The Third World War: August 1985

On the morning of the fateful meeting, Duglenko’s boss, the KGB Chief, met with a fatal ‘motor accident’ on his way into Moscow. Duglenko, already in the Kremlin, could now be satisfied that he would have access to the Politburo session. He relied on two things: complete surprise, for which reason no one knew of the details of his plan except the dozen secret policemen required to carry it out, mostly fellow Ukrainians; and the willingness of the Soviet administrative machine of that time to accept orders from the top, whatever they might be — a characteristic which he in fact was determined to change but which on this occasion was to serve him well. When the meeting had assembled and he was summoned to report on the accident to his Chief he drew from his pocket not a sheaf of paper, but a pistol, with which he shot dead President Vorotnikov, and on this signal his fellow conspirators, already on guard outside the room, broke in and disarmed the rest of the Politburo. Duglenko announced that he was assuming the offices of President and Party Secretary; he ordered the removal, under guard, of the leading hard-line members, and received the allegiance of the rest, who had little choice, with guns still drawn all round them.

The next few hours were a feverish race against time, to assume effective command of the armed forces before any counter-move could be made and before any wild orders could be given for nuclear release, to reassure the population, and not least to reassure the Americans and dissuade them from any idea of a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Some of the Soviet commanders were, as has been said, generally favourable to the idea of salvaging what they could from the present unhappy situation, as the only means of keeping the armed forces in being, but very few of them were privy to the details of the conspiracy. It had, of course, been necessary in advance to place one of these few in the post which handled the transmissions of presidential orders to the strategic nuclear forces, so that when Duglenko, having done what was immediately necessary in Moscow, finally got on the hot-line to President Thompson, he was able to assure him confidently that the Soviet nuclear forces had been ordered to stand down, and to ask President Thompson kindly to give corresponding orders on his side. Duglenko proposed in addition a complete ceasefire within twelve hours, and the opening of an early conference in Helsinki to draw up terms of peace.

Even the most expert Kremlin-watchers on the Western side were taken by surprise. In the confusion of the next few hours, while the American answer was being prepared, some voices were heard urging that it was a trick, or that if there were a real upset in Moscow, now was the time to push ahead and finish the Russians off. More accurately, some others argued that this was no more than a change of Russian tactics; the new, more open and more decentralized communism, of which they were getting the first news by monitoring Moscow broadcasts, would in the long run be more dangerous to the West than the brutal obscurantism of its predecessor. Therefore no concessions should be made, the guard should be kept up, and so on. But it was eventually agreed to be thankful for a large if not necessarily permanent mercy, to reciprocate the downgrading of nuclear alert, to accept the ceasefire, and to prepare, with all due caution, for a conference.

Duglenko had to contend with far more arduous decision-making, on no less a subject than the future of the Soviet Union. At a hastily-summoned meeting of representatives of all the constituent republics there was not really much choice but to accept that the Union was in dissolution; independence was now openly proclaimed as the objective of the Ukraine. It had already been achieved by many of the republics in Asia. The Russians now clearly had to accept that whether they liked it or not they were on their own.

It was generally agreed that they would all form a joint delegation to the Helsinki Conference, and at the same time work out the modalities of separation. Needless to say, the violent transition from a centralized autocracy to multiple nationhood was not everywhere achieved in an orderly manner. Not all the republics were geared to establish their own administrations, and many had deficient economic resources. The enormous problem of disposing of the former Soviet forces, in Europe and Africa and the Middle East, was being handled by UNRRO.

The Conference, as is the way of conferences, proliferated into a whole series, some of which are still continuing, and it would require another volume of this history to do justice to all these deliberations. The collapse of the USSR meant the end of large-scale hostilities in Europe. It did not mean universal peace.

CHAPTER 27: Reflections on a War