In the months since Natalya Roginova’s arrest, statism (from status quo) had become the accepted term within the Party for what was taken to be her view: namely that the Soviet Union should shed some of its most burdensome foreign policy commitments and concentrate on social and technological improvements in vital areas of the economy and Soviet life.
“Only a powerful, dominant Party can lead a powerful, dominant nation,” was Bukin’s slogan. I watched Kuba nod judiciously and flick a few grains of hot ash from his jacket in the way I’d seen Stalin do a dozen times.
Then Bukin came to the heart of the matter. Collective leadership was a principle we all endorsed, he said. But to be effective a troika has to have all horses pulling the same way. In the Politburo the collective leadership was hesitant because, since the justified disgrace of Roginova, the Party had been headless. Nearly a year after the funeral we were still without a Chairman of the Party and a President of the Soviet Union.
Statist elements, Bukin said, in the highest bodies in the Soviet Union, had consistently blocked the election of Semyon Trofimovich Kuba to the positions which analysis of the problem proved were rightly his. The future demands that the guiding hand of Semyon Trofimovich should be unfettered.
The future insists, he went on, that First Secretaries of the Republics play a fuller part in the guidance of affairs. I refer, he said pointedly, to an enlargement of the Politburo to include the most senior Party members in the republics.
Ourselves, of course, he meant. At the end of the speech, Bukin was red-faced and sweating. Every word had been carefully chosen and Soviet men that we were, we knew precisely what was on offer. For us, a place as members of the highest council in the land. For Kuba, our support in his election to General Secretary of the Party and for the purge of Roginova’s supporters which would inevitably follow.
There was no time for consideration. While we all sat around the table applauding the speech, each one of us was desperately calculating his own position. Each man had only one objective, not to leave himself at the end of the conference as one of a minority against Kuba. That way lay the knock in the night once Kuba’s purge began.
And yet I think it would be true to say that of the six representatives of the Nationalities present, not one favored the elevation of Kuba. We had all received a visit from Natalya Roginova in the days before her arrest, and I believe every one of us had pledged ourselves to the course she had outlined.
Perhaps here in the outlying regions of the U.S.S.R. we saw things more clearly than in Moscow. Certainly Roginova encouraged us to think so. We knew that plan targets were not steel ingots, or bushels of wheat or barrels of oil. We knew that the wonders of production achieved in the hard years of Stalin’s reign could never be achieved again after the demythologizing of the Soviet ideal which Khrushchev’s attack on Stalin had made inevitable.
At least, and this every man around the table kept to himself, we knew that these targets could not be reached without a fundamental reshaping of Soviet society. And that is what Natalya Roginova had offered us. After Stalin, Lenin was to be dethroned, and perhaps after him, Marx himself. What she had offered was a true federation of the peoples of Stalin’s Empire, an opportunity to jump clear of the past, ahead even of the present. At least, this much she had said to me. But what had she said to the others?
And now, as Semyon Trofimovich leaned forward to speak, we all knew that we were being pressed back in time, to a past we no longer believed in.
It fell to me to answer first. I saw the stem of the pipe, gray-wet with saliva, point crookedly across the table.
“Comrade Mikoyan,” Kuba said formally. “Let us have first an Armenian view of these great issues.”
I spoke desperately, trying to gauge the likely response of the others. The only one I felt at all sure of was Bashmani the Uzbek with whom I’d had a cautious, skirting conversation a month earlier. All the rest kept their eyes down. By not so much as a pursed lip did they register that they heard my words.
“None of us can be unaware of the difficulties with which the members of the Politburo have had to contend since death removed a firm hand from the tiller,” I began. “In the Armenian Republic the inevitable introduction of bread rationing has strengthened disaffected nationalist-bourgeois elements. Party recruitment programs have fallen well short of target in each of the last two quarters and civic discipline has reached an unprecedented low.”
I saw Kuba shake his head angrily. His own KGB were responsible for the maintenance of civic order. He must have known well what had been happening in Armenia in the last two months.
“All this,” I continued, “reflects just those leadership conditions which Comrade Bukin has outlined.”
A nod of agreement now from Kuba.
“Weaknesses in the Party structure must be removed forthwith.”
The Uzbek Bashmani looked across at me, his round Asiatic face expressionless.
“Every Communist must see the truth of Comrade Bukin’s analysis. A united Party must lead a united nation.”
Bukin frowned, wondering whether that was precisely what he had said.
“To the great end that Comrade Bukin revealed to us in his speech, the inclusion of the senior Party leaders of the republics in the Politburo must greatly strengthen the collective leadership under Semyon Trofimovich’s guiding hand.”
Everybody present was aware that I had said nothing about an endorsement of Kuba as General Secretary of the all-Union Party. But on one issue I had to be clear first.
“It would be an error to disguise from ourselves the disagreements of the immediate past,” I said. “I think all Party leaders would agree that Natalya Roginova still commands a certain following in the… lower ranks of our national Party organizations.”
“Natalya Roginova is a broken reed,” Bukin said angrily.
“Nevertheless it would be helpful to know the Politburo’s intentions toward her.”
Bashmani nodded agreement. The other delegates allowed themselves a judicious pursing of the lips.
Kuba leaned forward. In a voice meant to convey certainty, he said, “Natalya Roginova will be brought to trial for anti-State activities. In particular, for her formation of the national divisions which have damaged the concept of unity in the Soviet Army.”
“Is she prepared to confess her errors?” Bashmani asked quickly.
“There’s no necessity,” Kuba said. “The confession of the renegade Igor Bukansky will produce all the evidence needed that her activities were guided by Western governments.”
“Treason is a capital charge,” Bashmani said.
“A capital charge,” Kuba nodded grimly. “She will receive a capital sentence.”
We knew now which way we must go, we Party leaders. Around the table no man doubted Kuba’s will to power. But it was Bashmani again who opened that small chink in Kuba’s armor.
“Bukansky,” he said, “has of course already confessed.”
Bukin shot a quick, worried look at Kuba.
The KGB general smiled his brown-toothed smile. “Accept my assurances that he will, Comrades.”
I stepped into the breach. If Bukansky had not yet confessed, we still had time, time not to change the endorsement Kuba required from us, but at least to extort a concession.
“I must now speak for everyone present from the republics,” I said.
For the first time the heads rose, the lines of their mouths were tense with fear.
“I have spoken of our increasing difficulties in the autonomous republics. In particular I have spoken of the inevitable introduction of bread rationing. But you should know, Semyon Trofimovich, that there is one issue in all the southern republics more threatening to good order and Komsomol recruitment programs even than bread. That is the issue of the Penal Brigades.”