ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

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PERINA: Intellectuals did create the environment for change, but you needed someone like Dubcek to make it happen. It was very similar to what subsequently happened with Gorbachev. Dubcek was a party apparatchik, a career member of the party. No one expected that he would have such reformist views after he came to power, just like no one expected Gorbachev to do the things he did. In fact, both leaders were chosen by their respective communist parties because they were seen as safe choices that would not rock the boat. Had it been known that they would be such reformers, they never would have become Party leaders. This is why Kremlinology was so difficult. If the Party colleagues of Dubcek and Gorbachev could not predict how these leaders would behave once they gained power, how could analysts in Washington predict it? Q: Did you go through a period of depression after the Soviets moved in? I mean, this must have been pretty depressing since you had been so involved. PERINA: Yes. It was very disappointing although in some respects not surprising because some of the things that were going on in Czechoslovakia really were getting out of control from the Soviet viewpoint, and poor Dubcek was playing with fire. But it also showed the fallacy of the Marxist view that the individual is not important in history and all things are determined by larger social forces. Dubcek, just like Gorbachev later, was essential to the changes that happened in his country. One can argue that perhaps these changes were inevitable, but it still could have been 10 years or 100 years before they happened. Everything I have learned in my study of history reinforces a sense of how individual leaders are important, and what an enormous impact good leadership or bad leadership has on the fate of countries. I think this is something which I saw also throughout my Foreign Service career, not just with Gorbachev but also, for example, in Yugoslavia where a collection of bad leaders led that country toward disaster. I saw it reflected in other things as well. For example, when I was in college the place where everyone expected a disastrous civil war was South Africa, and no one expected an F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela would emerge and save that country from disaster. The quality of leadership and individual leaders plays a great role in history, sometimes to the good and sometimes, like in Yugoslavia, to the bad. Q: What was the mood at Columbia during your years there? Did the events of the Prague Spring have impact on it? PERINA: I don’t think it had that much impact only because so much else was going on. 1968 was an incredible year. Columbia was in a tumultuous state because of Vietnam and the civil rights movement. There was also the assassination of Martin Luther King, student demonstrations in France and Robert Kennedy’s assassination. The Prague Spring wasn't the number one issue on most people's radar scopes, but we had many demonstrations at Columbia on other issues, and thanks to some of these I in fact met my future wife. Q: Did you get married while you were at Columbia? PERINA: Yes. 16
Q: What was the background of your wife? PERINA: My wife's maiden name is Ethel Ott Hetherington, she is from Dallas, Texas and of Anglo-Saxon and Swiss German heritage. We met in the aftermath of the student demonstrations at Columbia in 1968 that shut the University down. You may remember the name Mark Rudd who led these demonstrations. A number of classes were cancelled and shifted to the apartments of students. My future wife was the roommate of one of my classmates who hosted a class in her apartment .We dated on and off for several years and then we got married in Salzburg, when I had my fellowship. I received a Foreign Area Fellowship to do research on my dissertation in Munich, Germany which had the best archives on Communist Czechoslovakia through Radio Free Europe and also through something called the Collegium Carolinum which was basically a Sudeten German organization that collected everything that was published in Czechoslovakia after 1945. So I went to Munich for two years on this fellowship, from 1970 to 1972. Ethel came to Europe during this time and we were married in Salzburg on May 26, 1972. We found out that in Austria, with its socialist traditions, the cost of a civil marriage was a percentage of one’s income. Since I had a fellowship and a very small income, we got married for about $30 in a beautiful castle in Salzburg, the Schloss Mirabelle. It was a small but very nice wedding. Q: How did you find Germany at that time? PERINA: I found Munich a very pleasant city. We were there during the 1972 Olympics and the tragedy that happened to members of the Israeli Olympic team, who were taken hostage and killed by Palestinian terrorists. There was one other incident, of a very different kind, that I recall. I did most of my research at Radio Free Europe. There was a Czech broadcaster at the Radio who was sort of our age, a young fellow who had left Czechoslovakia after 1968. His name was Pavel Minarik. He became very friendly toward us. He had a very nice German wife, and we went to movies a couple of times with them and so on. When we were back in New York and I was finishing up my dissertation and teaching the Western Civilization course in Columbia College, he even visited us once and we had dinner together. I always assumed he was just a friendly fellow, perhaps interested at some point in immigrating to America and wanting to keep up his contacts. Well, some years later, after I joined the Foreign Service and was on my first tour in Ottawa, I was reading the newspaper and suddenly saw a short report that a Czech employee of Radio Free Europe had appeared at a press conference in Prague where he attacked Radio Free Europe and said he had worked there for five years as a spy for the Czechoslovak intelligence services. It was Pavel Minarik. He was treated as a hero by the Czech government and gave numerous interviews and wrote articles about the alleged plots and evil deeds of Radio Free Europe. There was subsequently a big debate at RFE about whether he had always been a spy or simply struck a deal with the Czech intelligence service in order to be able to return home. We now know that he indeed had been a spy from the very beginning, sent out with the express purpose of infiltrating Radio Free Europe and embarrassing it. He was truly a dastardly fellow because his German wife knew nothing of his real purpose and was devastated when he left her. As I 17
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Page 3 and 4: Holbrooke visits Albanians Dayton M
Page 5 and 6: throughout the country were execute
Page 7 and 8: capitalists and so on. At that time
Page 9 and 10: taken to an apartment which initial
Page 11 and 12: Q: You said that after Cleveland yo
Page 13 and 14: they agreed to send me there. Marxi
Page 15: most comprehensive collection of in
Page 19 and 20: is there from that trial?” I thou
Page 21 and 22: word that he was going to come to a
Page 23 and 24: Q: During the Vietnam War, there wa
Page 25 and 26: very different interpretations. The
Page 27 and 28: Q: So you were there from 1979? PER
Page 29 and 30: I will always remember that staff m
Page 31 and 32: was very tough. We did suspend the
Page 33 and 34: line was that a person was made to
Page 35 and 36: there. The Polish economy was nose-
Page 37 and 38: Q: What sorts of issues did you tal
Page 39 and 40: war. But I can tell you that the So
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Page 45 and 46: phrases “Open this gate, tear dow
Page 47 and 48: PERINA: Yes, they did. Jumping ahea
Page 49 and 50: Those plenary sessions I actually w
Page 51 and 52: PERINA: That is exactly right. The
Page 53 and 54: Q: OK, in 1989 you’re going to th
Page 55 and 56: PERINA: This was an issue because o
Page 57 and 58: position in Europe, and really the
Page 59 and 60: Soviet domination. They had histori
Page 61 and 62: Q: That was my impression as well w
Page 63 and 64: welcoming dinner in a restaurant an
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eard, and he functioned as everythi
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Part of the reason that we didn’t
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One of the more interesting people
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Q: So what was happening with Kosov
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Albanians were very anxious to have
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I remember Holbrooke’s first visi
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cannot now remember what finally tr
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Q: And this was not an idle comment
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price for having a very bad leaders
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PERINA: Certainly during the period
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Q: So you took over the Holbrooke r
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PERINA: Not really. We coordinated
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why I believed that it was not wort
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Q: Can you give a brief summary of
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PERINA: Well the American interests
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shorter visits of three to four wee
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Q: How so? PERINA: Well, he felt un
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Q: Still, it strikes me that all of
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As for the European Union, most Mol
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PERINA: Nagorno-Karabakh is the mos
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e called the “Prague Process” w
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we physically crossed the front lin
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were about three-quarters of the po
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down to the Black Sea. Since I was
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PERINA: It is difficult to say. He
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political interests to keep it goin
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a huge personal embarrassment. It l
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clearly followed the advice because
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good governance and so on. In its b
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Deputy Secretary, Richard Armitage,
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PERINA: Relations with Europe were
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End of interview 129
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