Posted on 06/11/2004 2:23:15 PM PDT by knighthawk
ST. PETERSBURG -- Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan's one-time adviser on Soviet affairs remembers him as the man who forever changed the face of Moscow-Washington relations.
Suzanne Massie, Reagan's adviser from 1984 to 1988 and a Democrat at the time, said Reagan played a "very significant" role in ending the Cold War.
"His greatest ... achievement was being able to make that break through and establish a human contact and relationship of trust, which was definitely not there before," Massie said.
Reagan was the first U.S. president to build human relations between the two countries, which were locked in the decades-long Cold War, Massie said.
"Gorbachev told me that he [Reagan] had extraordinary human instincts," Massie said. "That's very important for Russians."
Washington bureaucrats had a stale approach to U.S.-Soviet ties, leaving the two sides locked in an arms race that had the two superpowers living in fear of each other. "They all just assumed that the Soviet Union was immutable, would never change. Think how many careers were built on that -- bureaucratic careers. So status quo was much more convenient than anything else," Massie said.
But Reagan turned the tide with his unique approach and interest in the Soviet people. "He really wanted to know how ordinary Russians thought and lived and their aspirations, rather than bureaucrats," she said. "He was the first president, I think, to understand very clearly the difference between 'Russian' and 'Soviet'."
Known as the "The Great Communicator," Reagan collected Soviet anecdotes and many of his words became catch-phrases of the 1980s. He took the Russian proverb "trust but verify" and transformed it into an international symbol of U.S.-Soviet relations. "I taught him the proverb," Massie said.
Reagan used the proverb in Washington when he and Gorbachev signed the historic INF Treaty, reducing the two superpower's stockpiles of ground-based nuclear weapons. "Gorbachev said, 'Why do you say that all the time?'" Massie recalled, laughing. "And he said, 'Because I like it.'"
He was better known, however, for declaring the Soviet Union "The Evil Empire," a name that immediately ignited international debate and has lived in infamy since. The phrase came at the end of a speech to a group of evangelical Christians in Florida, in the second-to-last paragraph, almost "in passing," Massie said.
"It's amazing to me how it was not only picked out, but how it stuck. As far as I know, he never used that expression ever again," she said.
Massie spoke in a telephone interview during a visit this week to St. Petersburg, where she is involved with a charity assisting hemophiliacs. She cut short the trip to return to Washington for Reagan's funeral.
Reagan's determination to end the Cold War was evident even before he won the presidency. Reagan's son Michael said he decided to run for a second term as governor of California "to get the Soviets to the table," Massie said.
An assassination attempt early into Reagan's first term in 1981 spurred him on, she said. "After his assassination attempt, he felt even much stronger that he had a real mission. He's going to be remembered as the man who did manage to shepherd the end of the Cold War without a single shot being fired -- and that's quite an achievement."
Massie met with Reagan 22 times over their four-year working relationship, "which is a lot," she said. "I had more face time with him than anybody on this subject except his closest adviser." Each meeting often lasted 1 1/2 hours, a rarity, and she counseled Reagan "before all the big meetings with Gorbachev," Massie said.
"I had a sincere affection for the man," she said. "And I really think I was pretty damn lucky."
Ping
So, is the writer a filthy Commie, or does the translator (I assume this is a translation of a Russian piece) not know what "infamy" means?
There is a lesson there for us all.
Our worst experiences can make the best people out of us.
The only thing that lived and died in infamy was the evil empire itself.
He was right. His critics will go into the "dustbin of history", right next to the Evil Empire.
Too bad that we can't recycle those critics into something useful, as beer cans are recycled for aluminum. Unfortunately, you can't recycle poison.
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