But the pro-independence demonstrations were not the only tangible image of popular unrest broadcast over State television. Under prodding from reformers like Boris Yeltsin, the former Moscow Party chief whom Gorbachev had deposed, the hardliners in the Politburo had reluctantly agreed to the first free national elections in the history of the Soviet Union. On Sunday, March 26, 1989, hundreds of millions of Soviet citizens would assemble for the golosovat, the “vote” that was the most absorbing topic of conversation all across the country. They would elect the new Congress of People’s Deputies, an actual parliament that would be theoretically empowered to pass laws independent of the Communist Party. The Congress certainly fell far short of what I understood to be democracy in the West, but it was a major departure from the Party’s absolute control of Soviet life.
Now thousands of otherwise docile citizens assembled under placards and banners to hear political candidates openly defy government dogma, their voices rasping through electric bullhorns, and the people chanting back slogans in return.
I had seen the sullen faces of uniformed Militia and plainclothes KGB officers assigned to monitor these demonstrations. Clearly they would have loved orders sending them into the crowd with their truncheons swinging. But the rusty door of glasnost had creaked even further open. The angry men from the “Organs” had to stand there impotently and watch. And it wasn’t just political chanting that assailed them. The Memorial organization actually organized moving demonstrations in Dzerzhinski Square, opposite the brown sandstone facade of KGB headquarters, demanding that the State Security archives be opened to reveal the true fates of hundreds of thousands of “enemies of the people” who had disappeared into the black maw of the gulag.
All this smacked of bardak, “disorder.” For seven decades the only demonstrations on the streets of Moscow, or anywhere else in the Soviet Union, had been vast pokazuka festivals, carefully choreographed to lavish praise on the Party and its leaders. Now the people were waking up, a frightening prospect for people like Sergei, Yuri, and his parents, seated around me at the dining room table.
When I had first met Yuri’s parents in Moscow two years before, he had simply told them, “Sasha is one of us.” They had no reason to believe I had changed — unless the KGB had alerted them that I was under investigation for suspicious behavior.
That week construction workers had unearthed an unmarked mass grave in a pine forest south of Minsk. The trench contained hundreds of skeletons. Each skull had been shattered by a single, large-caliber pistol bullet. And the few actual bullets recovered were found to have been fired from the big Nagant revolvers carried by Stalin’s NKVD execution squads. This secret grave was just the latest of more than a dozen discovered in that region alone. Private groups investigating the massacres now estimated that more than 200,000 Byelorussians had been executed during the Great Terror of the late 1930s. And Byelorussia was a small republic. Now Memorial and other unofficial organizations were demanding a complete government accounting of these atrocities. Again, opening the secret KGB archives was the principal demand.
“What do you think of all this, Sergei?” Yuri asked. “Do you believe they’ll let the television crews into the basements of the Lubyanka?”
Yuri was referring to the Lubyanka prison adjacent to KGB headquarters, where the NKVD archives were said to be kept.
“I hope they do not,” Sergei said flatly. “At least not in my lifetime.”
“They contain information on actual atrocities?” I asked, looking levelly at Sergei.
He nodded grimly, and seemed to suppress a shudder, as if what had already been discovered and made public was relatively minor compared to the horrible record in those dusty files. “Yes, Sasha,” he said softly, “there were terrible events. But the people should never learn the details. It simply will not help them at all.”
Yuri and his family seated opposite me nodded in unison. For them, glasnost had already gone too far.
“A nation has the right to know its history,” I said, keeping my voice as calm as possible. The four of them stared at me, their eyes going hard. I cleared my throat, and the painful silence spread.
Finally Sergei sighed and spoke. “Sanya,” he said, reaching over to touch my arm, “you are a nice fellow. I hope we will end up on the same side of the barricades.”
I looked into his eyes. “Do you think it will all come to fighting in the streets?”
Sergei sipped his cognac and smiled now. “Sasha, where do you think perestroika will eventually end?”
I knew from his tone this was a cynical Moscovite’s sophisticated riddle. “I don’t know.”
“Perestrielka,” he said, “gunfire.” The others at the table nodded again. Their faces wore a strange mix of apprehension and mirth.
“It’s a fact, Sasha,” Sergei added. “You’re always reading. Check the dictionary.”
In the latest State lexicon, the next entry after the word “perestrielka” was, in fact, “perestroika.” This was an accident, of course, but for hundreds of thousands of hard-liners, the coincidence was an omen.
Sunday, March 26, I went to the hospital gym to exercise. I had no intention of voting. Officers on my ward had told me the Air Force had sent unofficial word as to which candidates standing for election in Moscow districts were “acceptable.” Certainly Boris Yeltsin, who had supported the campaign to expose the gross excesses of Raisa Gorbachev during her shopping sprees in foreign capitals, was not a favorite of the Air Force. Yeltsin was standing in the north-central Moscow district that included this hospital. If I were going to vote for anyone, it would be him. But, because I was stationed in Georgia, I was not registered to vote in Moscow. Almost all the officers voting were also stationed elsewhere. The whole exercise was a fraud in which I refused to participate. Then my case physician, Lieutenant Colonel Merkulov, found me in the gym.
“Captain Zuyev,” he said sternly, “you haven’t voted yet. Colonel Golubchikov sent me to find you.”
Golubchikov was the director of the internal medicine division, a professional surgeon trying to do the best job he could, which naturally included pleasing his superior officer, Colonel Ivanov. This was not an easy task for a dedicated physician.
Ivanov was known as a harsh taskmaster, a wealthy Communist zealot, as close to its own Mafia boss as this hospital had. His position would have brought him a constant stream of “gifts” and favors. He had many influential friends in the Defense Ministry. They no doubt expected him to deliver a solid block of military votes for the Party’s handpicked candidates.
“Comrade Lieutenant Colonel,” I told Merkulov, “I do not intend to participate in this election.”
Merkulov was hardly a troop commander. He seemed more disappointed than angry. “Then you’ll have to report to the colonel to explain.”
That meant a shower and changing into a clean uniform. But, at least for the moment, I was still a Soviet Air Force officer, and direct insubordination did not come easily.
Fifteen minutes later I stood before Golubchikov’s desk. What’s the problem, Alexander Mikhailovich?” he asked quietly, more weary than angry.
“If I were to vote, Comrade Colonel, I’d do it at my base in Georgia where I knew the candidates.”
Sheepishly Golubchikov slid a sample ballot across his polished maple desk. The names of the three “acceptable” candidates had been circled in red ink. We were ordered to vote for notorious Party apparatchiks who were cronies of the Defense Minister, Marshal Yazov. “You know your duty, Captain,” the colonel said. “Go to the registry desk in the Lenin Room and cast your ballot. All the other officers in this hospital have already voted.”