Approved For Release 2000/08/08
: CIA-RDP96-00789R0001 001 60006-8
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Thursday, June
21,
1984
Ferment Seen in Soviet Policy
By David Ignatius
Staff Reporter o/Tiu-; Wau, Sthkkt Joljknal
WASHINGTON-If Soviet policy seems
confused to Western observers these days,
there may be a simple reason:
it
is con-
fused.
Senior Reagan administration officials
believe
the
Soviet
leadership
is
in
the
midst of an unusual internal debate over
foreign and
domestic
policies,
in
which
some Soviet officials are privately criticiz-
ing their hard-line superiors. In the Ameri
can vifew, this'Soviet debate offers new op
portunities and risklf'for the U.S. in a pe
riod of frosty superpower relations.
The
latest
example
of
Soviet
uncer
tainty,
U.S.
officials argue,
is the Krem
lin's treatment of President Reagan’s re
cent
remarks
about
a summit
meeting
with Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko
Moscow finally got around this week to re
porting in the Soviet news media about Mr
Reagan’s offer last Thursday of a summit
characterizing it as election-year rhetoric
But administration officials say the Krem
lin
still
hasn’t taken a clear position on
whether
it
favors
a summit
and
what
should be discussed.
“There seems to be a fascinating uncer-
tainty in the Soviet elite right now," says a
high-ranking
administration
official who
deals with Soviet affairs. He believes that,
on
the summit
issue, the
Soviets
“don’t
want
to
close
off any
option”
and
are
“wary of denouncing” a meeting and thus
adding to their current international isola-
tion.
U.S. intelligence about what goes on in-
side the Kremlin is always murky at best.
But as administration officials read the ev-
idence, the current debate pits the hard-
line views of Soviet Foreign Minister An-
drey Gromyko against more pragmatic ar-
guments advanced by
officials who deal
primarily with economic
policy, such as
Politburo
members
Mikhail
Gorbachev
and Nikolay Tikhanov.
The Gromyko group seems to be argu-
ing that the Reagan administration is fun-
damentally anti-Soviet and can’t be trusted
under any circumstances. The other fac-
tion appears to be taking a more cautious
line, arguing that the Soviet Union needs
Western technology and modern manage-
ment for
its economy, and that
it makes
sense to keep channels open to the U.S.-
even to a propagandists Reagan adminis-
tration.
There
is a sharper d
te
6ver
eco-
nomic
policy. Some
senif
.toviet econo-
mists, perhaps with suppo
com Mr. Gor-
bachev, contend that the
niet econonr
agers greater authority. Br
hard-line offi-
cials, symbolized these days by Politburo
member Grigoriy Romanov, insist that re-
form will weaken the Communist Party’s
political power and argue that the best eco-
nomic medicine
is to crack the whip and
maintain
discipline.
Presiding over this contentious collec-
tive leadership is Mr. Chernenko. U.S. offi-
cials describe him
as a weak
leader,
a
“staff man”
and
“appointments
secre-
tary,” who succeeded Yuri Andropov this
year on the condition that he would allow
unusual autonomy
to liis’ fello^. Politburo
members, such as Mr. Gromyko and Mr.
Gorbachev, in their areas of expertise.
The
Reagan
administration may
be
overestimating the degree of friction in the
.
. the
U.S.S.R.
is
run by a gaggle, rather
than
a
tightly
knit
body.”
Kremlin and the extent of Moscow’s
for-
eign and domestic problems. U.S. officials
may also be mistaken
if they assume the
Soviets
will agree soon
to
real improve-
ments
in superpower relations, such as a
summit meeting.
One Soviet expert at the State Depart-
ment argues, for example, that the roots of
the current hard-line policy go back to No-
vember 1982, when Leonid Brezhnev was
still the Soviet leader;
the Kremlin
isn’t
likely
to reverse
this
policy
quickly, he
maintains. This official also contends that
policy conflict in the Kremlin
is the rule,
rather than the exception.
But there are some intriguing signs of
uncertainty and
friction
in
the Kremlin
these
days.
Administration
officials
cite
the following examples:
-Sniping and rumor-mongering. In re-
cent
conversations with
Westerners,
So-
viets have criticized Mr. Gromyko and Mr.
Chernenko. Some of these comments seem
to reflect rumor-mongering by the KGB,
the Soviet security and intelligence force,
but U.S. officials believe they may signal a
real debate within the Soviet leadership.
“Russians
all over the place -official and
semiofficial— are now talking about politics
in the Kremlin more openly than they have
in years,” says one senior administration
official. He notes, for example, that some
officials
of
the
Soviet
Foreign
Ministry
have suggested that Mr. Gromyko may be
excessively hard-line.
-The March Switch. Many U.S. officials
believe something happened in March that
Jed to a hardening ofSoviet nolicy toward
hS'GlAhRD^6MMi7,^
head
of
the
Soviet Olympic Committee,
was
telling American
officials early
this
year that the
Soviets would come
to
the
Olympics;
suddenly, the policy switched.
Administration officials also note that the
Soviets
seemed
eager
to
discuss
dead-
locked arms-control issues with former na-
tional
security
adviser
Brent
Scowcroft
and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
David
Jones,
but when
they
arrived
in
Moscow last March for confidential discus-
sions, they were rebuffed by top Soviet of-
ficials.
—Politburo portfolios. Two younger Po-
litburo members who appear to be rivals
to succeed Mr. Chernenko, 53-year-old Mr.
Gorbachev and 61-year-old Mr. Romanov,
recently have gained added responsibility.
U.S. officials believe that Mr. Gorbachev,
as the senior member of the party secre-
tariat on
the
Politburo
after Mr.
Cher-
nenko,
is now the No. 2 party leader, with
growing involvement
in
foreign
affairs;
Mr. Romanov, meanwhile, appears to have
taken control of “administrative organs”-
such
as
the
KGB,
the
police
and
the
courts-as well as defense industry. What’s
intriguing, U.S. officials say, is that no sin-
gle member
of the Politburo appears
to
have taken control of the most important
portfolio of all -the responsibility for run-
ning
the
party’s
“organizational
work,"
which
confers
enormous
patronage
power.
-Military.
U.S.
officials are studying
an interview by Soviet Chief of Staff Niko-
lai Ogarkov that appears last month in the
military newspaper Red
Star.gMarshall
fflgarkov made sopie surprising comments,
(Including
a
statement
that
a
further
'buildup of Soviet o^^pnu^ar forces
jps becoming
serisel^^ljHd a
call
for
greater
emphasis
oir " bigh-technology
i
£
r‘deep-strike”
non-niiclegr. weapons.
U.S.
officials
believe
he was
suggesting
the
need for reform in Soviet military doctrine
and lobbying for more spending on high-
tech weaponry.
Analysts in and out of the Reagan ad-
ministration disagree about how
to read
these tea leaves, and about whether they
imply a gradual softening of Soviet policy
toward the U.S. But most Soviet experts
seem
convinced
that
the Kremlin -after
months
of
strident
bluster
toward
the
U.S.-is now on what one analyst calls “a
,
sticky wicket.”
“You have a situation emerging where
the
U.S.S.R.
is run by a gaggle,
rather
than a tightly-knit body, and what you’re
getting
is a more
dissonant information
flow,”
says
one
State Department
offi-
cial.
Adds a top Soviet expert for several re-
.
“Soviet policy is
.dOjDtl&9liDduw6reDare seeing now is
the
tip of the iceberg.”