360 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
he finished by complimenting Gorbachëv on his performance in
New York, he left an impression of some degree of discontent – and as
Gorbachëv’s deputy in the Party Secretariat he had opportunities to
make things difficult for him.^43
A hero abroad, Gorbachëv came back to a Politburo that distinctly
refrained from offering uniform endorsement. But at least he avoided
censure, and he took his chance to stress the economic benefit ration-
ale for military withdrawal. Military expenditure, he remarked, had
recently doubled as a proportion of the USSR’s state budget. This was
not a sustainable situation. Cutbacks were inevitable. At the same
time, he affirmed, there was nothing in his policy that posed a threat
to the country’s capacity to defend itself.^44 It was only then that he
moved on to the Armenian earthquake. Ryzhkov reported on the
meas ures he had undertaken.^45 Gorbachëv was receiving an early
warning of political trouble ahead. He tried to smother it inside the
party by refusing the advice of his radical associates to lead them off
into a separate organization of fundamental reform. He stuck to his
favoured tactic of keeping all public agencies together under his aegis.
The abiding horror for him was that a coalition might emerge against
his radicalism. However much he disliked communist conservatism or
even moderate reformism, he felt he had to cohabit with their leaders
until such time as he made transformation irreversible.