Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

For the first time since 1941 the Christian Maple ousted the Soviet New Year Fir. Few were unmoved by the Kremlin’s sudden admission of the invalidity of the Secret Protocol.

Formal Baltic independence must be very near, despite threat of economic sanctions, blockade, even Red Army intervention. Nevertheless, Soviet military, hitherto stiff, with jungle-cat menace, were attempting joviality, joining the rest of us at television or bar-side radio. Estonians, too, were relinquishing suet impenetrability, jerking out sardonic jokes about communism and capitalism as techniques, rival but identical, to deceive, impoverish and boast.

Censorship lapsing, new dailies appeared, and old-style politicians emerged from cellars, sewers, barges, woods, into crisp, snowy air. Ideas were mangled in cafés, where we heard of the deaths of Irving Berlin and Samuel Beckett, the American President’s dislike of broccoli, the demise of apartheid, British acid-house raves, then, from a dozen capitals, the announcement that the Cold War had ended.

Notwithstanding this, my dreams, drained of sexuality, were of Soviet Terror, bears with swollen eyes and razor claws, cut-throat gangs, for Russians had invaded Lithuania, were attacking Vilnius, corpses piling around Television Tower. Another report, sedulously detailed though untrue, was of the assassination of the Latvian Minister of the Interior.

Tallinn remained quiet, though purposeful. In January, with Baltic revolts crushed, Gorbachev unexpectedly flew to Vilnius, watched by immense crowds, utterly silent but, he would have observed, not apathetic. That night he broadcast, emphatic but ambiguous. ‘My fate is linked with the Baltic Republics. I pledge myself to resolve certain mutual obligations and explore the rights of secession.’

This was largely ridiculed by nationalists as pap for the United Nations and the European Union, but before departure he aroused some street applause, not noisy but hopeful.

Expectation was all, a dusty jewel emitting random flashes. By summer, with Marxist obdurates abstaining or fled, the Supreme Estonian Soviet, to crashing cheers and in collusion with Lithuania, declared the restoration of full independence. Red dissidents attempted a march but were howled off by the populace, supported by the KGB itself, which forthwith abandoned its prisons and offices, their doors already painted ‘Sty for Sale’. The giant watch-tower zone on the Gulf of Finland bloodlessly surrendered.

For two tense days we awaited reprisals from Red battalions still stationed at ports, air bases, industrial centres, but they stayed in barracks. Back in Moscow and in another mood, Gorbachev threatened economic sanctions, withdrawal of supplies, even bombs, but hesitated at hostile reactions from the United Nations.

Tallinn, Tartu, Narva hoisted national banners, and no commissar or general stirred. History was pausing only for fresh breath. Popular fronts were swearing to defend the Baltic Way, the international press repeating Savisor’s invective against what he had long defended but now denounced as ‘the Criminal and Unlawful 1939 Pact’.

Yet, despite Red Army immobility, rumours of coercion persisted. Frontier conflicts, long-range bombers assembling outside Leningrad, Kremlin admission of bloodshed at Baku, where ethnic dissent fermented secession movements throughout Azerbaijan, all incited nationalists and ex-communists to coalesce, with reckless demands for a congress of fifteen Soviet Republics, then declared the formation of a Baltic Council, briefed to demand the removal of all Soviet troops and the ratification of Baltic independence.

Ignoring this, Moscow confessed ‘strategic withdrawals’ in East Germany and Poland, though, more prominently, reporting drug-smuggling in Florida, persecution of Cubans seeking protection from Castro, British and Israeli subsidies for Kashmiri communal hatreds, Manchester prison riots.

At a Kremlin warning of a Red Putsch in the Baltic, thousands from the three republics massed on their Russian borders, had already formed the Great Chain, unarmed but determined, hands clasping in the intoxication of cohesion and victory.

Without deliberate decision, still believing myself neutral, I found myself amiably conscripted by a carload of young Estonians, drunk but eager to reach the Chain. Amongst faces bricklike, clerkish, sentimental, I had my hand held tight by a drowsy girl, resigned, without much caring, to whatever might come.

Under blue, empty sky we faced a treeless horizon. Patriotic songs were everywhere, liquor and unlikely stories swapped, good cheer abounding.

‘You’ll need these shoulders. Don’t break ’em.’

This from a girl, athletic in rust-coloured corduroy, yellow scarf, sailor’s round cap; high-cheeked, pallid, with serious grey-blue eyes. Her rough speech would have drawn condescension from High Folk.

She grasped my arm. ‘I’m Eeva.’ Reluctantly, I surrendered my own name, fearing suspicion. But her eyes went shiny with incredulity, astonishment. She almost gasped. ‘But you’re famous!’

Surely some laborious native humour, but before she could explain her sturdy self-possession went shy, and she hurried into introduction to her friends. They were friendly, some grateful for my imaginary deeds, saluting my spurious repute. Puzzled, I smiled, accepting drink, little cakes. An old woman, leathery, runic, kerchiefed, paused before us and, as twilight spread and many settled down to rest, she thrilled me with words heard so often at the Manor. ‘Good night. Sleep with angels.’

All was warm and starlit. Thousands slept on grass and scrub, volunteers kept guard. Transistors awoke us with news that Russia was silent, surely awed by the Great Chain. Coffee was handed me from all sides, Eeva superintending delivery of bread. Wary yet glad of the queer respect awarded me – as if John Wayne, not quite sober, had roughed my hair and growled, ‘You’ll do!’ – I was also cautious of her. She might be informer, provocateur, drug vendor, though I doubted it.

The Moscow Central Committee was soon to abandon one-party rule and had acknowledged the independence of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia. There followed what I had never expected to witness, the dissolution of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc, from Tallinn to Sofia, Lübeck to Warsaw, Moscow to Prague and Bucharest, a wreckage from a second Great Wrath. In this flush of excitement I enrolled as an Estonian citizen, though still aimless, trapped, despite the fervour and rhetoric, in an impoverished scrap of the New Europe, itself united to capitalize on Russian decline and to resist American overlordship. Party ruthlessness would, I suspected, be replaced by factional turmoil, mafia cartels, in high streets of strip bars, massage parlours, skinhead knights, impoverished student prostitutes. Overgrown cemeteries, shabby cinemas, bandstands, railway stations, neglected parks, were swarming with vivacious political auctioneers, the paraphernalia of electoral partisans, and young amateurs with paintbrushes and swabs, attacking grime and rot as gaily as they had Intourist centres, the Jean-Paul Marat factory, the granite, arrogant Catherine the Great memorial, and the archives of Spetssluzhba , the regional KGB.

Parks, we were promised, would no longer be lopped, trimmed, squared for bureaucratic tidiness, shores would be cleansed of oil-shale pollution from Soviet thermal power. Dances and a concert celebrated the renaming of Tractor Street to Street Konstantin Päts. Children cleared Tartu Mante trees of ivy. Extra trams shortened queues. More slowly, but methodically, electricity, oil, shipping were being retrieved. Pending elections, Savisor widened the franchise.

Still cautious, I yearned unrealistically not for an efficient component of European Union and NATO but for restoration of the old German Free Cities, the solid, balanced culture evoked by the young Thomas Mann. This was pipedream, but much was propitious. Russian was no longer being enforced in schools and civil service. Indigenous skills were already being subsided, not only agriculture, farming, navigation but biochemistry, laser-power cybernetics, chemistry. European combines were competing to invest in vast Estonian peat reserves, pipeline joints, welds, blast furnaces.