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Sat, May 31, 2008 05:17:44 PMFrom:
National Security Archive
Subject:
The Moscow Summit 20 Years Later From The Secret U.S. and Soviet Files
The Moscow Summit 20 Years Later
From The Secret U.S. and Soviet Files
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 251
Compiled and edited by Thomas Blanton and Svetlana Savranskaya
For more information, 202/994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu
Washington D.C., May 31, 2008 – Twenty years ago today, President Ronald Reagan declared the end of the Cold War while walking through Red Square and the Kremlin in Moscow during a summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that was friendly and largely ceremonial, according to the previously secret summit transcripts published today on the Web by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org).
Asked by a reporter on the Kremlin grounds May 31, 1988 about the famous “evil empire” speech of 1983, Reagan responded, “I was talking about another time, another era.” The underlying documents from the summit, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests in the U.S. and from the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow, show that Gorbachev was thwarted in his efforts for rapid arms control progress by lack of trust on the U.S. side, and that the “human factor” reflected in Reagan’s comments was the most important outcome of the summit.
The documents include the official U.S. transcripts of the face-to-face meetings in Moscow between Reagan and Gorbachev, the President’s briefing book for the summit (prepared by the State Department), notes from Soviet Politburo sessions before and after the summit (taken by Gorbachev aide Anatoly Chernyaev), the U.S. National Security Decision Directives leading up to the summit, and the talking points sent to U.S. embassies around the world after the summit.
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