the Soviet Union’s cohesion. He had, possibly, already foreseen the demonstrations in Chechnya and the balkanisation of the southern Russian states.
Gorbachev undertook to talk frankly with the ANC leadership about its responsibility to seek a political solution in all earnestness, but, in almost the same breath, told me that we were inclined to overestimate Moscow’s influence on the ANC and even the SACP. He was, no doubt, correct if one took cognisance of the SACP’s ultra-revolutionary stance, even towards the ANC leadership, in the previous few years.
At one stage, I was probably too frivolous in joking about Lenin’s absence from Petrograd during the revolution of 2 February 1917 and brought it up in relation to the communists in the ANC who also kept a reasonably low profile. Gorbachev frowned slightly, but the interpreter, with what was presumably a masterly touch of eloquence, took the impetuous sting out of my comment.
Gorbachev spent a full 40 minutes with me – or rather, I should say, with South Africa. I experienced him as both pleasant and intelligent. As a person, he was more matter-of-fact than earthily genial, as I had experienced of many Russians, but neither was he off-hand or dismissive. Possibly, he was not relentless enough to handle that vast country with its enormous problems, ambitious politicians and headstrong security forces.
On our departure, I gave him a Krugerrand coin and a Krugerrand necklace for Mrs Gorbachev. On the way back in the car, Artemov took me to task about the Lenin remark and said that the interpreter had seen fit to adapt my words considerably … but that it was all for a good cause. I agreed – for what other reason was there a brotherhood among spies? I thanked the interpreter heartily.
On the plane on the way home, I could relax, for the first time, and look back on the years and think about my father with sadness, but also with pride. Nicolaas Evehardus Barnard, aged 72 when he died of heart failure, had been a man among men, a deeply religious Afrikaner patriot with sound political judgement.
He had grown up virtually penniless, as an orphan and a bywoner. And yet, with discipline and determination, he had studied simultaneously at the Bloemfontein Teachers’ Training College, where he was chairman of the Students’ Council, and the Grey University College; after three years, he had been awarded a BA degree and a teacher’s diploma. He had been a pioneer in education in what was then South West Africa, where he had been promoted to chief inspector of education; all his life, he had been averse to egotism.
He inspired his four sons to do everything with full commitment and dedication. Beneath his photo that hung in what was later our family company’s boardroom are the words by which we shall always remember him: ‘Blaas hoog die vlam!’ (‘Fan the flame high!’)
Before my early departure after the death of my father, I enjoyed the hospitality and spontaneity of my Russian hosts for three days and nights. Mike Kuhn and I were accommodated in a newly built guesthouse that had everything we could possibly need.
We later realised that it was, in all probability, the very same place where my then Russian counterpart, General Vladimir Kryuchkov, planned a coup against Gorbachev. Just over a month after our visit, Kryuchkov and the minister of defence, Dmitry Yazov, among others, had tried to seize power in Russia while Gorbachev was away on holiday. However, their plans had been foiled. On hearing this news, Mike and I had both been worried – but, luckily, unnecessarily so – that our visit would perhaps be linked to the attempted putsch.
We were shown many interesting and historic places, including the University of Moscow where a number of South African communists were being trained and the rector told us that most of the South African students were slackers of the highest order. After an extended tour of the Kremlin and all its wondrous and valuable cultural treasures, I found myself in a room that few communists are destined to see: Vladimir Lenin’s office, which still looks exactly as it did in the photographs one saw in history textbooks years ago. Even the familiar globe of the world was in its place, as was the desk at which he had helped to plan his revolution and Leon Trotsky’s civil war against the White Russians.
We also journeyed through the countryside and spent a night in none other than Joseph Stalin’s dacha in the vicinity of Kursk, where the greatest tank battle in history had taken place during the Second World War. Mike and I took photos of one another in the bathroom adjoining the main bedroom where I slept. We took photos beside the bath and on the toilet – after all, very few people have surely been privileged to share a toilet seat with Stalin!
In the notorious headquarters of the KGB, we talked for hours on end. It was with mixed feelings that I stood before the bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky for a photograph in the foyer of the KGB’s main building, the Lubyanka. Dzerzhinsky was the founder and, from 1917 to 1926, the first director of the Cheka, the Soviet Union’s security police. The mixed feelings arose because of my historical loathing of communism until I had come to the Damascene realisation that not every Russian is a communist, nor do they all stand for the same values. It was here, on Dzerzhinsky Square, where, according to the history books, unspeakable atrocities had been carried out by the Russian intelligence service. Nevertheless, for me it was a privilege that I, representing NI, was permitted into the hallowed halls of the KGB.
I was even taken on an extended guided tour through the KGB museum, where my hosts did not hesitate to play open cards – relaying the heroic stories as well as the failures. They were extremely proud of some, very ashamed of others, and they acknowledged the familiar, universal tendency: that the politicians claimed all the glory for the successes, whereas the officials were held responsible for the failures.
We then moved on to General Kryuchkov’s boardroom, where the revered head of the KGB had little to say. In his office, he did me the honour of pinning a KGB decoration to my chest in recognition of the extraordinary service I had rendered in the building of relations between the two intelligence services.
The photo of this event must surely still be giving the ANC nightmares: how was it possible that the KGB had honoured a ‘Boer-Broederbonder spy’ in this way? Shortly before his death, Joe Slovo and I drank whisky together for old times’ sake, and I showed him the photograph.
‘You progressed far further than I did in the KGB,’ he joked. ‘You thought I was a major in the KGB, but it looks to me as if you were a field marshal!’
We were particularly impressed by the KGB’s chief of operations, Leonid Shebarshin, who spoke intelligently about everything – from the SACP, which apparently fostered dreams of a revolutionary takeover of power in South Africa, to the role of Chief Buthelezi and the IFP and similar dilemmas that the Russians faced with the Islamic ethnic minorities in the southern parts of their vast country. We were all convinced that, in both cases, a form of federalism offered the best solution.
It was clear that our KGB colleagues harboured no illusions about the realities of Africa. They informed us that they were planning to limit their presence considerably on the continent, which they regarded as no more than a bottomless pit from which there was little to speak of in the way of useful intelligence returns. There and then it was agreed that a KGB representative would be stationed in Pretoria to keep the Kremlin fully informed about developments in South Africa on a first-hand basis.
In my feedback to President De Klerk, I pointed out that the Soviet Union was under enormous pressure and that Moscow greatly appreciated the proposed co-operation with some of our state departments.
I also gave a full report on the visit to Neil van Heerden, Derek Auret and Herbert Beukes of foreign affairs, who were scarcely able to hide their displeasure at what they felt was a case of NI trespassing on their sphere of influence. This was fully understandable, but I had no choice but to give these valued colleagues a watered-down dose of bitter medicine: that the Russians had told me emphatically that they saw no possibility of extending the informal, confidential diplomatic relations that took place between us so infrequently. The reason was simply that the minister of foreign affairs, Pik Botha, was frankly incapable of keeping sensitive and secret matters to himself, and the Russians were especially concerned about such matters reaching the ears of the American CIA, the British SIS and other European intelligence services.
In October 1991, three months after my visit to Russia, the head of the KGB, Yevgeny Primakov,