PRESENTING THE SOVIET PACKAGE 165Gorbachëv talked about total reductions, but we in the General
Staff did not think that this would really happen. We supposed
that this could be some far-off prospect, but did not believe it. We
[started] from the premise that an acceptable level compatible
with mutual deterrence should be found. We still maintain that
nuclear weapons should be preserved as an element of deterrence,
given the real possibility of the appearance of nuclear arsenals
among third countries.^27Years later Akhromeev confessed that he had never believed in the
goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons.^28 But as Chief of the General
Staff he knew what the General Secretary wanted. Akhromeev would
obviously get nowhere if he simply opposed the orientation towards
arms reduction. He pretended to support it by offering a scheme that
he knew would be unacceptable to NATO. He absolutely did not want
a world war and hoped to manage questions of international military
rivalry in such a fashion as to avoid one. He assumed that the General
Staff knew what was best for the USSR’s security.
He had deliberately drafted a schedule that spanned fifteen years.
As he was aware, there could be no guarantee that future political
leaders would stick to it. He had also included British and French
nuclear warheads in the first stage of arms reduction despite knowing
that governments in London and Paris would guard their nuclear-
power status.^29 Akhromeev had also purposefully restricted his scheme
to nuclear arms. The Americans would inevitably grasp that, if they
agreed to it, Soviet leaders would be able to threaten Western Europe
with the numerical superiority of their conventional forces.
Silence descended on the entire room until Yuli Kvitsinski, a
Soviet arms negotiator in Vienna, let out an ironic laugh. He was
voicing what everyone in the room was feeling, that Akhromeev had
pulled a fast one.^30 The diplomats pointed out that Western leaders
would inevitably treat such a scheme with deep suspicion. Varennikov
replied that the entire General Staff was against the slightest revision
of it. Akhromeev in person strode into the office halfway through the
meeting – Grinevski would later describe him as ‘thin, nervous, ener-
getic’. Varennikov ordered the military officers to stand to attention.
Akhromeev acted like the master in the house. Refusing to sit down,
he barked that the Politburo package of 2 January was obsolete. At
that very moment a general – arms talks specialist Nikolai Chervov –
was in a plane flying south to present the General Staff ’s ideas to
Gorbachëv, who was taking a vacation in Pitsunda by the Black Sea.