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To U.S. officials who have conferred with him, though, Brezhnev seems articulate, well informed, open-minded. In conversation with Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Glenn Seaborg last May, Brezhnev agreed that most Soviet buildings are hideous, volunteered that the regime plans to send young architects abroad to study.
Twice Lucky. As he moved up in the Ukraine party hierarchy before World War II, Brezhnev attracted Khrushchev's attention. Like his mentor, he joined the close-knit wartime coterie of political officers on the crumbling southern front. Rising swiftly after the war, Brezhnev was elected in 1952 to the party's Central Committee and Secretariat, became a candidate member of its executive arm, the Presidium. In 1954, he got his big job in Kazakhstan. Blessed by adequate rainfall and an eager labor force, he brought in the first two successful Virgin Lands harvests, returned to Moscow in triumph to resume his old Central Committee and Presidium jobs.
In May 1960, Brezhnev was kicked upstairs from the Secretariat to the largely ceremonial chairmanship of the Presidium of the party, which he adroitly used to keep his picture in Pravda. But at the June 1963 party plenum, Brezhnev was restored to the Secretariat, and thus became the only other full member of the Presidium (after Khrushchev) to hold state and party posts.
Brezhnev, or any other Soviet leader who may come to power in the next few years, will be dealing with a situation no Soviet leader has ever faced.
Russia's East European satellites, also adjusting to an economic slowdown, are increasingly asserting their own national identities and seeking warmer relations with the West. Soviet Russia, after all the years of proud self-sufficiency, now faces the humiliation of having to buy its food from the capitalist rival. Moscow's hopeful plan is to spend up to $10 billion for Western chemical plants in the next few years.
Hint of Reason. In any case, the Kremlin for years to come will be faced with mounting economic pressures that will at least discourage metal-eating military budgets. A minor $666 million cutback in Soviet defense spending announced last month was, Khrushchev insisted, the result not of economic difficulties but of "considerations of common sense guided by a sincere desire for peace." Moreover, during Russia's Western-aided chemicalization, itself a far more rational exercise than pouring rubles into an ever-increasing steel capacity that Moscow needs mostly for prestige, the note of reasonableness may just possibly persist.
It has to, if Russia is to complete its long leap into modernity. Though almost certainly faced with lower growth rates than it was able to maintain during the flank-speed recovery period of the '50s, its rulers can still keep the Soviet economy humming if they will vigorously seek a more comfortable and colorful life for its people. If, as seems likely, a consumer economy is to be its destination rather than—or even en route to—a Marxist Elysium, Russia will first have to overhaul and expand its archaic marketing and distribution systems. Almost certainly