In Marshal Dimitry Ustinov’s Kremlin command headquarters the news from the Amur River border area came as a bombshell. He had just ordered the dispatch of ten first-line divisions to the Hungarian-Rumanian border to await the Politburo’s decision on intervention. Now, what appeared to be a direct threat was developing in the East.
Amur IV, V, VI described that section of the border where a Chinese salient some 400 miles deep and 200 miles wide pushed into the belly of the Soviet Union. At its deepest point it was barely 50 miles from the Trans-Siberian Railway. There was no area which could cause greater alarm to the Moscow military planners, or would be more difficult to defend against a sudden armored thrust.
Contingency plans were consulted. Even if the Chinese intended no more than a relocation of forces in this area the planners considered a minimum reinforcement of twenty-two divisions necessary.
At midnight that night the new enlarged Politburo met for the first time. They had been due to meet the following day when Kuba thought to push through his appointment as First Secretary of the all-Union Communist Party. But at the midnight emergency meeting military affairs naturally took precedence.
Even Kuba must have seen the contrast between the aging members of the Politburo, already tired before the midnight session began, and the younger members from the republics, including now the western republics.
Kremlin secretary Peter Rinsky certainly did.
It was after all only midnight, although the chances are, I suppose, that all the old men had been in bed for an hour or two when the call came. Had they not been such a unique gang of murderers one would have felt sorry for them.
At that first meeting of the expanded Politburo, secrecy, I’m happy to say, went out the window. At two-thirty they took a break. The doors opened and, instead of the decorous shuffling of old men, the young ones came charging out like bulls still arguing amongst themselves.
My friend and I kept our ears at full prick and afterward I think managed to piece together what had happened. The Defense Minister had proposed immediate reinforcement to the China border to counter some troop movement along the Amur River. Naturally with our existing problems in Hungary and Rumania this was going to put a severe strain on manpower.
The solution Defense proposed and Kuba endorsed was to call up class A and B reservists despite the fact that Mikoyan the Armenian and others had warned frankly that severe resistance would be met in their republics.
Others felt that their political position at home would be threatened if the first Politburo meeting they attended resulted in a mobilization decree which would fall most heavily on the non-Russian republics.
The Ukrainian First Secretary seems to have tried to bring the two sides together. He feared an American response, and with the Ukraine in a vulnerable position if the West should decide to support Hungary or Rumania, he suggested a mobilization confined to the Russian Republic where nationalist feeling against the Chinese was strong.
This of course was a ground-breaking suggestion. To my knowledge it was the first time that it had been suggested that the Union should tackle its problems on an individual republic basis. Naturally the Central Asian and Caucasian republics were delighted at the idea. Let Mother Russia deal with Mother Russia’s own problems!
They had coffee and sandwiches and went back for the second session. Even through the thick soundproof doors we could hear Kuba shouting. There must have been some fine blood-thirsty threats handed out that night.
The meeting broke up at four in the morning. Everybody now seemed drained of energy. Kuba, leading them out, was grim-faced.
It was only next morning that we knew who’d won the day. To our country’s problems of bread rationing and oil and transport restrictions was now added a nationwide mobilization of Class A and B reservists to contend with.
I suppose people like ourselves make a life of sorts wherever we happen to be. Naturally in Moscow in those days there was no question of being open. As I’ve said, for the golden boys it was seven years in a camp. But nevertheless we had our meeting places. The best by far, not a million miles from Red Square, was “Mother Hubbard’s.” One or two of the foreign community were “members” and Scotch and English gin were available most nights. Mother Hubbard himself was well aware of the risks. But then the prices reflected it.
Certainly the fun had gone out of the place recently. In the last few weeks we were like a clutch of old hens clucking around anyone who had any information to give. And most members had something. They were, after all, well placed in various circles of government and Party and one, Vladimir, (nobody asked his other names) was a colonel in the KGB. At least, this we believed, and he never denied it.
I think it was David Butler, the Englishman, who started the whole thing. I remember it was a particularly drunken evening and five or six young Georgian dancers had been introduced by Mother Hubbard, just to keep the adrenalin running and the drinks flowing. Of course we were all desperately competing and the champagne was popping every few seconds. Mother Hubbard was looking happier than he had in weeks.
I was sitting with my friend at one of the alcove tables watching the young Georgians overwhelmed by the hospitality on offer when the Englishman Butler walked in. Whether his embassy knew he was golden I can’t say. But then the English take such an extraordinary relaxed view of these things. I instance the case of the dreadful Anthony Blunt. Not only was he not sent to a camp for being golden, but he seemed to have got away scot-free when it was revealed that he’d spied for the murderer Beria as well. That’s liberalism for you!
I must say truthfully that David Butler was a very different kettle of fish. No one in the club regarded him as other than a totally loyal Englishman, and many of us I know used him (with his own knowledge) to feed a little detail here and there into the Western pipelines.
Well, this evening Butler sat with us and, although each of us no doubt had one eye on the Georgian dancers, the conversation quickly took a serious turn.
David Butler said frankly that he thought the Soviet Union was facing its greatest crisis since the Hitler war. In food, energy and transport, the crisis had already arrived. By the end of this winter its effects would be literally incalculable.
To that could be added the problem of internal nationalisms, which the Soviet Union was now experiencing. Nobody believed these feelings could be suppressed by a Stalinist. Or at least, he added, nobody in their right mind.
And now the Transylvanian crisis.
I suppose it was nervousness about the future that made us tell him that the reservists were to be mobilized. He would know by tomorrow anyway.
He foresaw, accurately as it happened, serious problems in the autonomous republics when the mobilization orders were announced.
Until that evening, I suppose, we, even in the government, had not taken the idea of a collapse of authority in any way seriously. But David Butler convinced us we should. His view was that the night of the funeral was no more than a rehearsal for what was to come. He claimed that Kiev and Tallinn and Russian towns, too, like Leningrad and Sverdlovsk were already sporadically rioting against the militia. It could start in Moscow anytime. A prudent man, he said, would make some arrangements, even if they later proved unnecessary.
Frankly, my friend and I were impressed. David Butler, we knew, was no scaremonger. And our own experience confirmed what he said. We decided it was time to take our vacation entitlement, as far away from Moscow as possible.