THE THIRD MAN BREAKS LOOSE 469Gorbachëv’s confidence in him. He traced the change to something
that Bush said to Gorbachëv at the Malta summit when he made the
comment: ‘I absolutely believe in Shevardnadze.’^45 Gorbachëv, he
guessed, probably felt that he needed to be on his guard if the Ameri-
can President found ease in Shevardnadze’s company.
Throughout the summer months, at Gorbachëv’s request and with
Yeltsin’s agreement, a group of economists led by Stanislav Shatalin
and Grigori Yavlinski worked on a plan to introduce a market econ-
omy to the USSR through a programme that would take 500 days to
implement. The Party Central Committee met in mid-September 1990
to consider the proposals. The economy was in free fall, and Minister
of Finance Valentin Pavlov reported that the USSR would go bankrupt
without a massive inflow of foreign capital. He estimated that thirty-
five per cent of enterprises were in the red. The gathering speed of
collapse helped Ryzhkov to surmount his worries about social protests
against the consequences of retail price reform. The need for firm
action, he declared, was acute. At the same time he queried the recent
decision to put Yakovlev in charge of the campaign against criminality
- he said that Yakovlev was obviously out of his depth. Those who
preferred the old economic system to the uncertainties of reform
also came into the open. Yuri Prokofev dismissed the Shatalin draft
programme as mere sloganeering, lacking any practical use. Oleg Bak-
lanov asserted that the working class was on the point of taking to the
streets.^46 The Central Committee was a house divided. The sole point
of consensus was about the fact that the USSR faced an acute emer-
gency.
Gorbachëv and Shevardnadze hoped to alleviate the situation with
Western assistance. They grew worried when Yeltsin took a trip to
America. Chernyaev recorded: ‘And Bush and Co. are looking on him
as an alternative.’^47 Gorbachëv had asked British Foreign Secretary
Douglas Hurd to intercede for $2 billion of interest-free credit. He
indicated that Moscow needed another $15–20 billion in credits,
goods and expertise to overcome its difficulties. Hurd promised to
relay the request to Thatcher, who alone could make the decision.^48
The USSR’s General Staff and Defence Ministry were less than
helpful to their political leadership. On 18 September Shevardnadze
alerted Gorbachëv about Western press coverage of the USSR’s system-
atic infringement of arms agreements.^49 The story surfaced that the
high command had removed tanks to the east of the Ural mountains
instead of destroying them.^50 Shevardnadze felt he could not discharge