4 There are differing accounts about the origins of the initiative, although most credit Akhromeyev. Gorbachev has said he and Shevardnadze had talked about it soon after Shevardnadze’s appointment. Savelyev and Detinov also say it came from the General Staff and defense ministry. Akhromeyev says he shared the military’s draft with Kornienko at the Foreign Ministry. In the author’s possession is a copy of the color chart used to explain the plan at a press conference in Moscow on Jan. 18, 1986. On the back is written, in hand, that the plan was brought into being and edited by Akhromeyev. Katayev, Hoover.
5 Gorbachev had already imposed a unilateral moratorium on Soviet nuclear tests, and used the January 15 announcement to extend it.
6 “Statement by M. S. Gorbachev, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee,” Izvestia, Jan. 16, 1986, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, Jan. 17, 1986. Time magazine reported on the Vremya broadcast, Jan. 27, 1986.
7 Anatoly Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev (University Park, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 45–46, and diary, Jan. 18, 1986.
8 George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), pp. 699–714; and Don Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a New Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), pp. 156–168.
9 Jack F. Matlock Jr., Reagan and Gorbachev, p. 178. David Hoffman and Walter Pincus, “President ‘Grateful,’ Aides Cautious on Soviet Arms Control Proposal,” Washington Post, Jan. 17, 1986, p. A1. David Pace, AP, Jan. 28, 1986, “Sen. Nunn Wary of Gorbachev Arms Proposal.”
10 Reagan diary, Jan. 15, 1986.
11 Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 377.
12 Reagan diary, Feb. 3, 1986.
13 The call came on Jan. 31, 1986. Chernyaev diary, Jan. 18 and Feb. 1, 1986.
14 Robert D. English sums up Chernyaev’s life and times in his introduction to My Six Years. The author is also indebted to Svetlana Savranskaya for additional information.
15 An edited compilation of their notes was published in 2006, V Politburo TsK KPSS: Po Zapisyam Anatolia Chernyaeva, Vadima Medvedeva, Georgiya Shakhnazarova, 1985–1991 (Moscow: Alpine Business Books, 2006).
16 See Mikhail Gorbachev: Selected Speeches and Articles(Moscow: Progress, 1987), p. 341.
17 National Security Decision Directive 196, Nov. 1, 1985.
18 V Politburo, p. 32.
19 United States Nuclear Tests: July 1945 through September 1992, Department of Energy, Washington, D.C., DOE/NV-209 (Rev. 14), Dec. 1994.
20 Chernyaev, pp. 55–57. Some additional quotations from Chernyaev’s notes, not contained in the book, were provided by Svetlana Savranskaya.
21 Grigori Medvedev, The Truth About Chernobyl (Basic Books, 1991), Evelyn Rossiter, trans.; Piers Paul Read, Ablaze: The Story of the Heroes and Victims of Chernobyl (New York: Random House, 1993); and Zhores Medvedev, The Legacy of Chernobyl (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1990). Also see the extensive work of the United Nations Chernobyl Forum Experts Group, including “Environmental Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident and Their Remediation: Twenty Years of Experience,” available at http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/Chernobyl/. For a technical account of the reasons for the accident, see “INSAG-7: The Chernobyl Accident, Updating of INSAG-1,” Safety Series No. 75-INSAG-7, IAEA Safety Series, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, 1992.
22 Zhores Medvedev, p. 24. Valery Legasov, an academician and deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, who served on an early response team, later listened to tape recordings of the operators’ telephone conversations. This exchange was recorded on the tapes. Two years after the disaster, Legasov committed suicide. The tape transcripts were found in his safe.
23 Grigori Medvedev, p. 74.
24 “Urgent Report,” A. N. Makukhin, First Deputy Director, Ministry of Energy and Electrification, April 26, 1986, No. 1789-2c, Volkogonov Collection, Library of Congress, from Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, Reel 18, Container 27.
25 These comments were made on the twentieth anniversary of the accident. See BBC News, April 24, 2006, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/4918940.stm.
26 Chernyaev, p. 65.
27 V Politburo, p. 41.
28 Dmitri Volkogonov, Autopsy for an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime (New York: Free Press, 1998), p. 478. Read reports Ligachev argued “for saying as little as possible,” and that a vote was taken in which Ligachev prevailed.
29 “Information about the accident at Chernobyl nuclear power station April 26, 1986,” Fond 89, Hoover. An essential guide to these documents is Larissa Soroka, Guide to the Microfilm Collection in the Hoover Institution Archives; Fond 89: Communist Party of the Soviet Union on Trial (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2001). An hour later, a second TASS statement said the accident was the first ever in the Soviet Union, and noted other accidents in other countries. Read, p. 175.
30 Volkogonov, pp. 478–479.
31 “Ot Sovieta Ministrov SSSR” [From the Council of Ministers USSR], Fond 89, Perechen 53, Delo 2, Hoover Institution.
32 A subsequent account claims the red glow was not the burning core, but a piece that had been blasted loose during the explosion. Alexander R. Sich, “Truth Was an Early Casualty,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 1996, pp. 32–42.
33 Michael Dobbs, Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire (New York: Knopf, 1997), p. 160.
34 Fond 89, Perechen 51, Delo 19, Hoover.
35 Reagan diary, April 30, 1986.
36 Fond 89, Perechen 53, Delo 6, Hoover. The memo carries a stamp by the Central Committee indicating it was circulated on May 16, two days after Gorbachev’s televised speech. In an interview in 2008 with Irina Makarova, Gubarev said Gorbachev seemed “absolutely in the dark about what was happening.” Gubarev later wrote a play, Sarcophagus, which suggested that the accident was due to operator and human error, not the design of the reactor.
37 Chernyaev, p. 66. Also see V Politburo, pp. 61–66.
38 Tarasenko, interview, Feb. 3, 2005.
39 Eduard Shevardnadze, The Future Belongs to Freedom (New York: Free Press, 1991), pp. 175–176.
40 Sergei Akhromeyev and Georgi M. Kornienko, Glazami Marshala i Diplomata (Moscow: International Relations, 1992), pp. 98–99.
41 Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Gody Trudnykh Reshenii [Years of Difficult Decisions] (Moscow: Alfa-print, 1993), pp. 46–55.
42 “Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-economic Impacts,” the Chernobyl Forum, 2003–2005. In another estimate, at least six thousand more died from radiation exposure, and perhaps many more. David R. Marples, “The Decade of Despair,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May–June 1996, pp. 22–31.
43 Shultz, p. 724.
44 Reagan diary, May 20, 1986.
45 Shultz, pp. 716–717.
46 Chernyaev, p. 83. This was a reference to the nuclear-pumped X-ray laser that was being advocated by Teller, although Reagan did not envision a nuclear program.
47 Reagan, An American Life, p. 661. The Soviets were eager to do parallel experiments.
48 See USSR Nuclear Weapons Tests and Peaceful Nuclear Explosions: 1949 through 1990 Ministry of the Russian Federation for Atomic Energy, Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Russian Federal Nuclear Center VNIIEF, 1996. The U.S. data is from United States Nuclear Tests.
49 Frank von Hippel, Citizen Scientist: From the Environment to Dissent, a Leading Scientist Talks About the Future of the Planet (New York: Touchstone, 1991). An example of their brainstorming came in the first days after the Chernobyl accident. Von Hippel urged Velikhov to distribute potassium iodide tablets to the population, to forestall the uptake of radioactive iodine into the thyroid of people exposed. Velikhov rushed the idea to the Kremlin. On May 1, the Ministry of Foreign Trade was ordered to “urgently sign contr
acts to purchase from abroad the necessary amount of medications” and the Health Ministry to “examine the received offers.” Protocol No. 3, May 1, 1986, Fond 89, Perechen 51, Delo 19, Hoover. In the end, the advice was not taken out of fear of causing mass panic. Velikhov interview, 2004. According to a later report by the United Nations, radiation doses to the thyroid “were particularly high in those who were children at the time and drank milk with high levels of radioactive iodine. By 2002, more than 4000 thyroid cancer cases had been diagnosed in this group, and it is most likely that a large fraction of these thyroid cancers is attributable to radioiodine intake.” See “Chernobyl’s Legacy,” p. 7.
50 Frank von Hippel, “Contributions of Arms Control Physicists to the End of the Cold War,” Physics and Society, vol. 25, no. 2, April 1996, pp. 1, 9–10. The conference was part of the Niels Bohr Centennial celebration, Sept. 27–29, 1985.
51 Of three proposals considered, Cochran said NRDC’s was accepted because the group could move quickly. The agreement was signed May 28 between Velikhov and Adrian DeWind, chairman of the NRDC. Cochran, communication with author, July 9, 2008; von Hippel, Citizen Scientist, pp. 91–92.
52 Cochran had asked Charles Archambeau, a theoretical seismologist at the University of Colorado, to help organize the seismologists and equipment. Archambeau recruited John Berger, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, to organize the team to man the Soviet and U.S. installations and identify and order the needed equipment. Archambeau and Berger recruited James N. Brune from the University of Nevada and several others.
53 Natural Resources Defense Council, “Nuclear Test Ban Verification Project,” Status Report, November 1986; and Thomas B. Cochran, The NRDC/Soviet Academy of Sciences Joint Nuclear Test Ban Verification Project, Physics and Global Security, vol. 16, no. 3, July 1987, pp. 5–8.
54 Cochran, communication with author, July 8, 2008. The Soviet documents are at Katayev, Hoover.
55 The Central Committee approval was July 9 as Cochran and his team were just arriving on the site. Katayev, Hoover.
56 Chernyaev, pp. 77–78.
57 Gorbachev letter to Reagan, Sept. 15, 1986, RRPL.
58 Reagan diary, Sept. 19, 1986.
59 Chernyaev notes from the Politburo session, Sept. 22, 1986. See The Reykjavik File: Previously Secret Documents from U.S. and Soviet Archives on the 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev Summit, TNSA EBB 203, doc. 3.
60 Chernyaev, pp. 79–84. Also see David Holloway, “The Soviet Preparation for Reykjavik: Four Documents,” in the conference report Implications of the Reykjavik Summit on Its Twentieth Anniversary (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2007), pp. 45–95.
61 Chernyaev, p. 81.
62 “Talking Points,” three pp., John Poindexter to the President, no date, RRPL, document no. 9155, Box 90907, European and Soviet Affairs Directorate, NSC.
63 Two sets of notes of the Reykjavik discussions were used for this account. While there are some differences, they largely agree on the substance of what was said. The United States notes are summaries and have been declassified by the State Department; see TNSA, EBB No. 203. The Soviet notes are more detailed, in the form of transcripted speech, and were published in four installments in 1993 by the journal Mirovaya Ekonomika I Mezhdurnarodnyye Otnosheniya and translated by FBIS.
64 The U.S. team was led by Nitze, and the Soviet team by Akhromeyev. See Strobe Talbott, The Master of the Game: Paul Nitze and the Nuclear Peace (New York: Knopf, 1988), pp. 317–322.
65 Shultz, p. 763.
66 Reagan, An American Life, p. 677.
67 This account of the final dialogue is from Shultz, and Reagan gives a similar account. However, Gorbachev said Reagan reproached him, “You planned from the start to come here and put me in this situation!” Gorbachev recalls he replied he was prepared to go back inside and sign a comprehensive arms control document “if you drop your plans to militarize space.” He quotes Reagan as responding, “I am really sorry.” Gorbachev, Memoirs, p. 419.
68 Reagan diary, Oct. 12, 1986.
69 Gorbachev press conference, Oct. 14, 1986, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, SU/8389/A1/1.
CHAPTER 12: FAREWELL TO ARMS
1 Svetlana Savranskaya and Thomas Blanton, eds., “The Reykjavik File,” TNSA EBB 203, doc. 19.
2 TNSA EBB 203, doc. 21.
3 Anatoly Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev (University Park, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), p. 87.
4 Gorbachev needed to raise prices that had long been set artificially low, but he could not bring himself to do it. Stable prices were part of the social compact with the population that went back to the late 1950s and early 1960s. Yegor Gaidar, Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2007), pp. 122–139.
5 Politburo instruction No. P34/I to the Ministry of Defense, Oct. 14, 1986, as referenced in an excerpt from Protocol No. 66 of the Politburo meeting, May 19, 1987. Katayev, Hoover.
6 Sergei Akhromeyev and Georgi M. Kornienko, Glazami Marshala i Diplomata (Moscow: International Relations, 1992), pp. 124–126.
7 Gorbachev broadcast on Soviet television, Oct. 22, 1982, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, SU/8398/A1/1.
8 In his televised address from the Oval Office October 14, Reagan said, “We offered the complete elimination of all ballistic missiles—Soviet and American—from the face of the Earth by 1996.” He also described a 50 percent cut in other weapons along with elimination of the missiles.
9 Don Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a New Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 208. Crowe said in his memoir that he told Reagan the plan was “ill-advised,” but he does not quote directly from his presentation. William J. Crowe Jr., The Line of Fire: From Washington to the Gulf, the Politics and Battles of the New Military (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), pp. 266–269.
10 Reagan diary, Oct. 27, 1986.
11 TNSA EBB 203, doc. 23.
12 The arrival of Stinger shoulder-fired antiaircraft weapons to the U.S.-backed Afghan resistance in September marked a turning point in the six-year-old war. Congress pumped $470 million in secret aid to the fighters in fiscal year 1986 and increased that to $630 million the next year. Steve Coll, Ghost Wars (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), pp. 149, 151.
13 Chernyaev, p. 95.
14 Reagan, who earlier adhered to the SALT II limits, decided that the United States would no longer do so, and the United States broke through in late November 1986.
15 This was a reference to Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, who was removed as chief of the General Staff in September 1984 but at the time remained in the defense ministry and continued to be outspoken about the need to provide advanced technology to the military.
16 The radar issue was first raised by the United States in 1983; Gates was repeating the charge.
17 William M. Welch, “Soviets Have Far Outspent U.S. on Nuclear Defense, CIA Says,” AP, Nov. 25, 1985. The spravka is in Katayev, Hoover.
18 Sakharov said February 15, “A significant cut in ICBMs and medium-range and battlefield missiles, and other agreements on disarmament, should be negotiated as soon as possible, independently of SDI… I believe that a compromise on SDI can be reached later.” Sakharov, Moscow and Beyond (New York: Knopf, 1991), p. 21.
19 See “The INF Treaty and the Washington Summit: 20 Years Later,” TNSA EBB No. 238.
20 Podvig, Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 224–226. Gorbachev, Memoirs, pp. 443–444.
21 Katayev’s account is drawn from his memoir; a lengthy monograph, “Structure, Preparation and Application of Decisions in Political-Military Problems in the Soviet Union;” and a monograph on civil-military relations.
22 Chernyaev, p. 103, n 4.
23 Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), pp. 481–482.
24 Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformi, vol. 2,
pp. 36–37. George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), p. 890.
25 An upgrade was planned to give the Oka a range of 372 miles, but it was never carried out. Katayev.
26 TNSA, EBB 238.
27 Gorbachev approved May 19. Katayev.
28 Yarynich, interviews with author.
29 This account is based on K. Lantratov, “Zvezdnie Voini, Kotorikh ne bylo” [Star Wars That Never Was], at www.buran.ru/htm/str163.htm. Two days after the crash, on May 17, Defense Minister Sokolov sent a message to the Central Committee, saying new programs would be readied for anti-satellite combat as well as the SK-1000 list that had been put on Gorbachev’s desk in 1985. The Politburo referred Sokolov’s message for further study by a four-man committee on May 19. However, most of the projects were never built. “On questions of perfecting the structure of the strategic nuclear forces of the USSR and counteracting the American program to create a multi-echelon system of anti-missile defense,” a memo. Katayev, Hoover.
30 “On completed investigation of the criminal case against Rust,” Central Committee memorandum, July 31, 1987, Hoover, Fond 89, Perechen 18, Delo 117; a documentary by Danish radio, DR, at http://www.dr.dk/Tema/rust/english/index.html; Peter Finn, the Washington Post, May 27, 2007, p. A20; The Observer, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2002, interview by Carl Wilkinson.
31 Pravda, May 28, 1992; see Michael Dobbs, Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire(New York: Knopf, 1997), pp. 180–181.
32 Gorbachev, Memoirs, p. 232.
33 Chernyaev, p. 119.
34 Chernyaev, p. 119. Also, “On Violation of Soviet Airspace and Measures to Strengthen Leadership of USSR Armed Forces,” Volkogonov Collection, Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, Reel 17, Container 25.
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