10 March 1985. Night had come to Moscow as the enormous black Zil limousines sped towards the high Kremlin walls. The traffic lights on the 205 foot high Spassky Gate switched automatically to green to all these "first among equals" citizens of the USSR access to their place of power, The guards, still dressed in long winter overcoats and knee-length boots would have sharply saluted their rulers. They also probably wondered what on earth the Politburo members were doing, gathering at 10 pm on a Sunday night. Once inside the Zils would have turned right in front of the Ivan the Great bell tower, completed by Boris Godunov in 1600. Then they would have gone past the glittering cathedrals where the tsars had been crowned and buried for over 300 years. Lastly, the huge limos would have made another right past yet another set of guards and a pair of wrought iron gates, there they finally would have stopped outside a mustard colored palace alongside the Kremlin wall. This three story building was shaped like a three-sided triangle, and formed an inner citadel -a kremlin within the Kremlin.
In tsarist times it had housed the Senate and the Palace of Justice. When Lenin moved the capital back to Moscow from Petrograd in March 1918, the Senate building became the headquarters of the new regime. Almost 70 years of Soviet history had been centered on this building. This was the location from where Lenin ordered the "liquidation" of the tsar and his family. It was from this building that Stalin organized not only a campaign of immense terror on ordinary Soviet citizens-but on his Kremlin colleagues as well! Lavrentiy Beria, another Stalin-inspired monster, had been arrested by his suspicious Politburo members here during Khrushchev's time. Beria and his arrest are worth a couple of articles on their own in the future if I get time.
On this Sunday evening there were to be no arrests. General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Konstantin Chernenko had finally given up the ghost at 7:20 this very evening. For the third time in slightly more than three years the Politburo had to choose a new "Tsar." The Politburo members would have taken an elevator to the third floor of the Senate building. From there they would have seen a long, high-ceilinged corridor with a spotless red runner down the middle and doors on either side. The door one entered would have depended on one's senority. Voting members gathered in a walnut-paneled room, next to the "genseks" (general secretary's) office. Candidate or non-voting, members met with Central Committee secretaries in a more modest room, which had been cheerfully named the predbannik, Russian for the dressing room of a bathhouse. At the appointed time the two groups met in the Politburo Room, greeting each other in a formal yet friendly manner. The reason for the initially divided nature of this unwritten Kremlin tradition was to allow the general secretary to consult with the most senior Soviet leaders before the start of the meeting. Major decisions were often made in the Walnut Room, without any note takers present, and ratified in the Politburo Room.
Mikhail Gorbachev was still not guaranteed the top job as he waited to greet his fellow Politburo members that Sunday evening. Gorbachev had been chairing sessions in Chernenko's abscence (as Chernenko had done in Andropov's abscence), but he was very aware that the old guard wasn't ready to give up yet; even after going through so many leaders in such a short time the situation was becoming the stuff jokes were made of. Gorbachev knew that some of the old guard were wanting the 71 year old Moscow Communist Party boss, Viktor Grishin to get the top job. Grishin had a reputation for corruption and sluggishness that was high even compared to a party boss in one of the outlying Soviet republics. A few weeks earlier Grishin had put on a little theater that he hoped would make people see he was Chernenko's heir apparent by helping the dying leader cast his vote on nationwide television. Prime Minister Tikhonov was at it again behind the scenes to block Gorbachev's candidature. However, rank and file members of the Central Committee were very heavily in favor of Gorbachev. After 13 months and over 18 years (except for a few slight changes under Andropov) both the party and the people were desperate for real change. Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko was the key figure in this transition. Gromyko was an oldster himself, having served every Soviet leader since Stalin. He had joined the Communist Party in 1931-the year Gorbachev was born. Now that Defense Minister Ustinov was dead, there was no other man in the Politburo who could match his influence and prestige. To be continued...
I am kind of going crazy getting information I had written down here while I can type halfway decently. This is indeed a new series but I very much intend to go back to Rome very soon. The two different subjects will run simultaneously. In this series (which by the way I do not like the name-so any suggestions other than "The Big Questions" will be appreciated!) I just want to ask major questions of history and see if there are any answers. Things like: Can one person make a difference? What causes a nation to rise, stagnate or fall completely? Maybe even questions like: Do conspiracies play a major role in history? (conspiracies do not always have to be major to make a difference. Hopefully we will see shortly how if we believe one person can make a difference in the Gorbachev succession- a very tiny conspiracy may have ended up playing a major part-it then boils down if one believes a single man or woman can make a difference when confronted with the overwhelming tides of history.) These are pretty much the questions I started this blog for and wound up getting so wrapped up in Roman history ( but will definitely continue with that also, God willing) that I forgot-especially as I had a long spell on this blog without doing anything. If I am offline tomorrow, I hope to be online Friday. All the best to anyone stopping by!
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