Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [110]
The answer lay in foreign travel. Zhukov had been invited to Washington. Why not go to Yugoslavia instead, Khrushchev suggested. Andrei Gromyko, the new foreign minister, would be in Washington anyway, and the uppity Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito needed some hand-holding ahead of the big pan-Communist summit in Moscow that was coming up in a few weeks to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution. Zhukov could take one of the brand-new battle cruisers (one of the few that had survived the scrap heap), it was further suggested, to impress the Yugoslavs, and he could visit Albania as well.
And so, on October 4, the unsuspecting defense minister was somewhere in the Adriatic, stuck on a slow boat from Tirana, his radio communications restricted, while Khrushchev hastened to Kiev to seal his fate. Ostensibly, the Ukrainian stopover was routine, a chance for the boss to meet with regional party officials, listen to their petitions for funds, and discuss economic policies. Somewhat less routinely, Khrushchev was also there to observe tank maneuvers and to meet with senior officers from the Kiev Military District, one of Zhukov’s former commands. Select members of the brass from Moscow had flown in for the impromptu talks, most notably Rodion Malinovsky, the deputy defense minister, whom Khrushchev still trusted.
Whether the timing of the visit with military commanders was purely coincidental would also become a topic of historical speculation. No record was kept of what was said during the maneuvers. A few days later, however, a small and unobtrusive squib would appear on the back page of Pravda. Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, it would announce in the smallest of print, had been “relieved of his duties.” Rodion Malinovsky was assuming his responsibilities.
On the night of October 4, the matter of Zhukov’s removal was either not yet resolved or still a closely held secret, because Sergei Khrushchev, who had joined his father in Kiev, had no inkling of the preemptive countercoup. Sergei had seen little of his father over the past several months. He had just gotten married, was busy with his dissertation, and had hopes of soon going to work for Korolev. He was beginning to make the transition from favored son to an adult with his own independent life and family, vacationing separately for the first time that summer and no longer living at home. Apparently Nikita missed Sergei’s company, because he had called him the day before, suggesting he hop on a plane and meet him at the Marinsky Palace in Kiev, where Khrushchev would be making an unexpected detour on his way to Moscow from his seaside dacha in the Crimea.
The palace crowned Kiev’s highest hill, offering postcard views of the Dnieper River and the gilded, green domes of the one-thousand-year-old Pecherskaya Lavra Monastery on one side, and, on the other, the more foreboding sight of the new gray granite government buildings built by German prisoners of war. Inside, beneath pendulous chandeliers, pastel ceilings, and ornate millwork, Sergei sat, bored, as he waited for his father to finish his seemingly endless meetings. The evening sessions had run well past ten, in the customarily rambling fashion of official Soviet delegations, so that the air in the Marinsky Palace dining hall had grown stale with cigarette smoke, and the crystal ashtrays around the long dining table were beginning to overflow. Among the smokers were Khrushchev’s closest supporters, and it was probably also not a coincidence that he had chosen to be with the chieftains from his former