Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [109]
The growing discontent within the middle and upper echelons of the military was all the more troubling since Khrushchev was uncertain whether he could count on the general staff’s loyalty. Foolishly, he had permitted Zhukov to pension off most of the old military leaders that the Soviet leader had known for years. “I can’t go to battle with generals who have to travel with field hospitals,” Zhukov had explained of the need for fresh blood in the geriatric High Command. Khrushchev had consented, but now he regretted his decision. He was not personally acquainted with many of the new crop of Red Army leaders that had been promoted in their place, and this younger generation of officers owed its allegiance directly to the charismatic defense chief. More ominously, after being elevated to full voting membership of the Presidium for his role in foiling the putsch, the marshal was now also free to build tactical alliances with Khrushchev’s Communist Party colleagues, further expanding his potential power base. “He assumed so much power that it began to worry the leadership” Khrushchev later observed in his memoir, though by “leadership” he of course meant himself.
Politically, Zhukov appeared to have outfoxed his insecure master, who soon became convinced that the marshal coveted “Eisenhower’s Crown”—to be both head of the military and head of state. “Father feared that Zhukov saw General Eisenhower as an example,” Sergei Khrushchev recalled. “I see what Zhukov is up to,” Khrushchev told his fellow Presidium members in late September. “We were heading for a military coup d’état.”
The clincher appeared to have been a particularly unsettling piece of intelligence that Khrushchev received a few weeks earlier. His defense chief, he was told, had secretly started “saboteur schools” outside Moscow and Kiev to train highly specialized covert operations teams. Typically, the Central Committee was informed whenever new military units were created, but Zhukov had not followed protocol and had kept his civilian overseers ignorant of his activities. Only the new head of military intelligence, a confidant whom Zhukov had recently appointed, had been kept in the loop. There could be only one explanation for the lapse, Khrushchev reasoned; the urban commandos Zhukov and his spy chief were secretly training were setting the stage for “a South American-style military takeover.”
Whether the conspiracy was real or whether it was a figment of Khrushchev’s inflamed imagination would become a matter of historical debate. (Not even Sergei, with the benefit of hindsight and a half century’s distance, would be able to unequivocally support his father’s suspicions.) That Khrushchev, after his brush with insurgency, had become more prone to seeing potential plots was perhaps understandable. That Zhukov had grown far more powerful than any other soldier in the Soviet era was also undeniable. But had he actually harbored mutinous ambitions? And had he really wanted to rule Russia? On that score, the historical jury is still out, and even Khrushchev would later wonder if he had jumped the gun.
Zhukov’s lapse in reporting the saboteur schools might have been an innocent omission, or simply a pretext for Khrushchev to launch a preemptive strike against an ally whose growing influence was becoming too dangerous. Whichever the case, by late September he had decided to remove Zhukov