ENDINGS 483Secretary, complained about the way that the new co-ops were paying
themselves more than they received in income. Shevardnadze brought
the discussion back to the Lithuanian question. He advised against
precipitate measures and reasoned that inactivity was preferable to the
kind of measures that the communist-conservatives and their military
sympathizers had in mind.^2
On 10 January Gorbachëv called on Landsbergis and the Lithua-
nian government to submit to Moscow’s constitutional authority; he
indicated that military intervention was a possibility – Shevardnadze’s
worst fears were coming to fulfilment. Soviet paratrooper units
began to seize buildings next day. On 13 January there was violence
at the Vilnius television tower, and thirteen Lithuanians were killed.
The national response was angry and immediate. Crowds gathered
in Lithuania’s big cities.
Gorbachëv, supported by Defence Minister Yazov and Interior
Minister Pugo, denied complicity in the bloodshed; but there was
quickly a suspicion that even if he had not ordered it, he had chosen
not to prevent it. He had always deliberately kept himself mysterious,
and nobody in his entourage – not even Chernyaev, Yakovlev or
Shakhnazarov – was sure what he thought he was doing when appoint-
ing obvious communist conservatives to high office. Shakhnazarov
was to speculate that Gorbachëv was two people at once: a radical and
an apparatchik.^3 Whatever part he might have played in the Vilnius
massacre, the practical consequences were undeniably damaging for
him and his cause. Nationalist agitation grew throughout Lithuania.
Russia became a foreign country for the three self-declared indepen-
dent Baltic states, and Boris Yeltsin recognized their status on 13
January at a meeting in Tallinn. Yeltsin was speaking as Chairman of
Russia’s Supreme Soviet when he condemned the Vilnius massacre.
In Moscow the Russian democratic movement organized a demon-
stration protesting against the military violence.^4 Having omitted to
enforce Yeltsin’s retirement from politics in autumn 1987, Gorbachëv
was having to confront a rival. Yeltsin called for more radical policies
in politics and economics, and he was open to the idea of a Baltic
secession.
Gorbachëv’s international status was dipping. On 25 February, with
his consent, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved at a Bucharest meeting of
foreign affairs and defence ministers from the USSR, Bulgaria, Hun-
gary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania.^5 Comecon was wound up
some months later.^6 Gorbachëv reluctantly recognized the inevitable: