The View from Lenin's Tomb

As Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders stood impassively on the marble Lenin mausoleum overlooking Red Square last week, loudspeakers boomed out the Kremlin's May Day greeting to the Soviet people. It was the supreme holiday of international Communism, yet not a word was uttered to congratulate the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong on their overwhelming victory. Among the placards carried by 100,000 Russian workers on their May 1 march, only one referred --obliquely--to the event: "Fraternal greetings to the heroic Vietnamese people," it read. The Communist Party daily Pravda was a nonchalant 36 hours late in reporting the news of Saigon's surrender. North Vietnamese diplomats assigned to Hanoi's embassy in Moscow had to seek out Western correspondents for details of their nation's triumph.

Dangerous Source. Officially, at least, no one in the Kremlin was gloating over the debacle of U.S. policy in Indochina. A ranking East European Communist in Moscow told TIME Moscow Correspondent John Shaw that "the Soviets are not going to try to humiliate the Americans over Viet Nam. The events speak for themselves--there's no use rubbing it in." Indeed, during the past tumultuous month, the Khmer Rouge conquest of Cambodia and the Communist triumphs in South Viet Nam were reported in the Soviet press with striking discretion. The first official Moscow communique on Saigon's fall emphasized that it was primarily a victory for detente rather than for Communism. Said Tass: "A most dangerous source of international tension and military conflict has been eliminated."

To some extent at least, Kremlin restraint in public surely masked private jubilation. Outside of Moscow and Hanoi, no one knows for sure how much military aid the Soviets have given the

North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong; but the total is less than the $150 billion the U.S. has spent in Viet Nam since 1950. Moreover, the relatively modest Soviet investment in Hanoi's future was made with minimum risk of military confrontation with the U.S. and with loss of only a handful of Russian lives. During the past year, ideologists writing in Soviet party journals have quietly reflected the Kremlin's glee. In addition to the U.S. disaster in Indochina, they have pointed to reverses perceived as signs of capitalist disintegration. They include the setback to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's peacemaking efforts in the Middle East, the rise of a Marxist-tinged military regime in Portugal, Greece's virtual withdrawal from NATO, Turkey's anger about American policy over Cyprus and the economic crisis facing the U.S., Western Europe and Japan.

Still, bad news for the West is not necessarily good news for the Soviet Union. Analysts in Washington believe that the Russian leaders are sophisticated enough to realize that the Communist victory in Indochina may, in the end, be something less than a total blessing for the Kremlin. As the principal arms purveyor to North Viet Nam, the U.S.S.R. was able to exert a degree of influence on Hanoi that may be difficult to sustain now that the war is over. Moscow is presently fearful of any encroachment by Peking--and with reason. In spite of Hanoi's professed neutralist policy, China's presence on Viet Nam's northern frontier is an undeniable geopolitical fact. Thus the struggle between Moscow and Peking for political influence and economic advantage in Indochina has only begun. As if to underscore centuries of traditional Vietnamese wariness of the Chinese, Hanoi pointedly listed the Soviet Union first and China second in its congratulatory May Day message last week.

There were also intimations last week that the Soviets are apprehensive that U.S. foreign policy reversals could lead to the installation of a new Secretary of State in Washington. If Kissinger could be forced to resign under a cloud, a number of policies with which he is associated would be in jeopardy --notably the Administration's commitment to easing trade relations with the U.S.S.R. Hungry for dollar credits and U.S. technology, the Russians are wary of such potential successors to Kissinger as Melvin Laird, whom they associate with a hard-line policy, and Donald Rumsfeld, who is viewed with suspicion because he has been U.S. Ambassador to NATO.

Renewed Strength. Western economic disarray offers the Kremlin many chances to seize political advantage. Recently, several Soviet leaders have made speeches underscoring the renewed strength of Communist parties in Portugal, Greece and Italy, and pointing to the new political opportunities for the left. In Western Europe there is a growing fear that a number of these parties might come to power. Still, there are dangers to Moscow in an untrammeled rise of the left in Europe. If Communism should prevail in Portugal, despite the party's poor showing at the polls (see story page 36), it could create a backlash elsewhere in Europe, mobilizing anti-Communist forces in France and Italy. Spain, fearful of sharing Portugal's fate, might well seek to join NATO.

In Moscow, reports Correspondent Shaw, there is no inclination to write off the U.S. as hopelessly crippled by its recent setbacks. The Soviet G.N.P. of $600 billion annually is still only half the American output. "Nevertheless," Shaw cabled last week, "there is a discernibly more confident Soviet estimation of its place in the world. Top Kremlin Theoretician Mikhail Suslov said in a speech that 'the international position of the Socialist community has never been stronger than it is today.' Rhetoric aside, that is probably true."

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