It will be utterly cynical to describe President Andropov’s death as a non-event on the specious plea that he lay dying for some weeks, if not months. No one can possibly be indifferent to the change of leadership in the world’s second most powerful country, especially in this uncertain period when the second cold war rages furiously and indeed when bombs are flying freely in and around Beirut in explosive West Asia. And Mr. Andropov was not a nobody. He never quite managed to fulfil his promise to end corruption in high places in the party and the government and initiate changes which would renovate the economy. But he did set afoot moves in that direction. For all we know, a promising career has been cruelly cut short. Even so it may perhaps be an exaggeration to describe his death as a momentous event, much less a turning point in the history of the Soviet Union. Obviously someone has been minding the shop in his name since August 18 when he disappeared from public view never to reappear again. There cannot now be the slightest doubt that the Soviet leaders must have known it for quite some time that he cannot recover – at least not sufficiently to do justice to so demanding job as his. While they could have kept the seriousness of his ailment a secret from their peoples, they could not have convinced themselves that he would get over his “influenza”.It follows that they have evolved an arrangement among themselves which can keep the system going.
At the time of writing, it is not known whether someone has edged ahead of his colleagues to a point where his succession to the deceased leader is assured. But even if the struggle for supreme power is yet to take place, it need not cause either much concern to the Soviet peoples and their friends or much joy to their opponents. Twice in the last two decades the Soviet system has demonstrated its capacity to cope with such transition fairly well – first in 1964 when Soviet oligarchs got together to remove Mr. Khrushchev from his office as first secretary of the CPSU and then in 1982 when the ailing Mr. Brezhnev finally passed away. It is, of course, impossible to be sure that the succession issue will be settled, if it has not already been settled in fact, or even in form, quickly and smoothly. It can drag on as it did in the post-Stalin period when it took Mr. Khrushchev close to two years to emerge on the top. But the chances appear to be that the issue will be settled soon. Certainly the Soviet leadership cannot afford prolonged uncertainty.
Mr. Andropov’s death raises some serious questions regarding the health and functioning of the Soviet system. Once it had been established, as it must have been soon after August 18, that he was suffering from a serious ailment which would at least keep him bed-ridden for months, he should have either stepped down voluntarily or made to do so in view of the absolutely critical importance of his office not only for the Soviet Union but for the whole world. We cannot say whether he offered to step down. But we do know that he did not. Apparently his politburo colleagues could not agree on a successor. Which means that the old men in the Kremlin can endorse someone as their supreme ruler only when he has emerged as one on his own. Mr. Brezhnev fought his way to the top when Mr. Khrushchev was still in good shape and so pushed him aside. Mr. Andropov gained an edge over Mr. Chernenko when Mr. Brezhnev was still around. This inability of the Soviet leadership to choose the boss is, of course, not a new development or discovery. Mr. Brezhnev lingered on in office for years despite his uncertain health and occasionally far from sure mental grasp. But Mr. Brezhnev was never incapacitated at one stretch for so long as Mr. Andropov and he had had long enough time in office to have consolidated his position before his health began to deteriorate. Mr. Andropov had been in office barely for nine months when he was struck down we still do not know for sure by what.
It is too early to say whether Mr. Andropov was in fact the architect of the sweeping changes that have taken place in the Soviet Communist Party and government in recent months (and the author of letters and proposals issued in his name) or whether the rest of the world was gullible in accepting Soviet claims in this regard at their face value. But the lengths to which the Soviet leaders have gone to shroud a development of this import in secrecy must be cause for concern to both friends and opponents of that mighty country. Imagine the dilemma, on the one hand, of Syria today when the US aircraft are bombing its positions in Lebanon if earlier in the week it had acted on the assumption that the Soviet leadership was firmly in place in Moscow, and of President Reagan, on the other, when he realizes that all this time he has not even known whom he has been addressing in the Kremlin. The Russian passion for secrecy has been well known for centuries. But it did not matter all that much when it was not a superpower. Today it is a different position when so much hinges on the personality of the topmost Soviet leader and the US appreciation of him.
