426 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
never before. He offered to step down and enable the Central Commit-
tee to elect a new Politburo. He was defiant: ‘What I’m doing – I’m
convinced – is what’s necessary for the country!’ Ligachëv, who was
chairing the session, calmed the tempest by denying that Melnikov
wanted rid of Gorbachëv. Melnikov in fact wanted exactly that result,
but the dust settled and Gorbachëv prevailed.^46
Gorbachëv felt chastened enough to reject a call to add ‘the current
political situation’ to the agenda.^47 He even avoided the subject of the
summit. Far from glorying in his performance off the Maltese coast, he
gave no account of the proceedings. Leonid Zamyatin, Soviet Ambassa-
dor to the United Kingdom, stepped forward on his behalf. Although
Zamyatin worried that the street demonstrations in Eastern Europe
could spread to Moscow, he applauded Gorbachëv’s foreign policy
since 1985 and claimed that there were grounds for cautious optimism.
He noted the hostility of the British, French and Italians to Kohl’s Ten
Points. This provided the USSR with a genuine opportunity to mould
the process as the Warsaw Pact and NATO brought about the necessary
stabilization.^48 Gorbachëv must have wished that Zamyatin had not
been the sole Central Committee member to speak out in this way. At
the summit, Bush had made him feel like a hero. The Western press
offered psalms of praise. When the Soviet party leadership withheld its
appreciation, he knew that danger was bearing down on him.