The Third World War - The Untold Story (63 page)

Relief of the position in Belorussia, the stilling of panic fears in central Europe and an end to the fighting were all aspects of one problem. There had to be a nuclear stand-down and a ceasefire ending the war in such a way as to avoid a general
sauve-qui-peut
of the Soviet armies. Then there was the nationality problem, that is, as Duglenko saw it, the independence of the Ukraine and its defence against Poland. And finally there was food. The food shortages, leading to riots (which we look at in the next chapter) were a phenomenon of the great cities but, since government also perforce resided in great cities, the food had to be brought in if government was to continue. Returning armies, too, needed food if they were not to turn into a rabble of looters.

Here were critical elements of a proposal for armistice which had rapidly to be put to the Americans. First of all Duglenko would propose a ceasefire worldwide with the stand-down of all nuclear forces at 0001 hours local time 23 August. This had to be followed by a massive relief operation in Belorussia, for which advanced planning parties were invited to arrive within thirty-six hours. Soviet ships were already being recalled to base and Soviet armed forces would leave occupied territory by stages to be agreed under arrangements made by Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. Grain would be shipped from the West and distributed under Red Cross auspices to relieve distress in Soviet cities outside the Minsk disaster area and provide minimum rations for Soviet forces provided they followed agreed withdrawal plans. The territory of all countries in Europe would be respected, pending a peace treaty, but the Ukraine and Belorussia, and such other of the Soviet republics as wished, would immediately assume responsibility for their own territories and would be free to decide whether they wished to join with others in any larger group, though the Warsaw Pact would be immediately abolished and could not be re-created.

Having established his authority at the head of the Soviet system, which he was about to liquidate, and having ordered an immediate standstill of Soviet forces, Duglenko was able to speak on the hot line to the US President less than thirty-six hours after the destruction of Minsk to report what had happened and to propose the terms of ceasefire and armistice. The West could perhaps be pardoned for a period of stupefaction and confusion at the extent of their success - or more correctly, perhaps, the failure of their opponent. In other circumstances they might have been able to appreciate rather more accurately the hollowness of the new Soviet regime. There were also hawkish Westerners who wanted to demand unconditional surrender and have it proclaimed before the world media in the Kremlin. They were outvoted in favour of terms based on those put forward by Duglenko, for two reasons.

The first area of an Allied advance would be the GDR. Western occupation of this territory would pose inescapably the question of German unity, which was still a bugbear to Western Europe, even to many Germans in the Federal Republic. The argument of disorder was also powerful. Had not the Bolshevik success in 1917 been made possible by the return to Russia of defeated and mutinous troops, who became the agents of revolution? Was it not also the Kerensky Government's brave decision to continue the war against Germany which contributed greatly to its downfall? Now, in 1985, there was a rare chance to reverse the previous disastrous course of history: to make peace with the provisional government and, instead of sending a communist revolutionary in a sealed train, as the Germans had done with Lenin in 1917, to send trucks of grain.

The massive relief operation in the Minsk area was put in hand by the United States at once, with immediate Allied help, and then handed over to the United Nations. The ceasefire was agreed within the proposed time limit. The armistice had to take a little longer, and delegates from both commands met at the NATO headquarters in Brussels. Western representation was fairly straightforward. On the Eastern side, however, there had not been time for all the communist regimes to be replaced by something else. Representation was therefore confined to the Soviet High Command, Poland (where the leaders of Solidarity had lost no time in emerging from prisons and internment camps and assuming the power which had so narrowly escaped them in 1981) and the newly established independent governments of the Ukraine, Belorussia and the three Baltic states. A Kazakh from Alma-Ata arrived halfway through the proceedings to announce the independence of the Central Asian republics.

The armistice was of course only the beginning of a very long process of reordering the political geography of large parts of Europe and Asia. It is still going on. A major threat to mankind's future had been eliminated, but this did not mean that mankind would at once become as angels. Indeed, the relaxation of fear and of dictatorship gave freedom not only to breathe again, but to resume many of the ancient and modern quarrels which had been temporarily suppressed by the greater danger. Their resumption took place, none the less, under the tragic but in its own way salutary recollection of the terrible events which took place in Birmingham and, far worse, in Minsk. Before looking at the re-ordering of the map, however, we might catch our own breath and very briefly examine some of the reasons which conditioned the resolution of the main drama and take a look, at close quarters, at its effect on ordinary Soviet citizens.

“ “They'll be shooting us all soon,” sighed Nikolay Kryukov. Other prisoners turned to him, but he just went on musing aloud, talking to no one in particular. He was a huge rough man from Murom, an ancient city 200 kilometres east of Moscow.

“When things are so unstable it's dangerous for the Party to keep us alive, even in prison. Sasha here has tried to organize a free trade union. Peter has taken part in a strike. I am known to have read books on the banned list, Adam Goldman has joined in demonstrations, Jan Bruminsh raised the national flag in Riga, Dima Nalivaiko did the same in Kiev. They must see us as detonators in a powder store, so they've isolated us, surrounded us with guard towers and machine-guns, barbed wire and dogs.

“During the Second World War opponents of the regime held in Soviet camps were systematically shot. That's in the official histories.”

“Why should we wait until one by one they start shooting
us?
We must act now.
Now.
I haven't talked about this earlier because we've got provocateurs here. Our only chance lies in immediate action, all together, with little or no preparation. When this rest break ends, we'll all go back to work and then move instantly. What I'm going to say now is for the provocateurs. I don't know who you are, but you're here for sure. We've got seven minutes left until the end of the break. That's when we get under way. Anyone attempting to approach the guards before the break ends will be considered a provocateur, and I'll kill him with this shovel.” Kryukov raised a shovel, which was like a toy in his great paws.

“I now want all the tractor drivers over here. Not all at once: we don't want to attract any attention.”

Over by the central gate to the building site the supervisor banged on a piece of rail suspended from a post. The sound echoed across the site, signalling the end of the break. Slowly the prisoners got up and wandered off back to their work. A heavy tractor coughed into life, the circular saw started up, cement-mixers were turning. Everything seemed to be as usual. One of the tractors lumbered slowly off. Then, suddenly, it turned on the spot and the driver in a prison pea-jacket jumped down, while the tractor slowly crawled on towards one of the guard towers. A second and then a third tractor followed suit, each ploughing its stolid way towards a separate tower. The guards, taken by surprise, soon reacted and began to pour machine-gun bullets into the first tractor. It just carried on its way, until, meeting with the resistance of the guard tower, slowly and methodically pushed it aside. With a cry the man on guard came down, his machine-gun with him. The tractor carried on past the crumpled tower towards the rows of barbed wire. The second tractor was not so lucky. It missed the guard tower and, deflected by a rock at the first line of barbed wire, failed to break through. The third tractor brought down its guard tower and moved effortlessly through the barbed wire beyond. The way to freedom was open.

Hundreds of shouting prisoners tore through the breaks in the wire under a hail of wild machine-gun fire. Dogs tried to head them off but cascades of toxic foam from fire extinguishers, snatched up at the towers, held them back. A machine-gun from one of the towers was seized by the crowd. The scene was a terrifying one: 700 raging men armed with hammers and spades, with fire-extinguishers and, now, a machine-gun. And they still had one tractor in reserve. They turned it towards the guards' barracks. The guards ran shouting and screaming out of the doors or jumped out of the windows, straight into machine-gun fire. A second attack was under way. The grey-black crowd roared towards the central gates. One of them had picked up an automatic lying on the ground and still yet another machine-gun fell into the prisoners' hands. Fire broke out in the more distant guard towers. But the guards there had long since deserted their posts and fled into the forest.

The throng of prisoners pulled down the gates and were free.

“Wait!” shouted Nikolay Kryukov, a machine-gun in his hands. “Listen to me. In this situation prisoners usually go off into the forest in small groups, on the basis that you can't catch a lot of hares in one go. But we're no hares, and times have changed now anyway. The communists haven't the forces to hunt us through the forest. I'm forming a National Liberation Detachment. Anyone who wants to join - come with me. If not - then go off separately or in small groups.”

Kryukov got 193 men for his detachment.

Immediately after the uprising the Lithuanian prisoners formed their own group of twenty-seven. They thanked Kryukov, took their leave of the other political prisoners and set off back towards Lithuania. It was a long way off but what else could they do? A group of Armenians followed suit with even further to go, as well as a score or so of Baptists making for Kursk. There were a couple of hundred common criminals in with the political prisoners; some asked to join Kryukov, but he declined to take them. Some of the politicals had to be left behind too - if they were seriously wounded or suffering from leg injuries which made walking difficult. A small camp was organized for them on an island in the swamp, where they were left with an automatic rifle and sixty rounds of ammunition, together with such stores and medicaments as had been seized. Kryukov's detachment then set off into the forest.

Kryukov himself realized that they should not go far. He would be hunted in the woods and marshes, so it would be better to hang out near a camp, where no one would think of looking for him. The detachment made a great loop through the forest, coming back to where their tricky journey had started. The following night they attacked a neighbouring camp for political prisoners. The guards' attention was directed inside the camp, not towards the perimeter - an ancient and natural instinct of prison guards. Hence the attack could go in quickly and quietly, without much shooting and with few losses to the attackers. Six hundred political prisoners and 400 criminals were then set free from the camp. There were also rich pickings - 100 automatics, several cases of ammunition, many grenades. Kryukov now had 297 politicals in his detachment. The prisoners hanged the entire prison guard from the gateposts and guard towers and the detachment then took cover in the forest. This time Kryukov held a council of war and decided to head straight for the industrial area in the Urals - to Chelyabinsk and Magnitogorsk . . . “*

* Alyosha Petrovich Narishkin, A Phoenix Out of Ashes (Bantam, New York 1986), pp. 55-6.

The question is still being asked, how was it possible for Duglenko's conspiracy to succeed; how could a system established for so long, buttressed by the largest security apparatus in the world and governed by an all-powerful Communist Party, be overthrown in a few minutes' gun battle in the inner sanctum of the Politburo in the Command Post?

The general answer is that the system, in spite of all appearances, was already permeated by decay, like a wooden structure devoured by termites, when only the outer shell remains and can be knocked over by a minor accident. Considered in outline, the situation brought into being by the war held powerful elements of change. The check to the Soviet advance in Europe, the defection of units of the armed forces to the enemy, the fear of total nuclear devastation following one horrifying disaster, and the initial signs of break-up in the east -all these might have been weathered if the system had been generally sound. As it was, they brought into the open the disillusion and hatred that so many in the USSR had long been harbouring in their hearts. Reactions to failure, to fear and to hunger were for the first time stronger than the customary caution of the citizen towards the secret policemen and the informer. The 'masses' on whom the regime was supposed to be based now at last realized the strength that numbers could give.

Three primary weaknesses were exposed. First of all, the system was grossly inefficient in producing material goods because of the distortions inherent in central planning in a state of the size of the Soviet Union, and because ideology still dominated economic theory. Secondly, agriculture was a disgrace and cause of shame. How could a vast area like the Soviet Union, with some of the most fertile soil in the world, not produce enough to feed its own people? Agricultural failures had been concealed because there was enough gold and gas produced in Siberia to find hard currency for American wheat and maize, but now, with the always inefficient distribution system upset by the demands of war, the lack of food in urban centres became a pressing matter of public order.

Last but by no means least was the contrast between the way in which 'we' and 'they' lived. The Bolshevik revolution had triumphed in the name of a classless proletarian society determined to root out aristocratic privilege. It succeeded in this task, but only to substitute another privileged group for the old aristocracy. It was tragic that the Soviet Union, which was founded in the name of egalitarianism and love and brotherliness, should become the land of privilege and hate and police-state cruelty.