By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers
Shultz would not let
the matter rest, however. He told the president, "To succeed, we have to
have a team: right now there isn't one. Cap Weinberger, Bill Casey, Jeane Kirkpatrick [ambassador to the United Nations], and I
just don't see things the same way." Shultz said he was fed up with the
leaks, end runs, and delaying tactics. It was impossible to get anything done.
"I'm frustrated," he told Reagan, "and I'm ready to step
aside."89
Reagan would never
fire Cap Weinberger, a longtime friend and associate, but he knew he had to
make a choice. "Cap was not as interested as George in opening
negotiations with the Russians," Reagan recalled, "and some of his
advisors at the Pentagon strongly opposed some of my ideas on arms control that
George supported, including my hope for eventually eliminating all nuclear
weapons from the world." Weinberger and his conservative allies in
Congress told Reagan that Shultz "had gone soft on the Russians."
Reagan knew this was nonsense, but he also knew that he had to resolve the
differences between McFarlane and Shultz on the one hand and Weinberger, Casey,
and Ed Meese on the other. The "dispute is so out of hand that George sounds
like he wants out. I can't let that happen," Reagan wrote in his diary
right after his victory in the 1984 presidential election. "Actually,
George is carrying out my policy. I'm going to meet with Cap and Bill and lay
it out to them. Won't be fun but has to be done."90
The exchanges with
Chernenko were not leading anywhere, but Reagan's mind was made up. He had
learned a great deal during his first four years as president and believed he
could pursue a peace agenda with the Russians when the opportunity presented
itself. "Hang tough and stay the course," he said to himself and his
advisers. "America was back," and the Soviets knew it. Eventually,
they would be more forthcoming.91 Reagan was a patient, stubborn man. He wanted
to bargain, but from strength. He seemed very much like Harry Truman when
Truman had said that he wanted to cooperate with the Russians, so long as he
could get his way 85 percent of the time.92
Reagan had tremendous
faith in his own negotiating skills, disarming friends and foes alike with his
relaxed, calm, modest, and self-effacing manner. He was sentimental yet
unemotional, a "warmly ruthless man," wrote Martin Anderson.93 Reagan
had the gift "of setting you utterly at ease," wrote David Stockman.
He was a "master of friendly diplomacy," said Shultz, and "was
easy to like. "94 He was often short on facts and devoid of knowledge but,
according to Richard Pipes, "had irresistible charm. "95 But he was
no pushover. He was calculating, competitive, tough-minded, and disciplined. He
instinctively grasped the rhythm of negotiations. His stubborn patience was a
powerful weapon, as were his apt use of humor and anecdote, simple language,
and strong convictions.96
By 1984, Reagan was
eager to apply his negotiating skills to the Russians. "There is renewed
optimism throughout the land," he said in his State of the Union message
on 25 January. "America is back, standing tall, looking to the eighties
with courage, confidence, and hope." He had great plans for the new year
and for a new presidential term, a term that he was determined to win through a
decisive electoral victory. "America has always been greatest when we
dared to be great." He now invited the Soviet people to join him in his
dream to make a safer world, "to preserve our civilization in this modem
age." "A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,"
Reagan declared. Speaking to the members of Congress who sat before him, but
explicitly directing his remarks across the oceans, he asked the "People
of the Soviet Union" to join America in a quest for peace. "If your
government wants peace, there will be peace. We can come together in faith and
friendship to build a safer and far better world for our children and our
children's children. "97
Reagan's tough
actions and increasingly mellow talk sat well with the American people. His
defense buildup, deployment of intermediate-range missiles, intervention in
Grenada, and aid to the Mujahedin in Afghanistan were popular, even while his
support of the Contras in Nicaragua and his indifference to human rights
violations in EI Salvador and Guatemala triggered virulent opposition. His wife
and some of his political advisers, such as Michael Deaver, nurtured the
president's more conciliatory rhetoric, wanting to dispel the warmongering
image the Democrats liked to employ against him. But Reagan did not cater to
the polls. He hated arguments based on politics, and he believed he could read
the temperature of the American people better than anyone.98
Reagan won a smashing
victory in the 1984 elections. His opponent, former vice president Walter
Mondale, won only his home state and the District of Columbia. Reagan promised
throughout the campaign that "morning in America" meant more of the
same: smaller government, less regulation, and more freedom. In his second
inaugural address, on 21 January 1985, he proposed an "opportunity
society" at home "in which all of us-white and black, rich and poor,
young and old, will go forward together, arm in arm." He thought a
"new beginning" had been achieved during his first administration
domestically, and freedom was on the march internationally. He promised an
unwavering quest for peace based on strength. Through negotiations with the
Kremlin, he was determined to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and seek their
"total elimination ... from the face of the earth." He insisted that
his Star Wars "security shield" was an eminently sensible way to
proceed. "It wouldn't kill people; it would destroy weapons. It wouldn't
militarize space; it would help demilitarize the arsenals on earth. "99
Chernenko and his
aides did not know quite what to make of Reagan's new public rhetoric. Through
most of 1984, Chernenko had sent friendly replies to Reagan.lOO
He authorized the renewal of talks that had been suspended when the Pershing lIs had been deployed in West Germany. These discussions
bogged down quickly, but Gromyko accepted an invitation to meet with Reagan in
the White House at the end of September 1984. As Reagan put it in his diary,
the president opened "with my monologue and made the point that perhaps
both of us felt the other was a threat." Both men acknowledged that both
sides had mountains of nuclear weapons that were getting higher and more
dangerous. "I tried to let him know," Reagan recalled, "that the
Soviet Union had nothing to fear from us." To Reagan, Gromyko appeared
"hard as granite." To Shultz, he seemed "comfortable with the
Cold War." But Gromyko nonetheless took Nancy Reagan aside at a reception
before lunch and whispered playfully, "Does your husband believe in
peace?" Nancy replied that he did. "Then whisper 'peace' in your
husband's ear every night," Gromyko said.101
Shultz and McFarlane
kept nudging Reagan to push forward with his overtures to Chernenko, but on 10
March 1985 Chernenko died. He was the third Soviet leader to pass away on
Reagan's watch. The president had tried to engage each of them but had had
little success, partly because of their reluctance, partly because they could
not discern the American president's real intentions when his rhetoric and
actions often seemed so threatening.102
Yet Reagan's and
Shultz's hopes for the future were lucidly outlined in the talking points
prepared for Vice President Bush when he headed to Moscow to attend Chernenko's
funeral and talk to the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. "I bring
with me a message ... of peace," Bush was scripted to tell Gorbachev.
"We know this is a time of difficulty; we would like it to be a time of
opportunity." The Soviet and American systems were different, and the differences
would not disappear soon. "Our relationship is bound to be essentially
competitive. But it is in the interest of both countries to compete and resolve
problems in peaceful ways, and to build a more stable and constructive
relationship. We know that some of the things we do and say sound threatening
or hostile to you. The same is true for us." But the point Bush was
supposed to stress was that "neither the American government nor the
American people has hostile intentions toward you." They recognized that
"you have suffered a great deal, and struggled a great deal, throughout
your history." They recognized that World War II was a great triumph for
the Soviet Union and a great tragedy. The triumph opened up possibilities for a
more peaceful world; the tragedy was that the opportunities were squandered.
Now there was a new chance. "We are ready to embark on that path with you.
It is the path of negotiations." A number of agreements had already been
signed, but there could be more. "We think it is a time to be more
energetic, to tackle larger issues, to set higher goals .... [W]e should strive
to eliminate nuclear weapons from the face of the earth." Both nations
should aim for a "stable deterrence based on non-nuclear defense .... [W]e
should approach the other issues between us with the same energy and vision. We
should seek to rid the world of the threat or use of force in international
relations."103
Bush did not actually
say these words at the meeting, but wandered instead into a discussion of
regional issues and human rights. But then Secretary Shultz looked directly at
Gorbachev and conveyed the president's message: "President Reagan told me
to look you squarely in the eyes and tell you: 'Ronald Reagan believes this is
a very special moment in the history of mankind.' "104
Mikhail Gorbachev
impressed Shultz and Bush. He was lively, energetic, and intelligent. He
listened, asked questions, and probed. He liked to talk. He was smart and
self-confident. "He has a deep and sharp mind," Gromyko had said at
the Politburo meeting that elected Gorbachev general secretary, and was a man
who could "distinguish the primary from the secondary .... He dissects
every issue to see its structure. But he doesn't leave it at that-he
generalizes and draws broader conclusions. He's a man of principle and
conviction ........He's straightforward with people ... can say things not to
your liking but get along with different people." 105 Shultz saw
precisely these traits. "In Gorbachev we have an entirely different kind
of leader in the Soviet Union than we have experienced before," he told
Bush. Gorbachev was quick, fresh, engaging, and wide-ranging. "I came away
genuinely impressed with the quality of thought, the intensity, and the
intellectual energy of this new man on the scene," Shultz recalled.106
Mikhail Gorbachev was
born in the village of Privolnoe in the Stavropol
region of southern Russia on 2 March 1931. His grandparents were peasants. His
mother's father was an ardent supporter of the Bolshevik revolution, a member
of the Communist Party, and an organizer of a collective farm; his father's
father, Andrei Gorbachev, wished to farm independently. Andrei and his family
suffered terribly during the great famine of 1933, and he was arrested the
following year for failing to meet the government's sowing quota. During the
1930s, both grandfathers at different times were declared "enemies of the
people" and incarcerated in concentration camps before returning to
Stavropol, where they then worked diligently and productively on collective
farms. Gorbachev's grandmothers, meanwhile, were deeply religious, as was his
own mother. Gorbachev himself was secretly baptized. "Under the icon on a
little home-made table stood portraits of Lenin and Stalin," he
remembered.107
Gorbachev was ten
when the Nazis invaded. "Wartime impressions and experiences remain
engraved in my mind," he wrote. In August 1941 his father, along with all
the other men in the village, was conscripted. "Entire families would
accompany their men, profusely shedding tears and voicing parting wishes all
the way. We said goodbye at the village center. Women, children, and old men
cried their hearts out, the weeping merging into one heart-rending wail of
sorrow." 108
Only women and
children remained in the village. Mikhail had to take over his father's
household chores and cultivate the vegetable patch that provided the family
food. "The wartime children skipped from childhood directly to
adulthood," he wrote. In late summer 1942, German armies occupied the
village. "Rum ours of mass executions in the neighboring towns circulated,
and of machines that poisoned people with gas." Mikhail and his mother and
grandparents feared for their lives. But they were saved when Soviet troops
returned in early 1943 and drove the Germans westward. During that year
everything in the village had been destroyed-"no machines were left, no
cattle, no seeds. We ploughed the land by hitching cows from our individual
households. The picture is still fresh in my memory," Gorbachev continued,
"the women crying and the sad eyes of the cows." Famine raged. His
mother sold his father's clothes and boots for a sack of com. They planted
seed. The rains came. They lived. 109
In late summer 1944,
they received a letter saying Mikhail's father had been killed. But the news
was wrong. He had survived. He had fought at Rostov, Kursk, and many other
battlefields; in his brigade alone, 440 soldiers were killed, 120 wounded, and
651 missing. But he survived, returning home in mid-1945 after being wounded.110
War meant
devastation; war meant trauma. Those who were too young to fight were spared
some of the worst pain and suffering, but they occasionally caught shocking
glimpses of the meaning of war. Roaming the countryside in March 1943, when the
snows were beginning to melt, young Mikhail and his friends "stumbled upon
the remains of Red Army soldiers." They beheld "unspeakable horror:
decaying corpses, partly devoured by animals, skulls in rusted helmets. . . .
There they lay, in the thick mud of the trenches and craters, unburied, staring
at us out of black, gaping eye-sockets. We came home in a state of shock."
Mikhail would never forget. "I was fourteen when the war ended. Our
generation is the generation of wartime children. It has burned us, leaving its
mark both on our characters and our view of the world."l11
Life in the postwar
Russian countryside was hard. Drought struck. Harvests were poor. Famine
wracked the villages in 1946 and 1947. "There was nothing but hard labor
and the belief that once reconstruction was complete, we would finally be able
to lead a normal life," Gorbachev wrote. "Hope inspired the most
laborious, humiliating work."112
Gorbachev was
ambitious. In school, he compiled an exemplary record. He also joined the
Komsomol, the Young Communist League. He was socialized. The school system, he
later commented, "played an enormous role in forming our ideas about the
world; it sought to convince us by all means at its disposal that we were
living in the most just form of society. Thus we developed the outlook ... that
no alternative was possible."113
Of course, he grasped
that the realities around him did not correspond to the theories that were
inculcated in him. But the ideals were inspiring. "The impulse provided by
the revolution had a powerful effect: freedom, land, ... human dignity for
those who had been humiliated-the belief in all those values was, in spite of
everything, something quite positive. "114 He was motivated, moreover, by
his father's becoming a communist at the battlefront. For Gorbachev, as for so
many others, "the war was not only a great victory over fascism but proof
that our country's cause was the right one. And by the same token," he
reminisced, "so was the cause of Communism." After the victory over
the Nazis, "there existed a truly positive subjective attitude toward
Soviet society on the part of entire generations who connected their dearest
hopes and plans in life with the success of that society."115
As a teenager,
Gorbachev labored in the fields during the summer with his father, a machinist
and tractor driver, whom he greatly admired for his intelligence, industry,
courage, and intellectual curiosity. In 1948, working together and with another
father-and-son team, they produced a record harvest, five or six times the
average. Gorbachev's father won an Order of Lenin prize and Mikhail the Order
of the Red Banner of Labour. The young Gorbachev
greatly valued this award, which was instrumental in winning him admission to
Moscow State University, an unprecedented opportunity for a peasant lad from
the boondocks whose grandfathers had been enemies of the people.ll6
Studying law
transformed Gorbachev's life. Initially, he felt inadequate. His preparatory
education had not been on a par with that of the more urbane students from
Moscow and Leningrad. But he was hardworking, ambitious, curious, and
intellectually gifted. He loved delving into topics he had not previously
explored. The curriculum presumed that in order to study law you needed to
understand the socioeconomic and political processes that undergirded the law.
Gorbachev preferred the courses in history, diplomacy, political economy, and
philosophy to the more practical legal courses. Although much brainwashing went
on, he was exposed to new ideas, new students, and stimulating faculty.
"The lectures revealed a new world, entire strata of human knowledge
hitherto unknown to me."117
When, in 1953, Stalin
died, it was "a heavy blow that we found hard to endure," Gorbachev
acknowledged many years later. "All night long we were part of the crowd
going to his coffin." But university life changed for the better after the
dictator's death. Lectures became more interesting, seminars livelier.
"Doubts were expressed-warily at first, but gradually more
outspoken." Traditional interpretations were challenged. Gorbachev learned
"how to think. ... Before the university I was trapped in my belief system
in the sense that I accepted a great deal as given, as assumptions not to be
questioned. At the university I began to think and reflect and to look at
things differently." 118
He met his soul mate,
Raisa Titorenko, at the university. An accomplished
student of philosophy, she also came from a family that had experienced the
purges and terror of the 1930s. With Raisa, Gorbachev found somebody with whom
he could discuss his concerns and share his ambitions. They were married in
1953. She did not have his social skills, but she was smart, incisive, and
committed to ameliorating the many ills of the Soviet system, including the
position of women and the backward conditions of the peasantry, subjects she
studied while her husband pursued his career.1l9
After graduating from
Moscow State University, Gorbachev returned to Stavropol. For the next two
decades, he moved steadily up the ranks, first of the Komsomol and then of the
local and regional Communist Party. As he worked on party and agricultural
issues and traveled around the region, he learned much about the poverty and
backwardness of his country. The infrastructure of Stavropol-health care,
education, transport, and water supply-was in miserable shape. "Sewage
often poured into the open gutters lining the streets." He was dismayed by
the sterility of thought of local officials. All directives emanated from Moscow.
He, like everybody else, "was bound hand and foot by orders from the
center." Gorbachev longed for enlightened leadership from Moscow, but the
hopes initially inspired by Khrushchev's thaw quickly faded. Kosygin's economic
reforms floundered. "All eyes were fixed on the center," Gorbachev
recalled, "and it rejected any kind of innovation, or else it drained the
energy and vitality out of any kind of initiative. My first doubts about the
effectiveness of the system were born at that time."120
These doubts were reinforced
by foreign travel. As he moved up the party ranks, Gorbachev gained the right
to travel abroad, for example to the German Democratic Republic and Bulgaria.
In 1969, only months after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he visited
Prague and was shocked by the hostility he encountered. In 1971 he went to
Italy, in 1972 to Belgium and Holland. Later in the 1970s, he went on trips to
Italy and West Germany and traveled extensively in France. As a provincial
official in Stavropol, he knew little about the world, so he relished these
trips as opportunities to learn. The trips themselves reflect how highly he was
regarded by his superiors, since very few Soviet officials received the right
to travel in the West during those years. Gorbachev liked talking to
foreigners, exchanging ideas, and making comparisons between his way of life
and theirs. He felt pride in the Soviet educational system. He believed his
countrymen had better access to medical care and a superior public transport
system. But his travels abroad bred doubt: [M]y previous belief in the
superiority of socialist democracy over the bourgeois system was shaken as I
observed the functioning of civic society and the different political systems.
Finally, the most significant conclusion drawn from the journeys abroad: people
lived in better conditions and were better off than in our country. The
question haunted me: why was the standard of living in our country lower than
in other developed countries? 121
Doubts about the
system did not mean rejection of it. Gorbachev was a devoted communist. He saw
that Soviet communism functioned badly, but he nonetheless believed deeply in
its values and appreciated its achievements. He later reflected: For many years
people experienced an extraordinarily high rate of industrial growth, the
tangible and undeniable change from a backward country into an industrialized
country. People came from remote villages to work in new factories, which they
took pride in as their own accomplishment .... The eradication of illiteracy,
access to education, and visible improvement in living conditions for the
masses after ominous destruction and starvation-all this was not just
propaganda, but people's actual experience.
Inefficiencies
proliferated and corruption grew, but basic needs were provided and society was
not polarized. At "the lowest levels of the social ladder," Gorbachev
later recalled, "people did not live in such hopeless circumstances that
lack of social mobility was transferred from generation to generation, as is
typical for those living in poverty in many countries with capitalist
economies." 122
As the party chief in
Stavropol, Gorbachev's aims were to accelerate economic growth and ameliorate
living conditions. He was energetic, personable, and adaptable. He tried to
appoint young people who were talented and creative. "I considered it my
duty to support whatever was new and to encourage the development of a
democratic atmosphere in our region." He struggled to raise agricultural
productivity "not by administrative methods" but by encouraging local
autonomy and embracing scientific and technological innovation. He tried to
spur the independence of local enterprises. 123
His vigor and
determination captured the attention of patrons in Moscow. Fedor
Kulakov, minister of agriculture; KGB head Andropov;
and Mikhail Suslov, the ideology tsar and party
secretary, came to know him. They had close ties with the Stavropol region and
liked to vacation there at the numerous spas. Gorbachev had worked under Kulakov when the latter was regional first secretary. When Suslov and Andropov visited Stavropol, Gorbachev found ways
to meet with them and ingratiate himself. Andropov liked him. In 1970 Gorbachev
was designated first secretary of the Stavropol region. The next year, at the
age of forty, he became a full member of the Central Committee. When Kulakov died in 1978, Brezhnev brought Gorbachev to Moscow
and appointed him party secretary in charge of agriculture. Shortly thereafter,
he was asked to join the Politburo, first as a candidate member and then as a
full member. In his late forties, he was nearly twenty-five years younger than
his average colleague.124
In Moscow, Gorbachev
was eager to bring about change. He met with agricultural economists and other
experts, visited various policy institutes, asked questions, listened, and
probed. He wanted to decentralize authority, give farmers more responsibility
for organizing their work, and pay them according to their productivity. 125
Yet, as long as Brezhnev lived, he was able to accomplish little. By now old
and sick, Brezhnev could not organize the work of the government or the party,
communicate effectively, or consider new approaches or initiatives. The
Politburo, according to Gorbachev, was in "total disarray." Top party
leaders were insulated from the people and isolated from one another. At
regular meetings in the early 1980s, they talked little about their work and
rarely explored new ideas. There was a need to reallocate resources away from
the defense establishment, but "the problem could not even be analyzed.
All statistics concerning the military-industrial complex were top secret,
inaccessible even to members of the Politburo."126 For leaders with
reformist instincts, there was little to do but wait for Brezhnev to die.
Meanwhile, Gorbachev
kept developing himself. As a high party official, he now had access to books
not previously available to him. He was exposed to new ways of thinking about
socialism as he perused articles by Willy Brandt and Francois Mitterrand.127 He
also initiated contacts with experts on foreign policy and atomic weapons. He
met scientists like Yevgeni Velikhov, academicians
like Georgi Arbatov, and international relations
experts like Anatoli Chernyaev and Georgi Shakhnazarov. On a trip to Canada, he renewed his
acquaintance with Alexander Yakovlev, the Soviet ambassador in Ottawa. The two
men discovered they were "kindred spirits." "We spoke completely
frankly about everything," Yakovlev recalled; "the main idea was that
society must change, it must be built on different principles."128
When Brezhnev died
and Andropov became general secretary, there was a palpable change in the
atmosphere. The former KGB chief wanted to invigorate the system and accelerate
industrial production. He looked to Gorbachev to help spearhead overall
economic reform. And knowing he was ill, he began grooming the younger man as
his successor. He assigned Gorbachev the task of preparing the major address
commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of Lenin's death and encouraged him to
think more broadly about all issues: "act as if you had to shoulder all
the responsibility ... ," said Andropov.129
Andropov set a course
that greatly appealed to Gorbachev. He "resolutely denounced all the
features commonly associated with Brezhnevism, that
is, protectionism, in-fighting and intrigues, corruption, moral turpitude,
bureaucracy, disorganization and laxity." 130 He called for the perfection
of "developed socialism." Qualitative changes, he insisted, must
occur not only in the productive forces of society but also in the
superstructure. He meant that labor productivity must increase and new
technologies must be embraced, including computers and robots. Like his
predecessors, Andropov stressed that the quality of goods must be enhanced. He
reminded his comrades that the "ultimate objective of our efforts in the
economic field is to improve the living conditions of the people." Even
while he demanded stricter discipline, he also believed that socialist
democracy must be broadened, that the" activities of the party and state
bodies [must be brought] closer to the needs and interests of the people."131
Andropov did not
hesitate to say that the challenges were daunting. "Frankly speaking we
have not yet studied properly the society in which we live and work, and have
not yet fully revealed the laws governing its development, particularly economic
ones," he acknowledged in a speech to the party plenum on 15 June 1983.
"This is why we have to act at times empirically, so to speak, by the
quite irrational trial-and-error method." Life constantly interjected new
problems, and scientific study was required. But science and technology
conjured up new challenges and threats, too.132
No threat was greater
than that of nuclear war. "An unprecedented sharpening of the struggle
between the two world social systems has taken place," said Andropov.
"[But] an attempt to solve the historical dispute between the two systems
through a military clash could be disastrous to mankind." Preserving the
peace was therefore his main objective. So important was it, he insisted, that
one had to "reappraise the principal goals ... of the entire communist
movement." Fighting" oppression and the exploitation of man by
man" had always been an overriding concern, but nowadays communists
"must also struggle for the preservation of human civilization, for man's
right to life." Capitalism was facing ever graver crises, besieged as it
was by "internal and interstate antagonisms, upheavals, and
conflicts." But within the capitalist world were factions and movements
that realized the necessity of peaceful coexistence. Andropov wanted them to
know that he shared their hope for peaceful coexistence, which met "the
interests of the peoples on both sides of the social barricades dividing the
world." 133
Andropov still
"believed that the future belongs to socialism. Such is the march of history."
But this did not mean that "we are going to engage in the 'export of
revolution.' " Socialism would "ultimately prove its advantages
precisely in the conditions of peaceful competition with capitalism. And we by
no means advocate competition in the military field, which imperialism is
foisting on us." Although he would never sacrifice the security of the U.s.S.R. or its allies and was prepared to enhance the
combat power of the nation's armed forces, he preferred "to reduce the
level of armaments and military spending on both sides and embark on
disarmament, which we are actively seeking." The goal of the Soviet Union,
he concluded, was not merely to avert war but to seek a radical improvement in
international relations.134
These ideas appealed
to Gorbachev, but they were put on hold when Andropov died in early 1984.
Gorbachev briefly thought he might be elected general secretary, but the old
guard united behind Konstantin Chernenko, who led the country for a year.
Seventy-three years old, sick, and infirm, he was an embarrassment to those who
yearned for dynamism and innovation. Although he talked about proceeding in the
direction set by Andropov, he lacked the vigor, imagination, and determination
to shake up the party cadres, catalyze economic change, spur production, or
reconfigure relations with the United States. Since Chernenko often was too
sick to attend Politburo meetings, Gorbachev grew accustomed to running them.
Then, as Chernenko's death grew near-he died on 11 March 1985-Gorbachev mobilized
his supporters. Eager to take command, he was not to be outfoxed a second time
by his opponents. He wanted to reform and revitalize the system, and he had
developed his own ideas about how to move forward. "We can't go on living
like this," he whispered to Raisa on the eve of assuming power. He thought
the "system was dying away; its sluggish senile blood no longer contained
any vital juices." 135
The next day, at the
meetings of the Politburo and the Central Committee, he was unanimously elected
general secretary. Applause greeted the choice.136 It was twilight in Moscow,
but Gorbachev offered a glimpse of a new dawn. At the Central Committee meeting
that officially designated him the new general secretary, Gorbachev outlined
his vision. Without repudiating the past, he emphasized that the Soviet economy
must be rejuvenated and its society revitalized. He wanted to accelerate
production, restructure economic management, and promote openness and
democracy,137 "Accelerate" meant to incorporate scientific and
technological innovations promptly into Soviet industry, to heighten labor
productivity, and to combat alcoholism. Socialist democracy must be nurtured
along with more discipline and more order, Gorbachev said. Individual workers
had to be reengaged in production, develop a sense of ownership in the process.
More self-management demanded more transparency (glasnost),13s Gorbachev
believed that more democracy in the workplace meant more socialism. And more
socialism meant more social justice, the feature that distinguished socialism
from capitalism and made it more likely to satisfy man's quest for personal
fulfillment and creativity.139
Turning to foreign
affairs, Gorbachev stated unequivocally that the arms race must be curbed.
"Never before has such a terrible danger hung over the heads of humanity
in our times," he told his comrades. "The only rational way out of
the current situation is for the opposing forces to agree to immediately stop
the arms race-above all, the nuclear arms race."140
The mounting
stockpiles of nuclear weapons made no sense to Gorbachev. They did not
contribute to national security, and he believed a nuclear war could not be won
and must never be waged. "In the atomic-cosmic era," he would say in
May 1986, "world war is an absolute evil."141 Nor did he think that
nuclear weapons could be used politically to blackmail or intimidate an
adversary in a crisis. Risk-taking of this sort could be suicidal, as war might
arise through miscalculation if the adversary did not back down. Nuclear
weapons "must stop being used in a political role because it's impossible
to achieve our goals using [them]."142
The greatest danger
to Soviet communism, however, did not arise from external threats. Gorbachev
"did not think anyone was going to attack us," said Anatoli Chernyaev, one of the foreign-policy experts who became an
aide to the new Soviet leader in February 1986. Soviet military capabilities
were sufficiently great "to repulse the desire for aggression."143
However, Gorbachev did consider the Soviet Union imperiled by internal decay.
The arms race had to be tamed and international relations defused because these
steps were indispensable for the success of his domestic program. "[W]e
understood that if nothing was changed in our foreign policy, we would get
nowhere with regard to the internal changes we had in mind," Gorbachev
recalled. Chernyaev emphasized that there was an
intimate connection "between every important domestic issue and foreign
policy."144
Gorbachev's thinking
adumbrated a radical shift in ideology. Imperialism was still to be worried
about; vigilance was necessary.145 The United States, Gorbachev would say over
and over again during his first years in office, was trying to exhaust the
Soviet Union, "waiting for us to drown."146 He would not allow his
country to be intimidated by superior American power, and he was initially
prepared to shift more resources to modernize Soviet defense capabilities.
Military preparedness is "for us the sacred of the sacred."147 But the
primary threat emanated from within, from the communist system's failure to
fulfill the expectations of the Soviet people, to produce the goods people
wanted, and to ensure the way of life they anticipated.
Restructuring was the
key to a revival of socialism's appeal. "Contemporary world politics [was]
a struggle for the minds and hearts of people," Gorbachev believed.148 In
this contest, socialism offered a glorious vision of social justice and
individual fulfillment. But "the international impetus of socialism had
lessened."149 By restoring its dynamism at home, he could increase its
attractiveness abroad. When he was elected general secretary, he made it clear
that he wanted to focus on domestic issues. On 15 March 1985, he told a
conference of party secretaries that the U.S.S.R "should emphasize
domestic issues and solving the economic and social problems of our country's
development." In his report to the twenty-seventh Party Congress on 25
February 1986, he would reiterate that the main "international duty"
of the party was to ensure the success of the revolution at home.150
Gorbachev recognized
from the outset, however, that his domestic goals could not be achieved without
readjusting Soviet foreign policy. He understood, according to Chernyaev, that "in order to pursue some sort of
transformation, to improve Socialism, nothing could be done unless you stop the
arms race." The purpose of foreign policy, Gorbachev said a year after
taking over leadership, was to "do everything ... to weaken the grip of
expenses on defense." He was to be even more explicit at a Politburo
meeting in October 1986, when he discussed his strategy for his forthcoming
meeting with President Reagan at Reykjavik, Iceland. "Our goal is to
prevent the next round of the arms race. If we do not accomplish it, ... [w]e
will be pulled into an arms race that is beyond our capabilities, and we will
lose it, because we are at the limits of our capabilities." Gorbachev's
comrades agreed, even most of the military officers, if not the civilian managers
in the defense industries.l5l
To defuse
international tensions and promote an atmosphere conducive to arms cuts,
Gorbachev wanted to transform the image of the Soviet Union. "From the
very beginning," Chernyaev stressed,"he
... knew that you could not change society if you did not first change the
attitudes of other countries toward the Soviet Union." The "image of
our country ... when Gorbachev came to power was actually the worst it [had]
ever been in the eyes of international society," said Sergei Tarasenko,
another influential foreign-policy adviser. For almost a decade the country had
been run by a group of elderly, infirm men who seemed out of touch with
contemporary needs at home and abroad. The invasion of Mghanistan,
the escalation of the arms race, the declaration of martial law in Poland, the
incessant wrangling with China, the destruction of the Korean civilian
airliner, and the stagnation of the economy had soiled the Kremlin's reputation
and discredited its leaders. "[O]ne of the first
concerns of the Gorbachev administration," Tarasenko continued, "was
to repair this image so the Soviet Union wouldn't be viewed as the 'evil
empire.' "152
Gorbachev immediately
went to work trying to alter the image of the Soviet Union and to promote
better relations with the United States. On 24 March 1985, a few days after
speaking forcefully to Vice President Bush and Secretary of State Shultz about
the need for a new beginning, he sent his first letter to President Reagan:
Our countries are different by their social systems, by the ideologies dominant
in them. But we believe that this should not be a reason for animosity. Each
social system has a right to life, and it should prove its advantages not by
force, not by military means, but on the path of peaceful competition with the
other system. And all people have the right to go the way they have chosen
themselves, without anybody imposing his will on them from outside.
The two countries, Gorbachev continued, had one overriding interest uniting
them: "not to let things come to the outbreak of nuclear war which would
inevitably have catastrophic consequences for both sides." The leaders
needed to stop "whipping up animosity," to assess their differences
calmly, and to "create an atmosphere of trust between our two
countries." Gorbachev welcomed a personal meeting with the U.S.
president.153 Like Reagan, he believed that "normal relationships"
across ideological lines must be built on "a human basis."154
Reagan wrote back
swiftly and warmly, asking Gorbachev to meet with Congressman Thomas P.
("Tip") O'Neill, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and other
legislators visiting Moscow. Gorbachev readily complied. On 10 April, he said
candidly to O'Neill: "The relations between our countries are presently in
a kind of ice age," but they did not have to remain frozen. "A fatal
conflict of interest between our countries is not inevitable." There was
"a way out, namely, peaceful coexistence, the recognition that each nation
has the right to live as it wishes. There is no other alternative." 155
To achieve this goal,
Gorbachev needed to plow new ideological ground. He was already beginning to
embrace "common security," or "equal security," a concept
extensively discussed among European socialists and theorists of international
relations and a core ingredient of Gorbachev's "new thinking," which
moved the Soviet conception of international relations away from class
conflict,156 Of course, words were cheap, and Gorbachev knew that deeds needed
to match his rhetoric. He started to explore ways to withdraw Soviet troops
from Afghanistan.157 He told the Warsaw Pact allies that he would negotiate to
reduce intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe "or, better yet, to
reciprocally rid Europe of b<?th intermediate-range
and tactical nuclear weapons altogether."158 In July 1985 he announced a
unilateral moratorium on Soviet nuclear testing and expressed hope that the
United States would reciprocate. 159
The seriousness of
Gorbachev's intentions began to impress foreigners when at the end of June 1985
he dramatically removed Andrei Gromyko as foreign minister, a post he had held
for more than twenty years. The able, tough-minded veteran diplomat was, in
Gorbachev's view, "rigid," his ideas "locked in concrete."160
Gromyko was burdened, as his son later acknowledged, by the memory of Nazi
aggression, the "June 22 Syndrome," and by the belief that the Soviet
Union was forever encircled and besieged by imperialist enemies.161
In his place,
Gorbachev appointed Eduard Shevardnadze, a young Politburo member from Georgia
with no foreign-policy experience. Gorbachev knew Shevardnadze well. They were
of the same generation, had both endured the hardships of war on the home
front, and had moved up the ranks of the party hierarchy simultaneously,
Shevardnadze in Georgia and Gorbachev in Stavropol. They had met at meetings
and had come to regard one another as kindred spirits. Gorbachev knew that in
appointing Shevardnadze he was selecting a foreign minister who would embrace
his new thinking. 162
World War II had
powerfully shaped Shevardnadze's views, though not as permanently as it had
those of the generation of 22 June. "The war shaped me as it did millions
of my contemporaries," he recalled. "It formed my convictions and
purpose in life." His brother died in the first days of the war; his other
brother was immediately summoned to the front. "My mother dressed in
mourning for all present and future losses." The Nazi attack confirmed
that "outsiders wanted to destroy us, to annihilate us physically. My
choice [of communism] was determined by the death of friends and relatives, by
the grief, suffering, and privations of millions of people." For
Shevardnadze, "the war with fascism became a personal battle .... The
fascists were attacking communism, and communism was my religion."163
When appointed
foreign minister, he had not grown ashamed of his commitment. "The
collectivism that I served with all my might was literally working miracles,
transforming barren land, defeating fascism, raising the country from ruins,
and therein lay its great authority." But like Gorbachev, Shevardnadze
could see the flaws in the system-its lawlessness, its penchant to reduce
"a person to a cog who could be crushed with impunity." As party leader
in Georgia, Shevardnadze had tried to gain more autonomy, get around the
command system, and unleash local initiative, but he was frustrated.
"Everything is rotten," he had confided to Gorbachev in late 1984.164
Shevardnadze was
flabbergasted by the offer to be foreign minister. He knew little of the world
and spoke no foreign language. Georgian was his native tongue, and he spoke
Russian with a pronounced accent. But Gorbachev implored him to take the job,
for he wanted innovation, courage, and dynamism. He wanted someone, like
himself, who could deal with the Americans on a human basis, who could
transcend the ideological chasm.165
When Shevardnadze met
Secretary of State Shultz in Helsinki at the end of July 1985, he knew little
of the details of the arms-control negotiations that had been going on for so
many years. He did not hide his ignorance. He told Shultz that he would simply
read the talking points that had been prepared for him. His candor and openness
impressed Shultz, which was precisely Shevardnadze's intention. His primary
goal was to eradicate the "image of the enemy." "We and the
Americans were divided by walls built out of the rubble of distrust and stones
of ideology," he recalled.166
Shevardnadze's speech
in the Finnish capital commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Helsinki
Agreement contained the seeds of the new Soviet thinking. The Kremlin,
Shevardnadze said, now wanted to defuse international tension and focus on
domestic life. Soviet leaders wanted to accelerate social and economic development,
promote citizens' well-being, and create the conditions for the
"harmonious development of the individual." Soviet foreign policy
sprang from these domestic requirements. "In order to carry out its
large-scale plans," Shevardnadze concluded, "the Soviet Union needs a
lasting peace in Europe, a lasting peace all over the world."167
Gorbachev
communicated the same message. In early October 1985, he told a French television
audience that his highest priority was "to develop the economy, social
relations, and democracy." Answering journalists' questions with vibrant
self-confidence, he remarked, "We have different political systems. We
have different views of human values. But we also have much in common."
Since "we live in the same house, we need to cooperate." When asked
about whether the Soviet Union had four million political prisoners, he
bristled and said it was "absurd" to talk about numbers of this sort.
"We know what has to be done in order to open up even more the best
aspects of this social system. And at the center of all our aspirations is man
and his needs." 168
He made the same
points when he met with leaders of the Warsaw Pact on 22 October, though in
that setting he also denounced what he saw as American attempts to accelerate
the arms race. "They are planning to win over socialism through war or
military blackmail." His hostility to SDI was unreserved: "Its
militaristic nature is obvious .... Its purpose is to secure permanent
technological superiority of the West, not only over the socialist community,
but over [the US] allies as well." If necessary, the Kremlin would counter
the American initiative and was already pouring more resources into military
research and strategic defense. But he preferred not to do so; it was costly.
"We need to force imperialism to undertake concrete steps toward
disarmament and normalization of the situation in the world." His aim was
to eradicate the Western image of a "Soviet military threat."169 But
the new tone was distinctive and the larger message clear: the Soviet Union and
the United States obviously had substantial differences, as he wrote to Reagan,
but must "proceed from the objective fact that we all live on the same
planet and must learn to live together."170
Reagan eagerly
anticipated his first encounter with the new general secretary, scheduled for
mid-November. The president's "juices were flowing. In a very real
sense," he recalled, "preparations for the summit had begun five
years earlier, when we began strengthening our economy, restoring our national
will, and rebuilding our defenses. I felt ready." 171
He and Shultz knew
that Gorbachev wanted to focus on arms reductions and stop the SDI program. 172
Report after report from intelligence analysts in the State Department and CIA
stressed that the Soviet Union was "a society in trouble." Although
it was not likely to collapse anytime soon, it could no longer serve as a model
for restless peoples and revolutionary nationalists seeking rapid modernization
and social transformation. In fact, the Americans believed the Soviet regime
would be unable to fulfill its people's expectations or to muster the resources
to meet Gorbachev's ambitious economic goals.173
Knowing all this,
Reagan aimed to extract concessions on matters that interested him: the state
of human rights inside the U.S.S.R., the war in Afghanistan, and the turmoil in
Central America, southern Africa, and other regional hotspots. To him, arms negotiations
were linked to these matters. The tension and animosity between the U.S. and
the U.S.S.R. were, in his view, a result not of armaments but of mistrust. If
the Soviet Union wanted arms reductions, as did he, they would have to remove
the distrust, help settle regional disputes, and allow some of their dissidents
to speak more freely and emigrate more easily.174
President Reagan was
willing to bargain-except on the Strategic Defense Initiative. He wrote in his
diary on 11 September 1985: "I won't trade our SDI off for some Soviet
offer of weapon reductions."175 He hoped to settle other matters-just not
right away. Unlike his secretary of defense, director of central intelligence,
and head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, he was eager to talk to
Gorbachev.176 But Shultz advised him to modulate his expectations; Gorbachev
was extremely personable and engaging, but he was also tough and intelligent.
The most important thing was to establish a personal rapport, to begin a
process.177 Reagan agreed completely. He believed he knew how to negotiate.
"You're unlikely to get all you want; you'll probably get more of what you
want if you don't issue ultimatums and leave your adversary room to maneuver;
you shouldn't back your adversary into a corner, embarrass him, or humiliate
him; and sometimes the easiest way to get things done is for the top people to
do them alone and in private. "178
Ronald and Nancy
Reagan flew to Geneva on 16 November 1985 to meet Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev.
Their excitement was palpable. "As we shook hands, I had to admit ...
there was something likeable about Gorbachev," the president recalled.
"There was warmth in his face and his style." Reagan immediately
suggested they chat without advisers, an idea he had been carefully planning.
He wanted to establish a sense of intimacy. Together, with only their
interpreters, they talked for about an hour.179
"The fate of the
world" was in their hands, Reagan began. They could bring peace to the
world, if only they could allay the deep suspicions that separated their
countries. The president suggested that they focus, first, on building trust;
solutions to specific problems would follow if only they could build
confidence. Reagan tried to be empathetic, mentioning his understanding of the
impact of World War II on the Soviet Union, but he also expressed apprehensions
about Soviet efforts to spread Marxism-Leninism by brute force. The U.S.S.R.
and the United States, Reagan said, should work together to settle the problems
besetting third world countries.180
Gorbachev wanted to
build a rapport, too, but he was far more eager than Reagan to reach an
agreement on reducing nuclear armaments and preventing an arms race in space.
He spoke with warmth and sincerity, and told the president that his intention
was to talk quietly and with respect. The Soviet peoples bore no grudges and
wished America no harm. He was convinced that they could improve relations but
stressed that they had an obligation to solve the overriding question of war
and peace. The way to begin was to reduce armaments. Though he shared Reagan's
concern about the strife and turmoil in the third world, the Soviet Union was
not responsible for the unrest, he argued. Moscow was not
"omnipotent." He did not wake each morning thinking about "which
country he would now like to arrange a revolution in." Revolutions had
their own indigenous causes; the Kremlin supported self-determination, and did
not want to impose its way of life on anybody. 181
This initial
conversation immediately created a bond between the two met. What was obvious
was that they both wanted to build a human relationship, to transcend the
ideological divide without abandoning their principles. As they joined the
larger delegations, they continued to elaborate on many of the key themes they
had introduced in this first talk.
Each leader expressed
his concerns about the other's expansionist tendencies. Gorbachev, however,
picked up on Reagan's initial theme about building trust. But he wanted more
than trust: he wanted Reagan to disavow SDI. The Soviets regarded Star Wars as
an American effort to gain supremacy, and as an offensive, not defensive,
measure. SDr could not effectively shield America
against a premeditated Soviet attack involving thousands of missiles; its
utility, therefore, must be to thwart Soviet retaliation should the Americans
launch a preemptive strike on the Soviet homeland.
Gorbachev said he
knew that some Americans relished a chance to demonstrate technological
superiority and ratchet up the arms race, thinking it would wear down the
Soviet economy. This strategy, he insisted, would not work: if necessary,
"we will build up in order to smash your shield." Yet that was not
what he wanted to do. He wanted-and he was surprisingly candid in explaining
his thinking-to rechannel money from the arms race
into the civilian economy. In both their countries, the military was
"devouring huge resources." 182
Over the next day and
a half, Reagan repeatedly accused the Soviets of sponsoring revolution around
the world, crushing human rights, and building up a gigantic nuclear arsenal.
Gorbachev needed to remove American anxieties about these developments, Reagan
said. In turn, the U.S. president wanted to allay Soviet fears about Star Wars,
which, he maintained, was not part of an offensive strategy; he had no intent
to catalyze an arms race in space. To prove American goodwill, Reagan said the
United States would share the SDI technologies with the Soviet Union. With both
sides having the same defensive capabilities, substantial cuts in strategic
weapons, perhaps even the elimination of all nuclear warheads, would be
possible.183
Gorbachev and his
advisers were baffled by the American position. When Reagan and Gorbachev went
off for another private chat in the afternoon, Shevardnadze told Shultz that
the president's ideas about Star Wars were a form of "fantasy."
Deputy Foreign Minister Georgi Kornienko explained that the Kremlin could never
agree to such proposals. How could Soviet officials ~ow for sure that subsequent
American presidents would honor Reagan's commitments? "Unfortunately, we
knew from history examples of treaties which were signed and then thrown into
the wastebasket." The whole idea was "naive."184
Over the two days of
conversations, SDI became the great stumbling block. Gorbachev kept explaining
why SDI was unacceptable, and Reagan kept insisting that it was being designed
for defensive purposes. Why could the Soviets not trust him? "With some
emotion," Gorbachev emphasized that verification of space-based
technologies would be exceedingly difficult, and he appealed to the president
to rethink his attitude. "What was the logic of starting an arms race in a
new sphere?"185
The discord over SDI
meant that there could be no meeting of minds on the limitation of strategic,
intermediate-range, or conventional weapons. Nor was there any agreement on
regional disputes. Nonetheless, both Reagan and Gorbachev gained confidence in
one another and agreed to meet again, first in Washington and then in Moscow.
Gorbachev was disappointed that he left Geneva without concrete understandings,
but he sensed that Reagan "was a man you 'could do business with.'
"186 In turn, Reagan liked Gorbachev. Already at the end of the first day,
Nancy Reagan recalled, "I noticed an unmistakable warmth between
them."187
The warmth was most
conspicuous during the evening dinners and toasts, when Gorbachev greatly
impressed the president and his wife. He was relaxed, asked questions, and had
a good sense of humor. "He could tell jokes about himself and even about
his country," Reagan wrote, "and I grew to like
him more."188 In one of Gorbachev's warm, evocative toasts, he recalled a
biblical story about "a time to throw stones, and ... a time to gather
them; now is the time to gather stones which have been cast in the past."
Reagan, in turn, reminded the guests that they were dining on the forty-third
anniversary of the Soviet counterattack at the battle of Stalingrad, the
turning point in the Great Patriotic War. He hoped, he said, that this meeting
might be "yet another turning point for all mankind-one that would make it
possible to have a world of peace and freedom." 189 At the end of dinner
on the second night, when both leaders reflected on their failure to achieve
concrete results, they nevertheless voiced optimism. "We will not change
our positions, our values, or our thinking," said Gorbachev, "but we
expect that with patience and wisdom we will find ways toward solutions."
The president agreed. Previous summits had led nowhere, he mused, but" 'To
hell with the past,' we'll do it ·our way and get something done."190
Gorbachev intrigued
the president. "I don't know, Mike," Reagan confided to his former
aide, Michael Deaver, when he returned to Washington, "but I honestly think
he believes in a higher power." 191 To his good friend the actor George
Murphy, Reagan summed up his feelings: the meeting "was worthwhile but it
would be foolish to believe the leopard will change his spots. [Gorbachev] is a
firm believer in their system (so is she [RaisaJ),
and he believes the propaganda they peddle about us. At the same time, he is
practical and knows his economy is a basket case. I think our job is to show
him he and they will be .better off if we make some practical agreements, without
attempting to convert him to our way of thinking." 192
Hoping for quick
progress, Reagan sent a long handwritten letter to Gorbachev a week after their
meeting. The message was vintage Reagan: glowing with warmth yet tough in
substance. "I found our meeting of great value," he wrote. They had
spoken frankly, ascertained that "there are many things on which we
disagree and disagree very fundamentally." But they both recognized that
they must manage their relations in a peaceful fashion. He then defended SD1
and reiterated that it had nothing to do with achieving first-strike
capabilities. "[WJe should be able to find a
way, in practical terms, to relieve the concerns you have expressed." They
must instruct their negotiators in Geneva to "face up" to the tough
issues and make certain that neither nation achieved a one-sided advantage.
Reagan then shifted to regional issues. Once again, seeking to show Gorbachev
he had listened, Reagan stressed, "I can assure you that the United States
does not believe that the Soviet Union is the cause of all the world's
ills," but it had "exploited and worsened local tensions." It
could allay American anxieties and show its true intentions by withdrawing its
forces from Afghanistan. He concluded with another personal touch, urging
Gorbachev to collaborate with him to achieve noble goals that only they could
reach. "Both of us have advisors and assistants, but ... the
responsibility to preserve peace and increase cooperation is ours. Our people
look to us for leadership." 193
Gorbachev was eager
to provide the leadership, but he wanted Reagan to make the concessions. He was
frustrated by the president's intransigence on SDI. "Believe me, Mr.
President," Gorbachev replied, also in a handwritten letter, "we have
a genuine and truly serious concern about U.S. nuclear systerns."
And his government also worried about U.S. actions in many third world regions.
Both Washington and Moscow offered military assistance to countries around the
globe. "Why apply a double standard and assert that Soviet assistance is a
source of tension and u.s. assistance is
beneficial?" The Soviet Union was assisting legitimate governments that
came to it for aid when beleaguered by outside interference. The United States
often "incites actions against governments and supports and supplies
weapons to groups which are inimical to society and are, in essence,
terrorists." He mentioned Washington's actions in Nicaragua and,
implicitly, U.S. support of the Mujahedin in Afghanistan. However noble were
the president's intentions, he could not ignore U.S. capabilities. But like
Reagan, Gorbachev wanted to take the sting out of his letter: Please accept
this letter, Gorbachev concluded, "as another one of our 'fireside talks.'
I would truly like to preserve not only the spirit of our Geneva meetings, but
also to go further in developing our dialogue." 194
Gorbachev recognized
that Reagan was trying to use Soviet weaknesses to wring concessions on SDI,
regional struggles, and human rights. Gorbachev wanted to get out of
Afghanistan. 195 He also was sensitive to Reagan's accusations about the human
rights situation in the Soviet Union, and was not averse to easing emigration
restrictions.196 But he was most eager to break the impasse over SDI and press
forward with arms reductions. This was critical to the success of perestroika,
his program to restructure domestic economic and social life, which he was
preparing to present at the forthcoming meeting of the twenty-seventh Party
Congress in February.
Gorbachev maneuvered
deftly to put more of his own people into positions of influence in the
International Department of the CPSU and in the foreign ministry. He promoted
innovative thinkers like Yakovlev and brought experts like Chernyaev
into his office. In these early years of his rule, his control of the party
machinery was masterful. His talks with foreign statesmen, his vigor, and his
confidence in handling Western journalists added to his stature in the Kremlin.
At Politburo meetings, he did most of the talking, and his colleagues deferred
to him. Some winced at his long-winded monologues, but most grasped the need to
change in order to revitalize the system. They accepted his determination to
modulate the arms race and, eventually, shift expenditures away from the military,
so long as Soviet security was not jeopardized and its prestige not damaged.
197
Gorbachev knew, of
course, that he could not disregard the sensibilities of His military advisers
and the defense industry managers. He dealt craftily with them, trying to win
them over and allowing them to think they were using him. He wanted his
generals to devise a viable strategy to solve the problem of intermediate-range
missiles in Europe. Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev,
chief of the General Staff, endorsed a comprehensive program for nuclear
disarmament that was generated in the foreign ministry, believing that
eventually the program would turn out to be nonnegotiable and that military
officers would be able to avoid the cuts they opposed. Gorbachev, however,
embraced the idea of this comprehensive package, as it accorded with his
predilections and offered a huge opportunity to alter the Soviet image. At a
key meeting at the end of 1985, the Politburo approved the new initiative,
giving Gorbachev wide room to maneuver. "Once you have a document in your
pocket approved by the Politburo about the total destruction, down to zero, of
all nuclear armaments, then you are justified in continuing in this policy
direction," reflected General Nikolai Detinov, a
leading arms-control expert. "It is easier to speak to the military once
you have such a document."198
On 15 January 1986,
Gorbachev proposed a bold vision to advance the cause of nuclear disarmament,
calling upon key statesmen to abolish all weapons of mass destruction by the
year 2000. Many of Reagan's advisers felt nothing but contempt for this, and
many of Gorbachev's admirers thought he had been hoodwinked by his own armed
forces and was offering nothing but platitudes. But Gorbachev took it
seriously. "My impression is that he's really decided to end the arms race
no matter what," Chernyaev wrote in his diary.
"He is taking this 'risk' because, as he understands, it's no risk at allbecause nobody would attack us even if we disarmed
completely. And in order to get this country on solid ground, we have to
relieve it of the burden of the arms race."199
Reagan's advisers
told him to dismiss Gorbachev's initiative. General Edward Rowny,
an arms-control expert, told the president not to take Gorbachev's proposal
seriously. The Soviet Union would not change; it would cheat. Rowny shouldn't worry, the president said reassuringly.
"I'm not going soft .... But ... I have a dream of a world without nuclear
weapons. I want our children and grandchildren particularly to be free of these
terrible weapons. "200
Gorbachev's dream
coincided with Reagan's, but both leaders were prag~atists
as well as dreamers. Gorbachev's primary goal was to promote perestroika and
accelerate economic growth. At the end of February, he presented his program to
the twenty-seventh Party Congress, as always a major event in the Soviet Union.
The general secretary outlined his vision in a (tediously) long report that
began with a paean to socialism and went on to a discussion of capitalism, its
animosity toward socialism, and its inherent contradictions-all traditional
pablum. Gorbachev then shifted gears and mused: "Will the ruling elites of
the capitalist world" make sober assessments? "Maybe yes and maybe
no," he continued. But "we cannot take no for an answer to the
question: Will mankind survive or not? We say: The progress of society, the
life of civilization, must and will continue. . . . The course of history, of
social progress, requires ever more insistently that there should be
constructive and creative interactions between states and peoples." Such
interactions were essential to avoid nuclear catastrophe and tackle other
challenges. "The realistic dialectics of present-day development consist
in a ... growing tendency towards interdependence of the countries of the world
community. This is precisely the way, through the struggle of opposites ...
[toward an] interdependent and in many ways integral world."201
This was a shift in
communist thinking-to argue that history would lead to interdependence and
peace-but it was a prerequisite to the elaboration of Gorbachev's program. What
is "acceleration"? he asked. "Its essence lies in the new
quality of growth: The all-around intensification of production on the basis of
scientific and technical progress, a structural reshaping of the economy, and
efficient forms of managing, organizing, and stimulating labor."
Administrative changes were imperative; corruption must end. Workers must
become engaged in self-management, and their self-discipline and productivity
must improve. Enterprises must gain more autonomy. Food shortages must end.
Consumer goods must proliferate. People must live better. Social justice must
be promoted. Society must change, and socialist democracy must grow "in
all its aspects and manifestations." This was a summary of what Gorbachev
called Perestroika-a term that literally means "restructuring" but
that he used as a label for his whole economic-social program.202
The country's
economic and social agenda must shape its international strategy, Gorbachev
then emphasized. The goal was straightforward: peaceful coexistence must
"become the supreme and universal principle of interstate relations."
The ideological chasm must be crossed, the two systems must coexist and compete
peacefully, and "a comprehensive system of international security"
must be designed. All societies must have the right to choose their own social
systems, and regional disputes must be resolved justly.203
In Politburo meetings
after the Party Congress Gorbachev reiterated these themes. "The idea of
acceleration and the idea of preserving peace" must proceed together, he
said. They were mutually reinforcing.204 Thereafter, he and Shevardnadze tried
to improve ties with West European governments and transform the image of the
Soviet Union. But they never lost sight of the fact that the indispensable
partner was the United States. Agreement with Washington was the ultimate
prize, the key to reconfiguring international politics, effectuating arms cuts,
shifting resources to domestic priorities, and revitalizing socialism within
the U.S.S.R. On 3 April, Gorbachev told the Politburo, "Notwithstanding
all the ambiguity in our relations with the United States, reality is such that
we cannot do anything without them, nor they without us. We live on one planet.
And we cannot preserve peace without America.''205
But Gorbachev was
frustrated. The arms-control talks in Geneva had bogged down, and Reagan had
shown no inclination to budge on Star Wars. They "are putting pressure on
us-to exhaust us," Gorbachev told the Politburo on 24 March.206 Nor was he
satisfied with the pace of change at home. He went around the country making
speeches, trying to generate support for his initiatives, sometimes hectoring,
sometimes pleading. Soviet citizens must not tolerate obsolete practices that
"are holding back our movement, . . .blackening and darkening our
conditions, our life, our socialist system," he told party loyalists in
Khabarovsk. They needed "fewer words, chatter, conceit and empty
theorizing, and more down-to-earth concern about real matters and satisfying
the demands and requirements of people. "207
Gorbachev was
infuriated and embarrassed by the explosion on 26 April at the nuclear power
plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, which killed more than 30 people and required the
evacuation of 116,000 local residents. Although he tried initially to conceal
its dimensions, he soon realized he could not. The fire raged for days,
catalyzing fears of a massive nuclear meltdown. Radiation clouds wafted across
Europe carrying more radioactive material than had been released from the
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The accident was a catastrophe, costing
billions of rubles, ruining the lives of tens of thousands of citizens, and
endangering the food chain throughout Central and
. Western Europe.208 Gorbachev was disgusted with the incompetence of his
managers, yet another indication of the rot in the Soviet system, but he was
also angered by the way Westerners used the accident to heap contempt on the
U.S.S.R. and stymie progress on arms talks. Still, the overall lesson was
clear: "it is another sound of the tocsin, another grim warning that the
nuclear era necessitates a new political thinking and a new policy." He
announced that he would extend the moratorium on Soviet nuclear tests, and
again asked the United States to reciprocate. Chernobyl had illuminated
"what an abyss will open if nuclear war befalls mankind .... The nuclear
age demands a new approach to international relations, the pooling of efforts
of states with different social systems for the sake of putting an end to the
disastrous arms race. "209
In August, Gorbachev
vacationed in the Crimea. He was worried and agitated. "When we spent our
vacation together," Chernyaev reflected,
"Gorbachev was really concerned ... that Perestroika was starting to slow
down, that all his efforts to make the Party pursue Perestroika, to try to
awaken society, that this was all going to collapse. "210 He felt he was
being tested, squeezed. The Americans "were using our sincere desire to
disarm as a tool against us."211 When the Politburo met again on 4
September, Gorbachev poured forth his spleen. The Americans, he said, wanted to
exhaust the Soviet Union, to keep the Kremlin trapped in regional imbroglios,
like the one in Afghanistan. They yearned for superiority and sought to
intimidate. Their aim, he suspected, was to undermine perestroika. They did
"not want to let us increase the dynamism of our system." They must not
be permitted to gain superiority.212
But while he fumed,
he did not retreat from his strategy. He was tenacious, and he believed that
perestroika at home depended on progress abroad. He decided not to go to
Washington, as had been initially planned, because it might be interpreted as a
sign of weakness. Instead, he would ask Reagan to meet again on neutral ground.
On 15 September, he wrote another letter to Reagan. "We still have not
moved one inch closer to an agreement on arms reductions." The Kremlin had
tried to be accommodating, but American negotiators were intransigent. Events
since their Geneva meeting "all give rise to grave and disturbing
thoughts." (He was referring to the arrest of Soviet spies in the United
States and the Soviet imprisonment of an American journalist, Nicholas
Daniloff, for espionage.) The two governments, Gorbachev said, needed to
proceed calmly, temper their rhetoric, and focus on solutions. Knowing that
Reagan would not change his mind on Star Wars, Gorbachev proposed that they
strengthen the anti-ballistic missile treaty of 1972 in a way that would permit
research on SDI but confine it to the laboratory for fifteen years; if that
were acceptable, the Kremlin would be willing to make large reductions in its
stockpile of strategic weapons. And he repeated that he would eliminate all
Soviet intermediate-range missiles in Europe if the Americans reciprocated.
Last, Gorbachev once again challenged Reagan to accept a moratorium on nuclear
testing. Negotiations had been floundering for almost a year. "They will
lead nowhere unless you and I intervene personally. "213
Reagan wanted to move
forward, but he demanded that Daniloff first be set free. To Shevardnadze, he
denounced the Kremlin's disregard for individual freedom, and he again
chastised the Soviets publicly for their military intervention in Afghanistan,
their assistance to leftist factions in local conflicts in southern Africa and
Central America, and their callousness about human rights. Reagan's aim was to
sustain the pressure, to make the Kremlin blink first, and to set forth his own
prerequisites for any agreement. He believed he was negotiating from strength;
they, from weakness.214
His advisers were
divided. Shultz agreed with Reagan's impulses and was pleased that the
"Soviets were now talking from our script."215 But Secretary of
Defense Weinberger and his influential assistant secretary for national
security policy, Richard Perle, were wary of any
attempt to reach agreement. Would the Soviets really change? They doubted it.
Were Gorbachev's reforms significant? Intelligence analysts did not think so.
And if, in fact, Gorbachev succeeded at reform, might he make the Soviet Union
into a stronger adversary? They worried that the president might be lured into
a foolish deal. Reagan hated nuclear weapons and believed that once the world
was rid of them, Star Wars might shield America against rogue states cheating
on an agreement. Skeptical of his idiosyncratic view yet knowing they had to
support him, Weinberger and Perle proposed that
Reagan offer Gorbachev a deal that would eliminate all ballistic missiles.
(This plan sounded transformative, but Weinberger and Perle
knew the Soviets would reject it because it would mean the elimination of a
category of weaponry in which they were superior.) By doing so, Reagan could
capture the high ground yet kill the negotiating process-precisely what
Weinberger and Perle hoped to accomplish.216
On 11 and 12 October,
Gorbachev and Reagan met for the second time. "At Reykjavik my hopes for a
nuclear-free world soared briefly, then fell during one of the longest, most
disappointing-and ultimately angriest-days of my presidency," Reagan
wrote.217
The two leaders began
their talks privately, agreeing that progress had been slower than they had
hoped. Reagan expressed disappointment about the Soviet record on human rights.
It would be easier to reach an agreement with the Kremlin on matters it deemed
important, he said, if American public opinion were not "aroused by things
that happen in the countries [like Russia and Poland] where people came
from." But Gorbachev swiftly shifted the conversation to the arms race.
"The Soviet side was in favor of proposals which were aimed at total
elimination of nuclear arms, and on the way to this goal there should be
equality and equal security for the Soviet Union and the United States."
Reagan expressed overall agreement with this goal, provided there was proper
verification: "Doveryay no proveryay
(trust but verify)," he said with a smile.218
After summoning
Shevardnadze and Shultz to join them, Gorbachev presented the concrete Soviet
proposals: cutting strategic offensive arms by 50 percent; eliminating all U.S.
and Soviet intermediate-range nuclear forces in Europe without regard to
British and French weapons, a major Soviet concession; and freezing short-range
(less than a thousand kilometers) missiles. With regard to SDI, Gorbachev said
it could go forward so long as research was confined to laboratories, and so
long as both governments agreed not to withdraw from the existing
anti-ballistic missile treaty for ten years. In addition, they should ban
nuclear testing and agree on verification procedures, including on-site
inspections.219
Reagan was encouraged
by Gorbachev's proposals, but then dwelled on SDI. He proposed that both sides
stay "within the ABM limits, and when the point was reached when testing
was required beyond the limits of the ABM treaty, the US would go forward with
such testing in the presence of representatives of the other country .... If
testing showed that such a defense could be practical, then the treaty would
call for the US to share this defense system. In return for this there would be
a total elimination of strategic missiles. "220 As they talked more,
Reagan clarified that he was stressing cuts in ballistic missile warheads, not
all strategic nuclear arms. He also made clear that his intent was for the
United States to proceed with SDI testing for the next ten years within the
existing ABM treaty, whose meaning was hotly contested and, in the view of U.S.
defense officials, did not restrict research to laboratories.
On the morning of the
second day, their discussion became testy. To Gorbachev, the Americans did not
seem to want to make any concessions. In the laboratory for fifteen years; if
that were acceptable, the Kremlin would be willing to make large reductions in
its stockpile of strategic weapons. And he repeated that he would eliminate all
Soviet intermediate-range missiles in Europe if the Americans reciprocated.
Last, Gorbachev once again challenged Reagan to accept a moratorium on nuclear
testing. Negotiations had been floundering for almost a year. "They will
lead nowhere unless you and I intervene personally. "213
Reagan wanted to move
forward, but he demanded that Daniloff first be set free. To Shevardnadze, he
denounced the Kremlin's disregard for individual freedom, and he again
chastised the Soviets publicly for their military intervention in Mghanistan, their assistance to leftist factions in local
conflicts in southern Africa and Central America, and their callousness about
human rights. Reagan's aim was to sustain the pressure, to make the Kremlin
blink first, and to set forth his own prerequisites for any agreement. He
believed he was negotiating from strength; they, from weakness.214
His advisers were
divided. Shultz agreed with Reagan's impulses and was pleased that the
"Soviets were now talking from our script."215 But Secretary of
Defense Weinberger and his influential assistant secretary for national
security policy, Richard Perle, were wary of any
attempt to reach agreement. Would the Soviets really change? They doubted it.
Were Gorbachev's reforms significant? Intelligence analysts did not think so.
And if, in fact, Gorbachev succeeded at reform, might he make the Soviet Union
into a stronger adversary? They worried that the president might be lured into
a foolish deal. Reagan hated nuclear weapons and believed that once the world
was rid of them, Star Wars might shield America against rogue states cheating
on an agreement. Skeptical of his idiosyncratic view yet knowing they had to
support him, Weinberger and Perle proposed that
Reagan offer Gorbachev a deal that would eliminate all ballistic missiles.
(This plan sounded transformative, but Weinberger and Perle
knew the Soviets would reject it because it would mean the elimination of a
category of weaponry in which they were superior.) By doing so, Reagan could
capture the high ground yet kill the negotiating process-precisely what
Weinberger and Perle hoped to accomplish.216
On 11 and 12 October,
Gorbachev and Reagan met for the second time. "At Reykjavik my hopes for a
nuclear-free world soared briefly, then fell during one of the longest, most
disappointing-and ultimately angriest-days of my presidency," Reagan
wrote.217
83. Shultz, Turmoil
and Triumph, 497-98.
84. Reagan, An
American Life, 605--606.
85. Ibid., 590, 587.
86. Harry S. Truman,
Memoirs: 1945, Year o/Decisions (New York: Signet, 1955),72; Reagan ro Alan Brown, 22 January 1985, in Skinner, Anderson, and
Anderson, A Life in Letters, 413; Reagan to Marmaduke Bayne, 12 September 1983,
ibid., 410.
87. Anderson,
Revolution, 288; also see Deaver, A Different Drummer, 86, 169; McFarlane,
Special Trust, 21-22, 269.
88. Stockman, Triumph
o/Politics, 74; Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 131.
89.Pipes, Vixi, 167; Dobrynin, In
Confidence, 605-12; Helmut Schmidt, trans. by Ruth Hein, Men and Powers: A
Political Retrospective (New York: Random House, 1989), 241-46; Eduard
Shevardnadze, The Future Belongs to Freedom (New York: The Free Press, 1991),
81-90.
90. N. Reagan, My
Turn, 114; Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 145; Anderson, Revolution, 285; Deaver,
A Different Drummer, 71; Schmidt, Men and Powers, 241-56; Dobrynin,
In Confidence, 605-12; Baker Interview, 41-42, Me.
91. "Address on
the State of the Union," 25 January 1984, PPP: Reagan, 1984,87-94.
92. For Reagan's
contempt for political pandering, see N. Reagan, My Turn, 111; Deaver, A
Different Drummer, 26-27; Cannon, President Reagan, 390.
93. "Inaugural
Address," 21 January 1985, PPP: Reagan, 1985,55-58; for the election,
Patterson, Restless Giant, 188--92; Gil Troy, Morning in America: How Ronald
Reagan Invented the 1980s (Princeton, N.].: Princeton University Press, 2005).
94. Chernenko to
Reagan, 19 March 1984,7 May 1984, 6 June 1984, 7 July 1984, 26 July 1984, 8
November 1984,20 December 1984, Executive Secretariat, NSC, Head of State, box
38--39, RRPL.
101.Reagan, An
American Life, 604--605; Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 471, 484.
102.Dobrynin, In
Confidence, 605-12.
103. Nicholas Platt
to McFarlane and Donald P. Gregg, 11 March 1985, Executive Secretariat, NSC,
Head of State, USSR, box 39, RRPL.
104. Shultz, Turmoil
and Triumph, 531-32.
105. Quoted in
Anatoly S. Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev,
trans. and ed. by Robert D. English and Elizabeth Tucker (University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 20; also see comments by Alexander
A. Bessmertnykh, in William C. Wohlforth,
Witnesses to the End of the Cold War (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1996), 106-107, 184.
106. Shultz, Turmoil
and Triumph, 532. British prime minister Margaret Thatcher also had a positive
impression of Gorbachev when they met in December 1984. She communicated her
views to Reagan. Memorandum of conversation between Thatcher and Reagan, 28
December 1984, website of Margaret Thatcher Foundation,
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/archive!.
107. Mikhail
Gorbachev, Memoirs (New York: Doubleday, 1995),22-28, quotation on 23; for baptism,
see Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford, Eng.: Oxford University Press,
1997),27.
108. Gorbachev,
Memoirs, 28.
109. Ibid.,31.
110. Ibid., 32.
111. Ibid., 33-34;
for impact of the war, also see Raisa Gorbachev, I Hope, trans. by David Floyd
(New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 12,97.
112. Gorbachev,
Memoirs, 38-39.
113. Mikhail
Gorbachev and Zdenek Mlynar,
Conversations with Gorbachev on Perestroika, the Prague Spring, and the
Crossroads of Socialism, trans. by George Shriver (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2002), 17-18.
114. Ibid., 18,
149-50; Mikhail Gorbachev, On My Country and the World, trans. by George
Shriver (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 28-29.
115. Gorbachev and Mlynar, Conversations, 15, 150.
116. Gorbachev,
Memoirs, 38-42; Brown, Gorbachev Factor, 28.
117. Gorbachev,
Memoirs, 43-46; graduates of the Moscow School of Law often staffed the
punitive agencies of the state.
118. Gorbachev and Mlynar, Conversations, 21, 23; Gorbachev, Memoirs, 48.
119. R. Gorbachev, I
Hope, 47-52, 70-72; Brown, Gorbachev Factor, 32-34; for very negative views of
Raisa Gorbachev, see Valery Boldin, Ten Years That Shook the World: The
Gorbachev Era as Witnessed by His Chief of Staff, trans. by Evelyn Rossiter
(New York: Basic Books, 1994), esp. 83-91; N. Reagan, My Turn, 336-64.
120. Gorbachev,
Memoirs, 77; Gorbachev and Mlynar, Conversations,
47-48, 30-31; also see R. Gorbachev, I Hope, 107-19.
121. Gorbachev,
Memoirs, 102-103; R. Gorbachev, I Hope, ll6; Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed
Forces: The Trans-National Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1999), 260.-{)3; Paul Hollander, Political Will and Personal
Belief The Decline and Fall of Soviet Communism (New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1999), 102.
122. Gorbachev
and Mlynar, Conversations, 150-51; Gorbachev, On My
Country, 27-28, 50, 53.
123. Gorbachev
and Mlynar, Conversations, 49; Brown, Gorbachev
Factor, 46.
124. Gorbachev,
Memoirs, 56-107; Brown, Gorbachev Factor, 36-52; Martin McCauley, Gorbachev
(London: Longman, 1998),21-39; R. Gorbachev, I Hope, 113; Hollander, Political
Will and Personal Belief, 103.
125. Brown,
Gorbachev Factor, 58--{)0; for the influence of ideas and experts, see Sarah E.
Mendelson, Changing Course: Ideas, Politics, and the Soviet Withdrawal from
Afghanistan (Princeton, N.].: Princeton University Press, 1998), 78-91; Jeffrey
T. Checkel, Ideas and International Political Change:
Soviet/Russian Behavior and the End of the Cold War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 1997),77-90; Robett D. English, Russia and the
West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2000).
126. Gorbachev,
Memoirs, 136 (for quotation), also see 109-21, 134-36; R. Gorbachev, I Hope,
120-24.
127. Gorbachev
and Mlynar, Conversations, 49-50.
128. English,
Russia and the West, 184 (for quotation), also 180-86; Brown, Gorbachev Factor,
89-105.
129. Gorbachev,
Memoirs, 140, 146; Gorbachev and Mlynar,
Conversations, 51.
130. Gorbachev,
Memoirs, 153.
131. Andropov
plenum speech, 15 June 1983, Foreign Broadcast Information System (FBIS), 16
June 1983, R5, R7.
132. Ibid., R8.
133. Ibid.,
R9-R10.
134. Ibid., R11-R12.
135. Gorbachev,
Memoirs, 154-68, quotation on 167-68; Gorbachev, On My Country, 65-66, 171-80.
136. Chernyaev, Six Years with Gorbachev, 19-20. Gorbachev's
election was very close, and he had to maneuver adroitly to win. See Mark
Kramer, "The Reform of the Soviet System and the Demise of the Soviet
State," Slavic Review 63 (Fall 2004): 511.
137. Brown,
Gorbachev Factor, 121-29.
138. Gorbachev
speech, 10 December 1984, FBIS, 28 March 1985, R1-R4; Gorbachev and Mlynar, Conversations, 199-200; "Conference of the
Secretaries of the CC CPSU," 15 March 1985, Volkogonov
Collection, NSA.
139. Fo'!" emphasis on social justice, see the Political
Report of the CPSU Central Committee, presented by Gorbachev to the 27th CPSU
Party Congress, 25 February 1986, FBIS, 28 March 1986, especially 019/f, 037.
140. Gorbachev,
On My Country, 180; Gorbachev, Memoirs, 167.
141. Gorbachev
Speech at Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 28 May 1986, REEAD 3486, Chernyaev Collection, NSA; comments by Nikolai Detinov, in Tannenwald,
"Understanding the End of the Cold War," 151-52.
142. For the
quotation, see comments by Chernyaev in Tannenwald, "Understanding the End of the Cold
War," 139; also comments by Georgi Shakhnazarov,
ibid., 69; also his comments in Wohlforth, Witnesses,
37.
143. Comments by Chernyaev in William C. Wohlforth,
Cold War Endgame (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003),
21; Gorbachev Speech at Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 28 May 1986, REEAD 3486,
Anatoly S. Chernyaev Collection, NSA; also see Wohlforth, Witnesses, 5.
144. Gorbachev,
On My Country, 66; Chernyaev, Six Years with
Gorbachev, 55.
145. See, for
example, Gorbachev's Speech in Smolensk, 27 June 1984, FBIS, 29 June 1984, R9;
Gorbachev's comments at meeting between Erich Honecker and Chernenko, 17 August
1984, Mastny and Byrne, A Cardboard Castle?, 497-98.
146. Chernyaev's Notes from the Politburo Session, 16 October
1986, REEAD 2953, NSA; also Chernyaev's Notes from
the Politburo Session, 22 September 1986, REEAD 2956, ibid.; also see, for
example, Gorbachev Speech at Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 28 May 1986, REEAD
3486, Chernyaev Collection, ibid.; Transcript of
Conversation between Gorbachev and Fran,ois
Mitterrand, 7 July 1986, REEAD 3366, ibid.
147.
"Conference at the CC CPSU on preparation for the XXVII Congress of the
CPSU," 28 November 1985, NSA; also see Anders Aslund,
Gorbachev's Struggle for Economic Reform (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1989), 15-16; Noel E. Firth and James H. Noren,
Soviet Defense Spending: A History of CIA Estimates, 1950-1990 (College
Station: Texas A & M Press, 1998),98-110; Stephen Kotkin,
Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970--2000 (Oxford, Eng.: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 61.
148. Gorbachev
Speech at Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 28 May 1986, p. 7, REEAD 3486, Chernyaev Collection, NSA.
149. Gorbachev
Speech, 4 November 1987, FBIS, 4 November 1987,23.
150.
"Conference of Secretaries of the CC CPSU," 15 March 1985, Volkogonov Collection, NSA; Political Report of the CPSU
Central Committee, presented by Gorbachev to the 27th CPSU Party Congress, 25
February 1986, FBIS, 28 March 1986,032.
151. Comments
by Chemyaev, in Tannenwald,
"Understanding the End of the Cold War," 78-79; Chemyaev's
Notes from the Politburo Session, 4 October 1986, READD 2954, NSA; Gorbachev
Speech at Ministry of Foreign Mfairs, 28 May 1986, p.
4, REEAD 3486, Chernyaev Collection, ibid.; comments
by Bessmertnykh in Wohlforth,
Witnesses, 33.
152. Comments
by Chemyaev, in Tannenwald,
"Understanding the End of the Cold War," 78-80; comments by Sergei
Tarasenko, in ibid., 75.
153. Gorbachev
to Reagan, 24 March 1985, Executive Secretariat, NSC, Head of State, USSR, box
39, RRPL.
154. Comments
by Chemyaev, in Tannenwald,
"Understanding the End of the Cold War," 78.
155. Gorbachev,
On My Country, 181; Reagan to Gorbachev, 4 April 1985, Executive Secretariat,
NSC, Head of State, USSR, box 39, RRPL.
156. For
Gorbachev's "New Thinking," see On My Country, 171-90; Gorbachev,
Memoirs, 237-40, 401-62; for the fullest rendition, see Mikhail Gorbachev,
Perestroika: New Thinkingfor Our Coun·
try and the World (New York: Harper and Row, 1987); for background, see esp.
Evangelista, Unarme'd Forces; English, Russia and the
Idea of the West; Checkel, Ideas and International
Political Change.
157. See
Gorbachev's first conversation with Babrak Karmal, the communist leader of Afghanistan, 14 March 1985,
"Zolotoi Fond," NSA; Comments by Chernyaev and Detinov, in Tannenwald, "Understanding the End of the Cold
War," 95-97,275-77; also see analysis below, pp. 403-14.
158. Gorbachev
Speech, 26 April 1985, in Mastny and Byrne, A
Cardboard Castle?, 509.
159.
Evangelista, Unarmed Forces, 264-65.
160. Gorbachev,
Memoirs, 166.
161. Comments
by Anatoli Gromyko, "Moscow Cold War Conference" (oral history
conference organized by Richard Ned Lebow and Richard K. Herrmann of the
Mershon Center of Ohio State University, 1999; transcript available at NSA).
162.
Shevardnadze, Future Belongs to Freedom, 23-39.
163. Ibid.,
13-14.
164. Ibid., 19,
14,34-35,37; Hollander, Political Will and Personal Belief, 117-25.
165.
Shevardnadze, Future Belongs to Freedom, 38-39.
166. Ibid., 48,
81; also see Pavel Palazchenko, Gorbachev and
Shevardnadze: The Memoir of a Soviet Interpreter (University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1997), 33-35; comments by Tarasenko, in Tannenwald, "Understanding the End of the Cold
War," 190-91.
167.
Shevardnadze address, 31 July 1985, FBIS, 31 July 1985, CCl-6.
168.
Gorbachev's address and interview on French television, 30 September 1985,
FBIS, 2 October 1985, G1-11, quotations on G5 and G11.
169. Gorbachev
Speech at the Political Consultative Meeting of the Warsaw Pact, 22 October
1985, website of the Parallel History Project,
http://www.isn.ethz.chlphp/documents/2/851022.htm; for increased spending on
strategic defense during 1985-87, see Firth and Noren,
Soviet Defense Spending, 107.
170. Gorbachev
to Reagan, 12 October 1985, Executive Secretariat, NSC, Head of State, USSR,
box 39; Reagan, An American Life, 622; Shultz to Reagan, 7 November 1985, End
of Cold War Collection, NSA.
171. Reagan, An
American Lzfe, 634.
172. Shultz to
Reagan, 7 November 1985, End of Cold War Collection, NSA.
173. Department
of State, Intelligence and Research, "USSR: A Society in Trouble," 25
July 1985, box 1, End of Cold War Collection, NSA; CIA, "Gorbachev's
Approach to Societal Malaise: A Managed Revitalization," 24 July 1985, box
1, ibid.; CIA, "Gorbachev's Economic Agenda: Promises, Potentials, and
Pitfalls," September 1985, ibid.; Gates, From the Shadows, 342--44.
174. See
Reagan's comments to Shevardnadze on 27 September 1985, "Draft U.S. Themes
on the Shevardnadze Visit and Soviet Counter-Proposal," box 92129, Matlock
Papers, RRPL; for the importance of trust, see Reagan's opening remarks to
Gorbachev when they met at Geneva. Memorandum of Conversation, 19 November
1985, 10:20-11:20 a.m., box 2, End of Cold War Collection, NSA; Shultz to
Reagan, 7 November 1985, ibid.
175. Reagan, An
American Life, 628.
176. Ibid.; for
disparate views in the administration, see Oflra Seliktar, Politics, Paradigms, and Intelligence Failures:
Why So Few Predicted the Collapse of the Soviet Union (New York: M. E. Sharpe,
2004), 136-38; Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 578-80; Gates, From the Shadows,
341--43, 199-213; Kenneth Adelman to McFarlane, 3 July 1985, box 90706, Donald
Fortier Papers, RRPL. Caspar Weinberger's attitudes are reflected in Caspar W.
Weinberger with Gretchen Roberts, In the Arena: A Memoir of the Twentieth
Century (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2001), 269-86.
177. Shultz to
Reagan, 7 November 1985, End of Cold War Collection, NSA; Reagan, An American
Life, 631-32.
178. 'Reagan,
An American Life, 637.
179. Ibzd., 11-12; N. Reagan, My Turn, 340.
180. Memorandum
of Conversation, 19 November 1985, 10:20-11:20 a.m., box 2, End of Cold War
Collection, NSA.
181. Ibid.
182. Memorandum
of Conversation, 19 November 1985, 11:27 a.m.-12:15 p.m., box 2, End of Cold
War Collection, NSA.
183. Ibid.;
Memorandum of Conversation, 19 November 1985, 2:30-3:40 p.m., ibid.; Memorandum
of Conversation, 3:40--4:45 p.m., ibid.; Memorandum of Conversation, 20
November 1985, 11:30 a.m.12:40 p.m., ibid.; Memorandum of Conversation, 20
November 1985, 2:45-3:30 p.m., ibid.
184. Memorandum
of Conversation (between Shultz, Shevardnadze, and their assistants), 19
November 1985,3:35--4:30 p.m., box 92137, Matlock Papers, RRPL.
185. Memorandum
of Conversation, 19 November 1985,3:40--4:45 p.m., box 2, End of Cold War
Collection, NSA. According to Jack Matlock, President Reagan never grasped that
"SDI could be used offensively." See comments by Matlock in Tannenwald, "Understanding the End of the Cold
War," 183-84.
186. Gorbachev,
Memoirs, 405; comments by Chernyaev, in Tannenwald, "Understanding the End of the Cold
War," 115.
187. N. Reagan,
My Turn, 342.
188. Reagan, An
American Life, 639.
189. Memorandum
of Conversation, 19 November 1985,8:00-10:30 p.m., box 2, End of Cold War
Collection, NSA.
190. Memorandum
of Conversation, 20 November 1985, 8:00-10:30 p.m., ibid.
191. Deaver, A
Different Drummer, 118; also see Reagan to Alan Brown, 10 December 1985, in
Skinner, Anderson, and Anderson, A Life in Letters, 415.
192. Reagan to
George Murphy, 19 December 1985, in Skinner, Anderson, and Anderson, A Life in
Letters,415-16.
193. Reagan to
Gorbachev, 28 November 1985, Executive Secretariat, NSC, Head of State, USSR,
box 39, RRPL.
194. Gorbachev
to Reagan, 24 December 1985, Executive Secretariat, NSC, Heads of State, USSR,
Box 40, RRPL; for the intense competition in the third world, see Gates, From
the Shadows, 346-56; Westad, "Reagan's
Anti-Revolutionary Offensive," 241-61.
195. For Mghanistan, see below, pp. 403-14.
196. For
human rights, see the Meeting of the Politburo, 25 September 1986, document
package associated with the conference "Understanding the End of the Cold
War," Brown University, May 1998; Max M. Kampelman,
Entering New Worlds: The Memoirs of a Private Man in Public Life (New York:
HarperCollins, 1991),374.
197. For
shifting personnel, see Brown, Gorbachev Factor, 89-129; for changes in the
foreign ministry, see Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl and Melvin A. Goodman, The Wars of Eduard
Shevardnadze, 2nd ed., revised and updated (Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, 2001),
73-88. For attitudes toward Gorbachev during these early years, 1985-88, the
transcripts of two oral history conferences are illuminating-for many of his
supporters, see "Understanding the End of the Cold War"; for many of
his opponents, see "Moscow Cold War Conference."
198. Comments
by Detinov and Grinevsky,
"Understanding the End of the Cold War," 112-13, 120-23.
199. Chemyaev, Six Years with Gorbachev, 45-46; for a typical
U.S. "expert" reaction, see Paul H. Nitze, From Hiroshima to
Glasnost: At the Center of Decision-A Memoir, with Ann M. Smith and Steven 1.
Rearden (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989),421.
200. Comments
by Edward Rowny, in Tannenwald,
"Understanding the End of the Cold War," 132-33; also see Nitze, From
Hiroshima to Glasnost, 422; Max Kampelman, another
influential member of the administration, recounted the same meeting. See
"Bombs Away," New York Times, 26 April 2006.
201. Political
Report of the CPSU Central Committee, 25 February 1986, FBIS, 28 March 1986,08.
202. Ibid., 0
9, 0 24; for assessments of his economic ideas, see, for example, Brown,
Gorbachev Factor, 130-54; Aslund, Gorbachev's
Struggle for Economic Reform; Philip Hanson, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet
Economy: An Economic History of the USSR from 1945 (London: Pearson Education,
2003), 177-92.
203. Political
Report of the CPSU Central Committee, 25 February 1986, FBIS, 28 March 1986, 0
33, 029.
204. Chemyaev, Six Years with Gorbachev,54 (for quotation), also
50-60.
205. Ibid., 57.
206. Chernyaev's Notes from the Politburo Sessions, 24 March
1986, 15 April 1986, REEAD 2966 and 2963, NSA; also see Gorbachev to Reagan, 2
April 1986, Executive Secretariat, NSC, Heads of State USSR, box 40, RRP1.
207.
Gorbachev Speech, 31 July 1986, FBIS, 12 August 1986, R4-17, quotations on R4,
RD.
208.
David Reynolds, One World Indivisible: A Global History Since 1945 (New York:
Norton, 2000), 534.
209.
Gorbachev Address, 14 May 1986, FBIS, 15 May 1985, 11-4, quotations on 13, L4;
also see Gorbachev's Speech at the Foreign Ministry, 28 May 1986, REEAD 3486, Chemyaev Collection, NSA.
210.
Comment by Chemyaev, in Tannenwald,
"Understanding the End of the Cold War," 195; also see Wohlforth, Witnesses, 5, 166-68.
211.
Comment by Chemyaev, in Tannenwald,
"Understanding the End of the Cold War," 155.
212.
Resolution of the Politburo of the CC of the CPSU, 4 September 1986, REEAD, Chernyaev Collection, NSA (also published in Istochnik 2 [1995]); Chemyaev's
Notes from the Politburo Session, 22 September 1986, REEAD 2956, NSA.
213.
Gorbachev to Reagan, 15 September 1986, Executive Secretariat, NSC, Heads of
State, USSR, box 40; for Gorbachev's thinking, also see Chemyaev's
Notes from the Politburo Session, 4 October 1986, REEAD 2954, NSA.
214. Reagan,
An American Life, 668-74.
215.
Shultz to Reagan, 2 October 1986, box 2, End of Cold War Collection, NSA.
216.
Comments by Rowny and Matlock, in Tannenwald,
"Understanding the End of the Cold War," 143-48; Nitze, From
Hiroshima to Glasnost, 424-25; Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 718-27.
217.
Reagan, An American Life, 675.
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