The succession to the 75-year-old and ailing Mr. Brezhnev has not yet been settled. But apparently the choice has narrowed down to two – Mr. Chernenko, a long-time protégé and aide of the Soviet president, and Mr. Andropov, who has just been elevated to the powerful Secretariat of the central committee of the Soviet communist party and has given up his office as head of the dreaded KGB. Mr. Andropov’s promotion to fill the vacancy caused by the death of the party ideologue, Mr. Suslov, is not altogether unexpected. He was a member of the secretariat from 1961 to 1967 when he took over as head of the KGB and he has been a full member of the politburo since 1973. He was rated as a possible successor to Mr. Brezhnev even before his return to the party secretariat. He had, for instance, delivered the speech on Lenin’s birth anniversary at the Kremlin’s ceremony on April 2. Even so, if he indeed manages to succeed Mr. Brezhnev to the top party post with or without the presidency thrown in, it will mark a radical departure in the history of the Soviet Union. It will be the first time that a former KGB chief with links with its agents throughout the length and breadth of the land will have risen to the top position. It will be rash to interpret such a development as an expression of a decline in the power of the party and an increase in that the KGB because the two are closely linked in terms of the personnel, especially at the top. But it will be equally rash to treat it as a matter of no significance. Students of Soviet affairs will be keeping their ears and eyes open.
Despite his 18-year-long tenure as secretary-general of the CPSU Mr. Brezhnev has been little more than the first among equals. Not to speak of Stalin, he has not enjoyed the powers which Mr. Khrushchev was able to accumulate. He has presided over what has genuinely been a collective leadership. As such he is not in a position to select his successor. The top leadership as a whole will take the decision. Indeed, it is possible that it has promoted Mr. Andropov precisely because it did not want the issue to be settled in Mr. Chernenko’s favour in advance. It is a matter of speculation whether Mr. Andropov has had a hand in the uncovering of cases of corruption involving persons close to Mr. Brezhnev. But if he has masterminded the recent disclosures, it would not be wrong to infer that the Soviet president could have only acquiesced in his elevation. In any case, the fact of collective leadership appears to be so well established in the Soviet Union that it may not really matter all that much whether Mr. Andropov succeeds Mr. Brezhnev or Mr. Chernenko or some third dark horse. The policies associated with him are likely to continue even after he finally retires and the era associated with his name draws to a close.