TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/85/85.6

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                                                                                November 25, 1985

WORLD

When History Reaches a Peak


Future Soviet-American relations are at stake as Reagan and
Gorbachev meet


By Wednesday night it will all be over. Ronald Reagan will be
packing to leave for Brussels to report to NATO allies, then will
hurry on to Washington to address a joint session of Congress
that will be televised to a waiting nation. Mikhail Gorbachev
will be getting ready to head back to the halls of the Kremlin,
where he will weigh his impressions of the American leader.
Soviet officials, newly savvy about influencing public opinion,
and American officials, veterans in the art, will be struggling
to put the proper spin on what took place in the first encounter
between their two leaders -- just as these officials spent the
previous week trying to manipulate the expectations. After the
3,000 journalists who converged on Geneva file their final
reports, after the last evening broadcasts by Dan Rather and
Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw are transmitted from specially
built new ground stations, it will be possible once again to get
a hotel room and a table in a restaurant -- and easier than ever
to get an outside phone line in a city were 1,250 miles of new
cables were laid for the most heavily chronicled superpower
summit in history.

For 40 years the world has watched with growing concern every
move in the fitful drama of Soviet-American relations. As arms-
control talks sputter and arsenals inexorably grow, so do the
fears and, perhaps miraculously, so do the hopes. That is why
Geneva was destined to be, more than any of the ten summits that
have preceded it since the end of World War II, a global
extravaganza, an event whose very occurrence transcended in
importance whatever might be put on paper at its end.

Yet for all the hoopla, the most important moment in Geneva was
likely to have been the most personal and private one. On
Tuesday morning at 10:05, shortly after meeting for the first
time, Reagan and Gorbachev were scheduled to excuse themselves
from the ceremonial opening din and sit down together in a
tranquil room in the villa Fleur d'Eau with only their
interpreters. No battalions of advisers, no swarms of reporters.
Alone in the room with just their wits and their heavy sense of
responsibility. That is when, in all likelihood, the full wonder
of the moment will have most powerfully gripped them. Two humans
out of 5 billion somehow chosen to carry the hopes of all,
searching each other's eyes, listening to the timbre of each
other's voice, looking for some familiar signal that could lead
to a better way to live together on this planet.

John Kennedy probably best described the realizations that come
from such a moment. He was back home in Palm Beach, Fla.,
resting after the 1961 summit in Vienna, a daiquiri in hand,
Frank Sinatra records filling the night air. He remembered
Nikita Khrushchev as seeming, well, so different when the two
first sat down alone. "I looked him over pretty good," Kennedy
chortled. He became fascinated with his adversary's hands. They
were always thumping, fiddling. They were blunt, ungraceful
hands, Kennedy recalled, but strong, so quick. "You're an old
country, we're a young country," blurted Khrushchev. "Look
across the table," retorted Kennedy, "and you will see that we
are not so old."  One moment Khrushchev was a battering ram
determined to end the irritation of West Berlin, a threatened
democratic enclave in the midst of Communist East Germany. The
next, he was country cracker, Kennedy's cigar match went wild and
landed behind Khrushchev's chair. "Are you trying to set me on
fire?" snorted Khrushchev. "Not at all," Kennedy assured him
(though, as Kennedy later mused, the thought was tempting). "Ah
ha!" answered Khrushchev. "A capitalist, not an incendiary."

Echoes from that hastily conceived summit have resounded down the
years. The complaints of the various Soviet bosses have been
similar, their pride so predictably fragile. Kennedy thrust at
the core of the problem between the leaders when on an impulse he
asked Khrushchev, "Do you ever admit you're wrong?"  Surprised,
Khrushchev clouded up, then angrily pointed out that in the 20th
Party Congress he had made his famous speech attacking the Stalin
regime. "Those weren't your mistakes," said Kennedy. For the
first time Khrushchev had no rejoinder, but his eyes smoldered.

After Vienna, Kennedy did win a little help from the Soviets in
dampening the fight in Laos, but there were no agreements on
nuclear-weapons testing or on Berlin. The summit, it soon
developed, was to prelude to crisis. Khrushchev sized up the
young President and decided Kennedy could be challenged. The
Berlin Wall followed. The Cuban missile crisis followed.
Kennedy, the romantic, came away from the meeting with the
conviction that the two most important ingredients in these
confrontations were strength -- and strength.

Back in August 1968, Lyndon Johnson convened one of his Tuesday
lunches to plot the Viet Nam War. These were often grim affairs,
where discouraging news was ladled out with the soup. On that
particular Tuesday, however, he was bubbling over with a secret.
He had the stewards bring in a little "sherry wine" and pour each
of his aides a glass. Then he announced that the U.S. and
U.S.S.R. would soon begin nuclear arms talks, and he and Soviet
Premier Alexei Kosygin would hold a summit to seal the deal.
That afternoon Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia on their
brutal mission of suppression. End of dreams.

Johnson had thought that his odd little meeting in Glassboro,
N.J., with Kosygin a year before had created a special personal
rapport. It was man to man, story for story. Kosygin told of
working in a textile plant as a boy. Johnson fired back that he
had been on a road gang and had chopped cotton. "You want war,
we want peace," said Kosygin. "I agree with half of what you
said," answered Johnson. "You want peace -- so do we."  They
parted without a deal, and Johnson flew off to his ranch scheming
how he would handle Kosygin next time. That time was not to be.

Richard Nixon was born for summitry, eager to show a hostile
world he was somebody. He relished the pageantry and the pomp,
the feeling of being at center stage as history was made. In
1972, when his aides feared that his visit to China and the
mining of Haiphong harbor would so anger the Soviets that they
would never talk to him, Nixon figured differently. His long
years of trekking about the world as Senator, Vice President and
Pepsi-Cola hustler had given him a feel for the realities of
power. His audacity and conspiratorial bent fascinated the
Soviets. When Henry Kissinger arrived in Moscow to prepare for
the summit, he found the Soviets awed by Nixon. After a vodka or
two, important officials took Kissinger to a dim corner and
probed quietly about Nixon. "He's a little crazy, is he not?"
asked one. Maybe, Kissinger replied, leaving the answer hanging
mysteriously.

Crazy like a fox. Nixon went to Moscow with his old blue bedroom
slippers, his supply of Wheaties and martini mixings, and a
healthy distrust of everybody he was about to meet. When he got
there he hammered out the SALT I nuclear-arms limitation treaty,
the only one that survives, the first concrete step in realizing
the hopes of this weary world that those hideous weapons could be
restrained. There were other agreements on antibalistic
missiles, safety at sea, cooperation in space. It was a stunning
season of diplomacy, borne along by a singular relationship that
grew up between Nixon and Communist Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev.

When the two met again at Camp David in 1973, they grew even more
friendly. Things went so well that Brezhnev hatched the idea
that the Soviets might build their own Camp David especially for
the return visit scheduled in 1974. But Brezhnev, the executor
of absolute power, did not have a firm feel for the American
system. He flew off praising his friend Nixon the very day that
John Dean took the stand in the Senate's Watergate investigation.

Jerry Ford tried heroically to pick up the torch when he flew to
Vladivostok in 1974. Old Brezhnev, by that time ailing, also
tried hard to fan the dying flame. Greeting the U.S. delegation
at the ramp of Air Force One, Brezhnev jammed a fur hat on Ford's
head, then peeled off the President's brand-new fur coat in jest.
The two huddled that night as a gentle snow fell across the land,
and they agreed to resume nuclear arms talks the following year.

It was this Vladivostok agreement that Jimmy Carter wanted to
push aside in 1977 in his evangelic zeal to substitute deep cuts
in missiles and warheads. But surprises are not welcome in the
programmed society of the U.S.S.R. Brezhnev, sicker than ever,
angrily turned down the idea. It took Carter two years more to
get back to Ford's agreement. Before he rushed off to tell the
world of his SALT II achievement in Vienna's Hofburg Palace, he
kissed Brezhnev on both cheeks, the way they do down in Georgia --
Soviet Georgia -- a kiss seen round the world.

Six months later the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. An angry
Sunday-school teacher is dangerous. Carter thrashed about in his
despair, pulling the U.S. out of the Moscow Olympics, embargoing
the sale of American grain to the Soviets, and losing the
nation's confidence in his Vienna nuclear arms deal. It died in
Congress.

But there is in this world a craving for peace that will not die.
Almost against their wills, Gorbachev and Reagan have been pulled
and poked toward the summit. "I don't underestimate the
difficulty of the task ahead," the President said in a televised
address last week, recounting the problems his predecessors
faced. "But these sad chapters do not relieve me of the
obligation to try to make this a safer, better world."  He
proposed an expanded program of "people-to-people exchanges,"
spoke of "a historic opportunity" to change the course of Soviet-
American relations and dubbed this trip "a mission for peace."

Yet as his advisers have been doing for weeks, Reagan played down
hopes that the summit would produce a major breakthrough in arms
control. Now that summits are media extravaganzas, somewhat like
presidential primaries, manipulating expectations is part of the
walk-up. The Reagan Administration's official line was one of
"tactical pessimism."  The idea was to explain away in advance
any failure to reach substantive accords as the fault of a new
Soviet leader who, for all his pretense to the role of Great
Communicator, is in fact just another dogmatic Kremlin
apparatchik. For their part, the Soviets engaged in similar pre-
emptive propaganda about how the Reagan Administration had all
but doomed the summit's chances.

The awesome responsibility that face Reagan and Gorbachev was to
withdraw from this distressing clamor and, in those quiet moments
by themselves, search for some genuine gesture from each other.
For the good of mankind. It did not matter if it was just a look
or a word; it could be a start toward something much larger.

By Hugh Sidey.

_______________________________________________________________
High Hopes, Low Expectations

A TIME poll finds the U.S. eager for summit progress but wary


When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, large numbers of
Americans shared his determination to build up U.S. armaments and
take a hard stance against Soviet expansionism. But as Reagan
prepared for this week's meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in
Geneva, a TIME poll showed more support for reaching an
accommodation with the Soviet Union, than at any other time
during his presidency. The U.S. public strongly favors making
significant progress in talks with the Soviets, particularly on
nuclear arms control, even while it is dubious about any likely
success. Although a majority of Americans favor development of
the President's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a solid 74%
indicate a willingness to trade away the proposed missile-defense
system for cutbacks in Soviet military power.

The desire for summit deals is hedged by considerable doubt about
their feasibility. The survey of 1,020 registered voters, taken
Nov. 5 through Nov. 7 by Yankelovich, Skelly & White, Inc., found
that while 82% of respondents believed the first summit in six
years was a good idea, only 7% expected significant forward
movement from the talks, and 16% forecast no progress at all.
The Administration's attempts in recent weeks to dampen
expectations about summit accomplishments were clearly
successful. For example, 86% of those surveyed considered a
mutual reduction in nuclear arms a "very important" summit goal,
but only 31% thought it likely to happen. More than three-
quarters of the survey respondents put a high priority on the two
superpowers agreeing to stop interfering in the affairs of
Nicaragua and Afghanistan, yet less than one-fifth of them
thought such restraint likely to be achieved.

Even if a breakthrough agreement on a vital foreign policy issue
could be reached, the survey indicated considerable skepticism
about whether it would work:  66% do not believe the Soviets can
be trusted to keep their end of the bargain, and a surprising 28%
think the U.S. is similarly unlikely to honor the fine print of a
pact.

Much of the dubiousness can be laid to misgivings about the two
main players in Geneva and their willingness to strive, seriously
for an arms-control agreement. Despite a flurry of artfully
crafted public appearances. Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev
remains an unknown quantity to the American public. Some 93% of
the survey group admitted knowing little or nothing about the new
Soviet leader; 47% of those who know at least something about
Gorbachev suspect that he cannot be counted upon to honor his end
of a bargain. Gorbachev's public relations efforts and his youth
(by past Politburo standards) notwithstanding, a majority of
Americans consider the new Soviet boss to be part of the old
Kremlin leadership, no better or worse than his predecessors.

More surprising are public doubts about the popular Reagan. Only
30% think the President emphasizes arms control over expansion of
our nuclear arsenal, although 79% personally favor that position.
Fully 50% of those surveyed believe Reagan is determined to build
up America's supply of nuclear weapons, but only 12% find that a
good idea. Indeed, by 25% to 21%, more voters believe Reagan's
nuclear policies increase rather than decrease the threat of war.
(A remarkable 46% think those policies have no effect either
way.)

Still, the President enjoyed solid public support as he faced off
with Gorbachev:  by 53% to 20%, voters view Reagan as more
knowledgeable in world affairs; by 66% to 14%, they rate him more
skilled in presenting his ideas; and by 58% to 9%, think him more
concerned about the threat of nuclear war than his Soviet
counterpart. Moreover, a solid 55% predicted that Reagan would
outscore Gorbachev in world opinion. Yet 33% thought Gorbachev
more likely to get his way at the summit, while only 28%
predicted Reagan would prevail there. More ominously, despite
general approval of the Geneva talks, 51% of Americans think U.S.
involvement in a nuclear war is either somewhat likely or very
likely in the next 20 years.

The survey indicates a marked recent softening of anti-Soviet
opinion in the U.S. In 1980, shortly after the invasion of
Afghanistan, Americans were divided on how the U.S. should treat
the Soviet Union, with 45% favoring a cooperative policy of
detente and 41% urging a cold war approach to the Soviets as
potential enemies. But after four years of a costly U.S.
military buildup, the proportion of Americans favoring detente
has jumped to 65%, while the number of those favoring cold war
tactics has dropped to 24%. Significantly, the detente approach
received almost equal support from Republicans and Democrats
alike.

Even though a solid 55% of those questioned characterize current
U.S.-Soviet relations as generally poor, the survey disclosed a
startling drop in concern over the Soviet threat to this country.
The proportion of Americans who believe the Soviet Union
represents a very serious threat to the U.S. declined from 52% in
1983 to 32% this month. Similarly, the respondents who agreed
that "the nuclear arms race is so dangerous that spending more
money on nuclear arms weakens our national security rather than
strengthening it" increase from 45% in 1982 to 62% this month.
Some 68% believe the U.S. has sufficient nuclear weapons now.
Only 22% favor more "for self-defense."

Despite the sentiment for moderating the nuclear buildup, public
opinion is gradually forming behind the President's expensive
space-based missile-defense project. A majority think SDI will
work (65%), believe it should be built (59%) and are convinced it
will make the U.S. more secure (58%). Those views, however, are
hardly based on exhaustive knowledge. While 88% of those
surveyed claim to have heard of SDI, or Star Wars as it is often
called, 69% admit they know only "a little" about it.

Moreover, Star Wars creates notable splits along partisan and
gender lines. Republicans plump for Star Wars 75% to 19%, while
Democrats oppose it 47% to 46%. Men are overwhelming adherents
of the program, 70% to 24%, women back it by a mere 47% to 44%.
Nor does the increasing support mean that uneasiness about the
project's usefulness has vanished. Asked whether Star Wars
deployment would facilitate an arms-control agreement, 36% of the
respondents replied yes and 33% answered no. Some 36% believe
Star Wars would decrease the possibility of nuclear war, up from
26% in a similar survey last July; 20% believe the system would
increase the chance of war, vs. 30% last July.

The depth of public commitment to SDI is also suspect. Among
possible goals for the summit, the survey listed, "Reaching an
arms-control agreement in which the U.S. stops building the Star
Wars defense system and the Soviet Union makes similar cutbacks
in its military systems."  A commanding 74% thought that idea to
be a "very important" goal, while only 18% labeled it "not very
important."  If the President continues to insist that SDI offers
more security than a missile cut, he will have to persuade the
U.S. public as well as the Soviets of his views.

The poll results underscore a remarkable anomaly in the public's
reaction to Reagan, whose lusty 62% positive job-performance
rating remains near its historic high. Even though the national
economy has just completed three years of expansion, only 27% of
respondents believe they are better off economically under
Reagan, while 28% think their economic situation has
deteriorated. Concern over the swollen federal deficit and U.S.
economic health continue to rank first and second among problems
facing the country, well ahead of the arms race and the threat of
nuclear war. Yet, despite their reservations about the
President's hawkish summit stance, many voters claim they feel
more comfortable after five years of Reagan's defense and foreign
policies. Only 16% consider themselves in greater danger
militarily because of Reagan's defense and foreign policies,
while a full 36% believe they are safer. Perceptions of the
legacy from Geneva will doubtless affect those numbers.

By David Beckwith.

_______________________________________________________________
Countering America's Crusade

Moscow presents a looking-glass version of individual liberties


Leonard Peltier is not exactly a household name in the U.S. But
in the Soviet Union he ranks right up there with Ronald Reagan
and Michael Jackson. While the President is in Geneva, the White
House will be deluged with sacks of postcards mailed by readers
of the Young Communist League newspaper demanding the release of
that "well-known" political prisoner. The paper called on its
readers "to raise our voices in defense of the human rights and
freedom of those whose only 'fault' is to struggle against the
genocide unleashed by U.S. authorities against the native
population."  Translation:  in the looking-glass logic of
superpower relations, Peltier, an American Indian serving two
consecutive life sentences for the murder of two FBI agents, is
to Soviet propagandists what dissident Physicist Andrei Sakharov
is to the U.S., a symbol of flagrant disregard for human rights.

The Kremlin has peppered the U.S. with scattered human rights
charges ever since the Sacco and Vanzetti case of 1920. But in
the maneuvering leading up to this week's summit, the
denunciations have reached new heights. The campaign represents
a tactical shift by Moscow; while the Soviets still maintain
their traditional stony attitude about Western interference in
their own "internal affairs," they are now going on the
counterattack. In reply to the continued U.S. criticism of
Soviet emigration policies and Reagan's recent rebukes of the
oppressive nature of Soviet society, the Kremlin under Mikhail
Gorbachev has taken the offensive with a rancorous propaganda
drive. Its goal is to paint the U.S. as a nation teeming with
human rights violations that run the gamut from unemployment to
genocide. "They used to deal with human rights criticism by
sitting in cold silence," says one senior Western diplomat in
Moscow. "Now the new leadership are tough and embattled and
intend to match our criticism with criticism of their own."

Virtually every day, Soviet newspapers fulminate about rampant
U.S. censorship, persecution of dissidents, forced labor,
religious discrimination and telephone tapping. Film of homeless
Americans sleeping on subway grates and bag ladies foraging
through trash cans has become so standard on Soviet TV that at
least a few viewers must be convinced that all of New York City
consists of such unfortunates. Recalling the concentration camps
of the Nazi era, a professor serving as a commentator for one
show tells his audience, "The U.S. is going through a prison
boom; camps for dissidents are hastily being built there."

One heavily hammered theme has been the bombing in Philadelphia
last May of the headquarters of Move, a radical cult. "American
authorities recently gave the whole world a demonstration of
their democracy,"  TASS declaimed, "when they publicly
slaughtered more than a dozen black-skinned inhabitants of
Philadelphia and bombed a whole city block."  The Soviet press,
however, omits any mention of the fact that the mayor of
Philadelphia is black and that the bombing has provoked much
soul-searching in addition to searing criticism and lengthy
hearings and investigations.

Soviet authorities employ the catch-all term, "state terrorism"
to cover a multitude of human rights sins. Last week, for
example, they wheeled out Vitaly Yurchenko, the fickle KGB
defector, for a rather wooly and sometimes bizarre two-hour press
conference in which he elaborated on his tales of kidnap and
torture at the hands of the CIA. After Yurchenko reiterated his
charges that he was given drugs by the CIA, a Soviet doctor
compared the alleged doping "to the experiments perpetrated by
the Nazis on our war prisoners."  At one point, the press
conference seemed to turn into a scene from an early Woody Allen
movie. Rambling on about "cheap CIA tricks," Yurchenko gravely
announced that the CIA "made me play golf."  Worse was to come.
"They also gave me a suntan," added an indignant Yurchenko, "to
get rid of the green color of my skin."

The Soviet approach is double-edged; along with the vituperation,
they have decided to offer some concessions. On the eve of the
summit, Moscow announced that it had resolved about ten
controversial emigration cases by granting exit visas to a small
number of its citizens. Among those now able to leave the Soviet
Union are eight long-separated spouses of Americans, representing
about a third of the so-called divided-spouses cases, situations
in which Moscow has prohibited Soviet husbands and wives from
joining their partners in the U.S. In the past Moscow has been
known to offer such symbolic gestures just before the start of
major negotiations to create the appearance of compromise. But
some of those involved were skeptical. "Until I hold [an exit
visa] in my hands, I won't believe it," said Irina McClellan, 47,
who married an American professor 11 1/2 years ago. On occasion
even that has been insufficient. In 1974 the Kremlin granted
exit vistas to the family of Abe Stolar, 67, a Moscow resident
who holds dual U.S.-Soviet citizenship. But the KGB removed them
from an outward-bound plane just before takeoff.

As with virtually every issue dividing the two superpowers, human
rights are defined differently by the Soviets and the Americans.
While the U.S. emphasizes the rights of the individual, such as
freedom of speech and religion, the Soviets stress the notion
that individual rights are contingent upon the rights of the
collective. They regard full employment, housing and
comprehensive health care as the fulfillment of basic human
rights; less tangible rights are barely considered. A Soviet law
professor was quoted in TASS as saying, "About 9 million
unemployed in the United States is evidence of the gross
violation of international human rights in that country."
Ironically, it is the Soviets, all the while castigating American
capitalism, who view human rights in a materialistic rather than
a political way.

The 1975 Helsinki accords, signed by Washington and Moscow as
well as 33 other nations, committed those nations to "respect
human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of
thought, conscience, religion or belief."  Often citing this
document, Jimmy Carter turned America's concern for individual
freedoms into a high-visibility moral crusade. Although Reagan
has not been as vocal as Carter in condemning human rights
violations, he will not be silent at the negotiating table.
After years of stonewalling references to Helsinki's human rights
provisions, the Soviets now frequently invoke them when accusing
America of abuses, creating a distorted mirror image of U.S.
human rights policy. As Pravda recently wrote, "The U.S. today
is the biggest country in the world where the oppression of
millions of people is camouflaged by unrestricted demagogy about
"freedom."

The offensive has probably been effective in changing perceptions
about the U.S. among some Soviet citizens; its goal of taking the
edge off Washington's charges about Moscow's alleged violations
is still remote. Washington so far has not reacted to the
stepped-up campaign, maintaining an aloof disdain for the Soviet
charges, and is quietly relieved that the Soviets are talking
about human rights at all. Notes one senior U.S. official:
"Everybody here can judge this country's approach to the
enhancement of human rights, and they can judge the other side's.
We'll let those judgments rest."  The offensive may come back to
haunt the Soviets. While it is intended to put the U.S. on the
defensive, it also opens the way for a closer look at the issue
of human rights, an examination that the U.S. can only welcome.

By Richard Stengel. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett/Washington
and James O. Jackson/Moscow.