It had been apparent to the Soviet government, said Bessmertnykh, that “Reagan decided to change the course of defense policy and start an enormous buildup,” and “that the United States was serious about overwhelming the Soviet Union in one basic strategic effort.” Quite significantly, Bessmertnykh states unequivocally that it was the “economic side of the arms race” that “was very much on Gorbachev’s mind,” and that, in turn, drove Gorbachev to propose arms reductions.48 In other words, the Soviet leadership had reacted precisely the way that Ronald Reagan had long ago predicted.
But to what extent? From 1985 to 1986, the USSR may have spent an added $15–20 billion annually, strictly on military spending, in an attempt to match Reagan’s hikes.49 To the United States, an extra $15–20 billion would be exorbitant; to the USSR at this time, it was a silver bullet. According to a Soviet estimate, 62–63 percent of the money devoted to machine-building in the USSR in 1986 was for military purposes.50 This was at a time when, as Marshal Akhromeev put it, “the USSR was not able to continue… the military confrontation with the USA and NATO. The economic possibilities for such a policy was exhausted.”51 Nonetheless, Mikhail Gorbachev was trying. And, in responding to the Reagan challenge, the USSR was in the process of bankrupting itself.
18. Calling for Liberation: 1987
ON JUNE 12, 1987, NINE YEARS AFTER HIS FIRST, FORMATIVE trip to East Berlin, Ronald Reagan returned to the Berlin Wall. Now, he voiced a number of opinions that he had wanted to say since his first visit, and this time with the power of the world’s media behind him.
It was a clear but breezy day at the Brandenburg Gate, and likewise Reagan’s unambiguous words flew off the page as he delivered one of the most notable speeches of his career, appealing directly to Mikhail Gorbachev to effect change in this city that was literally cut in half. “There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace,” said the president. “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”1
The crowd roared in approval. Reagan’s words placed the onus squarely on Mikhail Gorbachev, who indeed was the one man who held the power to tear down the wall. And if Gorbachev was truly the near saintly figure depicted by Western liberals, then he ought to do one simple, right thing: order the dismantling of the Berlin Wall.
It was a remarkable moment, one that rippled across the world. At once a call to arms and a direct challenge to the man in Moscow, the line shuddered with the intensity and hopes of millions that were trapped behind the Berlin Wall, none of whom dared say what Reagan could and did.
While historians have noted the significance of Reagan’s command to Gorbachev, the words that came after that famous line, at the conclusion of the speech, have not been discussed with the same fervor, but nevertheless should be, since they contained a rather prophetic prediction. As he was finishing his speech, Reagan looked out on the crowd, and from the Reichstag, he noticed the words “This wall will fall” crudely spray painted upon the wall. Pondering them for a moment, Reagan faced the crowd and asserted: “Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall.”2
That line did not appear by mere chance. While the phrasing was new, the sentiment had been there all along. Said Peter Robinson, the author of the speech: “Among us speechwriters, I don’t think there was any doubt at all about what the Gipper was up to: He intended to win. I’ll grant that I was surprised the wall came down when it did. But that Reagan wanted to defeat the Soviet Union—that he wanted us to win and them to lose—was clear enough in the speechwriting shop.”3 Robinson and Reagan on that day intended to call for the collapse of more than just the wall dividing Berlin.
Almost from the instant that he uttered those words, the Soviet press began to vilify Reagan’s remarks, subjecting a captive audience behind the Iron Curtain to a lengthy discussion by hardline Marxists who denounced Reagan’s declaration. Speaking on “Studio 9,” three of Russia’s top “political analysts”—Valentin Sorin, Georgi Arbatov, and Valentin Falin—explained that the speech was “plain blackmail, blackmail by an American cowboy… threatening and waving his hands and staging a show of strength near the Berlin Wall.” Arbatov informed Soviet citizens that Reagan’s “hypocritical” statement was merely an attempt to deflect Americans’ attention from the Iran-Contra scandal and the impending economic “crash” about to befall the capitalist United States.4
Likewise, Falin complained that, “Reagan came to this city [West Berlin] without a good knowledge of the fact that West Berlin is less suitable than many other places on the planet for demonstrations of force, threats, and the lowest and most—if I may say so—frantic demagoguery.” Reagan, said Falin, was yet again “increasing tension” and “increasing the temperature.” Continuing in this vein, Falin proceeded to justify the Berlin Wall’s 1961 construction and continued existence: “The measures our GDR [East Germany] friends were forced to take in 1961 were of strictly defensive character. Their Warsaw Pact allies also asked them to take these measures…. [T]hose measures at the border… steeply reduced possibilities of using West Berlin for subversive activities against the GDR and other socialist states.”
He plowed on: “Today the President turns to the vocabulary of the forties, fifties, and sixties and tries to plunge West Berlin back at least twenty years. He tries to plunge both West Berlin and central Europe back into the period when very acute crises arose from time to time in and around West Berlin. I would like to remind you that in 1961, precisely in West Berlin at the end of 1961—when the U.S. Administration was toying with the idea of bringing down this wall—the world found itself within 200 meters of World War III.”
As far as Falin and the group were concerned, Reagan was seeking to move the world backward, not forward, and the wall was a source of stability. In fact, Falin believed that a divided Germany was imperative, its presence providing an assurance that fascism could not once again take hold. Calling Berlin the “capital of bloody fascism,” he complained: “For Reagan the whole German question is the opening of the Brandenburg Gate. For all Europe and for us, however, it is the question of not allowing World War III to be unleashed again by German imperialism.”
Chomping at the bit, Arbatov jumped in: “What Reagan is saying is simply political vulgarity. Political vulgarity!”
Moderator Zorin invited the commentators to offer their objective assessments on Reagan’s request that Gorbachev “prove” he was serious about “openness” by coming to Berlin to open the Brandenburg Gate. Falin replied by bemoaning Reagan’s dirty pool: “I think that Reagan is not only imposing political rules of the game on the other countries and the Soviet Union, but he also wants the political figures and leaders of the states to think precisely the same way as he does. But the Soviet leaders do not come into the house of someone else to either close or open gates. Soviet leaders know and respect international laws, know and respect sovereign interests of other countries….”
He was cut off by Zorin, “Unlike the U.S. President.” Yes, Falin shot back, “…unlike the U.S. President.”
To these Marxists-Leninists, who held the stage at the height of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost, it was clear that Reagan had acted rudely and without respect for Soviet sovereignty. For them, Reagan’s call to tear down the wall had nothing to do with liberating people; it was a form of blackmail that cruelly exploited contented East Germany. This discussion on “Studio 9” was indicative of the larger mood that permeated the Soviet press and leadership, and it was clear that East Berliners’ best friend in June 1987 sat in the Oval Office, rather than behind a camera in Moscow. When Reagan made this speech, there was no one in the USSR—including Mikhail Gorbachev—who was making similar calls for the wall’s dismantling, and despite all claims of the USSR’s Western-looking government, the Soviet leadership and media remained rooted in the past.
In fact, at the time, Gorbachev was on record favoring a divided Germany and the very wall that separated it. Indeed, his shockingly insensitive euphemism for the wall in his 1987 bestseller Perestroika is worth highlighting: West and East Germany, wrote Gorbachev, casually, “are divided by an international border passing,
