A Treatment for Tularemia & A Promotion for the Cops

According to the men who ousted him, Nikita Khrushchev was feverishly prone to "harebrained scheming." Last week the 330-man Soviet Central Committee offered what it hoped would be a cure for that particular strain of political tularemia. Meeting for the first time since it gave Khrushchev the boot, it ordered a top-to-bottom renovation of the Russian Communist Party structure --and in the process assured itself of more internal chaos, discontent and power struggles.

Fix Needed. What the new Russian leaders are trying to correct is a system started two years ago when Khrushchev split the party bureaucracy into a brace of inevitably competitive economic units: agricultural and industrial. K. hoped that a bifurcated bureaucracy would give his underlings more chance to specialize and thereby help production. But he was only falling victim to a political extension of Parkinson's Law: though the number of bureaucrats was doubled, each man felt bound to covet his opposite number's authority and neglect his own job.

To fix all this, the Central Committee picked Nikolai Viktorovich Podgorny, 61, onetime protege of Nikita and a specialist in party organization. During last week's meeting, Podgorny formally proposed a re-merger of the agricultural and industrial segments of the party, a return to the "territorial principle" of leadership at local and regional levels. The proposal was passed unanimously, and Podgorny was charged with administering the shakeup--or shakeback--which probably will begin after the Supreme Soviet, Russia's rubber-stamp Parliament, meets Dec. 9.

With the start of de-Khrushchevization, first things came first: Nikita's son-in-law Aleksei Adzhubei was fired from the Central Committee for "mistakes in his work." Next, the top of the Soviet hierarchy was reshuffled.

Rising Stars. What with his powerful new assignment, Podgorny now appears solidly ensconced behind Brezhnev as party Second Secretary. Once Nikita's favorite whipping boy--he was publicly tongue-lashed by K. for failing to grow enough corn in the Ukraine, regained favor by doubling Ukrainian grain sales the next year--Podgorny resembles his former patron physically, including moon face and broad peasant shoulders. But he is more controlled and aloof.

His major competitor in the party Presidium, Dmitry Stepanovich Polyansky, 47, is just as cool but not quite as stiff. A bright, backslapping opportunist, Polyansky shares his birthday with the Bolshevik Revolution, has been working quietly behind the scenes since Khrushchev's ouster (during which he delivered the recitation of Nikita's agricultural sins).

Either man could move to the top in the months ahead, but both will have to keep an eye on a handful of ambitious apparatchiki who were elevated to positions of new authority. Among them:

sb ALEKSANDR NIKOLAEVICH SHELEPIN, 46, hard-eyed ex-boss of the secret police, somewhat "sanitized" since Stalin's days, who remains in many ways Russia's top cop. His was the most remarkable of the new promotions, since he leapfrogged over the heads of oldtimers waiting around for membership to become the youngest member of the party Presidium. A persuasive pragmatist, Shelepin talked 350,000 Russian youths into volunteering for work in the virgin lands, served as Nikita's iceman when Khrushchev decided to re-refrigerate the thaw in Soviet art and literature two years-ago. Significantly, Shelepin is now the only man in the leadership who simultaneously holds top rank in the Presidium, the Secretariat and the Council of Ministers--a tripod power base that Khrushchev alone previously enjoyed. As chairman of the Party and State Control Committee, Shelepin is also the watchdog of Russia's entire economic and administrative life, and his chairmanship of the State Control Committee gives him handcuff control over party apparatus.

sb PETR EFIMOVICH SHELEST, 56, bald and beaming protege of fellow Ukrainian Podgorny (whom he succeeded as First Secretary of the Ukraine), won delicious revenge with his appointment to the Presidium. In Budapest last April, Shelest was singled out publicly by Khrushchev as the "culprit" who had failed to deliver electric motors to Hungary on schedule. Additionally, he has been outspokenly critical of Nikita's agricultural reforms, objected vociferously to the agricultural-industrial split in party administration, which Podgorny is now charged with mending. If Podgorny moves ahead in power and authority, Shelest will be right behind him.

sb PETR NIKOLAEVICH DEMICHEV, 46, Secretariat member and chief overseer of Russia's chemical and light industries, was elevated to alternate Presidium membership. A dandy with high-piled hair and a low-keyed manner, Demichev is a chemical engineer by training, shared with Kosygin the responsibility for developing the consumer-goods industry, which Khrushchev chose to emphasize late in his career. Demichev's promotion is an indication of the continued importance Moscow's new regime attaches to chemicals and consumer goods, no heavy-industry "metal eater" was promoted.

Falling Ax. Apart from this emerging constellation, the appointments held some other clues. No professional military men were elevated to full membership on the Central Committee, thus indicating that the army has only limited pull with the new leadership. By contrast, one of eight new men elected to full Central Committee membership was Vladimir Semichastny, who is Shelepin's successor as head of the secret police. This promotion, coming on top of Shelepin's own, suggested to some Kremlinologists that a new era of the cop may be starting in Russia. The new rulers, though in favor of Khrushchevian "peaceful coexistence" and economic liberalism, are evidently prepared to reinstate stricter police control if need be.

And the need might be there--particularly after Podgorny's ax begins falling in the provinces.

In the communique announcing the changes, no mention was made of Leonid Brezhnev, Khrushchev's successor as party boss. In the precise symbolism of Soviet affairs, this seemed to indicate that Brezhnev had not yet really consolidated his position within the new, precariously balanced "collective leadership."

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