Russia: The Morning After

In a somewhat left-handed compliment, U.N. Secretary-General U Thant described Russia’s new bosses as “competent and unpretentious.” So far, at least, they have plenty to be unpretentious about. The start of their rule was not auspicious. Nikita Khrushchev was deposed and out of sight, but his invisible presence still badly cramped the style of the new Moscow team. When Premier Aleksei Kosygin and his teammate Leonid Brezhnev, new head of the Communist Party, made their first joint public appearance in Red Square to hail Russia’s three most recent cosmonauts, applause from the onlookers was markedly listless. Visibly ruffled, Brezhnev stared down on them and muttered: “K chortu.” That meant “Go to the devil,” and because someone had forgotten to turn off the mike, the words went out loud and clear.

There was plenty of feedback, particularly from Communist leaders outside Russia. They should be accustomed to the Communist way of changing rulers, but they reacted with puzzlement, anger, even outrage. The fact was ironic, for in large measure Khrushchev had been felled because his policies had lately splintered the Communist movement, and his removal was obviously designed to help reunite the comrades. But for the present, at least, international Communism seemed even more badly split than before, and just as cockily independent of Moscow. The relative national autonomy won by the various parties during the Khrushchev era could probably never again be wholly destroyed.

Taken Aback. To date, Moscow has given no account of exactly what happened to Khrushchev and why-forcing not only the West but also other Communist parties to work out the puzzle as best they could (see following story). The Soviet press kept stating the new regime’s case against Khrushchev in the usual half-veiled style; its gist was that he had been highhanded and had refused to take advice. But the criticism sounded a little more restrained, with the new regime presumably taken aback by the protests.

Reaction was strongest among West European Communists. First to speak out were the French, who only a week before Khrushchev’s fall had declared their formal independence from Moscow control; they were obviously determined to keep that independence. The French demanded “fuller information and necessary explanations,” and Party Boss Waldeck Rochet announced that he would send a delegation to Moscow to get the answers.

Italy’s Reds, who comprise the largest Communist Party in Western Europe, were openly worried by the dumping of the man they had both criticized and supported. Party Leader Luigi Longo said: “The manner in which these changes at the top of the Soviet Party occurred leaves us concerned and critical.” Fearful that the new Russian leaders might get overly tough with the West, and thus spoil his party’s chances in Italy’s nationwide local elections next month, Longo harped on Khrushchev’s “peaceful coexistence” line and desperately reminded Italians that his predecessor, Palmiro Togliatti, had demanded “greater freedom of expression” for Communists. To take the edge off the French initiative, Longo decided to send two fact-finding missions to Moscow.

Foreign News. The Eastern European Red bloc was also dismayed. Even East Germany’s Walter Ulbricht, who had not had the best of treatment at Khrushchev’s hands and might have been expected to toady to the new men in the Kremlin, eulogized Nikita and expressed “profound emotion” over his sudden eclipse. The East Germans found it hard to believe that Khrushchev had “shown himself to be no longer equal to his tasks.”

Czechoslovakia’s reconstructed Stalinist Antonin Novotny praised Khrushchev, as did Hungary’s Janos Kadar and Poland’s Wladyslaw Gomulka. But there was only determined coolness from the recalcitrant Rumanians, who had successfully bucked Khrushchev on economic matters and thus probably helped provoke his ouster. Rumania’s party newspaper Scinteia played the story of his fall under the heading “Foreign News” on page 4.

The New Face. There were, of course, those who crowed over Khrushchev’s removal. Pro-Chinese Reds in Rome produced a poster of Stalin that read: “Khrushchev has fallen! Stalin is vindicated! Hurray for glorious Comrade Stalin!” The new face of Russian Communism, as it began to emerge, was far from Stalinist; it was definitely Khrushchevian in its lineaments, though more serious and nowhere near as lively. But there were hints of changes ahead, and the most significant concerned China. While B. & K. kept Mao Tse-tung’s name out of their pronouncements, Brezhnev hinted that Moscow would take the initiative in trying to “overcome difficulties” within the Communist movement. Unlikely as it sounded, Ideologist Mikhail Suslov was reported preparing to make a trip to Peking aimed at easing the Sino-Soviet rift. There were even rumors that Mao might be coming to Moscow.

In other matters, the new team almost frantically reassured everyone that the old policies would continue. In his Red Square speech, Brezhnev implied that Khrushchev’s basic foreign and domestic policies were still “the only, immutable line of the Soviet government.” Playing it both ways for the moment, Kosygin continued emphasis on production of consumer goods, while Brezhnev also promised greater investment in heavy industry. There were other promises, reassuring to the army, that cutbacks in defense spending would be halted. B. & K. also showed their sympathy for the army by turning up at the Moscow funeral of Marshal Sergei Biryuzov, Red Army Chief of Staff killed last week in a Belgrade plane crash as he flew in to attend Yugoslavia’s 20th anniversary of liberation from the German occupation.

Ultimately Willing. “You get the impression that during this period a genuine committee is at work,” says a high U.S. Official. “The speeches look like State Department drafts. In other words, there’s not an interesting word in them.” The professional Kremlin watchers now speak of the new pair in Moscow as a “diarchy within an oligarchy,” clearly a precarious situation.

Neither Brezhnev nor Kosygin can as yet be certain of his job, and behind each, among the other oligarchs, stand any number of potential replacements. One major contender is gone-ailing Frol Kozlov, 56, whose name suddenly disappeared along with Khrushchev’s from official pronouncements. President Anastas Mikoyan, 68, though shunted into the role of greeter last week, is still the man with the best balance in the Soviet Union, having survived every change of leadership since the fall of the Czar.

Right behind him is Mikhail Suslov, 61, whose icy, opportunistic command of ideology had seen him through Stalin and Khrushchev and firmly into the new era. But Mikoyan may be too old and Suslov too frail (he suffers from a chronic kidney ailment) to rate much of a chance among the hustlers in the Soviet Union today. Not so Nikolai Podgorny, 61, a hog-healthy Ukrainian protege of Khrushchev’s who managed many of his most delicate foreign and agricultural projects, and Dmitry Polyansky, at 46 the “baby” of the Presidium but one of its canniest opportunists.

Any of these men would ultimately be willing to do to Brezhnev or Kosygin what they had done only a week before to Khrushchev.