Moscow Rules

by Robert Moss

  *

  The Politburo met in crisis session with the army chiefs in the Central Committee building on Old Square.

  The General Secretary sat silent, weighing the consensus, letting others debate while the stenographers scribbled away at their tables against the wall. Under the light from the chandeliers, the General Secretary’s face had the color and texture of frozen poultry. From time to time he would take an atomizer from his pocket and squeeze it into his mouth.

  Marshal Zotov was seated opposite Romanov, the former Party boss in Leningrad and one of the contenders for the succession. With his exaggerated tan, this Romanov didn’t look much like his namesakes, the former royal family. He makes himself up like a tart, Zotov thought.

  Gussein Askyerov was doing a lot of the talking. The Azerbaijani managed to fawn and dominate at the same time. ‘If you’ll permit me, Comrade General Secretary,’ he kept saying, ‘with your permission —’

  He certainly knew how to keep in with the boss, the Marshal thought as he watched Askyerov perform. He had oiled his way into the confidence of Tsvigun, and used him to make his number with Tsvigun’s brother-in-law, Brezhnev. Then, with impeccable timing, he had switched his loyalties to Andropov. But as soon as they had Andropov strapped to his dialysis machine, Askyerov had smarmed his way back into the inner councils of the old Brezhnev clique.

  ‘If you’ll allow me to say this,’ Askyerov went on, nodding and smiling at the General Secretary, who had transferred his attention from the atomizer to a bottle of pills — they looked big enough to be horse pills — ‘we really must show a firm hand. If we demonstrate any sign of weakness, this unpleasantness at Togliatti could infect the entire country. Already, the strike has assumed an overtly anti-Party character.’

  There were a few grunts of assent. On the second day of the strike, when Secretary Muzykin attempted to deliver a public speech, the roar of the crowd was enough to drown out the loudspeakers. Some of the voices were crying, ‘Down with the Party!’

  ‘What exactly are you proposing?’ Galayev interjected. The youngest man in the room, hoping to survive the rest and inherit their power, he didn’t want to be upstaged.

  ‘We must issue a statement at once,’ Askyerov continued. This was sure to get the approval of the General Secretary, whose main talent was issuing slogans. ‘We must condemn the saboteurs and explain to the people that the trouble in Togliatti is inspired by foreign elements who are undoubtedly planning to disrupt Soviet production. It is well known that this Misha Repnin was an agent of western imperialism.’

  Round up the usual suspects, Zotov commented in silence.

  There were no objections to this suggestion. But Askyerov was off and running.

  ‘With your permission,’ he bobbed his almost creaseless face at the General Secretary, ‘it is now clear to all that the Party and the internal security forces are under siege in Togliatti, which has become a bastion of reaction. The saboteurs will not be defeated without maximum firmness. Am I not right, Comrade Chairman’ — this was addressed to the head of the KGB — ‘that, yesterday alone, there were twenty-seven reported deaths?’

  ‘Just so,’ General Chetverikov confirmed. Marshal Zotov watched the man closely. He was a lynx, that chekist. Like Askyerov, he had started out spying on the army in Stalin’s time. Now he seemed to be playing Askyerov’s game.

  ‘We all know what is required.’ Now Askyerov was addressing the whole room, shifting his eyes — implausibly blue against the olive skin — from one face to another, but carefully avoiding Zotov. ‘We all know there has to be blood on the floor. But why should we alone be blamed? Why should the Party, the Committee, and the militia have to eat all the shit — if you’ll pardon the expression, Comrade General Secretary. Is it not right that the armed forces should share the responsibility for upholding state security?’

  The Defense Minister seemed to be taking this in his stride. Perhaps he’d been briefed in advance. But Marshal Zotov, who had not, started to bridle.

  ‘Are you suggesting that regular troops should be used against the strikers at Togliatti?’ Zotov demanded clarification. In his first face-to-face confrontation with Askyerov, he was careful to address the Prime Minister by all his honorifics.

  ‘Do you foresee any operational difficulty, Comrade Marshal?’ the Azerbaijani responded in his velvety voice.

  ‘I wish to point out,’ the Marshal went on, ‘that there is no precedent for this proposed action since the episode at Novocherkassk, more than two decades ago, which had an unfortunate effect on army morale.’ This was a considerable understatement. The strike at Novocherkassk in 1962 had ended in a massacre. Grisly reports of blood spattered as high as the streetlamps had seeped out to the West and been replayed in Russian over the BBC and the Voice of America.

  ‘I am sure, Marshal, that you’re not suggesting that the Soviet armed forces cannot be counted on to do their duty,’ Askyerov rejoined, smooth and treacherous.

  Zotov stiffened. ‘I believe we know our duty. I merely wish to observe that it is unnecessary to use the army unless the militia has been overwhelmed.’ He darted a look at the Interior Minister, who said nothing. ‘I would add that it is also inadvisable, not to mention irregular, to call in the armed forces unless you intend that the troops should use their guns.’

  ‘Marshal, you have heard the report from Secretary Muzykin,’ Askyerov countered. ‘The situation in Togliatti is extremely volatile. We should not make the error of underestimating our opponents.’

  ‘I beg to remind you that we are talking about Russian workers and their families and that errors may have been committed by the local authorities.’ Zotov pulled himself up short, conscious that he may have overstepped the line by suggesting that Party officials were at fault.

  Askyerov was ready to pounce, but the General Secretary chose this moment to intervene. His words were hard to follow. They came in rapid bursts, punctuated by gulps of air. He sounded like a drowning man who has just been pulled up to the surface.

  ‘Those matters will be subject to inquiry at a time fitting.’ — gasp — ‘The Marshal will issue the appropriate instructions.’ — wheeze — ‘Who is the District commander?’

  ‘General Leybutin,’ Zotov replied.

  ‘Can we count on him?’ Askyerov asked.

  The Marshal stared at the Azerbaijani as if he were something that had crawled out from under a log. ‘Pavel Leybutin gave his blood in Afghanistan,’ he said. ‘He’s one of the finest officers in the Soviet army. I trust him as I trust myself.’

  The Defense Minister glanced at the General Secretary, who nodded assent.

  They’ve worked it all out already, Zotov thought.

  ‘Please instruct General Leybutin to place himself at the disposal of Party Secretary Muzykin,’ the Defense Minister ordered Zotov.

  *

  The giant auto plant at Togliatti, named in honor of a famous Italian Communist leader, had, appropriately enough, been constructed under license from an Italian company, Fiat. But the city was closed to the outside world. A visiting team of engineers had been rushed back to Moscow and were being held incommunicado in their hotel.

  Even the flow of samizdat had started to dry up. Most of what appeared in the western press was speculation.

  But Aaron Semyonich, it seemed, knew how to squeeze through spaces too narrow for a cat. Elaine was met at the railway station in a nearby town by one of Ari’s contacts, a nervous man who was a press-tool operator in the Lada factory. She arrived in Togliatti on the same day as General Leybutin. She wore over her jeans a shapeless coat she had purchased in GUM. She was carrying a purse and a shopping bag with a few necessities in it. Everything else she had left at the hotel, to make herself less conspicuous. She had told nobody where she was going. In retrospect, she thought this was a mistake. Guy Harrison might get worried and start rattling cages. Well, it was too late now.

  Her guide, who introduced himself only as Yakov, said that she could stay overnigh
t with his family. But his nervousness was contagious.

  ‘I really don’t want to put you out,’ she said in her fractured Russian.

  On the way into the city, he started asking her whether she could get someone to write to him, claiming that he was a relative, so that he could apply for an exit visa.

  She said uncertainly, ‘I’ll try.’

  They followed a back road into the town. Elaine heard a noise like squelchy rubber boots over gravel, and when they came to the top of a hill, she saw its origin. Along the highway, over to their left, a column of tanks and army trucks stretched as far back as she could see.

  ‘My God,’ she breathed. ‘Do the people know?’

  ‘We have to go back,’ Yakov said to her. His face was damp.

  ‘No,’ Elaine insisted. ‘Whatever’s going to happen, the world has to know.’ She knew that she sounded preposterous, but she was carried along by a giddy sensation, as if she’d been drinking on an empty stomach.

  They found a mass demonstration taking place in the center of the town. There were scores of banners bearing the symbol of the Association of Russian Workers and the word ‘Solidarity.’ Elaine let herself be swept along by the crowd. She didn’t stand out in any way. There were almost as many women as men. The human current carried her farther and farther away from Yakov until he was lost from sight.

  There was an open space up ahead, and row upon row of soldiers blocking the street. Beyond, the squat facade of an official building. Elaine could not see or hear the exchange that was taking place between Secretary Muzykin and General Leybutin inside the Party headquarters.

  ‘Why do you think you’re here, fuck your mother?’ Muzykin was screaming. ‘Give the order to open fire!’

  ‘From what I’ve seen,’ Leybutin said doggedly, ‘this is a peaceful demonstration.’

  ‘You didn’t see what happened yesterday, or the day before,’ Muzykin insisted. ‘Now we have information. They want to burn down Party headquarters. Just listen to them!’

  From the streets came the dull roar of a thousand voices calling for Muzykin’s head.

  ‘You know your orders!’ Muzykin yelled. ‘They come from the top. Now I’m telling you, Disperse the rioters!’

  Heavily, as if his feet were fettered, Leybutin went down the stairs and out into the square.

  ‘Fire over their heads,’ he ordered.

  At the first volley, the crowd wavered, and the people in the front ranks tried to turn and run back. But then the roar deepened, and the crowd surged forward.

  Muzykin came hopping out to join Leybutin. ‘Why are you waiting?’

  ‘They’re Russians,’ Leybutin said quietly. ‘There are women and children out there.’

  Muzykin glared at him as if he were thinking of ripping off his shoulder boards.

  ‘I’ll do it myself,’ the Party Secretary announced. ‘Open fire!’ The senior warrant officer, standing next to Leybutin, looked at him questioningly. Reluctantly, Leybutin nodded assent. The warrant officer repeated the order. His voice boomed out over the heads of the troops like cannon.

  Some of the soldiers still hesitated. It was a mixed contingent of conscripts, many of them Russians. Some of the men had been drafted from the Togliatti region and might have had friends or relatives in the crowd. The Uzbeks and Kazakhs in the division, however, didn’t have any local loyalties to worry about. Shooting strikers in Togliatti might even have been a more welcome job for them than shooting Afghans. So the Central Asians opened up with their machine guns. The bullets struck their targets with the light plop of pebbles being tossed into mud.

  Elaine gasped as a heavyset man tried to elbow her aside. She couldn’t move back; the mass of people behind her was solid. The man jabbed his elbow savagely into her stomach, desperate to get away from the shooting.

  ‘Stop, wait,’ she pleaded, her words lost in the screaming and the rattle of the machine guns.

  But he came at her again, blindly, falling on her as if he meant to flatten her on the ground. All his weight came pressing down on her shoulders, and her knees buckled under her. But for the people behind her, she would have fallen. She clawed at the man, trying to pry herself loose. Her hands came away from him wet and sticky, and she screamed when she realized that she was covered in blood. A violent eddy in the crowd dragged her away to the left, and the man’s body rolled away from her. He had been shot through the back of the head.

  Borne aloft like a cork in the stream, she caught a glimpse of the scene in front of the Party headquarters. Something odd was happening. The soldiers had stopped firing, and broken their lines. They were standing around in ragged groups, leveling their guns at each other. One of them, a swarthy man with a black moustache, was lying in his own blood.

  Then she was running with the others, running to save herself from falling under their feet, following the direction they chose. They veered away down a side street, and suddenly a man came darting out of a doorway and grabbed hold of her arm. It was Yakov.

  ‘In here,’ he said sharply as he pulled her into the building.

  There were a dozen people or more crowded into the tiny flat. Elaine looked at the circle of frightened faces. But there was a woman there who looked entirely composed. She was stocky, with a raw look of good health, and she was dressed all in black, with her hair in a tidy bun. She was very definitely in charge. ‘Make our guests some tea,’ she issued instructions, as if nothing unusual was going on outside.

  ‘This is Aglaya,’ Yakov explained to Elaine. ‘Mishka Repnin’s wife.’ They hadn’t got used to the hard word ‘widow.’

  Elaine couldn’t hold the glass steady. Some of the tea sloshed over the rim, scalding her wrist.

  ‘Why did the soldiers stop shooting?’

  ‘Georgi saw it all from the roof,’ Aglaya said, gesturing toward her teenage son. ‘When the troops were ordered to open fire, only some of them obeyed. There was a boy there from around here — a Russian,’ she specified with grim satisfaction. ‘It was too much for him. He shot one of the Central Asians who was firing into the crowd. It looked as if there was going to be a war between the soldiers, but then their general stepped in. What’s his name, Yakov?’

  ‘General Leybutin.’

  ‘Well, Leybutin ordered them to cease fire and withdraw.’

  ‘I wish I could have seen Muzykin’s face,’ Yakov interjected. ‘He’s the Secretary of our Party Committee,’ he added for Elaine’s benefit. ‘He ran away to hide when the soldiers left.’

  ‘I saw him!’ Georgi said excitedly. ‘He had to climb out a back window! There were flames coming out of the building.’

  ‘You mean they stormed Party headquarters?’ Elaine asked.

  ‘They took the place apart,’ Yakov confirmed. ‘They ransacked the files. I never thought I’d live to see anything like it. Party documents are blowing around the square. They say several militiamen were killed too,’ he added grimly. ‘There’ll be the devil to pay.’

  ‘By tonight,’ Aglaya said, ‘the news will be all over the country. Yakov says you’re a journalist.’ She turned to Elaine. ‘I hope you will write our story so the world will know that they couldn’t kill Misha Repnin.’

  *

  Yakov shook Elaine awake before dawn.

  ‘What time is it?’ she asked blearily. As she uncoiled herself on the sofa, she became conscious of the other people in the room, busily engaged in gathering their belongings.

  ‘We can’t stay here any longer,’ Yakov said urgently. ‘This is one of the first places they will search.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ Now Elaine was fully awake, and could read the fear in the others’ faces. Even Aglaya, so proud, so contained the day before, seemed pale and edgy.

  ‘We received a message while you were asleep,’ Aglaya said. ‘Muzykin didn’t waste any time. He went to Moscow himself and arranged everything. General Leybutin has been placed under arrest. A new district commander is arriving today. They are bringing in special troops �
� Chukchis.’

  The word seemed to create a chill among the Russians in the room.

  ‘The Chukchis are born killers,’ Yakov explained to Elaine. ‘They’re an Arctic people. The men are bred to be hard and merciless. They provide a lot of the guards for the uranium mines — and shock troops for the MVD.’

  ‘I think I should stay,’ Elaine said.

  ‘You must go.’ It was Aglaya who spoke. ‘Go and tell the world what they’re doing to the workers of Togliatti.’

  The streets were bleak and unnaturally quiet as Yakov led her away from the center of the city. They pressed themselves into a doorway as a military convoy roared past, led by a jeep with a heavy machine gun mounted on the back.

  ‘They’re going to the auto plant,’ Yakov whispered. The workers had seized the factory and were holding it against all comers. In the distance, Elaine could hear the crackle of small-arms fire and the deeper crump-crump of mortars and rockets.

  ‘But the workers aren’t armed,’ she said.

  Yakov shrugged. ‘There are rumors that some of the Russian soldiers joined them. I don’t know if that’s true. They’ve already begun the court-martials. Some of the soldiers who refused to obey orders have been shot. They say a whole regiment is going to be disbanded. The men will be sent to the labor camps.’

  They walked for what seemed like hours, creeping along, ready to take cover at the sight of a uniform. Beside a rough track leading across the fields, Yakov said, ‘I can’t come any farther.’ He pointed ahead. ‘You’ll be able to get on a train at the next village. It’s not far.’

  Waiting in line at the railroad station to buy her ticket for Moscow, Elaine started fishing around for money in her pocketbooks. She must have injured her left hand during the jostling in the street, she thought. The fingers felt stiff and arthritic. She felt a sudden, searing pain in the joints and her bag fell to the ground, spilling most of its contents.

  An unpleasant little man who had been lolling over by the platform, undressing her with his eyes, came hurrying over to help.