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Page 352
Martial law was always available, like a sword in a scabbard, on the books.
Ivan Yulin had been badly shaken by the shock army soldiers' insistence that he, a man far above them in rank, swear the oath of loyalty to the government that common soldiers swore on their enlistment day. These bumpkins were deadly serious and suspicious of everything and everyone in the capital. The question he needed answered was, did they behave this way because they were naïve and ignorant men or because they suspected his loyalty?
The chief of the Intelligence Directorate and the commander of Kremlin Security had been required to swear the oath as well. Never mind, thought Yulin bitterly, that Aleksandr Borisovich had never allowed either of them to carry out their duties properly. Yulin well remembered him saying, "I don't need three agencies surrounding me, keeping me away from the Russian people. I love them, and they love me." Sentimental slop. Who knew if it was really so? If given a choice between Cherny and Kondratiev, whom would the masses have chosen? For that matter, which one would I have chosen?
The President knew that Ivan Yulin was a member of an Old Guard that had served in the Politburo for many years before Yeltsin had begun to dismantle state and party. Cherny had chosen Yulin to preside at the dismantlement of the KGB apparat for exactly that reason. "Our new thinking must never allow us to forget the dynamism of the old regime," he had said, as recently as last year, to a session of the Congress. At the time he had made the speech, he claimed that the deputies should remember that though he was a "liberal," he was also the heir to all the power of the state, and capable of reprisals against his enemies. No one had believed him; in fact, they had laughed at him behind his back.
But a new phase in the long battle for change in Russia had begun with the arrests of Aleyev, Kalinin, and Suvorov.
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