The Dead Hand

Union would never, indeed could never, change no matter how bad their internal economic and social problems were.”⁵⁸ The CIA briefing paper given to Reagan, titled “Gorbachev’s Personal Agenda for the November Meeting,” said Gorbachev had “little expectation of any major substantive breakthrough on arms control or regional issues.” Gates, a longtime Soviet specialist, who also briefed the president, predicted that Gorbachev wasn’t going to be pushed around. His conclusion: “Gorbachev simply intended to outwait Reagan.”⁵⁹

For Reagan, one CIA briefing proved riveting, by specialist Kay Oliver, who had just drafted a National Intelligence Estimate titled “Domestic Stress on the Soviet System.” She told Reagan of the decay in everyday life in the Soviet Union—alcoholism, alienation, drug abuse, economic decline—and explained how the “ruling elite had become stagnant, cynical, outrageously corrupt and ineffective” in the 1970s and early 1980s.⁶⁰ These themes reinforced Reagan’s lifelong assumptions. He wrote approvingly in his diary that Oliver “confirmed things I had heard from unconfirmed sources. The Soviet U. is an ec. basket case & among other things there is a rapidly spreading turn by the people to religion.”⁶¹

Reagan was attentive to Suzanne Massie, the author and Soviet culture expert, and read her book Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia. Massie recalled that when she met Reagan, he seemed hungry to learn more about the Russians as people than he was getting from the briefing papers. “He was an actor: actors like to absorb from feeling, and he just wasn’t getting that…kind of juice, if you want, that helped him make sense of affairs, from his official sources.” In her briefing, Massie tried to counter the Hollywood stereotypes of the Russians. She told him Gorbachev had been called to rule a country that was unruly and fractious, “not a whole lot of Communists marching in locked step, that it was far from that.” Massie also told Reagan not to worry about the contrasts being made between himself and the younger Gorbachev—that in fact Reagan was in a stronger position.⁶²

Summing up his impressions, Reagan wrote by hand on a yellow pad a four-and-a-half page memo. The note, which was typed up and then corrected by Reagan in ballpoint pen, offers a valuable snapshot of his thinking before the meeting. Reagan accepted the cautious view that Gorbachev would not bring radical change.

“I believe,” he wrote, “Gorbachev is a highly intelligent leader totally dedicated to traditional Soviet goals.”

Reagan added, “He will be a formidable negotiator and will try to make Soviet foreign and military policy more effective. He is (as are all Soviet General Secretaries) dependent on the Soviet-Communist hierarchy and will be out to prove to them his strength and dedication to Soviet traditional goals.” On arms control, Reagan wrote that Gorbachev wished to “reduce the burden of defense spending that is stagnating the Soviet economy,” and that “could contribute to his opposition to SDI” since “he doesn’t want to face the cost of competing with us.”⁶³

The economic pressures on the Soviet system had gravely worsened that autumn. Saudi Arabia increased oil production in a radical change in policy that was undertaken to boost its market share. A glut of crude hit world oil markets, prices collapsed and so did Soviet foreign currency earnings. By one estimate, Moscow had just lost $20 billion a year. Gorbachev’s backward country suddenly became a lot poorer.⁶⁴

Reagan’s memo also included a curious statement about the Soviet military. In the original memo, he wrote that an internal study “makes it plain the Soviets are planning a war. They would like to win without it and their chances of doing that depend on being so prepared we could be faced with a surrender or die ultimatum.” The surrender-or-die ultimatum was one of Reagan’s old chestnuts from his anti-communism speeches. Reagan’s comment seemed to be lifted right out of his late-1970s slogans warning of a “window of vulnerability.”

According to Matlock, Reagan “had not been advised that the Soviets were planning to start a war, but that they were planning so that they could fight one and prevail.”

When he read what he had written, Reagan felt misgivings, and crossed out the part about the Soviets planning a war. He substituted instead: “They would like to win by being so much better prepared we could be faced with a surrender or die ultimatum.” It was still a skeptical, fearsome, dark view of the other side.

To prepare for the summit, Shultz and McFarlane went to Moscow and met Gorbachev on November 5. They found Gorbachev in a feisty, uncompromising mood. Gorbachev’s remarks followed the broad outline of the “asymmetrical response,” but he was clumsy. He attacked Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, saying at one point the purpose was to bail out the military-industrial complex in the United States, which Gorbachev claimed employed 18 million Americans. Shultz, an economist and former labor secretary, was surprised at Gorbachev’s bad information, and responded that defense was only a small part of the American economy. He delivered a mini- lecture to Gorbachev—which he had composed in his mind before the trip—about how the global economy was turning to a new information age. Gorbachev was stubborn and unmoved. “We know what’s going on,” he insisted. “We know why you’re doing this. You’re inspired by illusions. You think you’re ahead of us in information. You think you’re ahead of us in technology and that you can use these things to gain superiority over the Soviet Union. But this is an illusion.” If Reagan went ahead with the plan for Star Wars, Gorbachev warned, “We will let you bankrupt yourselves.”

Then he added, “We will engage in a buildup that will break your shield.”⁶⁵

Shultz called Reagan afterward. Reagan wrote in his journal that night, “Gorbachev is adamant we must cave in our S.D.I.—well, this will be a case of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.”⁶⁶

After Shultz flew back and briefed Reagan, the president added, “It seems Mr. G. is filled with a lot of false info about the U.S. & believes it all. For example, Americans hate the Russians because our arms manufacturers stir them up with propaganda so they can keep selling us weapons.”⁶⁷ Reagan vowed, “In Geneva I’ll have to get him in a room alone and set him straight.”⁶⁸

In the weeks before the summit, Roald Sagdeev, the space institute director who had been skeptical about a Soviet Star Wars, was invited to a meeting at the Central Committee with others from the academic and arts elite. They were told that, from now on, they were totally free to meet foreigners without asking permission. “It was a thrilling sensation,” Sagdeev recalled. “In a society where everything was under strict control and tight regulation, even phone numbers could not be given to foreigners.” He was ordered to join Velikhov and other leading advisers to Gorbachev on a plane to Geneva one week before the summit. The instructions: be open, give press interviews.⁶⁹ Hundreds of reporters called, and the group kept busy. A total of 3,614 journalists, including television technicians, registered for the summit. They were drawn by the sense of unpredictability—rarely in the history of superpower summits had there been a meeting without a prearranged script and treaty to be signed; adding to the uncertainty was Reagan’s long history of anti-communism and the curiosity stirred by Gorbachev’s first months in power. The CIA was there, too. The agency “pulled out all the stops to make Gorbachev feel unwelcome in Geneva,” Gates recalled. The CIA sponsored anti-Soviet demonstrations, meetings and exhibits.⁷⁰

When he arrived in Geneva November 16, Reagan, then seventy-four years old, was full of anticipation. “Lord I hope I am ready and not overtrained,” he wrote. The first meeting was to be held at Maison Fleur d’Eau, a twenty-room, nineteenth-century villa on the western shore of Lake Geneva. He and Nancy Reagan toured it in advance, spotting a cozy pool house on the lakeshore. Reagan made sure the White House advance team knew he wanted to steer Gorbachev there for a private chat, with a fire blazing. In the preparations, Reagan held a mock summit session, with Matlock playing Gorbachev, speaking in Russian and trying to mimic Gorbachev’s gestures.⁷¹ In another briefing, Reagan seemed to glaze over. There was a long silence. “I’m in the year 1830,” the president suddenly said, startling his aides. “What happened to all these small shopkeepers in St. Petersburg in the year 1830 and to all that entrepreneurial talent in Russia? How can it have just disappeared?” The aides realized he was absorbed in thought about Massie’s book.⁷²

Cold winds blew off Lake Geneva as Reagan bounded down the steps to greet Gorbachev without an overcoat just after 10 A.M. on November 19. Gorbachev, then fifty-four years old, in office less than a year, stepped out of his black ZIL limousine, bundled up in a blue patterned scarf and overcoat, and took off his fedora, asking Reagan: “Where is your coat?” “It’s inside,” Reagan replied as he motioned toward the glass doors and the warmth of the chateau, guiding Gorbachev by the elbow. As they shook hands for the photographers, Reagan later recalled, “I had to admit…that there was something likeable about Gorbachev. There was a warmth in his face and his style, not the coldness bordering on hatred I’d seen in most senior Soviet officials I’d met until