Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (22 page)

On the morning of August 20, I met with O. D. Baklanov, who had been given the same assignment. We decided to work together…We created a working group with representatives from various agencies and organized the collection and analysis of data regarding the situation. This working group ended up preparing two reports, one by 9 
P.M.
on August 20 and the other by the morning of August 21, both of which were discussed at the Committee meeting.

In addition to this, on August 21, I worked on the preparation of G. I. Yanaev’s address to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. On the evening of August 20 and the morning of August 21, I participated in the Committee meetings. To be precise, I participated in the proceedings that took place in the presence of invited parties. These were the activities that I participated in on August 20–21 of the present year. Additionally, on August 20, at approximately 3
P.M.
, at his request, I met with D. T. Yazov at the Ministry of Defense. He told me that the situation was growing complicated and expressed doubts regarding the plan’s success. After our conversation, he asked me to accompany him to a meeting with Deputy Minister of Defense General V. A. Achalov, where they were developing a plan for taking over the building of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR. He listened to V. A. Achalov for three minutes, only learning about the composition of forces and the projected duration of operations. I did not ask anyone any questions.

Why had I come to Moscow on my own initiative—no one had summoned me from Sochi—and begun working with the Committee? I was, after all, certain that this venture would be defeated and, upon my arrival in Moscow, felt even more sure of this. Since 1990, I had been convinced, just as I am convinced today, that our country is headed toward ruin. Soon, it will be dismembered. I was searching for a way to loudly declare this. I believed that my participation in facilitating the work of the Committee and the consequent involvement with these proceedings would provide me with the opportunity to speak about this openly. Though it may sound unconvincing and naïve, this is the case. There were no ulterior motives for my decision…

Letter to USSR President M. S. Gorbachev, August 22, 1991

—

Gorbachev is important, but the Fatherland is more important still! We must at least leave our trace so that history may show that there was resistance to the death of such a great state. Let history decide who was right and who is to blame…

From a notebook, August 1991

N.’S ACCOUNT

This was a rare witness. From of the holy of holies—the Kremlin, the chief citadel of communism. A witness to the life that was hidden from us, its inner workings as tightly guarded as the lives of Chinese emperors. The gods on Earth. It took a long time to convince him to speak to me.

N. requested that his name and position remain confidential due to his role in the Kremlin. Initially, he only agreed to be interviewed over the phone.

—

…What does history have to do with it? You want the facts “fried up”? Served spicy, with some extra sauce? Everyone’s thirsty for blood, the people want fresh meat. These days, even death is a commodity. Everything is for sale. The man on the street will be over the moon, what a good jolt of adrenaline…It’s not every day that an empire falls. There it is, lying face down in the mud! All bloody! And it’s not every day that a Marshal of the empire kills himself…Hangs himself from a Kremlin radiator.

…Why did he leave us? His country disappeared, and he went along with it: He no longer saw his place here. He…here’s what I think…He saw where things were headed. How socialism was going to be eviscerated. Idle chatter would end in blood. Gangsterism. How they’d start toppling the monuments. The Soviet idols going for scrap, to the salvage lots. They’d start threatening Communists with Nuremberg…and who would be the judges? Communists putting other Communists on trial—those who left the Party on Wednesday prosecuting the ones who’d left it on Thursday. How Leningrad would be renamed…The cradle of the Revolution…How it would become fashionable to use obscenities when discussing the Communist Party, how everyone would start cursing it. How people would walk down the street with posters reading, “The Communist Party is kaput!” “Rule, Boris!” Thousands of people at demonstrations…and what ecstatic faces! Their country was dying, and there they were, celebrating. Smash the state! Tear it down! For us, this kind of thing is always a cause for celebration…A real holiday! They only had to say the word “Attack!” and there would have been pogroms…“Kikes and commissars against the wall!” The people were waiting for it. They would have welcomed the opportunity, gone after the old men, hunted them down. I would find flyers on the ground with the addresses of leading Central Committee workers—last names, house and apartment numbers; see pictures of them posted in every possible location. In case you run into one of them, so that you’ll recognize him. The Party
nomenklatura
would run from their offices with plastic bags, string bags full of their things. Many of them were afraid to sleep at home, they hid at their relatives’ houses. We knew the score…We knew how things had gone down in Romania. They’d shot Ceaușescu and his wife,
^*7
rounded up Chekists and Party elites and executed them all. Buried them in ditches…[
A long pause.
] As for him…He was an idealist, a romantic communist. He believed in the “glittering peaks of communism.” He took all that literally. He thought that communism was forever. It’s embarrassing to admit this now…It sounds dumb…[
A pause.
] He could not abide what was happening. He saw the young predators stirring…the pioneers of capitalism…Instead of Marx and Lenin, they had their minds on dollars…

…What kind of putsch was this, with no shots fired? The army beat a hasty retreat out of Moscow, like cowards. After the members of the GKChP were arrested, he waited for them to come for him and lead him away in handcuffs. Out of all of the aides and advisors to the president, he was the only one who had supported the putschists. Openly supported them. The rest just held their breath. Waiting it out. The bureaucratic apparatus is a machine capable of major maneuvering…anything for the sake of survival. Principles? Bureaucrats have no convictions, principles, or any of those muddled metaphysical ideals. The most important thing is holding on to your seat, keeping your palms greased. Bureaucracy is our hobby horse. Lenin himself considered bureaucracy a greater threat than Denikin. The only thing that’s valued is personal loyalty—never forget who owns you, whose hand is feeding you. [
A pause.
] No one knows the truth about the GKChP. Everyone lies. So…that’s that…In reality, it was all a big game. We will never know the whole truth about its players and the behind-the-scenes machinations. The foggy role of Gorbachev…What did he say to journalists when he came back from Foros? “I’ll never tell you everything anyway.” And he really won’t! [
A pause.
] Perhaps this was another reason for his departure. [
A pause.
] Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators…this had a profound effect. It became impossible to maintain the status quo. It wasn’t himself that he was afraid for…He couldn’t come to terms with the fact that all of it would be stamped underfoot, entombed in concrete: the Soviet order, the great industrialization of our nation…the Victory…That it would turn out that the cruiser
Aurora
had never fired to signal the beginning of the storm of the Winter Palace, and that the Winter Palace had never been stormed at all…

They blame the times…Our era is evil. Empty. We’re drowning in flashy rags and VCRs. Where is our great country? The way we are now, we’d never triumph over anyone. Gagarin wouldn’t have even gotten off the ground.

—

I was taken by complete surprise when, at the end of one of our conversations, he said, “All right, you can come see me in person.” We met on the following day at his home. He wore a black suit and tie despite the heat. The Kremlin uniform.

Have you talked to…[
He names several prominent people.
] And what about…[
Another name that’s been on everyone’s lips for a long time.
] Their version of events—that he was killed—I don’t buy it. There are rumors going around about witnesses…facts…They say the cord wasn’t right, that it’s too thin, that it could have only been used to strangle him, and that the key was left in the outer lock of the office door…People say all sorts of things…Everyone likes a palace intrigue. I’ll tell you something else: Witnesses can be manipulated, too. They’re not robots. They are manipulated by television, newspapers, friends, corporate interests…Who has the real truth? As far as I understand, the truth is something that’s sought out by specially trained experts: judges, scholars, priests. Everyone else is ruled by ambition and emotions. [
A pause.
] I’ve read your books…You shouldn’t put so much stock in what people say, in human truth…History records the lives of ideas. People don’t write it, time does. Human truth is just a nail that everybody hangs their hats on.

…You have to begin with Gorbachev. Without him, we’d still be living in the USSR. Yeltsin would have been the first secretary of the regional Party committee in Sverdlovsk, and Yegor Gaidar would be editing economics articles in
Pravda
and believing in socialism. Sobchak would still be lecturing at the University of Leningrad…[
A pause.
] The USSR would have lasted a long time yet. A colossus with feet of clay? Total nonsense! We were an Almighty Superpower that called the shots in many countries. Even America was afraid of us. There weren’t enough pantyhose and blue jeans? To win a nuclear war, you need the latest in missiles and bomber aircraft, not pantyhose. And we had them. First-class weapons. We could have won any war. The Russian soldier is not afraid to die. In this, we’re Asiatic…[
A pause.
] Stalin created a state that was impossible to puncture from below; it was impenetrable. But from above, it was vulnerable and defenseless. No one thought that they would start destroying it from the top, that the top leaders would be the ones to betray it first.
Pererozhdentsy!
^*8
The general secretary turned out to be the chief revolutionary, installed in the Kremlin. Our state proved easy to destroy from the top. Harsh discipline and Party hierarchy worked against it. It’s a unique case in history…it’s as if Caesar himself had initiated the fall of the Roman Empire…No, Gorbachev is no pygmy; he’s no toy in the hands of circumstances, and he’s not a CIA agent…But who is he?

“Communism’s undertaker,” “traitor of the Motherland,” “Nobel Laureate,” and “bankrupter of the Soviet Union”; the “sixties dissident-in-chief,” “the perfect German,” “the prophet,” and “little Judas”; “the great reformer,” “the great actor,” “the great Gorby,” and “Gorbach”; “the man of the century,” “Herostratus”
^*9
…All that rolled up into one.

…Akhromeyev prepared for his suicide for several days: He wrote two of his suicide notes on the 22nd, one on the 23rd, and then his last one on August 24. What happened that day? August 24 was the day that they announced Gorbachev’s declaration of resignation from the position of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and his call for the self-dissolution of the Party. “We must make a difficult but honest decision.” The general secretary went out without a fight. He did not appeal to the people and the millions of communists…Instead, he betrayed them. He gave everyone up. I can only guess what Akhromeyev had felt in those moments. It’s not impossible and, in fact, it’s quite likely that on his way to work, he saw the flags being removed from the government buildings. From the towers of the Kremlin. What could he have felt? As a communist…a man who had fought at the front…his whole life had lost meaning…I can’t imagine him participating in our new way of life. Non-Soviet life. Sitting on the presidium under a Russian tricolor flag instead of the red Soviet flag. Under a Tsarist eagle instead of a portrait of Lenin. He simply doesn’t fit into the new interior. He was a Soviet Marshal…You understand? So-vi-et!!! That and nothing else. Only that…

He wasn’t comfortable in the Kremlin. An odd man out, a black sheep…He couldn’t get used to it, he’d always said that “honest, selfless camaraderie only exists among soldiers.” His whole life, all of it…He spent his entire life in the army. Among army men. Half a century. He first put on a uniform at the age of seventeen. That’s a long sentence! Life! He moved into his Kremlin office after resigning from the position of the Chief of the General Staff. He wrote his letter of resignation himself. First of all, he thought that it was important to leave at the right time (he’d seen his share of hearses) and make way for the next generation. At the same time, he’d started butting heads with Gorbachev. Just like Khrushchev, who only ever referred to the generals as “spongers,” Gorbachev didn’t like the army. We were a military nation, 70 or so percent of the economy was, in one way or another, tied to the military. Our best minds worked for it…physicists, mathematicians…All of them helped develop tanks and bombs. And our ideology was also militarized. But Gorbachev was profoundly civilian. Previous general secretaries had all seen combat, while his background was the Philosophy Department of Moscow State University. “Are you preparing to fight?” he would ask the top brass. “I’m not. And there are more generals and admirals in Moscow alone than there are in the whole world combined.” Before him, no one had dared to speak to the top command like that, they used to be the most important people in government. The minister of defense, not the minister of economics, was always the first to address the Politburo; the number of weapons manufactured used to be more important than the number of VCRs. And that’s why a VCR cost as much as an apartment. Then everything changed…So of course the top brass revolted. We need a large and powerful military, our territory is enormous! We have borders with half of the world! People respect us as long as we’re strong, but if we become weak, no “new way of thinking” will convince anyone of anything. Akhromeyev reported to him personally on many occasions…That was the major disagreement between them…I won’t go into the petty conflicts or anything like that. Words familiar to every Soviet had vanished from Gorbachev’s speeches: “the machinations of international imperialism,” “counter-strike,” “overseas big wigs”…he got rid of all that. All he had were the “enemies of glasnost” and “enemies of perestroika.” He cursed in his office (he was an old hand at that!) and called them all fuckwits. [
A pause.
] “Dilettante,” “The Russian Gandhi”…That’s not even the most biting stuff that was going around the Kremlin in those days. Naturally, members of the old guard were in shock and presaged disaster: He’s going to drown and take everyone else down with him. For America, we were the “Evil Empire,” they were threatening us with Crusades, “Star Wars”…Meanwhile, our chief of state was playing the Buddhist monk, “the world is a common home for humanity,” “change without violence or bloodshed,” “war is no longer a continuation of politics,” and so on. Akhromeyev fought for a long time, but eventually, he got tired. At first, he thought that people were giving false reports to the higher-ups, deceiving them, but then it dawned on him that this was treason. So he made a statement. Gorbachev accepted his resignation, but he would not let him go. He made him his advisor on military affairs.