Three Days in Moscow

by Bret Baier

  Then it clicked for Fitzwater. “Look at these people,” he said to Baker, who was standing nearby. “The ladies are maids and telephone operators and cleaning ladies from our hotel. And look at the men—they’re our drivers from yesterday. Everyone speaks English, which means they’re KGB. They dressed them up like peasants.”

  Baker nodded.

  “Howard, should I tell him? Does this matter?” Fitzwater asked.

  “Well, I don’t know, but . . . yes, you tell him.”

  Fitzwater went up to Reagan, where he was standing with Gorbachev. “Mr. President, can I have a word for just a second?”

  Reagan nodded and backed away two steps.

  “These groups are KGB,” Fitzwater said quietly. Then he walked away and Reagan returned to his conversations. Reagan’s demeanor never changed, and he didn’t indicate to Gorbachev that he was onto the ruse. He was just as genial as ever. One could almost hear him thinking, So what if they’re KGB? They’re also Russians, just like everyone else.

  There was a side story to Reagan’s walk in Red Square that’s become the subject of intrigue in recent years. The White House photographer Pete Souza (who would serve under President Barack Obama as well) snapped a picture of Reagan greeting a young boy. Over the boy’s left shoulder is a blond man, standing like a tourist with a camera around his neck. Souza later said he was told that the man was Vladimir Putin, and many people thought it looked like him. At the time, Putin, thirty-five, was a KGB functionary serving in East Germany, and the Russian press has scoffed at the idea that he was in Moscow. But Putin’s supposed appearance in Reagan’s frame became something of a myth, often referenced, and never confirmed, though it is clear that there was a substantial KGB presence in the square that day. Fitzwater weighed in on that during a recent conversation. “I saw the picture,” he told this author. “I believe it was him; he denies it. But the picture looks just like him, and now, knowing his personality with thirty years of hindsight, I would bet my life on it that he was there.”

  As they walked through Red Square, the ABC reporter Sam Donaldson called out to Reagan, “Do you still think you’re in an evil empire?”

  Reagan paused. “No,” he said firmly, “that was another time, another era.” His answer, which seemed casually delivered but might have been planned, had a bracing effect on the Soviet people. “It made them pay attention to the other things he said,” Matlock observed, “such as his admiration for Russian women, accustomed to holding a full-time job while maintaining a household in the midst of scarcity, his love for Russian literature and music, his sympathy for the terrible human losses during World War II and to Stalin’s terror.”

  His words in Red Square also scored a victory for Gorbachev. Now he could tell his party leaders, “See, my efforts have changed the American mind.” It was as if Reagan had lifted a five-year curse.

  Reagan felt exhilarated after his walk in Red Square, but the main event was still to come. That afternoon he had a date with destiny, as he might have described it—a speech at Moscow State University where he would finally present his case to the Soviet people.

  Chapter 11

  The Speech

  An enormous bust of Vladimir Lenin, frowning and fierce, poised atop a tall yellow pedestal, loomed over the stage at Moscow State University where Reagan would give his address. To its left was a dramatic mural of the Russian Revolution.

  Josh Gilder, the speechwriter assigned to draft Reagan’s speech, was aghast when he paid an advance visit to the auditorium and saw the setting.

  “I had an instinctive reaction of repulsion,” Gilder recalled. The backdrop needed to be changed. Gilder knew that Gorbachev had told people to be helpful, so he said to the official accompanying him, “Okay, the first thing is, the bust of Lenin has to go. Is it movable?”

  “Yes,” said the official, shaking a bit.

  “Wheel it out,” Gilder instructed.

  The official was nearly in tears. “Second,” Gilder said, “cover up the mural.”

  Agitated, the official hurried off to consult with others.

  But as Gilder waited in the hall, his eyes nervously traveling back and forth from the majestic bust to the sweeping mural, he came to a realization: the setting was not demeaning to American values; it was a backdrop that would heighten the power of Reagan’s speech. Sitting there, the first line came to him: “Standing here before a mural of your revolution . . .” He quickly told the official that the bust and mural could remain.

  And so the dramatic stage was set. But it was still a bit of a shock when the president’s aides arrived that day, shortly before the speech. Fitzwater, who was riding in the motorcade behind the president, received a call on his phone. A nervous aide said, “Marlin, when you get here, take a look at this podium where the president’s going to be speaking.”

  “What is it?” Fitzwater asked.

  “Lenin . . . a huge statue . . . right above the podium.”

  “Oh, no,” Fitzwater mumbled. Was it a trick? “Here’s the problem,” he said. “We can’t really do anything about this without making a scene.” It was too late. Students were already filing into the auditorium.

  Like Gilder before him, Fitzwater quickly reached a positive point of view. Later, when someone asked him what he had thought of Reagan standing in front of Lenin for his speech, he had a snappy comeback: “If anybody would ever appreciate Lenin having to spend an hour and a half looking at the backside of Ronald Reagan, it would be the president.”

  The choice of Moscow State University for Reagan’s major speech was loaded with significance. Considered Moscow’s finest university, with thirty-five thousand students, it was an imposing structure in Lenin Hills, with a view of the city. Both Gorbachev and his wife were graduates, although neither would be present for the speech. (Nor would Nancy, who was on a day trip to Leningrad.)

  The students who crowded into the twelve-hundred-seat auditorium were like students everywhere: informally dressed, their faces a mix of curiosity, excitement, and practiced indifference. They had been raised to distrust and even hate the United States, just as American children had been raised to distrust and hate the Soviet Union. But because they were young and attended a university where ideas were debated, many of them had expanded their thinking. If a poll had been conducted among them, it would probably have shown approval of Gorbachev’s reforms. In some circles, perhaps, Reagan was even lionized, just as Gorbachev was by American youth. Those were indeed strange times, the apple cart of conventional thinking upended by their leaders.

  Anthony Dolan viewed the Moscow speech as the final flowering of Reagan’s philosophy—begun at Westminster with the “ash heap of history,” confirmed in Orlando with the “Evil Empire,” and furthered in Berlin with “tear down this wall!” In Moscow, Reagan was summoning a vision of the new world that awaited them, already striding forward—as if the Communist state were a mere technicality of history. Some people thought his early speeches were the “old” Reagan and the later speeches were the “new” Reagan, but Dolan saw them as being all of a piece—the continuum of his grander design. Dolan remembered being in the Oval Office the previous December 7, the day before the Gorbachevs had arrived for the Washington summit. Reagan had invited four writers in for a conversation. One of them, Ben Wattenberg, who was mostly associated with Democrats, had asked bluntly, “Have we won the Cold War?”

  Hearing that, Dolan had felt overtaken, finding the moment almost extraterrestrial. He stepped outside and viewed the scene from the Rose Garden. “I could see Reagan shifting uneasily in his seat, because he wanted to say yes, but he didn’t want to upend things before the summit,” he said. He watched as Reagan gave a standard nonanswer: “We’re working on it . . . much is left to be done . . .”

  Reagan believed that the Cold War was over, even if he never said it out loud, so the Moscow speech had a markedly different tone than any address he had ever given about communism—optimistic and futuristic, friendly and even colleg
ial, like old friends making plans.

  Dolan thought Gilder was the perfect person to give expression to those thoughts. “Josh had a great understanding of Reagan,” he said, recalling the first time he’d taken Gilder into the Oval Office to meet the president. He could feel Gilder “getting” Reagan, listening to him, recognizing his communication genius.

  “Most of us understood it wasn’t us, it was him,” Gilder recalled, meaning Reagan. “When I first came on the staff, I asked someone, ‘How do I write like Ronald Reagan?’ I was told, ‘Don’t try to. Write the best speech you can and he will make it sound like Ronald Reagan.’ He was transformational in this way. Reagan’s speeches were remembered because people learned he meant what he said. He had a vision, and every single thing he did as president was part of it. I don’t think there’s ever been a more consistent politician.”

  When Gilder returned with a draft, it was beautiful. Reagan loved it. Once again, the nervous Nellies in the State Department and NSC hovered around, worrying about the language. But they soon realized that the speech had no single phrase that might give offense, no line that just had to be excised. Its deeper meaning was encased in respectful prose and stirring poetry. It was meant to lift hearts, not rattle cages. And it was pure, unadulterated Reagan. It might have been entitled “Morning in Moscow.”

  When Reagan strode to the podium, there was polite clapping, but he immediately won over the audience with his opening: “I know you must be very busy this week, studying and taking your final examinations,” he said. “So, let me just say, zhelayu vam uspekha [I wish you success].”

  The speechwriters had lobbied for a different saying—Ni púkha, ni perá, literally meaning “Neither fur nor feathers,” a traditional good luck wish given to hunters, comparable to the American saying “Break a leg.” But Reagan struggled with the exact pronunciation, which was important because it was close to an expression meaning flatulence. So they played it safe with the less colloquial phrasing. It didn’t matter. The students applauded enthusiastically.

  It was a speech remarkable for its poetry, its subversive seduction, and its subject matter: the technological progress of the current era, the promise available to those modern-day explorers, perhaps sitting in that hall.

  Standing here before a mural of your revolution, I want to talk about a very different revolution that is taking place right now, quietly sweeping the globe without bloodshed or conflict. Its effects are peaceful, but they will fundamentally alter our world, shatter old assumptions, and reshape our lives. It’s easy to underestimate because it’s not accompanied by banners or fanfare. It’s been called the technological or information revolution, and as its emblem, one might take the tiny silicon chip, no bigger than a fingerprint. One of these chips has more computing power than a roomful of old-style computers.

  But then, ever so subtly, Reagan turned the discourse around, framing the “revolution” as the product of freedom, with the underlying message that it was the reward of an open society. He didn’t criticize the Soviet Union; instead, he spoke to the audience of their shared aspirations, based on the assumption that they were collaborators in destiny, seeking common goals. He spoke to them as if they were bound together in a common destiny. He was trying not to persuade them but to inspire them. He didn’t shout. He didn’t preach. He didn’t admonish. He let the warm timbre of his voice wash over the hall. As they listened, the students witnessed the rhetorical gift that Americans had long appreciated: his utter authenticity, the words more convincing because they were spoken from the heart. Time and again he returned to the topic of freedom:

  We Americans make no secret of our belief in freedom. . . .

  Go to any American town, to take just an example, and you’ll see dozens of churches, representing many different beliefs—in many places, synagogues and mosques—and you’ll see families of every conceivable nationality worshiping together. Go into any schoolroom, and there you will see children being taught the Declaration of Independence, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights—among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—that no government can justly deny; the guarantees in their Constitution for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. Go into any courtroom, and there will preside an independent judge, beholden to no government power. There every defendant has the right to a trial by a jury of his peers, usually 12 men and women—common citizens; they are the ones, the only ones, who weigh the evidence and decide on guilt or innocence. In that court, the accused is innocent until proven guilty, and the word of a policeman or any official has no greater legal standing than the word of the accused. Go to any university campus, and there you’ll find an open, sometimes heated discussion of the problems in American society and what can be done to correct them. Turn on the television, and you’ll see the legislature conducting the business of government right there before the camera, debating and voting on the legislation that will become the law of the land. March in any demonstration, and there are many of them; the people’s right of assembly is guaranteed in the Constitution and protected by the police. Go into any union hall, where the members know their right to strike is protected by law. As a matter of fact, one of the many jobs I had before this one was being president of a union, the Screen Actors Guild. I led my union out on strike, and I’m proud to say we won.

  But then he added that it wasn’t just America or the West that knew about freedom and greatness. In fact, not once in his speech did he criticize the Russian people. Instead, he elevated them with a deep tone of respect, stating that one of the most eloquent passages on human freedom came not from American literature but from the Russian writer Boris Pasternak in the novel Dr. Zhivago: “I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats—any kind of threat, whether of jail or of retribution after death—then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer in the circus with his whip, not the prophet who sacrificed himself. But this is just the point—what has for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel, but an inward music—the irresistible power of unarmed truth.”

  He was a messenger of hope, seducing them with their own longings, which he knew they had. How could they resist the poignant cry of their countryman? It was not Reagan the outsider they didn’t fully trust but Reagan the human being who reminded them of their higher purpose, richly detailed in Russian literature and fully grounded in their hearts. “Is this just a dream?” he asked, his voice growing soft. “Perhaps. But it is a dream that is our responsibility to have come true.” The hall was still, the audience rapt. “Your generation is living in one of the most exciting, hopeful times in Soviet history. It is a time when the first breath of freedom stirs the air and the heart beats to the accelerated rhythm of hope, when the accumulated spiritual energies of a long silence yearn to break free.” He was reaching out to anyone who felt discouraged, anyone who felt that things could never change. It was the first breath of freedom, and they were there to experience it. He was erasing the conflict that had defined the relationship of their nations and speaking of their shared identity. He was asking them to set aside, if only for a moment, their resistance to democratic principles and think of themselves and the people they could become.

  Finally he employed a sentimental tone that brought tears to many eyes. It was Reagan, with his melodic voice, that restored to them the plaintive cry that was in the Russian heart. Reagan had already seen it that week in the excited faces of the crowds in the Arbat, in the fears of the refuseniks, in the serene hope of the monks, in the breathless anticipation in the faces of artists and poets.

  I’ve been told that there’s a popular song in your country—perhaps you know it—whose evocative refrain asks the question, “Do the Russians want a war?” In answer it says: “Go ask that silence lingering in the air, above the birch and poplar there; beneath those trees the soldiers lie. Go ask my mother, ask my wife; then you will have to ask no more, ‘Do the Russians want a
war?’ ” But what of your one-time allies? What of those who embraced you on the Elbe? What if we were to ask the watery graves of the Pacific or the European battlefields where America’s fallen were buried far from home? What if we were to ask their mothers, sisters, and sons, do Americans want war? Ask us, too, and you’ll find the same answer, the same longing in every heart. People do not make wars; governments do. And no mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology. A people free to choose will always choose peace. . . .

  We do not know what the conclusion will be of this journey, but we’re hopeful that the promise of reform will be fulfilled. In this Moscow spring, this May 1988, we may be allowed that hope: that freedom, like the fresh green sapling planted over Tolstoy’s grave, will blossom forth at last in the rich fertile soil of your people and culture. We may be allowed to hope that the marvelous sound of a new openness will keep rising through, ringing through, leading to a new world of reconciliation, friendship, and peace.

  He concluded, smiling at the audience and loving them, those young people so full of possibility. Lenin’s gaze did not deter him. He wanted the students to look at him, to hear the message he was bringing them. The past was history; the future was theirs to own.

  After the speech, he did something very unusual in the Soviet Union: he took questions from the audience. “You could see at first people being a little bit uncomfortable,” Duberstein said. “Are we really going to question the president of the United States?” This was Reagan’s wheelhouse; he loved to interact with people. He enjoyed the chance to spontaneously chat with the audience, and the questions were certainly not hardballs, although he wouldn’t have minded if they were. Sensing that many people in the hall regarded his position as president as somehow imperial, he ended with a down-home story. “Nobody asked me what it was going to feel like to not be president anymore,” he said conversationally. “I have some understanding, because after I’d been governor for eight years and then stepped down, I want to tell you what it’s like. We’d only been home a few days, and someone invited us out to dinner. Nancy and I both went out, got in the back seat of the car, and waited for somebody to get in front and drive us.” The audience laughed; then as one they rose to their feet and gave the president of the United States a standing ovation. Reagan later quipped that while they were cheering, he’d glanced behind him and seen Lenin weeping.