Down with Big Brother (76 page)

By seeking to reinvigorate the Communist system, Gorbachev succeeded in destroying it.

GLOSSARY
NOTES ON SOURCES
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY

GLOSSARY
OF FOREIGN TERMS

POLISH

KOR Workers’ Defense Committee (human rights group)

MKS Interfactory Strike Committee

PZPR Polish United Workers’ Party (Communist Party)

Solidarity Solidarity trade union

stan wojenny
martial law (literally warlike state)

szlachta
petty nobility

vojvodship province

ZOMO riot police

RUSSIAN

Alpha Group elite KGB antiterrorist squad

apparat bureaucratic machine

apparatchik bureaucrat

Central Committee policy-making body of CPSU

chemodanchik
little suitcase (nuclear codes)

CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union

dacha country house

gensek
general secretary of CPSU

GKChP Committee for the State of Emergency (formed during August 1991 coup attempt)

glasnost openness

Gosplan State Planning Agency

Gosstroi State Construction Agency

KGB Committee for State Security (secret police), successor to Lenin’s Cheka and Stalin’s NKVD

kolkhoz collective farm

kolkhoznik collective farm worker

kremlin a fortified place

kulak landed farmer (prior to collectivization)

Lubyanka headquarters of KGB

muzhik peasant

narod
people, the masses

nomenklatura roster of officials nominated by Communist Party

osobaya papka
special file, top secret Communist Party documents

perestroika restructuring

plenum full Central Committee meeting

Politburo executive leadership of CPSU Central Committee (composed of full and alternate members)

PVO Antiaircraft defense

shestidesyatniki
men of the sixties, the generation that matured under Khrushchev

spetsnaz
KGB “special assignment” troops

stagnation term applied to Brezhnev era

Staraya Ploshchad
old square headquarters of Communist Party

terror term applied to Stalin’s rule

thaw term applied to period of political liberalization under Khrushchev

vertushka
Soviet government communications system

Volga car used by mid-level officials

Vremya
television news

White House headquarters of Russian government

Zhiguli popular compact car

Zil limousine used by senior party officials

SERBO-CROAT

chetnik Serbian nationalist (World War II term)

HDZ Croatian Democratic Union (governing party in Croatia)

JNA Yugoslav People’s Army

SDS Serbian Social Democratic Party of Bosnia (led by Radovan Karadžić) ustashi Croatian nationalist (World War II term)

OTHER

conducător
supreme leader (Romanian)

mujahedin Islamic guerrilla fighter

Securitate Romanian secret police

Stasi East German secret police

Trabi popular East German car

NOTES ON SOURCES

T
HE COLLAPSE
of communism opened up a treasure trove of previously untapped sources. In writing this book, I have drawn on interviews with direct participants, memoirs of Soviet and East European leaders, declassified archival materials, contemporary newspapers, and my own reporting notes. Unless otherwise stated, all interviews are with me. I have tried to provide a named citation for all direct quotations. During the course of my research I gathered transcripts of numerous meetings of the Soviet Politburo, which are marked in the notes with the Russian abbreviation TsKhSD. The translations are my own. Because access to the Soviet archives is still restricted, I have deposited copies of these materials with the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C.

Also helpful in reconstructing events were three documentary television programs prepared by the British Broadcasting Corporation by Brian Lapping Associates,
The Second Russian Revolution
, the
Fall of the Berlin Wall
, and
Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation
. I am grateful to Norma Percy and Brian Lapping for permission to quote from the original transcripts of
The Second Russian Revolution
, which are deposited at the library of the London School of Economics. Publishing details of all books cited in the notes are provided in the bibliography. I have used the following abbreviations in the notes:

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation transcript service

CDSP Current Digest of the Soviet Press

CNN Cable News Network

FBIS Foreign Broadcast Information Service

ICAO International Civil Aviation Organization

LAT Los Angeles Times

MN Moscow News

NSC National Security Council

NYT New York Times

RFE/RL Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

TsK KPSS Central Committee of Soviet Communist Party

TsKhSD Center for Storage of Contemporary Documentation

UN United Nations

WP Washington Post

NOTES

I:
REVOLT OF THE PROLES

1.
Weather report,
NYT
, December 27, 1979, p. B8.

2.
Sergo Mikoyan, son of the former Soviet leader Anastas Mikoyan, provided me with the details of Brezhnev’s dacha. See also the memoirs of his doctor, Yevgeny Chazov,
Zdorov’ye i Vlast’
, pp. 86–87.

3.
Roy Medvedev, “The Advantages of Mediocrity,”
Moskovskie Novosti
(Moscow), September 11, 1988, pp. 8–9, translated in
CDSP
, vol. XL, no. 36, p. 5.

4.
For a detailed discussion of Brezhnev health problems, see Chazov, pp. 115–44, and former bodyguard Mikhail Dokuchayev, “Devyatka,”
Novoye Vremya
(Moscow), no. 32 (1993), pp. 36–40.

5.
Chazov, p. 128.

6.
Vladimir Medvedev,
Chelovek Za Spinoi
, pp. 148–49.

7.
Chazov, p. 134.

8.
Ibid., pp. 149–51. For Western reports of the incident, see
NYT
. October 7, 1979, p. A1, and Reuters dispatches from Berlin on October 6, 1979.

9.
Chazov, p. 150. See also Edward Gierek,
Przerwana Dekada
, pp. 93–94.

10.
Zdenek Mlynář,
Nightfrost in Prague
, p. 156.

11.
See, for example, Defense Department estimates for 1980 reproduced in David Holloway,
The Soviet Union and the Arms Race
, pp. 134–40. The U.S. Defense Department publication
Soviet Military Power
(1981, p. 71) also claimed that the Soviets had “dramatically reduced” the U.S. lead in “virtually every important basic technology” during the 1970s.

12.
Vyacheslav Molotov,
Molotov Remembers: Conversations with Felix Chuev
, p. 8.

13.
Deputy Soviet Foreign Minister Georgi Kornienko,
Novaya i Noveishaya Istoria
(Moscow), no. 3 (May-June 1993), p. 107.

14.
Ibid., p. 108.

15.
Statement of Captain Abdul Hadud, reported in Colonel A. Lyakhovski and Lieutenant Colonel V. Zabrodin, “Secrets of the Afghan War,”
Armiya
(Moscow), no. 6 (March 1992), pp. 60–61.

16.
For Soviet suspicions of Amin, see report by the Politburo Commission on Afghanistan, quoted in Aleksandr Lyakhovski,
Tragediya i Doblest’ Afgana
, pp.
102–3. See also Kornienko, p. 110, Georgi Arbatov,
The System
p. 119, and Anatoly Dobrynin,
In Confidence
, p. 436.

17.
For KGB view, see memoirs of Col. Aleksandr Morozov, former KGB deputy station chief in Afghanistan, published in
New Times
(Moscow), no. 38–41 (1991).

18.
Andrei Gromyko,
Memoirs
, p. 99.

19.
Memorandum signed by Konstantin Chernenko, December 27, 1979, TsKhSD. Copy in author’s possession.

20.
Chazov, p. 133.

21.
Arbatov, p. 266.

22.
Larisa Vasilieva,
Kremlin Wives
, p. 219.

23.
NYT
, April 3, 1994. For details of Andropov activity in Budapest, see also
Izvestia
, July 24, 1992, and Arnold Beichman and Mikhail S. Bernstam,
Andropov
, pp. 145–60.

24.
Alexander Werth,
Russia at War
, pp. 213–17.

25.
Soviet Military Power
(1981), p. 12.

26.
Chazov, p. 90.

27.
Ibid., p. 205.

28.
Transcript of Politburo session, July 12, 1984, TsKhSD.

29.
Arbatov, p. 198.

30.
For Gromyko’s reasons for supporting invasion of Afghanistan, see reminiscences of former Foreign Minister Aleksandr Bessmertnykh and Gorbachev foreign policy aide Anatoly Chernyayev at Princeton University conference on the Cold War, vol. III, February 26, 1993.

31.
Vladimir Medvedev, p. 130.

32.
Voenno-Istoricheskii Zhurnal
(Moscow), no. 11 (1993), pp. 30, 35.

33.
Chernyayev, Princeton conference, vol. III, pp. 22–23. See also Dobrynin, P. 439

34.
Chazov, p. 152.

35.
A copy of the handwritten resolution, obtained from TsKhSD, was published in the
Washington Post
, p. A1, on November 15, 1992. The only full Politburo member not to countersign the resolution was Andrei Kosygin, who was gravely ill at the time and resigned from his post as Soviet prime minister shortly afterward. According to Kornienko, p. 110, the decision to invade was taken jointly by Brezhnev, Suslov, Andropov, Ustinov, and Gromyko.

36.
Voyenno-Istoricheskii Zhurnal
(Moscow), no. 11 (1993), pp. 32–34.

37.
Henry S. Bradsher,
Afghanistan and the Soviet Union
, p. 179.