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

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.
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