Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (24 page)

During the Soviet-American disarmament talks, Americans always got exactly what they wanted. In his book,
Through the Eyes of a Marshal and Diplomat,
Akhromeyev describes the debates about the Oka missile (known in the West as the SS-23). It was a new missile, no one else had anything like it, and the American side intended to destroy it. However, it didn’t fall under the terms of their agreement, which dictated the destruction of medium-range missiles with a radius of 1000
–
5500km, and smaller ones, with a range of 500
–
1000km. The Oka’s range was 400km. The Soviet General Staff made an offer to the Americans: All right, let’s play fair and ban all missiles starting with a 400km range instead of 500km. But then the Americans would have had to sacrifice their modernized Lance-2 missiles, which had a range of 450
–
470km. A drawn-out behind-the-scenes battle…Behind the backs of the military, Gorbachev personally decided to destroy the Oka. That was when Akhromeyev made his famous statement: “And while we’re at it, maybe we should ask for political asylum in Switzerland and never come home?” He couldn’t participate in the annihilation of something he’d devoted his life to…[
A pause.
] The world became unipolar; now, it belongs to America. We became weak, we were pushed to the sidelines. Turned into a third-rate defeated country. We won World War II, but we lost World War III. [
A pause.
] For him…this was unbearable…

…December 14, 1989…Sakharov’s funeral. Thousands of people in the streets of Moscow. According to police records, between seventy and one hundred thousand. Yeltsin, Sobchak, Starovoitova
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standing next to the coffin…American consul Jack Matlock wrote in his memoirs that while the presence of these people at the funeral of the “symbol of the Russian revolution” and “the nation’s chief dissident” was to be expected, he was surprised “to see Marshal Akhromeyev, in full uniform, standing modestly in the crowd.” While Sakharov was alive, they’d been enemies, irreconcilable opponents. [
A pause.
] But Akhromeyev came to pay his respects. No one else from the Kremlin came except for him. No one else from the General Staff…

…They’d allowed a little freedom, and the petit bourgeois started coming out of the woodwork. For Akhromeyev, an ascetic man, uninterested in money, this came as a blow. Straight to the heart. He couldn’t believe that we could have capitalism here. With our Soviet people, our Soviet history…[
A pause.
] I can still see the image of a pale young woman running around the government dacha where Akhromeyev lived with his family of eight, crying, “Take a look: two refrigerators and two televisions! Who is this Marshal Akhromeyev that he should have two televisions and two refrigerators?” Today they’re silent, not a peep…when all the previous records for dachas, apartments, cars, and other privileges have long since been broken. Luxury automobiles, Western office furniture, vacations in Italy instead of Crimea…Our offices had Soviet furniture, we drove Soviet cars. We wore Soviet suits and boots. Khrushchev comes from a mining family…Kosygin from peasant stock
^*15
…All of them, as I’ve already said, had seen war. Their life experience was, admittedly, limited. It wasn’t just the people, but also their leaders who lived behind the Iron Curtain. All of us lived as though we were in an aquarium…[
A pause.
] And again…maybe this is incidental, but Marshal Zhukov’s postwar fall from grace didn’t just happen because Stalin envied his glory, it was also because of all of the German carpets, furniture, and hunting rifles they found at his dacha. Even though all of that stuff could have easily fit into two cars. A Bolshevik shouldn’t have that much junk…These days, it sounds ridiculous. [
A pause.
] Gorbachev loved luxury. In Foros, they built him a dacha with Italian marble, a German tile stove…sand for the beach shipped in from Bulgaria…Not a single Western leader had anything like it. Gorbachev’s dacha made Stalin’s Crimean dacha look like a dormitory. The general secretaries changed with the times…and so did their wives…

Who stood up for communism? Neither the professors nor the secretaries of the Central Committee. Instead, it was people like Leningrad chemistry teacher Nina Andreyeva who threw herself into defending communism. Her article, “I Cannot Forsake My Principles,” made a lot of noise. Akhromeyev wrote, too…gave speeches…He told me, “We have to fight back.” They’d call him and threaten him, telling him he was a war criminal because of Afghanistan. Few people knew that he’d actually been against the war in Afghanistan. And he never took diamonds or any other precious gems out of Kabul, or paintings from the national museum, not like the other generals. They were always attacking him in the press…for getting in the way of the “new historians,” who needed to prove that we had nothing, that our past was nothing but a wasteland. And that there had been no Victory. Just antiretreat detachments and penal units.
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That the war had been won by prisoners, they were the ones who had marched into Berlin under gunfire. What Victory? They blanketed Europe in corpses…[
A pause.
] The army was insulted and denigrated. Could an army like this have won in ’91? [
A pause.
] And could the Marshal have lived through it?

Akhromeyev’s funeral…Relatives and a handful of friends stood around the grave. There was no military salute.
Pravda
didn’t even print the obituary of the former chief of General Staff of an army numbering four million. The new Minister of Defense Shaposhnikov (the former Minister Yazov had been jailed along with the other putschists) was, I believe, preoccupied with taking over Yazov’s apartment, from which they were urgently evicting Yazov’s wife. Selfish interests. But…I want to say…This is important…Say what you will about the motives of the putschists, they were not in it for themselves. They weren’t out for profit…[
A pause.
] People whispered about Akhromeyev in the Kremlin corridors: “He didn’t bet on the right horse.” The bureaucrats rushed to Yeltsin’s side…[
He repeats my question.
] The concept of honor? Don’t ask me naïve questions! Good people are going out of style…His obituary appeared in the American magazine
Time.
It was written by Admiral William J. Crowe, who had been the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Akhromeyev’s equivalent) in Reagan’s administration. They had met many times during military negotiations. And he respected Akhromeyev for his faith, although it was foreign to him. The enemy paid his respects…[
Pause.
]

Only a Soviet person can understand another Soviet person. I wouldn’t have talked to anyone else…

FROM THE AFTERLIFE

On September 1, in Moscow, Marshal of the Soviet Union S. F. Akhromeyev was buried in the Troyekurovsky Cemetery for High-Ranking Persons (a branch of Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery).

On the night between September 1st and September 2nd, unknown parties excavated Akhromeyev’s grave, along with the adjacent grave of Lieutenant-General Srednev, who had been buried the previous week. Investigators speculate that Srednev’s grave was unearthed first, apparently by mistake. The grave robbers made off with Akhromeyev’s Marshal’s uniform with its gold braid, and his Marshal’s cap, which, according to military tradition, had been nailed to the coffin. Along with his numerous medals and decorations.

Investigators are confident that Marshal Akhromeyev’s grave was not desecrated for political reasons but for financial gain. The uniforms of high-ranking military officials are in especially high demand among antiques dealers. A Marshal’s uniform is bound to go like hotcakes…

Kommersant
newspaper, September 9, 1991

FROM INTERVIEWS ON RED SQUARE IN DECEMBER 1991

—I’m a construction worker…

Before August 1991, we lived in one country, and afterward, we lived in another. Before that August, my country was called the USSR.

Who am I? I’m one of those idiots who defended Yeltsin. I stood in front of the White House, ready to lie down in front of a tank. People went out into the streets on the crest of a wave, on a surge. But they were out there to die for freedom, not capitalism. I consider myself a person who’s been deceived. I don’t need this capitalism we’ve been led to…that they slipped us…Not in any form, neither the American model nor the Swedish. I didn’t start a revolution to get my hands on someone else’s dough. We shouted “Russia!” instead of “USSR!” I’m sorry that they didn’t disperse us with water cannons or roll a couple of machine guns onto the square. They should have arrested two or three hundred people and the rest would have gone into hiding. [
A pause.
] Where are the people who called us out onto the square today? “Down with the Kremlin mafia!” “Freedom tomorrow!” They have nothing to say to us. They ran off to the West, now they’re over there badmouthing socialism. Sitting around in Chicago laboratories. While we sit here…

Russia…they’ve wiped their feet with it. Anyone who wants to can smack her in the face. They turned it into a Western junkyard full of worn-out rags and expired medicine. Garbage! [
Obscenities.
] A trough full of raw materials, a natural gas tap…The Soviet regime? It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than what we have today. Worthier. Overall, I was satisfied with socialism: No one was excessively rich or poor, there were no bums or abandoned children…Old people could live on their pensions, they didn’t have to collect bottles and food scraps off the street. They wouldn’t look at you with searching eyes, standing there with outstretched palms…We’ve yet to count how many people were killed by perestroika. [
A pause.
] Our former life has been smashed to smithereens, not a single stone was left standing. Pretty soon, I won’t have anything to talk about with my son. “Papa, Pavlik Morozov is a moron. Marat Kazei
^*17
is a freak,” my son says to me, when he comes home from school. “But you taught me…” I taught him the same things that I had been taught. The right things. “That horrible Soviet upbringing…” That “horrible Soviet upbringing” taught me to think about people other than myself. About the weak and the suffering. Nikolai Gastello
^*18
was my hero, not those magenta sports coats with their philosophy of only looking out for themselves—their own skin, their own wallets. “And please, Papa, don’t start in with that the spirit stuff, that humanism mumbo jumbo.” Where did he pick that up? People are different now…Capitalists…You have to understand, that’s what he learns from the world, he’s twelve years old. I’m not an example for him anymore.

Why did I defend Yeltsin? He won a million supporters just for saying that the
nomenklatura
’s special privileges should be revoked. I was ready to pick up a machine gun and shoot at the Communists. I was convinced…We didn’t understand what they were preparing for us in its place. What they were slipping us. An enormous lie! Yeltsin spoke out against the Reds and signed up with the Whites. It was a calamity…The question: What did we want? Gentle socialism, humane socialism…And what did we get? On the streets, it’s bloodthirsty capitalism. Shooting. Showdowns. People figuring out who runs the kiosk and who owns the factory. The gangsters have risen to the top…Black marketeers and money changers have taken power…Enemies and predators all around. Jackals! [
A pause.
] I can’t forget…I can’t forget how we stood in front of the White House…Whose chestnuts were we pulling from the fire? [
Obscenities.
] My father was a real communist. A righteous man. He was the Party organizer at a big factory. Fought in the war. I said to him, “Freedom’s here! We’re going to be a normal, civilized country…” And he replied, “Your children will be servants. Is that what you really want?” I was young and dumb…I laughed at him. We were terribly naïve. I don’t know why things turned out like this. I really don’t. It’s not what we wanted. We had something completely different in mind. Perestroika…there was something epic about it. [
He pauses.
] A year later, they shut down our design bureau, and my wife and I ended up out on the street. How did we survive? First, we took all of our valuables to the market. The crystal, the Soviet gold, and our most precious possessions, our books. For weeks on end, we’d eat nothing but mashed potatoes. Then I went into “business.” I started selling cigarette butts. A liter jar of butts…or a three-liter jar of butts…My wife’s parents (college professors) collected them off the street, and I would sell them. And people would buy them! Smoke them. I smoked them myself. My wife cleaned offices. At a certain point, she sold
pelmeni
for some Tajik. We paid dearly for our naïveté. All of us…Now, my wife and I raise chickens, and she never stops weeping. If only we could turn back time…And don’t give me a hard time for saying that…This isn’t some nostalgia for gray salami for two rubles and twenty kopecks…

—

—I’m a businessman…

Those goddamn communists and KGB goons…I hate communists. Soviet history is the NKVD, the gulag, SMERSH.
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The color red makes me want to throw up. Those red carnations…My wife bought herself a red blouse and I asked, “Have you lost your mind?” I consider Stalin as bad as Hitler, I demand Nuremberg trials for those Red bitches. Death to the Red dogs!

Everywhere, we’re surrounded by five-pointed stars. The Bolshevik idols remain standing on the squares. When I walk down the street with my kid, he asks me: “Who’s that?” That’s a monument to Rosa Zemlyachka, who flooded Crimea with blood. She loved to personally execute young White officers…What am I supposed to tell him?