THE SOVIET PACKAGE UNTIED 247insisted that there was nothing wrong with the technical equipment
available to the defence agencies. Shevardnadze commented that the
Soviet armed forces had enjoyed too much freedom from control for
far too long. Heads, he suggested, had to roll. Only then did Sokolov
understand that the rest of the Politburo expected him to resign. He
complied with deep reluctance. Having played no direct part in the
butchery, Gorbachëv expressed thanks for Sokolov’s work over many
years and asked him to stay in post until a successor was appointed.^63
Gorbachëv disbelieved Rust’s story about his peace mission and
ignored the foreign pleas for mercy. The young man had broken the
law and deserved punishment.^64 At the same time Gorbachëv repeated
the argument he had made in East Berlin that the USSR needed to
accept America’s case that the Warsaw Pact had numerical superiority
in Europe.^65 Shevardnadze supported him. He could see no chance of
completing a disarmament treaty until such time as the USSR openly
acknowledged that it had more medium-range nuclear missiles in
Europe than NATO.^66
The General Staff and Defence Ministry had suddenly lost any
right of resistance because of the Rust affair. A vast process of sackings
took place in the armed forces. Gorbachëv was ruthless. He snarled
to the Politburo that the bizarre episode showed why it was that the
General Staff had objected to an agreement with America on arms
inspections: ‘It was so that we couldn’t see the disorder there.’^67 His
choice to replace Sokolov was Dmitri Yazov – apparently he had
earned Raisa Gorbachëva’s favour for expressing his admiration for the
poet Pushkin. Hundreds of top commanders throughout the armed
forces were pushed into retirement. The way was becoming clearer to
deepen the rapprochement with America. This gave rise to pleasure on
the other side of the Atlantic, where Shultz was able to inform Reagan
that the Kremlin was at long last willing to negotiate a separate treaty
on intermediate- and short-range nuclear forces. On 13 June the
President signed a new national security directive that welcomed
the Soviet climbdown as a victory for the line he had marked out in
Reykjavik.^68
Shevardnadze held a planning meeting in his ministry on the same
day. Everyone agreed that the USSR obtained no true advantage from
insisting on keeping a hundred missiles in its Asian territories. As
things stood in the Geneva talks, Bessmertnykh said, the Americans
could frighten the Chinese with the claim that the USSR had begun to
concentrate on them as the enemy. Shevardnadze closed the meeting