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.