His is the finger most likely to be next to the

nuclear trigger in the years ahead.

He is also the man most likely to move the

Soviet Union from state capitalism to a search

for incentives for individuals Io produce more

on farms and in factories.

In a land without adversary elections, he

who heads the Comnmnist Party also governs

the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and

its more than a quarter of a billion denizens as

if from a throne, usually for life. There is no

greater seat of power in the world, occupied,

until 1985, by Lenin and by those who moved

up the ladder as their colleagues were purged.