IN THE SOVIET WAITING ROOM 113As she told the BBC that evening, her guest at Chequers impressed
her:
I am cautiously optimistic. I like Mr Gorbachev. We can do busi-
ness together. We both believe in our own political systems. He
firmly believes in his; I firmly believe in mine. We are never going
to change one another. So that is not in doubt, but we have two
great interests in common: that we should both do everything
we can to see that war never starts again, and therefore we go into
the disarmament talks determined to make them succeed. And
secondly, I think we both believe that they are the more likely
to succeed if we can build up confidence in one another and trust
in one another about each other’s approach, and therefore, we
believe in cooperating on trade matters, on cultural matters, on
quite a lot of contacts between politicians from the two sides of
the divide.But Gorbachëv showed a rougher side to Labour Party leaders. At
lunch with Neil Kinnock, the two sides called each other ‘comrades’;
but when Kinnock read out a list of Soviet human rights cases, Gor-
bachëv turned red in the face and let forth a spate of expletives.^78 He
warned that the British would get it ‘right in the teeth’ if they insisted
on denouncing the USSR’s record on human rights. He called dissent-
ers like Anatoli Shcharanski ‘turds’.^79
Gorbachëv let nothing spoil his mood. On 19 December he felt
carefree enough to stop his limousine and take an impromptu stroll
along Downing Street.^80 This was hardly the conventional behaviour
of a Politburo member, and the British media alerted the world to his
novelty. But almost as soon as he appeared in England he was gone.
Unexpected news arrived from Moscow that Politburo member Usti-
nov had died, and Gorbachëv had to cut short his visit in order to
attend the funeral and ensure that nothing of importance was decided
in his absence.
Thatcher wrote to Reagan about her impressions, stressing that he
was intelligent, affable and ‘relatively open’. She reported that Gor-
bachëv was definite about the USSR’s intention to match the Strategic
Defense Initiative if the Americans continued their research pro-
gramme; but she added that he acknowledged that any Soviet rival
programme would place a huge strain on the budget. She repeated that
she could do business with him and commented: ‘I actually rather
liked him.’^81 Although American officials avidly read what she wrote,