A NEW WORLD ORDER? 475one occupied by the Shevardnadze family, Shevardnadze surmised
that Yanaev’s idea was to expand his living quarters at their expense.^11
At the same time he yearned to complete the work that had occupied
him since the mid-1980s. He thought the Americans were becoming
distracted from the tasks of completing a treaty on strategic nuclear
forces.^12
While all this was happening, Gorbachëv arranged to reorganize
the structure of government. This would involve ‘extraordinary
measures’ of a kind that his traditionalist critics had long demanded.
There was a growth of separatist tendencies in the Baltic region and
the south Caucasus, and practically every Soviet republic was asserting
its right to sovereignty. Gorbachëv arranged to stabilize the situation
by setting up a cabinet of ministers under his control. Law and order
would be enforced. Shevardnadze saw dangers in the switch of policy
and even unburdened himself of his worries in conversation with
Chinese Foreign Affairs Minister Qian Qichen about it. He told him
about the public demonstration on 7 November, when banners were
brandished with the words ‘Down with Gorbachëv!’ and ‘Down with
the Gorbachëv–Shevardnadze–Yakovlev Clique’. Shevardnadze asked:
‘What were we meant to do? Fire on them?’^13 This was a rhetorical
question. His basic fear was that if Gorbachëv introduced any extra-
ordinary measures, he might indeed soon find himself under pressure
to use violence. He dreaded that the USSR would succumb to dictator-
ship. Next day, as he flew from Moscow to Paris, he talked to aides
about whether he should resign.^14 He was reaching the limits of
patience and endurance. He wanted to step down.
KGB Chairman Kryuchkov urged the Politburo to declare an
emergency situation. He wanted the President to assume plenipoten-
tiary powers.^15 This would have meant that Gorbachev put himself in
the hands of the USSR’s traditional agencies of coercion: the KGB, the
Soviet armed forces and the communist party. Minister of Internal
Affairs Vadim Bakatin – a reformer and one of Gorbachëv’s close asso-
ciates – rose up in fury. Although Gorbachëv defended him, Bakatin
had spoken with a loose tongue.^16 Gorbachëv judged it prudent to
mollify his communist-conservative critics – in October 1990 he had
even given permission for the testing of a nuclear bomb on Novaya
Zemlya between the Barents Sea and the Kara Sea. This was just before
he was meant to go to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.^17
Bakatin was gone from office at his own request by 1 December 1990.
As Gorbachëv manoeuvred to the side of his conservative critics, he