The Downing Street Years, 1979-1990

REASSESSING THE SOVIET UNION

As 1983 drew on, the Soviets must have begun to realize that their game of manipulation and intimidation would soon be up. European governments were not prepared to fall into the trap opened by the Soviet proposal of a ‘nuclear-free zone’ for Europe. Preparations for the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles went ahead. In March President Reagan announced American plans for a Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) whose technological and financial implications for the USSR were devastating. Then, at the beginning of September the Soviets shot down a South Korean civilian airliner, killing 269 passengers. Not just the callousness but the incompetence of the Soviet regime, which could not even bring itself to apologize, was exposed. The foolish talk, based on a combination of western wishful thinking and Soviet disinformation, about the cosmopolitan, open-minded, cultured Mr Andropov as a Soviet leader who would make the world a safer place was silenced. Perhaps for the first time since the Second World War, the Soviet Union started to be described, even in liberal western circles, as sick and on the defensive.

There was a new chill in East-West relations. We had entered a dangerous phase. Both Ronald Reagan and I were aware of it. We knew that the strategy of matching the Soviets in military strength and beating them on the battlefield of ideas was succeeding and that it must go on. But we had to win the Cold War without running unnecessary risks in the meantime.

The Cold War itself had never really ended, at least from the Soviet side: there were merely variations of chill. At times, as in Korea and Vietnam, it had been far from cold. But it was always, as I never forgot, a conflict of one system against another. In this sense, the analysis of the communist ideologues was right: ultimately, our two opposing systems were incompatible — though, because both sides possessed the means of nuclear destruction, we had to make the adjustments and compromises required to live together. What we in the West had to do now was to learn as much as we could about the people and the system which confronted us and then to have as much contact with those living under that system as was compatible with our continued security. In a cold as in a hot war it pays to know the enemy — not least because at some time in the future you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend.

Such was the thinking which lay behind my decision to arrange a seminar at Chequers on Thursday 8 September 1983 to pick the brains of experts on the Soviet Union. The difficulty of tapping into outside thinking even in our own open democratic system of government shows just why closed totalitarian systems are so sluggish and mediocre. I had been used to wide-ranging seminars from our days in Opposition and had always found them stimulating and educative. But instead of the best minds on the Soviet system I now found myself presented with a list of the best minds in the Foreign Office, which was not quite the same thing. I minuted on the original list of suggested participants:

Back to the drawing board.

In fact, by the time the seminar went ahead I felt that we did have the right people and some first-class papers. The latter covered almost all of the factors we would have to take into account in the years ahead in dealing with the Soviets and their system. We discussed the Soviet economy, its technological inertia and the consequences of that, the impact of religious issues, Soviet military doctrine and expenditure on defence, and the benefits and costs to the Soviet Union of their control over eastern Europe. The one issue which, in retrospect, we underestimated — though it figured briefly — was the nationality question, failure to solve which would ultimately lead to the break-up of the Soviet Union itself. Perhaps for me the most useful paper was one which described and analysed the power structure of the Soviet state, and which put flesh on the bones of what I had already learnt in Opposition from Robert Conquest.

Of course, the purpose of this seminar was not ultimately academic: it was to provide me with the information on which to shape policy towards the Soviet Union and the eastern bloc in the months and years ahead. There were always — right up to the last days of the Soviet Union — two opposite outlooks among the Sovietologists.

At the risk of over-simplification, these were as follows. On the one hand, there were those who played down the differences between the western and Soviet systems and who were generally drawn from political analysis and systems analysis. They were the people who appeared night after night on our television screens analysing the Soviet Union in terms borrowed from liberal democracies. These were the optimists, in search of light at the end of even the longest tunnel, confident that somehow, somewhere, within the Soviet totalitarian system rationality and compromise were about to break out. I remember a remark of Bob Conquest’s that the trouble with systems analysis is that if you analyse the systems of a horse and a tiger, you find them pretty much the same: but it would be a great mistake to treat a tiger like a horse. On the other hand, there were those — mainly the historians — who grasped that totalitarian systems are different in kind, not just degree, from liberal democracies and that approaches relevant to the one are irrelevant to the other. These analysts argued that a totalitarian system generates a different kind of political leader from a democratic one and that the ability of any one individual to change that system is almost negligible.

My own view was much closer to the second than to the first of these analyses, but with one very important difference. I always believed that our western system would ultimately triumph, if we did not throw our advantages away, because it rested on the unique, almost limitless, creativity and vitality of individuals. Even a system like that of the Soviets, which set out to crush the individual, could never totally succeed in doing so, as was shown by the Solzhenitsyns, Sakharovs, Bukovskys, Ratushinskayas and thousands of other dissidents and refuseniks. This also implied that at some time the right individual could challenge even the system which he had used to attain power. For this reason, unlike many who otherwise shared my approach to the Soviet Union, I was convinced that we must seek out the most likely person in the rising generation of Soviet leaders and then cultivate and sustain him, while recognizing the clear limits of our power to do so. That is why those who subsequently considered that I was led astray from my original approach to the Soviet Union because I was dazzled by Mr Gorbachev were wrong. I spotted him because I was searching for someone like him. And I was confident that such a person could exist, even within that totalitarian structure, because I believed that the spirit of the individual could never ultimately be crushed in the Kremlin any more than in the Gulag.

At the time of my Chequers seminar, although as I have explained East-West relations were worsening — and would become worse still when the Soviets pulled out of arms control talks in Geneva in response to the stationing of Cruise and Pershing missiles — it did seem that there would soon be important changes in the Soviet leadership. Mr Andropov, though he was no liberal, did undoubtedly want to revive the Soviet economy, which was in fact in a far worse state than any of us realized at the time. In order to do this he wanted to cut back bureaucracy and improve efficiency. Although he had inherited a top leadership which he could not instantly change, the high average age of the Politburo would present him with the opportunity of filling vacancies with those amenable to his objectives. There were already doubts about Andropov’s health. If he lived for just a few more years, however, it seemed likely that the leadership would pass to a new generation. The two main contenders appeared to be Grigory Romanov and Mikhail Gorbachev. I asked for all the information we had about these two. It was not very much and a good deal was vague and anecdotal. It was soon obvious to me, however, that — attractive as was the idea of seeing a Romanov back in the Kremlin — there would probably be other unpleasant consequences. Romanov as First Secretary of the Communist Party in Leningrad had won a reputation for efficiency but also as a hardline Marxist which, like many of the sort, he combined with an extravagant lifestyle. And I confess that when I read about those priceless crystal glasses from the Hermitage being smashed at the celebration of his daughter’s wedding some of the attraction of the name was lost as well.

Of Mr Gorbachev what little we knew seemed modestly encouraging. He was clearly the best educated member of the Politburo, not that anybody would have described this group of elderly soldiers and bureaucrats as intellectuals. He had acquired a reputation for being open-minded; but of course this might be just a matter of style. He had risen steadily through the Party under Khrushchev, Brezhnev and now Andropov, of whom he was clearly a special proté gé; but that might well be a sign of conformity rather than talent. Nevertheless, I heard favourable reports of him from Pierre Trudeau in Canada later that month. I began to take special notice when his name was mentioned in reports on the Soviet Union.

VISIT TO HUNGARY

For the moment, however, relations with the Soviets were so bad that direct contact with them was almost impossible. It seemed to me that it was through eastern Europe that we would have to work. The Deputy Prime Minister of Hungary, Mr Marjai, had come to see me in March, before the general election, and had renewed an invitation from his Government for me to visit Hungary. I had been fascinated by what he told me about the Hungarian ‘economic experiment’. At one point Mr Marjai, having noted the importance of profits and incentives, declared that it was not for the government to hand out money because the government did not have money. I commented that these remarks could have been made in one of my own speeches.

Hungary was the choice for my first visit as Prime Minister to a Warsaw Pact country for several reasons. The Hungarians had gone furthest along the path of economic reform, although they were anxious to describe it as anything but capitalism. A certain amount of liberalization had occurred, though outright dissent was punished. The strategy of Já nos Ká dá r, officially First Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party but in fact unchallenged leader, was summed up in the telling if hardly original slogan, ‘he who is not against us is with us.’ He used economic links with the West to provide his people with a tolerable standard of living while constantly asserting Hungary’s loyalty to the Warsaw Pact, socialism and the Soviet Union: a necessary consideration, given that some 60,000 Soviet troops had been ‘temporarily’ stationed in Hungary since 1948. By this time Mr Kâdâr seemed to be regarded with some respect, perhaps even affection, by many Hungarians because he was credited with avoiding a repetition of the events of 1956, while allowing a gradual process of reform to continue. Although he himself had been tortured by his comrades, his own past included the incidents of villainy which marked the careers of all that generation of old communist leaders: he had been responsible for the torture and trial of Cardinal Mindszenty, the execution of his friend, Foreign minister Rajk, and the betrayal of the Revolution of 1956. However, he denied to me personally that he had had any responsibility for the execution of Imre Nagy, the reformist communist leader; indeed he said he had obtained an undertaking from the Soviets that Nagy would be allowed to live. In any case, the fact that Kâdâr had been in power for so long meant that he had come to know the Soviets and their thinking better than any other eastern European leader. In particular, he knew Mr Andropov, who had been the Soviet Ambassador in Budapest at the time of the 1956 uprising, and, we believed, remained close to him. I hoped that he would report back to the Soviet leader what I had to say.

I stepped off the plane at 10 o’clock on the night of Thursday 2 February 1984 to be met by the Hungarian Prime Minister, Mr Lâ zâ r, and then walked across the thick snow to inspect a floodlit Guard of Honour. My first official engagement the next morning was a private discussion with Mr Lâ zâ r, a self-effacing functionary who gave every sign of loyalty to the communist system. But what he had to say showed the roots of that loyalty. He warned me that the worst possible thing I could do on my visit was to cast doubt on Hungary’s remaining part of the socialist bloc. The Hungarians had been concerned at what Vice-President George Bush had said to this effect in Vienna after making a successful visit to the country. I realized that formal adherence to the Soviet system was the price of the limited reforms they had been able to make. I immediately said that I understood and I was careful then and later to keep my word.

Later that morning I saw Mr Kâ dâ r. He had only four more years left in power. But he was still vigorous and very much in charge. He was a square-faced, large-boned, healthy complexioned man with an air of easy authority and an apparently reasonable frame of mind in discussion. He did not rely, as so many other communist leaders did, on serried ranks of advisers and we were accompanied only by interpreters.

The main message I tried to get across was that the West and President Reagan personally were genuinely seeking disarmament. What we wanted was to preserve our own security, but at a lower level of weaponry, particularly nuclear weaponry. I told Mr Kâdâr that I knew from President Reagan, who was a close friend, just how personally hurt he had been by an earlier response to an attempt to get a better understanding with the Soviet Union. I recalled the tone in which President Reagan had spoken, when the two of us were walking in the garden of the United States Embassy in Paris, about a personal letter he had written in his own hand to President Brezhnev telling him of America’s desire for peace. He awaited the reply eagerly. It took a long time to come. And when it did, it consisted of just the standard, official typed letter, short and dismissive. Since then, I added, President Reagan had indeed been increasing the military strength of the United States but he wanted relations between NATO and the Warsaw Pact improved.

I went on to try to gain a clearer picture from Mr Kâdâr of the situation in the USSR. He told me about the personalities of the Soviet leaders he had known: as he put it ‘the Russians are individuals too’. Khrushchev was impulsive. Mr Kádár had told him that he was like an old Bolshevik — instead of saying ‘Good Morning’, he tended to punch you in the stomach. Brezhnev he described as very emotional. Andropov was different again. He described him as very tough and calculating, but someone who was capable of listening. He confirmed that Andropov was ill, but said that he was mentally intact and never stopped working. He also told me that his condition was improving but that the Hungarians were crossing their fingers for him. He added that the Soviet leadership was becoming stronger and younger people were entering it, that they wanted peace and were prepared to have talks about it. Of course, this picture of life in the Kremlin could hardly be taken at face value, given Mr Ká dá r’s long association with Mr Andropov. And given that Andropov died six days later, what he told me about the latter’s health was either wildly optimistic or a diplomatic lie. But his insights were interesting nonetheless.

So too was my first experience of what life in a communist country was like for ordinary people. On Saturday morning I visited Budapest’s large central covered market, talked to stall holders and shoppers and bought honey, pimentos and spices. Huge friendly crowds gathered, in spite of the intense cold. The market was better stocked than I imagined it would be. But what remains in my mind even to this day was the warm, even passionate, welcome from the crowd of shoppers. It was not just that I was a western head of government that evoked this, but my reputation as a strong anti-communist political leader — a reputation further burnished internationally by the Falklands War two years before and even by the Soviet attacks on me as the Iron Lady. I responded warmly to the crowd and, on my return to London, found that several journalists were reporting my discovery that ‘communists were human beings too.’ What I had in fact discovered — or rather had confirmed — was that human beings in communist countries were not in fact communists at all but retained a thirst for liberty.

I was also struck by the people’s pride in the old Hungary — which has since become the basis for the new post-communist one. At Szentendre I visited the local museum and art gallery which had a valuable collection of porcelain. I was shown round by a distinguished elderly curator, wearing well-cut but worn clothes, and immaculately polished but creased shoes. He had that indefinable air of someone who has known better days, as indeed he had. He was an aristocrat who had lost his property, but at the time of the communist revolution, rather than go into exile, he had remained to pass on his extraordinary knowledge of Hungarian history and culture to a new generation, who might otherwise forget it. Both from what he told me then of his country’s past and what I had noticed earlier in my discussions with Mr Ká dá r, all Hungarians — even the communist rulers — had a strong sense of their country’s identity.

The one surprise — and disappointment — of my visit was how far even Hungary was from a free economy. There were some small businesses, but they were not allowed to grow beyond a certain size. The main emphasis of Hungary’s economic reforms was not on increasing private ownership of land or investment but rather on private or co-operative use of state-owned facilities. I visited a housing project at Szentendre in which the British firm, Wimpey, was involved. I found, on asking the people that I met there, that though they could buy their own flats they could not sell them freely on the market but only back to the state — more or less the same policy, it must be said, that the Labour Party in Britain had adopted towards the sale of council houses.

I reported my impressions in a message to President Reagan:

In retrospect, my Hungarian visit was the first foray in what became a distinctive British diplomacy towards the captive nations of eastern Europe. The first step was to open greater economic and commercial links with the existing regimes, making them less dependent upon the closed COMECON system. Later we were to put more stress on human rights. And, finally, as the Soviet control of eastern Europe began to decay, we made internal political reforms the condition of western help. My visit to Hungary which began this successful diplomatic strategy had turned out to be altogether more significant than I could have imagined.

MOSCOW: ANDROPOV’S FUNERAL

Just a few days after my return from Hungary Mr Andropov was dead. Nevertheless the funeral, to which I decided to go, would give me the opportunity to meet the man who to our surprise emerged as the new Soviet leader, Mr Konstantin Chernenko. We had thought that Mr Chernenko was too old, too ill and too closely connected with Mr Brezhnev and his era to succeed to the leadership — and as events turned out we were more astute than his colleagues in the Politburo. But at least western commentators were unlikely to portray this ageing time-server as heralding an overnight transformation of totalitarianism into liberal democracy.

My party landed at Moscow Airport at 9.30 p.m. on Monday 13 February. It was bitterly cold and as I trod gingerly around the ice patches I wished that I was wearing a thick Russian fur coat. I spent the night at our embassy — a magnificent house, facing the Kremlin across the Moskva river, which was constructed at the end of the last century for a Ukrainian sugar magnate. (Later, when we would otherwise have had to give it up at the end of the lease, I did a deal with Mr Gorbachev for us to keep our splendid building in exchange for the Soviets keeping their current embassy in Britain when that lease expired. One of the few points on which the Foreign Office and I agreed was the need for British embassies to be architecturally imposing and provided with fine pictures and furniture.)

The day of the funeral was bright, clear and if anything even colder than when I arrived. At these occasions visiting dignitaries did not have seats: we had to stand for several hours in a specially reserved enclosure. Later I met the new Soviet leader for a short private meeting at which he read rapidly, stumbling over his words from time to time, from a prepared text. He was accompanied by the Soviet Foreign minister, Mr Gromyko. It was a formal affair, covering all the old ground of disarmament issues. I was unimpressed.

With long hours of standing I was glad that Robin Butler had persuaded me that I should wear fur-lined boots, rather than my usual high heels. They had been expensive. But when I met Mr Chernenko the thought crossed my mind that they would probably come in useful again soon.

VISIT OF THE GORBACHEVS TO BRITAIN

I now had to consider the next step in my strategy of gaining closer relations — on the right terms — with the Soviet Union. Clearly, there must be more personal contact with the Soviet leaders. Geoffrey Howe wanted us to extend an invitation to Mr Chernenko to come to Britain but I said that it was too early to do this. We needed to see more about where the new Soviet leader was heading first. But I was keen to invite others and accordingly invitations went to several senior Soviet figures, including Mr Gorbachev. It quickly appeared that Mr Gorbachev was indeed keen to come on what would be his first visit to a European capitalist country and wanted to do so soon. By now we had learned more about his background and that of his wife, Raisa, who, unlike the wives of other leading Soviet politicians, was often seen in public and was an articulate, highly educated and attractive woman. I decided that the Gorbachevs should both come to Chequers, which has just the right country house atmosphere conducive to good conversation. I regarded the meeting as potentially of great significance. Indeed, before their arrival I held a further seminar with Soviet experts to cover the issues and work out the approach I would take.

The Gorbachevs drove down from London on the morning of Sunday 16 December, arriving in time for lunch. Over drinks in the Great Hall Mr Gorbachev told me how interested he had been to see the farm land on the way to Chequers and we compared notes about our countries’ different agricultural systems. This had been his responsibility for a number of years and he had apparently achieved some modest progress in reforming the collective farms, but up to 30 per cent of the crops were lost because of failures of distribution.

Raisa Gorbachev too was making her first visit to western Europe and she knew only a little English — as far as I could tell her husband knew none; but she was dressed in a smart western style outfit, a well-tailored grey suit with a white stripe — just the sort I could have worn myself, I thought. She had a philosophy degree and had indeed been an academic. Our advice at this time was that Mrs Gorbachev was a committed, hardline Marxist; her obvious interest in Hobbes’s Leviathan, which she took down from the shelf in the library, might possibly have confirmed that. But I later learned from her — after I had left office — that her grandfather had been one of those millions of kulaks killed during the forced collectivization of agriculture under Stalin. Her family had no good reason for illusions about communism.

We went into lunch — I was accompanied by a rather large team of Willie Whitelaw, Geoffrey Howe, Michael Heseltine, Michael Jopling, Malcolm Rifkind (Minister of State at the Foreign Office), Paul Channon and advisers; he and Raisa by Mr Zamyatin, the Soviet Ambassador, and the quietly impressive Mr Alexander Yakovlev, the adviser who was to play a large part in the reforms of the ‘Gorbachev years’. It was not long before the conversation turned from trivialities — for which neither Mr Gorbachev nor I had any taste — to a vigorous two-way debate. In a sense, the argument has continued ever since and is taken up whenever we meet; and as it goes to the heart of what politics is really about, I never tire of it.

He told me about the economic programmes of the Soviet system, the switch from big industrial plant to smaller projects and ‘businesses’, the ambitious irrigation schemes and the way in which the industrial planners adapted industrial capacity to the labour force to avoid unemployment. I asked whether this might not all be easier if reform were attempted on a free enterprise basis, with the provision of incentives and a free hand for local enterprises to run their own show, rather than everything being directed from the centre. Mr Gorbachev denied indignantly that everything in the USSR was run from the centre. I took another tack. I explained that in the western system everyone — including the poorest — ultimately received more than they would from a system which depended simply on redistribution. Indeed, in Britain we were attempting to cut taxes in order to increase incentives so that we could create wealth, competing in world markets. I said I had no wish to have the power to direct everyone where he should work and what he or she should receive.

Mr Gorbachev, however, insisted on the superiority of the Soviet system. Not only did it produce higher growth rates, but if I came to the USSR I would see how the Soviet people lived — ‘joyfully’. If this were so, I countered, why did the Soviet authorities not allow people to leave the country as easily as they could leave Britain?

In particular, I criticized the constraints placed on Jewish emigration to Israel. He claimed that 80 per cent of those who had expressed the wish to leave the Soviet Union had been able to do so. I said that this was not my information. But he repeated the Soviet line, which I did not believe either, that those forbidden to leave had been working in areas relating to national security. I knew there was no purpose in persisting now; but the point had been registered. The Soviets had to know that every time we met their treatment of the refuseniks would be thrown back at them.

We now left the dining-room and had coffee in the main sitting-room. All of my team except Geoffrey Howe, my private secretary Charles Powell, and the interpreter left. Denis showed Mrs Gorbachev around the house.

If at this stage I had paid attention only to the content of Mr Gorbachev’s remarks — largely the standard Marxist line — I would have to conclude that he was cast in the usual communist mould. But his personality could not have been more different from the wooden ventriloquism of the average Soviet apparatchik. He smiled, laughed, used his hands for emphasis, modulated his voice, followed an argument through and was a sharp debater. He was self-confident and though he larded his remarks with respectful references to Mr Chernenko, from whom he brought a not very illuminating written message, he did not seem in the least uneasy about entering into controversial areas of high politics. This was even more so in the hours of discussion which followed. He never read from a prepared brief, but referred to a small notebook of manuscript jottings. Only on matters of pronunciation of foreign names did he refer to his colleagues for advice. 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. I found myself liking him.

The most practical piece of business I had to discuss on this occasion was arms control. It was an important moment. Secretary of State Shultz and Foreign minister Gromyko were due to meet early in the New Year in Geneva to see whether the stalled arms talks could be revived. I had found in talking to the Hungarians that the best basis on which to discuss arms control in a relatively serene atmosphere was to state that our two opposing systems must live side by side, with less hostility and lower levels of armaments. I did the same again now.

I added that as perhaps the last generation of politicians that remembered the Second World War, we had a bounden duty to ensure that no such conflict would occur again. On this basis our detailed discussions began: two things quickly became clear. The first was just how well briefed Mr Gorbachev was about the West. He commented on my speeches, which he had clearly read. He quoted Lord Palmerston’s dictum that Britain had no eternal friends or enemies but only eternal interests. He had been closely following leaked conversations from the American National Security Council, which had appeared in the American press, to the effect that the US had an interest in not allowing the Soviet economy to emerge from stagnation.

At one point, with a touch of theatre, he pulled out a full-page diagram from the New York Times, illustrating the explosive power of the weapons of the two superpowers compared with the explosive power available in the Second World War. He was well versed in the fashionable arguments then raging about the prospect of a ‘nuclear winter’ resulting from a nuclear exchange. I was not much moved by all this. I said that what interested me more than the concept of the nuclear winter was avoiding the incineration, death and destruction which would precede it. But the purpose of nuclear weapons was, in any case, to deter war not to wage it. They had given us a greater degree of protection from war than we had ever known before. Yet this could — and must — now be achieved at a lower level of weaponry. Mr Gorbachev argued that if both sides continued to pile up weapons this could lead to accidents or unforeseen circumstances and with the present generation of weapons the time for decision-making could be counted in minutes. As he put it, in one of the more obscure Russian proverbs, ‘once a year even an unloaded gun can go off.’

The other point which emerged was the Soviets’ distrust of the Reagan Administration’s intentions in general and of their plans for a Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) in particular. I emphasized on more than one occasion that President Reagan could be trusted and that the last thing he would ever want was war. I spoke, as I had in Hungary, about the desire for peace which lay behind his earlier letter to President Brezhnev. In this he was continuing something which was characteristic of America. The United States had never shown any desire for world domination. When, just after the war, they had enjoyed a monopoly of nuclear weapons, they had never used that monopoly to threaten others. The Americans had always used their power sparingly and shown outstanding generosity to other countries. I made it clear that, while I was strongly in favour of the Americans going ahead with SDI, I did not share President Reagan’s view that it was a means of ridding the world entirely of nuclear weapons. This seemed to me an unattainable dream — you could not disinvent the knowledge of how to make such weapons. But I also reminded Mr Gorbachev that the Soviet Union had been the first country to develop an anti-satellite (ASAT) capability. It was clearly not feasible to think in terms of stopping research into space-based systems. The critical stage came when the results of that research were translated into the production of weapons on a large scale.

As the discussion wore on it was clear that the Soviets were indeed very concerned about SDI. They wanted it stopped at almost any price. I knew that to some degree I was being used as a stalking horse for President Reagan. I was also aware that I was dealing with a wily opponent who would ruthlessly exploit any divisions between me and the Americans. So I bluntly stated — and then repeated at the end of the meeting — that he should understand that there was no question of dividing us: we would remain staunch allies of the United States. My frankness on this was particularly important because of my equal frankness about what I saw as the President’s unrealistic dream of a nuclear-free world.

The talks were due to end at 4.30 p.m. to allow Mr Gorbachev to be back for an early evening reception at the Soviet Embassy, but he said that he wanted to continue. It was 5.50 p.m. when he left, having introduced me to another pearl of Russian popular wisdom to the effect that, ‘Mountain folk cannot live without guests any more than they can live without air. But if the guests stay longer than necessary, they choke.’ As he took his leave, I hoped that I had been talking to the next Soviet leader. For, as I subsequently told the press, this was a man with whom I could do business.

SDI

President Reagan’s Strategic Defence Initiative, about which the Soviets and Mr Gorbachev were already so alarmed, was to prove central to the West’s victory in the Cold War. Although, as I have noted, I differed sharply from the President’s view that SDI was a major step towards a nuclear weapon-free world — something which I believed was neither attainable nor even desirable — I had no doubt about the Tightness of his commitment to press ahead with the programme. Looking back, it is now clear to me that Ronald Reagan’s original decision on SDI was the single most important of his presidency.

In Britain, I kept tight personal control over decisions relating to SDI and our reactions to it. I knew that irreparable harm could have been done to our relations with the United States had the wrong line or even tone been adopted. I was also passionately interested in the technical developments and strategic implications. This was one of those areas in which only a firm grasp of the scientific concepts involved allows the right policy decisions to be made. Laid back generalists from the Foreign Office — let alone the ministerial muddlers in charge of them — could not be relied upon. By contrast, I was in my element.

When I was Leader of the Opposition I had had several briefings from military experts about the technical possibilities of SDI and indeed about the advances already made by the Soviet Union in laser and anti-satellite technology. These left me fearful that they were already moving ahead of us. I collected and read articles from Aviation Weekly and the scientific press. Consequently, when I began to read reports of the new Reagan Administration’s thinking in this area I immediately understood that we too needed access to the best expert advice in order to assess the potentially revolutionary implications. Neither the Foreign Office nor the Ministry of Defence took SDI sufficiently seriously. Time and again I had to press for papers which had been promised and these, when they came, consistently underrated the technical possibilities opened up by the research and the American Administration’s determination to press ahead with it. In fact, the only time I found much enthusiasm was when there appeared to be possibilities — which, by contrast, the MoD significantly exaggerated — for British firms to win large contracts for the research.

In formulating our approach to SDI, there were four distinct elements which I bore in mind. The first was the science itself. The American aim in SDI was to develop a new and much more effective defence against ballistic missiles. This would be what was called a ‘multi-layered’ Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD), using both ground and space-based weapons. This concept of defence rested on the ability to attack incoming ballistic missiles at all stages of their flight, from the boost phase when the missile and all its warheads and decoys were together — the best moment — right up to the point of re-entry of the earth’s atmosphere on its way to the target. Scientific advances opened up new possibilities to make such defence far more effective than the existing Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) defences. The main advances which appeared likely were in the use of kinetic energy weapons (which were non-nuclear and which, when launched at high speed against the nuclear missile, would smash it) and in the use of laser weapons. Even more challenging than the development of these different elements of SDI, however, was the requirement for an enormously powerful and sophisticated computer capability to direct and coordinate the system as a whole. Such an undertaking would not only require huge sums of money but also test the ultimate creative abilities of the western and communist systems competing for it.

The second element to be considered was the existing international agreements limiting the deployment of weapons in space and ABM systems. The 1972 ABM Treaty, as amended by a 1974 Protocol, allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to deploy one static ABM system with up to one hundred launchers in defence of either an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) silo field or the national capital. The precise implications of the treaty for the research, testing, development and deployment of new kinds of ABM system were subject to heated legalistic dispute. The Soviets had started out with a ‘broad interpretation’ of the treaty which they narrowed when it later suited them. Within the American Administration there were those who pressed for a ‘broader than broad’ interpretation which would have placed almost no effective constraint on the development and deployment of SDI. The Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence always sought to urge the narrowest possible interpretation, which the Americans — rightly in my view — believed would have meant that SDI was stillborn. I always tried to steer away from this phraseology and made it clear in private and public that research on whether a system was viable could not be said to have been completed until it had been successfully tested. Underneath the jargon, this apparently technical point was really a matter of straight common sense. But it was to become the issue dividing the United States and the USSR at the Reykjavik summit and so assumed great importance.

The third element in the calculation was the relative strength of the two sides in Ballistic Missile Defence. Only the Soviet Union possessed a working ABM system (known as GALOSH) around Moscow, which they were currently up-grading. The Americans had never deployed an equivalent system. The United States assessed that the Soviets were spending in the order of $ 1 billion a year on their research programme of defence against ballistic missiles. Also the Soviets were further advanced in anti-satellite weapons. There was, therefore, a strong argument that the Soviets had already acquired an unacceptable advantage in this whole area.

The fourth element was the implications of SDI for deterrence. I started off with a good deal of sympathy for the thinking behind the ABM Treaty. This was that the more sophisticated and effective the defence against nuclear missiles, the greater the pressure to seek hugely expensive advances in nuclear weapons technology. I was always a believer in a slightly qualified version of the doctrine known as MAD — ‘mutually assured destruction’. The threat of (what I preferred to call) ‘unacceptable destruction’ which would follow from a nuclear exchange was such that nuclear weapons were an effective deterrent against not just nuclear but also conventional war. I had to consider whether SDI was likely to undermine that. On one argument, of course, it would. If any power believed that it had a completely effective shield against nuclear weapons it had, in theory, a greater temptation to use them. I knew — and post-war experience demonstrated beyond doubt — that the United States would never start a war by launching a first strike against the Soviet Union, whether it believed that it was secure from retaliation or not. The Soviets, by contrast, claimed to have no such confidence.

But I soon began to see that SDI would strengthen not weaken the nuclear deterrent. Unlike President Reagan and some other members of his Administration I never believed that SDI could offer one hundred per cent protection, but it would allow sufficient United States missiles to survive a first strike by the Soviets. Theoretically, the US would then be in a position to launch its own nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union. It follows that the Soviets would be far less likely to yield to the temptation to use nuclear weapons in the first place.

The decisive argument for me, however, was precisely the one which made me reject President Reagan’s vision of a nuclear weapon-free world. It was that you could not ultimately hold back research on SDI any more than you could prevent research into new kinds of offensive weapons. We had to be the first to get it. Science is unstoppable: it will not be stopped for being ignored. The deployment of SDI, just like the deployment of nuclear weapons, must be carefully controlled and negotiated. But research, which necessarily involved testing, must go ahead.

DISCUSSION OF SDI AT CAMP DAVID

It was the subject of SDI which dominated my talks with President Reagan and members of his Administration when I went to Camp David on Saturday 22 December 1984 to brief the Americans on my earlier talks with Mr Gorbachev. This was the first occasion on which I had heard President Reagan speaking about SDI. He did so with passion. He was at his most idealistic. He stressed that SDI would be a defensive system and that it was not his intention to obtain for the United States a unilateral advantage. Indeed, he said that if SDI succeeded he would be ready to internationalize it so that it was at the service of all countries, and he had told Mr Gromyko as much. He reaffirmed his long-term goal of getting rid of nuclear weapons entirely.

These remarks made me nervous. I was horrified to think that the United States would be prepared to throw away a hard-won lead in technology by making it internationally available. (Fortunately the Soviets never believed that he would.) But I did not raise this directly. Instead, I concentrated on my areas of agreement with the President. I said that it was essential to pursue the research, but that if this reached the point where a decision had to be made to produce and deploy weapons in space a very different situation would arise. Deployment would not be consistent either with the 1972 ABM Treaty or the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Both of these would have to be renegotiated. I also explained my concern about the possible intermediate effect of SDI on the doctrine of deterrence. I was worried that deployment of a Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system would be destabilizing and that while it was being constructed a pre-emptive first strike against it would become an attractive option. But I acknowledged that I might well not be fully informed of all the technical aspects and wanted to hear more. In all this I was keen to probe the Americans, not just in order to learn more of their intentions but to ensure that they had clearly thought through the implications of the steps they were now taking.

What I heard, now that we got down to discussion of the likely reality rather than the grand vision, was reassuring. President Reagan did not pretend that they yet knew where the research could finally lead. But he emphasized that — in addition to his earlier arguments in favour of SDI — keeping up with the United States would impose an economic strain on the Soviet Union. He argued that there had to be a practical limit as to how far the Soviet Government could push their people down the road of austerity. As so often, he had instinctively grasped the key to the whole question. What would the effects be of SDI on the Soviet Union? In fact, as he foresaw, the Soviets did recoil in the face of the challenge of SDI, finally renouncing the goal of military superiority which alone had given them the confidence to resist the demands for reform in their own system. But of course this still lay in the future.

What I wanted now was an agreed position on SDI to which both the President and I could lend our support, even though our long-term view of its potential was different. I had been thinking about this over the last few days and particularly on the long flight from Peking where I had been for the signing of the Joint Declaration on Hong Kong. I now jotted down, while talking to National Security Adviser Bud McFarlane, the four points which seemed to me to be crucial.

My officials then filled in the details. The President and I agreed a text which set out the policy.

The main section of my statement reads:

I subsequently learnt that George Shultz thought that I had secured too great a concession on the Americans’ part in the wording; but in fact it gave them and us a clear and defensible line and helped reassure the European members of NATO. A good day’s work.

VISIT TO WASHINGTON: FEBRUARY 1985

I again visited Washington in February 1985. Arms talks between the Americans and the Soviet Union had now resumed, but SDI remained a source of contention. I was to address a joint meeting of Congress on the morning of Wednesday 20 February and I brought with me from London as a gift a bronze statue of Winston Churchill, who had also many years before been honoured with such an invitation. I worked specially hard on this speech. I would use the Autocue for its delivery. I knew that Congress would have seen the ‘Great Communicator’ himself delivering faultless speeches and I would have a discriminating audience. So I resolved to practise speaking the text until I had got every intonation and emphasis right. (Speaking to Autocue, I should add, is a totally different technique to speaking from notes.) In fact, I borrowed President Reagan’s own Autocue and had it brought back to the British Embassy where I was staying. Harvey Thomas, who accompanied me, fixed it up and, ignoring any jetlag, I practised until 4 a.m. I did not go to bed, beginning the new working day with my usual black coffee and vitamin pills, then gave television interviews from 6.45 a.m., had my hair done and was ready at 10.30 to leave for the Capitol. I used my speech, which ranged widely over international issues, to give strong support for SDI. I had a terrific reception.

I regarded the quid pro quo for my strong public support of the President as being the right to be direct with him and members of his Administration in private. It was a little more awkward on this occasion for I had brought Geoffrey Howe and Michael Heseltine with me for my meeting and working lunch with the President, which made for a more stilted and less satisfactory conversation than on other occasions. (I did not bring them again.) But I went to the heart of what was worrying me. I told President Reagan that I thought it was important to avoid exaggerated rhetoric about SDI. We must not get into a situation where people were told that nuclear weapons were wicked, immoral and might soon be rendered unnecessary by the development of defensive systems. Otherwise the British public’s support for them would be eroded. I think that the President took this point. He, for his part, emphasized that SDI was not going to be a bargaining chip. The United States would not go to Geneva and offer to give up SDI research if the Russians reduced nuclear weapons by a certain amount. He was to prove as good as his word.

REYKJAVIK

The following month (March 1985) saw the death of Mr Chernenko and, with remarkably little delay, the succession of Mr Gorbachev to the Soviet leadership. Once again I attended a Moscow funeral: the weather was, if anything, even colder than at Yuri Andropov’s. Mr Gorbachev had a large number of foreign dignitaries to see. But I had almost an hour’s talk with him that evening in St Katherine’s Hall in the Kremlin. The atmosphere was more formal than at Chequers and the silent, sardonic presence of Mr Gromyko did not help. But I was able to explain to them the implications of the policy I had agreed with President Reagan the previous December at Camp David. It was clear that SDI was now the main preoccupation of the Soviets in arms control.

Mr Gorbachev brought, as we had expected, a new style to the Soviet Government. He spoke openly of the terrible state of the Soviet economy, though at this stage he was still relying on the methods associated with Mr Andropov’s drive for greater efficiency rather than radical reform. An example of this was the draconian measures he took against alcoholism. As the year wore on, however, there was no evidence of improvement in conditions in the Soviet Union. Indeed, as our new — and first-class — ambassador to Moscow, Bryan Cart-ledge, who had been my foreign affairs private secretary when I first became Prime Minister, pointed out in one of his first despatches, it was a matter of, ‘jam tomorrow and, meanwhile, no vodka today’.

A distinct chill entered into Britain’s relations with the Soviet Union as a result of expulsions which I authorized of Soviet officials who had been spying. The defection of Oleg Gordievsky, a former top KGB officer, meant that the Soviets knew how well informed we were about their activities. I had several meetings with Mr Gordievsky and had the highest regard for his judgement about events in the USSR. I repeatedly tried — without success — to have the Soviets release his family to join him in the West. (They eventually came after the failed coup in August 1991.)

In November President Reagan and Mr Gorbachev had their first meeting in Geneva. Not much of substance came out of it — the Soviets insisted on linking cuts in strategic nuclear weapons to an end to SDI research — but a good personal rapport quickly developed between the two leaders (though not, sadly, between their wives). There had been some concern expressed that President Reagan might be outmanoeuvred by his sharp-witted and younger Soviet counterpart. But he was not, which I found not at all surprising. For Ronald Reagan had had plenty of practice in his early years as President of the Screen Actors Guild in dealing with hard-headed trade union negotiations — and no one was more hard-headed than Mr Gorbachev.

During 1986 Mr Gorbachev showed great subtlety in playing on western public opinion by bringing forward tempting, but unacceptable, proposals on arms control. Relatively little was said by the Soviets on the link between SDI and cuts in nuclear weapons. But they were given no reason to believe that the Americans were prepared to suspend or stop SDI research. Late in the year it was agreed that President Reagan and Mr Gorbachev — with their Foreign ministers — should meet in Reykjavik, Iceland, to discuss substantive proposals.

In retrospect, the Reykjavik summit on that weekend of 11 and 12 October can be seen to have a quite different significance than most of the commentators at the time realized. A trap had been prepared for the Americans. Ever greater Soviet concessions were made during the summit: they agreed for the first time that the British and French deterrents should be excluded from the INF negotiations; and that cuts in strategic nuclear weapons should leave each side with equal numbers — rather than a straight percentage cut, which would have left the Soviets well ahead. They also made significant concessions on INF numbers. As the summit drew to an end President Reagan was proposing an agreement by which the whole arsenal of strategic nuclear weapons — bombers, long-range Cruise and ballistic missiles — would be halved within five years and the most powerful of these weapons, strategic ballistic missiles, eliminated altogether within ten. Mr Gorbachev was even more ambitious: he wanted the elimination of all strategic nuclear weapons by the end of the ten-year period.

But then suddenly, at the very end, the trap was sprung. President Reagan had conceded that during the ten-year period both sides would agree not to withdraw from the ABM Treaty, though development and testing compatible with the Treaty would be allowed. Mr Gorbachev said that the whole thing depended on confining SDI to the laboratory — a much tighter restriction that was likely to kill the prospect of an effective SDI. The President rejected the deal and the summit broke up. Its failure was widely portrayed as the result of the foolish intransigence of an elderly American President, obsessed with an unrealizable dream. In fact, President Reagan’s refusal to trade away SDI for the apparent near fulfilment of his dream of a nuclear-free world was crucial to the victory over communism. He called the Soviets’ bluff. The Russians may have scored an immediate propaganda victory when the talks broke down. But they had lost the game and I have no doubt that they knew it.[65] For they must have realized by now that they could not hope to match the United States in the competition for military technological supremacy and many of the concessions they made at Reykjavik proved impossible for them to retrieve.

My own reaction when I heard how far the Americans had been prepared to go was as if there had been an earthquake beneath my feet. I supported the idea of a 50 per cent reduction in strategic ballistic missiles over five years, but the President’s proposal to eliminate them altogether after ten years was a different matter. The whole system of nuclear deterrence which had kept the peace for forty years was close to being abandoned. Had the President’s proposals gone through, they would also have effectively killed off the Trident missile, forcing us to acquire a different system if we were to keep an independent nuclear deterrent. My intense relief that Soviet duplicity had finally caused these proposals to be withdrawn was balanced by a gnawing anxiety that they might well be put forward on some new occasion. I had always disliked the original INF ‘zero option’, because I felt that these weapons made up for western Europe’s unpreparedness to face a sudden, massive attack by the Warsaw Pact; I had gone along with it in the hope that the Soviets would never accept. But extending this approach more generally to all strategic ballistic missiles would have left the Soviets confronting western Europe with a huge superiority of conventional forces, chemical weapons and short-range missiles. It also undermined the credibility of deterrence: talk about eliminating strategic ballistic missiles (and possibly nuclear weapons altogether) at some point in the future raised doubts in people’s minds about whether the United States was prepared to use nuclear weapons in the present. Somehow I had to get the Americans back onto the firm ground of a credible policy of nuclear deterrence. I arranged to fly to the United States to see President Reagan.

FURTHER DISCUSSIONS OF NUCLEAR STRATEGY AT CAMP DAVID

I have never felt more conscious than in the preparation for this visit of how much hung on my relationship with the President. It seemed to me that we were poised between a remarkable success and a possible catastrophe. I received the fullest briefing from the military about the implications of a defence strategy involving the elimination of all ballistic missiles. It was argued in some quarters in the US Administration that NATO strategy would not be undermined by the elimination of strategic ballistic missiles, and that aircraft, Cruise missiles and nuclear artillery, in all of which it was thought the West had a superiority, would provide an even better deterrent. In fact, NATO’s whole strategy of flexible response — dependent as it was on a full range of possible military, including nuclear, responses to a Soviet attack — would have ceased to be viable. The so-called ‘Air Breathing Systems’ (Cruise missiles and bombers) were less certain to penetrate Soviet defences and generally more vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike. That would weaken their deterrent value. Europe would be dangerously exposed.

Just as important were the political considerations. To provide a credible British deterrent using Cruise missiles rather than Trident might be twice as expensive. Was it really likely that in an atmosphere full of talk of a world free of nuclear weapons we would ever obtain public support for such a programme? The more closely I examined the implications, the worse they were.

Percy Cradock (my Special Adviser on security matters), Charles Powell and I drafted and redrafted the arguments I would use with President Reagan. These must be logically coherent, persuasive, crisp and not too technical.

I flew into Washington on the afternoon of Friday 14 November. That evening I practised my arguments in meetings with George Schultz and Cap Weinberger. I saw George Bush for breakfast the following morning and then left for Camp David where I was met by President Reagan.

To my great relief I found that the President quickly understood why I was so deeply concerned about what had happened in Reykjavik. He agreed the draft statement which we had finalized after talking to George Shultz the previous day and which I subsequently issued at my press conference. This stated our policy on arms control after Reykjavik. It ran as follows:

I had reason to be well pleased.

PREPARATION FOR MOSCOW VISIT

It is easy to imagine what the effect of the Camp David statement must have been in Moscow. It meant the end of the Soviets’ hope of using SDI and President Reagan’s dream of a nuclear weapons-free world to advance their strategy of denuclearizing Europe, leaving us vulnerable to military blackmail and weakening the link between the American and European pillars of NATO. It also demonstrated that, whether they liked it or not, I was able to have some influence on President Reagan on fundamental issues of alliance policy. Mr Gorbachev, therefore, had as much reason to do business with me as I with him. Add to this the fact that the Soviets often preferred to deal with right-wing western governments, because they regarded them as hard-headed negotiators who would nonetheless keep a bargain when it has been reached, and that I had struck up such a good personal relationship with Mr Gorbachev at Chequers before he became leader, and it is no surprise that I was soon invited to Moscow.

I prepared myself very thoroughly. On Friday 27 February 1987 I held an all-day seminar on the Soviet Union at Chequers. The two opposing tendencies among Sovietologists, which I have mentioned earlier, were apparent on this occasion. The enthusiasts stressed the scope and energy of Mr Gorbachev’s reforms. The sceptics emphasized the orthodox communist objectives which Mr Gorbachev was pursuing and the limited effect even these modest measures of reform were having. On balance, the sceptics probably had the better of the argument. The view was that fundamental change was not on the agenda, only limited change which fully preserved the powers and guiding role of the Communist Party. Although Mr Gorbachev might want to enjoy the fruits of the incentive system, he could not take the risk of adopting it. Reform would, therefore, be conducted firmly within the bounds of the socialist system. In retrospect, it is possible to see that this analysis was flawed by a confusion between the intentions of Mr Gorbachev, which at any particular time were limited both by his communist way of thinking and by the circumstances of the moment, and the effects of his reforms, which unleashed forces that would sweep away the Soviet system and the Soviet state.

The seminar was only one aspect of my preparations. I also read through in detail the — usually long and indigestible — speeches which Mr Gorbachev had been making. Even though the political language was so different from that which I would have used, I felt that something new was emerging from them. Of these, by far the most important to date was that which he delivered to the Central Committee of the Communist Party towards the end of January 1987. In this he placed a new emphasis on democratizing the Party and, at the local level, the Soviet body politic itself: the forthcoming Soviet local elections would allow the nomination of more candidates than seats available in a small number of multi-member constituencies. This would prove to be the beginning — though only the beginning — of the replacement of democratic centralism by real democracy in the Soviet Union.

Soviet politics worked on the basis of slogans. These could not be taken at face value nor given a western interpretation. But, equally, they had to be taken seriously. The slogans under Mr Gorbachev were definitely changing. Perestroika(restructuring) had taken over from uskorenie(acceleration), reflecting his understanding that the fundamental problems of the Soviet economy required not just more of the same — central controls, discipline, efficiency drives — but real radical change. Similarly, the new talk of glasnost(openness) was based on an understanding that, unless the facts were known and at least some of the truth told about what was going on, conditions could never improve.

In the two years since Mr Gorbachev had become Soviet leader, the political reforms were already more evident than the economic benefits. Although there was precious little evidence of the Soviet economy working better, there was far more discussion of the need for political freedom and democracy. Mr Gorbachev had gone to great lengths to win over some of the leading dissidents, particularly Professor Sakharov, to support his programme. The truth about the horrors of Stalin — though not yet of Lenin — began to be published. The Soviets started to show greater sensitivity on matters of human rights, allowing more — though by no means all — Soviet Jews who wished to emigrate to do so. Whatever Mr Gorbachev’s long-term goals, there was no doubt in my mind that he was making the Soviet Union something better than a ‘prison house of nations’ and we ought to support him in his efforts.

Such support was certainly needed. Although there was a freer political atmosphere and the improvements in political conditions endeared him to some of the intellectuals, ordinary Soviet citizens saw no real material progress. And though many members of the Politburo and the Central Committee had been replaced, it did not follow that all these replacements necessarily supported Mr Gorbachev and reform. There were worries too about the attitude of the army and the KGB. All this posed the Soviet leader with a dilemma — and created a dilemma for us too.

Above all, the West had to ensure that Mr Gorbachev’s reforms led to practical improvements in our own security. Were the Soviets prepared to reduce their military threat? Were they prepared to withdraw from Afghanistan? Would they end their policy of international subversion? We must press them on all these matters, but not in such as way that Mr Gorbachev’s reform programme was discredited and so reversed, either by him or a hardline successor.

In the course of March I welcomed a stream of visitors to No. 10 and Chequers to brief me before my visit. The Chief Rabbi came to see me about the plight of the refuseniks. Peter Walker gave me his own impressions of the Soviet Union, gained on a recent visit. I discussed arrangements for the trip with the Soviet Ambassador. General Abrahamson, the Pentagon’s Director of the SDI programme, came to Chequers to give me an up-to-date account of the state of research and the strategic issues. Oleg Gordievsky gave me the benefit of his analysis. So did the human rights activist, Yuri Orlov.

I was not going to Moscow as the representative of the West, let alone as a ‘broker’ between the USSR and the United States, but it was clearly very important that other western leaders should know the line I intended to take and that I should gauge their sentiments beforehand. I knew President Reagan’s mind and had, I knew, his confidence. I therefore limited myself to sending him a lengthy message. There was only one specific policy point at issue which I felt it necessary to raise. This was a proposal, which I had made to the Americans and which they were studying but were not so far prepared to accept, that the United States should give the Soviets an assurance about the shape and time-scale of SDI — what was known in the jargon as ‘predictability’. My argument was that since it would take a number of years before the decision about the deployment of SDI need be reached there was no point in alarming the Soviets unnecessarily now.

I also arranged to meet President Mitterrand and then Chancellor Kohl on Monday 23 March. The French President — socialist or not — has the use of a number of delightful châ teaux. He also seems to have access to the best chefs in the French Republic. Lunch with him at the Châ teau de Benouville in Normandy was no exception. And of course each dish had to have a traditional Norman flavour, with sauces of cider or calvados and some of that aromatic Camembert against which the health-conscious bureaucrats of the European Community were to labour in vain. President Mitterrand’s attitude to the Soviets was very like my own. He believed, as I did, that Mr Gorbachev was prepared to go a long way to change the system. One of his shrewdest and most perceptive observations was that the Soviet leader would find that ‘when you change the form, you are on the way to changing the substance.’ But the French President knew too that the Soviets respected toughness. He said that we must resist the attempt to denuclearize Europe. I warmly agreed.

Nor did I find any disagreement with Chancellor Kohl. The division of Germany, past history and the existence of large numbers of Germans living as minorities throughout the Soviet bloc gave this very German leader a clear insight into the USSR. Moreover, as he reminded me, West Germany had for many years been the main target of Soviet propaganda. He had doubts about whether Mr Gorbachev would survive: he was running a high-risk policy. Nor should we assume that his reforms — which Chancellor Kohl saw as intended to modernize a communist system, not create a democratic system — could be carried through without suffering. Helmut Kohl always had a strong sense of history and he reminded me that from the time of Peter the Great the reforms of Russian leaders had not been without their victims.

My last public pronouncement about the Soviet Union before I left had been my speech to the Conservative Central Council in Torquay on Saturday 21 March. It would have been easy to tone down my criticism of the Soviet regime. But I was not prepared to do so. Too often in the past western leaders had placed the search for trouble-free relations with foreign autocrats above plain speaking of the truth. I said:

VISIT TO THE SOVIET UNION: MARCH-APRIL 1987

I left Heathrow for Moscow just after midday on Saturday 28 March. I always used a special VC10 for these flights. A dozen of these aircraft were permanently based at Brize Norton and two or three of them had been adapted for ministerial overseas visits. The VC10 was not a modern aircraft and was rather noisy. But it was pleasant to fly in and had two big advantages. One was that there was plenty of space for me and my staff. There were tables to work at. There was a separate compartment for me to get an hour or two’s sleep when allowed respite from writing speeches and reading papers. There was even room for journalists towards the rear of the aircraft. The other advantage was the RAF staff who provided us with delicious food, drink and friendly service.

When I landed, there was an official welcoming ceremony which began at Moscow Airport, where I was presented with a large bouquet of red roses which proved remarkably photogenic against my plain black coat and fox-fur hat. We then sped down the centre of the road, reserved for high officials and their guests, to the Kremlin. There I had to make my way down the length of St George’s Hall, under its glittering crystal chandeliers, to meet Mr and Mrs Gorbachev and to exchange formal pleasantries. I cannot deny that I enjoyed the splendour of these occasions, but I sometimes reflected that the traditional formalities were intended to clothe in the trappings of legitimacy regimes that had neither historic nor democratic credentials.

On Sunday morning I was driven fifty miles out from Moscow to the Russian Orthodox Monastery at Zagorsk. I knew that this was a very important time for Orthodox Christians in Russia who, the following year, would be celebrating the millennium of their Church. The Soviet authorities had allowed some churches to reopen and the numbers of seminarians to increase a little. There was also a slight increase in the amount of religious literature allowed. As the Khrushchev years showed — when religious persecution sharply increased, even though in other areas liberalization occurred — there was no guarantee that the pressure on Christians would be removed just because of glasnost and perestroika. I felt it important that I should show solidarity.

Crowds were waiting outside the gates of the monastery when I arrived. Against the wishes of the communist Minister for Religious Affairs (sic) who accompanied me, I insisted on getting out of the car to speak to them. Then I got back in and we were taken into the grounds of the monastery itself. I had never attended an Orthodox liturgy. I was struck by the richness of the singing, the clouds of incense, the gorgeous vestments, the sensuousness of the total experience. It was a far cry from the Sunday service at Finkin Street Methodist Church in Grantham. I was also moved by the devotion of the worshippers — it would be too much to say ‘the congregation’, for so much of what was going on was evidently a matter of private prayer, with people coming in and out to attend a part of the apparently endless ritual. I stayed for forty minutes or so and then lit one of the long, thin unbleached Orthodox candles, placing it in the sandbox which contained so many others. I reflected that it would take more than limited reforms of the communist system to contain the power of this Christian revival.

The best that can be said of most of the Russian Orthodox leaders was that they probably had little choice other than to collaborate so closely with the communists. The worst that can be said was that they were active KGB agents. Certainly, the speech which was given by the Deputy Patriarch over lunch could have been drafted by Agitprop: it concentrated heavily on the need to get rid of all nuclear weapons. Discarding my own prepared text, I answered by stressing instead the need to release prisoners of conscience. In the car, on the way back to Moscow, I asked the Minister for Religious Affairs whether there were still people in gaol for their religious beliefs. He said, ‘No, unless they are in for something else.’ Such as possessing a Bible, I thought.

That afternoon it had been arranged, at my suggestion, that I should do a ‘walkabout’ of the sort which comes so easily to western politicians but which the Soviets typically — and perhaps for good reason — avoided. (Mr Gorbachev, though, was in this, as in other matters, a western-style politician.) As I walked around a large housing estate in a bleak suburb of Moscow in the slushy snow and bitter wind, more and more people gathered to meet me. Soon they poured in from everywhere, a huge crowd cheering, smiling, wanting to shake hands. As in Hungary I was being received rapturously as an anti-communist by those who knew the system even better than I did.

That evening I attended a performance of Swan Lake at the Bolshoi Theatre with the Gorbachevs. We shared a box. Like all good Russians, they were both clearly enthusiasts for the ballet. I too enjoy the ballet, almost as much as the opera, so we found this in common. During the interval the Gorbachevs held a small supper party for me in a private room. It was a relaxed occasion. For some reason the conversation turned from the story of Swan Lake to the subject of bread-making in the Soviet Union. Mr Gorbachev said that, partly as a result of help which the Soviet Union had received from ICI, the quality of Soviet bread was now much better than it had been. But it was difficult to please people. When the quality had been lower, it had been necessary to add salt. Now that the quality had improved, so that salt was no longer necessary for the bread, the people still preferred salty bread. He had told the Soviet minister responsible for bread-making to go on television to explain to the people that they were now getting better bread, even though it was not what they were familiar with. Ironically, a similar point had recently been made by the great dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. He remarked that whenever the Soviet media reported that scientists had found that some food — sausage, say — was bad for your health, the ordinary Russians reacted immediately by telling each other: ‘So they’re running out of sausage.’ Such are the unanticipated consequences of collectivism.

We drank some excellent Georgian wine. I was encouraged to have another glass when Mr Gorbachev assured me that it helped some Georgians to live to be a hundred. He was very conscious of the unpopularity of the action he had taken against alcoholism. This had already resulted in a decline in deaths at work and road accidents. But it was an uphill struggle. He had read that people in the West thought that perestroika was doomed because he had taken away alcohol from the people and privileges from party officials. We lingered rather too long over supper and the audience had been sitting in semi-darkness for some time when we returned. When we bade farewell Mr Gorbachev was still in a jovial mood and said that he looked forward to our meeting tomorrow.

Monday began for me with a meeting of what it would be perhaps impolite but only accurate to describe as impeccably distinguished Soviet stooges. This group of tame artists, academics and scientists took up again the themes which had been prominent in the Deputy Patriarch’s speech. They knew, presumably, that I was to have lunch with Dr Sakharov and other dissidents and wanted to extol the merits of communism first. Then I left for my discussions with Mr Gorbachev in the Kremlin.

I sat across the table from him, a long flower vase between us. I was accompanied by just one member of my staff and an interpreter. It was soon clear that he, glancing from time to time at the notes in front of him, intended to take me to task for my Central Council speech. He said that when the Soviet leaders had studied it they had felt the breeze of the 1940s and ‘50s. It reminded them of Winston Churchill’s speech at Fulton, Missouri (about the ‘Iron Curtain’) and the Truman doctrine. They had even considered whether they might have to cancel the visit.

I did not apologize. I said that there was one point which I did not make in my Central Council speech but which I would make now. This was that I knew of no evidence that the Soviet Union had given up the Brezhnev doctrine or the goal of securing world domination for communism. We were ready to fight the battle of ideas: indeed this was the right way to fight. But instead we in the West saw Soviet subversion in South Yemen, in Ethiopia, in Mozambique, in Angola and in Nicaragua. We saw Vietnam being supported by the Soviet Union in its conquest of Cambodia. We saw Afghanistan occupied by Soviet troops. We naturally drew the conclusion that the goal of worldwide communism was still being pursued. This was a crucial consideration for the West. We recognized that Mr Gorbachev was committed to internal reforms in the Soviet Union. But we had to ask ourselves whether this would lead to changes in external policies.

I went on to show that I had read Mr Gorbachev’s speeches with as much care as he seemed to have read mine. I told him that I had found his January Central Committee speech fascinating. But I wanted to know whether the internal changes he was making would lead to changes in the Soviet Union’s foreign policies as well. I added that I had not expected that we would have generated quite so much heat so early in the discussion. Mr Gorbachev replied with a roar of laughter that he welcomed ‘acceleration’ and was pleased we were speaking frankly.

The conversation went back and forth, not just covering regional conflicts (with me placing much of the blame on the Soviet Union and Mr Gorbachev blaming the West), but going right to the heart of what differentiated the western and communist systems. This I described as being a distinction between societies in which power was dispersed and societies based on central control and coercion.

Mr Gorbachev was as critical of Conservatism as I was of communism. But he was a good deal less well informed about it. His view was that the British Conservative Party was the party of the ‘haves’ in Britain and that our system of what he called ‘bourgeois democracy’ was designed to fool people about who really controlled the levers of power. I explained that what I was trying to do was to create a society of ‘haves’, not a class of them.

We then turned to arms control. As at our meeting at Chequers, he showed that he was well versed in all that was being written about the Soviet Union in the West. He knew that it was being openly said that the Soviet Union would need to reduce its military budget to finance the development of the civil economy and that the Soviets were desperate for arms agreements. He was clearly extremely sensitive and worried about being humiliated by the West. In particular, he blamed me for frustrating the moves towards the elimination of nuclear weapons which had been discussed at Reykjavik. (So the Camp David statement had indeed been noticed.) I found myself arguing, yet again, the case for the retention of the nuclear deterrent. I also said that it was quite clear to me that the Soviet Union’s objective was to bring about the denuclearization of Europe, leaving the USSR with a preponderance of conventional and chemical weapons. But I welcomed the fact that Mr Gorbachev had now broken the link, to which the Soviets had previously held, between an INF Agreement and other arms control issues, such as SDI. At this point I returned — rather late because our animated argument had overrun the scheduled time limit — to lunch with the Sakharovs and other former dissidents who were now supporting the Gorbachev reforms. I was impressed by what they told me of the changes being made. But I told them that it was not enough to support Mr Gorbachev now; they should be prepared to support him in five to ten years’ time when the going got really tough. I said that the costs of reform would be apparent long before the benefits.

I then returned to the Kremlin to continue my talks with Mr Gorbachev. St Katherine’s Hall, where we had met that morning, was now being rearranged for the plenary session which was due to follow. So we were moved to the ‘Red Room’ of the Kremlin, which Mr Gorbachev said he hoped might improve my views. The afternoon discussion was less contentious and more informative. He explained to me the economic reforms he was making and the problems still to be faced. This led on to technology. He claimed to be confident about the Soviet Union’s capacity for developing computers in competition with the United States. But I was not convinced. And that led back to SDI which Mr Gorbachev promised the Soviets would match — in some way that he would not disclose. I tried to interest him in my proposal for greater ‘predictability’ as regards the progress of the American SDI programme, but apparently to no avail.

Then I pressed Mr Gorbachev on human rights in general and the treatment of the Jews in particular. I also raised the question of Afghanistan, where I had the impression that he was searching for some way out. Finally, I listed the points which I thought we could agree on for a public account of our discussion which, he agreed, had contributed to better relations and greater confidence between us. But it was now very late. Guests were already assembling for the formal banquet at which I was to speak. The plenary session was abandoned. Putting diplomacy ahead of fashion, I abandoned my plans to return to the embassy and change: I attended the banquet in the short wool dress I had been wearing all day. I felt rather like Ninotchka in reverse.

Tuesday began with a rather dull meeting with Prime Minister Ryzhkov — apparently a pleasant, competent man, who, alas, could never quite escape from the armour of his communist training — and other Soviet ministers. I had hoped to learn more about the Soviet economic reforms, but we got bogged down once again in arms control and then in bilateral trade issues.

Far more exciting and worthwhile for all concerned was the interview which I gave to three journalists from Soviet Television. I learnt afterwards that this had an enormous impact on Soviet opinion. Most of the questions related to nuclear weapons. I defended the West’s line and indeed the retention of the nuclear deterrent. I went on to point out that there were more nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union than in any other country and that the Soviets had led the way on deploying short- and intermediate-range weapons as well. I reminded them of their huge superiority in conventional and chemical weapons. I pointed out that the Soviet Union was ahead of the United States in ABM defences. Nobody had ever told ordinary Russians these facts. They learned them from my interview for the first time. The interview was allowed to go out uncut from Soviet television, which I afterwards regarded as proof that my confidence in Mr Gorbachev’s basic integrity was not misplaced.

That evening the Gorbachevs gave me dinner in an old mansion, converted many years before for entertaining foreign guests. The atmosphere was, perhaps deliberately, as close to that of Chequers as I ever found in the Soviet Union. In the rooms around which Mr Gorbachev showed us, Churchill, Eden, Stalin and Molotov had smoked, drunk, and argued. We were a small group, the Gorbachevs being joined by just the Ryzhkovs, who did not take a very active part in the conversation. A brightly burning log fire — again like Chequers — illumined the room to which we later withdrew to put right the world’s problems over coffee and liqueurs. I saw two interesting examples of the way in which old Marxist certainties were being challenged. There was a lively argument between the Gorbachevs, which I provoked, about the definition of the ‘working class’ about which we heard so much in Soviet propaganda. I wanted to know how they defined this in the Soviet Union — a point of some substance in a system in which, as the old Polish saying goes, ‘we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.’ Mrs Gorbachev thought that anyone who worked, whatever his job or profession, was a worker. Her husband argued initially that only the blue-collar workers counted. But he then reconsidered and said that this was largely an historical or ‘scientific’ (that is Marxist) term which did not do justice to the diversity of today’s society.

The second indication of a break with old socialist certainties was when he told me — with tantalizingly little detail — of plans which were being discussed for increasing people’s incomes and then having them make some payment for public services like health and education. Not surprisingly, such plans, whatever they were, came to nothing.

The following morning I had breakfast with refuseniks at the British Embassy. Theirs was a disturbing tale of heroism under mainly petty but continual persecution. Every obstacle, short of total prohibition, was put in the way of their worship and expression of cultural identity. They were discriminated against at work — if they found work. They told me that giving private tuition was the easiest way to earn a living: for these were educated people whose talents the Soviet state should have been able to draw upon. One of their leaders, Iosif Begun, brought me a tiny Star of David, which he had carved out of horn while he was in prison and which I have always kept.

Later that morning I left Moscow for Tbilisi in Georgia. I had wanted to see a Soviet republic other than Russia and I knew that Georgia would present a great cultural and geographical contrast. This certainly proved to be the case. From all that I saw — and from the excellent and exotic food and Georgian wine — it was clear to me that given the right political and economic conditions this was an area where the tourist industry could flourish. But, as in the detective story, perhaps the most important feature of my admittedly brief visit was the ‘dog which did not bark’. Although I was presented with all the evidence of a vigorous folklore and although I knew how ancient and distinctive Georgia was — only coming under the control of Russia at the beginning of the nineteenth century — there was still no evidence of that desire for national self-assertion and independence which was to come.

That night I left Tbilisi Airport for London. It had been, quite simply, the most fascinating and most important foreign visit I had made. I could sense in the four days I spent in the Soviet Union that the ground was shifting underneath the communist system. De Tocqueville’s insight that ‘experience shows that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is generally that in which it sets about reform’ sprang to my mind. The welcome I had received — both the warm affection from the Russian crowds, and the respect of the Soviet authorities in long hours of negotiations — suggested that something fundamental was happening under the surface. The West’s system of liberty which Ronald Reagan and I personified in the eastern bloc (thanks, ironically, to the effects of communist propaganda) was increasingly in the ascendant: the Soviet system was showing its cracks. I sensed that great changes were at hand — but I could never have guessed how quickly they would come.