ONE FOOT ON THE ACCELERATOR 141atmosphere of suspicion. Craxi urged him to permit greater flexibility
at the Geneva talks. Gorbachëv gave him short shrift: ‘If the Ameri-
cans don’t renounce SDI, the Supreme Pontiff in Rome will be able to
celebrate the funeral of the negotiations.’^19
The feeling was strong in the Politburo that Reagan was insincere
in his proposal to eliminate all intermediate-range missiles.^20 Zaikov
did not concur. Agitated about the stalling of the Geneva talks, he
silenced the Party Defence Department’s attempt to explain why the
current obstacles were so hard to surmount: ‘Stop, stop, stop! This is a
very serious problem and we can’t allow any delay in tackling it.’^21 He
explained his concerns to Yuri Maslyukov, who headed the Military-
Political Questions Commission for the Council of Ministers. Zaikov
recognized that the USSR harmed its economy by producing far more
weapons than were needed for security. It was the Politburo’s fault,
he said, that Pershing-2 missile sites now dotted the map of Western
Europe – and these missiles needed only twelve minutes at most to hit
Moscow.^22 If Soviet leaders wanted to get those missiles removed from
Western Europe, they would have to agree to withdraw their SS-20s
from Eastern Europe.^23 Maslyukov concurred and urged Zaikov to
contact Ligachëv for his support. Ligachëv endorsed Zaikov’s argu-
ments and the two of them phoned Gorbachëv, who was on holiday in
Crimea. Gorbachëv too was sympathetic despite knowing that trouble
would ensure from the General Staff and the Defence Ministry. He did
not flinch and gave the order: ‘Go to it! I’ll back you.’^24
Zaikov looked around for a reliable team to help him draft a ratio-
nale. He turned to Kataev, deputy head of the Party Defence
Department, to lead the work. Kataev agreed and in turn solicited
additional assistance from Viktor Karpov in the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs. Karpov was overjoyed: ‘Wonderful! At last they’ve understood!
But all intermediate-range missiles need to be liquidated. This means
that we essentially have to accept Reagan’s “zero option”.’ The team
aimed to limit the discussions to Europe in the first instance and to
keep the USSR’s Asia-based weapons off the agenda. They hoped that
Washington would appreciate the scale of the Soviet offer. Their chief
worry was about the fuss that the USSR’s military and industrial elites
would probably make.^25
The high command behaved exactly as predicted. When Kataev
and Karpov expounded their ideas to Varennikov, First Deputy Chief
of the General Staff, there was a furious dispute.^26 Reference was made
to the awful precedent of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. There