MIKHAIL GORBACHEV/U.S.-SOVIET RELATIONS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000301630004-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 21, 2010
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: March 11, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
PROGRAM The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour STATION WETA-TV
PBS Network
DATE March 11, 1985 7:00 P.M. CITY Washington, D.C.
Mikhail Gorbachev/U.S.-Soviet Relations
ROBERT MACNEIL: We talk about the new Soviet leader now
with two men, an American and a Soviet, who met and worked with
Mikhail Gorbachev. The American is John Kristol (?), President
of Bankers Trust Bank of Des Moines, Iowa. Mr. Kristol's uncle
received former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at his Iowa farm
in 1959. Since then, John Kristol has made a number of trips to
the Soviet Union. He met Gorbachev first in 1981, and then again
in '83, when Gorbachev had responsibility for Soviet agricultural
production. He joins us now from Des Moines at the studios of
Iowa Public Television.
Former Soviet diplomat Arkady Shevchenko also has met
Gorbachev. Shevchenko is the highest Soviet official ever to
defect to the West, leaving his United Nations post in 1978.
He's the author of the recently published book Bre-a-k-i-ng with
Moscow.
Mr. Kristol in Des Moines, as I say, you've met and
talked with Gorbachev for quite long periods. What kind of a man
did you make him out to be?
JOHN KRISTOL: He was civil, intelligent, perfectly
capable of measuring the faults of the agricultural economy of
the Soviet Union, and I think a man who thought that a good
economy was good politics.
MACNEIL: Margaret Thatcher also said, besides what we
just heard, that he was a man she thought she could deal with.
Is he the kind of man you could deal with?
KRISTOL: Yes, I think so. I felt comfortable with him.
And while I've only spent four or five hours with him, the
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conversations were one-on-one. And I think had I known him
longer, I might have liked him.
MACNEIL: Your four or five hours are a lot longer than
98 percent of everybody else in the world has spent with him, I
think.
And you say you might have liked him more. What did you
mean by that, if you'd spent longer?
KRISTOL: Well, I think you need to be with a person
longer than that to think that you could be a friend. And it
would be presumptuous of me to think that he thought more of me
than that.
MACNEIL: Let's move to Mr. Shevchenko.
How different is Mr. Gorbachev from his predecessors?
[Confusion of voices]
MACNEIL: I'll come back to you in a moment, Mr.
Kristol. Let's move to Washington and Mr. Shevchenko.
How different is Gorbachev from his predecessors?
ARKADY SHEVCHENKO: Oh, first of all, he's a younger
man. He, as everybody knows, would have another style, better
educated. And he -- what I would say, first of all, he has more
fresh knowledge of what is going on in the Soviet Union. Because
the old leaders, they, for decades, never had a firsthand
experience in dealing with the problems. And Gorbachev is
relatively fresh. And as First Secretary of the [unintelligible]
region, he met with ordinary people, as the First Secretary. He
knew directly the problems. And I think that as far as the
economy is concerned, as far as the necessity to do something in
the Soviet Union, as far as economic problem and social problem
in the Soviet Union, we can expect from him something.
But let me caution you that the -- you just mentioned
that it's a generational shift in the Soviet leadership. Let's
wait. In a sense, it's true. In a sense, only. Because, still,
majority of the Politburo, the people to whom Gorbachev have to
listen -- and not only listen, but who can make decisions, at the
ver top of the Politburo. And moreover, in the [unintelligible]
of the Soviet Union, in the regions, also the people are ather
old.
So that he's only one who made now the move and become a
new leader of the Soviet Union, a leader which perhaps will have
a fresh look at the Soviet reality as far as the economy is
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concerned, but who definitely will not change anything as far as
the foreign policy of the Soviet Union is concerned in the near
future.
And moreover, he will need a lot of time to do some-
thing, even something very serious in the Soviet Union. He needs
to consolidate his power. Still, the majority, as I mentioned,
belong to the old generation. And what the sharing of power will
be, it remains to be seen what will happen, I mean, with the how
arrangements will be.
MACNEIL: Let me go back to Mr. Kristol.
You've met other Soviet leaders and many other Soviet
personnel. Is Mr. Gorbachev less ideological, is he more
pragmatic, do you think?
KRISTOL: I think that he's a dedicated communist. I
also think he is pragmatic. But I think that old people can have
young minds, and young people can have old minds. I think he's a
young mind in a young body.
MACNEIL: Would you look for any changes?
KRISTOL: I would look for changes domestically. I
think that the general public in the Soviet Union wants an
economy with a clear direction and a more effective economy. I
think he recognizes that desire. And I would expect him to use
-- to consolidate his position and to move popularly into a more
efficient economy than they have had.
MACNEIL: Mr. Shevchenko, just translating this into the
terms of the average American tonight -- and the Soviet Union has
been the bugbear of this country all through the cold war. Is
this change something that Americans should feel hopeful about,
or not hopeful, or have no particular emotion about?
SHEVCHENKO: I don't think that we should expect any
drastic changes in the Soviet foreign policy. It would be more
or less the same situation.
But in my view, the present Soviet leadership -- not
only Gorbachev, but both old and the new, the more younger Soviet
leaders -- they need now, above all, I would say, not a confron-
tation with the West, but a peaceful international environment,
to concentrate on domestic problem of the Soviet Union.
And as far as Gorbachev is concerned, I would like also
to say that he is a party apparatchik. Don't forget that. You
talk about that he's a lawyer, he has education, and he did one
thing or another. He's spent all his life as a party
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apparatchik, devoted party apparatchik, which means that he's
very much ideologically oriented.
It doesn't mean that he would not have fresh look at the
problems of the Soviet economy. And I'm agreed that most likely
he will try to do something, and might do something.
MACNEIL: Domestically.
SHEVCHENKO: Domestically.
MACNEIL: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: ...We take a look now at the potential
Gorbachev impact on U.S.-Soviet relations, particularly the arms
control talks that start tomorrow in Geneva, with Arnold Horlick,
former CIA National Intelligence Officer for the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe. He is now the Director of the Rand UCLA Center
for the Study of Soviet Behavior and Director of Soviet/East
European Studies for the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica,
California. He joins us tonight from Los Angeles.
Mr. Horlick, what effect do you think Mr. Gorbachev's
coming in, Mr. Chernenko's death will have on these arms talks,
if any?
ARNOLD HORLICK: Well, in the short run, as Secretary
Weinberger's bit earlier in the show suggested, it's not likely
that the Soviet going-in position at Geneva is going to be
affected one way or another, in part because those positions have
been worked out over the last few months without the active
participation of Chernenko. So taking him out of the picture
shouldn't really make any difference.
Secondly, and even more importantly, the logic of the
Soviet position at Geneva argues for their doing precisely what
it is clear now they will be doing beginning tomorrow, and any
Soviet government, I think, would do that -- namely, to try to
soften up, to erode, at a minimum to test the firmness of the
U.S. position, particularly with respect to strategic defensive
weaponry. And if they fail to move that position or to soften
it, to seize the high ground, diplomatically and propagandisti-
cally, in a struggle for Western public opinion, which I think
will be a natural outgrowth of this first round at Geneva.
WOODRUFF: But you're saying they'd be doing that
anyway, regardless of who the man at the top is. Right?
HORLICK: Yes. But I do think there may be one diffe-
rence. I think, for the first time in almost a decade, the
Soviet Union will be represented at the highest level in the
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world, diplomatically and politically, by a more vigorous, a more
dynamic and, from the point of view of Western audiences, also a
more attractive Soviet leader. So I suspect that Gorbachev will
be in a position to press the Soviet case, particularly with
Western public opinion, far more effectively than any Soviet
leders have been able to do for the last half-decade or decade or
so.
WOODRUFF: Well now, all those characteristics you just
named really add up to a little more than style, don't they? Are
you saying that's going to have an impact on policy?
HORLICK: Well, I don't think we should underestimate
the importance of style and form. Compared to the aging,
moribund almost, in some cases, Soviet leaders that the world had
been facing and presented with over the last few years, a vital,
living, breathing, healthy, relatively young Soviet leader would
be a large improvement, in any case.
But Gorbachev demonstrated in his trip to the United
Kingdom a few months ago that, in some respects, he's just what
the doctor ordered for the Soviets at this particular time.
Whether this, over time, translates itself also into a
change in policy remains to be seen. I think, in domestic
affairs, the question of change is, I think, more higher on the
agenda and is more likely to attract his energies and attention
than foreign affairs.
On the whole, it seems to me, the international rela-
tions of the Soviet Union have been less contentious inside the
country, including in the leadership, than the question of where
to go on domestic affairs.
WOODRUFF: Arkady Shevchenko is still here with us. Let
me bring you back into this.
Do you agree much with what Mr. Horlick is saying?
SHEVCHENKO: In some points I agree, in some I disagree.
The one thing which we have to bear in mind, first of
all, that Gromyko will remain now the major force in the Soviet
leadership who would really dominate the foreign policy of the
Soviet Union. And the Gorbachev -- and I agree with what Mr.
Horlick said -- that Gorbachev most likely will be more interes-
ted in more in domestic affairs of the Soviet Union. But it is
Gromyko now who really, with the absence of a strong military
leader, after the death of Ustinov and after the dismissal of
Ogarkov, actually Gromyko now combine in itself a force which
represent the -- as far as shaping the Soviet arms control
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policy, much more strong than even Gorbachev. Gorbachev will not
try even, very much, to disagree with Gromyko.
WOODRUFF: Mr. Horlick, you get what he's saying, that
it's going to be a while before Mr. Gorbachev can consolidate his
position. Do you agree with that?
HORLICK: Well, no. I think that's true. I was simply
saying that by virtue of his greater youth and vitality, he will
emerge very quickly as the outstanding authoritative spokesman
for the Soviet Union on foreign policy. It may be a foreign
policy put together by a collective leadership in which Gromyko's
undoubtedly will be the most authoritative voice. But I think
the Soviets are in a position to press their case, to prosecute
the offensive, which I think they will be waging at Geneva and
after Geneva, much more effectively with Gorbachev.
I think the Administration will have a tougher time
dealing with the Soviet Union diplomatically now than it has had
over the last four years. _
WOODRUFF: Why do you say that? Specifically, why?
HORLICK: Well, because the number one man, really since
1979-1980, has only been intermittently available. He has not
been available -- Brezhnev, in his declining years; Andropov, for
a good part of his tenure; Chernenko, for most of his. They have
not been available to deal one-on-one with foreign leaders,
especially West European leaders. They have not been able to
make the case for the Soviet Union dramatically with Western
audiences, the way I believe Gorbachev will do.
WOODRUFF: Well, thank you, Arnold Horlick, for being
with us. I know it's a subject we'll be coming back to....
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