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

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with the President. The reason I raise this is because even at this lunch he got a very wide range of interpretations of Gorbachev and his objectives. So it was not surprising that the government also had diverging views. The lunch and the film were interesting, however, because they showed how excited Reagan was about his trip to Moscow, and how extensively he wanted to prepare for it. He did somehow see it as a culmination of his presidency. One little anecdote. The first one-on-one meeting at the summit was held in the Kremlin, and it was the first meeting in Moscow between Reagan and Gorbachev as well as between Nancy Reagan and Raisa Gorbachev. The scenario was that the two couples would meet together and then the presidents and first ladies would split up for separate meetings. Tom Simons and I had to follow behind Reagan because we were going to be the note takers in the meeting of the presidents. The Soviets always had a way to add drama to these events, and when we arrived at the Kremlin, there was a very high narrow staircase that Reagan and Nancy were supposed to climb in order to meet Gorbachev and Raisa at the top. You could see the Soviet psychology behind it: the U.S. President starts at the bottom and has to walk up to meet Gorbachev. In any case, Reagan and Nancy were walking up the staircase and Tom and I were about 30 feet behind. It was a closed off staircase so I am not sure that Reagan and Nancy were aware that anyone was watching them. In the middle of the staircase they stopped and looked at one another, and then Reagan took Nancy’s hand and they walked up the rest of the way holding hands. It was a minor thing but actually very touching because one could sense that they both felt that this was a very special moment for them. Q: But when you talked about the one-on-one, you said there wasn’t very much substance. PERINA: That is true. I wrote most of the talking points for Reagan, and we tried to prepare him to raise issues that he could handle and that would not give openings to Gorbachev to play mischief. So we wanted him to raise the more philosophical issues, particularly freedom of religion, which he liked as an issue and understood. This was still a time when there were church problems in the Soviet Union, persecution of believers and so on. So I wrote a number of talking points for him on freedom of religion, and I remember one passage that said, “A person’s love for his religion and for his country is like a person’s love for his children and his parents. They are different and complement each other and need not be in conflict.” The idea was, of course, that the state should not feel threatened by the church and by people’s devotion to the church. Well, Reagan did raise freedom of religion and there was a brief discussion of it although the above line was never used. This is the kind of general discussion Reagan wanted to have, whereas Gorbachev quickly pulled the declaration of principles out of his pocket and wanted to get agreement on the document. This was the range of the one-on-one meetings. Q: This is not to denigrate these meetings because it is important just to have the two leaders talking to one another. 50
PERINA: That is exactly right. The meetings are important. Indeed, by the time of the Moscow summit I think Reagan had changed his view of the Soviet Union as an evil empire primarily because of his meetings with Gorbachev. He gave a speech in Moscow in which he tried to nuance the evil empire phrase and explain that he had really been speaking about the system and not the people. So leaders getting to know one another and developing their views is very important, even if no substance is discussed. Q: Did you have any contact with the note takers or the handlers on the other side? PERINA: No. They were probably some NSC equivalents, and under the circumstances we just didn’t have a chance to interact at all. The interpreters knew one another because they were the same at almost all of the meetings. Q: How did you feel overall about this summit? PERINA: I think it was a useful summit and important symbolically. In the perception of people, it did a lot to reduce the sense of confrontation from Reagan’s first term. It influenced Reagan, and I think it influenced Russians about Reagan. He did a lot of things on the trip. He went to a university there, he went to churches, he strolled through Red Square with Gorbachev, he made a lot of speeches and appearances, and I think it did change the dynamics of the relationship and made the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union less dangerous for everyone. Q: Is there anything else we should talk about from your NSC days? PERINA: Perhaps just one thing. One of my portfolios at the NSC was also Eastern Europe. I made a trip to Poland with then Vice President George Bush, and I also visited the region in early 1988 with Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead, who had been given a special brief by George Shultz to follow events there. We made stops that included Sofia, Bucharest, Budapest, Bratislava and Prague. The most interesting of these was the stop in Romania where we took away MFN (Most-Favored Nation Tariff Status) from Ceausescu. Of course, Ceausescu knew what was coming and actually renounced MFN about an hour before meeting with Whitehead, so we could not actually take it away. But I will never forget what a desperate place Romania was under his leadership in those years. There was no heat, no electricity and hardly anything in food shops. People in the Foreign Ministry wore overcoats in their offices. I wandered into a bookshop and almost the only books available were those written by Ceausescu or his wife Elena. Most striking was the fear that everyone so clearly had in their eyes, from people on the street up to officials around Ceausescu. Even we were aggressively followed everywhere by secret police who made no effort to hide their presence. I think it was the closest experience I have had to what it must have been like to live under Stalin in his last years when he went a bit insane and instituted a cult of personality and reign of terror. We were only there about two days but the experience was unforgettable. I have never seen anything equally depressing. Q: You left the NSC when? 51
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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 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 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
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: Those plenary sessions I actually w
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
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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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Page 81 and 82: Q: And this was not an idle comment
Page 83 and 84: price for having a very bad leaders
Page 85 and 86: PERINA: Certainly during the period
Page 87 and 88: Q: So you took over the Holbrooke r
Page 89 and 90: PERINA: Not really. We coordinated
Page 91 and 92: why I believed that it was not wort
Page 93 and 94: Q: Can you give a brief summary of
Page 95 and 96: PERINA: Well the American interests
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Page 99 and 100: 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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