164. Memorandum From Secretary of State Shultz to President Reagan1
SUBJECT
- Your June 1 Dinner with General Secretary Gorbachev
While the memory is still fresh, I want to record for you my thoughts on the remarkable evening you, Nancy, O’Bie, and I had with the Gorbachevs and Shevardnadzes. The dinner at the Tsarist palace they styled a dacha was an historic occasion between our two countries and deserves to be recorded for posterity.
My first impression was of the liveliness of the conversation and the easy conviviality of the evening. Gorbachev seemed determined to match you joke for joke and even Raisa told a couple to spice up the conversation. There were hardly any lingering signs of rancor from the tough conversation of the morning or of any desire to return to old arguments. Indeed, the Gorbachevs and Shevardnadzes went out of their way to make it a pleasurable evening. It appeared they would have been happy to prolong it even longer than they did.
I was struck by how deeply affected Gorbachev appeared to be by the Chernobyl accident. He commented that it was a great tragedy which cost the Soviet Union billions of rubles and had only been barely overcome through the tireless efforts of an enormous number of people. Gorbachev noted with seemingly genuine horror the devastation that would occur if nuclear power plants became targets in a conventional war much less a full nuclear exchange. Gorbachev agreed that Chernobyl was a “Final Warning” as Dr. Gale had called it in his book.2 It was obvious from that evening that Chernobyl has left a strong anti-nuclear streak in Gorbachev’s thinking.
Gorbachev showed open pride in your accomplishments together, mentioning that the INF treaty was an accomplishment for the entire world. While the Gorbachevs commented on the good press coverage of the Moscow Summit in our two countries and around the world, they betrayed some frustration at Western media stories on them personally. Gorbachev registered an interest in more discussions with us on regional issues, and his joke about dressing a Brazilian soccer team [Page 1124] like Georgians so their Armenian opponents would get fired up was an ironic reference to his major nationality problems at home.
Finally, both the Gorbachevs revealed something of themselves during the evening. Evidently true lovers of the ballet, they recalled fondly how they had watched standing from the upper balconies in their student days. Gorbachev noted that his only two connections with religion had been his baptism which he could not remember and a recent meeting with Soviet church leaders. His comment that he had never used his law degree brought out a strong defense of his successes in life from Raisa. She also remarked to you on the responsibilities and burdens of leadership. Both expressed a confident sense of national pride in their descriptions of the variety of the Soviet Union, remarks which came across to me as genuine and not overbearing.
In sum, Mr. President, the evening was a fitting climax to your four summits with General Secretary Gorbachev. O’Bie and I were honored to take part.
- Source: Department of State, Executive Secretariat, S/S Records, Memoranda of Conversations Pertaining to United States and USSR Relations, 1981–1990, Lot 93D188, Moscow Summit 5/29–6/1, 1988. Secret. An unknown hand wrote in the upper right-hand corner: “6/24/88.”↩
- See footnote 4, Document 163.↩