Read Online Moscow, December 25th, 1991 by Conor O'Clery - Free Book Online
Authors: Conor O'Clery
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Gennady Burbulis, calls to inform him, in his high-pitched, precise voice, that he must wind things down sharply. Burbulis, it seems, has earmarked Chernyaev’s space for himself and is impatient to move in.
Shortly before 10:30 a.m., refreshed and slightly scented from his hairdresser’s attention, Gorbachev enters his presidential office past the cramped reception area where the secretaries and bodyguards sit, and walks across the carpeted parquet floor to take his customary seat in the high-backed leather chair behind his desk. It is a big, gloomy room, forty feet long and twenty feet wide, with wainscoting and a high ceiling. White damask drapes hang over the windows, and a six-foot-high bookcase takes up half of an adjoining wall. On one side are a worktable and a low coffee table with easy chairs, where he relaxes with visitors. Gorbachev’s desk of dark cherrywood with solid top and base is in the corner by the window. Behind it stands a ceiling-high red Soviet flag. In front of the desk are two adjacent leather armchairs, which self-important visitors try to avoid. Sitting in them means having to look up at the president behind his desk. In the corner is a safe containing top secret documents and some personal items, including a Makarov pistol with gold inlay that he received as a present from Viktor Chebrikov, head of the KGB from 1982 to 1988.
Off the anteroom is the Walnut Room, where major decisions were until recently made by Gorbachev and a select few communist leaders, often with no note takers present, to be ratified in the adjoining Politburo Room. The Politburo Room was once Stalin’s office. It is often referred to as the “shoe room” because the table is shaped like the sole of a shoe. It has not been used since the party was outlawed and the Politburo disbanded after the August coup. On the table rests a control console that opens a special wall panel to expose a series of maps, which are also redundant. Many city and street names and even the titles of the fifteen Soviet-era republics have reverted to their prerevolutionary forms in the past year, and from today the almost invisible dotted lines between the republics will become solid international borders with customs and immigration posts.
The two colonels with the nuclear suitcase have, as always, followed the president into the reception room attached to his office. They place the black object with sharp metal corners on a table so that it is in view. If there is a nuclear alert, a light will flash. This has never happened since the chemodanchik was invented in 1983, in the final phases of the Cold War, to provide Soviet leaders with a remote communications system to minimize reaction time should a missile be detected heading towards the USSR. The device has never left Gorbachev’s side since 1985. In an emergency the top leaders can converse with each other and with the strategic forces command center at Chekhov, a small town outside Moscow linked to the Kremlin by a secret KGB subway known as Moscow Metro II. If one leader should be incapacitated by a nuclear strike, two others can authorize retaliatory action.
Occasionally the colonels have taken Gorbachev through the procedure, showing how in an emergency the president can monitor the trajectory of a suspect missile on a screen inside the case linked into the Soviet Union’s command and control network, Kazbek, and converse with the defense minister and strategic command center by satellite telephone. The system was designed to respond to the U.S. Pershing medium-range ballistic missile, which has a sevenminute trajectory. By pressing one of a row of buttons inside the suitcase, the president can approve different kinds of reactions, from a limited reprisal to nuclear Armageddon.
Contrary to popular belief, the three nuclear suitcases do not contain the codes necessary to unlock the safety mechanisms on nuclear missiles. The president can authorize access to these codes, however. If
Shortly before 10:30 a.m., refreshed and slightly scented from his hairdresser’s attention, Gorbachev enters his presidential office past the cramped reception area where the secretaries and bodyguards sit, and walks across the carpeted parquet floor to take his customary seat in the high-backed leather chair behind his desk. It is a big, gloomy room, forty feet long and twenty feet wide, with wainscoting and a high ceiling. White damask drapes hang over the windows, and a six-foot-high bookcase takes up half of an adjoining wall. On one side are a worktable and a low coffee table with easy chairs, where he relaxes with visitors. Gorbachev’s desk of dark cherrywood with solid top and base is in the corner by the window. Behind it stands a ceiling-high red Soviet flag. In front of the desk are two adjacent leather armchairs, which self-important visitors try to avoid. Sitting in them means having to look up at the president behind his desk. In the corner is a safe containing top secret documents and some personal items, including a Makarov pistol with gold inlay that he received as a present from Viktor Chebrikov, head of the KGB from 1982 to 1988.
Off the anteroom is the Walnut Room, where major decisions were until recently made by Gorbachev and a select few communist leaders, often with no note takers present, to be ratified in the adjoining Politburo Room. The Politburo Room was once Stalin’s office. It is often referred to as the “shoe room” because the table is shaped like the sole of a shoe. It has not been used since the party was outlawed and the Politburo disbanded after the August coup. On the table rests a control console that opens a special wall panel to expose a series of maps, which are also redundant. Many city and street names and even the titles of the fifteen Soviet-era republics have reverted to their prerevolutionary forms in the past year, and from today the almost invisible dotted lines between the republics will become solid international borders with customs and immigration posts.
The two colonels with the nuclear suitcase have, as always, followed the president into the reception room attached to his office. They place the black object with sharp metal corners on a table so that it is in view. If there is a nuclear alert, a light will flash. This has never happened since the chemodanchik was invented in 1983, in the final phases of the Cold War, to provide Soviet leaders with a remote communications system to minimize reaction time should a missile be detected heading towards the USSR. The device has never left Gorbachev’s side since 1985. In an emergency the top leaders can converse with each other and with the strategic forces command center at Chekhov, a small town outside Moscow linked to the Kremlin by a secret KGB subway known as Moscow Metro II. If one leader should be incapacitated by a nuclear strike, two others can authorize retaliatory action.
Occasionally the colonels have taken Gorbachev through the procedure, showing how in an emergency the president can monitor the trajectory of a suspect missile on a screen inside the case linked into the Soviet Union’s command and control network, Kazbek, and converse with the defense minister and strategic command center by satellite telephone. The system was designed to respond to the U.S. Pershing medium-range ballistic missile, which has a sevenminute trajectory. By pressing one of a row of buttons inside the suitcase, the president can approve different kinds of reactions, from a limited reprisal to nuclear Armageddon.
Contrary to popular belief, the three nuclear suitcases do not contain the codes necessary to unlock the safety mechanisms on nuclear missiles. The president can authorize access to these codes, however. If
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