11
NOTES ON
AN UNRAVELING RED
SWEATER
It was 8 o’clock, and I was already 30 minutes late. A frosty black January night had settled over the Capitol, and most of the other offices had long since been locked up. I was perched on the arm of a couch in the Speaker’s office, anxiously waiting for Jim Wright to finish.
He was sitting behind his desk, totally absorbed in a report we had received that day from the State Department. I kept glancing at the clock on the wall, hoping he would ask me why I was so fidgety. But he pored over the report again and again, pausing here and there to underline a passage.
“Have you read this?” he said finally, looking up.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Fascinating stuff, isn’t it?”
“Damn sure is,” he said. “This guy is really interesting. But nobody seems sure whether or not he’s for real. If he is, this could be the most important thing that’s happened in the past 50 years.”
He put aside the report and reached across the desk for his tattered black personal notebook—a volume which we staff members privately referred to as The Gutenberg, after the Bible of approximately the same age. Jim Wright seldom let this book out of his sight, guarding it as dearly as Linus does his security blanket. Inviolate and treasured, the book may have been a hodgepodge, but it was his hodgepodge. It contained a calendar on which he frequently jotted notes, plus a number of yellowing newspaper clippings, a list of telephone numbers perhaps assigned personally by Alexander Graham Bell, a batch of long-forgotten business cards and, I always suspected, perhaps some letters his wife gave him to mail in 1978.
He thumbed through the calendar, scanning the next few months. “I’m trying to figure out the best date to do this,” he said. “Why don’t we check on April 10? That’s a Friday, and the beginning of the Easter recess.”
“Fine. I’ll talk to the State Department and the Air Force tomorrow and see if April 10 works for them,” I said, edging toward the door.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Speaker,” I said sheepishly. “It’s just that I was supposed to meet Eddie at the Sheraton Grand for dinner at 7:30, and she’s going to kill me.”
Jim Wright laughed. “Tell her hello, and I’m sorry I made you late.”
As it turned out, I escaped Eddie’s wrath because when she reached the hotel dining room, she happened to bump into Wayne Franke, the friend with whom we were having dinner. By the time I arrived, they were enjoying a glass of wine at a window table with a spectacular view of the Capitol dome, floodlighted dramatically against the black wintry sky.
Wayne Franke, a good old Texas boy, was a lobbyist. He represented GTE Corporation in Austin, and flew up to Washington now and then to try to fend off whatever new and different indignities Congress was planning to foist upon his employer. We had been friends for many years, and as far as I know, Wayne never asked Jim Wright or his staff for anything at all.
On that particular evening, it was obvious that Wayne was excited about something. He fiddled nervously with the silverware and grinned a lot. Finally the stress proved too much for him. The seams burst.
“I’m going to be a father,” he announced, beaming. His wife, Jane, had just received the news from her doctor, and Wayne was so exhilarated he barely nibbled at his filet. He was happy with the whole wide world and everybody in it. When the dessert and coffee came, he grew even more expansive.
“You know, Marshall, we need to do something for Jim Wright,” he said. “What would you think of our organizing some kind of event—maybe a barbecue or a chili supper? It could be a fund-raiser, and I’d help you with all the arrangements.”
“Any place you say,” he said, throwing his arms open wide. “We could have it here in Washington, or in Fort Worth, or even in Austin. We could have it any place you say.”
“Any place at all?” I said.
“Any place at all,” he trumpeted reassuringly.
“Could you have it in Moscow?” I asked.
Wayne, uncertain he had heard correctly, sat down his coffee and leaned forward. “Moscow, like in Russia?” he asked.
“Moscow, like in Russia,” I said, nodding.
“Are you kidding?” he demanded.
“No, I’m not,” I said.
“You mean you’re actually talking about putting on a barbecue in the Soviet Union?” ”
“Either that, or a chili supper.”
Wayne was interested but puzzled. “Would you please tell me what the hell you are talking about?” he pleaded.
“Glad to,” I said. “The Soviets have invited the Speaker to bring a delegation to Moscow. Jim Wright has talked to the State Department and the White House, and they think it might be a pretty good idea—especially right now.”
“Great! Sounds really interesting. What would you guys do over there?”
“Well, for one thing, the Speaker would talk to this new fellow everybody’s talking about--Gorbachev.”
“Wow. I’ve been reading about him. He’s got everybody stumped as to what he’s really doing over there—reorganizing the government, bringing new people into the Kremlin, opening up the press and the movies.”
I nodded. “Right. Nobody really can figure what he’s up to.”
“Do you think he’s for real? Is he just craftier than the guys in the past, or is this a whole new ball game?”
“That’s the main thing Jim Wright wants to try to find out.“
“And the chili supper?”
“The Speaker told he’d like to put on some kind of a reception over there, and I think he’d go for a deal like this. Even if Gorbachev ain’t for real, maybe some 4-alarm Texas chili and jalapeno peppers will thaw out the Cold War.”
Wayne was clearly intrigued by the idea, and accurately predicted that his boss, Buddy Langley, President of GTE, would enthusiastically approve. Wayne wryly confided to me, however, that his company rarely gave chili suppers in Moscow.
Over the next few weeks, preparations for the trip picked up momentum. The Speaker invited and got prompt acceptances from 18 colleagues, including two other members of the Democratic leadership, Majority Leader Tom Foley and Majority Whip Tony Coelho. Five Republicans also signed on, including Congressman Dick Cheney, a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence who was destined later to become Secretary of Defense.
Jack Matlock, a seasoned diplomat who was preparing to go to Moscow as our new Ambassador to the Soviet Union, came by the office to share some insights with the Speaker. Fluent in Russian and steeped in USSR history and customs, Matlock had served three previous tours in subordinate jobs in the Moscow Embassy. He also had traveled widely in the country and knew many of the key players in the current Kremlin intrigue. I was disappointed to learn that he had serious reservations about the prospect of significant changes in Soviet policy under Gorbachev’s leadership.
To work out final details of our schedule, the Speaker asked me and Spencer Oliver, a veteran staff member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to advance the trip by flying to Moscow a week before the delegation. Our job would be to work with our Soviet counterparts on the schedule and other arrangements. In particular, we were to make sure there were no surprises to ruffle feathers on either side. On this point I recall wondering whether Moscow had a Billy Bobski’s.
To me, advancing this trip was the assignment of a lifetime. For a Depression kid who used to stand on the street and sell popcorn in Bishop, this was pretty heady stuff. Here I was, flitting off to Moscow to arrange meetings for the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives—by any measure the most important legislative office on earth—with the new boss of the Soviet Union.
As Miss Myrtle Wakeland used to drum into our high school civics class, it is the President, not the Congress, whom the Constitution empowers to speak for our country in foreign affairs. Nobody in the Speaker’s delegation was under any other illusion. Even so, everybody realized these Moscow sessions would offer a unique opportunity to get insights into this relatively unknown man who now had his finger on the USSR nuclear trigger.
Nobody was quite sure just where Mikhail Gorbachev was leading the Soviet Union. With his surprising new policy of “openness” at home, his “restructuring” of the Soviet bureaucracy, his aggressive new crew in the Kremlin and his flurry of fresh proposals for nuclear arms control, this looked as if it could be a whole new ball game. But after nearly half a century of the Cold War, virtually every responsible American official had grave doubts.
But what if, I fantasized, these very meetings—my meetings, if you please—yielded some tiny clue as to a possible detour from our existing road toward nuclear Armageddon? What if, as a lowly Congressional spear carrier, I had even a microscopic role on a world stage where we might--just might--take the first halting steps toward keeping our lush green earth from being incinerated into a lump of celestial charcoal? Wow.
Before Spencer and I left for Moscow, Jim Wright made it clear that while Gorbachev and Company were his No. 1 priority, he didn’t want to spend the rest of the trip in dreary meetings with Kremlin bureaucrats. “I want a chance to meet some real, honest-to-goodness people—the everyday citizens of the Soviet Union,” he said. “I want to get out in the towns and the countryside—to see where people live and work. Like on a dairy farm, for instance. Yes, that’s it—make sure we get to visit a dairy farm.”
If anybody questioned whether the Kremlin regarded the Speaker’s upcoming visit as important, all doubt was wiped away by preparations Spencer and I found underway shortly after our arrival in Moscow. This would be the highest-ranking U.S. Congressional group ever to visit the USSR, and the Kremlin was rolling out the, uh, welcome carpet.
As a longtime staffer on the Foreign Affairs Committee, Spencer had been to the Soviet capital several times before and had good friends in our embassy. After a quick briefing there, we went to the first meeting with our Soviet counterparts. The Soviet team was headed by an impressive sandy-haired fellow in his mid forties. His name was Nikolai Lysenko. Over the next couple of weeks, I was to come to know him pretty well. In was Nikolai, in fact, who was later to give me my most revealing personal insight into the events unfolding in his country.
Behind Kremlin walls that had been standing since an obscure Italian sailor weighed anchor from Spain in 1492, the Speaker’s delegation would meet with an all-star cast of Soviet leaders--Gorbachev, Ligachev, Gromyko and Shevardnadze. Other private meetings were laid on with Dobrynin and Shcherbitsky, our old pals from the Kremlin group we had hosted in Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth a couple of years before.
Apparently only once did the Soviet team run into any problem in arranging all these high-level talks. As Spencer and I heard the story, some Kremlin bureaucrat had not gotten the word and challenged Nikolai’s authority, demanding “Who ordered this?” Nikolai cleared up matters for the poor fellow with a very brief response. “Mikhail S,” he said simply--as in Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev.
Even though Nikolai’s people seemed to try hard to accommodate the wishes of the U.S. delegation, Spencer and I did surprise them with one request.
“A dairy farm?” asked Nikolai, blinking. “The American side would like to see a dairy farm?”
“Yes,” I said. “When Mr. Khrushchev visited the United States in the 1950’s, he visited a corn farm in Iowa. He wanted to see how the average farmer lived in our country. Surely you can understand how the members of our Congress would like to see how your people live, also.”
Nikolai shrugged and promised to do his best.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, the Speaker had discovered that his scheduled visit to Moscow would overlap that of U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz. The Secretary would be there to negotiate with Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze on some of Gorbachev’s startling new arms control proposals. To avoid distracting Soviet attention from these delicate talks, Jim Wright and his colleagues stopped over two days in Madrid, where European parliamentarians were meeting, and then flew on to their first stop in the Soviet Union--Kiev, the busy, sprawling capital of the Soviet Ukraine. Here we found that my friend Nikolai, despite his reluctance, had pulled a few strings.
Along with greeting ceremonies, formal meetings and museum tours, we found that our official schedule for Kiev also provided for a visit to--you guessed it--a dairy farm. There were only two modest problems. First, the farm was no less than 30 miles south of the city. Second, we would travel by bus over roads that, well...just say they fell a bit short of Interstate standards. And, as any Capitol Hill staffer will tell you, there are two things you ought never, ever, to put on a bus. One is a crate of dynamite, and the other is a member of Congress. On long, bumpy trips, both are capable of generating loud and unpleasant sounds.
But on this trip, Jim Wright and his jolly crew did pretty well. We got to see parts of the city and the Ukrainian countryside that we otherwise would have missed. And besides that, Mickey Leland was aboard.
Mickey Leland was an African-American Congressman from Houston and one of the finest men I ever knew. A former Texas state legislator, he was elected to Congress in 1978 and promptly enlisted Jim Wright’s help in a realizing a cherished personal dream--to help at least some the world’s starving people. A Select Subcommittee on Hunger was created and Mickey was named Chairman. In this post Mickey rolled up his sleeves and launched efforts which unquestionably saved the lives of uncounted thousands. In 1989, on his way to one of the countless remote, starving provinces he visited in Africa, Mickey and several members of his staff died in a plane crash.
But don’t think of Mickey as some sort of stuffy do-gooder. A saint he definitely was not. He drank, gambled and, during his bachelor days, proved himself a worthy successor to Casanova. He also told raucous jokes and wonderful stories.
If Mickey enlivened the long bus trip to the dairy farm, it was probably because he was a specialist in buses. In his first race for Congress, often he crawled out of bed long before dawn and got a friend to drive him out to the furthermost point of a commuter bus line in Houston. Climbing aboard, he sat quietly until the bus filled up. Then he moved to the front of the bus, cleared his throat, and bellowed: “Good morning! My name is Mickey Leland, and I am running for Congress.”
To this ultimate captive audience, Mickey spent half an hour or so making his pitch and answering questions. He said even some otherwise stoic commuters seemed impressed by his unorthodox campaign idea.
“Did the bus driver ever try to shut you up?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” Mickey said. “First I made sure I had the endorsement of the bus drivers’ union.”
Jim Wright’s idea in going to a dairy farm was, of course, to try to meet some of the ordinary working people of the Soviet Union. He wanted to see their homes, visit with their kids, and try to get some personal insights into the problems and hopes of their families. Whether deliberately or not, the Soviets took us instead to a place where we saw few workers and no families at all. While the dairy operation looked efficient and impressive, it would have been far more interesting to a group of American dairy engineers and technicians than to a gaggle of American politicians. The visit did, however, have its entertaining moments.
To comply with the dairy’s sanitary standards, the Congressional visitors were asked to slip long, white sterile robes over their clothing before going through the milk production unit. Grinning wryly, Mickey Leland dutifully donned this modified bedsheet--and then went a step farther. As our bewildered Soviet escorts looked on, Mickey picked up a spare robe and fashioned for himself a pointed white hat. Still having no idea what was happening, the Soviets watched as this unusual guest extended his arms in a dramatic pose. Looking for all the world like a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan presiding at a cross-burning, Mickey laughingly called out to Jim Wright: “You see, Mr. Speaker, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you!”
In Moscow, the Soviets lodged the Jim Wright delegation in the Sovietskaya Hotel, a rambling, comfortable old place reserved for official visitors. I had barely checked in when one of our escort officers told me he was really puzzled about two other Americans who also had just arrived at the Sovietskaya.
“What’s so unusual about them?” I asked.
“Well, for one thing, besides their baggage, they were carrying these large wooden spoons and soup ladles,” he said. “And they had this big cardboard box they insisted on carrying themselves.”
“And I guess you’re going to tell me that they were wearing cowboy boots and big ten-gallon hats?”
“Yessir, they sure were,” he nodded vigorously. “And one other thing. One of them kept showing people a sonogram--you know, the kind that doctors take.”
“Did he say what the sonogram was?”
“He sure did. He showed it to everybody who’d look. He was the proudest guy I ever saw. He said it was a picture of his little daughter--who won’t be born for three more months!”
I smiled a private smile. Wayne Franke had arrived.
Along with his friend, Mario Martinez, Wayne had flown in on a commercial airliner, carrying essential chili-making tools and a cardboard box containing enough Texas-style seasoning to heat Leningrad. Our Moscow chili party was a go.
Before leaving the States, Wayne was worried that Moscow butcher shops might not have the quality meat needed to make good chili. The State Department and the Air Force agreed. So from its European bases, the Air Force rounded up 90 pounds of top-grade beef, cut into half-inch cubes, and flew it to Moscow, along with 20 pounds of pinto beans and several crates of tomato sauce. To me, this supply flight had an ironic touch. I was around early in the Cold War when our Air Force pulled off the logistical miracle known as the Berlin Airlift. With around-the-clock flights in all kinds of weather, American airplanes fed a city of two million people, defying a Soviet blockade. Now, forty years later, Air Force officers of another generation were flying a shipment of food to the Soviet capital to feed perhaps at least a few of the Soviet old-timers who helped blockade Berlin. Only this time, the food was intended not to fight the Cold War, but maybe to take one tiny step toward ending it.
Ambassador Matlock made available the kitchen facilities at Spaso House, his official residence, for the chili caper. Wasting no time, Wayne and Mario donned their aprons, grabbed their big wooden spoons--and promptly were confronted by the Spaso House’s veteran chef, a fiery Italian named Pietro. He apparently had never heard of a substance called chili, resented two strangers being thrust into his kitchen, and looked upon the whole enterprise with grave professional misgivings.
Since Pietro’s English was limited and Wayne and Mario spoke no Italian at all, Mario began experimenting with Texas Spanish as a common channel of communication. Grudgingly at first, Pietro began responding to this overture. As he tried to make sense out of Spanish and Mario tried to fathom the intricacies of Italian, Pietro’s huffiness began to evaporate. Before long he not only pitched in to help with preparations for the chili but also took Wayne and Mario out that night for a bit of Moscow bar-crawling. The next day the three of them whipped up a vat of steamy, succulent red broth that would have easily won a prize at the annual chili cookoff back inTerlingua, Texas.
On the evening of the big blast, Soviet dignitaries turned out by the score. While language differences limited standard party chitchat, our guests smiled and nodded a lot and warmly applauded a harmonica duet rendered by the Speaker and Congressman Jim Scheuer of New York. And the chili?
Wisely, Wayne and Mario had been far more sparing in their use of peppery chili seasonings here than for a crowd in Texas, and most of the American delegation bragged that the dish was zesty and wonderful. Naturally, though, everybody was anxiously watching for the reaction of our Soviet guests. Most of them, wary at first, took a few modest spoonfuls and then decided, apparently, that this was pretty tasty stuff--not nearly as fearsome as they had expected. Wayne and Mario happily dished a lot of second helpings--some even to guests whose eyes were glistening a bit. And Wayne, while cleaning up after the party, found only one bowl with the chili partly eaten. Every other bowl in the hall was spooned clean--the ultimate barometer of good chili.
It would take more than a vat of Texas chili, of course, to burn away the fog shrouding Mikhail Gorbachev’s real aims. Still unanwered were the questions being asked around the world. Where was this new Kremlin leader trying to take the Soviet Union? Did his surprising actions to date portend important changes in the his country’s fundamental aims? Was there really a chance of ending the Cold War? Or was all this just an attractive new coat of paint for the same old expansionist goals that the USSR had pursued for half a century?
These questions itched in the minds of the Americans as they gathered under the imposing spires and domes of the Kremlin. In the ornate Great Hall of Catherine, they assembled around a long conference table for a long talk with Gorbachev.
Opening on a positive note, Jim Wright told the General Secretary that recent changes in the USSR could offer the best chance in fifty years for our countries to cooperate. Gorbachev, smiling, seemingly relaxed and self-assured, said through his interpreter that the USSR wanted to work with the U.S. for several reasons--economic, political and social. To the surprise of the Americans, he added: “Thank God some movement has begun toward cooperation.”
Later he complained that the U.S. had not responded adequately to generous new Soviet arms proposals, apparently feeling the USSR was cornered and “could be squeezed like a lemon.” He said the Soviets would like to reduce nuclear missiles in Europe, but the Reagan Administration said this would cause difficulties with Congress. “I look you in the eyes and do not see you as being so bloodthirsty or fearful of the USSR,” he declared. Finally, after two hours, Gorbachev sheepishly apologized for talking so long, comparing himself to a garrulous preacher.
“I was about ready to take up a collection,” Jim Wright joked. In other meetings the delegation huddled with Ligachev, Gromyko, Shevardnadze, Shcherbitsky and Dobrynin, and sat in on sessions of the Supreme Soviet. When all the talking was over, the Congressmen had lots of scribbled notes and personal hunches, but nobody seemed to have any conclusions on which they were willing to bet the family jewels.
Three days before we were scheduled to leave Moscow, Nikolai showed up unexpectedly in a Kremlin hallway. “I must talk with you,” he said quietly.
The two of us moved into an alcove beside a statue. From his discretion I could see he had something unusual on his mind.
“The General Secretary would like to invite the Speaker to speak on Soviet television,” he said.
Assuming this was a routine courtesy, I said: “You mean on television just here in the Moscow area?”
“No,” he said. “On our national television. Over the whole country. He would speak for about fifteen or twenty minutes, and we would provide an excellent translator.”
This was a little bigger deal than I thought. I recalled having read somewhere that the Soviet Union had about 300 million people spread across 11 of the world’s 24 time zones. This would be a somewhat bigger audience than Jim Wright reached on the 10 o’clock news over KXAS-TV in Fort Worth.
“What would he talk about?” I asked.
“Anything he wants to,”Nikolai said.
“Anything at all?”
“Anything at all,” he nodded.
“When would you want him to do this?”
“At the time when our audience is largest. We would like for his speech to be broadcast at the time the General Secretary always chooses for his own speeches--immediately after the 9 o’clock news on Saturday night.”
I pointed out that we were scheduled to leave Moscow Saturday afternoon, and the schedule probably could not be changed.
“The speech could be recorded,” Nikolai said.
“Would you edit out any of it?”
Nikolai acted hurt. “We would not do that,” he said.
Frankly, the more he talked, the more flabbergasted I became. What would prompt Gorbachev to make an offer like this? The Soviet Union had been giving the world nuclear indigestion for half a century, so why would its new leader open up his own proprietary television network and tell a top-ranking American official he could say anything he pleased? Was there a joker in the deck? Was there some key question I had foolishly failed to ask?
It was an hour or so before I could get Jim Wright loose from the delegation for a private huddle back at the hotel. When I told him about the offer, he was surprised--and clearly delighted. Even so, we spent a good deal of time trying to examine its implications. On its face, the invitation to make a major speech to the entire population of the Soviet Union seemed almost too good to be true. Jim Wright and I both wanted to believe it was made in good faith, and that his remarks would not be misused or twisted in a way to compromise or embarrass the United States. Having lived with the trickery and deceptions of the Cold War for most our adult lives, we were inclined to be wary.
Even though the speech would have to be taped and would not be broadcast until several hours after our departure, I accepted Nikolai’s word that it would not be edited, and that it would be translated accurately. After all, the Soviets knew our Embassy would monitor the broadcast carefully and could spot instantly any shenanigans with the tape or the translation. For Jim Wright, it was decision time.
“Tell them we’ll do it--on a couple of conditions,” he said. Then he carefully spelled out the message I was to convey to Nikolai.
For Jim Wright, this was a dream come true. He was, by instinct, by experience and by choice, a political animal. And what politician in history would not have drooled down his string tie over an opportunity to deliver a personal message to a television audience spanning nearly half the earth? But for this particular politician, this would be far more than a just another ego trip.
Nearly 30 years earlier, as Christmas, 1958, approached, Jim Wright, then a young two-term Congressman, had written a visionary newsletter called A Letter To Ivan. Addressed to an imaginary Soviet citizen, the letter bemoaned the vast amounts of money being poured into weapons by both the Soviet Union and the United States because each feared the other. Stressing the common values shared by people in both countries, the letter proposed a peaceful contest between our two competing economic systems. Then, by a methodical, agreed-on 10 per cent a year reduction in arms spending, both countries could invest the savings in fighting disease, feeding the hungry, wiping out slums, and building schools, hospitals and libraries. “Think it over, Ivan,” the letter said. “We’ve both been trying the other way long enough.”
As he was leaving his two-hour conference with Gorbachev in the Kremlin only a day or so before, Jim Wright told him about this newsletter and gave him a copy. The General Secretary nodded agreement. “If only we had done so back then,” he said.
Now, in his televised speech, Jim Wright would have a chance to echo this theme of peaceful competition and step-by-step disarmament in a fresh, updated version of his old, yellowing newsletter. The message would be the similar, but this time he wouldn’t be pecking it out on a typewriter. This time, he would be talking to Ivan himself.
Nikolai was standing by at the hotel, awaiting Jim Wright’s answer. “The Speaker is pleased to accept the General Secretary’s generous offer--provided you can agree to two conditions,” I said. “The first is very simple.”
“Yes?” he said.
“I would like for you to reconfirm to me a promise you have already made--that there will be no editing, no changes, no alterations of the Speaker’s remarks, and that the translation will be absolutely accurate and faithful to his meaning.”
“Again, you have my absolute assurance,” Nikolai said.
“Great. Now for the other condition. Jim Wright would like to offer to each listener a little emblem like this,” I said, fingering the tiny replica of crossed U.S. and Soviet flags in my coat lapel.
“That is very generous. There is no problem with that.”
“Yes, but I haven’t finished,” I said. “The Speaker would send these lapel buttons only to people who write to him in the United States. I have already checked with the Washington post office. I have been told that the letters from your country can use a simplified form of address--‘Jim Wright, Washington, U.S.A.’ We would like to have those words superimposed on the television screen.”
“That’s fine. That can be done,” Nikolai said.
I frowned. “Nikolai, I want to make sure you understand. Over these past few days I have learned to like you and respect you. I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”
He smiled. “There will be no trouble.”
I wasn’t sure I believed him. “Nikolai, now please understand exactly what I am telling you. I am saying that a high official of the United States government is going to ask citizens of the Soviet Union to write personal, private letters to him in the United States. What’s more, he plans to answer the persons who write and send them one of these little emblems. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I understand what you are saying, and it is all right,” he said.
“There is no problem with your citizens engaging in private correspondence with an official of the United States? They will not get into trouble?”
“There is no problem. They will not get into trouble.”
“And you can tell me this on your own responsibility? You don’t need to consult with anyone?”
“I don’t have to ask anybody,” Nikolai declared. “I can tell you it is all right.”
To me, that did it. In my own private world, I was now sure that something truly profound was unfolding in the Soviet Union. How else could Nikolai, certainly no high-level Kremlin mucketymuck, display such sublime self-confidence? How else could he personally be absolutely sure that plain, everyday Soviet citizens were perfectly free to correspond with a top-ranking official of a foreign government? Under previous regimes, wouldn’t any such letter writer have been carted off by the KGB to the nearest gulag?
However ridiculous it may seem to admit it even today, I truly felt at that moment I knew the answer to the question everybody was asking. Mikhail Gorbachev was indeed for real. By design or by accident, he had pulled a couple of loose threads, and now the Communist dictatorship which had terrified its own citizens and the rest of the world for 50 years was beginning to come unraveled like an old sweater. Otherwise how could Jim Wright be granted such an astounding blank check--not only to say anything he doggoned pleased to the whole USSR, but also then to correspond privately with Soviet citizens?
In response to Jim Wright’s TV speech, he received nearly 2,500 letters. About a third were in English. The rest were translated by the Library of Congress. To each was sent a reply and, as promised, a lapel pin of crossed U.S. and Soviet flags.
All the letters expressed hope for peace and cooperation. Many recalled U.S. help to the USSR during World War II. Many others appealed for nuclear disarmament. And some foresaw better days ahead.
“Great changes are going on in our country,” said one Soviet citizen. We feel it daily in our life. We have great hopes to do better.”