THE STALLED INTERACTION 179transfer. He and Gorbachëv badly wanted to achieve economic regen-
eration. They had tried to tempt the Japanese with the promise to buy
their products, but this got them nowhere. The Tokyo government
declined to annoy the Americans, and anyway the Soviet leadership
refused to negotiate about the Japanese northern territories annexed
by the USSR in 1945.^4 Shevardnadze drew up a list of other awk-
ward questions that would soon require an answer. What was to be
the USSR’s relationship with other communist states? Where did the
developing countries stand in Moscow’s eyes? How did the answers
affect how the Soviet leadership handled America? What was the offi-
cial line about ‘the problem about the democratization of international
relations’? Shevardnadze, who had laboured as a boy in Georgian vine-
yards, liked to say that he was pouring new wine into new wineskins.^5
The frustration for Gorbachëv was that Reagan appeared to prefer
wine of an older vintage. Among his aides and advisers, Gorbachëv
was frank about the need to rethink Soviet military doctrine: ‘I bet
there are as many definitions of strategic parity as we have people sit-
ting in this room. I am ready to defend my own. Real strategic stability
does not necessarily require that both sides follow each other, nostril
to nostril.’^6
The Congress was nevertheless a triumph for Gorbachëv. His key-
note speech dwelt on an exciting agenda. While adumbrating a set of
political and economic changes in the USSR, he emphasized his prior-
ity for ending the arms race in an ‘interdependent world’. He expressed
horror of the American ‘Star Wars’ programme and highlighted his
January declaration as the basis for progress. Taking the Congress into
his confidence, he noted that a ‘right-wing grouping’ held power in the
Washington administration – throughout the speech he avoided men-
tion of Reagan himself in pejorative terms. He admitted that the letter
from the President, which had arrived only a day before the Congress,
was less than clear about America’s intentions. While some aspects
gave grounds for optimism, others were dispiriting. To loud applause,
Gorbachëv said he was unwilling to take no for an answer. He called
for a deep change in global politics. He wanted an end to a wide range
of regional conflicts. As agreed with Shevardnadze, he called the
Afghan war ‘a bloody wound’; he also announced the desire to pull out
all the Soviet forces as soon as possible. No one listening to him was in
any doubt that he was setting a broad new direction for the USSR at
home and abroad.^7
What he dared not publicly admit was that his country’s economic