When they arrived in Lake Geneva in that cold November of 1985, we knew we would be witnessing a historic event, but none of us even imagined from afar that the long Cold War farewell would begin with that summit. .
However, it was the Geneva meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev that broke the ice, providing the prologue to an extraordinary season, which in just six years would have led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, at the end of the bipolar world that emerged from World War II.
The summit had come at the wave of a very serious phase of tension in relations between Moscow and Washington. Elected in 1980, Ronald Reagan had launched the largest post-war armaments program in response to the Kremlin’s increasingly aggressive line, which culminated in the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. “It’s not that we do not trust each other because we are armed, but we are armed because we do not trust each other,” was the joke with which Reagan welcomed Gorbachev to the Swiss city.
The American president was convinced that only the language of force and the technological superiority of the USA would push the USSR to change its position and accept a policy of real cleansing.
The issue of American armaments, was the Strategic Defense Initiative, the future plan of an anti-missile space shield, which became known as the Star Wars project. Although still an experimental system, his ambition had exposed the technological delay of the Soviet Union and the cracks of an inefficient system in complete political crisis: three PCUS general secretaries – Brezhnev, Andropov and Cernenko, all old and sick – had died within three years.
Then, in April 1985, Gorbachev emerged, a new leader, convinced that he could reform the Soviet system and above all determined to open a comprehensive dialogue with America and the West. “We will deprive you of the enemy,” was the promise of Georgi Arbatov, one of Gorbachev’s aides.
“A leader you can work with,” was the close judgment of Margaret Thatcher, Reagan’s favorite ally, who fully believed his point. He, the anti-communist champion who began calling the Soviet Union the “Empire of Evil,” would have established a political and personal relationship based on trust and appreciation with the leader of the Communist Party.
When they were in Geneva facing each other, they shook hands for seven seconds, looking at each other and smiling. And it was Reagan who broke the protocol, proposing to the Kremlin chief to take a walk before starting talks at Villa Fleur d’Eau. It was in that lakefront conversation that Reagan proposed to Gorbachev a pact of mutual alliance against a possible alien attack.
“Would you help us?” He asked. “Of course, Mr. President,” Gorbachev replied. “We would do it too.” A cinematic fantasy, typical of a former actor like Reagan, but with great suggestive force.
Almost nothing happened in Geneva, but the road was open. It was another crisis that precipitated a year after the new meeting. When journalist Nick Daniloff, accused of espionage in retaliation for the arrest of a Soviet spy in New York, ended up in a Moscow prison in September, open communication channels on Lake Geneva were activated. And the result was the Reykjavik Summit in Iceland.
Originally conceived as another chance to reconnect, it actually came very close to a global deal to eliminate all nuclear ballistic missiles within 10 years.
For two days, experts from both sides worked in absurd terms on the Ghost House, a wooden villa on the seafront, also using toilet tables to spread maps and cartography. In the end, the agreement was broken due to Gorbachev’s refusal to allow the United States to continue feasibility studies (not its realization) of the space shield.
“Do you want to turn down this historic opportunity for a single word?” Reagan asked. “It is a matter of principle,” Gorbachev replied. The summit closed there. They say White House staff breathed a sigh of relief, convinced the president had offered so much to the Soviets. But the failure in Iceland was obvious, because from that moment on, disarmament negotiations took off at a rapid pace.
In Moscow, Gorbachev had begun his Perestroika, restructuring the system through small doses of economic liberalization and private initiative. The conclusion was “Glanosti”, transparency that paved the way for a partial democratization of the system. But it was still a timid start. The USSR remained a sick, debt-ridden giant marked by growing instability.
Reagan pressured Gorbachev to do more. On June 12, 1987, at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the American president delivered his most famous speech: “Mr. Gorbachev, if you want peace and prosperity for the USSR and for Central and Eastern Europe, if you want liberalization, come to this door. . Hapeni. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.” It was a gong blast that roared across Central Europe, still under the Soviet yoke.
Meanwhile, in December, the Reagan-Gorbachev summit policy bore fruit: the signing in Washington of the INF Treaty eliminating all atomic missiles between 500 and 5,000 kilometers, first and foremost, as the disarmament agreement that foresaw the physical destruction of an entire class of armaments.
The US summit also served to lay the groundwork for a new negotiation to reduce strategic nuclear weapons by 50%: however, it would take four years before the 1991 Start, signed by Gorbachev and George Bush, was concluded. , father.
Reagan and Gorbachev met again in Moscow in May 1988, a summit commemorating the US president’s statement in Red Square, in which he said he no longer considered the USSR an “Empire of Evil.”
The last time was in December 1988 in New York Bay, on Governor Island, where Reagan and President-elect George W. Bush received Gorbachev, this time without many gifts.
1989 would be a year of celebrations, those for the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, which marked the end of the “Ancien Regim” and the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It ended up being another year of revolution, really of the revolutions that changed the map of Europe.
From Poland to Hungary, from Bulgaria to Czechoslovakia, and finally to East Germany, democratic uprisings brought an end to communist regimes, disintegrating the Soviet bloc.
Gorbachev did not move a finger to prevent the landslide, in fact his perestroika and his promises of democracy often sparked rebellions against the Warsaw Pact countries. His most famous and involuntary sentence was in Berlin in October, when he warned rebel Eric Honecker, the leader of the GDR (East Germany), against any openness and reform: “Life punishes those who arrive late.”
Less than a month later, the Berlin Wall fell. From that breach, thanks to Helmut Kohl, the unstoppable train of German reunification would depart.
But Gorbachev was also behind history. It was his shyness, his fluctuations, his delay in events and last but not least, the refusal of the new US administration to give him a hand at the economic level that thwarted his reform efforts and resurrection.
And after all, Mikhail Sergeevich was not even a good Marxist: contrary to what the Chinese communists would have done, who opened up to capitalism and tightened the screws of democracy, he started with the political superstructure (Gllasnost, opposition, the right to demonstrate), while moving badly and slightly in the economic structure, with half-reforms and confused market openings.
Meanwhile, under pressure from American “Reagan” rearmament pressure and hoping for help from the West, which he had promised to oust as an enemy, he removed some of the cornerstones of Soviet power, be they Euro-missiles, strategic weapons. and conventional or areas of influence.
The August 1991 coup put an end to his illusions and brought to an end, after 70 years, the first socialist state in history.
Would another outcome be possible, he says? It is unlikely and it is very comforting. But the former Soviet president is right about one thing in each case.
When he says today that, after the end of the Cold War, the new leaders did not know how to create a new and modern security architecture in Europe, Gorbachev is showing an elementary truth. How and when he criticizes NATO’s hasty expansion to the East. What happened next, including Vladimir Putin, is all there is to tell.
Adapted in Albanian: “Si”
