The president looked splendid: lively, energetic, with bright eyes and no signs of fatigue. This was the second time I saw him up close. The first time was 24 January 1989 when Kriuchkov presented me to the president before my appointment. At that time Gorbachev had been somewhat gloomy and distant. The president ordered me to summon all the vice-chairmen of the KGB and announce that I was to become acting chairman.
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A three- to five-minute private session with the president does have special significance in this world. In passing through the “black walnut room” I saw convivial, even tender smiles and symbolic clasping of hands from all corners. Just in case. . . .
Outside, the golden domes of Great Ivan’s bell tower had grown dim. We headed toward Lubianka Square where a crowd had gathered with obvious ill intent toward the KGB. We drove around the crowd with some difficulty and plunged into the KGB complex through a side street. (The usual shopping frenzy continued uninterrupted by the Children’s World department store.)
I gathered the vice-chairmen and announced the president’s decision. Immediately the group broke out in controlled but happy smiles. I distinctly remember G.F. Titov’s open and honest face. He had been on vacation and took no part in any of the events. The sole issue on the day’s agenda was the classic Russian one—what’s to be done? It was absolutely clear that the old order was finished and something new had to be taken up. But the “absolutely clear” ended at this point. We decided to gather the KGB leadership on the next day, 23 August, to discuss the issues for the Collegium session. A Collegium meeting had to be held as soon as possible. There was nothing left to say and we broke up. (A line from a poem by Esenin ran through my head: “Before this throng of the departing //I can’t conceal my sorrow.”) It was to reappear again and again during those days.
My office is a hell of ringing telephones. The officer in charge of quarters reports that the crowd outside is about to storm the building. They are writing offensive graffiti on the walls and have surrounded the Dzerzhinskii monument [founder of the Cheka, the secret police].
“What are we to do?”
“No gunfire under any conditions! Lock all the gates and doors, check the gratings. We’ll call city hall for help and ask them to send the police.” (An instance of humiliation that is to last two days.) We get in touch with the police but they are in no hurry to help us. V.I. Kravtsev calls from the Attorney General’s office: “We are sending a team of inspectors to search Kriuchkov’s office.”
“Good, send them.” Next comes a call from the office of the Attorney General of the Russian Federation: “We are sending a team of inspectors to conduct a search of Kriuchkov’s office. Molchanov from Central Television will come with the team.”
“You are welcome to send them but people from the Soviet Attorney General’s office are already on their way here.”
“That’s all right, we’ll come to terms with them.”
Within ten minutes my office is filled with some fifteen servants of the justice system among whom I recall only Stepankov, the attorney general of the
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Russian Federation. To my surprise both groups come to an immediate understanding, find witnesses (young women from the secretariat) and surge into Kriuchkov’s office. Another group sets off to search Kriuchkov’s dacha where his wife has been weeping all morning. Yet another group sets off to search Kriuchkov’s apartment.
The phone rings. It is M.S. Gorbachev: “I have signed the edict appointing you acting chairman of the KGB. Take charge.”
I note the time—it is 1500 hours. To the constant reports (“they’re smashing windows . . .” “we can’t get in touch with the police . . .” “they’re about to topple the monument”) there is an added flood of congratulations on my appointment. Just in case. Life is becoming increasingly unbearable, but there is no time to think about it. My office windows look out into an inner courtyard and the noise of the crowd is heard dimly. How familiar the situation is. How horrible that it is taking place not in Tehran where some ten years ago I sat besieged, commanding the defenders, hearing the roar of the mob, the ring of shattering glass, the blows on the doors, gunshots . . . Horrible that it is happening here on Lubianka Square and that here, as in Teheran, there is no help coming.
But I am wrong. Two deputies of the Russian Federation appear in my office. It is their task to quiet the crowd should it turn violent. I write down their names with sincere gratitude—Leonid Borisovich Gurevich and Il’ia Mstislavovich Konstantinov. They have brought reason into the totally irrational world of my office.
There is a report that free vodka is being distributed from a truck in Serov Lane [near the headquarters]. But this has to be totally in the realm of fantasy—vodka is a valuable commodity and anyone would be happy to pay for it. Nevertheless, I have it checked. It turns out there is no distribution. (There is disappointment in the voice.) Things gradually clear up. There is no violent crowd on the square but rather a political rally which is discussing how to remove the monument. S.B. Stankevich [leader of a democratic faction] is in charge and the police are quietly maintaining order.
Slowly the white heat drops to a cherry red. Using the underground passageway I go to G.B. Ageev’s office in the old building. The windows of his fifth-floor office look out on the square. At the request of the organizers of the rally we have turned on the building’s projectors (“Don’t assault us. See how conscientious we are.”), but the square remains poorly illuminated. The crowd leaves a sizable empty circle around the monument. It is hard to estimate but there are several tens of thousands. People speechify, others shout slogans while two enormous self-propelled cranes take the measure of the monument. An ambulance drives onto the square but only to better illuminate the public execution of the founder of the secret police [Cheka], the first
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Chekist. A public execution is not a new phenomenon for Russia. Though the scale is much grander with a monument, television will put things in the right perspective. It will be even more intriguing because the monument does not change its facial expression. Everything occurring is meaningless to it, and is simply the vanity of those who have not yet dissolved in eternal darkness. When you are executing a living person it is a different matter. In Iran they understood the difference well.
I force myself to watch. Do I feel anguish? No. Everything going on is the natural reckoning for near-sightedness, limitless power, for the self-indulgence of the leaders, for our sheep-like, mindless nature. The end of an era. But also the beginning of another era. The cranes rev up; the crowd bellows. There is the pop of hundreds of flashbulbs and “Iron Felix” firmly suspended by the neck hangs over the square while under the cast iron greatcoat the iron legs give a death shudder. You gave up your first earthly life for the wrong reasons, Mr. Felix Ed-mundovich, sir. Now posthumously you answer for the sins of your progeny.
The empty buildings of the KGB are silent and still. I have given an order to remove the guard details form the fourth and fifth floors of the new building. This was a maximum security zone where the offices of the secretariat, the leadership, and the chairman were located. And the long corridors look strange without the customary young lieutenants at all the entry points to the two floors.
My last order of the day is to the superintendent’s unit: not to use firearms under any circumstances. That is it. There is nothing to be done here at night. We leave through an exit to Kuznetskii Most [a street]. The streets are deserted with only an occasional passer-by and a group of police at a distance, closer to the square. This is my city. I was born and have lived in it but at this night hour I sense its cold alienation. Lines from the poet Blok come to mind: “Night, a street, a lamp, a pharmacy,// A meaningless and murky light.”
We hear the footfalls of history but do not know where to hide so as not to be crushed.
I am to
rmented not by the future (it is all in God’s hands) but by the present and the not so distant past. I see myself immeasurably humiliated, deceived and robbed. The remnant of my human dignity is outraged at its treatment. After all, I did not live merely to fill my stomach with food and to sleep soundly. I considered myself a reasonably educated, rational, and reasonably decent person. It has seemed to me that I and those like myself have been perceived thus by others. The betrayal by Kriuchkov turned out to be the last in that long chain of betrayals of which my generation had been victim.
We were betrayed for the first time when we were made to believe in the semi-divine genius of Stalin. We were then too young to be cynical or to
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doubt the wisdom of our elders. (Was I the only idiot? I don’t think so. What I say is true for a whole generation.) In March of 1953 my classmates and I wept real, bitter tears. Stalin had died. A black cloud of imminent ills was moving upon our country and ourselves, its miserable children. We were too inexperienced to see beyond the funereal bunting. Otherwise we would have seen the frenzied gleam in the eyes of the successors to the leader of all eras and all nations.
It is demeaning even to recall the mini-cult of our dear Nikita Sergeevich [Khrushchev], and after him the hero of the Great Patriotic War [WW II], the hero of virgin soil [previously uncultivated land], the hero of the Soviet renaissance, the dyed-in-the-wool apparatchik [functionary] Leonid Il’ich Brezhnev, and the pitiful figure of Chernenko. In February of 1984 when the death of Iu.V. Andropov was announced we sat in a small room of the information service trying to guess who our next leader would be. We tried not to admit to ourselves that it might be an ex-manager of a garage and Cher-nenko’s one-time office manager.
Was it different under Andropov? He was a far-sighted, practical and clever man who spoke simply and to the issue. In conversing with him no one ever resorted to slogans or the usual hollow rhetoric. Had that happened, there would have been no subsequent conversations with that person. But Andropov lied as well and, voluntarily or involuntarily, had us believe in lies and lie to ourselves. (Incidentally Andropov once remarked in passing: “What gives you the idea, that you know what power is?” Once, in Afghanistan, the taciturn Kosygin said something similar. And Kriuchkov developed the theme further: “At that level, i.e., at the very top, there is no human friendship nor human devotedness.”)
These are new times. If falsehood has not been annulled it has, at least, been reduced in its rights to the level of truth. The compulsiveness of a single, canonized, absolute truth, the bearer of which was a high priest with a mysterious conclave of wise elders, called the Politburo, was vanishing. It was becoming clear that each person may believe in whatever seems to be the truth and may speak of it openly. A timid hope appeared that even if our leaders are not very wise, they, at least, might be honest. But the right to the truth was again used for deception. We were betrayed yet again.
Fifty-six years constitutes a fairly long life. In it there has been war, starvation, poverty, the death of dear ones, artillery barrages and long sieges, disillusionment in myself and others—the usual events in the life of a Russian of my generation. There is nothing to especially grieve for or be especially joyous about.
One’s own conscience should be one’s master. And to be farther from people who lust for power. Farther from power and its companion—falsehood. That is all.
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The Russian Century Page 47