Michael Dobbs - Down with Big Brother

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.