65 Shultz, pp. 589–596. McFarlane, pp. 314–316. Oberdorfer, who covered the trip for the Washington Post, reports that Gorbachev said he would be willing to reduce existing nuclear weapons to zero on condition the two sides stopped the “militarization of space,” Don Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a New Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 137.
66 Reagan diary, Nov. 5, 1985.
67 Reagan diary, Nov. 6, 1985.
68 Reagan, An American Life, p. 632.
69 Sagdeev, pp. 268–269.
70 Gates, p. 358.
71 Matlock, pp. 134–135, 158.
72 Oberdorfer, p. 143.
73 Reagan, An American Life, p. 635.
74 This account of the summit meetings is based on the official U.S. minutes, unless otherwise specified.
75 Gorbachev, p. 406.
76 Reagan diary, Nov. 19, 1985.
77 Reagan, An American Life, p. 636.
78 Gorbachev, p. 408.
79 Dobrynin recalls that this agreement for reciprocal visits was precooked quietly by him, p. 589. Reagan had also envisioned meeting again. Matlock, p. 153.
80 Lou Cannon, Ronald Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 754. In his memoir, Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman then, rendered the quotation slightly differently. In Speaking Out: Inside the Reagan White House (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988), p. 138. Speakes quoted Reagan: “I bet the hardliners in both our countries are squirming.”
81 Reagan said it before the Japanese Diet, Nov. 11, 1983, and in his annual address to the United Nations General Assembly in 1984. In an exchange of letters before Geneva, Reagan and Gorbachev had also discussed including this language in their concluding summit statement.
82 “Exchange of Televised Addresses by President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev,” Public Papers of the Presidents, 1985 Pub. Papers 4, Jan. 1, 1986.
CHAPTER 11: THE ROAD TO REYKJAVIK
1 Nikolai Chervov, Yaderny Krugovorot [Nuclear Continuum] (Moscow: Olma- Press, 2001).
2 Valery Boldin, Ten Years That Shook the World: The Gorbachev Era as Witnessed by His Chief of Staff(New York: Basic Books, 1994), p. 115.
3 Akhromeyev’s views are from his memoir with Georgi M. Kornienko. Akhromeyev kept the proposal outside normal interagency channels for arms control proposals, where it most certainly would have been stopped. The proposal definitely had a strong propaganda value, and Gorbachev acknowledges in Memoirs that he announced it before the forthcoming Party Congress for maximum impact. But the author believes that Akhromeyev and Gorbachev also believed in the goals of the proposal, and felt the nuclear danger was real. So, from their perspective, it was not just an artificial statement without meaning, as in the past.
4 There are differing accounts about the origins of the initiative, although most credit Akhromeyev. Gorbachev has said he and Shevardnadze had talked about it soon after Shevardnadze’s appointment. Savelyev and Detinov also say it came from the General Staff and defense ministry. Akhromeyev says he shared the military’s draft with Kornienko at the Foreign Ministry. In the author’s possession is a copy of the color chart used to explain the plan at a press conference in Moscow on Jan. 18, 1986. On the back is written, in hand, that the plan was brought into being and edited by Akhromeyev. Katayev, Hoover.
5 Gorbachev had already imposed a unilateral moratorium on Soviet nuclear tests, and used the January 15 announcement to extend it.
6 “Statement by M. S. Gorbachev, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee,” Izvestia, Jan. 16, 1986, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, Jan. 17, 1986. Time magazine reported on the Vremya broadcast, Jan. 27, 1986.
7 Anatoly Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev (University Park, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 45–46, and diary, Jan. 18, 1986.
8 George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), pp. 699–714; and Don Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a New Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), pp. 156–168.
9 Jack F. Matlock Jr., Reagan and Gorbachev, p. 178. David Hoffman and Walter Pincus, “President ‘Grateful,’ Aides Cautious on Soviet Arms Control Proposal,” Washington Post, Jan. 17, 1986, p. A1. David Pace, AP, Jan. 28, 1986, “Sen. Nunn Wary of Gorbachev Arms Proposal.”
10 Reagan diary, Jan. 15, 1986.
11 Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 377.
12 Reagan diary, Feb. 3, 1986.
13 The call came on Jan. 31, 1986. Chernyaev diary, Jan. 18 and Feb. 1, 1986.
14 Robert D. English sums up Chernyaev’s life and times in his introduction to My Six Years. The author is also indebted to Svetlana Savranskaya for additional information.
15 An edited compilation of their notes was published in 2006, V Politburo TsK KPSS: Po Zapisyam Anatolia Chernyaeva, Vadima Medvedeva, Georgiya Shakhnazarova, 1985–1991 (Moscow: Alpine Business Books, 2006).
16 See Mikhail Gorbachev: Selected Speeches and Articles(Moscow: Progress, 1987), p. 341.
17 National Security Decision Directive 196, Nov. 1, 1985.
18 V Politburo, p. 32.
19 United States Nuclear Tests: July 1945 through September 1992, Department of Energy, Washington, D.C., DOE/NV-209 (Rev. 14), Dec. 1994.
20 Chernyaev, pp. 55–57. Some additional quotations from Chernyaev’s notes, not contained in the book, were provided by Svetlana Savranskaya.
21 Grigori Medvedev, The Truth About Chernobyl (Basic Books, 1991), Evelyn Rossiter, trans.; Piers Paul Read, Ablaze: The Story of the Heroes and Victims of Chernobyl (New York: Random House, 1993); and Zhores Medvedev, The Legacy of Chernobyl (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1990). Also see the extensive work of the United Nations Chernobyl Forum Experts Group, including “Environmental Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident and Their Remediation: Twenty Years of Experience,” available at http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/Chernobyl/< /a>. For a technical account of the reasons for the accident, see “INSAG-7: The Chernobyl Accident, Updating of INSAG-1,” Safety Series No. 75-INSAG-7, IAEA Safety Series, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, 1992.
22 Zhores Medvedev, p. 24. Valery Legasov, an academician and deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, who served on an early response team, later listened to tape recordings of the operators’ telephone conversations. This exchange was recorded on the tapes. Two years after the disaster, Legasov committed suicide. The tape transcripts were found in his safe.
