280 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
the CIA wondered whether this was really fair on Gorbachëv.)^35
Shevardnadze tried to cajole Reagan and Shultz in the White House
soon afterwards. Although he still could not reveal any specific Polit-
buro decision, he asked them to understand that the Soviet leadership
was truly probing for a solution.^36
It took until autumn 1989, months after Reagan’s departure, for a
definitive transformation in the Soviet position when Shevardnadze,
in his talks with President Bush’s Secretary of State James Baker,
divulged that the Kremlin had decided to close down the Krasnoyarsk
facilities entirely.^37 By then, 530 million rubles had been spent and a
whole new town of 30,000 inhabitants created. The Soviet authorities
had abandoned the scheme for a research centre. They had dropped
ideas of establishing some civilian kind of factory. When they plumped
for a penal colony of some sort, it turned out that no ministry wanted
to bid for the facilities.^38 In December 1989 there was an announce-
ment that the station would be fully dismantled at some point in
1991.^39
The White House had been raising parallel objections to the
USSR’s secretiveness about its military expenditure. The Kremlin con-
tinued to lie about the size of its armed forces and their weaponry. If
Gorbachëv and Shevardnadze genuinely wanted some kind of partner-
ship with America, this situation had to change. The Foreign Affairs
Ministry was raising the question in autumn 1986, and on 22 October
a decree issued from the Central Committee ordering the Defence
Ministry to supply proposals for a scheme and schedule for what kind
of details could be published.^40 When on 5 March 1987 Akhromeev
came back to the Politburo, he moved Gorbachëv to anger: ‘The whole
world is laughing. The United States is spending three hundred billion
whereas we spend [only] seventeen billion. And we ensure parity.’^41
The Politburo would no longer tolerate evasion by the Soviet military
lobby. Gorbachëv wished to be able to talk to the Americans with a
straight face.
The Party Defence Department asked for permission to go on
publishing an inaccurate budget while it carried out some research.^42
Gorbachëv was annoyed about the attempted subterfuge, and called
for a shift in attitudes. On 8 May he told the Politburo that the USSR
had always lied about the number of its troops stationed in Central
Europe. NATO had far fewer and knew it. No progress with America
was feasible until the Soviet side showed some honesty.^43 When
Gromyko tried to resist, Shevardnadze and Yakovlev sided with