The Soviets: Trying to Influence Moscow

A longstanding and often frustrated goal of U.S. policy

The Reagan Administration believes it can influence the orientation, and possibly even the composition, of the leadership that has succeeded Leonid Brezhnev. That belief, whether it proves right or wrong, is a variation on an old theme: a stubbornly recurring but usually frustrated American desire to effect some change for the better in the system that poses the most serious military threat and political challenge facing the West.

Supreme power in the U.S.S.R. has changed hands only four times before. Vladimir Lenin died in 1924 and made way for Joseph Stalin, who died 29 years later, to be replaced briefly by Georgi Malenkov, who was outmaneuvered by Nikita Khrushchev, who in turn was ousted by Brezhnev in 1964. The changeovers in Moscow might as well have occurred on another planet. U.S. statesmen of those years had little understanding of what had happened, much less any anticipation of what was going to happen next, and still less any sense of what the U.S. could do about it.

But Ronald Reagan's chief advisers thought they had a unique opportunity to affect the post-Brezhnev transition. They knew that the actuarial tables, combined with the obvious evidence of Brezhnev's declining health, made it quite likely that he would be replaced during their own term of office. Furthermore, there was good reason to suspect that the economic and demographic problems besetting the Soviet empire had touched off a debate behind the Kremlin walls over the best course to follow in the future.

Reagan and company hoped that their reputation as hard-liners would nudge the Soviets toward more cautious, pragmatic and inward-looking leaders than those who have ruled the U.S.S.R. until now. Richard Pipes, a Harvard historian who has served as the Administration's senior Kremlinologist, is convinced that a struggle has been going on for some time between young Turks who advocate domestic economic reform and an old guard that wants to continue the traditional pattern of compensating for internal failures by pursuing foreign successes, often in the form of military adventures.

The Reagan Administration's tough rhetoric, its attempt to consolidate anti-Soviet alliances and its program of across-the-board rearmament have all been intended to impress on the Soviets that they have a choice. They can moderate their conduct—which, by implication, means choosing more moderate rulers—and thereby earn a respite from conflict abroad that may be their last chance to tend to their home front. Or, if the succession struggle is resolved in favor of ideologues and expansionists, they can continue pursuing an aggressive course and thereby risk an almost inevitable, potentially cataclysmic confrontation with the U.S. On top of that, the stagnation and deterioration of their economy will accelerate as more resources are wasted in an arms race that the U.S.S.R. can neither afford nor, in the long run, win.