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

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attention than human rights agreements within the UN and elsewhere. But then suddenly, all of these Helsinki monitoring groups began appearing in the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries, much to the surprise of the governments. In fact, Western governments were also surprised by this; no one expected such a reaction. Partly, the timing worked well with the advent of Jimmy Carter’s presidency and his emphasis on human rights, but it also showed a much higher level of frustration in Eastern bloc countries than many realized, and also a higher level of readiness by dissidents to challenge authority and vent this frustration. I found the developments fascinating, and, of course, they did play into my interests from academia and my dissertation. So I latched onto CSCE and stayed with it, on and off, for the next 25 years. Q: For a relatively new officer this frankly must have been a hell of a lot of fun. PERINA: It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that assignment. Ironically, it was the only State Department assignment that I had for about the next 20 years. My subsequent Department of State assignment was as Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary in 1996 because I spent so much of my career overseas and then in Washington in the NSC (National Security Council) or just on training assignments. But I made a lot of good contacts in that first State Department job. I found out rather quickly that contacts are key to a career in the State Department, that indeed it is a little bit like what Dick Holbrooke jokingly said in later years in a commencement address: “Remember that what is important in life is not who you know, it's whom you know.” I made contacts in that first Washington job that got me through at least the next 20 years of my career. Q: So what happens next in 1978? PERINA: In 1978 I left RPM and went into a year of Russian training because I was assigned to Moscow, to the political section in Embassy Moscow. Q: I imagine this came from your European Bureau contacts because Moscow was a hard club to get into. PERINA: Yes. It was going to the center of the action at that time. China was just emerging, it was becoming a desirable assignment, but Moscow was still the place to go. Ironically, I didn't know Russian. I had a lot of other languages but I didn't have Russian so I had to go into a year of Russian training. Then in the summer of ‘79 I went out to Moscow to work in what was called at the time the External Political Section which followed Soviet foreign policy. Q: With your Czech and your German, how did Russian go? PERINA: With my Czech I had an advantage in Russian. At the beginning it's a little confusing. If you're weak in one Slavic language it can really confuse you to learn another Slavic language. But my Czech was strong enough that I was able to keep them separate, and there are a lot of cognates. I did well in the language training and had pretty good Russian by the time I went to Moscow. 26
Q: So you were there from 1979? PERINA: From the summer of 1979 to the summer of 1981. Q: What was the situation in the Soviet Union in 1979 when you got out there? PERINA: Well, this was pre-Afghanistan so our relations were still pretty good. Jimmy Carter was the president and he put a great emphasis on human rights issues, but in our overall relations with Moscow there was a lot of interaction, a lot of exchanges and growing commercial relations. The invasion of Czechoslovakia had been forgotten, and the effort to build détente was underway. So it was an expanding bilateral relationship. Q: Our Ambassador was Thomas Watson? PERINA: I had three chiefs of mission. When I just got there it was still Mack Toon for about six months. Then he was replaced by Thomas Watson, the IBM president. But then he left after about a year and was replaced by Jack Matlock, who came not as ambassador but as Chargé d’Affaires between ambassadors. The most significant event during my tour is obvious. I got there around September 1979, and three months later the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. I do have a story about that. The invasion came at Christmas time, and it so happened that everybody was on leave for the holidays, even the DCM (Deputy Chief of Mission) was gone and the Political Counselor, Bob German, was in charge of the Embassy. It was the same thing in the Russian Foreign Ministry, or so they claimed. They told us after the invasion that the Foreign Minister was out of town but I doubt it. He just did not want to meet. So the Deputy Foreign Minister was in charge. In any case, we received word a few days before Christmas that Washington had noticed these strange military movements along the Soviet border with Afghanistan, and we were instructed to go in with a demarche to try to find out what was happening. Bob German delivered the demarche because everybody else was on vacation, and he took me along as the note taker because I had the best Russian in the Political Section. I'll always remember that session. We met with Georgiy Korniyenko, who was First Deputy Foreign Minister. Bob German was a very polite fellow and in a very friendly way he said that we had noticed these apparent military movements on the border, and what is going on? And I remember Korniyenko saying, “There's absolutely nothing going on, and if there were something going on, it should be no subject of concern to the United States.” In other words, he was saying that if something were happening, it was none of our business. So we got this complete brick wall. I wrote up the telegram, and then I think it may have been the next morning or no later than two days after that suddenly we saw in the morning that Afghanistan had been invaded. The Soviets were also justifying it all as helping Afghanistan stave off a coup attempt engineered by the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). So it clearly did concern the United States, contrary to what Korniyenko had told us, because there was this effort to implicate us and in fact blame us for the whole thing. It amazed me at how blatantly and unabashedly Korniyenko had lied to Bob German. There was not the slightest effort by the Kremlin to reconcile what they told us 27
Page 1 and 2: The Association for Diplomatic Stud
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 and 16: most comprehensive collection of in
Page 17 and 18: Q: What was the background of your
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: very different interpretations. The
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
Page 41 and 42: museums. Even in the private sector
Page 43 and 44: to the Soviet Union. Everything tha
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
Page 65 and 66: Q: How were you received by the Ser
Page 67 and 68: eard, and he functioned as everythi
Page 69 and 70: Part of the reason that we didn’t
Page 71 and 72: One of the more interesting people
Page 73 and 74: Q: So what was happening with Kosov
Page 75 and 76: 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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