change of regime in the Kremlin where you stood with Leonid Brezhnev," - to be chosen so quickly or without
Willy Brandt wrote in Der Spiegel. public debate.
official eulogies for the former occupant the defender of Marxism-Leninism and
The despotic nature of the rule of the Soviet bureaucracy is revealed most dramatically on the occasion of the death of the supreme bureaucrat himself.
Brezhnev's death was officially announced on November 12, virtually every publication in the Soviet Union appeared with exactly the same front page, the same communique, the same picture of the deceased boss, the same bewailings of the "great loss" by the various levels of the party and of the "working masses."
The next day, November 13, once again all the Soviet papers had the same first page, showing the picture of the new general secretary, Yuri Andropov - "The emperor is dead; long live the emperor!"
The eulogy delivered by the new Kremlin boss also had the monstrously exaggerated, character of the official eulogies typical of despotism since the age of the pha-
"Our party and our country, the entire Soviet people, have suffered a heavy loss. The heart of the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and of the Soviet State, outstanding leader of the
Communist and workers movement, a fiery Communist, a true son of the Soviet people, Leonid Brezhnev,
"The greatest political figure of our time has passed away...
"Inseparably bound up with the name and works of Leonid Il'ich are the growth of the power and the all-embracing cooperation of the countries of the great socialist commonwealth, the active participation of the world Communist movement in resolving the historic tasks before humanity in our age, the reinforcing of solidarity of all forces of national liberation and social progress on the earth."
On this and following days, the Soviet press carried long articles under headlines such as "The World Mourns."
Notably, the messages of condolence featured were those of the heads of capitalist states, such as Reagan and Thatcher. These were placed high above those from revolutionary figures such as the Cuban and Nicaraguan leaders.
The capitalist leaders did express a genuine-sounding sympathy with Brezhnev; he was apparently the sort of Soviet leader they like, completely cynical, and mediocre. "You always knew
In a number of respects, the cere-
Brezhnev's body resembled the ritual for a dead czar. example, the hall of the trades-union where the bier was set up was filled with candles, which are an impor tant part of the trappings of Eastern Orthodox church ceremonies.
According to legend, it was the great banks of candles in Constantinople's Saint Sophia that so impressed Princess Olga of Kiev that she adopted Christianity as the official religion of the first Russian state.
As changes of regime in a despotic setup usually are, Brezhnev's death was preceded by rumors of a deadly struggle among his potential heirs, accompanied by the equivalent of muffled thuds in the
In January, General Tsvigun, a member of Brezhnev's family, died in myste
The name of the general secretary was notably missing from the list of signatures that are customarily appended to the obituaries of high
At the beginning of October, Andrei Kirilenko, minister of industry and one of the top Kremlin figures, suddenly fell from the upper circle. On October 3, his name was among the signers of the obituary of the secretary of the first secretary of the Tatar Communist Party; on October 5, it was missing from the obituary of the second secretary of the Ukranian Communist Party.
On November 4, Kirilenko's picture failed to show up in a series of leadership portraits put up in Moscow. His son reportedly fled to the West.
There, was also a perceptible disarray in the Kremlin apparatus after the disappearance of the high priest of the official ideology, Mikhail Suslov, who died shortly after General Tsvigun. For example, a rock theater group found itself the of an army commando attack despite the fact that it was praised in the
French CP organ, l'Humanite, wrote November 13 that the rapid ascen-
Andropov should have ended "speculations as indelicate as they were about skulduggery involved in determining Brezhnev's successor.
In fact, in normal legal succession, one would not expect the holder of such an imposing office - to judge only by the one would not expect a smooth transfer of power to be accom panied with such appeals to unity. For example, in his eulogy, Andropov said:
in the most difficult moments there is a power that helps us resolve the most difficult problems. That power is the unity of the Party."
The next day, November 14, Izvestia's front page had two articles. One was on the funeral. The other was entitled: "The Unshakeable Unity of the Party and the
The November 18 Pravda had a frontpage editorial entitled "The Feelings of a United Family," which said, among other things, "The workers of all nations and nationalities in the USSR unanimously approved the resolution of the special plenum selecting Comrade Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov general secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU," Lately the Soviet press has had a number of articles indicating increased concern about national resentments in the USSR.
The succession could be expected to be difficult, since the command of the bureaucracy has changed in effect only three times since the rule of the apparat was consolidated in 1928. In two of the three cases, the change has followed the lingering death of the top bureaucrat. Only Khrushchev left office while he could still walk. He was ousted by a palace revolution. In any case, he could be considered a figure thrown up by the representing reforms and hare-brained schemes to try to overcome the basic problems of the
With Brezhnev in 1965, the bureaucracy returned to its
Brezhnev's position as the continuer of bureaucratic despotism was confirmed by the development of a full-blown "cult of the personality" around him in the later years of his reign.
He became a "literary" as well as a political genius, and the press of all the nationalities began publishing his works in serial form. In the organs of the various republics - in the case of the smaller republics there is no attempt to maintain the fiction of seperation between the govthe party and the same paper serves as the organ of both - many issues were largely taken up with Brezhnev's literary work.
Andropov's eulogy hailed Brezhnev as
was not kept.
2.6% down by relative sophisticated and used he
Moscow control.
"the despite of
Soviet the
The possibility of directed selective, trained cops to instance, for branches of industry, notably electronics, liquidation to assure that its needs were met
Apparently, the more farsighted Soviet military chiefs are getting worried that the poor standards of bureaucratically managed industry are endangering the standing of the Soviet armed forces relative to the American. With the pace of the electronics revolution, •bureaucratic management results in more and more grave technological lags. That is a basic problem from which the entire Soviet bloc is suffering. It is logical that this should hit the military hardest. the Kalevala, The test of U.S. and Soviet equipment in the latest Mid-East war indicated that the U.S. is gaining an important lead in electronics weapons systems. According to Adler and other such He has a diplo- experts, it was the military professionals who tipped the balance in Andropov's favor. Paradoxically, as the long-time head of the KGB, he could be expected to be the most enlightened of the available candidates for power. That is because in the totalitarian system only the KGB knows what the real situation is. It is interesting in this respect to note that in the wake of Stalin's death, the leadership of the CP in Hungary, at that time the sick man of the Soviet bloc, were called to Moscow, where Beria, then head of the secret police, read them a full seat of the mighty. indictment of the failures of their bureaucratic management of the economy. (Tibor Meray, Nagy Imre, Elete es Halala, pp. 13-19.) It is likely that the Andropov team will try to carry out some Hungarian-type economic reforms and to maneuver politically more than the Brezhnev regime. For one thing, under the supremely immobile Brezhnev problems have accuits possibilities. degradation, ist cash. KGB Alexandre Adler, a former French CP leader charged for many years with Soviet relations, linked Andropov's rise to that of General Ogarkov, the most prominent modernizer in the military hierarchy.
Earlier this year, Ogarkov published a book that was virtually a manifesto of the modernizers. Among other things, it sug gested the army directly take over certain