Overview

This volume is part of a subseries of volumes of the Foreign Relations series that documents the foreign policy decision making of the administration of President Ronald Reagan. The second release of four Soviet bilateral volumes, it commences immediately following the dramatic encounter at Reykjavik, on October 10–11, 1986, where U.S. and Soviet leaders propelled the negotiation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), and focuses on subsequent interactions between and among President Ronald Reagan, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, Secretary of State George Shultz, and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. Included are internal deliberations and memoranda of conversation from the December 1987 Washington Summit, where Reagan and Gorbachev signed the landmark INF Treaty, and the May 1988 Moscow Summit, where Reagan stood with Gorbachev in Red Square and stated his phrase from 5 years earlier—“evil empire”—applied to “another time, another era.”