Free Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 by Stephen Kotkin Page A

the Andropov-assembled Gorbachev–Ligachev– Ryzhkov team remained in place. But the old guard held on, reduced—after the December 1984 death of Ustinov—to the triumvirate of Chernenko, Tikhonov, and Gromyko. The trio had a concealed escalator built so they could still ascend Lenin’s mausoleum for holiday parades.
    ‘We were ashamed of our state, of its half-dead leaders, of the encroaching senility,’ recalled Nikolai Leonov, then a top analyst of the post-war generation in the KGB, which since the 1970s had been preparing memoranda for an indifferent politburo on the widening technological gap with the West, increasing alcoholism at home (with attendant crime, low productivity, and birth defects), and the unsustainability of global adventurism.
    Many a time we discussed these questions in a circle of the closest colleagues . . . We all sincerely and unshakeably believed in socialism as a higher and more humane system than capitalism. We were also convinced that all our troubles derived from the so-called subjective factor—the personal qualities 53
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    of our leaders. We hoped and believed that a new, young, anointed generation of party and state leaders would come to power. 20
    The unavoidable generational shift
    On 10 March 1985 at 7.20 p.m., Chernenko, after having been in a coma, died. First to be notified by the Kremlin doctor was Gorbachev, who instructed the apparat to convene a politburo meeting that same evening at 11:00. The man rumoured to be Gorbachev’s principal rival, Viktor Grishin, the head of the powerful Moscow city party committee and an intimate of Chernenko, learned of Chernenko’s death from Gorbachev. Provocatively, Gorbachev suggested to Grishin that the latter should chair Chernenko’s funeral commission. In the past, the funeral commission chair had always become the general secretary. Grishin demurred, proposing that Gorbachev be chair. The message was clear: Grishin did not have the forces to challenge Gorbachev. But at the politburo meeting itself, with top position finally within his grasp, Gorbachev brushed aside a motion by Grishin to be named funeral commission chairman. No one else was nominated. Strangely, no vote was taken. 21
    The succession seemed, that night, still up in the air. But it was not. As de facto Secretariat chief, Gorbachev assumed responsibility for arranging the funeral, the next day’s 54
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    afternoon meeting of the politburo, and the same day’s follow-up plenary session of the CC; indeed, it was Gorbachev who had decided to call the initial politburo meeting. Together with Yegor Ligachev and KGB Chairman Viktor Chebrikov, Gorbachev worked at party HQ
    until the wee small hours. Later that morning, 11 March, prior to the second politburo session, Gromyko suddenly telephoned Ligachev to indicate he would back Gorbachev. As was agreed, at the second politburo meeting Gromyko dramatically stood up, pre-empting the others, and, like a kingmaker, nominated Gorbachev for general secretary. Tikhonov seconded the nomination. Fifteen others tripped over each other to concur. At the CC
    gathering that would formally vote on the politburo’s recommendation, Gromyko again stood up first, and his disclosure of the choice for Gorbachev drew resounding applause.
    Could the outcome have turned out differently? Was there a succession struggle?
    Back in 1978, when Andropov had contrived Gorbachev’s transfer into the inner circle, the next youngest CC
    secretary was Chernenko, twenty years Gorbachev’s senior.
    Inevitably, the gerontocrats began to die off: Suslov (1982), Brezhnev (1982), Andropov (1983), Ustinov (1984), and Chernenko (1985). In March 1985, the two surviving elder statesmen, Tikhonov and Gromyko, both entertained notions of their own candidacy. 22 But, even if one had agreed to step aside for the other, age considerations would have dictated only another Chernenko-like 55
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    interregnum. Slightly