“You are one of us,” Oleg told me. “You understand our work, Sasha. But keep it between us.”
When I got back to the regiment in February, my squadron was very busy. The base had been selected to host the Central Committee of the Georgian Communist Party for the February 23 Red Army Day military exposition. And I had been chosen as the representative young MiG-23 pilot.
This was my first official encounter with high Party officials. My unit zampolit, Major Vladimir Novikov, gave the younger officers direct and simple instructions as to how to respond to the visiting delegation: “To any question about conditions, you will reply Otlichno. Excellent.”
I was positioned at the nose of a well-scrubbed MiG-23 that had obviously never been flown hard. Its tires were brand-new. Laid out before me on the tarmac — which had been scrubbed clean of oil stains — was a fan-shaped display of all the missiles and bombs the aircraft could carry.
We had been told that the Georgian Party delegation would be led by its chairman, Eduard Shevardnadze, who was reputed to have good connections in Moscow. So PVO and VVS fighter interceptors were given the most prominent positions among the combat aircraft. This was in keeping with the Party and Defense Ministry policy line that the Soviet military was basically a defensive force, protecting the Socialist Motherland from imperialist aggression.
But after six weeks away from the regiment, the exposition’s hypocrisy grated on me. Certainly everything was not otlichno. The officers of the habitually understaffed maintenance sections, for example, were forced to work almost fifty straight hours to prepare for the show. Then at the last minute they were issued new black coveralls to replace their stained and ripped regular uniforms to make it appear they had merely supervised the clumsy and inept conscripts assigned to them.
The engineering officers were also ordered to clean up the frayed, cast-off cloth earphone helmets, which the pilots had given the mechanics to jury-rig as improvised hearing protection. This was a glaring example of the gap between pokazuka and reality. Ever since I’d been flying, ground crews had complained that they were never issued protective helmets against the deafening whine and blast of jet engines. Indeed, “deaf as a mechanic” was a common phrase. So, whenever they could, pilots retired the close-fitting nylon and leather earphone liners worn under the hard flight helmets and gave them to the mechanics, who stuffed the earphones with thick cotton wadding.
Now these mechanics and engineers had to pretend the helmets were State issue.
The only people really looking forward to the exposition were the conscripts. They knew that whenever an important kozyol, “goat,” of the Party visited the base, the food in the soldiers’ dining halls would dramatically improve and the kitchens would be scrubbed spotless.
But it was unlikely Comrade Shevardnadze’s delegation would perform a white-glove inspection searching for rancid grease in the soldiers’ kitchens. Sometimes, though, apparatchiks — trailed by zampolits snapping pictures — would sit at the soldiers’ dining tables to enjoy a bowl of rich, meaty soup, the only fresh beef or lamb the soldiers might see for months.
However, as I stood in my best winter flying suit waiting for the Zil limousine to come to a stop near the honor guard at the far end of the ramp on that cloudy February morning, I knew it was more than unlikely that the Party delegation would inspect the bachelor and married officers’ housing compound two miles from the base. When I had first arrived in Vaziani, Bagomed “Boris” Bagomedov and I had shared a dingy room in the bachelors’ quarters. But Boris was a hard worker and helped me make the quarters livable. We both felt sorry for the married fellows living in the shoddy, two-story brick building across from us. Their families were jammed into single rooms without toilets, equipped with a small sink and a single, cold-water tap. Every morning we saw the wives in their housecoats trudging across to the latrines on the ground floor of our building, lugging their sloshing chamber pots. Their husbands would be flying twenty-million-ruble aircraft while these women were obliged to scrub out stinking slop buckets with cold water.
After Boris got married to a girl from his home village in Dagestan, I had the room to myself, but could hardly enjoy this dubious privilege. I ate all my meals at the officers’ dining room on the base, two miles away. This meant that on weekends I had to spend hours waiting for the single shuttle bus, just to eat breakfast, lunch, and supper. So I studied the situation carefully and planned a campaign to win the support of Major Novikov, my squadron zampolit.
“Comrad Captain,” I told him, “I need my own apartment if I am to successfully complete my training.”
“Lieutenant Zuyev,” he said, “this is a most unusual request.”
I had expected that he would respond that way and was prepared to put him on the defensive. “You know, of course, Comrade Captain,” I reasoned, “that I am in a very intense training schedule and need all the sleep I can get as well as nutritious hot meals. Surely you realize our flight surgeon, Major Blustein, has recommended this regime.”
Novikov nodded neutrally.
“Captain Novikov,” I added, playing my trump card, “the flight surgeon suggested I see you to find a quiet apartment where I can sleep during the day when I’m on night training flights, and where I can prepare my own meals without wasting hours traveling back and forth to the officers’ dining room.”
Again, Novikov was noncommittal. Finding an apartment for a single junior officer would be a real challenge.
I let the silence between us deepen. “Well, Major,” I said, filling my voice with disappointment, “I’ll manage somehow. If you can’t help me, I understand. I probably made a mistake in troubling you.”
Novikov stared at me intensely. I could see he was intrigued by the challenge. “I will do what I can for you, Comrade Lieutenant.”
Going to the zampolit with my problem had not been an act of desperation. The major took his duty seriously. The welfare of the officers and men certainly was his primary responsibility. And like most of his kind, he was a Communist zealot, who believed fervently that the Marxist-Leninist system provided answers to all human problems.
If a soldier’s mother was sick or his father died halfway around the world in Siberia, the zampolit counseled the boy with suitable Communist condolences and arranged an Aeroflot ticket for compassionate leave. If a mechanic’s wife complained he was spending his pay on a girl in town, the zampolit would call the man on the carpet for a lecture on Communist morality. When a soldier showed up drunk for duty, part of his discipline was a counseling session with the zampolit. I had read there were equally dedicated priests and ministers serving in Western armies as chaplains, men who rode the tanks or even parachuted into battle with their men. These chaplains served the same function as zampolits in the Soviet military. Or perhaps, given the sequence of history, the situation was reversed. All I knew was that a well-motivated zampolit was a good friend to have, even if he couldn’t fly an airplane worth a damn.
The zampolit made a strong case for me with Major Kuchkov, who in turn took my request to Colonel Rinchinov. A week later I was given the keys to my tiny apartment in an old two-floor wooden building in the military housing compound. Two weeks after that, I discovered that the Voyentorg military exchange actually had a big brand-new Minsk refrigerator available, one that had been shipped by mistake, with no officer waiting to buy it. I told the clerk to hold it for me and he insisted I have my zampolit endorse my order. I was back at Major Novikov’s office in a flash, presenting the order form for his countersignature. Novikov looked at me a bit strangely: It was unheard-of for a senior lieutenant to obtain both an apartment and a new refrigerator within weeks of each other. But he did sign the order form.
The Voyentorg closed for the weekend in three hours. And I had to hurry to withdraw the 470 rubles from the State savings bank. As a bachelor, I had managed to save more than 2,000 rubles since leaving the academy. But I resisted splurging and buying a good used Gorizont or Taorus television to complement
my Minsk refrigerator. My savings were paying almost three percent interest. If I kept depositing a quarter of my monthly salary, I would have enough to buy a decent used Zhiguli sedan in six or seven years. So I installed the big white refrigerator in my tiny parlor, the place of honor usually taken by a television set. After that, when my friends asked me if I had seen some particularly interesting television program, I always told them, “No, boys, that show hasn’t been shown on my Minsk station yet.”
I was thinking about all these matters while standing like a store-window dummy in my pressed flying suit before the nose of the aircraft. But my reverie was interrupted by the sudden arrival of Lieutenant General Igor Buravkov, the district’s VVS commander. I snapped to rigid attention and saluted in the best Armavir manner. But the general told me to stand easy.
“All set for the delegation, Zuyev?”
“Absolutely, Comrade General.”
Buravkov looked over my display and briefly inspected my uniform. “Let’s have a look at your cockpit.”
He climbed the ladder ahead of me, and to my surprise sat down in the fighter’s ejection seat. The general’s hands slid over the throttle and stick, and lingered on the weapons’ control panel. Then he looked at me frankly, one pilot to another. “You know, Lieutenant,” he said quietly, “they don’t let us general officers fly anymore, ever since those accidents in the Ukraine. I miss it. I envy you young fellows.”
His openness had disarmed me completely. I nodded in sympathy. What could I tell a lieutenant general?
Finally he looked up from the instruments and assumed his normal role. “How’s your training progressing, Lieutenant Zuyev?” The regimental zampolit was down there on the apron with his camera, and I was expected to smile respectfully.
For a moment I considered mouthing the standard reply, but then I realized I had a unique opportunity to cut through the bureaucracy. “Speaking frankly?”
“Of course.” General Buravkov frowned now.
I explained that I had been selected for the MiG-29 program and had been pulled out of the group undergoing intense training for First Class pilot rating. “I’m afraid, Comrade General, that I won’t have the chance to make First Class.”
Again Buravkov frowned, then climbed down from the cockpit and turned to speak to his aide, a dandy of a young captain with a Guards’ tab on his epaulets. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant Zuyev,” the general said gruffly, “you’ll receive the rating before your transfer.”
Five minutes later Shevardnadze’s delegation made its way down the line of planes, pausing before each one to ask the appropriate questions of the pilot or maintenance officer.
After I saluted the chairman and shook his hand, Shevardnadze turned his bright brown eyes on the array of weapons displayed on the tarmac. “Any shortcomings or deficiencies the Party should be aware of, Comrade Lieutenant?”
The question was pure pokazuka. “Certainly not, Comrade Chairman.”
I caught General Buravkov’s eyes as the Party leaders moved past me. The old pilot was smiling.
At the squadron briefings the next morning, Colonel Rinchinov glared at me and pushed back his thick black hair in an angry gesture. “Zuyev,” he said, “I didn’t know you could jump rank so high.” He was furious that I had raised the training issue with the district commander.
“Comrade Colonel,” I answered, “the general asked about my training and I replied.”
Rinchinov glared a moment longer, enjoying my discomfort. “So I understand, Comrade Lieutenant.”
The colonel had received a message directly from General Buravkov. The regiment was to guarantee that Igor and I would be granted the aircraft and instructors necessary to complete our First Class training before transfer to the MiG-29 program. And like everything else he did, Colonel Rinchinov organized this effort well.
He selected Captain Griek, who was also due for transfer to MiG-29s, as our chief instructor. And Rinchinov consulted his engineering deputy to locate four well-maintained aircraft, a two-seat MiG-23UB for dual instruction, and three single seaters to be flown only by Igor, me, and our instructor. Most of the training remaining on the syllabus was at night, so Rinchinov organized the entire regiment’s flying schedule around ours, keeping the simulator, the runway, and the weapons poligons free for our use.
Four nights a week we flew. On Saturdays and Sundays we used the simulator and studied manuals. After forty-five days of this intense instruction, Igor and I passed our First Class pilots’ examinations on April 25, 1985. I was two years and three months out of the Armavir Academy and had just reached a milestone that normally required seven years. The next night in the officers’ dining room, Igor and I paid for the cognac.
The fellows in the 1st Squadron presented each of us a framed “Air Force Regulation” describing the duties of Third, Second, and First Class pilots:
Pilot Third Class: knows it all, but can’t fly worth shit.
Pilot Second Class: knows a little bit of everything and can even fly a little.
Pilot First Class: doesn’t remember shit, but can fly anything, anywhere, anytime.
To me, that crude declaration was worth more than a thousand-ruble bonus.
I had been so focused on my training that I hardly had time to consider the political events shaking Moscow. In March, Communist Party General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko died — or at least the Central Committee acknowledged his death: Chernenko, an elderly zombie like Brezhnev, had been absent from Party meetings for over a month, so the official announcement of his death was hardly a shock. People were used to these fossilized old politicians dropping dead. But the Politburo’s speed in naming his successor was a surprise. Only hours after the solemn music began droning on Radio Moscow, the announcement came that Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev had been named Party General Secretary.
Despite the hectic pace of my schedule, I took the time to read both Pravda and Izvestia that week. Gorbachev was like no leader the country had ever known. For the previous year, as a new young member of the Politburo, he had often appeared on television, speaking frankly, with obvious conviction, about the need for reform and reorganization in the Soviet Union. It wasn’t just his relative youth and enthusiasm that made him so different. Gorbachev spoke candidly, without resort to the text of a prepared speech or even notes. And when he addressed the people, he looked directly into the camera lens, in a way that riveted his listeners.
Mikhail Gorbachev had been a protege of Andropov, and believed deeply that our huge, rich nation could reach its great Socialist potential if the people were well led and motivated. I shared his optimism.
“Finally,” I told Pashka and Igor one night in the sauna, “we have a man in Moscow who will shake things up and get this country back on track.”
That spring the regiment’s 1st Squadron left for Afghanistan to replace the 2nd Squadron in Kandahar. Boris Bagomedov was now a member of the 1st Squadron, and I was with him on the apron the morning the squadron prepared for takeoff on the first leg of the flight east.
I had known Boris for six years; we had shared that huge tent of candidate cadets in the sweltering selection camp at Armavir. Even then, he had looked older than the other boys. His face had a definite Asian appearance, with sharp, clean-cut features and smooth olive skin. Unlike most Muslim men, he did not wear a mustache. But he spoke with the distinct accent of the Dagestan mountains, swallowing his consonants and rounding out his vowels. However, none of the Russian guys in that tent had mocked him as a “national hero.” Boris had the thick chest and wide shoulders of a classical wrestler. He was incredibly strong and could do 140 pull-ups on the chinning bar. And when he moved, it was with a certain slow grace.
Neither the academy’s academic course nor the flight training had come easy to him. But Boris ground along, the tortoise to the flashy hares like Sergei and Karpich. It hadn’t surprised me when Boris was selected for accelerated MiG-23 training. People made a real mistake when they confused his native reticence
and quiet manner with stupidity. It was only in our last year in the academy that we were able to convince Boris to taste vodka and enjoy the forbidden pleasures of pork sausage.
I certainly recognized this ethnic aspect of my friend more clearly after Boris went home to his village in Dagestan on his first annual leave from Vaziani and returned with his new wife, Sultanat. In his matter-of-fact way he announced that this shy young girl who matched his chiseled features and olive complexion had been selected to be his wife when she was a child. After Boris went to the academy, Sultanat studied to be a primary school teacher so that they would be social equals.
Boris was inordinately proud when he announced that Sultanat was expecting a child. Almost nine months to the day after their wedding, she gave birth to a healthy boy, who we all joked would naturally be named Bagomed Bagomedovich Bagomedov Bago-medovsky.
“No,” Boris said, his serious face knit in a frown, “we will call him Bulat.”
Only when we broke into loud guffaws did Boris realize we’d been having him on. That night he bought the cognac and helped us drink it.
But three months later no one in the regiment was laughing. It was a clear winter Wednesday morning, and we had already flown two training sorties, when the zampolit sent the commander’s GAZ and driver racing out to the flight line to pick up Boris. There had been an accident with Boris’s baby in the military housing compound, and Boris had to meet his wife and child at a civilian hospital in Tbilisi. Boris didn’t even change out of his flight suit before clambering into the vehicle.
He did not return to the regiment for several weeks. But we all had heard the story by afternoon. Sultanat had been feeding the baby his first solid food in their tiny apartment. And this young Muslim girl, far from her home village, was too shy to ask other women how to best prepare food for an infant. The baby spit up on a piece of fruit and began choking. Soon the baby was turning blue.
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