The unbelievably fierce effect of the downward heatwave was felt first. At a range of over 15 kilometres from the epicentre people clad in ordinary summer clothing in the open received burns which demanded immediate medical attention if they were not to prove fatal. Such attention was almost never forthcoming. The epicentre of the attack, above which the missiles had been set to detonate, was the grandiose building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia, built in the late 1930s in the style then current to emphasize the power, extent and modernity of socialism. In front of it stood a full-size statue of Lenin. Within a few seconds of the first detonation this immense structure was no more than a great pile of rubble. Somewhere in there the statue of Lenin, the principal architect of all this huge disorder, lay pounded into dust. Up to some 5 kilometres from the former Communist Party headquarters, everything combustible was immediately set on fire. Fires were also springing up further out from the centre but the heat pulse was followed in a few seconds by blast waves of terrific power which extinguished many of the fires raging in the centre itself. The huge pressures developed by blast crushed everything immediately below, so that within 5 kilometres of the centre everything above ground level, of whatever construction, was brought crashing to the earth. The effect of the blast wave declined as it travelled outwards and some buildings of stouter construction still remained standing, if badly damaged, further out, though structures more lightly built, if not immediately destroyed by blast, were often torn apart by the hurricane winds that followed it. As far out as 12 kilometres from the city centre railway trucks were hurled from the permanent way, oil tanks were split asunder and their contents spread, while overhead wiring everywhere came down.
The noise of these explosions, in a continuous roar, lasted for more than thirty seconds at Dzerzhinsk, for example, some 30 kilometres away to the south-west and an important centre of local administration with a key railway station, as it also did at Borisov, about the same distance away from Minsk on the direct railway line to Moscow in the north-east. Damage at this range was relatively slight, though very many windows were broken, but the terrifying burning fiery furnace, with its stupefying noise, stunned all who saw it, even those who saved their sight by turning away.
The attack came quite without warning and though there were shelters available for at least a part of the population, very few people were in them. Of the one and a quarter million inhabitants of the city of Minsk, some 50,000 were killed almost instantly. Some, so badly burnt in the first thermal pulse as to have no hope of survival, were mercifully killed in the blast wave which almost immediately followed, while many were buried alive in the piles of masonry from buildings thrown down by the shock.
Something that could be seen from near Moscow, some 600 kilometres' distant, was even more clearly manifest in important places nearer to Minsk itself. It was visible in Riga, capital of Latvia to the north-west, in Kiev in the south-east and in Warsaw some 450 kilometres to the south-west. The pillar of fire was seen and the rumble of the detonations clearly heard at Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, only 170 kilometres away, while in the important Lithuanian city of Kaunas, 100 kilometres further off, the disturbance in the sky was also clearly visible and the rumble of the bursts was plainly heard. The inhabitants of Bobruisk, also in Belorussia and only 150 kilometres away from Minsk, were shocked and terrified. Much was seen and heard in Smolensk, Vitebsk, Gomel and Brest, on the Belorussian/Polish border. In all these important places, each with its own political interests, there was confusion and uncertainty and everyone was gripped by a fear approaching panic as to what might happen next.
In the suburbs of Minsk, where there were still wooden buildings, something approaching a firestorm was developing, generated in the tremendous currents of air caused by the impact of the blast wave. It was scarcely possible that any living thing could survive in the inner part of the city and if any did it could not be for long. On the outskirts burnt and blinded people, many bleeding badly from the effects of flying glass and other debris carried through the air by winds approaching hurricane force, all in a severe state of shock, were stumbling about in a forlorn search for parents or children and for medical assistance of which there was no hope at all. Others whose injuries prevented movement or who were pinned in wreckage from which there was no possibility of their rescue lay where they were in a state of stunned despair.
Soviet provision for civil defence had been held up in the early 1980s as something to admire and imitate. It is true that there were in the neighbourhood of Minsk concentrations of civil defence expertise and equipment at places like Borisov, Bobruisk and Baranovichi. All available resources were mobilized and moved in towards the disaster area. The authorities, however, were less concerned with the alleviation of personal distress than with the control of the movement of refugees, pathetic crowds of people who came pouring out from the outskirts of Minsk and its neighbouring regions along the roads towards Orsha and Bobruisk, people still alive, unlike those in the city, but suffering greatly from burns, injuries from falling masonry and a thousand other sources of distress. Almost all came on foot. By the outbreak of war the private ownership of motor vehicles in Minsk was at the level normal in Soviet cities, that is, at about that found among black South Africans. The few that there were had, of course, at once been requisitioned. Here and there in this heart-rending horde there would be a military or official motor vehicle, or one seized by force. For the most part the crowd just stumbled hurriedly on, carrying bits of household gear or food or bedding, wheeling perambulators, or handcarts upon which old or injured people sometimes lay. They only wanted, for the most part, in their state of stunned stupor, to get away.
The problem of controlling their movement, daunting though it might be, was in the Soviet fashion fairly easily solved, at least in the first instance. The USSR had raised more than 1,000 KGB battalions in the process of mobilization. It was not difficult to put a barrage round Minsk at a distance of some 12 kilometres from the centre and shoot anyone not belonging to the Party structure or the military who wished to come further.
At a distance of some 30 kilometres (in front of Borisov for example) a further ring of KGB troops was established. It was their business not to shoot down anyone attempting to get through but simply to send them back, with the exception of any individuals who could prove an official connection.
The headquarters of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia had moved out from Minsk on the outbreak of war and was established, together with the headquarters of the Belorussian Military District, in Orsha. These two centres of power, the military and the civil acting jointly, with the military commander technically in charge but the Party First Secretary as his deputy the real source of authority, now faced a truly frightening task of relief and reorganization. It was quite beyond the resources of the republic of Belorussia. It was formidable even for the USSR and could hardly be contemplated without despair.
Only much later would the question arise why such an appalling disaster should ever have been invited and who was to blame. There will probably never be an answer. What is sure is that it should never have happened and must never be allowed to happen again.
Chapter 21: Soviet Disintegration
Minsk was chosen as the target for the Western nuclear attack because of its general comparability with Birmingham as the Soviet target. To destroy Moscow or Leningrad would have been a fast jump up the ladder of escalation. An important provincial city was required, far enough from the capital so that no direct physical effects would be felt there, but near enough for immediate political repercussions on the seat of government. Minsk answered this bill. It was not just a specimen city of the Soviet Union, but the capital of the Belorussian Republic, one of the principal constituent units of the USSR, and singled out for special prominence by being allotted a fictionally independent seat at the United Nations. The stability and coherence of the area was weakened by the frontier changes after the Second
World War, when Poland was pushed bodily westwards, absorbing parts of Germany, but losing territory, and population, to Belorussia and the Ukraine. As a result there were important Catholic minorities in both these republics. The destruction of Minsk would clearly add to the internal strains in the whole area.
The Ukraine, lying immediately to the south of Belorussia, is far larger and more important. It occupies an area greater than that of France and has a population of about the same size. Before the war it produced more steel than the Federal Republic of Germany, with major armament works at Kharkov and Kiev. Kiev was the capital of the First Russia, before the Tartar invasion and before the emergence of Moscow. But the Ukraine had never been an independent state. It was a battlefield between Poles and Russians, Turks and even Swedes, before it was finally absorbed by Russia in 1654. However, the memories of former greatness and the idea of Ukrainian independence had never wholly died. They had, indeed, been revived by Stalinist persecution and by the repression of a fragmentary independence movement in 1966.
After Minsk the Ukrainians could well fear that Kiev or Kharkov would be next on the Allied targeting list. There was another more long-standing anxiety: insurrection was now widespread in Poland and receiving active and increasing support from the Western allies. As we have seen, this was already weakening the Soviet military effort in Germany. The destruction of Minsk would make it even more difficult for the Soviet Union to control the situation in Poland. If Poland were to escape from Soviet hegemony, one of its first ambitions would probably be to recover the Polish territory lost to Belorussia and the Ukraine. The Ukraine would be wise not to lose much time in claiming its own independence and looking after its own interests rather than those of its Soviet overlords.
To the north of Belorussia, the brief independence of the three Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, had also been extinguished by the USSR in the Second World War, but they had never been wholly assimilated and were now likely to be early candidates for freedom. Minsk therefore proved politically more significant in death than it had ever been in life. Its destruction triggered the dissolution of the whole western border area of the Soviet Union, not only by showing the vulnerability of Soviet power but by releasing, through the psychological Shockwaves of four nuclear missiles, the nationalistic passions which had lain dormant for so long.
This particular denouement had not been in mind when the young Vasyl Duglenko, a promising graduate from the Kiev police academy, was infiltrated by Ukrainian nationalists into the KGB, thanks to a favourable recommendation from no less than Khrushchev himself. It was this action, nevertheless, and Duglenko's subsequent appointment to the security section in the Kremlin, which made sure that the Soviet system could be overthrown from within, and that it would be followed by the establishment of separate nations on the ruins of the Soviet empire.
The mechanics of conspiracy are hard to unravel. To misquote the old epigram, if treason prospers it is not treason but a constitutional change of regime: and the secret plotting is swept under the carpet in the hope that it may not serve as a model for the next attempt at change. But three main elements were required for the success of the momentous coup which toppled the CPSU: the Ukrainian network in the KGB which had access to the inner sanctum of the Command Post being used at the time, to which Politburo and Defence Council had transferred their functions from the Kremlin; the disaffection of some of the Politburo members who had struggled under the leadership of Chief Party Ideologist Malinsky against the nuclear decision and now saw their attitude vindicated in the appalling devastation of the capital of Belorussia, with stupendous human suffering, and the gigantic surge of feeling which could lead to disintegration in the western regions; and influential officers of the Soviet High Command anxious to preserve a core of military strength as the foundation and guarantee of a successor Soviet state. For these were conscious that any further nuclear attack on the Soviet Union would destroy the chances of survival of organized authority and they knew that this could now only be provided by the armed forces.
All these groups had watched with growing apprehension the checks to Soviet forces on western fronts, the reverses of Soviet policy in the peripheral adventures, the signs of approaching break-up in Central Asia, and above all the incapacity of the leadership to understand and to adjust to what was happening. This was particularly noticeable in the formerly all-powerful General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, whose physical and mental deterioration was so marked that total breakdown could not be far off. The need of each group for allies in the right places overcame their seasoned caution, and contacts had begun to be made. Duglenko found a fellow Ukrainian in the highest ranks of the General Staff in Colonel General Vladimir Borisovich Ivanitskiy, Chief of the First Main (Strategic) Directorate. The latter knew the divisions in the Politburo intimately and had no difficulty in identifying the right members to approach at the crucial moment. The decision to bomb Birmingham gave them all the evidence they needed that the Party Secretary had lost his head (and some would even go so far as to say his reason) and should be removed at a very early opportunity. From the effect of the nuclear attack on Minsk they drew the assurance that Soviet forces west of the capital would be in no position to support or to restore the existing regime once it was overthrown. The example set by the defection of a great part of 3 Shock Army, under General Ryzanov, now freely co-operating with the British, German and Dutch in the Northern Army Group, supported and maintained by them in armed hostility to forces loyal to the regime, was being already followed in other parts of the Soviet forces as well. For the overthrow of the regime it now only remained for the method to emerge and the moment to be chosen. The Minsk disaster had become the fulcrum upon which the lever of popular disaffection already labouring to displace the Soviet regime could now operate. The method was there, the moment was there, but time was short. A meeting of the Politburo had been summoned to meet early on the following morning, 22 August.
The start of the October revolution of 1917 had been signalled by a cannon shot from the Aurora. On this occasion, in 1985, it was evident that a more prosaic pistol shot would have to suffice, but if it could be aimed precisely at the General Secretary himself it would do all that was required. Duglenko assumed responsibility for this part of the operation, counting on his access, for security purposes, to the most closely guarded parts of the Command Post currently in use.
Some vital problems still remained. Who was going to take power in succession to the Secretary, and how were the conspirators to make sure that they, and no one else in the hierarchic succession, secured the physical levers of supreme power, that is to say, control over the nuclear command system? Unless they had this control there would be a serious danger that some frustrated hard-line party or military group that had managed to secure it could decide that holocaust was preferable to surrender and start the ICBM attack on the West which would bring about the near-annihilation of the world. The conspirators had viewed with irony but also with apprehension the conflict of claims to authority by the top members of the US Government when the President of the United States was shot and nearly killed in 1981. The American version of 'hunt the black box', the search for the package containing the relatively simple apparatus without which, whatever other authority he possessed, even the President could not authorize nuclear release, had been farcical. A Soviet version in present circumstances could end in universal tragedy. The actual guardian of the box itself at the time, an army signals officer, would therefore have to be made to transfer his allegiance rapidly from the General Secretary to the conspirators' choice of successor, and not merely rely on the devolution of authority down the normal line of orthodox command. This was a practical detail to which Duglenko gave very close attention.
Just before the meeting, ordered for 5 am on that fateful morning of 22 August, it was learnt that the General Secretary had been taken seriously ill and would not be able to attend. In this crisis, both of the country an
d the Communist Party, with the leadership faltering, it was imperative to defer what looked like developing into a personal power struggle over the succession in the Politburo - or more probably, between the five members of the Defence Council - until decisions of the most pressing urgency had been taken, first of all on what was arising out of the nuclear attack on Minsk. In the absence of the General Secretary the chairmanship of the meeting had to be in the hands of someone of the highest prestige who, at the same time, would not be taken too seriously as a contender for personal power. The not unprecedented, though unusual, step was taken by common consent of bringing in the titular head of state President Vorotnikov to take the chair.
All ten members of the Politburo (excluding, of course, the General Secretary) were expected to attend the meeting. Duglenko's first task was to see that his own chief, Aristanov, Chairman of the KGB, did not. He had moreover not only to be prevented from attending this meeting but any other that might be held subsequently. With the help of his Ukrainian driver, Duglenko did not find the fatal accident which was required for the purpose impossibly difficult to arrange and, of course, it was Duglenko himself who could expect to be called in to explain the absence of the chief he should have accompanied to the meeting.
As soon as the Politburo assembled, under the chairmanship of President Vorotnikov, KGB Chairman Aristanov's empty chair was at first assumed to be the result of pressing state security business in Belorussia, but also raised fears that the KGB were plotting independent action. Only one of the members knew that the actual plotters were already within the gates. This, of course, was Taras Kyrillovich Nalivaiko, the member of the Politburo responsible for relations with socialist countries and a fellow Ukrainian. Some others were to have ample leisure in future to reflect on the poignancy of the always unanswered question: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, or in Soviet terms, if you give too much power to the state security force, what is to prevent it from taking the rest?
The Third World War - The Untold Story Page 43