Authors: Claire Berlinski

There is No Alternative (44 page)

BOOK: There is No Alternative

6.02Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

“What else did they talk about?”

“Everything from the Soviet and Cuban presence in Africa, to the whole question of intermediate and short-range missiles in Europe.”

“The debate was mostly about the actual record of the Soviet Union, as opposed to the philosophical problem of communism?”

“It was both, it was both. I mean, she was trying to persuade him that communism was fundamentally a misguided system, not to be reconciled with human natureâthe concept of communism, with the state running everything and so on, was never going to work. She larded it with examplesâthe Gulag, the people she had met, like Sakharovâ”
²²⁹

“Do you remember what his face looked like when she wasâ”

“Oh, he could be quite angry, he could be quite stern, Gorby. He waved his arms a lot and so on . . . ”

“Was there any point during the meeting when you noticed an expression on Gorbachev's face that would have suggested that he felt she was getting the better of him?”

“Can't say I do, no. Gorbachev was also, you know, very convinced of his rightness. They were two quite similar people in that sense. I think Gorbachev in some ways found her quite usefulâI mean, she was an anvil on which he could beat out his own ideas. If you could sort of take your views to destruction testing with Margaret Thatcher, then, you know, if they could survive that, then they were probably worth having. And of course, very few of his views
did
survive that. But I think his belief that he could negotiate with Reagan, that there could be a decent arms control agreement . . . I think, basically, I think he wanted to run his ideas past her, before he tried them on Reagan.”

“Was there any flirtation between the two of them?”

“A bit, yes, yeah, at times.”

Thatcher did not, in the end, get herself thrown out of the Kremlin. Perhaps that hint of flirtation, and Gorbachev's willingness to laugh, had something to do with this.

“At the end of that thirteen-hour day you must have been exhausted,” I say.

“I was in a
total
state of exhaustion.”

His bladder, he later told me, was also about to burst. Finally, he excused himself to look for the bathroom, but he couldn't figure out how to get out of the room. Gorbachev, amused, watched him cast about helplessly. “It was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life,” Powell recalls. Finally, Gorbachev took pity on him. Beaming broadly, he pushed a button by his chair. A door slid open. Powell escaped.

Didn't
she
need to go, I ask?

No, she did not, says Powell. Not even once. The Iron Bladder held out for the whole thirteen hours.

“At the end of that day, was anything concluded?” I ask Powell.

“Nothing. Well, there were conclusions I think about arms control and the right way to proceed, and yes, there were some concrete
conclusions on individual foreign affairs subjects. But I think something more was concluded: There could be, at last, after all those years, a genuine dialogue with a Soviet leader, in which you said blunt things and criticized each others' systems, but you could bargain with, and come not necessarily to agreements, but to understandings of each others' point of viewâwhich led to the clear horizon in which the Cold War could be ended.”

History hinged upon that visit, in both Britain and the Soviet Union. “It was really from that moment that one knew she was going to win the '87 election,” Powell recalled, “because it was a huge PR triumph in this country . . . It was very hard for Labour to criticize her, because there she was, dealing with the Russians, dealing very forcefully, but no one could say that because she was the Iron Lady, because she was making these vitriolic speeches, that she was keeping Britain out of discussing the relaxation of tensions, or arms control, or anything like that.”

More importantly, her visit was a PR triumph in Russia. Gorbachev permitted Thatcher to get out of her car and mix through the crowds. “These vast crowds had turned out to see her,” Powell remembered. “And Gorby treated her very well. When he invited her, she said, âLook, I'd like to come, but can I do what I want to do?' And he said, âYup, anything you want to do, I'll let you do.' This had never happened with a prime minister before. And she said, âWell, I want to do a television interview. And I don't want it censored.'”

Gorbachev agreed, and kept his word. This interview was broadcast live, as Gorbachev had promised. “She was interviewed by three Soviet generals,” Powell remembers, “and she rode right over them.”

Hapless Soviet General:
Excuse me, I would like to return to the question of nuclear weapons. You just said that nuclear weapons preserved peace for forty years, but many times we were at the verge of nuclear war during those forty years; many times we were saved only by accident, by chance, but with that, nuclear weapons developed. In the beginning,
they threatened cities; now they threaten the whole of humanity. How can one speak of nuclear weapons as a guarantor of peace?

Prime Minister:
Are you not making my point? If you say that many times we were at the verge of war and we did not go to war, do you not think that one of the reasons we did not go to war was the total horror of nuclear weapons? After all, I think conventional weapons are awful. It did not stop a war, a terrible war, in which the Soviet Union suffered enormously. You cannot just act as if there had never been nuclear weapons. If conventional war started again, the race would be on as to who got the nuclear weapon first.
One moment!
That person would win.

Hapless Soviet General:
The thing is that there is a possibility of an accidental outbreak of a nuclear conflict. Time passes, nuclear weapons are improved and more and more sophisticated. There is a great possibility of an accidentalânot political, that politicians will decide, but computers. The flight time of a Pershing 2 to the Soviet Union would be only eight minutes. Who will be deciding? Who will be in charge?

Prime Minister:
There are more nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union than any other country in the world. You have more intercontinental ballistic missiles and warheads than the West. You started intermediate weapons; we did not have any. You have more short-range ones than we have. You have more than anyone else and
you
say there is a risk of a nuclear accident?
One moment! . . .
²³⁰

“Taxi drivers in Moscow still speak of it,” says Powell. “They really do.”

Neil Kinnock has a different perspective on Thatcher's trip. He recalls discussing it with Gorbachev:

NK:
First of all, it wasn't thirteen hours.

CB:
It wasn't?

NK:
No. It was sporadically over a period of about nine hours.

CB:
Right.

NK:
And it arose because Margaret Thatcher, they went through the usual discussions, you know, governments do, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. And eventually she started to tell Gorbachev what was wrong with the Soviet Union, and what he should do about it.

CB:
Uh-huh?

NK:
Now, I think the first part of that is fine, some other people think that breaks the code, but I think that's bloody rubbish. I think it's quite right to tell people what you think of their country. I've done it. But it's very difficult then to say what they should do about it without inviting them to say, “OK, OK, fine, I've heard what you said, now this is what you should do about
your
country.” And that doesn't really
get
you anywhere, you just get an exchange of prescriptions, butâ

CB:
Well, what I understood, and correct me if I'm wrong, because I've only heard this from one source, is that Charles Powell was saying that Gorbachev
did
start telling her, “Look, you've got this problem with the miners, you've gotâ”

NK:
Yeah, that's just what he did, you see, and Northern Ireland, and the whole thing. So that went on for some time. Then, what Gorbachev told me, when I asked him about it a few years afterwards, he said, “I thought at the time that she so completely failed to understand Marxist-Leninism, even though she claimed to understand it, that I should tell her where her analysis was wrong.” So there were exchanges on
that basis, but they
didn't
get on like a house on fire, they had a kind of ideological duelâ

CB:
Uh-huhâ

NK:
And it wasn't, at that time, that Gorbachev could have been described as the most profound Marxist-Leninist, although at the time he did think that he could adapt Marxist-Leninism for the purposes of a more open and free societyâ

CB:
When you talked to him about it, did he seem to be describing her warmly?

NK:
No.
I mean, there was a twinkle, and he hadâum, he has regard for her strengths, he's a very courteous man, but he thought she was
so
wrong about the central issues and difficulties of Soviet society thatâhe treated her with some bemusement. He wasn't dismissive, it wouldn't be in his nature to be dismissive, but he thought she was sort ofâskidding off the surface. But anyway, the caricature of this series of exchanges is of two immensely earnest people who had a political chemistry, and if a few more hours had been available, they could have probably resolved the problems of the world. That's the impression that's conveyed, but what I've heard from the other side, including from Gorbachev's interpreter . . . that um, you know, it
wasn't
desperately profound.

Kinnock is very passionate on the subject, no doubt, but in the end, his account of the meeting diverges from Powell's in only one substantive way: He claims the meeting lasted only nine hours. Was it nine hours or thirteen? I don't know; it is easy to imagine that it was really nine hours but
felt
like thirteen. Either way, it sounds like a long meeting.

But Kinnock seems otherwise to be describing more or less the same events. I am not sure what his problem is, really. Neither of them gave way? What would he expect? Was he expecting Margaret Thatcher to say, “You know, Gorby, I've thought it over, and there's more to this Marxist-Leninism business than I realized. Do
you think you could give me a few tips on shooting my intellectuals and collectivizing my farms?” Was Kinnock expecting the head of the Politburo suddenly to declare, “You know, Margaret, I've seen the light, and you're right, communism will never work. It's time to tear down the Wall”?

The very idea would be risible, were it not for one thing: One year later, Gorbachev saidâthrough his actions if not his wordsâ
exactly
that. Perhaps things would have worked out even better had Thatcher evinced in this meeting a more sophisticated understanding of Marxist-Leninism.

But how, exactly?