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the KGB.
    The Party's protracted crisis had worsened with the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster in 1986. The horrendous catastrophe had been shown in detail by the media. That incident had been one of the primary reasons the Party had begun to falter. Control of the media had been abolished, leading to further erosion of party authority.
    The incident that had irritated the former KGB secret service chief the most had happened in 1987. Pravda had publicly rebuked a top KGB officer. The loyal agent, hand-picked years earlier by Zhilinkhov, had been fired as head of the unit in the Ukrainian region of Voroshilovgrad.
    The policies of glasnost and perestroika had hit party ministers and members of the Politburo very hard.
    Zhilinkhov remembered that his Politburo friend, Boris Dichenkovko, had come very close to forced resignation in 1987 for questioning glasnost.
    The general secretary looked at his watch. He had twelve minutes left of his solitary lunch break before addressing the Central Committee again.
    Zhilinkhov thought about the serious decline of production levels in the late eighties and early nineties. Economic growth had withered, which resulted in shortages of many consumer items, including clothing, shoes, watches, glassware, television sets, washing machines, refrigerators, cars, and motorcycles.
    During the same period of economic stagnation and associated political unrest, more stinging attacks had been directed at the former Kremlin leaders, including Brezhnev and Nikita Khrushchev, from state-run periodicals. The articles had been very demoralizing for Soviet leaders and government officialdom.
    However, Zhilinkhov, along with his contemporaries in the Politburo, had known in their hearts that it was typical for the Kremlin leadership to denounce its predecessors. Khrushchev had attacked Stalin in 1956, three years after Stalin's death, and his friend Leonid had denounced Khrushchev after he was ousted in 1964.
    The real blow to Zhilinkhov had been his dismissal from the Politburo in September 1988, along with Dichenkovko and two other members who were close stalwarts from the Brezhnev era. The four men, all hard-liners, had lived with the stinging embarrassment for many months.
    Zhilinkhov had retaliated by publicly criticizing Gorbachev's decision to allow Andrei Sakharov to visit the United States.
    The Nobel laureate had told Western reporters that Gorbachev's political and economic restructuring faced solid domestic opposition that would endanger world peace. Sakharov warned that perestroika and glasnost could result in an extremely dangerous Gorbachev dictatorship.
    The Western press had reported that Gorbachev had tried to rejuvenate the Communist party system, and renovate a government, without reforming it. The editorials had predicted that the authoritarian Communist system, lacking momentum and zeal, would slowly degenerate.
    Then, during Gorbachev's trip to the United States in December 1988, the Armenian earthquake overshadowed the general secretary's announcement of Soviet troop reductions in Europe.
    Rushing to Leninakan, Armenia, Gorbachev found total confusion in the Russian rescue and relief efforts. High-level Soviet officials, aided by the media, lambasted the general secretary and his efforts at restructuring. The disorderly earthquake rescue effort, the critics said, was another example of a faltering government.
    Gorbachev, beleaguered and harshly defensive, fired back at his critics during January 1989. He alluded to strong political resistance from leaders at the pinnacle of power, and down played calls for a return to the authoritarian style of Stalin.
    The most alarming aspect of Soviet economic problems had been the unbelievable drop in oil production in 1990. The flow from the rich Tyumen fields of western Siberia had declined eighteen percent from the previous year. The loss in production had had a staggering effect on the country and the military in particular.
    The oil minister,