Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [36]
The entire city was paralyzed. The sprawling Stalin Coach Works, the huge locomotive factory, shut down. In the early afternoon, the Georgian first party secretary tried to address the agitated crowd outside Government House but was shouted down. No one had ever publicly defied the senior Communist Party representative before. Terrified, he locked himself in his office, surrounded by armed guards. The Georgian Central Committee hotline to the Kremlin burned with urgent pleas for guidance. The local authorities were no longer in control.
Just before midnight, word reached Moscow that a huge crowd had descended on the main radio and telegraph station in central Tbilisi, demanding to broadcast from the transmission tower. Tanks had deployed around the communications center and were anxiously awaiting instructions. The time for debate was over. Something had to be done now. “This is what the provocation, that was apparently organized by foreign spies and agents, and which was not dealt with in time, led to,” Stanikov reported afterward. “Hooligans put everything into action: knives, stones, belts. There was no way out for the soldiers. Their life was in danger and they were forced into taking defensive action.”
By the time the T-55 tanks finished “defending” themselves from the onslaught of civilian belt buckles and pocketknives, nine protesters were officially pronounced dead, dozens lay wounded, and thirty-eight alleged ringleaders were arrested. Historians would later increase the body count ten- to twentyfold, though to this day no one knows how many Georgians actually died during the March 9 massacre. One thing was clear, however: Nikita Khrushchev had unleashed powerful pent-up forces with his secret speech. His attempt to breathe a little democracy into the Stalinist corpse had horribly backfired because a little democracy can be dangerous in a totalitarian society. Liberalization is a slippery slope. And dictatorships can easily lose their footing once they loosen the reins. Khrushchev didn’t understand that, and he underestimated the longing for self-determination of the nationalities held captive behind the Iron Curtain.
His troubles, in fact, were just beginning.
• • •
As the winter wore on and the KGB hunted for the “nest of foreign spies” that had incited the Georgian uprising, Sergei Korolev grappled with his own share of difficulties. His problems, like Khrushchev’s, had been mostly of his own making.
Korolev had fallen into the classic salesman’s trap. During his pitch to the Presidium at OKB-1, he had made wildly unrealistic promises in order to close the deal for the satellite. By showing the Presidium a full-scale mock-up of the R-7, he had left Khrushchev and Molotov with the distinct impression that a prototype of the ICBM was almost complete. But the rocket they had seen was an illusion, little more than a ten-story-tall modeler’s toy. The real prototype was nowhere near ready. The satellite was also hopelessly behind schedule. And the modifications required for the rocket to carry it were not nearly as “minor” as Korolev had breezily suggested. In short, Korolev had conned Khrushchev, a sucker for engineering marvels who could easily “be beguiled by a charismatic scientist promising miracles,” according to his biographer William Taubman.
Korolev had played on Khrushchev’s intellectual aspirations and educational shortcomings, while downplaying his own limitations. During the Presidium presentation, he had even silenced Glushko, the suave main engine designer, who had emphasized the daunting complexities of making the R-7 operational. “Our guests are not interested in the technical details,” Korolev had interrupted, with a cheerfully dismissive wave. But now that Korolev had to deliver on his promise,