stopped.
And yet, the protests were falling on deaf ears, as Reagan continued to climb ahead in the polls, leaving Democratic challenger Walter Mondale in the dust. Perhaps out of desperation, the Soviets voiced their concerns directly to Reagan. In a September 28 meeting, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko told the president, “Behind all this lies the clear calculation that the USSR will exhaust its material resources before the USA and therefore will finally be forced to surrender.”43
Gromyko did not record Reagan’s response. He didn’t need to. Of course, not everyone from the Communist world was fighting against Reagan’s reelection, especially those who had escaped and could cast a ballot for him. As the first Tuesday in November approached, the president received an October 26 letter from Father S. C. Rokicki of Assumption B.V.M. Church in Detroit, who said he was writing on behalf of “a few of the Bishops, many priests and very very many people” he had met in Poland while there for threeand-a-half weeks. “They wanted me to tell you that 80 percent of Poland is praying for you for re-election,” wrote Rokicki. “The Polish people are very proud that you stand up to the Communists. Since the sufferings and prayers of Poland have meant so much to God over the centuries, I am sure that you will be re-elected. The Polish people know weeks in advance you will win.” Father Rokicki concluded by thanking Reagan “for being such a good President and for taking a strong stand against Communism and abortion.”
The letter meant a lot to Reagan, as he took time out of his extremely busy campaign schedule to write back to Rokicki on November 4, only two days before the election: “I’m also very proud, yet humbly so, to have the approval of the Polish people and their prayers….I pray that I can be deserving of their support.”44
On November 5, the eve of the election, Reagan reminded Americans that only four years earlier, the United States had been mired in recession, the nation had fallen, and the Soviets were advancing. Even the most devout Democrat had to admit that all of this had indisputably changed for the better under Reagan. He invoked Main Street and the Shining City and told his fellow Americans that their nation’s best days lay ahead. “And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” he promised.
The next day, he won reelection in a landslide, defeating former Carter vice president Walter Mondale by sweeping 49 of 50 states, losing only Mondale’s home state of Minnesota, and even then by a narrow margin. He very nearly took all fifty states, running away with the Electoral College—525 to 13.
Despite their attempts, Ted Kennedy and the Soviets could not derail Reagan, nor his vision for a brighter America, which had helped him win the overwhelming support of the American people. Reinforcing the agenda he had laid out over his first four years, the election reaffirmed Reagan’s calling and liberated him to continue a tough course against the USSR. What had begun four years earlier would proceed unabated, giving Reagan the opportunity to see his goals to their conclusion.
After a busy year of campaigning, Reagan was free to again make the Kremlin the center of his attention. With reenergized vigor, he headed into the new year, prepared to confront the Soviets on an entirely different scale. As he would soon find out, 1985 was to be a monumental year in the history of American-Soviet relations, one that would see not merely a renewed focus in Reagan’s economic war, but a new leader for the USSR.
PART III
The Second Term
15. The Emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev: March 1985
WHILE RONALD REAGAN’S REELECTION PROMISED MORE OF the same, the big change in 1985 took place not in the Oval Office but instead with a sudden shift at the pinnacle of power in Moscow. On March 10, 1985, things began to unfold quickly in the USSR when the aged General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko died. Now, the totalitarian system moved hastily to pick a replacement. Fittingly, the Soviet people, accustomed to being kept in the dark, had no clue about the transition taking place behind closed doors; indeed, a day after the fact, they still had not even been informed that Chernenko had succumbed.
Behind the scenes, Mikhail Gorbachev was nominated for the nation’s highest office by Stalinist Andrei Gromyko, with the eventual enthusiastic support of the entire Central Committee.1 Gorbachev beat out Moscow Party boss Viktor Grishin and Prime Minister Nikolai Tikhonov. On March 11, the totalitarian press simultaneously announced to the public Chernenko’s death and Gorbachev’s ascension.
Upon assuming power, Gorbachev was fifty-four years old, a marked departure from his elderly predecessors, the last three of which (Brezhnev, Andropov, and now Chernenko) had died in office. The Soviet Union, once ruled by Stalin for parts of four decades, had now had four leaders in only three years. Reagan quipped that he wanted to negotiate with the Soviet leaders “but they keep dying on me.”
And perhaps Reagan was sending a message to Gorbachev when only a few weeks later he headed to Europe to assure a West German audience on May 6, 1985, four years before the wall came down: “[Y]ou can create the new Europe—a Europe democratic, a Europe united east and west, a Europe at long last completely free.”2
Reagan was exuding confidence. When he got back home, he told a Florida audience: “I firmly believe the tide of history is moving away from communism and into the warm sunlight of human freedom.”3 At the top of the other superpower, a man named Gorbachev was listening closely.
BORN MARCH 2, 1931 IN A SMALL VILLAGE IN SOUTHERN RUSSIA, Mikhail Gorbachev, like Ronald Reagan, came from humble origins. He was raised a peasant on a collective farm during Stalin’s disastrous collectivization, where his father worked at a tractor station. Like Dutch’s father, Mikhail’s dad struggled financially. Both boys’ mothers endured their troubles by consulting the Bible, which was a considerably greater risk in Russia than it was in Dixon, Illinois.4 Mikhail was young enough to be spared from World War II, a conflict that took the lives of more men from Russia than any other nation.
Gorbachev was admitted to Moscow State University, where his academic focus was law and agriculture, the latter of which became his area of expertise in the Communist Party. At Moscow State, politics also captured his interest, and Gorbachev began his political career as leader of Komsomol, the country’s Communist youth group. There, in 1951, he met his future wife, Raisa, a devout Marxist-Leninist-atheist, a soul-mate who, like Nancy Reagan to Ronald Reagan, supported his political ambitions.
It was with this marked background of education and ambition that enabled the charismatic Gorbachev to rise quickly up the ranks of the Communist Party, eventually becoming a full member of the Politburo in 1980 and positioning himself for the top spot in March 1985. Perhaps it was fitting that as Reagan’s second term was in its infancy he suddenly had a new counterpoint in Moscow, an individual that he and the world hoped would stem the tide of oppression that had flowed from the Kremlin for so long.
REAGAN’S ROLE IN GORBACHEV’S SELECTION
Notably, it may in fact have been a direct intention of Reagan policy to influence the rise of a Soviet general secretary like Gorbachev. As possible evidence, a remarkable letter exists in the personal files of Bill Clark: In January 1984, Clark, who was by then secretary of the interior, wrote a letter to his old friend, giving Reagan advice on seeking a second term. Therein, Clark proffered a remarkable statement, assuring Reagan: “Another few months of ‘standing tall’ should restore the arms balance in Europe and very likely influence the rise of a less dangerous Soviet leader than the dying Andropov.” Such a less dangerous Soviet leader was indeed in the
