Michael Dobbs - Down with Big Brother

“What comrades?” he asked sharply. “I am not expecting anyone.” 73

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.” 74

“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?” 75

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.” 76But 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.” 77

“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.” 78

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!” 79

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?