124 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
race into outer space. This pleased Gorbachëv. Less helpful was Kohl,
who stood by the Americans. Prime Minister Nakasone of Japan
raised the perennial question of the Soviet occupation of his country’s
northern islands in 1945. Thatcher emphasized her desire to resume a
dialogue with the USSR and to increase confidence between NATO
and the Warsaw Pact. She turned her charm on everyone – and it was
noticed that she employed ‘feminine’ (po-zhenski) ways of enhancing
her impact.^35 Chernyaev observed Thatcher with a fascinated eye and
remarked: ‘Beautiful, intelligent, extraordinary, feminine. It’s untrue
that she’s a woman with balls or a man in a skirt. She’s all woman and
what a woman!’^36 He pinned up her pictures in his Moscow office.^37
Soviet officials suspected that she saw a chance of putting Kohl and
Mitterrand in her political shadow.^38 Gorbachëv told her and the other
West Europeans how frustrated he felt about the lack of progress in
the arms talks. He emphasized that the USSR was trying to be ‘more
consistent and flexible’.^39
He held a separate meeting with Warsaw Pact leaders and spelled
out his policy for Eastern Europe. The USSR was no longer willing to
use its armed forces to prop them up. This had been the reality since
Brezhnev and Andropov had shrunk from military intervention in
Poland earlier in the decade. Gorbachëv spelled out some new impli-
cations. His idea was that the East European communist rulers should
take responsibility for affairs in their countries. Soviet interference was
to be consigned to history. The so-called Brezhnev Doctrine was dead.
As Gorbachëv noted, not everyone at the meeting believed what they
were hearing. It was not unknown for a Kremlin ruler to mouth pieties
and behave differently. Some were hoping that this was happening yet
again. Gorbachëv was determined to prove them wrong.^40
He left his own party leadership in no doubt that the times were
changing and that he was the man to preside over them. When report-
ing to the Politburo, he often referred to himself in the third person as
‘Gorbachëv’. This was his implicit way of stressing that he was some-
one special. From the start of his general secretaryship he imparted
the sense that he had an important destiny in Soviet and world poli-
tics. He was a leader in a hurry. He was brash and impatient, and this
side of his temperament was to the fore as he set about transforming
the USSR. Gorbachëv overflowed with energy. Not for him the Hun-
garian system of meeting on a fortnightly basis.^41 The Politburo would
meet every Thursday. He let others have their say and there was no
censoring of opinion. Sessions started at eleven in the morning and,