284 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
threatened leading commanders with disciplinary sanctions if ever
they tried to voice their objections at communist party gatherings.^62
Soviet technical specialists anyway lent no support to the criticism;
they felt sure that Gorbachëv had done the right thing. The fewer
nuclear missiles on the European continent, the better.^63 Even Akhro-
meev, when he applied his mind rationally to the question, accepted
the need for a drastic numerical reduction. Kataev in the Party
Defence Department shivered at the thought of a field commander
who might start the Third World War by deciding to fire a short-range
nuclear missile in support of forces under threat near the lines of
East–West confrontation.^64 He and arms talks specialist Nikolai
Detinov had a further reason to oppose the critics. Both of them
appreciated the dilemma that had faced Gorbachëv: if he had refused
to withdraw the SS-23s, the Americans would have felt free to deploy
their new Lance-2 missiles with a range of 450 kilometres – and the
result would have been a sharpening of military insecurity in Europe.
Detinov was an army man with a record of falling out with the diplo-
mats in the Soviet talks delegation in Geneva; he was not someone
who automatically believed in the wisdom of Gorbachëv. But on this
vital occasion he believed that the General Secretary had no other
sensible option.^65
Gorbachëv, with the approval of the Big Five and the Politburo,
made concession after concession in pursuit of bilateral agreements to
reduce the stockpiles of nuclear weapons. All concurred that it was a
price worth paying. Reagan wanted a deal as badly as they did. But
Gorbachëv and his colleagues needed it more than he did – and
Reagan knew this.