SOVIET UNION: Difficult Year

A gerontocracy grows older

One of the world's most gerontocratic elites is getting older rather than younger. Meeting in Moscow last week, the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party elevated First Deputy Premier Nikolai Tikhonov, 74, from alternate to full membership in the Politburo, thereby raising the average age of that 14-member body from 69.3 to 69.6 years.

An angular, thin-lipped economic planner from the southern Ukraine, Tikhonov is considered by Kremlinologists to be a loyal follower of President Leonid Brezhnev, 72, and a probable successor to ailing Premier Aleksei Kosygin, 75. Rumored to have suffered a heart attack, Kosygin has not been seen in public since mid-October, and Tikhonov has been carrying out his official duties.

Tikhonov's place as one of nine non-voting alternate members of the Politburo was taken by a relatively young unknown, Mikhail Gorbachev, 48, who for the past year has been the Central Committee's secretary in charge of agriculture. Gorbachev, apparently, was not blamed for a disastrous 1979 grain harvest. Largely because of bad weather, Brezhnev announced, this year's crop amounted to only 179 million tons—47 million tons short of the target, and the worst harvest since 1975. The U.S.S.R. has already contracted to buy 25 million tons of American wheat and corn and will probably purchase at least 7 million tons from other countries. Soviet production of oil, natural gas and electric power also fell short of targeted goals in 1979, which Brezhnev aptly described as "a very difficult year."