Kremlin Gambit

With. a sudden shifting of pawns and one of their bishops, the impassive players in the Kremlin changed the alignment of the diplomatic chessboard last week and left the rest of the world wondering what new gambit they were up to this time.

The maneuver went thus:

P: From Moscow to London to be new Soviet Ambassador to the Court of St. James's--stony-browed Andrei ("Walkout") Gromyko, 42, since 1949 the U.S.S.R.'s chief Deputy Foreign Minister;

P: From Washington to Peking as New Ambassador to Red China--Alexander S. Panyushkin, 47, the wordless wonder who has represented Moscow in Washington since late 1947;

P: From London to Washington--Georgy N. Zarubin, 52, unobtrusive envoy to Britain for the past 5 1/2 years;

P: From Berlin to Moscow as a Deputy Foreign Minister--Georgy Pushkin, Ambassador to the East German Communist regime for nearly three years.

In Panyushkin, Peking will be getting Russia's freshest expert on U.S. affairs at the time when the Chinese Reds, lacking any diplomatic contact of their own with the U.S., probably feel the need for some interpretation and guidance on the mood and the thinking of American policymakers. Panyushkin served as Ambassador to China from 1939 to 1944.

But the key move in the gambit is the return of Andrei Gromyko to the world outside the Iron Curtain. The most experienced and brainiest of the band of hostile, icy "new generation" Communists who today are Russia's representatives to the outside world, Gromyko is plainly a big gun in the Foreign Ministry. In three years as Ambassador to the U.S. and two as Soviet delegate to the United Nations, his showing was brilliant enough (by Kremlin standards) to make him heir presumptive to Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky, whose health is none too good. In sending him to London instead of Washington, and in sending a nonentity to Washington, the Russians are plainly saying that they expect to accomplish more mischief in Britain than in the U.S. What mischief? Driving a wedge between the U.S. and Britain. Along with the diplomatic switch last week, both Pravda and Izvestia began playing up stories of "intensified Anglo-American contradictions." Andrei Gromyko presumably goes to London to hold the wedge for the Kremlin's busy hammer-swingers.

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