SOLOVYOV AND KLEPIKOVA
205
pro forma
communist ideology to an impulsive, nationalistic one.
What caused that contradiction? Was it not only an apparent one, since
ideology is usually a forerunner of politics, and determines it? Is not
Brezhnev's position as Chief of State merely nominal and symbolic?
What if the immutable Brezhnev were only an optical illusion, a
facade, a screen behind which-especially in the late seventies-drastic,
irreversible political changes were taking place? What if while every–
one was expecting those changes to take place after Brezhnev's depar–
ture from the political scene they were in fact taking place while he was
still on stage and, thanks to him, were invisible to the outside observer?
Finally, what if Brezhnev, despite his frail health, were to outlive the
Brezhnev era?
In the seventies, intense ideological struggle determined the
structure of the political balance of power in Russia. Inevitably, that
balance had to be upset by the predominance of one of the ideological
parties, so that the colorless interlude of the Brezhnev administration
could finally take on some coloration, and the period of stagnation
become a full-fledged era. Our task is to bring out this latent struggle,
so that the victors and the vanquished emerge clearly into view. To that
end, we must analyze both domains of power in the USSR-the
political
and
the ideological. In comparison with the scanty informa–
tion available about the former, jnformation about the latter is both
abundant and ignored.
The political endurance of the tottering Brezhnev may seem
perplexing. He bears his " fateful burden" of power with amazing
obstinacy, like the toy soldier in Andersen 's fairy tale; or like those real–
life Japanese soldiers who went on fighting against an invisible enemy
long after their country had surrendered to that enemy and had even
managed to make friends with it. In 1977, when we were still in the
Soviet Union, officials from the Central Committee, giving secret
lectures at research institutes, were critical of Brezhnev's ideological
concessions and diplomatic compromises and his "protecting the
Zionists who had infiltrated the institute of America under the wing of
Arbatov." The charge was repeated in a pamphlet printed on a rotary
press (with whose permission?) and widely circulated in both capitals
in 1979.
It
was signed, "The Russian Liberal Movement," and its
authors named Kosygin, Suslov, and Romanov as the only real
Russians in the Politburo, which (they said) was dominated by a group
of Zionists headed up by Brezhnev. But Brezhnev managed to remain in
power because, unlike Khrushchev, he prizes political power more
