The Downing Street Years (79 page)

So too was my first experience of what life in a communist country was like for ordinary people. On Saturday morning I visited Budapest’s large central covered market, talked to stall holders and shoppers and bought honey, pimentos and spices. Huge friendly crowds gathered, in spite of the intense cold. The market was better stocked than I imagined it would be. But what remains in my mind even to this day was the warm, even passionate, welcome from the crowd of shoppers. It was not just that I was a western head of government that evoked this, but my reputation as a strong anti-communist political leader — a reputation further burnished internationally by the Falklands War two years before and even by the Soviet attacks on me as the Iron Lady. I responded warmly to the crowd and, on my return to London, found that several journalists were reporting my discovery that ‘communists were human beings too.’ What I had in fact discovered — or rather had confirmed — was that human beings in communist countries were not in fact communists at all but retained a thirst for liberty.

I was also struck by the people’s pride in the old Hungary — which has since become the basis for the new post-communist one. At Szentendre I visited the local museum and art gallery which had a valuable collection of porcelain. I was shown round by a distinguished elderly curator, wearing well-cut but worn clothes, and immaculately polished but creased shoes. He had that indefinable air of someone who has known better days, as indeed he had. He was an aristocrat who had lost his property, but at the time of the communist revolution, rather
than go into exile, he had remained to pass on his extraordinary knowledge of Hungarian history and culture to a new generation, who might otherwise forget it. Both from what he told me then of his country’s past and what I had noticed earlier in my discussions with Mr Ká dá r, all Hungarians — even the communist rulers — had a strong sense of their country’s identity.

The one surprise — and disappointment — of my visit was how far even Hungary was from a free economy. There were some small businesses, but they were not allowed to grow beyond a certain size. The main emphasis of Hungary’s economic reforms was not on increasing private ownership of land or investment but rather on private or co-operative use of state-owned facilities. I visited a housing project at Szentendre in which the British firm, Wimpey, was involved. I found, on asking the people that I met there, that though they could buy their own flats they could not sell them freely on the market but only back to the state — more or less the same policy, it must be said, that the Labour Party in Britain had adopted towards the sale of council houses.

I reported my impressions in a message to President Reagan:

In retrospect, my Hungarian visit was the first foray in what became a distinctive British diplomacy towards the captive nations of eastern Europe. The first step was to open greater economic and commercial links with the existing regimes, making them less dependent upon the closed COMECON system. Later we were to put more stress on human rights. And, finally, as the Soviet control of eastern Europe began to decay, we made internal political reforms the condition of western help. My visit to Hungary which began this successful diplomatic
strategy had turned out to be altogether more significant than I could have imagined.

Just a few days after my return from Hungary Mr Andropov was dead. Nevertheless the funeral, to which I decided to go, would give me the opportunity to meet the man who to our surprise emerged as the new Soviet leader, Mr Konstantin Chernenko. We had thought that Mr Chernenko was too old, too ill and too closely connected with Mr Brezhnev and his era to succeed to the leadership — and as events turned out we were more astute than his colleagues in the Politburo. But at least western commentators were unlikely to portray this ageing time-server as heralding an overnight transformation of totalitarianism into liberal democracy.

My party landed at Moscow Airport at 9.30 p.m. on Monday 13 February. It was bitterly cold and as I trod gingerly around the ice patches I wished that I was wearing a thick Russian fur coat. I spent the night at our embassy — a magnificent house, facing the Kremlin across the Moskva river, which was constructed at the end of the last century for a Ukrainian sugar magnate. (Later, when we would otherwise have had to give it up at the end of the lease, I did a deal with Mr Gorbachev for us to keep our splendid building in exchange for the Soviets keeping their current embassy in Britain when that lease expired. One of the few points on which the Foreign Office and I agreed was the need for British embassies to be architecturally imposing and provided with fine pictures and furniture.)

The day of the funeral was bright, clear and if anything even colder than when I arrived. At these occasions visiting dignitaries did not have seats: we had to stand for several hours in a specially reserved enclosure. Later I met the new Soviet leader for a short private meeting at which he read rapidly, stumbling over his words from time to time, from a prepared text. He was accompanied by the Soviet Foreign minister, Mr Gromyko. It was a formal affair, covering all the old ground of disarmament issues. I was unimpressed.

With long hours of standing I was glad that Robin Butler had persuaded me that I should wear fur-lined boots, rather than my usual high heels. They had been expensive. But when I met Mr Chernenko the thought crossed my mind that they would probably come in useful again soon.

I now had to consider the next step in my strategy of gaining closer relations — on the right terms — with the Soviet Union. Clearly, there must be more personal contact with the Soviet leaders. Geoffrey Howe wanted us to extend an invitation to Mr Chernenko to come to Britain but I said that it was too early to do this. We needed to see more about where the new Soviet leader was heading first. But I was keen to invite others and accordingly invitations went to several senior Soviet figures, including Mr Gorbachev. It quickly appeared that Mr Gorbachev was indeed keen to come on what would be his first visit to a European capitalist country and wanted to do so soon. By now we had learned more about his background and that of his wife, Raisa, who, unlike the wives of other leading Soviet politicians, was often seen in public and was an articulate, highly educated and attractive woman. I decided that the Gorbachevs should both come to Chequers, which has just the right country house atmosphere conducive to good conversation. I regarded the meeting as potentially of great significance. Indeed, before their arrival I held a further seminar with Soviet experts to cover the issues and work out the approach I would take.

The Gorbachevs drove down from London on the morning of Sunday 16 December, arriving in time for lunch. Over drinks in the Great Hall Mr Gorbachev told me how interested he had been to see the farm land on the way to Chequers and we compared notes about our countries’ different agricultural systems. This had been his responsibility for a number of years and he had apparently achieved some modest progress in reforming the collective farms, but up to 30 per cent of the crops were lost because of failures of distribution.

Raisa Gorbachev too was making her first visit to western Europe and she knew only a little English — as far as I could tell her husband knew none; but she was dressed in a smart western style outfit, a well-tailored grey suit with a white stripe — just the sort I could have worn myself, I thought. She had a philosophy degree and had indeed been an academic. Our advice at this time was that Mrs Gorbachev was a committed, hardline Marxist; her obvious interest in Hobbes’s
Leviathan
, which she took down from the shelf in the library, might possibly have confirmed that. But I later learned from her — after I had left office — that her grandfather had been one of those millions of kulaks killed during the forced collectivization of agriculture under Stalin. Her family had no good reason for illusions about communism.

We went into lunch — I was accompanied by a rather large team of Willie Whitelaw, Geoffrey Howe, Michael Heseltine, Michael Jopling, Malcolm Rifkind (Minister of State at the Foreign Office), Paul Channon and advisers; he and Raisa by Mr Zamyatin, the Soviet Ambassador, and the quietly impressive Mr Alexander Yakovlev, the adviser who was to play a large part in the reforms of the ‘Gorbachev years’. It was not long before the conversation turned from trivialities — for which neither Mr Gorbachev nor I had any taste — to a vigorous two-way debate. In a sense, the argument has continued ever since and is taken up whenever we meet; and as it goes to the heart of what politics is really about, I never tire of it.

He told me about the economic programmes of the Soviet system, the switch from big industrial plant to smaller projects and ‘businesses’, the ambitious irrigation schemes and the way in which the industrial planners adapted industrial capacity to the labour force to avoid unemployment. I asked whether this might not all be easier if reform were attempted on a free enterprise basis, with the provision of incentives and a free hand for local enterprises to run their own show, rather than everything being directed from the centre. Mr Gorbachev denied indignantly that everything in the USSR was run from the centre. I took another tack. I explained that in the western system everyone — including the poorest — ultimately received more than they would from a system which depended simply on redistribution. Indeed, in Britain we were attempting to cut taxes in order to increase incentives so that we could create wealth, competing in world markets. I said I had no wish to have the power to direct everyone where he should work and what he or she should receive.

Mr Gorbachev, however, insisted on the superiority of the Soviet system. Not only did it produce higher growth rates, but if I came to the USSR I would see how the Soviet people lived — ‘joyfully’. If this were so, I countered, why did the Soviet authorities not allow people to leave the country as easily as they could leave Britain?

In particular, I criticized the constraints placed on Jewish emigration to Israel. He claimed that 80 per cent of those who had expressed the wish to leave the Soviet Union had been able to do so. I said that this was not my information. But he repeated the Soviet line, which I did not believe either, that those forbidden to leave had been working in areas relating to national security. I knew there was no purpose in persisting now; but the point had been registered. The Soviets had to know that every time we met their treatment of the
refuseniks
would be thrown back at them.

We now left the dining-room and had coffee in the main sitting-room.
All of my team except Geoffrey Howe, my private secretary Charles Powell, and the interpreter left. Denis showed Mrs Gorbachev around the house.

If at this stage I had paid attention only to the content of Mr Gorbachev’s remarks — largely the standard Marxist line — I would have to conclude that he was cast in the usual communist mould. But his personality could not have been more different from the wooden ventriloquism of the average Soviet
apparatchik.
He smiled, laughed, used his hands for emphasis, modulated his voice, followed an argument through and was a sharp debater. He was self-confident and though he larded his remarks with respectful references to Mr Chernenko, from whom he brought a not very illuminating written message, he did not seem in the least uneasy about entering into controversial areas of high politics. This was even more so in the hours of discussion which followed. He never read from a prepared brief, but referred to a small notebook of manuscript jottings. Only on matters of pronunciation of foreign names did he refer to his colleagues for advice. His line was no different from what I would have expected. His style was. As the day wore on I came to understand that it was the style far more than the Marxist rhetoric which expressed the substance of the personality beneath. I found myself liking him.

The most practical piece of business I had to discuss on this occasion was arms control. It was an important moment. Secretary of State Shultz and Foreign minister Gromyko were due to meet early in the New Year in Geneva to see whether the stalled arms talks could be revived. I had found in talking to the Hungarians that the best basis on which to discuss arms control in a relatively serene atmosphere was to state that our two opposing systems must live side by side, with less hostility and lower levels of armaments. I did the same again now.

I added that as perhaps the last generation of politicians that remembered the Second World War, we had a bounden duty to ensure that no such conflict would occur again. On this basis our detailed discussions began: two things quickly became clear. The first was just how well briefed Mr Gorbachev was about the West. He commented on my speeches, which he had clearly read. He quoted Lord Palmerston’s dictum that Britain had no eternal friends or enemies but only eternal interests. He had been closely following leaked conversations from the American National Security Council, which had appeared in the American press, to the effect that the US had an interest in not allowing the Soviet economy to emerge from stagnation.

At one point, with a touch of theatre, he pulled out a full-page diagram from the
New York Times
, illustrating the explosive power of the weapons of the two superpowers compared with the explosive power available in the Second World War. He was well versed in the fashionable arguments then raging about the prospect of a ‘nuclear winter’ resulting from a nuclear exchange. I was not much moved by all this. I said that what interested me more than the concept of the nuclear winter was avoiding the incineration, death and destruction which would precede it. But the purpose of nuclear weapons was, in any case, to deter war not to wage it. They had given us a greater degree of protection from war than we had ever known before. Yet this could — and must — now be achieved at a lower level of weaponry. Mr Gorbachev argued that if both sides continued to pile up weapons this could lead to accidents or unforeseen circumstances and with the present generation of weapons the time for decision-making could be counted in minutes. As he put it, in one of the more obscure Russian proverbs, ‘once a year even an unloaded gun can go off.’