The Leading Contenders to Succeed a Tired Khrushchev

SHARKS, BUREAUCRATS & DARK HORSES

ARRIVING for an inspection trip in Bucharest last week, Nikita Khrushchev seemed weary, listless, and troubled by the heat. Briefly, Khrushchev recovered his remarkable vigor, then sagged again as an aide read one speech and Khrushchev canceled another address entirely. Clearly, at 68, the top man in the Kremlin is beginning to lose his bounce. He is overweight (5 ft. 5 in., almost 200 lbs.) has high blood pressure and a heart condition. According to one rumor, he is receiving injections of water and procaine (better known by the trade name Novocain), a dubious treatment devised by a Rumanian woman doctor to retard the aging process. He has limited his partygoing, restricted his diet, cut out hard liquor. Nowadays, says Khrushchev, wagging a finger at First Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan. 66, "he is the drinker, while I am the talker."

All this makes the question of who will succeed the Soviet boss increasingly interesting and urgent. If past history is any guide, the struggle will be stained by betrayal and shrouded in mystery. No one can predict the victor--but there are signs and portents. Among the leading contenders:

FROL KOZLOV, 53, beamed a few years ago when Khrushchev told visiting Averell Harriman in Kozlov's presence that the handsome, iron-grey-haired Communist Party Secretary was his choice to follow him. Kozlov, trained as a metallurgical engineer, is an efficient, tough administrator who delivered the key speech on new party regulations at last October's Moscow party congress. He has apparently recovered from a heart attack he suffered last year. Kozlov occupies a strategic position in the party secretariat from which Stalin and Khrushchev made their power plays, and, like them, he has placed his supporters in key posts. But apart from his health, two circumstances weaken Kozlov's chances: the mere fact of being once designated by Khrushchev as heir apparent tends to unify his rivals (Lenin preferred Trotsky and Stalin handpicked Malenkov); Kozlov rose to eminence in the Leningrad party apparatus, historically distrusted by the other powerful Russian and Ukrainian Communist factions.

LEONID BREZHNEV, 55. a relative newcomer to high rank, has risen quickly under Khrushchev's sponsorship. Westerners first heard of him in 1950 as a provincial party official in Khrushchev's Ukraine; a decade later he became President of the Soviet Union, the job he now holds. In the past, the post has been largely ceremonial, although its character could well change with the man. Brezhnev is a dynamic speaker and agile politician. In the first months following Khrushchev's death, he and Kozlov might well govern as a duumvirate, sharing state and party control, until the dictatorship again forms its natural pyramid and there is room for only one at the top.

DMITRY POLYANSKY, 44, the youngest member of the Communist Party Presidium, was born in a Ukrainian peasant hut on the day of the Bolshevik Revolution (Nov. 7, 1917), attended the Central Committee Communist Party school, and became its star graduate when in 1958 he replaced Kozlov as premier of the Russian Soviet Republic, largest and richest of the 15 Soviet republics. Polyansky is loudly extraverted, urbanely intelligent, shrewdly aggressive--a combination of attributes matched only by Khrushchev himself. If Khrushchev should fall ill or die soon, Polyansky's youth would probably be a handicap, but if the succession struggle were to last for some time, he could well make the grade. Says one Washington official: "He is a shark, the type who would make his move only when Kozlov or somebody like him starts to founder. No matter what happens, Polyansky will come out near the top."

NIKOLAI PODGORNY, 59, another Ukrainian, 4 1/2 years ago ousted an early Khrushchev favorite, hard-boiled Fellow Ukrainian Aleksei Kirichenko, as party boss in Khrushchev's former fiefdom. Early last year Khrushchev delivered a scorching assault against Podgorny for having blamed bad weather for poor corn yields ("The crop was pilfered, stolen, and yet you say weather prevented growing a good harvest?"). But by the time of the next harvest, Podgorny could report better news. With a smile, he told Khrushchev at the October congress that the Ukraine had doubled its sale of grain to the state, and had "honorably passed its examination." So had Podgorny. In April he was named to the government Presidium.

ALEKSEI KOSYGIN, 58, was only 13 when the Bolsheviks seized power, and is one of the best examples of the new breed of Soviet technocrat who relies less on Communist dogma than on practical results. A wartime premier of the Russian Soviet Republic, Kosygin entered the inner Kremlin circle under Stalin, lost the dictator's favor in 1948 and remained relatively unimportant until 1959, when Khrushchev turned Kosygin's experience as an economic planner to use as the head of the State Planning Commission. During a tour of France two years ago, Khrushchev openly referred to his traveling companion as "my successor." Soon afterwards Kosygin was named a First Deputy Premier. His predecessor in the slot: Nikita's other heir apparent. Frol Kozlov.

Such a deliberate division of favor is what helps Khrushchev maintain his grip on the Kremlin--and helps prevent a peaceful transition of power in the Soviet dictatorship. In that future contest, some other figures must be reckoned with: Senior Theoretician Mikhail Suslov, 59, who may be too old for the top job, but whose long party career may make him a kingmaker, if not a king; Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, 63, beefy, belligerent Soviet Defense Minister, who controls the army; Aleksandr Shelepin, 43, ex-boss of the relatively sanitized secret police. Dark horses include Andrei Kirilenko, 55, a member of the Party Presidium, who surprisingly bounced back from disfavor; Gennadi Yoronov, 50, who was recently promoted to full membership in the Party Presidium with overall responsibilities in the make-or-break job of raising agricultural production. Apart from these men, any unknown bureaucrat may come out on top, and for reasons the West will never know. Khrushchev himself was merely one of ten members of the Party Presidium when Stalin died.

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