The Dead Hand

14 Ksenia Kostrova, interview, August 2007. Ksenia is Katayev’s granddaughter.

15 This account is based on Katayev, Hoover, and materials in author’s possession.

16 A CIA estimate, made in 1986, was 15–17 percent. (This estimate was a revision from 13–14 percent earlier. The reason for the revision was a recalculation of prices made by the Soviets in 1982.)

17 Katayev, “Chto Takoe VPK” [What Was the VPK], undated, author’s possession. This paper is similar to a chapter Katayev contributed to The Anatomy of Russia Defense Conversion, edited by Vlad E. Genin (Walnut Creek, Calif.: Vega Press, 2001), p. 52.

18 Andrei Grachev, Gorbachev (Moscow: Vagrius, 2001), p. 178. Gorbachev nursed a hope to use the defense sector to somehow boost the flagging Soviet economy. Gaddy, pp. 55–56.

19 Robert D. English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), pp. 193–228.

20 See Stephen F. Cohen and Katrina vanden Heuvel, Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev’s Reformers (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1989), pp. 157–173.

21 Letter to Politburo of November 26, 1985, “On distortion of facts in reports and information coming to the CPSU Central Committee,” State Archive of the Russian Federation, Fond 3, Opis 111, Delo 144, pp. 39–41, courtesy Svetlana Savranskaya.

22 Georgi Shakhnazarov, Tsena Svobody: Reformatsiya Gorbacheva Glazami yevo Pomoshnika (Moscow: Rossika-Zevs, 1993), p. 88.

23 Steve Coll, Ghost Wars (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), p. 127.

24 Chernyaev diary, June 20, 1985.

25 Matlock recalls the Soviets already had in place 414 Pioneers, each with three warheads, while NATO at that point had deployed only 143 warheads on intermediate-range missiles in Europe, made up of 63 Pershing IIs and 80 ground-launched cruise missiles. Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev, p. 116.

26 Reagan letter to Gorbachev, April 30, 1985, RRPL.

27 Chernyaev diary, April 16, 1985.

28 A contentious issue this year was whether Reagan’s proposed Strategic Defense Initiative would remain within a narrow interpretation of the 1972 treaty on missile defense, or whether the administration was seeking to use a broader interpretation of the treaty to allow research to move ahead. McFarlane suggested October 6 the treaty permitted research, testing and development of new systems—appearing to put the administration on record for using a broader interpretation of the treaty. The Soviets were alarmed at this, as were U.S. allies. George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), pp. 579–582. An account critical of Shultz appears in Frances Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), pp. 290–300.

29 Shultz, pp. 570–571.

30 Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents (New York: Times Books, 1995), p. 573.

31 Chernyaev diary, July 1, 1985.

32 English, p. 202.

33 Minutes of the Politburo, June 29, 1985. Volkogonov Collection, Library of Congress, Reel 18. TNSA.

34 Chernyaev diary, June 15, 1985.

35 Andrew and Gordievsky, Comrade Kryuchkov’s Instructions: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations, 1975–1985 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), pp. 107— 115.

36 Unless otherwise specified, this and other comments by Katayev on missile defense are from an undated monograph, “Kakoi byla reaktzia v SSSR na zayavlenia R. Reagana o razvertyvanii rabot v CShA po SOI,” or “What was the reaction of the Soviet Union to the announcement of R. Reagan on the deployment of works in the United States on the SDI,” twelve pages, Katayev, Hoover.

37 Katayev. The author is indebted to Pavel Podvig for identifying and explaining this.

38 Konstantin Lantratov, “The Star Wars Which Never Was,” January 1995. See www.buran.ru/htm/str163.htm.

39 Roald Z. Sagdeev, The Making of a Soviet Scientist (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994), p. 273.

40 Velikhov, interviews by author.

41 Called “IS,” this system was developed in the 1960s and tested in the 1970s and early 1980s, but Andropov’s 1983 moratorium seems to have marked the end of active use. See www.russianspaceweb.com/is.html.

42 A ruby laser emits energy in the visible (red) region.

43 P. V. Zarubin, “Academician Basov, high-powered lasers and the anti-missile defence problem,” Quantum Electronics, No. 32, 2002, pp. 1048–1064.

44 Velikhov described a similar project, known as Gamma, which he said never got off the ground.

45 The declaration was Sept. 24, 1982. Velikhov was also editor of The Night After… Climatic and Biological Consequences of a Nuclear War (Moscow: Mir Publishers, 1985).

46 The group was the Soviet Scientists’ Committee for the Defense of Peace Against the Nuclear Threat.

47 Velikhov said the 1983 report remains secret. But some parts are evident in: Yevgeny Velikhov, Roald Sagdeev, Andrei Kokoshin, eds., Weaponry in Space: The Dilemma of Security (Moscow: Mir, 1986).

48 The chart showing thirty-eight warheads is from Katayev, Hoover. Other data on the SS-18 is from Podvig, Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 218–219. See “Multiple (as in ‘up top 38’) warheads,” http://russianforces.org. For the U.S. expectations of asymmetric response, see “Possible Soviet Responses to the US Strategic Defense Initiative,” NIC M 83-10017, Sept. 12, 1983, Director of Central Intelligence.

49 Gorbachev interview, June 30, 2006.

50 Nichols, p. 133.

51 Chernyaev diary, Sept. 1, 1985.

52 Reagan diary, Sept. 10, 1985.

53 Reagan diary, Oct. 22, 1985. Shultz said the Soviet offer September 27 was heavily weighted against the United States in the way it was structured. Shultz, pp. 576–577.

54 Soviet Military Power, April 1985, p. 55.

55 Robert C. McFarlane, with Zofia Smardz, Special Trust (New York: Cadell & Davis, 1994), pp. 307–308. Matlock, p. 133.

56 Reagan diary, Sept. 26, 1985.

57 Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 342.

58 Shultz disagreed with this view. Shultz, p. 586.

59 Gates, p. 343. The Soviet outlook wasn’t very ambitious either. Moscow “did not pin great hopes on the summit,” Dobrynin said, p. 586. Chernyaev recalls the thrust was not to deviate from existing positions on arms control, “not to get worked up” over regional conflicts, and “in a word, not to provoke Reagan in order not to intensify the threat, not to play up to the hawks.” Chernyaev diary, Nov. 12, 1985. Gorbachev had leeway to go beyond these guidelines, and he did.

60 Gates, p. 343. NIE 11-18-85, Nov. 1, 1985.

61 Reagan diary, Nov. 13, 1985.

62 Suzanne Massie, interview for the television documentary The Cold War, Sept. 2, 1997, Liddell Hart Center for Military Archives, Kings College, London.

63 Matlock, pp. 150–154 and Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Superpower Illusions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010) p. 317, note 11.

64 Yegor Gaidar, “The Soviet Collapse: Grain and Oil,” American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, April 2007. Also see Gaidar’s Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2007).