The World

Closely allied to Reagan, Thatcher surveyed a world that appeared to be unchangeably divided between the Soviets and the Americans; it is easy to forget that Iberian democracy was new and that half of Europe was still ruled by Leninist dictators. On 23 February 1981, a conspiracy of 200 Spanish soldiers, led by a colonel, tried to halt Spain’s advance to democracy. They attacked the Cortes (parliament), seized hostages and fired shots while officers sent tanks on to the streets of other cities, in a bid to restore Francoist dictatorship in the name of the king. After eighteen hours, at 1.15 in the morning, Juan Carlos, wearing the uniform of a captain-general, addressed the nation: ‘The Crown won’t tolerate the interruption by force of the democratic process.’ It was ‘my decisive moment and I knew what to do’, he told the author.

In the east, the Communist dictatorships were grimly permanent and sometimes still capable of murderous terror. In December 1981, Enver Hoxha unleashed a terror against his own comrades that culminated in the deaths of the prime minister and two other ministers – all thanks to a love affair between two teenagers.

Regarding himself as the sole judge of Marxist virtue, Hoxha feuded first with his Yugoslav backer Tito, then denounced Khrushchev and embraced Mao before rejecting Deng’s reforms, making a cult out of his righteous isolation and building a network of 170,000 fortifications to repel capitalistic and heretical invaders. As cultists expressed loyalty with the Hoxhaist Salute – right fist to the heart – he supervised every detail of Albanian life, backed by the ferocious Sigurimi

secret police. In August that year, Hoxha’s trusted henchman Mehmet Shehu, who had been premier for twenty-seven years, was visited by his son Skender, who told his father he was in love with a pretty volleyball player, Silva Turdiu. They were going to marry. ‘Oh dear, why did you get involved with them?’ asked the premier, knowing that Silva was related to a writer who had mocked Hoxha for secret homosexuality, not least with the line ‘Glory to your ass, oh dandy!’

After suffering a heart attack, Hoxha became distrustful of Shehu, suspecting him of planning the succession of his sons. Now Hoxha and his drear wife Nexhmije crossed the street of the Block to congratulate Shehu and his wife Fiqirete in the presence of the young couple, but the dictator was seething because his permission had not been sought. Eight days later, the engagement was cancelled. ‘I called Mehmet,’ wrote Hoxha on 11 September, ‘to ask about his son’s engagement to a family teeming with war criminals, some executed, some exiled. The city is buzzing with the news. Mehmet was fully cognizant of the fact. A grave political error.’

In the tiny cabal of the Block, Hoxha toyed with his premier and family. On 17 December, Shehu was attacked at the Politburo. ‘Reflect on the criticism,’ warned Hoxha. That night, Shehu wrote a long letter to him, reflecting on their struggle against the betrayal of the ‘Iago–Khrushchev plot’ – a mix of Marxist and Shakespearean jargon – and later was found shot in his bedroom. ‘You can say Mehmet died “accidentally”,’ Hoxha wrote. It is not known if Shehu killed himself or was liquidated, but Hoxha had his wife arrested and tortured, and his son Skender shot, along with the interior and health ministers.^*

Thatcher and Reagan knew little of these secret murders in tiny, impoverished Albania, but, alarmed by Soviet gains in Angola, Afghanistan and Nicaragua and by a build-up of Soviet nuclear weapons, they intensified the competition. Atop his decaying system, Andropov worried about strikes and protests in Poland and feared that the trigger-happy cowboy Reagan planned a pre-emptive nuclear strike. ‘The US is preparing for nuclear war,’ he warned in May 1981 as a succession battle raged around Brezhnev. Andropov faced competition from a geriatric mediocrity, Konstantin Chernenko, the Silent One, who had started as a Stalinist executioner before becoming Brezhnev’s deputy, trying, noticed Gorbachev, to ‘isolate Brezhnev from any direct contact’. But in July 1982 Brezhnev telephoned Andropov: ‘Why do you think I transferred you to the Central Committee apparatus? I put you there to lead … Why don’t you act?’ At the next Politburo, Andropov seized the chair, but he was already suffering kidney failure, undergoing regular dialysis. On 10 November, when Brezhnev died in his sleep, Andropov succeeded as the tension with America mounted.

On its way to the lying-in-state, Brezhnev’s body fell through the bottom of his coffin.

THE NEHRUVIANS: THIRD GENERATION