headquarters, demanding that the State Security archives be opened to reveal the true fates of hundreds of thousands of “enemies of the people” who had disappeared into the black maw of the gulag.
All this smacked of bardak, “disorder.” For seven decades the only demonstrations on the streets of Moscow, or anywhere else in the Soviet Union, had been vast pokazuka festivals, carefully choreographed to lavish praise on the Party and its leaders. Now the people were waking up, a frightening prospect for people like Sergei, Yuri, and his parents, seated around me at the dining room table.
When I had first met Yuri’s parents in Moscow two years before, he had simply told them, “Sasha is one of us.” They had no reason to believe I had changed — unless the KGB had alerted them that I was under investigation for suspicious behavior.
That week construction workers had unearthed an unmarked mass grave in a pine forest south of Minsk. The trench contained hundreds of skeletons. Each skull had been shattered by a single, large-caliber pistol bullet. And the few actual bullets recovered were found to have been fired from the big Nagant revolvers carried by Stalin’s NKVD execution squads. This secret grave was just the latest of more than a dozen discovered in that region alone. Private groups investigating the massacres now estimated that more than 200,000 Byelorussians had been executed during the Great Terror of the late 1930s. And Byelorussia was a small republic. Now Memorial and other unofficial organizations were demanding a complete government accounting of these atrocities. Again, opening the secret KGB archives was the principal demand.
“What do you think of all this, Sergei?” Yuri asked. “Do you believe they’ll let the television crews into the basements of the Lubyanka?”
Yuri was referring to the Lubyanka prison adjacent to KGB headquarters, where the NKVD archives were said to be kept.
“I hope they do not,” Sergei said flatly. “At least not in my lifetime.”
“They contain information on actual atrocities?” I asked, looking levelly at Sergei.
He nodded grimly, and seemed to suppress a shudder, as if what had already been discovered and made public was relatively minor compared to the horrible record in those dusty files. “Yes, Sasha,” he said softly, “there were terrible events. But the people should never learn the details. It simply will not help them at all.”
Yuri and his family seated opposite me nodded in unison. For them, glasnost had already gone too far.
“A nation has the right to know its history,” I said, keeping my voice as calm as possible. The four of them stared at me, their eyes going hard. I cleared my throat, and the painful silence spread.
Finally Sergei sighed and spoke. “Sanya,” he said, reaching over to touch my arm, “you are a nice fellow. I hope we will end up on the same side of the barricades.”
I looked into his eyes. “Do you think it will all come to fighting in the streets?”
Sergei sipped his cognac and smiled now. “Sasha, where do you think perestroika will eventually end?”
I knew from his tone this was a cynical Moscovite’s sophisticated riddle. “I don’t know.”
“Perestrielka,” he said, “gunfire.” The others at the table nodded again. Their faces wore a strange mix of apprehension and mirth.
“It’s a fact, Sasha,” Sergei added. “You’re always reading. Check the dictionary.”
In the latest State lexicon, the next entry after the word “perestrielka” was, in fact, “perestroika.” This was an accident, of course, but for hundreds of thousands of hard-liners, the coincidence was an omen.
Sunday, March 26, I went to the hospital gym to exercise. I had no intention of voting. Officers on my ward had told me the Air Force had sent unofficial word as to which candidates standing for election in Moscow districts were “acceptable.” Certainly Boris Yeltsin, who had supported the campaign to expose the gross excesses of Raisa Gorbachev during her shopping sprees in foreign capitals, was not a favorite of the Air Force. Yeltsin was standing in the north-central Moscow district that included this hospital. If I were going to vote for anyone, it would be him. But, because I was stationed in Georgia, I was not registered to vote in Moscow. Almost all the officers voting were also stationed elsewhere. The whole exercise was a fraud in which I refused to participate. Then my case physician, Lieutenant Colonel Merkulov, found me in the gym.
“Captain Zuyev,” he said sternly, “you haven’t voted yet. Colonel Golubchikov sent me to find you.”
Golubchikov was the director of the internal medicine division, a professional surgeon trying to do the best job he could, which naturally included pleasing his superior officer, Colonel Ivanov. This was not an easy task for a dedicated physician.
Ivanov was known as a harsh taskmaster, a wealthy Communist zealot, as close to its own Mafia boss as this hospital had. His position would have brought him a constant stream of “gifts” and favors. He had many influential friends in the Defense Ministry. They no doubt expected him to deliver a solid block of military votes for the Party’s handpicked candidates.
“Comrade Lieutenant Colonel,” I told Merkulov, “I do not intend to participate in this election.”
Merkulov was hardly a troop commander. He seemed more disappointed than angry. “Then you’ll have to report to the colonel to explain.”
That meant a shower and changing into a clean uniform. But, at least for the moment, I was still a Soviet Air Force officer, and direct insubordination did not come easily.
Fifteen minutes later I stood before Golubchikov’s desk. What’s the problem, Alexander Mikhailovich?” he asked quietly, more weary than angry.
“If I were to vote, Comrade Colonel, I’d do it at my base in Georgia where I knew the candidates.”
Sheepishly Golubchikov slid a sample ballot across his polished maple desk. The names of the three “acceptable” candidates had been circled in red ink. We were ordered to vote for notorious Party apparatchiks who were cronies of the Defense Minister, Marshal Yazov. “You know your duty, Captain,” the colonel said. “Go to the registry desk in the Lenin Room and cast your ballot. All the other officers in this hospital have already voted.”
“For these candidates, Comrade Colonel?” I let the irony ring in my voice. All across the eleven time zones of the Soviet Union on this long Sunday, military officers and employees of institutes and factories under tight Communist control were undoubtedly also being pressured to vote for the candidates approved by the Party. This was the bosses’ version of democracy.
“The vote is secret, Captain Zuyev,” Golubchikov said, his voice neutral. But his meaning was clear; once I registered, his responsibility ended.
The colonel handed me my registry card and a blank ballot. For a moment I felt like ripping it up. But this hardworking doctor was not my enemy. I took the papers and came to attention. “I serve the Soviet Union.”
In the Lenin Room a young captain sat warily at the registration desk, obviously concerned that my minor rebellion might land him in the middle of something unpleasant. He was clearly relieved when I approached the desk, then bent to sign in the one remaining empty space on the page. I was, indeed, the last officer to vote.
I took the ballot into the booth, slid shut the blue curtain, then dropped the ballot, unmarked, into the slot of the varnished box. Now I whispered the ritual phrase of military obedience: “I serve the Soviet Union.”
Two days later I saw Colonel Golubchikov on the third-floor corridor. He looked like a boxer who had just lost a fight. That morning Pravda had announced the election results. Communist candidates had been defeated in every important district. No important Party man had been elected in Moscow, Leningrad, or Kiev. The Party bosses in the Baltic Republics had been defeated, as had the general commanding the KGB in Estonia and the four-star general commanding all Soviet forces in Germany. Boris Yeltsin had been elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies by a massive majority, defeating the Party hack whom the Air Force had found so “acceptable.”
“Good morning, Comrade Colonel,” I said pleasantly as we passed. “It’s a great day for our nation.”
Golubchikov stopped, his hands thrust deeply into the side pockets of his starched white medical coat. He seemed about to speak, but then scowled silently and turned on his heel.
For the next eight days I had my final round of X rays, blood tests, and orthopedic examinations. This was an official review of my physical condition required as part of my formal permanent removal from flight status. In principle, I could have petitioned to remain on limited flying duty in low-performance aircraft, as had my friend “Karpich” Karpov, who had suffered the spine injury when his stupid zampolit shot him down with an R-23 missile. Karpich hoped to end his military career flying an old An-2 Anushka biplane, dropping scared cadets at Armavir in parachute training. He could not imagine a life outside the protective blanket of the military. To me that blanket had become a suffocating shroud. I declined my right to appeal.
During those days, shuttling among the laboratories and radiological service, I learned from friendly nurses about a medical scandal of explosive proportions. The previous autumn, there had been five officers from the Republic of the Congo at the hospital undergoing complete physical examinations as part of their jet fighter pilot
