Zhilinkhov had known that such open reporting would hurt the Party and the country. He had known also that the information was correct. Leonid’s friendship for him had paved the way to his becoming chief of the KGB.
The Party’s protracted crisis had worsened with the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster in 1986. The horrendous catastrophe had been shown in detail by the media. That incident had been one of the primary reasons the Party had begun to falter. Control of the media had been abolished, leading to further erosion of party authority.
The incident that had irritated the former KGB secret service chief the most had happened in 1987. Pravda had publicly rebuked a top KGB officer. The loyal agent, hand-picked years earlier by Zhilinkhov, had been fired as head of the unit in the Ukrainian region of Voroshilovgrad.
The policies of glasnost and perestroika had hit party ministers and members of the Politburo very hard.
Zhilinkhov remembered that his Politburo friend, Boris Dichenkovko, had come very close to forced resignation in 1987 for questioning glasnost.
The general secretary looked at his watch. He had twelve minutes left of his solitary lunch break before addressing the Central Committee again.
Zhilinkhov thought about the serious decline of production levels in the late eighties and early nineties. Economic growth had withered, which resulted in shortages of many consumer items, including clothing, shoes, watches, glassware, television sets, washing machines, refrigerators, cars, and motorcycles.
During the same period of economic stagnation and associated political unrest, more stinging attacks had been directed at the former Kremlin leaders, including Brezhnev and Nikita Khrushchev, from state-run periodicals. The articles had been very demoralizing for Soviet leaders and government officialdom.
However, Zhilinkhov, along with his contemporaries in the Politburo, had known in their hearts that it was typical for the Kremlin leadership to denounce its predecessors. Khrushchev had attacked Stalin in 1956, three years after Stalin’s death, and his friend Leonid had denounced Khrushchev after he was ousted in 1964.
The real blow to Zhilinkhov had been his dismissal from the Politburo in September 1988, along with Dichenkovko and two other members who were close stalwarts from the Brezhnev era. The four men, all hard-liners, had lived with the stinging embarrassment for many months.
Zhilinkhov had retaliated by publicly criticizing Gorbachev’s decision to allow Andrei Sakharov to visit the United States. The Nobel laureate had told Western reporters that Gorbachev’s political and economic restructuring faced solid domestic opposition that would endanger world peace. Sakharov warned that perestroika and glasnost could result in an extremely dangerous Gorbachev dictatorship.
The Western press had reported that Gorbachev had tried to rejuvenate the Communist party system, and renovate a government, without reforming it. The editorials had predicted that the authoritarian Communist system, lacking momentum and zeal, would slowly degenerate.
Then, during Gorbachev’s trip to the United States in December 1988, the Armenian earthquake overshadowed the general secretary’s announcement of Soviet troop reductions in Europe. Rushing to Leninakan, Armenia, Gorbachev found total confusion in the Russian rescue and relief efforts. High-level Soviet officials, aided by the media, lambasted the general secretary and his efforts at restructuring. The disorderly earthquake rescue effort, the critics said, was another example of a faltering government.
Gorbachev, beleaguered and harshly defensive, fired back at his critics during January 1989. He alluded to strong political resistance from leaders at the pinnacle of power, and downplayed calls for a return to the authoritarian style of Stalin.
The most alarming aspect of Soviet economic problems had been the unbelievable drop in oil production in 1990. The flow from the rich Tyumen fields of western Siberia had declined eighteen percent from the previous year. The loss in production had had a staggering effect on the country and the military in particular.
The oil minister, Yevgeny F. Sveridoskiy, a solid party member, had been fired and sent into exile, as reported by TASS. Zhilinkhov recalled, however, that Sveridoskiy had never been seen again by family or friends.
The Russian economy, exploited with ruthless means by the military hierarchy for three decades, had turned on its leaders. The perestroika facade had crumpled as waves of protesters rioted throughout major industrial sectors in 1991. The Soviet image of a dynamic, prosperous work force had become a national embarrassment.
The political meddling had escalated to finger-pointing and shouted insults among Politburo members. Longtime political friends wouldn’t speak to each other in social settings.
Party hard-liners had demanded a return to basic communist principles. The Politburo, feeling a total loss of control, had split into two factions.
Zhilinkhov recalled the evening he had contacted his Politburo friend, Boris Dichenkovko. That night the two of them had formed the “inner circle.”
Zhilinkhov and Dichenkovko had invited three current Politburo members, who openly resisted the former general secretary, to join them in a bold coup d’état.
The three newcomers to the circle had been bolstered by the zeal of Zhilinkhov and Dichenkovko. Their passion had grown as Zhilinkhov outlined the detailed plan in a lengthy secret meeting.
An “accident” had been arranged to kill the former general secretary. A Libyan militiaman, expert in the use of portable air-defense missiles, had used a Soviet SA-14 to down the Russian transport carrying the Kremlin chief. The recruited Libyan had been murdered less than thirty minutes after the crash by a Dichenkovko loyalist.
The three current Politburo members had acted swiftly to align the other eight members behind Zhilinkhov and Dichenkovko. The group had been at odds over many issues and readily embraced the plan Zhilinkhov presented to restore Communist party principles. The Politburo, with one dissenter, had elected their friend and former Politburo member, Viktor Pavlovich Zhilinkhov, to fill the position of general secretary and president.
After Zhilinkhov had entrenched himself in the position of consummate power, the inner circle had initiated the next phase. The steps necessary to probe the Americans in preparation for a nuclear, chemical, and biological “first strike” to the United States were begun.
Zhilinkhov had enlisted a longtime friend, Minister of Defense and General of the Army Trofim Filippovich Porfir’yev, in the inner circle.
Porfir’yev, the Russian equivalent of the American secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff combined, had initially been shocked by the magnitude of Zhilinkhov’s intent. Although Porfir’yev was fully apprised of the different first-strike scenarios rehearsed by the senior military commanders, he had never discussed the possibilities with the ruling hierarchy.
After meeting with the other members of Zhilinkhov’s aggregation, Porfir’yev embraced the bold plan and strongly recommended that the group include Marshal Nicholas Georgiyevich Bogdonoff, chief of the general staff.
The members of Zhilinkhov’s circle, although concerned about security, agreed. They didn’t want too many individuals, even at the top, to be aware of the secret strike plan.
Bogdonoff had always been a fervent advocate of the preemptive strike theory. He would provide the key military ingredient during the first stages of investigating American reactions.
Zhilinkhov and Porfir’yev approached the marshal of the Soviet Union in the general secretary’s private dining room. Bogdonoff, though initially stunned, enthusiastically joined the conspiracy. He immediately set about implementing the military steps to probe the Americans without alarming any leaders in the Soviet military.