196 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
encouraged contacts with leading foreign scientists who were known
to oppose the American programme. In July 1986 the Soviet embassy
in West Germany contacted the Max-Planck Institute of Physics and
Astrophysics, whose executive director Hans-Peter Dürr had spoken
against the militarization of outer space. Velikhov and his Committee
of Soviet Scientists in Defence of Peace and Against Nuclear War
received permission for further overtures to colleagues abroad – the
idea was to send the physicist Sagdeev to West Germany with this in
mind.^35
Although the resultant publicity was helpful to Moscow’s cause,
the Politburo knew that it failed to dent the determination of the
American administration to see the programme through to comple-
tion. It was in the light of this recognition that Gorbachëv had taken
the big decision to offer a compromise to the White House whereby
Reagan would agree to confine the Initiative to the research labora-
tories and abandon the schemes for testing and deployment. His
calculations were both military and economic. He wanted to ensure
that the Americans would not produce weapons that were superior to
those which the USSR was developing. At the same time he aspired to
an environment in international relations where his country would
waste less treasure on its armed forces.