Soviet Union Sick Leave: Chernenko rumors abound

How sick is Konstantin Chernenko?

The topic is discussed constantly in Moscow these days, for clearly understandable reasons. The Soviet party leader and President, 73, who is believed to be suffering from emphysema, has been absent from public view for about a month. Soviet television last showed an apparently frail Chernenko on Dec. 27, handing out awards at a Kremlin ceremony. Three days earlier he had missed the funeral of Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, held in Red Square on a bitterly cold day.

By its own secretive standards, the Kremlin has been relatively candid about the fact that Chernenko is having health difficulties. A member of the Soviet Central Committee is reported to have told a visiting French official two weeks ago that Chernenko was ailing. Since then, the Kremlin has dropped hints that the President's condition is not serious. On Moscow's somewhat cloistered cocktail party circuit, Soviet officials have been quietly confirming to foreign diplomats that Chernenko is ill. Some of the Soviet gossipers have even averred that his condition is "quite" serious.

The problem, as always, is how to evaluate the ephemeral evidence. Chernenko's predecessor, Yuri Andropov, who died last February after being out of public view for six months, had been said by Kremlin officials to be recuperating from a slight ailment just a few weeks before his death. On Nov. 7, Politburo Member Victor Grishin told a Western newsman that Marshal Ustinov had only "a little sore throat." Ustinov died of cardiac arrest following pneumonia on Dec. 20.

Even though Chernenko's health probably caused the last-minute postponement of a Warsaw Pact summit meeting earlier this month, the Soviet press worked hard at creating the illusion that the President was at his desk in the Kremlin. With TV cameras recording the event on Jan. 19, party officials nominated him in his absence for a seat on the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Republic, a post of no significance. They released statements in Chernenko's name congratulating Syrian President Hafez Assad on his re-election as head of his country's ruling Baath Party, and greeting a Moscow peace conference.

Last week the Soviet press published the text of Chernenko's reply to a letter from a Canadian student, Laurie Piraux, 18, of Calgary, Alta., who had asked Chernenko what could be done to secure world peace. His letter was ominously reminiscent of the one Andropov sent two years ago to Maine Schoolgirl Samantha Smith, inviting her to visit the Soviet Union. By the time Samantha arrived with her parents in July 1983, Andropov was apparently too ill to receive her. He made one more public appearance, in August 1983, before , disappearing from public view. His death was announced on Feb. 10.

Late last week, the official Soviet news agency TASS announced an event that may offer further insight into Chernenko's condition: Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou will make an official visit to Moscow in mid-February. Because Papandreou is a head of government rather than a head of state, protocol requires only that he be received by Soviet Premier Nikolai Tikhonov. But Moscow has been courting Papandreou's socialist government assiduously of late, and Chernenko, health permitting, would almost certainly want to take part in Kremlin talks with the Greek visitor.