Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume VI, Soviet Union, October 1986–January 1989

147. Memorandum of Conversation¹

Moscow, April 22, 1988, 11 a.m.–2:05 p.m.

SUBJECT

• The Secretary’s Meeting with Gorbachev April 22

PARTICIPANTS

• U.S.

  • George P. Shultz, Secretary of State
  • Colin Powell, the President’s National Security Advisor
  • Paul C. Nitze, Special Advisor to the President
  • Jack F. Matlock, Ambassador to the USSR
  • Rozanne L. Ridgway, Assistant Secretary of State (EUR)
  • Thomas W. Simons, Jr., Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (EUR) (notetaker)
  • Dimitri Zarechnak (interpreter)

• USSR

  • Mikhail S. Gorbachev, General Secretary, CPSU CC
  • Eduard Shevardnadze, Minister of Foreign Affairs
  • Sergei Akhromeyev, Marshal, First Deputy Minister of Defense
  • Anatoliy F. Dobrynin, CPSU CC Secretary
  • Andrei Chernyayev, Senior Advisor to the General Secretary
  • Yuriy Dubinin, Ambassador to the U.S.
  • Aleksandr A. Bessmertnykh, Deputy Foreign Minister (notetaker)
  • Pavel Palazhchenko (interpreter)

(During the handshake, Gorbachev said he had the impression that the U.S. was losing interest in moving forward. The Secretary replied that it was not a question of interest; the issues were genuinely difficult.)

While pictures were being taken, Gorbachev said the Secretary should get a badge of honor from the airlines. The Secretary said it was mainly the Air Force that was involved. Gorbachev said that if the Secretary did not have memorial buttons, Aeroflot could provide them. The Secretary said he was ready for a frequent flier program. Gorbachev said Aeroflot could generate that too. The central government still had some impact on economic life in the Soviet Union.

The Secretary said he was looking forward to going on to Kiev and Tbilisi the next day. Gorbachev said he welcomed their inclusion in the Secretary’s program. He was sure to hear something different from what Matlock reported, and what the Soviets in Moscow told him. He would form his own impressions. That was the best way to study something. He (Gorbachev) had no shortage of information himself. There was even excess information as far as he was concerned. He had plenty of officials who wanted to show him they were working, and sent him memos. He preferred direct contacts. It had been that way with him through his whole career. He preferred to make his own comparisons, form his own impressions.

The Secretary said there was no substitute for that. You have to go talk to people to hear what they have to say in their own territory, as distinct from yours. Gorbachev replied that that was an essential principle. That was the only way.

Gorbachev continued that the Soviets had been noting remarks Americans were making, including remarks by the President, and has started to have doubts that we could go on to a new stage in relations. First, however, he wanted to welcome the Secretary and the others in his party. They were old friends and negotiating partners, had been for a long time. The Soviets respected all of them. The week before he had talked to the American business people. The summit in May would be the fourth he had had with the President. Today had marked, he thought, the 23rd meeting between the Secretary and Shevardnadze. Shevardnadze interjected that it was the 25th. In that case, Gorbachev went on, it was a jubilee meeting. It was the occasion for a medal. The Secretary remarked that Akhromeyev had all the medals. Gorbachev rejoined that Akhromeyev had been in the armed forces a long time, since the war. Akhromeyev said he had been in 48 years. Gorbachev said Akhromeyev was a happy exception, the kind of person who did not receive unmerited awards.

The Secretary said Akhromeyev had been kind enough to give him a two-volume biography of Zhukov. He looked forward to having a chance to look at it. He had appreciated it. Gorbachev said Zhukov had been a major (“strong”) personality, in all respects. People were still trying to understand him. Gorbachev welcomed the effort.

Gorbachev invited the Secretary to help himself to tea. The Secretary said he had already taken a sip. He was also big on Georgian mineral water. Gorbachev said that when they had started the anti-alcohol struggle—a campaign that was harder than U.S.-Soviet relations—the Georgians had done a great deal to expand the variety of soft drinks they produced. Others were only now catching up. There were some places where consumption of these drinks had increased two or three times. Shevardnadze said he would treat the Secretary to some.

Gorbachev suggested they get down to business. He had some notes. (His notes were a file folder with all four pages covered with felt-pen scrawl.) The Secretary asked if those were his notes. Gorbachev laughed and said he had more in reserve. There were some points he wanted to raise.

Perhaps the Soviets had exaggerated possibilities at some point, Gorbachev said. Perhaps they had not been realistic enough in their assessment of what was possible in terms of reaching a new stage in relations. But in recent years there had been some bricks put into the structure of new Soviet-American relations. They still thought progress was realistic. And the progress the sides had been able to make was the result first of all of their more realistic approach to each other. Perhaps they were beginning to find a way out of the prison of old stereotypes, away from imposing their own approaches and views on the other, away from stressing only their own interests, things that had stood in the way of movement toward improving relations.

The problem came if one looked at recent U.S. statements. That was true of the last speech of the President too.² No matter what the circumstances in which it was given, the context, the group to which it was given, when the President made remarks it was not only for the U.S. but for the world. The Soviets had to draw conclusions from such remarks, including those made two days before. It seemed the U.S. Administration was not abandoning stereotypes, was not abandoning reliance on force, was not taking account of political realities, the interests of others, a balance of interests. And there were also U.S. actions, in Latin America, in the Middle East. They too showed a stress on force. The Soviets had to conclude that there was backward movement, a reversal. There was an attempt to preach to them, to teach them. This was what it meant to characterize Soviet foreign policy as exclusively negative, and American foreign policy as exclusively positive. The remarks might have been made in a spirit of humor. He himself liked humor, but he could not see humor as such in these recent statements.

How was one to explain this?, Gorbachev asked. The election campaign? The old policy affections of the President? Had the Administration exhausted some limits? Still, that was a domestic question. Again, there seemed to be a reversal, a backtracking on the recent past. Perhaps both sides had built their policies on illusions. The Soviet side had abandoned its illusions. It knew that the United States, under any administration, would build its foreign policy to protect U.S. interests above all. But the U.S. should also be led to seek a balance of interests with others.

Gorbachev continued that it had seemed there was some movement in that direction. It had been not just philosophical. It had also taken place on some specific questions. There had been some results. And now it seemed there was some sort of reversal. For instance it seemed to be taking place in one segment of the Republican Party. Nixon had taken a break for the labor of writing his memoirs to take part in political debates. He, Gorbachev, could understand why, since the stereotypes Nixon had spent so long in building were being abandoned. But the dead should not be allowed to take the living by the coattails, and drag them back to the past. We should not let old politicians prevent us from building up relations. There had been results in the past two or three years.

Gorbachev said both sides had had to overcome a lot to find new approaches. It had been difficult but necessary. The Soviets valued the contributions of the President; of the Secretary; of Mrs. Ridgway; of Matlock; of Nitze; now of Powell, who had come on the job; of Simons. Why, Gorbachev asked, should we fritter away the capital that had been built up over many months? The Soviets all had to ask: was that the political base on which the President would build his visit to the Soviet Union? Was that the approach he would be bringing? The Soviets could not permit such attacks to go unanswered. Were we all to bury the achievement?

Whom did this serve?, Gorbachev asked. In recent polls—the U.S. had more polls than the Soviet Union, but the Soviets had recently been taking some as well, including recently some joint Soviet-American polls—there was large-scale support for positive development in relations. Sincerely, he could say, he had been pleasantly surprised that most Americans thought that by the year 2000 relations between the two countries should not just be non-confrontational, but not even relations of rivalry, but rather relations of friendship. The Secretary would be seeing Georgia, and the Ukraine. The people there were for it too. The Secretary would see it better than what Matlock reported from Moscow, from rumors. He would also see their attitudes on Soviet domestic policies. But if the people were for better relations, whose will did such statements reflect?, Gorbachev asked. If better relations were wanted, whence flowed such remarks, especially from the President?

If we could not protect the atmosphere we had at the beginning of the year, Gorbachev went on, he did not see how we could have a successful visit. If the Soviets had published the President’s remarks in full (and that had been their first reaction; sometimes leaders had to stop to think), there would have been the reaction in the Soviet Union that such a portrayal of the Soviet Union, of its leadership, of its policies was unacceptable from a leader coming to the Soviet Union in a month’s time.

So, Gorbachev continued, he thought it was in the supreme interest of both countries and peoples for the U.S. Administration to do its best not only to preserve what had been achieved but to engage in dialogue to continue the forward movement in relations. This was in the broad interest of the broad spectrum of their peoples, if not in that of some individual groups, those who wanted to stick spokes in the wheels of Soviet-American normalization. The Soviets were ready to prepare the visit so that it would be a major political event. This was particularly true since the last visit of an American President had been in 1974. For a decade and a half there had not been one. That very fact made the coming visit an important event, and they viewed it as such. He thought that not only the government but the people of the Soviet Union would give the President a very friendly reception, showing respect not only to the American people but also to the President himself. He had contributed much to relations in recent years. The two sides needed to act as they had until recently, and not reverse what had been achieved. They needed to prepare the substance well. There would always be something to discuss and resolve.

He was sure the American people would approve that approach, Gorbachev went on. This would also be reflected in the elections to which the President was paying so much attention, playing up to the right wing, to the hawks. Probably when he left Moscow the President would say that firmness had worked, that he had promised that and achieved it. In that case the Soviets would say that the results had been achieved because there was realism on both sides, a recognition of political interests based on the realities of today’s world. That was why there had been results.

Thus, Gorbachev said smilingly, he had already come to the end of the visit, and the press conference could begin. He thought he would begin by mentioning this topic. The Soviets did not accept the approach they had seen in the recent statements of the President.

The Secretary said he would like to make a few comments.

First, he wished to pass on the President’s warm regards. The President was looking forward to his visit to Moscow with Gorbachev. He had reviewed the suggestions Gorbachev had made concerning the schedule that Shevardnadze had passed on in Geneva the week before. He had asked the Secretary to tell Gorbachev he appreciated them. They had been thoughtful and constructive, and they had showed a degree of personal touch he especially appreciated.

Gorbachev had mentioned polls, the Secretary continued. There were many in the U.S. By and large they showed a desire for more stable and constructive relations between our countries. There was no doubt about that. Recently there had been an interesting vote in the House of Representatives. The particular subject was INF, but it had been a way to register sentiment more broadly. It had been 393–7 in favor of the INF Treaty. He had not thought there could be that big a majority about anything in our House of Representatives. ( Gorbachev interjected that he was aware of that vote.)

He had some comments on the flow of the relationship, the Secretary went on. As the President saw it, there was a whole host of reasons—some of which we see, some of which we do not fully understand—why things were moving forward, but it was evident that a new page in our relations dated from the first summit Gorbachev had had with the President in Geneva.

We had always had a very full agenda before us, the Secretary continued, and we had classified it together into four areas. If one compared the present with the time of the Geneva summit, there were identifiable, significant, concrete results in each of the four areas. Of course there were many problems, and much work ahead, as Gorbachev had said. There was a tendency to stress them. But it was also important to reflect on the achievements, as the President saw them and as he, the Secretary, saw them.

With regard to human rights and humanitarian concerns, the Secretary said, we had seen many problems resolved. We had seen emerge a systematic way of discussing these issues. And it was a two-way street. We regarded that as a very healthy development.

In bilateral relations, we had seen a sharply increased flow of visits by groups. There had been agreements reached, and there would be additional agreements reached by the time of the summit. 500 U.S. firms had been represented at the economic meeting the week before. There was thus quite a lot of action in that field.

On arms control, we were in the midst of important discussions, the Secretary went on. But we had behind us, first, the Stockholm agreement on confidence-building measures, which we had made with other countries. It had been a breakthrough, providing for the first time for on-site inspection of military activities on demand. This had been followed by the INF Treaty, which—in addition to its results eliminating classes of weapons and reducing nuclear armaments—contained a completely new element in its verification provisions, creating a new openness between the two countries beyond anything that had existed before. Some of these things would have been out of the question four or five years ago, would have been considered impossible. Nevertheless they had now been created, and were beginning to take effect.

Turning to regional issues, the Secretary said Gorbachev and the President had identified their special significance in Geneva. He knew we had many great difficulties. But we had joined the previous July in a Security Council action that was virtually unprecedented, on the Iran-Iraq war. It had given the world a lift. He thought it was past time to follow up on that action, but that we had acted as we had was already a significant event. And last week we had signed the Afghanistan accords together. Both recognized that they marked only a stage, and that there were many difficulties ahead. But it had been a significant and important step.

So, the Secretary continued, all these things would add up to the ability to develop a relationship that was more constructive, more capable of resolving problems, and that on the basis of explicit things accomplished, and not just rhetoric.

So from the standpoint of the summit meeting in Moscow, the Secretary concluded, it was a question of reflecting on the accomplishments, and asking where we should go from here. It seemed broadly, as with other great events, to be an occasion for summarizing what had taken place, on the one hand, and on the other hand for projecting an image of the future we wished to attain.

In order to make the meeting a political success, what did we need to do?, the Secretary asked.

First, he said, it needed to be prepared well. He had to explore all the substantive areas and bring them along to fruition, or to a stage that was promising, on a realistic basis, as Gorbachev had said. Gorbachev interrupted to say that here the Soviets had seen some marking time, and they had seen it on specific questions. There were some elements where they could say this would change the atmosphere for the worse. The Secretary said that was undoubtedly true, and we would have to look at that. But there were also areas that were just difficult, and we should not gloss over that. Gorbachev replied that neither should we deliberately or artificially complicate things. The Secretary agreed, and said we could point to some. But those were problems to overcome.

Second, the Secretary continued, we should seek at the summit the right combination of businesslike and substantive activities to go with the public activities, which were also important, since they would set a tone. In that sense, the program that was falling into place was excellent. But we needed to fill in the blanks concerning what will happen, to take advantage of time available. We also had to work out the proper way to record the results. There were very many, some small, some of greater consequence, and we needed to see how to record them, to let the world know what had taken place. Then we had to set the tone. The President’s emphasis would certainly be the outlook to the future.

Gorbachev said that outlook had to be realistic. But it seemed there were some who wanted to ascribe only the color red to the future the Soviets saw, and not see any red in the American future, even though the color red had existed before capitalism or socialism. The weakness of foreign policy in the recent past, including Soviet-American relations, was that actual social diversity had been seen as a source of confrontation. He believed we should look at diversity and use it as a source of cooperation, for the exchange of values in the economic, social, political spheres. Whereas Abrams looked at human rights based only on the U.S. understanding of them. He thought that only with the defeat of Communism could human rights be assured. The goal was therefore the defeat of Communism, and since it could not be defeated by political or economic means, that left only military means. And that came from a person close to the Secretary of State. If that was how the President felt, it was important how he would discuss the outlook for the future. If there were no place in it for socialism, for the Soviet Union, if he insisted that the Soviet Union had to earn the confidence of the U.S. for there to be progress in relations, that would be going back to the past.

Gorbachev continued that he had to say it seemed to him the Soviet Union had already graduated from the primary school of politics. There had been progress, as the Secretary had said, and it should not be pushed back. But literacy meant taking U.S.-Soviet realities into account. The world was very diverse. There were many new countries. The two countries could live without each other, but it would be better for both to cooperate. Nuclear war was inconceivable. Those were the kinds of things he had in mind.

The Secretary recalled that at Geneva Gorbachev and the President had agreed that war of any kind between them was excluded. Gorbachev said he had just been making a brief inventory of realities. But if now the U.S. were coming to revise the achievements, to return to a position of force, imposing things on the Soviets and the world, an empire-like approach, he thought all that should have been left in the past. The Soviets did not pretend to have the final truth. They did not impose their way of life on other peoples. They told the U.S. they wanted to cooperate, they wanted dialogue, they wanted to find answers together with the U.S.

Gorbachev said he wanted to say—and not in a mean way, but in a friendly way—that the pragmatism typical of American policy was not working beneficially in this context. The U.S. needed a more philosophical approach. The inertia inherent in pragmatism made the U.S. look only to its own advantage. It needed to look more broadly, at all factors. Unless it looked more broadly, the two sides would fail on the specifics. There would be a deadend on specific issues.

Gorbachev recalled the time in that very room when he and the Secretary had looked at the diagrams the Secretary had brought, on what the world would look like in a few years in terms of economic power, changes in forces and roles. He had welcomed their talk. It seemed to him that if that trend continued—he had thought about it a lot, and not just by himself, he had consulted experts—if it continued, then it followed that the two countries did have to cooperate.

The Secretary said he welcomed what Gorbachev had said. He believed profoundly that the near future would be quite different from five or ten years before. We needed to study it together. It will present opportunities; it will also present problems, some of which we can see already, with all due deference to the difficulties of predicting. He had worked on these issues himself. He had encouraged our policy planning talks. He would welcome the opportunities to pursue these topics with Gorbachev directly. Unfortunately there never seemed to be time to discuss them. They were always crowded out.

Gorbachev said once the Secretary had completed his term of office, and he had completed his, they would be free from day-to-day activity, and free for intellectual discussion. He had to tell the Secretary—and it was the first time this had been told to a foreigner—a limit to the time party and government officials could spend in their positions would be proposed. He hoped the Secretary would not divulge that to the press; they had not completed their thinking on it. There would be other far-reaching proposals put forward at the conference.

Gorbachev said he could tell the Secretary that sometimes he heard bad things about his statements that he needed cooperation in Soviet-American relations. He had information from spies like Shevardnadze, from lesser people who got their information like Matlock. He heard things Matlock did not even dream of. He heard that his efforts were taken for weakness, that he had to beg, to kneel to get cooperation, to get respect, that unless he did there would be no better dialogue. The truth was that when he said he was for Soviet-American cooperation he did it from deep conviction, and not because there was opposition at home, because he needed success. That was bureaucratic nonsense, superficial and untrue. He believed what he said. But if they let the time slip away they would lose the opportunities. He asked the Secretary to remember what he had just said; he would have heard it there for the first time.

Gorbachev said he would like to sum up: he thought the two sides had to base their efforts on what had been accomplished, and they had to make the summit a step toward a new stage for the future. He thought that was also the Secretary’s approach.

The Secretary said indeed it was. But he wished to return briefly to one thing Gorbachev had said five minutes before. He had said that when they were both through in office, they could have intelligent discussion of larger trends. The problem was to have people in office and in charge get a sense of the trends and build them into their thinking, so that they would be shaping what is done. The more we could adjust to the trends, the more we could change the balance of problems and opportunities in the direction of the opportunities.

The Secretary said he had always marked Gorbachev down as a person who instinctively did that. He remembered the first time they had met, when the Secretary had accompanied Vice President Bush to the funeral of Mr. Chernenko. They had sat in this very room, for about an hour and a half. Gorbachev had talked about the diversity of his interests.³ The Secretary had been much impressed with his analysis and his point of view. He thought Gorbachev should carry that forward. In his visit to the United States he had made a big impact on the American people. The Secretary thought the reason was fundamentally the same reason President Reagan had such an impact: he projected someone more interested in the future than in the past.

Gorbachev said the present leadership in both the Soviet Union and the United States, whether he went or not, was at a watershed of a new generation of political leaders who were coming to better reflect the trends of the world than the present people did. He was pleased that Soviet and U.S. leaders had been better able to respond in the previous three years than they had before that. He felt that if Vice President Bush were elected, he would be one of them, but of course they would have to continue to prove that to each other. Of course he was now engaged in his campaign, trying to display some muscle. It was funny how change went with position. Carlucci was now somewhat different from what he had been as National Security Advisor. He had once been talking to a former central minister in the provinces, and had reproached him for representing only a regional interest, when the issue was a national problem. The man had said, well, every dog barks up its own tree.

The Secretary said we had the saying “where you stand is where you sit.” Gorbachev said that was also good in Russian. He had said what he thought was important, he commented.

Turning to the summit program, Gorbachev said he welcomed the approved program. He thought it was really a joint program. It bore a resemblance to the experience in Washington. He thought experience, when positive, should be used, and the Washington experience had been positive. He agreed there should be dialogue at the same substantive level they had had there. The President and Mrs. Reagan would also be able to have contacts with people from all walks of life.

But we needed to think of what would crown the summit, Gorbachev went on. He was not in favor of insisting on signing a treaty at every summit. There would be too many; it would be out of control. But he did not want to be disarmed at this point either. The sides would have to work hard, try to move in every area. Even if they were not able to achieve everything, it was important that the final document record and fix the progress that had been made. Both the U.S. and the Soviets wanted a good START Treaty. They would sign it when they had it, but they had to move toward it. He thought the sides had to move, and if they did, the Soviets believed an agreement in Moscow was still possible. The U.S. side seemed less optimistic, but that was a common goal. And if agreement were to be reached on important points and future provisions, there had to be movement at the summit too.

Turning to chemical weapons, Gorbachev said he understood the U.S. did not want a separate statement at the summit. But on the other hand we could not just repeat what had been said in Washington. So he hoped there would be movement there.

Finally, on conventional weapons, Gorbachev said it seemed to him that the U.S. and NATO even liked the current situation, where discussion was more or less propaganda, an occasion for accusations about Soviet conventional superiority. The Secretary said that was not the case. We would like to see conventional stability talks get underway. We wanted to start to grapple with the issues. We would like to see the Vienna review meeting reach a proper conclusion. He had told Shevardnadze we were puzzled, because the Soviet CSCE delegation’s positions on human rights were behind the practices in the Soviet Union. That was the key to breaking things open, and we would like to see that done. If it was, that was a matter that could be ready before the summit.

Gorbachev said he thought what the Secretary had said was a cover. He disagreed with it. His information was that Ridgway and Nitze had told NATO that on conventional arms talks and data exchange the U.S. would say in Moscow that these things could not be decided in Moscow or in Washington, and that would be the end of it. His impression was that the U.S. did not want real progress, but just wanted to talk about Soviet superiority.

The Secretary rejoined that, on the contrary, we wanted progress, and the way to get it was to complete the Vienna talks, agree on a mandate, and start the exchange of data. They had had fourteen years of experience on data in MBFR, and they should do better than in MBFR. We had put forward certain ideas, on units of account and the like, that had been published. We were ready to roll up our sleeves and get something accomplished.

Gorbachev said he had not yet reacted to the perennial issue, also to be discussed during the President’s visit, of human rights. It was perennial because man was perennial. It was true that the two sides had certain arrangements for cooperation functioning, and the Soviets wanted to expand that. It was good also that they had agreed on a specific working group for their legislators; that had been decided in principle. But the U.S. Administration continued to make attempts to interfere in Soviet affairs. The Soviets rejected that. There were arguments to substantiate what he had said.

But, said Gorbachev, he would like to put the question of whether the U.S. would agree to take a new approach, beginning with the President’s visit. The Soviet approach was that each nation had the right to choose its own way, that there should be no attempt to pressure the other side. If the U.S. did not accept that approach, the Soviet side would base itself on another approach, which was actually the U.S. approach. It would make public its concerns and demand explanations. He would say frankly that that would be interference in U.S. affairs. For instance, the U.S. had said it had twelve problems with Soviet human rights practices. The Soviets had not put forward a comparable list, because that would be interference in U.S. internal affairs.

He had to say that if the U.S. did not accept a more constructive approach, if the U.S. insisted on a policy of propaganda and interference in Soviet domestic affairs, the Soviets would respond, with all their power and might. They had been restrained. If they began to turn in that direction, it would be hard to improve the atmosphere of relations. It would be going back to the past. But they could accept the U.S. approach, and use that tone even during the President’s visit. They could describe all the problems in the U.S., based on recognized human rights principles: the laws, the Presidential decisions, Supreme Court decisions. They could give all that to the press, just as the U.S. press did to them. He could tell, because every U.S. visitor hammered on these issues as if he would otherwise be afraid to return to the U.S. This was pushing toward confrontation.

Gorbachev said the U.S. side did not understand that we had different values. The U.S. valued private initiative, private property. Its media, its philosophy, its politicians all protected that. That was the choice of the U.S. Whereas in the Soviet Union they were just beginning to develop new forms of cooperation and individual work, and people were asking if that did not mean a return to private property, to capitalism, to the exploitation of the working class. They were just beginning to develop these forms, and the charges had nothing to do with reality. Matlock could read about it every day.

The Secretary commented that he had been to a cooperative restaurant, and had a good talk with the proprietor. Gorbachev rejoined that the Secretary had much more money in his pocket than the average Soviet. But the authorities had to work hard now to prove that these new forms were consistent with socialism. Values were different. The Soviets did not impose theirs, and the U.S. side tried to impose its values on the Soviets. This could result only in aggravation, in a bad atmosphere. Maybe that was what the American side wanted. But the Soviets criticized themselves a lot. It was hard for the U.S. side to add to that.

Gorbachev said he was not yet finished with human rights. The Secretary said he had a few brief things to say on human rights. We accept that there is a great diversity in governmental arrangements in the world. Countries had to balance the needs for efficiency and the needs for equity, for social justice, in society. Everyone had to make that choice. If you went too far either way it did not work. But discussion on how to organize we regarded as healthy. There was nothing wrong with it. We had learned from criticism.

Gorbachev said he would be interested in what the Secretary had had to say about U.S. society, whether he had engaged in self-criticism on human rights. The [General?] Secretary knew what he had said about the Soviet Union. The Secretary said there was great freedom to criticize in the U.S. We were worried about our problems. Drugs were a problem. Crime was a problem. They would be big issues in the upcoming election campaign. Our standard of living was on the whole high. The market system had worked quite well. But there were problems. Ours was a country of great diversity, and at the lower end of the income scale, especially in the inner cities, that was undesirable. We had worked hard on it. Sometimes we were successful, at other times not. There had been a tremendous struggle on the general subject of civil rights. We had a way to go, but we had made headway. In the 1960’s and early 1970’s that struggle had been intense. He himself has been engaged in it. We took the point very seriously. So there was no lack of criticism. He thought that on the whole we had benefitted from it.

The Secretary continued that he had been impressed with Gorbachev’s willingness to criticize. No one had criticized all aspects of society and the economy as severely as Gorbachev. But there were some things that were registered internationally, in the Helsinki Final Act, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that cut across the board. The Soviets had signed them, we had signed them. We did not think it was interference to hold up that standard and ask questions. He thought there had been tremendous progress even in his time. He said he would like to see that preserved and built on. When he had started the two sides couldn’t even discuss those issues. Now they had an organized and systematic review underway. Shevardnadze had asked him many questions. He had raised issues about life in the U.S., he had raised cases. The Secretary said he did not mind. He tried to respond. He thought things had moved in a healthy way.

Gorbachev said there was one flaw in the Secretary’s initial position. The U.S. side thought human rights were violated in the Soviet Union, but not in the U.S. That approach was visible also in U.S. foreign policy. It said the Soviet Union was all negative, and the U.S. was all good. Its economic system was all beautiful, encouraging initiative and enterprise, and the Soviet Union’s was not. But people chose their own systems. The flaw was that the U.S. approach was not self-critical. It was interesting to compare. In the Soviet Union making propaganda for war was punishable under the law. In the U.S. anti-war activists were punished by prison.

The Secretary said they were not; they were punished only if . . . Gorbachev interrupted to say he had seen the U.S. laws and codes, and they were formulated in such a way that anyone who disagreed with the authorities could be accused of anything; they could even be turned against democratic people. What kind of a society was it where one could be followed and monitored, where computer files could be kept on millions of people?, he asked. What kinds of laws were the 1950’s laws that the State Department referred to to keep Soviet trade unionists from visiting? Were they going to undermine the U.S. social system? He was going to stop, Gorbachev said. He had mentioned just one percent of what he had. He could recount all the codes, the articles the President had signed, the Supreme Court decisions, the amendments that had violated those decisions.

The two countries were different, Gorbachev said. The right way for them to deal with each other was to cooperate. The Secretary could see that the Soviets believed all countries had problems, and that the right way was to cooperate in science, in economics, in culture. That was the Soviet approach. It was not to try to remodel the other side. Let people think, and form their own impressions. The United States Government was not some kind of super-government that could teach the Soviets. It could not even tell Panama what to do.

Gorbachev went on to say that the U.S. approach was also not acceptable to the Soviets because it was differentiated too. The U.S. had learned not to notice racism, hunger or poverty in certain countries if that was not in the U.S. side’s interest. For instance, both the Soviets and the U.S. had said that Islamic fundamentalism was a dangerous phenomenon. Both had stated that there were dangers if Iranian fundamentalism were allowed free rein. But the U.S. supported Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan. It probably saw some advantage to that. And now the Afghan fundamentalists wanted to move their center to Iran, where they felt an affinity. When was George Shultz right?, Gorbachev asked.

The Secretary said he was almost always right. Gorbachev (laughed and) said he congratulated him. The Secretary continued that he was right when he said we needed a follow-on resolution, and when he said Iran could not lay mines. Iran had to be confronted when it stepped out of line. Gorbachev said he had some remarks prepared on that, and showed his file folder. The Secretary said he had some talking points. Dobrynin suggested they exchange. Gorbachev said the Secretary’s were better prepared; only he could read his.

The Secretary said he understood Gorbachev had more to say on security issues. He would be very interested. Gorbachev asked whether he was right or mistaken in thinking that the U.S. was putting brakes on the negotiating process in nuclear testing. The Secretary said he was mistaken. The U.S. wanted to complete the negotiations as soon as possible. It had wanted to complete protocols for the PNET and the TTBT. The Soviet side had wanted agreement on a JVE first. The U.S. had agreed. The Secretary said he was certain that they could have the whole PNET protocol and the JVE agreement and all its details ready by the time of the summit. They had received a positive report from the working group that morning. Shevardnadze said the actual experiment would take place later than the Soviets would have liked. Akhromeyev said there had been a slowdown concerning equipment; it had arrived at the site only three days previously.

Gorbachev said the Soviets saw some slowdown on the U.S. side in every area—conventional arms, chemical weapons, nuclear testing. The Secretary said that was not accurate. In nuclear testing the U.S. had proposed to go more rapidly than the Soviets, and had adjusted down to the Soviet pace. But the JVE was now on track. A procedure was agreed; equipment was moving, was arriving. In chemical weapons some progress had been made at this meeting. He was sure the summit statement would on chemical weapons be able to go beyond what had been said at the time of the Washington summit. On nuclear and space talks issues, ideas had been put forward at this ministerial, and we were engaged. The problems were hard, and ideas had to be digested. But we were engaged, and the President wanted a treaty if it were possible by the summit, and if not by the time he left office. What we wanted in the summit statement was the registration of the progress we had made, including progress since Washington, and there had been some.

Gorbachev said the Soviets were ready to act in that spirit.

Gorbachev asked if the Secretary wanted to add anything on the Persian Gulf. The Secretary said he had nothing particular to add. It would be a good thing to agree on a follow-on resolution, and have a ceasefire. That offered the best change of bringing the war to an end. On naval activity, as he had told the Minister the U.S. had no desire to maintain it at the current level. It was a response to the war, a response to what had taken place.

Gorbachev said the Soviets understood the importance of the situation in the Gulf, including the Iran-Iraq war. He could only confirm that they were ready to cooperate with the U.S. in this area. They had already done something. But frankly U.S. activities there had made the search for solutions difficult.

The Secretary asked if the Soviets could join in the search for a follow-on resolution. Gorbachev said that in principle they were ready to work on it. There was no obstacle in principle. But what the U.S. had done had hurt the prospects. The Soviets knew the people there quite well. So did the U.S.; it had at least cooperated with Iran in the past. He had said to the President and the Secretary in Washington that one had to act with a kind of restraint, in order not to create a situation of deadend for either the Iranians or the Iraqis. They were people who were unpredictable when they were driven into a deadend. He had to say frankly that the recent U.S. action—and he was glad it was over; at least he hoped it was over—had delayed the possibility of a second resolution. If it were adopted now he could not predict how things would evolve. The Soviets were ready to work on it, but the sides would have to assess the situation as they went along. The Soviets would not lose sight of it for a moment.

Concerning Afghanistan positions were even clearer, Gorbachev went on. The Soviet Union and the current regime were for a neutral and non-aligned Afghanistan. Iranian Prime Minister Musavi had recently received an envoy from Zia, and said his approach was that the present regime should be ousted and an alliance of fraternal fundamentalist countries created. The Secretary said that was not the Pakistani position. Gorbachev admitted that was what Musavi had said, and that he did not know Zia’s response. But he felt Pakistan and the U.S. were not showing enough realism. The U.S. and Zia were tempted to try to oust that regime. He felt that was the main danger.

Perhaps he was just repeating himself, Gorbachev went on, but he felt it was very important. If the Soviet Union said it insisted on preserving the current regime, without a coalition or recognition of the forces of the opposition, it would not be realistic. It would not be consistent with what had been said in the Soviet-American talks. The vision of a neutral and non-aligned Afghanistan had been developed together. The Soviets did not know how Afghanistan would act, especially after the Soviets had left. Not everything was clear with the Najibullah regime. The Soviets did not know everything that was happening, though they got news from many channels. But to the extent possible they would work in the spirit of the exchanges with the U.S.

That was the situation on the Soviet side, Gorbachev continued. What would the Soviet response be if the U.S. side acted differently from the spirit of their exchanges?, he asked. There was of course no agreement on this, beyond the agreement to be guarantors. But the Soviets attached great importance to the way the U.S. acted in this area. After INF ratification, Gorbachev said, which he hoped would take place—he had forgotten to ask . . . The Secretary said that it would. After INF ratification, Gorbachev went on, the way the U.S. acted in this area would be a very important test of how much the relationship could work, and how much the old principles were in force.

The Soviet Union would watch how the U.S. acted, Gorbachev said. That would create a precedent. If the U.S. refused to interact with the Soviets in moving toward a neutral and non-aligned Afghanistan, but took a different approach, the conclusion would have to be that it would be hard to hope for interaction on other regional situations. The world would doubt the value of U.S. and Soviet guarantees.

The crucial difference was that the Soviet Union pushed Najib to the extent it could in the direction of a coalition, and the U.S. would prefer his ouster, Gorbachev said. The U.S. would prefer a different regime based on a different coalition. He felt that if the U.S. went that way it would put in danger the process of political settlement. The U.S. might try to put in a regime that would just be good for the U.S., but that would not be neutral and non-aligned. The Secretary could see it was easy to talk to him. He had no smokescreen or diplomatic niceties. He spoke clear political language.

The Secretary said we supported a neutral and non-aligned Afghanistan. We supported measures to increase political stability there, among other reasons so that the refugees would return. That was one reason we had agreed to be a guarantor. We were not smart enough to know what the people of Afghanistan would decide about their internal affairs. We knew from history that it was a country of great diversity; that there were strong tribal instincts; that there was not a tradition of strong central government. We did not know how the Afghans would work things out. We would like to see a neutral and non-aligned Afghanistan take its place in the region in a sensible and responsible way. We supported efforts to help the refugees. We supported Cordovez’ efforts. But as to how the Afghans would arrange themselves, we just did not know.

The Secretary asked General Powell if he wished to comment. Powell said he did not.

Gorbachev said “good” on hearing the translation. He commented that one interesting aspect might emerge. Evidently the Alliance wished to move to Iran. If the U.S. supplied military assistance, it would be supplying Iran. He had just thought of that. The rest he left to the Secretary and Shevardnadze. The Secretary said they would do their best.

Gorbachev asked the Secretary to convey his regards to the President, along with the substance of their conversation. He wished to say he was for moving consistently to improve the relationship; he was against all impulsiveness. He would welcome it if on arriving in Moscow the President told him what he had told the President in their one-on-one meeting in Washington—Dimitri (Zarechnak) knew about it, and it was in the notes—that he was abandoning pretensions, and favored proceeding on the basis of real politics.

The Secretary said he took it that Gorbachev thought he and Shevardnadze should keep going. They had discussed the possibility of another meeting. He had told Shevardnadze he was prepared for one. Gorbachev said he agreed, but the two ministers should not work as they had been working; they should work better. Shevardnadze joked that he meant the Secretary of State. Gorbachev said no, he meant the both of them. They should work on the substance and weight of what would be discussed. The Secretary said that was what we wanted too.

Gorbachev said he had been pleased to meet again with old friends. He hoped that no one would be able to wipe out what they had done together over the previous three years to improve relations. Life demanded that. The Secretary said he agreed. As always, he appreciated the time Gorbachev had spent with him, and their exchange. He knew the President looked forward to being in Moscow for his own direct discussion with Gorbachev.

On parting, Gorbachev asked the Secretary to tell the Vice President and his candidate for President that the Soviets would be comparing what he said on campaign with what he had said in the car with Gorbachev.

1. Source: Department of State, Executive Secretariat, S/S Records, Memoranda of Conversations Pertaining to United States and USSR Relations, 1981–1990, Lot 93D188, Moscow—4/88—Shultz—Shevardnadze. Secret; Sensitive. Drafted by Simons. The meeting took place in Catherine Hall in the Great Kremlin Palace. Pascoe’s stamped initials appear in the top right-hand corner of the memorandum. In Secto 9030, April 22, Shultz reported that “Gorbachev was much more confident in his meeting with me than in the October meeting during the Yeltsin crisis, when he threatened to hold up the Washington Summit for SDI. If he was still worried today it showed in his questions rather than his manner. He was peppy, reflective, indignant and humorous by turns.” Ultimately, however, “he agreed with the two-pronged summit objective I had laid out—sum up, and project forward—and seemed to accept that we intend to carry on with the work you and he have begun so well.” (Ibid.)
2. Reference is to Reagan’s April 21 remarks to the World Affairs Council of Western Massachusetts in Springfield. (Public Papers: Reagan, 1988, Book I, pp. 488–496)
3. The memorandum of conversation for the March 13, 1985, meeting between Bush and Gorbachev is scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, vol. V, Soviet Union, March 1985–October 1986.