Who remembers Konstantin Chernenko these days? Who really gave him muchthought even during his brief reign as Soviet leader? Wasn't he no more than a chancefigure, another old man waving his hand from atop the Lenin mausoleum at the vestiges of acrumbling system, the funeral music already playing it seemed. Is there any reason toremember him now?

History sometimes seems to be guided by the same physiological lawsthat shape the lives of every one of us. Medical terms spring to mind, health and disease,energy and apathy, turbulent youth and the inevitable decline of old age. Some historicalfigures appear as virulent infections, more cause than effect, while others emerge as meresymptoms of an underlying pathological condition.

To be a symptom, such was the fate of Chernenko, more the fleetingsymbol of a dying system than a man of any memorable substance. People found no reason toremember him. They remember well enough the late Brezhnev years of ever growing senilityand stagnation. They remember the brief appearance of Yuri Andropov, long time KGBchairman, the ‘General Secretary from the Lubyanka' come to restore order anddiscipline to a nation falling inexorably apart. History and health become tangled at thatpoint though, Andropov ruled from his hospital bed, ostensibly he had a ‘cold',in reality he was suffering from kidney failure and a host of other ailments.

The terminal phase had set in, on 10 February 1984, Andropov died, andon 10 March 1985, his ephemeral successor, Chernenko, went the same way, clearing the roadahead for Mikhail Gorbachev, perestroika, and all the growing pains of a new era. WithChernenko's death, the waiting was over, and the question arises, why was the wait solong?

The politburo was never free of rivalry, Andropov and Brezhnev had eachhad their camp, and after Andropov's death, it seemed logical that one of his peoplewould replace him. Gorbachev was widely considered to be one of Andropov's people,and many expected to see him named General Secretary rather than Chernenko, a seventythree year old, chronically ill bureaucrat and Brezhnev's loyal toady. The countryhad been living in a hospital bed as it were, for too long already, the Soviet systemitself was desperately ill, and with an average age of 67, the politburo was littlebetter. Gorbachev was the hope, the elixir of youth and promise of change.

But it was not to be, at least not yet. Chernenko got his hour ofglory. After faithfully serving the system all his life, he finally found himself at thesummit. Painting his life and person in the appropriate heroic colours proved a nighimpossible task even for the experienced Soviet myth-making machine. Chernenko began lifein a Siberian peasant family, developed ‘political consciousness' and became aKomsomol propagandist. He sat out the war safe within the walls of the partypropagandists' school in Moscow. While busy on the ideological front in Moldavia, hemet Brezhnev who eventually brought him to Moscow. He spent 18 years as ‘chiefbureaucrat' of the Central Committee, and he loved that work in the shadows, allthose files, all that gossip that flowed his way, all that secrecy. He was a man oflimited interests and intellect, a lackey by nature, a grey figure who slipped throughhistory virtually unnoticed.

So how did it happen that after several years of gerontocracy andhospital beds, it was Chernenko who emerged to wheeze his asthmatic way through thirteenpainful months? What motivated such an apparently absurd decision? The politburo wanted topreserve the Soviet system, and yet they seemed to be playing a bad joke on themselves andadmitting to the world that their days were numbered.

The paradox is only on the surface though, deeper down, everything isquite logical and perfectly symptomatic not only of the Soviet system as it was then, butalso of human nature.

Chernenko may have been old, ill, and not a suitable leader for one ofthe world's superpowers, but he represented the status quo, and that was his trumpcard. His fellow politburo members were men who had lived through years of intrigue andupheavals, men who had begun their party careers back in Stalin's time and who hadseen the consequences of ambition, betrayal and disgrace. They were weary, it is wellknown that with age, change becomes more feared and tattered reality with all its faultsbecomes preferable to uncertain promises of even the most radiant future.

Chernenko was predictable, he had no reforms up his sleeve, no newideas tucked away. Certainly, Chernenko at the top meant more stagnation for the country,but the alternative was action, courage and uncertainty, rather than the lulling routineof endless meetings and slogans. Chernenko was the ideal compromise figure for the old menof the politburo, he retained a certain nostalgia for the Stalin years, but hadn'tthe uncompromising iron streak of Andropov. He reinstated Vyacheslav Molotov,Stalin's foreign minister, in the party, but went no further than that symbolicgesture. He was a true successor to Brezhnev, a convenient, non-threatening figure whowould ensure at least a semblance of calm and stability.

Some simply laughed at Chernenko, others felt a kind of awkward pityand embarrassment. The old man could scarcely string a coherent sentence together and hefound himself face to face with the likes of Francois Mitterand and Margaret Thatcher,monotonously reading prepared speeches and not daring to add a word of his own. It nodoubt seemed almost cruel, there he was on display when he should have been at home,resting, happy with his family. But he wanted those thirteen months at the top, not forany reason other than just to be there, to be the one praised after having spent a lifepraising others, to wield the power, even if only in the interests of the jealouslyguarded status quo.

Thirteen months is such a short time and Chernenko left no real trace.No sooner was he buried, than he was forgotten. Brezhnev, his friend and mentor, wasluckier in that respect. He was around for that much longer, and while his later yearsgave rise to countless jokes, the Brezhnev era as a whole found a fond place in manypeople's memories precisely because of its characteristic features; stability, calmand predictability.

Every society attempts to achieve those things, that is why revolutionsare never permanent, eventually peter out and grow fossilised. The physiological laws takeover, too much stress leads to exhaustion and apathy creeps in.

If there is a reason not to forget Chernenko, it is because heillustrates these laws, because he was the logical continuation of Brezhnev's legacy,running a system not just mired in stagnation, but virtually comatose Stability is anormal human desire, it is also a necessary platform from which to launch much neededchange and not just a comforting end into itself. This thought comes to mind looking atRussia's present government, a government of compromise and stability. Prime MinisterEvgenii Primakov, ministers Masliukov and Kulik, central bank head Gerashchenko; they allrose through the old system, and the fact is that old habits and the temptation to fallinto old rhetoric die hard.

It would be a sad irony to see the healthy foundation that stabilityprovides merely crumble away due to irresolution as to how to build further. When a personis sick, they must be treated, even if the medicine is bitter. A country is no differentand Chernenko's brief reign shows us what happens when this simple truth is buriedfor the sake of short term illusion. The stability that Chernenko represented was a deadend. There was no purpose to his inaction other than to keep a lid on all the problems inthe country for as long as possible, as if in that way they would somehow vanish.

Only, of course, they never did vanish. But then, it is commonknowledge that the longer symptoms go untreated, the more likelihood there is of a fataloutcome.