Down with Big Brother
Michael Dobbs













“One of the great stories of our time… a wonderful anecdotal history of a great drama.”

    

—San Francisco Chronicle Book Review







As Washington Post correspondent in Moscow, Warsaw, and Yugoslavia in the final decade of the Soviet empire, Michael Dobbs had a ringside seat to the extraordinary events that led to the unraveling of the Bolshevik Revolution. From Tito’s funeral to the birth of Solidarity in the Gdańsk shipyard, from the tragedy of Tiananmen Square to Boris Yeltsin standing on a tank in the center of Moscow, Dobbs saw it all.

The fall of communism was one of the great human dramas of our century, as great a drama as the original Bolshevik revolution. Dobbs met almost all of the principal actors, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa, Václav Havel, and Andrei Sakharov. With a sweeping command of the subject and the passion and verve of an eyewitness, he paints an unforgettable portrait of the decade in which the familiar and seemingly petrified Cold War world—the world of Checkpoint Charlie and Dr. Strangelove—vanished forever.






“Down with Big Brother ranks very high among the plethora of books about the fall of the Soviet Union and the death throes of Communism. It is possibly the most vividly written of the lot.”

    

— Adam B. Ulam, Washington Post Book World












Michael Dobbs

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

The Fall of the Soviet Empire


FOR LISA




His eyes refocussed on the page. He discovered that while he sat helplessly musing he had also been writing, as though by automatic action. And it was no longer the same cramped awkward handwriting as before. His pen had slid voluptuously over the smooth paper, printing in large neat capitals—

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

over and over again, filling half a page.

    

George Orwell, 1984















ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


THIS BOOK IS THE OUTCOME of reporting tours in Yugoslavia, Poland, and the Soviet Union between 1977 and 1993. But my interest in the former Communist world goes back long before that. I was eight weeks old when I first went to Russia, courtesy of my parents, Joseph and Marie Dobbs, who had met at the British embassy in Moscow in 1948. I was to visit Russia, in one capacity or another, under all Russian leaders from Stalin to Yeltsin. When I went to work in Yugoslavia and Poland, I was also following in the footsteps of my peripatetic parents. I therefore have them primarily to thank for ushering me into the shadow of Big Brother and getting me to write about the experience.

While gathering material for this book, I have benefited from the stimulating conversation and hospitality of friends, colleagues, and sources in many different countries. I mention many of these sources in the endnotes, but I would particularly like to thank a few people who assisted directly in my research. In common with other Washington Post reporters in Moscow, I was fortunate to be able to draw on the advice and assistance of Masha Lipman, a talented Russian journalist who has gone on to become managing editor of the news magazine Itogi. Here in Washington, I would like to thank two research associates, Brian Sloyer and Marian Alves, who spent long hours at the Library of Congress on my behalf. I am also indebted to Mark Kramer, of Harvard University, who supplied me with many interesting documents from Soviet and East European archives.

My agent, Rafe Sagalyn, and my editor at Knopf, Ashbel Green, played key roles in encouraging me to write this book and shepherding it to completion. Other people who made helpful comments on the manuscript were Jeff Frank, now with The New Yorker, my former Moscow colleague Fred Hiatt, and David Brown, a medical reporter for the Post. Responsibility for any remaining errors rests with me. I would also like to thank Don Oberdorfer, a former diplomatic reporter for the Post and author of The Turn, for making available the transcripts of two Princeton University conferences on the end of the Cold War. These proved very helpful.

The collapse of communism was one of the great news stories of the twentieth century. I will always be grateful to the editors of the Washington Post, particularly Jim Hoagland and Michael Getler, for assigning me to cover many of its most dramatic episodes, beginning with the Polish labor unrest of August 1980. My understanding of the story was greatly enriched by talks with present and former Post reporters, including Bradley Graham, Jackson Diehl, Robert Kaiser, Dusko Doder, Celestine Bohlen, Gary Lee, Fred Hiatt, Margaret Shapiro, David Hoffman, Lee Hockstader, Dan Southerland, Blaine Harden, Mary Battiata, John Pomfret, Christine Spolar, and especially David Remnick. Nobody could wish for better colleagues.

I am happy to acknowledge the support of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. The Kennan Institute provided me with both a fellowship and a congenial place to work, when I returned to Washington from Moscow in August 1993.

Most of all, I am grateful to my family for sharing in my adventures and putting up with my frequent absences. My wife, Lisa, has been my most attentive reader and perceptive critic. My children, Alex, Olivia, and Joseph, are not quite sure what communism was all about, but they know that it took up a lot of their father’s time, long after it had been pronounced dead and buried. One day, they will read this book and understand what those tanks were doing roaring past our front entrance on August 19, 1991.




PREFACE


THE HAULING DOWN OF THE RED FLAG from the Kremlin at 7:35 p.m. on December 25, 1991, marked the end of the Soviet era, as surely as the storming of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg on November 7, 1917, marked its beginning. But who can say, for certain, when the collapse of communism began?

One possible starting point for the story might be April 26, 1986, when the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power station demonstrated the technological incompetence of the Soviet regime. Another is March 11, 1985, when the fifty-four-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev was elected general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. There are good arguments to be made in favor of August 31, 1980, when a Communist government formally surrendered the right to represent its own working class to an independent trade union. Or you could go all the way back to the death of Josef Stalin on March 5, 1953. After Nikita Khrushchev started destroying the reputation of the “Greatest Genius of All Times and Peoples,” belief in a Communist utopia gradually waned.

For me personally, the anti-Bolshevik revolution began on May 8, 1980. This was the day I got my first close-up look at the guardians of Stalin’s legacy. My only previous view of these men had been from a distance, through the prism of a propaganda machine that depicted them as the exalted representatives of an infallible party, chosen by history to implement the will of the masses. Viewed up close, I was reminded of Hannah Arendt’s phrase about the leaders of the Third Reich: the “banality of evil.” The aura of bureaucratic anonymity—the ultimate source of their authority—was shattered.

I was living in Belgrade at the time. Josip Broz Tito, the father of Communist Yugoslavia and the last surviving legendary figure from World War II, had just died. On the day of the funeral, the Yugoslav capital was awash with foreign dignitaries. With the exception of President Carter, who did not wish to be seen shaking hands with Leonid Brezhnev less than five months after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, anybody who was anybody was there. The Soviet bloc sent its top leaders. The mourners included a Communist demigod, Kim II Sung of North Korea, and one of the great mass murderers of the twentieth century, Pol Pot of Cambodia.

Through a security lapse, I managed to gate-crash the VIP enclosure on the strength of a simple press pass. For the next half-hour I was able to chat and mingle with the assembled high priests of Marxism-Leninism. There, in one corner of the VIP pen, stood the builder of the Berlin Wall and the undertaker of the Prague Spring, exchanging pleasantries, two cogs in a vast machinery of state repression. A few feet away, the president of Bulgaria was fussing over his fellow dignitaries, like some overeager waiter, desperate to please. While standing in line to view Tito’s coffin, I found myself gazing into the dull, evil-looking eyes of the self-styled “Genius of the Carpathians.” Nicolae Ceauşescu of Romania had one of the most unpleasant faces I have ever seen: deep, black lines around a long, pointed nose; a high forehead; crinkly gray hair. As a general rule, the more grotesque the personality cult surrounding this or that “Great Leader,” the more mediocre its beneficiary turned out to be.

Seated in the middle of the gathering, like a medieval emperor receiving the homage of his vassals, was Big Brother himself. Leonid Brezhnev seemed to have trouble focusing on events around him. His face was bloated. He clung to Andrei Gromyko, his indispensable foreign minister, like a child clings to his nanny. “Where’s Andrei Andreyevich,” he murmured, in apparent panic, when Gromyko disappeared for a few seconds. He was surrounded by sycophants. “I want to thank you for your work for peace,” fawned the president of Bangladesh, almost groveling on the red carpet. Brezhnev lifted his vast eyebrows. “We try our hardest,” he croaked. “We are ready for anything in the struggle for peace.”

At midday, the city of 1.5 million people fell silent in tribute to the man who had ruled Yugoslavia since 1945. All that could be heard in the normally noisy city were the chimes of clocks and the chirping of birds. Then, equally suddenly, the silence was interrupted by the wailing of factory sirens and the horns of ships on the nearby Danube and Sava rivers. A military band struck up a slow funeral march. Eight generals appeared on the steps of the Yugoslav parliament building, carrying the numerous medals of their commander in chief. The coffin itself was escorted by Tito’s political heirs, the eight members of the new collective presidency, representing the ethnically diverse components of the Yugoslav federation. Vain to the end, Tito had decided that no single individual could possibly take his place. Instead, he was to be succeeded by a committee, each of whose members had a veto over the actions of all the others. It was a recipe first for paralysis, later for civil war.

When the procession reached Tito’s residence, on a hill overlooking the Sava, the band began playing the “Internationale,” the anthem of the worldwide Communist movement. The coffin was lowered into the vault, to be sealed with a marble slab inscribed with gold lettering, JOSIP BROZ TITO 1892–1980. The nonentities of the collective presidency shuffled self-importantly past. They were followed by kings and princes, presidents and prime ministers, Communist Party secretaries and Third World dictators—pillars of a seemingly permanent world order that was about to crumble.




BEFORE 1980, reporting from the Communist world had been an introverted pursuit. Our sources of information were limited to Western diplomats, official propagandists, a handful of brave dissidents. To hold an honest conversation with an ordinary person was practically impossible. Factories were completely off-limits, unless you were accompanied by a government chaperone. Censorship was so tight that we usually never heard of protests until they were long over. Our job was to put together a coherent picture of an entire society on the basis of isolated scraps of information. It was like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, with hundreds of missing pieces.

This sedentary way of life disappeared virtually overnight. Within a few months of running into Poland’s Edward Gierek at Tito’s funeral, I was filing dispatches on his overthrow. Soon, I found myself covering strikes, hunger marches, coups, wars, and the remaking of the map of Europe. As a reporter from the Washington Post, first in Eastern Europe and then in the Soviet Union, I had a grandstand view of the “decade that shook the world.” Indeed, in a minor way, my colleagues and I became part of the revolution. Our reports were beamed back into the Soviet bloc by Western radio stations, breaking the information monopoly of one-party regimes.

My travels around the disintegrating Communist world took me from the Berlin Wall to Tiananmen Square, from tropical Nicaragua to the windswept island of Sakhalin. I visited places I had never dreamed of visiting, from a freezing orphanage in Bucharest to the inner corridors of Kremlin power. I wandered around KGB headquarters in Moscow, inspected the sites of nuclear explosions, and walked through the ruins of once graceful towns like Tbilisi and Vukovar. I was fortunate enough to meet most of the principal actors in the fall of communism, from Andrei Sakharov to Mikhail Gorbachev. I was the first Western journalist to be admitted to the Lenin shipyard in Gdańsk during the great strike of August 1980 by a then unknown Lech Wałęsa. A decade later, when Boris Yeltsin jumped on the tank outside the Russian parliament to rally resistance to an abortive Communist coup, I was in the crowd of one hundred or so Muscovites standing right in front of him.

The unraveling of the Communist empire was a great human drama, as great a drama in its own way as the original Bolshevik revolution. It changed the lives of millions of people, including many who had never lived in a Communist country but who had been touched by the Cold War. Some were inspired to acts of greatness; others were driven to their deaths. In the space of a decade, playwrights and electricians were magically transformed into presidents, dissidents into prime ministers, Marxists into nationalists, and general secretaries into jailbirds. Strategic assumptions that had shaped the thinking of a generation of diplomats and politicians were turned upside down. A superpower disappeared, and twenty new nation-states joined the United Nations. The familiar and seemingly petrified Cold War world—the world of Checkpoint Charlie and Dr. Strangelove—vanished forever.




JUST AS COMMUNISM cast a long shadow over the twentieth century, the consequences of the failed experiment in utopia will be felt well into the next century. Many of the disaster scenarios that could threaten the future of humankind—nuclear blackmail, environmental catastrophe, a large-scale war, the rise of a Mafia state—originate in the former Communist world. Integrating the post-Communist societies into the modern world is perhaps the biggest challenge facing the international community today.

In order to deal with this challenge, we must first understand how it arose. The convulsions that have swept Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union reflect the disintegration of a totalitarian ideology. The explosion of primitive nationalism has its roots in attempts by the old nomenklatura to preserve its power and privileges. The halting nature of economic reform in Russia is due, in large measure, to the inefficient structure of the Soviet economy, with the military-industrial complex grabbing the lion’s share of the nation’s resources. The cutthroat capitalism and Mafia-like mentality of the new bourgeoisie can be traced back to the systemic corruption of the Communist regime.

It will take the passing of at least one generation, and possibly two or three, to exorcise the ghosts of totalitarian rule. The rivers and steppes of the vast Eurasian landmass will be poisoned for decades from the fallout of nuclear accidents caused by the arbitrary and irresponsible decisions of Communist leaders. The Berlin Wall was breached in a single day, but many years will go by before East Europeans are accepted as citizens of the new Europe. Tens of thousands of Romanian orphans—the product of Ceauşescu’s bizarre social policies—will grow up physically and intellectually stunted. Ethnic wars between Serbs and Croats, Armenians and Azerbaijanis, Russians and Chechens, will provide the fuel for massacres and countermassacres for many generations.

Big Brother may be dead, but the specter of communism will continue to haunt us for decades to come.




I. REVOLT OF THE PROLES


If there was hope, it lay in the proles.

    

George Orwell, 1984






The march of freedom and democracy will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history.

    

Ronald Reagan








ZARECHE

December 26, 1979


THE BLACK ZIL LIMOUSINES raced over the ice-bound Moskva River, past the pompous wedding-cake structure of the Ukraine Hotel, and down the rectilinear expanse of Kutuzov Avenue. Bundled up in long winter coats as protection against fifteen degrees of frost, militiamen ordered motorists to the side of the road with frantic waves of their white nightsticks. Plainclothes agents loitered along the sidewalk, scanning the crowd for signs of suspicious activity. Tightly drawn white curtains and tons of bulletproof armor shielded the occupants of the speeding Zils from the curious stares of pedestrians, picking their way through the gray-brown sludge of the dreary Moscow winter.




As members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, the men inside the curtained limousines belonged to the Kremlin’s inner elite. Their expressionless faces stared down from hoardings all across the Soviet Union. Their turgid speeches filled bookstores from Kaliningrad to Khabarovsk. Their physical needs were satisfied by the Ninth Directorate of the KGB security police, which supplied them with everything from country houses and pornographic movies to tailor-made suits and topflight medical attention. Cosseted by a powerful propaganda machine and a ubiquitous security apparatus, they were insulated from the kind of pressures Western politicians deal with every day: public opinion polls, protest demonstrations, a hostile press. They were the faceless representatives of an infallible party.

The lights were green all down Kutuzov Avenue, one of a dozen highways that radiate outward from the Kremlin. Designed by Stalin as a grand entrance into the Soviet capital, with luxury apartment buildings for senior party officials on either side, Kutuzov Avenue led direct to Minsk, Warsaw, and Berlin. It was along this route that both Napoleon and Hitler had invaded Russia, losing everything in a fateful gamble with the vastness of the Russian landscape and the harshness of the Russian winter. The Zils and their police escort vehicles hugged the crest of the road, traveling at eighty miles an hour in the lane permanently reserved for the “big pine cones,” shiski, as Muscovites referred to their leaders. A few hundred yards after the Triumphal Arch, commemorating Napoleon’s defeat at the hands of General Kutuzov in 1812, the motorcade reached the city limits.

During the seventies the Soviet capital had grown to engulf vast tracts of surrounding pine forest. The city had expanded in all directions except one: westward, along the meandering Moskva River. Here, hidden among gentle hills, billowing birch trees, and picture book villages, was the playground of the ruling class. In the elaborate reward-and-punishment system devised by Stalin for maintaining control over his labyrinthine bureaucracy, there was no greater prize than a country house in this bucolic setting. For the Soviet elite—government ministers to nuclear scientists to prima ballerinas to army generals—a dacha was not only a place of rest but a form of escape from the oppressive atmosphere of the capital, with its noxious pollution and paranoid sense of being under constant surveillance.

The line of Zils turned left off the highway, ignoring several No Entry signs, onto an immaculately maintained country road that disappeared into the snow-covered forest. The motorcade traveled along the bank of the icebound Setun River and entered a private estate, surrounded by a ten-foot-high green wooden fence. Some twenty minutes after leaving the center of Moscow, the Zils pulled up in front of a mock neoclassical palace. Decorated in the ornate bourgeois style favored by Soviet leaders, it looked like a cross between an office building and a museum. The complex boasted indoor and outdoor swimming pools, tennis courts, and a private movie theater.




The inhabitants of the curtained limousines had come to inform the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party of the final plans for the invasion of Afghanistan.

===


IT WAS DIFFICULT to tell it now, as one looked at his puffy face, parchment-colored skin, and dull, lifeless eyes, but Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev had once been a vigorous and gregarious politician. He had received little formal education. In fact, he had scarcely read a book in his life. Outside politics, his main interests were hunting, driving fast cars, and watching ice hockey games on television. He showed little enthusiasm for paperwork and was a poor public speaker. But in the Bolshevik phrase, he was “good with cadres.” He took care of his own. His intellectual limitations had been outweighed by a remarkable instinct for the uses of power and patronage and a talent for forming alliances with his fellow apparatchiks. His intuitive sense of whom to flatter, whom to manipulate, whom to bribe, and, when necessary, whom to trample underfoot had taken him to the highest rungs of the Soviet bureaucracy.

His Politburo colleagues had consistently underestimated him. One of the main reasons why they had elected him general secretary to replace the disgraced Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 was that they were sick of strong, charismatic leaders. They wanted a malleable stopgap, and Brezhnev—nicknamed “the ballerina” because of his ability to change positions in line with prevailing opinion—seemed to fit the bill. They were correct in thinking that the new leader would be more easygoing than Khrushchev and would put an end to the upheavals that had shaken the party apparatus. But they seriously misjudged his staying power. Brezhnev had outlasted, and outmaneuvered, them all.

As he entered the sixteenth year of his reign, Brezhnev was a mixture of Communist demigod and national buffoon. The personality cult surrounding the general secretary, or gensek, had reached ludicrous proportions. Not content with depicting the doddering seventy-three-year-old leader as a wise and far-seeing statesman, the official media also presented him as a brilliant military strategist, a distinguished man of letters, and an outstanding contemporary thinker. Propagandists compared him with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state. He was the proud holder of Party Card No. 000002. (Card No. 000001 was reserved for the dead Lenin.)

The more infirm and senile Brezhnev became, the more honors and accolades he received. By the end of his life he had accumulated more awards than Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev combined. Soviet history books had been rewritten to transform his undistinguished wartime exploits into a decisive contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany. His boastful ghostwritten reminiscences about World War II, Malaya Zemlya (Little Land), had been acclaimed a literary masterpiece by Soviet critics and printed in millions of copies. They were read out on radio and television, serialized in magazines, and “studied” in schools and party meetings.

All this was the cause of great ridicule among ordinary Soviet citizens. In public they joined in the officially orchestrated adulation of the general secretary, adopting resolutions to support his political initiatives and holding ceremonies to celebrate his birthday. In the privacy of their own homes they joked about his poor Russian and his narcissistic habits. After the publication of his memoirs in 1978, the villagers of Zareche began referring to the walled-in Brezhnev compound as Malaya Zemlya.




Although his sayings and doings filled the front pages of Soviet newspapers, Brezhnev usually worked for no more than one or two hours a day. By the late seventies he was barely able to look after himself, let alone the affairs of a mighty superpower. Politburo meetings had been reduced to fifteen or twenty minutes. The general secretary rarely visited his Moscow apartment or his Kremlin office. He spent weeks at a time cooped up in the Zareche dacha or his favorite hunting lodge at Zavidovo, at the confluence of the Moskva and Oka rivers. Family life had become a burden to him. His tearaway daughter, Galina, had scandalized Moscow by her luxurious lifestyle and affairs with shady circus performers. His son-in-law, Yuri Churbanov, had become a front man for the Uzbek cotton Mafia. Brezhnev would shut himself up for hours in his study with his personal bodyguard, an old wartime buddy named Aleksandr Ryabenko, playing checkers or dominoes.

Brezhnev’s true state of health was one of the Kremlin’s most closely guarded secrets. It was clear to anyone who observed his stumbling gait, slurred speech, and vacant expression that he was a chronic invalid. But the extent of his physical and mental ailments was known only to three or four senior Politburo members and a handful of doctors, bodyguards, and relatives. The truth was that the world’s largest country had been without an effective ruler since at least 1974, when the general secretary suffered a series of mild strokes caused by the medical condition known as arteriosclerosis of the brain.




As the arteries of Brezhnev’s brain hardened and became clogged, he lost control over many of his physical functions. Doctors observed a shocking, apparently irreversible change in their patient’s personality, caused by the devastation of the central nervous system. Once jocular and unassuming, he had lost the ability to view his own actions with a critical eye. At times he experienced fits of deep depression and burst into tears for the most trivial reason. At others he would have delusions of grandeur, reading aloud the obsequious articles about himself in the state-controlled press. He insisted on driving fast cars long after he had slipped into his second childhood. There were several occasions when he nearly killed himself and his terrified security guards by steering his limousine too closely to a cliff on the winding mountainous roads of Crimea, where he had a summer residence.


 His vanity was fed by a retinue of sycophants, always ready to assure him that he was a superb driver, in addition to being the beloved father of the Soviet people.

What would normally have been a serious but possibly treatable illness had been greatly complicated by an addiction to sleeping pills and prescription drugs. Brezhnev had long suffered from chronic insomnia. His aides and cronies slipped him powerful tranquilizers, which he often washed down with his favorite vodka, Zubrovka. During the mid-seventies he had formed a doting relationship with a KGB nurse, who supplied him with a steady stream of pills without the knowledge of his doctors. The depressants had the effect of further weakening his nervous system, making him listless and inert and contributing to his symptoms of dementia. This in turn further aggravated his insomnia. It was a vicious cycle. One crisis followed another.

In an attempt to save the general secretary from himself, his doctors and bodyguards frequently resorted to petty deceit. They diluted the Zubrovka with boiled water, causing Brezhnev to look suspiciously at his glass and complain, “There’s something about this vodka that’s not quite right.” On other occasions they gave him blank sleeping pills. The problem with this trick was that Brezhnev was unable to distinguish the real pills from the fake ones. Desperate to get to sleep, he would swallow increasingly large numbers of pills. The bodyguards worried that he might end up killing himself.




Enormous effort went into preparing his public appearances. Special escalators were invented to permit the gensek to climb the steps of the Lenin Mausoleum in Red Square and his personal airplane. Politburo speechwriters were instructed to avoid the use of certain long words that he had difficulty pronouncing. Teams of resuscitation specialists accompanied him wherever he went. Special medical facilities were installed wherever he stayed. Doctors were under strict orders to do everything in their power to make sure that Brezhnev fulfilled his ceremonial obligations. The head of the Kremlin medical service, Yevgeny Chazov, later complained that the attempt to camouflage the leader’s true state of health was not only “hypocritical” but also “sadistic.”




When Brezhnev gave a speech, his doctors never knew whether he would make it back from the podium. In October 1979, Chazov had accompanied his patient to ceremonies marking the thirtieth anniversary of the foundation of the German Democratic Republic. The trip almost ended in disaster after Brezhnev suffered an attack of chronic fatigue, losing sensation in his legs. An hour before a special session of the East German parliament bodyguards carried the general secretary out of his residence. When the time came for him to make his speech, he was unable to move from his chair. Chazov sat horrified in the corner of the hall as the Polish and East German leaders, Edward Gierek and Erich Honecker, gripped their Soviet comrade by the elbows and frog-marched him to the lectern. Miraculously Brezhnev managed to wheeze his way through his thirty-five-minute speech without alerting Western reporters to his true condition.




When it was all over, the Soviet Foreign Ministry lodged a formal protest with Poland over Gierek’s “unfriendly gesture” in assisting Brezhnev to the lectern of the East German parliament. According to the Soviet démarche, the gesture had created the erroneous impression that Comrade Brezhnev was “infirm.” Chazov later wrote that “gratitude” would have been more in order. “I am not convinced that Brezhnev would have been able to get up from his chair at all without outside help.”







BORN IN 1906, Brezhnev had watched Russia transform itself from a weak, practically defenseless country into a mighty superpower, feared and respected throughout the world. Soon after coming to power in 1917, the Bolsheviks had been forced to surrender territories containing one-third of Russia’s urban population to Germany under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. By 1945 not only had they reconquered all the land they had lost, they had gained control over a vast chunk of Central and Eastern Europe. Victory in World War II had brought a five-hundred-mile buffer zone around the western fringes of the Slavic heartland. For Brezhnev and his colleagues, the true western border of the Soviet Union was now represented by the Elbe River, where Russian and American soldiers had linked up following the victory over the Third Reich. It was an empire that exceeded the wildest dreams of the tsars.

The Soviet empire was shaped in the form of concentric circles, radiating outward from Mother Russia. The “inner empire” was made up of nations, such as Ukrainians, Georgians, Balts, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and Armenians, that had all been incorporated into the Soviet Union proper. The next circle consisted of the “People’s Democracies” of Eastern Europe, such as Poland, East Germany, and Hungary. The “outer empire” included Third World countries, like Nicaragua, Angola, and Afghanistan, that had shaken themselves free from the shackles of imperialism but had not yet reached the stage of “real socialism.” In the last decade alone Marxist-Leninist parties had seized power in more than a dozen such countries, causing analysts in both Moscow and Washington to conclude that the worldwide “correlation of forces” was moving inexorably in favor of socialism.

Strategically, too, the global balance of power seemed to be shifting in favor of Moscow. During the past two decades the Soviet Union had embarked on a huge military buildup. From a position of clear inferiority when Brezhnev came to power, it had become the geostrategic equal of the United States. In some areas, such as tanks and heavy land-based missiles, it enjoyed a significant advantage. Six thousand long-range nuclear warheads were on permanent standby, ready to obliterate Washington and Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, at the touch of a button. Hundreds more medium-range missiles were targeted on West European cities, such as London, Frankfurt, and Paris.

Brezhnev regarded it as his duty to defend this legacy and pass it on intact to his successors. He based his actions on the tsarist principle that territory gained must never be surrendered. Translated into the wooden terminology of scientific socialism, the tsarist insistence on never taking a step back was known as the “irreversibility of history.” Once a country had progressed from one stage of history to another—from feudalism to capitalism or from capitalism to socialism—there was no turning back. To countenance the possibility of a regression from socialism to capitalism was to question the whole basis of Marxist dialectics.

In private Brezhnev could be brutally frank about Soviet foreign policy goals. When Alexander Dubĉek and the other Czechoslovak reformers were kidnapped and brought to Moscow in August 1968, following the Soviet invasion of their country, the Soviet leader gave them a harsh lesson in realpolitik. “The results of the Second World War,” he told Dubĉek, “are inviolable, and we will defend them even at the cost of risking a new war.”




A decade after the crushing of the Czechoslovak experiment in “socialism with a human face,” the Soviet regime appeared both unchanging and unchangeable. There was a similar immutable quality about international affairs. The world seemed permanently split into two, ideologically opposed camps. Restrained by a balance of nuclear terror, neither side possessed the means to secure victory over the other.

In reality, the state of Soviet society and economy was more brittle than practically anyone imagined. With his vacant gaze and shuffling walk, Brezhnev was the public face of a vast multinational empire already sinking into irreversible decline. By the fall of 1979 the Soviet Union had become a sclerotic giant. Its bureaucratic arteries had shriveled and hardened. Years of ideological indoctrination, or, more simply, years of lies, had produced an atmosphere of total cynicism. Edicts were issued from the center and promptly forgotten; grandiose projects were announced and never completed; statistics had ceased to have any meaning. In the surrealistic atmosphere of the late Brezhnev era, the government allocated billions of rubles to building imaginary factories and nonexistent railway lines. Years later it was discovered that the leaders of the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan had been routinely reporting a fictitious cotton crop to Moscow and distributing the receipts among themselves.

Even the military-industrial complex—the leadership’s number one priority—was not immune from the ills afflicting the rest of the economy. The Soviet Union might be ahead of the United States in tanks and rockets and number of men under arms, but it was losing a much more important race. Soviet generals had begun to voice serious concern about the lack of “smart weapons” capable of matching the sophisticated weaponry under development in the West. Although some official U.S. studies claimed to show that the Soviet Union was “ahead” or “catching up” in key areas of military technology, such as cruise missiles or antisubmarine warfare, Soviet scientists knew very well that this was not an accurate picture.


 The Soviet Union was in danger of missing out altogether on the technological revolution that was transforming Western societies.

Unable to summon up the energy for internal renewal, Soviet leaders sought legitimacy through external expansion. They had become hostages to their own ideology. The dogma of the irreversibility of history meant that no part of the empire—however useless, however costly—could ever be surrendered. In his quest for global influence, Brezhnev had forgotten one of the cardinal lessons of realpolitik, knowing when to stop. In the words of Stalin’s foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, “You have to understand that there are limits to everything. Otherwise, you can choke.”







THE CRISIS CONFRONTING the most powerful men in the Soviet Union had been building for months. In April 1978 a small group of radical intellectuals and left-wing army officers had seized power in Afghanistan, a mountainous country of fifteen million people on the Soviet Union’s southern border, and proclaimed a socialist regime. Kremlin leaders found out about the coup from a dispatch by Reuters news agency.


 Nevertheless, they began referring to the Afghan leaders as “comrades.” Giddy with success, the ideologists pointed to the Afghan “revolution” as another triumph over the forces of imperialism. “Today, there is no country in the world that isn’t ready for socialism,” declared one apparatchik enthusiastically.




With its clanlike political structure, almost medieval way of life, and 90 percent illiteracy rate, Afghanistan seemed an unlikely candidate for a workers’ paradise. Within eighteen months of the rising of the red flag over Kabul, the “revolution” was on the verge of falling apart. The mullahs had called for a “holy war” against the godless Communists. Most of the countryside—and some big towns—were already under the control of antigovernment guerrillas. The army was disintegrating. The man who had proclaimed himself the “Great Leader of the April Revolution,” a dreamy Marxist theorist named Mohammad Taraki, had issued numerous appeals for Soviet assistance.

Brezhnev had given Taraki much of what he wanted—tanks, helicopters, military advisers—but had drawn the line at direct Soviet involvement in the Afghan civil war. In early September he had publicly hugged and embraced Taraki at a ceremony in the Kremlin. Soon afterward came news that the Afghan president had been overthrown in a palace coup and arrested on charges of terrorism. When Brezhnev returned to Moscow from East Berlin on October 9, he was greeted by even more distressing news. Taraki was dead. The Kabul Times reported laconically that he had been suffering “for some time” from a “serious illness.” In fact, he was murdered on the orders of his successor, Hafizullah Amin. A member of the palace guard later described how he had helped tie the “Great Leader” to a bed with a towel and had then suffocated him with a pillow. The death throes had lasted for fifteen minutes.




Soviet leaders had grave doubts about the loyalty of the man now described by the Afghan mass media as the “Brave Commander of the Revolution.” According to Soviet intelligence reports, Amin was pursuing sectarian and repressive policies that could trigger a truly popular revolt. In addition, he was suspected of planning diplomatic overtures to Washington. Amin had studied in the United States, and there were rumors that he might have been recruited by the CIA. While there was no hard evidence to support the allegations, Kremlin leaders had paranoid visions of the “imperialists” establishing electronic listening posts along their southern borders, monitoring everything that moved in Soviet Central Asia.


 By November the KGB residency in Kabul had concluded that the “revolution” could be saved only through Amin’s forcible removal from power. That in turn would require a Soviet military intervention.







THE MEN WHO GATHERED at Brezhnev’s dacha that cold December day in 1979 all had been born before the Bolsheviks staged their coup d’état in Petrograd. Like the general secretary himself, they were the products of their times. Peasant boys from the vast Russian plain, they owed their careers and positions entirely to the Soviet Communist Party. Their formative years had been marked by war, famine, and revolution. They all had felt what one of them later described as the “merciless… relentless gaze” of a great tyrant, who possessed the power of life and death over 250 million people.


 The seemingly arbitrary disappearance of millions of Soviet citizens—including some of their own relatives and friends—had cleared the way for their own upward progress through the Soviet bureaucracy. Now old men, they were finally experiencing the rewards of a lifetime of unquestioning political obedience.

Apart from Brezhnev himself, there were four men in the room: the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov; the defense minister, Dmitri Ustinov; the foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko; and the general secretary’s closest aide and confidant, Konstantin Chernenko.


 Each of these men owed his place in the Politburo to Brezhnev, and each had a personal interest in perpetuating the rule of a chronic invalid. In return for symbolic tribute, Brezhnev allowed his barons to run their fiefdoms as they pleased and bathe in his reflected glory.

As head of the KGB, the Committee for State Security, Andropov had been the first Politburo member to learn about the deterioration in Brezhnev’s health. The Kremlin doctors reported directly to him. For a long time he had refused to share the information with his colleagues because he feared it could provoke a vicious struggle for power. “For the sake of peace in the country and in the party, for the well-being of the people, we must keep silent. Indeed, we must try to hide these failures of Brezhnev,” he told Chazov. “If a struggle for power begins in conditions of anarchy, at a time when there is no strong leadership, it will lead to the collapse of the economy and the entire system.”




There was another reason for Andropov’s caution. A premature power struggle could damage his own chances of becoming general secretary. In Chazov’s view, Andropov was “terrified” of other strong figures in the leadership, such as Aleksei Kosygin and Nikolai Podgorny. As their power dwindled and his own position grew stronger, Andropov dropped his objections to informing the Politburo about Brezhnev’s state of health.

A tall, ascetic-looking figure with steel-rimmed glasses and brushed-back silver hair, Andropov ran a worldwide network of spies, informers, and agents provocateurs. The successor to Lenin’s Cheka and Stalin’s NKVD, the KGB was an empire within an empire. Known as the “sword and shield” of the Soviet Communist Party, the KGB was responsible for everything from rooting out dissidents and electronic eavesdropping to foreign intelligence gathering and providing protection for the leadership.

For the leader of such a seemingly all-powerful organization, Andropov had a remarkably keen sense of the fragility of Soviet power. His younger associates talked about his “Hungarian complex.”


 As a rising apparatchik in his early forties he had been dispatched as ambassador to Budapest. There he had experienced the seminal event of his career, an armed uprising in 1956 against the Communist regime and its violent suppression by Soviet tanks. From the windows of his embassy he had seen Communists strung up from lampposts. He himself had come under fire, on his way out to the airport to greet a senior Soviet emissary. His wife, Tatyana, had suffered a breakdown, from which she never fully recovered.


 Andropov was stunned by the speed with which the apparently well-entrenched Stalinist regime in Hungary was swept away. It took just a few weeks for the dissatisfaction of a handful of intellectuals and military cadets to build up into a mighty protest movement. The secret police was disbanded in a matter of hours. Supposedly loyal Communist Party members transformed themselves overnight into fanatical anti-Communists.

There was another lesson that Andropov drew from the Hungarian uprising. Military power, ruthlessly applied, can stop a counterrevolution in its tracks. Furthermore, a successful demonstration of overwhelming force would deter future rebellions. As Soviet ambassador to Budapest Andropov had played a key role in crushing the uprising, persuading a former Hungarian prime minister to sign a letter “inviting” Soviet troops into the country.


 Nearly a quarter of a century later he proposed applying the Hungarian scenario to Afghanistan.

Andropov’s closest ally in the Politburo was Marshal Ustinov. Like the KGB chief, Ustinov spoke in the name of a tremendously powerful institution. With more than 180 divisions, and five million men under arms, the armed forces were an awe-inspiring colossus. Without the Red Army there would have been no Soviet Union. No sacrifice was too great for the institution that had won the civil war for the Bolsheviks, driven out the German invader, and transformed a backward country into a global superpower. The army was both a source of national pride and an instrument for holding together a vast multinational empire. Every year more than a million eighteen-year-old Uzbeks and Russians, Lithuanians and Georgians were thrown into an ethnic melting pot for two years’ compulsory military service. The army had the task of transforming these raw recruits into both good soldiers and good Soviet citizens.

An engineer by profession, Ustinov personified the military-industrial complex. At the age of thirty-three he had been picked by Stalin for a crucial task, supplying the Red Army with the weapons it needed to defeat the Wehrmacht. As people’s commissar for armaments Ustinov had supervised the evacuation of the defense industry from European Russia to Siberia. Within six months of Hitler’s invasion of Russia in June 1941, more than fifteen hundred defense factories had been physically transplanted one thousand miles to the east. The plant and equipment filled some one and a half million railway wagons.


 It was one of the most stupendous organizational feats of World War II and a vital precondition for the Soviet Union’s eventual victory. After the war Ustinov oversaw the construction of delivery systems for the Soviet atomic bomb. In short, he brought the Red Army from the age of cavalry to the age of nuclear weapons.

By the time Ustinov became Soviet defense minister in 1976, Soviet factories were churning out an average of five fighter planes, eight tanks, eight artillery pieces, and one intercontinental ballistic missile every day.


 In Politburo discussions Ustinov routinely demanded greater resources for the military—and usually won the argument. It was clear to everyone in the leadership that military spending was draining the Soviet Union’s economic resources, but no one had the courage to call a halt. Negotiations with the imperialists could be conducted only from a position of strength. As Brezhnev liked to say, “The people will understand us. For peace, it is necessary to pay a price.”




The defense minister had the qualities of a strong-willed Russian muzhik, or peasant. He was big-hearted and gregarious. With the possible exception of Andropov, he was the hardest-working member of the Politburo, regularly putting in fifteen-hour days when he was well over seventy.


 Like many of the older generation of Soviet leaders, however, he was a Stalinist at heart. He never forgave Khrushchev for defiling the memory of the tyrant with his secret speech to the Twentieth Communist Party Congress in 1956. By condemning Stalin’s crimes, Khrushchev had dragged Soviet history through the mud and undermined the faith of the people in Communist ideology. “No enemy brought us as many misfortunes as Khrushchev,” Ustinov told the other members of the leadership. “It’s no secret that the Westerners have never liked us. But Khrushchev gave them enough arguments and ammunition to keep them well supplied for many years.”




The third member of the national security troika was Gromyko. For many people in the West, Gromyko was the physical embodiment of Soviet foreign policy. His dour demeanor—he was known on the diplomatic circuit as Grim Grom—seemed to sum up the Kremlin’s approach to international relations. A talented linguist, the foreign minister had been around for so long that he had practically become a one-man institution. He had run errands for Stalin at Potsdam and Yalta, while the fate of postwar Europe was being decided, and helped draft the founding charter of the United Nations in San Francisco. He had sat next to Khrushchev when he banged his shoe on his desk at the UN General Assembly. He had negotiated with Charles de Gaulle and Zhou Enlai, Henry Kissinger and Ho Chi Minh.

Western newspapers had christened Gromyko Mr. Nyet because of the series of twenty-six vetoes that he delivered in the UN Security Council between 1946 and 1948 as the first Soviet representative to the world body. In the Kremlin, however, he was known as Comrade Yes because of his servility to his superiors.


 A professional diplomat, Gromyko had climbed to the top of the Soviet bureaucracy by dint of loyalty and long service. He had achieved his ambition by becoming a full member of the Politburo in 1973 and would do nothing to jeopardize his privileged position. While Brezhnev’s illness had significantly increased his policy-making responsibilities, Gromyko was reluctant to cross swords with more powerful Politburo figures, such as Ustinov and Andropov. On crucial national security questions, the opinions of the minister of defense and the chairman of the KGB were usually decisive.




The last visitor to Zareche that day, Konstantin Chernenko, had little to do with the formulation of foreign policy. He was there by courtesy of his relationship with Brezhnev, whom he had known for more than three decades. He was the Kremlin’s chief paper shuffler, responsible for drafting Politburo minutes. He performed a series of indispensable chores for the general secretary, such as compiling laudatory press clippings, doling out cigarettes, and swapping old war stories. Chernenko was such a dullard that aides and bodyguards laughed at him behind his back.

Chernenko had a favorite catchphrase—“everything’s fine, everything’s fine”—which he repeated endlessly. Occasionally this got him in trouble with his patron. One day, as he sat in his office, Brezhnev complained that he had been unable to sleep at all the previous night. Chernenko, who also suffered from insomnia, was barely awake at the time. “Vsyo khorosho,” he murmured, scarcely aware of what was happening around him. “Everything’s fine.”

“What’s fine about that?” roared Brezhnev. “I can’t sleep, and you go on with your ‘Everything’s fine.’ ”

“Ohhh,” sputtered Chernenko, by now wide-awake, “that’s not fine.”







THE GENERAL STAFF had serious doubts about the proposed invasion. Afghanistan’s rugged terrain and warrior traditions had created enormous problems for both tsarist Russia and the British Empire. The generals’ concerns were shared by Foreign Ministry officials, who feared the international repercussions of a Soviet move into Afghanistan. But Ustinov and Andropov were convinced that a massive show of force would intimidate the opposition and restore order in the country. What they had in mind was a short, sharp operation, somewhat like the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Protected and encouraged by the Soviet army, “healthy forces” would regain control of the Afghan party from the usurper, Amin. The presence of Soviet troops in the capital, Kabul, and other garrison towns would permit the Afghan army to suppress the antigovernment insurgency. Under no circumstances would Soviet soldiers be allowed to take part in combat operations against the mujahedin. The actual fighting would be done by Afghans.




When the chiefs of the General Staff expressed skepticism about this plan, Ustinov summoned the dissenters to his office. He had two marsnals and a general stand at attention in front of his desk, beneath the portrait of Lenin. “Are generals now making policy in the Soviet Union?” he demanded angrily. “Your task is to plan specific operations and to carry out your orders.”


 The implied accusation of Bonapartism—regarded as a mortal sin by Soviet Communists—was enough to bring the dissenters into line. The generals saluted smartly and got to work.

Once the foreign policy troika had taken a decision to use force in Afghanistan, the only man capable of blocking the invasion was the gensek himself. But Brezhnev was distressed by the gruesome fate that had befallen Taraki, just a few days after their public embrace, and regarded Amin’s refusal to accept Soviet advice as a personal affront. “What will they say in other countries?” he had asked his aides, in a characteristic fit of emotion. “Is it possible to believe the word of Brezhnev if all his assurances of support and protection remain mere words?”




The decision to invade had been endorsed by the Politburo on the evening of December 12. One by one, the twelve senior members of the leadership had joined Brezhnev in scrawling their names across the Central Committee resolution NR 176/125, approving a series of “measures” to be taken in country “A.”


 The measures were so secret that they could not be committed to paper. To prevent a possible leak via the Politburo typist, Chernenko wrote out the resolution by hand.

There were two stages to the operation. With Amin’s agreement, three divisions of Soviet troops would be dispatched to Afghanistan with the ostensible purpose of “saving the revolution.” They would then proceed to the second stage, the forcible removal of Amin and the installation of a more compliant Afghan leader. Soviet military planners envisaged Operation Storm as a gesture of “fraternal assistance” and invasion rolled into one.




While the inner Politburo met at Brezhnev’s dacha on December 26, a fleet of four hundred Soviet transport planes was already pouring into Kabul’s Bagram Airport. A plane landed every three or four minutes, discharge troops and armored vehicles, and fly away for more without turning off its engines.


 The operation was supervised by Ustinov, Andropov, and Gromyko, who reported the results to Brezhnev.

Convinced it was his duty to preserve the empire that had been put together with so much blood, the general secretary gave the order for Operation Storm to proceed. The following day Chernenko dictated a memorandum recording that the general secretary “approved the plan of action for the immediate future, as outlined by the comrades.”


 Shortly afterward Brezhnev was heard to boast that “it will all be over in three to four weeks.”




Many years later, when a search was made of the archives for the political decision that led to the bloody events of December 27, these two notes drafted by Chernenko were all that could be found. By that time the men who had taken the fateful decision to invade Afghanistan were long dead, and the Soviet Union itself was no more.




KABUL

December 27, 1979


HAFIZULLAH AMIN WAS CONVINCED that the Red Army was coming to his rescue. His personal envoy had just returned from Moscow with news that the Soviet Union was at last ready to provide Afghanistan with “fraternal assistance.” The Kremlin had accepted his explanation for the overthrow and murder of Taraki, the original “Great Leader” of the Afghan revolution. Soon Amin’s hold on power would be secure.

There had been some difficult moments. Over the past few weeks Communists loyal to Taraki had begun a campaign to assassinate members of the new regime. At the beginning of December they had succeeded in lightly wounding Amin and killing his nephew. Anti-Communist rebels had advanced to within a few miles of the capital, cutting the main north-south highway. For security reasons Amin had moved out of the House of the People in downtown Kabul a week earlier. His new residence was a monstrous three-story fortress, the Dār-ol-Amān Palace, built by a former Afghan king. Located at the base of the Hindu Kush mountains, seven miles southwest of Kabul, the palace was defended by an Afghan infantry brigade. Tanks guarded the only approach road, a winding serpentine.

Amin had some doubts about the loyalty of his own troops but trusted his Soviet advisers completely. He knew the Soviet leaders were angry with him for killing Taraki but reasoned that they would support the winning side. Confident that he was the victor in the Afghan fratricide, Amin gratefully accepted Soviet offers of “protection.” He allowed a battalion of elite troops from Soviet Central Asia—the so-called Muslim battalion—to take up positions near his palace.


 Soviet advisers had intimate knowledge of his security arrangements. Frightened that Afghan cooks might try to poison him, Amin had even gone to the length of employing two cooks from the Soviet republic of Uzbekistan.

On December 27 Amin entertained government ministers at lunch. He wanted to show them his new residence and boast about his Soviet connections. “The Soviet divisions are already on their way. Everything is going fine,” he assured his guests, referring to the thousands of Soviet troops already pouring into Bagram Airport. “I am in constant contact with Comrade Gromyko. We are discussing how to inform the world about the decision to grant us Soviet assistance.”




At the end of the lunch everybody at the table fell violently ill. Amin, together with many of his guests, lost consciousness. Soviet and Afghan doctors were summoned. Although this was obviously a case of mass food poisoning, it did not occur to anyone to suspect the Soviet kitchen staff.

The doctors were greeted by a tableau of wretchedness. All over the palace—in the hallways, on the staircases, in waiting rooms—prominent Afghans were lying in unnatural poses. Some were still unconscious. Some were doubled up, clutching their stomachs. Some were screaming with pain. The Soviet military doctors, who were not informed about the plot to overthrow the Afghan leader, were ushered into an upstairs room where Amin was lying on a bed, dressed only in a pair of shorts. His pulse was weak. His jaw was hanging down, and his eyes were rolling. The doctors pumped his stomach, injected him with antidotes for food poisoning, and attached drips to his veins. Suddenly his eyelids began fluttering. The “Brave Commander” was pulling through.

As he regained consciousness, Amin began asking questions. “What’s happening in my house?” he demanded. “Who did this? Is this an accident—or some kind of diversion?”


 But it still did not occur to him to suspect his Soviet comrades. “Believe it or not, this is the work of the Taraki group,” he told his wife, who had not attended the luncheon.







THE CRUMBLING AVENUES and twisting alleyways of Kabul were practically deserted as Grigori Boyarinov embarked on the mission that would mark the start of the Soviet Union’s last great colonial adventure. The evening curfew came into force at 7:00 p.m., and only security personnel were allowed on the streets. The sprawling mud slums on the outskirts of the city seemed peaceful. Confined to their homes, many Afghan families were preparing to sit down for dinner. Radios and television sets were blaring out from countless courtyards. The aroma of shashlik—a pungent mixture of oil, wood fires, and sizzling meat—filled the crisp winter air.

A plan to poison the Afghan leader and take him into custody had already gone awry. Amin had only nibbled at his food and had been able to make a premature recovery. His aides had resisted Soviet offers to transfer him to the Soviet military hospital in Kabul. Alarmed by the mass food poisoning, the Afghan authorities had begun to strengthen the guard around the palace. The Soviet attack, originally planned for eleven that night, would now have to be brought forward.

Crouching in an armored personnel carrier a couple of miles from the Dār-ol-Amān Palace, Boyarinov waited for the signal to launch the attack. The fifty-seven-year-old colonel was easily the most experienced member of the sixty-member assault team. Indeed he could probably claim to be the Soviet Union’s leading expert on partisan warfare. As a young lieutenant in World War II he had earned numerous medals for bravery by parachuting behind German lines and causing havoc in the enemy’s rear. He had gone on to write a dissertation on the subject, and he had also run a school for KGB snipers. For the last eighteen years he had served as head of the guerrilla warfare department at the KGB staff college, training the young men who would soon be going into battle beside him. Earlier that year Boyarinov had spent three months in Afghanistan, advising the Afghan Army and analyzing the military situation.

If there was going to be action in Afghanistan, Boyarinov wanted to be part of it. This handsome, well-built man, known to everyone as Grisha, felt an obligation to his “boys” in the Alpha and Zenith squads of the KGB. At the same time, like many professional officers, he had some reservations about the whole Afghan business. Before returning to Afghanistan, he had tried to cheer up a KGB colleague who had failed to win a place in the assault team. “Don’t worry, we will get our fill of Afghanistan. It sounds bitter, I know, but I am afraid that this is going to last a long time.”


 After his superiors outlined the operation to him, he commented dryly to a friend, “Let’s hope that the people who prepared this attack know what they are doing.”




Shortly before 7:30 p.m. Soviet commandos blew up the Kabul post office with 115 pounds of plastic explosive. The bomb knocked out the telecommunications system of the Afghan capital. Echoing off the mountains that ring Kabul, the explosion served as a signal to groups of Soviet commandos scattered in different parts of the city to move into action. Within minutes Soviet and Afghan troops were battling for control of key buildings in the capital: the Interior Ministry; the headquarters of the General Staff; the central prison. Red tracer bullets and puffs of artillery smoke flashed across the nighttime sky. The Muslim battalion began firing on the Dār-ol-Amān Palace, and a column of armored cars moved up the serpentine approach road.

The assault plan went wrong from the start. The shelling began too early, depriving the attackers of the advantage of surprise. The shells seemed to bounce off the thick walls of the palace as if they were made of rubber. A burned-out Afghan bus blocked the palace driveway, forcing the Soviet commandos to make a dash for it on foot. Under heavy fire from the upper floors of the palace, they blasted their way into the ground floor with portable grenade launchers. Within the first few minutes of fighting at the palace, half the Soviet assault force lay sprawled on the ground, either dead or injured.

A splinter from a grenade caught Dmitri Volkov in the throat after he had captured an Afghan tank on the approach road to the palace. Gennady Zudin was shot in the head as he squatted behind one of the Corinthian columns that adorned the front of the palace. Valery Yemishev, one of the first men into the palace, had his right hand blown off by an Afghan grenade. A friend took fifteen seconds out of the battle to reconnect the dangling hand with a rubber band. One of the Soviet doctors, Viktor Kusnechenkov, was killed in the crossfire.

Inside the palace there was total chaos. To disguise their identities, the Soviet commandos had put on ill-fitting Afghan army uniforms. Since both sides were also using Soviet weapons, it was difficult to tell them apart. In order to recognize each other, the Soviets screamed Russian swearwords as they raked the long corridors of the palace with machine-gun fire. They would kick a door down, throw in a grenade, and proceed to the next room. Shrieks and groans could be heard from all directions. When it was all over, Soviet cleanup squads carted away two truckloads of Afghan corpses.

As he ran into the palace, Boyarinov was hit by shrapnel. His face and hands were bleeding. His thirty-man team had been given the task of securing the ground floor, but most of them had disappeared. Rushing down a corridor, he spotted the shell-shocked and seriously wounded Sergei Kuvilin.

“We have to destroy the communications center,” Boyarinov shouted.

“There are none of us left. I’m alone.”

“Well, there’re two of us now.”




Boyarinov threw a few grenades into the communications center and then raced up the staircase to Amin’s private apartment, leaving Kuvilin to cover the ground floor. At that moment a burst of automatic fire from somewhere up the staircase blew off Boyarinov’s face.




AS SOVIET ARTILLERY SHELLS SLAMMED into the presidential palace, Hafizullah Amin instructed the commander of the guard to find out where the fire was coming from. “The Soviets will come to our assistance,” he added confidently.




The commander returned in panic a few minutes later. The telephones were not working. He had managed to reach army GHQ in Kabul by wireless. It too was under fire. No Afghan units had moved from their bases. There were no reports of mutiny or unrest. That left only one possibility: The palace was under attack by the “friendly army.”

“That’s impossible, you’re lying,” screamed Amin, throwing an ashtray at the unfortunate aide. “It’s our own mutinous troops.”




Like Czechoslovakia’s Alexander Dubĉek before him, Amin could not believe that his Soviet allies had turned against him. For all his brutality, the Afghan leader had retained an innocent faith in the homeland of world socialism that went back to his days as a student at Kabul University. As a young Communist he had regaled his followers with tales about the valiant Red Army. For this army to attack him was not just betrayal. It was sacrilege.

As the sound of gunfire grew louder, Amin rushed out of his room. Two Soviet doctors cowered behind a bar in the corridor. They could see the Afghan leader dressed in white shorts, with drips still sticking out of his bandaged arms. One of the doctors pulled the needles out of Amin’s arms and dragged him to the bar. All of a sudden they heard a child crying somewhere in the darkness. It was Amin’s five-year-old son. Seeing his father, the boy hurled himself at him, grabbing his legs. Father and son slumped down together beside the wall.

Soviet soldiers discovered the two bodies in a pool of blood. Evidently, they were caught in the crossfire. As they lay dying, the tyrant hugged the boy’s head close to his chest.


 After the fighting died down, a member of a rival Afghan faction insisted on carrying out a formal death sentence on Amin “in the name of the Party and the people.”


 The fact that the dictator was already dead did not deter him from pumping several more bullets into the corpse.




WHILE THE SOVIET COMMANDOS were mounting their assault on the Dār-ol-Amān Palace, the man who was shortly to succeed Amin as president of Afghanistan was cowering in a bunker on the other side of Kabul. Vain, garrulous, and a chronic alcoholic, Babrak Karmal had been one of the original leaders of the Afghan “revolution.” After quarreling with Taraki and Amin he was sent into exile as Afghanistan’s ambassador to Czechoslovakia. The KGB had smuggled him back into Kabul on December 23, 1979, four days before the invasion.




Karmal later boasted that he had directed a “popular uprising” against the tyrannical Amin. In fact he had virtually nothing to do with the fighting. The first meeting of the new Afghan Politburo took place at the Soviet military base at Bagram Airport under the watchful eyes of Karmal’s KGB bodyguards. It was here that Karmal appointed himself general secretary of the Central Committee of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. It was here that he listened to his own prerecorded radio address to the Afghan people broadcast from a transmitter in the Soviet border town of Termez, in which he denounced Amin as an “agent of American imperialism.”

“The day of freedom and rebirth has arrived,” declared the new Afghan leader. “The tyrannical torture machine of Amin and his supporters—the savage butchers, hangmen, usurpers, and murderers of tens of thousands of our compatriots—has been smashed.”




Late that night, after Amin was dead, Karmal climbed into a Soviet armored car. The armored car joined a Soviet convoy, guarded by three tanks, moving cautiously in the direction of the city. As dawn broke, the convoy drove into the center of Kabul. It was a clear, crisp morning. Armed men were everywhere. Tanks and armored vehicles roared down streets littered with burning vehicles and the debris of bombed-out buildings. Karmal and his bodyguards were deposited at the Interior Ministry building, now firmly in the hands of Soviet troops.

As Afghanistan’s new president was arriving in Kabul, another convoy was moving in the opposite direction. At the Kabul airport coffins containing the remains of the twelve Soviet commandos killed during the assault on Dār-ol-Amān were loaded onto transport planes.


 There were special honors for Boyarinov, who was given the posthumous award of Hero of the Soviet Union. They were the first casualties of a war that was to last nearly ten years and take the lives of more than thirteen thousand Soviet servicemen, in addition to half a million Afghans.

As they watched the coffins of their dead comrades being stacked on transport planes at Bagram Airport that wintry morning, the survivors of the attack on Amin’s palace were convinced that the war was over. In fact it was just beginning.

The long-term results of the invasion were almost the exact opposite of the goals of Politburo leaders. Instead of crushing the Afghan opposition, they gave it new life. Instead of striking a blow against the imperialists, they provoked an unlikely coalition of the United States, China, and Saudi Arabia. And instead of defending the prestige of world socialism, they encouraged a generation of Soviet citizens to question where the world’s second superpower was heading.

When the coffins were eventually unloaded on Soviet soil, there were no salutes and no marching band. The Kremlin did not want anyone to know that Soviet citizens were being killed in combat operations in Afghanistan. The funerals took place in secret. A standard formula was adopted to explain the fatalities of a nonexistent war to the families of the victims. Boyarinov and the others had died “while fulfilling their internationalist duty.”




PITSUNDA

December 28, 1979


A WOODED PENINSULA JUTTING OUT into the Black Sea, the Georgian resort of Pitsunda has been known for its natural beauty since ancient Greece. Centuries-old pine trees stretch down to the water’s edge, providing shelter from the sudden winter storms and harsh summer sun. In the first century A.D. the Greeks established a fortified trading settlement on the narrow peninsula, with strong walls to scare away pirates. A thousand years later the rulers of Byzantium transformed the fortress into a kind of medieval health spa with magnificent baths.

After Georgia had been incorporated into the Soviet Union, Pitsunda became a holiday resort for the Communist nomenklatura. Nikita Khrushchev liked the place so much that he had a luxurious villa built by the seashore, surrounded by an ugly concrete wall. Recreation facilities included an Olympic-size swimming pool, a gymnasium, and tennis courts. Two other, slightly less grandiose villas were built on adjacent plots of land for more junior leaders.


 It was at Pitsunda, in October 1964, that Khrushchev learned of the Kremlin coup that forced him out of office.

As they walked down the winding paths of Khrushchev’s old dacha that wintry afternoon, the two youngest members of the Politburo recognized that the Soviet Union was headed in the wrong direction. Both Mikhail Gorbachev and Eduard Shevardnadze were convinced Communists, completely loyal to the system that had sponsored and promoted them. What distinguished them from the older members of the Politburo was a still-youthful energy and optimism, an almost naive belief in socialism’s further perfectibility. There was a word for their generation in Russian: shestidesyatniki, “men of the sixties.” Their formative years had been marked by Khrushchev’s thaw, the brief interlude between the terror of Stalinism and the stagnation of the Brezhnev period. The previous generation, as represented by Brezhnev, had been brought up in an atmosphere of all-pervasive fear. Conservative to the core, they were loath even to tinker with the system, for fear of bringing the whole structure crashing down. The shestidesyatniki, by contrast, were full of confidence in their own abilities and itching for the chance to put things right. They had little firsthand experience of war and terror.

The generational differences between Soviet leaders were summed up by a joke that became popular during Brezhnev’s twilight years. Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev are seated in a compartment of a train that breaks down in the middle of Siberia. After hours of waiting, an argument breaks out between the passengers over how to get the train moving again. “Let’s shoot one of the drivers,” suggests Stalin. “Then the other drivers will know that we mean business.” “No, that’s inhumane. We must abide by socialist norms,” says Khrushchev. “Let’s offer the drivers higher wages.” Unable to agree, the two older men ask Brezhnev to adjudicate. He ponders the question for a long time. “I know,” he replies finally. “Why don’t we just close the blinds and pretend the train is moving? No one will know the difference.”

The Soviet Union had been practically immobile now for fifteen years. Although Gorbachev and Shevardnadze had no clear idea how to get the train moving again, they understood that the first priority was acknowledging that it had stalled. That meant raising the blinds, letting in some fresh air, and ending the pretense about the country’s advancing from one socialist triumph to another.

As the Politburo member in charge of agriculture Gorbachev had an excellent vantage point for observing the ruinous effects of central planning. The world’s largest country—a country that possessed more acres of bountiful farmland than Canada and the United States combined—was unable to feed itself. A net exporter of grain before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Russia was now compelled to scrounge for grain every year from the capitalist West. Russian peasants, corralled into vast state-run farms during Stalin’s collectivization campaign, had forgotten how to farm. Instead of producing goods for a market, they fulfilled the orders of bureaucrats. Prices were established by administrative fiat and bore little relation to real costs. The distorted price structure gave rise to many absurdities. Since the price of bread was heavily subsidized by the state and was lower than the equivalent price of grain, it made perfect economic sense for farmers to use loaves of bread as animal fodder.

Predictably enough, Gorbachev’s early attempts to boost agricultural production met with complete failure. In 1979 the grain harvest was a disastrous 179 million tons, 40 million tons below target. The shortfall would have to be met by imports. As usual, Soviet leaders blamed the weather. But Gorbachev knew perfectly well that the real problem was with the way Soviet agriculture—and, by extension, the entire Soviet economy—was organized. Labor discipline was so poor that hundreds of thousands of kolkhozniks failed to show up for work every day. One-third of the food harvest was lost because of inadequate storage facilities, an outdated transportation system, and general mechanical failures. Tractors and combine harvesters left factories in such poor condition that they invariably had to be repaired as soon as they arrived on the farm.




In public Gorbachev maintained the pretense that all was well. But he talked frankly with Shevardnadze, whom he had known for more than two decades. The two men had much in common. As young men Gorbachev and Shevardnadze had climbed the greasy pole of Soviet politics together, making their early career in the Komsomol, the Communist youth league. Gorbachev became first secretary of the Communist Party in his home region of Stavropol in 1970. At the age of thirty-nine he had in effect become Kremlin plenipotentiary for a predominantly agricultural district roughly the size of Illinois. Two years later Shevardnadze was chosen as Communist Party chief in his native republic of Georgia, on the other side of the Caucasus mountain range.

The two party bosses took their winter vacations together at Pitsunda. During a long walk through the pine woods Shevardnadze described his attempts to increase agricultural production in Georgia by offering peasants financial incentives. The experiment had horrified doctrinaire Marxists, who feared the reemergence of the so-called kulak class, the prosperous, stubbornly independent peasantry destroyed by Stalin. Shevardnadze had taken Gorbachev to meet one of the new kulaks, who kept ten dairy cows at his farmstead. The question now was what to do with this ideological monstrosity.

“If you like, we can de-kulakize him,” said Shevardnadze in his thick Georgian accent. “Then there won’t be any farm, milk, or livestock.”

The party’s new agriculture secretary laughed. “We could de-kulakize him, of course, so that your theoreticians won’t get angry. But how are we going to improve rural life without this kind of kulak?” he replied.




On another occasion Shevardnadze blurted out that everything was “rotten” in the Soviet Union. “We cannot go on living like this. We must think what we can do to salvage the country,” he told Gorbachev.




Both Gorbachev and Shevardnadze were experienced apparatchiks, adept in the ways of Soviet politics. They knew how to camouflage their “experiments” behind innocuous-sounding names. In return for occasional flashes of personal honesty, they joined the rest of the Soviet leadership in ritualistic displays of public hypocrisy.

Gorbachev had honed his sycophantic skills on the important visitors who passed through Stavropol. With its warm weather and mountain spas, the Stavropol region was a favorite vacation destination for the “big pine cones” from Moscow. The local Communist Party chief was responsible for humoring the big shots and helping them unwind from the burdens of office. Party bosses from places like Stavropol were even occasionally referred to as resort secretaries. The opportunities for corruption were immense. The party secretary in the neighboring Krasnodar region, Sergei Medunov, was a notorious bribe taker with close links to the local mob. Gorbachev, by contrast, had a reputation for relative honesty. All the same, for his own political survival, he was obliged to ply his visitors with gifts and cater to their various whims.




An amateur actor in his youth, Gorbachev was particularly good at feigning sincerity. When he praised Brezhnev or spoke about the glorious future awaiting the next generation of Soviet citizens, his deep brown eyes seemed to light up with enthusiasm and conviction. At Politburo meetings he always deferred to his elders. When his turn came to speak, he would invariably support the leader’s position, however absurd or hard-line. When the entire country was called upon to critique Brezhnev’s memoir positively, Gorbachev displayed the required enthusiasm. At an ideological conference in Stavropol he praised the decrepit general secretary for his “titanic daily work,” “deep philosophical penetration,” and “talent for leadership of the Leninist type.” “Communists, and all the workers of Stavropol, are boundlessly grateful to Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev for this truly party-spirited literary work,” Gorbachev declared. He ordered all local newspapers to serialize the turgid volume “in response to the innumerable requests of the workers of Stavropol.”




If Gorbachev was a talented flatterer, Shevardnadze was a virtuoso. In the Georgian tradition, he groveled at the feet of the powerful. At the Twenty-fifth Communist Party Congress in 1976, he lauded Brezhnev’s “high competence, breadth of vision, concreteness, humanity, uncompromising class position, loyalty, principled position, skill at penetrating the soul of his interlocutor, and ability to create an atmosphere of trust between people.” He expressed his nation’s undying loyalty to its big Russian brother in unctuous tones. “They call Georgia a sunny land. But for us, comrades, the real sun rises not in the East, but in the North, in Russia, the sun of Leninist ideas.”




While resting at Pitsunda the future general secretary and his future foreign minister heard an announcement that was to cast a long shadow over their efforts to chart a new course for the Communist superpower. On the morning of December 28 Radio Moscow began retransmitting the speech by Babrak Karmal proclaiming the dawn of a new “day of freedom.” A few hours later the radio reported that the Afghan government had sent an urgent request to the Soviet Union for “immediate political, moral, and economic aid, including military aid.” “The government of the Soviet Union has met the request of Afghanistan,” the announcer added, without elaboration.




As candidate, or nonvoting, members of the Politburo, neither Gorbachev nor Shevardnadze had been informed about the plans to invade Afghanistan. Both men later claimed that they were shocked by the decision, which they described as a “fatal error” and a “crime against humanity.”


 In June 1980, however, they joined other Central Committee members in unanimously endorsing a resolution claiming that the Red Army had foiled “imperialist” plans to turn Afghanistan into a “bridgehead for military aggression” against the Soviet Union. Shevardnadze went out of his way to praise Brezhnev once again for his far-sighted leadership, hailing the invasion as “a brave, uniquely loyal, uniquely courageous step… that has been received with approval by every Soviet citizen.”




By sending troops to Afghanistan, Kremlin leaders imagined that they had bought a few years’ peace and quiet, just as they had with the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. They could not have been more wrong. While Gorbachev and the other Central Committee members were raising their hands to approve the provision of “fraternal assistance” to Afghanistan, even more serious trouble was brewing at the opposite end of their empire: in Poland.




GDAŃSK

August 15, 1980


THE GATES OF THE LENIN SHIPYARD were locked shut when I arrived on the second day of the strike that was to foreshadow the downfall of communism. A portrait of John Paul II, the Polish pope, had been attached to the front of the gate, like a talisman protecting the strikers from the fury of the Communist regime. The white and red Polish flag hung limply from the top of the gate. STRAJK OKUPACIJNY, “Occupation Strike,” proclaimed a nearby placard. Workers in grimy overalls clutched the gray metal railings with their fists, gazing out at a crowd of several hundred sympathizers and relatives. The gate was adorned with freshly cut red and white flowers.

Hundreds of strikes had taken place around Poland over the previous few weeks to protest a rise in meat prices, but they had always been settled behind closed doors. Strike leaders calculated that the presence of journalists, particularly foreign journalists, would only complicate their negotiations with the regime. Communist ideologists regarded factories, coal mines, and shipyards as proletarian fortresses, built to withstand the assaults of class enemies. In years of wandering around the Soviet bloc, I had never once been permitted to visit a factory without being chaperoned by government officials.

To my amazement, the shipyard gates suddenly opened a crack, and I was ushered into the forbidden world. Marxist ideologists would never be able to come up with a satisfactory explanation for the scene that now confronted me: workers rebelling against the “workers’ state.” Strikers were lounging around on the grass, sitting on torn-up pieces of asbestos. Heated discussions were going on everywhere, as if people had just been released from a lifetime vow of silence. Some workers had scrambled on top of the shipyard walls, to honks of support from passing motorists. An incongruous touch was provided by several dozen patients from the shipyard hospital, who were wandering around in striped pajamas and red dressing gowns. When the strikers found out that I represented a Western newspaper, they came up and hugged me excitedly. Cries of “Amerika, Amerika” rippled around the shipyard.

I was led to a large hall, decorated with a statue of Vladimir Lenin at one end and a model sailing ship at the other. Negotiations were already under way between the strike committee and the shipyard director, Klemens Gniech. The man sitting opposite Gniech caught my attention immediately. A shortish figure, about five feet seven, he was dressed in a crumpled dark suit and a checkered, open-neck shirt. Apart from his oversize mustache, the first things I noticed were his quick, darting eyes, impish smile, and cheeky, rasping voice. He had the air of a born rabble-rouser.

“That’s our leader. His name is Lech Wałęsa,” whispered my guide, Gregorz Obernicowicz. “He’s the person who decided to let you in.”

Wałęsa understood, almost instinctively, that the ability to command public attention was his most valuable asset. He also realized that he could use the Western media to circumvent the information blockade imposed by the Communist authorities. Since childhood he had secretly listened to the broadcasts of Radio Free Europe and the BBC. He knew that any reports filed by a Western journalist about the shipyard strike would immediately be broadcast back to Poland by Western radio stations—and heard by millions of Poles.

Speaking the truth openly was Wałęsa’s trump card. It was what distinguished him from the despised apparatchiks and gave him his authority. When I asked him that first day why he had decided to allow a foreign journalist into the shipyard—when other strike leaders had kept us out—he replied: “We want to show people that they do not have to be afraid.”

Later on the strike in the Lenin Shipyard became an international media event. Negotiations were conducted under the glare of television arc lights. During the first few days, however, the atmosphere was extraordinarily intimate. I felt as if I had wandered behind the scenes of an elaborate theater production. For years the Communist authorities had forced Western journalists to watch the show from the balcony. We suspected that what we were seeing on the other side of the proscenium arch was false but could never be sure. The actors had become thoroughly accustomed to the lines written for them by the party ideologists. Yet here they were, rebelling against the director and rewriting the script. The make-believe world created by Communist propaganda had been shattered.

Watching the workers gain confidence in one another, I understood why the authorities attached so much importance to walls and fences. In order to preserve and consolidate their power, the Communists had taken the strategy of “divide and rule” to its logical extreme. The most obvious wall was the one that divided Communist countries from the outside world: the Iron Curtain. But equally important were the internal walls that divided workers from intellectuals, crane operators from welders, Poles from Jews. Some of these barriers were real. They took the form of censorship, restrictions on freedom of movement, and a ban on independent organizations of any kind. But many were psychological, the legacy of decades of arbitrary rule and a climate of ingrained fear. Freedom of association was a mortal threat to the totalitarian regime. As the self-appointed instrument of historical progress, the Communist Party controlled an atomized and defeated society.

When I think back to the shipyard strike, what sticks in my mind most of all was the extraordinary lightness of spirit. There were many tense moments, particularly at the beginning, but the predominant mood was one of infectious gaiety. The warm August sunshine helped create a holiday atmosphere. But mostly it was the smiles on people’s faces, the sense of walls coming down, the sheer irreverence and improbability of it all. When the workers were discussing what material to use for a monument to commemorate the victims of Communist repression, someone pointed to the life-size Lenin on the podium. “We won’t be needing him anymore. Let’s use that,” he suggested, to ironic cheers.

There was a quality of self-liberation about the conversations that took place at the shipyard in August 1980. After years of lies, people were at last looking one another in the eye and telling the truth. They were learning not to be afraid, as Wałęsa had hoped. In the process they helped liberate the rest of us from our own preconceptions. We discovered that people we had previously dismissed as representatives of Marx’s lumpen proletariat were individuals with hopes, worries, and diverse points of view.

I also remember the sight of the crowd standing outside the shipyard gate, stretching back as far as the eye could see. It was crowds like this—good-humored, self-disciplined, incredibly patient—that had greeted the pope on his return to Poland the previous summer. There were people in the crowd from all walks of life: factory workers; office employees; students. As they waited for a glimpse of Wałęsa, they held impromptu discussions. I was reminded of John Reed’s account of the Russian Revolution. “For months in Petrograd, and all over Russia, every street-corner was a public tribune. In railway trains, street-cars, always the spurting up of impromptu debate, everywhere,” wrote Reed in Ten Days That Shook the World.

Over the next decade I was to witness such scenes many times over as Poles—followed by Baits, Czechs, Ukrainians, Germans, and finally Russians—unmade the revolution that Reed had chronicled.




LECH WAŁĘSA WAS a child of postwar Poland. He had taken part in the great social upheavals that spawned the Communist world’s first free trade union movement: the massive migration from the impoverished countryside; the struggle of the Catholic Church against an atheistic regime; the strikes and demonstrations along the Baltic coast in 1970. His life could almost be a symbol of Poland’s postwar history, with its cycles of soaring hopes and bitter disappointments.

When Wałęsa was born, in the tiny village of Popowo, in central Poland, the country was under German occupation. A few months after his birth, in September 1943, his father was hauled off to a Nazi concentration camp, where he died two years later. By the time Lech went to school, Poland was firmly within the Soviet camp, having been liberated from the east by the Red Army. The Soviets grabbed the eastern part of the country for themselves, compensating the Poles with a two-hundred-mile swath of formerly German territory. They installed a Communist-led government in Warsaw, making sure that all the key posts were held by Moscow-trained apparatchiks. Everything about the new regime—from the crash industrialization program and ubiquitous secret police to the Stalinist architecture and uplifting slogans promising a socialist utopia—was based on the Soviet model.

A long history of struggle against foreign occupation, including Russian occupation, had prepared the Poles to resist attempts to Sovietize the country. At school children were encouraged to become Communist pioneers and follow the footsteps of “Grandpa Lenin.” At home they were brought up on tales of the epic anti-Russian uprisings of the nineteenth century and the “Miracle on the Vistula” in August 1920, when Marshal Józef Piłsudski’s legions routed the Red Army. In their factories, on weekdays, workers were exposed to an unending stream of Marxist propaganda at obligatory Communist Party meetings. In church, on Sundays, they attended to spiritual needs that were beyond the reach of the seemingly all-powerful state.

In 1966, at the age of twenty-three, Wałęsa moved from central Poland to Gdańsk, following in the footsteps of millions of young Poles. Gdańsk, formerly the free town of Danzig, had been part of the territories “reclaimed” by Poland following the defeat of Nazi Germany. During the first wave of migration, immediately after World War II, the largely German population was driven out. A second wave of migration followed in the fifties and sixties, as the result of the Communist government’s program of breakneck industrialization. A predominantly agricultural country was transformed into a predominantly urban one in the space of two decades.

There was a political rationale behind this social revolution. Marxist ideologists believed that the most effective way of consolidating the power of the party—and shattering the reactionary influence of the church—was to create an urban working class. The church could continue to wield its influence in the countryside, but the party would dominate the cities.

If the party had provided the new proletariat with decent working and living conditions, the strategy might have made some sense. But the factories and coal mines of the workers’ state were sweatshops, more reminiscent of Dickensian England than the promised socialist utopia. The Lenin Shipyard, Wałęsa later recalled, lacked the most elementary conveniences for workers. “When I arrived, our shipyard looked like a factory filled with men in filthy rags, unable to wash themselves or urinate in toilets. To get down to the ground floor where toilets were located took at least half an hour, so we just went anywhere. You can’t imagine how humiliating these working conditions were.”


 In rainy weather workers returned home soaked to the skin because there was no place to change. Safety standards were abysmal. Shortly after Wałęsa joined the shipyard as an apprentice electrician, twenty-two workers were burned alive in an explosion on a ship they were rushing to complete.

Living conditions for workers were equally primitive. The younger workers stayed in hostels, three or four to a room, with a kitchen and shower at the end of each corridor. Fights broke out frequently, particularly on payday, when workers drowned their misery in vodka. The areas around the hostels were wastelands of broken glass and uncollected garbage.

What Gdańsk did possess in abundance was the spirit of freedom. A strategically important port of nearly half a million people, the city has always looked outward. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, it was one of the most important trading posts in the Baltic. The magnificent old town, with its baroque and Gothic churches and Renaissance guild hall, was built during a period when Gdańsk was the respected trading partner of cities like Bruges, London, and Hamburg. The huge granaries along the banks of the Vistula River are a reminder of the time when Poland was Europe’s largest grain exporter. During the Communist period, as Poland became a net importer of food, the grain started moving in the opposite direction.

Proclaimed a Free City after World War I, under League of Nations control, Gdańsk was the spark that ignited World War II. Hitler was determined to get Danzig back and cut Poland’s land corridor to the sea. The first shots of the war were fired a few miles away, at the coastal fort of Westerplatte, by the German battle cruiser Schleswig-Holstein on September 1, 1939. To die or not to die “for Danzig” became a burning moral issue for millions of young Europeans who could barely locate the city on a map.

The city’s reputation as a flash point for political unrest was strengthened by the workers’ rebellion of December 1970. The first confrontation with the security forces had taken place right outside the shipyard gate. The workers had intended to march to the town hall with the centuries-old demands of Polish insurrectionaries, bread and freedom. Singing the Communist anthem, the “Internationale,” they were greeted by a burst of automatic rifle fire. Within seconds dozens of demonstrators lay sprawled on the ground. The casualty toll from that single incident was four dead and fifteen injured.




A member of the original shipyard strike committee, Wałęsa remained obsessed with the idea of honoring the memory of his fallen comrades. He remembered how the survivors had draped the murdered workers’ helmets in black crepe and attached them to the shipyard gate. They had daubed the blood of the victims onto bedsheets to form four red crosses, which they hung from a window of the shipyard hospital. “We then sang the national anthem, laying particular stress on the words: ‘We’ll recover with the sword what the alien forces have taken from us.’ Loudspeakers had been set up on the gate so that the government pawns could hear what we had to say, and we began the chant, ‘Murderers, murderers.’ ”




The Communist authorities were equally determined to erase all traces of the tragedy. The corpses of the victims had been spirited away in the middle of the night, to be buried in unmarked graves. Their relatives were warned to keep quiet or face the possibility of dismissal from work or losing their place in the line for housing. The Communist apparatchiks and army generals who gave the order to shoot were never punished. Promises to erect a monument to the dead were never kept. It was even unclear exactly how many people had died as a result of the disturbances. The official figure was fifty-five, but many people in Gdańsk suspected that the real number was much higher.

Wałęsa used anniversaries of the December 1970 riots to denounce the Communist authorities. He organized unofficial rallies outside gate number two of the shipyard to demand that the authorities keep their promise to erect a memorial to the dead. The number of people attending these rallies grew from six in 1976 to one hundred in 1977 to five hundred in 1978. In December 1979 the shipyard management had attempted to sabotage the commemoration by sending workers home early, ostensibly as an “energy-saving measure.” But some five thousand people turned up to listen to Wałęsa call for the establishment of a free trade union, independent of Communist Party control. At the end of his speech he urged everybody in the crowd to return to the same spot the following year, bearing a large stone.

“We’ll build a mound with those stones, we’ll cement them over, and that will be our monument. We’ll erect it ourselves.!”







THE SHIPYARD STRIKE WAS originally planned for August 13, 1980. But Wałęsa had to help his long-suffering wife, Danuta, at home that day—she had just given birth to their fifth child—so the revolution was postponed for twenty-four hours.

The instigators of the strike were three young shipyard workers: Jurek Borowczyk, Ludwik Pradzynski, and Bogdan Felski.


 They all were in their early twenties, with no family commitments, few inhibitions, and practically nothing to lose. They shared the anger of the older workers over the humiliating living conditions and the arrogance of the one-party state but did not share their sense of caution. They had still been children in December 1970, when Polish security forces opened fire on workers outside the shipyard, and had not experienced political defeat. The consumer culture of the seventies, promoted by the party as a means of diverting the attention of young people away from politics, had put them in touch with Western fashions and Western ideas. While older workers were awed by the repressive power of the Communist government, for these young men, the regime was an irrelevance.

Borowczyk and his friends felt reasonably confident they could persuade their workmates to join a protest action. Tens of thousands of Polish workers had already staged strikes over the government’s attempts to raise meat prices at at the beginning of July. On each occasion, the workers had called off their protest after being promised large pay increases by the government. Such victories meant little at a time of high inflation. Within a few months the workers were as bad off as before. It was essential that the Gdańsk strike be organized properly.

In order to sustain their protest and ensure that the whole shipyard came out on strike, the young radicals knew that they needed someone experienced. Wałęsa was an ideal choice. He enjoyed considerable authority in the shipyard as one of the leaders of the failed 1970 uprising. He was also well known in Gdańsk as a prominent member of the underground Baltic free trade union movement. There were other opposition figures in the city, who were better read and had greater strategic vision. But Wałęsa had a special talent: making a nuisance of himself in public. He would seize any opportunity to denounce the Communist regime. He would hop on a tram or bus and immediately start distributing antigovernment leaflets. When he took a taxi, he would try to convert the driver to the cause of free trade unions. Exasperated by his behavior, the shipyard management had fired him for insolence in 1976. The authorities frequently locked him up in prison for forty-eight hours at a time. But all attempts to control the feisty little electrician were useless. Wałęsa would even argue with his jailers.

In early August the management of the Gdańsk shipyard handed the free trade union the perfect excuse for a strike. It fired an elderly crane operator named Anna Walentynowicz five months before she was due for retirement. The dismissal letter accused Walentynowicz of “severe violations” of labor discipline. Her real crime was her persistence in distributing Coastal Worker, the free trade-union newsletter. The union decided to retaliate.

If there was a guiding mind behind the initial organization of the strike, it was Bogdan Borusewicz, the thirty-year-old chief editor of Coastal Worker. A graduate of the Catholic University of Lublin, Borusewicz had a long history of conflict with the authorities. During the student unrest of 1968 he had been sentenced to three years in prison for handing out illegal leaflets in Gdańsk. He was in close contact with intellectual and dissident circles in Warsaw. It was Borusewicz who recruited the three young men from the shipyard—Borowczyk, Pradzynski, and Felski—to bring their fellow workers out on strike. Accustomed to the ways of conspiracy, he insisted on the need for strict secrecy. Even Wałęsa was given less than twenty-four hours’ notice of the final date of the strike.




On the morning of August 14 the three young workers fanned out across the sprawling shipyard. Each was armed with a dozen posters and five hundred or so leaflets, printed on the illegal presses of Coastal Worker. Borowczyk headed for his department, K-5, on the other side of a canal that runs through the middle of the shipyard. Rusting away in a corner of the department were piles of imported steel-welding equipment, costing millions of dollars, which nobody had learned how to put to use properly.




The workers crowded around Borowczyk as he began distributing leaflets in the locker room. Signed by the editorial board of Coastal Worker, the leaflets called for the reinstatement of Anna Walentynowicz. “The authorities frequently resort to isolating those who show leadership potential,” the leaflets declared. “If today we fail to make our opposition felt, there will be no one to contest the increase in working hours, the violations of security rules, or the compulsory overtime. The best way of defending our own interests is to defend one another.”


 In order to broaden the appeal of the strike, Borowczyk added a second demand, a thousand-zloty pay rise.

His colleagues were sympathetic but frightened. “Why doesn’t a larger department begin the strike?” asked one worker. “We’re not standing here any longer, let’s go back to the hall,” said another, glancing around nervously. Borowczyk knew that if the workers went back to the hall, under the gaze of the foreman and the Communist Party secretary, all would be lost. He had no idea if other departments had joined the strike, but he decided to take a risk.

“Let’s go to K-three and K-four,” he said, referring to two giant hull-making departments. “They’ve both stopped.”




A group of about thirty workers agreed to follow him. Beneath a makeshift banner announcing their two demands, they marched back across the drawbridge to the main section of the yard. Everywhere knots of curious workers formed to watch them pass, a lonely band of determined men dwarfed by the towering cranes and red propaganda posters hailing the glorious Communist future. “Come with us,” they chanted. Khodz z namy. It was the same cry that had reverberated around the shipyard a decade before. In little groups of three and four, workers clambered down from the half-finished ships to join the swelling procession. Someone switched on the shipyard warning sirens, the agreed signal for the beginning of the strike.

Wearing their blue-gray overalls and yellow hard hats, the workers skirted the back of the electricians’ hall, W-4, where Wałęsa had worked four years previously. They headed for the K-3 department at the far end of the shipyard, near gate number three. A crowd of several hundred workers had gathered outside K-3, reading the posters hung up by Ludwik Pradzynski. The effect of the two groups coming together was electric. “Hurrah, hurrah,” they cheered. Suddenly they no longer felt alone.

By now they were several thousand strong. Growing more confident, they marched very slowly around the entire shipyard once again, attracting supporters as they went. They ended up at gate number two, where the tragedy of December 1970 had occurred. But this time, instead of surging out onto the streets, they halted. A minute’s silence was declared in memory of the fallen. Then, their throats sore with emotion, they sang the national anthem, “Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła, Póki my żyjemy” “Poland has not perished yet / So long as we live.”




LECH WAŁĘSA HEARD THE WAILING of the shipyard sirens at home in Stogi, a drab working-class suburb of crumbling prefabricated apartment blocks on the eastern outskirts of Gdańsk. He knew exactly what it meant. The shipyard named for the founder of the world’s first socialist state was on strike.

Family problems had prevented him from getting away any sooner. His trade union activities had caused him to miss the birth of his daughter Ania a few days before. Police had knocked on the door of their two-room apartment with an arrest warrant just as his wife, Danuta, was about to go into labor. Detaining opposition activists for forty-eight-hour stints, without bringing formal charges, was a standard form of official harassment. By the time he was released, baby Ania had already been born. The trauma of the birth, in a crowded, unsanitary hospital, had left Danuta exhausted and barely able to stand. She insisted that Lech get the older kids dressed and take them to school before rushing off to change the world.

As he rode the tramway to the shipyard, dressed in his most respectable clothes, a shabby gray suit that looked as if it needed a good dry cleaning, Wałęsa wondered why he had not been arrested again. He could see a Polish Fiat trailing the tram: the secret police were keeping a close eye on him. The authorities were expecting trouble in Gdańsk. A few days previously the party’s top ideologist had boasted that the police knew the names and addresses of twelve thousand opposition activists in Poland. Rounding up potential troublemakers in a city like Gdańsk was a relatively simple affair. A dark thought flashed across Wałęsa’s mind: Perhaps they actually want us to go on strike, so they can gun us all down once again.




By the time he arrived at the shipyard thirty-five minutes later, he had overcome his doubts. He thought of baby Ania and the life that awaited her in the People’s Poland. There was no going back. It was up to ordinary Poles to assume responsibility for their own destiny, regardless of the Machiavellian calculations of Communist Party apparatchiks.

A crowd of people was milling around gate number two, the main entrance to the shipyard. Wałęsa could see that the guards were checking every pass. In order to get back into the yard, from which he had been banished four years previously, he climbed over a nearby brick wall.

A meeting was under way in the main square of the shipyard, just outside the red-brick hospital building. The shipyard director, Klemens Gniech, was attempting to persuade the workers to end the strike. He appeared to be having some success. There were boos and catcalls, but some people were drifting back to work. Wałęsa climbed up on the excavator. “Do you know who I am?” he asked angrily, tapping Gniech rudely on the shoulder. “I worked in this shipyard for ten years, and still feel myself to be a shipyard worker. I have the confidence of the workforce. It’s been four years since I lost my job.”




The director was so astonished that he found it difficult to speak. The workers cheered one of their own. Sensing that he had got the upper hand, the quarrelsome electrician threw in several more demands for good measure. These included his own reinstatement and the construction of a monument to the fallen shipyard workers. He upped the demand for a pay raise to two thousand zlotys. The cheers grew even louder. Feeling the crowd behind him, Wałęsa announced an “occupation strike” and promised the workers that he would be the “last one” to leave the shipyard.

“I landed a straight left and put him down so quickly that he almost fell out of the ring,” Wałęsa recalled later. “I shouted at him that the workers wouldn’t go anywhere if they weren’t sure that they had obtained what they wanted. So they felt strong, and I became their leader.”







WARSAW

August 15, 1980


EDWARD GIEREK WAS ON HOLIDAY in the Soviet Union when he heard about the strike at the Lenin Shipyard. Vacations by the Black Sea had become an annual ritual for the men who served as Moscow’s proconsuls in Eastern Europe. Every August, at Brezhnev’s invitation, the first secretaries of the ruling Communist parties assembled at a nineteenth-century palace on the southern tip of the Crimea. Luxuriating in tsarist splendor, they inhaled the sea air, gloated over the misfortunes afflicting the capitalist world, and issued self-congratulatory communiqués.

The trips to the Crimea gave Gierek an opportunity to demonstrate his good standing with Brezhnev. The obligatory television pictures of the two Communist Party chiefs embracing each other on the cheeks sent a message to political rivals back home. That was one reason why he had gone ahead with his vacation at a time when labor unrest was sweeping the country. His Politburo colleagues might grumble about his economic policies and engage in the endless game of bureaucratic intrigue behind his back. But there was little chance that they would make any serious move against him as long as he appeared to enjoy the confidence of the Kremlin.

It had not been a restful vacation. Shortly after his arrival in the Crimea, at the end of July, Gierek had had an unpleasant interview with Brezhnev. The gensek was greatly alarmed by a strike in the eastern Polish city of Lublin that had paralyzed the main Moscow-Berlin railway line.


 For four days the Soviet Union had been without rail communications with its frontline troops in East Germany. Such a state of affairs was intolerable, Brezhnev made clear. Gierek had tried to reassure the old man. For a few days the strike wave appeared to subside. Then came the shattering news from Gdańsk.

A special plane was dispatched from Warsaw to bring the first secretary back home. From the airport he drove to Communist Party headquarters. As he walked through the oak doors of the Politburo conference room, his colleagues rose respectfully from their seats.




The Politburo had been in emergency sessions since the previous day, when the Lenin Shipyard had gone on strike. The party secretary responsible for national security, Stanislaw Kania, reported that the strike had already paralyzed most of the Gdańsk region. A wave of panic buying had been observed along the Baltic coast. There were signs of trouble spreading to other parts of the country. A state of alert had been ordered in the armed forces, and army and police reserves dispatched to Gdańsk.

“And where are all the party members?” demanded Gierek, seated at the head of the oval conference table, in the place of honor, directly beneath an oil portrait of Lenin.




The question was directed at Kania, a thick-jowled apparatchik with a square peasant’s face. During Gierek’s absence in the Crimea he had been left in charge in Warsaw. He had paid a series of visits to trouble spots around the country, including Gdańsk, and understood something that Gierek had not yet grasped: The party had lost its authority.

“The party members are not strong enough to oppose what is now going on,” he replied. “There were no signals that a strike was about to start in the shipyard. They were taken unawares. There is now a real danger that the situation could get out of control.”




Other Politburo members supported Kania. During the two weeks Gierek had been away, not a single day had gone by without a strike. Deteriorating standards of living had left rank-and-file party members demoralized. “Antisocialist elements” were exploiting the legitimate discontent of the workers. Economic demands were being transformed into political demands, including the establishment of free trade unions. Despite rigid censorship and the resolutely upbeat tone of the official media, news about fresh outbreaks of labor unrest traveled fast. Foreign radio stations, particularly Radio Free Europe, were devoting blanket coverage to the crisis.

The news from Gdańsk was politically devastating for Gierek. A former coal miner with a reputation for caring about workers, he had come to power on the wave of labor unrest in December 1970 that had sealed the fate of his predecessor, the autocratic Władysław Gomułka. Several weeks after his appointment, Gierek had visited the Lenin Shipyard to appeal to the workers for their “help.” “We will help you, Comrade Gierek,” the workers had shouted back. “Pomożemy, Towarysz Gierek.” Pomożemy had become the slogan of the Gierek regime.




The first secretary understood the cutthroat world of party politics better than anyone else in the room. He suspected that his enemies in the Politburo were exploiting the latest outbreak of strikes to move against him.


 He asked himself the question that Communist Party bosses usually ask themselves in such circumstances: Who stood to gain from his overthrow?

The answer seemed obvious: the security apparatus. During a period of social upheaval the armed forces and the Interior Ministry became the guarantors of political stability in the country. There could be no major shakeup in either institution until the strikes were over. With their vast network of agents and informers around the country, the security chiefs were also best placed to manipulate the unrest to their own advantage.

Kania seemed harmless enough. He was known to be fond of alcohol and was frequently incapable of serious work after lunch. In Communist Party circles such a weakness was not generally considered an obstacle to high office: It made a man more pliable, more dependent on his Politburo colleagues. Recently, however, Kania had been displaying some worrying signs of independence. Furthermore, he had a powerful ally in the defense minister, General Wojciech Jaruzelski.




Like many high-ranking Polish Communists, Gierek could not understand why the security chiefs had allowed the labor unrest to grow and grow without taking elementary countermeasures. Had they wanted to put a stop to the strikes, he reasoned, it would have been a simple enough matter to isolate the principal troublemakers and prevent information reaching Western correspondents in Warsaw. But Kania had said repeatedly that the situation was under control and that Gierek should go ahead with his Crimean holiday. Now that the strikes were spreading along the Baltic coast, the task of restoring order was more difficult.

Gierek’s first instinct was to counterattack. Obviously, he told the Politburo, the strikers were inspired by “outside forces.”

“This is not something we need to discuss today, but we do need to think about it,” said Gierek, suggesting he might favor an armed crackdown. “It is clear that this period of tension cannot go on indefinitely. It may take a more dangerous form—and that would compel us to use force.”




Within hours of Gierek’s return to Warsaw, the machinery of repression had moved into high gear, and columns of riot troops were moving in the direction of Gdańsk. The Polish government placed three army regiments stationed in the Gdańsk region on a state of alert. Soviet naval ships appeared off the Baltic coast. Warsaw Pact troops in East Germany and the western Soviet Union were called up for what the Soviet news agency Tass euphemistically described as “routine maneuvers.”


 Telephone communications with Gdańsk were cut. A task force was established in the Ministry of Interior to prepare a plan to crush the rebellion and normalize “the country’s social and political situation.” The plan, code-named Summer ’80, envisaged the storming of the Lenin Shipyard by helicopter, the arrest of Wałęsa and other strike leaders, and twenty-four-hour surveillance of “antisocialist forces.”




The immediate priority was to contain the revolt within the Lenin Shipyard.




WHILE GIEREK WAS DEMANDING a smothering of information about the unrest in Gdańsk, a balding man in a moth-eaten silk dressing gown was busy dispensing it as rapidly as possible. Jacek Kuroń lived in a three-room apartment on Adam Mickiewicz Street, a fifteen-minute tram ride from the Central Committee building. Over the last month he had slept no more than three or four hours a night. He spent his days and nights on the phone, relaying information from the strike committees springing up around Poland to Western news organizations in Warsaw.

Kuroń’s address book contained the names and telephone numbers of hundreds of opposition activists in towns and villages all over Poland, from Arłamow to Zakopane. Western correspondents used to joke that it was the most subversive document in the Soviet empire. Its owner sat behind a large wooden desk, littered with half-drunk cups of coffee, discarded cigarette packages, old newspapers, hastily scribbled notes, and a battered orange phone. A human dynamo, he was seldom in repose. He would dial one number, listen for fifteen or twenty seconds, and bark out a few commands. Practically hoarse from a surfeit of talking, smoking, and drinking, he would pause only to dial a new number. He talked at machine-gun speed—as if expecting the telephone to be cut off at any moment. In the rare moments when he was not on the phone, Kuroń devoted his attention to the never-ending stream of visitors who tramped through his apartment. After the last visitor had left, he would slump down on a couch in the corner of the room for a few hours’ sleep.

For Poland’s Communist leaders, this disheveled personage was Lucifer incarnate, an “enemy of the state” and a “hireling of world imperialism.” For the country’s rapidly growing dissident movement, he had an almost godlike status. He was organizer, ideologist, and den mother rolled into one.

A former “Red Scout” and lecturer at Warsaw University, Kuroń had received an orthodox Marxist education. He had been active in the Communist youth movement and had appeared destined for a brilliant Communist Party career. But he had fallen out with the authorities in the early sixties for writing a Trotskyist critique that accused the Communist bureaucracy of exploiting the working class as ruthlessly as capitalists did. Since 1965 Kuroń had spent more than six years in jail for “antistate activities.” While he was in prison, his political views had evolved. He found inspiration in Polish history books, particularly works about the great nineteenth-century insurrections against Russian rule. He ceased to think in Marxist terms. Although he never became a believer, he came to respect the Catholic Church for its role in preserving Poland’s national identity. He began to consider the problem of how civil society could develop in the shadow of a totalitarian regime.

Contrary to what the official news media said about him, Kuroń did not advocate an all-out confrontation with the state. Indeed, he was convinced that society had no chance of winning a violent showdown with a heavily armed opponent. This was the lesson of the workers’ rebellion of 1970.

The only solution was to bypass the party altogether. Society would ignore the institutions of the Communist regime and create its own unofficial structures, rolling back the frontiers of totalitarianism. By behaving as if they were free, Poles eventually would become free. Underground newspapers would make a mockery of government censorship. A “flying university,” meeting in private homes, would circumvent the state education system. A network of civic defense committees would result in de facto freedom of association. The structures of Communist power would be preserved as an ideological fig leaf for the Kremlin, but Poland would become a pluralist society in all but name.

“Don’t burn down party committees; found your own” was Kuroń’s motto.

The free trade unionists in Gdańsk formed part of Kuroń’s extended opposition family. At the heart of the network was the Workers’ Defense Committee, known by its Polish initials as KOR. Founded in 1976 by a group of Warsaw intellectuals to assist the victims of police brutality, KOR soon developed into a political pressure group. Its members issued statements drawing attention to human rights violations and criticizing the Communist Party’s management of the economy. KOR became a kind of umbrella organization for other opposition groups, ranging from peasants’ defense committees to underground publishers. When a new wave of labor unrest broke out in July 1980 over a government plan to raise the price of meat, Kuroń established a strike information center in his apartment.

Kuroń and his friends recognized that the Polish Communists were not going to give up any of their hard-won political power willingly. They believed, however, that the stark facts of economic decline would oblige the regime to come to an understanding with the opposition. By holding down the living standards of ordinary people, the Communist countries of Eastern Europe had achieved some remarkably high rates of economic growth in the fifties and sixties. But the era of high growth rates had now come to an end. In 1979, for the first time in postwar Poland, the economy had actually shrunk by some 2 percent. The sacrifices had been in vain. The boom had turned into a bust.

The most immediate crisis facing the regime was a crippling foreign debt. During the early seventies the Gierek government had borrowed billions of dollars to finance grandiose investment projects. Western banks and governments had fallen over themselves to provide credit; the Soviet bloc was generally considered a “good risk.” Surely, it was argued, the Kremlin would never allow one of its satellites to default. Gierek boasted about building “a second Poland.” The idea was to construct hundreds of modern factories, dramatically increase the production of consumer goods, and pay back the loan with increased exports to the West. But the plan had misfired. Few of the projects selected by the supposedly omniscient planners had been economically justified. Most were the result of the personal whims of Polish leaders, large bribes from Western companies, or sheer bureaucratic incompetence. By 1980 Poland owed its creditors some eighteen billion dollars. Virtually every dollar that Poland earned in foreign exchange from exports was earmarked for servicing the debt.

The unofficial opposition was ready to help the government find a way out of the crisis—for a price. Polish society had to be allowed to develop its own “self-governing” institutions. The Communist Party would have to provide guarantees that it would no longer resort to arbitrary violence and would not renege on concessions extracted in moments of weakness. Leaders who had previously been accountable to no one but themselves would have to submit to some kind of social control. At the very least, that meant open discussion of the economic and social catastrophe facing the country.

After the government had cut telephone and telex links between Gdańsk and Warsaw, the boundlessly energetic Kuroń devised a human relay system to circumvent the information blockade. As soon as something happened at the shipyard, his acolytes in the free trade union movement would drive a hundred miles or so in the direction of Warsaw. When they found a functioning telephone, they would call Kuroń. The system was cumbersome, but it worked.

On Saturday, August 16, Kuroń’s informants reported that the strike committee had agreed to a compromise pay offer and had called off the strike. A few hours later came news that the shipyard workers had decided to continue the strike—in solidarity with other workers in the Gdańsk region.

As Kuroń relayed the story, Wałęsa had been on the point of going home to his wife and children when he was confronted by angry delegates from other factories. “If you abandon us, we’ll be lost,” screamed the representatives of the striking bus and tram drivers. “Buses can’t face tanks.” Several hundred predominantly young workers surged around Wałęsa, chanting, “Solidarity, Solidarity.” Wałęsa grabbed a microphone and began speaking to the crowd gathered in front of the shipyard gates.




“I promised you that I would stay here to the end. Who wants to go on with the strike?”

Chants of “We do,” “We do.”

“Who wants to end the strike?”

Silence.

“The strike goes on!”

It was a crucial moment, as Kuroń was quick to appreciate. The Communist authorities were dealing no longer with an isolated outbreak of labor unrest, but with a vast protest movement that would grow until it enveloped all sections of Polish society. As a first step the workers in Gdańsk had established an interfactory strike committee to represent the interests of striking workers all over the country. Wałęsa had been elected chairman. The workers’ principal demand, stabbing like a dagger to the heart of Communist ideology, was free trade unions.




WARSAW

August 29, 1980


EDWARD GIEREK REMEMBERED with bitterness how the whole country had breathed a sigh of relief when he came to power. Striking workers along the Baltic coast had hailed him as one of their own. Communist apparatchiks had predicted that he would help restore the party’s depleted authority. The Kremlin had showered him with compliments, describing him as an “outstanding Marxist-Leninist.” Even the West had joined in the applause for a personable Communist leader who seemed to understand the value of détente and economic cooperation. Everyone was sick and tired of Gomułka, who had been brought to power during a previous wave of workers’ unrest, in 1956.

The wheel of Polish history had turned full circle, Gierek reflected. Everybody was turning on him, just as everyone had turned on Gomułka in December 1970. In the space of a few days he had become the object of almost universal derision. At the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk the same workers who had shouted, “We will help you, Comrade Gierek,” ten years before greeted his most recent television appearance with jeers and catcalls. His allies in the Politburo seemed embarrassed to be associated with him. The Soviets were making ominous noises about the “threat to socialism” in Poland and the “mistakes” committed by the Polish leadership. Western leaders who had once beaten a path to his door were gloating over the extraordinary challenge to his power. Everywhere, people were saying that he was finished.

As usual, ordinary Poles expressed their sentiments about their political leaders in a joke. “Question: What is the difference between Gierek and Gomułka? Answer: None, only Gierek doesn’t realize it yet.”

At Politburo meetings the Kania-Jaruzelski tandem was already taking aim at his economic policies. Jaruzelski, whom Gierek had earlier regarded as an ally, claimed he had learned about Poland’s huge foreign debt from a broadcast on Radio Free Europe. Kania, the party secretary in charge of national security, complained that the Politburo had been treated with “total contempt.”


 Other Politburo members, who had previously groveled before the first secretary, joined in the attack. In order to appease the critics, Gierek had been forced to sacrifice six of his closest associates. He was under enormous stress. He felt isolated and abandoned.




The first secretary was still surrounded by the trappings of power: the bulletproof limousine, the deferential secretaries, the security guards. The plain black telephone on his desk was a direct line to Brezhnev. A companion white telephone, with push buttons, provided instant communications with Communist Party leaders in other Soviet bloc countries, from Czechoslovakia to Bulgaria. Just along the hallway was a special communications room dominated by a large wall map of Poland with forty-nine miniature lightbulbs, one for each vojvodship (province). Seated behind a microphone, Gierek could speak directly to any provincial governor in the country. Or he could flick a switch to light up all forty-nine lightbulbs, representing forty-nine local Communist Party bosses ready to carry out his orders. It was a perfect example of the command economy transmitting instructions downward.




To Gierek’s dismay, the bureaucratic machine was no longer responding to his orders. It was not so much that someone else had grabbed the levers of power as that the levers themselves had ceased to function. Senior leaders appeared on television—and no one paid any attention. Instructions were issued to rank-and-file party members and promptly forgotten. The map in room 115 flashed its lights, but the list of striking factories grew ever longer. Communist Party branches in the Lenin Shipyard and hundreds of other proletarian bastions around the country had withered away overnight. The party itself—a mighty organization with more than three million members—was doing nothing. Its leaders had become generals without an army.

At first Gierek took comfort in the thought that the strike leaders did not represent the workers. He was disabused of this notion by the government representative in Gdańsk, Mieczysław Jagielski, who insisted that the strike had the “total support” of society. “My feeling is that we are going to have to agree to the creation of free trade unions,” Jagielski reported on August 26. “Today the workers are still asking our permission [to establish their own unions]. Tomorrow they may not bother to ask us.”




The following day, August 27, the Soviet ambassador came to see Gierek with a letter describing the Kremlin’s growing concern over events in Poland. Soviet leaders were outraged by the presence of so many foreign journalists in the Lenin Shipyard. They wanted a much more vigorous propaganda campaign against the strikers, citing the way Lenin had dealt with the “anarchosyndicalist” opposition in 1921. Gierek understood this to be a reference to the purges of opposition leaders and the Red Army’s brutal suppression of a rebellion at the Kronshtadt naval base, with the loss of several thousand lives. Shaken by the comparison, he told the ambassador that the deployment of the army on the streets might only make things worse.

“A soldier in a tank is only effective if he is willing to shoot. These soldiers are Poles, and we don’t know if they would be willing to shoot at workers.”




Gierek postponed a decision on what to do. He seemed to be hoping for a miracle or at least more concrete guidance from Moscow on how to deal with a crisis that confounded all Marxist-Leninist theory. The situation had continued to deteriorate, and by Friday, August 29, half the country was out on strike. By official count, some seven hundred factories were being occupied by around seven hundred thousand workers. “Strike alerts” had been declared in many of the country’s remaining factories. The protests were on the verge of becoming a general strike. The labor unrest had spread from the Baltic coast to the textile city of Łódż in central Poland and the coalmining region of Silesia in the south. Practically every sector of Polish industry was affected.

The news that the coal miners had joined the strike was a terrible blow. Gierek regarded Silesia as a personal fiefdom, the one region of Poland that would never betray him. Silesia had been the springboard from which he had launched his political career. Its people were reserved and industrious, not given to dramatic political gestures. The local security forces kept a tight rein on dissidents. As the situation in the rest of the country grew progressively worse, Gierek considered making a last stand in Silesia.

“We will withdraw from Warsaw to the South and then we will reconquer the country vojvodship by vojvodship,” he told an associate, in the desperate tone of a man who knows that he has already lost.




Over the past two weeks the first secretary had changed his mind several times about how to respond to the labor unrest. In his memoirs, written ten years after the event, he claimed he consistently opposed the use of force. His Politburo colleagues and Soviet interlocutor present a different picture of his actions and state of mind during those tension-filled days. According to these accounts, Gierek considered calling for Soviet military assistance at the beginning of the crisis. His Politburo colleagues opposed the idea, and nothing came of it. At other times Gierek insisted that the protests be defused peacefully. Many different emotions were churning inside him: the desire to hang on to his job; bitterness at the disloyalty of those around him; concern for his own reputation.

“There were many different Giereks,” recalled Kania, the man closest to him during this period. “Not only the early Gierek, the man of the early seventies, who had social support, and the later Gierek, who had to leave the political scene. In every period there were several Giereks, and during the most difficult times there were several Giereks in the course of a single day.”




Now Gierek sat quietly as the debate swirled around him at the Politburo meeting. His tactic of choice—procrastination—was no longer feasible. There were essentially two alternatives: agree to the demand for free trade unions or suppress the unrest by force. The Interior Ministry task force had devised a plan to storm the Lenin Shipyard and take over the Baltic ports. That morning, the head of the task force, General Bogusław Stachura, had reported that his men were ready “to liquidate the counterrevolutionary nest in Gdańsk.”


 In the Politburo the spokesman for the hard-liners (or men of cement, as they were known in Polish) was a former trade union boss named Władysław Kruczek, an elderly holdover from the Stalinist era. He demanded the immediate declaration of a state of emergency.

“The regime must begin to defend itself. Even the most beautiful speeches are not producing any results.”




This was the signal for the Politburo members in charge of security to mount a counteroffensive. Although they had secretly begun drawing up plans for a crackdown, they thought it was too early to put them into effect.


 Kania described the proposal for Wałęsa’s arrest as “a daydream.” Jaruzelski, the practical military officer, pointed out that the Polish constitution made no provision for a “state of emergency.” If force was used, the government would have to declare a “state of war” (stan wojenny), but such a step was “unrealistic” at a time when half the country was on strike. One should not give orders that could not be carried out. A similar point was made by the police minister, Stanislaw Kowalczyk. The security forces lacked the manpower to crack down everywhere at once. His men could seize port facilities in Gdańsk, but there would certainly be bloodshed.

The Politburo was in a quandary. Gierek’s frantic appeals to Moscow for guidance had produced no result. Brezhnev was officially said to be “unavailable.” The Kremlin was not prepared to issue a dispensation to the Poles to embrace the heresy of free trade unions, which it saw as tantamount to the “legalization of the antisocialist opposition.”


 On the other hand, Soviet leaders were frightened by what might happen if the Polish leadership failed to reach some kind of agreement with the workers. So they did what Soviet bureaucrats usually did when they could not make up their minds: They stopped answering their phones. They also put their own forces in the region on “full combat alert” and called up one hundred thousand military reservists.




The first secretary summed up the mood of the meeting by telling his Politburo colleagues that free trade unions were unacceptable, ideologically and politically. There was, however, no other acceptable short-term solution. “We are being threatened with a general strike. We have to choose the lesser evil and then find a way of extricating ourselves from it.”




GDAŃSK

August 31, 1980


THE LAST DAY OF THE STRIKE at the Lenin Shipyard began, as usual, with a mass. A wooden platform had been erected in the middle of the shipyard to form a makeshift altar, complete with carpet and wooden crucifix. A few yards away, on the wall of an administration building, was a faded hammer and sickle flag. A priest in resplendent white vestments broke a ceremonial wafer in front of ten thousand kneeling workers and television cameras from all over the world. Other priests fanned out through the crowd to hear mumbled confessions.

When the time came to sign the agreement giving workers the right to form independent labor unions, Wałęsa produced a foot-long souvenir pen of the pope’s pilgrimage to Poland the previous year. It was a typical Wałęsa gesture, a tongue-in-cheek way of sending a message to millions of his fellow Poles. He knew that state television planned to broadcast large parts of the signing ceremony, and he wanted to distinguish himself from the party functionaries with whom he had been negotiating. He would never permit himself to become one of them. He also wanted to recognize publicly his debt to the man who had inspired the nation to voice its opposition to totalitarian rule. The ploy was successful. That evening Polish television viewers were permitted their first glimpse of the strikers who had been defying the Communist government for the past two weeks. When they saw a worker with an oversize mustache and a pen with a portrait of the pope on it sitting next to some bureaucrats in expensive-looking suits, they immediately knew which side they were on.

Unusually for him, Wałęsa read his speech declaring an end to the strike from a prepared text. He paid tribute to Jagielski, the government negotiator, and “a certain rather reasonable group” in the Politburo that had resisted the use of force. “We reached agreement as Poles with Poles…. Did we achieve all we wanted, fulfill all our longings and our dreams?… Not everything. But we all know we gained a lot…. We got all we could in the present situation. The rest will be achieved because we have what matters most: our independent, self-governing trade unions. That is our guarantee for the future.”


 He stressed the words “independent” and “self-governing” as if they were a magical mantra, before concluding, “I declare the strike over.”

It was Jagielski’s turn to address the delegates and the huge crowd gathered outside in the brilliant August sunshine. The deputy prime minister had spent a fretful forty-eight hours, shuttling between Gdańsk and Warsaw for meetings with his Politburo colleagues and the Soviet ambassador. The Kremlin had never responded to the doctrinal query about free trade unions. Polish leaders had taken the Soviet silence as a sign that it was up to them to do whatever was necessary to bring the strikes to an end.

“Esteemed audience,” Jagielski began. “We tried to show the practical limits of what we could undertake and actually implement. I reiterate and confirm what has been said. We talked as Poles should talk to one another, as Pole with Pole.”

As he echoed Wałęsa’s thought, Jagielski was interrupted by a loud burst of applause. By common consent, he had acquitted himself well during the weeklong negotiations. He had represented a corrupt and unpopular regime with dignity.

After the government delegation had departed, members of the strike committee hoisted Wałęsa onto their shoulders and carried him to gate number two one last time. A refrain of Sto lat, sto lat (May he live a hundred years) echoed around the shipyard. As Wałęsa scrambled on top of a forklift truck and punched his fists in the air in celebration of victory, the huge crowd broke out into chants of “Le-szek, Le-szek.” It looked like a scene from a movie: the sea of jubilant, exhausted faces; the white and red Polish flag fluttering in the breeze; the red banner reading “Workers of all Factories, Unite!” Indeed, it soon became a movie. The crowd at the shipyard gate included Andrzej Wajda, who had just come up with an idea for a new film, to be called Man of Iron.

As the cheering died down, Wałęsa told the crowd that he had been unable to achieve anything by himself. “We did this together. Everybody together, that is power. That is strength.” He then reminded his listeners why he kept coming back to gate number two. “My actions are connected to December 1970. Perhaps someone will accuse me of being a dictator, but I say we must always meet here on December 16. Always, always. We must always remember those who were killed.”




The chants of “Le-szek, Le-szek” started up again, this time with even greater force. Workers in yellow hard hats flung open the shipyard gates, and the strikers streamed out into the sun-filled streets of Gdańsk. At that moment everything seemed possible. August had been a triumph of memory over forgetting. In fact, the storm clouds were just beginning to gather.




WASHINGTON

December 3, 1980


MONITORING THE POLISH DRAMA from his office in the White House, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser was becoming increasingly pessimistic. Like most Polish-Americans, Zbigniew Brzezinski had been exhilarated by the rise of Solidarity and the resurgence of Polish national feeling, but he also found it difficult to believe that the Kremlin would ignore such a serious challenge to its authority. The Soviet Union had shown repeatedly—in East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968—that it was willing to use force to defend its East European empire. Polish history was full of brave, but ultimately doomed, insurrections against Russian rule.

Brzezinski knew very well that the United States could not prevent Soviet tanks from rolling into Poland without being prepared to risk a nuclear war. But it could raise the stakes. If Washington had reason to believe that the Soviet Union was preparing to invade Poland, it had a duty to say so. In August 1968 the United States had picked up clear evidence of massive Soviet troop movements around Czechoslovakia but had failed to act on the information. American passivity, Brzezinski believed, had unwittingly strengthened the hand of the hard-liners in the Soviet Politburo. Had the Johnson administration warned Brezhnev of the devastating impact that an invasion of Czechoslovakia was likely to have on East-West relations, history might have turned out differently. Brzezinski, the author of the standard university textbook on the Soviet bloc, was determined that Carter would not repeat LBJ’s mistake. His strategy was to make as much noise as possible in order to dissuade the Soviets from military intervention.




By the beginning of December American spy satellites had picked up information that seemed to support Brzezinski’s worst fears. Satellite photos showed that civilian traffic along East Germany’s border with Poland had dwindled to a trickle, suggesting that the frontier had been sealed. On Poland’s border with the Soviet Union, soldiers were unfolding hospital tents and stockpiling ammunition. In northern Czechoslovakia long columns of tanks and artillery pieces were moving up to the frontier. The roads were icy and treacherous, making this an unusual time of year to be holding such a huge exercise. Occasionally a tank slithered into a ditch or a telegraph pole. In Poland itself the two Soviet tank divisions stationed near the southwestern town of Legnica were on a state of high alert.

The information gleaned from the spy satellites was confirmed by an exceptionally well-placed Polish agent. Disillusioned with communism and disgusted by the December 1970 massacre of workers in Gdańsk, Colonel Ryszard Kukliński had been cooperating with the CIA for almost a decade. He was an intelligence agent’s dream. A brilliant staff officer completely trusted by the defense minister, General Jaruzelski, he had access to the innermost secrets of the regime. He had already supplied Washington with sensational details about Soviet war plans and the degree to which the Polish army was subject to Kremlin control. In October 1980, just three months after the creation of Solidarity, he had been invited to join a secret working group set up at the Ministry of Defense to lay the groundwork for the introduction of martial law. He was now able to provide the CIA with up-to-the-minute details of the Soviet campaign to intimidate the Polish government.




In early December Kukliński reported that the Kremlin had presented Jaruzelski with an ultimatum. A total of eighteen Warsaw Pact divisions—fifteen Soviet, two Czech, and one East German—would enter Poland at midnight on December 8. Polish troops had been ordered to cooperate fully. The operation had been depicted as a routine exercise, code-named Soyuz (Alliance) 80. In reality it was an invasion in disguise. Jaruzelski was so shocked that he shut himself up in his office, refusing to see even his closest associates. He was particularly distressed by the fact that German troops would be participating in the operation. If the ultimatum were carried out, German and Soviet armies would jointly dismember Poland for the second time in half a century. The Polish General Staff was stunned and paralyzed.




The threat of a new partition of Poland galvanized Brzezinski into action. Having left Poland at the age of ten, shortly before the Nazi invasion, he had severed most of his ties with his former homeland. But he felt part of a remarkable Polish diaspora that included Karol Wojtyła, Pope John Paul II; Secretary of State Edmund Muskie; Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin; and the winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for literature, Czesław Miłosz. (Throughout the Solidarity crisis the diaspora acted as a high-powered international think tank on Polish affairs. At one particularly tense moment the pope and the national security adviser conferred by phone in their native language.)

Brzezinski, the son of a prewar Polish diplomat, also had a slight connection with Jaruzelski, the general who was to declare war on Solidarity twelve months later. Brzezinski’s older stepbrother and Jaruzelski both had attended a Catholic boarding school in Warsaw, run on military lines by the Marian friars.


 The two boys spent much of their time reciting mass, parading up and down in dark blue uniforms, and singing songs glorifying Poland’s military dictator, Marshal Piłsudski. When war broke out, the boys were scattered in different directions. The Jaruzelskis were deported to the Soviet Union, and later returned to Poland as standard-bearers for communism. The Brzezinskis ended up in Canada and the United States.

Over the past few days Brzezinski had urged Poles to sink their differences in the face of the Soviet threat. He advised Solidarity emissaries to consolidate their gains rather than risk a showdown. He also encouraged government leaders to tell Moscow they were determined to keep Poland within the Warsaw Pact but would resist a Soviet invasion. Once again his strategy was guided by a desire to avoid the mistakes of the past. The Soviets had been able to act with impunity in Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Brzezinski reasoned, because they knew in advance that there would be no resistance from the Czech army.




Concerned that time was running out, the national security adviser now persuaded Carter to get on the “hot line” to Brezhnev. A teletype link between the White House and the Kremlin, the hot line was technologically inferior to the telephone since it did not allow voice communication. (Facsimile machines were installed only in 1986.) But the very fact that an American president was using a device that traced its origins to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis—when communications difficulties had brought the world to a brink of a nuclear war—served to underline the gravity of the moment.

In a few moments a rickety teletype machine down the corridor from Brezhnev’s office was spitting out the president’s message. It began on a note of reassurance: “I WISH TO CONVEY TO YOU THE FIRM INTENTION OF THE UNITED STATES NOT TO EXPLOIT THE EVENTS IN POLAND, NOR TO THREATEN LEGITIMATE SOVIET SECURITY INTERESTS IN THAT REGION.”

Then came the threat: “AT THE SAME TIME, I HAVE TO STATE OUR RELATIONSHIP WOULD BE MOST ADVERSELY AFFECTED IF FORCE WAS USED TO IMPOSE A SOLUTION UPON THE POLISH NATION.” The five-sentence missive was signed, somewhat incongruously, “BEST WISHES, JIMMY CARTER.”




At 1621 Washington time—twenty-one minutes past midnight in Moscow—word arrived from the Kremlin confirming receipt of the message.




MOSCOW

December 5, 1980


AS THEY FLEW TO Moscow in answer to a summons from the Soviet leadership, Stanislaw Kania and Wojciech Jaruzelski felt a sense of impending doom. They knew that the armies of their Warsaw Pact allies were camped around Poland’s borders, ready to enter the country at any moment. Live ammunition had been distributed; field hospitals had been set up to take care of the wounded; communication lines were in place. Their attempts to arrange a private meeting with Brezhnev had been rebuffed. The Polish leaders had been excluded from the first day of the emergency Soviet bloc summit at which the fate of their country would be decided.

Kania, who had succeeded Gierek as first secretary of the Polish Communist Party, thought of his son, Mirek, who was serving in the army.


 Nobody knew how Polish soldiers would react in the event of a Soviet invasion. Even if they were confined to barracks, there was a strong possibility of spontaneous resistance, which would almost certainly result in terrible bloodshed. Jaruzelski recalled the many Polish rebellions against foreign rule that had ended in bloody failure. His grandfather and two of his great-uncles had been sentenced to twelve years’ exile in Siberia for taking part in the 1863 insurrection against the tsars.




Like Brzezinski, Kania and Jaruzelski thought constantly about how the Soviets had crushed the 1968 Prague Spring. The Czechoslovak reformers, under Dubĉek, had forfeited Moscow’s confidence by talking about “socialism with a human face” and tampering with the holy grail of Marxist-Leninist ideology. The Polish Communists had adopted a different strategy. They presented themselves as trustworthy defenders of Soviet-style socialism in Poland. When other Soviet bloc leaders attacked them, they meekly agreed with the criticism. They acknowledged that the “antisocialist” forces posed a serious threat. At the same time, they argued that they were in control of the situation and had both the means and the will to defeat the enemies of socialism. They even hinted that if events really did get out of control, they themselves would appeal for “fraternal assistance.”




The Soviet leaders had selected a villa on top of the Lenin Hills as the site of the inquisition. The view over the winding Moskva River and the gilded domes of the Novodevichy monastery had attracted rulers and would-be rulers of Russia for centuries. From this spot, in September 1812, Napoleon had gazed out over the burning rooftops of Moscow after conquering an entire continent. Confronted with the scorched-earth tactics of the Russian army, he concluded that he had no choice but to retreat back to Paris at the head of his rapidly dwindling Grande Armée. It was the turning point of one of history’s great military campaigns. In the Soviet period the Politburo had built a complex of luxurious guesthouses on top of the hills, surrounded by high concrete walls pierced by heavy wrought-iron gates. It was here that the Polish leadership would be confronted with evidence of the counterrevolution.

The Poles were shown into a large conference room, equipped with translation booths. The curtains were closed. Facing them across a vast square table, beneath heavy chandeliers, were the leaders of the Soviet Union and five other Warsaw Pact countries, who had met in private the previous day. Two of these leaders, János Kádár of Hungary and Gustáv Husák of Czechoslovakia, had come to power as the direct result of Soviet invasions. A third, Erich Honecker, had risen through the ranks of the Communist youth movement as Soviet tanks suppressed a workers’ uprising in Berlin in 1953.

It was Honecker who played the role of Grand Inquisitor. Frightened that the “Polish disease” could spread to East Germany, he had been particularly active in lobbying for Soviet military intervention and was ready to contribute between two and four divisions to ensure its success. Before traveling to Moscow, he had obtained “plenipotentiary powers” from his Politburo colleagues in the event of an invasion.




“There is a danger to the constitutional order. The internal Polish solution is almost exhausted. We are ready to help in the struggle with the counterrevolution. The Gdańsk agreement was a mistake, a capitulation to enemy forces. There must be no further retreat.”




A physical fitness fanatic, who exercised daily in his private gym, Honecker had plenty of experience defending “the gains of socialism.” As East Germany’s security chief he had supervised the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. Dubbed the “Anti-Fascist Protection Wall” by the Communists, the one-hundred-mile-long network of concrete, barbed wire, and machine-gun posts was designed to prevent East Germans from fleeing to the West. Its lightning construction—one of Europe’s largest cities was sliced into two halves overnight—was a source of great satisfaction to Honecker. He later recalled that “nothing essential” had been forgotten in an operation that had made the world “take notice” of the German Democratic Republic.




Nicolae Ceauşescu, the maverick Romanian dictator feted in Western capitals for refusing to join the invasion of Czechoslovakia, joined in the attack. In an attempt to win popularity at home and dupe the West into granting him trading concessions, the self-styled “Genius of the Carpathians” claimed to be pursuing a policy of “national independence.” In reality his regime was a virtual carbon copy of Stalin’s. As the supreme leader (conducător) of Romania, Ceauşescu owed his power to an omniscient security service, a slavishly loyal party, and a personality cult of absurdist dimensions. He was astute enough to understand that all this could be undermined if the “Polish disease” were allowed to spread.

“Any concession is tantamount to capitulation by the Party,” the conducător whined. “In addition to political methods, other steps must be taken that will strengthen the state authorities and smash the counterrevolution. There must be an element of force.”

Now it was Kádár’s turn. Installed in power by the Red Army following the 1956 uprising, the Hungarian leader had the reputation of being the most sophisticated and flexible of East European leaders. He had softened his “butcher of Budapest” image by promoting a consumer ideology known as goulash communism and experimenting with market mechanisms in the economy. But he remained brutally realistic about the limits of Soviet tolerance and the character of his Kremlin patrons. “Do you really not know the kind of people you’re dealing with?” he had asked Dubĉek, in frustration, three days before Russian tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia.


 His own carefully calibrated strategy could be jeopardized by the kind of revolutionary change now sweeping through Poland.

His voice breaking with emotion, Kádár told his Soviet bloc colleagues that what was happening in Poland was “a Polish affair” but had implications for “the entire socialist community.” “We think that the Polish comrades will sort this out. But we must show solidarity with them and offer them our help.”

“The military assistance rendered by other socialist countries to Czechoslovakia in 1968 turned out to be absolutely necessary,” piped up Husák, who had been responsible for “normalizing” Czechoslovakia in the wake of the Soviet invasion. “In Poland the leadership is good, but it lacks courage and decisiveness.”

Husák’s eyes welled with tears. He was himself a victim of Stalinist repression and had served an eight-year prison sentence on trumped-up charges of “bourgeois nationalism.” But this had not prevented him from purging the Czechoslovak party of almost one-third of its members after ousting Dubĉek. The stifling political atmosphere had made him a hated figure among Czechoslovak intellectuals, many of whom had been forced to take menial jobs, but Husák did not care. Intensely ambitious, he understood that the path to success in a Communist country was to carry out Moscow’s wishes, without question.

After allowing everyone to have his say, the Kremlin leaders dragged their Polish counterparts off for a further round of browbeating, this time one-on-one. Jaruzelski tried to convince Ustinov that the Polish army—unlike the Czechoslovak army in 1968—was loyal and disciplined. The Soviet defense minister brushed him aside. Puffing himself up in his marshal’s uniform and banging his fist on the table, he repeated over and over again: “It is necessary to act with determination, and in an offensive manner.”




The decisive encounter took place between the two party leaders. Kania tried to explain to Brezhnev that Soviet military intervention was likely to provoke a popular uprising, in addition to dealing a catastrophic blow to détente. He recalled how young Poles had attacked German tanks with Molotov cocktails during the Warsaw uprising at the end of World War II. No nation in Europe was willing to risk so much for its independence, he told Brezhnev. Finally, Kania promised the general secretary that the Polish Communist Party would not permit any change to the “constitutional order.”

After Kania had finished, the decrepit Brezhnev uttered the enigmatic words that seemed to summarize the Kremlin’s entire approach to the crisis. “Okay, we will not go in.”

There was a pause as he struggled for breath.

“But if there are complications, we will go in. We will go in.”

Another long pause.

“But without you, we won’t go in.”




A few hours later the high command of the Warsaw Pact withdrew the order for eighteen divisions of highly trained combat troops to move into Poland at midnight on December 8 for the Soyuz 80 “maneuver.”


 The first stage of the crisis was over. The second was about to begin.




WHILE THE POLISH LEADERS FLEW home to Warsaw, the Soviet, East German, and Czechoslovak troops that had been expecting to crush the “counterrevolution” in Poland began to demobilize. As the days went by and the threat of a Soviet invasion failed to materialize, there were sighs of relief in Western capitals. Superpower relations, already seriously damaged by the invasion of Afghanistan, would not be thrown back into the ice age. But a tantalizing question remained: What had caused the old men in the Kremlin to pull back from the brink?

In their memoirs both Kania and Brzezinski claim some of the credit for persuading Brezhnev to back down. The arguments of Polish leaders, and the public and private warnings issued by the White House, must have had some impact on Soviet calculations. But Politburo records released in Moscow after the collapse of communism provide another explanation for Soviet restraint. The Soviet leaders had no intention of invading Poland, except possibly as a last resort, in the event of massive civil disorders. The Kremlin strategy all along was to pressure the Polish leadership to do its dirty work. Large-scale military maneuvers around the country’s borders—which would certainly be observed by American spy satellites—was one particularly effective method of raising the psychological stakes. Repeated American warnings of a Soviet invasion of Poland may have inadvertently served Moscow’s purposes by increasing the pressure on Warsaw to take drastic action against Solidarity.

Kremlin documents show that Soviet leaders began actively considering the martial law option as early as October, a full fourteen months before Jaruzelski eventually took the plunge. They knew about the contingency plans for a state of emergency and wanted the Polish leadership to put them into effect. Brezhnev contrasted the passivity of the Polish leadership with the repressive policies adopted by Tito’s successors in Yugoslavia, who used the pretext of some minor labor unrest to arrest three hundred Albanian dissidents.

“Wałęsa travels from one end of the country to another and is treated in high esteem,” Brezhnev grumbled. “Perhaps they really should introduce martial law.”

Other Politburo members agreed. “If martial law is not introduced, then the situation is going to become more and more complicated,” declared Ustinov. “There are rumblings in the [Polish] army.”




The ostentatious manner with which Soviet generals shared their invasion plans with their Polish colleagues also smacked of political intimidation. The Soviets even allowed a visiting Polish delegation to make copies of a map showing precisely where the eighteen Warsaw Pact divisions would be deployed. Polish staff officers accompanied Soviet advance troops on reconnaissance missions into Poland.


 Looking back at the events of December 1980 twelve years later, Jaruzelski acknowledged that Soviet leaders had stage-managed the summit “to scare us out of our wits.”


 The deputy chief of staff of the Warsaw Pact, General Anatoly Gribkov, conceded that the Kremlin had sought to “put pressure on the Polish leadership and society in every possible way.”




The exercises produced their intended effect. After returning from Moscow, Jaruzelski ordered that preparations for martial law be accelerated. Lists were drawn up of four thousand leading Solidarity activists who would be interned as soon as a state of emergency was declared.




By early 1981 the Kremlin strategy had become clear. “We must subject the Polish leadership to constant pressure,” Ustinov told the Politburo on January 29. “We are planning maneuvers in Poland in March. I think we should extend these maneuvers so as to create the impression that our forces are ready [to intervene].”


 Three months later a secret Kremlin document described the fear of a Soviet invasion of Poland as “a factor that restrains the counterrevolution” that should be “exploited to the maximum possible extent.”




The pressure on the Polish leadership reached a peak in early April, a few days after yet another well-advertised invasion scare. Soviet military planes began flying over Poland without requesting permission.


 The Soviets then sent a military aircraft to take Kania and Jaruzelski to a secret meeting with Ustinov and Andropov. Remembering the fate that had befallen hundreds of thousands of their countrymen, the Polish leaders wondered if they would ever return.


 The session took place in a railway carriage in a forest on the Soviet side of the border. For a full six hours Ustinov and Andropov accused the Poles of turning a blind eye to “counterrevolution” and failing to respond to “anti-Soviet attacks.” The harangue continued until 3:00 a.m.

Kania and Jaruzelski sidestepped Soviet demands for the immediate introduction of martial law but promised “to restore order with our own forces.” Andropov reported to the Soviet Politburo that the Polish comrades seemed “extremely tense,” “nervous,” and psychologically “worn out.”




While the Soviets continued to threaten military intervention, they had good reasons to avoid such a step. One reason was economic. As a senior Soviet official explained to Honecker, who was itching to teach the Poles a lesson, the Soviet economy was reeling from a series of three disastrous harvests. Oil production, which fueled both the military machine and the civilian economy, was nearly 10 percent below projected targets in 1980. In order to make up the shortfall, planners were counting on a sharp increase in exports of natural gas. But this was possible only with large-scale technical and financial assistance from Western countries.


 If the West responded to an invasion of Poland with a trade embargo, the results could be catastrophic.




The military-strategic considerations were even more compelling. Nearly a hundred thousand Soviet troops were already committed to Afghanistan. What had been planned as a swift and relatively painless operation was turning into a classic military quagmire, with no end in sight. Andropov, who had helped mastermind the invasion, now realized Soviet troops were ill prepared to fight an unconventional war. To some of his associates, he appeared to be having second thoughts about the whole operation.


 An invasion of Poland would stretch the Kremlin’s resources to the limit.

“In practice, we already have three fronts,” said Ustinov, explaining the Soviet view of the world to Jaruzelski, as the two defense ministers inspected troops participating in a joint military exercise. Shouting to make himself heard above the roar of helicopter engines, the Soviet marshal ticked off the “fronts” one by one: Afghanistan; China, which was cooperating with the United States; and finally Poland, where Solidarity was acting as an imperialist “Trojan horse.” The implication was that one of the fronts had to be liquidated.




Mikhail Suslov, the Politburo ideologist and head of the commission on Poland, put the matter even more succinctly. He told his associates that the Soviet Union simply could not afford “a second Afghanistan.”




Like generals fighting the last war, both Polish and Western leaders were obsessed with the “Czech variant.” The world had changed since 1968, and there were many differences between Czechoslovakia and Poland. Even if the Kremlin had not been bogged down in Afghanistan, an invasion of Poland represented a much greater military challenge than the relatively peaceful Czechoslovak operation. There were more than twice as many Poles as there were Czechs and Slovaks, and the Poles had a history of resisting foreign armies. Furthermore, the Soviets never gave up on the Polish leadership, as they had with Dubĉek. Jaruzelski, in particular, was highly regarded in Moscow.




At the secret meeting in the railway carriage in the Belorussian forest, Ustinov was disturbed by the depressed state of mind of Jaruzelski and Kania and their penchant for procrastination. But he brusquely brushed aside Jaruzelski’s plea that he be allowed to resign because of exhaustion. “We need this pair,” he told his Politburo colleagues a few days later.




Soviet leaders treated their Polish counterparts as subordinates, bound by the discipline of the international Communist movement. When Brezhnev called Kania or Jaruzelski on the phone, he used the familiar ty form of address, as if he were speaking to a lowly apparatchik in Omsk or Tomsk. Polish leaders, by contrast, always took care to use the polite vy form in talking to Brezhnev. Kania and Jaruzelski replied to the Soviet leader’s slurred monologues as if they were the distillation of human wisdom, meekly thanking him for his continued “trust” and “support.” The Soviet treatment of Polish leaders was sometimes gratuitously insulting. The commander of the Warsaw Pact, Marshal Viktor Kulikov, even threw Kania out of his residence late one night, allegedly for being drunk.




Soviet leaders had one enormous advantage in the high-stakes political poker game that took place around Poland in 1980 and 1981. They could see the other side’s hand. The Poles and the Americans knew that the Soviets were in a position to invade, but they could only guess at the Kremlin’s real intentions. The Soviets, by contrast, had access to detailed firsthand information of virtually everything that happened in the Polish Politburo. Their spies were everywhere: in factories, government offices, military barracks. The KGB resident in Poland knew everything going on in the Polish Security Ministry. The Polish army was integrated into the Soviet chain of command, with Soviet “advisers” and “inspectors” at every level.


 Soviet leaders paid careful attention to Kania’s drinking habits and Jaruzelski’s fits of depression.

In the end this intimate knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of their Polish “partners” allowed the Soviets to turn a losing hand into a winning one.




WARSAW

December 12, 1981


SLIM, STIFF, AND ALMOST PAINFULLY SHY Wojciech Jaruzelski was an enigma to his countrymen. They knew from his speeches that he was an orthodox Marxist who had absorbed the political lexicon of Poland’s conquerors. They knew he was trusted by Moscow; otherwise he would not have become the youngest general in the Polish army at the age of thirty-three. But they were also impressed by his aristocratic bearing and perfect diction. There were rumors that his family belonged to the class of feudal landowners known as the szlachta, the privileged gentry of pre-Communist Poland. It was said that Jaruzelski and his family had suffered greatly at the hands of the Soviets. The real thoughts of this aristocratic general, whose accomplishments included fencing and horse riding, seemed forever concealed behind a pair of thick dark glasses.

In the forest lands northeast of Warsaw, in the tiny village of Trzeciny, where the young Wojciech had grown up, the sense of confusion was even greater. The villagers remembered his father, Władysław, who had cut a dashing figure with his saber when he went off to fight the Bolsheviks in the Polish-Soviet War of 1920. They remembered his mother, Wanda, a quiet, determined lady who had brought her children up to be good Catholics and good Poles, reading them stories about brave Polish heroes struggling against Russian rule. Finally they remembered Wojciech himself, a timid, frail child who appeared in church without fail every Sunday, before being packed off to a strict Warsaw boarding school at the age of ten. The villagers found it difficult to believe that this was the same Wojciech who later became head of a Communist government and first secretary of the Polish Communist Party. Something must have happened to him. The story spread that the Soviets had kidnapped the real Wojciech and cunningly sent a Communist double back to Poland in his place.




But it was the real Wojciech. Jaruzelski fitted the classic Marxist-Leninist profile of a “class enemy.” His family could trace its heraldic crest, a blindfolded crow, back to the thirteenth century. His paternal grandfather had been sent in chains to Siberia after taking part in the great antitsarist insurrection of 1863. Because of his defiance, the family had lost most of its property. Despite his noble status, Władysław Jaruzelski was reduced to working as an administrator on the family’s former estates. After the Red Army had occupied eastern Poland in September 1939, the Jaruzelski family fled to Lithuania, where they had relatives. A few days before Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, in June 1941, Jaruzelski senior was arrested as a “socially dangerous element.” By the time he was released from a labor camp in January 1942, following a deal between Stalin and General Władysław Sikorski, the head of the Polish government-in-exile, this strong two-hundred-pound man had become an emaciated skeleton, weighing no more than a hundred pounds. He died of dysentery and malnutrition six months later.




The rest of the family experienced almost equal hardship. At the time of his father’s arrest Jaruzelski was deported to Siberia, along with his mother and sister. The trip, in an overcrowded goods train, took a month. He spent almost two years in Siberia as a virtual slave laborer, chopping down trees and hauling huge bags of flour around a warehouse. He suffered from excruciating back pains, which flared up again during periods of tension, such as in 1981. The secret police urged Jaruzelski to apply for Soviet identity papers, on the ground that eastern Poland had been incorporated into the Soviet Union. When he refused, he was thrown into prison with common criminals, who stole his belongings and beat him up. After three weeks of this treatment he accepted the NKVD offer. Shortly afterward he applied to join the Polish army that was being formed on Soviet soil under the leadership of a Communist officer, Zygmunt Berling. Joining this army, he explained later, represented a chance of “returning to Poland with a weapon in my hand.”




Jaruzelski had little sympathy for either Russia or for communism when—as his party biography delicately put it—he “found himself” in the Soviet Union at the age of sixteen. At school he had belonged to a particularly zealous Catholic youth organization, known as the Soldiers of Mary. By his own account, he shared the anti-Soviet convictions of the szlachta class. His first impression of the Red Army had been of a horde of conquering barbarians. “What struck me first was how many of them there were,” he wrote later. “I had the impression that there were thousands upon thousands of them, with their long gray overcoats and great piles of rifles. I had the sense of a force that was terrible, strange, hostile.”


 Yet, after returning to Poland from the Soviet Union, Jaruzelski became the devoted soldier of an alien ideology. In 1947, at the age of twenty-four, he experienced what he later described as a spiritual “rebirth.” He applied to join the Polish Communist Party and was swiftly accepted.




According to Jaruzelski, this stunning conversion took place in stages. In the Siberian taiga he discovered that ordinary Russians were not the Satans he had previously imagined them to be. He began to draw a distinction between the Russian people and their oppressive political system. He came to admire their incredible feats of endurance, the way they threw themselves into battle crying, “For Stalin, for the motherland.” Communism could be cruel and terrible, but it had some redeeming features. The Communist aspiration for a fairer, more just society was not too far removed from the social values that Wanda Jaruzelski had sought to instill in her children, minus the traditional anti-Russian outlook of the szlachta class. The Communist Party seemed to offer a more realistic program of postwar reconstruction, and the rapid absorption of formerly German territories, than the bourgeois parties. It was not just soldiers like Jaruzelski who rallied around the party at the end of the war, but also intellectuals like Czesław Miłosz and Leszek Kolakowski.

Another explanation for Jaruzelski’s ideological rebirth might begin with the personality of a superachiever. Ever since childhood he had striven hard to earn the approval of his superiors. At the Catholic boarding school in Warsaw he was considered an outstanding pupil. He soaked up the conservative opinions of his Marian teachers, chanting songs praising Poland’s military dictator, Marshal Piłsudski, and avidly following the military campaign of Spain’s General Franco. He was an enthusiastic Boy Scout, modeling himself on the hero scouts who had helped defend Poland against the “Red invader.” Later in life he was equally zealous in seeking to impress the commanders of the Warsaw Pact and the members of the Soviet Politburo. After Solidarity came to power in 1989, he cultivated contacts with former dissidents like Adam Michnik, whom he had once thrown into prison.

In all these exploits there was an element of the odd man out, struggling for social acceptance. At school he was always the puniest child in the class. In Communist politics he was the offspring of the petty nobility who, by his own account, could never quite rid himself of an inferiority complex toward the “working class.”


 In retirement he was Poland’s last Communist leader, fighting to salvage his historical reputation.

As he climbed up the bureaucratic ladder, Jaruzelski shut his eyes to many unpleasant facts. He had the soldier’s habit of carrying out orders without asking questions. As defense minister in 1968 he had little compunction about ordering Polish troops to join the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. It never occurred to him to doubt Soviet propaganda claims about stockpiles of German weapons and a Western plan to subvert Czechoslovakia.

Sometimes his lack of curiosity bordered on the abnormal. When he was elected Communist Party leader in October 1981, in succession to Kania, he was handed a key to the safe containing the innermost secrets and scandals of the Polish regime. Despite the notoriety of this safe, he never bothered to look through its contents. “I don’t know how to explain this lack of curiosity,” he later confessed. “It’s probably very personal.”




Jaruzelski’s five years in the Soviet Union had taught him a brutal lesson in realpolitik. The monthlong train trip to Siberia—a journey twice the width of the continental United States—had given him a sense of the vastness of Poland’s eastern neighbor. He had gained an insight into the power of the Soviet system and the might of its armed forces. Breaking with Poland’s romantic tradition, Jaruzelski prided himself on his realism. From his own experience he knew that resistance to such a huge empire was futile. It was his duty to save Poland from the horrors of yet another Russian invasion. As he remarked privately to a colleague, “Our historical mission is to prevent a Soviet intervention.”




Whatever the explanation for Jaruzelski’s conversion to communism, the Soviets had every confidence in him. Shortly after his election as first secretary, he received a congratulatory telephone call from Brezhnev, who urged him to carry out his plan to crush the “counterrevolution.” “There is nobody else in the PZPR [the Polish Communist Party] who enjoys as much authority as you,” said the Soviet leader, reading haltingly from a prepared text.




The Kremlin’s trust in Jaruzelski seems strange in view of his class origins and long-standing Soviet suspicions of “Bonapartism,” the meddling of the military in political affairs. The fact that Jaruzelski had endured Stalinist repression without kicking up a fuss made a favorable impression on Soviet leaders. They also gave him credit for his wartime service, his work in building up the Polish army under Communist leadership, and his excellent Russian.




Jaruzelski’s official biography makes clear that he played a part in the bloody settling of accounts with the anti-Communist Home Army in the years immediately after World War II. He was a protégé of the Soviet generals who supervised the Polish Defense Ministry. According to one account, he was the only Polish general to vote against the dismissal, in 1956, of the Russian-born defense minister Marshal Konstantin Rokossowsky and his recall to the Soviet Union.


 Jaruzelski was subsequently put in charge of political education in the armed forces, an extremely sensitive post reserved for someone who could get along with the Russians. When he was appointed defense minister in 1968 in succession to the nationalistically inclined Marian Spychalski, the Soviets were delighted.




In his memoirs Jaruzelski describes himself as a “fanatical believer” in the doctrine of communism. “It went without saying that we had to defend our church and its dogmas.”




Soviet leaders occasionally complained that Jaruzelski lacked “courage” and “decisiveness.” But they had no doubts at all about his “moral-political reliability.”


 They had studied his personal dossier thoroughly, and they knew their man.




STEP BY STEP JARUZELSKI had accumulated all the leading positions in the Polish People’s Republic. He was commander in chief of the armed forces, prime minister, and first secretary of the Communist Party. All that remained was for the onetime “Soldier of Mary” to declare himself military dictator. But he could not make up his mind.

After his appointment as prime minister Jaruzelski had moved into the office of Poland’s last military dictator, Marshal Piłsudski, on Ujazdowskie Avenue.


 It was here that Piłsudski had organized his program of “national purification” following the coup d’état of 1926. The ghost of his right-wing predecessor seemed to haunt Jaruzelski as he struggled to find a solution to Poland’s problems. As the crisis deepened, he frequently spent entire nights in the second-floor corner office, sleeping on a camp bed. Crushed by a sense of terrifying responsibility, he lay awake for hours. On several occasions he opened the drawer to his desk, where his service revolver lay. He gazed at the gun for minutes at a time, before closing the drawer again.




Pressures were growing from all sides. There were rumors—yet again—of Soviet troops massing on the borders. Jaruzelski had no illusions about what would happen to him in the event of an invasion. He remembered how Brezhnev had ordered Dubĉek’s arrest a few days after kissing him warmly on both cheeks. The image of the Czechoslovak Communist leaders being brought to Moscow under arrest had obsessed him from the outset of the crisis.


 The invasion of Czechoslovakia would be a picnic compared with the bloody catastrophe that would result if Soviet troops entered Poland.

The economy was another source of worry. Production had fallen by 12 percent in 1981, on top of the 4 percent drop in 1980 and 2 percent in 1979. The output of coal, Poland’s principal hard-currency export, had plummeted as a result of the introduction of a forty-hour week for miners. The foreign exchange reserves were practically zero. Poland was almost entirely dependent on Moscow for supplies of raw materials. A few weeks earlier the Kremlin had threatened to slash gasoline exports to Poland by two-thirds. Deliveries of natural gas, phosphorus, iron ore, and cotton would be reduced by 50 percent. Without these supplies Polish industry would grind to a halt.




Jaruzelski knew Western countries would react harshly to a crackdown on Solidarity. But he also had reason to believe that the newly formed Reagan administration would breathe a quiet sigh of relief over an “internal solution” to the Polish crisis. He knew that Washington was exceptionally well informed about the behind-the-scenes drama in Poland. His trusted aide Colonel Kukliński had defected to the West in early November with a complete blueprint of plans for martial law. Polish leaders feared that the Reagan administration would alert Solidarity to the coming danger, but nothing happened. Jaruzelski interpreted Washington’s silence as tacit approval of his plans. He reasoned that the United States regarded martial law as a preferable alternative to a Soviet invasion, which would have devastating consequences for East-West relations.




There is another explanation for the Reagan administration’s failure to act on Kukliński’s information: old-fashioned interagency rivalry. The handful of senior CIA officials who knew about Kukliński’s existence were determined not to share their knowledge with anyone else in the U.S. government—even after their source had escaped from Poland. They themselves treated his warnings about martial law with skepticism, trusting the instinct of Solidarity leaders who believed that Jaruzelski would not dare send the Polish army against civilians.







WHAT JARUZELSKI LATER DESCRIBED as “the most difficult day of my life” began, as usual, with his top military aides.


 At 9:00 a.m. he summoned the men charged with implementing the state of war (stan wojenny) to his office. The task of rounding up thousands of Solidarity activists and smashing any protest action fell to the interior minister, Czesław Kiszczak, a politically astute general who had previously served as head of military intelligence. Florian Siwicki, the armed forces chief of staff, would be responsible for the military aspects of the operation, including coordination with Soviet forces. Another longtime Jaruzelski protégé, Michał Janiszewski, was responsible for drafting martial law regulations and overseeing the state bureaucracy. Together these four generals formed the inner core of the new Military Council for National Salvation.

The generals fully expected Solidarity to unleash its ultimate weapon, a general strike. Workers would occupy their factories, just as they had done in August 1980. This time, however, the authorities were well prepared. There would be no need to order Polish soldiers to fire on Polish workers, something Jaruzelski had vowed never to do. In great secrecy the regime had assembled a force of thirty thousand professionally trained riot police, known by the Polish acronym ZOMO. Dressed to look like a swarm of Darth Vadars, with Plexiglas shields, gas masks, and water cannon, the ZOMO had the job of methodically breaking one strike after another. Poland’s 320,000-strong armed forces would perform a backup role, providing security for government installations and intimidating the population with a massive show of military might. Moving thousands of tanks out of their barracks served the additional purpose of showing Soviet leaders that Jaruzelski was not in need of “fraternal assistance.”




Browbeaten by the Kremlin and pushed into a corner by Solidarity, the Polish high command was convinced that martial law represented the only way out of the crisis. In five days’ time the opposition was planning to hold a huge protest demonstration in Warsaw. In another few days tens of thousands of soldiers would complete their military service, to be replaced by untrained conscripts, tainted by the Solidarity experience. The time to act was now, at the weekend, while the factories were empty.




Jaruzelski had already succeeded in linking Operation X to promises of a Soviet economic bailout. At his insistence the Kremlin had sent its top planner, Nikolai Baibakov, to Warsaw a few days before to discuss a two-billion-dollar Polish wish list. As a result of these talks, a tacit understanding had been reached. If the Polish government took tough action to crush Solidarity, Moscow would help the country out of its economic mess.


 Before issuing the final go-ahead for martial law, the general wanted to clarify Soviet military intentions toward Poland.

As was often the case in Communist Party politics, relations between Moscow and Warsaw were characterized by an extraordinary degree of intrigue and deceit. As Jaruzelski later remarked, he was dealing with people who were perfectly capable of showering you with kisses one day and sending troops to overthrow you the next.


 He knew the Soviets maintained good relations with Polish hard-liners who were prepared to issue an “invitation” that could be used to justify military intervention. It was in Jaruzelski’s interest to create the impression that there were certain circumstances under which he might himself appeal for Soviet assistance. That way he would retain the final word on whether or not to issue such an invitation.

This is the most plausible explanation for references in Soviet documents to a Polish request for military assistance, in the event that Operation X failed to restore order in the country. In addition to demonstrating his loyalty to Moscow, Jaruzelski wanted to sound out Soviet intentions. In his own words, he was constantly “Probing” the other side.


 Kremlin leaders suspected something of the kind. “Jaruzelski is displaying a certain cunning,” said Suslov, chairman of the Politburo commission on Poland. “He is creating an alibi for himself with these requests…. Later he will be able to say, ‘I turned to the Soviet Union for help and didn’t receive the help I was asking for.’ ”




In the presence of his three colleagues, Jaruzelski placed a call to Brezhnev on the morning of December 12. The general secretary was indisposed, so he was put through to Suslov, who was himself seriously ill. Exactly what was said during this telephone conversation has remained controversial. Soviet officials say that he asked for a pledge of Soviet help, if Operation X went wrong. Jaruzelski claims that he wanted an assurance that the Soviet Union would treat the introduction of martial law as an “internal” Polish affair.

“And what if things get complicated?” asked Jaruzelski, alluding to Brezhnev’s enigmatic warning to Kania the previous year.

“Well, you have always said that you can handle this with your own forces,” Suslov replied.




A couple of hours later Ustinov phoned. The marshal wanted to stiffen Jaruzelski’s backbone before the coming battle. As usual, the Soviet defense minister spoke in the hectoring tone used by a commanding officer to address a subordinate. He peppered his end of the conversation with words like nastupat’ (attack) and reshitel’no (decisively).


 Jaruzelski had heard these words frequently over the last sixteen months.

After listening to Moscow, Jaruzelski turned his attention to the situation in Gdańsk. Over the past ten days relations with Solidarity had deteriorated to an all-time low. The immediate cause of the crisis was the government’s use of riot police to break up a strike by firefighter cadets. Solidarity leaders had responded to the storming of the firefighters’ college—a dress rehearsal for a much more serious crackdown—by calling for antigovernment street demonstrations. They had returned to the movement’s birthplace, the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, to consider proposals for a referendum on free elections and the formation of a provisional government. In Jaruzelski’s mind, the proposals were tantamount to the dismantling of Communist power in Poland.

The Solidarity National Commission was riddled with secret police informers, who sent reports back to Warsaw about the uncompromising mood of the meeting. By 2:00 p.m. Jaruzelski had heard enough. He instructed his aides to proceed with Operation X.







GDAŃSK

December 12–13, 1981


IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN a moment of triumph. Lech Wałęsa was back in the Lenin Shipyard, sitting on the podium of the same conference hall where he had negotiated the Gdańsk agreement with Poland’s Communist authorities. The conference hall was bathed in television arc lights. In the space of five hundred days Wałęsa had been transformed from an unsung dissident in a corner of the Soviet empire to an international media celebrity. He had traveled to Japan and France, received the acclaim of the International Labor Organization in Geneva, held talks with Pope John Paul in the Vatican. His exploits were followed with close attention in the Kremlin and the White House; his pithy turns of phrase were dissected by journalists from all over the world. He had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and chosen as “Man of the Year” by Time magazine.

Usually Wałęsa enjoyed the media attention. He played up to the paparazzi, who followed him around Poland. He allowed himself to be photographed taking a bath, praying in church, scolding his children, thrusting his fists into the air in a gesture of victory.

On this occasion he was uncharacteristically somber and passive. He seemed oblivious of the dramatic debate whirling around him on how to respond to the latest government “provocations.” Sitting slightly to one side, he leafed through a pile of newspapers, making paper airplanes and fiddling with his new Czech pipe. His face looked swollen and white. He took no part in the voting as his colleagues passed a series of hard-line resolutions. Kuroń, the organizational brains behind Poland’s political opposition, called for the formation of a coalition government. One of the radicals began to bait the Solidarity leader, insisting that he should at least take the floor.

“Leszek, you sit there like a maharaja, saying nothing. Speak to us.”

“You’re all talking so much rubbish here that we’d better check to see if someone has added anything to your food,” Wałęsa snapped back.




The endless arguments, with both the government and his own Solidarity colleagues, had worn Wałęsa down. He sensed that an approaching cataclysm would severely test the strength of the first free trade union in the Communist world. At his last meeting with Jaruzelski, in early November, the general had seemed unyielding. The balance of power within the regime appeared to be shifting in favor of the advocates of force. Several of Wałęsa’s own advisers had warned him that the government was preparing for a showdown.

Bronisław Geremek, a medieval historian who had been advising Wałęsa since August 1980, voiced the fears of the intellectuals at the meeting of Solidarity’s national commission. “We cannot win an all-out confrontation with the government,” he told Solidarity leaders. “We’re not prepared for one, but they are. Remember, it’s they who will choose the time and place for such a confrontation, not we.”

His words were received in silence.

Outside the conference hall, life was continuing normally. Thick snow lay on the ground. At the shipyard’s number two gate, made famous in news pictures all over the world, a brisk trade was going on in Solidarity mementos. There were Solidarity wall calendars for 1982, posters, emblems of the pre-Communist eagle with the crown on the head, and dozens of lapel badges, including the cheeky new slogan, “I Love the Soviet Union.” A banner had been strung across the shipyard entrance, calling for the establishment of a people’s tribunal to punish “the murderers and thieves of the Polish people.”

By early evening disquieting news began to arrive at the shipyard. A Solidarity representative in the town of Olsztyn, a hundred miles southeast of Gdańsk, phoned to say that ZOMO units had left their barracks in full battle gear. Telex messages reported army movements to the south and west of the city. Phone calls were made to the local militia chief, who told Solidarity leaders “not to worry.” A large-scale police operation was under way to crack down on crime in the Gdańsk region.

Just before midnight, an aide handed Wałęsa a piece of paper with the news: “All communications by telephone and telex have been cut.”

The Solidarity leader rose to his feet. His face, lit up by the television lights, appeared even more swollen than before. He had what he later described as a “subconscious premonition” of what was about to happen but decided that resistance was pointless.




“Ladies and gentlemen, we have no communications with the outside world. Perhaps they will be restored tomorrow, perhaps not. In connection with this, I wish you good night.”

He stood up, threw his hands up in the air, as if to say, “There’s nothing more I can do,” and strode out of the room.




BY THE TIME WAŁĘSA REACHED his apartment on the outskirts of Gdańsk, ZOMO squads were knocking on the doors of known Solidarity supporters all over Poland. If there was no response, they simply smashed the door down. Those detained in Operation X included some of the best-known people in the country: writers, actors, historians, film producers, and academicians, in addition to straightforward union activists. In an attempt to make the roundup seem a little more evenhanded, a handful of former Communist leaders, including Gierek, were also detained. Some of the would-be internees were already dead, an indication that the lists had been drawn up many months previously.

At 2:00 a.m. ZOMO in pale blue battle dress surrounded the Monopol Hotel in Gdańsk, where members of the Solidarity National Commission were staying. All exits were blocked. The police went from room to room, handcuffing Solidarity officials and leading them out into waiting police trucks. Members of the antiterrorist squad in tightly fitting nylon jackets guarded the roof. The twenty-seven-year-old leader of the Warsaw branch of Solidarity, Zbigniew Bujak, observed the scene from across the street. He could not believe his eyes. His first thought was that the government had gone crazy. The whole of Poland would go on strike.




The doorbell rang in Wałęsa’s apartment building in Zaspa at around 3:00 a.m.


 The Solidarity leader had gone to bed. His wife, Danuta, looked through the peephole to see the local Communist Party chief, Tadeusz Fiszbach, in the company of the provincial governor and half a dozen policemen with crowbars. A reputed liberal, Fiszbach had been woken a short time before and ordered to put Wałęsa on a plane to Warsaw for “talks with Jaruzelski.” He seemed upset. At first Wałęsa refused to go. After the governor told him that the ZOMO were ready to take him to Warsaw by force, he packed a few clothes and left. (Wałęsa never did meet with Jaruzelski. After a few weeks in a government villa outside Warsaw, he was taken to a hunting lodge near the Soviet border that had once been the playground of Poland’s “red bourgeoisie.”)

At 6:00 a.m. Jaruzelski appeared on television in full general’s uniform, flanked by the Polish flag. “Our country has found itself at the edge of an abyss,” he declared. “Poland’s future is at stake: the future for which my generation fought.”

In a voice laden with emotion, Jaruzelski accused Solidarity leaders of everything from “acts of terrorism” to economic sabotage. If the present situation were allowed to continue, he declared, the result would be “famine,” “chaos,” and “civil war.” Socialism was the only path possible for Poland. With heavy heart, he announced that a state of war had been imposed on the entire country. A Military Council of National Salvation had been formed to bring the country back from the brink of disaster. Military tribunals were being established to punish anyone acting against the “interests of the state.”

Jaruzelski ended his speech with the first line of the national anthem: “Poland has not perished as long as we live.” As he spoke, the chords of the patriotic mazurka sung by exiled Polish legionnaires following the eighteenth-century partition of their country welled up in the background.

From Jaruzelski’s point of view, the first few days of martial law went astonishingly well. A few Solidarity leaders—Bujak was the most important—managed to go into hiding, but most were arrested. As expected, workers at many large factories attempted to stage occupation strikes. All were broken up with brutal efficiency by the ZOMO, usually under the cover of the nighttime curfew. The Lenin Shipyard, regarded by the entire country as Solidarity’s inner fortress, held out for less than a week. The organizers of the strike had trouble persuading the frightened workers to guard the perimeter of the shipyard, including gate number two. After establishing a psychological advantage, the ZOMO smashed the shipyard wall at several different points and rounded up the protesters.

The most serious casualties occurred at the Wujek coal mine in Silesia, where Solidarity supporters armed themselves with axes, chains, and iron rods. The miners had vowed to defend themselves after hearing of beatings and mass arrests elsewhere in Silesia. Fierce hand-to-hand combat broke out after ZOMO units attacked the mine with tanks and helicopters, three days after the imposition of martial law. Encircled by the enraged miners in a narrow courtyard, the riot police opened fire. Nine protesters were killed. The wall where the miners died became a makeshift shrine. The victims’ helmets lay on the top of the wall for months afterward, along with mounds of fresh flowers and messages of support for the banned trade union.




With his massive blow against Solidarity, Jaruzelski succeeded in reversing the movement’s principal accomplishment: overcoming the fear that had divided Pole from Pole. As was the case before August 1980, the Communist regime now controlled an atomized and defeated society. The psychological walls that Solidarity had succeeded in smashing went up again practically overnight. Ordinary people began to mistrust one another once more. Anyone could be a police informer. The desperate economic situation also helped the general. The priority for most families in the exceptionally cold winter of 1981 was not politics, but keeping warm and finding enough to eat.

It was enough to look at the faces of people in the streets the day after martial law was declared to see that Jaruzelski had won his gamble. The exuberance and sense of pride that had been the hallmark of the Solidarity period disappeared overnight. The people themselves were different. Millions of rank-and-file Solidarity supporters retreated to the safety of their apartments. Their place on the streets was taken by hundreds of thousands of people connected in some way with the Communist regime. They immediately began ripping down Solidarity posters, guarding public buildings, and issuing permits of one kind or another. Their cynical, dissolute faces wore expressions of immense relief. Such people had been around all along; they had just lain low, waiting for better times.




IN THE SHORT TERM Jaruzelski won his “war” with the Polish people. Operation X was a model of its kind, one that will be studied by would-be military dictators for a long time to come. The coup showed that it is possible to turn back the information revolution. The most sophisticated communications technology in the world is no protection against a totalitarian regime. A sufficiently determined dictator can lock up the photocopy machines, unplug the automatic telephone exchanges, and hunt down the typewriters and computers.

The cost of doing all this, however, was immense. In order to reimpose Communist Party control over Poland, Jaruzelski had to take the country back into the Middle Ages. He turned an industrialized country in the heart of Europe into a land cut off from the outside world, a country without telephones and telex machines. He locked up ten thousand of the best and the brightest. He imposed a stifling censorship on the mass media, closing down hundreds of newspapers and obliging television news readers to wear military uniforms. The martial law decrees covered everything from the introduction of compulsory labor and political loyalty tests for millions of state employees to bans on recreational sailing and sales of gasoline. A dusk-to-dawn curfew was introduced. Poland’s borders with the outside world were sealed. In order to prevent information from flowing freely around the country, travel without a permit was banned. Even savings accounts were frozen to prevent money from reaching Solidarity activists who had managed to avoid arrest.

There was no way a country burdened by such regulations could compete in the modern world. The restrictions were relaxed gradually, but Jaruzelski found that he had to rely on the support of Communist Party reactionaries to stay in power. That meant abandoning all hope of economic reform and condemning Poland to another decade of stagnation.

That was not all. For the Communist Party to be rescued by its own army was a humiliating admission of failure. During the period immediately after World War II, Polish Communists had felt a kind of revolutionary élan. Their success in rebuilding a war-ravaged country and incorporating the “western territories” acquired from Germany had won them popular support. By December 1981 it was clear that communism could maintain itself in Poland only with the aid of machine guns and internment camps. In order to save the system, Jaruzelski had to wage war against the working class. He replaced trade union leaders with military commissars and ordered tanks to smash their way into factories.

Paradoxically martial law may have been a blessing in disguise for Solidarity. After sixteen months of bruising struggles with the government, the movement was displaying the symptoms of a split personality. Some Solidarity leaders wanted the union to champion the cause of national independence; others wanted to put the emphasis on social matters. Some Solidarity activists saw themselves as spokesmen for workers in the huge industrial plants that were threatened by the free market; others regarded economic reform as a first step toward the junking of communism. Had history been allowed to take its normal course, these divisions would have led to an open split. The military crackdown had the effect of uniting the warring factions and preserving the Solidarity myth intact.

Packed off to internment camps by Jaruzelski, Solidarity leaders regarded themselves as the modern-day equivalents of the Polish officers murdered by the Soviets at Katyn in World War II or the antitsarist insurrectionaries of 1830 and 1863. Like their forefathers, they felt they were suffering for a just cause, Poland’s national independence. They were determined to live up to Piłsudski’s motto: “To be conquered and not to surrender—that is victory.” The battery of Polish national feeling, which had run down in the sixties and seventies, was once again fully charged.

In the end martial law was a Pyrrhic victory for Jaruzelski. Even in the darkest days of December 1981, when the nation was completely demoralized, it was clear that the wheel of Polish history would turn again. The people had been conquered, but they had not surrendered. There were limits to the restoration of the old order. Poles had changed as a result of the Solidarity experience, and Communist ideology had lost its power to motivate. The system of central planning had proved hopelessly inefficient and would have to be dismantled if Poland were to have any chance of escaping from the seemingly never-ending cycle of economic crises and political explosions. Jaruzelski and his advisers understood the need for sweeping changes, but were afraid to relax political controls because it would undermine the very basis of Communist Party power. The dilemma was irresolvable.

The crackdown in Poland was also a Pyrrhic victory for the Soviets. Once again, as in 1956 and 1968, they managed to stuff the genie of freedom back into the bottle. Eastern Europe had been made safe for “socialist democracy.” Soviet tanks would continue to have the run of the vast strategic plain between Russia and Germany. On the other hand, Soviet leaders now bore the burden of helping Poland survive an economic blockade imposed by Western countries. They could not afford to be saddled with another international basket case, at a time of growing economic problems at home. Brezhnev complained to his Politburo colleagues that “we are stretched to the limit in our capacity to help the Poles, and they are making still more requests.” He suggested that economic assistance be confined to prestige projects, “which should not impose great strains on our economy.”




Soviet economic planners had great difficulty persuading Brezhnev to make hard economic choices. Surrounded by sycophants and completely dependent on his doctors and bodyguards, the general secretary had lost touch with political reality. His political program consisted of trying to please everybody and accepting artificial tributes as his rightful due. Trapped in grandiose illusions, he imagined himself both infallible and irreplaceable.




But he too was mortal.




MOSCOW

November 10, 1982


ON NOVEMBER 7 LEONID BREZHNEV presided over the annual Revolution Day parade in Red Square, an obligatory annual ritual for Soviet leaders. He stood for several hours on top of the Lenin Mausoleum in bitterly cold weather, waving feebly as T-72 battle tanks and nuclear missiles trundled across the ancient cobblestones. Immediately after the parade he was driven to his hunting lodge at Zavidovo for the holiday. On November 9 he returned to his dacha at Zareche. His personal barber got blind drunk and was unable to give him his regular afternoon shave, but Brezhnev was too sick to care very much.

“What a useless fellow,” he murmured indulgently. “He’s smashed again.”




As the general secretary fell into his dotage, he had become increasingly estranged from his unruly family and dependent on the KGB guards who looked after his every physical need. They were like wet nurses to him. They helped the seventy-five-year-old leader out of bed in the morning, changed his clothes, fed him his meals, played dominoes with him, put up with his moods, and worried about his health. It was like dealing with a small child.

On the evening of November 9 Brezhnev retired to bed early. He usually stayed up to watch the 9:00 p.m. television news program Vremya, but he was tired by the hundred-mile drive from Zavidovo. He complained that his throat was hurting him. The following morning his bodyguards waited for his wife, Viktoria Petrovna, to emerge from his bedroom before going in to wake him up. It was a few minutes before nine o’clock. Brezhnev was lying on his side, apparently asleep.

“Leonid Ilyich, it’s time to get up,” said Vladimir Medvedev, the head of the night shift, as he gently shook the gensek.

There was no reaction. Medvedev began shaking Brezhnev more vigorously, but his eyes did not open. His body seemed cold. The bodyguards did what they were trained to do in such a situation: They pumped the old man’s heart and gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. They also called the chief Kremlin doctor, Yevgeny Chazov, who arrived on the scene twelve minutes later. Soon afterward an emergency medical team rushed into the room and started full-scale resuscitation procedures. It was clear to Chazov that all this frenetic activity was just for show. Brezhnev had been dead for several hours.




The first Politburo member on the scene was the former KGB chief Yuri Andropov, the heir apparent. He gave an involuntary gasp as he looked at the lifeless corpse of the man who had led the Soviet Union for the past eighteen years. He stared intently at the dead leader’s puffed-up face, which had turned a pale blue. Suddenly the reverie was over. Andropov said his good-byes and left.




THE SOVIET PEOPLE HEARD the news twenty-six hours later. The man chosen to make the death announcement on behalf of the grieving Politburo was Igor Kirillov, senior news reader for central television, who had served as the voice and face of Big Brother for almost two decades. A master of intonation and inflection, Kirillov had a knack for conveying Kremlin propaganda to the masses. His voice would drip with treacly pride as he announced the fulfillment of five-year plans. He read Politburo communiqués as if they were self-evident truths with which no honest person could possibly argue. Turning to news from capitalist countries—unemployment and crime were favorite topics—Kirillov switched instantly to moral indignation. For Brezhnev’s death, he adopted a tone of voice that was both somber and reassuring.

“Dear comrades,” Kirillov announced, pausing for effect. “The Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the whole Soviet people [pause] have suffered a grave loss [pause]. Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev [reverential inflection, long pause], loyal perpetuator of the great cause of Lenin [pause], ardent patriot [pause], outstanding revolutionary and fighter for peace and communism [pause], an outstanding politician and statesman of our time [pause], has departed this life [long, mournful pause].”

But wait, comrades. All is not lost. “The people have learned from experience that whatever the turn of events and whatever the trials [pause], our party remains capable of carrying out its historic mission. [Voice assumes growing confidence.] The home and foreign policies of the CPSU elaborated under the leadership of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev [reverential pause] will continue to be applied consistently and purposefully [final note of triumph before funeral music surges in the background].”

Years later, after the collapse of communism, Kirillov explained that he had been trained in the famous Stanislavsky school of acting, the Method.


 In order to seem sincere, the actor must completely live the part. If he can convince himself that he is hopelessly in love, he can convince others. Like anyone else his age—he was born in 1932, at the height of Stalin’s great terror—Kirillov knew about the gulag and the man-made famine that killed millions of people, but he put them out of his mind. He convinced himself that the party was right. Eventually, as the personality cult surrounding Brezhnev reached absurdist proportions, even Kirillov began to have doubts. But he still behaved as if he believed. He was the epitome of the system of doublethink that held a nation of 287 million people in its grasp.




KIRILLOV’S SIMULATION of ideological conviction was an apt analogy for the Brezhnev era. By and large, ordinary Soviets had ceased to believe in socialist ideology, but they continued to go through the motions. The whole country was engaged in a mass deceit. In the privacy of their kitchens people laughed at their doddering leader. In public they kept straight faces.

The Brezhnev period was later dismissed by Soviet historians as the “era of stagnation.” It would be wrong to conclude, however, that nothing of significance happened in the Soviet Union during those years. The process of ideological disillusionment that took place under Brezhnev was an essential prelude to the Gorbachev revolution. During his eighteen years in power the regime gave up the battle to control the minds of its citizens, concentrating instead on their outward behavior. An all-embracing religion capable of mobilizing millions of people was transformed into an ideology for cynics. By the time Brezhnev died, the Soviet Union had lost its sense of mission. Even the general secretary no longer believed in the future socialist utopia.

“All that stuff about Communism is a tall tale for popular consumption,” he told his brother, Yakov. “After all, we can’t leave the people with no faith. The church was taken away, the tsar was shot, and something had to be substituted. So let the people build Communism.”




Compared with the scenes that had accompanied Stalin’s death nearly thirty years earlier, Brezhnev’s funeral was a restrained and unemotional affair. Stalin was terrifying and awe-inspiring even in death. In March 1953 Politburo members had quaked before him as he lay on his deathbed in his dacha. When they heard that the “Great Leader of All Times and All Peoples” had passed away, millions of people all over the country broke down and wept. The crowds were so great for the lying in state that more than five hundred people were trampled to death on the streets of Moscow. When Brezhnev died, Soviet citizens merely shrugged their shoulders. The elaborate funeral rites in Red Square—the coffin borne aloft by the surviving members of the Politburo, the wailing of factory sirens and firing of guns, Chopin’s “Funeral March”—were practically identical. But there was no sense of real grief.

Curiously enough, the ideological crisis came at a time when ordinary Soviets were living better than ever before. The improvement in living standards fell far short of the regime’s own promises. Standards of health remained dismal, meat and butter were rarities, and wages were low. Even so, Brezhnev’s rule represented a respite from the terror and grinding poverty of the Stalinist period. Older people later looked back to the era of stagnation as a golden age, when bread cost sixteen kopecks a loaf, there was no unemployment, and every Soviet citizen was guaranteed five square meters of free housing. Russian families were beginning to acquire consumer luxuries like refrigerators and color television sets and could even dream of a tinny Soviet-made automobile.

Had Brezhnev’s successors been able to sustain this gradual increase in living standards, there might have been no perestroika and no Second Russian Revolution. But this proved impossible at a time when the Soviet Union was waging war in Afghanistan, pouring money into the arms race with the United States, and propping up a string of Third World clients. By the early eighties it was clear to the thinking section of the Soviet elite that such profligacy could not continue forever. In order to meet the evergrowing cost of empire, Russia had been forced to ransack its treasure trove of natural resources. In other words, the country was living off its own future.

When the planners attempted to point this out to the decrepit gensek, he would wave them away impatiently. It was an article of faith with Brezhnev that Russia’s natural wealth was “inexhaustible.”

“To hell with you and your figures,” he once told Baibakov, the head of the state planning commission. “Let’s go hunting.”







A FEW MONTHS AFTER Brezhnev’s death, in April 1983, a group of a hundred or so Soviet economists and sociologists met in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk to discuss the eternal Russian questions: Who is guilty? What is to be done? Emboldened by Andropov’s calls to get the world’s second superpower moving again, the participants in the seminar tried to analyze the causes of the country’s declining economic performance. They rejected the standard explanations—such as bad weather conditions, lack of skilled manpower, and low labor discipline—in favor of a much broader indictment of central planning. In the opinion of these scientists, the economy was trapped in a Stalinist rut of low productivity, shoddy output, and extravagant use of natural resources. The obsession with fulfilling targets established by supposedly omniscient planners was stifling individual initiative. The command-and-administer system, under which any economic decision of any significance was taken at the center, may have functioned reasonably well when the country’s industrial infrastructure was still being formed. But it was incapable of meeting the challenges of the modern economy.

To avoid problems with the censors, the organizers of the Novosibirsk conference took care to wrap their conclusions up in Marxist-Leninist jargon. They limited circulation of their findings to fifty-eight numbered copies. Each was stamped “Confidential—for official use only.” Despite these precautions, a copy of the report made its way to the West, where it caused an overnight sensation.


 The so-called Novosibirsk report provided an insight into a growing behind-the-scenes debate in the Soviet Union on how to meet the challenges posed by the technological revolution that was sweeping the rest of the industrialized world. Behind the monolithic and seemingly stagnant facade something was stirring.

Under Stalin the Soviet Union had adopted a simplistic formula for economic growth. Increases in output were believed to be directly proportional to greater inputs of the “factors of production”: manpower, raw materials, and land. If necessary, force would be used to achieve the desired result. In the 1930s, at the height of Stalin’s industrialization campaign, thirty million peasants were forcibly uprooted from the countryside to provide slave labor for socialist industry. Another fifteen to thirty million Soviet citizens fell victim to terror or famine. The Bolshevik leaders were convinced that the goal of building a socialist utopia justified any sacrifice. Their hubris was breathtaking. “There are no fortresses Bolsheviks cannot storm,” one of Stalin’s collaborators boasted. “Our task is not to study the economy, but to change it. We are not bound by any law.”




The extensive economic model was retained by Stalin’s successors, with only slight modifications. Both Khrushchev and Brezhnev had a weakness for huge projects that would exploit the country’s untapped resources. Khrushchev developed the virgin lands of northern Kazakhstan in a vain attempt to solve the food crisis. Brezhnev ordered a railway line to be built across the frozen tundra of northern Siberia to reach the copper reserves of Udokan and the gold mines of Yakutia. By the early eighties the Soviet Union led the world in such basic economic indices as the production of iron, coal, timber, and cement. It boasted the world’s biggest hydroelectric dam, largest steel factory, heaviest tractors, most powerful rockets. At the same time, industry was unable to produce a decent razor blade or meet the demand for toilet paper.

What the Novosibirsk reformers proposed was a switch from extensive to intensive growth. Quality, not quantity, would become the new buzzword. Western studies had shown that a Soviet factory consumed two to three times as much energy as a Western plant to produce an inferior product. The technological gap between the Soviet Union and the West was growing all the time. By 1982, the year of Brezhnev’s death, the Soviet Union trailed the United States in the number of computers per head by a factor of 1:400 and in the number of industrial robots by 1:15 




Compared with later critiques of the Soviet economy, the Novosibirsk report was fairly tame. By contemporary standards, however, it was revolutionary. It challenged the official Leninist dogma that the Soviet Union was already a “classless society” and predicted that economic reform would trigger a political struggle between different interest groups. It also called for a total “restructuring” of the system of economic management to encourage individual initiative.

Nobody realized it yet, but a new political slogan had just been launched, a slogan that would transform the Communist world: perestroika.




NOWA HUTA

June 22, 1983


WHILE THE LEADERS of world communism were bidding farewell to Brezhnev, a little drama was being played out on the periphery of the Soviet empire that captured the scale of the ideological challenge confronting his successors. The workers of Nowa Huta, a city of two hundred thousand people in southern Poland, had taken a passionate dislike to a statue to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin adorning their central square. They had marched on it, scrawled anti-Communist graffiti on it, and attempted to pull it down with picks and ropes. On one occasion they had even set the father of the international proletariat on fire, drenching his billowing overcoat in gasoline and blowing off one of his hands.

Determined to protect Vladimir Ilyich from his ungrateful offspring, the Communist authorities erected a corrugated iron fence around the charred two-story-high monument. Thousands of ZOMO riot police moved into Nowa Huta. Armed policemen patrolled the square day and night. At moments of tension a dozen police vehicles threw a defensive circle of steel around the statue. Water cannon were stationed nearby to repel a surprise attack.

For a nation still reeling from the psychological shock of martial law, there was a delicious irony to these events. Nowa Huta—Polish for “new steelworks”—had been planned as a model socialist community. Poland’s rulers had wanted a socioeconomic laboratory where they could turn Godfearing Polish peasants into the new proletarian man described by Marx and Lenin. They saw the town as a political counterweight to the nearby city of Kraków, Poland’s ancient capital, which they regarded as a bastion of conservative reaction. The construction of Nowa Huta in the early 1950s was accompanied by a propaganda barrage about the incredible feats of “heroes of socialist labor,” which served as inspiration for Andrzej Wajda’s film Man of Marble. To celebrate its completion, the giant Nowa Huta steelworks received the hallowed name of Lenin.

There were hundreds of similar “model” towns all over the Soviet empire, from Karl-Marx-Stadt in East Germany to Komsomolsk-on-Amur in the Soviet Far East. They were uniform in their soul-destroying drabness, gridlike layouts, and pompous style of municipal architecture. Lenin Avenue always led to Lenin Square, dominated by a huge statue of Lenin, right arm thrust up in classic taxicab-hailing pose. The biggest building in each square was always the headquarters of the local Communist Party, and the party secretary always had his offices on the second floor. Faded propaganda banners—with slogans like “Glory to the Communist Party” and “We Promise to Fulfill the Goals of the Five-Year Plan”—adorned the potholed streets. The stores had names like Food Products No. 8, Bakery No. 12, and Hairdresser. The gray apartment buildings had a makeshift, slapped-together quality about them, as if nobody cared whether the walls were straight or the balconies fell into the street. There was even a distinctly socialist smell. The blend of odors varied slightly from country to country, but the basic ingredients were always the same: low-octane gasoline, body odor, unwashed frying pans, cheap perfume, brown coal, cabbage, dried urine, and musty newsprint.

Many of these towns were company towns, built around a single state-owned factory, such as a steelworks or a coal mine or a big defense plant, visible for miles around. The factory dominated the lives of the townspeople, just as it dominated the landscape. It provided them with jobs and poisoned the air they breathed and the water they drank. It organized day care centers and summer camps for their children and exposed them to an unending stream of Communist propaganda. It distributed housing and acted as an extension of the police state: If you misbehaved, you would be crossed off the ten-year waiting list for an apartment.

Nowa Huta differed from other model socialist towns in one very important respect. At the corner of Karl Marx Avenue and Great Proletarian Avenue stood a soaring concrete structure that had not been part of the original plan. Topped by a huge steel cross, the Church of Our Lady, Queen of Poland was known to everyone in town as the Ark. The struggle to prove the planners wrong had infused the entire community with a sense of defiance.

The first cross had appeared on this site in 1957, in the wake of the popular upheavals that swept Gomułka to power. Over the next decade the cross was repeatedly torn down by police and stubbornly put up again by the local inhabitants. Finally, in 1967, seventeen years after the building of Nowa Huta, the archbishop of Kraków had dug a spade into the earth to break the ground for the town’s first church. It took another decade of bureaucratic obstruction and arbitrary shortages of building materials to complete the Ark. Much of the work, including carrying two million stones from mountain streams, was done by local inhabitants with their bare hands. Consecrating the completed church in 1977, the archbishop had declared: “Nowa Huta was built as a city without God, but the will of God and the people who worked here prevailed. Let this be a lesson.”




The archbishop had gone on to become Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in 455 years. On his first pilgrimage back to his homeland, in 1979, Karol Wojtyła had been refused permission to visit the Ark. So he had said mass across the cornfields, in Kraków, against the backdrop of the dark, satanic steel mill. Now he was returning to Poland once again, and this time he would be visiting Nowa Huta. Frustrated in their attempts to pull down the local Lenin monument, the inhabitants of the “city without God” were determined to show the world where their loyalties really lay.




THE POPE’S FIRST VISIT had provided the spiritual boost that had paved the way for the rise of Solidarity. By turning out to greet their countryman, and becoming part of the millions-strong crowd that followed his every move, Poles acquired a sense of solidarity with one another. Never again would they feel alone and isolated, as they had during the dark days of totalitarianism. If anyone was isolated, it was Poland’s Communist rulers.

During the 1979 pilgrimage John Paul had spoken in a voice that was simple and direct, quite unlike the voice of the Communist regime. He talked of the thirty-five-year Communist experience as a transitory phenomenon, insignificant in comparison with Poland’s thousand-year devotion to the Roman Catholic Church. It was a message that came across clearly on the first day of the visit, in Warsaw’s Victory Square, when the pope attacked the state for attempting to create an atheistic society. “Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe,” he had thundered. The crowd greeted his words with a ten-minute burst of applause, ending with rhythmic chants of “We want God, we want God.”




From that moment onward, Karol Wojtyła became the uncrowned king of Poland.

During his weeklong tour of Poland the pope had elaborated on one of his favorite themes, the spiritual unity of Europe. He saw his beloved Kraków as part of a European-wide civilization, in which political boundaries were more or less irrelevant. In Wojtyła’s Europe, the Europe of 966, when Poland was first converted to Christianity, there was no Iron Curtain and no Berlin Wall. Priests, scholars, and ideas traveled freely from one town to another. The pope was convinced that his election was God’s way of reminding Western Europe that Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Bulgars, and even Russians were also part of a much broader Christian civilization.

Born in 1920, the year Poland defeated Soviet Russia in the “Miracle on the Vistula,” Karol Wojtyła had firsthand experience of family tragedy, backbreaking labor, and political oppression. He had scarcely known his mother, a schoolteacher, who died when he was only six, while giving birth to a stillborn girl. His father, who had served in the Austro-Hungarian army, was killed in the opening year of World War II. “At the age of twenty,” Wojtyła later recalled, “I had already lost all the people I loved and even the ones I might have loved, such as my big sister who had died, I was told, six years before my birth.”


 Psychologists have speculated that the future pope sought compensation for the maternal love he never received in the Marian cult of the Black Madonna.

As a theological student in Kraków Wojtyła experienced the terror of German occupation. A particularly brutal Nazi gauleiter, Hans Frank, installed himself in the royal Wawel Castle with orders from Hitler to treat the Poles as a slave race. “The standard of living in Poland must be kept low,” Hitler instructed. “The priests will preach what we want them to preach. Their task is to keep the Poles quiet, stupid, and dull-witted.”


 Wojtyła saw Kraków Jews being taken to the death camp at Auschwitz, just a few miles down the road. Polish intellectuals were disposed of in a similar fashion. The Germans put Wojtyła to work, first in a stone quarry and later carrying buckets of lime in a water purification plant. On the night of August 6, 1944, the Gestapo arrested all Polish males between the age of fifteen and fifty in retaliation for the Warsaw uprising. Had they found Wojtyła, they would probably have killed him. Fortunately for the young theologian, he was given shelter by the archbishop of Kraków, Prince Adam Sapieha.

Wojtyła lived in the residence on Franciscan Street, off and on, for nearly fifteen years, as both student and archbishop. When he returned in June 1983, as pope, it was as if he were coming home. He greeted the nuns by name and sang and joked with the thousands of young people who waited to greet him in the street outside. “Holy Father, we trust you,” they chanted. “Save Poland.”

On the last full day of his visit the pope said mass on the Błonie, the vast meadow in front of Wawel Castle. Banners reading “Solidarity Lives” and “There Is No Freedom Without Solidarity” fluttered above the crowd of two million people. Alluding to Jaruzelski’s imposition of martial law, the pope urged his listeners never to give up. The nation had been “called to victory,” he declared.

As he said these words, two million people raised their hands silently in the air in the V for victory sign. An underground Solidarity leader, Eugeniusz Szumiejko, who had managed to escape the police roundup, was standing at the back of the huge throng, on top of an embankment. All of a sudden he saw a sea of black heads submerged in a wave of white fists.


 It was an awe-inspiring sight, proof that Jaruzelski had been unable to crush the spirit that had given birth to Solidarity. At the end of the mass a large chunk of the crowd set off on foot for Nowa Huta, beneath their Solidarity banners, to see the pope consecrate a new church.

“Khodz z namy,” they chanted, the battle cry of 1970 and 1980. “Come with us. There will be no beatings today.”

When they reached the site of the new church, they joined a congregation of a quarter of a million people. The entire population of the “city without God” had turned out to greet the pope. Here was proof that history could not be reversed by tanks, internment camps, and corrugated iron fences, that martial law too would pass, and that Nowa Huta’s two-story monument to the founder of world communism would one day come down.




THE KREMLIN GREETED THE NEWS of Pope John Paul’s triumphant return to his homeland with ill-concealed fury. The Soviet mass media accused Polish priests of inciting parishioners to acts of “political hooliganism” and inspiring “counterrevolutionary disturbances.” Soviet leaders urged their Polish counterparts to crack down hard on the “reactionary” wing of the Catholic Church.

“The Polish Communist Party isn’t putting much effort into the struggle with the church,” Gromyko, the Soviet foreign minister, complained to his Politburo colleagues. “Things have reached the point when thousands upon thousands of people are crawling on their knees before the Roman pope.”




Jaruzelski resisted Moscow’s advice to crack down on the church. He tried to explain that he needed the church as an “ally” in his campaign to ensure peace and quiet in Poland and regain respectability at home and abroad. The Kremlin potentates remained hostile. Their suspicions were voiced by the youngest member of the Politburo, who presented himself as an ardent believer in the monotheistic faith of communism. “Jaruzelski is trying to paint the situation in rosy colors,” he told his colleagues. “We must clarify his real intentions. We must find out whether he wants to introduce a pluralistic system of government in Poland.”




Such were the views of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev a year before he became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.




II. REVOLT OF THE MACHINES


In Poland, in August 1980, it was human beings who went on strike. In the Soviet Union, we are witnessing a strike of inanimate objects.

    

Adam Michnik






All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.

    

Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire








SAKHALIN ISLAND

September 1, 1983


AFTER RONALD REAGAN’S ELECTION as fortieth president of the United States, the Pentagon began publishing annual reports on the Soviet military threat. Packed with color illustrations of missiles that could hit New York and Los Angeles, charts depicting the growing Warsaw Pact advantage in tanks and men under arms, and grainy photographs of nuclear submarines, the glossy brochures portrayed a world in which the balance of power was shifting inexorably in favor of the Communist superpower. With each edition of Soviet Military Power, an ever greater proportion of the earth’s surface was daubed in red. Sinister red arrows reached out across the world’s major sea-lanes, showing the Kremlin straining to achieve the goal of a thousand-ship navy. Much of Asia, Africa, and Latin America was covered with blotches and symbols denoting the presence of Soviet, Cuban, or East German military advisers. No part of the globe, not even the United States, seemed entirely safe from the encroaching Red menace.

Thanks to satellite technology, American military planners were able to observe a Soviet arms buildup that was unprecedented for peacetime. If anything, they underestimated the extent of the buildup, failing to detect many of the nuclear warheads that were rolling off Soviet production lines. There was something missing, however, from this bird’s-eye view: an understanding of ground-level reality.

Viewed up close, the Soviet military machine was neither as awesome nor as efficient as it appeared from the sky. The military-industrial complex suffered from the same weaknesses as the rest of the Soviet economy: incompetence, waste, technological backwardness, bureaucracy. Despite devoting an ever-increasing proportion of their country’s economic resources to the military, Soviet leaders still felt insecure.

Several years later, when the Cold War was already winding down, Soviet military chiefs presented their American counterparts with a map that reflected their view of the world. In sharp contrast with American maps, the Soviet map depicted a vast country encircled by enemies. To the east there were the Chinese, waiting for a chance to expand into the underpopulated vastness of Siberia. To the south, the Muslims, with whom Russia had waged war for five hundred years. To the west, the ideologically irreconcilable forces of imperialism. And all around, the rival superpower, with its military bases, electronic listening posts, subversive radio “voices,” and all-conquering consumer culture.

To defend themselves against these multiple threats, Kremlin leaders propagated the doctrine of a “sacred” border. The frontiers of the Soviet state had been consecrated with the blood of millions of soldiers and could never be altered. It was the patriotic duty of every citizen to defend these borders to the end. Half a million soldiers were assigned to patrol the frontier. Soviet air defenses alone consisted of some twenty-five hundred interceptor aircraft, five thousand early warning radar systems, and ten thousand surface-to-air-missiles, deployed along a five-thousand-mile arc from Kamchatka to Kaliningrad.




The orders were clear: “Use weapons and combat equipment” to destroy any intruder. When the test finally came, the border guards almost fluffed it.




GENNADY OSIPOVICH CLIMBED into the cockpit of his Su-15 interceptor jet an hour before dawn on September 1, 1983. He was given the coordinates of an unidentified “military” target approaching the island of Sakhalin from the direction of Kamchatka, a volcanic peninsula that juts down from the eastern tip of Russia. His mission was to destroy the target if and when it crossed back into Soviet airspace. At 5:42 a.m., Sakhalin time, he received the order to take off.

By the time Osipovich was finally airborne, the “intruder” plane had been wandering across Soviet territory for almost an hour. Four fighter planes had been scrambled over Kamchatka to bring it down, but they had lost touch with their target as it headed out over the Sea of Okhotsk. It later turned out that eight out of the eleven tracking stations on Kamchatka and Sakhalin were not functioning properly.




A veteran pilot with ten years’ experience in the Far East, Osipovich knew that the boastful talk about the Soviet Union’s impenetrable borders was a myth. In fact, there were gaping holes in the system. The Americans seemed to delight in testing the mettle of Soviet pilots. U.S. fighter aircraft would head directly for the border, only to veer away at the last moment. American RC-135 intelligence-gathering planes were constantly buzzing around. The war of nerves was taking its toll. Six months previously a squadron of planes from the U.S. Pacific fleet had brazenly violated Soviet airspace over the Kurile Islands, an archipelago seized from Japan at the end of World War II. A high-level commission had berated the Soviet pilots for their lack of vigilance.




Personal initiative was not a quality that was prized in the Air Defense Force (PVO). The Soviet top guns who flew high-performance combat planes sometimes dismissed their PVO colleagues as “robots” controlled from the ground. Osipovich’s Sukhoi-15 was a typical PVO plane, a cumbersome gas guzzler, fast-climbing but difficult to maneuver. One Soviet defector described it as little more than “a high-altitude missile platform.”


 The range of PVO planes was limited. After a Soviet fighter pilot flew a state-of-the-art MiG-25 to Japan, orders were issued to ensure that PVO planes never had enough fuel to reach a foreign airfield. That meant a maximum flying time of forty to fifty minutes, barely enough to complete a mission.




After roughly ten minutes’ flight Osipovich caught sight of the intruder through a thin layer of cloud. At first it looked like a flying dot, two to three centimeters across. The flashing navigation lights were clearly visible against the nighttime sky. When he got closer, to a distance of around three miles, he could observe the silhouette of a strange, humpbacked plane. It was large, unlike anything he had ever seen before.

At 6:15, Osipovich’s headphones crackled with an order to “prepare to fire.” Ground control on Sakhalin addressed him by the call sign 805 and asked if his missile systems were “locked on” to the target.

“I am locked on,” replied the pilot, watching a row of lights on his control panel beginning to flash. The interceptor was equipped with two R-98 air-to-air missiles. Upon release, one of the missiles was programmed to home in on a source of infrared radiation, such as aircraft exhaust. The other missile was guided to its target by radar. Attempting to get a little closer to the intruder, Osipovich turned on his afterburner. The radio crackled an order that he could not make out.

“Say again.”

The voice of ground control rose to a shout. “Eight-zero-five, the target has violated the state border, destroy the target!”




But there was to be a last-minute reprieve for KAL 007. Down on the ground, frantic messages were flying between air force bases on Sakhalin, a thousand-mile-long slither of starkly beautiful mountains rising from a plain that bristled with military installations. The duty officer for Osipovich’s squadron was startled by the extraordinarily “stupid” behavior of the intruder. Suicide missions were not the American style. He told a colleague from a neighboring fighter division that it all seemed “very suspicious.” “I don’t think the enemy is so stupid. Can it be one of ours?” Next, he called a control post at Makarov, on the eastern tip of the island, to check on the progress of the intruder.

“It hasn’t bombed us yet,” came the cheerful reply.




At the command control center in Khabarovsk, four hundred miles to the west, there were similar doubts about the identity of the “target.” The duty officer thought the intruder plane could be a passenger aircraft. “All necessary steps must be taken to identify it,” he insisted. His superior, General Kamenski, was also troubled. “Maybe it is some civilian aircraft, or God knows what,” he told the commander of air defenses on Sakhalin, General Kornukov.

“What civilian?” exploded Kornukov, who had been dragged out of bed forty-five minutes earlier and informed that an American RC-135 was heading straight toward his island. He knew the penalties for letting such a plane escape. “It has flown over Kamchatka. It came from the ocean, without identification. I am giving the order to attack.”




Seconds later even Kornukov began having some doubts. Straining to make sense out of the nocturnal drama, he countermanded his earlier order to shoot down the intruder. “Are there navigation lights or not?” he suddenly barked out. In the next minute he repeated the question five more times. The absence of navigation lights would be proof of the plane’s hostile intent. The question was relayed to Osipovich.

“The air navigation light is on; the flashing light is on,” he radioed back.

“Flash the interceptor’s lights as a warning signal,” ordered Kornukov. “Order him to approach the target, rock wings at it, and force it to land.” To still the hubbub that was coming in over his headset, he gave another order to the commander of Osipovich’s squadron: “Stop that horsing around at the command post. Only you, I, and the controller are to talk. No one else.”




Positioned behind and slightly below the intruder plane, Osipovich fired four bursts of armor-piercing shells, 243 rounds in all. In response, the target appeared to reduce speed, forcing Osipovich’s Su-15 to shoot ahead. Both planes had now crossed the island from east to west—a twelve-minute flight—and were heading out into the Sea of Japan. In the thick moon haze of the predawn sky, it seemed to Osipovich that the target was taking evasive action. He knew that if he slowed down, he would stall. So he dived two thousand feet and banked around for a second run at the intruder. His thoughts were consumed by the flashing lights of his instrument panel.







THE 240 PASSENGERS on board Korean Airlines flight 007 from Anchorage to Seoul were oblivious of the drama just outside their portholes. Some had covered themselves in blankets and had drowsed off. Others were waiting for the cabin crew to come around with breakfast as the plane flew over Japan on its approach to South Korea. Most of the window shades were down, for the in-flight movie. Up on the flight deck the crew were suppressing yawns and engaged in desultory conversation about vacations and customs procedures. The talk turned to the location of the airport currency exchange.

“What kind of money do you wish to exchange?” asked one crew member. “Dollar to Korean money is all right.”

“Yes.”

“That is in the domestic building.”

“It could be open nine o’clock in the morning. It could be ten o’clock.”


 It did not occur to Captain Chun Byung-in and his colleagues that they had flown in and out of Soviet airspace for more than two hours and were being tracked by Soviet interceptors. Shortly after leaving Anchorage, they had programmed the well-trodden route to Seoul into the Boeing’s computer. At this moment they believed themselves to be more than two hundred miles to the east, in international airspace, off the coast of Japan. But a tragic error had occurred. Instead of following the recognized route, the plane had followed a constant magnetic heading that had brought it right over Soviet territory. The onboard inertial navigation system had failed to engage, either because the pilots had switched it on too late or because someone had flipped the switch to the wrong position. There had been many opportunities to catch the error, but the flight was long and tedious, and nobody noticed that the plane was drifting off its assigned route.




At the moment when Osipovich was attempting to attract his attention with a burst of cannon fire, Captain Chun was talking to air traffic control in Tokyo. He received permission to climb two thousand feet to an altitude of thirty-seven thousand feet, a routine fuel-saving maneuver at this point in the flight. Osipovich interpreted the climb as an attempt to escape.




BY NOW THE INTRUDER PLANE was heading out of Soviet airspace, and the generals down on the ground were beginning to panic. If it got away, they would be accused of dereliction of duty and could face dismissal. There was no time left to identify the target positively. Osipovich was running out of fuel. He had no more than ten to fifteen minutes’ flying time remaining. In theory he could have tried to communicate with the intruder aircraft on the internationally recognized 121.5 megahertz emergency frequency. But that would have meant retuning his radio and losing contact with his ground controllers. There was no time for that either.




At 6:21, just as dawn was breaking over the island of Sakhalin and KAL 007 was flying out of Soviet airspace, Kornukov made his final decision. The air crackled with commands.

“Fire missiles, fire on target six-zero-six-five, destroy target six-zero-six-five.”

“Get Osipovich to fire, and soon!”

“Carry out the task, destroy!”

“Bring one-six-three in behind Osipovich to guarantee destruction!”

“Eight-zero-five, approach target and destroy target!”

As he spun around behind the Boeing, Osipovich had only one thought in his mind: to down the enemy plane. He had even dreamed of such a moment. This would be the culmination of his career as a Soviet interceptor pilot. He stubbed his index finger to release the heat-seeking missile. Two seconds later he fired the radar-guided missile.

“Launch executed,” he radioed back.

It took the missiles roughly thirty seconds to cover the five miles between the two planes. Then Osipovich saw a burst of yellow flame from the tail section. The navigation lights went out immediately. At first the plane seemed to climb. But as he peeled off to the right, he could see the intruder plane plummeting toward the sea.

“The target is destroyed,” he announced excitedly.







THE KREMLIN

September 2, 1983


THE DESTRUCTION of Korean Airlines flight 007 was a spectacular example of what the historian Barbara Tuchman has described as the “March of Folly,” action that flies in the face of national self-interest. By shooting 269 innocent people out of the sky, the Soviets seemed to confirm the “evil empire” tag that had been stuck on them by President Reagan.

Soviet leaders compounded the public relations disaster of shooting down a civilian aircraft by refusing—for almost a week—to acknowledge what they had done. The first statement by the official Tass news agency about the incident failed to mention any shots. It claimed that an unidentified aircraft, flying “without navigation lights,” had violated Soviet airspace. Soviet interceptors had attempted to guide the plane to the “nearest airfield,” but the intruder had ignored all the “signals and warnings” and “continued its flight in the direction of the Sea of Japan.” These claims were a gift to conservatives in the United States, who had no illusions about Moscow’s willingness “to lie and to cheat,” in Reagan’s phrase. Soviet responsibility for the shootdown was easily demonstrated. The Americans simply played a tape of the exchanges between Sakhalin ground control and the interceptor pilot to a hushed session of the UN Security Council.

No single individual was to blame for this self-inflicted disaster. It reflected the collective woodenheadedness of a system that had sidetracked Russia into decades of self-imposed isolation, a system that suppressed dissenting opinions and was unable to deal flexibly with new challenges, a system that prized ideology over common sense. It was the same woodenheadedness that had caused Kremlin leaders to murder millions of their own citizens in the name of progress, to devastate their country’s natural environment for short-term economic gain, to persecute its most outstanding writers and scientists, and to stumble into an unpopular, unwinnable war in Afghanistan despite numerous warnings about the risks of such an enterprise. The system was so powerful, and so well entrenched, that it seemed to paralyze virtually all who lived in its shadow.




LESS THAN TEN MONTHS had passed since Brezhnev’s death, but they had taken their toll on Yuri Andropov. Worn down by rapidly failing health and awesome responsibilities, the new Soviet leader looked like a skeleton. Even longtime associates had difficulty recognizing him. He spent much of his time in a hospital room, cluttered with medical equipment and Kremlin telephones, sitting in an ancient dentist’s chair with a high headrest that allowed him to shift his position at the press of a button. In the summer of 1983 his kidneys had given out entirely, and he had to be hooked up to a dialysis machine twice a week.


 For the Soviet people the general secretary had become a kind of ghostly presence that could be felt and sensed but was never seen. If he needed to communicate with the nation, he did so in written form, through a statement “from the Soviet leadership,” or a Tass communiqué, or perhaps an interview in Pravda.

The Andropov era had begun on a hopeful note. After the drift and stagnation of the Brezhnev years, most Soviet citizens welcomed any sign of change, however modest. They were impressed by the new leader’s attempts to shake the bureaucracy out of its torpor. An anticorruption drive targeted at former Brezhnev cronies helped bolster the image of the former KGB chief as a stern but just ruler who would get the country moving again. At last Russia had a real khozyayin, master, who would punish idlers and restore a sense of order and discipline. Desperate for vigorous leadership, many Russians reacted positively to such token gestures as a series of police raids on Moscow bathhouses in the middle of the day to crack down on absenteeism.

Among the Communist Party elite, the wizened man in the dentist’s chair was regarded as the best of his generation. Fifteen years at the head of the world’s largest spy agency had given Andropov a unique insight into the true condition of the Soviet Union and the extent to which it lagged behind its capitalist rivals. Compared with Brezhnev, he was decisive and energetic. He understood the need for change and seemed open to new ideas. But there was a hard side to the dying Soviet leader that went back to his days as a rising apparatchik under Stalin. Unlike younger members of the Politburo, who had never experienced war or revolution, Andropov knew that Soviet power rested on the ability of a ruthless minority to impose its will on the majority. Reform was necessary, but it had to be tightly controlled.

In Andropov’s view, the secret of ruling a country as vast as Russia was never to show weakness. This applied to both domestic policy and foreign affairs. The enemies of socialism were lying in wait, ready to pounce the moment the dictatorship of the proletariat displayed signs of indecision or disunity. Events should not be allowed to reach the point where the only solution was overwhelming military force. That meant keeping a watchful eye on dissent and nipping protests in the bud, before they grew into a major challenge to the regime. In Politburo discussions before he became general secretary, Andropov was always calling for firm measures against would-be dissenters and wayward intellectuals. He liked to quote the Leninist dictum that “A revolution is worth something only if it knows how to defend itself.”




“It is very easy to destroy a social order, particularly one in which there are many hidden reasons for dissatisfaction, where nationalism is just under the surface,” Andropov told his associates. “Dissidents are enemies of our social system, although they conceal their aims beneath demagogic slogans.”




For all his sophistication and willingness to experiment, Andropov remained a prisoner of the system. A revolutionary mind-set prevented him from challenging its basic features: the overwhelming weight of the military-industrial complex; central planning; the dominance of politics over economics. Like many Soviet leaders, he had become a victim of his own absolute power.

Andropov was a great admirer of Eisenstein’s epic film Ivan the Terrible, a thinly disguised apologia for autocratic rule that had been made to order for Stalin. He was particularly impressed by a scene early on in the movie, when the new tsar is attempting to impose his will on the rebellious boyars. The boyars grumble that neither Europe nor Rome will recognize the young ruler, to which a Jesuit priest retorts, “He who is strong will be recognized by everybody.” Andropov would cite these words approvingly when arguing the need for a tough stance vis-à-vis the American “imperialists.” “Both we and the Americans live according to this principle,” he told his associates. “Neither of us wants to appear weak.”




Like Stalin and Ivan the Terrible before him, Andropov lived in a world dominated by scheming domestic enemies and hostile foreign powers. The only way to survive in such a world, and ensure the well-being of his people, was through ruthlessness, cunning, and a large dose of paranoia.

Military strength was the foundation stone of the Russian state. The obsession with security frequently undermined the Kremlin’s other foreign policy goals, which required a “peacemaker” image. Even as general secretary Andropov was reluctant to go against the wishes of the military-industrial complex. When the Korean airliner affair erupted, the Foreign Ministry urged him to assume responsibility for the shootdown, while accusing the United States of organizing a deliberate intrusion into Soviet airspace. But the defense minister, Ustinov, was categorically opposed to admitting that the Soviet Union had destroyed a civilian airliner.

“Don’t worry,” he told Andropov in a conference call to his hospital room. “Everything will be all right. Nobody will be able to prove anything.”







EVER SINCE THE DAYS OF STALIN, Politburo meetings had followed a well-established ritual. They were less a forum for open debate than a weekly loyalty ceremony for members of the party’s inner elite. The course of the proceedings was usually predetermined by the general secretary and a handful of powerful vassals, each of whom enjoyed a great deal of autonomy in running his particular fiefdom. There was always a strict pecking order around the Politburo table. Junior members were expected to give the floor to their elders and then chime in respectfully in support of the established party line. By voicing ritualistic support for a particular decision, they automatically assumed responsibility for it. The process was then repeated over and over again, all the way down the party hierarchy, until it became binding on all eighteen million Soviet Communists. Under the rules of “democratic centralism,” once the Politburo had taken a formal decision, no dissent was permitted.

In its language and rituals the Politburo resembled a group of Mafia dons who have clawed their way to the top of a gigantic protection racket. The Communist Party was at root a conspiracy. The original purpose of the conspiracy—the building of an earthly utopia—had long since been forgotten. Ideology had given way to cynicism, but the gang mentality had remained. In order to preserve their power and privileges, the party bosses understood that they had to stick together.

Contrary to the cherished notion of some Kremlinologists, the Politburo was not divided into hawks and doves. Under both Brezhnev and Andropov, all Politburo members were hawks by definition. (The only way for a dove to survive when surrounded by hawks is to become a hawk itself.) It was part of the ritual that everyone prove his credentials by sounding at least as hawkish as the previous speaker. Disagreements were expressed in nuances and subtle differences of emphasis, rather than open argument. The biological law of Kremlin politics was survival of the blandest. That meant having an intuitive feel for the emerging consensus—as spelled out by the gensek or one of his top vassals—and climbing on board. All Soviet politicians, with the partial exception of the gensek, were required to wear a mask.

In Andropov’s absence, the Politburo debate on the Korean airliner affair was opened by Konstantin Chernenko, the wheezing asthmatic who used to light Brezhnev’s cigarettes. Thanks to his late patron, he was now the party’s chief ideologist. He reacted to the destruction of a civilian airliner—and the deaths of 269 people—as a bureaucrat whose orderly world has been disturbed by an unwelcome intrusion.

“One thing is clear,” he sputtered, “we cannot allow foreign planes to overfly our territory freely. No self-respecting state can allow that.”




Next to speak was Defense Minister Ustinov, who was determined to defend the honor of the military establishment. His report to the Politburo included several blatant lies, designed to relieve his subordinates of all responsibility. His assertion that the Boeing 747 was flying “without warning lights” flatly contradicted the testimony of the interceptor pilot. He insisted that “repeated instructions” had been given to the intruder to land at a Soviet airfield and that warning shots had been fired “with tracer shells, as stipulated in international rules.”

“My opinion is that in this situation we must show firmness and remain cool,” the defense minister barked. “We should not flinch. If we flinch, it gives all kinds of people the opportunity to overfly our territory.”

The only Politburo member who might have had the authority to stand up to Ustinov was Andrei Gromyko, who would be required to bear the brunt of international outrage over the shooting down of a civilian airliner. But the seventy-four-year-old foreign minister was exceptionally cautious. This survivor of Stalin’s purges had managed to climb to the top by always backing the winning side. Every gene in his body told him not to get into an argument with someone as forceful as Ustinov. If he judged that the timing was right, “Grim Grom” could be an effective advocate for arms control negotiations with the United States in internal Politburo discussions. Faced with a choice between antagonizing the military and abandoning policy positions favored by the Foreign Ministry, he almost always chose the latter. He did not want his ministry to acquire a dovish reputation.




Gromyko told the Politburo that the Soviet military had acted “correctly” in shooting down the Korean plane. At the same time, he believed that the Soviet Union should anticipate the likely thrust of “imperialist propaganda” and acknowledge that “shots were fired.” “We should say so frankly, so as not to allow our adversary to accuse us of being deceitful. Our main argument should be that the plane was flying over Soviet territory and had penetrated an exceptionally long way into our territory.”

Now it was Mikhail Gorbachev’s turn to speak. The youngest member of the Politburo was in a delicate position. Everyone knew he was a favorite of Andropov, who had encouraged him to broaden his range of interests beyond agriculture. His elders needed his youthful energy and competence, but they also felt threatened by him. Here was a man who could push them all aside. In order to retain their confidence and have a shot at the top job, Gorbachev had to tread a very fine line. He had to prove that he could be an enthusiastic and creative spokesman for the party without threatening the vested interests of any section of the Soviet bureaucracy.

Gorbachev resorted to the standard stratagem of Kremlin politics: When in doubt, attack the “forces of imperialism.” He told his colleagues that the Americans must have been aware of the unauthorized incursion into Soviet territory. The length of time that the Korean plane had been in Soviet airspace, some two hours, showed that this was a well-planned “provocation.”

“It’s no use keeping quiet now; we must go on to the offensive,” he concluded, striking a hawkish note.

That evening, in keeping with Andropov’s declared intention of introducing greater “openness” into political life, the Soviet people were informed that the Politburo had met. A communiqué read out on the main television news bulletin said that the subjects under discussion included “improving the production of color television sets” and measures “to increase labor productivity.”


 There was no mention of the KAL tragedy. It took another five days for the Soviet authorities to acknowledge that they had indeed shot down a civilian airliner. On September 10 the Kremlin moved over to the offensive, just as Gorbachev had proposed, broadcasting a television interview with the man who had blasted the Korean airliner out of the sky.




GENNADY OSIPOVICH WAS SHOCKED and bewildered. He tried hard to conceal his feelings, but his mental anguish was apparent to anyone who met him. His normally firm handshake was cold and lifeless. His expression seemed hopelessly distracted. He behaved like someone suffering from an attack of nausea or perhaps a merciless tongue-lashing from a superior. Wrapped up in his own world, he seemed to tune out of a conversation and gaze off into the distance.

“Perhaps there was no one on the plane,” he would say to no one in particular. Or, “Who can tell me exactly how many seats there are on this Boeing?”




The pilot’s world had turned upside down several times in the space of a few days. When he brought his Su-15 back to Sokol Air Base, he was greeted like a hero. The entire regiment turned out to welcome the man who had shot down an “intruder.” There were hugs, kisses, and celebratory shots of vodka. The younger pilots looked at him with envy, but Osipovich felt a twinge of anxiety. He phoned Kornukov, the general who had given the order to “destroy the target,” to find out what had really happened. Perhaps the plane had been “one of ours”?

“No,” the general had replied in his gruff tone. “It was a foreigner. So make a hole in your shoulder boards for a new star.”




Then the rumors started. Western radio stations reported that the Soviet Union had shot down a passenger airplane, with 269 people on board. Government commissions arrived from Moscow. There were endless questions and investigations. The higher-ups, trained in the art of playing it safe, began to look strangely at Osipovich.

“Why are they treating me as if I am insane?” the pilot complained to a journalist for the army newspaper Red Star, who had flown in to interview him. “For days I have not even been able to go to the bathroom by myself. They keep me locked up.”




The journalists had been fully briefed before leaving Moscow. Their task was to get the interceptor pilot to confirm the official propaganda line about downing a “spy plane.” That meant mouthing the same lies that the Soviet Union had been telling the rest of the world. The entire script had already been written in Moscow. All Osipovich was required to do was to memorize his lines and repeat them in front of the camera. He did as instructed, but the result seemed hopelessly artificial and wooden. The television correspondent was dissatisfied

The pilot asked for a break. Someone produced a bottle of vodka, which he downed in a succession of quick shots. He felt more relaxed now. When he reappeared in front of the television cameras, the words of outrage and indignation seemed to come spontaneously. He spoke about the threat of a nuclear war, describing how he had been scheduled to give a talk on “peace” to a school in Sakhalin on the very day that the United States organized its provocation. The television reporter, Aleksandr Tikhomirov, asked if he was certain that the intruder had been an “enemy plane.”

“Yes, this is what I thought,” replied Osipovich, slouching in an easy chair. “After it crossed our border, it only made me more certain. This enemy aircraft which had broken into our territory was now flying over my home. It passed almost over our base. People at this time are peacefully sleeping, and he’s up there on a spying mission.”







THE KOREAN AIRLINER TRAGEDY was a cathartic experience for both superpowers. It brought them closer to nuclear Armageddon than at any time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, but it also laid the psychological foundation for a new era in East-West relations. Like punch-drunk fighters clutched in a deadly embrace, the leaders of Russia and America staggered to the edge of a cliff, looked over the edge, and then took a step back.

Hearing the rhetorical missiles hurtling back and forth between Moscow and Washington, one could be forgiven for concluding that the world was on the edge of an abyss. The Reagan administration accused the Kremlin of “a crime against humanity” and the deliberate “massacre” of 269 innocent civilians. The Soviets responded by depicting Reagan as a “madman,” comparable to Adolf Hitler, who wanted to dominate the world. At the same time, however, there was a reassuring predictability about these barbs. It was as if each side knew that it possessed the means to inflict unacceptable devastation on its rival and was therefore compelled to find other ways of giving vent to its hostility. The balance of terror was matched by a balance of rhetoric.

The rhetorical confrontation between Moscow and Washington came against the background of a trial of strength over the deployment of American missiles in Western Europe. If the Kremlin could convince Western public opinion that Reagan was pushing the world to the brink of a nuclear confrontation, the battle was almost won. The Reagan administration, by contrast, wanted to portray itself as tough but reasonable. The Korean airliner affair represented a major public relations defeat for Andropov, from which he never really recovered. The deployment of American Pershing and Cruise missiles—the Western response to the earlier deployment of Soviet SS-20 missiles targeted on Western Europe—went ahead on schedule.

The Soviets lost the struggle for Western public opinion. But there was another, equally significant battle taking place—the battle for Reagan’s own mind—and here, ironically, Andropov had more success. The war psychosis in Moscow helped convince the president that it would be unwise to push the Soviets too far. A cornered enemy could react in an irrational way. Reagan was surprised to learn in late 1983 that “many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans… as potential aggressors who might hurl nuclear weapons at them in a first strike.”


 He felt an obligation to dispel such ideas.

Reagan’s own horror of nuclear war was strengthened by watching a preview of the ABC television movie The Day After, which depicted the destruction of Lawrence, Kansas, in a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. Some administration officials were concerned that the movie could play into the hands of Soviet propagandists, but the commander in chief had a different reaction. “It’s powerfully done, all $7 million worth. It’s very effective and left me greatly depressed,” he noted in his diary. “We have to do all we can to have a deterrent and to see there is never a nuclear war.”




There would be no dramatic changes in superpower relations as long as Kremlin politics revolved around a hospital bed. The dying Andropov had indicated, in a note to the Politburo, that he wanted the young and energetic Gorbachev to be his successor. But his wishes were thwarted by a geriatric cabal that could not stomach the thought of a new generation’s taking over the leadership. When Andropov died in February 1984, the crown passed to the seventy-year-old Chernenko, himself mortally ill. Gorbachev’s hopes of becoming general secretary were dashed by the seventy-eight-year-old prime minister Nikolai Tikhonov. “Mikhail is still very young,” Tikhonov was overheard telling his associates. “It’s unclear how he would behave in such a position. Kostya is the one we need.”




The biological imperative could not be ignored forever, however. The age of the dinosaurs was nearly over.




THE KREMLIN

March 10, 1985


NIGHT HAD ALREADY FALLEN as the black Zils sped between St. Basil’s Cathedral and the executioner’s stand on the southern fringe of Red Square. As the limousines approached the fortified walls of the Kremlin, the traffic lights on the facade of the 205-foot-high Spassky Gate switched automatically from red to green. Dressed in knee-length boots and long winter overcoats, the guards snapped to attention, saluting their rulers. It seemed an unusual time for Politburo members to be gathering in the Kremlin—nearly 10:00 p.m. on a Sunday—but the guards had been trained never to question the habits of their secretive leaders.

Inside the Kremlin the Zils turned right in front of the Ivan the Great bell tower, completed by Boris Godunov in 1600, past the glittering cathedrals where the tsars had been crowned and buried for more than three hundred years. Then another right, past another set of guards and a pair of wrought-iron gates, halting outside a mustard-colored palace alongside the Kremlin wall. Shaped in the form of a triangle, this three-story building formed a kind of inner citadel, a kremlin within the Kremlin. In tsarist times it had housed the Senate and the Palace of Justice. After Lenin moved the capital back to Moscow from Petrograd in March 1918, the Senate building became the headquarters of the new regime. A red flag fluttered from its round copper roof, held aloft by a mechanical gust of air. Viewed from Red Square on the other side of the wall, the flag crowned a symbolic tableau of Soviet power, centered on Lenin’s tomb and flanked by the glittering red stars on top of the Spassky and Nikolai gates.

Nearly seven decades of Soviet history had been concentrated in this building. It was here that Lenin had ordered the murder of the tsar and his family, here that Stalin had organized the purges of his political opponents and run the military campaign against the Nazi invader, here that the monster Beria had been arrested by his frightened Politburo colleagues. Even the granite steps over which Stalin’s heirs now entered the building bore their own legend. To be summoned “to the steps,” in the language of the party nomenklatura, meant to be granted an audience with Stalin himself.


 As they mounted the steps, the dictator’s intimidated subordinates often had no idea what to expect. An angry glance could be a prelude to promotion. A smile could mean death. It all depended on a tyrant’s whim.

But times had changed, and on this occasion Soviet leaders had all been expecting a summons “to the steps.” Konstantin Chernenko, the lackluster bureaucrat who succeeded Andropov as gensek, had been battling lung disease and pneumonia for weeks. At 7:20 that evening he had finally died, at the age of seventy-three. For the third time in just over three years it was necessary to choose a new tsar.

The Politburo members took the elevator to the third floor of the Senate building, where the general secretary had his office. Stepping out of the elevator, they found themselves in a long, high-ceilinged corridor, with an immaculate red runner down the middle and doors on either side. Which door they entered depended on their seniority. Voting members traditionally gathered in a walnut-paneled room, next to the gensek’s office. Candidate, or nonvoting, members met with Central Committee secretaries in a more modest room, nicknamed the predbannik, Russian for the dressing room of a bathhouse. When the appointed time came, the two groups met together in the Politburo Room, shaking hands like two rival football teams before the big match. The purpose of this unwritten Kremlin tradition was to allow the gensek to consult with the most senior Soviet leaders before the start of the meeting. Key decisions were often taken in the Walnut Room, without any note takers present, and ratified in the Politburo Room.




As he waited to greet his fellow Politburo members that Sunday evening, Mikhail Gorbachev was still a few steps away from supreme power. He had been chairing sessions in Chernenko’s absence, but he knew that some members of the old guard were counting on one of their own, Viktor Grishin, to block his rise to the top. As the Moscow Communist Party boss the seventy-one-year-old Grishin had gained a reputation for both inefficiency and corruption. A few weeks earlier he had attempted to project himself as Chernenko’s heir apparent by helping the dying leader cast his vote on nationwide television. Prime Minister Tikhonov was also maneuvering behind the scenes to block Gorbachev’s candidature. But rank-and-file members of the Central Committee were solidly for Gorbachev. After thirteen months of Chernenko both the party and the country wanted a change.

The key figure in the succession was Andrei Gromyko, the veteran foreign minister, who had served every Soviet leader since Stalin. Now that Ustinov was dead, there was no one in the Politburo who could match Gromyko’s prestige and authority. He had been around for as long as anyone could remember, having joined the Communist Party in 1931, the year of Gorbachev’s birth. He had had his differences with Gorbachev in the past and was irritated by the rave notices that Gorbachev had received in the Western press, following a triumphant tour of Britain in December 1984. At the same time, he had made a realistic assessment of the balance of political forces. His own son, Anatoly, was a strong Gorbachev supporter. By anointing Gorbachev, he would cement his own position as the Soviet Union’s elder statesman.

By prior arrangement, Gorbachev and Gromyko had agreed to meet in the Walnut Room a few minutes before the arrival of everyone else. The younger man used the occasion to solicit Gromyko’s support openly.

“We have to unite our forces. This is a critical moment,” said Gorbachev.

“It seems to me that everything is clear.”

“I am counting on the fact that you and I will cooperate.”




Confident that he had Gromyko’s backing, Gorbachev then approached Grishin to offer him a consolation prize, chairmanship of the Funeral Commission. The Moscow Communist Party boss was an astute enough politician to understand that the apparently courteous offer concealed a trap. If he accepted the prestigious, but purely honorific, position of head of the Funeral Commission, he ran the risk of appearing to make another unseemly grab for power, without gaining anything concrete in return. Cautiously he replied that the post had traditionally gone to the person who had been standing in for the general secretary. He urged Gorbachev to take the job, hoping perhaps that he would encounter opposition from older Politburo members.




“There’s no need to hurry,” said Gorbachev, calculating that his own support would build, as the wishes of regional party secretaries became known. “Let’s think about this carefully overnight.”

Entering the Politburo Room, Gorbachev moved his chair a little to one side of the place traditionally occupied by the general secretary. Proprieties had to be observed. The mood in the room was still “The king is dead,” rather than “Long live the king.” The Politburo attended to a number of seemingly minor details, such as listening to a medical report on Chernenko, preparing the obituary, picking a date for the funeral, and summoning members of the policy-making Central Committee to Moscow. Then Gromyko spoke. He was adamant that Gorbachev be appointed chairman of the Funeral Commission. This was his way of signaling that he supported the younger man’s candidature for gensek. While there were a few murmurs about unnecessary speed, no one opposed the proposal.




In addition to Gromyko, Gorbachev had another very influential supporter. While working in the Central Committee apparatus in Moscow, he had forged an alliance with Yegor Ligachev, the secretary in charge of cadres. A Siberian with an authoritarian manner and appetite for hard work, Ligachev had been chosen by Andropov to purge the party of incompetent officials. Like Gorbachev, Ligachev was disgusted with the drift of the Brezhnev years. Over the past three years he had been traveling round the Soviet Union, replacing longtime Brezhnev cronies with younger men. He kept his finger on the pulse of the network of party officials who controlled the nation on a day-to-day basis. These regional chieftains, who held some 40 percent of the seats on the Central Committee, had played a key role in getting rid of Khrushchev in 1964. If there was a deadlock in the Politburo, as there would be if Grishin pushed his own candidature, their word would be decisive. Ligachev had counted heads. They were practically unanimous for Gorbachev.

Two members of the old guard who might have come out in support of Grishin were absent from the crucial Politburo meeting. The party boss of Kazakhstan, a Brezhnev holdover named Dinmukahamed Kunayev, arrived in Moscow only on the following day. The Ukrainian Communist Party chief, Vladimir Shcherbitsky, was stranded in San Francisco on an official visit. His flight home was mysteriously delayed until after the leadership question was settled. The delay may have been entirely coincidental, but Kremlin conspiracy theorists automatically suspected a plot by the pro-Gorbachev forces.




At around 3:00 a.m., after settling organizational matters with Ligachev, Gorbachev went home to his dacha in the Moscow countryside, one of the many perks of a Politburo member. His wife, Raisa, was waiting up for him. However late he returned from work, it was their invariable custom to take an evening walk together. This was partly Gorbachev’s way of unwinding after a long day in the office. But it was also a way of talking things over with his closest confidante in a place where they could be sure that there were no microphones.

As they strolled through the snow-covered garden, Gorbachev blurted out that there was a good chance that he would be elected gensek the following day. Despite some doubts, he thought he should take the job. He had worked hard as the Politburo member in charge of agriculture but had not been able to achieve “anything substantial.” Championing reform in the present political climate was like beating one’s head against a brick wall. The Soviet people were “full of hope,” and he had no right to disappoint them.

“We can’t go on living like this. There has to be change,” added the fifty-four-year-old peasant boy from the rolling plains of southern Russia.




While Gorbachev was talking with Raisa, his allies were busy summoning the three hundred members of the Central Committee to Moscow from every part of the Soviet empire. They gathered, the following afternoon, in their marble-paved conference hall, on the opposite side of Red Square from the Kremlin. For perhaps the first time since the overthrow of Khrushchev in 1964, there was a sense of real political tension in the air. The Politburo had just met for a second time, and nobody knew what had been decided. It was clear to everybody that the Soviet Union stood at a crossroads. In private conversations in the lobby, younger party officials discussed what they would do if the Politburo blocked the general desire for change. Some threatened to organize a collective protest if Gorbachev was not the official candidate for gensek.

A door on the left of the stage opened, and the Politburo members filed into the room, in order of seniority. As they took their places on the podium, beneath a thirty-foot mosaic of Lenin in red and orange, the hubbub of conversation died away. As second secretary Gorbachev called for a moment of silence in honor of the departed leader. Then Gromyko walked to the rostrum. The tension mounted. Could the veteran foreign minister be making his own bid for the leadership? There was a heart-stopping preamble as Gromyko paid the ritualized tribute to Chernenko. Then the words that everybody had been waiting for:

“The Politburo has unanimously agreed to recommend,” he rasped, staring stone-faced at the hall, as if he were delivering another nyet to the UN Security Council, “Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev—”




A roar of applause burst from the hall. Suddenly everyone was on his feet, clapping and smiling. Everybody in the room, even the tough old party bosses who had wanted desperately to stop his nomination, was a Gorbachev supporter now. The tension of the last twenty-four hours had burst. The new general secretary, the youngest Soviet leader since Lenin, sat alone on the podium, head bowed, as if embarrassed by the adulation. He made a gesture to stop the cheering, but it went on and on.

The world’s first socialist state had a new tsar.




OVER THE NEXT SIX YEARS, as the assumptions of the postwar world were turned upside down, Western analysts were to marvel over how a man like Mikhail Gorbachev had emerged from the obscurity of the Russian provinces. After a succession of geriatric genseks, the sight of a Soviet leader who could talk without notes and walk unassisted was itself cause for wonder. The fact that the new leader was willing to challenge ideas and habits sanctified by more than sixty years of Communist tradition seemed nothing short of miraculous. How had the Soviet system, the most durable totalitarian regime of the twentieth century, produced such a man?

The truth was that Gorbachev did not emerge out of nowhere. He represented a generation of political activists who grew up in the shadow of a great tyrant and lived all their lives in a socialist state. It was a generation whose Communist faith had been severely tested but never entirely undermined, a generation that had become accustomed to endless political and moral compromises, a generation waiting patiently for the chance to correct its predecessor’s mistakes. The new general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union shared the dreams and nightmares of the shestidesyatniki generation, its strengths and failings, its beliefs and illusions.

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was born on March 2, 1931, in the village of Privolnoye in the fertile steppes that stretch northward from the Caucasus Mountains. In Russian the word privolnoye has two connotations: wide, open spaces and freedom. There was a sense of both in the northern Caucasus. The area was populated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by Cossack peasants fleeing serfdom in Russia and Ukraine. In return for their freedom, the Cossacks helped defend the southern border of the Russian empire from the Muslim tribes of the Caucasus. There was enough land for everybody. Misha’s maternal great-grandparents had moved here from Ukraine; his paternal great-grandparents were from the Voronezh region of central Russia.

The Ukrainian side of the family, the Gopkolos, appear to have supplied Gorbachev with his charisma and romantic spirit. He inherited the dark brown eyes of his Ukrainian grandmother, Vasilisa, and the talkativeness and occasional stubbornness of his mother. It was Vasilisa who decided to have him baptized, at the height of Stalin’s persecution of the Orthodox Church. He remembered the Ukrainian folk songs that he learned from his mother and grandmother and as general secretary would occasionally sing them to his guests in his soft baritone.


 The Russian side of the family had given him a sense of moderation and a willingness to compromise. His facial characteristics, particularly his smile, resemble those of his father, Sergei.




The year of Gorbachev’s birth coincided with Stalin’s murderous collectivization campaign. Determined to catapult backward Russia into the ranks of the industrialized countries, the dictator decreed that peasants pool their land and machinery in giant state-run kolkhozes, or collective farms. In order to drive independent farmers out of business and increase the supply of food and labor to the cities, he used the technique of compulsory procurement quotas. Anyone who showed even token resistance to the new order was dubbed a “class enemy” and relentlessly persecuted.

The consequences of forced collectivization were particularly dramatic in the northern Caucasus, the Russian breadbasket, and Ukraine. Robert Conquest, the chronicler of the “harvest of sorrow,” estimates that roughly one million people died in the northern Caucasus alone as the result of the famine of the early thirties.


 Hundreds of thousands of rich peasants, or kulaks, were deported. Sometimes entire families were wiped out. The mortality rate among children under the age of two was particularly high. For a village boy, the chances of surviving this man-made disaster were little better than one in two. In his memoirs Gorbachev recalls the large number of empty, half-destroyed houses in his village, whose occupants had died of hunger.




Nearly every family in the land was touched by the terror, and the Gorbachevs were no exception. In 1934, when Misha was only three, his paternal grandfather, Andrei, was denounced by a neighbor for hiding grain and “sabotaging” the spring sowing plan. A stubborn individualist, Andrei Gorbachev had refused to join the collective farms that were being established in the Stavropol region during these years. After a typically farcical trial he was sent off to Siberia to cut timber. Deprived of their principal means of support, the family swiftly became destitute. Within months three out of Andrei’s six children had died of starvation.

The fact that Gorbachev managed to survive at all was probably due to his Ukrainian grandfather, Panteley Yefimovich Gopkalo, who played a key role in the early collectivization campaign. As the first chairman of the local collective farm Grandfather Gopkalo was one of the most powerful men in the village. One of his jobs was to extract grain from the other peasants, including, presumably, Andrei Gorbachev. But then, in 1937, at the peak of the purges, Panteley Gopkalo was arrested in the middle of the night and accused of belonging to “an underground right-Trotskyist counterrevolutionary organization.” The transformation of persecutors into persecuted was a reflection of the general paranoia of the times. Gorbachev recalls that his own home became a “plague house,” which nobody dared visit for fear of being associated with an “enemy of the people.” “Even the neighbors’ kids refused to have anything to do with me,” he recalled in his memoirs. “This is something that remained with me for the rest of my life.”




In a typically Soviet twist of fate, Grandfather Gopkalo was released and rehabilitated shortly before the outbreak of war. He served for a further seventeen years as chairman of the Red October collective farm, insisting, “Stalin has no idea what the NKVD [secret police] is doing.”

Political repression was so widespread in the thirties that it was impractical for the party to limit recruitment to workers and peasants with completely clean family records. Many of Gorbachev’s colleagues had similar skeletons in their personal files. That in itself was not an obstacle to high office, provided they kept quiet about it. To have raised such a matter in public would have raised doubts about one’s “political reliability.” So for almost six decades Gorbachev never talked about the sufferings of his family. He did not ask to see KGB files on his grandfathers until after the abortive hard-line coup of August 1991. As he later explained, he was unable to break through the “spiritual barrier” of loyalty to the Communist Party.




It is a measure of the psychological legacy of Stalinism that Gorbachev, like many others, was unable to rid himself of the illusion that a noble purpose had been served by all this suffering. The sacrifices of those close to him became a reason not for rejecting the Soviet system but for continuing to believe in it. “Am I supposed to turn my back on my grandfather, who was committed to the Socialist idea?” Gorbachev asked rhetorically in November 1990. “Can I go against my father, who defended Kursk, forded the Dnieper River knee-deep in blood, and was wounded in Czechoslovakia? When cleansing myself of Stalinism and all other filth, should I renounce my grandfather and father and all they did?”




For the older generation of Soviet officials, the salient fact of Gorbachev’s biography was that he was the first general secretary too young to participate in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War. It is hard to overestimate the central place of the war in Soviet life—it took the lives of twenty million Soviet citizens—and the impact it had on the way of thinking of successive leaders. For men like Brezhnev and Andropov, the memory of how the Germans had reached the gates of Moscow and Leningrad in a four-month blitzkrieg in 1941 held ever-present lessons. It explained their obsession with security, their paranoid fears of foreign encirclement, their deeply ingrained conservatism. Experience had taught them that it was fatal ever to relax their guard. For them, the victory over the Nazi invader was the ultimate proof of the superiority of the Communist system. Without Stalin’s forced industrialization, the Soviet Union would never have been able to produce the tanks and guns that eventually enabled the Red Army to triumph over the most formidable military machine the world had ever known. Without the purges and show trials, the country would have been racked by internal division.

When the Germans invaded, Gorbachev was only ten. The Nazi occupation of the Stavropol region lasted too short a time—just five months—to make much impression on him. Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, who survived the nine-hundred-day siege of Leningrad and went on to become military adviser to the future gensek, had a typical older man’s reaction to this lack of wartime experience. Gorbachev, he wrote in his memoirs, represented a generation that had never been forced “to fight against Fascist tanks armed only with rifles and Molotov cocktails, to watch powerlessly as German warplanes swooped down on your comrades and yourself, to withdraw hundreds of kilometers [as the invader] burned our cities and villages, killed peaceful civilians, and destroyed our national wealth.”


 What Gorbachev had witnessed was the horrific aftermath of war: the hunger and cold; the uncertainty about the fate of one’s relatives; the backbreaking labor of reconstruction. The old soldier speculated that those experiences may have contributed to the “pacifist” inclinations of his boss.

Gorbachev’s formative years coincided not with the war but with the death of Stalin in March 1953 and the Khrushchev thaw. At the time he was an impressionable young law student at Moscow State University. He had arrived in the capital in 1950, with little more than the clothes on his back. The collective farm chairman’s grandson was exactly the kind of person that the party wanted to recruit for the most prestigious educational institution in the country. He had the right “class” background. At high school near Privolnoye, he had completed his graduating exam on the subject “Stalin Is Our Battle Glory, Stalin Is the Flight of Our Youth.”


 He was an active member of the Communist youth organization, the Komsomol, and had even won a state decoration, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, for his work as a combine operator. It was at the university that he met his future wife, Raisa Titarenko, a stylish young philosophy student from Siberia.

While Gorbachev’s political opinions were entirely orthodox, he did display a certain intellectual independence. Precocious and self-confident, he would argue with his teachers, both in high school and at the university. He joined in the freewheeling debates in the student dormitory. Comments that he made to his Czech roommate, Zdenek Mlynář, show that he was well aware of the gulf between Communist ideology and Soviet reality. On one occasion the two students were watching a propaganda film, entitled The Cossacks of Kuban, that glorifies the collective farms of the northern Caucasus. When the film showed peasant tables groaning with food and drink, it was too much for Gorbachev, who told Mlynář how little the kolkhozniki really had to eat. On another occasion, after a lecture on “kolkhoz law,” Gorbachev made clear to his Czech friend that the most important law for the kolkhozniki was brute force.




A few months after Stalin’s death, Gorbachev returned to the Stavropol region to help out with the harvest and train in the local prosecutor’s office. After the heady atmosphere of Moscow State University, he was struck by the “passivity and conservatism” of provincial life. “I am so depressed by the situation here,” he wrote his future wife. “Especially the manner of life of the local bosses. The acceptance of convention, subordination, with everything predetermined, the open impudence of officials, and the arrogance. When you look at one of the local bosses, you see nothing outstanding apart from his belly. But what aplomb, what self-assurance, and the condescending, patronizing tone!”




Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin’s crimes came as a huge shock to Gorbachev, who had been brought up to revere “the Father of the Peoples.” But it also enabled him to bring his political ideals into line with the reality he saw around him. Now, once again, he had something to believe in. If the Communist Party could succeed in ridding itself of the “Stalinist filth,” it would lead the country to the promised utopia.

Gorbachev was a delegate to the Twenty-second Communist Party Congress in 1961 that voted to remove Stalin’s body from the mausoleum in Red Square, where it had lain alongside Lenin’s. Held in the new Palace of Congresses in the Kremlin, the congress was infused with a spirit of optimism that reflected the mood of the times. Khrushchev had just defeated a Stalinist clique in the Politburo, led by former Foreign Minister Molotov. The Russians had beaten the Americans into space; one of the delegates to the congress was Yuri Gagarin. Russia was still a poor and backward society, but it was making rapid strides in all areas. Economic growth rates were high. Internationally, colonial empires were falling apart. Imperialism was in obvious retreat. The faithful gathered in the Kremlin had no difficulty believing Khrushchev when he assured them the Soviet Union would overtake the United States in per capita production by 1970 and achieve full communism by 1980.

The hopes of the shestidesyatniki generation received a shattering blow in August 1968, when Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia to crush Dubĉek’s experiment in “socialism with a human face.” The invasion set the cause of reform back by a generation not only in Eastern Europe but also in the Soviet Union, where there was an abrupt shift back to neo-Stalinist policies. Gorbachev visited Czechoslovakia a year after the invasion, as a member of a Soviet Communist Party delegation that also included Ligachev. It was an uncomfortable, disquieting experience for him. “When we went into factories, nobody wanted to talk to us,” he later recalled. “The workers did not reply to our greetings, they demonstratively turned away. It was an unpleasant sensation.”




Gorbachev kept his feelings under tight control. It was at this point that his political career took off, thanks in large measure to his friendship with Dmitri Kulakov, a former Stavropol Communist Party chief, who was the Politburo member for agriculture.


 Other powerful patrons were Yuri Andropov and Mikhail Suslov.




THE SHESTIDESYATNIKI INHERITED from Khrushchev a conviction that the Communist Party could be cleansed of its impurities and lead the masses to a better life. It was this belief that sustained them during the long years of stagnation, when the world’s largest country seemed to be drifting aimlessly. When Gorbachev told Raisa on the eve of his election as gensek that “there has to be change,” the last thing he had in mind was the kind of revolutionary change that actually took place. In a speech to Communist Party activists less than three months previously, he had spoken of the need for a technological revolution that would allow the Soviet Union “to enter the new millennium as a great and flourishing state.”


 He wanted to strengthen the Communist system, not to bury it. It was to take him almost eight years to acknowledge publicly that this hope had rested on an “illusion.”

“We were like Khrushchev. We wanted to improve the system, to give it more oxygen, a second breath,” Gorbachev recalled in 1993, two years after the failed Communist coup. “When I felt that the post of gensek would be offered to me, I racked my brains about what to do. I knew what was wrong with the country. We couldn’t just go on as before. There was already a big budget deficit; national income was falling; our machinery was obsolete; our technology was outdated; there were no goods in the shops; oil production was declining. And what did we have to export? Only oil and vodka. I saw all this very clearly. We understood that there had to be reforms, that more freedom should be given to producers, to the regions. We knew that it was necessary to free society of many restrictions. We thought we could do all this within the framework of the existing system.”




The goal that Gorbachev set himself was without precedent in Russian history. Other Russian rulers—Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Stalin, to name but a few—had attempted to jolt Russia out of its backwardness and catch up with the West. But all had relied on the coercive power of a centralized state to mobilize the masses. The whip and the executioner’s block were the instruments of choice for Russian reformers. Gorbachev and his allies understood that the repressive tradition was a large part of the problem; a technological revolution could not be carried out by an alienated, apathetic workforce. Russia’s new leader wanted to realize the “immense potential of socialism” by releasing the energies of individual human beings.

Gorbachev knew that his revolution would have to start from above. In contrast with a country like Poland, with its long history of struggle against totalitarian rule, Soviet society lacked an independent voice. But the latest successor to Lenin and Stalin realized very quickly that the revolution would have to be continued from below. Otherwise it would be smothered by the army of bureaucrats, just as Khrushchev’s thaw had been smothered.




THE KREMLIN

March 14, 1985


IN ORDER TO IMPRESS their foreign guests with the majesty and might of holy Russia, the tsars ordered a temple of military glory to be built in the heart of the Kremlin. Constructed from the finest marble and parquet, the two-hundred-foot-long room was known as St. George’s Hall, after the highest military decoration that imperial Russia could bestow. The white and gold walls bore lists of Russian military conquests, from Poland to Alaska, the coats of arms of provinces that had been absorbed into the empire, and the names of the commanders who had defeated Napoleon.

The Communists had continued the tsarist tradition of marking great occasions with splendid banquets in St. George’s Hall. It was here that Stalin feted the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 and here that Khrushchev welcomed Gagarin on his return home from man’s first journey into space. It was here too that Kremlin receptions were held following the funerals of general secretaries and world leaders formed their first impressions of the new masters of a country that stretched across eleven time zones and possessed more than thirty-five thousand nuclear missiles.

The initial assessment of most of the foreign guests was that Gorbachev would make a formidable opponent. The new gensek appeared in the hall flanked by his seventy-nine-year-old prime minister and his seventy-five-year-old foreign minister. In addition to being younger and more energetic than these men, he had a much more engaging personal style. He mingled easily with the guests and had a Western politician’s way of looking his interlocutor sincerely in the eye. But he seemed to be cut from essentially the same ideological cloth as the men by his side. Most of the foreigners who met with him that day concluded that Gorbachev’s emergence as Soviet leader amounted to little more than a face-lift for a totalitarian state.

The sense of Western unease was expressed by the West German chancellor Helmut Kohl, whose country would benefit most dramatically from the policies of the new Soviet leader. He later compared Gorbachev’s public relations skills with those of the Nazi propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels. East European politicians were equally skeptical. They were unimpressed when Gorbachev told them that the Kremlin would respect the “sovereignty” and “independence” of the socialist camp. “Brezhnev used to use very similar words. It didn’t mean very much at the time,” recalled Wojciech Jaruzelski, after the empire had collapsed.


 Gorbachev told the Polish leader that any “attempt to undermine the socialist order” in Eastern Europe would be completely unacceptable. There could be no relegalization of Solidarity.

The American delegation, led by George Bush, was ushered into a nearby room for an eighty-five-minute private audience with Gorbachev. The vice president was weary of Kremlin funerals: “You die, we fly” had become the unofficial motto of the Bush entourage. This was the third time in forty months that he had watched the Byzantine farewells in Red Square. After his return to Washington he described Gorbachev as an “impressive idea salesman” but made it clear that he expected little change in basic Kremlin policies. The shift was one of style, rather than substance. Five weeks later the American ambassador to Moscow, Arthur Hartman, flew to Washington to deliver an initial progress report on Gorbachev to Ronald Reagan. “Hartman confirms what I believe,” the president noted in his diary, “that Gorbachev will be as tough as any of their leaders. If he wasn’t a confirmed ideologue, he would never have been chosen by the Politburo.”




Perhaps the most perceptive comment about the new Soviet leader came from Margaret Thatcher. Gorbachev had visited London three months earlier and had impressed the British prime minister with his agile mind and willingness to talk about any subject under the sun. “We can do business with Mr. Gorbachev,” she had declared then. They shared some similar traits, notably a supreme self-confidence and a restless desire for change. Unlike many Western leaders, Thatcher realized that Gorbachev was sincere in his desire to reform the Communist system, but she doubted he would be successful. “Gorbachev thinks that there are problems with the way the system works,” she told George Shultz, the American secretary of state. “He thinks he can make changes to make it work better. He doesn’t understand that the system is the problem.”







NIZHNEVARTOVSK

September 4, 1985


THE SCALE OF THE TASK confronting Gorbachev soon became evident. Within months of his election the Soviet Union received another economic jolt: For the first time in many years oil production had begun to decline. The fall received little attention in the West, where people were more interested in the personality of the new leader, but it was destined to shape the whole course of Gorbachev’s reform effort. His ambitious industrial modernization schemes depended on large-scale investment. If the oil boom turned into a bust, none of this would be possible. His perestroika reform movement, at least as originally conceived, was doomed to fail.

The discovery of vast oil reserves in western Siberia in the late sixties had given the economy and the regime a new lease on life. The oil came on stream at a particularly fortunate time for Brezhnev and his colleagues. The Stalinist command-and-administer system had ceased to work effectively but could not be jettisoned without undermining the foundations of the Communist state. Scared by the Prague Spring, Soviet leaders were opposed to anything that smacked of free market economics. Thanks to the windfall gains from oil exports, economic reform could be postponed almost indefinitely. Equally fortunately the boom coincided with a severe energy crisis in the West, caused by the explosion of oil prices in the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Soviet propagandists seized on pictures of angry motorists besieging gas stations in America and Western Europe as evidence of the terminal bankruptcy of capitalism. Seen through their eyes, the energy crisis was a purely capitalist phenomenon that could not happen in a “planned” economy.

The oil bonanza had allowed the Kremlin to finance grain imports, service its rising foreign debt, and bankroll its Third World allies. Soviet petrodollars had covered the costs of the war in Afghanistan, the stationing of Cuban troops in Angola and Ethiopia, and the salaries of more than 150,000 technical advisers in seventy-six countries. In the decade that followed the first oil shock, the Soviet Union earned some three hundred billion dollars from oil exports to the West.


 Huge as this figure may seem, it represented only a small slice of the pie. Roughly 75 percent of Soviet oil production was reserved for domestic consumption. A further 10 to 15 percent was earmarked for client states. From Warsaw to Havana, from Hanoi to Managua, corrupt and inefficient Communist regimes were kept afloat by plentiful supplies of cheap Siberian energy. On the domestic market, oil cost even less: a few cents a gallon. As long as the oil kept flowing, factory managers had little incentive to change their ways.

“The oil money was a kind of drug,” said Stanislav Shatalin, a Soviet economist who later became an adviser to Gorbachev. “Like any drug, it created the illusion of strength, while destroying the body even more and making the disease even more fatal.”




In retrospect, the energy crisis was a blessing in disguise for the West. By forcing factories to cut costs and introduce new energy-saving techniques, it had the effect of speeding up the technological revolution already under way in many Western countries. The Soviet Union, by contrast, wandered further into an economic fantasy land, where the laws of supply and demand were replaced by bureaucratic decree. Soviet managers became accustomed to apparently limitless supplies of cheap raw materials. By the mid-eighties the average factory was consuming two or three times as many raw materials as an American plant to make a vastly inferior product. When the energy crisis finally caught up with the Communist world, the impact was devastating.

The first sign of the approaching calamity came at the end of the seventies, when planners warned Brezhnev that the Soviet Union was living beyond its means. In October 1981 the Kremlin finally decided to cut oil deliveries to Eastern Europe by 10 percent, provoking protests from its clients. The East German leader Erich Honecker was particularly vehement, arguing that he would not be able to explain the sudden rise in energy costs to his “working class.”


 Anxious to keep everyone happy, the indecisive Brezhnev scaled back the proposed cutbacks. The savings turned out to be marginal.

By the time Gorbachev came to power, the signs of crisis were so obvious that they could no longer be ignored. Addressing a Politburo session a month after his election, the new gensek ticked off examples of the Soviet Union’s economic backwardness one by one. He concentrated on the dismal state of agriculture, the field in which he had most experience. In the food industry, he told his colleagues, manual labor still accounted for nearly two-thirds of total output. Labor productivity was 60 percent below Western levels. Every year a third of the harvest was lost because of waste and inefficiency. More than three hundred Soviet towns were without water supplies and sewers. Half the streets in urban areas were unpaved.




“If we don’t break this trend, then by the end of the century we will be transformed into a Third World country,” Gorbachev told his colleagues, a candid assessment censored from the official transcript released to the Soviet press.




The scale of the new leader’s ambitions had made the problem of resource allocation even more acute. In his first few months in office Gorbachev ripped through the country like a tornado, exposing structural defects in Soviet society that went back many decades. There was so much that needed fixing. The goal was clear: to get the nation moving again by replacing plant and equipment and increasing the productivity level of ordinary workers. What was unclear was where the money to pay for such a gigantic modernization program was going to come from.

It was a classic guns-versus-butter dilemma. One option was to cut military spending. But that was impossible at a time when relations with the United States were still contentious. Shortly after his election the defense chiefs persuaded Gorbachev to increase the military budget. A secret Politburo resolution pledged that defense spending would rise by an annual rate of 4.5 percent a year throughout the 1986–90 plan period, outpacing the planned growth in national income.


 A second option was to cut consumption. But that was unacceptable in view of the popular expectations released by Gorbachev’s election. If people were to be persuaded to work harder, they needed more incentives, not fewer.

In the middle of this debate, news from western Siberia caused Gorbachev to revise both his travel plans and his economic calculations. The oil boom of the Brezhnev years was running dry. Unless urgent measures were taken, the Kremlin would lose its most reliable source of hard currency.

===


As HIS TUPOLEV 134 AIRCRAFT skirted the fringe of the Arctic Circle, thirty-five thousand feet above the world’s largest oil field, Gorbachev had a bird’s-eye view of the economic foundations of Soviet power. The pristine taiga—wave after wave of undulating forest—gave way to a nightmarish industrial wasteland. It looked as if someone had taken a knife to a vast green canvas and slashed wildly from side to side. A great tangle of roads, pipelines, and oil derricks stretched for hundreds of miles on either side of the Ob River. Every so often the slashes coalesced into an ugly blotch of unpaved streets, apartment blocks slapped together from concrete slabs, and factories belching fire and smoke into a perpetually gloomy sky.

For generations of Russians, Siberia was not only a place but also an idea. Traditionally the name had conjured up two conflicting images in the Russian mind: the idea of freedom and the idea of tyranny. The vast unexplored spaces made Siberia the Russian equivalent of the American West, a land of promise and opportunity that attracted pioneers who wanted to escape the ubiquitous bureaucracy. But Siberia was also a place of banishment for the political opponents of tsars and general secretaries, associated in many people’s minds with the repression of millions of people and uniquely harsh climatic conditions.

During the Communist period Siberia became synonymous with yet another idea, the notion that the Soviet Union was a land of “limitless” resources. Exploiting these resources, the Bolsheviks believed, was purely a matter of political will. The ends always justified the means. If the leadership decided that a project was of overriding national importance, the human and environmental costs became irrelevant. Any sacrifice was justified in the name of the ultimate goal, the construction of a Communist society. In pursuit of this utopia, Stalin launched an heroic onslaught against nature and turned Siberia into a vast prison camp. He mobilized millions of slave laborers to build canals and railways across its frozen wastes, scour its mountains for uranium, and construct munitions factories around its shores.

The Siberian treasure trove sustained Soviet-style communism long after it had reached the point of natural exhaustion. It was to Siberia that the Brezhnev generation of leaders looked for salvation from the economic crises affecting the rest of their empire. When the centralized economy experienced serious bottlenecks in the early seventies, the Politburo ordered construction of a two-thousand-mile railway line, known as the BAM, to tap the fabulous mineral wealth of northern Siberia. When the cotton-growing regions of Central Asia began to run dry because of overexploitation, the planners had a simple solution: Divert Siberian rivers from north to south. When the Kremlin’s superpower burden started to become intolerable in the late seventies, Siberian oilmen were instructed to redouble their efforts. Siberia fulfilled the function of a raw materials appendage to the Communist empire, a colonial outpost that could be mercilessly exploited. For Brezhnev and his colleagues, any attempt to question the myth of Siberia’s “inexhaustible” wealth was ideologically unacceptable.

From an economic point of view, Siberia made Soviet-style communism possible. It was also where its death throes would be most visible. Eventually even nature rebelled against its rapacious masters.

The city to which Gorbachev was now headed, Nizhnevartovsk, was a typical example of the Stalinist approach to economic development. A quarter of a century earlier all that had stood on this desolate spot were several hundred wooden huts belonging to the native Khant population. The nomadic Khants lived off the reindeer in the surrounding forests and the abundance of fish in the Ob River. Geologists had identified a nearby swamp—known to the natives as Samotlor (Dead Lake)—as a probable oil deposit. In early 1965 several drilling teams set out to explore the site. The working conditions were appalling. There were no roads, and temperatures were forty to fifty degrees below zero. It took the drilling teams more than a month to hack their way through the marshes. But when they sank their drills into the frozen earth, they found more oil than they had even dreamed about. The oil began to come on stream in significant amounts at the beginning of the seventies.

Over the course of the next decade the Samotlor field produced more oil than Kuwait. Every fourth barrel of Soviet oil—the equivalent of the country’s entire export surplus—came from this remote corner of western Siberia. The pioneers who discovered the field were showered with medals. Desperate for anything that could be turned into hard currency, Soviet leaders repeatedly raised production targets. In order to keep pace with the demands from Moscow, the oilmen began cutting corners. In their haste to get the oil out of the ground, they skimped on infrastructure and paid no attention to the surrounding environment. They used crude extraction techniques that caused the fields to become waterlogged and lose their natural pressure. They left valuable timber to rot in the swamp, rather than take the trouble of processing it. Instead of building pipelines to remove the excess natural gas, they simply torched it. Every day enough gas was burned off from the oil fields around Nizhnevartovsk to heat several European cities.




With sensible conservation techniques, the Samotlor field could have continued to produce large amounts of oil for many decades. But the oil was extracted in such a slipshod fashion that the natural life of the field was unnecessarily shortened. By the time Gorbachev came to power, production had already entered a sharp decline.

Scarcely any of the oil wealth trickled down to the people of Nizhnevartovsk. Home to more than three hundred thousand people, the city had a transient, makeshift quality about it, as if the flimsy apartment blocks and potholed streets would be abandoned to the taiga as soon as the oil wells dried up. An entire quarter of the city consisted of nothing but metal wagons designed as temporary accommodation for oil workers. Frequently three or four families were forced to share a single outdoor toilet, despite sub-zero temperatures for more than half the year. For serious shopping, residents were obliged to fly to Moscow, three hours away by plane. Recreational and cultural facilities were practically nonexistent.




AS GORBACHEV STEPPED OUT of the bulletproof Zil that had been specially flown in from Moscow, the crowd surged forward. The Kremlin security men had trouble preventing the grimy oil workers from sweeping the general secretary and his fashionably coutured wife, Raisa, off their feet. Wherever they went, the couple was greeted by a wall of cheering, inquisitive people. The local party bureaucrats, anxious to avoid an embarrassing scene, hovered uneasily in the background. The expressions on their faces suggested an unctuous desire to humor the new leader, combined with alarm over his unpredictable ways.

It was an encounter between two different worlds: the apparatchiks in their homburgs and heavy overcoats and the unshaved, unwashed masses in their threadbare anoraks and woolen ski caps. And there, bobbing up and down in the middle of this tableau vivant, was the smiling face of the Soviet Union’s new leader, arm outstretched to the people, like a modern-day tsarbatyushka (little father).

The sight of a Communist Party leader rubbing shoulders with ordinary people seemed miraculous to the inhabitants of Nizhnevartovsk, as it did to the rest of the country when it was broadcast on television that evening. The propaganda machine had done its best to drain of any individuality the men who waved feebly from the top of Lenin’s tomb on national feast days. Like the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, Communist leaders derived their authority from participation in endless rituals, rather than their ability to impress the masses with their brilliance. The aura of mystery and anonymity that surrounded these men was one of the principal sources of the durability of the regime.

In order to achieve his goal of pushing the world’s second superpower into the twenty-first century, Gorbachev knew he had to extricate himself from the grasp of the conservative party apparatus, which had no interest in challenging the status quo. If he allowed himself to become a prisoner of the bureaucracy, change would be glacial. The solution was to forge a direct link with the long-suffering Russian people, the narod, over the heads of the apparatchiks. This would provide him with the independent power base he needed to push through his program of reform.

“Let us put them [the bureaucrats] under control. You from one end, and us from the other,” he told an appreciative audience at one of his stops. “Without the support of the workers, no policy is worth anything. If it is not supported by the working people, it is no policy, it is some farfetched thing.”




By the time he arrived in Nizhnevartovsk, Gorbachev had already discovered a magical tool for awakening the slumbering masses. He was the first general secretary to understand the power of television. As a rising apparatchik he had seen how television had helped destroy public confidence in leaders like Brezhnev and Chernenko by broadcasting their obvious infirmities to an increasingly disillusioned nation. Now he proposed using the same medium to project himself as a dynamic new leader tackling the problems of ordinary people. The state-run television network gave him a captive audience. Every evening, at precisely nine, across the eleven time zones of the Soviet Union, 150 million people tuned in to the news show Vremya, broadcast on all main channels. The lead story during those early days was almost always Mikhail Gorbachev, hectoring local officials, diving into crowds, explaining his policies to attentive workers. He combined the roles of newsmaker and news editor. Vremya producers often received a telephone call from Gorbachev or one of his close aides with detailed instructions on what to include in the show and what to delete.




Television cameras accompanied Gorbachev practically everywhere he went in western Siberia. Here he embraced the notion of the “human factor” as the decisive element in the revolution that he was attempting to unleash. Like many visitors to Siberia, he was struck by the contrast between the riches that were pouring out of the ground and the squalor in which people were forced to live. As he toured supermarkets, drilling rigs, and gas compressor stations, he was besieged by complaints about shoddy housing, poor food supplies, air pollution, outdated equipment, and the lack of consumer goods. The ends had clearly not justified the means. The Stalinist system of economic management had created a monster that fed on itself, producing little benefit either for the country or for its inhabitants.

The new gensek was shaken to learn that for all the billions of rubles that it had contributed to the central treasury, Nizhnevartovsk did not possess a single public movie house. Movies were screened occasionally at a Communist Party youth club, but tickets were hard to acquire. All this troubled Gorbachev as he flew to the regional capital, Tyumen, for a meeting with local party officials. The next morning he got up early to revise the text of the speech that his aides had prepared for him.


 He agreed with the planners that urgent measures had to be taken to reverse the decline in oil production. But there was another message he wanted to convey: The entire economy had to be reoriented toward the individual.

“It is embarrassing for us to talk about the millions of tons of oil and cubic meters of gas when a drilling foreman says to us that the greatest incentive in Nizhnevartovsk is to be given a ticket to see a film,” he told party workers, gathered in front of him like dim-witted schoolchildren. “Why, at the end of the day, do we need to extract millions of tons of oil and gas? Not so that we can simply talk and brag about such quantities, but so that people’s lives can be improved, so that the economy becomes stronger, so that our defenses can be strengthened, so that the people’s living conditions can be improved. That is why all this is necessary.”




During those early barnstorming trips around the country Gorbachev frequently discarded the speeches that had been prepared for him in advance. He modeled his speaking style on the early Bolsheviks, who could keep audiences spellbound through the sheer force of their oratory. Speaking extemporaneously provided a contrast with his immediate predecessors, who were barely able to read from prepared texts. On the other hand, it caused him to ramble, the occupational disease of an all-powerful leader who is rarely contradicted. The points he was trying to make could easily get lost in an avalanche of words. Sometimes he got carried away with his own rhetoric, forgetting the point that he intended to make.

While the new tsar had a very clear sense about what was wrong with the Russian economy, he had a much hazier idea of how to put it right. Stripped of their revolutionary rhetoric and good intentions, his early policies often boiled down to more of the same. He still proclaimed an undying faith in the socialist system of centralized distribution. His attitude to Lenin remained deeply reverential. On the subject of market economics, Western visitors found that he was practically illiterate. Given these ideological limitations and the ingrained habits of Soviet bureaucrats, it was not surprising that the party bosses in western Siberia responded to the new leader’s criticisms and exhortations in the traditional way. They drilled hundreds more wells and increased the pressure on work crews to meet plan targets. Little attention was paid to the maintenance and repair of existing wells or the rational, long-term development of oil fields. Only token efforts were made to improve the living conditions of oil workers. Uskorenie (acceleration) became the slogan of the day.

Over the next two years oil production did increase slightly. But the frenetic drilling of new wells had the effect of making matters even more chaotic, exacerbating the problem of waterlogged fields. By 1988 Soviet production was in steep and irreversible decline. Even more alarming, at least in the short term, was a decision by Saudi Arabia in the summer of 1985 to increase its oil production dramatically. Shortly after Gorbachev’s visit to Siberia, world oil prices crashed. By the first quarter of 1986 the Soviet Union would be able to fetch no more than ten to twelve dollars a barrel for its oil, compared with a peak of nearly forty dollars in 1980. During Gorbachev’s first two years in office the country’s hard currency export earnings fell by almost a third.

Perestroika was doomed before it had even begun.




GORBACHEV’S TRIP TO Western Siberia turned out to be important for another reason: It marked the high point of his ill-conceived antialcohol campaign, which did more to alienate the Russian people than any other single action. With hindsight, it was probably the most spectacular blunder committed by the new leadership during the early stage of perestroika.

Drink had been the scourge of Russian life for many centuries. “The greatest pleasure of the people is drunkenness, in other words forgetfulness,” noted the marquis de Custine during his visit to Russia in 1839.


 The Brezhnev regime tacitly encouraged vodka sales, which provided a valuable source of tax revenue and helped ensure the political acquiescence of the population. Consumption of hard liquor had almost quadrupled during the Brezhnev period. By the time Gorbachev came to power, alcoholism had reached epidemic proportions. Official studies showed that 70 percent of all crimes were related to alcohol. Drink was blamed for widespread absenteeism at work, a sharp increase in the divorce rate, and a dramatic drop in male life expectancy.

The driving forces behind the antialcohol campaign were two Politburo members who had played an important role in helping Gorbachev become general secretary, Yegor Ligachev and Mikhail Solomentsev. Ligachev was a puritan, disgusted with the moral decay that he saw all around him. He had already tried to enforce a ban on alcohol in his hometown of Tomsk. Solomentsev was a reformed alcoholic who waged war on drink with the enthusiasm of the convert. Together they persuaded the Politburo to adopt draconian restrictions on the production and sale of alcohol. Tens of thousands of liquor stores across the country were closed down; centuries-old vineyards in the Caucasus were plowed up; alcoholic beverages were banned from official receptions. The sale of alcohol was prohibited altogether before 2:00 p.m. The few liquor stores that were permitted to remain open were constantly besieged by long lines of frustrated customers.

The effect of this campaign was to drive one of Russia’s largest and most profitable businesses underground. Sugar became a “deficit item” overnight, as the production of illegally brewed moonshine shot up. Unable to buy vodka from government stores, people switched to any available substitute. Thousands of desperate alcoholics died from imbibing noxious substances, such as eau de cologne, glue, window-cleaning liquid, and shoe polish. The government surrendered its jealously guarded monopoly over alcohol sales to criminal gangs. The loss of tax revenue from alcohol sales left a hole in the state budget that was never repaired. From 1985 onward there was a growing imbalance between the money income of the population and the supply of goods and services. Since the government continued to fix prices by administrative fiat, the result was widespread shortages. By the time the antialcohol campaign was quietly abandoned in 1988, the authorities had lost control over the monetary system.

Although Gorbachev was not the principal instigator of the antialcohol drive, he supported it wholeheartedly. In the public mind it was viewed as his campaign. Jokes soon circulated at the new leader’s expense. Russians started referring to him as mineralny sekretar (mineral water secretary), instead of generalny sekretar (general secretary). He was undaunted by the criticism. At Politburo meetings he made clear that he regarded the struggle against alcohol as part of the struggle for communism. What was at stake, he told his colleagues, was the “genetic future” of the nation. When the deputy head of the state planning agency, Gosplan, objected that the move toward prohibition would deprive the state of up to 12 percent of its revenues, Gorbachev cut him short. “Vodka is not going to bring us to communism,” he snarled.




Gorbachev’s determination to impose sobriety on his countrymen, even against their will, revealed an authoritarian streak in his personality that contrasted with his talk of democracy and openness. “Bear in mind, this is not for a day or two, or even for a year. It is forever,” Gorbachev told the oil workers of Nizhnevartovsk, wagging his index finger at them, like an angry patriarch.


 The workers applauded sullenly, without any intention of changing their ways.




GENEVA

November 19, 1985


THE DAY AFTER HIS APPOINTMENT as general secretary, Gorbachev had written a private memorandum to himself, outlining his political priorities. Improving relations with the United States, the leading imperialist country, was at the top of the list.


 The time had come to put the memorandum into effect. He would have a face-to-face meeting with Ronald Reagan, a man Kremlin propagandists had compared with Hitler in his obsessive quest for world domination.

Close to one hundred photographers from all over the world were on hand to record the first handshake between a Soviet general secretary and an American president in more than five years. The practice of regular summit meetings had been suspended as a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the political turmoil in Moscow. Reagan, who was already in the second term of his presidency, had geared himself up for a summit with first Andropov and then Chernenko. But, as he later complained, the Soviet leaders “kept dying on me.”


 Now, in Gorbachev, he had finally found a young and vigorous leader with whom he could talk.

Reagan had a visceral dislike of Communists that went back to his days as a trade union activist in Hollywood after the Second World War and his suspicion that the Reds were attempting to take over the American movie industry. At his first presidential news conference he had spoken of Soviet leaders as if they were soulless automatons, willing to “commit any crime, to lie, and to cheat” in order to promote the goal of worldwide revolution.


 Yet as he pumped Gorbachev’s hand in the courtyard of the Villa Fleur d’Eau on Lake Geneva, he found “something likable” about him. “There was warmth in his face and his style, not the coldness bordering on hatred I’d seen in most senior Soviet officials I’d met until then,” he recalled later.




A small army of White House advance men had spent weeks discussing how Reagan could break the ice with Gorbachev. They had crawled over the grounds of the nineteenth-century château, with measuring tapes and telephoto lenses, looking for the best camera angles. It was important to establish the right atmosphere, an amalgam of intimacy, parity, informality, and security. Finally they settled on a cozy boathouse down by the lake, a hundred yards from the main house, with a picturesque fireplace. It was an image maker’s dream. After strolling down to the lake, the two most powerful men in the world would sit down opposite each other in overstuffed chairs, by a blazing fire, and address the great issues of war and peace. This would be the “Fireside Summit.” If that evoked memories of the reassuring fireside chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt—one of Reagan’s great heroes—so much the better.




The summit began on an inauspicious note, with arguments over ideology and human rights. “At the beginning it was more like a dispute between the number one Communist and the number one capitalist than a working dialogue between the world’s two most powerful leaders,” Gorbachev recalled later.


 To ease the tension, Reagan suggested a walk in the fresh air. The younger man accepted with alacrity. By the time they got to the summer house, a fire was already blazing in the hearth, attended by a bureaucrat with top-level security clearance.

As Gorbachev settled into his armchair, the president consulted his script, typed on a deck of four-by-six index cards, which he occasionally shuffled. He had given some thought to how to address his Soviet guest. In the end, he settled for “Mr. General Secretary,” having been persuaded that the use of “Mikhail” on the first occasion might be misconstrued. Having got the formalities out of the way, he staked out some common ground. Here we are, he said, the two of us, sitting opposite each other in this room. You, like me, were born in an obscure hamlet, in the middle of a huge country. From these poor and humble beginnings, we have risen to become the leaders of America and Russia.

“We’re probably the only people in the world who could start World War III. And we’re also the only two people, perhaps, in the world that could prevent World War III.”




At first glance, it would be hard to think of any two men more different than the seventy-four-year-old president and the fifty-four-year-old gensek. One had made a career out on anticommunism; the other dreamed of giving communism a new lease on life. One was bored by the details of public policy and would happily abandon his briefing books for another viewing of The Sound of Music; the other was a workaholic who devoured position papers and intelligence assessments, underlining interesting passages with an iridescent marker. One held fast to certain immutable principles; the other was a compromiser born and bred. One was an amiable character, who liked telling jokes; the other didn’t much care for jokes and could be a bit of a bully.

Yet for all these differences Reagan was correct when he suggested to Gorbachev that they had a great deal in common. At the most basic level they both were superb actors, with the power of communicating ideas and feelings to large numbers of people. Reagan had been trained in the great movie studios of Hollywood. A natural television performer, he knew how to control his gestures and his voice to evoke a sense of empathy from his audience. At times he even seemed to model himself after characters in his own movies. Gorbachev, by contrast, had received his thespian initiation on the stage of High School No. 1 in Krasnogvardeyskoye. He was so convincing as the romantic lead in nineteenth-century Russian comedies that he once considered taking up acting as a career.


 He learned the art of attracting the attention of a live audience through deliberately exaggerated gestures, dramatic finger pointing, and a flamboyant stage presence.

There was a visionary, almost prophetic quality about both Reagan and Gorbachev. They were optimists, convinced they could make the world a better place. Unlike many politicians, they allowed themselves to dream, and their dreams and illusions became part of the geopolitical calculations of great powers. Reagan’s optimism was the unclouded optimism of a man who had lived the American dream and wanted others to share in his good fortune. At times it bordered on nostalgia. By proposing a space shield that would protect America from incoming nuclear missiles, the president hoped to re-create the security and well-being of his youth. Gorbachev’s optimism derived from his experience as a young man growing up during the heady years of the political thaw that had followed the death of Stalin. The general secretary was convinced that if socialism could only be cured of its Stalinist deformities and abuses, everything was still possible.

The two leaders also shared a horror of nuclear war. The dawning of the nuclear age had linked the destinies of America and Russia, creating a symbiotic relationship based on mutual insecurity. The vast open spaces that had allowed Russia to repel invasions by Napoleon and Hitler meant nothing when the Kremlin could be destroyed by a nuclear missile fired from an American submarine with scarcely any warning. The ocean that had protected America from foreign aggression for two centuries could be crossed by a Soviet warhead in less than thirty minutes. For the first time since the Revolutionary War against the British, there was a direct threat to the American heartland.




PRIOR TO THE GENEVA SUMMIT Reagan had met very few Russian politicians. He had had a brief encounter with Brezhnev in California in 1973 and a more substantive meeting with Gromyko in the White House in September 1984. It was easy to demonize such men. They seemed to take pride in acting as the faceless representatives of a totalitarian ideology. As Gromyko remarked on one occasion, “My personality doesn’t interest me.” Their stolid appearance and stonewall negotiating technique confirmed Reagan’s view of East-West relations as a titanic struggle between good and evil.

Although he had battled with Hollywood leftists in the late forties and early fifties, the president’s knowledge of communism and Communists was largely theoretical. Much of it derived from a book of spurious Lenin quotations, The Ten Commandments of Nikolai Lenin, given to him by a friend out in California.


 He kept the book in a drawer of his desk in the Oval Office and frequently referred to it when he wanted to make a point about Soviet perfidy. A favorite quotation, which he tried out on many foreign and congressional leaders, was: “We will not have to take the last bastion of capitalism, the United States. It will fall into our outstretched hand like overripe fruit.”


 Soviet experts in the administration went to some trouble to show that this and many other quotations in the book were false.

Reagan never abandoned his belief that communism was intrinsically evil. But he did change his tactics for dealing with Soviet leaders, to the dismay of some of his conservative supporters. He stopped referring to the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” driven by a fanatical desire for world domination. In early 1984, in a calculated opening to Moscow, he was already musing what would happen if “Ivan and Anya” found themselves sharing a shelter from the rain with “Jim and Sally.” He concluded that the “common interest” of ordinary people in creating a “world without fear” was a phenomenon that transcended “all borders.”




The struggle for Reagan’s soul was symbolized by a rift in the administration. On one side were the pragmatists, led by Secretary of State George Shultz, who were impressed by Gorbachev and wanted to take advantage of the new political climate in the Soviet Union. On the other were the ideologues, represented by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who regarded the changes in Moscow as largely cosmetic and were deeply skeptical about the benefits of arms control negotiations. In his heart Reagan sided with the ideologues. But his political instincts and his confidence in the negotiating skills that he had developed in Hollywood told him that the time had come for a serious dialogue.

Nancy Reagan played an important role in persuading her husband to adopt a mellower, more conciliatory tone toward the Kremlin during the run-up to the 1984 presidential election. She was disturbed by public opinion polls suggesting that the president’s harsh Cold War rhetoric could cost him votes. “Ronnie, you have to present a more peaceful image,” she told her husband during a trip on Air Force One, in earshot of National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane.




The first lady was strengthened in her conviction that Gorbachev would make a worthy negotiating partner for the president by her astrologer friend Joan Quigley, who had studied the personal horoscopes of the two leaders. The astrologer explained to Nancy Reagan that “Ronnie’s Mercury,” the “planet of ideas and the mind,” was very close to “Gorbie’s Venus,” the “planet of love.” This showed that Gorbachev would “love and embrace the ideas that the American president would bring him.” The celestial chemistry between the two leaders had “breathtaking possibilities,” but it was essential that Reagan jettison the “evil empire attitude” before traveling to Geneva. The precise departure time of Air Force One for Geneva—8:35 a.m. on November 16, 1985—was chosen by Quigley in order to put Gorbachev’s planet “in the ascendant” on her chart, so that he “would be drawn to Ronnie.”




In order to reach the point at which he could have a real conversation with Gorbachev, Reagan needed more than just an astrologer. He also had to have a kindred spirit to exorcise his ideological demons, to help him see the Russians as three-dimensional human beings rather than two-dimensional villains. The key figure here was Suzanne Massie, the voluble author of several popular books about Russian history, who had a gift for talking on Reagan’s wavelength. During the course of eighteen unpublicized meetings with the president, she fed him a mixture of street-corner anecdotes, salty jokes, and ancient folk wisdom about Russia that sparked his interest in a vast and contradictory land. Many of Reagan’s favorite Russian aphorisms—including the endlessly repeated Doverai, no proverai (Trust, but verify)—came from Massie.

Massie’s own twenty-year love affair with Russia had been ignited by a family tragedy. Her son, Bobby, was a hemophiliac. In the course of dealing with his illness, she and her husband, Robert Massie, became fascinated by the life of the most famous hemophiliac of all, the tsarevich Aleksis, and the curative powers of the mad monk Rasputin. (The research eventually blossomed into a best-selling book, Nicholas and Alexandra, by Robert Massie.) When she traveled to Leningrad for the first time in 1967, she felt an immediate kinship with the Russian people. “It was like finding a huge family that belonged to me, but that I had never known existed,” she later wrote.


 She was banned from visiting the Soviet Union for ten years after a search at the Moscow airport turned up an address book filled with Russian names and phone numbers. By the time she got back, in September 1983, in the middle of the KAL crisis, she was alarmed to discover that communication between the two superpowers had virtually broken down. Convinced that someone had to correct the demonic views that each side held about the other, she badgered the White House for a meeting with Reagan.

“Do Soviet leaders really believe in their ideology?” was Reagan’s first question when they finally got together.

“I can’t answer that,” Massie replied. “All I can tell you is what Russians say about their leaders. They call them the Big Bottoms. They think the only thing their leaders are interested in is their chairs, their positions. Ideology is unimportant.”




Talking to the president, Massie found, was rather like talking to her curmudgeonly great-uncle. He had certain idées fixes about Russia that he had picked up from friends in California who knew very little about the place. But he had a sense of humor about himself, was eager to learn more about the country he had already labeled the “focus of evil in the modern world,” and had no problems with his ego. For a man with the reputation of being the “great communicator,” he was enigmatic. It was difficult to read what was going on in his mind. He seemed to relax when the bureaucrats left the room. During their one-on-one sessions Massie tried to give the president a sense of the variety and diversity of Russia. She told him what it was like to live in a communal apartment, what people talked about while standing in line, what Russians were like as people. She also sought to bolster his confidence in negotiating with Gorbachev, who was already being built up in the American press as some kind of superman.

“You are stronger than he is in every way,” she told the president before he left for Geneva. “You have a lot of experience; you are older and wiser; you are secure in the hearts of your countrymen.” Russians, she added, were basically “ungovernable.” “If you were president of that country, you really would be in trouble.”




RONALD REAGAN TOOK the biblical prophecy of Armageddon seriously. When he read references in the Book of Revelations to a star that would fall from heaven, poisoning everything in its path, he thought of the effects of nuclear war. Far from guaranteeing the peace, nuclear weapons were inherently immoral, in Reagan’s view, because they would bring about the end of human civilization. “For the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the second coming of Christ,” he had declared in 1971.


 If this was the case, it was obviously the responsibility of the statesman to protect his people from the promised Day of Judgment.

During the 1980 presidential election campaign, Reagan had an experience that strengthened his view that something had to be done to protect the American people from the threat of nuclear annihilation. He was touring the headquarters of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which has the task of detecting incoming nuclear warheads. An underground city hidden deep in the Cheyenne Mountain, in Colorado, the NORAD command post could serve as the setting for a James Bond movie. Banks of radar detectors and computers keep track of everything from flocks of birds migrating south for the winter to a Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile lifting off from the deserts of Kazakhstan. Sophisticated communications devices ensure that the information can be flashed instantaneously to the president, wherever in the world he might be. Watching the flickering consoles and giant screens pinpointing hundreds of Soviet missile sites, Reagan asked the NORAD commander what could be done if the Soviets were to fire a missile at an American city.

“Nothing,” the general replied, in the eerie stillness of his mountain fortress. “We would pick it up right after it was launched, but by the time the officials of the city could be alerted that a nuclear bomb would hit them, there would be only ten or fifteen minutes left. That’s all we can do. We can’t stop it.”

The answer stunned Reagan. He found it difficult to believe, much less accept, that the United States had no defense against Soviet missiles. As he flew back home to Los Angeles, he confided his astonishment to an aide. “We have spent all that money and have all that equipment, and there is nothing we can do to prevent a nuclear missile from hitting us.”




Reagan’s shock at American vulnerability to a nuclear attack blossomed into the launching of a top-priority program to intercept and destroy incoming Soviet missiles. In a televised address from the Oval Office on March 23, 1983—just two weeks after the “evil empire” speech—he outlined his vision of how to avoid a nuclear Armageddon. He appealed to scientists who had spent half a century developing nuclear weapons “to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.”


 The doctrine of mutually assured destruction—MAD for short—would be superseded by a new Fortress America doctrine. This time, however, America would be protected not by the ocean but by an invisible, space-based shield. The official name for the program was the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a phrase designed to emphasize its peaceful intent. But the technologies involved—lasers, particle beams, and kinetic energy weapons—seemed so fantastic that journalists were soon referring to Reagan’s plan as “Star Wars,” after the blockbuster science-fiction film.

The president’s announcement was greeted with dismay in Moscow. Kremlin leaders viewed it as a further escalation of the arms race, designed to deprive the Soviet Union of its hard-won military parity. They could not accept American assurances that SDI was purely defensive. Their reasoning was simple. If the United States succeeded in deploying an antimissile system that protected American cities from incoming warheads, it would enjoy a huge strategic advantage. Such a development would allow Washington to launch a first strike against the Soviet Union with impunity or, at the very least, engage in nuclear blackmail. The alternative—being dragged into another exhausting high-tech race with the rival superpower—was equally alarming to Soviet leaders.

It did not take Gorbachev long to realize that the Soviet Union could not afford to match the American investment in “Star Wars.” At the Geneva summit he offered Reagan a sweeping trade-off. The Kremlin would agree to a 50 percent reduction in the nuclear arsenals of the two superpowers, including its own SS-18 missiles, in return for a pledge from Washington to respect a 1972 treaty banning ballistic missile defenses. If the United States refused to compromise, the Soviet Union would be forced to take “countermeasures.” Rather than compete directly with SDI by building its own nuclear shield, it would attempt to overwhelm the American defenses with bigger and better offensive missiles.

“Everything is coming to a halt if we can’t find a way to prevent the arms race in space,” the Soviet leader warned.




“I’m talking about a shield, not a spear,” replied Reagan, departing from his prepared notes. “Even if everybody reduces [offensive missiles] by 50 percent, it’s still too many weapons. SDI gets around that.”

“It’s emotional… one man’s dream,” Gorbachev shot back, exasperated by Reagan’s stubbornness. “I want to reduce the number of weapons, but SDI is threatening a new arms race.”




FOR ALL HIS SHORTCOMINGS—the seemingly eccentric ideas and notorious inattention to detail—Ronald Reagan possessed an incredible political sense. His adversaries repeatedly underestimated him. His aides were amazed by his ability to glide through life, with seemingly minimal effort, achieving goals that were beyond the reach, or even the imagination, of workaday politicians. Even for those close to him, this was a paradox that was difficult to explain. “He knows so little,” marveled the detail-obsessed McFarlane shortly after his resignation as national security adviser in 1984, “yet he accomplishes so much.”




Part of the reason for Reagan’s success in dealing with the Soviets was his abiding faith in the strengths of the American system of government. Shortly after he became president, a French intellectual named Jean-François Revel wrote a book entitled How Democracies Perish that became a bible for many American conservatives. It begins with an alarming prediction: “Democracy may, after all, turn out to be a historical accident, a brief parenthesis that is closing before our eyes.” The central thesis of the book is that it is futile to expect that economic crises would cause the mellowing or disintegration of Communist states. According to Revel, it is far more likely that the opposite would happen. In order to cover up their internal failures, Soviet leaders would become more aggressive, more militaristic. Totalitarian societies were, by their very nature, cohesive and well regimented. There was a growing danger that they would overwhelm the fragile Western democracies.

Reagan did not share the view that the Russians were ten feet tall. His political sixth sense told him that democracy was a much stronger form of government than totalitarianism, precisely because of its pluralistic nature. He believed instinctively that communism’s death knell was already sounding, a conviction that he expressed in his speeches. “In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right,” he told the British Parliament in June 1982. “We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis, a crisis where the demands of the economic order are conflicting directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union.”


 Reagan’s prediction that the “march of freedom and democracy” would leave communism on the “ash-heap of history” seemed like a vain hope at the time—certainly to thinkers like Revel—but it proved astonishingly accurate.

In his dealings with Gorbachev, Reagan displayed a flexibility and tactical finesse that belied his reputation as a Cold War warrior. His ingrained optimism, and his confidence in himself, led him to go further down the road to disarmament than many conservatives thought wise. “I bet the hard-liners in both our countries are bleeding when we shake hands,” he joked to the Soviet leader at the end of three days of discussions in Geneva.


 It was almost as if there were two very different Reagans: the confrontational Cold War ideologue and the pragmatic Hollywood negotiator.

One Reagan spoke as if treaties with Communist states were not worth the paper they were written on. The other concluded one of the most sweeping arms control agreements in history with the rival superpower. One Reagan denounced the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.” The other traveled to the heart of that empire and joined his Soviet counterpart in burying the Cold War. One Reagan spoke as if the only language that the Communists understood were force. The other was a dreamer who thought he could convince a Communist leader of the superiority of the capitalist system by flying with him in a helicopter over the villas and swimming pools of Southern California.

There was an objective need for both Reagans in the collapse of communism. Had the president failed to respond vigorously to the Soviet arms buildup or the invasion of Afghanistan, the Kremlin would have had less incentive to change its ways. On the other hand, if he had heeded the advice of his right-wing friends and spurned the olive branch offered by Gorbachev, a historic opportunity to negotiate a peaceful end to the Cold War might have been lost.

“If Reagan had stuck to his hard-line policies in 1985 and 1986, Gorbachev would also have been forced to take a much tougher position,” said Anatoly Dobrynin, the veteran Soviet ambassador in Washington. “Otherwise he would have been accused by the rest of the Politburo of giving everything away to a fellow who does not want to negotiate. We would have been forced to tighten our belts and spend even more on defense. Remember the party still had everything under control at that time, and this was a realistic option.”




Reagan’s dream of constructing a nuclear shield around the United States bedeviled his future dealings with Gorbachev. But the president’s initiative also had the effect of altering the political dynamics between Moscow and Washington by exposing Soviet economic weakness. In a perverse kind of way it may have helped pave the way for the dramatic breakthrough in superpower relations.

The launching of “Star Wars” provoked a contradictory reaction in the Soviet Union. Supported by some sections of the military, politically well-connected weapons developers immediately began an intense lobbying effort to be given the resources to counter the American program. A decision was taken to significantly increase defense spending during the 1986–90 plan period. At the same time, the prospect of a new high-technology arms race had a sobering impact on Kremlin policy makers.

“The Russians really believed that Reagan would do what he said he was going to do. The perception was the reality. They believed. This may have been Reagan’s greatest achievement. He conveyed political will,” said Suzanne Massie, who helped Reagan prepare for his meetings with Gorbachev.


 “The SDI program had a long-lasting impact on us,” acknowledged Aleksandr Bessmertnykh, a leading American expert in the Foreign Ministry. “We realized that we were approaching a very dangerous situation in the strategic counterbalance we had been living in.”







GENEVA MARKED A CRUCIAL STEP on Gorbachev’s long journey from a collective farm in an obscure corner of the Soviet Union to the center of the world stage. Like Reagan, he was a complex, contradictory personality. He was a man with a soaring vision for his country, yet at times he could be infuriatingly obtuse. He earned the reputation in the West of being a decisive man of action, but there were long periods when he seemed gripped by indecision. He could work himself up into an emotional frenzy and then behave as if nothing had happened. He could be incredibly charming and almost heartlessly cold.

Some of these contradictions were explored in a psychological portrait of the Soviet leader that the Central Intelligence Agency prepared for Reagan on the eve of the Geneva summit. Among several passages carefully underlined by the president with his blue biro were the following: “Gorbachev has a greater measure of self-confidence, even arrogance, than recent Soviet leaders about his ability to revitalize the Soviet system, deal effectively with foreign leaders, and restore credibility to Soviet diplomacy…. Behind the smile and approachability, Gorbachev—like Khrushchev before him—has a tough, hard-nosed side…. Although Gorbachev’s background and approach are unusual, he remains a product of the Soviet system.”




Shortly after the Geneva summit Gorbachev entered what one of his top aides later described as his Lenin phase.


 He would pore over the writings of the founder of the Soviet state, searching for some clue to the country’s future direction. At times he even picked up a volume of Lenin’s collected works from his desk and read a passage out loud, remarking on its relevance to contemporary problems. This interest in Lenin’s writings was unusual for Soviet leaders. Politburo members quoted Lenin all the time but rarely went to the bother of actually reading him. But Gorbachev evidently regarded himself as the modern-day equivalent of the great revolutionary leader.

The keeper of the Leninist flame was also the ultimate Soviet yuppie. Everything about Gorbachev—from his fastidious clothes sense to his obsessive work habits—made him a symbol of upward mobility in an ostensibly classless society. As he moved upward—from the Privolnoye kolkhoz to a Moscow university dorm to a meteoric career in the Communist Party—he displayed a natural facility for making and discarding allies and collaborators. He had very few lifetime friends. His wife, Raisa, a beautiful and ambitious woman who had seemed a cut above him when he courted her at the university, was the ideal partner for him on this journey. His opinions and ideals remained his own, but the way he looked at the world was heavily influenced by those around him.

Joining the club of world leaders was the ultimate step up for the peasant boy from Stavropol. He began to look at the problems of his own country and its relationship with the rest of the world from a different perspective. The opinions of Reagan and Kohl and Thatcher began to matter to him almost as much as those of his Politburo associates. Some of his aides later complained that the gensek allowed the praise of Western leaders, and the “Gorbiemania” of the crowds, to go to his head. Always keen to improve himself, he had Dale Carnegie’s best-seller How to Win Friends and Influence People translated into Russian. He successfully adopted its precepts: the firm handshake; the sincere smile; the technique of remembering little details about his interlocutors.




A man of insatiable curiosity, Gorbachev soaked up facts and impressions of life in the West. As his plane flew over a city like Paris or London, he would look down at the tidy streets and neat little houses, making mental comparisons with the languorous squalor of street life in the Soviet Union. No detail was too small for his attention.

Gorbachev’s goal in going to Geneva was to create the right international climate for his domestic programs. To accomplish perestroika (restructuring), he needed a peredyshka (respite or breathing space) from the East-West competition. A few months after the Geneva meeting, he outlined his new foreign policy strategy in a candid speech to a specially convened conference of Soviet ambassadors. The United States, he declared, was attempting to “exhaust” the Soviet Union economically by dragging it into a ruinous arms race. The central task of Soviet diplomacy was to “create the best possible conditions” for social and economic development at home. The most basic requirement was peace with the West, “without which everything else is pointless.” But it also involved abandoning outmoded ways of thinking. Pragmatism, not ideology, would become the watchword for Soviet foreign policy. Rather than dig themselves into entrenched positions, Soviet diplomats would be required to display political imagination and tactical flexibility. Gorbachev did not want his representatives to be nicknamed Mr. Nyet by their Western colleagues.




The reference to “Mr. Nyet” was aimed at Gromyko, the diplomat who had embodied Soviet foreign policy for almost four decades. In one of his first acts as Soviet leader, Gorbachev had pushed the seventy-five-year-old foreign minister upstairs to the largely ceremonial position of chairman of the Supreme Soviet, the country’s de facto head of state. He had entrusted the task of representing the Soviet Union abroad to his old friend Eduard Shevardnadze, the man who had originally come up with the expression “We cannot go on living like this.” Shevardnadze knew very little about foreign affairs, having spent most of his political career in his native republic of Georgia. Far from disqualifying him from the job of foreign minister, his ignorance of the way things were done in the past may actually have been an asset, in Gorbachev’s eyes. He needed a new face to embody his policies toward the rest of the world.

Gorbachev’s talk about “new thinking” angered the Kremlin old guard. “What kind of new thinking?” spluttered the octogenarian Boris Ponomarev, who had been in charge of the party’s foreign policy department for a quarter of a century. “We already have the right thinking. Let the Americans change their thinking!”







WHEN GORBACHEV LOOKED into Reagan’s eyes in Geneva, he still saw the face of world imperialism. He resented the president’s attitude of moral superiority and eagerness to subject him to long lectures on human rights. “I felt that my interlocutor was so weighed down by stereotyped thinking that it was really difficult for him to reason soberly,” he complained.


 He had little time for small talk and was put off by Reagan’s penchant for telling anecdotes and jokes and his lack of knowledge of detailed arms control issues. After their first meeting he made a comment to his chief foreign policy aide that suggested he did not believe that Reagan was up to the job. “He would make a very pleasant next-door neighbor, but a president…”




At the same time, Gorbachev understood that Reagan was politically strong and had the overwhelming support of his own people. He concluded that Reagan was a person with whom it was possible “to do business,” the very phrase that Mrs. Thatcher had used about Gorbachev himself two years before.




Soviet fears of a nuclear first strike by the United States faded after the Geneva meeting. Gorbachev accepted Reagan’s assurances that he was not a warmonger intent on the physical destruction of the rival superpower. He achieved his primary goal going into the summit, a joint statement proclaiming that “a nuclear war cannot be won—and must never be fought.”


 The Soviet leader took such rhetoric seriously. When military aides came to him a few weeks later with a routine contingency plan for the outbreak of nuclear war, he brusquely pushed them away. “Up until now, we assumed in our planning that a war [with the United States] is possible. But now, while I am general secretary, don’t even put such plans, such programs on my desk.”




The antinuclear sentiments of both leaders were soon strengthened by a man-made nuclear catastrophe that seemed to fit right in with the biblical prophecy of Armageddon that had impressed Reagan so much: “A great star fell from the sky, flaming like a torch; and it fell on a third of the rivers and springs. The name of the star was Wormwood; and a third of the water turned to wormwood, and men in great numbers died of the water because it was poisoned” [Revelation 8:10]. The Ukrainian word for “wormwood” is Chernobyl.




CHERNOBYL

April 26, 1986


SUMMER HAD COME EARLY to the picture book villages around the Chernobyl nuclear plant in northern Ukraine. It was that magical time of year when, with scarcely any warning, the rivers unfreeze, the snows melt, and the countryside turns a deep shade of green. Spring had been compressed into a few fleeting days, giving local residents barely enough time to unseal their windows, pack away their heavy winter coats, and plant a new crop of vegetables. The scent of pine trees and apple blossoms filled the air. Day and night fishermen lined the banks of the cooling pond of the power plant, casting their nets for the young fish that teemed in the warm wastes.

Carved out of the primeval forest, Chernobyl was known as a good place to raise a family. Recreational facilities were excellent. The dormitory town of Pripyat, where most Chernobyl employees had their apartments, was cleaner and better planned than most Soviet industrial communities. The glittering white power plant was a pleasant contrast with the pollution-spewing industrial dinosaurs that enveloped many urban areas in clouds of black smoke. Dominating the surrounding woodlands, the power plant seemed almost as benign as the meandering Pripyat River. Its four reactors emitted no odor, and scarcely any noise, other than a barely discernible hum. Nobody worried about environmental hazards. For years the Soviet government had assured everybody that nuclear power was perfectly safe.

As he paced up and down the control room of Reactor No. 4, Chernobyl’s deputy chief engineer felt tired and irritable. Anatoly Dyatlov had been on duty for more than twelve hours. His subordinates had messed up a routine experiment to see if the reactor could operate under electricity generated by its own turbines, allowing the power in the reactor to fall to unacceptably low levels. There had been some discussion about terminating the experiment prematurely, but Dyatlov ordered it to continue. Soon the ordeal would be over, and he would be able to go back to bed.

The first explosion came in the form of a heavy thud, at 1:23 a.m. It was followed by a series of tremors, like an earthquake, and a mighty whoosh of steam. Then another deafening bang from somewhere deep inside the building shook the plaster off the ceiling and extinguished the overhead lights. It sounded to Dyatlov as if a huge gas tank had exploded. Others thought that the building was under attack by terrorists or even that war with the United States had finally broken out. The dozen or so engineers in the control room strained to read their instruments by the light of the emergency circuits.

“Everybody to the reserve switchboard,” shouted Dyatlov.




Seconds later he countermanded his order. Darting from one control panel to another, he realized that what had happened was not a minor accident but something much more terrible. Computer readouts showed that the turbine pressure was zero. In other words, steam from the reactor was no longer turning the turbines that generated electricity. Pressure in the water channels was also zero, meaning that cool water was no longer being pumped through the reactor. Most alarming of all, the instruments showed that the power in the reactor was increasing wildly when it should have been decreasing.

“I thought my eyes were coming out of my head. There was no way to explain it,” Dyatlov recalled later.

In Chernobyl types of reactors, nuclear fission is controlled by lowering dozens of neutron-absorbing graphite rods into the reactor core. Normally the rods are lowered mechanically, but in an emergency they can also be lowered by gravity. To Dyatlov’s horror, neither procedure seemed to work. For some reason, the rods had jammed in their sockets, about a third of the way down. The reactor was out of control.

The foreman in charge of the reactor rushed into the room. Pale and panic-stricken, Valery Perevozchenko was probably the first person to appreciate the scale of the catastrophe because he had seen it begin. He had been standing on a galley above the reactor lid, a huge metal circle made up of 1,661 pressurized steel tubes, each containing 770 pounds of nuclear fuel. The engineers referred to the lid colloquially as the pyatachok (five-kopeck piece). Without warning, the pyatachok seemed to come alive. Viewed from above, it looked as if 1,661 steel cans were popping open simultaneously, in response to some inexplicable force beneath.


 Seconds after Perevozchenko ran out of the hall, a terrifying blast ripped off the pyatachok, leaving a gaping hole in the roof of the reactor hall.

No one believed the foreman when he announced that the reactor had exploded. According to the textbooks, this was technically impossible. Dyatlov was still thinking of ways to control the nuclear reaction. He turned to two trainees, who had been observing the experiment, and ordered them to attempt to pull the graphite control rods down by hand. Protective clothing was nowhere to be found, so the trainees rushed off without respirators or masks. After they left, Dyatlov realized that he had probably sent two young men to their deaths for no useful purpose. If the control rods would not come down mechanically or by gravity, there was no way to bring them down manually. He ran after them, but it was too late.


 They had already disappeared into the smoke-filled inferno. By the time they returned, half an hour later, both had received lethal doses of radiation.

The fishermen along the banks of the reactor pool also had a grandstand view of the explosion. They saw a pillar of flame and red-hot chunks of nuclear fuel shoot up into the dark sky, accompanied by a thunderclap that sounded like a sonic boom. Without knowing what was happening, the fishermen had just witnessed a radioactive release equivalent to ten of the atom bombs that had been dropped on Hiroshima. They continued to watch, entranced, as teams of firefighters battled the blaze from the half-destroyed roof of the turbine hall. The temperature was so high that the roof seemed to melt under the firemen’s feet. Radioactive debris littered the entire area, emitting a sinister glow. As soon as one fire was put out, others started.

As dawn approached, the fishermen could see that the men up on the roof were sluggish and disoriented. Soon they began to feel nauseated. Their skin turned black, and they felt a burning sensation inside their chests. They were suffering from “nuclear tan.”




Unable to do anything in the control room, Dyatlov decided to survey the damage. In the turbine hall he was greeted by a scene of unimaginable devastation. Flames were leaping up through huge holes in the ceiling. Water was spurting in different directions, spilling over the machinery. There was a constant clicking sound from short circuits. Great chunks of roofing had fallen onto the floor, puncturing oil tubes that immediately exploded into flames. The air was thick with radioactive dust, which created a burning feeling in the chest and lungs and a tightening of the skin.

On one of his sorties out of the control room the engineer came across a worker from the reactor hall, Anatoly Kurguz, who had been singed by radioactive steam. The whole of his body was covered in blisters, and he was in terrible pain. Dyatlov could see the blisters hanging down from his face, like pieces of dead flesh. He ordered Kurguz to report to the medical unit in the administrative building. It turned out that the first-aid station was closed, one of many signs of the hubris of Chernobyl managers. Neither Dyatlov nor anyone else had any idea how much radioactivity had been released by the explosion. Their Geiger counters were capable of measuring only relatively modest levels of radiation and were already flickering off the scale. More powerful instruments had been locked away in safes, on the assumption that they would never be needed.

When Dyatlov inspected the damaged reactor, he discovered that two entire walls of the building were missing. By this time he was feeling nauseated, having exposed his body to destructive beta and gamma rays. He grabbed some computer printouts and took them to the administrative building, where the plant director, Viktor Bryukhanov, was on the phone to Moscow. The director was insisting that the reactor was intact and the fire under control. Dyatlov was too sick to argue with his boss. He felt as if there were nothing left of his insides. He mumbled something about a fault in the shutdown mechanism and left the room. He spent the rest of the night throwing up, alongside his companions from the control room.

A turbine engineer by profession, Bryukhanov knew little about nuclear power. His real skill lay in knowing how to please the bosses, while making sure that his subordinates received their annual bonuses for “fulfilling the plan.” Ever since his appointment as the first director of the Chernobyl plant in 1970, at the remarkably young age of thirty-five, he had been under constant pressure to meet plan targets. He had pushed ahead with the construction of new reactors, ignoring warnings about sloppy building practices and violations of safety procedures. Four years earlier a small explosion had occurred in the core of Reactor No. 1, releasing some radioactivity into the air. Bryukhanov’s main concern then had been to hush up the incident and repair the damaged reactor as quickly as possible. The following year he had succeeded in commissioning the fourth unit three months ahead of schedule, an achievement that earned him the title Hero of Socialist Labor.

Anxious to salvage his reputation as an efficient manager, Bryukhanov reported that Reactor No. 4 was still functioning and radiation levels at the plant were “within normal limits.” He based this claim on the fact that the Geiger counters were incapable of registering more than one thousand microroentgens per second, a relatively modest amount. When a civil defense worker finally unearthed a much more powerful instrument and took measurements showing catastrophic levels of radiation, the director refused to believe him.

“There’s something wrong with your instrument. Fields that high are impossible,” he snapped. “Get that thing out of here, or toss it in the garbage.”







NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS CAN OCCUR anywhere, but Chernobyl was a uniquely Soviet catastrophe. It was the almost inevitable consequence of the rapacious attitude toward nature that was an inherent part of the Soviet system of economic development. In the revolutionary mind-set, nature was subordinate to man. “We cannot wait for favors from nature,” Soviet propagandists liked to proclaim. “Our task is to take them from her.” In the end nature was bound to take its revenge, one way or another.

“The Russian soil was able to support the Communists for fifty years. It can’t put up with them much longer,” said Adam Michnik, one of the intellectual forces behind the Polish Solidarity movement, referring to Chernobyl and a host of other man-made disasters. “In Poland, in August 1980, it was human beings who went on strike. In the Soviet Union we are witnessing a strike of inanimate objects.”




In the immediate aftermath of Chernobyl, the government blamed the disaster on Bryukhanov, Dyatlov, and their subordinates. It was true that they had ignored safety rules and made serious errors of judgment. The investigation showed that the operators had switched off the emergency cooling system to Reactor No. 4 so that it would not interfere with the turbine experiment. They had failed to observe proper shutdown procedures. At a secret trial in July 1987 both Dyatlov and Bryukhanov were sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for “violations of discipline.” Four other operators received prison sentences ranging from two to ten years. The prosecution described the defendants as “nuclear hooligans.”

By producing a few scapegoats, the court neatly absolved everybody else of responsibility. The verdict deflected attention away from a series of major design flaws in the Chernobyl type of reactor, such as the lack of a containment structure to prevent leaks of radioactivity. It turned out that such reactors were chronically unstable at low levels of power, but no one had bothered to inform the operators about this defect. The operators were also unaware that under certain circumstances, the emergency shutdown mechanism could trigger a fatal surge of power. This is precisely what happened at Chernobyl. To have admitted all this at the time would have raised questions about the whole future of the nuclear power industry. It was much easier to blame “operator error.”

The real villain of Chernobyl was not the operators or even the designers of the flawed reactor, but the Soviet system itself. It was a system that valued conformity over individual responsibility, concerned with today rather than tomorrow, a system that treated both man and nature as “factors of production” that could be mercilessly exploited. Eventually something had to break.

The violation of safety procedures was the norm, rather than the exception, in Soviet factories. So too was the obsession with secrecy that deprived the operators of the Chernobyl plant of basic information about the design of the reactor and previous nuclear accidents. But perhaps the gravest shortcoming of the system was the way it suppressed the notion of individual responsibility. The physical bravery displayed by many of the six hundred thousand “liquidators” who took part in the Chernobyl cleanup efforts—beginning with the operators themselves and the firemen who fought the blaze on the roof of the turbine hall—was remarkable. Equally remarkable was the moral cowardice that caused otherwise decent individuals to go along with senseless and reprehensible decisions, including a fatal delay in the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people from heavily contaminated areas. When the Ukrainian Communist Party chief insisted that May Day parades go ahead in Kiev despite the fact that radioactive winds were blowing in the direction of the capital, hardly anyone stood up to protest.

This moral failing was eventually recognized by one of the leaders of the Soviet nuclear industry, academician Valery Legasov, who committed suicide on the second anniversary of the disaster. Shortly before his death he gave an interview in which he complained that technology had been permitted to outpace morality. He explained that the previous generation of Soviet scientists—men like Sakharov, Kurchatov, and Kapitsa—had stood “on the shoulders of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.” They had been educated in the spirit of beautiful literature, great art, and a “correct moral sense.” But somewhere along the line the connection with Russia’s prerevolutionary traditions had been broken. “Soviet man” was technically developed but morally stunted.

“We will not cope with anything if we do not renew our moral attitude to work,” Legasov concluded.




The Soviet system made a catastrophe like Chernobyl unavoidable. It then compounded the tragedy by an insistence on secrecy so absurd that it was ultimately self-defeating. The attempted cover-up was all the more grotesque because it came when the rest of the world was in the throes of an information revolution that rapidly revealed the magnitude of the disaster.




ONE OF THE FIRST DECISIONS taken by Bryukhanov in the early-morning hours of Saturday, April 26, was to order nonessential telephone lines around Chernobyl to be cut.


 It was an apparatchik’s instinctive reaction to a major disaster. To the Communist bureaucratic mind, there is nothing more frightening than loss of control. Panic could be avoided by keeping the population in the dark.

During those first few hours after the explosion, thousands of people living in the immediate vicinity of the power plant received potentially fatal doses of radiation. Unaware of the danger, people took advantage of the warm weather to tend their gardens, visit friends, and play outside with their children. Local officials later boasted that sixteen couples were married in Pripyat that day, proving how “normal” everything was less than two miles away from the burning reactor.

Years later the people of Pripyat would have reason to curse the lack of information. Thousands died because of mysterious illnesses. The health of tens of thousands of others was permanently ruined. Leukemia rates soared. “If we had known what had happened, of course we would have remained indoors and taken precautions. God knows how much radiation we might have been spared,” said Nadezhda Spachenko, a Chernobyl engineer, whose children soon began to suffer chronic headaches, nosebleeds, swollen thyroid glands, and general fatigue.




In the best Soviet tradition, the investigation of the Chernobyl disaster was entrusted to the very people who were largely responsible for the tragedy. The first government commission arrived on the scene eighteen hours after the explosion. It was headed by Deputy Prime Minister Boris Shcherbina and included the designers of the failed reactor. Shcherbina was a leader of the old school, a little Napoleon who could instill terror in his subordinates with a harsh remark or withering glance. He had served as minister of oil and gas, a job that involved relentless cracking of the whip to ensure the fulfillment of planned targets. Promoted to the post of deputy prime minister in charge of the entire energy sector, he had attempted to apply similar methods to the building of nuclear power stations, a policy that had resulted in a sharp fall in safety standards. His handling of the emergency was summed up by a phrase that he used soon after his arrival in Pripyat: “Panic is worse than radiation.”




The evacuation of Pripyat finally got under way at 1:30 p.m. on April 27, thirty-six hours after the disaster. Believing they would be allowed to return in a few days, after the emergency was over, the residents left most of their belongings behind. Within a couple of hours a city of forty-eight thousand people had been turned into a ghost town. Pets had to be left behind because their hair was dangerously radioactive. For a few days packs of sick and hungry dogs roamed the streets, turning increasingly ferocious as it became clear that their masters would never return. Eventually they were rounded up and shot. In later years Pripyat became an eerie testimonial to the early Gorbachev era, with faded propaganda banners hailing the forthcoming May Day holiday.

It was not until the radioactive cloud reached Sweden on April 28, two and a half days after the explosion, that the rest of the world found out that a major nuclear disaster had occurred. An emergency Politburo session was convened in Moscow to consider how to respond to inquiries from Western governments and media organizations. After some debate, the Politburo decided to provide as little information as possible. That evening, a television announcer read a terse four-line communiqué from the Soviet government: “An accident has taken place at the Chernobyl power station, and one of the reactors was damaged. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Those affected by it are being given assistance. A government commission has been set up.” Censors instructed Soviet editors to refrain from publishing anything about Chernobyl other than the official government communiqué.

Deprived of information, Soviets living in the immediate vicinity of Chernobyl exposed themselves to further danger, at a time when people thousands of miles away, in Western Europe, were drinking powdered milk and scrubbing vegetables. On Tuesday, April 29, U.S. intelligence analysts were stunned to see satellite pictures of an open-air soccer game taking place less than a mile from the smoldering reactor. A barge was sailing peacefully down the Pripyat River as if nothing had happened.


 The second stage of the evacuation, affecting eighty-five thousand people living within an eighteen-mile radius of the power plant, did not begin until May 5, more than a week after the explosion. Apart from a few privileged officials, scarcely anyone in the zone received potassium iodide pills that might have afforded some protection against fast-decaying radioisotopes, such as iodine 131.

By insisting on secrecy, the government commission exposed many more people than necessary to high doses of radiation. Hundreds of thousands of “liquidators”—mainly young people of child-bearing age—were ordered to take part in the cleanup effort. Many evacuees ended up in places that were only a little less dangerous than those they had left. Shcherbina ignored expert advice and ordered a new city, Slavutich, to be built on contaminated ground, to house Chernobyl workers and their families. In order to reduce the numbers of people requiring medical treatment, the government secretly approved a tenfold increase in “safe” radiation levels two weeks after the accident. For three years meat and milk from the contaminated region were mixed with clean meat and milk from other regions and sold all over the country.




Chernobyl was a symbol of the failure of the command-and-administer system. But in an ironic way, it was also an instrument of retribution against the system and its hitherto untouchable representatives. Most of the senior officials involved in the Chernobyl cleanup understood very little about radiation or nuclear physics. Through a combination of ignorance and bravado, they took needless risks. One deputy minister received a fatal dose of radiation in a top Moscow clinic after being assigned a bed previously used by a Chernobyl firefighter.


 A later investigation showed that the nursing staff had failed to change the bed linen, so patients were contaminating one another.

Shcherbina himself died under mysterious circumstances in August 1990, at the age of seventy, after what the Soviet press described as “a serious illness.” He had exposed himself to needless risks by eating contaminated food and flying over the reactor without protective clothing, but it was unclear whether his death was caused by radiation. In 1988 he had issued a secret decree forbidding doctors from citing radiation as a cause of death or illness.







THE KREMLIN

July 3, 1986


THE SOVIET UNION’S most eminent nuclear scientists sat at little desks in front of Mikhail Gorbachev, like disobedient schoolchildren summoned to explain themselves before the headmaster. A portrait of Lenin gazed down severely from the walls of the Kremlin conference hall. Politburo members and ministers shifted uneasily in their chairs, uncertain who would be the next target of the general secretary’s wrath.

Under Brezhnev, Politburo meetings had been pro forma affairs, often lasting little more than twenty or thirty minutes. By long-established ritual, they took place every Thursday, on the third floor of the government building in the Kremlin, beginning on the stroke of 11:00 a.m. Many crucial decisions, such as the invasion of Afghanistan, were made by a handful of Brezhnev cronies and not even discussed by the full Politburo. After Gorbachev came to power, there was a complete change of routine. Politburo meetings turned into marathon brainstorming sessions that frequently lasted for eight or ten hours. The new gensek liked to include as many people as possible in the decision-making process. At times of crisis seventy or eighty people might crowd into the gloomy Politburo conference hall, to be subjected to long harangues by Gorbachev.




“For thirty years, you told us that everything was perfectly safe,” the Soviet leader fumed, addressing the nuclear barons. “You assumed we would look up to you as gods. That’s the reason why all this happened, why it ended in disaster. There was nobody controlling the ministries and scientific centers. And for the moment, I can see no signs that you have drawn the necessary conclusions. In fact, it seems that you are attempting to cover everything up.”




Rage and frustration had been building up inside Gorbachev for weeks. Apart from the immense destruction and suffering that it had caused, Chernobyl had been a public relations catastrophe. It could not have occurred at a worse time. Naturally the West had seized on the catastrophe, and the initial cover-up, as evidence that nothing had really changed in the Soviet Union. His own reputation as a dynamic new leader was in tatters. Western commentators had made much of the fact that it had taken eighteen days for him to go on Soviet television with a personal account of the disaster. They had described his eighteen-minute speech as “defensive” and “uninformative.”

Gorbachev was angry with the Western media and the Reagan administration for criticizing his performance and questioning his commitment to reform. He was depressed by the stories of bureaucratic heartlessness and incompetence that had come to his attention. Most of all, he was furious about the difficulty of obtaining fast and accurate information from his own subordinates. He believed that the leadership had been misled about the reliability of the Chernobyl type of reactor, radioactivity levels in the disaster zone, and much more. He accused the nuclear chieftains of using a cult of secrecy to safeguard their vested interests, refusing to share information even with the Central Committee and the government. Free from outside control, they had created a mini-empire riddled with “the spirit of servility, sycophancy, persecution of dissidents, window-dressing, personal connections, and clans.”

“We’re going to put an end to all this,” Gorbachev pledged. “We have suffered great losses, and not only economic ones. There have been human victims, and there will be more. We have been damaged politically. All our work has been compromised. Our science and technology have been discredited as a result of what has happened…. From now on, what we do is going to be visible to our entire people and the whole world. We need full information.”

As the expanded Politburo meeting wore on, horrifying facts began to emerge about safety standards in the Soviet nuclear power industry. At Chernobyl alone there had been an average of twenty accidents a year. Most were attributable to design defects. “We were heading toward a major disaster,” acknowledged Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzkhov. “If it hadn’t happened now, it could have taken place at any moment.”




The gensek was in no mood for excuses. When a deputy minister insisted that the reactor was structurally sound except for one small detail—the lack of a containment structure—he gave vent to his anger. “You astonish me. Everybody is saying that the reactor has shortcomings and is dangerous, but you are still defending the honor of the uniform.” The apparatchik was fired two weeks later, along with several other ministers and deputy ministers.

In public Gorbachev continued to defend the system that made such disasters possible. He placated the Politburo old guard by attacking the West for an “unrestrained anti-Soviet campaign” and insisted that the Soviet Union would continue with its ambitious nuclear power program. In private, however, he was radicalized by the traumatic experience of Chernobyl. In conversations with aides, he complained more and more frequently that perestroika was proceeding too slowly and would have to be accelerated. He still saw the Communist Party as the spearhead of his revolution, but there would clearly have to be a vast shakeup in its ranks before it could become an effective instrument of change. The party, like the nuclear industry, could no longer be answerable only to itself. It would have to submit to some form of outside control.




His weapon in this battle was glasnost (openness). First and foremost, Gorbachev wanted more information for himself and the Politburo. But he also saw the need for more information for the general public, which would be his ally in his struggle to reform the party. In the weeks since Chernobyl, he had been bombarded by complaints from newspaper editors about the lack of glasnost.


 Designed to prevent panic, the ban on information had had precisely the opposite effect, in the view of the editors. Rumors spread by word of mouth. In Kiev, a city of 2.5 million people, ninety miles south of Chernobyl, panic-stricken residents had camped out at railway stations for days on end, storming departing trains. Everybody knew that Communist Party officials responsible for censoring the news media were evacuating their own families from the capital.

In response to these protests and the outcry in the West, the flow of information about Chernobyl gradually increased. Gorbachev also used the crisis as a pretext to appoint new editors to magazines and journals, such as Ogonyok, Moscow News, and Novy Mir, which quickly became standard-bearers for glasnost.

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FOR THOSE WHO DEALT with Chernobyl, the disaster was a turning point in their lives and professional careers. For Marshal Akhromeyev, who sent tens of thousands of conscripts to clean the mess up, it was an event comparable to Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Legasov, the nuclear scientist who committed suicide, compared Chernobyl with such epoch-making catastrophes as the destruction of Pompeii. For Prime Minister Ryzkhov, struggling to cope with collapsing oil prices and falling alcohol revenues, the disaster represented another blow to the nation’s finances. For Grigori Medvedev, a nuclear engineer who wrote the first detailed account in Russian of the disaster, Chernobyl marked “the final, spectacular collapse of a declining era.”




The effect on Gorbachev was summed up by his foreign policy aide Anatoly Chernyayev. Chernobyl, he writes in his memoirs, was a “time bomb” that exploded on Gorbachev’s watch but had been ticking away for decades beneath the foundations of Soviet society.


 There would be many more such explosions. Gorbachev was fated to pay for the mistakes of his predecessors.




JALALABAD

September 25, 1986


WHAT RUDYARD KIPLING CALLED the Great Game had been played out in the inhospitable mountains around the Khyber Pass for more than two centuries. The object, according to the nineteenth-century British strategists who drew up the rules, was nothing less than “the domination of the world.”


 Successive British viceroys of India had nightmares of Russian troops pouring through the pass and achieving the age-old tsarist dream of a warm-water port on the shores of the Indian Ocean. To prevent this geopolitical nightmare from taking place, it was essential to control the northern approaches to the pass.

In the updated twentieth-century version of “the Game,” everything was reversed. The Kremlin gerontocrats were plagued by visions of an “imperialist” threat to their Central Asian republics, the soft underbelly of the Soviet empire. In order to forestall this threat, they had invaded Afghanistan only to encounter unexpectedly strong opposition from the descendants of the same tribesmen who had spent years fighting the British. Determined to make things difficult for the Russians, the “imperialists” secretly supplied the tribesmen with weapons and provided training bases on the southern side of the Khyber Pass. The Soviets responded by attempting to seal the border with Pakistan.

Like the British before them, the Soviets established a strong garrison in Jalalabad, halfway between the Afghan capital, Kabul, and the Pakistani border town of Peshawar. A brigade of two thousand elite spetsnaz (special assignment) troops was camped out around the airport. By intercepting rebel communications with mobile eavesdropping equipment, they were able to locate mujahedin caravans crossing over into Pakistan. Once a caravan had been pinpointed, a squadron of Mi-24 helicopter gunships would be dispatched to strafe the area with rockets and machine-gun fire. Paratroopers would arrive aboard Mi-8 transport helicopters, protected by the Mi-24S. After several hours of bombardment, a column of tanks, armored cars, and mortars would move in to finish the job.

Operation Curtain, as it was dubbed by the Soviets, was launched in April 1984. Inevitably there were setbacks as well as successes. Supported by the local population, the mujahedin possessed a superb intelligence network and were often able to turn the tables on their Soviet tormentors. But the results were sufficiently impressive to persuade Gorbachev to authorize an escalation in the war in the spring of 1985, shortly after he came to power.


 For the first time in six years the Soviets seemed to have a chance of winning “the Game”—provided, of course, that the “imperialists” did not succeed in turning one of their pawns into a queen.




IN SEPTEMBER 1986 a small band of mujahedin led by a Commander Ghaffar left a guerrilla training camp in Pakistan and crossed the Khyber Pass. They crawled undetected to within a mile of the Jalalabad airport. From a well-hidden position, on a small hill overlooking the airfield, Ghaffar’s men could observe Soviet soldiers moving around inside the perimeter fence. Soviet tanks and armored personnel carriers stood at each end of the runway. The mujahedin had split into three teams of three men each, deployed in a rough triangular formation, within shouting distance of one another. They had been waiting, crouched behind the bushes, for more than three hours now. Each team was equipped with one of the most sophisticated pieces of electronic gadgetry yet devised by the U.S. Army, the Stinger missile, a portable air defense system capable of downing an enemy aircraft from a distance of three miles.

In midafternoon, as the shadows were lengthening over the mountains, Ghaffar’s patience was finally rewarded. No fewer than eight Mi-24 helicopter gunships—the most hated weapon in the Soviet arsenal—were approaching for a landing. The commander gave a shout. The three marksmen hoisted the launchers onto their shoulders and trained the sights onto the approaching Mi-24S, with their telltale glass-covered noses and rocket pods hanging down beneath the fuselage. With a flick of his left thumb, each marksman punched a button that instructed the missile’s electronic brain to sense the infrared heat being emitted from the helicopter engines. There was a series of loud pinging sounds, the signal that the missiles had locked on to their targets. Ghaffar shouted, “Fire,” and the marksmen pulled the triggers. Ecstatic chants of Allah o Akbar (God is great) rose into the air as the missiles whooshed into the sky at a speed of more than twelve hundred miles per hour.

Seconds later two of the helicopters burst into flames and plummeted to the ground. There was a wild scramble as the firing parties reloaded. Two more missiles were fired, downing another helicopter. The first five Stinger missiles ever fired in combat had resulted in three kills and two misses, a 60 percent success rate. The mujahedin were jubilant. An Afghan cameraman attempting to record the scene for the benefit of the spymasters in Peshawar was so excited that his film consisted mainly of blurred shots of sky, stony ground, and black smoke pouring from the wreckage.




There was jubilation too in the White House and the Pentagon when news of the ambush reached Washington. The Stinger missile had become a well-publicized symbol of U.S. clandestine support for the Afghan rebels in their struggle against the Soviet invader. The “most overt covert operation in history,” somebody called it. Together with the decision to supply satellite intelligence and other high-tech American weaponry to the mujahedin, it helped change the course of the Afghan War.

From now on it would be much more difficult for the Soviets to conduct the kind of low strafing of rebel positions that had proved so effective in 1985 and early 1986. The scope of spetsnaz hunt-and-destroy missions was much reduced. Soviet pilots would change their operating procedures, flying at high altitude, beyond the range of the mujahedin. When they came in to land, they adopted a curious corkscrew technique, descending in a tight spiral and firing flares every few seconds to confuse the homing devices of the Stingers. The Soviet Defense Ministry was so taken aback by the new weaponry that it promised the title “Hero of the Soviet Union” to the first soldier to capture a Stinger from the mujahedin. The first batch of intact Stingers was delivered to Moscow in the fall of 1986.







BY INVADING AFGHANISTAN in December 1979, Brezhnev and his colleagues handed the West a diplomatic victory that had hitherto proved way beyond the reach, or even the imagination, of the smartest policy makers in Washington, London, or Paris. The spectacle of Soviet aggression against a Muslim Third World country—one of the founding members of the non-aligned movement—brought the most unlikely political bedfellows together. In the space of a few months a remarkable anti-Soviet coalition had taken shape. It spanned the entire ideological spectrum: American capitalists and Chinese Communists, conservative Saudi princes and Iranian Islamic fundamentalists, Pakistani generals and European peaceniks. The only people left in Moscow’s camp were diehard Kremlin clients.

The Politburo was aware that there would be near-universal condemnation of its action. A few days after the invasion a prominent Moscow think tank warned Soviet leaders that they were up against “the united resources of the U.S., other NATO countries, China, Australia, the Islamic states and an army of Afghan insurgents.”


 Such warnings fell on deaf ears. Soviet leaders were convinced that the international hue and cry would soon die down, just as it had after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

In addition to howls of outrage, the invasion of Afghanistan caused an immediate toughening in Western policies toward Moscow. The American president, Jimmy Carter, reacted to Brezhnev’s adventure with the fury of a jilted suitor. He believed he had done his best to improve relations with the rival superpower, but his good intentions had been mistaken for weakness. He had been duped and betrayed by his would-be Soviet partners. He commented bitterly that he had learned more about the real nature of the Soviet Union in a few days than in the previous three years of his presidency. Describing the invasion as “the greatest threat to peace since the Second World War,” he authorized a series of actions designed to punish the Soviets and bolster American defenses.


 Publicly announced sanctions included a ban on high-technology exports to the Soviet Union, an embargo on grain sales, a delay in ratifying the SALT-2 arms treaty, and a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. Privately Carter also approved covert arms supplies to the Afghan resistance and military consultations with China.




The Reagan administration expanded these measures into an anti-Soviet crusade, led by a former World War II spymaster named William Casey. A Wall Street millionaire, Casey had been appointed director of the Central Intelligence Agency as a reward for managing Reagan’s presidential campaign. His Jesuit upbringing had taught him to view international politics as an eternal struggle of good against evil. He saw himself as the foreign policy conscience of the administration. His wartime experiences—he had organized an intelligence network behind German lines—had made him a firm believer in the value of covert action. Convinced that clandestine operations had contributed significantly to the defeat of Nazi Germany, he wanted to apply similar methods to the Soviet Union. “It is important… to understand how clandestine intelligence, covert action, and organized resistance saved blood and treasure in defeating Hitler,” he writes in his wartime memoirs, published posthumously. “These capabilities may be more important than missiles and satellites in meeting crises yet to come, and point to the potential for dissident action against the control centers and lines of communication of a totalitarian power.”




In Casey’s view, intelligence could not be neutral. Intelligence without action was pointless. The war had to be taken into the enemy camp. He needed to find a place, he told associates, “to start rolling back the Communist empire.”


 In March 1985, Casey got what he wanted—a presidential directive to push the Soviet army out of Afghanistan. Prior to 1985, the American strategy had been simply to bleed the Soviets. The new objective was to help mujahedin win the war. From mid-1985 onwards, the CIA began pouring weapons into Afghanistan, via the guerrilla training camps in Pakistan.




A shambling bear of a man, with the look of an absentminded professor, Casey inspired strong opinions. To his detractors, he was an irresponsible ideologue, so blinded by his hatred for the Soviets that he was unable to view the world objectively. Secretary of State George Shultz complained repeatedly that the CIA was feeding him false information about the Soviet Union, vastly overrating its military and economic capabilities. He blamed Casey for a series of intelligence disasters beginning with the Iran-contra affair.


 To his admirers, Casey was the unsung hero of the final phase of the Cold War, the backstage mastermind who devised a strategy for bringing a Communist superpower to its knees. His methods for rolling back communism may have been crude, but they were effective. By the time he resigned as CIA director in January 1987, the “evil empire” was in clear retreat.

Whatever one thought of Casey, one had to be impressed by his energy and single-mindedness. Sick with cancer and in his early seventies, he was still crisscrossing the globe in his specially equipped black C-141 Starlifter aircraft to tend to his cherished anti-Soviet coalition. In order to save time and avoid unnecessary stopovers, the plane often was refueled in midair by a KC-10 tanker. The CIA director traveled at night to avoid attention, and checked into hotels under assumed names such as Smith and Black, in cloak-and-dagger tradition. A typical trip included stops in Tokyo, Beijing, Islamabad, Riyadh, Jerusalem, Ankara, and Rome. He discussed strategy with the Chinese, finances with the Saudis, and logistics with the Paks. Pakistani intelligence officials were soon referring to him as “the wanderer” or “the cyclone.”




On one such trip, in October 1984, Casey was taken by helicopter to visit the secret mujahedin training camps in Pakistan near the Afghan border. After watching the rebels learning how to make bombs with CIA-supplied explosives, he startled his Pakistani hosts by suggesting ways in which the war could be extended to the Soviet Union itself. Stage one of the plan involved the smuggling of subversive literature across the Afghan-Soviet border, to be followed by weapons to encourage local uprisings. A few months later the CIA shipped ten thousand Uzbek-language versions of the Koran to Pakistan for distribution in Soviet Central Asia.




Back in Washington, meanwhile, a bureaucratic war was under way within the administration over the supply of Stingers to the mujahedin. The Joint Chiefs of Staff did not want to hand their wonder weapon over to a bunch of illiterate Afghans. The CIA bureaucracy was concerned that the Stinger could be easily traced back to the United States, a violation of the most basic principle of covert warfare, plausible deniability. The main advocates of the deployment of the Stinger were conservative members of Congress and a few well-placed bureaucrats, such as Morton Abramowitz, chief of intelligence at the State Department, who feared that the Soviets might overwhelm the Afghan resistance. In interagency discussions Abramowitz argued that it was important to bring home to the new Soviet leadership the costs of remaining in Afghanistan. As long as Gorbachev could blame the war on his predecessors, he could be persuaded to get out. The United States should not allow “Brezhnev’s war” to become “Gorbachev’s war.”




The president authorized the transfer of four hundred Stingers to the mujahedin in February 1986, but more than six months elapsed before they showed up in Afghanistan. As was often the case in Washington, the presidential decision triggered more bureaucratic infighting over how it would be implemented. The army succeeded in delaying deployment for weeks by insisting that the entire stockpile of Stingers was needed by U.S. troops in Germany. It then demanded that security in mujahedin training camps in Pakistan be upgraded to American standards.


 By the time these objections were sorted out, a series of press leaks had alerted the Soviets that the missiles were on their way.

In an attempt to second-guess the internal Kremlin debate about Afghanistan, U.S. policy makers staged mock Politburo sessions in the Pentagon basement.


 Officials took turns playing Soviet leaders, arguing among themselves about how to respond to the latest challenge to their authority. The hawks argued in favor of a further escalation of the war and armed incursions into Pakistan to destroy the guerrilla training camps. The doves insisted that one Afghanistan was enough, and it was time to pull Soviet troops out. Intelligence reports from a well-placed agent in Moscow, suggesting that the Soviet military was extremely nervous about Gorbachev, supplied a touch of authenticity to these mock debates.




In fact, nobody in Washington really knew what was happening behind the Kremlin’s thick brick walls.




THE KREMLIN

November 13, 1986


THE GENERAL SECRETARY WAS in a combative mood. At his second meeting with Reagan, in Reykjavik, he and the president talked about bargaining away their entire nuclear arsenals. Had it not been for Reagan’s obsession with “Star Wars,” which torpedoed the agreement at the last moment, they might have changed the course of world history. Gorbachev had returned home frustrated and disappointed by the setback, but with a grudging respect for the “human qualities” of his American partner. It seemed to him that Reagan was genuinely interested in promoting peace.


 He was more determined than ever to tackle the vast range of issues that were impeding progress in superpower relations.

At the top of Gorbachev’s agenda was Afghanistan.

“We have been waging war in Afghanistan for six years now. If we don’t change our approach, we’ll be there for another twenty or thirty years,” Gorbachev told his Politburo colleagues, gathered in the Kremlin for their regular Thursday meeting. “We must end this process in the swiftest possible time.”




Like a chessplayer moving his pieces into position before an offensive, Gorbachev had prepared carefully for this moment. He had been raising the subject of Afghanistan at Politburo sessions within a few months after his appointment as gensek, suggesting that the time had come “to leave.”


 He came to the meetings armed with letters from ordinary Soviet citizens and war veterans and read them out loud to his colleagues. “We cannot explain to the soldiers what is going on,” a political officer had written. “Why do we have to kill civilians, destroy villages, burn down settlements? What are we fighting for?”




After “educating” his Politburo colleagues, Gorbachev had got to work on the Afghan leadership. In May 1986 he summoned Babrak Karmal to Moscow and told him bluntly that the time had come to quit.


 He then sent emissaries to Kabul to persuade the new Afghan leader, Mohammad Najibullah, to embrace a policy of “national reconciliation.” The issue now was not whether Soviet troops should be pulled out of Afghanistan but how and when and what kind of country they would leave behind.

Out of the half dozen men who had made the decision to invade Afghanistan, the only one still alive and still in power was Andrei Gromyko, now Soviet president. Gorbachev was amused by the speed with which the former foreign minister had “restructured” himself during the first two years of perestroika.


 Perhaps that explained his astonishing longevity. By the fall of 1986 the chief apologist for the invasion had become a leading advocate of withdrawal.

Sidestepping the question of his own responsibility, Gromyko acknowledged that the gamble had failed. The Soviet leadership had “underestimated” the difficulties that it would encounter. The social conditions in Afghanistan—a backward, almost medieval state—had not been ripe for socialism. There was little domestic support for the “revolution.” The Afghan army was plagued by desertion. The United States was doing its best to trap the Soviet Union in a long, drawn-out war.

“We must seek a political solution,” Gromyko concluded. “Our people will breathe a sigh of relief if we undertake steps in this direction.”

Gorbachev knew he could count on the other key figures in the room. His prime minister, Nikolai Ryzkhov, had been complaining for months that the war was placing an unbearable strain on the Soviet Union’s finances. The cost of the war had doubled over the past two years. The Kremlin was spending as much on the upkeep of 100,000 troops temporarily deployed in Afghanistan as on 380,000 troops permanently stationed in East Germany, along the front line with NATO. Annual expenditures on Afghanistan were roughly comparable to the cleanup effort after Chernobyl.




Afghanistan was far from being the only economic basket case propped up by Kremlin largess. As glasnost took hold in the Soviet Union, the issue of “fraternal assistance” became increasingly controversial. Every year Moscow sent shiploads of Zhiguli cars to Nicaragua, prefabricated barracks to Guinea-Bissau, radio stations to Angola, and factories to Cuba. Even the normally lucrative international arms trade turned out to be unprofitable for the Soviet Union. Revolutionary governments in Africa, the Middle East, or Latin America practically never paid hard cash for the mountains of weapons that they received from Moscow. Accustomed to viewing the world through ideological glasses, Soviet leaders chalked their losses up to “socialist solidarity.” Eventually, however, even they understood they were being conned.

“I learned to my cost what the weapons trade with ‘friends’ was all about,” Ryzkhov said later. “An ever-growing debt. Endless negotiations, in which requests for rescheduling payments were interspersed with threats not to pay at all. Constant appeals to our ‘sense of friendship.’ ”




Gorbachev had already lined up military backing for his attempts to end the war. The key figure here was Marshal Akhromeyev, who had helped draw up the invasion plans. The armed forces chief of staff was a complex personality, at once diehard Communist and ardent patriot. Like his patron Dmitri Ustinov, the marshal revered Stalin for his wartime leadership. A few weeks after Gorbachev’s election Akhromeyev had proposed turning the Soviet Union into an “armed camp,” ready at all times to defend itself against the imperialists. On certain matters, however, he was a progressive. He was opposed to the Soviet Union’s frittering away its resources on Third World countries like Ethiopia.


 He had helped facilitate arms negotiations with the United States. American negotiators were extremely impressed with him, crediting him with several important breakthroughs. As far as they were concerned, he was a “first-class military man”: direct, authoritative, and very loyal.




The commanders on the ground had told Akhromeyev that the Fortieth Army would have to be doubled in size in order to fulfill the Politburo’s order to seal the border with Afghanistan. That would mean redeploying elite combat troops from the NATO front line or the militarily sensitive Chinese border. Even then there would be no guarantee of success. The Soviet Union could not support three fronts at once.




A soldier-intellectual, Akhromeyev understood that the conditions of combat in Afghanistan were vastly different from those of the Great Patriotic War. When the Russian soldier was fighting to defend his own homeland, he could perform incredible feats. In Afghanistan he felt himself to be an intruder, obliged to wage war against the local population on behalf of an unpopular government. The chief of staff believed that the army had acquitted itself well in Afghanistan, under extremely adverse circumstances. The mujahedin were no match for Soviet units in set-piece battles. But the ability to seize territory had little practical significance in a land where the enemy could melt back into the mountains and wait for the Soviets to leave. The Soviet army had been given an impossible mission.

“The military fulfills the tasks that are assigned to it, but the results are zero. Military gains are not being consolidated by political gains,” the marshal complained, attempting to shift the blame back to the civilians. “We control Kabul and the provincial centers, but we cannot establish political authority on the territory that we seize. We have lost the struggle for the Afghan people. Only a minority of the population supports the government.”

The Politburo session ended in general agreement. The Kremlin would promote a political settlement between the Communist government in Kabul and the mujahedin. Soviet troops would be withdrawn in stages, over the next two years. The dream of building socialism in a backward, feudal society was officially abandoned. The goal now was to ensure “a neutral state” on the Soviet Union’s southern border. For the first time in nearly seventy years the Politburo was acknowledging that defections from the Soviet bloc were possible. Revolutions could, after all, be reversed.

The empire had begun to crack.




ENDING THE WAR in Afghanistan had been high on the list of political priorities that Gorbachev had drawn up for himself on his first day in office. Accomplishing this goal was not so simple, however. Unlike many struggles over domestic policy, the Afghanistan debate did not divide the Politburo into conservatives and reformers. The real battle over the modalities of Soviet withdrawal took place in Gorbachev’s own mind.

“Afghanistan did not fit naturally into the ideological struggle for perestroika. There was consensus on this issue. Everyone in the Politburo, including conservatives like Ligachev, was in favor of withdrawal,” said Gorbachev’s foreign policy adviser, Anatoly Chernyayev.




Gorbachev talked about the war as “a past sin,” grumbling to his colleagues, “Soon they will be sticking this label onto us.”


 At the same time, according to Chernyayev, he still saw the conflict through the prism of East-West confrontation. He was susceptible to pressure from radical Third World leaders, such as Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia, who argued that the Kremlin would lose all credibility if it abandoned one of its allies.

American support for the mujahedin helped convince Soviet leaders that they were fighting an unwinnable war. “The situation now is worse than it was six months ago,” said Gromyko in November 1986, two months after the first Soviet helicopters were shot down by Stingers. Akhromeyev complained that, even with fifty thousand soldiers deployed along the border with Pakistan, it was proving impossible to close off all the supply routes used by the Afghan resistance.

Once the decision to leave had been made, however, the U.S. covert action program may have had the paradoxical effect of delaying withdrawal. This, at least, is the view of former Gorbachev aides, who argue that it was extremely difficult for Moscow to leave a country that had been turned into a superpower battlefield. “American arms supplies only dragged out the war,” insisted Aleksandr Yakovlev, the ideological brains behind perestroika. “Gorbachev, Shevardnadze, and myself were deeply convinced that we did not need Afghanistan and had no business being there. We would have lost the war anyway. We should have learned from the British that Afghanistan is a country that cannot be conquered. But the struggle between the two political systems sometimes drove us and the Americans to do stupid things. We all lost touch with reality.”




Over the next few months the war continued to escalate. By early 1987 there were 120,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan, up from 75,000 at the beginning of the war.


 Both the cost of the war and the number of casualties continued to rise. It took the Soviets another twenty-seven months to extricate themselves from the Afghan quagmire.

The decision to leave Afghanistan paved the way for the release from internal exile of the human rights campaigner Andrei Sakharov. The father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb had been banished to the closed city of Gorky in January 1980 for daring to criticize the invasion of Afghanistan in public. It was now obvious that he had been right all along, although this was too much for the Politburo to acknowledge. When Gorbachev phoned Sakharov to tell him that he was free to return to Moscow, he offered no apology and no explanation.

“Go back to your patriotic work!” the gensek ordered.




Emboldened by Sakharov’s release and the about-face on Afghanistan, Gorbachev’s more radical aides urged him to turn his attention to military reform. Articles began appearing in the Soviet press on hitherto taboo themes, such as nepotism and corruption in the military. The general secretary had been waiting for a chance to assert his control over the Soviet Union’s bloated armed forces. A few months later he was presented with an opportunity that was almost literally heaven-sent.




MOSCOW

May 28, 1987


IT WAS BORDER GUARDS’ DAY, one of those typical Soviet holidays when the regime congratulated the “defenders of the socialist motherland” and reminded the population of the ever-present “imperialist threat.” As usual, there were fireworks over the Moskva River and laudatory articles in Pravda hailing the vigilance of some unsung KGB officer stationed in a remote frontier post. Unusually for Moscow, there were also brawls in Gorky Park, as groups of vodka-drenched border guards intimidated passersby and sang lewd songs. It was an early sign that public discipline was breaking down in conditions of glasnost.

While the border guards were whooping it up in Gorky Park, the commanders of Soviet air defense were trying to figure out the significance of a mysterious blip on their radar screens. The blip had first made its appearance in the early afternoon, in the Leningrad region, and was assigned the number 8255. It seemed to be traveling south toward Moscow, at an altitude of around eighteen hundred feet. After the inevitable bureaucratic delay—duty officers feared that they would be penalized for raising a false alarm—a MiG-23 interceptor jet was sent up to investigate. The pilot reported spotting “a light sports plane flying just below the clouds.”

The high command was skeptical. There were no private sports planes in Russia. After the KAL affair would any sane pilot intrude into Soviet airspace without filing a flight plan? More MiGs were sent up to investigate, but they lost sight of the “target” in the low clouds. There was more confusion as another unidentified blip—a weather front or a hot-air balloon—merged with 8255 and then separated again. Soviet pilots spent the next two hours chasing a phantom. As the blip approached Moscow, the generals racked their brains over the identity of the mystery target in a telephone conference.

“I’m afraid it was birds, small birds,” said Major General Gvozdenko, one of the commanders of the national air defense system.




“No,” objected Major General Reznichenko, in charge of Moscow’s air defenses that day. “The pilots saw it.”

“They didn’t see anything. Those pilots are always seeing things.”

“But the pilot is very insistent. A plane appeared from somewhere.”

Frustrated by such stubbornness, Gvozdenko changed his approach. “Do you realize,” he told his colleague, “if we say it’s a plane, the higher-ups are going to badger everybody? They’re going to say, ‘If you saw a plane, then look for it.’ ”

Reznichenko’s superior, Lieutenant General Brazhnikov, joined the conversation. “It’s a weather formation, or birds. That’s the most likely.”

“It would be nice if it really were a weather formation,” said Reznichenko, allowing himself to dream for a moment. “But what if it’s a plane? And it comes down because it runs out of fuel. Then [the higher-ups] will really start yelling at us, ‘What did you do, and why did you do it this way and not that way?’ ”

“So it comes down,” argued Gvozdenko, still thinking about ways to cover himself. “We tracked it consistently. We sent fighters up.”

As the senior general present Brazhnikov realized that it was time to make a decision. “Okay, we have to make a report. What is it to be: birds, a weather formation, or a target?”

The general in charge of the radar system, Aleksandr Gukov, was in a quandary. “I can’t make a decision,” he told Brazhnikov. “I doubt it is a weather formation. It’s moving too fast.”

A few minutes later Gukov came back on the line. A good soldier, he knew how to please his superiors. “Our conclusion is that it is a weather formation,” he reported.

“But, Aleksandr Ivanovich, you’re so contradictory,” said Brazhnikov, exasperated. “Two minutes ago you said it couldn’t be a weather formation.”

“You made a decision. It’s up to us to work these things out.”

Brazhnikov decided he preferred the birds explanation. “Try to remember what the north and Siberia are like at this time of year,” he told Gukov. “Do geese fly for a long time?”

“Yes, they do. The Leningraders decided it was birds.”

“Well, there you are, and you were saying a weather formation. Why should weather formations stand out against such a cloudy background? It seems very doubtful.”

“We should go along with the decision of the Leningraders and show solidarity,” said the radar commander, amid chortles from his fellow generals. “There’s just one thing that confuses me. Birds fly north in the spring. But this is coming from the north.”

“I still think we will conclude that it was geese,” said Brazhnikov firmly, bringing the debate to a close. “So, Aleksandr Ivanovich, it will be birds.”

“Yes, sir, understood, let it be birds.”

Seventy minutes later a single-engine Cessna 172 sports plane flew low over the Kremlin, buzzing the Lenin Mausoleum. After circling Red Square a couple of times, the Cessna landed on an expanse of cobblestone between the domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin’s Spassky Gate. A bespectacled young pilot, dressed in a red flying suit, got out. Mathias Rust, a nineteen-year-old bank clerk trainee from Hamburg, told the crowd that he wanted to talk to Gorbachev about “world peace.”




NEWS THAT A WEST GERMAN teenager had managed to penetrate Soviet air defenses and fly 450 miles unchallenged across Soviet territory to the inner sanctum of Soviet power provoked one of Gorbachev’s most spectacular temper tantrums. He was out of the country at the time, attending a Warsaw Pact meeting in Berlin. “It’s a national shame. This is as bad as Chernobyl,” he exploded when Marshal Akhromeyev reached him by phone late that night.




In accordance with long-established tradition, the entire Politburo was at the airport to welcome the general secretary back home from Berlin. There were the usual smiles and comradely bear hugs, but Gorbachev’s eyes flashed with anger as he greeted his colleagues. According to his chief of staff, Gorbachev suspected that the generals had permitted Rust’s plane to reach Red Square in a deliberate attempt to cause him political embarrassment. After this incident he would never trust the military again.




“They have disgraced the country, humiliated our people,” he told an aide, referring to the military leadership. “Well, so what, let everybody see where power lies in this country. It lies with the political leadership, the Politburo. We will put an end to all this hysterical chatter about the military being in opposition to Gorbachev, about their wanting to replace him.”




At an emergency Politburo meeting the following day Gorbachev lambasted “the complete helplessness of the Defense Ministry” and accused senior generals of being “apprehensive” of perestroika. Turning to the defense minister, Marshal Sergei Sokolov, he said, “Under the present circumstances, if I were you, I would resign at once.”


 Sokolov stood at attention and resigned on the spot. More than 150 lower-ranking officers were dismissed or disciplined for “negligence.”

To add insult to injury, Gorbachev selected a relatively unknown general, Dmitri Yazov, as his new minister of defense, passing over dozens of more senior officers. The military hierarchy deeply resented being singled out for such degrading treatment and the accompanying barrage of criticism in the Soviet media but could do nothing. As Akhromeyev acknowledged in his memoirs, its guilt was “undeniable.”

The Rust incident was widely interpreted as a sign of Gorbachev’s political dominance. However, it turned out to be one of the last occasions that the general secretary was able to impose his will on a united Politburo. Opposition to his policies was growing within the leadership, from both left and right. The battle for perestroika had just begun.




MOSCOW

October 21, 1987


As A REVOLUTIONARY ELITE, committed to building a utopian society by force, the Communists understood that they would always be a minority. In order to impose their views on the majority and stay in power, they had to stick together. If cracks were allowed to appear in the Communist monolith, the party would lose its aura of historical infallibility. The entire system would rapidly fall apart. That was why there was no greater crime in the Bolshevik lexicon than “factionalism.” The traitor within was more dangerous than the enemy without.

The “unshakable unity” of the Communist movement was of course a myth. The East European Communist parties, particularly the Polish party, were riven by internal struggles. The Soviet party accommodated hardline Stalinists, social democrats, and careerists without any ideology at all. The doctrine of democratic centralism permitted party members to express their opinions freely—at least in theory—provided they abided by the decisions of “higher authorities.” What was banned was organized opposition to the “party line,” as promulgated by the leadership. This included the creation of factions within the party or—an even bigger heresy—any attempt to influence the internal debate by appealing to public opinion. The men who waved to the crowds from the top of the Lenin Mausoleum were expected to speak with a single voice and abide by a single code of behavior.

The iron conventions of Communist Party politics were to be shattered by a Siberian named Boris Yeltsin. Constructed like a human bulldozer with very poor brakes, he was accustomed to pushing aside any obstacle that lay in his path. Six feet four inches tall, with a pugnacious face and a mane of white hair, he had an almost animal sense of power and territory. Hardworking, stubborn, independent, self-confident to a fault, he was what the Russians call a nastoiashchii nachalnik (a real boss). His leadership abilities propelled him upward, from running a construction site in the Ural Mountains to regional party secretary to the Politburo in Moscow.

“For more than thirty years now, I have been a boss,” he writes in his memoirs. “That’s exactly what people of my social class in Russia are called. Not a bureaucrat, not an official, not a director, but a boss. I can’t stand the word—there’s something about it that smacks of the chain gang. But what can you do? Perhaps being first was always a part of my nature, but I just didn’t realize it in my early years.”




In addition to being a natural leader, Yeltsin was a born rebel. As a child he was always getting into scrapes. His boxer’s nose, which is broken in the middle, was the result of a childhood fight with older boys, when he was whacked across the face with the shaft of a cart. A few years later, during the war, he stole a hand grenade from the ammunition store. It exploded while he was attempting to dismantle it, blowing off two fingers of his left hand.

The young Boris had an ingrained disdain for authority figures. He was expelled from school at the age of twelve after publicly accusing the head teacher of abusing the children “mentally and psychologically.”


 It was a drama that repeated itself over and over again, as he made his way from a remote Siberian village to the corridors of Kremlin power. He got into arguments with university professors, construction foremen, plant directors, party secretaries. The plot and cast of supporting characters changed, but the climactic scene always remained the same: a furious denunciation of a powerful—and, in Yeltsin’s eyes, unworthy—superior.

It was this combination of leader and rebel that made Yeltsin such a formidable opponent. If he could not climb to the top of the Communist Olympus, he would destroy the party from within. With his intimate knowledge of nomenklatura politics and his skill at exposing the party’s internal divisions, he was more dangerous than any dissident.

“It was as if there were two people inside Yeltsin,” recalled his loyal aide Lev Sukhanov. “The first Yeltsin was a party leader, accustomed to power and privilege, and devastated when it was all taken away. The second Yeltsin was a rebel, who rejected the rules of the game imposed by the system. These two Yeltsins fought each other.”




The man who was to become the first freely elected leader in Russia’s thousand-year history was born on February 1, 1931, in the squalid village of Butko, on the eastern side of the Ural Mountains, which divide Europe from Asia. The Yeltsin family owned a windmill, a threshing machine, five horses, and four cows. This was enough to qualify as kulaks, or rich peasants, by the standards of Stalin’s collectivization campaign. Boris’s mother, religiously devout, like most Russian peasants, made sure that he was christened soon after birth. In this and some other respects Yeltsin’s childhood resembles that of Mikhail Gorbachev, his almost exact contemporary and future political nemesis. The main difference is that Yeltsin was a product of the great Russian heartland, while Gorbachev was born on the southern fringes of the country, where there was no tradition of serfdom.

Like the Gorbachevs, the Yeltsin family suffered as a result of the murderous collectivization drive. When Boris was three years old, his father and uncle were accused of being kulaks and “wreckers” and given three-year terms in a labor camp. This blemish on the family record was something the Yeltsins, like the Gorbachevs, blanked out of their lives. Although Yeltsin had vivid memories of his father’s being dragged away in the middle of the night, he never mentioned the incident publicly until long after the collapse of communism.




In 1955, the year Gorbachev graduated from the law school of Moscow State University, Yeltsin completed his studies in the construction faculty of the Urals Polytechnic in Sverdlovsk, formerly Ekaterinburg. A bastion of the military-industrial complex, Sverdlovsk was even more tightly sealed off from the outside world than other Soviet cities. The city was entirely off-limits to foreigners until 1991. For an ambitious young man like Yeltsin, there was no alternative to “Soviet reality.” He devoted his energy to making the system work.

Yeltsin’s former associates in the city describe him as a tough and unforgiving taskmaster. Appointed regional party secretary in 1976, the former builder ran the city like a giant construction site, setting firm deadlines and personally inspecting the work of his subordinates. If a project was not completed on time, he made sure that someone was punished. In one celebrated incident he announced he would travel along a projected 220-mile highway from Sverdlovsk to the northern town of Serov in exactly a year. Officials from every village and town along the route were told to accompany him. Those who failed to complete their allotted sections on time were warned that they would be thrown off the bus and made to walk.

In his autobiography, Against the Grain, Yeltsin recalls the “intoxicating sense of power” enjoyed by regional party bosses who ran their fiefdoms like little tsars. “Whether I was chairing a meeting, running my office, or delivering a report, everything that one did was expressed in terms of pressure, threats, and coercion. At the time, these methods did produce some results, especially if the boss in question was sufficiently strong-willed.”




Yeltsin’s ability to get things done earned him considerable popularity in Sverdlovsk. It also impressed his superiors in Moscow, notably the party secretary in charge of cadres, the conservative Yegor Ligachev. At Ligachev’s recommendation Yeltsin was transferred to the Soviet capital in April 1985, a month and a half after Gorbachev became general secretary. By the end of the year Yeltsin had been promoted to the key post of secretary of the Moscow party committee.

As Moscow party chief Yeltsin quickly displayed a talent for popular, crowd-pleasing gestures. He fired dozens of bureaucrats, encouraged people to air their grievances, and began to reorganize the notoriously corrupt retail trade. To demonstrate his concern for ordinary Muscovites, he rode the crowded, ramshackle buses that brought workers in from their dreary suburbs and toured the half-empty grocery stores where housewives scavenged for food. A television crew often accompanied him on these occasions, provoking complaints from Politburo colleagues that he was seeking “cheap popularity.” Yeltsin’s real crime was that he was breaking the unwritten code of conduct for Soviet leaders. By ostentatiously giving up his Zil limousine, even for a few hours, he was undermining the system of nomenklatura privileges. A Soviet leader’s authority derived from his position in the bureaucracy, rather than his standing with the people. By daring to distinguish himself from his fellow apparatchiks, Yeltsin was destroying the party’s monolithic facade.

In seeking to establish his own direct link with the narod, Yeltsin was following a trail blazed by Gorbachev. What he failed, or refused, to understand was that they were playing by different sets of rules. As the supreme leader of the state a general secretary was permitted to have his own unique personality. His underlings were expected to remain faceless members of the collective. Besides, there was a hesitant, conditional quality about Gorbachev’s relationship with the masses. For Gorbachev, glasnost was a means to an end, a way of bringing pressure on the party from outside. The party remained the ultimate source of his power. Yeltsin, by contrast, was coming dangerously close to rejecting party discipline altogether.

In the early stage of perestroika, Yeltsin and Gorbachev had been natural allies. When his reform plans ran into a brick wall, Gorbachev used the human battering ram from Siberia to clear a way forward. It was important that the Politburo have a radical wing, to balance the naturally conservative majority. That way the general secretary could present himself as a man of compromise. As Yeltsin notes in his memoirs, “If Gorbachev didn’t have a Yeltsin, he would have to invent one…. In this real-life production, the parts have been well cast, as in a well-directed play. There is the conservative Ligachev, who plays the villain; there is Yeltsin, the bully-boy, the madcap radical; and the wise, omniscient hero is Gorbachev himself. That, evidently, is how he sees it.”




The Moscow experience had radicalized Yeltsin. He understood that the old command-and-administer methods would no longer work. He was frustrated that he was no longer his own master, as he had been in Sverdlovsk. Instead of helping him, his Politburo colleagues seemed intent on undermining his authority. He was particularly upset with his old patron Ligachev, who had come to personify the party machine. As the second-ranking figure in the leadership Ligachev chaired meetings of the all-powerful Secretariat, which supervised the work of lower party bodies. Yeltsin complained that the Secretariat was constantly interfering in Moscow’s affairs. For his part, Ligachev dismissed Yeltsin as a demagogue, who talked a lot and did very little.

The stage was set for one of the most dramatic showdowns of the Gorbachev era.




A SENSE OF EXCITEMENT surged through the wood-paneled conference hall as Gorbachev strode to the podium at precisely 10:00 a.m. There was a single item on the agenda of the Central Committee: the speech on Soviet history that the general secretary intended to deliver to mark the seventieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution on November 7. In a democracy the subject matter would have sounded arcane. In a crumbling dictatorship, such as the Soviet Union, it was electrifying, because it went to the heart of the way the country had been ruled and the kind of society it aspired to become. In a totalitarian state, writes George Orwell in his novel 1984, “He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.”

The conference hall—the same room where Gorbachev had been elected general secretary two and a half years earlier—was packed. Sitting in front of the gensek were the cream of the Soviet nomenklatura: party secretaries; generals; ministers; leading cultural figures; industrialists. A thick autumn fog had closed the city’s airports, and several dozen Central Committee members from distant parts of the country had been unable to reach Moscow in time for the plenum. Their places were taken by the commanders of military districts and regional party bosses. Like a pope delivering an encyclical, the general secretary was promulgating a new party line. When the conclave was over, the cardinals of the Communist Church would go forth and spread the Word.

The message that Gorbachev wanted to convey on this occasion was that the party had erred and strayed from the one true faith. Stalin was bad, but Lenin was good. Salvation lay at hand if the party could cleanse itself of the Stalinist “filth” and return to its Leninist roots. Communism not only could but must be reformed.

After the obligatory preamble, hailing the “colossal, grandiose achievements” of the revolution, Gorbachev set about demolishing the reputation of the man who had led the Soviet state for twenty-nine of its seventy years. He poured scorn on the notion that Stalin was somehow unaware of the mass repressions committed by his underlings. Stalin’s personal involvement, he told Central Committee members, was fully documented and “unforgivable.” To illustrate his point, he gave some specific figures. Only one member of the 1924 Politburo—Stalin himself—survived the great purges. Other victims of the terror included 60 percent of the delegates to the 1934 congress, 70 percent of the Central Committee that they elected, “thousands of Red commanders who constituted the flower of the army on the eve of Hitler’s aggression,” and “many thousands of honest party and nonparty people.”


 (This was a grotesque underestimate. The total number of Stalin’s victims, including those who died as a result of artificially induced famines and the forced resettlement of entire nations, which Gorbachev did not mention, is generally believed to lie in the range of thirty to forty million.)

By the standards of the time, it was a bold speech. Getting the Politburo to agree to the paragraph about Stalin’s “crimes” had been a major breakthrough, requiring weeks of argument. As usual, however, it took the general secretary far too long to make his point. As he droned on—for an hour, for two hours, for four hours—his attacks on the enemies of perestroika got lost in a general ideological fog. Perhaps this was his intention. In order to destroy the totalitarian monster, he had to proceed by stealth. If his Communist party followers had understood where he was leading them, they would certainly have rebelled a great deal sooner than they eventually did. A master of Kremlin intrigue, Gorbachev had perfected the art of camouflaging a major policy shift behind a rhetorical smoke screen. He would casually throw out the seed of a new idea and then sit back and watch it grow, adjusting his moral judgments to the political needs of the moment.

As far as Yeltsin was concerned, Gorbachev’s talent for vacillation and compromise was also his greatest failing. He was sick of the Byzantine maneuverings, the interminable ideological discussions, the constant sabotage of the apparatchiks. The fawning atmosphere surrounding the general secretary was another source of irritation. Yeltsin never forgot the fact that just a few years previously Gorbachev was running a relatively unimportant agricultural region, whereas he, Yeltsin, had been responsible for one of the most important industrial fiefdoms in the country.


 While he admired Gorbachev’s courage for launching perestroika, at a time when he could have sat still and enjoyed the perquisites of power, Yeltsin was disillusioned by the lack of concrete results.

Yeltsin had come to the Central Committee plenum with a scrap of paper listing his grievances. He knew that the action he was about to take was politically suicidal, at least in traditional Communist Party terms. At the back of his mind there may have been a vague sense that the ground rules of Soviet politics were changing and he could carve out a new role for himself. Popular dissatisfaction with growing economic difficulties—hardships that many people associated with perestroika—was becoming a factor that the leadership could no longer ignore. But his main motivation was almost certainly psychological. It was the same inner voice that had urged him to get up at his school graduation ceremony, at the age of eleven, and denounce the teacher for being a sadist. The voice told him to screw his courage to the sticking point, say what was on his mind, and damn the consequences.


 When Gorbachev finished speaking, he raised his hand.

Ligachev was in the chair. At first he did not see his political enemy, even though he was sitting in the front row with other candidate members of the Politburo. The second secretary was about to bring the plenum to its customary close, a unanimous endorsement of everything the general secretary had said, when Gorbachev interrupted him.

“Comrade Yeltsin has some kind of statement to make.”

Yeltsin’s speech was disjointed. A smoother politician would have focused his attacks on one or two vulnerable targets. But Yeltsin scattered his criticism in all directions, taking on the entire political establishment. He began by denouncing Ligachev and the powerful Central Committee Secretariat for “an intolerable style of work” that relied on “bullying reprimands” and constant “dressings down.” He then moved on to the failures of perestroika. The people were disillusioned by two or three years of empty promises, and their faith had “begun to ebb.” The party’s authority was falling. He concluded with a direct assault on Gorbachev’s style of leadership. He claimed to detect the beginnings of a new “personality cult” in the excessive adulation of certain Politburo members toward the general secretary. If left unchecked, such a tendency could become very dangerous. He was implying, in effect, that the father of glasnost could become another Stalin. Gorbachev’s face flushed with rage at this observation.




There was a long pause as the burly Siberian collected his thoughts and summoned up his courage to say one last thing: “I am clearly out of place as a member of the Politburo. For various reasons. There is the question of my experience, and other factors too, including the lack of support from some quarters, particularly Comrade Ligachev. That has led me to ask you to release me from the duties of a candidate member of the Politburo.”




“Having said all that, I sat down,” Yeltsin recalled later. “My heart was pounding, and seemed ready to burst out of my ribcage. I knew what would happen next. I would be slaughtered, in an organized, methodical manner, and the job would be done almost with pleasure and enjoyment.”




Events developed exactly as Yeltsin had foreseen. Gorbachev was furious that the ritual display of unity on a festive occasion had been shattered. While on holiday, he had received a letter from Yeltsin outlining his grievances and threatening to resign. But he thought he had persuaded his protégé to postpone the showdown until after the anniversary celebrations.


 His own political maneuvering room had been drastically reduced. He now had no alternative but to sit back and watch the conservatives tear the most radical member of the Politburo to bits.

First to speak was Ligachev, the darling of the apparatchiks, who accused Yeltsin of “the purest form of slander.” By daring to suggest that the public was losing confidence in perestroika, Yeltsin had “raised doubts about our entire policy.” Other speakers accused the Moscow party boss of being a “quitter,” a “wrecker of party unity,” a “demagogue,” a “coward,” a “nihilist.” In all, twenty-five members of the Central Committee took the floor in the debate. Only one had a remotely kind word to say for Yeltsin. That was Georgi Arbatov, the Kremlin’s resident Americanologist, who praised the heretic for his “courage,” while joining the others in deploring the rift in party unity.

===


NUMEROUS FOREIGN DIGNITARIES HAD been invited for the seventieth anniversary celebrations, and the show had to go on. Yeltsin appeared on the top of the Lenin Mausoleum with the rest of the leadership for the big military parade on November 7. But he was already feeling the burden of social ostracism. As soon as the celebrations were over, he was thrown to the wolves.

Yeltsin was taken to the hospital on November 9. According to his own account, he was suffering from nervous tension, severe chest pains, and excruciating headaches. Gorbachev later accused him of staging a fake suicide by slashing himself across the rib cage with a pair of office scissors. “I was already aware of Yeltsin’s propensity for invention,” the Soviet leader wrote later.




Three days later Gorbachev summoned Yeltsin to a plenary session of the Moscow party committee. In his memoirs Yeltsin describes how he was pumped full of drugs and hauled before his accusers. “I could not understand such cruelty,” he wrote later. “My head was spinning, my legs were crumpling under me, I could hardly speak because my tongue wouldn’t obey…. Scarcely able to shuffle my feet, I was almost like a robot.”




The Moscow plenum resembled a Stalinist show trial. Ligachev with a smile of triumph on his face sat up on the podium beside Gorbachev. There was little pretense of giving Yeltsin a fair hearing. Instead his erstwhile colleagues and subordinates lined up to denounce him in the harshest possible way. Few of them knew what Yeltsin had actually said at the Central Committee meeting—the proceedings were not published until two years later—but they attacked him anyway. Working for Boris Nikolayevich was “torture,” said one district secretary. Another accused him of being the only person in Russia who did not “love Moscow or Muscovites.” A third official criticized his “cruelty.” A fourth complained that his regular personnel changes had become a “bad joke.” After his tormentors had had their say, Yeltsin did what the accused nearly always did on such occasions. He meekly confessed his “guilt” before the party and before “Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, whose prestige in our organization, in our country, and in the whole world is so high.”




When it was all over, Yeltsin collapsed across the table. As he was leaving the room, Gorbachev saw him out of the corner of his eye and turned back. He grabbed Yeltsin by the elbow and led him back to his old office. They sat there, talking for a while, before an ambulance came to collect Yeltsin and take him back to the hospital. A few days later Yeltsin got a phone call from Gorbachev, offering him a job as deputy head of the state building conglomerate, Gosstroi. It was a ministerial-level position, but outside the charmed circle of Politburo members and Communist Party secretaries. Yeltsin accepted immediately.

“I will never allow you back into big-time politics,” the general secretary added.




Rarely have more fateful words ever been spoken by a Russian leader.




MOSCOW

March 14, 1988


THE OFFICIAL BLACK CARS deposited the men responsible for molding Soviet public opinion outside an imposing portico on Staraya Ploshchad (Old Square) emblazoned with the words “Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.” Uniformed KGB guards snapped to attention as the editors in chief entered the building, flashing the little red booklets that identified them as members of the nomenklatura. The visitors checked their coats into the ground floor cloakroom and then took the elevator to the fifth floor, where the party’s ideology secretary had his office.

If the Kremlin was the symbolic heart of the Soviet Union, the place where the Politburo held its regular Thursday meetings and foreign leaders were received, Old Square was the political nerve center. For decades the virtually unchecked authority of the totalitarian state had been concentrated in a labyrinth of buildings between the Lubyanka Prison and the Kremlin. Everything of significance that happened in the Soviet Union—from the approval of five-year plans to the appointment of a factory director in faraway Siberia—was grist to its bureaucratic machinery. Central Committee departments issued binding instructions to ministers and newspaper editors, army officers and Russian Orthodox bishops, factory managers and ambassadors. A special communications system, nicknamed the vertushka, linked the Central Committee with every important decision maker in the country.

Occupying a city block, the Central Committee was a luxuriously appointed bureaucratic machine. No expense was spared to ensure that everything was in perfect running order, in stark contrast with the rest of Moscow, with its crumbling facades and potholed streets. Every office was repainted once a year. A special furniture factory produced the desks, cupboards, lecterns, and long conference tables that adorned the offices of the apparatchiks. An entire section of the Ministry of Health—the Fourth Directorate—looked after the health of Soviet leaders. The Central Committee’s own farm supplied ecologically uncontaminated food for the staff restaurants, thus ensuring that the “servants of the people” did not have to eat the same poisoned food products as the people they served. When a senior official needed a new suit or a pair of shoes, he was outfitted by a special Central Committee tailor or shoemaker. Lower-level employees had access to a special section of the Gum department store on Red Square.

In the Communist utopia created by the apparatchiks for their own benefit, every rung on the bureaucratic ladder had its own special privileges and rewards. Dachas, medals, clothing allowances, and even cemetery lots all were distributed according to a Byzantine table of ranks. Instructors had the right to a new fur hat once every two years, while secretaries and drivers were limited to one every three years. A visitor could tell where power lay in the Central Committee by following the carpet runner in the hallway. It glided past the offices of ordinary apparatchiks but made right-angle detours into the suites of the top leaders. Another telltale sign was the portraits of the Communist deities. When a bureaucrat reached the rank of deputy head of department, he was automatically allocated a portrait of Marx instead of the standard portrait of Lenin. Heads of department had large portraits of both Marx and Lenin on their walls. Then there was the question of how tea was served. A lower-ranking official was served tea on a plain tray. Once he reached the rank of chief of sector, the tray suddenly sprouted a napkin. In apparatchik-speak, the promotion was referred to as “receiving the napkin.”

The fifth floor of the old Central Committee building, where the editors in chief alighted from the elevator, was the inner sanctum of the Communist cathedral. The carpet runners were thicker here than on other floors of the building, the brass lamps in the corridors had a special sheen that came from daily polishing, and the walnut-paneled offices were large enough to accommodate entire committees. Voices were kept to a respectful hush. This was the only place in the building where an official was permitted to sit directly beneath the portrait of Lenin. (Elsewhere the portrait was placed a little to one side.) It was as if the founder of the Soviet state were speaking to future generations through the occupants of these offices. Everything was done to bolster the impression that they were his spiritual heirs.

Apart from the chief ideologist, only two other people had offices on the fifth floor: the secretary in charge of the Soviet economy and the gensek himself. The ideology secretary’s office was in a front corner of the building, with a fine view of KGB headquarters and the towering statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police. For more than a quarter of a century the “gray cardinal” of Kremlin politics, Mikhail Suslov, had held court in this office, defending the purity of Marxist-Leninist dogma. Suslov, a stern figure of unbending rectitude, with the manner of a dried-up professor, had struck fear into an entire generation of Soviet and foreign Communists with his withering denunciations of anyone who dared think differently. Suslov was to ideology what Gromyko was to foreign policy: Comrade Nyet. As far as he was concerned, all change was bad, almost by definition. When Suslov finally died, in 1982, Office No. 2 was inhabited in turn by Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, and Mikhail Gorbachev. The latest occupant of the office was Yegor Ligachev.

Together with many senior apparatchiks, Ligachev had unpleasant memories of Office No. 2. He himself had been the target of some of Suslov’s tirades.


 In many ways, however, the former party secretary from Tomsk was a worthy successor to the “gray cardinal.” He was energetic, incorruptible, and ideologically blinkered. His entire adult life had been spent in the service of the party. Like Gorbachev and Yeltsin, Ligachev had direct experience of the Stalinist terror. His father-in-law, a Red Army general, had been arrested in 1936 on the absurd charge of being an “Anglo-Japanese-German spy” and executed at the end of a ten-minute trial. As a Communist youth leader in 1949 Ligachev himself had come under suspicion of “Trotskyism” and had been lucky to escape arrest.


 But his faith in socialism had never wavered. His subordinates were sick of hearing him talk about his seventeen years in Siberia—that “severe but wonderful land”—as the happiest and most satisfying period of his life. Ligachev was a short, gruff man, with the face of a pugilist, who had an imperious manner and a voice that brimmed with moral certainty. When he opened his mouth, it was as if he were speaking for the entire Central Committee.

In the early days of perestroika, Ligachev and Gorbachev had seen eye to eye. Dismayed by the stagnation of the Brezhnev era, they shared a common determination to breathe new life into socialism. Ligachev was happy to serve as Gorbachev’s hatchet man, purging the party of incompetent and corrupt officials and whipping its regional organizations into line. If glasnost meant diagnosing the defects of the planned economy and putting them right, he was all for it. As time went on, however, he became increasingly alarmed over the direction that glasnost was taking and the party’s inability to control events. He later said that he began having serious doubts about the political course being followed by Gorbachev from late 1987 onward. “At some point this man became something else. He underwent a political rebirth. As our economic difficulties mounted, he began to look for solutions that led to the destruction of everything we believed in.”




Ligachev had a puritan’s distaste for such undesirable social phenomena as pornography and rock concerts. But what really enraged him was what he saw as the increasingly revisionist and negative attitude toward Soviet history. In his view, giving editors the green light to denounce Stalin’s “crimes” had opened the floodgates to a general “blackening” of everything the party had accomplished since 1917.

As ideology secretary Ligachev had done his best to prevent glasnost from getting out of hand. He had hit the roof in September 1987, when the weekly Moscow News dared publish an obituary of the émigré Russian writer Viktor Nekrasov, a nonperson as far as Kremlin propagandists were concerned. But Ligachev was finding his job increasingly difficult. Holding back the rising tide of anti-Sovietism was like trying to plug a leaking dike. He ran frantically from one gap in the Soviet Union’s ideological defense system to another, yelling at newspaper editors and giving speeches bemoaning the loss of traditional Communist values, but the waters kept on rising. The ideological dam had been breached in dozens of places. Unless dramatic action was taken, there was a serious danger that it would be swept away altogether.

Ligachev’s problem was that the traditional methods—a discreet telephone call here, a party reprimand there—no longer worked as effectively as they had. Once-servile mass media organs, such as Moscow News and Ogonyok, had managed to slip out of his grasp. New television programs, such as Vzglyad (Glance), aimed at the youth audience, were constantly testing the ideological limits, running items about Afghan war veterans or the spread of AIDS or hard-currency prostitutes. In the Baltic states censorship regulations were getting particularly lax. At the beginning of March a Russian-language journal in Latvia had begun publishing Orwell’s Animal Farm, the classic denunciation of totalitarianism.

The party’s monopoly over the dissemination of information was also being undermined by the technological revolution. Up until very recently every photocopier in the country had been kept under lock and key. Such tight control was no longer feasible if the Soviet Union wanted to compete in the modern world. Preventing the politically unreliable from getting their hands on the latest generation of information technology-such as VCRs, computers, laser printers, satellite dishes, and fax machines—was equally daunting.

The time had come to mount a general counteroffensive. Like a commander in chief briefing his generals, the ideology secretary intended to outline his plan of attack at his meeting with the editors in chief.




LIGACHEV’S PROBLEMS WERE COMPOUNDED by the fact that two floors below, another Politburo member was intent on taking Soviet society in an altogether different direction. An owlish figure with bushy eyebrows and a fondness for three-piece suits, Aleksandr Yakovlev was the most erudite member of the leadership, and also the most radical. By temperament and political conviction, he and Ligachev were polar opposites. Ligachev was overbearing and insensitive to others. Yakovlev was introspective and easily offended. Ligachev wanted to maintain a tight grip over what Soviet citizens should be permitted to read and say. Yakovlev favored shining the torch of glasnost on previously taboo subjects, including the holy of holies, Lenin himself. If Ligachev was the hero of the apparatchiks, Yakovlev was the darling of the intellectuals.

At sixty-four, Yakovlev was nearing the end of an epic intellectual journey. It had taken him from a tiny village on the banks of the Volga River, in the historic heart of Russia, to the heart of Soviet power; from a once-ardent faith in the “shining” socialist future to a conviction that Soviet-style communism was doomed. Back in 1985 he had believed, along with Gorbachev, that the system could be reformed. The desperate rearguard action put up by his fellow apparatchiks during the first two years of perestroika had destroyed his remaining illusions. By his own account, the turning point came in January 1987, when he and Gorbachev had come up with a proposal for competitive elections to party posts. The intention had been to introduce a degree of democracy within the party and unleash the latent energy of the Soviet elite, but the result had been a storm of protests from the nomenklatura.

“That is when it became clear to me that the system could not be reformed It had to be broken,” said Yakovlev in 1993. “At first I thought that we could achieve what we wanted to achieve by eliminating the stupidities associated with the Brezhnev version of socialism and allowing people to display some initiative. But it turned out that the system would not permit this. The system is based on fear and the lack of individual responsibility. Any attempt by an individual to use his initiative was bound to shake the system to its foundations.”




Yakovlev’s ideological conversion had been long and tortuous, and it involved the painful rethinking of many deeply held beliefs. The descendant of Yaroslavl serfs, he was impressed by the way in which a backward, rural country managed to transform itself into a modern industrial state, vanquishing illiteracy in the process. His father, Nikolai, had fought with the Reds in the civil war and, like Gorbachev’s grandfather, became the first chairman of the local collective farm. Unlike Gorbachev, however, Yakovlev had little direct experience of the terror. Nikolai Yakovlev managed to avoid arrest through the simple stratagem of leaving the village for several days at a time when the secret police were rounding up “enemies of the people.” Like everybody else in the Soviet Union, the NKVD had a plan to fulfill. After grabbing the required quota of “enemies” from the Yaroslavl region, it moved on. When he learned that the coast was clear, Yakovlev’s father returned home.




At the age of seventeen Yakovlev went idealistically to war, shouting, “For Stalin! For the motherland!” with his friends as they charged German lines. As a lieutenant in the marines he saw a lot of gruesome action. Neither side bothered with prisoners. Many of his friends were killed. He would have been killed himself had it not been for the tradition in the Soviet Marines of never leaving a wounded soldier on the battlefield. When he was riddled by Nazi machine-gun fire in a swamp outside Leningrad, his friends dragged him to safety. Four of them sacrificed their lives in the process, but Yakovlev was saved. He returned home a permanent cripple. Of his school year, only three students out of every one hundred survived the war.

Yakovlev’s first faint doubts about Stalin occurred after the war, when he saw how the regime treated Soviet prisoners coming home from Germany. Instead of being greeted as heroes and helped to begin a new life, the POWs were packed off to prison camps again—Soviet camps this time—for fear that they might be ideologically contaminated. “There was no way I could accept this. It was a terrible shame,” said Yakovlev later. His doubts were strengthened in 1956, when he sat in the balcony of a Kremlin meeting hall as Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s crimes in his celebrated “secret speech.” The accounts of purges, deportations, and mass atrocities “turned me inside out,” Yakovlev recollected. “No one looked at anyone else. There was only silence as Khrushchev revealed fact after fact, each one worse than the last.”




Fate decreed that Yakovlev would witness another epoch-making event, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. By that time he had risen to become acting head of the propaganda department of the Central Committee. He arrived in Prague a day after the Red Army acted to crush Dubĉek’s experiment in socialism with a human face as the ideological watchdog for a group of Soviet journalists. It quickly became clear to Yakovlev that the official explanation for the invasion—a “Jewish-American conspiracy” to overthrow socialism in Czechoslovakia—was a lie. During his five-day visit he saw Czechoslovak citizens burn the Soviet flag and attack Soviet tanks with Molotov cocktails. He heard them chanting, “Fascists, fascists,” at the army that had supposedly come to provide “fraternal assistance.” He saw Dubĉek—reviled by Yakovlev’s fellow propagandists as a traitor to communism—being greeted as a national hero on his return from captivity in Moscow. “My visit to Czechoslovakia left a lasting impression on me,” he told me. “It was a sign that the system was doomed.”




Like many of his colleagues, Yakovlev took care to conceal his personal views. Without an ability to lead a double life, he would not have survived in the bureaucracy, much less prospered. He claims that he gave Brezhnev an accurate account of the “real state of affairs” in Czechoslovakia. But his report must have been couched in extremely diplomatic terms since he was given a state award for his work in Prague and remained in his propaganda job for several more years. It was only after the collapse of communism and his retirement from high office that he talked about his Czechoslovak experiences in public.

The other great intellectual influence on Yakovlev was foreign travel. He was the only Politburo member with detailed personal knowledge of life in Western countries. As a rising apparatchik he had spent a year at Columbia University in 1958, in the first Soviet-American student exchange. Although he was impressed by American hospitality and technological achievements, he reacted negatively to moralizing lectures from his hosts about the inherent superiority of capitalism. Decades later he still smoldered at the memory of the Manhattan store clerk who asked him to remove his hat to check if it really was true that Communists had horns. He vented his resentment in a series of stridently anti-American tracts, with such titles as The Ideology of the American Empire, The U.S.A.—from Great to Sick, and On the Edge of an Abyss.

After getting into a literary brawl with Russian nationalists in 1972, Yakovlev was sent into gilded exile as ambassador in Canada. He remained there for ten years, observing the workings of a Western democracy from up close and the tragicomic goings-on of the late Brezhnev era from afar. The Canadian experience gave Yakovlev the ability to view the problems of his own country with a degree of intellectual detachment. It also provided a relaxed setting for a remarkable series of conversations with Gorbachev in May 1983, during which the two men explored many of the ideas that ultimately led to perestroika. Gorbachev, then the youngest member of the Politburo with responsibility for agricultural affairs, was making his international debut with a ten-day visit to Canada. Yakovlev had the job of showing him around.

Yakovlev had met Gorbachev on several occasions in the early seventies but did not know him well. However, they had a very close friend in common, a man called Mark Mikhailov, who was from Stavropol, Gorbachev’s hometown, and had worked for Yakovlev in the Central Committee. Thanks to this mutual friend, they knew that they could be frank with each other. The informal nature of Gorbachev’s trip also helped. Hopping around Canada in an old prop-driven Convair plane, they discovered that they had remarkably similar views. At one stop their Canadian host failed to show up, and they had a long two-hour walk through the cornfields until they were caught in the rain. “I took advantage of the circumstances and told him what I really thought. He did the same,” said Yakovlev.


 Far from KGB eavesdroppers and their doddering Kremlin colleagues, they talked about the “stupidities” of Soviet foreign policy and the need for a radical change of direction at home.

Gorbachev brought Yakovlev back from his Canadian exile and helped him become director of a prestigious Moscow think tank, the Institute for World Economy and International Relations. After he became general secretary, he promoted Yakovlev to the Politburo and made him his closest confidant. Yakovlev was Gorbachev’s ideas man, the intellectual powerhouse behind perestroika.

Although Yakovlev and Ligachev were political opposites, in one respect they were very similar. They both were skilled apparatchiks, accustomed to wielding power behind the scenes. On the basis of long experience, they had an intuitive feel for the backstage intrigues of the Central Committee bureaucracy. Although Yakovlev had a following among Moscow intellectuals, he lacked the populist instincts of a man like Yeltsin. Yakovlev believed that the real fight was in the Politburo, not on the streets, and that Yeltsin was harming the cause through his emotional, erratic behavior.

The supreme operating rule of big-time Kremlin politics was the principle of plausible deniability. Instructions were given verbally, often by telephone, in such a way that they could not be traced back to their source. Sometimes they consisted of little more than a wink and a nod. Like Ligachev, Yakovlev exerted his influence through a network of well-placed allies. He acted as the political patron of the self-proclaimed “kamikazes of glasnost,” the radical newspaper editors who were constantly probing the ideological limits. They took responsibility for what appeared in their newspapers, but it was understood that he would protect them in a crisis.

A typical example of Yakovlev’s methods came in October 1986 with the release of the anti-Stalinist film Repentance, one of the major breakthroughs of glasnost. A Felliniesque allegory set in Stalin’s native Georgia, Repentance dealt with some of the most explosive issues of Soviet history as well as contemporary politics. Yakovlev knew that it would be difficult to get such a work approved by Politburo conservatives. In order to skirt around this obstacle, he reached a confidential understanding with the director of the film, Tengiz Abuladze. Repentance would not be officially released. Instead it would be shown by private invitation to select audiences. The number of screenings grew and grew until virtually the whole country had seen the film. Repentance became a nationwide sensation.

Once censorship was relaxed, Soviet journalists and filmmakers needed little encouragement from above to expose the dark secrets of the past. Nevertheless, conservatives like Ligachev soon began to view Yakovlev as the evil puppeteer, pulling the strings of his glasnost puppets. They blamed him for all their setbacks. In his memoirs Ligachev denounces Yakovlev as the éminence grise who distorted the true course of perestroika through his manipulation of the media. Doing battle with such a man was like fighting shadows. “We had no idea what a powerful and dangerous weapon the media could be in [conditions of] glasnost and pluralism. Aleksandr Yakovlev, who had spent many years in the West, naturally had a much better understanding of this than other members of the Politburo. From the very beginning he established a personal control over the right radical press.”




If socialism was to be saved, Ligachev knew that he had to fight back.




LIKE YAKOVLEV, LIGACHEV HAD his network of like-minded editors, who regarded him as their political patron. In March 1987 one of these editors, Valentin Chikin, launched a journalistic broadside against glasnost in his newspaper, Sovietskaya Rossiya. It came in the form of a full-page article, headlined I CANNOT BETRAY MY PRINCIPLES, signed by an obscure Leningrad chemistry teacher named Nina Andreyeva. The headline was borrowed from a recent Gorbachev speech, but the article itself was the antithesis of practically everything the general secretary stood for. Andreyeva defended Stalin, called for a “class struggle both at home and abroad,” and denounced the informal political groups that were springing up around the country. It was, Gorbachev said later, a direct assault “against perestroika.”




Exactly who was behind Andreyeva’s tract later became a matter of great controversy. The radicals immediately suspected that Chikin was acting with Ligachev’s protection and encouragement. The two men were certainly in close contact during this period. Ligachev repeatedly denied that he had anything to do with the article before publication, and the case against him has never been proved. Given the way such matters were handled, it is unlikely that a “smoking gun” will ever be found. In a sense it is irrelevant because the real issue with the Nina Andreyeva article was what happened after publication.

Had “I Cannot Betray My Principles” been the musings of a lone chemistry teacher, no one would have raised an eyebrow. By 1988 glasnost was well advanced, and opinions similar to Andreyeva’s appeared in the press every day. What attracted attention, however, was their exceptionally prominent display in a leading party newspaper. The three-column photo spread of the author, wearing a Bolshevik-style leather jacket, surrounded by adoring students, was a signal to readers that her views had official approval. For the conservatives it was a call to arms.

The attempt to turn “I Cannot Betray My Principles” into the new party line began the day after publication, on the fifth floor of the Central Committee. Ligachev had deliberately avoided inviting the editors of the two most radical periodicals, Ogonyok and Moscow News, to the meeting, which took place in the Politburo conference room, around the corner from his office. After a few remarks about propaganda support for the spring sowing campaign and the development of livestock breeding, the ideology secretary turned to the subject that was uppermost in his mind.

“Have you read the article by Nina Andreyeva?” he asked the editors.

“Yes, we’ve read it,” replied Ivan Laptev, the editor in chief of Izvestia. The official organ of the Soviet Parliament, Izvestia had become a strong supporter of glasnost, which Laptev feared could be endangered if Ligachev got his way.

“It’s an excellent article, a wonderful example of party political writing. I would ask you, comrade editors, to be guided by the ideas of this article in your work,” enthused Ligachev in his stentorian voice. He then turned to the head of the Tass news agency, regarded by thousands of provincial newspapers as the official voice of the Kremlin.

“Tass should distribute this article at once.”




His instructions were immediately carried out. Dozens of provincial newspapers republished the article. Party organizations across the country held special meetings to study it. Telegrams from “honest workers,” supporting Andreyeva’s views, flooded into the Central Committee. One morning the Communist Party newspaper Pravda even printed Ligachev’s name ahead of his Politburo colleagues, elevating him to almost equal status with Gorbachev.


 The liberal intelligentsia was in despair. Without a signal from the top, no one dared respond to Andreyeva and Sovietskaya Rossiya. People remembered the Brezhnev period of stagnation, when Khrushchev’s thaw had turned back into a freeze, with little warning. The fate of perestroika seemed to lie in the balance.

Ligachev had timed his counteroffensive well. When he met the editors, Gorbachev had just left Moscow on an official visit to Yugoslavia. Yakovlev had flown off to Outer Mongolia, eight time zones away. It took three weeks for them to formulate a response.




THE KREMLIN

March 23, 1988


THE POLITBURO DEBATE over the Nina Andreyeva affair erupted unexpectedly. Gorbachev finally got around to reading the article on his return from Yugoslavia, on Saturday, March 19. He spent the weekend pondering its significance. The general secretary was uncertain how to react. On the one hand, he had no desire for a showdown with Ligachev, the party’s deputy leader. On the other, if this was a deliberate assault on perestroika, as his radical advisers insisted, there would have to be some kind of reply.

The Politburo was not due to meet until the following Thursday, for its regular weekly meeting. On Wednesday, however, fate intervened. Several thousand collective farmers from all over the Soviet Union had descended on the Kremlin for their first congress in more than twenty years. As was customary on such occasions, Gorbachev opened the meeting with a two-hour speech. Behind him, on the stage of the Palace of Congresses, a vast, plushly decorated auditorium built to house big propaganda events by day and performances of Swan Lake by night, were most of his Politburo colleagues. When the gensek finally got through exhorting the kolkhozniks to be more efficient and display more initiative, the Politburo members filed backstage to the Presidium Room for tea and sandwiches. Without warning the chitchat turned to Nina Andreyeva.

“Yes,” said Vitaly Vorotnikov, the prime minister of the Russian Federation, emphatically. “There was an article the other day in Sovietskaya Rossiya. A real, politically correct article. It was a model for our ideological work.”




Ligachev jumped into the conversation, with more lavish praise of Andreyeva. “It’s good that the press is finally showing these…” He left the end of the sentence unspoken, realizing he was in polite company. “Otherwise everything would go to pieces.”

The Politburo patriarch, Andrei Gromyko, supported Ligachev. “I think it was a good article. It will put everything back in its proper place.” His fellow septuagenarian Mikhail Solomentsev, who had helped Ligachev organize the failed antialcohol campaign, added his two kopecks’ worth in favor of Nina Andreyeva.

Gorbachev suddenly realized that he could not let the conversation continue in this fashion. Four full Politburo members, out of a total of thirteen, had just endorsed a political platform that was fundamentally different from his own. Unless he took a clear stand, he could quickly find himself in a minority, supported only by the two hard-core liberals Yakovlev and Shevardnadze. He would then be forced to embrace the views expressed in “I Cannot Betray My Principles” or resign.

“If you consider this article to be a model, then we have to clarify a few things. I have a different view.”

“Well, well,” shot back Vorotnikov, an Andropov protégé and early supporter of Gorbachev, increasingly dismayed by the radical direction that perestroika had taken.

“What do you mean ‘well, well’?”

There was an awkward silence as Gorbachev and Vorotnikov glared at each other, and the other Politburo members glanced uneasily around the room.

“This smells of a schism,” said Gorbachev fiercely, using the Russian word raskol, a Bolshevik term of abuse. “The article was directed against perestroika. I have never objected if someone expresses his personal opinion. Whatever views you want—in the press, in letters. But I’ve been told that there have been attempts to turn this article into a party directive. In some party organizations they are already adopting it as a resolution, like in the old days. The press has been forbidden to utter a word against it.”

At this point Gorbachev decided to gamble everything on the strongest card in his hand, his immense political prestige, both at home and abroad. His Politburo critics may have tapped into a groundswell of Communist Party dissatisfaction with the way perestroika was going, but they were disorganized and leaderless. Ligachev was a divisive, controversial figure. The rules of party discipline, plus ingrained habits of obedience, made it difficult for the conservatives to mount an open challenge to the general secretary. Their aim, at this stage, was not to replace the leader but to make him their spokesman. Gorbachev understood the contradiction in their position and exploited it brilliantly.

“I am not going to fight for my chair. But as long as I am here, as long as I occupy this position, I shall insist on the idea of perestroika,” he declared, hinting that he was prepared to resign. “No, this is not going to succeed. We will discuss this matter in the Politburo.”




THE POLITBURO MEETING LASTED for two days, an unprecedented length of time, even by glasnost standards. It began in the Kremlin on Thursday and continued all day Friday on the fifth floor of Old Square, in the same conference hall where Ligachev had heaped praise on the Andreyeva article, less than a fortnight previously. Much of the debate was taken up by the general secretary’s long monologues. A mixture of waffling visionary and determined politician, Gorbachev had a unique ability to envelop an audience in billowing clouds of rhetoric, exhausting and disorienting everybody with his tortuous logic. The confusion of a good argument seemed to clarify his thinking and serve as a platform for action. He liked to quote Lenin: “The most important thing in any endeavor is to get involved in the fight, and in that way learn what to do next.”


 He could talk himself out of almost any crisis.

On this occasion the role of attack dog was played by Yakovlev, who took the Andreyeva article apart line by line. “This is an antiperestroika manifesto,” he declared bluntly. He was supported by the prime minister, Nikolai Ryzkhov, who made an impassioned defense of perestroika and suggested that Ligachev be relieved of his position as ideology secretary. Ever the unctuous Georgian, Foreign Minister Shevardnadze described what was happening in the Soviet Union as the “major event of the twentieth century.” “The issue here is nothing less than the salvation of socialism,” he enthused. “A primitive approach could compromise our magnificent enterprise.”




Now that the debate had been framed in terms of perestroika—for or against—the outcome was clear. No one wanted to be labeled a “splitter” or “destroyer of party unity.” The remaining Politburo members all hastened to endorse the party line, as laid down by Gorbachev and Yakovlev. The conservatives soothed their consciences by grumbling about the “irresponsible” media. “Of course we are all for glasnost,” remarked Gromyko, eager to make up for his lapse earlier in the week. “But it is intolerable that the Soviet people are presented in the press as a people of slaves, a people of lackeys. The thesis developed by Sovietskaya Rossiya was a reaction to this slander.”

As the debate swirled around the question of who had issued the order to discuss Andreyeva’s article at party meetings, Ligachev maintained a sullen silence. He later said that he found the atmosphere at the Politburo session “oppressive.” It reminded him of a “witch-hunt.” Yakovlev was clearly intent on making him take political responsibility for the affair and ousting him from the leadership. He was ready to defend himself, if necessary.




Gorbachev decided not to press the point. He had won an important victory. He had got the Politburo to agree to issue an authoritative reply to Andreyeva in the pages of Pravda, to be drafted by Yakovlev. By now it was clear that he had the support of the Politburo’s wobbly-kneed majority, who were willing to go along with practically anything their leader said. Wishing to avoid an open break with the conservatives, the general secretary helped Ligachev cover his traces. Like his opponents, he had an ingrained fear of raskol. He thought that little would be gained in having a Politburo composed of like-minded people if it was unable to push its decisions through the generally reactionary apparat, the vast bureaucratic machine that actually ran Russia.




Pravda published its counterblast to “I Cannot Betray My Principles” on April 5, ending three weeks of national uncertainty about the future of perestroika. The unsigned editorial insisted that there were no “taboo subjects” and “no going back” to the policies of the past. A few weeks later Ligachev was relieved of his ideological portfolio and given the thankless job of rescuing Soviet agriculture from its chronic state of crisis.




THE NINA ANDREYEVA AFFAIR was a turning point for both the Soviet Union and Gorbachev. The floodgates of glasnost were opened once and for all. The trickle of revelations about the country’s Stalinist past now became a veritable deluge. There was something new every day: the television premiere of Mikhail Bulgakov’s “anti-Soviet” masterpiece The Heart of a Dog; the publication, by an Estonian newspaper, of the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, demonstrating the collusion between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany; a theater production of Hope Against Hope, Nadezhda Mandelshtam’s epic description of the gulag; the decision by a Moscow court to release Vladimir Nabokov’s erotic novel Lolita. The rewriting of Soviet history became so extensive that Soviet secondary schools were obliged to cancel all history exams, pending the release of new textbooks.

The rebirth of history triggered a sense of political exhilaration that transcended class barriers. The homeland of world socialism became a gigantic “debating society,” in Gorbachev’s phrase.


 Highbrow intellectuals, frightened that they might miss something, spent hours glued to their television sets. Brawny workers thumbed through fat literary journals in search of a long-banned work by Akhmatova or Solzhenitsyn. Former prison camp inmates cast aside decades of caution and told their stories in public for the first time. Archivists for government agencies devoted their spare time to drawing up lists of the “repressed.” A group called Memorial succeeded in gathering tens of thousands of signatures in several weeks to support demands for a center to commemorate Stalin’s victims. Suddenly everybody seemed to have an opinion and was not afraid to voice it.

Gorbachev sensed this national mood and responded to it. By now he saw himself as a man of destiny, chosen by history to accomplish something very special. To a far greater extent than any of his colleagues, he had staked his reputation on the success of perestroika. He was the tsar-liberator, the farsighted ruler who had given the serfs their freedom. At Politburo meetings he occasionally compared himself to the great Lenin, who had launched a revolution through the sheer force of his political will. There was no going back now.

“You have certain goals in which you believe, and you are sure that you are right,” he told his fellow Politburo members. “If this is the case, you have to go on, right to the end. Otherwise what kind of man are you, and why do you occupy this position? You have the country, the whole world, behind you. If you panic at the slightest setback, like some weak fellow, if you cry ‘Help’ and behave like an opportunist who is concerned only with saving his own skin, then all is lost.”




The Andreyeva affair made Gorbachev realize that he could no longer entrust his revolution solely to the party. He was taken aback by the strength of bureaucratic resistance to his ideas. “Now I realize the kind of people I’ve been working with,” he told his chief of staff.


 “You can forget about perestroika with people like that.” He complained that many of his Politburo colleagues lacked the political imagination to grasp the significance of what was happening in the Soviet Union. “It’s as if there’s a ceiling, right here,” he said, waving a hand above his head.


 The political system would have to be opened up to outside forces.

At the end of the two-day Politburo meeting on the Andreyeva case, when everybody was too exhausted to pay much attention, Gorbachev exploded one of his rhetorical bombs. “The people” were demanding changes in the electoral system. Serious consideration would have to be given to how to implement the Leninist slogan “All power to the Soviets,” the representative organs that had, up until now, provided a constitutional fig leaf for Communist dictatorship. The entire relationship between the party and the Soviets would have to be “rethought.”

Stripped of the ideological trappings, what the general secretary was proposing was an end to seven decades of one-party rule.




LABOR CAMP PERM-35

July 8, 1988


MART NIKLUS FELT like the man in the proverbial time machine. An unrepentant Estonian nationalist, he had been dispatched to a “strict regime” labor camp in the Urals in 1980, at a time when the Brezhnev regime was preoccupied with the crises in Poland and Afghanistan. His contact with the outside world had been minimal. He spent his days sewing cords onto electric irons. When he reached the required daily norm of 522 finished electric irons, he was allowed to take a forty-five-minute walk in a thirty-foot-long cage. If he protested, he was thrown into an unheated isolation cell, ten feet long, three feet wide, and six feet high. The nerve roots in his back had become chronically inflamed from sitting in the same position, day after day. Now he was going home.

Like many Estonians, Niklus was a man with a long memory. He remembered how the Red Army had marched into his hometown of Tartu in June 1940, when he was a nine-year-old boy. He remembered how his country had been incorporated into the Soviet Union against its will and how the cream of the Estonian nation had been deported to Siberia. He remembered the postwar purges and the campaign of terror against private farmers. Unlike most of his countrymen, however, he did not keep quiet about what he had seen. At Tartu University he organized groups of students to listen to Western radio stations. He made copies of the text of the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact—unearthed by Western historians in the former Nazi archives—and distributed them as widely as he could. He tried to stage street demonstrations on Estonia’s prewar independence day. The authorities considered him a “dangerous recidivist.” They sentenced him to long prison terms for “anti-Soviet agitation,” only to see him resume his seditious activities as soon as he was released. By 1988 the former zoologist had spent nearly twenty of his fifty-seven years in Soviet penal institutions.

Since his most recent incarceration three general secretaries had died in office, and nothing had changed at Perm-35. The new general secretary had come into office, angrily denying that the Soviet Union had a human rights problem.


 Vague rumors had reached the camp—the last remaining outpost in the once-sprawling “Gulag Archipelago”—of new political slogans, like glasnost and perestroika. But no one seemed to know what they meant. Initially Niklus was skeptical that they meant anything at all. As recently as 1986 a fellow political prisoner, Anatoly Marchenko, had died of the treatment he received at Perm-35. When Niklus asked a prison guard when they could expect to see some “restructuring” in the gulag, he was told: “We don’t know. We only follow the rules; we have received no instructions.”




Niklus began to suspect that something might be changing when several nearby labor camps were closed. The population of Perm-35 began to decline. By mid-1988 there were only several dozen political prisoners left in the camp that had once housed such eminent anti-Soviet “hooligans” as Natan Shcharansky, Vladimir Bukovsky, and Yuri Orlov. On June 15 Niklus received a visit from two officials of the Estonian KGB. They brought him a food parcel from home, gave him some chocolates—an unimaginable luxury in Perm-35—and asked, very politely, if he would like to write a letter to his mother. He was permitted to receive Estonian newspapers, and soon he was reading about a demonstration in Tartu demanding his release. On June 30, still sitting in prison, he read an interview with a senior official announcing that he had already been freed and was on his way home. His reaction was to begin an immediate hunger strike.

It took another week for the release order to make its way down through the prison bureaucracy. On July 8 Niklus was escorted out of the barbed-wire enclosure, and taken to the Perm railway station. He sent a telegram to his mother, hoping that someone would show up at Tartu railway station to help him with his luggage. Then, still dressed in the striped black clothes reserved for specially dangerous prisoners, he boarded a train to a country of newspaper fable, the land of perestroika.

The “dangerous recidivist” was unprepared for the welcome he received in Tartu. Thousands of well-wishers showed up at the train station, offering him flowers and waving the long-banned flag of the prewar Estonian republic. There were banners with slogans like “We want perestroika without the KGB” and “We want to leave the Soviet Union.” “It was the most fantastic moment of my life,” Niklus recalled later. “They didn’t simply carry my bags; they carried me, on their shoulders. Everyone wanted to touch me.” He was paraded around the town, like a returning sports hero, and made a little speech about Estonian independence. Within two hours he heard his halting, emotional words being broadcast over the same state radio that had once denounced him as an “enemy of the Soviet people.” That evening there was a mass meeting in Tartu’s medieval town square to celebrate his return.

There were many times, during those first few weeks of freedom, when the former political prisoner could scarcely believe what was happening around him. Ordinary people now voiced opinions that had earned Niklus long terms in the gulag. A few weeks after his release, Estonia’s Communist-run television station broadcast a program to mark the forty-ninth anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. There was a graphic picture of sinister black arrows, marked with swastikas, devouring most of Poland. Then large red arrows coming from the direction of the Soviet Union swallowed up the rest of Poland, plus the Baltic states. There were shots of the Soviet and German foreign ministers, Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop, congratulating each other in Berlin. The camera then panned to a rally, addressed by Yuri Afanasiev, a prominent Russian historian. Afanasiev not only admitted the existence of the secret protocols—a fact still denied by Soviet leaders—but described them as a “historical injustice that we have no right to keep silent about.”




Events in Estonia, and the other Baltic states, now moved with breathtaking speed. That summer hundreds of thousands of Estonians—out of a population of 1.5 million—took part in patriotic song festivals. The mass outpouring of national sentiment was dubbed “The Singing Revolution.” By October Estonian nationalists and reform-minded Communists had formed a mass political movement, or popular front, ostensibly to “support perestroika.” Niklus was chosen as one of the founding delegates to the Congress, taking his place alongside doctors and factory managers. Within weeks similar mass movements had been launched in the neighboring republics of Latvia and Lithuania. It soon became clear that the real goal of these “pro-Gorbachev” movements was the restoration of Baltic independence. Once-reactionary Communist Party officials scrambled to lead the revolution or get left hopelessly behind. By November the hitherto pliant Estonian Parliament had declared what amounted to home rule and legalized private property.




THE HARD-LINERS IN MOSCOW could scarcely contain their anger. The head of the KGB reported to the Politburo that “nationalistic forces” were consolidating their positions in the Baltic states, and the situation was getting out of hand. At Gorbachev’s suggestion, the Politburo voted to send Aleksandr Yakovlev on a fact-finding trip to Lithuania, to see what could be done to rein in the pro-independence groups. To the conservatives’ dismay, Yakovlev delivered a remarkably sanguine report, depicting events in the Baltic republics as totally in keeping with perestroika. People were drawing attention to social and economic grievances that had festered for decades and taking power into their own hands, he insisted. There was no cause for alarm.




The behind-the-scenes political crisis came to a head in late November in the Walnut Room of the Kremlin, the place where the inner leadership gathered prior to Politburo sessions. Ligachev and his allies complained that the country was falling apart. Estonia had taken the first step to real independence. Ethnic disturbances had broken out in the Caucasus, between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Crowds had set alight several Soviet tanks in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, and two Russian soldiers had been killed. Demonstrators had carried portraits of the ayatollah Khomeini through the streets.

“Where are we going?” asked Vorotnikov, the Politburo member who had praised Nina Andreyeva’s article.

“I said back in March that it is time to show our power, to restore order, to show these bums. How much can we tolerate?” said Ligachev. “Everything is falling apart. Discipline has broken down. The state is beginning to collapse.”




At first Gorbachev listened to Ligachev’s ranting with a slightly ironic expression on his face. According to his foreign policy adviser, Anatoly Chernyayev, his political intuition told him that the Baltic states would probably break away. He did not want this to happen, but he felt powerless to prevent it. Unlike the conservatives, he would not allow himself to abandon perestroika, which he regarded as his life’s work. He concluded that the best form of defense was attack.

“Why are you trying to frighten me all the time, Yegor? You keep on asking what this perestroika of ours has brought us? Where are we going? What’s happening with us? This does not scare me.”

Gorbachev felt politically stronger now than he had in March, during the Nina Andreyeva affair. Two of Ligachev’s allies, Gromyko and Solomentsev, had retired from the Politburo. Ligachev himself had been shunted aside. For the first time since his election as general secretary, in March 1985, Gorbachev threatened to resign.

“If you consider that we have chosen the wrong path, that I am doing something wrong, then let’s go next door.” He nodded in the direction of the Politburo Room, on the other side of the tall walnut doors. “I will resign. On the spot! And I won’t express a word of resentment. Choose who you want, and let him run things as best he can.”

Gorbachev got his way once again. But there was a price to be paid for his stubbornness. Politburo unanimity—the method by which the Communist Party had imposed its will on a recalcitrant nation for more than seventy years—was a thing of the past. By now the split in the leadership had become impossible to hide.




NEW YORK

December 7, 1988


THE PEASANT BOY from Stavropol had come a long a way. Rarely in the thirty-three-year history of the United Nations had a visiting dignitary been accorded such a reception by the General Assembly. At the end of his address, presidents, foreign ministers, and ambassadors from 158 countries gave him a standing ovation. Mikhail Gorbachev sat in a thronelike white chair, as the applause of the world community echoed in his ears. For once the Soviet showman seemed nervous, as if overwhelmed by all the attention. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe his mouth. Then, a little stiffly, he rose to his feet to acknowledge the applause.

During the course of his one-hour speech Gorbachev effectively abandoned seven decades of Bolshevik ideology. He renounced the Marxist-Leninist idea of a never-ending “class struggle,” substituting instead the “primacy of universal human values,” including individual rights that had long been denied by Moscow. He declared an end to the “Cold War” that had consumed the energies of two superpowers for as long as most Americans and Russians could remember. He insisted that the Soviet Union could no longer remain a “closed society,” isolated from the world economy. And he paved the way for the political liberation of Eastern Europe by pledging to respect the “freedom of choice” of other peoples and renouncing the use of force in international relations. As a token of the Kremlin’s new intentions, he announced a unilateral reduction in the size of the armed forces by half a million men.




Normally jaded New Yorkers greeted the general secretary like a latter-day Messiah. The welcome exceeded all expectations. Gorbachev’s aides had warned him that New York was a cynical city, indifferent to the comings and goings of even the most distinguished foreign visitors, except when they tied up traffic.


 The forty-five-car Soviet motorcade was greeted by cheers and smiling faces wherever it appeared.

There were chants of “Gorbie, Gorbie” and handmade placards hailing “the peacemaker.” His name was in lights on Broadway. WELCOME, COMRADE GENERAL SECRETARY GORBACHEV, announced the electronic signboard in Times Square, flashing the Communist hammer and sickles like an advertisement for a soft drink. On Wall Street dealers tore themselves away from their computer screens to applaud the leader of world communism. In the media frenzy surrounding the visit, anyone touched, or spoken to, by Gorbachev shared in his reflected glory. “He was standing right here,” marveled elevator operator Gary Benaccio, still shaking his head as he told CBS how he had escorted the Soviet leader 107 stories to the top of the World Trade Center. “He looked like a regular tourist.”

The popular adulation had a double-edged effect. The cheering crowds left an indelible impression on everyone in the Soviet delegation, most notably the general secretary himself. Gorbachev had seduced the West, but the West had seduced him in its turn. The triumphant reception strengthened his conviction that perestroika was right and necessary, not just for the Soviet Union but for all humanity. He was no longer just another Soviet leader with a thick neck; he was a man who could change the world.

Foreign trips offered Gorbachev a respite from his growing domestic problems. On this occasion, however, the respite was short-lived. As the Soviet leader’s Zil sped away from the United Nations, he received a telephone call from Moscow over the scrambled Kremlin communications network. On the other end of the line was a very agitated Ryzkhov. There had just been a terrible earthquake in Armenia. Entire cities had been destroyed. There were thousands of victims. Gorbachev listened to the prime minister in grim silence as the crowds in the streets continued to chant his name. That evening a gloomy and dejected general secretary told his aides that he was cutting short his foreign tour and returning home.







YEREVAN

December 11, 1988


THERE COULD HARDLY HAVE BEEN a greater contrast between the bright lights of Manhattan and the wrenching misery of Armenia. “In my entire life, I’ve never seen one-thousandth of the suffering I’ve seen here,” said Gorbachev, after picking his way through the rubble of Leninakan and Spitak.


 The grief-stricken survivors greeted him with indifference, even hostility. They wanted to know why high-rise apartment blocks had collapsed so easily, why scientists had been unable to predict the devastating tremors, why the rest of the country was slow in sending help.

Had the Armenian earthquake occurred in a Western country, it would have caused enormous damage and significant loss of life. But what would have been a manageable natural disaster in the West became an overwhelming man-made catastrophe in the Soviet Union. Shoddy construction practices and corruption among local officials caused the casualty toll to rise to the tens of thousands. Nearly half a million people were left without housing. Few buildings in the affected area had been constructed to withstand powerful tremors, despite the fact that earthquakes are commonplace in the Caucasus region. A subsequent investigation showed that steel rods that should have been used to reinforce concrete structures had been stolen and sold on the black market, leaving multistory apartment blocks as flimsy as matchboxes.

In the aftermath of the earthquake Soviet civil defense organizations proved hopelessly overstretched and ill equipped. Although they had the means to blow up the world and intimidate their neighbors in Europe and Asia, Soviet leaders were unable to organize an efficient relief effort in their own country. Troops were rushed to the area but were unable to provide assistance to the population because they lacked suitable equipment for removing the piles of rubble. In conditions of glasnost, it was impossible to conceal the inefficiency of the transportation system, the lack of decent medical care, the appalling housing conditions. Like Chernobyl, the Armenian earthquake became a metaphor for a sociopolitical system that was militarily powerful but economically crippled, technologically advanced but socially backward.

The abrupt transition from international triumph to domestic tragedy highlighted the challenge facing Gorbachev. Persuading Reagan and the American people to take a more benign view of the “evil empire” was easy compared with the awesome task of getting the Soviet Union back on its feet. The man who had been acclaimed as a miracle worker on the international stage seemed to have little to offer his own people except lectures and exhortations. In the West Gorbachev was applauded as the leader who had put an end to the Cold War and slashed the Soviet armed forces. At home his countrymen were beginning to refer to him as a boltun (chatterbox), a man of fine phrases devoid of practical meaning.

Nowhere had political support for Gorbachev plummeted so far, so fast as in Armenia, a small Christian nation that had traditionally looked to Russia for protection from the Turks. A year earlier the Armenians had looked up to Gorbachev as a hero. Thanks to glasnost, they had been permitted to give vent to a long-standing national grievance: Stalin’s decision to make the mountainous region of Karabakh part of Turkic Azerbaijan, against the wishes of its predominantly Armenian population. A series of huge demonstrations had taken place in the streets of Yerevan to demand self-determination for Karabakh. At first Gorbachev had seemed sympathetic to the Armenians. After watching a KGB tape of the rallies in February 1988, he told his Politburo colleagues that there was “nothing anti-Soviet” about the protests.


 He was impressed that many of the demonstrators even carried his own portrait as they marched.

By December, however, Gorbachev’s views had radically changed. The upsurge of national feeling in Armenia had provoked a counterreaction in Azerbaijan. There had been anti-Armenian riots in Sumgait, an Azerbaijani town with a large Armenian minority. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians and Azerbaijanis had been forced to flee from their homes. It was the first sign of a new, and ominous, political trend that would accompany the collapse of communism: ethnic cleansing.

The general secretary displayed his mounting political frustration at the end of his visit to Armenia. He used an interview with Soviet television about the earthquake to lash out at Armenian nationalists as “adventurists” and “political gamblers,” who were exploiting the misery of their people for their own ends. Shortly afterward he ordered the arrest of the leadership of the Karabakh committee, which had organized the rallies in Yerevan.

Something profound had happened in the Soviet Union in the two and a half years since Chernobyl. It was no longer just the “inanimate objects” that were revolting against Communist rule, in Adam Michnik’s phrase. In the Caucasus and the Baltic states the revolt had been joined by “animate objects.” Soon the wave of popular discontent would spread to the politically somnolent Slavic heartland of the Soviet Union. The “revolution from above” had become a “revolution from below.”

Gorbachev was no longer in control of his own revolution.




III. REVOLT OF THE NATIONS


Where the Russian flag has once been hoisted, it cannot be lowered.

    

Nicholas I, 1850






Comrades, we have every right to say that we have solved the nationality question in this country.

    

Mikhail Gorbachev, November 1987








TERMEZ

February 15, 1989


MIKHAIL GORBACHEV REMEMBERED the pictures of American helicopters lifting off from the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, with marines pushing away Vietnamese citizens as they tried desperately to clamber aboard. It would be a “shame,” he told his aides, if Soviet troops were to “run away” from Afghanistan as the Americans had done in Vietnam.


 He wanted the Red Army’s withdrawal from Afghanistan to be orderly and dignified, in keeping with the Soviet Union’s superpower status.

In accordance with Gorbachev’s wishes, everything possible was done to create the illusion that the Red Army had “fulfilled its internationalist duty.” As column after column of tanks and armored cars swept across the “Friendship Bridge” spanning the muddy Amu Darya River—the ancient Oxus—a military band struck up a patriotic march. Regimental standards fluttered proudly in the breeze. Battle-hardened veterans, their faces bronzed in the Afghan sun, were showered with kisses and carnations by relieved relatives. Everyone seemed to be wearing a medal of some kind. “The Order of the Motherland Has Been Fulfilled,” proclaimed a red banner strung up across a makeshift parade ground.

The patriotic slogans and parade ground hurrahs could not, however, conceal the bitterness felt by many of the returning troops over a futile nine-year war. As they crossed back into Soviet territory, commanders spoke contemptuously about the politicians who had sent them to Afghanistan and the Communist regime they had attempted to defend.

“It’s like the Middle Ages there,” said a spetsnaz colonel, gesturing in the direction of the country he had just left. “The Afghan people were simply not prepared for a socialist revolution.”

“It was a tragedy,” acknowledged another veteran. “We helped a government that did not have the support of the Afghan people.”




Although the Geneva accords provided for the complete withdrawal of Soviet troops by February 15, 1989, there had been considerable skepticism in Western capitals about whether Gorbachev would keep his promise. From the time of Peter the Great Russian history had been one of almost continuous expansion, interrupted by the occasional foreign invasion and domestic cataclysm. Over the course of several centuries Russian rulers had succeeded in establishing their dominance over much of the Eurasian landmass, an area inhabited by more than a hundred ethnic groups. To hang on to these vast territories, Russia had to convince its many enemies that retreat was out of the question. If it started abandoning colonial outposts, however obscure and however costly to defend, its credibility as a great power would be called into question.

The Russian territorial doctrine was succinctly expressed by Tsar Nicholas I in 1850, after one of his naval officers had seized some territory belonging to China along the Amur River. The officer had acted on his own initiative, without orders from St. Petersburg, and some of the tsar’s advisers were in favor of surrendering the territory, which had little strategic value. But Nicholas saw things differently. “Where the Russian flag has once been hoisted, it cannot be lowered,” he declared. The tsar’s stubbornness and inflexibility produced the desired impression on foreign rulers. “The Russian policy of aggression is slow and steady, but firm and unchangeable,” noted the emir of Afghanistan some thirty years later. “If once they make up their minds to do a thing, there is no stopping them, and no changing their policy.”




The Bolsheviks followed a similar territorial doctrine to the tsars, although they dressed it up in Marxist-Leninist language. Two years after the invasion, in 1982, Pravda described the Afghan Revolution as “irreversible because it is a people’s revolution, and because it enjoys the support and solidarity of the Soviet Union.”


 Soviet leaders had an additional reason for wanting to retain what amounted to the world’s last great colonial empire. Together with victory over Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War, the existence of a steadily expanding network of client states was the major accomplishment of the Soviet regime. Here was concrete proof that communism was on the move, ideological justification for decades of economic hardship and political repression. Soviet citizens might live in penury and squalor, but history was on their side. Sooner or later communism would triumph throughout the world.

It was this doctrine—the doctrine of the irreversibility of history—that was being undermined by the withdrawal from Afghanistan. If the forces of socialism were defeated in Afghanistan, the Kremlin would find it difficult to hold on to places like Nicaragua, Ethiopia, and Poland.




IT TOOK LIEUTENANT GENERAL BORIS GROMOV, the last Soviet commander in Afghanistan, a week to make the three-hundred-mile drive along the mountainous Salang Highway from Kabul to Termez. This was the same route that the Soviets had used to invade the country nine years earlier. An outpost founded by Alexander the Great and sacked by Genghis Khan, Termez had been incorporated into the tsarist empire in the late nineteenth century, during the great thrust to the south. The springboard for the Russian conquest of Afghanistan had become the main reentry point for Soviet troops returning home.

The long convoys of Soviet military vehicles proceeded cautiously, knowing they could be ambushed by the guerrilla fighters who now controlled more than four-fifths of Afghanistan. To protect the highway from sudden attack, Soviet special forces had systematically destroyed hundreds of Afghan villages perched in the towering mountains on either side of the road. Everywhere they looked, the retreating troops could see the detritus of a war that had cost the lives of fifteen thousand of their own comrades and more than a million Afghans. They drove past roofless mud-brick houses, bullet-splattered walls, and fields of forlorn tree stumps that had once been luxuriant orchards. Rusting carcasses of bombed-out tanks and the twisted wreckage of army trucks littered the sides of the highway.

A month before his departure from Kabul, Gromov had received a message from the Afghan guerrilla commander who controlled the heights around the Salang Highway, Ahmad Shah Massoud. “We have put up with war and your presence in our country for nearly ten years now,” the missive read. “God willing, we will put up with you for a few more days. But if you begin military action against us, we will give you a worthy response.” Despite Massoud’s offer of a cease-fire, skirmishes had broken out between the mujahedin and the departing Soviet troops. In retaliation, Gromov had launched Operation Typhoon. In its last military action in Afghanistan, the Red Army carried out more than a thousand helicopter attacks against suspected mujahedin positions in the Salang area and blasted their supply bases with long-range missiles.




The rest of the withdrawal proceeded smoothly enough. The weather proved more troublesome for the Soviets than the mujahedin, who refrained from harassing their enemies on their way out. Several soldiers were killed in avalanches that had blocked the eleven-thousand-foot-high Salang Pass for days at a time. The Fortieth Army reached the border without further losses.

Gromov spent his last night in Afghanistan in the town of Khairaton, on the southern side of the “Friendship Bridge.” Like his men, he was immensely relieved to be going home. He had spent nearly six years in Afghanistan, on three separate tours of duty, and had little illusion about the ability of Najibullah’s Afghan regime to survive without Soviet assistance. For nearly a decade the Afghan Communists had manipulated the Soviets into waging war on their behalf. In theory the Soviet “internationalist” fighters had been defending the “cause of socialism.” In practice, Gromov realized, they had been defending an unpopular government from its domestic opponents. They had failed to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. The leaders the Soviets had helped install and keep in power were inept, corrupt, and entirely dependent on foreign assistance.




Gromov had had a difficult time explaining to his men what they were doing in Afghanistan. The standard formula—“fulfilling their internationalist duty”—was no longer adequate. Until Gorbachev came to power, the Soviet Union had refused to acknowledge it was fighting a war in Afghanistan. Instead of being hailed as heroes on their return home Afghan war veterans were treated like pariahs. The motherland seemed ashamed of them and was reluctant to acknowledge their sacrifices. It soon became clear to Gromov that he and his men were in an unwinnable war. In this situation it was his duty to reduce Soviet combat losses to a minimum. This was the goal he had set for himself following his appointment as commander of the Soviet “limited contingent” in Afghanistan in 1987.




As he made a final tour of inspection of the Soviet military barracks at Khairaton, Gromov was sickened by the sight of warehouses overflowing with hundreds of thousands of tons of food and building materials. It was not just human lives that had been squandered in Afghanistan. The war had disrupted the Soviet economy, absorbing resources and contributing to widespread shortages of ordinary household items. In a few hours’ time these huge stockpiles of sugar, flour, cement, and roof tile would be handed over to the Afghan army. Gromov knew from bitter experience what would happen next. A few weeks before, Afghan soldiers had ransacked the Soviet military barracks in the southern city of Jalalabad, carrying away everything from television sets and air conditioners to beds and doorframes. Many of the stolen items quickly ended up on the black market.




Gromov had promised himself that he would be the last Soviet soldier to leave Afghanistan. He told journalists he would walk alone across the “Friendship Bridge,” once he knew all his men were safely on Soviet territory. As he crossed the border, he would turn back in the direction of Afghanistan and “say what needed to be said.” When word of his intention reached Moscow, it caused some alarm at the Defense Ministry, which did not appreciate flamboyant gestures by independently minded combat generals.

“Why are you leaving last, and not first, as a commander should?” growled the defense minister, Dmitri Yazov, when he finally reached Gromov over a secure Kremlin telephone line in Khairaton.

“This was my own decision as the commander of the army,” the forty-six-year-old general replied. “I consider that five and a half years’ service in Afghanistan gives me the right to make a small breach of army tradition.”




Yazov grunted but said nothing.




FOR GROMOV, THE WAR WAS ENDING as it began, in a shameful silence. He resented the fact that neither Gorbachev nor any other Soviet leader could be bothered to come to Termez to welcome the troops home. Even the defense minister and his deputies had chosen to avoid the ceremonies, which were being presided over by low-level officials from the republic of Uzbekistan. In effect his troops had been left to organize their own homecoming. Moscow had rejected his repeated pleas to follow tradition and award the Fortieth Army a collective medal for its service in Afghanistan. It was as if the Politburo wanted to wash its hands of the whole Afghanistan adventure, Gromov thought, and put the blame on the soldiers who had carried out the orders of their political superiors.

He lay awake most of the night, thinking about what he had seen and done since he first arrived in Afghanistan in January 1980, a month after the invasion. A sense of emptiness and betrayal overwhelmed him. Despite winning every set-piece battle they had fought with the mujahedin, his troops had lost the war because they lacked the necessary political support from the Afghan people. In Gromov’s view, the Soviet Union had suffered a political rather than a military defeat. But it was a defeat nonetheless. The consequences of such a shattering setback were impossible to predict. The future—for both the country and the army—was clouded with uncertainty.

Gromov also thought about the price his own family had paid while he was waging war. During his second tour of duty in Afghanistan his wife had been killed in an air crash. His two sons, Maksim and Andrei, had grown up without a father or a mother. He had been away from home long enough.

He finally got to sleep around 4:00 a.m. An hour later he was awakened by the noise of engines being revved up and soldiers joking about the end of the war. He dressed carefully, asking an adjutant to inspect his uniform from all sides, to ensure that he would be picture-perfect as he crossed the “Friendship Bridge.” He ordered guards to be withdrawn from the last remaining Soviet outposts around Khairaton. Outside on the parade ground five hundred soldiers of the 201st Reconnaissance Division were lined up next to their armored personnel carriers, waiting for the command to move off. Gromov gave the troops a pep talk, telling them they would go down in history as the last battalion of Soviet troops to leave Afghanistan. As they paraded past his reviewing stand, he noticed that many of the men had tears in their eyes.

A few minutes later Gromov climbed into his own APC to drive the final mile into Soviet territory. The “Friendship Bridge” was deserted. In the distance, on the Soviet side of the wrought-iron bridge, he could see a crowd of journalists and well-wishers, including fourteen-year-old Maksim. He jumped down from the vehicle and proceeded on foot. At the center of the bridge, on the state boundary line, he turned back in the direction of the country he had just left and said “what needed to be said.”

Speaking in a soft voice, so that no one could hear him, the last commander of the Fortieth Army roundly cursed the leaders who had dispatched a million Soviet boys to defend the “cause of socialism” in a backward, mountainous land, with a long tradition of fighting foreign invaders. And he asked for forgiveness from the mothers of the fifteen thousand soldiers who had never returned from Afghanistan.







MOSCOW

March 26, 1989


ACCORDING TO STANDARD MARXIST-LENINIST THEORY, a metropolis is meant to exploit its colonies for its own benefit, using them as a source of cheap raw materials and a dumping ground for shoddy industrial goods. In the Soviet case, precisely the opposite had happened. Russia exported oil at heavily discounted prices to places like Estonia, Poland, and Cuba. Sometimes it received overpriced consumer items in return for this oil; at other times, nothing at all. Third World trouble spots like Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua were a constant drain on the Soviet treasury. Under communism it was impossible to draw a line between exploiting and exploited nations. The rapacious system of central planning exploited everyone, Russians most of all.

Geopolitical setbacks overseas and economic devastation at home caused Russians to turn away from foreign adventure and examine their own problems. Thanks to glasnost, they were able to compare their standard of living with that of other people. They were dismayed to find that they were at the bottom of the pile. Vast territories and unprecedented military might had brought ordinary Russians nothing but pain and further economic suffering. The social compact of the Brezhnev era—pride in the Soviet Union’s superpower status combined with a low but gradually increasing standard of living—was disintegrating.

The revolt of ordinary Russians was the essential precondition for the successful rebellions in Eastern Europe. The subject nations wanted their freedom. Russians wanted an end to their economic misery. Eventually these two elements gelled into a grand political bargain that was to transform the Communist world.

Mikhail Gorbachev was the first Soviet leader to show any real concern for the opinions of his countrymen. In the spring of 1988, in the wake of the Nina Andreyeva affair, he had made a strategic decision. He would make use of public opinion in his battle against the nomenklatura. Frustrated by the opposition of Communist Party bureaucrats to his reforms, he came up with a device for circumventing them altogether. Citing the Bolshevik slogan “All Power to the Soviets,” he proposed creating a powerful legislature. The old Supreme Soviet, a rubber-stamp body packed with party hacks and a few token milkmaids, would be replaced by a real parliament.

The announcement that the Soviet Union would hold its first-ever contested election on March 26, 1989, provoked a wave of political excitement. Soon the entire country was caught up in a gigantic debate, which unfolded in television studios, city squares, meeting halls, classrooms, army barracks, and the columns of newspapers. The hubbub of voices was both bewildering and exhilarating. Fear melted away like the packed ice on Russian rivers after the long winter, cracking open with a mighty cacophony of sound. Suddenly everybody seemed to have an opinion. Walls were plastered with political slogans; housewives standing in line for groceries vented their spleen at the government; anti-Communist tracts were distributed on street corners.

As the elections approached, the apparatchiks began to panic. Voting procedures had been designed to give official candidates a built-in advantage, but in many cases this was not sufficient to ensure their election. The prospect of hundreds of Communist Goliaths being slain by populist Davids made for a riveting spectacle. This was a struggle for personal—as much as political—survival. In the Soviet Union political connections were the key to a privileged lifestyle: a larger apartment; improved food rations; opportunities for foreign travel; access to a government dacha; better medical services; a car perhaps. Losing one’s place in the nomenklatura was devastating, psychologically, professionally, and even economically.

In many people’s eyes, the struggle for democracy in the Soviet Union was symbolized by high-profile opposition candidates, like Boris Yeltsin and Andrei Sakharov. Both men overcame enormous bureaucratic resistance to get their names on the ballot. Yeltsin, the turncoat Politburo member, had decided to run for a city-wide seat in Moscow, representing six million voters. Frantic attempts by the Communist authorities to discredit him only increased his popularity among ordinary Muscovites. Sakharov was nominated to fill one of the deputy slots reserved for the prestigious Academy of Sciences, a body that had joined in the Kremlin’s campaign to revile him for his human rights activities and opposition to the war in Afghanistan. The bureaucrats who ran the academy had initially attempted to block his candidacy but were forced to climb down following a series of angry protest meetings by rank-and-file scientists.

By Western standards, the election campaign was extraordinarily low-tech. There were no slickly made television advertisements, no image makers or spin doctors, no fund-raising drives, no campaign staffs. There weren’t even many political posters in evidence, just the occasional scruffy sheet of typewritten paper tacked to a wall, describing the “program” of one or another of the candidates. The most important platform for propagating a candidate’s ideas was the political meeting.

The Communist Party dug deep into its bag of dirty tricks in order to rig the election in its favor. Party officials packed nomination meetings with their own activists, preventing opposition candidates from getting their names on the ballot. Many apparatchiks ran unopposed in rural districts, where people were still afraid to express their opinions.

When the election returns came in, the apparatchiks received a hugh shock. In most places where there was a clear choice, the party-approved candidate was defeated. The list of the vanquished read like a who’s who of Soviet public life: Politburo members, generals, cosmonauts, government ministers, and the mayors or party bosses of Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, and many other big cities. In Moscow Yeltsin crushed his official Communist rival by a stunning margin of thirteen to one. In the Baltic states popular front movements that were already beginning to toy with the words “national sovereignty” and “independence” crushed Communist Party candidates. In Ukraine, which had previously been regarded as a bastion of reaction, five regional Communist Party bosses were defeated by nationalist candidates.

The election results surprised and delighted Moscow intellectuals, who had previously regarded the Soviet people as a dark, inchoate mass unreceptive to democratic ideas. “After this, my country will never be the same again,” enthused the poet Andrei Voznesensky, a spokesman for the shestidesyatniki generation. “We intellectuals always saw ourselves as the symbol of democracy, but we thought the people weren’t ready for it. The joyful thing about all this is that in many ways we have been proved wrong.”




Despite the powerful showing of the reformers, the conservatives were still assured a built-in majority in the new legislature. One-third of the 2,250 seats in the Congress of People’s Deputies had been reserved for Communist-dominated “social organizations,” including the party itself. Communist Party candidates also did well in the countryside and traditionally conservative areas of the country, such as Central Asia and Belarus.

The apparatchiks had suffered a serious reverse, but they were hardly out of the game. Within days of their setback at the polls, they were galvanized into action by nationalist disturbances in the turbulent Transcaucasian republic of Georgia, birthplace of Josef Stalin. The counterattack would not be long in coming.




TBILISI

April 9, 1989


HIS LEFT HAND RESTING ON A SILVER STAFF, the patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church waited patiently for silence. The broad tree-lined avenue in front of him was packed with people. Illuminated by hundreds of flickering candles, their predominantly young faces bore expressions of expectancy and determination. One of the most ancient peoples of the Caucasus, inhabiting the mythical land of the Golden Fleece, Georgians were imbued with a sense of unique national identity. His Holiness Ilya II knew that it would be difficult to persuade his compatriots to back down now. But he felt a duty to try.

“In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. God is with us.”




A hush descended over the crowd as Georgia’s eighty-two-year-old patriarch pronounced his blessing. It was 3:15 a.m., and some ten thousand people were now crammed into the plaza in front of the Georgian parliament, on Rustaveli Avenue, Tbilisi’s principal thoroughfare. Some of the demonstrators held placards with slogans, handwritten in Georgian and in English, like “We Demand an Independent Georgia,” “Down with Soviet Power,” and “Russian Occupiers, Go Home.” Others waved the banned black, red, and white flag of the pre-Communist Georgian republic, which had enjoyed a brief independence between 1918 and 1921, before its conquest by the Red Army. The color black was intended to symbolize the Georgian nation’s tormented past, red its bloodstained present, and white its glorious future.

On his way to the parliament building from his residence in the old town, the patriarch had seen Soviet troops and armored cars massing in Lenin Square, a few hundred yards away. Georgian officials had told him that the army planned to use force to disperse the demonstrators. He spoke slowly, with long pauses, hoping that reason would prevail over emotion.

“All of Georgia appreciates you. The nation understands what you are doing. It knows how important it is. But we cannot ignore the real danger that is facing us, right now. That is why I came to bless you and ask you to leave.”

Now in its fifth day, the protest outside the parliament building had begun as a hunger strike by several hundred students to denounce attempts by the Abhazian minority to secede from Georgia. As they listened to speeches by opposition activists, the protesters became increasingly radical and nationalistic. There had been demands for the formation of a provisional government to kick out the Communists and restore Georgian independence. Frightened of losing control, the authorities had called in the army. The previous day a column of tanks and armored cars had driven through the streets of the capital, while helicopters flew overhead. Far from intimidating the people of Tbilisi, this military display had only fueled their ardor. As rumors spread of an imminent crackdown, the size of the crowd grew steadily. The unarmed protesters blocked the approaches to the building with barricades, made out of city buses with deflated tires and abandoned concrete trucks.

Flanking the patriarch, on the stone steps of the floodlit parliament building, were the most prominent leaders of the opposition. Alongside them, squatting in makeshift plastic tents that had been pitched on a little stretch of grass next to the steps and facing their supporters in the square, were the original hunger strikers. A few minutes earlier the demonstrators had been dancing and singing Georgian folk songs. As they listened to Ilya, pleading with them to disperse, their mood became somber and defiant.

The patriarch tried again. “It is possible that there are only a few minutes left. We have a chance to go to the cathedral and pray there.”

“We’re not going,” one of the demonstrators shouted.

“We won’t take a step back,” others cried. “We have taken an oath not to leave.”

Suddenly the whole crowd began to chant: “Long live Georgia,” “Long live Georgian independence.”

The patriarch knew what was about to happen but felt powerless to do anything more. “Do you want to die?” he murmured to one of the protesters, standing beside him. As he left the plaza, the passionate voice of one of the nationalist firebrands, twenty-eight-year-old Irakli Tsereteli, boomed over the loudspeakers.

“Tonight we will be reborn. We will remain on the path of democracy, the path of independence, the path of God. God is with us.”

“Amen,” the crowd roared back.

“God is with us.”

“Amen.”

“We have taken an oath never to retreat. The best sons of Georgia will keep that oath, against the will of our enemies.”

“We have sworn.”




WHILE THE PATRIARCH WAS ADDRESSING the demonstrators outside the Georgian parliament, the man who would determine their fate was pacing up and down Lenin Square. At fifty-three, Colonel General Igor Rodionov was one of the most experienced commanders in the Soviet army. He had served in Afghanistan, where he had annoyed his superiors by refusing to open fire on unarmed civilians. As commander in chief of the Transcaucasian military district, he had spent much of the past year in endless negotiations with warring factions in Armenia and Azerbaijan. He had also been involved in relief operations in Armenia following the earthquake of December 1988. He was a fanatical believer in order and discipline, and his life revolved around the army. He regarded the region’s squabbling politicians with contempt.

Outsiders who met Rodionov were impressed by his intelligent, well-educated veneer. But they were also struck by another side to his character, a total, almost blinkered loyalty to the Communist Party. Here was a man who had grown up entirely within the system. Like many of his colleagues in the military, he was dismayed by the massive political upheavals taking place in the Soviet Union. The anti-Soviet and anti-Russian slogans pasted up all over Tbilisi—slogans like “Down with Russian Imperialism”—offended him deeply. He regarded the protesters who had taken over the plaza as revolutionary subversives, attempting to overthrow the constitutional order. As far as the general was concerned, this was not a peaceful demonstration. It was an “anti-Soviet orgy.”




At first Rodionov had been reluctant to involve the army in the Georgian crisis. Ensuring public order was a matter for the police, not the military. But as the demands of the demonstrators grew steadily more outrageous, he changed his mind. The republic’s leaders were no longer able to control events. The local security forces were already stretched to the limit by the upheavals in the Black Sea region of Abhazia. Rodionov concluded that only the army had the means, and the political will, to restore order. The Defense Ministry in Moscow had dispatched two thousand troops to Tbilisi to assist him.

Precisely who gave orders for force to be used against the demonstrators outside the parliament building later became a subject of intense political controversy. Soviet leaders, from Gorbachev downward, denied any knowledge of the affair. But in those predawn moments in Lenin Square, the chain of command seemed perfectly clear. Despite his strong political views, Rodionov was not the kind of officer who would launch a military operation by himself without the authorization of his superiors.

A subsequent investigation showed that the general had received written instructions from the Soviet Defense Ministry to take the parliament building “under control.” How this was to be done was left vague, but “the center” was kept fully informed of the military preparations. A deputy defense minister and several senior Central Committee officials were in Tbilisi, monitoring the crisis. The decision to apply force was endorsed by local party leaders, who later claimed that they were in constant communication with the center, through KGB channels. Several minor operational details, including a last-minute decision not to use water cannon against the demonstrators, were also “agreed” with Moscow.




At 3:30 a.m. Rodionov in Lenin Square received a telephone call from Dzumber Patiashvili, the first secretary of the Georgian Communist Party, who was at home. The two men spoke over a radiotelephone. Under the influence of his Russian deputy, Patiashvili had earlier firmly supported the use of force against the demonstrators. He was convinced that there was no other way of preserving Communist Party power in Georgia. But now he was beginning to panic. His subordinates had told him about the demonstrators’ refusal to heed the patriarch. There were too many people in front of the parliament building.

Perhaps, he suggested to Rodionov, the operation should be postponed for a little while?

The general said it was too late. Emotions were at a fever pitch. If the army backed down now and failed to restore order, anything could happen. He promised Patiashvili that there would be “no complications.”




Rodionov returned to his commanders in a determined mood. The short, pugnacious man was convinced of the righteousness of his cause. His troops were lined up beneath the outstretched arms of the gigantic Lenin statue in the middle of the square, as if receiving the blessing of the father of Soviet communism. The armored cars were revving their engines.

“Let’s begin,” the general announced. It was exactly 4:00 a.m.







EVERYONE DOWN ON THEIR KNEES,” shouted Tsereteli as the troops began their slow march up Rustaveli Avenue, in the direction of the parliament building. “They won’t beat you if you are on your knees.”




A chant of “Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name” echoed from the loudspeakers around the plaza. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”

“Give us this day our daily bread,” shouted the hunger strikers, sitting on the grass alongside the broad steps leading up to the parliament building, itself set back some fifty yards from the avenue.

Ten thousand voices-young, defiant, seemingly ready for any sacrifice—joined in the prayer. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.”

The demonstrators could see the headlights of four armored personnel carriers moving toward them through the darkness, occupying the width of the avenue. Behind the APCs they could see a line of Interior Ministry troops, thwacking their plastic shields with heavy rubber truncheons. Behind those troops came several companies of paratroopers, who had been given the task of guarding the parliament building once the plaza in front of it was cleared. Except for the sharpened metal spades that were part of their regular equipment, the paratroopers were unarmed.

Cries of “Georgia, Georgia” filled the air, as the spetsnaz troops moved forward behind the APCs, herding people in front of them. By 4:10 a.m. the troops had formed a human barricade of shields and armor across the middle of Rustaveli Avenue, splitting the crowd in two. Riot police swarmed down side streets next to the parliament building, trapping everybody sitting in the vicinity of the fourteen stone steps and the adjacent patch of lawn. By barricading the side streets with trucks, the demonstrators had sealed off their own means of escape.

The patch of lawn next to the parliament building was filled with frantic people, crammed into an increasingly tight space. As the troops pushed inward from both sides, the hunger strikers struggled to their feet, kicking and screaming. Several dozen riot police were equipped with aerosol cans of a toxic nerve gas, known familiarly as cherry gas, or cheryomukha, which they sprayed at the demonstrators. Others lashed out with rubber truncheons. At one point the police line seemed to be breaking. Rodionov ordered paratroopers into the breach. In order to gain some breathing space, they struck out with the only weapon at their disposal, their metal entrenching tools. In the general crush of human bodies, the weakest were trampled underfoot and were soon struggling for breath.

“They’re killing people in there. Help them,” shouted the demonstrators outside the police barricade. “Fuck the bastards.”

Determined to rescue the hunger strikers, the demonstrators found a large wooden pole, which they attempted to ram through the line of shields and rubber truncheons. Occasionally a bloody figure ran through a chink in the line, assisted by Georgian militiamen, many of whom were beaten by Soviet soldiers as they helped the demonstrators form an escape route. Soon the entire avenue became a battleground. Tear gas canisters exploded overhead as young men, wearing kerchiefs, attacked the armored cars with sticks and stones. Ambulance sirens wailed. Curses filled the air.

“This is for Stalin,” yelled a Russian soldier, beating a demonstrator with his truncheon.

“Fuck the bastards, they’re all drunk,” shouted a Georgian, smelling the alcohol-soaked breath of one of the riot police.

When it was all over, sixteen bodies were collected from the patch of lawn next to the parliament building and the nearby steps. The faces of the victims were bloated and swollen, symptoms of asphyxiation.


 Ambulance teams noticed a smell of rotten fruit on the breaths of some of the victims, suggesting that nerve gas had been fired at them from close range. Most of the victims were women, ranging in age from sixteen to seventy, the least able to defend themselves in the crush.

After the violence outside the parliament building, the troops chased the crowds down Rustaveli Avenue, toward Republic Square, firing tear gas as they went. By sunrise another three demonstrators had been fatally injured in other parts of the city. Some 250 people were taken to the hospital. Many were suffering from a combination of “crowd crush” and toxic gas poisoning. Others displayed deep welts from the long rubber nightsticks of the spetsnaz. Several dozen had stab wounds, apparently caused by the little spades wielded by paratroopers.




THE MEN WHO ORDERED the violent dispersal of the Tbilisi rally wanted to prevent the disintegration of the Soviet empire. But as frequently happened during the final crisis of communism, the outcome of their action was the precise opposite of their intention. Instead of dampening the nationalistic spirit of the Georgian people, they gave it a tremendous boost. Instead of establishing a precedent for the use of force to suppress unauthorized gatherings, they provoked a furious debate over the role of the army in domestic political conflicts. Instead of saving communism in Georgia, they only hastened its end.

A few years before, such incidents would have been hushed up. In conditions of glasnost, this was impossible. The spectacle of soldiers beating and killing defenseless civilians, just as the country was starting its transition to democracy, shocked people throughout the Soviet Union. In Georgia itself the events of April 9 soon became the stuff of popular legend, much of it distorted.

No one exploited the myth of “Bloody Sunday” in Tbilisi more effectively than Zviad Gamsakhurdia. The fifty-year-old son of the republic’s best-loved writer, Gamsakhurdia identified himself with Georgian national aspirations. His father, Konstantine, specialized in historical epics, describing the long struggle of the Georgian nation against the other peoples of the Caucasus. His novels were set against a background of snowcapped peaks and rugged mountains and peopled by beautiful Georgian maidens, noble princes, and heroic warlords, after one of whom he named his son. It was easy for Zviad, listening to these stories, to imagine that he had been given the mission of uniting Georgia against its many enemies.

The older Gamsakhurdia’s writings had found favor with the most eminent Georgian of all. Born Joseph Djugashvili, Stalin had listened to similar tales of Georgian bravery and banditry from his mother. Although he was a scourge of Georgian nationalism, Stalin had a sentimental attachment to Georgian folklore. He permitted Konstantine Gamsakhurdia several eccentricities that would have got other writers into serious trouble. Older residents of Tbilisi still remember how the writer liked to parade around the town dressed in medieval Georgian costume like a prince. As long as he stuck to historical themes and avoided politically delicate subjects, such as the war between Russia and Georgia, nobody bothered him. He was on good terms with the local Communist leaders, including Eduard Shevardnadze. In return for his services to Georgian literature, the Gamsakhurdia family was rewarded with a magnificent villa overlooking the capital, protected by a high iron gate.

When Georgian nationalism began to stir again in the aftermath of Stalin’s death, Zviad Gamsakhurdia was right in the middle of the ferment. He had had his first run-in with the authorities in 1957, at the age of eighteen, when he was convicted of “anti-Soviet agitation” for distributing subversive pamphlets. Two years later he was in trouble again, this time for getting into a fight with a policeman. On both occasions, however, he received relatively light suspended sentences. His father’s fame helped him stay out of jail. Like his father, Zviad Gamsakhurdia had an ambiguous relationship with the Communist regime, a mixture of defiance and accommodation. He was sent to prison in 1978 for founding a Georgian human rights group and giving interviews to foreign correspondents. The following year, however, he was released after a television interview in which he publicly recanted his “mistakes.” Rival dissidents accused him of collaborating with the KGB.

By 1989 the Georgian dissident movement had splintered into dozens of factions and subfactions, as opposition leaders vied for influence. In the struggle to shape public opinion, Gamsakhurdia junior coined the slogan “Georgia for the Georgians.” Although Georgians accounted for only two-thirds of the republic’s 5.5 million people, he believed they deserved an exclusive voice in its political affairs. In his view, minority groups, such as Abhazians, Ossetians, and Armenians, were all second-class citizens.

“Georgia is a unitary independent state, and therefore there can be no concessions to the separatists in Abhazia and southern Ossetia,” he told the meeting outside the parliament building. “The representatives of all other nations are merely guests on Georgian land, who can be shown the door at any time by their hosts.”




In many ways, Gamsakhurdia’s brand of xenophobic nationalism was as authoritarian and myopic as the Communist ideology it sought to replace. He convinced his followers that independence would lead automatically to prosperity, as the Kremlin would no longer have the opportunity to “exploit” Georgia economically. In his patriotic zeal he ignored the fact that Georgia relied on other Soviet republics for practically all its oil and gas, 94 percent of its grain, 93 percent of its steel, and 82 percent of its timber. His assumption that ethnic minorities would meekly accept the will of the Georgian majority turned out to be another fatal miscalculation, which laid the basis for a prolonged civil war.

In the emotional aftermath of the Tbilisi “massacre,” reason and common sense were in short supply. Revolted by the shedding of innocent blood, Georgians rallied around the leaders who denounced the Soviet “imperialists” the loudest. At this point the Communist authorities made a series of blunders that played right into the hands of the nationalists. They arrested Gamsakhurdia and other opposition leaders, endowing them with the halos of martyrs. Then, for almost two weeks, the army denied using toxic gas against the demonstrators. Panic swept the city as hundreds of people were admitted to local hospitals with symptoms of poisoning. Anti-Soviet sentiment reached a fever pitch. By the time Gamsakhurdia was released from prison several weeks later, the role of one of his father’s heroes seemed ready-made for him. A year and a half after “Bloody Sunday,” he was to win the first free election in Georgian history, by a two-to-one margin.

For ordinary Soviets, the Tbilisi tragedy became a chilling reminder of just how easily democratic reforms could be reversed. It was a lesson driven home a few weeks later, by an even greater tragedy on the other side of the Communist world.




BEIJING

May 17, 1989


“WE SALUTE THE AMBASSADOR OF DEMOCRACY,” read the placards in Tiananmen Square, the symbolic heart of the world’s most populous nation. “In the Soviet Union, They Have Gorbachev. What Do We Have?”

When Mikhail Gorbachev decided to put an end to three decades of enmity between the Soviet Union and China, he could scarcely have imagined the turmoil he would unleash. During the course of his three-day stay in Beijing, authority on the streets of the Chinese capital had passed from the “People’s government” to the people themselves. The ostensible purpose of the visit was overshadowed by the biggest display of popular defiance in the history of Communist China. On the eve of Gorbachev’s arrival, several thousand students began a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square to publicize their demand for democratic reforms. By the day he left, the protest had spread to dozens of provincial cities. In Beijing alone more than a million people poured into the streets to express support for the students and call for the removal of unpopular Chinese leaders, beginning with Deng Xiaoping.

The demonstrators represented every conceivable walk of life. There were schoolchildren and steelworkers, bankers and bellhops, diplomats and doctors, artists and artisans. There were contingents from the training school of the Public Security Bureau, the Chinese secret police, and the Peopie’s Liberation Army. Even Beijing’s notorious criminal gangs, the liumang, took part in the festivities, declaring a moratorium on petty crime for the duration of the protest and acting as the self-appointed guardians of public order.

The protesters arrived in the center of the city on bicycles and pickups, in trucks and buses, by taxi and on foot. As they marched down the Avenue of Heavenly Peace, past the luxury hotels that were the sign of China’s explosive economic growth, and the entrance to the Forbidden City, where Deng and other Chinese leaders had their residences, to Tiananmen Square, the normally drab city became the backdrop for an astonishing political carnival. A host of sounds filled the air: the sirens of ambulances evacuating weakened hunger strikers from the square, the applause of bystanders, the drumbeats of marching bands, firecrackers, bicycle bells, and chants of “Down with corruption” and “We want democracy.” There were cries of “Deng Xiaoping, go and play bridge,” a reference to the favorite pastime of the ailing eighty-four-year-old leader. One group of protesters climbed to the roof of the History Museum, overlooking the hundred-acre square, and erected large banners reading “We Are the Soul of China” and “Perseverance Is Victory.”

It was a Communist regime’s worst nightmare, a popular uprising embracing all sections of society. The masses were symbolically reoccupying the square where Mao Zedong, standing on top of Tiananmen Gate, had proclaimed the People’s Republic on October 1, 1949. A secular shrine bordered by the Forbidden City and the Great Hall of the People, Tiananmen Square had played a fateful role in Chinese history. It had been the setting for nationalist riots and fanatical Red Guard rallies, military parades and student protests, solemn state funerals and dissident demonstrations. But it had never witnessed scenes like this.

Watching the sea of humanity pour into the square, I was reminded of the early days of the Solidarity movement. The size of this demonstration was several times larger than anything I had seen in Poland, even during the pope’s visit, but the exuberance and infectious gaiety of the crowds were very similar. After decades of passively submitting to totalitarian rule, the people were rebelling against their masters. The artificial barriers between different social classes and different age-groups were being swept away, allowing a pulverized and atomized society to discover its own strength. What had long been banned was suddenly permitted. As in Poland in August 1980, there was a sense of sheer improbability about what was happening that left people rubbing their eyes in disbelief.

The protests forced extensive changes in Gorbachev’s schedule, beginning with the arrival ceremony, which was moved from Tiananmen Square to the airport. The switch was made so abruptly that protocol officials were unable to roll out the usual red carpet. On his second day in Beijing, Gorbachev had to be smuggled into the Great Hall of the People through an obscure service entrance in the rear because the rest of the building was under siege by students. Planned excursions to the Forbidden City and the Imperial Palace were canceled. On the final day of the visit hundreds of journalists battled their way into the Great Hall for a promised end-of-summit press conference, only to learn that Gorbachev was stranded at his official residence, six miles away. There was only one solution. Since the Soviet leader was unable to reach his own press conference, the conference would have to go to him. The resulting obstacle chase, through streets filled with banner-waving demonstrators, was one of the zanier highlights of my journalistic career.

All semblance of organization and protocol had irretrievably broken down. We poured out of the Great Hall, followed closely by a small army of Soviet and Chinese officials, interpreters, and technicians. A motley fleet of bicycles, rickshaws, and minivans was commandeered for the mad dash across town. Cheered on by a carload of Gorbachev’s security men, a dozen of us piled onto the back of a passing pickup. “Follow us,” the KGB men shouted as they careered down an avenue filled with chanting protesters. Entering the spirit of the occasion, one of the security men held up a photo of Gorbachev and began flashing victory signs at the delighted demonstrators. Miraculously a path opened up through the million-strong multitude. Gripping the back of the pickup, we made a triumphant entrance to the government guesthouse where Gorbachev was staying. Soldiers in white gloves treated us as if we had arrived in a chauffeur-driven limousine, saluting smartly and waving our truck down a long driveway lined with artificial lakes and ornamental pagodas. Our friendly KGB escorts never made it to the news conference. Their decrepit Soviet Lada overheated in a gigantic traffic jam. They were last seen gazing disconsolately under the hood as steam billowed from the radiator.

While many Chinese students regarded Gorbachev as a symbol of democracy, he was careful not to say anything that would embarrass his official hosts. He used the press conference to express the hope that the crisis would be resolved through “dialogue” and “negotiation.” But he also seemed to chide the protesters for wanting to move too far, too fast. “We, too, have hotheads who want to renovate socialism overnight,” he told Chinese officials at one point. “But it doesn’t happen like that in real life. Only in fairy tales.”




===


GORBACHEV HAD GOOD REASON not to gloat over the misfortunes of the Chinese Communists, for he had numerous troubles of his own. After four years in power, the length of an American presidential term, his political authority was rapidly eroding. He could no longer evade responsibility for the economic cataclysm hanging over the Soviet Union by denouncing the misguided policies of his predecessors. He himself was also to blame.

His political position seemed secure enough. Shortly before leaving for Beijing, Gorbachev had succeeded in purging the Central Committee of one-quarter of its members, replacing representatives of the old guard with his own supporters. In other respects, however, his policies were beginning to unravel. Perestroika contained within it the seeds of its own destruction.

By introducing elements of democracy into a totalitarian state, Gorbachev had released destructive centrifugal forces that were threatening to tear the Soviet Union apart. The upheavals in Georgia were a symptom of long-smoldering nationalist grievances that were spreading around the fringes of the old Russian empire and threatening to spill over into the traditional Slavic heartland. The relaxation of central controls had also had a devastating impact on the economy. The old rules had ceased to apply, but no new rules had been devised to take their place. The Soviet Union had entered a kind of economic twilight zone, where nobody could be sure of anything. The once-rigid five-year plan had been reduced to a catalog of empty promises. The ruble had plummeted in value because of a succession of catastrophic budget deficits. Since prices were still controlled by the state, the result was long lines and rationing by scarcity. Unable to rely on the promises of the planners and mistrusting their own currency, consumers and producers had retreated to a primitive barter system.

Gorbachev was paying the price for allowing political reform to outpace economic reform. The Chinese leaders, by contrast, had made dramatic strides toward a market economy but continued to deny freedom to their citizens. Both variants of reform were inherently unstable. The students who surged onto the streets of Beijing during Gorbachev’s visit were a perfect illustration of the disparity between economic progress and political stagnation. It was no longer possible to seal the Middle Kingdom from the outside world. Thanks to Deng’s modernization campaign and “open-door policy,” tens of thousands of Chinese students had studied at universities in the United States and Europe. Millions more had been affected by the information revolution that had swept across Chinese campuses. The more the students learned about the rest of the world, the more critical they became of the defects in their own society and the abuse of power by the Communist elite. Li Chaojie, a philosophy student at Beijing University, was speaking for many of his fellow protesters when he told me: “In China, power means money, the ability to do whatever you want. Corruption is everywhere. That is why we need democracy: in order to make those in power responsible for their actions.”




By the time Gorbachev arrived in Beijing, it was clear not only that communism had failed but that reform communism had also failed. China and the Soviet Union had taken opposite paths to reform, and both were in deep crisis. The Chinese reforms ignored the yearning for freedom; the Soviet reforms ignored the yearning for a better life.

In some respects, the course of the two reform efforts was preordained. Gorbachev was haunted by the memory of the 1964 Kremlin coup against Nikita Khrushchev, the last reformer to hold the office of general secretary. When the nomenklatura judged that Khrushchev had gone too far, they simply got rid of him, and nobody made the slightest protest. In order to prevent the same thing from happening to him, Gorbachev attempted to create new political institutions to counterbalance the power of the party. By unleashing the forces of glasnost, he ensured that the public would know what was going on and have the ability to react. “I often said to my colleagues when we began perestroika: ‘If we do not think up something new, we will meet the same fate as Khrushchev,’ ” Gorbachev later acknowledged. “That was when we started on the first free elections.”




For the Chinese Communists, the Gorbachev tactic of arousing public opinion against the nomenklatura was frighteningly reminiscent of their Cultural Revolution. Chairman Mao had used a similar strategy in the mid-sixties, when he saw his dream of a socialist utopia begin to fade. The excesses of the Red Guards had left thousands of senior Chinese Communists, Deng included, with an abiding horror of spontaneous mass movements that could not be strictly controlled by the party. The fact that Gorbachev intended perestroika to be a peaceful revolution mattered little to Deng, who feared a general descent into chaos and anarchy. The memory of how he had been forced to make a humiliating self-criticism, stripped of all his leadership positions, separated from his family, and shipped off to the countryside was the most searing experience of his life, more terrible even than the Long March. His eldest son, a student at Beijing University, had been paralyzed from the waist down after leaping out of a fourth-floor window in an attempted suicide, while being persecuted by Red Guards.




Now that he was back in power, the quality that Deng prized above all else was stability.




As LONG AS GORBACHEV WAS IN BEIJING, the students were assured a measure of protection. Indeed, knowing that the government would hesitate to use violence against them while the world was watching, they had timed their protest to coincide with his visit. But the sense of security provided by the presence of thousands of foreign journalists and live television coverage of events in Tiananmen Square was illusory. It took the Chinese authorities less than thirty-six hours after Gorbachev’s departure to begin to reassert their control.

At 12:55 a.m., on Saturday, May 20, the loudspeakers in the square suddenly came to life with a hysterical tirade from Li Peng, the hard-line prime minister. Drowsy students emerged from their tents and buses to hear the man they considered their archenemy announce that martial law was being imposed on Beijing. His voice rising to a shriek, Li said that the leadership had decided to take “decisive and firm measures to put an end to the turmoil” and protect the socialist system in China. Troops had been authorized to use force to clear the square of hunger strikers and their supporters.

The speech was greeted by a deafening chorus of boos and chants of “Down with Li Peng,” “Long live democracy,” and “Victory belongs to us.” By the time the prime minister finished speaking, tens of thousands of demonstrators were defiantly singing the “Internationale” and flashing victory signs. They scrawled their response to martial law on a banner plastered across the Monument to People’s Heroes, just opposite the mausoleum housing Chairman Mao’s embalmed remains: “We Came Here on Our Feet; We Will Leave Only on Our Backs.”

The government followed up on its declaration of martial law by pulling the plug on live television coverage of the drama in Tiananmen Square. “Your task is over,” a Foreign Ministry official told CNN. “You came here to report on Gorbachev. Gorbachev is gone.” But when troops were sent to reoccupy the square, their path was blocked by makeshift barricades and human ramparts erected by tens of thousands of ordinary Beijing citizens.

Over the next few days the mood of the students switched repeatedly between fear, exhilaration, paranoia, exhaustion, elation, and back to fear again. Gangs of motorcyclists roared from one end of the city to the other to gather information on behalf of the hunger strikers. Many of the reports contradicted each other. The army was advancing. No, it was retreating. The reformers were winning, and Li Peng was about to resign. No, it was the hard-liners who were winning, and Zhao Ziyang, the liberal Communist Party chief sympathetic to the students, who was under house arrest.

Lost in all of this was the position of the diminutive eighty-four-year-old Communist who had rebounded from disgrace several times to become de facto emperor of China. It was Deng Xiaoping, the great survivor of Chinese politics, who would have the last word.




BEIJING

June 3–4, 1989


AS RUMORS FLEW AROUND THE CITY that the People’s Liberation Army was advancing on Tiananmen Square, thousands of Chinese students huddled around the base of the Monument to People’s Heroes. A rickety white foam-and-plaster “Goddess of Democracy” rose high above their heads, facing the huge portrait of Chairman Mao at the entrance to the Forbidden City. Raising their right hands, the students swore a solemn oath: “For the sake of our country’s democratization, for the sake of our country’s real prosperity, for the sake of preventing our country from being usurped by a small band of conspirators… I will devote my young life to protect Tiananmen and the Republic. I may be decapitated, my blood may flow, but the people’s square will not be lost. We are willing to lose our young lives to fight to the very last person.”




Several miles away, in a special nuclear-safe command center in the Fragrant Hills district of the city’s western suburbs, China’s octogenarian leaders awaited news of the military operation against their own people.


 Deng Xiaoping later insisted that China’s future would have been “too terrible to imagine” had he not taken “firm action.”


 How could twenty-year-old students presume to know better than a veteran revolutionary, a man who had accompanied Mao on the Long March and survived the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution?

Over the past three weeks Deng had been humiliated in front of Gorbachev and the whole world. Not only had the students refused to allow him to revel in his greatest diplomatic triumph—the first Sino-Soviet summit in more than three decades—but they had publicly demanded his resignation. In an unsubtle pun on his given name, Xiaoping, which sounds like the Mandarin for “little bottle,” they had smashed bottles on the pavements outside the Great Hall of the People. A decade earlier students had paraded through the streets of Beijing carrying glass bottles to express their support for Deng in his struggle against the ultraradical Gang of Four.

The issue now was very simple. Who had the greater political legitimacy: the students or the Communist Party leadership? The answer to that question was equally obvious. He who controlled Tiananmen Square, the symbolic heart of China, had traditionally claimed the right to represent “the people.” It all boiled down to a question of power.

Shortly after the students swore to uphold democracy, a long column of tanks and armored cars started to move on the square from the west. Before going into battle, the troops had stood in front of their commanders and taken an oath of their own, to uphold law and order and prevent a recurrence of political “turmoil” in China. They were under orders to “recover the square” at any cost. This time they would not permit themselves to be deflected by unarmed protesters blocking their path as had happened just two weeks previously.

The first serious clashes occurred at a traffic circle at Gongzhufen, about ten blocks west of the square. As the motorized column forced its way through a barricade of buses and overturned taxis, demonstrators began pelting the troops with bricks and stones. The troops opened fire, first over the heads of the crowds but then directly at them. Enraged civilians grabbed hold of a couple of soldiers and tore them to pieces. A few blocks later the cycle of violence repeated itself, this time with greater fury. The Avenue of Heavenly Peace became a hellish battleground: flaming barricades; soldiers shooting indiscriminately from their AK-47s; panic-stricken civilians screaming abuse; army vehicles set alight with Molotov cocktails; bodies sprawled everywhere; the continuous wail of ambulance sirens. Eyewitnesses reported that the troops lost all sense of proportion, raking nearby apartment buildings with gunfire and slashing the dead with their bayonets.

By 2:30 a.m. the troops had sealed off the square from three sides, leaving a small gap in the southeast corner, through which the students would be permitted to flee. A well-known rock star from Taiwan, Hou Dejian, negotiated with the army for a peaceful withdrawal. “The students sang the Internationale, their hands tightly clasped together,” recalled Chai Linh, who had been elected commander of Tiananmen Square by her fellow students. “We were crying.”


 As the students made their retreat, chanting, “The People’s Army should not shoot at the people,” they were savagely beaten by riot police with long nightsticks. The troops moved in behind them, sweeping aside the tent city that had been home to the hunger strikers for the past month and knocking down the “Goddess of Democracy.” Later the army claimed that there were no killings within the narrow confines of the square. Nevertheless, it was clear to everybody that several thousand deaths had occurred within the immediate vicinity. Observing the carnage from the seventh floor of the Beijing Hotel, on the northeast corner of the square, the veteran American journalist Harrison Salisbury was reminded of Chairman Mao’s dictum: “All power comes from the barrel of a gun.”




Determined not to allow its prize to slip from its grasp, the People’s Liberation Army established machine-gun posts around the square, and mowed down anybody who got too close. Later that morning Radio Beijing boasted that Tiananmen had been cleansed of “trash” and “returned to the people.” As far as China’s Communist rulers were concerned, they and “the people” were one.




MOSCOW

May 25-June 9, 1989


THE MARQUIS DE CUSTINE VISITED RUSSIA in 1839. Although he spent less than three months in St. Petersburg and Moscow, the French aristocrat wrote a travelogue that some have hailed as the best book ever written about Russia by a foreigner. A habitué of the literary salons of Paris, anxious to establish a reputation as an outstanding writer, the marquis was snobbish, opinionated, and frequently condescending. Unlike his more celebrated contemporary Alexis de Tocqueville, who had toured America a few years earlier, Custine had little sympathy for the country that provided him with his material. But his observations about Russian despotism—a brutally repressive political system that had created what Custine described as a “nation of mutes”—contained insights that have stood the test of time.






Nations are mute only for a time—sooner or later the day of discussion arises; religion, policy, all speak and all explain themselves in the end. Thus, as soon as speech is restored to this silenced people, one will hear so much dispute that an astonished world will think it has returned to the confusion of Babel…. In a nation governed like this one, passions boil a long time before breaking out; while the danger approaches from hour to hour, the evil is prolonged, and the crisis delayed. Even our grandchildren may not see the explosion; but we can say to-day that explosion is inevitable, while we cannot predict the time.








One and a half centuries later, when Mikhail Gorbachev granted the Soviet Union its first real parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies, many of these prophecies were realized. In Custine’s phrase, the “day of discussion” had arrived.

It came in the form of a torrent of words that brought a country of 280 million people to a virtual standstill. For thirteen days Russians and Ukrainians, Balts and Uzbeks, Armenians and Azeris took part in a festival of free speech, the likes of which they had never seen before. Industrial production sank from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka as coal miners, factory managers, and government bureaucrats tuned in to the Kremlin soap opera. The debates were televised live, so there was no question of government censorship and no way of predicting what would happen next. At the beginning of the opening session a bearded actor from Latvia hijacked the proceedings by striding to the podium to call for a “minute’s silence in memory of those who died in Tbilisi.” Gorbachev and other Politburo members seemed taken aback by this unscripted intervention but were nonetheless forced to their feet.

Over the course of the next two weeks the deputies competed with one another to shatter long-standing political taboos. Everything was a matter for public discussion: from the war in Afghanistan to the spread of AIDS to the privileges of the Communist elite to the nature of the one-party system itself.

Every day brought a fresh sensation, the toppling of some hitherto sacrosanct Communist icon or a dramatic clash between reformers and conservatives. A truck driver from Kharkov accused Gorbachev of falling victim to flattery and allowing his wife, Raisa, to gain too much influence. He sarcastically compared the Soviet leader with the “great Napoleon,” who, under the influence of assorted sycophants, including his consort, Josephine, had transformed France from a republic into an empire.


 An Olympic weight-lifting champion launched an all-out attack on the KGB, which he said bore responsibility for “the destruction or persecution of millions of people.” He called on the security organs to vacate Lubyanka Prison, where people who were “the pride and flower of our nations” were tortured and hurt.




Not to be outdone, a historian, Yuri Karyakin, demanded that Lenin’s body be removed from its mausoleum by the Kremlin wall, the pantheon of Communist heroes. “Tanks roll across Red Square and the body vibrates. Scientists and artists touch up his face. This is a nightmare. It’s all done for the sake of appearances. There is nothing there.”


 His words produced a stunned silence in the normally noisy hall.

One of the most riveting exchanges occurred when General Rodionov was called upon to explain his actions in Tbilisi on the night of April 9. Jeered by the radicals and cheered by the conservatives, the general depicted himself as the victim of a Stalinist witch-hunt by the mass media. He described the demonstration in front of the parliament building as a “provocation” and poured scorn on Georgian leaders for attempting to blame the military for what had happened. Minutes later the deputies were treated to an emotional speech from Patiashvili, who had resigned as Georgian first secretary immediately after the tragedy. Choking back tears, Patiashvili accused Rodionov of lying to him about the “degree of cruelty” that would be used against the population and concealing the use of entrenching tools and toxic gas.




Mixed in with the rhetorical fireworks and occasional blasphemy were grim facts about life in the Soviet Union that had long been concealed from ordinary people. Revelations about environmental catastrophes, abysmal standards of public health, and economic lunacy poured out of the congress. An eminent biologist reported that 20 percent of the population lived in ecological disaster zones, where every third person could be expected to develop cancer. In some parts of the country infant mortality exceeded African levels. One-fifth of all the sausages in the Soviet Union and 42 percent of dairy products for children contained poisonous chemicals.


 An agricultural specialist complained that the Soviet Union produced ten times as many combines and five times as many tractors as the United States but only half the amount of wheat. Distinguished scientists were obliged to do their calculations on abacuses because of the shortage of computers and even electronic calculators.




For sheer political theater, the first session of the Congress of People’s Deputies offered a breathtaking spectacle. First, there was the setting itself, a modernistic, glass-fronted hall in the heart of the Kremlin, overlooking the golden onion domes of the fifteenth-century Cathedral of the Assumption. Then there was the plot: Democracy comes to the one-party state. Finally there was the extraordinary cast of characters: Communist Party leaders and former political prisoners, Red Army generals and black-robed Orthodox priests, poets and nuclear scientists. Most of the Soviet elite took part in the work of the congress.

The action in the lobbies was as interesting as the speeches from the podium. After yelling at one another across an opera-size stage dominated by a huge statue of Lenin, the deputies would stream out into the marble-tiled lobbies to be confronted by cameras and microphones. For a press corps whose knowledge of Soviet leaders had traditionally been restricted to what little they chose to reveal in Pravda, it was a dream come true. In the space of a few hours a moderately energetic reporter could pick up quotes from the head of the KGB, Andrei Sakharov, Boris Yeltsin, a couple of cosmonauts, half a dozen Politburo members, and a representative sampling of Soviet intellectuals. Occasionally Gorbachev himself made an appearance in the halls, provoking a mass stampede. Television cameramen would shove legislators aside in a mad dash to get within shouting distance of the general secretary, bashing one another with their metal stepladders and long boom mikes.

Such were the birth pangs of Soviet democracy. What we reporters were not only witnessing but actively helping to accelerate with our undignified behavior was the demythologizing of Kremlin power. Communist demigods were being transformed into ordinary mortals before our eyes. Soviet politics, which had previously been restricted to a tiny elite, was now taking place in full view of the entire world. There was no more mystery.

It was a key moment in the downfall of communism and the eventual disintegration of the Soviet Union. The Communist Party’s monolithic facade was the primary source of its political strength. Once Soviet politicians began speaking with many voices, allowing their own power bases to take precedence over party discipline, the cement that had been holding together a vast multinational country rapidly became unstuck.




OF THE OUTSIZE PERSONALITIES who dominated the First Congress of People’s Deputies, two men stood out: Mikhail Gorbachev and Andrei Sakharov. They were the antipodes around whom the debate swirled. This was a clash of characters, rather than political opinions. Deep down inside, they shared a similar vision for their country. They wanted Russia to abandon its centuries-old messianic complex—the tsars had referred to Moscow as the Third Rome—and become part of the mainstream of world civilization. The question was how to achieve this grandiose goal, a problem that had preoccupied Russian reformers from Peter the Great onward.

Gorbachev was the supreme tactician. He proceeded by stealth, taking one step backward and two steps sideways for every one and a half steps forward. He was ready to make an alliance with anyone, in order to secure a temporary political advantage. He was adept at hiding his true intentions beneath a fog of Communist rhetoric; he redefined the word “socialism” until it was deprived of any practical meaning. He was the master conjurer and illusionist. At times he was so clever that he even outsmarted himself. His intricate sleights of hand left him dizzy and disoriented, unsure about the direction in which he was moving or whether to support or condemn the revolution that he himself had unleashed. The physical strain of keeping the show on the road was so overwhelming that it was easy to lose sight of broader political objectives. After presiding over several hours of raucous parliamentary debate at the congress, he would retire to the Presidium Room in utter exhaustion.




Sakharov, by contrast, was the ultimate man of principle. He was an antipolitician, who rejected the “art of the possible” in favor of a policy of speaking the truth at all times. He was impervious to the things that motivate most politicians: power, popularity, and the prospect of high office. He was unmoved by the opinion of his fellow parliamentarians or even his constituents. Hardened by decades of official persecution and the ostracism of many of his fellow scientists, he lived his life in accordance with a set of humanitarian values that he had worked out for himself. He had no interest in compromise, coalition building, or finding a common language with his political opponents. He did, and said, what he thought was right. His health had suffered as a result of the lack of proper medical attention during his six-year exile in the city of Gorky and several long hunger strikes. He was a poor orator, speaking haltingly and frequently becoming flustered. He lacked Gorbachev’s debating skills or Yeltsin’s talent for exciting crowds. But there was a clarity to Sakharov’s thinking—the ability to go to the heart of a problem—that is the hallmark of a great scientist. As the debate raged around him, he would appear to drift off into his own self-contained world. But his mind continued to whir. All of a sudden he would snap out of his reverie and march to the rostrum, to make the essential point that had eluded everyone else.

Since Gorbachev had telephoned Sakharov in Gorky in December 1986 to inform him of his release from internal exile, there had been little personal contact between the two men. Their dealings with each other at the congress mirrored the stormy relationship between the father of perestroika and the pro-democracy forces he had let loose. At first Gorbachev treated Sakharov respectfully, protecting him from what one radical deputy called the “aggressive-obedient majority” and ensuring that he had ample time at the podium. The general secretary recognized the moral authority of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and wanted to tap into it. He viewed Sakharov as a one-man “loyal opposition,” who could act as a political counterweight to the reactionaries and serve as a moderating influence on the radicals. As the congress wore on, however, Gorbachev became increasingly irritated with Sakharov and his constant moralizing.

There was a behind-the-scenes skirmish between the two men on June 1, halfway through the congress. Sakharov was concerned about the growing gap between words and deeds that was undermining public support for perestroika. Deciding that the time had come for a “frank talk,” he asked to see the general secretary at the end of the evening session. They sat down together on the edge of the vast stage, underneath the towering statue of Lenin. As was his custom, Sakharov went immediately to the heart of the matter, telling Gorbachev that public confidence in his leadership had dropped “almost to zero.” People were tired of listening to empty promises. The time had come to stop playing politics and decide, once and for all, whose side he was on.

“The country, and you personally, are at a crossroads. Either accelerate the process of change to the maximum, or try to retain the command-and-administer system in all of its aspects. In the first case, you will have to rely on the Left, and you’ll be able to count on the support of many brave and energetic people. In the second case, you know yourself whose support you’ll have, but they’ll never forgive you for backing perestroika.”




A week of boisterous debate had exhausted Gorbachev. “His usual smile for me—half kindly, half condescending—never once appeared on his face,” Sakharov later recalled. Gorbachev understood that the Soviet Union was facing a deepening crisis, but the kind of decisive action that Sakharov was demanding went against all his political instincts. For Gorbachev, politics was a constant compromise, a never-ending process of tacking one way and then another.

“I stand firmly for the ideas of perestroika,” he replied. “But I’m against running around like a chicken with its head cut off. We’ve seen many ‘big leaps,’ and the results have always been tragedy and backtracking. I know everything that’s being said about me. But I’m convinced the people will understand my policies.”

For Sakharov, the only way out of the crisis was to push the revolution begun by Gorbachev to its logical conclusion. That meant stripping the apparatchiks of their power and vesting supreme authority in a democratically elected parliament. He wanted the congress to adopt a Decree on Power, abolishing the one-party state, severely restricting the authority of the KGB, and paving the way for direct presidential elections. He pointed out that Gorbachev had never received a popular mandate and had never even faced a contested election. (A block of 100 seats in the 2,250-seat congress had been reserved for Communist Party nominees, led by the general secretary.)

“I’m very concerned that the only political result of the congress will be your achievement of unlimited personal power,” Sakharov told Gorbachev. “Besides, you’re vulnerable to pressure, to blackmail by people who control the channels of information. Even now, they’re saying you took bribes in Stavropol, 160,000 rubles has been mentioned. A provocation? Then they’ll find something else. Only election by the people can protect you from attack.”

“I’m absolutely clean. And I’ll never submit to blackmail. Not from the right, not from the left!”

At this point Gorbachev would almost certainly have won a popular election. Virtually everyone, including his opponents, conceded that he was irreplaceable. But he could not break ranks with his Politburo colleagues, most of whom were horrified by the thought of running for office, so he resisted Sakharov’s suggestion. When his closest political ally, Aleksandr Yakovlev, advised him to give up the post of general secretary in order to become president, he replied that the party was a “monster” that must not be permitted to escape from his grasp.




Gorbachev could never decide whether he was leader of the party, or leader of the country, or, as Sakharov put it, “the leader of the nomenklatura or the leader of perestroika.” The contradiction remained unresolved until the very end, fatally undermining his authority. In the eyes of the apparat, he was a destroyer. In the eyes of the people, he was first and foremost a Communist.




THE FOLLOWING DAY the “aggressive-obedient majority” went on the offensive. Like Sakharov, the apparatchiks wanted to know whose side Gorbachev was on. Their instrument for getting the general secretary to reveal his hand was an emotional speech by a legless Afghan war veteran, attacking Sakharov for lack of patriotism.

Sergei Chervonopisky evoked an immediate wave of sympathy from the hall as he hobbled painfully to the rostrum on his crutches. He began by denouncing the shameful treatment of the former “fighting internationalists” and the primitive state of the Soviet prosthetics industry, which remained “at the level of the Stone Age.” He depicted the Tbilisi tragedy as an anti-military “provocation” and accused the liberal media of carrying out an “unprecedented persecution” of the Soviet army. He then read out an open letter from a group of paratroopers denouncing Sakharov for his “irresponsible, provocative” statements about the war in Afghanistan.


 The Nobel laureate had claimed in a newspaper interview that Soviet helicopters had opened fire on Soviet soldiers to prevent them from deserting to the enemy.

Inspired by thunderous applause from the conservatives, Chervonopisky now turned his sights on Gorbachev. Noting that more than 80 percent of the deputies were Communists, he said the time had come to pin their colors to the mast. He accused the general secretary of failing to even mention the word “communism” in his report to the congress.

“I am a convinced opponent of sloganeering and window dressing, but today I will proclaim three words for which I believe we all, without exception, must fight.”

Here the speaker paused dramatically. Expressing ideology in the form of a sacred trilogy had an almost mystical appeal for Russian conservatives. Everyone in the hall was familiar with the reactionary tsarist slogan—“Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationalism”—and they wondered what new rallying cry the disabled war veteran could have in mind. Chervonopisky pronounced his triple formula slowly and deliberately: “State, Motherland, Communism.”

The three words brought most in the hall to their feet, for the loudest ovation of the congress. Politburo members, seated discreetly to one side of the hall, joined in with enthusiasm. At first Gorbachev remained seated, applauding politely. But as the cheering turned to a rhythmic clapping, he too rose. Remaining seated required an almost physical effort of willpower. “I felt some powerful force propelling me up out of my seat, compelling me to join the standing ovation,” the radical deputy Anatoly Sobchak recalled later. Determined not to succumb to the “mass hysteria,” he grabbed the armrests of his chair. “I remembered that feeling from my army service, marching to a military band. But that was only a parade. Here it was more like a battle.”




Attempting to defend himself, Sakharov went to the rostrum to say that he had the greatest respect for the ordinary Soviet soldier. His bony head cocked slightly to one side, his words almost whistling through the gaps in his teeth, he ignored the growing uproar as best he could. “The war in Afghanistan was a criminal one, a criminal adventure….” (Here he raised his voice above the shrieks of derision that poured down on him from all sides.) “A criminal adventure undertaken by unknown persons. We do not know who bears responsibility for this enormous crime against the motherland. This crime cost the lives of almost a million Afghans, a war of destruction was waged against an entire people.”

The conservatives were shouting so loudly now that Sakharov could hardly be heard. Few deputies were listening to what he had to say anyway. He seemed a beaten, dejected figure, as isolated as he had ever been. Still he pressed ahead. “I came out against sending Soviet troops into Afghanistan, and for this I was exiled to Gorky.” Noise in the hall, shouts of “Apologize,” “Shame on you.” “Precisely this was the main reason, I am proud of this….” The words were almost drowned out by jeers and whistles. “I am proud of this exile to Gorky, as a decoration that I received…. I do not apologize to the entire Soviet army, as I have not insulted it. I was insulting neither the Soviet army nor the Soviet soldier.” Noise in the hall. “I was accusing those who gave this criminal order to send Soviet troops into Afghanistan.” General pandemonium, jeers, chants of “Away with Sakharov,” scattered applause.

After Sakharov had finished, the “aggressive-obedient majority” set about him with a vengeance. One by one deputies who had remained silent during the invasion of Afghanistan climbed to the rostrum to accuse Sakharov of slander and dishonor. It was as if they were justifying their own subservience by venomously attacking the one man in the Soviet Union who had had the courage to speak out. The verbal lynching was reminiscent of the way Yeltsin had been treated after daring to criticize Gorbachev and Ligachev at the Politburo meeting eighteen months earlier. Nobody came to Sakharov’s aid; the radicals were stunned into silence. Although Gorbachev seemed embarrassed by what was happening, covering his face with his hands, he did nothing to stop the attacks.

The onslaught reached a climax with a vituperative speech by a teacher from Uzbekistan. Her voice choked with tears, Tursun Kazakova said Sakharov had canceled out all his previous services to the nation “by this one action.” “You have insulted the entire army, the entire people, all our fallen who have given up their lives,” she screamed. “I have nothing but contempt. You should be ashamed!”

This hysterical performance brought those in the hall to their feet for yet another standing ovation. This time, however, Gorbachev remained in his seat.

As long as the Soviet Union remained a semifree country, with a semidemocratic parliament, Sakharov continued to obey the dictates of his own conscience. He trusted the good sense of the millions of ordinary Soviet citizens who were following the proceedings on television. He was right about that. As a result of the congress, Sakharov achieved an almost heroic stature. Letters and telegrams of support poured into his apartment on the Moscow ring road and the Academy of Sciences, which had attempted to block his nomination.

A few weeks after the congress the country’s most popular newspaper, Argumenty i Fakty, ran a poll among its twenty million readers to nominate the “best deputy.” Sakharov topped the list, Yeltsin was second, and Gorbachev was a distant seventeenth. The general secretary was so annoyed by this result that he attempted to fire the editor, who refused to resign. Whether Gorbachev liked it or not, glasnost had come of age.




TWO DAYS AFTER THE COMMUNIST WORLD had been shaken by the earthquakes in China and Poland, Mikhail Gorbachev sought inspiration at the shrine of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. When the congress broke for lunch, deputies were invited to join the Soviet leadership in making a ritual pilgrimage to the mausoleum, in Red Square, where Lenin’s body had lain in state for six decades. In the company of the international press corps, Gorbachev led the Politburo on the half mile hike through the Kremlin grounds.

Surrounded by a moving wall of bodyguards and television cameras, his wife, Raisa, by his side, Gorbachev was his usual ebullient self as he headed for the Kremlin’s ancient Spassky Gate. He seemed to relish all the attention. For all its rowdiness and unpredictability, the first Congress of People’s Deputies had represented an unquestioned political triumph for the father of glasnost. He had dominated the proceedings from the very beginning, alternately charming and cajoling the deputies, making up the rules as he went along, doing everything he could to steer the unruly congress in the direction he wanted. For someone who had risen through the ranks of a totalitarian state and had no experience of democratic debate, it was an amazing performance. Gorbachev took to parliamentary democracy instinctively. He knew how to twist arms, make deals, bend rules, win votes, exploit the media. He could outtalk, outmaneuver, and outargue everyone else in the room. Thanks to his ability to think fast on his feet, he was usually two or three steps ahead of his political opponents. He was also incredibly persistent. He understood that nothing is ever final in politics and that the political struggle continues even when it appears to be over. He was the great improviser, the Houdini of Soviet politics, the statesman with nine lives.

The rest of the Politburo fell in line behind Gorbachev as he strode past the palaces and cathedrals of the Kremlin, waving cheerfully at astonished tourists. The contrast between the charismatic Soviet leader and these bureaucratic drones was stunning. They walked clustered together in a grim silence, fending off attempts by reporters to ask questions about events in China and Poland. It was enough to look at their somber, melancholy faces to guess what was running through their minds. Gorbachev may have come into his element, but their world was falling apart. The powers and privileges that they had worked all their lives to achieve were being stripped away from them, as rival centers of authority appeared in the country. During the past few days they had been forced to observe the debates in the congress from the wing of the vast hall, rather than the traditional place of honor on the presidium. It was a bewildering, humiliating experience.

For several months now, as Gorbachev acquired the status of an international superstar, other Soviet leaders had felt themselves increasingly left out in the cold. “We felt some kind of zone, or curtain, separating him from other members of the Politburo,” Vitaly Vorotnikov wrote in his memoirs. “We believed in Gorbachev for a very, very long time. We pinned our hopes on him, and were unable to imagine what kind of paths he would lead us down. Alas, we realized what was happening far too late. [By that time], the pseudodemocratic train had gained such speed that it had become impossible to stop.” Half in admiration, half in disgust, Vorotnikov cited Gorbachev’s unique ability to create a rhetorical mist “so that each of the opposite sides began to think that the gensek supported its position.”




The congress may not have been democratic enough for Sakharov and his supporters. For oligarchs like Vorotnikov, it was far too democratic. They were losing their ability to control events. During the breaks they gathered backstage, in the old Presidium Room, to grumble about the antics of the radicals and express alarm about the direction in which the country was headed. Gorbachev’s chief of staff later wrote that he had never seen Politburo members look so alarmed. “Most of them realized that a door had just been opened, and a motley crowd had burst through it. They were frightened by the kind of sentiments the crowd was voicing in front of the entire nation.”




It was a decisive moment. Everyone understood that the genie of freedom had escaped from the bottle and that only massive repression would succeed in stuffing it back in. The bloodshed in Tiananmen Square and the revolution by ballot box that was under way in Poland had crystallized the options facing Gorbachev. In the phrase of one of his Communist Party aides, he now stood at “a political and moral crossroads.”


 His revolution from above had become a revolution from below. He could permit the revolution to continue, in the knowledge that reformers like himself would ultimately be swept away, or he could use force to stop the revolution in its tracks. That would mean abandoning the hope of radical economic reform for another generation and risking an all-out confrontation with the West.




LED BY GORBACHEV, the Politburo members passed through the fortified Spassky Gate, with its four-sided clock and crenellated green spire, topped by a red star, onto the cobblestoned vastness of Red Square. Still fending off reporters’ questions, they marched into the boxlike red marble mausoleum in the center of the square. The KGB honor guards snapped to attention as Lenin’s modern-day heirs disappeared inside the black marble doors and descended into a dimly lit basement, where the temperature was kept at fifty-nine degrees Fahrenheit.

The body of the dead Bolshevik lay on a bed, beneath a bulletproof glass shield that had withstood several physical assaults, including a visitor who blew himself up with homemade explosives in 1973. Only Lenin’s waxlike hands and head—which housed a brain purportedly 25 percent larger than that of the average human—were visible above the blanket. Hidden wires connected the body to an underground control room, where teams of scientists monitored its condition twenty-four hours a day. (The Russian press later claimed that most of the corpse was moldy, following a bungled restoration job during World War II, when it was evacuated to Siberia to prevent it from falling into the hands of the advancing Nazis.) The subterranean complex also included a secret workout room, where KGB officers were encouraged to get into shape, after a hard day guarding Vladimir Ilyich’s physical remains.

The Soviet leaders filed past the body in an atmosphere of hushed reverence. As they emerged into the sunlight, they ran into the mob of journalists and cameramen, yelling questions about the events in Beijing. Gorbachev hemmed and hawed, saying that he was watching developments in China with “concern” but that every government was responsible for its own actions.

“At the press conference in China, I said we are in favor of a dialogue between the state and Party organs, working people, and students. The answer to these questions can only be decided through dialogue. This is also my position now.”




The equivocal position adopted by Gorbachev provoked much grumbling from the radicals. Anxious to forestall similar tragedies at home, they demanded a forthright condemnation of Beijing and a clear definition of the circumstances in which it was permissible to use force to break up demonstrations. Yeltsin described the actions of the Chinese army as “a crime against humanity.” Sakharov called for the withdrawal of the Soviet ambassador from Beijing. The gensek, however, refused to make things any clearer. He was determined to preserve his freedom of maneuver.

It was Gorbachev’s fate to operate in the shadowy world between politics and morality, where right and wrong are always relative and everything depends on the final result. In the cutthroat world of Kremlin politics, morality was a luxury that a statesman could ill afford. The primary goal was political survival. Had Gorbachev taken the kind of absolutist moral position favored by Sakharov, he would almost certainly have been stabbed in the back by his own colleagues.

At the same time, he did remain true to certain basic principles. Although he dabbled with violence himself and closed his eyes to its use by other Soviet leaders, he never permitted a forcible reversal of the political processes that he had set in motion. In 1989 he still had the power to stop the Second Russian Revolution in its tracks, before it accelerated out of control and the Soviet empire disintegrated. But he deliberately failed to use this power because he feared it would only lead to massive bloodshed and smother all hope of reform for another generation. He rejected the Tiananmen option. He permitted the revolution to proceed, behind a fog of rhetoric that confused supporters and opponents alike. The creation of this verbal smoke screen was arguably his greatest achievement.

Gorbachev’s resolve and political skill were soon to be put to the test by a series of dramatic events in Eastern Europe.




WARSAW

June 4, 1989


WHILE THE CHINESE PEOPLE’S ARMY was suppressing the last vestiges of popular resistance around Tiananmen Square, another Communist regime on the other side of the world was submitting its record to the judgment of the electorate. For the first time in more than forty years, the citizens of Poland had been granted the right to express their opinions through the ballot box. They were using their newfound freedom to deliver a massive rebuff to their self-appointed rulers.

The stark choice confronting Communist leaders, in the face of mounting popular discontent, was summed up by two evocative sounds. There was the rat-tat-tat of machine guns in China, as security forces splattered unarmed protesters with bullets. And there was the scrrratch-scrratch-scratch of voters’ pens in Poland crossing out the names of Communist parliamentary candidates. It was the choice between suppression of the people and submission to the people, dictatorship and democracy, violence and nonviolence. It had its clearest expression on June 4, 1989.

The Polish Communists had already tried mass repression, and it had failed to resolve any of Poland’s underlying problems. Store shelves were no fuller than in December 1981, when Jaruzelski imposed martial law. Workers had not become more productive. Factories still churned out substandard goods that were practically impossible to sell on world markets; even the Soviets had complained about the quality. The foreign debt crisis was graver than ever. The environment had suffered further devastation, and standards of public health had continued to decline. The psychological shock of martial law was rapidly wearing off. After a period of stunned resignation, strikes and other forms of protest were again becoming commonplace. The government was preparing a package of sweeping austerity measures, including large-scale layoffs and big price increases. Sooner or later another social explosion seemed inevitable.

In theory Jaruzelski still had the possibility of resorting to martial law once again, an option favored by Communist Party hard-liners. This time around, however, martial law would probably have to be accompanied by mass bloodshed. Repression on such a scale went against his own character and the trend of events in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev. Using force against the population would also kill off any prospect of radical economic reform.

It was here that the comparison with China broke down. In China the transition to free markets was already well under way when Deng Xiaoping sent tanks to crush the student protests. The chaos and confusion of the Cultural Revolution, coming on top of the disastrous Great Leap Forward, had produced a backlash within the Communist Party in favor of economic pragmatism. In Poland, by contrast, the reformers lacked a reliable political base, either inside or outside the ruling party. If Jaruzelski chose the path of violence, he would be forced to rely on the most reactionary wing of the Communist Party, which saw free enterprise as a mortal threat. Without popular support, there could be no reform and no chance of escaping the seemingly endless cycle of repression and revolt.

The alternative to repression was dialogue with the opposition. Jaruzelski decided to give Solidarity the chance of participating in discussions about Poland’s future in return for helping keep the peace. In order to carry out this U-turn, he had to quell a revolt from his own ranks. At a session of the policy-making Central Committee he and his key supporters silenced the critics by threatening to resign en masse.

The precise shape of the proposed Round Table and the placement of the guests became the subject of protracted negotiations. The finest carpenters in the land were commissioned to construct a huge doughnut-shaped table, with accommodation for up to sixty people. This magnificent piece of furniture was nearly twenty-eight feet in diameter, providing a safety margin of three feet over and above the world’s longest-recorded spitting distance.


 It was periodically assembled, disassembled, uncovered, covered, brought to Warsaw and returned to the manufacturer as both sides maneuvered for political advantage. Subtables and sub-subtables were added. Finally, on February 6, 1989, jailers and jailed sat down together around the now-mythical table, their view of one another partially obscured by floral decoration. Two months later they announced that they had reached agreement on the relegalization of Solidarity and the first semifree elections in the history of People’s Poland.

In keeping with Jaruzelski’s determination to introduce democracy in carefully regulated doses, everything was done to ensure that the Communists won these trial elections. Senior members of the Jaruzelski government were permitted to run unopposed on a “National List.” An official candidate would be considered “elected” as long as a majority of voters did not go to the trouble of putting a cross through his name. Of the seats in the Sejm, the lower chamber of the parliament, 65 percent would be reserved for the Communists and their allies. Solidarity, meanwhile, would be restricted to contesting the remaining 35 percent of “open” seats in the lower chamber and all one hundred seats in the less powerful Senate.

On election day polling places were decorated in bright red and white bunting, the Polish national colors. The Communist candidates concealed their political loyalties as best they could, hiding behind the anonymity of the National List. But there was no doubt about the identity of the Solidarity representatives. Their photographs had all been taken individually with Wałęsa at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk and turned into campaign posters, which were plastered up all over Poland. Shortly before the election Solidarity had designed a final campaign poster that summarized what was at stake after forty-four years of uninterrupted Communist rule. It was a photo of the actor Gary Cooper in full cowboy regalia. “High Noon, June 4,” the slogan declared.

Everybody expected the Solidarity candidates to do well, but the results were stunning. In the first round of the election Solidarity won 160 out of the 161 seats in the Sejm that it was allowed to contest, and 92 seats in the Senate. Only 2 members of the National List managed to secure the 50 percent of the votes needed for election. After four decades of enforced unanimity and sham elections, the temptation to “throw the bums out” was simply too great for ordinary voters to resist. In fact they took what one voter described as an “almost sensual pleasure” in putting crosses through the names of well-known Communists—from the prime minister down. “I crossed out all of them,” said a voter in Warsaw, “because every one of them is compromised. They promised us things so many times in the past, and every time they failed.”




This was not the result Solidarity had wanted. As he voted in Gdańsk, Wałęsa had told reporters that “too big a percentage of our people getting through would be disturbing, and might force a fight on us.” He himself voted for all the names on the National List, with the exception of Interior Minister Czesław Kiszczak, his onetime jailer. Solidarity leaders knew that Jaruzelski still had the support of the army and the police. After winning their lopsided victory, they had to guard against seeming too triumphant. “We knew we had won, but we couldn’t express our happiness too openly because we also knew that they had all the guns,” recalled Bronisław Geremek, the leader of the Solidarity parliamentary group.




When party leaders got together to discuss the results of the election, their mood was bleak and defeatist. “The election results are terrible,” conceded Jaruzelski. Like a commander struggling to keep his troops together in retreat, the general parceled out commands and assignments. He ordered a new round of discussions, with everybody from the Roman Catholic Church to the “allies,” apparatchik-speak for the Kremlin. Outwardly he seemed calm and in control, but aides who knew him well could see that he was going through another bout of intense mental anguish.


 He wanted so much to go down in Polish history as the father of democracy, but he had been unable to shake off his popular image as the general in dark glasses who had imposed martial law. His reward for choosing the path of dialogue and reconciliation, rather than the path of violence and oppression, was massive rejection by the voters.

Like Gorbachev before him, Jaruzelski made the mistake of thinking he could control the pace and scope of change. He thought he could persuade Solidarity to share responsibility for painful economic reforms without giving the movement real power. He believed that the transition to democracy would be gradual. But events had assumed a momentum of their own. By agreeing to talks with Wałęsa, he had triggered a political process that was to lead inexorably to his own downfall.

At the official inquest into the party’s electoral defeat on June 5, different explanations were suggested for the debacle. Some accused Solidarity of being too aggressive; some blamed the influence of the Catholic Church; some criticized the party for elementary political mistakes. But it was the minister for economic reform, Władysław Baka, one of the defeated candidates on the National List, who put the matter most cogently. “The people simply didn’t want us anymore,” he told his comrades.




That evening the official Communist Party spokesman went on television to concede the obvious: “The elections had the character of a referendum, and Solidarity won a clear majority.” The following day, June 6, the outgoing Communist prime minister, Mieczysław Rakowski, invited his inner circle to breakfast. Everybody was tired, and there was a fin de régime atmosphere about the meeting. The scale of the disaster was summed up by the acerbic government spokesman Jerzy Urban, who just a few months ago had been describing Wałęsa as a “private citizen” and Solidarity as a “nonexistent organization.”

“This is not just a lost election, gentlemen. It’s the end of an age.”







FOROS

August 22, 1989


THE CRIMEA HAD BEEN a favorite vacation spot for Russian rulers ever since Catherine the Great captured it from the Turks in the late eighteenth century. A subtropical paradise of palm trees and vineyards, the mountainous peninsula jutting into the Black Sea was considered the jewel in the imperial crown. Tsars and general secretaries came here every year to take restorative cures, breathe the balmy sea air, and escape the cares of state. When power changed hands, a new palace invariably appeared along the winding coastal road, each more magnificent than the last.

Soon after he became Soviet leader, Gorbachev decided that he too deserved a grandiose summer residence. The site he chose was on the southernmost tip of the Crimea, midway between the historic towns of Sevastopol and Yalta, in a particularly dramatic and isolated spot. A two-thousand-foot-high ridge rose behind the rocky beach, creating a sundrenched semicircular bowl, sandwiched between the mountains and the sea.

Construction of the residence began in 1987 and was accorded top priority. Thousands of soldiers labored around the clock to complete the private resort, which included tennis courts, outdoor and indoor swimming pools, a helicopter landing pad, a cinema, and secret communications facilities. Hundreds of tons of topsoil were trucked in to create a shady landscape, along with an instant orchard of peach trees. A hotel was built for bodyguards and service staff. The Gorbachev family residence itself was a tasteless architectural mishmash, consisting of two concrete boxes, with sloping red-tiled roofs, joined by a covered bridge. A sixty-foot glass escalator provided access to the beach. From the outside the compound looked like a cross between a luxury hotel and an inhospitable prison camp, surrounded by watchtowers and several high metal fences.

From the start there was an air of ill omen about Foros. The gensek’s bodyguards took an immediate dislike to the place, which they nicknamed the “frying pan” because it was so hot. In the fall landslides would dislodge rocks from the surrounding mountains, cutting off the approach roads. Work on the residence was as slipshod as it was rushed. Shortly after the first family moved in, in the summer of 1988, an oak beam fell on the head of Gorbachev’s grown-up daughter, Irina. She had to spend a week in the surgery ward of the local hospital, and there was some concern she would suffer permanent brain damage. After that incident the bodyguards began jumping up and down on the beds and chairs, to test the solidity of the furniture.




By the time of Gorbachev’s second vacation in Foros in August 1989, it was not just the villa that was crumbling about him. The entire Soviet empire, assembled so arduously by his predecessors, was in the process of falling apart. The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan had been a harbinger of things to come.




THE ROT HAD GONE furthest in Poland, traditionally the most troublesome of the East European satellites, with the Communist Party’s devastating electoral defeat. To make matters worse, the party had been deserted by long-subservient political allies and could no longer command a parliamentary majority. A leading Communist reformer, General Kiszczak, had tried, and failed, to form a government. In order to break the impasse, Solidarity had proposed a compromise: “Your President, Our Prime Minister.”


 Jaruzelski would be permitted to stay on as a largely ceremonial head of state but would be obliged to accept a Solidarity-led government.

Communist power was unraveling elsewhere in Eastern Europe as well. In Hungary a liberal Communist regime was physically dismantling the Iron Curtain erected by Stalin at the end of World War II to seal his empire from the West. On May 2 Hungarian soldiers had begun tearing down the barbed-wire fences and watchtowers along the border with Austria. When President Bush visited Budapest in July, his Hungarian hosts presented him with a symbolic piece of the Iron Curtain in a glass display case. News that gaping holes had appeared in the once-impenetrable border spread quickly. Within weeks thousands of East Germans, chafing against draconian travel restrictions in their own country, were attempting to use Hungary as a transit point to the West.

To a certain extent, Gorbachev was prepared for these developments. During his meetings with East European leaders he had repeatedly warned of the danger of “lagging behind” events. He and his advisers understood that the era of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe was coming to an end, even if they did not expect the end to come so suddenly. In a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, in July, he had called for the Cold War to be “consigned to oblivion” and had acknowledged explicitly, for the first time, that socialist revolutions were reversible: “The social and political orders of certain countries changed in the past, and may change again in the future. However, this is exclusively a matter for the peoples themselves to decide; it is their choice. Any interference in internal affairs, or any attempts to limit the sovereignty of states—including friends and allies, or anyone else—are impermissible.”


 In effect Gorbachev was abandoning the so-called Brezhnev doctrine of limited sovereignty. According to this doctrine, the security and well-being of the socialist community were indivisible. If socialism was endangered anywhere in the Soviet bloc, it was the duty of all other socialist countries to provide “fraternal assistance.” There could be no defections from the socialist camp.

Burying the Brezhnev doctrine was facilitated by the fact that Soviet ideologists had always denied its existence. The term was an invention of Western Sovietologists, summarizing the arguments used by Moscow to justify the invasion of Czechoslovakia. In theory the Soviet Union remained committed to the principles of equality, independence, and noninterference in international affairs. Gorbachev’s contribution was to give real content to what had hitherto been an empty slogan. When the Czechoslovak leader Gustáv Husák asked him for advice about personnel changes in the Communist Party, an area of vital concern to Brezhnev, Gorbachev refused to get involved. “It’s clearer to you what you should do than to us in Moscow,” he replied airily.


 His spokesman began talking about the “Sinatra doctrine”: Let everyone be able to say, “I do it my way.”




“There never was any formal decision to refrain from the use of force in Eastern Europe,” said Aleksandr Yakovlev, who helped Gorbachev devise his foreign policy strategy. “We simply stopped being hypocritical. For years we had told the entire world that these countries were free and independent, even though this was obviously not the case. There was no need to take a formal decision. We just had to implement what was already official policy.”




Traditionally, Soviet foreign policy had been a prerogative of the general secretary. Although Ligachev and other conservatives repeatedly bemoaned the loss of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe at Politburo meetings, they were reluctant to challenge Gorbachev in an area that was clearly his responsibility. By his own account, Ligachev was more concerned about propping up socialism in East Germany than in Poland. He regarded the formation of a Solidarity-led government as Poland’s “internal affair.”


.

By the time the conservatives realized what was happening, it was too late. The dominoes had begun to fall.




GORBACHEV LIKED FOROS because it enabled him to escape the hothouse world of Kremlin politics. Dressed in shorts, a sports cap, and hiking boots, he spent two hours a day strolling through the mountains above the dacha with Raisa. Bodyguards trailed behind, with rucksacks loaded up with mineral water, two-way radios, and Kalashnikov sub-machine guns. Sometimes the Gorbachev family took an excursion by boat, down the indented Crimean coastline, as far as the white tsarist palace at Livadia, where Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill had decided the fate of Europe in the dying days of World War II.

Outside visitors were rarely invited to Foros. The general secretary had no desire to socialize with his Politburo colleagues; there had always been a terrible sense of isolation and loneliness at the summit of Kremlin power. Gorbachev was surrounded by sycophantic courtiers, but he had very few personal friends. One outsider to penetrate the Gorbachev family circle was his foreign policy aide, Anatoly Chernyayev. The former diplomat regarded himself as the representative of Russia’s liberal intelligentsia in the Gorbachev court. He served as a debating foil for the general secretary and helped him with his speeches and theoretical works about perestroika. His meticulous, handwritten diary reflects Gorbachev’s concerns that summer, and the sense of a political and economic order that was falling apart:






Socialism is disappearing in Eastern Europe. Western Communist parties are collapsing everywhere where they have been unable to identify themselves with a national idea…. But the main thing is the disintegration of myths and unnatural forms of life in our own society. The planned economy is falling apart, the “image” of socialism is disappearing. Ideology, as such, no longer exists. The empire is falling apart. The party has lost its leading, dominating role, and repressive force, and is breaking up. The power [of the centralized state] has been shattered, and nothing has yet filled the vacuum. Signs of chaos are accumulating….








For Gorbachev, the upheavals in Eastern Europe were a sideshow to the main event, the revolution in the Soviet Union itself. Everywhere he looked, there were threats and challenges. Scarcely a day went by without a new crisis: an upsurge of ethnic violence in Uzbekistan; nationalist protests in the Baltic states; strikes by hundreds of thousands of coal miners in Ukraine and Siberia. His own ability to influence events and manipulate the public debate was rapidly declining, a process he found deeply frustrating. In private conversations with Chernyayev, he railed at the press for “stirring things up” and at the Balts for their selfish preoccupation with national independence, which threatened to torpedo the entire experiment in controlled reform. He was also troubled by the growing militancy of ethnic Russians, who had hitherto formed the backbone of the Soviet state.

“If Russia rises up, then it will really begin,” he commented bitterly. “It will be the end of empire.”

The dwindling personal authority of the father of perestroika was only part of a much larger crisis of power throughout the Soviet bloc. Moscow could no longer issue commands and expect them to be obeyed from Vilnius to Vladivostok, much less in Berlin and Budapest. Local authorities, and even individual citizens, were deciding for themselves which instructions they would implement. Students were evading the draft, factory managers were ignoring the plan, and newspaper editors were throwing Central Committee instructions into the garbage.

The crisis of power was particularly evident in the economic field. The centralized system of distribution had virtually broken down under the strain of the deepening economic crisis. Shortages of almost everything, from television sets to toilet paper, were causing local authorities to look for ways to protect their own consumers. A “shopping-bag war” had broken out in early 1989, when Czechoslovakia and East Germany banned the export of children’s clothing and certain food items to neighboring socialist states. The Soviet Union countered with a similar prohibition on the export of refrigerators, washing machines, and caviar. Regions, cities, and even villages had joined the rush toward protectionism. In the middle of August Moscow city authorities announced that shoppers would have to produce residence permits in order to purchase a wide range of “deficit” items. The planned economy, with its rigidly formulated quotas and deadlines, had effectively given way to a rudimentary system of barter. In the absence of a free market, it was everyone for himself.

When the American secretary of state, James A. Baker III, visited Moscow in May, he urged Gorbachev to take the first step toward the creation of a market by abolishing state controls over prices. The Soviet leader had been resisting similar advice from his own economists because he feared a popular backlash over rising prices. Baker, a former treasury secretary, urged Gorbachev to act quickly while he still enjoyed a “credit of trust.” “If we did this, people really would lose confidence in us,” Gorbachev replied. “We are already twenty years late with price reform. It’s impossible to turn things around in two or three years.”




What Baker failed to understand—and Gorbachev could not acknowledge—was that the “credit of trust” in perestroika had already expired.




ALTHOUGH GORBACHEV WAS PREOCCUPIED with domestic affairs, he could not help paying some attention to events in Poland during his Foros vacation. Negotiations were under way for the formation of a Solidarity-led government under the premiership of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a veteran Catholic editor and former political prisoner. The Communists had been promised two ministerial portfolios—defense and internal affairs—but wanted more. Everybody understood that a major turning point in the postwar history of Eastern Europe had been reached. For the first time ever a ruling Communist Party was on the threshold of surrendering effective political power.

Communist leaders elsewhere in Eastern Europe were dismayed by the prospect of a Solidarity-led government in Poland, but most of them understood that they were powerless to prevent it. The exception was the maverick Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceauşescu. A Stalinist diehard who headed the most repressive regime in Eastern Europe, Ceauşescu had managed to win plaudits from Western statesmen by occasionally distancing himself from Moscow. In August 1968 he had been the sole Soviet bloc leader to condemn the invasion of Czechoslovakia, on the ground that it violated the principle of national sovereignty. The threat to Communist rule in Poland caused a 180-degree turn in Ceauşescu’s foreign policy. From being the champion of national independence he had now became the staunchest advocate of the defunct Brezhnev doctrine.

At midnight on August 19 the Polish ambassador in Bucharest was hauled out of bed and presented with an urgent diplomatic note from the Romanian government, setting forth Ceauşescu’s views on the crisis. Denouncing Solidarity as the hireling of “international imperialism,” the note called on the Polish army to facilitate the formation of a “government of national salvation,” led by the Communists. It said that the remaining Warsaw Pact countries had both the right and the obligation to take joint action to defend the “cause of socialism” in Poland.


 Precisely what kind of action Ceauşescu had in mind was not specified, but the note implied that he favored some kind of decisive military intervention.

Poland rejected the Romanian demand, as did other Warsaw Pact members. Three days later, on August 22, Gorbachev endorsed the formation of a Solidarity-led government in Poland, in a forty-minute telephone conversation with Mieczysřaw Rakowski, the new leader of the Polish Communist Party. Gorbachev had taken a personal dislike to the megalomaniac Romanian conducător and his domineering wife, Elena. The grotesque personality cult surrounding the couple reminded him of the worst days of Stalin. At Warsaw Pact meetings Ceauşescu had been gratuitously offensive, pouring scorn on perestroika and presenting Romania as the model for other Communist countries to follow. The debate became so heated during one session that the bodyguards outside the room were sent away, so that they would not hear two general secretaries yelling at each other. Relations between the two wives were equally bad-tempered.




“Ceauşescu fears for his own skin,” Gorbachev told Rakowski, dismissing the Romanian call for a Warsaw Pact intervention in Poland.




Although he had no intention of stopping the formation of a Solidarity-led government, Gorbachev was troubled by the stunning electoral defeat suffered by Communist reformers in Poland. He felt a political kinship with Jaruzelski, the first East European leader to embrace the ideas of perestroika, and apply them in his own country. As their reward for leading the rest of the Soviet bloc in the transition to democracy, the Polish reformers had been unceremoniously booted out of office. There were worrying portents here for the Soviet Union and for Gorbachev himself. He told Rakowski that the only solution was the construction of a new political party, purged of conservatives.

“You must build a new party. You won’t be able to accomplish anything with the old lot. Not even crap,” he told Rakowski, apologizing for his use of the Russian vernacular.

The Soviet leader insisted that Moscow would stick by the Polish reformers and continued to support the “line of agreement” pursued by Jaruzelski. Soviet “support” for Poland would remain unchanged, provided the Polish “opposition” behaved in a reasonable and responsible way. If the opposition attempted to overthrow the existing “constitutional order,” then the Kremlin would be obliged to review its policy toward Poland. “You can tell that to the opposition.” Gorbachev did not say precisely what he had in mind, but the implication was that the Soviet Union would cut back supplies of subsidized oil and raw materials.

Without the threat of military force to back it up, it was inevitable that this latest line in the sand would soon be swept away. Events were now moving faster than anyone, including Gorbachev, could possibly anticipate. The next few months were to witness the crumbling of Moscow’s East European empire and the shattering of a geopolitical arrangement that had been in place for more than four decades.




THE PACE OF CHANGE began to accelerate a few hours after Gorbachev got off the phone with Rakowski. Unbeknownst to either man, the foreign minister of Hungary made a decision, in the privacy of his Budapest home, that led inexorably to the fall of the Berlin Wall less than three months later.

Gyula Horn was grappling with the kind of excruciating moral and political dilemma familiar to many Communist reformers that summer. Over the past few months Hungary had been transformed into a holding pen for tens of thousands of East German refugees. Very few were political dissidents. For the most part they were young people, fed up with the austerity of life under communism and the never-ending snooping of the secret police. They had given up on their dogmatic Communist leaders, who seemed allergic to the very idea of reform, and were voting with their feet. From Hungary they wanted nothing more than safe passage to the bright lights of capitalism in West Germany. “There is no future for us in the East” was a common refrain. The foreign minister had to decide whether to let them go or keep them penned up in the Communist East.

On the one hand, Hungary had binding treaty obligations to East Germany. Under a bilateral agreement, signed in 1968, the Hungarian government had undertaken not to permit East German citizens to travel to the West via Hungary. If Budapest violated this treaty, Horn feared that Communist hard-liners in Berlin, Prague, and Bucharest would find a way of getting even. On the other hand, he knew that his government would appear hypocritical, and hopelessly behind the times, if it failed to live up to its new humanistic principles. A few months earlier Hungary had signed international agreements pledging to promote freedom of travel between states and to protect the rights of refugees. The way the Hungarian government handled the issue of East German refugees was a crucial test of the sincerity of its commitment to democracy and human rights.

After a sleepless night, pacing up and down his sitting room, the fifty-seven-year-old foreign minister made up his mind. He decided to abrogate the treaty with East Berlin and let the refugees go. Hungarian leaders had earlier taken the precaution of informally testing the waters with Moscow. The Soviets appeared to have no objection.

“There was no other way,” Horn recalled later. “We had to look for the humanist solution, no matter what sort of conflict might arise. It was quite obvious to me that this would be the first step in a landslide-like series of events.”







BERLIN

November 9, 1989


THERE WAS NO MORE enduring symbol of the Cold War than the Berlin Wall. For more than a generation the wall exemplified the confrontation between communism and capitalism, East and West, dictatorship and democracy. Its images became ingrained in the popular imagination: Soviet and American tanks barrel to barrel at Checkpoint Charlie; John Kennedy declaring, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” at the Brandenburg Gate; the spy swaps on the Glienicke Bridge; a series of dramatic escapes; Ronald Reagan shouting, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

The wall was the quintessential dividing line, not merely between two parts of a single city but between two rival ideologies and two contrasting ways of life. This was not just a wall. It was the wall. On one side of the wall were the bright lights of the Ku’damm, with its luxurious department stores and garish sex shows. On the other side were the ubiquitous hallmarks of socialism: dimly lit streets, crumbling apartment blocks, and ugly statues to worthy proletarians. One side of the wall was a monotonous white; the other, a riot of cheeky, multicolored graffiti. On one side of the wall people drove Mercedes and BMWs. On the other they drove the Trabant, a car variously described as “a sardine-can on wheels” and a “plastic tank.” On one side of the wall was a society that permitted its citizens to travel freely; on the other side, a society that needed a wall to prevent them from fleeing.

The East German authorities had erected the wall in the course of a single day—on August 13, 1961—in order to stem the flood of refugees to the West. Before the wall was built, half a million people crossed the city every day, and hundreds never returned. Since the end of World War II some three million East Germans had left their homeland, one of the largest mass migrations in European history. Most of the refugees were professionals, such as doctors and engineers, who believed that there was no future for them under communism. Fifty percent were under the age of twenty-five. The German Democratic Republic was threatened with demographic extinction.

At first the wall consisted of rolls of barbed wire, demarcating the Soviet and Western sectors of Berlin. Streets were arbitrarily cut into two. In some places the line went through the middle of a house. Friends, neighbors, even members of the same family ended up in different worlds. Thousands of East German soldiers ensured that the Western sector of the city was sealed tight as swiftly as possible. Tanks and armored cars were deployed beneath the Brandenburg Gate. Subway stops were barricaded; houses were boarded up; bridges were destroyed. Frightened of unleashing a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union, Western leaders were forced to sit back and watch.

“We’re going to close Berlin,” Nikita Khrushchev had boasted to his generals. “We’ll just put up serpentine barbed wire, and the West will stand there like dumb sheep. And while they’re standing there, we’ll finish a wall.”




Events turned out precisely as Khrushchev predicted. By the end of the year the barbed wire had been replaced by a concrete wall, twelve feet high, encircling the Western enclave of Berlin. Over the next quarter century the East German authorities worked on perfecting what was officially described as the “anti-Fascist defense barrier,” until every conceivable hole was plugged. In its completed form the wall was 104 miles long, including 66 miles of reinforced concrete slabs. Built of the hardest concrete, to withstand ramming, each slab was six inches thick and weighed two and a half tons. The slabs were cemented together and topped with asbestos piping. Extra protection was provided by 302 observation towers, 65 miles of trenches, 259 dog runs, and 20 massive concrete bunkers.


 Next to the wall was a death strip of constantly raked sand, at least a hundred yards wide, equipped with hundreds of mines and automatic firing devices.

Despite these precautions, thousands still managed to escape the “socialist paradise” in all manner of brave and ingenious ways. They flew over the wall in hot-air balloons and homemade flying machines, burrowed under it in tunnels, and rammed it with steel-plated trucks. In order to attain their freedom, one group of refugees dressed themselves up as Soviet army officers and walked through the border unchallenged. Others crawled through stinking sewers and slid down homemade chair lifts. One family sailed across the Baltic in a homemade submarine. The escapees included several hundred East German border guards. Later human rights organizations compiled a list of 825 people who had lost their lives trying to flee to the West.




For many people, in both East and West Germany, the wall seemed a permanent feature of their lives. It was so solidly built that it was difficult to imagine its ever coming down. Erich Honecker, the man who had supervised its construction, boasted in early 1989 that the wall would still be around in “fifty or one hundred years’ time.”


 The West German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, did not believe that the fall of the wall was imminent. On a visit to Poland on November 8, 1989, he reacted with incredulity when Lech Wałęsa predicted that the wall would be down in a matter of “weeks.”

“You are a young man,” Kohl scoffed. “This is something that is going to take many years.”




Twenty-four hours later the chancellor was obliged to interrupt his trip to Warsaw and return home because of extraordinary developments from Berlin.




IT HAD BEEN a generally soporific news conference, dedicated to the political and economic reforms under way in East Germany. The regime’s propaganda chief, Günter Schabowski, was exhausted. The last few weeks had seen a whirlwind of political changes, including the overthrow of Honecker and the collective resignation of the Politburo. The refugee crisis had reached a climax. Almost a million East German citizens had applied to emigrate. Tens of thousands were leaving every day without waiting for permission, via the circuitous routes that had opened up in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Pro-democracy demonstrations were getting larger by the day. The previous weekend, on November 4, an estimated half million people had paraded through the streets of Berlin to demand free elections and free travel. Schabowski himself had attempted to speak at this rally and had been roundly jeered.

“Wir sind das Volk,” the demonstrators had chanted. “We are the people.”

The East German people were reclaiming their sovereignty, just as their Polish neighbors had done in August 1980 and June 1989. Never again would they permit their self-appointed representatives to speak in their name; never again would they participate in the pretense that they had surrendered power voluntarily to a Soviet-sponsored “people’s democracy” on German soil. Like other East German reformers, Schabowski sensed that the days of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” were numbered. But he had no idea of the historical upheaval that he was about to unleash.

The propaganda chief peered at the throng of journalists above his half-moon glasses and announced that he would take one more question. Someone at the back of the room wanted to know about the new travel regulations under consideration by the East German leadership. Schabowski shuffled through his papers to find a government statement that the new party leader, Egon Krenz, had shoved into his hand moments before the press conference with the comment “This will do us a power of good.”


 It was couched in the usual bureaucratese, a deliberately woolly style of language that permitted the authorities to make grand-sounding concessions that could be retracted as soon as officials started examining the fine print.

From now on, Schabowski announced, East German citizens could “apply for” private trips abroad “without preconditions.” Furthermore, the authorities would issue visas for “permanent departures”—i.e., emigration—without delay. Such departures could be made through all border crossings, including the checkpoints leading into West Berlin. The spokesman did not notice a sentence on the other side of the paper embargoing the news until 8:00 a.m. the following day.

There was nothing specifically in the communiqué about the Berlin Wall, and the procedure for approving tourist trips to the West was still unclear. What the apparatchiks had in mind was an orderly line that could still be controlled. The spectacle of tens of thousands of East German refugees camping out in West German embassies in Czechoslovakia and Hungary had been deeply embarrassing to them. If this pressure could be relieved, senior Politburo members believed, then the German Democratic Republic could still be saved.

Schabowski felt a twinge of panic as he read out the reference to “West Berlin.” As the Politburo member responsible for Berlin he knew that any decision concerning the city’s status had to be agreed with the four “occupying powers”—the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain, and France. “I hope the Soviets know about this,” he thought. “This thing affects the four-power status.”




Among the reporters who attended the news conference, both German and foreign, there was confusion over what the government announcement really meant.


 On the face of it, the propaganda chief seemed to be saying that travel through the wall was now permissible for East German citizens. On the other hand, anyone with experience of Communist bureaucrats knew that their words did not always mean what they appeared to mean. Everything depended on implementation.

By the time Schabowski finished speaking, it was already 7:00 p.m. The East German television news show Aktuelle Kamera went on the air half an hour later. Reporters had no time to clarify matters, so they decided to broadcast the statement verbatim without explanation.

What happened next was extraordinary, something that went against the habits of subservience carefully nurtured by the Communist authorities. Instead of waiting for official clarification, thousands of East Berliners simply took matters into their own hands and headed for the Western sector of the city. It was as if they really did believe that they, not the Communist government, were the true representatives of “the people.” When they reached the six crossing points leading to West Berlin, they were given the usual runaround. The border guards claimed to know nothing about the new regulations. “It’s all nonsense, go home,” said some. “We have no instructions,” said others.

As the crowds built up behind them, and Western television news crews arrived to film the scene, people began to argue with the border guards about the meaning of Schabowski’s statement. “Open the gate! Open the gate!” they chanted. “The wall must fall.” The vast majority of those clamoring to get out had no intention of leaving East Germany permanently. They merely wanted to taste life on the other side of the wall. “Let us go and see the Ku’damm and we’ll come right back,” they shouted. “We’ll come back.”

By this stage the border guards were beginning to panic. They had been trained as an elite force, ready to protect the frontiers of the socialist state with their lives. Up until a few days ago these hard-faced young men had orders to shoot would-be escapees on sight. In the past their word had been law. They possessed overwhelming force and the will to use it. Ordinary citizens had no choice but to obey their arbitrary commands. But now, even though they retained their weapons, the guards found themselves besieged and outnumbered by crowds of angry citizens, who refused to take no for an answer. At around 9:00 p.m. commanders on duty at the border posts began flooding their superiors in the Stasi, the German secret police, with anxious telephone calls. They were told to “hang on” for clarification.

At the Bornholmer Strasse crossing point, in the northern suburbs of the city, the pressure of the crowd was becoming uncontrollable. There were chants of “Open up, open up.” Shortly before 11:00 p.m. the dam finally broke when the crowd pushed back the red and white frontier post. Soon the border guards were enveloped in a sea of humanity. “It made me wonder why we had been standing in that place for the past twenty years,” Captain Helmut Stoss told reporters later.


 When Security Ministry officials finally found out what was happening, they reluctantly issued orders to let the people pass.

At Checkpoint Charlie, the gateway to the American sector of the city, the crowds had to wait until midnight before the border was opened. A great roar went up from the Western side of the wall as the first East Berliners pushed through the eerie, real-life set of countless espionage movies, flashing victory signs and waving their blue identity cards in the air. People poured out of a nearby bar to greet the new arrivals with bottles of champagne and gifts of West German money.

“I just can’t believe it!” exclaimed thirty-four-year-old Angelika Wache as she emerged blinking into a hundred flashguns.

“I don’t feel like I’m in prison anymore,” shouted another young man. Torsten Ryl, twenty-four, told reporters that he had come over to see what the West was like and intended to return. “Finally, we can really visit other states, instead of just seeing them on television or hearing about them.” To the cheers of the crowd, a West Berliner handed him a twenty deutsche mark bill and told him to “go have a beer.”




In the meantime, dozens of youths from West Berlin had clambered on top of the wall at the Brandenburg Gate and had begun to taunt the police on the other side. The old Prussian memorial to victories past, a six-column arch topped by the Goddess of Victory in a chariot pulled by four horses, was regarded by many Germans as the symbol of German unity, a reminder of the country they had lost following their defeat in World War II. A few hours previously it was unthinkable even to approach the wall at this point because it was so heavily guarded. But now people began to dance on it, in full view of astonished television viewers around the world. At around 1:00 a.m. the Wessis (Westerners) were joined by Ossis (Easterners), at which point the East German police turned a water cannon on the revelers, a gesture that was greeted by derisory hoots and whistles from the crowd. One young man nonchalantly opened up an umbrella to protect himself from the shower of water.

“So ein tag, so wunderschön,” sang the crowds on both sides of the wall. “What a day, what a wonderful day.”

The next few days were a riotous street party as East Berliners poured into the forbidden city. Within forty-eight hours of the opening of the wall, nearly two million East Germans had crossed over into the West. Westerners showered them with flowers and chocolate and thumped the roofs of their decrepit Trabant cars in welcome. The sight of two-stroke “Trabis” choking the streets of West Berlin became a token of the new era, along with Mstislav Rostropovich playing his beloved cello by Checkpoint Charlie. In a flood of warm feeling toward their Eastern neighbors, some Westerners even began referring to the poisonous fumes emitted by the Trabis as the “perfume of freedom.” Soon the people of Berlin and Leipzig switched from chanting, “We are the people” (“Wir sind das Volk”) to chanting, “We are one people” (“Wir sind ein Volk”).

Later the generosity and hospitality of Wessis wore off, along with the novelty of having their poor relations coming to visit. Familiarity bred suspicion, even contempt. The euphoria felt by Ossis at their sudden liberation was replaced by bitterness and anger toward their Communist rulers for having cheated them for so long. But for a few glorious days a city that had experienced so much sorrow and tragedy became the scene of unadulterated joy.

“For twenty-eight years, since the construction of the Wall on August 13, 1961, we have longed and hoped for this day,” the mayor of West Berlin, Walter Momper, told a rally in front of City Hall. “We Germans are now the happiest people in the world.”







AT THE SOVIET EMBASSY on Unter der Linden, the elegant tree-lined avenue bisecting the Brandenburg Gate, diplomats had watched, spellbound and uncomprehending, as crowds of East Berliners took the wall by storm. For nearly four and a half decades the embassy had served as a kind of viceregal palace, the channel through which the Kremlin controlled its prize possession. Few decisions of any consequence in the German Democratic Republic were made without the Soviet ambassador’s being consulted or at least informed. But now momentous events were taking place on its own doorstep, and the Soviet Embassy knew less about what was going on than West German television.

Some eight hours after the wall had first been breached, the embassy received a panicky telephone call from Moscow. It was the desk officer for the socialist countries section of the Soviet Foreign Ministry. “What is happening at the wall?” he demanded. “Every news agency in the world is going crazy.”




A political officer at the embassy briefly recounted the events of the past few hours, beginning with Schabowski’s extraordinary press conference.

“Has all this been agreed with us?” the desk officer asked incredulously.

The East German government had informed the embassy about its plan to allow would-be refugees to travel directly to West Germany without going through Czechoslovakia or Hungary. The ambassador, Vyacheslav Kochemasov, had in turn informed the Soviet Foreign Ministry, which had raised no objection to the plan. But the embassy knew nothing at all about the decision to permit ordinary East Germans to come and go as they pleased through the wall. It was inconceivable that the GDR authorities would fail to consult Moscow on such a delicate matter, particularly one that affected the four-power status of Berlin. Perhaps, the diplomat suggested delicately, this information had been conveyed through back channels, without the embassy’s being informed. It was also possible that Krenz had chosen to get in touch with Gorbachev directly, over the vertushka.

Inquiries were made, and it soon turned out that the inconceivable had in fact occurred. Nobody in Moscow knew anything. Half an hour later Ambassador Kochemasov received a telephone call from the East German Foreign Ministry.

“Last night’s decision was forced upon us,” a senior East German official explained apologetically. “Any delay could have had very dangerous consequences. There was no time for consultations.”

It took many months for Soviet and East German officials to piece together exactly what had happened that night and to explain the failure in communications. The original draft of the new travel regulations, the draft that had been shown to Soviet diplomats, had not addressed the issue of tourist visits at all. It had dealt exclusively with the problem of “permanent exits.” This had seemed anomalous to a team of four mid-level East German interior ministry officials and Stasi lawyers, who were charged with preparing the final draft. “We were supposed to come up with regulations for the citizen who wanted to leave the country forever, but we weren’t supposed to let out the citizen who just wanted to visit his aunt?” one of the Interior Ministry officials recalled later. “That would have been schizophrenic.”


 To make good this omission, on the morning of November 9, the officials inserted a vaguely worded paragraph opening the way for “private trips,” without going into detail about the accompanying formalities.

The new draft was submitted to the Politburo during its lunch break. The leaders had more pressing matters on their minds, such as their own political survival, and paid little attention to the wording. They approved the draft, while sipping their coffee. At around 5:00 p.m. the resolution was presented to the policy-making Central Committee. Hardly any of the 213 members understood the text. There was only one question. “Has this been agreed with the Soviet comrades?” someone asked. “Yes,” replied Krenz, distracted by the excitement of the last few days.







NEWS THAT THE BERLIN WALL had fallen came as a shock to Gorbachev, but he quickly adjusted to the new reality. For months he had been lecturing the ultraconservative East German leadership on the need for flexibility. “In politics life severely punishes those who fall behind,” he had told Honecker in October 1989, during ceremonies to mark the fortieth anniversary of the foundation of the German Democratic Republic.


 The visit to Berlin gave Gorbachev a firsthand insight into the depth of Honecker’s political isolation. Standing on the podium for an anniversary parade, he could hear young East Berliners chanting, “Gorbie, help us.” Many of the demonstrators were members of the Communist youth organization.

Polish prime minister Mieczysław Rakowski was standing just behind Gorbachev. Since he spoke good German and Russian, he could act as the Soviet leader’s interpreter. “Do you understand what they are screaming?” he whispered into Gorbachev’s ear.

“Yes, I understand it.”

“This is the end.”




On his return home Gorbachev told his Politburo colleagues that Honecker’s days in power were numbered.


 Sure enough, the old Stalinist was forced to resign less than two weeks later, a victim of his stubborn refusal to countenance any kind of serious change.

Soviet diplomats in East Berlin frequently complained that it was very difficult to get the Kremlin leadership to focus on the growing crisis in East Germany. By late 1989 Gorbachev was almost totally preoccupied with the deteriorating situation at home. At first he had not even wanted to attend the jubilee celebrations, as he did not believe there was anything he could do to influence the course of events. It was only as the result of very active lobbying by Kochemasov that he agreed to participate.




Gorbachev’s attitude to Germany was heavily influenced by the fact that he belonged to the postwar generation of Kremlin politicians. He was the first Soviet leader since Stalin not to be filled with atavistic horror by the thought of a reunited Germany outside the Soviet orbit. Indeed a divided Germany struck Gorbachev as unnatural and unsustainable over the long term. Deep down he regarded the reunification of Germany as “inevitable,” even though he did not expect it to occur within the immediately foreseeable future.


 History itself would decide such questions, he liked to say. A week before the wall came down, he told East German leaders that reunification was “not a problem of current politics.”




In reacting to events in East Germany, Gorbachev remained faithful to his precept that every Communist Party was responsible for events in its own country, a position that he had first enunciated at a meeting of East European leaders in 1986. During a visit to Moscow in June Honecker had complained that he was coming under increasing pressure from “government circles” in West Germany to make political concessions. “This pressure needs to be adequately countered,” he told Gorbachev in an indirect appeal for Soviet assistance. The Soviet leader expressed solicitude and said he had warned Kohl against “exploiting” the popular discontent in East Germany. But he made clear that the Soviet Union did not intend to get directly involved.




As Honecker’s political authority began to unravel, Gorbachev adopted the stance of a detached bystander. His main concern was to keep the half million Soviet troops stationed in East Germany out of the crisis. In conversations with colleagues and aides, the general secretary insisted that the revolution be permitted to take its natural course without interference from outside.


 To make sure that his instructions were carried out, he sent Yakovlev to Berlin and other East European capitals with a very simple message. “I had to make the point over and over again. We are not going to interfere,” Yakovlev said later. “Please, we told them, make your own calculations, but make sure you understand that our troops will not be used, even though they are there. They will remain in their barracks and will not go anywhere, under any circumstances.”




During what later became known as the October Revolution in Leipzig, Soviet officials urged Honecker and Krenz not to use force against hundreds of thousands of young people who were defying a ban on demonstrations. There was concern in Moscow about the possibility of an anti-Soviet “provocation.” In order to prevent this from happening, Soviet troops were confined to barracks, and all military maneuvers canceled, for the duration of the demonstrations.


 Similar instructions were issued in the hours immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall.




Twenty-four hours after the wall had been breached, Ambassador Kochemasov received official instructions from Moscow, belatedly endorsing what had happened. He conveyed an oral message from Gorbachev to Krenz, accepting the East German explanation for the failure in communication and adding, “Everything was done completely correctly. Act in a similar way in the future—energetically and confidently.”




The wall was no more. Nearly four and a half decades of Soviet domination over Eastern Europe had come to an end.




PRAGUE

November 24, 1989


AS THE HERO of the Prague Spring stepped out onto the balcony high above Wenceslas Square, three hundred thousand people burst out into a deafening roar of “DUBĈEK, DUBĈEK.” An elderly, slightly stooping figure, with white hair and a gentle smile, Alexander Dubĉek waited for the chanting to subside. Then he uttered the slogan that had inspired millions of his countrymen in 1968 and caused a panic-stricken Soviet Politburo to send tanks rumbling into Czechoslovakia.

“Long live socialism with a human face!”




More chants of “Freedom, freedom!” and “Long live Dubĉek.” The long, narrow square echoed with the sound of people jangling key chains, their way of telling Dubĉek’s Stalinist successors that the time had come to quit.

For more than two decades Czechoslovakia’s hard-line Stalinist regime had done its best to turn Dubĉek into a nonperson. When the state-controlled news media deigned to mention him at all, it was only to ridicule him. After being forced to resign as first secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in April 1969, he had been given a series of low-level jobs, each one more degrading than the last. For most of his countrymen, Dubĉek’s weary face evoked a bygone age. On his way over to Wenceslas Square, people had stared at him in amazement as if they had seen a ghost.

Yet here he was, basking in the applause of hundreds of thousands of people. Around the country virtually the entire population of Czechoslovakia was watching the scene on live television. Dubĉek’s return to Wenceslas Square and the fact that it was witnessed by so many people represented “the triumph of remembering over forgetting,” in the phrase of the exiled Czech writer Milan Kundera.

Wenceslas Square, in the heart of Prague, had been the focal point of popular resistance to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. For a long time the stone facade of the National Museum at the top of the square had borne the pockmarks of machine-gun fire, following a shoot-out between a Czech sniper and Soviet soldiers. Here Soviet troops had shot dead an eleven-year-old boy as he tried to ram a Czechoslovak flag down the barrel of a Red Army tank. Here, on January 16, 1969, a Czech student named Jan Palach had burned himself to death in a protest against the abandonment of the ideals of the Prague Spring. In retrospect, Palach’s death marked the last spasm of the democracy movement. Palach too had become a nonperson.

After Dubĉek’s ouster from office, power had passed to a group of neo-Stalinists led by the Slovak leader Gustáv Husák. “Normalization” became the slogan of the day. Within a few years half a million Dubĉek supporters had been expelled from the Communist Party. Those who refused to recant were forced to take menial jobs as street sweepers, boiler men, and night watchmen. Tight censorship of the news media was reimposed. Independent political groups and trade unions were shut down. Czechoslovakia closed its borders with the outside world once more.

The country remained a reactionary backwater long after Gorbachev had unleashed his glasnost campaign in the Soviet Union. For Husák and his colleagues, glasnost represented a mortal political threat. Their power derived directly from the Soviet invasion. They knew very well that a public discussion of the invasion would fatally undermine their own legitimacy. During meetings with Soviet leaders in 1989 they repeatedly rejected attempts to reopen the question. Anything associated with the Prague Spring, including use of the very word “reform,” was taboo. Like Honecker in East Germany, the Czech leaders resisted pressure from Moscow for the adoption of more liberal policies, believing it would trigger a political avalanche that would sweep them from office.

“They lived under the shadow of the 1968 syndrome,” Gorbachev wrote later. “They would become hysterical at the slightest hint in the Soviet press about the possibility of an official reevaluation of 1968.”




The implementation of “normalization” was so thorough and so pervasive that it effectively ended political debate in Czechoslovakia. For years organized resistance to the regime had been confined to a handful of restless intellectuals, the most prominent of whom was Václav Havel, the country’s leading playwright. Most people were too scared to side openly with the dissidents. The memory of the invasion and the massive political repression that followed discouraged them from expressing their true opinions. As Havel himself said in 1988, “our fellow countrymen sympathize with us, but they do not support us.”




As anti-Communist rebellions swept through the rest of Eastern Europe, the hard-line Czechoslovak leadership found itself politically and ideologically isolated. After the fall of the Berlin Wall it was clear to everybody that Czechoslovakia was next in line. All that was needed was some spark to galvanize the dormant and apathetic masses into action and help them overcome their fear of the regime. That spark occurred on Friday, November 17, after the government had used force to break up a peaceful student demonstration demanding political freedom. Hundreds of demonstrators were taken to the hospital, and there were rumors (which later turned out to be false) that a student had been beaten to death.

Over the next week the protests grew until they came to envelop the whole country. Havel and his dissident friends launched a mass movement, known as Civic Forum, to investigate police brutality and demand the resignations of those responsible. Civic Forum’s targets included Husák, who had been kicked upstairs to become president, and his successor as the Communist Party leader, Miloš Jakeš. Day by day more and more people packed into Wenceslas Square to support Civic Forum’s demands.

As fear melted away, the people of Prague took a perverse delight in flaunting forbidden symbols, as if to make clear to the regime that the attempt to wipe out the country’s collective memory had failed utterly. By November 24 the streets of the city were plastered with portraits of Palach and Dubĉek. There were also numerous pictures of Tomaš Masaryk, the social democrat who had presided over the birth of an independent Czechoslovak state in 1919, and his son, Jan, who had served as foreign minister after World War II and been hounded to his death by the Communists. As symbols of the country’s liberal, pre-Communist traditions, the two Masaryks had been consigned to the political void along with Palach, Dubĉek, and Havel. Another nonperson who reemerged into public life on November 24 was Marta Kubisova, an actress banned from the stage for twenty-one years for performing anti-Communist songs. The crowd roared its approval as she stepped onto the balcony of the newspaper Free Word to sing a haunting song about a seventeenth-century Bohemian hero who fought for the liberation of his people.

Then it was Dubĉek’s turn. There were delirious cheers when he demanded the ouster of all Communist Party leaders tied to the Soviet invasion. “Twenty years ago we tried to reform socialism, to make it better,” Dubĉek told the crowd. “In those days the army and the police stood with the people, and I am sure it will be the same again today.”

“Dubĉek na hrad, Dubĉek na hrad,” chanted the crowd. “Dubĉek to the castle.” In other words, Dubĉek for president. (Hrad?any Castle was the official residence of the head of state, Gustáv Husák.)

Dubĉek was followed out onto the balcony by Havel. They stood for a moment together under the television arc lights, holding each other’s arms and acknowledging the cheers of the crowd. They were an odd couple, the former Communist Party leader in a gray suit alongside the dissident in his scruffy jeans and open-neck shirt. To the crowd down below, it seemed like the most natural union in the world. “Dubĉek-Havel,” they chanted. The revolutions of 1968 and 1989 had finally come together.




HAVEL AND DUBĈEK HAD REACHED Wenceslas Square by very different routes. By personality and background, they were almost polar opposites. They represented two distinct political traditions, but in the end they arrived at the same point.

Dubĉek was the son of a Slovak carpenter, who had emigrated briefly to the United States, only to return home thoroughly disillusioned with capitalism. One of the founders of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, Dubĉek’s father took his family to live in the Soviet Union for thirteen years, at the height of Stalin’s terror. During World War II both Dubĉek and his brother, Julius, fought with the Slovak partisans against the Nazis; Julius was killed during one of these battles. Such impeccable Communist credentials gave Dubĉek a head start as he began his climb up the party’s bureaucratic ladder at the end of the war.




Havel, by contrast, was the son of a rich Czech businessman. His uncle owned Czechoslovakia’s biggest film studios. After the Communists staged their coup d’état in 1948, the Havel family assets were seized by the state. Havel himself was prevented from entering the university because of his class origins. Instead he became a stagehand at a theater and eventually a playwright. He took a special delight in satirizing the absurdities of communism.

The two political traditions came together briefly in 1968, when Dubĉek set out to prove that communism need not be synonymous with dictatorship. The Action Program drawn up by the reformers in the Czech leadership was to find an echo many years later in the ideas of perestroika. It promised a return to the rule of law as well as respect for freedom of assembly and freedom of the press. The grotesque personality cult that had traditionally surrounded Communist Party leaders was dismantled. Many years later a Czech dissident recalled how impressed he had been when a newspaper published a picture of Dubĉek diving into a swimming pool. “We had never seen a picture of a Communist Party first secretary in bathing trunks before,” said Peter Uhl, editor of an underground human rights journal.


 Havel described the Prague Spring as “an unbelievable dream.” It was the first time in his life he had really felt free.

Although Dubĉek rebelled against the Stalinist variant of communism, he remained loyal to both socialism and the Soviet Union. The climactic moment in his political career came in the early-morning hours of August 21, 1968, when he learned that Soviet troops had landed in Prague. His first reaction was incredulity: How could the Soviet leaders do such a thing “to me”?


 As he later acknowledged in his autobiography, he had totally misjudged the character of the people he was dealing with. “I did not believe the Soviet leaders would launch a military attack on us…. It took the drastic, practical experience of the coming days and months for me to understand that I was in fact dealing with gangsters.”




Shortly afterward Soviet paratroopers burst through the doors of Dubĉek’s office and announced they were taking the Czechoslovak leadership “into custody.” Dubĉek and his fellow Politburo members were flown to Moscow under armed guard. During the subsequent “negotiations” with Brezhnev, Dubĉek maintained a dignified silence, refusing to recant the humanistic ideals of the Prague Spring. At the same time, he chose to avoid a public confrontation with Brezhnev or the hard-liners in the Czechoslovak leadership, such as Husák. His position was close to that of the character in Havel’s play The Memorandum, who hopes he can “salvage this and that” if only he can sidestep an “open conflict” with his ruthless deputy. The attempt to save what could be saved ended in total failure and Dubĉek’s expulsion from the Communist Party.

During the deadening years of normalization Dubĉek was kept under de facto house arrest. Police surveillance was relaxed after Gorbachev visited Prague in April 1987 and signaled his support for some of the ideas of the Prague Spring. Even then Dubĉek preferred to keep his head down. When I called on him at his home in Bratislava in August 1988, on the twentieth anniversary of the invasion, he chatted amicably about his three grandchildren and his hopes of visiting Italy. But he refused to respond to a harsh attack that had just been published in the Communist Party newspaper Rude Pravo, accusing him of “personal responsibility” for the invasion because of his failure to rein in “the extremists.” “It’s not that I am afraid, simply that the time is not right,” he explained.




There could scarcely have been a greater contrast with Havel, who believed that the only way of dealing with a lawless regime was to confront it head-on. Like the founders of Solidarity in Poland, Havel was determined to follow his conscience whatever the consequences. He talked about “living in truth.” By behaving as a free citizen in an unfree nation, he would show his countrymen that it was possible to challenge the seemingly all-powerful regime. Over time, he believed, more and more people would join the ranks of the opposition, as the absurdities of the Communist system became apparent.

The first cracks in the Communist monolith appeared in 1977, when Havel and a handful of other dissidents published a document drawing attention to human rights violations in Czechoslovakia. The idea behind Charter ’77, according to Havel, was to provide society with a voice, “to straighten up as a human being once more after being humiliated, gagged, lied to, and manipulated.” The fact that the charter initially attracted only a few hundred signatories was unimportant. What mattered was that civil society, which had previously been given up for dead, was once again showing signs of life. The charter became the inspiration for Civic Forum.

These activities earned Havel the hatred of the regime and the status of public enemy number one. His plays were performed in New York, London, eventually even Warsaw and Moscow—but not in Prague. He had spent more than five years in prison and had been arrested countless times, most recently in January 1989, for commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Palach’s self-immolation. When not in prison, he was the subject of almost constant police harassment and surveillance.

Havel’s defiance had its roots in an intellectual tradition stretching back more than three centuries. In 1620 the Habsburg armies crushed the forces of the Czech nobility at the Battle of the White Mountain. Twenty-seven ringleaders of an attempted uprising were publicly executed in Prague’s Old Town Square. For the next three hundred years, until Czechoslovakia won recognition as an independent state after World War I, Prague was a provincial outpost. Czechs were excluded from the political life of the empire, and the official language, in Prague as in Vienna, was German. The role of preserving and defending the Czech language and national consciousness fell to the writers.

I visited Havel in his farmhouse in the rolling hills of northern Bohemia in August 1988. At that time the oppressive Husák regime was still well in control, if a little rattled by events in the Soviet Union. Prospects for a nationwide uprising seemed slim, but Havel was remarkably buoyant and optimistic. “This situation cannot go on forever,” he told me. “Something has to change here. Nobody knows when and how that change will come, but it will come. There is too great a distance between the official ideology and the state of mind of society.”







WHILE HAVEL AND DUBĈEK WERE SPEAKING to the delirious crowds in Wenceslas Square, the panic-stricken Czech leaders were holding a crisis session of the party’s policy-making Central Committee. Long-festering splits within the leadership had burst out into the open. Husák’s successor as first secretary, Miloš Jakeš, was in favor of using force to break up the demonstrations. But his Politburo colleagues lacked the stomach for decisive measures.

As the protest demonstrations grew in strength, the Prague police became increasingly demoralized. Jakes prepared a last-ditch plan to shore up his crumbling authority. He would order the People’s Militia, a twenty-five-thousand-strong force answerable only to the party leadership, into Prague factories to counter the influence of students who were trying to drum up support for a general strike. He also hoped to use the militia to reestablish his control over state television, which had begun to broadcast coverage of the demonstrations. The Politburo approved the plan on the evening of Tuesday, November 21.

The results fell way short of the decisive show of force that would have been required to restore the status quo. It was too little too late. When the People’s Militia squads appeared at the factories, they were booed and jeered, in some cases even attacked. The interior minister, who was responsible for the police, refused to go along with the plan. Other Politburo members, including the Prague party boss, looked for ways of distancing themselves from the discredited Jakeš. The demoralized and leaderless militia went home.

At the Central Committee meeting on November 24, one member after another got up to denounce the leadership for the use of violence against the demonstrators. Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec, the leading reformer on the Politburo, denounced the use of “extraordinary measures,” saying it would only “further aggravate” the situation.


 Eventually even Jakeš joined in the ritualistic breast-beating and self-criticism. “We have underestimated completely the processes taking place in Poland, Hungary, and especially recently in the German Democratic Republic,” he told his colleagues. “Our restructuring has been accompanied by many wonderful words, without the necessary deeds.”




Like other disgraced Communist leaders, Jakeš was devastated by the way in which once-trusted subordinates turned on him as soon as the going got rough. “Beforehand, they had been raising their hands to vote yes,” he told an interviewer later. “Suddenly, everything was wrong. I could do nothing right.”







THE FINAL ACT of the day’s drama took place in the Magic Lantern Theater, a hundred yards from the bottom of Wenceslas Square. The Magic Lantern served as the headquarters of the democracy movement, performing a similar function to that of the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk during the heyday of Solidarity. It was here that Civic Forum leaders plotted strategy, student activists drew up manifestos, and Havel held his daily press conferences.

On the evening of November 24 Havel was joined on the Magic Lantern stage by Dubĉek. Journalists wanted to know how Dubĉek’s ideas had changed during the twenty years since he had dropped out of public life. Not at all, was the answer. “I believe in the reformability of socialism,” Dubĉek replied. “We must look truth in the eyes and depart from everything that is wrong.” As Dubĉek spoke, Havel wore a pained expression. “Socialism is a word that has lost its meaning in our country,” he told journalists. “I identify socialism with men like Mr. Jakeš.”




As the two men were discussing their differing views of socialism, someone rushed onstage to deliver a whispered message. Television had just announced that Jakeš and the entire Politburo had resigned. The theater erupted in applause. Havel and Dubĉek jumped to their feet to embrace each other and flash the V for victory sign. A supporter emerged from the wings of the theater carrying a bottle of champagne and some glasses. Havel proposed a toast: “Long live a free Czechoslovakia.” Dubĉek downed the champagne in one long gulp.

Outside in Wenceslas Square crowds of people, amazed by the latest turn of events, gathered in front of store windows to watch the television news. Then they began lighting firecrackers and sparklers. Taxi drivers leaned on their horns. Four soldiers in uniform ran laughing through the square, waving a red, white, and blue Czechoslovak flag. A single trumpeter led a crowd of revelers to the statue of St. Wenceslas, ringed by hundreds of flickering votive candles. The first snowflakes of winter had begun to fall.

It was spring again in Prague.




BUCHAREST

December 21, 1989


THE DICTATOR STOOD on his balcony, gazing out across a sea of demonstrators bearing his portrait and red banners extolling his wise and brilliant leadership. His high-pitched voice had become one continuous shriek, denouncing “foreign imperialists” and “fascist hooligans” for disturbing the workers’ paradise. When he paused for breath, the crowd responded with rhythmic chants of “Ceauşescu-Romania” and “Hoorah, hoorah.” The dictator modestly raised his hand to silence the deafening roars of approval. Then he resumed his ranting, slicing the air with the palm of his hands as he screamed into the microphone.

Demonstrations of popular support for the conducător, supreme leader, of the Romanian people always followed the same ritual. Party organizers were instructed to dispatch fixed quotas of “ordinary Romanians” to the site of the rally. The demonstrators were issued banners and told what slogans to chant. The front rows of the rally were filled with members of the secret police, the Securitate, who led the chanting and provided a physical barrier between the conducător and his “supporters.” The volume level was routinely boosted by prerecorded applause, relayed through strategically placed banks of loudspeakers.

During his twenty-four years in power Nicolae Ceauşescu had come to depend on the adulation of those around him. Dozens of museums had been built in his honor, to cater for his insatiable thirst for omagiu (homage). Romanian newspapers compared him with Napoleon and Alexander the Great. A court painter depicted him carrying an orb and scepter, ascending through the clouds with his wife, Elena, accompanied by cherubic young Communist pioneers and white doves, symbolizing his quest for peace. His favorite poet referred to him as a “lay god,” with a voice of “planetary resonance” that echoed to the corners of the earth.


 Impressed by Ceauşescu’s occasional disagreements with Moscow, Western leaders had joined in the chorus of applause. Richard Nixon hailed his “profound understanding of the world’s major problems.” The queen of England invited him to Buckingham Palace and made him a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, the highest award she could bestow on a foreign leader.

For twenty-four years the applause had never faltered. But on this day something went terribly wrong.

It started with a low murmuring at the back, where the ordinary people stood. As the conducător ranted on, the murmurs turned to boos and whistles. There were shouts of “Freedom,” “Democracy,” and, ominously, the same chant that had sealed the fate of East Germany’s Communist leaders: “We are the people.” Gradually the cries of protest swelled, so that they could no longer be drowned out by the Securitate cheerleaders and the tape-recorded applause of the loudspeakers.

As they watched the live broadcast from Palace Square in Bucharest, millions of Romanians could hear the growing rumble of discontent. They saw a puzzled look spread across Ceauşescu’s deeply lined face, to be replaced by annoyance and finally by outright fear. They saw him raise his right hand in an ineffectual attempt to silence the hecklers. They saw him open and close his mouth, as nothing came out. For the first time ever their leader seemed at a loss for words. His eyes darted back and forth, searching the crowd. A bodyguard rushed forward to pull the president away from the balcony. Television viewers could hear Elena’s frantic comments to her husband: “Promise them something, talk to them.” Martial music swelled up in the background. Then the television screens went blank.

In an attempt to win over the crowd, Ceauşescu promised across-the-board wage and pension hikes. They responded with boos and hisses. The illusion of his omniscient power had been shattered once and for all. Both the people in the square and millions of television viewers at home had sensed his vulnerability.

Even before the wave of anti-Communist revolution swept Eastern Europe, Ceauşescu was a man obsessed with personal security. Fearing assassination plots, he refused to eat anything that had not been professionally tasted. When he appeared in public, he was always surrounded by the Securitate. He had a personal hygiene fetish and would douse his hands in alcohol before and after meeting foreign dignitaries. Mistrusting outsiders, he appointed his relatives to key posts in the governments. “Socialism in one family” became a Romanian joke. Elena was considered the number two person in the regime; son Nicu was heir apparent; brother-in-law Ilie Verdeţ rose to the post of prime minister; another brother-in-law, Manea Mănescu, was deputy prime minister. Other relatives held key positions in the army, the Ministry of Trade, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Few people outside the charmed circle of relatives were permitted to remain in sensitive posts for more than a few years.

Convinced of his own infallibility and irreplaceability, Ceauşescu was prepared to do almost anything to remain in power. As his political position grew more precarious, he began lobbying other Communist leaders for urgent action to save the cause of socialism in Eastern Europe. In private conversations with his aides Gorbachev referred to Ceauşescu as the “Romanian führer” and made clear that he would be happy to see him deposed. During one visit to Bucharest the Soviet leader had accused Ceauşescu of terrorizing Romanians and isolating them from the rest of Europe.




By early December it was clear that the conducător was in serious trouble. The flash point came in the western Romanian city of Timişoara, where thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to defend a Lutheran priest threatened with deportation for his human rights activities. On Ceauşescu’s orders, soldiers fired into the crowds, killing dozens of people. “We’ll fight to the last,” he had told his security chiefs, only hours beforehand. “Fidel Castro is right. You do not shut your enemy up by talking to him like a priest, but by burning him.”




The events in Timişoara provoked a wave of national revulsion against the Ceauşescu regime. As news of the killings spread by word of mouth—the state-run media were prohibited from reporting antigovernment demonstrations—casualty figures became grossly inflated. The rumors of thousands of dead jolted Romanians from their long torpor. The rally in Palace Square represented a last, desperate gamble by Ceauşescu to prove he still had public opinion behind him. The live television pictures of the crowd jeering and booing the tyrant served as a signal to ordinary Romanians to take to the streets.

That afternoon and evening there were riots on the streets of Bucharest. Crowds massed in the center of the city, outside Communist Party buildings, chanting, “Timişoara, Timişoara.” Periodically the protesters were dispersed by water cannon and bursts of gunfire from Securitate sharpshooters. The next morning the crowds were back, tearing down portraits of Nicolae and Elena and besieging the Central Committee building in Palace Square, where the couple was holed up. The streets were full of tanks and armored cars, but their occupants showed little enthusiasm for using force against the demonstrators. In University Square, around 11:00 a.m., soldiers allowed demonstrators to scramble on board their armored vehicles. Soon a new chant went up: “The army is with us, the army is with us.”




As the demonstrators broke into the Central Committee building, a white helicopter took off from the roof, with the Ceauşescus aboard. It flew first to Snagov, a town spa forty miles northeast of Bucharest and the site of one of many presidential residences scattered around Romania. Inside the palace Ceauşescu attempted to get in touch with Communist Party secretaries around Romania by phone and rally their support. Minutes later the helicopter flew off again. The dictator wanted to go to the oil-producing city of Pitesţi, which he had heard was quiet, but the helicopter pilot had different ideas. Claiming that the French-built craft had been spotted by radar and could be shot down at any moment, he deposited the Ceauşescus by the side of a country road.

For the next few hours the deposed first couple wandered around the Romanian countryside in a series of hijacked cars. Abandoned by their bodyguards, they were finally arrested by the army in the town of Tîrgovişte, just south of the Carpathian Mountains. Ceauşescu was unable to accept the fact that he was being held prisoner by his own army. He alternated between bouts of deep depression and rantings about “betrayal.” “How could you arrest me?” he berated his captors. “I am your commander-in-chief.”


 He complained that his fate was “decided in Malta,” a reference to a Gorbachev-Bush summit three weeks earlier. When his captors offered him regular army food, he pushed it away, describing it as “inedible crap.” At night he and Elena huddled together in the same bed, two old people hugging each other and bickering at the same time.

Over the next three days the Ceauşescus could hear gunfire around the army barracks where they were being held. In Tîrgovişte, as in other Romanian towns, Securitate sharpshooters were conducting a furious last-ditch stand. Their strategy was to create an atmosphere of total confusion and panic by taking potshots at civilians and attempting to storm key government buildings. The sound of shooting encouraged Ceauşescu to believe that a civil war was raging in Romania and it was only a matter of time before he was rescued.

In fact Ceauşescu’s supporters were fighting a losing battle. A new transitional government, known as the National Liberation Front, was gradually imposing its authority. By Christmas Eve the new rulers had had enough. In order to deprive the Securitate of a rallying point, they decided to rid Romania of the Ceauşescus once and for all.

The “trial” took place on the afternoon of Christmas Day in a small schoolroom that had been transformed into an improvised courtroom. The proceedings lasted for fifty-five minutes and were as grotesque a parody of the “rule of law” as anything that had occurred under Ceauşescu himself. No attempt was made to prove the charges, which included “murder of more than sixty thousand people,” “subversion of the national economy,” and “depositing more than one billion dollars in foreign banks.” The military judge acted as one of the prosecutors. After failing to persuade the Ceauşescus to plead diminished responsibility through insanity, the court-appointed defense counsel conceded at the end of the trial that his clients were guilty as charged.

Still dressed in the same dark overcoat that he had worn in Bucharest, the fallen conducător stubbornly refused to acknowledge the court’s authority or answer its questions. Over and over again he insisted that only his own rubber-stamp parliament, the Grand National Assembly, had the right to put him on trial. When Elena screamed at the court, he patted her on the hand, as if to say that it was not worth arguing with such insignificant people. From time to time he gazed impatiently at his watch, rolling his eyes at the ceiling at the impudence of those who presumed to judge him.

“I am president of the country and supreme commander of the army. I do not recognize you,” he snarled. “I do not answer the questions of a gang which carried out a coup.”




After the court delivered the preordained verdict—capital punishment—Ceauşescu maintained a sullen dignity. According to the official account, as he was led away, he hummed the opening bars of the “Internationale.” Elena was more shrill, screaming at the soldiers who took her away that she had been “like a mother” to them. “We want to die together,” she insisted at one point. When one of the soldiers bumped into her, she turned on him furiously. “Go fuck your mother,” she yelled.

The soldiers led the Ceauşescus out into an adjoining courtyard and placed them against a whitewashed wall. A firing squad was waiting. The four executioners opened up with automatic rifles, firing more than thirty rounds apiece. The bodies of the “beloved father and mother” of the Romanian people crumpled to the ground.




MANY OF THE OFFICIAL charges against the Ceauşescus turned out to be wildly exaggerated. The new National Salvation government later acknowledged the total number of those killed during the “revolution” was more like one thousand than forty thousand.


 No hard evidence was ever found to support allegations that the dictator had stashed away millions of dollars in Swiss banks. On the other hand, the economic, social, and psychological devastation wrought on Romania by Ceauşescu during his twenty-four-year rule was incalculable. It will probably take the country many generations to recover from the effects of his megalomania. Hailed by Communist propagandists as the path to national grandeur, Ceauşescu’s policies had turned Romania into the most impoverished and backward country in Eastern Europe, with the possible exception of Albania. The so-called Golden Era was an age of unrelenting economic hardship and brutal political repression.

Hardly any of Ceauşescu’s grandiose schemes ever came to fruition, but the cost of attempting to implement them was enormous. Determined to boost the population of Romania from twenty-two million to thirty million by the year 2000, the tyrant virtually outlawed abortion and contraception. The result was a surge in the number of unwanted children, a jump in the infant mortality rate, and the deaths of thousands of women who attempted illegal abortions every year. Intent on creating a modern industrialized state, he poured money into prestige projects, such as a vastly expanded oil-refining industry, which worked at only 10 percent of capacity. The country’s once-prosperous agricultural sector was ruined. To build a capital city that would be worthy of him, Ceauşescu tore up some of the oldest sections of Bucharest to make way for a vast and hideous “People’s Palace,” with more than a thousand rooms, decorated with five-ton chandeliers and acres of white marble. At the same time, he ordered hundreds of villages razed to the ground in the name of “systematization” and “civilization.” To pay for his visionary ideas, he deprived ordinary Romanians of heat, food, and electricity.

Reporting from Romania in the aftermath of Ceauşescu’s overthrow was like reporting from a country just liberated after a devastating war. The difference was that Romanians were being freed not from a foreign occupier but from their own domestic tyrant. It was as if a huge weight had been lifted from the national psyche. People seemed dazed by their experiences. There was a kind of stunned relief among Romanians that they had survived the experiment in “scientific socialism.” Wherever one went—factories, schools, hospitals, orphanages—people shouted out stories that they had scarcely dared whisper to trusted intimates a few days before. The story that caught the world’s attention, because it best summed up the biological and psychological degradation of the nation, was the plight of Romania’s orphaned and abandoned children.







ORPHANAGE-SCHOOL NO. 6 on the outskirts of Bucharest, home to 226 shivering, undernourished children, was typical of hundreds of other Dickensian establishments scattered around Romania. Although the children suffered from a wide variety of ailments, including AIDS, rickets, and tuberculosis, the most common sickness was frostbite. In winter the temperature in the orphanage, a three-story concrete barracks, frequently fell below freezing because of severe energy cuts ordered by Ceauşescu. Children wore knitted caps and mittens to keep warm, even while indoors. They received lukewarm baths on Wednesdays and Saturdays. They lived in rooms of ten beds each, off long, gloomy corridors that were permanently dark because of a shortage of lightbulbs. The curriculum was dominated by lessons in blind adulation for the dictator who tormented them. “The people, Ceauşescu, Romania, the party,” they would chant whenever a visitor came into the room, lit only by a forty-watt lightbulb, the maximum permitted. The children were taught politically uplifting songs that mocked the cold and dark reality of their surroundings.
		How beautiful, how beautiful is my life,



		I can become what I want.



		I am a patriotic hawk of the fatherland.



		Today the country is taking care of my childhood.



		How beautiful, how beautiful is my life.



		For my country, one day,



		I will sacrifice everything.








When news of Ceauşescu’s overthrow reached the orphanage, staff and children went from room to room, tearing down his portraits. Some girls even gouged his eyes out. Within a week the orphanage director was telling the children lurid tales about how the dictator had turned former orphans into Securitate killers. Everybody recalled how the orphanage had previously been housed in much more lavish accommodations in the center of Bucharest that had been demolished to make way for one of Ceauşescu’s pet projects. “You saw what Ceauşescu did,” shouted Titza Batezatu. “He killed children; he shot children. He only pretended to love you, but in fact he shot you.”

“Ceauşescu was a criminal,” said Rodica Bruiso, a look of hatred crossing her twelve-year-old face.

“That’s right,” piped up eighteen-year-old Mikhaila Baiban. “He had dozens of palaces built for himself, while the people starved.”

The scene in the orphanage was the direct result of the bizarre social policies pursued by the “Genius of the Carpathians.” In 1966, a year after Ceauşescu came to power, Romania adopted legislation providing for prison terms of up to five years for illegal abortions. An abortion was permitted only if a woman had already had five children. In 1986 the law was tightened further to ban abortions for any woman under the age of forty-five unless her life was endangered. There were severe penalties for doctors carrying out illegal abortions. These draconian restrictions were combined with a failure to create suitable living conditions for raising large families. Many women who were unable to face the prospect of having more children, and were too poor to bribe doctors for illegal abortions, attempted to self-abort. Others had the children only to abandon them later.

Under Ceauşescu the Bucharest Municipal Hospital dealt with an average of three thousand failed abortions every year, including two hundred women who required major surgery. Many other women were too frightened to report to the hospital. The head of the hospital’s gynecological section estimated that well over a thousand women died in Bucharest every year as a result of bungled abortions. Gangrene of the uterus and permanent sterility were frequent complications.

Unlike many Western leaders, ordinary Romanians were not taken in by Ceauşescu. Not far from Orphanage-School No. 6 was a former children’s playground that had been hastily converted into a “cemetery of heroes.” Hundreds of candles flickered in memory of demonstrators killed by Securitate snipers or crushed by tanks during the final death throes of the Ceauşescu regime. Adorning the grave of fourteen-year-old Marian Mulescu, shot by security police beneath the dictator’s balcony in Palace Square, was a placard recording his last conversation with his mother as he lay dying in the hospital.

“Why did you go down to the square, my son?”

“I went there for freedom.”




KATYN

April 14, 1990


AFTER DECADES OF LIES the time had come to tell the truth about the thousands of Polish officers massacred in the forest of Katyn by the Soviet secret police. By a quirk of history, this task had been assigned to Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland’s last Communist ruler and president of the first post-Communist republic. The man who had devoted the better part of his life to keeping Poland part of the Soviet bloc was eager to prove he could be an equally devoted servant of the new order.

Dressed in the uniform of a four-star general, Jaruzelski stepped forward to lay a wreath on the grave of the murdered officers. As he straightened himself up, a volley of rifle shots disturbed the quietness of the birch grove. A military chaplain led the crowd in prayers. Hundreds of tiny flags, bearing inscriptions such as “To my beloved husband, murdered in Katyn” and “To our father, killed on the orders of Stalin and Beria,” fluttered in the breeze.

“They fought for a free Poland, and they were slaughtered as innocents,” Jaruzelski wrote in the remembrance book. “Far from their homes and their native land, they remained faithful to Poland and their soldiers’ honor until the last moment. To the Polish officer, and the victim of Stalinist crimes, is due eternal honor.”

A few months earlier such a ceremony would have been impossible. Even though there was overwhelming evidence implicating the Soviet secret police in the murder of the Polish officers, Kremlin propagandists had always insisted that the Nazis were responsible. Like his Communist predecessors, Jaruzelski had accepted the Russian version of events, prohibiting the Polish press from any discussion of Katyn. It was only after Communist rule had begun to unravel in Poland that he shifted his position. After the Solidarity election victory in June 1989 Jaruzelski urged Gorbachev to acknowledge Soviet responsibility for the tragedy on the ground that it was impeding the development of normal relations between the Soviet Union and Poland.

The Polish obsession with Katyn was part of a frenzied reexamination of history all over the former Soviet empire. The Balts wanted to know the truth about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which had permitted Stalin to crush their independence at the outset of World War II. Czechs and Slovaks insisted on being told the names of the Politburo traitors who had requested “fraternal assistance” from the Soviet Union in 1968 to suppress the Prague Spring. Hungarians demanded political rehabilitation for the leaders of the 1956 Budapest uprising against the Communist dictatorship. East Germans combed through Stasi records to discover which of their friends and neighbors had been spying on them.

Exactly half a century earlier, in April 1940, the spot where Jaruzelski now stood had been a killing field. The NKVD, Stalin’s secret police, brought the Polish officers here in prison vans known as Black Ravens. The officers were frisked for valuables and forced to kneel alongside a line of deep pits. It was easy to see why the NKVD had chosen the clearing in the forest as a suitable execution site. It was a quiet and secluded place where they could work undisturbed. It was also convenient, right next to a summer vacation home for NKVD employees and only a thirty-minute drive from the main Moscow-Minsk railway line.

The NKVD executioners were trained to kill with brutal efficiency. Soviet pistols tended to overheat with heavy use, so they used a German-made pistol, the Walther 7.65 mm, considered more reliable. They took aim at the nape of the victim’s skull, so that the bullet passed neatly through his brain, emerging between the nose and the hairline. Perfected in the early days of the revolution, this method caused instant death with minimal consumption of bullets. An assistant usually stood by to reload the eight-shot semiautomatic pistol. The bodies were neatly stacked in layers of twelve. There could be anywhere between two hundred and three thousand bodies per pit. When the pit was full, it was filled in with heavy sand and landscaped with birch trees.




The Germans stumbled on what had happened at Katyn after invading the Soviet Union in June 1941. Acting on a tip from a local peasant, they dug up the skeletons of 4,143 Polish officers. The mass graves also contained personal effects such as letters, snapshots, bracelets, and leather cavalry boots. The discovery was a propaganda windfall for the Nazis, who used it to drive a wedge between the Poles and the Soviets. It was also an embarrassment for the Western Allies, who needed to keep on good terms with Stalin in order to win the war.

From the historians’ point of view, the most important find were twenty-two diaries, which make it possible to reconstruct what happened to the officers in the seven months between their arrests and brutal executions. After their capture by the Red Army, the officers were interned in a Russian Orthodox monastery at Kozielsk, 150 miles south of Moscow. All attempts to “reeducate” them or persuade them to remain in the Soviet Union failed. Proud of their national traditions, they defied the Soviet military authorities by holding prayer meetings in their barracks and singing the Polish national anthem. Their proud demeanor, unquenchable optimism, and beautifully cut leather boots astonished their Soviet jailers. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they persisted in believing that their homeland would soon be liberated.

Toward the end of March 1940 the prisoners picked up rumors that the camp was about to be closed. The Soviet Union had never declared war on Poland. The officers hoped to be sent to a neutral country and eventually rejoin the exiled Polish army. The NKVD encouraged such rumors, hinting that they were going “to the West” or “to home.” On April 3 the first group of three hundred or so prisoners left Kozielsk to the exuberant cheers of their countrymen. They were fed a good meal before leaving the camp, leading to speculation that the Soviets wanted to fatten them up prior to releasing them. After a twenty-four-hour ride in windowless wagons, they were pushed off the train at a place called Gniezdovo.

“At [the Gniezdovo] station, we were loaded into prison cars under strict guard,” noted Lieutenant Wacław Kruk in a diary entry dated April 8. “Optimistic as I was before, I’m now coming to the conclusion that this journey does not bode well.”




One of the Polish officers, Major Adam Skolski, managed to keep writing his diary until a few moments before he died. “From dawn, the day started in a peculiar way. Departure in lorries fitted with cells; terrible. Taken somewhere into a forest, something like a country house. Very thorough search of our belongings. They took my watch, which showed time as 6:30 (Polish time) 8:30 (Soviet time); asked about a wedding ring. Ruble, belt, and pocket knife taken away.”







FOR GORBACHEV, glasnost had never been an end in itself. It was a means to an end, a way of bringing outside pressure to bear on the apparatchiks who actually made decisions. Historical truth was a powerful political weapon to be used sparingly, in accordance with changing circumstances, and at the most opportune time. This was one area where he enjoyed an advantage over his bureaucratic rivals. As general secretary he was the custodian of the regime’s most terrible secrets.

The secrets were stuffed in large envelopes, tied with string, and sealed with wax. There were around two thousand of these envelopes, all neatly filed away in cupboards in the Kremlin apartment once occupied by Stalin, down the corridor from the general secretary’s office. This was the celebrated osobaya papka (special file), containing documents so secret that they were circulated and preserved in one copy only. Anybody who checked the documents out was obliged to sign for them. Many of the envelopes in the osobaya papka could be opened only by the general secretary himself or with his personal authorization.




The contents of the osobaya papka were politically and ideologically devastating. Here, in black and white, were documents that laid bare the cynicism and opportunism of Soviet leaders, from Lenin onward. There were orders, signed by Lenin, for the murder of priests and “class enemies” and for a policy of “Red Terror” against the enemies of the revolution. There were documents proving that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of millions of his countrymen, and not just “thousands,” as Gorbachev himself maintained as late as November 1987. There was the official Russian-language text of the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, providing for the dismemberment of Poland and the Baltic states, a document that Moscow had long denounced as a forgery. There were the squalid details of Kremlin power struggles, including the murder of the secret police chief Lavrenti Beria and the plot against Khrushchev. There were documents outlining preparations for the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. And there were two large envelopes devoted to Katyn.

An item in Envelope No. 1 revealed the shameful truth: The Polish officers had been killed on Stalin’s direct orders. It was a typewritten memorandum from Beria to the dictator, recommending the “supreme penalty—shooting” for Polish officers and Poles suspected of belonging to “various counter-revolutionary organizations.” Stalin had scrawled his approval across the top of the document, and other Politburo members had also affixed their signatures. Another handwritten report, submitted to Nikita Khrushchev by the head of the KGB, gave a precise figure for the number of Poles executed at Katyn and two other sites: 21,857. It recommended destroying the personnel records of the murdered Poles on the ground that they no longer had any “operational” or “historical” value and were potentially embarrassing.




Gorbachev had the opportunity to discover the truth about Katyn from the moment he became general secretary. However, he showed little interest in the matter until it became a subject of hot political controversy. In the spring of 1987 he set up a joint Soviet-Polish commission to investigate so-called blank spots in relations between the two countries. Official historians from both sides were instructed to comb the archives to produce an agreed-upon version of history. Despite numerous meetings, the commission failed to make much progress largely because the Soviet representatives were not authorized to question the official line. Polish historians concluded that the purpose of the blank spots campaign was to obfuscate rather than to clarify, postponing the moment when Moscow would finally admit responsibility for Katyn.

Two years later, in the spring of 1989, pressure began to mount from the Polish side for a resolution of the Katyn affair. With contested elections approaching, and in the wake of the Round Table agreement with Solidarity, Jaruzelski was anxious to demonstrate his national credentials. For the Polish Communist Party to continue to deny Soviet guilt—in the face of overwhelming evidence—would be politically suicidal. In March 1989 a Polish spokesman announced that everything pointed to the conclusion that “the crime was committed by the Stalinist NKVD.”




The Polish about-face put Gorbachev in a difficult spot since he had earlier insisted that there was no conclusive evidence of Soviet guilt. Far from being dead and buried, the Katyn mystery had now become a live political issue. In a memorandum dated March 22, 1989, the top Soviet officials dealing with Poland warned Gorbachev that the Katyn affair could explode in his face and urged him not to procrastinate any further. “In this case, time is not our ally,” the memorandum concluded. “It might be preferable to explain what really happened, and who specifically is responsible for what happened, and close the issue there. The costs of this course of action would be lower, in the final analysis, than the damage caused by our inaction.”




Preoccupied with his own domestic problems, Gorbachev effectively shelved this recommendation. But according to his former chief of staff Valery Boldin, he did order his own search of the osobaya papka. Boldin later recalled:






He called me in and asked me to show him everything we had on the Katyn affair. Two envelopes were found. I ordered them from the archives, and I brought them to him unopened, exactly the way I received them from the archives. He opened both envelopes himself, read what was inside, and sealed them back with Scotch tape. He did not give the material to me to read. He told me, “This is indeed the material concerning Katyn. It needs to be kept so that it is quite safe.” I put the material in a new envelope and sealed it properly…. All the documents that were kept in the archives on this subject were handed over to him.








In accordance with the rules of the osobaya papka, archivists duly noted that the documents were signed out to Boldin on April 18, 1989, and returned in a new envelope. It was the first time that any Kremlin official had examined the file in more than eight years.

Gorbachev insists he was never shown the documents relating to Katyn or equally damning evidence on the Molotov-Ribbentrop secret protocols.


 He has challenged the veracity of his former chief of staff, pointing out that Boldin played a leading role in the August 1991 coup. He has also posed the rhetorical question, Why should the father of glasnost, the man who did more than any other Soviet leader to publicize the ghastly atrocities of the Stalin era, have any reason to lie about Katyn?




Boldin’s reliability as a historical witness is certainly open to question. On this occasion, however, he seems more credible than Gorbachev. In April 1989 he was still the perfect apparatchik, faithfully carrying out his master’s wishes. He had no reason to conceal documents from his own boss. On the contrary, he wanted to impress the general secretary with his loyalty and zeal. The idea that he would have kept such explosive material to himself is so improbable that few Russian officials outside Gorbachev’s immediate entourage believe it. Even Yakovlev, the Politburo member directly responsible for historical matters, has accused the former Soviet leader of lying: “There was a huge fuss about this. Gorbachev kept telling me: ‘Find the documents, keep looking.’ And he told Jaruzelski: ‘Press harder on Yakovlev, let him look for these documents.’ It put me in such a difficult position. During my talks with Jaruzelski, I felt like a fish in a hot frying pan…. I later discovered that he [Gorbachev] had hid the facts about Katyn all along.”




There is a plausible answer to Gorbachev’s rhetorical question about why he should have concealed the most damning documents about Katyn when he allowed so much else to come to light, and it goes to the heart of his political identity and character. The father of glasnost was a master obfuscater and manipulator. He was in favor of openness, but on his terms. He believed in doling out the truth in small, politically calculated doses. He could have totally destroyed the legitimacy of the Communist system with a series of spectacular revelations, but he had no interest in doing so. He was a reformer, not a revolutionary. In the case of the Katyn archives, he wanted to prevent a wave of anti-Sovietism in Poland. He did not want to antagonize the conservative wing of his own Politburo, at a time when he needed its support to create a powerful presidency. A host of such considerations are likely to have run through his mind as he stuffed the incriminating documents back into the envelope.

In short, the time was not yet ripe.

Later on, when the time was ripe, he had his own historical reputation to consider. The way Boldin tells it, Gorbachev became trapped in his own Byzantine political manipulations. His attempt to control the flood of revelations from the archives had led him to conceal valuable documents from both his own colleagues and the international community. Having lied once, he was obliged to lie again, for reasons of consistency.

When Gorbachev revised his position about Soviet responsibility for Katyn in April 1990, he did so for primarily pragmatic reasons. Independent research in both Poland and the Soviet Union had exploded the longstanding claim of German guilt and Soviet innocence. Jaruzelski was coming to Moscow and wanted to go down in history as the man who had persuaded the Soviets to “tell the truth” about Katyn. From Moscow’s point of view, it was better to concede Soviet guilt to Jaruzelski than to his anti-Communist rivals. According to a secret Kremlin memorandum, it was necessary to find a way “to seal the political problem and at the same time avoid an explosion of emotion.” The challenge facing Soviet leaders was to come up with a version of history that would set the record reasonably straight, at the “lowest [political] cost.”




When Gorbachev received Jaruzelski in the Kremlin, he told the Polish leader that the available evidence indicated that the Katyn massacre had been carried out on the orders of “Beria and his henchmen.”


 This formula had the effect of shifting responsibility for the massacre away from the Soviet state toward an individual who was later executed for his crimes. The contents of the osobaya papka were still considered too shocking to be made public.

If this is a correct interpretation of Gorbachev’s handling of the Katyn affair, he made one fatal miscalculation. He assumed that the secrets of the osobaya papka would remain under lock and key virtually indefinitely. He underestimated the political challenge he faced from Boris Yeltsin, who had been nursing a festering sense of grievance about his ouster from the leadership two and a half years previously.

Over the next eighteen months the rivalry between Gorbachev and Yeltsin gradually came to dominate the Soviet political scene. Theirs was to be a fight to the death, involving every conceivable weapon in the Kremlin arsenal, including the osobaya papka.




MOSCOW

May 29, 1990


BORIS YELTSIN DESCRIBED the brutal essence of Kremlin politics when he observed that leaders “have never voluntarily parted with power in Russia.” In the second volume of his memoirs, The Struggle for Russia, he tried to explain this “medieval principle” to a predominantly Western audience: “It’s as if leaders were told: you have been given power, so hang on to it. Don’t let it go for anything. Whoever is on top must step on those below…. That is the vertical structure of society. Russia is one and indivisible. Everyone strives upward, to the very top. Higher and higher still. Once you have scrambled to the top, the altitude is so dizzying, you cannot back down.”




Russian leaders had every incentive to hang on to power. In the West the shock of losing high office is cushioned by new opportunities; there is a revolving door between public and private life. In the Soviet Union losing power was tantamount to losing everything. Under Stalin, ousted Politburo members were lucky to stay alive. Stalin’s successors were more humane. Instead of shooting their defeated rivals, they humiliated them, sending them off to run power stations in Siberia and embassies in Latin America. It was not physical destruction, but it was political destruction, and it was accompanied by the loss of many of the privileges enjoyed by members of the Kremlin circle.

When Yeltsin was expelled from the Politburo in February 1988, he was obliged to give up many privileges, including his Zil limousine and country dacha. The psychological trauma of losing power was even greater. His telephone fell silent; people whom he had regarded as friends and colleagues disappeared from his life; his information network dried up overnight. His former comrades in the Kremlin nomenklatura treated him as a political outcast. He lay awake at night, suffering from appalling headaches, obsessively reviewing every step that he had taken and every word that he had said. There were times when he felt like “crawling up the wall” and could hardly restrain himself from “crying out loud.”

“Politically, I was a corpse,” he later wrote. “All that was left where my heart had been was a burnt-out cinder. Everything around me was burnt out, everything within me was burnt out.”




Traditionally once a person was tossed out of the charmed inner circle of Soviet power, there was no way back. The victors made sure of that. Yeltsin, however, had the wit to realize that the rules of Kremlin politics were changing rapidly because of Gorbachev’s glasnost campaign. For the first time in seven decades, public opinion was becoming a real factor in Soviet decision making. Gorbachev made use of public opinion in his fight with the bureaucracy. Yeltsin, however, was the first Soviet politician to understand that power could come from the people rather than from the party.

The role of people’s tribune suited the Siberian. Although he had been a nachalnik (boss) for most of his life, he knew what it was like to be an underdog. Born dirt poor, he had suffered abuse as a child. More recently he had been disgraced by Gorbachev and the party leadership and had many scores to settle. His immense physical strength and sportsman’s training made him a natural fighter. He had a lot of stamina. He knew almost instinctively how to appeal to a crowd. Like Poland’s Wałęsa, he was able to sense what his listeners were thinking and shape his message to what they wanted to hear. Through a skillful mixture of good humor, common sense, and outright demagoguery, he tapped into the anger of the masses and used it as a weapon against his political opponents.

It was Gorbachev who had inadvertently supplied Yeltsin with the vehicle for his political resurrection, with his decision to create a partially free parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies. After Sakharov’s death in December 1989 Yeltsin became the leader of the “democratic opposition” to Gorbachev.

The Soviet Union’s deepening economic crisis played straight into Yeltsin’s hands. By the summer of 1990 most Russians had lost interest in Gorbachev’s foreign policy triumphs and the dramatic improvement in relations with the United States. Soviet television viewers reacted to pictures of Germans and Americans chanting, “Gorbie, Gorbie,” with snorts of contempt. Reductions in nuclear arsenals were welcome, but what most interested ordinary Russians were everyday concerns like a good pair of shoes and the length of the line outside the local bread store.

In developing his own political style and identity, Yeltsin did everything to distinguish himself from his former patron. Gorbachev rode around in a long motorcade of Zils; Yeltsin flaunted his dilapidated Moskvich, the Soviet equivalent of the despised East German Trabi. Gorbachev once confided that he shared state secrets with his wife, Raisa; Yeltsin took the view that wives had no business poking their noses into politics.


 Gorbachev had a penchant for long-winded speeches that could go on for two or three hours at a time; when Yeltsin spoke, he was always succinct and concrete. As his popularity declined, Gorbachev seemed to retreat back into his Kremlin fortress and shy away from direct contact with ordinary Russians; Yeltsin made a point of getting out into the Russian heartland and listening to what ordinary people were saying.

But the differences went deeper than style and personality, to the most crucial question of all: Was communism finished? Despite a willingness to redefine the word “socialism,” so that it lost much of its meaning, Gorbachev was unwilling to abandon Communist ideology altogether. He prattled on about the irrevocable “socialist choice” that Russia had allegedly made in November 1917. Lenin remained an unassailable authority for him. Yeltsin, on the other hand, was undergoing an ideological conversion that was both painful and public. Spurred on by his conflict with the Communist Party establishment, he had reexamined his most basic political beliefs, and he had come to the conclusion that he was no longer a Communist.

A turning point in Yeltsin’s intellectual development occurred during his first visit to the United States in September 1989, more specifically his first visit to an American supermarket, in Houston, Texas. The sight of aisle after aisle of shelves neatly stacked with every conceivable type of foodstuff and household item, each in a dozen varieties, both amazed and depressed him. For Yeltsin, like many other first-time Russian visitors to America, this was infinitely more impressive than tourist attractions like the Statue of Liberty and the Lincoln Memorial. It was impressive precisely because of its ordinariness. A cornucopia of consumer goods beyond the imagination of most Soviets was within the reach of ordinary citizens without standing in line for hours. And it was all so attractively displayed. For someone brought up in the drab conditions of communism, even a member of the relatively privileged elite, a visit to a Western supermarket involved a full-scale assault on the senses.

“What we saw in that supermarket was no less amazing than America itself,” recalled Lev Sukhanov, who accompanied Yeltsin on his trip to the United States and shared his sense of shock and dismay at the gap in living standards between the two superpowers. “I think it is quite likely that the last prop of Yeltsin’s Bolshevik consciousness finally collapsed after Houston. His decision to leave the party and join the struggle for supreme power in Russia may have ripened irrevocably at that moment of mental confusion.”




Sukhanov devotes an entire chapter of his book Tri Goda s Yetsinym (Three Years with Yeltsin) to describing the wonders of the Houston supermarket. He records Yeltsin’s amazement at being told that the store stocked thirty thousand separate items. (The average Soviet store stocked fewer than a hundred, and many of these were usually “unavailable.”) Every aisle was an eye-opener for the visitors from Moscow. Scarcely had they recovered from the shock of the cheese section, where they saw “red cheese, brown cheese, and lemon-orange cheese,” than they were “literally shaken” by the quality of produce in the vegetable section. They were particularly struck by the radishes, which were as large as good-size potatoes back home and seemed to sparkle beneath the brilliant light of the store. Reluctantly they had to move on from the vegetables to the pastry section.

“You could spend hours in the pastry section,” exclaimed Sukhanov. “As a spectacle this probably surpassed Hollywood. At the counter there was a customer waiting for a huge cake, made in the form of a hockey stadium. The players were made of chocolate. It was a real work of art, but the main thing was that it was available for purchase, completely available.”




On the plane, traveling from Houston to Miami, Yeltsin seemed lost in his thoughts for a long time. He clutched his head in his hands. Eventually he broke his silence. “They had to fool the people,” he told Sukhanov. “It is now clear why they made it so difficult for the average Soviet citizen to go abroad. They were afraid that people’s eyes would open.”




The former party apparatchik understood the yearning of the narod—the long-suffering Russian people—for a normal life, its anger at being deceived and humiliated. He, too, had been humiliated. He, too, had been deceived. He would help the narod secure its revenge against the party establishment. The narod’s revenge would also be his.

===


DOMINATED BY A MONUMENTAL marble statue of Lenin, set between Corinthian columns, the long conference hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace had witnessed some of the most dramatic events of the Soviet era. Here Stalin had reached the apotheosis of his political power, at the Seventeenth Party Congress in 1934, when he was officially described as “the greatest man of all ages and nations.”


 Here, too, the Gorbachev generation of Communists had listened, heads bowed, to Khrushchev’s impassioned denunciation of Stalin’s crimes, in his “secret speech” to the Twentieth Congress in 1956. Under Brezhnev the hall had been reserved for meetings of the Supreme Soviet. Every year newspapers around the world had carried the ritual photograph of doddering Politburo members raising their right hands in unanimous approval of party policy.

After serving as a totalitarian echo chamber for more than five decades, the great Kremlin hall had finally been turned into a real debating chamber. A large electronic scoreboard, placed to one side of Lenin, kept track of the innumerable votes. There were long lines of people waiting to speak at the microphones scattered around the hall. Outside, in the lobby, journalists rushed frantically about, nabbing deputies as they came out of the hall. Tables were piled high with draft resolutions, political pamphlets, official transcripts. On one side of the lobby there was a line of display boards, filled with telegrams from voters. The texts varied, but the message was always the same: The people’s candidate for chairman of the new Russian parliament was Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.

Egged on by Gorbachev, who accused Yeltsin of turning his back on “socialism,” the Communists did everything they could to prevent the renegade from gaining the highest political post in Russia. But their efforts to smear him backfired. The Communist candidate was so unappealing—both politically and physically—that he had trouble gaining the votes of all his fellow Communists. Independent deputies resented the Soviet president’s open interference in the election process. The longer they took to make up their minds, the more telegrams supporting Yeltsin poured into the Kremlin. After two inconclusive rounds of voting, Yeltsin was finally elected speaker on the third ballot, by a margin of just four votes.

Minutes after his triumph Russia’s new leader walked out of the Kremlin to thank the narod. They had been waiting patiently for hours, standing beneath St. Basil’s Cathedral and listening to radio transmissions of the debate. When they caught sight of their hero’s silver gray pompadour, they rushed toward him with a roar, chanting, “Victory, victory.”

“My struggle is the people’s struggle,” Yeltsin boomed, addressing his supporters from a grassy mound beneath the red-ocher Kremlin wall. “This is an important step in the victory of democracy. Now we need to continue the fight for the independence and sovereignty of Russia, for the revival of its national, economic, and spiritual image, so that Russia will live as it did before.”


 Acknowledging the cheers of the crowd with his fist, he crammed himself into the front seat of his Moskvich and was driven away.

In addition to a huge political constituency, Yeltsin now had a political stage vast enough to vie with that occupied by Mikhail Gorbachev. Russia was by far the largest, and most important, of the Soviet Union’s fifteen republics. Stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific, Russia occupied 76 percent of the Soviet landmass, an area nearly twice the size of the entire United States. Its 142 million population equaled that of all the other republics combined. The republic accounted for 90 percent of Soviet oil production, 76 percent of natural gas output, and 89 percent of foreign trade earnings. It was no exaggeration to say that the Russian colossus held the key to Gorbachev’s success or failure.

Not only was Russia vast, but it was also ideally suited to the theme that Yeltsin had made his own, the yearning of ordinary people for a decent standard of living. Other nations had independence movements to distract them from their economic misery. Russia had nowhere else to go; it was the heart of the empire. The empire, however, had brought Russia nothing but headaches. The economic devastation left behind by seven decades of communism had caused many Russians to question the national tradition of constant territorial expansion, a tradition embraced by tsars and general secretaries alike. For the first time in many centuries Russians were ready to shed their traditional great power aspirations if this would lead to an improvement in their own living standards. It was a conscious turning inward, away from empire.

The buzzword in this debate was “sovereignty.” One of the first steps taken by the new Russian parliament under Yeltsin’s leadership was the adoption of a “declaration of sovereignty,” asserting the primacy of Russian laws over Soviet laws. The parliament also asserted a right of ownership and control over all natural resources on the territory of the Russian Republic. After a one-year transition period Russia would insist that the other Soviet republics begin paying world prices for oil, gas, and other raw materials.


 As Gorbachev was quick to appreciate, such a step threatened to destroy one of the last bonds holding the empire together. If Russia took control of its vast natural resources, his bargaining power would be much reduced not only with the Baltic states but also with Slavic republics such as Ukraine. The whole basis of Soviet power, and his personal authority as president of the Soviet Union, would be undermined. The prediction that he had made at Foros the previous summer—“if Russia rises up… it will be the end of empire”—was in the process of coming true.

Yeltsin, by contrast, had discovered the perfect political weapon to use against his former Communist comrades. By leading the struggle for “sovereignty,” he would wrest power away from Gorbachev and the hated “center.” But the fight was sure to be fierce, and he needed allies. In order to make the necessary alliances, he was prepared to share his weapon with others. Not only republics but provinces, towns, and even villages had the right to be sovereign, he assured his supporters. “Take as much sovereignty as you can swallow,” he told provincial leaders shortly after his election. In Yeltsin’s conception, the entire structure of political power in Russia would be rebuilt from the bottom up, on a contractual basis. The possibility that the sovereignty weapon might one day be used against him appears to have never occurred to Yeltsin. If it did, he put it out of his mind. That was tomorrow, and this was today.

After almost three years in the political wilderness, he was back at the center of power, and it felt exhilarating. The new speaker took possession of an enormous office in the White House, a massive building on the Moskva River, where the Russian government had its headquarters. He visited the White House in the company of Sukhanov, who had helped him recover from despair at the Soviet Building Ministry, Gosstroi. The sight of the luxurious office, with its soft modern sheen, gave Sukhanov a “pleasant tingle,” he later recalled.

“Look, Boris Nikolayevich, what an office we have seized!” Sukhanov exclaimed.

“We haven’t just seized an office,” Yeltsin replied. “We have seized the whole of Russia.”







MOSCOW

December 20, 1990


AS IT TURNED OUT, Yeltsin was wrong. He and the “democrats” had not “seized” the whole of Russia. Not yet, anyway. What they had “seized” was a luxurious office in the center of Moscow, as Sukhanov had been astute enough to observe. For the time being, their power did not extend very far beyond the Moscow Ring Road. Mother Russia—vast, lethargic, bankrupt, disillusioned—continued to elude them.

The popularly elected Russian Congress of People’s Deputies had proclaimed its authority over the whole of Russia. It passed resolutions, issued edicts, and adopted laws. The blizzard of paper, however, had little visible impact on real life. The “power ministries”—the military, the KGB, the police—remained under tight Communist Party control. Months after giving up its constitutionally guaranteed monopoly of power, the party continued to exercise its influence through a ubiquitous old-comrade network. The titles on office doors were changed to emphasize the shift of power from the party to elected bodies, but the occupants of the offices usually remained the same.

The bureaucrats used the centralized distribution system to remind Yeltsin who was boss. When the new speaker demanded an official residence outside Moscow, he was allocated a room in a seedy vacation home for low-level clerks. After much complaining, he was eventually permitted to move in with a deputy minister of agriculture. The Ninth Directorate of the KGB, which was responsible for ensuring the safety of Soviet leaders, did its best to prevent Russia’s new rulers from gaining access to government cars and government communications systems. Weapons were a particularly sensitive issue. Fearing a crackdown by the hard-liners, Yeltsin attempted to build up a Russian security service that would be independent of the KGB. Since the Russian government did not control any munitions factories of its own, it had to scavenge whatever weapons it could. By the time a coup eventually did take place, in August 1991, the White House arsenal consisted of sixty assault rifles, a hundred pistols, two bulletproof jackets, and five walkie-talkies.




Just because the Communist Party apparatus was successful in denying real power to Yeltsin did not mean that nothing had changed. The impotence and incompetence of the nomenklatura became increasingly apparent, as Russia sank further into an economic morass. The bureaucrats controlled everything, but there was little they could do with their power, other than hang on to it. The system of centralized distribution had ceased to function effectively, but the apparatchiks were loath to get rid of it, for fear of undermining their own authority. The result was political paralysis. Rival legislatures competed with one another to churn out laws and edicts that nobody respected. Unable to halt the disintegration of the economy, provincial governments attempted to protect their own citizens by resorting to total rationing and erecting customs barriers. The mood was everyone for himself.

There was a brief surge of optimism in early September, when Gorbachev and Yeltsin both embraced a plan to introduce a Western-style mixed economy over a period of five hundred days. The five-hundred-day plan, as it was known, envisaged the denationalization of 80 percent of the Soviet economy, the abolition of central planning, and the liberalization of foreign trade activity. Prices would be freed; the ruble would be made convertible; collective farms would be disbanded; private property would be recognized. What is more, all this would happen relatively painlessly. What Soviet economists called the monetary overhang—the phenomenon of too much money chasing too few goods—would be eliminated by the proceeds of a bankruptcy sale of state assets.

The five-hundred-day plan turned out to be another Utopian dream. There was no such thing as a painless transition from central planning to a free market. The economists who drew up the plan underestimated the opposition they would encounter from the people who actually ran the economy: factory directors; collective farm chairmen; representatives of the military-industrial complex. These people coalesced into a powerful lobbying group. Scarcely a week went by without the convening of a conference to denounce the “ruinous” plans of the radicals and demand a return to well-tried “administrative methods.” The political pressure on Gorbachev became intense. Prime Minister Ryzkhov warned of political and economic disintegration. The kolkhoz chairmen threatened to withhold food from the cities if the five-hundred-day plan was implemented. Military deputies in the Soviet parliament went so far as to call for the president’s removal from office, unless he acted decisively to prevent “the collapse of the country.”




In the end Gorbachev simply “got frightened,” in the words of his leading economics adviser.


 His own popularity had dropped to an all-time low of 21 percent. In the Soviet parliament the “democrats” were an insignificant force. The five-hundred-day plan contained many interesting ideas, but they existed only on paper. The harsh Russian winter was approaching. Gorbachev could not afford to antagonize the factory managers and bureaucrats, who were actually running the country, or the generals and secret police chiefs, who constituted his final line of defense against Yeltsin. It was here that real power lay. He decided to bow to political reality and beat a tactical retreat.

During the fall of 1990 the radicals watched in dismay as Gorbachev appeared to move steadily to the right. In early December he dismissed his progressive interior minister, Vadim Bakatin, who had incurred the wrath of the conservatives by failing to crack down on Baltic separatism. A few days later he issued a decree ordering all state enterprises to abide by the instructions of the central planners. In a speech to the Soviet parliament he called for “resolute measures” to keep the country together. But the biggest shock was yet to come.




EDUARD SHEVARDNADZE WAS particularly alarmed by the growing influence of the conservatives. The foreign minister considered himself a political soul mate of Gorbachev and one of the intellectual fathers of perestroika and “new thinking.” He recalled his talk with Gorbachev on the beach at Pitsunda in the early eighties. In his emotional Georgian way Shevardnadze had blurted out that everything was “rotten” in the Soviet Union, and it was impossible “to go on living like this.” In a sense, everything had begun with that conversation.

It was difficult for Shevardnadze to keep track of his old friend’s constant zigzags, but one thing seemed clear: Gorbachev was drifting away from him. The president had chosen to surround himself with representatives of the traditional power structures—the Communist Party, the military, the KGB. As the conservative attacks mounted, the foreign minister thought he was being made to shoulder the blame for the Kremlin’s international setbacks, while the president basked in the praise. One incident in particular rankled with him. On October 15, the day Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a rancorous “Who lost Germany?” debate erupted in the Soviet parliament. Shevardnadze later complained that he had been left to fend off the attacks of the reactionaries for permitting a reunited Germany to become a member of NATO. “The only thing I needed, wanted, and expected from the President was that he take a clear position: that he rebuff the right-wingers, and openly defend our common policy. I waited in vain.”




After a sleepless night Shevardnadze made his decision. He wrote out his resignation statement, by hand, in the early-morning hours of December 20, 1990. He informed his daughter in Tbilisi and his two closest aides at the Foreign Ministry. They expressed their support for the action he was about to take. Then he left for the Kremlin.




A stunned silence fell on the Congress of People’s Deputies as Shevardnadze embarked on what he described as “the shortest and most difficult speech of my life.” Thumping the air with his right fist, his Georgian accent thicker than ever, he berated the “comrade democrats” for scattering “into the bushes” while the fate of perestroika was being decided. Then came the disjointed words that made headlines around the world: “Dictatorship is coming; I state this with complete responsibility. No one knows what kind of dictatorship this will be and who will come—what kind of dictator—and what the regime will be like. I want to make the following statement: I am resigning…. I cannot reconcile myself to the events taking place in our country, and to the trials awaiting our people. I nevertheless believe that the dictatorship will not succeed, that the future belongs to democracy and freedom.”




As Shevardnadze delivered his bombshell, Gorbachev listened impassively from his seat on the podium a few feet away. He later acknowledged he was “hurt” by his friend’s failure to inform him in advance, but his face betrayed no emotion at the time.


 When the speech was over, he clutched his forehead and looked down at his papers.

The team that had launched the Soviet Union on its great experiment back in 1985 had gone its separate ways. Yegor Ligachev had joined the hard-line opposition after accusing Gorbachev of presiding over the dismantling of socialism. Aleksandr Yakovlev, the ideological brains behind glasnost, had effectively retired from active politics. Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzkhov had become a victim of the government’s rock-bottom popularity. Now it was Shevardnadze’s turn to quit. Gorbachev had never been so alone.

The filmmaker Ales Adamovich summed up the Soviet leader’s predicament in a speech to the congress. “By losing such allies as Shevardnadze, you are losing your own strength, your prestige,” he told Gorbachev. “If this process goes on, the president will soon be surrounded by colonels and generals. They will surround the president, making him a hostage. Gorbachev is the only leader in Soviet history who has not stained his hands with blood, and we would like to remember him for that. But a moment will come when they will instigate a bloodbath, and later they will wipe their bloodstained hands against your suit, and you will be to blame for everything.”




It did not take long for Adamovich’s prediction to come true.




IV. REVOLT OF THE PARTY


The most dangerous moment for a corrupt regime is when it attempts to reform itself.

    

Alexis de Tocqueville






A revolution is only worth something if it knows how to defend itself.

    

Vladimir Lenin








MOSCOW

December 22, 1990


EDUARD SHEVARDNADZE HAD BASED his warning about an “approaching dictatorship” on his acute political intuition. He had watched the conservatives mobilize their forces to oppose the five-hundred-day plan, and he feared Gorbachev might be wilting under the pressure. He regarded the Tbilisi massacre of April 1989 as a dress rehearsal for a much broader armed crackdown. There had been an intensive parliamentary investigation into the Tbilisi events, but no one had ever been punished. The foreign minister began to suspect that there were “hidden forces… lurking behind the president’s back” who were ready to resort to “criminal actions.” The fact that Gorbachev was willing to shield these people was deeply disturbing to him. One day he could bear it no longer and decided to confront his old friend with his suspicions.

He reached the president over the vertushka as he was being driven to the Kremlin from his country dacha. The twenty-five-minute drive was always a good opportunity to catch Gorbachev alone, before he got submerged in daily business.

“Acts of violence are the end of perestroika, and of your reputation…”

“What are you thinking?” Gorbachev exploded. “How can it even occur to you that I would allow something like that to happen?”




Shevardnadze’s suspicions were well founded, even though he had no concrete evidence to back them up. By the time he delivered his bombshell to the congress, the machinery of repression was already in motion. Plans for a nationwide crackdown were already being hatched in the Lubyanka Prison, headquarters of the Committee for State Security. Surveillance of opposition activists had been intensified. KGB agents were following Yeltsin around the clock and had even bugged his favorite sauna with a remote-control radio. In an effort to gather incriminating information, wiretaps were ordered against hundreds of people, from the prime minister of Russia and the mayor of Moscow to Yeltsin’s tennis coach and Raisa Gorbachev’s hairdresser. Eventually the net was widened to include many of Gorbachev’s own advisers, such as Shevardnadze, Yakovlev, and the author of the five-hundred-day plan, the economist Stanislav Shatalin.


 Transcripts of these intercepted conversations were later discovered in the safe of Valery Boldin, Gorbachev’s chief of staff.

In the fall of 1990 the KGB chairman, Vladimir Kryuchkov, began bombarding Gorbachev with letters, outlining alleged plots by the “democrats” to seize power.


 He urged the president to agree to the imposition of a nationwide state of emergency. At a Politburo session in late November he called for the establishment of direct presidential rule across the entire Soviet Union and the suspension of parliamentary institutions.


 Gorbachev opposed the plan but did agree to the drafting of emergency legislation and to KGB preparations for a crackdown.

On December 8 Kryuchkov summoned two key aides to his fourth-floor office in the Lubyanka, one floor up from the office previously occupied by Andropov. Citing a request from Gorbachev, he instructed them to prepare a memorandum on measures to “stabilize” the situation in the country, along with the draft declaration on a state of emergency that could be submitted to the Supreme Soviet.


 Three days later the KGB chairman went on television to claim that “destructive elements,” funded and supported from abroad, were attempting to “shatter our society and government and destroy Soviet rule.” Such paranoid talk had not been heard in public from a Kremlin leader since the onset of perestroika.

If there were any doubts about Kryuchkov’s conviction that a strong-arm solution was necessary, they were dispelled at the winter session of the Congress of People’s Deputies. On December 22, two days after Shevardnadze had warned of “dictatorship,” the KGB chairman appeared before the congress to demand “decisive measures” to put an end to ethnic violence. The thrust of his speech was that Soviet leaders had to be ready to spill a little blood in order to save the country from an even worse fate. “Esteemed comrade deputies! Is not blood already being shed? Do we not learn almost every day, when we switch on our television sets and open our newspapers, of new human fatalities, of the deaths of innocent people, including women and children? I do not wish to frighten anyone, but the Committee for State Security is convinced that if the situation in our country continues to develop along the present lines, we will not be able to escape sociopolitical shocks that are even more serious and more grave.”

Aware that Communist Party power could not be restored through legal, democratic methods, Kryuchkov was setting out the argument for using force. His speech ran counter to Gorbachev’s repeated insistence that all problems be resolved through “exclusively political means” but was fully consistent with traditional Communist dogma. Before 1985 Soviet leaders had no compunction about using violence in order to defend “the revolution.” “Bloodshed is inevitable,” Defense Minister Ustinov had argued during a Politburo debate about the Polish crisis in April 1981. “If we fear it, then we will give up position after position. All the gains of socialism could be put at risk.”




As Lenin liked to say, “A revolution is only worth something if it knows how to defend itself.”




SINCE THE EARLY DAYS of the revolution Soviet power had rested on the Communist Party, the Red Army, and the security organs. Of these three pillars, only the “organs” had remained relatively unscathed after five tumultuous years of perestroika.

The party had been forced to give up its monopoly of political power, guaranteed under Article VI of the Soviet Constitution. Dispirited by the revelations of Stalinist atrocities, rank-and-file Communists were deserting the party. The once-monolithic ruling elite had lost its cohesiveness, following the defection of reformers like Yeltsin. The army too was a shadow of its former self. Its morale had been shaken by the debacle of Afghanistan, massive draft evasion, and a series of ethnic wars around the periphery of the Soviet Union. Decimated by budget cuts, it was now an army in retreat, more concerned with finding housing for officers thrown out of Poland and East Germany than fending off military threats from outside.

By contrast, the KGB had managed to survive, more or less intact, as the “shield and sword” of the Soviet state. The “organs” had made token gestures to glasnost, such as appointing a press officer and providing information about the fate of the victims of Stalin’s terror. The infamous Fifth Directorate, charged by Andropov with crushing the dissident movement, had been renamed the Directorate for the Protection of the Constitution. The public relations campaign to show a kinder, gentler face of the secret police reached its apogee earlier in 1990 with the appointment of a “Miss KGB.” Little had changed, however, in the way the committee went about its business. Its responsibilities ranged from watching over Soviet borders to guarding the Politburo, from hunting down economic “saboteurs” to chasing foreign spies, from handling government communications to spreading disinformation. The KGB continued to keep tabs on suspected dissidents and use illegal wiretaps. It was later revealed that its vast network of informers included the prime minister of Lithuania and the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The budget and manpower of the KGB remained at preperestroika levels. To this day nobody knows precisely how many people worked for the “organs.” According to Kryuchkov’s successor, Vadim Bakatin, the KGB had 480,000 full-time employees in September 1991, a figure challenged by some independent experts as being too low.


 The KGB payroll included some 12,000 foreign intelligence workers, 90,000 agents in provincial cities, 220,000 border guards, and several divisions of spetsnaz troops. These “special assignment” troops included the Alpha Group that had stormed the presidential palace in Kabul in December 1979. During the fall of 1990 Kryuchkov persuaded Gorbachev to transfer to the KGB several regular army units, including the Vitebsk Paratroopers Division, and two motorized rifle divisions.




Like his predecessors, Kryuchkov placed great importance on the revolutionary traditions of the KGB, inherited from Lenin’s Cheka and Stalin’s NKVD. A four-story monument to the founder of the Cheka, Feliks Dzerzhinsky, stood outside the Lubyanka. The spirit of “Iron Feliks” seemed to permeate the entire organization. KGB officers referred to themselves proudly as Chekists, graduated from the Dzerzhinsky Academy, and venerated the memory of the father of the Red Terror. Although some junior officers were infected by the democratic spirit of perestroika, ideological vigilance remained the order of the day at the senior levels of the KGB. When Bakatin was given the task of dismantling the KGB in the wake of the failed coup of August 1991, he was amazed by the low quality of the committee’s analytical work and the general lack of professionalism. The obsession with ideology was even apparent in the nuclear bomb shelter that had been prepared for the commander in chief, where the only books on the shelves were the complete works of Lenin.

“It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so pathetic,” Bakatin commented. “The Communist core of the KGB had decided that this was what the head of state really needed at such a critical moment.”




The dangers of relying on such a powerful organization with such a blinkered view of the world were apparent to many of Gorbachev’s liberal advisers. But he brushed their fears aside. He had every confidence in the loyalty of the KGB.


 He frequently boasted about how well informed he was about everything that was happening in the Soviet Union. Far from considering the KGB a potential threat to perestroika, he regarded it as an essential ally. At a time of general political upheaval the “organs” were a pillar of political stability, a counterweight to the forces arrayed behind Yeltsin. Like other Kremlin leaders, particularly those who had spent most of their careers in the provinces, Gorbachev had great respect for the supposed omniscience of the KGB. The thick red dossiers, with their “eyes only” reports for the general secretary, were part of the mystique of Kremlin power.

Gorbachev knew that Kryuchkov and the representatives of the “power structures” were trying to push him into declaring a state of emergency. He struck a kind of Faustian bargain with “the organs.” He would use them to defeat Yeltsin and then shake himself free. As he later explained, he was trying to “outmaneuver” both the conservatives and the democrats.

“A politician has to have a sense of tactics. I was being criticized from both sides. It was necessary for me to steer between one extreme and the other. I was playing for time.”




Gorbachev should have known that bargaining with the KGB was a little like bargaining with the devil.




VLADIMIR ALEKSANDROVICH KRYUCHKOV had the kind of bland, featureless face that merges into the crowd. Western correspondents had difficulty identifying him at the first Congress of People’s Deputies in May 1989, seven months after his appointment as head of the KGB. Few of the legislators knew who he was, and there was little in his official portrait to distinguish him from the other faceless apparatchiks. He seemed the perfect subordinate: soft-spoken, self-disciplined, eager to please.

He had made his career in the shadow of Yuri Andropov. Their association went back to the Hungarian crisis of 1956, when Kryuchkov served in the Soviet embassy in Budapest under Andropov. The uprising and its subsequent suppression by the Red Army were an ordeal by fire for both the ambassador and his thirty-two-year-old press attaché. Together they had the task of convincing the rebels that Soviet troops were withdrawing permanently from Hungary at a time when Khrushchev was planning to send them back into Budapest in overwhelming force. The experience provided Kryuchkov with a powerful lesson in the uses of misinformation and military might to stop a counterrevolution in its tracks. When Andropov was transferred back to Moscow, to be put in charge of a Central Committee department dealing with socialist countries, he took Kryuchkov along as his aide.

When Andropov was appointed head of the KGB in 1967, he asked his assistant to accompany him. A party apparatchik inexperienced in intelligence work, Kryuchkov aroused some resentment among KGB professionals. Many were openly contemptuous, regarding him as an obsequious bureaucrat who owed his position entirely to Andropov’s patronage. “He was a meticulous paper shuffler, a master at working the Soviet bureaucracy,” recalled Oleg Kalugin, a career KGB general who had many arguments with Kryuchkov. “Kryuchkov catered completely to Andropov’s wishes, and unfortunately the KGB chairman had worked with Kryuchkov so long that he couldn’t see his assistant’s myriad shortcomings. In reality, Kryuchkov knew little of the outside world, and even less about intelligence. He had a serious intellectual inferiority complex and was extremely jealous of his colleagues’ successes. He was the kind of man who gloated when you stumbled and then, if the opportunity arose, would push you even further down. He was, in short, a real bastard.”




In order to retain the confidence of his masters, Kryuchkov had to display utter loyalty and devotion to the cause. Like other KGB officers, he was required to submit a detailed personal biography, drawing attention to any conceivable character flaw or compromising family connection. He acknowledged that his sister was an alcoholic who had been convicted of theft. He took care to inform his superiors that he had broken off all ties with both her and with a politically unreliable older brother, who had conveniently disappeared from his life at the end of the war by moving to the Soviet Far East.




Andropov appointed Kryuchkov head of the foreign intelligence arm of the KGB, the First Chief Directorate, in 1974. He served in this position for the next fourteen years, impressing his subordinates with a seemingly limitless capacity for work and a total absence of humor. A physical fitness fanatic, he had the habit of squeezing tennis balls to strengthen his grip while conducting meetings. He rose every day at 5:45 a.m., in order to allow time for a full regimen of outdoor exercises, regardless of the weather and when he had gone to bed. This routine continued after he became chairman of the KGB in October 1988. He would summon officials to his Moscow dacha and make them wait while he finished his early-morning run around the estate. A Zil would then take the party to the Lubyanka.




The fact that Kryuchkov had served Andropov for many years boosted his standing with Gorbachev. The general secretary believed that the new KGB chief would continue Andropov’s crusade against corruption and Brezhnevite “stagnation.”


 He had every condidence in Kryuchkov’s loyalty, seeing him as a consummate acolyte, who had spent his entire life fulfilling the wishes of his superiors. It was difficult to imagine such a creature leading a coup against his commander in chief. When he was eventually presented with evidence of Kryuchkov’s betrayal, he initially refused to believe it.




Treason was probably the last thing on Kryuchkov’s mind in December 1990. His aim was not to lead a coup himself but gradually to maneuver Gorbachev into cracking down on the “antisocialist” opposition. The country was on the verge of disintegration, but the “course of events” could still be reversed through decisive action. Soviet history was full of examples of Communist Party leaders reasserting their authority when all seemed lost. There were textbook scenarios for what he had in mind in the KGB archives, in files marked “Kronshtadt, 1921,” “East Berlin, 1953,” “Budapest, 1956,” “Prague, 1968,” “Kabul, 1979,” and “Warsaw, 1981.” The party and the KGB had decades of experience in the art of seizing and retaining power. It was what they did best.

The KGB chief was convinced that political chaos and economic disruption had left many Soviet citizens yearning for a “strong hand.” If the authorities displayed sufficient determination and tactical skill, they might be able to restore order without excessive violence and bloodshed. But first of all, it was necessary to organize a trial run.




VILNIUS

January 13, 1991


THE CONVOY OF FOUR T-72 TANKS and sixteen armored cars roared up the winding path to the television tower, on the top of a hill, overlooking the Lithuanian capital. As the tanks approached, swinging their gun turrets menacingly and firing deafening blanks, several thousand demonstrators rushed toward the eleven-hundred-foot tower. From the tops of the armored cars, Soviet soldiers trained powerful spotlights on the crowd. An amplified voice boomed out of the darkness. “Brother Lithuanians! In the name of the National Salvation Committee, I announce that all power in the republic is now in our hands. This is the power of simple working people: workers, peasants, and servicemen. The power of people like you.”




There were jeers and whistles from the demonstrators, who had linked arms, forming a human barricade, ten to twelve people deep, around the television tower. Chants of “Lietuva, Lietuva” (Lithuania, Lithuania) and “Laisve, laisve” (Freedom, freedom) filled the cool nighttime air.

“True, some of you have come under the influence of deceits, lies, demagoguery, and intimidation,” the male voice went on. “These are the weapons the authorities have used up to now, playing games in the Lithuanian parliament and government. They expressed the interests of rich people, fraudulent people, corrupt elements. This is not our course.”

By now it was clear where the voice was coming from, a loudspeaker mounted on top of one of the armored cars. The speaker did not identify himself, but Lithuanian investigators later said it belonged to Juozas Jermalavičius, chief ideologist of the pro-Moscow wing of the local Communist Party.


 Installed in power by Soviet tanks, Jermalavičius and his comrades had suffered a humiliating defeat in the first free elections in Lithuania in half a century. When the Lithuanian parliament declared independence on March 11, 1990, by a majority of 124 to 0, the pro-Moscow deputies walked out. Ten months later they announced the formation of a “National Salvation Committee,” with the task of restoring “Soviet power” in Lithuania. The members of the committee refused to reveal their identity, saying they feared for their lives.

“I ask you not to resist,” the voice continued, first in Lithuanian and then in Russian, as the tanks pushed aside a few small trucks and cars that had been blocking the path to the television tower. “I ask you to go home. Your parents, your mothers and fathers, your brothers and sisters, your grandfathers and grandmothers are waiting for you. Go home. Confrontation is senseless.”

The Lithuanian defenders stood their ground, shouting defiance at the approaching tanks. They had been expecting such a confrontation for several days now. Over the past week the Kremlin had stepped up its campaign of intimidation, dispatching thousands of paratroopers to the Baltic states to hunt down draft dodgers. Events seemed to be following a planned scenario. First, Gorbachev had dispatched an angry letter to the Lithuanian leaders demanding their allegiance to the Soviet Constitution. Then Soviet troops began seizing public buildings, gradually restricting the authority of the democratically elected Lithuanian government. They also took the precaution of disarming an elite Lithuanian antiriot squad, the only force capable of opposing them. Air and rail traffic, in and out of Vilnius, was halted. Finally, at midnight on January 12, a delegation of “workers” had attempted to deliver a petition to the Lithuanian government, demanding that it surrender power to the National Salvation Committee. The “workers,” many of whom reeked of alcohol, had been hustled away for questioning by nervous pro-independence activists.

At the time the incident seemed inconsequential. But the leaders of the shadowy National Salvation Committee needed a pretext, however flimsy, for appealing to the commander of the Soviet military garrison in Vilnius for “assistance.” This was it. Shortly after 1:00 a.m. armored columns appeared on the streets of Vilnius, prompting Lithuanian leaders to broadcast a frantic appeal to the population to defend strategic buildings like the television tower.

Rolandas Jankauskas was at a Vilnius discotheque when he heard the appeal. He had just turned twenty-two. He had left the Soviet navy two months previously, after completing his compulsory military service. Singing and laughing, Jankauskas and his friends poured out of the disco to see where the tanks were headed. At roughly the same time a twenty-three-year-old seamstress, Loreta Asanavičiute, ran into an old friend while walking home after a party. The friend asked her to go with her to the television tower, on Cosmonaut Avenue, where large crowds were beginning to gather. Impulsive and full of life, Asanavičiute immediately agreed.




Jankauskas and Asanavičiute were among the first Lithuanian victims of the attack on the television tower. He fell to the ground as the troops began advancing toward the tower, throwing stun grenades and firing shots into the air. Seconds later he was crushed under the wheels of an armored personnel carrier. Asanavičiute was one of several Lithuanians hit by a tank clearing a path for the advancing troops. The right side of her body bore the marks of caterpillar tracks.

After failing to disperse the demonstrators by firing over their heads, the Soviet attackers aimed their AK-47 assault rifles directly into the crowd. Seven of the eleven Lithuanian civilians killed during the assault on the tower were hit by bullets. Sporadic shooting continued in the vicinity of the tower for a further ninety minutes. That night, out of more than four hundred injured, a total of fifty-three people were taken to hospitals in Vilnius with bullet wounds. At Hospital No. 1, in the center of the city, there were horrific scenes of carnage: charred faces; crushed legs; ripped-out intestines. “Some of the things I have seen tonight made my hair stand on end,” said Dalia Steibilene, the doctor on duty when the fighting broke out. “We knew that this kind of violence was happening in the Caucasus, but nobody thought that anything like this would happen in peaceful Lithuania.”




Soviet officials later claimed that members of the crowd had opened fire on the Soviet army. But they failed to produce any evidence to support their assertion, and none of the foreign journalists at the scene saw any firearms in the hands of the defenders.

Spearheading the assault force was a group of thirty or so men in black helmets, their eyes shielded by bulletproof visors, who smashed their way through the plate glass windows at the base of the television tower. They seemed more organized and disciplined than the rest of the attacking force. They talked to one another constantly, via radio sets attached to the backs of their helmets. Once inside the tower, they moved methodically from floor to floor, pushing aside the barricades erected by the Lithuanian defenders and dismantling the booby traps. Their presence in Vilnius was meant to be a closely guarded secret. Within a matter of days it was to become a matter of nationwide controversy, and a serious embarrassment to their masters in Moscow.




MORE THAN A DECADE HAD PASSED since Yevgeny Chudesnov had taken part in the operation to overthrow Amin. He still remembered the fragrant aroma of shashlik, rising from hundreds of bonfires, as he drove through the deserted streets of Kabul that cold winter night. A veteran of the Alpha Group, he had become almost immune to the rattle of gunfire and the deafening sound of explosions.

If the KGB was the sword and shield of the Soviet state, the Alpha Group was the sword and shield of the KGB. Modeled on the British SAS and the American Delta squad, the two hundred or so members of the Alpha Group were superbly trained and equipped. These Soviet Rambos had extensive experience in freeing hostages, disarming terrorists, and storming buildings. Since the takeover of Amin’s palace in December 1979, they had carried out hundreds of delicate missions in different parts of the Soviet Union, achieving almost mythic status in the eyes of Kremlin leaders. The head of the Alpha Group reported directly to the chairman of the KGB. The force was the last line of defense for a Soviet Union threatened with disintegration.

Chudesnov and sixty-four of his colleagues had arrived in Vilnius after nightfall on January 11, on a special flight from Moscow.


 The following day they received their orders. They were instructed to seize control of three facilities: the TV tower, the radio transmission center, and the Vilnius television station. A Soviet army paratroop regiment would provide the necessary support. Chudesnov was put in charge of the subgroup that was to capture the television station.

There were large crowds of people standing around the television station, just as there had been at the TV tower. After catching his first glimpse of these crowds, Chudesnov had a fleeting hope that the operation would be called off at the last moment.


 The armored convoy drove past the television station, but then it turned back, and he and his men were ordered into battle. They jumped out of their armored cars and dived into the human barricade, throwing stun grenades. One of the stun grenades hit a twenty-eight -year-old Lithuanian defender in the chest, killing him on the spot.


 As the Alpha Group entered the building, a female announcer was broadcasting an emotional message to millions of Lithuanians.

“We address all those who can hear us,” she said, looking straight at the camera. “It is possible that the army can break us with force and close our mouths, but no one will make us renounce our freedom and independence.”

Seconds later Lithuanian television went off the air.

Chudesnov was running along the corridor of the television center when he heard a voice behind him. It was a young lieutenant, Viktor Shatskikh, a recruit to the Alpha Group. “Yevgeny Nikolayevich, I feel a pain in my back,” he murmured. When Chudesnov examined the wound, he saw that a bullet had penetrated a hinge in the lieutenant’s body armor, ripping open his right lung. He died shortly afterward. It was never established whether he had been shot by a Lithuanian sniper’s bullet, as the Soviet military later claimed, or friendly fire.

This was a disaster. If anyone found out that the Alpha Group had taken part in the storming of the television center, the official cover story would be blown apart. It would no longer be possible for Kremlin leaders to deny knowledge of the events in Lithuania. There would be a chain of evidence linking the National Salvation Committee to Kryuchkov and possibly to Gorbachev.

All night the generals in charge of the operation had been broadcasting messages to one another, full of strange talk about “big boxes,” “cucumbers,” and “tomatoes.” Decoded, these were cryptic references to tanks, bullets, and explosives. After Shatskikh’s death, a note of panic crept into the radio traffic.

“A two-hundred-kilo load has appeared. Over.”

“What do you mean, a two-hundred? Over.”

“The people who came with you in helmets, they say they have a two-hundred. Do you understand me? Over.”

The conversation continued for some minutes. “The people in helmets” was code for the Alpha Group. “A two-hundred-kilo load” was Afghan veterans’ slang for a coffin with a corpse in it.

“This is Granite-Eighty-two. Listen to me, and tell this to everybody else. About those striped ones in helmets, the ones who worked up in front. They weren’t there. Okay? You don’t know anything about them. Over.”

“Understood. Over.”




The KGB did its best to disown Shatskikh and cover up its role in the attempted coup in Lithuania. Stories in the Soviet press described the dead officer as a “paratrooper.” When the “two-hundred-kilo load” was transported back to Moscow, there was no KGB representative at the airport to take delivery. Kryuchkov and other KGB leaders failed to show up for the funeral. This know-nothing stance shocked other members of the Alpha Group.


 They had risked their lives for leaders who were unwilling to take responsibility for their actions and insisted on hiding their true identities behind an anonymous National Salvation Committee. By the time the “organs” finally got around to acknowledging that a KGB officer had been killed in Vilnius, the damage had been done. Cracks of dissent had appeared in the KGB’s avenging “sword.”




A PEDANTIC MUSIC PROFESSOR with a little goatee, Vytautas Landsbergis seemed an unlikely spokesman for a nation attempting to break away from the Soviet empire. His speeches were dry, even dull. He had never been a prominent dissident. Prior to his emergence as the head of the Lithuanian independence movement, Sajudis, he was best known as the world’s leading authority on Mikolajus Čiurlonis, a turn-of-the-century Lithuanian composer and painter. One of his first actions after being elected chairman of the Lithuanian Parliament was to have a piano moved into his office. He held up a parliamentary debate on independence with a long discourse on whether Lithuanians should sing the national anthem in the key of F sharp, as was traditional, prior to the Soviet occupation. Landsbergis was determined to convince his fellow legislators that it was impossible to sing that high.




After the assault on the television facilities Landsbergis appealed to the population to defend the parliament building. By dawn a crowd of seven to eight thousand unarmed civilians had gathered around the yellow stone building in the center of Vilnius. Inside, several hundred volunteers were busy transforming the symbol of the country’s independence into a sandbagged bunker. Their weapons consisted of a few dozen hunting rifles, Molotov cocktails, and fire hoses.

As an emergency session got under way in the parliamentary chamber, gas masks were distributed to the deputies. A Catholic priest blessed everyone present. Landsbergis was wearing under his jacket a bulletproof vest that made him look even more rotund and professorial than usual. He had spent the last few hours frantically trying to reach Gorbachev, only to be told that the Soviet leader was “unavailable.” His fury at Gorbachev was almost matched by his anger with President Bush for his inactivity in the face of Soviet aggression. He complained that Bush was completely preoccupied with the crisis in Kuwait, and preparations for Desert Storm.

“The Americans have sold us out,” he fumed, waving his hands. “Bush should ring Gorbachev on the hot line and tell him that, whatever the situation in the gulf, murder in Lithuania is also murder. If Gorbachev doesn’t stop this, nobody will defend Gorbachev from his own murderers. He will be a zero for the West and a zero for his colonels.”




What Landsbergis lacked in charisma, he made up for in stubbornness. In the ten months since the Lithuanian declaration of independence, Soviet leaders had done everything in their power to persuade the little nation of 3.7 million people to back down. They had sent columns of tanks and armored cars past the parliament building. They had shut down the gas pipelines. They had banned travel by foreign citizens to and from Lithuania, erecting a kind of cordon sanitaire around the country. The political and economic pressure failed to make much impression on the diminutive music professor. He shut himself up in his spacious presidential office, played his beloved Čiurlonis on the piano, and refused to budge.

Such intransigence infuriated Gorbachev, a compromiser born and bred. The Soviet leader could not understand why his adversary failed to play by the normal rules of the political game and was so obsessed with the outward symbols of Lithuanian independence. But it seemed entirely logical to Landsbergis, who had devoted his life to studying the symbolist movement inspired by Čiurlonis. “Everyday difficulties do not exist for him. He thinks you can do without such things as gasoline,” explained his wife, Gražyna. “He is guided by a single motivating idea—the freedom of Lithuania.”




The Lithuanian leader was a product of the inbred world of Catholic intellectuals who managed to preserve the nation’s identity in the face of terrible adversity. His maternal grandfather, Juonas Jablonskis, had been a fierce defender of the Lithuanian language. His paternal grandfather, Gabrielus Landsbergis, had helped lead the struggle against tsarist rule in the late nineteenth century and had been deported to Siberia for his activities. The ideas of such men were passed down to future generations, even as the Baltic states were crushed by the Stalinist and Nazi military machines. The Soviet occupation of Lithuania in June 1940 left a vivid impression on eight-year-old Vytautas. “Look, the Mongols have arrived,” he whispered to his older brother as the Soviet troops, who included a large proportion of Central Asians, took over the country.




During the dreary years of Soviet occupation Landsbergis devoted his energy to defending Lithuanian culture from “Sovietization.” His interest in Čiurlonis, who played an important part in the resurgence of Lithuanian culture, was a form of intellectual dissent. “For many years cultural activity meant political activity,” he later recalled. “By protecting our culture, we also protected our national identity. Otherwise we would have been Russified—first in language and later in thinking.”







SYMBOLS WERE JUST ABOUT ALL Lithuanians had to hang on to that grim winter, as the Soviet army strengthened its grip on their country. The bloodshed at the television tower united Lithuanians as never before. The more the Kremlin propaganda machine sought to justify the assault, the more they flaunted their long-banned national symbols: the yellow, green, and red flag; the white knight on horseback; the schematic outline of a medieval castle.

The ultimate symbol of Lithuania’s defiance of Moscow and its passionate desire for independence was now the parliament building itself. Ordinary people, who had never shown much interest in politics, mounted an around-the-clock vigil outside the bunkerlike building. Fearing a tank attack, workers erected a twelve-foot-high concrete wall on three sides of the virtually undefended building and dug a fifteen-foot ditch. The wall soon became a display case for anti-Soviet graffiti. “Gorbie, hell is waiting for you,” read one slogan in English, next to a crude drawing of Gorbachev, with horns growing out of his head. “The Red Army is Red Fascism,” proclaimed another.

A nearby strand of barbed wire served as a collection point for the symbols of Soviet occupation: passports, conscription papers, Communist Party cards. Day and night Lithuanians threw piles of Soviet propaganda booklets on the bonfires in front of the parliament building. Even if their cause was doomed, the defenders of independence had the satisfaction of keeping warm by the embers of the complete works of Lenin and multivolume histories of the Soviet Communist Party. Many people brought their children along with them, so that they could describe Soviet tyranny to their children and grandchildren.

Bundled up against the cold, a three-year-old girl named Zhivele Kaslauskas listened to her parents discuss Lithuania’s chances of gaining full independence, before taking her home to bed. “It may take years, but in the end I am sure we will win,” said her father, Alvidas. “This empire cannot last. One day Russians themselves will rise up against it.”




Inside the legislature the atmosphere was tense and claustrophobic. Lithuanian democracy was less than a year old, and already it was being forced to defend itself from armed attack. The deputies were scared. “If the military attacks, we’re going to become human torches. Look at all this wood and fabric,” whispered one terrified legislator as rumors spread of an imminent assault.


 The spectacle of the freely elected representatives being issued gas masks and hunkering down behind concrete barricades was both shocking and ominous.

Soon such a sight would become commonplace, from Tallinn to Tbilisi, from Moscow to Sarajevo. Big Brother refused to go quietly, without a fight.




MOSCOW

January 14, 1991


THE BLOODSHED IN VILNIUS CAUSED a wave of revulsion and apprehension throughout the Soviet Union. There had been a lot of speculation about “a move to the right” by Gorbachev, but it was difficult to tell exactly what was going on behind the Kremlin walls. Finally, everything seemed clear. The reformer was turning his back on his own reforms. The sick joke about pere-stroika (restructuring) giving way to pere-strelka (a shoot-out) was in the process of being realized.

The time had come for a final parting of the ways between Gorbachev and the radical intellectuals, who had been his most enthusiastic supporters during the early stages of perestroika. As news of the massacre outside the television tower spread, they poured onto the streets of Moscow and other cities, carrying banners with slogans like “Gorbachev Is the Saddam Hussein of the Baltics!” and “Give Back the Nobel Peace Prize.” Yuri Afanasiev spoke for many Moscow intellectuals when he blamed the killings on a “dictatorship of reactionary circles” made up of the military, the KGB, and the Communist Party. “And at the head of that party dictatorship stands the initiator of perestroika, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev,” he added bitterly.


 There was an upsurge in resignations from the Communist Party, beginning with the entire staff of Moscow News, one of the flagships of glasnost.

When the Soviet parliament debated the events in Lithuania the following day, Gorbachev was unrepentant. He insisted he had known nothing about the violence until it was over, “when they woke me up.” But he refused to criticize the army’s decision to provide military assistance to the self-appointed National Salvation Committee, whose members did not even have the courage to identify themselves. Indeed he put the blame for what had happened on Landsbergis and other Lithuanian leaders, accusing them of “violating” the Soviet Constitution.

“I don’t see how we will make progress with such people in charge,” he told the deputies. “Lithuania has treated us like a foreign country.”




There were only two possible explanations for the line that Gorbachev was taking, and both were equally disturbing. Either the commander in chief was in control of his own security forces, or he wasn’t. In the first case he was the accomplice of hard-liners, who were attempting to mount a coup against a democratically elected parliament. In the second case he had become their puppet. By refusing to discipline his subordinates, he had effectively condoned a flagrantly illegal act. His failure to condemn the violence was an implicit invitation to the would-be putschists to try again.

Documents unearthed following the failed coup of August 1991 demolish the cover story about the commander of the Vilnius military garrison’s responding to an “appeal” from the National Salvation Committee. The decision to use force was made not in Vilnius but in Moscow, where Soviet military leaders had been preparing for such a confrontation over many months. A few semiliterate handwritten jottings discovered in the diary of Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov and dated March 22, 1990—less than two weeks after Lithuania had declared its independence—provided an insight into what was being planned:

• Issue a warning. Not recognize their laws! Bring pressure to bear.

• If necessary, act resolutely!

• What are we to draw on? The old government cannot be resuscitated.

• To draw on the committee and set up committees everywhere!

• To be ready to take the TV center?!




A subsequent diary entry, for April 9, 1990, shows that Soviet leaders were considering the imposition of direct presidential rule on Lithuania at that time. But Gorbachev opposed the use of force, partly for fear of offending international public opinion. “We cannot take the strap to Lithuania’s ‘behind,’ ” Yazov quoted him as saying. “The issue of Lithuania far transcends the framework of the Union! Is the Lithuanian issue becoming a world-international issue?”

It turned out that the puppeteers in Moscow had planned everything in advance, including a “general strike” by ethnic Russians and an attempt to storm the parliament building:

• General strike! A telegram will be sent for them to abolish their resolutions, restore the constitution.

• About 200 armed men, in the Hall and the Supreme Council.

• An appeal will be made.

• The publishing house belongs to the CPSU (Soviet Communist Party)—capture it!

On the Saturday that the KGB dispatched the Alpha Group to capture the television center, Kryuchkov drove to the Kremlin for a secret meeting with his fellow plotters. According to Kremlin records, the session began at 7:15 p.m. and broke up at 2:10 a.m., shortly after the shooting had begun in Vilnius.




What is most intriguing about this meeting, which took place in the office of Gorbachev’s chief of staff, Valery Boldin, was the list of participants. In addition to Kryuchkov and Boldin, it included Valentin Pavlov, who was about to become Soviet prime minister, Oleg Baklanov, the head of the military-industrial complex, and Oleg Shenin, a Communist Party secretary in charge of organizational matters. These men were to become the key figures in the State Committee for the State of Emergency, which seized power from Gorbachev eight months later.




THE REMAINING LIBERALS in Gorbachev’s entourage were sickened by the use of military force in Lithuania and the president’s refusal to condemn it. They recalled Shevardnadze’s warnings of “an approaching dictatorship.” Now each of them faced a crisis of conscience. They could do the honorable thing and resign, leaving Gorbachev in the clutches of the hard-liners. Or they could stick with him in the hope that he would have a change of heart.

The president’s economics adviser, Nikolai Petrakov, chose to resign, after signing a collective protest letter to the Moscow News accusing a “regime in its death throes” of launching an “open war” on the republics.


 The foreign policy adviser, Anatoly Chernyayev, dashed off a long memo to Gorbachev, describing his sense of “torment” and “shame,” but never submitted it.


 Several other staffers, including the presidential press spokesman, Vitaly Ignatenko, were talked out of resigning by Yakovlev, who insisted that this was not the time to abandon the president. Meeting in Yakovlev’s office on Monday afternoon, the dissenters decided on a different course of action: They would persuade Gorbachev to fly to Vilnius and “bow before the dead.”

Yakovlev went to see Gorbachev, who agreed with the plan. He instructed his staff to draft a speech that he could deliver to the Lithuanian parliament. By Tuesday, however, the president had once again changed his mind. “Some comrades are against the idea,” he told his aides, evidently referring to Kryuchkov. “They say it is impossible to guarantee the security of the president.”




Although Gorbachev refused to apologize for the use of force in Lithuania, he did put a brake on the machinery of repression. If everything had gone the way the hard-liners planned, presidential rule would have been declared in all three Baltic republics, and parliamentary activity suspended. The bloodshed in Vilnius, combined with the spectacle of tens of thousands of unarmed civilians taking to the streets to defend their parliaments and the outrage of the Russian intelligentsia, caused Gorbachev to reconsider his position. He would not permit his hard-line associates to push events to their logical conclusion.

The men who had gathered in Boldin’s office in the Kremlin drew their own conclusions from Gorbachev’s hesitation and prevarication. There was no point in restoring “socialist order” on the periphery of the empire if the center could not be relied upon. The script was fine, but it was necessary to make a few alterations. Next time they would begin at the center and proceed from there to the republics.




MOSCOW

April 5, 1991


AS WINTER GAVE WAY to spring, the shock of the attempted coup in Lithuania began to fade. Ordinary Soviet citizens had other, more pressing matters on their minds, including the problem of finding enough to eat. The economy was in free fall. Shortages were spreading from one sector of industry and agriculture to another, creating a devastating ripple effect. In the past Soviet leaders might have been able to make up for the fall in production by increasing imports of grain and industrial goods. But the country’s foreign exchange reserves were practically exhausted. In the words of a government report, the world’s first socialist state was “on the verge of bankruptcy.”




The real mystery about the Soviet Union’s command economy is not that it collapsed when it did but that it managed to survive for so long. Economic power was concentrated in the hands of a small group of bureaucrats at the top of the pyramid. Even if these apparatchiks had been totally omniscient and supremely intelligent, it would still have been physically impossible for them to match the collective wisdom of the millions of individuals who form a Western-style “marketplace.” The Stalinist system of central planning could cope with grandiose tasks, like building nuclear bombs and producing thousands of tanks, because it was good at mobilizing resources to achieve a specific goal. The more complex the economy became, the more inefficient the system proved to be. The command economy lacked the myriad self-correcting mechanisms of a market economy. When a capitalist entrepreneur makes a wrong decision, he is quickly put right by millions of consumers; a similar error by a Soviet bureaucrat could go undetected for years, with horrendous consequences.

In the end there was only one self-correcting mechanism that mattered in a totalitarian state as powerful and self-sufficient as the Soviet Union: the country’s ability to support such a profligate and hopelessly inefficient system. Because Russia was a land of fabulous natural wealth, it took some time before this mechanism kicked into operation. As long as Kremlin leaders could export enough oil and natural gas to ensure Soviet citizens a basic standard of living and bankroll military adventures in the Third World, they had little incentive even to think about reform. It was no coincidence that Mikhail Gorbachev came to power just as the petrodollars were beginning to run out.

Even with a committed reformer occupying the post of general secretary, the system proved very resistant to change. Prior to 1991 there were hidden reserves that could be tapped to extend the life of the command economy by a few more months. When oil exports started to decline, there were still plentiful deposits of natural gas. When the gas industry began experiencing difficulties, the planners switched their attention to timber and precious metals. When all else failed, the Kremlin could always borrow money on international markets. The Soviet Union’s credit rating remained relatively high until 1990.

By 1991 it was no longer possible to disguise the gravity of the economic crisis. Oil exports had slumped by 50 percent since 1989 because of a decline in domestic production. After climbing slowly during the seventies and early eighties, the Soviet Union’s hard-currency debt had more than doubled under Gorbachev to $68 billion.


 Western bankers were reluctant to lend Moscow any more money, without firm guarantees of repayment. In a sign of financial desperation, Kremlin leaders now began authorizing massive sales of gold bullion to shore up the collapsing balance of payments. When the figures were published later that year, Western bankers were shocked to discover that the Soviet Union’s gold reserves had shrunk to 240 million metric tons, worth about $3 billion, a fraction of earlier estimates.




The myth of Soviet financial respectability had been shattered for good.




JUST BECAUSE THE ECONOMY WAS a shambles and ordinary Soviets had extraordinary difficulty making ends meet did not mean that it was impossible for enterprising, well-connected individuals to make a lot of money. In fact, the opposite was true. The greater the economic chaos and confusion, the greater the opportunities for personal enrichment. In a country that was increasingly out of touch with economic reality, someone with a firm grasp of the laws of supply and demand could become a millionaire overnight.

The simplest way of making a fortune was to find a way of purchasing goods and raw materials at artificially low Soviet prices and turn around and sell the same goods for much higher free market prices. The profit margin was often staggering. This was the trail blazed by the country’s first millionaire, Artyom Tarasov, one subsequently followed by the vast majority of successful Soviet businessmen. Tarasov, an engineer working for the Moscow City Council, devised a method for turning Soviet junk into American dollars. He scoured Russia for scrap metal, which he purchased with rubles at dirt-cheap prices. He exported the metal to Western countries and used the proceeds to purchase personal computers, which he was able to resell in Russia for a huge profit. Business soared.

By the end of 1990 Tarasov had moved on to the even more lucrative oil trade. He persuaded the newly appointed Russian government to grant his company, Istok, a license for the export of several million barrels of Russian oil. He was able to purchase the oil for the ruble equivalent to eighty-five cents a barrel and sell it abroad for around twenty dollars a barrel in hard currency. These transactions yielded millions of dollars in profits. Under the terms of Tarasov’s agreement with the Russian authorities, Istok was permitted to keep the funds in a French bank account. There was one, very important caveat, however. The entire hard-currency proceeds of the sale would be used to purchase consumer goods that had already been promised to Russian farmers, under an incentive scheme known as Harvest ’90.




At the beginning of April 1991 came news that Tarasov and his principal business partner had fled the country. The money earmarked for Harvest ’90 had vanished from the French bank account. The Russian farmers had lost out once again. According to Russian investigators, the only benefit the farmers ever derived from an import-export deal designed to offer them new hope was several thousand pairs of defective rubber boots. The state prosecutor’s office accused Tarasov of “misappropriation” and “breach of trust,” but failed to bring formal charges because of the statute of limitations.


 Tarasov maintained his innocence all along and refused to cooperate with the investigation, saying that it was inspired by his political enemies.

Hundreds of similar get-rich schemes were implemented in the early months of 1991. A subsequent parliamentary investigation showed that only a small proportion of the several billion dollars earned by semiprivate companies like Istok during 1990–91 ever returned to Russia.


 These were halcyon days for the emerging class of nomenklatura capitalists.

Behind every successful entrepreneur stood a bureaucrat with the power to grant or withhold a license of some kind and a foreign partner willing to ignore how the license was obtained. In many cases these relationships outlasted the collapse of communism. The key to understanding how biznes is conducted in the new Russia frequently lies in knowing who was pals with whom in the old Communist Party and KGB. “What we have in Russia is a pseudomarket, not a real market,” explained Aleksandr Rudenko, a prominent businessman in St. Petersburg, who made his fortune during this early period. “The state has a monopoly over the export of basic goods. The economic conditions have been created in which people who are well connected can steal like crazy. You get three or four officials to sign a piece of paper authorizing you to do something, and you have it made.”




By refusing to follow Western advice and liberalize prices, Gorbachev fostered the development of the privileged new class. In a market economy entrepreneurs make their profits from tiny percentages. The more imperfect the market, the bigger the potential profit from buying and selling. In the dying days of the Soviet Union the profit margins were so huge that few people who were in a position to manipulate the market to their advantage were able to resist the opportunity. The absurdities of the “planned economy” were screaming to be exploited.

Some of the scams were perfectly legal, if morally questionable. In November 1989 the government slashed the tourist rate of the ruble by 90 percent but left the official rate unchanged. Foreigners living in the Soviet Union were allowed to purchase foreign airline tickets in devalued tourist rubles, even though the price was still calculated at the official ruble rate. As a result, a round-trip business class fare to Paris or London cost less than a hundred dollars, one-tenth of the previous price. For a few glorious months members of the Western community thought nothing of flying to Stockholm to catch the latest Hollywood movie or taking a weekend trip to Rome to visit a new trattoria. Dream vacations in Africa, Australia, and Latin America suddenly became affordable. Since few people bothered to fly economy class anymore, Western airlines flying in and out of Moscow upgraded most of their seats to first class and business class. Everyone was happy. The only obvious loser was the Soviet Foreign Trade Bank, which collected devalued rubles from the foreigners and paid out real dollars to the airlines. It was hardly surprising that the bank went bankrupt shortly after the loophole was finally closed, almost a year later.

For years one of the few real constraints against private enrichment at the expense of the state was the fear of getting caught. Thanks to Gorbachev, however, even that inhibition had now vanished. The bureaucrats who controlled the Soviet economy scrambled to profit from their positions. It took surprisingly little time for once-doctrinaire Marxists to transform themselves into born-again capitalists. Red Army generals in East Germany stopped worrying about the threat from NATO and began selling fuel and military supplies on the black market. KGB officials, trained to root out any manifestation of free enterprise, founded commodity exchanges. Officials at Gosplan, the state planning agency, used their intimate knowledge of how the Soviet economy actually worked to launch their own trading companies.

Nowhere was the enthusiasm for “nomenklatura capitalism” more apparent than in the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. By the spring of 1991 the inner sanctum of Marxism-Leninism had become a den of money changers.




FOR MOST OF ITS EXISTENCE the Soviet Communist Party never had to concern itself with the problem of raising funds. When the party needed money—whether to build dachas for deserving apparatchiks, to pay for the limousines used by Politburo members, or to finance Western Communist parties—it simply issued an instruction to the state bank. In a one-party state there was no distinction between the party and the state. The Politburo’s orders were the law of the land.

The symbiotic relationship between party and state was shaken in February 1990, when the Congress of People’s Deputies voted to abolish Article VI of the Soviet Constitution. When it lost its constitutionally guaranteed monopoly of political power, the Communist Party also lost the right to plunder the state treasury as it saw fit. Even though the party was still an immensely wealthy organization—its property holdings alone were worth billions—its financial managers were extremely worried. The new Russian parliament, headed by Yeltsin, was threatening to levy taxes on a long list of party assets, including its vast media empire, and hundreds of rest homes, hospitals, and vacation resorts.

Determined to protect its economic privileges, the party began to search for ways of hiding its wealth from prying eyes. In a secret memorandum, dated August 23, 1990, Deputy General Secretary Vladimir Ivashko proposed channeling some of the assets to commercial firms controlled by trusted Communist Party members.


 Assistance would be given to the front organizations to engage in foreign trade activity, in order to generate an “independent source” of hard currency for the party’s international operations. Communist members of the Soviet and Russian parliaments would ensure that the appropriate legal framework was created to defend the party’s commercial interests. Secrecy was essential, of course. Only a very small group of leaders would know the identity of the “friendly firms” or their true relationship with the party.

Ivashko’s plan was hardly original. A similar scheme—to channel funds to pro-Moscow organizations around the world—had been in operation for several decades. “Friendly firms” controlled by foreign Communist parties were granted special trading privileges in the Soviet Union, enabling them to purchase raw materials at deeply discounted prices. A typical example of such an operation was the delivery of free or subsidized newsprint to left-wing publishing houses in Italy and Greece. Some of the newsprint was resold at market prices, in order to provide income for political activities. An alternative method of subsidizing “friendly firms” was to purchase goods from them at inflated prices. After the failed coup of August 1991 Russian prosecutors drew up a list of around one hundred foreign companies that received Soviet subsidies of one kind or another.




In order to put Ivashko’s ideas into effect, the Central Committee recruited a KGB colonel, well versed in the art of clandestinely channeling funds to “friendly firms.” Leonid Veselovsky had previously served as a KGB field officer in Portugal, where he was responsible for contacts with the local Communist Party. Soon after his appointment he wrote a memorandum for his new bosses describing a mechanism for shifting party funds to the West by starting joint stock companies in countries “with a mild taxation system,” such as Switzerland. According to his plan, details of which were later leaked to the Russian press, the companies would be headed by trusted party agents.




The extent to which the Communist Party succeeded in laundering its assets later became a subject of great political controversy. After the failed coup Russian prosecutors claimed to have traced billions of rubles of party funds that had been “loaned” to Russian companies and joint ventures. The list of alleged recipients of Communist largess included some of the best-known Russian banks and holding companies. Hardly any of this money was ever recovered, leading prosecutors to complain that their investigation was blocked for political reasons. Veselovsky himself insisted that most of his ideas for shifting party assets overseas never got beyond the planning stage.




What is clear, however, is that many apparatchiks chose precisely this moment to launch their own careers as private businessmen. Veselovsky himself was a prime example of this phenomenon. In early 1991, while still working for the Central Committee, he hooked up with a flamboyant Canadian millionaire named Boris Birshtein. A Soviet émigré who had once run a textile factory in Lithuania, Birshtein understood the importance of establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with well-placed bureaucrats. That, after all, was the way biznes had always been conducted in Russia. Personal connections were the key to business success. “You just need to get in the saunas, and that’s where you really do business,” he boasted to a Western reporter.




Unlike most foreign businessmen, Birshtein deliberately flaunted his wealth. With his fleet of private jets, sable-lined coat, and diamond-studded brooch, he was almost a caricature of the Russian idea of the successful capitalist. When he came to Moscow, he hired the biggest limousine possible and traveled from office to office in a motorcade worthy of a head of state. The Moscow Police Department, which had itself benefited from Birshtein’s generosity, was happy to provide the tycoon with an impressive escort.

By his own account, Veselovsky helped Birshtein rent a luxurious party-owned mansion on the Lenin Hills that had previously been reserved for such visiting foreign dignitaries as Fidel Castro and Henry Kissinger. The two men hit it off immediately. Veselovsky provided Birshtein with introductions to party bureaucrats, whose assistance was essential for the conclusion of lucrative foreign trade deals. Birshtein permitted Veselovsky to escape from the stifling world of party apparatchiks into the world of private jets and diamond brooches. After the negotiations for the mansion had been concluded successfully, Birshtein offered his new friend a one-year contract as a “consultant.”

“He was influential and intelligent. He had a Ph.D. in economics,” Birshtein recalled later. “We started to think about different businesses. He said, ‘I’m sick of the party. It’s all bullshit. I want to leave.’ It was then that I offered to hire him.”




The relationship between Birshtein and Veselovsky proved beneficial for both men. The Canadian millionaire helped the former KGB colonel move to Switzerland, giving him the use of a lakeside villa in Zurich and a silver Mercedes. In the meantime, Birshtein’s own fortunes began improving sharply. Prior to 1991 his private Toronto-based company, Seabeco, had been struggling with creditors and disgruntled former employees. In 1991 business suddenly took off. The Seabeco Group spawned dozens of offshoots, including a number of highly profitable joint ventures with Russian trading companies. The business grew and grew until, one day, Birshtein overreached himself. At the peak of his influence, in September 1993, he was caught up in a sensational bribery scandal involving the Russian security minister and declared persona non grata.







EXCEPT FOR THE FACT that it attracted a lot of attention, because of the mystery surrounding Communist Party finances, there was nothing unusual about Veselovsky’s transformation from apparatchik to businessman. There was a fin de régime atmosphere in Moscow in the spring of 1991, and bureaucrats were lining up to jump ship before it was too late. Many of Veselovsky’s colleagues in the Central Committee apparatus found jobs in the emerging private sector at this time, as “experts” or “consultants.” Veselovsky himself later said that from April 1991 onward practically all the senior officials in the administration department of the Central Committee were involved in commercial activity of one kind or another.




This was a crucial turning point. In the past Communist ideology had provided the ultimate justification for the power and privileges of the Soviet elite. But many members of the elite were now discovering that they could maintain their privileged positions in society even without the ideology. If they were clever enough and agile enough they could trade their positions in the old Communist regime for equally comfortable positions in the nascent capitalist order. In many cases they were trading up. Why drive a Volga when you could be driving a Mercedes? It was no longer necessary to pretend that they were the vanguard of the proletariat, chosen by history to build a socialist utopia.

Not all members of the elite arrived at this conclusion at precisely the same time, of course. Some apparatchiks lacked the wits to succeed as entrepreneurs; some were scared by the thought of changing careers in midstream; some believed that the Communist Party was the only organization capable of holding the Soviet Union together. Mixed in with the thousands of careerists and cynics—people who worried only about their “bottoms,” to use the popular expression—were a few true believers. What mattered, however, was that the party was no longer a monolith. And once it ceased to be a monolith, it was no longer invincible.

The collapse of communism unleashed a ruthless struggle for the vast economic resources that had previously been controlled by the state. The nomenklatura capitalists grabbed whatever they could, while the going was good. In many cases assets were sold off for practically nothing; this was “grab-it-ization” rather than privatization. The wild scramble for property that got under way in the Soviet Union at the beginning of 1991 represented the relatively benign form of this struggle for power and wealth. But the potential for violence was always just beneath the surface, as events in Yugoslavia soon demonstrated.




BOROVO SELO

May 2, 1991


THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL produced a wave of self-congratulation in Western capitals. When communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, many people in the West assumed that the new order would be represented by politicians like Václav Havel and Lech Wałęsa, who had spent most of their lives struggling against totalitarian dictatorship. The slaying of the Communist dragon appeared to represent the final victory of the liberal, free market values dear to Western democracies. Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson had triumphed over Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.

The sense of victory was short-lived. Just because communism was in its death throes did not mean that democracy had triumphed. Communism was more than just an ideology; it was a guide to political action, a tested method of achieving, and retaining, supreme power. Like a malevolent virus, communism possessed a unique ability to adapt to changing circumstances. A skillful Communist leader knew how to exploit the divisions in society, how to rouse the have-nots against the haves, how to employ populist demagoguery to rout his political opponents. If circumstances required, such a leader might even be prepared to switch ideologies, in the interests of retaining supreme power. This was a struggle in which the ends always justified the means.

Nowhere did Communist leaders have greater success in shedding their ideological skins than in Yugoslavia. The role of political trailblazer came naturally to the Yugoslav Communists. Apart from Russia, Yugoslavia was the only country in Eastern Europe where the Communists had come to power through their own efforts, rather than with foreign assistance. Under their leader Josip Broz Tito, the Yugoslav Communists had conducted a successful guerrilla campaign against the Nazi occupation of their country in World War II. They had consolidated their power after 1948 by refusing to submit to Stalin. This act of defiance made Yugoslavia a favorite of the West and a candidate for billions of dollars of economic assistance. But the liberal, easygoing facade presented by Yugoslav Communists was deceptive. When their power and privileges came under threat, they put up a more ruthless fight than any of their more orthodox, Soviet-sponsored comrades, with infinitely more tragic results.

The key figure in the Yugoslav Communist Party was Slobodan Milošević of Serbia. A master of bureaucratic intrigue, Milošević had moved to fill the political vacuum created by Tito’s death in 1980. He was the first Communist leader anywhere in Eastern Europe to understand the power of nationalism. By giving voice to long-repressed ethnic grievances, he succeeded in becoming the undisputed leader of Serbia, the largest and most powerful of Yugoslavia’s six republics. It was a virtuoso performance. In the space of a few months a stolid, rather colorless Communist Party functionary re-created himself as the father of the Serb nation. Far from coming to an end with the collapse of the old Communist order, history was just getting started again, after a hiatus of almost half a century. Milošević had the sense to realize this and to exploit the rebirth of history for his own purposes.

Milošević, a shy, almost reclusive figure, seemed an unlikely nationalist firebrand. He kept his emotions so tightly under control that it was difficult to guess what he was feeling or thinking. He rarely smiled. When he was angry, his jaw might sometimes jut out a little, but his bland, fleshy face remained as expressionless as ever. His personal life has been marked by dogged hard work, family tragedy, and a striking absence of close friends. Both of his parents had committed suicide when he was young. At school he seemed uninterested in the favorite pastimes of his classmates, such as chasing girls and playing basketball. With the exception of his wife, Mirjana Markovi?, a hard-boiled Marxist ideologist, whom he married just out of high school, he had few confidants.

Milosevic made his early career in the labyrinthine economic bureaucracy of the Communist state, running an energy company and serving as president of the leading Serbian bank. Up until the mid-1980s his speeches were full of standard denunciations of nationalism. When he spoke in public, he used the wooden language favored by Communist bureaucrats, which was difficult for ordinary people to decipher. He seemed an almost perfect product of the apparatchik class: There are practically no photographs of him in anything other than the apparatchik’s uniform of dark suit and white shirt. He rose through the ranks of the party apparatus by displaying total loyalty to his superiors and never stepping out of line.

One of the distinguishing features of the international Communist movement was an ingrained suspicion of any leader who attempted to develop a popular power base outside the party. The party’s strength lay in its unity. Only a very few exceptionally confident Communist leaders had dared to violate the taboo against involving the masses in internal party disputes. In China Mao had launched the Cultural Revolution in an attempt to outflank the hidebound party apparatchiks. In the Soviet Union Gorbachev had used glasnost to drum up popular support and put his conservative Politburo rivals on the defensive. Milošević employed essentially the same tactic. Before his death Tito had decreed that he would be succeeded by a collective leadership, made up of the representatives of Yugoslavia’s many different ethnic groups. In Milošević’s view, this arrangement had become a recipe for political paralysis. By stoking up the passions of the Serbian masses, he would become the single most powerful politician in the country and inherit Tito’s mantle.

The key moment in Milošević’s transformation from Communist to nationalist came in April 1987, when he visited the province of Kosovo, in southern Serbia. The very fact that he was willing to make such a trip was a sign that he was looking for ways of distinguishing himself from his fellow bureaucrats. Modern-day Kosovo is a dirt-poor Third World kind of a place, 90 percent of whose inhabitants are Albanian. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, however, Kosovo was the core of a powerful Serbian state. When Serbs think of Kosovo, they automatically think of the most fateful episode in their history. In 1389 a battle took place that ended Serbia’s existence as an independent nation-state for nearly five hundred years. Dressed in heavy chain mail, the Serbian knights were decimated by the lightly clad, and much more mobile, Turkish cavalry. Although the Serbian prince, Lazar, was killed on the battlefield, he left behind a legend of heroism and chivalry that sustained his countrymen for generations to come. In Serbian mythology, military defeat was transformed into moral victory and immortalized in an epic poem promising Serbs revenge against “the Turks”:
		Whoever is a Serb and of Serbian birth,



		And who does not come to Kosovo Polje



		to do battle against the Turks,



		Let him have neither a male



		nor a female offspring,



		Let him have no crop.











Milošević went to Kosovo to attend a Communist Party conference investigating complaints by local Serbs of harassment and persecution by the Albanian majority. The meeting took place on the very site of Prince Lazar’s defeat, in the village of Kosovo Polje, better known in English as the Field of Blackbirds, on the outskirts of the Kosovo capital, Priština. During the meeting thousands of Serbs and Montenegrins tried to force their way into the hall, to voice their grievances. The Serbs began pelting the police with stones.


 The police blocked their path, beating them back with truncheons. At this point Milošević emerged from the hall to speak to the angry throng. He was confronted by a wizened old Serb with a white mustache and a splendid crop of white hair, who complained that the police had been beating him. After listening to the old man, Milošević uttered the words that were to give birth to a new legend and change the course of Yugoslav history: “Nobody has the right to beat you.”




This single sentence earned Milošević an instant place in Serbian mythology, alongside Prince Lazar. He stayed in the building until dawn, listening to Serbs pour out their grievances against the Albanian-dominated provincial government of Kosovo. Overnight he was transformed from an anonymous Communist bureaucrat to a people’s tribune. When he appeared in public, he was greeted by chants of “Slobo, Slobo.” He had hit upon the magic formula that would propel him to supreme power. He had the ability not only to identify with the masses and voice their grievances but also to manipulate their emotions for his own ends. A Serbian political rival compared the new Milošević with the character in the Charlie Chaplin film The Great Dictator, “when they wave the flags and he realizes his power.”




In the hands of a political master like Milošević, nationalism was a potent weapon. Had he accused his political opponents of betraying socialism, the country would have laughed. By labeling them traitors to the nation, he united the whole of Serbia behind him. He adopted the nationalist battle cry, “Samo Sloga Srbina Spašava” (Only Unity Will Save the Serbs). In the Serbian Cyrillic script, S is written as C. The four back-to-back Cs became the symbol of the Serbian nationalist movement. The new ideology enabled Milošević to preserve the one-party state in all but name. There would be very little economic reform and only token democratization. The key institutions of Communist power—propaganda, big companies, banks—remained firmly under the control of Milošević and his allies.

In September 1987 the hero of Kosovo Polje ousted his longtime patron and mentor, Ivan Stambolić, as leader of the Serbian Communist Party. It was an act of spectacular political ingratitude that sent a warning to politicians all over Yugoslavia. Next, Milošević took his “antibureaucratic revolution” on the road. Thanks to his control over the media, primarily television, he was able to mobilize huge crowds to intimidate his political opponents and force them out of office. Within a short time, pro-Milošević leaders had come to power in the Serbian provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina, as well as the Serb-inhabited republic of Montenegro. The series of mass rallies reached an emotional climax on June 28, 1989, the six hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo Polje. For twelve months a coffin said to contain the mummified remains of Prince Lazar had been making a triumphal tour of Serbian villages, being greeted at every stop by crowds of wailing mourners. On the great day itself more than a million Serbs crowded onto the Field of Blackbirds to hail Milošević as the reincarnation of the fallen prince.

At a time when Communist leaders all over Eastern Europe were being chased out of office, Milošević was climbing to new heights of power by exploiting nationalist grievances. Nationalism stood him in good stead in March 1991, when his regime faced its most serious crisis. Tens of thousands of opposition demonstrators took to the streets of Belgrade to protest against the official manipulation of the mass media. As they attempted to take over the television station, dubbed the Bastille by Milošević’s opponents, one of the protesters was killed by a police bullet. There were hundreds of arrests. The government declared a state of emergency and attempted to crush the uprising with tanks. The huge show of force further inflamed the demonstrators, who set up a street “parliament” in the center of Belgrade that attracted hundreds of thousands of people.

The police brutality severely dented Milošević’s halo. The leader who had risen to power on the populist slogan “Nobody has the right to beat you” was “beating” his own people. In order to defuse the protests, he was obliged to make a tactical retreat, dismissing some of the most obnoxious members of his entourage, including the television chief. He then served notice that Serbia was preparing for war. Nationalism became a way of diverting attention from the economic and political crisis threatening the country.

Milošević outlined his strategy for carving a Greater Serbia out of the disintegrating Yugoslav federation at a secret briefing for regional party chiefs on March 16. He told them they had a sacred duty to defend the three million Serbs who lived outside Serbia proper, mainly in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. If the rights and freedoms of Serbs in other Yugoslav republics were threatened, the country’s internal borders would have to be redrawn, if necessary by force. This was no time for pro-democracy demonstrations or whining about the unprecedented decline in living standards. Serbia was surrounded by enemies, and national unity was essential. The course of future events would be decided by the strong, not the weak.

“We consider that it is the legitimate right and interest of the Serb people to live in a single state. This is the beginning and end of our policy,” he announced, to thunderous applause. “If we must fight, then, by God, we will fight. I only hope no one will be so crazy as to fight against us. We may not know how to work well or to do business well, but at least we know how to fight well.”







MILOŠEVIĆ WAS RIGHT to criticize the political paralysis that had gripped Yugoslavia in the years since Tito’s death. The country was drifting from one crisis to another. Bold action was needed to resolve the economic mess left behind by decades of Communist rule, but this proved impossible under the rules of consensus laid down by Tito. By the mid-1980s Yugoslavia had become virtually ungovernable. The federal government was extremely weak, and unable to impose its authority on the country. It seemed impossible for the republics to reach agreement on an austerity package to slash the budget deficit and allow loss-making factories to go bankrupt.

At first many American diplomats in Belgrade were favorably impressed by Milošević. They hoped the Serbian leader would use his newfound authority to break the political logjam and push through the necessary democratic reforms. It gradually became clear that Milošević had no intention of destroying the monopoly system that provided him with his own power base. Instead of supporting the federal government’s hesitant attempts to introduce market reforms, he worked behind the scenes to sabotage them. Instead of damping down nationalism, he used his control over the media to stoke the flames.

The nationalist explosion in Serbia soon led to a counternationalism in Croatia, Yugoslavia’s second largest republic. In April 1990 Croats went to the polls and elected a leader who was almost a mirror image of Milošević. Like his Serb counterpart, Franjo Tuđman was a former Communist. He had fought with Tito’s partisans during the Second World War and gone on to become one of the youngest generals in the Yugoslav People’s Army. His conversion to nationalism had come earlier than that of Milošević—he was one of the leading figures in an outpouring of Croatian national sentiment in the early 1970s known as the Euphoria—but his political philosophy was remarkably similar. Like Milošević, he was suspicious of genuine political pluralism. He regarded himself as the symbol of Croatia’s centuries-old desire for independent statehood and believed that the whole nation should rally around him.

The two leaders were alike even in their denunciations of each other. Zagreb television became a bizarre parody of Belgrade television. Tuđman was always the lead story on Croatian television news, just as Milošević’s sayings and doings dominated Serbian newscasts. The hate-filled language used by the two television stations was practically interchangeable; only the targets were different. Zagreb attacked the “terrorist, hegemonistic” policies of Serbia, while Belgrade attacked the “terrorist, hegemonistic” policies of Croatia. Both sides used long-forgotten World War II epithets against the other. Croatian commentators referred to Serbian leaders as “chetniks,” the name used by Serbian royalists who fought against Tito’s partisans. Serbian commentators referred to Croatian leaders as “ustashi,” after the brutal Croatian fascists who established a pro-Nazi puppet regime in Zagreb during the war.

There was, however, one important difference between the leaders of Serbia and Croatia. For Milošević, nationalism was a means to an end, preserving his own power. For Tuđman, restoring Croatian independence was the supreme goal. Whereas Milošević was cold and calculating, Tuđman was emotional and narrow-minded. He had much less political experience than his Serbian rival and made numerous errors of judgment. One of the most serious was his insensitivity to the traumas of the 600,000-strong Serb minority in Croatia.

During the war hundreds of thousands of Serbs had been massacred by the ustashi. Tuđman did little to allay Serb concerns about the place they would occupy in an independent Croatian state. The Croatian parliament adopted national symbols that were offensive to many Serbs, including the red and white checkerboard that had been used by the ustashi regime. (Tuđman argued that it was a perfectly respectable Croatian emblem that long predated the ustashi.) After winning the 1990 elections, his Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) began a systematic purge of Serbs from the police force, the education system, and even industry. Croats argued that such a step was only fair, since the Serbs had been overrepresented in Croatia under the Communists. While it was certainly true that the Serb minority in Croatia had enjoyed special privileges in the past—this was part of Tito’s delicate ethnic balancing act—mass dismissals were a provocative act under the circumstances. Tuđman played into the hands of the Serbian propagandists.

Given the hard-line attitudes on each side and the ghastly memories of the older generation of Serbs, conflict was almost inevitable. The two nationalisms fed on each other, but they also competed. There was little room for compromise, particularly in the border regions of Croatia, where many Serbs lived. The first signs of trouble came in August 1990, in Krajina, a stony plateau just inland from the Dalmatian coast, where Serbs had been living since the sixteenth century. The Krajina Serbs declared their “autonomy” from the rest of Croatia and appealed to the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army for assistance. That army provided the population with weapons and political support, preventing the Tuđman government from establishing its authority in the region.

For the next nine months the country waited for the spark that would ignite a full-scale war. It came at the other end of Croatia, on the border with Serbia proper, in an obscure little village called Borovo Selo.




THE BOROVO SHOE AND TIRE FACTORY LIES in a bend in the Danube River on the fertile Slavonian plain, a few miles across the cornfields from the town of Vukovar. Founded in 1931 by a Czech entrepreneur named Jan Bata, the factory soon achieved a reputation for high-quality products. During the years before World War II it was a model of modern production techniques, progressive management, and ethnic harmony. The workforce was predominantly Croat and German, together with some Serbs, whose ancestors had been brought to Slavonia to serve as frontiersmen in the Austro-Hungarian army.

The Communist victory caused a social and political upheaval at the Borovo factory. The former owners were expropriated, and the factory was taken over by the state. All the Germans were expelled. Croat managers were arrested, on suspicion of cooperating with the ustashi regime. In order to provide the factory with manpower and reward their own supporters, the victorious Communists began a major resettlement program. The place of the departing Germans was taken by Serbs and Croats from impoverished mountain regions near the Adriatic coast. There was immediate friction between the newcomers—hardened mountain people who had borne the brunt of the fighting during the war—and the native inhabitants. The mountain Serbs described the Slavonian Serbs as Schwabs, Germans. The local Serbs, many of whom were prosperous landowners, regarded the Krajina Serbs as lazy and uncouth. There were similar differences between the Slavonian Croats and the Croats from Herzegovina. These divisions later became very significant.

Ethnic hatreds had faded into the background during the postwar years. The Titoist slogan of “Brotherhood and Unity” had an effect, particularly when reinforced by the threat of long prison terms against anyone suspected of stirring up ethnic hatred. People stopped thinking of themselves as Serb or Croat. Mixed marriages were commonplace. By 1981, the year after Tito’s death, 22 percent of the local population was describing itself to census takers as Yugoslav, a catchall adjective for “South Slav.”

“There was little to distinguish Serbs from Croats,” recalled Nikola Radaković, a Serb director of the shoe factory. “We were born in the same hospital, went to the same schools, chased the same girls, and sang the same songs. We spoke the same language and wore the same kind of clothes. In fact, we were the same.”




The Borovo factory became a showcase for the Yugoslav system of “workers’ self-management,” which Tito invented to distinguish his brand of socialism from the Soviet variety. Delegations of admiring foreign visitors toured the factory and met the “worker-directors” who had been “elected” from the shop floor. In theory, it sounded as if Yugoslavia had the best of both worlds. Factories belonged to the workers, but there was meant to be free competition between different collectively owned enterprises. In fact, self-management was largely a fig leaf for continued Communist Party control. All appointments to senior management positions had to be cleared by the party. Most factory directors were Serbs, generally considered more “politically reliable” than Croats.

At first the system worked reasonably well. In return for their political passivity, the “worker-owners” were never fired. Loss-making departments were not closed down. The sixties and seventies were boom years for Yugoslavia—Western governments rewarded Tito’s defiance of Moscow with generous credits—but it was a false prosperity. By normal accounting standards, the Borovo factory was losing money. Factory managers later acknowledged that they spent much of their time juggling the books, in an ultimately futile attempt to conceal the losses. In order to meet the monthly payroll, they were obliged to take out huge bank loans, which were never paid back. The factory had long since ceased to invest in plant and equipment. As a result, two investment cycles were missed, and much of the shoe-making machinery was antiquated.

The logical answer to the factory’s problems would have been to dismiss half the workforce and raise the productivity of the other half by purchasing new machinery. When an attempt was finally made to follow such a strategy in 1988, the workers promptly went on strike. They camped outside the federal parliament building in Belgrade for weeks until the government caved in to their demands and granted the factory temporary relief from its debts. The government funded such loans by printing billions of new dinars, a course of action that led inexorably to hyperinflation. By the late eighties the Borovo factory had become a gigantic industrial dinosaur, employing more than twenty thousand workers. It was a symbol of everything wrong with the socialist economy: a bloated workforce; obsolescent technology; low productivity. It was also an ethnic time bomb, waiting to explode.

“The political crisis in Yugoslavia was the direct result of economic collapse,” said Josip Kovač, a Croat who worked in the factory’s financial department. “When two people are fighting for the same job, all their differences come to the surface: nationality; religion; political affiliation. If everyone had work, we would not have seen such political turmoil.”




At first there was little overt support in the Vukovar region for the nationalist parties. During the municipal elections of 1990 a majority of Croats and Serbs had voted for the nonsectarian Social Democratic Party. But the tradition of ethnic harmony broke down in the face of the growing economic crisis and the propaganda war between Belgrade and Zagreb. In early 1991 the Tuđman government began a concerted drive to replace “disloyal” Serbs with “loyal” Croats at all levels. In Vukovar Serbs were tossed out of the police force after they refused to wear the checkerboard emblem of the new Croatian state. As soon as it became clear that the Borovo factory was irretrievably bankrupt, several departments were forced to close. The Serbs suffered the brunt of the mass dismissals. Unemployed Croats could always find jobs in the police force, which was looking for recruits to fill the places vacated by the Serbs.

As important as the ethnic divisions between Serb and Croat were the differences between the plains people and the mountain people. The harvests were so abundant in this part of the world that anyone with land was assured a good income. In the farming villages of Slavonia there were many households with Mercedes cars and private swimming pools. Such people had no reason to fight for an even higher standard of living. They got on well with their Serb and Croat neighbors. By contrast, the landless immigrants felt the full force of the economic recession and had little attachment to the status quo. The bankrupt shoe factory became a natural recruiting ground for the rival militias and police forces that sprang up around Vukovar. The dispossessed on both sides became the officers in the coming war.

Pitting the poor against the rich was a standard Communist technique, and the Communists-turned-nationalists used it to perfection. Nationalist politicians like Milošević formed a de facto alliance with the desperate and the disgruntled. There is evidence that the Serbian secret police helped organize the paramilitary forces that spread havoc and terror, first in Croatia and later in Bosnia.


 In return for doing most of the fighting, the militia groups were promised the spoils of war.

The first barricades went up in early April around the Serb-inhabited settlement of Borovo Selo. This dreary industrial suburb a couple of miles down the road from the shoe factory was home to many unemployed Serb workers. Their plight had attracted the interest of Serb nationalists in Belgrade, including the leader of an extreme-right chetnik party, Vojislav Šešelj. The chetniks had done their best to stir up anti-Croat sentiment among the former Borovo workers and made sure that they had plenty of weapons to “defend” themselves from a Croat attack.

There were wild men on the Croat side too. In mid-April a group of HDZ members led by Gojko Šušak, the founder of a Canadian pizza company and adviser to Tuđman, decided to teach the Serbs a lesson. They forced the local police chief, Josip Reihl-Kir, a moderate who had worked tirelessly to reduce ethnic tensions, to take them to Borovo Selo. Approaching the village through the cornfields, they fired three shoulder-launched missiles at Serb positions. The missiles did not do much damage, but they were seized upon by the Belgrade propaganda machine as proof that Croatia was bent on war. Šušak, who rose to become defense minister in the Croatian government, later boasted that he had fired the first shell against the Serbian “aggressors” in eastern Slavonia.







THE ETHNIC TINDERBOX WAS IGNITED on Thursday, May 2. The Serbs of Borovo Selo had been celebrating May Day, a traditional Yugoslav feast day, and the village was adorned with the Yugoslav blue, white, and red tricolor emblazoned with the Red Star. Across the cornfields, in the predominantly Croat settlement of Borovo Naselje, people had hung out the Croatian checkerboard.

Shortly after midnight two Croatian police cars drove into town, from the direction of Borovo Naselje. The policemen began to haul down the Yugoslav flag from a post and immediately found themselves surrounded by angry Serbs. Shots were fired; each side later accused the other of firing first. Two of the Croatian patrolmen were detained by Serb vigilantes, and the others fled. In response the Croat authorities dispatched a group of twenty armed policemen to Borovo Selo to investigate the fate of the patrolmen.

As the Croatian police vehicles entered the village, they were ambushed by Serb militants. During the resulting battle twelve of the Croatian policemen and three Serb irregulars were killed. That afternoon Yugoslav People’s Army units arrived in Borovo Selo, with the declared aim of keeping the warring ethnic communities apart. A few days later the Croatian authorities released photographs purporting to show the mutilated corpses of three of the police. One had an arm chopped off, another had been slashed across the face, while the third had the skin ripped off his back. Such atrocities had been commonplace in World War II and were a gruesome reminder of what could happen again if war were allowed to break out between the rival ethnic communities.

The Croatian police chief, Josip Kir, had favored a policy of negotiating with the rebel Serbs. But he was no longer able to control his own side. Šušak and the other hard-liners had taken over. Convinced that his own life was in danger, Kir begged his superiors to transfer him back to Zagreb. The day before he was due to leave, he was murdered by one of his own subordinates in what his wife described as a politically motivated killing.




Once it had been set in motion, the downward spiral toward uncontrollable violence proved impossible to stop. Croat activists set up barricades on the outskirts of Borovo Naselje, next to the shoe factory. Soon former workmates who had happily shared their lunch breaks together were shooting at one another across the cornfields. Within a few weeks the sniper fire had been replaced by artillery barrages and tank salvos. Croatian national guardsmen moved into Borovo Naselje, while the Yugoslav army formed a defensive ring around Borovo Selo, less than half a mile away. Serbs living in predominantly Croat communities were forced out of their houses at gunpoint; the houses were then blown up from the inside. The same thing happened to Croat families that found themselves on the wrong side of the ethnic dividing line. Each side accused the other of planning a massacre.

The toughest fighters on both sides were almost invariably the poor immigrants whose families had arrived from the mountains on the “trains without a timetable” in Tito’s social revolution after World War II. Up until recently many of these people had been stuck in demeaning jobs at the Borovo shoe factory. The Croat commander of Borovo Naselje, Blago Zadro, was a typical example. He was a Herzegovinian, from the Dalmatian hinterland. Before the war he had a job mixing chemicals and rubber, a particularly unpleasant task. After his department had been closed down, he spent three months in the reorganized Croatian police force. He also had a high position in the local branch of the HDZ.




The Serb commander of Borovo Selo, Vitomir Devetek, had a similar background. He too came from the mountains, and he too had been working in a dead-end job at the factory, producing bulletproof vests. Along with dozens of other Serbs, he had been dismissed in March after refusing to sign a loyalty oath to the republic of Croatia. His forces included thirty-five Serbs fired from the Vukovar Police Department.

“The Croatian people must understand. They will never have the independent state they imagine in their sick heads,” Devetek told an American reporter in early July as he patrolled the front line. “Sooner or later, we will attack Borovo Naselje and liberate it. Then we will liberate Vukovar.”







MOSCOW

August 17, 1991


VLADIMIR KRYUCHKOV was convinced that the world’s first Communist state was headed for political disintegration and economic catastrophe. He had used every trick in the KGB disinformation manual to persuade Gorbachev to impose a nationwide state of emergency. He had accused Lithuanian independence activists of launching an armed uprising and firing on Soviet troops. He had planted stories about a conspiracy by Western bankers to wage “financial war” against the Soviet Union by flooding the country with cheap rubles. He had talked about CIA plots to recruit Soviet leaders as “agents of influence” and destroy the rival superpower. He had even informed Gorbachev about a bizarre scheme by opposition activists to storm the Kremlin with “hooks” and “ladders.”




At first it seemed that all this disinformation might be producing the desired effect. The president had gone along with some of the KGB chief’s schemes to curb the democratic opposition and restore order in the country. At the crucial moment, however, he had called a halt to the machinery of repression. Over the past few months Gorbachev had drifted away from the hard-liners and formed an alliance with republican leaders who were intent on grabbing as much power as possible from the center.

Time was running out for Kryuchkov. Leaders from all over the country were due to come to Moscow on August 20 to sign a new Union Treaty, bringing to an end seven decades of centralized rule. The USSR—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—would cease to exist. Its place would be taken by a much looser confederation, to be known as the Union of Sovereign States.

The decision to omit any mention of “socialism” from the constitution of the new state was alarming enough. Even more troubling were indications that there would not be a place for “principled Communists” in the new order. The KGB had recorded a conversation between Gorbachev and the two most influential republican leaders, Boris Yeltsin of Russia and Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, at the end of July. After a grueling round of negotiations on the new Union Treaty at the president’s dacha at Novo-Ogaryevo, the three leaders had turned their attention to possible personnel changes. At Yeltsin’s insistence, part of the conversation had been held on the balcony, to avoid eavesdroppers. But the microphones had nevertheless picked up their remarks, and the transcript made devastating reading.

Yeltsin had argued forcefully that nobody would believe in the new Union Treaty unless Gorbachev replaced the most “odious” members of his entourage. At the top of his list was Kryuchkov, who had the attempted coup in Lithuania “on his conscience.” Nazarbayev supported the demand for a purge and mentioned the name of Boris Pugo, the hard-line interior minister. Yeltsin later recalled that Gorbachev seemed tense but agreed that both security chiefs would be removed. The three leaders also decided to replace the prime minister, Valentin Pavlov, who had allied himself with the conservatives.




Kryuchkov now knew that in all likelihood he would not remain head of the KGB very much longer. If he was going to act, he would have to do so soon. On August 6, the day Gorbachev left for his annual vacation in the Crimea, Kryuchkov instructed his aides to prepare the necessary documents for a state of emergency.

The groundwork for a coup had already been laid. Over the course of many weeks Kryuchkov had put out feelers to other members of the leadership. He knew that many of them thought the same way he did. Pavlov had already tried, and failed, to persuade the Supreme Soviet to grant him emergency economic powers. The defense minister, Dmitri Yazov, was constantly complaining about the humiliation of the army and the decline in the Soviet Union’s military readiness. The party secretary in charge of the military-industrial complex, Oleg Baklanov, was convinced that Gorbachev was running the Soviet defense industry into the ground. The secretary in charge of personnel matters, Oleg Shenin, was angry that the party was losing its influence. The president’s chief of staff, Valery Boldin, was another malcontent, even though he took care to hide his disdain for Gorbachev behind a veil of sycophancy. These men met together regularly to bemoan the fate of a once-great superpower.

On Saturday, August 17, Kryuchkov invited his fellow conspirators to a KGB facility, near the Moscow Ring Road. The complex included a sauna, a swimming pool, a video room. It was a secure and pleasant place to meet, and the KGB chief often entertained here. On this occasion, however, he led his guests onto the veranda. Even he was cautious about being overheard. He served vodka to Yazov, Shenin, and Pavlov. The others preferred whiskey. Plates of bacon lard, a traditional Russian delicacy, were served as an appetizer.

“I am ready to resign right now,” said Pavlov, who understood that his days as prime minister were numbered. “The situation is catastrophic. The country is on the threshold of hunger. Nobody wants to carry out orders anymore. The only hope is a state of emergency.”




“I deliver regular reports to Gorbachev about the extremely difficult situation, but he scarcely reacts,” complained the KGB chief. “He interrupts the conversation, changes the subject. He doesn’t believe my information.”

At Kryuchkov’s suggestion, the participants in the meeting decided to form a Committee for the State of Emergency, to be known by its Russian initials, GKChP. They would send a delegation to the Crimea to make a last attempt to persuade Gorbachev to declare his own state of emergency. If he refused, he would be interned in his dacha. Vice President Gennady Yanayev would announce that the president was “ill,” and he would assume power. Yanayev was not yet part of the plot, but the conspirators thought they could talk him into joining. He was weak and malleable.

There was a discussion about who would go to Foros to break the news to the president. It was agreed that Kryuchkov and Yazov should remain in Moscow, to make the necessary preparations. Boldin, who had worked with Gorbachev for the past fifteen years, would be made part of the delegation, in order to underline the seriousness of the revolt.

“Et tu, Brutus?” joked Yazov, who owed his own promotion to defense minister in 1987 to Gorbachev. Everybody laughed.




FOROS

August 18, 1991


IT WAS A SLOW SUNDAY AFTERNOON. For the past eight hours Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Kirillov had been cooped up inside a locked room. He spent most of his time watching television. Outside his window the sea sparkled invitingly beneath the hot Crimean sun.

Suddenly the television set flickered and died. An emergency light began flashing on the electronic console in front of Kirillov. Almost instinctively the colonel started to check the telephones on his desk. The two-way intercom with the commander in chief was out of order. So was the direct line to the Defense Ministry in Moscow. Even the internal phone system within the presidential compound at Foros was down. With the exception of a nuclear strike by the rival superpower, Kirillov’s worst nightmare had just been realized. The man in charge of the Soviet nuclear codes had no way of communicating with his superiors. The clock on the wall showed the time as 1632.

A few feet away from Kirillov lay a black briefcase containing the Soviet nuclear codes. This was the modern-day orb and scepter that distinguished the leader of a nuclear superpower from ordinary mortals. From the outside it looked like an ordinary attaché case. This is precisely what it was. The designers of the nuclear command and control system had leafed through some Western mail-order catalogs, picked out a Samsonite briefcase with a lightweight aluminum frame, and adapted it to their needs. The electronic equipment inside the briefcase would allow Gorbachev to launch thousands of nuclear missiles at the touch of a button, in the event of a surprise attack on the Soviet Union.




Kirillov and his colleagues were required to carry the commander in chief’s chemodanchik (little suitcase) wherever he went. They followed him to the Kremlin in the morning and back to his dacha at night. They accompanied him on trips to foreign countries, waiting patiently in a reception room as he conferred with world leaders. When he went on vacation, they tagged along too.

The nuclear command post at Foros was. located in a two-story guesthouse, fifty yards away from Gorbachev’s personal residence. At any one time there were always three people on duty: two “officer-operators” and a communications specialist. The work was organized into three twenty-four-hour shifts. When they were not on duty, the nuclear aides lived in a military rest home, several miles away from the presidential compound.

Only one telephone out of an entire bank of communications devices in the command post was still working. This was a radiotelephone to the government communications center at Mukhalatka, a few miles down the road. When the operator answered, Kirillov asked to be put through to Moscow immediately.

“We have no communications with anybody,” the operator replied. “There’s been an accident.”




The nuclear aides were beginning to panic when there was a loud knocking at the door. The chief of Soviet ground forces, General Valentin Varennikov, was standing in the corridor with half a dozen other officers, most of whom Kirillov did not know.

“How are your communications?” barked the general.

“There aren’t any,” replied the colonel.

“That’s how it should be,” said Varennikov, evidently pleased. He told Kirillov that the interruption in communications would last approximately twenty-four hours, adding, “The president knows all about it.” With that he and the others disappeared in the direction of Gorbachev’s residence. When the colonel tried to find out more, he was told by one of the people who had come with Varennikov to “mind your own business.”




“A GROUP OF COMRADES is here to see you, Mikhail Sergeyevich.”

Gorbachev looked up from his papers to see the ingratiating face of the head of his personal guard, Vladimir Medvedev. He was seated behind the desk of the study in his Crimean residence, with a magnificent view of the Black Sea. His annual vacation was practically over. He felt rested and in generally good health, although his back was giving him some problems. He had suffered an attack of lumbago the previous day, while walking in the hills around Foros. That morning his personal physician had given him some injections to relieve the pain. “Do whatever you want,” the president had joked. “Remove the nerve, a vertebra, even the leg, but I must be in Moscow on August 19.”


 When Medvedev entered the room, Gorbachev had been working on the speech he planned to deliver at the signing ceremony for the new Union Treaty, which he saw as his last chance of holding the country together.

“What comrades?” he asked sharply. “I am not expecting anyone.”




The president was angry. He rarely invited Kremlin officials to visit him while he was on vacation. When he was at Foros, he preferred to be alone with his immediate family: Raisa, their daughter, Irina, her husband, Anatoly, and their two children. For outsiders to show up uninvited at his private retreat was a gross breach of protocol. It was also a serious violation of the elaborate security arrangements that surrounded a Soviet leader. Gorbachev wanted to know why his bodyguards had permitted the visitors to enter the compound.

“They came with Plekhanov,” Medvedev replied nervously.

This, at least, explained how the “comrades” had managed to get past the guards. Lieutenant General Yuri Plekhanov was head of the Ninth Directorate of the KGB, the division responsible for the protection of Soviet leaders. The president’s bodyguards ultimately reported to him. It was Plekhanov who had devised the seemingly impenetrable security system around the residence, which consisted of three circles of guards, a total of five hundred superbly armed men. There were the president’s personal bodyguards, headed by Medvedev. There were KGB soldiers, who were responsible for defending the internal perimeter of the compound and manning five high watchtowers. Finally there were border troops, who patrolled the outside of the compound. Every year Plekhanov spent a few days at Foros, to ensure that the system was functioning properly.

“Okay, let them wait a little,” Gorbachev told Medvedev. He planned to ask Kryuchkov what was going on. The fact that a group of Soviet leaders would come to visit him in Foros on the eve of his departure for Moscow struck him as strange. But he had confidence in the KGB chief, who seemed the model of the loyal subordinate. While he was at Foros, he spoke to him almost every day by phone.

The president picked up the vertushka, but it was dead. He picked up a second phone, a third, and a fourth, with the same frustrating result. Finally he removed the cover from a special red phone reserved for the commander in chief. This was the hot line to the defense minister and the chief of the General Staff, for use in the event of a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. No one else was permitted to touch this phone, even to dust it. It too had gone dead. Gorbachev now had no doubt that an attempt was under way to overthrow him. He looked at his watch. It was 4:50 p.m.

He rushed outside onto the veranda, where his wife was resting after a day by the beach. During the past six years he had shared all his hopes and worries with her. Now he told her that he detected “a plot.” It was the only plausible explanation for the unprecedented communications blackout, combined with the sudden arrival of uninvited visitors. Even the television set had been disconnected. They had to prepare themselves for a period of enforced isolation, perhaps even arrest.

“If they think that they will get me to change my policies, they will not succeed. I will not give in to any blackmail or threats,” said Gorbachev after a moment’s silence. “This will be difficult for all of us, for the whole family. We have to be ready for anything.”




“You have to make this decision yourself, but I will be with you, whatever happens.”

Raisa fetched Irina and Anatoly. They understood that anything could happen. As Raisa said later, “We all knew our history, its terrible pages.” They remembered how the last Kremlin reformer, Nikita Khrushchev, had been stripped of all his posts and exiled to a Moscow dacha from one day to the next. Russian history was replete with leaders who had been executed, tortured, and thrown into prison. One by one, the members of Gorbachev’s family said they supported his decision not to give in to blackmail.

His mind made up, Gorbachev returned to his study, where the “comrades” were already waiting for him. Half an hour had gone by, and they were getting nervous. There were five of them altogether: Baklanov, Shenin, Boldin, Varennikov, and Plekhanov. All were in suits. Gorbachev, who was dressed in shorts and a sweater, immediately began throwing questions at them.

“Who sent you?”

“The committee.”

“What committee?”

“The committee set up to deal with the emergency situation in the country.”

“Who set it up? I didn’t create it, and the Supreme Soviet didn’t create it. Who created it?”




Gorbachev’s office was small, and there were not enough chairs for everybody. The visitors were nervous, unsure of themselves. They had not been expecting such a hostile reception from the president, a compromiser to his fingertips. They thought they would haggle with him and reach “a mutually agreed solution.”


 But this time the president seemed in no mood to compromise. He glared at Plekhanov and ordered him rudely out of the room. As far as he was concerned, Plekhanov was a flunky, and flunkies had no business meddling in politics.

The visitors told Gorbachev the names of some of the members of the Emergency Committee. The list included the vice president, the prime minister, the defense minister, the interior minister, the KGB chief. He jotted down the names on a notebook with a blue felt pen. These were people he knew and trusted, people whom he himself had promoted to the top positions in the state and government.

The only member of the committee who had come to Foros was Baklanov, and he did most of the talking. He told Gorbachev that he had two alternatives. He could either sign a decree implementing a state of emergency or temporarily transfer his power to Vice President Yanayev. When Gorbachev said that republican leaders were due to sign the new Union Treaty on August 20, Baklanov interrupted him: “There won’t be any signing ceremony.”

“Yeltsin has already been arrested,” Baklanov added. A few seconds later he corrected himself: “He will be arrested.”




“You and the people who sent you are irresponsible. You will destroy yourselves, but that’s your business. To hell with you. But you will also destroy the country and everything we have already done. Tell that to the committee that sent you.”

Gorbachev was working himself up for one of his long monologues, his preferred style of political discourse. He browbeat the conspirators, just as he browbeat the parliament and Central Committee, telling them repeatedly to “go to hell.” The Soviet Union faced many crises, he told them, but a state of emergency was no way to resolve them. The country’s problems could be solved only by democratic means. Anyone who thought otherwise was an “adventurer” and a “criminal.” Nothing would come of their plans.

“Only people bent on committing suicide could now propose introducing a state of emergency in the country. I will not have anything to do with it.”

“Mikhail Sergeyevich,” pleaded Boldin, hitherto the most sycophantic of the president’s aides, who was standing by the window, “you don’t understand what the situation in the country is.”

“Shut up, you prick,” Gorbachev shot back. “How dare you give me lectures about the situation in the country.”




Varennikov, barely able to contain himself, was sitting across the table from Gorbachev. The former commander of the Soviet military operation in Afghanistan had a voice that carried naturally to the most distant corner of a parade ground. He was used to giving orders, not receiving them. He bellowed at his commander in chief as if he were a junior officer who had just disgraced the regiment.

“Resign!”




Varennikov launched into a tirade of his own, complaining about the way in which the Soviet armed forces had been “humiliated,” particularly over the withdrawal from East Germany. Why, he wanted to know, were separatist, nationalist forces being allowed to run riot? Why was the president ignoring the constitution he had sworn to uphold?

Gorbachev brushed aside the general’s demand for his resignation and, for good measure, pretended that he had forgotten Varennikov’s name and patronymic.

“Valentin Ivanovich, is it? Well, just listen, Valentin Ivanovich. The people are not a battalion of soldiers to whom you can issue the command ‘right turn’ or ‘left turn, march,’ and they will do just as you tell them. It won’t be like that.”




After hurling some more Russian swearwords at his former subordinates, Gorbachev told them they were “criminals” who would be held responsible for their actions. As the conspirators left the room, he shook them by the hand.

Raisa was sitting in the hall with her daughter and son-in-law. She was frightened that the conspirators would arrest her husband on the spot. She was particularly shocked to see Boldin among the group that had confronted her husband since she regarded him as a friend of the family. He stopped a short distance from her but did not say anything. Shenin and Baklanov said hello.

“Why have you come here?” she asked Baklanov.

“Force of circumstances,” he replied, adding, “We are your friends.”

He held out his hand to say good-bye, but Raisa refused to take it.







MOSCOW

August 18, 1991


GORBACHEV’S COLLEAGUES HAD GATHERED in the prime minister’s office, on the second floor of the government building in the Kremlin. They were seated around a long conference table, covered with green baize. Bottles of mineral water, half-drunk cups of tea and coffee, plates full of biscuits and sandwiches, and top secret documents were scattered around the table. Cigarette smoke hung in the air.

The participants in the meeting had arranged themselves on either side of the table, in order of seniority. The most senior officials were farthest from the door. Whenever someone came into the room, there would be a shuffling of places, in order to preserve the Kremlin pecking order. But the seat at the head of the table—the place reserved for the chairman of the meeting—was always left vacant. It was as if none of the men around the table were willing to assume individual responsibility for the events that were taking place. All sought refuge behind the anonymity of the collective. In the absence of Gorbachev, they were effectively leaderless.

Vice President Yanayev arrived late and reeking of alcohol. The conspirators were hoping he would agree to declare himself acting president, but he had yet to give his consent. He had spent the afternoon in the company of an old drinking buddy at a government rest home outside Moscow. His somewhat disheveled appearance provoked a sarcastic comment from Prime Minister Pavlov, who had also been drinking heavily that afternoon, having attended a homecoming party for his son.

“Here we are, discussing important matters, and the vice president is wandering about somewhere,” Pavlov remarked jocularly as Yanayev entered the room.




The vice president sat down in his usual place, to the immediate left of the empty chair. The place opposite was reserved for the speaker of the Soviet parliament, Anatoly Lukyanov, who had also been summoned to the Kremlin at short notice. The wily Lukyanov was insisting that his name be removed from the list of members of the GKChP. As the representative of the legislative authority he could not take part in the work of the executive.

The meeting had been convened by Kryuchkov, on the pretext that the president was “ill” and urgent measures were necessary to stabilize the situation in the country. Now that he had isolated the president, the KGB chief had the delicate task of broadening the plot to include other members of the leadership. Gorbachev’s “illness” was a convenient fiction that enabled everyone at the meeting to hide behind a cloak of legality.

Yanayev allowed the debate to swirl around him. He was unsure what position to take, and his alcoholic stupor made it even more difficult for him to think straight. He had talked to Gorbachev a few hours previously by phone—the president had told him he was flying back to Moscow on the nineteenth—so he knew perfectly well that he was not seriously ill. He shared his colleagues’ dismay at the state of the country and believed that a “strong hand” was the only solution. On the other hand, he had never had any pretensions to being a leader, far less a dictator.

Like most Russians, Yanayev had been surprised by his election as vice president eight months earlier. The press had dismissed him as a colorless bureaucrat who had managed to reach the top by never sticking his neck out. After writing a doctoral thesis on Trotskyism and anarchism, he had spent most of his career in the Communist youth organization, the Komsomol. He had also worked for the official trade union organization, which was known as a refuge for mediocrities. Yanayev’s lackluster biography and weak personality had caused a revolt in the Congress of People’s Deputies when Gorbachev proposed him for the post of vice president. Even his jokes fell flat. Questioned by deputies about the state of his health, he replied, “I perform my husbandly duties satisfactorily.” (According to Russian prosecutors, Yanayev was a notorious womanizer.) It took two ballots to get him elected, but Gorbachev seemed satisfied with his choice. The president did not want a strong number two, who might one day challenge him.

Shortly after 10:00 p.m. the delegation that had visited Gorbachev in Foros burst into the room. They too had been drinking, on the plane home. Shenin and Baklanov gave their accounts of the meeting with the president, complaining that he had refused to go along with their perfectly reasonable suggestions for a state of emergency. Yanayev attempted to find out precisely what was wrong with Gorbachev but had no success.

“What’s the matter with you? We’re not doctors,” said one of the group. “We were just told, ‘He’s sick.’ ”




Realizing that the others wanted him to declare himself acting president, Yanayev began to squirm. He protested that Lukyanov, who had known Gorbachev since the university, would be a better choice. The Supreme Soviet speaker was adamantly opposed to this idea. He had come to the meeting armed with a copy of the constitution, which he had helped draft. The constitution was clear, he told Yanayev. If the president is incapacitated, for whatever reasons, the vice president must take over.

“According to the constitution, you become acting president, not me. My job is to convene the Supreme Soviet.”




At this point, Kryuchkov shoved a piece of paper across the table to Yanayev. It contained a single typewritten sentence:






In connection with the inability of Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeyevich, to fulfill his duties as President of the USSR, due to his state of health, I assume the responsibilities of President of the USSR from August 19, 1991, on the basis of article 127


 of the Constitution of the USSR.

    

USSR Vice President



    

G. I. Yanayev







“Don’t you understand?” said Kryuchkov, one of the few people in the room still sober. “Unless we save the harvest, there will be hunger. In a few months the people will come out onto the street. There will be civil war.”




“Perhaps we shouldn’t say that he is ill,” mused Yanayev, smoking one cigarette after another. “They might not understand us properly. There will be all sorts of speculation, talk. People will immediately want to know when he is going to get better.”

“If we don’t link this with Gorbachev’s illness, what other basis do we have for assuming his responsibilities? Now is not the time to investigate whether or not he is ill. We have to save the country.”




There was silence around the table as everyone waited for the vice president to make up his mind.

“I won’t sign this decree,” he said finally. “I do not consider myself morally or professionally ready to assume these responsibilities.”




Everybody around the table attempted to calm Yanayev down. They told him that the GKChP would take care of everything. His duties would be limited to signing a few decrees. When Gorbachev’s state of health improved, he would naturally resume his old duties.

“Sign, Gennady Ivanovich,” said Kryuchkov softly.

Yanayev took out his pen and signed the document in a shaky hand.




MOSCOW

August 19, 1991


SHORTLY AFTER SIX THE NEXT MORNING, Yeltsin’s youngest daughter, Tanya, flew into his bedroom, yelling, “Papa, get up! There’s been a coup!”

“That’s illegal,” said Yeltsin, still half asleep. Just six weeks previously he had been sworn in as the first popularly elected president of Russia in a millennium, and his own children were already making jokes about a coup.

Tanya told her father what she had just heard on television. Gorbachev had been replaced for “reasons of health.” A committee with a strange-sounding acronym had been appointed to run the country, in order to impose a state of emergency. Its members included Kryuchkov, Yazov, Yanayev. By now Yeltsin was wide-awake. His first reaction to the coup was the same as that of millions of other Soviet citizens when they heard the news that Monday morning either by switching on the television or from telephone calls from their friends.

“Are you kidding me?”




Still in his nightclothes, Yeltsin dragged himself to the television set. A stern middle-aged matron was reading from a pile of decrees.

“The holding of meetings, street processions, demonstrations, and also strikes is forbidden. In the case of necessity, a curfew and military patrols will be introduced. Important government and economic installations will be placed under guard. Decisive measures will be taken to stop the spreading of subversive rumors, actions that threaten the disruption of law and order and the creation of interethnic tension, and disobedience to the authorities responsible for implementing the state of emergency. Control will be established over the mass media….”

Like most senior officials, Yeltsin had spent the weekend at his dacha in the bucolic Moscow countryside. After long negotiations with the central authorities, the Russian government had finally been allocated a complex of a dozen state dachas in the village of Arkhangelskoye, on the Moskva River, a twenty-five-minute drive from the center of the city. All of Yeltsin’s key aides, including Russian Parliament Speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov and Russian Prime Minister Ivan Silayev, had weekend homes in the same compound. They began assembling at Yeltsin’s dacha as soon as they heard the news.

The immediate priority was to establish how much support the coup leaders enjoyed across the country. None of the republican leaders seemed very eager to take the Russian president’s call. He had just returned from an official visit to Kazakhstan and thought he had a good relationship with the Kazakh leader, Nazarbayev. The day before, they had toasted their success in persuading Gorbachev to accept a new Union Treaty. This morning, however, Nazarbayev was extremely cautious in committing himself, one way or the other.

“It is obvious that this is a coup. Gorbachev has been stripped of power by force. How do you intend to react?” Yeltsin said down the phone line to Alma-Ata.




Nazarbayev replied that he did not yet have enough information to make any kind of public statement. A similar wait-and-see position was adopted by the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus when Yeltsin finally managed to get through to them.

At least the vertushka was still functioning. Yeltsin used it to call Yanayev but was told that the “acting president” was “resting” after working all night. He then placed a call to Gorbachev in Foros. A few minutes later the government telephone operator called back to say the call could not be put through.

The most significant call that Yeltsin made from Arkhangelskoye that morning was to the paratroop commander, General Pavel Grachev. The two men had first met just a few weeks before, during the Russian presidential election campaign. Displaying the sixth sense that was his political hallmark, Yeltsin understood that he might one day need the support of the military. After a campaign stop in the provincial town of Tula, he had made a point of attending a paratroop training exercise nearby. Grachev had been his host. After watching paratroopers float down from the sky, the two men repaired to a hut by a lake, where they downed numerous bottles of vodka. Yeltsin went for a nude swim in the lake. As the banquet ended, officers and politicians repeatedly assured each other of their “eternal love and friendship.”




In his alcoholic haze, the future president of Russia had posed a crucial question to the Afghan war hero. “If our lawfully elected government in Russia were ever threatened—a terrorist act, a coup, efforts to arrest the leaders—could the military be replied upon? Could you be relied upon?”

“Yes, we could,” Grachev had replied.




Unbeknownst to Yeltsin, Grachev had played a key role in drafting the plans for a state of emergency. On Kryuchkov’s invitation, he had joined a working group of senior KGB and Defense Ministry officials that began preparing for a crackdown as soon as Gorbachev left for Foros. The documents drawn up by Grachev and his colleagues formed the basis of the decrees issued by the GKChP that had been read over television that morning. When Yeltsin reached him on the phone, the general was supervising the deployment of tens of thousands of troops into the capital, including the Tula Division. Defense Minister Yazov had put him in charge of the military side of the coup.

The Russian president asked Grachev if he remembered the conversation they had had in Tula a few weeks previously. After a long pause Grachev replied nervously that he was duty-bound to obey the orders of his superiors. But then he added, “Wait a minute, Boris Nikolayevich, I’ll send you a security detachment.”




Yeltsin thanked Grachev, and they said good-bye. There was something about the general’s tone of voice that was encouraging. For a military officer, who knew that someone might be listening in to the telephone conversation, he had seemed sympathetic.

“Grachev’s on our side,” Yeltsin told his wife, Naina, as he put down the phone.

While Yeltsin was on the phone, the other Russian leaders had begun drafting an appeal to the citizens of Russia. They understood there was little point negotiating with the members of the GKChP. Their best hope was to take a firm stand on the issue of constitutional legality. There could be no compromise with the people who had overthrown the democratically elected president of the Soviet Union.

Since there was no typewriter available, Khasbulatov began writing out the appeal by hand. “We are confronted with a right-wing, reactionary, anticonstitutional coup,” the speaker wrote as the others leaned over his shoulder, making suggestions. “We urge the citizens of Russia to give a worthy answer to the putschists and demand that they return the country to normal constitutional development.” When they signed their appeal, Yeltsin, Silayev, and Khasbulatov had no way of knowing if it would ever reach the outside world.

In fact distributing the appeal turned out to be an amazingly simple operation. Unlike Jaruzelski, in December 1981, Kryuchkov and his colleagues had failed to lay the proper groundwork for their coup. There was no mass roundup of the political opposition. Soviet borders with the outside world remained open. Independent radio stations were still on the air. The telephones were working. The party apparatchiks who had set up the GKChP seemed to assume that once they got rid of Gorbachev, the rest of Soviet society would fall meekly into line. They were operating according to the rules of the last Kremlin coup—against Nikita Khrushchev, in October 1964—when Moscow’s control over information had been total.

The information revolution had caught up with Russia by 1991, and there were dozens of ways to get the news out. The president’s daughters began by faxing it to a group of Yeltsin supporters in the nearby town of Zelenograd. Son-in-law Lyosha then sent a copy to the aerospace design office where he worked. Someone else called the White House, the headquarters of the Russian government. Within an hour Yeltsin’s call for popular resistance had been photocopied, faxed, broadcast, and E-mailed all over the world. It was an impressive achievement in a land where all copy machines had been kept under lock and key up until 1989.

Yeltsin had been so preoccupied with organizing resistance to the coup that he did not have time to change out of his slippers and tennis shorts. When he decided to drive to the White House, his family helped him get dressed in his working clothes. It was then that he uttered what later became one of the catchphrases of the coup: “Can one of you women find some socks for the president of Russia?”




Before leaving Arkhangelskoye, Yeltsin put on a bulletproof vest offered to him by one of his security guards. The sight of the vest, peeking out of his smart brown suit, made his family understand the risks he was running. His wife and daughters suddenly felt afraid. By now several dozen Russian security men, with assault rifles, had taken up positions around the dacha.

“What are you protecting with that bulletproof vest?” Naina wanted to know. “Your head is still unprotected. And your head is the main thing.”

As the president climbed into his Zil limousine, his wife began to worry about the tanks already reported to be heading in the direction of Moscow. Yeltsin did his best to sound confident.

“We have a little Russian flag on our car. They won’t stop us.”




The presidential Zil hurtled along the winding country road that led from Arkhangelskoye to Moscow, followed by a cortege of Russian government vehicles. They were heading due east, and the morning sun was shining directly in their faces, making it difficult to see the road ahead. As they turned onto the Minsk highway, they overtook hundreds of tanks, armored cars, and troop trucks, crawling toward the center of town. The line of military vehicles seemed endless. The troops had been woken up at 4:30 that morning and ordered to head toward Moscow in full combat gear. Similar columns were advancing from the north and the south.

Dozens of journalists, both Soviet and Western, were already assembled at the White House. If there was going to be significant resistance to the men who had seized power from Gorbachev, this vast edifice on the left bank of the Moskva River would almost certainly be the rallying point. Designed by a committee of Soviet architects, in the worst traditions of post-Stalinist modernism, the nineteen-story building was an unlikely symbol for Russia’s fledgling democracy. It was possible to get utterly lost wandering around its corridors. It was the kind of building where if you wanted to reach the cafeteria on the top floor, you first had to take an elevator to the eighth floor, go down a corridor, descend two flights of stairs, and then take another elevator. As it turned out, the maze of corridors and underground tunnels provided the defenders of the White House with the basis of an effective security system.

In his first appearance before the press Yeltsin seemed pale and shaken. He seemed overwhelmed by the magnitude of his task. None of the other republics was in a hurry to come to Russia’s aid, and the sight of the firepower being brought into the city by his enemies was fresh in his mind. The situation looked hopeless. “At least fifty tanks are on their way to this building,” he told journalists, after a whispered consultation with an aide. “Anybody who wants to save himself can do so.”




When he returned to his office, on the fifth floor of the White House, Yeltsin could see a column of tanks lined up along the embankment. A group of Muscovites had surrounded the tanks and were arguing with the crews. Nobody seemed afraid, even though radio and television were spewing out the dire warnings of the GKChP against anyone who dared resist the state of emergency. “All at once, I felt a jolt inside,” he recalled later in his memoirs. “I had to be out there right away, standing with those people.”




A roar went up from the crowd when they spotted the towering figure of the Russian president striding purposefully down the ceremonial steps in the front of the White House. They broke into chants of “Yeltsin, Yeltsin” and “Down with the Communist Party.” Surrounded by aides and security guards, Yeltsin approached Tank No. 110 of the Taman Division and posed for pictures. Television cameras whirred as he shook the hand of the tank commander. The crew seemed dazed, utterly bewildered by what was happening.

“Apparently they are not going to shoot the president of Russia just yet,” Yeltsin quipped to the crowd.




Friendly hands helped Yeltsin up onto the tank. A dozen security guards and Russian deputies climbed up after him. Someone held up the white, blue, and red tricolor that had been the Russian flag prior to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The president stood by the gun turret and straightened himself up tall, raising his right hand for silence. He twisted his face into a defiant scowl and began to read from the “Appeal to the Citizens of Russia” that he and his colleagues had written earlier that morning.

“The use of force is absolutely unacceptable,” Yeltsin boomed. “We are absolutely sure that our compatriots will not permit the tyranny and lawlessness of the putschists, who have lost all sense of shame and honor, to be confirmed. We appeal to military personnel to display their high sense of civic courage and refuse to participate in the reactionary coup.”

As he stood on top of the tank, surrounded by cheering supporters, Yeltsin felt both a surge of energy and an intense sense of relief. It was like the time he had stood up in school and accused his headmistress of sadism. Everything was clear now. An intensely complicated political struggle had just been reduced to a case of us against them. They—the authority figures—had the guns. But he, Yeltsin, had a burning sense of moral conviction and political legitimacy. He also had the people on his side.




FOROS

August 19, 1991


OVERNIGHT GORBACHEV’S PRIVATE PLAYGROUND in the Crimea had been transformed into a luxurious—and very isolated—jailhouse. The president had become a prisoner of the security forces assigned to protect him. There was no way for the Gorbachev family to escape from Foros, just as there was no way for outsiders to penetrate the security fences that surrounded the compound. Fire engines had been parked across the helicopter landing pad to forestall any rescue attempt. Border guards blocked all the approach roads to Camp Dawn, the KGB code name for the dacha. The previous night Gorbachev’s personal secretary had counted the lights of sixteen naval ships surrounding the bay.




On the grounds of the dacha itself, a standoff had developed between two rival groups of security guards. The presidential bodyguards—with the exception of General Medvedev—had remained loyal to Gorbachev. No attempt had been made to disarm them, and they were permitted to continue protecting the president. The task of guarding the perimeter of the compound had been taken over by a fresh contingent of KGB men, who had arrived from Moscow with the conspirators. They took over control of the gates, impounded all the vehicles, and decided who would enter and leave. They also possessed the only means of communication with the outside world.

One of the first people to attempt to enter Camp Dawn after the coup was the president’s senior nuclear aide, Colonel Viktor Vasilyev.


 He had the job of taking over responsibility for the chemodanchik from Kirillov and escorting Gorbachev back to Moscow. Together with his two assistants, he reported to the entrance gate of Foros around eight on the morning of August 19. None of the trio had any idea what had happened in the country. There was no television and no telephone in the military rest home where they were billeted.

After examining their passes, the guard asked the nuclear aides to wait, while he phoned his superiors. A few minutes later a KGB colonel appeared and told them the passes were no longer valid. When they asked why, he suggested they listen to the radio, which was broadcasting GKChP decrees over and over again.

It took many hours for the Defense Ministry to decide what to do with Gorbachev’s nuclear briefcase. They were in no particular hurry. The chemodanchik had ceased to be operational from the moment that communications were interrupted with Foros, at 4:32 p.m. the previous day. (The defense minister and chief of the General Staff possessed identical pieces of equipment, which they could have used in the event of a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.) The significance of the chemodanchik was now symbolic, rather than practical. Without it, Gorbachev was no longer the commander in chief. This happened, without any ceremony, at 2:00 p.m. on August 19, when a jeep arrived for the nuclear aides. They flew back to Moscow that evening, aboard the presidential plane, taking the chemodanchik with them.




THE CONSPIRATORS HAD CUT OFF the television and radio cable to the presidential compound. Gorbachev, however, still had a little Sony transistor radio that he used to listen to the news while shaving. He spent the night fiddling with the dial, desperate for any news about the plans of the GKChP. There was nothing until shortly after six that morning, when Radio Moscow began broadcasting the announcement that Yanayev had taken over as “acting president.”

Apart from his bodyguards and private secretary, the only aide that Gorbachev had taken with him to Foros was his foreign policy adviser, Anatoly Chernyayev, who had been helping him write an article outlining several scenarios for the future development of the country. These included the imposition of a state of emergency, a course Gorbachev raised only to reject. When the conspirators arrived, Chernyayev was staying in the guesthouse behind the presidential mansion and was unable to leave the compound. He was to remain by Gorbachev’s side throughout the coup.

On Monday morning Chernyayev found the president lying in bed, writing notes to himself. His back was still giving him problems, and any movement was painful for him. Together, they tried to analyze the coup’s chances of success. Gorbachev was contemptuous of the putschists. He did not believe they would be able to put the economy back on its feet or restore order. In the long term they were doomed. In the short term, however, he feared that they might come out on top.

“This could end very badly,” he said gloomily. “In this situation, I trust Yeltsin. He will not give in to them, he will not make any concessions. There could be bloodshed.”




Raisa Gorbachev put herself in charge of security. Shattered by the betrayal of Boldin and Plekhanov, she was now hypervigilant. The GKChP announcement that Gorbachev was incapable of performing his duties because of ill health terrified her. The plotters’ next step, she reasoned, would be to turn her husband into a real invalid, in order to support their previous statements. Fearing a possible poisoning attempt, she kept the family from eating any food not already stocked on the premises. Her daughter, Irina, collected all the fruit in the house and hid it in a cupboard, to ensure that the children would have something to eat.


 Convinced the entire house was bugged, Raisa insisted that confidential conversations be held out in the open.

After lunch the entire Gorbachev family plus Chernyayev took the enclosed glass escalator down to the rocky beach. While the children swam in the sea, Gorbachev and Chernyayev sat in a little changing hut, planning the president’s next move. Gorbachev decided to bombard the leaders of the GKChP with constant demands, as a means of psychological pressure. Chernyayev jotted down his first orders, which he later handed to Plekhanov’s deputy, the GKChP representative at Foros:






1. I demand the immediate restoration of government communications.

2. I demand the immediate dispatch of the presidential plane, so that I can return to work.





By Monday afternoon the security guards who remained loyal to Gorbachev had rigged up a makeshift television aerial. The television set was working again, in time for the GKChP press conference that evening. Like everybody else in the country, Gorbachev was more struck by the way the coup leaders looked than by what they had to say. It was a pathetic sight. The advocates of a “firm hand” seemed terribly nervous and unsure of themselves. Yanayev was unable to keep his hands from shaking, as he promised to restore law and order in the country.

Equally revealing was the journalists’ lack of respect toward the would-be saviors of the nation. After six years of glasnost, they clearly had no intention of surrendering their hard-won freedoms. “Do you realize that you have carried out a state coup?” asked a twenty-four-year-old reporter for Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Moscow’s latest independent newspaper. “Which comparison do you find more appropriate: 1917 or 1964?” The Bolshevik coup or the removal of Khrushchev? Other reporters wanted to know if Yanayev would be seeking the advice of Chilean General Pinochet and why the Soviet people had not been told exactly what was wrong with Gorbachev.

After watching the pitiful performance of the coup leaders, Gorbachev decided to make his own appeal to the Soviet and international public. After midnight he sat down to record his message, in front of the family video camera. “Everything that has been said concerning the state of my health is false. On the basis of this lie, an anti-constitutional coup d’état has been carried out. The legitimate president of the country has been barred from carrying out his duties…. I am under arrest and nobody is allowed to leave the territory of the dacha. I am surrounded by troops from both the sea and the land. I don’t know whether I shall succeed in getting this out, but I shall try to do everything to see that this tape reaches freedom.”




Gorbachev read the appeal four times in succession. His daughter, Irina, and his son-in-law, Anatoly, cut the tape into four sections. They wrapped each section separately in a tiny paper envelope and sealed it with Scotch tape. Then they began to rack their brains over how to smuggle his message out of Camp Dawn.




MOSCOW

August 20, 1991


MARSHAL DMITRI YAZOV HAD SCARCELY SLEPT in the two nights since he had ordered his troops to occupy the streets of their own capital. He was depressed and irritable. He had joined the plot against his commander in chief after becoming convinced that Gorbachev was leading the Soviet Union to disaster and destroying its armed forces. But the more he saw of his fellow conspirators, the more he wondered whether he had made the right choice. Half of them were drunkards; the other half were incompetent.




The attempt to reestablish Soviet power was not going well. Moscow was buzzing with rumors that half a dozen tanks of the Taman Division had defected to the Yeltsin camp. They had been assigned to take up positions at the Kutuzov Bridge, a couple of hundred yards from the White House. After talks with Russian leaders, Major Sergei Yevdokimov had agreed to move his tanks, deploying them in a defensive position around the parliament building, with their gun turrets facing outward. There were other signs of dissent as well. A paratroop training academy in Ryazan had declared its support for Yeltsin, as had garrisons on the island of Sakhalin and the Kamchatka peninsula, eight time zones to the east. Morale among the five thousand troops now occupying the center of Moscow was reported to be poor.

“What have we got ourselves into?” muttered Yazov at a meeting of his senior commanders, at six o’clock Tuesday morning, as he reviewed the situation in the army.

Opposition to the GKChP even extended to the defense minister’s own family. His wife, Emma, had reacted to the coup with shock and dismay. Although she was recovering from a serious automobile accident, she had ordered a car to take her to the Defense Ministry, on Arbat Square, half a mile from the Kremlin. Weeping and sobbing, she had hobbled into Yazov’s office in a plaster cast.

“Dima, this means civil war. You have to stop this nightmare. Call Gorbachev.”




Hurt by his wife’s tears, Yazov explained gently that there was no way of communicating with the president. “Emma, please understand, I am alone.”

As they were talking, the television in the corner of the office began broadcasting the press conference by Yanayev and the other members of the GKChP. Emma wanted to know why he was not with them. By way of reply, he waved his hand dismissively in the direction of his colleagues.

“Dima, look at who you have got involved with. You always laughed at these people. Phone Gorbachev.”

The defense minister felt torn between his loyalty to the president and his loyalty to the Soviet Union, or at least his vision of it. Bluff and straightforward, he had tried to steer clear of palace intrigues. This was one reason why Gorbachev had confidence in him, despite his limited intellectual horizons and lack of a formal education. At sixty-seven he was an officer of the old school whose entire life had revolved around his military service and Communist Party membership. He had joined the army as a teenager, during World War II, and had twice been wounded at the front. Soon he would be celebrating his fifty-year jubilee with the Soviet armed forces.

Yazov could not bring himself to betray his fellow conspirators so soon after betraying Gorbachev. He ordered the military preparations for the takeover of the Russian parliament to continue.




AT THE WHITE HOUSE Yeltsin also had hardly slept the previous night. His situation looked desperate. The building was virtually undefended. Workers had practically ignored his call for an immediate general strike against the GKChP. Although there had been protest rallies here and there, most of the population seemed indifferent to what was going on in Moscow.

But the Russian president had one great advantage: He was a fighter who thrived on adversity. As both an athlete and a politician he was at his best when he was twenty points down and struggling to remain in the game. The ability to perform almost superhuman feats, interspersed with periods of prolonged idleness, is a common Russian trait, which Yeltsin possessed to an almost exaggerated degree. His burst of political activity during the coup was in marked contrast with the strange passivity of the plotters, who virtually dropped out of sight after their disastrous press conference.

When he climbed onto the tank outside the White House, Yeltsin became the symbol of democratic opposition to the new regime. By the second day of the coup he had issued a series of presidential decrees that laid the legal and constitutional basis for defying the authority of the GKChP. In quick succession he summoned the Russian parliament into extraordinary session, issued warrants for the arrest of the coup leaders, suspended the activity of the Russian Communist Party, and named himself commander in chief of all Soviet troops on the territory of Russia. The soldiers patrolling the streets of Moscow were now faced with a choice of whom to obey: Yazov or Yeltsin.




AT NOON ON TUESDAY, AUGUST 20, Soviet security chiefs gathered in the office of the deputy defense minister, Vladislav Achalov, to discuss an attack on the White House. Most of the uniformed participants at the meeting were well acquainted with one another since they had all served in Afghanistan. The Interior Ministry forces were represented by Boris Gromov, the last commander of the Soviet Fortieth Army. Sitting next to him was the paratroop commander, Pavel Grachev. The commander of the Alpha Group, Viktor Karpukhin, was wearing his combat fatigues. Also present was Valentin Varennikov, the loudmouthed commander of Soviet land forces, who had demanded Gorbachev’s resignation in Foros two days earlier.

A KGB general, Genii Ageev, opened the meeting by outlining Operation Thunder. It hinged on careful coordination among the army, the KGB, and the Interior Ministry. Grachev’s paratroopers would be responsible for establishing a security perimeter with a radius of a thousand yards around the White House. They would prevent demonstrators from entering the entire area between the Moskva River and the American Embassy. Gromov’s forces would then drive a wedge through the crowds of Yeltsin supporters who already surrounded the parliament. KGB troops, led by the Alpha Group, would move in behind the Interior Ministry forces and storm the building, firing grenade launchers as they went. A squadron of military helicopters would land on the building from the roof.

Once inside the White House, the Alpha Group would arrest the Russian leadership, shooting any resisters. Special ten-man units of KGB troops would comb the building for Yeltsin supporters. These units would include photographers, who had the task of taking pictures of White House defenders using firearms. The photographs would allow the GKChP to claim that the other side shot first.

Both Grachev and Gromov had grave doubts about the operation, but they kept their thoughts to themselves. Instead they raised practical objections, pointing out that they would have to bring more troops into Moscow in order to implement the plan worked out by the KGB. Grachev insisted that the participants in the meeting hear a report from his subordinate, General Aleksandr Lebed, who had just completed a reconnaissance mission around the White House.

“Big crowds are gathering,” Lebed told the security chiefs. “They are erecting barricades. It will be impossible to complete this operation without significant casualties. There are many armed men inside the White House.”




“General, it is your duty to be an optimist,” exploded Varennikov, who had been demanding Yeltsin’s arrest ever since the start of the coup. “You are bringing pessimism and uncertainty into this room.”

Like many other senior officers, Lebed felt confused and bewildered. For the past forty-eight hours, he had been caught up in an incomprehensible nightmare. On Monday, he had been instructed by Grachev to report to the White House and help organize the “defense and protection” of the building. Against whom was unclear: he did not hear about the formation of the GKChP until late Monday afternoon. He had negotiated with Yeltsin aides to station tanks around the building, with their gun barrels facing outwards. “In spite of all my efforts, I could not figure out what was going on,” he later recalled, describing his position as “humiliating.” On Tuesday morning, equally mysteriously, Grachev had instructed him to remove his tanks from the White House. “Again, I understood nothing.” It seemed to Lebed that he was taking part in some “idiotic game” straight out of the theater of the absurd. Later, he would be hailed as a hero for his role in defending the White House. But, as he wrote in his memoirs, “I was following orders when I led my troops into Moscow, and I was following orders when I led them out again.”







DURING THE AFTERNOON rumors of Operation Thunder began to filter down to the troops who had taken up positions around the center of Moscow. In most units the news of an imminent attack on the Russian parliament was greeted with alarm. In the day and a half since their deployment in the capital, the troops had been involved in endless debates with Muscovites about the legality of the state of emergency and the whereabouts of Gorbachev. The prospect of opening fire on their fellow Russians filled them with dread. The operation was set for 3:00 a.m. on Wednesday.

The debates were particularly lively in Manezh Square, alongside the Kremlin wall, which had been occupied the previous day by KGB spetsnaz units from the Moscow area. In recent months they had been training to support the Alpha Group in unspecified “antiterrorist operations.” They were well motivated and combat-ready. But even they were beginning to have doubts about their latest assignment.

The operation had begun badly. Driving into central Moscow, they had been delayed by a traffic accident, involving two armored personnel carriers and a passenger car. A soldier was taken to the hospital with a concussion. By the time the armored column reached the Manezh, the entrances to the square were blocked with trolley-buses. The spetsnaz had pushed the trolley-buses out of the way with the help of special engineering equipment, only to be confronted with crowds of unarmed civilians. None of the soldiers in the Manezh had any training in crowd control. Clearing the square of demonstrators, without resorting to force, had occupied the rest of the day.

That night the troops had attempted to get some rest in the holds of their armored cars. But they were constantly interrupted by visits from delegations of people’s deputies, representing both the Russian parliament and the Moscow City Council. The deputies distributed packages of Yeltsin decrees, appealing to the troops to ignore the orders of the GKChP and heed the authority of the Russian parliament. The spetsnaz officers were impressed by the red badges worn by the deputies in their lapels, a sign of their official status. Discussing the situation among themselves, they gradually reached the conclusion that Gorbachev’s overthrow had been unconstitutional. The officers’ uneasiness encouraged the deputies to push harder.

“Let’s all go to the Kremlin right now, and settle all this with Yanayev,” suggested Boris Nemtsov, a legislator from the Volga River city of Nizhni Novgorod, only half in jest.




“No, boys, that’s your business,” replied a spetsnaz colonel. “But you do whatever you want. We won’t stop you.”

In the early evening the spetsnaz troops received an order to withdraw from the Manezh and return to their barracks at Teplyi Stan in southwest Moscow. They were told that they would be taking part in a “special operation” later that night. Every soldier was required to equip himself with a bulletproof vest and two clips of live ammunition. The entire division was placed on battle alert. The officers were convinced that they would soon be ordered to attack the White House. For the first time in their military careers they began to argue about whether to fulfill an order.

“I won’t give an order to shoot,” one company commander told his men. “Act according to your conscience.”




“If I am ordered to shoot, I will obey the order,” said a lieutenant.

After some debate the officers reached a decision. They would halt at the first barricade, switch off their radios, and refuse to take any further part in the storming of the parliament building.

As the spetsnaz column pulled out of the Manezh, one of the APCs was flying the Russian tricolor rather than the red Soviet flag. Given the circumstances, it was an extraordinary act of defiance. Plainclothes KGB men accompanying the column launched an immediate inquiry and established that the flag had been raised on the orders of a platoon commander, Captain Oleg Nevzorov. They told him to take it down, adding, “We’ll deal with you later.”




ALL DAY LARGE CROWDS HAD BEEN GATHERING in front of the White House. Grachev used the network of Afghan war veterans to send word to Russian leaders that a decision to storm the building had been made. The best chance of avoiding such a catastrophe, he told them, would be to appeal to Muscovites to defend the building. The attacking forces would certainly be very reluctant to shoot unarmed civilians.




The defenders of the White House spent the afternoon erecting barricades from pieces of scrap metal and ripped-up cobblestones. A local transportation company provided dozens of heavy vehicles, which were used to block all the approach roads to the parliament building and the bridges across the river. Soon the area around the White House resembled the scene in Tiananmen Square in 1989, shortly before the military assault. Tens of thousands of people stood in a series of circles around the building, arms linked, ready to sacrifice their lives in the event of a military assault. Many people carried pocket transistor radios, most of which were tuned to the independent Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) station, which was providing regular updates about troop movements.

A large section of the crowd was composed of young people, many of whom had shown little previous interest in politics. It had taken a coup to jolt them out of their apathy and make them realize that they had a stake in the political future of the country. Members of the new entrepreneurial class were also well represented at the barricades. Brokers on the Moscow commodity exchange had demonstrated their support for Yeltsin by marching to the White House carrying a three-hundred-foot-long Russian tricolor.

As the brilliant sunshine of the first two days of the coup turned to a steady drizzle, the mood of the White House defenders grew steadily more bleak. Everything seemed to indicate that the final preparations for the assault were under way. At first the attack was expected in the early evening. All women were ordered to leave the building. The twenty ground-floor entrances were secured with barricades. Shortly after 6:00 p.m. deputies who had gathered in Yeltsin’s office in the fifth floor began issuing panicky statements over Echo Moskvy, suggesting that Russian democracy was doomed.

“I appeal to you, my brother officers,” said Aleksandr Rutskoi, the Russian vice president and a former Afghan war hero. “Think of the orders that you are being given. The interests you are defending are not those of the state, but those of the junta. Nobody will forgive you.”




At the peak of the tension deputies still inside the White House noticed a sudden surge of activity outside. The focal point was an elderly man with a shock of white hair attempting to force his way through the concentric lines of defenders. There was a great deal of shouting and pushing and shoving going on. Some people were urging that the man be let into the building, while others were insisting that he be kept out.

“I must see Yeltsin,” the old man kept yelling above the hubbub, a look of total determination on his face.

The intruder’s identity eventually became clear. It was the world-renowned musician Mstislav Rostropovich, who had been stripped of his Soviet citizenship by the Brezhnev regime in 1978 because of his friendship with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Rostropovich had played his cello by the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and was determined to defend the cause of freedom in his native Russia. He had heard about the coup in Paris and had taken the first available Air France flight to Moscow. He had bluffed his way past the border guards, telling them he had come to participate in a conference of Russian compatriots that was being held in the Soviet capital. They had granted him a visa on the spot. From the airport he had taken a taxi directly to the White House. Russian deputies later joked that he was the only person to succeed in storming the building during the coup.




The sight of Rostropovich pushing his way past the barricades at such a critical moment did not please all the defenders of the White House. Nemtsov, the deputy from Nizhni Novgorod, feared that a nervous defender might be tempted to open fire. Yeltsin, however, immediately understood the symbolic value of having such a celebrated figure by his side. He permitted the sixty-four-year-old cellist to stand guard for a time outside his fifth-floor office with a borrowed AK-47 assault rifle.


 The irrepressible Rostropovich was soon swapping Lenin jokes with his fellow defenders and insisting that everyone address him as Slava.




THE KEY ROLE IN STORMING the White House had been assigned to the Alpha Group, the crack KGB antiterrorist squad that had already performed so many sensitive operations for the Kremlin. Several dozen Alpha members had been deployed in the woods outside Yeltsin’s dacha in Arkhangelskoye early on Monday morning. It would have been easy for them to have ambushed the Russian president as he drove into Moscow, but the order to move never came. Confident that he was master of the situation, Kryuchkov preferred to wait until his opponent made a false move. It was a fatal mistake. By Tuesday afternoon the price of arresting Yeltsin had risen many times.

The Alpha commander, Viktor Karpukhin, assembled his principal subordinates at 5:30 p.m., following his return from the Defense Ministry. He outlined the plan for Operation Thunder.

“Who gave this order?” asked Mikhail Golovatov, the deputy Alpha commander.

“The order is from the government.”

“Is it a written order?”

“The order is from the government,” Karpukhin repeated testily.




Golovatov and the subcommanders understood the mood of the rank and file much better than did Karpukhin, a much-decorated Hero of the Soviet Union, who was always rushing off for talks with “the bosses.” They knew that ordinary Alpha members were fed up with being used as pawns in the never-ending Kremlin chess game. The seizure of the television facilities in Vilnius eight months earlier had been the last straw. The politicians who had ordered the Alpha Group into action against a crowd of unarmed civilians had refused to assume any responsibility for the resulting bloodshed. They had even tried to disown the young Alpha lieutenant who was killed during the operation.

When one of the subcommanders described the plan to storm the White House as “senseless,” Karpukhin lost his temper. He called the youthful defenders of the building “suckers” who would crumble before a determined attack. He ordered his subordinates to prepare for the assault by conducting a reconnaissance of the area around the parliament building.

The reconnaissance mission only confirmed their worst fears. There were some fifty thousand people gathered around the White House, including several thousand armed defenders. Operation Thunder was feasible enough on the technical level—the Alpha subcommanders estimated that they could storm the building in fifteen to thirty minutes—but the losses, on both sides, would be enormous. It was likely that half the members of the SWAT team would be wiped out during the assault.

Golovatov, who had led the attack on the Lithuanian television facilities, conducted an informal opinion poll among his men. One by one they expressed their objections to the operation.

“We will not go to the White House to kill people,” one of the men insisted.

“And we will not lead you there,” replied Golovatov.







INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE the nerveracking tension was more than some of the defenders could bear. Around 8:00 p.m. Yeltsin received a call over the office intercom from the Russian prime minister, Ivan Silayev, who had conducted some of the negotiations with the GKChP. He said he had allowed his staff to leave the building and intended to go home himself. He sounded depressed and defeated.

“I want to say good-bye, Boris Nikolayevich. Tonight, everything will be over with us. This is reliable information. Let them come and get us at home. Good-bye.”




Soon after the prime minister’s desertion Yeltsin broadcast an appeal over Echo Moskvy for as many people as possible to come to the White House: “Citizens of Russia! At this fateful hour, support those to whom you entrusted the fate of the country during the elections. The people of Russia must pool their efforts to defeat the forces of reaction. You must oppose the tanks and armored personnel carriers with the united determination not to permit dictatorship. Unity and solidarity—these are the keys to our victory… The days of the conspirators are numbered. Law and constitutional order will triumph. Despite everything, Russia will be free!”




Even though the 11:00 p.m. curfew announced by the GKChP was fast approaching, thousands of Muscovites responded to the Russian president’s appeal. Earlier in the evening Dmitri Komar, who had served in Afghanistan, had told his friends that he had seen “enough fighting” for a lifetime. After listening to Yeltsin, however, he decided to head for the barricades. The twenty-three-year-old former paratrooper asked a friend to tell his parents that he would not be home that night.

“It is my duty to be there. Tell Mama that I am spending the night with my classmates. She mustn’t worry.”




Ilya Krichevsky, a twenty-eight-year-old architect and amateur poet, had also spent the evening listening to the reports on Ekho Moskvy. Shortly after 10:00 p.m. the phone rang. It was an old army friend, suggesting they check out the protests around the White House. They agreed to meet by the nearby Barrikadnaya metro station, so named because it had been the scene of a popular insurrection against the tsarist regime in 1905. Ilya pulled on his brown parka and the black and red cowboy boots that were the envy of all his friends. His father stopped him as he was heading for the door and asked him where he was going.

“For a stroll.”

“What do you want to do that for? You just heard there is a curfew.”

“I won’t go far.”







THE PHONES WERE ALSO RINGING all evening in the offices of the so-called power ministers, the men who ran the Soviet security apparatus. The commanders of Operation Thunder were all waiting for each other to make the first move. No one wanted to be responsible for a bloodbath around the White House, but neither were they willing openly to defy the GKChP. Each, in his own way, was playing a double game.

In the late evening Grachev received a phone call from the head of the air force, Yevgeny Shaposhnikov. The air force commander had a reputation for “democratic” sympathies, and Grachev trusted him. He complained that the “riffraff” in the Kremlin wanted to use him as a scapegoat. As Shaposhnikov later remembered the conversation, the paratroop commander said he would resign or shoot himself rather than order an attack on the White House. They discussed several options, including sending paratroopers to arrest the GKChP or even bombing the Kremlin.

“No, that will lead to complete confusion, and endanger lives,” said Grachev. “Let’s just sit by our phones, and try to avert any stupidities.”




After their telephone conversation both Grachev and Shaposhnikov sent word to Yeltsin, via intermediaries, that they would not permit their men to be used in an assault on the White House.

===


THE FIRST SHOTS WERE FIRED shortly after midnight, half a mile from the White House, on the Garden Ring Road. A column of a dozen armored cars from the Taman Division had driven past the American Embassy and was headed toward the Foreign Ministry, skirting the area around the Russian parliament. As they approached the underpass beneath Kalinin Avenue, the soldiers in the lead APC could see a barricade in front of them. It was made of Moscow city buses, scrap metal, and concrete blocks.

As the armored column entered the tunnel, stones, bottles, and paving stones rained down from above. Hundreds of White House defenders were gathered on the ramp, leading from the Garden Ring to Kalinin Avenue. They had little doubt that the long-awaited assault on the parliament building was getting under way. Chants of “Russia, Russia” filled the air, interspersed with cries of “Fascists,” “Bastards,” and “Get out of here.”

Inside the cabin of the lead APCs the crews were beginning to panic. The way ahead was blocked, and it was impossible to turn around. They decided to batter their way through the barricade. After rocking backward and forward and repeatedly slamming the buses, two of the APCs managed to break free, crushing the leg of a White House defender. The enraged demonstrators jumped onto the APCs that remained boxed up in the tunnel and threw tarpaulins over the visors so that the drivers could no longer see where they were going. Soldiers who stuck their heads above their hatch were forced to surrender. Others fired their weapons into the air, in an attempt to scare away their tormentors.

Four hours after responding to Yeltsin’s radio appeal, Dmitri Komar found himself in the center of the action. As a teenager he had dreamed of becoming a fighter pilot. His experiences in Afghanistan—which he refused to talk about, even to his family—had turned him off a military career. But now, as the sound of gunfire echoed through the streets of Moscow, he was once again in his element.

Emboldened by the methylated spirits that he had been gulping back in the course of the evening, Komar climbed on top of APC No. 536. The rear hatch had come loose as a result of repeated collisions with the barricade, and Komar began to climb down into the cabin. The gunner thought he was attempting to take control of the APC and ordered him to get out. Komar refused. The gunner fired his automatic rifle. The shots missed Komar but caused him to lose his balance. He toppled off the vehicle and smashed his head open on the road beneath.




“Fascists, murderers,” screamed the crowd as it became clear that one of the White House defenders had been mortally wounded. After dragging Komar’s body to the side of the road, the demonstrators surrounded the APC and began trying to climb on it. From the rampway above, people began hurling firebombs onto the vehicle. Soon smoke filled the tiny cabin, making it difficult for the crew to breathe.

Afraid he was about to be lynched, the gunner of APC No. 536 fired a volley of shots into the air from his AK-47 assault rifle. The shots ricocheted off the half-opened hatch and hit half a dozen demonstrators. One of the demonstrators, Vladimir Usov, was hit in the head with a bullet and subsequently crushed by thirty tons of heavy armor.

Ilya Krichevsky, the amateur poet with the black and red cowboy boots, also found himself in the thick of the fighting that night. The former tank gunner had hoped to talk the troops out of joining the expected assault on the White House. After witnessing the deaths of Komar and Usov, he began throwing stones at APC No. 536. As he ran toward the vehicle, his fist thrust into the air in front of him, he was hit in the forehead by a bullet. He died instantly.




WHEN THE SHOOTING BEGAN, Yeltsin’s bodyguards began to implement a secret plan to allow the Russian president to escape from the White House. They hustled him down into the basement garage and bundled him into his bulletproof Zil. The garage exited onto a side street, less than five hundred yards from the new American Embassy compound. Russian officials had already secured the agreement of American diplomats to grant the president refuge if his life was in danger.

Yeltsin sat in the limousine for several minutes, as the sound of street fighting raged aboveground. He later said that he categorically refused to leave the White House, once he understood what was happening.


 He and his aides spent much of the rest of the night in an underground bomb shelter, behind a hermetically sealed steel door. Whether this would have saved his life in the event of an attack on the building is unclear. Russian prosecutors later learned that the KGB possessed blueprints of the labyrinth of tunnels and bunkers beneath the White House and were guarding all the exits.




ON THE OTHER SIDE of the barricades, some units had already begun to implement the initial stages of Operation Thunder. Shortly after midnight the KGB spetsnaz left their barracks in Teplyi Stan in full battle formation. They headed down Lenin Avenue and along the Mozhaisk Highway, on a route that led directly to the White House.

The security chiefs who had attended the noon meeting at the Defense Ministry were busy consulting with one another over the vertushka. Resorting to standard Soviet army tactics of prevarication and confusion, Grachev had held off sending his paratroopers to the White House, where they were meant to clear the way for the Alpha Group. When the fighting erupted outside the U.S. Embassy, Grachev called Gromov, to find out what the Interior Ministry troops were doing.

“They are standing still. And they are not going anywhere,” replied the last commander of Soviet troops in Afghanistan.




Grachev then received a call from Karpukhin. The Alpha commander said he was waiting, with his men, underneath a bridge on the other side of the river from the White House. (This information later turned out to be false. The Alpha Group remained in its barracks that night.) After feeling Grachev out, Karpukhin announced that his men would not be participating in the operation.

“Thank you,” replied Grachev. “My men are no longer in Moscow. I am not taking another step.”




AT KGB HEADQUARTERS Kryuchkov had been waiting all night for reports on the attack on the White House. Around two o’clock he received shattering news from Defense Minister Yazov. The army had decided not to participate in the operation. After hearing his subordinates describe the scene around the White House, Yazov had ordered a halt to all troop movements.

The KGB chairman asked the security chiefs to see him in his office on the fifth floor of the Lubyanka. Yazov refused to attend and sent his deputy Achalov. When Achalov entered the room, he was greeted by shouts of rage from the GKChP members, gathered around the table.

“So you chickened out?” asked Baklanov, who had led the delegation to Foros.

Quarrels broke out over who was responsible for the fiasco. KGB officials accused the military of cowardice and incompetence; Baklanov attacked Kryuchkov for failing to cut communication lines to the White House; the generals blamed the civilians. Eventually Kryuchkov bowed to military reality and told his fellow conspirators, in his soft voice, “Well, it looks as though we’ll have to call the operation off.”




The coup had effectively collapsed.




FOROS

August 21, 1991


THERE WAS NOW ONLY ONE HOPE LEFT for the conspirators: to plead forgiveness from Gorbachev. The fact that they considered it at all was a measure of their desperation. They had locked the president up for four days, cut off his communications, and taken away his nuclear codes. But they also knew about his rivalry with Yeltsin and his penchant for endless political maneuvering. They had taken advantage of these characteristics in the past. If they could persuade Gorbachev that they had been motivated by patriotic concerns, such as a desire to save the union, there was a chance he might agree to a compromise.

In the presidential compound at Foros, Gorbachev and his family listened all day to the radio. They heard about the shooting incidents near the White House, the continued defiance of the Russian parliament, and the withdrawal of troops from the capital. It was clear that the coup was crumbling. Senior state and Communist Party officials, who had kept silent during the early stages of the coup, were going on Moscow radio to denounce the GKChP and express allegiance to the country’s lawful president.

Although most of the news was encouraging, there was also cause for concern. Raisa Gorbachev was particularly alarmed when she heard, over the BBC, that Kryuchkov had agreed to allow a delegation of parliamentarians to fly to Foros to confirm that the president was incapable of carrying out his duties. After three nights without sleep she concluded that the conspirators were planning to turn her husband into a real invalid, in order to justify their earlier lies.


 In her panic she began looking for places for him to hide. She was so frightened that she suffered a mild stroke. For a few hours she was unable to talk or move her arm.

Shortly before five in the afternoon a long line of Zils and Volgas swept through the gates of Camp Dawn. The putschists—Kryuchkov, Yazov, Baklanov, Lukyanov—had flown to the Crimea in the presidential airplane. They had nearly two hours’ head start on another plane carrying Russian leaders, led by Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi and Prime Minister Silayev. They were determined to get to Gorbachev first, so that they could present him with their version of events.

As the limousines drew up to the presidential mansion, bodyguards who had remained loyal to Gorbachev leaped out of the bushes and aimed their automatic rifles at the visitors.

“Halt!”




The bodyguards directed the putschists to the guesthouse, where Chernyayev had his quarters. A presidential adviser, Chernyayev ranked well below most of the visitors, who occupied high state offices. When they saw him, however, they immediately began scraping and bowing. Defeat and humiliation were etched across their faces. He looked at them stone-faced and walked away in disgust. Later Gorbachev’s personal secretary, Olga Lanina, caught a glimpse of Yazov smoking and crying. She could hear the defense minister muttering to himself, “I’m a damned old fool.”




Gorbachev had a bodyguard tell the putschists he would not meet with any of them until his communications were restored. They replied that this would take some time.

“Tell them I am not in a hurry to go anywhere,” said Gorbachev.




The communications were restored at 6:38 p.m., as suddenly as they had been interrupted seventy-four hours earlier. From his second-floor study Gorbachev phoned the most important republican leaders, starting with Yeltsin. In subsequent calls he began to reassert his control over the country and his prerogatives as commander in chief. He deprived the putschists of their access to the vertushka, placed the Kremlin guard under his personal command, ordered the minister of aviation to allow Rutskoi’s plane to land at the nearby military airfield. He then called President Bush, who was on holiday in Kennebunkport, Maine, to let him know that the coup had failed and thank him for his public expressions of support.

The Russian delegation arrived at the compound around 8:00 p.m., soon after Gorbachev got off the phone with Bush. They were immediately shown into the presidential mansion. It was a jubilant Slavic reunion. Rutskoi and Silyayev rushed to embrace the president. There were hugs and kisses and tears all around. Everybody wanted to talk at once and relive the drama of the past three days. In the emotion of the moment both Gorbachev and the Russians forgot that they had been mortal political enemies just a few weeks before.

The Russians were flatly opposed to any meeting between Gorbachev and the “traitors,” who were still in the guesthouse. The president said he would talk only to Lukyanov, his old college friend, and Vladimir Ivashko, the deputy secretary-general of the Communist Party. Both men claimed that they had had nothing to do with the GKChP and had resisted the coup, as best they could. Gorbachev listened to their explanations impatiently. “Don’t hang noodles on my ears,” he told the parliamentary speaker, a Russian idiom for “You don’t fool me.”

“Listen, Anatoly, we’ve known each other for forty years. You should have thrown yourself in front of the guns. You delayed convening the Supreme Soviet for almost a week. What do you mean, you did this, you did that? If you were on the side of legality and the president, you should have summoned the Supreme Soviet the very next day. That’s what Yeltsin did.”




Overriding the objections of Raisa, who was still under the shock of the imprisonment, Rutskoi insisted that everybody return to Moscow that night. The victory over the GKChP was still tenuous and needed to be consolidated. A former Afghan war hero, he supervised all the security arrangements himself. The Gorbachev family would fly in the Russian plane, together with the Russian delegation. Kryuchkov was separated from his security guards and given a seat in the back of the plane. Yazov and the other conspirators were put in the presidential jumbo.

As the plane headed back to Moscow, everybody finally began to relax. There were toasts to the president’s good health and the victory over dictatorship. “We are flying into a new era,” Gorbachev announced.




In the aft section of the plane Kryuchkov sat deep in thought, clutching his briefcase and staring out the porthole into the night. A Rutskoi aide and former KGB employee, General Aleksandr Sterligov, sat beside him. The KGB chief made little effort to converse although at one point he sighed that he would probably have “to resign” as a result of the events of the past few days. After landing in Moscow, he made a move to leave the plane with the presidential party.

“Wait a little bit,” said Sterligov.

A few minutes later Kryuchkov again rose from his seat.

“Wait a little bit more.”

There was an uncomfortable pause. “I think I understand what is happening,” Kryuchkov said slowly.

“You have understood correctly.”

The chairman of the KGB was charged with high treason and taken to Lefortovo Prison.







MOSCOW

August 23, 1991


ALTHOUGH GORBACHEV INSISTED that he was “a different person returning to a different country,” he initially failed to understand the extent of the changes that had occurred in the Soviet Union during his three-day captivity in Foros. Instead of going straight to the White House from the airport to salute the defenders of democracy, he went home to bed. At a press conference the following day he continued to insist that the Communist Party was a “progressive force” despite the treachery of its leaders. He said he personally would remain faithful to the “socialist choice.”




The extent to which Gorbachev had misjudged the mood of the country became clear that night when tens of thousands of anti-Communist demonstrators marched on KGB headquarters in Lubyanka Square. Chanting, “Freedom, freedom,” and, “Down with the KGB,” they attempted to tear down the statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the secret police. In order to forestall a riot, the Moscow city authorities sent cranes to pluck “Iron Feliks” from his pedestal in the center of the square. Behind the crenellated curtains of the Lubyanka, sharpshooters stood guard, ready to resist the storming of the building, as senior KGB officials shredded documents.

By the following morning popular rage had shifted to police headquarters on Petrovka Street and the Central Committee building on Old Square. The victorious Yeltsin camp was afraid that the street revolution was getting out of hand. Something had to be done to channel the emotions of the mob in an orderly direction and bring the revolution to an end.

At the urging of Moscow city officials, Yeltsin’s chief of staff, Gennady Burbulis, dashed off a memorandum calling on Gorbachev to halt the “intensive destruction of documents” under way in the Central Committee. “An order from the general secretary is needed to temporarily suspend the activity of the C.C. building,” Burbulis wrote. He then took the note to Gorbachev for approval.

“I agree,” scrawled the last general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party across the top right-hand corner. “M. Gorbachev. 23 VIII 91.”




There was no time to type the note out properly. At police headquarters on Petrovka Street, people were already climbing the iron fence around the building. It was important to divert this crowd to Old Square, two miles across town.

“The mayor needs your help,” Moscow city officials shouted into a megaphone. “Everyone to the Central Committee.” A radical air force major took the microphone and urged the demonstrators to continue with the business in hand. But the opportunity to settle accounts with the hated Communist Party had the desired effect. A large section of the crowd began drifting away.




Over on Old Square, meanwhile, the representatives of the Moscow City Council were wondering how to deliver Gorbachev’s instruction to “suspend” the work of the Central Committee. First, they tried the ceremonial front entrance flanked by two marble columns that was traditionally reserved for members of the inner Politburo. The stone-faced KGB guards refused them admittance. Then they walked around to the back. After some heated discussion they were eventually shown up to the second-floor office of Nikolai Kruchina, the chief administrator of the Central Committee.

Kruchina rose from his desk as his uninvited visitors came through the soundproofed double doors that separated his spacious office from the anteroom for secretaries. A bearded man with a thin, youthful face shoved a crumpled piece of paper into his hand.

“You must order the immediate evacuation of the building,” said the man, who introduced himself as Vassily Shakhnovsky, chief of staff to the mayor of Moscow. “Otherwise our supporters will come in and throw you out.”




Kruchina read the piece of paper. When he saw the signature “Gorbachev” scrawled across the top, it was as if his neat, well-ordered world had suddenly exploded.

“It cannot be done. You can’t just close the entire Central Committee down like this,” he said flatly, glancing at the clock on his wall, which was approaching 3:00 p.m.

“Look outside your window. There is a huge crowd out there. They will tear everyone inside here to pieces, unless you go quietly.”

Kruchina went to the window that overlooked Old Square. He parted the white silk drapes and peeked out. A human chain, made up of thousands of people with linked arms, had been formed around the building. Behind them stood more people. Some waved their fists in the air; others held up placards with slogans like “Long Live Democracy,” “Put the Putschists on Trial,” and “Chase the Apparatchiks Out of the Central Committee.” Chants of “Down with the party” filtered through the double-glazed windows. Here and there people were tearing up party membership cards.

There was a scattering of police officers in the crowd, but they seemed to be taking the side of the demonstrators. A loudspeaker had been hooked up on top of a police car and was relaying a live broadcast from the Russian parliament building. Loud cheers went up from the crowd when a legislator got up to demand the disbanding of the Communist Party as a “criminal organization.”

Kruchina began to reconsider his position. With the exception of the KGB guards, he had no security forces to call on. In two hours the building would in any case start to empty for the weekend. The note signed by Gorbachev spoke only of a “temporary” suspension of Central Committee activities, not its permanent closure. If the apparatchiks refused to leave the building, they might be attacked by a vengeful crowd. He decided to allow Shakhnovsky and his colleague Yevgeny Sevastyanov to use the emergency public address system.

A secretary was summoned to lead the men from the mayor’s office to another part of the labyrinthine complex, where the public address system was located. There they went through the same arguments they had already been through with Kruchina. “What do you mean, you want us to leave the building? Is there a bomb in here or something?” said Konstantin Mishin, the deputy business manager, in an attempt at a joke. The Gorbachev note shocked the former Komsomol leader. His political instinct told him to order the women Central Committee workers to leave and the male comrades to stand and fight. But here was an instruction from the man who was still the general secretary of a party run on the principle of democratic centralism: Decisions made at the top are binding on everyone lower down.

“Once the leadership had made a decision, we had to comply,” Mishin said later. “In the past discipline had always been one of the principal sources of our strength as a party. But at that moment it turned into a fatal weakness.”




Mishin showed the visitors how to operate the public address system. Sevastyanov, the mayor’s chief of security, sat down in front of the electronic console.

“A representative of the mayor of Moscow is addressing you,” he announced, speaking into the microphone. “By agreement with the president, in connection with recent events, a decision has been made to seal this building. You have one hour in which to leave. You may take your personal belongings with you, but everything else is to be left behind.”

The message was repeated twice. Sevastyanov and Shakhnovsky could hear the announcement echoing around the vast complex. As they came out of the room housing the public address system, they heard the patter of feet in the corridors. The apparatchiks were already leaving the building. “Like rats leaving a sinking ship,” thought Shakhnovsky, torn between disgust and jubilation.




IN MANY DEPARTMENTS frantic attempts were under way to prevent secret documents from falling into the hands of the Yeltsin camp. Valentin Falin, the secretary in charge of the International Department, gave orders for the sign on his door to be changed to read “V. I. Falin, People’s Deputy of the USSR.” He calculated that the democrats would think twice before violating parliamentary immunity. He told his aide Anatoly Smirnov to destroy lists of left-wing parties in the West that had received financial aid from the Kremlin. When the order to evacuate the building came over the intercom, officials in the department began to panic. Piles of documents were dumped in the shredding machine, along with large paper clips. Unable to digest the metallic paper clips, the machine ground to a halt.




Around the corner at the staff canteen on Ipatyev Lane, an oppressive silence had settled over the potted plants and neatly laid tables. The guards were checking the red admittance cards for one of the best restaurants in Moscow. Waitresses in rusty-colored aprons were flitting between the tables, collecting written orders from the customers. A few apparatchiks were slurping down their last bowls of subsidized borsch. Suddenly a maître d’ came rushing in. “It’s all over. They’re sealing the building off.” The silence was broken by a lone, sullen voice: “What are you so happy about? You used to feed us; now you will feed the Americans.”




As the bureaucrats fretted over their fate, several dozen Moscow policemen had entered the building to reinforce Shakhnovsky and Sevastyanov. Sevastyanov ordered them to guard the entrances. Periodically he and Shakhnovsky appeared at one of the windows on the ground floor to tell the impatient crowd what was going on.

“The activity of the Central Committee has been suspended,” said Shakhnovsky, holding up the scrap of paper signed by Gorbachev to loud applause. Muscovites stared at the general secretary’s signature, as if it were some magical token.

“Friends, the next act of our life will be to take the stars off the Kremlin,” announced Sevastyanov. “But remember, there are provocateurs here, extremist forces. Do not give any pretext to those who would like to sow disorder here.”




The crowd, meanwhile, was enjoying the public humiliation of Gorbachev, relayed live by radio and television from the White House, on the other side of Moscow. This was Yeltsin’s revenge for his own disgrace almost four years previously at the hands of Gorbachev and the party elite. Now it was Gorbachev who was down and Yeltsin who was extracting his pound of flesh.

The occasion itself was humiliating enough. Betrayed by his aides, the Soviet president had been saved from political and perhaps physical annihilation by Yeltsin and the Russian parliament. Now he was trying to explain to them why he had placed so much trust in leaders who were prepared to lock him up in his own dacha. The deputies jeered and booed. Gorbachev waved his right forefinger in the air, trying in vain to get them to end his torment. Then Yeltsin approached the lectern. Towering over the president, he ordered him to read the minutes of a cabinet meeting that revealed the depths of his aides’ betrayal.

“Go on, read it now,” Yeltsin insisted, jabbing his powerful right forefinger at Gorbachev.

Amazed at the effrontery of his former protégé, Gorbachev looked at Yeltsin for a second with hatred in his eyes. Then, realizing that he was trapped, he smiled weakly. Yeltsin turned away, unable to conceal the look of triumph on his face, shaking his head in disbelief at the turn history had taken.

A few minutes later Yeltsin invited the chamber to join him in “a little bit of relaxation,” a decree suspending the activities of the Russian Communist Party. A protesting Gorbachev urged the deputies to remain “democrats to the end.” He was drowned out by loud applause and stamping of feet. “The decree has been signed,” the Russian president announced with a sneer. The demonstrators ringing the Central Committee building on Old Square roared their approval.




FOR SEVEN DECADES after the 1917 Revolution the Communist Party had deliberately cultivated a sense of mystery as a key to maintaining its own power. Separated from the people they ruled by a wall of ritual, party leaders acquired an aura of omniscience and aloofness. Scarcely anything was known about their private lives or personal political views. No ordinary mortal was allowed to know how these bureaucratic supermen acquired their fine clothes, what kinds of books and films they enjoyed, or how they made a seemingly miraculous appearance on top of Lenin’s tomb in Red Square on public holidays. Everything was hidden behind the veiled curtains of the Central Committee building and the limousines that swept through the silent city. As the mysteries were gradually explained, the party’s grip over society was automatically undermined. Now the final curtain was ripped away, to reveal a group of frightened and rather unremarkable people, more intent on saving themselves than the regime they served.

As the apparatchiks left the Central Committee building, they passed through two lines of democrats chanting, “Shame, shame.” A piercing whistling filled the air as grim-faced bureaucrats in gray suits and white shirts emerged in single file. Occasionally a Yeltsin activist would order an apparatchik to open his briefcase, to make sure that he was not smuggling any papers out of the building.

Yuri Prokofiev, the Moscow Communist Party chief, was grabbed by an angry mob when he emerged from a door next to the Central Committee cafeteria. For a few seconds it seemed as if he might be lynched. He was rescued from the crowd by several policemen and shoved into a passing taxi to a deafening chorus of jeers.

In the early seventies a network of secret tunnels had been constructed underneath Moscow for use in just such an emergency. An underground shuttle train connected the Central Committee building on Old Square, KGB headquarters, and the Kremlin; another metro line led to KGB safe houses and nuclear command posts deep in the Moscow countryside. The victorious Russian leaders were determined not to allow Communist Party officials to make use of these facilities. As soon as they had received reinforcements, Shakhnovsky and Sevastyanov posted guards at the entrances to the tunnels to prevent anyone from escaping.

An exception was made for several members of Gorbachev’s personal staff who were working in their offices inside the building at the time it was taken over. The president’s foreign policy adviser, Chernyayev, refused to follow the disgraced apparatchiks out into the street. It was a question of personal dignity. Chernyayev had remained at Gorbachev’s side during his imprisonment in Foros. He believed that he should be spared the whistles of a vengeful crowd. Yeltsin’s men eventually relented. Chernyayev was escorted to the Kremlin via the underground tunnel.




By 9:00 p.m. there was practically no one left in the massive building on Old Square. The KGB guards had been sent away. After being carried along by the tide of tumultuous events, Vassily Shakhnovsky found himself virtually alone in the silent building, which was protected by a few dozen Moscow militiamen.

The past four and a half days had been like a blur for Shakhnovsky, who had left the Communist Party at the same time as Yeltsin. He had scarcely had time to sleep, let alone think, as he rushed from one crisis to another. Now, unexpectedly, he found himself wandering around a darkened and deserted inner citadel of the worldwide Communist movement. Accompanied by the building’s newly appointed commandant, Aleksandr Sokolov, he decided to tour his new domain. He checked the entrances. He looked into the storerooms, glancing over a large batch of recently imported video equipment. He poked his head into the cavernous office of the party’s general secretary on the fifth floor and the Politburo conference room just down the corridor.

Then, suddenly, it hit him. Turning to Sokolov, he announced in awestruck tones: “Aleksandr Ilyich, we have just closed down the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”




MOSCOW

August 24, 1991


WHILE THE VICTORS WERE CELEBRATING their triumph, the vanquished were agonizing over their defeat. On the day the Communist Party was banned, Gorbachev’s military adviser, Marshal Akhromeyev, sat in his Kremlin office, pondering the collapse of the coup. Eventually he took out a pen and began to write.

First, he wrote a note to the speaker of the Soviet parliament, submitting his resignation as a people’s deputy. Then he prepared an eight-hundred-word farewell address to his fellow deputies. He acknowledged supporting the putsch against his commander in chief, an action he described as a “conscious breach of my military oath.” He had known nothing about the plot in advance. But he had been convinced for at least a year that the Soviet motherland was hurtling toward “destruction.” He had therefore felt morally obliged to assist anyone who acted to prevent such a tragedy, even though he doubted the coup attempt would succeed. It had been impossible to stand on the sidelines at a time when the multinational state was disintegrating and the armed forces were on the verge of breakup.

“These three ideas—the state, the [Soviet] people, the armed forces—have given meaning to my life and the lives of millions of other people. It follows that my life is now losing its meaning,” he wrote.




The sixty-eight-year-old marshal had heard about the coup attempt while on holiday at Sochi, on the Black Sea coast. He had immediately made arrangements to return to Moscow to offer his services to the GKChP. He had helped draw up plans for the storming of the White House and the arrest of the defiant Russian leadership, spending the night on the couch in his Kremlin office. When it became clear that the putsch was falling apart, he wrote in his diary: “Let history take note: They protested against the ruin of a great state. And let history judge who was right and who was guilty.”

After writing several letters to old army friends, Akhromeyev went home to his government dacha. His wife, Tamara, was still in Sochi. But his daughters, Natasha and Tatyana, were at home, together with their children. Their father seemed nervous and preoccupied but self-controlled. For the first time since the coup he appeared eager to have a heart-to-heart conversation with them.

The family had dinner and then sat together on the veranda, eating a huge watermelon and listening to the breeze rustling through the tall fir trees. Natasha and Tatyana steered clear of the subject of Gorbachev, believing it would only upset their father. Instead they encouraged him to reminisce about his wartime exploits. He talked again about the epic siege of Leningrad, in which he had almost starved to death, shriveling to just eighty-five pounds, and the defeat of Hitler’s armies at Stalingrad, which he had also witnessed.

Natasha finally asked her father about the coup. “You always said that a coup was impossible. And now it’s happened, and the minister of defense even took part in it. How do you explain that?”

Akhromeyev thought a little before replying, “Even now it’s impossible for me to explain it.”




The following morning at nine Akhromeyev left for the Kremlin in his official Volga. He seemed cheerful, promising to take his granddaughter for a walk in the garden that evening. Half an hour later Natasha called to say she would pick her mother up at the airport that afternoon.

Akhromeyev made a first, bungled attempt to kill himself a few minutes after Natasha’s phone call. He tied a noose to the window frame, but the rope broke after he put his weight on it. He wrote a note at 9:45 a.m. describing what had happened. Later that morning he was seen wandering around the Kremlin corridors, apparently on his way to the canteen. At midday he called his driver at the car pool, saying he needed a car by 1:00 p.m. The driver waited and waited, but the marshal never showed up.

Shortly before 10:00 p.m. the Kremlin duty officer making his rounds of the main government building saw the door of room 19A slightly ajar. It seemed very late for someone to be working. He pushed the door open and saw Akhromeyev’s thin, wizened body slumped over a radiator beneath a window. Around the neck of the corpse was a white nylon cord, the other end of which was attached to the metal handle of the window. A wooden chair lay off to one side. The corpse was dressed in the uniform of a marshal of the Soviet Union.




The investigators found half a dozen notes on Akhromeyev’s desk. One envelope contained a fifty-ruble bill and a note to his aide, asking him to settle a bill at the Kremlin canteen for food and drink consumed during the coup. Another note asked his colleagues in the army to help his family with the funeral arrangements. There was a private letter for his wife. And there was a note that was apparently meant to serve as his political epitaph:






I cannot live when my motherland is dying and everything that I ever believed in is being destroyed. My age and my previous life give me the right to leave this life. I fought to the end.

    

Sergei Akhromeyev. August 24, 1991










Nikolai Kruchina returned to his office in the Central Committee on the evening of Sunday, August 25, for a meeting with the building’s new administrators. He seemed calm enough as he talked about the transfer of Communist Party property to the Russian government and the social needs of a thousand or so unemployed bureaucrats. As the meeting broke up, a little after 9:00 p.m., Shakhnovsky happened to say: “And, of course, we will need to have a special discussion about the party’s finances.”




The business manager’s face went pale. “Okay, okay, let’s talk about it tomorrow,” he said, abruptly ending the conversation. He collected some belongings from an anteroom and departed. Shakhnovsky was left with the impression of an honest, hardworking bureaucrat who had some reason to feel ashamed. Perhaps it had something to do with the use of party money to establish covert commercial structures, he thought.

Kruchina was driven to his home on Pletnev Lane in the city center, one of several luxury apartment blocks reserved for top party officials. At around 10:30 p.m. he said good night to his wife and retired to his study, saying that he had “a little work” to do. He scribbled a couple of letters and put his affairs in order.

“My conscience is clear,” he told his family, in one of the notes. “I am not a criminal. I am a coward.” He underlined the word “coward.”




As dawn broke over Moscow, suffusing the city of gold-domed churches, crumbling tenements, and pompous “wedding cake” skyscrapers in a red glow, he went out onto the fifth-floor balcony, climbed over the railing, and hurled himself to his death.




NEARLY SEVENTY-FOUR YEARS after seizing power in an armed insurrection, the Soviet Communist Party had ceased to exist. At the time of its demise it had fifteen million members. Not a single one of them put up any resistance. All it had taken to shut down the building that had served as the headquarters of a worldwide revolutionary movement were a dozen militiamen and several pounds of stamped paper. When the end came, the Communists were too exhausted and too dispirited to fight back.

Terminal exhaustion had set in after a period of “threescore years and ten,” the biblical life span of the human organism. The Communists had exhausted the land they had ruled for nearly three-quarters of a century, a land as bountiful in many ways as North America. They had exhausted their capacity to expand the frontiers of socialism. They had exhausted their own people with unfulfilled promises of an unattainable utopia. In short, they had exhausted their own great idea, an idea that had moved millions by its grandeur and simplicity, the idea of building paradise upon this earth.

The durability of communism and the speed with which it collapsed were two sides of the same coin. There came a point at which the strengths of the system—massive repression, rigid centralization, an all-embracing ideology, the obsession with military power—turned into fatal weaknesses. By ruthlessly suppressing all manifestations of nationalism and political dissent, the Bolsheviks created the conditions for the simultaneous collapse of communism and the Soviet state. When the end came, nobody was prepared to help them.

History will identify many claimants to the title of vanquisher of communism. Pope John Paul II exposed the moral failings and political isolation of Communist leaders; Andrei Sakharov emphasized the universality of human rights at a time when most of his compatriots kept silent; Lech Wałęsa led a workers’ rebellion against the workers’ state; the Afghan mujahedin proved that the Red Army was not invincible; Ronald Reagan challenged Soviet leaders to an armaments race they could not possibly win; Boris Yeltsin shattered the monolithic unity of the Soviet Communist Party; Mikhail Gorbachev allowed millions of Soviet citizens to confront their tragic past.

All these contributions were significant, but none of them was decisive. Communism was not defeated by any one individual or even a combination of individuals. In the last resort communism defeated itself.




EPILOGUE


The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is ceasing its existence.

    

Presidents of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, December 1991






The people feel no mercy: You do good and no one thanks you.

    

Alexander Pushkin, Boris Godunov








SARAJEVO

September 22, 1991


BY THE TESTIMONY of those who knew them, Sergei Akhromeyev and Nikolai Kruchina took their own lives because they were unable to conceive of a place for themselves in the new post-Communist order. The collapse of the party each had served loyally for more than four decades represented the collapse of all their beliefs. There were other such personal tragedies during the twilight days of communism—both in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe—but they were the exceptions rather than the rule. For the most part the apparatchik class was remarkably successful in adapting to the changing times.

The archetype of the Communist-turned-nationalist was the Serbian president Slobodan Milošević. By the fall of 1991 he was well on the way to achieving the goal of a Greater Serbia that he had outlined back in March, shortly after the student riots that almost toppled him from power. Serb separatists supported by Milošević had seized control of roughly 20 percent of the neighboring republic of Croatia. The Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), the largest military force in the Balkans, was rapidly turning into an exclusively Serbian army. The Croatian town of Vukovar, on the Danube, was under siege by a combined force of the JNA and Serbian militia. It was at this point that Milošević turned his attention to the republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, where 1.5 million Serbs lived alongside 2 million Muslims and 800,000 Croats.

A patchwork quilt of different ethnic groups and religious traditions, straddling the centuries-old divide between Rome and Byzantium, Austro-Hungary and Turkey, Bosnia was Yugoslavia in miniature. It was also the proverbial Balkan tinderbox, waiting for the match that would ignite a much larger explosion. Everybody remembered how a few shots fired by a young Serb student in Sarajevo in June 1914 had ignited World War I. Three-quarters of a century later Bosnia no longer held the strategic importance it once did for the great powers. But it seemed destined to play a decisive role in the outcome of the Yugoslav civil war and the larger question of whether a “new world order” could be constructed on the rubble of communism.

Bosnia had managed to keep out of the fighting between Serbia and Croatia by acting as the honest broker in the conflict. For this political balancing act to work, the Bosnian Muslims had to be able to play the Croats off against the Serbs. If Croatia succeeded in breaking away from the Yugoslav federation, the precarious ethnic balance in Bosnia would be fatally disturbed. The republic would be faced with a terrible choice. It could declare its own independence, risking an armed revolt by Serb nationalists. Or it could remain inside a shrunken Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, a course of action that would be bitterly opposed by Croats and Muslims. For a glimpse of what life would be like in such a state, they had only to look across the border. At the same time as it was complaining about the mistreatment of Serbs by Croatia, the Milošević regime was denying elementary civic rights to the Albanian and Muslim minorities in Kosovo and Sandžak.

As Bosnia teetered on the edge, Milošević took a series of steps designed to ensure that he would be in a position to dictate the future course of events, whatever the Bosnian leadership decided. First, he established a political network in the republic, based on the nationalist Serbian Social Democratic Party (SDS), which had been the main instrument for provoking the rebellion in Serb-inhabited regions of Croatia. Next, he used his JNA connections to make sure that his Bosnian clients would enjoy an overwhelming advantage in weapons and ammunition over their future opponents. The Milošević government pursued a consistent, well-thought-out strategy of arming the Bosnian Serbs for the coming war from late 1990 onward. The code name for this strategy was RAM.

The existence of the RAM plan was first revealed by the federal prime minister, Ante Markovi?, during a showdown with Milošević’s supporters in September 1991.


 At the time little was known about RAM, except for its name. But the pieces in the jigsaw puzzle gradually fell into place, as large consignments of weapons turned up at SDS branches and Serb-controlled police stations all over Bosnia. In some cases the weapons were handed over directly by the four JNA army corps stationed in Bosnia, whose commanders were all Serb. In other cases they were sent from Serbia. It later turned out that the Bosnian interior minister, a Muslim businessman named Alija Delimustafić, was partly aware of what was going on. He turned a blind eye to shipments of arms from Belgrade to Croatian Serbs, in return for dropoffs of flak jackets for his police force. Some of the weapons earmarked for the Croatian Serbs were retained by the Bosnian Serbs.




In September 1991 the Serb campaign of political and military infiltration of Bosnia moved into the open. Copying the strategy of the Croatian Serbs, the Bosnian Serbs formally declared the “autonomy” of four Serb-inhabited regions, covering roughly 60 percent of the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina. At the same time, Serbia’s ally Montenegro dispatched a force of several thousand reservists to occupy strategic positions in the hills above Mostar, the capital of Herzegovina. The Muslims and Croats responded to this mini-invasion by mobilizing their own reservists, a move denounced by SDS leaders as a prelude to “civil war.”


 The JNA then mobilized its twenty thousand troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina, against the wishes of the republic’s collective presidency.

There is compelling evidence that most of these developments were orchestrated from Belgrade. The SDS leader, Radovan Karadžić, was regarded as Milošević’s loyal ally and client at this point. Two months previously, Milošević had urged the JNA to take up positions along the Neretva River, in support of the Serbian population in Herzegovina. The purpose of this exercise was to provide military security for “all those territories where Serbs lived” until the final breakup of Yugoslavia. In September, army leaders had finally set about implementing his plan.







THE DAY AFTER the Montenegrin reservists were deployed around Mostar, I took a flight from Belgrade to Sarajevo. I was researching a series of articles about the metamorphosis of communism into nationalism: Yugoslavia seemed like a textbook study of the dangers facing the Soviet Union following the collapse of central authority. Although Western governments were doing their best to ignore the growing tensions in Bosnia, it was already clear to anyone who followed developments in Yugoslavia that this would be the next great flash point.

The Muslim-led Bosnian government was desperate for international attention. Making as much noise as possible was its only real political weapon, given the fact that Serb nationalists already enjoyed an overwhelming advantage in firepower. Within hours of arriving in Sarajevo, I was invited to observe the work of a government commission investigating the events in Herzegovina. Soon I found myself in the back of a black Mercedes, driving through the gorges of the wild Neretva Valley, in search of the Montenegrin reservists. Sitting next to me was the head of the commission, Rusmir Mahmutcehajić, a deputy prime minister. As we drove past the scene of epic World War II battles between Tito’s Communist partisans and the Germans, he gave me his interpretation of the latest developments in the republic.

“This is the final stage in Milošević’s plan to create a Greater Serbia. It will be very difficult for us to avoid a war. There will be resistance—political, social, and even terrorist—from Bosnia. Milošević is like Hitler. The world must understand what will happen if he is not stopped. There will be genocide. He is a crazy man. How can we believe his assurances to us when the Albanians of Kosovo do not have any rights? He thinks we will be easy prey, but he is wrong.”




Following behind us was a long line of BMWs, Opels, and Mercedes, the cars of choice for senior government officials. The composition of the commission was a case study in Bosnian coalition politics. Led by Mahmutcehajić, a Muslim, it included a Serb and a Croat. The Serb representative was a deputy police minister, nominated for the post by Karadžić’s SDS Party. Other than keeping an eye on everyone else, he appeared to have little interest in the work of the commission. His face wore a look of supercilious amusement. When I asked him what the commission was likely to achieve, he shrugged his shoulders and replied, “Nothing.” Each member of the commission was accompanied by his own personal bodyguards, who eyed one another suspiciously. The Muslim and Croatian bodyguards were decked out in shiny suits and dark glasses; the Serbs, in Rambo-style combat fatigues. All were heavily armed.

In between listening to news bulletins from the front, Mahmutcehajić speculated on Milošević’s reasons for sending the Montenegrin reservists into Herzegovina. Version one: to carve out a Serb-dominated region on the eastern bank of the Neretva. Version two: to occupy the mountainous hinterland above the medieval Adriatic city of Dubrovnik, cutting it off from the rest of Croatia. Version three: to destabilize the sociopolitical situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in advance of any move by the Muslim-led government to declare independence. In view of subsequent events, all these explanations appear perfectly plausible.

As we drove on, we saw more armed men, representing a bewildering array of factions and paramilitary forces. Some saluted as we drove past. Others scowled. Finally the government motorcade pulled into a mixed Muslim and Croatian village. A crowd quickly gathered around us. “This is not a Yugoslav army; it is a Serbian army,” shouted one villager. “They are behaving like beasts; they are drunkards,” screamed another. “They were firing at us all night,” yelled a third. “Give us weapons. Nobody is safe any longer,” shouted a fourth.

“Weapons, weapons,” the villagers chanted together, looking as tough and as rugged as the mountains that rose around them.

As we toured more villages on the eastern bank of the Neretva, the cause of the commotion became clearer. A long line of trucks and tourist buses had arrived from Montenegro, disgorging some three thousand disheveled reservists. Part of this ragtag army was billeted at the Mostar military airfield, but others were camped out in the open. When they were not lobbing shells into Croatian and Muslim villages, the reservists spent most of their time scouring local bars for women and shooting their guns into the air. The arrival of the reservists had seriously strained intercommunal relations in the area. Muslims and Croats viewed the newcomers as a direct threat. Serbs saw them as a potential ally in a future battle, even though they were careful not to show their satisfaction in public.

After crisscrossing the Herzegovinian countryside, we eventually came across several dozen Montenegrins lounging outside Slobo’s bar in the tiny village of Potkosa. The tables were littered with empty beer bottles. The government ministers got out of their limousines. There was a clatter of safety catches being released and cartridge clips being jammed into position as the two armed groups faced each other across the remote mountain road.

“Hi, guys. Can I speak to whoever is in charge?” said the deputy prime minister, trying to be friendly.

There was no reply. The Montenegrins played with their automatic rifles. The deputy prime minister retreated.

The sun was dipping behind the starkly beautiful mountains when the motorcade moved off. Suddenly we heard the sound of shouting. Our police escort had practically run into a barricade blocking the road, half a mile up the hill from Slobo’s bar. Excited-looking soldiers waving M-76 automatic sniper rifles and Kalashnikovs appeared out of the woods on one side of the road. A row of ruined houses on the other side blocked any escape route. Each of the twenty or so cars in the motorcade was covered by an armed soldier.

“Turn your engines off. Don’t move,” shouted the soldiers, aiming their weapons directly at us.

Our driver reached instinctively for his German-made pistol. But he quickly understood that the situation was hopeless. We had driven into an ambush. One shot, and there would have been a bloodbath. During the moments that followed, we were left to ponder the true balance of power in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The ministers who were trapped in their Mercedes and BMWs could lay claim to the legitimacy of the ballot box, but it was the other side that possessed the guns. Furthermore, the government was itself bitterly divided over the future of the republic. The Serb members of the government commission shared the views and goals of the people who were threatening us with their guns. There was little doubt which side was better placed to win an eventual confrontation.

After about ten minutes the deputy prime minister was allowed to leave his car and approach the command post on foot. After another ten minutes of tense negotiations a JNA officer appeared and ordered us to return to Sarajevo. The gunmen disappeared back into the woods, as silently as they had emerged.




BACK IN SARAJEVO, the politicians were quarreling over the significance of the Montenegrin incursion and the prospects for avoiding all-out war. The Muslim politicians were desperate for foreign intervention. They were bombarding both the European Community and the United Nations with appeals for peacekeepers to be sent to Bosnia before rather than after real fighting broke out. Preoccupied with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the war between Croatia and Serbia, no Western capital showed any sign of listening to these appeals.

The clandestine arming of the Serb population had presented the Muslim-led government with a terrible dilemma. Militarily it would have been prudent for it to arm its own supporters, just as the Zagreb government had done prior to the outbreak of war in Croatia. Politically, however, such a step would have provoked a final rupture with the SDS and the collapse of the multiparty coalition. Rightly or wrongly, the Bosnian president, Alija Izetbegović, believed that the best chance for preserving peace lay in being as conciliatory as possible toward the Serb minority. For this reason, he chose the opposite path to that followed by Franjo Tuđman of Croatia. In Bosnia, unlike in Croatia, Serbs could not legitimately complain of discrimination. Attempts by Belgrade television to portray Izetbegović as a Muslim fundamentalist bent on creating an Islamic state in the heart of Europe would have been laughable had they not been so sinister.

A short man with a sad, rumpled face and a kindly smile, Izetbegović struck a tragic figure in the fall of 1991. In his doubts and well-meaning equivocations, he was more like Hamlet than the ayatollah Khomeini. He still believed that the best chance of preserving Bosnia-Herzegovina as a multiethnic community lay in preserving Yugoslavia as a federal state. As proof of his sincerity, he had gone along with JNA demands for the disbanding of territorial defense units established by Tito, on the ground that they could become the basis of rival ethnic armies. But the army had double-crossed him. Instead of remaining neutral in the conflict, it had distributed arms to Serb rebels. In what was supposed to be a training exercise, the JNA was even preparing for the coming war by digging artillery positions in the mountains above Sarajevo.




As the leader of an ethnically based party, Izetbegović must bear his share of responsibility for the fratricide that tore Bosnia apart. At the time, however, his main failing appeared to be an excessive optimism and naiveté. After the European Community recognized the breakaway republics of Croatia and Slovenia in December 1991, he believed he had no choice but to take Bosnia out of a Yugoslavia that would be dominated by Milošević. But he failed to provide his own people with the means of defending themselves against the inevitable Serb onslaught. He deluded himself into thinking that war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was unlikely for the simple reason that it was too ghastly to contemplate.

“The result of a war here would be terrible,” he told me in the presidency building in Sarajevo. “There would be neither victors nor vanquished. It would be a catastrophe. Every second person in the republic has a weapon, either legally or illegally. It would mean a general war in Yugoslavia. Everybody has an interest in Bosnia, and everybody would be drawn into such a war. The war would spread to Serbia, through Sandžak and Kosovo. A war in Bosnia-Herzegovina would lead to war in Europe.”




The headquarters of Karadžić’s SDS Party was only a few hundred yards away from the president’s office, but it was like entering a different world. Unlike Izetbegović, Karadžić knew exactly what he wanted and had a clear strategy for achieving it. He made no secret of his belief that Serbs were entitled to two-thirds of Bosnia-Herzegovina—even though they accounted for only one-third of the population—and were prepared to go to war to attain their territorial goals. There could scarcely have been a greater contrast between the soft-spoken Muslim intellectual and the ranting Serb nationalist, who had previously worked as a psychiatrist for the Sarajevo football team.

The day I went to see Karadžić, Sarajevo was buzzing with reports of a fax that he had allegedly sent to SDS offices around Bosnia. A copy of the “instructions” was published by the Sarajevo newspaper Oslobođenje, along with an SDS statement that it was a “dirty fabrication.” “In the event of resistance to the legitimate and humane demands of the Serbian people, you must be merciless,” Karadžić had supposedly told his followers. “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”




Although Karadžić denied issuing such instructions, he used similar language in my presence. He interrupted our conversation several times to take telephone calls from regional SDS chiefs and discuss plans for full-scale mobilization. “The destiny of Serbia is at stake,” he screamed down the phone. “This is our historic hour. We must act now.”

Turning his attention to me, he laid out his own idiosyncratic version of Bosnian history. “The Muslims are trying to dominate Bosnia. They want to create an Islamic state here, but we Serbs are not going to let them. You cannot force Christians to live in a Muslim state. Look at what happened in Lebanon. The Bosnian Muslims are really Serbs who were forced to convert to Islam, when the Turks were here. They have a very high birthrate. They are waiting until they make up fifty percent of the population, and then they will proclaim their Islamic state. I don’t understand why America is supporting this anti-Serb coalition.”

I asked him if he would agree to some kind of loose confederation between Bosnia and Serbia, an idea then under discussion. He shook his pompadour of scruffy gray hair in a vigorous no.

“We will never agree to this. A confederation is not a stable type of state. Attempts to create a confederation can only end by war or by disintegration. Probably both. They cannot take our territory.”

The kind of state Karadžić had in mind became clear when he produced a map purporting to show that many Bosnian towns with majority Muslim populations were really “Serb.” This was at the height of the so-called war of the maps, when every ethnic group was making absurd territorial claims. In retrospect, however, Karadžić’s map was a remarkably farsighted document. This was more or less what Bosnia was to look like in a year’s time, after hundreds of thousands of Muslims had been chased from their homes by “ethnic cleansing.”




LEAVING KARADŽIĆ’S HEADQUARTERS ON that golden fall afternoon, I felt a stab of nostalgia for a city and a way of life that seemed threatened with extinction. Sarajevo, built along a narrow river valley, surrounded by high mountains, was a seductive blend of East and West, old and new. The slender minarets of dozens of mosques dotted the hillsides, next to squat Orthodox churches and solid Austro-Hungarian buildings like the post office and Bosnian presidency. The cobblestoned old town, the Baš-čaršija, was a blaze of oriental bustle and color. Farther along the Miljačka Valley were the modern skyscrapers of the Communist era, which would have been eyesores in many other places but added to the city’s eclectic charm. Full of coffeehouses and nightclubs, Sarajevo was a tolerant, hedonistic city, echoing with gaiety and laughter.

It was in Sarajevo that I had first felt the distant rumbling of the political earthquake that was to sweep away the old order. It was May 4, 1980, a Sunday. I entered the city at dusk, having just driven up from Dubrovnik, through the Neretva Valley. The traffic seemed unusually chaotic, cars rushing in all directions, ignoring the most elementary traffic regulations. When I checked into the Europa Hotel in the Baš-čaršija, the receptionist was crying. He told me that Tito had died less than an hour before. Like many people in Sarajevo, he was terrified by the thought of what would happen to his country now that the man who had held it together for thirty-five years was gone. The television in the corner of the reception was showing old newsreel footage of Tito threatening to deliver a decisive rebuff to any invader. “In the same way we fought the Germans in the war, we were ready to fight in 1948, we are ready to fight now, and we will be ready to fight in the future too, when I am gone,” the old marshal was declaring.

Bosnia had remained at peace for more than a decade after Tito’s death, but its luck was now running out. The threat was coming not from without—as Tito had suggested—but from within. The legitimate government was attempting to deal with a fifth column, right in its midst, and was too weak to defend itself effectively. The Serbian nationalists in Sarajevo and Belgrade had resorted to a proven technique of aggression. As I walked away from my meeting with Karadžić, I was reminded of the situation in Czechoslovakia, prior to the Nazi takeover in 1938. By whipping up the nationalist sentiment of the German population in the Sudetenland, the Nazis were able to occupy the entire country with very little resistance. The rest of the world stood by and did nothing.

It did not take a great deal of imagination to predict the fate that awaited Sarajevo in the event of war. It already had a name, Vukovar.




VUKOVAR

November 19, 1991


WHEN THE YUGOSLAV ARMY and Serb militiamen finally entered Vukovar after shelling it mercilessly for eighty-seven days, they discovered a nightmarish wasteland of death and destruction. Bullet-riddled bodies littered the rubble-strewn streets; stray dogs wandered amid the burning apartment buildings; burned-out cars and tanks lined roads strewn with land mines; survivors emerged blinking into the sunlight from their cellars and basements, crying in horror at the scene of devastation around them. Not a single wall, door, or roof seemed to have escaped the downpour of artillery shells, bombs, and bullets. Even the trees had been chopped to pieces.

Before the war began, Vukovar was a charming town on the Danube River, known for its baroque churches and large shoe factory. Now it resembled a picture of Dresden after the Allied bombing campaign. Europe had not witnessed destruction like this since the Second World War. The Serb victors spoke of “liberating” Vukovar from the Croatian “fascists,” but there was precious little left to “liberate.” If there was ever a case of destroying a city in order to save it, this was it.

For Croats, Vukovar had become a symbol of their determination to resist Serbian aggression. It was their Stalingrad. For weeks Radio Vukovar had been broadcasting messages from its weak UHF transmitter: “Vukovar is still fighting. Vukovar has not fallen.” The town was defended by some fifteen hundred poorly armed policemen and volunteers. Yet for almost three months, they held out against an attacking force of some twenty thousand men, supported by tanks, artillery, and aircraft. When the JNA sent a column of tanks into the suburb of Borovo Naselje in mid-September, it was decimated by Croat militiamen, using shoulder-held grenade launchers. Unable to capture Vukovar in a ground assault, the JNA changed tactics and pulverized the town from the air with rockets, mortars, and bombs. Forced to take refuge in the basements, the townspeople drank rainwater and ate stale crusts of bread in order to survive. Many died for lack of medical care.

Atrocities were committed on both sides. Rival commanders thought nothing of executing civilians for suspected treachery or merely because of their ethnic origin. In addition to the thousands of people who lost their lives as a result of the shelling, hundreds simply disappeared. Fighting was particularly fierce around the Borovo shoe factory, on the northern approaches to the town.

When the JNA and Serb militia groups closed in on Vukovar in early November, the Croat defenders fought for every house and every cellar, until they ran out of ammunition. Several hundred defenders managed to escape across the cornfields. Several hundred others surrendered to the army and were reasonably well treated. Croat fighters who were captured by Serb irregulars were often executed on the spot, sometimes in full view of the foreign journalists who had been permitted to witness the final “liberation” of the city.




By the time their ordeal was finally over, both Serb and Croat survivors were too shell-shocked to display much relief. “My life has no meaning anymore,” said Marina Rodić, a Croat woman, who lost her husband and her son during the fighting. “Nobody won in Vukovar, we all lost,” said Milan Bosnić, a Serb who spent sixty-three days in a cellar.




The most controversial incidents occurred at the hospital, which had taken dozens of direct hits during the course of the fighting. The basement was full of injured soldiers and civilians. On November 19 the facility was cordoned off by JNA troops and Serb paramilitaries. The United Nations peace envoy, Cyrus Vance, attempted to gain access but was rebuffed by a JNA officer, Major Veselin Slavančinin, commander of the artillery units that had flattened much of the city.


 The major claimed that the hospital was mined, and he could not guarantee the safety of international observers. But both sides agreed that the 420 Croat patients in the hospital would be evacuated to Croatian-held territory.

The following day the Serb soldiers separated two hundred lightly wounded male patients from the other patients. “They ordered anybody who was able to walk to board the buses which were waiting at the back door of the hospital,” recalled Viktor Đurisić, a severely injured Borovo factory worker. “We never saw these people again.”




According to eyewitness testimony compiled by United Nations experts, the prisoners were taken to a large building used as a garage for farm equipment in the nearby village of Ovčara. Here they were beaten so severely that at least two men were killed. Serb soldiers then divided them into groups of about twenty men. “One by one, each group was loaded onto a truck and driven away. At intervals of about fifteen to twenty minutes, the truck returned empty and another group was loaded onto it.”




Following information provided by a Croat who managed to escape from the truck, UN investigators located a mass grave at the head of a wooded ravine, five minutes down the road from Ovčara. There were hundreds of bullet holes in nearby trees and piles of spent Kalashnikov cartridges on the ground. Roman Catholic crosses and rosary beads found on several exhumed bodies indicated that the corpses were Croat rather than Serb. After examining the site, the experts concluded that the executioners had stood “on the northwest side of the grave [and shot] diagonally toward the southeast and into the trees.” The forensic evidence of a massacre was buttressed by eyewitness testimony. “Since five in the afternoon to one in the morning, we were killing them in Ovčara,” a Serb paramilitary was reported to have boasted, while swigging back plum brandy over breakfast. “They were begging, crying, and pleading that they had not been shooting our people.”




Over the next few years many more such atrocities were committed, both in Croatia and in Bosnia. Half a century after the civilized world had learned about the horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald and vowed, “Never again,” concentration camps and torture centers were once again established on European soil. Words like “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” once again entered the vocabulary. By the time a peace agreement was finally reached in late 1995, an estimated quarter of a million people had been killed in the former Yugoslavia, and nearly three million driven from their homes.

The destruction arid killing of Vukovar were repeated, in seemingly endless variations, in Dubrovnik, Tbilisi, Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Dushanbe, Grozny, and dozens of smaller towns and villages across the former Communist world. Vukovar was only the beginning.




WESTERN LEADERS HAD the opportunity—some would say the historical obligation—to step in before the fighting got out of hand. Yugoslavia was, in part, an American creation. President Woodrow Wilson had taken the lead in creating a kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, from the rubble of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. After World War II the country had been a key element in the East-West balancing act. The United States extended informal security guarantees to Yugoslavia to forestall a Soviet invasion after Tito had broken away from Moscow in 1948. U.S. officials visiting Belgrade never missed the opportunity to voice support for the country’s “independence, nonalignment, and territorial integrity.”

It had been clear for some time that Yugoslavia was headed for a violent breakup. In October 1990 the Central Intelligence Agency issued a confidential report predicting that the country would fall apart within eighteen months. The CIA believed there was a “high probability” that the policies of nationalist brinkmanship pursued by Milošević and Tuđman would plunge the country into civil war.




Instead of acting on these warnings, the Bush administration treated the crisis as a primarily European matter. For most of 1991 President Bush and Secretary of State James A. Baker III had been preoccupied by the Gulf War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Accustomed to the geostrategic certainties of the Cold War, they linked the U.S. national interest in Europe almost exclusively to the containment of communism. The Western failure in Yugoslavia was a failure, above all, of political imagination. The collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe had produced a state of false euphoria in Western capitals. There was boastful talk about a “new world order” and “the end of history.” Seduced by their own rhetoric, American policy makers failed to see that nationalism was replacing communism as the principal threat facing the Western democracies and that Yugoslavia would be the first real battleground of the post-Communist era.

Far from coming to an end, history was just getting started again, after a forced hiatus of many decades. The Yugoslav crisis was emblematic of the kind of challenge that would soon become characteristic of the new epoch. Other Miloševićs and Tuđmans were springing up all over the former Communist world. The Cold War was giving way to a new kind of ideological struggle. On one side were those who believed in the American ideal of a pluralistic democracy, based on free markets, free institutions, and free speech. On the other were those who had a political and economic interest in erecting barriers to the free exchange of people, goods, and ideas. By whipping up ethnic hatreds that had lain dormant for decades, the Communists-turned-nationalists were able to perpetuate their own power.

Like communism, nationalism had a natural ability to reproduce itself, until checked by a superior force or brought down by its internal contradictions. It thrived in conditions of economic chaos, offering ready-made scapegoats and ostensibly painless solutions to deep-seated problems. By the end of 1991 the virus of nationalism had spread to large parts of Eastern Europe, casting a shadow over the democratic achievements of the previous two years. The visitor had the impression of traveling back in a time machine to 1945 or 1917. Flags, national symbols, political parties, even street names had been revived—all as they had been before the Communists came to power. It was as if the region had suddenly woken up from a long political hibernation.

In some countries the virus of nationalism assumed a relatively benign form. One such case was Czechoslovakia, where Czechs and Slovaks were able to work out a reasonably amicable divorce. In many other places, however, it was a recipe for fratricidal war. By the fall of 1991 the seeds of future disaster had already been sown in the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova. In the Caucasus a retired Soviet air force general named Dzokhar Dudayev was busy forming his own sixty-thousand-strong army. Within weeks he was to declare himself president of Chechnya, a country that few Westerners even knew existed.

There was a limit, of course, to what Western governments could do to contain the nationalist genie. America had never shown any interest in the Caucasus. Yugoslavia, however, was another matter. The country straddled a centuries-old geopolitical fault line between Byzantium and Rome, Islam and Christianity, East and West. The United States had already been dragged into two world wars sparked off by conflicts in Eastern Europe. During the Cold War successive American presidents had made clear that they would react vigorously to Soviet aggression in Yugoslavia. If the West was prepared to stand up to the newly resurgent forces of nationalism, then surely this was the place.

The first and best opportunity for drawing the line occurred during the winter of 1990 to 1991, when it became clear that Yugoslavia was hurtling toward disintegration. Senior Bush administration officials later expressed regret that they failed to intervene decisively at this point.


 One possible course of action would have been for the United States to have convened a pan-European congress to devise and impose a set of ground rules for Yugoslavia’s breakup, including guarantees for the protection of ethnic minorities. Without strong American leadership, the Europeans were unable to reach a common approach. The Germans had political, historical, and economic ties to Croatia and Slovenia, which were part of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. Britain and France, by contrast, had historical ties to Serbia. The divisions between Western governments sent a series of confusing signals to Yugoslav leaders.

The next opportunity for decisive action came in the fall of 1991, when the JNA was laying siege to the towns of Vukovar and Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik, in particular, could have been easily defended by NATO ships patrolling the Adriatic. An architectural jewel on Croatia’s Dalmatian coast, it had a six-hundred-year history of resisting foreign invaders. In October 1991 Serb gunners in the mountains above Dubrovnik began raining shells and wire-guided rockets down on the walled city. The NATO supreme commander, General John Galvin, later told Congress that his warships would have had little difficulty taking out the Serb artillery. “We could have sent the U.S. Sixth Fleet… into the Adriatic, and with very little military action, we could have shown the determination of Western nations that this did not get out of hand,” he testified.




Another opportunity to prevent the war from spreading occurred several weeks later, when Bosnian leaders begged Western governments to send a few hundred peacekeepers to prevent the war between Serbia and Croatia from engulfing their republic. Although U.S. officials listened sympathetically to the pleas of Bosnian President Alija Izetbegović, they did nothing. The United States was not prepared to act unilaterally. The United Nations took the view that Bosnia was still at peace and therefore not in need of peacekeepers. United Nations envoy Cyrus Vance believed it would be “premature” to send peacekeepers to Bosnia.


 Instead the United Nations imposed an arms embargo against all six former Yugoslav republics, a course of action that directly benefited the Serbs, already armed to the teeth.

During 1991 the Bush administration made only one serious effort to prevent the coming catastrophe in Yugoslavia, and it ended in disaster. On June 21 Baker made a one-day visit to Belgrade to urge the squabbling Yugoslav politicians to resolve their differences peacefully. He used the occasion to warn Yugoslav leaders of the “dangers of disintegration” and announce that Washington would not recognize any republic that attempted to secede from the federation. Within five days of his departure both Croatia and Slovenia had declared independence. Although Baker spoke out against the use of force by the federal government, Milošević interpreted his endorsement of a united Yugoslavia as a green light for sending in the army to crush the secessionist movements. He issued secret orders to the Yugoslav army to defend Serb-occupied territories in both Croatia and Bosnia.




The failed attempt at diplomacy left Baker deeply discouraged. He returned to Washington convinced that the United States “did not have a dog in that fight,” as he later put it. After listening to the leaders of Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia, he complained that it was difficult to get past the fifteenth century. His assessment was shared by the president, who, like many people in Washington, had trouble sorting out the bewildering complexity of Balkan politics. Bush would listen to his foreign policy experts with a distracted expression on his face and then remark, “Tell me again what this is all about.”




The lack of interest on the part of Bush and Baker meant that Yugoslavia was a low priority for the administration. Responsibility for handling the crisis was shifted to Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, who had the reputation of being “Balkan experts,” having served in the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade. Supported by the Pentagon, both men concluded that American interests were best served by keeping out of what was essentially a European crisis. “The Europeans kept on telling us that this was a problem on their own doorstep, and they would like to take the lead,” Scowcroft said later. “We were happy to let them do so.”




The State Department did its best to distance itself from the crisis. In October, the Yugoslav ambassador to Washington had a long talk with Eagleburger about the “new mood of isolationism” in America. Reporting back to Belgrade, he quoted Eagleburger as saying that the end of the Cold War had greatly reduced Yugoslavia’s strategic importance. The United States no longer felt any need to engage itself vigorously in places like Yugoslavia as a counterweight to Soviet expansionism.




Yugoslav leaders observed the disarray in Western capitals and drew the appropriate conclusions. It was clear that the West, led by the United States, lacked the stomach to get involved in a Balkan imbroglio. In the spring of 1991 Milošević had sent the Yugoslav defense minister on a secret mission to Moscow to find out whether the Soviet Union would help Yugoslavia resist a Western military intervention. The Russians replied that the question did not arise. According to their intelligence sources, the West had absolutely no intention of intervening in Yugoslavia whatever the circumstances.




The Serbian leaders knew that they could act with virtual impunity.




BYELOVEZHSKY FOREST

December 8, 1991


THE SNOW WAS FALLING lightly when the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus reached Brezhnev’s old hunting lodge in the Belorussian forest. It was a perfect winter day: The air was cold and crisp. The president of Belarus, Stanislav Shushkevich, sought to play the genial host by suggesting a walk through the pine trees or even a spot of hunting, but no one took up his offer. The other leaders were much too nervous and excited to think of recreation. They had gathered at this out-of-the-way hunting lodge to bury the Soviet Union.

Close to the Polish border, the Byelovezhsky nature reserve was a perfect spot for a secret assignation. The nearest city of any size, Brest-Litovsk, was fifty miles away. The hunting lodge was guarded by special troops, who had sealed off all the approach roads. The press corps had been left behind in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. Gorbachev was spending the weekend at his dacha outside Moscow, fretting that the leaders of the three Slavic republics had left him out of their discussions. Neither he nor anybody else in Moscow had any inkling of the events taking place deep in the forest.

By the time the republican leaders gathered in Byelovezhsky Forest, the power of the central government had diminished dramatically. Scarcely a day went by without news of some fresh snub to Gorbachev. In early November the Soviet president flew to Madrid to meet his friend George Bush; he returned home to discover that no fewer than seventy federal ministries had been abolished by the republics. Without consulting Gorbachev, the Russian government under Boris Yeltsin had decided to stop paying taxes to the central treasury and take control of oil and gas deposits on Russian territory. By late November some commentators were already comparing Gorbachev’s power with that of the queen of England.

But the most serious blows to Gorbachev’s authority were still to come. On December 1 presidential elections were held in Ukraine, the Soviet Union’s second most populous and powerful republic after Russia, together with a referendum on independence. Ukrainians voted in favor of independence by a margin of nearly nine to one. They chose a former Communist ideologist, Leonid Kravchuk, as Ukraine’s first president. Eager to establish his nationalist credentials, he announced that he saw no future for the Soviet Union. “Gorbachev’s ability to interfere after the referendum will be reduced to zero,” he told reporters as he cast his ballot. “You can’t oppose a movement of millions of people.”




When they met in the Kremlin several days later, Yeltsin told Gorbachev that he could not imagine a new union without fifty-three million Ukrainians. “If things don’t work out, we will have to think of other variants,” he added enigmatically.


 Gorbachev interpreted this to mean that Yeltsin would put pressure on Kravchuk to reach a compromise. The Siberian, however, had a different solution in mind.

Yeltsin and his advisers had been thinking about doing away with the Soviet Union for some months. The defeat of the August coup had completely altered the balance of power between Russia and the center. Gorbachev could do nothing without Yeltsin’s consent. Even so, Yeltsin knew that he would not be complete master of his own house as long as the Soviet president was around. He was contemptuous of Gorbachev’s endless political maneuverings which, he believed, had brought the country to the brink of civil war. And he could never forget the political humiliation that he had suffered in 1987, when Gorbachev had hauled him out of a hospital bed to face his vengeful Communist Party accusers. He had suffered debilitating bouts of depression, insomnia, and a nervous breakdown because of Gorbachev. The time had come to even the score.

It took twenty-four hours to draw up the Soviet Union’s death sentence and prepare the birth certificate for the new Commonwealth of Independent States. Aides to the three leaders stayed up all night, working on the text of a joint statement. The extreme secrecy and haste surrounding the meeting greatly complicated this task. There were no photocopy machines in the hunting lodge. When officials wanted to make copies of the documents, dissolving the Soviet Union, they had to feed them through a pair of linked fax machines. Only two typists were on hand to prepare the documents in three languages.




By the afternoon of December 8 everything was ready. One by one, Yeltsin, Kravchuk, and Shushkevich signed a joint communiqué declaring that “the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is ceasing its existence as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality.” They also laid claim to the nuclear warheads stationed on their territories.

All that remained now was to inform the rest of the world. The sequence of telephone calls made by the Byelovezhsky conspirators was indicative of their priorities. At the top of their list was Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan, the only non-Slavic republic to possess nuclear weapons. At that moment Nazarbayev was in the air, en route to Moscow. Yeltsin attempted to contact the plane, hoping to persuade Nazarbayev to fly to Belarus directly. But Soviet air traffic control refused to put the call through, and Nazarbayev remained out of contact until his plane landed at the Moscow airport. Angry that his Slavic colleagues had failed to consult with him earlier, he refused for several days to sign the communiqué dissolving the Soviet Union.

Next on the list was President Bush. If the Byelovezhsky agreements went into effect, twelve new countries would emerge from the rubble of the Soviet Union. (The three Baltic states had succeeded in establishing their independence immediately after the coup.) Swift international recognition was essential to the success of this operation. Otherwise, bickering and territorial disputes might break out among the former Soviet republics, raising the prospect of a replay of the Yugoslav tragedy on a much larger stage.

The simplest way of reaching the American president would have been via the Soviet government communications network, the vertushka, which was still under Gorbachev’s control. Suspicious of his rival, Yeltsin decided to place the call through a regular telephone operator. A few minutes later, the operator called back in a panic: She could not make herself understood by the White House switchboard. The Russian foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, a fluent English speaker, got on the phone. He had to explain patiently to the White House operator exactly who Boris Yeltsin was and why it was so important that he be permitted to speak to the president.




Calls were also put through to the Soviet and Russian defense ministers, to tell them what had happened. It was only after all these calls that the conspirators got around to informing Gorbachev about the disappearance of his country and, by logical extension, his job. This time the call was made by the president of Belarus, the junior member of the troika. The other two leaders listened in to the conversation on extensions. They knew only too well what Gorbachev’s reaction was likely to be.

By the time Shushkevich finally reached him, the Soviet president was fuming. He had spent the last few hours frantically calling his aides and trying to find out what was going on in the Byelovezhsky Forest. Nobody seemed to know anything. He felt almost as impotent as he had back in August, when his communications were taken away from him altogether. He told reporters later that he was “stunned” that Yeltsin did not have the decency to call him personally.

“Why is it you who called me?” Gorbachev demanded after Shushkevich filled him in on the agreement. “You mean you have already decided everything?”

When the soft-spoken Shushkevich confessed that not only had the agreement been signed but that Bush had already been informed, Gorbachev exploded. “This is a disgrace. You’ve been speaking with the president of the United States, and you failed to speak with the president of your own country? This is shameful.”







MOSCOW

December 25, 1991


WHEN YELTSIN RETURNED to Moscow, he hesitated about going to the Kremlin to inform the Soviet president officially that he had lost both his job and his country. There were rumors that the Alpha Group had been placed on alert and was preparing to arrest “the Byelovezhsky troika” for the attempted overthrow of the state. Speaking by phone to Gorbachev, Yeltsin suggested that he might be taken prisoner if he ventured into the massive red-brick fortress.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked Gorbachev incredulously, still employing the familiar ty form of address used for subordinates. “Have you gone out of your mind?”




Yeltsin need not have worried. Gorbachev was furious at the leaders of the three Slavic republics, but he had no intention of using force to remain in power. The failure to conclude a new Union Treaty represented the collapse of everything he had been trying to achieve for the last nine months. He regarded the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a political and economic disaster that could only lead to more pain and turmoil. In the end, however, it was up to ordinary Soviet citizens to accept or reject the Byelovezhsky agreements.

“I will respect the choice made by the representative organs of the people,” he told an interviewer. “Let the people themselves decide.”




Gorbachev had begun perestroika by attempting to involve ordinary people in decisions previously made by a closed circle of Kremlin leaders. After unleashing the unpredictable force of public opinion, he had gradually lost control over his own revolution. It had taken him places he had never intended to go, and now it threatened to devour him completely. But the successor to Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev remained true to the political choice that he had made when he launched perestroika. Unlike his predecessors, he would not resort to force to impose his will.

Over the next two weeks Gorbachev did everything he could to mobilize public opinion against the dissolution of the once-mighty Soviet superpower. He issued appeals, made statements, gave interviews. He tried to persuade the parliaments of individual Soviet republics to reject the decisions that had been taken in their name. He met with military leaders, newspaper editors, Nobel laureates. None of this activity had the slightest effect. Exhausted by the endless political debates and their own rapidly deteriorating living standards, the narod had lost interest in what the tsar had to say.




THERE WAS STILL SOME UNFINISHED BUSINESS to take care of before Gorbachev could lay down his burden. On December 23 he finally had a nine-hour meeting in the Kremlin with Yeltsin, his political nemesis. The two leaders discussed the transfer of the nuclear chemodanchik and a suitable presidential pension. (It was decided that Gorbachev would receive the ruble equivalent of forty dollars a month, plus a limousine and half a dozen bodyguards.) Gorbachev then summoned his aide Yakovlev to witness the formal handing over of the Kremlin secrets to Yeltsin.

Together, the three men ripped open the buff manila envelopes containing the evidence of Stalin’s most terrible crimes. They examined the map of Europe drawn up by Molotov and Ribbentrop in August 1939, carving up Poland and the Baltic states between the Nazis and the Communists. They pored over Stalin’s instructions to the NKVD to exterminate the cream of the Polish officer corps, interned at Katyn. Yakovlev, in particular, was shocked by the contents of the presidential archive, the osobaya papka. As the head of an official commission investigating the Stalinist era he had been looking for these documents for years, but Gorbachev had always assured him that they could not be found.

“How can this be?” he asked Gorbachev.




The president claimed that he had only just found out about the damning documents from the archivists, who had gone through the osobaya papka prior to the transfer of power to Yeltsin. Yakovlev looked at his old friend in amazement and disbelief. Yeltsin squirreled the incident away in his unforgiving memory. It would come in handy later, when he needed ammunition to use against the father of glasnost.

Gorbachev knew that he could expect little sympathy from Yeltsin. But he was taken aback by the abrupt change in the attitude of once-fawning bureaucrats and security personnel. As it became clear that he was on the way out, they seemed to go out of their way to slight him. Russian security guards instructed Raisa to clear the family’s personal effects out of the presidential dacha. By the end of his rule Gorbachev’s writ did not even extend to the sixty-nine acres of the Kremlin. It was all part of the time-honored Russian tradition of kicking a fallen leader.

Shortly after 5:00 p.m. on December 25 Gorbachev put through a call to President Bush, who was spending Christmas at Camp David. He struck a statesmanlike tone for his final telephone conversation with the leader of the rival superpower. He assured the president that there was no need to worry about the security of the Soviet nuclear arsenals and asked him to do what he could to support the new Confederation of Independent States, particularly Russia. Bush told Gorbachev that what they had achieved together “will go down in history.”




Gorbachev spent his last hour in power in his office on the third floor of the Kremlin, next door to the Politburo conference hall. His aides guessed that the president did not want to be left alone with the nuclear button and his resignation statement. So they kept him company, reminiscing about his years as a regional Communist Party boss in Stavropol. A few minutes before 7:00 p.m. he walked into an anteroom where a television studio had been set up. There were close to a dozen people in the room, including executives from Soviet television and CNN, which was broadcasting the speech to 153 countries around the world.

There was a brief discussion between his aides over whether he should sign the decree giving up his duties as commander in chief before or after the resignation statement. Gorbachev interrupted the argument to ask his press secretary for a pen. He tried it out on a blank sheet of paper. “I need something softer,” he complained. A CNN representative took out his pen and handed it to Gorbachev, who signed the piece of paper on the spot.

At precisely 7:00 p.m., he began to address the 280 million citizens of the Soviet Union. Reading from a prepared text in a pale green binder, he tried to explain to the narod one last time why he had launched perestroika in the first place. He told them the Soviet Union had been lagging behind Western countries despite the abundance of land, oil, and natural resources. He said he was proud of his role in ending the Cold War and helping Soviet citizens regain their freedom. Toward the end of his ten-minute speech he put particular emphasis on a few sentences he had written himself and inserted into the text at the last moment:


 “It is vitally important to preserve the democratic achievements of the last few years. They have been paid for through the suffering of our entire history, our tragic experience. They must not be given up, under any circumstances or under any pretext. Otherwise all our hopes for a better future will be dashed.”

Less than half an hour after Gorbachev finished speaking, at 7:35 p.m., the red Soviet flag was hauled down from the Kremlin for the last time. Moments later the white, red, and blue tricolor of Yeltsin’s Russia rose in its place. There was some scattered applause, and a few whistles, from the handful of tourists gathered in Red Square. A light snow was falling.

Seventy-four years after the storming of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.




OF ALL THE OUTSTANDING LEADERS of the twentieth century—Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill—the last general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party was surely the most contradictory. His name will be associated with epoch-making developments that were the very opposite of his original intention. He was the Communist who dismantled communism, the reformer who was overtaken by his own reforms, the emperor who allowed the world’s last great multinational empire to break apart. He wanted to lead the Soviet Union into the information age but was destined to preside over its downfall. He launched a revolution and ended up becoming one of its victims.

Gorbachev’s most important contribution lay not so much in what he did, as in what he permitted to happen, almost in spite of himself. If Ronald Reagan was the Great Communicator, Gorbachev was the Great Facilitator. In contrast with the early Bolsheviks, who set out to create utopia by force, Gorbachev permitted history to resume its natural course. He sought not to change the course of history but to swim in its tide. Even after it had become clear where his revolution was leading, he did not draw back from the consequences of his own actions.

Gorbachev’s mistakes, like his political vision, were mistakes on the grand scale. He clung to the illusion that the Communist Party was capable of reforming itself long after it had been hopelessly discredited. An enthusiastic proponent of elections for other people, he never submitted his own record to the judgment of the voters. A decisive moment occurred in 1989, when he rejected the idea of a direct election and allowed himself to be nominated for a bloc of uncontested seats in the new Soviet parliament. Up until that point he could probably have won a popular mandate—the economy had not yet started to unravel, and his prestige was still high—but he chose to show solidarity with his Politburo colleagues. His loyalty to the party cost him dearly during the final showdown with Yeltsin, when he found himself without a reliable political weapon. He renounced the use of the machine gun but failed to secure the legitimacy of the ballot box. He was never able to answer satisfactorily Andrei Sakharov’s question at the first Congress of People’s Deputies: “Whose side are you on, Mikhail Sergeyevich?”

The other major failure was his handling of the economy. Gorbachev did more to hasten the end of the “evil empire” through his muddled economic policies than anything Reagan could possibly have devised. The deficit in the state budget had risen from just over 3 percent when Gorbachev came to power to a staggering 30 to 50 percent by the time he stepped down. Things started going wrong almost from the moment he arrived in office. The disastrous antialcohol campaign of 1986–87 eliminated the single most effective source of government revenue. In order to plug the deficit, government presses worked overtime, churning out increasingly worthless paper rubles. Gorbachev compounded his mistake by refusing to liberalize prices, a course of action that led to chronic shortages of both consumer goods and industrial components. This was the beginning of one of the most catastrophic economic slides ever experienced by an industrialized society.

These were monumental errors, but they served a historical purpose. The transition from communism to capitalism was never going to be smooth. The totalitarian order established by Lenin and Stalin was so formidable and so deeply rooted in the Soviet psyche that it could not be demolished head-on. To remain in power and continue his reforms, Gorbachev had to proceed by stealth. This master of Kremlin intrigue bobbed and weaved among the rival factions, hiding his true intentions beneath a fog of Communist rhetoric. Duplicity and obfuscation were his required talents; political survival was the supreme imperative. Had he been clearer about his goals, it is likely that his Politburo colleagues would have attempted to get rid of him much earlier. By the time they finally understood what was happening, it was too late. The party had been destroyed from within.

The Soviet Communist Party was prepared to fight to remain in power as long as this was a serious option. The repressive power of the totalitarian state meant that domestic rebellions could be ruthlessly crushed. From the moment such a state possessed nuclear weapons, it became invulnerable to foreign invasion. The only way out, therefore, was death by economic exhaustion.

The irony is that the last general secretary had to fail in order to succeed in the larger historical mission of vanquishing communism. Gorbachev came to power promising to reverse several decades of Soviet economic decline and revitalize the Marxist-Leninist idea. Had he succeeded, the system would have received a new or at least a temporary lease on life. There would have been less pressure for significant political reform. The deepening economic crisis made the transition to democracy possible but also fraught with danger because it left many people yearning for the security of the authoritarian past.

In the long run the collapse of Soviet communism was inevitable, for the simple reason that it was too top-heavy a structure to bear its own weight. But there was nothing inevitable about the timing of the collapse or the manner in which it occurred. History will record that it was Gorbachev who set in motion the chain of events that led to the disintegration of the world’s first socialist state. Through a strange amalgam of genius and incompetence, idealism and egotism, naiveté and cunning, the onetime peasant boy from Privolnoye dealt a fatal blow to the most durable dictatorship humankind has ever known.

By seeking to reinvigorate the Communist system, Gorbachev succeeded in destroying it.




GLOSSARY OF FOREIGN TERMS


POLISH


KOR: Workers’ Defense Committee (human rights group)

MKS: Interfactory Strike Committee

PZPR: Polish United Workers’ Party (Communist Party)

Solidarity: Solidarity trade union

stan wojenny: martial law (literally warlike state)

szlachta: petty nobility

vojvodship: province

ZOMO: riot police

RUSSIAN


Alpha Group: elite KGB antiterrorist squad

apparat: bureaucratic machine

apparatchik: bureaucrat

Central Committee: policy-making body of CPSU

chemodanchik: little suitcase (nuclear codes)

CPSU: Communist Party of the Soviet Union

dacha: country house

gensek: general secretary of CPSU

GKChP: Committee for the State of Emergency (formed during August 1991 coup attempt)

glasnost: openness

Gosplan: State Planning Agency

Gosstroi: State Construction Agency

KGB: Committee for State Security (secret police), successor to Lenin’s Cheka and Stalin’s NKVD

kolkhoz: collective farm

kolkhoznik: collective farm worker

kremlin: a fortified place

kulak: landed farmer (prior to collectivization)

Lubyanka: headquarters of KGB

muzhik: peasant

narod: people, the masses

nomenklatura: roster of officials nominated by Communist Party

osobaya papka: special file, top secret Communist Party documents

perestroika: restructuring

plenum: full Central Committee meeting

Politburo: executive leadership of CPSU Central Committee (composed of full and alternate members)

PVO: Antiaircraft defense

shestidesyatniki: men of the sixties, the generation that matured under Khrushchev

spetsnaz: KGB “special assignment” troops

stagnation: term applied to Brezhnev era

Staraya Ploshchad: old square headquarters of Communist Party

terror: term applied to Stalin’s rule

thaw: term applied to period of political liberalization under Khrushchev

vertushka: Soviet government communications system

Volga: car used by mid-level officials

Vremya: television news

White House: headquarters of Russian government

Zhiguli: popular compact car

Zil: limousine used by senior party officials

SERBO-CROAT


chetnik: Serbian nationalist (World War II term)

HDZ: Croatian Democratic Union (governing party in Croatia)

JNA: Yugoslav People’s Army

SDS: Serbian Social Democratic Party of Bosnia (led by Radovan Karadžić) ustashi Croatian nationalist (World War II term)

OTHER


conducător: supreme leader (Romanian)

mujahedin: Islamic guerrilla fighter

Securitate: Romanian secret police

Stasi: East German secret police

Trabi: popular East German car




NOTES ON SOURCES


THE COLLAPSE of communism opened up a treasure trove of previously untapped sources. In writing this book, I have drawn on interviews with direct participants, memoirs of Soviet and East European leaders, declassified archival materials, contemporary newspapers, and my own reporting notes. Unless otherwise stated, all interviews are with me. I have tried to provide a named citation for all direct quotations. During the course of my research I gathered transcripts of numerous meetings of the Soviet Politburo, which are marked in the notes with the Russian abbreviation TsKhSD. The translations are my own. Because access to the Soviet archives is still restricted, I have deposited copies of these materials with the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C.

Also helpful in reconstructing events were three documentary television programs prepared by the British Broadcasting Corporation by Brian Lapping Associates, The Second Russian Revolution, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation. I am grateful to Norma Percy and Brian Lapping for permission to quote from the original transcripts of The Second Russian Revolution, which are deposited at the library of the London School of Economics. Publishing details of all books cited in the notes are provided in the bibliography. I have used the following abbreviations in the notes:

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation transcript service

CDSP Current Digest of the Soviet Press

CNN Cable News Network

FBIS Foreign Broadcast Information Service

ICAO International Civil Aviation Organization

LAT Los Angeles Times

MN Moscow News

NSC National Security Council

NYT New York Times

RFE/RL Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

TsK KPSS Central Committee of Soviet Communist Party

TsKhSD Center for Storage of Contemporary Documentation

UN United Nations

WP Washington Post




NOTES





I: REVOLT OF THE PROLES


1. Weather report, NYT, December 27, 1979, p. B8.

2. Sergo Mikoyan, son of the former Soviet leader Anastas Mikoyan, provided me with the details of Brezhnev’s dacha. See also the memoirs of his doctor, Yevgeny Chazov, Zdorov’ye i Vlast’, pp. 86–87.

3. Roy Medvedev, “The Advantages of Mediocrity,” Moskovskie Novosti (Moscow), September 11, 1988, pp. 8–9, translated in CDSP, vol. XL, no. 36, p. 5.

4. For a detailed discussion of Brezhnev health problems, see Chazov, pp. 115–44, and former bodyguard Mikhail Dokuchayev, “Devyatka,” Novoye Vremya (Moscow), no. 32 (1993), pp. 36–40.

5. Chazov, p. 128.

6. Vladimir Medvedev, Chelovek Za Spinoi, pp. 148–49.

7. Chazov, p. 134.

8. Ibid., pp. 149–51. For Western reports of the incident, see NYT. October 7, 1979, p. A1, and Reuters dispatches from Berlin on October 6, 1979.

9. Chazov, p. 150. See also Edward Gierek, Przerwana Dekada, pp. 93–94.

10. Zdenek Mlynář, Nightfrost in Prague, p. 156.

11. See, for example, Defense Department estimates for 1980 reproduced in David Holloway, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race, pp. 134–40. The U.S. Defense Department publication Soviet Military Power (1981, p. 71) also claimed that the Soviets had “dramatically reduced” the U.S. lead in “virtually every important basic technology” during the 1970s.

12. Vyacheslav Molotov, Molotov Remembers: Conversations with Felix Chuev, p. 8.

13. Deputy Soviet Foreign Minister Georgi Kornienko, Novaya i Noveishaya Istoria (Moscow), no. 3 (May-June 1993), p. 107.

14. Ibid., p. 108.

15. Statement of Captain Abdul Hadud, reported in Colonel A. Lyakhovski and Lieutenant Colonel V. Zabrodin, “Secrets of the Afghan War,” Armiya (Moscow), no. 6 (March 1992), pp. 60–61.

16. For Soviet suspicions of Amin, see report by the Politburo Commission on Afghanistan, quoted in Aleksandr Lyakhovski, Tragediya i Doblest’ Afgana, pp. 102–3. See also Kornienko, p. 110, Georgi Arbatov, The System p. 119, and Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence, p. 436.

17. For KGB view, see memoirs of Col. Aleksandr Morozov, former KGB deputy station chief in Afghanistan, published in New Times (Moscow), no. 38–41 (1991).

18. Andrei Gromyko, Memoirs, p. 99.

19. Memorandum signed by Konstantin Chernenko, December 27, 1979, TsKhSD. Copy in author’s possession.

20. Chazov, p. 133.

21. Arbatov, p. 266.

22. Larisa Vasilieva, Kremlin Wives, p. 219.

23. NYT, April 3, 1994. For details of Andropov activity in Budapest, see also Izvestia, July 24, 1992, and Arnold Beichman and Mikhail S. Bernstam, Andropov, pp. 145–60.

24. Alexander Werth, Russia at War, pp. 213–17.

25. Soviet Military Power (1981), p. 12.

26. Chazov, p. 90.

27. Ibid., p. 205.

28. Transcript of Politburo session, July 12, 1984, TsKhSD.

29. Arbatov, p. 198.

30. For Gromyko’s reasons for supporting invasion of Afghanistan, see reminiscences of former Foreign Minister Aleksandr Bessmertnykh and Gorbachev foreign policy aide Anatoly Chernyayev at Princeton University conference on the Cold War, vol. III, February 26, 1993.

31. Vladimir Medvedev, p. 130.

32. Voenno-Istoricheskii Zhurnal (Moscow), no. 11 (1993), pp. 30, 35.

33. Chernyayev, Princeton conference, vol. III, pp. 22–23. See also Dobrynin, P. 439

34. Chazov, p. 152.

35. A copy of the handwritten resolution, obtained from TsKhSD, was published in the Washington Post, p. A1, on November 15, 1992. The only full Politburo member not to countersign the resolution was Andrei Kosygin, who was gravely ill at the time and resigned from his post as Soviet prime minister shortly afterward. According to Kornienko, p. 110, the decision to invade was taken jointly by Brezhnev, Suslov, Andropov, Ustinov, and Gromyko.

36. Voyenno-Istoricheskii Zhurnal (Moscow), no. 11 (1993), pp. 32–34.

37. Henry S. Bradsher, Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, p. 179.

38. Chernenko memorandum, December 27, 1979, TsKhSD. See also Dobrynin, p. 439.

39. Dobrynin, p. 440.

40. Armiya, no. 6 (March 1992), p. 66.

41. Armiya, nos. 7 and 8 (April 1992), p. 54. In reconstructing the events of December 27, I have also drawn on Mikhail Boltunov, Alpha—Sverkhsekretnii Otryad KGB. For an Afghan perspective, I turned to Raja Anwar, The Tragedy of Afghanistan, which confirms many of the details of the Soviet accounts.

42. Armiya, nos. 7 and 8, p. 55.

43. Anwar, p. 189.

44. Boltunov, p. 37.

45. Ibid., p. 44.

46. Ibid., p. 72.

47. Armiya, nos. 7 and 8, p. 57.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid., pp. 55–56. See also Lyakhovski, pp. 144–51.

50. Ibid., p. 56.

51. Boltunov, pp. 86–89. For Karmal’s character and alcoholism, see also Leonid Shebarshin, Ruka Moskvi, pp. 206–09.

52. Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS-SOV-79-251), December 28, 1979, pp. D1–2.

53. Casualty figures for the storming of Amin’s palace remain contradictory. These come from Armiya nos. 7 and 8, p. 56, the semiofficial Soviet account of the incident.

54. The description of Khrushchev’s old dacha comes from Sergo Mikoyan, who spent family vacations here in the fifties and sixties. Conversation with author, March 1994.

55. For a discussion of Soviet agricultural problems during this period, see Valery Boldin, Ten Years That Shook the World, p. 35. Also Zhores A. Medvedev, Gorbachev, pp. 103–12.

56. Eduard Shevardnadze, The Future Belongs to Freedom, pp. 23–26.

57. At a press conference on October 15, 1992, Gorbachev said this conversation had taken place in December 1979. In his memoirs (p. 37), Shevardnadze also places the conversation in Pitsunda but says it took place in the winter of 1984, shortly before Gorbachev became Soviet leader.

58. Boldin, p. 36.

59. Stavropolskaya Pravda, May 6, 1978. Quoted in Zhores Medvedev, p. 216.

60. XXV Congress of the CPSU. Official stenographic record. Politizdat, 1976. Vol. I, p. 186.

61. FBIS-SOV-79-251, p. D3.

62. Shevardnadze, p. 26. Interview, March 1994.

63. CPSU Central Committee resolution, June 23, 1980, TsKhSD. Lyakhovski, p. 113.

64. Lech Wałęsa, A Way of Hope, p. 44.

65. Roman Laba, The Roots of Solidarity, pp. 15–56.

66. Wałęsa, A Way of Hope, p. 70.

67. Neal Ascherson, The Book of Lech Wałęsa, p. 55. See also Jean-Yves Potel, Gdansk: La Mémoire ouvrière 1970–1980, pp. 156–59

68. Wałęsa, A Way of Hope, p. 117. For Borowczyk’s account of the strike, see Stan Persky and Henry Flam, The Solidarity Sourcebook, pp. 73–78. Solidarity, no. 11, August 30 1980 (the shipyard strike bulletin), interviewed the strike insti-gators. The Polish August (editor Oliver MacDonald) contains a full English translation of all the strike bulletins.

69. Persky and Flam, p. 74.

70. Interview with strike committee member Gregorz Obernikowicz, August 14, 1980.

71. Wałęsa, A Way of Hope, pp. 117–18.

72. Solidarity strike bulletin, no. 11.

73. Wałęsa, A Way of Hope, pp. 116–17.

74. There are several different versions of this speech. This one is from an exhaustive Polish account of the strike by Andrzej Drzycimski and Tadeusz Skutnik, Gdańsk Sierpie? ’80, p. 437. See also interview with Orianna Fallaci, March 1981, reprinted in Persky and Flam, p. 102.

75. Persky and Flam, p. 102.

76. Gierek, p. 169.

77. After the collapse of communism, the building was transformed into the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

78. Politburo transcript for August 15, 1980, in Zbigniew Włodek, ed., Tajne Dokumenty Biura Politycznego: PZPR a Solidarność 1980–1981, pp. 28–34.

79. Ibid., p. 29.

80. Gierek speech to Gdańsk shipyard workers on January 25, 1971. See article by Mieczysław Rakowski, Polityka, no. 12 (March 21, 1981).

81. Gierek, p. 160.

82. For Gierek’s suspicions of his Politburo colleagues, see Gierek, pp. 155–60. In their memoirs, both Kania and Jaruzelski deny that they were part of a plot to unseat the first secretary.

83. Włodek, p. 33.

84. August 1980: The Strikes in Poland, p. 11.

85. Files of the Summer ’80 task force, which remained in existence until early 1982, were published in Życie Warszawy, May 12, 1994, Ekstra, pp. 1–3. See also Jerzy Jachowicz, “Tajemnice Wojny z Narodem,” Gazeta Wyborcza (November 7, 1990), p. 1, and Włodek, p. 24.

86. Interview with Kuroń, August 17, 1980.

87. Politburo meeting, August 23, Włodek, pp. 54–57.

88. Gierek, p. 165.

89. Interview with Czesław Szalanski, Gierek’s personal electrician, July 1993.

90. Politburo meeting, August 26, Włodek, pp. 70–72.

91. Gierek’s report to the Politburo on his meeting with Ambassador Aristov, August 28, Włodek, p. 78. In his memoirs (p. 168) Gierek claims that Brezhnev called him on the direct Kremlin line, offering to “lend a hand” if he “grabbed the contras by the muzzle.” There is no other documentary evidence to support Gierek’s version of the telephone conversation with Brezhnev, and both Kania and Jaruzelski are skeptical that it ever took place. Gierek maintains that both men were present when the Soviet leader called and listened to the conversation, but Kania and Jaruzelski deny this. Since Gierek has proved to be a less than reliable witness on several other points, his memoirs should be treated with caution.

92. Stanislaw Kania, Zatrzymać Konfrontację, p. 32.

93. Ibid., p. 32. Kania’s account of Gierek’s actions during this period is supported by Jaruzelski and former KGB resident Vitaly Pavlov. In an interview in June 1993. Pavlov said that he had learned from confidential sources that Gierek wanted to raise the question of Soviet military assistance at the Politburo, but Kania was opposed.

94. ?ycie Warszawy. May 12, 1994, p. 1. See also Kania, p. 33.

95. Politburo meeting, August 29, Włodek, pp. 84–90. At the time there were widely reported rumors that a much more formidable figure, Central Committee secretary Stefan Olszowski, was also in favor of the use of force. See, for example, Timothy Garton Ash, We the People: The Revolution of 89, p. 62, or Neal Ascherson, The Polish August, p. 162. Olszowski may have used Kruczek as a stalking horse, but the Politburo record shows that he himself adopted a more moderate wait-and-see position, insisting only on “consultations” with the Kremlin and a vigorous propaganda campaign against the strikers.

96. Interview with Colonel Ryszard Kukliński, Kultura (Paris, April 1987), translated in Orbis, no. 32 (Philadelphia. Winter 1988), p. 14. According to Kukliński, a party-state leadership staff was established on August 24, 1980, and immediately began drawing up preparations for martial law.

97. The Soviet Politburo set up a commission under Suslov to follow events in Poland on August 25. Portions of the Suslov commission archives were declassified in August 1993. in connection with President Yeltsin’s visit to Poland, and published in booklet form. See Dokumenty Teczka Susłowa, pp. 12–25.

98. Politburo memorandum, August 28, 1980, quoted by Mark Kramer, “New Evidence on the Polish Crisis,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 5 (1995), P. 120.

99. A. Kemp-Welch, ed., The Birth of Solidarity, p. 140.

100. The scene at the gate is recorded in the films Man of Iron and Workers ’80.

101. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 465.

102. Interview with Kukliński in WP, September 27, 1992. p. A1. See also portrait of Kukliński by Ben Weiser in WP magazine, December 13, 1992.

103. Kukliński interview in Kultura. pp. 3–57, partially translated into English in Orbis 32 (1988), pp. 7–31. The Orbis issue (pp. 32–48) also contains extracts from Brzezinski’s White House diaries, covering the Polish crisis of December 1980. For Jaruzelski’s account of these events, see Wojciech Jaruzelski, Les Chaînes et le Refuge, pp. 237–39.

104. Brzezinski interview, April 1994. See also Jaruzelski, Les Chaînes et le Refuge, pp. 24–29.

105. Brzezinski, Orbis, p. 36.

106. Ibid., p. 37.

107. Kania, p. 84.

108. Jaruzelski, Les Chaînes et le Refuge, pp. 16, 242.

109. Ibid., p. 239. At a press conference in Warsaw on December 4, a Communist Party spokesman, Jozef Kłasa, said Polish Communists had the “right and duty” to seek help from other socialist states in the event of a “real threat to socialism” but would not make such a request “lightly.” WP, December 5, 1980, p. A20.

110. Deutschland Archiv, no. 3, March 1993, p. 336. See also Moskovskie Novosti, no. 48 (November 28, 1993), p. 12.

111. Kania, p. 88.

112. Honecker obituary, LAT, April 29, 1994.

113. Mlynář, p. 157.

114. Jaruzelski, Les Chaînes et le Refuge, p. 240.

115. Kania, p. 91. Vitaly Svietlov, a Soviet Communist Party official who served as interpreter, remembers the conversation slightly differently. He quotes Brezhnev as saying, “Okay, there will be no maneuvers. But if we see that they are overthrowing you, we will go in.” Interview, Gazeta Wyborcza, no. 291 (December 11, 1992), p. 14.

116. Kania, pp. 92–93.

117. Politburo minutes, October 29, 1980, TsKhSD.

118. Jaruzelski, Les Chaînes et le Refuge, p. 237. See also article by General Anatoly Gribkov, deputy chief of staff of the Warsaw Pact, in Voyenno-Istoricheskii Zhurnal (Moscow), no. 9 (September 1992), p. 55.

119. Jaruzelski, Les Chaînes et le Refuge, p. 241. Jaruzelski maintains that Brezhnev canceled the invasion plans because of opposition from Kádár and Ceauşescu but provides no evidence to support this conclusion.

120. Gribkov, p. 54.

121. Kukliński, Kultura (Paris, April 1987), pp. 25–26.

122. Politburo session, January 22, 1981, TsKhSD.

123. Report of Suslov commission on Poland, April 16, 1981, TsKhSD. Published in booklet form in Dokumenty Teczka Sustowa, p. 40.

124. Kukliński, Orbis (Winter 1988), p. 22.

125. Jaruzelski, Les Chaînes et le Refuge, p. 256.

126. Politburo session, April 9, 1981, TsKhSD. For the Polish leaders’ version of this meeting, see Jaruzelski, Les Chaînes et le Refuge, pp. 253–57, and Kania, pp. 120–23.

127. Dispatch from Moscow, WP, December 3, 1980, p. A21.

128. Information from East German archives. Moskovskie Novosti, no. 48 (November 28, 1993), p. 12.

129. Arbatov, p. 272.

130. Jaruzelski interview, August 1993. Jaruzelski points to this conversation with Ustinov as a veiled threat of Soviet military intervention.

131. Gorbachev interview, Trybuna (Warsaw, November 9, 1992), p. 2.

132. See, for example, Suslov’s comments at Politburo session, October 29, 1980, TsKhSD, or the Suslov commission report of April 16, 1981, published in Dokumenty Teczka Sus?owa, p. 38.

133. Politburo meeting, April 9, 1991, TsKhSD.

134. Kukliński, Orbis, p. 23.

135. Interview with KGB resident Pavlov, July 1993. Pavlov denied that the KGB recruited Polish citizens directly, but see Wojciech Jaruzelski, Stan Wojenny Dlaczego, pp. 346–49, and Kukliński, Orbis pp. 28–30.

136. Jaruzelski learned about this legend when he received a visit from one of his former neighbors after becoming president of Poland in 1989. Interview with author, August 1993.

137. Jaruzelski interview. See also Jaruzelski, Les Chaînes et le Refuge, pp. 41–66.

138. Jaruzelski interview.

139. Jaruzelski, Les Chaînes et le Refuge, p. 50.

140. Ibid., p. 116.

141. Ibid., p. 38.

142. Ibid., p. 279.

143. Miecyzsław Rakowski, Jak To Się Stało, p. 25.

144. Dokumenty Teczka Susłowa, p. 52.

145. Svietlov interview, Gazeta Wyborcza.

146. Jan Nowak, Wojna W Eterze, p. 255.

147. Janusz Rolicki, Edward Gierek Replika, p. 84.

148. Jaruzelski, Les Chaînes et le Refuge, p. 146.

149. See, for example, Soviet Politburo discussion, October 29, 1980, in which Gromyko describes Jaruzelski as a “reliable person” but expresses concern about his statement that “Polish soldiers will not fire on Polish workers.” TsKhSD.

150. Czesław Kiszczak, General Kiszczak mówi…, p. 129.

151. Jaruzelski, Les Chaînes et le Refuge, p. 291.

152. Rakowski, p. 25.

153. Jaruzelski, Les Chaînes et le Refuge, p. 272.

154. Interview with Polish government spokesman Jerzy Urban, “CIA had agent on Polish General Staff,” WP, June 4, 1986. See also Jaruzelski, Stan Wojenny Dlaczego, pp. 356–58.

155. Interview with former NSC staffer Richard Pipes, June 2, 1994. According to Pipes, the CIA held information provided by Kukliński so tightly that it never entered the bureaucratic “machine.” Even Secretary of State Alexander Haig was unaware of Kukliński’s existence. Pipes later learned that the CIA considered Kukliński’s warnings “extremely implausible.” The CIA has never provided a full explanation for its handling of the Kukliński affair.

156. Jaruzelski, Stan Wojenny Dlaczego, p. 404.

157. Jaruzelski interview, August 1993.

158. Kiszczak, pp. 129–30.

159. Dokumenty Teczka Susłowa, p. 78. Jaruzelski, Stan Wojenny Dlaczego, pp. 390–91.

160. Jaruzelski interview, August 1993.

161. Ibid.

162. Politburo session, December 10, 1981, TsKhSD, translated in Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 5 (1995), P. 137.

163. Jaruzelski interview, Gazeta Wyborcza, December 14, 1992, p. 13. No official transcript of this conversation has yet been published. The former KGB resident in Warsaw, Pavlov, claims that Suslov declined a request by Jaruzelski for military assistance in the event of difficulties in enforcing martial law. He quotes Suslov as saying, “We will help you materially, financially, and politically, but not with armed force.” Interview with Gazeta Wyborcza, February 20, 1993, p. 15.

164. Gazeta Wyborcza, December 14, 1992, p. 13.

165. Jaruzelski testimony to Sejm commission, March 9–10, 1993. Sąd Nad Autorami Stanu Wojennego, p. 235.

166. I have relied on the account of my WP assistant, Marek Olbrich, who was present for this final Solidarity session in Gdańsk.

167. Interview, WP, November 16, 1982, pp. A1–A14.

168. Bujak interview, Maciej Łopiński et al., Konspira, p. 5.

169. Wałęsa, A Way of Hope, pp. 207–10.

170. Dobbs, WP, January 17, 1982, p. A1; March 14, 1982, p. A1.

171. CPSU Politburo debate, January 14, 1982, translated in Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 5 (1995), P. 138.

172. Chazov, p. 148.

173. Vladimir Medvedev, p. 176.

174. Chazov, pp. 168–69.

175. Interview, December 1992.

176. Luba Brezhneva, The World I Left Behind, p. 162.

177. MN, no. 21, 1992, p. 16.

178. A copy of the report was leaked to Washington Post Moscow correspondent Dusko Doder (WP, August 3, 1983, p. A1). The full text of the Novosibirsk report was published in Tatiana Zaslavskaya, A Voice of Reform, pp. 158–83. Zaslavskaya described the background to the report in an interview with the author in August 1987.

179. Quoted in Henry Rowen and Charles Wolf (eds.), The Future of the Soviet Empire, p. 26.

180. Brzezinski, p. 36.

181. LAT, November 7, 1981, pp. 1, 8.

182. Peter Hebblethwaite and Ludwig Kaufmann, John Paul II, p. 108.

183. David Willey, God’s Politician, p. 30.

184. Hebblethwaite and Kaufmann, p. 34.

185. Interview with Szumiejko, Konspira, p. 208.

186. Politburo session, April 26, 1984, TsKhSD.

187. Ibid.




II: REVOLT OF THE MACHINES


1. Soviet Military Power (1981), p. 64.

2. Report of the Completion of the Factfinding Investigation Regarding the Shooting Down of Korean Airlines Flight 007 (International Civil Aviation Organization, 1993), p. 49. Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB—The Inside Story, p. 497.

3. Osipovich interview in Izvestia, January 24, 1991, translated in FBIS-SOV-91-025, p. 8. See also Seymour M. Hersh, “The Target Is Destroyed,” pp. 17–19.

4. Alexander Zuyev, Fulcrum, pp. 124–26.

5. Osipovich, op. cit.

6. ICAO annex, pp. 65–66.

7. Ibid., pp. 146, 149.

8. Ibid., p. 103.

9. Ibid., pp. 127–29.

10. Osipovich, p. 11.

11. ICAO annex, pp. 9–10.

12. ICAO report, pp. 56–59.

13. Osipovich, p. 13.

14. ICAO annex, p. 72.

15. Chazov, p. 181. Arbatov, p. 286.

16. See, for example, speech marking fiftieth anniversary celebrations of KGB, December 20, 1967, reprinted in Martin Ebon, The Andropov File, pp. 166–76.

17. Chazov, p. 175.

18. Ibid., p. 90.

19. S. F. Akhromeyev and G. M. Kornienko, Glazami Marshala i Diplomata, p. 49.

20. Politburo session, September 2, 1983, TsKhSD, published in Rossiyskie Vesti, August 25, 1992, pp. 1–4, translated in FBIS-SOV-92-167, p. 7.

21. Akhromeyev and Kornienko, pp. 45–46.

22. Rossiyskie Vesti, loc cit.

23. Izvestia, May 23, 1991, p. 6, translated in FBIS-SOV-91-104, p. 5.

24. Interview with Osipovich, Izvestia, January 25, 1991, p. 7, translated in FBIS-SOV-91-025, p. 12.

25. Izvestia, May 23, 1991.

26. NYT, September 11, 1983, p. A16.

27. Ronald Reagan, An American Life, p. 588.

28. Ibid., pp. 585–86.

29. Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i Reformi, vol. 1, p. 249.

30. Yegor Ligachev, Inside Gorbachev’s Kremlin, p. 70.

31. Nikolai Ryzhkov, Perestroika—Istoria Predatel’stv, p. 78.

32. Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i Reformi, vol. 1, p. 264.

33. Grishin testimony for the BBC television series The Second Russian Revolution. See also Anatoly S. Chernyayev, Shest’ Let s Gorbachevym, pp. 30–31, and Boldin, p. 59.

34. Roxburgh, The Second Russian Revolution, pp. 5–6. See also Ryzhkov, pp. 78–79. Ligachev (pp. 68–70) gives a slightly different version of events, but his testimony is colored by a wish to emphasize his own role in Gorbachev’s election.

35. See, for example, comments by Georgi Arbatov in The Second Russian Revolution.

36. Gorbachev address to former classmates, June 16, 1990, recorded by BBC for The Second Russian Revolution. Gorbachev also referred to this incident in a talk to American intellectuals in Washington in June 1990. (FBIS-SOV-90-107, p. 15.) See also Raisa Gorbachev, I Hope, pp. 4–5, and Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i Reformi, vol. 1, p. 265.

37. Boldin, pp. 62–63. See also Chernyayev, pp. 29–30.

38. MN, no. 7, February 11, 1993, p. 15.

39. Raisa Gorbachev, p. 110. See also Gail Sheehy, Gorbachev, p. 40.

40. Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow, p. 303.

41. Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i Reformi, vol. 1, p. 42.

42. Ibid., p. 38.

43. Ibid., p. 39.

44. Speech on Central TV, November 29, 1990.

45. Akhromeyev and Kornienko, pp. 61–62.

46. Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i Reformi, vol. 1, p. 66.

47. Zdenčk Mlynář, “Il Mio Compagno di Studi Mikhail Gorbachev,” L’Unità (Rome, April 9, 1985), p. 9.

48. Raisa Gorbachev, p. 66.

49. Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i Reformi, vol. 1, p. 157.

50. Ibid., p. 106.

51. Robert G. Kaiser, Why Gorbachev Happened, p. 76.

52. Interview, August 1993.

53. Interview, September 1993.

54. Reagan, An American Life, pp. 614–15.

55. George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 568.

56. Edward Jay Epstein, “Petropower and Soviet Expansion,” Commentary, (July 1986), p. 26.

57. Dobbs, “Oil’s Skid Fuels Gorbachev’s Reforms,” WP, May 28, 1990, pp. A1, 18.

58. Soviet Politburo transcript, October 29, 1981, TsKhSD.

59. Chernyayev, p. 40.

60. Interview with Abel Aganbegyan, BBC/Lapping.

61. Izvestia, June 8, 1990. According to former Prime Minister Ryzkhov, the decision was taken because of the “prevailing international situation and our military doctrine.”

62. See Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i Reformi, vol. 1, p. 285.

63. BBC, September 6, 1985, SU/8049/C/1.

64. Testimony of Vremya producer Eduard Sagalayev. See David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb, pp. 146–47. See also Boldin, pp. 110–11.

65. Boldin, p. 100.

66. BBC, September 9, 1985, SU/8051/C/1.

67. Marquis de Custine, Empire of the Czar, p. 437.

68. Chernyayev, p. 39.

69. BBC, September 6, 1985, SU/8049/C/1.

70. Interview with Gorbachev foreign policy adviser Chernyayev, July 1993. See also Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i Reformi, vol. 1, p. 276.

71. Ronald Reagan, Speaking My Mind, p. 247.

72. Presidential press conference, January 29, 1981.

73. Reagan, An American Life, p. 635.

74. Donald T. Regan, For the Record, pp. 308–09.

75. Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i Reformi, vol. 2, p. 14.

76. Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime. p. 280. See also Reagan, An American Life, pp. 636–37.

77. Testimony of school friend Yuliya Karagodina, see Remnick, pp. 155–56.

78. Interviews with NSC adviser Robert McFarlane, December 1993, and former State Department official Tom Simons. Jack Matlock, the former NSC specialist on the Soviet Union, also referred to the spurious Lenin book during the Princeton conference, February 26, 1993, Session IV.

79. Interview with college radio stations, September 9, 1985.

80. Televised address to the American people, January 16, 1984. The “evil empire” speech was delivered to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, on March 8, 1983.

81. McFarlane interview, December 1993.

82. Joan Quigley, What Does Joan Say?, pp. 126–30.

83. Robert and Suzanne Massie, Journey, p. 190.

84. Massie interview, March 1994.

85. Daniel Schorr, “Reagan Recants; His Path from Armageddon to Détente,” LAT, January 3, 1988. See also Cannon, pp. 289–91.

86. Martin Anderson, Revolution, pp. 82–83.

87. Televised address, March 23, 1983.

88. This exchange occurred at the Soviet Embassy on November 20. See Don Oberdorfer, The Turn: From the Cold War to a New Era, pp. 147–50.

89. Shultz testimony, Princeton conference, Session IV.

90. Address to the British Parliament, June 8, 1982.

91. Kaiser, p. 119.

92. Interview, July 1994.

93. Interview, March 1994.

94. Princeton conference, Session II.

95. NSC memorandum, November 12, 1985, provided to author by Robert McFarlane.

96. Boldin, pp. 95–96.

97. Dusko Doder and Louise Branson, Gorbachev—Heretic in the Kremlin, pp. 16–17.

98. Vestnik (Soviet Foreign Ministry publication), no. 1 (August 1987). Quoted by Oberdorfer, p. 162.

99. Chernyayev, p. 61.

100. Ibid., p. 70.

101. A. M. Aleksandrov-Agentov, Ot Kollontaia do Gorbacheva, p. 289.

102. Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i Reformi, vol. 2, p. 14.

103. Dobrynin, p. 586.

104. Chernyayev, Princeton conference, Session II.

105. Dyatlov interview, April 1992. The most detailed English-language accounts of the disaster are Grigori Medvedev, The Truth About Chernobyl and Piers Paul Read, Ablaze.

106. Grigori Medvedev, pp. 73–76.

107. Dyatlov interview.

108. Grigori Medvedev, p. 87.

109. Grigori Medvedev, p. 114.

110. Interview with author, see WP, August 21, 1988, p. A10.

111. Yuri Shcherbak, Chernobyl, a Documentary Story, pp. 152–54.

112. Interview with Shcherbak, The Second Russian Revolution, Part II, BBC-TV, March 1991.

113. Interview, April 1991.

114. Grigori Medvedev, p. 167.

115. Nigel Hawkes, The Worst Accident in the World, p. 122.

116. “Lies about Chernobyl,” Izvestia, April 24, 1992.

117. Grigori Medvedev, p. 204.

118. “Chernobyl, Symbol of Soviet Failure,” WP, April 26, 1991.

119. For atmosphere at Politburo meetings, see, for example, Boldin, pp. 162–65.

120. Chernyayev, pp. 87–88.

121. Secret Politburo documents on Chernobyl, Izvestia, April 17, 1993, pp. 1 and 5.

122. Chernyayev, pp. 89–90.

123. See, for example, memorandum to Gorbachev from Pravda science editor Vladimir Gubarev of May 16, 1986, published in Rodina (Moscow), no. 1 (1992).

124. Grigori Medvedev, p. ix.

125. Chernyayev, p. 88.

126. For a classic definition of the Great Game, see George N. Curzon, Russia in Central Asia.

127. For Soviet spetsnaz tactics, see B. V. Gromov, Ogranichenni Kontingent, pp. 198–205, and “Taini Afghanskoi Voini,” Armiya (Moscow), no. 10 (May 1992), pp. 50–51.

128. Muhamad Yousaf, The Bear Trap, pp. 174–77.

129. Lyachowski, p. 379.

130. Confidential memorandum to Brezh-nev from Institute of World Economy director Oleg Bogomolov. WP, April 26, 1988.

131. Bradsher, pp. 189–99.

132. Brzezinski interview with author, April 1994.

133. William Casey, The Secret War Against Hitler, p. xiv.

134. Joseph E. Persico, Casey, p. 7.

135. Natonal Security Decision Directive 166. See Robert Gates, From the Shadows, pp. 348–49.

136. See Shultz, pp. 691, 844, 866.

137. Yousaf, pp. 78–79.

138. Ibid., pp. 189–95. WP, July 19, 1992, p. A1.

139. Abramowitz interview with author, January 1994.

140. Interview with Michael Pillsbury, former Defense Department official, January 1994.

141. Ibid.

142. The agent was probably Dmitri F. Polyakov, a general in the Soviet Air Defense Command. He was executed after Aldrich Ames identified him to the KGB in 1986.

143. Chernyayev, p. 115.

144. Official Politburo minutes, November 13, 1986, TsKhSD; Chernyayev, p. 130.

145. Dobrynin, p. 442.

146. Chernyayev interview, July 1993.

147. Dobrynin, p. 443.

148. Chernyayev interview, July 1993.

149. For Soviet estimate of costs of Afghan War, see Ryzkhov, pp. 232–33, Chernyayev, p. 193, and Akhromeyev and Kornienko, p. 167.

150. Ryzkhov, p. 231.

151. Chernyayev, pp. 14, 25, 192.

152. See, for example, comments by Paul Nitze, Princeton conference, Session III.

153. Gromov, p. 219, Akhromeyev and Kornienko, p. 167.

154. Interview, July 1993.

155. Chernyayev, p. 120.

156. Interview, June 1993.

157. Gromov, p. 254.

158. The conversation took place on December 16, 1986. Andrei Sakharov, Memoirs, p. 615.

159. Pravda, May 28, 1992, p. 3.

160. Akhromeyev and Kornienko, p. 76.

161. Boldin, p. 167.

162. Chernyayev, p. 159.

163. Dobrynin, p. 625.

164. Boris Yeltsin, The Struggle for Russia, p. 179.

165. Boris Yeltsin, Against the Grain, pp. 18–22.

166. Lev Sukhanov, Tri Goda s Yeltsinym, p. 143.

167. Yeltsin, Struggle for Russia, p. 98.

168. Yeltsin, Against the Grain, p. 67.

169. Ibid., p. 156.

170. Izvestia, no. 2, 1989, TsKh KPSS, pp. 214–15.

171. Yeltsin, Against the Grain, p. 76.

172. Ibid., p. 144.

173. Boldin, p. 235.

174. Izvestia, TsKh KPSS, p. 241.

175. Yeltsin, Against the Grain, p. 147.

176. Chernyayev, p. 135.

177. Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i Reformi, vol. 1, p. 374.

178. Yeltsin, Against the Grain, pp. 153–54 Gorbachev maintains that Yeltsin’s condition was stable.

179. Moskovskaya Pravda, November 13, 1987.

180. Boris Yeltsin, Ispoved’ na Zadannuyu Temu, p. 178. This crucial quote was inexplicably dropped from the English version, Against the Grain. Gorbachev says this conversation took place before the Moscow party plenum.

181. Ligachev, pp. 83 and 264.

182. Ibid., pp. 256–60.

183. Interview, April 1993.

184. Interview, June 1993.

185. Interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, June 5, 1990. For additional details on Yakovlev’s family background, see profile by Bill Keller, NYT Magazine, February 19, 1989.

186. Speech marking hundredth anniversary of Khrushchev’s birth, Moscow Times, April 16, 1994.

187. Interview, June 1993.

188. Ibid.

189. Ligachev, p. 105.

190. Chernyayev, p. 204.

191. BBC, The Second Russian Revolution, Part II; BBC/Lapping interviews with Laptev, Starkov, and Belyayev. See also Roxburgh, pp. 83–87. For Ligachev’s self-serving account of the incident, see pp. 298–307.

192. Pravda, March 19, 1988.

193. Chernyayev, pp. 204–05.

194. Dobrynin, p. 737.

195. This account is reconstructed from Chernyayev and the Politburo transcript of the March 25 debate, published in Mikhail Gorbachev, Avant-Mémoires, pp. 211–30. See also Vitaly Vorotnikov, A Bylo Eto Tak, pp. 198–203.

196. Ligachev, pp. 304–08.

197. Chernyayev, pp. 208–12.

198. Interview with WP, May 18, 1988.

199. Gorbachev, Avant-Mémoires, p. 215.

200. Boldin, p. 169.

201. Chernyayev, p. 204. See also Vorotnikov, p. 234.

202. See, for example, Gorbachev press conference in Paris, October 6, 1985.

203. Interview with Niklus, October 1988.

204. Dobbs, “Gorbachev Plan Wins Support in Estonia,” WP, October 17, 1988, p. A1.

205. Ligachev, pp. 137–40. Interview with Yakovlev, June 1993.

206. Chernyayev, p. 250.

207. FBIS-SOV-99-236, December 8, 1988, pp. 11–19.

208. Chernyayev, p. 267.

209. Ryzkhov, p. 179; Chernyayev, p. 267.

210. WP, December 12, 1988, p. A1.

211. Politburo meeting, February 29, 1988, TsKhSD.




III: REVOLT OF THE NATIONS


1. Chernyayev interview, July 1991.

2. Interviews with author, Termez, February 6, 1989.

3. Abdur Rahman, quoted in Afghanistan, the Great Game, p. 3.

4. Quoted in WP, February 13, 1989, p. A1.

5. Gromov, pp. 327–28.

6. Ibid., p. 311.

7. Ibid., p. 258.

8. Ibid., pp. 312, 342.

9. Ibid., p. 341.

10. Ibid., p. 347.

11. Dobbs, “Soviet Voters’ Revolt Carries Hidden Dangers for Gorbachev,” WP, March 29, 1989, p. A18.

12. Videotape of demonstration by Georgian filmmaker Eldar Shengalaya.

13. Rodionov address to Congress, May 30, 1989 (FBIS-SOV-89-125-S), p. 8. For an outsider’s impressions of Rodionov, see Anatoly Sobchak, Tbiliskii Izlom, pp. 79–80, 108–10.

14. Sobchak, pp. 134, 70–71. Defense Ministry instructions to Rodionov are reprinted on p. 211.

15. For Rodionov’s version of the conversation, see Ibid., p. 130. For Patiashvili’s, see FBIS-SOV-89-125-S, p. 13.

16. Sobchak, p. 132.

17. This account is reconstructed from videotape of the demonstration and Sobchak, pp. 138–44.

18. In addition to Sobchak commission investigation, the report prepared by Physicians for Human Rights, “Bloody Sunday—Trauma in Tbilisi,” February 1990, was very helpful.

19. KGB transcript, Sobchak, p. 66.

20. WP, May 18, 1989, p. A38.

21. See Dobbs, “Gorbachev, Deng to Meet on Rough Roads to Reform,” WP, May 14, 1989, p. A1.

22. “Tale of Two Reformers,” Moscow’ Times, April 16, 1994, p. 8.

23. Patrick Tyler, “Deng’s Daughter Opens a Long-Shut Door,” NYT, January 13, 1995, p. A1.

24. Orville Schell, Mandate of Heaven, p. 137.

25. Harrison Salisbury, Tiananmen Diary, p. 161.

26. NYT, January 13, 1995, p. A1.

27. Testimony quoted in Yi Mu and Mark Thompson, Crisis at Tiananmen, p. 268.

28. Salisbury, p. 56.

29. Custine, p. 346 ff. This translation taken from Journey for Our Time, George Prior, 1980, pp. 154–56.

30. Speech by Leonid Sukhov, FBIS-SOV-89-112-S, p. 25.

31. Speech by Yuri Vlasov, FBIS-SOV-89-127-S, p. 34.

32. Speech by Yuri Karyakin, FBIS-SOV-89-142-S, p. 10.

33. FBIS-SOV-89-125-S, pp. 5–14.

34. Speech by Alexei Yablokov, FBIS-SOV-89-159-S, pp. 23–27.

35. Speech by Yuri Chernichenko, FBIS-SOV-89-134-S, pp. 18–20.

36. Boldin, p. 224.

37. Andrei Sakharov, Moscow and Beyond, 1986–1989, pp. 131–32.

38. Yakovlev interview, July 1993.

39. FBIS-SOV-89-142-S, p. 3. See also Anatoly Sobchak, For a New Russia, pp. 31–33, and Sakharov, Moscow and Beyond, pp. 133–35.

40. Sobchak, For a New Russia, p. 32.

41. Vorotnikov, pp. 239, 260–61.

42. Boldin, pp. 226–28.

43. Interview with Andrei Grachev, December 1989.

44. WP, June 7, 1989, p. A17.

45. Wałęsa, The Struggle and the Triumph, pp. 167 and 174.

46. WP, June 5, 1989, p. A1; “The Curtain Rises,” LAT, December 17, 1989, p. Q6.

47. Interview, July 1993.

48. Rakowski, p. 227.

49. Ibid., p. 228. See also official transcript of meeting, published in Kultura (Paris), no. 3 (1993), pp. 41–51.

50. “The Curtain Rises,” LAT, p. Q6.

51. Yan Kasimov, “Holiday-making in Crimea,” MN, no. 34, 1992, p. 10.

52. Title of editorial by Adam Michnik, Gazeta Wyborcza, July 4, 1989.

53. WP, July 7, 1989, p. A19.

54. Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i Reformi, vol. 2, p. 355.

55. WP, October 27, 1989, p. A22.

56. Interview, August 1993.

57. Interview, April 1993.

58. Chernyayev, pp. 294–95.

59. Ibid., p. 295.

60. Rakowski, p. 254.

61. Interview with Georgi Shakhnazarov, Gorbachev adviser, July 1993.

62. Rakowski, pp. 244–45.

63. Blaine Harden, “Refugees Force a Fateful Choice,” WP, January 14, 1990, p. A35.

64. Peter Wyden, Wall, p. 23.

65. Information from Checkpoint Charlie Museum.

66. Reuters dispatch from Berlin, August 18, 1995.

67. Wyden, p. 681.

68. Interview with Wałęsa adviser Bronisław Geremek, who was present at the conversation, July 1993.

69. BBC/Lapping, Fall of the Wall, Part II.

70. Reconstruction of events leading to fall of the wall by Der Spiegel, October 8, 1990. See also Elizabeth Pond, Beyond the Wall, pp. 1–3, 130–34.

71. Peter Ross Range, When Walls Come Tumbling Down.

72. BBC/Lapping, Fall of the Wall.

73. Time magazine, European edition (November 20, 1989), p. 15.

74. November 10, 1989. Complete text reprinted in Harold James and Marla Stone, eds., When the Wall Came Down, pp. 46–49.

75. Eyewitness account of former Soviet diplomat Igor Maksimichev, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, November 10–11, 1993.

76. Der Spiegel 41 (1990), pp. 104–09.

77. Nezavisimaya Gazeta, November 10, 1993.

78. Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i Reformi, vol. 2, p. 412.

79. Der Spiegel 40 (1995), pp. 66–81.

80. Boldin, p. 143.

81. Kochemasov interview, MN, November 29, 1992, p. 12.

82. Chernyayev, p. 304.

83. East German Communist Party archives. Quoted in Hannes Adomeit, Post-Soviet Affairs (July-September 1994), p. 215.

84. Kochemasov, op. cit.

85. BBC/Lapping interview with presidential adviser Yuri Osipyan.

86. BBC/Lapping interview.

87. Kochemasov, op cit. See also Yakovčev.

88. Nezavisimaya Gazeta, November 10, 1993.

89. Ibid.

90. “Dubĉek Returns; Prague Spring Reformer Cheered in Wenceslas Square,” WP, November 25, 1989, p. A1.

91. Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i Reformi, vol. 2, p. 353.

92. Interview, August 1988.

93. See Alexander Dubĉek, Hope Dies Last, pp. 8–73 passim.

94. Interview, August 1988. See Dobbs, “The Czech’s Long Dissent; Playwright Vaclav Havel, 20 years after the Soviet Invasion,” WP, August 22, 1988, p. C1.

95. Mlynář, Nightfrost in Prague, p. 146.

96. Dubĉek, p. 178.

97. Dobbs, “The Autumn of Alexander Dubĉek,” WP, August 17, 1988, p. A12.

98. Dobbs, “The Czech’s Long Dissent.”

99. “Police Riot Sticks Spawn a Revolution,” WP, January 14, 1990, p. A39.

100. WP, November 25, 1989, p. A1.

101. David Pryce-Jones, The Strange Death of the Soviet Empire, p. 335.

102. “A Brutal Mistake Sparks a Revolution,” LAT, December 17, 1989, p. Q12.

103. Dobbs, “Romania’s Cult of the Personality,” Guardian (London, June 20, 1980).

104. Chernyayev, p. 81; Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i Reformi, vol. 2, p. 397.

105. Transcript of Political Executive Committee meeting, published in România Libera, January 10, 1990.

106. Eyewitness testimony to author, December 1989.

107. Edward Behr, Kiss the Hand You Cannot Bite, p. 17.

108. Transcript of trial, quoted in John Sweeney, The Life and Evil Times of Nicolae Ceausescu, p. 225.

109. Ibid., p. 217.

110. Author’s contemporaneous notes. See Dobbs, “Dictator’s Dream Took Harsh Toll,” WP, January 5, 1990, p. A1.

111. Interview with former NKVD executioner Vladimir Tokaryev, Observer (London, October 6, 1991), p. 1.

112. 82nd Congress. The Katyn Forest Massacre, p. 1661.

113. Ibid., p. 1660.

114. Interview with Dmitri Volkogonov, January 1995. See also Komsomolskaya Pravda, October 15, 1992, p. 3.

115. Yeltsin provided Poland with copies of Katyn documents in October 1992. For facsimiles and English translation, see Wojciech Materski et al., Katyn: Documents of Genocide.

116. “The Katyn Documents: Politics and History,” RFE/RL research, vol. 2, no. 4 (January 22, 1993), p. 27.

117. Joint memorandum from Shevardnadze, Falin, and Kryuchkov, in author’s possession. See also Materski and RFE/RL, “The Katyn Documents,” pp. 28–29.

118. Interview, January 1993. See Dobbs, “Gorbachev’s Veracity Challenged,” WP, January 22, 1993, p. A23.

119. In interview, Boldin said he showed Gorbachev original copies of the secret Soviet-German protocols in July 1987. Gorbachev continued to insist that the originals could not be found.

120. Statement to author, January 1993.

121. Interview, June 1993.

122. Falin memorandum, February 22, 1990, quoted in RFE/RL, “The Katyn Documents,” p. 29.

123. Official Tass statement, April 15, 1990.

124. Yeltsin, Struggle for Russia, p. 291.

125. Yeltsin, Against the Grain, pp. 157–58.

126. Ibid., p. 164.

127. Sukhanov, pp. 145 and 150.

128. Ibid., p. 146.

129. Ibid., p. 153.

130. Mikhail Heller and Aleksandr Nekrich, Utopia in Power, p. 251.

131. Author’s contemporary notes. “Yeltsin wins presidency of Russia,” WP, May 30, 1990, p. A1.

132. Dobbs, “Yeltsin Presses for Sovereign Russia,” WP, May 31, 1990, p. A1.

133. Yeltsin, Struggle for Russia, p. 18. For a slightly different account of the conversation, see Sukhanov, p. 269.

134. Yeltsin, Struggle for Russia, pp. 20–21.

135. Viktor Alksnis interview with Sovietskaya Rossiya, reported in “Conservative calls on Gorbachev to get tough,” WP, November 22, 1990, p. A62.

136. Petrakov interview, February 1991.

137. Shevardnadze, p. 212.

138. Ibid., p. 197.

139. Ibid., pp. 223–26.

140. “Shevardnazde quits as foreign minister,” WP, December 21, 1990, p. A1.

141. Quoted in Kaiser, pp. 388–89.




IV: REVOLT OF THE PARTY


1. Shevardnadze, p. 215.

2. Yevgenia Albats, The State Within a State, pp. 279–80.

3. Radio interview with coup investigator, FBIS-SOV-92-024, p. 61.

4. Vadim Bakatin, “Neizbezhnaya Otstavka,” Znamya (Moscow), no. 12 (1991), pp. 216–19.

5. Albats, p. 277.

6. Politburo debate, April 2, 1981, TsKhSD.

7. Vadim Bakatin, Izbavleniye ot KGB, p. 46.

8. Albats, p. 24.

9. Bakatin, Izbavleniye ot KGB, p. 44.

10. Ibid., p. 50.

11. Interview, August 1993.

12. Oleg Kalugin, The First Directorate, pp. 243–44.

13. V. Stepankov and E. Lisov, Kremlyovskii Zagovor, pp. 53–54.

14. Interview with Kryuchkov’s wife, Moskovskaya Pravda, August 22, 1992 (FBIS USR-92-119), p. 10. See also Andrew and Gordievsky, p. 446, and Leonid Shebarshin, Iz Zhizni Nachalnika Razvedki, pp. 7–9.

15. Gorbachev interview with Yuri Shchekochikhin, Literaturnaya Gazeta, December 4, 1991 (FBIS-SOV-91-233), p. 26.

16. Chernyayev, p. 484.

17. The author was a witness to these events. See “Soviet troops seize Lithuania’s TV station” and “Lithuania under Soviet military curfew,” WP, January 13, 1991, p. A1, and WP, January 14, p. A1, p. A13.

18. Interview with Lithuanian Procurator General Paulaskas, Izvestia, January 14, 1992 (FBIS-USR-92-013), p. 28.

19. Interviews with victims’ relatives, January 1991. See also official statement by Lithuanian Deputy Procurator General Norkunas, February 18, 1991.

20. Interview, January 13, 1991.

21. Stepankov and Lisov, pp. 272–79.

22. Boltunov, p. 188.

23. Norkunas statement.

24. Radio conversation intercepted by Lithuanian authorities. See Literaturnaya Gazeta (Moscow, July 10, 1991), p. 3.

25. Komsomolskaya Pravda, August 28, 1991, p. 4. (FBIS-SOV-91-171), p. 35.

26. Remnick, p. 238.

27. Interview, January 13, 1991, 7:00 a.m.

28. Interview, May 1990. See Landsbergis profile, “Unlikely revolutionary leader Lithuanian drive,” WP, May 7, 1990, p. A13.

29. Interview, May 1990.

30. Ibid.

31. WP, January 17, 1991, p. A18.

32. WP, January 14, 1991, p. A16.

33. Remnick, p. 389.

34. WP, January 15, 1991, p. A1.

35. Literaturnaya Gazeta (July 15, 1992), p. 12. (FBIS-USR-92-097), p. 117.

36. Stepankov and Lisov, p. 271.

37. MN, no. 3 (1991), p. 1.

38. Chernyayev, p. 411.

39. New Times, no. 12 (1992), p. 12. In interview in August 1993, Gorbachev said he never had any intention of following the “advice” of Yakovlev and Ignatenko, adding that his presence was needed in Moscow.

40. Vneshekombank report. Quoted in Stepankov and Lisov, p. 304.

41. “Republics assume Kremlin debt,” WP, October 30, 1991, p. A31.

42. Moskovskie Novosti, no. 46 (November 17, 1991), p. 9. “Much of Soviet gold is sold,” WP, September 28, 1991, p. A1.

43. Copies of export licenses, provided by Istok, are in author’s possession. The Russian press ran numerous articles on the Harvest ’90 scandal, notably Izvestia, October 21–26, 1992, and Trud, December 30, 1992.

44. Resolution to dismiss charges in Istok case, Russian ministry of Internal Affairs, July 4, 1994, in author’s possession. Tarasov subsequently returned to Russia as a People’s deputy with parliamentary immunity from prosecution. See also statement by Russian prosecutor-general Nikolai Marakov to Supreme Soviet, June 24, 1993.

45. Makarov statement.

46. Interview, September 1992. See Dobbs and Coll, “Ex-Communists are scrambling for Quick Cash,” WP, February 1, 1993, p. A1.

47. Stepankov and Lisov, pp. 302–03.

48. Interview with Soviet prosecutor Sergei Aristov, March 1993.

49. Komsomolskaya Pravda, January 22, 1992.

50. Interview, January 1993.

51. Stephen Handelman, Comrade Criminal, p. 372.

52. Interview, September 1993.

53. Yeltsin, Struggle for Russia, pp. 224–34.

54. Veselovsky memorandum, September 24, 1991, leaked to Komsomolskaya Pravda.

55. Quoted in Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts, p. 39.

56. BBC/Lapping, Death of Yugoslavia, Program 1.

57. BBC videotape of meeting.

58. Former Mayor of Belgrade Bogdan Bogdanovi?, quoted by Stephen Engelberg, NYT Magazine, September 1, 1991.

59. Slavoljub Đjukić, Izme?u Slave i Anateme, p. 187.

60. Interview, Vukovar, July 1993. This section is based on a reporting trip to Yugoslavia and Croatia for a series about the legacy of communism. See Dobbs, “Yugoslavia Maps a Road to Ruin,” WP, September 5, 1993, p. A1.

61. Interview, Zagreb, July 1993.

62. See, for example, Roger Cohen, “In the Balkans, Doing Well by Waging War,” NYT “Week in Review,” March 26, 1995, p. 4.

63. Laura Silber and Allen Little, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation, pp. 140 and 146.

64. BBC/Lapping. Death of Yugoslavia, Program 3.

65. Interview with former Borovo managing director Vladimir Husar, Zagreb, July 1993.

66. Mary Battiata, “In Croatia, Time Heals No Ethnic Wounds,” WP, July 13, 1991, p. A1.

67. Yakovlev interview, August 22, 1991.

68. Yeltsin, Struggle for Russia, p. 39; interview with Gorbachev, BBC Second Russian Revolution, final program.

69. Stepankov and Lisov, p. 85.

70. Interview with inventor, Komsomolskaya Pravda, January 28, 1992, p. 2. (FBIS-SOV-92-019, p. 7.)

71. Stepankov and Lisov, p. 138; “During the Soviet coup, who held nuclear control?” WP, August 23, 1992, p. A1.

72. “Physician Tells of Pre-Coup Events at Foros,” Izvestia, September 24, 1991 (FBIS-SOV-91-185).

73. Stepankov and Lisov, p. 9; Gorbachev press conference, Moscow, August 22, 1991.

74. Gorbachev press conference; interview with Raisa Gorbachev, Trud, September 3, 1991; Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i Reformi, vol. 2, p. 558.

75. Mikhail Gorbachev, The August Coup, p. 19.

76. Boldin, p. 26.

77. Stepankov and Lisov, p. 13.

78. Chernyayev diary, Izvestia, September 30, 1991.

79. Gorbachev, August Coup, p. 21. Stepankov and Lisov, p. 14.

80. Gorbachev, August Coup, p. 23.

81. Stepankov and Lisov, p. 15; extracts from prosecutor’s report, Novaya Yezhednevnaya Gazeta, August 6, 1993, p. 3; TV interview with Raisa Gorbachev, FBIS-SOV-91-194, p. 32.

82. Stepankov and Lisov, p. 89.

83. Prosecutor’s report, Novaya Yezhednevnaya Gazeta, July 30, 1993, p. 3.

84. Ibid.

85. Stepankov and Lisov, p. 90.

86. Prosecutor’s report.

87. Stepankov and Lisov, p. 90.

88. Yeltsin, Struggle for Russia, p. 54.

89. Khasbulatov memoirs, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, August 19, 1992, pp. 1–3.

90. Aleksandr Lebed, Za Derzhavu Obidno, p. 381.

91. Yeltsin, Struggle for Russia, p. 58. Author was present at the maneuvers.

92. Ibid., p. 58.

93. Komsomolskaya Pravda, August 19, 1992, p. 1.

94. Yeltsin, Struggle for Russia, pp. 42 and 61.

95. Yeltsin press conference, attended by author.

96. Yeltsin, Struggle for Russia, p. 68.

97. In presence of author.

98. Chernyayev diary, Izvestia, September 30, 1991.

99. Stepankov and Lisov, pp. 139–43.

100. Chernyayev, p. 485; Chernyayev diary.

101. Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i Reformi, vol. 2, p. 566.

102. Gorbachev, August Coup, pp. 91–92.

103. Yazov testimony, Izvestia, October 10, 1991, p. 7.

104. Stepankov and Lisov, pp. 132–33.

105. Ibid., p. 161.

106. Lebed, pp. 383–411.

107. Sergei Grigoriev, Istina Momenta, p. 190.

108. Ibid., pp. 21–26.

109. Stepankov and Lisov, p. 175.

110. WP, August 21, 1991, p. 24.

111. Grigoriev, pp. 49–50, 200.

112. Yeltsin, Struggle for Russia, p. 86.

113. Stepankov and Lisov, pp. 171–73.

114. Interview with Literaturnaya Gazeta, CDSP, vol. XLIII, no. 37 (August 28, 1991), p. 20.

115. Khasbulatov memoirs Rossiiskaya Gazeta, August 19, 1992.

116. Grigoriev, p. 33.

117. Yu. Kazarin and B. Yakovlev, eds., Smert’ Zagovora, p. 110.

118. Moscow magazine (November–December 1991).

119. Victoria Bonnell, ed., Russia at the Barricades, p. 205.

120. Interview with the prosecutor general, quoted in Krasnoye ili Beloye?, pp. 124–29. See also Kazarin and Yakovlev, pp. 94–97.

121. Yeltsin, Struggle for Russia, pp. 92–93.

122. Grachev interview, Izvestia, September 4, 1991. See also Grachev and Gromov testimony to prosecutors, MN, no. 29 (1994), p. 8; Stepankov and Lisov, pp. 174–76.

123. Stepankov and Lisov, pp. 183–84.

124. Interview with Raisa Gorbachev, quoted in Krasnoye ili Beloye?, pp. 141–42.

125. Chernyayev diary.

126. Quoted in Stuart H. Loory et al., Seven Days That Shook the World, p. 148.

127. Gorbachev press conference, August 22, 1991.

128. Chernyayev interview, July 1993.

129. Chernyayev diary.

130. N. Gulbinskii and M. Shakina, Afganistan, Kreml’, Lefortovo, p. 135.

131. Gorbachev press conference, August 22, 1991.

132. Copy of document in author’s possession.

133. CNN video film.

134. Shakhnovsky interview, May 1992.

135. Mishin interview, May 1992.

136. Smirnov testimony to Russian Constitutional Court, July 29, 1992.

137. MN (September 1, 1991).

138. CNN video.

139. Interview with CC official, August 1991.

140. Den’ (January 19, 1992), p. 1.

141. Interview with Akhromeyev family, June 1992.

142. Stepankov and Lisov, p. 239.

143. Sovietskaya Rossiya, September 28, 1991, P. 6.

144. Interview, June 1992.

145. Stepankov and Lisov, p. 236.




EPILOGUE


1. Vreme (Belgrade, September 23, 1991), p. 7.

2. Interview with Vreme military correspondent Miloš Vasi?, August 1994.

3. Interview with SDS leader Radovan Karadžić, September 1991.

4. Borisav Jovi?, Posledni Dani SFRJ, pp. 349. 386.

5. Author’s notes. See Dobbs, “Bosnian Republic Resembles Tinderbox Waiting to Explode,” WP, September 24, 1991, p. A1.

6. John Kifner, “With Little, Bosnians Sharpen Fighting Skills,” NYT, December 5, 1993. See also Tom Gjelten, Sarajevo Daily, pp. 75–76, and captured JNA documents published by State Commission for War Crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulletins no. 3 and 4, March-April 1993.

7. Interview, September 23, 1991.

8. Oslobođenje, Sarajevo, September 23, 1991, p. 3.

9. Chuck Sudetic, NYT, November 21, 1991, p. A1.

10. Dusan Stojanovic, AP dispatch, November 19, 1991.

11. Blaine Harden, “Serbs Blamed for Mass Croatian Grave,” WP, January 26, 1993.

12. Interview, Vinkovci, July 1993.

13. UN Security Council Document, S/25274, February 10, 1993, p. 29.

14. Harden.

15. Don Oberdorfer, “Despite Accurate Warning, U.S. Failed to Act on Balkans,” WP, July 2, 1993, p. A1.

16. Interviews with former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, December 1995.

17. Testimony to House Armed Services Committee, May 25, 1993, H201–11.

18. Interview with former U.S. ambassador to Belgrade Warren Zimmermann, March 1995.

19. Jovi?, p. 349.

20. Interview with Scowcroft. See also Dobbs, “Bosnia Crystallizes U.S. Post-Cold War Role,” WP, December 3, 1995, p. A1.

21. Interview, December 1995.

22. Jovi?, pp. 395–96.

23. Ibid., p. 295.

24. “Ukraine seen going independent,” WP, December 2, 1991, p. A1.

25. Andrei Grachev, Kremlyovskaya Khronika, p. 339.

26. Yeltsin, Struggle for Russia, p. 112. See also Fred Hiatt and Margaret Shapiro, “Snubs Helped Seal Old Union’s Fate,” WP, December 14, 1991, p. A1.

27. WP interview with Kozyrev, December 1991, see Hiatt and Shapiro, ibid.

28. Kozyrev interview. See also Grachev, P. 343.

29. Grachev, p. 344.

30. Ibid., p. 352.

31. Yakovlev interview, July 1993.

32. “Gorbachev: The Final Hours,” ABC Prime time Live, December 26, 1991; Grachev, p. 390.

33. Grachev, p. 389.




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Acclaim for

MICHAEL DOBBS’s

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER







“Combines the astonished gaze of an eyewitness with the deeper knowledge of a historian, providing a vivid, insightful account of what happened.”

    

—The New York Times












“[Dobbs] weaves this complex story together with the kind of fascinating details and snippets of conversation that constantly offer new insights into seemingly familiar events.”

    

—Los Angeles Times












“No one knows this story better…. Combining the energy of a master reporter and the care of a real historian, Dobbs focuses on the crucial moments of imperial collapse. He seems to have been on every scene and in every archive.”

    

—David Remnick












“Dobbs has written a straight-ahead narrative that makes good use of the documents coming out of newly opened East bloc archives.”

    

—Time












“Michael Dobbs seems to have been everywhere at once…. His superior skills as a reporter and storyteller alone would be enough to make a gripping account. But he goes deeper, sifting through former officials’ memoirs and long-sealed archives to produce a significant history, rich in the political and human drama of one of the twentieth century’s landmark events.”

    

—David Shipler









About the Author


Michael Dobbs was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has spent much of his journalistic career reporting from Communist countries: from 1977 to 1980 as a special correspondent based in Yugoslavia for the Washington Post, the London Guardian, and the BBC; and from 1981 to 1995 as the Washington Post’s bureau chief in Warsaw and Moscow (with an intervening stint in Paris). He is currently a diplomatic reporter for the Post.

In addition to having received the Overseas Press Club award for interpretation of foreign news in 1990 and a National Press Club award for best diplomatic reporting in 1995, Dobbs has held fellowships at the Russian Research Center at Harvard University and at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife and three children.




Copyright


FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, JANUARY 1998

Copyright © 1996 by Michael Dobbs

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1997.

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Knopf edition as follows:

Dobbs, Michael.

Down with Big Brother: the fall of the Soviet empire / by Michael Dobbs.

— 1st ed.

p. cm.

1. Soviet Union—Politics and government—1953–1985. 2. Soviet Union—Politics and government—1985–1991. I. Title.

DK274.D63  1997

947.084—dc20  96-21607

eISBN: 978-0-307-77316-6

Random House Web address: http://www.randomhouse.com/