THE THIRD MAN BREAKS LOOSE 467What Shevardnadze suffered was mild in comparison with the
attacks upon Yakovlev. KGB Chairman Kryuchkov regarded him as a
traitor and, after liaising with Boldin, went to Gorbachëv with his
agents’ reports. The evidence for his allegation was decidedly paltry.
Kryuchkov could only point to occasions when Yakovlev had had
‘unsanctioned’ conversations with Americans. Gorbachëv could see
that this fell some distance short of hard proof, and he advised Kryuch-
kov to discuss the matter directly with Yakovlev.^30 It was a deft but
unsatisfactory way of handling the matter. Kryuchkov had behaved
badly and would have lost his job if Gorbachëv had not been commit-
ted to balancing the radicals and traditionalists in his administration.
Gorbachëv would live to regret this calculation. Kryuchkov for the
moment returned to a posture of loyalty to his leadership. He was a
complicated figure inside the leadership. Sometime after being
appointed as KGB Chairman, he had blurted out to Ambassador Mat-
lock that some intelligence officials regarded the current Soviet leaders
as being out of their minds. But he also acknowledged that the USSR
had once been an evil regime, and he asked for advice on how to
tackle ethnic problems in the light of the American experience.^31
Shevardnadze considered whether to speak in his own defence at
the Central Committee plenum that month after hearing that people
held him culpable for the collapse of ‘the socialist camp’ in Eastern
Europe.^32 In the event, he lost his temper on a separate matter. This
happened when Ligachëv assured the plenum that the entire Politburo
had approved the decision to use troops in Tbilisi in April 1989.
Deeply offended, Shevardnadze interjected that the Politburo had
approved the deployment of military units only with a view towards
the maintenance of order. No permission was provided for the use of
force. When Shevardnadze sat down, the economist Stanislav Shatalin
was the only Central Committee member who voiced support.
Nobody was more shocked than Shevardnadze: ‘This was the first time
that I met with such a reception from such an audience.’^33 He resolved
to complete the tasks he had set himself in foreign policy on his own
terms: ‘I’m ready to take full responsibility upon myself; [but] if the
people considers that this means the collapse of the system rather than
democracy or that this is against our national interest, I’m ready to
hand in my resignation.’ He was proud of his part in the struggle
against dictatorship.^34
Presidential powers, according to Shevardnadze, needed strength-
ening if Gorbachëv was to overcome the resistance in the Politburo,