Wallace (2)

The room was already thick with tension, but Wallace wasn't finished. "I was also subjected to shameless treatment by your KGB at the airport," he said, voice rising. "They searched me with crude hands. Is that how you treat those who stand for freedom and equality? Or are you afraid my pen might endanger your personal safety?"

Yanayev smiled faintly and gestured for calm, his hand pressing downward. Once Wallace quieted, Yanayev spoke gently but firmly. "Alright, alright, let's not get ahead of ourselves, my dear journalist. We will take your questions one at a time."

He raised a single finger. "First, about the August 19th incident. You claim our soldiers pointed guns at freedom-loving citizens. But did you turn a blind eye when these same citizens were looting, setting fires, destroying public property? And if they truly stood for peace and liberty, who gave me this gunshot wound?" He tapped his shoulder. "Is freedom a license to ignore the law? Maybe Madame Roland was right: 'Oh Liberty, how many crimes are committed in thy name!' Remember the New York draft riots in 1863? Your police didn't hold back then. Why are our actions dictatorship and yours the triumph of the rule of law?"

Wallace had no immediate reply. He hadn't expected Yanayev to know American history better than most U.S. citizens.

Yanayev took a sip of tea and pressed on. "As for Stalin's purges—if you'd like, I can provide complete documentation: names, charges, amounts embezzled. Some of those men deserved capital punishment. We deal with corruption decisively."

Wallace gritted his teeth. "But the records I hold suggest that those who died were reformists, voices for democracy. Is this a purge of the enlightened?"

"There is no such division," Yanayev shot back. "Reformist or conservative, the law is impartial. But tell me this: in your democratic elections, where political donations flow freely, how is legalized bribery not corruption? Perhaps your reformers only wanted the freedom to be corrupt, like some of your own officials."

Yanayev didn't wait for a response. "Shall I hypothesize? Maybe those so-called reformers were hoping to escape the bounds of law entirely—to build an oligarchy masked as democracy, where wealth alone governs."

Wallace flinched but stood his ground. "Let's talk about Solzhenitsyn, often called the conscience of Russia. You silenced him."

Yanayev chuckled. "Solzhenitsyn? He hated communism, yes. But he hated your liberalism just as much. Called your music noise. Called your society vulgar materialism. Do you know what he truly wanted? A return to Tsarist Russia, where Orthodoxy ruled the state. I call people like him 'little emperors,' men too timid to stand upright."

Wallace pounced. "So you admit to suppressing religion? Ethnic freedom? The autonomy of your republics?"

Yanayev narrowed his eyes. "You're naive," he said flatly. "Our religious traditions stem from Byzantium, not from Crusades and inquisitions. Visit Leningrad or Sverdlovsk—countless churches still stand. Not suppressed, protected. Maintained with government funding. Why would we preserve what we seek to destroy?"

He went on, voice steady. "Yes, we took wrong turns under Stalin and Khrushchev. But we have corrected them. Judge us on the whole, not just the past."

Yanayev leaned forward. "And let me speak of America. A great country, built by great people. But not God's appointed overseer of humanity. You scold nations for failing your standards, forgetting your own beginnings. Jefferson, a slaveholder, wrote 'all men are created equal.' Your Constitution had no rights clause. Lincoln was willing to preserve slavery for the sake of unity. Women got the vote only a century after independence. Racial segregation only began to end in the 1960s."

He paused. "Even now, do your races live side by side? Or side by side in pretense? And yet you question our system?"

Wallace didn't reply. He turned a page. Time was short. He had one more question. "I want to tell you a story first," he said.

Yanayev watched him closely.

"In 1985, twelve Soviet POWs were held in Pakistan's Badaber Camp, a CIA-backed facility. They were tortured. On April 26, during evening prayer, they rose up, seized the armory and radio, and tried to call the 34th Soviet Air Army. No one responded. The next day, Rabbani ordered an assault. The POWs resisted until the end. Then they blew themselves up."

Yanayev's face slowly sobered.

"Did you know about this?" Wallace asked.

Silence.

Then Yanayev answered, hoarsely, "Yes."

Surkov, watching backstage, tensed. The cameraman's hand began to sweat.

Wallace pressed harder. "Then why did they die like that? Why not come home?"

Yanayev looked down. "Because we were told they didn't exist. The media dismissed them as traitors. Gorbachev said we weren't at war, so we couldn't have prisoners of war. They were abandoned."

He paused. "There were 430 unreturned soldiers. Lost in Afghanistan. No rescues. No retrieval. They vanished into dust."

Wallace was stunned.

"Are you not afraid of national backlash?" he asked.

"If the Soviet machine can't protect its own," Yanayev replied, "then what trust do we deserve?"

A pause. Then he continued, voice resolute. "Thank you, Wallace. Without you, perhaps we would have forgotten them. We will form a rescue team. And if any of them can still hear me, I say this to them, their mothers, and their country: you are not forgotten."

The studio was silent.

Wallace rose to his feet and applauded. Others followed.

Behind the scenes, Surkov exhaled. Plekhanov nudged him. "Well? Not bad for a trap, eh?"

Surkov didn't respond. The president hadn't followed a single scripted answer.

"He really is the most unorthodox of them all," he murmured.

Wallace turned back to Yanayev. "This interview," he said, "is the most extraordinary I've ever done. If I can help in any way—even through my own government—I will. Ideology aside, humanity unites us."

Yanayev took his hand firmly. "Thank you, Wallace. The Soviet people will remember you."

And in that moment, the caricature of the Soviet tyrant, carefully drawn by the West, cracked and crumbled—replaced by something more human. More dangerous.

Real.