Important Timezones:
- 19:00 D.C. time & Havana time (previous day)
- 00:00 London time
- 01:00 Berlin time & Bonn time
- 03:00 Moscow time
- 05:30 Delhi time
- 08:00 Beijing time
Chapter 12 – From Russia, with Love
4 – 18 November 1962
“My arms are up to the elbows in blood. That is the most terrible thing that lies in my soul.”
– Nikita Khrushchev
Sergei looks up at the sky; the morning sun is so bright he doesn't need to open his eyes to see it.
The Marshal can feel the vibrations from nearby detonations. Having been moved with his family to this dacha in Nowhereville, Georgia, he knows this war is over. It's not as glorious as the one he'd won seventeen years prior.
Kirill thanks the Lord like he never has done before, he's had to hide his faith for years. Out of his window, his home in Saransk is untouched. The city was never on America's SIOP plans.
Vladimir and Elena embrace one another warmly. He's a soldier, dodging the frontline. If he's going to die, it's going to be here in his wife's arms, not in a ditch in Germany.
Mikhaila doesn't know where her son is. From what she knew the government had been resisting Russian demands to send troops to Germany. He was probably somewhere in Poland.
Daniil sits in his bunker in Poland, counting his lucky stars. He wishes he was anywhere but here, the stress must be killing his mother - if the bombs haven't already.
The Soviet Union effectively ceased to exist between the 3rd and 4th of November 1962. Over those two days, the United States and the United Kingdom dropped over 5,000 megatons on the USSR, the Warsaw Pact and Communist China. Almost every major population centre in the USSR was destroyed, and the few that survived did so either by not being included in SAC's SIOP plan (such as Saransk) or by Anglo-American weapons not reaching their targets (such as Gorky). Over 150,000,000 people, 65% of the pre-war Soviet population, are dead, a statistic only comparable to the devastation in the two Germanies and western Czechoslovakia. Over the next two weeks, a further 40,000,000 Soviets would die. In the rest of the Warsaw Pact, casualty figures span from 15-40% of the pre-war population.
Almost all of the Soviet Army deployed in Germany and in Eastern Europe are dead, almost all of their major cities are gone and much of their remaining territory is either irradiated or on fire. Among the survivors are the GKO in their armoured train. They were between Volgograd and Saratov when the Americans had struck. From there they are able to move to the nearby city of Kamyshin - one of the few surviving in the country - and attempt to re-establish contact with Soviet forces worldwide, to bring the war to an end. The war isn't over yet; technically speaking, it was never formally declared anyway. The GKO are a government without a state. With its major cities obliterated, not only has the Soviet Union been crippled, but the cultural pillars of civilization are wiped out. Intelligentsia, gone. Statesmen, (except for the GKO) gone. Architecture, gone. Religious structures, gone except for the local level. There are still surviving people and settlements, but after 1,100 years, Russia is dead.
Nikita Khrushchev, Russia's Augustulus, sits in the sealed train carriage, he knows he's the last leader Russia will have. He knows it was his idea to put the missiles in Cuba in the first instance. He feels it's his fault. He's destroyed his country, likely forever. Not even the thought that the Americans have suffered a devastating fate too satisfies him - he doesn't know how lightly America got it. By the 9th of November, he's a mess. Neither he nor the rest of the GKO have washed in many days, or shaved, or changed their clothes. They are as broken and ragged as the nation they formally ruled. They also have barely enough food for two weeks. On the 10th, one of the train's guards finds himself unlucky. He made a minor mistake, in usual times this would be overlooked. But now, he's committed a capital offence and he is thrown from the train with a bullet through his temple. One less mouth to feed. Three more meals for the rest. By the 14th, the food situation is intolerable, they have to move. They now move from the train and into the city of Kamyshin itself, well, most of them. Khrushchev takes himself off for a walk in the middle of the day. By the early evening, he is found face down by the waterside of the Volga River with a bullet in his brain. Was he shot, or did he pull the trigger himself? No one will ever know. That evening, the GKO meets and agree to rule as a collective body "for the duration of the present situation". Quickly though, the meeting becomes dominated by a Brezhnev-Malinovsky-Gromyko troika. Their job, end the war, contact the Americans and preserve what little order they can in what small corner of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics they still control. There will be no speeches, no patriotic declarations, just a job to finish.
