42. ENDINGS
Gorbachëv ruled according to his chosen political orientation; but he
also lived by his wits, and now he drew deep on them for his survival.
By early 1991 they were no longer of much help in the severe general
crisis in the USSR. Communist party organizations were in chaos. The
ministries were incapable of imposing central power and the armed
forces were demoralized. Even the KGB’s personnel no longer knew
what they were meant to be doing. When Lev Shebarshin went on
an investigative mission around the USSR on Kryuchkov’s orders,
he was shocked by the lost sense of purpose. He witnessed how seldom
the phones were ringing in the Baltic capitals, Vladivostok and Kras-
noyarsk.^1 On 2 January, Gorbachëv held consultations with his close
associates, including even Shevardnadze, in a bid to prepare for the
Central Committee plenum at the end of the month. For the moment
he shifted the focus away from bilateral arms reduction, conflicts in
the Third World, official ideology and even the Soviet economic
collapse. His purpose was to work out a policy to deal with the prolif-
eration of nationalism in every republic.
Among Azerbaijani politicians there were some who called for
unification with northern Iran and its large Azeri population. Lithua-
nia was in uproar. The media were engaged in constant criticism.
There were reports that Soviet working-class opinion was beginning to
favour the establishment of some kind of dictatorship. The solution, in
Gorbachëv’s opinion, was for Kremlin leaders to visit the trouble spots
and calm the situation. He said that if there was to be constitutional
reform, it had to occur inside a federal framework of some kind. Gor-
bachëv was determined to save the Union. The bastions of the old
Soviet order were crumbling. This was a dangerous situation, and Gor-
bachëv urged the need to refrain from criticizing the armed forces.
Georgi Razumovski, who had lost his place as a Politburo deputy
member in mid-1990, spoke of the apathy he saw in the local party
committees. Nikolai Slyunkov, until recently a Central Committee