MIKHAIL GORBACHËV 127involving ever renewed efforts.’^57 He blamed America for the confron-
tation with the USSR. He accused the Americans of threatening the
‘heroic people of Nicaragua’ with the kind of military vengeance
meted out to Grenada.^58 He castigated attempts by America to subvert
the ‘socialist countries’.^59 Yet he also adopted a more conciliatory tone.
He made no mention of President Reagan. He praised the Helsinki
Final Act and other agreements signed in the years of détente – and he
called for a strengthening of economic and scientific-technical cooper-
ation with the West.^60 He expressed regret that the Geneva talks were
stalling because the Americans refused to concede on the Strategic
Defense Initiative – he attributed this to the desire of ‘certain circles’ in
the American administration to achieve world domination.^61 He
pointed to his recent proposal for a moratorium on nuclear test explo-
sions as proof of the Soviet leadership’s pacific intentions. If the
Americans wanted to reduce the potential for military conflict, they
could now see that the Soviet leadership was willing to talk.^62 He
expressed some hope that America’s standpoint could be ‘corrected’
through his overtures.^63
Among those who congratulated him was Eduard Shevardnadze.
Noting the international clamour about Gorbachëv, Shevardnadze
suggested that the West had a mortal fear of ‘the bringing together of
socialism with a strong leadership’.^64 Military commanders too were
pleased about Gorbachëv’s elevation. Defence Minister Sergei Sokolov
commented to Chief of the General Staff Sergei Akhromeev: ‘It seems
as if we’ve got a leader at last!’^65 Foreign Affairs Ministry official Ana-
toli Adamishin called him a ‘leader sent by God’.^66 But not everyone
held a high opinion of him. Boris Ponomarëv, head of the Party Inter-
national Department, thought he was an upstart with the talent of an
Agricultural Secretary at best.^67 Gorbachëv intended to prove such
people wrong. He had yet to work out a route or even a destination for
his general secretaryship. He was someone who assumed that paths
were made by walking. It was enough for him that he was going to end
the Soviet ‘stagnation’ of the 1970s. He was sure that he would find the
right policies as he moved along. This attitude would enable him to be
decisive and imaginative, though it also laid him open to trying things
out without a proper idea about what to expect. But all this lay in the
future. In his first weeks as General Secretary, Gorbachëv was a man
intent on big changes; and most people in the USSR and the rest of the
world liked the direction he was taking.