TORCH PASSES TO A SPRINTER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504730027-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 27
• Publication Date: March 12, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504730027-7
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
ARTICLE APPEARED
0~ PSG..
T
twtwAft
trorch va.R.Res t-o Iff
colleagues who were reluc- Dmitry Ustinov had died. By
tant to entrust him with pow- contrast, fellow Politburo
er upon the death of~ member Vladimir Shcher-
Andropov. bitsky, recalled to Moscow
Gorbachev is the youngest from a trip to the U.S. Sun-
of the 10 men currently. sere day, would not say that he
sprinter
ing on the Politburo, andl had been summoned back be-
harder." It appeared, she cause of the death of
added, that the transfer of with five of his colleagues
By LARS?ERIK NELSON over 70, he will have a strong Chia of The Hms Washington Bureau power was worked out in ad g
A British diplomat said
h
After more than seven
years of rule by pale,
frail and sickly men, the
Soviet Union swiftly and
smoothly handed power
yesterday to a young,
vigorous and confident
leader-who promises to
be just as hostile and
hard-line as his elders.
At 54, Mikhail Gorbachev
is the youngest leader to hold
supreme power in the Soviet
Union since the early days of
the Stalin era. He is better
educated and more widely
traveled than most of his ri-
vals, but he inherits a tech-
nologically backward and
stagnant society that is tradi-
tionally fearful of the out-
AN ANALYSIS
side world and resistant to
change.
"Before he can lead the
Soviet Union into the 21st
century," said one U.S.
analyst, "he'll have to lead it
into the second half of the
20th."
"For the first time in a
long time the Soviets have a
leader who is adroit, skillful
and intelligent," a U.S. gov-
ernment analyst said. "He
knows how to sell the Soviet
position, and he's going to
make us have to work a little
and in shaping the new se a
vance of the death of party
leader Konstantin of Soviet rulers. Morri Gorbachev was a "breath of
Chernenko. Rothenberg of the Advanc fresh air" during his brief
ANOTHER intelligence
analyst described Gorbachev,
who made a big hit during a
visit to Britain in December,
as "personable but unvield-
in. He's of a different
generation but he's from the
same old training ground, the
International Studies nsti tour of England and Scot-
tute in Washington pointed' land. "He didn't play the
out that with neither the same gramophone record
KGB nor the armed forces over and over again-as we
currently represented on the usually hear from East Euro-
politburo, Gorbachev will pean leaders-but on the
have an unusual opportunity issues, he was fairly hard-
to ui his own team. line," the diplomat said.
party and state bureaucracy. ALTHOUGH it can take
He's not going to be a liberal. several years for a new party
Peace and friendship will not leader to consolidate his
burst out all over." power by adding the post of
Gorbachev's ascendancy president and/or prime'
marked the "generational minister, Gorbachev already
change" for which Western has been chairing the De-
analysts have been waiting fense Council, according to
since former President reports from Moscow.
Leonid Brezhnev began to A dossier released by the
falter in the late 1970s. But Georgetown University Cen-
when Brezhnev died at 75, in ter for Strategic and In
November 1982, his equally
aged colleagues postponed
the transfer to a younger
generation by picking Yuri
Andropov, 68. Then, when
Andropov died in February
1984, they again postponed
change by picking Cher-
nenko, 72.
OVER THE LAST 13
months, however, with Cher-
nenko obviously ill, Gor-
;,bachev has managed the day-
to-day affairs of the ruling
Communist Par
By displaying orthodoxy on
ideological issues and dip-
lomatic deftness during his
trip to Britain, he apparently
won the confidence of older
ternational Studies showed
that he has traveled to Brit-
ain, Italy, Portugal, Canada,
France, West Germany and
Belgium. Like Andropov, he
is believed to favor some
measure of Hungarian-style
economic reform-especially
in agriculture. But such re-
forms would be much more
difficult to carry out in the
vaster, less-fertile Soviet
Union.
A SMALL BUT telling ex-
ample of Gorbachev's self-
confidence is that when he
was suddenly recalled to
Moscow from Scotland in De-
cember, he openly told his
hosts that Defense Minister
The transition from Cher-
nenko to Gorbachev is not
expected to have any impact
on the arms control negotia-
tions that have just resumed
in Geneva, U.S. analysts said.
Walter Laqueur of George-
town said Gorbachev would
focus first on domestic
changes-the two most criti-
cal areas in the Soviet Union
are agriculture and invest-
ment in new technology.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504730027-7