54 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
The Politburo gathered regularly at eleven o’clock in the morning
for its Thursday meeting in the Walnut Room of the Great Kremlin
Palace. Its dozen or so members gathered at the big round table and
held a preliminary discussion before the proceedings began. The
rituals of office were observed as the General Secretary led forward
the full members, followed by those who had candidate (or deputy)
status and then the Central Committee secretaries. The General Secre-
tary took the presiding chair in the Walnut Room. Invited speakers
gave their reports from a lectern to his right.^1 If a vote was taken, only
the Politburo’s full members could take part. Usually, a skilful General
Secretary avoided anything so crude and tried to achieve a consensus
by attempting to summarize the balance of opinion.^2 The men of the
Politburo headed the institutions which governed the entire country.
At the forefront of these institutions were the party, the KGB, the
armed forces and the industrial ministries. The party dominated all
of them. Although no clause in the USSR Constitution expressly en -
shrined the existence of a one-party state, this had been the political
reality since within a year of the October Revolution. The party was
the supreme agency of state in everything but name.
The status of Politburo member or Central Committee secretary
involved perks that were hidden from the public. If one of them trav-
elled abroad on an official trip, it had to be in a special plane.^3 He or
she – it was almost always a he – automatically had use of a large
dacha, maids, a chauffeur, a ZiL limousine with radio telephone and
at least four regular bodyguards. The dachas typically had a sauna, a
tennis court and a cinema as well as a greenhouse and orchard.^4 The
‘Zarya’ villa at Foros in Crimea was opulent by Soviet standards and
was kept available for the General Secretary. Built in a period when
general secretaries were incapable of the most moderate physical
exercise, it had an escalator down to the beach. The villa’s entire com-
plex was rumoured to have cost an astronomical 189 million rubles.^5
There were just a few obstacles to the growth of official privilege.
Office- holders could get into trouble if they built their own private
apartments, for example, although usually it was possible to find ways
round the prohibition.^6
Brezhnev, Party General Secretary since 1964, had fallen into
mental decline in the late 1970s as his health worsened and he spent
months at a time in his dacha at Zavidovo, outside Moscow.^7 With its
concentric series of guard posts and its panorama of fields – green in
summer, snow-covered in the Russian winter – it provided peace and