TO GENEVA 151nuclear weapons of every type, by as much as a half in the first
instance. He would offer to untie the question of intermediate-range
nuclear weapons in Europe from questions about strategic and space
weaponry; he also hoped to have direct negotiations with the French
and the British in the near future. He meant to use the summit to
break up the logjam in current negotiations.^3
He knew how difficult this might prove: ‘At the same time we don’t
nourish illusions that we’ll meet with a new Reagan in Geneva or that
he’ll proceed to agreement of a serious and sufficiently concrete
nature.’ The campaign to stop the arms race had to go on even if
the Americans were not yet ready to help.^4 Soviet diplomacy should
make use of the movement of opposition to the ‘Star Wars’ project in
Western Europe. He could see that he had to avoid seeming to aim at
a split in the NATO alliance. There was some reason for optimism.
Mitterrand had talked to him of his unease about American foreign
policy.^5 Kohl had written to Moscow proposing closer ties between
West Germany and Eastern Europe. Gorbachëv welcomed the over-
ture while stipulating that if Kohl was serious, the West Germans had
to forswear what he called their ‘revanchist’ pretensions against East
Germany and end their compliance with the Americans.^6 His big
worry was that Reagan and his administration lacked a genuine desire
to negotiate an arms reduction agreement. He hoped that Shevard-
nadze, who was scheduled to leave for America after the Sofia meeting,
could get the American side to take a more constructive approach
before the two leaders met at the Swiss summit.^7
The Strategic Defense Initiative, Gorbachëv repeated, was essentially
‘militaristic’. He added that the French ‘Eureka’ project was equally
warlike, and he discouraged the East European leaders from believing
that Mitterrand was offering genuinely equal collaboration.^8 He called
for faith in Comecon’s own Complex Programme of Scientific-Technical
Progress, agreed in June 1984 but not yet implemented; he lamented
the lack of progress towards deeper economic integration between the
USSR and Eastern Europe.^9 The East European leaders were accustomed
to calls by the Kremlin to bring their economies closer together. Gor-
bachëv’s latest appeal failed to cut much ice. On coming to power, he
had signalled that Moscow would no longer feather-bed the region’s
budgets. One of his first steps had been to end the Soviet subsidy to
Bulgarian vegetable production. Zhivkov reacted by almost doubling the
prices charged for food exports to the USSR.^10 Gorbachëv refused to
relent. When starting the Soviet temperance campaign, his government