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Neither Brezhnev nor Kosygin can as yet be certain of his job, and behind each, among the other oligarchs, stand any number of potential replacements. One major contender is gone-ailing Frol Kozlov, 56, whose name suddenly disappeared along with Khrushchev's from official pronouncements. President Anastas Mikoyan, 68, though shunted into the role of greeter last week, is still the man with the best balance in the Soviet Union, having survived every change of leadership since the fall of the Czar.
Right behind him is Mikhail Suslov, 61, whose icy, opportunistic command of ideology had seen him through Stalin and Khrushchev and firmly into the new era. But Mikoyan may be too old and Suslov too frail (he suffers from a chronic kidney ailment) to rate much of a chance among the hustlers in the Soviet Union today. Not so Nikolai Podgorny, 61, a hog-healthy Ukrainian protege of Khrushchev's who managed many of his most delicate foreign and agricultural projects, and Dmitry Polyansky, at 46 the "baby" of the Presidium but one of its canniest opportunists.
Any of these men would ultimately be willing to do to Brezhnev or Kosygin what they had done only a week before to Khrushchev.