Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev
“Ronald Reagan believes that this is a
very special moment in the history of mankind.”
~V.P. George H.W. Bush to Mikhail Gorbachev, March 13, 1985
“We win; they lose,” a smiling Ronald Reagan joked when asked to define his plan to end the Cold
War.
Behind his humorous quip was the heart of a determined leader with single-minded resolve to dismantle and dissolve the aggressive forces of communism. Before his election in 1980, the 40th president
created, then set into motion, sound policies to end the Cold War. Once in office, his strategy was challenged while coping with Soviet leaders who “keep dying on me.” In a period just over four years, three
staunch Soviet diehards – Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko - marched in and out of leadership positions. Journalist David Remick wrote, it was as if the Soviet Union was being led by a group of “half-dead
men in half-lit hospitals.”
© 2014 The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. All Rights Reserved.
Then a new player arrived at the table 30 years ago, on March 11, 1985. After Margaret Thatcher’s
first meeting with him, she was optimistic. “I like him,” she shared with President Reagan, “…I think
we can do business together.” Yet, Secretary of State George Shultz recalled Gromyko’s remark that…
“Gorbachev has a nice smile, but he has iron teeth.”
“Soviet leadership devoted to improving its people’s lives
rather than expanding its armed conquests,
will find a sympathetic partner in the West.”
~Ronald Reagan, May 9, 1982
The Deal
The funeral for General Secretary Chernenko was scheduled to take place in Red Square on
Wednesday, March 13, 1985 at 1pm. Vice President George H.W. Bush would fly to Moscow to represent
the United States along with Secretary of State George Shultz and Ambassador to the Soviet Union
Art Hartman. They carried with them a valuable message to be delivered to the new General Secretary
Mikhail Gorbachev: a handwritten letter from President Reagan inviting Gorbachev to the United States.
Click here to read the letter and the minutes from the Politburo’s Session on March 11, 1985:
© 2014 The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. All Rights Reserved.
As it was, Konstantin Chernenko had been gravely ill and essentially off the radar screen of world
politics for six months. Unlike his predecessor Yuri Andropov, Chernenko was a kind of transitional
leader who turned away from confrontation with the U.S. Because of his age and illness, the Soviet
wheels were in motion to be at the ready with a new replacement, who had been acting as the de facto
number two.
If you read the attached declassified Top Secret document, you can see how quickly the USSR
Communist Party Central Committee elected Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev as its new General
Secretary. Further, if you read between the lines, you will understand the deal Gromyko had cut with
Gorbachev. That is, Gromyko would support Gorbachev if Gorbachev would make him chief of state
rather than taking that honor for himself – as had been done in the past. Gorbachev agreed to the deal,
kept his promise, and proposed Gromyko for the prestigious but largely powerless position of chairman
of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet.
What we know today is how this event symbolized the beginning of the internal transformation of
the Soviet Union.
“I can’t claim that I believed from the start that Mikhail Gorbachev
was going to be a different sort of leader.”
~Ronald Reagan, 1990
He was born into a Russian peasant family as “the country was plunged into turmoil and famine by
Stalin’s forced collectivization of agriculture,” wrote scholar and former Ambassador to the Soviet Union
Jack Matlock. Surviving more hardship through WWII and after, the young Mikhail excelled academically
and was admitted to Moscow State University. It was there that his political career began as Komsomol
(Young Communist) leader. Essentially, he stepped into the Soviet political establishment right out of
college where he learned that survival was dependent upon his ability to please his superiors.
Believing in the Soviet system, the young Gorbachev became a protégé of Yuri Andropov. Initially,
he was in charge of agriculture in the Soviet Union, but in May 1984, he was appointed as the ideological
secretary, a role which carried great importance. That post had originally been held by Andropov in 1983
© 2015 The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. All Rights Reserved.
and “was considered a step up in the competition to become the next general secretary,” wrote Martin
and Annelise Anderson. Gorbachev was young, only 53 years old, and very few people knew much about
him. But those who did “considered him to be intelligent, full of energy and ambitious.”
Margaret Thatcher, the first world leader with a one-on-one with Gorbachev, staged a meeting
on December 17, 1984 when he visited London as the head of a delegation from the Supreme Soviet.
For eight days, he travelled through “the West,” the longest trip of any statesman from behind the Iron
Curtain. In a five-hour meeting with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he delivered a private message
from Chernenko.
“I found myself liking him,” Lady Thatcher wrote, “his line was no different from what I would have
expected. His style was. As the day wore on, I came to understand that it was the style far more than the
Marxist rhetoric which expressed the substance of the personality beneath.”
Even in this first meeting with “the West,” it was very clear, Thatcher wrote, “that the Soviets
were indeed very concerned about SDI. They wanted it stopped at almost any price.” The British
Prime Minister knew that she was being used as a “stalking horse for President Reagan.” Seizing the
opportunity, “I bluntly stated – and repeated at the end of the meeting,” she noted, “that he should
understand there was no question of dividing us: we would remain staunch allies of the United States.”
After March 11, 1985
“It is an irony that Gorbachev’s policies eventually turned out to be not only
more radical, but really revolutionary, for they ended by destroying
the system they were intended to save.”
~Jack Matlock, U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union
After the funeral, Vice President Bush and Secretary Shultz delivered the letter from their
President and came away with a positive impression, that finally, a Soviet leader had come to power who
might be different from his predecessors.
© 2015 The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. All Rights Reserved.
Apparently, Mr. Gorbachev was less impressed with the U.S. delegation. Looking at the Politburo
minutes, his comment is revealed: “Frankly, the American delegation made a pretty ordinary impression
on us. They are not a very serious lot…when I touched on questions that were outside the framework of
Bush’s text, he became confused.”
Reviewing observations from the U.S. delegation, President Reagan prepared to work with the new
Soviet leader. Without stardust in his eyes, he wrote in his diary, “Gorbachev will be as tough as any of
their leaders.”
Ah, but Reagan knew that Gorbachev was dissatisfied with Soviet economic performance and…
that his thinking was more flexible than that of his predecessors. With the help of many fine advisors
along with his own intuition, Reagan “developed proposals that would encourage restraint abroad and
reform at home.” It was time for patience.
And he had a game plan. He was ready for the Soviets. But the Soviets were only beginning to
plan for Reagan.
© 2015 The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. All Rights Reserved.
The Rest of the Story…
The so-call Soviet “transformation” got a kick start by President Reagan, heightened by personal
diplomatic skills and a negotiation style developed by experience. Try negotiating with Jack Warner
(Warner Bros. Studio Leader) when Reagan President of the Screen Actors Guild for seven years.
“After Jack Warner, the Russians can’t be any tougher.”
~Ronald Reagan
And try doing business Jesse “Big Daddy” Unruh when Reagan was Governor of California.
Negotiating with Gorbachev wouldn’t be Reagan’s first rodeo. People might call him the Great
Communicator; yet, as the Great Negotiator, what Reagan was able to produce once Mikhail Gorbachev
headed the Soviet Union was remarkable.
Starting with lengthy correspondence between the two leaders which was voluminous. Before their
first meeting, they had exchanged over 20 letters.
Then came Geneva, Reykjavik, Washington and Moscow: four major summits between two world
leaders. As Jack Matlock wrote, “We can only be astonished that, over the historically brief period from
1985 to 1988, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev managed to find a common language, to build,
step by frequently faltering step, a foundation of respect and trust, and on that basis to forge a common
purpose that allowed them to transform the political landscape of the entire world.”
In other words….”we won; they lost.”
© 2015 The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. All Rights Reserved.