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

there. The Polish economy was nose-diving from all of the strikes and unrest. Poland was
going more and more into debt and economic chaos. As long as this appeared to be the
trend, the Soviets were basically hoping that the example of Poland was negative rather
than positive to the rest of the bloc, and that Solidarnosc would collapse as a result of its
own actions. This was very different from Prague in 1968, which the Kremlin clearly
feared would be an example that others tried to emulate. But we spent a lot of time
watching the situation in Poland, knowing that the Soviets did not always think rationally
and that hot rather than cool heads could prevail.
Q: Were you able to talk to people at the Polish Embassy about this?
PERINA: We were, and they were totally out of the loop, frankly. Nobody was talking to
them. They were very isolated. We as an Embassy tended to know far more than they did
about Soviet attitudes. It was interesting because the Soviets always tried to maintain a
good relationship with us. They knew relations were already damaged because of
Afghanistan but their approach was to try to preserve as much of the relationship as
possible. The poor Poles, however, were clearly ostracized despite being a Warsaw Pact
ally.
Q: Could you go to the Soviets and say, “Hey, what's going on in Poland?”
PERINA: We did. We had numerous demarches about Solidarnosc. I was not specifically
involved in those because there were others who were specifically following Poland but
we certainly did raise Polish events with them. We tried to keep up a dialogue, and the
Soviets would engage to some degree on this.
Q: What about the institutes like the USA and Canada Institute?
PERINA: That was Georgiy Arbatov’s institute. It put itself forward as an independent
think tank, and it was the closest thing to a think tank in the Soviet Union so that is the
reason why many Westerners flocked to it. It was, of course, hardly independent, and
Arbatov was a very clever apologist for the Kremlin who knew how to give the
appearance of independence to Western audiences. He saw himself as very skilled in
dealing with Westerners and would occasionally be critical of Soviet actions to try to
maintain credibility but in the end almost invariably supported Soviet actions. He was
primarily useful as another voice of the government, but sometimes a more sophisticated
voice than what we heard in the Foreign Ministry or read in the press. So he did serve a
role, though a very disingenuous one.
Q: You went to Berlin in 1981?
PERINA: Yes. In 1981 we moved from Moscow to Berlin.
Q: What was the Berlin situation in 1981 because this was always a city of tension
between East and West?
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