Yefrem Vishnayev had a different opinion. At the outset of the Politburo meeting, he asked for the floor and got it.
“No one here, Comrades, denies that the famine that faces us is not acceptable. No one denies that the surplus foods lie in the decadent capitalist West. It has been suggested that the only thing we can do is to humble ourselves, possibly grant concessions that will reduce our military might and thereby delay the onward march of Marxism-Leninism in order to buy these surpluses to tide us over.
; “Comrades, I disagree, and I ask you to join me in rejection of the course of yielding to blackmail and betraying our great inspirator, Lenin. There is one other way—one other way in which we can obtain acceptance by the entire Soviet people of rigid rationing at the minimum-subsistence level, promote a nationwide upsurge of patriotism and self-sacrifice, and secure an imposition of that discipline without which we cannot get through the hunger that has to come.
“There is a way in which we can use what little harvest grain we shall cull this autumn, spin out the national reserve until the spring next year, use the meat from our herds and flocks in place of grain, and then, when all is used, turn to Western Europe, where the milk lakes are, where the beef-and-butter mountains are, where the national reserves of ten wealthy nations are.”
“And buy them?” asked Foreign Minister Rykov ironically.
“No, Comrade,” replied Vishnayev softly. “Take them. I yield the floor to Comrade Marshal Kerensky. He has a file he would wish each of us to examine.”
Twelve thick files were passed around. Kerensky kept his own and began reading aloud from it. Rudin left his unopened in front of him and smoked steadily. Ivanenko also left his on the table and contemplated Kerensky. He and Rudin had known for four days what the file would contain. In collaboration with Vishnayev, Kerensky had brought out of the General Staff’s safe the file for Plan Aleksandr, named after Field Marshal Aleksandr Suvorov, the great and never defeated Russian commander. Now the plan had been brought right up to date.
And it was impressive, as Kerensky spent the next two hours reading it During the following May the usual massive spring maneuvers of the Red Army in East Germany would be bigger than ever, but with a difference. These would be no maneuvers, but the real thing. On command, all thirty thousand tanks and armored personnel carriers, mobile guns and amphibious craft would swing westward, hammer across the Elbe, and plow into West Germany, heading for France and the Channel ports.
Ahead of them, fifty thousand paratroops would drop over fifty locations to take out the principal tactical nuclear airfields of the French inside France and the Americans and British on German soil. Another hundred thousand would drop on the four countries of Scandinavia to control the capital cities and main transportation arteries, with massive naval backup from offshore.
The military thrust would avoid the Italian and Iberian peninsulas, whose governments, all partners with the Euro-Communists in office, would be ordered by the Soviet Ambassador to stay out of the fight or perish by joining in. Within half a decade later, they would fall like ripe plums, anyway. Likewise Greece, Turkey, and Yugoslavia. Switzerland would be avoided, Austria used only as a through-route. Both would later be islands in a Soviet sea, and would not last long.
The primary zone of attack and occupation would be the three Benelux countries, France, and West Germany. Britain, as a prelude, would be crippled by strikes and confused by the extreme Left, which on instructions would mount an immediate clamor for nonintervention. London would be informed that if the nuclear Strike Command were used east of the Elbe, Britain would be wiped off the face of the map.
Throughout the entire operation the Soviet Union would be stridently demanding an immediate cease-fire in every capital in the world and in the United Nations, claiming the hostilities were local to West Germany, temporary, and caused entirely by a West German preemptive strike toward Berlin, a claim that most of the non-German European Left would believe and support.
“And the United States, all this time?” Petrov interrupted. Kerensky looked irritated at being stopped in full flow after ninety minutes.
“The use of tactical nuclear weapons right across the face of Germany cannot be excluded,” pursued Kerensky, “but the overwhelming majority of them will destroy West Germany, East Germany, and Poland—no loss, of course, for the Soviet Union. Thanks to the weakness of Washington, there is no deployment of either Cruise missiles or neutron bombs. Soviet military casualties are estimated at between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand at the maximum. But as two million men in all three services will be involved, such percentages will be acceptable.”
“Duration?” asked Ivanenko.
The point units of the forward mechanized armies will enter the French Channel ports one hundred hours after crossing the Elbe. At that point, of course, the cease-fire may be allowed to operate. The mopping up can take place under the cease-fire.”
“Is that time scale feasible?” asked Petryanov.
This time, Rudin cut in.
“Oh yes, it’s feasible,” he said mildly. Vishnayev shot him a suspicious look.
“I still have not had an answer to my question,” Petrov pointed out. “What about the United States? What about their nuclear strike forces? Not tactical missiles. Strategic missiles. The hydrogen-bomb warheads in their ICBMs, their bombers, and their submarines.”
The eyes around the table riveted on Vishnayev. He rose again.
“The American President must, at the outset, be given three solemn assurances in absolutely credible form,” he said. “One: that for her part the USSR will never be the first to use thermonuclear weapons. Two: that if the three hundred thousand American troops in Western Europe are committed to the fight, they must take their chances in conventional or tactical nuclear warfare with ours. Three: that in the event the United States resorts to ballistic missiles aimed at the Soviet Union, the top hundred cities of the United States will cease to exist.
“President Matthews, Comrades, will not trade New York for the decadence of Paris, nor Los Angeles for Frankfurt. There will be no American thermonuclear riposte.”
The silence was heavy as the perspectives sank in. The vast storehouse of food, including grain, of consumer goods and technology that was contained in Western Europe. The fall like ripe plums of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Greece, and Yugoslavia within a few years. The treasure trove of gold beneath the streets of Switzerland. The utter isolation of Britain and Ireland off the new Soviet coast. The domination without a shot fired of the entire Arab bloc and Third World. It was a heady mixture.
“It’s a fine scenario,” said Rudin at last “But it all seems to be based on one assumption: that the United States will not rain her nuclear warheads on the Soviet Union if we promise not to let ours loose on her. I would be grateful to hear if Comrade Vishnayev has any corroboration for that confident declaration. In short, is it a proved fact or a fond hope?”
“More than a hope,” snapped Vishnayev. “A realistic calculation. As capitalists and bourgeois nationalists, the Americans will always think of themselves first. They are paper tigers, weak and indecisive. Above all, when the prospect of losing their own lives faces them, they are cowards.”
“Are they indeed?” mused Rudin. “Well now, Comrades, let me attempt to sum up. Comrade Vishnayev’s scenario is realistic in every sense, but it all hangs on his hope—I beg his pardon, on his calculation—that the Americans will not respond with their heavy thermonuclear weapons. Had we ever believed this before, we would surely already nave completed the process of liberating the captive masses of Western Europe from fascism-capitalism to Marxism-Leninism. Personally, I perceive no new element to justify the calculation of Comrade Vishnayev.
“However, neither he nor the Comrade Marshal has ever had any dealings with the Americans, or ever been in the West Personally, I have, and I disagree. Let us hear from Comrade Rykov.”
The elderly and veteran Foreign Minister was white-faced.