"How may we help you?" Losing control of your emotions, Comrade President? A bad sign, my friend

"I need your support on the ethnic issue. We cannot have the entire Union break apart."

Kadishev shook his head forcefully. "That is inevitable. Letting the Balts and the Azeris go eliminates many problems."

"We need the Azerbaijani oil. If we let that go, our economic situation worsens. If we let the Balts go, the momentum will strip away half of our country."

"Half our population, true, but scarcely twenty percent of our land. And most of our problems," Kadishev said again.

"And what of the people who leave? We throw them into chaos and civil war. How many will die, how many deaths on our conscience, eh?" the President demanded.

"Which is a normal consequence of decolonization. We cannot prevent it. By attempting to, we merely keep the civil war within our own borders. That forces us to place too much power into the hands of the security forces, and that is too dangerous. I don't trust the Army any more than you do."

"The Army will not launch a coup. There are no Bona-partists in the Red Army."

"You have greater confidence in their fealty than I do. I think they see a unique historical opportunity. The Party has held the military down since the Tukhachevskiy business. Soldiers have long memories, and they may be thinking that this is their chance "

"Those people are all dead! And their children with them," Narmonov countered angrily. It had been over fifty years, after all. Those few with direct memory of the purges were in wheelchairs or living on pensions.

"But not their grandchildren, and there is institutional memory to consider as well." Kadishev leaned back and considered a new thought that had sprung almost fully formed into his head. Might that be possible

"They have concerns, yes, and those concerns are little different from my own. We differ on how to deal with the problem, not on the issue of control. While I am not sure of their judgment, I am sure of their loyalty."

"Perhaps you are correct, but I am not so sanguine."

"With your help, we can present a united front to the forces of early dissolution. That will discourage them. That will allow us to get through a few years of normalization, and then we can consider an orderly departure for the republics with a genuine commonwealth - association, whatever you wish to call it - to keep us associated economically while being separate politically."

The man is desperate, Kadishev saw. He really is collapsing under the strain. The man who moves about the political arena like a Central Army hockey forward is showing signs of fatigue will he survive without my help ? Probably, Kadishev judged. Probably. That was too bad, the younger man thought. Kadishev was the de facto leader of the forces on the 'left' the forces that wanted to break up the entire country and the government that went with it, yanking the remaining nation - based on the Russian Federation - into the 21st century by its throat. If Narmonov fell if he found himself unable to continue, then who ?