September 27 1991 Thursday In the morning Collins called me Bush wants to talk to M S But he was assigned to first inform M S what the conversation would be about I called M S at 11 a m he had a meeting with Mubarak At 10 30 a m he received Collins who outlined Bush's initiative that will be unveiled today a universal reduction of nuclear weapons even the Tomahawks which the U S never agreed to before Advantageous Well done Especially since they are ahead of us in conventional weapons But this is not the point M S tried to call Marshal Shaposhnikov to assign him to prepare a position for the talk with Bush at 4 p m But alas He could not reach him M S went to his meeting with Mubarak and assigned me to gather the generals Karpov and tell them to formulate our response Lobov some general Karpov came over For an hour and a half they discussed it From the outset they started digging what why and how much like the years of nonsense in Geneva and Vienna a dead-end and lucrative for the negotiators I told them do you think that this initiative was made only to beat us to deceive and humiliate us and to show that we are no longer a superpower Let's disarm completely so to say There is no beginning of a new U S policy here new relations with us the outcomes of new thinking-- you do not see any of this How will our President look when the entire world will be astonished by this initiative but all M S will have to say to Bush is that they have more of this and we still need to discuss that After Bush straightforwardly says that he will disarm unilaterally and calls on us to follow his example They changed their tune and tried to show that of course they understand But they are so outdated Again M S found a Chief of General Staff who with God's help is fit to command a division We do not have politician-generals like Bush has They left I dictated to Tamara a cheat-sheet for talking with Bush a major initiative a match for Reykjavik which you the Americans did not accept at the time Support Let's start and figure out the details as we go along where we will meet you where we will work in parallel and what will be figured out through negotiations Though I have to say that by 3 p m Shaposhnikov he is smarter more modern and more politically aware than the previous group I met with brought over a concept of the conversation similar to my own They gathered in M S ' office Lobov who came late tried to push that it is unprofitable to us that they will deceive us that he does not see any unilateral action etc Despite the fact that M S kept pointing at Bush's text and proving the opposite He kept the generals in his office when he spoke to Bush on the phone It was a pretty good move He said things along the lines of it is a historic step I welcome it in principle we see this positively we will discuss the rest and agree on how best to do it They also agreed on what M S ' public reaction to it would be he already filmed his TV appearance Source Anatoly S Chernyaev Diary manuscript donated to the National Security Archive Translated by Anna Melyakova