Down with Big Brother (32 page)

A soldier-intellectual, Akhromeyev understood that the conditions of combat in Afghanistan were vastly different from those of the Great Patriotic War. When the Russian soldier was fighting to defend his own homeland, he could perform incredible feats. In Afghanistan he felt himself to be an intruder, obliged to wage war against the local population on behalf of
an unpopular government. The chief of staff believed that the army had acquitted itself well in Afghanistan, under extremely adverse circumstances. The mujahedin were no match for Soviet units in set-piece battles. But the ability to seize territory had little practical significance in a land where the enemy could melt back into the mountains and wait for the Soviets to leave. The Soviet army had been given an impossible mission.

“The military fulfills the tasks that are assigned to it, but the results are zero. Military gains are not being consolidated by political gains,” the marshal complained, attempting to shift the blame back to the civilians. “We control Kabul and the provincial centers, but we cannot establish political authority on the territory that we seize. We have lost the struggle for the Afghan people. Only a minority of the population supports the government.”

The Politburo session ended in general agreement. The Kremlin would promote a political settlement between the Communist government in Kabul and the mujahedin. Soviet troops would be withdrawn in stages, over the next two years. The dream of building socialism in a backward, feudal society was officially abandoned. The goal now was to ensure “a neutral state” on the Soviet Union’s southern border. For the first time in nearly seventy years the Politburo was acknowledging that defections from the Soviet bloc were possible. Revolutions could, after all, be reversed.

The empire had begun to crack.

E
NDING THE WAR
in Afghanistan had been high on the list of political priorities that Gorbachev had drawn up for himself on his first day in office. Accomplishing this goal was not so simple, however. Unlike many struggles over domestic policy, the Afghanistan debate did not divide the Politburo into conservatives and reformers. The real battle over the modalities of Soviet withdrawal took place in Gorbachev’s own mind.

“Afghanistan did not fit naturally into the ideological struggle for perestroika. There was consensus on this issue. Everyone in the Politburo, including conservatives like Ligachev, was in favor of withdrawal,” said Gorbachev’s foreign policy adviser, Anatoly Chernyayev.
¹⁵⁴

Gorbachev talked about the war as “a past sin,” grumbling to his colleagues, “Soon they will be sticking this label onto us.”
¹⁵⁵
At the same time, according to Chernyayev, he still saw the conflict through the prism of East-West confrontation. He was susceptible to pressure from radical Third World leaders, such as Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia, who argued that the Kremlin would lose all credibility if it abandoned one of its allies.

American support for the mujahedin helped convince Soviet leaders that they were fighting an unwinnable war. “The situation now is worse than it was six months ago,” said Gromyko in November 1986, two months after the first Soviet helicopters were shot down by Stingers. Akhromeyev complained that, even with fifty thousand soldiers deployed along the border with Pakistan, it was proving impossible to close off all the supply routes used by the Afghan resistance.

Once the decision to leave had been made, however, the U.S. covert action program may have had the paradoxical effect of delaying withdrawal. This, at least, is the view of former Gorbachev aides, who argue that it was extremely difficult for Moscow to leave a country that had been turned into a superpower battlefield. “American arms supplies only dragged out the war,” insisted Aleksandr Yakovlev, the ideological brains behind perestroika. “Gorbachev, Shevardnadze, and myself were deeply convinced that we did not need Afghanistan and had no business being there. We would have lost the war anyway. We should have learned from the British that Afghanistan is a country that cannot be conquered. But the struggle between the two political systems sometimes drove us and the Americans to do stupid things. We all lost touch with reality.”
¹⁵⁶

Over the next few months the war continued to escalate. By early 1987 there were 120,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan, up from 75,000 at the beginning of the war.
¹⁵⁷
Both the cost of the war and the number of casualties continued to rise. It took the Soviets another twenty-seven months to extricate themselves from the Afghan quagmire.

The decision to leave Afghanistan paved the way for the release from internal exile of the human rights campaigner Andrei Sakharov. The father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb had been banished to the closed city of Gorky in January 1980 for daring to criticize the invasion of Afghanistan in public. It was now obvious that he had been right all along, although this was too much for the Politburo to acknowledge. When Gorbachev phoned Sakharov to tell him that he was free to return to Moscow, he offered no apology and no explanation.

“Go back to your patriotic work!” the
gensek
ordered.
¹⁵⁸

Emboldened by Sakharov’s release and the about-face on Afghanistan, Gorbachev’s more radical aides urged him to turn his attention to military reform. Articles began appearing in the Soviet press on hitherto taboo themes, such as nepotism and corruption in the military. The general secretary had been waiting for a chance to assert his control over the Soviet Union’s bloated armed forces. A few months later he was presented with an opportunity that was almost literally heaven-sent.

MOSCOW
May 28, 1987

I
T WAS
B
ORDER
G
UARDS’
D
AY
, one of those typical Soviet holidays when the regime congratulated the “defenders of the socialist motherland” and reminded the population of the ever-present “imperialist threat.” As usual, there were fireworks over the Moskva River and laudatory articles in
Pravda
hailing the vigilance of some unsung KGB officer stationed in a remote frontier post. Unusually for Moscow, there were also brawls in Gorky Park, as groups of vodka-drenched border guards intimidated passersby and sang lewd songs. It was an early sign that public discipline was breaking down in conditions of glasnost.

While the border guards were whooping it up in Gorky Park, the commanders of Soviet air defense were trying to figure out the significance of a mysterious blip on their radar screens. The blip had first made its appearance in the early afternoon, in the Leningrad region, and was assigned the number 8255. It seemed to be traveling south toward Moscow, at an altitude of around eighteen hundred feet. After the inevitable bureaucratic delay—duty officers feared that they would be penalized for raising a false alarm—a MiG-23 interceptor jet was sent up to investigate. The pilot reported spotting “a light sports plane flying just below the clouds.”

The high command was skeptical. There were no private sports planes in Russia. After the KAL affair would any sane pilot intrude into Soviet airspace
without filing a flight plan? More MiGs were sent up to investigate, but they lost sight of the “target” in the low clouds. There was more confusion as another unidentified blip—a weather front or a hot-air balloon—merged with 8255 and then separated again. Soviet pilots spent the next two hours chasing a phantom. As the blip approached Moscow, the generals racked their brains over the identity of the mystery target in a telephone conference.

“I’m afraid it was birds, small birds,” said Major General Gvozdenko, one of the commanders of the national air defense system.
¹⁵⁹

“No,” objected Major General Reznichenko, in charge of Moscow’s air defenses that day. “The pilots saw it.”

“They didn’t see anything. Those pilots are always seeing things.”

“But the pilot is very insistent. A plane appeared from somewhere.”

Frustrated by such stubbornness, Gvozdenko changed his approach. “Do you realize,” he told his colleague, “if we say it’s a plane, the higher-ups are going to badger everybody? They’re going to say, ‘If you saw a plane, then look for it.’ ”

Reznichenko’s superior, Lieutenant General Brazhnikov, joined the conversation. “It’s a weather formation, or birds. That’s the most likely.”

“It would be nice if it really were a weather formation,” said Reznichenko, allowing himself to dream for a moment. “But what if it’s a plane? And it comes down because it runs out of fuel. Then [the higher-ups] will really start yelling at us, ‘What did you do, and why did you do it this way and not that way?’ ”

“So it comes down,” argued Gvozdenko, still thinking about ways to cover himself. “We tracked it consistently. We sent fighters up.”

As the senior general present Brazhnikov realized that it was time to make a decision. “Okay, we have to make a report. What is it to be: birds, a weather formation, or a target?”

The general in charge of the radar system, Aleksandr Gukov, was in a quandary. “I can’t make a decision,” he told Brazhnikov. “I doubt it is a weather formation. It’s moving too fast.”

A few minutes later Gukov came back on the line. A good soldier, he knew how to please his superiors. “Our conclusion is that it is a weather formation,” he reported.

“But, Aleksandr Ivanovich, you’re so contradictory,” said Brazhnikov, exasperated. “Two minutes ago you said it couldn’t be a weather formation.”

“You made a decision. It’s up to us to work these things out.”

Brazhnikov decided he preferred the birds explanation. “Try to remember what the north and Siberia are like at this time of year,” he told Gukov. “Do geese fly for a long time?”

“Yes, they do. The Leningraders decided it was birds.”

“Well, there you are, and you were saying a weather formation. Why should weather formations stand out against such a cloudy background? It seems very doubtful.”

“We should go along with the decision of the Leningraders and show solidarity,” said the radar commander, amid chortles from his fellow generals. “There’s just one thing that confuses me. Birds fly north in the spring. But this is coming
from
the north.”

“I still think we will conclude that it was geese,” said Brazhnikov firmly, bringing the debate to a close. “So, Aleksandr Ivanovich, it will be birds.”

“Yes, sir, understood, let it be birds.”

Seventy minutes later a single-engine Cessna 172 sports plane flew low over the Kremlin, buzzing the Lenin Mausoleum. After circling Red Square a couple of times, the Cessna landed on an expanse of cobblestone between the domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin’s Spassky Gate. A bespectacled young pilot, dressed in a red flying suit, got out. Mathias Rust, a nineteen-year-old bank clerk trainee from Hamburg, told the crowd that he wanted to talk to Gorbachev about “world peace.”

N
EWS THAT A
W
EST
G
ERMAN
teenager had managed to penetrate Soviet air defenses and fly 450 miles unchallenged across Soviet territory to the inner sanctum of Soviet power provoked one of Gorbachev’s most spectacular temper tantrums. He was out of the country at the time, attending a Warsaw Pact meeting in Berlin. “It’s a national shame. This is as bad as Chernobyl,” he exploded when Marshal Akhromeyev reached him by phone late that night.
¹⁶⁰

In accordance with long-established tradition, the entire Politburo was at the airport to welcome the general secretary back home from Berlin. There were the usual smiles and comradely bear hugs, but Gorbachev’s eyes flashed with anger as he greeted his colleagues. According to his chief of staff, Gorbachev suspected that the generals had permitted Rust’s plane to reach Red Square in a deliberate attempt to cause him political embarrassment. After this incident he would never trust the military again.
¹⁶¹

“They have disgraced the country, humiliated our people,” he told an aide, referring to the military leadership. “Well, so what, let everybody see
where power lies in this country. It lies with the political leadership, the Politburo. We will put an end to all this hysterical chatter about the military being in opposition to Gorbachev, about their wanting to replace him.”
¹⁶²

At an emergency Politburo meeting the following day Gorbachev lambasted “the complete helplessness of the Defense Ministry” and accused senior generals of being “apprehensive” of perestroika. Turning to the defense minister, Marshal Sergei Sokolov, he said, “Under the present circumstances, if I were you, I would resign at once.”
¹⁶³
Sokolov stood at attention and resigned on the spot. More than 150 lower-ranking officers were dismissed or disciplined for “negligence.”

To add insult to injury, Gorbachev selected a relatively unknown general, Dmitri Yazov, as his new minister of defense, passing over dozens of more senior officers. The military hierarchy deeply resented being singled out for such degrading treatment and the accompanying barrage of criticism in the Soviet media but could do nothing. As Akhromeyev acknowledged in his memoirs, its guilt was “undeniable.”

The Rust incident was widely interpreted as a sign of Gorbachev’s political dominance. However, it turned out to be one of the last occasions that the general secretary was able to impose his will on a united Politburo. Opposition to his policies was growing within the leadership, from both left and right. The battle for perestroika had just begun.