In 1968, as a forty-two-year-old major general, he commanded a division in the Prague uprising, far and away the best-performing division in the operation. He won the undying gratitude of the airborne, the VDVs, when he saved one of their units from the frying pan. A too-small company had been dropped into central Prague, was surrounded by Czechs and in trouble, when Nikolayev personally led a tank company into the city to get them out.
He spent four years lecturing on tank warfare at the Frunze Academy, turning out an entire new generation of tank corps officers who adored him, and in 1973 was adviser on armored warfare to the Syrians. It was the year of the Yom Kippur War.
Though he was supposed to remain in the background, he knew the Soviet-supplied tanks so well that he planned and mounted an attack against the Israeli Seventh Armored Brigade out of the Golan Heights. The Syrians were no match for it, but the planning and tactics were brilliant. The Israeli Seventh Armored survived, but for a while the Syrians had them severely worried; it ranked as one of the few occasions when Arab armor gave them any problems at all.
On the basis of Syria he was invited onto the general staff, planning offensive operations against NATO. Then in 1979 up came Afghanistan. He was fifty-three, and was offered the command of the 40th Army that would do the job. The post meant promotion from lieutenant general to colonel general.
General Nikolayev looked at the plans, looked at the terrain, looked at the indigenous people, and wrote a report that said the operation and occupation would prove a man-killer, had no point, and would constitute a Soviet Vietnam. It was the second time he upset Andropov.
They assigned him the wilderness again—recruit training. The generals who went to Afghanistan got their medals and their glory—for a while. They also got their body bags, tens of thousands of body bags.
“This is garbage. I won’t believe this rubbish.”
The old general tossed the black file across the hearth to land in Monk’s lap. “You have a nerve, Yankee. You come barging into my country, into my house ... try to fill my head with these pernicious lies. …”
“Tell me, General, what do you think of us?”
“Us?”
“Yes, us. The Americans, the people from the West. I have been sent here. I am no freelance. Why have I been sent? If Komarov is a fine man and a great leader-to-be, why should we give a fuck?”
The old man stared at him, not so much shocked by the language, which he had heard many times before, but by the intensity of the younger man.
“I know I’ve spent my whole life fighting you.”
“No, General, you’ve spent your whole life opposing us. And you did so in the service of regimes you know have done terrible things. …”
“This is my country, American. Insult it at your peril.”
Monk leaned forward and tapped the Black Manifesto.
“But nothing like this. Not Khrushchev, not Brezhnev, not Andropov, nothing like this. …”
“If it’s true, if it’s true,” shouted the old soldier. “Anybody could write that.”
“So try this. This is the story of how it came into our possession. An old soldier gave his life to get this out.”
He handed the general the verification report and poured him a generous slug of his own vodka. The general threw it back Russian-style, in one gulp.
It was not until the summer of 1987 that someone reached to a high shelf, brought down the 1979 Nikolayev report on Afghanistan, dusted it off, and gave it to the Foreign Ministry. In January 1988, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze told the world, “We’re pulling out.”
Nikolayev was made colonel general at last, and brought from the general staff to supervise the withdrawal. The last commander of the 40th Army was General Gromov, but he was told the overall plan would be Nikolayev’s. Amazingly the whole 40th Army came out with hardly any more casualties, though the mujahedin were snapping at their heels.
The last Soviet column drove over the Amu Darya bridge on February 15, 1989. Nikolai Nikolayev brought up the rear. He could have flown in a staff jet, but he drove out with the men.
He sat alone in the back of an open GAZ jeep with a driver in front. No one else. He had never retreated before. He sat bolt upright in his battle dress uniform of combat smock, with no shoulder boards to give his rank. But the men recognized the mane of white hair and the points of the bristling moustache.
They were sick and tired of Afghanistan, glad to be going home despite the defeat. Just north of the bridge the cheering began. They pulled over when they saw the white hair, poured out of the trucks, and cheered him. There were VDV airborne men among them who had heard of the Prague affair and they cheered too. The BMD troop transporters were mostly driven by ex-tank men, and they waved and shouted.
He was sixty-three then, driving north into retirement, to a life of lectures, memoirs, and reunions. But he was still their Uncle Kolya, and he was bringing them home.
In his forty-five years as a tank man he had done three things that made him a legend. He had banned “hazing”—the systematic bullying of new recruits by three-year men, which led to hundreds of suicides—in every unit under his command, causing the other generals to copy him. He had fought the political establishment tooth and claw for better conditions and food for his men, and he had insisted on unit pride and intensive training, over and over again, until every unit he commanded from platoon to division was the best in the line when it counted.
Gorbachev gave him his General of the Army rank and then fell from power. If he had agreed to butcher Chechnya for Yeltsin he would have got his marshal’s baton and his free dacha.
“What do you expect, American?”
General Nikolayev threw down the verification report and stared at the fire.