New Members of Kremlin’s Leadership

Here are sketches of the new members elected Tuesday to the ruling Soviet Politburo:

--Viktor Mikhailovich Chebrikov, who will be 62 on Friday, has had a top role in the secretive KGB state security organization for 18 years. The heavy-set, balding Chebrikov, who holds the rank of army general, began his career as a Communist Party official in the industrial city of Dniepropetrovsk after serving in the Red Army during World War II.

He was graduated as an engineer from a metallurgical institute but switched to party work in the Dniepropetrovsk region. He was called to head the KGB personnel department in 1967 and was promoted to the top KGB job in December, 1982, succeeding Yuri V. Andropov, who took over as Soviet leader. He became a candidate (non-voting) member of the Politburo a year later.

--Yegor Kuzmich Ligachev, 64, vaulted into prominence by his elevation to full Politburo membership without having served as a candidate (non-voting) member of the party’s ruling body. Brought to Moscow from a party post in Siberia by Andropov, he worked closely with Gorbachev on selecting party cadres.

He built a reputation during 18 years in Tomsk, in central Siberia, as a successful campaigner against corruption and economic malaise. After training as an aviation engineer during World War II, he started climbing the party ladder in Novosibirsk in western Siberia.

--Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov, 55, an economic specialist who once spent 20 years working his way up from foreman to factory director, has achieved more rapid success in the Kremlin. First appointed to the party Central Committee four years ago, he was promoted to the powerful post of party secretary the following year. His rise to full membership in the Politburo without an interim appointment as a candidate member indicates that he was tapped for the job by Gorbachev.

Ryzhkov, who has headed the economic department of the Central Committee, is apparently going to take charge of overhauling the slow-moving Soviet economy. He was graduated from a technical institute in Sverdlovsk, in the Urals industrial area, and later became director of a major engineering factory. Ryzhkov was first deputy director of the State Planning Commission after serving as first deputy minister of heavy and transport engineering.

--Sergei Leonidovich Sokolov, 73, clearly owes his selection as a candidate (non-voting) member of the Politburo to his appointment last December as defense minister to succeed the late Dmitri F. Ustinov.

A career soldier, Sokolov will represent the armed forces in the highest level of the Kremlin. He has been in the army since 1932 and a party member since 1937. He fought in World War II on the Western and Karelian fronts. A rather short, balding man, Sokolov holds the rank of marshal in the army. He knows the Kremlin’s corridors of power, having spent 17 years as first deputy minister of defense. Western diplomats say that he was in charge of the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

In another major appointment, Viktor Petrovich Nikonov, 56, was chosen as one of the powerful secretaries of the Central Committee who direct all activity of the Soviet Union. He was named in 1983 to be agriculture minister of the Russian Federation and apparently is in line to take major responsibility for farm policy under Gorbachev.

He graduated from the Azov-Black Sea Agricultural Institute and switched to party work in 1958, working in farming areas of Krasnoyarsk, Tatar and Mari regions before becoming deputy minister of Soviet agriculture in 1979. He was elected to the Central Committee in 1976. Gorbachev once held the job in the secretariat that Nikonov now will occupy.