Game of Chicken_ , we had not decided who would take the fall. On the night of 11 April we discussed it again. As he had the previous evening, Yuriy Zamyatin explained to me that he could see no other way out. Mikhail Kozlovsky was still insisting on the impossibility of the situation and had offered to put on a uniform again, saying that by now, the security services had become accustomed to his appearance. The next morning there was to be a joint meeting of the Political Bureau and the Collegium. Kozlovsky was informed that he had a right to present an explanation, but that no one would believe him. He knew that too, and in the course of a conversation in his room he let it be known that he had decided to give up the idea of wearing a uniform. Why? Because if he did, he was not only inviting more trouble, but his life could become even more intolerable. He was aware of his responsibilities as an individual, and as a member of the political leadership. He knew that being a dissident was the safest way to ensure that his family remained safe, but by going back to uniform, he was in danger of harming the dissidents. 'In that case, I would like to do what I have been doing since 1978,' he said, 'but not be forced to do it on my own. This time, I want everyone to take the punishment for me. I'll lead them off to the Lubyanka, to that man, in my place. Why should the Party bear the brunt of what I've been doing?' The whole idea was mad. But it had touched an eminently sensible nerve. It was Kozlovsky's conviction that we had to prevent a situation in which every individual had to answer for his own responsibility, or else we would be doomed to spend our lives looking over our shoulders. To that extent he was quite correct. But it was not as simple as all that. The Party was not an abstraction: it had responsibilities. And those who were involved could not shirk them. Kozlovsky's idea was to hand himself over, but he wanted no one else to take the blame. It was a noble gesture, but his gesture was in itself a crime against the Party and the country. He was making it impossible for any other person to carry out a similar gesture. But the alternative was impossible as well: nobody was going to volunteer for such an outlandish, and suicidal, course of action. He asked me to let him know once the course of action was agreed. He needed a couple of days to pull himself together. On 11 April the Politburo convened at a very early hour, and only three members were present – including myself. The meeting lasted barely half an hour. It had gone off fairly smoothly until the subject of Kozlovsky's proposal was raised. He was by no means the only dissident who would not wear a uniform and would not take the blame for his defiance, but he was the most prominent, and it would have been impossible for us to make any gesture without his example. For all his mistakes, he had shown remarkable courage in carrying out his assignment as leader of the _Pamyat_. His action was important precisely because it was not of his own initiative. He was simply fulfilling his duties, and those of other dissidents, who had made the decision to refuse to wear a uniform, and to accept their punishment. We had all agreed that anyone who wanted to defy the draft should raise his arm in this spirit. In the end it had been decided that we should all go through a collective ritual in which every one of us would raise his arm as a sign of willingness to sacrifice his own personal interests, so that our country would not have to suffer for our individual actions. But because I had been the one to suggest this to Kozlovsky, he assumed it had been agreed in advance that I would be the one to take the fall in the event of the collective defiance having to be carried out. I had not said that; and to my mind it was important that it should be so. For that reason, and also because he was my brother, I agreed to take the brunt of any possible repercussions on myself. At the meeting that afternoon, our mood was very sombre. At last, a few hours before we were due to take a decision, Yury Ryzhikh and I had persuaded Kozlovsky that he should not make his own gesture. He had been prepared to take the fall for everyone else's defiance, but when I pointed out that such an action would have been almost meaningless, he accepted my view that we needed to show the same selflessness. He went back to his room in despair. In the evening, everyone found it hard to concentrate at supper. Svetlana, who had already known that this would happen, was the most affected. I spent the whole evening with Yuriy Yarov and his wife in order to support them. That night it was not the prospect of a new terror attack that worried me, it was Kozlovsky's refusal to give up his idea. The next morning, he was back in the Kremlin. He looked exhausted and his voice was hoarse from lack of sleep, but there was no doubt that he was ready to face the consequences. At the Politburo meeting that day, he explained in a voice filled with emotion: 'I am so ashamed that I should have been given the responsibility for some man's death.' It was painful for me to listen to his confession. And I could not say I was unmoved. A few moments before this meeting, I had gone down on my knees and prayed to God for forgiveness. Kozlovsky's confession had been the last straw for me, and I was not thinking any more about the Party or Russia. I left with a heavy heart. One of the officials who saw me off was Viktor Karyukhin, the first secretary of the Party committee, with whom I had a good working relationship. I went over to him and said, 'Are you really going to make me go through with this?' 'I understand,' he said, 'but it is all we can do.' 'I have a bad feeling about it. Don't we just pretend they're alive?' I spent the whole of the day in my office in the Central Committee building. Once again, Viktor Karyukhin was standing by my side. He was very embarrassed, as he knew I had not really understood the implications of my own action. Just before the Central Committee Plenum, Viktor came up to me again. 'My dear Kolya,' he said, 'this evening the Plenum will see you at work for the first time. You will come out looking good.' It was only when I went up to the rostrum that evening that I realized just what had been implied in his words. On the way, I had spent most of the time standing in silence with Kozlovsky, in the corridor just below the rostrum, waiting for Viktor Karyukhin to return. 'It is not just a matter of being on the rostrum,' he had said, when we were alone. 'In itself, it is a good sign. But it is our fault if it becomes a martyrdom for you. Don't you see that the people are already thinking that you are their man?' During the meeting, Kozlovsky was on my left and the First Secretary of the Communist Academy was on my right. The Plenum lasted for just one hour, and it was not possible to say very much. But we knew the Party had to show that it stood firm on its own policies. I was able to say that our decision had been taken solely to protect the most important values of the Party. The main task was still to be achieved. The moment of crisis had passed, but what was still more important was that it had been put behind us. For the first few weeks afterwards, Kozlovsky tried to live up to my expectations of him. At the same time, he was very critical of me. 'I was in favour of telling you about my decision even before you made the gesture,' he said to me, 'so that you could explain yourself in your own words and have a chance of being understood.' But it seemed that he had hoped, in the end, I would raise my hand and take responsibility for what happened. He did not understand that, even though it had been decided from the start that he should not take the blame himself, it was not a decision taken lightly. He said he had been deeply hurt by the fact that he had been betrayed by the Party, which had accepted his sacrifice and refused to see that it was his own individual decision, and that it was only because he had a strong character that he had been able to overcome the feeling of betrayal. I do not think I ever really knew Kozlovsky until after he was arrested. I never saw any depth to him at all. He was so naive, I hardly knew he was there at all. He always seemed the same to me. In early May, Kozlovsky and I were talking about the Party's preparations for the forthcoming celebration of Soviet power. The problem had been a difficult one. The Government had to show the right balance between the two aspects of its national character: being patriotic and loyal to the ideas of the Party, and at the same time expressing some kind of special national pride