The Case of the Missing Man

By George Russell

Andropov's absence hints at a leadership crisis

Monolithic, centralized, impregnable and, above all, unshakably secure in its sense of direction and control. That is the image that the Soviet leadership has long tried to project to friends and foes alike. But suddenly last week, on the most grandiose of Soviet annual public occasions, there was a gaping hole at the center of Moscow's bureaucratic fac,ade. The image that lingered in Red Square was that of a superpower afflicted by a leader ship crisis of unknown dimensions, and of new prospects of uncertainty in international relations.

The event that prompted such a vision was one of the holiest in the Soviet liturgical calendar: the Nov. 7 military parade commemorating the triumph of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Before the march-past began, virtually all eyes in Red Square's diplomatic enclosure were turned to the dark red, 35-ft.-high Lenin Mausoleum. There, the aging leadership of the Kremlin, dressed in look-alike dark gray overcoats and fedoras, shuffled slowly into line to review the parade. The face that every spectator sought was that of President and Communist Party General Secretary Yuri Andropov, 69, whose absence at a celebration two days earlier had been officially explained by the report that he was suffering from a "severe cold."

At first, there was some confusion. "There he is," a voice rang out at the sight of a tall, stooping figure on the reviewing stand. Then came the correction: the man was Konstantin Chernenko, 72, a former rival for the leadership in the eleven-member ruling Soviet Politburo. Long after the ranks of T-80 tanks and SA3 missiles began rumbling through the square, the first sign of Andropov's continuing presence in the Soviet hierarchy was a huge airbrushed portrait of him that sat on a red-draped float during the ensuing civilian procession.

No foreigner could recall a previous occasion when a Soviet Communist Party leader had failed to appear for the parade. Only a year earlier, the late Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev, visibly ill, had endured three hours of icy temperatures on the reviewing stand. Three days later, he died. Said a prominent Western envoy in Moscow: "Brezhnev stood there on his dying feet, because not being there meant you had lost power and authority."

In Andropov's case, the Soviet authorities went to extraordinary lengths to blunt such a conclusion. Days earlier, Leonid Zamyatin, head of the Soviet Central Committee's international information department, had hinted broadly that Andropov might not appear at the parade because of his "cold." Soviet newspapers gave prominent display to photos of the larger-than-life Andropov portraits that appeared during the parade. Even though Chernenko took Andropov's place on the reviewing stand, the official party newspaper Pravda never once mentioned Chernenko's name in reporting the event.

Speculation about Andropov's health began to increase last March, after he briefly disappeared from public view. When Andropov reappeared, he seemed weak and shaky. His last public appearance was a meeting with a group of U.S.

Senators on Aug. 18. Since then, Soviet pronouncements have been issued in the form of communiques in Andropov's name or through the official Soviet news agency TASS. A further signal that Andropov may not be well came last month, when he postponed a scheduled trip to Bulgaria.

Word began to circulate in Moscow and Eastern Europe that the Soviet leader was suffering from kidney disease. Following the cancellation of his Bulgarian visit, East European officials began to say that Andropov was undergoing kidney dialysis. One theory making the rounds last week was that he had undergone surgery. According to some rumors, Andropov's son Igor left Helsinki, where he was a member of a Soviet diplomatic delegation, to be at his father's side.

Whatever the state of Andropov's health may be, some Western experts are now starting to draw a far deeper conclusion about the state of affairs in the Soviet Union. In the year since he assumed power, Andropov has failed to inject the country with a new and forceful sense of direction. Instead, the Soviet Union has fallen back into the same kind of drift and indecision that characterized Brezhnev's waning years.

Andropov's continuing absence means a power vacuum at the top of the Soviet pyramid, and the result appears to be paralysis and attendant political jockeying. That insecurity was vividly illustrated at a diplomatic reception in the Kremlin's gothic Hall of St. George following last week's anniversary parade. Politburo members at the fete shunned their foreign guests and instead conferred among themselves behind banquet tables. As a U.S. State Department official put it in Washington, "It's like a court without a king. Who makes decisions?"

Administration officials are perplexed by that question. Under Andropov's evanescent leadership, Soviet policy toward the U.S. has zigzagged widely in recent months. During the spring and summer, Moscow made several gestures toward Washington. It granted exit visas to seven Soviet Pentecostalists who had camped for five years in the basement of the U.S. embassy and allowed U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kenneth Dam to discuss American arms-control proposals on Soviet television. Washington responded with an offer to resume talks on cultural and consular exchanges, and Secretary of State George Shultz began considering a trip to Moscow. A summit meeting between Andropov and President Reagan even seemed possible until the Soviets shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 on Sept. 1.

Moscow's muddled handling of the event illustrated the lack of sharp command at the top. Andropov was said to be on vacation at the time. But as the Soviet military covered its blunder by charging that the U.S. had attempted aerial espionage, the Kremlin suffered heavy damage to its international standing.

Since then, the signals from Moscow have been both sluggish and contradictory, particularly on the sensitive issue of NATO'S scheduled deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe. On Sept. 28 a statement issued under Andropov's name declared that events had "finally dispelled" any hope for improvement in the U.S. Administration's attitude toward Moscow. The Soviets followed that up with hints that they would walk out of the Geneva talks on limiting the number of intermediate-range missiles in Europe, perhaps as soon as this week. Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov last week added that the planned NATO deployment "will lead to a very dangerous development," a reference to the possible installation of Soviet missiles in East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Other Kremlin statements, however, have been milder and more forthcoming. Even so, U.S. experts now consider a missile deal with the Soviets to be unlikely. Says Sovietologist Dmitri Simes of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: "For that you need a leader who can take chances. We do not have a negotiating partner in the Kremlin."

Almost all of Andropov's other important initiatives seem to have gone into the deepfreeze. On the domestic front, his highly touted campaign against official corruption and his stern attempt to force increases in labor productivity have stalled. Likewise, Soviet overtures to Pakistan over the situation in neighboring Afghanistan and Moscow's tentative bid to improve relations with China have not led to any breakthroughs. Says Arnold Horelick, an analyst at the Rand Corp.: "Only a confident leader could reverse the course that the Soviets are on."

In his first year in office, Andropov has failed to recast the Soviet hierarchy in his image. Only one Andropov protege, Geidar Aliyev, 60, has become a full member of the ruling Politburo since Brezhnev's death. The high visibility of Andropov's former rival Chemenko is another sign of the lingering influence of Brezhnev's old guard. The prospects for the Soviet leadership succession are, in the words of former State Department Counselor Helmut Sonnenfeldt, "even more unclear than usual."

One problem is that no obvious leadership choices present themselves. Among the few young prospects in the Politburo are Agriculture Expert Mikhail Gorbachev, 52, and former Leningrad Party Boss Grigori Romanov, 60. To gain power, they would have to win the support of such gerontocrats as Premier Nikolai Tikhonov, 78, Defense Minister Ustinov, 75, and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, 74. Soviet experts in Washington speculate that none of the old guard would enjoy submitting to the leadership of the young contenders, whose first likely objective would be to sweep out the oldsters. More probable is the possibility of continued, uncertain rule by Politburo consensus. Says Soviet Expert William Hyland, editor-designate of the prestigious quarterly Foreign Affairs: "My guess is they'll divide up the pie, and there will be a true collective."

The question of the moment, however, is how much longer the Soviets will be able to impose a bland countenance on their leader's absence. Important public events continue to loom in Moscow, including a semiannual Central Committee plenum that is held in late November or early December. That closed-door session is traditionally followed by a highly publicized meeting of the country's Supreme Soviet, which is normally announced 30 days in advance. Failure to hold those events on schedule would cause muffled embarrassment in the Kremlin, and further uncertainty about the Kremlin abroad. --By George Russell. Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/Moscow and Gregory H. Wierzynski/Washington

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof, Gregory H. Wierzynski/Washington This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.