Chernenko’s election seen as following protocol

Press, 13 April 1984, Page 8

Chernenko’s election seen as following protocol

NZPA-‘N.Y. Times’ Moscow

Konstantin Chernenko has completed his consolidation of top Soviet offices. He was named president of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet yesterday, a job that amounts to the State Presidency. Mr Chernenko, who is 72, thus achieved in two months what it took Yuri Andropov seven months and Leonid Brezhnev almost 13 years to do, and his selection indicated that consolidation of Communist Party leadership and the State Presidency has now become custom.

In his nominating speech, Mikhail Gorbachev, generally regarded as the secondranking member of the Politburo, seemed to lay greater emphasis on the expediency of linking the senior posts than on Mr Chernenko’s qualifications.

Since Mr Chernenko’s selection as Communist Party chief in February, evidence has pointed to Mr Gorbachev’s being the new No. 2 man and his selection to nominate Mr Chernenko seemed to underscore his position.

In addition Mr Gorbachev, who is 53, was named on Wednesday as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Commission in the Supreme Soviet, a post Mr Chernenko had held.

“Relying on the experi-

ence of party and State construction in past years, proceeding from the supreme interests of the Soviet society and State, the plenum of the central committee unanimously found it necessary that the general secretary of our party central committee, Konstantin Chernenko, should concurrently hold the post of the president of the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet,” Mr Gorbachev told the Supreme Soviet, the nominal Soviet legislature.

Mr Gorbachev emphasised that combining the State and party job was of “great importance for pursuing foreign policy,” since it enabled the party chief, the effective leader of the Soviet Union, formally torepresent the State. •

The 1500 members of the Supreme Soviet, who had been selected unopposed in elections in March, raised their hands in unison to vote for Mr Chernenko, as they did on every other motion put to them. Diplomats also believe that Mr Chernenko has assumed the third key position held by Messrs Brezhnev and Andropov, chairman of the Defence Council. The office, which is not listed publicly, is believed to exercise control over the Armed Forces.

The selection of Mr Chernenko and the nomination by Mr Gorbachev appeared

to underscore an evolving pattern of political succession in the Soviet Union, many of its elements confirmed in the experience gained from the deaths only 15 months apart of Messrs Brezhnev and Andropov.

Mr Brezhnev had been nominated for the presidency in 1977 by Mikhail Suslov, then the No. 2 in the Politburo and chief of ideology. In June, 1983, it was Mr Chernenko, the secondranking member of the Politburo and chief of ideology, who made the nominating speech for Mr Andropov. But if Mr Gorbachev, the youngest member of the Politburo, has emerged as

the No. 2 member, the Supreme Soviet buttressed the impression that primary power resided in a grouping of the oldest members.

At yesterday's meeting Mr Chernenko was flanked by the Prime Minister, Mr Nikolai Tikhonov, aged 78; the Foreign Minister, Mr Andrei Gromyko, aged 74; and the Defence Minister, Marshal Dmitry Ustinov, aged 76. Most diplomats believe that they are the most influential members of what appears to be a collective leadership. Mr Gorbachev sat in the row behind them.

Diplomats have generally concluded that upon Mr Andropov’s death the senior members of the Politburo became wary of tapping a comrade two decades their junior, even though Mr Gorbachev had been the member closest to Mr Andropov.

Instead, the Politburo members apparently opted to follow protocol and give the job to the No. 2 man, while at the same time elevating Mr Gorbachev and giving him a strong claim as heir apparent. In a brief acceptance speech Mr Chernenko declared that, “today, as never before, carefully considered decisions and great organisation work were necessary to substantially raise the effectiveness of the economy and improve invariably on this basis the well-being

of all Soviet people.”

Although Mr Chernenko displayed his usual shortness of breath, reportedly the result of emphysema, he seemed tanned and fit.

After accepting the presidency he nominated Mr Tikhonov to continue as chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Prime Minister. The entire council formally resigns when a new Supreme Soviet is seated, and Mr Tikhonov is now charged with producing a new list of Ministers to-

day. In his nominating address Mr Gorbachev treated Mr Chernenko to all the accolades due a party chief. He described him as a “tested leader of the Leninist type,” whose speeches as party leader in the last two months “contain an extensive constructive programme for the socioeconomic and political development of. our country and for improving the international situation.”

The delegates erupted in what newspapers in Moscow called “stormy, prolonged applause.” Diplomats discerned in the procedures of the last two days evidence of a collective leadership for which Mr Chernenko acted largely as a spokesman, a leadership that displayed none of the demands for change that had marked Mr Andropov’s brief tenure.