136 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
from insomnia.^62 He recognized the weaknesses in his grasp of inter-
national relations.^63 He told his aide Teimuraz Stepanov-Mamaladze:
‘I’m caught in difficulty. In my previous work I always knew what I
could, wanted and had to say. Here, I haven’t found definition as yet.’^64
Initially he relied on Kornienko for arms talks advice.^65 He praised the
record of his predecessor: ‘Who am I compared to Gromyko, a battle-
ship of world foreign policy? I’m just a rowing boat. But with a
motor.’^66 Officials laughed at how they needed to spoon-feed him with
rudimentary information.^67 Ponomarëv in the Party International
Department was scathing: ‘He completely lacks any understanding in
[international relations].’^68 Gorbachëv shunted Ponomarëv into retire-
ment. To take his place, he brought back Ambassador Dobrynin from
Washington. This still left a lot of communist conservatives in post.
Shevardnadze knew that several officials in the ministry operated an
informal anti-reform intelligence network among themselves.^69 This
did not daunt him. He told an aide: ‘We need democratization like a
valve for bringing a healthy social force into action.’ He denied that
this might have an explosive effect on society.^70
It took until late August 1985 before Shevardnadze felt that he had
made the right decision in accepting the ministry.^71 Fair-minded
people admitted how quickly he was mastering his huge new brief. He
had no model to follow since the ministry was created in Gromyko’s
image, and its personnel were trained in a conservative tradition.^72
Shevardnadze had a low opinion of many of his ambassadors, whom
he thought were ignorant about their own country.^73
Shevardnadze knew that he needed a lengthy tenure of office if he
was to do what he wanted.^74 He believed passionately that the party
had to lead the way in everything;^75 he felt an urgent need for action,
saying: ‘Now we’ve got to save socialism.’ (He did not dare to say this
in public, but only to his aide Stepanov–Mamaladze.) He accepted that
the leadership would have to pay for past mistakes and introduced a
fresh dictum: ‘You m[ust] place peace above class interests.’^76 He urged
his officials to raise any matter they liked or to ask about when it
would truly be possible to drag the USSR out of ‘the bog’.^77 He strove
to root out idle chatter, nepotism and corruption. Too few Soviet dip-
lomats, he thought, could write in a lively way or give an adequate
public speech. There was far too little innovative thinking. He encour-
aged a spirit of democratic debate and deplored the ministry’s failure
to offer useful prognoses about the world situation; he indicated that
he intended to recruit outsiders to help him remedy the situation.^78 On