Kremlin choice signifies freshness and vigour

Press, 13 March 1985, Page 10

Kremlin choice signifies freshness and vigour

By

SETH MYDANS,

of "The

New York Times” (through NZPA) Moscow The Soviet Union has finally begun its long-awaited shift to a new generation of leadership. The speed with which Mikhail Gorbachev’s appointment as leader of the Communist Party was made and the fast pace of scheduled funeral rites suggested that plans for the succession had been firmly established before Konstantin Chernenko died on Monday. The signposts of change contained in an address by the new leader that was read immediately to the nation showed that Mr Gorbachev planned to take the Soviet Union forward towards changes in policy that have been on hold for the last year. But Western and Soviet analysts in Moscow cautioned that although Mr Gorbachev and his economic planners had been laying their plans for months, change in the Soviet Union was slow and difficult.

They said that although he seemed to have stepped into his new role with vigour, it might take months or years for him to consolidate his position firmly enough to allow far-reaching changes to be felt.

But within these limits, Mr Gorbachev sounded determined yesterday to act with dispatch, as Yuri Andropov did in the first months of his brief rule more than two years ago, when he began efficiency and anti-corruption campaigns. In Moscow there was a

palpable lift to the mood yesterday as Russians began to realise that 50 years of leadership by ailing old men wedded, except for Mr Andropov’s rule, to the ways of the past, had ended.

“This is the moment of change,” an intellectual said. “Each person has his own hope for what the new leadership will bring. Some hope for stability. Some hope for really effective reforms. Some people think their daily lives will begin to improve. But their hopes are now pinned on Gorbachev.”

Even if substantive change is slow, the promotion of Mr Gorbachev, who is 54, sends an immediate message up and down the Soviet hierarchy that the time has come for the old men to give way at last. From his colleagues on the ruling Politburo to regional party leaders around the country, to trade union leaders, book publishers, and ballet comjpany directors, the Soviet Union is run mostly by men in their 70s. Their job security, the legacy of the 18-year rule of Leonid Brezhnev, has led to an ossification of Soviet society and has held back the careers of an entire generation of younger men with new ideas.

In the recent years of slow succession, from the days of the ailing Mr Brezhnev at the end of the 1970 s through those of a dying Mr Andropov and a dying Mr Chernenko, domestic policy in the Soviet Union has largely been put on hold. The exception was Mr Andropov’s programmes aimed at reform, which lost

much of their energy when he became incapacitated in the early months of his tenure. Nevertheless, the anti-corruption campaign he started has been carried forward, although more quietly, under Mr Chernenko. The directions in which the new generation will channel its energy remain unclear, say Western and Soviet analysts in Moscow. It is a generation, unlike its predecessors, that has grown up in an era in which the Soviet Union is an established world Power. Many of the younger men face the outside world with the self-assurance shown by Mr Gorbachev on his recent visit to Britain.

These younger men are also a generation away from the repression under Stalin and can therefore be expected to act with less caution domestically, analysts say. This could have positive or negative effects, says Jonathan Sanders, assistant director of the W. Averell Harriman Institute, of Columbia University, who was in Moscow yesterday. “There are people in the younger generation who, not having experienced the extremes to which coercive measures can go, may be ready to use repressive policies in their hurry to straighten things out,” he said.

Domestically, Mr Gorbachev has made it clear in his speeches that he is determined to move the country towards restructuring economic central planning.

This goal could mean

some devolution, and encouraging more local autonomy and local planning. Such change is certain to be strongly resisted by the central bureaucracy, which has held its power firmly for two decades.

Western diplomats do not expect significant change in the substance of Soviet policy under Mr Gorbachev, although its style could change, given the young new leader’s ability to present his country’s policies more vigorously than his ailing predecessors.

Foreign policy in the Soviet Union, particularly relations with the United States, is believed to have the backing of a broad consensus in the Politburo and to remain under the firm direction of the Foreign Minister, Mr Andrei Gromyko. The strength of Mr Gromyko’s position under the new leader was suggested yesterday by the announcement that he had nominated Mr Gorbachev for his post. Mr Gorbachev’s recently favourable reviews in London, where he maintained the tough Kremlin policy line but with a suavity unusual in Soviet leaders, hints at the public relations gains he could bring. “He’s not another grey baggy suit,” Mr Sanders said, “although he may think like a grey baggy suit.” Particularly if new arms talks, which began today in Geneva, bogged down and became a propaganda forum, Mr Sanders suggested, the new Soviet leader could become an effective spokesman.

In addition the Soviet

Union suddenly had, for the first time in close to a decade, a leader who could meet his Western counterparts on an equal intellectual footing, his health strong, and his mind undimmed by age, he said.

The Politburo membership has now been reduced to 10 full members, half of whom are already in their 70s. Mr Gorbachev will in the coming years be able to shape the top ranks of Soviet leadership. He is expected soon to hand more power to a young Politburo colleague, Vitaly Vorotnikov, a 59-year-old Kremlin ally who rose, as he did, under Mr Andropov. He is also expected in Moscow to promote to the Politburo Yegor Ligachev, aged 64, who is believed to have been running the anticorruption campaign under Mr Chernenko.

Mr Gorbachev’s ability to elevate his allies soon will be a test of his strength in tackling the substantive issues of his leadership. The developments end the succession hopes of the Politburo’s other rising young star, Grigory Romanov, who has held the Politburo’s military portfolio since the death in December of the Defence Minister, Marshal Dmitri Ustinov.

It was expected in Moscow that Mr Gorbachev would succeed to the title of President, which was held by Mr Chernenko along with that of general-secretary of the Communist Party central com-jttee.