The Dead Hand

by David E. Hoffman

  Another important voice for glasnost, and against the long tradition of military secrecy, was Velikhov, the open-minded physicist and adviser to Gorbachev. In January 1987, four weeks after Katayev’s spravka, Velikhov came up with an idea. He wrote to the Central Committee defense department—Katayev’s office—proposing to challenge the misleading American statements about Soviet laser weapons. A showcase nuclear disarmament conference was scheduled for later in the month in Moscow, and Velikhov was one of the organizers. Scientists, celebrities and antinuclear activists were being brought in from all around the world. Velikhov suggested: what if Gorbachev himself announced at the conference that the Soviet Union would open up the top-secret test facility at Sary Shagan that was so often at the center of American propaganda? What if the Americans were invited to see for themselves that Gates and Soviet Military Power were wrong? Velikhov suggested that a group of five to eight American scientists and journalists be taken on a “spontaneous” four-hour visit. Contrary to American claims about the lasers, their actual power was “thousands of times less than required” for shooting down missiles, he said. “There exists a complete and unique chance to demonstrate the false nature of the official American claims,” Velikhov insisted. “An exposure of the lie with one concrete example may have big political consequences.”

  Velikhov was a vice president of the Academy of Sciences, and his proposal immediately commanded the attention of top security and defense officials, including Zaikov, Akhromeyev and the head of the KGB, Viktor Chebrikov. A staff report dumped cold water on Velikhov’s idea, saying the American visitors would quickly realize the Soviet equipment was really quite old. The two lasers at the complex were experimental samples using components from the early 1970s, the staff report said. The visiting scientists and journalists might think the Soviets were insincere, or covering up something, the report added. Akhromeyev worried that the Americans—seeing the size of buildings and the nature of the test range—might try to prove that the Soviets were planning to build missile defenses in the future. There was also worry that the visitors might see a secret project called “Gamma” to build an anti-satellite weapon in the future. In fact, Gamma never materialized. The only thing to hide at Sary Shagan was the painful truth: Soviet technology was way behind.

  On February 12, the Central Committee answered Velikhov: proposal rejected. No Americans could see the secret test range. But Velikhov had opened the door a crack, and did not give up.

  Another key moment in Gorbachev’s drive for change came December 16, 1986, when he telephoned Andrei Sakharov, who was watching television with his wife, Yelena Bonner. Sakharov, the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize winner and dissident physicist who had helped design the Soviet hydrogen bomb, was banished to Gorky in 1980 without trial for speaking out against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Soviet human rights violations. Reagan had raised the question of Sakharov in a letter to Gorbachev delivered at the Reykjavik summit. Gorbachev did not want to seem to be under pressure, but in December he told Sakharov on the phone, “You can return to Moscow.” Sakharov stepped off the train in Moscow at the Yaroslavl station on December 23.

  In February, Sakharov appeared in public for the first time since his return, attending the international disarmament conference, “The Forum for a Nuclear-Free World and the Survival of Mankind.” The conference was jam-packed with celebrities invited from around the world, but Sakharov’s presence cast a special glow. Even more significant was Sakharov’s message: it was time to get on with reducing dangerous missiles and break the deadlock over the Strategic Defense Initiative. It was time to crack open the Gorbachev “package” from Reykjavik.18

  Gorbachev had earlier been certain the package deal would bring results. But now, in late February 1987, the Soviet Union was preparing to set off its first nuclear explosion since the end of the moratorium. Gorbachev needed something new, and bold. Sakharov’s speech at the conference has been credited by some as pushing Gorbachev to move. But there was another strong impetus. On February 25, Gorbachev’s influential adviser, Alexander Yakovlev, wrote an extensive memo to him, arguing the time had come to unbundle the “package” and make separate deals to reduce nuclear weapons.

  Yakovlev, the paragon of new thinking who had walked with Gorbachev in the orchard in Canada, said Gorbachev needed to pay attention to the political dynamics. “In politics, maximum freedom of maneuver is always valuable,” he wrote. “The ‘package’ in its present form only ties our hands.” At the top of Yakovlev’s list of priorities, if the package were dropped, was to seek a separate agreement on the intermediate-range missiles that would ease the threat posed by the American Pershing II missiles in Europe. “For us, this would be tantamount to removal of a very serious threat,” he said. Yakovlev expressed a sense of urgency. “It is extremely important now not to lose the tempo we have developed, and not to lose time. If we want to untie the package, we need to do it right now, because later the effect of it will be much weaker.” A public speech making the announcement “could compensate, in the eyes of the world public, for the fact of our reciprocal resumption of nuclear testing.”19

  If Gorbachev untied the package, it would mean the very real concessions he made at Reykjavik—such as eliminating all the Pioneers—would be pocketed by Reagan, without any slowdown in the missile defense plan. But Gorbachev also realized that, since Reykjavik, they had been treading water. His package tactic wasn’t working. Gorbachev desperately wanted to get results, not shadow-box over the future.

  On the day after Yakovlev’s memo, February 26, 1987, the Soviet Union set off its first nuclear explosion since 1985, in tunnel No. 130 at the Semipalatinsk testing range in Kazakhstan. Gorbachev had absorbed Yakovlev’s argument by the time he addressed the Politburo that day. “The biggest step that would make an impression on the outside world, on public opinion, would be if we untie the package and agree to cut 1,000 of our most powerful missiles,” he said.

  “Let’s untie the package.”

  On February 28, he made the announcement. “The Soviet Union suggests that the problem of medium-range missiles in Europe be singled out from the package of issues, and that a separate agreement be concluded on it, and without delay.” Reagan took the news cautiously, saying it was “progress” toward a “new opportunity,” speaking to reporters in his first visit to the White House pressroom since disclosure of diversion of the Iran money to the contras two months earlier.

  The Pioneer missile had a brutish silhouette and carried three warheads, each 150 kilotons and independently targetable. The missile’s range was called intermediate or medium: less than the giant missiles that flew across the oceans, but more than those designed for use on battlefields. The Pioneer was a modern, mobile missile, transported on huge six-axle vehicles, which could keep the weapon in a state of constant combat readiness and launch it. Between 1978 and 1986, 441 Pioneer systems were deployed, including a version with improved accuracy and range in 1980, but they created a terrible problem the Soviet leadership had not anticipated. “The Soviet leadership at the time failed to take into account the probable reaction of the Western countries,” Gorbachev recalled. “I would even go so far as to characterize it as an unforgivable adventure, embarked on by the previous Soviet leadership under pressure from the military-industrial complex.” The NATO response—the Pershing IIs and the ground-launched cruise missiles—became “a pistol held to our head,” as Gorbachev put it. “Not to mention the exorbitant and unjustifiable costs of developing, producing and servicing the SS-20—funds swallowed up by the insatiable Moloch of the military-industrial complex.”20

  Katayev, the Central Committee staff man with long experience in the missile design bureaus, knew how the Soviet leaders fell into such a blunder. As he toured the archipelago of factories, bases and institutes under his supervision, Katayev found excess everywhere. Missiles were built because the design bureaus and factories needed to keep production lines open, not because the military wanted them. He recalled
meeting with the directors of two factories building submarine-launched missiles. When he suggested they were wasting money manufacturing weapons no one would use, the factory bosses objected. “The order for missiles is given, it is included in the plan, funds are given, and so we make them,” Katayev recalled of their response to his protest. “And the way these missiles are used by the military—this is not our problem.”

  The navy was the worst. At one point Katayev calculated there were between four and eight missiles manufactured for each submarine launching tube, compared to a ratio of 1.2 or 1.3 missiles per tube in other countries. “A vast number of sea-launched missiles in the Soviet Union were kept in poor conditions, reducing the combat reliability of the weapons,” Katayev said. He took a three-day voyage on a Project 941 submarine, the Typhoon, a huge vessel with two separate pressure hulls, which carried twenty solid-fuel missiles with a range of more than six thousand miles. As he watched, the crew launched four missiles toward the test range in Kamchatka. Katayev turned to the Typhoon chief designer, Sergei Kovalyov.

  “Sergei Nikitich, four missiles flew, this is roughly the cost of a residential building of 200 apartments. What do you need this for?” Katayev asked.

  Kovalyov replied simply that it was a training exercise. But he admitted that once the missile left the tube, he was finished with it. The point was just to train for the launch. Katayev said a concrete-filled trainer missile would work just as well, and make no difference for the crew. As Katayev recounted the conversation, Kovalyov replied, “Why not? Somehow this idea never occurred to me. There were always plenty of missiles, we didn’t give it a thought. Because this new solid-fuel missile is certainly a little expensive for training novices.” From then on, they started to use a concrete-filled missile for training.

  Katayev, precise and careful, loved lists and charts. He filled his notebooks with them, in neat handwriting, often accompanied by notes and drawings. He saw in his own records proof that missile production was excessive. He took the charts to his superiors. He implored Zaikov: they had far more missiles than the country needed. The missile overproduction was not increasing the security of the country; rather, in the case of the Pioneers, it had led to a “dangerous, strategic dead end.” But Katayev knew that his conclusion was not shared by either the generals or the legendary missile designers. The Pioneers were the newest Soviet missile, the best technology, with twenty or thirty years of useful service duty ahead of them—and all those involved were appalled at the idea of sacrificing them. Katayev recalled one particularly emotional meeting in 1985 when the idea of reducing the missile arsenal was debated. There were shouts of protest: “Sabotage!” and “The Fifth Column!” and “Remember Khrushchev!” (for the Cuban missile crisis fiasco). “I tried in vain to defuse the emotions with the help of technical arguments in favor of reducing the number of missiles,” Katayev recalled. After the stormy meeting, he remained in the conference room with one of Akhromeyev’s deputies. Katayev attempted in earnest to argue his point. “Unbeknownst to everybody,” Katayev told the deputy, “the time has arrived when the accumulation of nuclear weapons has outgrown its own level of safety and when it reached the zone where both our own nuclear weapons and those of the Americans have turned from being a means of deterrence into an instrument of increased danger. And first of all, for the Soviet Union, not for the Americans. Nobody in this country has considered it! They thought, the more missiles the better. We are the ones who have to step away from the danger—not Reagan.” They talked past midnight. Katayev recalled that although Akhromeyev’s office was right next door, he never once came into the room.21

  If Akhromeyev heard the discussion, he must have been personally torn. He hated to think they were wasting what they had built at such cost. But he was committed to Gorbachev, and perhaps even more important, Akhromeyev understood the folly of the original decision to deploy the Pioneers aimed at Western Europe. Chernyaev concluded, “As a military professional, he realized the danger Pershing II missiles posed to us, and he had always disapproved of the policy of targeting SS-20s on the U.S.’s NATO allies. A ‘local nuclear war’ was by definition impossible.”22 Other military leaders were not so farsighted. “Gorbachev had to go through a difficult struggle with his own generals,” Chernyaev said. “It took a long time to convince them to get rid of the SS-20s in Europe.”

  When Thatcher came to Moscow, March 23 to April 1, 1987, she told Gorbachev that it was folly to eliminate nuclear weapons. Sitting across the table from each other in Saint Catherine’s Hall, they had a vigorous argument, not unlike their first one at Chequers. “You, Madam Thatcher, with your stance on nuclear weapons, hamper the negotiations and hinder efforts to start a process of genuine disarmament,” Gorbachev said. “When you solemnly declare that nuclear weapons are beneficial, it’s clear that you are an ardent supporter of them—prepared to accept the risk of war.”

  Thatcher “got very tense, blushed, and her expression hardened,” Chernyaev recalled. “She reached out and, touching Gorbachev’s sleeve, began to talk without letting him get in a word.” She insisted that nuclear weapons had kept the peace. “She became so excited that the discussion got completely out of hand. They started to interrupt each other, repeat themselves, assure each other of their best intentions.” When Thatcher flew home, she described it as the most fascinating and important overseas visit she had ever taken; she realized “the ground was shifting underneath the communist system.”23

  Gorbachev revealed his deep frustrations to Shultz on April 14. At a Kremlin meeting, he complained the Reagan administration was behaving as if nothing was going on in the Soviet Union, when in fact it had a better opportunity to improve relations than any U.S. administration in decades. “Where do we go from here?” he wondered.24 They immediately began to wrestle over details of how to eliminate the Pioneer and Pershing II missiles. The negotiations to eliminate intermediate-range missiles were to cover those with a range of between approximately 300 and 3,500 miles. The Pershing IIs had a maximum range of 1,100 miles, and Pioneers about 3,100 miles. The Soviet Union had also deployed a relatively new short-range missile, the SS-23, named after the Oka, a Russian river. The single-stage, solid-fueled Oka was easily moved around on trucklike launchers, which could erect and fire it. The Soviet military calculated the range of the SS-23 as only 250 miles, and thus felt it should not be included in negotiations on intermediate-range missiles. American experts guessed it might have greater range, given the size of the projectile.25 The missile was prized by the Soviet military because of its mobility, and it was capable of carrying either nuclear or conventional warheads. Earlier, Gorbachev had offered to freeze the level of these missiles, and he went still further and proposed negotiating deep cuts, and ultimately elimination.

  But in the Kremlin meeting, Shultz suggested the United States first wanted to build up its arsenal of short-range systems to match Soviet levels, after which they could negotiate.

  Gorbachev unexpectedly offered, on the spot, to eliminate the Oka missiles altogether, if the United States would agree to a “global zero,” or none on either side.

  When Gorbachev made the offer, Akhromeyev, the chief of the General Staff, was not in the room. He was scheduled to arrive only later, after a break.

  Shultz replied to the offer by saying he would consult with the NATO alliance.

  “Why can’t you make a decision?” Gorbachev insisted.

  Shevardnadze interjected, “I am amazed that the United States is objecting to unilateral Soviet elimination of operational short-range missiles.”

  Gorbachev had just made an extremely sensitive concession. By the time Akhromeyev entered the hall later for a discussion of strategic weapons, Gorbachev had abandoned a whole weapons system. Akhromeyev only found out the next day, when he saw his name was on the list of attendees at the meeting, put there because Gorbachev wanted to show he had approved. Akhromeyev later said the concession was a “miscalculation” that infuriated the generals. “The mi
litary leadership was indignant at the incident with the Oka,” Akhromeyev recalled. “The Foreign Ministry didn’t give any appropriate explanation of the one-sided deal. The first serious split appeared between the military and Shevardnadze.” The generals tried to fight back in the months that followed, but were reprimanded. Gorbachev had maneuvered skillfully to get his way against his own military, but he still lacked any tangible result from the Americans. Appearing before the Politburo days later, Gorbachev sputtered in frustration that Shultz could not make a decision on the spot. The conversation was good, he said, but “essentially empty—we did not move anywhere.”26

  “We have to recapture the initiative,” said Shevardnadze.

  From his office at the Central Committee, Katayev, the precise and careful staffer, slowly came to a profound conclusion: the leadership of the country—hierarchical, centrally planned, rigid and hidebound by long practice—simply had no process for deciding how to abandon and destroy the weapons it had built at such enormous cost, even if disarmament had been a propaganda line for decades. The previous strategic arms control treaties from the Nixon and Carter era had only limited the growth of weapons, and destroyed none of them. The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention had outlawed an entire class of weapons and the Soviet Union secretly built them anyway. There was no road map for retreat. Katayev recalled it was an enormous psychological barrier, as well as a practical roadblock to decisions.