty years ago Mr Khrushchev suffered a serious loss of prestige when his attempt to extend the Soviet military presence in Cuba was blocked by the United States. Mr Brezhnev turned the Soviet Union into a true world power, able to exert influence and military force round the world. His successor inherits this power, as well as the responsibilities and the commitments (such as the unfinished and miserable war in Afghanistan) that go with it. Mr Brezhnev functioned as a manager, rather than an innovator, especially in the domestic affairs of the Soviet Union. His successor will be tempted to take the same, safe course. Once the dust of the succession has settled, it may be that there will be little visible change in Soviet policies.

Yet a change in leadership offers the best opportunity for many years for an improvement in relations between the Soviet bloc and the West. The Soviet Union continues to depend on Western food and Western technology for its development. The West could not influence the choice in Moscow; it can influence the behaviour of the new regime.

The best hope of improving relations between East and West will be a strong and intelligent leadership firmly in office in Moscow. In spite of his stern line in the past, Mr Andropov may be able to make the concessions that a reduction in world tension will require without, at the same time, alarming powerful factions in the Soviet Union. The Soviet leaders have an opportunity to reduce tension and political violence round the world by their choice this week-end. The rest of the world can do no more than hope that the opportunity will not be missed.