In the expected scenario of a Soviet first strike, there would be only minutes for the president to authorize counterstrikes and no time for constitutional niceties.
By scapegoating others for the collapse of the regime, the Russians spared themselves the need to accept the moral failure of the Soviet model and to strike out on a new course.
She won the trust of such giants of dissidence as Vaclav Havel (now Czech president), Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky (now an Israeli politician) and Larisa Bogoraz, whose husband Anatoly Marchenko died on hunger strike in the Soviet Union.