The Tuesday-evening rush hour in central Moscow dragged on interminably, a sure sign that something important was happening. As usual, the streets around the Krem- lin were blocked off, allowing black limousines to emerge from the Borovitsky Gate and speed away unhindered. Normally, that ritual ties up lesser motorists for only a few extra minutes; on this occasion, the tangle lasted much longer. The reason: the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee, more than 300 members strong, had just concluded its first plenary session under the leadership of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, 54. The outcome of the meeting, held behind closed doors last week, would provide some evidence of Gorbachev's grasp on the authority he inherited from the late Konstantin Chernenko on March 11.
The results were soon evident. Within three hours the official news agency TASS announced that Gorbachev had increased the membership of the Central Committee's policymaking organ, the Politburo, from ten to 13. In the process, he diluted the influence of the Kremlin's Old Guard, which now constitutes less than half of the Politburo membership. He also mildly flouted Kremlin protocol by leapfrogging two of his nominees to full Politburo status without benefit of an interval of nonvoting candidate membership. Finally, in his plenum speech, Gorbachev reaffirmed that the infusion of new blood at the top was part and parcel of his highest priority, the revamping of the Soviet Union's chronically ailing economy. Said he: "Revolutionary changes are needed. What is at issue is the retooling of all sectors of the national economy on the basis of the latest scientific and technological advances."
These words and deeds signaled a definite switch in the Kremlin's mood after the painfully indecisive 13-month reign of Chernenko. They also seemed to confirm that, as some Western analysts had suspected, the new General Secretary is a disciple of policies conceived by Chernenko's predecessor, Yuri Andropov. Explained Jeremy Azrael, senior analyst of Soviet affairs at the Rand Corp.: "To say that there have been new ideas on the domestic front would be a gross overstatement." Gorbachev, said Azrael, "is the heir of Andropov."
The influence of Andropov, a former KGB chief who was Gorbachev's mentor, was particularly evident in the new leader's Politburo choices. First among them, in terms of seniority, was Viktor Chebrikov, 62, Andropov's handpicked successor as head of the KGB. Chebrikov was trained as a metallurgical engineer, then labored as a Communist Party functionary in Dnepropetrovsk before Andropov made him a KGB deputy chairman in 1968. Chebrikov is well chosen as a guardian of Communist conformity: in 1981 he railed against the "contamination of Soviet youth by Western ideas" and has since waged campaigns against "reactionary theological concepts," meaning religion, and against "Zionism." He was elevated to lead the KGB in December 1982, and became a Politburo candidate member in 1983.