18
To Moscow
‘The light is coming from the West’
Fresh from her success at Camp David with President Reagan, Mrs Thatcher turned her attention again to Mikhail Gorbachev. Due to visit the Soviet Union in a matter of months, she was eager to keep in close touch with the Soviet leader. She felt she had persuaded Reagan to move away from the more radical approach espoused at Reykjavik and wanted to ensure that his interlocutor at the summit understood this. In correspondence, which was by now fairly frequent, Gorbachev had suggested that ‘some European leaders seemed to be frightened by the prospect of a Soviet–American understanding.’ Mrs Thatcher now dismissed this claim outright. ‘The doubts we had were about the wisdom of trying to achieve an all-embracing arms control agreement in one leap, as the Soviet Union proposed at Reykjavik,’ she explained. ‘Events convince me that a progressive approach based on smaller, more attainable steps has a better chance. I hope very much that you will revert to that.’1 She proposed concentrating on the areas she and Reagan had agreed at Camp David.
On 15 December 1986, Bryan Cartledge became the first British ambassador to be received alone by a Soviet general secretary since 1963. He came bearing Mrs Thatcher’s letter, but before he read it out, he had to listen to what he reported as ‘strong and at times angry criticism from Gorbachev of British positions post-Reykjavik’.2 Gorbachev said he had a high regard for the Prime Minister as an ‘interesting interlocutor’, and he saw her forthcoming visit as timely – ‘He wanted … to find out whether she looked to the future with a rifle in her hand or, as he believed, ready to reach out with a handshake.’ The European reaction to Reykjavik, he complained, showed that ‘As soon as a real possibility of eliminating nuclear weapons had appeared, there was a “panic” in London and Paris. British hostility to “socialism” was such that we could not accept Soviet ideas even when they were in our interest. The world was changing. The British Conservatives, however, were not.’ Their attitude had ‘the damp stagnant smell of the prehistoric cave’.
Cartledge then read out Mrs Thatcher’s letter, and expounded it, emphasizing the importance of the step-by-step approach. This provoked displeasure: ‘With considerable heat, Gorbachev attacked the UK for trying to dictate to the world, as she had done under Palmerston.’3 He said that ‘Mrs Thatcher had given him and President Reagan an “oral whipping” for getting carried away, “like small boys”, in Reykjavik.’ She boasted of her ‘great achievement’ at Camp David, but its effect was negative, producing impasse in Geneva: ‘her great potential influence should be used to better effect than to read a sermon to the Soviet Union.’ But despite what he called ‘the occasionally harsh tone’, Cartledge concluded that ‘It was not a stilted meeting, and he [Gorbachev] was not unfriendly.’ The dates for her visit to the Soviet Union (28 March–1 April 1987) were finally agreed. Gorbachev asked Cartledge to convey his ‘warm personal greetings’ to Mrs Thatcher.
Mrs Thatcher was pleased, as well she might be, by this flattering interpretation of her power, and by Gorbachev’s correct, if critical, reading of her role. Charles Powell conveyed her congratulations to Cartledge for the way he had conducted the meeting. ‘The Prime Minister’, Powell wrote, ‘has read [Cartledge’s telegram] with great interest (and some merriment).’4
There was nothing in Gorbachev’s combative style which irritated Mrs Thatcher, particularly as he was so declaredly eager to meet and talk. His attitude of stout argument combined with a keen interest in his opponent reflected hers. She felt a great hostility to the Soviet Union but also a growing curiosity about how it might change for the better. In the previous month, she had received the Russian dissident and leader of the Helsinki Monitoring Group in Moscow, Yuri Orlov. He counselled her against supporting the East–West ‘human rights conference’ which the Soviets wanted to hold in Moscow. She agreed and told him that people knew too little of the cruelty of the Soviet prison system and ‘could easily be misled by the smooth, smart Gorbachevs’ into thinking that ‘the Soviet Union itself had changed’. She was always anxious that people should see the question in the round, rather than just as a matter of arms control: ‘The genius of the Helsinki Accords was that they gave the West a locus for asking about human rights in the Soviet Union.’5 Orlov encapsulated a point which was important to her thinking: the great Soviet ‘fallacy’ was that ‘disarmament and peace were the same thing’.
Mrs Thatcher was interested both in highlighting Soviet oppression and in engagement which might improve matters. In December, Gorbachev at last relented and made a personal telephone call to Andrei Sakharov, the dissident and eminent scientist, allowing him to return to Moscow from his internal, KGB-supervised exile in Gorky. Mrs Thatcher, who had supported Sakharov publicly ever since his protests in the mid-1970s, sent him and his wife a Christmas card. Sakharov replied: ‘We are deeply grateful for your many years of concern for our family. Happy New Year! With hope.’6 She insisted on being allowed to see Sakharov as part of her Moscow trip in the spring.
In preparing for her Moscow visit, Mrs Thatcher was anxious to learn more about what was actually happening inside the Soviet Union, and to understand Gorbachev’s two increasingly famous concepts of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). ‘I don’t think I’ve ever prepared in so much detail and thought so carefully of what we wanted to do,’ she said in an interview with her daughter Carol some time afterwards.7 As she had done before when she wanted to think hard about the Soviet Union, she organized a seminar at Chequers (‘No journalists,’ she scribbled. ‘They will use the fact of the seminar for their own purposes’).8 As usual, she did her utmost to keep the numbers down, excluding all but the most indispensable officials,* but including some outside experts. She even kept out the Cabinet Secretary, Robert Armstrong, and, despite Armstrong’s protests, his deputy, the Soviet expert Christopher Mallaby.† Before the seminar was held on 27 February, Charles Powell wrote to her to focus on the purpose of the enterprise: ‘You need to reach a judgment on how far Gorbachev really intends to change the Soviet Union and what the prospects of doing so successfully are. A great deal depends on that judgment, including how you handle your talks with him and how we present your visit.’9 Powell also wanted her to consider whether Gorbachev would see her chiefly in her own right, or as ‘guide and mentor’ to Reagan. And it was not just a matter of Gorbachev alone – ‘What message should you try to convey to the Soviet people, e.g. through television?’
As it turned out, the seminar – and all her wide accompanying reading – provided a lot of information, but did not make her judgment much easier to form. The experts, who included veterans of her 1983 seminar such as Ronald Amann, Archie Brown and Christopher Donnelly, were joined by Robert Conquest, Sir Michael Howard, Hugh Thomas and Seweryn Bialer, from Columbia University. Bialer answered Mrs Thatcher’s demand that at least one American expert be present. Charles Powell summed up their prolonged discussion in a way which, he conceded, ‘may err slightly on the side of conveying too negative a view of what is happening in the Soviet Union’. He divided the experts into two camps – the ‘enthusiasts’, who tended to be more expert on the USSR, and the ‘sceptics’ who were ‘principally non-specialists’.10
The enthusiasts said that Gorbachev was so ‘shocked’ by the poor performance of the Soviet economy that he had ‘a strong sense of urgency’. A big change was in the air, and there were ‘signs of greater pragmatism’ about ideology and how to handle human rights cases. The sceptics, however, felt they ‘had seen it all before’, and compared it to the abortive reforms made, under Tsar Nicholas II, by Stolypin. The sceptics saw Gorbachev as ‘a transient figure’. The conclusions drawn, noted Powell’s record, were that ‘fundamental change was not on his agenda’ and ‘The Soviet Union might at best evolve in 20 years’ time into something resembling Yugoslavia today.’* As for the implications of what was happening for the West, the prospects seemed confusing. It was ‘by no means self-evident’ that it
would be to the West’s advantage if Gorbachev were to succeed in his economic reforms, but it would not be ‘very practicable, and probably not desirable’ to try to subject the Soviet economy to unbearable strain.11 One person whose view was not sought was poor Geoffrey Howe. When he made as if to speak, Mrs Thatcher forestalled him: ‘Don’t worry, Geoffrey. We know exactly what you’re going to say.’12 Looking back on the whole session years later, Archie Brown concluded that many of the expectations aired proved erroneous: ‘They won’t get out of Afghanistan, there’ll be no change in ideology, they won’t allow any shred of independence to Eastern Europe. I would say that the judgments that came out of that seminar on the whole are less perspicacious than those that came out in 1983.’13 As for Mrs Thatcher herself, she formed no clear conclusion from the seminar about Gorbachev’s ultimate destination. By nature, she was in the sceptic camp, but she also hoped the enthusiasts might be right.† The questions she was asking could be answered only by her visit.
Mrs Thatcher also consulted Oleg Gordievsky. Their first meeting, at Chequers the previous May, had suffered from a certain absurdity. As Charles Powell had reported, ‘The Prime Minister, who is very security-conscious, referred to Mr Gordievsky as Mr Collins throughout. If this confused anyone who was not supposed to be listening as much as it confused the guests, it was a very successful tactic.’14 ‘It was stupid,’ recalled Gordievsky, ‘because I was not Mr Collins and never had been!’15 Mrs Thatcher had indulged her tendency to talk: ‘The session lasted altogether some three and a half hours. The Prime Minister spent a considerable part of this in talking about life in general and Chequers in particular, in order to relax Mr Gordievsky/Collins … The discussion of Soviet affairs is not easy to record since, rather than address questions to Mr Gordievsky, the Prime Minister tested out her views and assumptions about the Soviet Union on him.’16 As Gordievsky recalled: ‘I’m sorry to say it but she talked and talked and talked … I could see it was her personal trait.’17 He had been irritated by her loquacity, but also impressed by what she said: ‘She knew of Communism only very basic things, but she had the same instinctive understanding of Communism as Reagan, but better than Reagan because more nuanced.’ She had ‘no historical understanding, but excellent moral understanding’. Mrs Thatcher had told Gordievsky that ‘she did not expect to see any change in the nature of the Soviet Union in her time. But she was interested to know how that system could be influenced.’18
Now, the following March, with the deputy head of SIS, Colin McColl, to ‘hold his hand’,19 Gordievsky had a more productive meeting with Mrs Thatcher, this time at No. 10. With everything focused on her meeting in Moscow at the end of the month, Mrs Thatcher was ‘on the ball’.20 Gordievsky recalled: ‘She said, “I need material on what to say at the press conference and other interviews” … I said, “Prime Minister, you couldn’t have found a better man than me for it. I am a specialist in propaganda.” ’21 He singled out points which would hit home with the Russian public, for example: ‘ “About 70 per cent of the British population live in independent dwellings. For the Russian population this is an absolutely sensational figure. Because they live in communal flats, like insects.” It was a very good discussion.’ He told her to be ‘as clear and pungent as possible’ whenever she appeared on television: she should ‘spell out with statistics the reality of western prosperity’.22
Gordievsky also told Mrs Thatcher that Gorbachev was not popular with his own people – ‘people resented the restrictions on alcohol, and thought he made far too many speeches.’ Gorbachev’s likely reforms would not lead to democracy. As for economic reforms, in 1922, the New Economic Policy (in which Lenin reversed his earlier dirigisme) had worked because the skills of a free economy still existed, but ‘Now there was no one who would know how to take advantage of even a modest move towards a market economy.’ The Soviet Union did want good relations with the West, because it was desperate for money, but Gorbachev’s ‘long-term aim was to denuclearise and neutralise Western Europe’. The Prime Minister ‘should not mince her words’ in pointing out that the West ‘must rely on nuclear weapons in the absence of conventional dominance’. She should raise human rights issues and not be shy of discussing Soviet adventurism in the Third World.
Mrs Thatcher wanted to know what Gorbachev would be expecting from her visit. On the one hand, Gordievsky told her, he sought ‘a chance to build up his prestige’ and would ‘want to be seen to be on good terms with the longest-serving Western leader’. On the other, ‘he would fear that the Prime Minister’s strong line on arms control might derail progress towards another US/Soviet Summit which he very much wanted.’23 The combined effect, especially when set against the weakness of Reagan’s position at home because of the Iran–Contra scandal, was to put Mrs Thatcher in a pivotal position.
The Prime Minister paid less respectful attention to the advice of her own Foreign Secretary. She ignored Geoffrey Howe’s suggestions about trying to persuade the Russians and Americans to sink their differences over SDI, and she was much irritated by the draft of an article by Howe intended for the Soviet magazine New Times. As well as disliking the conciliatory, Foreign Office tone of the draft (she demanded ‘Massive deletions’), she objected to its lèse-majesté. ‘Mrs Thatcher and I see this visit as an important opportunity,’ Howe had written. Mrs Thatcher encircled the phrase ‘Mrs Thatcher and I’, and wrote ‘No no no’.24 She was also unimpressed by the two silver-handled hairbrushes that the Foreign Office had selected as her official gift for Gorbachev. ‘But he’s completely bald,’ she protested.25*
Knowing that a general election approached, the Labour Party was anxious to head off any potential success for Mrs Thatcher. On 19 March, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Denis Healey, informed the Foreign Office that he was flying to Moscow immediately. The following day, however, Cartledge reported from Moscow that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were not interested in seeing Healey: ‘We subsequently learned … that Mr Healey had found it “inconvenient” to travel to Moscow at this time. This was clearly a politically motivated self-invitation which misfired. The Russians were evidently not prepared to play ball.’26 Beside this news, Mrs Thatcher happily wrote ‘!!’. Although the Soviets had more natural sympathy and closer contacts with the Labour Party, they calculated that Mrs Thatcher was the more likely winner of the coming election, the one worth dealing with. Neil Kinnock made his own effort to take some of the shine off Mrs Thatcher’s time in Moscow by planning a concurrent visit to Washington, DC. The White House, however, had no intention of doing anything to help Kinnock and the visit backfired spectacularly (see Chapter 20).
In Mrs Thatcher’s calculations about her Moscow visit, of course, the imminence of the general election bulked large. In planning the visit, the Foreign Office had expressed concerns over the timing, fearing that the trip ‘might get washed away by the election’.27 Mrs Thatcher, however, took a very different view. The timing of the election ‘dictated’ the date for the visit, recalled Charles Powell. She was looking for a coup de théâtre.28 Mrs Thatcher wanted to be successful not only in content, but in projecting the right visual impressions. Even more care than usual was taken about what she should wear. ‘She was very excited about her Russian clothes,’ recalled Amanda Ponsonby (formerly Colvin), who helped her pack them.29 Crawfie, her personal assistant, who had noticed that Mrs Thatcher was much taken with Gorbachev’s ‘wonderful sparkly eyes’, told her, ‘If you’re going to Moscow, I think we’d better buy you some new clothes. Mrs Gorbachev always wears Yves Saint Laurent so you’d better look nice.’30 Crawfie saw a black coat in the window of Aquascutum, which she got on approval. She also found a camel-hair coat with a sable collar and borrowed a sable hat from a friend. Mrs Thatcher intended to make a splash. Everyone was conscious of how much the visit mattered. Denis, who did not accompany her, said ‘Good luck, love’ with untypical anxiety: ‘We were all on edge.’31
In her final preparati
ons, Mrs Thatcher was careful to communicate fully with her allies. On 23 March she saw, separately, both François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl. The French President fell into the ‘enthusiast’ camp, though remaining staunch, from her point of view, that ‘we must resist the attempt to denuclearise Europe’.32 ‘He believes Mr G prepared to go a very long way to changing the system,’ Mrs Thatcher’s own handwritten notes recorded, ‘– “when you change the form, you are on the way to changing the substance.” ’33 The German Chancellor, on the other hand, qualified as a ‘sceptic’. Kohl was worried by the effect of Soviet propaganda on his country, and he did not like what was happening in the Soviet Union – Gorbachev ‘wants modern Communist system. Not a democratic system. More anti-religious than ever before.’34*
Two days later, Mrs Thatcher wrote to Reagan, laying out in full her approach to her visit, which sometimes echoed Gordievsky’s thoughts. ‘I want first to make my own assessment of how serious Gorbachev is about internal political and economic restructuring: and what impact this will have on Soviet foreign policy … I am sceptical whether he is really able to take the necessary steps, or fully understands what is needed. People who have only lived under communism find it difficult to comprehend the workings of a free market.’35 She would ‘make clear that the West does not want to make change in the Soviet Union more difficult. Far from it: it is only when they start to treat their own people decently and implement the freedoms confirmed in the Helsinki Final Act that we shall be able to develop the trust and confidence which are necessary … we shall want to see actual results.’
Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume 2 Page 79
