Down with Big Brother (44 page)

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.
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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.
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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.

O
F 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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.

T
HE 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.
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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.”
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