Down with Big Brother (63 page)

The Croatian police chief, Josip Kir, had favored a policy of negotiating with the rebel Serbs. But he was no longer able to control his own side. Šušak and the other hard-liners had taken over. Convinced that his own life was in danger, Kir begged his superiors to transfer him back to Zagreb. The day before he was due to leave, he was murdered by one of his own subordinates in what his wife described as a politically motivated killing.
⁶⁴

Once it had been set in motion, the downward spiral toward uncontrollable violence proved impossible to stop. Croat activists set up barricades on the outskirts of Borovo Naselje, next to the shoe factory. Soon former workmates who had happily shared their lunch breaks together were shooting at one another across the cornfields. Within a few weeks the sniper fire had been replaced by artillery barrages and tank salvos. Croatian national guardsmen moved into Borovo Naselje, while the Yugoslav army formed a defensive ring around Borovo Selo, less than half a mile away. Serbs living in predominantly Croat communities were forced out of their houses at gunpoint; the houses were then blown up from the inside. The same thing happened to Croat families that found themselves on the wrong side of the ethnic dividing line. Each side accused the other of planning a massacre.

The toughest fighters on both sides were almost invariably the poor immigrants whose families had arrived from the mountains on the “trains without a timetable” in Tito’s social revolution after World War II. Up until
recently many of these people had been stuck in demeaning jobs at the Borovo shoe factory. The Croat commander of Borovo Naselje, Blago Zadro, was a typical example. He was a Herzegovinian, from the Dalmatian hinterland. Before the war he had a job mixing chemicals and rubber, a particularly unpleasant task. After his department had been closed down, he spent three months in the reorganized Croatian police force. He also had a high position in the local branch of the HDZ.
⁶⁵

The Serb commander of Borovo Selo, Vitomir Devetek, had a similar background. He too came from the mountains, and he too had been working in a dead-end job at the factory, producing bulletproof vests. Along with dozens of other Serbs, he had been dismissed in March after refusing to sign a loyalty oath to the republic of Croatia. His forces included thirty-five Serbs fired from the Vukovar Police Department.

“The Croatian people must understand. They will never have the independent state they imagine in their sick heads,” Devetek told an American reporter in early July as he patrolled the front line. “Sooner or later, we will attack Borovo Naselje and liberate it. Then we will liberate Vukovar.”
⁶⁶

MOSCOW
August 17, 1991

V
LADIMIR
K
RYUCHKOV
was convinced that the world’s first Communist state was headed for political disintegration and economic catastrophe. He had used every trick in the KGB disinformation manual to persuade Gorbachev to impose a nationwide state of emergency. He had accused Lithuanian independence activists of launching an armed uprising and firing on Soviet troops. He had planted stories about a conspiracy by Western bankers to wage “financial war” against the Soviet Union by flooding the country with cheap rubles. He had talked about CIA plots to recruit Soviet leaders as “agents of influence” and destroy the rival superpower. He had even informed Gorbachev about a bizarre scheme by opposition activists to storm the Kremlin with “hooks” and “ladders.”
⁶⁷

At first it seemed that all this disinformation might be producing the desired effect. The president had gone along with some of the KGB chief’s schemes to curb the democratic opposition and restore order in the country. At the crucial moment, however, he had called a halt to the machinery of repression. Over the past few months Gorbachev had drifted away from the hard-liners and formed an alliance with republican leaders who were intent on grabbing as much power as possible from the center.

Time was running out for Kryuchkov. Leaders from all over the country
were due to come to Moscow on August 20 to sign a new Union Treaty, bringing to an end seven decades of centralized rule. The USSR—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—would cease to exist. Its place would be taken by a much looser confederation, to be known as the Union of Sovereign States.

The decision to omit any mention of “socialism” from the constitution of the new state was alarming enough. Even more troubling were indications that there would not be a place for “principled Communists” in the new order. The KGB had recorded a conversation between Gorbachev and the two most influential republican leaders, Boris Yeltsin of Russia and Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, at the end of July. After a grueling round of negotiations on the new Union Treaty at the president’s dacha at Novo-Ogaryevo, the three leaders had turned their attention to possible personnel changes. At Yeltsin’s insistence, part of the conversation had been held on the balcony, to avoid eavesdroppers. But the microphones had nevertheless picked up their remarks, and the transcript made devastating reading.

Yeltsin had argued forcefully that nobody would believe in the new Union Treaty unless Gorbachev replaced the most “odious” members of his entourage. At the top of his list was Kryuchkov, who had the attempted coup in Lithuania “on his conscience.” Nazarbayev supported the demand for a purge and mentioned the name of Boris Pugo, the hard-line interior minister. Yeltsin later recalled that Gorbachev seemed tense but agreed that both security chiefs would be removed. The three leaders also decided to replace the prime minister, Valentin Pavlov, who had allied himself with the conservatives.
⁶⁸

Kryuchkov now knew that in all likelihood he would not remain head of the KGB very much longer. If he was going to act, he would have to do so soon. On August 6, the day Gorbachev left for his annual vacation in the Crimea, Kryuchkov instructed his aides to prepare the necessary documents for a state of emergency.

The groundwork for a coup had already been laid. Over the course of many weeks Kryuchkov had put out feelers to other members of the leadership. He knew that many of them thought the same way he did. Pavlov had already tried, and failed, to persuade the Supreme Soviet to grant him emergency economic powers. The defense minister, Dmitri Yazov, was constantly complaining about the humiliation of the army and the decline in the Soviet Union’s military readiness. The party secretary in charge of the military-industrial complex, Oleg Baklanov, was convinced that Gorbachev was running the Soviet defense industry into the ground. The secretary in
charge of personnel matters, Oleg Shenin, was angry that the party was losing its influence. The president’s chief of staff, Valery Boldin, was another malcontent, even though he took care to hide his disdain for Gorbachev behind a veil of sycophancy. These men met together regularly to bemoan the fate of a once-great superpower.

On Saturday, August 17, Kryuchkov invited his fellow conspirators to a KGB facility, near the Moscow Ring Road. The complex included a sauna, a swimming pool, a video room. It was a secure and pleasant place to meet, and the KGB chief often entertained here. On this occasion, however, he led his guests onto the veranda. Even he was cautious about being overheard. He served vodka to Yazov, Shenin, and Pavlov. The others preferred whiskey. Plates of bacon lard, a traditional Russian delicacy, were served as an appetizer.

“I am ready to resign right now,” said Pavlov, who understood that his days as prime minister were numbered. “The situation is catastrophic. The country is on the threshold of hunger. Nobody wants to carry out orders anymore. The only hope is a state of emergency.”
⁶⁹

“I deliver regular reports to Gorbachev about the extremely difficult situation, but he scarcely reacts,” complained the KGB chief. “He interrupts the conversation, changes the subject. He doesn’t believe my information.”

At Kryuchkov’s suggestion, the participants in the meeting decided to form a Committee for the State of Emergency, to be known by its Russian initials, GKChP. They would send a delegation to the Crimea to make a last attempt to persuade Gorbachev to declare his own state of emergency. If he refused, he would be interned in his dacha. Vice President Gennady Yanayev would announce that the president was “ill,” and he would assume power. Yanayev was not yet part of the plot, but the conspirators thought they could talk him into joining. He was weak and malleable.

There was a discussion about who would go to Foros to break the news to the president. It was agreed that Kryuchkov and Yazov should remain in Moscow, to make the necessary preparations. Boldin, who had worked with Gorbachev for the past fifteen years, would be made part of the delegation, in order to underline the seriousness of the revolt.

“
Et tu, Brutus?
” joked Yazov, who owed his own promotion to defense minister in 1987 to Gorbachev. Everybody laughed.

FOROS
August 18, 1991

I
T WAS A SLOW
S
UNDAY AFTERNOON
. For the past eight hours Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Kirillov had been cooped up inside a locked room. He spent most of his time watching television. Outside his window the sea sparkled invitingly beneath the hot Crimean sun.

Suddenly the television set flickered and died. An emergency light began flashing on the electronic console in front of Kirillov. Almost instinctively the colonel started to check the telephones on his desk. The two-way intercom with the commander in chief was out of order. So was the direct line to the Defense Ministry in Moscow. Even the internal phone system within the presidential compound at Foros was down. With the exception of a nuclear strike by the rival superpower, Kirillov’s worst nightmare had just been realized. The man in charge of the Soviet nuclear codes had no way of communicating with his superiors. The clock on the wall showed the time as 1632.

A few feet away from Kirillov lay a black briefcase containing the Soviet nuclear codes. This was the modern-day orb and scepter that distinguished the leader of a nuclear superpower from ordinary mortals. From the outside it looked like an ordinary attaché case. This is precisely what it was. The designers of the nuclear command and control system had leafed through some Western mail-order catalogs, picked out a Samsonite briefcase with a
lightweight aluminum frame, and adapted it to their needs. The electronic equipment inside the briefcase would allow Gorbachev to launch thousands of nuclear missiles at the touch of a button, in the event of a surprise attack on the Soviet Union.
⁷⁰

Kirillov and his colleagues were required to carry the commander in chief’s
chemodanchik
(little suitcase) wherever he went. They followed him to the Kremlin in the morning and back to his dacha at night. They accompanied him on trips to foreign countries, waiting patiently in a reception room as he conferred with world leaders. When he went on vacation, they tagged along too.

The nuclear command post at Foros was. located in a two-story guesthouse, fifty yards away from Gorbachev’s personal residence. At any one time there were always three people on duty: two “officer-operators” and a communications specialist. The work was organized into three twenty-four-hour shifts. When they were not on duty, the nuclear aides lived in a military rest home, several miles away from the presidential compound.

Only one telephone out of an entire bank of communications devices in the command post was still working. This was a radiotelephone to the government communications center at Mukhalatka, a few miles down the road. When the operator answered, Kirillov asked to be put through to Moscow immediately.

“We have no communications with anybody,” the operator replied. “There’s been an accident.”
⁷¹

The nuclear aides were beginning to panic when there was a loud knocking at the door. The chief of Soviet ground forces, General Valentin Varennikov, was standing in the corridor with half a dozen other officers, most of whom Kirillov did not know.

“How are your communications?” barked the general.

“There aren’t any,” replied the colonel.

“That’s how it should be,” said Varennikov, evidently pleased. He told Kirillov that the interruption in communications would last approximately twenty-four hours, adding, “The president knows all about it.” With that he and the others disappeared in the direction of Gorbachev’s residence. When the colonel tried to find out more, he was told by one of the people who had come with Varennikov to “mind your own business.”

“A
GROUP OF COMRADES
is here to see you, Mikhail Sergeyevich.”

Gorbachev looked up from his papers to see the ingratiating face of the head of his personal guard, Vladimir Medvedev. He was seated behind
the desk of the study in his Crimean residence, with a magnificent view of the Black Sea. His annual vacation was practically over. He felt rested and in generally good health, although his back was giving him some problems. He had suffered an attack of lumbago the previous day, while walking in the hills around Foros. That morning his personal physician had given him some injections to relieve the pain. “Do whatever you want,” the president had joked. “Remove the nerve, a vertebra, even the leg, but I must be in Moscow on August 19.”
⁷²
When Medvedev entered the room, Gorbachev had been working on the speech he planned to deliver at the signing ceremony for the new Union Treaty, which he saw as his last chance of holding the country together.