Vanishing Act

Andropov misses a big rally

"Yevo nyet," astonished Soviet officials whispered to each other in the Kremlin's 6,000-seat Palace of Congresses last Saturday. "He's not here." The occasion was a traditional Communist Party rally inaugurating celebrations of the 66th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

The missing dignitary was none other than Communist Party Leader and Soviet President Yuri Andropov, 69. Attendance at the gala ceremony is almost a sacred obligation for Soviet officials; this year, a ripple of concern was evident as Andropov's place among the eight Politburo members on the dais was taken by a former rival for the leadership, Konstantin Chernenko, 72.

Western diplomats present at the rally could not recall the last time there had been such an absence on a major occasion. Leonid Zamyatin, head of the Soviet Central Committee's international information department, insisted that the Soviet leader was merely suffering from a severe cold.

Zamyatin indicated that Andropov was also unlikely to attend the country's big gest annual televised spectacular, the Nov. 7 military parade in Red Square. Said Zamyatin: "It is up to his doctors to decide whether he makes an appearance."

That excuse was hardly good enough to stem a renewed spate of speculation about the state of Andropov's health. According to the Soviets, he has now been suffering from a cold for nearly two weeks. The fact is, however, that Andropov has not been seen in public since Aug. 18, when he met with a group of U.S. Senators. Since then, a stream of Soviet presidential pronouncements on such issues as the scheduled NATO deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Western Europe have been made face-lessly, often through the official Soviet news agency TASS.

During past Andropov appearances, diplomatic observers noted that the Soviet leader seemed weak and shaky. At a state dinner in Moscow in early June for President Mauno Koivisto of Finland, Andro pov was helped in and out of his chair, and delivered a speech sitting down.

Those signs have led to speculation that Andropov was suffering from everything from heart trouble to a chronic kidney ailment. The rumors were reminiscent of those that made the rounds in Moscow concerning the health of Andropov's predecessor, Leonid Brezhnev. He lived for nearly a decade after the first stories of ill health began to appear. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.