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demanded that he exercise the privileges of his office. Yet Cherny did not always scorn luxury and perquisites. This ambivalence, Yulin thought, was surely sharpened by the certainty that he was being measured by some unreachable standard of purity and would eventually pay dearly for any human weakness. Whichever group succeeded Cherny in power, Yulin believed, sooner or later would hold Aleksandr Borisovich up to public obloquy. Possibly punishment, as well. Yulin also believed that Cherny was prepared for this fall from grace. It was, after all, the fate of all Russian politicians since Stalin. |
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The last twelve hours had been the worst in memory, both for the security forces and for Yulin himself. Pacing his office in the Lubyanka prison, he thanked God that he had never fully succumbed to Piotr Kondratiev and his grandiose blandishments, even when presented with the most sacred of Soyuz's royalist awards. He fingered the small white fragment of the cross, erected over the site in Ekaterinburg where the czar and his family were slaughtered and said to be miraculous. Should he? No, he decided, it was too dangerous. He took the tiny piece of wood and smashed it, then threw it into the wastebasket. Nothing tangible now, nothing with which Cherny could hang him. |
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But who could ever have imagined that the commander of the security forces, under the cold supervision of selected officersyokels, every oneof the Thirtieth Shock Army, would have to prove his loyalty to President Cherny by carrying out the arrests for treason of the entire hierarchy of the Soyuz movement? Yulin did not know General Kalinin well, but Aleyev and Suvorov were old comrades. Now Kondratiev was in custody and the entire Soyuz dream of a new, but old, Russian Empire seemed far, far away. |
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The arrests of the plotters must now be tempting Cherny to do as Mikhail Sergeivich Gorbachev had once done: to declare for himself the absolute dictatorial power to rule by decree. |
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