SYMPTOMS RECOGNIZED, CURES REJECTED 61would be urged to carry out their duties conscientiously; officials
would be threatened with penal sanctions for corrupt or lackadaisical
activity. The Soviet state fell deeper into the clutches of the police.
While recognizing the growing difficulties, Andropov was deter-
mined to show that the USSR could match any American threat. He
recruited a group led by Dmitri Ustinov to prepare policy on the
Strategic Defense Initiative. Deputy Chairman of the Council of Min-
isters Yuri Maslyukov and Chief of the General Staff Sergei Akhromeev
were appointed to it, and leading scientific institutes as well as the
KGB were under orders to offer their services. Nominally the head of
the group was Politburo member Ustinov but the person who coordi-
nated activity was the world-renowned physicist Yevgeni Velikhov.^37
In subsequent years Velikhov became the human face of the USSR’s
critique of the Strategic Defense Initiative.^38
This group – ‘the Velikhov group’ – operated in an increasingly
frantic atmosphere. Soviet scientific and technological lobbies were
eager to compete for funds to design and build a counterpart to the
American programme. Later the Party Defence Department was to
grouse that this was putting the cart before the horse. It would indeed
have made sense for Velikhov and his colleagues to start by examining
whether America’s programme had a realistic chance of success or
was just a President’s thoughtless whim. There was a growing body
of American scientific opinion – in Stanford University, Cornell Uni-
versity and the Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as at the IBM
Corporation – that the initiative was unlikely to achieve its stated pur-
pose. But the Velikhov group applied itself to the task that Andropov
had handed it.^39 If the Americans were going to have a new weapons
system, the USSR had to have one as well. ‘The main enemy’ must not
be allowed to steal a march on the Soviet defence preparations.^40
The budgetary imbalance built up like steam in a pressure-cooker.
The Politburo did not ignore this and Andropov consented to price
increases for gas, electricity and phone calls.^41 But he refused to
remove the indirect subsidies that the USSR made to Eastern Europe.
When the proposal was made to end financial support for Bulgaria, he
came down firmly against anything that might weaken the together-
ness of the ‘world communist movement’. He quietly overrode the
argument that the USSR received little benefit from Bulgarian agri-
cultural supplies. His fear was that the Chinese would offer to plug the
gap if the USSR ended its funding.^42 This had happened in Albania
since the 1960s and Deng Xiaoping could well decide to make further