Office of the Historian

47. Telegram From Secretary of State Shultz to President Reagan1

April 15, 1987, 1757Z

Secto 6030. Subject: My Last Day in Moscow. Memorandum for the President. From: George P. Shultz. Subject: My Last Day in Moscow.

1. My last morning in the Soviet Union O’Bie2 and I were driven through a spring morning snowstorm a short distance out of Moscow into rural Russia. The wooded, muddy scene was reminiscent of Appalachia. We stopped in a well-preserved 17th century Russian orthodox church which was crowded with traditional icons, lit candles, and believers. The old ladies chanting along with bearded priests were vivid reminders that there is still some vestige of religious intensity inside the Soviet Union.

2. We stopped and laid a wreath at Boris Pasternak’s grave. Pasternak’s novels are only now being made available here. The scene this morning in Peredelfino could have come out of the pages of his Dr. Zhivago.

3. The highlight was a two-hour discussion with nine Soviet intellectuals, novelists, poets, and artists.3 They were all exhilarated by Gorbachev’s openness policy. Some of these writers are only now being allowed to publish works they wrote 20 or 30 years ago. But they all emphasized that this current level of “glas nost” must be considered just a beginning. I left with them a variety of books by current American authors which they eagerly accepted.

4. These dynamic people all said that we cannot conceive of the importance of good relations between the US and the USSR to this process of openness. And they told me that the US is a beacon of strength to those struggling to speak and write freely here.

Shultz
  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 trip—Memcons 4/12–16/87. Secret; Nodis. Sent for information to the Department of State. The telegram was sent from the Secretary’s aircraft en route to Brussels from Moscow.↩
  2. O’Bie was the nickname of Shultz’s wife, Helena (nee O’Brien).↩
  3. An account of this meeting is in telegram 6357 from Frankfurt, April 24. (Department of State, Executive Secretariat, S/S–IRM Records, Memoranda of Conversations Pertaining to United States and USSR Relations, 1981–1990, Lot 93D188, Moscow Trip—Memcons 4/12–16/87)↩