This viewpoint was far from being unanimously held by the Kremlin leadership. Many Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials felt that the hard-liners were exaggerating NATO cohesiveness in this matter. But Mikhail Gorbachev had given over control of the Foreign Ministry to a new generation of nationalistic Russian conservatives as the price for support of his domestic programs. The KGB and the Soviet Army would not trust the Foreign Ministry in matters of arms control and arms reduction unless they were securely in the hands of officials sympathetic to their viewpoints. And the military was certainly not going to accept further cuts in its forces unless there were assurances that arms control treaties would not include concessions like those found in the INF (Intermediate Nuclear Forces) and MBFR treaties. The Foreign Ministry was now populated by officials who tended to have an instinctive distrust of the U.S., and who viewed American actions as a smoke screen for NATO preparations. Their biases tended to warp their interpretation and reporting of discussions with the U.S. government and cast a decidedly pessimistic view of U.S. intentions in the crisis.
The Soviet Army leadership was not happy about the prospects for war. They were aware, more than any element of the Soviet government, of the weaknesses in the Soviet armed forces. But they were deeply dismayed at what was taking place in Germany. And they were terrified by the prospect of trying to fight a conventional war against a NATO that had had months to mobilize. They warily leaned toward the notion of a preemptive strike against NATO. Soviet operational doctrine favored offensive actions, and the General Staff still thought the Soviet Army had some distinctive advantages.
The KGB was likewise divided about future plans of action; they were not worried so much about the military threat as the domestic political repercussions of the German crisis.
Gorbachev's policies of domestic reform had led to a steady increase in consumer goods, personal liberties, and other benefits for the average Soviet citizen. The problem was that this had nurtured a real sense of growing expectations. The average Soviet worker was coming to expect the situation to continue to improve, even though work discipline was as bad as ever, and productivity had stagnated. The strikes in the Baltic had occurred not only in the Latvian and Estonian areas; the shipyards in Leningrad were just as worrisome, and the strikes were now spreading south to auto factories in the Urals and to the industries along the Black Sea. The KGB was troubled by the curbs that Gorbachev had put on their internal activity, and were convinced that further internal disintegration was inevitable. War would not cure these problems, but would create conditions under which the national consciousness could be refocused back to national concerns and away from the lassitude and decadence of the past few years. Thus the KGB officials tended to support the plan to preempt NATO.
The mood at the Kremlin conference was somber. There was an underlying anxiety about the survivability of the Communist system when faced by the rigors of war. The more perceptive party and army leaders wondered to themselves which was the more appropriate historical model for the current crisis. Were they facing another 1914? Was the Soviet Army merely an immense, rotted anachronism about to be shattered by the professional armies of NATO? Would the Soviet Army suffer the fete of the Tsarist army in World War I, precipitating a revolution that would overthrow the regime? Or was the Soviet Union embarking upon another Great Patriotic War as in 1941-45? Such a war would be a horrible experience to be sure, but one that would cement the nation together and demonstrate the vitality of the Soviet system in the face of dire adversity. Certainly most leaders looked back on the Great Patriotic War as one of the few bright spots in Soviet history. The melancholy nostalgia engendered by the legends of that war was one of the few consolations for the Soviet leaders when facing the grim realities of another European war.
By the end of the three-day conference, the Kremlin leadership had convinced itself that the army's plan, code-named Operation Buran (buran meaning "blizzard"), would preempt a likely NATO attempt to seize East Germany. There was no longer any discussion of whether NATO actually planned such an operation. It was taken for granted as the consensus view of the leadership. The only issue now was when to attack, and how to restrict the war to the conventional phase. The army urged that Operation Buran be launched as soon as possible, preferably by the end of September.
Colonel Kucherenko reached the meeting room and found the staff officers of the Southwestern Front already seated and anxious. The upper elements of the armed forces knew that something was about to happen, and greeted the occasion with a mixture of apprehension and professional excitement. Soviet tactical commanders may not compare well to their NATO counterparts, but the higher staff officers were a different story. They were intelligent, widely read, and well educated. Their training and approach were based on the pattern of the much-touted German staff system from earlier in the century. They knew that much was expected of them.
Operation Buran was familiar to them, since it was simply a variation on a well-rehearsed war plan code-named Burya (storm). The older Burya plan was typical of the elegant operational plans of the Soviet General Staff. It offered an elaborate set of preconditions for the war and a subtle attempt to place the NATO opponent in the weakest possible position.
The original Burya plan was based on a complex coordination between the Ministry of Defense and the Foreign Ministry in the months preceding a planned attack against NATO. The plan suggested that a major objective of Soviet foreign policy would be to keep the NATO forces at a low state of readiness. This could not be easily accomplished using traditional maskirovka (deception and concealment) techniques such as camouflage of troop transports, false radio traffic, and the like. In the modern age of satellite surveillance, it was very hard to mask large troop movements. Instead of trying to mask the buildup itself, the plan was to mask Soviet intentions. The USSR would stage a provocation that would lead to the partial mobilization of Soviet and NATO forces. The war plan left the matter of the provocation open, since it presumed that initiation of the plan had been provoked by some specific crisis. Ironically, the usual provocation used in most staff war games concerned Berlin or the inter-German border. In the wake of the provocation, the Foreign Ministry would make concessions to NATO that would restore calm between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. In a few months, the USSR would find something else to take offense at, leading to another partial mobilization, probably followed by NATO counteractions. This cat-and-mouse game would continue for six months to a year. Characterized by rising and falling tensions, and a string of minor crises, it was aimed to lull NATO into a sort of complacency. The final crisis and troop mobilization would be the real one. By this time, NATO would probably be tired of the incessant games, and regard the latest Soviet mobilization as mere bluster. NATO would be conned away from mobilizing its own forces, viewing evidence of Soviet mobilization as just another futile gesture connected with a new phase of belligerent Soviet foreign policy.