1 On the practical implementation of and practical support for the results of the visit of Cde Gorbachev M S to the U N Gorbachev We can state that our initiatives pulled the rug from under the feet of those who have been prattling and not without success that new political thinking is just about words The Soviet Union they said still needs to provide evidence There was plenty of talk many nice words but not a single tank is withdrawn not a single cannon Therefore the unilateral reduction left a huge impression and one should admit created an entirely different background for perceptions of our policies and the Soviet Union as a whole Such impressive positive shifts created among the conservative part of the U S political elite--and not only in the U S --concern anxiety and even fear Thatcher also shares some of it This breeds considerations of another kind the essence of which is to lower expectations to sow doubts even suspicions Behind it is the plot to halt the process of erosion and disintegration of the foundation of the cold war That is the crux of the matter We are proposing and willing to build a new world to destroy the old basis Those who oppose it are in the minority but these circles are very influential In the classified information that we receive they speak directly we cannot allow the Soviet Union to seize the initiative and lead the entire world What kind of policy will the U S conduct with regard to us There are several very interesting and serious possibilities Here is one changes in the policy of the USSR are caused by the profound crisis in communism and socialism and what is happening in the socialist world and the Soviet Union is allegedly a departure from these ideas In other words we are dismantling socialism with our perestroika and renouncing communist goals This version is being used to devalue our peace initiatives These are just forced steps so they say they do not have any other way to go Well there is some grain of realism in this but only to a degree We had something different in mind when we formulated our policy Of course we considered internal needs as well On the basis of this version comes the conclusion that the United States should do nothing for its part to consolidate the positive shifts in international relations The Soviet Union so they say as well as other socialist countries have no way out The USSR will give up its positions step by step This is serious comrades The Washington Times is writing about it And the Heritage Foundation prepared a recommendation for the future Bush administration along these lines And here is the viewpoint of the liberal circles The USSR is not renouncing socialism but is rescuing it as President Roosevelt once rescued American capitalism through the New Deal They remind us that capitalism to solve its problems many times borrowed socialist ideas of planning state regulation and social programs based on the principle of more social fairness So they do not want to allow the Right to play on their version and to devalue our peace initiatives If this conservative version prevails it will have a serious political effect Incidentally some elements from this concept are present in the thinking of George Bush as if they are passing from Reagan to Bush They are present in Western Europe they say that under Reagan the United States has built up its military potential activated its support to freedom fighters in various regions and thereby convinced the Soviet Union that an expansionist policy has no future Some Europeans also want to see the source of change in Soviet policy as emanating from American power This seems to be the most influential current In essence it is close to the official viewpoint Its harm is obvious since if it takes root and is laid in the policy foundation of the future administration it will contribute to the arms race and to military interference by the U S in other countries I am now following these things very closely Now we should work out a longer-term plan of practical measures to implement the announced concept at the U N On this issue the Politburo has received considerations from departments of the CC Foreign Ministry Ministry of Defense and the Committee of State Security KGB They provide a program of actions for the near and long term Perhaps this is still a first draft We should put our heads together and give it time Among the things that were discussed during my stay in New York the major issue was the future of perestroika And this I would like to emphasize before the Politburo Could there be a turn backwards Incidentally this is an object of most intense speculation among the Far Right And if you analyze the content of recorded foreign broadcasts in the languages of our country on all foreign stations the emphasis is clearly on the difficulties of perestroika on growing obstacles to the process in the economy in relations among nationalities in the process of democratization and glasnost etc When I had to stay in isolation during the trip I tried during those twelve days day by day to analyze and systematize the materials on this score and to give them my assessment Radio voices are hammering away at the Soviet audience that perestroika is losing ground grinding to a halt that it has not given anything to the people that chaos reigns in the leadership and the party and that the country is sliding toward chaos No matter what the leadership undertakes it will sooner or later end up in a trap And the future of the present leadership hangs by a thread To be frank they say that Gorbachev is living through his last days According to most optimistic forecasts he may have a year or a year-and-a-half True Vladimir Alexandrovich he addresses Kryuchkov Kryuchkov People say many things Gorbachev You do not want to speak up It is so I should not say we are very surprised by all this I do not want to be excessively cheerful but if they are upset if they try to make these forecasts it means that they are afraid of our perestroika Of course it is still premature to draw serious conclusions about the policy of the future administration but something can be said on the basis of contacts and certain information First it is hard to expect that this administration will aggravate relations with the USSR or will get involved in some risky international venture that could undermine these relations There seem to be solid grounds for saying this On the other hand comrades I believe with full certainty that the administration is not ready for a new serious turn in relations with the USSR which would be adequate to the steps our side has undertaken At least such is the picture today So they say we will remain prudent we will not hurry Still at the last moment when I managed to tear myself away from Reagan I spoke to Bush about this indecisiveness He snapped back you must understand my position I cannot according to American tradition come to the fore until a formal transfer of power has taken place This I understand no question about it We will have an understanding And he assured me--there will be continuity He believes we should build on what has been achieved and will make his own contribution All that we picked up from different channels says that from their side they will augment the efforts to develop our relations We should take into account that Bush is a very cautious politician They say that his idiosyncratic feature is the natural caution of Bush It is inside him We should see it And what can make Bush act Only the threat of a loss of prestige for the administration So we need these sorts of circumstances which we have now created through our initiatives to promote this process The mood of the present administration mostly reflects centrist sentiments in U S political circles And Bush himself says I am in the Center Most of those who today turn out to be on Bush's team are people who are called traditionalists in America These people were brought up in the years of the Cold War and still do not have any foreign policy alternative to the traditional post-war course of the United States with all its zigzags to the right and to the left even with its risky adventures And we should understand that And much will depend on how we act I think that they are still concerned that they might be on the losing side nothing more Big breakthroughs can hardly be expected We should produce smart policy Georgy Arbatov has just shared the following ideas They the Americans have suddenly sent a trial balloon we are not ready let's wait we will see In general they will drag their feet they want to break the wave that has been created by our initiatives In response they heard that of course we could wait because we have much to do in other directions--European Asian Latin American Then they say Well you misunderstood us So we should have a thoughtful dynamic practical policy We cannot allow the future administration to take a prolonged time out and slow down the tempo of our political offensive Shevardnadze There is a draft resolution on point 1 of the Politburo agenda Of course I do not consider it a final draft We will have to work on it It is not true that the draft has not been cleared with the Ministry of Defense The reasons are well known comrades were not in place only Comrade Lobov 1 was present and all these issues all these points we agreed on with him We went to him obtained his 1 Oleg Lobov Chairman of the Security Council signature etc But this is not so important I am worried about something else What for instance does the Ministry of Defense propose in its report To present data to the Supreme Soviet only after their discussion by the Defense Council and the Politburo etc Should we do that if we are getting ready for a new Supreme Soviet with a new status new rights new content and forms of its work I believe it should not be done I have serious reservations about a proposal that the Supreme Soviet receive information only about the main lines of a military build-up and not the plans of this build-up as the draft suggests This may result in a lack of any details in the Supreme Soviet's discussion of this issue and in the same negative consequences we have already spoken about Specific plans will continue to be adopted and implemented in secrecy without the Supreme Soviet We should probably not let that happen It is absolutely unclear how the Supreme Soviet without information on specific plans will be able to consider seriously and approve defense expenditures This is a very serious issue It is also hard to understand the reasons for the objection to these clauses of the Foreign Ministry's Politburo draft resolution where it speaks about the presentation of a plan and schedule for withdrawal of our troops from Allied territories and about the discussion of this with our friends As far as I know a specific schedule for withdrawal has not been discussed in the Committee of Ministers of Defense of the WTO We should have plans for agreeing on a withdrawal with the Allies we should agree on them with the Allies and announce them publicly so that everybody knows about our firm intention to carry out what was stated at the United Nations in a systematic purposeful and orderly way Otherwise if everything is to be decided as the comrades from the Ministry of Defense write--in the usual course of business we will become a target for allegations that we are trying to sidetrack the issue of withdrawal from Eastern Europe and troop restructuring and not to do things as was announced from the podium at the General Assembly The following moment in the proposals of the Ministry of Defense is in direct contradiction to what was said from the Assembly's podium and to the clause of the Foreign Ministry draft resolution I have in mind the formula of the Ministry of Defense that Soviet forces that will remain on the territory of socialist countries after unilateral cuts will adopt a more I stress more defensive bearing These are just words but they have significance in principle Cde Gorbachev spoke about giving these forces a different unequivocally defensive structure This is an important and big difference We will be caught at every turn so to speak And now they propose that we talk not about structure but about some kind of abstract direction Behind this difference in terminology stand various methods of implementation of the general secretary's address In practice we should act in accordance with the speech at the U N so that deeds do not diverge from words I also cannot agree with how the draft of the Ministry of Defense treats the issues of glasnost and openness which are today of principal importance of the highest importance When we carry out our unilateral steps glasnost and openness will be maximized in my opinion Otherwise the desired effect will be lost and it seems to me our policy will sustain a propaganda defeat Our opponents will not hesitate to take us up on this and to sow doubts to the effect that the announced steps are not being implemented in full The military proposes not a maximal level of openness but a level that would be acceptable What that means--acceptable openness--is not clear Even more important is that even this acceptable glasnost and openness are suggested to be applied only to the withdrawal of our troops from Allied territory As to reduction measures on our territory apparently no glasnost is admitted This is probably wrong as well In general my conclusion is that the amendments to the Foreign Ministry draft proposed in the Ministry of Defense's draft resolution in particular to the militarypolitical section are designed not to allow genuine glasnost and openness And I still believe that these issues are of great importance In conclusion Mikhail Sergeyevich several words You spoke about certain informational reports They want us to be nervous And look at them they are serious people serious politicians Gorbachev Yesterday in the morning U S Ambassador Jack Matlock asked for a meeting with Alexander Yakovlev and arrived He listened to a broadcast from Leningrad inspired by comrade Iurii Filippovich Soloviev First Secretary of the Leningrad Party Organization During this program the chairman of the Administration of the GDR also spoke and said that one should keep in mind the plots of the imperialist intelligence services and their subversive activities against perestroika Well Matlock then said I have a special request from my leadership both the current and the future one to declare that we support perestroika Shevardnadze You know sometimes we help ourselves discredit certain foreign authorities We found an analysis of this fellow Kissinger Look what remained of his theory after your speech Gorbachev Nothing remained Shevardnadze If one says another a second a third we should not take it as absolute wisdom I think we should treat it more seriously Gorbachev We get used to the fact that in our country if someone speaks up it is not necessarily an official viewpoint And there they just prattle on you see Gorbachev When we discussed alternative military service at the Defense Council and even considered it at the Politburo we spoke about a reduction of troops by five hundred thousand Then in order to resolve the issue with students we said add to these five hundred another hundred thousand to remove the issue of enlistment of students but let's continue talking everywhere about five hundred thousand These five hundred thousand are army troops and one hundred thousand are construction troops Eduard Amvrosievich Shevardnadze would like to announce the figure six hundred thousand and I told him--no because when we start comparing numbers of troops they will always poke their finger at the fact that these are construction troops and we will insist that they are not Therefore officially we speak about five hundred thousand Yakovlev Yesterday I met with Matlock He told me that Bush is more professional better informed but at the same time is more cautious He tried to convince me that he always took part in the preparation of specific decisions was interested in details and knew many--i e he cast the new president in the best possible light What else should we keep in mind in terms of putting pressure on the Americans They are very afraid of our European and Pacific policies They would not like to jump on a departing train not to mention a runaway train They are used to driving the engine They are upset by our active foreign policy in other regions Most important Mikhail Sergeyevich--you spoke many times about this--is the disappearance of the image of the enemy If we continue to advance in this direction and we carry out this business we will ultimately pull the carpet from under the feet of the military-industrial complex of the United States Of course the Americans will be forced radically to change their approaches Yazov In accordance with the decision of the Defense Council taken on November 9 the Ministry of Defense has already worked out the plans for withdrawing our troops from the GDR CSSR HPR and PPR After your speech at the United Nations I attended a party conference of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany There was not a single question or a provocative remark Fourteen people spoke and all accepted this with approval On Saturday I was at a conference in the Kiev district of Moscow There was the question Would the withdrawal affect preparedness for defense I answered There were no more questions everyone reacted with understanding The entire armed forces of the country regard this with understanding In the Committee of defense Ministers held in Sofia all the ministers accepted it with understanding I believe that we are ready to report to the Defense Council on our plans for implementing the proposals that were announced at the United Nations The Ministry of Defense does not object to publicity of the issues of military build-up in the Commission of the Supreme Soviet But while according to the Constitution the Defense Council exists I believe that all the issues should be considered at the Defense Council before they are moved to the Commission of the Supreme Council I do not know why Cde Shevardnadze disagrees with this Before Mikhail Sergeyevich presented these proposals at the United Nations this issue had been considered by the Defense Council and over here at the Politburo How could it have been otherwise The Americans do not let us know everything either What we really want to learn from them we cannot buy for any amount of money in the world And why should we pass everything right away through the Commission of the Supreme Soviet Today the Commission of the Supreme Soviet will include a very broad circle And not everybody should know everything Gorbachev I think it is a misunderstanding There are many things that Americans consider behind closed doors Yazov Absolutely true Gorbachev There are things that the Congress does not even consider They can be carried out at the discretion of the president and the National Security Council Yazov Now on the formula about our defensive direction In his speech Mikhail Sergeyevich has mentioned cuts by 10 000 tanks In doing this we have to touch on all troops that are located in the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany We have to include our tank divisions in the reduction There are motorized regiments in tank divisions We intend to preserve these motorized regiments and to remove tank regiments from the tank divisions that will remain in Germany so that more tanks can be withdrawn In this situation should we really reveal the entire structure only because we want more glasnost I believe that is the prerogative of those countries which provide their territory for our troops In any case we will reveal what can be revealed but it is not necessary to go all the way As to the schedule for withdrawal we are ready to make a report on it We propose to withdraw three divisions from Eastern Europe this year and three divisions next year As to the part concerning the USSR and Mongolia we are also prepared to report to the Defense Council regarding the schedule Ligachev I would like to mention two or three circumstances In a word perestroika in international relations is very substantial Meanwhile it does not lose its class character which was stressed by Mikhail Sergeyevich in his report at the XIX Party Conference At the same time we spoke and justifiably so about the priority of common human values common human interests I believe that if it were not for the common interests of the countries that belong to different social-economic systems there would be no unity of action There is apparently a common interest in the following areas the huge burden of military budgets this is felt by the socialist world as well as by the capitalist world Issues related to the survival of humanity and ecological problems have become burning issues All this taken together and above all our policy of initiatives have led to some changes for the better This is the first point I wanted to mention The second point foreign policy is a very large complex of issues The most important among them is disarmament We need disarmament most of all We took such a burden upon ourselves with relation to the military budget that it will be difficult to dramatically solve anything in the sphere of the economy plus sometimes we took on this burden without sufficient grounds for it I've already mentioned this before But this does not mean that we should weaken the country's defense preparedness We have enough ways approaches and means to reduce excessively large military expenditures and to use rationally pragmatically the means for strengthening the nation's defense readiness We should tell the party and party activists about this Today when the world has already begun to disarm slowly but surely in the final analysis the power of the state will be determined not by military might but by a strong economy and by the political cohesion of society Vorotnikov I would mention only one point You Mikhail Sergeyevich in your speech have emphasized an ambiguous approach to perestroika and the reaction in capitalist circles including the United States But even in the socialist countries we run into serious problems Maybe in our draft resolution we should formulate the course for our policy towards the socialist commonwealth after all Indeed there is nothing in the draft besides the point about telebridges telemostov that should be arranged with socialist journalists I consider the situation in a number of socialist countries to be so complicated that we should clarify our thinking in one document or another This flows from your speech Gorbachev Comrades let us call it a day Our campaign which we had prepared for so long and have implemented has generated much publicity It elevates us to a new level in our thinking and work I think that our resolution encompasses in general all these areas political diplomatic ideological follow-up But the comrades should read it once again Perhaps they will add something useful to it or suggest some corrections I also have two points to add Vitaly Ivanovich Vorotnikov said that people ask around the country and even at home how did it come about that we are once again stripping down of our own accord And Yegor Kuzmich Ligachev approached this theme from another angle the party should know We are still keeping it a secret frankly And we keep this secrecy for one reason if we admit now that we cannot build a longerterm economic and social policy without unilateral cuts then we will be forced to explain why Today we cannot tell even the party about it First of all we should bring in some order If we say today how much we remove for defense from the national revenue this may reduce to nothing the effect of the speech at the United Nations since a situation of this sort does not exist in any other country Perhaps only in poor destitute countries where half of their budget goes for military spending Shevardnadze For instance in Angola Gorbachev Yes But there the budget and everything is different We are talking about another story If we take this glasnost approach now then people will tell us your proposal is rubbish you should cut your military expenditures by three-to-four times How do we go about that comrades First in our plans we build in military expenses that are twice as large as the growth of national income then our national income turns out to be down the tubes yet we stick to our military plans So put two and two together about what is going on here For that reason we should be patient for a little bit longer But you are all correct--we will have to speak about it Meanwhile only in political sense By the time of 13th five-year plan Yuri Dmitrievich Masliukov we will implement all these decisions and will have something to say Then our expenses on this item will be somewhat closer to the American expenses A lot of work should be done on the issue of our military grouping in Eastern Europe We should do it in a systematic way I know that all these proposals are in preparation for the Defense Council We agreed to hold a meeting in early January and to discuss all these issues Let's finish our exchange It was necessary This is really large-scale policymaking I propose to instruct Comrades Shevardnadze Zaikov Yakovlev Yazov and Kamentsev V M to finalize the draft resolution of the CC on these issues keeping in mind the discussion at the Politburo Members of Politburo Agreed Source RGANI Published in Istochnik 5-6 1993 Translated by Vladislav Zubok This document is from the holdings of The National Security Archive Suite 701 Gelman Library The George Washington University 2130 H Street NW Washington D C 20037 Phone 202 994-7000 Fax 202 994-7005 nsarchiv@gwu edu