No Changes

The scene in the Great Kremlin Palace amounted to an anticlimax before the show had even begun. On the rostrum before 1,517 obedient delegates to the Supreme Soviet, Russia's puppet parliament, Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev and Premier Aleksei Kosygin huddled and chatted with studied amiability. Then Brezhnev rose and nominated Kosygin for another term.

Thus was dissipated a wave of speculation about the possible retirement of the dry, dour Kosygin, regarded as a leading exponent of reform at home and restraint abroad. In recent months, Kremlinologists have professed to divine signs that the 62-year-old Premier might be in failing health and weary of the job. Instead, Kosygin was unanimously re-elected by the delegates on the first day, along with some of the other members of the collective leadership that took over from Nikita Khrushchev almost two years ago: among them President Nikolai Podgorny and First Deputy Premiers Kyrill Mazurov and Dmitry Poliansky.

Delay & "Democracy." Nor was there any hint of change in Soviet policies. The session rubber-stamped a proposal originally made by Brezhnev that the regime be "democratized" by increasing the number of the Supreme Soviet's standing committees from three to nine--which in substance meant nothing. Kosygin revealed no fresh policy to cope with Russia's lagging economy; instead, he disclosed that the new five-year plan, scheduled to have gone into effect last January, was still not ready, possibly because of wrangles over a new pricing structure designed to permit limited fluctuation in response to supply and demand, and to provide salary incentives for better work. It has long been suspected that old-style planners have been dragging their feet on Libermanism, and Kosygin confirmed it. Criticizing "a certain conservatism" by some officials, the Premier declared: "The new wholesale prices are to insure such conditions under which every normally operating enterprise will be able to develop on the basis of full self-accounting."

Hot Hands. On Viet Nam, the Kremlin leader boasted that Russia "is rendering the gallant Vietnamese people steadily increasing economic and military, material and moral support," ritually vowed that the Soviet "will do everything in its power to help drive out the American invaders." But Kosygin added that Russia stands ready to "traverse our part of the road toward mutual understanding" and "will not be taken in by the provocations of those who would like to warm their hands over the hot beds of international tension"--which seemed aimed less at the U.S. than at Red China.

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