Russia’s old men remember...

Press, 12 April 1984, Page 21

Russia’s old men remember...

DONALD TRELFORD,

editor of the London

“Observer,” gives his impressions of the Soviet Union leadership on returning from Moscow, where he led a television interviewing team from the West.

After the umpteenth vodka deployment, the Soviet general unbuttoned his tunic, loosened his tie, and leaned earnestly across the table. “The distance from Berlin to Moscow,” he said, “is only 2000 kilometres. Yet 20 million Russians died to stop the Germans getting here. That is 10,000 dead Russians for every kilometre of road. “You’ll understand why those of us who remember the war are so concerned by Europe’s failure to heed our warnings on cruise and Pershing missiles.” Lieutenant-General Victor Staradubov, a tall blond man in his midfifties, was just old enough to volunteer at the end of the war. He then trained as a naval pilot and is now a nuclear expert on the general staff and a member of the Soviet team at the arms talks in Geneva. His moment of authentic passion came after hours of measured debate, part of it in front of British television cameras.

The first surprising thing about this East-West debate is that it happened at all. It took many months to set up, and when Yuri Andropov died that seemed to be the end of it. Suddenly, however, permission came through, which says something about the Chernenko regime. There is a sense in which Soviet foreign policy has always continued on autopilot through the various indispositions of the country’s leaders. Lenin and Stalin were both ill for long periods before they died. In recent years the slow decline of Brezhnev was followed by Andropov’s disappearing act and now by the uncertain capacity of Chernenko. Western expectations

of a change of policy on every change of leadership — first excited by Khrushchev in the 1950 s — have invariably been dashed ever since.

Several people said to me in Moscow that early Western judgments on Chernenko — as a cunning old Siberian peasant — had underrated him. He did, after all, travel abroad wjith Brezhnev (whereas Andropov ■ never set foot outside the Soviet bloc in his whole life), and all the key policy papers must have crossed his desk for years as Brezhnev’s chief of staff. “He might surprise us, he might be his own man,” a Western diplomat said “What sort of man is that?” I asked. “We don’t know,” he shrugged. Music is the clue to a great deal in the Soviet Union. Mr Andropov is said to have liked Western jazz. Mr Chernenko, I’m sorry to report, fails the music test, having attacked “musical ensembles whose repertories are of a dubious nature,” thereby causing “ideological and aesthetic harm” to the Soviet people. Better news, though, of Mr Gorbachev, currently seen as the man most likely to succeed Chernenko. He has been spotted at the opera in Moscow with his beautiful wife.

What change will Mr Chernenko bring to relations with the United States, currently suspended after the breakdown of the arms talks? Diplomatic observers note a change of tone, but disagree on its significance.

The Russians clearly want and need to get back into talks, but they cannot do so immediately — certainly on intermediate range missiles like cruise and Pershing — without losing face. They appear to have boxed themselves into a corner and cannot decide how and when to come out unt ! ’ they see which way the United Siates election is going. The Russians got themselves into this awkward position by their all-or-nothing commitment against the Euro-missiles. This was partly because they overrated the power of popular protest in Western Europe (or their own power to manipulate it) and partly, one suspects, because the Soviet generals put the pressure on.

They make no secret of their genuine alarm that cruise and Pershing change the name of the war game. Even though they retain superiority in warheads, their strategists are worried that Soviet cities could now come under nuclear attack from Europe without (in theory anyway) a progressive escalation through limited war. The Armageddon scenario is speeded up. All this, together with longerterm fears of a Star Wars in space, which they lack the technology and the resources to fight on equal terms, explains Soviet anxiety about the apparent ascendancy in Washington of hawks who argue that the Communist empire will collapse if confronted toughly enough. The deadlock in Afghanistan, which has exposed sluggishness and faulty equipment in the Red Army,

and a dearth of computer skills; their failures in Africa; not to mention the endemic constipation of the economic system must all incline them (in my view) away from an adventurist foreign policy and back towards a more stable relationship with the United States. The hard-line view in Washington is that no movement can be expected before 1985.1 suspect that prospect is too gloomy. Even if it isn’t, the West has nothing to lose by using this year to help create the political conditions for change and so enable the Russians to return to the table under a facesaving formula. The Europeans have a special responsibility in Moscow, which is why visits by Mrs Thatcher and President Mitterrand should be encouraged. In Gorky Park, I was startled by a Russian who addressed me in English. “Why has the Iron Maiden changed her mind about us?” he asked me, after a while. It was no use explaining that Sir Julian Bullard’s Foreign Office memos had altered Tory perceptions of Communism, or that Lord Carrington had maybe achieved a slow private conversion ahead of his N.A.T.O. job. “She’s a woman, so she’s a realist,” I said. “Soviet people have been realists since 1941,” he replied. How did he feel about being ruled by old men, I asked in turn. After a pause, he said: “Old men remember. It’s young men who forget. Young men fight. Old men want peace. “Take the chance now, while it’s there.” Copyright — London Observer Service.