Chapter 1758 – A Farcical First Day

Foltseva had left Moscow almost back to back with Maphead, and from the moment he boarded the plane, Arikseyev had been keeping a close eye on the few Soviet heads who were going to make a coup, and according to his thoughts, how it had to be a flat-out coup, and with Yanayev calling the main members to his house, he knew that the main event was coming.

It was with great interest that he had just attended the meeting as a supernumerary member, without the knowledge of the main members, and had learned of a new term, the Emergency Committee.

The people who showed up at Yanayev’s house, Soviet Premier Pavlov, the original chairman of the Council of Ministers, and Interior Minister Pugo. There was also Oleg Dmitrievich Baklanov, deputy chairman of the Soviet Defense Committee.

Vasily Alexandrovich Starodubtsev, Chairman of the Peasants’ Union of the USSR, and Alexander Ivanovich Tidjakov, Chairman of the Union of State Enterprises of the USSR-Industry, Construction, Transportation, Post and Telecommunications.

The moment the discussion of the content of the coup was carried out, Alexeyev was taken aback, and Yanayev emphasized, almost repeatedly in his waking moments, that even if one person in the USSR died as a result of it, the coup was a failure and contrary to our ideals.

Alexeyev heard it repeated at least six times and he almost smashed his headphones, are you guys doing a coup or are you just messing around?

What do you do if you don’t have a coup, you have to debate, you have to directly ask the President of Russia to debate, none of these members can debate the President of Russia.

The reason why I say sober time is because this first day of meetings on the first day of the vacation of the Mapheads quickly turned into drinking, and it seems from what followed that all of Yanayev’s guests were drunk, and Arikseyev directly crossed out six people from the list of the Emergency Committee, leaving behind the names of Minister of Defense Yazhov, and the Chairman of the National Security Council, Kryuchkov.

If Alan Wilson can contact at this time on the good Dahl, he must be able to give reasonable advice, in fact, in the August 19th incident, most members is to occupy a field, the real role is Yazhov and Kryuchkov, a defense minister and a KGB chairman, know that the coup d’état is not a joke, just want to be ready to fight.

As for what vice president, the Soviet Premier, thinking of the situation without casualties, just proudly stand up their chests, the Chetniks are obedient. People have withdrawn from the Soviet Communist Party, still think it’s the old days, an internal meeting of the problem is solved?

A bit on the head of Aliksheyev at this time believed his father’s words, can not and these farcical big shots in the action together, to the listening device of a few people ordered, “twenty-four hours to listen to the list of people, can not leave a gap.” The listening list also had the name of the Russian President.

“Vice President, we will never leave any gaps.” Several young faces gave Alexeyev a military salute, they too knew what was at stake, the fate of the Soviet Union at this moment’s work absolute.

Alexeyev nodded solemnly, in fact not only this monitoring room, the entire faces of this operation, were all quite young, were specially drawn by him from all over the world, the situation in the Soviet Union deteriorated in the past few years, the information was confusing, even the KGB’s own Higher Agents School avoided being affected by the confusing information.

Wanting to get rid of these confusing information, Aliksheyev thought of a group of schools that were training agents from childhood, including seven towns including Gatsina, so he chose manpower from the seven special agent towns and arranged them into the positions needed to ensure that this operation could be carried out as if it were in the hands of the KGB.

The content of today’s surveillance was a real eye-opener, the members of the Emergency Committee at Yanayev’s house were all drunk, and it directly dispelled his delusions that at least six of the official members were not to be trusted, and he wondered what about the Minister of Defense and the Chairman of the KGB, and a few of the other names that were mentioned.

“Ligachev, Ryzhkov are not among the list of the Emergency Committee.” Arikseyev left the surveillance room, really wanting to talk to his father, but after a brief moment of reflection, it would never make sense for him, a forty-something year old KGB chairman, to always need advice from a foreigner over nothing, this hurdle would have to be passed himself.

These two people who used to be the head of the map number two at different times, Ryzhkov is now the representative of the Supreme Soviet, the equivalent of a British MP, as for Ligachev’s even greater crime, he was really the flag of the conservatives at that time, now completely without a bit of position, has been ordered to retire last year.

But really retired? In the city of Kalinin, Ligachev faced Foltseva full of dismay, “Comrade Ekaterina, what exactly do you mean?”

“The Motherland has reached a time of extreme danger, can’t you see that? Comrade Ligachev?” Foltseva asked rhetorically with a wry smile, “The situation is already extremely dangerous, just watch, soon Mikhail will lose his power completely, and in the same way we will lose the Motherland that we have fought for all our lives.”

Ligachev’s heart rose and fell, and with a trembling voice he inquired, “Is someone trying a coup? To oust him from power?”

“There are, but I don’t see them.” Foltseva’s good oldest son, in the end, did not choose to reconnect with a foreigner, but the senior mom-and-pop still wanted a little opinion from the Culture Tsar.

Foltseva’s opinion was that she couldn’t help directly in this matter, she could only rely on Alexeyev himself, but there was one thing she could do to help, she could organize an experienced governing team to help stabilize the country in the aftermath. This presupposed victory, failure would be anything but.

“Comrade Ligachev, what do you think of Marshal Akhromeyev?” Foltseva looked at Ligachev and inquired, she herself was actually not too familiar with Marshal Akhromeyev because the two were not active in the same era, Marshal Akhromeyev was ten years younger than Foltseva and was a late bloomer.

Foltseva was already the first secretary of the Moscow City Council in the fifties, so it can be said that forty years ago she was already a high-ranking female representative.

Marshal Akhromeyev didn’t become a leader in the military until the eighties, and hasn’t yet been the military’s number one.

“All I can say is that Marshal Akhromeyev has an extremely poor opinion of Mikhail.” Ligachev mentioned one incident to illustrate where that perception lay, simply that on one occasion, when confronted with a map head, he referred to the map head as the Gandhi of the Soviet Union.

“That’s quite a comment to make the sky bluer then.” Foltseva raised one eyebrow, already disillusioned with the Emergency Committee from Alikseyev’s spin.

The standard of these map-head promotions was so poor that he wanted to organize his own State of Emergency Committee, and wondered if Ligachev had anyone in mind.

Foltseva did in fact have candidates, such as the Sherepin group that had once been uprooted by Brezhnev, the supporters of Podgorny, and even Brezhnev’s supporters, all of whom might not be of much use now that they were getting older, but if they were all gathered together, they would at least look very powerful in numbers.

“Where are they?” Kryuchkov, the KGB chairman, realized that at a critical time, no one could be found anywhere, and the only one he could find was Yazov, and eventually the two men arrived at Yanayev’s home to see a group of drunken members of the Emergency Committee.

Kryuchkov was furious, and gave Yanayev’s guards a scolding, simply a group of pigmies, the first day that the head of the map left Moscow and delivered such a reply?

“Where’s Pavlov?” Yazov looked around at his sleepy colleagues and asked the guard where the Soviet Premier was.

“Minister of Defense, the Premier has left because he is unwell from drinking.” The guard replied with trepidation, after all, the identity of the Soviet Defense Minister was still very threatening.

The inquiring Yazhov did not know at this time that Pavlov had already gone to the hospital because of excessive drinking, but with regard to the scene in front of him, Yazhov intuitively felt that there was little hope for the success of this operation, and as an atheist he should not think that way per se, but the scene in front of him really did not bode well.

“Looks like it’s just the two of us.” Out of Yanayev’s home, Yazov abruptly opened his mouth to Kryuchkov, he was referring to this operation, only the military and the KGB two departments can be relied on, as for these what the vice president, the prime minister to behave so, not to drag their feet on the line.

“The two of us? Also enough.” Kryuchkov pondered for a moment gritting his teeth, “The Soviet Union will be history if we don’t stop the New Alliance Treaty. We must act now, mobilize the army into the city while I send agents to bring the Russian President under control.”

Alikseyev was literally busier than the members of the Emergency Committee, he was busy trying to find the people on top of the list his mother had provided, Semichasne? Shelepin, each of these names seemed to be a leading member of that coup d’état in the sixties, which at that time had the same status as the members of the Emergency Committee.

Still, it was easy for Alexeyev to find the first person, Semichasne, who lived in Moscow, and the city of Kalinin and Moscow were not far apart, and he soon met Foltseva.