Forced

December 8, 1991.

The Soviet Union remained intact. There was no gathering in the snowy village of Viskuli, no Belovezh Accords signed in the forests of Belarus. Kravchuk and Shushkevich still held their old posts in Kiev and Minsk. Boris Yeltsin, who would have once raised a toast to dissolution, was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery, long silenced by history's altered course. The flutter of a butterfly's wings had turned destiny in another direction. The agreement meant to shatter the Union was now only a dream left unrealized.

Leonid Kravchuk was still Chairman of the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet—not president. Stanislav Shushkevich had only just taken the equivalent position in Belarus. In Moscow, Yanayev had finally clawed order from the chaos. He held the reins of the military, gathered resources through shadow arms deals and back-channel foreign trade. In just two months, he had scraped together enough capital to finance the early phase of a conflict—without drawing further blood from the Soviet economy.

"If the separatists aren't punished," Yanayev often said, "the Union will rot from within. Better a sharp pain now than a slow death. Better to go down in fire than to be gutted by cowards dividing up our legacy."

There was no word for retreat in the Soviet lexicon.

And the first to feel the backlash would be Kravchuk and Shushkevich. Both Ukraine and Belarus retained voting seats at the UN—symbols of sovereignty that deeply unsettled Yanayev. He feared they might someday wield those seats against Moscow. So he summoned both men quietly, separately, to the Kremlin—Kravchuk from Kiev, Shushkevich from Minsk. Each believed the other still safe at home.

But even before the meetings began, there was a storm brewing inside the Kremlin. Pavlov, the usually loyal premier, paced angrily across the office carpet. His earlier support for Yanayev's policies had evaporated. The uproar from the constitutional amendment—which removed the right of member republics to secede—hadn't yet settled. Now Yanayev was talking about stripping their UN representation too?

"This is madness," Pavlov fumed. "You're playing with fire. The republics are already restless. Push any harder, and they'll leap into the West's arms."

He adjusted his glasses and tried to reason with Yanayev. "Your crackdown quieted the separatists—but only for now. They're waiting. If you provoke them again, we could see another Almaty, another Tbilisi. Or worse."

Yanayev's expression hardened. "Then why don't we strike first? You want to wait for more ethnic violence? For more blood in the streets? Every time we hesitate, they grow bolder. We must stamp out this rebellion before it consumes the Union."

"The country is still fragile!" Pavlov barked. "We don't even have a functioning economy! You want to add war to the list?"

Yanayev stood tall, now every inch the strongman. "The termites are already in the walls. We'll never stabilize until we cut out the rot. The nationalists want to purge Russians. They want to erase our flag. I won't stand by while they steal the Soviet Union."

Pavlov threw up his hands. "You're inviting civil war!"

"Mind your tone, Comrade," Yanayev warned sharply.

Then he turned to the door and waved. "General Rodionov, come in."

The name alone made Pavlov freeze. In walked General Valentin Rodionov—the man who'd once commanded the Caucasus Military District, then been disgraced and tried for his role in suppressing the 1989 Tbilisi protests. But now he was back, head high, expression grim.

"General Rodionov has been reinstated," Yanayev explained. "He won't be Supreme Commander, but he will have emergency authority across the Caucasus if unrest flares up."

"And Patiashvili?" Pavlov asked, already fearing the answer.

"He's being recalled to Moscow. I'm grooming him for the chairmanship of the Georgian SSR," Yanayev said with unsettling casualness.

Pavlov swallowed. "You want Zviad Gamsakhurdia to see this. You want him to react."

Yanayev's voice dropped cold. "Rodionov and Patiashvili were punished for preventing catastrophe. They kept the Georgian extremists at bay, and yet we tried them while the real traitors walked free. If I'd been there, I would've put a bullet through Zviad's skull."

For the first time, Pavlov saw the depth of Yanayev's fury. He wasn't just playing politics. This was personal. The ghosts of Tbilisi still haunted him.

"If you can't support this," Rodionov said quietly to Pavlov, "step aside. Let us finish what must be done."

Pavlov turned to leave, then paused, his voice tinged with something almost like sorrow. "You win, Yanayev. What choice do we have? We're just patching up a building that's already falling down. The cracks are too deep."

But Yanayev's eyes gleamed, firm and bright. He stared down the uncertain future like a general watching the battlefield clear of fog.

"You're wrong, Pavlov," he said softly. "You see a crumbling nation. I see a phoenix. The Soviet Union won't die. It will be reborn—in the fire of war."