484 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
countries of Eastern Europe had no wish for an alliance, military or
economic, with the Soviet Union. They intended to strengthen their
newly won freedom from Muscovite interference.
On 17 March the Soviet leadership tried to shore up its own posi-
tion by holding a referendum on the preservation of the USSR. He
received a resounding vote of approval across most of the republics.
On a Moscow visit in March, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd
expressed hope for a ‘renewed and voluntary Union’. He stated publicly
that the USSR’s disintegration would be bad for everyone, including
the West. Behind the scenes, he added that Yeltsin was ‘a dangerous
man’.^7 The unequal status of the two superpowers became painfully
obvious in the same month when Baker instructed the American
embassy in Moscow to organize a Moscow meeting of the presidents
of the fifteen Soviet Republics of the USSR. Gorbachëv angrily warned
off the presidents from attending.^8 But the Western pressure contin-
ued. British Prime Minister John Major approached Gorbachëv with a
repeated complaint about the Soviet biological weapons programme in
April – Ambassador Braithwaite passed the letter to Chernyaev for
delivery to the Soviet President.^9 The British continued to express their
concern through to the end of the year.^10 They offered no prospect of
economic assistance. Gorbachëv’s triumph with his referendum meant
nothing to a society whose households faced the prospect of ruin and
even starvation.
Shevardnadze warned that the USSR might suddenly fall apart in
civil war: ‘I fear this more than anything else.’ Gorbachëv, he added,
should have encouraged the creation of a separate party of reform
such as Shevardnadze and Yakovlev would have been eager to join.
Yakovlev wrote to Gorbachëv advocating a two-party political system.
Knowing that Gorbachëv suspected him of hoping to succeed him, he
insisted that he was too old for any such bid.^11 Shevardnadze regretted
the reluctance of Gorbachëv and Yeltsin to reconcile their differences;
he was beginning to envisage Yeltsin as a desirable alternative to Gor-
bachëv. He admitted that whereas Gorbachëv would never want to be
‘dictator’, Yeltsin displayed ‘authoritarian habits’. But as Gorbachëv lost
control in Moscow, Yeltsin appeared the better guarantee of continued
reform. Shevardnadze continued to speak in loyal terms about Gor-
bachëv. Nevertheless, his former deputy Adamishin sensed that
Gorbachëv had let him down and even betrayed him.^12 Shevardnadze
also felt that his old ministry no longer had any ‘strategists’ in high
posts – he did not approve of Bessmertnykh’s promotion.^13 When he