Yes Polyus is fascinating. If you are interested i can provide top notch documents on the matter.
One of the most fascinating aspects of Polyus relates to Gorbachev facing his future worse ennemy - Oleg Baklanov. For a start, Baklanov was one of the 8 conspirators in the August 1991 coup.
But Baklanov was more than that. He was the soviet union "ICBM czar" since the Andropov days. Basically from 1985 Baklanov played the following game.
When Gorbachev come to power in March 1985 he was deliberately kept in the dark by his military. A troubling question was "Should the Soviet Union build their own SDI ?" Soon gorbachev wondered if the question was not "Isn't my military building an answer to SDI without telling me ?"
Yeah, that was a pertinent question, to say the least.
Because he couldn't thrust his military, Gorbachev asked two top scientists - Roald Sagdeev and Y. Velikhov - to assess that silly thing SDI.
They told him the SDI was absurd and made no sense and there was no point in trying building a symmetrical answer.
And they were mostly right.
So Gorbachev tactic talking to Reagan in Geneva, November 1985 become
- Denounce that as a technological folly
- USSR won't build one, because it makes no sense
- do you want a ruinous and dangerous arm race in space ? I don't.
Alas, to Baklanov and the soviet generals, that was heresy. And he managed to keep Gorbachev in the dark and got funding to start building
- SKIF-D (= Polyus) a laser ABM
- KASKAD kinetic killers ABM
Programs that actually been in the planning stage since 1976 at least, without much funding. Andropov accelerated them during his brief 1982-84 tenure. For example the Soviet Union airborne ABL, a modified Il-76 transport rebranded the Beriev A-60, flew as early as 1981 with a low power laser. It was this laser that was to go on Skif-D, the next thing after Polyus.
Then Baklanov used Energiya (and Buran, somewhat) to hide Polyus, the following way.
Buran would be only ready for the second Energiya late 1988, so a 100 ton "ballast" was needed on first flight... and Polyus it was. Not Skif-D but a Skif-DM jury-rigged mockup.
Note that Polyus was Skif-DM, mostly a non-functional mockup. It would have been followed by Skif-D with the laser borrowed from the Beriev A-60 (think 747 ABL). Even that laser however would hardly be a serious threat. The full power laser would only come in the early 90's.
And then come Chernobyl, where Prypiat 25 000 people harrowing evacuation gave the Soviet leadership some taste of what nuclear war would look like.
Then it was the Reykjavik summit in October 1986.
Gorbachev, still ignorant of Polyus existence, wasted a golden opportunity to get ride of all nuclear weapons by sticking to his guns -
- denounce that foolishness
- USSR won't build one.
Reagan proposal was even more bizarre - he proposed to share SDI technology with the Soviets !
With such proposals it is no surprise Reykjavik floundered.
And then in May 1987 Gorbachev went to Baikonur to watch the first energiya launch... and he stumbled on Polyus, too late to prevent the launch. his mind was blown, he was furious, and even said "if only I had known my military was building this, at Reykjavik !"
Indeed Polyus being actually on the launch pad when SDI was only a paper project, would have allowed Gorbachev to consider... differently Reagan proposal - remember, he proposed to share SDI technology with the Soviets !
In the end Polyus committed suicide and the affair become moot.
An interesting side effect of Reykjavik floundering relates to Mathias Rust landing his Cessna on Red Square, also in May 1987 (hell of a month !) - he did the crazy flight in frustration to the Reykjavik fiasco. And in some way he suceeded, Gorbachev getting a golden opportunity to clear his military of the most dangerous, cranky old conservatives opposing reforms. Alas, by 1989 they returned... and 1991 was history.